Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  Clyste’s Well, the pool was called, named for the Dané who had last claimed guardianship there. On one of his journeys into the Danae realms, my grandfather had involved Clyste in a mysterious theft that had driven humans and Danae apart. For his part in the crime, the Danae had tormented his mind to madness. For hers, they had locked her away in her sianou, forbidding her to take human form again. She had lived on all the years since, enriching the lands watered by her spring, including Gillarine Abbey. But no more. My every sense insisted she was dead. Murdered.

  Heart drumming against my ribs, I bade Nemesio leave the ass where he stood. A few steps more and we reached the entry, the point where the passage walls expanded to encircle the grotto like cupped hands. Ah, Holy Mother… I clamped my arms about my aching middle. I would have given my two legs to be wrong.

  Translucent, blue-white cascades of ice ridged the vertical walls and sheeted the smooth ground. The pool itself lay unfrozen, dark and still, no matter the wind that whipped the heights, showering us with spicules of ice. Gerard floated on the glassy water, naked, bloodless. Rain must have washed his shredded flesh clean of blood and what scraps of his abbey garments the knives had spared. The thorough savagery could have left no blood inside him. Iron spikes had been driven through his outstretched hands, tethering him to the rocky bank like a boat to its mooring. But one hand had torn through as he struggled to escape his fate, and now dangled loose in the water. Harrowers left their ritual victims to suffer and bleed, for it was both their blood and their torment that poisoned the sleeping Danae and the lands they guarded. So my grandfather had told me.

  Nemesio choked, and I shoved him ruthlessly back into the passage to empty himself, though it was likely foolish to worry about further desecrating a place so vilely profaned. Gram pressed his back to the cliff wall at the entry, his pale cheeks as stark and drawn as the frozen cascades. “I cannot go here,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you with this.”

  “No matter. Rest as you need.” I retrieved a worn blanket from the donkey’s back and entered the grotto. Kneeling at the brink of the pool, I touched Gerard’s tethered hand. Cold. Great, holy gods…so cold. Darkness enfolded me, threaded my veins and sinews, tightened about my heart and lungs until I felt as if I shared the terrifying, lonely end of this child’s short life, and with it, the cold suffocation of the dead guardian. I needed desperately to empty my stomach, too, to cry out my sickness, to run, to be anywhere but this dreadful place. But I could not leave the boy. Forgive. Please gods and holy earth, forgive us all.

  Stretching out from the brink, I drew him close, then worked awkwardly to wrap the blanket around him. By the time I had pulled his weakened flesh from the remaining spike, an iron-faced Nemesio had rejoined me. Together we used the blanket to lift the boy from the pool, then wrapped him in an outer blanket and carried him into the passage.

  As the three of us tied the gray bundle to Dob’s back, a movement caught the corner of my eye back in the corrie. A glint of sapphire brilliance quickly vanished in the gray light.

  “Go on out,” I whispered, still fighting to contain my own sickness. Gram looked ill, and the prior’s teeth clattered like a bone rattle. Nemesio and I were both soaked. “I’ll be along before you start down the steeps.”

  Nemesio clucked softly to the donkey. I slipped back down the passage toward the rectangle of light, flattened myself to the icy wall, and peered into the grotto.

  A tall, naked man, every quat of his lean flesh ridged with muscle, knelt on one knee beside the pool. Back bent, head bowed, he extended his long arms over the water in a graceful curve as if to embrace the very essence of the pond. Red hair twined with yellow flowers curled over one shoulder. Patterns of blue light scribed his skin—a sapphire heron on his back, vines and flowers the color of mountain sky on his powerful limbs, a spray of reeds drawn in azure and lapis along one thigh and hip.

  The Dané lifted his head, and a single anguished cry tore through him—echoing from the ice-clad walls, resonating in my bones. And then, stretching his arms to the heavens, he rose on his bare toes and whipped one leg around so that he spun in place. A quick step and then he spun again…and then again, moving around the pool in a blur of flesh and color and woven light, one arm curved before his chest, one above his head. The very rocks wept with his sorrow. I thought my heart might stop with the beauty of it.

  When he reached his starting point, I stepped farther into the grotto. He halted in midspin and dropped his hands to his sides. He was not at all surprised to see me. And I recognized him. Three times I had glimpsed this same one of them…but never so close. Never in the fullness of his glory.

  His eyes glowed the fiery gold of aspen leaves in autumn. On his left cheek the fine-drawn pattern of light scribed a dragon, whose wings spread across brow, shoulder, and chest, and whose long tail wrapped about his left arm. Below the graceful reeds that curved from his hip across his belly, a hatchling dragon coiled about his groin and privy parts. He appeared no more than thirty, but Danae lived for centuries and did not age as humans do.

  “I didn’t know this would happen,” I said. “The man I brought here pretended to be what he was not. The child he slaughtered was an innocent…chosen because he was my friend. Never…never…did I mean to bring this on the one who slept here—this Clyste. My grandfather—” I caught myself before saying more. The Dané wouldn’t care to hear that a human wept for her.

  “As wolfsbane art thou, Cartamandua-son,” he said, speaking fury and grief in the timbre of tuned bronze. “Beauty and poison. Taking life. Giving it back. Speaking the language of land and water, but with words graceless and ignorant. Intruding where thou shouldst not, violating—” He broke off, trembling, and swept his hand to encompass the grotto. “Thou dost lead me here, cleanse the Well so I do not sicken, return it to my memory so I cannot escape knowing what is lost—though I must lose it all over again as I walk away. Is this thy pleasure to taunt those thou dost not know? Dost thou think my love for Clyste can shield thee from the judgment of the long-lived?”

  As flint to steel, his indignation sparked my anger, erasing all caution. “I know naught of you, Dané, save that you once offered me a haven in my need, then stood back and observed my captivity as if I were a performing bear chained for your amusement. I know that Danae vengeance has left my grandsire a madman. And I know that you or one of your fellows tricked me and my companions and our enemies into the bogs as if all humans were naught but beasts worthy of a slaughterhouse.” Naught would ever erase the memory of luring my enemies into the freezing mud to save my companions’ lives, of hearing…feeling…them drown. “I once believed your kind to be the blessed finger of the Creator in this world. But you are no better than we are.”

  “Pah!” With a snarl of disgust he turned away. Kneeling once again by the pool, he scooped water in his hands and poured it over his head. “Askon geraitz, Clyste,” he said, his voice breaking. “Live on in my heart, asengai. Let me not forget thee.”

  “Kol, don’t leave. You must—Please hear us!” I had forgotten Gram. The wan secretary stood framed in the dark band of the passage entry, astonished…stammering. “Many of us…most…despise these murderers. The Everlasting is in upheaval, to the ruin of our land, our beasts, and all humankind. Whatever the cause, we desperately need the help of the long-lived to understand it…to make it right again. The gard of the dragon names thee Kol, friend and foster brother of Eodward King, brother to shining Clyste, who danced as none before her. In Eodward’s name we beg hearing. Please, take us to Stian Archon or to any who might heed our message…our need…”

  The Dané shifted his gold eyes to Gram. Cocking his head, he flared his nostrils and inhaled deeply. His lip curled. “Human speech is briar and nightshade. Human loyalty is that of wild dogs and weasels. Stripped is Stian of his archon’s wreath.” His finger pointed to the dark pool. “These evils are the gifting of Eodward to those who sheltered him. Begone! Thou dost bear the stink of betrayal
and shalt not pass one step into our lands until his debt is paid.” He strode toward the ice-clad wall, but before he reached it, he vanished in a ripple of air and light.

  Never had I stood in a place so unforgiving, so empty. Gram might have been frozen into the wall. I gave him a nudge, and we abandoned the grotto.

  Halfway down the dark passage, a spasm of coughing caused Gram to stumble and skid on the ice. I grabbed his arm and steadied him. “You should come back to the abbey with us, Gram. You look like walking death.”

  “I might as well be dead. I should have listened better at Caedmon’s Bridge, but I didn’t want to hear their judgment. I should have believed what you told us about the Harrower rites poisoning sianous.”

  “My grandfather said it is the Danae’s greatest secret. But when I walked into Gillarine yesterday and found it ruined…when I touched the earth in the cloisters…Gram, I felt the world broken. I know it sounds presumptuous. I’ve meager skills and a history of lies, but you must believe that every breath, every bone, every drop of my blood tells me that this breaking is cause of the world’s upheaval…the weather…the sickness…I’ll swear it on whatever you like.”

  Someday, perhaps, someone might believe what I said without the backing of god-sworn oaths. My myriad swearings had my life tangled upside over and backside front.

  “We did not doubt your sincerity, Valen. We just believed that no human action could compromise the Canon itself. We assumed your grandfather’s tale was but guilt speaking through madness. And now I’ve wasted this opportunity. I should have been better prepared. Ah, cursed be this weakness…inept…” The racking cough forced him to stop and lean on the wall. He slapped his hands against the stone in frustration, his reserve shattered for the first time since I’d known him.

  “If all this is true,” he said, when he caught his breath at last, “if the Danae forget a place when it is corrupted and lost to the Canon, then how could Kol be here?”

  “He follows me,” I said, able to answer that one question, at least. “I saw him the first time on the night I tried to escape from Gillarine. He waited in an aspen grove and offered his hand—tried to rescue me. Then he watched me every day of my punishment exhibition in the streets of Palinur. I even glimpsed him in a courtyard of my family’s house. I saw a Dané in Mellune Forest, too, but I’m not sure it was he. I didn’t know the one with the dragon on his face was Kol. Spirits of night, Clyste’s brother…he likely was the one who tried to drown us in the bog. My grandfather warned me that I was in danger from the Danae.”

  Gram stared at me for a moment in the dim light, then rested his back against the passage wall and averted his eyes. I’d never met a more private man. “That makes no sense,” he said, collecting his scattered emotions. “Your grandfather is being punished for his crime and will continue to be until whatever he stole is returned. Thus his debt is being paid. The Danae would never take vengeance on others, even his family, unless they believed those others complicit in Janus’s crime. Their law—the Law of the Everlasting—forbids it.”

  He ran his long fingers through his hair as if to drag ideas from his skull. “Danae justice is quite clear and quite specific. Everything is balance. Bargains. Exchanges. Think of what Kol said and how he said it. Death and life. Violation and restored memory. He clearly did not blame you for Clyste’s death. He would blame the one who did the murder. Perhaps he was already following you about when it happened. Yet he implied that you’ve raised the ire of other Danae…the judgment of the long-lived…and with your grandfather’s warning…” He looked up at me again. “Valen, do you have what Janus stole?”

  “No!” I said. “I didn’t even know of my grandfather’s crime until a fortnight ago. And he refused to tell me what he took. If their ‘justice’ is so balanced, then why does Eodward’s betrayal bar us all from their realms?”

  “I don’t think he meant all humans.” Shivering, Gram bundled his cloak tighter. “I’ve got to consider all this…inform Thane Stearc and see what he makes of it. Our plans may have to change. Come, we’d best get back.”

  “Brother Valen!” As if in echo of Gram’s conclusion, Nemesio’s call bounced urgently through the passage. “Get out here now!”

  “So you go back to Osriel?” said Gram as we hurried toward the light.

  “I would rather do anything else. But I must honor my word or else—Well, I don’t know what would happen, but my word is the only thing I’ve ever held to. I promise you, I’ll be no good to him.”

  He stopped me as we approached the mouth of the passage. “You said something similar back at Mellune. What do you mean?”

  No need for him to know what my nivat-starved perversion was like to make of me. I pulled my arm from his hand. “Be well, Gram. Give the thane and his daughter my regards.”

  “Teneamus, Valen,” he said.

  We preserve—the Aurellian code word of the lighthouse cabal. Gram’s invocation of it expressed the sincerity of his concern for me. I had no answer for his kindness. “We’d best go before Nemesio bursts.”

  It was as well I chose not to further compromise my vow of submission. When Gram and I stepped from the cleft into the open air, Nemesio and the donkey waited with Gram’s gray mare. Beside them stood Voushanti.

  Chapter 3

  No argument of mine could persuade Voushanti that I’d no intent to run. “His Grace will decide your punishment,” he said as he bound my hands to the donkey’s harness. “And you will be there to heed it.”

  Though pale and quivering, Nemesio bore Voushanti’s impossible arrival with a straight spine and unbowed head. I should have warned the prior about Prince Osriel’s favored commander. I had seen Voushanti recover from terrible wounds in a matter of hours. I had witnessed his resiliency as we tramped day and night through the winter nightmare of Mellune Forest. More than once I had looked into the red core of his eyes and suspected he did not sleep. What common sleeping draft would affect such a man, if man he was?

  At least the mardane showed no interest in exploring the cleft. Whether or not Prince Osriel was Sila Diaglou’s rival in the pursuit of chaos, the last thing I wanted to do was teach him a way to interfere with the Danae.

  When we reached the flats, Voushanti dismissed Gram with a promise to report his interference both to Thane Stearc and Stearc’s liege lord Prince Osriel. The last I saw of the secretary, he was vanishing at a gallop into the frozen haze that had settled in the valley. Voushanti, the prior, the ass, and I slogged toward the abbey afoot.

  With no silken cords binding my hands to stay the flow of magic, I could have unlocked the chain that linked my wrists to the donkey even with my limited skills. But in truth I could not summon the wits to work a spell. A storm of blue light filled my head—the image of the Dané as he danced out his grief. I had never imagined such expressive power in mere movement, as if his body formed words and music I could not hear. My own feet dragged like brutish anvils through the snow. My arms felt stiff as posts. Compared to his, my body was no more living than a wall of brick.

  Remnants of our exchange swirled in my thoughts like water through a sluice. He’d said that I had cleansed the Well, as if it were some marvel. Yet I’d done naught but remove the dead boy, hardly difficult for a man of his strength.

  Kol, the son of the Danae archon who had sheltered King Caedmon’s infant son more than a century ago…My mind balked at the imagining. My grandfather, a cartographer with a sorcerer’s bent, had discovered Caedmon’s heir living in the realm of the Danae—the realm of angels, legend called it. Life spent differently in Danae lands, for a century and a half after his royal father’s death, Eodward had just been passing from youth to manhood. A Karish hierarch and a high priest of the elder gods had persuaded the young man to return to Navronne and revive the wreckage of his father’s kingdom. Though Eodward had promised the Danae to return to them after only a few years, he never had. Navronne had needed her strong and honorable warrior king, who had freed her from the disintegr
ating Aurellian empire and a succession of invasions from the barbarian Hansker.

  Three years ago, good King Eodward had died, abandoning Navronne to his three sons—a blustering brute, an effete coward, and my master, rival to the lord of the netherworld. Between my grandfather’s unexplained theft, Eodward’s betrayal of his word, and the depredations of the Harrowers, it was no wonder the Danae brooked no dealings with humankind.

  Nemesio unlatched the wooden gate in the low eastern wall of the abbey. The prior had been silent on our return journey. Praying, I thought. Mourning. Deunor’s fire, Gerard… an unscholarly boy with a quick smile and an innocent heart. What punishment would be dreadful enough to requite this crime? Gildas…the Harrowers…Sila Diaglou…I would see them brought to account for it.

  As soon as we left the field path for the abbey walks, the monks began to gather, like blackbirds to a rooftop. Despite their anonymous robes and hoods, I recognized them by their shapes—short, tight Brother Sebastian; willowy Brother Bolene; squat, stooped Brother Adolfus—and by their hands, roughened by cold and hard work or stained indelibly by buckets of ink. These men, who had so kindly welcomed me as a vagabond into their brotherhood, offered no signs of blessing, greeting, or welcome. Why would I expect it? Most of them had last seen me a month past, when my sister had led me from the abbey with shackled feet and silkbound hands—a disgraced recondeur, named traitor to god and king, a liar and thief who had mocked their vows by pretending he could be worthy of their company, even for a season. And now…chained to the ass that carried Gerard’s body…as if I were responsible…My skin heated with shame.

  “Set me loose,” I said to Voushanti through my teeth. “I’ll not run. Please. They’ll think I did this.”

  But he wouldn’t until we reached the bedraggled garden maze in front of the church. As the brothers lifted the boy gently and carried him toward the lavatorium where they would clean and wrap him properly, Voushanti detached my chain from the ass and led me toward the guesthouse like a troublesome dog.