Ash and Silver (18 page)

Yet another enchantment lurked in close proximity to the map, this one a simmering evil that robbed me of breath, an enchantment crafted of pain and fire, blood and despair. In all my training at Evanide, in countless mission studies, I'd never encountered such a thing. Without using magic of my own, I could not even guess at its nature. I was glad. The thought of probing deeper sickened me, in the way of sticking my hand in a dead man's rotting belly to retrieve his heart.

Rising emotion raddled one man's unintelligible words. Anger? Frustration? The warlord sat back on his haunches and bellowed, “Mount up!”

The warlord's command might have been a dog biting the squire's backside or the guards' boots. Packs and waterskins were quickly stowed. The squire brought the horses.

An Evanori warlord was dedicated and trained from birth to defend his lord, his mountain fastness, and his hoard of gold. Mumbling under his breath, this one fussed about his warhorse, doing everything the squire had already done before swinging himself easily into the saddle.

The prince's bodyguard gave Osriel a hand up to a bay gelding. Still no sight of Osriel's face. But the bodyguard's . . . Goddess preserve. Half his face was a crumpled, leathery ruin. Burnt, I'd guess, but more than that. Bones crushed, leaving jaw and cheek sunken and the eye but a dark slit. A bristle of gray-brown hair left this horror fully exposed.
He
should be wearing the hood.

The prince led the way toward the willow grove and the shady pool. Bodyguard and squire followed close. The warlord held an urgent conversation with the two soldiers, and to my dismay, the pair wheeled their mounts and took the path Grey had ridden an hour previous.

“Your heads roll if you're not back before sundown!” called the warlord after them. “Camp here.”

Ride with the wind, brother!
Concern for Grey beckoned me after the pair. But I knew what Inek would say. Grey, too. The mission lay ahead of me, not behind. The Order needed to know what wickedness this prince planned. If that single dread enchantment I'd detected was the prince's work, it justified their concern.

When the prince's party disappeared behind the shaggy willows, I skulked after them. Had I not watched them squeeze between a protruding boulder and the pond, I'd never have found the path.

The pond was far bigger than I'd thought, being the bottom end of a long lake. The upper end was sealed by a jumble of earth, wood, and stone, as if a divine sculptor had dropped all the waste from the earth's making there. The far shore was a scrubby bank of earth and loose rock.

But the four horsemen traveled the nearer shore. A massive scarp hemmed the lake along this side. The vertical stone was taller than five men, seamed with dirt and roots from the forested swell above. Between the foot of the scarp and the lake, a shelf of stone scarce wide enough for a single horse served as a path.

The path's direct course was not at all friendly to spies. Did I step out to follow the four, a single backward glance would note me. So I held still until they were but tiny figures at the far end of the lake. They dismounted.

I waited. And waited. Squinting into the watery sunlight, I picked out horses . . . but no men.
Towers of Idrium!
Where had they gone?

I pelted along the shelf path, sparing naught to prevent all this from being a waste. Yet even a hundred paces from the towering blockade that bounded the lake, I saw no place they could have gone. I'd felt no surge of magic. My gaze scoured the path-side cliff and the massive debris pile that ended the lake, though I could not imagine a limping man in robes climbing either one. Nothing moved but songbirds, squalling at circling crows, and trickles of water that seeped through the debris to feed the lake.

Had I gone blind?

The horses waited patiently, tethered to branches protruding from the scarp. Soothing the beasts with whispers and pats, I squeezed past them along the verge of the lake, and discovered a natural illusion that rivaled anything of magic.

What I had believed to be the leftmost portion of the lake's terminal blockage was, in fact, a flat wall that protruded from the scarp to the water's edge. Color and texture blended it into the actual background, neatly blocking an observer's view of the last section of the waterside path—a hundred paces at most. A ledge just below the surface of the lake—one boot long—would allow one person at a time to get around the end of the protruding wall. Carefully.

Time to choose. Go forward, or retreat to the mushroom patch to wait
for the four—and the other two soldiers—to return. Instinct said that if I retreated, I might as well abandon the mission.

Not a breath or shuffle could I hear from beyond the wall. Setting my inner foot gingerly onto the underwater ledge, I gripped the largest knob I could find and swung my outer foot around until it found a horizontal surface. Shifting my weight forward and inward, I pushed myself to standing on level ground beyond the wall.

Impressions pelted me like hailstones of lead.

A glimmer of torchlight inside the gaping maw of a cave.

An astonishingly familiar splash of white above the cave mouth.

And the certainty that I, the fool of a paratus, was not alone.

In the eyeblink's gap before the battering ram slammed into my head, I had already turned halfway round to note the man-sized niche in the protruding wall and the monstrous face and thick body that occupied it. My bracelets and a burst of magic generated a rope of light, mitigating the blow that laid me out. Thus I could see straight into the bodyguard's red-centered eye glaring down at me and recognize it as a well of pain and fire, blood and despair.

T
he half-faced bodyguard tried to drag me into the cave by one arm wrapped around my neck. I elbowed him in the knee. Dizzy and confused, I was unsure what that might accomplish, but after so many hours in Evanide's training room, it was wretched to be hauled about like a piglet.

I shouldn't have done it. Nor should I have bothered with any other move I attempted in our brief grapple. Never in my fiercest bouts at Evanide had I suffered such overmatching skill. His fists were very hard and very experienced, and he knew how to inflict the maximum discomfort while ensuring I remained conscious to appreciate his technique. Eventually he left me flat, convinced my bones were dust and wishing the rest of me was, as well.

One advantage of surrender was that I got a good look at the splash of white above the cave mouth. The image of a splayed hand had been carefully cut from white stone and embedded in the gray rock.

Then the bodyguard threw me over his shoulder with shameful ease and carried me into the cave. My senses reported naught but a blur of rock and torchlight and shadows blacker than seemed righteous. Every particle of my being hurt. Yet once deposited on my knees on a hard floor, with my head shoved downward in submission, I concluded that naught was actually broken save a tooth. I did not presume that my condition would improve. Anyone who could create the enchantment that bound this powerful man must own a roster of torments so vile I could not imagine them.

“So this is our shadow, the wisp of cloud who drifted in our wake for most of a day.” Cold, clear, heavy with dread portents, the voice came from everywhere at once. Whimsy, painted in poison. “So odd he is, don't you think, Voushanti? But with skills, you say?”

Were it my heart's deepest desire, I could not have lifted my head. My hands drooped limp and useless beside my knees.

“Some, lord. Not so much as he presumes.”

Inky shadows darted across the stone floor. Whirled in tornadic frenzy. Brushed slowly across the scrapes on my hands, stinging like brine.

Gatzi's teeth, I could feel them—the shadows. Invisible fingers traced the contours of my face and slid down my arms to my fingertips. Had I been able to move I would have tried to scrape them off. As it was they left a sticky taint like pine sap, though the odor reminded me more of the boneyard outside Necropolis Caton.

“The full mask is most curious,” said the lord. “Not at all what pureblood masters prescribe, yet these hands have talents. And these silver bands”—a light tapping on my bracelets by no instrument that I could see set my skin creeping—“I do believe wonders lurk inside them.”

Only the most perceptive sorcerer could detect magic lurking behind silver's brilliance. Yet Osriel was halfblood, anathema to our kind, one who represented a pureblood parent's careless extinction of the divine gift. In Osriel's case, it was his mother, a pureblood who'd become the mistress of a beloved king and died a few years after giving birth to . . . what? A charlatan? A coward? Or a monster who dabbled in evil to enhance his degenerate magic? The Order needed to know.
I
needed to know why he sought a cave marked with a white hand.

“Who is this man of clever illusion?” I said as haughtily as one could from his knees with bowed head. “A shadow twister with a brutish, devil-marked servant?”

A leash whipped round my neck, dragging my head forward and down until my nose touched the floor. Stinging neck and scraped chin testified the instrument was no illusion, yet neither was it made of leather or fiber. The Order's ropes of scorching light tangled limbs, but vanished as quickly as they touched their marks. The frigid tail of Osriel's leash did not let go.

“Insults are a fool's tactic,” he said. “Think of something better.” The choke strap tightened.

Don't panic. For all he knows you could be his brother's man. He'll get nothing from your corpse.
But the world spun dangerously, and I wobbled. The constriction eased half an instant before ending my life.

I gulped breath, blinking until my head cleared.

The strap tightened again ever so slightly, nudging me toward the verge of death. Most people didn't understand how brief a pressure to the neck would kill. This man did.

Dizzy again. No matter resolution, panic nibbled at my belly, at my
groin, at my lungs and spirit, even when the pressure relented long enough for my eyes to refocus.

I willed myself calm. Using magic to take a life could drain a sorcerer past his own capacity, warping his talents or obliterating them. One so skilled would know that. But there were things to be learned here. I had to live.

“Dead men answer no questions,” I croaked, twisting my head slightly to ease the pressure, perfectly designed to keep one dizzy with terror.

Cold, wicked, mirthless laughter cascaded through the cavern. “What say you, Voushanti? He thinks death would free him from answering.”

“I say he is an ignorant spy, lord.” The bodyguard grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back, as the invisible leash slid away, its edge keen as a razor knife. Warm blood dribbled down my shirt.

The man in spruce-green robes sat not ten paces from me, perched atop a slab of rock broken from the cave's low ceiling. The height of the slab would put his head on a level with mine were I allowed to stand. From my angle a pale, square, clean-shaven jaw was just visible below the drooping hood. Elsewise one might question whether he was a man at all. His limbs—whatever he had of them—were swallowed by voluminous sleeves and flowing gown.

Voushanti let go of my hair and moved to his master's side. A taint of red gleamed from his ruined eye. His shadow rippled, and his master's garments shifted as if moved by the breath of a great beast. No matter the need to observe, I averted my eyes, my spirit sick.

“I would know what you are, masssked one.” The viperous hiss issued from the hood.

The lord's power left no path to avoid danger. His demand left no time to devise elaborate plays. And deception bore its own risks. Yet neither was this his own fastness in Evanore. He had no great numbers of servants and messengers at his beck. Might a bit of truth lure him into revelation?

“I am a historian of pureblood birth, exiled from the society of my kind.”

“I doubt that.” My heart near leapt out of my skin. The cold, deep whisper sounded just at my ear, as if he knelt at my left shoulder, though he remained motionless on his rock seat. “A
recondeur
walks willing into a gatzé's den? Next you'll say you've no idea who I am.”

The pressure bending my back eased. But I didn't wish to invite more choking, so I stayed still.

“I am no
recondeur
, Lord Osriel, Duc of Evanore and Prince of Navronne. Rather I am condemned by family and Registry to walk the world without name, face, or home until my exile is reversed. I use the time to learn. Being a historian, I seek out secrets of the past. Powerful as you are, you can surely test my truth in this.”

“Oh, indeed I shall.” This time in my other ear. I hated that I jumped, even when expecting it. “What leads you to believe I hold secrets of the past?”

“You may hold secrets or not, Your Grace, but this cavern surely does.” Using a magical map to come here, he must know something about the white hand. If I was to learn what he knew, I had to offer something plausible of my own.

“Kneel up.”

It was no easy matter to raise up when every muscle and bone felt like a pounded meat custard. And more difficult yet to lift my eyes and face him as if I were an honest man. But he'd bitten my hook.

“The vanished city of Xancheira has ever intrigued me,” I said. “A great city founded by Aurellian sorcerers in the days we came to this land. A city renowned for beauty, art, just governance, and most especially, its magic. Then, in the matter of a day, so imperfect history claims, every Xancheiran soul dies and their great city vanishes from the earth, a mystery spawning a thousand hypotheses, but no evidence to prove one or the other as true. I've wandered throughout Navronne listening to tales from mighty hall to Ciceron fireside, while hunting the symbol of Xancheira. Son of a king, you may be familiar with it, a white tree with five branches. . . .”

“I am familiar.”

I inclined my back to acknowledge and smiled inside. The shadows had quieted. Though not a comfortable quiet, to be sure.

“Amongst these bits and pieces that make no sense, I've run across mention of another symbol that is very like—”

“A white hand.”

“Indeed, lord. Sometimes throughout the span of history, words, symbols, or stories become intertwined, shifting form until one cannot judge whether they are the same or different. My search for the mark of the white hand led me to Lillebras, but there it stalled. I have scoured the countryside with no result. And what should I hear on the eve of a great battle? The Duc of Evanore and a small party—no warlike legion—required a guide
intimately familiar with the district. And I think perhaps this lordly prince, reputed a powerful mage in his own right, might have an interest in legends of Xancheira's magic. And so I set myself to find him, and . . .”

I lifted my hands as if to say
here we are
.

“Bring him here.”

Voushanti grasped my upper arm with a grip like a bear's jaw. Forthwith, I stood an arm's length from the prince. A hand emerged from the folds of green velvet, a hand that might once have been slender and fine-boned, but was now mottled purple, gray, and red, misshapen at knuckle and joint, the fingers curled in upon themselves.

“Give me your hand, masked one, and say again that you speak truth.”

I dared not delay, lest I think too much and shade my declarations with untruth. I laid my grimy fingers in his slightly opened claw. It required every shred of discipline I possessed to keep my hand steady. Surely the fires of Magrog the Tormenter's furnace raged beneath his skin.

As a gale on the seaward wall, power rushed into me, sweeping away thought and caution. I clung desperately to the bones of my story and walled off all else. My hope to dissect Osriel's magic vanished along with the world and time and reasons, until I stood naked in a freezing dark while those scorching fingers examined every part and portion of flesh and spirit.

No, no, no! My spirit recoiled from that touch as it crept closer to the raw and gaping cavity in my breast. And then the bitter touch . . .

My screams set the cavern's fire and shadows dancing with wild abandon. I knew so, because I writhed and fought to escape that darkness, to hold back his touch, to appease the agony in my brow . . . in my breast . . . and in a fiery bridge between the two. Only Voushanti's bear-jaw grip kept my head from slamming into the prince's rock.

“Bring him ale.” The hollow command sounded a thousand quellae distant.

The monster shoved me to the floor, where I huddled in a knot, rocking, one fist to my head, one to my breast.
Mask your weakness, madman.
Danger lurked on every side like wolves gathered about a hunter's dying fire. What had he learned? I needed to attack, to obscure, to avert his gaze.

I swallowed the next scream that rose like lava from the pits. But to breathe was a mighty effort, and I could not think of a way to begin. . . .

A tin mug appeared in my shaking hands. I downed the lukewarm ale and grasped reality: the world of gray, shifting light, my mission, the Order. What childish hubris to invite such an assault. Had I exposed my brothers
or yielded my name or my will? Goddess Mother, for a mirror glass to look on my own eyes, to ensure they had no red center of pain and despair to mark enslavement.

“My question remains, masked one: What are you?”

“My question for you, prince,” I croaked, “is what have you made of me?” I riffled through two years of memory . . . of the meeting with the Danae, with Bastien . . . through the bits and pieces I had learned in the past days, through will and desire and hopes. All seemed my own—Greenshank's. Nothing of Lucian de Remeni.

“Shaping you to my service would pleasure me beyond description.” His raw lust oiled my throat and churned my bowels. “But what sculptor can choose proper tools when he cannot describe his medium? Clay? Steel? Diamond? Silver? Yes, perhaps silver. So much lies hidden beneath your tarnished surface as would provide a long winter's study in my mountain fastness. I have never encountered a soul so fragmented as yours.”

Pain subsided, leaving body and spirit a raw wound. My mind's fingers grasped at reason and gave me hope that I'd held firm. So, test it . . .

“I am condemned to exile, lord, as I told you.”

“So you are. Indeed all you spoke was truth . . . which does not imply that I believe your story. But enough that I shall invite you to examine what I came here to find.”

On my feet again, I bowed with what dignity I could muster, chilled to the marrow. Osriel's was no degenerate halfblood magic, but complex beyond my experience and dangerous beyond knowing.

“I offer my knowledge to the task, and an apology for this pitiful show. Your power, lord, humbles me. Alas, disconnection from the practices of my own kind has broken me in many ways.”

“Perhaps so.” The tenor of this pronouncement leached all ambiguity from the phrase. What did he see in me that confirmed my breakage so firmly?

Heaving a great breath, trying to ignore the whirling particles of night visible from the corner of my eye, I extended my open palm. “Show me, if you will.”

Perhaps the prince gestured. Perhaps he spoke. I neither saw nor heard his command. But the half-faced Voushanti shoved me toward the back of the cavern. Firelight danced on a high wall, the mottled gray rock carved into grotesqueries by seeps from above and undercut into swirled alcoves by
ancient floods. Our boots crunched on a dirt floor pocked with rubble and milky puddles.