Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  Uneasy, I glanced over my shoulder at the bored Jakome and at the far end of the chamber where the darkness hung so deep, unpenetrated by flame or thready daylight. Then I peered a little closer at the map.

  Increasingly frustrated, I tapped my silkbound hands on my mouth and chin, rested them on my head, and dropped them down again. My fingers itched to trace the web of paths, like those through Mellune Forest, where I had misled the pursuing Harrowers. They ached to touch the fine details, such as the cairn that marked the split in the track leading to Caedmon’s Bridge and Fortress Groult. In satisfaction I noted the vast distances Saverian and I had frog-leaped from the rounded hills of northeastern Ardra to the hills of Palinur, to the bogs, to the cairn, to the Sentinel Oak—

  I blinked. I would have sworn I had seen the faint shape of the Sentinel Oak depicted beside the cairn near Caedmon’s Bridge, but now I stared at the spot directly, I saw only the cairn. I angled my head to the side, and again glimpsed the tree.

  Shifting my examination westward, I scanned past the limits of civilized lands, across the wilds of the Aponavi, to the shores of the western sea that separated Navronne and Cymra from the uncharted lands beyond. Under a wash of green, the coastline jagged and curved, and I wondered which curve might be the shore of Evaldamon—Kol’s sianou, where the days passed more slowly than elsewhere in Aeginea. Somehow I felt that if I could touch the map, I would know such truths—as if I were a blind man touching his lover’s face.

  Of a sudden, I caught my breath—that’s what it was. This map had no words! Not one anywhere.

  “Wait outside, Jakome.” Sila Diaglou’s cool voice spun me away from the map. “And you, dear Gildas, I wish you to take our provisioning in hand. Hurd’s fifth legion, the last of our assault force, marches for Evanore this afternoon, and Falderrene has not the cleverness to see it done properly. The Grav has been so busy rousting purebloods, he’s had no time to see to it himself.”

  Sila swept through the door curtain. Gildas followed close behind, protesting. “But, holy one, I was to be here—”

  “I prefer to interview Magnus alone. Remind Jakome that no one interrupts me. And take the book—I want another site before tomorrow.”

  “Of course, holy one.” Gildas, flushed the hue of poppies, rummaged in the piled baggage and pulled out a thick square of brown leather, then inclined his back and left.

  I stared after him, ready to bash my head against the wall in frustration. Perhaps Sila knew Gildas was not entirely committed to her purposes. Perhaps not. But she had just sent him away with my book of Cartamandua maps. I had not been certain it yet existed.

  Once we were alone, the priestess moved briskly to retrieve a soiled cloak from the piled baggage. She fastened it about her shoulders and drew it close, giving an exaggerated shiver as she moved to the hearth. The action made her seem almost human.

  “The cusp of autumn arrives untimely.” She gazed into the leaping flames and spoke in a dreamy singsong voice. “Dun haze. Tarnished gold. Leaves…glory dulled…whipped from their branches. Wolves gather, howling, gnawing the light. No more the culmination of summer, but harbinger of bitter blue days and ever longer nights. The dance is finished, and my heart aches for the waning season.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me, her eyes narrowed, judging. “My grandmother taught me that when I was very small. It’s supposed to be sung. Have you heard it?”

  “No,” I said, mystified, wary.

  “She called it ‘The Canticle of the Autumn.’ I’m sure there once was a canticle for each season, but she never sang any but this one. Autumn is a sorrowful season. A dying season.”

  Somehow such flat pronouncement raised my dander. “This autumn, yes. But a rightful autumn is golden and fruitful, a worthy celebration of summer’s labors.”

  “And so you would say, too, that winter is not death.”

  Who could argue that the winter that held Navronne in its grip was not death? Not I, who had always envisioned the netherworld as a dungeon of ice.

  Turning back to the fire, she drew a greasy packet from her cloak, unwrapped it, and pulled out two flat strips of dried meat. She tore off a bite and closed her eyes in the way of a soldier who has been too long in the field and savors his meat as a sign he yet lives. Wordless, she offered me the second piece. I shook my head, and she devoured it, while I repeatedly rolled one thumb against the other in an attempt to free them from their bindings. I hated feeling so helpless in her presence.

  When she had finished the meat and wiped her hands on her breeches, she drained a small flask rifled from the depths of her cloak. Then she sighed and tossed another stick on the fire. “I apologize for your hand bindings, for your confinement, and for last night’s…coercion. You showed up at my door so unexpectedly. Though I believe you will eventually grant me your willing cooperation, events leave me little leeway for chance, and I must seize opportunity. Malena happens to be fertile just now.”

  “I await your explanations, madam.” Though expert at lies, I had never been very successful at feigning cooperation with those who restrained me and pretended they were doing it for some greater good. Yet I neither spat at her nor cursed her soul to everlasting fire as I would like to have done. If I were to save my friends, I needed to find some common ground with this woman.

  “You were examining my map,” she said, ignoring my abruptness. “It’s a Cartamandua map, as I’m sure you can tell—an unusual one.”

  “I’ve seen only a few so large.” Perhaps she would tell me what she thought was unusual. No words…I’d never seen a finished map lacking written names and keys. Janus had not made it for me; it was far too old. Yet naught gave me indication that it was incomplete. His own gryphon mark was scribed at the lower right corner. The cartographer’s mark was always the last thing added.

  “You may study it sometime, if you wish, before I destroy it.” No gloating or cruelty or irony accompanied this offer. With the same casual sincerity that Picus spoke of forsaking the human world to live in penitence, she spoke of destroying a work of incomparable magic, artistry, and breadth of knowledge. It must have taken Janus more than a year just to render it, and untold years of travel and study to gather the material for the early sketches. Saints and angels, the vellum itself was priceless without accounting for the map. Only a few sorcerers in the history of Navronne had been able to transform sewn vellum into so large and seamless a whole.

  “Why would you destroy such a marvel?” I said, the tantalizing mystery overwhelming my wish to let her lead the conversation. “What god could possibly wish it? Surely to know the size and variety of the world can but glorify whatever powers rule it.”

  Sila nodded, as if expecting that very question. “The map, like those things hidden in the Gillarine lighthouse, is an artifact of corruption. Until we have lived through the age of breaking and repentance, we have no need for such knowledge. Until we have destroyed the barriers that separate those who can make such a thing from those who cannot, we have no right to it. We shall drive the purebloods from their comfortable walls and squeeze the long-lived from their hiding places, breaking down the boundaries of birth and blood that hoard their gifts from humankind. When my use for this map is done, I’ll burn it. I don’t expect you to grasp everything right away.”

  Right away…so she expected me to live beyond the moment, at least. “Do you truly believe that mating me with your illiterate handmaiden will enable every man and woman to create such a work as this?”

  “If not, then we have no need of such works.” Always simple answers. Of all the things I had learned in my life, nothing was so simple as fanatics imagined.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “I very much dislike being used for anyone’s breeding projects.”

  Even from the side, I could see her smile blossom. The curve of her lips dimpled her left cheek just below the terrible scar, completely transforming her. She would never be a transcendent beauty like Elene, but when Sila Diaglou t
urned her smile on me, it felt as if Navronne’s winter had yielded to such a glory of summer as I could scarce remember. The world and all its troubles receded into dim anxiety beside an urgent need to touch her cheek. Great merciful Mother! Was my entire being reduced to naught but my treacherous prick?

  “I fully expected such rebellious sentiment from you, Magnus. Your indignation but confirms that you are meant to stand at my side and lead our people into a new age.”

  “Lead? At your side?” No beggar presented with a crown of rubies could be more astonished or more skeptical.

  She rose and joined me at the map, smiled again, and with one finger gently closed my mouth. “Who else could I trust to see both the wisdom of the future I propose and its dangers? Your life will stretch long enough to ensure we move past our time of suffering and penitence and into the new order”—she touched my wrist, setting my skin afire where a streak of pale blue peeked out between the silkbinding and my sleeve—“longer than I first imagined, longer than my own. Your unique magic will grow in these stretched years, serving to keep you safe and strong enough to lead. And your moral stature will shield the remnants of the old races from oppression as they die away.”

  I had expected to find Sila Diaglou evil incarnate, a leering devil who relished blood, or perhaps a drooling madwoman who saw macabre visions. What was beginning to disturb me most were these times that she seemed halfway reasonable. She shivered in the chilly fortress, relished her supper, had a grandmother who taught her songs. She worried about moral stature and oppression…which made her act of stabbing a spear through Boreas’s gut to pin his bleeding body to the earth all the more horrific. I would not allow myself to become one of her besotted sheep.

  I wrenched my attention from her face before I was completely undone. Behind her, the hanging blanket that covered the door to the gallery swayed, as if just dropped back into place. Despite Jakome’s wards, someone had been standing there, listening to what she had just said. Or perhaps I was merely twitchy because Gildas’s danger loomed so large. The last place on earth I dared stand was on some pedestal Gildas desired for himself.

  I stepped away from Sila. If she viewed the move as a retreat, so be it. “Madam, I claim no unique magic and no moral stature. Indeed I think you mistake me for someone entirely different. But even if I were as you say, and even if I espoused your goals—which seem so grand as to be impossible—how could a person of any ‘moral stature’ countenance your tactics? These rites of blood, these burnings, and spreading fear…” I dared not mention the Danae. Not until I understood more. “I don’t believe in your Gehoum.”

  “Your feelings are but confirmation of my judgment,” she said without the least trace of rancor. “They do you credit. But you must abandon your childish views, these notions of benevolent mother goddesses, compassionate father gods, and nurturing Danae guardians. No one tends this world. The universe is not benevolent. Look upon the stars—equal in their clarity, undivided in their brilliance—and the harsh truth of the universe becomes clear. I name this truth Gehoum that my followers might grasp it. It prescribes simplicity and demands order, and we who see the rancorous division and greed our ancestors have wrought upon the world, the corruption, this hoarding of talent, wealth, and privilege, the cruelties of war and servitude, must accomplish its return to purity. To me falls the dread task of cleansing, to you the task of regeneration. Our destinies track side by side, but shall never…marry.” Her apologetic smile ravished my wits.

  Of a sudden, wood rapped on stone from the gloom at the far end of the chamber. “Regeneration? Fool of a girl! Didst thou think I would not learn of this connivance?”

  “Grandam! Why are you hiding here?” Sila grabbed an unlit torch from the sconce by the door and shoved it into the brazier. Once it flared, she raised it high.

  The shadows fled to reveal a person sitting in the room’s farthest corner. Shapeless robes and wimple hid all but her face and the walking stick she rapped angrily against the floor.

  “I seek to understand why my dearest girl has not brought me this perverse creature fallen into her grasp. As she does not see fit to confide in me, I must resort to devious means.”

  The pale-complected woman who voiced this harsh complaint was the ancient I had seen with Sila in the hall the previous day.

  “Have you learned no lesson I’ve taught you, girl? The long-lived are a wound, festering with pride and corruption. They serve no purpose and cannot be made clean. And these Aurellian magicians dare set themselves above the rest of us. The world must be purged of them both, along with Caedmon’s prideful get. This halfbreed is abomination, yet you think to breed him and make more?”

  “I will not bend just because you and I disagree, Grandam.” Exhibiting her coldest self again, Sila set the blazing torch in its sconce and knelt beside the old woman to kiss her cheek. “You would chastise me did I betray my convictions for sentiment, would you not? Thus I chose not to distress you with my decision.”

  “But what is this breeding plan but sentimental attachment to corruption?” No excess affection displayed itself between Sila and her elder as they argued the merits of the world’s ruin.

  Momentarily abandoned, I shook off my fascination with Sila Diaglou’s family disagreements, and stooped down as if using my bundled hands to adjust my boot. A little more wriggling and my thumbs poked through the layered cords and touched the floor. I poured out magic, searching for the threads of life I had created the previous night. Gods, I was halfway to the prince and Stearc.

  “Magnus?” Sila’s hand touched my shoulder.

  I blinked and looked up. “My boot…”

  The lady’s laugh bit flesh as fiercely as Malena’s blade. “Do you think I don’t know what you do when you touch the ground? Gildas has told me of your Aurellian bent—and of your fondness for the Karish boy. Truly I have no wish to do him harm.”

  This gentle declaration appalled me. She did not see what she had done to Gerard and Jullian as harm. How could a flesh-and-blood woman feel nothing?

  One by one my secrets had fallen open to her, but anger hardened my resolve that she would not learn the rest. “You are most gracious, madam,” I said, bowing my head and climbing to my feet with as much dignity as bound hands allowed. “This child…I’ll confess I am preoccupied. He saved my life. Such a debt must be repaid, else a man’s life never comes into balance. With my own fate so little in my control, my concern for his rules both head and heart.”

  “You must tame such weakness that your mind may be devoted to the greater good, Magnus. So my grandmother taught me.” She beckoned me to follow. “Come, she asks to meet you.”

  Dutifully I stood before the old woman—older than I had thought from a distance. Framed by veil and wimple, her brow was high and her cheeks taut over square-cut bones like Sila’s, her dry skin finely checkered, like linen washed too many times and shriveled in the sun. Yet her turquoise eyes were astonishingly unclouded by time. They could have looked out at me from the face of a maid of one-and-twenty, save for the layer upon layer of despite in them. No few decades could have accumulated the depth of malice written in this woman’s face.

  “Tell me of your parentage, abomination,” she said, wasting no time on pleasantries.

  More than Gildas, more even than Sila, this woman incited me to caution. Her intelligence and festered grievance were so closely twined, opening anything of myself to her felt akin to spreading the lips of a wound and asking for salt. “I believe your granddaughter thinks bloodlines important only in their purposeful unraveling.”

  She leaned forward, her invisible hands propped on her stick, her body formless beneath the heavy robes that draped her head and spilled from her shoulders. “Call it an old woman’s curiosity.”

  Years…malevolence…somehow the pressure of her scrutiny squeezed an answer out of me. “My father is Janus de Cartamandua-Magistoria, a pureblood who languishes in drooling mania for his sins. I did not know my mother, and he did not tell m
e of her. I was raised as human, only learning of my dual heritage these past weeks.”

  “Son of the pureblood who returned Caedmon’s spawn to Navronne.” Hatred poured out of the old woman in a poison spew. “That itself is enough reason to drain thy blood. Who told you of your unnatural birthing if not the animal who caused it?”

  No difficulty in framing this answer. Truth would suffice. “My master, Prince Osriel, is an uncommon mage. He suspected the truth—using much the same evidence as Gildas, I suppose. Once his theory proved correct, he discarded me in some bargain with the Danae. Osriel explains neither his methods nor reasons.”

  “And now you have passed two of the remasti while out of your head. How is that possible? The dam directs such matters. Yet she has clearly been uninterested all these years, and who else of the long-lived would bother to force a human-raised halfbreed through the passages? And why?”

  The old woman held me paralyzed with her attention—a much more fearsome scrutiny than Sila’s. I dared not answer. I dared not meet her gaze. Surely she could read my flesh and bone. Sila saw people as clay to be molded to her will. This woman viewed us as prey.

  “I desire to look upon his gards.” The old woman’s crackling voice rose a note. “Perhaps they are but pureblood enchantment designed to deceive, some play of this cursed Osriel. Have him show me, Sila.”

  “This serves no purpose, Grandam. His marks are not spellworked.” Sila’s impatience scraped my nerves, creating noise and distraction when some insight waited just beyond my grasp. How did the old woman know so much of Danae?