Yet as twilight dropped its mantle over this landscape, I could not focus on my spellmaking. Once they had secured my upper body to the tree, they spread my ankles apart and fixed them in place with loops of rope, a wooden block snugged firmly behind each knee.
“I would do this in thy stead, Kennet,” said the taller of the youths, whose wheat-colored hair was braided with firethorn berries. “I’d not have thy gentle heart troubled by the deed.”
The other youth, he of the bruised oak leaves, knotted the rope that fixed my thighs in place and looped it behind the trunk again. “I’d gladly give over the task,” he said when he reappeared, “but I’d best not refuse Tuari. Give me leave to settle my spirit and strengthen my arm. I would make it fast and clean.”
A third chunk of wood, long and narrow like a club—a very heavy-looking club—lay on the ground behind them.
A fluttering panic rose in my belly. “Great gods of mercy, what are you doing? I can be persuaded not to run again. Once sworn, I keep my word.”
They wrenched the bindings tighter yet. I strained at the braided rope, but could shift neither legs nor torso so much as a quat. “What offense have I given? I’ve ever honored the Danae. I’ve left offerings even when I had naught for myself. Told your stories with reverence.”
Their blue sigils glowed like traces of sapphire in the lowering dusk. A last tweak of my positioning and the Dané with the firethorn braid picked up the club and moved to one side.
“I did not make my father lie with one of you,” I said, panic stretching my voice thin. “I’ve done naught but be born!”
The other youth, Kennet, extended his hand upward as if to grasp a fistful of leaves above his head, then coiled his body into a knot close to the ground. As I watched, breathless with fear, he unwound himself, spun once, and leaped into the air higher than my head, legs stretched fore and behind, as light and quick as a frighted doe leaps a fence.
My heart leaped with him. For a moment the sheer power of his body’s feat overshadowed my foreboding. But as he sank to one knee, took a deep breath, and stood up again, terror came rushing back. No time for pride. “Please, I beg you—”
“No deed of thine has brought this trial on thee,” said the one holding the club. “Only the Law. Halfbreeds cannot be allowed to corrupt the Canon again. Thou must never dance in Aeginea. Thou shalt not.”
“Dance?” My eyes latched on to the brutish stick of wood as he passed it to the dancer Kennet. “I don’t even want to stay with you! I’ve no intent to dance anywhere…don’t know how…save in a tavern brawl…crude stomping to pipe and tabor…nothing like what you do. I’ll swear it…swear obedience…kiss your archon’s feet…whatever you want. If you cripple me…gods, what gives you the right? If you do this, I’m a dead man.”
I’d seen what happened to cripples in famine times. For a man who could not read, the only labors that might keep him eating required legs that worked.
“We cannot take the chance. No argument will change that. But be assured, once thou’rt recovered, we’ll help thee make a useful life.” When I opened my mouth to beg and curse him, he shoved a strip of leather between my teeth. “Bite down hard.”
Kennet stepped toward me, the club poised on a line with my left knee. I slammed the back of my head against the ridged oak bark, squeezed my eyes shut, and all at once the sky fell and lightning struck…
Chapter 12
Stripes of lightning blazed on my breast. On the ground before me writhed a snarl of blue light…thumps, groans…quickly silenced. Beside me a dark shape yanked away ropes and my arms fell free. Dazed…confused…I spat out the strip of leather, but a hand clamped over my mouth, demanding silence before moving back to its other tasks. A whisk of cold steel sliced through the extra loops holding my thighs and knees, and I was free. My knees…intact. Of a sudden my every joint felt like mud.
My senses began to pick the truth out of the darkness. Blade strokes, not lightning strokes, had sliced through the braided rope across my breast. The spreading warmth dampening my shirt was my blood. And I had two rescuers…
Bright blue sigils faded to a dull glow, outlining my captors’ sprawled bodies, then winked out. The third Dané, the one who had fallen…or jumped…out of the tree, fumbled at my arms. “How hast thou—?” Hissing enmity spewed through the night as if it were the glowing dragon on his face that spoke. “Who else walks here?”
“Stay away from him!” Saverian’s brisk command whipped through the night as my ankles came free, the binding ropes hacked apart by her blade. “Run, Valen!”
Though I could not see the physician herself, her weapon—a dagger the length of my forearm—appeared to my right, reflecting the Dané’s blue fire. I stumbled, weak-kneed, to join her.
“No!” Kol stretched out his leg and spun. The dagger went flying. He grappled with the shadowy figure, cutting off her growl of fury, and threw her to the turf. Then his iron hands clamped on to my arm and propelled me away from the oak. “Come with me, Cartamandua-son, or count thyself captive of the archon once more and be broken. The remedy I’ve given thy captors will not quiet them long.”
“Wait! What have you done? The woman…” Recovering some semblance of strength, I wrestled free of him and returned to Saverian, relieved to feel the beat of life in her neck. “I’ll not leave her.” She had thwarted the prince’s will and jeopardized his bargain with the Danae, and I trusted neither Osriel’s mercy nor his friendship.
“The human is no concern of mine.” Kol’s voice shivered my bones. “She interfered where she had no business.”
So did you, I think, uncle. Though not for love of me. The memory of his grieving at Clyste’s Well remained as vivid as on the day I’d witnessed it. Duty, not care, had brought him to my rescue.
The Dané moved away, the words trailing behind him. “Stay if thou willst. Gratefully will I be finished with thee.”
I had only a moment to decide. Kol seemed honest at least, both in his dislike and in his grief. He held out some hope of evading Osriel, whose perfidy had sapped all faith. No vow, no pledged service for whatever cause, should require a man be crippled. I scooped the limp physician into my arms, heaved her over my shoulder, and hurried after the Dané, praying the gods to forgive my presumption of divine benevolence in the face of my oath breaking.
We moved west on undulating ground, the river a constant rush on our left, and the bulge of land and rock that formed the pinnacle of Fortress Groult a swelling blackness against the starry sky on our right. I fixed my eyes on the blue-limned shape ahead of me, while concentrating every other sense and instinct on my footing. The Dané acknowledged my presence with neither glance nor speech, but the distance between us did not vary, no matter that I flagged under Saverian’s weight on every uphill pitch. He could have vanished in an instant. I had no choice but to trust him.
The night deepened. My shoulders ached. The wind grew into a constant buffeting, whipping my face with the hem of Saverian’s cloak and the flaps of her leather skirt. The physical effort and the concentration required to avoid a fall made thinking impossible. So it was only when a sudden gust from my left staggered me that I noted the change in the air. The wind smelled vaguely of fish and felt odd—cold, yes, but heavy and sticky. A quick look around staggered me as well. Not three steps to my left, the earth plunged precipitously into the night. The far side of the river gorge had vanished. And beyond those black depths…the river’s voice had changed into a rhythmic pounding crash. “Kol,” I called. “Where are we?”
He did not respond. I repeated the call several times, especially once the path began a twisting descent that ofttimes seemed more vertical than not. Sand and gravel on the path set my boots skidding and my heart galloping. Immediately after one jolting slide, when only a nubbin of crumbling rock had saved me from skidding off the path and plummeting the rest of the distance to the bottom of the cliff, Saverian began to squirm, mumbling something about hands and castration. Her heavy cloak, leather overskirt, woolen riding breeches, and leggings were all in a bunch about her thighs, half obscuring my vision.