Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

“He is a bold sorcerer. I like that.” A shapeless figure in brown hobbled away from a flash of scarlet light toward Osriel.

“Grandam!” Sila’s shock raised the hairs on my neck. She did not expect Ronila here. Which meant the old woman was making her move…

“No!” Cursing my distance, I leaped from my high perch, driving my body forward to clear the rock ledges below. I jolted to earth some fifty quercae from the prince and raced toward them across the grotto, yelling, “Take Ronila! Keep her away!”

“And our Bastard is a fine liar.” Ronila waved her walking stick. “Even now the Cartamandua abomination comes to shepherd his prince onto your throne, granddaughter. I think it is time to be quit of this nuisance.”

Osriel’s men did not understand threats from old women. Ronila nudged an astonished Philo with her stick. Melkire merely shoved her back with the flat of his sword.

The old woman tottered and growled. But then she stepped deftly to one side, raised her walking stick again and poked one of the surviving sentries so hard he staggered backward. I arrived in time to grab his arm before he toppled Osriel into the sinkhole.

“You will not touch my king,” I yelled, spreading my arms wide to keep her away from the others, keeping a wary eye on her empty hand. “You will not do murder here.”

Cackling, Ronila poked her stick at me—only this time, a blade protruded from the end of it, aimed straight at my gut. Voushanti launched himself into me, staggering me sidewise. Fire blossomed deep in my side. The witch growled and yanked the stick away. And then I was falling…

Crushed between Voushanti’s prone bulk and iron-footed Melkire, I sagged only as far as my knees. Fear and instinct and every urgency of life demanded I stand up again. The old woman’s leering face loomed in front of me as huge as the Reaper’s Moon, her wild white hair a corona, her bloody blade aimed at my heart. A din of screams and wailing seemed to fill the universe.

Yet Ronila’s blade did not strike. Her gleeful cackle twisted into such a wrenching intake of breath as comes only with pain. Shock dulled the feral hatred that glinted in her eyes. And even as I clutched my middle and stumbled to my feet, sure that my stomach and liver must fall out the hole in my side, the old woman wobbled and crumpled. Sila Diaglou stood calmly behind her, her pale hands drenched in blood.

“Child?” the old woman whimpered.

The priestess knelt and touched the blood bubbling from her grandmother’s lips as if it were a great curiosity. “Could you not see, old woman?” she said. “I value the sorcerer far more than I value you. He is the new world. You are but the dregs of the old.” Then she reached around Ronila’s back and yanked out her dagger, wiped the blade on the stained brown robes, and stuck it in the empty sheath at her waist.

All the air in my lungs might have escaped through my punctured flesh.

The priestess proffered me a smile worthy of an angel. “There, my beautiful Dané sorcerer, the hag shall not threaten you again. It is not too late to join me. Malena awaits. Are you not curious—? Ah, the witch has wounded you!” Her smile quickly faded as Hurd, a belt wrapped around his bloody arm, gave her a hand up. “Do you need help?”

“Keep away from me, priestess,” I croaked, stepping back. I could not allow thoughts of Malena and what she might or might not carry to distract me. “Your kindness is as bloodstained as your hate.”

“And I choose to keep my annoying servant.” Osriel stepped from between two of his guards. “This war is ended, priestess. The lighthouse stands. The Canon shall be healed. Command this traitorous grav of Morian, my brother, and the rest to lay down their arms.”

“Because you play with corpses?” Sila said scornfully, glancing up at the towering phantoms. “Once I speak to my troops, they will fight—no matter how frightened they are of your ghosts. You have no kingdom, Bastard of Evanore, and no subjects but the dead. My legions will follow me to the netherworld.”

“They shall wish for the netherworld, lady, when I am done,” said Osriel, in such tone as would shudder the most jaded soul. “I give you fair warning. Lay down your arms, or curse the hour you first saw daylight.”

“Your threats do not frighten me.” And yet, they should. Was that the difference? Was it only those with souls who felt the fear of losing them?

“Then our parley is ended,” said Osriel and turned his back on her.

The prince hissed a command, and scarlet streams of light flowed from the sinkhole. From the gray faces in the clouds erupted a howl that only one who had experienced the doulon hunger would recognize. Or perhaps one who had tasted blood and despair. Of all in that grotto, only Voushanti and I did not stare upward. Terror was written on the faces around us…and pity, too.

Melkire pointed to the sky. “Skay,” he said. “By the holy angels, it’s Skay. And Bergrond. Merciful Iero, what’s happening to them?”

“Hurd, form up these whiners,” snapped Sila. “I will have Renna by dawn. We shall dismantle this prince limb from limb as we dismantle his house stone from stone.”

The gray-faced commander bellowed orders to the ragged Harrowers, kicked and slapped them and got them moving up the cart track. Sila followed. A shoulder touch here, an encouraging word there, an admonishment not to heed the Bastard’s illusions, and they moved faster.

Halfway up the sloping track, she looked back and smiled down at me. She waved her hand at Osriel, hunched over the gaping hole. “How can you bear this ghoulish prince, Valen? We need not be rivals. You are the essence of magic; I have rejected and forsworn all such power. You honor all gods; I acknowledge none. You care for humankind and the long-lived; I despise them all. You yearn for decadent pleasure; I need none of it. I am death, as is this prince of yours, while you, Valen, are life itself—more than any cold Danae. Come with me, and I will give you a world cleansed and purified. You can change its face forever, giving every man and woman the chance to wear silk or work spells or dance on the solstice.” No matter her smile, her eyes chilled even so bitter a night.

“I do not argue with your vision, lady,” I called up to her, “but that you slaughter children and destroy all that is holy and good to create it. There must be another way. I’ll have no part of you.”

“So be it.” She shrugged and ran after her troops.

“Voushanti, you’ll see to Valen?” said the prince. His voice sounded hollow, as if he walked yet another plane, or as if he had fallen into the sinkhole after his blood. He knelt beside the dark shaft, the scarlet streams of enchantment giving his pale skin a ruddy cast to match the blood marks he’d drawn. Yet Sila’s words prodded me to move. Osriel was not at all like her.

“Lord Prince, don’t do this,” I said, limping across the drifted snow to his side. “Not before you tell me what you felt here this day. Not until you tell me why I sense no more hatred from these lost souls that even a few weeks ago twisted my bowels.”

Despair and grief stared out at me from my king’s bleak face. “Because I bled with them. Because I remembered them, as I promised when I took them captive. Because I knew their names.” He dropped his eyes to the roiling pit. “And now I must command them to go forth and live and die an eternal death for me.”

“Your very nature rebels at this crime,” I said softly. “Let them go.”

“I cannot.”

I knelt beside the bottomless hole that stank of death and corruption. “Think of the day we rode down from Renna, when you walked among your people who had been burnt out by the Harrowers. They had nothing before you arrived, and no more when you left save your care and your promise of hope. With but those few words from you, they stood straight and were able to do for themselves. You have given everything for love of these people and this land, and a lover does not torment his beloved. Use the power that has been given you. Let them go.”