Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  We retreated behind the rocks. He was slender built for a knight. His hair, a shaggy tangle of mud-brown, spoke little of his age. But behind the alert intelligence I expected, the eyes examining me through the mask carried a weary burden. No matter that their personal memories were erased, knights felt the weight of the battles they’d fought and the sights they’d seen.

  “I’ve a skin of Malcolm’s cider,” I said. “And bread, a bit aged, and olive paste.” Losing four days along my path had preserved my supplies.

  “A swallow of cider would be fine,” he said, lowering himself gingerly to the ground, back to the rock. “No time to linger, as I must be back before dawn with my horse not blown. I daren’t be late. Prince Osriel’s bodyguard, Mardane Voushanti, has no patience for tardy guides. And he is surely marked by the Tormentor. Look him in the eye and your soul shrivels.”

  I passed Grey the aleskin. “Do you travel everywhere with Prince Osriel?”

  “Sky Lord’s benevolent mercy, no. It sounds perverse, but we were fortunate this battle’s come together near Lillebras. My cadre did advanced training hereabouts, so I’ve every rock, tree, and crevice charted in my bones. When the Order learned Osriel required a local guide, they made sure I was hired. I volunteered for the mission, but I’ll never be so grateful as when I pass it over, for if the servant is Magrog’s right hand, the master is surely the Tormentor himself.”

  “I’ve heard it so,” I said, interested to hear rumor confirmed.

  “You’ll never see even so much of Osriel’s face as you see of mine, but until the end of your days, you’ll never mistake his presence. ’Tis like cold oil that slowly sheathes your skin, fills your ears, slides over your tongue and into your nostrils until it drips into belly and lungs and you cannot breathe nor hear nor feel anything but him. . . .”

  Grey shuddered, then took a great swallow from the skin, closed his eyes, and sighed in gratitude. Evanide’s brewmaster pressed a fine cider.

  I left him the moment. Soon enough he opened his eyes and scratched at his half-grown beard. “Here’s what you need to know. The battle was joined three days ago—sooner than we expected. The fight has gone ill for the Ardran legion. Perryn’s lost two of his best generals, one dead, one captured, and his lines are in increasing disarray. This coming morning’s assault is surely going to break them. Sila Diaglou and her madmen have infused Prince Bayard’s legion with new vigor. They’ll chase Perryn all the way to Palinur by summer’s end.”

  “And what of Osriel? Does he spy on them? Plot against them?”

  The knight leaned forward, arms around his knees. “I’ve been with them three days now, and certain he’s been in no hurry to do anything. We arrived in the vicinity of Lillebras yestermorn. All day and into this night the Bastard has bided his time in a hovel with a squire, two soldiers, the bodyguard Voushanti, and a formidable Evanori warlord called Stearc. If he’s got more men in the vicinity, they’re well hid. I’ve neither seen nor heard aught of them.”

  “Are the servants pureblood? I’d expect one, if not two.” Osriel was the richest of the three princes, thanks to the gold beneath his mountain stronghold.

  “I attempted to discover that very thing.” Grey shoved his shaggy hair behind his ears. “I dropped an untraceable at a crossroad. The only man it brought to the alert was the Bastard himself. Fire-god’s holy heart, I’d heard he was halfblood, yet I didn’t believe— Well, I’d thought him asleep in his saddle. Three hours he had us scouring the surrounding wood for spies. When none was found, he concluded it was the power of the crossroad had intruded on his meditations. But ever since, he’s displayed an uncanny sense of where I am. He tells his men when I’ll get back from a scout, or when I’ll arrive in the morning. Hold rein on your magic unless you’re desperate.”

  Another swallow of the cider and he passed the skin to me. “Weren’t you supposed to be mounted?”

  Heat flushed my cheeks, though my answer was strictly true. “I never found the hostler’s. I thought it better to be here in plenty of time.”

  “You may regret that,” he said, dry as ash.

  I returned to the more important subject. “So the battle’s almost over, and Osriel’s not shown a pennon. What could he be up to?” Rumored horrors rose to mind.

  “No idea. ’Tis unlikely he’s to meet with anyone. He’s sent no messages along the journey. Before I raised your signal, the whole party was asleep save for the warlord taking the midwatch, and he’s not moved ten steps from the prince these three days.”

  “Then why did you fetch me here?” I wasn’t to go in until he had some sense of Osriel’s plan. Then I could observe whom he met or what he did from a reasonably safe distance.

  “Because they’ve told me I’m to guide them to a particular spot tomorrow—one I’ll be told only at dawn—and then I’ll be free to leave with my pay, as they’ve a map to take them the rest of the way. If I argue, they’ll get suspicious, and if I follow, he’ll know. And once I’m dismissed, they could head out anywhere—to the battlefield, the village, the river . . . caves . . . springs . . . the region is pocked with places. So drink up your cider, paratus, and take up your pack. You must stay close on our trail tomorrow. When Osriel’s coin touches my palm, the mission is yours.”

  • • •

  We made it to the hovel where Prince Osriel lay by first light. It sat atop a greening hill creased deep with rock gullies like an old man’s warty face. The site provided excellent views of the rolling landscape on every side and escape routes in any direction. From the size of the steel-capped man circling the hut—the formidable warlord, Grey said—the prince could sleep nowhere safer or better guarded.

  As Grey rode up the hill, I remained flat on the ground in a beech copse. He’d promised I’d see which way they went. I’d told him to have a care.

  Sentimental, Inek called me, to speak such things aloud. It was a knight’s duty to take his best care—for the success of his mission and his brothers of the Order. But then, some of us had to be reminded of that.

  Was it my own stubborn ignorance that had half the kingdom wanting to kill me and my family? Goddess Mother, I had a sister. Why hadn’t I asked her name? A spark, Bastien called her, a girl that I loved. Even beyond magic, how could I not feel her existence? Unless I’d failed at keeping her safe and they’d killed her, too . . .

  No. After the mission I would think. For now, I had to watch and be ready.

  Damp seeped through my braies and crept slowly up toward my shirt. I dug fingers into the stony earth and dragged myself forward. History and art together would be useful for a knight. To discover truth . . . to solve murders . . . to show people how to unlock complex spells and save themselves . . . The work of justice.

  A wrenching jolt in my head warned me to stop. But I could not let it go. Since my first days at Evanide I had hungered for greater magic, devouring and relishing each day’s advancement. Knowing some mysterious talent dwelt inside me, inaccessible, had been difficult enough. But to touch this soil under my fingers and know that in other times I could unlock its past was an exquisite torment.

  Inek said a paratus’s bent could be unmuted at any time the Marshal judged appropriate. Its use could be woven into the last months of his preparation. But what of dual bents? Would the Marshal risk giving both of them back? He could not afford a knight to go mad.

  The real question was what did Damon intend? Damon, who had sent me to the Order and who chose my missions. This one, too. What game was he playing and what gamepiece was named Lucian de Remeni?

  A good thing Morgan had laid some kind of sleep over me when we arrived at the lake. A gift of the long-lived, she’d said, as she kept watch at my side. When I’d waked, she was gone, and two smoked fish and a pile of raspberries awaited me. Thus, unlike poor Grey, who’d not slept in over a day, I was rested and fed. Just more than half crazed.

  A distant call br
ought me alert. Grey’s horse grazed on the hilltop, but he was nowhere to be seen. And where was the warlord? Idiot!

  Just before panic sent me running up the hill to search for tracks, a soldier rounded the corner of the hut. Then Grey came up from behind, leading three horses. A youth followed close with three more. Four men emerged from the house and joined the guard and the youth. Easy to pick out the prince. Five wore leather and steel. One wore robes and hood of spruce green.

  Stories named Osriel the Bastard a horned monster, deformed by his evils, or crippled from bribing his mentor Magrog with limbs or heart or balls, depending on who was telling the story.

  In truth he was no giant, but average among his servants. Most other details, including horns or deformities, were hidden by his shapeless garb. But though history named him a man near my own age, his back was slightly bent, and he walked with a noticeable limp.

  Before mounting, he stepped away from the others and turned slowly, as if surveying the terrain through the drooping folds of his hood.

  I did not think of myself as prone to frights or megrims, but I did trust a brother knight’s instincts. I did not twitch an eyelash until he turned away to his mount.

  The party wound slowly down the cragged hill on its western flank, Grey in the lead, the prince behind with a stocky warrior close at his shoulder—the bodyguard. The warlord in the steel cap brought up the rear behind the youth and two soldiers.

  They’d need no map to find the battleground. Thin pillars of black smoke scarred the deep blue of the western horizon. The death stench was likely my imagination, as the day was still and windless, with a gathering haze that dirtied the light. But when they reached the bottom of the hill, their route twined northward through the mounded hills.

  Afoot, I scuttered between hillock and rock; paused to make sure they’d rounded another bend; ducked behind a stand of hazel or leafless larch until they were out of sight again. Tracking a riding party of seven was simple. Staying close enough that they could not leave me behind would be the challenge in country variously open, rocky, and wooded.

  The luck of the landscape took us quickly into a dense woodland of oak, beech, and pine. The track was rough and little traveled and wandered through thick underbrush of tor-grass and fragrant juniper. Boulders of every shape—twisted, bulbous, conjoined, heaped, some shoulder high, some taller than three men—protruded from the fragrant earth. The air was heavy under the trees.

  An hour or more along the increasingly wild path, the party halted and dismounted. Their discussion was of an even temper, though it was impossible to make out words from behind a tree. When the solid thud of hooves came my way, I slipped to the ground and shrank into a knot.

  A single rider approached, retracing the route we’d taken. Not in a hurry. Humming, and . . . jingling coins. I grinned as Grey rode slowly past, tossing two coins in the air one more time before stuffing them in his waist pocket, even as the weight of responsibility settled on my shoulders. Dallé cineré, brother, I bade him in fervent silence.

  Stretched out on my belly, I slithered forward through a patch of mushrooms.

  The prince perched on a fallen tree, his back to me. The bristle-haired bodyguard and the warlord crouched before their master, the three heads together over a sheet of parchment. Their discussion remained damnably quiet. I’d have to be sitting on their boots to hear.

  The two other warriors stood well away, faces alert and scanning the wood. The unarmed squire minded the horses, examining hooves, legs, and girth straps. When done, he led the beasts one by one to a leaf-choked pool overhung with willow and birch. Its murky water leaked into a shallow rivulet that vanished quickly into the woodland.

  What was here to interest a dark-minded prince in the midst of a war for his father’s throne? Carefully, without invoking any spellcraft, I closed my eyes to the visible world and opened myself to magic.

  A lovely enchantment, intricate as spiderweb and strong as silk thread, hung amid the prince and his men. I recognized it immediately, as it was so like that of the map hanging in the Marshal’s outer chamber—a Cartamandua map, one of the finest made. It was said that Cartamandua maps could lead one to places you wouldn’t find otherwise. Was that what Osriel was about—hunting some secret place, a place of magic or omen, treasure or revelation?

  Yet another enchantment lurked in close proximity to the map, this one a simmering evil that robbed me of breath, an enchantment crafted of pain and fire, blood and despair. In all my training at Evanide, in countless mission studies, I’d never encountered such a thing. Without using magic of my own, I could not even guess at its nature. I was glad. The thought of probing deeper sickened me, in the way of sticking my hand in a dead man’s rotting belly to retrieve his heart.

  Rising emotion raddled one man’s unintelligible words. Anger? Frustration? The warlord sat back on his haunches and bellowed, “Mount up!”

  The warlord’s command might have been a dog biting the squire’s backside or the guards’ boots. Packs and waterskins were quickly stowed. The squire brought the horses.

  An Evanori warlord was dedicated and trained from birth to defend his lord, his mountain fastness, and his hoard of gold. Mumbling under his breath, this one fussed about his warhorse, doing everything the squire had already done before swinging himself easily into the saddle.

  The prince’s bodyguard gave Osriel a hand up to a bay gelding. Still no sight of Osriel’s face. But the bodyguard’s . . . Goddess preserve. Half his face was a crumpled, leathery ruin. Burnt, I’d guess, but more than that. Bones crushed, leaving jaw and cheek sunken and the eye but a dark slit. A bristle of gray-brown hair left this horror fully exposed. He should be wearing the hood.

  The prince led the way toward the willow grove and the shady pool. Bodyguard and squire followed close. The warlord held an urgent conversation with the two soldiers, and to my dismay, the pair wheeled their mounts and took the path Grey had ridden an hour previous.

  “Your heads roll if you’re not back before sundown!” called the warlord after them. “Camp here.”

  Ride with the wind, brother! Concern for Grey beckoned me after the pair. But I knew what Inek would say. Grey, too. The mission lay ahead of me, not behind. The Order needed to know what wickedness this prince planned. If that single dread enchantment I’d detected was the prince’s work, it justified their concern.

  When the prince’s party disappeared behind the shaggy willows, I skulked after them. Had I not watched them squeeze between a protruding boulder and the pond, I’d never have found the path.

  The pond was far bigger than I’d thought, being the bottom end of a long lake. The upper end was sealed by a jumble of earth, wood, and stone, as if a divine sculptor had dropped all the waste from the earth’s making there. The far shore was a scrubby bank of earth and loose rock.

  But the four horsemen traveled the nearer shore. A massive scarp hemmed the lake along this side. The vertical stone was taller than five men, seamed with dirt and roots from the forested swell above. Between the foot of the scarp and the lake, a shelf of stone scarce wide enough for a single horse served as a path.

  The path’s direct course was not at all friendly to spies. Did I step out to follow the four, a single backward glance would note me. So I held still until they were but tiny figures at the far end of the lake. They dismounted.

  I waited. And waited. Squinting into the watery sunlight, I picked out horses . . . but no men. Towers of Idrium! Where had they gone?

  I pelted along the shelf path, sparing naught to prevent all this from being a waste. Yet even a hundred paces from the towering blockade that bounded the lake, I saw no place they could have gone. I’d felt no surge of magic. My gaze scoured the path-side cliff and the massive debris pile that ended the lake, though I could not imagine a limping man in robes climbing either one. Nothing moved but songbirds, squalling at circling crows, and trickles of w
ater that seeped through the debris to feed the lake.

  Had I gone blind?

  The horses waited patiently, tethered to branches protruding from the scarp. Soothing the beasts with whispers and pats, I squeezed past them along the verge of the lake, and discovered a natural illusion that rivaled anything of magic.

  What I had believed to be the leftmost portion of the lake’s terminal blockage was, in fact, a flat wall that protruded from the scarp to the water’s edge. Color and texture blended it into the actual background, neatly blocking an observer’s view of the last section of the waterside path—a hundred paces at most. A ledge just below the surface of the lake—one boot long—would allow one person at a time to get around the end of the protruding wall. Carefully.

  Time to choose. Go forward, or retreat to the mushroom patch to wait for the four—and the other two soldiers—to return. Instinct said that if I retreated, I might as well abandon the mission.

  Not a breath or shuffle could I hear from beyond the wall. Setting my inner foot gingerly onto the underwater ledge, I gripped the largest knob I could find and swung my outer foot around until it found a horizontal surface. Shifting my weight forward and inward, I pushed myself to standing on level ground beyond the wall.

  Impressions pelted me like hailstones of lead.

  A glimmer of torchlight inside the gaping maw of a cave.

  An astonishingly familiar splash of white above the cave mouth.

  And the certainty that I, the fool of a paratus, was not alone.

  In the eyeblink’s gap before the battering ram slammed into my head, I had already turned halfway round to note the man-sized niche in the protruding wall and the monstrous face and thick body that occupied it. My bracelets and a burst of magic generated a rope of light, mitigating the blow that laid me out. Thus I could see straight into the bodyguard’s red-centered eye glaring down at me and recognize it as a well of pain and fire, blood and despair.