Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  “Gildas and Grav Radulf are his questioners,” said Osriel as we ascended the prison stair. “I hear them pass every day. They laugh.” Hearing his bated fury, no promise of heaven would make me step between Osriel and Gildas, should such a meeting ever come to pass. Nor would I be so inclined did Iero himself command me.

  I halted Jullian just below the main level, listening for movement both above and below, and trying to recall possible routes across the main hall to the outer wards. Sila’s great hall surged with people and noise. We hadn’t a chance of making it across to the exit doors. But according to Jullian’s description, we had but to slip behind the guards on the landing and through an alley to the left to reach the inner court.

  A heated shudder arrowed through my limbs, and the curved walls began to melt like frost wraiths at sunrise. I planted my hand on the grimed stone and forced the walls back into their proper shape. I would not falter.

  “Two guards at the landing,” I whispered to Jullian. “When I poke you, run for the inner court as quietly as you can. I’ll follow.”

  “I’ll distract the guards,” said Osriel through clenched jaw. “Just signal me when.”

  I jerked my head. Remembering several instances of his unsettling magics, I didn’t bother to ask him what he intended. So we crept upward to the juncture of the tower and the keep.

  The smoky hall was a patchwork of cook fires and torchlight. The two orange-heads stood on either side of the arch that led into the noisy vastness. But no one guarded the path to the alley. Indeed, no intruder in his right mind would head into such a trap. But a torch blazed on the flanking piers, and the two men stood at such an angle they would surely spot any movement from our position on the stair. They carried bill hooks.

  I tapped the prince on the hand and made sure he could see our problem, even from his awkward angle. He squeezed my hand in answer. He emitted a long sigh and the weight of him sagged even heavier on my back. I thought for a moment he’d passed out. Then I felt a low rumbling under my feet…or perhaps in my bones. Just enough to make me want to crawl into bed and pull the bedclothes over my head. The two guards, no disciplined warriors, shifted their stance uneasily, glancing over their shoulders. When a shadow darted past them into the hall, they pointed. A second one flew past, and they shouted, but no one paid any attention. The third set them charging into the crowd, yelling warnings, weapons leveled.

  “Saints and angels,” I hissed. “Could you not have done something a bit more subtle?” Every blighted Harrower in the place was on the alert.

  Jullian and I sped through the junction and into the alley, which was not an alley at all, but a short passage that opened into the undercroft of the keep. The cavernous vaults were long emptied, and only broken chimneys and masonry foundations remained of the kitchens and barracks that had once adjoined the bays on the outside walls. Some halfway along, Jullian angled sharply toward the inside walls and up a few steps into the rubble-strewn interior yard—the heart of Fortress Torvo. The place was as dark as a well of pitch.

  “Where—?”

  I hushed Jullian. Anyone could be watching from the walls that rose starkly on all sides. We crept along the wall that stretched to our left, disturbing several scuttling creatures on our way toward the collapsed privies. I set Jullian feeling along the lower spans of the wall for a grating that might indicate the outlet of a drainage canal. We reached the corner without finding it. The mounds of rubble would disguise any remnant of the canal itself.

  I squatted and set Osriel on his feet. Jullian lent his shoulder, while I touched earth and hunted the way with magic.

  My bent did not serve well to examine layers of human-built works. Only the passages of people and their purposes made sense of structures. But after sorting through two centuries of death and ugliness in the courtyard, I found an old streambed that coursed this dry slope in the direction that I wanted, and I surmised that the original drainage canal had channeled the stream. We should be standing right on top of it.

  Holding tight to my fading hope that I’d not stuck us in a trap, I reached for Osriel. He stayed my hand when I moved to heft him across my back again, but accepted my arm under his shoulders. Jullian held close on the other side of him. The three of us proceeded slowly across the court to the far end wall, at the spot where the buried canal should pierce the foundation of the great hall. And indeed, set into the wall was a grate identical to those Max had shown me on the outer walls of the fortress—an iron-barred rectangle as high as my knees and twice that wide, and only halfway blocked by stones and dead thornbushes.

  I lowered Osriel to the ground and pulled him and Jullian close, draping Jakome’s cloak over us to muffle the sound. “I’m going back for Stearc. Max—Prince Bayard’s pureblood—told me that this drainage canal tunnels under the fortress and exits outside the walls. But he’s got the grates warded, and the moment we breach them, he’ll know. I’d like to postpone that as long as possible, as I’d rather not end up in Bayard’s hands after getting out of Sila’s, so I’m going to leave you here. A certain touch on opposing corners will unlock the grates, if you need to get out before I return. Do you understand, Gram? Can you manage that much?”

  The prince nodded. His magic would suffice.

  “Good. Voushanti will be waiting for us outside the walls, off to the right. Give me an hour past seventh watch. No more. And mind your voices. These upper walls open into occupied chambers.”

  “Iero’s grace,” whispered Jullian. “I’ll keep watch so Gram can rest.”

  I smiled and ruffled his hair. He hated that.

  A hand squeezed my aching shoulder, then three fingers touched my cheek in the manner of a king to his knight. Osriel’s hand seemed steadier and less fevered than earlier. My hopes crept higher. As I slunk away, I let magic flow into three whispered words, charging them with power to reach beyond the fortress. Dead man. Parley.

  Moments later, I heard the response. Bluejay. Parley. Voushanti and his bought fighters would not attack the fortress, but would watch for us to emerge from the drainage canal.

  The return across the courtyard seemed interminable. I dared not hurry, lest some scuffing or stumble alert a watcher in one of the chambers that overlooked the yard. It was easier to walk quietly without boots, though the hose tied over my feet were getting a bit ragged. But eventually I reached the passage and the undercroft, and I raced back to the tower.

  The hall remained in an uproar. A crowd of orange-heads, many with torches, centered on a few men arguing. Only one guard had returned to the tower stair. He shifted nervously, starting at every shout from the conflict in the hall, frequently spinning around to stare behind him, approximately in my direction. From the bag at my waist, I pulled one of the knucklebones and lofted it into the hall behind his back. He darted forward a few steps, and I slipped behind him and took the downward stairs three at a time.

  I flattened my back to the wall beside the doorway to the prison passage. The torture session was ended, and the slow pacing of a single guard echoed in the passage. Praise be to Serena Fortuna, they seemed not to have discovered their missing prisoner.

  The guard’s footsteps paused. Soft fumbling noises came from just beyond the doorway, and then a trickle of water that grew into a stream. An opportunity not to be missed.

  I took him from behind with angled blows to his neck. He dropped to his knees. Reaching around, I slammed a sidearm blow to his chest. My forearm glanced up to his throat, sending him to the floor clutching his throat and wheezing like a bellows. An elbow to the back of his neck stopped his clutching and wheezing.

  Only after I had the scraggly fellow unconscious in his pool of piss did I remember Jakome’s dagger strapped to my thigh. It had been a very long time since I’d possessed a weapon.

  Had I been sure he’d caused Stearc’s screams, I might have slit his throat and thought it justice. But it occurred to me that this might be the very guard who had shown a sick prisoner the mercy of a blanket. I was no
judge. So I tied his hands with his orange scarf, emptied Saverian’s vial of yellow broom into him, and tucked him under the blanket in Osriel’s cell. Whenever he woke he would be so busy puking, he’d not be able to raise the alarm. I snatched up his ragged cloak and flop-brimmed hat, grabbed one of the torches, and ran for Stearc.

  They hadn’t bothered to lock the door at the end of the passage. The chamber was no cell, but a charnel house. Yet neither the implements on the walls nor the grotesque evidence of horrors held my gaze. In chains suspended from the roof beam hung the remnants of a man. The once powerful body of the Thane of Erasku had been purposefully destroyed by whips, murderously precise knife and ax work, and cautery irons. He had no feet. No nose. No ears. No fingers on his right hand, and only three remaining on his left. Had I not known who was held here, I could never have identified him as the proud warrior who believed in the honor of learning as much as he believed in the honor of his sword. The low despairing moan that seeped from his slack mouth might have been a threnody for the world’s reason.

  “Stearc, it’s Valen come to help you,” I said, throttling my rage. Using a length of timber, I scraped away the filth underneath him and spread out the guard’s cloak.

  “Valen?”

  “I’m going to get you down.”

  “No…no…no…no,” he rasped. “Must not falter. Will not.” Blood bubbled from his lips.

  “You’ve held long enough, Thane. They’ve not touched him.” With my brutish lock spell, I burst his manacles and lowered him to the floor.

  He cried out, little more than an animal’s bleat. The bloody claw that was his left hand gripped my arm with desperate strength. “He is safe?”

  “He will be with Voushanti and Saverian within the hour.” Avoiding his dreadful wounds as best I could, I took Stearc’s face in my hands, making sure his eyes met mine. “I’m going to take you to him, Stearc. You will not die in this vile place, but in the shelter of your lord.”

  Die he would. The instinct that had ever spoken to me of death and life told me clearly. But anyone with eyes must understand that will alone drove Stearc’s heart and lungs.

  “No!” His hand pawed at me, and he came near rising from the ground. “Don’t let him—I honor him above all men. My king. But I would not meet the Ferryman blind.” Terror radiated from him like fever. “I would not be Voushanti.”

  How could I console such fear? I saw no means for Osriel to work his dreadful rites in Torvo’s inner courtyard. But that was poor assurance for a man who had spent his last reserves of courage fifty times over. The prince might have other means to capture souls.

  “All right, then.” Which set me a dilemma. I could not leave Stearc living. “I would do you a last service, Thane. Tell me what you want.”

  “A blade.” He opened his bloody palm, rock steady. In the command I heard a trace of his old accusations. He had ever believed me a coward.

  I gave him Jakome’s dagger and wrapped his bloody fingers around the hilt. Then I spoke clearly so he could not mistake. “I will tell your king and your daughter only of courage, lord, not of horror. The lighthouse will stand. Teneamus.”

  He jerked his head. “For House Erasku,” he whispered. “For Evanore, for Navronne…teneamus.”

  I took off my glove and laid my hand on his forehead, determined Stearc would not die alone. His existence comprised naught but shadings of mortal agony…a map in which every road led but to another shock or scouring, and every border marked but new violation. My part in his pain, shared through my bent and the gards on my hand, ended mercifully fast.

  Gripping the dagger with the remaining fingers of his left hand, he used the palm of his mutilated right hand to plunge the blade into his throat. Blood spurted from the wound. His hands dropped away.

  I stayed with him, and when the face of the world had faded to naught but cold and gray, I whispered in his ear, “Know this, too, warrior of Evanore; the blood of noble Caedmon mingles even now with the blood of House Erasku. Your beloved daughter carries Caedmon’s heir. And I vow upon the soul of our holy abbot that I will see them both safe until the end of days.”

  The revelation did not violate my vow to Elene, for I told her secret only to a dead man. But I believed Stearc heard me, for his eyes grew fierce and bright just before the life went out of them.

  I hung him from his chains again and removed all evidence of my coming. Let the butchers believe Iero’s angels had released him from his pain.

  Chapter 26

  “Seventh watch! All honor to the Gehoum!”

  As the call caromed through the fortress, I crouched on the prison stair at the verge of the main level. This was taking much too long. At any moment a replacement would be coming down to relieve the guard who lay vomiting in Osriel’s cell. But a pair of cursed orange-heads stood just in front of me, one blocking the doorway to the great hall, one blocking the doorway of the alley to the inner court. Neither clattering knucklebones nor a shower of armament pebbles had distracted them. I had been hoping they would just go away. To get up to the gallery and Sila’s chamber, I would have to run between them.

  Forced to stillness, I had grown even more determined to take the map. I tottered on the verge of understanding. My glimpse of the Sentinel Oak had told me the map held two layers of information—perhaps that was what Gildas could not see. Sila was using the map in her campaign to squeeze the long-lived from their hiding places so that she could mingle Danae blood with Aurellian and Navron bloodlines. Something in the map would tell me her next move or which boundaries she thought to break. Though I regretted every moment’s delay in getting Osriel free, I had to take the chance. The map could be the key to everything, and I had no intention of ever returning to this fortress of horrors.

  The echoed call of the watch was slowing. Replacements had arrived for the two guards. I had to move. I seated the guard’s flop-brimmed hat on my head. Then I pelted up the stair as if newly come from the depths, sweeping Jakome’s brown cloak about my shoulders and calling to the two guards, “Tell Nikred I couldn’t wait for his lazy ass to show. I’m to relieve Jakome at the tower for the night.”

  The two grunted assent and turned back to their replacements, while I raced up the stair to the gallery. One torch burned outside Sila Diaglou’s chamber, but no guard was posted. Soft light leaked around the door curtain. I held my breath and listened. One person inside, breathing softly.

  I drew the knife, pulled back the edge of the curtain, and peered inside. Torches blazed on either side of the map. Ronila sat in front of it, her chin propped on her walking stick. Nothing for it but to slip inside, keeping my back against the wall.

  “You might as well come in, abomination,” she said, not even shifting her gaze from the map.

  Of course, Ronila would have skills like mine. Once I had confirmed that no one else was in the room, I strolled over to the map, keeping the knife under my cloak. “Did you know my father, Ronila?”

  “I suppose you deem yourself wise.” Never had I heard amusement that tasted so much of gall and rancid life. She cocked her head at the map. “The answer is no. Cartamandua first came to Aeginea long after I had left. He is talented, I hear—talented at finding places he should not. As you are.”

  “He was,” I said, staring at the map, trying to gauge its secret. Knotted cords looped from bolts in the wall through three bound eyelets sewn into the map’s upper edge. Three strokes of the knife would take it down. “The Danae took his mind for a failed promise.”

  “Pah!” She blew a note of disgust. “The long-lived cannot admit they are as crippled as I am. Mixed blood will be your doom as it has been mine, abomination.”

  “You know not even the half of it, Lady Scourge.” Though, in truth, I’d always thought the blood of my erstwhile mother’s prophecy meant I’d die in battle or at least in a fight. I’d never considered it might signify heritage…bloodlines…family. Even queasier than usual at recalling the divination, I shoved the annoying hat backward an
d scratched my head. “Do our kind see the future? I’ve not been taught that skill.”

  “I see the future,” she said. “In the hour he broke me, I told Stian what I planned. He didn’t believe a crippled halfbreed girl could bring them down. But when he feels the world die, he will confess it at last. When he sees Tuari Archon himself lapping from my hand, he will admit my power, and I will see Stian Human-friend stand alone in the ruin of his making. Was it the proud son—the most arrogant of an arrogant race—who marked you or the old cat himself?”

  “You made Sila a perfect tool for your vengeance,” I said, unwilling to yield even so small an answer. “You hate the Danae because they did not allow you to be one of them; you especially hate the archon because Tuari killed your mother. You hate Stian because, out of fear for the Canon, he crippled you, and because he allowed Eodward and Picus to live in Aeginea, so that a human man became your temptation. You loathe humankind because it was humans who sullied your blood, and you hate both Eodward and the Karish god, because they stole Picus’s affections that you believed should be yours alone. But I don’t understand your particular antipathy for purebloods. That mystifies me.”

  She snickered at that. “My daughter, Sila’s mother, was more Dané than human. Such grace…such beauty…When she danced in my kitchen, she made Stian’s daughter, Clyste, look as a stick. The Aurellians ruled this benighted land…and one of their knights rode through my village when Tresila was but thirteen. He dragged her to their pleasure house, forced her to service his common soldiers and Navron slaveys. Not the purebloods, though. She was not perfect enough to break their bloodlines. Thirty years they kept her a slave.”

  “But she birthed a child…”

  “You’ve yet much to learn of your Danae kin. Even halfbreed females can choose to conceive or not. One of Eodward’s soldiers rescued Tresila from the Aurellian pleasure house. In gratitude…in gratitude…she gave him a child.” Her tongue near curled with her bile. “The slut died bearing Sila. That’s as well, as I would have killed her for it, as I did the cur who plowed her. You cannot measure my hatred for this world. Sila merely wishes no blot of green to remain on this map, but my vengeance will be sated only in the hour humankind reaps eternal desolation and no Danae gard lights the world’s darkness.”