We ran across the small dark gap and joined three others—two males, one female—in a minor circle. I stumbled at first, my heart in my throat.
“Welcome the initiate!” called Thokki as she stomped and clapped.
The others shouted, “In the Canon, initiate!”
“In the Canon,” I croaked. Then I stomped and clapped, kept the rhythm and moved in the circle, and within three beats felt like crowing with the joy of it. I could have continued a lifetime with naught but this.
But the dance was not static, and Thokki leaned close. “Thy feet, initiate. Do not lose the pace. Remember.”
She stepped back, and I felt sere grass and thin soil, shards of rock and pricks of ice underneath my feet. I spun in place and stepped to the right. Gods cherish all…a rock pricked my left great toe and a sprig of tansy tickled my heel. And so we moved into the patterns Stian had drilled into me. Simple steps and spins and short leaps about our small wheel. The music of pipes and tabors swelled from the earth and stars. My gards took fire with the deepest blues of lapis, sapphire, and summer midnight in the frostlands, and I thought I must be raised into heaven. And when Stian’s Round came to its end in a great crescendo, I thought the hands that reached under my arms as if to embrace me must surely be my grandsire come to welcome me. Kol had won, and I was Danae.
The arms squeezed upward, crushing my shoulders. “Take the halfbreed to the pond. And remove that one.” Thokki stumbled forward and fell, her head slamming into the turf. “I’ll have Tuari break her for this trespass.”
No mistaking the crone’s voice that gave the orders, or the stick that fell so brutally on Thokki’s shoulder, or the shapeless form that moved into our circle from the night. Underneath her hood, golden eyes smoldered with hate, and her thin lips broke into a smile that none but I could see. Ronila.
Chapter 33
“No!” I yelled as a Dané with an unmarked face hefted a dazed Thokki to his shoulder and disappeared into the night beyond the circles. “Don’t harm her. Please, you don’t understand!”
The glare of sigils and starlight became a blur as I tried to wrestle free. But the owner of the well-muscled arms that gripped my shoulders locked his hands behind my neck. No matter my kicking and writhing, another Dané bound my ankles. If I could not walk, I could not escape.
The youth glanced up at me and wrenched his knots tighter. My heart sank as I recognized him as Kennet, the initiate whose legs were twined with oak leaves, Tuari’s attendant who had bound me to a tree intending to break my knees. His tall, strong companion with the wheat-colored hair was likely the person crushing my neck.
The other three dancers of our circle gawked in disbelief as the two young Danae bound my wrists behind my back. “My kin-father, the archon, has charged me to root out the causes of our failing life,” Ronila said to them. “What more cause could we discover than a halfbreed flaunting illicit gards in the Canon?”
“Don’t let her do this,” I said. “She wants to destroy us all!”
Ronila touched each of the three dancers on the shoulder. “Human interference has corrupted the long-lived, even he who is Chosen. I have paid the just price to preserve the Canon, and so must every violator. Go. Dance Freja’s Round and restore innocence to the change of season.”
The three glanced back uncertainly as they moved off to join Freja’s Round or the Round of Learning, where one dancer would move about the inside of a wheel of light, striving to match every other dancer’s most difficult steps.
“This is no violation!” I shouted after them. “Kol brought back the Well. It lives in your memory again.”
Kennet’s comrade hefted me onto his shoulders and carried me down the hill, past circles and spirals that twisted and turned like jewels of heaven strung on silken threads. Ronila hobbled alongside.
“I am made new by the Canon,” I said, recalling Kol’s teaching. “You cannot hinder me.”
“The archon will render that judgment,” said Kennet. “We but ensure thy attendance.”
With only a few hundred steps we traveled far from the dancing ground and the Center. This pond lay in a nest of meadowlands in the lee of a gentle hilltop, very like the lake at Dashon Ra. But here spike-thin pines and dark spruce mantled the surrounding hillsides. Snow lay deep upon these meadows, frosting every twig and needle of the trees. And the new-risen moon set the crystals sparkling and laid a path of silver light across the rippling lake. The splendor of the scene pierced my heart.
Two Danae walked out of a rainbow flare and joined us at the lakeshore. “What urgency demands our absence from the Canon, Llio-daughter?” said Tuari. “The change approaches. The dance beckons.”
My captors threw me to the ground at Tuari’s and Nysse’s feet. I rolled to the side, spitting out snow and dirt that filled my mouth. My cheekbone stung, sliced by a protruding rock.
“Behold, Tuari Archon,” said Ronila, “all has come about as I warned thee. You asked me, as your kin, as one who has paid the just price of imperfection, to uncover evidence of the corruption that cracks the world. Here is the halfbreed Cartamandua found preening and prancing in Stian’s Round. Canst thou mistake whose work this is?” Ronila’s stick poked my back, where the second remasti had etched Stian’s rock, and my arm, where the cat lurked amid Kol’s sea grass.
“Thou dost accuse the Chosen and his sire of willful violation?” Sounding truly shocked, Tuari stooped to examine me closer. “How can this be the Cartamandua halfbreed? He wore no gards when I saw him.”
“Clearly they have forced his body through some corrupt remasti,” said Ronila. “Canst thou not feel the storm wind rising in the human realm? Look out upon the beauty of Aeginea, Tuari Archon, and tell me that human violence and filth do not threaten its annihilation.”
“Good archon, gracious Nysse, I bring you hope of healing,” I said, struggling to my knees. “Your kind were given guardianship of both Aeginea and the human realms. Surely no mere chance caused the first four Danae guardians to arise at the points of our joining. I beg you heed what you have felt this night. Kol has given you back the Well, where my mother was poisoned by this harpy and her minions.”
“Who can say what deceptions Stian and his brood have wrought in our minds?” said Ronila, sneering. “The daughter who gave a child of our blood to a human. The son who steals the Center, as he stole this halfbreed from your just breaking. The father who once condemned you—Tuari Archon—to live as a crawling beast. They have brought a halfbreed to the dance, as your own proclamation of the Law forbids.”
Tuari looked from Ronila to me, his rust-colored eyes flaring with anger and mistrust. “Did Kol and Stian bring thee to the Canon, halfbreed?” he asked.
“Ask him about Thokki, as well, resagai,” said Ronila eagerly. “She who has lusted after Kol since he was nestling. Corrupted, as are all those touched by Stian’s get.”
“More pain and vengeance will not repair what’s done,” I said. “But I can help you heal the Canon without breaking it further. All I ask is your hear—”
“Thou art halfbreed, Cartamandua-son,” said Tuari sternly, interrupting. “Thou hast reached maturing this night, thus the Law forbids me to break thee. However, those who brought thee illicitly to the Canon are forfeit. Answer truth, if thou wouldst have me hear another word from thy lips. I will judge silence as agreement. Did Kol and Stian bring thee to the Canon, using Thokki to shield thee?”
How could I weigh the consequences of my answer? I, who was a master of lies, could likely devise a reasonable story. But Ronila had built her life on lies, corrupted Sila with lies. We stood at the brink of the abyss, and I needed this man to believe what I told him. Surely it was the time for truth. Kol and Stian…and Thokki, too…had known the risks they took.