by Carol Berg
He jerked as if she’d slapped him. Foolish girl. If she was truly infatuated with Ilario, she could not have hurt him more.
Ilario and Rhea rode in stiff silence, while I pondered aged shepherds and the mechanisms of history and the dubious truths of myth and prophetic speeches. Dante, locked in the dark by vengeance, had been drawn south by an enchantress who could murder through dreams and who promised worse evils to come. He’d been pursued by a self-righteous tetrarch bent on gutting and burning him and was told by his own father, his sister, and a prophetic stranger that he was destined from birth to become the Souleater’s minion. How could he not be crazed? Had it finally broken him? Was that what I’d felt? And if not that…
“I think we’ve found it,” called Ilario softly. “Hold back for a moment.” An hour’s plod down the narrow track had brought us to a clearing and a ramshackle house of wood and stone. Smoke plumed from the chimney.
“Divine grace!” Ilario called as he rode into the clearing.
It wasn’t Andero who stepped out of the doorway to greet us, but a thin, prune-faced man. Which man was more astonished, none could say, but Ilario spoke first: “John Deune!”
CHAPTER 32
THE KADR ROAD
“Master!” John Deune’s complexion paled to the hue of Melusina’s sheets. Knees buckling, he dropped to the muddy ground and shriveled into a weedy knot. “Save us, I never thought to harm. ’Twas only a trinket, a small gem long buried.” His voice shriveled, too. “Were you sent to fetch it? Did I have it I’d give it over straight off. Who’d imagine the dead would care?”
“I’m not dead. Not this hour anyway.” Ilario slapped his arms and cheeks. “But it was a near thing. Here you are in the wilds of Kadr—the last place I ever expected to find my valet.”
Deune’s head lifted. “To honor your memory, I assumed— The mage needed a guide.”
“But how did you come to be in Coverge to see me fall? You swore to tell my sister where I was before going off to see to your— Ah, were your sons the unpromising followers Andero wrote of?” Ilario slipped off his horse and gave me a hand down.
John Deune squinted at his master in puzzlement, his anxieties forgotten for the moment. He didn’t know. After eighteen years in Ilario’s service, he had never heard his master speak as anything but the idiot fop, the laughingstock of Sabrian nobility.
Ilario glanced over his shoulder at Rhea and me and burst out laughing. “We’ve a number of things to clarify, John. My recent brush with the eternal Veil seems to have knocked some wits into my skull. Amazing things, death and healing, yes?”
John Deune scrambled to his feet, puckered gaze raking the three of us. “What’s wrong with you, lord? Has this lady witched you?”
I could not enjoy his befuddlement. My throat constricted. My eyes fixed on the doorway. “Is Dante here?”
The manservant’s seed-like eyes shifted to me, his lips curled. “The daemon mage haunts Mancibar nowatimes. We’ve parted company, now he’s found what he seeks.”
“That’s it, is it?” Cutting disappointment made me snappish. “Did you think to steal the emerald from the blind man, John? Is that why you stayed with him?”
“Wouldn’t be the worst evil. Not compared to cold murder. Not compared to selling your soul to get what you want. Not compared to torturing the man you’ve come to rescue.
“Torture Portier? Never.” Spider feet tickled my spine.
Though yet eyeing Ilario uncertainly, the man stood straighter. “A witness saw Master Dante torment the librarian with hot irons till he could scarce speak for screaming.”
“Impossible. Dante and Portier are like brothers.” Then why did the hairs on my neck rise?
“There’s much you’ll not wish to believe, my lady. When you’ve given your heart to a daemon, it’s not so easy to reclaim.”
“You know nothing of my heart!” But shouting could not drown out fear.
“You asked.” Snorting, John Deune tramped around the side of the house. He returned with an armload of wood that he dumped beside the door.
He eyed Ilario. “I suppose you’re here to meet the smith. There’s a fire good enough for cooking inside, and I’ll put water on to boil. You were ever a fair master. I could do for you, as usual. For my regular pay.”
“I’ve no wherewithal,” said Ilario. “Not a kivre of my own. Naturally I’ll pay your back wages once we’re back to Merona.”
I didn’t want to hear from anyone but Dante. Or Portier…Holy gods. But John Deune was the only witness available. Gritting my teeth, I tethered Duskborn beside the other horses. “Forgive my sharpness, John Deune. I—we—need the rest of your story.”
“But you’ll believe only what you want of it? Call me liar?”
“I’m just tired and worried. I’ll listen. Please.”
“Come inside, then.” A few scraps of leather and a tumbled pallet were spread on the cold dirt floor. While Rhea heated cider from a small cask, John Deune told his story, beginning with the day Dante woke draped over a horse.
“…He near killed me that day, but I’d sworn, so I took him where he said, to the temple in Carabangor with the eagles out the front. Then I found me a place to hide, because yes, I saw no ill in taking a bit of glass whose owner had been dead a thousand years. I saw all that came about. The lady was like an angel, standing on a rock in the middle of that white lake. She keeps calling to the mage to come rescue her, and in her hand’s a green gem the size of a bird’s egg. Master Dante rows out to her.…”
“Just like the old soldier’s dream.” Andero filled the doorway. “Every detail he describes is just as Dante saw it in the dream.”
“Well he didn’t describe it to me,” snapped John. “Did he tell you that after he gets her across the lake, he chokes the life out of her? Murder, pure and simple. A girl younger than you, lady.”
“He wouldn’t…”
“Heed him, damoselle,” said Andero. “There may be an explanation, but you needs must listen. Wasn’t the first time a madness took him to murder. As I told you.”
I didn’t want to listen. Murder and daemons, the horror in the aether…everything told me that the world was terribly wrong, and that Dante was at the center of it.
John Deune nodded, smug. “Just as I said. He was wild as he was with me when I got him away from Hoven, and as he ever was at Castelle Escalon. The angel woman lay dead on the ground. Then the other one arrived and I thought he might kill her, too.”
“The other?” His hateful images clogged my thinking.
“Another woman the very twin of the first, ripe and beauteous as you’ve never seen, climbed out of the lake. She snatched up the dead woman’s emerald and showed the mage she had another just like to it. When she came up the stair, I had to scoot out of the way so’s not to be seen. But I’ll tell you, lady, once the both of them come out of the building into the sunlight, I knew the bargain was made. He knelt to her and held her hand to his forehead. Even a servant knows what such a swearing means. As they walked out to where his horse was left, he had to cover his eyes.”
He sat back in triumph. Ice crystals formed in my bones. “He
could see.”
“Clear as day. He sold himself to her. Some say he rules her now. He comes out from the palace and burns folk out of their homes, and there’s hauntings and vanishings and bleedings growing ever worse in the city. She wears the two jewels, but he carries his white stick. And they live with the Regent of Mancibar, who is the very whinging, creeping sorcerer who worked for him in Merona. None could tell me the daemon mage has become a servant to that one.”
Jacard! Dante had been right. And John was right that Dante could never serve Jacard. And whatever twisted logic might suggest Dante was playing agente confide, yet again, was erased. Jacard would never believe him. The woman had cured his blindness, given him light, given him a reprieve from his horror at losing his magic.…What would he give for that?
“Your sons watch Dante in the
city?” My voice rang hollow and flat like a dead woman’s.
“Alvy met some fellows at a tavern who serve at the palace. They say the mage teaches her magic, plays games with her. Maybe more. Eats from her hand, he does.”
Every word brought another blow. Though my body was frozen, the room swam in the heat.
“One of Alvy’s friends got called to the lady. She said he was to fetch the librarian, chain him in a pit just so, and leave an iron rod to heat in the fire, as she and her sorcerer were going to have some jolly fun. The guard did as he was told and said he watched as the mage come down and frighted the prisoner half to death. Yelled at him. Cursed him. Burnt him about his face with the red-hot iron. Threatened to put out his eyes as the librarian had let happen to him.”
“Night’s daughter, he didn’t do it?”
“Said his mistress wanted to do it. But any man would be damned forever to treat his brother so. I thought to take the boys and go home. The jewels were out of reach, and Mancibar was nowhere I wanted to be with young fellows getting stole from their beds and turning up shredded or with no blood in them.”
Bleeding? Shredded bodies? Angels’ mercy…
Andero continued the tale, earnest, intent. “When they came through Hoven, I persuaded John to send the boys back to the city to watch Dante. Will got hired on at the palace stables. He’s seen Dante ride out with the lady, friendly-like. He says there’s no doubt Dante could ride away at any time—certainly using his magic. So he chooses to stay. And there’s no doubt at all that he can see.”
The room fell quiet. Their eyes were on me, waiting. I could answer the sympathy in Ilario’s face no better than the accusation in John Deune’s or the worry in Andero’s.
“I’m going on to Mancibar,” I said. “None of you has to go with me. You all know I’ve resources I’ve not even explored as yet. Yes, Dante has done dreadful things.” Somehow saying it aloud set my back straighter. “He set out on this journey convinced that this woman and her jewels and the dream were connected to what we did at Mont Voilline and posed a danger at least its equal. Just look at the measure of his urgency. That he would ask for help from you, Ilario, and then allow you to save him, die for him…Nothing could be more alien to his nature. To return to Coverge blind, and then to ask you, Andero, a brother he’s not seen in half a lifetime, into such danger as we faced before, I cannot imagine how difficult that was for him. To continue on with you, John Deune, to willingly submit himself to one who loathes him—that’s the measure of desperation, not cunning. No matter what’s happened to him, no matter what choices he’s made—and I will not believe he’s chosen some evil path until I hear it from his own lips—I will find him. But first, I think”—and this was my own dreadful decision—“I must find Portier. I’ll not let Jacard bury him alive for any reason on this earth.” I wrenched a deep breath, satisfied in my resolution. “So choose for yourself what to do. More than half a day’s light remains. I’ll not wait.”
Ilario stood and stretched. “My hind end was just informing me that it needed the comforts of a sculpted leather seat and not these scraps on dirt.” He bowed toward Rhea. “My kind physician: Soul’s grace, damoselle, again and forever. Your good care is well taught, so I can likely manage dosing my lingering ills from here out. Clearly you’ll be welcome in Hoven until we return to escort you home.”
“You can’t—oughtn’t—be mixed up in this business,” Rhea mumbled. “The danger…”
“Portier and I have saved each other’s skin a number of times,” he said. “I’ll not leave him to Jacard’s whims. As for Dante, there’s more to this story than any of us can judge. I witnessed this urgency Anne cites; it was no brotherly love bade me do what was necessary to let him get away. But, of course, I am particularly unwilling to allow the ferocious Damoselle Anne to abandon me when I’m not in top fighting trim. So if you’re yet fretting about my bowels, physician—or my soul—you’ll have to come as well.”
Rhea snorted and hefted her pack. “Stubborn still. Wouldn’t trust you to take care any more than a hound.”
Andero looked from her to the queen’s bemused brother, and then back, as awestruck as if he’d seen a dove challenge a stag. It was always startling to witness the bold fire that shy, quiet Rhea brought to her profession.
“All right, then,” I said. “Three of us.”
In one fluid motion, Andero buried the fire in the little hearth and snatched up his own pack. “Not going to let someone else see to my little brother, now, am I? If he needs rescuing, I’ll do it. If he needs killing, I can do that, too. As I’ve already left a message at the forge that I’ll come back to fill my bond when I’ve done what’s needed, I’d like to get on the road as soon as may be. What of you, John Deune?”
“I’m going to fetch my boys away,” said John Deune. “They’ve been too long in the daemon’s path already.”
“So be it,” I said. “Let’s ride.”
MANCIBAR
The iron sun hammered the slow-moving flow of travelers on the approach to Mancibar. Each one had serious business, as the ill repute of the city precluded frivolous visiting. The city gates floated in the sun shimmer, as vague and insubstantial as the gates to Heaven.
John Deune had left us the previous night, intent on finding his sons. Ilario was off keeping company with some of the other travelers. Rhea and Andero rode behind me, talking quietly of soldiering and healing. As ever in the long days since crossing the river, I was lost in a heat haze haunted by the image of the Uravani bridge.
According to John Deune, Dante had spent most of an hour contemplating the sculpted figures—the Righteous Defender of Heaven and the Daemon of the Dead. The figures were a powerful image, the serene Defender, sword arm upraised to Heaven, and the Daemon lunging forward, arms extended as if his wake might draw the lesser daemons behind him. When Ilario pointed out that the Daemon was missing his clawed right hand, Andero told us how his father had purposefully mutilated Dante’s hand to mark him as the Souleater’s Chosen. Such cruelty—like his mother’s slavish ignorance—was incomprehensible. Whatever gods might be a part of this universe, I refused to believe they would countenance such works.
Neither Dante nor I subscribed to popular myths of the Beginnings. I was more inclined than he to believe that some benevolent hand had set the earth spinning and set it among the stars according to the perfect order mathematics described. Yet both of us had been shaken by our experience at Mont Voilline. A man who would not die. Spectral visions of starving dead. The winds of Ixtador sweeping the mountainside. And here amid Mancibar’s patchy fields of vigor and blight, the universe seemed at once more capricious and more dangerous than in the high pastures of Otro and his prophecies. What was the truth?
Ilario returned, reining in at my side and motioning Andero and Rhea close.
“I’ve a plan.” He grimaced as he blotted sweat from his face. Despite his hat, his fair skin was deeply sunburnt. “I met a jongleur who has hopes of getting on to entertain at the Regent of Mancibar’s palace. He says that most of those who played or sang for the old prince have fled the city and there’s opportunity for lesser-known folk to get paying work. Good, yes?”
“In what way?” My thoughts were sluggish in the heat.
“We need a reason for entering the city. And we need a way into the palace. Why would any sane person go there? But musicians, players, poets, they’re all mad.”
“But we’re not jongleurs or…or anything,” I said. “You can sing, at the least.”
“Our physician happens to have a fine contralto—I was not entirely insensible for that first month of our companionship. Andero says he picked up a bit of juggling while he was soldiering. You’re a graceful dancer and could learn more. And when the time was right, you could perhaps do a few magical tricks. Vanishings, perhaps?” His eyes sparked.
My head lifted. “We’d have to be very careful,” I said. “Couldn’t count on getting away with it more than once.” My supply of Lianel
le’s powder was getting low. But if we could become familiar with the palace, the people, the defenses, and then get all of us inside, ready to strike…
Lingering at a caravanserai outside the walls, we picked apart Ilario’s idea. Without any better alternative, we pulled out the scarves and shirts we’d bought at Mattefriese. I loosed my braid and tied my hair to one side with Lianelle’s silver pendant, letting it dangle like an earring, and gave Rhea the necklace of brass bangles and kingbuck horn the old woman had given me.
Ilario donned the mantle of braided scraps and rubbed his hands on the fatty dried meat Andero had brought from Hoven. “With your permission, my physician,” he said, grinning and wriggling his fingers in Rhea’s direction.
Though puzzled, she shrugged assent. He proceeded to grease her short hair and curl it about his fingers until it stood out in all directions. “There, very like a Syan dancer I once entertained,” he said, pleased with himself. “Only she smelled better.”