Flesh and Spirit (27 page)

Though wary of the Bastard Prince and his perverse magics, I had borne no fear of Evanore itself—until I looked upon it. Indeed the land seemed grayer than where we stood, as if the clouds that muted the sun were thicker there. Unreasoning emotion swelled in my blood. Not the sense-blinding assault I'd felt in the cloister garth or at the pool. Not pain or terror at all. More a directionless anger and a sorrow so deep as to make a stone weep. A fearsome thing, that looking upon a landscape could so wrench a man's spirit.

Hoofbeats pounded the track from the bridge. The horseman drew rein at the cairn and waited there, patting the neck of his sidestepping bay as we approached. “Good morning, Brother Adolfus and Brother…Valen, is it?”

The dulcian voice erased all thought of the horrors behind us and the brooding land to the south. I yanked off my hood and looked up. She had cut her hair. The wind flicked the chin-length strands of bronze about her eyes and her cheeks, where a smile threatened to break through her sober courtesy.

“Master Corin,” I said, bowing to cover my own foolish grin. “A great pleasure to see you again. Brother Adolfus, this gentle youth is the Thane of Erasku's squire.”

I tried not to drool or sigh or otherwise make a fool of myself. I even forgave her greeting me from horseback, the beast so close to me I could feel its exquisite temper expelled in hay-scented snorts and blows. The woman's posture astride the beast presented me a full view of a shapely leg clad in scarlet hose—not peg scrawny as with so many of her noble sisters, but rather looking as if she ran and danced and lived with all of herself. Oh, dear goddess Arrosa, what I would not have given to run my hand upward along that red-clad limb.

Harness chinked and jangled in the distance as two other riders approached more slowly, leading a riderless mule. While I gripped my cowl tight against the wind, and my desires against even stronger natural forces, the woman turned to my companion. “Edane Groult is laid up with gout this morning, Brother Adolfus, so he asks if you would be so kind as to attend him in his hall. He has sent down two escorts and a mule to bring you up. Unfortunately, he did not expect two of you. My master was just departing on his way back to his hold and offered my services to greet you and convey the edane's message.”

Brother Adolfus was nonplussed. “Of course I will ride up. Brother Valen
could
walk, but his leg is just now healing from a dreadful wound. I don't know…to leave a novice behind…”

“The edane's men will return for him, Brother. Meanwhile, my own lord is willing to delay his journey and provide Brother Valen company and refreshment for his wait.”

“Well then, that will do very nicely.” Brother Adolfus's conscience seemed much eased at the thought of me being provisioned. I was less sanguine, seeing now how matters were to work out. No second mule would be sent. Some excuse would be given when I did not appear in the edane's hall, while I would be dispatched on some ghost hunt with the Thane of Erasku. How much finer if I could wait here alone with Corin.

The mule arrived; Brother Adolfus mounted. As the monk and the nobleman's two servants moved away, the woman extended her hand to me, allowing a smile to break through. “Would you accept a ride to the bridge, Brother? Blackmane will certainly carry us both.”

“Ah, mistress…”

Could she have presented any choice more painful? Saint Ophir had definite opinions on his followers having physical contact with women—a matter I had conveniently failed to recall as she'd led me blindfolded about the valley of Gillarine. I could have conveniently forgotten it again, save the horse appeared much more disturbed by the idea than her kind invitation would attest. He sidled and jinked so anxiously that a determined frown supplanted the woman's smile.

“Alas, I am not permitted.” I stepped back to give the demon-cursed animal a bit more room. “And I don't think your beast likes me all that much.”

“Nonsense. He's as placid as a cow.” She said this with conviction, though, indeed, my distancing might have been a handful of sugar in the devil equine's mouth. “Come along, then. As you answered our first question so well, we've another puzzle for you.”

She held to a slow walk, slower than necessary. I did not protest, and walked as close to her as the beast and I could bear. “I don't suppose you might give me a hint about the purpose of these exercises with the book of maps. I've received no reward for my first success but chilblains, bruised knees, and a reputation for slovenliness.”

“I'm truly sorry for your trouble. The purposes of the cabal are not mine to reveal, but I vow they are of critical—”

“—importance to Navronne. To our children's children. So I've been told. Lives depend on secrecy, thus a novice's knees and unbridled curiosity are of poor account.”

“Many lives. You must believe that. Those who hold this responsibility have yielded everything in their lives to serve this need.” Her bitter argument took no heed of my teasing. And surely the horse was not responsible for the hard look she cast toward the bridge. Such an expression did not belong on such a face.

“One answer, then, and I'll pry no more for the moment,” I said.

“Good Brother, I cannot—

“I would know your true name, mistress. And don't say ‘Mag' or ‘Popsy,' for you are no more a villein girl than you are a lad. My mind finds a great void in its constant untanglings and unwindings of these dire mysteries, for I cannot set a proper name to one certain face. Perhaps if I could bound that face with a name and set it in a proper sequence with Thane Stearc the Formidable, Gram the Sickly, and Brother Gildas of the Mysteries, as for labeled jars on a shelf, it would not persist in distracting me from more serious thoughts. Elsewise I must strive to deserve more punishments just to give me more time for contemplating the question, and what would Iero and his saints think of such a sacrilege?”

Ah, Deunor's fire, her laugh resonated in my bones as if I were a harp and she the player filled with passionate music. I would have babbled my nonsense the night through to hear such tunes as she could pluck on me.

“Elene, good Brother. My true name is Elene, but I would advise you not to use it in front of my father. For the time, my own folly has made me none but Corin, his less-than-satisfactory squire.” She kicked the bay into a gallop, and they raced through the hazy morning toward the bridge. I could not take my eyes from her.

Elene…
The name, the flesh, the laugh played out the sweetest harmony of creation.

“I
suppose you wish to rest,” said the Thane of Erasku when I joined him, his daughter, and his secretary by the bridge.

“Good morning, my lord,” I said. “Indeed my feet are more bruised than a drunkard's liver.”

Brother Adolfus's mule had reached only half the distance to the fortress hill. As the goddess of love had produced no chain of circumstances that might leave me alone and naked with a similarly unclothed Elene, I was feeling a bit mulish as well.

“You're most kind to offer to wait with me for Edane Groult's transport, Lord Stearc, but please do not feel it necessary to delay your journey. Surely those clouds will split at any time and beset us with rain. Be on your way and godspeed!”

The three of them stood between the crumbling columns. Shards of white marble, stained and streaked with black, littered the flat muddy ground. What forces had shattered pillars as broad as my armspan? Even broken, they rose to twice my height. Lightning, perhaps, or siege engines, used in some long-ago attempt to destroy Ardra's only link with Evanore for a hundred quellae in either direction.

Elene stood at her father's side, one step behind his massive shoulder. The gray daylight revealed even more likeness between them, if any personage so ferocious and intimidating as Stearc of Erasku could be said to resemble a graceful woman. Their noses were blunt, cheekbones prominent, and jawlines square—hers formed in ivory, his in granite. The air around them seemed to quiver like heat rising from paving stones in deep summer.

The thane snorted. “You're not such a fool as to think this meeting is by chance, are you, monk? We've—”

“Excuse me, my lord.” Gram stepped out from behind Stearc, slightly stooped, black hair whipping in the wind. The secretary looked younger in the daylight, though even more wan and weak beside such exuberance of life as this father and daughter. “I've the provisions you required me to pack for the good brother.” Head inclined in deference, the gaunt secretary proffered a wineskin and a canvas provision bag. “I'll bring the book, and we can discuss our needs as Brother Valen takes a moment to catch his breath.”

“If he can do this at all, he should be able to do it quickly,” grumbled Stearc. “He can fill his belly as we wait for sunset—assuming the damnable sun still exists behind these clouds.”

Thanks be, Gram's good sense prevailed. I sat on a round of marble and made sure Stearc's impatience did not worsen from waiting for me to devour the barley bread, soft cheese, and good ale. A fire would have been pleasant, but I'd no mind to delay my refreshment until I'd given the lord my answer to today's puzzle. He'd likely throw me from the bridge when I refused to help. I could not waste more magic on their ventures. Only a few days and I'd need everything I could muster.

“My lord, if you've brought me here to question me further about the maps,” I said, when I was well through the little feast, “I'm afraid I've no more to tell you. I demonstrated everything I know in your first test. Any man with the knowledge you hold could have done the same.”

“Evidently not,” snapped Stearc, clasping his broad hands behind his back as if to keep from throttling me. His leather jaque strained with the display of his chest. “Others attempted to use the spell and trace the exact route you took. But they experienced no extraordinary guidance from the map. In hours of searching, they never came nearer the Well than the cliff. What caused your attempt to succeed where others failed?”

He leaned toward me, the pressure of his interest weighing like an iron yoke. Mouth stuffed with bread, I shrugged. But in truth I was not so nonchalant. So the eerie little pool Gildas and I had found…the Well, they called it…was indeed one of the hidden places that only my grandfather's maps could reveal. The wind poked its chilly fingers under my gown.

I'd not used the guide spell of the map, only my bent and my instincts. What did that mean? I was not familiar enough with the more obscure pureblood arcana to know. My father could not find such places without using the enchantments of my grandfather's maps—one of the matters that embittered him so sorely, I'd always thought. Max had always been more adept at tracking than at route finding. But then, I had been adept at nothing.

“Perhaps someone told you how to find the Well.” Stearc might have been a magistrate. “Or you ran across some mention of it in documents at the abbey.”

I came near choking. “No, my lord, I certainly did not read of the place. And I doubt—”

“Show him, Gram.”

The secretary sank to the grass just in front of me, sat back on his heels, and opened the book on his knees, searching for the page he wanted.

“Here, Brother.” He turned the book to face me.

I wiped my hands on the empty provision bag and tossed it aside, then took the book. The open page contained two small maps. The secretary pointed to a grousherre, painted in bright reds and yellows. The map was too small to have a cartouche. The tiny words embedded in twisting vines and leaves that filled the narrow borders of the little map would hold the spell.

The characters flowed together like a river of ink as soon as I looked on them, of course, but I needed neither cartouche nor border to tell me what this map depicted. The meticulous drawings of fortress, bridge, columns, river, and branching path were enough to identify the very place where we sat. Interesting that the twin columns were shown whole, each of them bearing a capital in the shape of a trilliot. King Caedmon had been the first to order the wild lily of Navronne sewn onto his cape and his banner and emblazoned on his armor.

My gaze swept the grass between us and the gorge. Among the shards of marble tumbled around us might be those very capitals. Such an odd sensation for that moment, as if I lived in both times at once and might soon see Caedmon himself defending the bridge, as his warlords retreated into Evanore to hold its mountains and gold against the invading Aurellians. The black-haired invaders from the east—my ancestors—had turned their acquisitive eyes upon Navronne when they discovered that the minor sorceries they could accomplish in their own land were not only easier to work, but took fire with power here. They called Navronne the Heart of the World.

And then, of a sudden, I envisioned my grandfather, a scrawny, squinting old man, his lean shoulders hunched, his thick hair gone white, beard yellowed around his mouth, sitting alone by a campfire on this hillside, his long fingers like spiders' legs sketching this scene in his worn leather traveling book. Alongside the delicate pen strokes that represented the objects in the map, he would scribe a column of inked letters and numbers, noting the measures and proportions, names, and colors he would use to bring out the message he wanted to convey with this grousherre. He had chosen to show the fortress much smaller than the columns, had decided to depict the thrashing river of less moment than the bridge that crossed it or the overgrown paving stones of the approaches. Grousherres were about relative significance rather than accurate measure.

“Brother?” Gram remained sitting on his heels, facing me across the book.

Fire washed my cheeks. I shook off the cascading visions and the hostility and resentment that inevitably accompanied thoughts of my family. “Sorry. What is it you wish me to find?”

The secretary laid his slender finger on the largest object on the map. “This.”

“Oh!” I had assumed the great tree that spread its ghostly branches across the entire page was but part of the book's decoration. Naught but straggling grass grew anywhere on this hillside. Certainly no tree stood where the map suggested, at the cairn where the path from the valley divided into two. “These maps were drawn years ago,” I said. “If the tree was ever here, it must have been cut down.”

“Perhaps the tree is only hidden,” said the secretary, softly encouraging. “Try it.”

“Try what?” I said, blank for the moment.

“Invoke the spell of the map!” bellowed Stearc, throwing up his hands. “What do you think? Spirits of night, must we be forever plagued with idiots and fools?”

“Give me a little time with the brother, my lord, and I'll explain what we seek…as we agreed.”

Gram's quiet insistence held sway. The thane betook himself to the brink of the river chasm. Elene's glance wavered, but after a moment, she followed dutifully after him. They strolled onto the bridge—a fearsome thing to my mind, no more than one horseman wide and lacking parapet or railing. There they sat, legs dangling over the unseen void.

Gram blew out a great puff of air as if he did the same, though his precarious state seemed more related to his testy lord. “Please excuse my master, Brother. He is in a most difficult position, his life forever balanced on a knife edge. Those things he would do to right matters—deeds he has trained for his entire life—slide ever farther out of his reach.”

“Because he conspires against his own lord, the Bastard Prince?”

No matter whether Osriel himself came to power—Kemen Sky Lord protect us from such a pass—whichever of the other two brothers became king would need to make alliance with the Bastard Prince to prevent his rival doing the same. Evanori lords who had failed in fealty to Osriel would be safe nowhere.

Gram's gaunt features twisted into a wry mask. “Indeed, that's a part of it.”

He tapped the page again. “So, to our problem: We have learned that this particular map will lead us to a location of great importance, a place where we can leave a message. Those who must receive the message live nearby, but we aren't sure exactly where. And we need their help. But we've had no more luck with this map than with the one to Clyste's Well. And so, again we ask your assistance.”

“But if they live nearby, surely this Edane Groult—”

“Edane Groult has no dealings with these neighbors,” said the secretary dryly. “He would not recognize them were they to sit on his shoes. Or if he did, then his aged heart would stop.”

My skin began to creep. How far did Abbot Luviar's arrogance of intellect take him? If he could redirect a man's loyalty to his prince, what could he do with a man's loyalty to his god?

“What neighbors might these be, living so close to the cursed land?” I said, sounding bolder than I felt. “I am pledged to holy Iero's service…”…and to Kemen's and Samele's and that of all and any gods and goddesses who allowed men to keep their skin and balls and fingernails and enjoy life without excessive torment. Unlike Magrog the Tormentor. The Adversary.

Gram lowered his head for a moment, as if in prayer, then lifted it again and glanced at me, though not so far lifting or so long glancing as to confront me as an honest man. “Good Brother Valen, we propose to deal with neither the Bastard Prince nor the Adversary nor their demonic lackeys, I promise you. Tell me, have you not read the inscription carved above your abbey's gates?”

“When I entered the gates of Gillarine, I was in no state to be
reading
anything, Master Gram,” I snapped. I had the sense he was patronizing me behind his quiet manner, so like a monk himself. I didn't like it.

“The inscription says,
The earth is God's holy book.
” He said this softly and with sincere reverence. Without hint of superior laughter.

“I've heard the abbot say that,” I said. In point of fact, out of all the prayers and mumblings I'd heard throughout my stay at Gillarine, it had been one phrase that made sense to me. It spoke of worth in common things where others saw naught. And it recalled the words of the sanctuary blessing:
by Iero's grace…by gift of earth…by King Eodward's grant…
And now these men spoke of holy wells. Of hidden trees. Of unseen neighbors whose presence might stop a man's heart. Of my grandfather's maps that could guide men to—

I stared at Gram. His dark head was bent over the book, only a swath of his wide forehead visible. A lock of dark hair had fallen forward, but surely underneath it, his eyes would be wild and fervent. Holy men. Madmen. I fought to keep sober. “By my soul, you're hunting angels!”

He was too intent upon his folly even to blush. “Not precisely. We believe there's been some confusion through the years. Your god may send angel messengers to tend our souls and guard us from temptation, but care of the earth is charged to other beings. Their stories have been told for as long as men have sat around fires under the stars. They live in realms of earth, not heaven, protecting and enriching the land they walk—that
we
walk—yet ordinary men cannot find the way to their dwelling places, save by luck or magic. Somehow, the pureblood cartographer who drew these maps could discover them whenever he chose, using only his pureblood bent. And now, using one of his maps,
you
have opened the way to one of their most hallowed places.”

Struggling to keep from laughing at his sincerity, I touched the naked figures that supported the ribbonlike borders at the map's four corners. One was the aingerou my grandfather had stuck into every drawing in the book, claiming he did so because I was so fond of them. But the other three figures, two male, one female, poised on toes, legs stretched and bent as if dancing on the page, were no round-bellied imps, but tall and graceful with perfect bodies and flowing red curls. Angels, one might say, though they had no wings. This all began to make some sort of perverse sense. “You speak of the Danae.”