by Sarah Remy
Liam thought the bones the most interesting thing in the library. He especially loved the two-headed serpent with its backbone like a puzzle game with many perfectly crafted pieces, and the fanged wolf displayed in artful, frozen attack.
“Sit.” Deval pointed to his own straight-backed stool. The cushion on the seat carried an impression of the man’s buttocks. “Let me show you what I’ve found.”
Liam sat. The stool was surprisingly steady, even when he hooked his heels around the bottom rungs, trying to shift it in place. Deval arched an eyebrow. Liam folded his hands in his lap and tried his best to imitate a scholar. Deval only laughed.
“You’re growing into an admirable young man,” he said as he set four thin books on the table in front of Liam. “You’ll make a capable soldier, if that’s the path you choose. Good of you to leave your sword at home; the theists become more anxious daily about weaponry too near the altar. They claim their god has grown more sensitive to the steel under his roof.”
Liam pulled his shoulders up around his ears. “He seems an irritable sort of god.”
Deval laughed again, more gently. He patted the top of Liam’s knee. “You’ve nothing to fear of that one. He and his priests are more concerned with the politics of the throne than the likes of you.”
Liam didn’t think Deval could claim to know any god’s mind but he didn’t bother argue the point. Deval, like Avani, could at times be as set in his ways as old rock.
“These are the journals I mentioned,” Deval continued. He opened the topmost book, cracking the hammered silver binding. Paper as thin as onionskin fluttered beneath his fingers. “I’ll admit at first I despaired of finding any such records at all. The list of names, certainly, are kept under lock and key in His Majesty’s library. I suspect any pertinent writings have been collected there, as well, or destroyed. The theists, I think, prefer to pretend they had no hand in the executions.”
“Oh, aye. Theists are a sneaky sort,” Liam agreed amiably. “Preaching peace until all at once they’re tying you to a post or chopping off’n your head because you’ve got a bit of magic in you. I’ve learned some of the histories; as much as to know the theists led the charge against Wilhaiim’s magi. It was the temple may not have called outright for the killings, but I’ll wager they were whispering regular-like in the king’s ear.”
Deval’s black brows drew down over his proud nose. “The temple had good reason for concern. The schism was over more than ‘a bit of magic’. For every young vocent working to guard the kingdom there were three more gone rotten with power. By the time the Aug took the throne, Wilhaiim was riddled with their influence and the flatland king was meant to be little more than a figurehead.” The old man hooked another stool, drawing it close to the table. He perched on the edge of the cushioned seat. “The magi ruled the day. They were the grist that kept the markets running, the glue that kept a lord’s estate from crumbling. They were the bringers of justice, their spellbound metal walking machines were the last bastion against sidhe uprising and foreign invasion.” He tapped an enameled fingernail on paper. “Many times the continent would have fallen if not for their influence. For the most part they were worshipped and adored as our vocent is today. But best remember: always, at the heart of it, they are necromancers, and the dead are not meant to be wielded as an arsenal—that way lies madness.”
Liam had to clench his fingers in his lap to keep from snatching the books away from under Deval’s hand. “Is it written here?”
“That, and more. Brother Lino, who scribed these journals, seems an unbiased chronicler. He did not hate the magi as so many in the court had come to. But he did fear them, for the power they drew from the dead and the spirits they snatched from the one god’s embrace for their own purpose, to set their spells and power their machines. Lino seems to believe necromancy is an unholy, unnatural magic, and may eventually turn a man’s heart black, his mind unwieldy.”
“Deep water drives a magus mad.” Liam studied the surface of the worktable. The wood was scarred in places, and stained through in spots with old ink. “I saw it happen to my lord, on the ship.”
“Deep water, yes,” agreed Deval. “And mayhap, also time. Exposure to the whims and ways of the dead. Lino certainly thought so. He made mention of many good men and women brought low by their use of necromancy, the bone magic. I have not read all of his entries but from those I have I am convinced there was reason for concern, at the time.”
“Concern is when I worry I’ve slept through first bell and the armswoman will clobber my ears for being late to exercise. The Aug called for mass execution, every sorcerer, each one. And the temple backed the throne in the name of their god.”
Deval said, “It was long ago. Nor can I condone necromancy. This Lino was not wrong. The dead are meant to sleep. The magi disturbed the natural order of life.”
The back of Liam’s neck pricked embarrassment. “They say I was dead once, but here I am. I don’t think I slept, between. I think there was nothing at all between dying and living.”
“I’m sorry.” The old man sounded tired. “I mean you no insult, lad. Nor do I mean to imply the Aug was correct in his solution. One evil is not set right by another.”
“Sir? May I take the books to read?” Liam prompted past an unwelcome lump in his throat. He knew Deval for a kind man, a fair fellow who said only what he believed even if it was hard to hear.
Deval exhaled. He closed the silver binding and pushed the two thin volumes in Liam’s direction. The dry air made Liam’s nose itch and his eyes threaten to run over. He wanted nothing more than to return to the barrack yard and beat Old Pumpkinhead to mush with his bare fists.
“These two volumes may contain the answer to your question,” he said. “If a magi may be turned from madness, Brother Lino would have made note. But I fear your search will end in disappointment, Liam. I do not believe the temple would have resorted to mass execution if there were any hope the magi could be redeemed.” Deval pursed his lips. “Take the books with you if you like, but return them to me soon and in one good stead, if you please. I’ve become attached to this library and my place within it. The Masterhealer would not be pleased to learn I’ve let any of his collection see daylight.”
Chapter 3
Everin appreciated Stonehill for its desolation, for the deserted cobblestone streets still blackened in places by sidhe fire, for buildings collapsed inward over the charred bones of former occupants. The gutted homes were monuments to lives lost, their silence his condemnation. He didn’t mind their mute accusation. He’d played his own small part in Stonehill’s destruction, if only by keeping secrets, but he would not argue responsibility with stone or crag or changeable sky.
He knew Avani believed he labored over his bricks and his kiln, intent on restoring the old settlement one building at a time, out of a sense of guilt. She was wrong.
He didn’t care one whit about the ruined village other than as a distraction, a chance to perfect a new craft, a way to fill time until time ran out. After all, he’d been responsible for many more lives lost in his time both below and aboveground. In the turning of centuries, the Stonehill’s dead were of no importance at all.
Time ran out while he was tending Avani’s sheep, turning them from one square of summer grass to the next. The witch’s flock had grown since Peter Shean had stolen her back to civilization. Her ewes had birthed six new lambs while she was away chasing plague. The babes had come in sets of two, which he didn’t expect, but that didn’t seem to concern the ewes at all. Spring had been wet and cruel. It had taken some doing but he’d managed to save all but one of the new stock. Now the sheep flourished, grazing craggy hillsides, far above the boiling flatlands, content as Everin was in solitude.
He heard Faolan before he saw him, in the horned ram’s warning bellows from atop a rocky peak. Animals rarely tolerated the sidhe—they knew a predator’s scent—and Avani’s stud never protested so loudly when human riders approached Stonehill. The r
am lowered its head, galloping back down the hillside toward the ewes and lambs. Everin left the pen. He scrubbed his hands beneath the pump he’d plumbed into a cistern near Avani’s cottage. Then he sat on her stoop and watched the horizon, waiting.
It didn’t take long. The aes si were inhumanly quick and Faolan always moved with purpose. He’d come from the hidden cave at the far end of the village, Everin supposed, but he crested the pasture hill scant minutes after Avani’s ram raised alarm. Had Everin made the same walk, he’d be thrice the time.
Faolan spotted him at once. He raised a hand in greeting. Everin didn’t bother return the wave. The aes si mimicked human courtesy for ease of interaction but rarely understood the inclination behind polite gestures. The lesser sidhe had no concept of geniality at all. Everin, who had lived too long in the company of both, preferred to dispense with pretense.
“You’re antagonizing the sheep,” he said as Faolan approached the cottage. “You might have sent word; I would have met you in the village, safely upwind.”
Faolan rolled dark eyes in the direction of the pen. He smiled, baring pointed teeth. His hairless pate was wrapped in a long colorful scarf against the sun; its long fringe hid the torque Everin knew the youth wore around his throat. He walked barefoot as usual, his slim form clothed in a simple robe.
“I’m hungry,” he confessed. “They know.”
Everin grunted. “Come inside,” he invited, climbing to his feet. “I’ve rabbit stew on the hob, and a new sampling of Black Coast cheeses sent up from the keep.”
Faolan licked his lips. “What does Lord Gavin owe you,” he wondered, “to gift such luxury?”
“Allegiance,” Everin replied. He slapped dust off his knees before entering Avani’s home. Faolan padded after. The aes si hadn’t been fibbing; his stomach growled audibly as he crossed the threshold.
“Are you living here now?” he asked, giving Avani’s brightly colored cushions a cursory glance.
“My tent did not survive the spring rains.” Everin crossed to the hob where he ladled rabbit into one of the witch’s small bowls. The stew was redolent with thyme and rosemary, thick and fatty. “This cottage was the only structure not touched by fire. Avani offered; I accepted.”
Faolan ate standing up, picking chunks of meat out of the bowl with his fingers, stuffing rabbit into his mouth. Everin watched, bemused. In the light through the cottage windows he could see the aes si had grown thin, close to emaciation beneath the folds of his tunic. The bowl was quickly emptied. Everin took it back, filled it a second time, and caught the twist of honest, if fleeting, gratitude on the youth’s full mouth.
“Thank you,” Faolan said between mouthfuls.
“Sit down,” Everin suggested. “Tell me why you’ve come.”
Faolan’s thin brows rose, disappearing beneath his headscarf. He chose a cushion and sat, then cleaned his fingers with a pink tongue, fastidious as a cat. His flat stare was amused but not unkind.
“You know,” he said. “Or at least you’ve guessed. You tasked me to listen for word of strangers come from the east, barbarians with eyes yellow as your own and feathers in their plaited hair.” He abandoned his fingers, licking stew straight from the bowl instead. When the last fatty drop was cleaned away, he lifted his head and regarded Everin solemnly.
Resigned, Everin looked down on the sidhe. Faolan, for all that he had been old as the mounds when Everin was but a babe in the womb, appeared fresh-faced as a lad. And certainly amongst his own kind Faolan was of minimal importance: as acolyte he was tasked with the chore of protecting the secret ways beneath the ground from human interference. He was never meant to dabble in the affairs of mortals. Though neither of them spoke of it, both men knew Faolan courted death by naming Everin friend.
“So it’s come at last. I’d hoped they’d dally until next snowmelt, at the very least. But what do desert lords know of snow?”
“Little enough,” Faolan remarked. “Winter may be to your advantage.”
“If the sand snakes are stirring already there’s no guarantee we’ll see winter. I’d hoped they’d keep each other busy with squabbling awhile longer yet. Renault will not be pleased.”
Everin returned to the hob. Ignoring the stew, he rummaged in Avani’s spare cupboards until he found the jug of brandy she’d used to warm her teas in the coldest weather. He popped the stopper with his teeth, splashed pungent drink into two cups then took both cups with him to Faolan. The sidhe accepted the offering with grudging pleasure. He waited until Everin had seated himself on the floor before lifting the brandy in silent toast.
“Luck to you. You’ll need it. As I imagine Renault will also not be pleased to learn you’ve taken it upon yourself to keep watch upon his borders, all unasked. Or has Avani not yet let your secret slip? Will His Majesty welcome you with open arms as grandsire lost, do you suppose, or will he cut you down on the assumption you covet his throne?”
Everin downed a healthy swallow of brandy. The fumes set his throat and the inside of his nose on fire. He coughed in appreciation.
“Avani will keep my secret,” he said simply. “Now tell me what you’ve seen.”
Faolan’s expression turned smug. “Better to show you,” he said. “But not yet. We leave after dark. Until then, I intend to sleep.” He emptied his cup, set it on the floor, and stretched out on his side in a nest of cushions. “Wake me at sunset—not before.”
Everin knew better than argue. Faolan was stubborn, even for an aes si. He would only grow more adamant if pressed. Besides, it was evident he needed rest. Whatever Faolan had been up to had left him changed. He fell into sleep at once, snoring softly as a man did when he was beyond exhaustion. There were hollows under his eyes and in his cheeks; his brow and beardless chin were peeling from too much sun, which meant the sidhe had been aboveground but below the Downs, walking the flatlands where summer reigned. Grime blackened his bare feet and the hem of his robes.
Sunset was still hours away, but Everin hadn’t time to waste. So he left the sidhe sleeping on Avani’s floor and climbed the slope from her cottage, past the fretful sheep, into Stonehill proper. He strode past blistered stone buildings, looking neither left nor right, making for the far side of town and the Widow’s rebuilt inn.
The Crooked Creek resembled its original incarnation only in general footprint and in the placement of door and windows. The skewed gray stone chimney was original, as was the great hearth and the sidhe gate hidden beneath. But the new facade was entirely brick made by Everin’s own hands, and although he’d built up high enough for three levels, he hadn’t the lumber for flooring nor the skill to make multiple stories out of stone. The new roof was fragrant thatch. He’d stocked the kitchen with salvaged iron pots and pans. Often in the deep of night the pots took to banging; the Widow, Everin assumed, displeased with the changes to her establishment.
Ghosts didn’t concern him. He supposed the Widow had good reason for anger. She’d been murdered in her own home, her blood soaking deep into the inn’s packed earth floor. But he preferred to sleep the night through uninterrupted by ghoulish temper, and after a handful of nights spent startled from sleep by unnatural racket, he’d moved his bedroll to Avani’s cottage.
Most of his belongings he’d left in the inn’s common room, for the breadth of space and—in the winter—the luxury of a roaring fire. Although he had reason to believe the sidhe gate at the base of the chimney was well and truly sealed against intrusion, he preferred to check it for himself dusk and dawn.
He did so now, sticking his nose in the hearth, examining the irons for sign of trespass. The sidhe tunnel below the inn was a closely guarded secret, inaccessible to anyone without the proper key, but Everin knew better than to assume it would remain so. The sidhe had come up through the tunnel once before; they were likely to do so again.
When he was satisfied that all appeared as it should, he made his way to the narrow table he’d built out of stacks of brick and the Widow’s old cellar door, rifled t
hrough the small collection of tools and oddities he preferred to keep close at hand until he found a serviceable piece of sheepskin and a stub of dross for writing. He tapped the piece of blackened wood against his palm, recalling rich inks and fine vellum. He couldn’t regret their loss, not when he’d traded that gilded cage for freedom.
Everin scratched a few words quickly onto the hide, secured the roll with a piece of string, and left it prominently on the hearth where the rider from Mors Keep would find it when next she came to deliver his post. With luck Avani would have his warning in hand before the moon turned, and in the king’s that same day. If Renault had any sense at all he’d see at once to his fortifications.
Familial duty thus satisfied, Everin next cast a clinical eye over the mess that was his workspace. It had been a generation since he’d run with the desert mongrels over white dunes beneath blue sky, but he remembered well that brief thrill of liberty. It hadn’t been a comfortable life. He’d seen men fall regularly from too much sun and too little water, and routinely in faithless skirmishes between raiding tribes. Resources were scarce on the other side of the mountains. A man had to prove his worth daily. Mercy was as uncommon as fresh water in the desert, tenderness rare as winter rain.
Nevertheless he’d fought tooth and nail, vicious as any sand snake, when at last the aes si had found him out and returned him again to his prison in the mounds. They’d had to starve him into half sleep before they’d managed get close enough to strip the feathers from his hair.
Faolan came for him at dusk. The sidhe acolyte dismissed the slim pack over Everin’s shoulder with a shake of his head.
“Optimistic,” he said, idly fingering the torque around his neck. “But impractical. Four day’s ride ahead and I’ve no time to waste on foraging. Your pack’s too light, unless you’ve taken to filling your belly with fresh air and sunshine. And you’ve clearly forgotten that beneath the Downs it is indeed summer. You’ll need more than one waterskin, I’m afraid. Once we turn away from the river the usual cricks have gone dry.”