Flesh and Spirit (52 page)

“Thank you, Brother Sebastian. Please excuse me.” Nones rang two hours before Vespers. I gave no credit to the stated destination. Gildas was taking the boy and my book to Sila Diaglou.

“The night drowns us, Valen,” Sebastian called after as I hurried away. “Go with Iero's light.”

I ran for the guesthouse. Nemesio would know if the Evanori had left horses for Voushanti and his men. If so, I could ride out…use my bent to follow Gildas. But before entering the guesthouse, I paused by the stoop and ripped open Gildas's parting gift. One glance and I launched the damnable thing into the night, scattering its contents into the churn of mud and snow. I could not find a curse vile enough for Gildas, and so I cupped my arms over my throbbing head and leaned against the stone wall, screaming out self-hatred and rage. The scent lingered: spicy, earthy, pepper and mushrooms, lighting an ember in my belly, where lurked a diseased knot the size of a fist. Nivat's claws settled into mind and body, ensuring I could not ignore it, could not forget, could not commit what wit I had to any other cause but servicing my hunger.

Smug
, Silos had called him that morning in Palinur, and rightly so. Gildas, the scholar who had surely read about herbs and medicines among all his studies, would have known that giving me too much nivat would turn my head to muck and would grow my craving when the need came on me again…and again…and again. He had abetted my escape before calling down Thalassa's hunters and then so very kindly had fed my perversion. He knew his service would put the weak and gullible fool in his debt, give him a leash to control the ignorant sorcerer. Who in the world had measure for my folly?

I shoved open the guesthouse door. Harsh reality dispensed with my silly imaginings of riding off on my own to retrieve Jullian. Of a sudden every fiber and sinew of my body ached. Exhaustion weighed my limbs with armor of iron. And Voushanti sat on the stair beside the rushlight, paring his fingernails with his knife.

“So, pureblood,” he said, without looking up from his task, “I thought perhaps you had gone wandering again. Lost yourself in the bogs and forgotten your oath.”

“I do not break my oaths.” Though I too often failed in my striving to keep them. As with Boreas. As with Jullian. Gildas would use the boy to manipulate me, as he had used the nivat. His shield. His hostage.
When the last darkness falls…

I kicked a broken chair out of my way and tried to muster some semblance of a plan. Perhaps I could convince the mardane to let me “aid the brothers” in a search for Jullian and Gildas. “Tell me, Lord Voushanti, is our master Sila Diaglou's ally or her rival?”

“You needs must ask him that yourself. I've had word he'll be here tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Here?” So soon. I'd expected…what? I was too tired to imagine.

“Prince Osriel's plans ripen. He needs neutral ground for an important parley, and this place happens to be convenient.” He stood and stretched out his shoulders. “We'll likely move fast after tomorrow. I'd advise you to sleep off these past days' trial while you can.”

He would never allow me to go out. I shrugged. “Tell me, Mardane, do
you
ever sleep?”

His face twisted in his grotesque mockery of a smile. “When my duties permit. Tonight, I keep watch.” He moved aside just enough that I could squeeze past him to reach the stair. No doubt I would find him there in the morning.

The nagging ache of failure filled my boots with lead as I climbed to the upper chamber. A meal had been laid out on a tray—bread, boiled parsnips, dried apples. Anselm's posset sat in a pitcher by the hearth. Too weary to eat, I pulled off my sodden boots and hose, sat cross-legged on a woven hearthrug, and poked up Prior Nemesio's fire.

A cabal that thought to preserve humankind past the end times. A master who stole dead souls. Fanatics who used tormented spirits to slaughter the land's guardians and unravel the fabric of the world. How in the name of all gods had a man who prided himself on keeping his head down stumbled into events of such magnitude? Stumbled…had I?

My thoughts wandered back to Wroling Wood, to the day Boreas and I had given up on Perryn of Ardra and deserted his legion. When we spied the tidy manse, sitting unguarded in the forest outside Wroling Town, we thought Serena Fortuna had at last acknowledged our meager libations. Unfortunately, rodents had found the larders before us, and we had to be satisfied with inedible spoils. We stuffed our rucksacks and ran, arguing about whether to head straight for Palinur or to pawn the goods in a lesser town. I had laughed at finding my book after so many years, crowing that an unwelcome gift could pay me twice over.

Just as we dropped from the outer wall to head for the road, the Moriangi outriders attacked. The arrow strikes pitched me into an overgrown ditch, thick with soggy sedge and brambles. Boreas dived in beside me, blackening the air with his curses. Our attackers, caught up in a blood-frenzied pursuit of hundreds like us, failed to stop and ensure we were dead.

We lay in that ditch waiting for nightfall, hearing the pursuit pass over and around us. I bled into the sodden earth throughout a long afternoon, praying that the rain would not turn to ice and seal my foretold doom, longing to be warm and dry and safe, to be free of pain and feel my belly full. And when I at last staggered out of the ditch, half delirious, my gut and heart and blood had led us…driven us…here. Straight to Gillarine.

I stirred the coals and asked the question that had squatted in the back of my mind since I'd waked in Gillarine's infirmary. How was it possible that I had traveled ninety-three quellae in two days, starving, delirious, and half drained of blood? I could not answer it any more than I could say why my heart ached so sorely in the cloister garth of Gillarine, or why I wept when I looked on a Dané, or how a man who reveled in impiety and scorned all consideration of family had come to think of a Karish abbey as his home. My fists overflowed with shards of mirror glass, but I could not put them together in any way that made sense. I could not see myself anymore.

Perhaps I must have faith that whatever…whoever…had brought me here would show me the rest of the way. I dragged the tray of Gillarine's bounty close and poured a generous dollop of Brother Anselm's posset into the fire as an offering for Iero, for Kemen, for Serena Fortuna or whichever god or goddess might welcome it. As the sweet liquid sprizzled and scorched, I wolfed down the food and downed the remainder of the posset, pretending it cooled the fire in my gut. I would need my strength in the coming days, whether or not I chose to run. I would need it for Jullian. For my grandfather and his book. For the lighthouse cabal and the treacherous, dangerous Danae, whom we must beg to help us hold the world together. I had no time for weakness.