Flesh and Spirit tld-1

by Carol Berg

  Gram blew out a great puff of air as if he did the same, though his precarious state seemed more related to his testy lord. “Please excuse my master, Brother. He is in a most difficult position, his life forever balanced on a knife edge. Those things he would do to right matters—deeds he has trained for his entire life—slide ever farther out of his reach.”

  “Because he conspires against his own lord, the Bastard Prince?”

  No matter whether Osriel himself came to power—Kemen Sky Lord protect us from such a pass—whichever of the other two brothers became king would need to make alliance with the Bastard Prince to prevent his rival doing the same. Evanori lords who had failed in fealty to Osriel would be safe nowhere.

  Gram’s gaunt features twisted into a wry mask. “Indeed, that’s a part of it.”

  He tapped the page again. “So, to our problem: We have learned that this particular map will lead us to a location of great importance, a place where we can leave a message. Those who must receive the message live nearby, but we aren’t sure exactly where. And we need their help. But we’ve had no more luck with this map than with the one to Clyste’s Well. And so, again we ask your assistance.”

  “But if they live nearby, surely this Edane Groult—”

  “Edane Groult has no dealings with these neighbors,” said the secretary dryly. “He would not recognize them were they to sit on his shoes. Or if he did, then his aged heart would stop.”

  My skin began to creep. How far did Abbot Luviar’s arrogance of intellect take him? If he could redirect a man’s loyalty to his prince, what could he do with a man’s loyalty to his god?

  “What neighbors might these be, living so close to the cursed land?” I said, sounding bolder than I felt. “I am pledged to holy Iero’s service…”…and to Kemen’s and Samele’s and that of all and any gods and goddesses who allowed men to keep their skin and balls and fingernails and enjoy life without excessive torment. Unlike Magrog the Tormentor. The Adversary.

  Gram lowered his head for a moment, as if in prayer, then lifted it again and glanced at me, though not so far lifting or so long glancing as to confront me as an honest man. “Good Brother Valen, we propose to deal with neither the Bastard Prince nor the Adversary nor their demonic lackeys, I promise you. Tell me, have you not read the inscription carved above your abbey’s gates?”

  “When I entered the gates of Gillarine, I was in no state to be reading anything, Master Gram,” I snapped. I had the sense he was patronizing me behind his quiet manner, so like a monk himself. I didn’t like it.

  “The inscription says, The earth is God’s holy book.” He said this softly and with sincere reverence. Without hint of superior laughter.

  “I’ve heard the abbot say that,” I said. In point of fact, out of all the prayers and mumblings I’d heard throughout my stay at Gillarine, it had been one phrase that made sense to me. It spoke of worth in common things where others saw naught. And it recalled the words of the sanctuary blessing: by Iero’s grace…by gift of earth…by King Eodward’s grant… And now these men spoke of holy wells. Of hidden trees. Of unseen neighbors whose presence might stop a man’s heart. Of my grandfather’s maps that could guide men to—

  I stared at Gram. His dark head was bent over the book, only a swath of his wide forehead visible. A lock of dark hair had fallen forward, but surely underneath it, his eyes would be wild and fervent. Holy men. Madmen. I fought to keep sober. “By my soul, you’re hunting angels!”

  He was too intent upon his folly even to blush. “Not precisely. We believe there’s been some confusion through the years. Your god may send angel messengers to tend our souls and guard us from temptation, but care of the earth is charged to other beings. Their stories have been told for as long as men have sat around fires under the stars. They live in realms of earth, not heaven, protecting and enriching the land they walk—that we walk—yet ordinary men cannot find the way to their dwelling places, save by luck or magic. Somehow, the pureblood cartographer who drew these maps could discover them whenever he chose, using only his pureblood bent. And now, using one of his maps, you have opened the way to one of their most hallowed places.”

  Struggling to keep from laughing at his sincerity, I touched the naked figures that supported the ribbonlike borders at the map’s four corners. One was the aingerou my grandfather had stuck into every drawing in the book, claiming he did so because I was so fond of them. But the other three figures, two male, one female, poised on toes, legs stretched and bent as if dancing on the page, were no round-bellied imps, but tall and graceful with perfect bodies and flowing red curls. Angels, one might say, though they had no wings. This all began to make some sort of perverse sense. “You speak of the Danae.”

  Gram stood up, pulling his billowing cloak tight. “The long-lived have retreated far from humankind. They may be extinct, as reports claim. But a reliable source tells us that if we leave an offering at this tree before the sun reaches the zenith, a Dané will surely come at nightfall to fetch it, if even one yet exists. Then we could present our petition.”

  A surge of good humor threatened to plaster a grin on my face. I brought my hand up as if to mask a cough. “An offering…so you’ve brought nivat seeds to buy a parley.” For if the Danae loved feast bread flavored with nivat, lore said they would bargain gems to obtain a quantity of the seeds. Nivat no longer grew in the wild.

  “Yes. But first we must find the tree.”

  I breathed gratitude to Serena Fortuna and controlled my excitement, bending my head over the map again lest he mark my improved humor. “A marvel that would be, Gram, to discover the Danae after so long. I’ve doubts I can help you, but with Iero’s grace, I’ll see what I can do.”

  The wind blustered, snatching at our hair and cloaks and the fine vellum. I smoothed the page and held it to prevent its tearing or wrinkling. My fingers tingled and pricked as I brushed over the inked drawings. Spellcraft, certainly, as much a part of this book as compass roses.

  I rotated the book to the left and then to the right, allowing my eyes to travel the lettered border and my lips to move slightly—Gram was watching very closely. Then I laid a finger on the bridge approach and dragged it to the branch point of the path whence the roots of the great tree spread like a spider’s web across the painted hillside. All the while my mind was racing, sorting through the magical tricks that pureblood children learn as they learn to breathe and walk. If only I had listened better to my despised tutors.

  “I don’t think we can find this tree where it is not,” I said. “But when I touch the roots on this page…perhaps…” Leaving the prospect dangling, I shut the book and gave it back to Gram.

  I would need a few things to make this work. When I stood up and stepped a few quattae to my left, I made sure Gram could not see what my foot encountered. “Do you accompany me this time?”

  He bowed in acknowledgment. “One moment, if you would. Lord Stearc would join us as well.”

  While he hurried off to fetch the thane, I reached down and grabbed the wadded canvas provision bag underneath my foot and stuffed it up my sleeve. Then I began to prepare a small voiding spell, the finest boon for a boy who wished to hide purloined items—wine, coins from his father’s purse, his mother’s divining cards, his man-smitten sister’s love philtres, or his brother’s prized knife. Strolling through the clutter of broken marble, I also sought a plant of some kind…Ah, there! Tucked up beside a boulder-sized chunk grew a scrabbling astelas vine. Astelas had nice spreading, hairy roots.

  The others were returning from the bridge. Cupping my hands to my breast, I dropped to my knees, bent forward, and touched my forehead to the earth. Thanks to the summer’s incessant rains, which had left the ground damp and pliable, I was able to pull up the astelas, roots intact. Before rising from my prayerful posture, I stuffed the plant up my sleeve alongside the bag.

  At a respectful distance, my companions waited for me to complete my devotions. The first spell structured and waiting, I clos
ed my eyes long enough to prepare a second—this one an inflation, the simplest kind of illusion. When it was ready, I rose and joined the others.

  “One thing before we go,” I said. “As I prayed Iero to guide our steps, I recalled that each time I’ve used the book, neither human nor beast has accompanied me. Perhaps that circumstance has somehow contributed to the successful outcome.”

  “The book says nothing of such a practice,” said Gram, “but we can certainly lag behind, if you believe it might help. It’s almost midday. If our first attempt should fail, we’ve no time for another today.”

  “Exactly my thought,” I said, delighted at his practical reasoning.

  “Just get on with it,” said Stearc. Was the man ever other than angry and snappish? “We can walk. Corin can bring up the horses. We’re no womenfolk needing to be coddled.”

  I refrained from smiling or glancing at Elene, who had drawn up her hood. “All right then.”

  As I strode briskly across the hillside, I honed my spells, straining to recall the nuances of skills so long unused. I could afford no explosions or sparks this time. I also plucked the leaves and stem from the astelas, scattering the bits and pieces of greenery by dropping them between my cowl and gown so they drifted to the ground as I walked. By the time I reached the cairn, only a thick clump of roots remained of the plant inside my sleeve.

  As I knelt beside the pile of stones, I quickly traced an arc on the lichen-covered stone from the earth to a point a handsbreadth above the ground and back down again, allowing magic to flow through my hands into the voiding spell. The substance of the stone retracted—squeezed aside, as to say—to create the void hole, a gap in the side of the cairn. I reached in and scrabbled in the earth, spreading and burying the astelas roots as best I could.

  Now the second spell—the inflation. Magic swelled and passed through my tingling fingers into the buried roots. Trusting that I had remembered enough, I unraveled the voiding spell to close the gaping hole. A gamble, this. To use the bent as I’d sworn not to do. To spend power that I would need within days. But to throw such an opportunity back into Serena Fortuna’s face was surely more risky yet. I rose and waited for the others to arrive.

  “I see no tree,” said Stearc, planting his hands on his waist, uncomfortably near his weapons. Gram and Elene flanked him, the secretary paler than ever, the woman flushed and rosy after tethering their horses a few hundred quercae up the hill, then running to rejoin us.

  “Though the cairn is not shown on the map, the map spell led me straight to it,” I said, feigning puzzlement. “Each step away from it jibes wrong.”

  “The tree should be here,” said Gram, crouching low to examine the cairn. “We should be able to see and touch it as Gildas saw and touched Clyste’s Well. The journal speaks of the Sentinel Oak as a meeting place of the two planes.”

  The cairn bore no markings. The rocks had likely been piled up to mark the path when snows lay deep. The secretary’s long thin fingers brushed the stone and earth around the cairn. He looked up. “My lord, come. There’s something here…”

  I stepped back, allowing Stearc a place to kneel beside his secretary. “Take down the stones,” he said. “Corin, come. Lay to it.”

  Elene and the two men dismantled the cairn before I could breathe another prayer. And there, protruding from the ground, was the rough-hewn stump of a modest-sized tree. Its dead roots, a nice thick, woody spread modeled from the astelas roots, poked from the earth here and there. I felt as proud as a father must upon viewing a new-birthed son.

  The thane folded his arms and regarded the stump. “It seems smaller than the description of the tree would warrant.”

  I wanted to mount a defense of my progeny: Too large and it would have disrupted the cairn. Smaller and you’d not believe. It is so nice and woody, well aged in its appearance. And I’ve not created so substantial an inflation in twelve years, at the least, so credit me a bit, fearsome lord! The stump should last a month or more if no one worked a spell of unraveling on it. Unraveling spells—the bane of a boy’s illusions—had been as common in my family’s house as arguments.

  “The map brought you here, Brother Valen?” said Gram, frowning. “You’re sure?”

  “Nowhere else. The guide thread I feel as I follow the map’s course fades even these few steps away.” I returned to the secretary’s side and knelt beside him. Spits of rain struck my face and pocked the disturbed earth about my lovely stump.

  “Nothing for it but to make the attempt,” said Stearc. “If the monk is wrong—of which I have little doubt—we’ve lost nothing but a day already wasted. The morning has almost run.”

  Gram, still troubled, nodded. He shifted one of the smaller stones left tumbled about from the destroyed cairn and laid it at the base of the stump carefully, as if judging a precise orientation. Elene watched him, and I watched her, wondering at her pinched lips and stormy brow. Some enmity ran deep between these two—both of them people I would be pleased to account my friends.

  I kept my preoccupation with Elene’s expressive face well hidden beneath the shelter of my hood, shifting my attention only when Gram pulled a small bag from the pocket of his cloak and set it on the stone. A distinctive scent, of pepper and almond, of dust and mushrooms, flooded the air. Blessed Samele, I could have picked the man’s pocket twenty times over!

  I touched the little bag. Oiled canvas. Common brown. Very like the provision bag hidden in my sleeve. Slightly smaller, closed with a black silk cord instead of a leather tie. Surely enough nivat for a year or more. It was all I could do to refrain from snatching it up and racing the coming storm back the way we’d come, past Gillarine and all the way to Palinur. Sell half the seeds and I would be set for half a year.

  But I’d never get away. These three rode horses and carried swords and smoldered with passion about their madness. Deception was a healthier course. Patience. Depending on how the next few hours went, I should be able to take what I wanted with none the wiser.

  I withdrew my hand and stood up. “Great Iero, shed your blessings here.”

  Gram held an open hand out to Elene. “Do you have the box, Corin?”

  From the pocket of her jupon, she drew a small tin box that she handed to Gram. He sprinkled some of the contents on the stone and shifted the bag of nivat to cover what he had just put down.

  “Salt,” he said, as if sensing my question. “To hold the Dané here while we speak.”

  “Why would you do that?” I said, aghast. No matter that I did not believe anything would come of his offering or his message. Some things were so wrong that it was better not even to mime them. “Fetter a Dané? Bind it? When you’ve come begging their favor?”

  “It’s only to stay the sentinel long enough for us to speak. We’d never force them. But we must be heard. If we knew another way, we’d use it.”

  “They’ll never forgive you. Of all things, Danae are free.” My grandfather’s stories came back to me. None could bind the Danae to field or forest or bog. “They choose their own places, Gram. That’s why you give them feast bread…to induce them to stay. That’s why you leave an undisturbed plot when you plow a new field or set aside a wild garden when you build a new house, so the Dané who tends that plot of ground can yet come and go at will. Elsewise he might leave to find another place, or she might be trapped amid the human works and die. Bind them, and you’ll lose everything before you speak one word of your message.”

  “This whole scheme is madness,” said Stearc. “We must proceed as we decided. This fool of a monk doesn’t know what he’s doing. Nor do we. Come, Corin, we need to set up a shelter before this everlasting rain washes us into the river.”

  “We try as we can, lord,” said Gram, more to himself than anyone.

  The thane strode off toward the horses, and his daughter followed. Gram shook his head and started up the hill after his master. A few steps and he paused, waiting for me to join him.

  The clouds had closed in over the sout
hern mountains, and veils of rain and fog drifted over the river and the bridge. The fortress had vanished into the murk. Confused, unreasonably disturbed, praying their oiled bag would protect the nivat seeds from the wet, I joined the secretary, and we trailed after Stearc and Elene.

  Gram walked more slowly than Stearc and his daughter. Though he seemed at the verge of speaking several times, he never did. Perhaps I had offended him with my blunt speech—silly, as I thought about it, to argue over legends. He could do as he liked with his foolery.

  “So am I to wait here, too, and help you pursue some other plan should this one fail, or is someone from the fortress truly bringing a mule to fetch me?” I said after a while. “I’d rather see the outcome of this venture. To see a Dané…blessed saints, it would be a miracle. But if I’m to go up to the fortress, I’d as soon leave before the rain worsens.”

  Gram lifted his head, roused from his thoughts. “The edane will send his mule for you eventually. We were able to arrange a delay, but only until midafternoon.” A few more steps and he stopped to rest. He glanced up at me, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I’ve already revealed more than Thane Stearc would approve, and he’ll not wish you to remain. However, I could argue it with him…”

  “No, no. He seems a difficult enough master. I’d not put you more in the way of his wrath.”

  Gram chuckled and glanced out from under the soggy locks of dark hair now dribbling water down his deep-carved cheeks. “That is a kindness, Brother. I could wish you were around us more often. Perhaps we would stay civil. Though our goals are like, our opinions diverge mightily, and to argue with anyone of the house of Erasku is a futile exercise. They are the harder rock from which the mountains of Evanore have sprouted.”

  Stearc and Elene had moved the horses into the lee of a low scarp that split the hillside. They were already unloading packs and satchels.