by Carol Berg
Jullian swore that no more than half an hour had passed from the moment I rolled into the font a madman until I climbed out again, refreshed and clearheaded. I would have believed it if he’d said days or weeks, for I’d had no sense of time at all. Yet I had carried with me the urgent understanding that I must return to physical form as soon as possible. Even so, we had gone to Gildas’s relief only after we had buried Brother Victor in the herb garden.
Our prisoner croaked a laugh. “One doulon does not enslave me, Valen. I’ll walk free and never look back.” He spoke bravely now I had refused to soil my hands with his blood.
“Very true. So let me show you magic, friend Gildas. A talented physician taught me how to enhance the effect of medicines fivefold.” I crouched beside him, placed my fingers on his brow, and triggered the spell. “The doulon is but a potion after all, which means—assuming a normal cycle of eight-and-twenty days, shortened by the extra-potent paste you prepared—you have perhaps two days until you feel the hunger ready to devour you. Perhaps only one. By that time, either the world will have fallen into the chaos you desire and no one will ever come to succor you, or Osriel of Evanore will be King of Navronne, and I will bring you to his justice for the murder of Brother Horach, Brother Victor, Thane Stearc of Erasku, Gerard of Elanus, and Clyste Stian-daughter. He will not be merciful.”
Gildas lunged toward my ankles as I headed for the door. “Wait, Valen, I can tell you secrets—”
I slammed the prison cell door and locked it. “Never step within his arm’s reach, Jullian,” I said, as Gildas yelled after us. “Never open the door, but just shove a water flask through the slot. He will beg and wheedle and play on your conscience, but this is no sin to confine him.”
“He didn’t listen to Brother Victor,” said the boy as we climbed the three short flights of steps back to the alley and the lighthouse door, trailed by Gildas’s hoarse curses and a last despairing wail. “I’ll vow he didn’t listen to Gerard or Horach either. This is justice, not sin. Not at all what he did to Thane Stearc.”
“Exactly so. Now, I must go. You’re all right with being alone, lad?” I hated abandoning him. “You’ll not go out again?” Victor and Jullian had stepped out to retrieve what was left of the abbey service books and stores when Gildas took them.
The boy shook his head and hung the magical lamp on its hook just inside the door. “Brother Victor showed me how to lock and unlock the door wards without magic. I’ll be sorry he’s not here to teach me more, but I’m not afraid and not alone. Iero and his angels are with me. Teneamus, Brother Valen.”
“Indeed, I’m sure they are. Teneamus, brave Scholar.”
I jumped lightly up and over the fallen masonry that I had scarce been able to crawl over two hours previous and sprinted for the cloister. As I worked the shift, the boy closed the lighthouse door and the ivory light from across the garth winked out, plunging the ruined abbey and the world into a sea of night and winter.
Chapter 34
The battle had been joined at Dashon Ra. The earth itself had told me of the assault while I had purged myself of nivat in my sianou. And now my senses perceived the dread results. A cacophony of drums, trampling boots, and rage-filled cries blared about the ancient mine and its rugged approaches, and I smelled battle sweat and loosened bowels and warm blood dripping on consecrated ground.
The Harrowers threw themselves against Thane Boedec’s warriors like the raging sea against the cliffs of Cymra, only these cliffs were not formed of granite, but of five hundred brave men who knew they were outnumbered ten to one. Strung out in a long crescent about the rim of the vast bowl, they had bent at the first wave. Torches and magelights flared bright in the driving snow, lighting the way for the frenzied mob that raced steadily upward from the east. Gods preserve my erstwhile brother, I saw no sign of Bayard’s Moriangi. But the banner of Perryn of Ardra flew alongside the orange pennant of Sila Diaglou at the solid center of the assault. Their wedge had already driven Boedec over the rim and onto the downward slope to the mine’s dark heart where Osriel lay bleeding—preparing to become a blood-addicted shell like Voushanti in order to preserve Navronne.
“We’ll get you down there,” said Philo. With his faithful comrade Melkire, the ginger-bearded warrior crouched beside me atop the west rim of the ridge, where Renna lay below the rock-gate stair. “But we’d best be quick. Old Boedec is as strong as lords are made, but none were made to withstand such odds as this.”
Of course they weren’t. Such was Osriel’s plan. When Boedec’s line broke, the Harrower legions would rush down into the bowl of the mine—and into Osriel’s trap. Only Voushanti and a handful of soldiers would stand between the mob and our prince. At that point Osriel would have to act—to summon power for enchantment—whether the Canon had reached its climax or not. It would be a race to determine which happened first. My blood thrummed with the imminent change of season, and my stomach throbbed with the pounding of Harrower drums. And Osriel did not yet know that Kol could give him the power he needed.
I snugged the dark cloak Voushanti had left for me and raised the hood to hide my facial gards. Then the three of us scrambled down from our perch and slipped and slid downward between spoil heaps and broken slabs, through snarls of iron and rope, and under rotted sluiceways. After Melkire twisted his ankle in a trench, I led the way with my better night vision, while the two warriors guarded my flanks. Voushanti had pledged their lives to protect mine.
The oppressive horror of the souls’ prison had not waned. The music of this ravaged landscape was as frigid as the frost wind that pierced flesh and bone, and as dissonant as the clangor of weaponry from the approaching combat. Yet something had changed here since the morning. On my every visit, these prisoned souls’ pervasive, virulent enmity for all that lived had left me shaking and ill. But on this night, I felt only confused anger and an overpowering grief. What had happened to their hate?
The wind whined and swirled powdery snow into our faces. Philo crept under a dry sluiceway, peering around the rotting supports to ensure no Harrower flankers had sneaked so far around the pitted vale. He waved us through. After a long, shallow descent, we encountered Voushanti and his sentries posted about the rim of the pit, a steep-sided grotto the size of Renna’s Great Hall, ripped out of the core of the mine. The Center of Dashon Ra matched the Center of the Danae dancing ground.
“Merciful Mother,” I whispered when I gazed down into the pit, for surely this place was the inverted mockery of the Canon’s heart. Where, in Aeginea, wheels of light turned to the earth’s music, here a thousand calyxes sat upon the layered rocks and ledges that lined the walls of the grotto, each giving off a bilious glow. And with the stench of leprous decay speeded a thousandfold, a monstrous, corrupt magic shaped of human torment and royal blood poisoned the air and earth. Its source lay in the center of the pit, where a dark-haired man had been stretched and suspended facedown across the black, gaping mouth of some deep shaft or sinkhole. His wrists and ankles were bound to iron stakes driven into the rock. Wide bands of gold encircled his upper arms, smeared with the blood that ribboned his shredded back. Only slight jerking movements of his shoulders told me that he lived.
Recklessly, I galloped and slid down a crumbled, near-vertical stair, unwilling to take the long way around to the sloping cart track that led into the deeps at the north end of the pit. “My lord, I’m here,” I yelled. “You need not suffer this. Voushanti, get him out! Saverian!”
The mardane followed on my heels. By the time we skidded to the bottom and dashed to the sinkhole, Saverian was pelting down the cart path, arms laden with blankets and medicine bags.
Strips of cloth bound Osriel’s eyes. Tufts of wool stopped his ears.
I touched his hand. He jerked, the binding ropes squeezing blood from the raw wounds about his wrist. “Valen?” he whispered. “Tell me.”
Stretching my arm across the empty blackness, I yanked the tuft of wool from his ear. “Kol dances the Center,” I said
softly. “The change of season is not yet.”
A quiet noise that might have been a sob caught in his throat. I did not release his cold hand. “Hurry!” I called to the others. “Get him out of this.”
Deep walls and howling wind muted the noise of the approaching battle. The mardane and his men slipped a wide plank under the prince’s torso and another the length of his body, supporting him as they unbound his limbs. Carefully they lifted him away from the gaping shaft and onto Saverian’s blankets, where he lay quivering, gasping for breath. I could not imagine the agony of his fevered joints.
As I slipped off Osriel’s blindfold, Saverian unstoppered a vial and pressed it to his lips. “Mother of life, Valen, I thought you’d never come,” she said.
“Get me up,” Osriel murmured into the blanket. “Help me into my armor.”
“You’re mad, Riel,” said Saverian, near tears as she sponged some potion on his lacerated back and peeled away his shredded shirt. “You must stay down until I stop this bleeding.”
“If I am not to share their fate, then I must lead them, at the least,” he said, drawing his hands underneath his shoulders as if to rise.
Their fate…He spoke of his prisoners. He had spent this day of torment listening to the dead.
Voushanti squatted beside us. “I’ll send down your arms, Lord Prince. Then I’ll deploy my line farther up the hill, as you commanded.” Osriel jerked his head, but Voushanti looked to me for confirmation. I nodded, and the warriors left Saverian, the prince, and me alone.
“Valen, would you give him—?” Saverian’s stopped breath made me look up. I had thrown back my hood, and she stared at me, blue sigils reflected in her dark eyes. I’d near forgotten my newest gards.
Smiling and rolling my eyes, I took the proffered flask. But she quickly averted her gaze, and even amid these matters of far more import, I selfishly wished she had not. I hated that she might think me some freakish creature.
While she prepared another potion, I helped Osriel sit up. I knew he needed to be on his feet to get his blood moving, to feel alive. Strength would come. He had reserves I could not imagine, and a physician unparalleled in any kingdom.
“Breathe a bit, get warm, and drink this nasty stuff,” I said. “Then I’ll help you stand. God’s bones, you look a wreck.” Gingerly I bundled blankets about his torn shoulders and helped him drink. His face was the color of ash, save for the bruises and blood.
He drained the flask and opened his eyes. A faint smile tweaked his bloodless face. “You’re not so handsome as you might think, Dané. Looks as if Grossartius let fly his mighty hammer at your fine gryphon.”
“And why is your hand bandaged?” said Saverian, the moment’s crack in her brittle shell quite well sealed. “I’ll vow you’ve not cleaned that wound any more than the one on your cheek.”
“It’s a reminder from Ronila and Gildas,” I said, brushing dirt from Jullian’s bloodstained linen wrapping my pierced hand.
One of Voushanti’s men arrived with Osriel’s shirt, jupon, and hauberk, greaves, and gauntlets. Another dropped chausses, boots, and swordbelt at the prince’s side. Osriel dispatched the two men with his demand for a scouting report. “Now I would have your report, Valen,” he said, once they’d gone.
“Brother Victor is murdered,” I said, grieving again that the chancellor’s passing must be slighted amidst these dread events. “But Jullian is safely locked in the lighthouse, and Gildas is secured until his king can judge him. So we’ve only the priestess, her gammy, your brothers, and their soldiers to worry with. And Ronila is by far the most dangerous…”
While Osriel downed two flasks of ale and another of Saverian’s potions, I sketched out the day’s events. “You can’t imagine how fast Ronila can shift. Keep someone at your back at all times. And don’t take one step toward her, or you’ll find yourself somewhere else altogether.”
“You’ve already taught me that lesson.” Osriel reached for my hands for help to get up, and I hauled him to his feet. He grimaced and gripped his shoulders. “Would that I had a sianou where I could be taken apart and put back together again without this cursed sickness.”
“Perhaps, as the land heals…”
As I sensed the change that had come about in this haunted place, I recalled Luviar’s words: The lack of a righteous king speeds the ruin of the land. The king and the land were so intimately bound, that his blood could charge it with power. They lived and died together. Osriel’s great enchantment would be a terrible wrong, even if wrought with the Canon’s magic and not his own soul’s death. What could be less righteous than stripping the dead of eternity?
“Something happened with you as you suffered here today, didn’t it, my lord? Something’s changed here.”
His gaunt face hardened. “Nothing’s changed. Do you hear what’s coming down on us from the east? Have you brought me an alternative?”
“Only this hope that we can restore the land. Lord, you must not sacrifice these souls.” My conviction grew with every passing moment.
“Hope will not save us, Val—”
A thunderous blast shook the earth. As votive vessels rocked and toppled from their perches with a clatter, Saverian and I jammed Osriel between us and hunched to the ground.
A bloodstained young warrior, wearing the green of Evanore, raced down the cart path, Voushanti, Philo, and Melkire on his heels. “Boedec’s broken!” cried the youth, chest heaving, looking wildly from one to the other of us. When Osriel stood up, half naked and scarred with blood, the boy went white.
“What is your name, warrior?” said the prince as calmly as if he wore ermine robes and crown.
“P-Prac of Noviart, Your Grace.” The boy trembled so wildly his empty scabbard rattled.
“Report, Prac of Noviart. You’ve naught to fear from your duc, no matter how ill your news.”
The young soldier straightened his back. “Prince Perryn’s cadre split us in two, lord. Harrowers have engaged our reserves. Thanea Zurina has fallen. Her house—what’s left of them—yet holds the left, but not for long.” The left was the easiest approach to Dashon Ra. “The priestess d-demands parley.”
“Philo, find this brave messenger a sword to fill his scabbard and a drink to ease his thirst, then bring him back here for my reply. Melkire, I want a report from Renna. We must have no interference from our backs.”
As the three soldiers did his bidding, Osriel spun to me. “How long, Valen? I must be here when Kol grants us the power of the Canon.”
My sense felt the night yet rising, a bowstring stretching its last quat. “Not yet, lord. Soon, but not yet.”
“We’ll not be able to hold the mob off you for three heartbeats, Lord Prince,” said Voushanti, his jaw pulsing—his only sign of agitation. “We should move you into the fortress.”
Shaking his head, Osriel folded his arms and summoned Philo and the messenger. “Prac, tell the priestess I will meet her here or nowhere. I guarantee her personal safety, but offer no bond of truce with those who have tortured and murdered my warlords. Can you say that exactly?”
“Aye, Your Grace.” The youth, become a man again with a weapon at his side and the trust of his lord, bowed. Philo escorted him back the way he’d come.
“She’ll never come down here herself!” said Voushanti, near exploding. “She’ll expect sorcery.”
“She’s attacked because we’ve told her my power is weak on this night. My warriors are in disarray. Will she not believe in a demonic prince brought low?” He spread his arms to display his wretched state. “All we need is to slow down the assault until Valen signals I’ve power to act. Return to your post, prepared to escort the priestess here when she arrives. And, Mardane”—Osriel glanced from Voushanti to me and back again—“I issue this command as your sovereign king. Valen has no say in it, no matter the bond between you. Is that understood?”
Voushanti bowed stiffly and hurried away.
“We need to put these aside for the moment,” he said
with a sigh, nudging his padded leathers and mail. “I’ll keep the cloak, at least, lest I be too frozen to speak. And, Saverian, if you have more of the samarth, I would be grateful.”
“Your purveyor of potions obeys, as always,” said Saverian harshly, shoving a vial into his hand. “I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for this day.”
Osriel drank and tossed her the empty vial. “I would regret that, whether or not you continue to keep me living. Now you’d best return to your hiding place. You, too, Valen. Sila mustn’t know you’ve escaped her trap.”
“Lord Prince, you must not—”
“Stay or go, Valen. I’ll do what I must to preserve this kingdom.”
I had no answer.
We upended a half-rotted cart to hide Osriel’s armor. The prince himself settled in the lee of the upturned cart. Bundled in blankets, he quickly lost himself in contemplation, the air about him fraught with spellwork.
Saverian gathered her flasks and jars and packed them away. I offered to carry her bags up to her hiding place.
“Stay with Riel,” she said. “Another time, though, I want to hear about the Canon. You said so little, but your face—it’s not only the gards that have left you…radiant.”
“I’d like to tell you,” I said, wishing I could erase the wistfulness that poked through her frayed emotions. My fingers twitched, as I fancied that I might touch the furrow between her brows and make it vanish. “As a part of your studies, of course.”
“Of course.” She started up the path, and I already missed her—so real, so human, our odd companionship grown as if by magic into a sweet tether, binding me to this human realm.
A hacking cough caused me to turn. Osriel’s head rested on his arms. So alone in his harsh resolution…
Of a sudden I charged after Saverian, instinct pushing me where I’d no thought to go. “We need Elene here tonight,” I said, breathless. “Something about his experience here today has made Osriel doubt his course. She, of anyone in the world, might be able to sway him when the time comes. I know it’s a great deal to ask. And risky. Holy Mother, I’ve sworn to keep her and the child safe…”