Tuari took her. As she stood waiting to hear what they would do, he wrapped his arms about her from behind and whispered, “Do not be afraid.” Before I could blink, both bodies had vanished, and a sparrow fluttered along the ground as if its wings were broken. Moments later and Tuari was back, kneeling beside the bird. He nudged it with his finger, and startled, it flew to a nearby rock. I wanted to watch her as she tried her wings, but a flurry of birds rose from the ground, wheeled, and vanished into the morning, leaving none behind.
The Danae dispersed, one and then the other. As a courtesy to Stian, they would not execute Stian and Thokki’s punishments until Kol’s was done. The three of them were taken away and I was left alone at the Center, weary and sick at heart.
At nightfall, I took Philo and a cadre of men to Gillarine to take custody of Gildas. Evidently the doulon hunger already burned his flesh. I did not stay to hear his pained sobbing and curses as they shackled him for the short journey to Renna’s dungeon, but hurried to the lighthouse door. “Archangel!” I said, infusing the word with magic.
In three heartbeats, the door flew open. “Brother!” The boy peered outside as if to see if the moon had fallen or the earth cracked. The sheer joy that dawned on his young face warmed even such a cold night.
As I told him briefly of Osriel’s great magic, and how we had hopes that my peculiar combination of talents might help set the weather back to rights, he served me a small cup of ale, taking as much pride in his hospitality as a new householder. He offered me cheese and dried figs, as well, which reminded me how dreadfully long it had been since I had eaten anything. My aching side and hand had stolen my appetite.
“Do you think the brothers will come back to Gillarine now?” he asked, hesitant. “I can do very well here for as long as needed. But if they were to come…there would be singing…and they might raise the bells again. The quiet…I don’t mind it, but…”
“I’m sure they’ll come back. But you will always be the Scholar. The king will have it no other way.” I stood to go. “Iero’s grace, Scholar.”
“Iero’s grace…Valen. I don’t suppose you’ll be coming back here to take vows.”
I laughed and looked askance at my gards. “I think I’ve vows enough for three lifetimes. But if you’ve matters to discuss with me, you can always go to the font, yes? See if I’m at home?”
He giggled like a boy again and thought that was very fine, and said he would read more in the book of Danae lore and discuss it with me to see if it was accurate. “If not, then I might write a new book that will tell the truth of Danae.”
I left him then and jogged across the cloister garth to meet Philo and his prisoner.
“Brother Valen!” Jullian’s call turned me around when I was scarcely past the font.
The breathless young scholar stood atop the alley rubble. “I forgot. Do you want to take the book?”
“It served me well, Jullian, and bless you forever for finding it, but you know it’s of no use—”
“Not the book about the doulon, but your grandfather’s book—the book of maps.” He held out a square volume, bound in brown leather, the very book that had gained me admittance into the lighthouse cabal. “I thought you might have use for it.”
“Saints and angels! Gildas brought it!” I had no way to carry it with me or keep it safe, but to use it…“Quickly, let’s get back to the light.”
Gildas sweated and his guards cooled their heels while I sat in the lighthouse doorway and paged through the book to find what I needed—a wholly unremarkable fiché, little more than a line drawing without colors or gold leaf or any other elaboration. One smiling aingerou lurked in a corner. Janus had scattered five rosettes across the rough outline of Navronne. Touch a finger to one of the rosettes and a symbol appeared beside it—one displayed the symbol for a mountain, one for a sea, one for a water feature such as a well, and one showed a spiral that Janus had called the Center, before I understood what that meant.
I touched the fifth rosette, the one drawn in the northern half of the map between the arms of a divided river, unmasking a symbol I had not recognized until now. Surely the tiny prongbuck marked the Plain.
Heart swelling with excitement, I touched the aingerou, drew my finger from the Well to the Plain, and poured magic into the enchanted page. In my mind appeared a certain route—a path of roads and fields, hills and valleys, images so vivid that I could use them to find a destination for a shift—a birthday gift from my Cartamandua father.
“The gods ease your pain, madman,” I whispered as I closed the book and gave it to the boy for safekeeping. “I’ll tell you all about it when this is over.”
At noontide on the next day, when they brought Kol to Evaldamon for prisoning, I was waiting for them. Nysse, as always, stood at the archon’s side, and ten other Danae had come to stand as witnesses. Kol, hands and feet bound with braided vines, gazed out onto the sea—deep green on this day beneath the winter sun. My uncle’s proud face displayed no fear, though a Dané dropped a pile of fragrant green myrtle boughs and arm-length stems of dried hyssop only a few steps away. Stian and Thokki sat atop the cliffs under guard.
“Tuari Archon, I beg hearing,” I called. “I have brought you that which must change this judgment.”
When Kol glanced my way, I bowed. He nodded without expression and returned his eyes to the sea.
“What evidence can change what is confessed?” said Tuari.
“On the solstice, you said that if I could return the Plain to the Canon, you would judge these transgressions worthy, did you not, Archon? And worthy deeds merit no punishment.”
Tuari’s rust-colored hair was wreathed on this day with holly leaves. “I said this, but thou went incapable.”
“On this day, I am capable. Send whomever you will to judge me.”
After some discussion, it was decided that Nysse and Ulfin would verify my claim, and that Kol’s imprisonment would be delayed until our return. To the fascination of the Danae, I knelt and laid my palms on the earth. The route unrolled in my mind like a scroll of parchment, and I recalled the shore of the small lake until I could smell the marshland and hear the birds and the lap of the wavelets. “This way,” I said, and we made the first shift into Morian, retracing the route I had worked out from Janus’s map over a very long night.
In a matter of an hour, we stood in a thick winter fog on an island between the forks of a mighty river. I stepped along a long-faded silver trace and described the dancer’s astonishing leaps and his intricate footwork. And soon Nysse herself danced a kiran, echoing Llio’s last.
“It is the Plain, Tuari Archon,” she said when we returned to Evaldamon. “I can return there at any time. With time and work, it shall live in our memory as clearly as the Well.” Ulfin vouched for all she claimed.
And so were my uncle and grandsire and merry Thokki set free to dance again in Aeginea.
“So why art thou heartsore, rejongai?” said Kol, as the two of us strolled down the strand that evening at sunset. “Didst thou expect some other marvel than these thou hast described to me? The world is changing. And thou art fully of the long-lived and fully of the human kind. That is not at all usual. In the coming seasons thou shalt restore the Canon.”
“I feel knob-swattled,” I said, rubbing the wound in my side that ached more than it should. “Neither here nor there. The prince needs a pureblood adviser and has asked me to stay with him…and I desire greatly to do what I can to help him and teach him…but I want to be here and learn…and I need to travel and begin to reclaim what we’ve lost…and then, there is a woman…human…very human…”
Kol halted and put a hand on my shoulder. “Sleep, Valen. When thou art…knob-swattled…it is the call to sleep. Take thy season, and thou shalt wake clear and purposeful. It is our way. Necessary. No lesson is more worth the teaching. Renew thyself, that thy work shall be worthy.”