“…and so we are left with Sila Diaglou, entirely sane, entirely ruthless, and determined to purify Navronne and reshape it according to her peculiar vision, with Gildas, who schemes to become the lord of chaos, and with Ronila, who intends to destroy us all. They will cross Caedmon’s Bridge in little more than a sevenday. I don’t completely understand my skills, lord, but I have bound them to your father’s service, to Abbot Luviar’s vision, to Jullian’s protection and the protection of two others whose names I cannot reveal. I would use them in the service of Navronne…in your service, too, if those two are the same. Tell me what is to happen at the mine called Dashon Ra on the winter solstice.”
Osriel’s eyes were closed, so that for a moment I thought he had fallen asleep. But he shifted and straightened and met my gaze unflinching, though his dark eyes held the bleakness of Navronne’s winter. “I will position a small force at the Bridge, commanding them to lure the Harrowers into the hills behind Renna. Thanks to preparations I have made over the years, Sila will find the vale of Dashon Ra harder to escape than to enter—now I know she is half Dané, I’ll have to consider more carefully how to deal with her own person, and her gammy’s, I suppose. With enough magic entirely channeled into the gold veins at Dashon Ra, I can free the souls I have imprisoned. Bound by blood to my will, they must and shall do my bidding. I plan to give them the Harrower legions.”
Cold horror struck me like a demon’s hand. “Instill the dead souls in living hosts?”
He shot to his feet at my first word, gripping one column of the great hearth as if it were all that stood between him and dissolution. “Do not preach to me of the evil of this course until you have seen the future your sister, the diviner, has shown me. Were I to send a living army down upon Sila Diaglou’s trapped legions to save this kingdom from such a future, no man or woman would fault me. Kings must command their people to die for them. Had I the slightest hope of an alternative, I would welcome it with all my heart. But I cannot condemn Navronne to centuries of starvation, disease, and enslavement for my lack of will to use what knowledge and skill I possess.”
“But what becomes of such an army?” An army of revenants…living bodies possessed by the angry dead.
“Under my command, they will turn on my brother’s troops. If my brother is wise, he will lay down his arms and come to terms with me. We must consummate the bargain quickly. Without an infusion of my blood, my warriors will have but seven days of life, perhaps twice that if the Danae keep their word. But those will be days they would not own had I left their corpses undisturbed on Perryn’s and Bayard’s battlegrounds. Perhaps they can make some peace with that.”
I shook my head. “Not peace, my lord. And you well know it. Their souls’ future will be forfeit. You will force them to trade seven days of breathing for the fullness of whatever life lies beyond this one. They’ll not have even the time to seek out their families. And what of the Harrowers’ souls displaced? Are they rightfully dead or are they lost to heaven as well? Or are they, in turn, prisoned in your veins of gold? Three days ago, I shared Voushanti’s dying, lord, and such despair as I felt cannot heal what ails Navronne. If you win your throne by such means, how ever will you govern?”
“My warlords will protect me in the beginning. From there my own deeds must tell. I’ll do what I can to hold back the night. And we must hope that the Danae, left alone and undisturbed, can heal the things I cannot.” He braced his back against the graceful column, as unyielding as the stone. “I have pondered this course for three years, Valen. Could I see but a glimmer of hope in some other plan, I would leap at it. Luviar knew about Voushanti. He knew of my work with the dead, and why I donned terror as a pureblood dons his mask. Indeed, he knew better than I of all my strengths and weaknesses, and to the very end he counseled me that his god would show me the path of right. Yet even Luviar, in all his wisdom, could not tell me another way.”
I stepped out of the calefactory enclosure full into the wind, for it felt as if the heat muddied my thoughts. “And what if Tuari Archon betrays you?” For, of course, Osriel intended the magic of the Canon to be channeled into the veins of gold to empower his army of souls. “Ronila spoke as if Tuari was already her tool.”
The prince riffled his hair with his slender fingers, truly puzzled. “Spite would be his only reason. I yielded every point, gave him everything he asked for. To demonstrate trust and buy the parley, I pledged him fair recompense for my father’s failure to return to Aeginea. To prove my faith, I returned the treasure that was stolen—and it is his own people who lost you again, after all. Our joined power on the solstice will end the sianou poisonings. But in the event you are right and Tuari upends the bargain, I do have an alternative. Certain rites can release the power bound in my blood as Caedmon’s heir. It should be enough to do as I want. Perhaps that is the only just solution after all.”
And then I put together the clues and understood what he had planned all along. No wonder Saverian would not speak of it. Sila Diaglou had once demanded a scion of Caedmon’s house to bleed in her penitential rites, and Osriel had told me that blood consecrated to Navronne would be supremely potent. He had told Elene that his plan would end his last hope of heaven, but he had not meant that merely as an acknowledgment of a monstrous crime.
“You think to have Saverian bleed you as Sila would,” I said, appalled at what I envisioned. “You die in torment to release this power in your veins, and she returns you to life to use it. You would yield your own soul to win this battle.”
He let his head fall back against the pillar and closed his eyes. “Actually I intend Voushanti to do the bleeding part. I’ll need him back from you before we begin.”
To spend one’s entire life dependent on the blood of others—whom would he choose? Saverian herself…his loyal childhood friend coerced into this macabre partnership? Not Elene. He had pushed her away, for love must surely wither in such a feeding. Voushanti…their survival linked one to the other like conjoined twins?
“I’ll not put Voushanti through another death to change guardianship, lord. Though I know he will obey you, even in this, it is cruel and inhuman and unworthy of you to ask it of him.”
“We must all heed cruel necessity—whether prince, warrior, or half-blood Dané, whether man or woman.”
And then did another consideration chill me. “Ah, lord, what did you promise Tuari to redeem your father’s betrayal?”
“Only that which I shall make sure never to have—a firstborn child for them to nurture in my father’s place.”
“Spirits of night, but you—” I bit my tongue. I was sworn to secrecy on the matter. Of course the Danae would require balance in such a bargain, and if Osriel’s firstborn was the price of the parley itself, this bargain would stand…no matter what happened on the solstice. I was sworn to protect Elene and the child, whatever that might mean in the future. Osriel could not know. “Could you find naught else, lord?”
He dropped his head between his stiff shoulders and laughed—a sad, despairing humor. “How far you’ve come, friend Valen, from the rogue who tried to steal my nivat offering. You lack even a sprout of wings, yet I feel as if the judgment of heaven rests in your word. Can you not see? My father left his beloved kingdom—his people—in my protection. Do I wait another season, I’ll have naught left to save. How can I ask of others what I would not give myself?”
I stared into the broken, snow-drenched cloisters of Gillarine and sought answers. Ruin lay in every direction that I could see. To stop Osriel left Navronne at the mercy of Sila Diaglou. But I had no confidence that even so determined a warrior as Sila could outfox the witch who had made her—and that made our end far worse. No wheat would grow from an earth of Ronila’s harrowing. And Gildas, the monk who aspired to godhood, was the blind bargain in the game. At some point he would strike out on a separate course from his malignant partner. He intended me to be a part of it, and the hunger lurking even now in my blood gave me the unsettling feeling that my escape from Fortress Torvo had not concerned him as much as it should have. Though even a victory would tally an unsupportable cost, who else but Osriel had the remotest chance of stopping these three?