Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

The uncertainty of name and birth dogged me until I next came to my senses—or at least what portion of them I could claim. A flurry of hands rolled me over in the soft bed and restrained my wrists and ankles with ties of silk. I could not fathom why my caretakers bothered with such. The only movement I seemed able to command was licking my parched lips.

A hand on my forehead brought the world beyond my eyelids into sharper focus. I smelled…everything…dust and stone, the faint residue of burning pennyroyal, rosemary, oil of wintergreen, medicines and possets, old boots and dried manure, cinnamon and ale, evergreen branches, chamomile, and soap. But unlike the usual case of late, the varied scents did not corrode my flesh. Hell’s minions had been using my senses as instruments of torture.

“The spell seems to be taking hold,” said the woman—the angel. Her voice crackled like glass crushed under a boot. “His last seizure spanned only an hour, and each seems milder than the one before. He no longer tries to injure himself. His body now responds to pleasure as well as pain. As Your Grace has rejoined us, perhaps he’ll open his eyes. He reacts to your presence as to none other. And not entirely with terror. Does that annoy you, lord?”

Someone drew up a sheet of soft linen to cover my naked shoulders and the touch of its fine-woven threads did not make me scream. I almost forgot to listen as I contemplated this odd experience.

“Will he have a mind left after all this? I need him capable. This very hour would be none too soon.” The man’s voice slid into my thoughts like a sharpened stake into soft earth, rousing a frantic need for sense and strength. Despite his intriguing language of sanity and reason, instinct screamed that to lie here bound and muddleheaded in his presence was dangerous.

Filled with eager dread, I fought to open my eyes, but succeeded only in stirring up remnants of madness. Just punishment. I had broken vows…indulged perversion…done murder…soiled my bed…and now I had to pay. Dancing shadows swirled in the landscape of my head, parting to reveal scarlet light glaring from the empty eye sockets of sprawled corpses, a brawny man pinned to the earth with wooden stakes, skeletal fingers drawing me into the snow-blanketed bog, pulling me down and down into the icy mud. Drowning…suffocating…freezing…yet never, ever dead. Seven times seven times seven years was I condemned to live and die, buried in the ice. A wail rose from my hollow chest.

The angel’s hand on my back silenced my cry before it reached my throat. Her sere voice swept away the nightmares as if they were no more than ash, drifting like black snow about my bed. “I cannot even venture a guess as to his state.”

She moved away. A clank of iron, various rustlings and thumps, and a mumbled “flagro” produced a rush of sound and a moment’s blistering heat behind me, surging to attack the legions of winter.

“Yet indeed the fellow’s constitution is extraordinary,” she continued. “A fortunate man—that is, one who did not die gnawing his own appendages—would experience the most acute nivat sickness for six weeks after quitting the doulon. Certain effects—nausea, high-strung nerves, tremors, and sweats—would then linger for nigh on a year, and susceptibility to the craving for the rest of his life. This man, or whatever you think he is, is emerging from the acute illness after only a fortnight. Perhaps your theory as to his birth explains why. Whatever the source of his resistance to nivat’s worst effects, each succeeding hour convinces me that this sensory disorder that remains is, indeed, fundamental to his body’s humors. Yet I see no more evidence of immortality or inhuman strength in him than I see of wings or halos or blue sigils glowing from his skin. Look at the scars on his thigh and shoulder. He’s been wounded a number of times, and he’s been enslaved to the most virulent of all enchantments for near half his life. No physician could tell you more of his nature than that. Consult priests or talespinners, if you insist on more.”

“I’ve not yet confirmed the details of his birth,” said the man. “And we’ve no idea the implications of dual bloodlines—such bloodlines. Of course, he would be neither immortal nor invulnerable. You’ve not mentioned this to anyone else?”

“Certainly not. I’d sooner spread plague than dose idiots with more superstitions. It’s wretched enough to see their response when I confess that my employer is Magrog the Tormentor’s rival, while I am forbidden to reveal that he’s naught but a disease-ridden celibate with a diabolical bent for magic and an overgrown opinion of himself.”

“Someday, mistress, you truly will overstep.” Frost edged the man’s words, so bitter that my tattered soul curled into a ball and hid, certain I was fallen to hell again.

But my astringent angel laughed, her fearless merriment a silver sword banishing the demon gatzi that tried to take shape behind my eyelids. Pillows lay soft beneath my cheek; tendrils of warmth wafted from her hearth. Even the silken ties that bound my wrists and wrapped each finger made me feel safe and protected in her presence.

Receding footsteps crossed my muted chamber, then clicked on tile as they passed into a place of echoes. Behind my eyelids I envisioned a long, wide passage of clean white stone, bordered by arches hung with brightly woven curtains. The lamps that hung from the high ceiling shone, not with burning oil or lit fingers of wax and braided wick, but with the pure blue fire of daylight, held captive within their glass panes. The image held the same hard-edged truth as the angel’s hands and stray moonbeams.

Whence came such certainty? I could not have seen. I’d been a raving lunatic since well before they brought me here, my eyes covered, my ears and nose stopped to tame the agony of my senses.

“Someone’s coming to sit with him? I don’t begrudge you rest after this long siege, but I’d not have him left alone.” The man’s voice echoed faintly down the passage.

“The fellow must have some charm about him,” she said, sere as the uplands of Ardra. “Everyone seems eager to take a turn to help—even your little heart’s bane. I’ve made a schedule…”

Gatzi surged out of the corners of my mind, pricked at my skin, and drew me downward into the frozen bog. Mud and water filled my lungs, so I could only choke and gurgle, not scream.

“There, can you feel it, Brother? A marvel as we’ve not seen since we left Palinur. Awkward as this might be for us were you sensible, Saverian said that to expose your skin might do more good than harm, so…”

Hands drew stale linens away, tugging gently where they snarled my tucked limbs, carefully settling the scant weight about my hips. The touch of air on skin set off a defensive tremor deep within me where some primitive function kept my heart beating and lungs pumping. Yet it was merely sharp-edged heat that bathed my flesh.

Every nerve burst awake in that moment, not in the overstretched agonies of madness, but in a fevered baptism of delight. My lungs filled with light. My ears rang with its brazen song. I tasted its tart and searing flavor. And as heat filled my veins, I groaned and uncurled, stretching to gather more of it before hell’s minions snatched it away.

“Dear Brother, I’m sorry if this hurts you!”

My eyes flew open to dazzling brilliance, and a sweetly curved form shimmering red against the haloed light—my angel. The memory of her strong hands tending my naked flesh sent the liquid sunlight in my veins surging toward my groin and possessed me of such aching desire, I dared reach for her wrist, even as I breathed fire. “O blessed one…”

“Brother Valen, the Mother be praised! What are you—?”