Ash and Silver (41 page)

“Bek, check downstairs and see if anyone's at the portal. Juli, how do I get outside the walls without stepping through those doors?” We dared not be seen.

“Out the Bronze Tower guardroom and through the herb garden,” she said. “I'll show you.”

“I'll follow when I've seen what's what,” said Bek, darting for the cellar door.

Juli led me past garden beds and storage casks to a doorway punched through the rubble of the collapsed Bronze Tower. A passage had been rebuilt from the crumbled bits. Restraining her for a moment, I peered through. My senses reported no one ahead of us.

My sister's hand firmly in mine, we sped through the low arches to a dusty chamber lined with brackets and hooks—the Tower guardroom or what was left of it. Cloaks and canvas bags adorned the hooks. Wooden spears stood in the brackets. The residue of old spellwork lay everywhere.

A doorway had been cut through the original curved wall to the outside. A thick new door stood slightly open, its wooden barricades standing against the wall. Juli motioned me through.

Caution bade me leave my sister here while I found out what was so wrong. But even had I known the way, no force of will or reason would allow me to be separated from her. She already held her own dagger, as did I. We squeezed through the narrow opening into the night.

Surprising to find it night. I had assumed only a short time would have passed here in the hour or two we'd been away.

Morgan had told me that crossing the boundary from the human world into the true lands would always match in season and time of day, but that the slow meandering of life in the true lands caused the days to spend so differently and humans to age at a much slower rate than they expected. I wasn't sure I would ever understand that.

The citadel's eerie luminescence had faded, leaving the darkness of its precincts as profound as the wildlands bordering the Gouvron Estuary. Starlight revealed a great lump of stone had crushed half of the Bronze Tower portico—recognizable only from pale columns yet standing.

Anger and bitterness dripped from voices in the distance, like acid piercing holes in my gut.

Juli drew me faultlessly through a labyrinth of fallen cornices and vine-choked gardens. She hesitated for a moment at a wall's dark face, then crept
rightward, halting at a simple garden gate, twisted at its hinges and smelling of rust.

The voices came clearer.

“. . . 'tis a cruelty unworthy of thee, Kyr.” Signé's desperate fury split the night. “What you felt is but a dying pulse of the old magic. We've no power like that anymore.”

“Lies do not become thee, Signé. I am no senseless worm to judge every step and whisper as earthquake. Petra, choose the next, a male this time.” Kyr Archon's rage could have crumbled Evanide itself.

“Mistress! Please! Don't let them . . .” The man's horror would have slashed the night even had he remained silent. But the darkness writhed as his pleading became panicked grunts . . . became moans . . . became a rising agony of screams.

I pressed Juli to the wall, willing her to wait. She acquiesced, and I slipped through the gate and alongside a fallen column until I could get a view.

Ten Danae, their flesh marked in fiery silver, stood in an arc between the top of the causeway and the citadel's gates. Twenty or thirty Xancheirans knelt on the paved terrace before the gates, Signé standing at the center front. At eight-and-twenty she was their eldest. Five slender trees, barren of leaves and lit eerily by the bright light of Danae gards, stood between Danae and humans. No tree had stood there on my first visit.

At first I thought yet another Dané stood in the very center of the saplings like a column of silver light, but he twisted around, the source of the dreadful cries. A young man I'd seen manning the gates on my first visit was being consumed by the argent fire. Feet and legs had vanished. Knees and thighs shattered like an exploding star. And as the light flared around groin and belly and chest, the lower part of the column turned dark and slender like scorched bone, transformed to wood and bark, rooted in the broken paving.

The Xancheirans did not wail or cover their ears, but clenched their fists and fixed their eyes on their friend as if to imprint his pain on their own souls. Nor did I betray the youth's agony by covering my own ears. This was retribution—not for the workings of old magic, but for mine.

A last cry, then chest and lungs were gone. Only his rictus of horror remained—and his spread arms, raised to keep them from the blazing light. When the light died, a sixth sapling stood with the others. Mother's mercy . . .

“Now again, Signé. Which one of thy people hast done this magic? And where is Siever?”

“You can feel my truth, Kyr. None of my people have done magic this day. And Lord Siever's long dying is ended.”

The archon waved at one of his kinsmen. “Prepare another rooting, Petra. This time a female.”

“Kyr, please no!” Signé cried.

Schemes to interrupt the dreadful standoff bloomed in me like deadly nightshade. A frontal attack? Or I could lure the Danae on a chase to the Sanctuary pool. More than breathing, I needed to feel Kyr Archon's heart stop beating.

A touch on my back fired my reflexes. No time could have elapsed before I pinned the scrawny sneaker to the ground, knees on his arms and dagger at his throat.

“It's Bek,” he croaked in a harsh whisper. “Bastien's friend.”

His name alone would not have saved him, not in the dark where I couldn't see him, at a time when rage threatened reason. As it was, I jerked my hands away and shifted back so he could scramble away from me.

“They're waiting at the portal,” he whispered.

The Cicerons. In the cellars, not the rooted ground beneath the paving. But how could I leave? A woman's shrill cries carved terror into my bones.

“Why do they allow this?” I spat.

“Those prisoned in the trees live,” said Bek softly. “If they kill Kyr and his kin, who will
keep
them living? Who else will set them free?”

“Every one of my city's children kneels before thee, Kyr.” Signé's words were built of the crumbled stone and ruined gardens, of strength and caring, of endurance and despair. “You can take us all, but it will not soothe thee. It is thine own broken power torments thee, not ours. When all of us have been devoured by this mockery of life and still the land does not yield to thee, how will you explain it? Let us work together to find an answer. . . .”

As if she knew I lurked close by, Signé had given me her answer. If all free Xancheirans were kneeling in the courtyard, my magic might prove they were not the sinners.

Bek and I slunk backward through the gate. I hated it. Sobs racked Juli, entirely silent. Gathering her close, I whispered in her ear, “We go. Now.”

As a boy's yelling scoured the night, defiance dissolving into torment, Bek, Juli, and I pelted through ruined gardens.

The Bronze Tower stood against the brittle stars like a broken tooth. I
held out a hand to slow my companions as we neared it. At the moment the tower doorway took shape from the night, a flare of silver blocked the way.

I shoved Juli and Bek behind me and readied a blast of fire from my bracelet.

“Hold, Remeni-son!” The quiet urgency stayed my hand, defining a dark shape behind the silver light. An eagle of wrought silver surrounded an eye colored deep as a spruce forest. Safia.

“Savages!” I snarled, low. “I should kill you all.”

“No kind greeting for the one who guided you here,” she said.

“With lies and childish mystery. You toyed with me when you could have told me the way. You could have told me about their desperate straits . . . and yours. You never mentioned this barbaric practice. Twenty thousand souls, and now these children . . .”

“Thou wert weak and unskilled,” she said fiercely. “Through the passing season, I've felt the changes in thy power, though even yet thy human blundering leads Kyr to wreak his despair upon us all. Kill us and the prisoners die. Instead, use thy power to set them free!”

“Tell me how.”

“Did I not say thy magic dissolves the boundaries? Must I etch the meaning on thy flesh?” Her green glare seared me.

“My power . . . you mean my magic can undo the Severing? But I've neither the knowledge nor the means.” I'd only guessed about my grandsire's chest—and it lay in Palinur.

“No! To repair the Dark Divide is too much a risk.” She ripped up a length of bloated, rotting vine and held it out to me. “Rejoin the lands while my kind yet walk this land and our blight will infest the true lands. The greater world will die as this one has. Take the prisoners from the trees, Remeni-son. Transport them across the Dark Divide, seal the crossings, and never look back.”

“But how—? You're saying magic
alone
will release the Xancheirans from the trees.”

“What is the shell of trees but another boundary? Lay thy magic upon each one and it shall release its prisoner, the most of them healthier than when we took them.”

“But how in the shades of Idrium can I touch twenty thousand trees without one of you planting an arrow in my back or slaughtering any Xancheiran who yet lives?” Each of twenty thousand would take days.

“Thou'rt the sorcerer. Learn what's needed. But quickly.” Her hand was
an iron manacle on mine. “Give me thy promise, Lucian. Free Benedik first. Get him to safety before all others, and when the time comes, I'll keep my kin away.”

More soul-searing cries dimmed the stars.

I wrenched my hand from her grip and locked hers in my own. “Stop Kyr from this horror or I'll stick a knife in him in the hour the Xancheirans walk free.”

“Pah!” she said, wrenching her arms from my grasp with a strength entirely unlikely for her sylph-like form. “He'll not take all of them tonight. But do not delay. And though simple knives cannot end us, thou canst be well satisfied; once the trees are gone, we shall weaken and die.”

“You, too?”

“Prove thy quality, Remeni-son.” She vanished in a flare of silver.

As I started for the door, Juli stepped in front of me. “Luka, we can't leave Signé to this. . . .”

“We've no choice.”

“But—”

“Our responsibility waits in the cellar.”

Of course she was angry. So was I. As the three of us raced through the citadel, the earth trembled. Stones cascaded from the rubble walls of the Bronze Tower, rattling on the guardroom floor, and the makeshift arches of the passage creaked as we sped through on our way to the cellar.

The Cicerons were petrified by the rumbling earth. With my head full of Safia's warnings, Signé's desperation, human trees, and the magnitude of the tasks yet waiting, it was immensely difficult to concentrate on the crossing. Had it not been for Bek and Juli getting the people calm and in order, I could never have managed it. Even so, as I toppled into the void with Juli at my back and some hundred people strung out behind her, my binding thread slipped. Terror rippled through the darkness. Children.

Hold, hold, hold,
I cried with every particle of my senses. Pouring magic into the tether, I stretched invisible arms from Juli all the way back to the surgeon. If only I'd planted splinters of silver in each person, linked with spells to hold us together, this would work better. . . .

H
ead and shoulder crashed into a stone wall. The blow caused my belly to erupt, and I vomited so violently, it seemed I must be turned inside out.

The world bulged and retracted beneath me. I crawled toward a jouncing blur, grasped a gunwale, and heaved again.
Always puke over the side.

As the shivering of depletion racked my bones, I clung to an imagining that I could do what was necessary. If I could just recall what that was. Or what had brought me to this disgusting state.

Concern was voiced in the language of squirrels. When frigid water splattered my face, the shock made me heave again. Only as stringy bile dribbled on my chin did I realize I was puking
into
a boat, not out of it. Fix would drown me. Or at least make me swab it out.

“Will something to drink help?” The low voice came from a short distance away.

“Yes. And he needs food.”

I clamped my mouth shut and swallowed hard. Repeatedly.

“Truly?” The man seemed unperturbed. “Seems unlikely he could hold on to it. Mayhap, there's more food in the boats.”

I squinted into a soft ivory light. Dark, lank hair framed deep-set eyes of charcoal. Haunted eyes. Bek. And with his name, the light took on its proper meaning. As did the slop of waves and muffled whimpers from the dark. The horror at Xancheira's gates shrilled in my ears and lurked behind my eyelids.

“How could you let them do it?” Juli stood over me, too, her fingers glowing, her small face a storm front. “What use is all this soldiering nonsense if you can't do something about a few naked, murdering creatures?”

“I'm just a man. D-danae are not.” Teeth clattering like hailstones on a roof, I rolled up to sitting. “It profits nothing for us to end up trees. Signé knew that. D-did everyone make it across?”

“All safe—but scared,” said Bek. “Almost lost three wee ones.”

“Goddess Mother.” I should have drawn on Fix's rubies. I should have figured out a way to transfer a holding spell through the line of people. I could have used—

“Splinters!” The solution exploded in my mind like a new sun. Not for the task just done, but for the one to come.

“What?” Juli and Bek chorused.

“Silver splinters! You can transfer magic through linked splinters, not just a particular spell, but raw power, too. Insert a splinter in the bark, a notch, a woodpecker hole. Anyone can do it . . . if there's anyone left.” I scrambled, still shaking, to my feet. “Juli, I can open the trees.”

“Woodpecker holes? Splinters? Luka, what have you done to yourself?” Juli patted my shoulder as if I were one of the children.

“I know how to set Signé's people free,” I said. “Just have to eat. Sleep a bit. It will take everything I have.” And everything Fix had loaned me. All temptation to draw on the rubies to cure my depletion vanished.

Fumbling at my sodden sleeve, I confirmed that the ruby bracelet was still in place. Baskets of silver splinters sat in the armory. Once the business of transporting a hundred Cicerons wasn't pressing, it wouldn't take long to link them. Then I'd need a plan to get the freed Xancheirans back to the greater world before they starved.

“Are the b-boats back? Have you heard bells? The time?”

“No bells,” said Bek. “All's quiet outside. Still fogged in.”

“I'll look,” I said. “Keep your light shielded,
serena
. And pass the word to the people that we'll be leaving soon . . .”

“. . . and to be silent, and they can have whatever food or drink they find on these boats. You mustn't get in the water again, Luka. You've no magic left. Someone else should go.”

“I can swim without magic.” I threw off my damp jaque and boots again. “None of you must be seen, and we mustn't open the doors.” The danger was greater this time; someone could have been alerted.

Conall and I had agreed that we'd proceed only with contact, not signals on the second pass. Lights, enchantments, noises . . . anything we could do might be detected. Praying the knight and his rowers lay close in the fog, I dropped into the water and soon dragged my protesting body onto the quay.

The night bells did not ring the quarter hours as in the day, but myriad hours on the seaward wall assured me we were yet in the deeps of night.
Fix's fog yet drifted about the silent fortress. A light wind swirled the veils and pockets, making the Defender's task more difficult.

Senses alert, I scuttered along the quay in the direction that seemed right. No steps followed. Fix's door was exactly where it should be.

“Ssssshhh.” A blade touched my neck and another pricked my back, nudging me forward. My hands flew up in surrender. Once the door closed behind us, the eye-searing magelight was not wholly unexpected.

“Greenshank!” Voices in front and behind spoke it together and with great relief.

The blades were withdrawn. The magelight dimmed. My muscles gratefully unclenched.

“He looks terrible,” said Conall, the man in front of me.

“Seeing you here imp-proves matters.”

Fire popped to life in Fix's brazier. Without invitation I dropped to my knees in front of it. The cold damp was making my back seize. Every shudder of depletion felt very like a new strike of the Order lash.

“It might be the only improvement,” said the man beside the door, breathing hard. “Thou wert stealthy on thy approach?” The Xancheiran shoved a short sword into a sheath hung by the door.

“I was careful. It's g-good to see you up, Lord Siever.”

“Prowlers patrol the docks,” said Conall, throwing a blessedly dry cloak over my shoulders. “Dunlin was clever enough to swim in from outside the fog and bring back word. Don't know if someone spied the boats leaving or what. Fix's guest here”—he indicated Siever—“sent them on a merry chase. He does an astonishing imitation of the boatmaster.”

“Nawt a man's ass is out in a fog like this'n,” drawled Siever. The wind-rasp in his voice was perfect. And a twirl of his hand shifted the firelight so that I'd vow old Boatmaster Fix stood there instead of the tall, lordly Siever. It was not so much illusion as a reordering of light, like reflections in rippling water. Even better, it lacked the definitive sensations of illusion.

“More lightwork,” I said, breathing in the glory of the magic.

Siever sagged onto one of Fix's stools. “Takes far too much out of me, though.”

“And Fix?”

“Well hidden. But we can't bring in the boats while someone's watching,” said Conall, crouching at my side. “And it's near midnight, which gives us no slack time. Fix has all he can manage with the fog.”

“So we need another diversion.” I blew a long exhale. “If you'll see to it,
Conall, I'll take your place in the boat. I'm drained to the nubbins, but I'll need Fix's rubies later. And you'll do better covering if we're late back, as I can't modify the rowers' memories.”

“Give me a quarter of an hour,” said Conall, donning his cloak. “When you see fire on the mount, stutter the fog warning—three and one—and Heron will bring up the boats.”

I appreciated that Conall didn't argue. And the sack of cheese and flask of ale they'd left me on the table was the gods' own benefice. The bells rang midnight. I cracked open the door and kept an eye on Idolon Mount while I ate and drank—likely far more than my share.

“Lord . . .” Siever had dozed off. Gods, I'd questions needed answering before I left.

Serena Fortuna provided. Wind swirled the flames in the brazier. Siever started, then wrapped his arms about himself and shook his head as if to clear it.

“I can open the trees,” I blurted.

Siever's drooping head jerked up. “By the Goddess . . .”

“But Safia said we dared not repair the Severing while she and her fellows walked the land, lest they infect the true lands . . . and all this world . . . with Xancheira's sickness. She said we should take out your people, then seal off the portals and leave the Danae there to die.”

“'Tis a dread ending for them.” He shuddered. “Like to burning from the inside out. But certain, they no longer fulfill whatever purpose the Mother ordained. Never have humans lived in so close a friendship with the divine as we did in Xancheira. We presumed too much on that.”

“I can't believe the only answer is to abandon them and leave the world broken. Is it true you might know how to undo the Severing?”

“In theory only.” He poured himself a mug of ale and returned to the stool, rubbing his head tiredly. “My father created the Severing enchantments. He sickened early on. As he died, he repeated the undoing steps to me over and over. But I was very young, inexperienced, and angry, and I'd already lost my greater magic.”

No wonder Siever refused to die.

“But you know how.”

He glared in annoyance at his bony, tremulous fingers. “The tools to aid in the undoing were sent with the Wanderers to be hidden. Alas, none of these that dwelt with us have a notion what became of them. With the tools, I might attempt it, though there's no assurance I'll regain the power
necessary. Or live, to be perfectly frank. Thy knightly friend had to prop me up to guard the door.”

“My grandsire was a historian,” I said, grasping at hope. “He hunted Xancheiran artifacts for years, but only one remnant of your city did he ever find. Is it possible—?” I hated to risk the asking. “How would I recognize your father's tools?”

Siever lifted his head, his glance sharp. “He packed them in a small chest of painted wood alongside other objects that could tell Xancheira's story. Even if rescue never came, he'd not have us entirely forgotten.”

My excitement could scarce be contained. “Objects like a wood spindle and an embroidered wedding
stola
that reveals how dual bents can reinvigorate a magical bloodline?”

“Merciful Goddess!” Siever sprang to his feet just as a burst of yellow flame on Idolon Mount cut through the fog.

For a moment I wasn't sure which had astounded him more.

“The
stola
and the spindle. By stone and sea, Remeni, the two together . . .
they
are the key!”

•   •   •

C
onall's fire on the mount sufficed to draw off anyone who might have interfered with our loading the boats and setting out for the bay crossing. Whether it was Fix's cheese and ale or pure elation, I was able to take Conall's stern-seat oars
and
summon magic for navigating Fix's fog.

Despite the loaded boats, the row was not difficult, as the night was calm and the tide with us. Still, the normal swells had Juli and more than half the passengers sick. My sister curled up around her misery, her head on my foot.

Feeling more inclined to believe in divine interference than I had for years, I prayed fervently that Conall would come to no harm from his showy assistance and that Siever would thrive. We'd the means at hand to free the Xancheiran prisoners and reverse the breaking of the world.

Once I'd retrieved the
stola
from Bastien and got it to Siever, I'd acquire the silver splinters from the armory and take them to Signé. She needed time to get them distributed and for Siever to regain his strength. I couldn't assume I'd have power enough to help him work the magic.

Only one obstacle remained. We'd need to undo the Severing soon after opening the trees, for I could see no other way to feed so many or get them back to the greater world. Two hundred had near wrecked me. Twenty thousand would kill me a hundred times over. Which meant, if Safia spoke true, we'd have to find some way to ensure that Kyr and the silver Danae
were not
walking the land
when Siever worked his magic. I hated the only solutions that came to mind.

But surely at sometime soon, we'd have a chance to set Xancheira free. The city would be a part of the living world again. Signé, her brother, and their people could take up their lives in the northland and, perhaps together with the Order, could take on the corrupt Registry—and Damon, if need be. For the first time, I dared imagine that such a healing might have some effect on Navronne's crippling winter.

Visions of grandeur, Greenshank! Damon likely started with such imaginings.

Yet the Danae were real; the void was real; and the decay of Xancheira and its people were real. Was it so mad to think such breakage as the Severing had caused some ill effect on the greater world, as well?

But, of course, all hope could end quickly. Damon and his gnarled plot awaited me at Cavillor.

As we entered the smoother water of the estuary, one of the Ciceron men who'd had some experience on the water agreed to take my oar. Grateful for the rest and the few moments peace, I scrunched down beside Juli, hauling her upright and tugging her damp cloak around her.

“Honestly, it helps to sit up and take deep, slow breaths,” I said. “We're almost to the mainland and we've thinking to do. I understand you already know Coroner Bastien. He'll protect you as you head for Palinur. But you need to decide where you want to go after that.”

“Will I ever see you again, Luka?” She leaned into my side, her spark considerably damped.

I would not lie to her. “Ah,
serena
, likely not. Beyond all this with Xancheira and the Danae, I'm involved in a game of power I don't entirely understand. It's all mixed up with the Registry and the princes' war and those awful things that happened in the months before I sent you away. If I lose, I'll be dead.” Or worse.

“And if you win? Because I will never doubt you.”

The flare of determination brought me a smile. Honesty did not require telling her how unlikely winning was when I didn't even know what winning meant. But, much as I wanted to console her, I had to speak what yet held my mind.