Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  “A boat . . . I’m sent out?”

  Once raised from tyro to squire, I’d been off the island numerous times. To fields and forests for training in open combat and riding practice. To remote villages to practice enchantments of stealth and illusion. To isolated crossroads to stash casks of reeds, salt, inks, or dyes for retrieval by our trusted factors. But always I had been in company of a knight or a commander and other trainees. To be sent on a mission away from the fortress alone was a measure of trust, a recognition of honor. A test, too, of course. Every activity in Evanide was a test.

  A moment’s focus to release magic through my waiting fingers, and the gate swung open.

  “You’ll find Inek in Fix’s chart room.”

  My smirking comrade chortled as I smacked him on the shoulder and dashed up the steep, narrow steps. I splashed through the cold footbath and left a trail of wet footprints through the stone halls as I hurried to my sleeping cell in the South Tower. A quick blot with a towel and I donned wool shirt and hose from the wooden chest, leather jaque from the peg on the wall, along with my knife belt and gray mask. Our full-face, clinging masks were the pervasive symbol of our life. The Equites Cineré lived by secrecy, stealth, and anonymity.

  Left behind in my chest was a fragment of a small rectangular stone called a relict—given me on the day I joined the Order and broken in half on the night I arrived at Evanide. The relict’s design was intaglio, a thin layer of black over white, so that the engraving showed white against an ebon field. When whole, it portrayed the emblem of the Order, a quiver with five disparate objects poking out of it—a staff, a sword, a whip, a hammer, and a pen. The relict’s matching half was hidden away in a safe place, or so I’d been assured. I prayed to every god that was true, for the missing fragment of stone held the sum of my lost memories.

  I could leave Evanide this day, running as far and fast as I wished. But unsanctioned departure meant relinquishing those memories, that life, for all time. No past. No future. No identity.

  • • •

  The sea tide was but a gentle urgency so far upriver. I shipped my oars and stretched my shoulders as it carried the skiff onto the muddy embankment. Plovers and quacking teals arrowed skyward from the vast stand of man-high reeds.

  When the prow nudged the bank, I sloshed through the chilly water, dragging the little vessel into the reed forest, away from the sea’s grasping fingers.

  The man I was assigned to meet was nowhere within range of my senses, even honed as they were with practice and magic. Just as well to have a moment to clear my head. To reach the river’s mouth across the vast bay had been a two-hour wrestling match, and the trip up the estuary another hour’s row through the tumultuous dance of inflowing tide and outflowing river current.

  Sitting on the prow, I removed my mask to let the misty air cool my cheeks. The mask was sewn of fine gray linen woven with a faint thread of green, like the bird who supplied my name. Once invested as a knight, I would receive a meaningful name and, consulting the wisdom of my superiors, choose how best to help right the wrongs of the world—chasing down bandits, unseating cruel landlords, protecting travelers, the noble work the Order had done for centuries. The work of justice.

  Assuming I passed my testing, of course. Assuming I was willing to give up my past forever. Not my bent; at some time along the way I would reclaim my inborn magic to use in service to the Order. Nor would I forfeit my knowledge of the world; it mostly remained with me already. But I would relinquish all knowledge of my personal past—people I’d known, those I loved, family, home, enemies, pastimes I had enjoyed, childhood dreams and fears, youthful ambitions. How could one decide when all you had were fragments?

  My age was eight-and-twenty or thereabouts.

  I had been born in the kingdom of Navronne, three years embroiled in a war of royal succession.

  I had once been contracted to a necropolis.

  I had once been wealthy but had fallen on hard times—which likely explained the necropolis.

  I was not a murderer.

  Those were the scraps that had been tossed me. None of them struck the fire of memory. None hinted at value worth forsaking the Order. Perhaps that was the point.

  A piping trill drew me to my feet, perhaps only another bird alarmed at my intrusion. But a second and third trill in rapid succession announced my visitor. I slipped on my mask, letting its enchantments settle it smoothly around my features.

  Most sorcerers in Navronne wore half masks. Only those of the Equites Cineré covered our entire faces. All that we were was kept hidden from the world.

  “Dastardly, damnable place to meet.” The wheezing complaint accompanied the hollow rattle of the head-high reeds. “Endless muck. Grim, gloom, cold as Magrog’s ass, with nary an awning to block the rain. Villains who hide their faces and leave a man’s notions in a muddle— Oh.”

  The man might have been a mud creature, thick-boned, brown-skinned, and bundled head to boot in dirt-colored wool. His beard was weedy, plaited in numerous short braids that stuck out from his chin like spikes of spreading saltwort.

  He grinned—his teeth brown, too—when he caught sight of me. “A locale of opportune meetings, however.”

  “Identify yourself,” I said, fingering the silver-inlaid wooden token Inek had given me.

  “Kitaro,” he said. “Ganache de Kitaro, scholar, adventurer, sometime scoundrel—though never when dealing with your kind—and occasional purveyor of rare materials. Tell me your requirements and I can provide.” With a flourish he whisked a small wooden disk from his pocket.

  An invisible thread of magic bridged the air between his disk and the one in my hand. His token matched mine, its magic, as well as its face, identical. My preparation for the mission had informed me of his appearance and manner, but it was the token witnessed his authenticity.

  “And your name, sirrah?” he said.

  “My kind do not deal in names, Scholar Kitaro, as you well know.” Inek had warned me of the fellow’s glib tongue. Information was as valuable as his rare materials. “I believe you’ve brought one of your rarities for my superiors. I have the agreed payment.”

  I produced a small bag and hefted it for him.

  His brown smile widened at the heavy chink. “Then let us fetch my prize before this mud swallows me entire.”

  He pivoted smartly and plunged back through the reed thicket. I stayed close, senses alert, probing the stillness beyond his rustling passage. Rain, little more than gossamer fog as yet, whispered over the landscape. A beast that was neither bird nor fish created a pocket of warmth and stink beyond the reeds, but no other human creature lurked anywhere close.

  Eventually Kitaro’s path of broken stems yielded to a broad expanse of marshland, a low, gray-green vista stretching as far as eyes could make out through veils of rain and fog. A stout donkey waited patiently at the verge of the reeds.

  Clumps of spreading, fat-stemmed glasswort provided more solid footing than did the sodden muck. Kitaro stepped awkwardly from one to another to retrieve a bundle from a nest of plants. He stripped burlap wrappings from a small green jar and proffered it gingerly.

  “Have a care, masked one. The substance you require is immersed in water and must remain so, else Deunor Lightbringer’s wrath will consume your hand and body in flame that can reduce city and forest, bone and mountain to ash. Break the jar and you unleash the holocaust.”

  Inek had told me much the same. But he’d also cautioned me against trickery.

  I pulled long, slim pincers from my knife sheath. “Open it. You understand I must verify the contents.”

  Holding the jar as far as possible from his body, Kitaro did as I asked.

  Magelight revealed a yellowish, thumb-sized lump suspended in the water. I probed the waxy glob with the sharp-tipped pincers and picked off a nub the size and color of a maggot.

  “Think
of it as a gatzé’s cod,” gibbered Kitaro, blanching as I drew the pale nub from the jar. “Pop it and we’ll have burning holes in our skin.”

  Holding the pincers well away, I sent a touch of warmth along the handle—only enough to take off the day’s chill. Then I dropped the bit on a mound of sodden weeds and stepped back.

  The tiny lump pulsed with a yellow-white gleam, softened a bit, and sent out tendrils of vapor. A sudden burst of white light, more brilliant than magelight, almost made me drop the tool.

  “Told you. Cereus iniga, also known as bonefire. Now I’m off before this rain rots my weary bones.” The brown-toothed grin spoke glee. The outstretched hand spoke naught but business.

  Shaking off amazement, I tossed him the heavy bag. He peeked into it and sighed with pleasure. “May Deunor’s light illumine your soul, masked one.”

  My fist touched my breast to acknowledge the blessing—one I heartily welcomed.

  Yet good manners could not make me forget duty. Kitaro mounted the donkey, and as he turned the beast inland, I called out, “One more matter, Ganache de Kitaro! Return my master’s token.”

  He looked back, grinning, and held out the wood disk. Magic ripped through my fingers into the splinter of silver embedded in my own token’s center. A silver arc streaked toward Kitaro’s hand. Though less showy, the power manifested far surpassed that of the green jar’s contents.

  Kitaro’s token fell to ash. His expression fell slack, his gaze gliding through me as if I were but another reed brushed by the rain. Wide brow creased ever so slightly, he dusted his tingling fingers, clucked at his donkey, and rode away.

  He would recall nothing of our transaction save for its initiation with the carved token, his comfortable familiarity with the masked strangers, and the gold coins he’d reaped. Those few things he would remember only if he was presented with another one of our tokens. All else, even this location and the particular material he’d brought here, would vanish from his mind over the next hours and days, as if a maidservant with a dust broom swept up his footsteps as he passed.

  For two centuries the Equites Cineré had held the keys to manipulating human memory—astonishing, intricate, awful magic that only those of extraordinary power and proven honor could or should wield. I’d been taught the ways of it already, and in the coming months before my investiture as a knight, I would learn the practice. Once I’d understood that gift to come, no personal doubts and no challenge my commanders threw in my path had been sufficiently difficult to deter me. For out of all my lessons at Evanide, one thing had come clear: The skill to master such magic was in me. If I developed the strength needed to use it, I could help untangle the horrors of the world. Who could ask for a richer life?

  Carefully I bundled the jar in its burlap wrapping and hurried back through the path of broken reeds, hoping to catch tide’s ebb to ease the passage back to Fortress Evanide. My eyes stayed fixed to the green jar, so wary was I of its contents. Only when the rippling of the drowned river intruded on my consciousness did I pause and extend my senses to check for danger.

  Amid the odors of fish, cold brine, and sea wrack floated an entirely untoward scent—a mix of meadowsweet and sun-warmed grass. Summer came to mind, and places far from Evanide.

  It seemed impossible that such slight variance in the air—likely some marsh flower bloomed early—should rouse sensations so entirely alien to the life I led. My knees softened like warmed dough; my chest grew tight as shutters swollen in the damp. And a heat roused my nether parts, a sensation I’d assumed had been excised along with memories of friends and lovers.

  I crept forward slowly. Paused at first glimpse of the flooded river.

  A woman was singing, her eerie melody heating my skin. Perhaps it was so affecting because I’d not heard a woman’s voice in so very long. But how had I not detected her coming?

  Not entirely bereft of reason, I summoned power. I’d no permission to show myself to strangers, even masked. Touching eyes, lips, ears, tongue, and brow, I drew an enchanted veil around me and slipped out of the reeds.

  She sat in my skiff, legs crossed, a pile of marsh grass in her apron. Thick, unruly curls the hue of chestnuts fell over her face and shoulders. As long, deft fingers wove the yellow-green stems, her song fell into humming.

  I dared not breathe as I tried to decide how best to oust her from my boat. She must have heard my step, for her head popped up. And to my horror, my veil enchantment was flawed, for when she shook the lush curls from her face, her eyes, fiery green and slightly angled, locked with my own. The corners of her lips quirked, emptying my lungs of breath and my mind of thought. Then she smiled, breaking the gloom as if the sun had burnt away the fog.

  “Fully masked, now? Oh, take it off, please, that I might look upon thy comely face once more. My shy, dear, gentle Lucian, how I’ve missed thee!”

  CHAPTER 2

  I should retreat. But the woman occupied my boat, and though the tide had begun its ebb, it would be hours before I could cross the bay afoot. And her greeting . . .

  “You mistake me for someone else, mistress,” I said, trying not to sound like a pithless boy.

  Though I might wish it otherwise, she could not possibly know me. Wherever the knights had recruited me, they would have ensured we were not followed, bringing the full power of the Order’s memory magic to bear on anyone who tried. Anonymity was our lifeblood. Our safety. Our first and strongest weapon.

  “Get out of my boat.” No magic sparked anywhere about the woman. My veil enchantment felt solid. How was I to explain such failure? Inek would have me a squire again!

  The woman laid aside her weaving and her smile, concern clouding jade-hued eyes. “Sure I’ve not changed so much. Whereas thou . . .”

  She jumped lightly from the boat, graceful as a leaping deer. Slender as the reeds, taller than I’d thought, near matching my own height, she swept around me like a summer eddy. Long fingers plucked at my knuckle-length hair, then brushed my shoulder and upper arm, near sapping what composure I had left.

  “’Tis true thy bearing is something different, and hair sheared so close hides the ebon sheen I so adored. And thou’rt grown in strength, most surely. But this”—she leaned her face to mine and inhaled deeply—“I could never mistake. Thy sweat is ever clean, unlike so many of thy brothers. Thy appetite yet favors grain and fish and green things more than blood meats. And though ’tis fainter than before, I catch the scent of thy beloved inks and pages.”

  She pressed the tip of her finger to her lips, hesitant, and then reached toward my face. “This custom I do sincerely regret, as I did in those sweet hours we spent together. To hide thy face entire—”

  I jumped back when she touched my mask, shaking off the mesmer of her beauty as two years’ training snapped into place . . . with no small sting of panic. Was I so weak as to be taken in by brilliant eyes? This mission must be Inek’s test.

  “Who are you? What business have you on a desolate shore where no one comes save those summoned? Perhaps you followed the trader. You’ll come with me and we’ll find out.”

  Sadness wafted over me like incense. “Oh, Lucian, I cannot. I do not fear, as I know ’tis thee behind the mask. We are ever bound by what we did together, closer than thine own heart could imagine. Yet thine eyes tell me—”

  She stepped back, her manner grown sharp and wary. “Is this some game or some dread penance since I beheld thee last? Humankind is ever fickle. Cruel . . .”

  “You’re a stranger to me, lady, as is anyone named Lucian. I wish you no harm, but I’ll not allow you to carry tales.” Spinning a net spell to keep her close, I reached for her arm.

  She slipped my grasp as deftly as an eel and . . . vanished.

  I spun in place, blinking raindrops from my eyes. How could anyone move so quickly?

  “Come to this place again one day,” she said, from every direction at once, “an
d thou’lt find proof of our friendship. My people sorely need thy counsel.”

  And then she was gone. Neither trained senses nor magic could detect a breath, a heart’s pulse, or a spot of warmth in the failing light. And though I inhaled half the wind, no meadowsweet freshened the stink of the marsh.

  Lucian. The name itself held no meaning for me, yet when I spoke it aloud, I fancied other names waited just beyond hearing. Glimmers of light trailed in the wake of her presence, fading just at the point other images lurked.

  I possessed no personal memory of any woman. Even so I knew she was extraordinary. Not just in beauty or grace. Her passions blazed from deep inside, shining through her skin and her words, through every expression and movement. Was it possible I’d known her in my former life, despite being bound up with rules and protocols as all purebloods were?

  She was correct about many things. The change in my physical bulk, certainly. My preference for fish, bread, and lettuces over heavy meat. My hair that was, indeed, black as a magpie’s head. Anyone at Evanide would know those things. But beloved inks and pages? No comrade of the Order, not even Inek, could possibly have guessed the aching pleasure the scent of ink and parchment roused in me. Yes, I was bound to explore every passing thought and feeling with my guide, but that one had always seemed too trivial to mention, in the same wise as my mask having a coarse thread that itched my left ear. Did she know that, too?

  I dragged the skiff into the water and hopped in. As I unshipped the oars, I forced aside all thought of the woman’s mystery. I had a long row ahead in dangerous waters and failing daylight. Distraction would see me dead.

  Knight Commander Inek had served as father, mother, counselor, tormentor, employer, tutor, and priest for two years, since the night two of his knights-in-training had dragged me gibbering across the bay at mid-tide and dropped me on Evanide’s great stair at his feet. Wreathed in fog, tall, stern, serene, and ageless, he had seemed a silver-haired god whose favored rites I had never learned. Shivering and dripping, the world yet swirling like the black waters of the bay, I had groveled at his feet, offering eternal service if he would but return my life to me. “I accept,” he’d said. “But it will be a life forever changed. And it begins now. On your feet, tyro . . .”