by Carol Berg
Something in the map would tell me her next move or which boundaries she thought to break. Though I regretted every moment’s delay in getting Osriel free, I had to take the chance. The map could be the key to everything, and I had no intention of ever returning to this fortress of horrors.
The echoed call of the watch was slowing. Replacements had arrived for the two guards. I had to move. I seated the guard’s flop-brimmed hat on my head. Then I pelted up the stair as if newly come from the depths, sweeping Jakome’s brown cloak about my shoulders and calling to the two guards, “Tell Nikred I couldn’t wait for his lazy ass to show. I’m to relieve Jakome at the tower for the night.”
The two grunted assent and turned back to their replacements, while I raced up the stair to the gallery. One torch burned outside Sila Diaglou’s chamber, but no guard was posted. Soft light leaked around the door curtain. I held my breath and listened. One person inside, breathing softly.
I drew the knife, pulled back the edge of the curtain, and peered inside. Torches blazed on either side of the map. Ronila sat in front of it, her chin propped on her walking stick. Nothing for it but to slip inside, keeping my back against the wall.
“You might as well come in, abomination,” she said, not even shifting her gaze from the map.
Of course, Ronila would have skills like mine. Once I had confirmed that no one else was in the room, I strolled over to the map, keeping the knife under my cloak. “Did you know my father, Ronila?”
“I suppose you deem yourself wise.” Never had I heard amusement that tasted so much of gall and rancid life. She cocked her head at the map. “The answer is no. Cartamandua first came to Aeginea long after I had left. He is talented, I hear—talented at finding places he should not. As you are.”
“He was,” I said, staring at the map, trying to gauge its secret. Knotted cords looped from bolts in the wall through three bound eyelets sewn into the map’s upper edge. Three strokes of the knife would take it down. “The Danae took his mind for a failed promise.”
“Pah!” She blew a note of disgust. “The long-lived cannot admit they are as crippled as I am. Mixed blood will be your doom as it has been mine, abomination.”
“You know not even the half of it, Lady Scourge.” Though, in truth, I’d always thought the blood of my erstwhile mother’s prophecy meant I’d die in battle or at least in a fight. I’d never considered it might signify heritage…bloodlines…family. Even queasier than usual at recalling the divination, I shoved the annoying hat backward and scratched my head. “Do our kind see the future? I’ve not been taught that skill.”
“I see the future,” she said. “In the hour he broke me, I told Stian what I planned. He didn’t believe a crippled halfbreed girl could bring them down. But when he feels the world die, he will confess it at last.
When he sees Tuari Archon himself lapping from my hand, he will admit my power, and I will see Stian Human-friend stand alone in the ruin of his making. Was it the proud son—the most arrogant of an arrogant race—who marked you or the old cat himself?”
“You made Sila a perfect tool for your vengeance,” I said, unwilling to yield even so small an answer.
“You hate the Danae because they did not allow you to be one of them; you especially hate the archon because Tuari killed your mother. You hate Stian because, out of fear for the Canon, he crippled you, and because he allowed Eodward and Picus to live in Aeginea, so that a human man became your temptation.
You loathe humankind because it was humans who sullied your blood, and you hate both Eodward and the Karish god, because they stole Picus’s affections that you believed should be yours alone. But I don’t understand your particular antipathy for purebloods. That mystifies me.”
She snickered at that. “My daughter, Sila’s mother, was more Dané than human. Such grace…such beauty…When she danced in my kitchen, she made Stian’s daughter, Clyste, look as a stick. The Aurellians ruled this benighted land…and one of their knights rode through my village when Tresila was but thirteen.
He dragged her to their pleasure house, forced her to service his common soldiers and Navron slaveys. Not the purebloods, though. She was not perfect enough to break their bloodlines. Thirty years they kept her a slave.”
“But she birthed a child…”
“You’ve yet much to learn of your Danae kin. Even halfbreed females can choose to conceive or not.
One of Eodward’s soldiers rescued Tresila from the Aurellian pleasure house. In gratitude…in gratitude…
she gave him a child.” Her tongue near curled with her bile. “The slut died bearing Sila. That’s as well, as I would have killed her for it, as I did the cur who plowed her. You cannot measure my hatred for this world.
Sila merely wishes no blot of green to remain on this map, but my vengeance will be sated only in the hour humankind reaps eternal desolation and no Danae gard lights the world’s darkness.”
No blot of green…I caught my breath and spun to look at the map again. This map was no ordinary fiché, where the significance lay in written symbols and proportionate distances, nor was it a grousherre, where disproportionately sized features demonstrated the mapmaker’s judgment of relative importance. In this map the shifting colors told the story. My eyes raced across the expanse. The lands about Gillarine gleamed ocher. The meadow near Elanus yet green. The bogs—Moth’s sianou—green. Kol’s western sea and its bordering shores green. The tangled waste of Mellune Forest ocher. Sianous—living or dead.
When a sianou was lost, the Danae could no longer remember it. Sila wanted to force them out of their hiding places, out of their sianous and into human lands. She wanted them to forget Aeginea completely and merge with humankind. What if Janus had made this map to show the Danae the lands they had forgotten, so that Kol and the others could dance and reclaim those lands…repair the broken Canon…repair the broken world? Gods, I was looking at the answer!
Excitement surged through flesh and bone as I reached up and sliced through the first cord holding the map. “I’m sorry for all that happened to you, Ronila. Sorrier for what you did to your granddaughter, a child who did not deserve to be warped for your vengeance. But Sila’s rapine cannot be allowed to succeed
—nor can yours.”
The second supporting rope at the opposite corner split like dry wood at the touch of the knife. Rolling up the bottom edge of the map with my left hand, I reached for the third cord.
Ronila lunged from her chair, grabbed one of the torches, and flung it at me. As the old woman toppled to the floor, bellowing with spiteful laughter, the ancient parchment exploded into fire like nitre powder.
“No!” I bellowed. I dropped the rolled map, and it crashed to the floor. Using hands…feet…cloak…I tried to smother the spreading fire. But sparks set my cloak ablaze, and searing heat drove me backward.
The flames chased charring blackness across the lustrous colors with the speed of shooting stars.
The woven curtain behind me roared into flame. Shouts and footsteps rang from the gallery. Ronila lay in a rumpled heap. “You’d best go quickly, abomination,” she said, waving me off with a hand streaked with azure. “My granddaughter will flay you.”
Blazing ash floated in the air. Acrid smoke billowed from blackened, smoldering curls of vellum, my hope vaporizing with it. With every breath I wanted to crush the cackling crone, but I dared not compromise those awaiting me. I had no such strength as Stearc. I ran.
Whether it was only the smoke from the gallery or someone had discovered the missing prisoners or the fused lock on my tower cell, the stair was swarming with Harrowers. “The gallery chamber’s afire!” I shouted when someone barred my way. And when a rough hand detained me and its owner snarled, “Who are you? I saw you go up…” I shoved him against the wall and said, “I’m Jakome’s brother. Where is he?”
Then I grabbed a woman warrior and another man and dispatched them to the “east tower,” hoping such a thing existed, and the hunt for strangers q
uickly became the hunt for Jakome.
My hands were scorched and blistered, my gards peeking through the charred tatters of my gloves. I tucked my hands beneath my half-burnt cloak.
“Grandam!” Sila Diaglou raced past me, Gildas close on her heels. I pressed my back to the wall and ducked my head so that the flop-brimmed hat shadowed my face. Only the tether of Osriel’s illness kept me from plunging my knife into one or the other of them; he might need me to get free. I galloped downward just as Sila screamed, “That was Magnus! The one in the hat! Take him!”
I dodged down the prison-level stair, just far enough to discard the hat. Then I raced upward again, tossing two knucklebones over my shoulder, and commanded two men to check on the clattering noise.
The moment the two were out of sight, I bolted for the alley. The hose covering my feet, soggy with the guard’s piss and Stearc’s blood, disintegrated as I sped through the voluminous undercrofts. When I reached the arch into the inner courtyard, I paused long enough to rip them off before they tripped me. I draped the scorched remnants of the cloak over my head, so that at least my pale face would not be visible to those above. I had to hope it would suffice to block any view of my blue-streaked feet as well. Then I moved.
The temptation to dash through the yard straight to Jullian and Osriel nearly overwhelmed me. But the arrow loops on the second level were bright with firelight, and the fortress exploding with shouts. I crept softly, silently through the rubble.
I was halfway across the yard, angling toward the corner, when footsteps and voices echoed in the undercroft behind me. “I’m sure I saw a fellow run this way. Same one as came up the stair.”
I dropped to the ground and held still under the ragged cloak, not even daring to look around to see if they followed me. Face buried in the dirt, I scrabbled for some spell that might give us time to get away, but I had naught in my bags of tricks that might deter a determined pursuit. Stupid…cocky…arrogant…
Thinking I could get away with this. Allowing myself to be distracted and beaten by a bitter hag.
Disappointment gnawed at my gut like rats.
“None would come in here. There’s no way out but this.” Though the sharp-voiced woman kept her excitement tight-reined, the close walls amplified her every word and footstep. I scarce breathed.
“Sila said to search everywhere.”
“She’ll tear every stone down before he gets away.”
At least three of them…curse the luck. Light danced on the broken paving that pressed my cheek. I could smell the hot resin of the torches. One step in my direction and I would have to run.
“Over there, Braut! Summat’s at the wall!” The three raced past me toward the north wall and the canal and my friends.
I leaped up, shouting, “Here, you damnable fools!”
They stopped, and turned my way, then looked back to the wall, where a shadow mimed a running man—though none of us were running.
“What is it?” They were pointing at me, and I realized the burnt cloak remained on the ground and the gards on my arms and feet glowed the hue of summer midnight. “Where’s the other?”
As their resolution wavered, a great explosive crack shot dust and rubble from the wall, and in a roaring avalanche the remainder of the privies crashed down, pulling much of the standing north wall down with it. Osriel…
The three Harrowers retreated screaming—more in fear than pain. Had they paused two steps closer to the wall, the masonry would lie atop their heads. And I was no more than ten paces farther away. I leaped and dodged the debris, grateful my half-Danae eyes could penetrate the clouds of dust that fogged the yard.
“Glad I didn’t choose to hug the wall,” I said, as I skidded into the corner where Jullian and Osriel waited. “Now we move. Even that display won’t hold Sila for long.”
Jullian quaked like a spring leaf, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly as he gaped at the man he knew as quiet, studious Gram.
Osriel huddled in the blanket Jullian had given him, his head resting heavy against the grate, as if he had expended every remaining portion of his strength. But his dark eyes blinked open when I knelt beside him. “Stearc?” he said.
My elation at the moment’s reprieve sank quickly under the burden of rage and disappointment. “I’m sorry, lord. He gave everything.”
Jullian choked back a cry.
We had no time for grief. The two of them had wisely cleared the rocks and weeds away from the grate. I touched its opposing corners, as Max had instructed, and fed magic to the spell that vibrated in the iron bars. A pop and hiss and the grate flopped forward into a very dark hole.
“Jullian first, then me, so I can help you through,” I said to Osriel, who had rolled forward onto all fours. He nodded without speaking, his head drooping between his quivering shoulders.
I reached out to the boy, but he scrambled backward. “Aegis Ieri, ” he whispered, his head shifting frantically between Osriel and my glowing hand.
“You’ve no need of Iero’s shield, Jullian,” I said, as calmly as I could, considering my own heart clattered like hailstones on a slate roof. “This was but magic—considerable magic, to be sure. Gram has hidden skills—inherited from his mother, as my talents and my strange appearance are inherited from my parents. Whatever else he may be, he is still the good man you know as Gram.” It was the argument I used with myself every hour.
“I thought I knew Gildas,” said the boy.
“Indeed Gildas fooled us all,” I said. “But you know me, and I promised to protect you and get you out of here. We must go now.”
Had any man or woman I knew committed such a feat of bravery as Jullian when he crawled into that blackness under Fortress Torvo with Osriel and me? I felt humbled. And very anxious. This was Max’s route.
Once I’d crawled into the hole myself and helped Osriel through, I set the grate back into the hole. It seated with a satisfying snick. I wondered if the unlocking spell worked from the back. In any case, I dared not leave it open.
After a brief attempt to confirm the route with my own skills—straight on, from what I could tell—I took the lead. Osriel tried to conjure us a light, but his hands were shaking with exhaustion. “Perhaps later,” he whispered hoarsely.
Sighing with inevitability, I removed the rest of my clothes, allowing my gards to provide us soft illumination approximately the hue of cornflowers.
Osriel’s eyes traveled my gards; then he turned away, unable to mask the beginnings of a smile.
Jullian needed a bit more reassurance after that. I pointed out Stian’s mark on my arm and the sea creatures that seemed to have taken up residence on my chest, and asked if any demon he could imagine would have cats and fish among their markings.
He heaved a great breath and pronounced his rueful verdict. “I suppose no immortal demon would have bothered eating Harrower porridge either.”
Even Osriel chuckled at that, though it set him coughing again.
We all needed something to take our mind off the place we traveled. The only thing worse than seeing the soured black slime we had to crawl through was smelling it. Osriel retched after every coughing fit. I tried not to inhale at all. Jullian vomited when he encountered a more solid lump that had at some time been a hound…or perhaps a pig. None of us complained that it was winter. To make this passage in the heat would have been insupportable.
“My mother was not who I thought,” I said to Jullian, hoping to mask the sounds of scuttering rats and the ominous creaks and groanings from the masonry above us. Max must have enjoyed the thought of me enduring this place. “Nor was my father, as it happens, but it is my mother’s race who display such marks as these. Her kind must go through four changes as they grow…”
By the time I had told them a bit about my uncle and tide pools and distressed rocks, a whiff of fresher air floated amid the fetid murk. I quickly hushed Jullian’s assault of questions and handed him my bundle of filthy clothes.
I crept forward the f
ew quercae to the grate. Voices carried clearly through the frosty night, issuing crisp orders. Clanks and creaks were weapons being shifted in their owners’ grasp. Sila kept more experienced men on the gates than on the interior watch. I hoped their eyes were focused outward.
As far as I could tell, the bailey itself was deserted. The drainage canal was blocked by rubble, which left us either the more exposed route straight across the bailey to the grate in the outer wall or a series of shorter jaunts between gallows and stocks and prison cages. For the time, Osriel’s magic was spent. We could not depend on his power to hide us.
Still undecided, I touched the corners of the warded grate and quickened its unlocking spell. The grate fell smoothly into my hands. So far, Max’s route had worked perfectly. But he would never trust me to show up with Gildas at our rendezvous three streets away. Warned by his wards that we were coming out, he would be waiting, and he would insist on knowing everything about my companions. Best go for speed.
“Only two bits still to go,” I said when I returned to my companions. “Straight across the bailey and through another grate will take us under the outer wall. Do you need me to carry you, Gram? This is no time for pride. We must be quick.”
“Saverian is very good at potion making,” said the prince, already sounding stronger than he had earlier. “Just don’t ask me to conjure a rat’s squeak along the way. Hadn’t you best take this and cover up?
My attire is less…conspicuous…than yours.”
I stayed his hand before he could shed the filthy blanket. “I—uh—hear better when I’m like this,” I said. “The blanket’s not big enough to hide all of me anyway. When you see I’m across with no disturbance, come after. Once we’re outside the walls, the nearest cover will be to the right. Go as fast as you can and stay low. I’m hoping that only friends will be waiting, but…” I shrugged.
