Breath and Bone Read online

  “He planned to bring his mother back from the dead,” I said numbly.

  “Osriel read everything he could find about Aurellian sorcery, and he questioned my mother and his father’s other purebloods until their ears blistered. He studied and followed my mother about as she worked with the sick. She said Riel could have been a healer himself were he not a king’s bastard, required to study politics and war. Everyone believed Osriel sought a cure for saccheria, but I knew what he was looking for. At twelve, when his father took him to Ardra for the first time, he brought back a wagonload of Aurellian books, and in an old book of herb spells, he found the key.”

  Saverian’s long, capable fingers were tangled in a knot, pressed to her chin, and she kept her eyes averted as people do when they tell stories they believe they should not.

  “At fifteen, he showed me how he could smother a frog and set it breathing again. A few months later, he claimed to have touched the living soul of a villein who had been kicked by a horse, though the man’s soul escaped him before he could catch it. By this time he had accepted that his mother was gone, but he could not stop.” She paused, pressing her lips together.

  “And Voushanti?” I said, urging her on.

  “From the day Lirene died, wherever Osriel walked, sat, studied, or slept, Voushanti stood by. Riel hated it. He called the saccheria his prison, and Voushanti his warder. When he was small, he cast magical curses at Voushanti—little flaming, stinging things—and his father chastised him sorely for it. By the time he turned sixteen, he merely lived as if Voushanti did not exist.

  “One winter afternoon, Osriel was sitting in the old library of this house, studying. He was feverish again, his joints so swollen that any movement was excruciating. He was practicing fire work, smothering the hearth fire and starting it up again with pure magic. Voushanti warned him repeatedly to stop, for the steward had reported the library chimney clogged. Voushanti stood directly in front of the hearth…”

  I needed no more words to see what happened—a frustrated, angry, pain-racked youth flaunting his talent before his jailer, casting a great flaming spell toward the hearth.

  Saverian stopped and drank from her ale cup. I was so caught up in the story, my own remained untouched. “Voushanti saved him from the fire,” I said.

  Saverian drained her cup. “The place burned like dry wheat. You can still see the ruin out behind the west wing. Voushanti took the full brunt of Osriel’s fireburst and the eruption of the chimney, yet he carried Osriel out, completely shielding him from the flames. No one could have survived such injuries as the mardane bore. My mother pronounced him dead within the hour.”

  Like the tides of Evaldamon, cold dread swept over me again. “But Osriel…”

  “He demanded servants carry the body into his private study. Almost a full day later, Riel summoned my mother to tend Voushanti’s burns. Lungs, heart, all his organs were functioning, though his burns remained savage. Voushanti lived again.”

  “You say this has happened more than once…his dying…”

  “Three that I know of. One that I saw, when Riel was too sick to complete the spell and called me in to help. Severe wounds can stop Voushanti’s heart, but he can be brought back if the enchantment is renewed immediately. Time can stop his heart if the enchantment is not renewed at least once in a sevenday. But the one whose blood seals the enchantment on the mardane’s lips is bound to him, able to command Voushanti to his service. Unless you force him elsewhere, Voushanti will not leave your side. He will sense your presence, know when you’re in trouble, and he fights like a man who has nothing to lose. He could make the difference between your venture’s success and failure.”

  “What of his soul?”

  “I don’t believe in souls.”

  “What does the prince say?”

  She folded her arms tight across her breast and hardened her mouth as if expecting me to assault her. “He says that Voushanti’s soul and body are fused, and that when his body dies at last—truly and forever—his soul will die with it. Osriel bears some dreadful guilt over the whole thing, which is ridiculous. The magic is truly remarkable.”

  I would have given my teeth to have more time to consider what Saverian had told me, for in her story of Osriel’s bold sorcery lay the truth about dead men’s eyes and votive vessels sealed with blood and what Osriel intended to do with them. I had assumed he planned some great enchantment, built with the substance and energies he had stolen from dying men. But now…It came to me that the Bastard thought to ensorcel himself an army.

  Chapter 20

  “Who gave you leave to speak of these matters?” The red centers of Voushanti’s dark eyes gleamed with fury. “The prince will have you flogged.”

  Saverian stepped closer to my side, as if together we could withstand his wrath. I wished I was far from Saverian’s meticulously ordered study.

  “The prince commanded me to do what was necessary to give you a full span of life, Mardane,” said Saverian. “You owe him your obedience, as I do.”

  “Him. Not you. Not this fey sorcerer.”

  “Then do as he would command you. If you have another partner in mind, perhaps Magnus could fetch him.”

  Cream-colored light streamed from a lamp of the magical variety that lit Renna Syne, illuminating shelf upon shelf filled with books, beakers, bottles, and jars. Two well-scrubbed tables laid out with brass implements, mortar and pestle, pans, and balances furnished one end of the room. A chair, side table, and footstool held the opposite end, with a variety of stools and benches in between. The physician had failed to mention the chamber’s location in the bowels of Renna’s fortress or its lack of windows. Evidently she disliked being bothered by household noise, outdoor views, or air as she worked.

  When I had said I would consider doing as she suggested, Saverian had bustled me here immediately. “What of your scruples?” I’d asked her, as we traipsed across the dry hillside between Renna Syne and the fortress. “You once told me that ‘no worthy physician could stand by and see a healthy body damaged.’”

  “To cause death deliberately violates every principle of the healer’s art,” she had said. “And to keep a body alive by enchantment violates the good order of nature that stands before any god in my esteem. But if I refuse to perpetuate Osriel’s ugly mistake, then I have destroyed Voushanti just as surely and far more permanently. He will die unless you and I do this.” That was the point I could not argue.

  Then we had arrived and Voushanti had been waiting for her. And before I could say yes or no, she had told Voushanti I would be his new partner in this macabre business. Since then he had been circling the workroom like a trapped wolf.

  Saverian continued to speak calmly. “It seems unlikely that the prince will return in time to perform this service for you himself. As you are accompanying Magnus to Palinur to effect our lord’s rescue, it would be most inconvenient if you were to die in the midst of it. This seems a reasonable solution to your problem.”

  “Reasonable?” There ensued one of the most horrible sounds I had ever heard—a strident gargling bellow that might have emanated from one of the nearby dungeons. The accompanying jerk of Voushanti’s shoulders and the spasm of emotion that crossed his scarred visage gave me the unlikely idea that he was laughing. “You cannot even tell me how this one’s fey blood might affect the enchantment. Would I had a tankard, physician, that I could raise it to your twisted notion of reason.”

  Saverian, unfazed, pointed to a long low bench. Scuffed leather covered its thin padding. “I promise you will be no more dead using the sorcerer’s blood than you will be without it. You’ve an appointment in Palinur three hours hence, Mardane, which means you’ve little enough time for recovery. If we’re to do this, we do it now.”

  Events swept past and over me like a flock of startled crows. Abandoning me at the door, where I held a drowning man’s grip on a much too low lintel stone, Saverian dragged a stepstool to one of her shelves and retrieved a small enamele
d canister shaped like an angel. She set the canister on a knee-high table in company with a silver lancet, a square stack of folded linen, and a bronze basin with an extended lip like that of a pitcher.

  “Slitting your heart vein will be quickest, Lord Voushanti, though the blood loss will likely leave you weaker than you would prefer,” she said. “But delivering Magnus to Prince Bayard should not entail a fight, and the journey…you will marvel at its ease and, in fact, decide that you have bound yourself to a fine racehorse. We’ll hope he keeps his pace reasonable in deference to your recent demise.”

  Like dust motes floating on the light, her macabre humor failed to settle. Voushanti’s pacing slowed. Perhaps he might refuse the enchantment…which seemed a vile and wicked hope.

  Saverian paused in her preparations. “Do you wish a sleeping draft? I know Prince Osriel does not offer, but I could—”

  “No!” None of his answers had approached the ferocity of this one.

  Without further argument, the seething warrior removed his leather jupon, gray tunic, and wool shirt, exposing broad chest and shoulders mottled with ugly red burn scars, old battle wounds, and patches of black and gray hair. He laid his garments on Saverian’s chair and reclined on the leather bench.

  At Saverian’s direction I moved to Voushanti’s side. He averted his face, and neither twitched nor fidgeted.

  With a flurry of brusque steps and clinking glass, Saverian added a few vials, tapers, and small dishes to her supplies. Then she doused the magical lamp and brought a lighted candle to her table. Drawing her stool beside mine, she thrust a stained but clean wadded sheet into my sweating hands. “Be ready with this,” she said softly.

  I could not think what she meant, but didn’t ask. My eyes would not leave the wide flat handle of the lancet that lay snug in her hand.

  “Mardane Voushanti, is it your will that I take you past the brink of unlife and work this magic to restore your breath and blood?”

  He jerked his head in assent, but fixed his eyes on the far wall.

  “Speak your will, or I’ll have none of this,” she snapped. “No man will say I chose this way.”

  Voushanti swiveled his head to glare redly at the both of us. “You’ve not bound me to this bench. Obey our master’s will. Take this life and give it back.”

  He turned away again. Saverian probed his neck with two fingers and without hesitation jabbed her lancet in between.

  Blood spewed from Voushanti’s wound like the liquid fire Aurellians discharge from their warships to set their enemies ablaze. Only by fortunate reaction did I hold up the wadded linen to catch this monstrous volley. Voushanti jerked and gripped the edge of the bench, emitting only a grunt.

  Saverian, her hands gloved in gore, snatched up one of her smaller folds of linen and held it to the surging flow, channeling it into the long lip of the tin basin, a river of red that threatened to overflow the vessel. The chamber fell silent, save for Voushanti’s rapid, shallow breaths.

  I rubbed my arms through the thin shirtsleeves, afraid to let myself feel anything. I had experienced a man’s death once. Saverian must wear steel beneath her plain garb.

  As the pulsing flow of blood dwindled, Voushanti’s breath began to labor. The half of his face we could see was a morbid blue-white and sheened with sweat. His hands that had gripped the bench now lay flaccid on its cracked leather.

  Saverian had me set the heavy basin aside while she wiped her hands clean. Then she turned the warrior’s head to face us and slipped another square of folded linen under the wound to absorb the waning trickle of his life. His scarred face was slack, his stare dull, even as his chest strained and heaved to draw each breath.

  I labored with him. The walls bulged and writhed around us. The flat iron stink of blood wakened reminders of battlefield nights, of wails and screams and dread visions. The physician dipped a finger into a small jar and dabbed a yellow ointment on Voushanti’s eyelids, flooding the thickening air with the pungent perfume of ysomar that the Karish said would summon angels to carry the soul to heaven, and the Sinduri claimed would call the Ferryman to the earthly shore to transport the soul to the Kemen Sky Lord’s feasting halls or Magrog’s land of torment. But what if a man’s soul was “fused to his body” and could not journey onward? What if a man had no soul?

  I had stabbed Boreas for mercy, drowned a pack of Harrowers to save other lives, and slain Navronne’s enemies for my king. None of these deaths rested easy in my mind, but at the least I had believed that those victims would be granted some existence beyond this life. Every god I knew promised a continuing for those who had a soul, so I’d never imagined I was sending them to endless nothing. But this…what was this we did here? A certain horror gripped my breath and bone. I could no longer sit still.

  Grabbing Saverian’s arm, I yanked her off her stool and dragged her away from the couch so Voushanti could not hear me. Scarlet cheeked, she wrestled to get free. “Are you mad?” she spat. “I need to watch him.”

  “Is there a chance this spell won’t revive him?” I said, harsh and quiet. “Have you done it before…you yourself?”

  “I’ve seen it done. I know what to do.”

  “But is there a chance? Could he not revive?” I shook her, unwilling to release her until I heard yea or nay.

  “No spell is proof against failure,” she said. “I’ll do my best, which is better than most. Now let me go, lest his heart stop for too long, for then the magic will fail.”

  I let her go, and she hurried back to her work, examining the blood that dribbled slowly from Voushanti’s neck. Briskly, she sprinkled herbs and powders from her vials into three glass dishes and used a thin brass spatula to dip blood from the basin and drip some on each dish. With thumb and forefinger she used one mixture to draw sigils on Voushanti’s forehead and cheeks. With another, she marked spiked crescents under her own eyes.

  Wiping her lancet clean on another folded square, she beckoned me back to my place. “The time approaches. Stop now, and you murder him.”

  Furious at myself for not questioning earlier, furious at Saverian, at Osriel, I returned to my stool. We might have already sent this man to his end. Alone. Before Saverian could stop me, I laid my hand on Voushanti’s spasming breast.

  “Valen! What are you doing?”

  So near, linked by touch and his blood on my skin, I existed with and in him. I opened my senses.

  The cold of Navronne’s untimely winter was as nothing to the bitter hour of Voushanti’s dying. One gouge of fire seared my neck…one grating burn marked agonized lungs…elsewise, waking mind hung suspended in a world of freezing black. Utterly alone. Anger rumbled faintly in the dark like retreating thunder. No fear, though. No grief. Not his, at least.

  One more straining breath and the body could do no more. The candlelight retracted to a pinpoint, only bright enough to serve as a reminder of loss. And as light and pain flared and faded, Voushanti and I shared one silent cry of such piercing hunger as tore the fabric of the descending night…

  “Valen! Give me your hand. Now!”

  I gasped, blinked, and snatched my hand from the clammy, flaccid body. Shuddering, wagging my head, I tried to clear out the morbid darkness, but patterns of light and shadow, more than could be explained by one small candle, shifted and wavered on the walls and in the very air itself, overflowing that chamber as the mardane’s blood did the tin vessel. Saverian’s cheekbones, flushed under the blood marks, and her green eyes, fiery with purpose, supplied the only sparks of color. The angel canister stood open on the table, whatever enchantment it had contained now released.

  Murmuring words I could not distinguish, Saverian scooped a fragrant green liquid from her third glass dish and traced patterns on my cheeks and forehead. Then her warm fingers clamped my wrist and pressed the back of my hand to a leather cushion that rested in her lap. Quick as lightning, her sharp little blade scored my thumb. Pain far beyond the wounding shot through my hand and up my arm as if traveling through my
gards.

  She pressed my bloody thumb to Voushanti’s lips, crying out in Aurellian, “Rise and live, mortal man, all desire and worth bound to thy master’s will until heart stops, bone crumbles, and breath fails.” Her marks on my face grew hot, as if Kol were at his work again, and I felt the varied parts of the spell engage, as if they were the shafts and cogs of a mill wheel.

  Shadows whirled over our heads, raising a wind that flapped book pages and rattled the shelves. Glassware tumbled to the stone floor and smashed alongside metal containers that clattered and bounced. The candle winked out. And still the physician held my bleeding thumb to those cold lips.

  Then, of a sudden, Voushanti’s head jerked beneath my hand, and a shaft of red lightning shot from his dead eyes straight into my own head. For one soul-searing moment, I could not look away…and then it was over. Darkness engulfed us again, the quivering excitement of air and life that signified enchantment vanished. Saverian released her grip.

  Blind in the absolute blackness, I cradled my cut hand to my breast, hoping to ease the pain in my arm and in my soul. The marks on my face cooled quickly, and the rattles and clatters ceased as the whirlwind dissipated. A choking noise came from the bench in front of me.

  “Come away,” whispered Saverian in my ear, drawing me up and away from the muffled sounds. “Careful. Mind the lintel.”

  I shuffled my feet to keep from stumbling over the debris and extended one hand at head height. Just as my fingers encountered stone and I ducked my head to clear the doorway, a pale light burst out behind me, illuminating Saverian’s face and hands. Two fingers of her right hand were pointed at a lamp in the room behind. I turned to look, but glimpsed only Voushanti’s back as she pulled the heavy door closed.