Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

All too aware that the treacherous moonlight would expose any approach on the meadow track, I circled wide toward the cliffs to come up behind the house, racing as soft-footed as I could manage over the rocky ground. When I plunged gratefully into the clumped beech and oak grown up in the lee of the cliffs, the rush of the nearby flames was already waning. I crept cautiously through the snagging undergrowth of blackthorn and hazel.

The screams—hoarse now, choking grunts, wordless animal cries—did not emanate from the burning house, but from an expanse between the house and the chalk cliffs. Breaking free of the bracken, I sped through a stretch of scattered, pale-trunked beeches and caught myself just before hurtling into the open.

Beyond the bordering trees lay a rolling meadow, dotted with stands of rowan and birch. Nestled in a willow brake, a small, bean-shaped pond shimmered in the cold moonlight, its waters ruffled by the knife-edged breeze. From the pond spilled the stream that gouged the hillside. My soul swelled at the beauty of the place; my skin flushed and quivered as if the angel choirs themselves had come to sing in Gillarine Abbey church.

But my eyes were quickly drawn to a knoll at the heart of the meadow. At the apex of the knoll, five people gathered about a splayed figure, still as death. The angled moonlight stretched their long shadows across the slope.

A howl rose in my throat. Had I a weapon…a bow…a club…a blade longer than my finger, I would have set upon them, never mind the odds. But as in every juncture of my life, I was inadequate. Too late. Unprepared.

A scrawny, tangle-haired man stood at the base of the knoll holding six horses. With a smothered curse at my loose-lipped folly, I recognized him as Gorb the Seedsman. He’d not worn the orange scarf about his neck three hours past.

The five were chanting a pattern of four words, one each, over and over around their circle until I could distinguish the voices—three men and two women—and the Aurellian words: sanguiera, orongia, vazte, kevrana. Bleed, suffer, die, purify. With every repetition, the moonlight dimmed and the weight of night and despair descended upon my shoulders like an iron yoke. After the fifth or sixth time around, a tall, pale-haired woman in an orange cloak raised her arms, holding a short staff in her two hands as if to challenge the sky. Her clear voice incised the air like a silver lancet, and every hair on my flesh rose.

Powers of Night and Storm and Terror, of Desert and Ice, of Death and Life,

O mighty Gehoum, heed our sacrifice.

Withhold our doom as we cleanse this land of decadent pleasure,

Of all that distracts us mortals from our proper reverence.

May this blood and fire and pain be a sweet odor to fill the long night of thy passing

And bear upon its vapors our vows renewed to purge the world of all that stands between us and thy immortal being.

“Heathen witch! Magrog take ye to his everlasting fire!” The raw, choking curse came from the victim at their feet…Boreas, no doubt of it, not so dead after all.

“Feel the cleansing fear, mortal man,” said the tall woman, lowering her arms and bending over him. “Thou art a blight upon the universe, diseased, depraved, an insult to the Powers who control the world’s fate. Of all thy miserable existence, only thy ending will serve a purpose. Suffer and bleed and rejoice in the terror of darkness.” She plunged her staff into the ground…into the man…ripping a cry of agony from his very depths.

Horror rooted my feet as each of the five bent to touch him. Then Sila Diaglou—of course, the pale-haired woman was the priestess I’d seen at Gillarine, the warrior who could rouse people to destroy their own fields and cities in the name of repentance—led her companions down the knoll to Gorb and the horses.

The seedsman gave the priestess a leg up into her saddle. She laid a hand on his head and murmured, as if bestowing a blessing, and then she and her cohorts rode toward me. I hid myself as best I could and still be able to see them as they approached the wood. Using every skill at my command, I etched their features into my memory.

Scarce forty, Sila Diaglou was a handsome woman with a high forehead and intelligent eyes set well below thin brows. The diagonal scar that seamed each cheek tainted her beauty with cruelty. Her hair floated like beaten flax as she rode, yet her wide mouth lacked any hint of generosity or mercy. Her lips, and those of her companions, were painted black with blood.

The smaller woman followed, particolored skirts draping her mount and a fluttering orange scarf wrapped about straight black hair. No more than a doe-eyed girl, eighteen at best, she rode like a queen, soft, copper-hued features devoid of emotion. The three men, too, I memorized as they came: the one with a beardless needle chin and colorless eyes, the one with a malformed ear and oiled black curls tied into a club at his neck, the third with a dog’s face, all lumps and crags, with but a fringe of hair about his round chin and a dagged cloak of purple velvet. Weedy Gorb mounted his own beast and rode after the others.

I held still until they had passed out of my hearing. Then I raced to the crest of the knoll.

Spirits of fire and darkness! Stripped to his braies, wrists and ankles stretched and bound to wooden stakes, my old comrade leaked blood from every quat of his length and breadth. Blades had shredded his flesh and punctured his eyes. The priestess had plunged her staff through his middle, not through his heart or his bowel to kill him quickly, but through his side so that every breath, every trembling shudder, tore him apart.

Swallowing my gorge, I knelt beside him and spoke softly. “Ah, Boreas, you god-cursed gatzé, I knew you’d get in trouble without me.”

“Who’s there?” he croaked. His battered lips scarcely moved. His head rolled side to side, as if he might be able to see, if he but turned his bloody sockets in the proper direction.

Gently I stilled him. “It’s Valen, come to help you as I vowed I would.”

He gasped, a whooshing stridor that only after a panicked moment did I realize was a laugh. “So I’m dead then. Of all Magrog’s servants come to take me at my end, ne’er thought ’twould be you, Valen. And I ne’er thought ’twould hurt so wicked to be dead.” His dreadful laughter stretched into a sob.

“Hush now.” I bent over so he could feel my breath. “Neither of us is dead. The baldpates saved my leg and my life, so I’ve you to thank for that. I heard you were up here, and I came to—Well, that doesn’t matter. Holy gods, I’m sorry I’m so late.”

I could see no way to help him. Pull the stake from his middle and the splintered shaft would draw his entrails, and he’d bleed his life away in agony. Leave it and his every breath would be torment and still he would die. But only after long dreadful hours…or days.

“No luck today for neither of us. Threw the last of our loot into the pond, they did. After killing—” A croaking sob. “Ah, Kellna was a merry lay. I never understood when ye said the best girls danced with ye. But Kellna…she danced.”

“I’ll pay her passage, Boreas. I promise.” I ripped off my rucksack and scrabbled through the contents of the bundled rag. Nothing in the pilfered medicines would help him. Few did I even know the proper use of. But the little knife…“Hold still and I’ll get your hands free.”

With the pointed, finger-length blade of the stolen herb knife I split the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles. He could not move his tortured limbs without crying out, so I did it for him, drawing them to his sides. Then I laid my monk’s gown over him. His massive body trembled.

“Somehow they knew I’d nivat. Said I was a twist-mind…abomination to their Gehoum…and I’d be better use to the world bleeding. I tried to tell ’em…” Growing agitation had him gasping between words. Blood welled out from around the stake. “They’ve left me in the dark, Valen. There’s naught here. Naught. I’m fallen in a well that has no bottom. Don’t leave me this way…”