by Carol Berg
“Though the cairn is not shown on the map, the map spell led me straight to it,” I said, feigning puzzlement. “Each step away from it jibes wrong.”
“The tree should be here,” said Gram, crouching low to examine the cairn. “We should be able to see and touch it as Gildas saw and touched Clyste’s Well. The journal speaks of the Sentinel Oak as a meeting place of the two planes.”
The cairn bore no markings. The rocks had likely been piled up to mark the path when snows lay deep. The secretary’s long thin fingers brushed the stone and earth around the cairn. He looked up. “My lord, come. There’s something here…”
I stepped back, allowing Stearc a place to kneel beside his secretary. “Take down the stones,” he said. “Corin, come. Lay to it.”
Elene and the two men dismantled the cairn before I could breathe another prayer. And there, protruding from the ground, was the rough-hewn stump of a modest-sized tree. Its dead roots, a nice thick, woody spread modeled from the astelas roots, poked from the earth here and there. I felt as proud as a father must upon viewing a new-birthed son.
The thane folded his arms and regarded the stump. “It seems smaller than the description of the tree would warrant.”
I wanted to mount a defense of my progeny: Too large and it would have disrupted the cairn. Smaller and you’d not believe. It is so nice and woody, well aged in its appearance. And I’ve not created so substantial an inflation in twelve years, at the least, so credit me a bit, fearsome lord! The stump should last a month or more if no one worked a spell of unraveling on it. Unraveling spells—the bane of a boy’s illusions—had been as common in my family’s house as arguments.
“The map brought you here, Brother Valen?” said Gram, frowning. “You’re sure?”
“Nowhere else. The guide thread I feel as I follow the map’s course fades even these few steps away.” I returned to the secretary’s side and knelt beside him. Spits of rain struck my face and pocked the disturbed earth about my lovely stump.
“Nothing for it but to make the attempt,” said Stearc. “If the monk is wrong—of which I have little doubt—we’ve lost nothing but a day already wasted. The morning has almost run.”
Gram, still troubled, nodded. He shifted one of the smaller stones left tumbled about from the destroyed cairn and laid it at the base of the stump carefully, as if judging a precise orientation. Elene watched him, and I watched her, wondering at her pinched lips and stormy brow. Some enmity ran deep between these two—both of them people I would be pleased to account my friends.
I kept my preoccupation with Elene’s expressive face well hidden beneath the shelter of my hood, shifting my attention only when Gram pulled a small bag from the pocket of his cloak and set it on the stone. A distinctive scent, of pepper and almond, of dust and mushrooms, flooded the air. Blessed Samele, I could have picked the man’s pocket twenty times over!
I touched the little bag. Oiled canvas. Common brown. Very like the provision bag hidden in my sleeve. Slightly smaller, closed with a black silk cord instead of a leather tie. Surely enough nivat for a year or more. It was all I could do to refrain from snatching it up and racing the coming storm back the way we’d come, past Gillarine and all the way to Palinur. Sell half the seeds and I would be set for half a year.
But I’d never get away. These three rode horses and carried swords and smoldered with passion about their madness. Deception was a healthier course. Patience. Depending on how the next few hours went, I should be able to take what I wanted with none the wiser.
I withdrew my hand and stood up. “Great Iero, shed your blessings here.”
Gram held an open hand out to Elene. “Do you have the box, Corin?”
From the pocket of her jupon, she drew a small tin box that she handed to Gram. He sprinkled some of the contents on the stone and shifted the bag of nivat to cover what he had just put down.
“Salt,” he said, as if sensing my question. “To hold the Dané here while we speak.”
“Why would you do that?” I said, aghast. No matter that I did not believe anything would come of his offering or his message. Some things were so wrong that it was better not even to mime them. “Fetter a Dané? Bind it? When you’ve come begging their favor?”
“It’s only to stay the sentinel long enough for us to speak. We’d never force them. But we must be heard. If we knew another way, we’d use it.”
“They’ll never forgive you. Of all things, Danae are free.” My grandfather’s stories came back to me. None could bind the Danae to field or forest or bog. “They choose their own places, Gram. That’s why you give them feast bread…to induce them to stay. That’s why you leave an undisturbed plot when you plow a new field or set aside a wild garden when you build a new house, so the Dané who tends that plot of ground can yet come and go at will. Elsewise he might leave to find another place, or she might be trapped amid the human works and die. Bind them, and you’ll lose everything before you speak one word of your message.”
“This whole scheme is madness,” said Stearc. “We must proceed as we decided. This fool of a monk doesn’t know what he’s doing. Nor do we. Come, Corin, we need to set up a shelter before this everlasting rain washes us into the river.”
“We try as we can, lord,” said Gram, more to himself than anyone.
The thane strode off toward the horses, and his daughter followed. Gram shook his head and started up the hill after his master. A few steps and he paused, waiting for me to join him.
The clouds had closed in over the southern mountains, and veils of rain and fog drifted over the river and the bridge. The fortress had vanished into the murk. Confused, unreasonably disturbed, praying their oiled bag would protect the nivat seeds from the wet, I joined the secretary, and we trailed after Stearc and Elene.
Gram walked more slowly than Stearc and his daughter. Though he seemed at the verge of speaking several times, he never did. Perhaps I had offended him with my blunt speech—silly, as I thought about it, to argue over legends. He could do as he liked with his foolery.
“So am I to wait here, too, and help you pursue some other plan should this one fail, or is someone from the fortress truly bringing a mule to fetch me?” I said after a while. “I’d rather see the outcome of this venture. To see a Dané…blessed saints, it would be a miracle. But if I’m to go up to the fortress, I’d as soon leave before the rain worsens.”
Gram lifted his head, roused from his thoughts. “The edane will send his mule for you eventually. We were able to arrange a delay, but only until midafternoon.” A few more steps and he stopped to rest. He glanced up at me, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I’ve already revealed more than Thane Stearc would approve, and he’ll not wish you to remain. However, I could argue it with him…”
“No, no. He seems a difficult enough master. I’d not put you more in the way of his wrath.”
Gram chuckled and glanced out from under the soggy locks of dark hair now dribbling water down his deep-carved cheeks. “That is a kindness, Brother. I could wish you were around us more often. Perhaps we would stay civil. Though our goals are like, our opinions diverge mightily, and to argue with anyone of the house of Erasku is a futile exercise. They are the harder rock from which the mountains of Evanore have sprouted.”
Stearc and Elene had moved the horses into the lee of a low scarp that split the hillside. They were already unloading packs and satchels.
“I’ve sensed that,” I said, relishing my view of Elene’s delicious body as she went about her work. “And the squire demonstrates as virulent opinions as the lord. At our first meeting, after that unfortunate encounter with a grain sack, I made the mistake of asking Corin about Prince Osriel.”
“Indeed?” We plodded uphill again. “And you lived to tell about it? The house of Erasku has no use for the Bastard.”
“Corin’s vehemence was reassuring. When Prince Osriel attacked the Moriangi at Gillarine—” Of a sudden, the memory laid a blight on my fey mood. “I just w
anted to make certain your little test was not enlisting me in the Bastard’s legion.”
“Ah. I’ve heard fearful stories of that raid—apparitions, a cloud of midnight, the mutilation of the dead. You do well to keep cautious of the Bastard’s poisonous madness. Thane Stearc walks a difficult path, unable to side with any of the three. We had a narrow escape from the abbey that night.”
“So who does he favor for the throne? Who do you favor, for that matter?”
Gram shook his head in the same hopelessness I felt. “Both Perryn and Bayard have young children. If the brothers maintain a stalemate, Lord Stearc believes we may be forced into some sort of cousinly union and a regency. Not a happy prospect when spring brings Hansker raids.”
We had reached a level with Stearc’s camp. The secretary rested his back against the scarp, expelling a relieved sigh. He cocked his head. “Tell me, Brother Valen, if we fail tonight—and I am no more sanguine than my master—and we arrive at some new insight that invites your participation, may we call upon you again? I do value your aid…and your advice.”
“I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter. This is all a great mystery, and I’m thinking my head will burst soon with wondering.” Indeed my mind was hopelessly jumbled as I tried to link the Danae to the lighthouse and the end times. What interest had Danae in books or looms?
Gram’s wry, twisting smile granted a moment’s grace to his stark face. “Your abbot must enlighten you further, Brother. Tell him what you’ve learned this day, and he will likely supply the rest…in far more civil terms than Lord Stearc would do. We need men and women of courage, goodwill, and varied gifts. Clearly you have a gift where this strange book is concerned.”
“Well, we’ll discover the truth of that at sunset, I suppose.” I returned his smile, regretting the need to deceive the mournful fellow.
Indeed, I felt privileged to be allowed such glimpses of Gram’s private self. Servants of volatile lords had to control themselves quite strictly. The secretary had been forthcoming to a degree others had not, and I held no prejudice against madmen. The armies, the alleys, and the finest pureblood houses of Navronne were filled with them.
I offered him my hand. “For now, farewell, sir. I must hike up this monstrous hill before I am soaked through. You’ll convey my respects to the thane and his man?”
He nodded graciously and took my hand, showing no surprise at the unclerical gesture. The fingers that circled my wrist were firm, but cold, and his own wrist hammered with a blood pulse that spoke of more excitement than his quiet manner displayed. Or perhaps it was merely the racing heart of an unwell man who had pushed too hard to climb a hill.
I did not take to the fortress road, but hiked only as far as the next scarp that banded the hillside. Though Stearc’s party lay hidden behind their own step of rock just below me, the dark ribbon of the cart track was clearly visible down the hill from them. The darker smudge and scattered rocks marked the fine stump where my year’s salvation lay waiting. I huddled against the short wall of rock, sinking into its shadow, drawing my cowl and hood close to shield me from the rain. Anyone coming down from the fortress to fetch me would see no one on the road or in the fields. Come dusk, I would put the last step of my plan into action.
The hours passed slowly. Sleep crept over me like the clouds and fog drifting across the gray-green landscape. Yet whenever I started, from grazing my cheek on the rock as I slumped or from the cold drizzle on my hairless patch of scalp when a gust of wind lifted my hood, the light seemed unchanged from my last waking. I was only wetter and colder. I settled deeper against the rock wall. Pretend you’re warm; you’ve done that often enough. Just stay awake…
Yawning, I played out the plan over and over again. As soon as the light fades enough to leave shapes and landscape indistinct, slip down toward the stump. Pray the rain continues. They’ll never see you. Empower the illusion. Replace the bag of seeds with the empty provision bag that will now appear exactly the same. To empty the nivat into the provision bag and leave the empty one behind would take too much time. One last touch of magic…a flash of blue light as the night closes in…easy, as you creep away unseen. Then the long trudge up the hill to the fortress. I’ll think of a story for Brother Adolfus…for the edane whose mule driver won’t have found me…Sympathize with Gram and Elene that their Dané eluded them…sympathize tenderly with Elene…
My eyelids weighed like lead…and still the game played out…over and over…
Trigger the spell…creep silently…careful…timing…all was timing…switch the bags…slog upward…a story…one more lie…a flash of spiraling sapphire in the night…
I sat bolt upright. Deunor’s fire, it was almost dark. The wind had died. The rain had stopped. Banners of fog lay in every hollow and niche, the world now colored with charcoal and ash. I shook off the dregs of sleep, cursing my everlasting carelessness. How long would Stearc wait to scoop up his bag of nivat and yell at Gram to devise him another plan? Impossible…unbearable…that my scheme or my magic should go to waste. Scooping up a fistful of earth, I recklessly poured magic into seeking a route through the twilight.
Once sure I would not tumble over the scarp into Stearc’s lap, I sped downhill. But I had not traveled half the distance when I glimpsed lights of deep and varied blue moving through the fog. A few steps closer, until the scene halted my feet and left me gaping. Exactly as I’d seen in the fog of my dreaming, the light was drawn into long coils and spirals…into delicate vines and leaves that hung in the thick air…living artworks as bright and rich-hued as the windows of Gillarine Abbey church. They drifted in sinuous unison away from the demolished cairn. Away from the tree—an oak of such a girth its bole could house a family and of such expansive foliage it could shelter a village beneath its limbs.
“Wait!” Gram’s cry bounced off the rocks and fell dead in the thick air. “Please! Hear our message…for any who dance in Aeginea. We need your help. Envisia seru, Dané.”
The blue lights paused and shifted, turning…the movement revealing the canvas for the artist’s magical pen…long bare limbs entwined by sapphire snakes, and flat breasts traced with azure moth wings, half hidden by a cascade of curling red hair…a pale cold face upon which a glowing lizard coiled its tail about a fathomless eye, while the reptile’s scaled body drawn in the color of lapis stretched across an alabaster cheek. So beautiful…so marvelous.
“Human voices are thorns in our ears.” The voice of the wind could be no more soulless. She was already moving away.
“Our estrangement shadows our hearts.” The speaker’s dark shape—Gram’s shape—moved between me and the apparition. “Meanwhile, the world suffers, and we seek to understand it. Can we bargain? Will you convey our request to Stian Archon or Kol Stian-son?”
I wanted to scream at Gram to move out of the way so I could see more, yet I could not accomplish even that. My limbs were frozen in place, stricken powerless with wonder. But I smelled her…woodrush and willow and the rich mold of old leaves and shaded gullies…she came from the fen country.
Everything of my own life—past, present, thought, sense—paled and thinned, having no more substance than smoke alongside the substance of her. I felt starved, fading.
Standing beneath the spreading branches, the Dané paused and cocked her head to one side, raising her brow so that the lizard’s tail twitched. “Bargain…and forget betrayal? Forget violation and poison? Forget thievery?” She breathed deep of the night air. Her nostrils flared. Her lip curled. “Thou canst not claim ignorance, human, for thy very blood bears the taint of betrayal and thy flesh stinks of thievery. The long-lived do not forget. Offer recompense for betrayal; uncorrupt that which thy poison has corrupted; return what was stolen, and we might consider a hearing.”
“Theft? Poison? I know naught of—”
No need for Gram to finish his claims of ignorance. She had vanished in a rush of air, as if she had wings to bear her back to heaven. And no spreading oak stood at the
cairn. Only my ugly stump.
Sodden, chilled to the marrow, I sank to my knees and tasted all that remained of the night—charcoal and ash, empty of magic. I pressed my forehead to the cold earth and wept.
Chapter 18
“Brother Valen! Are you injured? We heard a cry.”
Bobbing lantern light announced Elene well before she knelt beside me and brought her face down near my own. Even without sight I would have known her. She smelled of fennel soap and horse, damp leather and wet pine smoke, of a warm human woman, not the woodrush scent of the cold Dané.
“My lord, over here!” she yelled. And then quieter, “Brother?”
“I sprained…fell…I was on the way…the fortress…” My lies limped into nothingness. I inhaled and began again. “I stayed back to watch. Waited up the hill. Saw her.”
That was all I could muster. I could no more explain the fullness of grief that had overwhelmed me than I could explain my pain in the cloister garth, my dread at the pool in the hills, or why in the name of heaven a Dané had come to a tree stump conjured from a weed. I knew only that when the blue sigils vanished, I felt as if some great door had opened in the world and all joy had rushed out. Were the king’s own minstrels surrounding me, I could not have sung with them or danced to their music.
“So it was not just the three of us who saw and heard. Lord Stearc and I each thought we were dreaming. Gram even spoke to the creature! But you look dreadful, Brother. Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Elene laid a hand on my shoulder, and the sheer kindness of it came near setting me weeping again.
“I’ve not been myself of late,” I mumbled. “Ill. No sleep. So much praying. A different life.” I tried to sort myself out, dragging a sleeve across my face as I sat up. How long had I knelt here weeping like a babe bereft of its mother’s tit? My reaction made no sense at all. I hated feeling so helpless, so at the mercy of emotions without cause. “It’s nothing.”