She rapped on the door and was released. I wondered if the unhappy Jakome was forced to deliver her to me. I hoped so. I wondered if she had “caught,” and near screamed at the thought of a child given life from a doulonfed frenzy and in such a creature as Malena.
The morning was quiet so high in the tower. I fidgeted and paced. I sipped Saverian’s potion, hoping it might quench these other uneasy sensations as effectively as it controlled my stomach. After my outburst at Malena, I might find myself in the dungeons by midday. I touched the stone floor and, for the tenth time that morning, verified that the guide threads I had established the previous night were still intact. Somewhere far below me, Osriel and Stearc yet breathed.
I had just emptied the ale pitcher out the window without tasting its contents, when the bolts and latches rattled again. This time I heeded every snick of pins and levers in the locks. My visitor was Gildas.
“You’ve distressed our little wench this morning, Valen.”
“As long as I’ve a mind to choose with, I choose not to dance to Sila Diaglou’s music,” I said. “Which leaves me perhaps two days until I succumb.” I prayed I was misleading him. The more preoccupied I seemed to be with my cravings, the less cautious he might be.
“I am to take you to the priestess. Alas, good Jakome is required to bind your hands against the chance of some magical escape. Do I need to call for shackles, as well, or ruffians with blades?”
Lifting the hems of pourpoint and shirt, I showed him his little bag tied at my waist. “Your leash is quite strong enough, though it’s mostly promises as yet; three seeds get me nowhere but sick. Nor have I seen my young friend this morning. And all bargains are moot, if the priestess thinks to bleed me.”
Gildas grinned. “Sila much prefers you alive…as do I. I discussed Jullian with her last night, suggesting we entrust the boy to your care. I proposed that he could relieve Malena of serving your meals. Thus reassured that we mean well, you might be more attentive to the young woman’s charms.” Sila seemed receptive. Perhaps you could set her remaining doubts at rest during this morning’s interview. Each hour you behave well will add weight to your nivat bag.”
Gildas admitted Jakome, who carried a grimy wad of silken cord. The silkbinding took an extraordinarily long time, for Jakome wasn’t particularly good at it. He bound the cords tight, but uneven. And unlike pureblood guards, whose skilled binding left no bit of flesh exposed and not the least possibility of movement, Jakome failed to keep my fingers properly clasped and tucked as he worked. With a little time, I might be able to wriggle my thumbs loose and poke them through the coils of cord. The bony man completed the tedious task by spitting on the already filthy wrappings, evidently his idea of a proper torment.
Gildas led the way down the tight coil of worn and broken steps. Jakome followed behind me.
Once free of the wards on my door, I snatched the opportunity for spellwork. Dead man. Fallow. I closed my eyes and fed a bit of magic into the words. Fallow would inform Saverian and Voushanti that I was alive and safe enough for the moment. I strained my inner ear until I heard the echo. Bluejay. Fallow. In heart and head I thanked Saverian for her cleverness and skill.
How different from this doulonfed frenzy had been the forces that heated me as I lay with Saverian in the shrubbery. I needed to hold fast to that memory…which made me smile at what Saverian might say to my using carnal thoughts of her to shield me from unsavory lust.
Three landings down, a doorway opened into a long, wide passage. Embrasures along the left-hand wall admitted smoke and dusty light. A purposeful stumble allowed me to sneak a glimpse through one of them. The passage was actually an enclosed gallery that overlooked the long hall where I had been delivered the previous afternoon. Observers or bowmen could lurk here, completely hidden from below.
Opposite the embrasure wall, dim chambers opened off the gallery, appearing, for the most part, to be but habitat for spiders. But Gildas stopped at one doorway hung with a blanket. He held back the dingy wool, and Jakome shoved me into a cavelike chamber.
No windows graced this room. Arrow loops on the outer wall admitted bitter air and threads of wan daylight that scarce sufficed to keep me from colliding with Gildas. The now-familiar pressure of walls grew as I stood in the close quarters, but my stomach stayed in place, and again I blessed Saverian for her potion.
“Sila should be here by now.” Gildas’s voice dripped annoyance.
The sullen Jakome fed and stirred coals that smoldered in a rusty brazier. The rising flames pushed the darkness back a little.
The long, narrow chamber appeared to be a soldier’s billet, or more properly, a commander’s billet, as I saw no sign that more than one person slept here. Wool blankets were folded neatly atop a rolled-up palliasse. A folding table and several stools leaned against one wall, alongside a pile of leather saddle packs. For the most part the accumulated dust, dried mud clots, ancient straw, stone flakes, wood chips, bark, and ash that grimed the chamber and hearth had been left where they lay. But the end wall closest to me, where the firelight shone brightest, had been swept and scrubbed clean before someone mounted a map of Navronne. Only in my family’s home had I ever seen a map so large—fully twice the width of my arm span and almost as high. Janus de Cartamandua had drawn both of them.
Jakome took up a guard stance at the door. Gildas had begun to pace, glancing constantly into the shadows as if expecting gatzi to pop out at us.
I could not take my eyes from the map, noting the bold arcs of Janus’s roads, each drawn in one stroke of his favorite pen, the particular feathery gray foliage of his trees that no artist had ever been able to duplicate, the oddly individual faces he gave to the birds that inhabited the map borders. Heaven’s mercy, had he known what happened to failed Danae?
Gildas glanced from me to Jakome. “Something’s off. Don’t let him out of here.”
The monk pushed through the hanging blanket and disappeared. Jakome drew his sword and blocked the doorway behind him. His mouth twisted upward and his sharp eyes fixed on me, as if he hoped I would challenge him.
But it was the map that drew me, not the prospect of being skewered trying to escape while my hands were bound. Jakome made no move to stop me as I strolled across the room to an arrow loop and peered down at an inner ward littered with broken masonry and fine rubble. Several corbeled privies had collapsed, tearing down half of a sewage-stained wall. After a short time, I drifted idly toward the map.
Something struck me as odd beyond its grand scale, but I couldn’t decide what it was. The borders and compass rose were grandly decorated. The firelight sparkled from flecks of gold that had been mixed with some of the inks. It was certainly very old. A Cartamandua map never yellowed or cracked, but rather took on a certain luster, as if the lines and colors, the drawing and the magic had blended and transformed it into something richer and deeper than its parts. This one seemed near as deep as it was wide. The ink washes were curious—only two colors, green and ocher, spread across irregularly shaped areas that corresponded to no other boundaries. Yet there was something more…
Uneasy, I glanced over my shoulder at the bored Jakome and at the far end of the chamber where the darkness hung so deep, unpenetrated by flame or thready daylight. Then I peered a little closer at the map.
Increasingly frustrated, I tapped my silkbound hands on my mouth and chin, rested them on my head, and dropped them down again. My fingers itched to trace the web of paths, like those through Mellune Forest, where I had misled the pursuing Harrowers. They ached to touch the fine details, such as the cairn that marked the split in the track leading to Caedmon’s Bridge and Fortress Groult. In satisfaction I noted the vast distances Saverian and I had frog-leaped from the rounded hills of northeastern Ardra to the hills of Palinur, to the bogs, to the cairn, to the Sentinel Oak—