Flesh and Spirit tld-1

by Carol Berg

  Half of the Harrowers killed each other, trying to use their comrades for stepping-stones. Others drowned quickly, pulled down by panicked horses or tangled in dead vines and rotted trees swept down from the mountains in long-ago floods. Some wandered, crying for help in the neck-deep mud, climbing on hillocks only to have them sink under their weight. After a while I could only hear them, for the blizzard rose in full fury, and human eyes could not penetrate past the length of my arm. The cold and the mud would finish them. The memory of Luviar butchered, of Nestor and Boreas condemned to slow agony, of tar-clogged wells and villages burned to ash, crushed what glimmers of mercy blossomed in my soul. These gatzi would have ridden my friends to ground.

  I huddled on my islet in the center of the bogland, a driftwood club ready should one of the lost find his way to me. Only when my ears assured me that neither man nor beast roamed the upland banks did I press my hands into the muck to seek the path back to firm ground.

  I jerked them right out again, then bent double and retched bile until stomach, chest, and throat were raw. The terrors of dying men and beasts permeated the pools and hillocks, and I could not find my way. I sank to the ground, buried my face in my frozen cloak, and begged the earth’s forgiveness for the horror I had wrought.

  Chapter 32

  Valen fiend heart! The mocking cry stung like a tutor’s rod on cold knuckles. Cold…what wasn’t cold? The world, all life, and certainly every part of me was frozen. No one ever listened when I said how I hated the cold.

  I trudged onward. One step. Then a rest. Another step. Hip-high drifts covered the path that would take me away from the treacherous bog. Perhaps the insulting name, a relic from childhood, etched itself so vividly in my imagination because I longed so fiercely to believe that another living person existed in this wintry desolation.

  Fiend heart… Soon I’d be imagining I heard iron skull or lead wit or gatzi prick, though the damnable girl would lob that last stone only outside adults’ hearing. I smiled…more of a grimace, I imagined, as I could not feel my face. Lassa, please be real.

  My sister had once enspelled a connection between her favorite insults and my ears, so I would never fail to hear them. I’d never learned the skill, but on one precious occasion, I had managed to reverse her spell and bind one of mine to her. “Toad witch,” I mumbled into the folds of my cloak for the fiftieth time on this dreadful afternoon. If she were within ten quellae, she would hear.

  “Magnus! Magnus Valentia!”

  “Brother Valen!”

  I paused and surveyed the gloomy distance. No one in sight. I pulled my hood tighter and fretted that these faint voices, too, were naught but wishing dreams.

  Hellish dreams of mud and ice and suffocation had clung to me like draggle weed as I had crawled out of the bog hours and hours ago, too tired and too afraid to walk, unable to bear another route seeking lest I buckle under the weight of guilt and horror. That I managed to reach solid earth, that I was not drowned or dead, astonished me. I had dug a snow cave to wait out the blizzard and had drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming of long limbs marked with blue sigils embracing me, choking me, setting me afire.

  The wind mourned over the frozen fens. Did beasts feel this way after emerging from their winter sleep, as if ice crystals flowed in their veins? I feared the oncoming night. Find me, someone. Please. I hate the cold.

  Lights moved around the hillside toward me. Torches. Spits of gold against a sky the color of ripe blueberries. I sank to the ground, closed my eyes, and rested my back against a boulder. Let someone else break the path through the drifts. Friend or enemy, wraith or bogwight, I didn’t care.

  “Gracious Mother, Valen, what have you done this time?” My breathless sister’s painted eyes swam huge and worried from her fur-lined hood. “This Voushanti said you were facing fifty Harrowers alone in a bog, and that you’d saved Stearc and Gram and these Evanori lords. But they couldn’t find you in the storm. I called and called—No one believed when I claimed to hear you, but I knew. How is it you’re not frozen dead, fiend heart?”

  “B-been thinking w-warm thoughts of you, serena toad witch. Whatever are you doing in the neighborhood? Did you bring them my boo—?”

  She hissed, pressed her hot hand on my lips, and jerked her head backward. Several shapeless figures approached from behind her, one leading a donkey.

  “Watch your tongue, Valen. And I do mean that. The answer is yes.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Listen carefully: I came to continue my negotiations over new sheep pastures for the Temple and was shocked to discover the shambles. Do you understand?”

  “Shambles?” I croaked, wretchedly confused.

  But she had squeezed her painted eyes shut, and her words kept flowing, so softly no one but I could have heard them. “Who or what is this Voushanti? I See naught but death about him—blood and fire and torment. He says he’s taking you to Evanore as soon as the weather breaks. Bound to the Bastard…Holy Mother, Valen, I cannot help you more. I must return to Palinur immediately. With Luviar lost, Victor captive, and what’s happened here, the lighthouse may depend on my office.”

  The aura of her divination tickled my spine, as the newcomers joined us, their faces taking recognizable shape in dark wrappings. Indeed, Voushanti brought an ill odor with him everywhere. But I was more confused about her passing hints. “Lassa, I’ll be all right, if I c-can just get warm. But what shambles—?”

  “Silos!” She snapped, jumping to her feet. “He needs hot wine! And get a mask on him before I report him to the Registry. Good monk, bring your linens. No diviner is needed to see to the pitiful whiner. Lord Voushanti, take up your charge, though even my scoundrel brother is unlikely to run today.” Excessive sisterly sentiment would never burden Thalassa.

  Voushanti loomed over me like a frost giant, but he said naught as the others ministered to me. A somber Silos took Thalassa’s place and offered me a steaming wineskin. My fingers couldn’t grasp the leather, so he poured the stuff down my raw throat. O, great Mother Samele, grant my glorious sister a place at your side! Silos’s masked face drew up in disapproval as I hooked my elbow about his, preventing him from removing the skin until it was half empty. “Careful, plebeiu. You cause everyone trouble when you’re out of your head. Have you a mask with you?”

  He pulled the half mask of purple silk from the pocket I indicated and slipped it on me. Cold, wet…it felt like fish skin.

  Thalassa threw a blessedly dry cloak about my shoulders as Brother Anselm, the piebald lay brother from the Gillarine infirmary, examined my hands and feet. I despaired of ever being warm, shivering uncontrollably as he marveled that I showed no signs of true frostbite after crawling in the snow for most of a day. Voushanti refused to consider a fire, though I assured him that the dog-faced man and his Harrowers were no longer a threat. I could not bring myself to tell him why.

  They insisted I ride Brother Anselm’s bony donkey back to the abbey. As the monk led the plodding beast along the embankment, I looked out on the flats—still and silent, the horrors of the morning hidden beneath the mantle of fresh snow. My sister walked alongside me, and her gaze followed mine. “What happened out there, Valen?”

  I shook my head and shuddered. “Just don’t walk there, Lassa. Don’t ever.”

  “When did they strike?” I said.

  Brother Anselm, the donkey, and I slogged up the last slight rise between us and Gillarine. I had dismounted the balky ass. Walking eased my stiffness and kept the blood flowing in my hands and feet. Save for the marrow-deep chill and a general weariness, I’d come out of the day’s events astonishingly well. But all relief had fled when the shy assistant infirmarian at last explained Thalassa’s references to “shambles.”

  “’Twas on Saint Eldred’s Night, Brother Valen. You were not a fortnight gone from here. Some hundred or more raiders, both Moriangi and Harrowers, come twixt Matins and Lauds. Their fire arrows and torches took the scriptorium first. Then the church. Then the rest.”

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nbsp; “Great Iero’s mercy!” We had reached the top of the little rise, and the sight took my breath. The windows of the abbey church, whose brilliance in sun and candlelight had spoken of angels’ wings, gaped black as hell’s maw; the groins and buttresses mimed the naked ribs of a skeleton. The wooden buildings—infirmary, brewhouse, stables—had vanished, their remains hidden beneath a pall of gray snow. Gillarine Abbey stood broken and dark.

  “We were blessed most walls were stone.”

  But the slate roofs had fallen when the supporting timbers burned—a pureblood firemaster attached to the Moriangi raiders would have seen to that—smashing at least a third of the inner courts to jagged ruin. Only the gatehouse and walls stood unmarred. The damnable cowards had marched straight through the sanctuary gate to wreak their holocaust.

  “What of the brothers, Anselm? By the One God…” So many good men lived here: the kindly, skilled infirmarian, Robierre; garrulous Cadeus the porter; old Nunius, who reveled in holy minutiae…

  “Eleven passed to Iero’s heaven on Saint Eldred’s Night, three succumbed to injuries since then, and five more fell to lung fever—Abelard and Nunius, the eldest and weakest of us who breathed too much smoke or bent to the cold. Dear Brother Robierre died saving poor Marcus from the fire. With the ground so hard frozen and neither hands nor time to spare for digging, we’ve had to lay them in the cellars.”

  “Ah, Brother…” The physical ruin paled beside such a loss. What words could express sorrow enough? Neither sympathy nor helpless anger could repair this wound or ease the future it boded. The survivors’ trials were only begun. They would yet have more than twenty to feed and clothe. “What of your stores? And, blessed saints, what did they do to the orchard?” The trees still standing looked leprous, not burned, bark hanging in rags, trunks gouged and seeping, branches broken. More than half had fallen, bare roots frosted like nests of white snakes.

  “The undercrofts were gutted for the most. Naught burns like spilled oil and dry grain. We’ve a few bales of wool left, though smoked and charred, and Brother Jerome, Iero welcome his cook’s soul, fell to a Morian blade defending his last root cellar. But the orchard now”—the lay brother’s wide face crumpled like an old rag—“that weren’t the soldiers. No man, but only the One God himself sent us that trial. A root rot, Brother Gardener said, that spread through the trees at the same time the murrain come to the sheepfold. It’s the sickness in the world, as Father Abbot so often warned of, come to Gillarine at last…and now we’ve heard tidings of his own passing.”

  Anselm’s stolid presence faltered but did not break. His gaitered sandals crunched the snow, and he encouraged the tired donkey with a soft pat and an assertive tug on the lead.

  “Prior Nemesio has taken us well in hand. And the good God grants us fortitude. To share the trials of his poorest in this land must surely bring us grace. A blessing we’ve none with your appetite to feed.” He chuckled softly, then sighed. “We could use a cheerful story adventure as you’re wont to tell, though. We rejoice that our brothers live with the saints, and we know that Iero will give us all we need, do we but ask, but truly we feel a dreadful sadness come upon us with this untimely winter.”

  Sadness. Yes. More than the failing light and ruined buildings. More than so many good men dead. Gods grant you peace and care, good Robierre, as you gave so many, and Jerome, may you feast at the god’s own table. A pervasive sorrow held the abbey in its grip, a grieving in the stones and earth that felt as if the sun would never relieve this falling night. The thick dry cloak Thalassa had given me felt thin as gossamer.

  As Anselm and I led the donkey across the field toward the gatehouse, the shy lay brother continued his stories of the raid and its aftermath. I’d never heard so many words from the infirmarian’s assistant in all the weeks I’d lived at Gillarine. Perhaps trials did bring out new strengths in us.

  Behind us, on the road that stretched northward toward Elanus and Palinur, Thalassa, her faithful Silos, and her five temple guards had vanished into the darkening forest, determined to reach Elanus before nightfall. My sister’s parting kiss yet burned on my forehead. A kiss from Thalassa. She must believe I was going to die in Evanore. Unfortunately, I could not ease her concern. What use would the Bastard find for a mind-dead former doulon slave?

  “Thank you for rescuing me yet again,” I’d said after she yanked my head down and planted that unexpected kiss. Then I’d stooped to whisper in her ear, “Teneamus.”

  I’d never seen her smile like that. Genuine. Pleased. Sad. “Hold on to your soul, little brother,” she’d said as she mounted her palfrey. “Be well.”

  “I’d be happy enough with warm, Sinduria serena.”

  She’d rolled her eyes and ridden away. I was happy she hadn’t told me whether I would ever see her again.

  “I’ll put old Dob to shelter; then we’ll find you a bed and a bite,” said Anselm as we slogged through the gatehouse tunnel. A snarl of thick ropes and harness protruded from the drifted snow, and the wooden gates lay twisted from their hinges. “I needs must ask Father Prior if you’re to be housed in the dorter—which is now moved to the abbot’s house as it’s got a roof—or in the guesthouse. That new lord’s come today is most forbidding, I’ll say.” He nodded at Voushanti’s retreating back. The mardane had hurried off ahead of us to see where Philo and Melkire were bedded down. “Some folk I knew as a lad would call him marked of the Adversary. You’ve not renounced your vows, have you, lad, or been dispensed from them?”

  “Just taken on new ones, Brother,” I said, feeling an unexpected heat in my cheeks. “Lord Voushanti is my new master’s proxy.”

  We trudged through the Porter’s Gate and into the trampled gardens in front of the dark church. Anselm frowned. “So you’ll to the guesthouse, then. We’ve a fire laid. And you’ll need dry clothes. Secular garb. You take a good rest tonight, and I’ll put a flea in Father Prior’s ear to ask if Lord Stearc might have left some things would come near fitting you. I’ll send a posset as well, to stave off chills and damage from frostbite. Not so excellent as Brother Badger would have made for you, of course.”

  Summoning a smile, I clapped him on the shoulder in thanks.

  Once left alone, the sad emptiness of the abbey gripped my spirit sorely. Despite the cold, I lingered in the familiar paths and courts. To rush toward fire and food seemed somehow lacking in respect. So, rather than taking the straighter way to the guesthouse, I wandered past the church into the north cloister walk and looked out on the cloister garth—the abbey’s heart.

  Rubble littered the square, the angular bulk of fallen cornices and corbels bulging awkwardly beneath the snow, alongside the birdcage shape of Saint Gillare’s shrine. Though every building showed damage, the primary target of the raid was obvious. The walls of the abbey library and scriptorium had collapsed completely, crushing the eastern cloister walk. Naught was left but heaps of scorched stones and charred beams. The chapter house on one side and the monks’ dorter on the other gaped open on the sides that had adjoined the library. Both structures were gutted shells. Of the jewel-like chapter-house windows, depicting Eodward and Caedmon, only one soot-marked pane remained, bearing the outline of an upraised hand.

  So what had become of the magical lighthouse and its tools and books and seeds, gathered to sustain humankind past these dark times? Its creators had surely built it to endure through end-times chaos and destruction. Was this raid Bayard’s vengeance for the abbey’s sheltering Perryn? Or was this Sila Diaglou’s handiwork? The lighthouse would be anathema to her, a promise to undo the chaos she worked for. I thought back to her savage attack on Gildas…a ploy to “draw out” her enemies…and Luviar and Stearc and Gram running for the gate. Yes, she knew of the lighthouse and its creators.

  Firelight flickered in the far corner of the cloister, where the great hearth of the calefactory was required to remain lit until Saint Mathilde’s Day. As I rested my back on a slender column, a handbell broke the oppressive silence, ten me
asured rings calling the monks to the Hours, a thin, strident summoning compared to the sonorous richness of the bronze bells fallen from the belltower. The pattern of two, three, and one, followed—Vespers, the Hour of peace. But I felt no peace and could not shake the sense that more than bodies and buildings had been shattered here.

  I believed in the gods and their creatures—whether they were named Kemen or Iero, angels or Danae or gatzi. Even a dolt could see that the universe was no soulless clockwork, but infused with life beyond human understanding—wondrous and mysterious, perilous and exquisite. But as to whether the deities truly listened to our prayers or desired our votive gifts or libations or blood sacrifices, I’d been content to leave that study to wiser heads. And never had I given literal credence to the god stories and myths I’d been told—of Deunor’s stolen fire that lit the stars or of the Danae whose dancing nourished the world and held it together. Not until I looked on the ruins of Gillarine and knew in flesh and spirit, breath and bone, that the Canon, the pattern of the world, was truly broken.

  Curious, apprehensive, I knelt at the edge of the cloister walk and brushed away a patch of snow. The grass of the garth, so thick and green but a month ago, lay yellow and slimy. I pressed my hands to the earth.

  Nothing. No slamming darkness. No piercing light. No music of grief or longing to wrench my soul as it had every time I’d tested this particular patch of earth. I felt only the sickness of the outer world that had intruded here. Plague into the sheepfold. Rot into the orchard. Fire and death into the cloisters.

  Wiping my hands on the hem of my cloak, I sat back on my heels. Stories nagged at me. King Eodward had built this abbey on “holy ground.” I had almost forgotten the first death. Young Brother Horach had been brutally murdered inside Saint Gillare’s shrine, where the holy spring bubbled up into the font. Harrowers poisoned the land’s guardians with violated corpses. That was what Sila Diaglou and her cohorts had tried to do with Boreas. I recalled Graver’s Meadow, the lush grass and shimmering pond that swelled my spirit as if the angel choirs sang in the abbey’s soaring vaults. Easy to believe a guardian had lived there.