Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  CHAPTER 14

  The half-faced bodyguard tried to drag me into the cave by one arm wrapped around my neck. I elbowed him in the knee. Dizzy and confused, I was unsure what that might accomplish, but after so many hours in Evanide’s training room, it was wretched to be hauled about like a piglet.

  I shouldn’t have done it. Nor should I have bothered with any other move I attempted in our brief grapple. Never in my fiercest bouts at Evanide had I suffered such overmatching skill. His fists were very hard and very experienced, and he knew how to inflict the maximum discomfort while ensuring I remained conscious to appreciate his technique. Eventually he left me flat, convinced my bones were dust and wishing the rest of me was, as well.

  One advantage of surrender was that I got a good look at the splash of white above the cave mouth. The image of a splayed hand had been carefully cut from white stone and embedded in the gray rock.

  Then the bodyguard threw me over his shoulder with shameful ease and carried me into the cave. My senses reported naught but a blur of rock and torchlight and shadows blacker than seemed righteous. Every particle of my being hurt. Yet once deposited on my knees on a hard floor, with my head shoved downward in submission, I concluded that naught was actually broken save a tooth. I did not presume that my condition would improve. Anyone who could create the enchantment that bound this powerful man must own a roster of torments so vile I could not imagine them.

  “So this is our shadow, the wisp of cloud who drifted in our wake for most of a day.” Cold, clear, heavy with dread portents, the voice came from everywhere at once. Whimsy, painted in poison. “So odd he is, don’t you think, Voushanti? But with skills, you say?”

  Were it my heart’s deepest desire, I could not have lifted my head. My hands drooped limp and useless beside my knees.

  “Some, lord. Not so much as he presumes.”

  Inky shadows darted across the stone floor. Whirled in tornadic frenzy. Brushed slowly across the scrapes on my hands, stinging like brine.

  Gatzi’s teeth, I could feel them—the shadows. Invisible fingers traced the contours of my face and slid down my arms to my fingertips. Had I been able to move I would have tried to scrape them off. As it was they left a sticky taint like pine sap, though the odor reminded me more of the boneyard outside Necropolis Caton.

  “The full mask is most curious,” said the lord. “Not at all what pureblood masters prescribe, yet these hands have talents. And these silver bands”—a light tapping on my bracelets by no instrument that I could see set my skin creeping—“I do believe wonders lurk inside them.”

  Only the most perceptive sorcerer could detect magic lurking behind silver’s brilliance. Yet Osriel was halfblood, anathema to our kind, one who represented a pureblood parent’s careless extinction of the divine gift. In Osriel’s case, it was his mother, a pureblood who’d become the mistress of a beloved king and died a few years after giving birth to . . . what? A charlatan? A coward? Or a monster who dabbled in evil to enhance his degenerate magic? The Order needed to know. I needed to know why he sought a cave marked with a white hand.

  “Who is this man of clever illusion?” I said as haughtily as one could from his knees with bowed head. “A shadow twister with a brutish, devil-marked servant?”

  A leash whipped round my neck, dragging my head forward and down until my nose touched the floor. Stinging neck and scraped chin testified the instrument was no illusion, yet neither was it made of leather or fiber. The Order’s ropes of scorching light tangled limbs, but vanished as quickly as they touched their marks. The frigid tail of Osriel’s leash did not let go.

  “Insults are a fool’s tactic,” he said. “Think of something better.” The choke strap tightened.

  Don’t panic. For all he knows you could be his brother’s man. He’ll get nothing from your corpse. But the world spun dangerously, and I wobbled. The constriction eased half an instant before ending my life.

  I gulped breath, blinking until my head cleared.

  The strap tightened again ever so slightly, nudging me toward the verge of death. Most people didn’t understand how brief a pressure to the neck would kill. This man did.

  Dizzy again. No matter resolution, panic nibbled at my belly, at my groin, at my lungs and spirit, even when the pressure relented long enough for my eyes to refocus.

  I willed myself calm. Using magic to take a life could drain a sorcerer past his own capacity, warping his talents or obliterating them. One so skilled would know that. But there were things to be learned here. I had to live.

  “Dead men answer no questions,” I croaked, twisting my head slightly to ease the pressure, perfectly designed to keep one dizzy with terror.

  Cold, wicked, mirthless laughter cascaded through the cavern. “What say you, Voushanti? He thinks death would free him from answering.”

  “I say he is an ignorant spy, lord.” The bodyguard grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back, as the invisible leash slid away, its edge keen as a razor knife. Warm blood dribbled down my shirt.

  The man in spruce-green robes sat not ten paces from me, perched atop a slab of rock broken from the cave’s low ceiling. The height of the slab would put his head on a level with mine were I allowed to stand. From my angle a pale, square, clean-shaven jaw was just visible below the drooping hood. Elsewise one might question whether he was a man at all. His limbs—whatever he had of them—were swallowed by voluminous sleeves and flowing gown.

  Voushanti let go of my hair and moved to his master’s side. A taint of red gleamed from his ruined eye. His shadow rippled, and his master’s garments shifted as if moved by the breath of a great beast. No matter the need to observe, I averted my eyes, my spirit sick.

  “I would know what you are, masssked one.” The viperous hiss issued from the hood.

  The lord’s power left no path to avoid danger. His demand left no time to devise elaborate plays. And deception bore its own risks. Yet neither was this his own fastness in Evanore. He had no great numbers of servants and messengers at his beck. Might a bit of truth lure him into revelation?

  “I am a historian of pureblood birth, exiled from the society of my kind.”

  “I doubt that.” My heart near leapt out of my skin. The cold, deep whisper sounded just at my ear, as if he knelt at my left shoulder, though he remained motionless on his rock seat. “A recondeur walks willing into a gatzé’s den? Next you’ll say you’ve no idea who I am.”

  The pressure bending my back eased. But I didn’t wish to invite more choking, so I stayed still.

  “I am no recondeur, Lord Osriel, Duc of Evanore and Prince of Navronne. Rather I am condemned by family and Registry to walk the world without name, face, or home until my exile is reversed. I use the time to learn. Being a historian, I seek out secrets of the past. Powerful as you are, you can surely test my truth in this.”

  “Oh, indeed I shall.” This time in my other ear. I hated that I jumped, even when expecting it. “What leads you to believe I hold secrets of the past?”

  “You may hold secrets or not, Your Grace, but this cavern surely does.” Using a magical map to come here, he must know something about the white hand. If I was to learn what he knew, I had to offer something plausible of my own.

  “Kneel up.”

  It was no easy matter to raise up when every muscle and bone felt like a pounded meat custard. And more difficult yet to lift my eyes and face him as if I were an honest man. But he’d bitten my hook.

  “The vanished city of Xancheira has ever intrigued me,” I said. “A great city founded by Aurellian sorcerers in the days we came to this land. A city renowned for beauty, art, just governance, and most especially, its magic. Then, in the matter of a day, so imperfect history claims, every Xancheiran soul dies and their great city vanishes from the earth, a mystery spawning a thousand hypotheses, but no evidence to prove one or the other as true. I’ve wandered throughout Na
vronne listening to tales from mighty hall to Ciceron fireside, while hunting the symbol of Xancheira. Son of a king, you may be familiar with it, a white tree with five branches. . . .”

  “I am familiar.”

  I inclined my back to acknowledge and smiled inside. The shadows had quieted. Though not a comfortable quiet, to be sure.

  “Amongst these bits and pieces that make no sense, I’ve run across mention of another symbol that is very like—”

  “A white hand.”

  “Indeed, lord. Sometimes throughout the span of history, words, symbols, or stories become intertwined, shifting form until one cannot judge whether they are the same or different. My search for the mark of the white hand led me to Lillebras, but there it stalled. I have scoured the countryside with no result. And what should I hear on the eve of a great battle? The Duc of Evanore and a small party—no warlike legion—required a guide intimately familiar with the district. And I think perhaps this lordly prince, reputed a powerful mage in his own right, might have an interest in legends of Xancheira’s magic. And so I set myself to find him, and . . .”

  I lifted my hands as if to say here we are.

  “Bring him here.”

  Voushanti grasped my upper arm with a grip like a bear’s jaw. Forthwith, I stood an arm’s length from the prince. A hand emerged from the folds of green velvet, a hand that might once have been slender and fine-boned, but was now mottled purple, gray, and red, misshapen at knuckle and joint, the fingers curled in upon themselves.

  “Give me your hand, masked one, and say again that you speak truth.”

  I dared not delay, lest I think too much and shade my declarations with untruth. I laid my grimy fingers in his slightly opened claw. It required every shred of discipline I possessed to keep my hand steady. Surely the fires of Magrog the Tormenter’s furnace raged beneath his skin.

  As a gale on the seaward wall, power rushed into me, sweeping away thought and caution. I clung desperately to the bones of my story and walled off all else. My hope to dissect Osriel’s magic vanished along with the world and time and reasons, until I stood naked in a freezing dark while those scorching fingers examined every part and portion of flesh and spirit.

  No, no, no! My spirit recoiled from that touch as it crept closer to the raw and gaping cavity in my breast. And then the bitter touch . . .

  My screams set the cavern’s fire and shadows dancing with wild abandon. I knew so, because I writhed and fought to escape that darkness, to hold back his touch, to appease the agony in my brow . . . in my breast . . . and in a fiery bridge between the two. Only Voushanti’s bear-jaw grip kept my head from slamming into the prince’s rock.

  “Bring him ale.” The hollow command sounded a thousand quellae distant.

  The monster shoved me to the floor, where I huddled in a knot, rocking, one fist to my head, one to my breast. Mask your weakness, madman. Danger lurked on every side like wolves gathered about a hunter’s dying fire. What had he learned? I needed to attack, to obscure, to avert his gaze.

  I swallowed the next scream that rose like lava from the pits. But to breathe was a mighty effort, and I could not think of a way to begin. . . .

  A tin mug appeared in my shaking hands. I downed the lukewarm ale and grasped reality: the world of gray, shifting light, my mission, the Order. What childish hubris to invite such an assault. Had I exposed my brothers or yielded my name or my will? Goddess Mother, for a mirror glass to look on my own eyes, to ensure they had no red center of pain and despair to mark enslavement.

  “My question remains, masked one: What are you?”

  “My question for you, prince,” I croaked, “is what have you made of me?” I riffled through two years of memory . . . of the meeting with the Danae, with Bastien . . . through the bits and pieces I had learned in the past days, through will and desire and hopes. All seemed my own—Greenshank’s. Nothing of Lucian de Remeni.

  “Shaping you to my service would pleasure me beyond description.” His raw lust oiled my throat and churned my bowels. “But what sculptor can choose proper tools when he cannot describe his medium? Clay? Steel? Diamond? Silver? Yes, perhaps silver. So much lies hidden beneath your tarnished surface as would provide a long winter’s study in my mountain fastness. I have never encountered a soul so fragmented as yours.”

  Pain subsided, leaving body and spirit a raw wound. My mind’s fingers grasped at reason and gave me hope that I’d held firm. So, test it . . .

  “I am condemned to exile, lord, as I told you.”

  “So you are. Indeed all you spoke was truth . . . which does not imply that I believe your story. But enough that I shall invite you to examine what I came here to find.”

  On my feet again, I bowed with what dignity I could muster, chilled to the marrow. Osriel’s was no degenerate halfblood magic, but complex beyond my experience and dangerous beyond knowing.

  “I offer my knowledge to the task, and an apology for this pitiful show. Your power, lord, humbles me. Alas, disconnection from the practices of my own kind has broken me in many ways.”

  “Perhaps so.” The tenor of this pronouncement leached all ambiguity from the phrase. What did he see in me that confirmed my breakage so firmly?

  Heaving a great breath, trying to ignore the whirling particles of night visible from the corner of my eye, I extended my open palm. “Show me, if you will.”

  Perhaps the prince gestured. Perhaps he spoke. I neither saw nor heard his command. But the half-faced Voushanti shoved me toward the back of the cavern. Firelight danced on a high wall, the mottled gray rock carved into grotesqueries by seeps from above and undercut into swirled alcoves by ancient floods. Our boots crunched on a dirt floor pocked with rubble and milky puddles.

  The steel-capped warlord squatted beside a few saddle packs and a small fire built on a stretch of sand. Though I glimpsed no way forward beyond the cavern’s back wall, there had to be one. The party’s fourth, the squire, was nowhere to be seen.

  The warlord stood as we approached, a small leather case in hand. His hawkish face and solid bulk might have been hewn from the granite of his home mountains. An icy glance slashed me as he hurried back toward the prince on his rock throne.

  A torch mounted in a rusty bracket marked one of the shadowed alcoves. At closer distance, it came clear that this overhang, scarce a handspan higher than my head, housed a deeper cove than the rest, and an opening at its back.

  Voushanti waved me through the alcove into a wide passage. The wavering light of the cavern quickly faded behind us, and the bodyguard carried no lamp. Perhaps the red light in his eyes sufficed for his vision, but I cast a pale magelight. We had to climb over a few rockfalls and duck under low-hanging rock, but in the main, the way was easy enough until my senses detected a tangled shimmer in the air akin to a wall of spiderwebs.

  No matter how forcefully I stepped through the enchanted barrier, I got nowhere. Even when I spied a palm-sized rock and with utmost concentration stepped past it, the motion left me where I started. The rock remained in front of me. To one who could not sense the magic, the passage would seem endless.

  I doubted the enchantment was the prince’s doing. It reminded me of naught so much as the Ciceron commons house and its strange portal. The logic, the colors, the nuances might have been worked by my own hand. A close examination suggested this one was not so impenetrable as that one. But should I break it? Giving aid to Osriel must give any man pause.

  I turned to Voushanti, making sure my eyes did not shy from his monstrous face. A further show of weakness would do me no favors. “Has the prince moved beyond this enchantment?”

  “The proper question is: Can you move beyond it?” His words crackled like flame.

  Of course they were testing me. But answers lay ahead. The squire, too, I’d guess.

  My blood heated as I examined the spellwork more thoroughly, appreciating Evanide
’s never-ending practice in locks and barriers. The spell’s release was buried deep, but not difficult. I infused a bit of magic. The barrier vanished like smoke.

  The passage opened into a small chamber, where expectations were quickly unsettled. No squire waited. Indeed, no one had visited this place for a very long time.

  Dust lay thick on the stone floor, unmarred by footsteps. A pile of rubble collapsed from the ceiling filled half the chamber. Ancient artists had painted horses, deer, and ox-like beasts in red and blue over the walls, punctuated here and there with unfamiliar god-signs. Yet it was not dead men’s art that set my heart racing, but the round arch of hammered bronze set into the far wall.

  No weaving of threaded light filled the bronze frame. Only rock, scarred, cracked, and pocked as any cave wall, half grown over with hardened seeps. It had narrowly escaped being blocked by the rockfall.

  Shadows flitted across the wall and the arch, graying the light. I whipped my head around. The hooded prince stood in the tunnel doorway, Voushanti at his side. “So our journey is not wasted, after all.”

  “He opened the way without blinking,” said Voushanti.

  “I suspected he could. I deem him a man of many useful talents.”

  The portal in the hirudo had been hidden behind a simple illusion of plaster and barred with a blood seal, but this one . . . I touched the stone inside the arch. Prepared this time, I did not flinch when fire shot up my arm, as it had when I touched the tapestry of light. Yet, even knowing what to look for, I could detect no magical seal, only the fire. Perhaps the portal was dead.

  The prince joined me beside the arch. I did not step away, which was as difficult as anything I’d done on this journey.

  “What kind of portal is filled with stone?” he said. “There should be light. Motion. A spell to unravel to open the way.” One of his misshapen fingers traced the line of a curling bronze stem, making my own hair curl with a frisson of enchantment. Or terror. Osriel knew exactly what he was looking for. Where had he learned it?