by Carol Berg
We moved to the hole. One careful listening revealed no change; a careful observation revealed no eyes turned inward from the walls. I crawled through and dashed across the bailey. My bare feet made no sound, and I caught the third grate as it toppled inward, lowering it carefully into the hollow under the wall.
I scuttered through and across the blessedly short distance to the outermost grate, then quickened its spell.
A glance beyond the wall showed me naught but night in Riie Doloure. I left the grate leaning against its hole and crawled back the way I’d come.
The two hunched forms moved steadily across the bailey in my direction, not invisible but dark and quiet. They had crossed three quarters of the distance when the doors of the great hall burst open, and torchlight flooded the steps. A patrol of ten Harrowers emerged and ran for the gates. More men took positions on the steps and spread slowly outward, approaching the gallows platform, searching on and underneath it.
Osriel and Jullian had flattened themselves to the ground at the first disturbance and blended well into the mottled landscape of rubble and refuse. But if they remained where they were, the searchers would surely find them. I considered ten different plans and discarded them as quickly. If I set one foot out of the hole to distract the hunters, every eye would be on me. Osriel and Jullian might reach the tunnel, but I never would.
Under, through, or over a wall, thieves and lovers learn them all. The tavern reel’s chorus defined my dilemma. There would be no way through a gate so well guarded, and no way to get back to the tunnel and under the wall faster than Harrowers could be outside it waiting for me. Which left over…
My stomach lurched. I closed my eyes and recalled the layout of the bailey as I’d seen it from the inside. The stair to the wall walk was some halfway between my position and the gates. No time to think.
No time to doubt. Holy Erdru, god of drunkards and madmen, preserve your faithful servant.
I crawled out of the hole and darted up and over the wooden platform where Sila’s judges had mandated death and mayhem, crouching low and putting as much distance as possible between me and the open grate in the corner. I was halfway to the gallows when they spotted me.
“Look!” Twenty voices at once screamed out. Everything seemed to stop for that moment, just as on the day Voushanti and I had stormed this same gallows under the shield of Osriel’s enchantment to rescue Brother Victor. I spun in place. Searchers backed away. Some weapons clanked to the ground—not all, sadly.
Murmurings rose through the hush. Sorcery! Ghost! Spirit!
Stubbing my toes on broken planks and mounds of crusted snow, ignoring splinters that pierced my blistered hands, I climbed up onto the gallows. I quickened my simplest, crudest lock spell and touched the chains on the bloodstained drawing frame, where Luviar had been splayed and gutted like a boar. The iron shattered in a shower of red sparks. And then I did the same to the hinges on the gallows traps.
Angel! Guardian!
I dared not look to the corner. How long would it take for Osriel and Jullian to understand and move?
Somewhere behind the glaring torches, a snapped order imposed discipline. Boots crept toward me from the direction of the gates. I gripped a post, swung around it, and leaped off the platform, mustering what grace I could so as not to eternally sully all legends of the Danae. I landed on the balls of my feet with only moderate jarring of spine and limbs. Then I sprinted for the stair to the walls.
“Magnus!” Sila cried from the doors. “You will not escape! Your destiny lies with me!”
I had no breath to answer as I took the stairs three at a time. No wit to create some memorable farewell. I was too busy trying to remember what Kol had told me. Drive thy spirit upward with the leap. Hold it firm and soaring. It is will that counters the forces that draw us to earth.
For my king and my friend, I thought as I topped the stair and bounded across the wall walk with ten Harrowers charging from each flank. Stearc died to keep Osriel safe.
But it was not such noble thoughts that drove my spirit upward as I leaped from the wall of Fortress Torvo, or held it firm and soaring as I fell toward earth, but the remembrance of my uncle’s healing grace as he danced, and a stubborn will that Ronila’s malignancy would not destroy the beauty he had wrought.
Chapter 27
I landed on one foot and one knee. Breathless. Not with fear, though I would have sworn I’d left my stomach on Torvo’s wall. Not with pain, though grit and gravel and all manner of foulness had most uncomfortably embedded themselves in my knee. Exhilaration starved my lungs. I felt as if angels had borne me on their wings, as if I had lived my life in a cave and only now had glimpsed my first sunrise.
But four men with swords pelted toward me from the gates, Torvo’s portcullis ground upward with a troop of Harrowers ready to burst from behind it, and five well-armed riders in Registry colors blockaded Riie Doloure. Their commander sat astride a very large bay, perhaps ten paces from me. Only my conviction that he would be waiting kept my eyes from sliding away from him. Max was a master at obscuré spells.
I could not but grin when I saw his face illumined by Torvo’s torches. Not even when we were boys had I seen Max completely unmasked—which had naught to do with the pureblood silk that clung to half his face.
“Balls enough?” I called across the distance between us, opening my arms.
A slow grin broke through his awe. “Balls enough, little—Little bastard. Did you accomplish whatever you came here for?”
“Beware of Jakome,” I said, grinning back at him. I would not take his bait. “He’s false. But I’ve left you clean, do you but go now. If these Harrowers identify you…take my word, they will be out of humor.”
Whether or not he believed me, he must have decided he could work no more advantage from the situation. Laughing robustly, he wheeled his mount and rejoined his men. With a snapped command of dismissal, they vanished into the city. I sprinted back toward the hole in Torvo’s wall.
“Dead man!” I bellowed, quite unnecessarily, for Voushanti and a handful of leather-clad irregulars were already swarming out of the charred ruin of a tenement and inserting themselves between me and the oncoming Harrowers. Jullian was helping Osriel away from the wall. Between the two of us, we half carried, half dragged him toward the ruin where Voushanti had been waiting.
My back itched. I prayed that Sila had made it clear she wanted me alive. Bowmen on fortress walls in a night action could get twitchy fingers, and a glowing blue rock on a man’s back would make a fine target.
Battle erupted behind us. Weapons clanged and shouts of bravado warped quickly into cries of anguish as we ducked under a fallen beam and into the blackened skeleton of a house.
Half of a blackened wall leaned crazily against a snow-clogged hearth. With my gards and the faint wash of torchlight from the fortress the only light, the mottled floor was tricky going. Pools of sooty slush made it difficult to distinguish pits where foundation stones had been carted away. Bundles of unburnt straw lay around the place, as if someone was trying to blot up the slush. The ruin reeked of lamp oil.
“This way!” A pale light bloomed at the back of the ruin, where a stone stair led downward. “Mother of Night, Riel! And Thane Stearc?” She must have read our faces. “Ah, a pestilence on these vermin.”
Before we could blink, Saverian had Osriel seated on a bit of broken wall, draining vials of two different potions, Jullian wrapping the prince and himself in dry cloaks, and me dispatched to find us a way out. The physician’s practical fury seemed to cleanse the air of Ronila’s madness like a taste of fresh limes cleanses the palate. “Make it fast, Valen.”
I hurried down the broken steps into the ancient lane that had been uncovered two months ago by the raging fires of a Harrower mob. The noise of the fighting fell away quickly. The lane cut across a hillside, and its builders had installed high stone walls to hold back the dirt. But the stone houses that had lined the lane had vanished long before I was b
orn, and the fires had burned off the vegetation that held the hill stable. Now mud had slumped down from the hillside, and I couldn’t find the place I was looking for…a courtyard…a way out…
The intoxication of my leap from the walls deserted me, leaving a profound uneasiness in its wake. I felt cold, light-headed. The place, the night…everything felt wrong. I needed to get back. Voushanti and his men were sorely outnumbered.
In desperation, I knelt and touched the frozen mud, pushing magic through exhaustion and confusion.
And there in front of me lay a silver path. A Dané had once walked here. More than one, perhaps, for just ahead lay a knot of silver—not an unruly tangle, but layer upon layer of loops and windings as Kol laid down when he danced. In the center of the knot grew a winter-bare apple tree, vibrant with life and health here in the midst of a city gone mad. I should have guessed this was a Dané sianou when I’d first found it, but I’d not known how to look.
Racing back toward the others, I gave the final signal. Dead man. Harvest. Voushanti would retreat to the ruined tenement to join us. Bluejay. Harvest.
The physician, the prince, and the boy crouched in the lane behind a fallen beam. Osriel held a decrepit sword, while Saverian hefted a rusty ax—perhaps better were hard to come by in the city. Jullian seemed to be their rear guard and sagged in relief at the sight of me, lowering a dagger half the length of his arm. The combat was deafening and very close.
Voushanti’s bellow thundered through the din. “Fall back! To me! To me!”
“I’ve found the way out,” I said, “or would you three prefer to stay here and fight?”
Osriel conceded me only a glance. “Saverian has propped me up to scare off Harrower crows,” he said with a hint of laughter. “But altogether, I’d prefer a bed.”
“As soon as Voushanti steps under the beam, we can go,” said Saverian, dropping her ax. “Wait here and be ready.” She ran up the steps into the ruined house.
“Hold on!” I bolted after her. “Are you mad?”
She ignored me as first one and then another of Voushanti’s exhausted fighters yelled haven and stumbled through the crossed beams. Four…five…six of them…and then Voushanti himself burst through.
“Now, mage!” snapped the warrior.
As Voushanti twisted and skewered the Harrower who tried to follow him inside, Saverian touched the bundles of straw nearest the opening. Green flames exploded from the bundles, consuming another attacker, who stumbled screaming over his dead comrade. The physician ran from one bundle to the next until the entire front of the ruin was walled in flame taller than my head. Only one of Voushanti’s goggle-eyed mercenaries stood his ground long enough to catch the bag Saverian tossed him. Payment in hand, he followed his comrades straight up the steep hillside behind the ruined house and into the night.
“Time to go,” said Saverian, as Voushanti hacked at another man who braved the flames. “The fire won’t hold them long.”
Voushanti held the doorway until we were down the steps, lining the opening with dead and screaming wounded.
“Now, dead man!” I yelled over the roar of the flames. “Stay with me!”
As I led them down the ancient lane, I had a vague impression of Voushanti descending the steps in one jump and green flames exploding behind him. Shoving the roused fear and anxieties of battle aside, I sought clarity and memory enough to make the shift. A small courtyard…healthy growth bared by winter…
high walls and the knee-high ring of stones in the center…a pool of sustaining life—here an apple tree rooted deep in the hillside, there a well rooted deep in a mountain…air touched with winter and smoke, here from straw burning to preserve valuable lives, there from hearthfires and kitchens…
One by one, my charges hurried into the apple court, as I had named the strange little lane in Palinur
—Jullian, fiercely determined; Osriel, flushed and wheezing; Saverian batting sparks from her jupon; and then Voushanti, blood-splattered and facing backward. From the smoke behind us burst another figure, a giant-sized warrior wearing a ragged cloak, dented helm, and orange badge.
When Voushanti took him down with an ax to his thigh, the Harrower bled his life onto the winter grass of the well yard at Renna, some two hundred quellae south of Fortress Torvo. It was snowing.
Jullian, who had spun around to watch Voushanti dispatch the Harrower, bumped into me when I halted at the stone circle of the well. I caught his arm before he stumbled over my feet and stuck me or himself with his dagger. “Easy, lad. I don’t think any others can follow us here.”
The mud-drowned lane, eerie flames, and rampaging Harrowers had vanished. Behind Voushanti stretched a colonnade fronting the cold inner wall of Renna’s keep. The boy heaved a quivering sigh as he looked up at me. “Magic again?”
I squatted beside him and held out my arm in parallel with my glowing thighs. “Aye. It’s one thing these are good for. You’ll note that Gram is fairly well astonished, too.”
Osriel spun so quickly with his neck craned up at Renna’s heights that Saverian stood ready to catch him should he topple. “Well done,” said the prince. “Oh, very well done, Valen.”
Jullian leaned his head to my ear. “He’s not just Gram, is he? All three of you call him lord. And he brought down that wall.”
“He is Gram, but no, not just Gram. By now you’ve surely guessed his true name.”
The boy acknowledged without words, his face a pale blur in the night.
“You’ve no need to be afraid, Jullian.” I made no effort to keep my voice down. “Prince Osriel has found it necessary to keep people fearful of him…to protect himself and our cabal and his people here in Evanore. Abbot Luviar was once his tutor.”
But, of course, there was ample reason to be afraid of Osriel, not for Jullian alone, but for all of us together. Grateful as I was to stand in Renna’s shelter instead of Sila Diaglou’s tower, much as my legs felt like clay, my back wrenched, and my feet battered, my night’s work could not be declared finished.
“And Voushanti”—Osriel gripped the mardane’s shoulder and inspected him as if seeking the source of the blood that stained Voushanti’s hauberk and leathers—“a magnificently executed retrieval. Your valor and your skill in arms are unmatched.” His voice dropped a little. “You are well, Mardane? Saverian took care of you?”
“I am whole for now, my lord. The physician did as you commanded. I am bound to the sorcerer.”
“To Valen?” On any other night, I might have missed the hint of dismay in Osriel’s voice. He masked it quickly by a gallant bow in Saverian’s direction. “And your skills, physician…and friend…remain unmatched and irreplaceable. What greater wonder can I demonstrate to these present than walking up yonder stair without reclining on Valen’s shoulders or weighting my noble companion Jullian’s arm?”
“Your physician prescribes food, wine, bath, and bed,” said Saverian with no hint of sentiment, as she shoved her straggling hair away from her soot-smudged face.
“I must see Elene first,” said Osriel, his momentary lightness shed like an unwanted cloak. “Perhaps you would accompany me, Valen, and tell us what you can of Stearc’s end.”
Ah, Mother Samele embrace Elene, who must soon be torn asunder by sorrow and relief…and all the questions and fears this prince held for her. Her plight only hardened the resolution grown solid in my gut.
“I will, of course, lord,” I said, standing up, while keeping a hand on Jullian’s shoulder. “But I might suggest we not wake her to such ill news before I’ve had a chance to discuss the matter with you.
Saverian, as the prince has downed multiple vials of your marvelous elixirs, would it compromise him too severely to speak with me for a little?”
She raised her eyebrows and twisted her mouth in her ironical fashion that illumined her awkward features with life and wit. “As Lord Osriel will tell you himself, I am not his keeper. He knows my recommendations and will likely do with them as he always has.”
She rummaged in a pouch at her waist and tossed me another vial. Then she held out her hand to the boy at my side, let her magelight swell to a soft ivory where he could see it glowing from her fingers, and smiled in a way that instantly dispatched his awe. “Come, noble Jullian. You, at least, will enjoy what I have to offer in the way of food and bed. Prince Osriel has told me a great deal about you these past few years.
He lives in awe of your scholarship…”
As the woman and boy headed for the stair at the corner of the colonnade, Osriel glanced my way and dipped his head, then addressed Voushanti. “Mardane, perhaps you would notify the watch that we have returned, and that Mistress Elene is not to be disturbed until I wait upon her.”
Voushanti shifted his attention to me. Pinpoints of red centered his dark gaze. Only after I had given an uneasy nod did he bow to Osriel. “As you command, my lord prince.” He pivoted and followed Saverian and Jullian out of the well yard, leaving Osriel and me alone.
“So we are to have our reckoning before even we get warm.” Osriel spread his arms as if to welcome whatever I might bring, then seemed to think better of it. Shivering, he drew Saverian’s heavy cloak tight.
“It hardly seems fair to ask me to take you on when I’ve just seen you leap to earth from a height no man should survive, clad in naught but mythlight, and you’ve carried me out of hell to my own house in less time than it would take me to walk my own walls.”
“Let us walk a bit, my lord. I’d not wish some lurking guard to hear what we might say.” I pointed to the colonnade. Rather than taking the upper stair to the Great Hall and bedchambers or the lower stair to the passages where Saverian’s workroom lay, we strolled along the covered walk so like those surrounding the cloister garth at Gillarine—the three-petaled lily of Navronne embedded in its stonework, the cherubic aingerou carved into the slender pillars, the square of grass alongside our path, centered by a springfed font. We rounded the corner in truth and memory…
