by Carol Berg
“Max will see no advantage to warning Gildas of my murderous intent. He’d much rather have Gildas’s secrets.” I dug into the platter of roast pork under Saverian’s watchful eye. The two of us sat in the courtyard at Renna Syne two hours after my return from Palinur. “I’m not leaving Max personally at risk. He won’t even know I was actually after Jullian, Stearc, and the prince until we’re safely back here. All Sila’s anger and Bayard’s will fall on me and through me to Osriel. Bayard is conspiring against the priestess already, and I’ve hopes our prince will forgive me for saving his neck.”
“But you trust Max enough that this weapon he promises to supply is your only sure defense and this escape route he gave you is your only way out?” Saverian’s skepticism could have eroded Renna’s cliffs, so it did no good at all for my fragile confidence.
“In the best case, I won’t need to rely on either one. I’ve size, I’ve magic, and I’ve surprise to wield. Surely something in Fortress Torvo will remind me enough of something here that I can shift the four of us straight back here. And yes, before you ask again, I’ll not let Max turn me over until I’ve made sure the prisoners are actually in the fortress.”
The physician poked at the blaze in the fire pit. The serving man had thought she was mad to have wood hauled into the sunny courtyard of the window house. He was not present to note the greater oddity when I stripped off my cloak, tunic, and shirt as I ate, basking in the frigid air as if it were a river of mead, while Saverian huddled next to her blaze. Only a few hours remained until sundown, when Voushanti was to deliver me to Prince Bayard. Every time I thought of it, my gut tied itself in knots and my head got woozy.
“I won’t argue that we’ve much choice in the matter,” said the physician, “but your plan is madness. You’ve no idea what Sila Diaglou thinks to do with you. Do you actually believe she’ll allow you to roam free and abscond with her prisoners?”
“In the best case, I’ll have the three of them out before she can get over the surprise. In the worst case, well…” The worst cases were innumerable, and I couldn’t bear thinking about them. We’d no time to plan more intricate ploys. “…I’ll just have to lie a bit more. It’s still my finest talent.”
I had exercised that skill in plenty since I’d returned from Palinur, pulled on the damp clothes I’d stashed behind a water cask in Renna’s back alley, and rousted my fellow conspirators from their afternoon’s business. I had told Elene I had no reason to fear Sila Diaglou’s custody, as the priestess had made clear she wanted me alive. I had promised Brother Victor that no amount of intelligence and clever deceit could give Gildas the power to match a half-Danae half sorcerer. I’d assured all of them that my new skills could certainly get me and the prisoners out of Sila Diaglou’s house and back here in good order. I had even asked Elene to show me Renna’s dungeons so I could impress their complete image—the stink produced by the three drunkard prisoners, the chill, the taste and smell of iron and damp and enclosing walls—firmly on my mind. I had insisted that she needn’t worry about my pallor as I followed her through those dank passages, and when we’d come out into the wintry sunlight, I distracted them all from my sick fear and sketchy plan by showing them the fronds of sea grass that marked my hand with pale blue and silver light.
Saverian knew better. I appreciated that she didn’t contradict me until we were alone. While Elene, Brother Victor, and Voushanti prepared a letter in Osriel’s name, confirming the solstice plan and offering me to Bayard as a “gift of good faith” to hand over to Sila Diaglou and close their bargain, the two of us had hiked over to Renna Syne. Along with some of the wardrobe Osriel had provided me, Saverian had supplied food, medicine, and her own astringent honesty.
“This Gildas will suspect you’re there to take the boy and the others. He knows about your problem with nivat. That should worry you. One wrong word from Max and he’ll pounce.”
It did worry me. And then there was the matter of being staked bound and bleeding over some Danae sianou. Alone and dying slowly…great gods, what end could be worse than that? Especially when all assurance about what might come after my death had been upended. Saverian’s marrow-deep scrutiny had surely uncovered this fear, too.
“Yes. Yes. And yes,” I said. “It is a demented plan. A thousand things can go wrong. But from the beginning Sila has said she wants my contract, not just me. She has some use for me, Saverian. She’s not going to kill me or let Gildas do it. And if she has some use for me, then I have leverage. I won’t be shut up in a box. As for the nivat…I’ll be wary. At the first whiff, I’ll shut down my sense of smell—Kol taught me how to do that. Yes, I could be horribly wrong about all this, and if you think I am terrified, that’s not even the half of it. Gods, I’m no strategist. This is all I can think to do.”
I stuffed down more food, not knowing when I might get to eat again. I had to stay warm. I had to stay sensible. Saverian was too good at making me think, however uncomfortable. It was certainly possible that my connection with Osriel might lead Gildas to suspect that Osriel and Gram were the same man. In that case, the game would be up before it had even begun.
“You should get the others to prepare for the worst,” I said. “They respect you, listen to you. They know about strategy and tactics and all those things I’ve no head for. They must know some way to call in Osriel’s warlords. So use it and persuade the lords to defend Caedmon’s Bridge on the solstice. Stash Gillarine’s monks in the highest mountains of Evanore.”
“What if you’re wrong about bigger things, Valen?” said the physician softly. “What if your importance to the Danae is more critical than saving Osriel or Jullian or this lighthouse? Your mother had some plan for you.”
That argument, of course, I had no possible way to rebut, so I tried to explain the course that spirit and instinct had chosen for me. “Jullian is my friend and my sworn responsibility. Stearc is an honorable man and beloved of my friends. Though Osriel betrayed me, though he terrifies me, he is my lord and rightful king. He wants to do right for Navronne, even beyond his own life and honor and future—I can see that much. My mother told no one her plan, so I can’t see what would be so important that I must let my friends and my king die. And no one else has the skills to save them. I might. So, physician, steer me a better course.”
“Kill Voushanti.”
“Spirits of night!” I said, near choking. I dropped my eating knife into the platter as if it had given her the macabre idea. Had I not already closed down the rattling abundance of my senses, I would have been sure I had misheard. “Why, in the name of the Mother—?”
“He is already dead. Has been for over ten years. And if no one steps forward by tomorrow night, he’ll die again, this time with no coming back. To continue breathing he must be blood-bound to another living person. Osriel and Stearc are not available. Elene will have naught to do with the business. The monk is too weak. I can’t do it myself if I’m going to work the spell, not that I’m interested in having so close an attachment to him, either. He is brutish and bullheaded, frightens most of my patients, and has no respect for women, especially those who aspire to studies. I could perhaps persuade Philo or Melkire to the task—they respect him and are not so afraid as everyone else—but Osriel has given me no leave to tell anyone else of this.”
I worked to take in so much information. “But you’re telling me.”
“I believe the prince would trust you with the knowledge. In the days ahead, you might need someone who is bound to your will and devoted to your service…at least until Osriel can take on the burden again. It won’t improve your crazy plan, but it might give you and Riel a better chance of surviving it.”
She spoke as seriously and reasonably as Brother Sebastian explaining the structure of virtue. But the little lines atop the bridge of her nose had deepened to little ravines. Slowly I wiped my greasy mouth on my shirttail, startled as always to see the silvery gards gleaming from my hand. I swallowed. “Are you planning to explain more or d
o you expect me just to agree to such a mystery at your suggestion? Which I won’t.”
She shoved the plate of meat back toward me and refilled my cup with Evanori ale that tasted as if it had been made from discarded boots. “Keep eating. You don’t have much time, and if we’re to do this, we’ll need to do it soon.”
I just looked at her with the kind of expression such a ridiculous suggestion deserved.
She sighed and rested the ale pitcher in her lap. “Voushanti was the third son of a minor Evanori family, a veteran, competent warrior. When King Eodward moved his mistress to Renna to get her away from your hateful purebloods, he sent Voushanti along as her bodyguard. Voushanti was arrogant and silent and not particularly happy at being shoved off to watch over a woman. Everyone here was a bit afraid of him. And then Lirene died.”
The physician took on her most argumentative expression, but her eyes were focused on the past and not on me.
“You have to understand how Osriel adored his mother. She cared for him through so much pain and sickness, sang to him, bathed him, held him through long, dreadful nights. He was only seven when a sudden fever took her. He truly believed he would die without her. Evanori have stories…well, all warrior people have stories, I’m sure, about heroes that live beyond death. On the day of Lirene’s funeral rites, Riel told me that his magic was going to bring her back. Voushanti heard him say it, and called Osriel a blasphemer to so question the laws of the gods and insult the memory of true warriors. Osriel hated Voushanti from that day.”
“He planned to bring his mother back from the dead,” I said numbly.
“Osriel read everything he could find about Aurellian sorcery, and he questioned my mother and his father’s other purebloods until their ears blistered. He studied and followed my mother about as she worked with the sick. She said Riel could have been a healer himself were he not a king’s bastard, required to study politics and war. Everyone believed Osriel sought a cure for saccheria, but I knew what he was looking for. At twelve, when his father took him to Ardra for the first time, he brought back a wagonload of Aurellian books, and in an old book of herb spells, he found the key.”
Saverian’s long, capable fingers were tangled in a knot, pressed to her chin, and she kept her eyes averted as people do when they tell stories they believe they should not.
“At fifteen, he showed me how he could smother a frog and set it breathing again. A few months later, he claimed to have touched the living soul of a villein who had been kicked by a horse, though the man’s soul escaped him before he could catch it. By this time he had accepted that his mother was gone, but he could not stop.” She paused, pressing her lips together.
“And Voushanti?” I said, urging her on.
“From the day Lirene died, wherever Osriel walked, sat, studied, or slept, Voushanti stood by. Riel hated it. He called the saccheria his prison, and Voushanti his warder. When he was small, he cast magical curses at Voushanti—little flaming, stinging things—and his father chastised him sorely for it. By the time he turned sixteen, he merely lived as if Voushanti did not exist.
“One winter afternoon, Osriel was sitting in the old library of this house, studying. He was feverish again, his joints so swollen that any movement was excruciating. He was practicing fire work, smothering the hearth fire and starting it up again with pure magic. Voushanti warned him repeatedly to stop, for the steward had reported the library chimney clogged. Voushanti stood directly in front of the hearth…”
I needed no more words to see what happened—a frustrated, angry, pain-racked youth flaunting his talent before his jailer, casting a great flaming spell toward the hearth.
Saverian stopped and drank from her ale cup. I was so caught up in the story, my own remained untouched. “Voushanti saved him from the fire,” I said.
Saverian drained her cup. “The place burned like dry wheat. You can still see the ruin out behind the west wing. Voushanti took the full brunt of Osriel’s fireburst and the eruption of the chimney, yet he carried Osriel out, completely shielding him from the flames. No one could have survived such injuries as the mardane bore. My mother pronounced him dead within the hour.”
Like the tides of Evaldamon, cold dread swept over me again. “But Osriel…”
“He demanded servants carry the body into his private study. Almost a full day later, Riel summoned my mother to tend Voushanti’s burns. Lungs, heart, all his organs were functioning, though his burns remained savage. Voushanti lived again.”
“You say this has happened more than once…his dying…”
“Three that I know of. One that I saw, when Riel was too sick to complete the spell and called me in to help. Severe wounds can stop Voushanti’s heart, but he can be brought back if the enchantment is renewed immediately. Time can stop his heart if the enchantment is not renewed at least once in a sevenday. But the one whose blood seals the enchantment on the mardane’s lips is bound to him, able to command Voushanti to his service. Unless you force him elsewhere, Voushanti will not leave your side. He will sense your presence, know when you’re in trouble, and he fights like a man who has nothing to lose. He could make the difference between your venture’s success and failure.”
“What of his soul?”
“I don’t believe in souls.”
“What does the prince say?”
She folded her arms tight across her breast and hardened her mouth as if expecting me to assault her. “He says that Voushanti’s soul and body are fused, and that when his body dies at last—truly and forever—his soul will die with it. Osriel bears some dreadful guilt over the whole thing, which is ridiculous. The magic is truly remarkable.”
I would have given my teeth to have more time to consider what Saverian had told me, for in her story of Osriel’s bold sorcery lay the truth about dead men’s eyes and votive vessels sealed with blood and what Osriel intended to do with them. I had assumed he planned some great enchantment, built with the substance and energies he had stolen from dying men. But now…It came to me that the Bastard thought to ensorcel himself an army.
Chapter 20
“Who gave you leave to speak of these matters?” The red centers of Voushanti’s dark eyes gleamed with fury. “The prince will have you flogged.”
Saverian stepped closer to my side, as if together we could withstand his wrath. I wished I was far from Saverian’s meticulously ordered study.
“The prince commanded me to do what was necessary to give you a full span of life, Mardane,” said Saverian. “You owe him your obedience, as I do.”
“Him. Not you. Not this fey sorcerer.”
“Then do as he would command you. If you have another partner in mind, perhaps Magnus could fetch him.”
Cream-colored light streamed from a lamp of the magical variety that lit Renna Syne, illuminating shelf upon shelf filled with books, beakers, bottles, and jars. Two well-scrubbed tables laid out with brass implements, mortar and pestle, pans, and balances furnished one end of the room. A chair, side table, and footstool held the opposite end, with a variety of stools and benches in between. The physician had failed to mention the chamber’s location in the bowels of Renna’s fortress or its lack of windows. Evidently she disliked being bothered by household noise, outdoor views, or air as she worked.
When I had said I would consider doing as she suggested, Saverian had bustled me here immediately. “What of your scruples?” I’d asked her, as we traipsed across the dry hillside between Renna Syne and the fortress. “You once told me that ‘no worthy physician could stand by and see a healthy body damaged.’”
“To cause death deliberately violates every principle of the healer’s art,” she had said. “And to keep a body alive by enchantment violates the good order of nature that stands before any god in my esteem. But if I refuse to perpetuate Osriel’s ugly mistake, then I have destroyed Voushanti just as surely and far more permanently. He will die unless you and I do this.” That was the point I could not argue.
Then we ha
d arrived and Voushanti had been waiting for her. And before I could say yes or no, she had told Voushanti I would be his new partner in this macabre business. Since then he had been circling the workroom like a trapped wolf.
Saverian continued to speak calmly. “It seems unlikely that the prince will return in time to perform this service for you himself. As you are accompanying Magnus to Palinur to effect our lord’s rescue, it would be most inconvenient if you were to die in the midst of it. This seems a reasonable solution to your problem.”
“Reasonable?” There ensued one of the most horrible sounds I had ever heard—a strident gargling bellow that might have emanated from one of the nearby dungeons. The accompanying jerk of Voushanti’s shoulders and the spasm of emotion that crossed his scarred visage gave me the unlikely idea that he was laughing. “You cannot even tell me how this one’s fey blood might affect the enchantment. Would I had a tankard, physician, that I could raise it to your twisted notion of reason.”
Saverian, unfazed, pointed to a long low bench. Scuffed leather covered its thin padding. “I promise you will be no more dead using the sorcerer’s blood than you will be without it. You’ve an appointment in Palinur three hours hence, Mardane, which means you’ve little enough time for recovery. If we’re to do this, we do it now.”
Events swept past and over me like a flock of startled crows. Abandoning me at the door, where I held a drowning man’s grip on a much too low lintel stone, Saverian dragged a stepstool to one of her shelves and retrieved a small enameled canister shaped like an angel. She set the canister on a knee-high table in company with a silver lancet, a square stack of folded linen, and a bronze basin with an extended lip like that of a pitcher.
“Slitting your heart vein will be quickest, Lord Voushanti, though the blood loss will likely leave you weaker than you would prefer,” she said. “But delivering Magnus to Prince Bayard should not entail a fight, and the journey…you will marvel at its ease and, in fact, decide that you have bound yourself to a fine racehorse. We’ll hope he keeps his pace reasonable in deference to your recent demise.”