Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  “Aye,” said Melkire. “He received the report.”

  “Good. Stand fast and have faith in your prince and your commander,” I said. “Guard them well, warriors. And may your gods do the same for you.”

  “Godspeed, pureblood,” said Philo. “It gives us heart to know you are with us.”

  I wished I had more reason to be optimistic. And this matter of Bayard…

  A few steps took me to a patch of bare ground behind the bakehouse. Though lacking a sample of Max’s own blood, I squeezed a few drops from the fresh cut on my thumb and used it to touch earth with magic. Whether it was the half-Cartamandua blood or merely the heightened alertness of this day that fed my skill, I located him quickly.

  Spirits and demons… Max had crossed Caedmon’s Bridge into Evanore. Bayard’s legions could not be allowed to join Sila’s. So great a host could overwhelm Osriel’s fragile trap, or break too quickly through the defense Voushanti would mount for Osriel. Osriel must not be forced to take action before Kol’s release of power at the change of season.

  I pelted through the halls and passages of Renna. In a great show of noise and sparks I burst a bar on the wicket gate, then promised the quaking gate guards dogs’ faces if they failed to let me out. Bayard wouldn’t listen to me. I needed to see Max.

  Out on the open hillside, I stripped and bundled my clothes, tying them over one shoulder, and touched earth again. Carefully I recalled the landscape of the southern bridge approaches—a steep descent from the mountains over treeless slopes, leveling out only within the last quellé. As certain as I could be of Max’s position along that road, I headed northward along Renna’s rutted road to the point where it began its steep descent. Holding the two landscapes in my head for similarity, I worked the shift…

  Two riders pulled up sharply when I stumbled through a washed-out rut ten paces in front of them. Unfortunately, they were but the first of a sizable vanguard and neither of them was Max.

  One sidewise glance and I dived off the road, tumbling farther than I liked down a precipitous slope of rocks and scrub into what appeared to be a snow-choked gully. I landed facedown and skidded farther yet, digging in my toes as my head and shoulders crashed through brittle branches and crusted snow. When I came to a stop, my head hung out over a precipice of at least a thousand quercae. My stomach plummeted the entire depth; thankfully, my body did not.

  I held still, stifling my gasping breaths, while fifty other horsemen passed by and the two riders argued with each other about exactly what they had seen, and whether the slope was too dangerous to explore. As my legs began to cramp from my desperate hold, another man joined them.

  “A naked demon glowing with light, you say?” said the newcomer, snorting in sarcasm after their lengthy description. “More likely a boulder tumbled off the cliff. Speak such foolishness again, and I’ll conjure tails on your backsides.”

  “Aye, master.” The clank of harness and whuffling of horses was followed by departing hoofbeats. But only two beasts had gone.

  “Are you falling out of the sky now, Valen? Pardon if I don’t come down to join you.”

  I crept backward crabwise. Once I found a firmly rooted branch to rest my foot on, I turned around and scrambled upward. “I need to talk to you, Max.”

  He dismounted and sat on the verge of the shelf road, waiting, examining me carefully as I crouched just below him so as to remain out of sight of the road.

  “First you must tell me what you are,” he said in as soft a voice as ever I’d heard from him. “And who you are.”

  I extended my arm so he could see. “I’m still kin—of Cartamandua blood. It just happens my father was not Claudio, and my mother was not human.”

  “Not human…” He stared at the sapphire seagrass and the snarling cat, but did not touch them.

  “You’re not half so surprised as I was. But much as I would love to share the tale—one could say I’m the younger brother of a map—we’ve far more important business. Bayard was supposed to wait at the bridge.”

  Max tore his gaze from my hand. All wariness now, he scanned the cliffs and the upward road, as if hordes of my kind might be lying in wait. “Bayard released Perryn to ride with him, believing him chastened by his tongue-tied captivity. Then the little fair-haired weasel rode ahead with the priestess. It makes Prince Bayard exceeding nervous—the idea of Sila, Perryn, and Osriel working some compromise without him.”

  “Listen to me, Max, and believe. There will be no compromises at Renna. The only way Bayard comes out of this with even a portion of what he wants is to honor his agreement with Osriel. You must persuade him. My master will not be denied this day.”

  Max leaned forward—all business—worried and angry. “You lied to me about Fortress Torvo. Used me. And yes, it seems you left me clean of blame. But it left my master chary of Osriel’s schemes and me chary of persuading him to trust the Bastard. Why should I believe you now?”

  “Have you touched earth since you crossed the bridge, Max? Have you allowed yourself to feel what haunts Evanore?” Even lacking Danae blood, Cartamandua talents should detect the sickness lurking in the veins of Dashon Ra.

  “Osriel’s wards.” His voice dismissed the fears he named, but his pureblood mask could not hide those written on his face and in his eyes. He had felt the anger of the dead.

  “Exactly so. Whatever you perceive, it is only the beginning for those who challenge Renna. Do your master and his men march on Osriel, they will curse the day they were born, and they will curse the day they died here. Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll think on it.” He averted his eyes, shuttering fear behind perfect pureblood indifference.

  Such feeble assurance did nothing for my confidence. Too many pieces of the day’s puzzle remained tenuous. “I’ll tell you a secret—you, Max, not your master. Perhaps if you understand why I could trust no one in Palinur, you’ll give credence to my word today.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I prayed that I revealed only what no longer held importance. “Sila held three prisoners on the day I came to you. My master was one of them. Does that justify my deception?”

  Dismissive laughter burbled from inside him and made it so far as his throat. But then his eyes met mine, and laughter died. “By the night lords…the sickly secretary.”

  His gaze traveled my length as I climbed back onto the road. “Believe, Max. You must find some way to persuade your master to hold back. If not, then in the name of heaven, look to your own soul and ride away.”

  I prayed my vanishing trick would leave him convinced.

  The sun had traveled much too far from its fiery birth by the time I returned to Renna’s well yard and shifted back to Gillarine. That such a journey should by rights have taken me three days did naught for my growing fever. I needed to be at the Well. I would spare only a few moments to learn if Victor and Jullian had discovered word of the Plain.

  Once sure the abbey hosted no unexpected visitors, I hurried to the lighthouse door and invoked the trigger word archangel. The lighthouse door burst open. Jullian must have been sitting on the other side.

  “We’ve found it!” The boy bounded down the stair ahead of me.

  Brother Victor sat at a worktable half buried in books and scrolls. “Iero’s grace, Valen!” he said. “Read him the passage, lad. I’m determined to find him a map.”

  Jullian proudly showed me the pristine copy of the book Victor had named Narvidius, Traveler. My restless feet had me circling the room as the boy read the Aurellian text.

  To discover the lost country, the seeker must divide the riverlands in twain, and the eastern half in twain again. In the innermost of these two last divisions, known as the Barrowlands or the Haunted Plain by the local peoples, travel the winding thread of the River Massivius, called in ancient times Qazar or the “Twin,” as it crosses a series of rocky berms and parts itself into two waterways. On a fertile isle between, enriched by the water’s flow, once stood the garden city of Askeron.
Here did great sorcerers raise the river water to their uppermost towers and channel it through the lanes and terraces, so that water flowed through every man’s hold, the streets were ever clean of dung and waste, and the air was ever sweet with the roses and honeysuckle that grew in wild cascades from the walls.

  The lost city of Askeron figured in numerous legends. Narvidius speculated that the sorcerers had grown cocky and cultivated all of Askeron’s terraces, forgetting to leave a wild place for the guardian Dané to enter and leave. Thus had the crops and gardens failed one dreadful summer. In that autumn, the river grew to a mighty flood and washed away every trace of Askeron and left the ground dead so that the eye of humankind could not see its remains.

  “There’s no other reference to a plain in the book?” The link seemed tenuous.

  “None. But we found no mention of the other particular names you said either—the Mountain, the Well, or the Sea,” said the boy. “Though he writes of many mountains and seas. Surely holy Picus would not have told you of the story did he believe it false.”

  I wasn’t at all sure of that. Holy Picus enjoyed his storytelling.

  “We’ve few good maps of eastern Morian,” said Brother Victor, beckoning me to his table. “No Cartamandua map. But I’ve found one that shows a divided river.”

  The monk showed me the sketchy rendering of a river that split into two only to rejoin itself on its way to the northern sea. A different, later map purported to show the River Massivius and its relation to several other rivers and the Trimori Road, the Aurellian trade route that led to the great port city, only this map showed no division in the river.

  “Tell me the names of these towns and cities, and these other places,” I said, tapping my finger on the words around the divided river. I had marched with Eodward to the defense of Trimori, along that very road, and it seemed as if we’d crossed a thousand rivers. “If I could but find some place I can remember well enough, I could transport myself there.” I had no time for long expeditions.

  Jullian began reading the names: Armentor, Vencicar, Pavillium…None was familiar. For each map, Victor and Jullian read me the marked distances and interpreted the key, but the Barrowlands were marshy and had a reputation for ill luck, thus Eodward’s legions had avoided it.

  Out in the cloister garth, I touched earth, bringing to mind all I had learned of the divided river, but a path failed to resolve. It would take me weeks of traveling to approach the Barrowlands and the River Massivius from anywhere I knew.

  A crestfallen Jullian trotted alongside me. “Is there naught else we can do to help? Another map? Some question that needs answering? I want to fight in this battle beside you and Gram, but I know my best use is here and not behind a sword.”

  His earnest innocence, as always, made me regret the flaws and failures that left me unworthy of such admiration. “Here’s a question: Find out what use Danae have for nivat. My uncle gets testy when I mention it. And I suppose I’m ashamed to press him. Perhaps if I knew what they do with it, I’d know how to prevent the vile things it does to me.”

  His face brightened. “I’ll do it. I swear—”

  “Be careful with oaths, lad,” I said, smiling. “They’ll take you where you never thought to go.”

  When I delivered Jullian back to him, I clasped hands with Brother Victor and thanked him for his help. “Lock your door, Brother. Stay safe. I’ll come when I can to tell you what transpires.”

  “No one will find us.” Brother Victor touched my bare shoulder. Somewhere in all the taking off and putting on, I had lost my bundle of clothes. I hadn’t even noticed. “You shall be Iero’s finger of grace this day, Valen. Do not doubt.”

  The silver-white disk of the sun had slipped past the zenith, and I was yet climbing the last steep hill toward the Well and my waiting grandsire. The day had grown oppressive—the air so cold and thick it was an effort to breathe. Not a whisper of wind stirred the dead grass that poked from the rocks in stiff clumps. The light was flat, a gray-white haze dulling the faint blue of the sky. I felt screams on the air. The taste of blood filled my mouth, no matter how often I spat or grabbed a handful of dry snow to wash it out. Was it that this land’s king lay bleeding, or had Sila and her allies already reached Renna and bent their minds to slaughter and corruption?

  I jogged lightly across the ledge and down the narrow passage through the cliff that led to the Well. A white-haired Dané squatted beside the dark, still surface of the pool.

  “With all respect, grandsi—argai.” He looked up sharply and I bowed. “Duties prevented—”

  “Thy duty lies here and only here.”

  Stian’s greeting halted my apology in the way of an avalanche—rock and ice and inarguable finality. Which, on this day when my turbulent insides already seemed to be digesting briars and knives, drove me to bursting. “My duty lies wherever I choose to pledge my service. Here at the Well. With my king. With my human friends. And with my Danae kin.”

  “This is impossible,” he roared, shaking the ice-clad granite. “Kol is mistaken in thee.” He jumped to his feet and strode across the corrie. In moments he would vanish.

  “Wait, please, argai. Permit me…” Damnable touchy bastard. I dropped to my knees and laid hands on the stone, and felt a welcoming warmth flow up my arms. But it was a pattern I sought, the newest one—of course he would have danced here.

  It began and ended at the spot where he had been kneeling. First a powerful spin. More turns than Kol’s, but a heavier landing. I brushed one foot to the side. Shifted weight. Brushed the other. And then a leap—drive your spirit upward, Valen—scarcely landing before another, and then another, circling the pool. Do not think of your loutish, graceless bumbling. Only of the steps…feel them…show him…

  Such twisted grief I felt as I moved through his steps, such wrenching guilt for blindness and stubborn pride, for anger and righteous belief. Stian’s grief and guilt. Clyste, the brightest spirit ever gifted to the long-lived, had died here unforgiven. She had not dared tell her own sire of her hopes, and this shadow of his kiran told me she had been right to keep her secret. That was the worst. He would have woven her bonds of myrtle and hyssop himself. Pain drove Stian’s dancing, relentless, unending self-condemnation for beliefs he could not recant.

  I stumbled to the end of the silver thread. Trying to stretch my spine longer, lower my hips, and round my arms as to embrace a tree, I made my imitation of the allavé. I closed my eyes, determined to hold the position as long as possible, more afraid to hear Stian’s scorn than to exhibit my incapacity. But, at the least, I understood him better.

  To my astonishment, a hand grasped my back foot, shifted it slightly toward the center of my body, stretched it out farther, and left only my great toe touching the ground.

  My forward thigh heated. My supporting ankle wobbled. But I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself still.

  The hands grasped my waist and pressed me down and forward, and then pushed my shoulders down to realign them with back, hip, and leg. I thought my burning thigh would rip. But I held.

  “Remember,” he said as he pulled my elbows wider and lower, twisted and kneaded my wrists until they felt like softened clay, and riffled my fingers until they rested light as ash on my forehead. Cradling my head in his palms, he drew his thumbs across my eyelids and forehead, smoothing away my frown of concentration. “Thou’rt a stick. Pounding will break thee…or leave thee pliable. Now stand up.”

  I drew in my back leg and pushed up, resisting the urge to groan or knead the muscles of my aching thigh.

  “I could not believe what Kol spoke of thee,” he said, his granite cheeks unsoftened. “Come. We must prepare. Nightfall opens the Canon.”

  Chapter 32

  I held my tongue and followed Stian through the cliff passage. My actions seemed to please him better than my words.

  We emerged from the passage into a wholly different landscape—a valley of tall pines decked with frost. Then Stian transported me throu
gh a series of breathtakingly fast shifts that demonstrated how rudimentary Kol had been with his teaching. No shift left me nauseated until the last, when we strolled onto a grassy hilltop, the high point of a ridge that protruded from the mountains. The oppression of the day, the anguish on the air, the blood and pain and unyielding winter came together here, leaving every movement an effort.

  With only a gesture, Stian bade me stay where I was, while he wandered about the hillside. Every once in a while he would execute a breathtaking leap or a jump and spin that denied the god’s firm hand that holds our bodies to the earth. At last he seemed to find what he wanted. He knelt and began to clear a spot of rocks and grass.

  The view from the hilltop was magnificent. A little to the north, a small lake reflected the flat light, its outflow several small streams that shone like steel and gouged the hillsides. East of the ridge, the land dropped into a tangle of rock spires and knobbed hills that stretched to the horizon and the deepening blue of winter afternoon. The shortest day of the year. I was eight-and-twenty, and I was not mad. Not yet.

  I turned to the west and caught my breath. A parapet of red-and-orange-streaked stone edged the ridge, dropping precipitously to a broad slope—the apron of the greater mountains to the south. The jagged rim reflected the very shape I had etched into my memory that morning.

  “This is the Center,” I murmured. “Dashon Ra.” Only we stood in Aeginea, where no human had gouged and scraped and hollowed out this hilltop in search for gold. I knelt, and though I dared not touch the earth of such a place with magic, I believed I heard Osriel’s harsh breathing and felt the seeping of his blood. “Be strong, my king,” I whispered as if he might hear me across the distance. “Do not yield your soul too quickly. I will find you a way.”

  “Come here.” Stian sat back on his heels and motioned me to do the same on the opposite side of the barren patch he had created. “Do not move. Do not interfere.”