by Carol Berg
“There, you see, sir abbot. He hears us. The recondeur seems a bit unhappy at his state.”
Trapped within the bonds of my flesh, I struggled to strike…to scream…to move…half crazed already.
A cool hand rested on my forehead. “I regret you could not trust me, Valen,” said Luviar. “I would have protected you. Trust breeds faith. And faith, honesty, and compassion are the roots of honor. With your gifts and a smattering of honor, you might have done great good for the world. May Iero transform your intransigent heart.”
The blurred faces moved out of view. The lamp was taken away. My skin shrank as the yellow light wavered, latches rattled, and a door was opened, stirring the musty air, causing wild shadows to dance about the low, mold-patched ceiling.
Please don’t leave me here!
The door slammed shut. The locks clicked. The darkness and the walls closed in.
Chapter 21
Voices, light, and cheap scent yanked me into full awareness. This event was not a waking. I had not slept. But at sometime in the long frigid night of suffocation and terror, I had clawed open a hole in my mind, a deeper darkness void of thought, a place to huddle and stay sane. Now, unrelieved by sleep’s murky unwinding, I could remember exactly the events of day and night that had led to my current position flat on my back, eyes open, in the abbey’s prison cell.
Thalassa’s kohl-lined eyes and her long straight nose hovered above me. She laid a finger in the center of my forehead, whispered a word, and an invisible whip stroke tore through me from head to toes. A mighty unraveling.
I curled up in a knot and rolled to the side, muting my cry in a fit of coughing, my gritty eyes squeezed shut. My spine stung.
A hand closed over my mouth and pressed tightly, as if to silence my cough, even while another pressed from the back of my head. The hands—Thalassa’s, surely—were quickly removed, and I felt a void at my side as she moved away.
“Silos, inform me at once if you sense one scrap of magic from this cell,” she commanded. “We’ll silkbind his hands at the first hint of it. And tell the monk he may bring something for Valen to drink. But no ale or spirits. And nothing to eat for today. I wish the recondeur to remain sober, and a hungry day will remind him of his manners. We leave for Palinur in an hour.”
“Yes, Sinduria,” said the scented lackey.
Had anyone ever suffered such a sister? Between Thalassa and Elene, I vowed to swear off women altogether. Would Elene have let me take her body just to fulfill her holy purpose?
A swish of silk on stone and the door slammed shut behind Thalassa. I remained huddled on the palliasse, trying to summon the resilience that had sustained me as a child, trying to convince myself that I would not bend to their will just to avoid another night like the one I had just endured. The deepening cold bruised body and spirit, weighing as iron-linked mail on my limbs. I could not stop shaking.
The door opened and closed again. Light danced at the edges of my eyelids. Someone wearing sandals walked the five steps from the door and crouched beside me, smelling of damp wool and the boiling herbs of the infirmary, overlaid with traces of mud and grain fields.
“Sit up, Brother Valen. I’ve brought you water. You need to drink and change clothes, and then we must pray for your true repentance and a safe journey.”
“I don’t drink water, Brother Gildas,” I said, my voice as rough as if my night’s screams had been aloud instead of trapped within my skull.
“They’re not going to give you anything else for a while, and if you fail to cooperate, they’ll force it down you. You are no longer a child to take petty victories from stubbornness. Now, sit up.”
Men of insight. If my childhood had been lived out among ones like these, I might have turned out differently. I rolled onto all fours and sat back on my heels, cramming my frozen hands into my sleeves. Gildas sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, holding a green pottery flask. Beside him sat a small brass lamp and a pile of clothing that could be none but my own stained jaque, braies, and boots.
“How is it you are here?” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Are you a pris—?”
He pressed a finger to his mouth and jerked his head slightly backward toward the ironclad door at his back. Its upper half was a thick grate. Anyone in the darkness outside the door could see and hear what went on in the cell.
“Father Abbot sent me,” he said. “I told him I bore no grudge for the bruises, and assured him that my incompetence could not set you free again. Your guards—both of them—are purebloods.”
So they did not suspect his complicity in my escape. A touch of resentment cooled my good feelings. I supposed Elene thought Gildas too valuable to their little cabal to reveal his role in the night’s fiasco. At least he had tried to help.
“Drink this, and dress yourself in your secular clothing.”
I unstoppered the flask he gave me, sniffed at it, and stuffed the stopper back in again, pretending my throat did not feel like gravel. Water—my foretold doom. My mother might be a wretched parent, but she was a talented diviner. “So my novice year is at an end, is it?”
“For now. The Sinduria and Abbot Luviar have agreed that you will not be permitted to hide behind the cowl as you face the consequences of your transgressions. However, the abbot wishes me to remind you that you are not released from your vows. You remain sworn in obedience to him and to the Rule of Saint Ophir and are not to speak of certain events. Can you tell me which ones?”
I shoved the water flask back into his hand. “Despite what everyone believes, I’m not stupid.”
“Come now, tell me. I’m required to hear your recitation.”
“I’ll not reveal any of his—” My tongue balked at the word secrets. I began again. “He assumes I’ll tell of the—” I tried to say lighthouse but was unable to speak the word.
Again, and then again, I attempted to speak of the abbot and Gillarine and the conspiracy. I pressed my hands to my head as if to trap the words that kept escaping somewhere between my mind and my mouth, but concentration seemed to make no difference. Danae, lighthouse, conspiracy…I could not voice them.
“What have they done?” I tugged at my hair until my scalp burned. I was awake. In control of my body. Surely I could command my own speech. Surely…As I spewed half sentences and fragments, I remembered Thalassa’s hands squeezing my mouth and head and began to understand. “Is that why you’re here? Did they send you to test her damnable spell?”
Frantically, I sped through thoughts and memories in search of holes or gaps. Nothing of current or past events seemed to be missing, but then, how would I know?
“Valen…” Gildas laid his hands on my shoulders, but I knocked him backward.
“Listen to me! Listen!” Gildas got back to his knees and reached for me again. I twisted and shoved him away, but I could not both concentrate on the gaps in my speech and grapple with a man so determined and so surprisingly strong. Eventually he caught my upper arms and squeezed them tight to my body, shaking me until I met his gaze. “Be easy, Brother. This is well done. They’ve put a simple binder on your tongue with regard to these matters. Nothing more. I promise you. Father Abbot would allow nothing of a permanent nature. Yes, they wished me to test you. As the restriction is now proved, nothing further should be needed.”
“Am I to thank Luviar for that?” I said. I thrust my forearms between Gildas’s and slammed them outward to break his grip. He winced and rubbed his arms, and I was glad of it.
He did not touch me again but crinkled his brow earnestly. “You ran, Valen. Blame the one responsible”—his face was all apology—“and forgive him. Now we need to move on. They’ll be coming for you soon. The Sinduria wishes to leave for Palinur before Prime.”
He picked up my old clothes and held them out to me. “Though you must relinquish the cowl and gown, Father Abbot says you may keep the shirt. A biting cold has settled in since the storm.”
Stiff with anger at Gildas, at the monks
, at myself and everyone else within Gillarine’s walls, I made no move to take the stack. What had come over me in this place? I knew better than to trust anyone.
His eyes flicked quite obviously from me to the bundle. And then again. The third time he did so, I held out my hands. As he laid the neatly folded clothing on my open palms, his warm fingers grasped one of my hands and guided it to the middle of the stack. And there I felt a small wad of tallow-stiffened canvas, drawn closed with a leather thong.
I glanced up quickly, my heart galloping.
Raising his thick brows and smiling ruefully, he released the bundle and stood up. “You are a man of many virtues, Valen. Be very careful as you don these worldly garments again, lest you be snared from the path of right…or reason. There are always choices to be made, even in the life you were born to.”
Hot blood flooded my skin until I felt as if I must glow brighter than the lantern. I hated that he knew. What was wrong with me of late, worrying so much about what people thought of me? Gildas was but an overzealous monk. Gram a meek secretary. Jullian a smooth-chinned whelp. I could always find new friends.
Laying the stack beside me on the palliasse, I stripped off my cowl and gown. The stiff jaque bound tight over the thick, loose wool shirt. As I pulled on the braies, I quickly tucked the bag of nivat away and tied it safely to the waist string.
“And now drink the water—yes, you must. Then we’ll pray.” Gildas held out the flask.
My mouth felt like a nest of thorns. I had to drink something. He observed me closely as I drained the tasteless contents of the flask. Ugh…a drink for cows…
My stomach roiled at the first sip. Then a cramp twisted my gut, and my overheated skin blossomed into a cold sweat, as if my mother’s divination had truly come to pass.
“Valen, what do you feel? It’s only water.” Gildas might have been shouting down a well.
“I don’t usually drink—” The word poison came to mind as I hurriedly found the rusty pail in the corner of the cell, ripped off its cover, and vomited up every drop of the foul stuff. Even when it seemed everything must be out of me, I could not stop heaving.
Gildas knelt beside me as I huddled over the bucket. His hands felt like ice on my blistering forehead. “Come, lie down. I’ll tell Father Abbot and the Sinduria you’d best not travel today. Ah, friend…what strange miracles happen in this world. Nothing is out of the realm of possibility.”
He half carried, half dragged me to the palliasse, and threw the thin blanket over me, then grabbed his lamp and hurried out the door. Before his footsteps died away, I had fumbled my way back across the floor to the bucket, retching.
The rest of the day flowed together like wet ink on a page. As feeble daylight waxed and waned through a slot high on one cell wall, a string of visitors paraded through my cell—the abbot, Thalassa, Gildas, Thane Stearc, one at a time and then all together, talking and arguing too softly for me to hear. I could pay them no mind anyway. I was on my knees in the corner hunched over the fouled bucket, trying not to vomit up the entire contents of my skin. Brother Robierre questioned me between spasms, examining my tongue and fingernails, eyes and throat.
Even Gram came. He stood in the corner for a while, arms crossed, watching the others as they watched me. After a while he stepped close, laid his hand on my shoulder, and mumbled some incomprehensible sympathy.
As the Compline bell rang, I crawled back to my palliasse. Brother Robierre returned soon after. “The worst seems past,” he said, once he had verified that I was alive. “Were you trustworthy, we could have made you more comfortable in the infirmary.” I had never heard the kind infirmarian so frosty.
“No matter.” My raw throat made everything sound harsh.
He wiped my face with a damp rag and laid yet another blanket over me. “The abbot charged me to inform you of my findings. You were not poisoned. Anselm found naught in your spew or your blood. Your body tells me that you are entirely healthy. So this must be some condition of your blood. Perhaps sorcerers cannot tolerate blessed water. I’ve not treated your kind…purebloods…before.”
I shook my head and laughed. “Purebloods were never my kind.”
He did not see the humor. “Then perhaps it is the soul-poison of a man who would so betray the gifts of the good god and so endanger those who welcomed him as a brother. I will petition Iero to break your sinful spirit, Valen. Here—” With deft hands, he raised my head and emptied a vial of something strong and sweet down my gullet before I could protest. “Now you’ve settled a bit, this should ease your stomach.”
“I’m sorry, Brother,” I mumbled, dropping my head to the palliasse, feeling his draft sapping my remaining strength. “But you cannot possibly understand.”
He stood to go. “One more thing…Young Gerard was supposed to serve in the infirmary this evening, but the lad has not been seen all day. You ever took an interest in the boys, and someone told me you might know where he was off to.”
“No…sorry. Truly.”
The iron door clanged shut behind Robierre.
The day’s end bell had rung at least two hours since. That had been the last time I heard movement in the dark stairwell outside the door. Only two pureblood guards, Gildas had told me, and even purebloods had to sleep. Head pounding from holding off the effects of Brother Badger’s draft, I crept across the floor and touched my finger to the bottom of the door. Despite the doulon looming ever closer, I could not afford to hoard my magic. Flooding power into the spell, I drew my finger up and around in a sweeping arc on the stone beside the door, and back to the floor again. Then I grabbed my boots and crawled through the void into the stairwell. Still no sound.
The touch of open air on my cheek guided me up one narrow stair. I avoided brushing the wall. Hopes rising, I turned and slipped up the second course, bare feet soundless. One more turn, one more climb. I glimpsed a rectangular opening filled with stars…and then a squat silhouette blocked the opening.
“Do you think us fools, recondeur?”
I charged upward, barreling into the man, but at least three more bodies flung themselves on top of me as I tried to choke the life out of the one under my chest. It took them little time to wrestle me off their comrade, back down the stair, and into the cell. While two men held me down, two more folded my hands, fingertips interlocked and tucked inward, and bound them with silken cord, effectively precluding any application of magic. By the time they had unraveled my voiding spell and slammed the iron door behind them, the bells rang Matins.
Once I stopped fighting, Brother Robierre’s draft drugged me out of thought. The image of a gawky youth with a slow head and a ready grin quickly became tangled with that of riders in wine-colored cloaks and a naked man glowing with blue dragon sigils…
When the bells rang for Prime, the two purebloods arrived to release my hands and bring me a cup of small beer. They found me awake already, sitting on my palliasse, attempting to formulate some grand speech to throw at my captors or some scheme to get free. But thoughts of a dutiful boy who was not where he was expected had distracted me. Which made no kind of sense. Gerard had likely had enough of bells and prayers and righteousness.
The window slot yet gleamed gray when Thalassa swept into the cell impeccably coiffed and gowned—today in vermillion that set off her black hair and acorn-colored skin. Gold disks at her temples held back her veil and accented the thick black lines curving about her eyes. She dismissed her men to wait outside and close the door behind them. “Stand up.”
Sadly, my morning’s meditations had revealed naught to say worth the effort of irritating my throat and naught to do worth the trouble of remaining seated. As a boy I had fought until they forced me—to eat, to dress, to stand, to yield—the forcing far more horrid than whatever submission I had refused. Somehow I had lost that kind of resilience. I could not bear the thought of my sister’s pureblood lackeys laying hands on me again. I stood.
“A few rules before we go,” she said, nodding in appro
val at my wordless acquiescence. “No matter how you have abased yourself in these past years, you are pureblood, and you will remember your manners and discipline on this journey. The majority of our escort will be ordinaries, and you will maintain distance and detachment as you were taught. I see no need for you to speak at all, in fact, but I will leave you capable lest you fall ill again. I expect no repetition of your foolish escapade of last night. I would prefer to have left you unrestrained for the journey, but that is clearly impossible. Until you give me your word that you will not attempt escape, and convince me that you mean it, your hands will remain silkbound and your feet shackled.”
She paused, chin lifted, as if waiting for me to lash out. But this was not the day to fight. My knees felt like mud. I needed to eat. I closed my eyes, longing for her to vanish.
She didn’t, of course. “Punishment and restriction await you in Palinur, as you well know, but your behavior in the next days will influence my recommendations as to their severity and extent. And despite what you would prefer to believe, my opinion will carry weight with both the Registry and Patronn.”
“I have no doubt of that, Sinduria serena.” I bowed from the hip and touched my forehead with my fingertips, as was proper to a pureblood of superior rank—which was any one of them at present.
Clearly my intonation of her title and the proper female honorific struck her as insufficiently reverent. When I straightened up again, her full lips were tight, and her dark eyes sparked like struck flint. “You will submit, little brother. You have squandered your life and your talents. The time has come for you to focus your attention on something beyond your own pleasure. And we will begin that return to discipline now,” she said, and handed me a small piece of embroidered white silk.
I unfolded the fabric and stared at it for a moment, my fingers tingling with the minor magics woven into it. One edge straight and slightly stiffened, the rest irregularly shaped. One oval opening for the eye, its borders elaborately embroidered in white thread. Neatly sewn tucks to shape it around nose, mouth, and chin. A mask, or rather a half mask, for purebloods covered only one side of the face when appearing among ordinaries. The half mask was a symbol of our second self, the sorcerer within us that “ordinary” eyes could not see. The mask set us apart, enhanced our mystery, and gave us a certain anonymity among those we did not care to have know us. Only ones like Thalassa or the Gillarine pureblood, whose positions mandated other facial decoration or required family dispensation, were exempt from the discipline of the mask.