Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

“Brother Gildas has been a member of Saint Ophir’s order for nine years.” Nemesio’s voice quivered with suppressed fury. “With unmatched scholarship, holiness, and devotion, he has devoted himself to work and study that he may carry the world’s hope into the future. You, sir, are a liar, a charlatan who has mocked our faith and suborned the weak-minded with your unending prattle, a hedonist and libertine, an illiterate wastrel who has spurned Iero’s greatest gift—the magic in your blood—and accomplished nothing of value in your life. Why would anyone accept your word as truth?”

Knowing that his every charge had merit did nothing for my bitter temper. “Have you no fear of walking out alone with such a rogue?”

“Two of our brothers hold missives to be forwarded to Thane Stearc should I fail to return.”

“Spirits of night…”

Nemesio halted where the land kicked up sharply into the ridge, motioning for me to take the lead. “Abbot Luviar, the most admirable and perceptive of men, insisted that you were more than we could see. Yet he also named Brother Gildas as the Scholar. In which man was he deceived?”

And so was I silenced. I could not argue Gildas’s guilt without confessing my own—that my slug-witted reaction to an excess of nivat seeds had prevented me rescuing Luviar from his hideous death. The fact that Gildas himself had abetted my perverse craving could never exonerate me.

Our path twisted upward through gullies and rockfalls, every crevice and shadowed nook treacherous with ice and crusted snow.

“Not far now,” I said, as I led Nemesio and the flagging donkey up the last steep climb and onto a shelf of rock that abutted a shallow cliff.

Shivering, uneasy, I gazed back out over the valley of the Kay and the slopes we had traversed, shrouded in snow fog that teased the eye. Drifting clouds mantled the cliff tops above us. I could not shake the certainty that we were being watched. How could I have been so stupid as to come here? Only one day ago I had narrowly escaped a trap set by the trickster Danae down in the bogs of the River Kay. And now we were to intrude on their holy place, an unassuming little hollow that touched on the most profound mysteries of the world.

S ila Diaglou, priestess of the ragtag Harrowers, wished to send Navronne back to the days before cities and roads and tilled soil, to a time when women hid in caves and men cowered in terror of night and storm. She named all gods false: Iero, the benevolent deity of the Karish, as well as Mother Samele and Kemen Sky Lord and the rest of the elder gods, worshiped in Navronne since time remembered. Harrowers ridiculed belief in Iero’s angels, called the impish aingerou naught but fools’ wishing dreams, and denied the existence of the Danae, whose dancing defined the Canon—the pattern of the world.

I could not name which gods were real and which but story. Nor could I argue the truth of angels or aingerou, though I spat on my finger and patted the naked rumps of those cherubic messengers carved into drainpipes and archways in hopes my prayers might be carried on to greater deities. But Danae…As boy and man I had scoffed at my grandfather’s claims to have traveled their realms. But Danae existed. Since I’d come to Gillarine, I had glimpsed at least two of them for myself.

The prior and I trod slowly along the snowy shelf path. Repeated melting and freezing had left small glaciers along the way.

“Are you having second thoughts, pureblood?” asked Nemesio, blowing on his rag-wrapped fingers to warm them. “Why would Brother Gildas choose this particular spot to hide a body when any of these gullies would do? Perhaps you’ll tell me this is the wrong location after all.”

There was no mistake. “He chose this place because killing Gerard was not his object. He wanted to kill the Danae guardian.”

Despite their claims, at least some of the Harrowers believed in the Danae. It could be no accident that their savage rites murdered Danae guardians one by one.

Legend said Danae lived both on the earth and in it. Everywhere and nowhere, my mad grandfather said. Most times they took human form to walk their lands—our lands, for the human and Danae realms were both the same and not the same. But for one season of every year a Dané became one with a sianou—the grove, lake, stream, or meadow he or she had chosen to guard. The protection of a Dané infused the sianou and the surrounding land with life and health.

Our destination was such a sianou, a pool I had located at the bidding of Abbot Luviar, before I even understood what kind of place it was. I had brought my friend Brother Gildas there, and in the weeks since that night, Gerard had gone missing, blight had infected Gillarine’s orchards and fields, and disease had come to its sheepfolds. When I touched my hands to the earth in the abbey’s cloisters, I could no longer feel its living pulse. Harrower raiders had left the abbey buildings in ruins, but I believed the cause of its underlying sickness lay here and that Gildas was responsible.

Snow and ice packed a jutting slab beneath its slight overhang. Dob balked and brayed in protest at the tight corner. As the prior slapped the donkey’s rump and hauled on the lead, a horse whinnied anxiously just ahead of us.

Startled, beset with imaginings of lurking Harrowers, I hissed at Nemesio to keep silent.

Footsteps and jostling spoke of one man and one beast. “Easy, girl, it’s friendly company on the way. We’ll be about our business and be off again to hay and blanket.”

The quietly persuasive voice brought a smile to my lips. Gram could convince a cat to play in the ocean.

“How in great Iero’s mercy do you happen to be here?” I said, abandoning the prior to the donkey while I hurried around the rock and along the shelf toward the slender, dark-haired man stroking a gray mare. “Did you get Nemesio’s message about Jullian and Gildas? Well, of course, you must have done. That’s why you’ve come. Gram, you must believe me. Gildas has taken Jullian and the book. He’s murdered Gerard…”

I wanted to pass on everything I knew: what I had sensed in the abbey’s cloisters, the truth about my damnable perversion and how Gildas had thought to use it to bend me to his will. My determination to rescue Jullian—perhaps the only true innocent left in this blasted world—had become a fever in me. Ever-sensible Gram would understand the importance of prompt action. The man spent his days as the calm center of the lighthouse cabal, juggling his testy employer, Thane Stearc, and Stearc’s ebullient daughter, Elene. But I’d scarcely begun my tale when Gram raised his gloved hand.

“Hold, friend Valen,” he said. “We are already moving. Thane Stearc and his men have spent the night scouring the countryside between here and Elanus for the two of them. Mistress Elene leads another search party between here and Fortress Groult. We told Thanea Zurina that a wayward monk had kidnapped a young friend of yours and asked her to keep an eye out along the roads west as she makes her way home.”

The flushed Nemesio joined us, hauling Dob behind him. “What are you doing here, Gram?”

Gram bowed politely. “Good Father Prior, your god’s grace be with you this morning. As I was just telling Valen, Thane Stearc has dispatched several parties to search for Jullian and Brother Gildas. As he wished to move swiftly, my lord left me behind at Fortress Groult. So I rode up here, hoping to make myself useful.”

The secretary’s pale skin took on a hint of scarlet. Though no older than I, Gram was sorely afflicted with ill health.

Prior Nemesio shook his head. “Brother Valen’s story is nonsensical. How could a scholarly man such as Gildas give hearing to Harrowers? Even if he be apostate to divine Karus and the One God, which I cannot credit, who but mindless lunatics could imagine that a world without tools or books is what any god intends?”