by Carol Berg
As soon as we could breathe, a shocked Brother Adolfus fell to his knees and prayed for the missing villagers of Acceri, who usually worked Gillarine’s planting and harvest. Evidently the abbey had received no word of their distress.
He should have waited a quellé more for his prayers. A third village, Vinera, had burned mere days ago. The sharp wind off the mountains shifted a blackened shutter and ruffled a length of frayed, muddy cloth tangled in a smashed loom. No corpses were visible, but I could see what had happened. One of the stone hovels had been made into a charnel furnace.
“Who could commit such sin?” Brother Adolfus’s voice shook, as I showed him how the doors and windows had been blocked to prevent escape.
“Harrowers,” I said, snatching the fluttering orange rag from a charred post and grinding it under my foot. “They take the folk who’ll agree to follow them and send back raiders to slaughter the rest.”
We did not linger. Though I pulled my hood lower, so that I could see nothing but the muddy ruts and Brother Adolfus’s hem, the odor of burning lingered in my nostrils. Perhaps the world had already ended.
By late morning, we had completely lost sight of the river as we climbed a long series of switchbacks. Horses had traveled this road in the past day. A great rushing noise as of wind or water grew louder as we pushed on.
No gentle meadow awaited us beyond the crest of the climb, but a broad, treeless hillside, creased with a succession of low scarps. Beyond these alternating strips of vertical rock and grassy terraces, the land broke sharply upward into a formidable cap of barren rock. A blocklike fortress perched atop the crags, the grim ramparts more a part of the rock than distinct from it.
The road wound back and forth in deep bends to circumvent the scarps and traverse the broad terraces. Midway across the expanse, a waist-high cairn marked a branching of the track. The left fork arrowed across the slope toward the river gorge. The right snaked westward for half a quellé before beginning the ascent of the breathtakingly steep shelf road to the fortress.
“These mountain lords all think they are eagles,” said Brother Adolfus, gawking at the forbidding road we’d yet to climb.
As we slogged toward the cairn, backs bent and heads ducked into the wind that flapped our cowls and gowns, a simple arch of dressed stone came into view in the distance, spanning the gorge. Caedmon’s Bridge. Two broken columns marked the bridge approach, and a small mounted party, too distant to make out numbers, waited beside them. One rider galloped in our direction.
“Are these the ones who burned Vinera?” Brother Adolfus sounded ready to charge.
“I’d say not. Were they hostile they’d not be sending only one to greet us.”
My eyes did not linger on the bridge or the people, but rather scoured the rugged land beyond the chasm. Caedmon’s Bridge marked the boundary of Evanore, the land of trackless forests where the sun never penetrated, of rivers of flowing ice, of forbidden mountains where gods had made it impossible to breathe—the land of Prince Osriel and his terrible warlords and mages who served Magrog, lord of the netherworld. To cross Caedmon’s Bridge placed a man’s soul in mortal peril, so stories said, and would boil a pureblood’s brains.
Though wary of the Bastard Prince and his perverse magics, I had borne no fear of Evanore itself—until I looked upon it. Indeed the land seemed grayer than where we stood, as if the clouds that muted the sun were thicker there. Unreasoning emotion swelled in my blood. Not the sense-blinding assault I’d felt in the cloister garth or at the pool. Not pain or terror at all. More a directionless anger and a sorrow so deep as to make a stone weep. A fearsome thing, that looking upon a landscape could so wrench a man’s spirit.
Hoofbeats pounded the track from the bridge. The horseman drew rein at the cairn and waited there, patting the neck of his sidestepping bay as we approached. “Good morning, Brother Adolfus and Brother…Valen, is it?”
The dulcian voice erased all thought of the horrors behind us and the brooding land to the south. I yanked off my hood and looked up. She had cut her hair. The wind flicked the chin-length strands of bronze about her eyes and her cheeks, where a smile threatened to break through her sober courtesy.
“Master Corin,” I said, bowing to cover my own foolish grin. “A great pleasure to see you again. Brother Adolfus, this gentle youth is the Thane of Erasku’s squire.”
I tried not to drool or sigh or otherwise make a fool of myself. I even forgave her greeting me from horseback, the beast so close to me I could feel its exquisite temper expelled in hay-scented snorts and blows. The woman’s posture astride the beast presented me a full view of a shapely leg clad in scarlet hose—not peg scrawny as with so many of her noble sisters, but rather looking as if she ran and danced and lived with all of herself. Oh, dear goddess Arrosa, what I would not have given to run my hand upward along that red-clad limb.
Harness chinked and jangled in the distance as two other riders approached more slowly, leading a riderless mule. While I gripped my cowl tight against the wind, and my desires against even stronger natural forces, the woman turned to my companion. “Edane Groult is laid up with gout this morning, Brother Adolfus, so he asks if you would be so kind as to attend him in his hall. He has sent down two escorts and a mule to bring you up. Unfortunately, he did not expect two of you. My master was just departing on his way back to his hold and offered my services to greet you and convey the edane’s message.”
Brother Adolfus was nonplussed. “Of course I will ride up. Brother Valen could walk, but his leg is just now healing from a dreadful wound. I don’t know…to leave a novice behind…”
“The edane’s men will return for him, Brother. Meanwhile, my own lord is willing to delay his journey and provide Brother Valen company and refreshment for his wait.”
“Well then, that will do very nicely.” Brother Adolfus’s conscience seemed much eased at the thought of me being provisioned. I was less sanguine, seeing now how matters were to work out. No second mule would be sent. Some excuse would be given when I did not appear in the edane’s hall, while I would be dispatched on some ghost hunt with the Thane of Erasku. How much finer if I could wait here alone with Corin.
The mule arrived; Brother Adolfus mounted. As the monk and the nobleman’s two servants moved away, the woman extended her hand to me, allowing a smile to break through. “Would you accept a ride to the bridge, Brother? Blackmane will certainly carry us both.”
“Ah, mistress…”
Could she have presented any choice more painful? Saint Ophir had definite opinions on his followers having physical contact with women—a matter I had conveniently failed to recall as she’d led me blindfolded about the valley of Gillarine. I could have conveniently forgotten it again, save the horse appeared much more disturbed by the idea than her kind invitation would attest. He sidled and jinked so anxiously that a determined frown supplanted the woman’s smile.
“Alas, I am not permitted.” I stepped back to give the demon-cursed animal a bit more room. “And I don’t think your beast likes me all that much.”
“Nonsense. He’s as placid as a cow.” She said this with conviction, though, indeed, my distancing might have been a handful of sugar in the devil equine’s mouth. “Come along, then. As you answered our first question so well, we’ve another puzzle for you.”
She held to a slow walk, slower than necessary. I did not protest, and walked as close to her as the beast and I could bear. “I don’t suppose you might give me a hint about the purpose of these exercises with the book of maps. I’ve received no reward for my first success but chilblains, bruised knees, and a reputation for slovenliness.”
“I’m truly sorry for your trouble. The purposes of the cabal are not mine to reveal, but I vow they are of critical—”
“—importance to Navronne. To our children’s children. So I’ve been told. Lives depend on secrecy, thus a novice’s knees and unbridled curiosity are of poor account.”
“Many lives. You must believe that. Tho
se who hold this responsibility have yielded everything in their lives to serve this need.” Her bitter argument took no heed of my teasing. And surely the horse was not responsible for the hard look she cast toward the bridge. Such an expression did not belong on such a face.
“One answer, then, and I’ll pry no more for the moment,” I said.
“Good Brother, I cannot—
“I would know your true name, mistress. And don’t say ‘Mag’ or ‘Popsy,’ for you are no more a villein girl than you are a lad. My mind finds a great void in its constant untanglings and unwindings of these dire mysteries, for I cannot set a proper name to one certain face. Perhaps if I could bound that face with a name and set it in a proper sequence with Thane Stearc the Formidable, Gram the Sickly, and Brother Gildas of the Mysteries, as for labeled jars on a shelf, it would not persist in distracting me from more serious thoughts. Elsewise I must strive to deserve more punishments just to give me more time for contemplating the question, and what would Iero and his saints think of such a sacrilege?”
Ah, Deunor’s fire, her laugh resonated in my bones as if I were a harp and she the player filled with passionate music. I would have babbled my nonsense the night through to hear such tunes as she could pluck on me.
“Elene, good Brother. My true name is Elene, but I would advise you not to use it in front of my father. For the time, my own folly has made me none but Corin, his less-than-satisfactory squire.” She kicked the bay into a gallop, and they raced through the hazy morning toward the bridge. I could not take my eyes from her.
Elene… The name, the flesh, the laugh played out the sweetest harmony of creation.
Chapter 17
“I suppose you wish to rest,” said the Thane of Erasku when I joined him, his daughter, and his secretary by the bridge.
“Good morning, my lord,” I said. “Indeed my feet are more bruised than a drunkard’s liver.”
Brother Adolfus’s mule had reached only half the distance to the fortress hill. As the goddess of love had produced no chain of circumstances that might leave me alone and naked with a similarly unclothed Elene, I was feeling a bit mulish as well.
“You’re most kind to offer to wait with me for Edane Groult’s transport, Lord Stearc, but please do not feel it necessary to delay your journey. Surely those clouds will split at any time and beset us with rain. Be on your way and godspeed!”
The three of them stood between the crumbling columns. Shards of white marble, stained and streaked with black, littered the flat muddy ground. What forces had shattered pillars as broad as my armspan? Even broken, they rose to twice my height. Lightning, perhaps, or siege engines, used in some long-ago attempt to destroy Ardra’s only link with Evanore for a hundred quellae in either direction.
Elene stood at her father’s side, one step behind his massive shoulder. The gray daylight revealed even more likeness between them, if any personage so ferocious and intimidating as Stearc of Erasku could be said to resemble a graceful woman. Their noses were blunt, cheekbones prominent, and jawlines square—hers formed in ivory, his in granite. The air around them seemed to quiver like heat rising from paving stones in deep summer.
The thane snorted. “You’re not such a fool as to think this meeting is by chance, are you, monk? We’ve—”
“Excuse me, my lord.” Gram stepped out from behind Stearc, slightly stooped, black hair whipping in the wind. The secretary looked younger in the daylight, though even more wan and weak beside such exuberance of life as this father and daughter. “I’ve the provisions you required me to pack for the good brother.” Head inclined in deference, the gaunt secretary proffered a wineskin and a canvas provision bag. “I’ll bring the book, and we can discuss our needs as Brother Valen takes a moment to catch his breath.”
“If he can do this at all, he should be able to do it quickly,” grumbled Stearc. “He can fill his belly as we wait for sunset—assuming the damnable sun still exists behind these clouds.”
Thanks be, Gram’s good sense prevailed. I sat on a round of marble and made sure Stearc’s impatience did not worsen from waiting for me to devour the barley bread, soft cheese, and good ale. A fire would have been pleasant, but I’d no mind to delay my refreshment until I’d given the lord my answer to today’s puzzle. He’d likely throw me from the bridge when I refused to help. I could not waste more magic on their ventures. Only a few days and I’d need everything I could muster.
“My lord, if you’ve brought me here to question me further about the maps,” I said, when I was well through the little feast, “I’m afraid I’ve no more to tell you. I demonstrated everything I know in your first test. Any man with the knowledge you hold could have done the same.”
“Evidently not,” snapped Stearc, clasping his broad hands behind his back as if to keep from throttling me. His leather jaque strained with the display of his chest. “Others attempted to use the spell and trace the exact route you took. But they experienced no extraordinary guidance from the map. In hours of searching, they never came nearer the Well than the cliff. What caused your attempt to succeed where others failed?”
He leaned toward me, the pressure of his interest weighing like an iron yoke. Mouth stuffed with bread, I shrugged. But in truth I was not so nonchalant. So the eerie little pool Gildas and I had found…the Well, they called it…was indeed one of the hidden places that only my grandfather’s maps could reveal. The wind poked its chilly fingers under my gown.
I’d not used the guide spell of the map, only my bent and my instincts. What did that mean? I was not familiar enough with the more obscure pureblood arcana to know. My father could not find such places without using the enchantments of my grandfather’s maps—one of the matters that embittered him so sorely, I’d always thought. Max had always been more adept at tracking than at route finding. But then, I had been adept at nothing.
“Perhaps someone told you how to find the Well.” Stearc might have been a magistrate. “Or you ran across some mention of it in documents at the abbey.”
I came near choking. “No, my lord, I certainly did not read of the place. And I doubt—”
“Show him, Gram.”
The secretary sank to the grass just in front of me, sat back on his heels, and opened the book on his knees, searching for the page he wanted.
“Here, Brother.” He turned the book to face me.
I wiped my hands on the empty provision bag and tossed it aside, then took the book. The open page contained two small maps. The secretary pointed to a grousherre, painted in bright reds and yellows. The map was too small to have a cartouche. The tiny words embedded in twisting vines and leaves that filled the narrow borders of the little map would hold the spell.
The characters flowed together like a river of ink as soon as I looked on them, of course, but I needed neither cartouche nor border to tell me what this map depicted. The meticulous drawings of fortress, bridge, columns, river, and branching path were enough to identify the very place where we sat. Interesting that the twin columns were shown whole, each of them bearing a capital in the shape of a trilliot. King Caedmon had been the first to order the wild lily of Navronne sewn onto his cape and his banner and emblazoned on his armor.
My gaze swept the grass between us and the gorge. Among the shards of marble tumbled around us might be those very capitals. Such an odd sensation for that moment, as if I lived in both times at once and might soon see Caedmon himself defending the bridge, as his warlords retreated into Evanore to hold its mountains and gold against the invading Aurellians. The black-haired invaders from the east—my ancestors—had turned their acquisitive eyes upon Navronne when they discovered that the minor sorceries they could accomplish in their own land were not only easier to work, but took fire with power here. They called Navronne the Heart of the World.
And then, of a sudden, I envisioned my grandfather, a scrawny, squinting old man, his lean shoulders hunched, his thick hair gone white, beard yellowed around his mouth, sitting alone by a campfire on t
his hillside, his long fingers like spiders’ legs sketching this scene in his worn leather traveling book. Alongside the delicate pen strokes that represented the objects in the map, he would scribe a column of inked letters and numbers, noting the measures and proportions, names, and colors he would use to bring out the message he wanted to convey with this grousherre. He had chosen to show the fortress much smaller than the columns, had decided to depict the thrashing river of less moment than the bridge that crossed it or the overgrown paving stones of the approaches. Grousherres were about relative significance rather than accurate measure.
“Brother?” Gram remained sitting on his heels, facing me across the book.
Fire washed my cheeks. I shook off the cascading visions and the hostility and resentment that inevitably accompanied thoughts of my family. “Sorry. What is it you wish me to find?”
The secretary laid his slender finger on the largest object on the map. “This.”
“Oh!” I had assumed the great tree that spread its ghostly branches across the entire page was but part of the book’s decoration. Naught but straggling grass grew anywhere on this hillside. Certainly no tree stood where the map suggested, at the cairn where the path from the valley divided into two. “These maps were drawn years ago,” I said. “If the tree was ever here, it must have been cut down.”
“Perhaps the tree is only hidden,” said the secretary, softly encouraging. “Try it.”
“Try what?” I said, blank for the moment.
“Invoke the spell of the map!” bellowed Stearc, throwing up his hands. “What do you think? Spirits of night, must we be forever plagued with idiots and fools?”
“Give me a little time with the brother, my lord, and I’ll explain what we seek…as we agreed.”
Gram’s quiet insistence held sway. The thane betook himself to the brink of the river chasm. Elene’s glance wavered, but after a moment, she followed dutifully after him. They strolled onto the bridge—a fearsome thing to my mind, no more than one horseman wide and lacking parapet or railing. There they sat, legs dangling over the unseen void.