by Carol Berg
“Great Kemen preserve!” said Perryn, looking as if he would be sick. The blond prince backed toward the door. “You can’t do that, you twisted, depraved—”
“Have your man say that your brother Perryn is already forfeit because of his treasonous looting of Navronne’s treasury and his forgery of our father’s will.” Osriel pressed forward, his words harsh, decisive, shivering the air. “Have him report that your bastard brother is mad and can be persuaded to yield his land, his pureblood, and the secret of the library. Set a meeting with the woman and use it to haggle with her over the gold and apportioning of Evanore—she will never believe you would concede it all. Let her think she is going to win, while you control the damage as you can. At the last, settle for the best deal you can make, with the stipulation that her legions enter Evanore at Caedmon’s Bridge and attack my hold at Renna on the winter solstice. Tell her that I submit myself to Magrog at Dashon Ra each year at midnight on the winter solstice; thus my magic will be at an ebb.”
“And then?” Bayard growled in contempt and snatched Perryn’s sleeve, before the cowering prince could run away.
“Either the joined might of Eodward’s sons defeats her, or the world we know will end.”
The simplicity of this declaration left Bayard speechless. My head spun; my stomach lurched at the speed of events. Even Max’s mouth hung open.
“Osriel, you are mad,” said Bayard, recovering his wits sooner than my brother or I. “And I must be mad to listen to you. Yet Father’s writ claims—Tell me this, Bastard. What do you do with dead men’s eyes?”
The challenge echoed from the vaults as if the hideous beings dancing there had joined in the question. I wanted to cry out in chorus, “Yes, yes, tell us.”
“Ask first of Sila Diaglou how long she plans to let you rule,” said Osriel with such quiet menace as to raise the hair on my arms. “Bring me her truthful answer, and I’ll give mine.”
Osriel uncurled one slender hand to reveal a white ball of light, pursed his lips, and blew on it. A shivering lance of power split the air between Max and Bayard, causing Perryn to yelp and crouch into a ball at Bayard’s feet. “This will keep our brother quiet for the nonce. Lock him up safely, where no one can harm him. I’ll send a messenger to your headquarters in Palinur on the anniversary of Father’s coronation. At that time, you can inform me of the outcome of your negotiations, and I’ll notify you of any change in plan.”
Perryn pawed at his mouth and tongue in a wordless, animal frenzy I recognized. Poor, stupid wretch. How many words did his tongue-block forbid?
Bayard folded his arms and stared boldly at the man in the green hood, reclaiming something of the pride he had brought into the hall, but little of the arrogance. “You wear Father’s ring. I assumed this sniveling twit had stolen it from his dead finger, then feared to wear it publicly.”
Osriel’s slim fingers caressed the gold band. “Father gave it to me the night he died. Believe that or not as you choose. Perhaps I stole it. Perhaps my devilish magic twisted his mind.”
Testing. All of this was testing. Would Bayard believe? Would he accept what was offered or balk in arrogance, in self-deception, in fear? Would I? For I could not shake the notion that all of this was my test as well. Osriel had no need of me in this confrontation. I brought no power, no prestige, no insight that such a perceptive mind could not have come up with on its own. Yet a man of such well-considered purposes would not have me here without specific intent. Perhaps it was only to witness a kind of power I had known but twice in my life: in an abbey garden when an abbot had peered into my soul and found it worthy of his trust, and long ago beside a battlefield cook fire, when these princes’ father had shared his love of Navronne with a youthful pikeman.
After a moment, Bayard shook his head. “Father’s writ purports to explain why he chose you over me. Reading it, I heard his voice as clear as if he spoke to me aloud. ’Twas the Ardran hierarch showed me the thing, and I destroyed his chamber after. Had the Karish peacock shitting his robes, I did, naming him a cheat and a forger, as mad as you to believe our father wrote such lies about a crippled weakling.”
“Father valued you, Bayard. If you read the entire writ, then you know he named you Defender of Navronne and your sons after you, believing that your strong arm and stubborn temper should hold the righteous sword that mine cannot.” It was the nearest thing to an apology I ever thought to hear from royalty. A gift offered without coercion, without demand for reciprocation, with humbling generosity.
I thought Bayard would pounce on Osriel and grind him in his jaws. “Why didn’t he tell us? He knew what I believed. What everyone in this kingdom believed. Every day of my life I trained to be king, and he never told me elsewise.” Pain, not anger, drove his fury—a familiar anguish, rooted in family, in a child’s expectation and betrayal.
“You trained to be a warrior, Bayard, not a king. Father made his decision only after I turned one-and-twenty and showed some prospect of living for more than a moon’s turning. He told me first. Then Perryn. But you were off pursuing Hansker again, and he would not have you hear such news from any lips but his. Nor would he shame you by telling another soul before you. But you spent more time on your ships than in Navronne those last few years. How many times did he summon you home? He risked everything to save your pride and lost the gamble.” A gentle reproof, taking its power from unbending strength.
“I could not abandon my men halfway between Hansk and Morian just so I could play courtier. Let up the pressure, and barbarians lose all respect. I saved Navronne. I—”
Bayard cut off his own protest. Even he could hear how foolish it sounded now after three years of war and thirty thousand Navrons dead. He spat on the floor. “You’ll never rule; you know that. A bastard. The evil stories told of you. Clerics of either stripe won’t accept it. The people won’t. Not when there’s a strong, legitimate elder son. The hierarch’s paper is ensorcelled so it cannot be destroyed, sad to say, but without a valid second copy no one will believe it.”
Osriel did not accept the gauntlet Bayard threw, but rather slipped it back on his brother’s hand. Only time would tell whether he had left a spider in its folds. “We will preserve this kingdom first, brother, and then turn our minds to its ruling. I’d recommend you not go setting any crowns on your head before the solstice.”
Bayard jerked his head in assent. “I’ll see you on the solstice, then. Between times…I’d recommend you look to your back, little Bastard. I think you’re the only thing in this world the mad priestess fears.”
Bayard grabbed Perryn’s collar and shoved the moaning princeling toward the door. Max hurried ahead and held open the door, casting me a long, curious gaze before following his master from the room.
As soon as the door had closed behind Max, the flames in the braziers faded. The shadows flowed together, pooling in corners, settling over the monks’ tables and stools. The man in green slumped backward in his chair and leaned his head tiredly on his fist.
My mind, numbed with wonder and shock at what had just unfolded, slowly began to function again. Should I kneel to my king or should I topple his chair through the gaping windows and protect Navronne from a madman, a honey-tongued servant of Magrog who had convinced me that even the evils he acknowledged would admit to rational explanation?
Before I could choose any course, he swiveled his head my way, still resting his temple on his pale fingers. His eyes remained shielded behind his green velvet hood, but I felt their scrutiny. “So advise me on my plan, Magnus Valentia. Perhaps I should allow this bargain with the priestess to stand. The land is mine. The pureblood is mine. I know the whereabouts of the lighthouse. My brother Perryn has fallen to ruin in defeat and is useless to anyone. Bayard has too many dead Navrons on his conscience to be trustworthy. I could throw him into the bargain and allow Sila Diaglou to take care of all my problems.”
Slowly, deliberately, I removed my mask and tucked it into my belt. A hundred responses darted thro
ugh my head. I could not be easy, not with my fate bandied about as a bargaining chip of less worth than a slip of gold from Evanore’s mines. Yet neither fear nor resentment shaped my answer. “You wish me to be honest, my lord. So I must confess, I am very confused.”
Confused was too simple a word. I could not shake a growing admiration for this man—the same villain who had bound Jullian in terror to manipulate me, who claimed pleasure in bending minds to his will and refused to deny he stole the eyes of the dead. In the space of an hour I had both learned the unthinkable truth that the Bastard of Evanore was the rightful king of Navronne, and heard enough to suspect that choice not so unthinkable. Even as he quipped of betrayal and surrender, the echo of his charge to Bayard fed a mad and greening hope. Beyond shadows and sparring, nothing this man did was a lie—which frightened me to the marrow. Yet…
He laughed, deep and convincing. And familiar. Was I again recalling his father who had smiled as he watched me dance away the horrors of battle so long ago?
“I, too, sit confused,” he said, “for I know why Sila Diaglou wants the lighthouse. She wishes to destroy it so there will be no healing or recovery from the ravaging she plans. And I know—”
“Iero’s everlasting grace!” The shattering explosion of truth set my mind reeling. Healing…recovery…spoken like good Eodward’s chosen heir…a prince who hid wisdom and reason behind a gargoyle’s mask…who had sent his newly acquired pureblood out to rescue two holy men that a villain had no reason to aid. No discretion, no forethought, no tactic could keep my discovery from my lips. “You’re Luviar’s man!”
Chapter 5
“My princely pride prefers to think Luviar was my man. You understand, pureblood, that your tongue will blacken and rot before I allow you to speak those words outside this room.” A red glow suffused two fingers of Prince Osriel’s left hand as he made a slight circular gesture.
I clamped the back of my hand to my mouth, battling a sudden nausea as my tongue grew hot and swelled to half again its normal size. The taste of decay…of rotten meat…flooded my mouth. Spirits of night!
At the very moment I believed I must choke on my own vomit, the sensations vanished. I took a shuddering breath. “Not a word to anyone, lord. Not a word.”
“Only five living persons—and now you as a sixth—know that Luviar de Savilia was my first tutor. He remained so until I was ten, when my father built Gillarine and installed him as its abbot. He would have schooled me here, but…circumstances prevented it.”
My mind raced. Who else would be privy to such a secret? Brother Victor, of course; if Luviar had been one face of a coin, Victor was its obverse. And Stearc, who was himself a student of Gillarine, and the first to bear the title of lighthouse Scholar, would surely know. But Elene had been horrified…disgusted…when I asked her about Osriel, so perhaps Gram, not Stearc’s daughter, was a third. Yet Gram was wary of this prince.
I must be wary, too. Perhaps this was but a ploy to pry names from me. “Lord, these other five…they must be Luviar’s people as well.”
“Some are. Some are not. If you are attempting to discover whether I know that Thane Stearc and his daughter and his secretary have plotted with Brother Victor, Prior Nemesio, your sister the Sinduria, and even young Jullian to salvage what they can of learning before Sila Diaglou remakes the world, the answer is yes. If you are asking me to tell you which of those conspirators might know of my involvement with the lighthouse cabal, I will not, for you are not to speak of it with anyone.”
I licked my dry lips. No need to remind me of that. “But Brother Gildas did not know?”
“Ah. Indeed that is perhaps the one favorable circumstance of this betrayal.”
“So you know that Brother Gildas…”
“…has taken the boy and the book of maps. Yes. And we must assume he is taking them to Sila Diaglou. Which means we must wonder if her demands of my brother will change once she knows what she has.” He held up four fingers and ticked off one and then a second. “It is obvious why the priestess wants the lighthouse. Its treasures thwart her aims of an ignorant, helpless populace. As for why she desires one of Caedmon’s line to go under her knife: My family is consecrated to Navronne—I will be displeased if you laugh too openly at that consideration after such close viewing of us three together—and she has long held that our blood will be all the more potent for these purification rites she works, releasing a great deal of power at the same time.”
He wagged his third finger, offering me no opening to respond. “As for Evanore…she hungers for it. Not solely for its gold, for which she has little use, but because my land is the true heart of Navronne, which is the Heart of the World. You have not seen such magic as can be worked in Evanore.”
The prince wriggled his remaining finger. “But you, Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine…why did she ask for you instead of your grandfather’s book? You have already unlocked the maps to her man Gildas. To seek out Danae holy places so that she can work her abominations, all she needs is the book and time enough to use it. You’ve no more insight than the monk as to which places in the book are significant—perhaps less—and a book is far easier to manage than an obstreperous pureblood. Certainly purebloods have skills in magic—most of them superior to yours, it seems—but Sila considers your kind a disease akin to royalty and practors, an affront to the Gehoum, and she vows to dispossess purebloods of their favored place in the world. Did you not know that? So lay your mind to the question. Why does she want you?”
The wind moaned through the jagged glass. A quick review of everything I had learned and experienced over the past weeks, most especially my grandfather’s fractured testimony, brought me only one conclusion. “I suppose because I can take her past the boundaries of the maps. Gildas can lead her to any location on the maps, but to travel deeper into the realms of the Danae, they’d need my grandfather or me. My grandfather told me that my bent could take me anywhere…even to places he had not mapped…even to the boundaries of heaven or hell. Silly to think…No one would believe such a thing.”
The prince settled back in his chair. “The boundaries of hell…I doubt you’d care for that.”
My skin crept. He spoke as if he’d visited there.
Dread encircled and choked me like smoke from the braziers. “I’ve told the others, and so, I suppose you know that these murderous rites the Harrowers perform destroy the Danae guardians and corrupt the Canon. If Sila Diaglou were to lead her Harrower legions into their land…My lord, what better way to accomplish her ambitions than to destroy them all?”
He fell into a deadly stillness. Then he rose from his chair and grasped the back of it for a moment, as if to steady himself. “Well then, we certainly can’t allow you to fall into her hands.”
He turned away and moved in measured steps, not toward the outer door, but toward the kitchen stair. His shapeless green robes hinted at a slender man slightly more than average height.
This could not be the end of the subject. Luviar’s passion…the certainty of the darkness to come…only in these past few days had the urgency penetrated my understanding: the end of the Danae…the death of Navronne…the long night, the end of the world we knew become a reality as palpable as the wood beneath my feet.
“My lord, protecting me is not enough,” I said to his back. “What if they’ve other ways to make the attempt? What if they abduct my grandfather? The danger—”
“Your sister has secured your grandfather and hidden him somewhere not even I can find.” He paused at the edge of the pool of light cast by the braziers. “You’ve tested well, Magnus. Better than the first reports led me to expect. That morning in Palinur…Voushanti doubted your mind’s clarity.”
“My lord, what use do you think to make of me?” Even as the essential question took shape in my head, I was not sure I could bear the answer. Such a deep-buried longing gripped my heart, far deeper and more profound than the doulon hunger, I thought my chest must burst.
“
I think you have just answered that question,” said Osriel, as if plucking thoughts from my head. “The Danae dance on the solstice; did you know that? Whatever magic exists in the world is renewed on that night. The music of the universe reaches its crescendo, so they say, and without magic we will not prevail. That’s why I chose that day for our confrontation with Sila Diaglou. The assistance we need from the Danae must be arranged before they dance. And someone must warn them of the priestess and her plot.”
The treacherous, trickster Danae. Blue fire spun in my head…dragons and herons and long muscled limbs. Glimmers of light and shadow shifted and leaped on the burnished wood floor. I stared unblinking, as if these things might form some pattern I could comprehend.
“Good night, friend Valen.”
Startled, I glanced up to see his pale lips graced with quiet amusement. And for the first time that evening, he spoke without whisper or throaty harshness. So familiar.
Words rushed out of me. “Your Grace, this night has left my curiosity pricked beyond all reason. Excuse my impertinence, but you are not at all the person I expected. And I have a fancy…foolish, I know…that we are not strangers. I would look upon your face, lord, that I might know my rightful king.”
“You’re not afraid? Even my eldest brother, who regularly dropped me down the sewage sluice at our father’s house in Avenus, fears me. And rightly so.” His gold ring gleamed in the dying light, defining his hand against his shapeless robes.
“I do fear you, lord. Reason demands it. Instinct insists upon it. Yet I do not find myself afraid.”
“I’ve planned to force your service blind,” he said. “How can I trust you—a proven, skillful liar? I’ve been given reason to believe you involved in the matter of this murdered boy. And you could easily have betrayed Luviar and Victor, hoping to buy yourself a more comfortable future.”
