Flesh and Spirit (32 page)

“The ever-sensible Gram has not told you the connection between all these things?”

“It makes no difference. I'll not dance to their music no matter what.” I shook my head. “And they're not likely to tell me any more now, are they? Just more of my mind for my sister to obliterate lest I spew my guts to the hierarch and betray you all.”

We strolled through the hedge maze, a flock of sparrows twittering as they pecked at the worms the week's rains had washed onto the path. Plainsong wafted faintly from the church, the pure melody twining itself around my anger, soothing my aching head.

“You must confess you are an enigma. What are they to think of you—a pureblood who throws away his position…his magic…to chop vegetables in a monastery? A man who could vie for power with princes, yet who has not bothered to learn to read?”

“Tell me of
your
vocation, Gildas,” I snapped. “Was it your mother's prayers brought you here?
My
mother used predictions of my tormented demise to amuse her friends.”

“You don't want to hear of my mother. She forbade us to eat berries on the last day of the week, for all know that the seeds would sprout vines in our bellies to grow out our ears if swallowed on Samele's day. My mother believed that if she left a trail of blood between her door and the town well, a gatzé would come and grant her three wishes. Every child in Pontia would follow her to the well each day, taunting, asking what was her wish. She died with her veins flat from bleeding them. She—Well, you are not the only man with difficult family.” He barked a laugh.

I stopped in midstride. Harsh, lonely…of a sudden Gildas reminded me of a Pyrrhan exile I'd once met. Pyrrhans believed the world beyond their land's borders existed only in their imaginations, and thus every day spent outside Pyrrha felt askew—outside of time, in the wrong place. A blessed grace that Gildas had found a place he valued so deeply as Gillarine. “Ah, fires of heaven, Gildas…I'm sorry.”

Flushed from chin to the crown of his shaven head, he averted his face and nudged me forward again. “You'd no way to know, unless thought reading is a Cartamandua bent.”

“I've always imagined you at the very least some noble's younger son, done out of inheritance by an elder brother or sister and sent off here unwilling. Perhaps even our rumored Pretender.”

His smile tightened. “Not in the remotest instance. My family had nothing. Certainly nothing I wanted. They were not…scholarly…and my mind hungered for more stimulation than stitching leather to fit other men's feet. Pride of intellect led me astray for many years—until I began to look beyond the material world for answers. Humility is a difficult lesson.”

No one had ever shared such a clean and honest piece of himself with me, especially on so private a matter. In my first days at the abbey he had offered me his friendship, and caution had made me refuse him. Too late now. I regretted that as much as any consequence of this wretched day. “At least you've a mind for lessons. Some skulls are too thick.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Come now, we have no time to recount our mournful pasts. You need to decide what to do next. Right now they're debating whether to send you to Palinur as a novice of Saint Ophir, as Abbot Luviar wishes, or as a recaptured
recondeur
in the high priestess's custody.” He cocked his head in inquiry. “Truly you have a right to know why the abbot wants to keep you on his leash. Shall I tell you?”

“Do as you like.”

“Gram could recite it better, I suppose, with his tallyman's mind. But here's what I know…Twenty years ago, Brother Victor and Brother Luviar, scholars and visionaries of extraordinary perceptions, came to believe that certain changes they saw in the world were serious enough that they needed to prepare. Their studies and calculations intimated that some twenty-five or thirty years might pass from the depth of crisis until men and women were ready to hear again of books and plows. They recruited a few people to help them build the lighthouse to survive the worst. Being of middle years themselves, they decided they needed a younger man to stand with the lighthouse, a Scholar who knew both the content of the books and how to use the tools they had chosen to preserve. Even in so short a span, much knowledge could be lost. If those who know how to warp a loom are dead, who will prevent others from burning the loom to stay warm?”

I said nothing. I preferred to forget these people and their plotting. They needed no vagabond jackleg to help them.

My lack of response did not deter Gildas. “And what if we were to lose all those who can read? City dwellers are most susceptible to plague. To ravagers. If the cities die, if learning dies, we are sent back to the land, to nights in the wild forest with spirits we can no longer tame with words, to awe of these Gehoum—the Powers who make the sky grow light or dark, whose righteous wrath is fire and storm…” His words trailed off.

An icy breath traced my spine, very like the night Sila Diaglou plunged her stake into a bleeding Boreas. I shuddered. “If I didn't know better, I'd say
you
were the diviner in this cabal,” I said.

He laughed away the mystical fog that had settled over him like the haze cloaking the river in the night. “I've no magic. I only read the sayings of diviners and heed them.” He waved for me to keep walking as he talked. “Luviar and Brother Victor chose one of their finest and most versatile students at Gillarine's school to be their Scholar, a young warlord of Evanore.”

“Not Stearc!” I said, not believing it even as I said it.

Gildas nodded, tucked his hands up his sleeves, and rounded a corner between the straggling yews. “Stearc applied himself to read every volume as they stored it away and to learn the working of every tool. But when blight hit the vineyards, and King Eodward had still not named a successor, Luviar and Victor began to believe that the dark time could last longer and lie deeper than they'd thought. The lack of a strong and righteous king makes the coming decline far more severe, you see. Stearc agreed that they needed to prepare someone younger to become the Scholar.”

I halted again and stared at his hairless skull and well-hewn face, at the clear, unmarked skin, at the brown eyes never lacking in irony, tucked under the line of his dark brow. “You.”

No wonder he forever smelled of sheep or smithing or yeast and barley. No wonder he was forever reading. He was the one chosen to survive and remember and, when the time was right, teach. The keeper of the lighthouse. The memory of a bed crammed up against stacked barrels aroused a dreadful understanding.

“Great holy Iero, they're going to shut you in there, aren't they? Seal you in the lighthouse. So you'll survive the worst. Alone…for years…alone…”

“That was the original intent. Don't look so horrified! I thrive on solitude and silence. It is the only peace we're given in this world. And consider, I would have infinite occupation and no interruptions. However, a few months ago, we received new information that threw our whole plan into doubt.”

He moved on. I followed, unable to ignore the story. A rabbit sat chewing in the middle of an intersecting path, scampering away only when we were close enough to step on it.

“Stearc brought your sister into the cabal. He knew and respected her from other dealings with the Sinduri. She worked a grand divination, a whole day of incantations, burning herbs, and magical water basins, a marvel such as those of us raised outside pureblood halls had never seen before. And what she augured confounded the cabal. Two hundred and ten years until the dawn. A very long night indeed. Too much solitude, even for me! Somewhere along the way, Stearc had come by the private journal of Eodward's tutor—a Moriangi monk named Picus, sent by Caedmon to accompany and educate his son in his exile. And so, thoughts turned to the Danae.”

Lost in imagining the dreadful destiny they had planned for Gildas, I failed to grasp the connection. “I don't understand.”

As joyful evensong floated from the church, Gildas laughed again, not so merrily this time. “It seems we are both condemned to a life we would not choose. Instead of granting me a few decades of peace, solitude, and study, they wish me to go live with beings who despise humans, disdain scholarship, and who fight among themselves over which tree belongs to whom. If it can be arranged, I am to live in Aeginea.”

“Live with the Danae? Seven years for one…thirty years. So you would be…what?”

“According to this fey reasoning, when the madness fades and men realize they need what I can teach, I shall be but nine years past my fiftieth birthday—no older than Abbot Luviar, a hale and vigorous man. And perhaps not even so advanced as that in terms of health and strength, for once back here Eodward remained a man in his prime until well into middle age.”

“Deunor's fire!”

And as I contemplated this mad scheme, the most personal of Gillarine's recent mysteries unraveled as well. No more wondering why the abbot had allowed an unsavory vagabond to join his holy brotherhood. He must have thought my grandfather's book a gift from Iero himself. Had I not told him that I had successfully made use of the book, he would likely have kept only the book and sent me away. And I would still be free. After twelve years evading the prison of my birth, my lies had caught me up at last.

“Ah.” Gildas halted in midstride and pointed down the path. “It appears as if the decision has been made.”

Thalassa's two liveried guards hurried toward us. I imagined shackles tightening about my wrists. My gorge rose.

“Strike me,” said Gildas, grasping my shoulders and spinning me about to confront him. Fiery excitement bloomed in his face.

“What?”

“Strike me and run. Through the cloisters to the bridge behind the infirmary. Wait at the dolmen in the grain fields south of the river. I'll tell them a shortcut—misdirect them. As soon as I can, I'll bring food and coin, whatever you need. But wait for me. Promise.” He grinned and let his grip slide down my arms, shaking me out of my astonishment. “The cabal will find a road that is not built on the backs of dead men.”

“Ah, Brother, you must not—”

“Strike! Go!”

A hopeless scheme. But life's breath to one suffocating.

I drove my fist into his smiling face. His smooth skin broke and the fine bones shifted as I summoned the pent fury of the day to fuel the blow. My aim was not merely to play the necessary part, but to keep him blameless, for his gift was not only the strike, but the suspicion that must inevitably surround it. I knew well which injury could harm him more. Make one worse, and the other might be eased. They'd blame his misdirection on his muddled head.

“Iero's grace, Brother,” I said, as he crumpled into the yew hedge. And then I ran.

“I
should just go,” I said, as I blotted stray water droplets from my neck.

A storm had blown in soon after I reached the ancient stones of the dolmen, and the broad lintel stone, though something like a roof, did little to shield a man from wind-driven rain. The worst of the storm had passed somewhere between the ringing of Compline and the day's end bell, but by the time Gildas at last popped out of the fog, I was thoroughly soaked and incomparably edgy. I had waited more than four hours, telling myself every moment that I was a madman to do so.

“No! You must not stir from here,” said Gildas softly, crouched close enough I could make out his face. Voices carried in the fog. “Your sister insists that you'll run fast and far. They're scouring the countryside, the river, and the woodland tracks. They've alerted the watch in Elanus. They'll never imagine you've remained so near the abbey and in a barley field to boot. Even the purebloods—You're one of them, Valen. Surely you've spells to conceal your path, spells to confuse them.”

“I'm not at all good at spellcasting,” I said. “
Obscuré
spells are unreliable at best, and I've never made one work. I cannot just sit here.”

“Be patient. They'll soon tire of useless searching in the dark. And the moment they decide to wait for dawn, you're free of them.”

Gildas's eyes flashed in his pale face, blotched and swollen from encountering my fist. Though breathless from his hurried journey, his voice was tight with excitement. I had been on the run too often for excitement, and I was much too close to the abbey to feel free.

“I'm sorry I had to come here with so little. But I didn't want you to wait any longer without word. I hadn't counted on you putting me in the infirmary!”

“Yet you've brought me Iero's own gift.” Upon his arrival, my wet, battered, and bedraggled friend had shoved a fat wineskin into my hands. “And I do thank you for it and for this chance, but I daren't wait longer.”

“You need your secular clothes; they'll be watching for the cowl. And if you're going to avoid towns until you're well away, you need food. Give me another hour.”

I turned his head so I could see his swollen jaw. “Holy Mother, I
am
sorry for this. You oughtn't be trotting around with a bruised head. You'll get dizzy and fall in the river. And you
must
not be caught helping me. Do you even understand what they'll do to you?” He'd be god-blessed to see daylight ever again.

His teeth flashed in the rainy darkness. “Your sister's purebloods questioned me before Compline and now think I'm asleep. I can get into the dorter and the kitchen without anyone the wiser. But they'll certainly be back to question me, so I'll send one of the boys with your things. The abbey will be in such an uproar, they'll be able to slip in and out easier than any of us. And they admire you so.”

“No!” I said, sharper than I intended. “Not the boys. Of course they'd do anything you ask them. But no, please. I'd rather do without.”

I had no reason to believe Jullian or Gerard would still “admire” me in any way, assuming they ever had. Even so, I refused to put them in jeopardy. At least Gildas was a man and had some idea of the world and its horrors, but those boys…they would die in prison.

“They're very careful and I'm sure they'd not betray you, but if you prefer, I'll come myself during Matins. Promise you'll not leave before that. I'm quite recovered.” His hands squeezed my shoulders, solid and reassuring. “You saved me from Sila Diaglou's whip, Valen. Did you think I'd forget?”

I wrestled with fear and need and the desire to be gone. I could likely survive the next few days with no money, no food, no secular clothes. But of course I had a far more urgent lack. Four days gone since my incomplete doulon. Saints and angels, how I hated this. “Brother, if you can…I've left a packet hidden in the garden all these months, a few things I'd not like to abandon. A knife. Some extra medicine for my leg.”

One look inside the bundle and he would know. By sight or scent, nivat was unmistakable. If Gildas had risked so much to get me this far, then perhaps he could even forgive a bit of perversion.

“I'll bring whatever you like.” After I described how to find my bundle, he gripped my shoulders. “An hour. You are in the god's hand, Valen.”

“And you, good friend,” I said, as he sped through the stubbled field, vanishing almost before I could blink. “Be very careful.”

You're a fool to wait, Valen. Better to be caught running than squatting like a toad.
It was the same argument I'd had with myself all evening. But for twelve years, doing the unexpected had kept me free. Gildas would do as I asked. A fascination had captured him since the moment he'd learned I was pureblood, driving him to help beyond reasoned friendship. If we were successful, perhaps he'd have a chance to tell me why.

Pulling up my hood, I settled back against the cold stone and took a long pull at the wineskin. Though I expected ale, the essence of grape and oak warmed my gullet.
Oh, friend Gildas, blessed be your name. And mighty Erdru, holy lord of grape and harvest, how could you have so cruelly abandoned your worshipers?
I took a second drink, feeling the wine scald the hollows in my belly. With every swallow, I named Gildas holy.

I ought to sleep. The coming days would be long and difficult, and sleeping bodies were harder to locate with magic. But the events of the past weeks roiled in my head like cream in a churn, and strangeness hung about me like a fever. Through the hours of waiting, I had imagined I was hearing things through the drumming rain…sounds like sighs and breathing, like worms gnawing their way through dead flesh, like heartbeats and green shoots struggling to break through the mud and rock. I kept my hands clasped tightly in my lap, remembering the earth breathing under my hand as I searched out the route to Elanus. If I laid my palms down tonight, I felt the eerie certainty that I'd detect a heartbeat.

Holy ground.
Of course, the world was infused with divine mystery. Everyone felt such things on occasion—saw faces in the clouds, experienced a day in the midst of winter when it felt as if spring had leaked through the boundaries of seasons, felt prickles when walking through a darkening wood. But I had never thought myself closer to such mystery than the next man. Signs and portents had never shaken me, never driven me to any action beyond kissing the nearest aingerou or pouring a libation for the appropriate deity. But here in this valley…in the cloisters, on the road, in the hills. What was happening to me?

Likely what I felt tonight was nothing save these ancient rocks. Simple and stark, dolmens were scattered in the open country throughout Ardra. No one knew what purposes they had served—burials, ceremonies, boundaries, markers. Yet anyone with even a touch of magical sensibility would recognize the power that lingered about them.

And I had seen a Dané. Only now as the rain spattered on the stone and showered softly on the barley could I recapture the wonder of it. They lived…beings that could dissolve into earth or water or tree. Beings that could hear the music of the stars and weave life into the fields with their dancing. Knowing the legends were true…the world could never look the same to me.

A breath of wind swirled the mist, bearing the powerful sweet scent of rotting grain. I pulled my hood lower, huddled the wineskin closer, and drank again, closing my eyes. I didn't want to see what beings might live in a place so ancient. I didn't want to hear the creaking as the stones shifted with the breathing of the earth. I shuddered. What had Gildas said?
If the cities die, if learning dies, we are sent back to the land, to nights in the wild forest with spirits we can no longer tame with words, to awe of these Gehoum…

“Brother Valen?”

The soft voice sent me to my feet with my stomach in my throat. Giddy with the wine and foolish musings, I imagined all sorts of things before I associated the voice with the human shape standing near a mound of musty grain stalks ten paces away. “Mistress Elene?”

“Yes.”

I pressed my back to the stone, peering into the darkness, trying to glimpse other movement. “Have they sent you to drag me back? I warn you I won't go other than feet before, and I don't think you're capable of overpowering me on your own. Or perhaps you've brought comrades?”

“I'm quite alone.” She stepped under the lintel rock, water cascading from her cloak. Her wet hair curled about her face. “I spied on you and Brother Gildas in the maze and followed you out here, determined to bring you back. When you stopped so close, I believed you were having second thoughts. So, like a moonstruck chit, I've hidden behind that pile of sour barley all this time debating whether to speak with you or just to pray you would go back on your own.”

I did not mistake her reference to “moonstruck chit” for any more than description. Nor did I tease her about it. Her face, so pale in the night, was tied into much too sober a knot.

I sank to the ground again, leaning against one upright stone. My feet and my back reminded me of two exhausting days, a sleepless night, and a butchered pig. “I'm always glad for company, mistress. But I can't believe your father would approve.” Certainly not after Thalassa's jibes.

“He won't.” She matched my position against the other upright. “My father would prefer having a son and flies into a rage when I show any independence of mind. Even when he can't find reason to refuse a request, he seeks a way to make his acquiescence unpleasant. If I'm to be chastised anyway, I might as well do as I please now and then.”

“Thus your cheerful life as Corin the Squire.”

“He calls me Corin even when we're alone.”

This confession was couched in such rueful exasperation that I laughed in sympathy and tossed her the wineskin. “So we have both cursed our families with unfulfilled expectations. At least you bear no fault for your father's disappointment, as I'm sure a scholarly man such as Stearc will recognize eventually. My family has no such consolation. I was a dreadful, obstreperous child, who set out from the crèche to turn their well-ordered household bottom side up and who maliciously tormented every unfortunate who stepped within my view. My sister's reports of that are perfectly true.”

Elene took a single swallow of wine and slowly replaced the plug. Earning my eternal gratitude, she tossed it back to me. “I think your sister does not know you as you are now.”

I took a very long swallow. Perhaps the wine would blunt the whispering seduction of the night. The mist curled around my cheeks and tickled my ears like a woman's tongue. The earth pulsed beneath my legs and backside. The richness of Elene's voice drew soft fingers up my thighs. To keep talking was an effort.

“Nor do you know me, good Corin. If you're feeling guilty for leading me into that little mess this afternoon, don't. I am quite good at embroiling myself in messes on my own.” I shifted position, moving close enough to offer the wineskin again.

She shook her head and leaned forward, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped firmly in front of her legs. I could feel her breath on my face. I could smell the barley on her. The layers of damp leather. The woman underneath. Foolish to allow such distraction…

“If I'm to feel guilty, then I'd rather more fault than an accidental meeting to justify it.” Her voice played like music in the night. “I came here to ask you—No, to plead with you. The cabal needs you, Brother Valen. I'm surprised at Brother Gildas helping you escape. I never judged him a man to care about anyone's personal safety. He is quite single-minded. But he is a fool if he thinks the lighthouse cabal can succeed without your assistance. Your sister has tried everything to glean the information we need from your grandfather with no result. And since the day the gods brought you to Gillarine, each of us has tried to unravel the book of maps and got no farther than a bare cliff and a crossroads cairn.”

“And how do you propose I assist you? Do you understand the somewhat limited prospects for a recaptured
recondeur
? Until the day I die I'll not be allowed to piss without three guards watching me. You're all mad anyway.” Her choice of conversational topic cooled my rising fever.

“The life of a pureblood…I'd always thought it holy. Your people live hidden, so honored, valued, protected, elevated beyond all of us who must struggle with everyday life, as if you spend half your days in heaven, returning only long enough to produce wonders. I thought a
recondeur
must be soul-dead to leave such a noble gift as sorcery behind. Yet I cannot believe that of you.”

How could I explain that the favor of kings and a life of luxury, ever shielded from want and war, was not worth the price? What ordinary would ever believe it? Few purebloods besides my own mad self had ever believed it. Everyone who'd ever known me swore that I spoke such heresy to excuse poor skills and willful ignorance, or to service childish whim made stubborn by “unfortunate conflict” with my father. All agreed my nature insupportably perverse. Yet my belief was rooted as deep as any knowledge or understanding I possessed.