Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

“We should go after the book,” said Voushanti. “The monk believes us weak. He’s planned to make us choose. The boy is likely dead already.”

“Not yet,” I said, holding tight to my anger so I could think. “I’d know.”

“I’ll not build our future on one more dead child,” said the prince hoarsely. The saccheria had left thorns in his breathing. He moved carefully, as if his joints grated upon one another. “If we cannot protect our own, then how can we protect the rest of the kingdom? Valen and I will fetch the boy. You can go after—”

“No,” said Voushanti flatly. “I am here to protect you and your pureblood. You have bound me with that duty, and no whim—even yours, lord—will sway me from it.”

“You—are—my—servant.” A flash of red lanced from the prince’s fist to the bottomless black of Voushanti’s eyes…and held.

Muffling a groan, the mardane dropped to his knees. Even in his submission, he struggled and writhed, his body seeming to bulge and swell until he twisted his thick neck sharply, wrenching his eyes from Osriel’s lock. In that same moment the red lance broke and vanished. The mardane yanked his sword from its scabbard, laid it crosswise on his upturned palms, and thrust it at our master. “Do with this as you choose, lord, as is your right and privilege,” he said, curling his half-ruined mouth into a demonic leer, “but I will not leave you.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and confirmed that the sword’s crimson glow was not some artifact of blurred vision.

“By the mighty Everlasting!” Osriel’s upraised fists shook and spat white sparks that showered down on Voushanti’s dreadful face.

Surely Magrog’s own presence would not taint the night with such a stench—death and brimstone and scarcely bridled violence. The earth shivered at Osriel’s wrath, or so it seemed to me, who would gladly have exchanged my body for that of one of the cold worms I had touched. I laid my head on the ground and shrank as small as I could manage.

“You will pay for this, Voushanti. When your day of trial comes next, you will pay.”

The dispute was quenched as quickly as it had flared. The night became only night once more, rather than the vestibule of hell. Before I could sort reality from nivat-starved illusion, the two of them had tied me to the back of a horse and we were descending the slope into the darkening gorge. I could not fathom why Voushanti yet lived. In what kind of bondage did he serve?

The nervous animal’s hooves slipped more than once. Voushanti cajoled the beast to stay afoot and me to balance my weight back to help keep it so. But every jogging movement set off my cramps, and before we’d descended halfway to the bottom of the vale, I had stopped worrying about Osriel’s scarce-contained furies and was begging Voushanti to throw me from a cliff.

“Tell me which way to the boy, Valen,” said the prince, laying his hand on my knee as he walked beside me. Fifty times he had said it, between his hacking coughs. Even through my layered chausses I felt the heat of his fever.

“Water,” I said, my chin bouncing on my chest, lips numb, drool freezing to my chin. “Find the water. Down.”

The beast beneath me jolted forward. I muzzled my screams in the crook of my arm. Gildas must not hear us.

The night’s black seemed washed with silver. Details of the land crept out of the dark—scrubby trees, snow, crooked slabs of ice-slicked rock. Could it be morning already? Please, holy Iero, no. After a night in freezing water, the boy would be dead.

No, this light was something else. Not moon. Moon and stars were lost in cloud. Yet I could see…there, the guide thread itself laid out on the landscape, a gray pattern that sparked and shimmered of its own light, scribed atop the landscape, like the sigils of the Danae that shone from within and yet apart from their bare flesh. I dared not ask if my companions could see it, too.

“Bear left,” I croaked. Red sand hardened into stone and twisted by wind and water had formed a narrow rift. Thistles and scrub sprouted between its thin layers. “It’s narrow. Choked with boulders.” Beyond the boulder field a wall rose like the facade of a temple, an oddly flat face in this rugged wilderness.

We halted, and before I comprehended he had gone, Voushanti returned from a scout. “It’s as he says, my lord. Great slabs fallen everywhere. Dead trees. No sign of anyone, boy or man. But the place has an odd feel. We’d best leave the horses and the pureblood out here. Neither will manage the boulders.”

They untied my hands and feet and helped me to the ground. Propped my back against a rock. Bundled blankets around me and gave me a sip of ale.

“Are we in Evanore, lord?” I mumbled, my speech vibrating through my skull.

“No, Valen. Why would you think that?” Gram’s endless patience at my shoulder. Profound weariness. Perhaps the netherworld I had witnessed in his eyes had been but my own madness.

“Brains boiling.”

Soft laughter fell about my head and shoulders like autumn leaves. “Should we ever travel to my wondrous land, I’ll shield your poor brains, Valen. Now tell me: Is the boy close? We can’t take the horses any farther.”

I clutched my belly and rolled to the side, onto my knees, pressing forehead and hands to the churned snow and dirt. All I could sense was the blistering heat of my skin. “I can’t feel, lord.”

“Do we need to warm your hands? We daren’t make a fire.”

“Can’t raise my magic.” I could not even remember why I searched.

“Heed me, pureblood.” The presence swelled and darkened just behind me, close to my ear, sending thrills of terror up my spine. “Your father and grandfather used you to fuel their war with each other. Do you think I do not understand why a child’s pain touches your soul so deeply? Stop playing at this and find the boy, or I will break you.”

The boy… The ember yet burned. I grasped it and dived into earth. And from the deep crevices between the rocks came the faint trickle of water and a rhythmic tapping.

“Holy Mother, he’s trapped in the boulders,” I mumbled, hands clawed into the frozen mud, pebbles digging into my forehead. “In the crevices between. Look down. Seek the water.”

“Hold on just a little longer, Valen. Not a sound as we fetch him.”

“Careful on the ice.” Voushanti’s parting whisper carried through the night air as clearly as Gillarine’s bell.

My every sense stretched to fevered refinement. The crunch of their boots sounded like the tread of a retreating army. The horses snorted and tore at the dead grasses that poked through the snow, their mundane noises the cacophony of the world’s end. The hot stink of their droppings choked me.

I shivered and a spasm raked me from belly to lungs like a lightning bolt, near rending the bones from my flesh. “Archangel,” I mumbled into my knees. “Jullian! Where are you, boy?”

My agitated mind would not stay still, and I reached farther into the boulder-filled rift…into the earthen banks beyond the boulders, past the stone wall…where something breathed…men, unmoving, waiting, ready in a great hollow. Gildas was there, gone through the rocks, not over them. And a woman beside him…pale-haired, cold, deadly…roused with unholy lust to serve her fearsome Gehoum. Great gods…a whole citadel buried behind these steep banks. Sentries…watchers…ahead and to either side of us. Trap.

I clawed at the boulder behind me, willing my useless body upward. Stumbling into the rift, I dodged fallen slabs until the piled ice, stone, and rubble wholly filled the narrow gorge. I scrabbled up the boulder pile, at every touch reaching for their footsteps…Voushanti the devil, Gram my friend…Navronne’s king…Must be silent. Though I could hear my skin ripping on the sharp rocks. Though I could feel the blood leaking out of me.