Ash and Silver (20 page)

With infinite care, I stretched and reached. My fingers clawed at the little pocket hidden above me, ensuring a firm hold remained once the debris was clear. Then I found a solid foothold. Shift weight. Push upward. Reach . . . Again . . .

Where were they? Terror had erased all sense of time, but surely Osriel and his party should be below me with torches . . . magelight . . . paralyzing magic. The enchantments I'd thrown at them were well made and persistent, but anyone with the prince's skill should be able to counter them. I wasn't mistaken about his power. Of all things I had been taught, it was how to judge my enemy. And this prince was my enemy. He sought power in the realms of the Danae. Where else had he sought it using human eyes to pay his tally? I'd no reason to believe he would not survive to use what he'd bought.

I'd heard both knights and trainees at Evanide dismiss Eodward's third son. I had to survive this and tell them we dismissed the Bastard at our peril. At the world's peril.

So I climbed. And when I hauled myself over the rim of the scarp, scraping my face on the gnarled roots and rocks that kept the forest lands from washing into the lake below, doubting I could crawl another body length, I grabbed a sturdy sapling, stood up, and staggered forward.

Once away from the rim of the cliff, I dared a faint magelight to help me find the track down to the clearing at the lower end of the lake. Two narrow trails petered out quickly. But a third seemed more promising, definitely wider, and it penetrated a more open woodland. More interesting, a most definite aroma of horse rose from my boots. Fresh in the last few days. Multiple horses heading
up
the hill.

How likely was it a party of horsemen had come up this way so late in the day with no destination closer than Lillebras, probably a day's ride?

Had the squire taken the horses up to graze while I was being interrogated by his master? Facing a long slog afoot with a mounted chase, I'd best find out. I reversed course.

Doubts crept in as I trudged up the ever-steeper hill through the rain, getting ever closer to a man I feared, albeit separated by thick layers of earth and rock. To leave their mounts so far out of reach seemed careless. Twice a rustling in the brush sent me to ground, dousing my magelight.

About the time the rain stopped, the trees thinned and vanished. The track leveled, curving around the slope. My footsteps and weary breaths, so pronounced under the trees, vanished into open air.

Squatting low, I extended my senses as far as I could without magic . . . and then a little farther yet. Ahead were a muddy hillside with nothing growing higher than my knees, a rocky outcrop the size of a house, and horses. Four of them. Right in the middle of the rock. Or rather, as I discovered when I crept closer, left to graze in the lee of the giant rock pile. No human was anywhere close.

The lack of pursuit puzzled me. Perhaps Osriel assumed I could not get far on foot in the night and the rain. He knew I was alone. I didn't like to think what else he knew of me, after his ravaging. Yet how could I complain, when the knife he'd used to pry out my truth had somehow cut the bonds of my bent?

Summoning whatever calm an escapee altogether too close to a devilish pursuer could muster, I strolled past the horses, giving them wide berth. I brushed the bushes and hummed to let them know I was near. They were clearly well trained and experienced, as they'd been left with naught but ground ties, but a bit of caution ensured they'd not run until I was safely mounted.

I chose the warlord's bay. He was likely strong enough to get me back to Evanide and unlikely to be spooked by gouts of magic being flung about along the way.

“Hey, young sir,” I said, softly, standing to one side. “Might a tired paratus request your aid? He'd be a lighter burden than your master.”

He turned his head in my direction, and I held out my hand. “I'm not so fearsome as those you travel with. Sadly I don't have anything for you, either. You've likely eaten better than I today.”

He watched, unbothered, as I sidled close, and I was soon stroking his muzzle and his neck. A beautiful beast. And Goddess Mother, so warm.

“Come, good fellow,” I said, stroking the bay's neck, soothing as best I could with my own spirit in tumult. “We've a way to go and none must stop us. It will be mostly up to you, but I'll provide a little direction.”

Laying a hand on his muzzle and the other on his lead, I whispered “homeward” and let magic flow through both hands at once. No need to visualize what home I meant. Evanide was all I knew. Once I'd threaded his lead under and around one cheek band and through his mouth, I grabbed hold of mane and withers, and threw myself onto his back.

He wasn't sure of me at first, but I got him headed for his companions. We needed to scatter them. The squire's sturdy mare grazed nearest the rocks and as I slapped her on her rump, I noticed a dark, gaping hole in the granite . . . a cave . . . and a shadowy movement just inside.

Instinct screamed warning; realization slapped me. This hill surely housed the portal cavern that opened onto the lake. The cursed hole must connect to it . . . its postern gate. My enemies had only to stroll through tunnels to meet me.

“What a bold rogue you are, masked one, prying where you have no business. We shall surely have a game for the ages once you are in chains!” The cold challenge and the massive blast of power arrived at the same time, scarce a heartbeat after I touched the raised arrow on my left bracelet that triggered my
impenetrable wall
, draining every particle of magic in me to feed it.

The collision of Osriel's magic and my own set off a concussion that rumbled the earth. The rock behind the shadowed prince cracked with jagged orange fire, and the horses I planned to scatter galloped wildly into the night. The bay tried to do the same, and I held on with every shred of strength I could muster and let him run.

If I could but stay on his back, and he could avoid breaking a leg or careening off the cliff into the lake, my spellwork would guide us home to Evanide. Once there I'd serve the works of justice, as well as a cold fury that would not be appeased until I saw Osriel of Evanore, Prince of Navronne, in his grave.

S
omewhere in the moorlands west of Lillebras, I slid off the horse. That's what must have happened. The bay cropped the thick grass ten paces away from me, unspooked. I lay flat, and though my body complained of aches and bruises aplenty, a tender cheekbone, and a swollen lip courtesy of Osriel's monstrous bodyguard, it displayed no additional signs of blood or breakage. Wringing out my wet clothes would have made them more comfortable, but with plump clouds hung so low over the distant hills like ripe grapes, there was no use in it.

So I lay there on my back too cold to shiver, too empty to hunger, too weary to think beyond the green, wet wilderness. After using the impenetrable wall, it would be days until I could summon magic. Maybe forever. I needed to get back on the horse.

“Stay with me, beast,” I mumbled. “We need to move.”

When the rain came, I opened my mouth and drank until my belly bulged. Refreshed enough to recall the dread prince who must surely be in pursuit, I stepped on a long-fallen beech and dragged myself onto the horse's back. We rode on until I found myself on the ground again.

What are the proper boundaries between sleep and dream, thought and vision? Though the wan daylight and soggy moorland were banished outside my eyelids, the inside was populated with the events and revelations of the past days. Necropolis. Hirudo. Portal cavern. Scraps of information twined about each other like snakes in a basket.

I made it as far as sitting up, head on knees, as rain drizzled on scalp and shoulders. If I could not ride, I must at least think. The story I sought was inside me. I just had to find it.

The Danae did not make the bronze portals. Foolish that I'd ever thought so, now I'd seen Morgan in the wild where she belonged. Humans—the skillful, stubbornly independent Xancheirans—made them. The Xancheirans, known for their magic, their art, and—what had the
Marshal told me?—
a richness in their land itself that was exceptional, even in beauteous Navronne
. Which led me to the Danae, who tended the earth's health.

My bent had shown me the Xancheirans observing some Danae rite on the solstice. Surely that demonstrated a closeness—friendship grown from generous deeds or the land itself. Mayhap from their mutual reverence for it. And when invaders with curved swords and dangling earrings—Cicerons, I thought, still Wanderers in our own day—damaged the land with their own kind of magics and their war, the Xancheirans stopped them. Yet they didn't slaughter the newcomers. Instead they made peace, a holy peace, blessed by the Danae at the standing stones I had seen in the Marshal's window glass. A city of glory, they called their home, the City of the Everlasting . . . to honor the Danae?

Hoping to enliven my sluggish mind, I massaged my forehead, the origin of the magic that had blazed from me into the sculpted bronze.

What of that bronzework?
The archon will open the
ways
only for a short time
, the anxious sculptor had said. Morgan had spoken of
pathways
, passages that led between human lands and the true lands, as she had guided me to Palinur. If the Xancheirans were bound in peace to both Danae and Cicerons, perhaps the Danae had opened similar pathways for Cicerons to carry the bronze portals, cast and infused with magic by the Xancheirans, to hidden caves or a ravine in the shadow of Caedmon's Wall.

The bronze sculptor had also said the Cicerons would return with the Xancheirans' salvation when the time was right. How could
Cicerons
be the salvation of Xancheira? And why would they have been sent away from the city, while the other Xancheirans were left to face the danger from the south—the Registry? I had assumed the Palinur Cicerons had gone through the portal to find sanctuary, but this history suggested they were supposed to return to
Xancheira
 . . .

I blew a long, slow breath and let the drizzle cool my head.

When the Registry fire surrounded them, the Xancheirans retreated to the standing stones. And died. Or vanished.

The sentinel had implied that Palinur's Cicerons had indeed found sanctuary. She didn't want to tell me where, lest I reveal it to the wrong people. And if I stayed with her too long, or used my magic in the place where we met, I would be trapped—and would have to wait for another to be born with power like mine. Trapped until one was born with the
ability to thin the boundaries between Danae lands and human . . . and set them free.

Like gnats, revelations circled just in front of my eyes. I stilled, lest another movement knock them away again.

I had assumed she meant I was to set the Cicerons from Palinur free. Somehow bring them back to the human world. But she'd said “set
us
free.” What had Bastien told me of her first words to me?
You could be the answer to a long waiting. . . . My kind and your own.
And that had been spoken
before
the Palinur Cicerons had passed the portal, which had been on my last day as Lucian de Remeni. My own kind . . . impossible! Two centuries had passed. But my mind would not stop. . . .

My journeying with Morgan from the estuary to Palinur and back to the lake where I'd met Grey had seemed to encompass but a single day, but more like seven had passed in the world of humans. Two centuries . . . seven to one . . . less than thirty years.

Goddess Mother preserve
! Were they
all
still there, hidden in the place Morgan's Danae couldn't find, the place called Sanctuary? The Palinur Cicerons. The Xancheirans. And the silver-marked Danae, prisoned by a sacrifice of friendship to save the lives of their human friends.

“Morgan!” I bellowed to the earth and sky.

The bay looked up sharply.

“No . . . no . . . don't worry.” Burying shock and agitation, I shifted around where the horse could see me. “Naught to do with you. You, fine horse, are going to save my life. I likely saved yours when that cursed prince threw his magic at us. . . .”

If Morgan was watching, she gave no sign, and if not, how could she hear me? She spoke of a bond between us, but I couldn't feel it. And she had left me so abruptly at the lake, never mentioning when we would meet again or how I might find her. But her future depended on my finding answers. Surely she would come.

I led the horse for a while, until I found a rock tall enough to use to mount him. My legs hadn't spring enough to get me up again. If I could just find a spot out of the rain, find something to put in my belly, sleep a bit, maybe I could muster magic enough to build a fire, lure a rabbit. . . . For now, I just hoped to stay on the horse.

•   •   •

“I
s it not possible to serve duty without leaving thyself a husk, gentle Lucian?”

“Unff,” I said, shrugging. My mouth was fully occupied with smoky fish and its tender green wrappings. The concentration required to avoid choking on bones sapped my reply of any meaning other than thanksgiving
.
Strength and purpose came flooding back with every mouthful. Questions and answers could wait the brief time until Morgan's holy gift was demolished.

She had found me the third—or perhaps fourth—time I fell off the horse, about the time the scent of the sea had lured me into lustful dreams of her floating in Malcolm's cider. She had helped me regain my seat and led us to this place where no chase could follow. I slept until she woke me with fish.

Now I sat cross-legged on a windswept height, feasting, while Morgan squatted between me and a rivulet of clear water that dribbled from a pile of boulders. The sea was but an imagining on the purple-gray horizon.

I tossed bone and head aside with one hand and snatched up the last fish with the other. “Did you hear me calling?”

“Hear? No. Felt thy need, certainly.” Her thumb rolled a pair of dark berries about her palm. They seemed to require all her attention. “But I've other duties, too. And when one is at odds with Tuari Archon, it is well to attend them.”

She glanced up, her smile flashing pale like distant lightning. “Dost thou understand that?”

“Very well, else I'd never have left Palinur without prying more answers from the coroner. And doing my duty has benefited me as much as the alternative this time, I think. But certainly you must teach me how to avoid leaving myself a husk. Honestly, I don't enjoy it.”

Her laughter brightened the hazy sun. Her hair, more red than brown in the afternoon light, was threaded with white campion, and the clean, sweet lines of her body could not but make me ashamed of my mud-soaked garb and unshaven filth. She had begged me to remove my mask; now it was tempting to hide behind it. Instead, I averted my eyes. If I
appreciated
Morgan any more, I would forget the questions that so desperately needed answering. “Tell me of Sanctuary.”

I needed to understand.

“That's more difficult than it seems,” she said, ruefully. “The long-lived carry knowledge of mighty things—the land and seasons, woodlands, rivers, and the sea—and also of small things. I know a tree whose roots touch the river above the estuary; a family of otters makes its home there. I know
how patient is the shellcracker bird whose chicks take half a year to learn how to feed themselves. I know a rocky snag that houses a thousand little creatures who thrive through salt tide or river flow. It is the nature of the long-lived to keep such things in our minds, but when I was a wanderkin, I thought it burdensome. When we two bided in Montesard, 'twas thou who taught me what
duty
meant—not needful tasks commanded or required of thee unwilling, but joyful purpose, no matter difficulty or hardship.”

I wished I could warn that naive young man. He didn't know his family would be burnt alive or that the very men and women who taught him duty were executioners on par with Harrowers.

She twined a stem of campion around her fingers. “Remembering is our duty. Thus it troubles us when we realize something is missing from our memory, especially when it touches great emotion.”

“Like something mentioned in a song.”

She dipped her head, then tossed the wilted campion aside.

“On winter nights we oft sing of a wanderkin, a young one of our own who spends her days exploring and learning of the world as preparation for her duties. Against her elders' warning, she sneaks into a human city, fascinated at the vigor of life there, undaunted by the crowds or filth.”

“Was it you?” I blurted.

Her cheeks . . . indeed her neck and breasts, too, took on a rosy hue. “Nay. But certainly this song made me curious to learn what beauty she found in a city. Rhiain made a friend as could ease the longing for her own life. As did I.”

Now it was my cheeks heated.

“The song can take us from moonrise to moonset, so I'll tell, not sing.” She shifted her position abruptly as if to shake off sentiment. “A cruel woman recognizes Rhiain as one of the long-lived, lures her with nivé, and enthralls her. Books of lore have told the woman how to nourish a wanderkin's spirit just enough to keep her living, and the wicked dame shows off Rhiain in the market for coin, like some do birds or bears. One morn while sitting outside her mistress's house, filling a stone basin with her tears, Rhiain meets a human youth. When he asks what causes such grievous sorrow, she shows him what she is and begs him take a message to her father and mother that she is fading. Instead, the kind youth tries to steal Rhiain away. But he is himself enslaved—beaten, starved, and forced to harsh labors.”

She glanced up from her tale, a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Not
all
of
our songs tell dreadful stories of humankind. This one . . .” Her shoulders rose in helpless good humor.

Though my skin was near bursting to hear of the tale's significance, I returned her smile—happy to see it on a day she seemed so somber. But as the earth's face changes when clouds cross the moon, so did Morgan's revert to melancholy. Her gaze grew distant. . . .

“Rhiain steals her mistress's books of lore and brings them to the youth where he lies chained in terrible suffering. ‘My people know a place of safety for those who've no escape,' she says. ‘I never listened when told of it, as I am but a foolish wanderkin who believed the world's ills could not touch her. Help me discover the way to Sanctuary, and I'll take thee with me, for thou art brave as our heroes of old, and dearer to me than my own kin, who in all these seasons have not ventured the city to find me.'”

Again, Morgan emerged from her tale, face and spirit retaining Rhiain's grief so that I could not shed it either. “As thou hast seen, there is truth in the tales of the long-lived just as in thy magical drawings. It is that truth we hear when we sing Rhiain's Song.”

I touched her hand as if that might ease her sorrow. “And how does her tale end, gentle lady? What do we learn of Sanctuary?”

She shoved my hand away. “Nothing at all. For season upon season we strive to remember. The song says Rhiain and her youth found refuge there and stayed until they were healed of their afflictions. Rhiain renounced her kin, but devoted herself to our work, celebrated amongst us until her passing. The youth, healed from his travails, lived for many years in harmony with our kind, before choosing to return to the human world. Even the books of lore eluded us, as Rhiain and her friend burnt them before finding their refuge.”

I was very confused. “And before her passing, Rhiain didn't tell anyone what Sanctuary was like, where it was, or how she got there?”

“She may well have. But don't you see? We've forgotten everything of Sanctuary, save the mention in this song. And we don't know why.”

I pressed the heel of my hand to gritty eyes, trying to follow the threads. “Rhiain and her friend
left
Sanctuary. They weren't . . . trapped . . . there?”

“Certainly not. It would be no sanctuary were it just another prison.”