Breath and Bone (Lighthouse Duet) by Carol Berg Page A

when I inquired about Osriel, not from distressed sensibility at her lord’s depravity, but fear that somehow I had guessed a perilous secret. Eodward’s chosen heir…I had witnessed Gram’s intelligence, reason, judgment, his calm strength that had naught to do with arms. Aye, but therein lay the peril. How could a man with no legions hold a fortress, much less win a kingdom?
    I rounded the last spiral of the stair carefully, wishing I carried a torch. Only a faint wash of a rushlight in the upper passage touched the steps, leaving most of them dark as spilt ink. I grabbed the rushlight from its bracket and carried it with me. The coals in my bedchamber hearth were carefully banked, but I let them lie for morning. Instead I threw off my cloak and attacked my legions of buttons, hoping Gram would not require such grandiose attire too often.
    Great gods…Gram… Every time I thought I had accepted what had just happened, a wave of excitement washed over me. I’d never felt like this before…a part of something so important, something that felt so right. Of course, not even the most foolhardy gambler would risk his coin on our chance to put Gram on Caedmon’s throne, much less to hold off the plagues and famine that augured the coming years of trial. Even if Bayard kept to this truce of necessity, the prince must confront Sila Diaglou on the winter solstice, some two months hence. A night of magic, perhaps, but even devout Karish folk believed the longest night of the year to be the apex of the Adversary’s strength, when he set in place his schemes to ensnare the innocent, while the angel legions sang in holy chorus and formed up ranks to face him.
    The choice of that particular night for Gram’s first step was perhaps the finest irony of this whole tangled story. For I had been born at midnight on the winter solstice, so the family tale had always run—the ill-famed winter’s child of bardic rhymes, the get of gatzi, conceived when Magrog’s demonic servants infiltrated the bawdy rites of spring. And on this birthday would I turn my grandfather’s mysterious eight-and-twenty. My ears itched with his whispering: Thou shalt be the greatest of the Cartamandua line. Thou art of my blood, incomparably strong in magic. I, the least gifted of men. Grinning like a fool, I shed the satin pourpoint, wondering if it was too late to learn a bit of spellworking.
    And then, from out of nowhere, an invisible ax shattered my skull. Knives…lacerating…my flesh bathed in fire. Paralyzed with dread…awash in pain…drowning in blood…
    Choking, gasping, I dropped to my knees. The weak glimmer of the rushlight seared my eyes with the glare of a thousand suns. Gray, transparent faces, twisted with hate, hovered above me, striking…cutting…I felt my bones shatter. Blade-rent, beaten, my body reported every color of pain, and my mind every nuance of grief, of rage, of regret, of unfounded horror and hatred.
    Even as I experienced the agony of such wounding and felt a frigid numbness creep upward from my toes, I knew my limbs whole and unmarked, my palms resting on cold, solid stone. No one stood beside me.
    The physical pain ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The emotional tumult dwindled more slowly into a directionless anger. Then that, too, faded until I was empty of all but my own terror. I lay curled on the floor, trembling, my arms wrapped about my knees, afraid to move lest I trigger another assault.
    My disease, surely. Yet this was not the familiar ground of doulon perversion. The pain…the searing dread and anger…never in all my years had I experienced such a ravaging, as if my sickness had itself become some live thing inhabiting my body, wreaking purposeful vengeance now I’d sworn I’d no longer service it with nivat seed.
    After a time I sat up. Slowly. My blood started flowing again, and reason crept out from hiding, dragging with it a dismal conviction. I had to tell the prince. Tonight, while this pain