But Henry cannot be content with that, can he? He has his eye on greater things, does he not?

He has his eye on the chair of the emperor, in Darre. He wants to follow in the wake of Taillefer. Well!

Let Henry nurse his own lands before he sets off to heal others. Let him mate with a woman of his own people before he breeds with the whores of strangers." Antonia was by now quite red and quite furious.

Alain was both impressed and horrified.

Liutgard made as if to stride forward and confront the biscop physically, but Villam stayed her with a gesture. "I have heard enough insults," he said. "There is no more to be said. Let this battle be on your head, then, Biscop Antonia. Let it be said, from this hour forward in all the chronicles that record this day, that Sabella rejected King Henry's leniency when it was offered and chose to face his rage." He mounted, reined his horse around, and set off up the hill.

Liutgard tossed her head, like a spirited horse, and met Antonia's gaze with one no less hard.

"You are like a sweet water well that has been poisoned by the venom of a guivre." She turned and followed Villam, the Eagle bearing her banner trailing in her wake.

One of the Eagles hung back. Alain stared at the younger one. She had the palest haira coarse whiteblondehe had ever seen, except for the hair of the Eika prince. Her gaze caught his, and, for a moment, they simply looked at each other; she appeared more curious than hostile. And she had astonishingly pale blue eyes.

"Hanna!" said her companion sharply, calling back over her shoulder. The young Eagle wrenched her gaze away from Alain, glanced quickly at the hounds, then followed her companion up the hill after the two nobles.

"Is it true, Your Grace?" asked Tallia.

"Is what true?" Antonia had recovered her outer calm. "Come, child, we must ride back behind the lines. The battle will soon begin."

"Tthose things you said. About Henry."

"Of course it is true. Why would I say such things if they were not true?"

"Oh," said Tallia, and that was all.

Meekly, she let Cleric Heribert lead her back to her mother. When they arrived at Sabella's banner, Willibrod took the mule's reins away from Alain. Tallia was taken back behind the lines to the safety of the supply train, where the noncombatants awaited the outcome of the battle. One wagon had been brought forward from the train. This was unusual enough but made more so because Alain recognized it as the shrouded cage that concealed the guivre.

"You saw no sign of the Dragons?" Sabella asked.

"None. And I have never heard it said the Dragons hide themselves. Always they ride in the vanguard."

"Bastard and whore's child he may be," said Sabella grudgingly, "but Sanglant is known for being brave. What of the others?"

"I saw none."

"None of Henry's children?"

"None."

Sabella frowned. "That is unfortunate. I was hoping I might catch one or all of them for hostages.

It would serve me well to have them in my hands."

Antonia's reply was so soft only Alainand perhaps Heribertheard it. "It would serve you better if they were dead."

Sabella's captain rode up with the message that Rodulf's people were ready. "You must go back behind the lines, Your Grace," said Sabella to Antonia. She settled her helmet over her mail coif and tightened the strap. The banner of Arconia flapped beside her, held by one of her menatarms: a green guivre with wings unfolded and a red tower gripped in its left talon, set against a gold silk background.

"You I cannot afford to lose."

"What of our guests?" The biscop looked, and smiled, at Constance and Agius.

"Take them with you. They are too valuable to risk here where the battle will be fought."

Antonia signed, and Constance and Agius were led away under guard. "Come," she said to her attendants. They began to move back. Alain hesitated. "Come, child," said Antonia, beckoning to him.

"You will attend me as well."

Sabella noticed his hesitation. "This is one of Lavastine's menatarms, is it not? It is time he returned to the count's levy."

"But

"Do as I say," snapped Sabella with the expression of a woman who has no time to argue.

Antonia paused. Her face became a mask of stillness. Then, as the sun comes out from behind clouds, she smiled in her usual benevolent fashion. "As you wish, my lady." She did not bow, but she gave in. So. Sabella danced to no puppet strings. Antonia might control Lavastine, but she did not control the daughter of Arnulf.

Once Antonia was gone, no one paid the least attention to Alain though several rough menatarms pushed him back and told him sharply to find his place, only to apologize when the hounds growled at them. But they made the sign of the Circle at their breasts, as if he was some evil thing.

He retreated to the back of the line. Sabella had in her own company over one hundred wellarmed mounted soldiers and perhaps twice as many skirmishers and infantry; all together (according to Heribert's count) she had six hundred or so soldiers. But Henry's army was bigger, and Henry commanded more of the heavily armored cavalry that was the backbone of any lord's army. Of the infantry Lions, there was one century, but by all reports most of the Lions manned the eastern frontier against the raids of the Quman horsemen and other barbarians.

Alain trotted along the back of the line. He heard leather creaking as men shifted, waiting, anticipating the first step. On the hill above, none of Henry's soldiers moved. Alain could see the red silk banner flapping against blue sky and trailing white clouds, but the headssome helmeted, some with hard leather caps, some with no covering at allof Sabella's soldiers blocked most of his view.

Was this how a battle was fought? Was there a strategy involved, or did the two sides merely wait until one commander lost patience or nerve and sent his side forwardor into retreat?

A gap opened between Sabella's leftmost company of infantry and the rightmost company of those men under Lavastine's command. The men stood with their arms tight against their sides so they could rest the weight of their shields on their hips. Most of these men carried spears; few common men had the wherewithal to purchase a sword.

As Alain sprinted past the open ground, dashing for safety among Lavastine's men, he looked up toward Henry's army. Movement coursed along the ranks. Then, suddenly, the sky darkened with arrows. Most of them fell harmlessly in front of the line of Sabella's army; some overshot. A few found their mark. But even as men cursed and one shrieked in pain, the archers among Sabella's army took aim and shot.

They had to arc their arrows higher, to gain the height, but, if anything, this volley had more effect. A ripple passed down the line of Henry's army as if many arrows had hit their mark. And the line moved.

Horses started forward at intervals. Henry had sent out his skirmishers, mounted men armed with spear and shield or even spear alone. They raced forward, flung their spears, and turned back to gallop out of range, only to turn again

Alain dashed along the rear of the line and saw Lavastine's back and the black coats of his hounds just as a great cry went up from the crowd of soldiers around Sabella's banner. A rank of infantry trotted forward into the empty field that lay between the two armies. They pulled the shrouded cage along with them.

"Hai! For Henry!" the host above them shouted.

Alain shoved his way through to Lavastine's side. The count did not even notice the boy, he was so intent on the battle. At his leftmost flank, about twenty of his own skirmishers had raced out to meet the skirmishers opposite them. One group of horsemen broke away from the banner of Saony and began to sweep wide, disappearing into the forest.

Lavastine sought and found his captain. "Send a company after them," he said.

Another cry rent the air from Henry's army. The king rode a few paces forward and lifted his lance.

"The Holy Lance of St. Perpetua," murmured Lavastine, but to whom, Alain could not tell.

St. Perpetua. Lady of Battles.

Alain groped at his neck, found the rose. King Henry carried the Lance of St. Perpetua, a relic of the greatest antiquity and holiness. Was it not the Lady of Battles herself who had come to him, a simple merchant's son, on that stormy day above Osna Sound? Was it not the Lady of Battles who had changed his destiny?

He could not imagine for what purpose he had been led here, to this day and this hour and this moment.

Henry's army began to move down the hill, picking up speed so their weight could smash through Sabella's line. And first, in their way, was that knot of infantrymen, dragging the shrouded cage up the slope.

The cage jutted and bounced and lurched. Stuck. One of the wheels had gotten stuck. Henry's soldiers picked up speed and force. Sabella's captain shouted a shrill command and lifted a white banner, waving it. The line of her army lurched forward in its turn.

Lavastine lifted an arm. And Alain found himself as the two armies lumbered forward to their inevitable meeting. Rage and Sorrow whined. He faltered, unsure where to march, how to fall into place, or what to do. H was not even armed, except with his eating knife. What was he meant to do?

He fell behind and from this vantage point could see nothing except banners and pennants and the chaotic blur of movement on the hill above.

But he knew instantly when the first ranks met. It was a clamor unlike anything he had ever heard, made the more terrible because of the unforgiving clash of sword and spear set against the sudden harrowing screams of mortal men.

He thought of Rodulfs warnings and Sabella's answer: "This time it will not be enough." How could she hope to win against a better armed and larger force? He could not know whether the cage was opened deliberately or knocked over accidentally in the charge. He only knew it had happened because at that moment there came from the center of the milling battle a shriek from a hundred throats as from one throat that froze his heart in his chest. He could not breathe for so long a span of time that he coughed and gulped air when Rage butted him from behind, jarring him out of his stupor.

On the slope above, half seen through the chaos of soldiers scattering, through horses rearing and screaming, through the press of bodies and of many men intent on moving forward or on running away, he saw it rise into the spring day as a bird flies toward the heavens and freedom.

Only to be yanked hard, almost to plunge to earth again, because of the great iron collar that bound its leg to a heavy iron chain, the shackle that tied it to the earth and captivity. It screamed its rage and righted itself, still in the air, the downdraft of its great wings toppling men from their horses.

Still shrieking that harsh eaglelike cry, the guivre swept its gaze across the battlefield. And everywhere that men by design or accident met its eye, those men froze, unable to move. Everywhere, except among the soldiers of Sabella's army, who wore the amulets so painstakingly wrought by Antonia's clerics. The slaughter began.

Henry was the kind of man who left nothing to chance.

In a strange way, he reminded Hanna of her mother, i Mistress Birta. He had a hard, pragmatic side and yet j was as likely as any other person to give full expression | to his feelings. But to Hanna the most important thing ! about Henry was what Hathui had said of him that same evening after they had reached Henry's court at the monastery of Hersford and been taken in as members of the king's personal household: "He's a fine lord, is our king, and I am proud to serve him."

Hathui, with her fierce marchlander' s independence, was loath to serve anyone. That Henry had captured Hathui's loyalty so quickly was to Hanna's way of thinking a mark of his kingliness. He was the true heart of the kingdom, not any city, not any holy site, not any palace or stronghold.

Now, sitting astride her horse as Villam conferred with Henry after the disastrous parley, Hanna worried. She was not, by nature, a worrier, but she had come to be one these past weeks ever since she and Hathui had been forced to leave Liath behind. It was all very well for Hathui to proclaim that she would know if something had happened to Wolfhere and Manfred. A constant nagging anxiety ate away at Hanna. What if something terrible happened to Liath? Hanna had sworn in her heart to protect Liath, and now she had broken that promise.

Through no fault of your own. Isn't that what Birta would say? Isn't that what Liath herself would say?

But Hanna could only think of broken promises as she stared down the slope toward Sabella's army, drawn up in a strong line below them. She had sworn to protect Liath, and now she rode far from her side. Sabella had, by all reports, sworn an oath to Henry and now she had broken it. By my deeds, Hanna thought, / belong on Sabella's side.

Then, angry at herself for this ridiculous musing, she let out an exasperated sigh. There was no use blaming herself. She was not the Eika chieftain who had besieged Gent. She had not asked those Eika to attack the five Eagles. She had fallen off her horse and sprained her ankle, but the truth was, she was still not that experienced a rider. She and Hathui had brought the message of the siege to Henry as quickly as they could. She had done her best and now must live with what came after. It was not her fault but rather Sabella's that Henry could not ride immediately to Gent.

Liath was the one who worried incessantly and to no purpose, wondering what she had done wrong rather than accepting that sometimes one did nothing and still had ill luck. That was the way of the world, though perhaps Deacon Fortensia might say it was a heathen way of looking at things.

But Hanna and the rest of her family still laid flowers at the foot of certain trees in the forest and offered garlands where the spring rose from rock along the south ridge. Of course she believed in Our Lord and Lady and in the Circle of Unity. But that did not mean the old spirits had ceased to live in the world. They had only gone into hiding.

The old spiritslike that boy who had held the reins of the biscop's white mule and stared at her so strangely. He had an odd, fey look about him. And those hounds! They weren't ugly, like the Eika dogs she had seen, but they looked as deadly; yet they sat next to the boy like sweet puppies. Ai, well, there were a great many strange things that walked abroad in the world, if only one had the eyes to see them.

"the young Eagle

She shook her head and attended to what Henry was saying.

will attend Sapientia. She knows what to do. I will have Constance back before Sabella can retreat and take her away as a prisoner."

Henry was surrounded by his century of Lions. Hanna searched and found Karl's broad back among the ranks; if she craned her neck just right, she could see his profile. He did not notice her. With his fellows, he stared intently down the slope toward the restless mass of Sabella's army. The Lions were ready for battle.

Henry and Villam finished their consultation. Hathui rode away with a message intended for Theophanu, who had been left in charge of their supply train. Henry, ever cautious, had left the train and his noncombatants behind in the fortified town of Kassel.

Hanna was sent back behind the lines to the wood beyond. Henry had chosen this field to stand and fight because of the lay of the land. Guessing that Sabella would bring her supply train with her rather than leave it behind in Arconia, he had hidden some eighty mounted soldiers in the woods and put Sapientiawith a veteran captain at her side for good measureat their head. Concealed by the trees and by the skirmishing that prefaced any battle, they would sweep wide round Sabella's right flank and hit all the way back to the supply train, thus freeing Constance.

Or causing her to get killed, thought Hanna, but she supposed Henry would rather see his sister die than remain a hostage. After all, as long as Constance remained alivein Sabella's hands, she was a weapon to be used against the king.

That was how Hathui had explained it, at any rate. But Hathui had been raised in the harsh cauldron of the borderlands, which were in a state of constant war. There, as the hawknosed Eagle had said more than once, one killed one's children rather than let them fall into the hands of Quman raiders.

Sapientia looked like a greyhound being held on a tight leash: eager to run. She was small enough that Hanna was surprised Henry let her fight.

Of course every adult fought in the right circumstances, under conditions of siege or a raider's attack on a village; it would be foolish to waste any strong arm. But womenblessed by the Lady with the gift of bearing lifedid not often join the ranks of armed soldiers. Some, who dedicated their lives to St.

Perpetua or St. Andrea both soldiers for Godturned their hearts away from marriage and childbearing, as Hathui had done. Others by reason of unusual size or strength served a year or two in a lord's levy before returning to their holding and taking up their old lives.

But it was no shame for a noble lady to excuse herself from battle: that was what she had a husband and brothers for. Her first duties were to administer her lands and bear children to carry on her lineage. And Sapientia was particularly small, so that Hannarunning messages to her retinue from Henryhad been aware of the trouble the king and his smiths had gone to, to outfit her in decent armor.

But Sapientia wanted to fight, to lead her own unit. And Henry allowed her to, becauseHanna suspected he had something to prove thereby. Something for her to prove to him, most likely. No person could become sovereign if he, or she, could not lead the great princes and their levies into battle.

"When will we go?" demanded Sapientia, and the old captain spoke to her soothingly, calming her down.

From the direction of the field, Hanna heard the soldiers raise their voices in a great shout: "Hai!

For Henry!" That was the signal.

Sapientia lifted a hand and at the head of her troop of soldiers began to ride, circling through the trees. Hanna kept tight hold on her spear. She rode toward the back of the ranks, protected by them; no one expected an Eagle to fight unless they were overwhelmed. But she was still nervous. She stared through the trees, half starting every time new trees sprang into view. Luckily the soldiers next to her were too intent on what lay ahead to notice how jumpy she was. Possibly they were jumpy themselves, but she doubted it. For her first command Henry had given Sapientia experienced soldiers who had, most of them, spent time fighting in the east. After all, if this raid went well, they could fold up Sabella's right flank or even overtake and engulf her rear, thus preventing her from retreating.

Distantly, through the trees, Hanna heard a change in the echoing noise from the field. One of the soldiers beside her grunted: "They've engaged," he said to the man beside him.

They rode on, curving back to the right. A horrible shriek rose above the distant thunder of battle.

"What was that?" muttered one of the soldiers.

But then, at the fore of the company, the riders broke into a gallop. They had sighted their quarry. Their pennants whipped behind, streamers of red and gold.

Hanna saw the line of wagons ahead, drawn up in twos to make a wall and a gap between where the noncombatants could take shelter. Amazingly, Sabella had left only a token force to guard her supply train. A few arrows cut through the sky, their whirring like a warning come too late.

Sapientia raised her voice in a shrill cry: "Hailililili!" and, with her soldiers fanning out, they hit the line of wagons and broke into a dozen small swirls of fighting, soon stilled.

Hanna hung back, watching. Hathui had drilled this into her over the last ten days as they had ridden west to meet Sabella.

"You are the king's eyes and ears. You watch and mark all that occurs. You are not meant for heroics. You are meant to live and bear witness."

But there were no heroics here. Sapientia's troops took over the supply train easily and began to herd their new prisoners together, searching for Biscop Constance.

A cry came from the woods on the opposite side of the line of wagons. Hanna rode closer, to investigate.

There! Among the trees she saw riders, but she could not identify them. Sapientia's captain took twenty soldiers and rode into the wood to head them off.

And at that moment, someone grabbed her reins and jerked down hard on them. She started and swung her spear around to point at

A frater.

She stared. He had a harsh face. One of his lips was bleeding.

"Give me your horse!" he demanded. This was no humble churchman. After almost twenty days in the king's progress, Hanna recognized a great lord's arrogance when she saw it.

But she hesitated. He was dressed as a simple frater, after all.

"Ai, Lady, grant me patience!" he said aloud. "Eagle! Dismount and give me this horse!"

"For what purpose?" she demanded in her turn. "You are in Sabella's train "I am Sabella's prisoner, not her ally." "How can I know?"

Distantly, that awful shriek rose again on the wind, followed by a strange muttering, like calls of triumph and moans of defeat melded together, like a battle gone to rout.

The frater grunted in anger, grabbed her arm, and yanked her bodily off the horse. She hit the ground hard enough to jolt her and scatter her wits. The animal shied, but he jerked down on the reins and, while Hanna was trying to pick herself up, threw himself over the saddle and swung his leg over.

Kicked the horse, hard, and with robes flapping up around his thighs, he rode at a gallop off toward the battle. Lady! He was barefoot!

Panting, Hanna heaved herself to her feet. In the woods, two forces had met and blended together: she caught sight of the red dragon of Saony. Friends, then, but as soon as she thought it, she heard shouting.

"Lavastine's riders are coming! Turn round! Turn round and face them!"

Ai, Lady! What had Hathui said? An unhorsed Eagle is a dead Eagle. The frater, and her horse, were long gone. Still clutching her spear, Hanna ran for the shelter of the wagons.

is what it had all meant, of course. Alain saw that now with a clarity obscured only by the screaming of men and the milling of soldiers lost, frightened, and running, or caught up in the brutal and numbing work of slaughter.

Henry's soldiersthose caught by the guivre's glare were like so many trussed pigs, throats slashed while they squealed. This was not battle of the kind sanctified by the Lord of Hosts, who did not falter when He was called upon to wield the Sword of Judgment. This was a massacre.

Alain knew it was wrong, knew it in his heart. The guivre screamed in rage, trying to break free, beating its wings frantically. Sabella's first rank of horsemen moved steadily up the hill, their progress slowed because it was so easy to kill Henry's soldiers, because they had to scramble over the dead and dying and over horses collapsed onto the grass. On the far right flank, a melee swirled, back and forth, but the standard of Fesse wavered and began to move backward.

Above, about half of the century of Lions had begun to march forward to meet Sabella's army.

The rest either could not or would not march. And behind them Henry sat on his horse, unmoving. Was he waiting and watching? Or was he already caught in the guivre's eye?

The mounted soldiers opposite Lavastine's forces were trying to turn Lavastine's soldiers back so they could punch in to aid Henry's center. Alain ran, fought his way through the back ranks of archers and spearmen who had fallen back after the first skirmishing. He shoved, and Rage and Sorrow nipped and bit to make a passage for him, toward their sisters and brothers, the black hounds who attended Count Lavastine.

Alain reached the count, who was sitting back from the front lines, waiting and watching the progress of the battle, Alain grabbed his stirrup and pulled hard. Lavastine stared down at him. There was no sign in his eyes that he recognized Alain.

Desperate measures for desperate times. He prayed for strength to the Blessed Lady. Then he grabbed Lavastine's mail coat and tugged as hard as he could.

Because the count was not expecting it, he lost his seat. Alain shifted his grip to the count's arm and pulled him right out of the saddle. Lavastine fell hard and lay still.

And a spear pinched Alain between the shoulder blades. He dropped to his knees and fumbled at his neck as he turned his head to look up and behind.

It was Sergeant Fell. "You know me, Sergeant!" Alain cried. "You know the count is acting strangely. This is wrong! We shouldn't be here!"

Fell hesitated. Lavastine's captain fell back from the front lines, seeing the count unhorsed. All at once the hounds surrounded Alain, growling and driving everyone back. No one dared strike them. Alain found the rose and drew it out.

"I pray you, Lady of Battles, come to my aid," he breathed. And he brushed the petals of the rose over Lavastine's pale lips, just below the nasal of his helmet. Beyond, he heard the clash of battle.

Here he was protected, caught in an eddy, surrounded by a black wall of hounds. Sorrow licked Lavastine's face, and the count opened his eyes. He blinked and passed a hand over his helmet as if feeling it there for the first time. Then he sat up. Alain grabbed him under the arms and the hounds parted to let Sergeant Fell through. Together, Alain and the sergeant pulled Lavastine to his feet.

"What is this?" demanded Lavastine, staring at the chaos around them, his front rank of fighters pressing against the fighters from Saony. Fesse's banner was retreating. In the center, Sabella's banner moved up and farther up and came against the banner of the Lions. The guivre shrieked. The Lion banner toppled and disappeared from view. Henry, surrounded now only by his personal guard, did not move.

The captain pressed his horse through the knot of hounds and men, who parted to let him through. Sergeant Fell let go of the count and grabbed his horse's reins before it could bolt. The guivre made all the horses nervous, and they shied at every harsh call and scream.

"We are marching with Sabella, against Henry," said the captain.

"We are not!" cried Lavastine. "All of my men, withdraw from the battle."

This command raced through the ranks like wildfire. Lavastine mounted his horse and pulled back, and step by embattled step his soldiers withdrew from the battle until the captains of Saony's line realized what was occurring and, at last, let them go.

But Henry's center was broken. Sabella was halfway through the Lions and still Henry had not moved. As Lavastine's soldiers cleared the field, Alain stood his ground and their retreat eddied around him and ebbed until he stood among the dead and watched Saony's cavalry wheel and turn to aid their king. He watched the guivre twist and turn, still battering against the wind and against its shackles, watched its baleful glare sweep across the ranks of Saony's soldiers. Watched as half of Sabella's company split off to strike at this new threat.

A few arrows and spears cut through the air from <ivt taate, Of fe&fe' S \roops to slide harmlessly off the guivre's scaly hide and fall to the ground. The grass was empty around the guivre; Sabella's soldiers, though protected against its gaze, gave it a wide berth. Not one soul had king's dragon come within reach of its claws, circumscribed by the length of the chain that fettered it to the iron cage.

Slowly, Henry's soldiers were cut down or retreated up the hill toward the kingfor their final stand.

The rose fell from Alain's suddenly nerveless fingers. He could not stand by and watch any more.

He could not judge the Tightness of Sabella's grievance against Henry. But he knew it was not right that she win by these means, as horrible as they were. Lackling had been murdered to gain Lavastine's support. Henry's soldiers could not fight, so as to pit honest strength against honest strength, but were scythed down like wheat.

He ran across the field, stumbling on corpses, jumping over men who writhed or struggled to drag themselves to safety. He ran toward the guivre, and paused only once, long enough to take a sword from a noble lord's slack and bloody body. He did not even register the man's face.

But another figure reached the guivre before he could. Someone else, riding a duncolored horse.

The man flung himself off the horse and slapped it on the flank. The horse bolted away.

And the fraterfor it was Frater Agius, Alain saw that now as he ran, knowing suddenly that he would come too latewalked without fear into the circle of the guivre's talons.

Its cry was as much delirium as fury, but it stooped and plunged. Halfstarved and long since driven wild by captivity and the torment of its wasted and suffering body, it took the food offered it.

Agius vanished under a flurry of metalhard wings and sharp talons. The guivre lowered its head to feed.

Henry's armywhat was left of itand Henry himselt casoa to \\fe,. ^NViVi cries oi tage, driven almost to a frenzy by what they had witnessed and been helpless to prevent, they charged and hit Sabella's line, which had fallen out of formation as they took the hill and killed their easy prey. The soldiers from Fesse and Avaria regrouped and slammed into Duke Rodulf's stretchedthin line. Saony's troops fell back, reformed, and drove for Sabella's faltering center.

Alain ran for the guivre. Already the first of Sabella's men, shocked and not yet recovered from this reversal, stumbled backward past him. He ignored them, though Sorrow and Rage nipped and barked, protecting him so no man tried to stop him.

Why would any man try to stop him? The guivre loomed huge, this close, a stooped shape that was yet as high as two men, one standing on the other's shoulders. Sun glinted off its scales, and it fed with the rapacity of a creature who has been denied pleasure for too long. Alain came up behind it, thought of striking but did not. It remained oblivious to him. He heard the crunch of bone andAi, Lady!a horrible moan that pitched up into a strangled wail and was abruptly cut off.

He circled the great beast. Worms fell from its diseased eye to slither away on the ground. From this side it could not see his approach. And anyway, it was too busy feasting.

He raised the sword just as he heard a warning cry behind him and then a cry from farther away:

"Hailililili!" and the thunder of hooves and shouts of dismay, carrying Rodulf's name on the wind, and again and again the cry of "Henry! For King Henry!"

He brought it down with all his strength on the creature's neck. It screamed aloud, deafening him, and lifted its great and ugly head from what remained of Agius. Lifting, casting first to its sighted side and then slewing round the other way, it beat its wings, sending him tumbling forward underneath it. It was an ungainly thing, not meant for the ground; it had only the one set of talons and wings.

It clawed for him, missed, because it could not see him, tottered, because it was so ill and could barely find its balance. Alain stumbled back and righted the sword, turning it so the blade pointed up. His heel met resistance and he fell to one knee. Glanced behind himself.

The guivre had opened Agius at the belly, to feed on the soft entrails. Horribly, the frater's eyes caught on and tracked Alain; he was still alive.

The guivre screamed its fury and found its footing. Its shadow covered them, Alain and the dying Agius.

But, of course, as the old tales told, every great beast has its weak spot. Alain did not hesitate but plunged the sword deep into its unprotected breast.

Blood fountained, pouring over him like the wash of fire. He let go of the sword's hilt and jumped back, grabbing Agius and tugging him as the guivre writhed in its death throes. Spitting and coughing, blinded by the stinging, hot blood, he stumbled backward, dragging Agius. The guivre fell and the impact jarred Alain off his feet. He collapsed on top of the frater. The guivre shuddered, a great convulsion, and was still.

Agius breathed something, a rattling word and then another. Alain bent, eyes streaming, his hands smarting. A body slammed up against him, and then Rage was licking his face and hands. He tried to chase her away. He could not chase her away and concentrate on Agius. "Free the white deer,"

whispered Agius. "Ai, Lady, let this sacrifice make me worthy of Your Son's example." His eyes glazed over and he shuddered once, like the guivre, and died.

Sorrow nudged up against Alain. The hound had something in his mouth. Rage licked Alain's eyes clean of the guivre's blood and Alain blinked into sudden brightness and made sense first of all of the field lying washed by the sun's light and the chaos ranging there: Sabella's banner fell back and farther back yet. All the weight of victory had shifted. With the death of the guivre, their standard, Sabella's soldiers had lost heart and now they turned and fled.

A thorn cut Alain's cheek, a thin prick. He started back to see Sorrow carrying the rose in his mouth.

brought from the other side of the battlefield. Its petals had darkened to a deep bloodred, as red as Agius' blood that yet leaked onto the ground. Alain dropped his face to his hands and wept.

THE PROMISE OF POWER ROSVITA could not concentrate when she was waiting. She paced up and down in the feasting hall that adorned the palace built by the first duke of Fesse some eighty years ago. Now and again she walked over to the great doors that opened onto a beautiful vista of the town of Kassel, lying at the foot of the hill on which the palace had been erected. A huge grayblue stone capped the lintel of this monumental doorway. When Rosvita stared up, she saw tiny figures and patterns carved into the stone, their outlines blurred by age.

In the town below, a few bedraggled streamers still decorated the streets. When Henry and his army had marched in, the town of Kassel had been recovering from the raucous Feast of St. Mikhel, celebrated four nights before. Though the biscop dutifully spoke out against several of the local customs, even she could not prevent the usual festival which involved a young woman riding through the streets of Kassel clothed only

in her hairor in this case, in a gauzy linen undershift, some attention being shown to modestywhile the townsfolk closed their shutters and pretended not to watch her go by. After this procession everyone trooped out of doors and drank themselves sick. Rosvita was not sure exactly what had happened in the original story to force the poor woman to ride out in such a humiliating way, only that St. Mikhel was by a miracle supposed to have clothed the hapless virgin in a light so blinding it protected her from the stares of the heathen and the ungodly.

"It is said," said Princess Theophanu, coming up beside Rosvita to stand in a splash of sunlight,

"that this stronghold was built on the ruins of a Dariyan fortress which was itself built on the ruins of an older palace whose great stones were set in place by the daimones of the upper air." She indicated the huge lintel.

"Like the stone circles," said Rosvita, thinking of young Berthold. "Though some say they were set there by giants." That was what Helmut Villam had said, that day when they had explored the old fallen stone circle and Berthold had still walked alive in the light of day. Ai, Lady, this sorrow she must bear with her. But she could not allow it to drag her down. "Come," she said, turning to Theophanu. "We will read from the book I was given by the hermit, Brother Fidelis. In this way we may reflect upon the life of a holy woman while we wait to hear from King Henry."

She turned back into the hall, where light and shadow played among the thick wood pillars and in the eaves far above. No fire burned in the hearth this day; it was warm enough that only cooking fires in the kitchen house needed to be lit. Servants dressed in tabards sewn with the gold lion of Fesse lingered nervously beside the side doors. One brought wine forward, but she gestured for him to take it away.

She was not thirsty.

Young Ekkehard had fallen asleep on a bench. His gentle face and sweet profile reminded her bitterly of Berthold Villam, who was lost to them now. Ekkehard was a good boy, if a little too fond of carousing late into the night and singing with the bards who traveled from one great court to the next.

"It is just as well," said Theophanu, coming up beside Rosvita.

"What is just as well?"

Theophanu nodded toward her younger brother. Of all Henry's children, Ekkehard looked the most like his father: goldenbrown hair, round face, and a slightly arched, strong nose. At thirteen, he was lanky and tall and a bit clumsy except when he was playing the lute, but soit was saidhad Henry been at that age before he grew into the broad and powerful stature of his adult years. "It is just as well," said Theophanu, "that Ekkehard loves music and the pleasures of the feast more than he does the promise of power."

Rosvita did not quite know what to make of this bald statement.

Theophanu turned her dark eyes on Rosvita. "Is that not the source of Sabella's rebellion? That she is not content administering her husband's dukedom? That she wants more?"

"Is greed not the source of many sins?" asked Rosvita.

Theophanu smiled innocently. "So does the church teach, good sister."

Theophanu was old enough to have her own retinue, and yet her father kept her close by his side, just as he kept Sapientia beside him rather than giving her a title and lands to administer. Did Theophanu chafe at this treatment? Rosvita could not tell. Was she angry that her sister had been allowed to accompany Henry to meet Sabella on the field and been given her own command? That she had been left behind when truly she was larger and stronger and more fit physically for the exertions of battle?

Theophanu's expression and her inner thoughts on these matters remained unreadable.

Rosvita unwrapped the old parchment codex from the linen cover in which she had swaddled it and turned carefully to the first page. Brother Fidelis' calligraphy was delicate yet firm, betraying the lines of an older age in the loops and swirls of the occasional fillips of ornamentation he had allowed himself as he wrote. A Salkian hand, Rosvita thought; she had examined many manuscripts and books over the years and come to recognize various quirks and telltale signs of specific scribes or of habits learned in certain monastic schools. She touched the yellowing page with reverence, feeling the lines of ink beneath her fingers like the whisper of Fidelis' voice, coming to her as from down a long tunnel, through the veil of years.

Theophanu sat beside her and waited, hands clasped patiently in her lap. Rosvita read aloud.

' The Lord and Lady confer glory and greatness on women through strength of mind. Faith makes them strong, and in these earthly vessels, heavenly treasure is hid. One of this company is Radegundis, she whose earthly life I, Fidelis, humblest and least worthy, now attempt to celebrate so that all may hear of her deeds and sing praise in her glorious memory. The world divides those whom no space parted once. So ends the Prologue.' '

Rosvita sighed, hearing Fidelis in these words as if his voice echoed through the ink to touch her ears. She went on. " 'So begins the Life. The most blessed Radegundis was of the highest earthly rank Ekkehard snorted and woke up suddenly, tumbling off the bench onto carpets carefully laid there by his servants. At that same moment, one of Theophanu's servingwomen appeared in the doorway. "An Eagle!" she cried. "An Eagle comes." Rosvita closed the book with trembling hands and wrapped it in linen. Then she clutched it to her breast and rose, hands still shaking, and hurried over to the great doors.

Theophanu came with her, but the king's daughter was completely calm. Ekkehard was talking excitedly behind them, and his servants swarmed around him, helping him up. The chatelaine and other servants of king's dragon the duchess of Fesse crowded behind Rosvita and the princess.

The Eagle was Hathui, the young woman Henry had honored by taking her into his personal retinue. She handed off her horse to a groom and walked forward to kneel before Theophanu.

"Your Highness, Princess Theophanu," she said, lifting her eyes to look upon Theophanu's face.

She had the rare ability to be proud without being impudent. "King Henry sends word that his sister Sabella refuses any terms of parley, and that battle will be joined." "What of the course of that battle?"

asked Theophanu. "I do not know. I rode quickly, and without looking back, as is my duty."

"Bring her mead," said Theophanu. She stared off across the town. Kassel was laid out as a square with two broad avenues set perpendicular to each other, dividing it into four even quarters. An old wall surrounded it, the last obvious remains besides the baths that this had once been a Dariyan town in the days of the old empire. The town had probably been larger then, and certainly more densely populated. There was room now within the old walls for a few fieldsmostly vegetables and one impressive stand of fruit trees as well as some common pasture for cowsbetween the last line of houses and the town gates. Outside the wall lay fields, rye and barley because of the soil of this country, the red clay of the highlands.

Where had all those people gone, and what had become of their descendants? Had they fled back to Aosta, to the city of Darre out of which the empire had grown? Had they died in the wars and plagues and famines that had devastated and ultimately destroyed the old empire? Had they simply vanished and never returned, like poor Berthold?

Rosvita could not help but wonder. "Knowledge tempted me too much," Brother Fidelis had said. At times like this, she knew she also was too curious. Henry kate eiliott might be dead and all he had worked for overthrown. Or he might have committed the terrible crime of slaying his own kin, the very crime thatsome chroniclers wrotehad brought about the fall of the Dariyan Empire. And here she stood, wondering about the history of the town of Kassel when the peace and stability of the kingdom was at stake!

"Come," she said to Theophanu, "let us sit down again and wait."

Theophanu, barely, shook her head. "It is time to saddle our horses," she said quietly. "And to gather together healers. Either we will ride to the battle to give aid to the wounded, or we will ride away."

"Away?"

Theophanu turned now, her dark lashes framing eyes as startlingly large as those of queens in ancient mosaics. She looked entirely too composed. "If Sabella wins, then Ekkehard and I must remain out of her hands at any cost. We must be prepared to ride to my Aunt Scholastica at Quedlinhame."

Rosvita placed a hand on her chest and bowed slightly, showing her respect for the young princess. Of course Theophanu was right. She had learned politics at her mother's knee, and her mother Sophia had learned politics in the court of Arethousa, where intrigue ran in webs as convoluted and dangerous as those in any court in the world of humankind.

This, then, was the choice Henry had to make, because it was long past time for him to send one of his daughters on her heir's progress. He had to choose between Sapientia, the daughter who was bold and openand yet too often did not show good judgment, and the cool, inscrutable Theophanu, who had fine political instincts but none of that vital charismatic charm that marked a sovereign as the chosen of God. One was too trusting; the other, no one trusted. No wonder Henry dreamed of placing his bastard son Sanglant on the throne.

. frater to deacon. "Get me a horse!"

The woman who made this demand of Hanna had the imperious tone of a noblewoman though she wore simple deacon's robes and her braided hair had not even a shawl to cover it. But there was nothing Hanna could do. She had no horse, having lost it to the desperate frater.

"Begging your pardon, Deacon," she said, hefting her spear just in case the woman meant to attempt an escape while Princess Sapientia's soldiers fought off the new attack, "but all who are in this train are now in the custody of King Henry."

To her surprise, the deacon laughed. "Of course, child. Do you not know me?"

Hanna could only shake her head while she stared into the woods, hoping to catch sight of the princess' troops. A few soldiers lingered. Most of the people in the supply train were down, wounded or dead, or else they milled around aimlessly with that lost look on their faces of men and women totally out of their element. Some ten paces behind the deacon lay two guards in Sabella's colors; both were dead.

About five wagons beyond their bodies, Hanna suddenly saw a woman in biscop's vestments being helped onto a wagon. "Ai, Lady!" she breathed. "That is Biscop Antonia." "She must not escape," said the deacon in a hard voice. "Find me a horse, or find my niece and bring her back from the woods."

My niece. Hanna had a horrible thought. She risked a close look at the woman's face and decided it could be true, that the resemblance could be marked in the cast of the woman's features, in her nose and jawline and piercing gaze.

She bent to one knee, swiftly, and bowed her head. "Begging your pardon, Your Grace," she said quickly.

"Never mind that!" snapped the woman. "I do not want Antonia to get away. And I have no weapon that can stop her."

Hanna obeyed her. She ran toward the woods, sure that she would get run through at any moment. But Sapientia's troops came riding back, flanked by the red dragon soldiers of Saony. The other troop of soldiers, Lavastine's skirmishers, had evidently retreated. Hanna hailed her, and the princess pulled up at once.

"Your aunt, Biscop Constance, waits for your protection," Hanna cried, grabbing hold of the reins as Sapientia's horse shied away. Hanna knew horses well enough to see that this one had, besides a nervous disposition, a heavyhanded rider, and far too much excitement to cope with. "She begs of you to stop Biscop Antonia from making her escape."

Sapientia's expressive face lit up. "Captain!" she cried, "you must find and protect Constance.

Follow, you who are with me!" She urged her mount forward so quickly she tore the reins out of Hanna's hands. Perhaps thirty of her troops went with her; the rest hung back, confused or waiting for confirmation of this order from the old captain. He muttered something under his breath, then raised his voice so all the soldiers could hear him.

"You ten, you return to the wagons and protect Biscop Constance. We have more than enough soldiers here. The rest, and you soldiers from Saony, will return with me to the field where Henry fights."

They began to form up. He looked down at Hanna. "Eagle! You remain with Biscop Constance."

She nodded, happy at this moment to be subject to an authority that knew what it was doing.

They rode back toward the battle, whose outcome none of them knew.

So it was that, despite everything and despite several flurries of disorder caused by Sapientia's enthusiasm, king's dragon Biscop Antonia was taken prisoner together with her host of clerics. Duke Berengar was found, huddling underneath a wagon with only one loyal servingman at his side; he was so frightened he had pissed in his leggings. Hanna actually felt sorry for him when he was brought before a stern Biscop Constance, who, having taken command of Sapientia's forty soldiers, now controlled the supply train. But Constance showed him not pity, but indifference. Hanna quickly understood why: she had seen that slackjawed gaping and sudden bursts of inappropriate laughter before. Berengar was a simpleton, and therefore a simple pawna mere Lion in the game of chess. He did not matter.

The person who mattered here was Biscop Antonia, who looked to Hanna's eyes rather cheered at the thought of being in Constance's power. Antonia was a kindlooking woman who did not bear herself with the haughtiness of most of the noblyborn but rather with a smiling modesty. And yet in the parley, faced with Helmut Villam, she had raged with a passion that did not appear to be part of her now.

And there was one other prize, hidden among the clerics.

"Ah," said Constance. "Come forward, Tallia. I will not hurt you, child."

The girl was led forward. She was crying, and it made her nose red. She had nothing to say for herself except to throw herself on Constance's mercy. But Hanna kept looking past her toward Antonia's clerics. They were the most unsightly mass of churchmen Hanna had ever seen; they all looked as if they had some form of pox, with red sores on their faces and hands and rashes along their chins. Several of them were coughing feebly, and one the most sickly of the lothad a thin stain of blood on his hand when he lowered it from his mouth.

Ai, Lady! thought Hanna. What if they have the plague?

"Separate them from the others," said Constance to Sapientia, as if she had the same thought.

"But I will keep Tallia and Berengar beside me."

"Are they sick?" demanded Sapientia, who had finally dismounted after riding around in the trees for a while, looking for someone else to fight. She had returned from the woods to declare she would ride back to the battle, but Constance had forestalled that with a direct order, aunt to niece, and even the brash Sapientia dared not go; against a biscop's command. Constance could not be more than four or five years older than Sapientia, but her authority far outweighed that of her brother's daughter. "I do not know if they are sick," she said now, "bull we must be cautious. I have heard many tales of the; plague in Autun, which was hard hit by a sickness some twenty years ago. Take them aside and guard them, but let none touch them." i Biscop Antonia showed no sign of the disease, nor did! the one young cleric who stood closest to her. But Constance did not look likely to let the biscop out of her sight, sickness or no. I

"You will answer for what you did, Antonia," said Constance.

"We all answer to God," said Antonia reasonably.

A thunder of hooves alerted them. Sapientia's captain had returned with the rest of her troops but without the skirmishers from Saony. His expression was chilling.

"What is wrong?" cried Sapientia.

Antonia smiled knowingly.

"Good captain," said Constance in a firm but calm voice. "What news do you bring?"

He appeared stricken. "The Lord has blessed us with victory, Your Grace, but a terrible prize it is this day."

For one instant, Antonia's triumphant expression was wiped clean to show something nastier, cunning and brittle, beneath. Hanna glanced toward Constance, who looked graveas well she might.

When she looked back at Antonia, the old biscop had regained her usual expression, as placid as a saint's, as smooth as cream, and Hanna had to shake her head, wondering if she had imagined that other face.

"Give us your report," said Constance. Sapientia looked likely to grab her horse and gallop away, but after one sharp look from Constanceshe stayed where she was.

The captain dismounted and knelt before her. "Victory belongs to King Henry, but at high cost.

Many lie dead on the field, for Sabella used" Here he faltered. "she brought a creature on the field, a terrible thing that truly must have sprung from an evil sire, and by its magic her army slew fully half or more of Henry's armyaye, indeed, almost all of his Lionswhile they stood frozen on the field, held in the grip of some misbegotten enchantment."

Sapientia gasped aloud. Soldiers muttered in disbelief and horror. Almost all of his Lions. Hanna gulped back a sob of foreboding.

Constance raised a hand for silence, and it was granted her.

"How then did Henry win the day? If all transpired as you report?"

"I do not know. Only that a mana fraterthrew himself on the beast and somehow it was distracted from its sorcery and killed."

Antonia said something under her breath, but Hanna could not hear. Her face remained pleasant, but her eyes had grown hard.

Constance paled. "A frater?" she asked. "What do you know of this?"

"Some say it is the son of Burchard, Duke of Avaria, but I can scarcely believe that" Constance lifted a hand sharply and he fell silent.

One tear rolled down Constance's cheek, and then the wind blew it away and it vanished as if it had never existed. "Take her away, out of my sight," she said, pointing at Biscop Antonia, "but guard her closely." The captain, startled, jumped to his feet and did as he was told.

"What about Sabella?" Sapientia called after the captain. "Did she escape?"

"No," said the captain as his men surrounded Biscop Antonia and led her away to one of the wagons. "Villam captured her himself, though he was sorely wounded. Some fear he will not live. She is in Henry's custody now."

Constance shut her eyes and remained that way for a long while as Antonia was taken away and lodged in a wagon under heavy guard, as Sapientia finally lost patience and called for her horse.

"Come, Eagle," called the princess. "You will ride with me."

"No," said Constance suddenly, opening her eyes. "Go if you wish, Sapientia, but I will have an Eagle by me, as is my right." She touched the gold torque at her neck.

"It is true," said Sapientia thoughtfully, tossing her head, "that your loyal Eagle reached us from Autun, and that was how Father knew to ride here." Then, strangely, she smiled. "But without an army, how can Father ride to Gent?"

"Ride to Gent?" asked Constance. "Why would Henry wish to ride to Gent?"

Sapien reined her horse aside and rode away without answering the question, back to the battlefield to meet her victorious father.

"Ai, Lady," murmured Hanna. For it was true. Henry had marched with a large army, fully eight hundred or more soldiers. He could raise more, it was true, but it would take months to raise levies from the farflung lands of Wendar and Varre and the marchlands and more time after that to march them all the way to Gent. Sabella had lost many soldiers as well, this day; how was Henry in any case to trust the lords of Varre, who had risen against him? They might well refuse to give him an army, to save the son none of them had any love for.

They would not think about the people of Gent and

what they might be suffering. They would not think about Liath and the danger she faced. What did kings and princes care for the lives of Eagles? Like swords, they were only a tool to be used for the nobles' own gain.

KING Henry was in a foul mood. He was, indeed, in as rare a fury as Rosvita had ever seen him.

At Kassel they had received news of the victory and ridden out at once, only to arrive to find Henry pacing back and forth, back and forth, outside the hastily erected tent in which Helmut Villam lay.

It was rumored Villam was dying. All of Henry's servants and the various lords and ladies in attendance on his progress looked terrified, cowering at least twenty steps from him. Henry was perfectly capable of delivering a stinging and unprovoked rebuke to any persons who placed themselves in his line of sight.

Theophanu, sizing up the matter in one glance, drew Ekkehard aside and led him away to where shelters had been set up for the wounded, to give succor there. The Eagle Hathui, adept at being anonymous, walked over and took up her post beside the tent's entrance, close to the king and yet so still, so effaced against the plain cloth siding, that he seemed not to notice her.

Rosvita found herself besieged by courtiers begging her to bring the king to his senses. She calmly distracted them and sent them off on various useful errands and finally found a person who might give her information: Margrave Judith.

The margrave sat in a camp chair and surveyed the scene from a safe distance. Her servants kept importunate courtiers away from her, and so she sipped wine in a semblance of solitude and watched Henry pace. Servants fluttered close to the king and were chased off.

Beyond, Rosvita saw carnage. The field was littered with corpses. Most of the wounded had been moved, but there were far far too many to bury so quickly. Possibly the field would simply have to be abandoned; it had happened before. Men and womencommon soldiers and people from neighboring farmswalked among the dead, looting the corpses for valuables. Rosvita supposed the best booty had already been taken by the king's servants or by the noble lords.

Strangest of all, and worst to behold, a creature lay in the center of the field of slaughter, a great beast so ugly in death that she shuddered to look on it, even at this distance. Its head was as big around as a cart's wheel, resembling more than anything a grotesque rooster's head, but it had the sinuous body and tail of a reptile and the talons of a giant eagle.

"That is the guivre," said Judith with the detached interest of one who has taken no harm in the midst of disaster.

"A guivrel" Rosvita stared. "I have read of such monsters but never hoped to see one."

The creature lay with one huge eye open to the sky, staring blankly at the blue heavens above. Its wings wore a sheen like metal, feathered with copper, and most gruesomelythe shape of a man's body was half covered by its carcass. Some rash looter had stolen the dead man's shoesor else he had been barefoot. Small white things, like maggots, crawled over the guivre's body. Rosvita looked away quickly.

"What has happened?" she asked Judith.

"A great beast has met its death, as you can see," said the margrave. She had blood on her tabard, a rent torn in her mail shirt, and a purpling bruise on her right cheek. Her helmet, somewhat dented, sat at her feet. "Ai, Lord. I'm too old for this. No more children, no more fighting, or so the healers say. A man can fight long after his hair has gone silver, if he lives so long. I hurt to the very bones.

After this, my daughter's hus

bands ride out, as is proper, or if a woman must attend the battle, then one of them can go!"

Rosvita did not know quite what to say. She had seen death many times, of course, but never on such a scale as this. Up among the Lions, an Eagle knelt weeping over the body of an infantryman.

"It was a hardfought battle," Rosvita said finally.

"Which? The one on the field, or the one we witnessed just before your party rode in?"

"Which one was that?"

"Henry's argument with Duchess Liutgard."

Rosvita did not know Duchess Liutgard wellthe young duchess came to court rarelybut she did know that Liutgard possessed the fabled temper that had, so the chroniclers wrote, marred the reign of her greatgreataunt, Queen Conradina, a woman fabled for having as many arguments as lovers and both in abundance. "Why should the king argue with Liutgard?"

Judith found a stain of blood under one fingernail and beckoned to a servant. The serving woman hastened over and washed the margrave's hands while she talked. "Liutgard rode beside Villam when Sabella's guard was overtaken. They fought loyally

"Liutgard and Villam?"

Judith smiled, but there was a hint of derision in her expression. "That is not what I meant.

Sabella's retinue fought loyally and many were slain before the fight was given up. Rodulf died there."

"Duke Rodulf? That is grievous news."

"He fought for Varre, as he has always done. More for Varre I would suppose than for Sabella.

Alas, he could not bring himself to accept a Wendish king."

"Perhaps his heirs will be more reasonable."

"Perhaps," echoed Judith with a quirk of the lips that expressed doubt more than hope.

"Villam was wounded?" Rosvita asked. She was beginning to wonder if Judith was toying with her for her own amusement.

"Badly, yes." If this distressed the margrave, she did not show it. Rosvita had never much liked Judith, but the margrave had been loyal to Arnulf and then to Henry, never wavering in her support. She was not an easy woman to like, yet neither could she be dismissed. She was far too powerful for that.

"Because Villam was wounded, Liutgard was able to take Sabella into her custody."

"Ah." This explained much. "I suppose that did not sit well with Henry."

"It did not. That was what they argued about. Henry demanded that Liutgard surrender Sabella into his custody. Liutgard told him she would not until Henry was calmer and more able to think clearly."

"Ai, Lady," murmured Rosvita. "That was rashly spoken of her. She might have found more diplomatic words."

"Diplomacy is for courtiers and counselors, my dear cleric, not for princes. I have never found Liutgard possessed of subtlety in any case. You know Burchard's son is dead?"

"Burchard's son?" What had the Duke of Avaria and his children to do with this? The subject changed so quickly, and before Rosvita was done understanding the last one, that she did not follow the leap. Liutgard had married the duke of Avaria's second son, Frederic, but he had died several years ago.

Judith sighed ostentatiously, examined her fingernails for traces of blood or other detritus of armed struggle, and allowed the servant to dry her hands on a clean linen cloth. Then with a gesture she dismissed the servant. "Sabella seems determined to take the men of that line with her in her defeats, though she cares not one whit for them. I speak of Burchard's elder son, Agius, the one who went into the church."

Judith related a rather confused tale of the guivre, the frater, and a boy who had led Count Lavastine's hounds to the kill.

"You are going too quickly for me," said Rosvita. "I do not know what part Count Lavastine has in this battle. The last I heard of him, he had refused Henry's command to attend him on his progress.

That was almost a year ago."

"He turned up at the battle on Sabella's side." Judith paused and brushed a finger along her upper lip where a fine down of hair grew, the mark of her impending passage from fertility to wisdom. "But that is the strange thing: he withdrew his forces from the battle halfway through."

"After the guivre was killed, when he saw which way the wind was blowing?"

"No. Before that, when it appeared all was lost for Henry and that Sabella would win. No one can explain it, since Lavastine and his men have fled."

At long last, Rosvita was beginning to see where all this led. "What of Henry and Sabella?"

"We are at a stalemate there, it appears. Liutgard refuses to turn Sabella over to Henry, and Henry rages, as you can see."

"Have you attempted to intervene, my lady?" "I?" Judith smiled.

That smile. It was that particular smile, one Judith was famous for, that made Rosvita not like her, although she had no other good reason. The margrave of Olsatia and Austra was loyal to the house of Saony, had pledged her loyalty first to the younger Arnulf and then after his death to Henry. But Rosvita did not believe any affection or deep bond held her to them. Rosvita believed Judith remained loyal to Henry because she needed him and what he could bring her: his military support. The position of prince in the marchlands, the unstable border country, was a precarious one, and Judith had called onand receivedaid from Henry more than once.

Like many other noblewomen of the highest rank, Judith had given birth before her first marriage to a child gotten on her by a concubine or at any rate some handsome young man not of noble birth whose looks had caught her youthful fancy. That first marriage, as such marriages were, had been arranged for her by her kin to the mutual advantage of both houses. The concubine had long since disappeared. But the child had lived and thrived.

Lady bless, but Judith had petted and cosseted that boy; perhaps he would not have turned out so insufferable had he not been so handsomethose who had been at court longer than Rosvita said the boy resembled his father, in looks, at least; some said in charm as well. He had been a brilliant student, one of the most brilliant to pass through the king's schola in Rosvita's time there, but she had not been unhappy to see him leave. How unlike Berthold he had been in all ways except the one for which she of all people could not condemn him: curiosity.

But Hugh was gone now, into the church, and no doubt caught up in church concerns and his new position as abbot of Firsebarg. Without question his mother hoped to elevate him to the rank of presbyter, and with that honor he would leave Wendar to live in the skopos' palace in Darre. He would have no reason to trouble the king's progress with his presence. Thank the Lady.

"I have sent my personal physician to attend Villam," said Judith. She shrugged her shoulders, settling the mail shirt down more comfortably over her torso. "But no, I have not attempted to intervene.

That duty is for his counselors."

Rosvita smiled wryly and humbly. By such means did God remind her not to pass judgment on others. She nodded to the margrave and excused herself. It was time to take the bull by the horns.

"What have you to say for yourself," demanded Henry as soon as he caught sight of her. "Why have you not brought Sabella to me? Ai, Lady! That idiot daughter of mine has made a fool of herself, according to report, right in front of everyone and not even knowing she was doing so. Ai, Lord, what did I do to deserve such children?"

"I am here now, Your Majesty," she said, trying to remain calm. Henry was so red in the face that his veins stood out and he looked likely to burst. "And though my lineage is a proud one, you must know I cannot give orders to such as Duchess Liutgard."

He considered this for at least two breaths, which gave her time to put her hand on his elbow.

The touch startled him. It was not her place, of course, to touch the king without his permission, but the gesture served to make him think of something other than his grievances.

"You are angry, Your Majesty," she added while he was gathering his wits.

"Of course I am angry! Liutgard denies me the very person whose treason may yet cost me the only child

"King Henry!" She said it loudly and sharply. She knew with bitter instinct that he had been about to say something he would later regret. Something about Sanglant. "Let us go inside and see to Villam."

Had no one thought to calm him by appealing to his genuine affection for his old friend and companion? Rosvita could not believe they were so nervous of him as that. She gestured toward the tent.

He frowned at her, but he hesitated. Then, abruptly, he went inside, leaving her to follow. The EagleHathuinodded as Rosvita ducked inside. Approvingly? Rosvita shook her head. Surely no commonborn Eagle, not even one as proud as that one was, would think of approving or disapproving the actions of the nobly born.

Villam had lost his left arm just above the elbow. Rosvita dared not ask how he had taken the wound. The old man seemed half asleep, and she feared even whispers would wake him.

But Henry pushed the physician aside and laid a handgently, despite the fury that still radiated from himon Villam's forehead.

"He is strong," he murmured, as if to make it true. The physician nodded, concurring.

"There is no infection?" asked Rosvita softly.

"It is too early to tell," said the physician. He had a light, rather high voice, marred by a strong accent. "He is, as His Majesty say, a strong man. If no infection set in, then he recover. If one do, then he die."

Henry knelt beside the pallet. The physician dropped to his knees at once, as if he dared not remain standing while the king knelt. Henry looked up and gestured to Rosvita. She knelt beside the king and murmured a prayer, which Henry mouthed in time to her words, right hand clutching the gold Circle of Unity hanging at his breast.

When she had finished, the king looked over at the physician. "What do you recommend?"

Rosvita studied the man. She did not trust physicians. They seemed to her like those astrologi who wandered from town to town promising to tell people's fates by reading the positions of the starsfor a substantial fee, of course: They catered to the credulous and the frightened. But this man was beardless, so he was either a churchman or, just possibly, a eunuch from the East. She wondered where Judith had found him and what trade the margrave might be carrying on with Arethousa.

His voice, when he spoke again, confirmed his status. It was too high for a true man. "I learn by the writings of the Dariyan physician Galene, she of old days but great learning. This I follow. A man with such a wound must rest many weeks in a dry, warm place. The wound must keep clean. The man must"

He broke off and made eating gestures with a hand. "ahtake broth and other food good in the stomach.

His body will heal, or it will not heal. We aid. God choose." He drew the Circle at his chest and bowed his head to show his submission to God's will.

Villam's right arm lay folded across his chest. Henry took it now, and the old man's eyes fluttered open and focused, but he did not speak. Henry brushed away tears.

"You must go to Kassel, Helmut, and there recover your health," said Henry softly. "I march on Autun to restore my sister to her biscophric." He leaned forward and kissed the old man gently on either cheek, the kiss of peace, and rose.

This interlude had calmed him outwardly. The king nodded to the physician, who in the Eastern way touched his forehead to the ground.

Outside, Henry turned to Rosvita. "Let Sabella wait," he said in a low, intense voice that betrayed the rage still boiling within him. "Let her wonder, while we ride to Autun and I refuse to see her."

Rosvita smiled slightly. Henry had indeed returned to his senses. How quickly he turned the tables. Now, rather than Liutgard keeping Sabella from him, everyone would speak of Henry's anger being so great that he could not bring himself to look his sister in the face. That was, of course, much more effective.

But there was one question she had to ask, though she dreaded it. "You will not ride to Gent?"

His jaw tightened. He clasped his hands behind his back, as if holding them there was the only way to control himself. "Twothirds of this army is dead or wounded. I will restore Constance, and more besides, and then we will have the summer to raise an army. Gent must hold firm until autumn." His eyes flashed with anger. "And Sabella will learn what it means to raise her hand against me a second time."

HENRY and his retinue camped outside Autun for three days before Biscop Helvissa worked up enough courage to open the gates and let them in.

Alain watched from a vantage point above Autun as the great gates swung open and the people of Autun swept out with wild rejoicing to welcome Constance back to the city.

"Henry will not leave Helvissa as biscop for long," said Lavastine. He stood beside Alain, a strange enough occurrence in itself, and together they stared down at what remained of Henry's army and of Sabella's rebellion. For the last many days, as they had marched west to Autun and then camped here, out of sight, Alain had seen groups of men fleeing westward, the remains of the menatarms levied from the lands controlled by Sabella, Duke Rodulf, and the other lords who had come under their sway.

Fleeing westward; fleeing back to their homes. They had work to do, after all, in the fields. The time for spring sowing was long past. Now they must hope that summer would be long and the harvest delayed and that their families had been able to plant something against winter's hunger. Now they must hope for a good crop of winter wheat and rye for next year.

Besides Henry's army, and the retinues of the great lords who remained in Henry's custody, only Lavastine's company remained intact. He had sent Sergeant Fell on ahead with the infantry, for the count and his people also had fields to tend and next winter to survive. Miraculously, none in his company had taken any serious wounds. All would return to their families.

But Lavastine had remained behind with his twenty mounted soldiers, and he had shadowed Henry's progress to Autun and now waited here. Alain did not know why Lavastine waited or what he meant to do. All Alain knew was that something had changed radically. Now he slept in Lavastine's tent, on a decent pallet, and he was fed the same food that the count ate; he had been given a fine linen tunic to wear instead of his old ragged wool tunic, now much worn and patched.

"Come," said Lavastine, turning away as Henry's banner vanished into the city. "We will return to my tent."

They went, the hounds leaping around them, in fine good spirits this beautiful day. Alain was troubled. He king's dragon

still had nightmares about Agius. If only he had saved the frater. But he had not. Agius had sacrificed himselfand for what? Agius did not love King Henry. He had acted against Sabella and Antonia, not for Henry, though his action had saved the king.

Ai, Lady. If only he had the courage, but he did not. He had stood by while Lackling was murdered, because he had feared Antonia's power. He had said nothing after he had witnessed the feeding of some poor innocent to the guivre. He had accused no onethough surely the word of a freeholder's boy would never be listened to by the nobly born. He had not even thought to throw himself in front of the guivre at the battle; that he had managed to kill it was only because of Agius' willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of others. Or for his own revenge on Sabella. Alain sighed. It was all too deep and convoluted for him to make sense of.

"Come inside," said Lavastine, as much order as request, and yet Lavastine's attention toward him was perhaps the greatest mystery of all. Alain followed the count inside. He was half a head taller than Lavastine but never felt he towered above him, so intense was Lavastine's presence. Truly, the sorcery Antonia had laid upon Lavastine had been powerful in order to overcome that commanding disposition.

Lavastine sat in a camp chair that one of his servants brought to him. "Sit," he commanded Alain, sounding irritated that Alain had not sat down immediately.

"But, my lord" began Alain, while around them the count's captain and servants stared. They were just as amazed as he was that the count wished a common boy to be seated beside him as though they were kin. "Sit!" Alain sat.

Lavastine called for wine, two cups, and then dismissed everyone but Alain. When the flap closed behind the last retreating servant, a gloom pervaded the tent chamber. Thin shafts of light lanced through gaps in the

tent walls. Illuminating a line of carpet, the hilt of a sword, the ear of a hound. The hounds panted merrily. Sorrow rolled onto his back and scratched himself along the spine of the carpet. Rage growled and snapped at Fear, who had crept too close to Alain.

"Alain Henrisson," said the count. "That is what you call yourself?"

"Yes, my lord."

"You saved my life and my honor on the field of battle."

Alain did not know what to say, so he merely bowed his head.

"I did not intend to support Sabella. Nor, for that matter, did I intend to support King Henry. My lands are my concern, as are the safety and wellbeing of the people who live there. That is all. I never wanted to be dragged into these conspiracies. But you could not have known this. Why did you act as you did?"

"Bbecause ... I..."

"Go on! You must have had a reason."

Seeing that even in this friendly mood Lavastine was irritated by delay, Alain spoke as quickly as he could, hoping it made sense. "II saw that Biscop Antonia wasn'tshe had Lacklng murdered. She was going to murder the Eika prince you took prisoner, but hehe got away. Then she killed Lackling and I couldn't trust her"

"Hold, hold, boy. Who is this Lackling?"

"One of the stableboys, my lord."

Lavastine shook his head slightly. The name meant nothing to him. "She had him murdered? Why was this not brought to my attention?"

"She brought strange creatures, my lord, to the ruins, and then you changed. You were'

"Under a compulsion, yes." He made what was almost a spitting motion, as if the word, passing his lips, was distasteful to him. "I suppose Biscop Antonia would have denied everything and set her word against yours. Go on."

"Well, then, my lord, it just seemed wrong. The battle seemed wrong, that Sabella should win by treachery and sorcery and that poor imprisoned creature"

"The Eika prince? But he escaped."

"No. I meant the giiivre."

"The guivrel" Lavastine barked a laugh. "I have no compassion for such a beast as that." He set a hand on the head of the hound that sat at his feet; actually, the hound sat half on his boots. This one had white in its muzzle, a sign of age, and Alain recognized it as Terror. The hound lifted its head to get a scratch from Lavastine's fingers.

"No, my lord," replied Alain, because it seemed expected of him. But he had compassion for the beast, horrible though it was; it had suffered, too, and he had killed it as much to put it out of its misery as to save Agius. "And Prater Agius"

"Yes," said Lavastine curtly. "Prater Agius saved the king at the cost of his own life. And you, what reward would you have for saving my life?"

"I?"

"Since there is no one else here, I would suppose I mean you! When I ask a question, I wish for an answer."

"Bbut I wish for no reward, my lord. I did what was right. That is reward enough in the eyes of Our Lord and Lady, is it not? But something for my family, perhaps

"Ah, yes. Your family. This Henri, he is?"

"A merchant, my lord. His sister Bel is a freeholder of some distinction in Osna village."

"Yes. Near where the monastery was burned last year. What does Henry the merchant say about your parentage, Alain?"

Alain squirmed in the chair and took a sip of wine to cover his discomfiture. The wine was fine and smooth; he had never tasted anything as good before. Wine such as this did not come to the lips of common folk, not even the freeborn.

"He says" He says. Alain thought, briefly, about lying. But Henry and Aunt Bel had not taught him to lie.

They had treated him as kin, and it would dishonor them to twist their words now, even if the truth disgraced him before Count Lavastine. "My mother was a servant woman at your holding, my lord.

My father Henri ... had an affection for her. She was known to" He bit at his lip. Ai, Lady, he could not simply call his mother a whore. "to have consorted with men. She died three days after giving birth to me.

The deacon gave me into Henri's care in return for his promise to offer me to the church when I turned sixteen." "You are older than sixteen, are you not?" "Seventeen now, my lord. I would have entered the church last year, but the monastery at Dragon's Tail was burned. Yes. That is the whole of the story?"

"Yes, my lord."

Lavastine sat in the gloom and toyed with his cup, turning it around and around until Alain feared he would spill it. From outside, Alain heard Lavastine's captain speaking, something about Henry and Autun and the king's mercy, but even with his sharpened hearing, he could not string the phrases together into intelligible sentences. Sorrow yawned a dog's yawn, full of teeth, and threw himself against Alain's legs, leaning there until Alain was practically tipped over. He adjusted the chair, and this movement stirred the count to a decision.

"Attend, child," he said in his brisk, impatient way. "I must now tell you a tale and you must listen carefully, for this story I have never before confessed the whole of, and I will not speak it aloud again while I live."

Alain nodded and then, realizing the light was dim, managed to whisper, "Yes." The hounds snuffled and whined and grunted, eight fine black hounds, beautiful creatures, if vicious.

"I married once," said Lavastine softly. "But as all know, my wife and daughter were killed by my hounds."

"But how could that be?" asked Alain, curiosity overcoming good sense. "Or the child, at least"

"Listen!" snapped Lavastine. "Do not interrupt." Fear, thwarted of a place at Alain's side, had gone to the entrance and nosed aside the canvas flap. By this new stream of light, Alain saw Lavastine smile grimly. "How can that be? Even I don't know the true story of how my grandfather got the hounds, whether he received them in exchange for some kind of pactwith whom, I don't knowor whether they came to him as part of his birthright. But my fatherthe only surviving childinherited them in his turn, and Ialso the only child who survived to adulthoodin mine. So my father arranged a marriage for me at the appropriate time so I could beget childrenmore than one, it was hopedto carry on the line."

He drained the cup of wine suddenly and set the empty cup down on the carpet. "I was young, then, and I had taken a lover, a pretty girl from among the servingwomen. We often met up among the ruins, because I wanted to keep our meetings secret. But in time, as happens, she became pregnant and begged me to acknowledge the child so that she would not be branded as a common whore. But my bride was proud and covetous, and when she came to Lavas she told me she wanted no bastard child running about the hall. So I put aside the other woman and denied any knowledge of the child, and confessed my sin to the deacon, may her memory be blessed. The deacon promised to take care of the child and assured me I need trouble myself no longer. She was not even a freeborn girl." He picked up the winecup, tested it as if he had forgotten he had drunk it all, and set it down again with some annoyance. "I was not, perhaps, without fault in this matter."

Alain gulped air. He had forgotten to breathe. "Did she die? Giving birth, I mean."

Lavastine jumped up and strode to the entrance. He slapped Fear lightly on the flank and the hound retreated; the flap fell shut. "You will remain silent while I speak, Alain."

Alain nodded but Lavastine's back was to him. "No more wine," muttered Lavastine. "Yes, she died in childbed." He turned and spoke crisply and rapidly, as . if to hurry the story to its ghastly conclusion. "My bride was young, strongwilled, impatient, and argumentative. Since I was of the same disposition, we did not suit. She rarely allowed me into her bed. I refrained from taking a concubine, but I soon suspected that she had taken a lover. I could prove nothing because her servingwomen were loyal and helped her hide this fact. When our first child was born, I did not trust her. I did not believe the infant was my child, and yet" He made a sharp gesture and strode back to the chair, but did not sit. "Yet it might have been. She raised the child to distrust me, though I tried to befriend it. The child was often a sweet girl, or so I could see from a distance. And with a daughter to assure the succession, my wife gave up the pretense. She forbade me her bed completely and began to flaunt a lover openly, a common man.

She might as well have slapped me publicly in the face. But she said, 'what you had, a commoner in your bed, I may have as well.' She became ptegnatvt again and knew that this child was notcould not have beenmine. I demanded she put our daughter to the test, to face the hounds."

Alain gasped, then clapped a hand over his mouth. Of course, he could now see what was coming.

"She tried to run away with the child. The hounds broke loose that night."

Even the hounds were silent, as if listening. Sorrow and Rage were young, not more than three years old. Ardent and Terror were the eldest of the hounds. Had they been there that night? Had they pursued the fleeing pregnant woman and her bastard child? Had one of them been the first to catch up to the fugitives?

Lavastine spoke so softly Alain had to strain to hear him. "On her dying breath she cursed me.

'You will have no heir of your own body. Any woman you marry will die a horrible death. I swear this by the old gods who still walk abroad and whose spawn these hounds are.' The next year I did my duty and became betrothed to a young woman of good family. One week before the wedding she was drowned when her horse inexplicably king's dragon collapsed while she was fording a river, on her way to our wedding feast. The year after, I married a young widow. She sickened at the feast itself and died of the flux two days later.

"I have not tried to marry again. I want no more deaths on my conscience. But now . . ."

Now? Alain said nothing, but he waited.

Lavastine crossed the carpet to stand in front of Alain's chair. The dim light made him loom above, more shadow than living man. "I began to wonder last autumn, after I returned from the campaign against the Eika raiders, but I forgot everything under the compulsion. Now, isn't it as obvious to you as it is to me?"

At first Alain did not understand what the count was trying to say. But then he realized the hounds were lying every which way about the tent, some by Alain, some by Lavastine'S chair, some shifting as Lavastine moved. Alain touched the hem of his new, fine tunic, sewn with embroidered ribbon so rich even as prosperous a householder as Aunt Bel would have to trade a child in exchange for an arm's length of such an exquisite piece of fabric.

Lavastine took one of Alain's hands in his and lifted him to his feet. His mouth was set in a thin, determined line, and when he spoke, his tone allowed for no argument.

"You are my son."

JLJLA. JL JH. had nightmares. Every night, the dogs came and tore at her flesh, ripping her, tearing her limb from limb. Every night she would wake, sweating, heart pounding, and bolt upright in her blanket until the cool night air washed the stain of fear from her. But it could not wash away her grief.

Then she would weep.

Always Wolfhere slept through these episodes, or pretended to be asleep. She could not tell which. She did not want to know which it was. He was deeply preoccupied, spoke only when spoken to or when it was absolutely necessary to get supplies or new mounts. Only once, in an unguarded moment, did she hear him whisper a name. "Manfred."

They rode many days. Liath did not keep track of them. Though the skies were clear and perfect for viewing, she did not follow the course of the moon through the Houses of the Night, the world dragon that bound the heavens. She did not trace the courses of the planets through those same constellations.

She did not repeat the lessons Da had taught her over and over again. She did not walk in the city of memory, so laboriously built, so carefully maintained for so many years. She mourned and she dreamed.

Sometimes, if she chanced to stare into a hearth fire or campfire, she would get a sudden feeling she was peering through a keyhole, watching a scene that unfolded on the other side of a locked door.

There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds of aether that blow above the sphere of the Moon, and now and again their gaze falls like a blazing arrow, like the strike of lightning, to the Earth below, and there it sears anything it touches, for they cannot comprehend the frailty of Earthly life. They are of an elder race and are not so fragile. Their voices have the snap of fire and their bodies are not bodies as we know them, but the conjoining of fire and wind, the breath of the fiery Sun coalesced into mind and will.

"But are we not their cousins, then? Were we not born of fire and light? Is our place not here out beyond the sphere of the Moon, as their is?"

The first speaker shifts, studying the flames, for he too stares into the fire and across some doorway impossible to touch he watches Liath. He seems to know she is listening, that she can see him.

But he speaks to the woman who stands out of sight in the shadows behind him.

"We are not as old as that, my child. We were not bom of the very elements themselves, though they wove themselves into our shaping. We are the children of angels, but we can no longer live cast out from the Earth which gave us birth."

He lifts a hand. Liath recognizes him; he has come to be familiar to her, but he frightens her, not because he looks threatening but because he is so utterly inhuman, so unlike Da or any of the other people she knows, those few she has come to care for, even unlike Hugh, who is an abomination but a fully human one. He is Aoi, one of the Lost Ones, old, surelysuch is the authority of his bearingalthough he looks neither young nor old by any sign she knows how to read. He has the look of Sanglant about him. That frightens her, too, that seeing this strangely clad male reminds her bitterly of Sanglant, whom she wishes only to forget. Never to forget.

"Who are you?" he asks with simple curiosity, neither angry nor frightened, not like her. "Who are you who watches through the fire? Where have you found this gateway? How have you brought it to life?" Across his bare thighs rest the strands of flax he is twining into rope, a longer length each time she sees him through the fire. But the rope grows slowly, a finger 'sbreadth, a handsbreadth, while days pass for her as she and Wolfhere ride south and west, seeking King Henry.

She cannot answer him. She cannot speak through flame. She fears her voice will echo down unknown passageways and through vast hidden halls, that wind and fire will carry it to the ears of those who are listening for her, seeking her.

The sorcererfor he must be such, to have knowledge and vision togetherplucks a gold feather from the sheath that encases his right forearm and tosses it into the flames.

Liath started up, scrambling back as the fire flared up and then, abruptly, died down. She blinked back tears, streaming from smoke, and wiped her nose. Her face was hot. Behind her, the door slammed open and Wolfhere walked in from dark night outside.

She sat in the middle of a small guest housesuch as the abbot granted to Eagles, not the best of his accommodations but not the worst eitherat the Monastery of Hersford. The fire snapped and burned merrily, innocent of any sorcery. She might have dreamed . . . but it was no dream. When she dreamed, she dreamed of the Eika dogs. "What did you find out?" she asked. Wolfhere coughed and wiped his hands together, dusting something off them. "Henry and the court celebrated the Feast of St. Susannah here, but they were called away west. According to Father Bardo, Sabella raised an army and Henry had to ride west to meet her, before she entered Wendar. She removed Biscop Constance from the biscop's chair at Autun and set another woman there as biscop in her place. And took Constance prisoner, as well."

Liath set her elbow on her knee and her head on a hand. She was very tired, now, and did not much care for the troubles and intrigues of the noble lords. "Sabella would have done better to send her army against Bloodheart," she muttered.

"Well," said Wolfhere, "the great princes most often think of their own advantage, not that of others. Father Bardo does not know what happened to the king, or if it came to battle. Come now, we'll sleep and ride out at dawn."

She dreaded sleeping, but in the end her exhaustion drew her down, and down, and down . . . . .

. into the crypt at Gent, where corpses lay strewn

among the pale tombs of the holy dead and the dogs fed so voraciously she could hear the cracking of bones . ..

She started awake in a cold sweat, heart racing. Ai, Lady! How much more of this must she suffer? Wolfhere slept on the other side of the fire, which lay in cold ashes, as cold as her heart. Only one wink of heat remained, a flash of gold among the gray.

Without thinking, she reachedand plucked from the dead ashes of the fire a gold feather.

HjbJNJKY held court in the great hall of the biscop's palace in Autun, his three children sitting on his right side, his sister Constance and other trusted counselors on his left. Earlier, in the cathedral, Biscop Constancerestored to her positionhad celebrated Luciasmass, one of the fourquarters masses of the year. Rosvita knew that the mathematici gave these other names, the spring and fall equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices, but she preferred to think of them as the masses celebrating the blessed Daisan's four missionary disciples, those who carried the Holy Word to the four quarters of the Earth: Marian, Lucia, Matthias, and Candlemass, known to the old pagans as Dhearc, the dark night of the sun.

This last was the feast of St. Peter the Disciple, burned alive as a sacrifice to the fire god of the Jinna when he would not recant his faith in the God of Unities.

After mass, Henry and his court had returned to the great hall where feasting would continue late into the night, for this was midsummer and the sun stayed long in the sky, celebrating the triumph of the Divine Logos, the Holy Word, and the promise it offered of the Chamber of Light.

But Henry had business to conduct. He sat beside his sister and gathered his folk together. They waited in orderly lines, crowding in from outside, more even than the people who had marched with him, for many of the more prosperous natives of Autun had also come to see the king and pledge their loyalty.

On this occasion, Henry wore his clothofgold robes of state, and in his left hand he held his scepter, symbol of the king's justice, and on his right hand he wore the gold ring of sovereignty. On his silvering hair rested the heavy crown, studded with jewels. Biscop Constance blessed him and anointed him with oil blessed by the skopos herself and scented with attar of roses.

Thus was he confirmed in the eyes of his court and of the people of Autun as their king, chosen and approved by the divine wisdom of Our Lord and Lady.

"Let justice be served," said Henry to the multitudes. He called before him the heirs of Duke Rodulf.

Rosvita felt some sympathy for the young man who came forward, his retainers cowering like frightened dogs at his heels. He had none of Rodulf's bluff authority and was in any case barely past his majority. The duke had probably brought the boy along to get his first taste of war, only to have the poor child be forced to witness his father's death.

"Who are you?" Henry demanded, although he knew perfectly well who the young man was.

"I am Rodulf, son of Rodulf and Ida." The boy's color was high, and his hands trembled, but he did not disgrace himself.

"Do you speak for the heir of Varingia?"

"II speak for my elder sister, Yolande, who was named heir by my father five years ago."

"And where is she now?"

"Aat Arlanda Holding, the fortress built by my father." Young Rodulf bit his lip and waited. The penalty for treason was, of course, death.

"Let her present herself to me before Matthiasmass," said Henry. He extended a hand, as if beckoning, and the young man practically flung himself forward onto his knees before the king. "If she does so, I will demand these things from her in return for clemency. Fifty of Varingia's finest horses, for my stables. Gold vessels and vestments to adorn the cathedral in Autun, as recompense for the insult given Biscop Constance. A convent founded in the name of my mother, Queen Mathilda. And you, young Rodulf, with ten young noblemen of good character, to join my Dragons and protect my kingdom."

The boy began to weep. The crowd murmured, impressed by the king's justiceand his mercy.

Rodulf's family was no kin of his, so he could easily have taken their lives in payment for their treachery.

Rosvita nodded. This was the wiser course.

"I shall carry the message, Your Majesty," said the boy. "We shall abide loyally by your side from now on. I swear it." Constance brought forward a reliquary which contained the thighbone and a scrap of the robe once worn by St. Thomas the Apostle, and young Rodulf kissed the jeweled box and then the king's ring, to seal his oath.

"Let Biscop Antonia be brought before me," said the king.

Under heavy guard, Biscop Antonia was brought before Henry. She had her hands clasped in front of her, and she beamed as fondly on him as she might on a favored nephew.

Henry sighed. "You are under the protection of the church, Your Grace, so although you have conspired against me, I am forced to send you to Darre and let you plead your cause to the skopos herself. Let her judge your treachery."

"I have not forsworn my oath to the church, Your Majesty," said Antonia sweetly. "I doubt not the skopos will pass judgment in my favor." She was attended by only one cleric, the one known as Heribert.

Constance moved forward, looking grim. "What of your other attendants, Biscop Antonia? Half of them are dead and the rest soon to die of a disease which strikes none but them, not even the holy nuns who have ministered to them as they lay dying."

"I grieve," said Antonia, "but even I cannot interfere with the hand of Our Lord, when with His sword He cuts the thread that binds us to life."

"There are some who have accused you of sorcery," continued Constance, determined to have this out now. She did not look at Henry for permission, nor did he attempt to stop her. She was the only other person here whose spiritual rank was equal to Antonia's, and no secular power could intervene.

"There are some who speak of amulets fashioned by your clerics at your order, and that their suffering is the mark of this cruel sorcery, the same sorcery that brought a guivre to the battleground and let Sabella's soldiers walk free of harm from its gaze while Henry's soldiers were stricken to stone."

Antonia unclasped her hands and raised them, palms up, in a gesture of innocence. "If their suffering is a mark of sorcery, and I the sorcerer who devised such amulets, then how is it I stand untouched by disease? How is it that Heribert" Here she signed toward the young cleric who stood, as always, one step behind her. "remains unstained as well? Many things cause disease, including evil spirits.

I am sorry they are suffering, and I do what I am allowed to ease their pain, for it grieves me sorely, but what has stricken them comes from other hands than mine."

"Enough," said Henry suddenly, interrupting just as Constance took a breath to speak again. "We have gone over this a hundred times, and I no longer wish to speak of it. Biscop Antonia will be taken under guard to the skopos in Darre, there to stand trial accused of certain sorceries condemned by the church at the Council of Narvone."

Antonia was led away with her retinue of one. But even from her vantage point to the left of the king's throne, Rosvita could see no sign of fear or regret or repentance in the old biscop's expression.

She looked, indeed, as angelic as an ancient faultless grandmother who has seen all her children and grandchildren grow to adulthood.

Henry sat for a long while in silence. The crowd did • not grow restless; indeed, they scarely stirred. They knew that next, surely, he would call his sister Sabella before him.

Finally, he made a sign, and young Duchess Liutgard came forward. "I will now agree to speak to the woman you hold in your custody," he said.

Liutgard gave a curt assent and glanced once up at Rosvita, as if to thank her for her part in saving Henry from rash action.

When Sabella was brought into the hall the hush was so profound that Rosvita thought she heard the barking of hounds in the distance. Perhaps she was hearing things, or perhaps some lord kept kennels nearby.

Sabella refused to kneel before her brother. Henry did not rise and go forward to greet her, nor did he extend his hand for her to kiss. Rosvita did not think Sabella would have granted him that honor, that homage, in any case.

"What do you have to say?" he asked instead, gaze jumping past her for a moment to linger on her entourage, whose expressions were certainly more contrite and fearful than hers was. A servant wiped spittle off Duke Berengar's lips. Young Tallia stood pallid in a green silk gown, looking more like a captured fawn than the princess she was.

Rosvita glanced toward the other princesses, Henry's daughters. Sapientia was, of a mercy, behaving circumspectly today, holding her temper, her tongue, and her enthusiasm in check. She sat as still as she was able and watched the proceedings with a dark and avid gaze, as if soaking it in, as if playing herself in the role of queen. The pool of stillness that surrounded Theophanu was of a colder kind; she had no expression on her face, nor did she react when each judgment was passed. Even young Ekkehard, who half the time looked as if he was about to fall asleep, had jumped and murmured in surprise at the clemency Henry had shown to Duke Rodulfs heirs. Next to these three handsome and robust children, Tallia was a colorless bloom, lost in the glare of her mother's ambitions.

"I have nothing to say," said Sabella. Henry's wrath was evident though he did not lose himself now to his anger. "You have conspired against the rightful king of Wendar and Varre, anointed by the hand of the skopos, named by our father, Arnulf, as his heir, confirmed as such by the great princes of the realm. This is treason, and the punishment for treason is death." A gasp from the multitudes, quickly stifled. Every soul crowded into the hall strained forward. The air itself seemed not to breathe or to allow for any breath, for even the rise and fall of a single chest might stain the clarity of sight and hearing that reigned within the hall.

"But we are kin, and you wear the gold torque of the royal house." Henry did not touch the one he wore at his neck, but Sabellaas if involuntarilyreached up to touch hers. "I will not stain my hands, nor the hands of my children, with the blood of my kin. But this I will do. This judgment I will pass." He rose.

"Your child, Tallia, I take as my ward and remove to my custody. Your husband, Berengar, duke of Arconia, I judge unfit to rule, and I strip from him his rank as duke. He will retire to Hersford Monastery, where the holy brothers will care for him as is fitting. And you, Sabella"

No one moved. No one spoke.

"From you also I strip the title of duchess, and from your heir I take this title, for all time. The duchy of Arconia is without a duke, and so it comes to me to dispose of this title and the authority it grants. I give it now into the hands of my sister, Constance, Biscop of Autun, and you I give into her custody, as you once held her unwillingly in yours,"

The crowd could no longer restrain its astonishment. They burst into a haze of noise so loud Rosvita could scarely hear herself think. Sapientia, echoing the crowd, leaped to her feet and a moment later, sheepishly, with her brother tugging on her sleeve, seated herself. Theophanu had not stirred, but she had a thin smile on her face.

Sabella said nothing, showed nothing except a deadly and bitter anger, but there was nothing she could do. She had gambled and she had lost. Dukeno longer duke! Berengar was blowing his nose onto his sleeve, and at once his servingmen led him away. Poor man. He would be better taken care of in the monastery, Rosvita supposed. Tallia was crying. Tears made her fair skin blotchy and her nose red.

Sabella turned and snapped angry words at her daughter, but it was too noisy for Rosvita to make them out.

What a great roar of sound there was in the hall, shouts of "Henry! King Henry!" and others, acclaiming Constance as duke and biscopan unprecedented act, to combine the two titles in one person.

But Constance was being rewarded, of course, for her constancy. And the people of Autun were clearly happy about it; they loved their biscop.

Except Rosvita could not understand why she heard the sound of hounds barking so loudly and a sudden edge to the ovation of the crowd. "Clear the way!" someone cried. "Out of the way!" shrieked a woman. "Lord protect us! Devil's spawn!" Quickly, guards hustled Sabella and her retinue aside. Into the hall came a most astounding procession, the last fugitive, the only one unaccounted for after the battle: Count Lavastine and his famous black hounds. With him walked his captain and a finelydressed youth caught in that twilight between boy and man.

King Henry blinked several times, but that was the only sign he gave of his astonishment. The count walked boldly forward and stopped below the king's dais. He did not kneel.

"Last year," said Lavastine, "you sent an Eagle to request my presence on your progress. I have come."

This was so brash that Henry almost laughed. But the situation was too grave for laughter.

"It is late, and the summons was long ago," said Henry, "and you rode all this way in strange company, Count Lavastine."

"So I did, Your Majesty, but not of my own will. I have witnesses to prove that another's hand controlled me and that I did not march with Lady Sabella because I wished to, but because I was compelled to."

"It is a good excuse, Count Lavastine. Indeed, an elaborate and cunning one, now that Biscop Antonia has already been accused of other condemned acts of sorcery."

These words were spoken so harshly that Rosvita expected Lavastine to respond in kind, but for once he restrained his famous irritability. "I will give sworn testimony before your clerics," said the count.

"I have others who will bear witness in my favor including, I hope, my kinsman Lord Geoffrey, whom I treated very badly while under this compulsion."

"Your testimony will be sent south with, the party who accompanies Biscop Antonia to the skopos," said Henry. "But I will tell you truly, Count Lavastine, that I know you withdrew your forces from the field of battle while the tide still flowed in Sabella's favor. This will tell in your favor, when I come to pass judgment on you. But tell me, we all thought you had escaped. Why do you come before us now? I know you have no love for me."

"I am not a conspirator, Your Majesty, and I intend to clear myself of these charges. I have nothing to hide. But I do have a boon to ask of you."

"Ah," said Henry.

parting "Ah," whispered Theophanu, her mouth slightly as she leaned forward, intent now.

"He wants something," murmured Sapientia wisely to Ekkehard. "That is why he has come here now when he could have escaped back to his own lands."

"Hush," said Constance.

The crowd quieted. There was a great rustling of cloth as people shifted position. The hounds that sat in attendance on Lavastinethe only retinue he needed growled. One rose up and bared its teeth at an importunate lord who inched too close.

That was when the strange thing happened. Count Lavastine did not move. His captain, of course, got a brief sick look on his face. It was well known that Lavastine must be a fine and generous lord to command the loyalty of so many good servants and soldiers, since they were any of them at any time likely to rended limb from body by the black hounds.

But the youth spoke a quiet word, and the hounds subsided.

"Kneel before the king," said Lavastine, and the boy came forward obediently and knelt. He was tall, lanky, with black hair and amazingly clear eyes; he was not precisely handsome or elegant, but Rosvita found that it cheered her heart in some inexplicable way to look upon him.

"You know I am twwx NKviwitd •asvd *«vttvoiav •&« Yveii," said Lavastine, "and unlikely to get one now, for reasons I have long since confessed and done penance for. So I come before you, Your Majesty, to ask this of you. That this youth, my bastard child Alain, be recognized as my heir so he may inherit my title and my lands when I am dead."

Lady above! Rosvita's knees almost gave out from under her. She turned her gaze to study Henry's expression. Indeed, by the crawling feeling she had on her shoulders and her back, everyone looked at Henry. His childrenhis three legitimate childrenstared fiercely at him. Constance had laid the back of a hand against her cheek, and her eyes were closed.

In the silent hall, a laugh rang out.

"What will do you?" cried Sabella mockingly. "What will you do, brother? Make one bastard a count, and the other one a king?"

Henry made a sharp and angry sign with his right hand. The guards escorted Sabella out of the hall and back to the tower where she was being held prisoner.

Henry took one step down from the dais and laid his ringed hand on the boy's head. He met Lavastine's gaze, and the two men remained locked that way for some moments.

"Many a lord might claim a bastard so as not to lose their lands to an unloved kinsman. How can you prove this?"

"My deacons keep careful records of all the births and deaths at Lavas Holding, but I believe you need no better proof than this," Lavastine whistled.

The hounds swarmed forward, and even Henry stepped quickly back up onto the dais. The youth started up, eyes wide, and called the hounds to order. Like so many meek retainers, they obeyed him instantly and threw themselves at his feet. When Henry took a step forward, they growled.

The boy snapped his fingers and chased them back to a safe distance away from the king.

"What of you, child?" the king said, looking finally at the youth. "What is your name?"

"I am called Alain, Your Majesty." He had a clear voice, and he did not falter in his words, nor did he speak coarsely, as a lowborn boy would have.

"Is it true?"

He bowed his head modestly. "Count Lavastine has acknowledged me as his son."

"What do you know of your birth?"

"I was born in Lavas Holding to an unmarried woman who died three days after I was born. I was raised by

freeholders in Osna village and promised to the church. But" he related quickly a story of Eika and a burned monastery. "So I came to Lavas Holding to serve for a year."

"And saved my life," interrupted Lavastine, who had been tapping his feet impatiently throughout this recital, "and freed me from the compulsion laid on me by sorcery. I was not the first to suggest the connection, indeed, Your Majesty. Prater Agius, who served at my holding, mentioned the matter to me some months ago, but I was hesitant to believe him." Constance lowered her hand from her face. Henry blinked several more times and raised a hand to his lips. "This is the youth who killed the guivre, then!" he exclaimed. "Many stories were told of what happened that day, but we searched and none could find the man who saved my kingdom. Come, child, kiss my hand."

Alain glanced back at Lavastineat his fatherand then knelt before the king and was granted the signal honor of being allowed to kiss his hand.

"This cannot go unrewarded," said Henry. He had gained in spirits since the bitter confrontation with his sister. Indeed, he appeared almost elated.

Rosvita had a sudden feeling that Henry was about to commit an act whose repercussions would haunt him for a long, long time. She stepped forward, raised a rand to gain the king's attentionbut it was too late.

"By my power as king of Wendar and Varre and by the right of law recorded in a capitulary from the time of Emperor Taillefer, I grant you, Lavastine, Count of Lavas, the right to name this youth as the heir of your blood, though he is not born of a legitimate union. He may succeed to your title and to the authority vested in that title over your lands. Let my words become law. Let them be recorded in writing."

Ai, Lady. Everyone knew what this meant, why Henry's expression was so triumphant. He had made his choice. Now it remained only to see it through. Sapientia kate eluott started to her feet so suddenly her chair tipped over; she began to speak, stopped herself, and bolted from the hall instead.

Ekkehard gaped. Theophanu raised one expressive eyebrow but made no other sign.

"Henry," muttered Constance softly enough that no one but Rosvita and the handful of others crowded onto the dais could hear her, "do you know what you are doing?"

"I know what I am doing," said Henry. "And it is past time I did it. Long past time. He is the only one I can trust to take my place as sovereign king when I take my leave of this Earth and pass up through the spheres to the Chamber of Light."

Constance drew the Circle at her breast to avert ill omen.

"No one," proclaimed Henry, louder now, "and no argument, can sway me from this course."

From the doors came a shout.

"Eagles! Make way for Eagles!"

They came in haste, two of them, travelworn and weary. One was young and startlingly dark, as if a summer's sun had burned her so brown her skin had stayed that way. She bore a touch of summer's brightness with her still, so much that the eye lingered on her.

The other was Wolfhere, who had been banned from Henry's presence and Henry's court many years ago. But he strode forward with no sign that he rememberedor chose to obeythat ban. The young woman looked riven by sorrow, the strong lines of her face set in a mask of wretchedness and hopeless longing. Wolfhere looked grim. Behind her, Rosvita heard the two Eagles, Hathui and her young companion, gasp out loud.

"No," murmured Hathui to the younger one, "Do not go forward. We must wait our turn."

"She's wearing an Eagle's badge," whispered the younger one. She sounded ready to burst into tears.

"Ai, Lady," swore Hathui. "Look at their faces." And was silent.

The two new Eagles paused before the dais.

"Why have you come before me," demanded the king, "when you know you are forbidden my presence?"

"We come from Gent," said Wolfhere, "and we bear grievous news. Gent has fallen to an Eika assault, and the Dragons have been wiped out, every one. Prince Sanglant is dead."

"Lady," breathed Henry, clapping a hand to his chest. He spoke no other word. He could not speak.

Rosvita saw at once he was paralyzed by this terrible, terrible news. And because someone must act, she did so, though she felt as if someone else was acting, not her. She went to him and took his arm.

Almost collapsed herself, because his whole weight fell on her and he appeared so close to fainting that it was only with the aid of the Eagle, Hathui, that she got him out of the hall and into the private chapel that opened onto a garden behind it.

There, he threw himself onto the stone floor in front of the Hearth, in his gold robes, heedless of the crown tumbling to the floor, heedless of his scepter, which slipped from nerveless fingers. He groped at his chest and drew from next to his skin an old scrap of cloth stained a rusty red.

He could not weepnot as the king must weep, easily and to show his sympathy for those of his people who suffer. This pain was far too deep for tears.

"My heart," he murmured into the unyielding stone, "my heart is torn from me." He pressed the cloth to his lips.

Hathui wept to see him.

Rosvita drew the Circle at her breast and then she knelt before the Hearth, beside the prostrate king, and began to chant the prayer for dead souls.

After the hall was cleared and she and Wolfhere given bread and mead, after some hushed consultation between various noble lords and ladies whose names she did not know and whose faces all blurred into a single unrecognizable one, Liath was escorted to a small chapel.

Wolfhere did not come with her. Indeed, she saw they prevented him and led him away by another hall. A fine proud woman in biscop's vestments brought her before the king, who sat on a bench, no longer in his fine robes and regalia. He was held upright by a cleric and several other attendants, one of whom wiped his face repeatedly with a damp cloth. Liath knelt before him. His right hand clutched an old bloodstained rag.

"Tell me," he said hoarsely.

She want to beg him not to make her tell, not to relive the fall of Gent. Not again, Lady, please.

But she could not. She was an Eagle, the king's eyes, and it was her duty to tell him everything.

Not everything. Some things she could notand would nottell anyone: Sanglant's face close to hers, the light in his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, the bitter irony in his voice when he told her, "Make no marriage. " The feel of his skin when she had touched him, unbidden, on the cheek. No, not that.

Those were her memories and not to be shared with anyone else. No one need know she loved him. No one would ever know, not even Sanglant. Especially not Sanglant.

Telling the story would be like living through it again. But she had no choice. They all watched her, waiting. Among the crowd stood Hathui, and the Eagle nodded, once, briskly, at her. That gesture gave her courage. She cleared her throat and began.

Barely, barely she managed to get the words out. Terrible it was to be the bringer of this baleful news, and worse still to relate the story with the king staring at her as if he hated her, for whom else could he hate?

She did not blame him. She would have hated herself too, did hate herself in a way for living when so many had died. At last she stumbled to a halt, having spoken the last and most damning part of the tale, the vision seen through fire. She expected them to question her closely, perhaps to lead her away in chains as a sorcerer. The king lifted a hand weakly, half a gesture. It was all he could manage.

"Come," said the biscop. She led Liath away. Outside, she stopped with her under the arched loggia that opened out into a pretty garden, lilies and roses and brash marigolds. "You are Wolfhere's discipla?" she asked, using the Dariyan word.

"I? No. I don't know. I am newly come to the Eagles, just after Mariansmass."

"Yet you already wear the Eagle's badge."

Liath covered her eyes with a hand, briefly, stifling tears.

"What you saw in the fire," said the biscop, going on in what she perhaps meant to be a gentler voice, "is known to us as one of the arts by which certain Eagles can see. Do not fear, child. Not all sorcery is condemned by the church. Only that which is harmful."

Liath risked raising her head. The biscop was quite a young woman, really, pale and elegant in her fine vestments and tasseled biscop's mitre.

"You are Constance!" exclaimed Liath, remembering the lineages Da had taught her, "Biscop of Autun."

"So I am," said Biscop Constance. "And I am evidently now Duchess of Arconia, too." She said this with a hint of irony, or perhaps sadness. "Where were you educated, child?"

"My Da taught me," said Liath, now cursing the fate that had separated her from Wolfhere. She did not have the strength to fend off pointed questioning of her past kate eluott and her gifts, and certainly not from a noblewoman of Constance's education and high rank. "Begging your pardon, Your Grace. I am very tired. We have ridden so far, and so quickly, and" Almost the sob got out, but she choked it back.

"And you have lost someone who is dear to you," said the biscop, and in her own face Liath saw a sudden and surprising compassion. "One of my clerics will show you to the barracks, where the Eagles take their rest."

A cleric led her to the stables. There she found herself alone in a loft above the stalls. Shutters had been thrown open, admitting the last of the daylight. She flung herself down on the hay, then rose again, wiping her nose, and paced. It was as if, reciting the awful tale, she had passed some of her numbing grief off onto King Henry. Now she was too restless to rest. Grooms murmured below. She was utterly alone.

For the first time in months, for the first time since Hugh had taught her the rudiments of Arethousanall those damned impossible verbs!she was alone.

Carefully, she lifted The Book of Secrets out of her saddlebags and unwrapped it. She opened it to the central text, that ancient, fragile papyrus, dry under her skin as she ran a finger along the line of text, written in a language she did not recognize but glossed here and there in Arethousan. The Arethousan letters were still strange to her, but as she concentrated, opening doors in her city of memory, finding the hall where she had stored her memory of the Arethousan alphabet, she could transpose them in her mind into the more familiar Dariyan letters and thus form words, some of which she had learned from Hugh, most of which were meaningless to her.

At the very top of the page, above the actual text, was written a single word in Arethousan: krypte.

"Hide this," she whispered and felt a sudden, sharp pain in her chest. Hide this.

She put a hand over her mouth, breathed in, calming herself, and then studied the text beneath.

The letters that made up the text were totally foreign to her, unlike Arethousan letters, unlike the more common Dariyan letters; perhaps, faintly, they resembled the curling grace of Jinna letters although these had a squarer profile. She could not read them nor even imagine what language this was.

But a different hand had glossed the first long sentence with Arethusan words beneath, translating it; only that first sentence had been glossed completely. On the other pages brief glosses appeared here and there, a commentary on the text. But this sentence, at least, she could read part of. Perhaps it gave a clue as to the subject of the text. Perhaps that had been the scribe's intent in translating that entire first sentence.

Painstakingly, pausing now and again to listen for the movements of the grooms below, she sounded out the first sentence.

Polloi epekheiresan anataxafthai diegesink peri ton peplerophoremenon en hemin teraton, edoxe kamoi parekolouthekoti anothen pasin akribds kathexes, soi grapsai, kratista Theophile, hina epignois peri hon katekhethls logon ten asphaleian.

The light was getting dim, too dim for anyone to readexcept someone who had salamander eyes.

"Many people ..." she whispered, knowing the first word, and then skipped words until she found another word she knew and here she stopped short, heart pounding, breath tight in her throat. "... about magical omens ..." She skipped back to the pluperfect verb, such an odd form that Hugh had taken pains to point out the form to her, "... magical omens which have been fulfilled among us. It seemed good to me

..." Here again followed words she did not know, and then, again and suddenly, one she did. "... all the things from the heavens ... to you to write about..." She shut her eyes, so filled with commingled horror and stark excitement that for a moment she thought her emotions would rend her in two like the Eika dogs. "Theophilus." That was a man's name. "... so that you may know about these these words? These spellsT Could it be spells? "... in which you have been instructed by word of mouth ..." The last word she did not know.

Her hands shook. Her breath came in gasps. All the things from the heavens.

She heard voices below. Hastily she bundled up the book and stuck it away into her saddlebags just as people came up the ladder. It was Wolfhere and Hathui. Hanna was with them. All the excitement, all the grief, all the days of longing and hope and sorrow, overwhelmed Liath. She threw herself into Hanna's arms and both of them burst into wrenching sobs, the release of so many weeks of tension and fear.

"We must pray for Manfred's soul," Wolfhere said. He wiped a tear from his seamed face. They knelt together and prayed.

Afterward Wolfhere rose and paced. "I would give you Manfred's badge, if I could, Hanna," he said. "Though you did not see him die, you rode with him, and that counts for the same. You have in any case earned it twice over." He sighed. "But it is now beyond recovery. Will you wait? I will commission a new one to be made."

Hanna held tightly to Liath and Hathui, still holding their hands, and she nodded gravely. "So will it be done," said Wolfhere. "I must return to the king," said Hathui. She left. "It is late, and we have ridden far and all suffered much," said Wolfhere to the other two. "Let us rest."

Liath found herself a pallet on which to sleep, a richer bed than any she had lain in since Hugh.

No. She was Safe now. She need fear him no longer. She set her sword, her good friend, beside her. Reached into the bowcase to touch the wood and horn of her bow, Seeker of Hearts. Last, she settled her saddlebags next to her body. She felt the book like balm against her soul and, nestled against it, hidden as well, the gold feather; she had hope now that she might in time puzzle out the secret of the inner text.

For the first instant she feared sleeping, but she was so very very tired she could no longer fight it off.

Hanna lay down beside her and put her arms around her. "I thought you were dead," she whispered. "Oh, Liath, I am so glad you are alive."

Liath kissed her on the cheek and wiped the last tear from her face. There was nothing more she could do, not now, except to rest and pray that her path would seem clearer in the morning. There was so much she had to learn and so much she must discover about herself, about the book, all the things Da had hidden from her for all these years.

krypte. "Hide this."

"Trust no one." Da had not meant to leave her alone. He had meant to protect her, for as long as he could.

"I love you, Da," she whispered.

Sleeping in her friend's embrace, she did not dream.

would not leave the chapel, or perhaps he simply could not. At last, with the efforts of several servants, he was taken to the bedchamber set aside for his use. There he lay silent and unmoving on the bed, not because he slept but because he did not have the strength to stand or to kneel orevento mourn.

His children came in, Theophanu shepherding a trembling Ekkehard. No tears stained Theophanu's face, but she was pale. Sapientia was sobbing noisily. As a girl, Rosvita recalled, Sapientia had idolized Sanglant, had followed him like a puppy even to the point of being annoying, but Sanglant had never lost his temper with hernot that he had had much of a temper, being in all things a tractable child. It might be that Sapientia truly mourned him, despite her jealousy at her father's preference for the bastard over the eldest legitimate child.

Rosvita had never observed that Sapientia was capable of duplicity.

Margrave Judith appeared in the doorway, spoke to a servant, and was ushered inside. She walked over to Rosvita. "News from Kassel," Judith murmured, eyeing the king with interest andperhapspity. "Helmut Villam has taken a turn for the better. It appears he will live."

Roused by this whispering, Henry pushed himself up, though it was clearly exhausting for him to move at all. His face was graven with sorrow; he had aged ten years in one hour.

"Is it Villam you speak of?" he said. "What news?"

"He will live," said Rosvita in a calm voice, which was surely what the king needed at this deperate time rather than more hysteria.

Sapientia caught in a sob and let it out, bursting into a new stream of tears.

Henry shut his eyes. Slowly, he lifted a hand, the cloth, to his face. He murmured something, a word. No, it was a name: "Alia."

The touch of the old rag appeared to give him strength. "I want him gone!" he said. "Gone! Out of my sight. Send him south to Darre with the escort for Biscop Antonia."

"Whom, Your Majesty?"

"Wolfhere! But keep the other one here, the one who also witnessed. Where is Hathui?"

She stepped out from the shadow by the doorway. "I am here, Your Majesty."

"You will stay by my side," he ordered.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"It is time," he continued. His voice broke on the words, and yet none there would have mistaken him for anyone but the king. "Sapientia." Startled, the young woman flung herself to her knees and clutched at the bedcovers, bowing her head. Henry reached out but did not quite touch her hair. This mark of affection he could not quitenot now, not ever, perhapsbring himself to show for her. "You will ride out in the morning on your heir's progress."

Her sobs ceased. She began to speak.

He turned his back on her. "Go," he said, the word muffled by the cloth in which he buried his face.

Rosvita began to move forward, to lead Sapientia away before she did something foolish, but Judith forestalled her. "Let me," said the margrave. "I will see she is outfitted and sent properly on her way."

"Thank you," murmured Rosvita.

The margrave led Sapientia from the room. The servants hovered nervously, but Henry did not move. He had done what was necessary. He had done what should have been done months ago, but she was not about to tell him that now. Sanglant was a brave man and a good soulhalf human though it wasbut he was not meant to be king. She sighed, heartfelt. The servants brought water and cloth to bathe the king's face.

Theophanu glanced toward Rosvita and asked a question with her expression. Rosvita shook her head. Better to take the living children away so as not to remind him of the dead one. With a slight nod, Theophanu led Ekkehard out of the chamber.

Henry did not respond, not when his servants offered him wine, not when they bathed his face.

He was as stone, lost to the world. Together with the Eagle, Rosvita stood vigil beside him long into the dark night.

ALAIN could not sleep. The bed he had been given was too soft and too warm and too comfortable. He just could not sleep. The hounds snored softly. Count Lavastine snored, too, in a hushed counterpoint to the hounds. Unlike most noblemen, Lavastine did not sleep in a room with his servants; no one dared sleep within range of the unchained hounds. Perhaps it was the very lack of bodies that made Alain keep starting awake. He had never slept so privately before.

In Aunt Bel's longhouse here were full thirty people sleeping at night, and in the stables Not my Aunt Bel any longer.

He sat bolt upright for perhaps the tenth time, and Sorrow woke and whined softly, seeking his hand and licking it.

Lavastine's heir. This in his wildest dreams he had never imagined. He knew at that moment he would sleep no more this night, so he rose and dressed quietly and slipped outside, Sorrow at his heels.

Rage slept peacefully and did not stir.

Outside, a servant woke instantly. "My lord, may I escort you?"

How quickly they changed their treatment of him. But he was Lavastine's heir now, sealed by the king's own words. He would control their fates and their families in ten or twenty years. He knew better, from serving in a lord's household, than to try to go anywhere alone. It would never be allowed.

"Is there a chapel nearby?" he asked. "I wish to pray."

One of the biscop's clerics was found and Alain was escorted to a tiny chapel whose Hearth bore a fine jeweled reliquary box sitting in muted splendor on the polished wood of the altar. The chapel was not empty. A servant girl knelt on the stone before the Hearth, polishing the pavement with her own skirts.

In the next instant, just before she looked up, like a mouse caught in the act of nibbling at the cheese, he recognized her.

"My lady!" he said, aghast to find Tallia on her knees on the stone wiping the flagstone with her fine silk skirts. Her hands were red, rubbed almost raw by the unaccustomed work.

She stared at him, eyes wide and frightened. "I pray you," she said in a whisper, "do not send me away. Let me unburden myself before Our Lady in this fashion, by the work of my hands, though it is unworthy of Her regard."

"But surely you do not wish to ruin that fine cloth?" Alain could just imagine what Aunt Bel would say if she saw silk of that quality being used to sweep floors, however holy.

"The riches of Earth are as dust to the glory of the heavens and the Chamber of Light. So did Prater Agius preach."

"You heard Agius preach?"

"Did you not hear him as well?" she asked timidly. She came forward, still on her knees, and clasped Alain's hands in hers, almost in supplication. "You were his companion. He saw that you were of noble birth before any other did, is that not true? Was his vision not a gift to him from the Lady Herself?

Did he not preach the true Word of the blessed Daisan's sacrifice and redemption?"

"That is heresy," Alain whispered, glancing around, but they remained alone in the chapel.

Sorrow sat panting by the door, and no man dared enter because of him.

"It is not heresy," she finished, her pale face taking color as she took heart from whatever memory she had of Agius' preaching. "You must acknowledge it. You heard him. You must know it is the truth."

"I" It made him deeply uncomfortable to have a princess who wore the gold torque marking her royal kinship kneeling in front of himand speaking of heresy, in a biscop's palace. "You must rise, Princess." He tried to tug her to her feet, but she was either stronger than she looked or holding fast to her purpose. Her hands were warm on his, warming his, and he looked into her face and did not understand what he saw there.

"I pray King Henry will put me in the church," she said, staring up at Alain.

Or marry her to me. The thought popped unbidden into Alain's mind. He was so stricken by it that he let go of her hands and sat down on the nearest bench. Ai, blessed Lord and Lady. He was a lord, now, heir to the count of Lavas. He could think about marriage.

"Then, when I am made deacon, I will preach," she said in a fierce whisper. "I will preach the Holy Word Agius taught me, though the skopos calls it heresy. If they condemn me for it, then I will be a martyr, as he was, and ascend to the Chamber of Light where the saints and the martyrs live in the blazing light of Our Lady's gaze and Her Son's sweet glory."

Alain almost laughed, not at her but at the strange path that had brought him here to this chapel on this night.

Serve me, the Lady of Battles had said, and she had given to him a bloodred rose as her token, as the sign of her favor. He had served, as well as he was able. He had ridden to war. He had broken the compulsion laid by sorcery on Lavastine, and he had killed the guivre, though only because of Agius'

sacrifice. He had tried always to do what was right, though sometimes he had failed. He had not saved Lackling, but he had saved the Eika prince, although perhaps the life of the savage had not been worth the life of the poor simple boy. But it was not his place to judge the worth of their souls.

And Alain knew that although he had been raised from freeholder's son to count's heir, a huge leap in the world of men, such fortune could only have come about because of the presence of divine favor.

"Come, Tallia," he said, bold enough to use her name and hoping he would not be judged proud and insolent for doing so. "It is not fitting that you kneel. Sit beside me, I pray you." He gave her his hand and helped her up and, after a hesitation, she deigned to sit beside him on the bench.

She glanced past him toward the door and shuddered.

"What is wrong?"

"The hound. It scares me."

"I won't let it hurt you." He snapped his fingers. "Sorrow, come, boy." Sorrow padded dutifully over to him, and as if pulled along behind it on a string, his distraught servant crept into the chapel where he could observe safely, from a distance. Tallia shrank back from the hound's massive presence, but he bade the hound sit . and then he took her hand in his and, whispering softly, let her touch the hound's head. "You see," he said, "they are like any soul that wishes only to be touched with compassion and not with hatred or fear."

"You are very wise," said Tallia, but after a moment she withdrew her hand from Sorrow, though the hound made no move to snap or growl at her, obedient to Alain's command.

Alain smiled wryly. "I'm not wise. I'm only repeating what my fa" But Henri was not his father.

Lavastine was his father. Yet at this moment it did not truly matter. Henri had raised him as well as he was able. "I'm only repeating what others have taught me."

There was a sudden flurry of movement by the door. Rage bounded in, followed by Lavastine.

Tallia shrank away, but Rage sat down firmly on Alain's slippered feet, as if to make sure he did not run, and ignored the girl.

Lavastine ran a hand through rumpled hair and glared at Alain. "What do you mean by this?" he demanded. "Imy lordI "Well! Out with it!"

"I couldn't sleep. I just came here" He gestured, half terrified that he had offended Lavastine, half confused by the expression on Lavastine's face, which he could not interpret.

Lavastine caught himself and made a simple bow. "Princess Tallia. I beg your pardon." He called to a servant. "Escort the princess back to her chamber."

Given no choice, Tallia left, but she cast one look pleading or grateful, Alain could not tellback at Alain before she was led away.

"She's in disgrace now," said Lavastine, sitting down on the bench beside Alain and absently letting Sorrow chew on his hand. "And her mother certainly is." He rubbed his beard, then fingered the silver Circle that hung at his chest on a gold chain. "Henry might be willing to marry her off, if the right bargain was offered. Any lineage is strengthened by royal blood." He stared at the Hearth for some moments longer, though he was obviously not viewing the fine reliquary or meditating on its holy contents.

Then he shook himself, this stillness as much as he could muster in the course of one day. "Come, lad. It is almost dawn, did you not know?"

Alain had not noticed, but now through the glass he saw the faint glamour of light. He shook his head.

"I had a terrible fright when I woke and you weren't in the room. I thought I'd dreamed it all, the Eika prince, Sabella, the campaign, and you, my son." Lavastine stood and beckoned to the servants.

"Go on, then! I see no reason to wait. Henry has pardoned us and I for one do not intend to wait in this dark palace and intrude on his grief. Nor remind him of what I have gained that he has lost." He took hold of Alain, his hand closing over Alain's wrist as if he meant never to let go of him.

"Come, son," he said, relishing the sound of the word on his tongue.

"Where are we going?" asked Alain. Beyond, through the glass windows of the chapel, he saw now the enclosed garden, its flowers and hedges rising from the gloom into the light of a new and fine day. Distantly, he heard a woman's voice intoning the mass for the dead.

Lavastine smiled. "We're riding home."

At first he did not realize he was still alive. Caught in the middle of a waking sleep, his mind awake but his limbs as leaden as a corpse's, he became aware he rested half on cold flagstone and half on another body. His spine was aflame with agonizing pain, but even as it flared through him it began to dull down into a throbbing ache.

He could not quite manage to open his eyes. But he knew he was surrounded by bodies, strewn about him like so much refuse. Some few were still alive. He heard the muffled thunder of their heartbeats, felt their shallow breathing on the air, though he did not touch them. The body he lay on was, certainly, dead, but only recently so. Warmth pooled out from it, turning cold as he fought into full wakefulness.

It was so hard to wake up. And perhaps better not to.

No. Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

He heard the snuffling of the dogs. He began, then, to be consumed by dread: that the dogs would reach him before he could move and defend himself against them. There were few worse fates than being torn to pieces by dogs, like some dumb passive beast caught outside the stable.

He heard their growls and the way they shoved their muzzles against cloth and skin and metal, smelling for the ones who still lived. He heard the low rumble of voices, farther away, speaking words he did not know but in a guttural language he recognizedthat of the Eika savages. Now and again these unseen speakers laughed. Now and again the dogs barked in triumph, and then he would hear a man's grunt or a scream, cut off, and then he would hearand now he cursed his keen hearingthe flow of blood and the rending of flesh from bone. Once he recognized, however briefly, the voice of one of his own men.

Still he could not move.

A nose nudged his slack left hand and a hard fang traced up the sleeve of his mail shirt. The dog growled. Its hot breath, rank with fresh blood, touched his cheek.

He struck.

Miraculously, he twitched. His right hand moved. And then, throwing himself on his side, he slammed his mailed glove into the dog's muzzle. It staggered back, and he shoved himself up. He had gotten to his knees when two more dogs hit him, snarling and bitting, from behind. He threw one of them bodily over his head and jabbed his elbow into the ribs of the other, groped at his belt for his knife but found no weapon.

His left hand had lost its glove. One of the dogs caught it and sank teeth into flesh. He hammered the creature's jaw down onto the stone floor. Stabs of pain lanced up his left arm, but he pried the beast's mouth off his hand, heaved up its stunned body, and threw it at the other two.

Now more came and more yet. They closed in, circling. He waited, panting, and licked the blood from his mangled hand.

One jumped in and snapped at his mail shirt. He swung and struck it, and it leaped back, but now behind him another broke in and nipped at his heel. He kicked. It yelped and bolted back.

He spun, staring them down. But they were only waiting, only testing him, to see how quick, how strong, how determined he was.

Beyond the dogs he caught sight of other shapes, but this fightwith the dogswas to the death, and he did not have time to look. He had no helmet, no tabard, no protection on his bleeding and torn left hand, but he still had a mail glove on his right hand and the good mail shirt covering his torso and upper arms. He still had the dogs themselves, and though they were terrible to look uponeyes sparking fire and tongues hanging out, saliva dripping from their fangsthey were yet mindless ragefilled beasts and he was smarter than they were.

He backed up, stepping and stumbling over the dead, found a wall at last, and with this at his back he stared them down. A few sat down on their haunches and growled, unsure now. He singled out the biggest and ugliest one and darted out before any of the dogs could leap in upon him, grabbed the beast with a hand on each side of its thick neck, and with every ounce of strength he possessed swung it round and smashed it against the wall. It fell, limp, to the ground.

They erupted into a deafening chorus of howls and swarmed him, all leaping in at once. Their weight carried him down until he was trapped under their bodies, his arms and legs pinned. He was helpless. He was, at last, going to die.

Onethe biggest yetfought through the pack to stand over his chest. Its head loomed over his face, its great muzzle yawning wide as it howled its triumph before the death strike.

And he saw his chance.

It bit downhe slammed his head up under its jaw and lunged for the creature's throat. Clamped down.

Ai, Lady. He could not rip its throat out, but, by the Lord, he could crush its windpipe until it suffocated. The big dog thrashed above him as he bit down. Its irongray hide tasted like metal. Blood leaked down his own throat. Its paws scrabbled at him, slowed, and then went lax. He felt the windpipe crack and, finally, jaw aching, he dared let go.

The beast collapsed on top of him.

The other dogs, worrying at his arms and legs, backed away. They snarled at him as he struggled to his feet. He spit out hair from his mouth and wiped his teeth. He ached everywhere. But he had killed it.

Movement coursed through the lofty space, and just before the Eika came, he finally realized that he stood in the great cathedral of Gent. Had they dragged every one of his Dragons in here? He did not even know how much time had passed since the fall of Gent. It could have been an hour or a day, or perhaps the enchanter had other spells surpassing even his illusions by which he could change the course of the stars.

"What have we here?" A huge Eika moved into his line of sight, shoving dogs aside, striking them back with clawed hands.

"Bloodheart," he whispered, because he had long since learned to mark his enemy by name.

The Eika enchanter laughed, a rasping sound like a file sharpening iron. "A prince among the dogs! This is a fine prize to have in my pack. Better even than this And Bloodheart tapped his left arm.

There, wrapped around his upper arm like an armlet, Bloodheart had fixed the gold torque that signified royal kinship.

Sanglant could not help himself. He growled, low in his throat, to see his father's gift to him made mock of in this way. He sprang forward and flung himself on the Eika chieftain.

Bloodheart was strong, but Sanglant was faster, and he had already marked with his gaze the sheath that held Bloodheart's dagger. He found the hilt, wrenched it free, and with Bloodheart reeling backward, plunged the dagger into that hard skin, through it, up to the gold and jeweled hilt, right into the Eika's heart.

Bloodheart threw back his head and howled in pain. Then he grabbed Sanglant by the neck and shook him free and threw him hard to the floor. The dogs swarmed forward, but Sanglant struck wildly around with his fists and his hopeless fury drove them back. That fury was a companion when all his other companions were dead or dying. The dogs sat againexcept for two more who lay stilland with saliva rolling down their tongues they stared at him, ringing him so he could not move without coming within range of their teeth.

With a grunt, Bloodheart yanked the dagger out of his chest. He cursed and spit toward Sanglant, then laughed, that awful rasping sound. He handed the dagger to a small Eika who was naked except for a dirty cloth tied over his loins, a wizened creature made grotesque by the strange patterns painted on his body, by the sight of his body, so like a man's body except for the sheen of scales that was his skin. The small Eika spit on the blade and licked it clean. The blood hissed and bubbled, and then the small Eika pressed the blade against the wound on Bloodheart's chest and with some unseen sorcery burned the gash closed.

Sanglant winced at the acrid scent, but that wince sent a dog nipping forward toward his legs. He cuffed it hard, almost absently, and it whined and slunk back. He stared as the knife was lifted to reveal a thin white scar on the bronze sheen of the enchanter's hide.

"You'll have to do better than that," Bloodheart said, taking in a deep breath and puffing his chest up. The girdle of tiny gold links, interlaced into a skirt of surpassing beauty and delicacy, shifted around his hips and thighs as he moved, a dainty sound quite at odds with his bonewhite hair and the blood that spattered his arms and knees and the one last streak of blood that trailed down his bare chest.

He grunted, grabbed the biggest of the dead dogs, and dragged it backward. Then, looking again at Sanglant, he bared his teeth; jewels winked there, tiny emeralds and rubies and sapphires. "You'll not kill me that way, prince of dogs. I do not keep my heart in my body."

Sanglant felt a warm trickle running past his right eye. Only now did he feel the gash, whether opened by Bloodheart's claws or one of the dogs he could not know; he did not remember getting it. He only hoped it would not bleed too profusely and obscure his vision.

Several of the Eika warriors came forward now, grunting and pointing, rasping out words in their harsh language. He could guess what they said: "Shall we kill him now? May I have the honor?"

He braced himself. He would go down hard and take at least one with him, in payment for what the Eika had done to his beloved Dragons. There was nothing else he could do for them now. Under the voices of the muttering Eika he heard no faint breathing, no catch of air in a throat, no gasp of a loved one's name. He risked one look, then, swept his eyes across the vast nave of the cathedral. Light shone in through the huge glass windows, cutting light into a hundred shafts that splintered out across the carnage within.

There was Sturm, his company heaped around him in death as they had been in life. There was Adela, a woman as fierce in her own way as the Eika were in theirs, but she was dead andhe had to look away ravaged by the dogs. There, where he had come to his senses, lay the Eagle, poor brave soul, who had stood with them to the bitter end. Dead now, every single one of them. Why did he still live?

With his other senses he remained painfully aware of each least shifting of the pack of dogs as they twitched their shoulders or shifted their flanks or closed their mouths and then opened them again to bare teeth, a threatening smile much like Bloodheart's. Better to go down fighting against men, even if they were Eika, than to be thrown to the dogs. There was no honor among the dogs.

"Shall we kill him?" the Eika warriors demanded, or so he supposed by the way they pointed at him and hefted their axes and spears, eager to swarm him and bring him down, the last, the prize of the battle.

"Nay, nay," said Bloodheart in the tongue of Wendish men. "It is our own way, is it not? See how the dogs obey him. See how they wait, knowing he is stronger and smarter than they are. He is First Brother among the pack, now, our prince. He has earned that right." He leaned down and unfastened from around the neck of the dead dog its iron collar. Rising, he barked out words in his own language.

The Eika soldiers laughed uproariously, their harsh voices echoing in the nave as hymns once had. Then they threw down their weapons and swarmed Sanglant. Because they were smarter than the dogs and stronger then he was, they pinned him finally, though he did some damage to them before he went down.

They fixed the iron collar around his neck, dragged him along the nave, and fettered him by a long chain to the Hearth, so massive and heavy an altar that though he strained he could not move it. The dogs loped over to him. A few worried at his feet but in a curious way, not precisely hostile. One bit at him, and he slapped it hard across the muzzle. It whined and backed away, and it was at once jumped by another; they fought for a moment until one turned its throat up to the victor.

"Stop!" snapped Sanglant, and there was, this time, no killing.

The strange old Eika man was chanting in a soft voice, hunkered down and rocking back and forth on his heels. He had a little leather cup and he shook it and rolled white objects out: dice or bones.

Then he passed a hand over these objects, studied them, chanted again, and scooped them up. The cup he tucked away into the pouch he wore at his belt. A small wooden chest sat beside his feet.

More Eika swarmed into the cathedral, and they began dragging corpses down into the crypt.

Others carried a great throne carved out of a single piece of wood. The huge chair was painted gold and red and black and ornamented with cunning interlock, dogs and dragons biting each other, mouths to tails, in endless circles. They set this chair beside the Hearth, in mockery of the biscop's seat.

On this throne Bloodheart sat and he surveyed his new domain with satisfaction. Possessively, he rubbed the gold torque on his arm. Sanglant could not help himself: he reached up and touched the iron collar that now circled his neck where once he had worn gold.

The movement drew Bloodheart's eye. He leaned toward Sanglantbut not too close. No closer, really, than he would have gotten to his own dogs.

"Why are you still alive," Bloodheart asked, "when all the others are dead?"

"Let me fight," said Sanglant, and suddenly feared he sounded like he was pleading. Ai, Lady, he did not want to die such a dishonorable death. He would not have wished this on his worst enemy, to die like a dog, among the dogs. "Give me an honorable death, Bloodheart. Let your boldest warrior choose weapons and we will have it out, he and I."

"Nay, nay." Bloodheart bared his teeth in a grin. Jewels glinted, a rich treasure studding his teeth.

"Am I not king among the Eika of the western shore? Have I not fought down all the other tribes until they all bared their throats before me? Do I not boast a king's son in my pack of dogs?" He laughed, pleased with his triumph. "I think not, my prince. You are the prize in my pack, a fine lord with his handsome retinue. For my dogs are like to the kingdom of Wendar, are they not? Led by you." His grin turned into a snarl. "Lead them for as long as you can. For you will weaken, and when you do, they will kill you."

Beyond, the Eika methodically looted the corpses before they dragged them into the crypt. One, rifling the Eagle's body, ripped his Eagle's badge from his cloak and tossed it. It landed at the feet of Bloodheart, who picked it up, bit it, and spat.

"Brass! Pah!" He tossed it down and Sanglant swatted dogs aside and grabbed it up from the floor. But that turmoil set the dogs to snapping and snarling again. He made good use of the badge; it had a clean, rounded edge and was good for jabbing. The dogs backed off and settled down again. One of the big ones growled at him, but he made a sharp gesture, and it lifted its head to expose its throat to him in submission.

He wiped hair from his lips, trying to clean the horrible taste out of his mouth. His left hand throbbed. Blood leaked, slowed, stoppedas had the gash on his head, which had already stopped bleeding. That was the secret of his mother's geas, of course, the one she had set on him when he was an infant, the day she vanished from human lands. That was what her blood had given him: keen hearing and unnatural powers of healing.

An Eika grabbed the dead Eagle by the heels and dragged the body away toward the crypt.

Sanglant pressed the Eagle's badge against his cheek.

He was hit so hard by the memory of the young EagleLiathtouching him on his cheek in the silence and intimacy of the crypt that he was dizzy for a moment. The dogs, alert to any least weakness, stirred and growled. He tensed; they quieted.

By the Lady, he would not, he must not, let Bloodheart win. This at least he could believe, that Liath was still alive, for the last report he had been given before he and his Dragons were utterly overwhelmed was that the children of Gent had been led to safety.

"You are speechless, Prince," said Bloodheart. "Are you half dog already? Have you lost the power to talk?"

"I am like you, Bloodheart," he said, his voice hoarse; but his voice always was hoarse now, for he had survived worse injuries than these. The iron collar, and his chains, weighed heavily on his neck.

"My heart rests not within me but with another, and she is far away from here. That is why you will never defeat me."

But the dogs, ever watchful, growled softly. They were willing to wait.