"/ am a bastard. I can fight, and lead men in battle. If there is aught else you know of me which remains hidden to me, then please tell me now."

Anne's smile was slight. "You are not unversed in the art of the courtier, which some call intrigue. In some ways you are cunning, Prince Sanglant, but in most ways you are not, for like your dog that waits outside you show what you are on the surface. There is little else to know."

"No onion, I," he retorted, laughing again.

"He's not—" began Liath hotly, defending him, but he touched her on the hand, and for once she shut her mouth on an imprudent comment.

"But a cup made of gold shows the whole of its substance on the surface as well," continued Anne as if Liath had not spoken. "That makes it no less precious. You are here for a reason."

"You are the thread that joins Aoi and human," said Liath. "But for what purpose?"

Anne smiled, watching Sanglant as he watched her, opponents who had not yet drawn swords. "For as was written in the Revelation of St. Johanna: 'And there will come to you a great calamity, a cataclysm such as you have never known before. The waters will boil and the heavens weep blood, the rivers will run uphill and the winds will become as a whirlpool. The mountains shall become the sea and the sea shall become the mountains, and the children shall cry out in terror for they will have no ground on which to stand.'"

"Chapter eleven, verse twenty-one," said Liath automatically.

Anne continued. "Some say Johanna was speaking of a vision she had seen of a great cataclysm that would on an ill-fated day in the future overtake the world. But others claim that she recorded in her Revelation the words of one who had experienced in her own time such a cataclysm."

"But you think St. Johanna wrote of the future," said Liath, toying with the pages of the book, running a finger over the old writing as if the ink itself could reveal secrets.

"Nay," said Anne. "I think she wrote of both past and future, of what happened two thousand seven hundred yeas ago, and of what will happen in five years if we do not stop it in time."

This time, he felt it hit her before she moved, eyes widening, jaw setting hard as she reached almost blindly and grabbed his arm. Through her skin he felt the pulse of her heart and, distantly, a second pulse, fine and faint and swift, that slowed as the pain peaked and then quickened again. As the wave passed, Liath spoke in a whisper that carried no farther than the good wool of his tunic.

"I have been to the place the Aoi now live."

"Not lost at all," he said aloud, amazed that he hadn't seen it before. Had he not really believed her stories of the Aoi sorcerer? Or had he dismissed them as something inexplicable? "How could they have been lost if my mother could walk on earth? What if they were only hidden—?"

"We know that the Aoi vanished from earth long ago, leaving only their half-breed children behind," said Anne. "It was those half-breed children who founded and built the Dariyan Empire."

"The Aoi are not utterly vanished from the earth," objected Liath. "There are shades in the deep forest."

"Are these shades truly of earth, or are they only trapped somehow between the living and the dead, between substance and aether, doomed to live as shadows?"

Like the servants, doomed to live in bodies that only mimicked those of humankind. But he did not voice the thought out loud. He knew better than to challenge an opponent in an open battle when he was outnumbered and held inferior weapons. He wasn't desperate yet.

"You have not listened carefully, Liath," scolded Anne. "Bis-cop Tallia was the first scholar we know of since the days of the Dariyan Empire who gained enough knowledge to calculate the message written in the heavens. For the heavens do not lie. They only record God's creation. She discovered that on the date that you mentioned, great forces might be unleashed. From ancient records pieced together out of the archives of the old Dariyan Empire, she discovered that we have enemies lying in wait to destroy humanity. For this service to humankind, Biscop Tallia was humbled by the church at the Council of Narvonne, because they envied her."

When neither of them responded, she went on. "But Biscop Tallia did not let her knowledge die with her. She passed it on through her companion in the arts, Clothilde, who in her turn made sure that there would always be others to follow her. We are the ones who seem to be sleeping while the world wakes around us, only we are in fact waiting here in our hidden place to save humanity from that which threatens it. Seven is our number, because we are in number like to the seven planets: the Sun, the Moon, fleet Erekes, bright Somorhas, Jedu, who is the Angel of War, stately Mok, and sage Aturna."

"The Seven Sleepers," murmured Liath. "I've been so blind. Ai, God, here comes another one."

He let her clutch him, fingers digging into his arm. There was nothing else he could do.

"You should not have allowed yourself to become distracted from your true purpose," said Anne coolly, not moving to touch Liath as the wave came and went. "It is Bernard who is to blame for this weakness in you."

Liath made a sound halfway between a cry and a gasp. But it wasn't from physical pain. "You have no idea what we went through! Da died to protect me."

Suddenly tears came, unbidden, unexpected, as if all of it, the memory, the fear, her utter helpless despair at losing him, had finally crashed down with the weight of the heavens. Sanglant had never seen her weep over her dead father. Now it overwhelmed her.

The storm was brief but tempestuous, and Anne waited it out without any response except to carefully take the old book from her and close it so that the pages wouldn't get damp. She locked it away in the cupboard, flicked a finger toward the ceiling, and the servant fluttered down and vanished.

"Sit down, Liath. You are overwrought. The servant will bring you something to drink to restore yourself."

Liath sat obediently, shoulders shuddering under the weight of that old grief. Sanglant did not sit. He, too, had lost a parent and never cried for that loss. "Where did my mother come from?" he asked now.

Anne seemed as usual unsurprised by the question. "Henry found her in Darre, but she had before that been in Salia, or so we assume, because Salian was the tongue she spoke best. From whence in Salia she came no one knew or could guess, and she revealed nothing."

" 'There will come a moment,'" said Liath in the steady voice she used when she quoted from memory, " 'when all the power that churns through the universe, the force that moves the spheres themselves, can be touched by human hands. When it can be drawn down and manipulated for the greater good by those who have the knowledge and the will to risk themselves in such an undertaking.' That's the art of the mathematici. Which was learned from the Babaharshan magicians, who learned it from the Aoi long ago, so the stories say." She grimaced, shifting awkwardly, and for an instant he thought another pain was coming, but she was only uncomfortable. If God willed, the child would come soon and without incident. That would truly be a blessing. Liath looked up at Anne accusingly. "That's what you've been hiding all along. You believe the Aoi manipulated the power in the heavens to remove themselves from earth."

The servant returned and set a tray with three cups of cider on the table, then skittered away into the eaves. Anne glanced at the tray, surprised by the cider or by the number of cups; he wasn't sure which. He handed Liath a cup and made sure she drank before he drained his own. Anne had already begun to speak.

"There is much we do not yet comprehend about the universe, but we know that there are many interstices within the fabric of the universe that may be traversed by those who know how to do so. We call that cluster of stars that the Child is reaching for a 'crown of stars,' yet don't we also call the great stone circles which we find through the land 'crowns'? Magic built those circles long ago, and I believe that it was the Aoi who built them, at the height of their power. I believe that those were the mechanisms by which the Aoi hurled themselves elsewhere. Did you and Bernard ever travel to the cliffs of Barakanoi, southeast of Aosta?"

"Yes, we did. I'll always remember them because they were so sharp, the way the shoreline ends and the waters begin. I remember telling Da that I thought it was like someone had cut it clean with a knife." But she faltered, looking up at Sanglant. He only shrugged. He had never been there. "There was a city there, and it ended, too. As if it had been cut away. I always thought part of it must have fallen into the sea. But it couldn't have. There wasn't any sign of ruins in the sea below. It ran deep there. There weren't even any shoals, that's what Da told me."

Anne nodded. "Those of us born out of the earth must have earth to stand on. Even magi such as the Aoi could not exist in the aether as do the daimones and the angels."

"Are you suggesting," demanded Sanglant, "that they used their magic to literally take a part of this earth with them into their exile?"

"What does it matter, anyway, if they're gone now?" muttered Liath, rubbing her belly. "If they don't walk on the Earth any longer, then they can be no threat to us."

Anne had not looked away from Sanglant since he had entered the chamber, just as one does not take one's eyes from the poisonous snake with whom you share a cozy patch of ground. "An arrow shot into the air will fall to earth in time. Any great power unleashed in the universe will rebound someday in proportion to its original power and direction. What has been accomplished once may be accomplished again, and if a channel has already been dug, how much easier will the river flow back through where it is dry?"

"Are these riddles that I'm supposed to answer?" asked Liath irritably.

"No," said Sanglant. "I think she is saying that the Lost Ones will return."

"On the tenth day of Octumbre, in the year , at midnight," said Anne,

"when the paths between the spheres open and the crown of stars crowns the heaven."

Liath pressed both hands against her abdomen and shut her eyes with the kind of sigh that a person lets out when she knows that the toil before her is bound to be much harder than that which she just finished. "Why do I feel like a puppet dancing to the jerk of someone else pulling the strings?"

"If they left because humankind had driven them to such desperate straits," Sanglant asked, "then why would they want to return?"

"For the same reason, Prince Sanglant, that they would want a child born half of Aoi and half of royal human blood." She gestured toward him. "To take back what was once theirs: sovereignty over this world."

Wind rattled the shutters. An owl hooted in the night, and Sanglant heard the shriek of some poor creature caught in its claws. Anne shifted to look at Liath, who at that moment gripped his wrist and braced herself as another wave of pain washed over her, harder than any of the ones that had come before. She seemed to fall so far away from him, all her attention drawn inward, that it was as if she herself had been briefly cut away from him and from any part of the world beyond her womb, where the child now struggled to be born onto this earth.

"Sister Meriam should be woken," said Sanglant. "She said she would act as midwife."

Anne simply waited until Liath stopped panting. "That is why you are so important, Liathano. Why everything else in which you have engaged does not matter, and cannot matter." A little sweat beaded on Liath's forehead as she lifted her head and regarded Anne as much with annoyance for the interruption as with curiosity or awe for the solemn pronouncement being invoked.

"They have bided their time in safety hoarding their power and their magic.

Now they mean to rule over us again as they once did millennia ago. They are strong and unmerciful. They will make cruel masters. They will sunder the world in order to take it back, for their return to this Earth will cause such a cataclysm as no creature alive has ever seen. 'For the mountains shall become the sea, and the sea shall become the mountains.'"

Anne moved forward until the lantern light limned her. The gold torque gleamed at her throat, and like any queen or empress, she shone with that confidence which is called power, the ability to turn others to her will.

"The only one who can stop them, my child, is you."

II

SANGLANT had not realized how much he disliked Sister Anne until he spent the rest of a night, a day, another long and exhausting night, and perhaps the most agonizing day of his life at the side of his laboring wife as she struggled silently, suffered silently, and weakened inexorably. The pains came and went in steadily heightening waves, like the tide coming in, but the baby did not come.

Heribert tended the fire, brought hot cider for Sister Meriam and Sanglant and wine for Liath to sip when she could get it down, and fretted over the birthing stool he had constructed to Meriam's specifications a month before.

When Meriam needed to rest, Sister Venia sat at Liath's side and chafed her hands and kneaded her back.

"I remember what it was like for Heribert's mother," she said with feeling.

Zoe and Severus stayed away, which was no doubt for the best, but Sister Anne, too, ignored the sweating and straining in the hut, had no words of advice to give and no comfort to offer. She was too busy to attend, or she didn't want to see.

"Doesn't she remember what it was like?" demanded Sanglant finally, but Sister Meriam merely grunted. She was examining Liath again, one hand probing the shape of her belly from the outside and the other from within the passageway.

"My daughter-in-law had easier births than this," she commented. "So did I. I fear the child is breech."

"How much longer can she go on?" he asked in a low voice, but after two nights and two full days of laboring, Liath was too tired to hear him. Sister Meriam merely shrugged.

Dusk came, and with it came the evening star, a beacon above the horizon.

He hadn't seen it for weeks. According to Liath it had been hiding behind the sun, but now it shone reassuringly from the safe harbor of the constellation known as the Sisters, protector of women.

Something shifted then, a last gasp, an unloosening, or perhaps it wasn't Somorhas' influence at all, perhaps it was the infusion of wormwood that Meriam got down Liath's parched throat. Meriam greased her hands with pig's fat and felt up the passageway, got a grip on something. By this time Sanglant was holding Liath up bodily on the birthing stool. She was too weak to sit on her own, and her entire weight sagged against him. "Come, my love," he said.

"Push."

The baby's feet came first, then a rump, then a body all smeary-white.

Liath barely had enough energy to bear down to get the head out. After that she fainted and she bled, and he thought maybe he would faint, too, not at the sight of blood but out of fear. He had never been this afraid in his life.

Meriam handed him the baby brusquely. "Wash it," she said, and she set to work kneading Liath's flaccid belly until the afterbirth sluiced out with another gush of bright red blood, Humming, the old woman bound a poultice over Liath's groin as if that might stem the bleeding.

"Mind the baby!" she said sternly, for he had been staring in horror at his unconscious wife all this while. Jolted into obedience by her curt tone, he looked down into a pair of eyes so startling a green that he thought for an instant that they weren't eyes at all but chips of emerald. He went outside, unsteady on his feet but with a good grip on her, as tiny as she was, and washed her in a basin filled with cold spring water. She squalled mightily.

"Good lungs," said Heribert, who was dancing from one foot to the other, trying to get a good look. "She sounds strong."

"She's a blessing," murmured Sanglant, kissing the tiny creature on its wrinkled forehead.

"What will you name her? It's your right as her father to name her."

He looked up then, surprised. One of her tiny, perfect hands found his little finger and clutched it. She had the stubborn grasp of a warrior born. "I just did,"

he said, knowing the words as truth. " 'Blessing.'"

Liath was too weak to nurse the infant. Meriam tried nettle tea and parsley, but after a few beads of clear fluid welled up on her nipples, she went dry and no matter what Meriam tried, fennel, strips of meat mashed into a soft pulp, an infusion of vervain or of chaste tree, her breasts produced nothing more. She slept almost constantly and sometimes it was hard to rouse her even to get her to take wine and porridge. At times she burned with fever; at times she lay as cold as death except for the slight exhalation of her breath.

When she burned, she was incoherent, tossing and turning and babbling at intervals, lost to him. "The heavens run swifter than any mill wheel, as deep under the Earth as above it. But they and their creatures are eternal. The Earth is mortal. Yet, behold, she departeth very suddenly. What is this ribbon of light running through the heavens, disturbing them? It has only one side, and it never ends. It only returns again to its starting place."

Sometimes, when she raved, unlit candles would come alight, or lamp wicks snap into life that hadn't been burning before. At these times the servants fled from the hut, frightened. Only Jerna, who was braver now, would stay in the hut, always hovering near the baby, stroking it, blowing its black cap of hair into wispy spikes and then smoothing it out again. She even curled around the baby's cradle at night, an unearthly guardian, when Sanglant caught such sleep as he could, although his sleep was disturbed constantly either by the baby's crying or by Liath's sudden restless fevers.

Now and again Liath tried to show interest in the baby, but she would drift off at the exertion of letting it lie on her chest or, worse, break into a wheezing, weak cry because she couldn't feed it. Then the crying would exhaust her and she would slip into a cold sleep, her hands like ice.

The baby squalled and squalled. Sanglant carried her in a sling against his chest, or on his hip, or settled in a rocking cradle that Heribert had devised, and everywhere he went the servants crowded round, trying to touch Blessing, so wildly curious at this apparition that they neglected their labors and Severus complained peevishly that his bread was burned, his porridge cold, and the blankets left in disarray on his pallet when they ought to have been neatly folded after he rose in the morning.

At Meriam's suggestion, Sanglant milked the goats, and they tried everything they could, heating the milk and dropping it in her mouth bead by bead, soaking the corner of a cloth in goat's milk and putting it between her lips, molding a nipple out of sheep's intestine for her to suck on. But she would only take a minuscule amount before turning her head away. Squalls turned to mewls and mewls to whimpers.

"Ah, well," said Anne four days after its birth, observing the baby with equanimity. "It will die. That only goes to show that it was never meant to be born."

He felt the growl slip from him, enough that his Eika dog stood and barked, enough that Anne's new attendant, the black hound, growled and lunged for him.

"Sit!" said Anne, and the hound sat. She had not yet named it, nor did she seemed inclined to do so. But she only smiled at Sanglant, and it seemed to him that she was mocking him, waiting to see him fall apart in a rage as he watched the life leach out of his precious daughter.

But fear and desperation had healed him somewhat—he hadn't had nightmares since the day Blessing was born—and now fury banished the old instincts. He set a hand on the head of his dog to calm it and looked Anne straight in the face.

"Do you have so little feeling that you would stand by and let your own granddaughter die?"

"God's will is unknowable."

"Then if you have so little love in your heart, think instead of the gold torque you wear at your throat. Don't you have a responsibility to your kin to keep your lineage alive?"

Now she was far more interested than she had ever been in the child.

"What do you mean, Prince Sanglant?"

"Since the day we met, I have wondered to which royal lineage you owe your blood. If I'm right, then it makes no sense to me why you would not make every effort to keep this infant alive. Is it possible that you aren't Emperor Taillefer's granddaughter?"

"What makes you think that I am?" she said, but he saw that he had surprised her, and by that reaction he saw that his blow had hit true.

"Who else could you be? You aren't of Varrish kin because they're gone except for my aunt Sabella, her daughter Princess Tallia, and her poor, idiot husband who isn't fit to rule. You're not of Wendish blood because I know all my kin. All the Salian princesses whether married or unmarried or given to the church were discussed by my father's council after Queen Sophia died, from the eldest old crone of sixty to the girl of nine, because they wondered if there was one suitable for him to marry. A woman of your age and appearance was never mentioned. In Karrone they dare not wear the gold torque. Nor do the royal houses of the eastern realms decorate themselves in that way. The Alban queens wear armbands, not torques, to show their breeding. I admit you might be Aostan, but according to every rumor the royal house of Aosta was wiped out except for Queen Adelheid." He smiled a little, thinking that if not for Liath, he might have been bedding Queen Adelheid now. Yet if not for Liath, he would still have been chained to Bloodheart's throne, a madman. "Who else can you be? St.

Radegundis was pregnant when Taillefer died. No one knows what became of the child born to her. But you do." She said nothing.

Blessing stirred and whimpered, head turning to the side, rooting at his breast, but he had nothing for her. Ai, God, he was so angry at that moment, feeling the tiny body cupped between forearm and chest that he could have lashed out and strangled this regal woman who regarded him with the cool stare of an empress surveying that which ought to be beneath her notice; ought to be, but is not, because he had piqued her by guessing the truth. He had pierced her smooth shell, and now he knew Liath's secret.

Ai, Lady! He knew Liath's secret, and he knew triumph. What was Queen Adelheid's lineage compared to this? Henry would have to approve of the marriage now. Indeed, Henry surely would welcome this match, his own line bred and sealed with that of the dead Taillefer, greatest emperor the Daisanite world had ever known. If Henry sought for legitimacy beyond brute force to re store the Holy Dariyan Empire, this child was the one who would give it to him.

"Help me save my daughter," he said, and this time his voice broke. He knew Anne would interpret it as weakness and would seek the soft opening so that she could plunge the dagger in. He understood at that moment as he faced her that she was always and had always been waiting to kill him. She was just more subtle than the rest.

"No," she said.

"Have you no heart at all?" he demanded. "Were there no bonds of affection in your youth? Ai, Lord, who raised you?"

"A woman named Clothilde."

"St. Radegundis' handmaiden." He recognized the story, although it was not at all clear to him how St. Radegundis' lost child had managed to create a child in its turn.

"It is true Clothilde acted as Queen Radegundis' handmaiden, but in all ways and in all her actions she was the loyal servant of Biscop Tallia. She did what had to be done, to face the greater threat. And I will do what has to be done, just as she taught me."

"How does letting this child die aid you in your cause?"

"Because she is your child, Prince Sanglant. She is blood of your blood, and I am sworn to see that your blood never again flourishes on this Earth. They have nurtured their strength out in the aether, where they exist closer to the Chamber of Light, from whence all strength flows. They mean to return to this world and rule it with a hand of iron and with their gruesome sacrifices. They mean to obliterate the Light of the church and blanket the world in the darkness of the Enemy, for they are creatures of the Enemy."

He shook his head irritably. "Liath once told me that the Lost Ones were born of fire and light, and that if they are tainted by darkness it is only because all things that exist in this world are tainted by darkness. How am I any worse than you?"

"You are their creature, Prince Sanglant," she said coldly, "and Liath is mine."

"She is your daughter! Surely she means more to you than just a tool!"

"All of us are only tools, Prince Sanglant, but some of us are agents of God and some are agents of the Enemy. Do not ever believe that a child born of your kind will be welcome on Earth as long as I and my people are here to stop you."

He had known despair once, and bitterly. He knew it now.

Anne left, and he retreated to regroup, to suffer, to struggle as had Liath when she labored with all her strength to bring forth a blessing. Liath might yet die. Blessing might yet die.

But not if he could help it.

He leaned against the corner of the hut, exhausted, drained, catching his breath. The baby nestled against him, still and silent, so small.

Meriam emerged and saw him. "Liath is sleeping." She shrugged. "I don't believe she will die, Prince Sanglant, but it will be a long time before she is well.

But I fear there is nothing you can do to save the child if you cannot coax it to take the goat's milk." Then she walked away, not with triumph but with a sigh, a practical woman who has read the signs and is sorry at the pain she sees in the world.

But he was something else. He saw Jerna slip to the door, waiting for him to enter. He saw her truly for the first time in days, it seemed; he had been so preoccupied and she was just one among the many creatures fluttering around, things he hadn't the energy to take careful note of. She had fully taken on the likeness of a woman, a face composed in some strange way of all the faces of the women here in Verna: Zoe's kissable mouth, Meriam's sharp cheekbones, Anne's regal nose, Venia's broad and intelligent forehead, and Liath's hair falling like water to her waist, clear enough that he could see through it to the curtain hanging down over the door that led into the interior. She had taken on the shape of a woman, the gracious curve of ample hips with a modest veil of mist concealing her womanly parts, stout arms and a handsome neck, and breasts as bountiful as any nature had endowed woman with, full and ripe, leaking a clear fluid.

It seemed for an instant obscene, against nature. But then Blessing mewled and stirred in his arms, and he didn't hesitate, "lerna," he said softly, coaxing her forward, because she was a flighty thing; they all were, those who labored as servants at Verna under the strict rule of Sister Anne, she who was willing to watch her own granddaughter starve.

But he would fight for his daughter until his last breath. "Jerna," he said, and she flowed toward him, not a woman but something other, something trying to become a woman. This act might mark her forever, separate her from her kin, who did not walk on Earth but rather in the air, below the Moon. This act might mark Blessing forever, for how could he tell what nourishment she might in truth be receiving from an aetherical creature who dwelt closer to God than did humankind and who was composed of a different proportion of elements? But he had to try it.

He held out Blessing, and the creature sighed in some satisfied, inarticulate way, and settled the child to its breast. Blessing rooted, found the nipple, and began to suck.

AFTER a wet and cold journey of over five months, Hanna finally caught up with King Henry's progress at Lavas Holding on the Feast of St. Samais of Sartor.

She had prayed that morning at sunrise to the saint who was particularly beloved by servants, for hadn't St. Samais been the washerwoman who had laundered the blessed Daisan's robes, all that remained of him on earth after he had been lifted bodily to the Chamber of Light at the Ekstasis? Hadn't the water in which she washed that blessed cloth healed the sick and cured the lame? St. Samais had accepted martyrdom rather than hand over the blessed Daisan's robes to the minions of the Empress Thaisannia, she of the mask, for the empress had comprehended that the robes had miraculous powers which she herself wished to control.

Not, Hanna reflected as she crested a rise and saw Lavas Holding below, that she sought martyrdom as had the saints of old, but she was Henry's loyal servant and hoped she could serve him as faithfully as St. Samais had served the blessed Daisan. Manfred had died in Henry's service, and she hoped she had courage and loyalty enough to die as honorably as Manfred had, if it came to that.

Yet a wasp sting burned in her heart, nagging, incessant, uncomfortable.

She still dreamed of the Kerayit princess every night.

A Lion standing sentry hailed her. "Friend Hanna! How fares it with you?

What news of Princess Sapientia?" It was her old friend, Ingo, looking fit and well-fed.

"Princess Sapientia was well enough when I saw her last. She and Prince Bayan won a victory over the Quman."

"God be praised! And you, friend?"

She laughed. "I'm happy to see that I won't be riding any farther today.

King Henry moves swiftly. I lost three horses to lameness in the past month alone, and there was so much rain! It seemed as if I'd always stay two days behind him. What news here, friend?"

"You hadn't heard? Queen Mathilda is dead, may she rest in peace in the Chamber of Light. The king received word in Autun. Ai, Lord! He prayed for seven days and nights clad only in a pauper's robe." Ingo sighed and wiped a tear away. "His grief moved every soul there to tears. I still weep, to think of it."

"May her memory be blessed," said Hanna, as was proper. "What then brought you here to Lavas?"

"There's a terrible great judgment being held here." His mood changed abruptly and he spat on the ground in disgust. "Nobles, fighting over land again.

Greedy bastards always wanting more for their favorite children. You'd think they'd be content with what they've got, but it's never so. When will it ever end?" He said. "Ai, well. Count Lavastine was a fair man. It's too bad he died."

"I don't recall him seeming old or ill," said Hanna, surprised at this news.

"He was not. God's ways are a mystery, truly." He lifted a hand to beckon her closer, and she had to lean down from her saddle to hear him. "Perhaps it was sorcery, as some are saying."

She straightened, struck by the way he had moved her aside from his companions, had regripped his spear, as if fearing an attack. "Everyone seems to be speaking of sorcery these days. What news of Prince Sanglant?" It was an oblique way to ask about Liath.

"You were still with the king when the prince rode off, weren't you? Well, he's never come back nor has anyone heard one word from him. It was your comrade who bewitched him, they say."

"Do they still say that?" she asked cautiously.

"Ah," he said, reading something in her expression she hadn't concealed.

"You hadn't heard the news, then. The council held at Autun excommunicated her for trafficking in sorcery."

The blow was a hard one and easier to absorb alone. She thanked him and went on her way, and as she rode down into the holding she noticed the tight silence of the local people and, like its counterpoint, the constant whispering of the court's servants, who seemed to be enjoying themselves rather more than they ought given the grave nature of the charges and the death of a good man.

Was it in the nature of humankind that they should take pleasure in another's misfortune?

She handed her horse off to a groom, brushed the worst of the dirt off her clothing, and made her way to the hall, a fine timber edifice with whitewashed walls and huge roof beams painted with tar to keep the vermin out. She had never been here before, although Liath had visited here a year or more ago and told Hanna a little of what had transpired between her and Lord Alain. It seemed now that fate would conspire to keep her and Liath apart. God alone knew where Liath was now, and in what condition. And she had forgotten to ask Ingo about Hugh.

Her old comrades Folquin and Stephen were standing on guard at the door into the great hall, and they clapped her on the back and whispered greetings, then let her through although perhaps a hundred people had gathered outside, forbidden entrance. And no wonder: so many had crowded inside that it was reeking and hot despite the cool, damp spring weather. Someone had thought to strew mint in with the rushes on the floor, but the sweat of so many people overwhelmed any other odor. She had to elbow her way forward because people were so intent on the scene before them that they took no notice of her Eagle's badge.

It was slow work. Somewhere at the front of the room, people were giving testimony about Lavastine, his first marriage, the horrible death of his only known legitimate child, and the mistress he had once slept with who had died in childbirth.

She squeezed past two stewards dressed in fine linen, like chickens tarted up as swans as her mother would have said, but fetched up behind a hugely broad nobleman who seemed immune to her nudging. He was short enough that she could see over his shoulder and glimpse the dais, where Henry sat on his throne. The king looked tired. He had lines in his face that hadn't been there six months ago. Hathui stood behind him; she had mastered the blank face of the loyal servingwoman. His niece Tallia sat to his left, Helmut Villain to his right. On opposite sides sat Lord Alain and Lord Geoffrey, the disputants.

Henry lifted a hand, and a steward called forward the next witness, a heavyset older woman who, by the evidence of her stained apron, had evidently been called in from the kitchens. The nobleman in front of Hanna kept shifting as she tried to press forward, and she just couldn't get past him and by now was wedged between him, a bench, and a table. The atmosphere in the hall was so tense and focused that she hadn't the courage to shout out, as Hathui would have, "Make way for the King's Eagle," even though she had the right to do so.

She shoved her way up on the bench beside a trio of finely-dressed boys and was able to hear as the cook told her story with remarkable self-possession.

"Yes, Your Majesty, that would have been Cecily. She's the girl we all knew was Count Lavastine's mistress, may she rest in peace, but she wasn't the one who gave birth to Count Alain. She gave birth to a misshapen lad, our Lackling.

Alas, he died two years ago, poor child. Fell in the river and drowned, we think, for his body was never recovered."

"You don't think he might have run off, that he might still be alive?" asked Hathui.

"Nay, Eagle, he'd never have left here. That's how we know he died. He vanished one day and never come back."

"Did Count Lavastine know that this boy Lackling was his mistress' child?"

asked Henry.

She looked nervous then, wringing her hands in her apron. "Nay, Your Majesty. A poor beggar woman was brought in that same night, and both she and her child died, so we said that Lackling was hers and Cecily's babe was the one who died. I don't suppose more than three of us knew the truth, and we all swore never to speak of it, for the young count had just gotten betrothed and his bride was a jealous woman, all full of her own hurt feelings, may God grant her peace. We wanted to protect him."

"So you lied."

"So we did, Your Majesty. I'm sorry for the sin, but I suppose I'd do the same thing again. It's for God to judge the matter, not me."

"Who knew the truth?"

"Well, then, I knew, and Deacon Marian knew, and old Agnes knew.

Deacon and old Agnes attended every birth here, and I helped Agnes when she needed helping, bringing her clothes and water and ale for the laboring women, and so on. They're both gone, now, may God bless them. I'm the only one living who attended those births, for there was four babes born in the space of three nights. One was the poor dead beggar child, may God rest him and his mother.

One was Lackling. One was Count Alain. And the last was a tiny little thing, a girl I never saw again because her mother and father fled with her the next morning though the poor woman was still weak. I think they were afraid, for the other three mothers died. They thought it an ill omen, They were afraid she would die, too, if they stayed."

At these words, Geoffrey made to speak.

"Hold, hold," said Henry, lifting a hand. "If you knew that this child Lackling was the baby borne by Lavastine's mistress, and that the child Alain was borne by a different woman, then why did you say nothing when Count Lavastine named this young man as his heir?"

The old cook looked troubled. "What was I to say, Your Majesty? Was I to tell the count his own business? Was I to rule for him?"

"You could have told him what you knew."

She gestured toward Alain. "There was the hounds, Your Majesty."

Of course everyone looked. A hound sat on either side of Alain. He had a hand buried in each one's neck, as if holding them back—or as if they were all that was holding him up. Yet she could read nothing in his expression except perhaps a kind of resigned calm. His black hair had been recently cropped; his clothes were neat and handsomely fitted. But except for the hounds he sat unattended even by a servant while Lord Geoffrey was flanked by noble kinsmen who, with empty sword belts and arms crossed menacingly, looked ready to solve the problem with their fists. Lord Geoffrey had the kind of red face that comes of too much choler seeping from the blood into the mind. He looked as if he were about to burst into wrathful speech at any moment.

"The hounds?" asked Henry.

"He has the gift with the hounds, Your Majesty. Just as Count Lavastine did, and his father before him and his father before him, may their souls rest in peace in the Chamber of Light."

She frowned at a sight unseen by the rest of them, glanced over her shoulder as if looking at someone in the crowd, then rubbed her bulbous nose self-consciously. "Poor Rose. That's the girl who was Count Alain's mother, for I know she bore him truly enough. I saw him come from her body, just as I saw poor Lack-ling born out of Cecily, No mixing those two boys up, because Lackling come out of Cecily with his face all bent and legs funny and Alain was as perfectly-formed a baby as I ever saw. Yet Cecily was the good girl, obedient and quiet. She never went to any man but the count, and I'm not sure that wasn't more his choice than hers, begging your pardon, Your Majesty. She always said there was a young man in her village she meant to marry, when she returned home. Rose, now, alas, she was a whore, there's no kinder word for it.

Pretty as a rose, that girl. That's where she got the name, for she never claimed to have one of her own. She and her people come up from Salia a year or two before to find harvest work and she hadn't anything of her own, as poor as the mice in the church. They was even too poor to have a lord take them in. The man who called himself her father just called her 'girl,' and we all suspected that he was doing that to her that goes against nature, if you take my meaning. Your Majesty."

People chuckled and whispered around Hanna, finding amusement in this salacious tidbit. Henry frowned and rapped his scepter once, hard, on the floor.

Everyone quieted. "Pray give this woman silence in which to testify." She rubbed her nose again, which had gotten quite red from the heat of the hall, or of the king's regard. "She were so poor and so poorly treated by her father who was always slapping her and calling her indecent names right out where everyone could hear that it's no wonder she went looking for what she could get wherever she could get it. Everyone knew she made her assignations up in the old ruins.

She were always going on about meeting the Lost Ones there, and how a prince of the old people was coming in to her and was going to make her a queen.

Who's to say she didn't meet the young count up in the ruins one night? Every man in this holding looked at her with lust in his eyes, she was that pretty and had that kind of way with her that made you know that if you just gave her the right thing she'd, well, begging your pardon, she'd make it worth your while. It's as likely that Count Alain was Count Lavastine's son as any other man's, Your Majesty."

Lord Geoffrey looked ready to burst, and he burst now. "He might have been the get of any man in this holding! He might have been the lowest stable boy's by-blow! Ai, Lord! He's as likely to be the ill-begotten product of an incestuous union between the girl and her father!"

"Begging your pardon, my lord," the cook retorted with astonishing asperity, "but what about the testimony of the hounds, then? Not any man but the counts of Lavas can touch them hounds. They obey Count Alain just as they obeyed Count Lavas-tine. That was good enough for Count Lavastine, and he was a careful man and a good lord to us. We trusted him and never saw reason to question his judgment. He only did one foolish thing in his life, when his poor daughter was killed, and he repented that the rest of his days."

"Strong words," said Henry. His niece Tallia shifted in her seat as if his voice had startled her, but she did not look up from her study of her knees. She had a pale face, pale hair, and pale hands, was almost colorless, quite in contrast to the plump young noblewoman who stood in attendance on her with her hands folded quietly before her and her serious gaze flicking now and again toward Alain.

"What about this boy, Lackling?" asked Henry. "You seem sure he was Count Lavastine's bastard. Could he touch the hounds?"

"Why, bless you, Your Majesty," she said with a chuckle, "he hadn't enough wits to try, nor would anyone let him. He was misshapen in the body, poor lad, as sweet a soul as you might wish, but he was simple in the head."

"I pray you, Your Majesty, have I your permission to speak?" said Alain. His voice warmed Hanna; she had never heard him speak before, but there was nothing nasty or irate in his tone, nothing to trouble one's heart or scrape raw one's soul. Henry nodded. "The hounds never troubled Lackling."

It was an astounding observation to make in the face of the really awful accusations just thrown at him by his rival. The young noblewoman sitting at Geoffrey's side—most likely his wife because she held a young child on her lap—

leaned over to whisper in Geoffrey's ear, and he sat back, looking irritated, but keeping his mouth shut.

"What are you saying? I don't understand your meaning." Henry sat back in his chair, hands curling over the dragon armrests. Their carved tongues licked out between his fingers, and he rubbed them absently as he listened.

"They never troubled him," repeated Alain. "They never lunged at him or tried to bite him, as they would everyone else." He pointedly did not look at Geoffrey.

"Everyone but you," retorted Geoffrey. His face went from red to white in an instant, the complexion of a sinning man, or a fearful one. "Because you're an agent of the Enemy. You used sorcery to enslave them, just as you used sorcery to bind my cousin to your will. We've all heard the story that the elder Count Charles Lavastine was accused of having made a pact with the Enemy to get those hounds. Why would any man want them? We've all seen and heard how vicious they are. They can only be creatures of the Enemy, and if they obey you, it must be because you are a servant of the Enemy as well!"

"Hold!" cried Henry, raising a hand for silence as the crowd began to mutter and stir. The hounds growled softly, but Alain merely touched them on their muzzles and they lay down, resting their great heads on their forelegs. The king paused while Hathui bent to whisper in his ear. He nodded, and she gave an order to a steward, who hurried away. Hanna edged forward on the bench, got stuck again, jammed between a noble lady and her companion. She thought of crawling under the table, but the noble lady's whippets had hunkered down in a pack under the table and not only did they growl at her as she bent over to survey her chances, but they had made a stinking mess of the rushes underneath. She shoved her way back up on the bench as the king began again to speak.

"This is a grave accusation, Lord Geoffrey, not only against Alain but against Count Lavastine, his father the younger Charles, and his grandfather Charles Lavastine as well. Do you mean to imply that all of them were in league with the Enemy?"

At once the young noblewoman and an older man who resembled her leaned over to whisper furiously to Geoffrey while he by turns looked irate and mortified. The child on the woman's lap fussed and was given a fig to chew on to keep it quiet.

The crowd had begun talking and there was a buzz of anger below it, like bees smoked out of their hive, but Hanna couldn't tell who the anger was directed against. Alain did not move except to pat the head of one of the hounds. Tallia glanced at her uncle. She seemed to have eyes for no one but Henry, and even so her gaze was more like that of a rabbit eyeing the hawk that would like to eat it than that of a trusting niece. Hadn't she married Lord Alain last summer? Of course she had! Why wasn't she sitting beside him, then?

"Nay, Your Majesty," said Geoffrey finally. "It is evident that Count Lavastine and his father Charles were innocent."

"Then do you lay a claim against the elder CharJes Lavas-tine and his conduct?"

"No one knows what he got in return for the hounds, but it brought ill luck into his house. The story goes that his own mother died in childbed the day he got the hounds. He himself never had but one child although he married four different women, and his son had only the one living child although his wife was brought to bed ten or twelve times. My cousin Lavas-tine had only the one child, and not only were she and her mother murdered by these same hounds, but it was rumored that the girl wasn't his get at all, that his wife had committed adultery. Two times more he made ready to marry, and both those women died under unnatural circumstances. And last, that same ill luck brought this liar to Lavas Holding, this man who tempted my cousin and bewitched him. And killed him, too, so I hear. Everyone agrees it was sorcery that killed him, some foul creature of the Enemy. Even those who will speak no ill of this bastard acknowledge that my cousin died in an unnatural way. It's true, isn't it?" he demanded at last, for the first time glaring belligerently at Alain.

"That sorcery killed Count Lavastine?" answered Alain. "Certainly I believe it is true, and I was the first to say so." This calm remark caused so much stir, people bending and talking and gesticulating to their neighbors, that Hanna was able to skip across from one bench to another and thereby move herself so far forward in the crowd that she was finally halfway to the front. "He was killed by a curse set on him by Bloodheart, the Eika chieftain he defeated at Gent."

Lady Tallia flushed, color creeping into her cheeks. Her attendant touched her on the shoulder, as if to signal her, but Tallia made no attempt to speak.

"A clever ploy," said the noblewoman sitting beside Geoffrey. Her voice was as sweet as honey and only somewhat more cloying. "But you have no proof."

"Prince Sanglant would testify that there was a curse. When he was Bloodheart's captive, he saw an unnatural creature brought to life to fulfill that curse. That creature, that curse, is what killed my father."

Hanna winced, and it wasn't until then that she realized that she had fallen, heart and soul, in favor of Lord Alain over Lord Geoffrey, simply by reason of their demeanor here in this hall. Yet what was the mood of the crowd? She was only a common-born girl. The nobles would, no doubt, rally around their own.

Henry looked angry at the mention of Sanglant. "Then there is no doubt in your mind that you are Lavastine's son?"

Alain answered without hesitation. "Perhaps it's true that I am not Count Lavastine's son. I can't know and I don't know, for I never knew my mother. I was raised by free-born merchant folk in Osna village, a sister and a brother called Bella and Henri after the children of King Arnulf the Younger after you and your sister, Your Majesty. They told me only that I'd been born in Lavas Holding to an unmarried woman and that they'd agreed to foster me. It's only when I came to serve for a year here at Lavas Holding that Count Lavastine noticed me.

/ never asked to be named as his heir. But he acknowledged me as his son, and he honored me with his trust. I will obey his wishes and act as rightly as he tried to all his life, because that is the trust he handed to me on his deathbed. I swore an oath to him there to uphold this county and the title of count, as he wished for me to do. Any woman and man in this holding will testify that is true. Many of them witnessed." Around the hall, isolated people nodded, but Henry's noble followers merely looked on. "I know my duty," he finished. "It is up to you, Your Majesty, to judge otherwise if you see fit."

"You admit you might not be his bastard?" demanded Henry, clearly amazed.

"God enjoins us to tell the truth, Your Majesty, and the truth is that I don't know."

Geoffrey's kinfolk stirred and smirked; some looked outraged, and some looked gleeful. Their expressions were mirrored here and there in the hall by courtiers, who surely must now be wondering if a common boy had shown them up and embarrassed them by pretending to be one of them. He had the same fine proud line in his posture, only his expression was tempered by a gravity and modesty that was more truly noble than any wellborn man or woman there except for the king. And they would hate him for that.

But Alain had already gone on. Perhaps he was oblivious. Perhaps he didn't care. Or perhaps he was really that honest, a miracle in itself. "My fa— Count Lavastine named me as his son and treated me as his son. That his wishes should be dishonored in this shameful way is disgraceful, but I am well aware on my own account that we are all tempted by pride and envy and greed and lust to act in ways that God cannot approve. But I ask you to consider this, Your Majesty. It is Lavastine's judgment that is being questioned here, not my worthiness."

Geoffrey looked furious. His kinfolk muttered among themselves, annoyed and angry at being lectured, and Geoffrey's wife sat the little child straighter on her lap, as if it were on display at a market and she wanted to fetch the highest price for it. Henry looked thoughtful, leaning over to make a private comment to Helmut Villam. His niece sat as stiff as a statue, looking desperate. Had she been forbidden to speak? What did she wish for?

Hathui was looking around the hall trying to gauge the reaction of the court, and Hanna, seeing her chance, lifted a hand to catch her attention. It took a few moments, but Hathui finally saw her and at once brought Hanna to the king's notice. Stewards moved forward into the crowd, paths were made, and Hanna was able to come forward and kneel before him.

"Where is my daughter?" asked Henry. "How does she fare?"

"She is well, Your Majesty. She is married—" A general cheer rang out at this statement, and Hanna had to wait for it to die down before she could go on.

"She and Prince Bayan have won a victory over the Quman." As there came further rejoicing, she edged forward enough that she could speak to Henry in a low voice. "There is more, Your Majesty, but I am charged by your daughter to relate it to you in a more private setting, if it pleases you."

Henry sat back, and when the crowd had settled down, waiting for his response, he lifted a hand. "I want my dinner, and I have heard enough for today." He rose, and the assembly was thereby dismissed.

But that evening at twilight Hanna stood beside Hathui, and together they watched the king pacing in the garden as a fine drizzle dampened his cloak. She had given him Sapientia's message, and now she simply had to bide her time together with all the other Eagles who rode in attendance on the king, waiting to be sent out again.

"He still mourns his mother," observed Hathui, "may her soul rest in peace.

I tell you, Hanna, the king needs good cheer in his life, not dispute after dispute like this one!"

"Then you favor Count Alain?"

"Thank God I don't have to pass judgment! Lord Geoffrey's accusations are troubling, and hard to disprove. But Count Alain is no fool. King Henry respected Lavastine, and as Alain said, it is harder to pass judgment on the actions of a dead man than on the worthiness of a living one."

"Do you think so? The dead man can't defend himself."

"But a good reputation is its own defense, It's harder to pass judgment exactly because he can't defend himself, because the whole of his life is laid out before you. Who are we, then, to decide we would have acted differently, and that our actions would have turned out for the better?" The rose garden was laid out between the great timber hall and the stone tower, bound on the other two sides by a roofed walkway and a log palisade. A half dozen servingmen lounged under the shelter of the walkway's roof. "I do believe also that Lavastine and Alain will always be linked in the king's mind with his own wishes for Prince Sanglant. For that reason, I think him likely to favor Count Alain over Lord Geoffrey."

Hanna hitched up her hood and held it tight under her chin. The wind shifted, and a mist of rain blew into her face. From the other side of the log palisade she heard the sound of horses being led into the stables after their afternoon's exercise. Grooms called out to one another, laughing and joking.

Footsteps crunched on the path behind them, and they moved aside for Villam to pass. He conversed with the king for a few moments, then went back the way he had come, into the stone tower.

"Is there news of Liath?" asked Hanna softly.

She couldn't see Hathui's expression, but she felt the other woman stiffen and shift a little away from her. "She ran off with Prince Sanglant. Nay, you knew that. You were still with the court then. The Council of Autun found her guilty of the crime of sorcery, and excommunicated her. If you have any traffic with her, Hanna—

"I'll be excommunicated in my turn. But nevertheless, she is my friend, and whatever she was accused of, I know she's innocent. What happened to Father Hugh?"

Hathui grunted under her breath. "He was sent to Aosta to stand trial before the skopos. Only she can pass judgment on a man of his rank."

"You've heard nothing since from Liath? No word of Prince Sanglant?"

"Nothing," replied Hathui, even more softly. "And I've looked..."

Her tone held a caution in it, but Hanna's curiosity was piqued. "What do you mean, that you 'looked'?"

Hathui glanced around to make sure no one stood within earshot, but the stewards were far away and the king had walked to the farthest corner of the garden, where the curve of the stone tower met the palisade wall. Here a dog rose climbed a fretwork, and he touched a flower, bent to smell it, then, as with a fit of temper, snapped it off.

"You've served the Eagles well and faithfully," said Hathui in a low voice,

"but you must wait until Wolfhere returns, for I've not the knowledge to teach, only to see a few shadows."

"I don't understand you."

"There is more than one sight with which an Eagle can see. Wolfhere knows the secret of it, as do a few others. Those of us who can, learn it to aid ourselves and to aid the king. But you must never speak of it to anyone else. It's like our badge. It's part of our oath, sworn to serve the king and to aid each other."

"Serve the regnant and no other," said Hanna, watching the king. He plucked the petals on the rose and ate them, wincing a little at their tartness, then picked a second rose. "Speak only the truth of what you see and hear, but speak not at all to the king's enemies. Let no obstacle stand in the way of your duty to the king. Let your duty to your kin come second, and make no marriage—" Here she broke off, and Hathui finished for her.

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

"I do so swear," murmured Hanna, remembering the night when she had been given the badge that made her an Eagle, for now and for always. She winced at a flare of pain in her chest.

"Are you well?" asked Hathui, feeling her movement.

It had already subsided, vanished as if she had only imagined it. The king walked toward them.

"Hathui," he called, and his servingmen came running. "Here." He handed the rose to Hanna. "Take this one to my niece. Tell her that it would be well for her to remember that the thorns of those words which mislead without lying are small but persistent, and that the white rose which symbolizes purity is also veined with flaws."

She bowed and retreated as he called for and had brought to him a little whippet puppy which he took on a leash to run in the garden. She had to ask among his servants and discovered to her surprise that Lady Tallia did not lodge with her husband in the count's tower but rather in a pavilion pitched just outside the palisade wall, which she shared with the duchess of Varingia.

The duchess was a ruddy-looking woman with the massive presence of a high-ranking noblewoman. An infant old enough to sit up by itself held court on a gold couch, next to the duchess, who entertained the chortling baby by clapping her hands together and tweaking its ears. Tallia's noble attendant had joined in the play as well, getting down on her knees to shake a gourd rattle for the child to grab. The conversation was nonsensical, conducted entirely by Duchess Yolande who treated Tallia little differently than she did the baby and chattered on in singsong rhymes directed at the baby interspersed with commentary on the dress and behavior of the court folk. Tallia said not one word. The baby was more talkative.

"Isn't he sweet?" the attendant asked Tallia, but Tallia only stared at the baby as if it were a scorpion that had gotten loose among the carpets.

"Your Highness," said Hanna, bowing. "Duchess Yolande." In the lamplight she could better see the flower as she presented it to Lady Tallia: the silken white petals were indeed veined with pinkish-purple lines, so shot through with them that she could no longer see the rose as white at all. "His Majesty King Henry bids me give this to you, Your Highness, with this message: 'Tell her that it would be well for her to remember that the thorns of those words which mislead without lying are small but persistent, and that the white rose which symbolizes purity is also veined with flaws.'"

Tallia did not move, made no effort to take the rose, only stared.

"A common whore," she murmured, shuddering. She seemed to be talking mostly to herself. "That's why he showed me the nail. He was trying to pollute my faith in God."

There was, oddly enough, a sheen of dirt at her collarbone as if she had forgotten to wash. She wore a gold Circle of Unity around her neck together with a sachet, a little bag stuffed with herbs. The bitter scent tickled Hanna's nose and made her want to sneeze. Up close, Tallia's pale hair looked limp and stringy, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Her hands were thin and white and veined much like the flower's, more blue than purple.

"Come now," said Duchess Yolande, "it's a terrible blow, I admit it, but he's a good-looking and well-spoken young man, and I've met many a noblewoman who was scarcely less discriminatory in what manner of man she let into her bed." She took the rose from Hanna and danced it in front of the baby. He grabbed for it, got it, and at once pierced himself on a thorn and began to sob.

"There's life for you!" exclaimed the duchess. She pried the rose out of the baby's hand, kissed his reddened skin, and tickled him out of his misery. The rose, dropped to the carpet, was picked up by the young attendant; she glanced once around swiftly and then tucked it between her bosom and her gown, as if it were a precious ikeepsake.

"Lady Hathumod, you haven't said what you think of this scandal." Duchess Yolande lifted the child onto her lap as her own attendants gathered round to coo at him and tickle his chin. He gurgled happily at all the attention.

"Nay, my lady duchess," replied the attendant in a grave voice, "I have not."

"Surely after months living here with him you have formed some notion of his breeding. Do you suppose that one of the hounds sired him?" Her ladies laughed and laughed, but Lady Hathumod remained silent. "Ah! You're such a tiresomely serious creature, Lady Hathumod. Perhaps you have some new revelation with which to entertain us?"

Tallia looked up, startled, and then sighed sharply, almost a hiss between her teeth.

"As you wish, my lady duchess," said Hathumod, but she looked at Tallia.

"Your Highness?"

"Yes," said Tallia in a passionate voice, and her shoulders shook like a woman in the grip of a palsy. "We were speaking of it yesterday."

"Go on, speak!" insisted Yolande.

"We were discussing the matter of women's holiness," said Hathumod.

"Why would God choose a man as the vessel of Her holiness here on Earth rather than a woman? Why did She send a son to partake of mortality and not a daughter?"

"I thought we had agreed that She chose St. Thecia to be the Witnesser because a woman's word is worth more than a man's."

Hathumod smiled with the radiance of an honest heart. She opened her arms as if to open herself to the heavens. "Women are already the vessels of God. Are we not made in Her image? God in Her mercy gave Her Son to be sacrificed just as men are more likely to give themselves in battle to protect their kin. But we are reminded of that sacrifice by the blood women shed each month."

This heretical talk was making Hanna terribly uncomfortable. She slid back to the door, even coughed a little, but when no one paid her any mind nor seemed concerned to send her on her way, she simply eased backward through the door and made her escape.

She found Hathui with the king in the rose garden. The drizzle had stopped although the flagstone walks glistened, slick with water. The whippet puppy had about as much energy as the baby; it leaped and barked as Henry clapped hands at it, racing away and then galloping back when he whistled. Hathui stood beside the king, laughing with him, but when he gathered up the puppy against his chest and sobered suddenly, Hathui quieted as well. He began to pace again, stroking the whippet's back, while his servants watched from the walkway and Hathui waited on the path nearby.

Would he walk in this fashion al night? Would Hathui watch with him the whole time? A breath of rain spattered on the stones, a gust that passed and quieted. Hanna wiped its drops from her nose. Though it was dark, she could feel the clouds churning and flowing overhead. Out in the unseen grounds beyond the palisade, a dog barked. One of the servingmen sneezed, and a companion murmured a blessing. The king paused beside Hathui to make some comment which she answered in a murmur, then walked again. Hanna wondered at their intimacy, not anything remotely lascivious but rather far more profound, like head and hand.

Hathui saw her and came over. "Is there a message for the king?"

"Nay." She repeated what she'd heard. "She seemed in a trance. The only time she bestirred herself was when they began to speak of that heresy she's enthralled by."

Hathui grunted. "That's as we've come to expect. It's a strange thing all around, I'd say."

"It makes my skin crawl," muttered Hanna.

Hathui glanced up at the tower, where light still gleamed in the upper room. "Go on, then. No need for you to wait up all night."

"Will you, with the king?"

Hathui shrugged. "He often paces at night, now. As my old grandmother would have said, he needs a bed with something more than feathers to invite him in."

Hanna chuckled. "He's nothing like Villam, they say. Not one mistress since the death of Queen Sophia. Do you think it's true?"

"Hush!" The retort came sharply, surprising Hanna. "None of us have any call to speak disrespectfully of King Henry. Would you like to have to stand judgment every day over cases like this one? He's got a hard choice before him.

Lord Geoffrey's a good man at heart despite all the anger he showed today, and he has strong kin behind him and the support of the nobles. Yet Count Alain is a better man, and King Henry knows it. But Alain has got no noble kin to support him, not outside his wife. It will all hang on Lady Tallia's testimony."

"Thus the rose."

"Thus the rose," agreed Hathui. "Now go on. You've ridden a long way.

You've earned some rest."

She found the barracks where her comrades quartered, unrolled her blanket among the other Eagles, and enjoyed their companionship as she drank ale and ate cheese and bread. They gossiped about where they'd been and what they'd seen, shared tidbits of news and helpful information, what monasteries stocked the best ale and which villages were most welcoming, where bandits stalked and what forest cut-off was bedeviled by an aggressive pack of wild dogs. The others wanted to know about the east and how matters fared there; she told them details of the wedding and made them laugh when she repeated Prince Bayan's poetry. They speculated in low voices about Prince Sanglant, but no one spoke Liath's name out loud, as if by leaving the Eagles her name had been obliterated from their memory, as if they feared that the sound of it on their tongue might implicate them in her sorcery or scar their lips forever.

But she was comfortable here lying on straw and surrounded by good plank walls. Horses stamped in the stalls below them; their scent and warmth drifted up, and one by one her comrades drifted off to sleep. She slept, and she dreamed.

She is lost, battering her way through a tangle of high g o r wth that

scratches her hands and slaps her face. Swordlike leaves taper to points swaying far above her reach, a forest of grass. The sky is turgid with clouds. A strange humming tickles the air, a whistle with more weight than breath in its tone. She stumbles over a hump, trips, and lands with her hands buried in the oozing, stinking innards of a huge silver-furred bear that, eviscerated and hacked into parts, sprawls in death along the ground.

Just then, a heavy shadow overtakes her. She feels the wind of talons swiping at her back and hears a shrill trumpet of disappointment. Wings beat like bellows above her. She bolts, ter ified,

r

and flails through the grass, hands

weeping blood and ef luvia

f

, but the wind of its passage returns, hot and

staggering. She cannot see it precisely, she is too afraid to look up, but it is some monstrous creature, and as she cries out, the talons settle on her shoulders, grip her, and in the next instant her feet no longer touch the earth.

She kicks helplessly as they go up and up and the ground drops away so quickly that her head spins, and it is all she can do to clutch her spear tight. She isn't imprisoned by bird's talons at all, but by something more like lion's claws, and yet she glimpses a noble and terrifying eagle's head far above, with tufts for ears and armed with a fearsome beak. Beyond massive hind legs poised below her lashes a golden tail. At the heart of the blinding sheen of iron-gray feathers where she might plunge in her spearpoint, she sees a single pale spot on its breast, but they have made height so fast that she fears if she kills it, and it drops her, she will be dead from the fall.

If it is only a dream, will her death matter?

She doesn 't want to find out.

They fly until her shoulders ache. Unlike its claws, time has no grip. A day passes, an hour, a minute; she can't be sure. The landscape changes as she hangs above it. Perhaps she isn 't moving at all, perhaps it is the land beneath her that moves while she hangs unmoving, Liath used to talk about such things—The heavens are always turning around us, swifter than any mill wheel, as deep under this earth as above it, quite round and solid and painted with stars—but she never understood them or perhaps it is more correct that she didn

't understand why they were worth wondering about. Yet in the last two yea s r

she has seen a lot of things that have made her wonder and made her head ache for wondering. The clouds have fallen back behind them, scattering like sheep until at intervals the sun glares down so that she has to blink wildly as her eyes adjust to its harsh light. The bear's blood dries stickily on her hands, a pair of unpleasant gloves. Trembling, looking at her bloody hands, she realizes that the bear had no claws.

Ahead, grass dies away into hillocks o sand a

f

nd fields of rock, boulders

tumbled into odd, veined shapes by some ancient cataclysm. Ahead, the ground gleams all silver and gold. The creature descends until she sees that the plain opening before her is a desert strewn with sands that resemble seas of golden granules interwoven with channels of silver

dust. The sun sets, bathing the

glimmering sands in rose light. Abruptly, darkness comes but for a single light, a campfire. She sees no moon.

That suddenly, they dip, and the claws release her. The creature screams, and she is deafened, she falls with her hands clapped to her ears and her spear lost, and she hits the ground. Her knees drive into her chest and she can't breathe, clutching at anything, finding her spear jammed up against one elbow.

The coarse sand burns on her skin, still hot after hours baking in the sun. The grains are oddly shaped, unlike any sand she's ever seen before: they 're disk-shaped, flat and round like a baby's petrified fingernail. What ocean deposited this sand here? Where is the shore?

Firelight illuminates a figure walking toward her, but she knows that form as she knows her own heart, always, for her, an easy depth to fathom.

"/ called you, " says the princess, giving her a hand and helping her rise.

"What was that creature?" Hanna demands as she brushes off the knees of her trousers. In an odd way, she has become used to these meetings.

"That was a griffin," says the princess, emphasizing the word as though she thinks Hanna won't understand it even though every word they speak, two who share no common language, is completely intelligible in her dreams.

"Do you control i ?" sh

t

e asks, feeling faint.

"Nay, I only asked for its help. Just as I ask for your help." Hanna sees her clearly now with firelight and starlight and the princess' own shroud o magel f

ight

to guide her. Four huge bear claws hang heavily from a leather thong around her neck. Several miniature pouches hang from a belt at her waist, each one cleverly tied closed with thread as fine as spider's silk. Her felt conical hat is missing, and she wears no covering at all on her head; her braids have been tied back behind her neck to keep them out of the way. She has a healing cut across the knuckles of one hand, and her leather coat has a huge rent in it, as though it was recently slashed and mended. Meat is cooking, and fat is boiling. Her nose is smudged with soot.

"How can I help you?" asks Hanna. "This is only a dream."

"How can I find a dragon's scale? All the dragons are gone. They vanished when the Lost Ones fled, so the old stories tell us."

Hanna laughs. Maybe in dreams the truth is easier to find because it isn't obscured by waking blindness. She drops to her knees and gathers up a handful of sand, lets the odd golden grains pou d

r own through her fingers. The heat of

them soaks her skin in dreamy warmth, like the kiss of magic. "Couldn't these be dragon's scales?"

The Kerayit princess laughs out loud, a whoop of joy. For all that her expression and demeanor are exotic and somber, still, she is barely a woman, no older than Hanna herself. She is no different than any other child, gleeful as she turns the trick back on a wily old teacher. In her excitement, she grasps Hanna by the shoulders, not unlike the monstrous griffin, and kisses her on either cheek, then slaps her under the chin with h

t e back of her hand, an odd

endearment. Her breath smells of sour milk. Her lips are dark, as if stained with berry juice.

"Hai ai!" she cries. "Stay with me, luck, and we will hunt down the others together. Seventeen items she said I must bring her, and have five now. So I will prove myself worthy of becoming her apprentice."

A bass rumble vibrates along the earth, felt through the soles of her feet more than heard. The princess suddenly grasps Hanna's arm, and together they sway, only it isn't them, it is the earth that is shaken and they only move with it.

The land shudders and jerks as if dragons buried beneath a millennium of shed scales have woken and are trying to dig free.

The tremor drags at her, and she feels the ground slide away under her feet, spun not by sorcery or some monstrous flying creature but by a sudden disturbance cutting through the earth itself. She is torn away, but she is still dreaming. She hasn 't left the land of dreams, she has only been displaced.

The earth slides under her and the heavens are black. Neither star glints nor moon shines, but the breath of dawn licks at her face; she can see it in the graying scene unfolding before her, and she knows she has traveled a long way, thrown off course by the trembling earth. She is somewhere she has never been before. She feels another mind and another soul tangling with hers as she dreams, and he has brought her here, unawares, perhaps. No malice oppresses her, but the heart tha beats i

t

nside her is unlike anything she has ever known,

unlike her own simple and apprehensible heart, more cruel than merciful, more just than kind, yet in its contradictions unfathomable.

She walks among them and she falls inside.

Spring came early, as foretold by the merfolk who can taste the weather in the salt of the sea. No pounding storms troubled the fjords over the winter. Now he stands in the stem of his ship and the sea slides underneath as smoothly as melted grease coats a hot pan. The pull of the land is almost enough to draw them in. Scarcely does any oar touch the water.

Victory can be had in many ways, and this victory will be taken at dawn on a foe who lies sleeping.

Nokvi is, no doubt, shrewd and strong, and the magic of his allies can undo many an enemy. But that magic canno har

t

m the host of Stronghand, and

Nokvi's strength will not avail him in the confusion brought on him by a dawn raid.

The ships beach silently on the far side of the land's finger,where a steep ridge thrus s out into the

t

sound. His warriors disembark as mute as stones; for

this raid, they have left their dogs behind. They begin the hike that will take them over the ridge and down into Moerin 's vale, where Nokvi rules. As they climb, pine and birch grow increasingly thick about them, and the host speeds silently between the trees until, cresting the ridge, they see the watch fires marking Nokvi's long hall burning crisp and clean below them. All lies quiet.

As they move down the slope, their noise increases, and he feels a stab of misgiving, but it is already too late. His war iors are be r

ginning to howl, full of

their cleverness, ready to slaughter, and as they break f om the r

woods and

course over the fields he knows that even with this brief notice Nokvi's people will be easy prey, bewildered by the early hour and the unexpected attack.

Still no movement comes from the hall.

Distantly he hears a shriek, like a raven, suddenly cut off.

They reach the hall in a thundering roa , and it is

r

n 't until the first of them

strikes down the door and heaves it aside that he understands the worst.

Outside, the watch fires bum. Inside, the hearth fire burns but warms no one, because no one stands or sits or leaps up in astonished and enraged surprise.

The hall is empty.

Blow the retreat," he cries to his standard bearer even as he knows it is already too late.

Perhaps this will be his harshest test.

"Set the hall on fire," he calls, "and light every torch we have."

A new force emerges out of the trees, leaping in a wild ecstasy, and their ululations rise like the flames now streaking up the walls of the long hall. They are Soft Ones, but their skin is the color of the night sea and without clothing or adornment save spears and clubs spiked with iron they race toward the Rikin warriors shrieking and laughing like madmen. They plunge forward without fear, and in the instant before they fall upon his warriors, he sees robed humans walking among the trees with staffs upraised: sorcerers. His own staff he grips tightly, but their magic does not afflict his warriors, only their own, who hit the Rikin line with howls first of battle fever and then of agony.

"Retreat! " he cries again, and this time he wrenches the horn from his standard bearer and blows the call himself, sharp, imperative.

"Nay, nay," his warriors cry, "let us slaughter them. They are weak as calves. "

But he drives his troops fo w

r ard. They know to obey him.

They know he is

more farsighted than they are. And by now, some of them can see that they have been tricked. With spears and fire they beat their way forward through the throng of naked men, headed for the ridge and the trees. Only the stupidest are left at the hall when Nokvi 's troops come racing out of the dark f om the r

other

direction. It's a clever plan. Nokvi hoped to catch Rikin's army from behind while it wasted itself killing ensor-celled men.

It is a hard and humiliating run back up th

e ridge and down to his ships.

Only four of the ships are burning so fiercely that the fires set on them can't be stemmed. He kills one of the arsonists himself, a naked human man who gibbers and pokes ineffectually at him with a knife before the creature falls, doubled over, from a thrust to the guts.

Four ships lost, as well as a third of his men. One ship has to be scuttled in the sound, and ten more warriors dumped overboard when they die of their wounds.

But he counts himself lucky. He has underestimated Nokvi and his allies. It could have been much worse.

It is not in victory that you learn how strong you t uly r

are.

Sorrow licked him, and he startled up like a hare bolting and found himself weeping at Lavastine's bier.

It is not in victory that you learn how strong you are.

Ai, God. He could not weep for himself, not truly. He was weeping for what they had done to his father's hopes and dreams, shredded now. Thrown to the dogs.

Not my father any longer.

Nay, King Henry had not yet judged the case. Yet if Henry ruled in his favor, could he ever truly call himself Lavastine's son again without wondering if it were a lie to say so? Couldn't it be true, as Cook said, that Lavastine had lain with the young woman as well? Might he not have walked to the ruins one night and succumbed to temptation as Alain had almost done so long ago with that girl, Withi? How could they ever know one way or the other? How could one tell?

What had linked Lavastine and poor Lackling, who were so unlike that it seemed impossible they could be father and son, even after Cook's testimony?

Nothing had linked them, except blood, except perhaps the way the hounds had whined and whimpered at both their deaths.

Geoffrey's blood claim to the count's chair was stronger than Lackling's merely by reason of competence. But if fitness was the only standard, then couldn't he argue that he would be a better steward than Geoffrey? Under his rule, the people would do better than under Geoffrey's rule. Was it pride to think so? No, it was truth. Lavastine had recognized that truth and he had made his decision based in part on sentiment and emotion, certainly, but in equal part on reason, because Lavastine took seriously his duty to the land and people under his rule.

What was blood, anyway? It was everything, all that you had to mark kinship, and yet the bond he had shared with Lavastine was no less real whether or not blood had tied them together. He and Lavastine had been woven together in some way evident to them both.

He loved him still, and he had a bitter intuition that had Cook reluctantly brought her testimony before Lavastine, the count would have smiled in his terse way and told her that it made no difference to him.

Nay, the failure had not been Lavastine's. He had always known what he was about. He had known what would happen, and he had made every effort to prepare for it.

But Tallia wasn't pregnant. Alain had failed and, worse, he had lied to the man who trusted him most.

The knowledge lay in his heart as bitterly as the accusation that he might be nothing better than the ill-gotten child of a whore and her father, born out of incest and cruel poverty. Ai, Lady. No better than the poor beggars who had sheltered in hovels on his land and pleaded for food for their starving children.

Yet did God love them any less than They did the fine nobles who never wanted for elegant clothing and full platters?

But you're nothing so noble as a beggar's child. The voice scraped at him like a finger picking at a fresh scab. Did God love whores, too? The shame of having it spoken out loud in front of everyone still gnawed at him. It would never cease gnawing. His foster father Henri had protected him from the truth of what she was all this time. He had only ever said one thing about her, that she was beautiful. As if that was all that mattered. And maybe, in God's heart, that was all that mattered.

Rage whined, butting him, and he scratched her around the ears, buried his face in her massive neck as he patted her and ' she grunted contentedly.

What about the testimony of the hounds? Yet where had Fear gone? Would he ever return?

He ran a hand over poor Terror's stone flanks where the old hound lay in death at Lavastine's feet. The curse had marbled as the old hound stiffened and died, so that he looked hewn of a dark stone stippled with white. Lavastine lay peacefully, with Steadfast guarding his head and Terror his feet. The shame of this day did not touch him, for certainly he had atoned for his sins; his soul had ascended to the Chamber of Light. Alain had to believe that.

Beside him, Sorrow stood stiffly, growling, but made no move to plunge forward. Alain clambered to his feet and combed back his hair with a hand.

But he stood alone in the church, just as he had stood alone in the hall.

Then he saw her back by the door, peering nervously out from behind the first square column. "Come forward. The hounds won't hurt you."

Lady Hathumod moved with the hesitancy of a fawn approaching tame lions, innocent enough to trust and yet held back by an ancient caution.

"Have you brought word from her?" he asked eagerly.

She halted three paces from him, head bowed modestly, fleshy hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. "Nay, my lord. She refuses to see you. She refuses to send you a message."

"Then I will go to her! It isn't right that Duchess Yolande keep us apart in this way."

Boldly, she stepped forward to lay a hand on his forearm as if she meant to hold him in his place. Then, as quickly, she jerked back. Her cheeks flushed a bright red. She still wouldn't look him in the eye. "Nay, my lord, please do not do so. You will only humiliate yourself."

"How can I possibly bring on myself any greater humiliation than was heaped on me yesterday?" Bitterness rose in his throat, bile burning up from his stomach. "Tallia trusts me. She only need see that I haven't blamed her for what happened. It isn't her fault that Duchess Yolande dragged her away. I'm sure she didn't want to go, not truly."

"I pray you, my lord." She seemed almost to weep out the words as she clutched her hands together so tightly that her knuckles were white and the tips of her fingers red. "Do not blame Duchess Yolande. No matter what you say, Lady Tallia will not see you. So you must either be seen begging outside her door like a vagrant or breaking into her private chambers like a common thief."

"Since most of the nobles here think I am no better than a whore's son, how will it harm me—?" Knowing it was excessive, he broke off. He simply could not believe that Tallia had abandoned him so callously.

"I pray you, my lord," she said in her soft voice. "Do not waste yourself suffering over that woman, for she is not worthy of you."

Amazed, he watched as tears slipped down her cheeks. "What do you mean?"

"Tallia is the flawed vessel. She is how God has tested our faith, for truth was given to her, but it cracked her."

He was too stunned to reply. How had she concealed this disrespect for her mistress all these months? He had never guessed that Hathumod was anything but an obedient companion, willingly accepting banishment from Quedlinhame in order to remain with her beloved lady.

"I know, my lord, that you do not believe the true word as revealed to us by Brother Agius, to whom God granted the glory of martyrdom. Yet who am I to question God's design? I, too, am only God's vessel."

"Surely the Lady sent you to stand beside Tallia. She needs someone to take care of her."

Her mouth, tightening, gave away the depth of her disgust. "She turned her back on the one who loved her selflessly. I am leaving her service, my lord."

"But where will you go? Back to your family?"

"Nay, they sent me to the cloister because they have too many daughters and not enough land to divide between them. They do not want me back."

"Then where? You can't just strike out on your own. A mendicant's life cannot be for you, Lady Hathumod." He gestured toward her clothing, a good linen gown embroidered with cavorting rabbits; she was almost rabbitlike herself, with a soft round face, someone you wanted to pet rather than kick. She wore bright red cloth slippers, the kind of courtly, delicate shoes that would wear out after a day of walking. Her hands bore no calluses. Her skin was still as soft as a rose petal. "Will you go back to Quedlinhame?"

He recognized the stubborn set of her shoulders. "They won't have me back. It matters not where I go, my lord. I will trust in God's wisdom." Finally, she gained the courage to look him in the eye, and he was startled by her quiet yet passionate certitude. "But I know what I have seen here. I saw what happened with the loaves among the poor. If it is God's will to hide Her servants among us, then I will keep silence."

Then, astoundingly, she knelt before him and kissed his hand as a lady would that of her regnant.

"Nay, you must not!" he cried, embarrassed by this act of devotion. He lifted her gently to her feet, but could say no more, because the king's Eagle came in then, looking for him, and called him to court.

And in the end, when they had all assembled, Alain watched as the Tallia who would not speak to him nor even look at him, the only woman he had ever truly loved, came before her uncle the king.

"Can you swear before this court and by the name of Our Lord and Lady that the marriage was never consummated?"

"Yes," she said, and it seemed to him that she was glad to say it, that she positively rejoiced in that one word that shamed him and ruined him.

A nobleman laughed, a snorting chuckle. Henry looked up from his study of his niece, and it became so quiet that Alain could hear Rage's toenails clicking on the floor as she shifted her head on her paws. Someone nearby had farted ripely. A bee buzzed outside one of the open shutters, and from the distant fields he heard a hoe picking at dirt, someone chopping as if they were bothered and angry.

"By the oath you swore in front of witnesses on your marriage night, you have the right to support him as his kinswoman," continued Henry, almost suggestively. "Will you speak on his behalf?"

"I am not his wife," said Tallia, and the gleam of triumph colored her thin face. "If it was not consummated, then the marriage never took place."

The faintest scent of a fading dog rose drifted to him, vanished, and he became aware of his own rose hanging against his heart, as heavy as a lump of worthless iron slag. The point of the old nail had shifted, driven against his breastbone as if striking for the heart.

It was her betrayal that hurt the most.

Henry sat back with an obvious sigh. "So be it," he said, sounding more than a little displeased. "No woman or man can rule without kin to support them.

Because this man Alain has no kin to support him, I have no choice but to rule in Lord Geoffrey's favor. His daughter, Lavrentia, I name as count of Lavas, to be guided under her father's regency until she comes of age at fifteen."

After that it was all meaningless noise.

And yet, hadn't the judgment been passed a year or more ago? Hadn't his foster father Henri accused him of everything Geoffrey had, excepting sorcery?

Henri's own words had condemned him. "You don't think I'm Lavastine's son," Alain had cried. Henri hadn't hesitated: "Nay, and why should I?"

Ai, God, and without Tallia, would he have had the heart for it anyway, reigning as count for years and years, alone as Lavas-tine had been? No wonder Lavastine had fastened on to the unknown fatherless boy. He had been desperate and lonely. What a fool Lavastine had been! Would he have proved any better, any less foolish, any less desperate after years of lonely rule? Nay, it was all for the best that it end this way. He could have expected nothing else.

But then he shook himself, knowing this for the sin of despair. He would not dishonor Lavastine's memory by giving in to self-pity.

In this way he came to himself as the shouting and stamping feet subsided and Geoffrey leaped to his feet in triumph and anger.

"I beg you, Your Majesty! You must punish him for his presumption. Let the church take him to trial for sorcery!" He had to wipe his mouth because he was spitting, so eager was he to get the words out.

Rage and Sorrow rose, stiff-legged, more threatening in silence than a pack of barking dogs. One of Geoffrey's kinsmen grabbed Geoffrey's arm and yanked him back.

Henry rose and rapped his scepter on the floor three times, and anyone sitting quickly stood. "Nay!" cried Henry, staring Geoffrey down until the poor man hit his knees on his chair and sat down hard, then leaped up, fearful of insulting the king. "Your zealotry does you no honor. I see no sorcery involved in this case, only the error of a man heartfelt on finding a beloved son who had been lost to him."

Even Geoffrey was wise enough to let it go. He stepped back, he bowed his head humbly, and took his little daughter—the new count—in his arms, the symbol of his victory.

Henry turned to regard Alain. Did he look aggrieved? Had his voice caught on that mention of lost sons? Alain was too numb to care.

"You have served God and this throne faithfully, Alain. I offer you this choice, that you walk away from Lavas Holding now and never return to any lands under its watch on pain of death, or that you accept a position in my Lions, fitting to your birth, and serve me."

That fast, he had tumbled down Fortune's wheel. It was simply too stunning to grasp. But he had to act. He had to think. He struggled to clear away enough fog so as not to make a fool of himself. God help him, he would not disgrace Lavastine by making a fool of himself in front of Geoffrey and his smirking family!

But of course, Henry knew what he was about. There wasn't a choice, not really. Had he ever had any place to go except to return in shame to Bel's steading, which he could not do anyway because Osna was under Lavas protection?

He came forward and knelt as, from his seat among the nobles, he had once watched Eagles kneel before the king, as servants had once knelt before him, although those days seemed impossibly long ago. The rose seemed to have sprouted thorns of ice, pricking his heart until he thought he must bleed in torrents all over the floor. He would perhaps have fallen over from the pain, but Rage and Sorrow paced forward and sat on either side of him, their big bodies pressing warmly against his trembling one.

King Henry did not step back, nor did they growl at him.

"I will serve you as you command, Your Majesty," said Alain.

PRINCE Ekkehard saw the gold feather lying on the road and, after one of his grooms fetched it for him, he held it up in his cousin's face.

"Have you ever seen anything like this? I think it's pure gold! What luck that I saw it first!"

"Get that thing out of my face, I pray you," said Wichman, shoving Ekkehard's arm back. "It smells."

"It does not!" cried Ekkehard, holding it to his nose and taking a big whiff.

At once he began coughing, and Wichman's companions all laughed. Wichman took advantage of Ekkehard's coughing to snatch the feather from his younger cousin's hand, and by the set of his mouth and the frown made by his eyes, Ivar could tell he was intrigued.

"That's mine!" objected Ekkehard as the fit passed.

"So it is, little Cousin, but right now I'm having a look." Wichman handed it to one of his companions and quickly it was passed around among the older horsemen as Ekkehard fumed.

Wichman and his fighting men were not unlike a gang of bandits, Ivar reflected. Ermanrich had taken to calling them Lord Reckless and his noble companions Thoughtless, Careless, Heedless, Senseless, Mindless, Wordless, Useless, the three Thundering brothers, the six Drunken cousins, and of course the infamous Thruster, who had once been discovered doing unspeakable things to a ewe. Sigfrid did not approve of this levity, but he always ended up laughing anyway because Ermanrich had such a wicked ability to mimic.

"It's gold," said Thruster wisely as he twirled it, "and God damn it but I'd like to see those acrobat girls perform dressed in nothing but a skirt of these. I know what I'd do with'em then!" Known otherwise as Lord Eddo, he was the most single-minded person Ivar had ever met.

"Can't be gold," said Thoughtless who, like all the rest of Wichman's cronies, was a fat-headed, bored young nobleman from somewhere in Saony.

"Ain't any birds made of gold."

"Is too gold," said Useless, snatching it from his hand. " Tis-n't a bird feather at all. It's a Quman feather. They have wings, too, you know."

"I've never seen anything like it," said Wichman, which ended the matter.

"But I'd like to see what bird it comes from. Here, Father Ekkehard." He handed it back with a smirk. "Perhaps you educated churchmen can make more sense of it. Oh, God!" The groan came from him quite unexpectedly, and everyone started round to stare. He slapped his own forehead. "I forgot all my clerics at Gent!"

It had become a very old joke, but he and his companions still found it hysterical.

Amazingly, Prince Ekkehard had learned to keep his mouth shut at such times. He merely handed the feather to Baldwin for safekeeping.

They had passed the first signs of a village some time ago, woods logged out for firewood and buildings, grazed meadows, a litter of pig bones, and fields left fallow. It had been a quiet ride; there were remarkably few birds in the woods. Now as the sun sank into the afternoon, light filtered mellowly through spring leaves. They rode alongside a flowering orchard. Three half grown boys sprinted out from the cover of the trees to stare.

"Look at them spears!" cried one of them, whose face was at least as dirty as his feet.

"Come you to kil the beast?" cried another, galloping alongside the road until a ditch cut him off. Their friend had already taken off across a side path, leaping a rivulet, and vanishing into a crowd of waist-high berry bushes as if all the Enemy's minions pursued him.

Word flew before them, and when they reached the village, they were met by a delegation of village elders, three old women and two bent men who seemed to have about a dozen teeth between them. What must have been the rest of the village population crowded behind: matrons; men and boys of all ages; little girls. Strangely, there seemed to be no young women of marriageable age among them. Dogs barked, and Thoughtless took a swipe at one scrawny yapper with his spear, nicking the poor creature in its hindquarters. Ivar had seen this scene before as they had traveled at a leisurely pace south and east from Gent: the village elders would offer a few poor gifts as a transparent bribe and then suggest that the group travel to a manor house or monastic farm farther up the road, one more fit to entertain a party of their consequence.

Wichman would refuse because he preferred lording it at villages, where there was inevitably a handier supply of reluctant young women.

"God's mercy," cried the eldest of the sages, an old woman who had to lean on a stick to support herself. She had an odd way of clipping off her words at the end, the local dialect. "Our prayers are answered, my lords. Say that you have come to kill the beast!"

"What sort of beast might that be?" asked Wichman, scanning the huts and outlying sheds. Beyond, long fields tipped with green striped the ground, interspersed with ranks of fruit-bearing bushes and trees. Something pale flashed between two trees, escaping to the safety of the woods: a dog? a goat?

"Ai, a terrible creature not born of earth! Since Margrave Vil-lam and Duchess Rotrudis drove back the Rederii these twenty years and brought them into the Light of God, we've had no trouble here. But now!" Several folk wailed out loud. "Shades in the forest there've always been, but this! First all manner of unGodly lights up in the old stones, and now the beast. Why has God seen fit to torment us?"

"What manner of beast is it?" repeated Wichman. He had his most irritating little smirk on his face.

"A terrible creature never meant to walk on earth. It come from the stones one night, flew out of a blinding light. As big as a house, it is, like an eagle, only it's a monster sent by the Enemy to plague us. Its claws could lay open a cow with one rake. First it only took the deer, but we fear that—

"Haven't you any daughters but those little ones?" demanded Thruster suddenly. He was rubbing one thigh obsessively, sweating a little although it wasn't very warm.

Every man and woman in the place went still and white. One child, piping up, got a slap on the mouth.

"Eaten!" said the woman in a quaking voice. She had warts on her nose and a stubborn gleam in her eye. "The beast took the deer first", and then our daughters."

"I would have taken the daughters first and then the deer," said Useless,

"but this must be some agile relative of Eddo's." They laughed uproariously, including Thruster.

"Hold your tongues!" said Wichman, who hadn't laughed. "Whose land is this?"

"It's our own, my lord. I come with my husband, God rest him, to settle here when there wasn't nothing but savages living here. It were the agreement made with King Arnulf s stewards. We're beholden to no lady but only to the king."

He grunted thoughtfully. His horse, getting restive, danced a little sideways, and he yanked it back. "But I must keep my companions happy, or they won't want to risk their lives. What can you offer us?"

"Food and shelter, my lord."

"I know what you're hiding," said Wichman. "And I want it for myself and my men."

"What're they hiding?" cried Thruster eagerly.

Prince Ekkehard pressed his horse forward. Compared to his older cousin, he looked slight and almost frail, but he held his head as proudly and he was of course dressed magnificently. "I am Ekkehard, son of King Henry," he said in a bold voice. "I have come to save you. I ask no reward for my companions and myself no matter what the risk to our lives, for I know my duty as a prince of this realm. Tell me more of this beast that afflicts you."

In this way, Ivar found himself pressing through grass and chest-high foliage along an overgrown trail, following his guide, a thin and rather frightened boy whose speech was almost unintelligible. As Ekkehard's least favorite companion, Ivar had been sent ahead to scout the stones, the lair of the mysterious and horrible beast, and his guide had evidently been chosen because he was one person the villagers wouldn't much mind losing, poor lad.

Bait, Wichman had said, and his companions had all pounded each other on the back at this witticism and snorted and chortled. Baldwin had looked annoyed and begun to intercede, but Ivar had stopped him. He was proud to go, truly. He wasn't afraid anymore because he trusted in God's plan now even if he did still have uncomfortable dreams of Liath some nights. Anyway, it wasn't fair to make the poor boy go alone.

He hiked up his novice's robes as they forded a broad and shallow stream.

Wet to the knees, he clambered out on the other side, keeping up a stream of prayer as he crept on behind the boy. God had a plan, of course, really She did, and he trusted Her, but he stil wondered why his stomach couldn't decide between leaping up out of his throat or dropping straight down out the other way, and if he kept his mouth moving he didn't quite have to think so much.

How many lost souls had he brought to the truth since his revelation on the streets of Gent? Enough that he could go straight to the hall of the martyrs? He and Erman-rich and Sigfrid had preached among the benighted so pugnaciously for the next week that eventually Brother Humilicus had gotten suspicious, and the biscop had had them hauled up before her on the charge of heresy.

They had escaped only because Ekkehard was leaving with Wichman the next day and, driven by Baldwin's coaxing, he had used his princely authority to yank them out of the biscop's very annoyed grasp. But he hadn't been happy about it. And he still didn't like Ivar.

Had there been enough souls saved in Gent? It was hard to tell, and the villagers they had preached to along the way had been reticent, but at least those humble souls hadn't stoned them or driven them out. They'd listened, and whispered to each other. They'd even asked a few questions.

No one had said the work would be easy. God's plan wasn't all honey and pudding.

At times, Ivar wondered what God had planned for people like Lord Wichman, one of the most useless creatures ever to stalk the earth. Send a beast to kill a beast, Ermanrich had murmured as the expedition had armed and made ready to assault the beast's lair, but he'd stopped giggling at his joke when Ekkehard had commanded Ivar to walk ahead. Ekkehard had given him a small horn, which he now clutched in his right hand, and he hoped he'd have a chance to use it.

"Hsst!" The boy waved him back with a stick, then motioned toward a jumbly dark rise ahead of them, an unnaturally round hill crowned with fallen stones and unpleasantly torn up trees. It suddenly seemed odd to Ivar that all birdsong had ceased. Sun flashed among the stones, but then Ivar blinked, seeing it flash again, seeing it move, as if sunlight had been caught within the ruined stone circle and was trying to break free.

"Uh," uh, uh," grunted the boy in terror, and bolted. From the heart of the stones the sun rose, although the sun was already midway down a western sky half hidden in the broken clouds. It was huge and brilliant, covered in gold. Ivar heard shouts from behind him; the rider had seen it, and anyway, as he gaped as it rose higher and higher, he realized that he had dropped the horn.

It was shaped something like an eagle with a tufted eagle's head and a noble beak, but it was manifestly no eagle. They couldn't grow so large, and eagles didn't have gold feathers, as if they'd been gilded by flying too close to the sun. It was magnificent, with tail feathers that seemed to blaze and eyes that even from this distance sparked and glimmered like starlight. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

Scrabbling on the ground, he found the horn, lifted it, and blew, but all that came out was a stuttering wheeze.

It trumpeted. The sound boomed around him, as melodious as the voice of angels, too powerful for mortal ears to comprehend. He'd never seen anything cover ground that fast. It was far, rising from the fallen stones, and then it was near, as big as a warhorse, diving for him with talons edged and pointed like swords.

He flung himself flat on the ground. The air heaved and blew as the creature passed over him. The beat of its wings burned his neck, and he was dizzied by a scent as sharp and heady as the incense used in church. He heard a very human shriek beyond him, but he was too winded to move.

Was that the face of the Enemy, so dazzling that it would kill you as you stared at it in wonder? Or was it a precious glimpse of the face of God in all Her terrible splendor?

A bony hand tugged at his ankle, and he yelped, kicking— but it was only the boy, who had come back to get him. Distantly, he heard horses scream and an outbreak of shouting. Wichman's voice pierced momentarily above the chaos:

"With your spears, you fools!"

A riderless horse galloped out of nowhere, wild with terror, and Ivar leaped back out of its way, stumbled, rol ed, and struck his shoulder on an inconvenient rock. He got to his hands and knees, scrambled behind a prickly hedge, and panted until he could think again. The boy had vanished with the horse, or in its wake. Finally, disgusted with his cowardice, he ran back toward the ford, trying to keep out of sight.

The clamor of a particularly ugly skirmish rang in the air, wounded horses, a panicking man, a huffing grunt like erratic bellows, someone screaming over and over again about his arm. Ivar came into sight of the ford. Beyond it, where the wood fell away into open ground, the great creature beat above a churning clot of riders like a beaked angel shrouded in golden light. Basking in the glow were seven riders, chief among them Wich-man, never one to shrink from a fight. Each time the beast came near the ground, they prodded and thrust with their spears, and each time, with great beats of its wings, it would lift out of reach. With a shout, Prince Ekkehard spurred forward from the group, trying to get a thrust up from underneath, and for an instant he was out of reach of the others. The beast curled sharply toward him, uncannily graceful, and its talons caught his shoulders.

The young prince's arms were immediately pinned to his sides as talons dug deep into shoulders protected by a good mail coat. His spear fell to the ground, yet he didn't shriek, although blood began to run. With strained wing beats it tried to raise him into the air. The horse bolted out from under him, and he kicked, flailing helplessly, as if trying to reclaim his mount although the horse had already bolted into the woods. His helm, knocked loose, spun to earth.

He struggled on, pumping and swiping with his feet, as the beast flew low toward the ford where Ivar stood frozen, quite unable to think or act. Wichman and the other five riders pounded after in close pursuit. Shouting and whooping, more came riding from the woods, calling out the prince's name. As the beast closed, still beating low, Ivar could see Ekkehard's face, white, grimacing as he twisted, and yet in an odd way almost exulted.

The wind off its wings blasted Ivar as it came right in over his head, still unable to gain height. Without thinking, he leaped. Springing from a crouch to the air in two steps, he caught hold of one of Ekkehard's flailing legs.

At first he thought both he and the prince would be borne away as his toes left the ground, but in the next instant his feet were dragging in the water as the beast banked to one side, borne down by the extra weight. He heard Wichman shout, felt the press of horses nearby, driven in against their will. He didn't see the blow, but he felt it shudder through Ekkehard's leg, heard a grant from the prince, a groan forced out between gritted teeth. The beast trembled, and all three of them fell to the ground. The slow strained beats had become the frantic fluttering of a wounded wing, splashing in the stream.

Letting go, Ivar rolled over to see hooves slashing air above him. A shower of iron points and wooden shafts whistled past, cutting the sky into ephemeral ribbons. The cruel beak struck a hand's breath from his bare foot, and water sizzled from a weeping cut under one radiant eye; its blood scalded his toes. He threw himself sideways, rolling and rolling through the shallow water, gasping for breath and gulping more water than air until he was in the middle of the stream and outside the frenzied circle on the bank. He could see nothing but men and horses and spears, a frenzy of spears rising and falling like hammers beating death from life.

Gold feathers as delicate as anything crafted in the finest goldsmith's hall and that pale viscous blood drifted in a spreading smear from the bank. The steaming blood stung, burning his skin where it flowed over and around him, and he scrambled and scraped over pebbles and slimy stones and heaved himself out on the grassy bank just as a shout rose from the men.

They had themselves become the beast, howling over their defeated prey.

Sigfrid ran up beside Ivar, dropping to his knees. He was weeping, signing frantically: "No! No!"

But it was too late.

The glorious creature was dead.

Ivar staggered up and tottered over to the ravening crowd of celebrating young men, and of a miracle Wichman's cronies made way for him. They didn't even tease him or pinch him as they would otherwise have done as he pushed through them to the side of the beast. In death, it only looked grotesque, not sublime. It was just a monstrous dead thing with shining feathers and dull, lifeless eyes.

Baldwin was helping Prince Ekkehard to stand.

"Damned fool idiot," Wichman was shrieking as Ekkehard tried to move his arms. "I told you to stay back. No charging in like a glory-mad fool. Just get out of my way next time!"

Blood leaked through chain mail, and the prince swayed a little as Baldwin held him up and his other young companions clustered around, with their bodies widening the distance between him and his massive cousin. Then he saw Ivar.

"I owe you my life," said Ekkehard irritably. "What reward do you want in return?"

"Burn it," said Ivar. Sigfrid had come up beside him, wiping fresh tears from his face. Ermanrich stood on the other bank, mouth an "o" of astonishment.

"That's all I ask, Your Highness. Just burn it."

When the boy came in, leading the bolted horse, he was sent to the village with the news. Wichman ordered half his men to seek out the rest of the lost horses. Poor Mindless, the only casualty, was dying fast of blood loss and trauma: the beast had ripped his arm from its socket. They didn't bother to carry him anywhere, only made him comfortable on the ground and, squirting wine from their wineskins down his throat, got him drunk to kill the pain. Those who remained pulled feathers from the beast as well as they could, but they had to give up their looting because its blood blistered them even through gloves. When the villagers finally paraded in with cries of triumph and a garland of fireweed and pansies to drape around Prince Ekkehard's bruised neck, they had brought flagons of ale and a lit lamp.

Ekkehard still couldn't lift his arms, so he merely nodded when the old village woman offered him the lamp. "It injured you more than us," he said magnanimously. "Let the one of you who lost the most livestock set it on fire."

"But none of us lost any livestock, my lord," she said. "It were so cruel and fearsome looking, living so nearby, that we feared it might begin to stalk us."

Ekkehard blinked several times in quick succession, as if her words didn't quite make sense to him. Then, with a shrug, he sent Milo forward to fling the lamp onto the corpse from a safe distance.

Flames exploded from the body. Useless, still hanging about hoping to glean a few more feathers, got singed and skipped back, yelping like a hurt dog.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Ermanrich demanded of Ivar for the fourth time.

Ivar could only shrug. Sigfrid knelt at a safe distance from the bonfire and began to pray, lips moving although no intelligible sound could come out. He was still weeping.

The fire roared, and as feathers crisped and evaporated in the heat, Ivar began to see shapes in the flames: a multitude of honey-colored doves borne upward by the smoke; lions pacing into an unseen distance, sleek and pale; silvery roes leaping away as up invisible stair-steps of rock, vanishing into the heavens; salamanders delighting in the flames, their bright bodies more red than coals and their eyes sparking blue fire.

"I think we made a terrible mistake," he whispered.

Beyond the fire, where the rejoicing hadn't slackened and no one seemed aware of these strange emanations except as a heady cloud of incense wafting heavenward, an argument erupted as violently as had the fire out of the great bird.

"You're lying to us, you old bladder!" Wichman towered over the old woman who had first spoken to them, threatening her with a bloody-knuckled fist. "I know you hid your daughters. You admit yourself that it was a lie that the beast ate any of them. I saw some of them running into the woods."

"Leave them alone," said Ekkehard suddenly. He was still sitting on the ground, Milo, Baldwin and Udo hovering behind him as his servingmen agonized over how to get the bloodied mail shirt off without aggravating his injured shoulders. "What right have you to molest them?"

"The right of a commander who just lost a soldier to defend these miserable vermin!"

"I grieve for Lord Altfrid, too, but that's no reason to rape their daughters in exchange."

Wichman snorted, throwing his arms out and taking a big step to one side.

He had a way of flinging his body into any space nearby when he was in a foul mood, the way a person took up room to show that he could. He wiped blood from his nose. "Now here's a change of heart from the randy little boy who was never happier than when groping his sluts in Gent. Or are you happy enough with your pretty attendant Baldwin? If he's not sword enough for you, I can loan you Eddo here, for he'll probe the canals of quite any creature, human, animal, or otherwise."

"Don't mock me," said Ekkehard in a low voice. "And don't molest these people." He had gone white along the jaw, but at ! least blood wasn't dripping anymore. The wind was blowing the inebriant smoke from the beast's pyre directly into his face, although he didn't seem to notice.

Wichman had, of course, stepped wisely out of the heaviest stream of smoke. "How do you mean to stop me? I have fifteen experienced men to your fourteen half-grown boys. We could chop you into pieces and go on our way without breaking a sweat."

"And pork the village girls besides," added Thruster enthusiastically. "Did they really hide them from us? Mean of them!"

"My father—" began Ekkehard, almost squeaking with anger.

"Ai, God!" cried Wichman, clapping a hand to his head in the familiar, mocking way. "What will dear Uncle Henry do to me? I'm kin. And he needs my mother's support, doesn't he? So just shut up, little Cousin, and go back to your novices and your prayers, or have you forgotten that you're a monk, not a soldier?"

"Then do it," said Ekkehard quietly. Sitting, he looked like a chiU vainly attempting to bully a roaring giant. Yet as the smoke poured off the pyre, it seemed to pool around his body. For an instant, Ivar thought he saw the golden shadow of the dead bird rising, wings outstretched, from the battered shoulders of the prince.

With a grimace, and some help from his companions, Ekkehard got to his feet. Even standing he was entirely outmatched by his brawny cousin, a big, stout, experienced fighter, survivor of the second battle of Gent, leader of that troop of reckless young men who, outnumbered and outmatched, had fought hit-and-run engagements against Bloodheart's Eika raiders for half a year. Ivar had heard all the glorious stories. So had Ekkehard, and his admiration for his cousin had become both embarrassing and a nuisance to Wichman.

But something had changed.

"Do it," repeated Ekkehard. "Just be sure my father knows who killed me, and who terrorized these helpless villagers. They've got no lady or lord to avenge them, to call out a feud on their behalf, to get repayment for any damages you do them. They've only got the pledge of the king that they are under his protection." He turned then to address the villagers. To their credit, they hadn't fled; they'd only slunk back like dogs about to be whipped who knew that bars hemmed them in with their captor. "Keep your daughters hidden," he said to them before turning back to defy his cousin. "Now what will you do? Kill them one by one until they bring out their daughters? Don't they have enough sheep to satisfy you and your companions?" Wichman slugged him. He fell, thrashing a little like the bird had as it died in the stream. His wounded arms fluttered, then stilled. With eyes rolled up in his head, he lay there limply.

Baldwin lunged for Wichman, and then there was a gasp of fighting, Ekkehard's boys throwing themselves against Wich-man's men. Ivar would have leaped in, but Ermanrich restrained him and it was over in moments in any case.

Half of Ekkehard's boys had blackening eyes and the rest purpling cheeks, most of them now held at arm's length like puppets.

"Let them go," said Wichman with disgust. "Bring me my horse," he called to his groom. He spat at the feet of the crone before mounting. The horse sidestepped, trying to get away from the pyre, and he yanked its head round.

"Let's go," he said to his companions. "We can find better lodging than this. Get Alt-frid's ring so we can return it to his sister."

They thundered off through the woods, making for the main road.

Strangely, after their departure, the sun came out from its veil of clouds. The fire roared on, oblivious. Glittering stags poured out of the burning corpse, running in the sweet smoke until their shapes were lost in the light of the sun.

In the morning, Ekkehard still couldn't move his arms well enough to ride, but he looked remarkably cheerful as the villagers fussed over him. He'd been given the best bed in the hamlet, roomy enough for three and, according to Baldwin, not more infested than usual with fleas. The householder had strewn the floor with tansy to keep away vermin, and rushes had been brought in plenty to make soft bedding for Ekkehard's companions and servants.

But Sigfrid was missing.

They found him at the pyre. By the golden sheen of soot on his hair and nose and the state of his robe, they deduced he had snuck out sometime late in the evening after everyone else had gone to sleep and prayed all night beside the pyre. Seeing Ivar and Ermanrich, he grabbed a stick and scratched writing into the ashes.

"The Feast Day of St. Mercurius the Changeable," read Ermanrich, who still had an easier time reading than did Ivar. "No doubt accounting for Prince Ekkehard's noble behavior yesterday." He took the stick from Sigfrid and poked at the coals still smoldering in the pyre. No smoke rose, but a low mist of ashes seemed to hang about the coals as though blown up by some vast creature exhaling below. The pyre still gave off heat. It smelled now like a vast grave of flowers, a hundred rich scents tangled into one.

"Euw!" Ermanrich leaped back, dropping the stick. Within the bright embrace of the coals, a gleaming red-gold worm writhed.

Startled, Sigfrid flung out his hands to hold Ivar and Ermanrich back. He actually tried to speak—normally he never forgot about his missing tongue—but he was so excited now, trembling, mobile face working, that he made the most pathetic noises until, finally, he grabbed the stick and tried to write something in the ashes. But a hard wind came up and they had to jump back as the pyre swirled up in a cloud of golden ash, spinning, then settled.

The glowing worm had vanished. Sigfrid began to weep.

"It was a sign," said Ermanrich portentously. "But was it the Enemy, or God?"

Sigfrid, looking ecstatic more than grief-stricken, flung himself down onto his knees and began to pray again. They could not budge him, and there he prayed for the rest of the day while villagers came and went to exclaim over the remains of the beast, although none dared touch the coals. Indeed, as the day progressed, the coals seemed to glow more hotly. But maybe that was only Ivar's imagination, his own weak flesh reacting as, emboldened by Wichman's departure, the village's young women crept back. Nervous at first, like pigs knowing that one of their kind has been slaughtered, they grew bolder when none of the young men in Ekkehard's party molested them.

"Perhaps our preaching has finally reached Prince Ekkehard's heart," Ivar said to Ermanrich that evening as they feasted on roast chicken flavored with mustard, honey cakes, greens, and a very coarse dark bread that he had to soak in ale to make edible.

"I don't know," said Ermanrich, looking doubtful. "It was very sudden."

Ekkehard's arms still hurt him too much to move, although otherwise they seemed to be healing well. He allowed Baldwin to feed him, and had further charmed the villagers by drinking out of the wooden cup, engraved with a swan, offered to him by a village elder.

"I pray you, my lord prince," said Baldwin, smiling prettily, "let me take something out to our companion, Sigfrid, for otherwise I'm afraid he won't eat."

"Pray do so," said Ekkehard, who like everyone admired Sigfrid for his humble devotion to God and the ease with which he shed sincere tears. But then, the noble expression shattered briefly, twisting into something else. "But don't take him," he said, waving toward the far end of the table where Ivar and Er-manrich sat. "Take the fat one."

Ivar flushed. Ermanrich rose, leaning to whisper in his ear. "He's just jealous of you because Baldwin loves you. Don't mind it, Ivar."

But he did mind it. He finished his meal in silence, shunned by the others now that Ermanrich and Baldwin were gone. They all despised him because Prince Ekkehard despised him, and yet hadn't the blessed Daisan forgiven his enemies? Hadn't He reminded his followers that we who live in flesh are all weak and subject to temptation? Each person certainly was glad when she acted rightly, and yet the body, born into the tainted world, often did not walk hand in hand with the unstained soul.

It was so hard to be good all the time.

It was so hard that night when he woke up from an uncomfortably vivid dream of Liath, and it took him a moment, panting to ease himself, to realize he'd been jostled by a foot. In the warm late spring night both shutters and door had been left open, and by the light of a nearly ful moon he saw the pale shape of a woman dressed only in her undershift ease down onto the bed shared by Ekkehard, Baldwin, and Milo. Milo was a heavy sleeper under any circumstance, and Ekkehard had been dosed with juice of poppy because the pain as he shifted in his sleep made it difficult for him to rest.

But Baldwin was awake.

"My lord prince!" she whispered. "Your Highness—!" She lay a hand on Baldwin's naked chest.

"I'm not the prince," he murmured, although he did not attempt to remove her hand. "That is Prince Ekkehard, beside me."

"But you're so beautiful, my lord. Like an angel." She reached inside the neck of her tunic. For an instant Ivar saw the pale expanse of her skin as she drew the cloth aside, and he had to close his eyes, he was so flushed everywhere and still aching from the dream that he thought he might lose himself entirely.

"I got me a feather, my lord" she was whispering. "An angel feather."

He couldn't help but look. She hadn't exposed herself but rather a golden feather whose mellow glow set Baldwin's handsome features alight and made the girl seem the prettiest he'd ever seen, dark hair, a small nose, a mole on her right cheek that moved as she smiled. "I knew it were a sign. I've had so many strange dreams ever since I saw them lights in the old stone circle, before the beast come. I dreamed that I'd be visited by an angel. So did Rodlinda and Gisela and Agnes, and she's even been married since last autumn. Isn't that you, my lord? Aren't you the angel? Didn't God send you to come in unto us and give us a revelation?"

Ivar had remained chaste since the day of his revelation, but God surely knew it hadn't been easy.

"Ah!" Baldwin's exhalation made him sound more pleased than surprised as the young woman, not waiting for his answer, moved down over him.

Ivar rolled up and away from snoring Ermanrich, who wouldn't have woken up if a herd of stampeding horses had thundered past, and scrambled outside before he did that which would brand him forever or at least give Ekkehard another thing to make fun of him for. Mercifully, the moon's light allowed him to trudge out of the village through orchard and wood until he reached the pyre, although he stepped on more stickers than he could count and his face and arms got scratched up by low-hanging branches.

Sigfrid had fallen asleep and some kindly soul had thought to drop a ragged blanket over him. His thin fox-face, in repose, was so innocent and sweet that at once Ivar's doubts and desires evaporated and he could kneel with a clear heart. He didn't know why, but he thought it important that someone pray beside the pyre of that brilliant creature which had killed nothing more than food for itself until it had been attacked by lustful men misled by fearful ones.

Certainly it had frightened the villagers who, so they'd said, had come across the eviscerated corpses of deer, but wasn't it natural for such creatures to feast on meat? Unlike humankind, animals had no liberty to change what they were and how they acted. Even a creature molded by God needed to eat. It hadn't truly harmed anyone, and maybe it never would have.

Yet perhaps those visions he'd seen rising from the smoke off the pyre had been hallucinations, visions sent by the Enemy. Maybe it was only a matter of time before the beast would have begun preying on the villagers and their livestock. But he doubted it. He had been driven by fear and lust, too; by his own actions, he had helped to kill it.

He wasn't sure of the time. Unlike Sigfrid and Ermanrich, he hadn't learned how to chart by the rising and setting of stars when to begin Vigils, but when he heard a distant cockcrow, he began to sing, chanting the night prayer.

"Why do the wicked prosper, Lady,while the pure of heart suffer torments on this earth?

Why do they who wear violence as their robe and talk nothing but malice live in glorious wealth, untouched by trouble?"

Aurora came as he sang the Benedictus, and Sigfrid stirred and woke, kneeling to pray beside him although, of course, he could utter no words. They saw it long before anyone came to find them: a tiny red-gold fledgling bird fluttering among still-glowing coals. As the light rose, it buried itself deep among the ashes.

At midmorning Milo came to fetch them, looking angry that he had had to make the trip and a little nervous as he examined the still glowing pyre from a safe distance. "Prince Ekkehard wants you," he called. "Isn't that thing out yet?

Why do you keep praying out here? It's dead, isn't it?"

Back at the village, Baldwin looked utterly exhausted, as if he hadn't slept at all. He couldn't stop yawning, and perhaps the prince would have noticed something wrong, but he was stil woozy, recovering from the poppy juice.

"Perhaps Brother Sigfrid can explain it," Ekkehard was saying as they came in.

Certain members of the village had gathered, come to complain about dreams and disturbances that had plagued them since the mysterious arrival of the beast.

"In truth, good Brother," said the old crone who seemed appointed as their spokeswoman, "we thought these visions would go away once the beast was dead, but it in't any different now.

Worse, maybe. What does God mean by this? Have we done aught wrong?

Are we being punished?"

Ermanrich had grown adept at communicating with Sigfrid, with or without writing, and Sigfrid was so far ahead of them all in his understanding and interpretation of God's will that they had tacitly agreed to defer to him on matters of doctrine and scripture.

"What is a soul?" Sigfrid asked, although Ermanrich spoke for him. "It is all that we are, and yet we cannot live on this earth without a body. The blessed Daisan wore a. mortal body that was inhabited by an immortal soul, for God so loved the world that She gave to us Her only son, that He should take upon himself the measure of our sins. So He came before the Empress Thaisannia, she of the mask, and He would not bow down before her, for He knew that only God is worthy of worship. The empress had Him flayed, as they did to criminals in those days, and His heart was cut out and thrown onto the ground where it was torn into a hundred pieces by the dogs, for are we not ourselves the dogs, who unthinkingly devour God's treasures in the course of our growling and fighting?"

Baldwin was trying not to yawn again. The villagers present were beginning to look nervous.

Prince Ekkehard was actually able to bend one arm at the elbow so he could rub his nose with the back of a hand. "I think that's enough for now," he said.

"I pray you, believe us!" cried Ermanrich, loud enough that a number of people including some of Ekkehard's other companions jumped. "His blood washed away our sins!"

Sigfrid tugged on Ermanrich's robes and made a complicated signal of signs and grunts, sweeping rushes aside so he could trace letters into the dirt floor of the longhouse.

"Oh!" said Ermanrich, startled enough that for the first time he looked anxious. "Are you sure—Prince Ekkehard said— Sigfrid nodded his head emphatically. "Uh, well," continued Ermanrich, stuttering only a little. He glanced once at Sigfrid, his good-natured face drawn down in a frown, but Sigfrid's expression was as fixed as adamant stone. "My good Brother Sigfrid says that you who have no faith in the truth of our words will see a miracle at dawn tomorrow, and then you will believe."

Ekkehard called them aside after the villagers had straggled out to spread the news. "What are you talking about? I don't want to lose the goodwill of these villagers by having you babble on and scare them! Baldwin!" Obviously the poppy juice was wearing off, but his arms had more flex and movement in them than they'd had the day before, and he submitted to having his bare shoulders bathed in pine oil water as he scolded Baldwin. "What if we reach my sister and she sends us all home because of your ranting? Ai, God! Nay, leave off!" he snapped at the servant who was probing the bruises on his shoulders. "I will ride out tomorrow. I can ride well enough, I'm much better. Lord protect me! All night I dreamed of naked succubi sighing and moaning beside me in the bed until I thought I'd go mad. I made a promise not to touch any of their daughters, and I don't want to look bad now, not after I made Wichman look so bad in front of them, but we've got to get out of here."

"Truly spoken, Your Highness," said Ivar with a nasty glance at Baldwin.

"Let us go pray at the beast's pyre, my lord prince," said Baldwin. "The villagers stay away from it now, and we'll be at peace."

Ekkehard regarded Ivar with suspicion, as if he'd used sleight of hand to tempt Baldwin away from his rightful lord, but because he wanted to avoid trouble he agreed. Ten of the young men in Ekkehard's company accompanied them back to the pyre.

"This is a change of heart," muttered Ivar as they trod along the path. "I haven't seen you praying much the last few months. Too busy kissing the feet of my lord prince."

"Is this how I'm thanked?" retorted Baldwin. "With your petty grumpiness?

Haven't I been protecting you all this time? Didn't I save us from Judith? God help me but I hope you can return the favor, for I can't take another night like the one I just suffered through! They kept sneaking in through the window, one after the next, raving about angels and revelations." He shuddered, but not even a grimace could mar his perfect features. Walking this close to him, Ivar smelled oil of jessamine lingering on his skin, A sprig of dried lavender was caught in his brilliant hair, and Ivar plucked it out and crushed it between his fingers. A faint scent burst, then dissipated.

"God protect us," exclaimed Milo, who was walking at the front. Where the pyre lapped the stream, steam boiled up, and all the ashes and coals were hidden by the churning mist. A scent like flowers distilled to incense permeated the air. A whispery crackling came from the shroud of mist, melding with the babble of water over the stones and the curdling hiss of steam.

"I—I don't like it here," said Milo, taking several steps back, but Baldwin marched right up as close as he could stand and plopped down on his knees.

"Nothing could be worse than what I endured last night!" he proclaimed. "I would rather die than go through that again." Sigfrid nudged him, and he added hastily: "Although of course I know that God protects us. We are meant to be here." He grabbed Sigfrid by the sleeve and jerked him closer, lowering his voice.

"Aren't we?"

In this way, somewhat anxiously, the second day passed. Sometimes villagers came to look in on them, as if to make sure they weren't getting up to any mischief, but mostly they were left alone although once or twice Ivar thought he heard giggling at the edge of the distant wood, far enough away that, when he looked back, he only saw pale flashes moving among the trees, dogs or goats, or poor Baldwin's tormentors.

Baldwin prayed more beautifully than anyone, and he could lead them at prayers as long as Ermanrich prompted him.

"They who wander far from God are los , a

t nd they are destroyed, who

forsake Her. But if I desire nothing on earth, then God shall be my refuge forever."

In this way, twilight came, and Prince Ekkehard joined them at dusk as they sang the service of Vespers, all of them joining in. Their voices blended sweetly, light tenors and strong ones, and a few deeper voices that still cracked sometimes.

"It stinks in that village," said Ekkehard as the time of silence came upon them, although this night the moon was full and merry. "I'd rather sleep out here. Isn't the fire warm?"

The fire was warm, and it hadn't ceased bubbling in that odd way, but no one else seemed to think anything weird was going on. Ivar felt torn in two: frightened and yet unable to slink away because deep in some unlikely core of his being he could not shake the feeling that something very strange and wonderful was about to happen.

He slept as the moon swept upward to midnight. The crowing of a cock woke him. He lay on the dew-dampened ground with his cheek smashed against a hummock of cold earth and a piece of grass half stuck up his nose. Something was crawling on his face, and he cursed and flicked at it before he pushed up, hoping to get the kink out of his neck.

Nearby, Sigfrid was singing the Benedictus Domina, except Sigfrid couldn't sing anymore, and yet Ivar recognized that voice; he had sung beside Sigfrid so often in Quedlinhame that the other boy's sweet tenor had become his lifeline in the worst of his despair.

Sigfrid was singing, and weeping with joy, and as the auroral dawn breathed the first light and color into the heavy air Ivar saw that the mist had cleared to reveal the pyre grown to a monstrous height, golden-red coals like a thousand gathered stones heaped up upon each other until they rose higher than a man. Ekkehard, coming awake, stumbled up, arms pinwheeling as though he'd forgotten that he'd been injured, and staggered backward, and so did the others, but they ran up against the vil agers, who had come in a throng to stare.

Now even some of these ventured forward crying out that their toothache had vanished or their lameness been healed. Sigfrid sang with arms lifted toward the heavens, and Ermanrich, who was quite overcome but eminently practical, dragged him bodily back as the pyre heaved and shifted like a creature coming awake. Baldwin knelt so fixedly with hands clasped in prayer that Ivar thought he'd gone into a trance. He dashed forward to shake him, to wake him up, to warn him.

The rising edge of the sun glinted beyond the tumulus where the old stone ruins lay like the shattered and gargantuan crown of a long-dead queen. Day broke free from night.

The pyre opened. A cloud of fragrance burst over them. Flowers showered down around them, insubstantial petals vanishing as soon as they touched the earth.

It unfolded, wings unfurling, and the great beast rose as glorious as the day after a long, black, and hopeless night. It trumpeted. The sound rang from the heavens down to the Earth and back again, echoing on and on and on until Ivar knew that it wasn't an echo at all but an answer.

"The phoenix," cried Sigfrid. "It is the sign of the blessed Daisan, who rose from death to become Life for us all."

It took flight and rose so swiftly into the heavens that the last star winking into oblivion as the sun spilled light everywhere might have been the last flash of its being seen from mortal Earth.

When it was gone, Prince Ekkehard cried out in astonishment and all the villagers exclaimed in surprise and awe: the hurts of every soul there had miraculously vanished.

"You have witnessed the power of the Son and the Mother," said Sigfrid, who alone among them seemed unamazed. His faith had never wavered. "Thus you are healed."

But Ivar knew that its beauty had scarred him forever.

"DO not be so impatient. This is only a minor setback. We have over five years to train her to fulfill her part, more than enough time. You are allowing your natural distaste for her conduct to overshadow your reason, Brother. All will unfold by our design."

"So you say. But there have been far too many surprises and setbacks up to now."

Sanglant had to concentrate on staking down the log walkway, swinging his mallet at the same rhythmic pace he had been using before Severus and Anne had emerged from the tower and begun walking toward him. He didn't want them to suspect he was listening. After ten months, they still hadn't figured out how good his hearing was.

"It is true that she must be brought to see what folly it is to be bound by earthly desires. I hope that her confinement and illness have shown her the senselessness of indulging in carnal pleasure."

"We must be rid of that—that brute!"

"Cautiously, Brother. I have tested his strengths in many ways, and I am afraid that the geas his mother set on him is stronger than our magic."

"You mean you can't kill him."

"I cannot. But I have certain ideas. We still hold the strongest piece. We must only wait until we can use it against him."

"You will never persuade her to turn on both husband and child!"

"We shall see, Brother. Let us speak of other things."

They had been strolling down the new walkway all this while and now Sanglant stepped aside to let them pass.

"A good day to you, Prince Sanglant," said Anne to him as they cut around the portion he was staking into place. Brother Severus grunted out something that might have been a greeting.

"Good day," he said, resting the mallet over one shoulder. He had a wild urge to slam the wooden sledge into their smug faces, and for an instant the desire seemed blindingly clever, but he dismissed it as quickly. No doubt Anne protected herself, and anyway, he would hardly maintain Liath's good opinion if he murdered her mother.

Even if she had just admitted to being the person who had tried to kill him.

"Will Liath be attending the noon meal?" asked Anne pleasantly, pausing just out of his reach. She could, he reflected, as easily have walked down the path to ask Liath that question herself. But she did not.

"Nay, I think not." He jiggled a log with one foot; he had almost the entire walkway laid between tower and hall. He and Heribert had set the walkway over the worst muddy bits first as the spring rains ground the pathways into sludge, so that Severus and Anne did not even get their slippers dirty as they skirted this last missing section. "She'll eat her meal at our cottage." Then he smiled.

Anne's hound growled at him, sensing his insincerity, perhaps. He had left his Eika dog staked down near Liath, a habit he had fallen into these last two months since the birth of Blessing.

"Very well," said Anne, and she and Severus stepped up onto the odier portion of the walkway and continued on. Sister Zoe stood just outside the door to the hall, pretending not to watch. Sanglant admired her from this distance, lush curves suggested by the drape of her robe, and she turned suddenly and vanished into the hall. He laughed, and one of the servants pinched him on the thigh, as if to scold him.

"Hush," he said to it, still chuckling. "I've worked enough this morning.

Surely I can amuse myself in such a harmless fashion." But it had already flitted away toward the hall where,no doubt, it would be called upon to serve or clean.

He smelled freshly-baked bread and realized then how hungry he was. The walkway could wait. Shifting the mallet to drape across both shoulders, he jumped over the logs and strode back along the winding path, through budding grapes and orchards green with leaves and young fruit, that led to his wife and child.

He heard her before he saw her.

"Nay, nay, of course he did the only thing he could. I can't help but envy her, that she can nurse my daughter and I can't."

He came into sight of the hut to see Liath reclining on the couch Heribert had built for her so that she could lie outside and study in the books that Meriam and Venia brought for her. Heribert sat at the foot of the couch. He had been carving a rattle out of cherrywood, but knife and carving lay still in his hands as he and Liath watched Jerna nursing the baby under the shade of an apple tree.

It was truly an odd sight: he could see the bark of the tree through Jerna's translucent body, and although she seemed to have no substance but air and water, she could still hold the baby for short periods of time, enough to nurse it, before it slipped through her pale body as through a thick pudding and sank softly to the ground.

"What do you think her milk is made of?" whispered Liath, but Heribert could only shrug.

"Blessing grows," he said, as if that were enough. And it was enough.

Liath looked up and saw Sanglant. She got a silly grin on her face, swung her legs off the couch, and levered herself up by clinging to the curling seashell back so painstakingly carved by Heribert out of maple. "No, no," she called. "I'll come to you."

It wasn't far, no more than one hundred steps, but he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from running to help her. She was still so weak, as if all her strength had been drained from her, poured out into the child. She couldn't even light a candlewick. But she could walk a hundred paces and only have to lean on him a little as they walked back together. The warmth of her body against him set off all kinds of sensations, but he carefully eased her back onto the couch, patted the dog, and went to wash his hands and face in cold water at the trough by the door.

By the time he returned, a procession of servants had brought trays of food up from the hall: ale, bread, soft cheese flavored with dill, and a pottage of rye meal flavored with salt and cream. She moved aside so that he could sit beside her, and on the whole they ate silently. He was still stewing over the conversation he'd overheard earlier. How had he overlooked that it might have been Anne all along, trying to kill him? She was the obvious choice.

Did Anne truly mean to set Liath against both him and the baby? And how did she mean to accomplish that?

"You're thoughtful today, my lord prince," said Heribert.

"Ah, but today is the feast day of St. Mercurius the Changeable," retorted Liath, "and many stranger things have happened on this day."

Becoming an invalid had released an unlikely store of humor from some recess deep in Liath's being. She wasn't always very funny, but he always felt obliged to laugh because he didn't want to hurt her feelings, and in any case, it was charming to see her try, who had been so unremittingly serious before.

"It is a strange day," he agreed. "For once I'm heartily sick of work."

"I wish we could go somewhere. I don't think I've ever stayed so long in one place as we have here, except for Heart's Rest, and Qurtubah. I'm used to being on the move. It's beautiful here, truly, but sometimes I feel like a prisoner."

Under the tree Blessing finished nursing and as she squirmed, needing to be burped, she began her slow sink through Jerna's arms and body. Heribert leaped up and ran to fetch her.

"We are prisoners," Liath added.

"Hush," said Sanglant, laying a hand over hers. "Come, my love, you're just tired of the view. We'll go to the old cottage up—

Heribert returned and sat down at his place on the couch, mulishly reluctant to give up the baby. He was making stupid faces at her, exaggerated eyes and grins, cooing and ooing, because Blessing had just started to smile, and it was truly astounding the lengths to which the three of them would go to coax one of those sudden half startled smiles out of the tiny infant.

"I don't know if I can walk that far," said Liath, but she bit her lip, looking up through the orchard and toward the slopes, as if she'd like to tackle it.

"Then you can ride Resuelto."

It was as easy to coax her as it was to coax a smile from Blessing, who was as yet a remarkably easygoing baby. They finished their meal and started up the path with the dog running point. Liath walked as far as she could, and when she faltered among the dogwood, Sanglant simply swung her up onto the back of Resuelto. Heribert had refused to give up Blessing, and Jerna trailed somewhat behind, nervous of Liath as she always was. The path was strewn with flowers and a layer of decaying pine needles. Here and there they passed stumps of trees he had chopped down.

"Ai, Lady," murmured Liath. "Is it terrible of me to wish there was somewhere else to study? Rosvita suggested the convent of St. Valeria, but I think I'm ruined for that now." She laughed as she looked at him in a way that made his skin flush. An invalidish wife made the marriage bed an uncomfortable place, at least for a man who, before Gent, had never needed to practice self-denial. "Imagine the king's schola if mathematici were among those welcome to get an education there!"

"Hush," he murmured, still thinking about the manifold comforts of the marriage bed. "If there are servants about, they'll carry your words to them below."

They came past the birch grove to the high clearing and the barrier of cliff and fallen boulders. Summer flowers had sprung up among the spring primroses and snowdrops. It was still difficult to tell the seasons in a valley where any apple tree bore bud, flower, and fully ripened fruit on every branch. But with Liath he had learned to watch the wheel of the stars, and he knew that summer was almost upon them. Out in the world beyond, the campaign season had begun. Did Henry fight in the east? Had he marched south to Aosta, or was he stalled in the north haggling with or threatening recalcitrant nobles? Had Eika attacked again, or had their defeat at Gent weakened them so badly that it would be a generation before they struck the northern coasts with the same fury they had under Bloodheart?

Remarkably, he could think of Bloodheart now without an unwanted growl slipping from him. He hadn't had a nightmare for two months. He helped Liath off Resuelto. She was so tired, and she dozed off as he settled her down on the pallet in the old hut that they'd made comfortable months ago, the only place they could escape the watchful eyes of Anne's servants. He had certain vivid memories of those days.

"I haven't been up here much" said Heribert, poking around.

"Ah! Liath's scribbling." He displayed a parchment covered with diagrams and equations, then set it aside to pick up an old, cracked leather sole, turning it over to see if he could find a craftsman's mark. He had Blessing tucked into one elbow. She, too, had fallen asleep, and Sanglant took her and settled her tenderly in the crook of Liath's elbow. Liath murmured something, shifting position to pillow the baby against her. With her eyes shut and her lips brushing Blessing's thick black hair, you could almost see a resemblance, but the baby's face was still too unformed.

"Liath's stronger," said Heribert softly, glancing back to make sure that Jerna hadn't followed them inside. "How much longer will you keep her innocent of that which you've discovered?"

"Lord help me, Brother, but I've only confided in you because I can't stand not to talk!" He grinned to take the sting out of the words. "But as long as we have no way free of this place, and she's still this weak, I choose this way of protecting her. Even if it makes me no better than Sister Anne."

Heribert grunted good-naturedly. "A damning comparison, my friend. Yet if she doesn't know the secret of the stones, then how can we run?"

"I would think that if I were them, then that would be the last thing I would teach her. It's an odd thing in her, that she's wise in some ways and so ignorant in others."

"I don't suppose everyone has had your wide experience of life, my lord prince."

He said it jestingly, but Sanglant shuddered. "Nor would I wish it on them."

"Hush," said Heribert, echoing Sanglant's own admonition to Liath, and for an instant Sanglant thought the cleric was comforting him. Then, looking at the cant of his head, he realized Heribert was listening.

Jerna was singing. But it wasn't a song, it wasn't even really a tune but more like the brook's voice.

He slipped outside, Heribert right behind him.

He didn't see her at first, only water slipping over the huge wall of boulders that blocked one edge of the meadow. Heribert tugged on his sleeve and drew him forward, pointing, face flushed and sweating with excitement.

She was singing her way into the rock fall, not gouging a path but opening one that had lain closed and invisible where the brook cut down through the rock.

He waited only long enough to stake down the dog on a long lead by the cottage door before he followed her into the rock fall. Heribert dogged him, clipping his heels once, once grasping at his salamander sword belt when he slipped on a slope of pebbles. But the path was obvious and clearly marked, once you knew you were on it, winding up beside the brook through a spill of boulders as big as cottages and skirting the edge of ragged cliff faces until it speared up a narrow defile and ended on a ledge that looked down into another place. Jerna would come no farther than the last tumble of stones, but Sanglant walked all the way out until the wheel-rutted path turned into a thin trail more like a goat's path. He didn't see any goats although two little gray birds flitted along a nearby rock face, probing in crevices with their slender bills. It was almost a different season here: snow still covered half the hillside although here and there, on the sunniest slopes, gorse bloomed. He took a few steps farther on, kicking snow off the path, and came to rest on an outcropping from which he could view the vista beyond.

Below, a road wound through a steep-sided pass bounded by cliffs and shadowed by three monumentally high peaks that gleamed in the sun. Mist shrouded the highest peak, but the others rose stark and clear against the blue vault of sky, so white that their glare hurt his eyes.

"God preserve us," whispered Heribert, coming up beside him. "This is St.

Barnaria's Pass."

"The Alfar Mountains!" breathed Sanglant. "I've never seen them except their foothills in the north. I've never ridden them, though I've heard tales." He was astounded by the high peaks. He had seen them before, of course, from Verna: one had a distinctive crook, as though the summit had slipped slightly to one side. But from this angle, they seemed just so much more massive, and he hadn't before appreciated the vast sheer face of the big middle mountain plunging down to the steep defile that cut into the land below, marking a pass.

The road struck straight through the pass, engineered out of stone. Farther along, partially hidden by the thrusting shoulder of a ridge, he saw a cluster of buildings that resembled a monastery and was probably some kind of traveler's hostel.

And indeed he saw travelers on the road, a retinue fit for a grand lady or a nervous merchant hauling spices and silks from the east: a half dozen wagons and a troop of some thirty mounted soldiers and perhaps as many on foot. They were coming from the south in a line that had gotten rather strung out along the way, in part because heavy snow still blocked portions of the road and the wagons were having a hard time getting through. Now, the vanguard turned in to the hostel, and several tiny figures emerged from one of the buildings to greet them.

A banner opened in the breeze, revealing the lion, eagle, and dragon of Wendar. "Lord and Lady!" He heard his own voice tremble as he examined the riders making their way below. "It's Theophanu. Ai, God, look there! It's Captain Fulk and his men."

He had learned to make quick decisions. In battle, how swiftly and resolutely you moved often meant the difference between victory and defeat.

"This may be our only chance," he said, "for it's clear they've hidden the path and we can't come through without Jerna's aid. You go on, Heribert. I have to go back to get Liath and Blessing."

"What do you mean?"

One thing he loved about a troop of good soldiers was that once they trusted you, they knew better than to ask stupid questions. "This is our chance to escape. You descend now, go to Theophanu, and tell her that I'm coming. If we're pursued, we may have to fight."

"But—but I can't go! I'm an outlaw! I'm under censure by the church."

"I don't care what you've done in the past, Heribert. You've been a good friend to me, and I trust you. Throw yourself on Theophanu's mercy. Tell her that I sent you and that I mean for you to reside under her protection, no matter what. Give her— But he had nothing to give, not even a ring, nothing that she would know was incontrovertibly his, that he would never give up except in death. He had nothing, except their life together as children. "Remind her of the time we saved the robin's eggs from Margrave Judith's cat, and got that bastard Hugh a whipping for almost letting the cat drown." He shoved Heribert forward.

"Go!"

No soldier had ever resisted that tone. Even a cleric might find his feet moving before his mind had fully agreed.

Heribert stumbled down the path, fetched up in a drift of snow, arms waving like those of a jellyfish, slave to the currents he was caught up in. "I hate to leave you, my lord prince," he called, looking as if he meant to turn around and come back.

"Heribert," he shouted, almost beside himself, knowing when action was needed and talking of no use, "if it's true about the Lost Ones, that they're to return in an avalanche of fire and blood, then King Henry needs to know! He needs to know that my daughter is the great-great-grandchild of Taillefer! Damn it! Just use your wits. Go!"

Maybe Henry wouldn't believe such an outrageous story, but it didn't matter. Sanglant knew an opportunity when he saw one. He waited only long enough to see Heribert stagger on down the path. Then he turned and sped back up into the rocks. Jerna followed at his shoulder, agitated, plucking at him as if to haul him back, but he was in too much of a hurry to heed her now. He knew what burned in his heart: he was restless; he had recovered. His entire life he had lived as movement, striking when his enemy's line was weak, training new Dragons, hunting, whoring—in all honesty he could scarcely call it anything else—riding from one skirmish to the next to protect his father's kingdom. He wasn't used to inaction, and it felt now as if he had finally woken up from a long, long sleep.

"Liath!" he cried as he slipped out from the hidden crevice with Jerna whimpering behind him, and burst into the meadow. Flowers bloomed in such profusion that the meadow seemed more like a garden, a peaceful paradise.

Except for the ugly stench of blood.

His Eika dog lay by the cottage, throat cut. Green-copper blood soaked into the grass.

Anne was waiting for him, standing patiently by the door with her hands clasped before her exactly in the manner of those of her namesake, St. Anne the Peaceful, whose image he had seen painted on one pier of Taillefer's chapel in Autun. Her hound sat beside her, scratched up around the muzzle, skin stained with copperish fluid, but otherwise unharmed. It stiffened, growling when it saw Sanglant, but Anne stilled it with a touch on its head.

"Brother Heribert will have to take his chances," she said, "but I was rather hoping you might run, too."

He used a word so crude that at first he thought she hadn't understood him, until she spoke.

"Wicked there are in plenty, but you are right in your conclusions. The daimone acted under my orders. You will not find that path again. I had not counted on your loyalty to wife and child, although perhaps it should not surprise me. Dogs often go to the death protecting their own."

He was too angry at his own mistake to do more than gesture toward the dead Eika dog, his last and most faithful follower.

"It would not let us pass. Sister Zoe overcame her abhorrence and carried Blessing down to the tower. Brother Severus led down the horse. Liath still lies asleep inside, since none of us have the brute strength to carry her and she would slip right through the servants' arms." She stepped aside so that he could pass by her, and he tried to draw his sword, but the servants swarmed about him and so clotted the air about his wrist that he could not move it up or down.

"She is not meant for that world, Prince Sanglant. Did we neglect to tell you that she has been excommunicated and outlawed by a council presided over by your own father? Nay? That she has dwelt here and learned more of the secrets of the mathematici would only seal her fate. In Darre, they execute mathematici.

Go then, leave us. I will still let you depart, alone. It is better this way."

Never let it be said that he did not fight until the last breath, or that he abandoned his own.

He needed to say nothing. They both knew it was war.

He walked past her, into the cottage, to get his wife, and with Anne at his heels and Jerna trailing skittishly behind, he returned mute and furious to Verna.

THE chapel at Autun commissioned by Taillefer and built by his craftsmen was the most beautiful building Hanna had ever seen, eight huge pillars separating eight vaults, each arch made of alternating blocks of light and dark stone. On the second level, slender columns rose higher yet, with a third tier of columns above them, illuminated by tall windows. Behind this grandiose octagon lay the ambulatory where hangers-on and servants like Hanna waited, able to see into the central space where the regnant might conduct his ceremonies or wait to be admitted to the apse beyond the eastern vault, where the altar lay.

Taillefer's tomb lay at the center, under the dome. The huge stone coffin was topped by a lifelike effigy, a stone portrait that despite his legendary craftsmen did not quite rival the effigy of Lavastine at Lavas Church. But jewels encrusted his stone robes, formed into stylized roses, and he held in his marble hands a gold crown with seven points, each point set with a gem: a gleaming pearl, lapis lazuli, pale sapphire, carnelian, ruby, emerald, and banded orange-brown sardonyx. A crowd of saints painted onto the stocky piers watched over him, each one so distinctive that Hanna felt that she knew them all, like old and familiar relatives.

But almost everyone else was not observing the saints or the crown but rather the scene unfolding on the dais that held Taillefer's remains.

"No!" Tallia had flung herself at her uncle's feet and was now clutching his ankles with her bony hands. "I beg you, Uncle, if you love me at all, do not leave me here with my mother." Her sobs echoed liquidly in the chapel.

If the scene had not been so embarrassing, Hanna would have laughed outright at the expression on Henry's face. He rarely showed his true feelings so nakedly. "I pray you, Constance," he said to his sister, who reigned as biscop and as duke, "remove her from my sight, if you will. I tender her into your care."

Biscop Constance had the reserve of a woman who is at peace with God and well aware that she also lies blameless in the eyes of the regnant. If she was as disgusted with Tallia as was Henry, Hanna could not tell from the smooth tenor of her face.

"Tallia," she said, pressing a hand onto the girl's thin shoulder, "you must control yourself. You will stay under my care here. That your mother bides here as well is also through her own choosing. As I hear it, you cast aside a vocation at Quedlin-hame and then a respectable marriage. Now you will stay at Autun until we see what is to be done with you."

"Pray do not give me into my mother's keeping!" Tallia would not relinquish her grip on Henry's feet, nor did her hoarse sobs quiet. Hanna hoped devoutly that Alain was not one of those Lions on guard duty right now, so that he would be spared this humiliating scene.

Henry had some trouble keeping his balance with Tallia dragging at him like an anchor, but he was able to signal to his servants, and they moved to open the great doors. He clenched one hand and squared his shoulders, as if bracing for a blow.

From where Hanna stood, she could not see the doors pushed open, but a wind blew in from outside and on its sharp summer breath followed an entourage of richly clad servants and noble companions with the jewel of their party glittering in their midst in tawny velvet robes ornamented with gold-embroidered sleeves. Her dark hair was shot through with silver, although she was still robust—she had been born out of a sturdy line. She wore the gold torque of royal kinship at her neck, and she strode forward with no more than a perfunctory nod for the biscop who was her jailer.

"My God. Can this truly be my offspring lying here on the floor like the lowest sniveling beggar? The years have not improved her." She turned to regard her brother with a sudden half smile. "Well, Henry, I hear my stepmother is dead, and I'm sorry for it, for she never treated me ill even if she did push her own children forward to take what was rightfully mine. You look tired, Brother. I hear we are to feast together tonight." Tallia had broken out into fresh screams, as if she were being knifed to death. She rol ed herself so hard against Henry's legs that he almost fell over. "Oh, God," continued Sabella, signing to the nearest of her servants. "Can we not be rid of this wailing?"

The mask of stone had concealed Henry's true face again. He said nothing, moved not at all, as certain brawny and unexpectedly attractive young men among Sabella's retinue hurried forward and pried Tallia off her uncle before carrying her, still sobbing and writhing, away.

"Let us pray," said Henry in the silence that followed, "that my blessed mother may rest in the peace she deserves, and that we may all be reconciled as God—and she—would wish."

Biscop Constance bowed her head and lifted her hands as in prayer. "For it was sung in the city of Queen Salomae the Wise, 'let there be peace among sisters and brothers.'" She looked at Henry in a way that suggested to Hanna that she and her brother had had a long conversation about this meeting.

"Come." She opened a hand to indicate that they should move forward. "Let us pray."

It was Luciasmass, the first day of summer, and therefore a feast was laid out in the biscop's hall. Hanna had almost become accustomed to the splendor of royal feasts, but even so, Biscop Constance's table had the grandeur and sumptuousness of a feast set out in heaven. White linens swathed the tables, and at every place lay a folded knee covering—a table napkin embroidered with grapevines in green and purple. No person there did not sit on a cushioned bench, or eat off platters of gold or silver or brass, according to her station, that had been polished to such a high gloss that they could also have served as mirrors. Noble girls poured wine for the king and his royal siblings through delicate sieve spoons. A swan, decorated with its own feathers, was brought forward on a gold plate so heavy that it took two men to carry it. Haunches of beef still steaming from the spit were carried to the lower tables, and outside the hall chicken and pork were served to those who could not enter. On midsummer's long afternoon they had no need of candles to light their merrymaking, but fully three harpists traded songs or joined together, not that their music could often be heard above the noise of the feasters or the throngs of petitioners who were led forward at intervals to entreat the king.

Hanna waited behind the king's chair with Hathui and in this way was able to gain a bite of the coveted swan, dark meat swimming in a sauce so pungent that she had to shut her eyes as she savored it. The flavor was so overwhelming that she didn't hear him come in among the newest crowd of arrivals, only heard the king make a terse comment, and then his familiar, grave voice, a man never afraid to speak before the regnant.

"I left Princess Theophanu in Aosta, Your Majesty. She was then whole and healthy, and she had arrived safely with most of her retinue intact after a tremendously difficult journey through the mountains. But as I reported to her myself, Queen Adelheid at that time lay under siege in the city of Vennaci. An Aostan warlord calling himself Lord John Ironhead has been determined to wed her since the news of her young husband's death."

It was indeed Wolfhere, as hale and hearty as ever if that were possible.

He saw her standing beside Hathui, and Hanna could have sworn he winked. She was always surprised by how pleased she was to see him.

Henry grunted irritably before he took a sip of wine. "You know nothing more?" He swirled the dregs, staring into the cup like a conjureman of the old religion who could read fortunes from such leavings. "Damned stubborn child,"

he muttered so softly that only his attendant Eagles and, perhaps, his sister Constance could hear him. "If he had obeyed me and gone—" But he trailed off, then held out his cup so that it could be refilled.

Sabella, at his left, regarded the Eagle who knelt before Henry with a quizzical eye, rather like a woman who wonders if the dancing bear can also talk.

"I've heard news of this Ironhead from one of my clerics, who was educated in Aosta," she said. "It's rumored he murdered his nobly-born half brother and married the widow. But if he's pursuing Queen Adelheid, the woman must be dead. Or retired to the convent."

If Wolfhere was surprised to see Sabella feasting at table with her brother, he did not show it. He only inclined his head in agreement. "I met Lord John, Your Highness. I expect that retirement to a convent would be a merciful release from his attentions for a woman of noble breeding."

Sabella snorted, looking well entertained.

"There is other news," added Wolfhere. "While I was still in Karrone after crossing the mountains, we heard news that Iron-head had pursued Queen Adelheid and Princess Theophanu into the hills northwest of Vennaci. They took refuge at a small convent in the Capardian wilderness. Since then, I have heard nothing more."

While Henry mulled over this troubling news, Hanna was given leave to take Wolfhere outside and see that he was fed.

"Why didn't you stay with them?" she asked.

"I had other duties, as you know, Hanna, and other messages to deliver.

How fares it with you?"

She sat with him and told him of her adventures while he picked clean half a chicken that was only slightly charred from too much roasting, then washed it down with bread and ale.

"What do you think these dreams mean?" she concluded. "Are they true visions, or false ones?"

"I cannot tell you. An indigestion in your stomach might cause them. Or it may be you have picked up a strange destiny. I have caught a stone in my shoe now and again, and once it was a beautiful agate that I polished and hung on a chain." He smiled as at a very old memory. "Nay, I cannot say. I know little of the Eastern tribes." He chuckled. "I met Prince Bayan in earlier days. Who would have thought Princess Sapientia would have liked him so well?"

"Who would have thought," muttered Hanna, "that she would have liked him better than Father Hugh? Do you know where Liath is, Wolfhere?"

"Somewhere safe, I should hope," he replied smoothly. " It would go ill for her to return to a court where she would face trial on the charge of sorcery."

Since Wolfhere was always surprising her, it took her a moment to respond. "How can you know what happened at the Council of Autun? I only learned of it ten days ago when I joined the king's progress."

The summer evening had a drowsy light to it, not quite day and not quite night. "You have seen enough, Hanna," he said at last. "I can trust you with the Eagle's sight."

"What is the Eagle's sight?" she demanded, but she already had her suspicions.

"Meet me tomorrow at cockcrow out beyond the Lions' encampment." He would say no more.

In Taillefer's chapel the clerics were singing Vigils as she made her way past stables and palace to the field where three hundreds of Lions had set up their campground, with small tents and larger pavilions, wagons placed in a corral, and a dirt arena roped off for training.

Some few Lions were up and about. As commoners and field soldiers, they marched with few servants, and part of their duties were to take care of themselves like the Dariyan legionnaires of old who, it was said, dug their own earthen forts each night when they were on campaign and moreover did not scorn doing so.

She could not pass the sentries without looking for her old friends, but as it happened, she found Ingo out by the wagons with a piece of sausage in his hand and a kitten hissing at him from behind a wagon wheel.

"Friend!" she called just as the kitten scratched, and he yelped, dropping the bit of sausage. The kitten scampered into a mound of straw lying heaped up along the axle. "Now that's a dangerous foe," she said, crouching beside him. "I beg pardon for startling you. It looks like a hard-fought battle."

He sucked on his scratched finger. "Poor things. Their dam was run over by one of the water wagons yesterday and we've tried to coax them out, but they won't come near even to take a bit of meat."

The waning quarter moon hung low at the trees. The stars were fading as dawn grew around them.

"Skittish," said Hanna. "So my dam always said, that you can't shove a child among strangers and expect it to sing and dance." He smiled. Picking up the sausage, he held it out again and clucked under his tongue, hoping to tease out the kittens. She heard their sharp and almost laughable hisses from their hiding place in the straw. "I haven't seen your new recruit at the palace," she added.

Ingo shrugged without taking his eyes off the straw, which had a pronounced wiggle and slip to it; briefly, a gray tail peeped through, then vanished. "Thiadbold's captain of our company now," he said, "and he's decided to keep him busy here in the camp for the time being. No need to make him suffer more than he has already, poor lad. After all he went through, he hasn't a bad word to say of anyone."

"She turned on him," said Hanna in a low voice. "But perhaps he was a bad husband."

"Hush, friend," said Ingo suddenly. He rose, and she shifted to see a tall figure coming down the line of wagons with a shovel resting on his shoulder and two huge dogs walking at his heels. He stumbled to a halt just before them and almost tripped. The dogs sat down as polite as you please, without a noise. But she saw who they were now, and she couldn't help rising to face them, though they made not one threatening sound or movement.

"I beg your pardon, Ingo," said Alain. "I didn't see you." He saw Hanna, too, and offered a polite greeting. Obviously he didn't know who she was, and she wasn't about to remind him of Liath, whom he might associate with happier days. He gestured toward the wagon. "Are we moving out today? I didn't hear any orders."

"Nay, not today. It's those kittens—

"Ah." He, too, seemed to know about the kittens. He knelt by the wheel, setting the shovel down, and examined the now-motionless heap of straw.

This close to the shovel, Hanna could smell the pungent aroma of the pits and see bits of dirt and stickier substances clinging to the spade's edge. He had been on nightsoil duty, an odd chore for a man who had not ten days ago walked among the great princes of the realm. But if the labor annoyed him, she could see no trace of resentment on his face; he had an interesting profile, clean, a little sharp because of the cut of his nose. His dark hair was growing out raggedly and had been, caught back with a leather string. At this moment, he stared so intently at the straw that she wondered if he had forgotten she and Ingo crouched beside him. Slowly he extended a hand; he made the slightest whistling noise under his breath, hardly a sound at all, but the straw wiggled and shuddered and a tiny pink nose peeped out, then a second, beside it.

His hand did not move, nor had he taken the sausage from Ingo. The gray kitten slipped out of the straw and tottered skittishly forward, sniffed his fingers, then with its little pink tongue began to lick. A second shadow, more motley than gray, staggered out beside the first, followed by a third.

Hanna was afraid to move. Ingo seemed frozen with amazement, sausage dangling limp from his fingers. The hounds watched, eerily silent. One settled down to lick a paw.

After the kittens had licked Alain's fingers, he turned his hand over slowly and stroked them until tiny purrs rumbled. Still moving cautiously, he scooped them up against his chest, where they settled down, faces hidden.

"I'll take them to Cook," he murmured. "Maybe they'll take some cream."

He gestured with a foot toward the shovel. "I'll come back—"

"Nay, comrade," said Ingo. "I'll take the shovel to its place."

"Thank you," said Alain, and with his burden and his disquieting attendants, he walked on down the line of wagons and vanished into camp.

"Well," said Hanna. "What do you make of that?"

"He's a strange one, in truth," said Ingo, staring after Alain with a pensive expression. "Not disrespectful or arrogant, considering what he was. Nor is he humble and groveling either. You'd think he'd always been a Lion, really. Yet when I saw him sit among the lords, I never doubted he belonged there. And those hounds. Fierce as lions 'round anyone else but him, and with him they might as well be lambs."

"I thought the hounds belonged to the Lavas counts! Didn't they stay with Lord Geoffrey?"

"Nay, they're here in camp. I don't know if they followed him or if Lord Geoffrey turned them out. Still, it's very odd."

She left him there, thinking it odd herself, but she was late, and Wolfhere was waiting out beyond the sentries where a camp-fire burned. He was just feeding it another log when he saw her and indicated that she should sit down opposite him.

"I had hoped Hathui could come as well, but she must stay beside the king."

"He trusts and respects her."

"As he should," retorted Wolfhere, but then he smiled his wolf's grin, sharp, deadly, and oddly reassuring. "I've a trick to teach you. We call it Eagle's Sight.

It's a way of seeing long distances through fire."

Hanna laughed at such an absurd claim.

"Yet you believe me, don't you?" he observed. "With proper training, many Eagles can learn to see through fire any person we have observed closely enough that we can form their likeness in our minds. In time, you may learn to hear voices within the flames as well, but that won't happen at first. And I must warn you that some people simply are blind. If that proves so for you, Hanna, then think no worse of yourself."

"Only envy those who aren't blind!"

"Here, now. Look into the fire. See nothing, not even the flames. No, truly see nothing. Expect nothing. See what lies beyond the flames, not my hands or the trees or the camp, but that stillness which lies at the heart of all things. That stillness links all of us, and through it as through a window we can see."

She sat as still as she could, just staring.

"Good," he whispered. Clearly he felt something she did not. She felt only the heat of the flames and yet a taste of some other pulse, another thread that drew her toward the wasp sting in her heart. Shadows quivered in the flames, and for an instant she thought she saw the profile of the Kerayit princess. "Tell me who you see," he murmured.

"Liath," she whispered. "I want to see Liath."

And she saw something truly, not flames, not shadows, but a wall, like a veil of fire. "Is that the Chamber of Light? Ai, God. Is she dead?"

"Or only hidden from us," he replied so calmly that her fears dissolved.

"You're fast to catch on to this, Hanna. I begin to think your dreams are true dreams, and that some portion of your soul has already opened to these teachings."

"But I don't see anything!" Frustrated, she wiped a hand over her eyes, which stung from the smoke. "Ai, Lady! Isn't this sorcery? Am I imperiling my immortal soul by doing this?"

He sat back, relaxing. "Nay, child. This skill you use for the sake of the king. With Eagle's Sight you can gather intelligence hidden by distance or through intrigue. When you travel, you can find the king's progress more easily if you know where he's traveling."

She chuckled. "Rather than track him always two days behind! No wonder you arrive so quickly, and with so few detours."

"Have you seen enough? The sun is rising, and we've our duties to attend to."

"And no doubt look a little crazy staring into the fire like this. But—may I try one more time? What about Prince Sanglant? Surely if he's with Liath, then I would at least know where Liath is."

He simply lifted a hand, as if he hadn't the energy to dissuade her. Yet as the fire burned and snapped, she saw nothing, and she began to think that he was only humoring her, that she'd never seen anything at all in the flames.

"Well, then, one last time," she said, because Mistress Birta's daughter wasn't one to give up so easily. "I tell you truly, Wolfhere, I've always wondered what became of Biscop Anto-nia and Brother Heribert, if they really did survive that avalanche. Lady knows I got to know their faces well enough. Poor Heribert.

He seemed harmless enough. I always wondered why he was so loyal to her."

At first she thought it was smoke, a wet branch caught in the middle of the fire. But the shadow spread and grew form, and Wolfhere made a little noise, almost inaudible, what a mouse might utter when the cat sprang upon it.

"We dare not delay any longer," says a woman whose silhouette is regal land whose voice is cool and measured. It is a familiar voice,,vut through the agency of flame Hanna cannot quite make out the secret of its timbre. "We left Novomo before we were certain the pass was open because we got word that Ironhead was marching north to take Adelheid into custody. He styles himself king of Aosta now."

Was that hiss the flames, or Wolfhere?

A supplicant kneels before the great lady. "He meant to follow me at once, Your Highness. If he did not, then he was held against his will."

More shapes cluster beyond the flames yet somehow still in them; they are like the shadows of buildings seen beyond a palisade, and one among them speaks. "We found nothing, Your Highness. The goat track runs out on the hillside, and the cliffs are too steep to climb. Either he is lying to save his own skin—"

"Or there is more magic loose than we have ever suspected," says the regal woman. "After everything we have seen, I think we must believe the latter.

Nay, I am convinced this man was with my brother. Can you not tell me more, Brother Heribert?"

Is this a true vision, or a false one? Hanna dared not speak for fear that her voice would scatter the shadows. Was it truly Brother Heribert? Where had he been hiding all this time?

"/ can say no more except that he was alive and healthy when I left him.

fear to say any more, Your Highness. Some words are better left unspoken."

"It's a thin reed to build a bridge on," says the man in the distant shadows.

"Once more, where is my brother?" she asks.

"If he did not follow, then he could not follow, " insists Heribert. "There are powers you do not comprehend—" He seems afraid to say more.

"What, then, do you suggest, Brother?" She sounds slightly exasperated, and Hanna begins to believe that the curve of her shoulders isn't natural, it's a cape, some item of clothing common to travelers; the regal woman is simply ready to leave and is only waiting to receive, or to give, the final word.

"What he said himself. Go to the king, as you mean to do in any case."

"King Henry himself sealed the document that ordered you to be censured and taken before the skopos. Dare you to go before him now, knowing what might await you?"

"I trust you to protect me, Your Highness. Prince Sanglant said you would."

"Ml" She sounds pained and amused together. "So I am bound by his word, damn him." That shadow within the shadow, the slash of her mouth, is a smile.

"You would risk this for him?"

"Who would not?" he asks, sounding honestly surprised, and her laughter in answer is sharp. "There is one other thing, Your Highness. I pray you, may I speak to you privately?"

She gestures, but not all the shadows recede. "Trust you this man, Princess?" asks her counselor.

"I trust my brother, Captain Fulk," she answers, "and so do you." As flames shift and leap Hanna now sees only two shadows wavering in the fire.

When Heribert speaks again, at first she can scarcely hear him. "He has a child."

"A child! By the Eagle?"

"What mean you, the Eagle?"

"The woman called Liathano."

"Yes, by Liath. He believes that Liath, and thus his daughter, is descended from—

Dirt flew in her face. Wolfhere had leaped to his feet and kicked ashes and earth over the fire, and it guttered as she coughed and spat. But he was already leaving, striding away with his shoulders set so tensely that she almost feared to run after him.

But she had too many questions. She had seen too much to fear him now.

And she was still spitting dirt and hot ashes from her lips.

"Wolfhere!" She ran, and although he did not quicken his pace, she was panting hard by the time she caught him. "Why did you do that? Wasn't that Princess Theophanu? Why is Brother Heribert with her, and why is he speaking of Prince Sanglant as though they were old companions? Did he truly mean that Liath and Sanglant had a child together? Is what I saw true, or only a vision sent from the Enemy?"

"Your time with Liath marked you," said Wolfhere harshly. And then, with an agony that did not show in his expression: "Have I misjudged her so completely? Has she changed so much?"

"But^x He turned on her with an expression more fitting for a man who has just jseen Death riding down the road in his direction. "Go to Hathm and serve her and the Eagles well. But don't ask

me any more questions, for I cannot and will not answer them. You have a good heart, and I like you. Stay away from that which you can't comprehend."

He would say no more, although she followed him like a lost puppy, still asking questions. He did not even acknowledge her, only went to the stables and commandeered a horse although he hadn't the king's permission to leave. He would not answer her, he just left, riding out of Autun without looking back.

After the noon meal Henry called Hanna before him in the private garden of the biscop's palace. "Hathui says that you witnessed the departure of Wolfhere."

"I did, Your Majesty."

"He left without permission from me, or orders from any of my stewards or chamberlains."

She looked first at Hathui, but the other woman only lifted her chin, a signal Hanna could not interpret. After all, she was the King's Eagle. It was to him she owed her loyalty, wasn't it? "So he did, Your Majesty. But I know not where he was bound."

"Hathui?"

"I do not know either, Your Majesty," Hathui replied with obvious reluctance.

He slapped his leg hard enough that the sound made Hanna jump. "I knew he would betray himself some day." He seemed exultant. "The faithful Eagle abandons his post. So be it. I place him under the regnant's ban. If he is seen again by any woman or man loyal to me, let him be taken into custody and brought before me in chains, for desertion." He turned that pitiless lightning gaze on Hanna. "Know you what brought about his flight? Fear not, Daughter. I can see you are innocent of his treachery."

She could not lie. She saw in an instant that he comprehended the whole of her guilt.

She bowed her head in a vain attempt to gather her thoughts. Bricks paved the walkway she kneeled on, set in a lozenge pattern that repeated itself on and on and on around the square path that enclosed a central gazebo. When she looked up again, the king had leaned forward from the cushioned bench on which he sat, balancing himself with an elbow on one knee.

"Go on," he said, although she had not yet said anything.

"You know of that skill called the Eagle's Sight?" she asked.

No flicker of surprise or distaste marred his expression. He remained masked with dignity. "My father told me certain things known only to the heir.

Indeed, it was Wolfhere who brought the trick of the Eagle's Sight to your company. Did you know that?" She did not, and he must have recognized it from her expression because he went on. "For that and many other things my father honored Wolfhere and made him his boon companion. But I know otherwise.

What did you see?"

"This, Your Majesty. First, a woman I believe was Princess Theophanu, interviewing a man who called himself Brother Heribert. That same Heribert, I believe, who was sent to Darre with Biscop Antonia and who vanished with her in the avalanche that I myself witnessed. I was curious what might have become of them—" But she broke off, struggling back to the warp of the tale. The king remained silent, listening. "The princess said that Lord John Ironhead was marching in pursuit of Adelheid, and that he had been crowned king of Aosta."

Henry grunted, like a man kicked in the stomach, but said nothing. "Brother Heribert told the princess that he had shortly before been with Prince Sanglant—

" Now she had his attention fully, and she didn't like it. "But that the prince was somehow prevented from following him. Heribert said that the prince would want him to travel on to you, Your Majesty. He had a child—"

"Brother Heribert had a child?"

"Nay, Your Majesty, forgive me. Brother Heribert said that Prince Sanglant had had a child by Liath." She clenched her jaw, waiting.

Henry narrowed his eyes to slits and shook his head, as when the child who claims to be too clumsy to hunt comes home with the first boar of the season. "God help me for having sired such a stubborn son. If I could get Adelheid for him, then there would only be Ironhead to drive out, and the child he needs to prove his fitness is already born." After a moment, he remembered her. It was terrible to be focused under that gaze. She had never realized his eyes were such a complex shade of brown, veined with yellow and an incandescent leaf-green. "What other news can you bring me of my son? Where is he?"

"I do not know, Your Majesty. I saw no landmarks, nor do I know whether they spoke indoors or out. But Heribert said one thing more. He said that Liath, and the child, were descended from—

A gate opened, and Biscop Constance emerged into the garden, saw her brother, and began to walk toward them.

"Descended from—?" Henry glanced up, saw Constance, and lifted a hand to wave her over. Then he looked back at Hanna.

"That was the end, Your Majesty. I heard nothing more. I am not sure that Wolfhere didn't kick the fire out to conceal the rest."

Henry said nothing, only sat back and fingered the gold torque he wore, symbol of his royal kinship and right to rule. Here at his ease in the noonday garden he wore no royal robes; in truth, Hanna had rarely seen him robed and crowned in the regnant's dignity. He wore the dress common to every Wendish noble, a richly-embroidered tunic, leggings, sandals, and the various handsome rings worn by any great prince of the realm. One of these he drew off now and gave to Hanna.

She gaped at it: an oiled and polished emerald of a pale and almost milky green, set in thick gold band studded with tiny blood-red garnets.

"What news, brother?" asked Biscop Constance, sitting down beside him without asking his leave. "You have that certain smile on your face. I think the cats did not get the cream today."

"I had thought it might be prudent to travel to Wayland, but instead I have been visited with a blessing in the person of this Eagle. She will ride back to Sapientia with two hundreds of Lions and fifty cavalry to fight in the east. But I will ride south to seek out Theophanu."

"South to Aosta? Do you think that wise, Brother? You would do better to make your peace with Conrad in Wayland before you begin any grand enterprises."

But he had put on the mask of stone, and Hanna had never seen anyone—

even his powerful sisters—argue with him when he was in this mood. "I believe that many unexpected things will come of this. Indeed, I am sure of it."

Il THE

PERHAPS it was a blessing, after all, that he be allowed to march away from the memories that afflicted him. Walking for hours a day in the summer had a certain soothing rhythm, balm to the heart, and at night he never had any trouble sleeping once he had gotten camp pitched and pits dug and eaten a meal of flat bread and beans, all made heartier with ale or sweetened vinegar. The king kept his milites strong by feeding them well, and their pace was brisk enough that only the most determined camp followers could straggle along.

Still, it broke his heart to see them: peddlers hawking their wares; beggars holding out gourd cups in hope of a scrap of bread or thin soup; youths hoping to join the famous Lions or just gain a bit of experience fixing wheels or grooming the cart horses; women and boys come to trade favors for food or a trinket. Sometimes a Lion would even shelter a sweetheart on the long march, although that was against the rules. The captains were strict: as long as no one shirked chores or fell behind, they would look the other way.

The cavalry were another story, of course. They moved both faster and more slowly, helped and hindered by their fine horses and their little entourages, a groom, a servant, a concubine, and a camp-boy for the least of them and rather more servants for the greater.

He was digging out the night pits with Folquin when he saw her for the second time, a pale figure in dirty novice's robes kneeling before a pair of beggars who had swung into the procession three nights before: a brawny man with the face of a frightened child and his companion, a wizened man who had no feet. "Look there." He nudged Folquin with the butt of his shovel. "Do you see her?" She had poured water into a cup and was offering it to the crippled man.

Folquin had lost his only other tunic at dice last night, and he was in an irritable mood today, jabbing at the dirt with angry grunts. "Huh?" he said, looking up abruptly.

"That woman—" But she was already gone, slipped away into the whores'

makeshift encampment. At this time of the evening, various of the cavalrymen, unencumbered by any work except riding to war, were out strolling in twos or threes, looking for trouble, or a bit of pleasure, or some combination of the two.

"Do you fancy one of them, then?" asked Folquin. "I thought—" Sorrow growled softly, and Folquin struck himself on the head. He was a good soul, if a little reckless, and easy to get along with. "I beg your pardon. It's nothing to jest about."

"Nay, don't mind it." Alain patted Sorrow on the head reprovingly, and he settled down again beside Rage. "It wasn't your fault. But I could swear I know her. And if it's who I think it is, she's got no business traveling with the army."

"Who do you think it is?"

"My wi—" He bit off the word, stabbed by the old shame. "Nay, I must be mistaken."

"Here, I tell you what," said Folquin hastily. "I'll take your first hour of watch and you can go looking for her. Then you'll know whether you're mistaken." He got a good spadeful of dirt and tossed it above the ditch. "I always hate it when I can't stop thinking over something that might be, or might not have been. If only I hadn't rolled a deuce!"

Alain had to laugh. "If only you hadn't rolled at al ."

"Nay, leave off, I beg you," cried Folquin, leaning on his shovel and grinning, "you won't be lecturing me as Ingo did, will you?"

"Nay, not as Ingo did. In my very own way, I'm sure. Didn't your own aunt weave that tunic for you?"

Folquin groaned, pounding his head against the shovel's haft. "Ai, God!

Have mercy! Ingo calling me a shameless gambler was bad enough. Now this!

My poor aunt. How can I ever face her now? She'll know how careless I was with the things she gifted me with."

"And sweated over."

Alain had discovered that Folquin's adventurous heart concealed a very real devotion to his distant family, the same ones he'd abandoned for the life of a King's Lion. He was always collecting pretty ribands and little luxurious household items, like a wooden sieve-spoon that was a copy of the silver and gold ones used by noble ladies in the great halls, for his younger sisters; he had friends enough among the Eagles that on occasion one of them would deliver a package made up of such items to his village, if they happened to pass that way.

Now as a bit of rain spattered over them, warm and refreshing, he saw that Folquin truly looked remorseful. "It's true, isn't it? I risked something that I'd no right to wager on, for it was like she gave me a piece of her heart when she gifted me with that tunic."

"Here, now," said Alain quickly, "you lost it to Dedi in third cohort, didn't you? Maybe we can offer to take some of his duties in exchange. I don't know what Ingo would say, for he's enough responsibilities, but I wouldn't mind taking a turn at Dedi's privy digging for a night. If you and Stephen and Leo did as well, and explained the matter to Dedi, too, then why shouldn't he be willing to return the tunic?"

Folquin straightened up and stared at him for a moment in the most uncomfortable way. He had curly hair, cropped short. He tugged on it now, a habitual gesture, before turning back to his digging. "I'd be grateful," he said in a low voice. "And I meant what I said about you looking for that woman tonight, if you've a mind to. I'll take your watch."

By the time they had eaten their night's meal, the day had passed into that long hazy twilight that in summer lingers on and on. For some reason it was a loud evening at the whores' encampment, a straggle of tents, shelters, and awkward lean-tos made of canvas roped to trees that rose and fell each night as the army marched east. Perhaps the cooling rains had given a second wind to the cavalrymen. A bard played while three women danced for an appreciative audience. In the shadows, items changed hands, and hands sought under skirts for that which was hidden. The bounty in breasts was more evident than the bounty in almsgiving, for there were more beggars than usual, too, children with palsied hands, thin women in torn skirts and mended, filthy tunics, withered old men shoved out of the way by robust young lords who were seeking release from that boredom which is the burden of the well-fed. Alain had forgotten to set food aside as he sometimes did, and the sight of so much suffering chafed. But there was always suffering in the world. Rage and Sorrow padded beside him, and he never minded their presence. On a night like this, in such surroundings, it kept the peddlers and the whores away. He really didn't want to have a woman leaning up against him, offering him the very thing Tallia had denied him for so long. Surely some good must come out of the promise he had kept to her; he had never done violence to the oath she had made, even if he couldn't help but look on the women now and wonder what it would be like to take that which they offered more freely than Tallia had.

But all things came with a price.

Rage whined, slewing her head round as she caught a sound, or a scent, that he couldn't yet hear. He didn't see the one he was looking for. Surely he had only imagined her earlier.

He heard the noises coming from a dense thicket beyond a broad stream.

At first he thought that frenzied grunting was a rootling pig. When he heard low, hard male laughter, he realized he was hearing a desperate and one-sided struggle. He didn't hesitate, thought no more of getting his feet wet than of thrusting aside the leafy branches with his forearms and stumbling into a dome of low-hanging leaves and branches where two men hunkered over to watch a third wrestle on the ground with a woman in a dirty robe who was trying to scramble away. It was her, grunting hopelessly. It was them, laughing.

A moment later, he realized who she was.

Leaves dragged on his hair as he crashed forward. Under the dome of leaves, it was darker, as if a shroud had been drawn over the sun. Forest litter smothered the footfalls of his boots. The hounds pushed through the thicket behind him. The men turned.

"Ho! Dietrich, we have company!"

"Leave us be!" the one on the ground snarled.

One of his comrades, clearly drunk, giggled. "Nay, let him join in. If she won't take coin then she'll take what she gets, eh? More than enough foi four."

He didn't try to fight them. They were three, and he only one, but he shoved through the dome of vegetation around them, getting his face and hands all scratched up, and grabbed hold of the woman's wrist. Alain dragged her backward while she fought half against him and half against the man still groping for her thighs, his own tunic hiked up to his hips to expose a vast fleshy expanse. He had wits enough to pull her out into the woodland, not to the stream where her predicament would become a public scene to be laughed over.

The three men followed him, thrashing and swearing, and he shoved the young woman behind him and waited for them. They weren't all taller than he was, but they had the muscular arms and proud faces of noble sons accustomed to privilege. They rushed him like three bulls, but he stood his ground and raised one hand, pitching his voice to carry. He knew how to do it now, because he had once been a lord mightier than they. And he had Rage and Sorrow at his side.

"How dare you molest this holy woman!"

The words brought them up short, or perhaps the hounds did, standing silent and massive with muzzles pulled back to reveal their teeth and their great bodies poised for attack.

"Look at the size of those dogs," muttered the first. "Where's my damned sword?" He had to grope a little—overcompensat-ing for drink—but he found the hilt and drew the blade.

The second flexed his knuckles and then clenched his hands, grinning at the prospect of a fight. He cast around and found a stick, beat it twice on the ground to test its heft.

Yet with the hounds at his side, Alain felt no fear. It might even be possible that these young lordlings could beat him, scar him and best him, even pitted against the hounds, but that would be a minor crime compared to their assault on her.

"What manner of men are you, who would assault a holy woman sworn to the church—"

"And found consorting with the whores!" cried the man who'd been on the ground. He finished hitching up his belt, drew his knife, and fingered it menacingly. "Get out of our way, Lion. You've no right to be interfering with us.

And I want no trouble with those hounds. If she's your paramour, I'll pay you for damages, but there is no whore-woman who'll say nay to me in that fashion and get away with it. By God, I'd be shamed before my comrades!"

"You'll be shamed before God!" said Alain, low and furious. "What manner of parent raised you to think that your pride matters more than this innocent woman's fear? That your lust matters more than her charity? She has cast aside every luxury and every privilege to minister to the poor, who are God's creatures as much as we are. What have you cast aside? You cannot even walk one step without dragging your own vainglory with you, as if God made this world solely for you to take your pleasure in it. You cannot even take in one breath of air without filling your heart with wrath because you have forgotten that compassion should rule in our hearts, not self-love. You are an empty shell, pumping and groaning in the night, and long before you take the last step off into the Abyss you will find that you wander on this earth no better than a rotting corpse because all that is good in you will have fled and all that is thoughtless and bestial will have eaten you alive."

For some reason, the three men had fallen back, and as he took a step toward them, they fell to their knees.

"The blessed Daisan taught us that good is natural to humankind, but that evil is the work of the Enemy. In whose camp do you intend to muster? Choose your place now."

He was actually shaking, he was so angry. And he did not know, nor did he care, how they meant to respond. When they began to weep and beg his forgiveness, he was surprised enough that he could not think of one word to say to them, and in the end they staggered up and stumbled off back to their camp, still hanging on each other, trembling and moaning.

"My lord."

In his fury, he had forgotten her. Now he turned. She was kneeling, shawl torn from her head, hair half tumbling down her shoulders. Her robe was stained with dirt and vegetation, and she had gotten leaner in the face, but she still had the habit of blinking at him, marmotlike, a helpless animal needing shelter.

"Lady Hathumod." He extended a hand to help her up, but she shrank away from him, or from the hounds, who had come up on either side of her.

Standing, their heads came level to hers where she knelt. "Pray tell me you haven't been injured."

"Nothing more than scratches, my lord."

"You shouldn't be here. How are you keeping yourself? Surely not—

"Nay, my lord," she said, gaze dropping, suddenly embarrassed. She had lost her slippers or worn them out: her bare feet, untangled from the robe, were blistered and bloody.

"I pray you, forgive me. Of course you were not. But then how are you living? I saw you a few days ago, and then again tonight, bringing water to the beggars. Who is keeping you?" He knew she could not be keeping herself. How could a noblewoman's daughter survive outside the hall or the cloister unless like some young noble ladies she chose to ride to war with her brothers?

"The whores keep me, my lord. There's no churchwoman who preaches the word to them, or sings mass for them, or blesses them. They are as eager as any soul to hear the good news. Isn't it good news to them that the blessed Daisan took upon his own body our pains and our sins, and in this way brought Life to all humankind? Isn't it a comfort to them, who know no other way of life but sinning? Shouldn't we minister to the sick and the afflicted before we give our substance to those who live in comfort, my lord?"

"I beg you," he said, because the words were as painful as a knife cut, "do not call me by a title I can no longer claim."

She pressed hands to her forehead but did not answer.

"You can't travel with the army, Lady Hathumod. It isn't right. We'll come to a convent, and I'm sure they'll take in a young woman of your birth and education and good sense."

"God have mercy, my lord." She swayed forward, clung to his hand. "Do not make me leave you."

Was it possible that she loved him in the same hopeless way that he loved Tallia? Or was she merely clinging to someone familiar in a world that must seem strange to her, severed from the noble way of life she had become accustomed to? Either way, he owed her gentleness.

He helped her rise and walked with her back into camp. She showed him the tent where she slept. They had to wait there a few moments until a blowsy woman emerged and, behind her, a Lion from the third cohort who was straightening his tunic, a man Alain vaguely recognized but didn't know. He greeted Alain without embarrassment and walked away, whistling. The whore took a swig of cider and looked Alain over.

She wasn't a pretty woman, but she had the knack of letting the neck of her shift hang low over her breasts, and she knew how to set hand to hip and jut out her leg just so, to suggest goods for sale in the market.

Was this how his mother had looked? Or had she still retained some flower of innocence blooming somehow in the mire of her life? Henri had always said she was beautiful. How would his mother have looked had she lived on, with all the beauty hardened out of her like sap squeezed from a young tree? Was beauty doomed to wither where its goodness was not nurtured? Could beauty only arise out of innocence and purity? Or was it a quality entirely unrelated to anything but the accident of its presence in the world?

"I pray you," he said to the whore. "I just saved Sister Hathu-mod from being raped. They'd dragged her into the bushes—

"That would be Lord Dietrich," said the whore, looking Hathu-mod over with a resigned sigh, probing at her ribs and abdomen while Hathumod stood with head bowed. The young novice was ashamed, or humiliated, or uncaring; he couldn't tell which. "He's gone through every woman in the train, and he's looking for fresher prey."

"Is there anything that can be done to protect her?" She had a smile no more scornful than that of those hard-eyed noblewomen who oversaw extensive estates and flogged their servants when they were angry. "From the lords?" She laughed. "You Lions are more honest than them. We're lucky if they give us food after they've taken what they want." With a practiced touch, she hooked fingers up between Hathumod's thighs and felt at her groin. Alain looked away quickly, ashamed on Hathumod's behalf, but Hathumod only gasped, shuddering, hands hiding her face. She didn't even protest. The whore sniffed her fingers, then shook her head as she addressed Alain. "No harm done, this time. But there's not much we can do for her, friend. She's a bit touched in the head, thinks she's a noble lady's get, and while I grant you she's well spoken, I don't see any retinue following at her heels. She hasn't a clue how to take care of herself. She brings us nothing to eat for she's no way of getting food and no possessions to trade. We've been feeding her in exchange for her preaching, for truly she's got no other skills. She can't even mend a tear in a skirt."

He knew a bargainer when he saw one. He had watched Aunt Bel haggle on market day many times. "I'll see what extra food I can bring. But I've no coin.

I'm new to the Lions, and we're only paid in coin twice a year."

"Umm," she said, looking him over again in a considering way. "New to the Lions, indeed. You've got nice shoulders, my friend. But nice shoulders don't make dinner."

In that instant, he hated Geoffrey for impoverishing him. It had been within his power, before, to aid the poor and the helpless. Now he had little enough himself, and he felt helpless. "On the nights when I haven't duties in camp I'll do what I can to help you, bring in firewood, hunt a little. Gather berries when they're ripe."

Someone had bitten the whore's lower lip, and the wound hadn't yet healed. She played at the wound with her tongue as she eyed him with professional interest. "You're a good-looking lad, and well spoken. I've a young cousin at my old village of Felsinhame. She's looking for a husband. She'd not mind one who was away for months at a time, if he was a good lad otherwise."

Seeing something in his expression, she hurried on. "She's not like me, a horrible sinner, an old slut." She said the word harshly, and for an instant he glimpsed an angry memory deep within her, rooted in her face. "She's not like me. She's a good girl."

"I'm not looking for a wife," he said softly as, behind him, Hathumod whimpered and finally began to cry.

"Did you find her?" Folquin asked when, at midnight, Alain arrived at his sentry post somewhat farther downstream on the same brook that he had splashed over to rescue Lady Hathumod.

"Ai, God, so I did," said Alain, feeling so weary that he wanted to lie down and let the grass grow over him so that he wouldn't have to care what happened to poor Hathumod and all the other suffering, lost souls. Yet someone had to care. "She's—" But Hathumod's secrets weren't his to divulge. "She shouldn't be here."

"Nor should any of them be here," said Folquin. "I knew a boy once, my mother's cousin's cousin's son. He was just too pretty, that boy, and he found out that there were those men who would give him anything they had if he'd act the girl for them. So maybe he liked getting it or maybe he liked getting the trinkets or maybe he just liked jerking them on that rope. I'll never know. He got killed in a knife fight, poor stupid boy." He went off then, to get his rest.

Alain stroked Sorrow's ears absently. They'd been on the march for ten days and had camped this night somewhere in Fesse or Saony, he wasn't sure.

He didn't know the lay of the land here. Captain Thiadbold, Ingo, and the older Lions in first cohort had marched this way before; they recognized the landmarks and the estates, the names of villages and the courses of rivers. They'd crossed one ford that had once been a ferry crossing, and been forced to detour around a second ford that was now a high-cut, eroded bank too steep to pull the wagons up. Summer woodland made their march pleasant, delightfully uneventful except for the usual injuries: a foot run over by a wheel, a man kicked in the thigh by a horse, two fistfights, and one knifing over a village woman. Here in central Wendar, King Henry's reign was marked by tranquillity and enough to eat.

But he was not tranquil as he stood watch on the verge of the silent woodland, a tangle of young trees at the edge and older ones farther in, massive and brooding with only stars to light them, an ancient forest not yet fallen before the axes of humankind. They had passed a village earlier in the day, but now only the straight track led before them, striking straight as an arrow's flight into the forest. Here and there on the track stones showed through, scoured with lichen, dark with moss, an old line of march built by another people. Had Dariyan generals once marched their armies through this forest?

He stood on that track now, stones felt as an unyielding surface under the soles of his sandals. A few steps in front of him the half-concealed track crossed the stream at an old ford. He heard it more than saw it in the darkness where the water sang over the stones. Such a crossing point made a good sentry post, so Ingo had theorized.

Frogs chorused and fell silent. A single splash spread ripples of sound into the night, then stilled. Off to his right he saw the figure of another sentry pacing nervously at the edge of a particularly aggressive stand of oak that thrust out into the meadow in which they'd set up camp. He recognized the stout shoulders of Leo, Folquin's tent-mate. A twig snapped. An owl hooted. The stars blazed, a multitude of glorious lights. He sensed nothing unusual in the night, although a wind was coming up from the southeast. This past day they had marched through open woodland and meadows. Now dense forest lay ahead, a good long day of it, so Ingo said, before they came to the Veser River Valley and its string of forts and fortified towns and villages. East past the Veser there would be more forts and more fortifications, built in the reign of King Arnulf the Elder as protection against the depredations of the Rederii and Helyitii tribesmen who, until twenty years ago, had raided every winter. Now they were Daisanites and quiet plowmen, working in peace side by side with their Wendish overlords. But in recent years, according to the nightly gossip at the campfires, Quman tribesmen had raided far into the interior of Saony, lightning bolts that struck, sizzled^ and vanished. Farther east, past the Oder River, their group would enter the marchlands and from that point on they would always have to be on their guard.

War. Was this war different in kind than the terrible duel between Henry and Sabella, brother against sister? Would it be easier to fight an enemy who was so unlike and so savage? Yet even against the inhuman Eika, he had learned that he could not kill.

He had ben too stunned to remember that fact the day he had lost Lavas County and taken service in the king's Lions.

What would the Lions do when they found out he couldn't fight?

What would he do if the Lady of Battles had forsaken him?

Rage whined, nosing his fingers, and he chuckled a little under his breath.

What did it matter? He would march into battle at the side of the others, because that was the loyalty they owed each to the other and to the king. If he died, then at least he would be at peace, and if he lived, he would be no worse off than he was now.

No worse off, as long as he didn't think about Lavastine and Tallia. As long as he just kept walking each day, talking each day, working and eating and sleeping as though another Alain who had never known any life but this one inhabited his body, that empty shell, scoured and scalded by the lie that had ruined Lavastine's hopes. For he had no doubt that God was punishing him for the lie. And yet, given the choice again with Lavastine at his last breath, he would do it again, over and over again, every time, just to hear that beloved voice say: Done well.

Sorrow nipped at him, and he began to weep, but he struggled against it.

He rubbed his face hard with the back of a hand, obliterating the tears. He knew where weeping would lead. He had to keep walking without looking back.

Ai, God. The innocent boy dreaming in Osna village would have given anything to march among the Lions, bent eastward toward adventure and the glory of righteous war.

Ai, God. That innocent boy had given everything: the only home and family he knew, the only woman he loved, the father who had loved him and died at peace because he had given everything he had into the hands of the heir he trusted.

All in ruins.

He sank to his knees, had to support himself on the ground with his spear fallen to the track beside him as he fought against the sobs that welled up in his chest. He could not weep. He must not weep. But he was drowning, swimming in grief, lost as the waves swamped him. Bodies jostled against him as though to lift him out of the tide as he looks over the shoulder of Namms Dale's new chieftain. There were few sons of the old chief left to choose from, after the conflagration visited upon Namms Dale by Nokvi, but Stronghand has been patient in gathering up a stray ship here and a pack of warriors there. Now one of Namms Dale's surviving children has risen to take the staff of leadership. He has given himself the name Grimstroke and, like Bloodheart, he has chosen to observe the death magic ceremony.

Like Bloodheart, he has called his underlings together to witness his ceremony, to give notice that he does not fear death and treachery because treachery will rebound with greater force upon any person who dares to assassinate him.

But in truth, only one who fears death and doubts his own strength resorts to the death magic spell. Bloodheart revenged himself in this way upon the man who brought about his death. But the curse is a sign of weakness, not of strength. Bloodheart, after all, is still dead.

Stronghand watches as Grimstroke extrudes a claw and unhooks a tiny jar carved out of granite. Only stone can contain the venom of the ice-wyrms. The delicate granite lid falls back, and at once Hakonin 's hall is permeated with the scent of the only death a RockChild fears. Only a single grain of silvery venom lies in the jar, but it alone is enough poison.

The Namms Dale priest shakes a rattle and tosses a handful of herbs into the air. The herbs drift down onto the altar where corpse and jar lie side by side.

The dead hatchling is no bigger than a man's hand, and as white as roe. One pinch of a claw would slice it in half. It reeks of salt and seawater.

Only through killing does a hatchling become a RockChild instead of remaining forever a dog. In each nest, some of the blind hatchlings turn upon the others while most merely escape to live their short lives in the dog pack, the unthinking brothers of those who walk and plan. It is mind that separates a son from a dog, thinking that makes one a person and another simply a beast. In the nests of the Mothers, it is that first blind, groping kill that makes a mind flower.

And when the nests burst open and the hatchlings stumble out, corpses remain behind, caught in the ragged membrane. They soak there in brine, untended, unobserved, undecayed—

—unless a new chieftain fears death enough to risk the trek to the lair of the ice-wyrms, so that he can weave the death magic: the dead hand that will stalk the one who killed him and bring about the murderer's death as recompense, a death for a death.

The priest lights incense, and the scent of it is so sweet that it stings, but it does not vanquish the smell of the grain of venom. With pincers forged of iron, Grimstroke lifts the grain from the jar and gently deposits it into the gaping, unformed mouth of the tiny corpse.

There is silence in the hall as Grimstroke's underlings wait and watch. But there are other chieftains in the hall, from other tribes, whom Stronghand has called together to witness the rebirth of the Namms Dale chieftainship. It is his way of overturning Nokvi's victory, of calling notice that he, Stronghand, will say who lives and who dies, who will flower and who will merely bark at his heels like a dog. Yet he needs these same allies to defeat Nokvi. And they need him.

Alone, they will be sucked one by one into Nokvi's jaws to become puppets dancing to the tune of human magic. They all know what transpired when Rikin's tribe raided Moerin, that the Alban sorcerers en-sorcelled their own human brothers to charge as berserkers into a battle they could not win. Perhaps some even hoped Strong-hand would die there, caught in Nokvi's trap, but he did not.

They know now that Nokvi's alliance with the Alban tree sorcerers threatens them all, and that they have no protection against Nokvi 's magic unless they join with Rikin.

The dead hatchling shows no change as the venom dissolves into its lifeless body.

"You carry the curse," says Grimstroke suddenly, claw still extruded, a lingering threat or something simply forgotten.

"I do not," says Stronghand, and he pitches his voice so that it carries to all of the gathered chieftains: eight tribes have sent representatives, have come, as the humans say, when he called. He is not sure it will be enough.

"I do not carry the curse," he repeats. "I did not weave the death magic spell when I took Rikin's standard for my own hand. Any of my rivals who is strong enough and cunning enough to kill me is welcome to his victory."

Grimstroke laughs. He is beholden to Stronghand for his chieftainship, and because he knows it and resents it, his gratitude, like old fish, stinks a little. " will gladly walk behind you until your shoulders bow under the weight of your arrogance. Then I'll kill you and take your place. "

Stronghand grins, baring his teeth as humans do to show fellow-feeling.

"Then we understand each other," he says, although the words are meant for all of them.

The priest croaks out a garbled phrase and shrinks back from the altar.

Like all priests, who prolong their lives by unnatural means, he fears anything that smells of death.

The chest of keeping is brought and opened beside the dead-white hatchling that still lies limp on the altar. The late summer sun spills in through the western doorway, pouring light down the central aisle and veining the dark wood altar with its amber glow.

The little corpse shudders, stirs, and comes to life, out of death, for that is the other legacy of the ice-wyrm 's venom, that it can bring life out of death or death out of life, the horror that is both and neither.

Priest-words are spoken that seal it, the dead hand, to the life of its killer, and Grimstroke claps shut the lid and shuts the corpse inside the box that will hold it now and until he dies.

Alain screamed, trapped in darkness.

But it wasn't his voice he heard.

He heard the scream again, a shriek, a frantic call for help. A horn stuttered, wavered, and sputtered out. From the camp, he heard answering shouts made faint by a wind rushing in his ears like a tempest, and as he came fully to himself he found himself kneeling on the ground, braced on his hands.

Water gurgled past his fingers, and as he stared at the water, he realized that he had shifted forward during his lapse until his hands fetched up in the stream, pressing against the moss-covered stone track.

The stream was running the wrong way.

Sandaled feet stopped in mid-stream right in front of him. From this vantage, all Alain could see was leather winding up muscular calves. An obsidian spearpoint slid into view, drifting in front of his nose. Although there was no moon, there was light enough to see clearly the man standing before him: as Alain looked up from calf to thigh to a torso fitted with a cuirass ornamented with strange, curling beasts, he knew with a chill that it was no man.

A white half cloak was clasped at the figure's shoulders.

He looked up into a beardless face more bronze than pale, with deep, old eyes under a sweep of black hair tied up in a topknot and adorned with an owl feather. The spearpoint remained fixed before Alain's nose.

At this instant, Alain became aware of two things: the tense murmur of men gathering to fight in the brush behind him, and the silence of the hounds, who sat alert but unmoving at his feet.

"I do not kill you only because the sacred ones attend you," said the prince. Alain recognized him now, but it was not at all clear that this prince of a lost people recognized Alain. "Move off the road. Let us pass."

From behind, Alain heard Thiadbold's strong voice. "Roll away, Alain, and we'll loose a volley. There are more behind him, a host of them. My God."

Was it starlight alone that lit them, or an unnatural light that flowed with them like witchfire? Cautiously, Alain straightened until he knelt, upright, before the prince. His knees pressed hard into paving stone. Behind the prince, the procession trailed off down the path into the forest, a host he could not count because he could not see them all. They all had that wonderful, disturbing consistency to them, more shade than real and yet real enough. Their weapons looked as deadly as his own spear, which lay as a dark spar in the grass. They looked deadly enough to kill, these shades, bows and spears held ready by grim-faced soldiers, both female and male and yet manifestly not human men and women. Light rose from them in the same way that steam rises from a boiling pot. The old track gleamed as well, a silvery thread piercing the land east to west.

"What are you?" asked Alain. "Are you Dariyan?"

"I know not this tribe," answered the prince. "Stand aside."

"If we stand aside, will you go on your way without harming us?" asked Alain, not moving from the path.

"Let us shoot, Alain! Move aside!" cried Captain Thiadbold, and by the stillness of the prince's face and the unblinking regard of those soldiers closest to him, Alain realized that the prince and his followers could not hear Thiadbold's voice.

"Nay, Captain," said Alain. "Let them pass in peace. Their fight is not with us."

"Are there others with you?" demanded the prince.

A shade-woman crowding behind the prince hissed, raised her bow, and drew down on something behind Alain's head just as he heard grass rustle behind him and Thiadbold's voice, much closer now. "They're spread thin," said the captain. "Use cover to give you room to shoot."

"I'm standing up," said Alain, and with infinite care he did so, moving as slowly as he could to make sure no one would be startled. He was careful to keep his feet on the old track. "I beg you, Captain Thiadbold. Call your men back. Let them pass in peace. They have no quarrel with us." He lifted a hand, palm up and open in the sign of peace. "Where is Liathano, my lord prince?"

"She is walking the spheres," said the prince, eyes widening with elegant astonishment. "How is it you know of her? Yet there is something familiar about you—

"Go on your way in peace, I pray you," said Alain. "I swear on my God, the Two who dwell in Unity. Swear on your own god, and we will step back. We will not molest you. There is no war between us."

The shade-woman standing behind the prince spat on the ground. "There is always war between us!"

"Nay, be not impatient," said the prince, setting his spear haft down on the path. "We have our own troubles. This ijkia 'pe tells the truth. They are fully of the world. We need not fight them."

"Not now," said the woman, "but if the tide washes us back to shore, then it is better if there are less of them."

"Nay. reckless one. Or have you forgotten the army of shana-ret'zeri which pursues us?" He lifted his spear and shook it. Bells, tied to the base, rang softly.

"So be it, ijkia'pe. I swear by He-Who-Burns that as long as you touch no one of us, we will touch no one of you. But I will stand here beside you while my people pass, and my spear will pierce your heart if you have lied to me."

Alain stepped back from the path. "So be it. Captain Thiadbold, I pray you, tell the men to stand down. Let these people pass, and there will be no fighting."

A woman's voice, very human, spoke. He thought it might be that of the blonde Eagle who rode with them. "Listen to him, comrade. I think he sees more than we do."

"Stand down," said Thiadbold. "Let no man attack, by my order."

The command passed down through the gathered Lions, an echo of the whisper of the shadowy procession as it moved on. The prince stood aside to wait beside Alain, although he kept his feet upon the stones, and now the shade-woman led the way, striding forward with her bow taut before her. She, too, wore a cuirass of gleaming bronze, but she had no sword, only an ugly obsidian dagger strapped to her thigh.

"God have mercy," swore Thiadbold. By the sound of his voice, he seemed to be standing a few steps behind Alain. "I've never seen a woman that beautiful. I'd die happy if she plunged her dagger into my heart at the moment of release."

The wind had come up, as if blown off the march itself, the procession winding by. They walked two abreast, with their unearthly bronze-complexioned faces and their strange garb, more beads and feathers than Alain had ever seen.

Only a few wore rnetal, whether armor or decoration. All their weapons were of stone except for their arrows, which looked like slender, arm-length darts whittled out of bone. Not one man among them had a beard. Not one woman did not carry a bow. There were a few children, preciously guarded in the middle of the long line, naked bronze-skinned babies or long-limbed, silent youngsters with eyes as bright as stars. Every soul among them wore jade in an ear. Their passage was like the wind, and as Alain watched, he realized that in fact their feet didn't quite truly tread on the ground. No grass bent. No dirt stirred.

They weren't really here, not as he was.

Some man was crying in fear among the human crowd, babbling about a procession of shades come to haunt the waking world.

"Where do you come from?" Alain asked softly as the last dozen strode by, as silent as corpses, eyes alert although in truth they didn't really seem to see him. "Where are you going?"

"We were caught between one place and the next when the world changed. We were swept out to sea where the ground always shifts beneath our feet. But I feel the tide turning. It is coming back in. As the reckless one said, mayhap the tide will wash us back onto the earth again. Then we will have our revenge."

The prince swung into line behind the last of his soldiers.

Light rimmed the horizon. A cock crowed. The thin pinch of the last waning crescent moon floated just above the trees, fading into the dawn.

They vanished.

Had Alain been slugged in the stomach, he wouldn't have felt any more like the wind had been knocked right out of him. The stream flowed past, gurgling over the stones, and now it ran the same way it had last night, northeast, into the forest. Or perhaps he had only been dreaming it, before.

"What was that?" demanded Thiadbold as everyone began to talk at once.

"Captain! Captain!" A man came running. "It's Leo. He was sentry out by the forest. It's elfshot, Captain! He's terrible shot through with fever."

Alain went to the forest's edge with Captain Thiadbold, the blonde Eagle, and a nervous crowd of Lions, who promptly spread out in pairs to search among the trees. Dawn made them bold. There was no trace on the narrow track that any party, much less one of a hundred or more people, had passed over it during the night.

Leo was a man who didn't say much, and then usually only to swear. He was shaking now, a hand clasped over his right shoulder, but the rash had already spread up his exposed throat.

Sweat ran from his neck and forehead. His eyes had the glaze of shock.

"Nay, nay," he was mumbling, trying to push away someone in front of him who didn't exist. "Nay, nay. Be quiet now or they'll hear you coming."

"Get his mail off so we can see the wound," said Thiadbold. He still wore his helm, covering his red hair, but Alain could just see the scarred ear where the leather ear flaps had been pulled askew. "I thought it was a dream," the captain went on, looking at Alain. "That's why I went along with what you said. That, and what Hanna said—" He gestured toward the Eagle, who had evidently scrambled up so quickly from her bed that she hadn't belted up her tunic. "You sounded so sure of yourself—" He shook his head, frowning. Not quite suspicious, but looking as if he were sorry that he'd ever agreed to take on Henry's new recruit.

"Many of us have seen strange things in these days," said the Eagle.

"Strange things in strange times."

Her words produced a flood of anxious commentary from the assembled Lions, broken only when Leo screamed as three of his fellows pinioned him and pulled his mail coat up over his shoulders. Then, thrashing, he rolled on the ground like a madman.

"Hush," said Alain, stepping forward and pressing him down by one shoulder. "God will help you if you will only be still."

Leo moaned, spittle running from his mouth, then fainted.

There was no sign of any arrow in his shoulder nor, when Alain probed with his fingers at the little hole pierced in Leo's shoulder, did he find a point or shaft broken off in the skin. But it was festering. Angry red lines already lanced from the wound, and his skin was rashing and blistering all around it. Alain set his mouth to the wound and sucked, spat, sucked again, spat again, until his jaws ached.

"Waybread and prayer for elfshot," said Alain. "That's what my Aunt Bel always said."

"A poultice of wormwood to draw out the poison," added the Eagle, but she gestured toward Thiadbold. "Your healer may know other charms."

"I've never seen so strange a sight," said Thiadbold. "Not once in my ten years as a Lion." He wasn't looking at Leo at all, but at Alain. "You were speaking to them, but I couldn't hear a word they said. They were only shades. Shadows of the Lost Ones. How could you speak to them, who are ghosts? What manner of man are you?"

Folquin and Ingo shoved their way through the crowd of Lions. "Here, Alain," said Folquin too heartily, but he reached down to grasp one of Leo's legs.

"Let's carry him back to camp."

"We can rig a place on one of the wagons," said Ingo, drawing Thiadbold aside. "It won't take much time. We won't lose much on the march. I'd just as soon be through this forest before twilight."

In this way, they moved on. Folquin and Stephen jested with Alain and with the men around them as the day passed swiftly, a steady march under the canopy of the forest. By evening they cleared the thickest portion of the wood and, from a ridgetop lookout, could see the Veser River a half day's march beyond. Incredibly, Leo was recovering and he ate so much at supper that they joked they'd all have to fast. No one mentioned Alain's part in the incident, or at least not within his hearing.

Yet Alain was so tired he was dizzy, and he couldn't eat. He bundled up his bread and cheese and eased away from the fire. He found Hathumod easily enough, sitting in the last twilight trying to mend a torn skirt, squinting at the needle. As he came up beside her, coughing softly to let her know of his approach, she started, jabbed the needle into her fingers, and cried out.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Hathumod," he said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Nay, my lord," she said in a soft voice. Blood welled up on her forefinger, and without thinking she lifted the finger to her mouth to suck. She had gotten thinner. He wondered if she ever had enough to eat or if, like Tallia, she chose to fast.

He held out the bread and cheese. "You must eat this, Lady Hathumod, for you must keep up your strength. You can't fast and also march all day. Truly, I don't begrudge these beggars their share, but I haven't enough to feed them all."

She looked at him strangely. "Of course there will be enough, my lord, if it comes from your hands."

It was impossible to argue with someone who talked like that. He wondered how many beggars she had really seen before running off in the wake of the Lions. Did she cherish an innocent belief that Lady Fortune smiled equally kindly on every soul, here on this earth? Was her faith more pure than his, or only more naive?