Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  We had returned straight on to Renna Syne. The walk seemed to cool her temper slightly, but upon our arrival, she made clear that I had exhausted what meager stock of forbearance she had vouched me as her patient. “I don’t wish to be friends with you. I don’t care to join monkish conspiracies to change the world. All I ask is civilized behavior—which means, among other things, that you do not put me at risk of losing my employment or my life.”

  When she had me sit on the bed and proceeded to drop a thin chain about my neck, I’d feared she’d decided to strangle me. But the fat little coin that dangled from the chain and weighed so heavily on my chest was, in fact, the gold medallion she used to tame my disease.

  “When you feel your senses compromised, hold the medallion in the center of your forehead, infuse it with power until the world quiets, and do not beg me for any favors when it’s no longer sufficient to the task.”

  With the remedy for my disease in my possession, I’d felt well rid of Saverian’s attentions and gleefully anticipated setting out on my own business once my obligations to Osriel and Elene were concluded. But a night awash in sweat, plagued with doulon dreams and fits of the shakes, had stolen all the pleasure from my prospective independence. Eventually, I had squeezed enough use from the woman’s medallion to soothe my night’s ills, but I had sorely missed her hands.

  Fingering the gold disk, I glanced over my shoulder. The prince was unrecognizable in thick layers of wool. Somehow I’d thought it might be easier to draw him into conversation with him traveling as Gram, but my every attempt had fallen to naught. In truth he had not spoken to anyone since we’d ridden out of Renna’s gates at dawn, leaving Elene behind to tend Brother Victor in Saverian’s absence. His visage reflected more of the hammered gold wolf with garnet eyes above my bedchamber door than my friend Gram.

  Stearc’s back vanished around a steep bank. The billowing curtains of snow had thinned, so that as we followed the thane around the prominence, the rugged borderlands opened to every side. Rival claims, blood feuds, and banditry had ever festered in this harsh land. A few Ardran manses, where villeins worked their lords’ wheat fields, lay nose to jowl with Evanori fortresses and freeholds, where crofters kept flocks of rangy goats or coaxed rye and oats from the thin soil under the protection of their warlords.

  A little past midday, the air grew thick with black smoke. Voushanti dispatched Philo to scout the road ahead and drew the little troop close around us. Swords were loosed in their scabbards. A flurry of powdery snow announced the warrior’s return.

  “Raiders burnt out Edane Godsear’s villeins at sunrise this morning,” said the ginger-bearded warrior. “Harrowers, not bandits. The village is ash. The women say their men were called to the manse, as it’s burning as well, and they’ve seen smoke rising from both north and west.”

  “Is the manse still under attack?” asked Voushanti, who had come up to the front beside Stearc.

  “No, lord,” said Philo.

  Voushanti and Saverian were of a mind to turn back. Had I not been accustomed to the monks’ signing speech, I might have missed Osriel’s gesture; as he adjusted his grip on his reins, one gloved finger broke out from his curled hand to point decisively forward.

  “We’ve business west,” said Stearc. “No rabble with torches and bill-hooks will hinder us.”

  We rode on. The Ardran village had comprised no more than eight or ten dwellings, huddled near the crossing of road and a stream. Naught but a clay baker’s oven was left standing. Women stood paralyzed beside the smoldering ruins, children clutching their skirts. Plumes of smoke and billowing snow could not hide their smudged cheeks or the dull eyes that stared hopelessly as we rode past.

  “Lord Stearc,” said the prince softly, urging his mount up beside the thane. “We cannot just pass them by.”

  “We can do nothing for them, Gram. Godsear will see to their welfare. It’s too dangerous to linger where raiders can hide so easily.”

  “They’re stronger than we are and accustomed to hardship,” said Saverian. “If they’ve no help for themselves, an hour’s attention from us is not going to change their fate.”

  The prince bowed his head in deference. “You heard Philo’s report, mistress. The manse itself is burned. We must stop.”

  And so, of course, we did. Osriel was the first off his horse. He engaged himself with one person, then the next, prodding each to move and think. “Goodwife, have you a place to shelter? Family? You must get out of this weather. Gammy, have you a root cellar here? Or root crops under the snow? Boy, use that fence pole to shove the embers together to make a fire. Then get your sister and bring the unburned beams to build a windbreak. Help your mam stay warm through the night. Have you menfolk?”

  Most of the women were lone—their husbands already dead or gone with their lord to fight for the feckless Perryn, which they believed the same as dead. And rightly so. The men called to the manse to help fight the fire had been graybeards or cripples or boys under fifteen.

  Saverian dressed burns and tended injuries, moving briskly from one to the next. Our warriors offered packets of bread or cheese, sympathetic ears, and strong arms to build shelters. The people gawked at me, wondering, as if I might perform some magic to rebuild their lives. But of course, they didn’t know I was the most useless of sorcerers. I managed only to uncover their well with a minor voiding spell, but I had no confidence they could survive the frigid night.

  “The new year will bring a new king,” Gram told one trembling goodwife. “Survive until then. Greet him with your needs and sorrows. Those who have done this deed are not messengers of great powers, but vile ravagers, and your king will call them to account for this crime. Gods do not begrudge you a roof.”

  After an hour, we rode on. Though our escort remained alert, we encountered no Harrowers, only the path of destruction they had crafted. Every manse, croft, village, and sheep shed we passed by lay in ruins, some already cold ashes, some still blazing. We stopped wherever we found people, whether Evanori or Ardran, whether villeins, noblewomen bundled in charred furs, frightened boys, or grizzled crofters with burnt hands. Some mumbled fearfully of the blind immortal Gehoum, afraid even to help themselves. But more picked themselves up and set about their own survival once they heard that a new king would bring them aid with the new year.

  As we rode past a ragged Evanori procession on their way from their charred hillside to a warlord’s hold, I moved to Osriel’s side. “Why, lord?” I said softly so that the soldiers could not hear. “Why do you not reveal yourself to these people? Not that you are Eodward’s heir…I understand that. But how much more would their spirits lift if they knew the one sharing his bread and blankets to be their own duc? And how eagerly would they rally to his cause when he did step forward to claim his father’s throne?”

  “Fear has ever been the Bastard’s staunchest ally,” he said, hunching his shoulders against the bitter wind. “Hope must stand aside and do its work softly until the day is won.” He kicked his mount ahead of mine and said no more.

  Seeing the steadied shoulders, the firmer grasps, the clearer eyes that Gram’s care effected, I could not but remember Luviar’s talk of the mystical bond between Navronne and its sovereign. The lack of a righteous king speeds the ruin of the land. And so, perhaps, was the reverse true; the ascension of a righteous sovereign might have consequences deeper than law or politics. I wanted Osriel to be that king. I believed he could be. But the poisoned fury of the dead that infused this land and hung like battlefield smoke inside my skull made me fear that he was not.

  For three days we pushed hard, fearing that a new storm might leave the roads impassable. Late on the third day we descended a steep pass between two spiny ridges only to see a grand prospect opened before us, washed in the indigo light of snowy evening. From west to east the dark, jagged gorge of the River Kay sliced the frosted landscape of treeless terraces. Just below us the river plunged down a great falls and veered northward through broken foothills,
where, freed from the confining rock, its character altered into the lazy sweeping flow that fed the fertile valley where Gillarine lay.

  Bridging the gorge a quellé west of the falls was Caedmon’s arch, its broken entry pillars on the Ardran side resembling thick ice spears. And just north of the pillars lay the crossroads where I had first glimpsed a Dané and a tree that did not grow in the human plane. My stomach tightened.

  “Lord Stearc,” I said, coaxing my balky horse up beside the thane as the road wound downward onto the flatter approaches to the bridge. “Call a halt as soon as we’re across. I’ll lead from there.”

  He jerked his head in assent. Before very long, Stearc passed over the bridge and between the broken pillars. He raised his hand.

  “Saints and spirits,” I mumbled, as I reined in beside him, gulping great lungfuls of Ardran winter. Blessed Ardra. The clouds seemed thinner this side of the bridge, the air clearer…cleaner. Only my own anxieties thrummed my veins, not the muted violence and suffering that had tainted my every breath in Evanore. I felt as if a mountain had rolled off my back.

  “Are you ill, Magnus? It’s been only a few hours since you renewed the damping spell.” Saverian slipped from her saddle, squinting at me as if I were a two-headed cow. She’d not spoken three words to me all day. Only diseases piqued her interest.

  “On the contrary,” I said, wishing she weren’t watching as I lifted my mangled bum from the saddle and dropped to the ground. I winced, but managed not to groan aloud. “Both health and spirits seem much improved now we’re this side of the river.”

  “Except for the posterior.” Her slanted brows mocked a frown and her small mouth quirked, as she cupped her hand beside her mouth and whispered, “However will you ride naked?”

  Gods… A number of entirely crude retorts came to mind, but they would likely only encourage the creature. I vowed to ignore her and her odd humor.

  Leaving the horses with Voushanti and the soldiers, we joined Osriel and Stearc beside Caedmon’s pillars. Thane and prince were arguing quietly. “…But you have too few men to protect you, lord.”

  “Have the past three days taught you nothing?” snapped the prince. “You need to be out of sight. You carry the lighthouse ward. Remain at Gillarine until I give you leave to do elsewise.”

  The thane stalked away, threw himself into the saddle, and barked a command. He and his five men mounted up and soon vanished into the valley of the Kay.

  “Are you ready to proceed, my lord, or do you wish to wait for morning?” I said, removing my mask now Stearc’s men were gone. Voushanti, Philo, and Melkire had dismounted and were sharing a skin of ale with Saverian. The prince sat on a stained block of marble fallen from the shattered columns.

  “We go now. I’d rather not push our luck with the weather.”

  “All I know to do is try to find the Sentinel Oak and seek a way to take us past it. I gather we’ve brought no nivat?” Though my voice remained determinedly neutral, conscience and resolution battled the guilty hope that he would contradict me. Would he dare tell me if they had it?

  “No nivat.” The prince rubbed his neck as if to ease the stiffness. “What need to lure the Danae into our lands, when your talents can take us into theirs? I trust we’ll have no inflated illusions today.”

  Relieved, yes, truly relieved, I told myself, I sought some trace of good humor in this reference to my artful past. But none of Gram’s wry humor or controlled excitement leaked from under Osriel’s thick cloak and hood. He manifested only this passionless determination I’d seen throughout this journey.

  Voushanti commanded Philo, Melkire, and Saverian to remain with the horses, while he, Gram, and I ventured onward. A few hundred querae from the bridge, I halted. Time to keep my promise to Elene.

  “My lord, perhaps we should discuss how we’re to approach the Danae. If I could but understand the terms of your discussion, what exactly we are seeking from them, what’s to happen on the solstice…”

  “That is not your concern. The time for discussion has passed.” And that was that.

  I could have refused to take him farther, but I had no means to weigh the world’s need against Elene’s fears. If I postponed my leaving, stayed close if and when this meeting took place, then perhaps I could glean Osriel’s purpose.

  “It is my concern, lord, as your contracted adviser and as a fellow member of the lighthouse cabal. Eventually we must and will discuss it. For now, for the Danae’s safety and our need for understanding, I’ll fulfill our bargain.”

  I knelt and touched my hands to earth. At first I sensed nothing beyond the scrape of snow crystals on my wrists and cold grit under my palms. A momentary panic struck me that Saverian’s medallion had left my bent useless. But she had insisted that it should not, and as distasteful as her arrogance might be, she had convinced me of her competence.

  I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with the cold air, imagining its pungent clarity sweeping aside all worries of Elene and Osriel, of lost souls and abducted children, of familial lies, gravid warnings, and looming birthdays. My fingers prickled and warmed, and I swept my mind across the frozen ground.

  Beneath the wind-crusted snow lay a mat of yellowed grass and dormant roots, clotted with damp soil and stones. Sheep had grazed here along with deer, elk, and horned goats come down from the mountains. The beasts left a threadwork of trails down to the willow brakes and fens of the Kay. Human hunters, trappers, and other travelers had beaten two paths across the meadow—one leading down the valley toward villages, abbeys, and cities, the other up the bald rocky prominence to the thick-walled castle men named Fortress Groult. At the conjunction of these paths lingered the faint warm residue of sorcery.

  Not much magical structure remained of my illusion—a knotty stump magically inflated from an astelas vine, meant to convince Gram and Stearc that I could read my grandfather’s book of maps. Yet two months ago that cheat’s ploy had spanned the barrier between true life and myth, between the realm of men and Aeginea. On a meadow with naught growing taller than my knee, I had glimpsed an oak tree with a trunk the breadth of my armspan and a canopy that could shelter a small village, and my companions and I had encountered a Dané female with moth wings on her breasts. I had yet to understand how I’d managed such a feat, but I hoped to repeat it.

  My magic enveloped the spot of warmth. Recalling the great tree’s particular shape and the wonder I had felt upon seeing it, I sought some trace of a Danae presence upon the land, some evidence of the juncture of two planes that existed here.

  The frozen world, the whickering horses, my companions, and my fears receded, and my mind filled with an abundance of the familiar and mundane—the paths of ancient sledges drawn up the hill to build the fortress, the remnants of siege engines and destroying raids, the blood and pain humans left everywhere they walked. Sounds, smells, tastes echoed the richness of the land and its history. Trees had once populated these terraced meadows: maples and oaks, spruce and fir, white-trunked birch. I concentrated, stretched, delved deeper…

  …and came near drowning in music. A legion of musicians must have walked here, leaving behind songs in varied voices…a pipe, a harp, a vielle, some instruments unknown to me…everywhere random snips of melody that on another day would fascinate and delight. But on this day the pervasive music distracted me, and I pushed past it…deeper yet…until I felt the weight of the land, the slow-moving rivers of the deeps, the impenetrable roots of the mountains.

  Puzzled and anxious, I reminded myself to breathe amid such ponderous life. Yet I sensed more in the deeps: heat…circling movement…stone dissolved in eternal fire…

  I backed away quickly. No beings left traces so deep as this. No presence I’d a mind to encounter. I retreated to the veils of music, each melody as rich and holy as plainsong, of marvelous variety, yet not intruding one upon the other, as if designed—

  Understanding blossomed like an unfolding lily. Brother Sebastian had taught me that plainsong was a medium o
f prayer—bearing the petitions we would submit to the gods—and also a mode of prayer—a state of mind that exalted the soul and opened our thoughts to heaven. I focused my inner eyes and ears upon the music as if squinting to see differently or angling my head to pick up fainter sounds, and I began to see and hear and feel what I had previously gleaned in random glimpses and snippets. As blue sigils upon smooth flesh, traces more numerous than the paths of deer had been drawn on the land’s music, circling, dividing, rejoining. The earth’s music served as the favored medium of the earth’s guardians—their paint and canvas, their clay—opening the mind and senses to the deepest truths of the world. Danae shaped paths of music, imposing harmony…patterns…where they walked. No single thread laid across the landscape, but many silver threads that joined and divided and crossed one another. And now the path lay before me, I, Janus de Cartamandua’s son, could surely walk it.

  I jumped to my feet. “Follow me.”

  Mesmerized, I strode across the snow-clad meadow toward a spreading oak that had not yet shed its russet leaves. When at last I touched its bark, I marveled that the great bole’s rugged solidity did not waver or vanish. Laughing as would a man freed from the gallows, I pressed my back to the trunk and peered at the hazy blue sky beyond the spreading canopy—no longer winter evening, but autumn afternoon. The chill that nipped my skin tasted of fruit and wine. Then was my attention captured by the prospect beyond the shaded circle.