PART THREE

THE VALE OF ICE

WINTER laid in its usual store of bitter weather. For three days a viciously cold wind blew down from the north to turn the shores and shallows of the Veser River to ice. Every puddle that graced the streets of Gent had frozen through, and in some ways, Anna reflected, that was a good thing. It meant the stink froze, rainwater, sludge, and sewage in crackling sheets that little Helen liked to stomp on so she could hear them snap and splinter. At times like this Anna remembered the months she had hidden in the tanneries with her brother Matthias: the city had been cleaner when the Eika inhabited it, but perhaps that was only because it had been mostly deserted then.

Not anymore. Even in the dead of winter folk walked the frozen avenue alongside the freshly whitewashed wall marking the mayor's palace. Walled compounds faced the avenue on the other side. Well-to-do artisans and merchant families lived and worked in these compounds. A peddler trundled his cart up to one of the gates and called out, hoping for admittance. A servant boy emerged and, after looking the peddler over and examining the condition of his heavy winter tunic and cloth boots stuffed with

straw, let him inside. At times, these signs of prosperity still amazed her. It had been less than two years since refugees and newcomers had flooded back to Gent after the Eika defeat.

Anna had learned to amuse herself with such thoughts when she took Helen along on errands because inevitably she did a great deal of waiting. With her arms full of wool cloth, she couldn't just grab hold of Helen's arm and drag her along. The little girl didn't understand any need for haste, nor did she seem to feel the cold even as Anna's fingers grew numb, through her wool gloves. Helen warbled like a bird, phrases that leaped up and slid down with lovely precision, as she stamped on a particularly fine landscape of thin puddles, creamy with frozen shells that made a satis-fyingly sharp crack when they shattered.

"Here, now, little one, this is no weather for a child to be playing outside." The voice came from behind them. Helen continued her singing and stomping without pause.

Anna turned to see Prior Humilicus walking down the street with several attendants. The cathedral tower loomed behind him, marking the town square that lay just past the northwest corner of the mayor's palace. The prior of the new monastery dedicated to St. Perpetua was a familiar sight in town these days, especially in the months since the abbot, Prince Ekkehard, had ridden off with Lord Wichman to fight in the east. Humilicus visited the biscop every day no matter the weather.

"Ah," he said, seeing Anna's face and her burden.” You're the weaver's niece."

Like all noble folk, he had the habit of touching without asking. He stripped off his sheepskin mittens and fingered a bolt of cloth admiringly.” Very fine, indeed.

A rich scarlet. Did Mistress Suzanne dye this wool herself?"

Anna nodded. Helen had come to the last of the string of frozen puddles and was crushing the grainy ice that made a lacework of its miniature shoreline.

The prior's lean face tightened and his lips pressed together.” You're the mute one, are you not? God have surely afflicted your family twice over." Anna didn't like the way he examined Helen. From a filthy, abandoned, half-starved toddler, she had grown into an angelically pretty little girl, some four or six years of age.”

She has a remarkably true voice," he mused.” I wonder if she can be trained to sing hymns."

His gaze shifted past Helen. The long wall of the mayor's palace had once been painted with vivid scenes of the death and life of the blessed Daisan but had been painted over for the third time three days ago. Humilicus picked up a rose encrusted in hoarfrost, examining the wilted flower with the kind of scrutiny most folk reserved for maggots crawling on rotten meat.” I thought all these leavings were picked up last week."

"They were, Prior," said the eldest of the monks, whose thin nose was blue with cold. A gust of wind shook the banners set atop the palace wall and set Anna's teeth chattering.” The biscop's clerics go around every week collecting such offerings. They brought in two wreaths, one carving, and four candles yesterday."

Helen darted forward to pluck the rose out of Prior Humilicus' fingers, then scurried away to hide behind Anna.

"Here, now!" scolded the thin-nosed man.

"Nay, let her go," said Prior Humilicus.” A whitewash won't erase memory. If the common folk still lay offerings here after all this time, then chastising one witless girl won't have any effect on the stain that's crept into them. It was that stout lad who let the pollution in, he and his tongueless accomplice." Despite his grim looks, he had a mild if somewhat sardonic disposition. He paused to examine the wall with an ironic smile.” A clever and well-spoken lad was Brother Ermanrich. It passes my understanding that God should have allowed the Enemy's work to enter such a fitting vessel."

"God's ways are a mystery. Prior," agreed his companion.” It is a good thing those young monks rode away with Prince Ekkehard."

Humilicus bowed his head as if in submission to the unfathomable mind of God.

The procession of monks moved away down the street.

Anna stamped twice, sharply, to get Helen's attention. The little girl followed happily, skipping and singing, as they walked down to the waterfront gate, to the fullers' yard. The mistress allowed them to sit on their cloaks by the hearth while she inspected each finger of cloth with an eye to flaws, but Anna didn't mind waiting, since it was warm. She carried distaff and spindle with her, and began spinning fiber to yarn. Helen pried all the thorns from the rose and tucked it behind her ear, like an ornament. Sleepy, she

yawned so widely that her mouth looked ready to split. A few girls their ages sat or stood in the hall, spinning, although most of the activity at this time of day took place out in the yard or in the tenters' field situated below the city walls.

"That'll do," said the fuller, who usually hadn't a kind word to say about anyone.

That she couldn't find any flaws in the weaver's work was high praise.” I don't want anyone saying we'd damaged the goods in the fulling or tenting." An assistant hurriedly took the cloth away to the yard.” I've twelve lengths done for you to be taking back to your aunt, although I see you've an errand to run before you go home." She indicated the scarlet cloak, already fulled and finished, that Anna had set on the bench behind her. The fuller fingered the cloth in the same avaricious way Prior Humilicus had.” Not many can get such a good scarlet color. Did Mistress Suzanne get the wool already dyed?"

Anna allowed herself a vapid smile. She hated being mute. The lack of a voice was like lacking hands, most noticeable when you weren't thinking about it and reached instinctively to tighten your belt or take a slice of apple, but occasionally it had advantages.

"Well, you've nothing to say! And no wonder. Your aunt has made much of herself in Gent since the Eika were driven out. If I didn't know you were mute, I'd suppose you were simply too proud to talk to such as me!" The fuller had the kind of face easily creased by smiles, round and full, but she hadn't any smiles in her gaze, only envy.” Still, you're old enough to be betrothed, and you look as though you're likely to be moving to the women's benches come St. Oya's Day.

Has Mistress Suzanne found a husband for you yet?"

Anna shook her head. She didn't mind that her body was changing; that was part of the natural order. But she didn't like the way people tried to tempt her with marriage offers. After all, no one actually cared about her.

"You've a funny color of skin, it's true, but you're healthy enough and it would be a good alliance with a prosperous family, and advantageous for both our households to be allied one with the other. I've a likely nephew. He's a good lad, almost nineteen— The fuller seemed ready to go on at length, but shrieks erupted from the yard, followed by angry voices. She rose with a grunt of anger.” Gutta, give the weaver's niece the cloth that's done." To Anna's relief, she strode out to the yard, where Anna heard her voice raised in a blistering scolding.

A girl no older than Anna transferred the fulled and dried cloth into Anna's keeping as soon as Anna tucked distaff and spindle into her belt. She layered the good scarlet cloak in between the other cloth, for protection, and stamped twice to attract Helen's attention. She held a dozen folded lengths of cloth that Mistress Suzanne would either trade to tailors' row or finish herself into cloaks and winter clothing. With a sigh of satisfaction, she left the fullers' yard behind.

As usual, she had saved the best delivery for last.

She loved visiting the mayor's palace. The guards at the gate recognized her and let her and Helen inside without any trouble, although one of them, a lad not more than twenty years of age, bent down to speak to her.

"I beg you, sister, say a good word for me to the lovely Frederun. I know she favors you for the handsome cloth you bring."

The other guard snorted.” This girl's mute, Ernust. She can't say anything to the lovely Frederun, not that it would mean much to you if she did! She hasn't taken a man to her bed since Lord Wich-man went away. Get on with you, then, child, and leave us out here in the cold. Maybe poor Ernust's nether parts will cool off a little!"

The palace compound had a neat layout, easy to get around. The stables and storerooms lay to one side, the palace on the other, and the kitchens at the far end of the central courtyard so that any fire that might break out wouldn't spread to the other buildings. Despite the Eika occupation, the palace had survived more-or-less intact. One wing of the stables still lay in ruins, and three of the storerooms had burned to the ground and lay in various stages of repair.

The eastern gate had fallen in completely to make a great heap of stone, but it had taken all this time to make the palace interior habitable and only this winter had his lordship sent to Kas-sel and Autun to find engineers who could direct the rebuilding of the gate.

The palace itself had a great hall and several wings, one of them fully three stories tall, added on over many years. Anna mads her way around to the carters' entrance and was admitted to the servants' hal , a goodly chamber busy with women sewing up rents in

linens, mixing cordials, binding up sachets of aromatic herbs to relieve the smell in the closed-up winter rooms, and polishing the mayor's silver plate, salvaged in the headlong retreat from Gent.

Frederun had become chief of the servingwomen of the palace mostly because Lord Wichman had quickly singled her out when he'd taken over the lordship of Gent after the great victory over Bloodheart and the Eika. She had a chair set at the largest table, the seat of her authority, and when she saw Anna, she beckoned her forward and took the cloak from her. Standing, she shook it out.

Work in the hall came to a halt.

"Truly," said Frederun, "Mistress Suzanne has outdone herself this time!" The cloak had a rich scarlet hue, fur lining, and a beautifully sewn trim in a fanciful design of elegant dragons outlined in gold-dyed thread.

"Surely that's not for you, Frederun?" demanded an older woman whose face bore an unsightly scar, the mark of an Eika ax.

"Nay, it's for Lord Hrodik. Now that Lord Wichman is gone, he fancies himself the proud defender of the city. It's to go over his armor."

The women laughed.

"His sister's armor, you mean," continued the scarred woman.” He'll never be half the fighter Lady Amalia was, may God bless her name."

All the women there drew the Circle of Unity at their breasts and murmured a prayer for peace. Many of them remembered the noble lady who had died of her wounds after the battle for Gent that Count Lavastine and King Henry had won.

"No sense in calling the poor young man names, for all his faults," scolded Frederun.” The rats have fled the nest, and the mouse that's left us is a kinder master than they ever were."

"True-spoken words," agreed the scarred woman, resting a hand on Frederun's shoulder.” You took the brunt of it, friend. We've none of us forgotten that."

Frederun traced the outlines of dragons embroidered along the edge of the rich fabric. She had dreamy eyes of a limpid brown, the kind one imagined gazing into a lover's ardent gaze, set off by light hair caught back and covered by a shawl tied so loosely that curling strands of hair had escaped to frame her pretty face. She was, everyone agreed, the second handsomest woman in Gent.

"Come, now," she said, shaking off her reverie impatiently without responding to her companion's comment, "here's these two lasses who must be cold from walking outside in that wind just so Lord Hrodik can have his cloak the instant he desires it! Here, child, let you and your sister come in and have a bit of hot cider to drink for it's that cold Out, isn't it now? Sit by the hearth." She addressed one of the younger servants.” Give them a slice of apple, and be sure they have a bit of cake from the lord's table as well." She clapped her hands sharply twice.” Back to work! Let's have no sleeping in the hall. We've little enough light these months as it is. Fastrada!" The scarred woman had taken the cloak from her to fold it up.” I pray you, will you see that the cloak is delivered to Lord Hrodik?"

"Truly, Frederun, you know how he will complain if you're not the one to deliver it to him."

Frederun exclaimed sharply on a gusty sigh, but she reached for the cloak and finished folding it with practiced ease. She had strong hands from years of hard work, although certainly she couldn't have been more than twenty years of age.”

Why must he believe he is owed what Wichman took?"

No one else appeared to be listening, perhaps only because of the boring familiarity of the situation.” Can you not speak to Bis-cop Suplicia?" asked Fastrada.

"She is kin by way of certain cousins to Lord Hrodik's family. Why should she feel any compassion for a bond servant like me? Do I not owe service to their noble house?"

"I thought you served at the mayor's palace, not in the lord's bed."

"You know as well as I that Mayor Werner was the last of his family. Nay, the noble lords have hold of Gent now, and they won't give it up."

The older woman frowned sourly.” Very well. I'll take the cloak up to him, and let him bleat as he may."

Frederun cast down her gaze, as though in exhaustion.” I thank you." She straightened one of her sleeves and wiped a fleck of ash, floating out from the hearth, out of an eye.” He has grown worse—

"Since the weather keeps him locked inside instead of out hunting. Truly, he has more cock than sense!"

°°

"Isn't that true of most men!" interposed one of the younger women. She had a pretty mouth, bright eyes, and pox marks on her cheeks.” Here, Fastrada, I'll take the cloak up to his lordship. He fancies me, and I want some of that honey he hoards, for my family to trade for cloth for my sister's dowry."

"Take care, Uota, that you don't walk into a fire so hot that it burns you,"

replied Frederun quietly.

"I hadn't heard you were so shy," retorted Uota with a flash of anger, "in the days before Lord Wichman took to beating you for his pleasure. It's said you gave yourself freely enough if the lord was of princely disposition."

"Hush, Uota!" cried Fastrada, although Frederun made no reply except to sink down on the bench beside Anna.” You're a latecomer here. You can't know what any of us suffered—

Uota took the cloak and flounced out.

"Here, now," began Fastrada as the other servants turned away to give the illusion of privacy, although truly there were no secrets in the servants' hall.”

Frederun—

The younger woman raised a hand to forestall further comment, and after a moment Fastrada moved away to supervise three women polishing the silver plate.

Anna examined Frederun with interest and pity. It seemed to her that they shared something in common, she and the serving-woman: they had survived the worst kind of hardship and found themselves in a decent and even prosperous life, with a warm bed and two ample meals every day, yet she recognized in Frederun's expression a discontent like her own, bothersome and mysterious. Why couldn't she just be satisfied, as Matthias was?

Little Helen looked up suddenly, slid the rose from behind her ear, and presented it to Frederun.

"Ai, thank you, child!" Tears welled up in Frederun's eyes. She brought the rose to her face and sniffed at it, smiling ruefully.” All the scent's gone. Where did you find such a lovely treasure?"

Anna signed as well as she could, and unlike many people, Frederun watched her hands carefully, intent on what she was trying to communicate.” By the city wall? Nay, here, the palace wall. Ah, of course! It's one of the offerings folk leave." Her face shuttered, growing still and thoughtful, as she touched the wooden Circle that hung from her neck.” Some things are hard to forget," she CHILD or FLAME muttered, stroking the rose's withered petals before collecting herself with a shake of the head.” Will your aunt make a wedding cloak as fine for her betrothed, the tanner she's to marry in the spring?"

Anna smiled and nodded, but what flashed across Frederun's expression was difficult to understand: Pain? Longing? Envy?

"She's done well, has your aunt. None knows better than I what she suffered in Steleshame at the hands of Lord Wichman. I remember pitying her there. How could I have known it was to come to me in my time?" She straightened up sharply with a frown.” No sense in sorrowing over what's past, is there, little sister? You've suffered more than I, poor child, not able to speak a word." She wiped a smear of soot off Helen's delicate face.” And this poor creature, what will become of her with such a pretty face to plague her all her years?"

Helen smiled beatifically up at Frederun, for she was always the happiest of creatures as long as she was fed and clean. A pang gripped Anna's heart, hearing truth in Frederun's words. Probably Helen would never be quite right in the head, and her child's beauty, if it held as she grew, would only bring her grief.

"Come now," added Frederun briskly, "you finish that up and get you home or Mistress Suzanne will be fearing for you and the little one with dusk coming on."

Standing, she had just turned to call to one of her women when the door slammed open, helped by a gust of wind, and two of the mayor's guardsmen came in, beards tipped with ice, slapping their hands together to warm them.

"Ho, Mistress Frederun!" cried one in a voice too loud for the hall, pitched to carry over the wind.” There's a great party of soldiers and their noble lord ridden in, come to beg hospitality of Lord Hrodik."

"And to grant themselves first pickings at the armory," added his comrade irritably.

Frederun froze, as might a rabbit when the shadow of an owl skimmed across it.” Who might it be? Is it Wichman, returned?"

"Nay. They come from the west. They're riding east to fight the Quman. I saw no banner, nor did I speak to the outriders. You'll have to go into the hal to see who it might be."

Frederun hadn't time to answer before a trio of flustered servingmen hurried into the hall through another door, calling out Lord Hrodik's orders.

Anna grabbed a last bit of cake and wolfed it down before getting her arms around her load of cloth and hustling Helen out of the way. The winter wind hit hard as they came out into the courtyard. Men called to each other in the stables, and the yard had the look of a hive of bees stirred into action. Two outriders stood chatting with the stable master, but they wore no device to indicate to which noble kin they owed allegiance. No one paid any mind as she and Helen left by the western gate, nor did she see any war party on the streets as they cut through the town square, past the cathedral, and came back around to the other side of the mayor's palace. The eastern gate here was a tumble of stone. More than one child had broken a leg or an arm climbing these ruins.

Beyond the marketplace, quiet in winter except for a flurry of activity around the butchers' stalls, lay a number of workshops: smal er compounds made up of a house, workshops, and outbuildings surrounded by a wall.

With Helen tagging at her heels, Anna crossed the marketplace to the open gate that let her into the place she now called home, the workshop taken over by the woman everyone called her aunt, Suzanne. Once known to all of Steleshame as Mistress Gisela's niece, Suzanne was now known in the city of Gent simply as the weaver, although of course in a city as large as Gent, crammed with fully five thousand people so the biscop claimed, there were other weavers. None of them were asked to supply fine cloaks and tunics to the lord who resided in the mayor's palace.

Out in the courtyard, by the trough, a donkey stood patiently, one leg cocked slightly as its ear twitched at each shudder of wind. Raimar was sawing a log into planks, his pale hair caught back with a leather thong. He had stripped down to his summer tunic. The light fabric showed off the breadth of his shoulders. Flecks of sawdust flew from the wood, scattering like pale gold dust around his feet on the hard packed earth.

Young Autgar held the other end of the saw. He was singing in an off-key voice about the pain roasting his heart because it had been three days since he'd caught sight of the beautiful shepherd girl, which was after all a strange song for Autgar to be singing since he'd been married two years before in Steleshame to one of Suzanne's weavers and had two children already.

Raimar whistled sharply, and they laid up the saw. He turned to grin at the two girls.” Take those into the wool room, Anna. Suzanne was just asking after you. I see you still have some crumbs on your face. I told her you'd be dining at your ease at "the mayor's palace!"

Anna smiled back at him, and Helen ran over to watch the bubbling dye pot, this day stewing yarn to a strong tansy yellow.

Anna left Helen outside and went into the workshop, a long, low room hazy with smoke. Four looms stood in the workshop, and Suzanne's three assistants worked, each with a girl at her side learning the trade. A toddler raced around the room, shrieking with delight, while an infant slept in a cradle set rocking by one of the girls.

Anna crossed through the side door that led into the darker chamber, shuttered in, where fleeces, raw and scoured wool, and spun wool stored in skeins as well as unsold cloth were stored. The weighty scent of all that wool comforted her, dense and pungent. Suzanne was standing at the table, haggling with a farmer out of West Farms over the skeins of yarn he'd brought her.

"This just isn't as good quality as the last lot. I can't give you as much for it."

Anna set down her cloth on the table and got out her spindle so that she could spin while she waited for the negotiations to end. In time the farmer took away cloth as payment for his yarn.

"You've crumbs on your face, Anna," said Suzanne as she sorted through the yarn, setting some on one shelf and some on another, according to its quality and fineness.” I hope they fed you well at the palace, for we're fasting tonight.

Raimar brings news from the tannery." She examined Anna with a smile. That smile, no doubt, had gotten her into trouble before, just because of the way it made her face turn rosy and sweet.” Nay, I'll let Matthias tell you himself! Come, give me a hand with this yarn. Move what's at the back of the shelf forward.

That lot. Prior Humilicus came by. They're bringing in a dozen novices on St.

Eusebe's Day and he wants enough cloth for a dozen robes by summer. Did you know that Hano the saddler's daughter is to marry next autumn? To a young man all the way from Osterburg, if you can believe that!"

She chatted on in this companionable way as they tidied up the wool room. It was her way of making Anna comfortable. After they got everything in order, Suzanne returned to her loom while

Anna picked up the baby, who had woken and begun to fuss, so that her mother could finish off a line before nursing.

In the afternoon, with winter twilight sighing down outside, Matthias came in with Raimar and Autgar. He was taller than Suzanne now, filled out enormously from a combination of steady meals and hard work. He stank of the tannery, and as he washed the worst of the stink off his hands, he broke his news.” Anna! I'm to be taken in as a journeyman at the tanning works!"

His words left her cold, although she managed to hug him. They all expected her to be happy for him. He continued to speak as he stepped back from Anna, exchanging a look with his betrothed, the youngest of the weavers who had fled Steleshame with Suzanne. She was a girl about his age who had round cheeks and clever hands.” I'll live at the tannery now, and I'll have every other Hefensday off."

They all fell to talking as they made ready to attend the Hefensday Eve service, washing their hands, tidying their clothing, the women relying their hair scarves.

Because Anna couldn't join in the talk, she waited by the door like a lost child peeking in at a feast of camaraderie she could never share in. Matthias would move on with his life. After everything they'd survived together, he was leaving her behind. She could never be more than an afterthought in his new life. She wasn't more than an afterthought in any of their lives, not really, no matter how kindly they treated her.

Reflexively, she drew her finger in a circle around her wooden Circle of Unity, the remembered gesture that her mother had habitually repeated in moments of fear or sadness or worry. What had become of the Eika prince who, when they had crept to the door of the crypt in the cathedral, had watched them silently and let them go? He had drawn his finger, just so, around the Circle of Unity he wore at his chest, although she still could not fathom why a savage Eika would wear a Circle, symbol of the faith of the Unities.

Tears filled her eyes suddenly, bringing with them the bitter memory of the young lord who had knelt before her at Steleshame and spoken gently to her.

She hadn't answered him, and ever after that moment, she had lost her voice, as though God were punishing her for her silence.

"Here, now, Anna," said Suzanne, "it's a fine day for Matthias, is it not?" With a smile, she tugged Anna along with her, gesturing <> to the others to follow.”

You look well enough, lass. You won't disgrace us when we process like a fine and wealthy family into church, will you?"

Helen was wiggling in Raimar's arms, and he was laughing good-naturedly as he tried to wipe a sooty stain gotten God knew where off her cheek. The rest of the household trailed behind Suzanne like so many sheep, and in this cheerful fashion they made their way down the dusky streets to the cathedral.

On Lordsday many folk crowded into the cathedral for the evening services, for tomorrow would be Hefensday, seventh and therefore highest of the days of the week. The service had already started as they entered, making their way down the nave to the spot under a window painted with a scene of the blessed Daisan teaching his disciples. An ugly scar still marred the painted robe of the blessed Daisan, where an Eika weapon had mauled the paint. Most of the pillars had sustained damage during the Eika occupation. Stone angels, gargoyles, and eagles carved into the pilasters bore rake marks, as though they had been repeatedly clawed by a creature powerful enough to gouge stone. The paved floor had been scrubbed often enough that only a few traces of the fires that had burned here remained. The shattered windows had been restored first, although one was still boarded over.

At the altar, a cleric led the congregation in the seventh-day hymn. '"Happy that person who finds refuge in God!'"

The altar had been cleaned and polished to a gleam, a holy cup of gold placed upon it, together with the ivory-bound book containing the Holy Verses out of the which the clerics and the biscop dictated the service. Only one object lent a discordant note to the apse: a heavy chain fastened to the base of the altar, hammered in with an iron spike.

Anna remembered the daimone whom Bloodheart had chained to the altar in misery. Suzanne noticed her shuddering, and put an arm around her to comfort her. But nothing could ever drive out that recollection, flashes of recognition that always assaulted her when they came to services.

"In the crypt lies the path you seek,” the daimone had said in its unformed, hoarse voice. By that path she and Matthias had escaped Gent.

Yet it was the Eika who had stood by silently to let them escape. Matthias had forgotten that, but she never would.

The toddler had fallen asleep, but the baby was wakeful, now and again smacking its lips and taking a quick nurse at its mother's breast as the clerics sang the opening hymns.

"Where do you think Lord Hrodik is?" Raimar said to Suzanne. He caught Anna looking at him, and smiled at her. He always treated her and Matthias well. He had lost his family to the Eika, a young bride, his parents, and three brothers, and like Suzanne he was determined to make a good life for himself out of the wreckage. For that reason, as well as mutual respect, they had come to an agreement a few months ago and announced their betrothal, to be consummated in the spring.

Suzanne craned her neck to see the front of the congregation. The Lord's place near the altar stood empty.” He hasn't missed a Hefensday Eve service once since Lord Wichman quit the city. That must be fully eight months ago."

"Nay, love, he missed services that one time when he was caught out in a storm and broke his nose."

Suzanne stifled a giggle. In Steleshame she hadn't laughed much. No one had smiled much in Steleshame, but after being thrown to the dogs by her Aunt Gisela, Suzanne had had less reason to smile than most. Yet, in time, prosperity had cured her ills. She seemed content enough.

Anna only wished she felt content as well, but every night she dreamed of the young lord, Count Lavastine's heir. She couldn't remember his name. It seemed to her that he was weeping and lost, torn between sorrow and rage at the indignities and pain suffered by those he had loved.

Surely she could have helped him, if she had only spoken up. That must be the reason God were punishing her.

The clerics led the congregation in a hymn as the biscop entered from the side porch and took her place in her high seat behind the altar.

"Like a dry and thirsty land that has no water, so do I seek God.

With my body wasted with longing, I come before God in the sanctuary.

As I lift my hands in p ayer

r

I am satisfied as with a feast, and in the watches of the night I trust in the love which shelters me.”

The cleric leading the singing faltered, face washing pale, and a hush poured forward like a wave from the great doors at the entrance to the cathedral.

Everyone turned to look.

A nobleman stood in the entry way. He seemed frozen, hesitant, as if he could not make his feet move him forward into the nave. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a sharply foreign look about him: a bronze-complexioned face, high cheekbones, and night-black hair cut to hang loose at his shoulders. His features struck Anna with a disquiet that made her mouth go dry. He seemed familiar, but she couldn't place him. Lord Hrodik waited awkwardly behind him, staring at the big man in awe.

Suzanne staggered, and Raimar steadied her on his arm.” Prince Sanglant," she whispered.

The nobleman's gaze swept the congregation. For an uncanny instant, Anna actually thought he found and fastened on Suzanne, alone of the throng.

Suzanne made a noise in her throat—whether a protest or 'a prayer was hard to tell—and hid her face against Raimar's shoulder.

As if that muffled sound goaded him forward, he strode up the aisle without looking to his left or to his right. The altar brought him up short. He stared at the chain lying at rest in a heap at the stone base, nostrils flaring like those of a spooked horse. The biscop hurried forward from her seat, but he dropped down to a crouch without greeting her and reached to touch the chain as though it were a poisonous snake.

"God save us." Matthias grasped Anna's arm so tightly that his grip pinched her skin.” It's the daimone!"

Anna shook her head numbly. The daimone trapped here by Bloodheart had not been human; it had only taken on human form when it had been forced down out of the heavens and into its painful imprisonment within the bounds of earth.

"It wasn't a daimone at all," Matthias went on breathlessly, "but a noble man, that same prince they spoke of. By what miracle did he survive?"

Sweating now and shaking, the prince settled to his knees before the altar and looked unlikely to budge. Lord Hrodik hurried forward as if to remonstrate with him, but a slender cleric placed himself between the two men and with an outstretched hand waved to the young lord to move away.

Biscop Suplicia was not easily startled, although for an instant her lips parted in astonishment. She gestured to her clerics to step back, resumed chanting the service alone in a resonant soprano. Slowly, in stuttering gasps, her clerics joined in, although many of them could not stop staring at the man in his rich tunic and finely-embossed belt who had fallen to his knees right there before the altar. It was hard to tell if he were remarkably pious, stricken by God's mercy, or simply striving not to fall apart altogether, for his hands clutched at that chain until his knuckles whitened and a trickle of blood ran from one scraped finger.

In this way, the congregation, led by an anxious Lord Hrodik, dutifully followed the service to completion. The prince spoke not one word throughout, and when the biscop lifted her hands to heaven at the close of the final prayer, he bolted up as though he'd been nipped. That fast, like a wind from heaven, he fled down the aisle toward the entryway, then suddenly cut through the crowd, who parted fearfully before him.

Anna darted away, using her elbows to make a path for herself through the crowd, which was by now in a furious state of excitement, everyone talking at once. The prince ducked under the doorway that led down to the crypt, and the folk following in his wake hesitated. The crypt below Gent had become a charnel house during the Eika occupation, and few dared walk there.

But Anna had to find him, to see if it were truly the same creature. Perhaps he was only masquerading as a man, or perhaps he had been a man all along, cast out of a mold different than that from which most folk were formed.

She hurried down the steep curve of the steps, remembering the way the darkness hit abruptly. The noise of the congregation washed away with unexpected suddenness, and she barely recalled the jarring end to the steps as she stumbled down the last one.

She was blind.

He said, out of the darkness, "Liath?" The voice drifted to her, scarcely more than a whisper, but memory flooded back as she <> swayed, made dizzy by fear and the pounding of her heart. She would never forget that voice, the hoarse scrape to it, as though it hadn't formed quite right. Of course, she did not reply.

His boots scuffed the floor. An unvoiced curse came off his lips in a hiss. A hand brushed her shoulder. Then he grabbed her arm.” Who are you?"

She could not answer.

He touched her face, exploring it with his free hand, grunted, gave up in disgust, and released her.

A soft glow penetrated the gloom, advancing steadily. Torchlight made her blink. The slender cleric who had stood beside the prince at the altar moved hesitantly off the last step and ventured into the vaults.

"Sanglant?" He extended the torch first this way and then that, pausing in surprise when he caught Anna in its smoky light. Beyond, the prince stood mostly in shadow, at the edge of the light, staring fixedly into the depths of the crypt, an impenetrable gloom beyond the torch's smoky flare.

"Do you know this girl?" demanded the prince.” She seems familiar to me, but I can't recall her."

She wanted to tell him, but she could not speak.” Who are you, girl?" asked the cleric in a kind voice, examining her. She could only shake her head, and abruptly he moved past her, following the prince on into the vault, past the gravestones of the holy dead, those who were once biscops and deacons. Anna trailed after them, torn by curiosity and longing. Anyway, she didn't want to be left alone in the dark.

"She brought them here," said the prince to his companion.” Liath led the refugees into this crypt. There was a passage, so they say. That's how the children were saved from the ruin of Gent."

They wandered farther in, vaults lost in the darkness that spread everywhere outside the torch's light. Anna was too terrified to leave them. At every step she expected her feet to crunch on the bones of the dead soldiers who had lain here, decaying, when she and Matthias had passed through, but she saw no trace of them now, not even a finger bone, not even a forgotten knife. The miraculous light carried by St. Kristine had led the two children through the vault to the secret passage, but she could not now recall what path they had taken nor recognize any landmarks.

The prince halted beside one newly carved stone, an effigy of a lady fitted in armor. Her carved face lay in repose, peaceful and, perhaps, a little stubborn even in death.” This must be the grave of Lord Hrodik's sister, Lady Amalia. She died when they took back the city."

"Come, my friend," said the cleric sadly, "let us climb out of this place." He glanced at Anna, aware that she followed them.” Can you speak, child? Know you the passage of which Prince Sanglant speaks?"

She dared only to shake her head. She knew she would never find it again.

"It's closed to such as me," said the prince bitterly.” Ai, God, Heribert, my heart is torn out of me. Five months have passed. Was it only a vision I saw at Angenheim? Liath must be dead."

"Nay, do not say so. How can we know? There are so many mysteries we do not comprehend."

The prince threw back his head and howled like a dog. The horrible sound reverberated through the crypt, echoing and whispering down the vaults and through the many chambers. The cleric stumbled back in surprise, bumping into Anna, and almost dropped the torch.

The prince shuddered all over, pressing a palm to his head. Light shivered over him, steadying as Heribert got a good grip on the torch.

"Your Highness?" the cleric asked softly.

Prince Sanglant dropped his hand. His expression was grim and angry, but his gaze was quite sane.” Nay, I beg your pardon, my friend. Liath stood here with me once, that day Bloodheart breached the walls." He caught in a breath, then went on.” Lord help me. I never thought I'd have the courage to touch those chains."

"Come," said Heribert, "you've had courage enough for one day. Lord Hrodik promises to entertain us with the best wine in Saony."

"That's not the worst thirst I'm suffering." He walked to the edge of the flickering light thrown off by the torch and surveyed the gloom. With his back to her, Anna could not see his expression.” I heard it told that my Dragons were thrown down here to rot, but I see no sign of them." He stood there for a while in silence. The torch snapped and popped. Smoke tickled her nose. She sniffed hard and sneezed.

"Come," said the prince, as if the sound spurred him out of his reverie. He took the torch from the cleric and led them back up into the light.

"Why did you go down into the crypt?" Suzanne demanded later, when they had escaped the crowd and gotten home to a still-burning hearth, just enough warmth that they could take off their cloaks and sit sipping cider to warm their stomachs. A servant girl, left behind to tend to the house, served them, bringing mugs to pass around before taking a drink herself from the ladle.” It's dark down there. You might have gotten hurt."

Anna said nothing.

Suzanne sipped at her cider but could not leave the question alone.

"What did he say to you?" Her fingers asked another question, playing selfconsciously with her hair. She glanced at Raimar, who regarded her with thoughtful concern and a flicker of distress in his expression.” Why did you follow the prince down into the crypt?"

Anna couldn't answer, not even with such signs as she had learned to communicate with. She couldn't answer because she didn't know.

There were so many mysteries that humankind simply could not comprehend.

TO his surprise, Zacharias had come to admire the prince in the months they had journeyed eastward from one noble estate to the next. Prince Sanglant was frank, fair, honest, and a resolute leader, and he never asked anyone to do anything he wasn't willing to do himself.

"Nay, I never expected willingly to follow along in a noble lord's retinue,"

Zacharias said to Heribert as they shared a platter in the great hall of the mayor's palace in Gent, where wine flowed freely and a young apprentice poet mangled a hymn celebrating the encounter between the aged Herodia of Jeshuvi and the blessed Daisan in which the future saint had prophesied that the young Daisan would bring light to a benighted world.

"In truth, I never thought I would sit down to eat with a common man," replied Heribert thoughtfully. Sanglant sat at the high table, drinking heavily and speaking little as young Lord Hrodik boasted about a recent boar hunt in which he'd broken his nose.

"It was to escape men such as you that I became a frater rather than a monastic, for in a monastery I'd have had to bow down to a master born of noble kinfolk. My grandmother despised nobles as thieves and louts. She said they lived off the labor of honest farmers, and forced their foreign God of Unities onto those who preferred to worship in the old ways."

"She was a heathen?"

"Truly, she was. She worshiped the old gods. They repaid her faithfulness with a long life and prosperity and many grandchildren."

Heribert sighed. The young cleric had a lean, clever face, almost delicate, and the most aristocratic manners of any nobly born person Zacharias had ever come into contact with, although in all honesty he had not rubbed shoulders with noble folk much in his life. He had spent more of his adult life among the barbaric Quman tribes, to his sorrow.

"What fate befell your grandmother is long since settled. It is your soul I fear for, Zacharias. You do not pray with us."

"Yet I pray in my own way, and not to my grandmother's gods. Let us not have this conversation again, I beg you, for nothing you say will change my mind. I saw a vision—"

"Who is to say that it was not the Enemy who cast dust into your eyes?"

"Peace, friend. I know what I saw."

Heribert lifted a hand in capitulation.

Zacharias chuckled.” I will not pollute your ears with another description of the vision granted me. You are safe from that, at least."

"Safer from that than from this poet's wailing."

Zacharias snorted, for indeed the poet was not as skilled as he ought to have been—or else he was drunk.” Better the poet's song than Lord Hrodik's boasting.

Is there a male servant among those serving at the high table? All of them women, as if to boast that he's bedding one or all of them each night." He had never shaken his grandmother's distaste for thralldom, and could not keep the disgust from his voice.” I suppose they're bonded servants, and cannot leave his service even if they wished to."

Heribert looked at him in surprise.” We are all of us dependents in one manner or another. Regnant and skopos, too, are vassals of God. How is this different?"

"Does God force regnant and skopos to be whores against their will?"

Chief among the servants and the one who stood somewhat removed from the others, directing the flow of food and drink into the hall, was a remarkably pretty young woman whose handsome features were marred only by a scar along her lower lip, as if she'd been bitten hard enough to draw blood. Lord Hrodik seemed determined to make an ass of himself by continually calling her over and making much of her presence, although any idiot could see that the poor woman had fallen completely under the spell of Prince Sanglant's charisma. Trying not to stare at the prince, she made it all the more obvious that she was trying not to stare at him.

"Ai, Lord," said Heribert with a rueful smile, "there is one woman who has caught Sanglant's eye."

"How can you tell? It seems to me he looks at her no differently nor more often than he does the others."

Heribert chuckled softly.” Does it seem so to you? Yet I think it seems otherwise to her. She's both shapely and handsome, and I fear me that our prince is particularly susceptible to women like her."

"Pretty enough," agreed Zacharias, who did not object to admiring handsome women and in years past—before his mutilation—had fallen short of his vows a handful of times.” Perhaps it's your own chastity you must watch over, friend, rather than the prince's."

Heribert blushed slightly.” Nay, friend, the charms of women hold no power over me. Pity poor Lord Hrodik. He fades quickly

when seated beside Sanglant, and the more so because of his incessant bragging."

"Truly, he wouldn't have lasted a day among the Quman tribes. For all that they were savages, no man among them dared boast of his exploits unless he were truly a warrior and hunter."

"Lord Hrodik's retinue is agreed that he shot a buck last month, so perhaps he can be accounted a hunter."

Zacharias laughed, unaccustomed to hearing the fastidious cleric resort to sarcasm.

Prince Sanglant's head came up at the sound, and he stood abruptly. The poet broke off in confusion, staring around wildly as if he thought an armed party might thunder into the hall.

"I pray you, Brother Zacharias," said the prince, turning to address him across the length of two tables, "if you can recite the hymn to St. Herodia, then do so.

You know it perfectly, do you not?"

Zacharias rose, handing the wine cup to Heribert.” I can recite it, Your Highness, if it pleases you."

"It would please me greatly." Sanglant left the high table and came to sit beside Heribert, throwing himself into Zacharias' seat and gulping down what was left of the wine in his cup, leaving only dregs.” Ai, God," he said in a low voice, "I have no more patience for that pup's tail wagging nor for that truckler who claims to be a poet." He looked around desperately, lifting his cup, and the handsome servingwoman rushed forward to fill it, pouring the wine through a silver sieve that filtered out most of the dregs. Sanglant stared at her frankly, and she did not lower her eyes, so that this time it was the prince who looked away first, coloring somewhat, although a blush was hard to see against his bronze complexion. Lord Hrodik called to her sharply, and she hurried away to attend to him.

"Ai, Lord," muttered the prince.” I am not fit to be a monk."

"Our lord prince needs distraction," murmured Heribert to Zacharias.

When young, Zacharias had devised a way of memorizing the hymns and verses he loved so much by thinking of them as beasts tied up in a stable, each one in a separate stall and each stall marked by a bird or plant to remind him of its first unique word or phrase, something to launch him into the words. Walking down that stall in his mind's eye, he found a figure of a vulture, known as the prophet among birds, carrying a stalk of barley, called hordeum in Dariyan and sharing enough sounds with "Herodia" that it was easy to recall the second out of the first. It took him as much time as it took the prince to drain another cup of wine to gather the first words onto his tongue.

"Let us praise the first prophet, called Herodia, Who walked among the streets and temples of Jeshuvi And did not turn her eye away from mortal weakness, Nor did she fear to speak harshly to those who transgressed God's law."

Once he had begun, the words flowed freely, one linking itself to the next in an unbroken chain. It was the genius, so his grandmother had said, that the gods had granted to him. The frater who had brought the word of the Unities to their frontier village had praised him, telling him that he had been named well, for truly the angel of memory, Zachriel, had visited a holy gift upon him.

"So let the holy St. Herodia speak her blessings upon Us all, For her word is the word of truth.”

As he finished, he heard the prince mutter an exclamation just as Lord Hrodik jumped to his feet.

"Look here, cousin!" cried the young lord as a dozen townsfolk entered the hall, looking nervously about themselves. Unfortunately, the young woman standing at the head of the party with the scarf signifying her status as a respectable householder tied over her hair was even prettier than the servingwoman.

Sanglant rose with cup in hand and his familiar, captivating smile on his face.

"Come, Mistress Suzanne," exclaimed Hrodik impatiently as she and her kinfolk hesitated.” I have called you to attend me here in order to honor you, not to eat you." He giggled at his own joke. Certain of his attendants made laughing noises as well, glancing over at the prince to see if he found the comment as funny as Hrodik did. But the prince had not taken his gaze from Mistress Suzanne's person since she'd entered the hall. Hrodik made a great show of leaving his place at the high table and moving out to the center of the hall, his feet half smothered in rushes, where he must become the center of attention simply by virtue of his position.

"You must not fear to stand before Prince Sanglant, for truly he is a noble prince and no harm will come to you. Come forward, for I mean to show Prince Sanglant what help we can be to him, here in Gent. His soldiers aren't properly outfitted for this winter weather. I mean to convince him to abide a while here while we provide him with such cloaks and armor as is fitting to his magnificence." He almost fell over himself with eagerness as he beckoned to the pretty servingwoman, who appeared at a side door.” Come, now, Frederun. Do you now bring forward those gifts which I mean to present to the prince, so that he may later boast of the fine hospitality he met in my hall!"

Sanglant still hadn't taken his gaze from Mistress Suzanne, but she had not looked at him at all, except for one shuttered glance. The man beside her kept his hand on her arm.

"Well," Heribert murmured as Zacharias sidled over to stand behind his chair,

"there's one who's as handsome as Liath."

Sanglant glanced down at Heribert with a sharp smile composed more of irritation than amusement.” I am not my father, Heribert."

"Nay," agreed Heribert companionably, "for King Henry was famous for never walking down the path of debauchery, even after his wife died."

"How can sinless congress, when a woman and a man of their own free will join together for mutual pleasure, be counted debauchery? The Lord and Lady conceived the Holy Word between them, Brother, is that not so? Is not the universe and Earth their creation, brought about by desire?"

"By joining together in lawful congress."

Sanglant laughed, and every soul in the hall turned to look at him.” Truly, Heribert, it does me no good to dispute church doctrine with you." He sat down abruptly and lowered his voice.” But I swear to you, friend, I do not think I can remain virtuous much longer."

Lord Hrodik bustled forward to meet the servant Frederun, who held a fine scarlet cloak in her arms. Behind her, a young serving-man carried an object draped with a sheet of linen. Hrodik grabbed the cloak out of her arms and shook it free to well-deserved exclamations of delight and amazement from the feasting crowd. The cloak was masterfully woven out of thread dyed a rich scarlet hue and trimmed by an accomplished hand with an embroidered edge of golden dragons twined each about the next.

"This is the work of Mistress Suzanne, whom I bring to your attention, Your Highness. Let me present it to you as a gift, for truly it is worthy of your eminence." Hrodik had gotten quite breathless with excitement as he draped the cloak over Sanglant's arms. His thin, pimply face shone with pride as he beckoned the young weaver forward, although she came reluctantly.

"Fine work, truly," said the prince in a tone that suggested that he praised the woman as much as the cloak. She still did not look at him.

"How many cloaks do you need for your soldiers?" demanded Hrodik.” Truly, you have full sixty soldiers in your retinue."

"Seventy-one," said Sanglant.

The weaver paled.” My lord, I can't supply you with so much cloth in so short a time!"

"Nay," cried Lord Hrodik expansively, "it need not be a short time. They can't ride east in this cold, nor with the spring thaws coming. I see no reason they can't abide with us for two months or more!"

The poor weaver looked ready to faint, but Zacharias had a strong hunch that it was not the order for cloth that made her anxious but the presence of the prince, who was still watching her as he ran a finger lightly around a tracery of dragon outlined in fine golden thread.

Lord Hrodik was clearly almost beside himself in his desperation to please the prince, and now he noticed Sanglant's fascination with the dragon embroidery.

He leaped forward to take the linen-shrouded object out of the servant's arms, whipping the cloth off to reveal a stunningly beautiful helmet, glorious iron trimmed with gold to suggest the fierce visage of a dragon.

Prince Sanglant jumped up so fast that his chair fell over backward, hitting the rushes with a resounding thud. He thrust the cloak into Heribert's arms, had to brace himself against the table as if he feared his legs would give out.

"Where did you get that?"

Hrodik looked startled and not a little scared by the prince's vehemence.” It came from the crypt, Your Highness. We recovered a great deal of armor there, after the king and Count Lavastine returned Gent to human sovereignty. Lord Wichman had this piece restored and polished, but he allowed no man to wear it.

Nor did he take it with him when he rode east to fight the Quman."

Slowly, Sanglant straightened.” What of the rest of the armor found there?" The casual words could not disguise a blossoming of pain in his voice, although truly his voice always sounded hoarse.

"Wichman's companions commandeered most of it," Hrodik said, "and his mother Duchess Rotrudis sent stewards to carry off the rest. Nothing as rich as this piece, of course, but all of it well made and—" He broke off, a look of horror on his face. Stammering nonsense, he set the helmet on the table between a platter of chicken eaten down to the bones and a bowl of fish stewed in broth.

"I pray, grant me your pardon, Your Highness." His hands were actually shaking.” I mistook myself. I cannot gift this to you, for it was yours once, was it not? When you were captain of the King's Dragons."

Sanglant hesitated, then touched the helmet as though it were an adder. After a moment, he slipped his fingers through the eye slots and lifted it to examine it more closely, turning it to study the dragon inlay, the raised wings wrapping around the helmet's curve, the gleaming face staring down its foe. Zacharias could not interpret the expression on his face, deep emotions surging beneath a taut control. Without a word, he tucked the helmet under his arm in a gesture obviously remembered more by his body than by his mind and strode from the hall without looking at anyone or making any polite excuses. He simply walked out, such a stark look on his face as might be seen on a man who had watched his beloved comrades fall one by one before him, without hope of saving even one.

So he had, hadn't he? Zacharias had heard the story of Gent from Fulk's soldiers, but it was a story they only told when out of the prince's hearing.

Yet wasn't that why soldiers followed him with their whole hearts? Because he gave his heart to them in turn? Prince Sanglant knew the name and history of every man in his retinue. Not one among them doubted that their prince would lead them bravely, fight with them until the end, grieve over any of the fallen, and pay fair restitution to the families of those who, if God so willed it, did not survive.

"Come with me," said Heribert in a low voice.

Zacharias didn't need to be told twice, but at the door he paused to look back just as Lord Hrodik, waking as though from a stupor, spoke in an almost apoplectic voice.

"Go now, Mistress, come with me. We must go to his chambers and discuss what manner of outfitting his soldiers need."

The weaver had a pleasant voice, low and melodic, although it shook a little.” I beg you, Lord Hrodik, it seems to me that the prince is in no humor to be plagued by a lowly common woman such as myself. I and the other weavers in Gent can provide what you wish, if you will only allow us to—"

"Nay! Nay! I will have him satisfied exactly as he wishes! I am still lord over this town. You will abide by my command!"

"I pray you, Brother." The whisper came from the corridor. Zacharias turned to see the servingwoman, Frederun, standing in the shadow where door met wall.

Heribert had already vanished down the hall. With all the windows along the outside wall of the corridor shuttered, it was too dark for him to make out her face.” Does the prince know that woman? The weaver?"

"I have not been with the prince more than five months. I know little of his past. Yet I must counsel you, sister, do not let lust overmaster you. I do not know what binds you to this place, but surely you realize that the prince will ride on, and you will remain behind."

"I am bound as a servant here, Brother. Will you counsel me now to accept meekly what God have ordained for such as me? Is all happiness to be denied me?"

"Nay, sister, I am not what you think I am," he said, stung by her tone.” My kinsfolk walked east to the marchlands rather than suffer under the yoke of servitude to any noble. Yet carnal desire furthers no ends but its own. Truly, you must care for yourself before you surrender to carnal urges. What if you get with child?"

"I was forced to be Lord Wichman's whore for six months," she said bitterly,

"and yet no child fastened itself to my womb. Ai, God." Her voice came as a sigh, ragged and desperate.” Did you see the way he looked at her?" Abruptly, she hurried away down the corridor.

With a frown, Zacharias returned to the chambers allotted to the prince, but the sight that greeted him there gave his heart ho peace. Prince Sanglant stood in the center of the room, his tall, broad-shouldered form made daunting by the magnificent dragon helmet he now wore. He turned at the sound of Zacharias'

footsteps, pulling the helmet off as though he didn't want anyone to see him wearing it.

"I fear you are about to be visited by Lord Hrodik, Your Highness," said Zacharias.

"Lord preserve me," muttered the prince, cocking his head to one side to listen.

He held the helmet, two fingers crooked into the eye slot, as though it were a comfortable weight.” She's with him."

"Who is she?" asked Heribert softly from his station beside the table. He watched Sanglant closely, a compassionate half smile on his face.

"Mistress Gisela of Steleshame had a handsome niece, whose name was Suzanne. She was a fine weaver. She wove cloaks for the King's Eagles, among other things. My Dragons and I spent a week's worth of nights at Steleshame getting refitted by the Stele-shame armorer, when we rode to Gent." He swore then, half laughing, and tossed the helmet to the boy, Matto, who had been left in the chamber to sit in attendance on the sleeping Blessing, her slack toddler body bundled all cozy in the middle of the big bed where Sanglant took his rest.

Matto caught the helmet, grunting at its weight, and ran his hands over the gold fittings in astonished awe.” Lord bless me. I've never seen aught like this in the whole of my days. Not even the king has a helm so grand as this!"

"Hush, Matto," said Sanglant, not unkindly.” Do not speak disrespectfully of King Henry, to whom God have granted Their favor."

"No, Your Highness," said the youth obediently.

By now, they could all hear Lord Hrodik as he approached down the hall, calling orders to one of his stewards in his wheedling, ill-tempered voice.” Go, therefore, and let the prince know we attend him at his pleasured"

Sanglant sat down in the chamber's only chair, a richly carved seat set on a thick Arethousan carpet woven with flowers and vines. He gestured to Matto to stand by the door. The youth scarcely had time to position himself there before a flustered steward made a great show of announcing Lord Hrodik.

By sitting down, Sanglant made the gulf between his authority and the authority of the young lord quite plain. He knew how to use his presence and his size to intimidate, and he did so now by leaning forward to brace his hands on his knees. Hrodik simpered and stammered and finally moved aside to let the young weaver step forward. She had such a high blush in her cheeks that she looked feverish. Still she would not meet Prince Sanglant's gaze.

"Well met," he said without any seeming irony.” It seems you are a renowned weaver in this town, Mistress."

"Yes, Your Highness." Boldly, she lifted her gaze to look at him, before sweeping it around the chamber, marking Heribert, Zacharias, the youth Matto by the door, the three young hounds panting under the table, who had been given to the prince as a gift by the monks of St. Gall, and finally at the bed. Now she was startled, eyes widening as she recoiled slightly.” Is this your child. Your Highness?"

"So it is," he agreed, still watching her.” That is my daughter, Blessing."

Mistress Suzanne found the carpet a fascinating sight, compared, at least, to the child on the bed. Such currents ran between the man and the woman that Zacharias thought that probably he could trace them, had he only the ability to see emotion as light.” A handsome and well-grown child. Your Highness. Any child must be accounted a blessing." She faltered as though brought up short by the snap of a whip. Her flush washed pale, but her voice remained strong.” Yet not every child is conceived in blessed circumstances. Some of us become pawns, Your Highness, to those whose worldly power is greater than their fear of God." She glanced for the first time back at her little retinue, her eager household, who stood clustered behind her staring at the prince in awe and trepidation. The man standing at the fore nodded reassuringly to her in the way of a good companion tied by bonds of trust and affection. Nothing like as handsome as the prince, he had the broad shoulders and thick forearms of a laborer, and a certain grim fatalism lay on his shoulders as he eyed the prince.

His rival, thought Zacharias, knowing the thought for truth as soon as it surfaced.

Mistress Suzanne continued to speak, and as each word fell it seemed to make the next one easier.” After the fall of Gent I was given against my will to Lord Wichman, while he lived with his retinue at Steleshame and harried the Eika.

After the Eika were driven out, I left my aunt and Steleshame and came to Gent to begin anew, and to escape Lord Wichman. I was already pregnant. In time I gave birth to his bastard child. Because he had taken up residence in Gent, as its lord, I feared letting him know of my presence in Gent because I did not want him to—" This was too much, and she could not finish the sentence.

"Knowing my cousin Wichman, as I do," Sanglant said softly, "I can see that you would not have wished him to know that you lived close by him."

She sighed gratefully, gathered her resolve, and went on.” Yet the child must be baptized, Your Highness. In this way, it came to the attention of Duchess Rotrudis. Before the babe was six months of age, a cleric came to our house and took the child away." She remained dry-eyed and confident.” I confess I was thankful to have that burden taken from me. I am sure the duchess has given the child a better life than I ever could. Truly, I could never love it, remembering what I suffered in its making."

Sanglant could never be fully still, yet even with one foot tapping quietly on the carpet beneath his chair he knew how to listen with his full attention. His attention became almost a second presence in the chamber, the cloak of power any great prince carries beside her. Even Hrodik dared not speak without permission. But the prince's silence, like assent, gave the weaver leave to go on.

"My household has prospered, Your Highness. Duchess Rotrudis was generous in paying me for the trouble of bearing her a grandchild. I used that restitution to improve my workshop. I had already pledged myself to this man, Raimar.

With our newfound prosperity we were able to make our vows of betrothal before the biscop. We will marry in the spring. Raimar was able to leave the tannery, for he was put there as a slave by the Eika in the last weeks of their occupation but had apprenticed before the invasion to a carpenter. With our servingman Autgar, he built two new looms and added on a wool room, as well as shelves and beds for the household, and other small projects."

"Nay, nay," said Sanglant, lifting a hand. She broke off, flushing hotly again.”

Truly, you have earned the prosperity you now enjoy. I will not disturb you any longer. If Lord Hrodik can see to it that I am supplied with twenty stout wool cloaks for my company, then I will ask nothing more of you."

"Do not think me ungrateful, Your Highness, I pray you." At last, she lifted her gaze to meet his. With his words, she had allowed herself to relax. The play of lantern light over her face made the curve of her full lips and the quiet brilliance of her eyes most striking, so that even Zacharias felt a stirring of desire.

Sanglant gave a sharp sigh.” Do not find me unmindful of the roses of summer,"

she said, "which can never be reclaimed although we recall their scent and sweetness and beauty with an ardent heart."

"You have my leave to depart," the prince said irritably.” You as well, Hrodik."

But as they turned to go, he called out.” Nay, stop a moment. Who is that girl?"

He indicated one of Suzanne's party. The girl had nothing of obvious interest about her except an odd burnt butter complexion, as though she had been dipped in a tanning vat. Mostly grown, not quite a woman but no longer a child, she stepped forward fearlessly to confront the prince. The top of her head didn't even come to his shoulder.

"I know you," he said, almost dreamily.

Heribert stepped forward.” She was the child who followed you down into the crypt, my lord prince."

"Nay, true enough, but I know her. / know her. What is your name, child?"

"She is mute, Your Highness." Mistress Suzanne stood protectively behind the child, setting a hand on her shoulder.” Her name is Anna. She and her brother Matthias escaped from Gent long after the Eika had taken it. How they survived there for all those months I do not know, but they got free of Gent through the intervention of St. Kristine and came to Steleshame. I brought them with me to Gent as part of my household. Her brother Matthias is betrothed to one of my younger weavers. He's now a journeyman at the tannery."

"You're the daimone," said the girl suddenly in a voice as hoarse as the scrape of sandpaper.

Suzanne shrieked, and her family began talking all at once, crowding forward to touch the girl.

"Ai, God," Suzanne said through tears.” She's not spoken a word for two years."

"Sanglant?" Heribert rushed forward to lay a hand on the prince's arm.

Zacharias, too, pressed forward to stand beside the prince, because Sanglant looked utterly stunned, as though an unexpected blow had slammed into his head.

Blessing woke up and began to cry, frightened by all the noise.” Dada! Dada! I want Dada!"

"Ai, God," Sanglant murmured, "it wasn't a dream at all. Those two children, the boy with the knife and the girl with the wooden Circle of Unity hanging at her chest. I thought it was a delusion."

Blessing wailed. She had the lungs for it, a voice to pierce the clamor of battle.

The girl, Anna, got to her first, picked her up, and carried her over to her father.

Sanglant took her without thinking. Blessing hid her face against his shoulder and, with a few hiccup-ing cries, lapsed into silence.

"Haven't you a nursemaid for this child?" the girl called Anna demanded, looking around the chamber. Although Zacharias could feel the familiar snap, like the taste of lightning in the air, that he had come to recognize as Jerna's presence, he could not see the aery daimone at all. But he felt the current of wind that marked her trail.

Yet that wind grew stronger, and stronger still, as though someone had opened shutters facing into a storm. An unnatural whirlpool of milky air spun into existence in the center of the room. Jerna flickered into view above it.

In these last months as Blessing grew with unnatural speed and ate porridge and cheese more while nursing less, Jerna had in contrast begun to lose that womanlike mimicry that had made her seem more substantial before. In a way, it seemed as if Blessing's need had helped shape Jerna's human form. Now the daimone only vaguely resembled a pale woman creature with the tone and texture of water.

The pool of light had nothing to do with Jerna. It was something entirely other, a sorcerous manifestation right there in the middle of the chamber.

Shrieks and shouts erupted as the gathered people shrank back in fright.

Zacharias could not tell what frightened them more: Jerna's wispy form, or the strange whirlpool of light pouring brightness into the chamber. Blessing reared back, clapping her hands over her ears. Hrodik's steward had fallen down to the floor in a faint, and young Matto tried to haul him up to his feet so he wouldn't be trampled.

A sound emerged as a faint murmur, emanating from the whirlpool of light.

"Sanglant."

"Silence!" cried Sanglant in the ringing tones of a man accustomed to shouting orders above the chaos of battle.

Silence fell like a shroud. For an instant it was so quiet that Zacharias thought he had gone deaf, but then Hrodik giggled nervously.

The whirlpool spoke.” Sanglant. Blessing?"

Blessing twisted around in her father's grasp and reached toward the eddying light, opening like an unshuttered window onto a place lying far beyond the walls of this world.” Mama! Mama come!"

"Ai, God!" Sanglant's voice sounded ragged with hope, and pain.” Liath?" He took a step forward.” I can't see you. Where are you?"

Zacharias saw nothing through that window of light but a hard glare, like staring into a vale of ice when the cold winter sun dazzles you. Was this truly the woman he sought? Where was she?

The voice spoke again.” Sanglant, if you can hear me, know that I am living, but I am on a long journey and I do not know how long it will take me."

"Come back to us, Liath!" cried Sanglant desperately.

"Wait for me, I beg you. Help me if you can, for I'm lost here. I need a guide. Is Jerna there?" A dark shape moved through the icy gleam, one arm outstretched and the other thrown up before its eyes. A blue light winked and dazzled on the outstretched hand, and on the figure's back hung a bow, visible because of fiery fire-red salamanders sliding up and down the inner curve of the bow. The figure reached. For an instant it seemed she would pass right through the curtain of light. Zacharias gasped and leaped back, slamming into Heribert, as Sanglant jumped forward to grab for her.

"Take my hand, Liath!" His hand swiped through empty air.

She said, "Yes! I see you!" just as Jerna's silvery form spun down from the ceiling to wrap protectively around Blessing's body.” Come if you will, Jerna. Return to your home. The way is open."

The daimone spilled like water all down Blessing's body, soaking her in light and in the aetherical substance of her aery form. Blessing cried out in surprise and delight; a moment later, Jerna coiled into a slender reed, twisted, and vanished through the window of light.

The whirlpool collapsed as Sanglant leaped after her. He landed hard in the middle of the carpet, looking, if truth be told, a little foolish. Blessing laughed and clapped her hands, as though it had all been a trick for her amusement, but her father was white at the mouth, almost rigid. Blessing sobered, looking frightened by the man holding her with such a look of wretched anger on his face.

Heribert pushed past Zacharias and grabbed the whimpering child out of her father's arm. As though that movement freed him, Sanglant whirled around, grabbed the chair, and hoisted it.

He smashed it against the floor.

Splintered wood flew everywhere. Mistress Suzanne and her household fled the chamber. Even Lord Hrodik stumbled out in their wake.

Zacharias took a step forward to calm the prince, but Heribert stopped him with a gesture.

"But not for me!" cried Sanglant.” The way is open, but not for me! Do I mean nothing to her that she should call someone else in my place?" He hoisted what remained of the heavy chair in his right hand, making ready to smash it again, when the girl, Anna, stepped right out in front of him. She hadn't fled with the others, nor did she show any fear.

"Are you truly a daimone from the heavens?" she asked in that scrape of a voice.” Is that why you want to return there?"

The wrath of King Henry was famous throughout the land. Nobles feared the king's anger for good reason, although Henry was said to use it sparingly. Surely Prince Sanglant was the most easygoing of noblemen, or so Zacharias had come to believe. For the first time, he saw the regnant's anger full in the prince's face, forbidding and intimidating, and it made him step back beside Heribert, who spoke soothingly to the sniveling Blessing. She had never seen her father so angry before.

Anna just stood there, waiting.

Sanglant opened his hand and with a shuddering breath let the chair drop. It hit the carpet with a thud, clattering on the shards of its broken legs.

It was suddenly very quiet. The coals in the brazier shifted, ash spilled, and the fire made a wheezing sound, quickly stifled. The torches blazed back up, as if Sanglant had sucked the flame out of them to fuel his anger, but probably it was only the backwash from the aetherical wind that had driven into the chamber and vanished as abruptly. The room looked very ordinary with its two handsomely carved chests, for storage, and the tapestries on the wall depicting the usual noble scenes: a hunt, a feast, an assembly of church women.

Sanglant stepped past the girl and walked to the side table. He poured water from a pitcher into a copper basin, splashed his face until water ran down his chin to drip into the basin, and swiped a hand across his beardless chin. Without thinking, he licked the drops of water off his palm. His back remained stiff with anger, or despair.” Not an hour goes by that I do not think of her," he said to the basin, "yet does she call for me? Does she seek me? She lives, but she journeys elsewhere. Just like my mother."

"Have you a nursemaid for the child?" the girl asked in her funny little voice.

"I had one," he said bitterly, "but my wife took her from me."

"I can care for children."

"We are riding east to war, child. There will be no fine carpets and warm feet with my company. I've no use for camp followers who slow me down, and who run at each least glimpse of danger."

She had a hard stare, like a young hawk's. In a way she reminded Zacharias of Hathui: fearless, sharp, confident, and irritat-ingly persistent.” I survived a spring and summer in Gent when Bloodheart ruled here. I'm not afraid."

The prince regarded her with a half-forgotten smile on his face. She stared right back at him. She had her hair pulled back in a braid, and she wore a good wool tunic, neatly woven, with two roses embroidered at the collar for decoration. A wooden Circle of Unity hung at her chest.

At the door, Matto cleared his throat.” My lord prince? Here is the weaver returned to speak to you."

Mistress Suzanne appeared at the threshold, her face drawn and her hands wringing the fabric of her skirt as she sidled into the chamber.” Your Highness, I—Ach, Anna! There you are! I thought we'd lost you."

"I'm going east," said Anna stoutly.” I'm to be the nursemaid for the young princess."

"But, Anna—!"

"It's a sign, don't you see? Why else would God have given me back my voice now?"

"I pray you, Mistress Suzanne," said Sanglant.” Outfit the girl with what she needs, and return her here in the morning. I'll see that she is well taken care of."

Even a prosperous weaver could not argue with a prince. Subdued but obedient, Mistress Suzanne took the girl and left.

"Want down, want down," insisted Blessing as she squirmed out of Heribert's arms. She rushed over to her father, seeking solace, and he picked her up.

"I pray you, Matto," he said, cuddling his daughter against him, "the helmet needs repadding. Have Captain Fulk see to it. We'll fit it more exactly tomorrow.

I'll want more water for washing." Matto nodded and quickly fetched pitcher and helmet before leaving the chamber.” Zacharias."

"Yes, my lord prince."

"We'll need a straw pallet for the girl. Sergeant Cobbo can see to it."

Zacharias glanced at Heribert, but the cleric only gave a puzzled shrug. With a bow, Zacharias left on the errand.

Unaccustomed to palaces, he quickly got lost, but a sympathetic servingman directed him to the servants' hall. He passed through the mostly deserted hall and found a door that led outside. The hush of early evening hung over the courtyard. Stars glittered overhead. An unrelenting cold seeped through his clothes to chill his bones. His old scars ached, and he suddenly had to pee.

Looking for a private place where no one might accidentally see his mutilation, he finally stumbled up to the door of the cookhouse, meaning to ask for directions to the privies.

Smoke and the odor of burned roast drifted out of the cooking house, together with something tangier, so sharp it made his neck prickle. In the Quman camp he had learned to walk quietly, beCHILD or FLAME

cause Prince Bulkezu had liked his slaves to be silent and had once killed a man for sneezing in the middle of a musician's performance.

Her voice had the breathy quality of air. As he peered into the smoky interior, he saw a woman standing at the big block table, hands hovering over a platter ringed by four candles placed to form a square. An apple fanned into neat slices lay on the wooden platter, so freshly cut that the juice welling up from its moist flesh shone in the candlelight, making his mouth water. No one else was in the cookhouse.

"I adjure you by your name and your powers and the glorious place wherein you dwell, O Prince of Light who drove the Enemy into the Abyss. Let your presence rest upon this apple and let the one who eats of it be filled with desire for me.

Let him be seized by a flame of fire as powerful as that fire in which you, Holy One, make your dwelling place. Let him open his door to me, and let him not be content with any thing until he has satisfied me—

Nay, there was someone else there, over by the spit. She emerged from the shadows, a woman of middling years. In the half light, Zacharias saw the wicked scar blazed on her right cheek, puffy and white.

"What madness is this, Frederun?"

The pretty servingwoman broke into tears.” I thought he was dead! I was so happy when I was his lover—

"Hush!" hissed her companion, laying a hand on the young woman's shoulder.”

There's someone in the doorway."

Zacharias slipped away into the shadows. The wind shifted, and he smelled the privies, dug over by the stables. It still hurt to urinate, but he was no longer sure if the pain was actually physical or only an artifact lingering in his mind from those first weeks after Prince Bulkezu had mutilated him.

He found Sergeant Cobbo together with a dozen soldiers standing in the aisle between stalls, watching a chess game. Captain Fulk had set up a board and pieces on a barrel and brought two bales of hay to serve as seats. He had the dragon helm on his knee, with a hand curved possessively over its top. As Zacharias approached, the captain used an Eagle to take a Lion.

"My biscop takes your Eagle," said his opponent, the exiled Eagle known as Wolfhere. He paused, still holding the chess piece, and glanced up past Cobbo and the ring of watchers to catch Zacharias' eye.

"Come you from the prince?" The old man had a piercing intelligence and remained in all circumstances so calm that Zacharias did not trust him.

Zacharias explained his errand, and Cobbo designated a man to accomplish the task in the morning. The soldiers settled back to gossip about this turn of events.

"Will you play, Prater?" asked Fulk.” I can't best him."

"Nay, I've no knowledge of such games. They're meant for nobles and soldiers, not for simple fraters such as myself. I'm not one of those folk who will be moving pieces to and fro in a game of power."

Wolfhere chuckled.” Yet what harm might there be, friend, in learning the rules of the game, if only to protect ourselves?"

"I'm thinking you're not needing any protection, Eagle, beyond that which you already possess."

"Here, now," objected Fulk.” We're at peace in my lord prince's company."

"Nay, I've no quarrel with Wolfhere," said Zacharias.” He's a common man like myself."

"So I am," agreed Wolfhere genially, but his smile was like that of a wolf, sharp and clean. He had once been King Arnulf the Younger's favored counselor, yet now he rode in secrecy in Prince Sanglant's company because he had been interdicted and outlawed by King Henry, accused of sorcery and treason, a friend and boon companion to the very mathematici whose influence Prince Sanglant meant to combat.

Yet it was this man, so the story went, who had freed Liath from servitude at the hands of an unscrupulous and nobly-born frater. This man was a favorite of little Blessing's, and the ones whom Blessing liked the prince favored.

"Prince Sanglant's wife appeared to us in a vision," Zacharias said suddenly, wanting to prod the old man, to see him jump.

Wolfhere's lips tightened, that was all. He rolled the Eagle in his hand, thumb caressing the lift of its carven wings, as he lifted his gaze to regard Zacharias blandly.” This is unexpected news. How did she appear to you?"

"Quite unexpectedly. Truly, Wolfhere, you are a man who plays chess most masterfully. But you must ask Prince Sanglant for particulars. I dare not say more. The church frowns upon all sorcerous acts or even those who witness them."

Wolfhere laughed, setting down the Eagle, but Captain Fulk rose, cradling the dragon helm against a hip.

"Can you not tell us more, Frater? We have seen many strange things traveling with the prince. All of us have seen the daimone that suckles the young princess.

We have seen stranger things besides, in Aosta, when we rode with Princess Theophanu. News such as this may be important to all of us. It seems to me that Prince Sanglant has not suffered the absence of his wife well, and I pray that they may be reunited soon."

"Or truly the prince will be united with some other woman," joked one of the soldiers.

"I'll hear no more of that, Sibold!" said Fulk curtly.” Which of you would act differently? It's no business of ours whether the prince chooses to live as a cleric, or as a man."

Wolfhere smiled.” True-spoken, Captain, yet it's true that Prince Sanglant has long been famous for his amorous adventures. Have I ever told you about Margrave Villam's daughter, she who is heir to the margraviate? It's said she was taken by such a passion for the young prince that—"

Zacharias eased out of the gathering and retreated to the yard. His hands, always chilled in the winter, got stiff with cold, but he lingered outside.

That the fault of concupiscence, the seemingly unquenchable desire for the pleasures of the flesh, plagued Prince Sanglant made him no different from most of humankind. Unlike many a noble lord or lady, and entirely unlike the Quman warriors, who took what they wanted at the instant the urge struck them, the prince struggled to keep his cravings under control. For that reason alone, Zacharias had cause to respect him.

Yet it was not the prince he sat in judgment on.

Nay, truly, he recognized the sinful feeling that had crept into his breast: He envied Wolfhere his knowledge. The exiled Eagle kept a cool head and a closed mouth, and despite Zacharias' hints and insinuations over the months of their trip, Wolfhere never admitted to the knowledge that Zacharias knew in his bones the old

man kept clutched to himself as a starving man clutches a loaf of precious bread and a handful of beans.

Was Zacharias unworthy? Prince Sanglant had taken Zacharias on in part because of his knowledge of the Quman but mostly because the prince had, underneath his iron constitution and bold resolve, a sentimental heart. He had taken Zacharias into his company because the frater had spoken of his vision of Liath, because Zacharias had brought him a scrap of parchment on which the prince's beloved, and lost, wife had scribbled uninterpretable signs and symbols, themselves a kind of magic, readable only by mathematici.

He touched the pouch at his belt, felt the stiff cylinder cached there: the rolled-up parchment, his only link to the knowledge he sought. Liath had studied the heavens, too. She had asked the same questions he had, and maybe, just maybe, she would listen with astonishment and fascination to his description of the vision of the cosmos that had been vouchsafed to him in the palace of coils.

Maybe she had some answers for him. Maybe she was willing to search.

Standing out under the pitiless winter sky, he prayed that she would be restored to Earth. Because if she wasn't, he had no one else to go to.

Shivering, he made his way back into the servants' hall and, by a minor miracle, found with no trouble the corridor off which lay the chambers reserved for the prince.

Someone had reached the door before him.

He knew her by the curve of her gown along her body, the way her shawl had fallen back to reveal the curling wisps of her light hair. He stepped back, staying in shadow. She hadn't heard him, or maybe she just wasn't paying attention, because she was waiting at the door.

It opened, finally, to reveal the prince.

"My lord prince," she said in a remarkably level voice, "you called for wine and refreshment?"

Sanglant held a candle whose yellow flame revealed the sharp lines of his face and the carefully fanned-out apple, eight slices making a blunt star, two on each side. A silver goblet shone softly in the candlelight beside it.

"Nay, I asked for nothing more," he said, but he didn't close the CHILD or FLAME

door, he only stood there. After a moment, she slipped past him to go inside.

With that uncanny sixth sense he had, as exquisite as a dog s, Sanglant looked directly at Zacharias, although surely he ought not to have been able to see him, drowned as the frater was in night's shadow.

"What is it, Zacharias?" he asked softly.

"Nay, nothing, my lord prince." Zacharias took two steps back, paused.” All is as you wish, Your Highness. I'll go now. Wolfhere has promised to teach me to play chess."

As he walked away, he heard the door close and latch behind him.

BEYOND THE VEIL

IT was too dark to see the landscape of the sphere of Erekes. As soon as the wind loosened its grip, Liath halted to take her bearings. A hot wind blasted her face. She missed her cloak, which she could have used to shield her skin, and more desperately she missed her boots. The surface she stood on scraped the soles of her feet, but when she moved forward to stand on what appeared to be smoother ground, her foot sank into a viscous liquid so cold that her toes went numb.

She jumped back, stumbled, and for a moment couldn't put any weight on that leg. At last sensation returned, but that was worse; her skin burned and blistered. Limping, she fell back to the shelter of a high outcropping whose bulky lee protected her from the worst of the blasting wind. The iron wall, and the gate, had vanished. She leaned against the stone, catching her breath, but the slick cold, as penetrating as melting ice, burned her fingers. She jerked away, and an instant later felt that same ulcerous pain lance up her hand.

She stood there in misery, half out of the wind and with a foot and a hand throbbing, and surveyed the landscape, what she could see of it. Beyond the shoreline, more a suggestion of textural change than an actual visible line, the landscape stretched into the distance as smoothly blank as a sea littered with fragments of lamplight. Darting fingers of brilliance moved upon that sea, illusive daimones bent upon unfathomable errands, but she could not hear the music of the spheres above the whine of that endless hot wind.

Was it the wind off the sun? Yet why then did the sun not shine here?

One question always led to another. She puzzled again over her brief sojourn among the Ashioi. How could time move differently there than on Earth? Why did day dawn and night fall with such an irregular rhythm? Why did no moon rise and set, wax and wane, in the country of the Ashioi?

Did it, too, travel the spheres? Or was there another plane of existence lying within or beside the universe which she did not comprehend? Eldest Uncle had shown her the twisted belt, his crude representation of the path on which he and his people had found themselves, but that didn't explain where they were right now in relation to Liath.

So many mysteries.

And it were better not to linger here, dwelling over them. She might stand here forever, lost in contemplation, except that the wind blew hot in her face and the ground rubbed uncomfortably against her bare feet. Like her heart, her hand and foot were going numb.

Cold crept up her wrist like poison. Wind scalded her eyes. She' couldn't feel the coarse sand under one foot, and the lack of feeling disoriented her so much it was hard to keep her balance.

Time to move on.

The path was clearly marked, once you thought to look for it. Those lamplit sparks were stepping stones, each one about an anil's length in diameter, set across the blistering sea. The challenge lay in stepping from one to the next with no staff for balance and feeling in only one foot. She hitched her quiver tightly against her body and set off, cautiously at first, more boldly after she got the knack of compensating for her crippled foot and navigating against the constant pressure of wind blowing so hard into her face that her eyes ran with tears.

The dark shore receded behind her, quickly lost, until only the sea surrounded her, yet she felt the presence of hulking shapes

around her, impossible to distinguish. The wind stank of bitter wormwood. Willo'-the-wisps twinkled and vanished in the distance. Even in darkness, the landscape seemed as desolate as a woman's heart that has been scoured clean.

That fast, just before she took her next step, the wind turned. One instant it blasted her face with heat; the next it buffeted her from behind with an arctic chill. The sudden shift caught her off guard, almost tumbling her off her safe perch on a broad stepping stone. Light washed the landscape.

She stared.

The sphere of Erekes was a vale of ice, a blinding sea of whiteness.

She had always assumed that Erekes, often hidden by the sun's glare, would reflect something of the sun's substance: burned, charred, or at least a desert.

But of course, that was the weakness of assumption. Erekes wasn't any of the things she had expected.

Wasn't that the lesson of the sword? If you go into battle thinking you know what to expect, the hand of confusion will always sow chaos and death in your ranks.

Yet how could she have prepared herself for this? Instead of a neat trail of beacons leading her forward, she stared at a confusing scatter of stepping stones sprayed across the icy sea, too many to count. She took an arrow and, reaching, touched the stone directly in front of her. The arrow sank through the illusory stone and, sizzling from the bite of that poisonous seawater, dissolved into ash. Only the iron tip remained, floating on the gelid surface.

Three other stepping stones remained within reach and beyond them, hundreds more, receding to an impossibly near horizon. In daylight, it was impossible to tell which of the stepping stones was real and which illusion. The sea of ice had no limit, none that she could see, and she had only seventeen arrows left.

Lucian's friend, her sword, would have come in awfully handy right now, since it appeared that the icy liquid couldn't burn iron. But she had thrown it away.

The knife edge of the wind tore into her back. Her tunic flapped around her knees. Her long braid writhed against her back, distracting her, until she finally flipped it over her shoulder, where it whipped against her jaw. She couldn't feel her left arm from hand to elbow, and her right leg was numb from the knee down.

A pale shape flitted in front of her, careless as a breeze. Had this daimone come to taunt her? Or did it hope to guide her? Could she hope for their aid?

"Are there any here who were made captive at Verna?" she called.” Do you know me? I am Liathano, daughter of Anne and Bernard, wife of Sanglant, mother of Blessing. Can you help me?"

She saw more of them spinning and swooping among the staggeringly bright ice floes. Their movements seemed entirely random, unfixed and purposeless. What did they care if she triumphed, or failed?

The poison filtered up her limbs. She needed a guide quickly, a creature who could survive in the aether. Truly, she only knew where to find one such creature. She had to act fast.

On Earth she had learned to mold fire into a window. It proved no different here. Even in the sphere of Erekes, frozen in ice, fire came to her call.

It flared up with an audible crack, followed by a murmurous clattering like a thousand wings battering against an unbreachable wall. The sound died quickly.

In the ice floes nearest her, daimones fled from the heat.

She wrapped fire into an archway, a window to see onto distant Earth.

"Sanglant," she called, because the link to him was the strongest chain she had.

With her poisoned hand raised to shadow her eyes, she kept the living one outstretched toward the archway of fire, bleeding and burning sparks and swirling air onto another vista, pale and blurry as through a veil. Were those vague shadows human forms? The sea hissed around her.

"Sanglant!" she cried again. A small child's body took form beyond the archway, so bright that it shone even into Erekes, casting a shadow.” Blessing?" Her voice caught on the beloved name.

To her shock, she heard an answer.

"Mama! Mama come!"

Ai, Lady! Blessing was so big, speaking like a two-year-old. Had so much time passed in the other world already, although she had only lived among the Ashioi for a handful of days? She wanted them so badly, but she hardened her heart.

How easy it was to harden her heart.

\

"Sanglant, if you can hear me, know that I am living, but I am on a long journey and I do not know how long it will take me." To get back to you. She faltered.

He was only a shadow dimly perceived across an untold distance. Blessing blazed in the realm of shadows, but Liath could not really be sure if anyone else heard her or even was aware of the rift she had opened between Earth and the sphere of Erekes.

"Wait for me, I beg you! Help me if you can, for I'm trapped here. I need Jerna."

Surely if Blessing had grown so large, Liath need not feel guilty about stealing Jerna away. A child of two could thrive on porridge and soft cheese, meat and bread and goat's milk.

A daimone flashed as a silvery form across the shadows, beyond the veil.

"I see you!" She reached out just as Jerna's gleaming, wispy form coiled protectively around Blessing, soaking the child in Jerna's aetherical substance.

Blessing cried out in surprise and delight, a sweet sound that cut to Liath's heart.

But she could not stop now. No time to savor it. The poison had reached her left shoulder, and her right hip. If she couldn't escape the sea of ice, she would die.

"Come if you will, Jerna. Return to your home. The way is open."

As she reached into the whirlpool of light, wind cut her hand to ribbons. She jerked back, crying out in pain as the archway of fire collapsed into a hundred shards that spun on a whirlwind out into the sea. Reeling back, she remembered too late that she would only fall into the poisonous sea.

But she never plunged into the depths. A cool presence wrapped itself around her, lifting her.

In the aether, Jerna's luminescence dazzled. She had form as much as softness and only the vaguest memory of the human shape she had worn on Earth.

"Come," she said, a murmur made by the flow of her body through the aetherical wind. On Earth, Liath had not understood the speech of the daimones, not as Sanglant had. Here, all language seemed an open book to her.” The blessing needs me no longer. This last act I will grant you, her mother, so I can become free of humankind."

She twisted upward on a trail of gauzy mist that flowered into life as Jerna ascended. Liath's arm and leg throbbed painfully, all pins and needles, where Jerna's substance wrapped them in a healing glow. The pain made her head pound, and the reflection of light off the ice floes and the white sea blinded her until, dizzy, she couldn't tell what was up and what was down and whether earthly directions had any meaning in the heavens.

A rosy glow penetrated the ice-white blaze of Erekes' farthest boundary. Silky daimones clustered along a series of arches that formed not so much a wall as a porous, inviting border, an elaboration of detail so sensuously formed that she wondered if earthly architects saw this place in fevered dreams.

"Now am I come to my home," whispered Jerna.

But as they reached the many-gated border, weight dragged Liath down once again.

"I cannot carry you within," said Jerna.” You still wear too much of Earth about you, Bright One. For the sake of the blessing you allowed me to nurse, I have carried you thus far, but I can hold you no longer."

Liath panicked as she slipped out of Jerna's grasp. Ai, God, she would plunge back into the poisonous sea. Her clumsy fingers found her belt buckle. As she loosened it, the leather slithered down her legs, caught on her foot, and the belt and the items hitched to it—her leather pouch and her sheathed iron eating knife—fell away.

Jerna released her. The many-gated wall passed beneath her, and she tumbled into the sphere of Somorhas, whose warm and rosy light embraced her.

THAT first night out of Handelburg, huddled in miserable cold in such shelter as a half-ruined ancient hill fort afforded them, Hanna suggested to the prince that he and his party al shave their heads. That way they could tell-any folk they met that they'd battied lice and perhaps no one would suspect they had been excommunicated for heresy. Probably she risked excommunication herself for suggesting it, but it was the most practical thing to do.

She refused to shave her own head. Until that moment, she'd never known, or even considered, that she might be vain of her white-blonde hair. Maybe she hadn't minded Prince Bayan's attentions as much as she had protested to herself and to others. Maybe Princess Sapientia's jealousy had saved her from temptation.

God worked in strange ways.

When a snowstorm stranded the party for a month in a fortified village five days' march west of Handelburg, Ekkehard spoke sternly to his retinue.

"I don't know how long it will be until we can come clear of this village," he said,

"but there's to be no preaching."

.” But, my lord prince," objected Lord Benedict, always the first to speak when an opinion was asked, "it's a worse sin to remain silent when we can save lives with the truth!"

"That's true, but I made a promise to Prince Bayan that I wouldn't preach until the war is over and Bulkezu is defeated. I'll lose face if I don't keep my promise, and no one will ever respect me. We'll ride to the Villams and fight the Quman alongside them." How he would fight the Quman when his wounded shoulder still hadn't healed was a consideration no one addressed.

"We're not riding to your father, my lord prince?" Lord Frithuric was the biggest of Ekkehard's cronies, a strapping lad somewhat younger than Hanna.

Ekkehard shuddered.” I'll not throw myself on my father's mercy just yet. He's probably still mad at me for stealing Baldwin from Margrave Judith."

Lord Lothar was the eldest of the youths and, in Hanna's opinion, the only one with a feather's weight of sense.” But Margrave Judith is dead, my lord prince.

Her daughter, Lady Bertha, didn't care one whit about Lord Baldwin, except for that trouble about the marriage portion."

"True enough," observed Ekkehard thoughtfully. He had so thoroughly absorbed the mannerisms of the better bards who came through the royal progress that the inflections of his stock phrases all sounded as though they were copied from some epic poem, weary pronouncements of doom, wise musings, angry retorts, and noble resolutions.” Remember what Bayan said. We'll have no one to preach to if we lose this war to the Quman savages. God would want us to fight to make Her lands safe for Her true word."

"Very true, my lord prince," they agreed, all six of his noble companions, Lord Dietrich's two cousins, and nineteen miscellaneous others who had survived that five-day ride. One poor man had drowned during a river crossing, and there had been a great deal of discussion whether this meant his faith in the Sacrifice and Redemption hadn't been strong enough to save him. Hanna personally thought that it was because he had slipped, fallen, and panicked because he hadn't known how to swim. No one had been able to reach him in time.

"Let us all remember the phoenix," finished Ekkehard portentously as he ran a hand through the stubble of his hair, scratching it cautiously as though it might at any moment sprout thistles.” The phoenix rises in its own time. We must have faith that we have other tasks to accomplish before the church is ready to embrace the truth."

With a party of twenty-eight visitors in a village populated by no more than sixty souls, half of whom were children, there were indeed plenty of tasks to accomplish. Hanna knew how to make herself useful and did so, figuring their party would be better off building up a store of goodwill considering how much food they were eating. She carded and spun wool, sewed, cooked, ground grain, churned butter, and spent many a pleasant hour combing the hair of her new friends. Luckily, most of the cast-off soldiers also had practical gifts. They helped dig out the village after the first, and worst, snowfall, repaired those portions of the palisade they could reach through the drifts, built benches and tables, dug out two canoes from logs, searched out lost sheep, and otherwise kept themselves busy. Lord Dietrich's two cousins set themselves to caring for the horses, although of course the presence of twelve horses in such a village was a terrible strain on the forage supply. Because of the heavy snow, Ekkehard was able to take his lads hunting only twice, but at least both times they brought back game to supplement the common house table. Hanna hated to think what hunger these villagers would suffer as winter gave way to the privations of early spring, with all their stores eaten up by their unexpected visitors.

Of course it was inevitable that this respite wouldn't last, even though Ekkehard entertained the villagers every night with a princely rendition of one of the many epics he had memorized. Song couldn't substitute for food, once all was said and done. Small irritations multiplied into fistfights. A householder complained that her entire store of apples had been eaten, so Ekkehard gave her a gold armband as restitution to keep the peace. Despite his religious vows, he took up with a village girl, although neither she nor her mother seemed displeased at the prospect of the rings and other little gifts he offered in exchange for her favors.

Lady Fortune smiled upon them. The main road, such as it was, was almost passable the morning Lord Manegold was discovered in the hayloft with the blacksmith's young wife and her younger sister. Murder was averted when the two hotheads, Thiemo and Welf, were prevented from stabbing the furious blacksmith by the intervention of his adulterous wife, who threw herself bodily over her prone husband. By then it was already clear they were no longer welcome to stay in the village.

Prince Ekkehard was furious when they rode out at midday.” If I'd known she was willing, I wouldn't have settled for Mistress Aabbe's daughter, who isn't half as pretty."

"I would have shared her with you," protested Manegold. He wasn't as handsome as the infamous Baldwin, of course, but nevertheless was an appealing sight to girls who liked pretty, blond young men born into a noble house and unburdened by any notion of consequences. His blackening eye only added to his enticing good looks.” But I'd only just discovered myself how very willing she was! And that sister! You wouldn't think a common-born country girl would know how to do all those things!"

The villagers crowded together at the main gate, pitchforks and staves in hand, to make sure the prince and his retinue actually left. Four of the soldiers walked at the front, breaking trail. Lord Welf rode directly behind them, carrying Ekkehard's gold-and-red battle banner. This tattered and much-mended piece of cloth had, like Ekkehard himself, been rescued off the battlefield by the tumulus, so its presence was considered a sign of good luck as well as status, marking the progress of a royal prince. However meager his retinue might be.

"Perhaps, my lord prince," said Hanna reluctantly, "in the future you and your followers might be more cautious in your amorous trysts. In a marchland village such as this, the blacksmith is an honored member of the community and not to be insulted in such a grave way." "You haven't the right to say that kind of thing to me!" replied Ekkehard indignantly.

"I ride as the king's representative, my lord prince. The villagers were generous with their hospitality. I am sure King Henry would think it unwise to repay their generosity in such a way that they throw us out."

"How will King Henry ever know if there's no one to report to him?" demanded Lord Thiemo, laying a hand on his sword hilt.

"It's treason to kill a King's Eagle," said Lord Dietrich's elder cousin.

"So it is," snapped Ekkehard.” Leave her be."

"How is being a traitor worse than being a heretic?" asked Lothar, genuinely puzzled.

Ekkehard had no answer to such a difficult question.” It doesn't matter anyway.

I promised Prince Bayan I'd see the Eagle safely to the seat of the Villams, and so I will. After that, she's on her own to return to the king."

But Hanna noted how Lord Dietrich's cousins fell a little behind, talking intently to each other where the others could not hear them.

A warm sun rapidly turned the snow to heavy slush, and Hanna pitied the men who had to walk at the front to make a way for the horses. The weather remained changeable, freezing at night, sometimes warm and sometimes cold with a froth of snow during the daytime. One horse slipped and broke a leg, and although they ate well of its flesh over the next few days, the poor man who'd been thrown in the accident and hit his head finally lost consciousness completely and died of a seizure. One of the soldiers who did most of the trail breaking lost the use of his feet to frostbite, and when the infection began to stink, he begged them to kill him, but Ekkehard hadn't the guts for it. Instead, they abandoned him in a hamlet in the care of an old woman who claimed to know herbcraft. Hanna smelled the stink of witchcraft in that place, but there was nothing she could do to countermand Ekkehard's orders. She could hear the man's screaming for leagues afterward, long after they had marched out of earshot.

That night, Lord Dietrich's cousins and seven men deserted.

In the morning, Ekkehard would have upbraided the sentries, except it was the very men who'd been on watch who had left. They followed the trail made by the others, bold prints across virgin snow, but as the day wore on, bitterly cold, one of the foot soldiers fell gravely ill and had to be carried by his comrades.

They fell farther and farther behind.

Here in the marchlands, forest ranged everywhere, woodland cut frequently by meadows, marsh, and higher heath lands. They took refuge that night within the remains of a deserted village. Most of the buildings had fallen in or been demolished but one had half a roof intact. Thatch scavenged from the outbuildings made decent sleeping pallets, and there was plenty of wood for a fire.

Ekkehard paced impatiently at the limit of the fire's light as the rest of them listened to the sick man struggle to breathe. Lord Lothar, too, was ill; his breath rattled in and out as he huddled miserably by the fire. Hanna stood with one foot up on the ruined foundations, watching the land.

The stars shimmered beyond a veil of night haze, strangely luminous. Snow-shrouded trees lay in perfect stillness. The moon's light etched shadows across the abandoned village and once or twice she thought she saw the shade of one of the lost inhabitants scurrying across the common yard on an errand, but it was first an owl and a second time simply a phantasm glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. The snow lay untouched except where their own feet had churned it.

A sentry, stationed in the ruins of a pithouse right on the edge of the forest, coughed. Behind her the horses, crowded in with the men for warmth, stamped restlessly.

She stroked her hands down her braid. A cold suspicion was growing in her that Bayan had sent them all out here knowing they might well die. Was he more ambitious than he seemed? Did he mean to eliminate any possible threat to Sapientia's crown? Was it actually possible that Bayan could flirt as outrageously as he had with her and then send her out on such a dangerous journey? After all, the Quman could be anywhere, although surely they wouldn't ride abroad in this weather. Only a fool would march cross-country at the mercy of winter—a fool, or an Eagle sent about the reg-nant's business.

But, of course, Bayan hadn't made her an Eagle. She'd accepted the position, knowing its dangers. Any person who rode long distances was at risk, and if anything her Eagle's cloak and badge gave her a measure of security most travelers never knew.

Nay, Bayan wasn't bent on revenge or intrigue. In truth, Prince Ekkehard was a nuisance: young, untried, immature, and reckless. And as big a fool as Ivar to get mixed up in heresy. In Bayan's place, she would probably have done the same thing. Only she wished right now that she was snug in that sleeping platform in Biscop Alberada's hall instead of standing out here in the middle of wilderness with no fortified holding within a day's ride on either side. This was just the kind of place a small party like theirs could be attacked and overwhelmed.

In the distance, a wolf howled, the only sound in the lonely landscape.

Whispered talk died by the fire as men paused to listen, but nothing replied to that solitary call. A twig snapped at the fringe of the trees.

Was that a shape, creeping in among the snow-laden branches? Were those pale wings, advancing through the trees?

"Who's there?" demanded the sentry. His voice trembled.

"Hsst!" Ekkehard stepped forward, sword drawn, to stand beside Hanna.” What do you see, Eagle?" he whispered. Behind, his companions drew their swords while the soldiers scrambled to ready spears and shields. Hands shaking, she hoisted her bow and nocked an arrow.

There was nothing there. Snow tumbled from a heavily-laden fir tree, shrouding the imagined wing shape, and all was still. The moon's light cast a drowsy glamour over the silent forest.

"Hai!" cried the sentry, so startled that his spear fell, clattering on stone foundations.

It arrived noiselessly and settled down in the midst of a stretch of untouched snow. Despite its size, it did not break through the hard crust. It was the largest owl she had ever seen, with tufted ears

and a coat of mottled feathers, streaked with white at the breast. The owl gazed at her, unblinking, incurious, looking ready to snatch her up as it would a delectable mouse.

"That would make a tasty meal," muttered Ekkehard, elbowing Hanna.” Shoot it."

"Nay, my lord prince," she answered, suddenly afflicted by dread at the thought of shooting this magnificent creature, "for everyone knows that the flesh of an owl is like poison to a human being."

Ekkehard hesitated. In that instant, the owl took flight and was gone.

"Damn it! We've few enough provisions, Eagle. One owl shared between us wouldn't have sickened any one of us more than the rest!" He seemed ready to go on chastising her when Lord Benedict hurried up.

"Your Highness, come quick. The sick man is vomiting blood, and the old sergeant thinks he's going to die. You'd better give him a blessing so his soul will be safe when he passes to the Other Side."

The poor man did die, a little before dawn. Hanna paced all night, wrapped in her cloak, too cold and nervous to sleep, while the moon set and the forest sank into a deeper slumber. As Ekke-hard's company drifted in and out of their fitful sleep, interrupted now and again by Lord Lothar's hacking coughs, she wondered if she would have been better off if the deserters had invited her to join them.

They found their bodies the next day.

They had saddled up their remaining eight horses in the morning and started down the road, following the tracks left by the others. The cold had frozen a crust over the snow heavy enough to take a man's weight for a few moments before he broke through, and while that made the traveling easier for the men, it doubled the effort for the horses. Hanna quickly dismounted to lead her horse, and after a few more struggling steps, the young lords did so as well. They weren't fools about horseflesh. Hanna had long since observed that many noble folk had more concern for their hounds, horses, and hawks than for the common people bound into their service.

"Look here," said Frithuric, who had taken the lead as usual.” There's a set of tracks leading off the path, into the forest. Back toward the abandoned village.

Should we follow them? Maybe one of these damned deserters had a change of heart and came back to look for us."

"Nay," said Ekkehard impatiently, "we'll want shelter tonight and I've no intention of wasting time on them, since they're the ones who left us behind."

They went on, breath steaming in the cold air. The exercise made Hanna sweat, but her feet stayed cold and her toes ached incessantly. They had followed the path for less than half a league when Lord Frithuric, stil ranging ahead, gave a strangled cry. Hurrying forward, they saw him beside a wayside shelter, chasing away crows.

Lord Dietrich's cousins and their seven fellow deserters had made their final stand at the wayside shelter, vainly attempting to use its walls as protection.

Three of the men were missing their heads; the rest were simply dead, stripped of their weapons, any decent armor, and, of course, the three horses. Blood soaked the snow. Fire had scorched the thatch before burning itself out harmlessly. Singed straw lay scattered downwind along the snowy ground as far as Hanna could see. By the evidence of hoofprints, the deserters had been attacked by at least a dozen horsemen. A few stray feathers trampled in the snow or caught beneath the corpses left no doubt that their assailants had been a Quman raiding party.

No one dared-speak for fear their voices would carry on the still winter air across the sea of snow and blanketed forest to the waiting Quman. Surely they were still out there.

They hadn't the time or the energy to dig graves in the frozen ground, so they just left them for the wolves, not even building a cairn of rocks over them as they had for the man who'd died during the night. What else could they do?

As the others made ready to go, Hanna grimly followed the tracks of the raiding party a short way, just to get an idea what direction they were heading. That was the eeriest thing of all: the Quman riders had obviously ridden back down the trail toward the abandoned village. One man had been bleeding enough to leave a faint trail of blood in his wake, quickly churned away by the passage of his fellows. It seemed possible, in retrospect, that the solitary hoofprints veering off from the trail a stone's throw from the abandoned village had been those of a Quman scout rather than one of the deserters. Had it only been a dream that she'd seen pale wings moving among the trees last night?

Of course it had. If the Quman had spotted them, they would have attacked.

They hadn't spotted them, and they hadn't attacked.

Never argue with Lady Fortune, her mother would say.

Nervous every time a branch creaked or cracked under the weight of snow, she returned to the others. They were eager to be gone from the scene of carnage.

"Didn't they kill even one?" demanded Lord Frithuric.” I thought Lord Dietrich's cousins were strong fighters."

"Maybe they were taken unawares," said Hanna, which shut them up.

Maybe she had ridden under worse conditions in her time as an Eagle, but she couldn't think of any. The silence became excruciating. Little arguments flared up over nothing, tempers goaded into flame by anxiety. They slogged on and on and on along the path that led them deeper into the forest, far past the woodland fringes where they had traveled thus far, on into the old uncut heart, a vast tract of trees and silence. They saw no living creatures except themselves.

The path was their only landmark. They waded knee-deep through snow along a narrow track bounded by trees. Except for a detour here and there to cut around an escarpment or dip down to a ford in a stream, the path took a fairly straight course through the old foeest. Luckily for their feet, the streams had all frozen over, making every crossing easy.

The worst part of the whole long, cold, nerve-racking, miserable day was that it got dark so early, leaving them caught in twilight deep in the forest without shelter.

Fortunately, the old sergeant, Gotfrid, knew woodcraft. He spotted a dense stand of fir trees off to the right of the path. In their center, under overhanging branches, they discovered a living cathedral blanketed with needles and almost free of snow. The air lay close and quiet underneath the overarching branches.

In an odd way, Hanna felt protected here, as though they had stumbled upon an ancient refuge. Eighteen people and the eight horses could all crowd in, as long as two men were posted as sentries at the fringes to peer out into the darkening forest. Clouds hung low, seeming to brush the tops of trees, and snow skirled down, spinning and drifting.

"It's really beautiful," she murmured to old Gotfrid. She had come up beside his sentry post to survey their situation.” Or would be, anyway, if we had a fire and mead."

"And no Quman lurking like wolves to feed on us," he agreed. He was a good man, stable, shrewd, and steady, who had spent most of his adult life as a Lion.

"There's something I don't understand, though, Gotfrid." She glanced back to make sure the others couldn't hear them. Several ranks of trees, each taller and broader than the last, separated them from the hidden center.” Why would a practical man like you throw away everything for a heresy?"

He chuckled, taking no offense at the question, as she'd guessed he wouldn't.

He was old enough to have white in his hair and a few age spots on his face.”

You're thinking that those young lords might be taking to a heresy just because they're young and rash and fools, aren't you? That's because you're a practical young woman, as I've seen." He spoke the words approvingly, and it was a measure of the respect she'd gained for him on this desperate journey that she smiled, pleased with the compliment.” But it isn't a whim, friend." He faltered, growing suddenly serious.

Snow fell softly throughout the vista beyond, a mantle of white over everything.

It was almost too dark to see.

"Have you ever seen a rose?" he asked finally.

"Truly, I have seen one or two in my time. I saw the king's rose garden at Autun."

"Well, then." He hesitated again. She studied him. He wasn't handsome or ugly but rather comfortably in between, with the broad shoulders and thick arms of a soldier. He was, perhaps, the same age as the king but rather more weathered by the hardships of life in the infantry, and if he stumbled with his words it was because he'd had a soldier's education, not a cleric's.” Think of a rose blooming all of a sudden in your heart." He gestured toward the silent forest, all chill and white, a sea of winter.” Think of a rose blooming there, in the snow, where you'd never think to see it. Wouldn't that be a miracle? Wouldn't »

you know that you'd stumbled upon a little sliver of God's truth?"

"I suppose so."

He spoke so quietly that she almost couldn't hear him.” A holy one walks among us. But we mustn't speak of it, because God hasn't chosen to make Her messenger known yet. But the rose bloomed in my heart, Eagle. I have no better way to explain it, how I knew it was truth when I heard the preaching about the Sacrifice and Redemption. The rose bloomed, and I'd rather die than turn my back now. I'd rather die." There wasn't a breath of wind.

"Those seem ill-chosen words, friend, considering our situation," said Hanna finally, not unkindly.

"We've had poor luck, haven't we? God is testing us." "So They are." The cold seeped down into her bones. She chafed her hands to warm them.” But Lord Dietrich was stricken down and died when he professed the heresy."

"I think he was poisoned by the biscop." Gotfrid spoke these words so calmly that Hanna expected the sky to fall, but it did not. All she heard was the muffled noises of their party, hidden among the firs: a low mutter of conversation, the sting of smoke in her nostrils from a fire, the stamp and restless whickering of the horses. Twice she heard Lord Lothar's hacking cough.” That's a bold charge,"

she said at last.

"You think so, too," he said grimly, "or else you'd leap to her defense. I think she poisoned him because she saw he wouldn't back down. He was the strongest of us in faith. She hoped to frighten the rest of us into recanting." He leaned toward her, close enough that his breath stirred her hair.” Don't think there weren't others among the crowd who had heard and believed. They hold the truth in their hearts as well."

"But hadn't the courage to step forward." "Well," he said generously, "not everyone is ready to die, if it comes to that. Someone has to survive to spread the truth, don't they?"

She chuckled, finding it amusing that they could debate matters of heresy while running for their lives through this vale of ice.” I like living, and I wouldn't mind a nice hot cup of spiced wine right now."

CHILD OF FLAME "Well, lass, truly, so would we all."

But back in their refuge, there wasn't anything but stale bread. She did manage to sleep curled up in her cloak until one of the soldiers woke her for a turn at watch. Within the shelter of the trees, with so many bodies crowded together, it had actually gotten not warm, of course, but bearable. As she pushed her way out through the stinging branches, she felt all the warmth sucked away by a raw cold so profound that for a moment she thought it might seize her heart. She came to the edge of the thick stand of trees and at once floundered into a thigh-high drift of new snow, all powdery soft. Snow slipped down her leggings to freeze her ankles and toes. She staggered back into the shelter of the firs and tried to make sense of the scene before her.

She heard it, and felt it, more than saw it, because it was still too dark to see.

She tasted that flavor the air has when snow falls thick and fast and the clouds weigh so heavily that one knows a blizzard is on the way. Flakes settled on her nose, and cheeks, and eyelids, and melted away. Ai, God, if the Quman didn't kill them, then they would freeze to death in the coming storm.

A thread of falling snow, dislodged from a branch just to her right, hissed down past her ear. She went as still as a rabbit who has just sensed the shadow of an owl. Something was out there.

Beyond the veil of snow, wraithlike figures darted forward among the trees.

Quman.

Nay, not Quman at all. There was just enough light now, a hint of dawn, that she could make out their outlines: Slender and pale, these creatures walked rather than rode. Dark hoods obscured their faces, and where their feet brushed the snow they did not sink down through the light powder, nor did they leave tracks. They were shadows.

Ghosts.

One flung back its hood. She saw its face clearly: an Aoi face, more shade than substance, with the sharp cheekbones and broad lineaments common to Prince Sanglant's ancestors. Feathers decorated its hair, and the bow it carried in its hands gleamed softly, as if it weren't made of wood but of ensorcelled bone. Its eyes

were as cold as the grave as it paused to sniff the air, scenting for prey.

There were some things more frightening than the Quman.

She whistled sharply. The sound gave away her position. Before she could even take a single step back into the protecting tangle of firs, an arrow caught in her sleeve. As delicate as a needle, it had no fletching. It hung from the cloth, point lodged where the fabric creased at her elbow, and dissolved into smoke, simply and utterly gone.

Instinct made her duck to the right. A second arrow spit past, just where she'd been standing. A third caught in the dense fir above her, tumbled, and vanished as it fell.

A cry of alarm split the air. Shrieks and shouts erupted from the refuge within the" firs.

Hanna scrambled back into the firs. Branches scraped her face, pulled at her cloak, and yanked her hood back from her hair. Her braid caught and tangled in the crook of a branch. As she jerked her head sideways to free it, another spray of needles whistled past, spattering like falling stones down around her before they hissed out of existence. One struck her in the heel, but the needle-thin arrow couldn't penetrate leather. Or so she hoped. Stumbling forward, she didn't have time to check.

She burst into the open space under the tallest trees, as dark as sin except for the fire smoking and sparking where someone had thrown needles over it to kill it. She sucked in a breath to cry a warning but got such a lungful of smoke that she could barely breathe. Hacking, eyes burning, she grabbed for the nearest horse, snagged its reins, and glimpsed Gotfrid. The old Lion had formed up with two of his fellows to make a little wall of shields to defend Prince Ekkehard, much good that it did them.

Someone yelled, "God save us! My arrows go right through them! They're demons—"

The voice cut off. Then a man—maybe the one who had shouted fell backward right onto the smoking fire, clawing frantically at the arrow stuck in his throat.

Between one breath and the next, Ekkehard and his entire party panicked.

Hanna barely kept hold of the horse as men and horses bumped and careened past her. Smoke filled her eyes, blinding her, and she staggered into the thickest tangle of branches until she fetched up there, face scratched and raw, one glove torn off, hair coming free of her braid. She couldn't go any farther, and she'd lost the horse's reins. She turned around to try to find it, and almost screamed.

Facing her stood a pale figure, more shadow than substance. It had a woman's body but the face of a vulture, and the gleaming bronze armor at its chest was embossed with vulture-headed women bearing spears into battle.

Hanna could actually see the faint outline of the fir trees through its body, or maybe, horribly, actually even piercing its body, as though it weren't really entirely there.

Lowering its bow, it spoke.” I smell the stench of our old enemy upon you, human. That is how we tracked you down." It drew a long, ugly knife.

Stark terror flooded her.

It was going to kill her. With the branches pressed in against her, she couldn't reach her bow. Her fingers found the hilt of her eating knife, but she knew it was hopeless, that cold iron would do nothing more than stick itself in the trunk of the tree behind the phantom, while any least touch from a cursed elven blade or arrow would sicken a mortal unto death.

It was going to kill her.

That was it, her last thought: Ai, God. I'll never see Liath again.

The owl appeared out of nowhere, all beating wings and tearing beak. A moment's reprieve, that was all. A moment was all Hanna needed. She dropped to her knees and crawled like a madwoman, finding room to escape all the way down against the ground under a roof made of the lowest branches. Her bow scraped wood, and an arrow, catching on a branch, snapped as she broke forward. The bed of dry needles gave way to a dusting of snow, and she pushed through low-hanging branches and found herself facing into a drift. She burrowed up between two sprawling branches and floundered forward through the snow.

All she could think about was getting away. There was enough light to see, now, although everything was still in shades of gray as dawn fought to vanquish night, not an easy task with snow falling heavily and a dense blanket of clouds covering the sky. It was bitterly cold. Through the snow she saw other figures struggling to flee and, there, a lone horse.

With difficulty, she plowed through the snow and got hold of the horse's reins.

It reared back, terrified, and she almost lost hold of it.

One of the young lords materialized out of the snow beside her. He grabbed the reins out of her hands and within moments had the horse under control. By the way he favored one arm, she realized it was Prince Ekkehard. He turned to stare at her. He looked pale, scared, and very very young.

"Come on, Eagle. Lothar's dead and Thiemo's lost. We've got to run."

Behind them, a man screamed horribly. She began to turn, to go to his aid, but Ekkehard lurched forward as if the cry had propelled him on, and she didn't want to be left alone, God help her, to face those creatures. Sick at heart, she pressed through the snow in the prince's wake. From this angle, she saw thin red gashes scoring the horse's flanks, the mark of elfshot. Ekkehard's cloak was torn. They hadn't gone more than twenty wallowing steps through the snow when they were hailed.

"My lord p prince." The voice was ragged and almost incoherent with fear. Four of the young lordlings had taken refuge behind a massive elm, now stripped of foliage. They had three horses between them. As soon as they saw that Ekkehard was safe, they all blundered out into the snowy forest, aiming in no certain direction but only away from the refuge where they had so hopefully taken shelter the night before.

Hanna glimpsed a handful of other figures retreating far off to one side. Was that Gotfrid? She couldn't be sure, and she dared not call out to him, and anyway, he was already gone, lost beyond the veil of snow and the ranks of evergreens. Maybe she had only dreamed them. Maybe it was the shadow elves, circling around in order to ambush them somewhere else.

One of the boys was weeping, "Lothar's dead. Lothar's dead."

Ekkehard said, in a breathless voice, "Shut up, Manegold. They'll hear us."

"As if we aren't making the noise of an army," muttered Frithuric.

Lord Welf still had hold of the banner, although the haft had gotCHILD or FLAME

ten broken off halfway, and the young man was so dispirited that he dragged it through the snow as he stumbled on. Snow fell densely around them, soft and silent, until Hanna thought they would be buried alive.

After a long time, Benedict said in a whisper, "I think we've escaped them."

They all stumbled to a stop, breath billowing white in the cold air. The horses whickered nervously. Frithuric coughed. Ekkehard hissed a warning. They stood there with the trees all around them half invisible through the falling snow. It was utterly silent, except for the delicate shift of snow through branches and the merest whisper of wind through the crowns of trees. Because of the falling snow, Hanna couldn't see more than a stone's toss in any direction, but it all looked the same anyway: snow and trees, trees and snow.

"We're lost," said Lord Benedict finally in a very small, very frightened voice.

"I'm going to barf," said Lord Welf suddenly.

"My foot hurts," said Ekkehard, sounding surprised.

"We're all going to freeze out here," said Hanna sensibly, "if we don't keep moving. We mustn't believe we've escaped those those shades. Whatever they were."

"They're the ancient ones," whined Manegold, half frantic, almost babbling,

"who were cursed for being pagans and foul murderers who cut up babies on their altars. They were cursed to walk as ghosts forever. That's why they hate us. My old nurse told me stories—"

"All the more reason to keep moving," snapped Hanna, hoping a firm hand would get them going.

So it did. She'd learned that trick from her mother when it came time to get drunken men out of the inn and off to their homes late at night.

She grabbed the reins out of the prince's hands and pushed forward. There was no point in caring what direction they went now, except away from where they'd come. She supposed that the shades of the Aoi would have no trouble tracking them down no matter what the weather, but she'd be damned if she'd stand here waiting for them to take her unawares from the back. Let her die if she must, but as she'd said to Gotfrid not that many hours before, she'd really prefer to keep on living even if she wasn't going to get a nice hot cup of spiced wine for her trouble.

Ekkehard and his comrades followed smartly. For all their complaining, they were strong young men, well fed, strengthened by riding and weapons drill, and so scared that none of them wanted to be the one to fall behind.

Hanna's feet felt like ice and her hands were freezing. Flakes of snow stuck to her eyelashes. She flinched at every least crack and hiss from the snow-laden trees around them, but she pressed on determinedly. As long as they were moving, they weren't dead.

That was the only thing she was sure of right now.

The trees looked denser up ahead, although it was hard to tell anything for sure through the snow. A crowded line of trees like that, matted with underbrush, usually signaled a settlement or a stream. If it were the former, then they'd have shelter. If the latter, then they could follow its frozen path more easily through the forest, hoping it would lead them eventually to a place of refuge.

She reached the edge of the trees and found a deer trail, still visible because the snow made a trough where the path cut through the trees. Was that smoke she smelled? But the smell was gone quickly, nothing but a wish fled like mist under the morning sun. It began to snow harder. If they didn't find shelter soon, they would die.

The path cut around a corner. She glimpsed an opening through a curtain of branches.

"Wait!" cried one of the young lords behind her.

Too late she remembered caution. The shadow elves weren't the only enemies they were running from. But she had already taken enough of a step. Her calf caught on a trip wire, and she flew headlong, hit a slope tumbling, and slid and rolled down until she came to rest, dizzy and shaken, on her back in the snow under a cold, hard sky. It had, abruptly, stopped snowing.

The spear point came first, neatly shoved right up to the bridge of her nose.

With an effort, eyes almost crossing, she focused away from that light but deadly pressure. Someone was holding that spear, someone big and very solid, not a shade at all but quite horribly real.

The hideous and most menacing thing about him was that he had gleaming iron wings and no face, only a flat iron-gray visor with eyeholes.

With something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, he twisted off his helmet without letting slip his grip on the spear. Glossy black hair spilled over his shoulders like silk. Still stupefied, Hanna stared up into the face of the handsomest man she'd ever laid eyes on: A Quman warrior wearing the wings of a griffin.

THEY had blundered into the camp of the Quman raiding party.

Of course. Their luck could hardly get any worse.

She didn't dare move, even though the snow was leaking in through her clothing, making her skin sting. Men called out to each other in an incomprehensible language. A horse neighed in challenge.

Was that the sound of a skirmish? Or only the ring of cooking pots clanging together? She listened for Ekkehard's voice but heard nothing.

The warrior lifted his spear point from her face and handed it to someone unseen. He dropped to his knees beside her and, with an expression of astonished delight, reached down to touch her hair. She clenched her jaw, willing herself not to react as he traced a line down to her ear and picked up what remained of her braid, fingering it as if it were the most precious substance he'd ever encountered.

The unexpected beauty of his face, together with the knowledge that she was probably just about to have her throat slit, stunned her. He had a dark complexion, piercingly dark eyes, a scant mustache, and a wisp of a beard, but it was the elegant shape of his face, the dimple in his left cheek, and the brightness of his expression that marked him most. By this time his hair had fallen down over his

shoulders, spilling everywhere, so glorious that she had an insane urge to touch it.

Until, that is, her gaze fastened on the gruesome ornament dangling from his belt. The shrunken head swayed gently. Its grisly face, so revolting with those distorted features and blackened skin, swung in and out of her view. There was something nause-atingly familiar about it, maybe only that it was a human face and had once, not long ago, ornamented a living, breathing person rather than a savage's belt. The hair that crowned it had a sickly orange-brown hue, as though the poor dead man had once had hair as light as her own before it had been dipped in a noxious dye.

A voice called out. Her captor stood up, attention skipping so quickly away from her that she risked levering herself up on an elbow. No one leaped in to slaughter her, so she was able to watch as the prince—what else could he be, with those griffin wings and that swagger?—walked across the clearing to regard his captives.

They had Ekkehard and his four remaining comrades trussed up like birds being taken to the cooking pot. One of the Quman soldiers tossed a scrap of cloth to the prince. At first, the breadth of his wings hid him from Hanna's view. From this angle she saw clearly the harness attached to his lamellar armor, curving wood wings fletched by griffin feathers. Breschius had told her about griffin feathers. Only the greatest Quman heroes wore them, since they had to kill and pluck the beast themselves.

He turned sideways to shake out the banner, laughing as he saw Ekkehard's standard embroidered there: a golden harp and lion salient on a red field. He seemed to find the strangest things amusing. With a sharp whistle, he summoned to his side a man of indeterminate years but classic Wendish features. They spoke together. The Wendish man turned to regard the five youths with a sour frown.

"Which of you rates this banner, then?"

Ekkehard and company stood stubbornly silent.

The Wendish man spat on the snow.” Oh, for the love of the blessed Daisan, do you want yer cock cut off or not, for they'll not be hesitating if you don't give them satisfaction. Don't be thinking there's any bargaining with His Pompousness here." As he spoke the insulting name, he bowed with outward respect to the man with the glorious hair.” Because let me tell you, you're lucky you're not all lying dead. He wants to know whose banner it is, and if any of you have the right to it."

As boldly as he could, given the rope binding his wrists, the condition of his hair and face, and the rips and stains in his clothing, Prince Ekkehard stepped forward.” I am Ekkehard, son of King Henry, royal prince of the realm of Wendar and Varre. I wear the gold torque to mark my kinship to the royal house. Spare our lives, and I vouch that my father will pay a worthy ransom for us."

The interpreter stopped listening after the words "gold torque," and spoke quickly to his master.

The Quman prince listened intently. He seemed to have forgotten Hanna, or else he was the kind of man who only did one thing at a time. Cautiously, she ventured to sit all the way up.

The Quman camp consisted of one large round tent imperfectly camouflaged by a coating of snow and about a dozen smaller round tents, each one big enough for four men to sleep in. A long and slender standard dangled from the center post of each tent, white cloth marked with three raking stripes. After a moment, she recognized what it must be: the claw's rake, mark of the Pechanek clan.

Lady Fortune was surely laughing at Hanna today: she had fallen in with a raiding party from the tribe of Bulkezu himself, leader of the Quman army.

The prince stepped forward to unpin Ekkehard's cloak, pull down the front of his tunic, and run a finger along the twisted gold braids of Ekkehard's torque. For an instant, Hanna expected him to rip the torque right off Ekkehard's neck, because surely that's what savages did in their lust for gold. But he only grunted and stepped back without further molesting Ekkehard. With a grand gesture, he spoke, then waited for the interpreter's translation.

"His Magnificence says these words: 'You escaped my sister's son on the battlefield, but now I have your life in my hands, as I was meant to, Brother.'"

"He's the one you fought?" exclaimed Benedict.” He almost killed you!"

"Nay, it's some other one of them with those damned iron wings who fought me," said Ekkehard, looking increasingly nervous.” He just said so himself. Why does he call me 'Brother'?"

It was just hard to remain calm with all those nasty shrunken heads dangling from every belt. Hanna eased up to her knees. Strange that they had no campfires. How did they mean to cook the three skinned deer strung up on branches? And what was that seen beyond the trees that edged the other side of the clearing? Chalk cliffs? A ridge of snow? She couldn't make it out.

"Princes are brothers, are they not?" replied the translator sarcastically.” Unlike us poor bondsmen, who suffer at the whims of princes and pray only that we may live to see the next sunrise."

"Are you always so insolent?" demanded Frithuric.” Don't you fear your master's anger?"

The interpreter's smile appeared sincere, but he had a way of thrusting his chin forward that betrayed his resentment.” Only a fool wouldn't fear Prince Bulkezu's anger, for he almost never loses his temper, which makes him the worst kind of tyrant." He nattered on, a petty tyrant himself glad of the chance to lord it over folk more helpless than he was, but Hanna reeled and Ekkehard and his comrades swayed fearfully and changed color. Bulkezu.

Ai, God, this glorious man was Bulkezu? She'd thought their luck couldn't get any worse. But it had.

"Anyway," the interpreter continued, "none of these miserable Quman understand our tongue, so I can say what I wish. I could tell His Arrogance right now that you've insulted his mother, and then you'd be seeing something you'd rather wished you hadn't, like your guts spilled out on the ground before you're too dead to notice." Gleefully, he turned to Bulkezu and said several sharp sentences.

Ekkehard gasped out loud, but got control of himself as though he'd just remembered that, in the epics, the hero always died nobly. Straightening up, he composed his face sternly to meet his doom.

Bulkezu laughed again. He clapped Ekkehard on the shoulder and gestured toward the large tent.

The interpreter spoke mockingly.” Prince Bulkezu wishes to share wine with his Wendish brother, in token of their kinship."

"Is he going to poison me?" whispered Ekkehard, trying to look courageous and cool.

"Nay, my lord prince, he's going to do just as he says, share a cup of wine with you that he's taken off some poor God-fearing decent folk who are now dead and lying unburied, food for the ravens. I hope you enjoy it."

It seemed to Hanna that not one man there was paying attention to her. There were no obvious sentries anywhere. Most of the two dozen men in the small clearing stood around watching with various expressions of amusement the interplay between their prince and his prisoners. Off to the right, beyond the tents, seven men moved among the horses. These stocky creatures looked awkward compared to the bigger, prettier mounts captured with Ekkehard. One older man with a tattooed face and wearing a strange costume composed of dozens of scraps of cloth sewn into a patchwork stood off to one side, where he fingered the elfshot gashes torn into the roan's rump. With an absent, almost crazy smile, he smeared a yellowish paste onto the wounds, letting another man hold the horse's head so it wouldn't bolt.

She shifted sideways on her knees as Ekkehard made up his mind to approach the princely tent with as much dignity as his tied hands allowed. With everyone watching that little procession, she might have a chance to make a break for it.

But to what end? Would abandoning Ekkehard result in his execution? Could she really expect to escape when they had horses and she was on foot? Were the shadow elves still lurking in the forest?

Yet no matter what, no matter the risk or the consequences, she had to try to reach the king. He had to be made to understand that Quman raiding parties were overrunning the eastern borders of his kingdom.

Hanna got a foot under her, pushed up—

—and saw a needle-thin arrow skate across the snow right in front of her. It dissolved into smoke, melting down into the snow. A cloud of air, puffing out from nose and mouth, shrouded her vision briefly, but the shadow forms of the Lost Ones were unmistakable once you knew them, old enemies returned to haunt her. She sucked in air, and the mist cleared. A dozen bows aimed down at the camp as the shadow elves gathered at the forest's edge At whose hands would death be worse?

Like firebrands being quenched in water, arrows hissed and smoked through the brittle air. Two struck into the snow, first at one side of her and then, as she rolled away, to the other. Tiny trails of smoke rose where the arrows melted into the snow.

It seemed impossible for such delicate threads to be so deadly.

A scream pierced the quiet clearing. A Quman soldier reeled backward, hands grasping his head. Blood leaked between his gloved fingers as he staggered and fell, although his scream echoed on and on in time to the pounding of her heart.

She scrambled backward. An arrow streaked toward the Quman prince. Whether by luck or calculation, he twisted, catching the dart on his griffin wings. A shower of sparks like a hot iron forge lit up the dawn.

Bulkezu shouted unintelligible orders. Those with horses near turned them to become shields against the shadow foe. A few Quman loosed arrows in reply, but their shots flew wildly, clumsily drawn, and the shadows always faded into bush or tree before Quman arrows could strike a target.

A half-dozen Quman soldiers shoved Prince Ekkehard and his company toward the big pavilion. Lord Welf fell, although Hanna did not see where he was hit. A burly soldier hooked him under the armpits and dragged him on after the others.

The patch-cloak man let out a sudden whoop, dancing toward the prince, who had slapped his helmet back over his head. The shaman stripped off his cloak to reveal a naked torso, his chest and back covered with fantastic blue-black tattoos. As he babbled and pranced, the designs, wild and magical animals, scenes of battle, celestial forms, began to writhe and come to life.

Hanna shook her head hard, thinking she was seeing things, and found shelter behind a stalwart pony too stupid to be scared. She could not keep her gaze from the dancing man, his stocky, hairless torso, muscular legs, and powerful arms. In each of his ears he wore a chain of three human noses. A golden needle pierced the septum of his nose, with a human ear, dried and withered, skewered on each end. His hands were gloved in skins from human feet and his feet in skins from human hands.

Bulkezu ducked, catching a shower of arrows in his wings again, and took cover behind the captured roan. But the shaman crouched in plain sight and sang.

With each phrase he hunkered lower and lower until Hanna thought he meant to dig himself entirely into the snow. A white haze rose around him, like wind blowing the top layer off a snowy field, and his tattoos actually slipped off his body onto the snow and like a thousand wriggling worms climbed up onto Bulkezu, and the horse, spreading and growing until a half-dozen men and then a dozen more were dappled with his tattoos.

Bulkezu mounted the horse and shouted a command. With bows and spears and swords, the Quman charged up the hill. A hail of darts fell among them, but neither Bulkezu nor his soldiers flinched. As the shadow arrows struck, the tattoo beasts and warriors caught and swallowed them, and any harm they might cause. Neither horse nor rider could be wounded. With Bulkezu in the lead, they crested the slope and fell upon the shadow elves.

The battle thrashed away into the trees as the Quman drove off their attackers.

Prince Bulkezu was nowhere in sight, a dozen men scurried to corral the spooked horses, and the shaman, rising from the snow, threw his patchwork cloak back on and with a few assistants got busy tending to the wounded, including poor Lord Welf.

No one was paying attention to Hanna, no one at all.

Lady Fortune had a strange way of showering her favor over the hapless. Hanna got as far as the tree line before, amazingly, she tripped over that same damned trip line that had caught her in the first place. She fell hard, wind knocked out of her. Her head ached, and her hands had gone numb. But by God she was going to get out of here. She forced her elbows under herself and began to push up, just as hands grabbed her ankles.

She swore helplessly as a soldier dragged her back into camp. It was as much as she could do to keep her head up off the ground so she didn't smother in snow. Her captor didn't let go of her until he reached the entrance to the great tent. There, he let go of her ankles and rolled her over the threshold—a ridge of wood that bruised an arm and hip as she was tipped over it—onto a miraculously soft carpet that had no snow on it. She lay there, gasping for breath, as melting granules of snow trickled from all the creases in her clothing to numb her skin under her clothing. She wanted to weep, but she didn't have the luxury.

After a moment, she pushed up to her hands and knees, staggered slightly, and stood, aware that about a dozen men had crowded into the pavilion, eager to watch the final tawdry scene unfold.

Bulkezu sat on a stool at his ease, watching her. He stil wore his armor, but his wings and his helmet had been set aside and his skin and clothing bore no sign of the tattoos that had protected him. If the fight had discomposed him at al , she saw no sign of it in his posture or his serene expression. He said a few casual words to the interpreter, who like Hanna was still breathing hard, looking relieved to have escaped death.

"His Imperiousness Prince Bulkezu suggests with all politeness that you not try to escape again. He's quite taken with your blonde hair. If you're lucky, he'll like you well enough to keep you to himself for a bit before he throws you to the wolves."

"I wonder that he can't hear what a bastard you are just from your tone of voice," said Hanna.” I'll thank you, traitor, to let His Most Gracious Prince Bulkezu know that he'd better not touch me, because I'm a King's Eagle, and my person is sacrosanct."

The interpreter merely snorted, then repeated what she hoped were her words.

Bulkezu only laughed as he rose and approached her. Miraculously, her cloak hadn't come unpinned despite all the dragging and tumbling about. He grabbed hold of her brass Eagle's brooch and ripped it clean off. Her cloak slid down her body to land in a heap on the carpet, all ridges and rumpled valleys. Her tunic, torn, drooped a little, revealing skin.

Bulkezu sighed, lifting a hand to fondle her hair.

"Sorry to tell you," said the interpreter, who hadn't moved from his place beside the prince's stool.” The Quman believe that blonde hair is good luck. I've seen a man killed fighting to get possession of a light-haired bed-slave."

She was really getting frightened now, knowing how ugly it was probably going to get, and her fear made her angry and reckless. She hated the feel of Bulkezu touching her like she was an animal, or already his bed-slave. Grabbing his wrist, she yanked his hand down from her hair.

He hadn't expected her to defy him, and anyway, she'd worked hard all her life and wasn't a weakling. For the space of two breaths they stood poised there, she holding his wrist away and he gone tense, resisting her. They were almost exactly the same height. This close, she saw a shadow flicker in his eyes, the spark of anger. Something about him changed, his posture, the cant of his head, the tension in his shoulders. The atmosphere in the tent altered completely. The interpreter made a strangled noise in his throat, catching back a gasp of fear.

The ugly scene was upon them.

Bulkezu forced her hand down slowly, slowly. It wasn't easy for him to do it, but in the end he was stronger although she fought him all the way. He just held her arm down by her hip to prove that he had her, that she'd lost, that nothing she could do would change the fact that she was his now, to do with as he willed. He kept his gaze locked on hers, to drive her into utter submission.

She didn't flinch. In this contest, he could kill her if he wished, but he would never win. She refused to be beaten.

Fluttering up from the depths of her memory in that moment before the worst happened, she remembered Brother Breschius.

Without looking away from the Quman prince, Hanna spoke clearly and strongly.” I pray you, traitor, tell your master that he'd rather be dead than touch me because I'm the luck of a Kerayit shaman."

She saw the word "Kerayit" strike Bulkezu as might an arrow, right in the eyes.

His grip on her slackened, just for an instant, but hesitation is usually fatal. She twisted her wrist within his fingers and jerked out of his grasp.

The interpreter made a gagging noise in his throat, as though a bone had stuck there. But he spoke words nevertheless. Prince Bulkezu stepped back from her at once, alarmed and surprised. He snapped an order in his own tongue. It seemed like every man there gaped at her, faces white or flushed, as one darted out of the tent. He returned quickly with the man dressed in the patchwork cloak.

The shaman groped in one of his barkskin pouches. He came up with a handful of powder and flung it at her. Coughing, she waved the white powder away as it settled down into her hair and on her shoulders, drifting to the carpet. Its stink ate into her and woke the wasp sting in her heart. The shaman's eyes got very wide. He babbled in a high, anxious voice, made a number of signs that looked like the kind of gestures witches made when casting protection about themselves, and became so agitated, drooling and spitting froth, that most of the men fled the tent. His nose earrings swayed as he shuddered and twitched.

Finally, he sank down into a huddle on the floor, exhausted. As well he might be, after fighting off the shadow elves with his magic.

There was silence. Hanna began to wonder where Ekkehard was, or if he was even still alive.

And then, of course, Prince Bulkezu laughed, as if he'd just heard the best joke of his life. That easy laughter was beginning to make her nervous.

Her wrist hurt, and her stomach and breasts ached from the jolting drag across the ground, and her feet especially were freezing with flashes of hot and cold.

But she couldn't afford to look weak now.

With an amused smile on his handsome face, Bulkezu sat back down on his camp stool and gave some orders, nothing she could understand. The old shaman unrolled himself from his stupor, rose, and hurried away without any sign he'd had a fit. He returned with a fine copper basin engraved with griffins devouring deer and a copper pitcher filled with hot water. Where on Earth had they come by hot water in this godforsaken wilderness when they had not even one campfire burning to alert enemies to their position?

He gestured toward a curtain while Bulkezu watched her with avid interest.

Other men hurried out, sent on errands. Hanna allowed the shaman to show her behind the curtain. Here lay pillows and furs, the plush sleeping quarters of a nomad prince. The shaman ignored them, indicating that she should wash herself.

Why not? She washed her hands and face and cleaned up the worst of the stains on her clothing, then, daringly, took off her boots and bathed her freezing feet in the cooling water. Maybe she had never felt anything so wonderful in her life up to then as that water pooling over her toes. She dug out her wooden comb from her pouch, undid her braid, and untangled her hair before braiding it up again.

The shaman watched her with interest and respect. Strangely, he didn't scare her, despite the gruesome ornaments he wore. He had tended his own people and Lord Welf with equal skill. Nor he did look likely to rape her. And at least he didn't dangle a shrunken head at his belt like the rest of them did. As horrible as the noses and ears were, she could pretend that they were just dried apricots, discolored and withered into peculiar shapes. If anything, he looked a little crazy, but in a mellow way, as if he'd inhaled too much smoke and spoken to the gods once too often.

"Thank you," she said to him when she was finished. She made to wrap her leggings back on, but he indicated that she should hang them up to dry instead.

He poked about among the prince's sparse belongings and came up with a gorgeous silk robe. She shook her head, sensing all at once that someone was peering in through a gap in the curtains.” No, I thank you. I'll keep my own clothing on, if you please. I don't want His Gracious Highness Prince Bulkezu to believe for one instant that I am giving in to him or indeed taking anything from him that might lead him to believe I feel myself indebted to him."

The shaman smiled beatifically, nodding his head in time to the rhythm of her words. Obviously he couldn't understand a single thing she'd said. She rose, crossed to the curtain, and pulled it aside to reveal Prince Bulkezu himself, lounging just on the other side. He had gotten out of his armor and now wore a silk robe dyed a lush purple that set off his eyes. His hair had been combed out, and it lay draped over the robe in all its luxuriant beauty. He had that same irritating smile on his face. Had he been peeking, to see if she stripped?

If he laughs, she thought, I'll strangle him.

He merely indicated a neat semicircle of felt-covered pillows set in the center of the pavilion. Prince Ekkehard and his fellows were already seated there, trying to look as comfortable and relaxed as if they dined every day in the tent of their enemy, the man whom Bayan hated above all others in the whole wide world.

Even Lord Welf, looking much recovered from his elfshot wound, sat with them, although he was pallid.

"His Mightiness begs that you honor him with your presence, Honored One,"

said the interpreter to Hanna with considerably more politeness than he'd shown before.” Now that the Cursed

Ones have been driven off, there is time to celebrate the victory, and your fortuitous meeting."

"One wonders who it was lucky for," muttered Lord Benedict.

"Those shades would probably have tracked us down and killed us if we hadn't stumbled upon Prince Bulkezu," said Ekkehard crossly to his companion. He glanced back at the interpreter.” Is the Eagle to sit with us as though she's nobly born?"

"If I were you, my sweet prince," said the interpreter insolently, "I'd keep my mouth shut about her."

"Does Prince Bulkezu mean to take her as a concubine? I've seen prettier, but I suppose her hair is striking."

"You're an ignorant young sot, aren't you? Don't you know what she is?"

"She's a damned Eagle, and deserves the respect with which the king has honored her. I recognize the ring on her hand, the mark of my father's favor. I can't believe your savage master hasn't cut that emerald off her finger yet."

"Or that he hasn't cut off your head for your insolence," added Lord Frithuric.

Prince Bulkezu cleared his throat suggestively as he ushered Hanna up to a pillow and, with the manners of a courtier, indicated a wine-colored pillow decorated with clashing eagles. Once she sank down cross-legged, uncomfortable sitting as an equal among Wendish lords, Bulkezu placed himself on the remaining vacant pillow, between Hanna and Ekkehard. He clapped his hands, once, and his soldiers hurried to serve them on perfect wooden trays carved with filigree done to resemble twining vines. The cups were cruder, plain ceramic, but warm to the touch, and she almost laughed out loud when she breathed in the aroma: hot spiced wine.

A pang struck her, clawing at her heart. What had happened to Gotfrid and his fellows? Had they escaped, or did they lie dead in the snow?

But Gotfrid surely wouldn't begrudge her a moment's pleasure after everything they'd been through. Gotfrid would probably be the first to say that it was well worth enjoying what you had while you had it, since you didn't know how quickly it might be taken from you.

As Bayan had said, no war was ever lost if there was still wine to drink.

Bulkezu examined her in the silence as they sipped their wine and nibbled on hard cakes flavored with coriander. Truly, there was a war going on right now in more ways than one, and she didn't suppose it would be over very quickly. After all, despite their fear of the Kerayit, she was still his prisoner.

A soldier entering carrying an odd-looking two-stringed lute. He settled himself to one side and serenaded them in a grating, nasal voice that droned on and on.

After a long while, he finished, and they were permitted to go to sleep. Although she was most graciously offered the use of Bulkezu's furs, she took herself to the opposite wall of the tent, near the entrance, and wrapped herself tightly in her cloak. She was so exhausted that she fell asleep at once.

She woke to snoring. Without raising her head or otherwise giving herself away, she studied the dark interior. Prince Ekkehard and his comrades lay sleeping nearby, sprawled in ungainly postures on the floor of the pavilion. Each of the young lords had a partner in sleep, a Quman soldier at rest beside them, so that if their prisoner stirred, they would wake, too. Only Hanna wasn't guarded.

Or maybe she was.

One person wasn't sleeping. In the center of the pavilion, illuminated by the pool of light afforded by a single burning lamp hung from the center pole, Prince Bulkezu still sat on his gold-braided pillow. He had an easy posture, cross-legged, one elbow braced on a knee while the other fiddled with the stem of an elaborate ceramic pipe. Steam bubbled up from its belly. He took a puff from the pipe, exhaling softly. A veil of smoke hazed the air around him as he watched her. Did he know she'd woken?

The strangely-scented smoke filled her lungs and made her consciousness drift on hazy currents out through the smoke hole, lofting above the camp. There lay the prince's pavilion, below her, glowing with a faint golden ring of protection, and the other tents, ranged in a circle around it, seemed marked by yet more magical wards. There stood the horses, restless in the cold night, and their stalwart guard. To one side, unseen before, she noticed a corral and, within that fence, the patchwork cloak of the shaman. He

cooked meat over a kettle filled with coals, and abruptly glanced up, as if he sensed her. But her awareness already ranged beyond him, to the sentries in their concealed posts, the glittering trip lines laid high and low, and a pair of hawks perched on a branch, waiting for dawn.

What waited beyond Bulkezu's little camp struck dismay into her heart. As her awareness lifted higher, caught on an aetherical breeze, she saw that Prince Bulkezu's was only one campsite situated among many—more than she could count in the darkness. The tents of the Quman lay scattered through the forest like uncounted pebbles.

This wasn't a raiding party at all. It was the Quman army.

Bulkezu had swung wide around Handelburg. He'd abandoned Bayan and his shattered army, left them holed up and impotent in the east, and now was driving west toward the heart of Wendar itself.

The Quman weren't the only ones waiting in the cold night. Dread creatures stalked the Earth, patient and single-minded. Beyond the trip lines and other protective wards, the shadows of elves waited, arrayed in hunting groups, their thwarted rage like the throb of a lute string in the air. Would she never escape them? Why did they pursue her, she who had never glimpsed such creatures before? How had she angered them, or called attention to herself? Had they, like the hideous galla, learned her name?

A breath of cold air brushed her lips, like a kiss, and she came crashing back into her body, heart pounding with fear. But she hadn't moved, nor had anyone touched her. The night wind had teased the entrance flap open. Through the gap she saw outside into the open space between the tents. It had been snowing again. The tracks of the battle lay buried under a fresh blanket of snow, white and pristine.

The owl glided into view and came to rest on the unbroken snow. It blinked once, and she knew then that it was looking right at her.

She had seen this owl before. This was the owl who had appeared at the abandoned village, just two nights ago, before disaster had broken over them.

This was the owl Liath had spoken to at the palace of Werlida just as though it could understand her.

She knew now what it was. This was the centaur woman's owl, that Hanna had seen in her dreams.

It waited golden eyes staring. Silence settled like snow Bulkezu laughed. He sucked on his pipe before speaking in comprehensible Wendish.” Nay, dreaded one, I will not harm the woman with the frost-white hair. I fear your power too much. But now she's mine. Get her back if you can."

XI THE NOISE OF THEIR WAKING

ON the first fine spring day, Adica walked down from the stone loom after a weary afternoon of meditation. The gorgeous weather had not helped her keep her mind focused, not when the song of birds kept distracting her, and primrose and blooming flax painted the ground in pale yellows, blues, and violets. She kept wondering where her husband was, and what he was doing.

As usual, she had no trouble finding him. She had only to follow the sound of laughter, to walk down to the river where it seemed most of the village had gathered, whooping and hollering over some ridiculous male contest. Spring had come, and that of course meant men became infected with the Green Man's mischief.

Alain stood knee-deep in the river shallows, having challenged all comers to a wrestling match. She arrived in time to see him flip poor Kel into the deep water, dunking him. Kel came up shrieking from the shock of the cold water. A half-dozen other men stood shivering and wet on the bank, egging their fellows on.

"Throw him in!"

"It's more than he deserves! Hold him under!"

"Whoo! Ha! That water's so cold it'll be summer before my wife gets any pleasure out of me!"

"Well, then," called his wife from the crowd, "the Black Deer traders come through this time of year. I'll have to please myself with them until you're fit for use." She started a rowdy chorus of "My man can't even walk up the path to his own house," and most of the other women joined in.

Alain was laughing as he helped Kel out of the water. He had stripped down to a simple loincloth; it was the first day warm enough to do so. Even though Adica knew his body intimately by now, she still admired his lean hips and broad shoulders. Usually she combed and braided his hair for him, but it had al come loose around his shoulders. A man's beard had grown in over the winter, thus proving to the last of the skeptics, such as they were, that he had not one drop of the Cursed Ones' blood running in his veins.

Weiwara moved over to stand beside her. She held the elder twin, Blue-bud, in her arms. Adica ached to hold the baby, beautiful and plump as it was, but dared not ask.” You'd think you were married yesterday instead of last autumn the way you ogle him," said Weiwara with a chuckle, shifting the baby to her other hip.”

Look, here comes Beor."

Kel, still whimpering, staggered out of the river and grabbed a skin cloak to wrap around himself just as Beor stalked up to the shore and stripped off his knee-length tunic.

"Now you'll see what a real man can do," growled Beor.

The contrast between the two men was striking: Alain lean and smooth, Beor with his broad chest densely matted with curly hair. Alain always seemed to have a smile on his face, the look of a person who no longer has anything to worry about, while Beor suffered from a nagging, irritable discontent. But, in truth, Beor had mellowed over the winter. He didn't argue nearly as much as he had once done. Maybe it was just that it had been a mild winter during which the village hadn't suffered hunger or anything worse than the usual stink of being closed up in their homes for months on end. Maybe they were all just more at peace, despite the ever-present menace of the Cursed Ones, now that Alain lived among them.

"I said I will take on all men, not all bears," said Alain to general laughter.

Beor lifted his hands in imitation of a lumbering bear and, with a mock roar, charged Alain. A child yelped with excitement. Alain sidestepped him, but not fast enough. Beor got hold of a shoulder, they grappled, then Beor twisted Alain back and with brute strength lifted him up and tossed him backward into the current. The big man threw out his arms and let out a scream of triumph that echoed off the tumulus. Adica laughed helplessly along with the rest of the village.

Alain came up thrashing, drenched through.

"Peace!" he cried.” You win."

He extended a hand. When Beor took it, to help him up, Alain yanked so hard that Beor tumbled forward into the freezing water beside him. By this time the two black dogs had begun barking, and as the two men heaved themselves spluttering and laughing up out of the water, the dogs splashed into the shallows and, in their excitement, knocked them both over again.

"My stomach hurts," moaned Weiwara, tears leaking from her eyes as she laughed.

"The village will smell a lot better now," cried Beor's sister, Etora, from the crowd.” Whew! Look how the river has changed color downstream."

Adica found Alain's wool cloak lying on the rocks. After he waded out of the water, she draped it over his shoulders. A winter spent mostly indoors and the immediate effects of the freezing water had made him pale, dimpled with goose bumps.

"Cold," he proclaimed cheerfully as she fastened the cloak at his left shoulder with a bronze pin. He kissed her cheek.

His lips were as cold as death.

She shuddered.

"Adica." Instantly attentive to her moods, he took her hand in his. His skin was as cold as a corpse's. The vision hit like the slap of cold water.

Six figures, made indistinct by darkness, sit huddled in a stone chamber. A seventh rests on the floor, sleeping, injured, or dead, the figure of a lion sewn into the cloth on his heavy tunic. At the fringe of the light cast by a smoking torch lies a stone slab. On this altar a queen has been laid to rest. Her bones have been arranged with care and respect, and the garments and jewelry fitting for a woman of her status have fallen in among the bones, strands of rotting fabric, beads, a lapis lazuli ring, and armbands of gold. One of the figures lif s t

the torch to see better, and all at once the gold antlers placed at the skeleton's skull spring into view.

'.ew.

Those are the holy antlers she wears, to mark her place as Hallowed One among her people.

"Adica."

She swayed; clutching him.” I saw my dead body," she whispered hoarsely.” I saw my own grave."

He grabbed her, pulling her close.” Speak no evil words! No harm will come to you, beloved. I will not let any bad thing touch you."

"I love you," she murmured into his hair.

"Always you will love me," he said fiercely as the dogs bounded up and thrust their cold noses and damp fur against her hips, trying to squeeze between them,

"and always will I love you."

She had never had the courage to tell him the ful truth about the task that lay before her. It hurt too much ever to think of leaving him. That was the secret of the Fat One, whose face was twofold, wreathed half in light and shrouded half in shadow. She was the giver of all things, pain and death as well as plenty and pleasure. Was it any wonder that Adica chose pleasure when sorrow and death waited just beyond the threshold?

Meanwhile, villagers had gathered at a respectful distance, waiting for her attention.

"Hallowed One, Getsi has that cough again." "Hallowed One, my husband's snare out in the south woods is being vexed by evil spirits."

"Hallowed One, we've finished repairing the roof that was damaged in the snow, and it needs your blessing."

Alain laughed. Even in repose, his face had a kind of glow to it, but when he smiled, his expression shone. He had the most luminous eyes of any person she had ever met.” You make the village live, so it is for me to make you live and be happy."

It is easy to find death in the world, but a greater magic by far to bring life. He was a life bringer.

He had come to her in late summer, and in the natural order of things the days and months had passed as the moon waxed and waned and waxed again.

Autumn had worked free of summer, winter had cast her white blanket over the world, and in the course of time the Green Man lifted his head from his winter's slumber. So it went, and so it would go on, long after she was gone from the Earth. Even knowing the fate that awaited her as the wheel of the year continued to turn, when the seasons rolled from spring into summer and at last to her final autumn, she was content.

The Holy One had chosen wisely.

Right now, however, the villagers waited.

By late afternoon she finished weaving a protective spell around the snare in the south woods that was being plagued by evil spirits. Returning, she found the village gathered for the last day of feasting in celebration of the new spring. She went into her own house and, with the proper prayers and spells, put on her regalia, the antlers and bronze waistband. With staff in hand, she led the villagers in procession up the tumulus to stand outside the stone loom around the calling ground. Together, they watched the sun set a little to the right of the spring and autumn ridge that marked the equinox. Winter had left them. Now they could plant.

She sang.” I pray to you, Green Man, let the seeds take root." She turned to welcome the full moon, rising in the east. ''I pray to you, Fat One, let the village prosper. Let your fullness be a sign of plenty in the year to come."

Every villager had brought offerings, a posy of violets, a copper armband, flint axes, beads, arrowheads, and daggers. With the moon to light their way, they circled down the tumulus and followed the path that led to the marsh at the eastern limit of the hills. Adica knew the secret trail of firm tussocks that led through the marsh to the sacred island As the oldest uncrippled man in the village, Pur the stone knapper was given the honor of carrying in the offerings in her wake.

A fish jumped. The moon made silver of the water trembling through glittering beds of reeds and around grassy hummocks. The wind brought the scent of the cook fires from the village, and the smell of roasting pig.

CHILI) OF FLAME The sacred island was itself scarcely bigger than two men laid end to end. An old stone altar carved with cups and spirals had been set up here in the time of the ancient queens. She knelt before it and set her palms into two depressions worn into stone. Pur waited patiently. He knew how to listen, having mastered the art of letting stone speak to him, and so he didn't fear the dark of night as some did. He recognized its familiar noises and understood the magic that lies just beneath the surface of the world. After a while she heard the ancient voice of the stone, more a drone than voiced speech, as wakeful as stone ever could be at the quarters of the year when stars and earth worked in concert. She whispered to it, telling it the hopes and wishes of the villagers as well as the various small signs she had observed over the winter: where the first violets had bloomed, how a forest stream had cut a new channel, how both Weiwara and a ewe had borne living twins, how many flocks of geese had passed overhead last autumn on their way south to their winter nesting grounds.

The stone understood the secret language of earth, and it held the life of the village in its impenetrable heart.

When she was done with the prayers, she and Pur cast the offerings into the marsh, as they did every year at the festival of spring, a sacrifice for a good year.

After that, she was through with being the antlered woman, the crossing-over one who can speak both to humankind and to the gods, to made things and to wild things. Pur moved away so as not to see anything forbidden, and with the prayers and spells she knew best, she became Adica again, putting away her regalia in its leather bag.

As they made their way back, water squelched and sucked beneath her feet on the lowest hummocks, half drowned in the marsh. A water snake glided away over the quiet water. Pond weed edged the marsh. Within the sheltering darkness, she overheard the conversation of those waiting for her return.

"All winter you speak of the war with the Cursed Ones," Alain was saying.” Do you think they attack with the spring?"

"Of course they will attack." Kel always sounded as if he had fire burning under his feet.” They hate us."

"Why? Can there not be trading and talk? Why can there only be hate?"

»

Alain was always full of questions about things that seemed obvious to everyone else. The wind blew a light stalk of reed against her face, then away. Pur shifted behind her, but she didn't move. Wherever she walked, people marked where she was. Rarely did she have a chance to overhear when people spoke words unshaped by their concern about what she might hear.

Kel snorted.” Never can we trust the Cursed Ones. They sacrifice their human captives by flaying them alive, and then they cut out their hearts and eat them!"

"Have you seen it done, Kel?" asked Alain quietly.

"No! But everyone knows—

Urtan broke in.” Humankind has always warred against the Cursed Ones, ever since they came over the seas in their white ships. Only now the fight has grown more desperate because the Cursed Ones have brought their metal weapons to the killing field."

"Now we have a chance to defeat the Cursed Ones," exclaimed Kel eagerly.”

That's why they tried to kidnap the Hallowed One. They'll try again. We must be on our guard day and night—

"Hush, now, Kel," said Urtan quietly.” You'll wake the sleeping. That's why we have to wait here for the Hallowed One to return from the offering ground. In the old days, she would have walked to the marsh and returned all alone, but now we can't risk leaving her alone. The Cursed Ones won't give up."

"I'll protect her," said Alain in that stubborn way he had, more sweet than grouchy.

"No one can protect her," said Kel, stung by Urtan's words into speaking unwisely.” She has a doom laid on her—

Behind her, Pur hissed displeasure.

"What do you mean?" asked Alain.

Adica was suddenly aware of the grass stuck to her fingers. An owl hooted.

There came a sudden splash, then silence.

Urtan started in.” If your mother were alive today, she'd be ashamed to hear you talking like a crow, all loud noises and strutting but without two thoughts to rub together. You treat words like pebbles. Grab a handful and throw them to the winds. Maybe you sleep in the men's house now, but that doesn't mean you're a man until you've earned the right to have your counsel listened to."

"Here, now," began Alain.

"Nay, let him go," said Urtan as Kel thrashed away into the brush.” That'll make his ears sizzle. He'll think twice next time he speaks."

"But what did he mean about—?"

Pur coughed loudly.

"Hush," said Urtan.” Here comes the Hallowed One and Pur back again."

Adica made as much noise as possible, coming those last ten steps before she emerged into the clearing where a dozen adults waited, armed with spears or staffs.” Come, let us go to the feast."

Mother Orla had died at the solstice of a lung fever and been buried with her gold neck ring, one hundred amber beads, a full bark bucket of beer, and a handsome flint dagger. The villagers had held council for over a month—there wasn't much else to do in the winter—and finally chosen a new headwoman for the village, one who would bring them luck and prosperity.

Now, it was young Mother Weiwara who stepped forward to hand Adica a wooden ladle full to the brim with ale brewed of wheat, cranberries, and honey, flavored with bog myrtle. It stung a little, having gone somewhat flat after a winter in storage, but still had a good, strong taste, nothing sour or corrupt.

It was a balmy night, as sweet as a newborn child. They ate roast pig garnished with bistort and nettle tops, flat loaves of barley bread, stewed hedgehog, and greens, and drank enough ale to fill two rivers while Weiwara told the story of how the ancient queen Toothless built the tumulus with magic. Urtan sang of the hunt of the young queen Arrow Bright, who had captured a dragon and then set it free. If, as the night wore on and the moon cast its dazzling spell over the village, some women went off into the dark with men who weren't their husbands, no one minded. The Green Man would have his own way in these matters.

Adica sat beside her husband, content. She had bathed his hair in violet-scented water that morning, and she could still smell it there. He always smelled of flowers.

He knew songs, too, that he sang in the language of the dead, which none of the living could understand. The dead still feasted and loved and fought on the Other Side. Of course they would

need songs, like offerings. They sat by the fire for a long time, watching the flames tumble and lick, hearing the red-hot coals pop or sigh. Everyone else had gone. The moon rode high along her path, and Adica didn't ever want the night to end, as if they could be stranded here forever, untouched by fate.

Alain held her close. He stroked her belly and whispered in her ear.” We make a child?"

One of the dogs, lying to his left, growled.

She smoothed a thumb over his cheek, found his lips, kissed him.” No child."

She had no more grief to give over to a child who would never be born. Like a loosed arrow, she had to remain fixed and true so that she would hit her mark.

The Holy One had given her more than she had hoped for, and she would not let regret stalk her now.

He misunderstood her.” No child lives here yet." His fingers tapped her skin caressingly.” We can make a child, yes?"

She sighed, not wanting to have to make him understand.” No child, beloved."

"I will never let you or a child come to any harm." Suddenly passionate, almost angry, he leaned away from her, still grasping her elbows, so that he could look into her face.” You think I cannot protect you, just like I could not protect—"

Both dogs growled and stood.

"That's the loom! Someone is working the loom." She leaped up and ran to the gate. Alain and the dogs caught up with her there. He had brought a torch but not lit it.

"Do you hear the stones?" She waited for the night watch to open the narrow portal and squeezed through, Alain following after. Crossing the bridge, she turned her face toward the hill. Threads woven out of the loom of the sky, drawn down by magic's shuttle, traced so faint a pattern against the night sky and the glare of the full moon that only an eye trained to magic could discern them. The stones lay out of her sight at the height of the hill.

"Look!" said Alain as both dogs barked. A torch bobbed high up on the ramparts.

Who had come? Was it the Cursed Ones again?

The night watch blew two short calls to alert the village. Alain pulled her back through the portal, barring it behind them. Safe behind the palisade, she climbed the ladder that led to the gate tower. There, she waited as the torchlight approached and as adults of the village gathered outside the common house, ready with weapons.

A woman she had never seen before approached the gate, torch held high to light her path. In her other hand, she held a spear tipped with a flint point. Her hair, braided with bone and shell beads, gleamed under the torchlight, and her skin was mottled with strange markings, perhaps a scabrous disease.

But her voice was clear and strong.” Let there be peace among allies."

"Let those who suffer join hands," called Adica in reply. She signaled to the night watch. As he unbarred the portal, she climbed down from the parapet so that if the messenger brought evil spirits in with her, she would be the only one to take harm from them. The crowd gathered at the common house murmured at her appearance, but none called out. They, too, waited.

The woman had no disease: she bore the tattoos common to Spits-last's people, who called themselves "Akka," the Old Woman's people. She spoke the language of the Deer people with so heavy an accent that it was hard for Adica to understand her.

"I am a Walking One of the Akka people. This message I bring for the sorcerer of the Deer people from the one who falls down when the spirit rides him."

"I am Hallowed One of the White Deer people. Do you bring me a message from Falling-down?"

"This message I bring from the sorcerer who falls down when the spirit rides him: 'Walk with the messenger who brings you this message. Danger time this day and tomorrow. Knife of Cursed Ones cuts our threads. They know who we are. Come to the land of the Akka people, of the north country. Come quick quick. There I wait.'"

The words chilled Adica.” I will come."

Alain had the intent look on his face that meant he was working hard to understand words. At once, she realized how long it would be until she saw him again. This the looms demanded: you could never predict how many days or even months each crossing would take. The loom's burden had never seemed as harsh as it did at this

moment. How could she make him understand how bitterly it hurt her to leave him?

He spoke first.” I come with you to keep you safe." He turned at once, not waiting for her answer, and sent Kel off to fetch his staff, dagger, and cloak.

Relief left Adica speechless.

Mother Weiwara came forward.” Winter departs late in the north country where the Akka dwell." She sent villagers for water and travel bread, winter clothing, hide leggings and shirts, fur cloaks fastened with precious copper pins, and a complicated binding of grass and leather to protect feet from bitter cold.

Alain beckoned Beor over.” Put more adults on the night watch. Let all adults walk armed to the fields. If there is danger, if the Cursed Ones are planning an attack, then you must be ready."

Beor turned to Adica.” Give me the bronze sword, the one you hid away. If the Cursed Ones attack us and you are not here to protect against them with your magic, then it will go worse for us. It isn't right that we might have had a weapon in our hands to fight them off."

The memory of her vision flashed in her mind, of the bronze sword in Beor's hand as he wreaked havoc. It was a terrible choice, and perhaps an unfair one, but because she had no time, because the river had caught her in its grasp and swept her forward, she gave in.” Very well. Come with us to the loom. I will give you the sword."

They made a silent procession, walking up through the ramparts girded with staffs, torches, and traveling pouches slung over their shoulders. Beor admired the Akka Walking One; Adica recognized his belligerent way of flirting. The Akka woman did not return his admiration. She paid no attention to him at all. Indeed, she seemed most interested in Alain's black dogs. She had the broad features common to the Akka people and the broad shoulders of a woman who has tackled a lot of reindeer, and it was hard to tell whether she contemplated those dogs with such an avid gaze because they looked fit to serve her, or to be eaten for supper.

Adica made them wait at the base of the highest rampart while she went up alone to dig up the grave of bronze. Six months buried in earth had caused the sword's metal to fur over with green, and its soul to slumber. But where the starlight's gleam stroked the blade she felt it waken under her touch, felt it grope upward in the way a hand brushes aside a spider's web that blocks the entrance to a cave.

War is coming. The sword had a seductive voice. Free me.

She had no spells to counter its angry soul, no way to bind it so that it would slumber again. Perhaps Beor was right. If war was coming, then they had to defend themselves. It wouldn't be right to leave the village with anything less than what the Cursed Ones themselves carried. Perhaps the conjuring man of Old Fort could study this bronze sword and learn the secrets of its making.

Perhaps he could make more such swords. Then the White Deer people would not always fight at a disadvantage.

It still wasn't easy to give Beor the sword.

"Go," she said to him.” I must weave the passage, and you must go back to the village."

He drew her aside, looking restless.” I was a good husband to you, Hallowed One." He pulled on his right ear, as he often did when he was irritated.” But you never said so."

He went on without waiting for her reply.” Not that I begrudge you the man. I know he's not like us. If the Holy One brought him to you, then I'm not one to say 'nay' to her wishes, but I won't have it said that I wasn't a good husband to you or that I went without protest when the elders made me leave your house."

"No, you did not go without protest," she murmured.

That satisfied him enough that he left, halberd and sword held triumphantly before him. She shuddered. Light flashed off the tip of the bronze sword, and for an instant she thought she saw blood. Then she lost sight of him.

"Quick, quick," said the Akka woman.

"Stand there, to that side." Adica stationed herself on the chalk calling ground and studied the stars. The passageway to the Akka loom was made most easily when the Ploughing Man's Eye rose in the east, but there were other, more circuitous routes to every loom just as there were many ways to pattern cloth. It was too late in the evening to catch and hold the threads of the Bounteous One and her swift, shy child, Six Wings. But the Sisters were rising, and their twin lights could be woven in with the scatter of stars known as the Shaman's Headdress and hooked to the Dipping Cup as it dipped into the north.

She raised the obsidian mirror, caught the light of the gold-haired sister and, by shifting the mirror slightly, the silver hair of her twin. Light caught in the stones.

As she wove it in with the other stars, threads flowered to life among the flattened oval of the stones to form a passageway leading to another loom.

She picked up her sack and, with the others behind her, crossed through into a snow as light as feathers, spitting from heavy clouds. They stood on a high plateau composed mostly of boulders tumbled every which way, covered with lichens and mosses and a dusting of snow. The rocky land gave way toward the horizon to heaps of golden stones jutting up like huge tumuli, untouched by snow. No trees gave shelter against the cutting wind. Only the circle of stones and the gleaming hillocks defied the swirling snow. Mountains cut an edge along the eastern horizon. The light was cloudy and gray, lightening with dawn, although Adica could not see the sun.

Their guide trudged away down a path worn into scant earth, more pebbles than soil, and marked out with a trail of chalk that, curiously, was free of snow.

Adica hurried after her. Alain took up the rear guard with his dog-headed staff raised and the dogs at his heels. The path cut down through rock that fell by degrees into a steep valley smothered in trees and snow. Winter still lay heavily on this land. After a time, she saw clearings that had been hacked out of the forest. Pigs and deer had made tracks through these snow-drenched clearings.

Otherwise they were a featureless white.

Down by the valley's mouth, near the arm of water that bounded the lowest reaches of the valley, rock corrals penned in reindeer. Three boats draped with felt rode high on logs, upturned above the shoreline. A half-dozen smaller, sleeker skiffs lay drawn up on the rocky beach. Ice rimmed the shallows, but the deep waters lay as smooth as glass, unfrozen despite the bone-chilling cold.

Beyond the corrals, torches ringed a longhouse. This hall served the entire tribe as home, storage, and stable. Even Spits-last, their sorcerer, lived cheek by jowl with them, never knowing solitude.

Flakes of snow spun past. Although the wind had cut harshly on the plateau above, the shadow of winter burned more intensely within the valley's heart. The shock of the temperature change made her shudder. She paused once to catch her breath. Alain put an arm around her shoulders to warm her. His expression was grave.

"This country knows me," he said in his stumbling way, "and I know this country. In this country was born fifth son of the fifth litter, who became a strong hand." He shook his head, puzzling out the words."His hand is strong.

Hei! I cannot speak the name. There were children of rock here, but I see them

.not now. Many children of rock lived here when I saw it. They do not live here now."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"Quick!" The Akka guide beckoned impatiently.” Walking One of Water people dead is, or not dead is. To her you must speak."

People came out of the long hall to stare at them. A boy doused torches as weak daylight rose. It was too cloudy for her to mark the position of the sun's rise against the distant cliffs and ridges. Beyond the hall she saw other structures, pit houses or burial mounds, dug into the ground. She had only visited Spits-last once, in his homeland, and it had been snowing then, too, drowned in winter's darkness.

They stepped into the long hall to be greeted by a powerful reek. The long, low space was lit by three hearth fires and so smoky that the air seemed alive with particles. She smelled cattle and sheep, penned farther down. The taint of rotting crab apples hung in the air, a sweet tinge above the thick perfume of human bodies pressed together. Alain spoke a few words to his dogs, and they sat down, unmolested, on either side of the door. Their Akka guide made a path for them through the people by using her spear's butt to poke and prod everyone aside, but Adica and Alain were not as lucky as the dogs: hands reached'forward to pinch her bare skin or fondle the strings of her skirt, until she pulled out of the grasp of one only to find another waiting to handle her. They breathed into her face, gabbled in their hard tongue, and poked and prodded her with their fingers as though to assure themselves that she was a living being.

Beside the second hearth fire, on a pallet, lay Falling-down side by side with a dead woman half-covered with pine needles. His eyes were closed. For an instant Adica thought.he, too, was dead. She knelt beside him and touched his hand, and he opened his eyes

at once. He had the hazel eyes common to his tribe, rheumy with age but still sharply intelligent.

"Adica!" he said with pleasure in his brittle voice. She helped him up to a sitting position.” I sent the Walking One of Tanioinin's people twelve days ago to fetch you. Alas that the loom brought you here so slow. My cousin is dead now. She died at sunset."

"What happened?"

Alain crouched beside the woman and, without any thought of death's dangers and taboos, brushed aside pine needles and placed a hand around the curve of her throat, listening.

Falling-down watched him with bemusement.” Can this be the man the Holy One brought to be your husband? Where did he come from not to fear death?"

"He was walking the path to the Other Side. I don't know where he came from before that."

Alain sat back on his heels. The people who had crowded up behind him to stare skittered back, as if afraid that he, having touched that which was dead, would infect them. He did not appear to notice them as he looked at Adica.

"Her soul no longer lives in her body."

"So you see," said Adica to Falling-down.” He knows when a spirit still walks in the land of the living. Why are you here, Falling-down? Why did you leave your tribe? Such a long journey is difficult for you. And it is so dangerous now to walk the looms, if the Cursed Ones stalk us."

He lifted a hand for silence. A child brought him a wooden cup filled to the brim with mead. He sipped at it before reciting his tale. The Akka Walking One translated his words to her people, who crowded around to listen.

"The ships of the Cursed Ones landed on the coast of our land. Scouts of our cousins the Reed people saw them. They sent a Running Youth to alert us. Then another Running Youth came. The ships put to land near the nesting ground of guivres. The guivres rose and feasted on them."

Voices murmured in satisfaction at this gruesome and well-deserved fate. The Akka woman spoke sharply, and the people quieted, not without a lot of pinching and protests, so that Falling-down could go on.

"We feel happy, when this news runs to us. Then the loom opens. This one, my cousin, who is a Walking One of our people, falls through. She is wounded. She brings a terrible story with her." As he got caught up in the awful tale, his words began to slip; past became present, and his careful use of Adica's language, learned over a lifetime, became sloppier.” The Cursed Ones attack the people of Horn. All their houses and all their villages the Cursed Ones burn."

A general moan spread through the crowd, and was hushed, again, by the Akka woman's terse command.

"Evei\ the children they kill, cut cut." He made .a chopping motion with his hand. Children who had crowded up behind him to listen leaped back with frightened cries. But no one laughed.” The people of Horn escape to the hills.

Horn is old woman. She is not strong. She is more weak now. Maybe she die.

But she send this Walking One, who is once my cousin, through the loom. She send her home, with the warning. Maybe Horn die already."

"But if Horn dies, then we can't weave the great spell!" cried Adica, shocked out of her silence. Alain set a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

"No more news brings this Walking One," said Falling-down, indicating the dead woman.” She is not yet dead, in the home of my tribe, but no healer in my people can save her. So I bring her here. Healer woman of the Akka people is renowned."

Adica looked around, but she did not see the famous healing woman of the Akka people: a tiny woman who wore a cloak of eagle feathers.” Even the Akka healing woman could not save her?"

"No. The Fat One turned her face away. After half a moon's journey, this Walking One dies. Now, Akka healing woman and our brother Tanioinin pray to the ancestor, the old mother of their tribe. But you, Adica. You have strong legs.

I am too old, and Tanioinin cannot walk. Tell me this: Why did the Cursed Ones attack Horn's people and my people so close together? Why did they try to steal you?"

"The Holy One warned us. They've learned that we mean to act against them.

They want to kill us so that we cannot work the great weaving."

"Yes. We must know if Horn lives. We must know if the Cursed Ones attack our comrades also, and if Shu-Sha is safe. Walking Ones are not strong enough alone to do this. You have strong legs and strong magic. You must warn the others."

She gestured toward the eaves.” The sky is cloaked with clouds. We will have to wait until the stars shine again and the weather clears off."

"For that we cannot wait." He spoke so gravely that his words frightened her.

She knew that the Holy One had power over the weather, but her magic was ancient and even more frightening, in some ways, than the blood magic of the Cursed Ones.” We wait now in this house for the other Akka sorcerers to come.

Tanioinin's brothers and sisters and the cousins of the healing woman, they will come down from their halls north of this place and south of this place. When they come, they will call that thing which can blow the clouds away so you can travel."

"Quick, quick," echoed the Akka woman. She stamped a foot and clapped her hands together. The crowd around them echoed her words, the foreign syllables sounding strangely on their tongues. Someone threw pine needles and a rain of dried herbs and tiny pebbles on the fire. The flames hissed and spit, and a thick cloud of smoke boiled up, drowning Adica. She coughed violently, starting back, and Alain found her by touch and drew her away as the Akka people sang in loud and rather discordant voices a song repeating the same words over and over:

"nok nok ay-ee-tay-oo-noo nok nok."

When she had done blinking and could see again, the dead woman, and the pallet on which she had lain, were gone. Had they vanished through magic, or simply been carried off? She did not really care to know. The secrets of her own gods, and her own magic, were perilous enough.

"Come." By some mode of communication unknown to her, Alain found a raised pallet under the eaves and there, after setting down their packs, they lay down together. She was too tired to do anything but rest in his arms.

What if it all came to nothing? What if the Cursed Ones had discovered all their plans? What if the Cursed Ones used their blood magic to kill the human sorcerers who threatened them? Truly, she was willing to sacrifice herself knowing that her death would free her people from fear, but'it seemed the gods mocked her now. Without realizing, she had started to cry.

"Hush," said Alain, stroking her arms.” Sleep, lovely one. Do not fear for what is to come. Just sleep."

His quiet voice brought her a measure of peace. With him held tightly alongside her, she slept.

ALAIN woke to humming. At first he thought it was Adica, who could be counted on to make all kinds of strange noises in the course of her prayers and spells. He smiled, so blindingly happy that he didn't even want to open his eyes, only soak it in. How strange to think that it was only after he'd lost everything that he gained what mattered most. Tightening his arms around her, he tucked her closer against him. Which was when he realized that the warm body lying alongside him wasn't Adica's but that of a rancid-smelling child.

"Hsst!" A woman clad in oiled sealskins jostled Alain and the child awake and, with an expression of urgency, beckoned to Alain to follow her. He bumped his head on the eaves as he swung out of the bed and stood up too soon; everything was built for shorter people here in the north. The long hall was empty, silent and cool. Winter had sucked the warmth out of the fires. Except for Sorrow and Rage, sitting faithfully by the door, the three of them were the only ones inside. Muttering and rubbing his sore head, he followed woman and child outside.

The humming sounded out here as well, a sound that rang up through the ground to reverberate in his head. Sorrow whined, irritated by the noise, but Rage remained silent. The woman called urgently to him again, gesturing that he should follow, but he hesitated, looking for Adica.

"Ta! Ta!" cried the woman, beckoning. She hustled the child toward the mounds that clustered like a flock of sheep along the valley floor behind the long hall.

Alain hurried after her. Several people ducked down into the entrance of one of the mounds. Coming up behind them, he looked down a low tunnel, a smaller version of the passage that led into the queens' grave at Adica's village. This passage, too, was lined by stones, but it hadn't as sophisticated corbeling. In a crouch, he scuttled down the passage to a chamber that smelled of vegetables stored for a long time in a cool place, slightly spoiled by damp. No light illuminated the chamber, yet it was warmer here beneath the earthen mound than outside. Bodies pressed against him, all smelling slightly of rancid oil.

"Adica?"

She did not answer. She wasn't here. He knew it in the same way he knew he had a hand at end of his arm. The moon had waxed full seven times since that day when he had found himself lying naked by the bronze cauldron up among the stones, but sometimes it seemed as if it had only been seven days, or as long as seven years. But in any case, he wasn't going to hide in here without knowing where she was.

Crawling backward, he ducked out into the fresh air. The cloudy light of afternoon made him blink. The constant throbbing hum continued unabated.

Adica wasn't inside any of the eight mounds. The people crowded within seemed nervous, but not panicked. Each time he found his way in to one of the dark chambers, hands pulled him farther in, and when he made to leave, they plucked at him, urging him to stay.

But he had to find Adica.

He ran back to the long hall. It lay empty, and when the hounds snuffled around, they seemed unable, or unwilling, to find her scent. The hearth fire was burning low. How annoyed Aunt Bel would be to find a fire neglected! He fetched several dried cow pats and laid them on the coals, fanning the flame with a leather-and-wood bellows. The wheeze of the bellows didn't mask Rage's soft growl.

"Quick. Quick!"

He jumped. The Akka woman who had guided them here stood at the entrance to the hal .” Into the houses of dirt you must go. The dragons come."

He whistled to the hounds and came out to stand beside the woman on the flat porch of hewn planks that fronted the hall. Now that it was light, he noticed the brilliant swirl of tattoos mottling her skin, red chevrons, white lines, and small black circles.

She frowned at him, gesturing irritably.” Quick, you go."

"Where is Adica?"

"She goes above with the one who falls down when the spirit rides him and my brother who we call Tanioinin, something this means like the one who spits last.

They walk to the high fjall." She gestured toward the path they had walked down that morning, where it wound up the valley and was soon lost among the trees.

Mist lay heavily over the high land above, as though a huge creature steamed in its sleep. Then she gestured toward the arm of the sea that lay quiescent below.

A dozen skiffs were beached on the icy shore, twice the number that had been there at dawn.” The other sorcerers of my people come when he calls them.

Now they will raise the dragons from their sleep to blow the clouds away. Then we walk the loom to the far land of the one whose god shines in her face."

None of this made sense, and he was actually becoming alarmed. He hadn't thought of his old life in months, but as if jolted by a spark of magic, he shuddered, remembering that terrible night when a locked door had blocked him from reaching Lavastine in his hour of need.” Where is Adica?"

The Akka woman made a gesture of frustration.” She go above with the other sorcerers. Now you must go to shelter. Only in shelter is it safe from the wind of the dragons."

"I go above, too."

"Foolish to walk after the sorcerers. You must to shelter go.

Yes?"

"No. I will go after Adica."

They regarded each other for the space of five breaths. She flung up her hands, half laughing, half cursing.” Come."

He fetched his pack and, with Sorrow and Rage, headed up the path that led to the fjall. The Akka guide strode beside him, seemingly unperturbed by this change of plan.

"You do not take shelter?" Alain asked her.

The woman had a tart grin, like that of a woman who has played a trick on a companion who tried to cheat her. She shook the necklace of bear claws and yellowing teeth that hung around her neck.” This charm protects me."

Alain began to pant as the path steepened.” I don't know by what name I should call you."

"I am elder sister of Spits-last." She did not break stride as she spoke, nor did she seem winded. Like a good Walking One, she had the stamina of an ox.” In my people's tongue I am called Laoina."

They came clear of the denser growth of spruce and pine whose branches drooped under a heavy load of snow and into a thinning woodland composed mostly of birch trees, combed by the wind. A glow rimmed the eastern horizon, rather like the promise of dawn, but it had an amber gleam, rich and almost solid against the veil of clouds above. No part of the sky was visible, only low-hanging clouds, gray with unshed snow. The humming sounded louder here. The rocks seemed to vibrate with the noise. It was getting dark.

He hadn't realized he'd slept for so long. He ought to have stayed awake and watched over Adica. He hated being away from her for long. He was so afraid that something would happen to her.

"Quick. The dragons wake."

They broke into a jog. Alain puffed and wheezed, more out of anxiety perhaps than from being winded. He had heard stories of dragons, of course, but everyone knew they no longer existed on Earth. They had all been turned into stone a long time ago, like the one at Osna Sound which had become the ridge, running between the village and the now-destroyed monastery. But this talk of dragons made him nervous anyway. If they were just a story, then why did people hide away under mounds of earth?

So many things were different here. In seven months, he had not seen a single iron tool. Most of their implements were chipped out of stone. They made buckets out of bark, dug ditches with antlers, and carved canoes out of whole logs. Their ploughs were little better than a smoothed shaft of wood that couldn't turn more than a finger's depth of soil, and they didn't keep any horses, although they knew what they were. Even the grains and food were different: no wheat, no oats, no wine, not even turnips and cabbage, although big game was far more plentiful. He'd never eaten so much aurochs meat in his life.

In the afterlife, if that was what this was, maybe wine had been banished, but dragons still existed.

He tried to imagine them, creatures formed out of earth and fire. Their breath of flame might consume the unwitting traveler, and the unremarked lash of their thick tails might hammer soft flesh into the dirt.

Adica had gone up to the fjall to meet them.

He got a second wind and actually moved out in front of his companion, the nervous hounds lagging behind as though to watch their trail. As they picked their way onto the fjall, they came fully into the teeth of a strangely warm wind, almost seductively pleasant. He saw the stone circle immediately. Upright and in perfect repair, it looked nothing like the old ruined stone crowns he knew. It didn't seem right, somehow, that it should look so ... new.

A dozen human figures stood inside the stones. Eight wore the skins typical of the Akka people, furs and hides sewn into clothing. These eight bore stone mallets, and with those .mallets, to a rhythm they all seemed to understand, they beat on the stones.

The stones sang. High and low harmonics rang off the rock, throbbing through the air, as first one mallet, then the next and then a third, swung into a stone and dropped away.

Laoina stopped at the edge of the scree, hunkering down in the shelter of an overhanging boulder.” We wait here."

But the humming of the stones drew him forward to the stone circle. At the center of the circle a woman wearing an eagle-feather cloak stood behind two men. One of them, tattooed like his Akka tribesfolk, sat on a litter. His frail body rocked back and forth in time to the ringing of the mallets on stone. Beside him, an ancient man with white hair and weathered skin had tucked his face into his cupped hands, praying.

Where was Adica?

Crossing the threshold, stepping over the invisible line that demarcated the inside of the circle of stones from the outside, Alain walked from a world filled with a throbbing hum to one of silence except for the murmuring of the two sorcerers, for surely that was what they were. They wore like an invisible mantle an aura of power, just as Adica did: the Hallowed Ones of their tribes chosen for their ability to walk the path of magic.

The old man, then, was Falling-down, whom Adica often spoke of fondly. The other, Tanioinin, seemed not much older than Adica, as far as Alain could tell, but he lived in a broken body. By the evidence of the litter, he could not even walk.

At last Alain saw Adica, curled up into a ball on the other side of Tanioinin. The hounds padded past him and nosed her. She started up, alarmed to see him. He hurried over to crouch beside her.

"I would have sent for you after the danger was over," she whispered.

"I do not leave you," he said stubbornly.” Do not ask me to go, because I will not."

She knew him well enough not to argue when he spoke in that tone.

He indicated Tanioinin and bent closer to murmur in her ear. The singing of the stones concealed his words from anyone except her, who was accustomed to his whispered endearments.” How can this one be a sorcerer? Can he even walk?"

"Spits-last is the most powerful sorcerer born into the human tribes." She regarded Tanioinin with an expression of respect and, perhaps, a little pity.” His people nurtured and raised him because of his exceedingly clever and deep mind. He has served them as sorcerer for many years. But his body is so crippled that he is helpless in the middle world. Others have to take care of him. Only in the spirit world can he truly roam free. That is why he is so strong."

Alain could see by the man's blank expression and the way his eyes had rolled up into his head that he was already gone into the spirit world. He was calling to the dragons ... wherever they were.

Adica hissed under her breath, caught Alain's wrist, and pointed.

Those golden-stone hummocks arrayed along the eastern horizon like six giant tumuli were not stone at all. They glowed with the rich gleam of amber and the lustrous fire of molten gold. They hummed and, slowly, as he sank down—too stunned to cry out in astonishment—they woke.

They lifted great heads first. Their eyes had the winking fever of the hottest fire.

Some had crests along their heads and necks, fans of gold unfolding as they rose. A tail lashed to dislodge boulders which smashed through the landscape, thrown about like peb bles. It was then that he realized how huge they were, and how far away. The noise of their waking rumbled and crashed around him, echoing against the heavens.

First one, and then a second, huffed mightily. Sparks rained from their nostrils.

Fires bloomed and faded on rocks and among the mosses and low-lying scrub that lived in the fjall. Alain stared. Rage and Sorrow were whining, although it was hard to hear them above the distant crash and clamor of the waking dragons.

Adica struggled to her feet. She still held his wrist in a crushing grip; perhaps she had forgotten that she still held on to him. Mallets struck stone. The world hummed. As though drawn forward in a dream, Adica let go of Alain's arm and stepped forward, past the two murmuring sorcerers, to stand with arms raised at the threshold of the protective circle of the stone crown just as the first dragon launched itself into the air.

Alain leaped after her, but he did not even reach her. The backwash from the dragon's wings drove him to his knees. The screaming wind pounded him as a second, and then a third, dragon leaped toward the sky and caught the air under their vast wings, wider than houses. Their bellies shone like fire, and their tails lashed the air. Ice billowed off the distant eastern peaks, blown by their passage.

A fourth and fifth rose. Battered by the wind of their rising, Alain struggled to stay on his knees. A hot stream of stinging wind passed over his back. His hair singed, and his hands and lips cracked under the sudden blast of heat as all his tears dried away. He crawled forward. Adica stood framed by the stone lintel, arms still raised. The wind did not batter her down, nor did she bow beneath it.

She didn't need his help. She was the Hallowed One of her tribe, as powerful as the dawn, able to face without cowering the great creatures they had woken. All he could do was keep low to the ground and pray.

The dragons rose in glory, as bright as lightning. The wind of their rising stirred the clouds into a rage of movement, swirling in a gale stronger than any storm wind. As the dragons rose, the heavy layer of clouds began to break up, shredding in all directions. Drops of rain sizzled on stone. A single snowflake drifted down, dissolving before Alain's eyes.

As the dragons rose, their brilliant figures dwindling, dusk came. Stars winked free of cloud. A cool wind swept in from the

north. The dragons had driven the clouds away, and now the sorcerers could weave starlight in the loom.

Shaking, Alain clambered to his feet. His exposed skin hurt like fire.

Adica turned to examine him.” You should have waited until we called you." The brush of her fingers stung his raw skin.

He flinched away.” I can go on," he rasped.” You know I will never leave you."

Her expression softened. She stepped past him and spoke in a low voice to Falling-down. Alain swayed, dizzy, still stunned by what he had seen. He had never imagined creatures of such vast power and terrible indifference. The life of the middle world, the fleeting span of human years, was as nothing to them, who could slumber for a hundred years as though it were one night. He sank down cross-legged onto the hard ground. Rage and Sorrow flopped down beside him. The eagle-cloaked woman bustled up beside him to rub a soothing ointment onto his stinging skin.