Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg Page B

the royal brothers, Perryn, Duc of Ardra, and Bayard, Duc of Morian, had maintained a deadly balance for three years. As no one had produced Eodward’s authentic writ stating elsewise, Bayard claimed the Navron throne by right and precedent as Eodward’s eldest son. But Eodward had granted Prince Perryn regency in Ardra—the ancient seat of Caedmon’s line—and Perryn insisted that this demonstrated Eodward’s intent to name him king over his poorly educated elder brother.
    The third and youngest brother, Osriel the Bastard, regent of Evanore, had taken no active part in the three-year dispute save his grisly reaping on the battlefield. Some said Osriel cared naught for ruling on earth, but aimed to supplant the divine Magrog himself as lord of the netherworld. Others claimed he was waiting only for his brothers to weaken each other so he could sweep them both aside with an army of gatzi.
    Only in the winter just past had stories of a fourth brother—this child Pretender—risen, and as sure as dead men stink, before the rumor could gather strength enough to create him a rival, Bayard had made a devil’s bargain that looked to win him the day. He had allied with the Harrowers.
    The Harrowers denied both the elder gods and the Karish upstart Iero, claiming that Navrons had lost their proper fear of the true Powers who ruled the universe. Their priestess, Sila Diaglou, said that our cities and our plowing had defiled the land and that our false religions had caused us to forget these Powers that she called Gehoum, and that was why the weather had gone sour and the plagues and wars had risen.
    For years people had laughed at a woman speaking out as if she were the divine prophet Karus come back again, set on changing the ways of the world. Yet, in the last years of Eodward’s reign, when pestilence and storms grew worse and the king could pay no mind to aught but Hansker raiders—Sila Diaglou’s direst predictions come true—folk began to listen and nod their heads. More and more wild-eyed rabble, dressed in rags and orange head scarves, heeded her call for burning and destruction to “harrow” the land and appease the Gehoum’s wrath. Scorned by priests and nobles, she had grown her ragtag band of lunatics into an army to rival those of Navronne’s princes.
    Throughout the summer campaign, while Prince Perryn dithered and regrouped farther and farther south, claiming that no rabble could stand against his knights and legions, the Harrowers burnt villages and fields and left us nothing to eat and nothing to defend. And then Prince Bayard and Sila Diaglou had joined forces and swept us up like chaff from a threshing floor.
    The abbey bells clanged in an urgent rhythm. Distant shouts, mysterious door bangings, and running footsteps from the infirmary courtyard accompanied the summons. The evening reeked of danger. Unable to lie still, I threw off my blankets and pulled on my wool shirt, trews, and hose.
    A brown-clad body burst through the door and pelted down the long room to Brother Robierre’s shelves—the other young aspirant, Gerard, a soft, stammering boy of fourteen. He shoved bowls and basins aside, knocking half of them clattering to the floor. Then he whirled about, dark stains on his arms and in his eyes. “B-b-bonesaws. Where does he k-keep them? He said the far end…”
    I was already on my feet, alder stick in hand. “In that great iron chest down below.”
    By the time I joined him, the boy’s trembling fingers had scarcely got the lid open. Together we lifted out two trays of small, fine instruments—pincers, scalpels, probing tools of thin wire, and the like—laid out between sheets of leather. In the bottom of the chest lay a number of larger, linen-wrapped bundles. The boy dragged out cautery irons, mallets, and strangely shaped implements of unknown purpose. I’d seen enough use of such tools to recognize