by Carol Berg
“Almost seventy years ago, a young Janus de Cartamandua-Magistoria first found his way into Aeginea. I don’t know how he accomplished it. Who truly understands pureblood sorcery? But while traveling there, he encountered a human man of some eighteen years. The Danae called the youth Caedmon-son, and said his father was a man they honored as a friend of the Danae and the one human who was ever true to his word. History tells us that Caedmon’s four elder children were slain as the Aurellians drove through Morian and into Ardra. The Danae told Cartamandua that Caedmon had begged them to foster one remaining child—an infant son. The Danae archon, one named Stian, agreed to take in the child and a tutor sent by Caedmon to see to the boy’s education.
“Writings and papers in the tutor’s possession, as well as the tutor’s testimony, corroborated the story. Though fascinated by Cartamandua and his tales of Navronne’s struggles with the Aurellians and the Hansker, the young man had no interest in returning here. Life…time…runs differently in Aeginea. Though their seasons follow one upon the other at the same pace as ours, their days can seem like a year or an hour—much as a river spans only the distance from Elanus to Palinur, yet meanders faster and slower through straights and eddies on its way. And a human’s life spends more slowly there—we calculate seven of our years to every one of theirs.”
“Eodward,” I said. Of a sudden, dry history took on new life and meaning. Like Stearc, I had never truly believed in the legend, only in the man. One hundred and forty-seven years would translate to one-and-twenty—the age of Eodward when he appeared from nowhere to reclaim Caedmon’s throne. “How do you know all this?”
“Lord Stearc has come into possession of a journal relating to those days. Its accuracy is unimpeachable.” Clothing rustled in the dark. Gram’s hunched silhouette blocked out the stars in the clearing sky. “The Danae insisted Cartamandua swear to keep the secret of Eodward’s existence.”
“But he didn’t.” No one in my family would have kept such a secret. Not if the telling could enhance their prestige among the other purebloods.
“For a while, he did. But twenty-one years later, when all realized that Aurellia had become a fragile, decadent shell, Cartamandua told a friend about the young man—Caedmon’s living heir. This friend, Sinduré Tobrecan, was the high priest of Kemen, and it happened that Tobrecan’s closest boyhood friend Angnecy had just been anointed Hierarch of Ardra, the followers of the elder gods and those of Iero and divine Karus linked by this strange mechanism of fate. Seeing hope for the future in their own friendship and in the miracle of Eodward’s life, they convinced Cartamandua to lead them to Aeginea, using his book of maps. There they beseeched Eodward, who had aged little in all that time, to return to Navronne and take up his rightful throne, lest chaos descend upon the kingdom with the fall of Aurellia. The Hansker longships were poised to attack and drive us into barbarism and savagery.”
“And this time, he came,” I said, wondering. “He was one-and-twenty.”
“It was not an easy choice. Eodward loved and honored his Danae family, and considered himself one of them. His Danae mother guided his training, as is their custom, and he rode, danced, and hunted with his Danae father, brother, and sister. But from Cartamandua’s first visit, Eodward had dreamed increasingly of Navronne—a land he lived in, but had never really experienced, for as you have noted, the Danae realms are our own realms. We but tread different paths. When Eodward decided to come here, he vowed to return to Aeginea before they danced the Winter Canon thrice more.”
“But he didn’t,” I said, remembering the words he’d spoken to me on that long-ago battle’s eve. Tell them I don’t think I’ll get back…
“He could not. He had a thriving, glorious kingdom that needed him desperately. The Danae, still bitter at Cartamandua for breaking his vow, and unhappy with Eodward for his leaving, named Eodward’s failure to return as betrayal, compounding their own long grievances with humans. After a time, the king began to age as humans do, yet he fully intended to return to Aeginea as soon as his children were strong enough to carry on his work. He died still believing the Danae would forgive him and that he could live out his days among them.”
I shook my head. “He knew he would never go back,” I said. “His children were never worthy to succeed him.”
“Clearly not.” Gram sighed and hunched his blanket around his shoulders. “And other things have happened in the years since that caused the Danae additional grievance—perhaps this violation and the thievery she spoke of—and they’ve forsaken all human contact. Now we need their help again, and I don’t know how we’re to get it.”
“But you won’t tell me why. It’s this business of the lighthouse and the end times.”
“I am but one player in a very large game. You should sleep now, Brother. Tomorrow we’ll decide what to do next.”
While Gram was speaking, quiet movements in the dark on the far side of the snoring Thane of Erasku told me Elene had returned. “Tell me about Corin,” I said on a whim. “I sense a restless spirit there. Is he reliable? Trustworthy?”
“Reliable?” Gram laughed bitterly. “If the world could take shape from one will alone, then it would surely match young Corin’s vision of how things ought to be. And it would be a world so just and fair…so glorious and compassionate…your Karish angels would choose to live here in Navronne instead of heaven. Do not doubt. Should every man of this cabal fail, Corin will carry it ahead alone come heaven or hell, victory or ruin.”
I smiled as I pulled up my blankets, a moment’s respite from a pervasive despondency. All through that long night, I heard restless movements from two pallets besides my own. Only the Thane of Erasku slept much that night.
“Unable to read while you are walking?” said a disbelieving Brother Sebastian.
I stood before him in the monks’ parlor outside the dorter, damp, dirty, and exhausted, more from the night without sleep than the few quellae of the journey. After a predawn breakfast of cold cheese, Stearc had ordered Elene up to Fortress Groult to inform the edane that Brother Valen had wandered into their camp after getting lost in the rain and fog. Brother Adolfus returned with her, as it transpired that the poetry book was one that the abbey had already copied. That fact hardly surprised me. We had arrived at the abbey shortly before midday, and I prayed my mentor’s annoyance would not forbid me dinner.
“After vowing to improve your attentiveness, you get yourself lost. And atop this foolery and despite all your promises of obedience, you refuse to honor your elder’s wish to join him in your avowed duty of prayer along the route.”
“I am sorry, Brother. The jarring of walking, especially with my limp, makes the words on the page run together. I’ll strive to improve this weakness in the future as the Blessed Gillare heals this lingering mortification of my flesh.” Even lies came hard today.
“Clean yourself and fetch your new spare gown and cowl from Brother Tailor,” said Brother Sebastian. “Report to Brother Jerome for the rest of the afternoon. After Vespers we shall sit down and work out your reading syllabus and examination schedule for the next month. We must pay more rigorous attention to your studies and deportment.”
I bowed and thanked him, dreading the unhappy exposure sure to come very soon now. I would suffer yelling, admonitions, and penances until my hair turned white. But at least I had achieved one of my aims. Luviar would surely not dismiss me after my unlikely successes with the book of maps, whether I could read or not. Somehow, even that small accomplishment could not cheer me. The world felt old. Broken.
Of course, Brother Jerome would be out of sorts that afternoon. He complained of having only barley vinegar to use for his pickling, as the grape harvest had failed, and that salt had grown so dear he had to be a pinchfist with it just when he needed it most. Brother Sebastian must have sent word of my transgressions. Instead of allowing me to sit in the warm kitchen and chop turnips or carrots to go into his crocks of vinegar and salt, Brother Refectorian had sent me to the cold, st
inking butcher house to bleed and strip a pig.
As I wrestled the massive carcass in a vat of steaming water to scrub off its hair and buried my hands in its stomach cavity to sever and draw out its entrails, I imagined the scene in the guesthouse. Stearc, Gram, and Elene were likely head to nose with the abbot, the chancellor, and Brother Gildas—probably Jullian, as well—all of them bathed, dry, and drinking hot cider, talking of magical libraries, beings of legend, and the end of the world, while I was rendering a sow.
Sullen and resentful, I sorted all the nasty bits. White, lacy caul fat into the bowl for present use. Bung and rectum onto the waste heap. Emptied guts, destined to hold Brother Jerome’s fine sausage, into the brine crock along with the emptied bladder and stomach. My new spare gown was clean no longer, and my sandals and feet were splashed with blood and filth. Brother Sebastian would have no mercy.
The heart and liver had just gone into a bowl for the kitchen, and my sore hands had just plunged another length of gut into the cold running water of the butcher house conduit to scrape it clean, when I glimpsed a brickred cloak in the vicinity of Brother Butcher. The two of them stood outside the doorway of the wooden building. Though my hands were freezing, my face grew hot enough to cook the damnable pig. Was I to be forever splattered, filthy, or slug-witted in front of Elene? Bad enough that half my skull was bald and I stank worse than Jullian.
“Brother Valen!” Brother Butcher, a lay brother with a neck as wide as his head, also possessed a bellow worthy of his victims. “The squire says you’re summoned to the abbot.”
Blessed release! “Of course, Brother. I’ll stop off at the lavatorium to wash, and then—”
“Not so, Brother Novice. Brother Sebastian has sent out word to all that you’re to hop to your duties with no dawdling or digression. They wouldn’t have sent for you now did they want you to come later. So be off with you. I’ll take on your pig.”
Sighing, I dropped the gut back into the crock, plunged my arms into the conduit flow, and scrubbed at them with my numb fingers. After a handful of icy water to my face and a swipe with the only clean spot on my gown, I hurried through the butcher house, and bowed to the thick-necked lay brother. Though wet and freezing from fingertip to armpit, blood and offal still grimed nails and pores and the cracks in my skin. I grabbed my cowl from the hook by the door and threw it on.
Elene’s hood covered her hair, and she did not speak as she marched away. Brother Butcher watched from the doorway as I followed meekly after her.
“Good day, Squire Corin,” I whispered from under my own hood as we hurried past sheep pens and pig wallows. “I certainly hope your return to Gillarine was more fragrant than mine.”
“The abbot is always welcoming, though we don’t come here for the hospitality.” Her tone smacked far too much of serious affairs.
“Well, of course, you don’t. Though I don’t see that purposeful misery will solve any of the world’s problems, either. Which leads me to ask…”
She tripped briskly up the steps that crossed the low wall dividing the abbey’s outer and inner courts, and rather than take the eight steps down, she jumped straight to the ground, as nimble as a cat. I jumped as well, which left me feeling something like a mast with billowing sails, as my gown caught the air. My thigh did not even twinge when I landed.
I paused for a moment and watched her walk ahead toward the lay brothers’ yard and the brewhouse, the sight of her an antidote to my dogging melancholy. She moved like a dancer or a juggler, not frail or bony, but well muscled, her back as solid and well formed as her front. A most pleasing view, though truly it seemed very odd to have the luxury of examining a woman in breeches and jupon while I traipsed behind her in skirts.
She peered over her shoulder. Best get my mind back to business. We would soon be in the inner precincts where even quiet conversation could be noticed and overheard. Two full strides and I caught up with her.
“…which leads me to ask, Is someone ever going to tell me what is coming, so I can decide whether to keep watch upward to see the bolt of fire from heaven or downward to see the ground open underneath me? Will the world end in fire or ice, Squire Corin? Though I have my own guess as to that.” I shivered as the damp wind blew off the river, smelling of dead fish.
She slowed just a bit. “I told them they ought to be honest with you. But my father won’t hear of it, because—”
“—because he heard I had an arrow wound in the back. He despises me as a coward, and thus believes me incapable of keeping secrets.”
“For Abbot Luviar to be dismissed for sheltering a deserter would be disastrous to our cause. But you’ve proven yourself, so you deserve to hear the truth.” She planted herself in front of me, hands on her hips. “The earth itself will not end, only the life we know—cities and towns and villages, plowing and planting. Herds are dying. Famine and disease will bring barbarians, not just Hansker, who will surely come first, but wilder folk from the north and west. Yet they, too, will lose all they have. Summer will vanish, and, in the struggle to survive, men will forget books and tools and art and all the things we’ve learned in centuries. The Harrowers will get what they want. We will see the end times, but with no blessed ending in heaven.”
She believed this quite sincerely. I could tease no further. “How do you know? How do they know? Yes, the weather is foul, the war cruel, sickness rampant, yet we survive. Navronne has suffered before. Nobles are always underestimating the strength of common folk. What’s different this time?”
“Where are the monks, Brother? Where are the students who once came to Gillarine for schooling—fifty in my father’s time, with more hoping to come? How many villages lie ruined like those between here and Caedmon’s Bridge? Where are the grapes of Ardra or the summer fruits of the river country or Evanore’s wild boar that sustained my ancestors when the Aurellians forced them to live in caves like beasts? People abandon faith and paint their foreheads with dung. We don’t know why our downfall will happen. Everyone has a theory. Brother Victor thinks our present cycle of history just happens to be worse than similar ones of the past. Abbot Luviar believes that some dread event has caused a rip in the binding of earth and heaven. But those of the cabal are men and women of intelligence, wisdom, and a vision that is broader than one abbey or one kingdom or one faith. Besides, it has all been seen by a friend of my father’s. Now, come. They’re waiting for you.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I said, as I caught up to her. “I won’t betray you—any of you. I’m actually quite proficient at keeping secrets.”
She didn’t respond. As I considered all she’d told me, one word rose from her tale like a youthful blotch on a girl’s clear skin.
“Elene…”
She picked up the pace through the passage between the granary and the brewhouse, where the cloying smell of roasting barley was so thick it could choke a man.
“Corin…”
We strode across the guesthouse yard where I had first glimpsed her face. An exposed place. Three men in green livery approached the guesthouse from the direction of the stables. Anyone could pop out of the door or the five different passages that opened on the yard or could peer out of the myriad windows of the house.
But the blemish had swelled into a boil, and despite the risk of being overheard, I laid a hand on Elene’s shoulder as she grasped the brass door handle. “Seen…you mean foreseen, as by a pureblood diviner?”
She dragged the heavy door open and slipped out from under my hand before she answered, else I might not have barged into the columned atrium after her in full view of the group in the guesthouse parlor. By the time she said, “Yes,” it was too late.
As Brother Victor passed around a tray of steaming cups, and Gram worked at a writing table, a short, robust woman robed in mauve and blue silk stood talking with Abbot Luviar, Brother Gildas, and Thane Stearc. Her heavy black hair had been twisted and wound into a great loop, fixed to the back of her head with a gold fan, spread like a peacoc
k’s tail. The blue, green, and gold sprawl of interlocking beads on her ample breast proclaimed her a Sinduria—a high priestess of the elder gods. The thick stripes of kohl outlining her eyes and the eyes graven on her silver bracelets, set with pupils of opal and lapis, proclaimed her a pureblood diviner. And her shock when she saw me, quickly followed by amusement, quickly followed by triumph and contempt, proclaimed her my elder sister.
She raised her finger and pointed through the parlor doorway straight at me.
“Oh, Deunor’s fire, Lassa, don’t. Please don’t.” My voice echoed like frogs rasping in the fine antechamber.
But she was a Cartamandua, and so did my twelve years of freedom end with her one contemptuous word. “Recondeur.”
Chapter 19
“Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine…a Karish monk. What divination could have prepared me for this?” Thalassa’s laughter left her breathless. “Have you been driven out of every other house in Navronne in only twelve years, little brother? Or have you conquered every woman’s heart with your everlasting charm, so that the only ones left to share your bed are celibate old men and guileless boys? Do these monks know what you are?”
The others had come out of the parlor and now stood in an awkward half circle ten paces from me, gawking.
“I have lived a life of my own choosing,” I said, closing my eyes so I could no longer see Elene, clapping a hand to her mouth, or Brother Victor, his odd features so eloquent in condemnation, or Gram, peering at me curiously, as if I were something not quite human. “I have bound myself where I would and walked away when I would—”
“—and great rewards it has brought you. I can see and smell. But I’ll not believe you are here because you have chosen a life of purity and service. Even this corrupt and failing world has not changed so much. I’d advise you to check your valuables, Luviar. And look to your daughter, Lord Stearc. Valen bedded every serving girl and lad in Palinur before he was fifteen. Evidently he can breathe on a woman and set her fawning—maybe men, too. We were never able to prove he does it with magic.”
