Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

Images flashed before my eyes and fractured before I could identify them. The world was crumbling, and even Gildas’s groans could not put it to rights.

“Come on, Brother Valen. We’ve got to get you up the stair. I know what to do. I found out about nivat in a book. As you asked me to.”

He forced me to crawl…nudging, shoving, yelling unintelligible words…into the night…into the cold that sent spears of ice into my lungs and my heart that hammered to bursting. Through the snow that seared my raw flesh. More steps. More stone. Endless misery. Endless agony…

At last he propped me against a ring of stone, grasped my head, and forced me to look at his face. He was so ragged…weeping…but he did not falter. “This is Saint Gillare’s font, Brother. It’s a part of the Well—your sianou. Nivat is like spirits for the Danae. When they have too much of it, they go into their sianous and it puts them right. You’ve got to go into the font. Back to the Well.”

Snow drifted through the strips of stone above his head. I could not comprehend what he asked of me. “Sorry. Sorry. I can’t…”

“You must let go of your body, Brother. Then it will be all right again.”

He threw water in my face—bitterly cold and tasting of starlight—and my body understood. He shoved. I crawled. Once my aching belly rested on the font’s marble rim, he tipped me forward, and I rolled into the burbling water. With a sigh, I yielded my boundaries and plummeted, and with water, stone, and the deep-buried fires of the Well, I purged spirit and flesh of my old sin.

“Just implant the lesson in your head, Gildas. Relief comes only when I say. Food and water come only when Jullian says.”

Pain-ravaged, slimed with vomit and worse, the man who had once been my friend slumped against the stone wall of the abbey prison cell. The manacle that held his ankle to the wall gleamed bright in the light of Jullian’s lamp. The mark on his cheek, where I had struck him to resolve his first doulon and teach him of perverse pleasure, was already swelling and would make a lovely bruise.

Jullian swore that no more than half an hour had passed from the moment I rolled into the font a madman until I climbed out again, refreshed and clearheaded. I would have believed it if he’d said days or weeks, for I’d had no sense of time at all. Yet I had carried with me the urgent understanding that I must return to physical form as soon as possible. Even so, we had gone to Gildas’s relief only after we had buried Brother Victor in the herb garden.

Our prisoner croaked a laugh. “One doulon does not enslave me, Valen. I’ll walk free and never look back.” He spoke bravely now I had refused to soil my hands with his blood.

“Very true. So let me show you magic, friend Gildas. A talented physician taught me how to enhance the effect of medicines fivefold.” I crouched beside him, placed my fingers on his brow, and triggered the spell. “The doulon is but a potion after all, which means—assuming a normal cycle of eight-and-twenty days, shortened by the extra-potent paste you prepared—you have perhaps two days until you feel the hunger ready to devour you. Perhaps only one. By that time, either the world will have fallen into the chaos you desire and no one will ever come to succor you, or Osriel of Evanore will be King of Navronne, and I will bring you to his justice for the murder of Brother Horach, Brother Victor, Thane Stearc of Erasku, Gerard of Elanus, and Clyste Stian-daughter. He will not be merciful.”

Gildas lunged toward my ankles as I headed for the door. “Wait, Valen, I can tell you secrets—”

I slammed the prison cell door and locked it. “Never step within his arm’s reach, Jullian,” I said, as Gildas yelled after us. “Never open the door, but just shove a water flask through the slot. He will beg and wheedle and play on your conscience, but this is no sin to confine him.”

“He didn’t listen to Brother Victor,” said the boy as we climbed the three short flights of steps back to the alley and the lighthouse door, trailed by Gildas’s hoarse curses and a last despairing wail. “I’ll vow he didn’t listen to Gerard or Horach either. This is justice, not sin. Not at all what he did to Thane Stearc.”

“Exactly so. Now, I must go. You’re all right with being alone, lad?” I hated abandoning him. “You’ll not go out again?” Victor and Jullian had stepped out to retrieve what was left of the abbey service books and stores when Gildas took them.

The boy shook his head and hung the magical lamp on its hook just inside the door. “Brother Victor showed me how to lock and unlock the door wards without magic. I’ll be sorry he’s not here to teach me more, but I’m not afraid and not alone. Iero and his angels are with me. Teneamus, Brother Valen.”

“Indeed, I’m sure they are. Teneamus, brave Scholar.”

I jumped lightly up and over the fallen masonry that I had scarce been able to crawl over two hours previous and sprinted for the cloister. As I worked the shift, the boy closed the lighthouse door and the ivory light from across the garth winked out, plunging the ruined abbey and the world into a sea of night and winter.

T he battle had been joined at Dashon Ra. The earth itself had told me of the assault while I had purged myself of nivat in my sianou. And now my senses perceived the dread results. A cacophony of drums, trampling boots, and rage-filled cries blared about the ancient mine and its rugged approaches, and I smelled battle sweat and loosened bowels and warm blood dripping on consecrated ground.

The Harrowers threw themselves against Thane Boedec’s warriors like the raging sea against the cliffs of Cymra, only these cliffs were not formed of granite, but of five hundred brave men who knew they were outnumbered ten to one. Strung out in a long crescent about the rim of the vast bowl, they had bent at the first wave. Torches and magelights flared bright in the driving snow, lighting the way for the frenzied mob that raced steadily upward from the east. Gods preserve my erstwhile brother, I saw no sign of Bayard’s Moriangi. But the banner of Perryn of Ardra flew alongside the orange pennant of Sila Diaglou at the solid center of the assault. Their wedge had already driven Boedec over the rim and onto the downward slope to the mine’s dark heart where Osriel lay bleeding—preparing to become a blood-addicted shell like Voushanti in order to preserve Navronne.

“We’ll get you down there,” said Philo. With his faithful comrade Melkire, the ginger-bearded warrior crouched beside me atop the west rim of the ridge, where Renna lay below the rock-gate stair. “But we’d best be quick. Old Boedec is as strong as lords are made, but none were made to withstand such odds as this.”

Of course they weren’t. Such was Osriel’s plan. When Boedec’s line broke, the Harrower legions would rush down into the bowl of the mine—and into Osriel’s trap. Only Voushanti and a handful of soldiers would stand between the mob and our prince. At that point Osriel would have to act—to summon power for enchantment—whether the Canon had reached its climax or not. It would be a race to determine which happened first. My blood thrummed with the imminent change of season, and my stomach throbbed with the pounding of Harrower drums. And Osriel did not yet know that Kol could give him the power he needed.

I snugged the dark cloak Voushanti had left for me and raised the hood to hide my facial gards. Then the three of us scrambled down from our perch and slipped and slid downward between spoil heaps and broken slabs, through snarls of iron and rope, and under rotted sluiceways. After Melkire twisted his ankle in a trench, I led the way with my better night vision, while the two warriors guarded my flanks. Voushanti had pledged their lives to protect mine.