by Carol Berg
“If there is the slightest hope to rescue our prince, I must do it,” said Brother Victor. “I can transfer my wardship to another. And we must certainly do whatever we can to retrieve young Jullian as well. Perhaps I can speak to Gildas’s conscience…”
Perhaps they hadn’t told Victor about Gerard. “Gildas owns no conscience,” I said.
“The priestess will never yield a living captive.” Voushanti’s opinion interrupted the discussion with the subtle grace of a crossbow bolt. “Go through with this exchange and you but confirm she has a prize in hand. Then she will redouble her efforts to extract the truth from Thane Stearc. Whether or not he tells her what she wants to know, Thane Stearc is a dead man. His endurance is all that stands between Prince Osriel and Sila Diaglou’s questioning.” He glared at Saverian as if it were her fault Osriel was taken.
Voushanti’s reasoning—and its implication that Osriel was as good as dead, too—silenced us all. Elene closed her eyes and pressed folded hands to her mouth.
There had to be some other way to save three lives than to send this good man to certain death. I rolled the priestess’s message over in my mind. With every skill of memory I had developed through the years, I reviewed the exact phrasing, my thoughts focused as if heeding the whispers of stone. “She wants to have it done before the solstice,” I murmured.
Then truth struck home like a cudgel to the knees. “Of course!” I blurted out. “Max has settled her bargain with Prince Bayard!”
Saverian and Victor had not heard the details of Osriel’s meeting with his two half brothers at Gillarine. Thus I had to explain Osriel’s agreement with Bayard to join him in confronting the Harrowers, and how my brother Max, as Bayard’s negotiator, had been charged to drive a false bargain with the priestess over her demands for control of Evanore, the lighthouse, and me. “…and so Prince Osriel told them that either the joined might of Eodward’s sons defeats Sila Diaglou on the winter solstice or the world we know will end.”
“By the Mother, Riel!” Saverian’s harsh whisper split the despairing silence.
The problem, of course, was that without Osriel, his plan, whatever it might have been, collapsed like an empty sack. What hope had we of preventing Sila Diaglou from doing whatever she wished on the solstice? She could make Bayard her puppet king or crown herself. As long as she possessed the book of maps and the traitor Gildas to use it, she could eventually find every Danae sianou and work her poisoning, further corrupting the Canon. Harrowers would lay waste to Ardra. The warlords might hold Evanore against the combined legions of Harrowers and Moriangi, but what light would ever draw them from their caves as night and chaos drowned Navronne? No more savior princes waited hidden in Aeginea.
“Osriel commanded the warmoot to muster at Angor Nav on the solstice,” Elene said numbly. “He promised they would ride for Palinur the next day to enforce his claim to Navronne.”
No need to remind us that Angor Nav lay more than eighty quellae from Caedmon’s Bridge or to state the logical conclusion that Osriel had no intention of confronting Sila Diaglou with his Evanori legion. The prince had believed victory lay in the deserted gold mine of Dashon Ra, and if any knew what that dread solution entailed, it was Saverian. She looked as if she could snap bone with her teeth.
“Our first responsibility is to preserve the lighthouse,” said Brother Victor, always a man of practical reason. “Whatever plan Prince Osriel formulated and whatever he learned from the Danae that might aid him are imprisoned with him. So we must devise a new plan on our own.”
“Unless you’ve learned what we need, Valen,” said Elene, forcing her voice steady. “Perhaps he told you his intent before you were taken? Or perhaps you heard what he learned from the Danae?”
I heard her truer inquiry. Had I kept my promise to learn of Osriel’s dire enchantment and dissuade him from it?
I met her gaze and shook my head, then spoke to all. “We learned nothing from the prince or his meeting. But Saverian and I did learn that the Canon has been broken for a very long time. The Danae themselves are in decline and have found no answer for it. With each Harrower poisoning—what they did with Gerard and tried to do by killing Brother Horach—another part of the Canon is lost.”
Even as I spoke, many things seemed clearer in my own mind. On the day we retrieved Gerard’s body at Clyste’s Well, Kol, in his anger, had handed me the first clue. You lead me here, cleanse the Well so I do not sicken, return it to my memory so I cannot escape knowing what is lost—though I must lose it all over again. And Picus’s failing garden had given me the second.
“Once a sianou is poisoned, they can’t find their way there anymore,” I said. “And the rest of the land, despite their care, keeps failing. I saw what they do, what they fight, and I would wager on my hope of heaven that this failure is the root of our plagues and pestilence, our weather disturbances, too, for all I know. Prince Osriel went to the Danae hoping to gain use of their magic on the solstice, and we’ve no way of knowing what answer they gave him. But what Saverian learned is that no matter what they promised the prince, the archon’s enmity for humankind is so deep-rooted that trusting the Danae in any matter whatsoever increases our peril.”
As I laid out these truths, I saw no hope for Osriel or Stearc. Even if the thane had endured Sila Diaglou’s torments thus far, in the moment the priestess paraded her prisoners before Bayard, the game would be up and Osriel would die. It was only a matter of time.
“How long have we been gone?” I said. The confusions of Aeginea had destroyed my concept of time. Were we but a day or two from the solstice, I could see no course but to hide Elene and Victor and whatever monks we could salvage from Gillarine. Unbreached, the lighthouse might survive. But if those who could read the books and work the tools fell to Sila Diaglou’s holocaust, what matter if the priestess took her time to find her way inside? On the other hand, had we a sevenday, something more might be done, though I had no idea what.
“Six days have passed since you were taken.” Voushanti’s harsh intrusion grated on my spirit. “His Highness was made captive that same night. I returned to Renna only two days since.”
I spun to Saverian. “Only six! How could that be right?”
“Picus explained that it is not the days themselves, but the spending of human life that slows seven for one in Aeginea,” she said, with only vague attention. “Though time itself is fluid there, as we saw, the years pass side by side in the two planes, the sun’s passage marking the season’s change at the same hour.”
Saverian fell back into her own silence, distracted far beyond the matter of dirt and dishevelment and exhaustion. Her eyes flicked now and then toward Voushanti. But I accepted her word. Osriel had said something much the same.
Only six days…Perhaps we had a little time to work after all. “We’ve yet a fortnight until the solstice,” I said. “When is the anniversary of Eodward’s coronation? Has it passed? The prince was supposed to send to Bayard on that day to confirm their agreement.”
“The anniversary is three days hence,” said Brother Victor. “Mistress Saverian, did you say Picus?” She didn’t look up.
“A small, fast force might be able to intercept the priestess between the monkhouse and Palinur,” Voushanti broke in, his mailed bulk seeming to grow and fill the door. “One word and I can have the prince’s elite guard riding.”
“You will do nothing without my leave, Mardane,” said Elene harshly. “Renna is the gateway to Evanore. I’ll not leave it defenseless. As Prince Osriel’s appointed castellan, I command you stay here until Thane Boedec and Thanea Zurina arrive.”
“You cannot travel, Mardane,” said Saverian. “You know it.”
Voushanti folded his massive arms across his chest and looked away. I blinked, rubbed my own arms, and reached for better control of my wayward senses, for it seemed, just for a moment, that the edges of his flesh rippled like the surface of a wheat field. Though none acknowledged her comment, everyone looked as if a foul
odor had wafted through the chamber.
“Sila Diaglou has several days’ head start and can call up remounts and reinforcements throughout Ardra,” I said, impatient with their secrets. “She’s likely back at Fortress Torvo already. We’ll have to take the prince from her there.”
My vow to preserve the lighthouse demanded Osriel’s rescue, no matter my grievances with him. And my vow to Jullian demanded my participation, for I could rely on no one else to protect him.
Brother Victor tapped his walking stick on the floor idly. “We would need to be sure Osriel and Stearc are inside the fortress. We’ve heard that Palinur is in confusion. Perhaps we could send in a small party, shielded with enchantment. Strike quickly.”
Elene’s head popped up. “You could locate them, right, Valen? Your magic…”
“Of course…yes.” I knew Jullian and Osriel well enough that I could locate them if I had a clue where to start.
Yet a direct assault on their prison was out of the question; the ancient fortress where Luviar had bled out his life sat in the heart of Palinur. And negotiations of any kind could allow Sila Diaglou to discover the prize that lay in her hand. Our plan must use stealth. Something unexpected…
“As for getting inside the fortress…” A fearful, horrid idea began to take shape in my head. “There’s a possibility I could do that, as well. Max has negotiated this solstice bargain between Bayard and Sila. If I were to go to Max…find out the terms agreed to…make sure they’ve no inkling of the prince’s situation, I could likely get inside.” As long as the priestess still wanted me. Getting four of us out would be another problem, unless my Danae skills could suffice.
Saverian threw off her blanket abruptly and kicked her hearth stool aside. “Your health is unstable, Valen. Someone should go with you.”
“No choice,” I said, shaking my head. “I can get to Max. But without a lot of awkward explanations, none of you would be admitted into the place I’ll have to meet him. Once we’ve spoken, I’ll return here, and we’ll decide how to proceed. Unless someone has a better idea?”
I expected at least Voushanti to argue, but he merely stared at me, his hand caressing his battered sword hilt.
Elene looked bewildered. “But your brother is in Palinur with Bayard! That’s weeks of traveling! We can’t afford—”
“Our sorcerer has acquired new skills, lady,” said the physician.
Brother Victor glanced between Saverian and me. “What’s happened to you, Brother Valen? There’s something very different about you tonight.”
“Perhaps Saverian could tell you some of it tomorrow, Brother. Just now…” Somehow deciding a course of action had released my weariness to settle on my shoulders like the gods’ yoke. And I would need all the wits I could muster where I was going. “I don’t know about the ladies, but I can’t promise one more sensible word until I find a bed. Mardane, if you could…”
“Excuse me, good Saverian,” said Brother Victor, insistently, “did you say Picus?”
Voushanti, with as much curiosity as I had ever seen on his scarred visage, motioned me toward a side passage and a stair. When he showed me a small tower chamber, I almost wept at the sight of the plump pillows and folded blankets piled on a bed. Dané or not, world’s end or not, walls or not, I had to sleep. “Four hours or morning, Mardane, whichever comes later.”
Voushanti jerked his head and left. I drifted off still piecing together the puzzle of the Canon, the Danae, the Harrowers, the world’s end—why had I not asked Kol about the damnable weather?
The ancient wall embedded in crumbling earth…pebbles and mud washed down to the road at its base, crusted and frozen in this early morning. A gentle rightward curve…dawn smells of roasting meat, of baking bread, of damp earth…And around the next corner the sound of dribbling water—here melting ice dripping into the cistern, there the font that never froze or dried. Scrawny trees grew sidewise from the bank, branches heavy with snow drooping over the road…in my face…tickling, scratching, freezing…the smell of burning from the lower city…
I walked around the corner, and in less time than it took to think it, the narrow alley that squeezed between Renna’s kitchens and an ancient fortification built into an Evanori mountainside led me straight into the narrow lane in Palinur, more than two hundred quellae distant. The stare of an Evanori guardsman, flummoxed at the sight of an oddly naked man in the kitchen alley, now came from a ragged woman using water from the Aingerou’s Font to wash vomit off her boy child.
The boy pointed at me and cried out weakly, “Mama, look! He’s on fire…an angel…”
“Not so!” I whispered, embarrassed. “Sorry! Shhh!” But the lad’s thready cry bounced through the lane like a child’s ball, from one hushed voice to the next, for a beggars’ city jammed the lane that ought to have been deserted.
In the past, this favored quarter of Palinur had escaped the untidy truths of hard living. Evidently that was no longer the case. A few small fires smoldered here and there among makeshift tents and crude lean-tos, built from branches cut from the overhanging trees. Fortunately most of the crowd still slept.
I jogged down the crowded roadway, jumping over pools of filth, bundled possessions, and sprawled bodies, then dived over the low wall into a crusted snowbank and scrambled well away from the lane. Thanks to half a night’s rest and enough roast venison and jam tarts to breakfast a legion of halfbreed Danae, the cold did not bother me. All the same, best not dawdle. Fine houses, like those around here, would have pureblood guards and magical wards. Staying hidden in the straggling shrubbery, I donned my silk and satin finery.
Elene had somehow managed to get my pureblood cloak and mask cleaned by the time Voushanti woke me that morning. She had brought them herself, along with her thanks for my venture. “We all knew you were extraordinary, Valen, even when you were playing monk,” she’d said, touching the gards on my hand. When I inquired about her health, her courage came near breaking. “He doesn’t know,” she’d whispered, crossing her arms on her breast. “He could die this very day, not knowing of his child.”
I’d had little comfort to offer. The remembrance of her grief and the weight of her head on my chest ached like old wounds, as I slipped on my mask, hopped over the wall, and hurried up the lane. A cloud of yellow smoke and frost haze masked the lower city.
I had not expected ever to walk this particular lane again. But a pureblood head of family had the authority to summon each of his children to the family home without specifying a reason. If I worked matters right with Claudio de Cartamandua, he would arrange my meeting with Max.
“Best run, pureblood,” snarled a woman who was skinning what appeared to be a cat. “Orange-heads drove out a number of your kind just yesterday. We’ll see purebloods plowin’ come spring. Your pretty fur cloaks’ll ne’er keep ye warm in the mud.”
A few others joined her taunts. For once I was happy to see armed warriors in Registry black and red patrolling the upper end of the lane. They rousted a few sleepers who had wandered too close, but did not challenge me as I strode past them to the iron gate with the bronze gryphon.
How truth can change everything. Unlike the last time Serena Fortuna had brought me to these gates, my gut did not seethe with fear and loathing, nor did my skin blanch at unwelcome memories. None of the past had been my fault. Claudio and Josefina de Cartamandua-Celestine were not my parents. As I touched the lock and assembled my favorite spell, it occurred to me for the first time that Claudio, not Max, was my brother—and only half a one at that. Laughing, I fed magic into my spell, and the familiar lock shattered in a fizz of gold sparks and twisted bronze. Then I yanked the bellpull to wake them up and walked in.
Chapter 19
Five heavily armed guards met me in the entry court, blocking the gap between the iron lampposts and the lily-shaped brazier dedicated to Deunor Lightbringer. Their challenge died upon their lips as I removed my mask. They could not fail to recognize me or recall the dread prince who owned m
y contract.
“Announce me to Eqastré Cartamandua-Celestine,” I said with true Aurellian arrogance, while gloating childishly inside at naming my erstwhile parent as an equal. Truly this pureblood lunacy brought out the worst in me.
I did not wait for their return. Rather I strolled into the columned reception room, where my family had sold me to Prince Osriel. Naught had changed there, from the richly colored floor mosaics that displayed the order of the planets to the marble statuary, gilt caskets, tapestries, and urns. For generations, pureblood families had profited from Navronne’s hunger for sorcery. My family had been particularly successful at it until I’d come along.
“…impossible! Where is this visitor?” Claudio strode into the room in the company of the guards, as well as two gentleman attendants of exceptionally sturdy physique. He halted when he caught sight of me. “Magrog’s teeth!”
“Patronn.” Maintaining protocol, I sank to one knee and touched my forehead with my gloved fingertips. His servants were present, and I was not yet ready to proclaim my true heritage. Proof of one member’s tainted blood would call into question the lineal purity of every member of the family. I could ruin this house by removing one of my gloves.
For fifteen years this stocky, black-haired man adorned in red and green velvets and a fox-lined pelisse had been the bane of my life, unrelenting in his despite, deliberate in his cruelty. For twelve years more, I had struggled to survive in alleyways and battlefields, choosing poverty, abasement, and danger in preference to his sovereignty and the life it prescribed. Today, as I rose from my brief genuflection, I looked Claudio de Cartamandua-Celestine in the eye and smiled.
His glare of malice shifted to uncertainty. His eyes narrowed, and his powerful fists began to quiver. “Insolent…”
Protocol forbade him to touch me. My contract permitted only Osriel to do that. I longed to tell Claudio I knew his dirty secrets, but what I needed today was for him to summon Max. In no wise could I expect willing cooperation, and it was not yet time for threats, which meant I had to proceed very carefully.