by Carol Berg
I choked on a miserable laugh, closed off my hearing, and clung to the window bars. Saffron was more expensive than nivat.
Though I did not suffer from the cold, the morning was bitter. Ice crystals whipped through the barred windows, swirling on the floor and settling like dust in the cracks and crevices on either side of the door. In the mottled gray of storm and smoke, Palinur spread below my tower like a battlefield, its streets and houses like fallen soldiers—some of them charred ruins, half buried in mud and blackened snow, a few still displaying life and movement. Somewhere out there, Voushanti and Saverian awaited my call.
Considering the two of them gave me extraordinary comfort. That a dead man with a mote of hell in his eye and a physician with a desert for a heart seemed like the world’s finest companions told me what a nest of lunatics I’d come to. And I was as bad as any of them. The moment I had Jullian at my side, we would find a way through this damnable door, down to the prison level, and out of this cursed place.
“Dear Magnus, the day is so very cold.” A weight pressed softly against my back and Malena reached her arms about my waist. She was shivering, and my arms ached to enfold her. “Could we not begin again? If we learned more of each other, we could be friends.” Her fingernails were chewed and broken, ridged with black dirt and a rusty residue that could so easily be old blood. Saints and angels!
I grasped one of her hands as it snaked toward my groin and twisted her arm as I turned, using it to force her back toward the door. “Let us learn more of each other, Malena. Shall I tell you stories of my friend Gerard, of how he loved to watch the wall of light move across the refectory or how he named all the abbey’s goats after holy saints or how this boy, who blanched at butchering a chicken, sat bravely on a wounded soldier, singing of hearth and home, as our infirmarian sawed off the man’s leg? Tell me, Malena, did you cut Gerard at the Well? Did you drive the spikes that held his hands to the rock or taste his blood? You will need more than vigger’s salt to make me lie with you of my own will.”
Even as I spoke these things, my body craved her. Revolted, I shoved her against the wall and returned to my window. I would bind my hands to the bars before touching her again.
“You speak bravely in the light, Magnus,” she said, all sweetness foregone. “But when I come in the night, you shall bend as the earth must bend before the power of the Gehoum. They care naught for one boy, naught for you, naught for me, but only that the land and people be subdued and humble and made clean. Your body speaks their will. Look at your hands.” Indeed my shaking dwarfed her shivers.
She rapped on the door and was released. I wondered if the unhappy Jakome was forced to deliver her to me. I hoped so. I wondered if she had “caught,” and near screamed at the thought of a child given life from a doulonfed frenzy and in such a creature as Malena.
The morning was quiet so high in the tower. I fidgeted and paced. I sipped Saverian’s potion, hoping it might quench these other uneasy sensations as effectively as it controlled my stomach. After my outburst at Malena, I might find myself in the dungeons by midday. I touched the stone floor and, for the tenth time that morning, verified that the guide threads I had established the previous night were still intact. Somewhere far below me, Osriel and Stearc yet breathed.
I had just emptied the ale pitcher out the window without tasting its contents, when the bolts and latches rattled again. This time I heeded every snick of pins and levers in the locks. My visitor was Gildas.
“You’ve distressed our little wench this morning, Valen.”
“As long as I’ve a mind to choose with, I choose not to dance to Sila Diaglou’s music,” I said. “Which leaves me perhaps two days until I succumb.” I prayed I was misleading him. The more preoccupied I seemed to be with my cravings, the less cautious he might be.
“I am to take you to the priestess. Alas, good Jakome is required to bind your hands against the chance of some magical escape. Do I need to call for shackles, as well, or ruffians with blades?”
Lifting the hems of pourpoint and shirt, I showed him his little bag tied at my waist. “Your leash is quite strong enough, though it’s mostly promises as yet; three seeds get me nowhere but sick. Nor have I seen my young friend this morning. And all bargains are moot, if the priestess thinks to bleed me.”
Gildas grinned. “Sila much prefers you alive…as do I. I discussed Jullian with her last night, suggesting we entrust the boy to your care. I proposed that he could relieve Malena of serving your meals. Thus reassured that we mean well, you might be more attentive to the young woman’s charms.” Sila seemed receptive. Perhaps you could set her remaining doubts at rest during this morning’s interview. Each hour you behave well will add weight to your nivat bag.”
Gildas admitted Jakome, who carried a grimy wad of silken cord. The silkbinding took an extraordinarily long time, for Jakome wasn’t particularly good at it. He bound the cords tight, but uneven. And unlike pureblood guards, whose skilled binding left no bit of flesh exposed and not the least possibility of movement, Jakome failed to keep my fingers properly clasped and tucked as he worked. With a little time, I might be able to wriggle my thumbs loose and poke them through the coils of cord. The bony man completed the tedious task by spitting on the already filthy wrappings, evidently his idea of a proper torment.
Gildas led the way down the tight coil of worn and broken steps. Jakome followed behind me.
Once free of the wards on my door, I snatched the opportunity for spellwork. Dead man. Fallow. I closed my eyes and fed a bit of magic into the words. Fallow would inform Saverian and Voushanti that I was alive and safe enough for the moment. I strained my inner ear until I heard the echo. Bluejay. Fallow. In heart and head I thanked Saverian for her cleverness and skill.
How different from this doulonfed frenzy had been the forces that heated me as I lay with Saverian in the shrubbery. I needed to hold fast to that memory…which made me smile at what Saverian might say to my using carnal thoughts of her to shield me from unsavory lust.
Three landings down, a doorway opened into a long, wide passage. Embrasures along the left-hand wall admitted smoke and dusty light. A purposeful stumble allowed me to sneak a glimpse through one of them. The passage was actually an enclosed gallery that overlooked the long hall where I had been delivered the previous afternoon. Observers or bowmen could lurk here, completely hidden from below.
Opposite the embrasure wall, dim chambers opened off the gallery, appearing, for the most part, to be but habitat for spiders. But Gildas stopped at one doorway hung with a blanket. He held back the dingy wool, and Jakome shoved me into a cavelike chamber.
No windows graced this room. Arrow loops on the outer wall admitted bitter air and threads of wan daylight that scarce sufficed to keep me from colliding with Gildas. The now-familiar pressure of walls grew as I stood in the close quarters, but my stomach stayed in place, and again I blessed Saverian for her potion.
“Sila should be here by now.” Gildas’s voice dripped annoyance.
The sullen Jakome fed and stirred coals that smoldered in a rusty brazier. The rising flames pushed the darkness back a little.
The long, narrow chamber appeared to be a soldier’s billet, or more properly, a commander’s billet, as I saw no sign that more than one person slept here. Wool blankets were folded neatly atop a rolled-up palliasse. A folding table and several stools leaned against one wall, alongside a pile of leather saddle packs. For the most part the accumulated dust, dried mud clots, ancient straw, stone flakes, wood chips, bark, and ash that grimed the chamber and hearth had been left where they lay. But the end wall closest to me, where the firelight shone brightest, had been swept and scrubbed clean before someone mounted a map of Navronne. Only in my family’s home had I ever seen a map so large—fully twice the width of my arm span and almost as high. Janus de Cartamandua had drawn both of them.
Jakome took up a guard stance at the door. Gildas had begun to pace, glancing constantly into the shadows as if expecti
ng gatzi to pop out at us.
I could not take my eyes from the map, noting the bold arcs of Janus’s roads, each drawn in one stroke of his favorite pen, the particular feathery gray foliage of his trees that no artist had ever been able to duplicate, the oddly individual faces he gave to the birds that inhabited the map borders. Heaven’s mercy, had he known what happened to failed Danae?
Gildas glanced from me to Jakome. “Something’s off. Don’t let him out of here.”
The monk pushed through the hanging blanket and disappeared. Jakome drew his sword and blocked the doorway behind him. His mouth twisted upward and his sharp eyes fixed on me, as if he hoped I would challenge him.
But it was the map that drew me, not the prospect of being skewered trying to escape while my hands were bound. Jakome made no move to stop me as I strolled across the room to an arrow loop and peered down at an inner ward littered with broken masonry and fine rubble. Several corbeled privies had collapsed, tearing down half of a sewage-stained wall. After a short time, I drifted idly toward the map.
Something struck me as odd beyond its grand scale, but I couldn’t decide what it was. The borders and compass rose were grandly decorated. The firelight sparkled from flecks of gold that had been mixed with some of the inks. It was certainly very old. A Cartamandua map never yellowed or cracked, but rather took on a certain luster, as if the lines and colors, the drawing and the magic had blended and transformed it into something richer and deeper than its parts. This one seemed near as deep as it was wide. The ink washes were curious—only two colors, green and ocher, spread across irregularly shaped areas that corresponded to no other boundaries. Yet there was something more…
Uneasy, I glanced over my shoulder at the bored Jakome and at the far end of the chamber where the darkness hung so deep, unpenetrated by flame or thready daylight. Then I peered a little closer at the map.
Increasingly frustrated, I tapped my silkbound hands on my mouth and chin, rested them on my head, and dropped them down again. My fingers itched to trace the web of paths, like those through Mellune Forest, where I had misled the pursuing Harrowers. They ached to touch the fine details, such as the cairn that marked the split in the track leading to Caedmon’s Bridge and Fortress Groult. In satisfaction I noted the vast distances Saverian and I had frog-leaped from the rounded hills of northeastern Ardra to the hills of Palinur, to the bogs, to the cairn, to the Sentinel Oak—
I blinked. I would have sworn I had seen the faint shape of the Sentinel Oak depicted beside the cairn near Caedmon’s Bridge, but now I stared at the spot directly, I saw only the cairn. I angled my head to the side, and again glimpsed the tree.
Shifting my examination westward, I scanned past the limits of civilized lands, across the wilds of the Aponavi, to the shores of the western sea that separated Navronne and Cymra from the uncharted lands beyond. Under a wash of green, the coastline jagged and curved, and I wondered which curve might be the shore of Evaldamon—Kol’s sianou, where the days passed more slowly than elsewhere in Aeginea. Somehow I felt that if I could touch the map, I would know such truths—as if I were a blind man touching his lover’s face.
Of a sudden, I caught my breath—that’s what it was. This map had no words! Not one anywhere.
“Wait outside, Jakome.” Sila Diaglou’s cool voice spun me away from the map. “And you, dear Gildas, I wish you to take our provisioning in hand. Hurd’s fifth legion, the last of our assault force, marches for Evanore this afternoon, and Falderrene has not the cleverness to see it done properly. The Grav has been so busy rousting purebloods, he’s had no time to see to it himself.”
Sila swept through the door curtain. Gildas followed close behind, protesting. “But, holy one, I was to be here—”
“I prefer to interview Magnus alone. Remind Jakome that no one interrupts me. And take the book—I want another site before tomorrow.”
“Of course, holy one.” Gildas, flushed the hue of poppies, rummaged in the piled baggage and pulled out a thick square of brown leather, then inclined his back and left.
I stared after him, ready to bash my head against the wall in frustration. Perhaps Sila knew Gildas was not entirely committed to her purposes. Perhaps not. But she had just sent him away with my book of Cartamandua maps. I had not been certain it yet existed.
Once we were alone, the priestess moved briskly to retrieve a soiled cloak from the piled baggage. She fastened it about her shoulders and drew it close, giving an exaggerated shiver as she moved to the hearth. The action made her seem almost human.
“The cusp of autumn arrives untimely.” She gazed into the leaping flames and spoke in a dreamy singsong voice. “Dun haze. Tarnished gold. Leaves…glory dulled…whipped from their branches. Wolves gather, howling, gnawing the light. No more the culmination of summer, but harbinger of bitter blue days and ever longer nights. The dance is finished, and my heart aches for the waning season.”
She looked over her shoulder at me, her eyes narrowed, judging. “My grandmother taught me that when I was very small. It’s supposed to be sung. Have you heard it?”
“No,” I said, mystified, wary.
“She called it ‘The Canticle of the Autumn.’ I’m sure there once was a canticle for each season, but she never sang any but this one. Autumn is a sorrowful season. A dying season.”
Somehow such flat pronouncement raised my dander. “This autumn, yes. But a rightful autumn is golden and fruitful, a worthy celebration of summer’s labors.”
“And so you would say, too, that winter is not death.”
Who could argue that the winter that held Navronne in its grip was not death? Not I, who had always envisioned the netherworld as a dungeon of ice.
Turning back to the fire, she drew a greasy packet from her cloak, unwrapped it, and pulled out two flat strips of dried meat. She tore off a bite and closed her eyes in the way of a soldier who has been too long in the field and savors his meat as a sign he yet lives. Wordless, she offered me the second piece. I shook my head, and she devoured it, while I repeatedly rolled one thumb against the other in an attempt to free them from their bindings. I hated feeling so helpless in her presence.
When she had finished the meat and wiped her hands on her breeches, she drained a small flask rifled from the depths of her cloak. Then she sighed and tossed another stick on the fire. “I apologize for your hand bindings, for your confinement, and for last night’s…coercion. You showed up at my door so unexpectedly. Though I believe you will eventually grant me your willing cooperation, events leave me little leeway for chance, and I must seize opportunity. Malena happens to be fertile just now.”
“I await your explanations, madam.” Though expert at lies, I had never been very successful at feigning cooperation with those who restrained me and pretended they were doing it for some greater good. Yet I neither spat at her nor cursed her soul to everlasting fire as I would like to have done. If I were to save my friends, I needed to find some common ground with this woman.
“You were examining my map,” she said, ignoring my abruptness. “It’s a Cartamandua map, as I’m sure you can tell—an unusual one.”
“I’ve seen only a few so large.” Perhaps she would tell me what she thought was unusual. No words…I’d never seen a finished map lacking written names and keys. Janus had not made it for me; it was far too old. Yet naught gave me indication that it was incomplete. His own gryphon mark was scribed at the lower right corner. The cartographer’s mark was always the last thing added.
“You may study it sometime, if you wish, before I destroy it.” No gloating or cruelty or irony accompanied this offer. With the same casual sincerity that Picus spoke of forsaking the human world to live in penitence, she spoke of destroying a work of incomparable magic, artistry, and breadth of knowledge. It must have taken Janus more than a year just to render it, and untold years of travel and study to gather the material for the early sketches. Saints and angels, the vellum itself was priceless without accounting for the map. Only a f
ew sorcerers in the history of Navronne had been able to transform sewn vellum into so large and seamless a whole.
“Why would you destroy such a marvel?” I said, the tantalizing mystery overwhelming my wish to let her lead the conversation. “What god could possibly wish it? Surely to know the size and variety of the world can but glorify whatever powers rule it.”
Sila nodded, as if expecting that very question. “The map, like those things hidden in the Gillarine lighthouse, is an artifact of corruption. Until we have lived through the age of breaking and repentance, we have no need for such knowledge. Until we have destroyed the barriers that separate those who can make such a thing from those who cannot, we have no right to it. We shall drive the purebloods from their comfortable walls and squeeze the long-lived from their hiding places, breaking down the boundaries of birth and blood that hoard their gifts from humankind. When my use for this map is done, I’ll burn it. I don’t expect you to grasp everything right away.”
Right away…so she expected me to live beyond the moment, at least. “Do you truly believe that mating me with your illiterate handmaiden will enable every man and woman to create such a work as this?”
“If not, then we have no need of such works.” Always simple answers. Of all the things I had learned in my life, nothing was so simple as fanatics imagined.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “I very much dislike being used for anyone’s breeding projects.”
Even from the side, I could see her smile blossom. The curve of her lips dimpled her left cheek just below the terrible scar, completely transforming her. She would never be a transcendent beauty like Elene, but when Sila Diaglou turned her smile on me, it felt as if Navronne’s winter had yielded to such a glory of summer as I could scarce remember. The world and all its troubles receded into dim anxiety beside an urgent need to touch her cheek. Great merciful Mother! Was my entire being reduced to naught but my treacherous prick?
“I fully expected such rebellious sentiment from you, Magnus. Your indignation but confirms that you are meant to stand at my side and lead our people into a new age.”