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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Roderick

As Anne wheeled her mount from the road and into the forest, a wind blew through, resurrecting the dead leaves into aerial dancers pirouetting in vorticose ballet. A faint chorus of women's voices attended them, thin and without depth, as if the song had fallen from a great height and been stripped and broken as it fell until nothing was left but a memory imprinted in the air, with that fading, too.

She thought she heard her name and then only the thumping of Tarry's hooves and her breath, which seemed almost to hover around her rather than come from inside. The tree boles went by hypnotically, one by one, rows of columns that never seemed to end.

Tarry leapt a fallen log and nearly stumbled on the slope beyond, but he recovered, and then the slope evened out. For that brief moment when she seemed to float, sunlight seemed to explode around her, melting the trees down into green grass and misty rinns far below, and she was again on Faster, hurtling down the Sleeve, terrified, giddy, and blissful with life.

For an instant she held it, but then it was gone, and she realized with a leaden heart that that, too, was only a memory of something irrevocably lost. That life, that childhood, was gone forever, and even if she made it home it wouldn't be the home she knew.

Roderick

Tarry squealed and stumbled again, legs buckling, and in a fog of golden light Anne hurled forward through the dancing leaves and fertile smell of promised rain. She hit the ground and bounced, heard something snap, and pain like nearby thunder detonated in her thigh. She felt the flesh skinning from her elbows and arms as she wrapped them to protect her head, and finally fetched to a stop against a stump amidst the scents of turned earth, blood, and broken roots.

For a time she forgot where she was, and puzzled at the branches above, wondering what they could be, as something beat toward her like an approaching drummer.

She saw a face she ought to know but couldn't quite place, before it'like the wind and her childhood'faded.

Something lapped around her like the tongue of a giant dog, or waves on the strand, irregular in rhythm, soothing. Anne tried to open her eyes, but they seemed infinitely heavy, so instead she looked through the lids and saw her room'except it wasn't her room. It resembled her room, but the walls were falling in, and through a great hole near the ceiling red light streamed in that terrified her even to look at, and nearby'from the corner of her eye'she saw the door opening, and someone stepping through who shouldn't be there, whom she couldn't look at, and she knew suddenly that she hadn't awakened at all, but was still in some Black Mary of waking.

She tried harder to wake, then, to force her eyes open, to pry apart the wall of sleep and step through. But when she did, she was back in the room, and the red light was stronger, the door swung wider, and the shadow stepped in. Her skin felt a thousand stings, as if she lay in a bath of scorpions, and she woke, and it all started again'

She sat up and heard a voice screaming, which she took a moment to understand was her own. Her chest heaved as she clutched at strange bedclothes and prayed this was finally an end to sleep, and not another trick of the Mary. Then she felt the pain in her leg where the arrow had pierced her, and looked around in a fresh panic. She'd awakened before, not knowing where she was, not recognizing anything, and then gradually realizing she was in a familiar place made strange by the linger of dream. But as she stared about the room, it did not become familiar.

The lapping of her dream turned out to be the fire in the hearth a few yards away. Heavy tapestry drapes covered the windows, so she couldn't tell if it was day or night. A wolf pelt lay flat on the floor, and near the fire there was a loom and a stool to sit at it. Other than that, there was only a door, wooden and solid with iron bands.

She threw back the bedclothes. She wore an amber dressing gown worked with golden roses on the hem. She pulled it up until she could see her leg, and found it bandaged. She felt clean, as if she had been scrubbed, and a lilac scent seemed attached to her.

Anne lay there another moment, trying to remember what had happened. She remembered Tarry falling, and after that very little that could be separated from phantasm.

Whoever had found her, it couldn't be the Hansan knights. They had never shown any interest in taking her captive, much less in bathing her and bandaging her wounds.

Experimentally, she swung her legs over the bed and eased down to the rug upon the flagstone floor. When she put weight on the damaged leg it ached, but not so much that she couldn't bear to limp upon it, so she limped to the window and pushed the tapestry aside.

It was twilight outside. The sun was gone, but clouds of royal purple trimmed in gold and verdigris lay across the eastern sky. A light rain was falling, misting the thick glass of the window, which was cold to the touch. Plains or pasture stretched out and away to a dark green haze in the distance that might be forest, all resembling a painting that had been dipped in water while still wet.

She let the tapestry drop and hobbled to the door. As she had more than half expected, it was locked. Sighing, she turned back to examine the rest of the room'only to recoil at a sudden movement at the edge of her vision.

She fixed her eyes in that direction and saw a woman staring at her. She had almost opened her mouth to demand who she was when Anne understood that she was looking into a full-length mirror.

Her reflection was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, and the area around Roderick

her eyes seemed bruised. The thin frizz of red hair was weird and shocking. Her freckles had darkened and enlarged from long days in the sun'but more than that, her face had actually changed. Grown older, not merely metaphorically, but in fact. The very shape of the bone was different'her nose seemed smaller, and for the first time ever she caught a glimpse of her mother in her.

How long since she had seen herself in a mirror? How much could a woman change between sixteen and seventeen?

And she was seventeen now, though she had missed her birthday. She had been born in Novmen, on the eighth. It had come and gone without her ever knowing or thinking about it until now.

There should have been a party, and dancing, and cakes. Instead she couldn't even remember where she had been, because she didn't know the date now, except that it was well past the month of Novmen. Indeed, the Yule solstice had to be approaching'if that, too, hadn't passed her in the night.

Unable to gaze long on what she had become, she searched the room for anything that might be useful as a weapon, but the only thing she found was a spindle.

She took it in her hand and limped back to the bed, just as somewhere near the vespers bell began to toll.

Before the next bell, the creak of the door opening disturbed her. A stooped little woman in a gray dress and black shawl entered. 'Highness,' she murmured, bowing. 'I see you are awake.'

'Who are you? Anne asked. 'Where am I?'

'My name is Vespresern, if it please you, Princess Anne.'

'How do you know me?' Anne demanded.

'I have seen you at court, Highness. Even with your hair shorn so, I would know you. Is there anything I can get for you?'

'Tell me where I am and how I came to be here.'

'My master asked that he be allowed to explain that himself, Your Highness. He asked me to fetch him when you woke. I'll find him now.'

She turned and closed the door behind her, and Anne heard a key turn the lock into place.

Anne went back to the window and unlatched it. The air outside '

was wet and chill, but it wasn't the weather she was concerned with, but rather what sort of building she was in and how great the distance to the ground. What she found wasn't encouraging. Gray stone walls winged away in both directions.

She could make out battlements above her and a few more windows below. The drop was perhaps twenty yards, and that to a moat of ugly-looking water. There weren't any ledges she could see other than the narrow casements of the windows.

If she tied her bedclothes together, she thought she might decrease the jump by half, and the water might break her fall, if it was deep enough.

She closed the window and sat on the bed to think. Her leg was really bothering her, and she wondered how long such a wound would take to heal. Would it mend entirely, or would she limp for the rest of her life?

About a bell later, she heard the key scraping in the door again, and, clutching the spindle, she waited to see who it was.

A man stepped into the room, and immediately she knew him. Deep down she'd known she would.

'Well,' he said. 'I mistook you for a boy once before, and did so again when I saw that hair.'

'Roderick.'

'Well, I'm glad you remember me now,' he said. 'After meeting you on the road, I wasn't so sure you hadn't quite forgotten me.'

'Roderick,' she repeated, searching for something plausible to say.

His tone sobered a bit. 'You terrified me, you know. I thought you were dead.'

'I'm in your father's castle, then?' she asked.

'Yes, welcome to Dunmrogh.'

'I had friends back in the forest. We were attacked.'

'Yes, I know'I'm sorry, they were all slain. Brigands, I suppose. We've had our troubles with them, lately. But look, Anne'it's impossible that you could be here. How in the name of Saint Tarn is it that you are?'

She studied his face, the face she had dreamed about for so long.

Roderick

While hers had seemed older, his seemed younger, and not as familiar as it ought to. It came to her that she had really known him for only a few days, not even a month. She'd been in love with him, hadn't she? It had felt like that. Yet now, looking at him, she didn't feel the overflow of joy she'd been expecting.

And it wasn't just because she knew he was lying.

'Stop it, Roderick,' she said wearily. 'Please. If I ever meant anything to you at all, just stop it.'

He frowned. 'Anne, I can't say I know what you mean.'

'I mean my letter,' she said. 'The one I sent from the coven. Cazio did have it delivered after all.' She shook her head. 'I don't know why I doubted him.'

'You've left me behind someplace, Princess. I thought you would be happy to see me. After all, we'I mean, I thought you loved me.'

'I don't know what love is anymore,' Anne said, 'and there's too much else in the way of me wanting to remember.'

He took a step forward, but she held up her hand. 'Wait,' she said.

'I've no intention to harm you, Anne,' Roderick said. 'Indeed, quite the opposite.'

'I ask you once again, don't lie to me,' Anne said. 'It won't do you any good. I know you betrayed me. I've been chased over all the earth by men who tried to kill me, but when I finally started chasing them, where did they come? Here.

They're here, aren't they?'

Roderick stared at her for a moment; then he shut the door and locked it. He turned and walked back toward her.

'I didn't have a choice, can you understand that? My duty to my family'that's always first. Before king, before praifec, before love.'

'It was no accident that we met,' she accused. 'You were looking for me, that day on the Sleeve.'

He hesitated. 'Yes,' he said at last.

'And my letter'you showed it to them.'

'Yes, to my father. And then I hated myself'I still hate myself for what you went through. The whole thing began as a charade, to get you to trust me. But I got stuck in it somehow. Do you know how I've dreamed of you these months?

Everything faded when I thought you were dead. I wished to die myself. And then, by a miracle, I found you here.' He put his right hand to his forehead. 'The dreams, Anne. The dreams of you, of holding you'I cannot sleep.'

Rodericks voice shook with desperate sincerity, and she suddenly remembered the day she had met him. She and Austra had gone into the tomb of Genya Dare, below the old horz in Eslen-of-Shadows, and they had written a curse against Fastia on a lead tissue and placed it in the coffin so Genya could take it to Cer, the avenger of women. Only she hadn't really cursed Fastia, but simply asked that her sister would be nicer. And on a whim she had added, 'And fix the heart of Roderick of Dunmrogh on me. Let him not sleep without dreams of me.'

'Oh,' she murmured to herself.

Roderick dropped down on his knees and reached for her hand so quickly, she did not have time to withdraw it. He clutched it desperately.

'No one knows you're here except for Vespresern, and she won't tell because she loves me more than my own mother does. I can save you from them, Anne. I can make everything up to you.'

'Yes? And how can you do that, Roderick?' she asked. 'Can you return Austra, Cazio, and z'Acatto to me? They are here, too, aren't they?'

He nodded, his face a misery. 'They're going to do something to them, something in the woods to do with the Old Worm Fane. I can't do anything about that, Anne.

You don't understand'I would if I could'but it's too late.'

'Who are they?'

'I'm not sure, really. They're from everywhere, although a lot of the knights are from Hansa. They serve the same lord as my father. A lord of great power, but I've never heard his name or where he lives.' He reached to stroke her face.

'You have to forget them, if you want to live. I can't hide you here forever.'

'Then you will help me escape?' Anne said.

'What good would that do?' Roderick asked. 'They would only find you again, and this time you won't have anyone to protect you. They will kill you, and I will live in Hell. I can't allow that to happen.'

Roderick

'What is your solution, then?' Anne asked.

'You'll marry me,' he said. 'If you marry me, you will be safe.'

Anne blinked in utter astonishment. 'What makes you think'?' She bit off her reply, which was to end with 'I would rather die by hanging than marry you.' She thought a moment, and amended the question.

'What makes you think I would be safe as your wife?'

'Because then you could never be queen in Eslen,' he said. 'Yes, I know that much. They do not wish you to become queen. If you were my wife, you could not, according to the law of your Comven. And my father would have to protect you as his daughter-in-law. It's perfect, don't you see?'

'And my friends?'

'They are beyond saving. They die tonight.'

'Tonight?'

'Yes. And we shall marry'while my father is away, distracted by the ceremony in the woods. I've engaged a sacritor to perform the union. He will register it with the Church in the morning, and we shall have the protection of the saints and my family.'

'This is very sudden,' Anne said. 'Very.'

Roderick nodded vigorously. 'I know, I know. But you must believe in your heart as I do in mine that we were meant for each other, Anne.'

'If that is so,' Anne asked stiffly, 'how could you have betrayed me?'

'The letter came to my father,' he said, without blinking. He apparently had already forgotten admitting he had given it to his father himself. 'He opened it ere I saw it.' He gripped her hand until she thought it would break, and tears started in his eyes. 'I wouldn't have told them where you were, my love. I would not have.'

Anne closed her eyes, her thoughts churning, and she suddenly felt his lips against hers. She felt a wave of revulsion and wanted to push him away, but she knew now that he was her only chance. The curse had driven him past reason, and his insane love for her was the only weapon she had.

So, trying to remember how she kissed when she wanted to, when she meant it, she reached her arms around him and kissed him back. It went on for far too long.

When he finally pulled his tongue out of her mouth, he gazed gently down at her.

'You see? You feel it, too.'

'Yes, I love you, Roderick,' she lied. 'But you can never betray me again. You must swear it. I could never go through that sort of hurt again.'

His face practically split in two with joy. 'I swear it, by Saint Tarn, I swear it and may he strike me down if I lie.'

'Then let us be married,' she said, 'as quickly as possible. If what you say is true, we will have only this one chance.'

He nodded excitedly. 'The sacritor is in Dunmrogh village. He expects us a bell before midnight. I will see to the preparations. You rest now. I'll take care of you. You will be happy, Anne'I swear that on my life.'

Then he was gone again, and the door locked once more, and Anne was alone, wishing she had soap and water to wash the taste and smell of him from her.

PART

V

HARMONY

The Year 2,223 of Everon The Yule Season Wihnaht, in midmost Yule, is the longest night of the year. At midnight, the gates of the heavens are thrown open and the omens of the coming year make themselves known.

' from The Almanack of Presson Manteo Sefia, the seventh mode, invokes Saint Satro, Saint Woth, and Saint Selfans. It evokes bitter memory, love lost, the dying sunset. It provokes melancholy and madness.

Uhtavo, the eighth mode, invokes Saint Bright, Saint Mery, Saint Abullo, and Saint Sern. It evokes the fond memory, the blissful first kiss, the rising sun.

It provokes joy and ecstasy.

' from The Codex Harmonium of Elgin Widsel