Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Early in my residence at Evanide, our Knight Marshal had died of a fever. This new Marshal had appeared at his vesting wearing a full mask and robes of pure white. He even wore white silk gloves so that no one could identify him by scars or marks or any trace he left that might be detectable by magic. Every quat of his flesh was hidden, save eyes and mouth. Eerie to imagine I might have met him, trained under him, or studied his deeds as I viewed the missions stored in the Order’s archives, yet neither of us would know.

  Some said the Marshal walked the fortress unmasked from time to time to observe its workings. I doubted that, but certainly straightened up whenever I encountered anyone halfway familiar whose name eluded me.

  Hurrying through the Hall and up the South Tower stair, I prayed Inek’s business with the Marshal would be short, lest I lose my nerve to confess my deceit. The sheathed portrait, tucked into an oil-dressed sack, weighed on my shoulder like an iron plate.

  The Marshal kept his eye on the world from a series of chambers on the southern flank of the fortress. It seemed strange that a man who rarely left the citadel could gather sufficient information to choose our tasks wisely, but as Inek had often reminded me, the Order was hardly isolated from the world. Knights brought back detailed reports of their missions before their memories were erased; we were trained to be observant. Parati-exter who chose not to be invested as knights left Evanide with honor and served as good sources of information. And the Order maintained a wide network of well-paid informants who knew nothing of who we were, just as we maintained a network of factors for our business interests. Squires’ gossip whispered that a few Order knights served as spies, too, but no one knew for certain.

  Thyme and rosemary scented my path across a courtyard garden to the far colonnade where a guard paced. The knight pivoted smartly at my approach. I halted, touching fingertips to forehead, then fist to heart, eyes lowered.

  “Ah, Greenshank, I do so appreciate your fine discipline. I assured Commander Inek that no search parties were required, as you would dutifully seek him out no matter the lateness of your return.” The Marshal’s doorward, a jovial knight-retired named Horatio, knew the name and status of every trainee who’d been at Evanide more than a month. “They wish you to go right in.”

  “Go in?”

  Naught could measure my dismay. I’d been planning to snare Inek as he left, not intrude upon his meeting with the Marshal. And search parties? Deunor’s fire, were they ready to dismiss me even before my confession?

  Horatio rapped twice on the thick oak and pushed the door open. “Retain your mask.”

  I hooked my cloak at the shoulders, straightened my mask, shirtsleeves, and leather jaque, and cinched the ties of the leather sack. Best not have the portrait fall out in front of the Marshal. Goddess Mother . . .

  I had met Evanide’s Knight Marshal exactly twice. Once at the rite that advanced me from squire to paratus, and once shortly before that occasion when I had sat with him for a personal interview to judge my readiness. With a voice as mellow and mysterious as a night breeze in softer climes, he had probed my perceptions of the Order and our mission, my experiences during my training, and the seriousness of my intention to pursue investiture as a knight. I had come away stripped bare, and yet strangely exhilarated, the way before me clear. And now, so short a time later, all was murk and confusion—the true penance for lies and dissembling. Never again.

  That interview had been held in the Marshal’s outer chamber, so the hard benches and lack of a fire to chase away the damp did not surprise me. The beautifully rendered map labeled The Middle Kingdoms and the Known East yet held the place of honor at one end, while at the opposite end was a shimmering mosaic of our three ruling Knights in full armor: the Knight Marshal in white and silver, the Knight Archivist in deep red-gold, and the Knight Defender, his mail and helm gleaming black, his tabard, cloak, and mask of midnight blue.

  These three knights were the bones of the Order. The Knight Marshal focused his eyes outward, presiding over our missions and training. The Knight Archivist gazed ever inward, ensuring the integrity of the Order’s history and our memories. And the mysterious Knight Defender had eyes everywhere, for he saw to our security and integrity, and no one had any idea who he was. Though it was assumed the three consulted one another, their demesnes were separate and inviolate.

  The door leading into the Marshal’s inner chamber stood open. I swallowed hard, told myself that despite this one transgression, I remained a worthy warrior, and entered.

  I had never visited the inner chamber. Though it was no less plainly furnished than the outer chamber, its prospect must steal the breath of any person with eyes. Across the far wall stretched an expanse of windows measuring five times my armspan. Its center span, paned with remarkably clear glass, gave view to the crescent spit that cupped Evanide’s bay to the south and the lighthouse that marked its tip, already afire on this murky eve. Beyond all lay the gray, heaving expanse of the Western Sea and its seamless joining with the sky.

  But at either end of the clear window was an equal wonder—glass panes stained the colors of emerald, sapphire, ruby, and citrine, cut and joined to shape images. On the right they depicted the fortress, stark against a field of pale blue sky, surrounded by the swirling waters of the bay. Centered at the bottom was the small white-on-black emblem of the Order—the quiver and its five implements.

  On the left, the panes shaped a woman—a goddess, by her haloed face. Her finger pointed to a twin-peaked mountain, though her eyes were turned away, weeping. Sprawled across the slopes was a city of graceful towers, bridges, and flowered boulevards. Atop one of the mountain’s peaks stood a modest keep and its three towers. Its twin was crowned with a ring of standing stones. People crowded the ring of stones and others streamed up the lanes and boulevards toward it.

  Centering the lower glass was a cruder version of the Order’s emblem, the five implements no more than sticks. About the mountain city was laid an array of slivered panes of ruby and citrine. One might think the slivers benign—the artist’s suggestion of enchantments or the divine—and the goddess’s tears a mystery. But it struck me that when the sun made one of its rare appearances and shot its beams through that window, it would set that glorious city afire.

  Such a horror rose in me, I could not drag my eyes from the image, even when a man cleared his throat behind me. I didn’t understand it.

  “Greenshank, attend!”

  My gaze snapped away to two men seated beside a small hearth and a third, a glaring Inek, who stood to one side of them. I dropped to one knee, touched my forehead and heart, and lowered my eyes. “Knight Marshal, Knight Commander.” I nodded to the seated man in the white hood and mask and to Inek in turn. “I report my mission complete.”

  “Blessed return, Greenshank.” The two said it as one, though the voices were entirely distinguishable—the Marshal’s deep and mellow quiet and Inek’s that might have been hammered in the armory. Neither of them said speak, the command to continue my report.

  I stood. My stomach—which had lodged itself in my throat—settled a bit.

  “Have you met our guest, Greenshank?” The Marshal opened his hand to the man seated beside him. “Attis de Lares-Damon, respected linguist and a curator of the Pureblood Registry—a leader among the pureblood sorcerers of Navronne.”

  No wonder I’d been told to retain my mask. Ordinarily one bared one’s face before the Knight Marshal, but not with an outsider present.

  “I’ve not been formally introduced, Knight Marshal, but the curator has queried me on several occasions.”

  This Damon was a frequent visitor to Evanide, one of the few outsiders permitted here and the only one I knew of allowed to speak directly with those in training. He observed our work with sharp interest, yet his questions were mundane. Are swords or polearms easier to enhance with spellwork? Is your combat training more involved with pureblood oppone
nts or ordinaries? Do you focus primarily on individual combat? Inek could have answered more completely than I.

  “Damon has requested an interview with those new raised to the paratus rank,” said the Marshal. “Answer without reservation.”

  Without reservation . . . meaning without protecting what I knew of Order secrets. Who was this Damon? A glance at Inek’s lean face illuminated nothing, though as one who had spent two years with my life hanging on his whim, I detected an unusual fury smoldering behind his chilly shell.

  Damon rose and bowed to the Marshal. A small man, he affected a particular neatness about his hair, close-trimmed beard, and plain garments. His complexion was the hue of olives—visible because his mask covered only the left half of his face. That named him pureblood.

  All men and women born with magical talents were descendents of long-ago invaders from the Aurellian Empire. Purebloods were those whose magical lineage had not been diluted or obliterated by familial interbreeding with common Navrons. Surely most of us at Evanide were of pureblood descent and would have been raised among people like this Damon—in a society almost as restrictive as the Order. I could list the rules and disciplines of that life, but to think about it too closely made my head ache in the way it had when I’d first been brought to Evanide. I had learned to hold such matters at a distance.

  “I regret the unfortunate timing of our meeting, paratus,” said Damon. “You’ve just returned from a rigorous exercise, and I understand your desire to deliver your report and be off to rest and replenishment. My questions may seem frivolous, but I assure you they bear upon the future of our beloved kingdom and thus upon the future of us all.”

  I inclined my back, deferring to the Marshal’s obvious respect for the man. For the moment, curiosity shoved aside my personal concerns.

  “Know, first,” he said, “that I am aware of what is done to the minds of those who train at Evanide. So tell me, what do you recall of the war that rages in Navronne?”

  His manner invited answers as sober as his questioning. My recollection of history was extensive, but I began with a summary.

  “The noble king Eodward died some three years since without a writ designating which of his three sons should inherit his throne. The eldest, Bayard, Duc of Morian, is accomplished in arms, but considered brutish and poorly educated, ill-suited to rule. Osriel, Duc of Evanore, son of Eodward by a pureblood mistress, is a reclusive halfblood, reputed variously to be a weakling cripple or a dangerous madman who practices demonic magic in his mountain strongholds. Perryn, Duc of Ardra, seems nearest his father’s son, and yet demonstrates signs of weakness . . . cowardice, dishonesty, guile. The bitter contention of Perryn and Bayard gave rise to this war that ebbs and flows across the kingdom to its sorrow. It grants opportunity to Sila Diaglou and her murderous Harrowers, who seek to raze our cities and send us back to living in caves. She preaches that such groveling misery will appease some nameless gods who have sent us these years of plague and relentless winter. I could give more detail. . . .”

  Damon waved it off, even as he stepped closer. His unblinking stare pricked uncomfortably. “Which faction holds your allegiance? Prince . . . priestess . . . ?”

  How could he be so familiar with the Order and ask such a question?

  “I am incapable of answering that at the moment. As a paratus of Evanide, I defer to the Marshal and his commanders.”

  The Marshal leaned forward slightly, intent. His fingers brushed a silver pendant, the only adornment to his stark white.

  Still Damon probed. “And yet your account hints at personal feelings about Perryn and about the Harrowers.”

  “Who could not despise savagery that raises ignorance to the state of a god?” His probing crept under my skin, lending inappropriate sharpness to my words. “As for Prince Perryn . . . perhaps I misspoke to mention rumor less founded than those regarding Bayard.” Indeed I could not raise particular incidents about the Ardran prince to match Bayard’s firing of a Hansker plague ship with all aboard or his stripping of already depleted village storehouses in famine-ridden northern Ardra. “I was attempting to provide some equity between the three. My apologies if I overstepped, Domé Lares-Damon.”

  His observant posture grew only more intense. “Is it your broken memory that makes you incapable of opinion?”

  “I don’t—” And here I stumbled. It was not as if I’d no mind to consider what I heard. And yet, who knew what specific understanding had vanished along with the person I had been—this Lucian?

  Damon did not relent. “And if so, how will you judge rightly when you are a knight and have sacrificed the personal beliefs shaped by a past you’ve just hammered into dust?”

  “On that day I will be a new man,” I said, reaching for the surety of purpose the Marshal’s interview had left in me. “My foundations will be renewed in this Order which I deem worthy, which I choose to be the compass that will guide my course.” Yet my answer sounded over-simple and left me entirely unsettled.

  Damon strolled toward the center of the chamber and faced the grand windows, where the pearl gray of sea and sky had darkened to the hue of slate. “Magnificent,” he said. “It struck you as you came in, Greenshank, did it not? This window?”

  “Aye, domé. The prospect makes a man seem quite small.”

  “But it was not the center panel that arrested your attention so much as the left, I think. Why?”

  Two years in the Order had accustomed me to such intimate probing from Inek, my guide, the one charged to take the dust and splinters they’d left me and reshape them into something worthy. And the Marshal was the commander of us all. But this stranger . . .

  I glanced at Inek. The fire beneath his skin had flecked his eyes with sparks. Yet nothing in his soldierly posture gave me permission to withhold such privacies. Nor did the Marshal, whose expression remained unfathomable behind his white mask.

  “The depiction filled me with horror and . . . grief.” To speak it felt as if I peeled my skin away. “To burn a place entire must surely make a goddess weep.”

  Damon spun round as if I’d kicked him. “How could you know it burned?”

  I could not judge whether this was dismay or eagerness or merely surprise. It was tempting to say something outrageous to see what he might do. Did he think I remembered something?

  A chill left me acutely aware of my damp clothes, of my illicit venture to the estuary and the damning portrait in the sack on my shoulder. More than ever I did not want the portrait exposed here.

  “The arrangement of the slivered glass . . . the color of it, citrine and red . . . and imagining sunlight passing through . . . suggested burning. The female figure’s tears seemed to affirm it. Perhaps that’s an incorrect interpretation. The work, so large and detailed, is stunning no matter its subject.”

  Damon gestured dismissal, as if the ripple in his composure had never happened. “Clearly you’ve a good eye for detail. I never noticed those slivers of glass. Perhaps we could summon the next paratus, Knight Marshal. I’m finished with this one.”

  As Damon returned to his seat, the Marshal opened his hand to me. “Thank you for your clarity, Greenshank. Commander Inek, you and your charge are dismissed.”

  “Knight Marshal.” Inek touched his forehead and heart.

  I echoed his farewell, but on one knee. I had earned no true rank at Evanide. Not yet.

  I followed Inek through the fortress like a lamb behind its dam—or its butcher. I would be shed of this matter, even if he bucked me back to tyro and threw me in the bay.

  To my surprise he did not take me to one of the private cells where a guide met his charges for individual tutelage, counseling, or whatever personal scouring they needed. He led me to the armory.

  “Bare your face. Then light the warning lamp and barricade the door.” The molten fury I’d seen in Inek was ready to spew. Of all days . . .

&nb
sp; I hastened to do his bidding. No need to make things worse. The red globe outside the wide doors warned all who had business here that someone was working dangerous enchantment inside. I fired the globe with magelight, then threw the bolts, touched the release pins for the defense bars, and let magic flow through my fingers. Fingers are the conduit of magic.

  Steel beams shot out from the sides of the doors. As they slammed into their holding brackets with a resounding boom, Inek launched a shield across the armory and bellowed as I’d never seen him. Then he whirled on me, his eyes like the fire of the cereus iniga. “Do you know this Damon? Lie to me and you will sleep tonight in the bottom of Hercal’s Downspout with chains about your ankles.”

  “No, rectoré, how could I possibly—?”

  “Because for certain the devious wretch knows you, and for seven days you’ve lived a lie.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “I’ve no knowledge of the man, rectoré. I swear it,” I said. “Indeed, I had an eerie sense when he asked me about the window glass, as if—”

  “As if you had remembered something you should not. He believed your memory excision flawed or broken. Is it?”

  “No! Truly, I can tell you naught of Damon but what you heard and saw, and I was strictly honest throughout his questioning. But the other—”

  “The lies?” Inek had regained control of himself. His glare fixed on me and his words bled disbelief, but at least he didn’t look ready to throw anything else.

  “I omitted an incident in my report seven days ago. This is not excuse, rectoré!” I cut him off before he could say what I already knew. “I fully understand the depths of my fault, and in no way do I expect this confession to offset the penalties you assess. I returned tonight with full intent to tell you all, because I believe in the Order’s way. The life you and your brothers live has a purity and purpose well worthy of what an aspirant must sacrifice. But events have clouded my resolve, and in order to find my way again, I must step back. . . .”