Bloodheart must not muster an army out of Gent. The Veser River ran deep into Wendish lands and with enough ships and a clear road past Gent, Bloodheart and his Eika army could wreak havoc on Henry's lands.

Even Bloodheart must have a weakness. He needed only to be clear-sighted, like Liath, to find it out.

Certain things he observed.

A small gallery-the choir-ran above the nave along one side of the cathedral, but no Eika ever walked here or crowded above to stare down at their brothers.

The dogs never had puppies, nor did they ever seem to mate.

Just as he was tethered to the altar stone by his chains, so the Eika priest seemed tethered to Bloodheart. If Blood-heart sat on his throne, the priest did not venture out of doors. If Bloodheart left the cathedral as he did four times a day, then the priest left as well, dogging the chieftain's heels.

The Eika showed no sexual interest in their slaves, none that he had ever seen; perhaps their contempt for their human enemies ran too deep for such intercourse.

Wooden chest and leather pouch never left the priest's care. From the pouch he drew the bones which he read to prophesy the future. The chest he never opened.

However many Eika crowded the nave, they never stank. Humans stank; Sanglant knew that well enough because he had lived so long among them. The king's progress reeked with the smell of many humans jostled together. Villages and estates had each their own aroma of sweat and mold and damp wool, cesspits and rotting meat, women's holy blood, manure, all the lingering smells of human activity in the smithies and tanneries, the butcheries and the bakeries rolled into a fetid whole. He suspected the Eika thought he stank, even though he was only half of human kin. But it had been months since he had washed; even the dogs were cleaner than he was.

Ai, Lady, he was no better than a wild animal rolling in the forest loam, matted with filth-though he took what care he could of himself. But it was never enough.

When would King Henry come? Sanglant understood now that he could not die here among the dogs. His mother's geas was also a curse, for death would have been a blessing; it had been one for his faithful Dragons whose bones rotted in the crypt or, smoothed and bored, made music for Bloodheart's pleasure. That some other event had prevented Henry from marching last autumn on Gent Sanglant believed. Not for Sanglant's sake: Revenge was a luxury. But Henry had to retake Gent.

And someone had to stop Bloodheart.

If one only looked clearly at what lay in plain sight, the answer was obvious. He was amazed that it had taken him this long to realize it. He knew how to kill Bloodheart, if only he could get close enough.

IVAR was of such little importance to Mother Scholas-tica that she allowed Master Pursed-Lips to deliver the message, which might as well have been a death blow.

"I'll hear no more complaining from you, feckless creature!" scolded the schoolmaster. He did not exactly smile, but he clearly felt an unpleasant glee in the words which followed. "Your lord father has replied at last to your unseemly request to be released from your vows. Of course you are to stay in the monastery. You will offer up your prayers in the service of your kin-those living and those now dead.

Now." He rapped Ivar hard on the knuckles with his switch. "Get back to your labors!"

What choice did he have? The daily round at Quedlin-hame was, in its own monotonous way, soothing to his bruised heart. Trapped forever. Even Liath had rejected him, and that after everything he had promised to do for her.

Only once a day did this monotony lift, did he feel one iota stirred from the numbness that afflicted his heart and soul. And even this event was attended by obstacles.

"The problem," said Baldwin, "is that we can't get close enough to her. It's all very well to listen to what she preaches, but there is a fence between us."

"What matters a mere fence?" demanded Ermanrich. "How can you even doubt her, Baldwin?

Can't you hear the truth in each word she utters?"

"How can we truly see how sincere she is if we can't see her face except through a knothole?

What if she has been set here as a test for us?"

"A test, indeed," murmured Sigfrid, voice muffled by his clenched hands pressed against his lips.

Head bent, he had his eyes shut tight and seemed to be grimacing.

Ever since Tallia had come to Quedlinhame, ever since she began speaking in her monotonously fervid voice about the Redemptio of the blessed Daisan, of his death and rebirth, poor Sigfrid seemed engaged in an inner struggle which caused him much pain.

The four boys were not her only audience. Each afternoon just after the office of Vespers she walked barefoot out from under the colonnade to the fence that separated the girls' side of the novitiary from the boys' half. Each day for the last three months, no matter how awful the weather, she knelt, covered only by her novice's drab brown robe, and prayed. Only a few prayed with her every day. One of these was Ermanrich, who knelt on the opposite side of the fence, shivering in snow, in sleet, in gusty winds, in the heavy chill of winter's hard breath, to hear her speak. Some of the female novices did as well, among them Ermanrich's cousin, Hathumod.

Baldwin and Ivar came to listen on those days when it wasn't too much of a hardship. Many of the female novices collected on those pleasanter days as well, or so the boys assumed by the weighty sense of many breaths drawn and released in time to Lady Tallia's testimony, by the rustling and murmuring of coarse robes, by the whispers of light voices and, now and again, a giggle. But the giggling was never directed toward Tallia's words. No one ever laughed at Lady Tallia or her heretical preaching.

Lady Tallia never raised her voice. She never traded on her high position, unlike Duchess Rotrudis' son Reginar, nor did she expect to be deferred to or made much of. Quite the contrary.

Her privations had become legendary among the novices. She never wore shoes, not even in the winter. Her diet consisted wholly of barley bread and beans. She never drank wine, not even on feast days. She never allowed a stovepot by her bed, no matter how cold it became, and she allowed no servant to wait upon her, as the other noble girls did, but rather insisted-when her aunt Scholastica allowed it-on serving the servants as if she were the commoner born and they the noble.

There even circulated a rumor that she had worn a hair-shirt under her robe until Mother Scholastica forbade her to indulge herself in such a prideful display of humility.

"Hsst!" said Baldwin. On his knees, face pressed up against the knothole, he peered through onto that which was forbidden them. "Here she comes."

Ivar sank to his knees. The cold ground burned a chill into his skin through the fabric of his robe, and he wondered if he should go back inside. But inside sat Master Pursed-Lips, snoring by the stovepot, or Lord Reginar and his dogs, hoping to make life miserable for anyone who disturbed them while they diced. The second-year novices, led by Reginar, always diced just before Vespers, the only time during the day when novices were allowed a short period without occupation.

Only at this time did Tallia have opportunity-and privacy-to speak.

"Then why is it," whispered Baldwin, turning away from the fence to let Ermanrich press nose and eye up against the knothole, "-if she speaks the truth-that she doesn't testify in front of Mother Scholastica?" Like most handsome and favored children, Baldwin nurtured a blithe assurance that the adults in charge would bow before any reasonable, or passionately felt, request.

"Why didn't you just tell your parents you had no liking for the noblewoman who wanted to marry you instead of claiming you had a vocation to the church?" said Ivar.

Baldwin's beautiful eyes flared. "That wouldn't have mattered! You know as well as I that liking matters not when it comes time for one family to ally itself with another. Especially for the family which seeks advantage in the match."

"You're too skeptical, Baldwin," said Ermanrich.

"About marriage or Lady Tallia?" Baldwin retorted.

Sigfrid took his turn. As the female novices on the other side settled down with a rustling of cloth and several coughs and sniffles, he leaned back to speak. "Of course she would be condemned by Mother Scholastica and the other authorities if they heard her speaking such heresy!"

"Hush," said Ermanrich. "I can't hear her."

Sigfrid moved aside and let Ivar take his turn at the knothole. Ivar squinted, seeing first a wash of faces and fabric blended together as his sight adjusted. Like the twelve virtues, virgins all, in The Shepherd of Hermas, the female novices and even the meek schoolmistress had gathered around Tallia to listen. Ivar matched faces with virtues. Tallia for Faith, of course; Hathumod for Simplicity; the elderly and mild schoolmistress for Concordia. The rest-unremarkable girls with their hair covered by shawls and with noses red, or white, from cold and their pale hands clasped devoutly before them-would do for Abstinence, Patience, Magnanimity, Innocence, Charity, Discipline, Truth, and Prudence. Of them all, only Tallia had a truly interesting face, drawn to a fine pallor by her austerities. But perhaps it was only her tinge of fanaticism that lent attraction to her. She had nothing of Liath's warm beauty, but she was the only truly enticing object Ivar had seen at Quedlinhame since Liath had departed with the king's progress.

"Death is the cause of life," she was saying now. "By sacrificing the blessed Daisan in that ritual by which the Dariyans flayed the skin from the body of a living man, the empress relieved Him of His earthly clothing. So was He freed forever from His body, which He would not need in the Chamber of Light."

"But why did he have to be killed like that?" demanded one of the girls. "Didn't he suffer?"

"He already suffered by the measure of our sins." Tallia lifted her hands and turned them palms up to display to her audience. "This is mere skin, molded from clay, nothing more than that. Like all else outside the Chamber of Light, it is tainted with darkness. We do not return to God in the flesh but rather in the spirit. It is our soul that ascends through the spheres to the Chamber of Light."

"But then how could the blessed Daisan have come back to the earth and walked among his disciplas again, as you say, if he didn't have a body?"

"Is there any power God does not have? She gave us birth. She gave birth to the universe-Ah!"

Tallia gasped, swaying, and Hathumod, as stout a young woman as her cousin was a young man, held her up so she did not fall. "Lady bless!" said Tallia in an altered voice, high and breathless and yet somehow piercing. "I see a light like the blinding glance of angels. It penetrates the haze of mist that envelops the dull earth." Head lolling back, Tallia appeared to faint.

Ivar jerked back from the fence to find Baldwin, Erman-rich, and Sigfrid clustered at his shoulder, pressing him back into the rough wood.

"What happened?" demanded Ermanrich.

The bells rang for Vespers and the four young men scrambled up guiltily to take their place in line.

Ivar braved Master Pursed-Lip's willow switch to get a good look at the line of female novices as they proceeded into the church, but he did not see Lady Tallia among their number . . . and she never, ever, missed a chance to pray.

Nor did she appear before Vespers at her usual place the next day.

It took two days for Ermanrich to arrange a private rendezvous with his cousin, and then the news he had to report hit all four boys with horror.

"Hathumod says Tallia has been stricken with a paralysis."

"Devils have inhabited her because of her heretical words!" said Sigfrid, biting at his nails. "She's been possessed by the Enemy!"

"Don't say such a thing!" Ermanrich's ability to defer to the wishes of another-in this case his lady mother-without resentment had allowed him to enter Quedlinhame with a resigned heart and a peaceful spirit. He looked anything but peaceful now. "She lies as if dead, Hathumod says, with only the faintest blush of red in her cheeks to show she still lives. It is God who afflicts her, to test her faith with infirmity!"

"If it's true she eats so little, she probably fainted from hunger," observed Baldwin, whose appetite was as certain as the promise of the sun's rising each morning. "My aunt said that's a sure sign of starvation, when farmers are too weak to sow. The biscop enjoins us to sow charity and distribute grain in lean times for the good of our souls, but my aunt says we'd best do it for the good of our holdings."

"Baldwin!" Poor Sigfrid looked deeply affronted. "How can you say such a thing, and in God's house, may They forgive you for your disrespect."

"It's no disrespect to speak the truth!"

"Quiet!" said Ivar. "It won't help us if we quarrel like princes." But a sudden fear gnawed at him, and he did not know why.

He did not know why, but he and the others knelt every day at the usual time beside the fence, hoping for news.

And news came in the most startling fashion four days later when Tallia herself, leaning on Hathumod, made her slow way out to her accustomed place. There she knelt on fresh snow as though it were spring flowers, brought her hands together at her chest, and prayed.

She had no color in her lips. Her hands were curled up like claws, nails tucked into her palms.

Although she was frail in body, her voice was strong.

"God be praised! By the blessing given by the Holy Mother and Her blessed Son we have all been granted eternal life if only we shall testify to the Holy Word of the sacrifice and redemption. I was overcome by light, and while my body was laid low by God's hand, a vision enveloped me."

Her face had so fine and delicate a pallor that she appeared almost aethereal, as if her body had leached away and all that held her together in this world was the strength of her immortal soul. The very fragility revealed in her flesh, woven with the fierce glamour of her gaze, gave her a beauty she had not possessed before-or so Ivar thought, staring raptly until Ermanrich poked him hard between the shoulder blades and demanded his chance to look.

Though they shouldn't have been looking.

"My soul was led by a spirit of fire to the resting place of the angels. There I was granted a vision of the rewards God prepares for those who love Her, in which infidels and those who heed the False Word of the Unities put no faith." She lifted her fists. With great effort, face straining against obvious pain, she uncurled her swollen fingers.

Ivar gasped out loud, as did every female novice clustered on the other side of the fence.

Her palms bled, each one marked by a single shallow scarlet line down the center-just as if a knife had begun the first cuts to flay her skin from her body. Blood dripped from her palms to color the snow crimson.

Ivar staggered back, clapping his hands over his eyes.

Ermanrich pressed his face against the fence. "A miracle!" he breathed.

Sigfrid, after peering through the knothole, was too overcome to speak.

Baldwin only grunted.

But not a month later, when the snow had finally melted and the first violets bloomed, a climbing rose grew from the very spot where Tallia's blood had stained the earth. On the Feast Day of St.

Johanna, the Messenger, a single bud unfolded into a crimson flower.

"It's a sign," murmured Sigfrid, and this time Baldwin made no objection.

It had been almost a year since Ivar had knelt outside the gates and pledged himself as a novice.

For the first time since that day, he walked into the great church at Quedlinhame with no thought for his own grievances. His heart was too full with mystery and awe.

ALAIN saw her from a distance. He stopped, calling the hounds to heel, and made them sit in a semicircle around him.

"Go," he said while his escort, his usual retinue of padded dog handlers, a half dozen men-at-arms, and a cleric who had been brought into the household to read aloud to Alain various practical treatises on husbandry and agriculture, stared down the long open slope at the unusual sight of an Eagle walking instead of riding. "Ulric and Robert, go down and escort her to me."

It was always safer to escort a new person to him; if he approached them with the hounds, anything might happen.

The thin sheen of snow turned the winter landscape a glittering white, muddied by the dark line of the southern roadway and the skeletal orchard that stretched along it on either side. From this vantage he could see the tower of Lavas keep behind him but nothing of the town except trails of smoke rising into the clear sky. On this, St. Oya's Day and the first day of Fevrua (so the cleric had informed him this morning), the weather remained mild and bright. It was a good omen for those girls who had come to their first bleeding in the past year; they would now sit on the women's benches at church and those whose families were well-to-do enough might think of betrothing them to a suitable man. In thirty days would come the first day of the month of Yanu, the new year and the first day of spring.

In that new year, if God willed, he would be betrothed.

"Lady Above!" swore the cleric, and the remaining men in his retinue murmured, likewise, in amazement. Alain, too, stared, as the Eagle met the two guards and walked with them up the slope. He had never seen an Eagle arrive except on horseback-for of course Eagles must move swiftly and how better to do that than by riding? But that was not the only strange thing about her.

Young, she had the most astonishing complexion, as brown as if she had just stepped through into winter's pale daylight from a land where summer's sun burned night and day in all seasons. She wore quiver and bow on her back, had a sword strapped to her side and leather bag of provisions slung from one shoulder, and strode along as easily as any foot soldier. But there was yet another quality, something he could not name. She had a certain brightness about her, a warmth...it made no sense and yet struck him as one sees the shadow of the mother in her child's face.

"Autun!" he said suddenly, out loud. "She was one of the Eagles who came to Autun after the battle at Kassel. She brought the news of Gent's fall."

The hounds began to whine.

They cowered, heads down, whimpering away from her as she approached. First Good Cheer, then Fear, then the others tried to slink away, as meek as puppies frightened by thunder; only Sorrow and Rage remained, though they, too, stirred restlessly. "Sit!" he commanded and, reluctantly, the other hounds sat. But as the Eagle walked up to him, old Terror flopped down, rolled over, and exposed his throat.

"What a sweet old dog," the Eagle exclaimed. "I love dogs." She reached down to pet him.

Terror snapped at her hand, terrified, rolled and scrambled back to his feet, and at once all the hounds were up and barking wildly at her. She leaped back. His retinue did the same reflexively.

"Sit!" commanded Alain. "Sit, you!" He tugged down Sorrow and Rage. "Terror!" He jerked the old hound down by his collar, calmed the others. But even so, when they had subsided, they whined and growled and kept Alain between her and them.

"My lord!" She stared at the hounds, aghast. Alain had never seen eyes as blue as hers, as bright as fiery Seirios, the flaming point of the Huntress' bow in the night sky. "I beg your pardon-"

"Nay, think nothing of it." But he was puzzled by the hounds' reaction. "You have a message for my father?"

"For Count Lavastine, yes."

"I am his son."

She was surprised. "I do not mean to interrupt your walk, my lord. If one of your men will show me to the count-"

"I will do so myself."

"But, my lord-

He waved aside the cleric's objections. They had as their object this morning the little abbey of Soisins, founded by his great-grandfather after the death of his first wife in childbirth and added onto by his great-grandfather's second wife after his own death in battle. "This is more important." No one argued with him. "Come." He said it more to the hounds than to the others: where he and the hounds went, the rest followed. "Walk beside me," he said to the Eagle.

She glanced toward the hounds. "I'm sorry to have startled them. They don't seem very . . .

welcoming."

Alain heard the men-at-arms muttering behind him, and he could just imagine what they were saying. "Sometimes they surprise even me, but they won't harm anyone as long as I'm with them." With only a slight hesitation she moved up beside him. At once, still growling low in their throats, the hounds flowed to his opposite side, a mass of black coats and legs scrunched together. So intent were they on avoiding her that they scarcely noticed the handlers and men-at-arms hurriedly sidestepping to make room for them.

"What happened to your horse?" he asked.

"Ai, Lady!" She glanced behind herself as if wondering if someone followed besides his guards.

"Elfshot, my lord."

"Elfshot!"

"Fifteen days south of here. I've almost lost track of the days." She told a jumbled story of bandits and shadowy figures in the deep forest. "One of their arrows struck my horse's flank, just a scratch, but even though the deacon at Laar blessed it, the poor creature sickened and died."

"But you're a King's Eagle! Surely you could have commandeered another horse."

"So I could have, had I been in Wendar. But no one here would give me a fresh mount in exchange for a sick one."

"And this in my father's lands?" He was appalled. "That isn't how we serve the king's messengers!

I will see the deacons hereabouts are reminded of our duty."

"Do you support King Henry, my lord?" she asked, clearly surprised.

He could only imagine the reception a Wendish rider- though she scarcely appeared Wendish, with that complexion-had received in this part of Varre. "I do what is right," he said firmly, "and I hope my aunt-I hope my elders will never be disappointed in me by hearing I have stinted in hospitality to a stranger."

She smiled, a brief flash on her face that he wished, at once, to see again. "You are kind, my lord."

"Didn't the blessed Daisan say, 'If you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect?''

That did make her smile again. "In truth, my lord, many of the folk who offered me shelter and food these last fifteen days had no horse to give in exchange. It was the ones who did who were least hospitable."

"That will change," he promised her. "What is your name, Eagle?"

Startled, she took a stutter step, stumbling to catch up as he paused to look at her. "I beg your pardon, my lord. It's just not-few noble folk ask-Of course. Eagles hatched from common stock. No nobly born lord or lady would ever think of asking one's name. He had betrayed his upbringing, and yet, why should he be ashamed of simple courtesy? "I am called Alain," he said, to reassure her. "I meant nothing by it. It's just hard to address you as 'Eagle' all the time."

She ducked her head as she thought over this answer. She had a fine profile, limned now by the morning sun to the east. But for all her obvious physical vitality, she wore under that vigor a mantle of fragility, as if she might break apart at any moment. She is afraid. The revelation came to him with such force that he knew it to be true, yet he could hardly say so aloud. She lives in fear.

"I am called Liath," she whispered, and sounded amazed to hear her own voice.

"Liath!" This name had meaning for him. He remembered it. "Liathano," he said in a low voice as he took a step forward.

The weight of memory drowned him.

He stands in the old ruins, midsummer's stars rising above him as bright as jewels thrown into the heavens. The Serpent's red eye glares above. A shade detaches itself from the far wall, entering the avenue of stone. Fitted in a cuirass, armed with a lance, he carries a white cloak draped over one arm. Behind him, flames roar as the outpost bums under the assault of barbarians. He is looking for someone, but he sees Alain instead.

"Where has Liathano gone?" the shade asks.

Liathano. Surprised, Alain speaks. "I don't know," he says, but in answer he only hears the pound of horses galloping past, a haze of distant shouting, a faint horn caught on the wind.

His foot came down.

"What did you say?" asked the Eagle.

He shook himself, and Sorrow and Rage, trotting alongside, slewed their great heads round to look at him. Rage yipped once. Sorrow butted him on the thigh with his shoulder, and he staggered and laughed and rubbed Sorrow affectionately on the head with his knuckles.

"I don't know," he said, blinking into sunlight that seemed abruptly twice as bright. "Just that I've heard that name before."

For an instant, he thought she would bolt and run. Instead she stopped dead, stared at him as he, too, halted, the hounds sitting obediently beyond. Bliss whimpered softly. His retinue eddied to a halt around him, keeping well away from both Eagle and hounds.

"No," she said at last, more to herself than to him, her voice so soft only he and the hounds heard her. She seemed more perplexed than anything. "I can't make myself feel afraid of you."

Poor creature. Did she think she had to be afraid of everyone? "Come," he said gently, showing her the way. "You must be hungry and tired. You will find a place to rest in my father's hall. Nothing will hurt you there."

And with that, she burst into tears.

Nothing will hurt you there.

The young lord made sure she had something to eat and wine to drink before he took her upstairs to his father. She was too bewildered, too confused, and too embarrassed by her sudden storm of weeping on the road beyond Lavas stronghold to know what to say to him, so she kept quiet.

With the count, she felt on surer ground.

"What brings you to my lands, Eagle?" he asked. He did not, of course, ask her to sit down, nor did he ask her name.

"This message I bring to you from King Henry. 'The city of Gent still lies under the hand of the Eika. Its defenders lie dead. The count of that region and her nearest kin are dead as well and her army scattered. The lands all round the city lie as wasteland. It is time to take it back before the Eika can do worse damage. You were rewarded with a son for your honesty before me in Autun, after the Battle of Kassel. But I could not then ride to Gent's aid because of Sabella's treachery, which you once supported. Prove your loyalty to me by taking on this task. Meet me at Gent with an army before Luciasmass at midsummer. If you restore Gent to my sovereignty, with or without my aid, you will receive a just reward as well as my favor.'''

Lavastine smiled slightly. His smile had no warmth in it; neither, like Hugh's, was it cold, merely practical, as at the sight of a good harvest. "Gent," he mused. "Come, come, Alain. Sit down. Don't stand there like a servant."

Mercifully, the hounds had been kenneled, all but two. These padded obediently after the young lord, who sat himself in a fine carved chair to the right of his father. One of the hounds draped itself over the boots of the count. The other yawned mightily and flopped down near one of the three braziers that heated the room. After two months of traveling through the winter countryside, Liath appreciated how very warm it was in this room, as long as you kept out of the drafts. Tapestries smothered the walls. Rugs lay three deep on the floor. She was so warm she wanted to take off her cloak and outer tunic but feared it would look disrespectful.

"Gent," repeated Lavastine. "A long march from these lands. Yet the reward may be a rich one."

He glanced up at his captain, who stood with his other intimate servants here and there about the chamber. Liath recognized a soldier when she saw one; like the count, this man had a brisk competency about him and a squared strength to his shoulders that reminded her-briefly and painfully-of Sanglant.

"How many men-at-arms can we muster after the sowing?"

"I beg your pardon, my lord count," said Liath. Surprised, he looked at her, raised a hand to show she might continue. "King Henry also sends this message. 'From my kin you may ask for aid.

Constance, Biscop of Autun and Duchess of Arconia, will provide troops. Rotrudis, Duchess of Saony and Attomar, will provide troops. Liutgard, Duchess of Fesse, will provide troops. I ride the southlands now to gather an army for the coming battle and I will meet you at Gent unless events in the south or east prevent me. Only a strong army can defeat the Eika.''

"Ah," said Lavastine. "Captain, what do you say to this?"

"It is a long march to Gent," said the captain. "I don't rightly know how far, but it lies a good way into Wendish lands, up along the north coast. We heard many stories, at Autun, that the Eika chieftain was an enchanter, that he had brought a hundred ships to Gent together with a thousand Eika savages."

"You were at Gent," said the young lord suddenly. Alain. That was his name. He had offered her his name in the way of equals. She could not stop sneaking looks at him. Tall, broad-shouldered but slender, with dark hair and the thinnest down of pale beard on his face so that it almost appeared as if he had not yet grown a beard, he looked nothing like his father. Ai, Lady. He had spoken so gently to her, in the same way one coaxed a wounded animal into shelter.

"You were at Gent?" demanded Lavastine, suddenly interested in her. Before, she had only been, like a parchment letter, a medium through which words reached him.

"I was there at the end."

So again she had to tell the whole awful story of the fall of Gent. And yet, telling it at almost every hamlet she had slept at these past two months had softened the pain. Told again and again, it could hardly be otherwise. "If you pound your head against the wall enough times," Da would say with a bitter smile when she was furious with herself for making a mistake, "it will finally stop hurting."

Lavastine questioned her closely about the lay of the city, the land thereabouts, the approaches from the west, from the north and south, which she knew little about, and from the east, which she had never seen. He asked her about the river, how close the city lay to the river's mouth, how the island on which the city lay was situated, how the bridges gapped the water and in what manner the gates and walls stood in reference to roadway and shoreline.

"This tunnel," he said. "The farmer claimed the cave ended in a wall."

"So he did, my lord count. I have no reason to disbelieve him. It was a miracle that anyone survived or that the tunnel appeared."

"But a tunnel did appear," said Lavastine.

"And you survived," said the young lord, and blushed.

His father glanced sharply at him, frowned, and then played absently with the ears of the hound that lounged at his feet. "Dhuoda," he said to the woman seated to his left, the only other person so honored in the chamber. "Can you be without so many men for another summer's season? If we leave after sowing, I don't know if we can return by harvest."

"Much depends on the weather," she said. "But despite everything, last year's harvest was decent and this winter has been mild. It could be done if you muster after the Feast of St. Sormas . . . if you think it worthwhile."

"The king's favor and a just reward." Both he and the noblewoman looked at the young man.

"Eagle, where is Lord Geoffrey?"

"Lord Geoffrey remained behind to hunt with the king. He will follow later and will meet you here by the time you muster your troops."

"Was the king so certain I would agree?"

"He said, my lord count, that he would grant you the reward you asked for."

The young Lord had the propensity to blush a fierce red. He did so now. Liath could not imagine why. But at this moment she did not much care about the embarrassments of the nobly born. She only wanted to stand in this room, to shelter in this safe hall, for the rest of her life.

"Tallia!" said Lavastine in the tone of a man who has scented victory. "He will give us Tallia." He stood. "Let it be done. Eagle, you will return to the king to let him know that I hereby pledge to free Gent from the Eika."

HE climbs upward on the old path through a forest of spruce, pine, and birch. Soon the forest fades to birch only and at last even these stunted trees fall away as he emerges onto the fjall, the high plateau, home of the WiseMothers. The wind blows fiercely at this height, whipping his ice-white hair. A rime of frost covers the ground.

The OldMother, who is both his mother and his aunt, sent him here. "Speak to them, restless one," she said. "Their words are wiser than mine."

He finds the youngest of the WiseMothers still on the trail, her great bulk easing upward toward her place with the others. He sees them now in the distance like stout pillars surrounding a hollow burnished to a bright glare by the glittering threads that mark the spawning net of ice-wyrms. But he does not mean to brave the ice-wyrms' venomous sting this day.

Instead he stops beside the youngest of them, who has not yet reached their council ground. Although she passed the knife of decision to his OldMother before his hatching, it has taken her these many years to get as far as a morning's hard walk for him. But she, like her mothers and mothers' mothers before her, grew from that same substance that carves the bones of the earth. She has no reason to move swiftly in the world: She will see many more seasons than he can ever hope to, and long after her bones have hardened completely, her thoughts will still walk the paths of earth until, at last, she departs utterly to the fjall of the heavens.

He kneels before her, brings her in offering nothing durable or hard, only those things made precious by their fragility and transience: a tiny flower once sheltered in the lee of a rock; a lock of downy hair from one of the Soft Ones' infants which just died last night; the remains of an eggshell from Hakonin fjord; the delicate bone of a small bird such as a priest would carve marks into and with its fellows scatter onto stone to read the footprints of the future.

"WiseMother," he says. "Hear my words. Give me an answer to my question." Having spoken, he waits. One must have patience to converse with the WiseMothers and not just because of the ice-wyrms, Her progress up the path is so slow he cannot actually see her forward movement, but were he to come in another week, the lichen-striped boulder that lies beside the tread of her great hooves would be a finger's span behind. In that same way they hear and they speak to a measure of years far longer than his own. Perhaps, indeed, once they are no longer bound to the world of the tribe by the knife, it is actually hard for them to understand the words of their grandsons who speak and move so swiftly and live so short a time, not more than forty circuits of the sun.

Her voice rumbles so low, like the lowest pitch in the distant fall of an avalanche, that he must strain to hear her. "Speak. Child."

"OldMother heard from the southlands. Bloodheart calls an army together, all the RockChildren who will come to him, to campaign against the Soft Ones. If I take such ships as I have gathered and sail south when the wind turns, will I still be in disgrace? Is it better to remain here, risking little, or sail there, risking much?"

The wind blusters along the rocky plateau. Rocks adorn the land, the only ornament needed to make of it a fitting chamber for the wisdom of the eldest Mothers- all but the FirstMothers, who vanished long ago. Below, trees shush and murmur, a host of voices in the constant wind. It begins, gently, to snow. With the thaw will come spring rains, and then the way will lie open to sail south.

Her voice resonates even through the earth beneath his knees, though it is faint to his ears.

"Let. Be. Your. Guide. That. Which. Appears. First. To. Your. Eyes."

His copper-skinned hand still lies over her rough one. He feels a sharp tingling, like lightning striking nearby, and withdraws his hand at once. The offerings he has laid upon her upturned hand melt and soak into her skin as honey seeps into sodden earth, slowly but inexorably. The audience is over.

He rises obediently. She has answered, so there is no need to walk the rest of the way up the fjall, into the teeth of the wind, to kneel before the others by the hollow where all come to rest in the fullness of time.

He turns his back on the wind and walks down through the sullen green and white of the winter forest. Below the trees he walks through pastureland, the steadings of his brothers and oldest uncles, the pens of their slaves. All this is familiar to his eyes; he has seen it many times before: the sheep and goats huddling in the winter cold, scraping beneath the snow to find fodder; cows crowded into the byres, fenced away from the dogs; the pigs scurrying away to the shelter of trees; the slaves in their miserable pens.

But as he comes up behind his own steading, newly built from sod and timber, he sees a strange procession wind away into the trees. Silent, he follows. It is a small group of slaves, six of them; one carries a tiny bundle wrapped in precious cloth. They are hard to tell apart, but two he can recognize even from a distance: the male named Otto and the female-priest named Ursuline.

These two have become like chieftain and OldMother to the other Soft Ones he keeps as slaves; over the winter he has observed their actions among the others, forming them into a tribe, and it interests him. As this interests him.

A clearing lies in the trees. Certain markers of stone, crudely carved, are set upright into the soil. It is a slave place, and he leaves it alone as do all the RockChildren. Slaves have their customs, however useless they may be. Now, he sees what they are about. They have dug a hole in the ground and into the earth they place the body of the infant that died in the night. The female-priest sings in her thin voice while the others weep. He has tasted the tears of the Soft Ones: They are salt, like the ocean waters. Is it possible that their Circle god has taught them something of the true life of the universe? Why else would they cover their dead ones in earth even as they leak water onto the dirt? Is this what they give in offering? He does not know.

But he watches. Is this event the one he must use as his guide? What does the funeral presage? His own death if he returns to his father's army? Or the death of the Soft Ones whom Bloodheart will attack?

Risk much or risk little.

In the end, staring through the branches at the small mourning party, he knows he always knew the answer to his question. He is too restless to stay. Death is only a change in existence; it is neither ending nor beginning, no matter what these Soft Ones may think. He will return to Hundse, to Gent.

The mourners file past him on the narrow track. One of them, a young female with hollow eyes and a body frailer than most, still cries her salt tears though the others attempt to soothe her.

Did the infant come from her body? And if so, how was it planted there? Are they the same as the beasts, who also plant their young in and feed them out of the mother's body? But though the Soft Ones resemble brute animals, he thinks it cannot be completely true. They speak, as people do.

They gaze above themselves into the fjall of the heavens and wonder what has brought them to walk on the earth. This, also, true people do. And they do something he has seen no other creature, not RockChildren, not animal, not the small cousins of the earth nor the fell beasts of the ocean water, do.

They weep.

Alain woke to the profound silence of Lavas stronghold asleep in the dark and cold of a late winter's night. But a tickle nagged at him, like a hound scratching at the door. Rage slumbered on. As he rose, Sorrow whuffed softly and clattered to his feet, following him. The other hounds lay curled here and there on the carpet or near the bed. Terror lay atop Lavastine's feet, the two of them snoring softly together, in concert. Alain slipped on a tunic. He had heard something, or perhaps it was only the residue of his dream.

He latched the door carefully behind him and placed a hand on Sorrow's muzzle. It was cold in the hall and cold on the stairs. A draft leaked up the stone stairwell, a breath of warmth from the hall. He followed its scent and at last, beneath the breathing silence of hall and stone, heard what he was listening for: the sound of weeping.

It was so soft that he only found its source when he was halfway into the hall, attracted by the red glow of hearth fire. In the alcoves, servants and men-at-arms slept; others would have returned to their own huts outside the palisade or down in the village. But a single heaped shape more like a forgotten bundle of laundry lay by the fire, shuddering.

The Eagle wept alone on her rough pallet by the fire.

Sorrow whined nervously.

"Sit!" Alain whispered, leaving the hound sitting in the Doos middle of the floor with his tail thumping in the rushes. He approached the Eagle.

She did not notice him until he was almost upon her. Then, gasping aloud, she choked on a sob, started up, and reached for a stick in the fire.

"Hush," he said. "Don't be scared. It's only me. Alain. Don't burn yourself."

"Oh, God," she murmured, but she drew her hand away from the fire and used it to wipe her nose instead. He could not make out much of her face, but he could smell the salt of her tears in the smoky air.

"Why are you crying?" he asked.

"Ai, Lady," she whispered. "It wasn't so bad, riding away. But now I must go back."

"Go back where?"

She shook her head, trying now to dry her tears, but they still came despite her wish. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!"

She was silent for so long that he began to think he would have to speak, or that he had somehow offended her.

"Why should it matter to you?" she asked at last, haltingly.

"It should matter to every one of us when we see one of our kinsfolk lost in sorrow."

"We are not kin, you and I." The words came choked from her mouth. "I have no kin."

"We are all the sons and daughters of God. Isn't that kinship enough?"

"I-I don't know." She stirred restlessly and held out her hands toward the coals to warm them.

Reflexively, he fetched some sticks from the woodpile just inside the door and fed the fire. She watched him, still silent.

"You don't want to go back," he said, settling beside her and pulling his knees up to his chest.

Sorrow whined softly but kept his distance. "I saw you," he added, "when you rode in from Gent, when the king was in Autun. You and the other Eagle. I don't know his name."

"Wolfhere."

"Aren't Eagles your kin?"

"In a way."

"You've really no one at all?"

"My mother died about ten years ago. And Da is dead." How bitter this admission came he could hear in the tight rein she held on her voice. "Ai, Lady, almost two years ago now. He was all I had."

"And I was granted a wealth of fathers," he said, suddenly struck by how great his good fortune had been.

"How can you have a wealth of fathers? How can you have more than one?"

He hung his head, shamed to think with what anger he had left Merchant Henri at their last meeting, how badly he had behaved. Would Henri ever forgive him for that pride and anger? "I was fostered to one, a good man, and grew up calling him 'Father.' I came lately to the second."

"Oh, yes." She turned toward him, expression almost visible in the darkness. "King Henry granted Count Lavastine the right to name you as his heir. Isn't that right?"

"And I only a bastard before," he said lightly, but even so, and even though Lavastine's soldiers and servants had now accepted him, the memory of their visit to the manor of Lady Aldegund and Lord Geoffrey still stung.

"Who was your mother?" she asked, then said, embarrassed, "I beg your pardon, my lord. I've no right to ask such a thing."

"No, no, I asked you questions. You may ask me questions in my turn. She was a servingwoman here, gotten with child by my father and put aside when he married."

"That story has been told before," she said sharply. "Noble lords never ask if their attentions are welcome. That is the last thing they think of." Then, while he was still so astonished by this accusation that he could only blink, eyes tearing from the smoke, she huddled away from him, cowering as if she expected to be hit. "I beg your pardon. I meant no such thing. Forgive me."

But he could only gape, struck so hard by this new and unwelcome notion that it was only when a flea crawled up his ankle from the rushes matting the floor that he came to himself, scratching it off. "It never occurred to me," he said, ashamed now. "Perhaps she loved him, too-it's possible-or wanted something from him. But maybe she never cared for him at all and had no choice-" Hard on this thought, another flashed before him in all its brilliance. "Is there a noble lord on the progress who torments you in this way? Isn't there anything the king or the other Eagles can do to stop it?"

"Ai, Lady," she whispered, and because she began to cry again, he knew his guess was right.

"There's nothing Eagles can do. And nothing the king will do, for he's cleverer than the king and all the lords and ladies at court. They can't see him but only what he lays before them to see. There is no one to aid me in any case. He is the son of a margrave. I have no one to protect me!"

"I will protect you," said Alain. "I am heir to the county of Lavas, after all. That counts for something."

Suddenly she clutched his hands. Though the air was cold, her skin was hot. "I pray you, my lord, if you can do anything, if you can make it possible for me to stay here- to send someone else in my place back to the king's progress..."

"Then what?" asked Alain, amazed by the intensity in her voice. "Is this noble lord so loathsome to you?"

She let go of him at once. "You don't understand," she said fiercely. "I have no kin, only the Eagles. Even if I had any fondness for this man-which I do not!-if I became his concubine I would be cast out of the Eagles. Then where would I be if he tired of me? I wouldn't even have the protection of the Eagles. God help me, it doesn't matter. He'll never tire of me. He'll never let me alone."

He was afraid she was going to start weeping again. The confident Eagle he had seen on the road this morning seemed a distant memory now. She was all tears and fear. "What you're saying doesn't make sense! First you say you fear he will cast you off, and then you say you fear he'll never do so. It must be one or the other, surely, and in truth, my friend, I think you are right to fear the first more. If he favors you for a few years until he finds another younger, prettier woman, then you are kinless and without support when he puts you aside. If he never puts you aside, then surely you will live in good circumstances for the rest of your life, and any children you have by him will be well provided for."

At that, she began half to cry and half to snort with laughter. Had she gone mad? "You sound like Mistress Birta. Always calculating what is most practical."

"That's what my Aunt Bel-the woman who raised me- taught me. No use worrying about the fox stealing the chickens when the henhouse is safely locked and it's your house that's burning down."

Her sobs and laughter subsided into hiccuping chuckles. "That sounds like something Da would say. But you don't understand. You can't understand. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to have disturbed your rest this night."

"I want to understand!" he said, angry that she would think he didn't care. He sought and found her hands where she had wrapped them in an end of her cloak. "There is so much fear in you, Liath.

What are you running from?" He leaned forward without thinking and kissed her on the forehead. A few stray ends of her hair tickled his nose. Her entire body stiffened and at once he dropped her hands and leaned back. Sorrow, behind them, growled softly and scrabbled forward, but not too much, not too close.

"I beg your pardon!" said Alain. What had come over him? Yet what he felt now was nothing like the sinful, intense yearning that engulfed him when he thought of Tal-lia. He simply knew he must find some way to shelter Liath, just as he had known he had to save the Eika prince that awful night when Lackling was sacrificed in place of the Eika.

By now his eyes had adjusted well enough to the gloom that he could see her fairly well, sitting stiff and straight, her cloak draped in folds down to the floor, her single braid tucked away inside the hood. When she turned her head to stare at the fire, her eyes glinted with a spark of blue.

She only needed encouragement.

Haltingly, hoping to encourage her by his own open-heartedness, he told his story. It came out all in a jumble as he skipped from one thing to the next, watching her face by firelight to see how she responded. He tqld her of Fifth Son and the hounds, of Lackling's murder by Biscop An-tonia, of the guivre and Agius' death. Of the vision he had seen in the old Dariyan ruins, the shade who spoke the name "Liathano" and then vanished in a maelstrom of fire and smoke and battle. Of the dreams he still had, his link to the Eika prince.

When he stumbled to a close, she held a hand out to warm it over the coals. "Artemisia describes five types of dreams: the enigmatic dream, the prophetic vision, the oracular dream, the nightmare, and the apparition. It's hard to judge what you experienced. 'Enigmatic' because the meaning of your dreams is concealed with strange shapes and veils-"

"But they don't seem like dreams at all. It's as if I see through his eyes, as if I am him."

"The Eika are not like us," she said softly. "They wield magics we have no knowledge of."

The comment surprised him into blurting out a careless thought. "Do you have knowledge of magic?"

Their silence drew out until it became like a living thing which, hiding in the shadows, does not know whether to bolt into the nether darkness or advance into the clear, clean light. Abruptly, in a low, almost monotone voice and in short bursts punctuated by silences, she began to talk.

She told him of a childhood faintly remembered, of the sudden flight she and her da had made from that pleasant home after the death of her mother. She told him of many years wandering in distant lands, and though she spoke as one who has lived every day in fear, he ached to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about all the far and curious places he had ever dreamed of visiting. It seemed, strangely, that inside her words he heard her wish for a safe haven, like the walls of a monastery, to which she could retire, while she had lived the very adventure he had always hoped for and known would be denied him. She had seen Darre and the wild coast of eastern Aosta. She had sailed to Nakria and roamed the ruins of dead Kartiako. She had explored the fabulous palace of the ruler of Qurtubah in the Jinna kingdom of Andalla and wandered the market stalls of busy Medemelacha in Salia. She had seen with her own eyes creatures and wonders he had never heard tell of, not even from the merchants of Osna village, the most 'traveled people he knew.

But for this she had paid a price. She had lost her father, murdered at night by sorcery with no mark left on his body. Even now, fell creatures stalked her-some of them inhuman and one all too human.

Seeking sorcerous knowledge from The Book of Secrets as well as what secrets he vas sure she held hidden inside her, a holy man of the church had made her his slave-and worse.

After such misery as made Alain wince to hear it, she had been rescued by Eagles. Yet she could not trust even them, certainly not Wolfhere. She couldn't trust anyone except an Eagle named Hanna who was now, somehow, Father Hugh's prisoner. Except Prince Sanglant, whom she had met in Gent-and he was dead. Except perhaps an Aoi sorcerer seen through fire, and she had no idea where he was. In the end, tormented again by Father Hugh, she had discovered the most terrifying knowledge of all: She held locked inside her a sorcerous power trapped in her bones or in her blood over which she had no control.

"I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what it means or what it is, how much Da locked away and how much he never knew of. I only know he was trying to protect me. What if I go back to the king's progress? Hugh is holding Hanna as a hostage to make me come back. And if I don't go back, then what becomes of her? Ai, Lady, I don't know what to do! I don't know what's going to become of Hanna. But if I go back to the king's progress, Hugh will imprison me again. There's nowhere to run any more. I'm so afraid."

"Then maybe you have to stop running," he said reasonably.

Her laughter was sharp in reply. "And let them find me? Let Hugh trap me?"

"Find yourself." The answer didn't come cleanly; answers rarely did. But he sensed that they groped closer to the question now, and only when they could discover the question could they search out the path that would lead her to the answer she sought.

"Gnosi seaton," she murmured. " 'Know thyself.' That's what the prophetesses of the ancient gods said at the temple of Talfi."

His hand. The memory from his dream engulfed him so abruptly that he had to cover his eyes. "

'Let be your guide that which first appears to your eyes.' It wasn't the funeral at all. It was his own hand.

That's what she meant."

"What funeral?"

He shook himself free of the windings of forgotten sleep. "My dream of Fifth Son, the one I had this night."

"I only have nightmares," said Liath, her voice so quiet that even the snap of twigs and roll of burning logs drowned it. "I've never had a true vision, except through fire-and that isn't truly a vision but a gateway."

Before he knew what he was about, he had pulled the leather thong up from around his neck and opened the little cloth pouch. He laid the delicate red rose on his palm for her to see. It gleamed uncannily in the firelight.

She stared. "The Rose of Healing," she whispered. Her voice caught, broke, and she sniffed back tears. She did not attempt to touch it.

The petals burned on his palm. Quickly he replaced it in the pouch. Then, trembling slightly, he took another log and set it on the hot coals. It smoldered, caught, and blazed, flames dancing along its length.

She wiped her nose again with the back of a hand and looked up at him. She reached, hesitated, then laid a hand on his arm. The touch was so light it might not have been there at all, and yet in that simple act Alain understood that, as with the hounds, he had won her trust forever.

HE crept back upstairs when the first stirrings of dawn reached him. She had fallen asleep hours ago. Yet he could not bear to leave and instead had sat watch over her and the fire for the rest of the night.

Upstairs, his father was awake and waiting for him.

"Alain." He nudged Terror out of his way and swung his legs out of bed, rose, stretched, and then turned to examine his son with a frown. "Open the shutters."

Alain obeyed. The sting of cold air chased along his skin like so many gnats.

"Close it again," said Lavastine after examining him. "Have we not spoken of this? You of all people must be more careful than most."

"Careful of what?"

"I hope you are not about to say you went out to the pits to relieve yourself when we have a perfectly good chamber pot here, and a servant to carry it away in the morning?" Alain flushed, having finally realized where his father thought he had been for most of the night. "Where have you been?"

"Down in the hall, talking with-"

"Talking with?"

"That's all!"

"Perhaps it isn't fair to expect so much from you. It's a rare man who in his youth can resist a fair morsel set before him. Had God wanted us to remain as pure as the angels, They could have molded us differently, I suppose."

"But I didn't-

"Is it the Eagle? You know they swear oaths. They aren't allowed congress of that nature with any but their own kind, on pain of being thrown out of their Order. But you're a good-looking boy, and fair spoken, and she's a long way from the king. We each of us have our weaknesses."

"But we didn't-!"

"So it was the Eagle."

"I talked to her. You know I've always told the truth, Father! I heard her crying and I went to see-I comforted her, that's all. Can't you send another messenger in her place?"

"Why shouldn't she return to court? That is her duty."

"She has an enemy at court."

"An Eagle has an enemy at court? Why should anyone at court even notice such an Eagle, unless she has brought the king's displeasure down on herself?"

"It isn't that at all. There's a nobleman at court, an abbot, who wants to force her to become his concubine."

"Indeed." Lavastine walked over to the shutters and opened them again, framing himself in the full blast of cold air. He stared outside, examining some sight in the courtyard below. No one could ever doubt Lavastine ruled here. He did not have the height or bulk of King Henry or of his own cousin Geoffrey, but even standing in his bare feet, dressed only in a linen undershift as a robe against the chill, he had authority, that absolute assurance that all he surveyed lay under his command. Some gray colored his sand-pale hair; no longer a young man, neither was he old in the way of men entering their decline.

Alain wished he could feel so sure of himself, could in the simple act of opening a shutter proclaim his fitness to stand in his ordained place in the world. Aunt Bel had that assurance; so had his foster father, Henri. "Perhaps it's even understandable, if the nobleman is insistent enough. If she becomes his concubine, she'll lose her position as an Eagle. Then, should he tire of her, she would have no recourse except to return to her kin-if they would take her in."

"She has no kin."

"Then it is doubly wise of her to resist such an arrangement. I admire her pragmatism. She is better off in the Eagles." He shut and latched one shutter, leaving a draft of cold air to spill into the room while he called over Terror, Ardent, Fear, and Bliss and leashed them to a ring set into the wall. "But I remain puzzled. Why did she confide in you?"

Alain hesitated. For an instant, he wanted to say, "Because she's a wild creature, like the hounds, and she trusts me," but the notion was so outrageous that he knew he could speak no such thing aloud. "I don't know."

Lavastine had marked the hesitation. "If you have conceived some fondness for the Eagle . . . you understand why nothing must happen, Alain. You of all people must be more careful-"

As he hadn't been when the servingwoman at Lady Al-degund's manor had accosted him. Only the savagery of the hounds had saved him from giving in to base desire! Hadn't he learned anything from that? "I wouldn't-if I'm to marry Lady Tallia-" But this was too much. He sat down heavily on the bench and buried his face in Sorrow's flank. The thick smell of dog drove all impure thoughts out of his mind-or most of them, anyway, though he could not banish the image of Tallia. And why should such thoughts be impure? Wasn't it true that desire came from the Lady and Lord, that They had granted it to humankind so that woman and man could create children between them?

"What wouldn't you do since you're to marry Tallia?" asked Lavastine, sounding more curious than anything.

"She's so holy, so pure. It wouldn't be right if I didn't come to her as...pure as she will come to me."

"A Godly sentiment, Alain, and I am proud of you for it. It is just as well that the Eagle leaves today. If you have conceived a fondness for her, it might prove hard to keep your pledge to your future bride."

It took Alain a moment to sort through this. Then he jerked his head up. The untied hounds swarmed over to him, licking his hands. "Go away!" he said, irritated at their attention. "But I wouldn't-I wouldn't think of-" He stammered to a halt. With the window open, he could see his father's expression clearly and read what it meant: Not that Alain was tempted by the young Eagle, but that Lavastine was.

Was this how Alain had been conceived? By a young man who, seeing a young woman, determined to have her in his bed no matter what she wanted? "Isn't it written down by the church mothers that we must all come cleanly to the marriage bed?" he demanded, horrified to see Lavas-tine in this unflattering light. No word of scandal had ever touched Henri the Merchant.

Lavastine bowed his head and looked away. "So I am justly reminded of my own faults."

"I beg your pardon, Father." How had he come to blurt out such an appalling statement-even if it was true?

But Lavastine only smiled wryly and crossed the chamber to touch Alain's hair as a praying man might touch a reliquary. "Never beg pardon for telling what is only the truth. Be assured I have learned my lesson in such matters. I have learned to confine myself to whores and married women, such as may be approached discreetly."

"Father! But the church mothers enjoin us to-

The count laughed sharply and called Steadfast over to him. She had become more restless of late; most likely she was going into heat. Already the males had begun to grow more irritable than usual.

"I am not that strong, son. We must all learn the measure of our strength. Otherwise we exhaust ourselves striving for that which we can never gain." He tied Steadfast up away from the others and frowned at her, then whistled for Sorrow and Rage. Good Cheer was, as usual, hiding under the bed. "Let the servants in, Alain," he added curtly, motioning toward the door.

"But, Father, what about the Eagle?"

Lavastine was down on his knees now. Grabbing Good Cheer by the forelegs, he dragged her bodily out from her hiding place while she whined and attempted to lick him into leniency. He grunted, heaved her up, and wrestled her over to the wall while she leaned heavily against him, anything to impede his progress. "Cursed stubborn hound." He patted her affectionately on the shoulder. Then he turned round.

"Well, then, boy, we shall keep the Eagle here with us, which is the only practical choice, is it not? She knows the lay of the land by Gent. She has walked in the city and remembers its streets and walls. She traversed this hidden tunnel. What use to us is her knowledge of Gent if she is with King Henry when we attack?" He lifted a hand, forefinger raised as the deacon did when she meant to scold her congregation. "But there will be no-"

"I never even thought of it!"

Lavastine smiled thinly. "Perhaps you did not. Not yet, at any rate."

"Then you must make the same promise!" Alain retorted, still waiting at the door.

Steadfast barked, and all at once all the hounds began yipping and barking. "Hush! Stop that noise, you miserable creatures!" snapped the count, but he was not truly angry with them. He could not be. Just as, Alain saw suddenly, he was not angry at what Alain had said. Having been granted the heir he so long desired and despaired of ever having, he could not bring himself to chastise him. Nor, perhaps, did he even want to, though the demand had been impertinent.

"Very well. She will stay with us...untouched. We march to Gent after the Feast of St. Sormas.

Once we have retaken the city, we will collect Tallia and return home."

Collect Tallia. It made her sound like a chest of gold or a jeweled cup, a valuable treasure held by the king to be given out as a prize. Wasn't that what she was, now that her parents had been disgraced and shorn of their position? But their disgrace did not strip from her the inheritance she received through her mother nor the royal bloodlines that tied her to both the ruling house of Wendar and the princely house that had once ruled Varre.

A servant scratched lightly on the door.

"What if we fail to take Gent?" asked Alain.

Lavastine simply looked at him as if he had uttered words in a language the count did not know.

"They are savages, Alain! We are civilized people. The city of Gent fell because it was unprepared and overwhelmed. The same will not happen to us. Come now. We have spent far too long talking about a common Eagle who is no doubt more useful to us when she flies as is her nature than when she is left bound to a post for us to admire her beauty. Let us get on with our day."

JblLlh had not spoken words in a long time except to respond to taunts or to call down the dogs.

Indeed, it took him a long time-hours, perhaps days-to find the words that would say what he meant them to.

But he struggled, piecing them together. Never let it be said he did not fight until his last breath.

He would not let Bloodheart and the dogs defeat him.

"Bloodheart."

Was that his voice? Rasping and hoarse, he sounded brutish compared to the light, fluid tones of the Eika, who for all their ugly metal-hard bodies had voices as soft as the flutes Bloodheart played.

Bloodheart stirred on his throne, coming to life. "Is this my who addresses me? I thought you had forgotten how to speak! What boon do you ask?"

"You won't kill me, Bloodheart. Nor will your dogs."

Bloodheart didn't reply, only fingered the ax laid across his thighs and the smooth bone flutes tucked into his girdle of glistening silver-and-gold chain links. Perhaps he looked irritated.

"Teach me your language. Let your priest teach me to read the bones, as he does."

"Why?" demanded Bloodheart, but he might have been amused. He might have been angry.

"Why should I? You are only a dog. Why should you want to?"

"Even dogs bark, and gnaw at bones for sport," said Sanglant.

At that, Bloodheart laughed uproariously. He did not answer. Indeed, he left soon after to tour the armories and tanneries of Gent, to take his daily excursion down to the river.

But the next day the priest settled down just outside the limit of Sanglant's chains and began to teach him the language of the Eika, to teach him how to roll and interpret the finely carved bones he carried in his pouch. And every day, lulled by Sanglant's muted voice and intent interest- for what else did the prince have to be interested in?-the priest edged a little closer. Even a dog could be patient.

PART FOUR HEARTS Ill A GLIMPSE BEYOND THE VEIL BECAUSE of the rugged terrain and the lay of the mountains, no roads fit for the king's progress led between the duchy of Avaria and that of Wayland. An Eagle had ridden straight west from the palace at Echstatt along tracks impassable for the heavy wagons that made up the train of the king's entourage. So after several weeks at Echstatt, the court itself moved north along the Old Avarian Road toward the city and biscophric at Wertburg. Although not as well traveled a road as the Hellweg-the Clear Way-that ran through the heartland of Saony and Fesse, the road accommodated king and retinue without too much hardship for the royal party, though they moved slowly. Old fortresses, royal manors, and estates under the rule of convents or monasteries provided lodging and food. Common folk lined the way to watch the king and his entourage ride by. According to Ingo, the king had not ridden this way for some five years, accounting for their enthusiastic welcome. To Hanna, their welcome resembled all the others she had witnessed, just as this land looked much like any other land with hills, vast forest, and the friendly sight of fields and villages, churches and estates. But the hills were steep and high while in Heart's Rest the wilderness gave way to heath; beech and fir dominated in open fields where she was used to a dense canopy of oak and elm and lime; and the village folk spoke in a dialect that was hard for her to understand.

Each day on the king's progress brought new fascinations for Hanna. Heralds rode ahead to shout the news of the king's adventus-his arrival at the next stopping place. A levy of soldiers and servants forged ahead of the main party to clear the road of snow and debris. At the forefront of the main procession rode the king and his noble companions in full glory. After them came the swelling ranks of an army, growing with each day as nobles joined Henry or sent soldiers in their place. The horde of servants followed them, and farther back, wagons rolled, lumbering and jolting over the rutted road, skidding on ice, getting stuck in drifts. A century of Lions marched at the rear.

But of course there were always stragglers, beggars trailing behind, women and men hoping to hire themselves out as laborers. Peddlers, prostitutes, homeless servants, persons with grievances to bring before the king, and anonymous young men hoping to find employment or loot in the aftermath of battle, all of these followed in the track of the king's progress, some joining as others dropped out.

"Is it always like this?" Hanna asked Hathui. Fifteen days ago they had left Echstatt. Now she and the other Eagle pulled up their horses on a rise that looked down to the north over the episcopal city of Wertburg and down to the south over the road that wound away through the stubble of fields and lines of hedges before it lost itself in forest. Riding at the front, they had a good view of the king's train, a long and colorful procession strung across the landscape below. The line of stragglers still emerged from forest. Below them, the king ascended the hill. The hugely pregnant Sapientia rode beside him, mounted on a gentle mare, with Helmut Villam, Sister Rosvita, and Father Hugh in close attendance. At the Wertburg city gates, a large party led by the biscop and the local count had already begun its own procession out to meet the king.

"We'll be in Mainni by the thaw," said Hathui. "There are several royal palaces where we will sit out the floods. It's hard work traveling in the spring. How do you fare, Hanna?"

Hanna considered the question seriously; she knew very well what Hathui was asking. "I fare well enough. There's nothing wrong with Princess Sapientia that wise companions and fields of her own to plow won't cure, as my mother used to say."

"Are you her champion now?"

"It's true she's rash and proud and thoughtless, but from what I hear she lived for a long time in the shadow of her brother, Prince Sanglant-"

"True enough," observed Hathui.

"-and if she has many companions now, I fear it's mostly because they expect King Henry to name her as Heir-not for herself. So it's no wonder she's-well, as my mother would say, if you bring up a child on table scraps, then it will surely gorge to sickness when you finally sit it down to a feast."

"A wise woman, your mother," said Hathui with a grim smile. "But I didn't mean to inquire about the princess. What of Father Hugh?"

"I am of no concern to him," Hanna said at last, but she knew she was blushing. "He pays no attention to me." Why, then, knowing what she did about him, did she sometimes still wish he did?

"If I did not have Liath's testimony, it would be hard for me to believe the things she has accused him of."

"Perhaps he's changed."

Hathui shot her a sharp glance. "Do you think so?"

"He's so...kind and gentle, so soft-spoken. So clever and industrious. You've seen him yourself, laying hands on the sick, giving out alms to the poor. He attends Princess Sapientia faithfully and advises her with care."

"As well he might!"

Hanna had to grin. "If it's a child of his own begetting, then it's no wonder he attends her so closely. But he doesn't seem . . . the same person as he was in Heart's Rest."

"He's with his own people now."

"That's true enough. We were only common folk in Heart's Rest, far beneath his notice."

"Except for Liath."

"Except for Liath," Hanna echoed.

"Did you ever think she might be lying?" asked Hathui casually. Ahead, the biscop's procession had unfurled banners and the bright standards representing the city and the local count. Behind, riders in the king's procession began to sing.

Clouds covered the heavens this day, and it was cold, yet surely no soul could be gloomy observing such pageantry. Hanna turned her face into the breeze and stared, the lick of the wind on her lips. Even in gloves her hands were cold, but she would have been no other place in the world than this one as the king and his party ascended the hill, reaching the crest behind them. Their song carried fitfully on the breeze.

"She's not lying, Hathui. I saw her carried in that day, when she miscarried. I know what he did to her. And he stole her book."

"Some would say the book became his when he bought off her father's debts. She was his slave."

"And many's the man or woman who uses a slave as they see fit, and no one would ever fault them for it. It still doesn't seem right to me. She never welcomed his attentions. Is it right that she be forced, to accept him just because he's a margrave's son and she has no kin to protect her?" Her tone came out more bitter than she intended.

"Some would say it is," remarked Hathui. "You and I would not. But you and I do not rule this kingdom."

There was more Hanna wanted to say, but she was ashamed to say it out loud: Hugh was a selfish, arrogant lord with the faultless manners of a cleric and a voice like that of an angel-but sometimes beautiful flowers are the most poisonous. "Yet we can't help admiring them," she murmured.

"What?" Hathui looked at her side wise, then mercifully turned her horse aside. "Come, here is the king."

They made way, letting the king's standard bearers and then the king himself pass before them, and fell in behind, singing.

King and court celebrated the Feast of St. Herodia at Wertburg, with the biscop of Wertburg presiding. After a week eating from the biscop's table, they continued north for three days to Hammelberg, on the Malnin River, where they sheltered at a monastic estate. From here they cut across overland by the Helfenstene Way, a journey of four days, until they rejoined the Malnin Road at Aschfenstene. Turning northwest, they followed the river for five days until they reached the city of Mainni, where the Brixian tongue of the kingdom of Salia bordered the duchy of Ar-conia and lapped up against the duchy of Fesse. Once Biscop Antonia had presided over Mainni. Now, upon arriving, King Henry installed Sister Odila, a relative of the local count, as biscop.

Their arrival in the city coincided with the feast day celebrating the conversion of St. Thais. She had been a prostitute before embracing the God of Unities and walling herself up in a cell-from which she did not emerge for ten years, and then only to die. Hanna heard more than one cleric comment that Henry had offered the biscophric first to Sister Rosvita, but that the cleric had remarked that she was not yet ready to wall herself up when there were many more places she needed to visit for her History. She had suggested Sister Odila as a suitable candidate, and Henry had taken her advice in this as in so many other things. The appointment, of course, was contingent on the approval of the skopos, though as yet they had no news from Darre about the case brought against Antonia.

"I wonder how Wolfhere fares," Hanna asked Hathui many nights later after the feast celebrating the miracle of St. Rose a'lee; the saint, a limner in a humble village outside the city of Darre, had painted a set of murals depicting the life of the blessed Daisan that had so pleased the Lord and Lady that a holy light had shone on the images ever after.

"Wolfhere fares well enough, I have found." Hathui heaped the dwindling winter fodder in the biscop's stables into a plush heap, over which she threw her cloak, bundling herself up in her blanket.

With so many animals stabled below, the loft was a warm, if pungent, resting place. "I wonder how Liath fares. It's almost the end of the year and we've had no word from Count Lavastine."

"You don't think the count will refuse to march on Gent?"

"I think it unlikely. The question is whether the king will be able to meet him there." Hathui settled herself comfortably in the straw. "From Mainni, we can follow the road north to Gent-or the road south to Wayland."

"Why would the king want to go to Wayland?"

"Answer that yourself, Hanna!"

"Duke Conrad's soldiers turned me back from the Julier Pass. Is that a grave enough offense that the king would march against the duke?"

"Picking a fight-without the king's permission-with the Queen and King of Karrone? Remember, the King of Kar-rone is Henry's younger brother. And Duke Conrad also wears the golden torque that marks him as born of the royal line. His great-grandfather was the younger brother of the first Henry."

"Do you think he means to rebel, as Sabella did? Surely any claim he might have to the throne isn't nearly as strong as hers."

"I don't know what the noble folk intend. Their concerns are different from those I grew up with.

I hope," she added, "that King Henry finds a good margrave for Eastfall, a woman or man who can stop the Quman raids and protect the freeholders. A person who is not concerned with the intrigues of the court."

"Aren't all the nobles concerned with the intrigues of the court?"

Hathui only grinned. "I haven't asked them all. Nor would they answer me if I did. Hush now, chatterer. I want to sleep."

In the morning a messenger arrived from Count Lavas-tine-a messenger who was not Liath.

Sapientia reclined on a couch while her attendants fluttered around her and her new physician-on loan from Margrave Judith and newly arrived-tested her pulse by means of pressing two fingers to her skin just under her jawline. Hanna had observed that the princess liked commotion, as if the amount of talking and movement eddying around her reflected her importance. Behind the couch Hugh paced, more like a caged animal than an amiable and wise courtier. He held Liath's book tucked under his arm. In the two and a half months since the disaster at Augensburg, Hanna had rarely seen him without the book in his hands; if not there, then he stowed it in a small locked chest which a servant carried.

"Why did she not return?" he demanded of no one in particular. Looking up, he saw Hanna.

Hanna froze. She could not bring herself to move, not knowing whether to bask in his notice or fear it.

Sapientia yawned as she rubbed a hand reflexively over her huge abdomen. "Really, Father Hugh, I prefer my Hanna. Her voice is so very calming. The other one was too skittish. She serves Gent better riding with Count Lavastine than with us."

Hugh frowned at Hanna a moment longer. Then, with a palpable effort, he turned his attention to the princess. "Wise advice to your own counselor, Your Highness," he said in an altered tone.

Sapientia smiled, looking pleased. "More fruitful to wonder if we will ride south to Wayland and Duke Conrad, or north to meet Lavastine at Gent. And what is keeping my dear Theophanu? Perhaps she has turned nun at St. Valeria Convent." Her favorites, surrounding her, giggled. Hugh did not laugh, but when the gossip turned to the latest news-which was none-about Duke Conrad, he joined in with his usual elegance of manner, gently chiding those who were mean-spirited and encouraging those who supposed King Henry would find a peaceful solution to any misunderstanding which might arise.

"It is true," he remarked, "that force is sometimes necessary to win what is rightfully yours, but God also gave us equal parts of eloquence and cunning which we rightly point to as the mark of the wise counselor. We are better off hoarding our substance in order to fight off the incursions of the Quman and the Eika than wasting it among ourselves."

With this judgment King Henry evidently agreed. The court did not move south toward Wayland.

But as the early spring rains began and the rivers swelled with the thaw, his advisers deemed the journey north toward Gent as yet too difficult to attempt. While they waited for the roads to open, they visited the small royal estates that lay in a wide ring-each about three days' ride from the last-around Mainni. The court celebrated Mariansmass and the new year at Salfurt, fasted for Holy Week at Alsheim, and moved north to celebrate the feasts of St. Eirik and St. Barbara at Ebshausen. On the road from Ebshausen to the palace at Thersa, Sapientia felt her first birth pangs.

"But Thersa is so comfortable," she complained, looking both disgruntled and frightened when the king declared that they would go instead to the nearby convent of St. Hippolyte for the lying-in. "I want to go to Thersa!"

"No," said Henry with that look that any observant soul would know at once meant he could not be swayed. "The prayers of the holy sisters will aid you."

"But they can pray for me wherever I am!"

Hugh took Sapientia's hand in his and faced the king. "Your Majesty, it is true that the palace at Thersa is a grander place by far, more fitting for a royal lying-in-

"No! The matter is settled!"

Sapientia began to snivel, gripping her belly-and the king seemed ready to lose his temper. Hanna moved forward and leaned to whisper in Sapientia's ear. "Your Highness. What matters it what bed you lie in as long as God favor you? The prayers of the holy nuns will strengthen you, and your obedience now will give you favor in your father's eyes."

Sapientia's sniveling ceased and, once a birth pang had passed, she grasped the king's hands in her own. "Of course you are right, Father. We will go to St. Hippolyte. With a patron saint like Hippolyte, the child is sure to grow strong and large and of stout courage, suitable for a soldier."

Henry brightened noticeably and, for the rest of the damp ride to the convent, fussed over his daughter, who put up a brave face as her pains worsened.

Sapientia was taken inside the walls of the convent with only two attendants and Sister Rosvita to act as witnesses, as well as the physician who, being a eunuch, was considered as good as a woman.

Everyone else waited in the hall, what remained of an old palace from the time of Taillefer, now under the management of the convent sisters. Henry paced. Hugh sat in a corner and idly leafed through the book.

"She's small in the hips," said Hanna nervously, remembering births attended by her mother. Not all had happy outcomes.

"Look here." Hathui examined the carvings that ran along the beams in the hall. Blackened with layers of soot, cracked from the weight of years of damp and dryness, they depicted the trials of St.

Hippolyte whose strength and martial courage had brought the Holy Word of God to the heathen tribes who had lived in these woodlands a hundred years before. "A good omen indeed for the child who will prove Sapientia's fitness to rule and also ride as captain of the Dragons when he grows up."

Hanna surveyed the old hall. Servants swept moldering rushes out the door. Ash heaped the two hearths and had to be carried away by the bucket load before a fresh fire could be started. Even with all the people packing into the hall, the cold numbed her. At a time like this, the stables provided better shelter. She could still hear, like an echo, the soft cries of the sister cellarer of the convent bemoaning the loss of so many scant provisions-it took a vast amount of food and drink to satisfy the king and his company.

"Why didn't the king want Princess Sapientia brought to bed at Thersa? Everyone is saying that Thersa is a grander place by far, and the steward there more able to supply the court."

"Look here." Hathui took a few steps away from the younger clerics who, clustered nearby, were muttering among themselves. She wet her fingers and reached up to brush away grime and dust from one carving. Deep in the wood a scene unfolded down the length of the old beam. A figure draped in robes advanced, spear in one hand, the other raised, palm out, to confront the tribespeople retreating before her: a stylized flame burned just beyond her hand. Behind her walked many grotesque creatures, obviously not of human kin, but it wasn't clear whether they stalked the saint or trod in her holy footsteps, seeking her blessing.

As the clerics moved away, Hathui dropped her voice. "It's better not to speak out loud of these matters. Henry's bastard son Sanglant was born at Thersa. So Wolfhere told me. The elvish woman who was the prince's mother was so sick after the birth that some feared she would die. The court couldn't move for two months, but when she did rise at last from her bed, she walked away never to be seen again. They say she vanished from this earth completely."

"But where could she have gone?" demanded Hanna. "Where else is there to go, for a creature such as that? To the island of Alba?"

"It's only what I heard. That doesn't mean it's true."

"That doesn't mean it's not true," replied Hanna thoughtfully, examining the next carving. The same figure-she recognized the robes and the mark of fire before the saint's hand-approached an archway out of which emerged a man-sized creature with a circle of stylized feathers behind it that appeared to be wings; it also wore a belt of skulls. Following to the next scene, Hanna saw the same archway, made small now, standing among a circle of standing stones which were, apparently, in the act of falling to the ground, their power banished by the saint's holy courage.

"How was St. Hippolyte martyred?" Hanna asked.

Hathui smiled grimly. "Crushed by rock, as you see here." She indicated the last carving. They stood now at the far end of the hall. At the other end, fire flared, and Villam at last entreated Henry to sit down and take some wine.

The princess labored long into the night. At dawn on the next day, the Feast of St. Sormas, thirteenth day of the month of Avril, she bore a healthy girl child.

And there was great rejoicing.

Henry called Hugh before him. "You have proved yourself a good adviser to my daughter," he said, presenting him with a fine gold cup out of his treasury. "I have hopes now for her ability to reign after me.""God has blessed your house and bloodline, Your Majesty," replied Hugh, and though the compliments came many over the rest of the day, by no act or word did he display any unseemly pride in an event he had helped bring about. Nor did he appear conscious of the new status this safe birth brought him.

That evening, at the urging of Sister Rosvita, he read aloud from the Vita of St. Radegundis, the happy tale- somewhat startling to find in a saint's life-of how the saintly young woman, so determined in her vow to remain chaste and thus closer to heavenly purity, was overcome by the great nobility of Emperor Taillefer. Wooing her, he overcame her reluctance. Her love for his great virtues and imperial honor melted her heart, and they were married as soon as she came of age.

"It is time to think of marriage for Sapientia," said Henry when the reading was finished. "The king of Salia has many sons."

"It might be well," suggested Villam, "to send Princess Sapientia to Eastfall once she has regained her strength. Then she would gain some experience in ruling."

"It is better to keep her beside me as we travel," said Henry in the tone which meant he intended no argument to sway him. "But Eastfall needs a margrave. Perhaps I should send Theophanu to Eastfall..." With the king musing in this way, the happy feast passed swiftly. For the first time in months, for the first time, really, since he had heard the terrible news of Sanglant's death, Henry looked cheerful.

The court feasted for three days, for it took a feast of such magnificence to properly thank God for Their blessings upon the royal house. Sapientia was as yet too weak to appear, and in any case it was traditional for a woman to lie abed for a week in seclusion before receiving visitors. That way she might not be contaminated by any taint brought from the outside or any unholy thoughts at this blessed time.

Hanna was astounded yet again at the sheer amount of food and drink the court consumed. She could only imagine what her mother would say, but then, her mother might well say that as the king prospers, so does the kingdom.

Ai, Lady, at this time last year she and Liath had just left Heart's Rest behind, riding out with Wolfhere, Hathui, and poor brave Manfred. She touched her Eagle's badge. Where was Liath now?

JLJLA. IJHL hunkered down, arms hooked around her knees. The ground was too wet to sit on, and everything was damp. Mud layered wagon wheels and dropped in clumps from the undersides when they jolted over the roads. Every branch scattered moisture on any fool sorry enough to touch it.

The grass wept water, and the trees dripped all day even when it wasn't raining.

Though they had waited until the first day of the month of Sormas to leave, it was still a wet time to be marching to war. But that deterred no one-not with such a prize within reach.

"Can you do it?" whispered Alain. He kept a cautious three steps back from her. Sorrow and Rage sat panting a stone's throw away.

She did not reply. That the hounds would still not come near her only made her wonder if they sensed the awful power trapped inside her. Wood burns. She shuddered. Would she ever learn to control it? She had to try.

"We don't have much time," he said. "They'll come looking for me soon."

"Hush." She lifted a hand, and he shuffled another step back. Behind, the hounds whined. In wood lies the propensity to burn, the memory of flame. Perhaps, as Democrita said, tiny indivisible building blocks, hooked and barbed so that they could fasten together, made up all things in the universe; in wood some of these must be formed of the element of fire. If she could only reach through the window of fire and call fire to them, they would remember flame-And burn.

Wood ignited with a roar. Fire shot upward to lick the branches of the nearest tree. Liath stumbled away from the searing heat. The hounds yelped and slunk backward, growling.

"Lord Above!" swore Alain. He took another step away from her and drew the sign of the Circle at his breast-as if for protection.

Falling to one knee, Liath stared at the fire. Gouts of flame boiled up into the sky. Branches hissed. Grass within the ring of penetrating heat sizzled and blackened. Only when it was this wet dared she attempt to call fire; only when it was this wet was it safe to attempt an act whose consequences she could not control.

A light rain began to fall. Alain pulled his hood up over his head and took a hesitant step toward her. Liath stared into fire and in her mind twisted the leaping flames into an archway that would let her see into another part of the world.

"Hanna," she whispered. There. The sight was more of a whisper than a scene unfolding before her. Hanna stands beside Hathui; all else is shadow. But Liath could see by the set of Hanna's shoulders, the sudden grin she flashed at a comment made by the older Eagle, that she was well. Hugh hadn't harmed her.

Reaching inside her cloak, she drew out the gold feather. It glinted fire, bright sparks, a reflection of the blaze. Alain murmured an oath. The hounds growled.

"Like to like," she murmured. "Let this be a link between us, old one."

As a curtain draws aside, revealing the chamber behind, so the fire's roar without abating shifted and changed in pitch. A low rumble like distant thunder shivered around her. The veil parted and within it, beyond it, she saw the Aoi sorcerer.

Startled, he looks up. Flax half twisted into rope dangles from his hand. "What is this?" he asks. "You are the one I have seen before."

She sees through the fire burning before her, which is fed by wood, but sees also through fire burning an upright pillar of stone. This mystery attracts her notice. She must speak, even if it might attract those who are looking for her. But her first words are not those she had intended.

"How do you make the stone burn?" she demands.

"Rashly spoken," he replies. With that, he begins to roll flax into rope against his thigh.

But he appears to be thinking. He regards her unsmiling through the veil of fire, but he is not unfriendly. "You are of the human kin," he says. "How have you come here? Yet I see my gift reached you."

She grasps the gold feather tightly, mirror to those trimming his leather gauntlets. "You have touched that which I have touched. I do not know how to read these omens."

"I beg you," she says. "I need help. I made fire-"

"Made it?" His smile is brief and sharp. "Fire exists in most things. It is not made."

"No, no." She speaks quickly because she does not know how long she has before she and Alain are interrupted, and this man- no man- this Aoi sorcerer is the only creature she can ask. "I called it. It's as if the element of fire lies quiescent within the wood, and remembers its power suddenly and comes to life."

"Fire is never quiescent. Fire rests within most objects, in some more deeply than in others."

"Then in stone it rests more deeply than I can touch. Why can that stone burn?"

He pauses, flax rope draped over his thigh. "Why do you ask questions, child?"

"Because I need answers, old one. I need a teacher."

He lifts the rope and twirls it through his fingers. The white shells on his waist-length cloak clack together as softly as the whisper of leaves on the forest floor. He turns, glancing once behind him, then back at her. "Are you asking me to teach you?"

"Who else will teach me? Will you?" The fire does not burn more fiercely than the hope which leaps up in her heart.

He considers. Shells, stones, and beads wink and dazzle in the firelight. He wears a round jade spool in each ear. His hair, bound simply into a topknot, is as black as the veil of night, and he has no beard. His dark eyes regard her, unblinking. "Find me, and I will."

At first she cannot find her voice, as if it has been torn from her. Then, struggling, panicking, she gasps out words. "How do I find you?"

He lifts a hand, displaying the rope, gesturing toward the burning stone. "Step through.

The gateway already exists."

She rises, takes a step forward, but the heat is too strong. She can't move any closer.

"I can't," she says, half weeping. "I can't. How do I get there?"

"One strand of flax has no strength." He twines a single unwound thread of flax around a finger. Straining, he snaps it through. Then he wraps the finished rope around a hand. "Twined together, they make a strong rope. But it takes time to make rope, just as it takes time to twine strands of knowledge together to make wisdom."

Abruptly he stands, glancing around as if he has heard something. "They are coming."

In that instant she sees beyond him down a path which snakes oddly through the trees. A short procession winds its way along the path, rather like King Henry's progress but in smaller numbers. Bright colors so overwhelm her sight that she can make no sense of what walks there.

One thing she sees: a round standard carried on a pole, a circular sheet of gold trimmed with iridescent green plumes as broad across as a man's arms outstretched. It spins, like a turning wheel. Its brilliance staggers her.

"You must go," says the sorcerer firmly. He licks a finger and reaches forward with it into fire as though to douse a wick. Moisture sizzles and snaps, popping into her face. She jerks back, blinks, then with a gasp leans forward again. But the veil has closed.

She saw nothing but raging fire and the mist of water rising as steam into the cool spring air.

"Liath!" A hand closed on her elbow, but it was only Alain, kneeling beside her. "I thought you were going to walk right into the fire."

She licked her finger, reached out toward the fire as if to extinguish it-but nothing happened. "If only I could have."

"Now, there," he began, meaning to soothe her while behind him the hounds growled at the flames.

She shook out of his grasp and stepped back. The skin on her face felt baked; when she touched it, it smarted. "I saw the Aoi sorcerer. He said he'd teach me, if I could find a way to get to where he is."

He glanced at the fire suspiciously. "Can you trust a Lost One? They don't even believe in the God of Unities!"

"Maybe that's why," she said slowly, trying to understand it herself. "I'm a curiosity to him, that's all. He doesn't want anything from me-unlike the others."

"But why can you see him through fire?"

"I don't know."

"It is a mystery, like my dreams," he agreed, mercifully letting the unanswerable question drop.

He raised a hand in front of his face, absorbing some of the heat. "How it burns!" he exclaimed, and she hung her head, ashamed, thinking he would realize what a monstrous thing she had done and be repelled by her now that he knew what she was: sorcerer's child, untrained, ignorant, and uncontrollable. "Only think of what you could do with such fire!"

"Haven't I already done enough?" she asked bitterly, thinking of the Lions she had killed.

"We are none of us without sin," he pointed out. "But if you could learn to do something useful with it . . ."

"Call it down on the Eika," she replied caustically. "Burn Gent and all the poor dead bodies rotting there!"

"Nay, don't say that! If you could only scare them with it, enough to make them run-"

"Ai, Alain! You've fought the Eika. Fire won't scare them."

"And there are slaves in the city, or so it has been reported. If the city burned, they would burn, too." He frowned, then looked at her. "We must tell my father."

"No!" This she had no doubts about. "If the king knew I had burned down the palace at Augensburg, if the biscops knew, what do you think they'd do with me?"

Troubled, he busied himself with flicking ashy flakes of wood off his cloak. "They'd condemn you as a maleficus and send you to stand trial before the skopos," he said reluctantly. "But / would speak up for you! trust you."

"They'd only accuse me of binding you with charms. Nay, they'd never trust a maleficus who can call fire. And why should they believe I can't control it? Only that I don't want to-or that I'm more dangerous for being flawed."

"You can't control it?" He glanced nervously toward the raging fire.

"I can't even put it out," she said with disgust. "I can only make it light."

"But I must tell my father, Liath. He won't condemn you. He has too much on his own conscience to cast stones at others."

"But he might order me to call fire onto Gent, wouldn't he? If he did, and if I could do it, how many innocent slaves will die in the conflagration?"

He hesitated. By his expression he clearly feared she was right, that Count Lavastine would sacrifice a few slaves, even if they had once been honest freeholders, for the sake of taking Gent. For the sake of getting a noble bride for his heir.

Out of mist and rain and steam, they heard a shout. "They've discovered I'm gone," Alain said.

"You cut around the back. Then they won't know you've been gone. If they find this fire, they won't associate it with you."

"Yes, my lord." She was not sure whether to be grateful or amused by his high-handedness. He had nothing of the nobleman's arrogance but, like Da, he had an inexplicable dignity about him that made it impossible to do anything but respect him.

Darting forward, he grabbed a brand in each hand out of the fire and jumped back. "No use letting the poor soldiers shiver in this rain. We can start other fires with this. Go on!"

"How will you explain that?" she demanded, but he only smiled, mocking himself more than her.

"I am the count's heir. No one will question me except my father, and there's no reason he need ever hear about it. Now go on. I will say nothing of what I've seen today." He dashed off into the woods in the direction of the shouting. The hounds loped behind him.

She lingered by the fire, but she knew that if she looked within it now, no veil would part, no gateway would open. With a sigh, she started by a roundabout way back to camp. Ai, Lady. Her knee was sopping wet; the baggy cloth of her leggings alternately stuck to her skin and, as she walked, peeled off only to slap back again, cold and slimy.

But such discomfort mattered little against the offer the Aoi sorcerer had made to her: "Find me."

ROSVITA thought she recognized the book Father Hugh now carried with him. But he had such an elegant way of keeping it close against him or tucked away in the carved chest that one of his servants carried along behind him, of closing it softly, as if without thinking, or laying his hand over the binding to half conceal it, that she could never get a good look. She wasn't quite sure that it was, in fact, the same book she had seen Liath carrying last autumn on the very day Princess Sapientia had returned to the king's progress.

Rosvita hated being curious, but she had come to accept the fault and, perhaps, embrace it a little too heartily.

After seven days, the infant girl was anointed with holy water and perfume and given the name suggested by her father: Hippolyte, after the blessed saint. A robust child, she wailed heartily, indignant at the cold touch of water on her skin, and flushed a bright red from head to toe. Sapientia left seclusion and pleaded with Henry to let the court travel the four days to Thersa, whose accommodations were far more pleasant than these.

King Henry's good humor could hardly be improved upon. But Rosvita had observed that a man or woman who held their own child's child felt a certain triumph, as at a victory over the fragility of life on this mortal earth. Without argument, he relented. The entire court bundled itself and its possessions up yet again and headed off. God were gracious: The weather for the short journey was mild and sunny. At Thersa they settled in for a three-week stay so that the new mother and child could gain strength before continuing north to Gent.

"Perhaps it is time to lay his memory to rest," said Henry in a low voice one evening, and Rosvita merely murmured encouragement.

So it was arranged. A small party rode out the next morning, consisting of King Henry, Helmut Villam, Rosvita and three clerics, Father Hugh, and a company of Lions with an Eagle in attendance. A track led through greening fields to a village whose residents hurried to greet them. Father Hugh passed out sceattas to the householders; King Henry blessed the little children, held up for him by their mothers and fathers so he could set a hand on each dirty head. A little-used path led to a stream's edge. Here, clumps of grass waved in the rush of high water. The steep banks had overflowed slightly, but only the Lions got wet; the ford proved passable for the riders.

The ruins lay in a jumbled heap along the slope of land before them, crowned by a ring of standing stones. Once, buildings had stood here. Had they been built by the same people who raised the circle of stones, or was this a later fortress, built here to guard-or guard against-the influence of the crown of stones? With the nearby stream and cultivatable land, it made a good homestead, as the persistence of the villagers showed: Few people would willingly live within sight of a ring of stones unless they had a compelling reason to remain there.

Henry dismounted and, with Villam beside him, made his way up through the ruins alone.

"Now there's two men still mourning the loss of sons," said Brother Fortunatus, looking around the scene with interest. "Is this where the Aoi woman vanished?"

"Up in the ring of stones, I should think," said Sister Amabilia. "And poor Villam lost his son in a ring of stones."

"He did?" demanded Brother Constantine. "I never heard that story."

"That was before you came to us," said Amabilia sweetly, never loath to remind the solemn young man that he was not only young but the son of a Varren lady sympathetic to Sabella. "Young Berthold was a fine young man, a true scholar, I think, though it's a shame he was being kept out of the church so that he could be married."

"But what happened to him?"

Brother Fortunatus wheeled around, excited by the prospect of gossip. "He took a group of his retainers up to explore the ring of stones above the monastery of Hersfeld . . ." He paused, relishing Constantine's wide-eyed stare, and dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper. ". . . and they were never seen again."

"Hush!" said Rosvita, surprised at her own snappishness. "Berthold was a good boy. It isn't right to make a game of his loss and his father's grief. Come now." She saw Hugh seat himself on an old wall somewhat away from everyone else and open his book. "You may look around, as you wish. Brother Constantine, you may wish to discover if there are any Dariyan inscriptions on the stones and whether you can read them. Do not approach the king unless he requests your company." Together with Villam, the king had vanished into the circle of stones, a half dozen Lions and his favorite Eagle hard on his heels.

"Go on." They scattered like bees out to search for honey. Rosvita composed herself, then strolled casually across the ruins, picking her way over fallen stone and mounds of earth, until she reached Hugh.

"Father Hugh." She greeted him as she seated herself on a smooth stretch of wall. "You must be pleased at your mother's loyalty, sending her physician so far away from her lands in order to attend Princess Sapientia."

As he turned to smile at her, he gently closed the book; she gained only a glimpse of a bold hand scrawled in uneven columns down the page. "Indeed, Sister. But I believe my mother intends to return to the king's progress as soon as she has completed her business in Austra."

"Ah, yes, her marriage. Have you had any recent news?" Since any recent news would have spread to her clerics the instant it came in, this was pure gambit, and she knew it. Perhaps he.did as well, but he was hard for her to read, never being anything less than polite and well-mannered.

"None, alas. But perhaps," and now he smiled with a sudden and winning shrewdness, "Brother Fortunatus has heard that which we are not yet privy to."

That made her laugh. Hugh had much the look of his father about him. The Alban slave Margrave Judith kept as concubine had still been a fixture at court when Rosvita arrived in the last years of King Arnulf. No young woman, even one pledged to the church, could have failed to notice him, although upon closer examination he had proved to be stupid and vain. But in the end he had died in a hunting accident and the boy child who had come some years previously of this begetting had been given to the church.

Hugh did not have the sheer breathtaking beauty of his father, but he was handsome enough that it was no wonder Sapientia had seduced him. If, indeed, the seduction had been one-sided, which Rosvita doubted. For all his arrogance, Hugh had always been noted as a dutiful son to his mother; by becoming Sapientia's favorite and adviser, he enhanced his mother's strength among the great princes of the realm.

"It is a fine day, is it not, Father Hugh?" She lifted her face to the sun.

"I am only sorry the king should find sadness on such a favored day." He indicated the ring of stones above. Henry and Villam could be seen moving slowly among the stones. Henry had an old rag pressed to his face, dabbing now and again at his eyes.

"He must lay the prince to rest in his own heart," she said, forgetting her own purpose for a moment, "before the prince can go to his rest above." She gestured toward the sky.

"Can he?" asked Hugh suddenly. "He is half of elvish kin, and it is said they wander as dark shades on this earth after they die."

"Only God can answer that question. You and Sanglant were of an age, weren't you?"

"Oh, yes," he said, the words clipped short.

"But you attended the king's schola, and he did not."

Hugh looked away, up toward the stones. He was tall, though not as tall as Sanglant had been, and fair-haired where Sanglant had been dark. As a churchman he went beardless, and in this way he might be said to resemble the dead prince; in all other ways they were utterly unlike. Indeed, Rosvita knew very well that Sanglant had been a favorite at court in his youth; Hugh, while tolerated, envied, and sometimes grudgingly admired, had never inspired liking-not until now. "There is no virtue in speaking unkindly of the dead," he said at last. His hand shifted on the book he held, bringing it back to her notice.

"True words, Father Hugh," she said, seeing her opening. "What book is that you carry?"

He blinked. Then he glanced at the book, tucked his fingers more tightly around its cracked leather binding, and returned his gaze to her. "It is a book I have been studying for some time."

"How curious. I could swear that I saw that book before Princess Sapientia returned to the king's progress. Before you came back to us with her. Yes." She pretended to consider, then carefully looked away, surveying the ruins and the fine view of trees and stream and distant village as if the book was of only passing interest. After a while of basking in pleasant silence in the spring sun, as if she had just that instant recalled their conversation, she turned back to him. "I must be mistaken. I saw a book like to this in the possession of one of the Eagles. What was her name? These Eagles all run one into the next."

He raised his eyes to look at her but said nothing. She found a cluster of white flowers growing out from a crevice within the stones that was filled in with dirt. Plucking them, she pressed the rustic bouquet to her nose.

"Liath," he said finally, so baldly that she was startled, and showed it.

"Ah, yes, Liath," she managed, lowering the flowers. "A curious name, Arethousan in origin, I believe." He did not reply. "Didn't you serve as frater in the north, Father Hugh?"

"I did indeed, in that region called Heart's Rest, just south of the emporia of Freelas."

"Now there is a strange coincidence. The Eagle, Liath, and her comrade, Hanna-who is now Sapientia's Eagle- both came from Heart's Rest."

"That is where you come from as well, is it not, Sister?"

"So it is."

"You are the second child of Count Harl, I believe."

"Of course you would be acquainted with my father and family, if you resided there."

"I have met them," he said with a hint of condescension-something he normally never showed toward her, the favored cleric among Henry's intimate advisers, his elder in the church, and a woman.

"Did you bring the two young women to the notice of the King's Eagles, then? It was a generous act."

His pleasant expression did not waver--by much-but a certain hard glint came into his eyes. "I did not. I had nothing to do with that."

Had lightning struck, she could not have been more surprised by revelation. The memory of their visit to Quedlin-hame last autumn jolted her so hard she lost her grip on the flowers, and they fell to scatter over her robe, the stones, and the soil.

Ivar, talking to Liath in the dark sanctuary of a back room in the convent library. Liath had said, "I love another man." And that had made Ivar angry. Whose name had he spoken?

"Hugh."

Liath had not denied it, only said that he was dead. Now, with Hugh regarding her as innocently as a dove, she was angry with herself for not questioning Ivar closely about the incident.

"I am confused, then, and I beg your pardon, Father Hugh," she said at last. "I had thought you must have known the young women, as well as my brother, Ivar, when you were in Heart's Rest. Thus my curiosity about the book, which resembles one I saw Liath carrying."

He toyed with the book, tucked it more firmly against his thigh, and sighed deeply as at an unpalatable decision. "She stole it from me. But now, as you see, I have gotten it back."

"Stole it from you!" That she had suspected as much- that Liath had stolen the book from somewhere-did not make the fact any more pleasant to hear. "How did she steal it? Why?"

He closed his eyes a moment. It was difficult for Rosvita to imagine what thoughts might be going through his mind. Like the book, like a veil drawn to hide the chamber behind, he was closed against her.

He had completely given up abbot's robes and now dressed like any fine lord in embroidered tunic, a short cloak with a gold brooch, silver-banded leggings, and a sword; one knew he was a churchman only by his lack of beard and his eloquent speech.

"I do not speak easily of this," he said finally. "It pains me deeply. The young woman's father died in severe debt. I paid it off because it was the charitable thing to do, as you can imagine, being a Godly churchwoman yourself, Sister. By that price, she became my slave. She had no kin and thus, really, no prospects, so I kept her by me to protect her."

"Indeed," murmured Rosvita, thinking of Ivar's protestations of love. Of course a count's son could never marry a kinless girl who was also another man's slave! He should never even have considered it. "She is a beautiful girl, many have noticed that, and has an awkward smattering of education. Enough to attract the wrong kind of notice."

"Indeed. That she repaid me in this manner . . ." Here he broke off.

"How then did she come into the Eagles?"

He hesitated, clearly reluctant to go on.

"Wolfhere," she said, and knew she had made a hit when his lips tightened perceptibly.

"Wolfhere," he agreed. "He took what was not his to have."

"But only free women and men may enter into the Eagles."

Elegant, confident Hugh looked, for an instant, like a man stricken with a debilitating sorrow. "My hand was forced."

"Why do you not tell the king? Surely he will listen to your grievance?"

"I will not accuse a man if he is not beside me to answer in his turn," said Hugh reasonably. "Then I would be taking the same advantage of Wolfhere that he took of me, in a sense, when he claimed the young woman in question for the king's service without letting the king judge the matter for himself. Nor do I wish to be seen as one who takes unseemly advantage of my-" He smiled with that same shrewd glint. "Let us be blunt, Sister Rosvita. Of my intimate association with Princess Sapientia."

"No one would fault you if you brought the matter before the king now. It is generally agreed that your wise counsel has improved her disposition."

But he merely bowed his head modestly. "I would fault myself."

THEY gathered an army and, helpless, he watched them do so. By the angle of light that shone through the cathedral windows and the sullen warmth that crept in through the vast stone walls during the day when the doors were thrown open to admit sunlight, he guessed that spring had come at last. With the spring thaw running low, the winds would give the Eika good sailing out of the north.

From the north they came, droves of them, collecting at the foot of Bloodheart's throne like so much flotsam cast up by the tide.

That day, when the rebellious son returned, he knew he had to act. When even rebellious sons return to the fold, it means great movements are afoot, even so great as to attract back those who once were condemned to leave. Even the priest, crouching just out of range of Sanglant's chains while he taught him to read the bones, turned to stare at the unexpected sight of the young Eika princeling who wore a wooden Circle around his neck.

"Why have you come back?" roared Bloodheart in the human tongue, confronting the slender Eika who stood, proud and unflinching, before him.

"I bring eight ships," said the son, gesturing to certain Eika who stood behind him, representative, perhaps, of soldiers who remained outside. There were by now in Gent too many Eika to all crowd into the cathedral. He could smell them; their metallic scent permeated the air. "These two, from Hakonin, these two, from Skanin, and this one, from Valdarnin. Three more sailed with me from Rikin. These will swell the number of your army."

"Why should I take you in, when it was my voice and my command which sent you home without honor?"

Sanglant measured the distance between himself and the priest, then patted the rags draped over him that had once been clothing. He slid a hand under cloth and pulled out the brass Eagle's badge. With a flick of the wrist, he tossed it at one of his dogs, to his left. The sudden growling movement of two dogs leaping to growl over the badge startled the priest enough that he jumped sideways.

With that jump, the priest came for an instant within reach of Sanglant.

He sprang. As his hand closed on the Eika priest's bony arm, he jerked the knife out from under his tunic. Yanking the priest around hard, he dropped his grip on the creature's arm and snatched the little wooden chest out of the crook of its elbow.

Then he leaped back into the protection of his dogs- barking and raging wildly now-as a roar of fury broke from Bloodheart's throat and all the Eika in the hall began shrieking and howling at once, their dogs echoing them until Sanglant was deafened. He had only moments to act before he would be overwhelmed.

There was no time for finesse, but then, there rarely was in a pitched fight.

He hacked violently at the hasp of the chest. The knife, little used, still bore a good edge. The hasp snapped and wood splintered as he struck down and again, with all his strength, then wrenched the lid open and dumped the contents out on the floor.

He didn't know what an Eika heart would look like. But where else would Bloodheart keep his heart if not close by him? Why else would the priest carry a chest night and day, never letting it leave his side?

But all that spilled onto the floor was a bundle of down feathers and a white hairless creature smaller than his hand. With rudimentary ears and eyes, a nub of a tail, and four limbs, it looked like the premature spawn of an unholy mother, a ghastly colorless thing without defined features and with no recognizable parentage. It fell with a sickening plop onto the flagstone floor and lay there, limp, unmoving.

Dead.

Never trust the appearance of death.

He raised his knife.

A spear haft hit him broadside and then, as he spun, he felt a second spear pierce him in the back, just below the ribs. He jerked forward, brought the knife down as his dogs swarmed forward to attack his attackers. But his vision had gone awry; the world spun and staggered before him.

A shift of sunlight spilled over the stone floor, its golden touch illuminating the tiny corpse. With a shudder, the embryonic creature stirred, curled.

Came alive.

It darted away just as the point of his knife stabbed and skidded on the stone floor where it had lain.

Bloodheart screamed in rage.

The spear point was yanked out of his flesh and he staggered forward to keep himself upright; his neck snapped back when, at the limit of his chains, the iron slave collar brought him up short. The priest yipped wildly, scurrying after the slender dead-white creature now scrambling away between the feet of the Eika soldiers who had dashed forward to mob him.

Bloodheart, still roaring, his own dogs at his heels, slapped his howling soldiers aside as he shoved his way through. Blood streamed down Sanglant's back, coursing over his buttocks and down his thighs. He faltered and fell to his knees, knife raised before him.

"Dog! Son of dogs! The heart you seek with that blow lies far away from here, hidden among the stones of Rikin fjall. For this sacrilege you will pay the price in blood."

Bloodheart struck, but Sanglant was faster. He jumped up and sank the knife into the Eika chieftain's shoulder and hung there as two packs of dogs swarmed forward. At once he and Bloodheart were surrounded by a maelstrom, all teeth and tails and claws.

In this whirlpool Bloodheart grabbed Sanglant by the iron collar at his neck and hoisted him into the air. With his other hand, he took Sanglant's wrist, where he still held the knife, and twisted it hard.

The snap of bone and the wash of hot pain almost made him pass out. But he did not let go of the knife, not until Bloodheart ripped it out of his own shoulder and shook it free of Sanglant's grip. He tossed Sanglant back, flipped the knife to hold it, jeweled hilt in his huge scaled hand, and struck furiously to either side at the ravening dogs, then leaped in among them.

Sanglant groped, found the brass Eagle's badge, and hauled himself to his feet. This tiny shield he held before him, like a talisman, but it was useless. Bloodheart's fury had passed the point of thought. The Eika stabbed the knife again and again into Sanglant's chest.

Sometimes the remains of his chain mail turned the point, but at the ragged ends it could not protect him. The knife pierced him repeatedly, tearing him inside, shattering him, until his dogs leaped howling and biting and Blood-heart was forced to defend himself against them. He let go of Sanglant, who could not stand, could not even kneel, could only fall to the floor as his dogs drove back the mob that had come howling to watch him die. He could only watch as spears and axes fell on his dogs and the other dogs indiscriminately, splitting them open, spattering viscera and green-tinted blood and the wet matter of brain over him, over the floor, over everything. He could only feel the press of bodies and the sting of their whipcord tails as the last of his dogs pressed in around him, defending him even until the bitter end-as had his Dragons.

He would have wept at their loyalty, but he had no tears.

Bloodheart was still howling in rage, shouting at his priest, calling the Eika to silence, to stillness, so that they could hunt for the hideous creature that had escaped from the shattered chest. The mob stilled, broke, and parted.

In this way, abandoned for more important prey, Sanglant was left alone. Pain washed like water over him, the flood tide swelling to its height as black hazed his vision and he struggled to remain conscious, then ebbing to reveal every point of scalding pain in his body.

He heard the breath of the dogs, those panting out their last breaths and those few which still remained upright. The last six stood around him in a protective circle to face their common enemy.

Surrounded by this fortification of dogs, he lay there breathing shallowly and waited for the blinding pain to end.

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 of the dogs were still alive, and they growled when any movement sifted near him. It was so hard to wake up and perhaps better not to. Perhaps it was better to slide unresisting into oblivion.

Ai, Lady. Would he be admitted to the Chamber of Light? Or was he, because of his mother's blood, condemned to wander the world forever as a bodiless shade?

In the distance or in a dream, he heard the flutelike voices of the Eika speaking in Wendish, two voices accompanied by the mocking, harsh counterpoint of Eika calling and crying out in their own rough tongue. Some few of the words he now knew. In his dream he recognized more than he ever had before, but that was the nature of dreams, was it not?

"I have seen this army in my dreams." This in fluent Wendish.

"No better than dog, why dare you speak so before the great one?" This in the Eika speech.

"My dreams are more honest than your boasting, brother! Do not toss aside the gifts the WiseMothers give you just because they are not made of iron or gold."

"How can I believe your dreams are true dreams, weak one?" This from Bloodheart.

"I am stronger than I look, and my dreams are not just true dreams, they are the waking life of one of the humankind. He marches with this army, and as he marches, I march with him, seeing through his eyes."

One of the dogs nudged him, testing for life, and he gasped so loud the echo of it split his skull with pain, but no sound came out of his mouth. Blackness fell. For an endless time he drowned in a black haze of unrelenting pain that spun and sparkled like the knife which had been driven countless times into his body. Finally the darkness lightened to an early morning gray. Glints of light burst here and there in the limitless mist.

The veil parted.

The woman appears young and is certainly beautiful. She wears a fringed skirt sewn of leather so thin and supple that it moves around her with her movements like a second skin. A double stripe of red paint runs from the back of her left hand up around the curve of her elbow, all the way to her shoulder. Her hair has a pale cast, though her complexion is as bronze-dark as his own; drawn back from her face, it is bound behind her head with painted leather strips nested with beads, trailing a long elegant green plume. A wreath of gold and turquoise and jade bead necklaces drapes down her chest almost to her waist. She wears no shirt or cloak, only the necklaces, concealing and revealing her breasts as she shifts.

But for all her beauty and fine grace, she works patiently toward a brutal goal: with a curved bone tool, she is shaving stout lengths of wood into spear hafts. Obsidian points lie on a reed mat nearby with rope heaped beside them.

Does he make a noise? She looks up as if she has heard him and in that instant as a sudden lance of sun cuts down through trees to pierce across her shoulders, flashing on her necklaces, she sees him.

"Sharatanga protect me!" she exclaims. "The child!" She flinches away from the sight, drops wood haft and bone tool, and gropes for the stone points lying on the mat.

"It is not yet time for him to die," she mutters to herself, although he can hear every word clearly in a language he ought not to know yet understands perfectly. Grabbing one of the thin blades, she lifts it and raises it high above her and cries in a clear, strong voice. "Take this offering, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband. Give life back into his limbs."

She drags the blade across her palm. Blood wells, dripping down the length of the cut to spill into the air and she shakes the hand out, blood spitting toward him. Behind her, a voice calls a sudden frantic question. A touch of moisture spatters his lips, dissolving there, and as the harsh taste spreads to the back of his throat, the veil closes in a swirling pattern of grays and sparkling stars.

"I know you," he whispers.

But his voice was lost in the snuffling of dogs, and the touch of familiarity drifted away on the last tendril of mist.

Stillness hung like the weight of stone in the vast nave of the cathedral.

Terror hit with sudden force. Had he died? Had he seen, beyond the veil of the living, one of his own kinfolk or only a soulless shade caught forever in the memory of life?

He had always thought his mother's curse protected him from death. Ai, Lord, it wasn't true. It had never been true. He had only been lucky.

If this could be called luck.

He strained, listening, but heard nothing except the dogs. Had everyone gone away? Had they deserted the city, leaving to raid downriver into the heart of Wendar? How long had he lain here, dying and living again?

The footsteps that neared him came as soft as a breeze sliding through dead leaves scattered on the forest floor.

Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

He twitched but could not move his hands. His dogs growled, menacing their visitor. The smell of rancid meat hit him hard, gagging him, and he swallowed convulsively. He heard the damp slap of meat thrown to the floor and suddenly all the dogs skittered off, nails scraping the floor, and they fought over the remains. The footsteps eased closer. He lay there, paralyzed and unprotected, working his throat as if the movement would spread to his numb hands and allow him to defend himself.

He managed to open his eyes just as the slender Eika princeling who wore the wooden Circle crouched beside him. The Eika's movements had the easy arrogance of a creature who has the confidence of perfect health.

"Are you going to kill me now?" asked Sanglant. He was surprised to hear his voice, faint and hoarse. He struggled to lift a hand, to shift his shoulders beneath him, and felt the merest tick in his neck.

One hand flicked up, the one with the unbroken wrist.

But the Eika princeling only blinked. His copper-melded face wore no human expression. He had eyes as sharp as obsidian blades, thin nostrils, and a narrow chin. His ice-white hair was itself as bright as the sun that glanced in through the cathedral windows. His thin lips remained set, considering. "No. You are my father's challenge, not mine. I only want to know why you are still alive. You are not like the other Soft Ones. They would be dead by now of such wounds. Why aren't you dead?"

Sanglant grunted. The pain was bitter and would remain with him for some time, but he was used to pain. He got an elbow to move and, with a second grunt, heaved himself up onto the elbow. He stared down the Eika, who merely appeared . . . curious? Sanglant was himself curious.

"What was it?" he whispered. "The thing in the chest."

The Eika glanced toward the dogs, but they still munched on the bones. One raised its head to growl at him, but as no violence seemed imminent, it turned its attention back to scrounging for the last scraps of meat. "Don't all the leaders of your people carry the trophy of their first kill with them?" He lifted a copper-scaled hand, turning it slowly to display the tufts of bone claw, filed and sharpened to points, that sprouted from his knuckles. "That is the mark of the strength of their hands."

"That was his first kill?" Disgust swamped him, and he briefly forgot the pain under a spasm of nausea.

"So it is with all of us. Those destined to mature into men must prove their manhood by killing one of their nest-brothers. Don't you do the same?"

"It wasn't dead. It ran."

The Eika flashed a sudden and startling grin, white sharp teeth glinting with bright jewels. "What is dead may be animated by sorcery. So Bloodheart protects himself against his sons and any others who might attempt to kill him."

Sensation had returned to his legs and he got one heel to move, sliding under him. His broken wrist was stiff but whole. "Protects himself? How?"

"It is the curse we all fear, even the greatest chieftain."

"A curse on you all," muttered Sanglant under his breath. He jerked over, fist swinging.

But the Eika laughed and nimbly leaped out of the way as the dogs, alerted, bolted away from their food and rushed the princeling.

"Stop," said Sanglant and the dogs sat, yipped irritably, and returned to the scraps. "Did you come to strip me of what little I have left?" He could move enough now to indicate his tattered clothing.

The Eika recoiled. "No Eika would want such things so foul. Here." He kicked at something on the floor and the brass Eagle's badge skidded across the stone and lodged against Sanglant's thigh. Dried blood caked his skin-or at least, the dirt that grimed his skin. He was all dirt and stink except where the dogs had tried to lick him clean. The tatters of his undertunic were translucent, almost crystalline, because they were soaked with months of sweat. What remained of his tabard had so much dried blood and fluid on it that flakes fell off with each least movement and the cloth itself was stiff with grime.

The Eika princeling stared, then shook his head as he stepped away. "You were the pride of the human king's army?" he demanded. "If you are their greatest soldier, then no army they bring can be strong enough to defeat us."

"No army," murmured Sanglant, the words bitter to his ears.

"Even the one that has now camped in the hills toward the sunset horizon cannot possibly be strong enough to defeat us."

"Is it true? Has King Henry come to Gent with an army?"

"Henri," mused the Eika, naming the king in the Salian way. Without answering, he walked away.