Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  Sila’s new-arrived warriors gaped and moaned and let their arms fall slack.

  “Grayfin, Harlod, Danc, Skay…” From the prince’s lips fell a litany of names—Ardran, Evanori, Moriangi—summoning those he had bound to him until the world’s end. With each name a splotch of gray slipped out of the pit intermingled with the purple and black clouds, and a shudder ran up my spine. The pall of illusion fell away from the votive vessels, unmasking their livid gleam.

  The Harrower soldiers collapsed and buried their faces in their arms. While Voushanti’s sword held Sila and a bleeding Hurd at bay, the mardane harangued his own four men to ignore the roiling heavens and to maintain their protective line in front of Osriel. Sila lifted her eyes to the vague gray faces that appeared among the towering phantoms, and for the first time, appeared uneasy. “What have you done here, Prince?”

  “He is a bold sorcerer. I like that.” A shapeless figure in brown hobbled away from a flash of scarlet light toward Osriel.

  “Grandam!” Sila’s shock raised the hairs on my neck. She did not expect Ronila here. Which meant the old woman was making her move…

  “No!” Cursing my distance, I leaped from my high perch, driving my body forward to clear the rock ledges below. I jolted to earth some fifty quercae from the prince and raced toward them across the grotto, yelling, “Take Ronila! Keep her away!”

  “And our Bastard is a fine liar.” Ronila waved her walking stick. “Even now the Cartamandua abomination comes to shepherd his prince onto your throne, granddaughter. I think it is time to be quit of this nuisance.”

  Osriel’s men did not understand threats from old women. Ronila nudged an astonished Philo with her stick. Melkire merely shoved her back with the flat of his sword.

  The old woman tottered and growled. But then she stepped deftly to one side, raised her walking stick again and poked one of the surviving sentries so hard he staggered backward. I arrived in time to grab his arm before he toppled Osriel into the sinkhole.

  “You will not touch my king,” I yelled, spreading my arms wide to keep her away from the others, keeping a wary eye on her empty hand. “You will not do murder here.”

  Cackling, Ronila poked her stick at me—only this time, a blade protruded from the end of it, aimed straight at my gut. Voushanti launched himself into me, staggering me sidewise. Fire blossomed deep in my side. The witch growled and yanked the stick away. And then I was falling…

  Crushed between Voushanti’s prone bulk and iron-footed Melkire, I sagged only as far as my knees. Fear and instinct and every urgency of life demanded I stand up again. The old woman’s leering face loomed in front of me as huge as the Reaper’s Moon, her wild white hair a corona, her bloody blade aimed at my heart. A din of screams and wailing seemed to fill the universe.

  Yet Ronila’s blade did not strike. Her gleeful cackle twisted into such a wrenching intake of breath as comes only with pain. Shock dulled the feral hatred that glinted in her eyes. And even as I clutched my middle and stumbled to my feet, sure that my stomach and liver must fall out the hole in my side, the old woman wobbled and crumpled. Sila Diaglou stood calmly behind her, her pale hands drenched in blood.

  “Child?” the old woman whimpered.

  The priestess knelt and touched the blood bubbling from her grandmother’s lips as if it were a great curiosity. “Could you not see, old woman?” she said. “I value the sorcerer far more than I value you. He is the new world. You are but the dregs of the old.” Then she reached around Ronila’s back and yanked out her dagger, wiped the blade on the stained brown robes, and stuck it in the empty sheath at her waist.

  All the air in my lungs might have escaped through my punctured flesh.

  The priestess proffered me a smile worthy of an angel. “There, my beautiful Dané sorcerer, the hag shall not threaten you again. It is not too late to join me. Malena awaits. Are you not curious—? Ah, the witch has wounded you!” Her smile quickly faded as Hurd, a belt wrapped around his bloody arm, gave her a hand up. “Do you need help?”

  “Keep away from me, priestess,” I croaked, stepping back. I could not allow thoughts of Malena and what she might or might not carry to distract me. “Your kindness is as bloodstained as your hate.”

  “And I choose to keep my annoying servant.” Osriel stepped from between two of his guards. “This war is ended, priestess. The lighthouse stands. The Canon shall be healed. Command this traitorous grav of Morian, my brother, and the rest to lay down their arms.”

  “Because you play with corpses?” Sila said scornfully, glancing up at the towering phantoms. “Once I speak to my troops, they will fight—no matter how frightened they are of your ghosts. You have no kingdom, Bastard of Evanore, and no subjects but the dead. My legions will follow me to the netherworld.”

  “They shall wish for the netherworld, lady, when I am done,” said Osriel, in such tone as would shudder the most jaded soul. “I give you fair warning. Lay down your arms, or curse the hour you first saw daylight.”

  “Your threats do not frighten me.” And yet, they should. Was that the difference? Was it only those with souls who felt the fear of losing them?

  “Then our parley is ended,” said Osriel and turned his back on her.

  The prince hissed a command, and scarlet streams of light flowed from the sinkhole. From the gray faces in the clouds erupted a howl that only one who had experienced the doulon hunger would recognize. Or perhaps one who had tasted blood and despair. Of all in that grotto, only Voushanti and I did not stare upward. Terror was written on the faces around us…and pity, too.

  Melkire pointed to the sky. “Skay,” he said. “By the holy angels, it’s Skay. And Bergrond. Merciful Iero, what’s happening to them?”

  “Hurd, form up these whiners,” snapped Sila. “I will have Renna by dawn. We shall dismantle this prince limb from limb as we dismantle his house stone from stone.”

  The gray-faced commander bellowed orders to the ragged Harrowers, kicked and slapped them and got them moving up the cart track. Sila followed. A shoulder touch here, an encouraging word there, an admonishment not to heed the Bastard’s illusions, and they moved faster.

  Halfway up the sloping track, she looked back and smiled down at me. She waved her hand at Osriel, hunched over the gaping hole. “How can you bear this ghoulish prince, Valen? We need not be rivals. You are the essence of magic; I have rejected and forsworn all such power. You honor all gods; I acknowledge none. You care for humankind and the long-lived; I despise them all. You yearn for decadent pleasure; I need none of it. I am death, as is this prince of yours, while you, Valen, are life itself—more than any cold Danae. Come with me, and I will give you a world cleansed and purified. You can change its face forever, giving every man and woman the chance to wear silk or work spells or dance on the solstice.” No matter her smile, her eyes chilled even so bitter a night.

  “I do not argue with your vision, lady,” I called up to her, “but that you slaughter children and destroy all that is holy and good to create it. There must be another way. I’ll have no part of you.”

  “So be it.” She shrugged and ran after her troops.

  “Voushanti, you’ll see to Valen?” said the prince. His voice sounded hollow, as if he walked yet another plane, or as if he had fallen into the sinkhole after his blood. He knelt beside the dark shaft, the scarlet streams of enchantment giving his pale skin a ruddy cast to match the blood marks he’d drawn. Yet Sila’s words prodded me to move. Osriel was not at all like her.

  “Lord Prince, don’t do this,” I said, limping across the drifted snow to his side. “Not before you tell me what you felt here this day. Not until you tell me why I sense no more hatred from these lost souls that even a few weeks ago twisted my bowels.”

  Despair and grief stared out at me from my king’s bleak face. “Because I bled with them. Because I remembered them, as I promised when I took them captive. Because I knew their names.” He dropped his eyes to the roiling pit. “And now I must command th
em to go forth and live and die an eternal death for me.”

  “Your very nature rebels at this crime,” I said softly. “Let them go.”

  “I cannot.”

  I knelt beside the bottomless hole that stank of death and corruption. “Think of the day we rode down from Renna, when you walked among your people who had been burnt out by the Harrowers. They had nothing before you arrived, and no more when you left save your care and your promise of hope. With but those few words from you, they stood straight and were able to do for themselves. You have given everything for love of these people and this land, and a lover does not torment his beloved. Use the power that has been given you. Let them go.”

  “You have brought me no other answer, Valen.”

  “Because it has lived inside you all this time, lord. Behind a mask. Hope is enough.”

  He raked his fingers through his dark hair. “I would condemn us all.”

  “Then we will die with love,” said a soft voice behind us. “And honor. And faithfulness. But I don’t believe we will die. I watched these Harrowers just now, and they are frightened, too, misled by a glamor—despair masquerading as hope. You are their king, Osriel of Evanore. Save them.”

  When Elene knelt beside him, it was almost as if I heard the earth heave another great sigh. Or perhaps that was only me, watching surprise and weariness unmask his love at last.

  Chapter 35

  Osriel stood beside the sinkhole and called on those he had named to attend him. And so did every one of the gray phantoms in the cloud turn their empty eyes toward him. How he bore the cold weight of their attention, I could not imagine, for when I, by chance, met the gaze of only one, it placed a burden of lead and earth upon my shoulders.

  The prince removed his gold armrings and held them in the scarlet light, and the phantoms’ eyes burned red and gold, so one could believe they listened. “Hear my commands and obey,” he cried. “I charge you, by the bond I hold, find all who bear arms on this field of woe—your brothers in war, whole or wounded—and speak to each soul what you know of death and life. And at the ending, give this message: A new reign of law and justice shall come to Navronne with this new year. Do this, and I count your service to me ended. Duty done, make your way through the world as you will and find those whom you would comfort at your parting from earthly life, and when the sun touches the sky, be gone to your proper fate. Perficiimus.”

  The gray phantoms vanished from behind the cloud warriors, and an unsettling energy infused the air and land, like the building tensions of a thunderstorm. All the anger and confusion I had felt here was turned to eagerness. To hunting. Never had I been so glad I did not bear a blade. I did not want to hear what they would speak. I’d seen and heard enough of death and life.

  Voushanti knelt at Osriel’s feet and spoke what none of us could hear. Osriel held out his hand. Voushanti kissed it, then handed over his sword and ax. And then the mardane turned to me, expressionless. I nodded, and he walked out of the pit and into the night. I did not think we would see him ever again.

  Osriel knelt at the pit, his eyes closed as if he could hear his messengers. Elene kept vigil with him, her hand upon his shoulder. Philo formed up his three comrades at the foot of the cart track, weapons laid on the ground at their feet. The light of the votive vessels dimmed and faded. And so we awaited the end of the world.

  Accounts differ about what happened on that winter solstice. Some say Iero’s angels visited the homes of the dead all over the kingdom and brought them heaven’s solace, while the Adversary himself visited wrath upon Sila Diaglou’s legions, showing them the paths of hell and sending them home repentant.

  Some say the Danae brought forth Eodward’s Pretender, another young prince fostered in Danae realms. The guardians left him in the place of Osriel the Bastard, who had made one too many bargains with Magrog the Tormentor and was carried off to the netherworld. That this Pretender named himself Osriel was only to avoid the tricky business of Eodward’s will. Two copies of that document came to light with the new year, both proclaiming Eodward’s youngest son King of Navronne. All agreed that the first day of that winter dawned with a hope Navronne had not felt in living memory.

  I know only what I saw.

  When Osriel turned away from his enchantments, exhausted and at peace, Elene placed his hand upon her belly and whispered in his ear. It was the right time, when life displayed its truest mingling of joy and grief. For, of course, he had promised his firstborn to the Danae, and he could not break such fragile alliance as might come from this night’s work. They clung to each other for a while; then he donned his armor and became Navronne’s king, and Elene donned her fairest courage and became Navronne’s queen.

  I saw no more than that. Saverian found me slumped in the corner of the grotto, trying to find my way back to Aeginea, and offered to sew up the great hole in me instead. Once assured that the blood soaking her garments was soldiers’ blood, not hers, I mumbled that my wound would surely heal of itself, and that her stitches would make my fine sea grass look like brambles, and that I had urgent matters to attend if I could just remember what they were. But indeed I came near collapsing on her boots from the great gouts of blood that would not stop oozing, though I felt shamed when I considered how Osriel had bled near a sun’s turning and was yet spinning out enchantments and traipsing off to meet with his brother Bayard.

  Evidently the prince persuaded Bayard to round up the hardened elements of the Harrower legions and Perryn’s men, while Renna’s household garrison and the survivors of Boedec’s and Zurina’s legions gathered the Evanori dead for proper rites on the next day. After what Bayard’s men had seen happening in the sky over Dashon Ra that night, they were quite compliant. Many had been visited by the spirits of friends or brothers and had come to believe that Osriel had sent these spirits as a warning and a mercy to keep faith—as, indeed, he had. But I didn’t see any of that. Saverian had taken me in hand.

  “I must go back,” I said thickly. It was very awkward after the physician had just spent most of an hour with her hands in my blood and flesh, and had given me some lovely potion to dull the wicked fire in my side.

  “I suppose the ceilings are coming down on you again,” she said, emptying yet another basin of bloody water down her drainpipe.

  “Not too awful as yet. No, it’s Kol.” As sense returned, the remembrance of Tuari’s impending judgment had me frantic.

  She set her basin carefully on her table, as I slid my feet to the floor and put some weight on them to see if my legs would hold me up. “They’re still dancing, aren’t they?” she said.

  “Until dawn. I doubt I’ll be allowed anywhere close. Kol and Stian are already at risk of ruin for bringing me to the Canon.” There was also the matter of Kennet. For all the Danae knew, I had killed him. I had to explain. Fear more than blood loss threatened to buckle my knees.

  “Go, then,” she said. “I’ll be here if ever you choose to return to Renna.”

  As I touched her narrow face, drawing her worry into a rueful smile, a cheerful determination captured my soul. “None shall keep me away. There are things that even Renna’s powerful house mage has yet to learn,” I said, grinning at the thought. “I do think the gods intend me to see to her instruction.”

  I slogged back up the rock gate stair to Dashon Ra as fast as I could, holding my bandaged side. Saverian had come up with another cloak—I seemed to be shedding them like snakeskins—and chausses, so I was able to walk unremarked through the grisly business of battle’s aftermath. The snow fell gently now, laying a soft blanket on the cold faces of the dead. The waning night yet squirmed and wriggled uncomfortably, and I imagined souls passing on their missions of warning and mercy.

  Once out on the hillside, I thought to shift, but my steps were halted by two weary veterans hauling a bloodstained cart loaded with weapons and armor. “I’ve heard Boedec had her, then lost her,” said one. “She can slip through a man’s fingers.”

  My ears pric
ked, and I turned to listen.

  “Harrowers turned on her,” said the other man. “Ran her off. I’d love to get my hands on her—slaughtered my whole village, she did.”

  Gods, Sila was still loose! I pushed past them and ran down the slope, touched earth, and poured in magic. Only one other halfbreed Dané walked Dashon Ra.

  She was hiding in the dry bed of the leat. I rested my forearms on the rim of the great trough and peered over the side. “Ah, priestess, what are we to do with you?”

  “These whisperings are like to drive me mad,” she said, sitting up and shuddering as she glanced into the unsettled sky. “I’m glad for human company. Or at least mostly human. You can kill me if you want. Better you than one who holds grudges, which seems to be everyone. Perhaps before you do it, you could explain to me what went wrong. I was ready to take him down. We would have taken Renna by midday. Then, all of a sudden, my warriors began weeping and mumbling. Even the commanders. No one would listen to me.”

  “Osriel held a more powerful weapon.” I climbed up the great sluiceway and perched on the rim. “I don’t want to kill you. I think I’ve given up killing altogether. Never was very good at it. Neither can I allow you to go free. I’d like you to understand what you’ve done…and what was done to you…and why Osriel is nothing like you…but I don’t know enough words to explain it.”

  She sighed and brushed dirt from her face. “I’m too tired to listen. Besides, you’ll not change my beliefs. This world is corrupt beyond saving. The universe cares naught for our human politics. It demands purity. Plague and pestilence will accomplish the cleansing I could not. Just more slowly and with more pain.”