Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

For three days we pushed hard, fearing that a new storm might leave the roads impassable. Late on the third day we descended a steep pass between two spiny ridges only to see a grand prospect opened before us, washed in the indigo light of snowy evening. From west to east the dark, jagged gorge of the River Kay sliced the frosted landscape of treeless terraces. Just below us the river plunged down a great falls and veered northward through broken foothills, where, freed from the confining rock, its character altered into the lazy sweeping flow that fed the fertile valley where Gillarine lay.

Bridging the gorge a quellé west of the falls was Caedmon’s arch, its broken entry pillars on the Ardran side resembling thick ice spears. And just north of the pillars lay the crossroads where I had first glimpsed a Dané and a tree that did not grow in the human plane. My stomach tightened.

“Lord Stearc,” I said, coaxing my balky horse up beside the thane as the road wound downward onto the flatter approaches to the bridge. “Call a halt as soon as we’re across. I’ll lead from there.”

He jerked his head in assent. Before very long, Stearc passed over the bridge and between the broken pillars. He raised his hand.

“Saints and spirits,” I mumbled, as I reined in beside him, gulping great lungfuls of Ardran winter. Blessed Ardra. The clouds seemed thinner this side of the bridge, the air clearer…cleaner. Only my own anxieties thrummed my veins, not the muted violence and suffering that had tainted my every breath in Evanore. I felt as if a mountain had rolled off my back.

“Are you ill, Magnus? It’s been only a few hours since you renewed the damping spell.” Saverian slipped from her saddle, squinting at me as if I were a two-headed cow. She’d not spoken three words to me all day. Only diseases piqued her interest.

“On the contrary,” I said, wishing she weren’t watching as I lifted my mangled bum from the saddle and dropped to the ground. I winced, but managed not to groan aloud. “Both health and spirits seem much improved now we’re this side of the river.”

“Except for the posterior.” Her slanted brows mocked a frown and her small mouth quirked, as she cupped her hand beside her mouth and whispered, “However will you ride naked?”

Gods… A number of entirely crude retorts came to mind, but they would likely only encourage the creature. I vowed to ignore her and her odd humor.

Leaving the horses with Voushanti and the soldiers, we joined Osriel and Stearc beside Caedmon’s pillars. Thane and prince were arguing quietly. “…But you have too few men to protect you, lord.”

“Have the past three days taught you nothing?” snapped the prince. “You need to be out of sight. You carry the lighthouse ward. Remain at Gillarine until I give you leave to do elsewise.”

The thane stalked away, threw himself into the saddle, and barked a command. He and his five men mounted up and soon vanished into the valley of the Kay.

“Are you ready to proceed, my lord, or do you wish to wait for morning?” I said, removing my mask now Stearc’s men were gone. Voushanti, Philo, and Melkire had dismounted and were sharing a skin of ale with Saverian. The prince sat on a stained block of marble fallen from the shattered columns.

“We go now. I’d rather not push our luck with the weather.”

“All I know to do is try to find the Sentinel Oak and seek a way to take us past it. I gather we’ve brought no nivat?” Though my voice remained determinedly neutral, conscience and resolution battled the guilty hope that he would contradict me. Would he dare tell me if they had it?

“No nivat.” The prince rubbed his neck as if to ease the stiffness. “What need to lure the Danae into our lands, when your talents can take us into theirs? I trust we’ll have no inflated illusions today.”

Relieved, yes, truly relieved, I told myself, I sought some trace of good humor in this reference to my artful past. But none of Gram’s wry humor or controlled excitement leaked from under Osriel’s thick cloak and hood. He manifested only this passionless determination I’d seen throughout this journey.

Voushanti commanded Philo, Melkire, and Saverian to remain with the horses, while he, Gram, and I ventured onward. A few hundred querae from the bridge, I halted. Time to keep my promise to Elene.

“My lord, perhaps we should discuss how we’re to approach the Danae. If I could but understand the terms of your discussion, what exactly we are seeking from them, what’s to happen on the solstice…”

“That is not your concern. The time for discussion has passed.” And that was that.

I could have refused to take him farther, but I had no means to weigh the world’s need against Elene’s fears. If I postponed my leaving, stayed close if and when this meeting took place, then perhaps I could glean Osriel’s purpose.

“It is my concern, lord, as your contracted adviser and as a fellow member of the lighthouse cabal. Eventually we must and will discuss it. For now, for the Danae’s safety and our need for understanding, I’ll fulfill our bargain.”

I knelt and touched my hands to earth. At first I sensed nothing beyond the scrape of snow crystals on my wrists and cold grit under my palms. A momentary panic struck me that Saverian’s medallion had left my bent useless. But she had insisted that it should not, and as distasteful as her arrogance might be, she had convinced me of her competence.

I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with the cold air, imagining its pungent clarity sweeping aside all worries of Elene and Osriel, of lost souls and abducted children, of familial lies, gravid warnings, and looming birthdays. My fingers prickled and warmed, and I swept my mind across the frozen ground.

Beneath the wind-crusted snow lay a mat of yellowed grass and dormant roots, clotted with damp soil and stones. Sheep had grazed here along with deer, elk, and horned goats come down from the mountains. The beasts left a threadwork of trails down to the willow brakes and fens of the Kay. Human hunters, trappers, and other travelers had beaten two paths across the meadow—one leading down the valley toward villages, abbeys, and cities, the other up the bald rocky prominence to the thick-walled castle men named Fortress Groult. At the conjunction of these paths lingered the faint warm residue of sorcery.

Not much magical structure remained of my illusion—a knotty stump magically inflated from an astelas vine, meant to convince Gram and Stearc that I could read my grandfather’s book of maps. Yet two months ago that cheat’s ploy had spanned the barrier between true life and myth, between the realm of men and Aeginea. On a meadow with naught growing taller than my knee, I had glimpsed an oak tree with a trunk the breadth of my armspan and a canopy that could shelter a small village, and my companions and I had encountered a Dané female with moth wings on her breasts. I had yet to understand how I’d managed such a feat, but I hoped to repeat it.

My magic enveloped the spot of warmth. Recalling the great tree’s particular shape and the wonder I had felt upon seeing it, I sought some trace of a Danae presence upon the land, some evidence of the juncture of two planes that existed here.

The frozen world, the whickering horses, my companions, and my fears receded, and my mind filled with an abundance of the familiar and mundane—the paths of ancient sledges drawn up the hill to build the fortress, the remnants of siege engines and destroying raids, the blood and pain humans left everywhere they walked. Sounds, smells, tastes echoed the richness of the land and its history. Trees had once populated these terraced meadows: maples and oaks, spruce and fir, white-trunked birch. I concentrated, stretched, delved deeper…