Flesh and Spirit (33 page)

The night hid her expression, leaving us a certain intimacy, like comfortable bed partners after the frenzy is past. “Mistress, when your men threw that grain sack over my head, I was convinced I would die from it. No matter that the bag was loosely woven. No matter that your intent to let me live was soon clear, and that the restriction of my sight was part of a well-considered plan. Had the sack been woven of spider's silk wound with gossamer, the cord about my neck softer than angel's wings, and your bodyguards' hands as gentle as your own, it would have made no difference to my horror and dread. I could not breathe. Pureblood life was very like that for me. Now it will be worse.”

“Surely, whatever your problems in the past, your family will see you've changed.” She was truly naive.

“Ah, lady, you don't know my family.” I touched her face, so pale in the fog, cool and damp. And my hand slid around the back of her neck, pulling her gently toward me while stroking the downy hair and soft skin, feeling the strength and pride of her. So alive…

Her breath caught, but she yielded, warmth flooding her skin under my fingers. Imminent danger…escape…caution…vows…all slipped away, the pulse of the night driving me where I'd no intent to go. It had been so long. The ache within me grew, trapping breath in my lungs, obliterating thought as my lips touched hers…

Torches flared from the direction of the abbey. Shouts accompanied them and were answered from the mist on our flanks. Blessed saints and angels, how stupid, how inexcusably weak, lust-blinded, and incautious, could a man get? She
wanted
me taken.

“Magrog have you, woman!”

Elene shot up from the ground in the same moment I did. “Brother Valen, wait! I didn't—”

I didn't dally to hear her excuses, but sped southward into the fog, stumbling blindly until I stopped cursing perfidious women and threw every sense I possessed into the race.
Feel the thicker mist hanging over the river on your left…smell the wrack and weed…hear the whisper of water in its deep channel. Feel the road on the right…the tread of feet…of wheels…of hooves and paws for a thousand years…the restless horses patrolling there…waiting for you to stumble. And the earth underfoot…

I stopped and tore at the laces of my sandals. Throwing them off, I ran barefoot, feeling the prickling stubble of the barley field and the cold, sodden earth. Instinct warned me of holes, channels, and rocks and guided me southward, upward, away from the abbey.

The fog swallowed the torchlight and voices, and my bare feet were light, little more than a mouse's tread through the fields. I slowed a bit and controlled my breathing so as not to give away by gasps and gulps what I gained by speed.

A pale line emerged from the fog—a rampart of stone—the abbey boundary, a waist-high rubble wall out here in the fields, not the smooth-dressed ashlar of the abbey's public face. I slapped my hands on the top and leaped over the wall, trying to remember the terrain to the south, the route Brother Adolfus and I had traveled toward Caedmon's Bridge. Broad meadows between the road and the river, broken by swaths of trees, and then the short steep climb toward the higher meadows, the giant's steps toward the mountains.

Chest heaving, I knelt and pressed hands and forehead to the earth. Stretched my mind forward. Swept it across the landscape.
Safety…haven…guide me…
The night shifted a little.
Left. A path limned with moonlight.
I popped up and ran.

The breeze swelled, swirling the fog, thinning it here and there. Patches of stars appeared and were as quickly obscured. Angle right and around to avoid a spring and a thicket. Foolish as it was to hope, I began to think I had eluded them. My destination—the refuge—felt near.

Hoofbeats to my right. On the road, much too close. Torches again. Damnable beasts to bring pursuit so fast.

I burst through the edge of the fog. The night was clear; the stars gleamed above a lush meadow, broken only by a ring of trees with smooth white trunks and bright gold leaves. I'd thought these aspens were already bare…

“Ho there! Get him!” The hoofbeats dulled when they left the road for the grass of the meadow. Or perhaps my heart thudded so ferociously that it drowned out the sounds of pursuit.

A searing finger touched the back of my neck. Of a sudden my feet felt shod in iron. Stumbling, I dragged them onward, unwilling to concede the race. Another bolt touched my back—no mundane weapon, but sorcery, a brutal binding of limbs and will.

I was so close to the ring of aspens. What safety might lie there when I had already been spotted, I could not imagine. Yet I believed that to reach it must yield victory. Only a little farther…a few steps…

A third bolt took my knees, and I crumpled a mere ten paces from the rustling trees. The stink of horses and diseased leaves gagged me as I fell.

Until the end of days I would swear that a naked man, a dragon traced in blue fire upon his face and limbs, reached out to me from the grove. But it was too far, and the fourth bolt of fire made the night go black.

They rolled me onto a palliasse thinner than the one in the monks' dorter, and with only hard floor, no sling of ropes underneath it.

“Can he breathe properly? Swallow?”

No
, I wanted to say.
He cannot breathe, not if you've put him in a cell.
The place smelled of rusted iron and musty stone, fresh straw and old piss. Prisons were prisons, even in an abbey.

“Indeed, sir abbot, all those things. We are not permitted to injure him.” The perfumed man who had hauled me up from the ground and thrown me over his saddle sounded as if he'd a broom up his backside. His scent was cheap; his contract with Thalassa must not pay well. “The spell merely prevents voluntary movement. He is probably awake even now.”

Fingers shoved my eyelids open and I stared directly into the yellow glare of a lamp. My eyes blinked and watered. From behind the glare two shadowy faces looked down at me.

“There, you see, sir abbot. He hears us. The
recondeur
seems a bit unhappy at his state.”

Trapped within the bonds of my flesh, I struggled to strike…to scream…to move…half crazed already.

A cool hand rested on my forehead. “I regret you could not trust me, Valen,” said Luviar. “I would have protected you. Trust breeds faith. And faith, honesty, and compassion are the roots of honor. With your gifts and a smattering of honor, you might have done great good for the world. May Iero transform your intransigent heart.”

The blurred faces moved out of view. The lamp was taken away. My skin shrank as the yellow light wavered, latches rattled, and a door was opened, stirring the musty air, causing wild shadows to dance about the low, mold-patched ceiling.

Please don't leave me here!

The door slammed shut. The locks clicked. The darkness and the walls closed in.

V
oices, light, and cheap scent yanked me into full awareness. This event was not a waking. I had not slept. But at sometime in the long frigid night of suffocation and terror, I had clawed open a hole in my mind, a deeper darkness void of thought, a place to huddle and stay sane. Now, unrelieved by sleep's murky unwinding, I could remember exactly the events of day and night that had led to my current position flat on my back, eyes open, in the abbey's prison cell.

Thalassa's kohl-lined eyes and her long straight nose hovered above me. She laid a finger in the center of my forehead, whispered a word, and an invisible whip stroke tore through me from head to toes. A mighty unraveling.

I curled up in a knot and rolled to the side, muting my cry in a fit of coughing, my gritty eyes squeezed shut. My spine stung.

A hand closed over my mouth and pressed tightly, as if to silence my cough, even while another pressed from the back of my head. The hands—Thalassa's, surely—were quickly removed, and I felt a void at my side as she moved away.

“Silos, inform me at once if you sense one scrap of magic from this cell,” she commanded. “We'll silkbind his hands at the first hint of it. And tell the monk he may bring something for Valen to drink. But no ale or spirits. And nothing to eat for today. I wish the
recondeur
to remain sober, and a hungry day will remind him of his manners. We leave for Palinur in an hour.”

“Yes, Sinduria,” said the scented lackey.

Had anyone ever suffered such a sister? Between Thalassa and Elene, I vowed to swear off women altogether. Would Elene have let me take her body just to fulfill her holy purpose?

A swish of silk on stone and the door slammed shut behind Thalassa. I remained huddled on the palliasse, trying to summon the resilience that had sustained me as a child, trying to convince myself that I would not bend to their will just to avoid another night like the one I had just endured. The deepening cold bruised body and spirit, weighing as iron-linked mail on my limbs. I could not stop shaking.

The door opened and closed again. Light danced at the edges of my eyelids. Someone wearing sandals walked the five steps from the door and crouched beside me, smelling of damp wool and the boiling herbs of the infirmary, overlaid with traces of mud and grain fields.

“Sit up, Brother Valen. I've brought you water. You need to drink and change clothes, and then we must pray for your true repentance and a safe journey.”

“I don't drink water, Brother Gildas,” I said, my voice as rough as if my night's screams had been aloud instead of trapped within my skull.

“They're not going to give you anything else for a while, and if you fail to cooperate, they'll force it down you. You are no longer a child to take petty victories from stubbornness. Now, sit up.”

Men of insight. If my childhood had been lived out among ones like these, I might have turned out differently. I rolled onto all fours and sat back on my heels, cramming my frozen hands into my sleeves. Gildas sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, holding a green pottery flask. Beside him sat a small brass lamp and a pile of clothing that could be none but my own stained jaque, braies, and boots.

“How is it
you
are here?” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Are you a pris—?”

He pressed a finger to his mouth and jerked his head slightly backward toward the ironclad door at his back. Its upper half was a thick grate. Anyone in the darkness outside the door could see and hear what went on in the cell.

“Father Abbot sent me,” he said. “I told him I bore no grudge for the bruises, and assured him that my incompetence could not set you free again. Your guards—
both
of them—are purebloods.”

So they did not suspect his complicity in my escape. A touch of resentment cooled my good feelings. I supposed Elene thought Gildas too valuable to their little cabal to reveal his role in the night's fiasco. At least he had tried to help.

“Drink this, and dress yourself in your secular clothing.”

I unstoppered the flask he gave me, sniffed at it, and stuffed the stopper back in again, pretending my throat did not feel like gravel. Water—my foretold doom. My mother might be a wretched parent, but she was a talented diviner. “So my novice year is at an end, is it?”

“For now. The Sinduria and Abbot Luviar have agreed that you will not be permitted to hide behind the cowl as you face the consequences of your transgressions. However, the abbot wishes me to remind you that you are not released from your vows. You remain sworn in obedience to him and to the Rule of Saint Ophir and are not to speak of certain events. Can you tell me which ones?”

I shoved the water flask back into his hand. “Despite what everyone believes, I'm not stupid.”

“Come now, tell me. I'm required to hear your recitation.”

“I'll not reveal any of his—” My tongue balked at the word
secrets
. I began again. “He assumes I'll tell of the—” I tried to say
lighthouse
but was unable to speak the word.

Again, and then again, I attempted to speak of the abbot and Gillarine and the conspiracy. I pressed my hands to my head as if to trap the words that kept escaping somewhere between my mind and my mouth, but concentration seemed to make no difference.
Danae, lighthouse, conspiracy
…I could not voice them.

“What have they done?” I tugged at my hair until my scalp burned. I was awake. In control of my body. Surely I could command my own speech. Surely…As I spewed half sentences and fragments, I remembered Thalassa's hands squeezing my mouth and head and began to understand. “Is that why you're here? Did they send you to test her damnable spell?”

Frantically, I sped through thoughts and memories in search of holes or gaps. Nothing of current or past events seemed to be missing, but then, how would I know?

“Valen…” Gildas laid his hands on my shoulders, but I knocked him backward.

“Listen to me! Listen!” Gildas got back to his knees and reached for me again. I twisted and shoved him away, but I could not both concentrate on the gaps in my speech and grapple with a man so determined and so surprisingly strong. Eventually he caught my upper arms and squeezed them tight to my body, shaking me until I met his gaze. “Be easy, Brother. This is well done. They've put a simple binder on your tongue with regard to these matters. Nothing more. I promise you. Father Abbot would allow nothing of a permanent nature. Yes, they wished me to test you. As the restriction is now proved, nothing further should be needed.”

“Am I to thank Luviar for that?” I said. I thrust my forearms between Gildas's and slammed them outward to break his grip. He winced and rubbed his arms, and I was glad of it.

He did not touch me again but crinkled his brow earnestly. “You ran, Valen. Blame the one responsible”—his face was all apology—“and forgive him. Now we need to move on. They'll be coming for you soon. The Sinduria wishes to leave for Palinur before Prime.”

He picked up my old clothes and held them out to me. “Though you must relinquish the cowl and gown, Father Abbot says you may keep the shirt. A biting cold has settled in since the storm.”

Stiff with anger at Gildas, at the monks, at myself and everyone else within Gillarine's walls, I made no move to take the stack. What had come over me in this place? I knew better than to trust anyone.

His eyes flicked quite obviously from me to the bundle. And then again. The third time he did so, I held out my hands. As he laid the neatly folded clothing on my open palms, his warm fingers grasped one of my hands and guided it to the middle of the stack. And there I felt a small wad of tallow-stiffened canvas, drawn closed with a leather thong.

I glanced up quickly, my heart galloping.

Raising his thick brows and smiling ruefully, he released the bundle and stood up. “You are a man of many virtues, Valen. Be
very
careful as you don these worldly garments again, lest you be snared from the path of right…or reason. There are always choices to be made, even in the life you were born to.”

Hot blood flooded my skin until I felt as if I must glow brighter than the lantern. I hated that he knew. What was wrong with me of late, worrying so much about what people thought of me? Gildas was but an overzealous monk. Gram a meek secretary. Jullian a smooth-chinned whelp. I could always find new friends.

Laying the stack beside me on the palliasse, I stripped off my cowl and gown. The stiff jaque bound tight over the thick, loose wool shirt. As I pulled on the braies, I quickly tucked the bag of nivat away and tied it safely to the waist string.

“And now drink the water—yes, you must. Then we'll pray.” Gildas held out the flask.

My mouth felt like a nest of thorns. I had to drink something. He observed me closely as I drained the tasteless contents of the flask.
Ugh…a drink for cows…

My stomach roiled at the first sip. Then a cramp twisted my gut, and my overheated skin blossomed into a cold sweat, as if my mother's divination had truly come to pass.

“Valen, what do you feel? It's only water.” Gildas might have been shouting down a well.

“I don't usually drink—” The word
poison
came to mind as I hurriedly found the rusty pail in the corner of the cell, ripped off its cover, and vomited up every drop of the foul stuff. Even when it seemed everything must be out of me, I could not stop heaving.

Gildas knelt beside me as I huddled over the bucket. His hands felt like ice on my blistering forehead. “Come, lie down. I'll tell Father Abbot and the Sinduria you'd best not travel today. Ah, friend…what strange miracles happen in this world. Nothing is out of the realm of possibility.”

He half carried, half dragged me to the palliasse, and threw the thin blanket over me, then grabbed his lamp and hurried out the door. Before his footsteps died away, I had fumbled my way back across the floor to the bucket, retching.

The rest of the day flowed together like wet ink on a page. As feeble daylight waxed and waned through a slot high on one cell wall, a string of visitors paraded through my cell—the abbot, Thalassa, Gildas, Thane Stearc, one at a time and then all together, talking and arguing too softly for me to hear. I could pay them no mind anyway. I was on my knees in the corner hunched over the fouled bucket, trying not to vomit up the entire contents of my skin. Brother Robierre questioned me between spasms, examining my tongue and fingernails, eyes and throat.

Even Gram came. He stood in the corner for a while, arms crossed, watching the others as they watched me. After a while he stepped close, laid his hand on my shoulder, and mumbled some incomprehensible sympathy.

As the Compline bell rang, I crawled back to my palliasse. Brother Robierre returned soon after. “The worst seems past,” he said, once he had verified that I was alive. “Were you trustworthy, we could have made you more comfortable in the infirmary.” I had never heard the kind infirmarian so frosty.

“No matter.” My raw throat made everything sound harsh.

He wiped my face with a damp rag and laid yet another blanket over me. “The abbot charged me to inform you of my findings. You were not poisoned. Anselm found naught in your spew or your blood. Your body tells me that you are entirely healthy. So this must be some condition of your blood. Perhaps sorcerers cannot tolerate blessed water. I've not treated your kind…purebloods…before.”

I shook my head and laughed. “Purebloods were never my kind.”

He did not see the humor. “Then perhaps it is the soul-poison of a man who would so betray the gifts of the good god and so endanger those who welcomed him as a brother. I will petition Iero to break your sinful spirit, Valen. Here—” With deft hands, he raised my head and emptied a vial of something strong and sweet down my gullet before I could protest. “Now you've settled a bit, this should ease your stomach.”

“I'm sorry, Brother,” I mumbled, dropping my head to the palliasse, feeling his draft sapping my remaining strength. “But you cannot possibly understand.”

He stood to go. “One more thing…Young Gerard was supposed to serve in the infirmary this evening, but the lad has not been seen all day. You ever took an interest in the boys, and someone told me you might know where he was off to.”

“No…sorry. Truly.”

The iron door clanged shut behind Robierre.

The day's end bell had rung at least two hours since. That had been the last time I heard movement in the dark stairwell outside the door. Only two pureblood guards, Gildas had told me, and even purebloods had to sleep. Head pounding from holding off the effects of Brother Badger's draft, I crept across the floor and touched my finger to the bottom of the door. Despite the doulon looming ever closer, I could not afford to hoard my magic. Flooding power into the spell, I drew my finger up and around in a sweeping arc on the stone beside the door, and back to the floor again. Then I grabbed my boots and crawled through the void into the stairwell. Still no sound.

The touch of open air on my cheek guided me up one narrow stair. I avoided brushing the wall. Hopes rising, I turned and slipped up the second course, bare feet soundless. One more turn, one more climb. I glimpsed a rectangular opening filled with stars…and then a squat silhouette blocked the opening.