by Carol Berg
All I could think to do was pass the inquiry to someone who might do what I could not. On a threat of withholding his pay, I conscripted Finn to make copies of all the notes he’d written and post them to Portier in distant Abidaijar. If the librarian could pull his head out of his saintly ass, he might be able to piece together something from it.
Not for the first time, I wished Portier had not chosen to seclude himself beyond the eastern borders of Sabria. Letters took a month or more to pass between. Yet, I could hardly blame him. Two years previous, de Gautier had crippled and drowned Portier, believing him a Saint Reborn who could not die until the holy purpose of his life was accomplished. Anne and I and Portier’s own resilient nature had kept him living. Though distance and secrecy likely kept him safe from any more madmen who wished to test his sainthood by killing him, I could use his good counsel.
Once the notes were dispatched to Portier, I forced the entire incident into my mind’s refuse heap, where the rest of my life was rapidly piling up.
LIFE SOON FELL INTO A dull rhythm. Finn and I finished patching the stable roof and set about other such chores we wished to complete before winter. I had notions of a baking oven. I didn’t dream of the woman or her emerald again, though I wasn’t fool enough to imagine it had been only a dream after all. The incident nagged at me like street boys. Lacking recourse, I muted their goads and snickers with sweat by day and spellcasting by night.
Anne wrote. I came near tossing the letter before unsealing it. I knew what it would say. She had arrived safely. Her father was yet living half in dream and half in truth; her mother was completely absorbed in his care. Without Ambrose, only Anne was left to see to the grapes and the tenants’ brats and the unending tasks of maintaining estates that diminished Pradoverde to the size of an anthill. She would have to stay longer than she planned. Perhaps until midwinter.
Finn’s halting reading revealed exactly those things. Only she proposed no specific end to her stay, and she remained mired in self-deception.
I practice spell construction every day, though I lack the nerve to bind them where you cannot protect me from errors. Your instructive voice is quite clear in my recollections.
I’ve decided to use Lianelle’s silver finger rings to create my own ancille. It will remind me that if my little sister could work with Mondragon magic, I can, too. Perhaps someday, I shall create a spell worth binding to them. Perhaps one to preserve her soul. (No, I am not content to wait until then.) Naturally, that will require my return to Pradoverde for further instruction.
Meanwhile, be merciful to Finn. Hire a reader from Laurentine. Maia Fuller’s boy is fifteen now, and very quick. And very brave. Tell him it will be a temporary position until the damoselle returns.
It is good to be here, but I miss my home at Pradoverde almost as much as I miss my friend of the aether. If you hear from him, tell him I said so.
Anne
I burnt the letter and did my best to drive her out of mind with work.
Every spare moment I devoted to my seeing spell. After a tenday with almost no sleep, I came up with a variation I could maintain for three hours running. I could make out no more than gross shapes in a landscape of ink, tar, and charcoal. No colors. No details. I could neither read nor distinguish faces or textures. And as before, the binding demanded every spit of power I could scrape together; thus I could work no other magic while I used it—or for hours after—a price only desperation could make me pay. Nonetheless, on the day I walked the entire perimeter of Pradoverde without touching a cairn, getting lost in the wood, or falling in the stream, I felt as if I’d vanquished the witchlords of Kadr for myself.
ON A CHILLY MORNING LATE in Desen’s month, more than a month after de Cuvier’s departure, I received another letter, forwarded from Castelle Escalon, yet originating from the unlikeliest of sources. I’d not seen my elder brother Andero since I was fourteen. When I knew him he could neither read nor write, and I would have wagered a fortune he was long dead.
Dante,
I don’t know how to address you, nor if your thoughts ever turn to us as knew you long ago. Like not, and none could blame you. A blowout at the forge has left Da hard broke and burnt. The old devil is not in his mind most days. But in or out, your name is ever in his mouth. This, after sixteen years without a whisper of it. He says an angel caused the fire to bring you back so he could pass you a message. I’ve no truck with dream angels, but I fear his shade will haunt us if he dies without you’ve come. Spare us that, little brother.
Andero
It was no sentiment for the man whose seed begat me that determined me instantly to go. Nor was it to soothe Andero’s anxiety, though he was the only member of my family I would cross a room to acknowledge. What spurred me was a pent-up dread in my gut, released to flood limbs and soul and mind at the mention of an angel who passed messages in dreams.
CHAPTER 4
PRADOVERDE
I was not what my father wanted in his sons. He had no sympathy for a life of the mind, no belief in anything more ephemeral than the fire and iron from which he molded his life. He was the headman of our village and a smith, a man of skills among men who ground their short lives away hacking coal from the rocks of Coverge. Yet he prided himself that he, like the rest of them, could scarce count the coins of his pay or the heads of his children. Like them, he drowned pain and poverty in ignorance, ale, and brutality.
I had learned early on not to speak of the whispers in my head. When I asked other children what they heard inside their heads, they called me ognapé—crazed, like miners whose skulls had been crushed by rocks. So I asked my mother what was wrong with me. She locked me in the cellar without food until I swore that I was lying. Two days it took me to “confess.” Naturally, my father beat me for the lies, and beat my mother for coddling them in me. My father was the most righteous of all those righteous villagers. I was five years old.
Books saved my life. Estebo Lemul, the mine steward’s son, had gone to school in Fadrici, the principal town of Coverge. He came home to Raghinne to marry a local girl and open a school, bringing a treasury of five books with him. My father would not allow his children to participate in such frivolity as education. It was pointless for boys destined for the mines, he said, or for girls destined to bear miners’ children or go whoring in the remotest mining camps. That meant no other miner’s child went to school, either. As Estebo’s wife would not leave her mother, Estebo was left to dig coal or starve. I spent every moment I could with him…until he died coughing up blood and coal dust. He was nineteen and left me his books.
As I neared fourteen, the voices in my head grew incessant. Half crazed with the noise, forever angry, my growing body entangled in hungers none bothered to explain, I discovered I could force my will upon younger children—to give me their bread or throw stones at each other instead of me. On the day an outburst of rage caused fire to blossom from my hand, I became convinced the Souleater had chosen me to join his legion of the Fallen. Desperate, I sought help from my father, hoping that because I spent long hours at the forge each day, working at his side, he would tell me the right prayers to save my soul.
His face had been red and sweating, as pitted and scarred as his leather apron. The heat from the forge throbbed in time with the pulsing of my blood, the fear inside me swollen near to bursting. But with fury that near split my skull, he called me daemon-spawn and promised to thrash the wickedness out of me so thoroughly I would never again speak my own name, much less such deviltry. He beat me with a knotted rope he kept for hobbling mules.
When I regained my senses, the smithy fires were banked and dim. The shabby bindings of my precious books lay empty beside the great furnace. Their pages were ash.
I could not run away that night. I could scarce crawl up to the loft I shared with Andero and two younger brothers. In truth, anywhere I knew to run, Da could find me and drag me home.
For a year I spoke not a word to anyone. I yet believed I was daemon-posses
sed, but I knew I was not as wicked as my own father, who was judged a respectable citizen. I worked hard and grew stronger and ever more skilled at smithing, determined to supplant my father and watch him wither in this life, even if I was destined to become the Souleater’s smith and forge daemon chains in the next.
When I was almost sixteen, Da came by a few slips of silver from a dying bandit and schemed to coat some pewter slugs with silver and sell them as “magical charms” at Jarasco market. He set me to cast the slugs. As I poured the slugs, the molten pewter encountered moisture in the mold—the mold I had checked three times to make sure it was dry. The pour erupted like a newly waked volcano, spewing scalding metal over my right hand.
My mother coated my hand with herbs and pig fat, and Da bound it tight. Out of my head with pain, I did not question that a smith and his woman knew how to treat a burn. On the day we finally unwrapped the bandages, my favored hand was a clawed ruin and my prospects as smith or miner or laborer were over. I left Raghinne that same day. I pierced my finger and dripped blood on the dirt as I walked past the last house, uttering a curse and a vow never to go back.
I COULD NOT PUT THE phrases of my brother’s letter out of mind. The coincidence was like a cannon shot that crumbled my defenses and lodged iron in my bowels. Body and mind demanded I head north.
Which brought me to the dilemma of travel. Though I despised the idea of taking a minder to lead my horse, choose my bed, and point me where to piss, it seemed my only choice. The thought of hiring a stranger for the task left me ready to vomit. But Finn was the only person I knew roundabout, and even if the lad were willing to go, I needed him to finish the work at Pradoverde before winter settled in, to see to Anne’s horses…and to be at the house when she realized she wanted her beasts and the rest of her things sent on to Montclaire.
A simple locator spell planted in the mind of a random traveler might keep me from riding off a cliff. But of course I’d be left alone and powerless should my guide decide to die of wound fever or alter his route or snatch my purse. Though I’d studied maps of Sabria, I’d traveled very little. In a practical sense I was as ignorant of the roads of Sabria as a bondsman who’d never left his master’s land.
And whether I followed someone by magic, or buried pride and hired a nursemaid, the individual choice bore its own dangers. The law—the Concord that set the peace between king and Camarilla Magica—forbade me hide my mage collar. I was on rocky enough ground with the King of Sabria that I dared not be caught at so brazen a violation. That meant I needed a companion who wasn’t going to stick a knife in me because his brats had died from inept healing charms or because her granny’s fertility potion had gotten the crone whipped by the Camarilla.
More dangerous, if word dribbled out that Dante, the mad mage of Castelle Escalon, was away from his own demesne, unprotected, I could have a gaggle of Merona’s outraged citizens in pursuit. Three times in the last year, the Temple had petitioned the king to hand me over to their discipline. Thus far, he had not allowed it, thank the fates. I’d seen what happened when a whip-flayed man was hung in a market square as rat fodder. I needed a minder who could handle a weapon.
Gods, what a mess! Half a day juggling vile alternatives set my hands shaking and heated spikes piercing my spine. I needed to be on my way.
“Get out of here,” I snapped at Finn, shoving aside the tray of food he’d brought me. “Don’t come back till sunset. If you see the house in ashes or my head smashed against the anvil, find another employer.”
Needing no second hint, he ran. Anne somehow managed to channel my frustrations into work. She had a quiet, serious way of posing complicated little questions that sucked the vigor of my anger like a vacuum pump sucked air from a bell jar. But someday my daemonish temper was going to bring down the roof on our heads. No mystery why her family would send a son to war to keep her away from me.
I retreated to the small forge Finn and I had set up with clamps and guides and precise placement so that I could do small tasks on my own. I pumped the bellows as if to raise the fires of Vanyek, the Daemon Smith. With infinite care and focus, so as to preserve what parts of my body yet worked, I spent the afternoon pounding hot iron into useless shapes.
By evening, I had exhausted both muscles and mind. But when Finn came creeping back at sunset, I was ready to dictate a message. I had a plan.
“TO COVERGE? SAINTS AWAITING, MAGE, what amusements could one possibly find there? As everyone knows, I am devoted to adventurous travel, as long as there are no dreadful beasts to be found along the way. But I’ve heard there’s not a decent hostelry in that entire demesne. Even the duc and his demesne lords refuse to live there. And at the very onset of winter? We’ll frost our bones! Well, you’ve all your mysterious fires and smokes to keep yourself warm, but—”
“Hear me out, Chevalier,” I said, straining my patience through gritted teeth. The peacock lord had arrived earlier that morning, scarce five days from Finn posting my letter, and I was already prepared to incinerate him. “You’ve told me repeatedly that you owe me a debt for preserving your sister’s virtue. I never thought to claim it, as any sensible person would understand that pure necessity, not benevolence, determined my course. But I am without recourse. This is not a matter of pleasure travel, but of…family. A mortal illness. I cannot delay.”
Ilario de Sylvae, the most ridiculous human being I had ever met, sagged into Anne’s chair like a grain sack dropped from a loft. The rustle of satin and lace, the chink of jeweled chains and pendants, and the stink of perfume painted the spindly popinjay’s portrait more vividly than any paint dauber. “Well, that’s another matter entirely.”
Without going into the unwholesome state of my family bonds, I recounted the message from my brother and detailed the unpleasant necessity for not only a nursemaid but a bodyguard. I did not mention angels who spoke in dreams or visions of the world’s ruin.
“Naturally, there’s no need for you to suffer the journey yourself, lord. Your Captain de Santo, should you allow him leave to go, comes highly recommended.”
As always, the stalwart soldier had accompanied Ilario but remained outdoors, ever uncomfortable at visiting Anne’s house. The Gautier conspirators had set up de Santo as a scapegoat for royal assassination. Anne’s father had fallen for the ploy, stripping the captain of rank and cropping his ears—a disgrace that would follow the man to his grave. Yet after only a few words from Portier, the captain had allied himself with the king’s party. Honor, Anne called it, a word that carried far more meaning to those grown up in privilege than to those who hadn’t.
“But of course I must collaborate in such a venture!” chirped Ilario. “A Chevalier y Sabria cannot leave the unpleasant duties to his underlings, no matter how brave and loyal. And indeed where brigands are concerned, an extra pair of eyes—” He almost strangled himself trying to choke back the words.
“Exactly so,” I said, as calmly as I could spew anything.
It was annoying that I could not get angry with the lackwit. He was Anne’s great friend. At least once every month he arrived full of court gossip and took Anne out horse riding to share it. It always cheered her. His inanity had somehow endeared him to the king, as well, and to Portier, which made no sense at all. But that was why, six years past, I had used Ilario to convince them of my alliance with de Gautier. I’d meant only to put on a great show by damaging the chevalier a little. But I had ever been convinced Ilario was himself a deceiver. As I worked the magic to contain him, such a rage had grown in me that in trying to knock the lies out of him, I had come very near killing him. The fool had never raised his hand to resist.
The episode left me squirming when I thought of it. I had to respect his choice to come here in Anne’s absence. Honor again, perhaps, even in a moron.
So I swallowed my anxiety along with the excuses six years had made neither reasonable nor palatable. “Chevalier, I regret the severity—”
“Stop, stop, stop!” He pounded his walki
ng stick on the floor. “You did what was needed to foil the dastardly conspirators. Though, truly, I’ve never understood even the most crass villains desiring a world where food flies off of tables, boats plummet into oceans’ depths, and silkworms turn out kersey. And, by the holy saints, to think we might have seen crocodiles crawling about in houses…” A long gulping sound ensued. The wine cup Finn had brought him was surely dry.
“So when might Captain de Santo—and you, of course, as you wish—be able to go?”
“Unsure of your need and the length of my absence, I arranged with a gentle-mannered householder, the Baronet Montmorency de Froux, to attend my sister’s ladies. And I’ve left my ever-reliable man, John Deune, in the village, as I know you prefer to keep private, but in the matter of an hour I can dispatch him to acquire the necessaries for travel to be delivered along our road. In short, mage, at your word we ride north.”
“All right, then.” I gathered my wits as if a whirlwind had scattered them across the landscape. “Half an hour. Dispatch your message, refresh yourself…and the captain, too. Then we’ll go.”
