Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

The oppressive horror of the souls’ prison had not waned. The music of this ravaged landscape was as frigid as the frost wind that pierced flesh and bone, and as dissonant as the clangor of weaponry from the approaching combat. Yet something had changed here since the morning. On my every visit, these prisoned souls’ pervasive, virulent enmity for all that lived had left me shaking and ill. But on this night, I felt only confused anger and an overpowering grief. What had happened to their hate?

The wind whined and swirled powdery snow into our faces. Philo crept under a dry sluiceway, peering around the rotting supports to ensure no Harrower flankers had sneaked so far around the pitted vale. He waved us through. After a long, shallow descent, we encountered Voushanti and his sentries posted about the rim of the pit, a steep-sided grotto the size of Renna’s Great Hall, ripped out of the core of the mine. The Center of Dashon Ra matched the Center of the Danae dancing ground.

“Merciful Mother,” I whispered when I gazed down into the pit, for surely this place was the inverted mockery of the Canon’s heart. Where, in Aeginea, wheels of light turned to the earth’s music, here a thousand calyxes sat upon the layered rocks and ledges that lined the walls of the grotto, each giving off a bilious glow. And with the stench of leprous decay speeded a thousandfold, a monstrous, corrupt magic shaped of human torment and royal blood poisoned the air and earth. Its source lay in the center of the pit, where a dark-haired man had been stretched and suspended facedown across the black, gaping mouth of some deep shaft or sinkhole. His wrists and ankles were bound to iron stakes driven into the rock. Wide bands of gold encircled his upper arms, smeared with the blood that ribboned his shredded back. Only slight jerking movements of his shoulders told me that he lived.

Recklessly, I galloped and slid down a crumbled, near-vertical stair, unwilling to take the long way around to the sloping cart track that led into the deeps at the north end of the pit. “My lord, I’m here,” I yelled. “You need not suffer this. Voushanti, get him out! Saverian!”

The mardane followed on my heels. By the time we skidded to the bottom and dashed to the sinkhole, Saverian was pelting down the cart path, arms laden with blankets and medicine bags.

Strips of cloth bound Osriel’s eyes. Tufts of wool stopped his ears.

I touched his hand. He jerked, the binding ropes squeezing blood from the raw wounds about his wrist. “Valen?” he whispered. “Tell me.”

Stretching my arm across the empty blackness, I yanked the tuft of wool from his ear. “Kol dances the Center,” I said softly. “The change of season is not yet.”

A quiet noise that might have been a sob caught in his throat. I did not release his cold hand. “Hurry!” I called to the others. “Get him out of this.”

Deep walls and howling wind muted the noise of the approaching battle. The mardane and his men slipped a wide plank under the prince’s torso and another the length of his body, supporting him as they unbound his limbs. Carefully they lifted him away from the gaping shaft and onto Saverian’s blankets, where he lay quivering, gasping for breath. I could not imagine the agony of his fevered joints.

As I slipped off Osriel’s blindfold, Saverian unstoppered a vial and pressed it to his lips. “Mother of life, Valen, I thought you’d never come,” she said.

“Get me up,” Osriel murmured into the blanket. “Help me into my armor.”

“You’re mad, Riel,” said Saverian, near tears as she sponged some potion on his lacerated back and peeled away his shredded shirt. “You must stay down until I stop this bleeding.”

“If I am not to share their fate, then I must lead them, at the least,” he said, drawing his hands underneath his shoulders as if to rise.

Their fate…He spoke of his prisoners. He had spent this day of torment listening to the dead.

Voushanti squatted beside us. “I’ll send down your arms, Lord Prince. Then I’ll deploy my line farther up the hill, as you commanded.” Osriel jerked his head, but Voushanti looked to me for confirmation. I nodded, and the warriors left Saverian, the prince, and me alone.

“Valen, would you give him—?” Saverian’s stopped breath made me look up. I had thrown back my hood, and she stared at me, blue sigils reflected in her dark eyes. I’d near forgotten my newest gards.

Smiling and rolling my eyes, I took the proffered flask. But she quickly averted her gaze, and even amid these matters of far more import, I selfishly wished she had not. I hated that she might think me some freakish creature.

While she prepared another potion, I helped Osriel sit up. I knew he needed to be on his feet to get his blood moving, to feel alive. Strength would come. He had reserves I could not imagine, and a physician unparalleled in any kingdom.

“Breathe a bit, get warm, and drink this nasty stuff,” I said. “Then I’ll help you stand. God’s bones, you look a wreck.” Gingerly I bundled blankets about his torn shoulders and helped him drink. His face was the color of ash, save for the bruises and blood.

He drained the flask and opened his eyes. A faint smile tweaked his bloodless face. “You’re not so handsome as you might think, Dané. Looks as if Grossartius let fly his mighty hammer at your fine gryphon.”

“And why is your hand bandaged?” said Saverian, the moment’s crack in her brittle shell quite well sealed. “I’ll vow you’ve not cleaned that wound any more than the one on your cheek.”

“It’s a reminder from Ronila and Gildas,” I said, brushing dirt from Jullian’s bloodstained linen wrapping my pierced hand.

One of Voushanti’s men arrived with Osriel’s shirt, jupon, and hauberk, greaves, and gauntlets. Another dropped chausses, boots, and swordbelt at the prince’s side. Osriel dispatched the two men with his demand for a scouting report. “Now I would have your report, Valen,” he said, once they’d gone.

“Brother Victor is murdered,” I said, grieving again that the chancellor’s passing must be slighted amidst these dread events. “But Jullian is safely locked in the lighthouse, and Gildas is secured until his king can judge him. So we’ve only the priestess, her gammy, your brothers, and their soldiers to worry with. And Ronila is by far the most dangerous…”

While Osriel downed two flasks of ale and another of Saverian’s potions, I sketched out the day’s events. “You can’t imagine how fast Ronila can shift. Keep someone at your back at all times. And don’t take one step toward her, or you’ll find yourself somewhere else altogether.”

“You’ve already taught me that lesson.” Osriel reached for my hands for help to get up, and I hauled him to his feet. He grimaced and gripped his shoulders. “Would that I had a sianou where I could be taken apart and put back together again without this cursed sickness.”

“Perhaps, as the land heals…”

As I sensed the change that had come about in this haunted place, I recalled Luviar’s words: The lack of a righteous king speeds the ruin of the land. The king and the land were so intimately bound, that his blood could charge it with power. They lived and died together. Osriel’s great enchantment would be a terrible wrong, even if wrought with the Canon’s magic and not his own soul’s death. What could be less righteous than stripping the dead of eternity?

“Something happened with you as you suffered here today, didn’t it, my lord? Something’s changed here.”

His gaunt face hardened. “Nothing’s changed. Do you hear what’s coming down on us from the east? Have you brought me an alternative?”

“Only this hope that we can restore the land. Lord, you must not sacrifice these souls.” My conviction grew with every passing moment.