by Carol Berg
“Why have you not told me of this, Siever?” said Signé, cold as the stone. “Why has no one tried it?”
“Certain, we tried it! Many times over, when the elder mages yet lived with grace. Benedik studied everything known about the gates and the Severing void, and when he reached his maturity, he tried everything to open a way. But it was already too late. None could summon power enough to budge it after the Severing. It was never supposed to be easy. The long-lived didn’t want us making frivolous journeys through the true lands.”
“Will Kyr detect the magic?” I said, as my gaze took in handle and hinges, so like the ones that had brought me here.
“He’ll question me next time I go out,” said Signé, drawing her fingers over the bronze. When the handle did not yield to her touch, she yanked her hand away. “He does not come inside, but he knows we have magical artifacts inside the citadel. I’ll tell him something. If it’s a massive enchantment and we do it often, he’ll worry.”
“I hope we’ll use it again very soon,” I said. Then I turned to Signé and bowed, touching my fingers to forehead. “It has been an honor to meet you, my lady. Whatever happens here, know that I’ll not rest until—”
“Luka!” The faint call and running footsteps echoed through the caverns. “Where are you?”
Siever laughed from where he’d propped himself against the wall. “Benedik used to say that bold, clever younger sisters were the gods’ greatest aid to a man’s humility.”
“You should go,” said Signé, jerking her head at the portal. “To see you again will make the separation no easier. You can’t even promise her you’ll survive this.”
Signé was likely right, yet I had left my sister behind in so many ways. Without knowing my reasons for sending her here alone, I couldn’t even say I’d had no choice. I waited.
“Oh!” She carried a lamp and halted abruptly at the first storage chamber, her face riven with horror. “This is just like what Coroner Bastien told me. What are you doing down here, Luka? Signé, you’re not imprisoning him?”
“Certainly not,” said the lady, more patient than I expected of her. “We’ve found a doorway your brother thinks will take him back where he came from.”
“Well, I’m not going with you”—a frown twisted Juliana’s fine features—“though it appears you weren’t planning to take me.”
“No.”
“I’m not afraid.”
An unlikely grin threatened to break out. I smothered it, not wishing to insult her. “I never imagined it, serena. But you were determined not to leave your friends here. I am determined to find a way to get everyone away who wishes to go, so I’ve no fear to leave you here a bit longer.”
“So who is going with you?” she said. “Bek offered, when I told him. You likely don’t remember him either—Bek the surgeon, less unsavory and more intelligent than he appears?”
“I can’t take anyone with me,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve never done this, and I’m not sure . . . I may end up stuck here, too. Either way, here or there, there’s a great deal I’d like to talk with you about.”
Her frown only deepened.
“But if you don’t take anyone with you, then next time you’ll want to take only one person as a test, which means you’ll have to come a third time to actually get anyone out, and if there’s any delay . . .” Eyeing Signé and a bemused Siever, Juliana took on that kind of expression people use when they want to say more, but daren’t say it aloud. “They are having a terrible time with the food supply, and I just had this idea that perhaps you would take one. It would have to be someone braver than me, because I’m not sure I would go with you even if you wanted me to.”
“Dost thou imply, young woman, that I should venture this crossing, being wholly useless to my lady as I am?” Siever’s dying eyes sparked like shooting stars on a clear midnight.
“Well, it certainly should be someone who can help Luka figure out what he needs to do. Perhaps it might get him back sooner than all these months just gone since we came here.”
Siever and Signé glanced at each other—their silent exchange an entire conversation filled with logic and emotion and apology. My young sister had spoken what they could not. If I failed to get Siever across, he was no more dead than elsewise. No matter what vows he had made to his lord or his lord’s sister, he could do naught more valuable than help me. But it was not my place to speak first.
And so Signé did. “There is merit in Juliana’s suggestion. Every invocation of magic will draw Kyr’s notice. Thus every invocation must move us nearer a solution. And Remeni will need more information if he’s to formulate a plan for the Wanderers’ recovery.”
Now it was my turn. “I cannot promise safety, Lord Siever”—indeed I would have to depend on Fix’s forbearance to conceal him—“but I’m willing to try, and I’d welcome your advice going forward. The women’s argument is intelligent.”
Siever sank to one knee and laid fist on his breast. “My Lady Signé, allow me to do this service for my lord Benedik and his people.”
Signé laid a hand on Siever’s scant hair. “Go with the blessings of all gods, dear friend. I shall count the hours till thy return, and all of Xancheiros shall sing thy courage and honor until the last day of the world.”
“And if all goes well, my lady . . . what of the cache?”
“If you are well enough to go chasing myths, you are welcome to do so. But I’d rather you live and be at peace, whether there . . . or here.” Signé glanced at me, burying emotion in severity. “You, Lucian de Remeni, have a care with my chancellor.”
I inclined my back. “You, lady, have a care with my sister. I’ll have your chancellor back before she can get notions of filling his office herself.”
A hint of a smile illumined Signé’s face. Even without her terrible scar, she’d be no transcendent beauty, nor did she shed warmth like Morgan’s sun. I couldn’t even call her friend. Yet even so slight a transformation filled me with unnamable pleasure.
For the very satisfied Juliana I could find no words, but pressed her hand to my brow, wishing memory could flow like magic through her fingers. Then, motioning for Siever to stand behind me and hold on to my waist, I faced the door. Truly, taking someone through this door should not be more difficult than taking myself. I hoped.
A deep inhale to settle my spirit. Then I laid a hand on the smooth, unyielding handle and one on a hinge and reached deep into my two wells of magic. Head and heart. Magic only; no visions, no history, no art. I reached for Evanide, my home. For a chance at life for the man behind me. For a chamber filled with the detritus of human striving . . .
As the magic welled from inside and became a tidal onrush worthy of Evanide, I heard Siever gasp . . . or sob. But I could pay him no mind. Will released the flood through my fingers, the handle yielded, the door swung open, and the two of us plummeted into the breathless void.
CHAPTER 27
Again the endless fall through night and boundless silence. As before, my senses served up nothing, yet when my armless panic reached for Siever . . . there was surely a difference. Though splintering and starved for air, I was not alone. I should have learned more of him, so as to hold him firmer. What gift formed you before this long dying? Did you have a chance to experience greater magic? Did it shred your soul to lose it? Is it only duty that keeps you holding on? Or is it the Lady Signé? What is she . . . so hard . . . who thinks herself dead and the world’s end within reach, yet gentles a tree with her singing? Are you her lover?
We hit damp, close air that stank of blood and piss and boiling herbs. In the moment my body possessed arms again, I reached behind and pulled my bony, slumping companion into my embrace. As we slammed into slick stone and slid into a wall, I twisted round and absorbed what I could of the impact. A piercing pain in my back suggested a sword had been sticking out of the wall.
Eve
n as the world spun, I knew this was not the crypt. For a moment, as I sucked in air and extracted my bruised head from the limp tangle of fleshless limbs, I thought we were back in the atrium of Xancheira’s citadel. Yellow light squeezed my seeing to a squint.
But the light was sun glare spilling through an embrasure. And between me and the embrasure, a man with spiky red hair and a bandage around half his head sat gawking down at Siever and me, whose feet were lost somewhere under the sling bed. “Sky Lord’s balls,” he croaked. “Thought I was done with visions.”
The spiky-haired man collapsed backward, groaning. Snores and faint moans accompanied him on every side. A dreadful hacking cough was addressed by an abrasive voice, saying, “Drink this, tyro, or I’ll pour it down your nose.” Adjutant Tomas. We’d come to the infirmary.
I shook my limp companion’s shoulder gently, and whispered, “Are you with me, lord? We’ve come to the right place, though likely at the wrong time.”
The Xancheiran was dreadfully still. I rolled him over and ripped through his tattered shirt and felt his stuttering heart. “Come on, man, breathe. We’ve food can nourish you here. But it’s going to look awkward if the fellow I’m hauling about is dead.”
A spasm shivered his protruding ribs. “Lightwork,” he rasped, eyes yet closed. “Yes. Yes. No. Yes. She is an exceptional spirit. In another life.”
His whispered answers to my questions from the crossing brought a grin to my face. I slipped on the mask from my belt, then peeked over the bed to see Adjutant Tomas’s back at his linen cupboard. No time for caution.
Like a spider I skittered across the room. All blankets were in use, so I snatched two cloaks from the hook by the outer door, raced back, and dived into the space between the sling bed and the wall.
As I bundled Siever in the damp wool, I whispered, “Imagine you’re drunk . . .”
The infirmarian’s heavy tread crossed from the linen cupboard to the row of beds.
“. . . now.”
Without a pause, I heaved Siever over my shoulder and marched briskly across the room, his long body shielding my head from everyone’s view.
“Lazy lackwit of a tyro!” I growled. “Woolly head’s not going to keep you from a dunking! You’re into the deep every hour for the next ten. Swim or die. Might drown you apurpose . . .”
My blather was joined by a croaking bellow from inside the bundle. “Merry, merry, Cilla, show me thy toe. A glimpse of thy sweetness before I must go. Merry, merry, Cilla, show me thy leg. A taste of thy kneecap, else sure I must beg . . .”
By the time we had requested a sniff of Cilla’s neck, I had poor Siever tucked amid the coal sheds and wood stores behind the kitchens. The hidden spot had been my refuge over the years when I could not bear the sight or sound of my guide, trainer, or comrades for one more moment. The niche was sheltered, though not exactly dry; few places at Evanide could make that claim. At least it wasn’t raining. I’d rather have taken him straight to Fix, but mid-morning in the busy fortress was not a time to be hauling around a body you didn’t want anyone to see, alive or dead. I’d had to dodge and hide ten times to get even so far as this.
“Much as I would love to hear more of Cilla’s parts, we’d best stay quiet,” I said, as I made sure I had him right side up and breathing. “Are you all right?”
His skin was gray, his cheeks fevered, his breaths harsh. “I’ll tell thee in a while. Merciful—” He broke into a racking cough. I laid both borrowed cloaks over him.
“None will bother us out here,” I said, when the spasm eased, “and I’ll get you somewhere better soon. Warmer. Drier. But first something to drink, I think.”
He bobbed his head.
“I’ll be back as fast as I can. And, if you please, dead strangers are even more trouble than live ones. Besides . . . I need you to tell me what lightwork is.”
As I rose, his hand gripped my ankle. “Thy magic, Lucian de Remeni . . . ’tis a glory to banish grief.”
“I pray it can,” I said. “But we’d best get something in our bellies to feed our magics, yes? We’ve both got work to do.”
The smell of bread near had me on my knees as I hurried through the deserted Hall toward the kitchen. No one was guarding the stocks, so I stuffed an entire still-warm loaf into my jaque, filled a mostly clean flask from the cider barrel, and dipped broth from the never empty pot on the hob into the biggest mug I could find. No cheese at hand, but I spooned a heap of beechnut paste onto a leaf and stuffed it into my jaque atop the bread. With a furtive glance to ensure no one had followed me in, I scurried back the way I’d come.
It seemed that naught but two or three hours had passed since I sat in this Hall staring into fish stew, so tired I couldn’t remember what it was. But the sun through the clerestory spoke of late morning. If Morgan’s seven-to-one estimates held for Xancheira, then it was only a half day gone since I’d left the crypt. Everyone would be at their proper business for a day following a grueling exercise—cleaning arms and armor, healing, mourning, training hard to repair the mistakes that were made. Some of the knights would be out on mission already; they’d surely give the rest of us time to heal and learn before sending us to war. But I had troubles enough for the nonce.
My charges, Dunlin and Heron, would think I was with the Marshal. I’d given no thought to Inek; I couldn’t even say whether he yet lay in the corner of the overcrowded infirmary.
Fix would not be waiting for me in the crypt, but likely down at the docks this time of day, yelling at squires to get the boats swabbed and stored in proper order.
The Marshal would expect my report on the last sixteen days. The dunking in the Sanctuary pool had left me as damp as fourteen hours previous, as well as stinking, unshaven, dizzy from depletion, and weary to the bone. The Marshal would notice I’d not cleaned myself or rested.
But a man was sitting out in the rocks dying, and the means to aid him were in hand. Perhaps a small thing beside war and conspiracy to reshape pureblood life in Navronne. But it had to come first.
“Greenshank!” The call caught me as I was heading into the passage to the outside.
“Squire?”
I considered ignoring the squire, a man I didn’t know, but squires were often detailed to carry the Marshal’s messages.
“The Archivist would see you as soon as possible. And as I was searching for you, I spoke to your cadre second, who was also in search of you. He says you’re to report to the Marshal at sixth hour as usual. And paratus”—I was already turned to go before I slopped the hot broth on my hand or had the loaf leap out of my clothes—“did you know your back is bleeding?”
“It’s just seepage.” Slamming into the infirmary wall must have torn the stitches. “Tell the Archivist I’ll be in as soon as I complete my current task. And if you run into anyone else hunting me, tell them I’m seeing to an injured comrade.”
Skeptical, he frowned and pointed to my back. “Uh . . . it’s a deal of seepage. Mayhap you’ve lost enough blood it’s gone numb. I could look. . . .”
“Be off, squire. I’m well.” Or I would be if I could numb the damnable wound, which was hurting like the devil, and if I could get some food in Siever and me, then get the man to Fix . . . The list of tasks I had to do before I could sleep for even an hour was impossibly long. And I needed sleep before I could possibly address how to undo a severing in the foundation of the world, transform a forest back into human persons, and figure out what deviltry Damon thought to do with me.
Siever was curled up in the niche, shivering.
“Sorry it took me a bit,” I said, trying to shelter him from the wind. “If you can sit up, this might be something other than frigid.”
“Is this w-winter?” He snugged the cloaks tighter. “Or are we c-come to the lands of wolves, b-bears, and fur-beasts?”
I eased down beside him and tried to smile, despite a most unpleasant
stretching of the wound on my back, accompanied by oozing warmth. “Kemen Sky Lord and Mother Samele seem to have had a falling-out over the last few years and forgotten to tend the seasons. Every season turns out winter. Drink this first.”
I held on to the mug of broth until I was sure he had firm hold of it. He sipped slowly. Meanwhile I gripped the cider flask between my legs and pulled out the bread, somewhat damp and squashed, and the folded leaf—which had leaked out half its contents inside my shirt. My own hands were none too steady.
“I think I’m wearing my share of this stuff,” I said, pulling off a hunk of bread and dipping it in the paste, “but I’m not generous enough to give you all of it. Besides, a starving man shouldn’t put down too much at once, yes?”
“Depends on why he’s starving.” He took long swallow of the broth, then sighed as if he’d tasted the juice of Estigurean oranges. “We can eat as much as we want. It just tastes like clouds and satisfies the same. The citadel-grown plants prolong the inevitable, but sooner or later our bodies figure it out. So this delectable feast may not change anything. Which”—he scowled fiercely—“you will not bemoan like those soft-headed women.” He took another sip and reverted to his former beatific expression. “But I’ll say, this tastes like the Goddess Mother’s own homely brew, and I will have a bit of that bread to soak in it. Maybe not that brown mess . . . whatever it is. I don’t know that I could tolerate that in the best of times.”
I passed him a small knob of bread; I still thought it unwise for him to overdo. His gut might not be able to handle what his mouth craved. I precluded such an unfortunate circumstance by cramming three-quarters of the loaf, all the nut paste, and half the cider into my own gut, which appreciated them very much. That took about five heartbeats. Then I scrambled to my feet.
“I’ve got to leave you again for a while. I’d hoped to get you to better shelter, but everyone’s looking for me, and only one man here knows anything about my strange connection with your city. It must stay that way.”
