The Daemon Prism, page 21
My breathing calmed. My heart stilled. I extended my hand and waited, until the man at my feet grasped it. I hauled him up and released him. “Pardon my anger. The confusion … I cannot—”
“No matter, Master. You were injured. I hope no harm comes to you or your friend. It’s why I’ve tried to follow his instructions so carefully.” John’s voice was flat. I didn’t trust him any more than before. But we’d seen no more of pursuit, and I had no choices. The old shepherd’s warning about trickster companions would have made me laugh did I remember how.
“You’ve done well. I could not ask for better service.”
“We had best get on with things, then. I’ll fetch something for you to eat.”
“The world is still in danger, John. The chevalier understood that, better than I knew, and he’d be pleased with your service. Get me to Carabangor and I’ll see you rewarded fairly.”
Unlike Andero, John Deune didn’t bristle at the offer. He brought me cheese, olive paste, and a biscuit that could drive nails into oak. Starving, I ate it all. When all was packed away, I hauled myself into the saddle, not daring touch the staff that was replaced reassuringly at my knee.
“Now, I suppose you must lead me out of here.”
“Yes, Master.” Dislike and resentment were thick in the familiar drawl. Sarcasm dripped from the honorific. I’d not sleep easy while we were together. John must want something awfully to put up with this.
The lead rope strung from his saddle to Devil, John Deune clicked his tongue and we moved down the last slopes of Kadr’s ridge toward the Uravani River, the desert, and Carabangor’s mysteries.
I believed I could fall no lower.
Anne
CHAPTER 15
15 ESTAR, EVENING DEMESNE OF LOUVEL
I rode like the Souleater’s own legion, stopping only to relieve the horse or to sleep. The demesnes of northern Aubine and southern Louvel were as familiar to me as my own hand, so I could hold to private lanes and vineyard tracks that spies were highly unlikely to watch. Yet, I took no chances. The first night I bedded down in the Marques Piafort’s riding school, deserted since the death of his wife and daughter of summer fever. Cranked tight as a crossbow, I couldn’t sleep.
The second night, I huddled in a wayside shrine dedicated to Sante Ianne. Ilario believed Portier was Sante Ianne reborn to serve the world yet again. Outlandish, I would have said three years before. But Portiers extraordinary history had set me questioning. Even Dante had confessed—albeit grudging—that something extraordinary had occurred with Portier on Mont Voilline, something beyond his own magic and our joined power. Fates keep them both safe.
On the third day, determined to remain unpredictable, I rode west out of my way to the Ley and the small harbor at Villefort. There I paid a bargeman to carry me upriver past Merona and into northern Louvel. I told him I was slipping away from a cruel uncle in order to meet my lover while he was on leave from the Guard Royale. The man reduced the fee and recruited his two grown sons to provide extra hands at the poles.
From our landing at Leynoue, it would be two hard days’ ride to Laurentine and Pradoverde. I would need to take care on my approach. If de Ferrau’s witness knew I had lived with Dante, then perhaps he … or she … knew where as well. And if Dante wasn’t there, then by the Creator’s mighty hand, I’d follow him to Jarasco and into the wilds of Coverge.
PRADOVERDE
Duskborn plodded along the cart track. Both of us were about done in. Cold, relentless rain had made the two days from the river a misery. The rain had slacked only a half hour past, as the invisible sun nudged the western horizon. But mist had risen in the clefts and hollows, stealing what remained of the light.
I’d been sorely tempted to take a room in Laurentine. But even through cold, sodden weariness, I had judged that a mistake. Beltan de Ferrau of the Jarasco Temple Minor had traveled a very long way to question me, and I had gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid being followed. It would be idiocy to walk into a public house and risk alerting one of his spies. Besides, answers lay only a few kilometres more. I needed to be home.
Duskborn balked and snorted, his ears alert. I soothed and hushed him, urging him off the road and into the lee of a hill.
Dante, friend … I urged the words into the aether. But I sensed him only as before … a distant, stonelike presence, entirely unlike his usual fiery knot. Yet such was the immeasurable nature of the aether that unless he answered me, he could be one metre distant or ten thousand, awake, asleep, or insensible.
No threat materialized. Somehow I coaxed the last of Duskborn’s strength to life, and I soon dismounted at the hornbeam copse that marked the edge of our land.
“Stay here, brave heart,” I whispered for no sensible reason. “I’ll come back for you soon and you’ll spend the night with fine Louvel hay and Ladyslipper and Sonata for company. And Devil, too, if the gods are kind.”
But there was no kindness in earth or Heaven that night. I crossed Pradoverde’s boundary, past the small cairn I’d placed so Dante could find the cart track on his own. A raw screech sirened through the aether.
I kicked over the cairn, silencing the noise only Dante and I could hear. The tripped ward signaled that an intruder had violated Pradoverde’s boundaries and that Dante wasn’t available to cut off the noise.
My feet moved faster up the swale that hid the house from the road. When an orange haze suffused the sky above the grassy slope, I took out running.
“Finn!” I screamed. “Finn, where are you?”
There was no more purpose to stealth. Flames enveloped the kitchen building and the wooden sheds and steps at the rear of the main house. Orange tongues spurted from the front windows of the lower floor. A dark mass exploded from the door and splintered itself. The larger part darted back inside. By the time the dark figure emerged again with another armload, I had reached the pitiful pile of books he had dumped on the damp ground.
“Mistress!” Finn dropped his current load onto the pile. “Stay back!”
“Is anyone else here?”
“None.” He vanished into the smoke curling from the front door.
My cry of caution was swallowed by a thundering burst from the rear of the house—Dante’s laboratorium. I ripped off my cloak and the sleeveless gown layered over my riding trousers. Arm shielding mouth and nose, I followed Finn inside.
The heat near sucked the life out of me. Despite frenzied flames dancing in the workroom and licking the walls, thick smoke left me near as blind as Dante. Wood snapped and creaked. The walls were stone, but the upper floor … the roof … We had little time.
Heartsick, I groped through a jumble of furnishings toward the small painting of a lighthouse that had hung in Dante’s rooms at Castelle Escalon. It blackened and curled before I could reach it. So I changed course. Finn knew the only things truly worth saving: Dante’s books or … Oh, gods, his journals. Everything he knew of magic was written down in his awkward angular hand. Losing it all … Angels’ mercy, it would destroy him.
The library, too, was a jumble, shelves toppled, volumes scattered across the floor. Many were already burning. Loose papers floated on the heated air, bursting into flame like swamp lights.
“Which ones?” croaked Finn, coughing as he picked through whatever volumes lay atop the piles.
“His own first. Anything in his hand.” Frantically wiping my eyes, I spun around. Nothing was in its place. “But where?”
“Here, I think.” Finn waded through the ash-covered debris and thrust leather-bound journals and stacks of paper into my arms. “Now go on. I’ll bring what else I can.”
“Hurry.”
I stumbled through the door into the blessed air, dropped my burden on the pile, and whirled around, intending to go back for more. But the roof had caught, lighting the yard with garish orange.
“Finn!” I screamed between hacking coughs. “Get out!”
He emerged on the heels of my words, staggering under the load. I thrust my arms under his and together we lowered the treasures onto the pile. So little … all that remained of a life’s work.
Thunderous flames geysered skyward, as the roof collapsed into the shell of the house. I sank to my knees in the mud, coughing. Flooding tears eased the smoke sting in my eyes, but naught else.
Finn collapsed beside me, long arms dangling over his knees as he coughed until he could scarce catch a breath.
The firelight dimmed quickly inside the blackened shell of stone.
“What’s left standing?” I said. “We need to get these under cover.” The mist was thickening. My face and neck were slick with moisture.
“The guesthouse and stable weren’t fired,” he rasped, getting slowly to his feet. “I’ll fetch a barrow.”
As he slogged around the smoky ruin, I stacked pages with bound books atop and underneath to preserve what I could from the moisture. Finn brought a sheet of canvas along with the barrow. I used it to cover the remaining pile. He pushed the loaded barrow and I carried an armful across the muddy yard and garden to the guesthouse.
“What happened?” I said, numb. Dante had woven fire wards about Pradoverde, but they could merely warn those under its roofs. It was impossible to weave protections against every possible source of fire.
“I’d gone down the village for a stoup. Come back round the lake and through the wood. Surprised someone creeping round the house. Guess I should be grateful he didn’t want to kill no one. I’m no good wrastler. Woke up face down in the muck with the house afire.”
“You’re a hero, Finn. Bless all saints and angels you’re all right.”
He pushed open the guesthouse door. “Badger balls!”
The smaller dwelling where Finn and Dante slept had been ransacked. Beds and tables overturned, lamps and ink bottles smashed, clothes chests emptied. We had to lift a heavy oak chest and move it aside to get the barrow through the door. What were they after?
Finn threw a broken table and the torn pallets into a corner so we could unload the barrow. Three trips more and we had all we could salvage under the guesthouse roof. Rain hissed on the fallen timbers, sending acrid smoke billowing into the mist and choking us with the stink.
While Finn tended Duskborn, I laid a hearth fire, shoved debris aside, and assembled beds. By the time Finn stumbled inside, we had water boiling for black tea, all the provision Finn and Dante kept.
We gulped it until we stopped shivering. Now we had light enough, I insisted Finn let me clean and dress several nasty burns on his arms and back with the ointment of aloe Dante always kept nearby. Only then could I pose the question that kept me on my feet: “Have you had any word from Dante, Lord Ilario, or Captain de Santo since they rode north?”
Finn shook his head, too tired to speak, and collapsed on his pallet. I soon followed. Everything else would have to wait for morning.
“Who did this?” I said, when Finn stumbled out of the guesthouse door into the rain-washed sunlight. A thicket of hair framed his bony sootsmudged face.
I sat on a bench in our little orchard, my back to the ruined house. Idle, for the moment. One glimpse into the blackened carcass of my home had convinced me there was nothing in the steaming black soup within that could possibly be salvaged.
Finn joined me on the bench. His grimy fingers gripped the seat’s edge. “Didn’t see him well, as it was dark early and fogged in. And he wore a kerchief covered his mouth. But he had a swagger about him very like a fellow I met down to Nelli’s taproom. One of the three that come from the north I wrote you about.”
“The ones who told you of the winter storms on the road to Coverge?” That’s where Jarasco lay—Tetrarch de Ferrau’s sacred demesne. Now I could envision the city on the maps my father had hung in our schoolroom. The pale-eyed tetrarch had not left my thoughts all morning. Papa had always said that righteous holy men were the most dangerous enemies.
“Aye. Mayhap I talked too free …”
“Common thieves, do you think, looking for charms or silver or gems a mage might own?” Or had they been more purposeful, as someone hunting evidence of necromancy?
“Never met a thief, save me and other lads snatchin’ lemons and such.” Finn glanced out from under his wild shock of hair. “These were friendly—at least two of ’em were, as one kept always to himself. Yet I’d not think of ’em as common. They was clean. Tidy, you know, not like someone’s been working in the vineyard, nor even draymen. Fingernails clean, too, as you’re always onto me about. They said they’d come south looking for work where it weren’t so cold. I didn’t ask what as I’d no work to offer, but mayhap I ought to have.”
“No reason you should. Were any of them in the taproom last night to see you there?”
“Don’t know. I was down there, but … with Nelli … out back. Not inside. That’s where I am mostly in the village.”
I nodded as if I’d not noticed his cheeks scarlet under the soot.
His whole posture softened, while his earnestness redoubled. “But mayhap someone heard talk of the grenadier’s dream. That fellow, John Deune, said three emeralds so large would be worth more than Pradoverde.”
“Grenadier? Emeralds? I thought Dante went to see his father.”
“That come later—the message from his brother. From the day he got that, I knew he’d go. It talked about the angel, you see … the angel in the dream that was still preyin’ on his mind.”
Clearly Finn had a much longer tale than I’d imagined. “Come, I’ve got some cheese and biscuits in my saddle pack. You can draw some water. After we eat I’ll sort through this mess while you tell me everything that happened from the hour I left Pradoverde.”
He heaved a great sigh and leapt to his feet. “There’s a deal to tell. I had to write it all twice … but it’s likely burnt up now.”
As I sorted books, blotted pages, and spread them near the hearth to dry, Finn replaced the spare furnishings, gathered the scattered clothing, and recounted the tale of Masson de Cuvier and his terrible dream, and of the day Dante received the unexpected letter from his family.
“So he believed this woman—this enchantress—caused his father’s accident?”
“Drove him halfloony, it did. He ran me off and spent the whole day in the forge. Never heard the like of his hammering.”
I had heard it before, whenever Dante’s temper drove him to violence.
“You ought to leave when he warns you,” I said, though it felt like a betrayal, like admitting de Ferrau’s accusations. Yet I had experienced the ferocity of Dante’s rage in the aether. Dante’s wonder at the universe, his keen, ever-questioning mind, and his passion to make sense of what he found made him an incomparable teacher—and a companion worthy of a lifetime’s knowing. But whatever drove him—whether his desire to know, or to set the world to rights, or to overcome the scars of a past he refused to share—fed both his passion and his fragile, frightening temper.
“The way he was, I didn’t know but he would burn the place down and himself in it.” Finn glanced up from his bundle of muddy garments. “He had me write the letter to the chevalier that very night….”
“And the three of them rode north—Dante, Lord Ilario, and Captain de Santo—and you never heard from them after.”
“Aye.”
What had happened to Dante and Ilario? And John Deune, too, who was supposed to meet with them along the road? How had Captain de Santo ended up dead at Montclaire?
Where did I begin to make sense of all this? I felt less certain that heading for Coverge was the right course. Dante was not dead, so I couldn’t imagine him remaining long with a family he despised. Such a magical mystery would drive him hard, especially if he saw some remnant of Kajetan’s hand in it. His blindness necessitated a companion. That he had asked Ilario to do it—angels comfort the chevalier for enduring that task—was a powerful measure of his urgency.
I could not come up with any hypothesis that would connect this dream enchantress to the Temple. The Temple had no argument with magic, save when it impinged on their particular view of the divine—as necromancy did. Neither did they use magic in their practices. But perhaps de Ferrau’s investigation had turned up evidence relevant to this inquiry, something that might tell me where to look if not the tetrarch.
Merona, then. I would accept de Ferrau’s invitation to hear his witnesses. And I could, perhaps, ask the zealous tetrarch if he commonly burnt the homes of those he accused. Or tortured soldiers…
Having a plan got me moving. I did what I could to dry and sort the books and papers. Many were ruined, charred, or the ink hopelessly smeared. The scant information Finn recalled about the emeralds had me sort through the small stacks of surviving books to see if the particular volume he’d read had survived. I didn’t see it. Nor did I find any useful history. Papa and my goodfather had always talked of the Maldivean Hegemony as a model of good governance, but it had been such a slight interruption in the brutal history of Aroth, I’d never paid any attention to it.
Finn fetched supplies from Laurentine and verified through Nelli the tap girl that the three men from the north were yet hanging about. “I’d like to talk to them before I go,” I said. “But I don’t want it known that I’ve been here.” I decided to wait until I was ready to ride for Merona.
Finn and I dug through the cooling ruins and found our iron money box under the stone floor of the kitchen. Before I left, he needed money to pay our tax lest he be hauled off to debtors’ prison in our stead.
“What’s all this?” I said, as I opened the iron box to see a heap of folded paper.
“I threw the post in there till the master came back,” he said as he wrung out a shirt and hung it over a chair next the hearth. I had suggested that Nelli merited a shirt that wasn’t black with soot. “Figured I wouldn’t lose it that way and have him yelling at me.”
“But you needed me to unlock it.”
He shrugged. “After I wrote you the letter, I thought to look in the master’s pettibox, where he keeps that ring and the silver locket and such at night. Sure enough, he left his keys there. Now they’re lost in that stew of the house.”
