by Carol Berg
What have they done with you, serena? I should have been able to protect you. Instead I sent you into the lion’s mouth.
The scrap of parchment sent to save us from the fire lay on the plank alongside my drawings of the morning. I had examined it at first light—before we’d begun this futile experiment. The words were as Bastien had stated: Leave. Now. Else suffer your blood-kin’s fate.
One thing Bastien had not been able to tell me, however. Turning my bent to the scrap’s history revealed exactly nothing. Nothing of the page or the ink or their provenance, and not the least hint of the writer. Someone had left the page magically sterile—astonishingly worthless.
Manipulation of anything that touched learning or memory was a monumental skill. Perhaps one of the curators could do such things. Certainly not Pluvius, who was the logical sender. My grandsire said it was Pluvius’s skill for organization, not exceptional talent, that allowed him to take charge of the Archives and gain a curator’s rank. Had another curator sent it? Was a curator the murdering arsonist? At one time I’d have assumed no curator could countenance murder. Now I wondered. . . .
The heels of my hands gouged my eye sockets. My eyes were grainy with lack of sleep. Bastien and I had talked late into the night. Somehow the darkness had made it easier to speak of Capatronn and his indulgence of my dual bents, of the hurt when he broke with me, and all that had happened since. I’d told Bastien everything I could recall of my visions, and he confirmed that the occasions he saw me vanish entire were the very ones when I had climbed the heights of the fingered peninsula at the verge of the unknown sea. He had pelted me with questions, as if I were his chief witness at an inquest—as I suppose I was.
I rubbed my ankles, chafing under their iron bands. What business partners ever agreed that one had best stay in shackles? I wished he would send in the next corpse.
Bastien had a keen facility for pursuing his threads of inquiry to their end. Some of his questions I could answer. Some sat in my gut like undigested food. Was it your grandsire reported your philandering to the Registry in the first place? What if this Pluvius did visit you in the Tower? And, What are you wearing in these visions?
To consider the first fueled instant denial. To instigate the inquiry, to offer me up for such punishment as the Registry might require for my indiscretion, relying solely on his influence to mitigate it, meant my grandsire had put every person of his own bloodline at risk of dishonor, and those of my mother’s blood as well. Whyever would he do that? Indeed, now they were all dead, Juli lost, and I in shackles, with a madman’s mask waiting on the shelf nearby. Our name was ruin. Had he damned us all apurpose? Had I done something far worse than I knew? Did he think me mad? What was he afraid of?
As for Pluvius’s visit, the perfect logic that had named his visit a dream did seem thin in the daylight. I had seen and heard him clearly, felt his hand on my head. But to imagine what my grandsire might consider his “most significant discovery,” something that propounded a “terrible historical lie” that he had sworn Pluvius to destroy? I couldn’t even begin. Much of accepted history was lies.
The question about clothing was far simpler, and yet its implications stretched beyond my petty circumstances. In the Tower vision, I’d been naked, as I was when I worked the magic. In the two visions raised here at the necropolis, I had been clothed as I was here: in layered slops and breeches, prison tunic, my own filthy shirt, anything to keep me warm. That circumstance testified to the reality of my experiences. It was curious that no chains or silkbindings had hindered me. And yet . . .
I fingered the iron links joining my ankles. Had I been wearing any?
When I’d pursued my grandfather’s history in the Tower cellar, I was no longer required to wear restraints. And on my first day back here, when I experienced the displacement, Bastien had not yet replaced the mask or shackles. Mighty gods . . .
The door flew open. I stepped quickly to face the wall as the runners carried in my new subject. Yet I was near bursting with the need to speak.
Two sets of footsteps retreated—Garen’s brisk trot and Pleury’s shuffle. A heavy tread followed. The door creaked.
I spun around and yelled, “Bastien! Get these shackles off me.”
The door paused halfway and his face appeared in the gap. “Told you, if your friends from the Registry pull another inspection—”
“The magic does take me somewhere else!” Impossibility could no longer mask the truth. “My senses told me so, yet I couldn’t believe. But your question about the clothes: In the Tower vision, I wore none; in the visions here, the exact layers I was wearing that day. I could see the garments, feel them, smell them. How could some random dream be so exact? But in none of the incidents was I shackled or restrained in any way. Nor was I in truth. Perhaps it’s the chains make the difference; iron and steel interfere with magic. Or perhaps it’s just me, unable to bring my magic to fullness when I’m restrained. We need to try it with my feet unchained.”
Without a word, he unlocked the shackles. Then he closed the door and left me alone. I’d not yet guessed where his spyhole was.
My new subject was near a skeleton already. A tall man, he was missing one arm and one leg, but from old injuries. The stumps were ugly, but showed no signs of recent sepsis or other disease. A soldier, perhaps.
I closed my eyes and breathed deep. Offered a prayer for skill and guidance to whatever divinities might care. Wriggled my lightened ankles. And this time, I invoked both centers of magic equally—forehead and breastbone, history and art—for surely every part of this mystery stemmed from their duality. Only then did my one hand begin its passage around the dead man’s cold, scarred flesh and the other touch pen to parchment, and when the glory was grown in me and the world trembled, I did not resist the breathtaking fall. . . .
Rain drenched me to the skin in moments. Shivering as much from excitement as cold, I spun around on a rocky outcrop, hunting, needing . . . what? Sea, sky, and the land below had become one turbulent grayness, seamed by the bony ridges of white stone. A cluster of pines on a shelf of hillside above me swayed wildly, lashed by the wind. My sodden garments flapped.
“Lady Dané!” I yelled into the storm. “Are you here? Tell me what I’m searching for.”
Now I had accepted the truth of this place, I could give credence to the words she had spoken to me in the Tower vision. The beacon holds! she’d said, as if some signal fire were responsible for my arrival. And then she had remarked how my makings—my magic, surely—had twisted and strained the substance of the world. And she had said that they—the Danae?—were divided about what to do with me: lead astray or grant sanctuary?
Those who had met me on the streets of Palinur had warned of dangers, too, of my need to learn and to heed my workings because certain boundaries were not meant for human trespass.
“Tell me what you want!” I called. “Tell me where I am! Is this where humans are abandoned when you steal them from their beds? Is this a sanctuary for mad sorcerers in prison cells? Tell me why I’m here.”
“As I suspected, thou hast no knowledge of the world, though thy makings draw upon its essence.” The voice, low and rich as sun-warmed honey, came from behind me. “Thou’rt like a youngling dancing with flame.”
The silver-limned Dané woman perched in a rocky niche, long arms wrapped about her drawn-up knees, head tilted to one side. Two breaths ago, the niche had been empty. All my bold words fell away.
She smiled. Knowing. “Thou dost walk the true lands of the Everlasting. Clothed this time, I see!”
The Everlasting. The blue-marked Danae had spoken of it, too.
“This is Idrium?” I croaked softly. “The gods’ own home? Yet I am not dead. Mad, perhaps, but not dead.”
Her long sigh wove with the wind. “Exactly as I have spoken: Thou hast no knowledge of the world. That’s why thou canst not remain here as yet or hear all I might tell thee.”
“The others told me the same. Warned me of danger
s beyond my understanding.”
“Others?”
“In Palinur—the city where I live—two of you, male and female, came to me.”
She stretched out her arm, turning it so the silver markings gleamed. “And they were like to me? Or perhaps they were my excitable kin whose gards shine the color of day sky.”
“Blue, yes, but like you in grace and beauty. They, too, said I needed to learn. They gave me no answers, either, and threatened to steal my wits. I want to learn.”
“Learning must come as it will. My kin know that, too, though their view of human usefulness differs from mine own. Ever more generous than they, I grant thee a second question. One only.”
So many questions. Did the Danae truly dance at season’s turn to renew the earth? Were they wingless angels, a bridge between a god and humankind, as the Karish claimed, or were they living aingerou—impish sprites entirely of this world? Would she know what caused Navronne’s disastrous weather? Her blue kin had called the world broken. Was this Everlasting even a part of Navronne, for if enchantment could snatch me out of the Tower prison or the necropolis, why would my destination be limited to our land? A thousand things. How could I choose?
She brushed aside her wet, tangled curls and widened her eyes, spreading the eagle’s wing so delicately drawn across her brow. “Ask or I shall choose for thee.”
“Before—that first time—you said you were expecting me. Why?” As soon as I blurted the question, heat flushed my wet skin. Stupid. Such a mundane query, when I might learn some secret of the universe.
But she dipped her head in approval. “A wise choice, as it speaks to the center of our dealings. Hear this, my answer: The Law of the Everlasting tells that all kinds reproduce themselves. Thus it was certain that one would be born to humankind with the gifts needed—blood that could perceive the beacon and follow the path it prescribes, and the proper talents to vanquish the boundaries between human realms and this fragment of the true and living world. To certain of my kind—those of us whose gards shine with starlight—and certain of thine own kind, thy gifts might be the answer to a long waiting. Or not. As my kin surely told thee, such strength, wielded in ignorance, brings dangers of its own, no matter thy intent. I cannot let thee cross until thy quality is proved.”
“Cross what? What beacon? Take what path? An answer to what waiting? Please, I don’t understand.”
She hopped down from the niche, the silken draperies damp and clinging. My body could not but notice. Yet it was not lust but awe that drew my eyes along her long limbs and elegant curves and the fine markings—the very expression of living art. I longed to sketch her. Yet how dared I imagine my fingers could bring line and shape to such exquisite life?
Her lips quirked and the green eyes sparked brighter than the lightning that dazzled the horizon. “Come, two questions have I granted thee and not one hast thou answered in return. Here, an easy saying: What is thy name and parentage?”
It seemed right to bow. “Lucian, my lady, eldest son of Artur de Remeni and Elaine de Masson.”
Impossible to raise my head as she stepped close, enveloping me in her scent of rain-washed springtime. “Good names all. Pleasant on the ear.”
Her pleasure warmed me, filled me with such aching desire as I’d felt only once before in my life. Her finger on my chin set my knees quivering, and she lifted my jaw until my eyes met hers—a sea of emerald, spruce, and springtime that threatened to drown me.
“But a word on manners, Remeni-son. When we meet again, address me as Sentinel. Lady has no meaning here. Such naming would offend those of my kind unfamiliar with human ways. And the proper greeting is envisia seru. It says, ‘The sight of thee delights my eye.’” A touch brushed my groin. “It seems quite clear you would admit this as a true saying. That pleases me. Thus I will grant thee a third answer: the Path of the White Hand. We shall welcome thee at its ending.”
Throaty laughter rippled from her breast, and a warm breath shuttered my eyes. . . .
* * *
I blinked. My left hand lay on a dead man’s brow and my right held a pen, new dipped and quivering with pent magic. No doubts plagued me this time. Before I could lay down my first line, my forearm had to swipe raindrops from my hair lest they dampen the page and smear the ink. And my traitorous body yet displayed its lustful weakness.
It would have been easy to stop and contemplate all that had passed, but the maimed soldier was patiently awaiting his due. For the next hour my magic was his.
* * *
“A full hundred count!” Bastien charged into the studio before I had wiped my pens. “Vanished entire! Not a soul breathed in this chamber!”
Pens into the case. Rag spread to dry. Ink cup covered. I could scarce spare thought to shape words. Half my spirit had fled to that place of rock and sea. “Seemed ten times that. Perhaps that’s why it’s named the Everlasting.”
Bastien’s mouth dropped open so wide and his wiry brows flew up so high, one might think the Dané woman had appeared naked in front of him.
Weary laughter burst from my soul, settling me deeper into the chilly studio. The real world.
The coroner tossed the portrait of the soldier onto the drying plank and hefted himself onto the bier at the dead man’s feet. “You’re not saying it was—?”
“My very question. But it was neither the Halls of Idrium nor the Karish Heaven. Rather it was but a”—what had she called it?—“a fragment of the true and living world.”
“She was there again. The Danae woman?”
I closed my eyes, desperate to recapture the shape of her, exquisite, elegant, yet . . . real. Alive. No goddess or mythic vapor, but a woman. Teasing. Warm. Inviting. “Aye. She said I was too ignorant, too dangerous, to stay wherever she was . . . then she sent me back.”
A tap on the door brought Garen, Pleury, and Constance. The two young men stopped in their tracks and gaped. Constance rolled her eyes and twitched a hand at the dead man. “Well, be on it, then, dunderwits. Coroner’s here, so’s you’re not gonna be struck pithless for lookin’ at the blood’s nekkid face.”
Once the runners hauled away the dead man, Constance propped her hands on her scrawny hips and shifted her eye from Bastien, perched on the foot of the bier and quivering like a pup at a butcher’s stall, to me on my stool, hands full of implements I could not think what to do with.
“Here it is naught but a spit till dark. And only now ’ave I got the while to say I’ve collected the garments you wanted. Seems like I was told to have ’em at dawn this morn or I’d be swimming in a dead-pit!”
“Garments?” Had I not been watching, I’d have missed the half an instant Bastien was as confused as one of the runners. But his wit quickly came thundering back. “Confound you, woman. I’ve been waiting all day. Thought I’d have to pull out needle and spool myself. Told you I’d be at the spyhole, didn’t I, or are you gone deaf as well as thick?”
Constance pursed her thin mouth. “We both know what was told me and what wasn’t, as well as who’s thick and who’s not. And no doubt the pureblood’s magic can tell ’im who speaks true—and who don’t.”
From a bag dangling at her waist, she pulled a wrinkled apple. Sweeping across the room as if wearing a queen’s ermine instead of muddy canvas trousers and a kersey tunic splattered with dead spew, she removed the ink horn from my hand and installed the apple in its place. Then she glided from the room, smoothly laying the horn on the shelf and a glance of perfectly aristocratic disdain on the coroner.
When the door slammed shut, Bastien cast me a somber glance, and then we both erupted into raucous laughter. My ribs threatened to crack. A lifetime, it seemed, since such a torrent of good humor had made my sides ache so. When it was spent, naught remained of my enchanted visit to the Everlasting but a new mystery, my cold, soggy garments, and a ravenous belly.
I devoured the apple in three bites, as I told Bastien the tale of the Dané, every word as it was etched on my memory.
“S
o those you met in Palinur and this one are kin, but different. Squabbles between them, maybe.”
I’d not thought of it that way. “She said their view of the world differed from her own. They both spoke of my need to learn, and how my strength, my magic”—delving, the blue-marked Danae had called it—“twisted the world and dissolved these boundaries. Both said my ignorance could be dangerous, even if I didn’t intend ill.”
“But this one didn’t threaten your wits if you made a mistake.”
“No, I think she was more pleased. If I proved my quality—whatever that entails—she and others would welcome me, while those in Palinur spoke of trespass and forging a weapon to use against me.”
Though the female with the blue patterned fingers had known my name. “I couldn’t choose one as friend, one as enemy. The female in Palinur expressed a belief that I could learn what was needed to keep out of trouble, while this one seemed . . . skeptical, perhaps. Cynical.”
“And offered no guidance.”
I shook my head. “It seems as if I ought to know what she’s talking about. The Path of the White Hand, for example. I’ve never heard the expression. Yet something’s nagging at me—Maybe the place itself. The land spreads into the sea like fingers, the rocks like bones. But I climbed one or two of them already in these visions, and I believe it’s not so simple as that. The woman said I had blood that could perceive the beacon and follow the path it prescribes. But she never deigned to say what the beacon was.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Bastien’s elbows rested on his knees, fingers propping his chin. “She said your blood perceives the beacon—your blood that holds your magic. It’s brought you to the same place each time. And your talents—the two together, used freely, just as you described to me—have certainly done the vanquishing.”
