Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

“A portal, you say, lord?” I tried to sound surprised. “A blocked doorway, it seems, or unfinished.”

  He touched the stone, but just like Bastien in the hirudo, he did not recoil. Why did I experience the fiery rejection, when neither Osriel or Bastien did?

  “I wish you to use all your skills to tell me what you find here.” His will was as palpable a presence as his bodyguard. How would I know if he was forcing me when the command was exactly what I wanted to do?

  “This is real stone,” I said, rapping my knuckle on it, “solid, no illusion to hide a portal.”

  That was true. Perhaps in my old life I could have drawn the right person’s portrait to reveal the mysteries of this portal, as I’d done for the Cicerons in Palinur. But even if I remembered how to invoke my bent, I wouldn’t do it for Osriel.

  “What did you hope to find beyond this wall, lord prince?”

  “You said it. Magic.”

  The word was shaped with the craving of a twistmind for his nivat. It whispered of torments like those I’d seen in his bodyguard’s eyes—of pain, despair, and hopeless ruin, of a man who well might seek unholy spoils on a battlefield. If the place called Sanctuary was a part of what the Danae called the true lands, and these true lands were somehow bound to the health of the world as Morgan’s father believed, what would it mean if a skilled sorcerer without scruple could walk free there?

  I could not hold back my shudder. Did that please the one whose gaze burned through his green hood?

  Osriel wandered away toward the wall paintings and the rune-like god-signs. “And you, masked one?” he said over his shoulder. “What do you seek here?”

  “A story,” I said, in all honesty. “What more could a historian desire?”

  Damon had not chosen my missions and the Archivist’s revelations at random. What great purpose linked an ancient massacre and a recent one with the warring sons of a great king, and a man with two bents? With Xancheira and Cicerons and Danae? I’d never seen any hint that Damon knew aught of my dealings with Danae—or anything called the true lands or the Everlasting or the boundaries between them. Surely the tale was bigger than Damon.

  Gods, what I would give to know. Damon’s purpose—that piece of the mystery—had torn my life apart. But my head felt like an anvil. Somewhere deep between my brows the pain of Osriel’s ravaging yet lingered. Please gods, let that be all he’d left there.

  My fingers strayed to the bronze frame. The flowers and beasts wrought in its gleaming surface were exquisite, so real I could smell the sweetness of the blooming lavender and hear the mawk of the crow and the rustle of the vines. Veins and sinews heated as I touched a pair of dancers twined in an eternal arabesque.

  Without consideration, I reached deep, letting magic flow through my fingers . . .

  . . . and I near drowned in light and sound and sensation. Men in velvet gowns, women in embroidered caps or long scarves, and children decked out in ribbons of every hue danced through cobbled streets to rippling lutes and sawing vielles. Solstice fires blazed in healthy fields. Boisterous gaiety erupted in answer to sprays of brilliant fireworks against the night sky . . . shifting into whispered reverence. As the fireworks ceased and bonfires burned low, ears heeded fainter music, while lights of blue and sapphire flickered through veils of mist. . . .

  I strained to see. No, wait!

  The image vanished as if whipped by a sea gale, and still the deluge came. A quiet invasion from the distant east, impoverished Wanderers from the ancient homeland, their small magics used for thieving crops and horses, cattle and sheep, careless burning and rapine. Annoyances became years of violence. Vengeance that scarred the land. Riders in black tabards charged across the plains, whooping as they chased down the ragtag Wanderers. Lances of fire and ropes of light ensnared the wild ones—fierce men and women with curved blades and dangling earrings—and they were marched back to the city where pennons blazoned with the white tree flew. Shouts rang out: City of glory! All Hail, City of the Everlasting!

  In a blink, all vanished. But when I closed my eyes again, images and sounds and words raced across my mind’s canvas, blurred before I could grasp their story. Reason insisted I could control the chaos, but it could not tell me how. Yet only one thing could be its source—the furnace between my eyes pouring molten streams of magic down neck, shoulders, arms, and through my fingers. The magic of my blood. My bent.

  Exultant, I watched the sun blaze and listened to storms of years roll across mountains and plains. Only sensible to consider the mysteries that dogged me. Xancheira, Cicerons, Danae . . .

  A wintry gale howled through a ring of standing stones . . . curved blade and fire lance lay crossed on the center stone in the eternal sign of truce . . . blessings of peace rung in by cascades of joyous bells. Boughs of fir and yew on every lintel as the crowd gathered. Hosannas faded to awe as tall figures, male and female, skin scribed in sapphire light, laid their own solstice wreath atop the weapons. Meanings fluttered on the wind like prayer flags in mountain temples, like the return of birds in spring, like the first green of field and forest: a pledge . . . a promise of hope . . . a profound holiness shaped of generosity and mutual sacrifice. For the truest danger came from the south . . . from purebloods . . . from the Registry . . .

  Too soon that image faded, leaving eyes pricking and heart full, though I could explain none of it. Only time and peace might fit the pieces together. Meanwhile the flow continued. Towers rose above the town, markets bustled, and everywhere grew flowers of red and yellow . . . which too quickly yielded to hisses of anxiety and the roaring, blistering heat of a furnace, the acrid odor of molten bronze and a splash of bright enchantment.

  “Must have these ready tonight,” said a fading voice, as its owner tapped on a bronze frame just like the one my hand touched. “The archon will open the ways only a short time . . . the Wanderers must pass . . . until the time is right and they return with our salvation . . .”

  Before I could grasp the meaning of these things, my stomach lurched, and the world dropped out from under me. And when I opened my eyes, I was in a wholly different place.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Seasons have I waited to meet thee again, Lucian. I feared thee lost or broken, our hope failed.”

  The Dané sat on a narrow hilltop of emerald grass, pocked with white stones and buttercups. Her bare feet scarce bent a blade as she rose. The weighty gray-blue evening sky promised storm. Yet did it portend whirlwinds of epic magnitude, it could not rattle heart and bone like the sharp-edged silver of her gards.

  With all the grace I could muster after Voushanti’s beating, I bowed. “Envisia seru, Sentinel. Mortal danger stalks me every moment I am here, so before all I must ask: Where are they, those humans who traversed the portal two winters past? Are they safe?”

  A sea breeze teased my neck, ruffled the Dané’s drapery of spidersilk, and tangled her red-brown hair. Her green eyes, very like Morgan’s, glinted with silver lights as she examined me.

  “Protected, else what is Sanctuary?” But she did not smile. “Thy deed was worthy, knowing thine own passage was not yet possible. Indeed, the travelers have testified to thy quality.”

  “They took all the risk,” I said. “Such courage to step through. I doubt I helped with that.”

  “Thou didst send thy heart with them. Braver than sending thine own self.” Her fingers brushed my brow, shooting sparks into every part of me. “But if thou’rt in mortal danger, I deem it best not to tell where the travelers bide or aught that might betray us.”

  That, of course, made damnably good sense, though I’d no idea what she meant about my heart.

  “What is it you want of me?”

  “To set us free, of course. All of us—your kind and my own. Thou’rt the only one can do it. Come back when ’tis safe, and I’ll tell thee all.”

  “This place,” I said, pulling away so as to see our surroun
dings. “It’s real. . . .”

  For certain I no longer occupied a Navron cave with Osriel the Bastard. To the north the hillside descended into a folded landscape of grassy knolls, white-boned knees, and soft hollows that cupped ponds or lakes. At its foot, five white-ridged spits of land protruded into the heaving sea. Exactly as Bastien had described the landscape of my transports. The white hand.

  The view to the south revealed this hill to be isolate in a crescent bay. A short bar of land—the wrist of the hand—connected the hill and its spits to a rolling coast forested with new-leafed birches. The wrist was of a width that perhaps two horses could traverse it abreast. No horses were in sight anywhere, nor were towns or villages or any sign of human habitation.

  I’d no time to question. Every moment vanished from the chamber risked Osriel’s interest.

  “A great deal has happened since last we last spoke. I can’t remember how to go back or how I might visit you again. My magic doesn’t always bring me.”

  “It is my choice as sentinel whether to give thee entry, even when thy magic opens the boundaries. ’Tis often too great a risk, for the danger here grows mighty and terrible. Thou needs must find the surer way to come—the Path of the White Hand. Till then, I cannot let thee tread this land too long nor expend thy magic here nor draw upon the land to replenish it. Trapped wouldst thou be, unable to return to thine own lands until the Everlasting births another human of thy power and . . . quality.”

  “Trapped! Unable—”

  “I’ll send thee back.” Her fingers swept my eyelids closed.

  “Wait!” I said. “Before I go, lady . . . tell me your name and what you are.”

  “My name is Safia. I am summer evening light upon sweet grass. Sun and shadow.” Her sadness touched my heart, though I had no reason.

  Then her hand brushed my brow.

  • • •

  The dusty closeness of the cave cut off the sea wind. My eyes refused to open, for surely they’d see the bastard prince awaiting explanation. Bastien said I vanished for mere moments at a time. No one with Osriel’s skills could have missed the power of my bent, but had he noted my absence?

  “Now, historian, tell me your story.” The hooded man rested his back against the painted wall, faced in my direction, though direction and seeing seemed to have no connection where Osriel’s observation was concerned. “Complete this time.”

  “I should have warned you,” I said, as lies and half-truths, spells and diversions battled for primacy. What could I possibly say to blunt the malevolence filling the chamber like black smoke? Would the choke leash come next?

  “Warned?” Neither Osriel’s quiet intensity nor his manic shadows eased my jiddering gut. “Need I prove to you how sorely I take offense at deception?”

  “You need prove nothing, lord. Your deeds have witnessed both to your puissance and your strict requirements. My breath comes short already, even before I feel the noose.”

  I scrambled for ideas and words to express them. All I wanted was to get away from this devilish prince and consider every word and image of the last hour. That wasn’t going to happen easily, with Osriel ten steps away. Voushanti blocked the only way out, and if my vision had not failed me, the steel-capped warlord waited just behind him. And what use a blast of fire or even my last resort—the impenetrable wall enchantment—in this rat-trap of a chamber?

  “These years of exile have taught me much of my weaknesses, poor discipline, and self-indulgence. Did I babble obscenities, lord? Or curse at you, or gods’ save me, did I threaten you with violence or unseemly . . . intimacies?”

  “No.”

  Curse it, villain! Tell me what you saw. “Terrible aberrations that should have been trained out of me when I was a child seem to expose themselves when I probe deep-layered history. Please take this as no insult, Your Grace, but do you know how a historian’s bent presents?”

  “Sensory manifestations, so I understand, a rushing river of impressions derived from the object of study. And the historian’s skills must bind and constrain that river and its tributaries into—as you said—a story. Tell me the story.”

  I held up my hands as if they might diffuse his dangerous impatience. “There, you see, you’ve hit upon the other thing I failed to warn you of—my skills. You see, my superiors prisoned me for a matter of months. I was very close to madness. And whether from that or other circumstances, I lost my skills of interpretation. Imagine me standing in that river, as you so perfectly described it, and feeling it flow over, around, and through me without the ability to constrain it. Over these years of my exile—easy to understand the shame I brought upon my family—I’ve not improved them. Perhaps if we were to speak of what I experienced just now, a wise and knowledgeable prince might make sense of it. I’ve seen the city of Xancheira, I believe, and battles and peacemaking and even—I hesitate to say, lest you think I’m mad again—two Danae standing—”

  “Faugh!” bellowed the monstrous bodyguard. “Have you not heard enough of this babble, lord? He tells you only what you want to hear. Let me twist his neck twice around and perhaps he can find a word of explanation that is not a lie!”

  The prince stretched a grotesque finger Voushanti’s way, and with a single burst of scouring enchantment, dropped the big man to his knees. “I did not ask your advice, dead man. And do not speak of my desires again, lest I starve you.”

  When the finger swung round to me, I kept my palms spread and open. Did I touch my silver bracelets at that moment, I’d not have given a dried pea for my chances of taking another breath.

  “You saw two of the long-lived beyond this portal?”

  “Not beyond the doorway, lord, for as I said, it is blocked. I glimpsed them in an image drawn by my bent.” This was not the time for embellishment. Nor to ask him how he knew the term long-lived. I’d never heard it, save from Morgan and her kin. What would I dare risk to hear what he knew of the Danae and their true lands?

  The prince’s arms wrapped round his chest, squeezing as if to crush his human heart. His silence grated on my spirit worse than his threats. Nor did I know whether the pressure squeezing my own chest was his wrath or simple terror. But I dared not speak before he did.

  “Get him out of here.” Osriel waved that dreadful hand at the kneeling bodyguard. His voice, so smooth and cool, had taken on a heated roughness. “Ensure he takes no notion to leave us, for I would talk of vanished cities and mythical beings with this smooth-tongued historian. But my own dread master demands an accounting just now.”

  The stone beneath my boots trembled, and the dead cold chamber took on a furnace heat and a morbid shimmer that raised every hair on my body. I’d scarce choked back the invocation of my last resort, when Voushanti gripped my arm tighter than ever. The hawk-faced warlord stepped aside to let us pass, revealing the missing squire hiding his face in his hands. Had any adder brought to a market faire ever inspired such a careful dance as Osriel of Evanore?

  The iron-fisted Voushanti and I had not gotten so far as the thready remnants of the web enchantment when the prince called after us. “And then, historian, we shall strip you of your mask and your lies, and hear how it was you vanished as you stood in your river of magic.”

  It was well the prince called the warning. My greedy soul had already been contriving how I might learn what he knew before taking flight. But out on the seaward wall, Inek had warned me how it was hubris to taunt Serena Fortuna when she provided us a way out of an impossible situation. My life had value. I had answers the Order needed. And being in the grip of a devil, with an Evanori warlord and an angry Osriel the Bastard close behind, was as near impossible as I wished to visit.

  For a handful of moments when we emerged from the passage and the shadowed alcove, Voushanti and I were alone. As I knew he would, the furious bodyguard shoved me to the pitted floor. Controlling the fall, I rolled to my belly. With a touch of a br
acelet and a short burst of magic, a hand of flame shoved the bodyguard toward the rear wall. Another touch, another burst, and a whirlwind picked up dust and gravel and released it in the direction my finger told it—straight into the passage we’d just left.

  I leapt to my feet and ran, grinning as Voushanti roared. I’d shaped the fire spell to feed on a victim’s anger. The more furious Voushanti got, the hotter he would get and the more ferocious the pressure backing him to the wall. But an agonized scream from deep in the portal chamber quickly erased all childish pleasure. What unseen master tormented Osriel the Bastard?

  I bolted for the cavern mouth, eyes over my shoulder, cursing when my feet got tangled in a leather pannier left near the fire. My stumble knocked over a stack of fist-sized caskets of tarnished silver, tumbling their contents in the sand.

  Everlasting mercy!

  Eyes. The silver caskets had spilled out eyes cut from a human body, washed clean and wrapped in dread enchantment. Eyes that had once given light to a man’s knowing. That had looked on his lover or his children or the sun.

  Sky Lord’s wrath, what could make a man who had felt the pulse of divine magic in his veins resort to such profane cruelty? Many people believed the soul resided in the eyes. I hardly knew what I believed of gods and souls, but even with half a mind I knew the world’s glory shone through our eyes, as did its pain and despair, and every aspect that made us different from beasts.

  A rain-soaked evening waited beyond the cave mouth. I’d hoped for darkness, but charcoal sky and steady rain would serve for decent cover. I swung quickly round the masking wall onto the lakeside path. The horses were gone.

  My curses could have scythed a hay meadow. Without a mount to speed my escape, the path was now as dangerous a trap as the portal chamber. The two soldiers had been ordered to return to the lower end of the lake by sundown or forfeit their heads. I’d no reason to doubt they were there. Voushanti and the warlord could arrive at any moment. Osriel, too, if his accounting left anything of him. I needed to get off the path. Up or down; cliff or water.