Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

I nodded, a chill more bitter than Navronne’s foul winter shadowing my spirit. Of course, I remembered. This recital was for Voushanti’s benefit. Only the previous night had I shared with the prior my new-formed belief that Brother Gildas, scholar and traitor, had not only stolen young Jullian away, but murdered his friend Gerard.

Nemesio straightened his back and spoke boldly. “We of Saint Ophir’s brotherhood are Gerard’s family. If he lives, then we must locate him and ensure his safety. If he is dead, he must be returned here where we can afford him proper rites. We understand that Brother Valen’s pureblood bent involves tracking and route finding, thus request his aid in our search for the boy.”

Fool of a monk! I wanted to strangle Nemesio. Gerard’s body must be retrieved, and I was more than willing to lend my paltry skills to the task, but Voushanti was Prince Osriel’s man and could not be permitted to know of the place I believed the boy lay—or its significance. The Well was secret. Holy. And Voushanti and our master were not. “Father Prior, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Cartamandua is not brought here to serve you, monk,” Voushanti snapped. “Prince Osriel has chosen this monkhouse as a neutral meeting ground suitable for his royal business. The pureblood is required to attend his master. Nothing else.”

Nemesio’s hairless skull and wide neck glowed crimson. “Well, then. It was but a thought. We would never wish to distract a man from his duty. Here, I’ve brought refreshment for you all.” He filled the five plain vessels from his pitcher, handing them around first to Voushanti and the two warriors, then to me. “In all the excitement of your arrival yestereve…the various comings and goings of so many…we lapsed in our sacred rituals of hospitality.”

Nemesio raised his cup to each of us. His hands were shaking. “May the waters of Saint Gillare’s holy font bring good health and serenity to our guests.”

Voushanti shrugged at Philo and Melkire and the three of them raised their cups and drank. I raised my cup in my two hands, but only touched my lips to its rim. Since the day I turned seven, the day my mother the diviner first pronounced that I would meet my doom in water, blood, and ice, only desperation could drive me to water drinking. And were I naught but a withered husk, I could not have touched this water. The holy spring that fed the abbey font had its source in the hills east of Gillarine—in the very pool where I believed Gerard’s body lay.

A glance across my cup revealed Nemesio glaring at me as if I were defiling a virgin. I had no idea what I’d done, but his shoulders sagged a bit as I lowered my cup. He snatched away the vessel and gathered the emptied cups from the others.

“I’d best leave you gentlemen to your preparations,” he said. “The guesthouse is yours for as long as you need, of course. Though we can provide but meager fare since the Harrower burning, we shall send what refreshment we can for His Grace when he arrives. Our coal garth is intact…” Nemesio’s nervous babbling slowed as Melkire sagged against the doorframe, rubbing his eyes.

I glanced from the prior to the soldiers. Something untoward was going on.

“Mardane Voushant…s’wrong…” Philo’s voice slurred as he dropped to his knees and slumped to the floor. Melkire tumbled on top of him with a soft thud.

“Gracious Iero!” said the prior softly. But he made no move to succor the men.

“What treachery is this?” Voushanti’s hand flew to his sword hilt, and the core of his eyes gleamed scarlet. But before he could draw, he blinked, sat heavily on the low bed, and toppled backward.

“Father Prior, what have you done?” I said, my stomach lodged so far in my throat, my voice croaked as if I were a boy of twelve.

Nemesio dropped his vessels on the table. “They’ll sleep for a few hours and wake confused, so Brother Anselm told me. We’d best go right away.”

I could almost not speak my astonishment. “Nemesio, are you absolutely mad? These men serve Osriel the Bastard, the same prince who conjured horses and warriors the size of your church from a cloud of midnight, the same who, not two months ago, cut out the eyes of a hundred dead soldiers who lay in your fields. We know neither his capabilities nor his intentions in this war. Great Iero’s heart, for all we know he may have dispatched the Harrowers to burn you out!”

“I’m well aware. If the Bastard Prince wishes our destruction, then he’ll do it. I cannot control that. But you have made a grievous charge against Brother Gildas—the lighthouse Scholar—and we cannot know how to proceed until you prove it. As we’ve only these few hours until Prince Osriel takes you away, and as only you can find this place in the hills, I see no alternative.”

“Did you send my message to Stearc and Gram?” Thane Stearc was likely the leader of the cabal now that Abbot Luviar lay dead and Brother Victor lay comatose somewhere in Prince Osriel’s captivity. Stearc despised me and would no more believe my charges than Nemesio did, but Gram—Stearc’s quiet, pragmatic secretary—was a man of reason. He’d see that a search was mounted for Jullian and Brother Traitor.

“Indeed I sent news of your safe return. I also informed them of your foul accusation and my determination to seek the truth. You claim that you are one of us—sworn to Abbot Luviar’s memory to aid us in our mission—and this is the service we require of you.” Without waiting for my hundred arguments against this lackwit plan, he stepped over the two warriors and vanished down the stair.

Gods preserve me from holy men. It was Abbot Luviar’s persuasive passion that had got me caught up in his mad scheme to preserve the entirety of human knowledge in his magical library. Now his splayed and gutted corpse hung from a gallows back in Palinur. Crossing Prince Osriel…laying out his men with potions…the prior would have us end up the same or worse.

Yet as I pulled on a heavy cloak, I could not deny the virtue of retrieving poor Gerard. Unlike Jullian, a wily, experienced conspirator at age twelve, simple, good-hearted Gerard had been but an unlucky bystander. He should not lie forgotten.

For the fiftieth time since we’d left the abbey, I glanced over my shoulder and saw no one. A frost wind gusted off the mountains to the south, whipping the snow into coils and broomtails that merged with the gray-white clouds, hiding Gillarine’s broken towers. Ahead of me the prior, his black cowl billowing, strode eastward across the wind-scoured fields toward the valley’s bounding ridge, leading Dob, the abbey’s donkey.

Though the calendar marked the season scarce a month past Reaper’s Moon, the once-fertile valley of the Kay lay blanketed in snow. The Karish said Navronne’s past ten years of increasingly cold summers and bitter winters were caused by the One God Iero’s wrath at mankind’s sinfulness. The Sinduri Council claimed the elder gods’ bickering among themselves had shifted the bowl of the sky. Those of the lighthouse cabal feared the cause lay with the earth’s guardians—the mysterious, elusive Danae, who had withdrawn from all contact with humankind. Though I had no sensible arguments to make, my instincts told me that matters were worse than they imagined. Whatever the cause, famine and pestilence had taken on bony reality and crawled into our beds with us.

“We should be hunting the living, not the dead,” I said, puffing out great gouts of steam in the cold air. “Don’t you understand, Nemesio? Not only does Gildas have Jullian, he has my grandfather’s book of maps. And the god’s own fool that I am, I unlocked the book to him. Given rumor of a Danae holy place…given even a guess as to where one might lie…he can follow the maps and take the Harrowers there to destroy it. Once Prince Osriel takes me away from here, I’ll not be able to help you anymore. And without me or the book, you’ve no hope to find the Danae and ask for help.”