Wolfhere knelt opposite. "By this means, I will view. Did Bernard teach you the art of vision?"

She shook her head. She had never seen Da "vision" anything, although she had read it was possible to look long distances through certain media: water, fire, and certain kinds of stone. "Is itis it right to practice the forbidden arts on holy ground? In a church?"

He glanced up. His gaze was mild but direct. "It is needful, and Our Lord and Lady do not prohibit what is needful. Or so agreed the church elders at the Council of Kellai. The church did not condemn sorcery, Liath, though at the Council of Narvone it imposed a penance on those who practice it outside the supervision of the church."

What had Hugh said to her? "/ am sure there are those in the church who have made it their task to lean the forbidden arts of sorcery, but I have not found them so far." "But they are called the forbidden arts," she whispered.

"It is true the church looks with disfavor on those who j seek the elder arts, those practiced by the ancient heathens which have come down to us in their writings. Those which can be used by the unscrupulous to gain power. But it would be more than foolish to deny that such arts and powers are within our grasp, or to attempt to condemn them as heresy is condemned. It would be impossible, as well as dangerous. So in her wisdom Skopos Mary Jehanna, who presided over the Council of Kellai, was first to pronounce some of the forbidden I arts as lying within the provenance of the church, and king's dragon that ruling was confirmed by the Council of Navrone a hundred years ago. Indeed, in these days the Convent of St. Valeria is known for its study of the forbidden arts." "But you are not in the church." "I received some part of my training at a monastery in Aosta, at a schola there. I was never pledged to the church. Now. Attend."

He opened the leather pouch that hung from his belt and took out a flask. Then he took dagger and sword from their sheaths and laid them to one side. He unstoppered the flask and offered it to her.

She shook her head, and he took a drink himself and set the flask down.

She waited. It seemed safe, now, to betray her intense curiosity. He knew what her parents were, after all. And had she not called fire?

He placed both hands, palms down and his shoulders' width apart, on the glassy black stone surface. For a long while he simply stared at the rock face. It was so quiet in the crypt she felt she heard the sound of dust settling on the tombs and the slow creak of stone shifting against the bones of the earth.

The darkness beyond the flickering torchlight no longer scared her; it was merely shadow and silence and the physical remains of the dead, their spirits long since risen up through the seven spheres. "Liath."

She started up. Wolfhere glanced at her, surprised.

He had not spoken.

His look was a question. She shook her head and settled back. "I beg your pardon," she said.

"What is it?" he asked. Either he had not heard the voice or he was more subtle than she feared.

"Nothing." She settled back into place, her grip tight on the torch. It blazed with undiminished strength. "A spider crawled up my hand."

Whether he believed this excuse or not, he accepted it. He turned his left hand palm up, the back of the hand still lying on the stone, fingers curled up slightly as if he was about to cup a sphere. "Sorcery is a mental discipline, not a physical one. It is the manipulation of the unseen forces that surround us, that are always active, though they are invisible to our five senses. There are those who profess knowledge of the forbidden arts who use physical means, incantations, chants, and objects, to focus their minds and reveal knowledge beyond what is common. These we know by many names, depending on what elements they seek to manipulate. The tempestari try to control the weather; the haroli seek to call down the daimones of the upper air, who are almost as knowledgeable as the angels. The sortelegi cast lots and make predictions, and old wisemen and women who may yet remember the old gods and have not yet turned their hearts entirely to Our Lady and Lord make predictions by means of the flights and cries of birds. These we call augures. Even unlearned folk have among them those who by diverse means and complicated misunderstandings have some simple skill in magic."

He paused and seemed to be waiting for her to comment.

The marble tomb at her left hand was engraved with the likeness of a woman wearing a biscop's mitre and robes: Caesaria, deacon and biscop. In the carving, the biscop held a shield depicting a saint, a woman with arms outstretched holding a knife in each hand; she also wore, as the sign of her martyrdom, a knife buried hiltdeep in her breastSt. Kristine.

"But the church condemns some magi," said Liath, "and watches with suspicion over any who are not sworn to its service."

"True enough. The church does not approve of those who seek such powers without its guidance. There will always be people who use the arts only for their own gain or to harm others. These we call malefici. The worst among them are those who consort with devils by means of blood and sacrifice. But others also remain suspect, chief among them those we know as the mathematici, for the study of the heavens is derived from the arts of king's dragon the Babaharshan magi and the church looks with disfavor upon arts known to be heathen in origin."

And what of those who can speak a name and have it resonate across a great distance? This was not the first time she had heard that voice, calling her name, but obviously it must be the voice either of a magus or of some creature not of human birth, an angel or a daimone. Or a devil in service to the Enemy.

She shuddered.

Wolfhere lifted a hand to touch her, briefly and reassuringly, on the knee. "You are safe with me, Liath."

She said nothing. She did not believe him. He regarded her silently. Suddenly calm, she examined him: his grave expression; the stern light in his eyes which was, nevertheless, touched with kindness; the marks of age on his skin; and in his hair and beard, where only a trace of the younger man remained, a few strands of brown hair nestled among the silver.

It was not that Wolfhere might personally wish her harm; she did not believe that. But she suspected his ujtimate ends. She suspected him of wanting her for some other purpose, one which he chose not to reveal to her. "Trust no one. " Even if he meant well by her, how could he protect her from the fate that had stalked Da? How could he protect her against a power that could strike death onto a man without unlocking door or window and without leaving a mark on the body? How could she protect herself?

Wolfhere laid his hand back on the stone. "But if the mind is properly trained, none of these other ways are necessary or even preferable. By what means do the magi focus and train their minds?" "The ladder."

He nodded. " 'The ladder by which the magi ascend.' Can you recite it?"

She had tried so hard not to think of these things while she had been Hugh's slave that it took her some little time to walk back through the city of memory, to mark the gates, the levels of the great city in which all her knowledge was stored. "There are seven rungs on the ladder, which correspond to the seven spheres of the heavens. First is the rose of healing. Then the sword of strength. The cup of boundless waters. The ring of fire, which is known to us also as the Circle of Unity, the symbol of our Lady and Lord who together form the God of Unities. The throne of virtue. The scepter of wisdom. And the Crown of Light, which we also know as truth."

Wolfhere nodded. "These are the tools the magi use. Follow with me, in your mind's eye.

Through the ring of fire we may see a vision of another place." He drew his hands farther apart and stared fixedly at the black stone. Liath felt his silence reach a new and deeper level, as if he were drawing away from her, although of course he did not actually move. But she had never learned to build the ring of fire in her own mind; Da hadn't taught her the mental exercises beyond the sword of strength. She stared at the expanse of stone that lay between Wolfhere's hands, one palm down, the other palm up.

Her grip tightened on the torch. The air itself seemed to grow taut. Wolfhere sucked breath in between his teeth. His pupils widened, then shrank to pinpricks as at a sudden bright light. She saw nothing except black stone. "What do you see?" he whispered, as if the words took effort. "Nothing."

He shook his head suddenly and his pupils expanded. He seemed to be searching. "I, too, see nothing," he murmured. "Campfires, tents, their ships, and a kind of darkness that shades the center of their camp." He shut his eyes, then lifted his hands off the stone and, rather like a dog letting itself off guard, shook himself slightly all over. He looked at Liath. "This enchanter shields himself against my sight.

That bodes ill, I fear. My powers are not strong, but as an Eagle I am adept at certain things. Seeing is one of them. You saw nothing as well?" "I saw nothing." But her nothing was not, she real king's dragon

ized, the same nothing as he had seen. She had truly seen nothing. Da had been right all along; she was deaf to magic.

But then how had she managed to cause the torch to catch flame?

Wolfhere frowned. "I have never heard Eika were accomplished magi, or that they had any skill at the forbidden arts, or even knowledge of them. They are savages, after all. But I no longer doubt Prince Sanglant. There is a presence among them who controls great power. That must explain" He ran a hand over the slab of obsidian. "Strange." "Explain what?"

But now an edge came to his voice. "Sit still," he ordered. He traced a ring on the stone and then rested his hands, one palm up, the other palm down, a shoulder's width apart. He stared at the black surface, intent, concentrating. She saw nothing, but she felt a breath like wings brushing her cheek.

"An eagle!" he breathed sharply, starting back. "An eagle in flight, plummeting to earth." He jumped up. "Come, Liath. We must go back. I don't know what this portends." Hastily, he collected his weapons from the floor, and they hurried back to the stairs that led out of the crypt. When Liath stuck the torch back in a sconce, it snuffed out as soon as it left her hand, plunging them in darkness. Wolfhere grunted, sounding surprised, but he said nothing. They climbed the stairs by feel and hastened out of the cathedral.

It was dark and still overcast, but after the blackness of the crypt, the night did not seem heavy.

The Eika drums sounded louder now; they usually reached their peak at midnight.

As they walked swiftly back toward the mayor's palace Liath recalled Wolfhere's broken sentence. "You said the presence of an enchanter might explain something."

"Ah." For the space of twelve steps, clipped and hard and rapid on the plank walkway, he considered. "When

we rode into Gent, I cast a spell to attempt to delay the advance of that group of Eika who were coming after us. Nothing more than an illusion. My skills are not great, and I am only adept at certain arts of seeing. I warned you to ignore what you saw."

The flight to Gent was still graven in her mind with the vivid colors of a freshly painted mural.

What he spoke now made her suddenly understand that which she had almost forgotten, because it had made no sense at the time.

A flash, a glittering of light like afire's light seen from inside a dark room. Her horse had almost thrown her, and Manfred had flung a hand up to cover his eyes, as it to protect himself from a much fiercer vision. A tingling on her back. The tiny winkings of fireflies. But that was all she had seen. Either Wolfhere's magics were indeed very small, or else . . .

"I knew there must be some kind of sorcery at work," he continued. "Now I know it is more powerful than I feared. To dissipate my illusions is one thing. To cloud my seeing is entirely another."

Or else she had seen only the faint edge of his magicor not his magic at all, but the barest trace of the enchantment that had protected the Eika against it. "You've thought of something," Wolfhere said.

"No. Nothing." Until she understood it herself, she would not confess this mystery to him. It would give him power over her, more power than he already had, "Only what Da said: 'To master knowledge is to have power from it.' '

"True words," commented Wolfhere. The palisade marking the inner fortress, the mayor's palace, rose before them in the gloom. She heard the distant buzz of many voices speaking at once.

Were they true words? When Da said, "trust no one," had he meant her to include himself? She was deaf to magic, yet he had begun to teach her the arts of the , magi. She was deaf to magic, yet she had some kind of power; she had seen it manifested twice, once when she |

king's dragon had burned the Rose of Healing into the table in Hugh's study and this night in the crypt, when she had caused the torch to light.

"Is that all you have thought of?" he asked.

She remained mutely silent.

"Have I made any attempt to harm you, Liath?" he asked gently, if a little accusingly. "To bring you to harm?"

"You brought me to Gent!" But she said it with a wry smile, hoping to distract him.

They came though the wooden gateway into the courtyard of the mayor's palace. The stonepaved courtyard was awash in torchlight, smoke and flames setting a yellow haze over the people gathered like so many bees swarming. This was a new crowd, smaller than the one this morning, and agitated in a completely different way. "Alas that I did," he murmured. Then he grabbed her by an elbow and with a grim expression pulled her through the crowd, shoving Dragons and rich merchants and the mayor's retainers ruthlessly aside so that he and Liath could get to the center.

There, they found the mayor, Manfred, and Prince Sanglantand an Eagle, battered beyond belief, his cloak torn, his head wrapped in a bloody, dirty cloth, one arm hanging useless at his side, and his horse dying at his feet.

He looked up, saw Wolfhere emerge out of the crowd, and tried to get to his feet, but staggered.

Manfred steadied him.

"Find a healer," Prince Sanglant ordered, signing to his Dragons. "Bring a stretcher, and wine."

His closest attendants, the scarredface woman and the man with the limp, hurried off.

Mayor Werner's complexion had a ghastly white cast under torchlight. But it was not only the light but also his expression. He looked like a man who had seen his own grave.

"Lie down, my son." Wolfhere knelt beside the Eagle and lowered him onto Manfred's bundled cloak. "What is your news?"

Liath crept closer. Blood soaked the Eagle's tunic, and he breathed in ragged bursts. The broken end of an arrow protruded from his chest. She caught in a gasp and took an involuntary step closer. The next instant, a hand caught her by the shoulder.

She knew before she looked, felt in her whole being, that she had come up beside the prince and that it was he who had stopped her from going forward. His hand seemed to burn her shoulder even through the cloth, though she knew it was only the shame of her desire that made her feel his presence so keenly. She risked looking up at him because it would be cowardly to do otherwise. But when their eyes met, he was the one who looked away. He let go of her and even took a half step away. She had a sudden uncomfortable notion that her presence troubled him.

The Eagle coughed, spitting blood. Ai, Lord, the arrow had caught him in the lung. It was only a matter of time.

"Bad news." His breath came in bursts now. His skin flushed a deep red as he struggled to speak. "Count Hildegard. Riding to Gent. Many troops. We were ambushed. I escaped to

"He came to the east gate less than an hour ago," said Sanglant. "These folk brought him here."

He gestured toward the crowd, which by dint of glares and simple force from the prince's everpresent escort of Dragons, had finally moved back, giving the rest of them air. "Though he would have gotten through the streets more quickly had they stayed in their beds and not swarmed out into the streets to get in his way."

"What of Count Hildegard?" Wolfhere asked. The man coughed again, this time clots of blood, and when he spoke, Liath had to bend forward to hear him. "I don't know. Perhaps she won free. Our Lord

He went into convulsions. Liath threw herself forward and helped hold his shoulder down, Manfred oppo

site her, while Wolfhere leaned on a leg and Sanglant grasped the other. As if from a distance she heard Mayor Werner wailing and the cries and sobbing of the crowd. The Eagle went lax. Liath sat back, looked up to find Sanglant staring at her, his hands resting on the man's left leg. The prince stayed there, poised like that, for a long breath. Wolfhere muttered a curse and hunched over, ear to the injured man's chest.

"No need," said Sanglant, not taking his gaze off Liath. "He's stopped breathing. There is no pulse of blood. He's dead." That strange hoarse scrape in his voice lent a verisimilitude of grief to his words that she did not see in his expression; not that he was pleased, either, just that death no longer grieved or surprised him.

She looked away in time to see Manfred cover his eyes with a hand. Wolfhere remained bent over the body for a long while, his face hidden. Finally, he straightened.

"He is dead." He sat on his heels while beyond Mayor Werner wept copious tears, although not, Liath suspected for the dead man but rather for the loss of hope.

Sanglant lifted a hand. The Dragons drove the onlookers out of the courtyard. "This is no time to weep," the prince said, rising and turning to Mayor Werner. "He was a brave man, and he deserves this honor: that we not lose heart because of the news he paid his life to bring us. Count Hildegard may yet win through." "If she does not?"

"If she does not," replied the prince, "if her force is utterly broken, then we will ration food more strictly and settle ourselves in for a long siege. We have good water supplies here. There is yet hope that Wolfhere's companions will reach King Henry. Some of my own men still reside outside the walls, and they will harass the Eika until we can either break out or another force comes to break in."

Finally Wolfhere moved, but only to unpin the brass badge the dead Eagle wore at his throat. It was wet with blood and drying spume. He wiped it off on the tatters of the dead man's cloak. Then he rose, and Manfred and Liath rose with him. Wolfhere extended a hand, open, the badge lying on it, winking in the torchlight.

"What are the precepts which govern the conduct of an Eagle, Liath?"

They were simple enough. She had memorized them easily. "Serve the king and no other. Speak only the truth of what you see and hear, but speak not at all to the king's enemies. Let no obstacle stand in the way of your duty to the king, not weather, not battle, not pleasure, not plague. Let your duty to your kin come second, and make no marriage unless to another Eagle who has sworn the same oaths as you."

She could not help it. She glanced toward Sanglant, who had turned back to watch her, or to watch Wolfhere, she could not tell which. His gaze was steady and a bit imposing, but he made no sign or sound.

Yet as she took a breath, to finish, she saw that Manfred also watched her, but with an odd expression, as if he was watching to see what she would do or how she would react. Had she been blind? Was his affection for her something more than that of comrades? She dismissed the thought quickly and with impatience; to believe so was vanity, nothing more. Just because Hugh had desired her and no other woman in Heart's Rest did not mean every man desired her.

Manfred smiled sadly at her. She smiled back and continued.

"Aid any Eagle who is in need, and protect your comrades from any who might harm them. And, last, abide by your faith in Our Lady and Lord.

"Do you swear to abide by these?" Wolfhere asked.

It was quiet now that most of the crowd had been chased away. The mayor had stopped wailing.

He huddled behind Sanglant, his servants clustered round him with solemn faces and hands clasped in prayer. Torches flared, and as the wind shifted it blew smoke into her nostrils, stinging and bitter. From the east, stronger now, she heard the Eika drums.

"I do so swear," she said quietly, understanding now what was going on.

Manfred knelt and pulled the remains of the dead Eagle's cloak across his slack and bloody face, concealing it. Wolfhere leaned forward across the body, lifting the badge. But Sanglant stepped in and set a hand between them.

"As the king's representative, it is my right," he said.

Wolfhere hesitated only a moment. What choice did he have? He relinquished the Eagle's badge to the prince. And Sanglant fastened it to Liath's tunic, his fingers at her throat. His lips were turned up slightly, but Liath could not be certain if the expression was meant to be a smile. She only knew that she was flushed. He kept his gaze where it belonged: on the sharp pin as he fastened it through the cloth of her tunic. But when he had finished, he did not immediately drop his hands away. He met her gaze and mouthed three words which, with his back to Wolfhere and Manfred and all the others drawn back or gone, only he and she knew:

" 'Make no marriage.'

Then he turned and walked away and soon was lost in the darkness beyond the torchlit haze.

She watched him go, then, selfconsciously, dropped her gaze away. But it came to rest on the dead Eagle. She touched the badge at her throat. The metal was cold and still slick with the effluvia of his dying.

"Now you are truly an Eagle," said Wolfhere softly, not without triumph.

LIATH woke at dawn, stiff and shivering. It was colder than it had been the night before, and as she slipped her wool tunic on over her shift she noticed the light was of a different quality as well.

Throwing her cloak over her shoulders, she went outside.

The clouds had blown off, and from the parapet she saw the glittering cold disk of the sun, bright but with the breath of old winter on it, a last reminder of snow and ice and the grip of cold weather. She stamped her feet .and rubbed her arms. She refused to let memories of Hugh spoil this day, her first as a true Eagle. She touched the brass badge at her throat. Surely this badge protected her from him. Surely not even a noblewoman's bastard like Hugh would attempt to make her break her oath that had now been given to the king's service. Or at least she told herself that. It was too clear and fine a morning to taint with fear.

The eastern shore was shrouded with fog that the sun had not yet burned off. She could not see the Eika camp and only the suggestion of earthworks, dark forms shouldering through the white blanket of fog. To the west she saw clouds. Licking a finger, she held it up. The wind was coming from the east; those western clouds, then, were those that had covered Gent last night. She smiled, slightly; Hathui would merely snort at this profound observation and point out that a child could have made it.

But thinking of Hathui made her think of Hanna. Where was Hanna now? Had she escaped the Eika? Had she found safety? Had they reached the king, and was he even now marching to raise the siege? She missed Hanna so badly. The bite of cold made it worse because cold wrenched her mind back to Hugh, to that night when she had chosen not to die, when the light had bobbed an erratic course out to her where she huddled in the pig shed only to reveal itself as Hugh, with a lantern. Hugh, who had taken her back inside

But there was no point dwelling on that. "No point thinking only of what troublesyou," Da always said. But Da had been a master at ignoring the trouble that stalked him, whether it be debt or whatever had finally caught and killed him. She wiped away a tear with the back of a king's dragon hand, then clapped her hands together, rubbed them briskly, trying to warm them.

"Liath!"

She turned. Below, in the courtyard, Wolfhere waved at her. She climbed down the ladder and jogged over to him.

"I must prepare the body for burial," he said. "But in my surprise and haste last night forgot my flask in the cathedral crypt."

She nodded. "I'll fetch it for you." "Come back here after," he said. "We'll bury our comrade after Terce."

The city was more restless than usual, this day, this early. People wandered the streets as if looking for lost relatives. The hammering of blacksmiths sounded a steady din from the armory, and a constant stream of men and women carried loads on their backsmetals, leather, anything that could possibly be made into weapon or armordown to the warehouses where the armories had been set up.

There were, Liath noted, no children on the streets at all. ~~

When she reached the cathedral, she heard the final psalm of the office of Prime.

" 'God, Our Lady and Lord, have spoken and have summoned the world from the rising to the setting sun.' ' She hurried up the steps and through the open doors. The cathedra] was packed: with refugees, with townspeople, with the Mayor and his entourage. At the front, in the place of honor, knelt Prince Sanglant, his blueblack hair and the wink of gold at his neck a beacon for her gaze. He wore mail and his fighting tunic, and fifty Dragons knelt with him, all arrayed for battle, helmets tucked under their arms. The biscop stood before her gold biscop's chair, set behind the Hearth; she raised her arms as she led the congregation in the final verses of the psalm.

' 'Our Lord is coming and will not keep silence: fire runs before him and wreathes him closely round.

Our Lady summons heaven on high and Earth to the judgment of the people.

Think well on this, you who forget God, or you will be torn in pieces and no one shall save you.' '

All were kneeling. Liath knelt in the side aisle, at the very back of the crowd, and spoke the final Kyria with the congregation.

Lord, have mercy. Lady, have mercy.

Then, in the hesitation as the final prayer died into the air and the congregation waited for the biscop to dismiss them, Liath stood and slipped along the wall to the shadowed corner of the vestibule where a heavy wooden door barred passage to the crypt. It creaked as she opened it. She glanced back, but the hum of the crowd, rising, stretching, waiting perhaps for a word from biscop or mayor about last night's message, covered the noise. She left the door ajar behind her.

A thin line of light marked the door as she descended, and at the first sharp comer it glanced off stone and illuminated a bead of water caught on a delicate spiderweb. Turning the corner, she lost sight of the door, though the suggestion of daylight still trailed after her. She went as silently as she could, not wishing to disturb the peace of the dead. She reached the bottom, foot slamming into level floor where she thought there was another step down, and paused to let her jolted shoulders recover.

Strange, that the light from above still gave a steady if faint radiance, just enough that she could see the shape of her hand if she held it up in front of her face. Last nightbut of course, last night it had already been dark when she and Wolfhere had descended; that was why it had been pitchblack.

Abruptly, she heard a noise above, from the stairs. She froze, listening.

Footsteps descending. They were heavy and accompanied by a fine rattling and shaking, many small chains muffled in cloth. The pale ghosts of tombs watched from the gloom. She was, she discovered with surprise, not

afraid at all. Indeed, without knowing why, she was expecting him.

"Liath," he said. She could only see his shape, bulky in armor, only feel the air shifting as he stopped five steps above, his body blocking the narrow passage.

"You heard the door creak," she said, "even above the noise of the congregation."

"Below the noise of the congregation," he corrected. She felt that he smiled or perhaps only wished that he did. In any case, he walked down the rest of the stairs. He stumbled on the floor, not expecting it so soon, and swore. "Damn, it's dark down here. How can you see anything? What are you doing here?"

"Fetching something left behind."

"An answer worthy of Wolfhere. I am not your enemy, Liath."

"No," she said. Her voice shook. "I never thought you were."

Seeking, his hand found her shoulder; he was like a blind creature groping by sound. The crypt echoed strangely, and even the faint harmonics of his mail, rippling and clicking with his every least movement, got caught and distorted among the tombs and the vast breathless cavern, all air and stone.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Who are your kin?"

"I am the daughter of Anne and Bernard. I know nothing of my mother's lineage, save that she is of free birth. Wolfhere knew her. It's likely he knows things about her he has not chosen to tell me."

He chuckled, a soft sound on an exhalation of breath. "Wolfhere is not a man for sharing confidences. Or so my father claims. But I did not expect you would be given the same treatment as the rest of us."

His hand on her shoulder was terribly distracting, but neither did she want to move away from him. "Why? Why do you say that?"

"He favors you. Or I should say, he seems to be protecting you."

"Perhaps he is. I don't truly know."

"Ah. And your father's kin?"

"I know little about them, save that they came west and settled in Wendar during the reign of Taillefer. There is still a cousin who holds lands near Bodfeld, but I have never met her. One of her sons rides with the Dragons."

He removed his hand from her shoulder, and she was sorry to lose the contact. He shifted, restless, and she glimpsed in the halfdarkness the shape of his head, tilted back, then cocked to one side, as if he was listening. She could only hear the weight of the stone above her, a heaviness more sound than feeling.

"Bodfeld," he murmured. "That would be Sturm. But he is trapped outside."

"I met him!" She thought back, recalling the Dragon who had led the company which had saved them from the first attack of the Eika. But all she had seen of that man were blue eyes, blond beard, and a grim expression. Much the same expression, she supposed by the tone of his voice, which Sanglant wore on his face right now.

"He is a good soldier."

This praise for her kinsman warmed her, though it was delivered bluntly and without any suggestion he meant it as flattery toward her.

"Why did you follow me?" she asked boldly.

Rather than answer, he sat on the last stair but one. It was an unexpected gesture and oddly moving; now, instead of towering above her, his head was level with her chest. He appeared less imposing. Perhaps that was his intent.

"A good lineage, if not of the first rank," he said. "Which may account for your lack of deference."

Stung and embarrassed, she flushed. "I beg your pardon, my lord. My Da always told me we came of a proud lineage and need bend our knee to none but the king."

He YaugYv&d soM^. Obviously Vie was not offended.

"You didn't answer my question. Why did you follow me?"

He shook his head, refusing to answer. Perhaps he did not truly know.

But she knew. She was not afraid of Sanglant. His reticence piqued her, irritated her. Surely the darkness, the stone, and the earth hid them from the sight of any who might be watching. Only the cold tombs gleamed with a faint phosphorescence, but the holy sisters and brothers of the church were used to sin, were they not? Did they not preach forgiveness? Was it not allowed, even once, to give in to the urging of your heart?

Liath had forgotten she had a heart. It hurt, like a wound salved with salt, to rediscover it now.

Sanglant did not move. She could not make out his expression. Gold gleamed softly at his neck, the twisted braid of gold that was the emblem of his royal kinship. She could make out the outlines of the black dragon on his tabard, as if it had been stitched with thread spun of moonlight and dewladen spider's silk.

Was it true he had no beard at all, like a woman? Impulsively, she raised a hand to touch his face. She almost flinched away, thinking of Hugh's unshaven face, but Sanglant's skin was nothing like: his was toughened by exposure to the weather, chafed by the chin strap of his helmet, and cool.

And beardless. He might have shaved an hour ago, his skin was so smooth.

Her heart was beating hard. Hugh's shade was furious, but he was far away at this moment, very far away.

"Sanglant," she whispered, wondering if she would have the courage to To what?

He took her hand in histhough his were encased in gloves sewn of soft leatherand drew it away from his face. "Down that road I dare not walk," he said quietly but firmly. He let her hand go.

Numb, she let it fall to her side.

"I beg your pardon," he added, as if he meant it.

Ai, Lady. She was annoyed and embarrassed and such a jumble of other emotions she could not disentangle them one from the other. Sanglant was a notorious womanizer; everyone said so. Why was he rejecting her!

Sanglant shifted restlessly. This was her punishment. She could almost hear Hugh laughing, that soft arrogant sound. You are mine, Liath. You aren't meant for anyone else. Tears stung her eyes. This was her lesson: that she must remain locked within her tower. She must notcould notsuccumb to temptation. It would never be allowed. She was already hopelessly stained.

"I must go," he said abruptly. The hoarseness in his voice made her think, for a wild moment, that he was sorry to be leaving; but his voice always sounded like that. He stood, mail shifting. "We're preparing for a sally out of the walls if we see any sign of Count Hildegard or her people."

"Why did you say that, last night?" Anger helped her fight against tears, anger at Sanglant's rejection of her, at Hugh for his unrelenting grip on her, at Wolfhere for his halftruths, at Da for dying.

"Why?"

"What did I say?"

"You haven't forgotten."

He made a sharp gesture, and she understood abruptly that he had not forgotten and that he spoke as much with his physical being as he did with words. "Make no marriage, Liath," he said harshly.

"Be bound, as I am, by the fate others have determined for you. That way you will remain safe." But he mocked himself as much as he spoke to her.

"Will I remain safe? And from what? What are you safe from, Sanglant?"

He smiled derisively.

How could she see him smile? It was far too dark.

But it was not dark, not entirely. His face and front were illuminated by a soft white light, like muted starlight. The black dragon winked and stirred in that light as Sanglant moved, looking beyond her into the vaults.

His eyes widened in shock. He lifted a hand, stood there, poised, frozen, and utterly astonished.

Liath turned. Just behind her, so close she felt the displacement of air, Sanglant knelt.

She stood beside the tombs as if she had just stepped out of the earth itself. She wore a long linen shift of a cut Liath had never see except in mausoleums and reliefs carved into stone. Her face was as pale as the moon, marked by eyes as blue as the depths of fire. Her long hair, gilded with that same touch of unearthly light, looked like spun gold, hanging to her knees. Her feet were bare. They did not quite touch the floor of the crypt. In each hand she held a knife, and those knives shone as if their blades were made of burning glass.

And she bled, from her hands, from her feet, from her chest where a knife stood out, its blade thrust deep to take her heart's blood. Blood slipped in trails like the runnels of tears down her shift from that wound, and she wept tears of blood.

But she gazed on Liath and Sanglant with the calm serenity of one who is past pain and suffering.

And she beckoned to them.

Hesitant, hand clutching through cloth and wood the Circle of Unity she wore as a necklace, Liath took slow steps forward. Sanglant followed. She heard him murmuring a prayer under his breath.

She spoke no word, merely retreated farther into the night vault of the crypt, into the warren of chambers where the deacons and laybrothers and sisters, servants of the biscop, were buried, least known and least honored.

There lay a plain gravestone, flat against the earth. It bore no markings, no inscription; a grayflecked fungus obscured half its face, grown in a pattern that might have revealed a new mystery had there been better light. But the light that limned the saintfor how could she be anything but a saint?was enough to see the hollow that opened up behind the simple gravestone, a sinkhole that transmuted into stairs, leading down and farther down yet into total blackness.

Sanglant knelt beside the grave. Liath ventured forward, following the saint, who descended the stairs. Her light receded away from them and was lost around a bend in the catacomb. Liath set foot on the first stair.

"Go no farther," said Sanglant abruptly. "The air smells fresh here, and it carries the scent of oats."

She halted, looking back over her shoulder. Already the unearthly light dimmed, as a candle gutters.

He added, impatiently: "The soil in the river valley and east of Gent is rich enough to grow wheat and rye. Only in the western hills do the folk hereabouts grow oats. This tunnel must lead miles from the city."

"But she called to us

Voices sounded from above, accompanied by the ring of mail and the stamp of heavy feet.

Torchlight streamed into the chamber, sending streaks of light glaring over stone and tomb and earth.

Liath shaded her eyes.

"My lord! Prince Sanglant!"

He rose and turned as the first of his Dragons found him.

"My lord Sanglant!" It was the scarredface woman. She looked first at him, then at Liath, who still stood half in the sinkhole, then back at the prince.

He said quickly and loudly, as the others crowded in, "We have followed a vision of St. Kristine.

This is where it brought us."

A few drew the circle at their breasts. None seemed inclined to laugh or make jokes, even finding the prince alone in such a place with an attractive and young woman.

"The fog has lifted from the eastern shore, my lord," continued the woman. She, too, wore armor and, with her exceptional height and broad shoulders, looked as ready for hard battle as any of her comrades. "The watch has spotted Count Hildegard's banner among a mob of horsemen. They are fleeing just ahead of an Eika horde. They are coming to Gent."

Sanglant looked once, and sharply, toward Liath. He was not a man who betrayed emotion easily through the expression of his face; she could read nothing there now. But he lifted a hand and touched his cheek with a finger, an unconscious echo of the moment she had touched him so. Realizing what he was about, he jerked his hands down. Then he swept out at the head of his Dragons. Their heavy steps and the weight and clink of their mail rang through the crypt like thunder, hurting her ears.

None waited for her.

She Waited, but the light died, torchlight and the pale fluorescence of saint's light, both together, leaving her in a gloom relieved only by that faint trail of plain good sunlight filtered through dust and darkness. Air touched her face, as soft as a feather, rising softly from the catacomb at her feet. She smelled fresh earth and growing things, although she could not have sorted oats out from that distant aroma of earth and hills and open air.

The saint had vanished down the stair into the black mystery beyond. Liath dared not follow her, however desperately she wished to. Perhaps, for a moment, she understood Sanglant. Down that road I dare not walk. But that did not lessen the ache.

She shook herself and stepped out of the sinkhole. Groping, she made her way back to the large vault, found the obsidian slab and the little flask tucked forlorn and forgotten up against Biscop Caesaria's tombstone. Liath unstoppered the flask and took a draught. It was bitter enough to make her eyes sting, but bracing. Thus fortified, she climbed back to the living world above.

Like Sanglant, she did not doubt that St. Kristine of the Knives had appeared to them. But she could not answer the most pressing question: Why to them? And why now?

She reached the steps of the cathedral in time to see Sanglant mount his horse. He received his helmet from the woman, but before he settled it over his head, he glanced up toward the open doors.

Their gazes met across the mob that had gathered. The noise in the streets was that of people hysterical with fear and hope.

He did not smile at her, only looked. Then someone spoke, and his attention was pulled away.

He settled his helmet on his head and by that means was transformed; he was Prince Sanglant no longer, but captain of the King's Dragons.

Their gold tabards were as bright as sunlight and his most of all, the black dragon sigil stitched onto gold cloth with veins of silver thread. They looked, indeed, as terrible as their reputation, fierce and unforgiving in iron helms faced with brass; that his helm with its delicate gold dragon was also beautiful only made the contrast between the fine ornamentation and the grandeur of their stark and forbidding strength the more striking.

The prince hefted his teardrop shield on an arm, touched his sword's hilt, and led the way. The rest clattered behind him, over one hundred, headed down the main avenue to the eastern gate where they would meet the rest of their fellows, those who were already on duty and those still arming.

She ran back to the mayor's palace. The people on the streets, seeing her scarlettrimmed cloak and her Eagle's badge parted to let her through.

Wolfhere waited, pacing impatiently back and forth in the Lady Chapel where the dead Eagle had been laid out. The corpse was now clad in a white linen shift, face decently covered by a square of white cloth; it lay, as was appropriate, at the foot of the Hearth.

"Liath!"

She handed Wolfhere the flask. He took it reflexively, without really noting it, and thrust it between belt and tunic. "I sent Manfred ahead to the eastern gate, to be our eyes with the Dragons. Go there now. If they must ride out, you will watch and report back to me. A horse has been saddled."

Everything was happening so fast. She checked herself for bow, quiver, and sword; all were there. Then she hurried outside to the courtyard where a horse was indeed waiting, one of Mayor Werner's geldings, a big handsome bay. His size helped her more than her Eagle's badge now. The streets were thronged and more and more people spilled out of their crowded homes as word spread through the city of Count Hildegard's approach.

But the closer she came to the eastern gate the more the crowd thinned; in a besieged town, even with as daunting a force as the Dragons within their walls, the townsfolk chose the path of prudence. A street ran parallel to the river wall. Here she found a group of boys, old enough to be useful and young enough to be fearless and, thus, enamored of the Dragons. She handed her reins over to one, a gangling weed of a boy with a thin face and quick eyes. From this vantage point she could see the ranks of the Dragons, ten abreast, about two hundred of them, lined up in the open space that fronted the gate.

The boys, citybred and citywise, showed her a ladder that led up the wall and to the wallwalk.

She clambered up, surprising the men of the city's militia who stood watch there, looking out anxiously to the eastern shore.

The fog had lifted, or most of it, in any case. Out on what had once been rich cropland the land boiled with movement like flies swarming over a carcass. The Eika were out in force. The level ground gave a clear view. After a few minutes of confusion, she began to sort out the picture displayed there like a shifting mosaic.

The Eika were out in force, truly; they infested the ground. She had never seen so many bodies in one place, and all of them mobile. The green and white banner that marked the remains of Count Hildegard and her retainers bobbed unsteadily in a tight mass of horsemen supported by a straggling line of running infantry. Those who could not keep up were enveloped in the mass of Eika that came close behind, swallowed and consumed. The Eika closed in around the count's force, slowly cutting them off, encircling them. Only one narrow strip of unclaimed ground remained: the road to the river and the eastern bridge to Gent. It was a race. Liath could not imagine how the count and her remaining soldiers could reach the bridge in timeunless the Dragons sallied out into the very jaws of the Eika army.

This thought hit her with the force of a bracing flood of cold water on a hot day. It cleared her mind. Clearing, her vision clouded, and she closed her eyes and rubbed them with her knuckles. Opened them.

Now, as she stared with horror, the view of the fields beyond the river looked utterly different.

There was a banner, green and white, bearing the blazon that was, probably, the badge of Count Hildegard's lands and kin. But no human retainers surrounded it. No horsemen rallied to it, no infantry fought desperately at the rear. It was surrounded instead by the icewhite glare of a thousand Eika warriors jogging at a brisk pace along the thin strip of road that led to the stone and timber bridge. That led into Gent.

What she had seen before was illusion.

What she had seen before was what everyone else saw, all the watchers along the wall, the Dragons who had left their horses and gone to the posts above the gate to call down their report to the prince, to judge to the instant the best moment to sally out. What they saw was a vision brought by a terrible and powerful enchantment, brought into being by what skills she could not imagine, only that she was the only one who saw past the enchantment to the truth.

"You are deaf to magic, " Da always said.

Or else guarded against it.

The thought hit her with such force that for one awful moment she simply could not move or think.

But she had to think. What had happened to Count Hildegard and her soldiers she did not know, but she could guess. The count's army had been utterly destroyed, and the banner wrested from the dying hands of her last loyal retainer to be used now as the lure to draw the Dragons to their death.

And she was the only one who could stop them.

JL A JM. practically slid down the ladder, she moved so fast. Splinters sliced into her left hand, but the pain was only another goad. The boys who held her horse stared after her as she sprinted toward the Dragons, whose attention was entirely on the men who stood watch above the gate.

"Let me through!" she cried. "I must speak with the prince."

They let her by without demur. Sanglant sat his horse at the front of the line, in conference with others: an elderly militia man, a dismounted Dragon, and his chief attendant, the scarred woman.

Sanglant caught sight of Liath; perhaps he had heard her voice. He lifted a hand to silence the militia man, who was speaking.

"But my lord Sanglant!" the man protested, misunderstanding the prince's intent. "There are too many of them! It would be foolish to sally out into such numbers. If Count Hildegard can win through, we will open the gates to receive her." Then he saw Liath and stuttered to a halt.

"You can't!" Liath cried. She took the reins of Sanglant's horse out of the hands of a Dragon, as if by holding his mount's harness she could control the prince's decision. "Count Hildegard isn't out there at all. It's an illusion. There's magic

Sanglant was off his horse at once. Without waiting for her or anyone, he ran to the wall and took the steep steps three at a time to the lookout over the gate. She scrambled after him. Manfred stood here with two Dragons and a cluster of city militiamen. He motioned the others aside so the prince could come forward. Liath

pressed up beside Manfred; surely he would believe her, if the others could not see. There, on the parapet, protected by a timber wall covered by animal skins soaked in water, they stared out at the far shore.

She saw so clearly now. There must be more than a thousand Eika, two thousand perhaps, a vastly greater number than those who defended Gent. The barbarians jogged forward at a steady trot, the banner swaying in their midst, a prize of war. Their enormous dogs loped beside them, muzzles lifted to the wind. There was rank after rank of blue and yellow shields with their menacing red serpent blazon, the dark line of their weapons, held at the ready; their bone white hair gleamed in the new sunlight as the fog dissipated along the shore of the river. How could anyone see this as the remnants of Count Hiidegard's army? The Eika called out, too, in words she could not understand, only that they sounded like taunts in her ears. The dogs ran silently which was, perhaps, worse. The river streamed on, oblivious.

Drums beat to the time of running feet.

They came closer, and closer. Liath could make out the details in the green and white banner: a boar on a white field. She could see the long flanks of the dogs, saw their tongues lolling out. The Eika had come so close, first rank almost on the bridge itself, that the prince had possibly twenty breaths to make a choice.

"Don't you see?" she cried.

Sanglant narrowed his eyes.

"Manfred!" She grabbed Manfred's arm and shook him, hard. "It isn't Count Hildegard at all! It's only Eika! Look harder. You're an Eagle. You must be able to see with true sight."

"There!" called Sanglant. "In the fourth rank. There is Count Hildegard and her brother!" He pushed away from the wall.

The banner and the first of the Eika troops hit the bridge. Their footsteps sounded like the hollow tramp of doom on the stone and timber structure. A shrill keening rose from the front ranks of the Eika, as if they had king's dragon caught the scent of their quarry. As if they had seen Sanglant's dragon helm on the walkway above and knew he was waiting for them.

"The Eika are almost upon them!" cried Manfred, jerking his arm out of Liath's grip. He shot her a single glance, as if to say he was sorry.

Sanglant looked then, piercingly, at Liath. He wavered. Clearly he did. He wanted to trust her that much. But then he looked back. Howls rang from the bridge, a chorus of them, dogs and Eika joining in strength until they deafened her. The faces of those watching, those whose faces she could see, went white with horror. Liath could no longer imagine what they saw, or what they thought they saw. She couJd only see the Eika army almost upon them.

"Open the gates!" Sanglant commanded. As he pushed past her, she grabbed his arm. The Dragons nearest him swore and lunged for her. The great wheels that controlled the gate began to creak and roll, and the doors swung outward.

"Close the gates!" she yelled, but no one listened. Below, the Dragons parted, half to each side, making room for the flight of the count and her retainers into the city. "It's an illusion. Its a trick."

All she could see of Sanglant's face was his eyes, jade green, staring hard at her. He shook his.head. Then he was gone, down the steps.

The gates creaked farther open, gaining speed. Mirroring them, the Eika in the front ranks broke into a dead run.

"Manfred!" she screamed, grabbing his cloak, shaking him. "Can't you seel Manfred! Trust me!"

But it was too late.

The gates opened. Count Hiidegard's banner passed the last pylon, crossed over the transition from bridge to land. And Eika poured through the open gate into Gent. Sanglant, caught on the ladder, could not reach his horse or his men.

The square below boiled into chaos. Their howling reached a peak, so sharp and high it hurt her ears. Manfred gasped aloud and then he shoved her along the walkway.

"Run! Run along the wall until it's safe. Find Wolfhere!"

She stumbled and went to her knees just as an arrow thudded into the militia man standing, still in shock, behind her. He grunted, more surprised than pained, and tumbled slowly to his knees. Gripping the arrow as if to his chest, the man fell forward to the edge of the walkway and over as she grabbed for and missed him. He landed atop two Eika warriors just as they hacked at a Dragon cut off from the others. They went down under his weight, but more came behind them, many more, like the unstoppable waters coming up the river at floodtide. Then the dogs found him; some ran on, but others began to feed.

Liath gagged, bile rising in her throat.

A mailed hand yanked her to her feet. She came up hard, jolted against a tabarda black dragon sewn with silver.

It was Sanglant. He did not speak. He pulled her along the walkway behind him so fast her feet barely touched the ground. She could not even look back to see what had become of Manfred. She was too numb even to feel fear; she felt completely paralyzed.

Two arrows stuck out of Sanglant's back, quivering, points embedded in mail. One shook loose and fell harmlessly away. Militia men knelt, shooting with their bows, aiming out over the wall toward the bridge where Eika crowded in from the eastern shore. It was too confused in the square fronting the gate to hope to shoot Eika safely without chancing to hit Gent's defenders.

The defenders were hopelessly outnumbered. Already the Dragons had been borne back by the force of the unexpected assault and the sheer weight of numbers and ferocity. The Eika gave no quarter.

Beyond that, she could make out no pattern to the battle swirling at the gate except that of ironhelmed Dragons fighting desperately to form back into ranks.

She heard, distantly, the creak of the wheels that moved the gates. Then screams. She smelled smoke.

In a staccato pattern arrows thunked into the wood just behind her, like a sudden spatter of drum beats, sharp and final. Sanglant grunted and swore and stopped. She turned her head. An arrow stuck out from his left leg, just above the knee. As she watchedas if time obeyed different laws herea drop of blood welled up through leather and leaked out, following by a second and then a third, sending a trail of red down the curve of the knee. Red blood, just like her own, like any human's blood She could not get any breath in to her lungs. She was going to choke.

"Break it off." Sanglant let go of her. Obedient, she gripped the arrow, one hand braced against his leg, the other clamping down over the fletching. Blue, she noted idly; the feathers were stiff as metal, digging into her skin. The shaft was strong. Somehow, she snapped it in two and tossed the end away.

He grabbed her and tugged her on. "My lord prince!" A militia man called to them from the safety of a lookout post built into the wall. Sanglant pulled her inside, where the whitebearded militia man threw back a hatch to show a trapdoor beneath.

"This way, my lord," he said. Liath was unable to catch her breath. She stared at the man's brown cloak, strangely fascinated with its plain weave and ordinary texture. It had been patched on one shoulder with a piece of material that did not match in color, as if taken from a different batch of dye.

Sanglant leaned against the closed door, panting, for this moment safe from arrow fire. Liath heard the sounds of the battle, swords chopping at mail, at ironrimmed shields; the alarm, a thin horn rising like a clarion again and again, alerted the people of Gent.

Sanglant pushed away from the door and crossed to an embrasure. He had not let go of Liath, so she perforce had to follow. The archer standing there moved aside instantly. Together, she and Sanglant stared out the thin slit of a window toward the eastern shore of the river.

The angle of the lookout post was such that the embrasure's line of sight took in the river's bank where the bridge touched the eastern shoreline. Eika poured onto the bridge, but even as they watched the tide slowed, stemmed by the halfclosed gates, by the resistance from within the city, by the narrow path itself, the roadway and bridge, that forced the Eika warriors close together. But although they slowed down, they still moved inexorably forward, howling and keening like wild beasts. On the eastern shore, swathes of fog concealed patches of field. A shadow lay over the land, wreathed with mist, there on the far shore.

Neither fog nor mist. Something about it: a pattern, a shifting, the way her eye wanted to slide away from it. It was an enchantment. She forced herself to look hard at it, to not believe it was shadow and fog but rather concealment.

It dissolved, or not dissolved as much as faded from her sight and resolved into four figures. Two of them were Eika warriors painted and outfitted like the rest of their kind, red serpent round shields resting casually against their legs, twobladed axes cradled like infants in the crooks of their arms.

Between the two warriors stood an Eika remarkable for his scrawny stature and his apparent nakedness: He wore only a ragged loincloth and a gold belt. In his hands, he held a small wooden chest. A leather pouch hung from the belt.

But beside these three stood one other, one unlike the rest by stature alone, by some indefinable quality Liath could not name, yet recognized. She could not tear her gaze away; he was a huge Eika whose face and arms and chest had the scaly sheen of a creature clothed in living bronze. He had no tunic, nothing covering his chestnot even the garish painted patterns sported by his warriorsonly layers of necklaces, beads, shells, and bones strung together and mixed in with chains of gold and what looked like gold and silver coins, holes king's dragon drilled in their centers and strung on thin ropes of metal. His stiff trousers were sewn of cloth dyed a brilliant blue, belted by a mesh of gleaming gold that draped in delicate folds to his knees. He wore gold armbands, like twining serpents, around each thick arm. His hair glinted bone white in the sunlight, braided into a single braid that hung to his knees.

Beside her, Sanglant sucked his breath in between his teeth.

"There!" said Liath. "Do you see him?"

"I see him." He shook his head as if to shake away anannoying insect. "He is the one whom I felt all along.

His is the power."

"He is the enchanter." She felt the power, just as Sanglant did.

Sanglant leaned forward into the embrasure, suddenly intent, staring hard toward the distant Eika.

His lips parted. "Tell me your name," he whispered.

The Eika enchanter shifted, head turning so abruptly that Liath shuddered. It was as if he had heard. He looked around and focused that fast, looking toward them although certainly he could not see them, concealed as they were by the timbered walls and the narrow confines of the lookout post.

Certainly he could not know the prince watched him from there.

And yet, why not, if he was truly so powerful an enchanter?

She thought, then, that he spoke a word in reply, but she could not see him clearly to guess at the syllables he spoke, and she certainly could not hear above the clash of battle raging in the city beyond.

"Bloodheart," said Sanglant in a low voice, staring out as if the two of them watched each other, tested each other. "We will meet, you and I."

Beyond, on the shore of the river, the Eika tide swelled. The knot shoving forward on the bridge broke loose and Liath tore her gaze away from the Eika enchanter to see the gates shoved open and more Eika flood into Gent.

Jerking back from the embrasure, Sanglant turned to Liath. "Go to the cathedral. Save those you can." The militia man waited, nervous, taut, at the trapdoor.

"Where are you going?"

But it was a stupid question. She knew the answer before Sanglant said the words, although he said them anyway.

"My Dragons need me. We will hold them as long as we are able." He lifted a hand and touched her cheek with his mailed handas she had touched his, in the silence of the crypt.

Then he hefted his shield, raised his sword, and was out the door before she could say anything more. She started after him, back to the wallwalk, only to see him descending an outside ladder. Then he was gone, running into the chaos that raged around the gates as the battle moved steadily outward, farther into the streets of I Gent. A cry went up, a piercing shout, his name called j over and over. Before the militia man grabbed her she saw the overwhelmed Dragons rallying, fighting on horse or by foot toward the lone figure of their prince who seemed to be intent on running alone full into the j force of the Eika assault.

A hand clapped onto her shoulder and dragged her back away from the door just as an arrow thunked into it. A burning arrow. Smoke made her eyes sting. It guttered against the wood; the bearded man slammed the door shut, but she heard more arrows thud into it, an echo of the drums that pounded relentlessly in the Eika camp.

"This way!" he said urgently. "Down two levels to a tunnel beneath. It runs all the way from this lookout post to the mayor's palace. You will meet up with a larger | tunnel, which runs straight. Take no side tunnels, they only lead to other posts. I pray that the Eika have not yet taken the other posts and gotten into the tunnels."

She descended the ladder, not looking back. The man I did not follow. The first ladder gave out on dirt, a tiny space within the wall, banks of sod and timber, so tight king's dragon she could hardly breathe. She found the other ladder and climbed still farther down, twelve rungs, to a tunnel lined with fired bricks. The space was barely wider than her shoulders.

She hesitated, touched her bow, then drew her short sword instead. Her fingers brushed the words graven in the hilt: "This good sword is the friend ofLucian."

"I pray you," she whispered, "be my good friend as well."

She walked cautiously, for it was dark and she could hear the distorted echoing noises of battle not far above her, crossing and crossing back like a complicated tapestry being woven. Pray God that this tapestry was not to be the fall of the city of Gent.

The narrow side tunnel debouched into a larger passageway, one that might support two men walking abreast but not more. Behind, where she judged the wall stood, she caught the flickering glare of fire and smelled the stinging scent of smoke. Her eyes had already adjusted to the dark. Ahead, it was darker and more silent. Behind, she heard a grunt and the hard thunk of a person landing on dirt. She whirled. Saw the betraying gleam of white hair. What else to do?

She had the advantage. She ran forward, and just as the Eika whipped round, she stabbed it in the gut. Felt the resistance of its skin, as if it was alloyed with metal. But Lucian's was a good sword indeed. Perhaps the Dariyans had known secrets of metallurgy lost to the blacksmiths of today. Perhaps Eika skin was not as tough as it looked. The blade sank in and pierced the creature through.

It howled and sliced at her. She yanked backward and cut at its face; it went down. The stink was horrible. Above, fire flared and she heard a man screaming over and over and over again, Ai! Ai!

Ai! and more distantly, heard through smoke and pounding feet and shouting and the whole chaotic cacophony of a battle being slowly and brutally lost, a sharper call: "To the prince! To the prince!"

She jumped back from the Eika's body. It twitched and she fled away down the tunnel. If any followed, she did not notice them. She was too busy running. Too busy remembering.

He had touched her cheek. Did he care for her? Surely he would be killed. And what did it matter, now? There were not enough defenders in Gent now that the Eika had breached the gate. Not enough in any case, if the Eika had, as their leader, an enchantereven if his only gifts were for illusion.

Illusion was a powerful weapon in the hands of one who dared use it any way he wished.

"Save those you can." So Sanglant had said. Surely that was why the saint had appeared to them.

Saints, like angels, like the daimones of the upper air, were not bound to the world of time: They could see the future.

She passed side tunnels and all she heard was fighting and screaming, all she smelled was blood and smoke.

The tunnel led to the barracks. She climbed up a narrow ladder into the tackroom, head butting into a trapdoor which, with main force, she shoved open from underneath, scraping knuckles on the iron bands that bound the trapdoor together.

The barracks were entirely empty now; there was only the distant sound of drums and the clarion call of the horn. And, drifting ever closer, the aroma and music of battle. All the Dragons were gone.

Gone. Dead, soon enough. She had no energy to cry. She had to warn Wolfhere. She had to lead as many people out through the catacomb as possible before the city fell. She no longer doubted Gent was doomed.

But at the door of the barracks, she stopped dead. Hesitated and turned back, staring at the empty ranks of stalls, smelling the straw, some of it dry, some of it damp with urine or manure. The barracks would burn very well.

She ran back to the stall where she and Manfred and Wolfhere had slept. Manfred's saddle sat against a post, king's dragon

just where it had always sat this past month. Its presence was like an accusation. What had happened to him? Was he still alive? Had she though of him once since the breaching of the gate? But she did not have time; she should not even be here. Every moment meant another life saved, or lost.

But she had to get the book. She heaved her saddle up and over, grabbed the saddle bags and slung them over her shoulder. Then she sprinted back, outside, crossing the deserted courtyard. It was far too quiet, here in the mayor's palace. "Liath!"

Wolfhere stood on the palisade. He practically jumped down the ladder, he was in such haste to get to her.

"No hope!" she cried. "The Eika have breached the gate. Everyone must arm and fight, or go to the cathedral." "How?"

"An enchanter." She remembered, suddenly, that strange exchange. Someday it might be important that more people than she and Sanglant knew that name. "He calls himself Bloodheart."

Wolfhere nodded once, sharply. "Then go, Liath. Go. If you win free, you must get word to the king."

She did not wait to ask him what he meant to do. She did not have time. Already smoke rose in thick clouds, heavy, black, and forbidding, from the eastern part of the city, and flames licked the roofs of houses near enough to see. Perhaps the mayor's guard had already run to the eastern gate.

But when she crossed out through the arch and started down the main thoroughfare of Gent, she found utter confusion. The street was packed, every soul there wild with fear. Half of them seemed to be headed to the western gate. Some few, armed with butcher knives and staves and shovels and hatchets and any object that might be used as a weapon, shoved their way toward the east. But not as many ran east. Mostly, the people of Gent had forgotten everything and completely panicked.

Liath pushed and elbowed her way through the crowd. At first she tried to yell, every third step,

"To the cathedral!" but there was no point to it. Her voice simply could not be heard above the roar of shouting, donkeys braying, chickens squawking, children wailing, fire snapping, and untold feet slapping down on plank and stone roadwayall headed every direction and none.

But she needn't have worried. Pushing her way along the length of the palace palisade, crossing the square, and reaching the broad steps and inviting facade of Gent Cathedral proved the easiest part of her journey.

The cathedral was packed.

People were shoved together on the steps, crowding in, crying and pleading, lifting their children high over their heads so the infants might be granted sanctuary inside if not their own selves.

"Make way!" Liath cried, although their noise drowned out her words. She drew her sword and used its hilt to knock hard into the people. When they turned, angry or sobbing, they gave way before her Eagle's badge.

In this fashion, though slowly, she got up the steps. If possible, it was more crowded inside. All of them had shoved inside until she could not understand how anyone could breathe pressed up toward the Hearth, the haven, the holy space. Surely not even savages like the Eika would profane the holy space of the God of Unities.

They stank of fear and sweat. It was impossible, absolutely impossible, to imagine getting through this crowd to the Hearth where she might hope to find the biscop. She sheathed her sword.

And then, amazingly, she heard a shift in the tone of the crowd. Like a muting blanket drawn bit by bit across the congregation, the wordless mutter and yelling and king's dragon weeping took on form and flow. Creeping back from the front, a hymn slowly took hold.

"Lift me up!" Liath commanded.

Half to her surprise, two men did so, grabbing her by the legs and hoisting her up. There, at the Hearth, the biscop presided, arms lifted toward the heavens as she led the congregation in a psalm.

" 'You that live in the shelter of Light, you who say, 'The Lord is my safe retreat, the Lady the fastness in which I trust.'

He will cover you with His pinions.

She will grant you safety beneath Her wings.

You shall not fear the arrow that flies at night or the spear that stalks by day.

A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand close at hand, but you it shall not touch.' '

Liath sang with them. When the psalm finished in a somber Kyria, the biscop turned her hands, palms outward, and the mass of people quieted so all were listening. Only the hiccuping sobs of terrified children broke the silence.

"Pray, let us have silence," cried the biscop.

In that moment, while silence trembled and the roar of fire and battle and distant drums leaked in through the walls and the open doors, before the panic of the people outside could overset this tenuous peace found here, Liath raised her voice. She called attention to herself in the very way Da had warned her against.

"Never be noticed. Never stand out. Never raise your voice."

"Biscop, I pray you, listen to my words. I am a King's Eagle!"

The men holding her shifted, and she had to steady herself, one hand on each of their shoulders.

Every head in the cathedral skewed round, faces bleached white with fear. The biscop lowered her hands and signed to her to continue.

"Your Grace, please believe my words. I have seen a sign. St. Kristine appeared to me" Liath faltered. She could see she was losing their attention, their belief. "St. Kristine of the Knives appeared to Prince Sanglant! It was a true vision. There is a catacomb beneath the cathedral, a tunnel, leading west.

By this way That was all she had time for. A shout rose from the gathered crowd outside. "The Dragon!

The Dragons have broken!" Liath clapped her hands over her ears just as the two men lost their grip on her. She fell but could not land hard because the people were packed so tightly in the cathedral. Even shoving, panicking, trying to move one way or the other, no one could shift more than half a step to right or left.

The next instant a horn call blasted through the space, echoing off stone, deafening her and every other soul inside. But it silenced the crowd long enough, just long enough, that the biscop could be heard.

"This I say!" she cried in her powerful voice. "This I say to you, my people, that I will not stir from this Hearth until all have reached safety or the Eika have been repulsed. So must all who are fit take up any weapon you can find and fight to save this, our city. In the name of Our Lady and Lord, in the name of St. Kristine who, though she suffered and died in this holy place, did not forsake us."

She drew breath, but such was the power of her voice and the tense expectation that none spoke or filled the void with clamor.

"So has St. Kristine appeared to the prince, he who even now fights with his own body to spare ours pain and desecration. This is my word, and you my people shall obey it. Let those who are children or who are nursing children follow this Eagle into the crypt, in an orderly fashion. Gather the children, for they and the holy relics of this Hearth are the treasures of our city.

king's dragon We must save them, if it is so willed by Our Lady and Lord and the saint who watched over us. Let the elder children shepherd the younger, and let the infirm wait with me at the Hearth. Let us put our trust in God. Lord, have mercy. Lady, have mercy upon us."

Her deacons brought torches. With the crowd parting before her, Liath took a torch and led the way down into the crypt. As she descended the steps, all the din and tumult was lost to the muffling encasement of stone and earth, to the cloak of death and the pale tombs of the holy dead. The torch burned steadily, heat blowing in her face, stinging her eyes.

She stood while deacons carrying the holy relics of St. Kristine crowded behind her and the stairs filled with softly weeping children, pressing, waiting. She felt them at her back like a weight: on her all depended.

"Save all you can," Sanglant had said. And others, crying out: "The Dragons have broken."

She had no idea where the saint's tomb was. Everything looked changed. The crypt opened out before her in silent mystery, taciturn, unwilling to give up its secrets.

Then, on a whim, she knelt where her footsteps and Sanglant's, so short a time before, had scuffed the earth. She cast about, andthere!

On the dirt perhaps two strides away she saw the flecking of dried blood.

She followed this trail left by the bleeding saint. It led her to the sinkhole and the stairs that yawned into the black earth beneath. The crypt quickly filled behind her. Deacons whispered, frightened.

An infant sobbed and was muffled.

Of the battle in Gent, she could hear nothing. She did not know whether Sanglant yet lived; she had no idea what had happened to Wolfhere and Manfred.

She could at least hope that Hanna had made it away from Gent alive. It seemed ironic now that Hanna, forced to flee, had been granted the safer path, though it had not seemed so at the time.

She could not delay. What lay there in the dark earth could not be worse than the fate awaiting those who faced the Eika onslaught. She took in a deep breath and started down the steps.

She counted as she went, aware always of the press of refugees at her back though she never turned to see them, to help them, to make sure they did not stumble. She had to walk the unknown path.

She counted eightyseven steps, because counting gave her the courage to go on, speaking the numbers aloud so she couldn't hear, so the blackness didn't seem so utterly enveloping. The air was close, smelling of mildew and earth. Once, or twice, hand brushing the wall, she thought her fingers touched worms or other moist creatures that live only in the night. But she did not have time to flinch. She had to press forward.

The steps ended and the floor leveled out and turned sharply. It widened to the width of her outstretched arms. She paused then, but only that one time. The torch illuminated rough stone walls and a low ceiling hewnout of rock. The floor here was also rock, strewn with small stones and pebbles that rustled under her boots.

But it was fairly smooth, as if water had once streamed through here or many feet marched back and forth, grinding it down under the weight of years and passage.

She could not see far ahead of her, but she felt the air had a flavor untouched by burning and war and death.

She smelted oats, a touch caught on a bare wisp of a breeze borne down from distant hills. That gave her heart. The deacons pressed up behind her, the woodenchest which contained the saint's relics jutting into her back. A child said, in a high, wavering voice: "But it's so dark. Where is my momma?"

She walked on into the darkness. She led them, counting until it became ridiculous to count, past one thousand and two thousand and beyond that. The tunnel ran straight, like an arrow toward its intended victim.

She wept as she walked, plain good tears, quiet ones. She could not afford to sob. She could not afford to be blinded by grief. Behind, she heard those who followed, the thin wails of infants and the helpless weeping of children who could not understand what was happening to them. The deacons murmured in soft voices to the rhythm of their step, the words of the psalm they had sung in the cathedral:

" 'For She has charged Her angels to guard you wherever you go, to lift you on their hands.' '

On she walked, leading them. On and on, away from the fall of Gent. So few would be saved.

"We will hold them as long as we are able." His last words.

He was not meant for her, of course. It was foolish, an infatuation, not love, surely, for love is built on ties of blood or of shared work and companionship, not on a glance or the stray wanderings of stubborn and insistent desire. Never meant for her, even if he had lived. It was not only the difference in their births, for she believed what Da had told her, that she need only bend her knee before the king.

They were freeborn, of an old lineage, so Da always said, though he had never given her more information than that. Of a lineage that had gained lands in return for lordship over themselves, beholden to no count or duke but only to the king. As Hathui's people had, in these times, in the eastern marches.

No, it was more than that, and utterly different.

"Be bound, as I am, by the fate others have determined for you." So Sanglant had said. Was it not the duty of the captain of the King's Dragons to die in the service of his king? And hers to live, if she was able?

Was she not bound by that other mystery, of Da's death, of her mother's death eight years before, of the treasurehouse, the secret, that she both carried in her saddlebags and even perhaps in her own person? Of her own person? She had been made a slave because of another man's desire to possess what was hidden within her. She was now always and ever marked by that slavery, just as she was marked by Da's murder and by the mystery of the white feather she had found next to his dead body. Deaf to magicor guarded against it. But bound to it, whichever was true.

Some destinies cannot be escaped.

So she walked and left Gent behind. She felt nothing in her body, not truly. She could not afford to be crippled with grief, and during those long months with Hugh she had learned how to put strong emotion away from her, locking it away behind a sturdy door.

But she allowed herself tears. She wept for Sanglant and for what could never be. She wept for Da, for her mother, for Wolfhere and Manfred, for the dead Eagle whose badge she had inherited. For all the souls, the brave biscop and her people, who would die. Liath had seen the Eika enchanter who named himself Bloodheart. She did not believe he would show mercy or respect the sanctity of the Hearth. Why should he? He had not been brought within the Circle of Unity. He had slaughtered Count Hildegard and then used her banner as part of an unscrupulous trick. He wanted Sanglant for reasons she could not fathom. But he and Sanglant were engaged in a duel set in motion before they had ever set eyes on one another.

Her torch burned steadily and did not go out or expend its substance. She held it in front of her as a beacon; it was the only light left to her.

Not the only light. She had to believe Hanna was alive. She would find Hanna again.

She reached up without thinking and touched her badge, felt the eagle embossed on brass.

Hanna was all, except for the Eagles. She truly was one of them now. And that, perhaps, gave her a place where she might find safety.

So she walked. The tunnel ran on and on and on. If those behind her faltered, she did not know.

She led them and did not look back.

JLlJb Eika had breached the eastern gates just after dawn. It was midday by the time Liath emerged, blinking, halfblinded, and exhausted, from a narrow cave mouth into the glaring light of a fine spring day.

Behind her, the refugees from Gent staggered out, stumbling after a steep climb up several hundred steps. The tunnel itself had been long and made arduous because of fear. But Liath feared the final climb, up steps carved into rock, would prove too much for the smallest and weakest of the refugees, thus holding up those who tried to escape behind them.

They came so slowly. First the anxious deacons emerged, carrying the holy relics from the cathedral. Then came a long line of children, younger carried by elder, infants in the arms of their mothers. There were women in all stages of pregnancy, including one who had gone into labor. Here and there, other folk appeareda blacksmith with his hammer and tongs, his skills too precious to waste in a hopeless fight, the two lanky girls who had performed as acrobats in Mayor Werner's palace, the elderly bard who had mangled the Heleniad and produced his own atrocious imitations of old Dariyan verse at the many feasts in the great hall.

Too slowly. A clump of a dozen would stream out, and then there would be a pause, so long Liath would catch her breath and pray this was not the end of the line. Then more would emerge, stumbling, halt and lame, or a child collapsed and no longer able to walk on its own. The trickle would as suddenly turn again into a steady stream as those held back behind the knot hurried out and dispersed onto the hillside.

Liath could not bear their grief. Hers was heavy enough. She walked out away from the cave, which lay

half hidden by shrubs and trees in a great jutting ridge of hill.

It was just as Sanglant had said. There was a field of oats here, straggling along the hillside.

Stumps of trees edged the ripening oats, and beyond them the forest climbed back into wilder lands. Two huts sat in the shadow of the trees. As she watched, a man came out from behind the closer of the huts to stare. Then, waving his arms, he ran over to the deacons. They began to talk all at once.

Liath edged closer, then recalled that as King's Eagle she had every right to listen to their conversation.

but . . . but it is a miracle!" the man was crying, hands clapped over his cheeks. "The cave narrows and ends in a rock wall one hundred paces back. We have hidden in there, now and again, when Eika scouts rode too close by. A company of Dragons sheltered there five nights ago. But never have I seen steps or a tunnel leading east!"

Though the sky was clear, they heard a low rumbling like distant thunder. Liath hurried back and scrambled up the ridge that sheltered the cave. From its height the hill dropped away precipitously to the river plain below, stretching eastward, green and gold patched with earth, to a stark horizon. From here she could see the river winding like a dark thread through the plain. The sky was so clear the sun's light had leached away the most intense blue at the zenith, washing the land in brightness. Distant Gent looked like a child's toy, tiny carved blocks fashioned in the model of a city.

Arnulfs city, some called it, where King Arnulf the Elder had joined his children in marriage to the last heirs of Varre.

The city was on fire. Liath stared for a long time. Smoke stained the horizon, reaching in streaks toward the heavens. There was so little wind this day that the smoke rose straight up in thick columns, obscuring her view. The city lay too far away for her to identify buildings, but she could not even pick out the cathedral tower.

On the plain, ants crawled. The Eika had come to feast on the leavings. She shook her head. She felt by turns numb and then suddenly engulfed with a crushing grief. No matter how she tried she could not push it away any longer.

She abandoned her position to three boys who came scrambling up behind her. They stared and pointed at the view, and one gaped at her. His thin face appeared familiar, but she could not place him.

Perhaps he had been a servant at the mayor's palace.

He said, "I lost the horse," and then burst into tears.

She fled. She had nothing to say to him, or to any of them. As she climbed back down, careful to find good footing among the loose scree and wiry roots, she watched the refugees emerge from the cave mouth. Children and yet more children, a darkhaired plump child of indeterminate sex carried in the arms of a thin palehaired girl who did not look strong enough for such a burden, a few older people now, some of them carrying bundles on their backs, a few precious possessions, or else nothing at all, only themselves. Some fell to their knees to praise God for this deliverance. Others merely sank onto the ground and had to be helped away, to clear the path that led out from the cave's mouth.

But they were coming out too slowly. So few would escape. Surely by now the Dragons had been utterly overwhelmed. At any moment she expected the stream of refugees to end, or Eika to spring forth, hacking right and left with their axes and deadly spears.

"Ai! Wagons!" cried one of the boys at the ridgetop.

And another: "They bear the mayor's colors!"

Liath ran with the farmer to where a roadsuch as it wascut up near his farmstead. A few brave deacons followed, but the rest remained by the field as if the cave and the reminder of the saint's mercy would grant them safety. Liath took out her bow and gave herself cover behind a tree. The farmer hefted a pitchfork.

But they needed no weapons, not this time. The wagons did indeed belong to Mayor Werner.

They lurched and

careened over the two ruts that served as road. The mayor himself, redfaced and flushed with weeping, sat in the front of a wagon driven by

"Wolfhere!" Liath leaped out and ran forward, joggingalmost dancingbeside the wagon as it pitched and jolted the rest of the way up the hill, coming to rest at last beside the two poor huts of the oat farmer.

Wolfhere swung down, looked her over carefully, then beckoned to the farmer. "Show these servants where they can build a fire. Somewhere out of the way."

"And alert the Eika?" the man protested.

Wolfhere made an impatient gesture with a hand. "They have found better prey today than the poor pickings they could scavenge here." The farmer retreated obediently.

"I saw Gent," said Liath. She could not take her eyes off Wolfhere. She could not believe he was alive. "It's burning."

"So it was when we left."

"How did you get out?" She stared back, hoping to see But there were no Dragons in attendance, only servants from the palace, about thirty of them walking alongside the ten wagons. A pale, pretty woman drove in the last of the wagons and, dryeyed and grim, began to rub down the horses. Liath recognized her: She was the servingwoman who had, everyone knew, been carrying on an affair with the prince. Would she weep for her lover? Or was she only glad to be alive?

A man came up beside her to aid her; in the wagon's bed a girlchild raised her head weakly to look around. It was the pair she had saved from the streets, father and daughter.

Refugees from the tunnel swarmed forward, surrounding Mayor Werner, drowning him in questions and pleas and demands. "Where is my husband? Do you know what happened to my mother?

Has my brother been seen? What of the mint? My father guarded there. Does the biscop yet live?"

]

And on, and on. Like a coward, she thought bitterly, the mayor had saved himself rather than die in the defense of his city. That duty he had left to Prince Sanglant and the Dragons.

"My good people," he cried, wiping tears from his cheeks. How she had come to hate his voice, filled with selfimportance and a trace of the whiny, indulged son he had been. "Pray, grant me silence.

There is no time to waste. We must begin to march. It will take many days to reach Steleshame, and most among us are weak or young. We have emptied the stores from the palace. This must serve us on our journey. Listen to my words!" Now, finally, the ragged band of refugees had quieted and drawn closer while yet others still emerged, in ones and twos, from the cave mouth.

"Let the elder children shepherd the younger, and let the children be divided into groups so there will be no confusion and none left behind. Let those who are strong enough carry food on their backs, so there may be room in the wagons for those whose legs grow weak. We will pass out bread now. In one hour we begin our journey. We dare not wait longer than that."

With that he turned and began directing his servants. The pretty servingwoman pulled back the heavy cloth that had been draped over the foodstuffs in her wagon, and she began distributing bread with the efficiency of long practice, aided again by the father. Deacons began to organize the children into groups of ten, each under the command of an adolescent. A woman, sobbing quietly, nursed her infant while another child clung to her skirts. One of the slender acrobats came up cautiously to the woman and offered her and the child bread. At the cave's mouth, more refugees stumbled out into the noontide glare.

Now, however, there were servants to guide them to food and a place to rest until the next stage of the journey began. Now, one in five of the refugees were adults with wounds or singed clothing; there were, perhaps, eight hundred people in the oat field. She judged, by measuring the height of the sun with her fingers, that she had emerged an hour or so ago. Would the Dragons never come?

But of course they would not. Prince Sanglant would not leave the city until every last soul was safe or dead.

"Liath." Wolfhere beckoned. She followed him back behind the hut where the farmer had built a fire in an outdoor hearth. It blazed merrily, a lattice of sticks that collapsed as those at the lowest rung burned to ash. The farmer set more logs on the fire and, at a sign from Wolfhere, retreated, leaving them alone.

"We must look," said Wolfhere.

"How did you get free?" she asked. "Did any others? Where is Manfred?"

He shook his head. For the first time she saw his mouth tighten, concealing heart's pain. "We loaded the stores into the wagons and made our way to the western gate. Others fled the city by that gate as well, though many died at the hands of Eika. Some may have escaped. But we came later. By that time the battle that started at the eastern gate had grown until it engulfed half the city. So we were able to get away with less trouble. We lost only one wagon, and that because its axle broke. And we met Dragons

"Dragons!"

He lifted a hand sharply, silencing her. "You will remember them. They were the ones who saved us when we first rode into Gent a month ago."

"Sturm," she murmured. Her cousin, if report was true.

"They cut through a company of Eika, freeing us."

"And then?" she demanded.

He frowned, almost wincing, as if the memory did not bear recalling. "Then they rode into the city by the west gate, to join with their fellows."

Liath shut her eyes.

"Attend," said Wolfhere. "We have no luxury for grief, Liath. We must see with Eagle's sight.

That is our duty."

"Through fire and stone?" she whispered.

"Not every Eagle has such skills, it is true. Now. Attend." He shut his eyes and raised his hands, shoulder width apart, palms facing in toward the fire.

"But it's true," she said, interrupting him. He had to understand. "I can't see that way. In the crypt I saw nothing, not because there was a shadow, but because I saw only the stone. And the EikaThere is an enchanter, and he is Eika, not any other kind of creature." This memory hurt, it was still so raw.

Remembering how Sanglant had seen and named the Eika chieftain. "That is how the gates were breached. He wove an illusion. It wasn't Count Hildegard's forces at all."

Wolfhere opened his eyes and stared at her. "Go on."

"It was an illusion. Everyone saw the banner and the count and her people. Everyone. Except me. / could see through the illusion."

"What are you saying?"

T am saying that I am deaf to it, as Da said. Or else guarded against it. I don't know which."

Immediately she cursed herself inwardly for confessing to him. But she had been so happy to see him.

Surely that joy meant he could be trusted, or trusted in part. He had saved her from Hugh. He had treated her with unrelenting kindness and good will. And she had, she realized, come to care for him.

Reflexively she rested a hand on the warm leather of her saddlebags, feeling the book hidden with . in.

She waited.

Wolfhere looked truly startled. "Bloodheart," he said. "Illusion. I understand now. I did not before. I wondered why I had seen nothing of Count Hildegard's soldiers within the city, even the last survivors of that force. I wondered how the gate had been breached. For I saw it, too, Liath. I saw her banner, and her retainers, pursued by Eika. From the palisade at the mayor's palace I saw them reach the bridge, and then I saw no more. And yet you say you saw through the illusion." "I did." "I cannot explain it, either to you or to myself. Attend me, Liath. Tell me what you see." He lifted hands again and shut his eyes, then, after a moment, opened them, staring into the fire.

Yelloworange flame licked the air. Liath stared hard at it. She envisioned in her minds' eye a circle branded into the airthe Ring of fire, fourth step on the ladder of the mages. Through this she viewed the flame.

She saw nothing but the lick and spit of fire. And yet, had she not once seen salamanders, their blue eyes winking in the coals of the hearth? Had she not once seen butterflies called up by her father in the summer garden? Once, years ago, before her mother died, she had seen magic. Before her mother died. Then everything had changed.

Da was protecting me.

He had given his life to protect her. To hide her.

There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. At their backs a wall of fire roars up into black night, but there is nothing to fear. Pass through, and a new world lies beyond. In the distance a drum sounds like a heartbeat and the whistle of a flute, borne up on the wind like a bird, takes wing.

Wings, settling on the eaves. A sudden gust of snow through the smokehole. Bells, heard as if on the wind.

"Where is she?" said the voice of bells.

"Nowhere you can find her," said Da.

The fire blazed higher, growing, engulfing the logs until it burned like a storm. And in the flames she saw battle, the steps of the cathedral, the Dragons in a last ragged line, so few of them now, the last, their horses and their comrades strewn like so much refuse along the course of their retreat. Dogsthose who were not raging in the thick of battlefed voraciously. She shuddered, convulsed by nausea.

A last knot of city militia fought desperately by the mint and then finally were overwhelmed.

Behind them, the palisade of the mayor's palace and the timber roof of the great hall burned in sheets of flame, a terrible bright backdrop to the last killing field.

The Eika pounded at the Dragons, axes chopped down again and again on the teardrop shields, red serpents pressed against dragons, shoving them by sheer weight of numbers back and back up the steps to the doors.

There! Sanglant, limping and bloody, striking at either hand as he retreated step by step, the last man in the wedge, taking the brunt of the onslaught. At his right hand, the scarredface woman, ragged Dragon's banner draped around her shoulders, her spear working, jabbing, wrenching free; at his left, Sturm, blue eyes grim as he cut down first one Eika then, when that one fell, the next. Manfred stood half inside the cathedral doors, staring; seeing, as was his duty.

But one by one, Dragons fell, Gent burned, and the streets were deserted except for Eika, prowling and sniffing in doorways and looting. Except for the dead. Except for the feeding dogs.

A wagon had been brought into the square fronting the cathedral and from atop this, surrounded by his howling troops and by a pack of slavering dogs, Bloodheart surveyed the ruins and the last stand of the Dragons. He leaped down and hefted a spear in his huge hands, ran with it to the steps and took them two at a time. Behind him came his soldiers, their mouths open in shrieks and howls Liath could only see, not hear. Only the naked old Eika male remained behind in the wagon, but even he grinned, jewelstudded teeth winking in the reflected glare of flame.

Bloodheart's charge hit the last Dragons like a hammer. So few, and already wounded and exhausted, half of them went down, crushed beneath the assault. Sturm vanished in a hail of ax blows.

The scarredface woman was torn away, the weight of huge dogs bearing her down. Dragons shouted their prince's name, but they were all separated now, a few at the door, a few swarmed and surrounded and harried down to the base of the steps, and Sanglant in the centerthe eye of the stormstriking on either side like a madman as he hacked his way toward Bloodheart.

The blow that took him came from behind.

Surrounded, flanked, engulfed. A screaming Eika had leaped into the gap that opened behind the prince. The creature swung. Sanglant jerked and then collapsed, that fast, like a rock let drop. His body landed hard, sprawling, at the feet of Bloodheart.

The Dragons were gone, vanished, as if they had never existed. Bloodheart stared down at the prince. He bent and wrenched the helmet from Sanglant's head to reveal the lax face. He twisted a hand under the gold torque and yanked it off, his white claws cutting the prince's face and neck. Blood seeped, slowed, stopped.

Bloodheart raised the gold torque up like a trophy, threw back his head, and howled with triumph.

Liath shuddered. She could not hear it, yet she couldas if borne miles on the wind, as if carried through the ranks of the refugees who fled through the tunnel, as if cutting straight to her heart.

But she could not look away.

Bloodheart lowered the torque but only because he had to beat back the dogs. He hit hard around himself, using both haft and head of his spear, and he growled and cursed at the dogs, driving them back from his prize: Sanglant. The dogs cowered finally and sat back on their haunches, eyes burning yellow with rage, tongues hanging out, muzzles rimed with saliva and blood. The biggest of them snarled, baring its fangs at the Eika chieftain, and he struck it hard on the head with his bare hand; his own clawsa bristling growth at his knucklessliced its cheek open. It whined and groveled before him. The others slewed their ugly heads round and stared hungrily at the prince's body, but they didn't move in.

Yet.

Soon. Soon he would be theirs.

Liath leaned in toward the fire as if she could reach and drag the corpse to safety, spare it this desecration.

The heat burned away her tears, but it could not burn away her pain. It could not change what she saw and so witnessed.

Bloodheart shook himself and whirled once, spinning as if he felt the breath of an enemy on his spine. His gaze lifted to the middle distance. Everything shifted; the fire flared before her. She blinked, and he was looking at her.

"Who are you?" Bloodheart demanded, gaze impossibly fixed on her through the fire. "You trouble me with your spying. Be gone!"

He spit. She flinched back and was staring at fire, roaring and crackling and consuming, burning, buildings of stone consumed by the dull red of heat and the whiteblue searing of flame, smoke thick and oily in her nostrils. She heard the pound of horses galloping past, a haze of distant shouting, a faint horn caught on the wind. But these were no buildings she had ever seen before. These were not the buildings of Gent.

A figure turned, staring, a male figure, armed with a bronze breastplate and silvertipped lance.

"Liathano," he said.

But through him a gateway, his shade itself is the gateway, like stars seen through a gauze of fine linen. A drum sounds like a heartbeat, and a flute draw its music over the air like the rising and falling of waves. She sees through flames, staring out through afire but a different fire, not her own.

There on a flat stone sits a mannot a man, perhaps, for his features are exotic and unlike those of any man Liath has seen except there is a passing resemblance to Sanglant, that bronzetinged skin, the high, broad cheekbones, the beardless face. He is dressed strangely in a long, beaded loincloth so cunningly worked that the pattern of beads describes birds and leaves woven into a tight embrace.

Leather sheaths encase his forearms and his calves, covered with gold and green feathers and tiny shells and gold beads and polished stones strung together. A cloak trimmed with white shells and clasped with a jade brooch at his right shoulder drapes to his waist. He twists lengths of fiberflax, perhapsalong his bare thigh, binding them into rope.

He looks up, startled, and stares at her but without truly marking her. Behind him, a figure moves, too far away to be plainly seen.

"Liath."

She jumped back and found herself, face singed from heat, staring at the hearth fire and at Wolfhere, across from her. Tears stood on his cheeks, but only a few. He stared into the flames and finally drew his gaze away as if from down a long distance and murmured, so soft she barely heard him:

"Aoi."

She blinked, bewildered. Who had spoken her name, there at the end, wrenching her out of that final vision?

"Those were the Lost Ones, Liath."

"Who were?" But she could not make sense of the world, of her fingers on her hands, of the snap of fire or the brush of wind on her face.

Ai, Lady. Sanglant was dead.

Wolfhere shook himself all over, like a dogor a wolfand stood abruptly. "This mystery must be solved later," he said. "Come, Liath. Our first duty is to the king, and he must have word of this."

"Word of what?" To form the question was difficult enough. She could not move. She could not even remember what it was to move.

"Of the fall of Gent. Of the death of his son."

The death of his son.

"Fed to the dogs," murmured Wolfhere. He grimaced like a man enduring an arrow's barbed head being dug out of his thigh.

Liath fell forward onto her knees and clasped her hands before her. "Ai, Lady," she whispered.

"Hear my pledge. I will never love any man but him."

"Reckless words," said Wolfhere, his tone sharp. "Come, Liath."

"Safe words," she replied bitterly, "since he is now king's dragon dead. And I will follow the fate others have determined for me."

"So do we all," he said quietly. They left the fire still burning and returned back around the huts to find the field crowded with refugees forming into staggered lines, making ready to leave.

"Has so long a time passed?" Liath asked, amazed. She judged that another hundred or so refugees filled the oat field, and a few more trickled from the tunnel, scarred, shaking, and weeping. But these had left Gent hours ago. They could not know what had just transpired, what she and Wolfhere had seen. "How long did we look into the fire?"

Wolfhere did not answer. He had gone to confront Mayor Werner, to demand that the Eagles be given two horses. Liath did not listen to the argument; she stared at the cave's mouth, where people still emerged into daylight, blinking, weeping, frightened, relieved. How many more would arrive? Was Manfred among them, or had he been killed? Did the biscop survive?

"Liath!" Wolfhere called to her, impatient, tense, and angry. "Come!"

Horses were brought. Werner sputtered and looked furious, but could not refuse. Liath took the reins of a gelding and mounted.

"What about Manfred?" Liath asked, looking back over her shoulder past the line of wagons and the tidy groups of refugees as they got into place, ready to begin their long march. She stared hopefully, hopelessly, toward the cave's mouth.

"We can't wait," said Wolfhere. He urged his horse forward, angling up to the old road.

The first of the wagons jerked forward, heading west for Steleshame and safe haven. The refugees, with murmurings and sighs and one voice that could not stop sobbing out its grief, began to walk. But Liath hesitated, staring back.

Perhaps it was a trick of the eye. She thought she saw

a faint figure standing on the rocky ridge above the mouth of the cave: the form of a woman draped in a gown of ancient design, herself wounded yet standing, unbroken by those wounds. The patron saint of Gent still watched over her flock.

Perhaps it was a trick of the breeze. She thought she heard a shout from the last figure to clamber out of the cave's mouth. "The tunnel is closed! It's sealed shut as if it never existed!"

"Liath!" Wolfhere was already into the trees. Wagons trundled up the road behind him.

Liath followed Wolfhere onto the old path that led into the forest and away from Gent. They soon left the ragged column of refugees far behind.

THE SHADOW OF THE GUIVRE l SABELLA'S army pitched camp in the Elmark Valley, at the eastern edge of the lands inherited by her husband. Here, fifty years ago, the kingdom of Varre had given way to the lands ruled by the kings and queens of Wendar. In the highlands beyond the valley lay the outermost villages sworn to the duke of Fesse, whose loyalty to the Wendish royal house was absolute.

News came at dusk that an army commanded by Henry himself had arrived at the town of Kassel, within a day's march of the border and their position. That evening Biscop Antonia's clerics moved through camp, passing out amuletsone to each soldier. Alain walked with the clerics, by now accustomed to their presence; he slept, ate, walked, and prayed within sight of either Willibrod or Heribert.

Agius, too, of course. But Agius' company was rather like the hairshirt the frater wore: Alain supposed that its constant rasping harsh presence was good for the soul and thus its elevation toward a more holy cast of thought, but tor himself he preferred not to be always rubbed raw.

No doubt this failing on his part revealed how lacking he was in true holiness. But then, he had only to watch Agius each day to observe a man who wished for nothing except union with God. Alain admired the ferocity of Agius' devotion. For himself, and despite his circumstances, Alain was amazed and heartened to be seeing something of the world at long last. He supposed, and prayed, that Our Lord and Lady would forgive him for wishing to experience the world before trothing himself entirely to Their service.

"What is this?" Agius asked when Alain and the clerics returned, late, to Biscop Antonia's tent.

Agius preferred to pray under guard rather than roam through camp in the company of Antonia's clerics, whom he despised. Also, perhaps, he wanted to remain obviously caged, a hostage, rather than let anyone believe in the fiction of his willing complicity to Sabella's cause. "Is this an amulet?"

Cleric Willibrod stammered something incomprehensible and scratched at his lesions.

Heribert, who never appeared cowed by Agius' high station, held out the amulet impatiently. "It is for protection. Take it."

Agius raised a haughty eyebrow. "Magic? Does Biscop Antonia dabble in magic now as well as treason?"

Willibrod giggled nervously.

Heribert dropped the amulet into Agius' hand and turned away. "It is late, brother," he said to Willibrod. "We must pray and then go to our sleep."

Biscop Antonia's camp bed remained empty: She was still in conference with Sabella and the other lords. Outside, a guard yawned. Rage and Sorrow found their favorite corner and turned several times, in the way of dogs chasing their own tails, then settled down. Agius king's dragon stared at the amulet, fingering it, turning it this way and that.

Alain sat on his haunches beside the frater. "Do you think it is magic?" he whispered.

Agius shrugged. " know nothing of magic, or nothing more than you might, I suppose."

Alain wore one of the amulets around his own neck, tied there with a bit of string. He held it out, comparing it to the one Agius had. It was a small circle of wood, innocent enough, for it appeared to be a Circle of Unity, the very ornament any person would wish to wear at his breast. But carved on the back were tiny letters Alain did not recognize, and bound in with the string were a strand of hair, a thin delicate quill that appeared to be from a feather, and a single withered elder leaf.

"There is an old woman in our village who can understand the language of the birds," said Alain.

"Once a man traveled through Osna village claiming he could read our fortunes by reading the map of the heavens on the saint's day on which we were born. But he charged coin for this prophesying, so Deacon Miria said he was a fraud and drove him out of the village."

Agius frowned at the letters burned into the back of the wooden circle. "I do not know this script or these words," he said. "Nor do I intend to ask our brother clerics what the words mean, if they even know." He looked up, meeting Alain's gaze. His expression was forbidding. Alain knew at once what he was recalling: the night when Antonia sacrificed Lackling, when the spirits came, drawn by the scent of blood. After that night, Count Lavastine had changed from a decisive, clever man to a puppet dancing to strings controlled by someone else's hands.

"Biscop Antonia must mean to use magic," Alain whispered, glancing back at the clerics. They were praying and did not seem to be attending to their captives' conversation. "She has used it before."

"But for what purpose?" Agius murmured. "And how? There were a few among those in the schola, when I attended the king's progress as a boy, who might know or guess. Margrave Judith's bastard son, for one. He was always interested in what the clerics never wanted to teach him. But the forbidden arts never interested me. I had already discovered the lost words of the blessed Daisan and the suppressed testimony of his holy disciple St. Thecla"

He broke off and stood. Sorrow raised his head and growled, low in his throat. Alain sprang up just as the biscop swept in with her retainers. Her robes bore a sheen of raindrops, glittering in the torchlight. The air that swelled into the tent on her heels was laden with moisture. Distantly, Alain heard drunken singing, something bawdy. Sabella had recently dismissed her latest concubine in favor of a younger, handsomer man, a freeborn soldier in Duke Rodulf's guard. There had been a bitter if brief confrontation between the two men five nights ago, in which the abandoned man had come off poorly.

The castoff lover was now the object of ridicule and of a great deal of bad verse.

"Cleric Heribert," said the biscop. The young cleric came at once and knelt before her. "See that a bed is set here, in the corner with our other guests." By this euphemism she always referred to Alain and Agius. "Then go and bring her here. We must make room. More have come to join Sabella's army.

'So shall all the people gather in the house of righteousness.' '

" 'Do not invite all comers into your home,' " retorted Agius. " 'Dishonesty has many disguises.' '

Antonia spared the frater a pitying glance, as one might to a boy who, old enough to herd the goats, still wets himself. Then she turned her kindly gaze on Alain. Sorrow growled. Alain set a hand on the hound's muzzle, silencing him. "Come, child," said the biscop, ignoring the hound's hostility. "We will speak while I am readied for bed."

Willibrod brought a stool for Alain and hovered anxiously behind him while the biscop's other servants king's dragon helped her with her mitre and vestments, lifting them off and folding them carefully into the elaborately carved and painted chest that sat at the foot of her camp bed. The biscop wore a robe of fine white silk beneath. She sat and one of her servingwomen unbraided and rebraided her hair while Antonia toyed with a gold Circle of Unity studded with gems. Alain watched, by turns, his hands and then hers.

"You are continuing your lessons in the evenings?" she asked.

"I am, Your Grace."

"Read to me." She took from the bed a book so beautifully bound in a carved ivory case that when she opened it and handed it to him, he was at first afraid to touch it. She nodded that he was to take it from her.

Gingerly, he took the book out of her hands. At first he just gaped at the pages. The facing page was beautifully illuminated with an image of the seven disciples raising their hands toward the heavens, celebrating the miracle of the Pentekoste. The scrollwork was traced in gold ink, and the large initial letter that initiated the text held within its heavy black outline countless tiny owls perched on a narrow Tree of Wisdom, each clutching in one claw a tinier scroll or pen, all of which had been executed in cunning and meticulous detail. He had never touched anything this rich before. "Read, child," she repeated.

Haltingly, he began to read. " 'So it happened that when seven times seven days had passed after the Translatus, Thecla heard the voice of the blessed Daisan and her vision was restored. He showed himself to her and her companions and gave proof that he was alive. He spoke to them for seven hours, teaching them about the God of Unities and the Chamber of Light.' '

Heart pounding, he stopped and took a few gasping breaths. It was bad enough to read when Agius stood over him, but Antonia's watchful gaze made him terribly nervous. Agius had knelt, as he always did when anyone read from the book of Holy Verses.

"You have improved," said Antonia. "But you are still far from fluent. Go on."

He sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Lady and Lord above. He could puzzle out the language of the church, Dariyan, but the truth was that any book but this would have been impossible. He had heard this story so many times in Osna church, when Deacon Miria read aloud from the Holy Verses or told the story in loving detail from memory, that if he did not recognize a word, he still knew what ought to come next.

" 'And the blessed Daisan told them, "You will receive power when an angel bearing the Divine Logos, the Holy Word of God, comes upon you. You will bear witness for me in Sal's, and all over Dariya and even into Arbahia, and away to the ends of the earth."

" 'When he had said this, as they watched, he was lifted up and a cloud removed him from their sight.

" 'Then they returned to Sai's from the hill called Olivassia, which is near Sai's, no farther than a Hefensday journey. Entering the city they went to the house where they were lodging: Thecla, Peter and Matthias and Thomas, Lucia and Marian and Jahanna. All these were constantly in prayer together.

" 'This was then the day called Pentekoste, the fiftieth day after the Ekstasis and the blessed Daisan's Translatus into the heavens. On this day while they were all together, there came suddenly from the sky a noise like that of a strong driving wind, which filled the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues like flames of fire.' '

Antonia sighed and nodded her head, as if the tale affected her deeply. "So did the disciples speak in every tongue of every nation," she said, "even in those languages which they did not know. So did the Blessed Daisan reveal that the Holy Word and message of Light was meant for all peoples, of every kind."

"Even the Eika?" Alain asked. "Or the Lost Ones? Or the goblins who live in the Harenz Mountains?"

king's dragon "Even they," she replied solemnly. "For it is not our part to judge which kind may enter the Chamber of Light and which may not."

Alain thought of Fifth Brother. He thought of how he had told the Eika prince the story of the Ekstasis and Daisan's Translatus up into the heavens. But the prince i could not understand Wendish.

And yet ... that story had caused the prince to speak his first word to Alain, to betray both that he could speak and that he had an intelligence that understood and sought speech. It had caused the prince, savage that he was, to attempt friendship, of a kind.

A servant brought a pitcher filled with steaming water. Pouring it into the fine ceramic basin, the servingwoman wet a cloth and carefully bathed the biscop's face, then patted her skin with oils perfumed with the scent of lavendar.

"Go on," said Antonia, her eyes shut as the servingwoman drew the cloth away from her face.

"Read on, child."

He swallowed and glanced at Agius, but the frater had placed his forehead on his clasped hands and was staring at the carpet. Licking his lips nervously, Alain went on. " 'Now there were living in Sai's peoples of every nation under heaven, and because of this miracle a crowd gathered, and they were all amazed and perplexed.

" Thecla stood up with the Six and addressed them: "This is what the prophet spoke of. So say the God of Unities: 'This will happen in the last days: we will pour out upon everyone a portion of our Holy Word. Your women shall see visions and your men shall dream dreams. Yes, even the slaves shall be given a portion of Our word, and they shall prophesy. And We will show portents in the sky above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and storm. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood. Call upon the Lady by Her name, the Mother of Life, and call upon the Lord by His name, the Father of Life, and ye shall be saved and lifted in glory to the Chamber of Light.' " And the other disciples clasped their hands and raised their voices in loving prayer, as affirmation to her words.' '

A cleric entered and leaned to whisper in Antonia's ear. She smiled kindly and made a gesture, then rose herself. "We have a new guest in our tent tonight," she said. As she turned, the entrance was pushed aside and Cleric Heribert, accompanied by two guards, led Constance into the tent. Behind him came servants carrying a wooden pallet and feather bed.

In the intervening days Constance had lost her biscop's vestments. Alain did not know if she had given them up or if they had been taken away from her. Her face, at least, was unmarked by signs of physical coercion.

"My blessed sister," said Antonia, coming forward. Constance extended a hand, as if she meant Antonia to kiss it, but Antonia merely clasped it fondly, as she might the hand of a kinswoman. If this impertinence irritated Constance, she did not let it show. After all, Sabella had taken her biscophric away from her and by that standard Biscop Antonia now stood above her in the church's hierarchy, if not in that of the world. Even in her biscop's vestments Constance had worn the gold torque that marked her as born of royal kin; in simple deacon's robes she wore it still.

"I am so sorry," Antonia continued, "at this loss of comforts. But you were alone with your servants in the other tent, and now it appears that Duke Conrad's cousin, the son of his father's sister, has joined us with twenty mounted men and fifty infantry.'

"And what of Conrad?" asked Constance coolly. "He has not come to join Sabella? Perhaps he has thought better of lending his aid to an unlawful rebellion." One of her servants brought forward a stool, and she sat. She had not acknowledged Agius' presence, not even with a glance, nor had he looked up from his prayer. But there was a tautness in the frater's shoulders, as if his body betrayed what his eyes and lips resisted: any comment on the presence of the woman he had betrayed.

king's dragon

"Duke Conrad has not arrived. It is said his wife Eadgifu is within a sevenday of her time."

"Their fourth child, this will be," said Constance. If she was nervous or angry, she only betrayed it by the slow movement of her right hand, stroking the fingers of her left. "But that is only an excuse, Your Grace. Eadgifu has kinswomen with her; there would be no need for her husband to stay with her at such a time. Do not deceive yourself. If Duke Conrad has not come to Sabella's side yet, then he does not mean to do so." "Nor has he gone to Henry's side." Constance smiled faintly. "Conrad is not without ambition on his own behalf. Besides my family, he is the only other surviving descendant of the first Henry. Should the children of Arnulf the Younger waste themselves on a war over their right to the throne, his will become the surviving claim."

"Do you forget the claim that might be put forward by Duchess Liutgard?"

"It is true she is of royal kin, being the greatgrandniece of Queen Conradina. But when her grandfather gave up his claim to the throne and supported Henry instead, he gave up his claim in perpetuity. No. Liutgard's loyalty is assured." Here, as if despite herself, she glanced at Agius, and he, looking up briefly, met her gaze and winced away from it.

"Then what is it you counsel?" Antonia asked. She did not use the honorific granted to a biscop'your grace'and the omission was clearly deliberate; Constance was no longer Biscop of Autun as long as Sabella controlled the city.

"I counsel peace," said Constance. "As ought we all who have given our service to Our Lady and Lord."

Antonia signed to her servants, and they brought pillows and a feather quilt to the pallet. "It is late," said the biscop. "We march in the morning."

"Once you cross into Wendar you will have signaled outright your defiance of my brother's reign," said

Constance, "beyond all else that has occurred in these last months."

"So will it be," replied Antonia with one of her kindly smiles, as if patient with a student who is slow to learn. "Henry waits at Kassel, so our scouts inform us. That is where we will meet. Now, let us pray, and then rest."

She knelt, and her servants and cleric knelt with her. Constance hesitated, but then, proudly and with the noble air of a woman who will not let adversity beat her down, she knelt as well and joined in the prayer.

That night, Alain dreamed.

The pitch of the boat rocks him, but he does not sleep. There are twenty prisoners, taken to be slaves, huddled in the belly of the boat. They weep or moan or sleep the sleep of those who have given up hope. His cousins took only the strong ones, the young ones, who will give service for a hand of years or longer before they succumb to the winter ice or the predations of the dogs. Some might even breed, but the soft ones' infants are weak and fragile, not suited to survive. How they have grown to spread themselves across the southern lands is a mystery he cannot answer, nor dare he ask the WiseMothers, for they do not care to hear of the fate of infidels. But did Halane Henrisson not speak of a god and of faith? He touches the Circle that hangs at his chest. It is cold.

Waves slap against the hull and oars creak with a steady beat in the oarlocks as the longship pierces forward through the seas. This music he has heard for all of his life and its cadences are like breath to him. It is a good night for travel on the northern sea.

He stands at the prow, watching mist stream off the waters. He studies the stars, the eyes of the most ancient Mothers, those whose bodies were at last worn away by wind and borne up into the vale of black ice, the fjall of the heavens. The moon, the heart of OldMan, spreads light over the waters.

Once he, too, took his place at the oars. But that was before his father stole the secret of the enchanter's power and, binding that power into his own body, lifted his tribe and his litter of pups out of the endless pack struggles and made them supreme.

Once he toiled with the others, but that was before his father drilled holes in his teeth and studded them with jewels to mark his primacy. Now, together with his nestbrothers, he leads.

This ship does not belong to his home tribe, but he is marked by the wisdom of the WiseMothers, and his father is a great enchanter and chief of the tribes of the western shore. So these cousins have accepted him as their leader. Of course, he had to kill their First Brother and the dogs' pack leader, but that is the way of each litter and each tribe: Only one male can lead. The others must bare their throats or die.

Do the soft ones pick their leaders in this fashion? Are they weak because they do not? He does not understand them, nor does he understand why Halane set him free. Compassion is not part of the cruel north. As OldMother once said, the RockChildren would have died out long ago had they succumbed to compassion.

The wind brings the scent of shore to his nostrils. One of the slaves sobs on and on, a whining cry that grates on his nerves. Before, he would have set the dogs on her or cut her throat with his own claws.

Now, the memory of Halane stays his hand. He will abide. He will suffer the complaints of the weak.

For now.

The smell of freshwater touches his lips. He licks them, suddenly thirsty, but he will not give in to this need yet. To give in quickly is to build weakness. Behind him, as if catching his thought, the dogs growl. He turns his head and growls back at them. They subside, accepting his primacy.

For now.

He smells a grove of ash and the still, wise scent of oak. They pass forest here as they voyage east. East, to where his father hunts.

The oars beat the sea, sunk steady and deep. The wind whips at his face, and salt spray rimes his lips. From the shore, he smells a hint of charcoal, and he casts back his head and scents, touching his tongue to the air.

Alain woke. He was completely awake, uncannily so, eyes open and already adjusted to the blackness. Rage slept. Sorrow whined softly but did not stir. Beyond Sorrow, the blankets where Agius slept lay empty.

By the light of the coals in the brazier, Alain saw a dark shape kneeling by the pallet on which Constance slept. His heart pounded. Was someone about to murder her?

Almost, he sprang up. But his hearing was keen, this night. He heard their breathing, heard the dry slide of skin against skin as they touched hand to hand, heard them whisper in voices as low as the murmur of daimones on the night air.

"Frederic was involved with Sabella's first revolt. Why should I trust you now, after what you have done, knowing what I do about your brother?" But her words were entirely at odds with her tone and with the sense Alain had that she held tightly to Agius' hands, more like a lover than a stern biscop.

"He was discontent. He was very young. He came of age, and my father gave him a retinue but no other duties. His was a rash soul, and it wanted action. You know that is true. So when the rebellion failed, he was disciplined and married off to Liutgard."

"Do you consider that punishment? Marriage to Liutgard?" Almost, she laughed.

"Ai, Lady. It would have been for me." Here he choked on the words, they came forth laden with much emotion.

"Hush, Agius." She stirred on her pallet, and Alain thought she lifted a finger to the frater's lips, touching him most intimately there.

Alain flushed and looked away. For some reason he thought of Withi, of her shoulders and the white expanse of bosom she had let him glimpse, that day before he followed her up to the ruins at Midsummer's Eve. He had never touched a woman so.

"You must love God, Agius," murmured Constance. "Not the world and those who live in it.

Biscop Antonia tells me you are involved in heresy. I have no reason to trust her, so I will let you defend yourself to me against such a base accusation."

"I cannot. I will not. After you were promised to the church instead of to" he faltered. "instead of to marriage, I swore I would not rest

"You swore you would avenge yourself on your father and my brother. But you must not, Agius.

You must let this anger go. There was nothing you could do. There was nothing I could do."

"My father swore before the Hearth. As did your brother. But Lord and Lady did not strike them down when they went back on their vow. So I knew by this sign that their pledge was empty, for it was sworn to the shadow of the truth. They had listened to the false words of those who presided at the Council of Addai, those who suppressed the truth. So did St. Thecla speak the truth of the end that came to the blessed Daisan. I have seen the scroll that records her words." "Where have you seen such a scroll?" "It is hidden, lest the church burn it and destroy her true speaking, which is shamefully forgotten.

Then came the blessed Daisan before the judgment of the Empress Thaisannia, she of the mask. And when he would not bow before her but spoke the truth of the Mother of Life and the Divine Logos, the Holy Word, then she pronounced the sentence of death. This he met joyfully, for he embraced the promise of the Chamber of Light. But his disciples with him wept bitterly. So was he taken away and put to the flaying knife and his heart was cut out of his breast.' " The hush was so deep, and Agius' voice so low, that kate eiliott Alain thought he could hear the sifting of the coals, red ash burning and cooling to gray.

" 'A darkness fell over the whole land, and then the blessed Daisan gave a loud cry and died. His heart's blood fell to the earth and it bloomed as roses. There came a light onto the land and to the ends of the Earth, and it was as bright as the garments of angels. By this light Thecla and the other disciples were blinded. And they lived seven times seven days in darkness, for they were afraid.'

"But I am not afraid, Constance. I am not afraid to proclaim the truth. Did the blessed Daisan not say: 'Be assured I am with you always, to the end of time?' Did the Mother of Life not give her only Son for the forgiveness of our sins?"

Constance sighed. "Ai, Agius, this is heresy indeed. How can you speak these words? It is a serious charge, to be brought before the presbyter who watches over the order of fraters. Is this what you want? To be condemned as a heretic?"

"It is better to speak the truth and die than to keep silence and live."

"You are bitter, Agius. You were not like this before."

With an abrupt movement, he buried his head against her chest. He spoke, his voice muffled further by the cloth of her robes. "Forgive me, Constance. I did it to save the life of my niece, for the love that lived between her father and myself."

"You have always loved too deeply, Agius." She sighed, her breath catching in her throat. "You know I forgive you. How can I not? You are first in my heart, after my pledge to Our Lady and Lord."

"Yet you did not protest. You did not rebel, when your brother gave you to the church."

"I know my duty," she said softly, stroking his hair.

Agius was, Alain realized, weeping quietly. Constance wept as well, and Alain felt that by licking his tongue into the air he could taste the amalgamation of I their tears, each into the other. Perhaps Agius did love too deeply. But was it not written that the blessed Daisan loved the world and all the people on it? Was love not the chief blessing granted to human beings by the mercy and grace of Our Lady and Lord?

Alain could feel their closeness, could taste the heat of their bodies, pressed against each otherand he felt envy. What would it be like to love a woman that much? So much that, if those hints Agius gave were true, he had turned away from the world when it came about that he could not marry her and instead devoted himself to the church as a humble frater, far below his rightful station in life?

Would any woman ever weep for Alain? Press herself close against him?

Ai, it was true, that old saying. Envy is the shadow of the guivre, the wings of death. Alain knew shame, for he desired what was not his to have. He had been marked twice, once by the church and once by the Lady of Battles, whose rose he bore.

But he could not help but think of nights in the longhouse when as a child he lay awake, listening, hearing the soft sounds from other beds, Stancy and her husband, Aunt Bel and Uncle Ado, before Ado died. Of all the adults Alain knew, only his father Henri and those pledged to the church did not engage in such congress. Agius and Constance engaged in nothing now more intimate than an embrace, and yet there was so much more between them that it flared like a bright light, like the heat of coals in the brazier.

There was another brazier in the tent, this one placed beside the bed where Antonia slept. Alain glanced that way reflexively, trying not to move or betray that he was awake. But he gasped, more of a grunt, then bit his lip. He did not breathe for the space of five heartbeats.

Antonia's eyes were open. He caught the glint of dim light against them, eyes glittering in night.

Constance and Agius were too caught up in themselves to notice. But he did.

She watched, silent. She appeared to him like a huge yawning maw, sucking in life and air. She watched, he felt, not because she had her own yearnings or because she wanted to spy and thus gain information, but because she was greedy, because like a cat laps up cream or a griffin suckles the blood of its mother, she wanted as rnuch as she could take from them. As if she intended to gather to herself and hoard all that intensity of emotion.

It made him sick, the feeling of her watchfulness.

He shut his eyes and turned his face against the safe, warm flank of Sorrow.

Later, when there was no more whispering, he slept.

JL XT.C JL held council at dawn outside Antonia's tent.

"I still say the battle comes too soon," protested Duke Rodulf. Obviously this argument had been raging tor many days, and he was not quite yet resigned to losing it. "We risk everything by meeting Henry now."

"Meeting Henry now is exactly what I planned for and wish for," said Sabella. The odd thing about her voice, as monotone as it was, was the way its lack of emotion lent her an air of stubborn decisiveness. She was not a bright light or a leader of great radiance; she did not even have that brusque impatient authority by which Lavastine had (once) ruled his lands. Like a boulder rolling down a slope, she made no great claims, sparked no great fire, but simply crushed any obstacle in her path. "He has rushed to meet me. He has no great force with him today."

"Yet according to our scouts he has a greater army than what we have gathered here." Rodulf frowned and shook his head.

"Not as great a force as the one he will gather, given time to raise levies. Given time for his supporters to raise levies from their lands and march them across Wendar to Henry's side. No, this is as small a force as Henry will ever wield in defense of his crown. And this time it will not be enough."

"You are sure of this," said Rodulf. Of all the various nobles and petty lords in attendance on Sabella, he was by now the only one who still questioned her. She endured his questioning, as she must: He was a duke, her equal in rank in all things except for the gold torque. But Rodulf's mother's mother had been a princess of Salia, so in this way he, too, came of noble lineage.

Alain stood behind Biscop Antonia, hiding among her clerics, and watched the council. By now Cleric Willibrod was not alone among the clerics in having a rash and unsightly sores on hands and lips, though he remained the only who picked nervously at them. Only Heribert, as fastidious as any man Alain had ever met, maintained his clean, unstained skin. But as chief among Antonia's clerics, he kept himself above the actual work; he only supervised the care of the vestments, the making of amulets, the care for the sick in Antonia's train, and the rest of the multitude of small tasks that accompanied attendance on a biscop.

"I am sure of this," said Sabella. "Now is the time to act. Now is the time to fight." She looked at Biscop Antonia; the biscop nodded, answering an unspoken question. Sometimes Alain wondered if Antonia controlled Sabella the way she controlled Lavastine, but even now he saw no sign of such a thing. Sabella and Antonia worked in concert. What grievances, in their inner hearts, drove them to these deeds he could not tell, though he wondered mightily. Sabella's complaint was the more obvious. She believed she had been deprived of a throne which was rightfully hers. But had not God spoken, by default, when Sabella had ridden out on her heir's progress and returned without having conceived a child? Henry, on his heir's progress, had conceived a child, even if it was with as strange a mate as an Aoi woman. Why could Sabella not accept what fateand Godhad decreed for her?

No more than could I, he thought ruefully. Fate and the God of Unitieshad decreed he must enter the church as a novice, and yet here he was, marching to j war, seeing more of the world than he had ever expected \ to, though this was exactly what he had dreamed about.

So did they all ready themselves. Duke Rodulf took j himself off to his own troops, and Sabella waited for her horse to be brought to. her. The army formed a great cavalcade as it rode east, crossing the El River at a shallow ford and marching up into the highlands. They now moved through the lands that owed allegiance to the duke of Fesse. They were in Wendar.

By bringing troops into lands outside Arconia, Sabella j had now crossed the line past which there was no going back. Alain could not help but feel a thrill of excitement, j The men he marched beside, the guards and clerics who ' protected Biscop Antonia and her "guests,"Constance j and Agiusfelt it, too. They laughed and sang boister i ously and made jokes among themselves, boasting about what they would do with the riches they intended to loot from the bodies of Henry's soldiers: a spearhead, a good dagger, any kind of armor, shield or metal helmet or j leather surcoat or, for a truly lucky man, a mail shirt or a | sword.

No matter who won this battle, Alain realized, a great deal of wealth was about to change hands.

At midday the two armies met as if by design. They I arrayed themselves on a broad field.

Henry's force took the better position. The field sloped gently upward toward steeper heights beyond, and Henry had ordered his forces so Sabella would have to attack up the hill at him.

But she seemed unperturbed.

"Hai!" she said fiercely and triumphantly to Duke Rodulf, who had dropped back from his mounted soldiers to consult with her. "Look you, at the banners of Henry's forces, and tell me what you see."

From this place in Antonia's retinue, which marched always at the side of Sabella, Alain surveyed Henry's army. It seemed vast, unnumberable; he had never seen so many people gathered into one place at one time. He could not even count that high, though he heard Cleric Heribert whisper to Antonia:

"Something less than eight hundred men, and perhaps a third of them mounted."

Alain recognized the dragon of Saony, but the men assembled under the banner of Saony's duke were no more in number than those who rode in Count Lavastine's retinue. The eagle of Fesse flew over a more formidable band of soldiers, many of these mounted. One group of these mounted soldiers was massed tightly around a figure wearing a surcoat of white and gold, royal colors; this person must be Duchess Liutgard. A banner also flew for Avaria, and though Alain glanced to where Agius stood meekly beside Constance, he did not think Agius was paying any particular attention to the banner of his father's dukedom or to that of the woman his brother had married in his stead. Agius was praying. Constance stood calmly, hand raised almost to her throat but resting lightly on her chest, and her lips moved as she spokeseemingly to herselfthe names of the lords and counts and dukes who rode in Henry's host.

In the center a huge bold banner of red silk fluttered in the stiff spring breeze. Three animals, stitched in gold thread, were displayed in a column on the banner: an eagle, a dragon, and a lion, the signs of Henry's authority. Even from this distance Alain thought he recognized the king himself, surrounded by a richly arrayed group of retainers.

The king wore a crested iron helm and mail sleeves, and his chest was protected by a metal breastplate over a mail shirt. He wore also, on his legs, mail to protect his thighs and iron greaves on his calves; indeed, many of the mounted soldiers in his retinue wore such greaves, a sign of their wealth and station. In his left hand the king held a lance, in his right hand nothing, so that he might better grasp his sword when it was needed. The shield iv/\lt ELLIOTT hanging from his saddle was of iron, without device or color.

Like the other common soldiers, Alain did not even have a metal helmet much less armor this elaborate. He could only imagine how many sceattas such equipment would cost. Not even Duke Rodulf wore such impressive armor, though certainly he was heavily protected.

It was a formidable army. Only two ducal banners waved in Sabella's forces: the guivre of Arconia and the stallion of Varingia, but both she and Rodulf had fielded many men, though not as many were mounted or armed as well as Henry's men. It seemed a desperate gamble.

"Conrad the Black has not chosen to appear on the field," said Rodulf to Sabella, squinting at the line of banners and soldiers on the slope above them.

"Conrad plays his own game," said Sabella. "If he will not support me, then I am just as happy that he chooses not to support Henry either. But don't you see, Rodulf? Don't you see what is lacking, there?" She gestured broadly, her arm taking in the entire line of Henry's army and the banners displayed.

"There is no Dragon banner. The red dragon of Saony I see, but there is no black dragon. Henry's best fighters are not with him on the field!"

Rodulf whistled breath out between his lips. "So are they not. I no longer despair, Sabella."

"Nor should you ever have despaired. Do you wear your amulet, Rodulf?" "I do, but"

"That is all that matters. Return to your men." "Where are the Dragons, then? Surely Prince Sangiant has not turned agamst Yus Miner ? never heard before that the boy had the least drop of rebellious blood in him." He laughed, a little nervous still but obviously resolved to see this fight through to the end. " often wish my own children were so obedient."

"Surely you heard me mention that my informants said the Dragons had ridden north, well out of the way, to fight Eika raiders?"

"Ah, of course. Strike at the sheep while the watchdog is out hunting the wolf, eh?" He grimaced, more by way of a grin than a frown. "If the Dragons stood beside Henry on this day, I would judge it wiser to ask forgiveness than to light. But"

"But they do not. And now you do not need to make that choice. Go, then." She made a sign to one of her menatarms. He had been expecting the signal, because he turned and rode back toward the train.

Rodulf reined his horse away and with his attendants rode back to his soldiers, who held the right flank opposite the banner of Fesse. Lavastine and a motley assortment of lordlings as well as levies taken from monastery lands made up the left flank, facing the lion of Avaria and the small contingent that had marched long days from Saonyor perhaps, Alain supposed, there had not been time for a contingent to come all the way from Saony. Perhaps the banner of Saony rode over those folk who had been in attendance on Henry already. Perhaps they flew the banner more to show Saony's loyalty than to boast of their force of numbers.

"They mean to parley," said Constance suddenly and clearly as several figures carrying a blue banner marked with a silver tree detached themselves from Henry's retinue and rode into the open space that separated the two armies. "That is Villam's device."

"Of course," said Sabella.

Abruptly, the figure in white and gold rode out under the banner of Fesse to join Villam.

Sabella nodded toward Biscop Antonia. "You know what to say."

The biscop was already mounted on her white mule.

She signed to her clerics and all but Heribert dropped back away from her.

"Tallia," said Sabella curtly. Her daughter came forward reluctantly. "Attend Biscop Antonia. It is time for you to be seen." The girl nodded obediently, but she did I not look happy; she looked, in truth, more like a mouse caught in the clutches of an owl.

Antonia measured the number in Villam's party: Villam, Duchess Liutgard, and two others. She considered the company around Sabella, but her gaze fell finally on Alain. "Come, child," she said. "You will lead my mule."

Sabella raised an eyebrow. "A kennel boy?"

"Something more than that, I think. These two hounds that accompany the boy are Lavastine's hounds. Villam will recognize them and by that know Lavastine willingly marches with us."

Sabella snorted. "So we will send Lavastine's hounds as proxy? I am amused, although my brother will not be. That serves my purpose also. Go, then."

Given no choice, Alain took the mule's reins and led the animal forward, up the slope. Sorrow and Rage padded at his heels. Cleric Heribert followed suit, taking the reins of Tallia's horse and walking alongside Alain, so the biscop and the girl rode side by side, granting them equal status.

As he walked, he studied the four figures they had been sent to meet. Two were Eagles; he recognized them by their cloaks trimmed with scarlet. Both were women, one of them surely no older than he was himself. It was this younger one who held Villam's banner in her left hand.

The hale older man had to be Villam. He was armed in a fine mail shirt; over it, he wore a handsome tabard marked with the device of the silver tree.

But Alain's gaze kept snapping to the fourth member of their party> Dwcfiess Liwtgord. Ttvvs, than, was, tive, woman Agius had refused to marry. She was tall and rather younger than he expected.

She had a cleanly arrogant face and a steady gaze, and a hint of temper in her eyes.

She held her own banner, an odd affectation, and rode a beautiful white gelding outfitted with harness worked with gold ornamentation. Her armor was richer thanVillam's, more elaborate even than the king's. Indeed, it surprised Alain to see a woman of this rank, in the prime of her childbearing years, riding to war and thus putting herself at risk. But her expression, the very set of her jaw, suggested that Duchess Liutgard had a strong will that was not easily overridden.

She noticed his gaze and, curious in her turn, looked him over; much could be said at a parly simply by the choice of people sent forward to conduct it. He could hear Aunt Bel's voice: "Keep your hair tidy and your hands washed, lad. And meet new folk with a face that is neither too sullen nor too smiling, for they will trust neither one." He tried to school his face to an expression of indifferent humility.

Now his gaze slid to Tallia. He had never been quite this close to the young princess before. She had fine clean skin, brushed with freckles, and in the sun her wheatblonde hair had a touch of fire's gold in it. Her lower lip trembled. He risked a glance back at Antonia, but the biscop wore her usual expression of kindly solicitude.

Villam, with some show of reluctance, dismounted and kissed the biscop's ringed hand as a mark of respect for her office. After a deliberate pause, and after handing her banner over to the other Eagle, Duchess Liutgard followed suit. The two Eagles were not important enough to be allowed this honor; like Alain and Heribert, they hung back and observed.

"Lady Tallia," said Villain, nodding toward the girl, "it is a pleasure to see you again."

She nodded in return but did not speak. At this moment, she looked incapable of speech.

"Is there no one who comes forward with you to parley?" Villam continued. "Duke Rodulf does not graceus with his presence."

"I think you know his opinions well enough."

"It is true," said Villam, not quite hiding a smile, "that Rodulf is refreshingly frank. But I see other banners here which surprise me. Count Lavastine is known to me, and to the king, and yet he does not come forward with you to speak his mind."

Barely, Antonia's lips quirked. She gestured toward the hounds. Villam looked that way. His reaction was twofold, and rather strange. At first he looked annoyed. Antonia was suggesting, of course, that Lavastine was either a dog running at Sabella's heels or else that the count himself meant to insult the king by sending the two hounds as his representatives. But then Villam registered Alain. He looked at the boy, studied him for one awkward moment; something in his face betrayed him, and he had to look away to hide ita grief he could not share. Oddly, Duchess Liutgard touched him on the elbow, the way one steadies a man who has stumbled.

"I would have speech," continued Villam after a moment, "with Sabella."

"Of course," said Antonia smoothly, "any words which you speak here will reach her. I am merely the vessel through which they travel. Indeed, Sabella has words for her brother as well."

"No doubt," said Villam dryly. "But I fear we speak of deeds, not words, now. Why has Sabella marched with this army out of Arconia, the territory she administers for her husband Berengar?"

The mule shifted, and Alain tightened his grip on the reins to still it. Antonia opened one hand and gestured eloquently toward Henry's red silk banner. "She is grieved by her brother's usurpation of her rightful place as queen of Wendar."

Villam shook his head. His eyes were dark and heavy, as if he had recently endured many sleepless nights. "That dispute was settled eight years ago. Sabella vowed on your ring, Biscop Antonia, to hold no more grievance against King Henry and to retire to her own holdings and be a faithful supporter of his rule. Has she broken that vow?"

"She swore that vow under duress, as you yourself witnessed. Only those who have sworn themselves to wear martyr's garments are expected to choose death king's dragon' over life, no matter what the charge. So does Our Lady forgive us for our attachment to life, as long as our hearts remain pure and our bearing dignified. As long as we do not forsake our duty to God."

"Is that how you interpret the scripture?" asked Liut. gard sharply, suddenly coming to life.

"I do not intend," replied Antonia with a patient smile, "to debate scripture here, my lady." She turned back to Vilfam. He was a tall, broad man, and though she still sat on her mule, she did not loom over him as she would have a smaller man or woman.

"Sabella is a reasonable woman. Henry may keep his title as duke of Saony, giving the county of Attomar to his sister Rotrudis. Sabella will take the crown and throne of Wendar, and Varre will go to Tallia. She will show her favor toward Henry by allowing his young son Ekkehard to marry Tallia and become king of Varre as Tallia's consort."

Villam was too old and wilyand too burdened by that other, nameless griefto get angry. "I would laugh if only the suggestion were not so offensive. As well as ridiculous. To Sabella, King Henry sends these words: She may keep her dukedom if she turns and quits the field now."

"It is not her dukedom to quit, Villam. Berengar is Duke of Arconia."

Villam grunted, finally sounding irritated. "Your Grace, please do not treat me as if I were a fool.

Berengar is a fine and noble man, I am sure, but he does notshall we saycarry a full kettle of wits with him. Sabella rules that dukedom as both man and woman." Then he quickly nodded toward Tallia, who had flushed a bright pink and was staring so hard at her hands that first Alain, and then Heribert, and then the two silent Eagles, and finally the other threewho knew betteralso looked at the girl's hands to see if something was growing there. "Begging your pardon, Lady Tallia."

She murmured something indistinguishable, but its tone sounded like apology.

Antonia spoke. "If we cannot agree, Lord Villam, there is no point in discussion, is there?"

"You wish to fight?" He looked genuinely puzzled. As well he might: Henry's force was clearly larger and, more importantly, had more mounted soldiers. Their weight and overbearing force alone assured Henry victory.

"Of course we do not wish to fight," said Antonia with a heartfelt sigh. "Of course we wish for peace, Lord Villam. Duchess Liutgard. All souls wish for peace, for is that not the devout wish of Our Lord and Lady? But is it right for Sabella to allow Henry to continue on a throne that is rightfully hers?"

"She did not"

"She has a child. Here is Tallia, before you. Henry has only the word of a heathen woman, if you can even trust the word of an Aoi. Is it not said that elves are children gotten by fallen angels on human woman?"

"In fact," began Liutgard, breaking in as Antonia took breath, "if one studies the Dialogue on Fate, one reads that the blessed Diasan said that elves were

"I do not mean to discuss church matters here." Antonia made a sharp sign with her right hand, as if she was lopping off her left hand at the wrist. Silence.

Duchess Liutgard whitened; she looked mightily annoyed, and her mouth tightened. Villam made a soft noise, and with an obvious effort the duchess kept silent.

"How can we know Henry earned his heir's right?" Antonia continued. "How can we know Sanglant is his son at all? Sabella was Arnulf's first choice as heir. Not Henry. Men may swear all they wish that any child is of their begetting and their blood, but only a woman giving birth before witnesses can prove a child is hers. No man can do that, for even if he locks a woman up, there are creatures not of human blood and earthly make known to have other methods of entry."

"You are saying," said Villam quietly but with real growing anger, "that Henry lied about Sanglant and his heir's progress."

"I say nothing about Henry. I say Henry can never know, and thus we can never know. Why do you think the church encourages inheritance to pass through the mother's line, Lord Villam? Duchess Liutgard? The old Dariyans practiced adoption, bringing any kind of person into their houses, but the church outlawed that practice for inheritance purposes over three hundred years ago at the Council of Nisibia. So do some of us work today to ban inheritance through the male line." Antonia had by now worked up real fervor. Always, she presented a benign facade. Alain had never before seen her so impassioned. "If Henry continues his reign, who will become sovereign after him? The children of Sophia and Arethousa? Will the taint of the East infiltrate our kingdom? Does this new heresy that has spread its tendrils into our fine pure faith not come from the lands ruled by the Arethousan emperors? Will our rulers be Arethousan, and not of Wendish blood?"

"They will be Henry's children," said Villam firmly. "And strong rulers, despite what you say, Biscop Antonia."

"Beware Arethousans bearing gifts," she replied, darkly. "Had Henry married a good Wendish woman of noble birth, I would not be so adamant in my cause. But he did not. Two women he is known to have consorted with, both of them foreigners and one not even of human blood." She had finally and entirely lost that placid grandmother's face. Beneath it, she was hard and cold. "I cannot trust such a man.

Nor will I trust his offspring. Sanglant! His pet! A bastard child who isn't even human and probably isn't even his, since we have only the mother's worthless word that she did not act the whore. And Henry makes a fool of himselfeveryone knows; it is common knowledge throughout Wendish lands because he favors such a child! I do not call this a kingly virtue. I do not think this shows strong judgment. Sabella married, as was her duty, a man of her own people.