Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

I touched earth again and sought an approach from the open fields—the direction they’d least expect. Once the route felt sure, I slipped through the pale night, following the guide thread in my head. Fifty times I thought I’d gone wrong; I’d never traveled wholly blind before. But just as the guide thread gave out, my feet felt the sharp rise of the hollow’s lip, and I came near breaking my fingers when my extended hands encountered the bark of a young oak.

Lamenting my bulky monk’s garb, I crept from tree to tree, now following soft voices and the weak lantern light that gleamed deep in the treed hollow. Somewhere beyond them, horses grazed.

“Dawn approaches. Are you prepared?” The woman’s voice, cold and clear as a knife blade, chilled my soul. Only one night removed from her depraved rites, I could not mistake the priestess were a thousand other voices yammering in my ear.

The muffled answer was a man’s voice, but I could not decipher his words.

“Witness this noble sacrifice, sister and brothers,” said Sila Diaglou, “even as you remain vigilant. May the sweet odor of his suffering serve the Gehoum, drawing out our enemies that we might confound and crush them.”

A few of them shifted position in the fog, and I used their footsteps to cover my own as I slipped closer. Embracing one tree and then another, I honed my every sense, so that I would not collide with one of the shadowed forms. Four of them besides the priestess…no more. Likely the same I’d seen at Graver’s Meadow. Not gathered close as they’d been there. But somewhere in the center would be the priestess and the victim…

“Sanguiera, orongia. Scream, Monk. The trump of your pain shall open this battle and win the night.” Sanguiera, orongia. Bleed. Suffer.

A whistling split of the air. A crack, as if a limb of dry oak had snapped. A heart-tearing scream told me they’d stood him upright near one of three trees, some twenty quercae from my position. I gripped the reins of my fury and held still, listening. The next lash told me which tree.

Not again. This would not happen again. And certainly not to one of the brothers…

Blocking out the cries ripped from a man’s pain in the name of purity, I touched earth and mapped the grove, recording every tree, every shrub, every rock, stick, trench, or dip that might betray my steps or slow them. I searched out true north and etched the sense of it into my bones so that I could orient myself without thought. It took longer than I wished, knowing that the lash continued to fall, but I also knew they had no intent to be quick about their brutal game.

When my mind held as much as I could reasonably learn of the grove, I crept toward the closest of the four watchers. Only at the last step did he look my way—Boreas’s needle-chinned murderer. With every minim of strength I had in me, I slammed my walking stick into the man’s throat. Then I darted away. I hoped I’d killed him.

“Who’s there?” As a loop snapping into a knot did Sila Diaglou’s remaining henchmen gather round her, only to unravel again when one of their company did not arrive. “Radulf?”

Brisk footsteps sought the victim. “Radulf is down, lady!”

“Find the intruder!” The priestess’s command slammed my gut like a fist. But I held still and did not flinch. “Falderrene, Malena, all of you, spread out. Do not let him escape! Hold, monk. We’ll finish with you betimes.”

“Quiet!” spat one of the men.

The light wavered, shifted. Another light bloomed, coloring the fog piss yellow. Close enough to hear the gasps of the injured man, the harsh breathing of their captive, and the hiss of whispered orders, I pressed my back to the slender trunk and waited for them to disperse.

The three spiraled outward from the site of their crime. Closing my eyes, I matched their movements with the map imprinted on my mind. Unable to see in the fog, they brushed stalks, snapped branches underfoot, disturbed rocks. As soon as they were spread out from their captive and the cold priestess who guarded him—not so far as I would like—I threaded my way between them. I had little confidence in my fighting ability, but I had a few other skills.

Yanking my abbey blanket from my rucksack, I returned to the downed man. He clutched his throat, wholly preoccupied with choking. I slipped his dagger from its sheath. If he died I would not grieve, but I could not shed his blood on that ground. Instead, I spread the blanket over his body, considered my intent, and constructed the most rudimentary of illusion spells—the only kind I’d ever learned to any effect. Once prepared, I stared, motionless, scarce breathing, toward the ashen cloud whence came the captive’s harsh breathing. I stared until I could just make out the priestess’s tall figure pacing a short path near the tree. She wielded a short blade.

“You intrude on matters you cannot comprehend, infidel,” she cried. “Dare you sully a sacrifice offered to the Gehoum? I am the tool of their wrath.”

You bring murder to Iero’s holy ground, Harrower, I thought, snarling. Against his might, you shall not prevail.

Touching the blanket, I fed magic to my working. And waited. As the arm of a siege engine seems to crawl on its skyward journey toward release, so my spell seemed to spend eternity in its binding. My heart near stopped when I felt the blanket shift…and then it swelled into the very awkward likeness of a giant monk. Or a giant tent. I didn’t care which way she saw it or how crude the work might be. I was already running.

“Infidel!” No coward, Sila Diaglou. She charged out of the fog, crashing through trees and scrub straight at my feeble working. “Falderrene! Morgaut! To me!”

Silently I’d circled wide of her, leaping rocks and pits, dodging saplings and branches and stones, to come up behind the tree. Before she could reach my illusion, I was fumbling at the quivering captive suspended from the thin-boled oak. I could scarce believe my luck—his luck. Two loose, twisted loops of rope were all that held his hands to the limb above his head. I slipped the loops off his wrists, grasped him in my arms, and drew him away from the tree. Though his pale skin ran dark with blood, he expelled only a faint hiss at my handling. He lifted his head—pale, too, shaven as it was, his dark eyes a stain on his white skin…Gildas!

“Valen?” Even in the wan light, I could feel his shock.

“Do I need to carry you?” I said, grinning, cheered to feel him supporting his own weight.

“No…no, not…but….” He shook his head. Though his speech stumbled, he gathered up his cowl and gown that had been stripped off his shoulders and left bunched about his waist.

“Then follow me.” I grasped his arm and pulled him along.

“I’ll bleed you for the Gehoum, infidel!” Sila Diaglou’s cry of rage followed us as I led Gildas on the shortest path out of the hollow. I didn’t expect her to follow, and she did not. As I supported the stumbling monk across the broken ground, the dwindling thunder of galloping hoofbeats signaled the Harrowers’ escape. As soon as I was sure, I halted.

“I think we’re safe now,” I said, supporting him by his arms, careful not to jar or twist his mangled back. “I’ll fetch Robierre…the litter.”

“No…no…I’ll be all right. Stupid to get caught out. But, Valen”—his gaze was hot—“what, in great Iero’s mercy, are you doing out here? How did you—? I don’t understand.”

“I could ask the same of you, Brother,” I said.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, after a moment. “I needed to think, and so I played the fool, wandering about out here in the night. Walked right into their little plot.”

“Exactly so,” I said. “Only, I seem to have lost my blanket as well—hung it up in a tree to distract them. Do you think Brother Sebastian will punish me?”