His face brightened. “I’ll do it. I swear—”
“Be careful with oaths, lad,” I said, smiling. “They’ll take you where you never thought to go.”
When I delivered Jullian back to him, I clasped hands with Brother Victor and thanked him for his help. “Lock your door, Brother. Stay safe. I’ll come when I can to tell you what transpires.”
“No one will find us.” Brother Victor touched my bare shoulder. Somewhere in all the taking off and putting on, I had lost my bundle of clothes. I hadn’t even noticed. “You shall be Iero’s finger of grace this day, Valen. Do not doubt.”
The silver-white disk of the sun had slipped past the zenith, and I was yet climbing the last steep hill toward the Well and my waiting grandsire. The day had grown oppressive—the air so cold and thick it was an effort to breathe. Not a whisper of wind stirred the dead grass that poked from the rocks in stiff clumps. The light was flat, a gray-white haze dulling the faint blue of the sky. I felt screams on the air. The taste of blood filled my mouth, no matter how often I spat or grabbed a handful of dry snow to wash it out. Was it that this land’s king lay bleeding, or had Sila and her allies already reached Renna and bent their minds to slaughter and corruption?
I jogged lightly across the ledge and down the narrow passage through the cliff that led to the Well. A white-haired Dané squatted beside the dark, still surface of the pool.
“With all respect, grandsi—argai.” He looked up sharply and I bowed. “Duties prevented—”
“Thy duty lies here and only here.”
Stian’s greeting halted my apology in the way of an avalanche—rock and ice and inarguable finality. Which, on this day when my turbulent insides already seemed to be digesting briars and knives, drove me to bursting. “My duty lies wherever I choose to pledge my service. Here at the Well. With my king. With my human friends. And with my Danae kin.”
“This is impossible,” he roared, shaking the ice-clad granite. “Kol is mistaken in thee.” He jumped to his feet and strode across the corrie. In moments he would vanish.
“Wait, please, argai. Permit me…” Damnable touchy bastard. I dropped to my knees and laid hands on the stone, and felt a welcoming warmth flow up my arms. But it was a pattern I sought, the newest one—of course he would have danced here.
It began and ended at the spot where he had been kneeling. First a powerful spin. More turns than Kol’s, but a heavier landing. I brushed one foot to the side. Shifted weight. Brushed the other. And then a leap—drive your spirit upward, Valen—scarcely landing before another, and then another, circling the pool. Do not think of your loutish, graceless bumbling. Only of the steps…feel them…show him…
Such twisted grief I felt as I moved through his steps, such wrenching guilt for blindness and stubborn pride, for anger and righteous belief. Stian’s grief and guilt. Clyste, the brightest spirit ever gifted to the long-lived, had died here unforgiven. She had not dared tell her own sire of her hopes, and this shadow of his kiran told me she had been right to keep her secret. That was the worst. He would have woven her bonds of myrtle and hyssop himself. Pain drove Stian’s dancing, relentless, unending self-condemnation for beliefs he could not recant.
I stumbled to the end of the silver thread. Trying to stretch my spine longer, lower my hips, and round my arms as to embrace a tree, I made my imitation of the allavé. I closed my eyes, determined to hold the position as long as possible, more afraid to hear Stian’s scorn than to exhibit my incapacity. But, at the least, I understood him better.
To my astonishment, a hand grasped my back foot, shifted it slightly toward the center of my body, stretched it out farther, and left only my great toe touching the ground.
My forward thigh heated. My supporting ankle wobbled. But I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself still.
The hands grasped my waist and pressed me down and forward, and then pushed my shoulders down to realign them with back, hip, and leg. I thought my burning thigh would rip. But I held.
“Remember,” he said as he pulled my elbows wider and lower, twisted and kneaded my wrists until they felt like softened clay, and riffled my fingers until they rested light as ash on my forehead. Cradling my head in his palms, he drew his thumbs across my eyelids and forehead, smoothing away my frown of concentration. “Thou’rt a stick. Pounding will break thee…or leave thee pliable. Now stand up.”
I drew in my back leg and pushed up, resisting the urge to groan or knead the muscles of my aching thigh.
“I could not believe what Kol spoke of thee,” he said, his granite cheeks unsoftened. “Come. We must prepare. Nightfall opens the Canon.”
Chapter 32
I held my tongue and followed Stian through the cliff passage. My actions seemed to please him better than my words.
We emerged from the passage into a wholly different landscape—a valley of tall pines decked with frost. Then Stian transported me through a series of breathtakingly fast shifts that demonstrated how rudimentary Kol had been with his teaching. No shift left me nauseated until the last, when we strolled onto a grassy hilltop, the high point of a ridge that protruded from the mountains. The oppression of the day, the anguish on the air, the blood and pain and unyielding winter came together here, leaving every movement an effort.
With only a gesture, Stian bade me stay where I was, while he wandered about the hillside. Every once in a while he would execute a breathtaking leap or a jump and spin that denied the god’s firm hand that holds our bodies to the earth. At last he seemed to find what he wanted. He knelt and began to clear a spot of rocks and grass.
The view from the hilltop was magnificent. A little to the north, a small lake reflected the flat light, its outflow several small streams that shone like steel and gouged the hillsides. East of the ridge, the land dropped into a tangle of rock spires and knobbed hills that stretched to the horizon and the deepening blue of winter afternoon. The shortest day of the year. I was eight-and-twenty, and I was not mad. Not yet.
I turned to the west and caught my breath. A parapet of red-and-orange-streaked stone edged the ridge, dropping precipitously to a broad slope—the apron of the greater mountains to the south. The jagged rim reflected the very shape I had etched into my memory that morning.
“This is the Center,” I murmured. “Dashon Ra.” Only we stood in Aeginea, where no human had gouged and scraped and hollowed out this hilltop in search for gold. I knelt, and though I dared not touch the earth of such a place with magic, I believed I heard Osriel’s harsh breathing and felt the seeping of his blood. “Be strong, my king,” I whispered as if he might hear me across the distance. “Do not yield your soul too quickly. I will find you a way.”
“Come here.” Stian sat back on his heels and motioned me to do the same on the opposite side of the barren patch he had created. “Do not move. Do not interfere.”
With the same powerful fingers he had used to correct my allavé, he scooped up the damp soil and spread it over every finger’s breadth of my face and neck. “Do not touch it,” he said as he closed my eyes and packed the soft soil over them as well. “Do not remove it until I tell thee.”
My skin heated. Itched. Burned. Panic welled up from my depths. “Iero’s grace! Please—”
He gripped my wrists firmly until my breathing settled. “When I lay a hand on thy breast, follow me. Move as I do, as best thou art able, and attend carefully the earth beneath thy feet. Remember.”
I could not imagine what he meant until he packed my ears with dirt, causing another bout of terror. He gripped my wrists until I understood he was not going to fill my nose or mouth.
A touch under my arms brought me to my feet. Thin cold air cleansed my lungs and whispered over my skin. Over my gards. I wriggled my feet and noted the surface of sere grass and thin soil, shards of rock and pricks of ice.