PROLOGUE

HE had ran this far without being caught, but he knew his Quman master still followed him. Convulsive shudders shook him where he huddled in the brush that crowded a stream. His robes were still damp. Yesterday he had eluded them by swimming a river, but they hadn't given up. Prince Bulkezu would never allow a slave to taunt him publicly and then run free..

At last he calmed himself enough to listen to the lazy flow of water and to the wind rustling through leaves. Across the stream a pair of thrushes with spotted breasts stepped into view, plump and assertive. Ai, God he was starving.

The birds fluttered away as if they had gleaned his thoughts instead of insects. He dipped a hand in the water, sipped; then, seduced by its cold bite, he gulped down handfuls of it until his skin ached. By his knee a mat of dead leaves made a hummock. He turned it up and with the economy of long practice scooped up a mass of grubs and popped them in his mouth. Briefly he felt their writhing, but he had learned to swallow fast.

He coughed, hacking, wanting to vomit. He was a savage, to eat so. But what had the Quman left him? They had mocked him for his preaching, and therefore had taken his book and his freedom. They had mocked him for his robes, his clean-shaven chin, and his proud defense of Lady and Lord and the Circle of Unity between female and male, and therefore treated him as they did their own female slaves or any man they considered sheath instead of sword—

with such indignity that he winced to recall it now. And they had done worse, far far worse, and laughed as they did it; it had been sport to them, to make a man into a woman in truth, an act they considered the second worst insult that could be given to a man. Ai, God! It had not been insult but pain and infection that had almost caused him to die.

But that was all over now. He had run before they took away his tongue, which truly mattered more to him than the other.

Water eddied along the bank. A hawk's piercing cry made him start. He had rested long enough. Cautiously he eased free of the brush, forded the stream, and fell into the steady lope that he used to cover ground. He was so tired. But west lay the land out of which he had walked in pride so many years ago that he had lost count: five or seven or nine. He meant to return there, or die. He would not remain a Quman slave any longer.

Dusk came. The waxing moon gave him enough light to see by as he walked on, a shadow among shadows on the colorless plain. Stars wheeled above, and he kept to a westerly course by keeping the pole star to his right.

Very late, a spark of light wavering on the gloomy landscape caught his attention. He cursed under his breath. Had the war-band caught and passed him, and did they now wait as a spider waits for the fly to land? But that was not proud Bulkezu's way. Bulkezu was honorable in the way of his people—if that could be called honor—but he was also like a bull when it came to problems: he had no subtlety at all. Strength and prowess had always served him well enough.

No, this was someone—or something—else.

He circled in, creeping, until in the gray predawn light he saw the hulking shapes of standing stones at the height of a rise, alone out here on the plain as though a giant had once stridden by and placed them there carelessly, a trifle now forgotten. His own people called such stone circles "crowns," and this fire shone from within the crown. He knew then it was no Quman campsite—they were far too superstitious to venture into such a haunted place.

He crept closer on his hands and knees. Grass pricked his hands. The moon set as the first faint wash of light spread along the eastern horizon. The fire blazed higher and yet higher until his eyes stung from its glare. When he came to the nearest stone, he hid behind its bulk and peeked around.

That harsh glare was no campfire.

Within the ring of stones stood a smaller upright stone, no taller or thicker than a man. And it burned.

Stone could not burn.

Reflexively, he touched the wooden Circle of Unity he still wore. He would have prayed, but the Quman had taken his faith together with so much else.

A woman crouched beside . She had the well-rounded curves of a creature that eats as much as it wants, and the sleek power of a predator, muscular and quick. Her hair had the same color as the height of flame that cast a net of fire into the empty air. Her skin, too, wore a golden-bronze gilding, a sheen of flame, and she wore necklaces that glittered and sparked under the light of that unearthly fire.

Witchfire.

She swayed, rocking from heel to heel as she chanted in a low voice.

The stone flared so brightly that his eyes teared, but he could not look away. He saw through as through a gateway, saw another country, heard it, a place more shadow than real, as faint as the spirit world his ancient grandmother had told tales about but with the sudden gleam of color, bright feathers, white shells, a trail of dun-colored earth, a sharp whistle like that of a bird.

Then the vision vanished, and the stone snuffed out as though a blanket of earth thrown on the fire had smothered it.

Stone and fire both were utterly gone.

A moment later the lick and spit of everyday flame flowered into life. The woman fed a common campfire with dried dung and twigs. As soon as it burned briskly, she made a clucking sound with her tongue, stood, and turned to face him.

Ai, Lord! She wore leather sandals, bound by straps that wound up her calves, and a supple skirt sewn of pale leather that had been sliced off raggedly at knee length. And nothing else, unless one could count as clothing her wealth of necklaces. Made of gold and beads, they draped thickly enough that they almost covered her breasts—until she shifted. A witch, indeed.

She did not look human. In her right hand she held a spear tipped' with an obsidian point.

"Come," she said in the Wendish tongue.

It had been so long since he had heard the language of his own people that at first he did not recognize what he heard.

"Come," she repeated. "Do you understand this tongue?" She tried again, speaking a word he did not know.

His knees ached as he straightened up. He shuffled forward slowly, ready to bolt, but she only watched him. A double stripe of red paint like a savage's tattoo ran from the back of her left hand up around the curve of her elbow, all the way to her shoulder. She wore no curved felt hat on her head, as Quman women did, nor did she cover her hair with a shawl, as Wendish women were accustomed to do. Only leather strips decorated with beads bound her hair back from her face. A single bright feather trailed down behind, half hidden. The plume shone with such a pure, uncanny green that it seemed to be feathered with slivers from an emerald.

"Come forward," she repeated in Wendish. "What are you?"

"I am a man," he said hoarsely, then wondered bitterly if he could name himself such now.

"You are of the Wendish kin."

"I am of the Wendish kin." He was shocked to find how hard; it was to speak out loud the language he had been forbidden to j speak among the Quman. "I am called—" He broke off. Dog, worm, slave-girl, and piece-of-dung were the names given him among the Quman, and there had been little difference in meaning between the four. But he had escaped the Quman. "I—I was once called by the name Zacharias, son of Elseva and Volu-sianus."

"What are you to be called now?"

He blinked. "My name has not changed."

"All names change, as al things change. But I have seen among the human kin that you are blind to this truth."

To the east, the rim of sun pierced the horizon, and he had to shade his eyes. "What are you?" he whispered.

Wind had risen with the dawning of day.

But it was not wind. It sang in the air like the whirring of wings, and the sound of it tore the breath out of his chest. He tried to make a noise, to warn her, but the cry lodged in his throat. She watched him, unblinking. She was alone, as good as unarmed with only a spear to protect her; he knew with what disrespect the Quman treated women who were not their own kin.

"Run!" he croaked, to make her understand.

He spun, slammed up against stone, and swayed there, stunned. The towering stone block hid him from view. He could still flee, yet wasn't it too late once you could hear their wings spinning and humming in the air? Like the griffins who stalked the deep grass, the Quman warriors took their prey with lightning swiftness and no warning but for that bodiless humming vibrating in the air, the sound of their passage.

He had learned to mark their number by the sound: at least a dozen, not more than twenty. Singing above the rest ran the liquid iron thrum of true griffin wings.

He began, horribly, to weep with fear. The Quman had said, "like a woman"; his own people would say, "like a coward and unbeliever," one afflicted with weakness. But he was so tired, and he was weak. If he had been strong, he would have embraced martyrdom for the greater glory of God, but he was too afraid. He had chosen weakness and life. That was why They had forsaken him.

She shifted to gaze east through the portal made by standing stones and lintel. He was so shocked by her lack of fear that he turned—and saw.

They rode with their wings scattering the light behind them and the whir of their feathers drowning even the pounding of their horses' hooves. Their wings streamed and spun and hummed and vibrated. Once he had thought them real wings, but he knew better now: They were feathers attached by wire to wooden frames riveted to the body of their armored coats. That armor had a scaly gleam, strips of metal sewn onto stiff leather coats. On a standard fixed to a spear they bore the mark of the Pechanek clan: the rake of a snow leopard's claw. The Quman had many tribes. This one he knew well, to his sorrow.

At the fore rode a rider whose wings shone with the hard iron fletching of griffin feathers. Like the others he wore a metal visor shaped and forged into the likeness of a face, blank and intimidating, but Zacharias did not need to see his face to know who it was.

Bulkezu.

The name struck at his heart like a deathblow.

A band of fifteen riders approached the ring of stones, slowing now, the hum of their wings abating. From a prudent distance they examined the stone circle and split up to scout its perimeter and assess the stone portals, the lay of the ground, and the strength of its defenders. The horses shied at first, made skittish by the great hulking stones or by the shadow of night that still lingered inside the ring, but taking courage from their masters, they settled and agreed to move in closer.

The woman braced herself at the eastern portal with her spear in one hand. She showed no fear as she waited. The riders called out to each other.

Their words were torn away on a wind Zacharias could not feel on his skin—

audible but so distant that he could make out no meaning to what they shouted to each other, as though the sound came to him through water.

At once the whirring began again as all the riders kicked into a gallop and charged, some from the left, some from the right, some from the other side of the circle. Wings hummed; hooves pounded; otherwise they came silently except for the creak and slap of their armored coats against the wooden saddles.

With the rising sun bright in his eyes, Zacharias saw Bulkezu as iron wings and iron face and gleaming strips of iron armor. The two feathers stuck on either side of his helmet flashed white and brown. The griffin feathers fletched in the curving wooden wings that were fastened to his back shone with a deadly iron gleam. Where the ground leveled off, just beyond the eastern portal, he galloped toward the waiting woman, lowering his spear.

Zacharias hissed out a breath, but he did not act. He already knew he was a coward and a weakling. He could not stand boldly against the man who had first mocked him, then violated him, and then wielded the knife.

He could not stand boldly—but he watched, at first numb and then with a surge of fierce longing for the woman who waited without flinching. With an imperceptible movement she opened her fingers. From within her uncurling hand mist swirled into being to engulf the world beyond. Only the air within the stone circle remained untouched, tinted with a vague blue haze. An unearthly fog swallowed the world beyond the stones.

All sound dissolved into that dampening fog, the whir and hum of spinning feathers, the approach of the horses, the distant skirl of wind through grass.

With a sudden sharp exclamation, the woman leaped to one side. A horse loomed, became solid as griffin feathers cut a burning path through the mist. In stillness the horse jumped out of the fog and galloped into the ring of stones, hooves clattering on pebbles. Bulkezu had to duck so that his wings did not strike the lintel stone above.

The other riders could be seen as fleeting figures searching for a portal to enter, yet they were no more substantial than fish swimming beneath the cloudy surface of a pond. They could

not leave their fog-enshrouded world. They could i circle.

The war leader quickly scanned the interior of the oiuiie ring, but the woman had vanished. As he turned his horse in a tight circle the griffin feathers left sparks behind them in the blue haze. Of all things in this place, those feathers alone seemed immune to the witchcraft that had been brought to life.

"Dog!" he called, seeing Zacharias through the haze. "Crawling one! You have not escaped me!" He nudged his horse forward, tucked his spear between leg and horse's belly, and drew his sword. Zacharias shrank back, trapped against the stone. He had nowhere to run.

But the horse had taken no more than three steps when the earth began to shake and the huge stones groaned and creaked and seemed to swing wildly from side to side, although Zacharias felt nothing at his own back except solid, unmoving stone. Bulkezu's horse stumbled to its knees, neighing in terror, and Bulkezu himself was thrown. Stones swayed as if whatever spell had set them in place was at this moment unweaving itself, and Zacharias shrieked, flinging up his hands to protect himself, although mere flesh could not protect him against stone.

This was more than witchcraft.

The woman appeared again in the center of the circle, surefooted and unshaken by the earth's tremors except for the flashing shimmer and sway of beads dangling among her gold necklaces. Bulkezu struggled up from his hands and knees behind her. Zacharias tried to call a warning, but the breath sucked into his lungs congealed there and he could only gasp and choke and point.

With a grunt, the woman swung around to bring the flat of the obsidian blade down between the two arched spines of Bulkezu's wings, onto his head.

The blow laid him flat on his stomach, and his helmet canted awkwardly to one side, almost torn off. Blood swelled from the base of his skull to mat his black hair. The shaking subsided, but the haze remained. Outside the circle the other riders flitted by this portal and that, still searching for an entrance.

The woman stepped closer to Bulkezu—that fast he rolled to one side and jerked himself up and back around in a half turn. The tips of his deadly wings hissed through the air to slice her across the abdomen and through her sheath of necklaces. Beads of jade and turquoise, pellets of gold, rained onto the ground around her. He leaped backward, up to his feet, sword held before him. His helmet he slapped down, and again when it would not settle right around his eyes, and then, with an angry grunt, he wrenched it off and flung it to one side so that, finally, his face was exposed—proud and handsome in the Quman way.

Ugly red welts bloomed on the woman's bronze-dark skin. Blood welled from the cuts and snaked down in vermilion beads to lodge in the waistband of her skirt.

They faced off, each wounded, each warrior now. In this way they measured each the other: the Quman warrior made fearsome by the glint of the griffin feathers bound into the wings at his back—only a man who had killed a griffin could wear such wings; and the foreign woman, not of human breed or birthing, with her bronze cast of skin and hair, her own blood seeping unheeded down her belly. Her gaze on her opponent was as unyielding as the stone behind Zacharias' back.

Bulkezu sprang forward, batting at the spear with his sword and closing the distance between them. Zacharias gasped aloud. But her spear circled around Bulkezu's blow, and as she stepped aside, she caught him with the haft, a strike behind his knee. She was neither frail nor slender; the force of her blow dropped him to his knees, but he sat down hard, locking the haft beneath him, and lashed out with his sword. She leaped back, abandoning the spear. But as he rose to pursue her, the spear moved. Like a serpent come to life, it twined around his legs. He fell, catching himself on his hands, but where his sword struck earth, it sank into the dirt as if hidden claws dragged it down into the depths. No matter how hard he scrabbled, he could not grab it.

She raised her arms again, chest naked now except for a single strand of gold that curved along the swell of a breast. The shaking resumed, more violent than before. The great lintel stones rocked and teetered and began to slide.

Wind battered Zacharias to his knees. With his dagger Bulkezu hacked at the magicked spear wound around his legs, but to no avail. With each cut it merely grew spurs and flourishes, and these spurs sprouted roots that embedded themselves into the ground until its many-limbed net pinned his calves to the dirt and twined up his arms. In frustration he threw his dagger at her. With her arms outstretched and blood trickling down her breasts to pool in the folds of her skirt, she merely stared.

But the dagger slowed—or was that a trick of the haze and the trembling earth? As the shaking subsided, the dagger froze, suspended in the air.

Impossible. Zacharias staggered up to his feet, leaning on the stone for strength. What was she?

"Damn you, witch, what do you want?" cried Bulkezu, but she did not reply; she did not appear to understand him, and neither did she appear to care.

In the seething fog beyond the stone circle, riders still quested back and forth and around the ring of stones for some way to get inside.

Bulkezu struggled on the ground but could not free himself from the rootlike tangle that bound him hand and foot. His sword had vanished into the earth. He looked furious. Brought down by a mere woman, and one armed with the most primitive of weapons! But Bulkezu's hatred could not be more tangible than Zacharias' exultation.

Zacharias actually crowed, the rooster's call. He had lived to see Bulkezu brought low.

"Sorcery is a weapon more powerful than a blade," Zacharias cried in the tongue of the Quman people. "What matter that she is a mere woman and you are a strong warrior? What matter that the tribes sing your praises because you slew a griffin, the first warrior in a generation to do so? You may be adept at war, mighty one, but she is armed with something more dangerous than brute strength. Her sorcery binds you. You can only kill her, never compel her to your will as she does to you now. And the truth is, you can't kill her either."

"Dogs can bark, but it is all noise," snapped Bulkezu without looking at him.

He did not look away from his opponent. "As for you, you who are only a woman, you have made an enemy this day."

But the woman only smiled, as if she found his threats so insignificant as to be laughable. At that moment Zacharias fell in love with her—or with what she was, and what she had: She was no coward, and her gods walked with her.

What matter that he no longer possessed that portion of a man that some considered to be all the measure of manhood? Hadn't the blessed Daisan himself said that the peace of true love lasts until the end of days, and has nothing to do with carnal desire? She was everything he was not.

"I beg you," he called hoarsely in the Wendish tongue, "let me serve you so that I may teach myself strength."

She looked at him, then turned away to catch the horse and hobble it. To one side of the fire lay a basket and a quiver. She unearthed bow and arrows, and with some care she approached the furious warrior and plucked a griffin's feather from the wooden frame which, like two shepherd's crooks, arched over'

his head. Her fingers bled at once, and profusely, but she only licked her fingers and murmured words, like a prayer, under her breath.

"Nay, I beg you, let me do it." Zacharias stumbled forward as Bulkezu cursed out loud. "Let me do it. For he has shamed me, and in this way I may return shame upon him threefold."

She stepped back to regard him with narrowed eyes. He had never seen eyes of such green before, fathomless, as luminous as polished jade. Measuring him, she came to a decision. Before he could flinch back, she nicked his left ear with her obsidian knife, and when he yelped in surprise, she licked welling blood from his skin—and then handed him the knife and turned her back on him as she would on a trusted servant.

"Strike now!" cried Bulkezu, "and I will give you an honorable position among my slaves!"

"There is no honor among slaves. You are no longer my master!"

"Do you not recognize what she is? Ashioi, the tribe of gold. The ones who vanished from the bones of earth."

A chill from the stones seeped into Zacharias' skin and soaked through to his bones. It all made sense now. She had come from the spirit world. She was one of the Aoi, the Lost Ones.

Bulkezu grunted, still struggling. Only a man who never ceased striving could stalk and slay a griffin. "I will lay a blood-price on her. My riders will track you, and kill her, and bring you back to grovel at my feet."

Zacharias laughed, and at once his fear sloughed off, a trifle compared to the prospect of victory over the man who had humiliated him. "You bargain and then threaten, Bulkezu, mightiest son of the Pechanek clan. But what you took from me is nothing to what I am about to take from you, because the flesh is given by the god to all men but your prowess and reputation can never be returned once they are taken from you. And by a|

dog, a piece-of-dung who was used as you use slave women!" He reached for a feather.

"I curse you! You will never be more than a slave, and always a worm! And I will kill you! I swear this on Tarkan's bones!"

Like an echo of the threat, the iron-hard feathers sliced Zacharias' skin with each least touch until his palms and fingers were a mass of seeping cuts. Blood smeared his hands and made them slick while Bulkezu struggled and cursed but could not free himself from his bindings as Zacharias denuded his wings.

He took everything, all but one, and when he was finished, his hands bled and his heart rejoiced. "Kill him now!" he cried.

"His blood will slow me down." She said it without emotion, and by that he understood there was no possible argument. "Nor will you touch him," she added. "If you will serve me, then you will serve my cause and not your own."

She grasped Zacharias' hands and licked them clean of blood, then let him go and indicated that he should stow most of the feathers in the quiver. She fletched several of her stone-tipped arrows with griffin feathers, afterward hefting them in her hand, testing their weight and balance. When she was satisfied, she went to the eastern portal and began to shoot, one by one, the riders who circled her sanctuary. At once they sprayed a killing rain of arrows back into the stones. She had downed four of them before they truly understood that although neither they nor their arrows could get into the circle, her arrows could come out. At last they retreated out of arrowshot with their wounded. As from a great distance Zacharias saw them examine the arrows and exclaim over them while one rider galloped away eastward.

"My tribe will come soon with more warriors," said Bulkezu, even though he knew by now that the woman did not understand his words. He had recovered himself and spoke without malice but with the certainty of a man who has won many battles and knows he will win more. "Then you will be helpless, even with my feathers."

"And you will be helpless without them!" cried Zacharias.

"I can kill another griffin. In your heart, crawling one, you will never be more than a worm."

"No," whispered Zacharias, but in his heart he knew it was true. Once he had been a man in the only way that truly counted: He had held to his vows. But he had forsaken his vows when God had forsaken him.

Bulkezu glanced toward the woman. He could move his neck and shoulders, wiggle a bit to ease the weight on his knees and hands, but he was otherwise pinned to earth, no matter how he tried to force or twist his way free of her spell. "I will raise an army, and when I have, I will burn every village in my path until I stand with your throat under my heel and her head in my hands."

Zacharias shuddered. But he had come too far to let fear destroy him.

Against all hope he was a free man again, bound by his own will into the service of another. He might be a worm in his heart, but hearts could change. She had said that all things change.

"Come, you who were once called Zacharias-son-of-Elseva-and-Volusianus." She had stepped back from the edge of the stone circle and hoisted two baskets woven of reeds and slung them from the ends of Bulkezu's spear, then balanced and bound the spear as a pole over the saddle. To the saddle she tied three pale skin pouches, odd looking things that each had five distended fingers probing out from the bottom as if they had been fashioned from a cow's misshapen udder or a bloated, boneless hand. She tossed dirt over the fire. She whistled tunelessly and wind rose, blowing the fog outside the sanctuary of the stone circle into tufts of a wicked, cutting gale. The distant riders retreated farther away.

Bulkezu strained against the spear with its many rootling arms that clasped him to the earth, but he still could not shift at all, The remaining griffin feather hissed and fluttered in the rising wind. While she tested the harness, ignoring him, he tested his shoulders to see how far he could slide his wings out, or if he could wedge himself down far enough to cut at the magicked staff with the iron edge of that last feather. "I will have my revenge!"

She took no notice of his threat. Instead, when everything was to her liking, she returned to the eastern portal to watch. Fog shrouded the land, and in this fog she—and Zacharias with her—could easily make their escape, concealed from the eyes and ears of the waiting riders. But how long would they have until the Quman riders tracked them down?

She turned to smile at him as if, like the spotted thrush, she had divined his thoughts. Carefully, she wiped drying blood from her abdomen, then clapped red-streaked hands together and spoke words. A flash of heat blasted Zacharias' face, and suddenly, as winked back into existence in the center of the stone circle, he knew that the Aoi woman would not leave this sanctuary by any earthly road.

The woman regarded him unblinking, as if testing his courage. Bulkezu said nothing. Zacharias dropped the horse's reins and untied the bedrol behind the saddle, shook it out to reveal the fine knee-length leather jacket that Quman men wore when they did not wear armor. He offered this to her so that she could cover herself, because not even necklaces covered her upper body now, only the smears and drying tracks of her own blood.

The stone burned without sound. Wind swirled round them, whistling through the stones.

Bulkezu threw back his head and howled, the eerie ululation that according to the shamans was the cry of the he-griffin. Zacharias had heard that call once, from far away, when the Pechanek clan had wandered the borderwild of the deep grass— the land beyond human ken into which only heroes and shamans might venture. Ai, God! He had never forgotten it.

But he would not let it rip his hard-won courage from him now.

She stepped forward. Zacharias followed, leading the horse.

The heat of fire burned his face, but just before he could flinch back from the flame, they passed through the gateway. Bulkezu's call, the high-pitched song of wind through grass and stone, the moist heat of a midsummer day blanketed by fog— al of these vanished as completely as though they had been sliced away by a keen and merciless blade.

I

THAT WHICH BINDS

THE ruins stretched from the river's bank up along a grassy slope to where the last wall crumbled into the earth at the steep base of a hill. Here, on this broken wall under the light of a waning quarter moon, an owl came to rest. It folded its wings, and with that uncanny and direct gaze common to owls it regarded the ring of stones crowning the hilltop beyond.

Stars faded as light rose and with it, shrouded in a low-hanging mist, the sun. The moon vanished into the brightening sky. Still the owl waited. A mouse scurried by through the dew-laden grass, yet the owl did not stir to snatch it.

Rabbits nosed out of their burrows, and yet it let them pass unregarded. Its gaze did not waver, although it blinked once. Twice. Thrice.

Perhaps the mist cleared enough for the rising sun to glint on the stones that made up the huge standing circle at the height of the hill. A light flashed, and the owl launched itself into the air, beating hard to gain height. From above the stones it swooped down into the circle, where certain other stones lay on the soil in a pattern unreadable to human eyes. Flame flickered along the ancient grain of a smallish standing stone in the center of the ring. Out of the flame came faint words overheard in the same way that whispers escape through a keyhole, two voici in conflict.

"It seems to me that you have all been too gentle. A firms hand would have solved the matter long ago and bent this ori: you seek to your will."

"Nay, Sister. You do not fully understand the matter."

"Yet do you not all admit that I have certain gifts none f the rest of you possess? Is that not why I was b ou

r ght amon you nu

r

mber? Is it not fitting that

you let me try my hand ii h

t is in case your other plan fails? Then you will see what I aiij capable of."

"I am against it. "

"Yours is not the final word Let t

.

he others speak."

Wind sighed in the distant trees and hummed through ths stones. A hare bounded into view, froze, its ears twitching, anl then flinched and leaped away into the cover of mustard flowei and sedge.

"We risk nothing if she fails," said a thir d voice. "If she suA, ceeds, we

benefit, for then our absent sister can return her( quickly and we can return to our work that much sooner."

Hard upon these words came a fourth voice, "I am curious. I would like a demonstration of these methods we have heart so much about."

"I care not, " said the fifth voice, so faint that the sound o it almost died on the wind. "This is a trifle. Do as you wish."

Now the first spoke again. "Then I will attempt it. What hat eluded you for so long will not elude me! "

The owl glided down in a spiral. With sudden grace it foldei its wings and, heedless of the flames, came to rest on the smooti knob at the top of . The sun's light pierced th last strings of mist and broke brightly across the grandeur the stone circle.

Between one moment and the next, van ished—and the owl with it.

IN any village, a stranger attracts notice—and distrust. But Eagles weren't strangers, precisely; they were interchangeable, an arm of the king—his wings, so to speak—and they might come flying through and, after a meal and a night's sleep, fly away again, never truly at rest.

Liath had discovered that as a King's Eagle her only solitude on any errand she rode for the king came while actually on the road itself, because the roads were lightly traveled. Wherever she stopped to break her fast or for a night's shelter, she had no rest as long as she stayed awake. Villagers, deacons, chatelaines, nuns, even simple day laborers: All of them wanted gossip of the world beyond because few of them had ever ventured more than a day's walk from their home—and even fewer had actually seen the king and his court.

"Did the foreign queen die?" they would ask, surprised, although Queen Sophia had died almost four years ago.

"Lady Sabella rebelled against King Henry's authority?" they would cry, aghast and amazed, although all this had taken place a full year before.

"We heard the Eika sacked the city of Gent and are laying the countryside waste all around," they would confide nervously, and then she would calm their fears by telling them of the second battle of Gent and how Count Lavastine and King Henry had routed the Eika army and restored the ruined city to human hands.

To them, she was an exotic bird, bright, fleeting, quickly come and quickly gone. No doubt they would remember her, and her words, long after she had forgotten them and theirs.

It was a sobering thought.

In the village of Laderne full twenty souls crowded the house of her host, turning her visit into a festive gathering. They entertained her with songs and local gossip while she ate, but as soon as her host brought her a mug of beer after the meal, th turned their questions on her.

"What's your errand, Eagle? Where did you come from' Where are you going?"

She had learned to judge how much to say: when to keerf close counsel or when to be more forthcoming. Many people favored her with better food the more she told them, and this old) householder clearly thought her visitor important: She hadn' watered down the beer. "I'm riding to the palace at Weraushausen, at the king's order. He left his schola there, many of his clerics and most of the noble children who attend the progress. His own young son, Prince Ekkehard, is among them. I'm to give the word where they are to meet him."

"Weraushausen? Where's that?"

"Beyond the Bretwald," she said. They shook their heads, hemmed and hawed, and advised her to ride carefully and on no account to cut through the old forest itself.

"Young fools have tried it now and again," said Merla, the old householder.

She had about six teeth left and was proud of them. "They always vanish. Killed by wolves and bears, no doubt. Or worse things." She nodded with satisfaction, as in pleased at their dreadful fate.

"Nay, I heard at market that foresters was cutting a roac through the heart of the BretwaJd at the king's order," protested one of the men. He had a face made bright red by many hours working in the sun.

"As if any could do so," retorted the old woman. "But you've said nothing of the king. Has he named an heir yet? This Prince Ekkehard, perhaps?"

"He has an eldest daughter, Princess Sapientia. She's old enough to be named as heir now that she's ridden to battle and borne a child."

"Ach, yes, proven her fertility and led soldiers in war. God have marked her as worthy to rule."

They nodded sagely al round, much struck by this sign oi God's favor, all except one thin man in the back. He sipped beei and regarded Liath with pale eyes. He was almost as brown as she was on his face and hands, but where his tunic lay unlaced at his chest—for it was stil warm—she could see how pale his skin was where the sun didn't reach. "He'd another child, a son, with a Salian name—Sawnglawnt, or something like that. Hi was a grand fighter, captain of the King's Dragons. But I heard from a peddler that he and his Dragons died when the Eika took Gent."

She flushed, and was grateful that people who did not know her well could not see any change in her complexion, dark as it was. "Not dead," she said. How on God's earth did she manage to keep her voice from shaking? "He'd been held prisoner, but he was freed by troops under the command of Count Lavas-tine.

He is now safe at the king's side."

They exclaimed over this miracle. She gulped down her beer. But the damage had already been done. That night she slept restlessly and in the morning blushed to recall her dreams.

Ai, Lady. What had he said to her six days ago as the dawn light rose over the king's camp, set up outside Gent?

"Marry me, Liath."

All day the sun shone as Liath rode northwest along the great northern loop of the Ringswaldweg. She passed only a few travelers during the day: two carters hauling coarse sailcloth weighted down by a dozen bars of pig iron; a quiet pack of day laborers seeking a harvest; a peddler pushing a handcart; and a trio of polite fraters walking south with bare feet, callused hands, and sun-chapped faces. The ancient forest known as the Bretwald loomed to her left, so thick that it was no wonder travelers did not bother to try to hack through it but rather suffered the long journey round its northern fringe. Land broken up by trees, pasture, and the occasional village surrounded by strips of fields marched along on her right. She was used to traveling. She liked the solitude, the changing landscape, the sense of being at one with the cosmos, a small moving particle in the great dance of light.

But now, as the late summer twilight overtook her, the wind began to blow, and for some reason she couldn't shake the feeling that something was following her. She glanced back along the road, but it lay empty.

Never trust the appearance of emptiness.

Clouds brought an early dusk, and she unrolled her cloak and threw it over her shoulders as rain spattered down. Because the summer had been dry, the road did not churn instantly to mud, but even so, the way bogged down and she soon despaired of reaching any kind of shelter for the night.

God knew she did not want to sleep outside on a night o storm and rain, far from any human habitation.

The rain slackened. From ahead, she heard a faint jingling ofj harness, and for an instant she breathed easier. She had no fear! of lawful riders on the king's road.

For an instant.

Out of the darkening sky behind her, she heard a low reverberation, a tolling like that of a church bell. But she had passed no church since midday.

Was that sound the echo of a daimone's passing? Did such a creature pursue her again? She glanced back but saw no hollow-eyed daimone formed into the fair semblance of an angel gliding above the earth, saw no glass-feathered wings. Yet as the rising wind buffeted her, she felt a whisper:

"Liathano."

The air shuddered and rippled on the road far behind her, just where it hooked to the right around a bulge in the forest's girth, Columns of mist rose into the air like great tree trunks uprooted from the forest and spun into gauze.

Surely it was only a trick of the light. But claws seemed to sink into her, into her shoulders and deeper yet, right down to her heart, and those claws clutched at her, tugging her back toward the tolling bells. Why not just wait?

Why not just slow! down and wait?

"Come to me, Liathano. Do not run any longer. Only wait for us, and you will find peace."

Her horse snorted nervously and flattened its ears.

"Waitfor us. Come to us."

She hesitated.

"Run, " Da would answer. "Run, Liath. "

The compulsion to wait slid from her like rainwater off a good roof. With fear and anger fueling her, she urged her mount forward. It eagerly broke into a canter. She glanced back, and her heart almost died within her. Creatures formed like columns of living oily smoke streamed along the road, chasing her.

They; had voices, a rustling murmur like countless leaves stirred in a gale, underscored by that terrible dull tolling bell-voice. Thai they were living creatures she did not doubt.

And they were gaining on her.

She freed her bow from its quiver, readied an arrow. On the wind she smelled a hot stench like that of the forge. Her ho: bolted, and she let it run while she turned in the saddle and, drawing, measured the distance between her and her pursuers. She loosed, but the arrow fell harmlessly onto empty road.

The shout came as warning. "Hey, there! Look where you're going!"

Ahead, in the dimness, she saw a small party: two riders and an escort of four men-at-arms. A minor lord, perhaps, or a steward about the business of his lady: She did not recognize the sigil of a deer's head on white that marked the shields. They swung wide to make room for her headlong flight.

But as she drew breath to shout a warning to them in turn, light flashed to her right, and beyond the road where the ground swelled up to make a neat little tumulus, fire flashed and beckoned from a shadowy ring of standing stones.

An owl glided past, so close that her horse shied away right-ward, breaking off the road. She needed no more urging than that. With her bow in one hand and the reins in the other, she let the horse have its head. It jumped a low ditch to reach the grassy slope that marked the tumulus. From the road, men shouted after her.

A moment later she heard screaming.

The horse took the slope with the speed of a creature fleeing fire, and yet it was fire that greeted them in the center of the tiny stone circle: seven small stones, two of them fallen, one listing. And in the center stood an eighth stone as tall as a man of middling height; it burned with a blue-white fire that gave off no heat.

The shrieking from the road turned into garbled noises that no human ought to be able to utter. She dared not look behind. Ahead, the owl settled with uncanny grace onto the top of , and the horse leaped—

She shouted with surprise as blue-white flame flared all around her. Her horse landed, shied sideways, and stopped.

With reins held taut and the horse quiet under her, Liath stared around the clearing: beaten earth, a layer of yellowing scrub brush, and thin forest cover made up of small-leafed oak as well as trees she had never seen before. But her voice failed her when the man sitting on a rock rose to examine her with interest. Not a human man, by any measure: with his bronze-tinted skin and beardless face and his person decorated with all manner of beads and feathers and shells and polished stones, he was of another kinship entirely. Humans named his kind Aoi, "the Lost Ones," the ancient elvish kin who had long sinced vanished from thecities and paths trodden by humanity.

But she knew him, and he knew her.

"You have come," he said. "Sooner than I expected. You must) hide until the procession has passed, or I cannot speak for what judgment the council will pass on you and your presence here. Come now, dismount and give me the horse."

He looked no different than in the vision seen through fire,! although he was smaller in stature than she expected. The feathers with which he decorated himself shone as boldly as if they had been painted. The flax rope at his thigh was perhaps a finger longer than when she had last seen him, weeks—or was it months?—ago. A tremulous moan sounded from the depths of| the forest, and a moment later she recognized it as a horn call.j She shaded her eyes, and there along a distant path seen dimly under shadows she saw a procession winding through the trees. At the head of the procession, a brilliant wheel of beaten gold and iridescent green plumes spun, although no wind blew.

"How did I come here?" she asked hoarsely. "The creatures were chasing me, and then I saw an owl. . . and ." She turned in the saddle to see the stone still blazing, blue-white and cold. No owl flew.

"An owl," he mused, fingering a proud feather of mottled! brown and white, one dull plume among the many bright ones that trimmed his forearm sheath. He smiled briefly, if not kindly. "My old enemy."

"Then the horse leaped, and I was here," she finished haltingly. She felt like a twig borne down a flooding stream. Too much was happening at once.

"Ah." He displayed the rope and the fiber he twined to create it. "Out of one thing, we make another, even if there is no change or addition of substance.

Sometimes it is the pattern that matters most. These strands of flax, alone, cannot support me: or aid me as this rope can, and yet are they not both the same; thing?"

"I don't understand what you're saying."

" is a gateway between the worlds. All of the stones are gateways, as we learned to our sorrow, but this one was not fashioned by means of mortal magics but rather is part of the fabric of the universe. To use it, one must understand it."

"I don't know anything," she said bitterly. "So much was kept hidden from me."

"Much is hidden," he agreed. "Yet nevertheless you have come to me. If you are willing, I sense there is a great deal you can learn."

"Ai, God. There's so much I need to know." Yet she hesitated. "But how long will it take? To learn everything I need to know?"

He chuckled. "That depends on what you think you need to know." But his expression became serious. "Once you have decided that, then it will take as long as it must." He glanced toward the procession in the forest, still mostly hidden from them in their small clearing. "But if you mean to ask how long will it take in the world of humankind, that I cannot answer. The measure of days and years moves differently here than there."

"Ai, Lady!" She glanced at the stone. The fire had begun to flicker down, dying.

"Why do you hesitate?" he pressed her. "Was this not the wish of your heart?"

"The wish of my heart." Her voice died on the words as she said them. Of course she must study. It was the only way to protect herself. She wanted the knowledge so badly. She might never have this chance again.

And yet—she could not help but look back.

"You are still bound to the other world," he said, not dismayed, not irritated, not cheerful. Simply stating what was true. "Give me your hand."

He was not a person one disobeyed. She sheathed her bow and held out a hand, then grunted with surprise and pain as he cut her palm with an obsidian knife. But she held steady as blood welled up, as he cut his hands in a similar fashion and clasped one to hers so their blood flowed together. His free hand he pressed against the stone. Fire flared, so bright she flinched away from it, and her horse whickered nervously and shied. But the old sorcerer's grip remained firm.

"Come with me," he said. "What has bound you to the world of human kin?"

The fire opened, and together they saw within.

When he sprawls in the grass under the glorious heat of the sun, he can hear everything and nothing. He shuts his eyes, tk better to listen.

A bee drones. A bird's repetitive whistle sounds from the treei His horse grazes at the edge of the clearing, well out of "I made him a promise." As the vision faded, its passing throbbed in her like a new pain.

She knew better, she knew what she ought to do, what Da her to do. But none of that mattered. For a year she of his other companions: three Eika dogs in iron colla s

r and iron chains bound to an iron stake he has hammered into ground. Bones crack under their jaws as they feed. These th are all that remain to him of the beasts who formed his war-band in Gent's cathedral. He hears their chains scraping each she sounded. on the others as the dogs growl over the tastiest bits of marrow He merly let go of her hand and regarded her. He had no A stream gurgles and chuckles beyond them: he has washel expression on his face except the quiescence of great age. "It is there, al h t ough he will never t uly

r

wash the filth and the shame ever such with those who are young. But I do not believe your of Bloodheart's chains off himself no matter how often he spills, water over his skin and cleanses himself with soap or sand m oil. Now he lies half-clothed in the sun to dr

y in merciful solil tude.

Of human activity he hears nothing. He has fled the captive ity of the king's court and found this clearing next to the tram, that leads northwest—in that direction she rode off on the king's^ errand eight days ago. Here, now, he relishes his freedom', bathing in sun and wind and the feel of good mellow earth and, grass beneath his back A fly lands on his face and he brushes it away without opening his eyes. The heat melts pleasantly into his skin. Where his other hand lies splayed in the grass he has tossed down th square leather pouch, stiffened with metal plates and trimmed. with ivory and gems, in which he shelters the book. He feels its sparks when her shoulder brushed weight just beyond his fingertips, although he does not need tii

o

t uch it to know that it is still there, and what it means to him a promise. He keeps it always with him or, when he hunts on bathes, ties it to the collar of one of the dogs. The dogs are the,only ones among his new retinue he can trust.

Wind rustles in leaves, indifferent whispers so unlike the ones that follow his every movement among the courtiers—the one they think he can't near.

had thought him dead.

"I have to go back." Then, hearing the words as if someone else had spoken them, she hurried on. "I'll come back to you. I swear it. I just have to go back—" She trailed off. She knew young. But do not believe your path will be a smooth one."

"Then I can come back?" Now that she had made the choice, she regretted having to go. But not so much that she could bring herself to stay.

"I cannot see into the future. Go, then."

"But there are creatures pursuing me—

"So many mysteries. So much movement afoot. You must make your choice—there, or here. The gateway is closing."

The flames flickered lower until they rippled like a sheen of water trembling along the surface of the stone. If she waited too long, the choice would be made for her.

She reined the horse around and slapped its rump with the trailing end of her reins. It bolted forward, light surged, and her sight was still hazed with dancing spots and black dots and bright Each day of the king's progress unfurls, flowers, and fades as in a haze. He waits.

Among the dogs, he has lea ned t

r

o be patient.

"That which binds you," said the sorcerer, but whether with: surprise or recognition she could not tell.

s,out of the ragged circle of stones with a flash of afternoon sun in her eyes.

Disoriented, she shaded her eyes with a hand until she could make out the road below. It was not yet twilight; an unseasonable chill stung the air. The Bretwald lay beyond the road, alive with birds come to feed at the verge. Crows flocked in the tree-tops. A vulture spiraled down and landed on a heap of rags that littered the roadside.

Of the fell creatures that had stalked her, there was no sign.

What had the old sorcerer said? "The measure of days and years moves differently here than there."

Had she arrived earlier than she had left? Was that even possible, to wait here beside the road when she was herself riding on that same road, not yet having reached this point? She shook herself and urged the horse forward, looking around cautiously. But nothing stirred. The crows flapped away with raucous cries. The vulture at last bestirred itself and flew, but only to a nearby branch, where it watched as she picked her way up to the roadside and dismounted to examine the litter: a jumble of bones scoured clean; damp tabards wilted on the turf or strewn with pebbles as though a wind had blown over them; and weapons left lying every which way. With her boot she turned over a shield: A white deer's head stared blankly at her.

She jumped back, found shelter in the bulk of her horse, who blew noisily into her ear, unimpressed by these remains.

The men-at-arms she had seen had borne shields marked with a white deer's head. And she had heard screaming. How long could it have been? It would take months for a body to rot to clean bone.

The light changed as a scrap of cloud scudded over the sun, and she shivered in the sudden cold. She mounted and rode on, northward, as she had before. As dusk lowered, she studied the heavens with apprehension throbbing in her chest. Stars came out one by one. Above her shone summer's evening sky. Had she lost an entire year?

Ahead, a torch flared, and then a second, and she urged her mount forward, smelling a village ahead. A low, square church steeple loomed, cutting off stars. They had not yet closed the palisade gates of the little town, which protected them against Wilfr animals as weft as ihe occasional depredations oJ

what bandits still lurked in the Bretwald. The gatekeeper sent her on to| the church, whete the deacon ke^t mats fax txa e ets and a siut! mering pot of leek stew for the hungry.

Liath was starving. Her hands shook so badly that she could barely gulp down stew and cider as the deacon watched with! mild concern.

"What day is it?" Liath asked when at last her hands came back under her control, and the sting of hunger softened.

"Today we celebrated the nativity of St. Theodoret, and tomorrow we will sing the mass celebrating the martyrdom of St.! Walaricus."

Today was the nineteenth of Quadrii, then; the day she had; fled the creatures had been the eighteenth. For an instant she breathed more easily.

Then she remembered the bones, and the party she had almost met on the road.

"What year?"

"An odd question," said the deacon, but she was a young woman and not inclined to question a King's Eagle. "It is the year since the Proclamation of the Divine Logos by the blessed Daisan."

One day later. Only one day. The bones she had seen by the roadside had nothing to do with her, then. They must have lain there for months, picked clean by the crows and the vultures and the small vermin that feed on carrion.

Only later, rolled up in her blanket on a mat laid down in the dark entry hall of the church, did it occur to her that the clothing left behind with the bones on the roadside was damp but not rotted or torn. Had it lain there for months or years, it, too, would have begun to rot away.

THE hunting party burst out of the forest and then scattered aimlessly into small groups, having lost the scent. The king rode among a riot of his good companions, al laughing at a comment made by Count Lavastine. Alain had fallen back, to the fringe, and now he reined in his horse to watch a trio of young men fishing in the river an arrow's shot upstream. Hip-deep in water, they flung nets wide over the glittering surface.

"Alain." Count Lavastine halted beside him. The black hounds snuffled in the grass that edged the cliff, which fell away about a man's height before hillside met river. A rock, dislodged by Fear, skittered down the slope, stirring up a shower of dust, and the other hounds all barked in a delighted frenzy as they scrambled back.

"Peace!" said Lavastine sternly, and at once they quieted, obedient to his wishes. He turned his gaze to Alain. "You must come ride closer to the king, Son."

"Their task seems easier than mine." Alain indicated the fishermen below.

Stripped down to their breechclouts, the fishermen enjoyed the purl of the water around their bodies and the hot sun on their glistening backs without any thought except for the labor at hand. He heard their laughter ringing up from the distant shore.

"A drought, a late freeze, a rainy Aogoste. Any of these could ruin their crops."

"But at least the rivers always breed fish. I'm never quite sure what the noble parties are hunting."

"You do not like the form of this hunt. But it is one you must learn, and you must learn to judge which party will succeed and which will fail. In this way we make our alliances, The prince favors you."

"The princess does not."

"Only because you are favored by the prince."

"Because I am a bastard, as he is."

"Were," said Lavastine with a sudden bite to his tone, like a hound's sharp nip, more warning than attack. "You are legitimately claimed and honored now."

"Yes, Father," said Alain obediently. "But when she sees me and then sees Lord Geoffrey, it reminds Princess Sapientia that the king may choose another claimant over her when it comes time to anoint his heir." The hounds sat, panting, in the sun: Rage, Sorrow, Ardent, Bliss, and Fear. Terror flopped down.

Only I Steadfast still sniffed along the verge of the bluff, intent on a I scent that did not interest the others. A stone's toss back from! the bluff, King Henry and his companions conferred, pointing toward the dense spur of woodland that thrust here into a scat-; tering of orchard and fields of ripening oats cut into a neat patchwork by hedgerows.

"I have never much cared for the king's progress," said Lavas-' tine finally.

He, too, looked toward the forest. The bleat of a hunting horn floated on the air.

"You don't like the king?" asked Alain, daring much since they were alone, unheard except by the hounds.

Lavastine had a hard, compelling gaze; he turned it on Alain now. "The king stands beyond our likes or dislikes, Alain. I respect him, as he deserves. I hold no grievance against him as! long as he leaves me and mine alone—and grants me that which: I have won." The flash of approval in his eyes did not extend to his lips. "That which we won at Gent, you and I. There are many young men and some few women who would gladly join the ranks of your entourage, Alain, if you were to show them your favor. You have learned your manners perfectly, and you carry yourself as well—or better—than most of the young nobles whom we see here at court. You have done well to remain above their games and useless intrigues. But now it is time to build your own retinue."

Alain sighed. "My foster family brought me up to work and to be proud of that labor. Yet here, should I only gossip and hunt and drink? In truth, Father, I don't feel at ease in their company. But if I don't indulge in these amusements, then I fear they'll think me unworthy."

Lavastine smiled slightly. "You are not swayed by their levity, as you should not be. You have made a name for yourself in war. Others have noticed that you also apply yourself to the study of scientia. It's such practical knowledge that will allow you to administer Lavas lands as well as I have done in my time. Your serious manner proves in the eyes of the worthy that you are cast of noble metal."

The praise embarrassed Alain. He did not feel worthy. Below, the fishermen had hauled their nets out into the shallows and now shouted and whooped with the good cheer of young men who haven't a care in the world as they tossed fish into baskets that rested on the rocky shore. A few fish slipped from their hands in twisting leaps that spun them back into the river and freedom. But the baskets were by now almost full; their contents churned and slithered, scales flashing in the light like liquid silver.

The horn rang out again, closer. A large animal erupted from cover and scrambled into the orchard. The king's huntsmen began shouting all at once, bringing their hunting spears to bear. Lavas-tine's hounds sprang up and tore away, only to stop short when Lavastine whistled piercingly. They barked furiously as a huge boar appeared in the distance beneath the shelter of a cluster of apple trees.

At that moment, two parties of about equal numbers galloped free of the woods, one from the southern edge of the spur of woodland and the other from its center. Princess Sapientia led the first party. Her banner rippled blue and white from a lance carried by a servant, and her companions thundered along beside her so colorfully outfitted that they obliterated the serenity of cultivated land. Some few even jumped hedgerows and trampled fields in their haste to reach the boar before the other party did.

That other party had come clear of the woodland closer to the hunted beast, but their leader made such a clear point of avoiding any stands of oat and bypassing one stoutly growing field of beans that they closed on the boar from the north just as Princess Sapientia and her entourage circled in from the south.

For an instant the two parties faced each other, as do enemy forces in a skirmish: the princess small and fierce on a skittish gelding rather too large for her; her half brother so at his ease with a hunting spear in one hand and the other light on the reins of a magnificent gray that he seemed to shine under the glare of the sun.

The king raised a hand, and his own companions paused, holding back.

Everyone watched. The boar bolted away toward the river, the only stretch of open ground left to it.

At once, Prince Sanglant galloped after it, leaving his party behind. He had so much natural grace that Sapientia, racing after him, had somewhat the appearance of a mongrel chasing a sleek greyhound. No one rode after them: to the victor, the spoils.

Sanglant broke wide to drive the boar back from the bluff and cut in from behind. Then he deliberately reined up to let Sapientia take the kill, as if it were her prerogative. As if he did not want what he could easily take.

She saw only his hesitation, his turning aside. The boar bunched, charged; she thrust at its ribs and lodged the point of her spear behind its front shoulder, but the beast got under her horse and the horse went crazy, bucking while she clung to the saddle.

Huntsmen came running, their brindle boarhounds coursing ahead.

Sanglant vaulted off his horse and sprinted for the wounded beast. It saw his movement, and in its blind fear and fury charged him. Distantly, Alain heard King Henry cry out. But the prince only braced himself, showing no fear. The boar impaled itself on his spearpoint and drove itself into the lugs. Sanglant plunged his dagger into its eye to kill it.

Sapientia had calmed her horse and now claimed first blood. The boarhounds leaped yelping and biting in a mob around the dead boar, but they slunk back, whimpering, ears pinned down, as Prince Sanglant laid about him with his fist, battering them back as if he were the beast being hunted.

Only when the other riders approached did he shake himself, like a dog newly come from water, and step away to become a man again, tall and handsome in his fine embroidered tunic and leggings with a gold brooch clasping a short half-cloak across his broad shoulders. Yet the iron collar he wore at his neck instead of a gold torque of royal kinship looked incongruous; that, and the odd habit he had of scenting like a hound for smells on the air and of starting

'round like a wild animal at unexpected movement behind him.

Princess Sapientia cut over to Prince Sanglant, but before she could swing down beside him, she was distracted by her chief adviser, Father Hugh. With elegant grace he lured her away to the heady congratulations of her entourage.

"There is one at least," said Lavastine softly, watching the scene through narrowed eyes, "who wishes for no reconciliation between brother and sister."

After twenty days riding with the king's progress, Alain could not bring himself to like, trust, or even respect the handsome, charming, and ingenious Father Hugh. But he felt obliged to be fair. "Father Hugh is well spoken of by everyone at court. Everyone says his influence has benefited the princess immeasurably."

"Certainly his manners are excellent, and his mother is a powerful prince. I would not like to make an enemy of him. Nevertheless, he has thrown his weight behind Sapientia, and all that influence comes to naught if she does not become regnant after her father."

"I don't like him because of what he did to Liath," muttered Alain.

Lavastine raised an eyebrow and regarded his son skeptically. "You have only her word—that of a kinless Eagle—that he behaved as she describes. In any case, if she was his legal slave, then he could do what he wished with her." That easily he dismissed Liath's fears and terrors. "Still, the Eagle has uncommon gifts. Keep an eye on her, if you will. We may yet use her again to our advantage."

Prince Sanglant had retreated to the river, away from the kill and the commotion. His new hangers-on, uncertain of his temper as always, kept a safe distance although they made an obvious effort to distinguish themselves from those who flocked around Sapientia. The prince stood on the verge where the bluff plunged away to the water. The fishermen had stopped to stare at the sight of a noble lord and his fine retinue.

"He'll go in," said Alain suddenly, and as if his words— surely too distant for the prince to hear—triggered the action, Sanglant abruptly began to strip at the bluff's edge.

Tittering came from Sapienta's entourage. They had seen this behavior before: Prince Sanglant had a mania for washing himself. But to be without clothing in such a public setting was to be without the dignity and honor granted one by noble birth. Only common folk making ready to wash themselves or to labor on a hot day would as unthinkingly strip before all and sundry as kneel before God to pray.

The prince left his clothing on the ground and scrambled down the slope into the water. He had an astonishing number of white scars on his body, but he had begun to fill out. Alain could no longer count his ribs.

As the wind turned and positions shifted, Alain heard Father Hugh's pleasant voice on the breeze. "Alas, and like some dogs, he'll leap into any body of water if not restrained. Come, Your Highness. This is not fitting."

Sapientia's party retreated to the woodland while the huntsmen dealt with the kill, although some few of the ladies with her could not resist a backward glance.

Lavastine sighed audibly. A flurry of movement came from within the king's party as certain riders—mostly women—made to leave with Princess Sapientia's party while others, including the king, began to dismount.

"Come," said Lavastine as he signaled to his attendants. "I return now to the king. Alain, you must choose your place as you think fit."

By this time half a dozen of Prince Sanglant's entourage had begun to strip, to follow him into the water, and Alain saw that the king meant to bathe as well, as if to lend royal sanction to his son's action.

Alain felt it prudent to stay near the king, so he followed Lavastine and in this way was able to jest with several young lords whom he had befriended.

Steadfast forged ahead, still on a scent. She growled, and Fear padded forward to snuffle in the grass beside her.

Where the bluff gave way to a negotiable embankment, servants had come forward to hack through brush clinging to the slope to make a path for the king down to the water. The prince, waist-deep in the sluggish current, now plunged in over his head and struck out for the opposite shore. Upstream, the fishermen collected their baskets and made ready to leave. They lingered to stare as the king made his way down the embankment and left his rich clothing to the care of his servants while he took to the cool water. The splashing and shouting and laughter had long since drowned out any sound of Sapientia's party as it retreated into the forest.

"Do you mean to come in, Son?" Lavastine swung down off his horse. As soon as the count's feet touched the ground, Terror tried to herd the count away from a thicket of brambles while the other hounds set up such a racket of barking that the prince paused half out on the opposite shore to turn and see what the commotion was, and King Henry spoke a word to an attendant who scrambled back up the embankment.

"Peace!" Lavastine frowned at the hounds, who swarmed around him more like puppies frightened by thunder than loyal fighting hounds.

A creature rustled in the thicket. The hounds went wild. Terror closed his jaw over the count's hand and tugged him backward while Steadfast and Fear leaped into the brambles, teeth snapping on empty air. Hackles up, Sorrow and Rage circled the bramble bush and Ardent and Bliss tore up and down between Lavastine and the thicket. But there was nothing there.

"Peace!" snapped Lavastine. He so disliked it when his orders were not obeyed instantly.

Steadfast yelped suddenly, a cry of pain. The other hounds went into such a wild frenzy around the thicket that servants and noblemen scattered in fear, and then the hounds spun and snapped and bolted away as if in hot pursuit, the entire pack running downstream along the embankment. "Alain! Follow them!"

Alain quickly followed the hounds, with only a single servant in attendance.

The hounds ran far ahead now, scrambling in a fluid, furious pack down to a rocky stretch of beach. He glanced back in time to see Lavastine strip and make his careful way—as had the other courtiers before him—down the slope to the river. While the younger men braved the crossing to follow after the prince, the king and his mature councillors took their ease in the shallow water and talked no doubt of Gent and the Eika and recent reports of Quman raids in the east and certain marriage alliances that must be accepted or declined.

The hounds had disappeared, so Alain broke into a trot and found them clustered just around the river's bend on the last strip of narrow beach. Stiff-legged, they barked at the water. Alain thought he saw a flash of something tiny and white struggling in the current. Then, slowly, their barking subsided into growls, growls to silence, and the hounds relaxed into a steady vigilance as they regarded the flowing river.

Had he only imagined that flash of movement? The sun made metal of the water as it streamed along. Its bright flash made Alain's eyes tear, and he blinked rapidly, but that only made the water shimmer and flow in uncanny forms like the shift of a slick and scaly back seen beneath the waves or the swift passage of a ship along a canyon of water.

Ahead lies the smoke of home, the cradle of his tribe. Who has arrived before him ? Will he and his soldiers have to fight just to set foot on shore, or has he come first to make his claim before OldMother so that she may prepare the knife of decision ?

The fjord waters mirror the deep blush of the heavens, the powerful blue of the afternoon sky. The waters are so still that each tree along the shore lies mirrored in their depths. Off to one side a merman's slick back parts the water and a ruddy eye takes their measure; then, with a flick of its tail, the creature vanishes into the seamless depths.

Teeth closed on his hand and, coming to himself, he looked down to see Sorrow pulling on him to get his attention. Only three hounds remained; the others had vanished. He started around to see his attendant sitting cross-legged, arms relaxed, as if he'd been waiting a long time.

"My lord!" The man jumped up. "The other hounds ran back to the count, and I didn't know how to stop them, but you was so still for so long I didn't know how to interrupt you…" Trailing off, he glanced nervously at the remaining hounds: Sorrow, Rage, and poor Steadfast, who sat whimpering and licking her right forepaw.

"No matter." Alain took Steadfast's paw into his hand to examine it. A bramble thorn had bitten deep into the flesh, and he gentled her with his tone and then got hold of the thorn and pulled it out. She whimpered, then set to work licking again.

A flash of dead white out in the streaming flow of the river distracted him.

Downstream, a fish appeared, belly up. Dead. Then a second, a third, and a fourth appeared farther downstream yet, dead white bellies turned up to sun and air, gleaming corpses drawn seaward by the current. Beyond that he could make out only light on the water.

Rage growled.

"My lord." The servant had brought his horse.

But he walked back instead, to keep an eye on Steadfast. The thorn had done no lasting damage. Soon she was loping along with the others in perfect good humor, biting and nipping at her cousins in play. Alain would have laughed to see them; it was, after all, a pleasant and carefree day.

But when, across the river, he saw the fishermen trudging home with their baskets full of plump fish, the image of the dead fish caught in the current flashed into his mind's eye and filled him with a troubling foreboding—only he did not know why.

THE quiet that pervaded the inner court of the palace of Wer-aushausen had such a soothing effect, combined with the heat of the sun, that Liath drowsed on the stone bench where she waited even though she wasn't tired.

Fears and hopes mingled to become a tangled dream: Da's murder, Hugh, the curse of fire, Hanna's loyalty and love, Ivar's pledge, the shades of dead elves, Lord Alain and the friendship he had offered her, the death of Bloodheart, Sister Rosvita and The Book of Secrets, daimones hunting her and, more vivid than all the others, the tangible memory of Sanglant's hair caught in her fingers there by the stream where he had scoured away the filth of his captivity.

She started up heart pounding; she was hot, embarrassed, dismayed, and breathless with hope all at once.

She could not bear to think of him because she wanted only to think of him. A bee droned past. The gardener who weeded in the herb garden had moved to another row. No one had come to summon her. She did not know how much longer she would have to wait.

She walked to the well with its shingled roof and whitewashed stone rim.

The draft of air rising from the depths smelled of fresh water and damp stone.

The deacon who cared for the chapel here had told her that a spring fed the wells; before the coming of the Daisanite fraters to these lands a hundred years ago its source had rested hidden in rocks and been worshiped as a goddess by the heathen tribes. Now a stone cistern contained it safely beneath the palace.

Was that the glint of water in the depths? if she looked hard enough with her salamander eyes, would she see in that mirror the face of the man she would marry, as old herbwomen claimed? Or was that only pagan superstition, as the church mothers wrote?

She drew back, suddenly afraid to see anything, and stepped out from the shadow of the little roof into the blast of the noonday sun.

"/ will never love any man but him." Was it that pledge which had bound her four days ago in the circle of stones where she'd crossed through an unseen gateway and ridden into unknown lands? Had she really been foolish enough to turn away from the learning offered to her by the old sorcerer?

She shaded her eyes from the sun and sat again on the bench. It had heavy feet fashioned in the likeness of a lion's paws, carved of a reddish-tinged marble. That same marble had been used for the pillars lining the inner court.

Because the king was not now in residence at Weraushausen, a mere Eagle like herself could sit in the court usually reserved for the king rather than stand attendance upon him. It was so quiet that she could believe for this while in the peace that God are said to grant to the tranquil soul—not that such peace was ever likely to be granted to her.

A sudden scream tore the silence, followed by laughter and the pounding of running feet.

"Nay, children. Walk with dignity. Slow down!"

The children of the king's schola had arrived to take their midday exercise, some more sedately than others. Liath watched as they tumbled out into the sunlight. She envied these children their freedom to study, their knowledge of their kin, and their future position in the king's court. One boy climbed a plinth and swung, dangling, from the legs of the old statue set there, an ancient Dariyan general.

"Lord Adelfred! Come down off there. I beg you!"

"There's the Eagle," said the boy, jumping down. "Why couldn't we hear her report about the battle at Gent?"

Next to the statue stood Ekkehard, the king's youngest child. He resembled his father although he had the slenderness of youth. At this moment, he wore a sullen expression as if it were as fine an adornment as his rich clothing and gem-studded rings, in sharp contrast to the austere expression of the stone soldier. "I asked if I could ride back with her, to my father," he said, "but it wasn't allowed."

"We must be going back to the king's court soon," retorted the other boy, looking alarmed. By the slight burr in the way he pronounced his Wendish, Liath guessed he was from Avaria, perhaps one of Duke Burchard's many nephews.

"King Henry can't mean to leave us here forever! I'm to get my retinue next year and ride east to fight the Quman!"

"It won't matter, forever," muttered Prince Ekkehard. He had a sweet voice; Liath had heard him sing quite beautifully last night. In daylight, without a lute in his hand, he merely looked restless and ill-tempered. "Soon I'll be fifteen and have my own retinue, too, and then I won't be treated like a child. Then I can do what I want."

"Eagle."

Liath started to her feet and turned, expecting to see a cleric come to escort her to Cleric Monica. But she saw only the top of a black-haired head.

"Do you know who I am?" asked the child. For an instant it was like staring into a mirror and seeing a small shadow of herself, although they looked nothing alike except in complexion.

"You are Duke Conrad's daughter," said Liath.

The girl took hold of Liath's wrist and turned over the Eagle's hand to see the lighter skin of the palm. "I've never seen anyone but my father, my avia—my grandmother, that is—and my sister and myself with such skin. I did see a slave once, in the retinue of a presbyter. They said she had been born in the land of the Gyptos, but she was dark as pitch. Where do your kin-folk come from?"

"From Darre," said Liath, amused by her blithe arrogance.

The child regarded her with an imperious expression. "You just rode in from the king's progress. Has there been news? My mother, Lady Eadgifu, should have had her baby by now but no one will tell me anything."

"I have heard no news of your mother."

The girl glanced toward the other children. Ekkehard and his companion had moved off to toss dice in the shadow of the colonnade, and the others kept their distance. Only the old statue remained, like a trusted companion. He had once held a sword, but it was missing. Flecks of blue still colored his eyes, and in the sheltered curve of his elbow and the deeper folds of the cloak spun out in folds of stone from his left shoulder Liath could see the stain of gold paint not yet worn away by wind and weather. Lichen grew on his stone sandals and between his toes.

Was it not said that the Dariyan emperors and empresses and their noble court were the half-breed descendants of the Lost Ones? This stone general looked a little like Sanglant.

"I'm a prisoner here, you know," the girl added without heat. She had the rounded profile of youth, blurred still by baby-fat and the promise of later growth, but a distinctly self-aware expression for all that. No more than nine or ten, she already understood the intricate dance of court intrigue. With a sigh, the child released Liath's hand and turned half away. "I still miss Berthold," she murmured. "He was the only one who paid attention to me."

"Who is Berthold?" asked Liath, intrigued by the yearning in the girl's voice.

But the girl only glanced at her, as if surprised—as Hugh would say—to hear a dog speak.

A cleric hurried up the central colonnade and beckoned to Liath; she followed her into the palace. In a spacious wood-paneled chamber Cleric Monica sat at one end of a long table otherwise inhabited by clerics only half awake, writing with careful strokes or yawning while a scant breeze stirred the air. The shutters had been taken down. Through the windows Liath could see a corral for horses and beyond that the berm of earth that was part of the fortifications.

Wildflowers bloomed along the berm, purple and pale yellow. Goats grazed on the steep slope.

"Come forward." Cleric Monica spoke in a low voice. The clerics worked in silence, and only the distant bleat of a goat and an occasional shout from one of the children penetrated the room, and yet there lay between them all a companionable air as if this hush reflected labor done willingly together, with one heart and one striving. Two letters and several parchment documents lay at Monica's right hand. "Here is a letter for Sister Rosvita from Mother Rothgard at St. Valeria Convent. Here are four royal capitularies completed by the clerics at the king's order. To King Henry relate this message: the schola will leave Weraushausen in two days' time and travel south to meet him at Thersa, as His Majesty commands. Do you understand the whole?" "Yes."

"Now." Cleric Monica beckoned to a tiny deacon almost as old as Monica herself. Liath towered over the old woman. "Deacon Ansfrida."

Deacon Ansfrida had a lisp which, combined with the hauteur of a noblewoman, gave her an air of slightly ridiculous abstraction. "There has been a new road built through the forest. If you fol ow it, it should save you four days of riding time toward Thersa."

"Is it safe to ride through the forest?" Neither churchwoman appeared surprised by the question. The forests lay outside the grasp of the church; they were wild lands still. "I have heard no reports that the levy set to do the work met with any difficulty. Since the Eika came last year, we have been peculiarly untroubled by bandits." "What of other creatures?"

Cleric Monica gave a little breath, a voiced "ah" that trailed away to Wend with the shuffling of feet and the scratch of pens. But the deacon gave Liath a strange look. "Certainly one must watch out for wolves," replied Ansfrida. "Is that what you mean?" Better, Liath realized, to have asked the forests that question and not good women of the church. "Yes, that's what I mean," she said quickly.

"You may wait outside," said Cleric Monica crisply. "A servant will bring you a horse."

Thus dismissed, Liath retreated, relieved to get out from under Monica's searching eye. Beyond the palace she found a log bench to sit on. Here she waited again. The palace lay enclosed by berms of more recent construction; in one place where ditch and

earth wall stood now, she could see the remains of an old building that had been torn up and dug through when the fortification was put in. The palace loomed before her. With windows set high in its walls and six towers hugging the semicircular side like sentries, it appeared from the outside more like a fort than !

a palace. A jumble of outbuildings lay scattered within the protecting berms. A woman stood outside the cookhouse, searing a side of beef over a smoking pit. A servant boy slept half hidden in the grass.

Without the king in residence, Weraushausen was a peaceful place. From the chapel, she heard a single female voice raised in prayer for the service of Sext, and in distant fields men sang in robust chorus as they worked under the hot sun. Crickets buzzed. Beyond the river lay the great green shoulder of the untamed forest; a buzzard—scarcely more than a black speck— soared along its outermost fringe.

What would it be like to live in such peace?

She flipped open her saddlebags. The letters were sealed with wax and stamped with tiny figures. She recognized the seal from St. Valeria Convent at once by the miniature orrery, symbol of St. Valeria's victory in the city of Sai's when she confounded the pagan astrologers. Liath dared not open the letter, of course. Did it contain news of Princess Theophanu? Had she recovered from her illness, or did this letter bring news of her death? Was Mother Rothgard writing to warn Sister Rosvita that a sorcerer walked veiled in the king's progress?

Would Rosvita suspect Liath? Or would she suspect Hugh?

Liath glanced through the capitularies: King Henry grants to the nuns of Regensbach a certain estate named Felstatt for which they owe the king and his heirs full accommodation and renders of food and drink for the royal retinue as well as fodder for the horses at such times as the king's progress may pass that way; King Henry endows a monastery at Gent in the name of St. Per-petua in thanks for the victory at Gent and the return of his son; King Henry grants immunity from all but royal service to the foresters of the Bretwald in exchange for keeping the new road through the Bret Forest clear; King Henry calls the elders of the church to a council at Autun on the first day of the month of Setentre, which in the calendar of the church is called Matthi-asmass.

That day, according to the mathematici, was the autumn equinox.

Ai, God. If she held The Book of Secrets, could she open it freely here?

Would she ever live in a place where there was leisure, and such safety as this palace offered? Was there any place she could study the secrets of the mathematici, wander in her city of memory, explore the curse of fire, and be left alone?

She laughed softly, a mixture of anger, regret, and giddy desire. Such a place had been offered her, when she had least expected it, and she had turned away in pursuit of a dream just as impossible.

A man emerged from the palace gateway leading a saddled horse, a sturdy bay mare with a white blaze and two white socks. She took the reins, thanked him politely, and went on her way.

AS the deacon had promised, the road ran straight east through the Bretwald. Birds trilled from the branches. A doe and half-grown twin fawns trotted into view and as quickly vanished into the foliage. She heard the grunt of a boar. She peered into the depths beyond the scar that was the road. Trees marched out on all sides into unknowable and impenetrable wilderness. The scent of growing lay over everything as heavily as spices at the king's feasting table. Like a rich mead, she could almost taste it simply by breathing it in.

But she could no longer ride through the deep forest without looking over her shoulder. She could not forget the diamone that had stalked her, or the creature of bells. She could not forget the elfshot that had killed her horse this past spring, although that pursuit had taken place in a different forest than this one. Yet surely all forests were only pieces of the same great and ancient forest.

She had traveled enough to know that the wild places on earth were of far greater extent than those lands tamed by human hands.

There.

An aurochs bolted through the distant trees. Its curving horns caught a stray glance of sunlight, vivid, disturbing, and then it was gone. The noise of its passage faded into the heavier silence of the forest, which was not a true silence at all but rather woven of a hundred tiny sounds that blended so seamlessly as to make of themselves that kind of silence which has forgotten, or does not know of or care about, the chatter of human enterprise.

As the last rustle of the aurochs' passing faded, Liath heard, quite clearly, the clop of hooves behind her. She swung round in her saddle but could see nothing. What if it were Hugh?

Ai, Lady! That bastard Hugh had no reason to follow her. He would wait in the safety of the king's progress because he knew she had to return to the king.

She had no freedom of her own to choose where she went and how she lived; she was a mere Eagle living on the sufferance of the king, and that was all and everything she had, her only safety, her only kin.

"Except Sanglant," she whispered. If she said his name too loudly, would she wake herself up from a long and almost painful dream and find the prince still dead at Gent and herself sobbing by a dying fire?

The sound of hooves faded as a wind came up, stirring the upper branches into movement punctuated by the eruption into flight of a dozen noisy wood pigeons. That suddenly, she saw a flash of red far back in the dim corridor of the road. At once she slipped her bow free of its quiver and drew an arrow to rest loosely along the curve of the bow.

A branch snapped to her left and she started 'round, but nothing showed itself in the thickets. What use was running, anyway? She and Da had scuttled from shadow to shadow, but in the end his enemies had caught them.

She reined up her horse and peered into every thicket and out along an unexpected vista of tree trunks marching away into shadow like so many pillars lining the aisles of a cathedral. Nothing. What approached came from the road.

And she heard no tolling of bells.

Yet her face was flushed and she was sweating. She nocked her arrow and waited. A King's Eagle expected respect and safe passage. She had endured so much, she had escaped from Hugh twice.

She was strong enough to face down this enemy.

As the rider came clear of the shadow of the trees, she drew down on a figure dressed in ordinary clothing marked only by a gray cloak trimmed with scarlet. A familiar badge winked at his throat.

"Wolfhere!"

He laughed and, when he came close enough, called to her. "I'll thank you not to look quite so intimidating with that arrow aimed at my heart."

Startled, she lowered the bow. "Wolfhere!" she repeated, too dumbfounded to say anything else.

"I had hoped to catch you before nightfall." He reined in beside her. "No one likes to pass through the forest alone." He rode a surly-looking gelding. Her own mare, sensing trouble, gave a nip to the gelding's hindquarters to let it know at once which of them took precedence.

"You've ridden all the way from Darre," she said stupidly, still too amazed to think.

"That I have," he agreed mildly. He pressed his gelding forward into a walk and Liath rode beside him.

"It took Hanna months to track down the king, and it's only the twenty-fifth day of Quadrii."

"That it is, the feast day of St. Placidana, she who brought the Circle of Unities to the goblinkin of the Harenz Mountains." She saw immediately that he was trying not to smile.

"But you know perfectly well that no passes over the Alfar Mountains are clear until early summer. How did you get to Weraushausen so quickly?"

He slanted a glance at her, eyes serious, mouth quirking up. "I knew where the king was."

"You looked for him through fire."

"So I did. It was a mild winter, and I made my way across the Julier Pass earlier than I had hoped. I watched through fire when I could. I know Wendar well, Liath. I followed the king's progress with that vision and saw where they were bound. Once I saw that King Henry had left the children of the schola at Wer-auschausen, I knew he would have to return by that way or at the least send a message by one of his Eagles, who would know what route he planned to take. I had hoped it might be you."

How much had he seen of her? Did he know Hugh was tormenting her again? Had he seen her burn down the palace at Augensburg, or fight the lost shades in the forest east of Laar, or kill Bloodheart? Had he heard Sanglant's words to her? Had he seen her cross through the gateway of burning stone?

As if he read her thoughts in her expression, he spoke again. "Although I couldn't be sure you still rode with the king's progress and not with Princess Theophanu or on some other errand. You are difficult to vision through fire, Liath. It's as if there's a haze about you, concealing you. I suppose Bernard laid some kind of spell over you to hide you. I'm surprised the effect has survived so long after his death."

Like a challenge, the words seemed to hang in the air between them. They rode some paces in silence while in the branches above the purring coo of turtledoves serenaded them and was left behind.

"You strike straight to heart of the matter, and at once, do you not?"

"Alas, I'm not usually accused of such a weakness." His tone was dry and his smile brief. "To what do you refer, my child?"

She laughed, light-headed, a little dizzy. "I don't trust you, Wolfhere.

Maybe I never will. But I'm grateful to you for saving me at Heart's Rest. And I'm not afraid of you anymore."

This time the smile sparked in his eyes, a pale flicker in gray.

She did not wait for his answer but went on, determined to bring it all to light immediately. "Why were you looking for me? Why did you save me at Heart's Rest?"

He blinked. She had surprised him. "When you were born, I promised Anne that I would look after you. I had been looking for you and your father for eight years, ever since you disappeared. I knew you were in danger." He looked away to the verge where road and forest met and intertwined. When he frowned, lines creased his forehead, and she could see how old he truly was; she had seen only a handful of people whom she supposed to be older than Wolfhere, and certainly none of them had been as hale and vigorous. What magic made him so strong although he was so old? Or was it magic at all but rather the kiss of Lady Fortune, who for her own fickle reasons blessed some with vigor while inflicting feebleness upon others? "Had I found you earlier," he continued, still not looking at her, "Bernard would not have died."

"You could have protected us?" He had not seen Da's body or the two arrows stuck uselessly in the wall.

"Only Our Lady and Lord see all that has happened and all that will happen." A jay cried harshly and fluttered away from the path, its rump a flash of white among dense green. He turned his gaze away from his contemplation of a riot of flowering brambles that twined along the roadside, and with that pale keen gaze regarded her again. "What of you, Liath? Have you been well? You seem stronger."

Did he understand the fire she held within her, which Da had tried to protect her from? She didn't want him to see its existence, her knowledge of its existence, as if some change in her might betray it to his penetrating gaze; she was sure he watched her so keenly to see what she might unwittingly reveal. Da always said there were two ways to hide: to scuttle from shadow to shadow, or to talk in plain sight on a busy road at midday. "Talk too much about nothing, or be silent about everything," he would say, but Wolfhere couldn't be misled by babble, and she no longer dared hide behind silence. Once she had thought silence would shield her. Now she knew that ignorance was more dangerous than knowledge.

"I was afraid to ask you questions before," she said finally, not without a catch in her voice. "Even though I wanted to know about Da and about my mother. I was afraid you would make me tell you things. That you were one of the ones hunting us. But I know you were one of the ones hunting us."

"I would not have phrased it so: 'hunting' you."

"Aren't you named for the wolf. Doesn't the wolf hunt?"

"The wolf does what it must. Unlike humankind, it only kills when it is threatened, or when it is hungry—and then only as much as it needs."

"How did you come to know my mother and father?"

"Our paths crossed." He smiled grimly, remembering as well as she did the conversation, more like a sparring contest, they had had last spring in the tower at Steleshame. "What do you know of magic, Liath?"

"Not enough!" She reconsidered these rash words, then added, "Enough to keep silent on that subject. I've only your word that you made a promise to my mother to protect me. But she's dead, and Da never once mentioned your name.

Why should I trust you?"

He looked pained, as at a trust betrayed or a kindness spurned. "Because your mother—" Then he broke off.

She waited. There was more than one kind of silence: that of the indifferent forest; that of a man hesitant to speak and a woman waiting to hear a truth; the silence that is choked by fear or that which wells up from a pure spring of joy. This silence spread from him into the forest; the sudden stillness of birds at an unexpected presence walking among them; the hush that descends when the sun's face is shrouded by cloud. His face had too much weight in it, as at a decision come to after a hard fight.

When he finally spoke, he said what she had never expected to hear. "Your mother isn't dead."

TEN steps, perhaps twelve, on a path through a dessicated forest whose branches rattled in a howling wind brought Zacharias and the woman to another hard bend in the path. Coming around it, coils of air whipped at his face as he followed the Aoi woman through a bubble of heat. The ground shifted under him, and suddenly he slipped down a pebbly slope and found himself slogging through calf-deep drifts of sand. The horse struggled behind him, and he had to haul on it to get it up a crumbling slope to where the Aoi woman stood on a pathway marked out in black stone. Barren land lay everywhere around them, nothing but sun and sand and the narrow path that cut sharply to the right.

Disorientation shook him, his vision hazed, and when he could see again, they walked through forest, although here the trees looked different, denser than that first glimpse of forest he had seen, like moving from the land where the short-grass grows to the borderwild beyond which the tall grass of the wilderness shrouds the earth and any who walk in its shadow.

The Aoi woman spoke in a sharp whisper, holding up a hand to stop them.

Zacharias yanked the horse to a halt. In the distance, he heard a moaning horn call and saw a green-and-gold flash in the vegetation; someone was on the move out in the forest. They waited for what seemed an eternity, although Zacharias drew perhaps twenty breaths.

"Hei!" said the woman, waving him forward. She looked nervous, and her pace was brisk.

This time when the path veered left, Zacharias knew what to expect. The ground shifted, but he kept his balance, only to lose it as his boots sloshed in water and a salty wind stung his lips. Water lapped his ankles. He looked up in surprise to see waves surging all the way to the horizon. He staggered and barely caught himself on the horse's neck. Where had all this water come from?

Where did it end?

On his other side, merciful y, lay a long strand of pebbles and beyond it hummocks of grass and scrub. A gleaming path shone under the water, cast in bronze.

"What is this place?" he whispered. The woman did not answer.

The ghost lands, his grandmother would have said. The spirit •world. Was he dead?

The path veered right, and the Aoi woman disappeared into a dense bank of fog. Zacharias shook off his fear and followed her to where light streamed in the mist, a fire flaming blue-white and searing his face with its heat—and then it vanished.

He sucked in a breath of grass-laden air and collapsed to his knees next to a dead campfire. Water puddled from his robes and soaked onto the earth. An instant later he gulped, recognizing their surroundings. They had come back to the very stone circle where the witch had defeated Bulkezu. He groped for the knife, then saw the sky and hissed his surprise through his teeth.

It was night, and the waning gibbous moon laid bare the bones of the stone circle and the long horizon of grass, a pale silver expanse under moonlight.

Four turns on an unearthly path had brought them not to a different place but back to the same place at a different time.

He knelt beside the old campfire and stirred the cold ashes with a finger.

Chaff had settled there together with a drying flower petal. "Six days, perhaps seven," he said aloud, touching ash to his tongue. He looked up, suddenly afraid that she would punish him for his fear...or for his knowledge. But if she had meant to kill him, surely she would have done so by now. "Did we walk through the ghost lands?" he asked.

She stood beneath a lintel, gazing west over the plain.

Bulkezu's jacket, laid over her shoulders, gave her the look of a Quman boy.

But she was no boy.

She lifted her spear toward the heavens and spoke incomprehensible words, calling, praying, commanding: Who could j know? As she swayed, her leather skirt swayed, as supple as the finest calfskin.

Except it wasn't calfskin.

"Ah—Ah—Ah—! Lady!" Terror hung hitches into his words, ! forced out of him by shock.

The skirt she wore wasn't sewn of calfskin, nor of deerskin. It wasn't animal skin at all.

Under the lintel, the Aoi woman turned to look at him. Her ( leather skirt slipped gracefully around her, such a fine bronze sheen to it that it almost seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.

"Human skin," he breathed. The words died away onto the night breeze, then were answered by hers.

"You who were once called Zacharias-son-of-Elseva-and-Volusianus. I have taken your blood into my blood. You are bound to me now, and at last I have seen how you can be of service to me and my cause."

ALIVE.

At first Liath could only ride silent along the newly-cut road i while the riot of forest tangled around her until she felt utterly confused. Why had Da lied to her? Had he even known? Ai, Lady. Why couldn't it be Da who still lived, instead of her mother?

At once she knew the thought for a sin. But her mother existed so distantly from her that she could grasp no feeling for that memory which came in the wake of Wolfhere's words more as dream than remembrance: a courtyard and herb garden, a stone bench carved with eagle claws, a slippery memory of silent

| servants half hidden in the shadows. Of her mother she recalled little except that her hair had been as pale as straw and her skin as light as if sun never touched it, although she remembered sitting sometimes for entire afternoons in the bright sun of an Aostan summer, a light more pure than beaten gold.

"You knew all the time."

"No," he said curtly. "I only discovered it now, on my journey to Aosta."

"Hanna didn't tell me."

"She had already left me to return to King Henry with news of Biscop Antonia's escape."

"Did you tell my mother you found me? Did you tell her Da was killed?

What did she say?"

"She said I must bring you to her as soon as I can."

"But where is she now?"

Finally he shook his head. "I dare not say, Liath. I must take you to her myself. There are others looking for you—and for her."

"The ones who killed Da."

His silence was answer enough.

"Ai, Lady." She knew herself to be a young woman now, having left the last of her girl's innocence behind when Da had been killed and Hugh had taken her as his slave; she knew she must appear different to his eyes than she had on that day over a year ago when they had parted in Autun. She had grown, filled out, gotten stronger. But Wolfhere might have aged not a single day in the last year for all she could see any difference in him. White of hair, keen of eye, with the same imperturbable expression that all wise old souls wore in order to confound youthful rashness, he had weathered much in his life that she could only guess at. Surely it took some remarkable action for a common-born man to make an enemy of a king, for kings did not need to take notice of those so far beneath them in all but God's grace. Yet the grieving Henry, at Autun, had banished Wolfhere from court as punishment for his being the messenger who had brought him news of Sanglant's death at Gent.

Except Sanglant wasn't dead.

"If only I could have taken you with me to Darre instead of Hanna,"

Wolfhere murmured. Then he grinned wryly. ."Not that I have any complaint of Hanna, mind you, but do not forget— as I have once or twice to my regret—that we Eagles do not control our own movements. We must go as and where the king sends us."

"If you dislike the king's command upon you, then why do you remain an Eagle?"

"Ah, well." His smile gave little away. "I have been an Eagle for many years."

They rode on for a time in silence as the afternoon sun drew shadows across the road. A red kite glided into view along the treetops and vanished as it swooped for prey. Vines trailed from overhanging branches to brush the track.

"Is she well?" Liath asked finally.

"She is as she ever was."

"You might as well tell me nothing as tell me that. I hardly remember her.

Ai, Lady! Can you imagine what this means to me?"

"It means," said Wolfhere with a somber expression, "that I will lose you as an Eagle."

It struck her suddenly and profoundly. "I'm no longer kin-less. I have a home." But she could make no picture in her mind of what that home might look like.

"You will become what your birthright grants you, Liath. Although how much Bernard taught you I don't know, since you will not tell me." Though there was a hint of accusation in his voice, he did not let it show on his face.

"The art. of the mathematici, which is forbidden by the church."

"But which is studied in certain places nevertheless. Will you go with me, Liath, when I leave the king?"

She could not answer. This, of all choices, was the one she had never expected to have.

By late afternoon they heard a rhythmic chopping and soon came to half-cleared land, undergrowth burned out between the stumps of trees. A goshawk skimmed the clearing. Squirrels bounded along branches, chittering at these intruders. Just past a shallow stream they came to a natural clearing now inhabited by three cottages built of logs and several turf outbuildings. A garden fenced with stout sticks ran riot alongside the central lane, which was also the road. Several young men labored to build a palisade, but when they saw the Eagles, they set down their tools to stare. One whistled to alert the rest, and soon Liath and Wolfhere were surrounded by the entire community: some ten hardy adult souls and about a dozen children.

"Nay, you can't go this day," said the eldest woman there, Old Uta, whom the others deferred to. "You'll not come clear of the Bretwald before nightfall.

Better you bide here with us than sleep where the beasts might make off with you. As it is, we've a wedding to celebrate tonight. It would be our shame not to show hospitality to guests at such a time!"

The young men put on deerskin tunics and then set up a long table and benches outdoors while the women and girls prepared a feast: baked eggs; rabbit; a haunch of venison roasted over the fire; a salad of greens; coarse brown bread baked into a pudding with milk and honey roasted mushrooms; and as many berries as Liath could eat without making herself sick, all washed down with fresh goat's milk and a pungent cider that went immediately to her head.

She found it hard to concentrate as Wolfhere regaled the foresters with tales of the Alfar Mountains and a great avalanche and of the holy city of Darre and the palace of Her Holiness the skopos, our mother among the saints, Clementia, the second of that name.

The bride was easy to recognize: the youngest daughter of Old Uta, she wore flowers in her braided hair and she sat on the bench of honor next to her husband. The bridegroom was scarcely more than a boy, and all through the meal he stared at Liath. There was something familiar about him, but she could not pin it down and no doubt it was only the strength of the cider acting on the astounding news Wolfhere had burdened her with that made her so dizzy. Her mother was alive.

"Eagle," said the young man, speaking up suddenly. "You were the one who led us out of Gent. Do you remember me? With no good humor, I'd wager.

I'm the one as lost your horse, by the east gate." Ruddy-cheeked from working in the sun, he looked little like the thin-faced lad who had wept outside Gent over losing her horse and losing his home that awful day; he had filled out through the chest and gotten rounder in the face. But his eyes had that same quick gleam.

"Ach, lad, lost a horse!" The men groaned and the women clucked in displeasure. "A horse! If we only had a horse to haul those logs, or even a donkey—

"We could have traded a horse for another iron ax!"

i "Peace!" said Liath sharply. They quieted at once and turned to her respectfully. "Did he not tell you what occurred at Gent?"

"Gent's a long way from here," said Old Uta, "and is nothing to do with us.

Indeed, I'd never heard tell of it before they came."

"What's Gent?" piped up one of the younger children.

"It's the place where Martin and Young Uta came from, child." The old woman indicated the bridegroom and then a stout girl with scars on her face and hands. "We took them in, for there were many young people left without family after the raiders came. We've always use for more hands to work. It took us and the other foresters ten years to cut that road." She nodded toward the track that led eastward out of the clearing into the dense forest. "Now we're done, we can cut a home out of this clearing and be free of our service to Lady Helmingard."

"Well, then," said Liath, looking at each in turn, "I'l thank you not to be thinking it's any fault of Martin's that he lost the horse. The king's own Dragons died saving what townsfolk they could from the Eika. There was nothing a boy could do against savages."

"Did all the Dragons die in the end?" Martin asked. She recalled now that he had been the kind of boy who yearned after the Dragons and followed them everywhere he could.

"Yes," said Wolfhere.

"No," said Liath, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Wolfhere astounded in his turn. "The prince survived."

"The prince survived," echoed Wolfhere, on an exhaled breath. Liath could not tell if he were ecstatic or dismayed.

"The prince," breathed the young man in tones more appro- j priate for a prayer to God. "But of course the prince must have j lived. Not even the Eika could kill him. Are they still there in Gent? The Eika, I mean."

"Nay, for two great armies marched on Gent in order to avenge ' the attack last year." Her audience raptly awaited the tale, and even Wolfhere regarded her with that cool gray gaze, patient enough for obviously wanting to hear the story of how Prince Sanglant had survived the death both she and Wolfhere had visioned through fire.

So she told the tale of Count Lavastine's march and the terrible battle on the field before Gent, of Bloodheart's enchantments and the Eika horde. She told of how Lavastine himself had taken some few of his soldiers as a last gamble through the tunnel and how Bloodheart's death had shattered the Eika army, how King Henry's army arrived at the very end—just in time. She could not resist dwelling perhaps more than was seemly on Sanglant's great deeds that day, saving his sister's line from collapse, slaying more Eika than any other soldier on the field. To these isolated forest folk the tale no doubt could as well have been told about heroes who had lived a hundred years before; she might as well have sung the tale of Waltharia and Sigisfrid and the cursed gold of the Hevelli for all that her words truly meant no more to them than a good evening's tale.

But they proclaimed themselves well satisfied when she had done.

"A fitting tale for a wedding feast," said Old Uta. "Now we've somewhat for you to take to King Henry, as a token of our gratitude for his generosity in granting us freedom from Lady Helmingard's service, which she laid heavily on us."

Recalling the diploma she carried, Liath removed it from her saddlebags and read aloud to them King Henry's promise that the foresters would be free of service to any lady or lord as long as they kept the king's road passable for himself and his messengers and armies. The king had not yet put his seal on it, but the foresters nevertheless listened intently, touched the parchment with reverence, and examined the writing, which, of course, none of them could read.

"I've a wish to go back to Gent," said the scarred girl, Young Uta. "I don't like the forest."

"You've a few years to work off first," said Old Uta sternly, and the girl sighed.

But Martin was satisfied with his new life. He had a bride, a place of honor, and security among his new kin. The foresters had meat in abundance and wild plants and skins to trade to the farming folk for grain to supplement what vegetables they could grow in their garden. Even in years made lean by a scant harvest there was game to be caught in the deep forest. They showed off their iron tools: two axes and a shovel. The rest of the tools were made of wood, stone, or copper. They had a storehouse filled with baskets of nuts and pips, shriveled crab apples, leather vessels brimming with barley and unhulled wheat, herbs dried and hung in bundles, and several covered pots of lard. From the rafters they brought down four fine wolfskins and a bearskin and these they rolled and tied and gave to Wolfhere to present to the king as a token of their loyalty and in honor of his recent visit to Weraushausen and the pledge made between foresters and king.

When twilight came, they all escorted bride and bridegroom to the best bed in the hall and entertained them with songs and lengthy toasts. Oaths were sworn—Martin would be given a place in the family in exchange for his labor—

and pledges of consent exchanged. In a month or a year, a frater would probably walk out along the road into the forest, and then he could sing a blessing over the couple. It was always good to get the blessing of the church in such matters, when one could.

"Come now!" said Old Uta finally, taking pity on the new-lyweds, who sat bolt upright in the bed enduring the jests and singing. "It's time to leave these young folk alone to get on with it!" With much laughter, the rest of them left the hall and went to sleep outdoors.

But Liath was too restless to sleep. Wolfhere built a small fire, and by this they sat as stars bloomed in the darkening sky. Lying on her back, she pretended to sleep but instead studied the heavens. Summer was known as "the Queen's sky." The Queen, her Bow, her Staff, and her Sword all shone in splendor above. The Queen's Cup stood at the zenith, the bright star known as the Sapphire almost directly overhead. Her faithful Eagle rose from the east behind her, flying eternally toward the River of Heaven, which spanned the night sky much as the forest road cut a swath through the dense woodland. The zodiac was obscured by trees and by a misty haze that had spread along the southern horizon, but she caught a glimpse of the Dragon, sixth House, between gaps among the tops of trees. Stately Mok gleamed in the hindquarters of the Lion, a brilliant wink between leaves.

"I never thought to look for him," said Wolfhere suddenly into the silence.

"For whom?" she asked, then knew the next instant whom he meant.

"Didn't you ever try looking for my mother through fire?"

"We can only see the living, and then only ones we know and have touched, have a link to."

"But I saw the Aoi through fire, after Gent fell." She rolled to one side. He sat on the other side of the fire, his face in shadow. "I'd never met any such creatures." She hesitated, then said nothing more about her encounter with the Aoi sorcerer.

"That is indeed a mystery. I have but small skill in these matters, though I am adept at seeing. Had I ever suspected Prince Sanglant was alive, I would have looked for him, but I did not. We both saw him take a killing blow—" Here he broke off.

"You are no more surprised than I was when I recognized him in the cathedral," she admitted. But she could not make herself describe to Wolfhere how like a wild beast Sanglant had looked— and acted. Instead she changed the subject. "Da said—"

Da's words on the last night of his life remained caught forever in her city of memory. "If you touch anything their hands have touched, they have a further link to you. . . . They have the power of seeking and finding, but I have sealed you away f om them

r

." If Da had only known her mother wasn't dead, what then? Could she have saved him?

"How could Da have thought she was dead if she wasn't?" "How could we have thought Prince Sanglant dead, when he wasn't?"

"But if she was alive, then why didn't she try to find us? She could see through fire. She knew we weren't dead!"

"She looked for you! But you are not alone in being hunted. Despite our small magics, distances are great and not easily traversed even for an Eagle who has a horse and the promise of lodging and food wherever she stops."

"But if she had to go into hiding, why couldn't she take us? How could Da have thought she was dead? I remember—" Like fire taking to pitch, the memory of that night ten years past flared into life.

"What do you remember?" he asked softly. She could barely find her voice.

"Everything burst into flame, the cottage, all the plants in the courtyard, the stables and the weaving house, all the other buildings..." She shut her eyes, and there in the forest clearing with the whispering of the night woodland pressing in on her she dredged into the depths of that old painful memory. "And the benches. The stone benches. Even the stone burned. That's when we ran. Da grabbed the book and we ran. And he said, " 'They've killed Anne and taken her gift to use as their own.' "

She had to stop because her throat was thick with grief, and with more questions than she knew how to ask. Opening her eyes, she stared up at a sky now so brilliant with stars that it seemed a thousand burning jewels had been casually strewn across the heavens. A streak of light blazed and vanished: a falling star. Was it an angel cast to earth by God's hand, sent to aid the prayers of the faithful, as the church mothers wrote? Or was it the track of one of those aetherical creatures born out of pure fire who, diving like a falcon, plunged from the Sun's sphere to those nesting below?

Wolfhere said nothing. The fire popped loudly and spit a red coal onto the end of her cloak. She shook it off and then sank forward to rest elbows on knees and stare into the fire. A long while passed in silence as the yellow flames flickered and died down into sullen coals. Wolfhere seemed to have fallen asleep.

He had looked for her, but he had not been able to see her through fire.

Was Da's spell stil hiding her? She had felt the presence of others looking for her, had felt the wind of their stalking, the blind grasp of their seeking hands.

She had seen the glass-winged daimone. She had seen the creatures that stalked with a voice of bells and left flesh stripped to bone in their wake. Were they still out there? Could she, like a mouse, scuttle into places forbidden to her and spy them out?

She made of the coals a gateway and peered into its depths. If only she could recall her mother clearly enough in her mind's eye, then surely she could vision her through fire, actually see her again. But as the fire flared under the weight of her stare, she was suddenly seized by a foreboding of doom as real as a hand touching her shoulder—as Hugh's hand had imprisoned her, binding her to his will.

The fire leaped with sudden strength as if it were an unnatural being blooming into existence, wings unfurling into a sheet of fire, eyes like the strike of lightning, the breath of the fiery Sun coalesced into mind and will. Its voice rolled with the searing blaze of flame.

"Child."

She shrieked out loud and scrambled backward, so terrified that she couldn't gulp down the sobs that burst from her chest.

Wolfhere started up. The fire winked out, that fast, to become ashes and one last spark of heat, a dying cinder, gone. "Liath!"

She jumped up and ran out to the half-built palisade, logs felled and sharpened and driven into a ditch to make a barrier against the beasts of the forest. She leaned against one of the stout posts. With the bark peeled off oak lay smooth against her shoulder and cheek; the foresters had done their work well, tc the post did not shift beneath her weight.

shadow fluttered past, then vanished hy!" she whispered to the silent witness of stars and nigh to and the many busy animals about the.r nocturnal labors. "Sanglant."

TVAR had never prayed so much in his life, not even in his first year as a novice at Quedlinhame. His knees ached constantly. But Baldwin had taken it into his head that if he prayed enough he could protect himself from his bride's attentions: He hoped that even a powerful margrave would be loath to disturb a young man at prayer, no matter how long she had been waiting to get her hands on him.

So it proved for the first five days after they left Quedlinhame. But Ivar had ears, and he had grown up with sisters. Margrave Judith wasn't so old that her holy courses had ceased. He even caught a glimpse of a stained cloth laid reverently on a blazing hearth fire.

Women were specially holy at their bleeding time, not to be corrupted by base desire. Even a noblewoman such as Judith followed the wisdom of the church mothers in such matters. Ivar suspected that all Baldwin's praying was a pretty show that counted for very little except to whet his bride's appetite; sometimes while praying, Ivar glanced sidelong at the margrave watching Baldwin, who did indeed pray beautifully.

"You oughtn't to pray unless you pray from your heart," said Ivar. "It's a sin."

It was late afternoon on yet another day of travel, west, toward the king.

Ivar rode a donkey, as was fitting for a novice, but Baldwin had been given a proud black gelding to ride. No doubt Margrave Judith could not resist the chance to display two handsome creatures together.

Right now, however, Baldwin came as close to scowling as he ever could.

"You scold like Master Pursed-Lips. I am praying from my heart! You don't imagine I want to marry her, do you?"

"As if you have a choice."

"If the marriage is not consummated, then it is no marriage."

Ivar sighed. "She's no worse than any other woman. You'll have fine clothes to wear, excellent armor, and a good iron sword. You'll have the Quman barbarians to fight in the march country. It won't be so bad."

"I don't like her," said Baldwin in the tone of a child who has never before had to accept anything he didn't like. "I don't want to be married to her." He cast a glance forward where Lady Tallia rode beside Margrave Judith. "I'd even rather marry—".

"She isn't to be married!" hissed Ivar in a low voice, suddenly angry. "Not by anyone! God has chosen her to be Her handmaiden, to be the uncorrupted bride of Her Son, the blessed Daisan, as all nuns ought to pledge themselves to be."

"Why can't I be chosen?" murmured Baldwin plaintively.

"Because you're a man. Women serve God by tending Her hearth, for they are made in God's image and it is their duty to administer to all that She creates."

"If you preach a heresy," whispered Baldwin, "then the church will punish you."

"Martyrdom isn't punishment! The heathen Dariyans rewarded the blessed Daisan by flaying him alive and cutting out his heart. But God gave him life again, just as martyrs live again in the Chamber of Light."

Baldwin flicked a fly away from his face as he considered the women riding at the front of the procession. "Do you suppose Margrave Judith will be lifted up to the Chamber of Light when she dies, or will she be flung into the Abyss?"

At the vanguard rode some twenty guardsmen, soldiers fitted out in tabards sewn with a leaping panther. After them came Margrave Judith herself.

She had a proud carriage, silvering hair, and a handsome profile marked in particular by a strong nose; she wore a tunic of the richest purple, a hue Ivar had never seen before and marveled at now, embroidered so cunningly with falcons stooping upon fleeing hares and panthers springing upon unsuspecting deer that at odd moments he thought he had glimpsed a real scene, not one caught by silk thread on linen. Riding beside the margrave, Tallia looked frail with her head bowed humbly and her shoulders curved as though under a great weight; she still dressed as simply as a novice, in a coarse robe with a shawl draped modestly over her head. Other attendants surrounded them, laughing and joking. Judith preferred women as companions; of the nobles, clerics, stewards, servants, grooms, carters, and humble slaves who attended her, almost all were female, with the exception of most of her soldiers and two elderly fraters who had served her mother before her. She rode at the head of a magnificent procession. Of the entourages Ivar had seen, only the king's had been larger.

"Why would such a powerful noble be flung into the pit?" Ivar replied finally. "Except that she is in error about the Holy Word and the truth of the blessed Daisan's death and life. But that is the fault of the church, which denies the truth to those eager to hear the Holy Word. I suppose Margrave Judith will endow a convent at her death and the nuns there will pray for her soul every day. So why shouldn't she ascend to the Chamber of Light, with so many nuns praying so devoutly for the care of her soul once she is dead?"

Baldwin sighed expansively. "Then why should I bother to be good, if it only means that I'll endure for eternity next to her in the Chamber of Light after I'm dead?"

"Baldwin! Didn't you listen at all to the lessons?" Ivar realized at that moment that Baldwin's rapt attentive gaze, so often turned on Master Pursed-Lips, Brother Methodius, and their other teachers, might have all this time concealed his complete mental absence from their lessons. "In the Chamber of Light all of our earthly desires will be washed away in the glory of God's gaze."

At that instant the margrave chanced to look back toward them. The gleam in her eyes caused poor Baldwin to look startied and abruptly shy, but unfortunately Baldwin's modesty only highlighted the length of his eyelashes, the curve of his rosy cheeks, and the blush of his lips. The margrave smiled and returned her attention to her companions, who laughed uproariously at some comment she now made. Like a cat, she gained great pleasure in toying with the plump mouse she had snared.

Ivar shuddered. "But there's nothing you can do anyway," he said to Baldwin.

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." A half-gulped-down sob choked out of Baldwin's throat and was stifled. "At least you're with me, Ivar." He reached out and clasped Ivar's hand tightly, almost crushing Ivar's knuckles with the desperate strength of his grip.

"For now."

"I'll beg her to keep you by me," said Baldwin fiercely, releasing Ivar's hand. "You can be my attendant. Promise me you'll stay with me, Ivar." He turned the full force of those beautiful eyes on Ivar. Ivar flushed, felt the heat of it suffuse his face; that blush satisfied Baldwin, who first smiled softly at him and then glanced nervously toward the woman who now controlled his fate.

That evening Ivar was allowed to pour wine at the margrave's table. They had stopped for the night at a monastic estate, and Judith had commanded a fine feast. The margrave was in high spirits; the food was plentiful, the jesting so pointed that Baldwin could not take his gaze off the wooden trencher he shared with his bride. A poet who traveled with them performed "The Best of Songs,"

appropriate for a wedding night.

"Bring me into your chamber, O queen.

ha

I

ve eaten my bread and honey.

have drunk my wine.

Eat, friends, and drink, until you are drunk with love."

One of Judith's noble companions was questioning the elderly uncle, brother to Baldwin's mother, whose presence had been necessary to pry Baldwin loose from the monastery: The old man had explained to Mother Scholastica in a quavering voice that the betrothal between Judith and Baldwin had been formally confirmed by oaths when Baldwin was thirteen; thus the covenant superceded Baldwin's personal oath to the monastery.

Now drunk, the uncle confided in Lady Adelinde. "But the margrave was still married then, when she saw the lad. Ai, well, if her husband hadn't died fighting the Quman, no doubt she would have set him aside in Baldwin's favor.

He was of a good family but nothing as well-favored as the boy."

Adelinde only smiled. "And when Judith sees a man she wants, she will have him despite what the church says about cleaving only to one spouse. No doubt it was a good match for the family."

"Yes, indeed," he agreed enthusiastically. "My sister saw how much she wanted the boy, so she drove a hard bargain and was able to expand her own holdings with several good estates."

Ai, God! Sold like a young bull at market. Ivar gulped the dregs of wine from the cup he was taking to refill. The wine burned his throat; his head was already swimming.

"She'll marry him tonight," said the old uncle, nodding toward the bridal pair. Judith kept a firm hand on the wine cup she and Baldwin shared, making sure he did not drink too much, but she did not fawn over him or pay him an unseemly amount of attention. "And a biscop will sing a blessing over the marriage when we reach the king."

"Come, my beloved, let us go early to the v

ineyards. Let us see if the vine

has budded or its blossom opened."

"You see, Adelinde," said the margrave, calling Lady Adelinde's attention away from Baldwin's aged relative. "No flower should be plucked before it blooms, or we will never see it in its full flowering." She indicated Baldwin who by this time was pink with embarrassment; yet like a flower under the hot gaze of the sun—and the abrupt attention of all the folk privileged to sit at the table with Margrave Judith—he did not wilt but rather flourished. But she had already turned her gaze elsewhere; she had a sudden and uncomfortable glint in her eyes. "Is that not so, Lady Tallia?"

The young woman did not look up. She had not even eaten the bread off her plate, and at once Ivar felt guilty for having eaten and drunk so lustily. Her face was as pale as a dusting of snow on spring fields, her voice so soft that he could scarcely hear her reply. " 'If a woman were to offer for love the whole wealth of her house, it would be utterly scorned.' "

This rebuke had no effect on Margrave Judith's good cheer. " 'But my vineyard is mine to give,' " she retorted to hearty laughter, and then signaled to her waiting attendants. "Come. Now we shall retire."

"What?" exclaimed her companion with drunken joviality. "So soon after fetching him from the monastery? You raise horses aplenty in the east. Surely you know you break them in a bit at a time. You don't just throw a saddle on them and ride them the first time you put a harness on them."

"I have been patient," said Judith with a pleasant smile, but there was iron in her tone. She gestured to Baldwin to rise, and Ivar hastily followed him, since poor Baldwin had now gone as white as a burial shroud.

In the bustle as they retreated from the hall Ivar found himself cornered by Judith's noble companion, who was so flushed with drink that her hands had no more discretion than her wine-loosened tongue. "Do you have those freckles everywhere?" she demanded, and with a hand on his thigh seemed likely to pull up his robe to find out.

"Nay, Adelinde." Judith put herself between the woman and Ivar. "This boy is sworn to the church. He's not even allowed to speak to women. I have pledged to see him safely to the monastery of St. Walaricus the Martyr. And that means safe in all parts." Her glance touched Ivar, but in her case it was her disinterest in him that was tangible. He could have been a chair she moved aside. "Go on, boy. Attend my bridegroom to his night's rest."

A chamber had been set aside for the margrave and her attendants.

Several pallets had been s'et to one side on the floor; the bed, wide and soft, had a curtain hung about it like a shield. A breath of wind through open shutters stirred the curtain. Outside, twilight bled a buttery light into the room.

Baldwin was shaking as Ivar helped him out of his sandals and leggings and fine tunic, leaving him in his undertunic. He washed his face and hands and then went to kneel beside the bed in an attitude of devout prayer, as blank of expression as a handsome marble statue.

Judith arrived, flushed and full of energy. She was a good-sized woman, tall, stout, and strong. Baldwin was scarcely taller and, having all the slenderness of youth, seemed swallowed by her robust presence.

At a signal from one of the servants, Ivar left Baldwin and retreated to a corner. At the table, one of Judith's clerics chanted words over a strip of linen marked with letters—something in Dariyan that Ivar couldn't make out, although it had the cadence of one of those homely spells used by parish deacons to drive out pests or heal the sick. The cleric soaked the linen in vinegar and then wrapped it up around a pebble. Now Ivar turned away modestly while Judith's attendants flocked around her, undressing her. There was much giggling and whispering. A serv-ingwoman drew the curtains shut. The other servants settled down on pallets or on the floor, but Ivar couldn't sleep. Facing the corner, he sank down to bruised knees, clenched his eyes shut, and clasped his hands tightly in prayer.

Even with his eyes squeezed shut, he couldn't help but hear. The good margrave seemed to take an unconscionably long time about her task.

His own body stirred in response to what he heard: a slip of cloth as bodies rolled, a grunt, a stifled chuckle, a sudden surprised gasp; a sigh. Ai, Lady protect him. He could imagine the man rousing, the woman opening, and whether his thoughts dwelt longest with bridegroom or bride he could not—must not—think on. His prayers fled from him like startled hares. He was sweating although it was not a particularly hot night.

A few short gasps which he recognized as Baldwin—and it was finally over.

He had held himself so tensely that to move made his muscles groan.

Grimacing, he eased down onto the carpet that covered the wood floor, the only pallet granted him, and at last, wrung out by the ordeal, dozed off, only to be awakened much later in the night by the same thing.

When they had finished once again, he could finally sleep, but he was haunted by terrible dreams. Surely the Enemy had sent a hundred grasping, pinching, teasing minions to taunt him with visions of Liath warm, willing, and close against him.

In the morning only formalities remained. Judith presented her new husband with a traditional morning gift to celebrate the consummation of the marriage: a fine sword set in a jeweled scabbard; a silk tunic from Arethousa; a small ivory chest containing jeweled brooches and rings; and twelve nomias, gold coins minted in the Arethousan Empire. It was a handsome and impressive gift.

Baldwin's old uncle had brought a trifle for Baldwin to present to her in his turn, a gold bauble with bells hidden inside that tinkled when it was rolled along the floor.

The marriage-price paid by Judith to his parents was more substantial but none of it movable wealth: He now could lay claim to several rich estates in Austra and Olsatia. That had all been agreed upon five years before, and it was only a formality to read the charters now.

They left the estate late in the morning. Judith rode ahead with her attendants, leaving Ivar to keep pace beside Baldwin. The new bridegroom had a flush in his cheeks and a bit of pale fuzz along his jaw; he was a man now and was expected to grow a beard.

Ivar reached over to tap his leg, and Baldwin flinched as if any least touch startled him. "Are you well?" whispered Ivar. "You look as if you've taken a fever."

"I didn't know." His eyes had a feverish gleam and his gaze on Ivar had such intensity that all at once those thoughts which had tormented Ivar's waking prayers and restless sleep last night shuddered back into life and danced through his body. Both young men looked away, at once, and when Ivar looked up again it was to see Baldwin staring now at Lady Tallia with her pale face and frail profile. His lips were slightly swollen, and his eyes were wide.

"I didn't know," he repeated, as at a revelation, but of what he hadn't known then and did know now he spoke no further word. Ivar was left to ride in discomforting silence beside him.

WHEN Rosvita slept with the Vita of St. Radegundis tucked against her, the bequest given to her by the dying Brother Fi-delis, she always had strange dreams. Voices whispered in her dreams in a language she could not quite understand. Creatures j fluttered at the edge of her mind's vision as at the forest's verge, trying to catch her attention, then bolting as woodland animals did when they caught the scent of a predator.

A golden wheel flashed in harsh sunlight, turning. Young Berthold slept peacefully in a stone cavern, surrounded by six attendants. A blizzard tore at mountain peaks, and in the wings of a storm danced moon-pale daimones, formed out of the substance of the aetherical winds. A lion stalked a cold hillside of rock, and on the plain of dying grass below this escarpment black hounds coursed after their prey, an eight-pointed stag, while a great party of riders clothed in garments as brilliant as gems followed on their trail.

"Sister Rosvita!" I

A hand descended on her shoulder and she woke, dragged out of the dream by the urgent summons of the waking world. She grunted and sat up, blinking.

"I beg you. Sister Rosvita." Nerves made young Constan-tine's voice squeak like a boy's. "The king wishes you to attend him. A steward is here to escort you."

"I beg you, Brother, recall your modesty."

He murmured apologies and turned his back as she slipped out from under the blanket and pulled on cleric's robes over her undertunic. Sister Amabilia snored pleasingly in the bed; Rosvita envied the young woman her ability to sleep through anything. She considered the Vita and on impulse picked it up.

The king was out behind the stables, fully dressed as if he had never lain down to sleep the night before. He stood with one foot braced on a stump and a hand braced on that leg as if to give him a place to grip patience as he watched his son pace back and forth, back and forth, along the ground in a curving line that would soon wear itself visibly into the grass. For an instant Rosvita thought the prince was on a leash, but it was only that the pattern of his restless pacing marked the same ground over and over: as if he still paced in a semicircle at the limit of chains. Yet he had been freed from the chains of his captivity to Bloodheart over twenty days ago.

Dogs growled as Rosvita approached, making her neck prickle. Horrible beasts, they had huge fangs coated with saliva, and eyes that sparked fire. Their iron-gray coats lay like a sheen of metal over thin flanks. They lunged, were brought up short by chains, and contented themselves with barking and slobbering.

Seeing Rosvita, Henry gestured toward his son. "He has taken a mad plan into his head to ride out after one of my Eagles, without even an escort. Your advice, good Sister, will surely make him see reason where Villam and I cannot."

Sanglant stopped pacing and stood alertly as if listening—to her, or to the birds singing their morning lauds. Was it true, as Brother Fidelis had said over a year ago, that the birds sang of this child born of the mingling of human and Aoi blood? Could the prince actually understand the language of the birds? Or was he listening for something else?

"Let me go, Your Majesty," said Sanglant harshly. "Call off your dogs."

The soldiers glanced toward the staked-down Eika dogs, who growled and yipped, sensing their disquiet. Henry looked toward Rosvita, expecting her to speak.

Quickly she collected her thoughts. "What troubles you, Your Highness?

Where is it you wish to go?"

"She should have been back by now. I have been patient. But there are things stalking her." He cast his head back to scent. "I can smell them. There is something else, something I don't understand— What if she's met with disaster on the road? I must find her!"

That he did not bolt for freedom was due only to the presence of his father. Henry would not have been king had he not had a gaze as sharp as lightning and a force of will as strong as any ten men. That will set to bear on the prince was all that kept Sanglant from bolting.

"How will you find this Eagle you seek?" Rosvita continued. "There are many roads."

"But I smell death—! And the taint of the Enemy." He shook himself all over, barked out something more like a howl of frustration than a curse, and suddenly collapsed to his knees. "Ai, Lady, I feel a dead hand reaching out to poison her."

"As well chain him up like the dogs," muttered the king, "as get sense out of him. No one must see him like this."

"Your Highness." Rosvita knew how to soothe distraught men. As eldest daughter in her father's hall, that duty had fallen to her more than once as a child when rage overtook Count Harl. She had soothed Henry many times. She went forward now and cautiously but firmly laid a hand on the prince's shoulder.

His whole body shook under her touch. "Would it not be better to remain with the king's progress than to risk missing her on the road? The Eagle you seek will return to the king. If you go hunting for her, how can you hope to find her when so much land lies between?"

He had a hand over his eyes and was, she now realized, weeping silently.

But tears, at least, were a man's reaction, not a dog's. Emboldened by this small success, she went on. "We move again today, Your Highness. At Werlida they have stores enough to feed us all for a week or more. How many roads lead to Werlida? You could ride for months and miss her on the road. Only be patient."

"Child," said Villam gently, "all Eagles return to the king in time. If you wait with the king, then she will come to us eventually."

"She will come to me eventually," he whispered hoarsely.

Villam smiled. "There speaks a young man touched by the barb young men feel most keenly. You must be patient in your turn, Your Majesty. He has endured much."

The king frowned at his son but, as the clerics gathered in the manor hall behind them raised their voices in the opening verses of Prime, his expression lost some of its utter gloom.

"She's a handsome enough young woman," continued Villam, almost coaxingly. "It would do him good to recover his interest in women."

"What is it you mean, son," asked the king, "by the taint of the Enemy? By a 'dead hand'?"

Suddenly, as if alerted by a noise only he could hear, Sanglant bolted to his feet and yanked up the stake that held the dogs. With them yammering and dragging at the chains, he made for the horses watched over by a nervous groom. The horses shied away from the frenzied approach of the pack, and the prince had to beat the dogs back with his fists to make them stop lunging for the underbellies of the horses. With growls and whines they obeyed him, and he swung onto a horse and with the dogs' leashes still in his grip and a square pouch slung over his shoulder, he rode away toward the river.

The king looked toward Hathui. She nodded, as at a spoken command, and commandeered a horse to make haste after Sanglant. With barely audible groans, the four soldiers followed her.

"I despair of him," muttered Henry.

"Let him recover," advised Villam. "Then give him the Dragons again. Battle will restore his wits."

But Henry only frowned. "Ungria's king has sent an envoy. He offers his younger brother as a bridegroom for Sapientia."

Rosvita regarded him with surprise. "I thought you favored the suit of the Salian, Prince Guillaime. Or the son of the Pole-nie king."

"Savages!" murmured Villam, who had fought against the Polenie before their conversation to the faith of the Unities. "You'd do better to marry her to young Rodulf of Varingia, and seal his sister the duke's loyalty in that way.

Sapientia will need the loyalty of Duchess Yolande of Varingia when she comes to the throne."

"He's always been an obedient son," said Henry, still staring in the direction his son had ridden. "But I must set the foundation on stone, not sand."

Villam glanced at Rosvita and raised his eyebrows as if to question her.

What on earth was the king speaking about? She could only shrug.

In the forecourt in front of the manor house where they had stayed the night, the servants were already loading wagons, beating feather beds, hauling the king's treasure chests out under guard. Rosvita watched as young Brother Constantine hurried out, bent over a loose bundle of pens and ink bottles; because he wasn't looking where he was going, he slammed into a servant, dropped a stoppered bottle and then, bending to retrieve it, several quills as well.

Rosvita smiled. "Your Majesty. If I may go to my clerics and make ready?"

Henry nodded absently. As she moved off, he called her name. "I thank you, good friend," he said with a sudden, brilliant smile, and she could only incline her head, staggered as always by the force of his approval.

Rosvita reached young Constantine in time to help him pick up the last goose quil . A moment later she heard a hail. Brother Fortunatus and Sister Amabilia had appeared on the steps, blinking sleepily, and now they swung around to look as a rider came into view.

• "Where is the king?" the man called. Rosvita stepped forward to take his message. "Nay, I bring no message," the rider continued politely. "I ride as herald for Margrave Judith. She has returned to the king's progress with her bridegroom. She escorts Lady Tallia to the king."

"Her bridegroom!" said Fortunatus just as Amabilia exclaimed: "God Above!

What has the girl done to get herself thrown out of Quedlinhame so quickly?"

A new set of riders clattered into view, and the clerics stared expectantly, but it was only an annoyed Prince Sanglant with his escort of Hathui and the four guardsmen made anxious by the Eika dogs. Servants scattered, running for safety. The dogs erupted into a frenzy of barking, and a moment later Count Lavastine and his hounds spilled into the courtyard. The noise became so deafening that Rosvita covered her ears.

Sanglant leaped down off his horse and yanked his dogs down, but they kept struggling up to bolt for the black hounds, who wisely kept their distance without stinting in threatening growls and ear-splitting barks even as the count called them to heel.

Then Lavastine's heir came out of the hall. Lord Alain knelt beside the hounds and spoke a few words to them, and at once they ceased barking and sat, tongues lolling, with patient vigilance.

Sanglant was still cursing his dogs, who barked and lunged and snapped at their rivals. His right hand dripped blood where the chain, dragged through his grip, had scraped the skin raw. Alain approached him cautiously, knelt with extended hand, and reached out to touch the nearest Eika dog.

Rosvita shut her eyes as Amabilia gasped and Fortunatus swore under his breath. Constantine whimpered in fright. Then Rosvita cursed herself for cowardice and opened her eyes just as an uncanny silence fell upon the scene.

Alain had laid a hand gently on the head of the biggest and ugliest of the Eika dogs. It sat meekly, trembling beneath his touch. The other two hunkered down. Gobs of saliva dribbled down their muzzles to stain the dirt at his feet.

"Peace," he said to them. "Poor troubled souls."

He stood up. Sanglant regarded the young man with astonishment. Count Lavastine's expression was so blank Rosvita could not read it.

A moment more they all stood so. Then raised voices drifted out to them from the hall behind. Sanglant grimaced and hastily dragged his dogs away just as Sapientia and Father Hugh emerged from the hall. An attendant carried infant Hippolyte, and the baby crowed and burbled as Hugh smiled at her and tickled her under her fat chin.

But Sapientia was staring around the courtyard, mouth pinched down. "Did we miss something?" she demanded as Sanglant vanished behind the stable.

Hathui nodded curtly at Rosvita and left to find the king. Servants emerged cautiously from their bolt-holes and resumed their labors, and the messenger crept out from the safety of the stables and knelt before Father Hugh.

"My lord. Your mother rides not an hour behind me on the road."

Father Hugh turned his smile from baby to messenger. "Ah, you are the younger son of old Tortua, the crofter over by Lerchewald. You're much grown since I left Austra. You are wed now?"

"Nay, my lord. The farm has gone to my elder sisters and there was nothing left for me, so I came into your good mother's service."

"Indeed," said Hugh with a gentle smile but a glint like the spark of fire in his eye, "that is often the fate of sons. Here." He took a pouch from one of his attendants and gave a handful of silver coins to the young man. "For your dowry."

The messenger flushed scarlet. "My lord Hugh!" He kissed Hugh's hand.

Hugh said a blessing over him and sent him off to find something to eat. As Count Lavastine came forward to pay his respects to Princess Sapientia, Hugh's gaze roved the courtyard and came to rest, briefly, on Rosvita.

She nodded at him, to acknowledge him, although they did not stand close enough to speak. His eyes had a fever in them, as of a man caught at the beginning of the onslaught of an all-encompassing illness. He frowned at her, recalled himself, and offered a pleasant smile instead, then turned away.

Did he suspect that she was the one who had stolen The Book of Secrets from him? And if he did, what action would he take against her?

IT was well past dawn, but the procession was not yet ready to leave.

Loaded wagons jostled past crates of chickens; a file of soldiers stood at their ease beside the wagons which carried the king's treasure. As a mark of favor, the king had chosen to wait for Margrave Judith's party to arrive so that they could travel together to Werlida. Alain stood restlessly beside Lavas-tine, who himself waited on the king. The sun's glare made him wince as he squinted northeast, trying to make out the approaching party. It was so hard to wait.

Lord Geoffrey had caroused late the night before, and he finally emerged from the house rubbing his eyes, looking rather the worse for wear. "Cousin!" he said to Lavastine by way of greeting. He nodded at Alain, nothing more. "Is it true that Margrave Judith will arrive today?"

Lavastine's frown was comprehensive as he studied Geoffrey. "Had you risen earlier, you would know the whole."

"And missed the wrestling?" Geoffrey laughed heartily, and Alain flushed. A group of women who were no better than whores had come from the nearby town of Fuldas yesterday to entertain the king's court.

"I would not have called it wrestling," replied Lavastine. "Indeed, if you recall, their antics were so outrageous that in the end the king asked them to leave the hall."

"Yet he did not forbid any of us to follow after them. The king does not begrudge the young their diversions."

"The young will behave foolishly, as is their wont. But you are married, cousin."

"And glad of it! So could you be married again, cousin, if you took a wife."

Lavastine pressed his lips together so tightly that his skin went white at the corners of his mouth. He called Terror over to him, and Geoffrey fidgeted nervously, but the old hound merely snarled at him and then sat down to get his ears stroked. "I will not marry again. Alain will sire the next heir to Lavas county."

Geoffrey's smile in reply was as tight, and he did not look at Alain at all.

But Alain knew he was thinking of his eldest and so far only child, Lavrentia, whom he had once believed would inherit the county of Lavas.

"Geoffrey!" cried one of the young lords from among a pack of them gathered by the stables. "You missed the best of it last night! Come, we'll tell you!"

Geoffrey excused himself and hurried over to them, stopping only to pay his respects to King Henry, who greeted him cheerfully enough.

Alain stared and stared "Look!" he cried, pointing to a haze of dust along the river.

"It was a terrible risk, Alain," said Lavastine suddenly. "What were you thinking to approach Prince Sanglant's dogs in that way?"

"Poor creatures. But I wasn't scared of them. That's why they didn't hurt me. If the prince would not treat them so brutally, they might have better natures." Then he flushed, aghast at his own harsh words.

"Eika dogs do not have 'better natures.' Prince Sanglant has shown great mercy toward them. I would have had them killed outright. That they didn't injure you is beyond my understanding, Son. You will not go near them again."

"Yes, Father," he said obediently. Then: "I see them!"

Margrave Judith's procession came into view on the road. Her banner, a panther leaping upon an antelope, flew beside a banner marked with the Arconian guivre set between three springing roes, two above and one below, the sigil of the old royal house of Varre. Lavastine hissed in breath between his teeth and with a smile of triumph turned to Alain.

"Make ready, my child. What we have worked for will come to pass at Werlida."

Suddenly, senses made sharp by anticipation, Alan could smell the harvest of summer's growth, hear chickens scratching on wood, the piping call of a bullfinch, and the purl of the distant river. Far away, clouds gathered on the horizon, a dull gray that promised rain. Ardent yawned, a gape-toothed swallowing of air, and flopped down beside Bliss. Alain smelled ripe cheese and the last faint perfume of frankincense used in the morning service.

"Tallia," he said softly, trying her name on his lips, but his throat clotted with emotion, and he could only stare as Margrave Judith's party approached in all their glory—a sight that two years ago would have left him speechless at the splendor of their passing but which now had become commonplace. Father Hugh walked forward to kiss his mother's hand; then Judith dismounted in her turn to greet King Henry.

Alain searched, but he could not see Tallia although he knew she must be among the group of women concealed by hoods and shawls.

Sister Rosvita and her clerics stood a few paces from him, and Alain heard their whispered comments.

"God Above! He has the face of an angel!"

"Sister Amabilia," replied Rosvita sternly. "Do not stare so. It is unseemly."

" 'A lily among thorns is my sweet flower among men,' " quoted the youngest of them, not without a quaver of awe in his voice.

"Brother Constantine and I are for once in agreement," muttered Amabilia.

"Where does she find these succulent young morsels?" asked the fourth.

"Brother Fortunatus!" Rosvita scolded. Then, on a gasp, she spoke again.

"Ivar! What means this?"

"God help us," murmured Lavastine in a tone of astonishment. Alain tore his gaze away from his search for Tallia to see a blindingly handsome young man brought forward to be presented to the king. With him, like an attendant, walked another young man whose curling red-gold hair strayed out from the otherwise modest cowl of his novice's hood. Rosvita moved forward to intercept the young men, but before she could reach them through the crowd, King Henry signaled for the march to begin. At once the courtyard fell into such a clamor and with so much dust hazing the scene that Alain had everything he could do to keep the hounds and himself next to his father.

With Margrave Judith now in the procession, Count Lavas-tine and Alain were relegated to the second rank behind Henry, Helmut Villam, Judith, Hugh, and Princess Sapientia. But Alain did not mind; he kept craning his neck around to try to get a glimpse of Tallia, but her group was lost to his gaze in the crowd behind.

It took until the afternoon to reach Werlida, a magnificent palace set on a bluff overlooking a broad bend in the river. They wound up a road from the river bottom and past a berm and a palisade wall into the lower enclosure. Here most of the wagons rumbled to a halt, scattering out among a village made up of sunken pit-houses for quartering servants and craftsmen, four large weaving halls, and a half dozen timber-post graneries. Alain caught the dusty scent of old grain stored in sacks and pots, then they moved out of range, upward through gateways with no less than three ramparts with ditches cut away on their outer slopes. From the height of the upper enclosure, he saw the river at the steep base of the bluff below. It curved around on three sides. Fields lay scattered among copses of woodland, and beyond them spread forest.

Here, on the grounds of the palace, they waited in the large, open interior field—not quite a courtyard—for the king to make his way to his quarters, which lay on the other side of a stone chapel. A stately timber hall with its foundations set in stone graced the southern side of this complex of buildings. The king's stewards parceled out quarters according to rank and favor, but no sooner had Alain gotten the hounds settled in a makeshift kennel outside their assigned guesthouse than the count came looking for him.

"King Henry has asked that we attend him in a private council. Come, Son.

Make yourself presentable." He glanced toward the kenneled hounds who, hoping for a caress, wagged their tails and whined. "Bring two of the hounds as well."

The king received them in a spacious room with all the shutters taken down to admit light and air. Only Helmut Villam, a half-dozen servingmen, and Sister Rosvita attended him. Henry sat on his traveling chair, carved cunningly with lions as the four legs, the back as the wings of an eagle, and the arms as the sinuous necks and heads of dragons. The king leaned forward as his favored Eagle spoke softly into his ear. Seeing Lavastine and Alain, he straightened.

"Let him come to me at once if you can coax him within the ramparts.

Otherwise—" He glanced toward Villam, who gave a barely perceptible nod. "—

let him range as widely as he wishes

at this time. Better that the court not see him when he is in such a restless and wild humor."

She bowed and strode briskly out of the chamber. Henry gestured to a servingman, who left the chamber in the Eagle's wake. Then he nodded to Sister Rosvita and, with a troubled expression, she read aloud from a letter.

' 'To my brother, His Illustrious Majesty, Henry, regnant over Wendar and Varre. With a heavy heart and a disquieted mind I must relate to you these tidings, that our niece Tallia cannot remain at Quedlinhame. She has been spreading the taint of heresy among my novices and has polluted over twenty young innocents with her preaching. I advise caution even as I commend her into your hands. It seems to me that marriage would best distract her from these falsehoods.' "

Henry signed, and Rosvita stopped reading. "Do you still want the marriage to go forward?" he asked Lavastine bluntly. "The charge of heresy is a serious one. Mother Scholastica has taken Tallia's youth into account in judging her fit, at this time, for mercy. The girl claims to have had visions, but whether they have come to her through the agency of the Enemy or merely through her innocent trust in bad counselors we cannot say. If she does not repent of these views, the church may be forced to take more drastic action."

Lavastine raised an eyebrow, considering.

Heresy. Alain knew in his gut to whom Tallia had listened: Prater Agius. It was as if the heresy of the flaying knife and the sacrifice and redemption of the blessed Daisan was a plague, passing from one vulnerable soul on to the next.

Agius had been granted the martyr's death he so desired. Wasn't that a mark of God's favor? But why should God favor a man who preached a heresy against God's own truth?

Yet the thought of losing Tallia because of Agius' preaching infuriated him.

Anger welled up in his heart, and Rage growled beside him.

"Peace," murmured Lavastine, and the hound settled down to rest its head on its great paws. He turned to the king. "Lady Tallia is young yet, Your Majesty.

And she has not, alas, been exposed to the wisest of counselors. A steadying influence—" He nodded toward Alain. "—will calm her young mind."

"So be it," said Henry, not without relief.

"The sooner this transaction takes place, the better," added Lavastine. "I must return to my lands before autumn so that I and my son can oversee the autumn sowing. A hard winter awaits us because of the men who died at Gent...those same men who gave up their lives to return Gent—and your son Sanglant— into your hands."

The door opened and the servingman returned with two young women in tow. One, with a plump and eager face, stared at the king with mouth agape and then recalled herself and knelt obediently. The other, shawl askew to reveal wheat-pale hair, was Tallia.

Alain had to shut his eyes. He was overtaken by such a surge of anticipation and relief and simple, terrible desire that he swayed, trembling all over, until Sorrow nudged up under a hand to give him a foundation to steady himself on.

"Uncle," said Tallia so softly that the commonplace noises from outside almost drowned out her words "I beg you, Uncle, let me retire in peace to a nun's cell. I will take vows of silence, if that must be, but do not—

"Silence! You are not meant for the church, Tallia. In two days' time you will be wed to Lord Alain. Do not seek to argue with me. My mind is made up."

Alain looked up to see Tallia kneeling before the king. Her cheeks were scoured to a dreadful pallor, and she was as thin as a beggar in a year of bad harvests, but she was still beautiful to his eyes. It was more than her beauty that affected him; another inexplicable, unnamable force had taken hold of him and he could only stare, stricken dumb with shame for the desire he felt even as she turned a pleading gaze on him and with tears rolling down her cheeks bent her head as in submission to the terrible fate that had overtaken her.

FATHER Hugh never argued. He merely smiled when another disagreed with him, then spoke with such gentle persuasion that his disputants rarely recognized that he almost always got his way. But Hanna had learned to read signs of his agitation. Right now he was wringing the finger of one of his gloves, held lightly in his left hand, twisting it round and round as he listened to his mother's advice to Princess Sapientia.

"Prince Sanglant is a threat to your position only if you let him become one, Your Highness," Margrave Judith was saying. Hanna stood behind Sapientia's chair; the margrave sat like an equal beside the princess in a chair almost as elaborate as the regnant's throne. All of her other attendants—including her new husband and her bastard son—stood while the two noblewomen conversed. "It is true that your father the king has neglected you because of his affection for the prince. I speak bluntly because it is only the common truth."

She spoke bluntly because she was powerful enough to do so. A sidewise glance brought Hanna a glimpse of Ivar's bowed head. He had a flush in his cheeks that bothered Hanna, as if a disease had come to roost within him that he was not yet aware of. Yet in such a situation, she could not hope to speak to him.

"What do you advise?" Too restless to sit still for long, Sapientia jumped up and began to pace. "I do not dislike my brother, although I admit since we rescued him from Gent he behaves strangely, more like a dog than a man."

"His mother was not even human, which no doubt accounts for it." Judith lifted a hand and Hugh, obedient son, brought her a cup of wine. He moved so gracefully. Hanna could scarcely believe she had seen this elegant courtier strike Liath with cold fury. He was so different, here at court. Indeed, he was so very different in all ways from the men in Heart's Rest, the village where she had grown up: his elegant manners; his fine clothes; his beautiful voice; his clean hands. "But women were made by God to administer and create and men to fight and toil," continued Judith. "Cultivate your brother as a wise farming-woman cultivates her fields, and you will gain a rich harvest for your efforts. He is a notable fighter, and he carries the luck of your family with him on the battlefield. Use his good qualities to support your own position as heir to the regnant. Do not be so foolish as to believe the whispers that Henry wishes to make him Heir. The princes of Wendar and Varre will not let themselves be ruled by a bastard, certainly not a male bastard, and one as well who has only half the blood of humankind in him."

Sapientia paused by the window. Something she saw outside caused her to turn back and regard Margrave Judith with a half smile. "Count Lavastine's heir was once named a bastard. And now he is legitimate—and marrying my cousin this very night!" "Tallia is an embarrassment. Henry did well to give her as a gift to Count Lavastine as reward for Lavastine's service to him at Gent. It rids Henry of Tallia."

"And gives Lavastine a bride with royal connections for his heir," said Sapientia thoughtfully. "I think you did not meet Lord Geoffrey, who is Lavastine's cousin and was his heir before Lord Alain appeared. He is a nobleman in every respect, certainly worthy of the county and title."

"Lavastine is cunning. Once Lord Alain and Lady Tallia produce an heir, Henry will be forced to support Alain if Lord Geoffrey contests the succession."

Hugh spoke suddenly. "What if King Henry decides to marry Prince Sanglant in like manner, to give him legitimacy?"

Startled, Judith glanced at him as if she had forgotten he was there. "Do you actually think Henry so far gone in his affection for Sanglant that he would consider such a thing?" "Yes," he said curtly.

"No," retorted Sapientia. "I am Heir. I have Hippolyte to prove my worthiness. It's just that you hate Sanglant, Hugh. I see how you detest him.

You can't bear that I might like him, even though we grew up together and he always treated me kindly when we were children. But your mother is right."

Judith nodded in acknowledgment, but Hanna noted how hard her gaze was upon her son, as if she sought to plumb his depths and thereby know his mind.

"Sanglant is no threat to my position—unless I let him become one. And by seeming to fear him because my father favors him and shows an old fondness for him, it weakens me—not him." She spun around to look at Hanna. "Is that not so, Eagle? Is that not exactly what you said to me yesterday?"

Ai, Lady! They all looked at her. She wished abruptly that she had never spoken such rash words to Sapientia. But Sapientia, if young and foolish, had promise if only someone bothered to give her practical advice, and Hanna had a store of practical advice harvested from her own mother.

"Wise counsel," said Margrave Judith with a gleam in her eyes that made Hanna exceedingly nervous. "What do you say, Hugh?"

Hugh had a certain quirk to his lips that betrayed irritation. He smiled to cover it now. His voice remained as smooth as honey, and as sweet. "It is God's will that sister love brother. For the rest of us, we must treat weak and strong alike with equal compassion."

"Still," mused Judith, "I had not considered the possibility of a marriage for Prince Sanglant. I will propose to Henry that he marry Sanglant to my Theucinda."

"You would marry your own legitimate daughter to my bastard brother?"

asked Sapientia, astonished.

In her mind's ear, Hanna could hear her mother's voice commenting. She knew exactly what Mistress Birta would say: that Margrave Judith, a wise administrator, was merely gathering the entire flock of chickens into her own henhouse.

"Theucinda is my third daughter, just now of age. Gerberga and Bertha have their duties, their estates, and their husbands and heirs in Austra and Olsatia. Theucinda can serve me in this way, if I think it advantageous." She drained her cup, still watching her son. "But I do not concern myself as much with Sanglant's marriage. Do not forget that Henry may marry again."

"As you did," said Hugh stiffly, glancing toward Baldwin and as quickly away as if embarrassed to be caught looking.

Judith chuckled. "What is this frown, my pet? I must have my amusements." By not glancing toward Baldwin she called attention to his presence because everyone else then looked at him. The poor boy was, truthfully, the prettiest creature Hanna had ever seen; as was now commonly said among the serving-folk, he had the face of an angel.

Hugh seemed about to speak. Abruptly he moved forward to take his mother's empty wine cup and have it refilled. When he returned it to her, she touched his wrist as lightly as a butterfly lights on a flower to sip its nectar, and for a moment Hanna thought that something passed between them, mother and son, an unspoken message understood by what could be read in the gaze and in the language of the body. But she did not hold the key to interpret it.

When Judith left, Ivar was hustled away together with Baldwin, and Hanna could only catch his eye as he crossed the threshold. He lifted a hand as if in reply, and then was gone. For the rest of the day, preparations for the wedding feast consumed her attention. Mercifully, Hathui pressed her into service to escort two wagons to an outlying farmstead where stores of honey and beeswax candles had been set aside for the regnant's use as their yearly rent.

She loitered at the farmstead, talking to the old beekeeper while his adult children and two laborers loaded the two wagons with casks of honey and carefully wrapped bundles of delicate wax. His youngest son eyed her with interest.

"Ach, the king himself!" said the old man, whom Hanna quite liked. "I've never seen King Henry. It's said he's a handsome man, strong and tall and a fine general."

"So he is."

"But I have seen Arnulf the Younger with these own eyes, and that sight I'll never forget. He came here by this very farm when I was a young man, with his escort all in rich clothes and with such fine horses that it nearly blinded a man to see them. I remember that he had a scar under his left ear, somewhat fresh. He rode with an Eagle at his right side, just like you, a common Eagle! Only it were a man. Strange it were, to see a common man riding next to the king like his best companion. But he died."

"The Eagle?" asked Hanna, curious now.

"Nay, King Arnulf. Died many a year ago and the son come onto the throne for the elder girl couldn't bear children and it isn't any use to have an heir if she can't bear children in her turn, is it now?" He glanced toward one of the adults, a tired-looking woman who had an angry lift to her mouth. A number of small children helped—or hindered—the labor, but none of them ran to her. "Ach, well, they say Henry has children of his own and a fine son who got him the throne, who's captain of the Dragons, they say."

"That would be Prince Sanglant." They all looked at her so expectantly that she felt obliged to give them a quick tale of the fall of Gent and its retaking.

"Ach, now!" exclaimed the old man when she had finished. "That's a story!"

He gestured to his youngest son, and the lad brought a mug of sweetened vinegar so tart despite the honeyed flavor that Hanna could not keep from puckering her mouth while her hosts laughed good-naturedly.

"Now, then," said the old beekeeper, gesturing toward the son. "Can you do me a favor, Eagle? If you'd take the lad with

you, he could see the king and walk back home after. He's got a yearning to see the king, and how can I say 'nay' to him, who was the last gift my poor dead wife gave me?"

The lad's name was Arnulf, no doubt in memory of the dead king; he had light hair and a pleasant if undistinguished face except for a pair of stark blue eyes that held such a wealth of wordless pleading in them that Hanna did not have the heart to say no. Arnulf proved to be no trouble, although he asked a hundred questions as he walked alongside the wagons, driven by two skeptical wagoneers in the service of the king's stewards who had grown so accustomed to the presence of the king on their daily travels that they were amused by the lad's excitement.

As they passed a stand of woods, a pack of riders swept by to the right.

Hanna recognized them because of the dogs. She called out: "Look there. That is Prince Sanglant." The lad gaped.

"They say he's run mad," said the first wagoneer, to which the second retorted, "He's never harmed any but the king's enemies. You won't find a better captain than Prince Sanglant. I hear such stories. . . ."

Hanna caught sight of Hathui riding down the track, and hailed her.

"I see you have what you came for," said Hathui, reining in beside Hanna.

"Wish me good fortune in rny own hunt. I'm to bring him back in time for the feasting tonight." She lifted a chin to indicate the riders who had just vanished into the copse.

"What's wrong with him? Many things are whispered, that he's more dog than man now."

Hathui shaded a hand to get a better look at the trees. "Chained among the Eika for a year?" She shrugged. "At least those prisoners the Quman take are made slaves and given work to do. It's a miracle he's alive at all." Her gaze had a sharp sympathy. "Don't forget how he fought outside Gent when he was finally released."

Hanna smiled. "Nay, I've not become Sapientia's advocate against him. But do you think it's true, what's rumored, that Henry has it in mind to name Sanglant as his heir instead of his legitimate daughter?"

Hathui's frown was all the answer she would give as she nodded at Hanna and rode away.

Hanna left the wagons and wagoneers by the pit-houses that served the kitchens and let Arnulf follow her to the great open yard that fronted chapel, hall, and the royal residence. There, as luck would have it, king and court had gathered outside to cheer on bouts of wrestling. Hanna made her way through the crowd to the side of Princess Sapientia. Catching the princess' eye, Hanna knelt before her. With a graceless exhalation of surprise, the lad plopped down beside her.

"Your Highness." Sapientia was in a good mood, all light and charm made bright by that very energy that so often made her look foolish. "Here is Arnulf, the beekeeper's son. He has escorted us from his father's farmstead with honey and candle-wax.

Sapientia smiled on the young man, called over the steward who oversaw her treasury, and handed young Arnulf two silver sceattas. "For your dowry," she said. She hailed her father.

Henry came attended by Villam and Judith. He was laughing, not immoderately but with pure good humor, infectious and yet dignified. But when Sapientia indicated the young man who stared in awe at this apparition, the king's posture changed.

He sobered; he turned the full force of his gaze on the young man and, with a firm hand, touched him on the head. "My blessing on you and your kin,"

he said, then removed his hand. That quickly, he returned to his jest with his companions, and they strolled away while Margrave Judith pointed out the young man-at-arms who was next to challenge the champion.

Hanna led the quaking Arnulf away. "What are these?" he whispered, holding out the sceattas.

"They're coins. You can exchange them for goods in the marketplace down in the lower enclosure, although you'd best not do so today, for they'll know you're not used to bargaining and they'll cheat you."

"My dowry," he murmured. He blinked so many times she thought for a moment he was about to faint. He turned to her. "Will you marry me?" he demanded.

Hanna choked down a laugh and instead smiled kindly. "Go on, lad," she said, feeling immeasurably older although she guessed they were of an age.

"Take the coins and your blessing home to your kinfolk." She led him to the gate and watched him walk away, still unsteady on his feet.

On her way back to Sapientia, she saw Ivar standing in the doorway to the residence where Margrave Judith had taken up quarters. He saw her, beckoned, and ducked inside. She followed • him over the threshold. "Ivar?"

"Hush!" He drew her into a small storeroom where servants' pallets lined one wall. The closed shutters made the room dim and stuffy. He embraced her.

"Oh, Hanna! I thought I would never see you again! I'm not allowed to speak to women."

She kissed him on either cheek, the kinswoman's greeting. "I'm not just any woman!" she said unsteadily. "I nursed at the same breast. Surely we can speak together without fear of punishment."

"Nay," he whispered, opening the door a crack to see out into the corridor, then returning to her. "Rosvita wanted to see me, but it was forbidden, though she's a cleric, and my sister. But she would only have scolded me anyway, so I'm glad I didn't see her!"

Hanna sighed. He was as passionately thoughtless as ever. "Well, you've certainly filled out through the shoulders, Ivar. You look more like your father than ever. But are you well? Why aren't you at Quedlinhame?"

He still shook his head the same way, red curls all unruly, face gone stubborn. He always jumped before he measured the ground. "Is it true? That the king means Lady Tallia to marry? They mustn't despoil her! She must remain the pure vessel of God's truth." He wrenched away from her again, clapping his hands to his forehead in an attitude of despair and frustration. "They'll do to her what they did to Baldwin! They care nothing for vows sworn honestly to the church!"

"Hush, Ivar. Hush, now." She drew his hands down from his head and pressed a palm against his forehead, but he wasn't hot. His voice had the fever in it, not his skin. "Why aren't you at Quedlinhame? Did your father send for you?"

He made a strange gesture, left index finger drawn down his chest over his breastbone. "If you'd seen—

"Seen what?"

"The miracle of the rose. The marks of flaying on her palms. You'd believe in the sacrifice and redemption. You'd know the truth which has been concealed."

Nervous, she pulled away from him and bumped up against the wall. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ivar. Is this some madness that's gotten into you?"

"No madness." He groped for her hand, found it, and tugged her against the wall. Her boot wrinkled the edge of a neatly-folded wool blanket, uncovering a posy of pressed flowers beneath, a love token. "The Translatus is a lie, Hanna.

The blessed Daisan didn't pray for seven days, as they wrote in the Holy Verses.

He wasn't lifted bodily into the Chamber of Light. It's all a lie."

"You're scaring me. Isn't that a heresy?" Surely the minions of the Enemy had burrowed inside him and now spoke through his lips. She tried to edge away, but his grip was strong.

"So has the church taught falsely for years. The blessed Daisan was flayed alive by the order of the Empress Thaisannia. His heart was cut out of him, but his heart's blood bloomed on the Earth as a red rose. He suffered, and he died.

But he lived again and ascended to the Chamber of Light and through his suffering cleansed us of our sin."

"Ivar!" Perhaps the curtness of her voice shocked him into silence. "Let me go!"

He dropped her hand. "You'll do as Liath did. Abandon me. Only Lady Tallia wasn't afraid to walk where the rest of us were imprisoned. Only she brought us hope."

"Lady Tallia is spreading these lies?"

"It's the truth! Hanna—"

"Nay, Ivar. I won't speak of such things with you. Now hush and listen to me, and please answer me this time, I beg you. Why aren't you at Quedlinhame?"

"I'm being taken to the monastery founded in the memory of St. Walaricus the Martyr. In Eastfall."

"That's a fair long way. Did you ask to be sent there?"

"Nay. They separated the four of us—that is, me, and Baldwin, and Ermanrich, and Sigrid—because we listened to Lady Tallia's preaching. Because we saw the miracle of the rose, and they don't want anyone to know. That's why they cast Lady Tallia out of the convent."

"Oh, Ivar." Despite the fever that had overtaken him, she could only see him as the overeager boy she had grown up with. "You must pray to God to bring peace to your spirit."

"How can I have peace?" Suddenly he began to cry. His voice got hoarse.

"Have you seen Liath? Is she here? Why haven't I seen her?"

"Ivar!" She felt obliged to scold him despite what he'd said about Rosvita.

"Listen to the words of a sister, for I can call myself that. Liath isn't meant for you. She rides as an Eagle now."

"She abandoned me at Quedlinhame! I said I would marry her, I said we would ride away together —

"After you'd sworn vows as a novice?"

"Against my will! She said she'd marry me, but then she just rode away when the king left!"

"That isn't fair! She told me of your meeting. God Above! What was she to do? You'd already sworn vows. You had no prospects, no support — and she has no kinfolk —

"She said she loved someone else, another man," said Ivar stubbornly. "I think she abandoned me to be with him. I think she still loves Hugh."

"She never loved Hugh! You know what he did to her!"

"Then what man did she mean?"

She knew then, at once, whom Liath had meant, and a sick foreboding filled her heart. "That doesn't matter," she said hastily. "She's an Eagle. And you're traveling east. Ai, God, Ivar! I might never see you again."

He gripped her elbows. "Can't you help me escape?" Letting her go, he answered himself. "But I can't abandoned Baldwin. He needs me. Ai, Lady. If only Liath had married me, if only we had run away, then none of this would have happened."

They heard voices at the door, and she hid under a cot as several of Judith's stewards came in. "Ah, there he is! Lord Baldwin is asking for you, boy.

Go attend him now."

Ivar had no choice but to leave. They rummaged around on other errands that at length took them into other chambers, and she slipped out, unseen. But Ivar's words troubled her into the evening, when at last king and court gathered for the wedding feast. The bridal couple were led forward wearing their best clothes. A cleric read out loud the details of the dower, what each party would bring to the marriage. Lord Alain spoke his consent in a clear, if unsteady, voice, but when it came Tallia's turn, King Henry spoke for her. Was she being forced into the marriage against her will, as Ivar claimed? Yet who would quarrel with the regnant's decision? The children of the nobility married to give advantage to their families; they had no say in the

matter. Tallia was Henry's to dispose of, now that he had defeated her parents in battle.

The local biscop had been brought in from the nearby town of Fuldas to speak a blessing over the young couple, who knelt before her to receive it. Lord Alain looked nervous and flushed and agitated. Lady Tallia looked so pale and thin that Hanna wondered if she would faint. But she did not. With hands clasped tightly before her, she merely kept her head bowed and looked at no one or no thing, not even her bridegroom.

The long summer twilight stretched before them as they crowded into the hall. Fresh rushes had been strewn over the floor. Servants scurried in and out with trays of steaming meat or pitchers of wine and mead. Slender greyhounds slunk away under tables, waiting for scraps. Sapientia allowed Hanna to stand behind her chair and occasionally offered her morsels from her platter, a marked sign of favor which Father Hugh noted with a surprised glance and then ignored as he directed Sapientia's attention to the poet who came forward to sing.

The poem was delivered in Dariyan, but Hugh murmured a translation to Sapientia.

"She said: Come now, yow who are my own love. Come forward.

You are the light which flames in my heart.

Where once were only thorns there now blooms a lily.

He replied: I walked alone in the wood.

The solitude eased my heart.

But now the ice melts. The flowers bloom.

She bids him: Come! I cannot live without you.

Roses and lilies I will strew before you.

Let there be no delay."

Hanna flushed although she knew well enough that the words were not directed at her, but surely no man had a more beautiful voice than Hugh, and when he spoke such phrases so sweetly and with so much music in the words, even a practical young woman might feel faint with desire.

Quickly enough she steadied herself. Lady Above! No need to be foolish.

No need to let Ivar's madness infect her. There was plenty else to distract her, here at the feast. At the heart of the king's progress, she could never be bored.

Her faithful companions from the long journey out of the Alfar Mountains, the Lions Ingo, Folquin, Leo and young Stephen, stood guard at the door.

Catching her eye, Ingo nodded at her. Perhaps he winked.

yu At the king's table, Margrave Judith shared a platter with Helmut Villam.

Heads together, they talked with great seriousness. Baldwin sat a table down from them; despite his status as Judith's new consort and his breathtaking beauty, he did not warrant a seat at the king's table. And there sat Ivar, beside Baldwin, but he ate nothing except a few crusts of bread and a sip of wine.

The royal clerics ate and talked with gusto, but now and again Sister Rosvita would pause and stare at her young brother with a troubled gaze.

The bridal pair sat on the other side of the king, so Hanna couldn't get a good look at them. But in any case the tableau that interested Hanna most was that of Hathui and Prince Sanglant. Hathui hovered behind Sanglant's chair and certain small communications seemed to pass between the Eagle and the king at intervals, unspoken but understood. The prince sat with the awkward stillness of an active man forced to stay in one place when he would rather be moving. With fists on the table, he stared at the opposite wall—that is, at nothing. On occasion Hathui would jostle him and he would recall himself and bolt down a scrap of cut meat, then hesitate, shake himself, and eat like a man—only to sink again into a stupor. Of the feasting and merriment around him he seemed unaware.

After a suitable interval of singing, King Henry called Sister Rosvita forward.

Candles were set out but not yet lit since, with all the doors flung open and the shutters taken down, the evening still bled light into the hall. The gathered folk quieted expectantly as Sister Rosvita opened a book and began to read out loud in a clear voice.

" 'Many tales of the young Radegundis' holy deeds came to the ears of His Gracious Majesty, the illustrious Taillefer, and he had her brought to his court at Autun. The emperor could not but be swayed by her great holiness, and he determined at once to make her his queen. He entreated her to pray with him and by diverse almsgiving and acts of mercy to beggars brought her into charity with him. As her morning gift he gave her not just lands but every manner of fine gifts that she could distribute to the poo , and he pl r

edged to feed the

paupers at Baralcha every Hefensday.'

" 'In this way the saintly young woman, so determined in her vow to remain a chaste vessel so that she could embrace God with a pure heart, was overcome by the nobility of the emperor Taillefer. Wooing her in this fashion, he overcame her reluctance. Her love for his great virtues and imperial honor softened her heart, and they were married.'

" 'It is only possible to write here of a few of the many good works she accomplished in this period of her life. Early glory did not dim her ardor for God, nor did she take upon herself the trappings of royalty only to forget that the garments of the poor conceal the limbs of God.'

" 'Whenever she received pan of the tribute brought before the emperor, she gave away fully half of it as her ti h

t e to God before any was put in her own

treasury. To the needy she gave clothes, and to the hungry, feasts. She built a house for poor women at Athies, and bathed the hair and sores of paupers with her own hands. To convents and monasteries she gave princely gifts. No hermit was safe from her generosity.'

" 'When his last illness laid low the emperor, she could not be torn from his side although she was great with child. She knelt beside him with such devotion that her attendants feared for her health, but she could not be shaken from her prayers and at last his passing, made gentle by her efforts, came about, and his soul was lifted to the Chambe of

r Light.'

" 'At that time many powerful p irnces lfocked like carrion crows to the side of the illustrious emperor, desirous of obtaining by guile or force what he would leave behind him. Not least among these treasures stood the blessed Radegundis, a jewel among women. But she had no kin to protect her from their greed.'

" 'Still heavy with child, Radegundis clo hed hersel t

f and her closest

companion, a woman named Clothilde, in the garb of poor women. She chose exile over the torments of power, and she swore to marry no earthly prince but from this time on to bind herself over into God's service alone. In this way, they escaped in the night and fled to the convent of Poiterri, where they took refuge—

A crash and a startled scream shuddered through the hall. Sanglant had leaped to his feet in such a state of wild excitement that he had overturned the table at which he and several others sat. A stunned silence held the feasting crowd, like a deeply indrawn breath before a shout, while he stood with head thrown back, like a beast listening for the snap of a twig in the forest.

Then he sprang over the overturned table and bolted toward the doors, heedless of food and platters scattered under his feet, of wine splashed everywhere and now soaking into the rushes. Whippets scurried forward to snap at the spilled trays while servants scrambled to save what they could.

"Sanglant!" cried the king, coming to his feet, and the young man jerked to a halt as if brought up short by a chain. Perhaps only that voice could have stopped him. He did not turn to face his father. His hands shook noticeably, and he stared at the main doors so fixedly that Hanna expected a brace of Eika to come clamoring in, axes raised for a fight.

But no one entered. All was still except for the scuff and tap of servants cleaning up and the groan and heavy thunk of the table being tipped back onto its feet by the combined efforts of three men.

"As I was telling you, Your Highness," remarked Hugh to Sapientia in a pleasant voice that carried easily in the hush that now pervaded the hall, "when Queen Athelthyri of Alba was angry with certain of her subjects for fomenting rebellion against her, she set her dog Contumelus over them as their count. And quite a fine count he was, this dog, for it is said that besides wearing a neckband and a gold chain as a mark of his rank, he had a certain gift, that after he barked twice he could speak every third word."

Half the assembly tittered. Henry did not laugh, and an instant later a rash of barking came from out of doors, hounds singing a warning.

"Make way!" a man shouted outside. Hanna heard horses, the buzz of voices, and caught a glimpse of movement in the twilight beyond the threshold.

Two Eagles came into the hall.

"Liath!" Hugh stood up so quickly that his chair tipped over behind him.

On the other side of the hall, Ivar had to be restrained from bolting forward by Baldwin.

Sanglant took a step forward and then froze. A thin flush of red stained his cheeks. Liath marked him; Hanna saw it by the way her step faltered, and she supposed everyone else saw it, too. He stared at her, his body turned as a flower turns with the sun so he could follow her with his gaze as she strode forward with Wolfhere to the king.

Hugh muttered words under his breath, Hanna could not make them out.

The two Eagles knelt before the king's table.

"Wolfhere," said Henry with such dislike that the old Eagle actually winced.

The king gestured. A servingman hastened around the table to give a cup of wine to Liath; she took a draught, then gave the cup to Wolfhere, who drained it.

"Your Majesty," he began with cup still in hand.

The king indicated that Liath should relay her messages first, but he caught her in the act of glancing over her shoulder toward Sanglant, and she stuttered out something meaningless as many among the assembly giggled, or coughed.

"I come from Weraushausen, Your Majesty," she said, recovering quickly.

"I bring this message from Cleric Monica: She will join you with the schola. I bring also capitularies needing your seal, and a letter for Sister Rosvita from Mother Rothgard of St. Valeria Convent."

"I pray it brings news of Theophanu." At last Henry deigned to look upon Wolfhere, who had waited patiently under the king's censure.

"Your Majesty," Wolfhere said briskly. "I bring news from the south. Duke Conrad sends this message: That he will wait upon Your Majesty before Matthiasmass."

"Why has it taken him so long to come before me after the insult he gave my Eagle?"

"His wife, Lady Eadgifu, died in childbed, Your Majesty."

A murmur rolled through the hall, and several women wailed out loud. The king drew the Circle at his breast. "May God have mercy upon her." He leaned forward to rest a fist on the table. "What of the message you took to the skopos?

Is it true that you believe Biscop Antonia did not die in this avalanche we have been told of?"

"She did not die, Your Majesty."

"You have seen her alive?"

"I do not need to see her to know she still lives—although I do not know how she escaped or where she is now." "I see. Go on."

"Her Holiness dementia, skopos and Mother to us all, has passed this judgment on Antonia of Karrone, once biscop of Mainni: that she be excommunicated for indulging in the arts of the malefici. 'Let neither woman nor man who stand within the Light of the Circle of Unity give her shelter. Let no deacon or frater take her confession or give her blessing until she bring herself before the throne of the skopos and repent of her deeds. She may no longer enter into a church and take mass. Any who consort with her or give her shelter will also be excommunicate.' These were the words of the skopos."

"A harsh judgment," said Henry, musing, then smiled grimly. "But a just one."

"That is not all the news I bring," continued Wolfhere, and the king looked at him expectantly, inclined, perhaps, to look kindly on him for bringing news so favorable to Henry's interests. He gestured for Wolfhere to go on. "Queen Gertrudis of Aosta is dead, Your Majesty, and in Ventuno King Demetrius lies on his deathbed and has received last rites."

A profound stillness, coming over the face of the king, spread quickly until the hush that pervaded the hall caused even the greyhounds to sink down and lay their heads on their paws.

"King Demetrius is without heirs, as you yourself know, my lord king. His heirs and those who contested for his share of the Aostan throne long since wasted themselves in wars in the south or else they were carried off by the pestilence brought by Jinna raiders into the southern ports. But Queen Gertrudis left one child, her daughter Adelheid, who is recently widowed."

"Widowed," said Henry. He looked—and everyone turned to look at him—at his son. Sangant stood as quiescent, or as stupefied, as the greyhounds, staring at Liath. "She is the legitimate claimant to the throne of Aosta."

"So she is, Your Majesty," said Wolfhere, who alone in the hall did not look at Prince Sanglant. "And but twenty years of age. Rumor has it that her kinfolk are now so denuded by plague and war that she has no male relatives to fight with her for her claim."

Henry shut his eyes briefly. Opening them, he gestured to the two Eagles to rise. "The Lord and Lady have heard me," he said in a voice made thick with emotion, "and listened to my prayers." He spoke softly into the ear of a steward, and as Liath and Wolfhere retreated and were escorted outside, a party of tumblers hurried forward to entertain the court.

So the merriment and feasting resumed.

But Sanglant, moving aside to make room for the tumblers, pressed himself against the wall and instead of returning to his seat made his way to the door and slipped outside. A moment later, Hugh excused himself and left. Ivar made to get up, but Judith's young husband pulled him back into his chair and whispered urgently into his ear.

When Hanna moved to follow him, Sapientia called to her. "Eagle! Look there! How do you think that girl balances on that rope?"

Given no choice, she had to stay where she was.

THE LOCKED CHEST

asked Wolfhere harshly as they left "WHAT means this?" the hall.

A servingwoman brought them food and ale and left them to sit on a bench to take their supper in peace. Liath smiled wryly as Wolfhere glared at her.

Peace, indeed. The first stars had bloomed in the heavens above—the three jewels of the Queen's sky promising momentary splendor—but in the west the sky still wore the blush of sunset.

"You are silent," Wolfhere observed. They hadn't eaten since taking bread and cider at midday at an isolated farm, but he ignored the platter set on the bench beside him, although a fresh cut of roast pig steamed up most invitingly.

Liath concentrated on the food because she was starving. Wolfhere would get his answer soon enough. She had gulped down most of the food on her half of the platter when she saw him make his way through the crowd of retainers who had flocked around the entrance to watch the entertainment within.

Embarrassed to be caught bolting her food, she wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and stood. Wolfhere jumped up as Sanglant eased free of the crowd and walked toward them.

"What means this?" Wolfhere demanded again.

"What matters it to you? What right do you have to interfere?" But she was only angry at him because of the fearful pounding of her own heart as the prince stopped before her. He had filled out in the past twenty days and had his hair trimmed neatly, but the haunted look in his eyes hadn't dissipated. He wore a rich linen tunic trimmed with silver-and-gold-threaded embroidery, cut to fit his height; with a sword swinging in a magnificent red-leather sheath at his belt and several fine rings on his fingers, he looked very much the royal prince and courtier. Only the rough iron collar bound at his neck spoiled the picture. Perhaps it choked him: He seemed unable to speak, and now that he stood so close she could not think of one single word.

"Do not forget the oath you took as an Eagle," said Wolfhere suddenly. "Do not forget the news I brought you, Liath!"

"Leave us," said Sanglant without taking his gaze off Liath.

Not even Wolfhere dared disobey a direct command. He grunted with irritation, spun, and stalked off without taking supper or ale with him.

"I kept the book safe for you, as I promised." His hoarse voice made the words seem even more fraught with meaning; but his voice always sounded like that. "The question I asked you . . . have you an answer for me?" Shouts and laughter swelled out from the hall, and he glanced back toward the doors and muttered something under his voice more growl than words.

"You were half mad. How can I be sure you meant what you asked?"

He laughed—the old laugh she recalled from Gent when, under siege, he had lived each day as if he cared not whether another came for him. "Ai, Lady!

Say you will marry me, and let us have done with this!"