by Carol Berg
Best not think too much of what I had to do. I laid the scraps on the floor, pressed my hands atop them, and closing my eyes, poured out magic enough to search Fortress Torvo. Indeed, naught prevented me…though I came to wish it had.
I cursed. Swore. Eventually I crawled away, buried my face in the bedclothes, and screamed out a monumental rage. Had any other edifice this side of hell seen so much of torment? The Harrowers’ self-righteous slaughter was only the most recent depredation. For decades this ruin had been a secret prison, used by nobles who took pleasure in meting out punishments in cruel excess of those mandated by Eodward’s ideals of justice. Men, women, children, noble or common…none were exempt. Before that, the fortress was used similarly by the Aurellians, a race whose delight in torture reached levels of depravity that counterbalanced every glory of their arts and every marvel of their building. And in ancient Ardra, before the rise of the enlightened Caedmon, Ardran nobles had lived in constant war with one another, as well as with the Moriangi Gravs to the north—and they had locked their rivals and their families here to starve. Every wail and scream and bloodletting had left its mark upon this stone. Despair had become its mortar.
But my uncomfortable exercise had repaid me. Osriel and Stearc were held straight down below me, six levels, at the least. Both men lived—that the magic had worked told me that much—but I could discern naught of their condition. I fixed their guide threads in my mind, the route of steps and passages through layer upon layer of blood-woven history, a trail that would lead me to them as soon as I could manage it. Some of the blood and pain I felt was surely theirs.
But what of Jullian? I had no blood to trace him. Of all the prisoners who had trod these vile halls, far too many had been boys. Three days…most of this one gone already.
The sun had gone, leaving the night beyond the windows black as pitch. The wind whistled through the window grates, as I yanked and twisted each one. Many of the bars were loose in the weathered stone facings; some were rusted through, some missing altogether. A little brutish work would allow me to crawl out. But one glance down into the blackness showed the pin-pricks of light that would be torches at the gates. As far as I had learned, Danae did not fly, and surely even Kol could not survive so great a leap. Damn the cowardly Jakome to the nethermost regions of hell!
Of a sudden I heard murmurings outside my door, and the bolts and latches scraped. By the time the door swung open, I was seated in one of my two chairs, feet propped on the table, and my gloves covering the blue telltales on my hands. I snatched up an apple and started munching. The taste of the fruit and the scents of porridge and wine waked an appetite I’d thought ruined by my searching.
“Good evening, Magnus Valentia.” A small woman hurried past me and set a loaded tray on my table, as an invisible companion closed and locked the door behind her. “A simple meal, but nourishing. And hot, if we partake right away.”
The soft-voiced visitor, barefoot and clothed in a plain white shift, was Sila Diaglou’s young devotee, the copper-skinned young woman with the earth-brown eyes. Thick hair the color of walnuts hung over her shoulder in a single plait, as if she were on her way to bed. Any man would find her alluring did she not have a habit of smearing her victims’ blood on her full lips.
“I do not sit down with murderers.”
She wrinkled her brow as if pondering the course of the universe. “But you’ve broken bread with other warriors, have you not—your comrades-in-arms in Prince Perryn’s service? War is dreadful, but when the world’s need demands it, all must serve. Some by killing. Some by dying.”
“My comrades took no pleasure in their deeds. They did not slaughter innocents or lick their blood.” Yet Boreas had notched his spear whenever he skewered a beardless Moriangi, saying he’d “keep the river dogs from growing up another warrior from a whelp.” And Boreas was not near the worst of those I’d called comrade.
“Some kinds of killing cannot be justified by war,” I said. “Unclean killing. Children.”
“If the war itself be noble, then I can’t see how one death be different from another. Please, let us not argue this evening. You should eat.” She had set out two deep bowls of porridge, a small plate of butter and bread, two spoons, and a steaming pitcher, and now poured wine into two waiting cups, sloshing a bit onto the table. The stout fragrance of wine and cloves filled the room, swirled by the chill breeze, setting up a raging thirst in me. Of a sudden I was sweating.
The girl perched on the second chair, tucked her bare feet under her robe, and dipped her spoon. “Will you not tell me more of yourself, Magnus?” she said between bites. “Then I’ll do the same. My mistress would not have us enemies.” Her great eyes gleamed in the lamplight, no hint of guile. Indeed they were empty of anything save eager curiosity and a certain sincere…appreciation.
I looked away. I did need to eat. Even more, I longed for the wine. It was a mercy that only this girl had been sent here. I was much too tired to spar with Gildas or Sila herself. Yet I would need to have a care. This girl was little more than a child herself—sixteen, seventeen—but a child who collaborated in murder. I dared not forget that.
I swirled the wine in the wooden cup, inhaling. Bless all gods, no lurking scent of nivat or anything else untoward wafted from it. Cloves certainly…a touch of cinnamon. Sweet Erdru, the aroma itself could get me drunk. All the better to sleep and forget what my bent had shown me.
I touched my tongue to one drop left hanging on the rim. Warmth spread from toes to eyebrows in less time than a flicker’s peck. No nivat. No lurking trace of herbs or potions. But the wine itself was disappointing, heavy on the tongue and tasting as if it had been kept in a cask of iron instead of oak. No use risking a muddled head for spoilt wine.
Unable to stomach sitting with the girl, I left the wine cup on the table and perched on a window ledge with bowl and spoon. Perhaps I could induce her to tell me where Jullian was kept or discover a way to get out of this room. The cursed Jakome’s treachery had been a sore blow.
“You speak first,” I said. “You likely know a few things about me already. What is your name?”
“Malena.”
An Aurellian word. “Goddess’s treasure.”
A pleasured flush deepened her already richly colored skin. “That’s right. I was a third daughter of a third daughter, so my parents gave me to the temple in Avenus when I turned five. They’d no coin for the fee, so I was put to work in the temple baths—scrubbing tiles, fetching water or towels or candles, waiting in corners till I was needed.” She popped a bite of buttered bread in her mouth.
“Arrosa’s temple, then.” Only the goddess of love required baths in her temple.
“Mmm.” She nodded and swallowed her bread. “I was lucky to serve and not take vows, though I didn’t know it then. I didn’t understand what I saw—the wickedness what took place in the baths.”
She licked the butter off her small, delicate fingers.
“Copulation…mating…is no corruption,” I said. “Arrosa blesses earthly love, makes it divine, if pleasure is shared freely.” The qualifier was not widely preached, of course, but its truth had become apparent to me early on, and no woman I’d had since had ever disagreed.
“Well, of course we’re meant to join and make more of us, and if we can take comfort in it, all the better.” A sprightly smile illuminated her round cheeks and pointed chin, then faded as she knit her brow. “But in the temple, pleasure was not offered freely. Novices younger than me were used by whatever great lords and warriors took a fancy. I heard them screaming from the bath, saw them thrashing in the water when the lords forced them down on their…laps. And I had to bring towels to wipe the girls’ blood, and oils to anoint their skin, so they could be sent into the bedchambers to glorify Arrosa through the night.”
I well knew such crimes happened. I had warned Jullian of them, sworn to protect him. I wished she would speak of something else. All manner of unseemly urges seemed waked in me this night.
/>
“One night when I was ten, a lord tired of the priestess who serviced him in the bath. He bellowed that he preferred a younger body. He saw me hiding in the corner and demanded me. And he got me. For a sevenday. Even though I could offer him no temple blessing. Even though I could not read to him from the temple writs or recite the lays of love.”
Her simple statement of evil gave weight to her story that indignant diatribes could not. I believed her.
“Afterward, I ran away. If I had taken vows, like Sila, they would have come after me, and I would have had to cut myself as she did to undo the swearing. But I was just a bath girl…”
“…Yet your parents refused to take you back—their gift to the goddess.” No need to ask what had happened to her after. I had been fifteen when I ran away, and the ways to feed oneself so young were very few. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it does not…cannot…justify—”
“But I am not sorry! Don’t you see?” She twiddled with the lamp, retracting the wick so its fire dimmed, confining the pool of light to the table and her red-gold complexion. “Had I stayed a bath girl at the temple I’d not have met Sila. I’d not have learned of the Gehoum, and how we must make ourselves humble before them. I’d not understand the need for cleansing and repentance or to tear down the false structures of learning and privilege that make one man’s will more powerful than the purity of a girl.”
I had learned long before that when a certain note crept into an otherwise reasonable argument, it paid a man naught to continue. The fanatic’s gleam shone in Malena’s soft brown eyes, and she was never going to agree that her slaughtering children in the name of her uncaring Gehoum was no holier than a lord’s raping children in the name of his own pleasure.
“I’ve eaten all I can bear,” I said, setting down the tasteless porridge. I wanted this woman out of here. Long-buried memories of drunken soldiers and their rough, fumbling hands, of filthy alleyways and painful humiliations, had gotten tangled with images of bath girls and swimming brown eyes and soft copper-hued limbs. “Tell your mistress and her monk that sad stories and beds with quilts will not make me their willing captive. Let them come and tell me what they want of me.”
I saw no use in pretending cooperation. Gildas knew me too well. I just needed to keep their eyes on me and away from the captives down below. But what if I found a way to get Osriel out of here, yet had not secured Jullian? I shoved the thought away as soon as it appeared. I had two more days.
Malena set down her spoon, picked up my wine cup, and joined me at the window. Her round cheeks bloomed with health. “Dear Magnus,” she said, pressing the cup into my hand. “The holy one has sent me to tell you what she wants of you.”
Her lips parted slightly. Soft. Waiting. I drained the cup in one gulp, and her smile blossomed in fragrant sweetness like moonflowers. A gust of wind whistled through the iron grate, and she shivered.
“And what is that?” I said, relishing the potent richness of the wine. Malena was so small…so fragile in the thin white shift that fluttered in the wind, giving shape to the ripened form beneath. I wrapped my arms about the trembling girl to shield her from the cold.
She wrapped her arms about my neck and pulled my head down so she could whisper in my ear. “I am your chosen mate.”
Chapter 22
“Chosen mate?” Increasingly thickheaded, as if I’d drunk a vat of wine, I could not seem to grasp her meaning.
“Mmm. The world shall be renewed.” Her fingers stroked my neck and teased at my ears.
My body swam with lust. My mind swam with the wine and unfocused danger, and I knew I should stop what I was doing. I just could not remember why. Even as I voiced the question that might elaborate the risk, my gloved fingers found the ties that held her flimsy shift closed, and I pulled.
Goddess Mother… Her breast tasted of ginger and honey.
“I am the holy one’s gift to you…prepared…purified…ah…” The soft catch in her throat as I pushed the gossamer fabric downward and shifted my mouth from one sweet curve to another drove me out of my senses. I drew her to the bed and lay beside her. As she unfastened my buttons and laces, I imagined vaguely that I should stay her hand. But instead I loosed her hair, inhaled her rising scent, and traced the line of neck and jaw and mouth with kisses, inhaling her sweetness as a starving man devours the first spoonful of sustenance.
“Why would the goddess send a gift to me now?” I whispered, my words buried in Malena’s smooth belly, as somewhere above my head her trembling hands unbuttoned my gloves. “I’ve failed to honor blessed Arrosa for far too long, though I am ever her servant in mind.”
The girl’s laugh echoed the song of larks, until she freed my hands and gasped again. I took full advantage. My fingers explored silken breasts, smooth flanks, and swollen lips, while my mouth continued its downward trek. “Careful, lady,” I mumbled, as her quest to strip away my layered garb grew insistent enough to tear skin along with fabric. But I was as eager as she. More.
“Ah, Magnus, they told me you might—But I never—” Her voice quivered…caught in a sob…as her fingers traced a path on my naked back. “They are so beautiful. You are so beautiful…”
Of a sudden my back bloomed in exquisite fire. Her fingernails had transformed to steel blades that slashed a path of agony across my skin. The pain drove me into frenzy.
I buried myself in her. Heedless…mindless…I strove and thrust and drowned in sensation that sent coils and spirals of lightning to every quat of my skin. Were the dissolution of the world appointed for the culmination of my act, I could not have stopped. And the explosion, when it came, had naught to do with sweetness or shared pleasure. Only need.
Laughter eddied about my head, swirling, dipping…changing pitch from low to high and back again. Sluggish, sated, incapable of movement, I sat with my fire-scoured back against the curved wall of my tower prison, my head on my knees. Wine lay sour on my tongue, though I could remember only one cup.
“Well done, child.” The higher-pitched voice. Sila Diaglou. She had said this three times. I couldn’t understand it. Why weren’t they angry?
The two of them—priestess and monk—had burst through the door and pulled me off the girl. Was it Malena’s strangled cries and strident weeping had brought them or was it my bellow of completion? They were gentle enough, supporting me stumbling toward a window and lowering me to the floor. But since then, my head had grown so heavy I could not lift it. Nor could I persuade my tongue to speak such apology as I wished. Sorry…sorry…sorry. Never do I take without giving…or so I intend…never, never would I take pleasure in forcing…in injury…
The tide of shame drenched me yet again, swirling my meager thoughts into confusion. The girl had screamed and wept and begged. How could she not be injured? Why did they laugh? Gildas’s robust chortle was unmistakable. Even Malena’s moans and whimpers had yielded to girlish giggles.
A bitterly cold wind raked my naked skin. Sapphire light danced beneath the flutter of my eyelashes. My gards entirely visible…I tried to draw in my limbs…hating to be so exposed…hating for them to see. But I could scarcely twitch my fingers.
I had felt washed clean in Aeginea—the gards a sign of renewed purpose, a hint of a joy that I had not believed existed in this life. No more of that! I had proved myself an animal, a damnable, brutish thug who had so pompously called judgment on men who corrupted children. What had come over me?
Someone new arrived, cursing under his breath, his malevolence hammering at me.
“Get her up,” the priestess commanded. “Carefully, Jakome! Do not drop her on the stair. Stay abed and still until I come to you, child.”
Feet shuffled and scrambled. “Kasiya Gehoum, mistress. Sanguiera, orongia, vazte, kevrana.” Bleed, suffer, die, purify. Malena’s cheerful invocation of blood and suffering only worsened my confusion. Your chosen mate…not chosen by Arrosa, but by Sila Diaglou. They had used the girl—a willing girl. And used my cursed weakness for pleasu
ring, for wine…
“Did I not tell you that his appetites would be his leash?” said the monk, as if in echo of my self-condemnation. The syllables grated on my ear like steel on glass. “A little wine, a fair young body…and so much easier than reasoning with him or putting him to the question. He will be everything you wish. Pliable. Controllable. One taste of decadent pain and pleasure, and he is yours.”
How did the priestess bear his patronizing manner? How had I ever mistaken it for brotherly mentoring and friendship?
A finger began tracing the patterns on my back. The priestess’s, I knew, from the heat. At least her touch did not sap my wits this time, as I had so little remaining. Her exploration, though not purposefully brutal, did not avoid the lacerations that dribbled warm blood down my flanks. That I flinched each time she encountered one did not deter her. The blade had been no lust-fueled imagining. They must have hidden it beneath the palliasse.
“What does it mean that he displays Danae markings, Gildas? You said he did not know what he was.”
“It would appear he’s found out. We can ask him, as soon as he recovers enough to speak, but I would not count any report he gives as reliable. Not yet. He has no fond feelings for either of us, and you’ve heard his history of lies.”
Recovers… Like a sleeping lion, mortal dread raised its head and set me screaming inside. Wake up, fool. Wake up. But I had smelled the wine, sampled a drop before drinking. And porridge could not mask poison.
“We must ask the old one what the marks signify and what powers they give him.”
Unnamed panic threatened logic. How was it possible they knew of my mixed birth? And what old one could they ask? Not Stearc or Osriel. The image of Picus flew through my head, but he had no intercourse with Navronne. Why could I not lift my head and ask them?
This leaden indolence, this sodden paralysis that left me near incapable of reason…I had not felt the like since the morning Luviar died, the last time Gildas and I had spoken, when I yet believed him my friend…