Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  “Kol is certainly hard, but even I would not call him soulless.” Not one who danced as he did, who grieved as he did.

  Picus held open the flap of leather behind me. “Nay, nay. It is not a matter of naming. Have you ne’er been taught the holy writs, lad? The Creator gave the spark of life only to human creatures. Danae have souls no more than red deer or ash trees or the wind.”

  “Then what of those like me? Am I half souled, part tree, part man, destined for half heaven or half hell?” I tossed this out in jest, thinking he but carried on his sparring with Kol. But his prattle stilled long enough to disturb me. I turned and found his pale eyes picking at my face as if to search the darkest nooks and crannies behind my heart and ribs.

  “I know not,” he said softly. “There was a time when I believed the One God could not be so cruel as to beget a soulless creature upon a human parent. But then I saw evidence…” He switched his gaze back to the Dané in the tree. “Perhaps it is one by one He chooses.”

  I swallowed hard and hid my mottled hands in my soggy bundle of clothes. No soul…that was not possible. I shifted my shoulders as if to prove I had will and sense of my own, and I remembered Gillarine Abbey church and how I had felt uplifted there, and reverent—surely the sign of gods speaking to a person, one capable of repentance and service, one possessing life beyond the body’s limits. But then, I had also felt uplifted when I saw Kol dance, when I had looked on Elene silhouetted in sunlight, and when I’d sat in Gillarine’s refectory eating stewed parsnips. How would one ever know if one lacked a soul? Even Danae had thoughts and will, emotions and, at least in Kol’s case, some sense of honor—not the marks of soulless beasts.

  “Was Kol so fierce before his sister—my mother—was imprisoned?” Cowardly, I asked no more of souls.

  “Kol hath ever a sober cast of mind,” said the monk, palpably relieved at my shift of subject. “More than most Danae, and of a certain, more than Clyste—not that she lacked intelligence to accompany her cheery nature. He ever seeks perfection in his being—a hard road for any of God’s creatures. But Clyste made him laugh and softened his eye, and my dear lad challenged him to find delight in brotherly friendship as well as duty. Twixt them both, held so dear by their love, Kol reflected Iero’s light upon us all. But I fear his joy has died with them.”

  My dear lad…It took me a moment to realize the monk spoke of Eodward.

  “Come inside, lad, and relieve thy chill.” The monk’s hand gripped my shoulder kindly, even if his offer was wholly nonsensical. Naught could relieve the chill he had just laid on me. For a being without a soul, death became the end of all.

  Moist heat slapped my face as I ducked and stepped into Picus’s round hut—scarce eight paces across. Saverian knelt by a small fire pit in the center of the dark room, stretching her cloak to help the thick layers to dry. I needed no polite encouragement to sit on the hard-packed dirt beside her. Not only could I not stand upright without cracking my head on the low slanting ribs of the roof or poking my eye on wayward thatch, but I could scarce see or breathe at that height. If the monk had a hole in the roof to draw out his smoke, it was wholly inadequate to the task.

  Picus let the door flap fall behind us. Quicker than blinking he had coaxed his fire brighter, set a clay pot of water over it, and snapped sprigs from a dry bundle dangling from his roof alongside a skinned rabbit, several woven nets bulging with pale, dusty vegetables, a variety of tools with leather-wrapped handles, and a pair of snowshoes. He settled cross-legged across the fire from me and Saverian and crushed the leaves into a clay mug and bowl. “We’ll have a bracing tea anon. ’Tis such pleasure to have company, I scarce know up from down—not seen a human person in much longer than you’d want to account. I’m flummoxed that I can recall how to speak, so you must command me stopper my mouth when thy ears protest. Kol comes to check on me now and again. Tends my garden or brings me a fish or a bag of apples, and in return I deluge him with human words, poor fellow, the last thing he cares to hear. Which recalls…”

  He sprang to his feet and poked his head through the door flap. “Kol, as thou’rt waiting…my turnips suffer black mold, and the onions pull up soft and slimed, scarce a layer fit to eat. I fret this rain will finish them. The spelt in the far mead has no ripe heads, and frost nips the dawn. I know it’s been scarce a month since you’ve tended it, but if thou wouldst have mercy upon my poor plot, I’d be most grateful.”

  I tried to hear Kol’s response, but I could not distinguish it from the sounds of snapping fire and rain rustling on the thatch, and the thousand other noises of storm-racked forest and distant sea vying for attention in my head. Overwhelmed with mystery, I could not even imagine what Picus required. I doubted Kol would set to work with rake and hoe. Another question to add to my growing tally.

  I held my hands near the fire, but instantly withdrew them before my skin blackened like scorched paper. The shifting blue marks had faded to silver. I wrapped my arms around my unsettled middle and hoped the steam rising from my sodden shirt would suffice to calm my shivering.

  Picus closed the flap again and lowered himself to the dirt floor, scratching his grizzled chin. “’Tis a wonder Kol comes here. The land grows ill. Will not stay healthy no matter that he puts it right. And my company is no pleasure to him. Though, indeed, he’s exiled himself from their company, save when he is summoned to the dance. Even his sire is near a stranger to him since Clyste’s fall.”

  I believed I knew why. “None but you and he know that Janus fathered Clyste’s child.”

  Picus nodded. “After Clyste’s prisoning, I saw that Kol bore some weighty burden and seemed like to shatter with it. So I baited him into a fight—not so difficult to do, as you see—and goaded forth his secret. Took me a good trimonth to walk without those bruises squalling, and I’ve ne’er regrown the teeth.”

  He kneaded his unshaven left jaw for a moment, his attention suddenly far away. But then he scooted around and rummaged in the dark behind him, pulling out two irregularly woven blankets that might once have had some color. He gave one to each of us. “Come, thou’rt a soggy pair. Bundle up and get warm, mistress. I’ll leave thee lone here in the house and take me to the shed when sleep time comes so ye can do what women must. And I’ll not even think on it, I promise, or if I do, I’ll perform my most rigorous spiritual exercises or even hike me down to the sea and douse my head, though I could wish for better weather or at the least Kol to take me down a shorter path. The determination to penance can take a man only so far until it falls into the sin called ‘pride of mortification,’ if thou’rt familiar with Karish vice and virtue.”

  “Good monk, you’ve no need to give up your bed,” said Saverian. “I’m a daughter of Evanore and our customs see no wrong in stalwart women sheltering with honorable men.” She was being exceptionally polite. She didn’t correct his use of mistress.

  Shaking his head sadly, Picus poured the simmering water over his herbs and handed the mug to Saverian and the bowl to me. “Ah, mistress, hope of heaven and true repentance bids me warn ye that I am no honorable man, but abjectly fallen. Though vowed chaste at fifteen, and gi’en naught to suffer in this life but a surfeit of adventure and the joy to serve the fairest prince the One God ever sent to humankind, I succumbed to the Adversary’s assault and broke my vows and the most solemn responsibilities of a teacher to lie with a woman. None should trust me.”

  A long pull on the steaming tea seemed to restore the physician’s ironical humor. She tilted her head and examined the monk, as he opened a flat wood chest he’d dragged from the same dark corner where he’d found the blanket. “So you what…consummated an attraction…kept a female companion…in two-hundred-some years…a healthy man who lives among beings who go about unclothed? I’ve little understanding of Karish ways, despite my association with Brother Valen here, but I hardly see the difficulty. If you are indeed this Picus…a man of such advanced years…I would think the continuation of a young man’s animal urgencies would be
more reassuring than problematical—mayhap a sign of your god’s favor.” She sounded little short of laughter, which I feared must surely wound a monk so determined to penance, no matter how foolish we judged his rigor.

  “The structure of virtue was the last lesson of my novitiate, Saverian,” I said, “though I scarce got beyond naming the seven great virtues and the twelve great vices. But pride of mortification made sense to me—the vice of those who aggrandize themselves by the extremity of their penance rites or humility. Clearly Brother Picus heeds the first duty of the sinner—to sincerely balance his reparations with his clearest assessment of the severity of his sin. We must honor his judgment, while welcoming his willingness to allow us to intrude upon his solitude.”

  Picus looked as though the portal to heaven had opened in front of him. His rounded mouth opened and closed like that of a fish. His hands, one holding a rank-smelling onion and the alter holding a leaf-wrapped bundle that smelled fishy, dropped into his lap. “Novitiate?” he stammered. “Thou art Karish, then, a monk vowed, as well as the Cartamandua’s halfbreed son who has begun to take the Danae passages. How comes that—?” Pain etched his fleshless face. “Ah, great Iero’s heart, I must not even ask. I have renounced the world.”

  “I did take novice vows, but my abbot sent me back into the world. The story is very long, Brother Picus, and not half so interesting as your own, which we would relish hearing.”

  This man had known King Eodward…and Caedmon himself. He could tell us of the Danae…of Kol and his disaffection from his own kind…of my mother and her plan…perhaps even something of the world’s grief. A guilty fear gnawed at me that the archon would be so angered by my escape, he would refuse to tell Osriel what they knew of the failing world. If I could learn from Picus, perhaps I could make up for it. Once Kol set me free to go back to the human world in safety, I could send what I’d learned to the cabal, thus keeping my vow to Luviar. As for Osriel himself, I felt no pity. Likely they would not cripple him for their own failure to hold on to me.

  “Thou must tell me thy names, at the least,” said Picus, as he busied himself with his pot and his bundles, “and some small summary of thy purpose in Aeginea, lest I go mad and forget even my devotions. If the Cartamandua did not send thee to Kol, then how come ye here? Kol’s pride would never allow him to fetch thee. Didst thou not know what breaking awaited a half-breed, boy? I fought to convert the long-lived from all their heathenish ways, especially from such cruel abuse of their own children”—he clutched his hands to his chest for a moment, closing his eyes and looking as if he might choke—“but their terror of Llio’s curse ever drives them. And you, lady, so wise and gentlewomanly…an Evanori warrior? Stalwart, I’ll vow, but not half so ferocious as the warlords I remember, who painted their faces with blood and brought Hansker scalps to lay before King Caedmon. How come ye here with Janus’s son?”

  As his stream of words bounded and flowed like an exuberant watercourse, the monk dropped the leaf-wrapped bundle into the blackened clay pot and whipped a knife from the folds of his robe. Though the blade was worn near the slimness of a stiletto, he proceeded to slice the onion into the pot, as well, tossing the moldy outer skin out through the dripping door flap.

  “My name is Valen,” I said. “I’ve come here to learn of the world. Tell me, what is this Llio’s cu—?”

  Of a sudden, I was not sure I could sit still to hear the secrets of heaven, much less whatever tidbits the monk could reveal. Picus’s pot belched steam, smelling strongly of fish and onion. The smoke filled my lungs, and the rank smell curdled my belly. My skin itched. My foot tapped the dirt floor uncontrollably. So little air.

  I waved at the physician to take up the conversation, while I downed the lukewarm tea—mint and elderberry—and appreciated its spreading comfort. An unlikely sweat broke out beneath my wet, scratchy shirt.

  “I am Saverian, physician and student of natural philosophy, house mage to Osriel, Duc of Evanore, Prince of Navronne. A daughter of warriors, not one myself.”

  Picus’s expression blossomed with wonder. “You serve my king’s son? What a fine man he must be. I had warned Eodward that the One God disapproved using holy marriage for wartime alliance, but the Moriangi grav and his men knew of ships, and when we drove the Aurellians to the sea, ’twas the grav who crushed them. And the grav’s daughter produced such a robust babe. I knew him only as a motherless boy, of course, rough mannered and interested in naught but fighting. I tutored him in combat as I had his father. I tried to introduce book studies as well, but the fighting was heavy in those days, and we were constantly on the move, so we’d no time for it.”

  Saverian nodded. “You speak of Bayard, the eldest of Eodward’s three sons. When times were more settled, another son, Perryn, was born to Eodward’s second wife, an Ardran ducessa. My master is the third and youngest, born to his pureblood mistress. You do know of Eodward’s fate, Brother?”

  “Do I know he is dead? Aye. Even I, whose eyes remain steadfastly human, saw the sun dim on that day. Kol came to break the news and invite me to share his kiran, but I could not, though I knew it would be such a glory as I had not seen since he danced for Clyste. I sent him away, that a heathen creature would not witness a monk’s blaspheming, for I had always believed merciful Iero must surely bring my lad home before the end. Whate’er his sins, as any king must commit in carrying his office, they could not be so dread as to forbid him one last glimpse of the Canon after so long away. Once thou hast seen it…” The monk dashed a hairy knuckle at his eyes, as he stirred his pot with a wooden spoon. “Three sons left. A mercy in that at the least.”

  A mercy only if we did not tell him of the princes and their war. Though Picus’s talk touched on old mysteries, like the Canon, and new ones like this Llio’s curse that caused the Danae to cripple halfbreeds, and kirani that seemed something more than mere dancing, it was an effort to concentrate on the conversation. I hunched deeper into myself, cold and hot together, ravenous, yet unsure if I could choke down this mess he stirred. Something was definitely wrong with me. When had I ever found aught I would not eat? The light had gone completely from my gards, leaving my skin purplish gray and leprous in appearance.

  “Why did you abandon King Eodward, Brother?” said Saverian, a physician setting out to diagnose the world’s ills. “You vanished without a word to the king or anyone else. You were seen leaving Palinur, but no evidence of mishap or treason was ever found. Even the journals you left behind told Eodward nothing of your fate. The prince says his father died yet grieving for your loss, chastising himself for some unknown failure that drove you away. Surely your god would agree that service to Navronne’s king supercedes any personal penance, especially for minor transgressions of the flesh.”

  Picus squeezed his broad brow tight as if to force aside the sentiments that had bubbled so near his surface. “One night’s fall from grace drove me from my lord’s side. I had long renounced the woman and thought I’d made amends. But when I was confronted with the lasting evidence of my wickedness and shown how it contravened everything I loved, everything he loved, I knew no man had ever so abjectly failed his god or his lord. Ronila said that to cleanse my sin I must bleed, suffer, and die by my own hand or hers. But the One God forbids self-murder, and I would not add to my soul’s debt by allowing her to take my blood on her own hand. So I swore to her on Iero’s name that I would die to the world—leave my prince and all my friends and holy brothers without apology or explanation, and live henceforth in solitude, penury, and repentance for as long as the streams of time might carry me forward. She knew me and believed I would keep any pledge so sworn. And so I have, save for these few untimely lapses, when I am out of measure surprised.”

  “Ronila?” said Saverian. “The woman you lay with…who must have been a student, if you betrayed a teacher’s trust. But I thought your only student was Eodward himself.”

  I glanced up from my knees where I had focused my eyes to get control of my stomach. The dim
smoky room swirled unpleasantly. “You mentioned Ronila in your journal—a disaffected halfbreed girl who left Aeginea after making her third change.”

  Picus wagged his head. “We witnessed her knee-breaking, my prince and I. A golden child of an age ye would judge fourteen summers. ’Tis after the child passes the second remasti they do it. She screamed and begged us to save her from crippling, but we could not. My prince was naught but a tender seven-year-old, and I God-sworn to protect him above all things, which meant honoring Danae customs. So much pain…After, I thought to give her something back to redeem her suffering, something the others would not have and could never take from her. The long-lived claim to bear no grudge against a broken halfbreed, but of course they do. They seek perfection in their arts—which are firstly their bodies and their use of them—and thus treated her with cruel disdain. She was clever at numbers and had such a vivid imagining that she devoured all I could teach her of Navronne, of natural philosophy, of human history and warfare, of moral philosophy and the teachings of Karus. Every afternoon when she had completed her tasks of the day—making baskets or weaving spidersilk or gathering apples or mushrooms—she would hobble to my canopy for teaching…Ah, I babble on too long. I sinned. I renounced that sin. But I will pay the price of it until my bones are dust.”

  He tightened his mouth and would not speak more for a while. He broke pinches of herbs from his dangling bundles and threw them in his pot, each breaking an explosion of fragrance. The scent of dried mushrooms, damp earth, and moldering leaves left the memory of nivat on my tongue. Sweat dribbled down my sides. My left thigh muscle cramped, and an ember burned in my gut…

  No! Nivat no longer had power over me. I forced my thoughts away from my body. So the celibate monk, exiled far from home and holy brotherhood, had seduced a half-Danae girl. Or had she, a lonely outcast, enamored of a kind, virile young man, used her Danae wiles to tempt him? Yet more troubled me than such common failings as lust and seduction. Something in the telling of his story…something in the words…had touched off a bone-deep revulsion, but I could not capture it. Wit seemed to have drained out of me, along with the myriad telltales of my senses that had been with me since the remasti. This windowless room. So small. So close.