Carol Berg - Breath and Bone

…and came near drowning in music. A legion of musicians must have walked here, leaving behind songs in varied voices…a pipe, a harp, a vielle, some instruments unknown to me…everywhere random snips of melody that on another day would fascinate and delight. But on this day the pervasive music distracted me, and I pushed past it…deeper yet…until I felt the weight of the land, the slow-moving rivers of the deeps, the impenetrable roots of the mountains.

Puzzled and anxious, I reminded myself to breathe amid such ponderous life. Yet I sensed more in the deeps: heat…circling movement…stone dissolved in eternal fire…

I backed away quickly. No beings left traces so deep as this. No presence I’d a mind to encounter. I retreated to the veils of music, each melody as rich and holy as plainsong, of marvelous variety, yet not intruding one upon the other, as if designed—

Understanding blossomed like an unfolding lily. Brother Sebastian had taught me that plainsong was a medium of prayer—bearing the petitions we would submit to the gods—and also a mode of prayer—a state of mind that exalted the soul and opened our thoughts to heaven. I focused my inner eyes and ears upon the music as if squinting to see differently or angling my head to pick up fainter sounds, and I began to see and hear and feel what I had previously gleaned in random glimpses and snippets. As blue sigils upon smooth flesh, traces more numerous than the paths of deer had been drawn on the land’s music, circling, dividing, rejoining. The earth’s music served as the favored medium of the earth’s guardians—their paint and canvas, their clay—opening the mind and senses to the deepest truths of the world. Danae shaped paths of music, imposing harmony…patterns…where they walked. No single thread laid across the landscape, but many silver threads that joined and divided and crossed one another. And now the path lay before me, I, Janus de Cartamandua’s son, could surely walk it.

I jumped to my feet. “Follow me.”

Mesmerized, I strode across the snow-clad meadow toward a spreading oak that had not yet shed its russet leaves. When at last I touched its bark, I marveled that the great bole’s rugged solidity did not waver or vanish. Laughing as would a man freed from the gallows, I pressed my back to the trunk and peered at the hazy blue sky beyond the spreading canopy—no longer winter evening, but autumn afternoon. The chill that nipped my skin tasted of fruit and wine. Then was my attention captured by the prospect beyond the shaded circle.

Earth’s Holy Mistress… Bathed in the steep-angled sunlight, the land fell away in the familiar giant’s steps to the river valley far below. But here, the grass was not crushed with early snow. Rather it rippled in golden, ankle-high luxuriance. The great forests of the Kay, thicker, taller, stretched well beyond the boundaries I knew, so that swaths of red-leaved maples, of deep green spruce and fir and russet oak lapped even these upland slopes and spilled onto these grassy meads. A kite screeched and dived from the deepening sky, only to soar upward in an arc of such exultant grace as to bring a lump to my chest.

No evidence of the human travelers’ road scarred the autumn landscape. No warriors’ refuge had been hacked from the rocky pinnacle where Fortress Groult had loomed only moments before. I spun in my tracks. No human work existed anywhere within my sight, nor did any prince, warrior, physician, or beast.

“Lord Prince!” I called, hurriedly retracing my path toward the gorge, out from under the tree…back from golden afternoon to indigo evening and snow. When Osriel and Voushanti came back into view, standing not twenty paces from the barren crossroads, I grinned and beckoned, shouting as the wind billowed my cloak. “You’d best stay close!”

Osriel’s eyes gleamed as hard as garnet. The deep twilight left Saverian, the soldiers, and the horses as anonymous smudges by the broken pillars of the bridge approach. “You’ve found your way, then? We lost sight of you.”

“Ah, lord, it is a wonder…” Osriel’s somber visage stilled my desire to babble of music and sunlight. As did Elene, I feared his soul already lay beyond the rock gate without hope of heaven.

Reversing course toward the oak, I walked more slowly this time, relishing the passage, feeling the land and light shift all around me. I sensed a strip of woodland to my left before I could see it, smelled the intoxicating air of Aeginea while human paths yet lay beneath my feet. Voushanti’s mumbling told me he saw the tree well after it had come into my view.

When we reached the tree, Osriel touched the craggy bark, and his gaze explored the spreading canopy. It grieved me that I could read no wonder in him.

“I would venture the opinion that we stand in Danae lands, Lord Prince,” I said softly, as the dry leaves rustled in the breeze, a few drifting from the branches above us, “and that the meeting you have sought is at hand.” For indeed another marvel awaited us.

Striding upslope from the valley were five Danae, their elongated shadows gliding across the rippling grass as if they flew. A big, well-muscled male led the party, his ageless face reflecting unbounded hauteur. A wreath of autumn leaves rested on a cascade of rust-colored hair that fell below his slender waist. A female walked alongside him. Though taller than most human women, she appeared but a wisp beside his imposing height and sculpted sinews. The skin beneath her blue sigils glowed the softest hue of sunrise, and a cap of scarlet curls framed her delicately pointed face. Her lean body spoke of naught but strength.

Slightly behind these two, almost as tall as the male, walked the disdainful female we had met here two months ago—she whose angular face was scribed with a coiled lizard, her flat breasts with intricately drawn moth wings. The Sentinel, Gram had named her. Woodrush and willow, mold and damp—did I truly catch her scent at such a distance or was it but memory?

These creatures value human life less than that of grass or sticks, I reminded myself, summoning disdain and repugnance, lest the empty yearning of that magical night overwhelm me again.

Two other males trailed behind. They seemed younger, less…developed…than their leader. Or perhaps that was only my assumption as they had no sigils marked on their unsmiling faces. They carried bundles in their arms.

“Let us walk out, Valen. Best let them see us.” The prince’s command startled me, and my feet obeyed without consulting my head for a reason not. Osriel and I stepped beyond the oak canopy together, Voushanti so close behind I could feel his breath on my neck.

The five Danae halted ten paces away, wholly unsurprised, as if they had come here purposefully to meet us. The hair on my arms prickled, as my true father’s warning crept into my memory: Go not into their lands ’til thou art free…not until eight-and-twenty. My belief that Danae other than Kol did not know me dulled with the fast-failing sunlight, for it could not be mere imagining that five pairs of aspen-gold eyes had fixed on me.

“Envisia seru, ongai…engai.” Prince Osriel inclined his head to the two in front.

“My lord,” I said softly. “What is—?”

“So a human knows of manners…and how to keep a bargain,” interrupted the small female as if I did not exist. The breeze wafted the sweetness of white pond lilies. “Awe embraces me. But I cannot return thy offered greeting. The sight of thee doth not delight my eye, Betrayer-son.”

“As ever, the long-lived honor their word,” said the prince, nodding coldly to the Sentinel. “Thus I presume it is Tuari Archon”—he acknowledged the male—“and his consort, Nysse”—and the female—“who honor me with their hearing. I regret that my presence offends. My sire reverenced the long-lived and their ways, and rued the division that grew between him and thee. As do I. As thine eyes attest, and the call of thy blood will surely affirm, I have brought thee that which was stolen.” His slender hand pointed at me.