by Carol Berg
I shook my head and raised two open palms in a gesture of peace—or poverty, if one interpreted gestures in marketplace dialect. The message was much the same: I couldn’t afford him, but bore him no ill will.
He nodded and slumped back against the bricks.
Though my taste ran usually to women, the youth was, indeed, beautiful. A torch burned in a bracket above his head. His mellow rose-brown skin and acorn-colored hair gleamed in the firelight. The deep blue silk of his scanty tunic rippled enticingly with his movements, and the silver bracelet on his bare ankle sparkled with a gemstone of matching blue…a sapphire?
I halted abruptly. That a catamite in the alleys of Elanus would be wearing a sapphire bracelet did not stun me half so much as the fact that I had admired that very bracelet in a noblewoman’s jewel box…just before I stuffed it in my rucksack and got myself an arrow in the thigh. Boreas!
My blood running hot, I beckoned the youth to the street. Down the alley, Tigg the Procurer was taking a lei-surely piss.
The youth summoned a smile from some secret place and lowered his dark lashes in a way that promised to share its source. Well past its days of breaking, his voice wrapped my body like silk. “What’s your pleasure, sir? Tigg has a room—”
“Shhh.” I laid my arm around the youth’s tight shoulders. Though he smelled exotically of cardamom and clove, his accent was directly from the riverlands of Morian, not mystical Estigure. Careful to keep him within sight of his master and myself obscured by the brick corner, I bent my head to his. “No custom from me this night, sorry to say, but I would offer you a citré for a question answered.”
He raised his heavy lids and buried his secrets again. “One citré buys only a small answer.”
“The bracelet on your ankle. I would know where to find the person who sold it to your master. My wife—a harridan the likes of which would drive Sky Lord Kemen himself to the netherworld—would forgive me the worst of my failings if I could but take her such a trinket. And though your beauty is most worthy of much beauty in its turn, I’m thinking this little treasure was not ruinous to buy. Your master seems a…thrifty man.”
“Your coin?” He stuck out his hand, all languorous invitation vanished.
I dug the copper from my boot and held it above his hand. “And your answer?”
A careless toss of his head threw his silken hair from his face. “Don’t think to get this bauble. Master covets it. He said I could wear it for the street, but not when I go with aught. Big hairy fellow gave it for a night with me most of a month ago. Said he needed the blessing of lying with Karus’s kin, as he was hunting a place to bed for the winter.”
“That’s all?”
The youth’s long lashes fell toward his smooth, empty palm. “We didn’t talk so much. He’d been a while without a decent lay.”
Disappointed, I brushed my hand across his, releasing the coin. It vanished under the hem of his tunic, and he stepped back so that my arm dropped loose and empty. Even a touch would cost me more. I didn’t begrudge him the necessities of his trade.
I eyed his slender form, neither hair nor blemish to be seen anywhere below his scalp. He brought to mind Stearc’s squire Corin of the bronze braid and elegant cheekbones…fairer yet than this one. I felt a shifting in my braies, which circumstance startled me a bit. I was truly a pitiable case. “Fare you well this winter season, lad, with worthy companions and a light hand from those who profit from you. Indeed, you are almost enough to sway a man who finds his pleasures elsewise.”
His eyes took light from the torch as he shrugged and settled back against the wall, raising one knee to prop his foot on the bricks. “One Mistress Kellna lives out by Graver’s Meadow and sells berries and rootstock here in the market. Some say she also buys and sells goods that are…outside the common trade. I don’t care much for women, but you might find her informative. She come by new stock this month past and made profit enough selling it on to Edane Groult down near Caedmon’s Bridge that she bought me two nights running for a new friend come to stay with her.”
I grinned. “By Graver’s Meadow, you say?”
“Aye. West on the first track outside the gates. Right fork at the old mill.”
“Thank you for that,” I said.
“Mayhap next time, you’ll let me sway your pleasure. You’re a leg up on most as come by here.” The boy’s gaze flicked down the alley, and his face paled. “You won’t say who told you?”
“On my soul, not a word.” I backed away quickly. When Tigg the Procurer stepped out of the alley and peered up and down the lane, I was well hidden behind a broken chimney.
I pulled the monk’s gown from my rucksack and drew it over my head, covering rucksack and all. Then I slipped out of the ruin, clasped my hands to my chin, bowed my head and shoulders as if in prayer, and hurried toward the town gate close behind the ragged donkey boy driving his empty charcoal wagon.
The woman in the pillory spat and yelled as I passed. “Karish perversion mocks the Gehoum. The earth will bleed to cleanse itself. You’ll pay, Karish! You’ll pay!”
No one paid her any mind, or me, either. Not the gate guards I’d talked to earlier. Not even the short sallow newcomer riding through the gates, wearing a gray silk mask that covered half his face, a claret-colored cloak, and the black-and-yellow badge of an itinerant inspector from the Pureblood Registry. I grinned behind my folded hands, strolled across the stinking ditch, and turned westward onto the track for Graver’s Meadow. Though the moon was well past full, its cold light kept me to the path.
Typical of Boreas to hole up for the winter in the first place he came to, a town small enough everyone would learn of him, and then to choose the bed of one who dealt in stolen goods. He’d never been one to think things through. And it was just like the devil to convince his woman to buy him a boy. I’d never understood what made women fawn on Boreas so—a big, hairy, unwashed brute with a gruff, foolish way about him, who definitely preferred partners with parts between their legs no female could provide. Not that he hated women. Women were his porridge, nourishing and sufficient for every day. Lads were his meat and spice.
As I walked I amused myself planning the encounter. Would it be more pleasurable to slice off the villain’s balls with one of our stolen daggers or to tie him up naked in the cold and let him watch me walk away with our booty? Once I’d settled somewhere—Pontia, perhaps, a town large enough to sell one of the daggers and still keep my head down—I’d send an offering to Gillarine to thank them for their hospitality.
The track kicked up sharply. The stream, narrower here, burbled and gurgled, cutting deep into the rocky slope, creating moss-lined nooks and grottos, each with its own watery music. As a child I had imagined such a cool, mysterious nook must be a Danae sianou—the holy place where a Dané gave up its body for a season and became one with the land. Sometimes I would leave feast bread there and pray to be stolen from my family. More often I would yell, stomp the ground, and throw rocks in the water, hoping to wake the sleeping guardian. Neither activity bore fruit.
A cold gust flapped my gown around my ankles as I stepped around fresh horse droppings. And then more. I bent down and passed my hand over a mound. Still warm. Several people had ridden up this path not long before. I swore under my breath, but I’d come too far to turn back. Likely more than Mistress Kellna lived up this way.
After consideration, I removed my monk’s gown and stuffed it into my rucksack. A lost monk might walk clear easier than my own self if I encountered ordinary folk, but the talk of Harrowers had unnerved me. And the captive woman had reminded me how they hated Karish.
My thigh was grateful when the path broke over the lip of the rise. The stream lay like a silver necklace across a rocky goat pasture, leading the eye toward a scant woodland and a cottage. A sweet, cozy little hideaway, cupped in the embrace of shallow chalk cliffs, easily defensible.
Unfortunately, the cottage was ablaze. A robust woman sprawled among the grazing goats with an a
rrow in her back, and somewhere Boreas was bellowing out agonized curses that threatened to crumble the earth beneath my feet. I would recognize his rumbling epithets anywhere.
I ran. Not back toward Elanus, which even a moron’s poor sense would demand, but toward the conflagration and the screaming. Boreas had saved my life at the battle of Arin Fay, taking a deep slash on his arm while striking down the halberdier ready to remove my head. We had exchanged the favor a number of times in the long months following, so one could say I owed him nothing—less than nothing since he had abandoned me half dead. But that first time, having seen the Ferryman’s hand as clearly as I would until the day I took ship with that grim spirit, I had given Boreas my oath to protect his back. I prided myself that I had never broken my sworn faith.
All too aware that the treacherous moonlight would expose any approach on the meadow track, I circled wide toward the cliffs to come up behind the house, racing as soft-footed as I could manage over the rocky ground. When I plunged gratefully into the clumped beech and oak grown up in the lee of the cliffs, the rush of the nearby flames was already waning. I crept cautiously through the snagging undergrowth of blackthorn and hazel.
The screams—hoarse now, choking grunts, wordless animal cries—did not emanate from the burning house, but from an expanse between the house and the chalk cliffs. Breaking free of the bracken, I sped through a stretch of scattered, pale-trunked beeches and caught myself just before hurtling into the open.
Beyond the bordering trees lay a rolling meadow, dotted with stands of rowan and birch. Nestled in a willow brake, a small, bean-shaped pond shimmered in the cold moonlight, its waters ruffled by the knife-edged breeze. From the pond spilled the stream that gouged the hillside. My soul swelled at the beauty of the place; my skin flushed and quivered as if the angel choirs themselves had come to sing in Gillarine Abbey church.
But my eyes were quickly drawn to a knoll at the heart of the meadow. At the apex of the knoll, five people gathered about a splayed figure, still as death. The angled moonlight stretched their long shadows across the slope.
A howl rose in my throat. Had I a weapon…a bow…a club…a blade longer than my finger, I would have set upon them, never mind the odds. But as in every juncture of my life, I was inadequate. Too late. Unprepared.
A scrawny, tangle-haired man stood at the base of the knoll holding six horses. With a smothered curse at my loose-lipped folly, I recognized him as Gorb the Seedsman. He’d not worn the orange scarf about his neck three hours past.
The five were chanting a pattern of four words, one each, over and over around their circle until I could distinguish the voices—three men and two women—and the Aurellian words: sanguiera, orongia, vazte, kevrana. Bleed, suffer, die, purify. With every repetition, the moonlight dimmed and the weight of night and despair descended upon my shoulders like an iron yoke. After the fifth or sixth time around, a tall, pale-haired woman in an orange cloak raised her arms, holding a short staff in her two hands as if to challenge the sky. Her clear voice incised the air like a silver lancet, and every hair on my flesh rose.
Powers of Night and Storm and Terror, of Desert and Ice, of Death and Life,
O mighty Gehoum, heed our sacrifice.
Withhold our doom as we cleanse this land of decadent pleasure,
Of all that distracts us mortals from our proper reverence.
May this blood and fire and pain be a sweet odor to fill the long night of thy passing
And bear upon its vapors our vows renewed to purge the world of all that stands between us and thy immortal being.
“Heathen witch! Magrog take ye to his everlasting fire!” The raw, choking curse came from the victim at their feet…Boreas, no doubt of it, not so dead after all.
“Feel the cleansing fear, mortal man,” said the tall woman, lowering her arms and bending over him. “Thou art a blight upon the universe, diseased, depraved, an insult to the Powers who control the world’s fate. Of all thy miserable existence, only thy ending will serve a purpose. Suffer and bleed and rejoice in the terror of darkness.” She plunged her staff into the ground…into the man…ripping a cry of agony from his very depths.
Horror rooted my feet as each of the five bent to touch him. Then Sila Diaglou—of course, the pale-haired woman was the priestess I’d seen at Gillarine, the warrior who could rouse people to destroy their own fields and cities in the name of repentance—led her companions down the knoll to Gorb and the horses.
The seedsman gave the priestess a leg up into her saddle. She laid a hand on his head and murmured, as if bestowing a blessing, and then she and her cohorts rode toward me. I hid myself as best I could and still be able to see them as they approached the wood. Using every skill at my command, I etched their features into my memory.
Scarce forty, Sila Diaglou was a handsome woman with a high forehead and intelligent eyes set well below thin brows. The diagonal scar that seamed each cheek tainted her beauty with cruelty. Her hair floated like beaten flax as she rode, yet her wide mouth lacked any hint of generosity or mercy. Her lips, and those of her companions, were painted black with blood.
The smaller woman followed, particolored skirts draping her mount and a fluttering orange scarf wrapped about straight black hair. No more than a doe-eyed girl, eighteen at best, she rode like a queen, soft, copper-hued features devoid of emotion. The three men, too, I memorized as they came: the one with a beardless needle chin and colorless eyes, the one with a malformed ear and oiled black curls tied into a club at his neck, the third with a dog’s face, all lumps and crags, with but a fringe of hair about his round chin and a dagged cloak of purple velvet. Weedy Gorb mounted his own beast and rode after the others.
I held still until they had passed out of my hearing. Then I raced to the crest of the knoll.
Spirits of fire and darkness! Stripped to his braies, wrists and ankles stretched and bound to wooden stakes, my old comrade leaked blood from every quat of his length and breadth. Blades had shredded his flesh and punctured his eyes. The priestess had plunged her staff through his middle, not through his heart or his bowel to kill him quickly, but through his side so that every breath, every trembling shudder, tore him apart.
Swallowing my gorge, I knelt beside him and spoke softly. “Ah, Boreas, you god-cursed gatzé, I knew you’d get in trouble without me.”
“Who’s there?” he croaked. His battered lips scarcely moved. His head rolled side to side, as if he might be able to see, if he but turned his bloody sockets in the proper direction.
Gently I stilled him. “It’s Valen, come to help you as I vowed I would.”
He gasped, a whooshing stridor that only after a panicked moment did I realize was a laugh. “So I’m dead then. Of all Magrog’s servants come to take me at my end, ne’er thought ’twould be you, Valen. And I ne’er thought ’twould hurt so wicked to be dead.” His dreadful laughter stretched into a sob.
“Hush now.” I bent over so he could feel my breath. “Neither of us is dead. The baldpates saved my leg and my life, so I’ve you to thank for that. I heard you were up here, and I came to—Well, that doesn’t matter. Holy gods, I’m sorry I’m so late.”
I could see no way to help him. Pull the stake from his middle and the splintered shaft would draw his entrails, and he’d bleed his life away in agony. Leave it and his every breath would be torment and still he would die. But only after long dreadful hours…or days.
“No luck today for neither of us. Threw the last of our loot into the pond, they did. After killing—” A croaking sob. “Ah, Kellna was a merry lay. I never understood when ye said the best girls danced with ye. But Kellna…she danced.”
“I’ll pay her passage, Boreas. I promise.” I ripped off my rucksack and scrabbled through the contents of the bundled rag. Nothing in the pilfered medicines would help him. Few did I even know the proper use of. But the little knife…“Hold still and I’ll get your hands free.”
With the pointed, finger-length blade of the stolen herb knif
e I split the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles. He could not move his tortured limbs without crying out, so I did it for him, drawing them to his sides. Then I laid my monk’s gown over him. His massive body trembled.
“Somehow they knew I’d nivat. Said I was a twist-mind…abomination to their Gehoum…and I’d be better use to the world bleeding. I tried to tell ’em…” Growing agitation had him gasping between words. Blood welled out from around the stake. “They’ve left me in the dark, Valen. There’s naught here. Naught. I’m fallen in a well that has no bottom. Don’t leave me this way…”
“Hold on.” I pressed my hands on his shoulders. “Let me think what we’re to do.”
Perhaps the stake wasn’t all the way through. With one hand on his shoulder to calm him, I touched the wooden shaft. Embedded deep in the earth, the stake did not move…
Dread…terror…suffocation… I was drowning in blood. In torment. Violated. Soul and mind raped with fire, then immersed in a cold midnight beyond bearing. Alone. Sensing a desolation so profound that it seeped into the grass, the earth, the very air.
I snatched my hand away. Lifting my face to the cold air and the moonlight, breathing deep to ease my shaking, I gave guilty thanks for life and light and the broad sky above me. What rite could create this dread that crushed the heart and devoured the soul, that stole the night’s glory and blighted this sweet meadow? The thought that I had brought down this vileness on my old comrade appalled me, yet plain sense said I could not have imagined such an outcome. As I could not undo my careless babbling, I saw only one way to make it up to him. No one deserved to suffer so.
“I can’t undo this, Boreas. I’m sorry. If I could—”