by Carol Berg
“You’re wrong,” I said. From our vantage I could see the fields of wounded and dead and those who tended them. “But clearly you must be judged by wiser heads than mine. Two realms have claim to your punishment, and I think…Will you come with me?” I jumped down from the trough and offered my hand.
She took it and jumped down beside me. “Nothing better to do at present.”
I threw off my garments and gathered my thoughts and memories. We walked back toward the gully. I listened for music as we climbed the rocky parapet…
…and by the time we reached the top, the cries of wounded soldiers had become the music of a single vielle, its strings picking out a pavane. The dancers were paired, one lifting the other or lowering, closing or separating but always touching, entwining their bodies in a single expression of grace, never stopping, as the music never stopped in its round. As far as we could see across the grassy hillside, the lines of sapphire, azure, and lapis flowed and swirled and bent, but never broke. Kol and Thokki danced the Center, and if grace and strength could speak of heaven, then their partnering was divine.
Sila’s face grew still. Stunned. “What is this?” she whispered.
The music swelled as it began another round, and slowly, one by one around the circles, the partners held their last position, then settled to the ground until only Kol and Thokki danced. He lifted her above his head, her arms and back and legs one smooth curve. Then Kol settled into an allavé with his own back straight and his leg a perfect line with it, and Thokki held above him. And then did the first light of dawn fall on them and the music fade.
“This is what you would destroy,” I said, tears pricking my eyes.
She did not respond. Did not speak at all, as the Danae embraced and bowed and vanished, one by one, into the morning. “Come,” I said. “We can go back now.”
But a small knot of Danae gathered atop the hill, and as I suspected would happen, several more were waiting for us by the time we climbed down the rocks. Sila was strong but not strong enough to resist three determined Danae. I did not run. “It is time for judgment,” I said.
Tuari and Nysse and ten more of the long-lived stood at the Center. Kol, Stian, and Thokki stood before them. They paused in their discussion, and all heads turned as we were brought up the hill.
“In the Canon, Tuari Archon,” I said, bowing. “I have brought you the hand of the Scourge. She is of our kind, but was nurtured in Ronila’s bitterness…”
The trial was long and required much discussion and argument. Such punishments as were to be meted out could not be Tuari’s decision alone.
I was cleared of Kennet’s murder. Ulfin knew that neither Kennet nor I had possessed a knife, and he had seen Ronila throw herself on Kennet as he himself brought Thokki to the pond.
For their part in bringing me to the Canon, Stian and Thokki were condemned to beast form for a gyre—a full term of the seasons. It was a bitter punishment and dangerous, lest some accident befall or some rash hunter failed to recognize them, but mild for the offense. The judges said they were brought into the conspiracy by their love for Kol and not of their own part, and indeed a marvel and no harm had come of my presence at the Canon.
But Kol was judged to have given long thought to his misdeed. He had begun my training and had failed to bring the issue of my talents to the archon. He had defied every precept of the Law and had taken fully on himself the risk of breaking the Canon. At noontide on the following day, he would be prisoned in his sianou, bound forever to slow fading with myrtle and hyssop. They accepted no plea from Stian to trade punishments with his son, no argument that Kol’s dancing was unmatched in any season. And the marvel of the Well’s recovery could not mitigate both Stian’s punishment and Kol’s.
Kol accepted the judgment without argument. “I did as was necessary,” he said. “I saw no other way. I would do it again.” Though many of the ten were uncomfortable with his sentencing, his own words condemned him.
“I can find your lost sianous, Tuari Archon,” I pleaded. “I can find the Plain. I just need time.” But they believed in swift judgment and would not yield. One look from Kol closed off further protests. He would not have me prisoned as well.
Sila Diaglou they condemned to beast form for as long as she might live. She said nothing. I did not know if she was yet mesmerized by the Canon or believed she was lost in dream. When they asked her what form she would prefer, she asked only that it not be vermin and that it be done right away.
Tuari took her. As she stood waiting to hear what they would do, he wrapped his arms about her from behind and whispered, “Do not be afraid.” Before I could blink, both bodies had vanished, and a sparrow fluttered along the ground as if its wings were broken. Moments later and Tuari was back, kneeling beside the bird. He nudged it with his finger, and startled, it flew to a nearby rock. I wanted to watch her as she tried her wings, but a flurry of birds rose from the ground, wheeled, and vanished into the morning, leaving none behind.
The Danae dispersed, one and then the other. As a courtesy to Stian, they would not execute Stian and Thokki’s punishments until Kol’s was done. The three of them were taken away and I was left alone at the Center, weary and sick at heart.
At nightfall, I took Philo and a cadre of men to Gillarine to take custody of Gildas. Evidently the doulon hunger already burned his flesh. I did not stay to hear his pained sobbing and curses as they shackled him for the short journey to Renna’s dungeon, but hurried to the lighthouse door. “Archangel!” I said, infusing the word with magic.
In three heartbeats, the door flew open. “Brother!” The boy peered outside as if to see if the moon had fallen or the earth cracked. The sheer joy that dawned on his young face warmed even such a cold night.
As I told him briefly of Osriel’s great magic, and how we had hopes that my peculiar combination of talents might help set the weather back to rights, he served me a small cup of ale, taking as much pride in his hospitality as a new householder. He offered me cheese and dried figs, as well, which reminded me how dreadfully long it had been since I had eaten anything. My aching side and hand had stolen my appetite.
“Do you think the brothers will come back to Gillarine now?” he asked, hesitant. “I can do very well here for as long as needed. But if they were to come…there would be singing…and they might raise the bells again. The quiet…I don’t mind it, but…”
“I’m sure they’ll come back. But you will always be the Scholar. The king will have it no other way.” I stood to go. “Iero’s grace, Scholar.”
“Iero’s grace…Valen. I don’t suppose you’ll be coming back here to take vows.”
I laughed and looked askance at my gards. “I think I’ve vows enough for three lifetimes. But if you’ve matters to discuss with me, you can always go to the font, yes? See if I’m at home?”
He giggled like a boy again and thought that was very fine, and said he would read more in the book of Danae lore and discuss it with me to see if it was accurate. “If not, then I might write a new book that will tell the truth of Danae.”
I left him then and jogged across the cloister garth to meet Philo and his prisoner.
“Brother Valen!” Jullian’s call turned me around when I was scarcely past the font.
The breathless young scholar stood atop the alley rubble. “I forgot. Do you want to take the book?”
“It served me well, Jullian, and bless you forever for finding it, but you know it’s of no use—”
“Not the book about the doulon, but your grandfather’s book—the book of maps.” He held out a square volume, bound in brown leather, the very book that had gained me admittance into the lighthouse cabal. “I thought you might have use for it.”
“Saints and angels! Gildas brought it!” I had no way to carry it with me or keep it safe, but to use it…“Quickly, let’s get back to the light.”
Gildas sweated and his guards cooled their heels while I sat in the lighthouse doorway and paged through the book to
find what I needed—a wholly unremarkable fiché, little more than a line drawing without colors or gold leaf or any other elaboration. One smiling aingerou lurked in a corner. Janus had scattered five rosettes across the rough outline of Navronne. Touch a finger to one of the rosettes and a symbol appeared beside it—one displayed the symbol for a mountain, one for a sea, one for a water feature such as a well, and one showed a spiral that Janus had called the Center, before I understood what that meant.
I touched the fifth rosette, the one drawn in the northern half of the map between the arms of a divided river, unmasking a symbol I had not recognized until now. Surely the tiny prongbuck marked the Plain.
Heart swelling with excitement, I touched the aingerou, drew my finger from the Well to the Plain, and poured magic into the enchanted page. In my mind appeared a certain route—a path of roads and fields, hills and valleys, images so vivid that I could use them to find a destination for a shift—a birthday gift from my Cartamandua father.
“The gods ease your pain, madman,” I whispered as I closed the book and gave it to the boy for safekeeping. “I’ll tell you all about it when this is over.”
At noontide on the next day, when they brought Kol to Evaldamon for prisoning, I was waiting for them. Nysse, as always, stood at the archon’s side, and ten other Danae had come to stand as witnesses. Kol, hands and feet bound with braided vines, gazed out onto the sea—deep green on this day beneath the winter sun. My uncle’s proud face displayed no fear, though a Dané dropped a pile of fragrant green myrtle boughs and arm-length stems of dried hyssop only a few steps away. Stian and Thokki sat atop the cliffs under guard.
“Tuari Archon, I beg hearing,” I called. “I have brought you that which must change this judgment.”
When Kol glanced my way, I bowed. He nodded without expression and returned his eyes to the sea.
“What evidence can change what is confessed?” said Tuari.
“On the solstice, you said that if I could return the Plain to the Canon, you would judge these transgressions worthy, did you not, Archon? And worthy deeds merit no punishment.”
Tuari’s rust-colored hair was wreathed on this day with holly leaves. “I said this, but thou went incapable.”
“On this day, I am capable. Send whomever you will to judge me.”
After some discussion, it was decided that Nysse and Ulfin would verify my claim, and that Kol’s imprisonment would be delayed until our return. To the fascination of the Danae, I knelt and laid my palms on the earth. The route unrolled in my mind like a scroll of parchment, and I recalled the shore of the small lake until I could smell the marshland and hear the birds and the lap of the wavelets. “This way,” I said, and we made the first shift into Morian, retracing the route I had worked out from Janus’s map over a very long night.
In a matter of an hour, we stood in a thick winter fog on an island between the forks of a mighty river. I stepped along a long-faded silver trace and described the dancer’s astonishing leaps and his intricate footwork. And soon Nysse herself danced a kiran, echoing Llio’s last.
“It is the Plain, Tuari Archon,” she said when we returned to Evaldamon. “I can return there at any time. With time and work, it shall live in our memory as clearly as the Well.” Ulfin vouched for all she claimed.
And so were my uncle and grandsire and merry Thokki set free to dance again in Aeginea.
“So why art thou heartsore, rejongai?” said Kol, as the two of us strolled down the strand that evening at sunset. “Didst thou expect some other marvel than these thou hast described to me? The world is changing. And thou art fully of the long-lived and fully of the human kind. That is not at all usual. In the coming seasons thou shalt restore the Canon.”
“I feel knob-swattled,” I said, rubbing the wound in my side that ached more than it should. “Neither here nor there. The prince needs a pureblood adviser and has asked me to stay with him…and I desire greatly to do what I can to help him and teach him…but I want to be here and learn…and I need to travel and begin to reclaim what we’ve lost…and then, there is a woman…human…very human…”
Kol halted and put a hand on my shoulder. “Sleep, Valen. When thou art…knob-swattled…it is the call to sleep. Take thy season, and thou shalt wake clear and purposeful. It is our way. Necessary. No lesson is more worth the teaching. Renew thyself, that thy work shall be worthy.”
“Thank you, vayar.”
“Address me as Kol, rejongai. We get on well.”
PART FIVE
God’s Holy Book
Chapter 36
The drips and splats, dribbles and trickles have annoyed me for days. Pesky noises. I want to hear words, not plops and spatters. So easy to forget words when I nestle in the deeps close to the fire or flow through my clean and healing channels to mind the roots. Words land on my surface like pebbles and sink down to where I sleep, nudging me to wakefulness. I curl around them, cherish them, and comprehend matters that have naught to do with seeds or roots or beasts.
It is the woman comes most to bring me words. “The king has taken up residence in Palinur. Prince Bayard swore allegiance in the Temple District, and Osriel named him Defender of Navronne. He left immediately and is to live on his ships. Prince Perryn is branded a traitor on his forehead and is exiled in Bayard’s service. The people do not know that Bayard is forbidden to set foot on Navron soil again. But his children shall be fostered in Evanore, while Perryn’s are married off to foreign lords. Bayard is satisfied. Riel says he might find use for this onetime brother of yours—Max—who negotiated all these matters.
“The change in Riel is astounding. In these few short weeks, he has had no flare of the saccheria. No cough. No limp. No fever. Whether his pain is truly gone or just so much lessened that his dead nerves cannot feel it, I find myself weeping like a sentimental granny to see him ruddy-cheeked and able to ride and work and love his mooning wife. You will think me entirely changed.
“Those people not touched by the solstice magic are coming slowly to understand that he is not as they believed. It will take time and work, but Riel’s peace—in the kingdom and within himself—are his best heralds.”
I laughed to hear this and dived down to the earth fires and embraced them. My instincts had told me true: The land heals the righteous king.
Comes another day: “The queen blossoms, though not without sadness. The child will arrive with the summer. Two years Nysse Archon will give them together. But kings’ children are often fostered, and unlike Caedmon, Riel and Elene will get to see their little one often as he grows. And yes, I know it is he, though I’ve not told them. And another secret, only for you, the child is also a she…for it seems our king got twins upon his beloved. Which will be firstborn and have to go, and which will dawdle and get to stay at home? Perhaps you can persuade Nysse to allow them to trade places from time to time! With Jullian as their tutor, they will learn. With you as their sworn guardian, they will laugh and thrive.”
Joy and grief forever mingled. Ever will I give my friends what they need of me.
“Gildas was hanged yesterday…”
Justice. But I do not rejoice in ending life.
Did I make a child with Sila’s handmaid? I will have to know before it breathes. No child of mine will suckle on hate.
“Bright news this day, dear Valen: The monks have come home to Gillarine. Brother Sebastian is named abbot. They send their prayers for you. They don’t seem to realize what an unlikely messenger I am, who puts no faith in gods or prayers. I am helping Brother Anselm set up his new infirmary, and so they allow me to stay in the guesthouse despite my sex. They would like it better were I a married woman. And I would like—
“You must understand, Valen, I’m neither ashamed of my virgin state nor overprotective of it. Can you truly hear me? I must not believe it, for I would never say such a thing in front of you. In truth, I’ve never understood what men and women found together. My parents…” She spoke of a pureblood mother who came to re
gret the life she had given up for love, and a warlord father who resented that his wife held power he could not master. They grew apart and disliked the reminder of their connection in their daughter. A harsh and loveless lesson they taught. “…but at least I was clever enough to bury myself in books, not the doulon!
“Ah, friend, sometimes I think I hear you laughing as the ice melt dribbles into your pool—into you. Even if you are truly here, I suppose you sleep. Rest well, Valen. Riel needs you. The world needs you. And I…I will be pleased to see you and argue about gods and prayers, souls and immortal life.”
She touched me that day—dipped her hand in the pool, and I burned with such fire at the remembrance of her hands that the trees on the ridge will be full green well before the spring change.
The dancer comes, too. He does not speak to me with words, but with leaps and spins and everlasting grace. He charges my dreams with glory, and my lands with the health and nurturing that I can only begin to provide. I feel the shifting of the air as he drives his spirit upward, and I yearn for my body that I can begin to learn how he does it.
The sun warms me on this day, and I feel lazy and still. And lonely. Yet, though the snows lie deep upon the mountains, the sap rises in the trees. I will sleep again another night or three or seven, but spring shall soon fill my loins and call me to the dance, and I shall have my way with living. Teneo!
