PART TWO THE UNCOILIN YEAR

AN ADDER IN THE PIT

IN the east, so it was said, the priests of the Jinna god Astareos read omens in fire.

They interpreted the leap and crackle of flames, the shifting of ash along charred sticks, and the gleam of coals sinking into patterns among the cinders, finding in each trifling movement a message from the god revealing his will and the fate of those who worshiped him. But no matter how hard Zacharias stared at the twisting glare of the campfire, he could not tease any meaning from the blaze. It looked like a common fire to him, cheerfully devouring sticks and logs. Like fire, the passage of time devoured all things, even a man's life, until it was utterly consumed. Afterward, there was only the cold beauty of an infinite universe indifferent to the fate of one insignificant human soul.

He shuddered, although on this balmy summer's night he ought not to be cold.

'What do you think, Brother Zacharias? Do you believe the stories about the phoenix and the redemption?"

Startled, he glanced up from the fire at Chustaffus. The stocky soldier regarded him with an affable smile on his homely face. "What phoenix?" he asked.

'He wasn't listening," said Surly. "He never does."

'He's seeing dragons in the fire," retorted Lewenhardt, the archer.

'Or our future," said quiet Den.

'Or that damned phoenix you won't shut up about, Chuf," added Surly, punching Chustaffus on the shoulder.

They all laughed, but in a friendly way, and resumed their gossip as they ate their supper of meat, porridge, and ale around their campfire, one of about fifty such fires scattered throughout pasture-lands outside the Ungrian settlement of Nabanya. Why Prince San-giant's loyal soldiers tolerated a ragged, cowardly, apostate frater in their midst Zacharias could never understand, but he was grateful for their comradeship all the same. It allowed him to escape, from time to time, the prince's court, where he served as interpreter, and the grim presence of his worst enemy who was, unfortunately, not dead yet.

'Prince Ekkehard was a traitor," said Den. "I don't think we should believe anything he said."

'But he wasn't the only one who spoke of such stories," insisted Chustaffus. "Men died because they believed in the redemption. They were willing to die. Takes a powerful belief to embrace martyrdom like that."

'Or a powerful stupidity." Surly drained his cup and searched around for more ale, but they had drunk their ration. "I don't believe it."

'It wasn't heresy that saved Prince Ekkehard," said black-haired Everwin, who spoke rarely but always at length. "I hear he was treated like a lord by the Ojuman. If that Eagle's testimony was true, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't believe it, then there's many honest, God-fearing folk who died while Prince Ekkehard ate his fill of their plundered food and drank stolen wine and dandled women, none of them willing to have been thrown into his bed. They might have been any of our sisters forced to please him or die."

'Prince Ekkehard wasn't the only one who survived," objected Chustaffus. "Don't forget Sergeant Gotfrid of the Lions, and his men. They escaped the Ojiman, and shades in the forest, and bandits who sold them into slavery before the prince redeemed him.

Gotfrid is a good man. He believed in the phoenix. Even that Lord Wichman admits he saw the phoenix."

'Give it a rest, Chuf," said Lewenhardt. "If I have to hear about that damned phoenix one more time, I swear I'm going to put an arrow through the next one I see."

Den, Johannes, and Everwin laughed longest at this sally, but Chustaffus took offense, and it fell to Zacharias to coax the glower off the young soldier's face. As a slave to the Quman, he'd learned how to use his facility for words to quiet his former master's dangerously sudden vexations.

'Many a tale is truer than people can believe, and yet others are as false as a wolf's heart. I wonder sometimes if I really saw that dragon up in the Alfar Mountains. It might have been a dream. Yet, if I close my eyes, I can still see it gleaming in the heavens, with its tail lashing the snow on the high mountain peaks. What am I to make of that?"

The soldiers never got tired of his story of the dragon.

'Were its scales really the size and color of iron shields?" asked Lewenhardt, who had a master archer's knack for remembering small details.

'Nothing that big can fly," said Surly.

'Not like a bird, maybe," said Lewenhardt. "It might be that dragons have a kind of magic that keeps them aloft. If they're made of fire, maybe the earth repels them."

'Kind of like you and women, eh?" asked the Karronish-man, Johannes, who only spoke to tease.

'Did I show you where that Ungrian whore bit me?" Lewenhardt pulled up his tunic.

'Nay, mercy!" cried Johannes with a laugh. "I can dig up worms enough to get the idea."

'Someone's been eating worms," said Surly suddenly, "and not liking the taste. There's been talk that King Geza is going to divorce his wife and marry Princess Sapientia. That's the best way for the prince to get rid of her."

'Prince Sanglant would never allow that!" objected Lewenhardt. "That would give King Geza a claim to the Wendish throne through his children by the princess."

'Hush," said Den.

Captain Fulk approached through flowering feather grass and luxuriant fescue whose stalks shushed along his knees and thighs. Beyond him, poplars swayed in the evening's breeze where they grew along the banks of a river whose name Zacharias did not yet know. Where the river curved around a hill, an old, refurbished ring fort rose, seat of the local Ungrian noble family. Beyond its confines a settlement sprawled haphazardly, protected by a palisade and ditch but distinctively Ungrian because of the many stinking corrals.

Every Ungrian soldier kept ten horses, it seemed, and folk who walked instead of riding were scorned as slaves and dogs. Yet who tilled the fields and kept the gardens?

The farmers Zacharias had seen working in hamlets and fortified villages as Prince Sanglant and his army followed King Geza's progress through the Ungrian kingdom were smaller and darker than the Ungrian nobles who ruled over them. Such folk were forbidden to own the very horses they were scorned for not riding.

All the men rose when Fulk halted by the fire's light.

Lewenhardt spoke. "Captain. Is all quiet?"

'As quiet as it can be, with the army marching out in the morning." Fulk surveyed the encampment before looking back over the six soldiers seated around the fire. "I posted you out here to keep alert, not to gossip." He nodded at Zacharias. "Brother, I come from the prince. You're to attend him."

'I thought he had Brother Breschius to interpret for him tonight. Isn't it only Ungrians and Wendishmen at the feast?"

'I don't answer for His Highness. You're to come at once."

Surly began whistling a dirge, breaking off only after Chustaffus punched his arm.

'You take your watch at midnight," said Fulk to his soldiers, i.' I'll be back to check up on you."

That sobered them. Zacharias rose with a sigh and followed Fulk. They walked along the river, listening to the wind sighing in the poplars. Although the sun had set, the clouds to the west were still stained an intense rose-orange, the color lightening toward the zenith before fading along the eastern hills to a dusky gray.

'I miss the beech woods of home," Fulk said. "They say we'll ride through grasslands and river bottom all the way to the Heretic's Sea. There are even salt marshes, the same as you'd see on the Wendish coast, but lying far from the seashore. When I left home to join the king's service, I never thought to journey so far east. But I suppose you've seen these lands before."

'I have not. I traveled east the first time through Polenie lands."

'Did you see any one-legged men? Women with dogs' heads? Two-headed babies?"

'Only slaves and tyrants, the same as anywhere."

Fulk grunted, something like a laugh. Like all of Sanglant's personal guard, he wore a pale gold tabard marked with the sigil of a black dragon. "The Ungrians are a queer folk,"

he continued, humoring Zacharias' curtness. "As friendly as you please, and good fighters, yet I know their mothers didn't worship God in Unity. I'd wager that half of them still sacrifice to their old gods. One of the lads said he saw a white stallion being led out at midwinter from the king's palace, and he never saw it come in again for all that King Geza spent the Feast of St. Peter on his knees in church. God know they're half heretics themselves, for it was Arethousan churchmen who first brought the word of the blessed Daisan to these lands."

'It is Brother Breschius who presides over mass, not an Arethousan priest."

'True enough. It's said the last of the Arethousans fled Ungria when we arrived with Prince Bayan's body last autumn. They're worse than rats, skulking about and spreading their lies and their heresy."

'It seems to me that there's heresy enough in the ranks of Prince Sanglant's army. I hear whispers of it, the phoenix and the redemption."

Fulk had a deceptively mild expression for a man who had survived any number of hard-fought battles and had abandoned King Henry to join the war band of that king's rebel son. His lips twitched up, as though he meant to smile, but his gaze was sharp. "If you toss an adder into a pit without water and leave it alone, it will shrivel up and die soon enough. But if you worry at it, then it will bite you and live."

In silence they left the river and followed the track across an overgrazed pasture to the palisade gate. The ring fort had been built along the bend in the river, but in recent times houses, craftsmen's yards, and shepherds' hovels had crept out below the circular ramparts and been ringed in their turn by a ditch and log palisade.

The two men crossed the plank bridge thrown over the palisade ditch and greeted the guards lounging at the open gates. With the king in residence, the Quman defeated, and a good-sized army camped in the fields beyond, the watch kept the gates open all night because of the steady traffic between town and camp. In Ungria, peace reigned.

Half a dozen soldiers were waiting for Fulk just beyond the gate, leaning at their ease on the rails of an empty corral. As soon as they saw their captain, they fell in smartly behind him.

'A captain cannot appear before the prince without a retinue, lest he be thought unworthy of his captain's rank," said Fulk wryly. "You came alone to get me."

'So I did. I wanted to get a good look at camp without being noticed. Smell the mood of the men."

The settlement had a lively air. A summer's evening market thrived near the tanners'

yard, although the stench of offal, urine, and dung at times threatened to overpower the folk out bargaining over rugs, bronze buckets, drinking horns, pots of dye, woolen cloth, and an impressive variety of shields. Small children with feet caked in dried mud ran about naked. A woman sat beside a crate of scrawny hens, calling out in an incomprehensible tongue that seemed only half Ungrian to Zacharias' ears, shot through with a coarser language closer to that spoken out on the grasslands.

Horses pounded up behind them. Zacharias glanced back just as Fulk swore irritably.

A sweep of pale wings brushed the dark sky; in an instant the riders would be upon him.

The frater shrieked out loud and dropped hard to the ground, clapping his hands over his head. Death came swiftly from the Quman. They would strike him down and cut off his head. Terror made him lose control; a hot gush of urine spilled down his legs.

But the horsemen swept past, ignoring him, although in their passage they overturned the crate. Freed chickens ran squawking out into the market. One of the birds ran right over Zacharias, <claws digging into his neck.

'Here, now," said Fulk, grasping his arm to pull him up. "Did you get hit?"

They hadn't been Quman after all, come to behead him. It was only a group of Ungrian cavalrymen wearing white cloaks, the mark of King Geza's honor guard.

Fulk's soldiers ran down the chickens and returned them to the woman, who was cursing and yelling. At least the commotion hid Zacharias as he staggered to his feet. The darkness hid the stain on his robe, but nothing could hide the stink of a coward. As long as he feared the Quman, and Bulkezu, he was still a slave. Blinking back tears of shame and fear, he tottered over to the dirty watering trough and plunged in as Fulk and his soldiers shouted in surprise. Chickens, goats, and children made an ear-splitting noise as they scattered from his splashing. He was sopping wet from the chest down when he climbed out. Someone in the crowd threw a rotten apple at him. He ducked, but not quickly enough, and it splattered against his chest.

'For God's sake," swore Fulk, dragging him along. "What madness has gotten into you now, Brother?" The ground sloped steeply up and the ramparts loomed dark and solid above them.

'I fell into a stinking pile of horse shit. Whew! I couldn't attend the prince smelling like the stables." As they walked into the deeper shadow of the rampart gates, lit by a single sentry's torch, he found himself shaking still. "Next time those Ungrian soldiers will cripple some poor soul and never bother to look back to see what they've wrought."

'Here, now," said Fulk, taken aback by his ferocity but obviously thrown well off the scent, "it's a miracle you weren't trampled, falling like you did."

The passage through the ramparts took a sharp turn to the left, and to the right again, lit by torches. Sentries chatted above them, up on the walls from which they watched the passage below. One of the soldiers was singing a mournful tune, his song overwhelmed by the hubbub as they came into the central courtyard of the inner fort.

The nobles were feasting in the hall, late into the summer night, in honor of St.

Edward Lloyd, a cunning and pious Alban merchant who had brought the faith of the Unities as well as tin into the east. Zacharias heard singing and laughter and saw the rich glow of a score of lamps through the open doors. Servants rushed from the kitchens into the hall, bearing full platters and pitchers, and retreated with the scraps to feed the serving folk, the beggars, and the dogs.

Fulk gave the bright hall scarcely a glance and headed straight for the stables, currently inhabited by the rest of Sanglant's personal guard and a sizable contingent of Ungrian cavalrymen. Wolfhere met them at the door.

'It isn't raining," the old Eagle said, looking Zacharias up and down in that annoyingly supercilious way he had, as though he had guessed the means and nature of the injury and found the frater wanting yet again.

'An accident." The words grated, harsh and defensive.

Wolfhere shrugged. "This way, Captain. We got her porridge and ale, as the prince requested. She said she'd rest and bathe after she'd delivered her report."

Instead of heading up a ladder to the loft where the soldiers quartered, the old Eagle led them past stalls, about half of them stabling a horse and the rest storing arms, armor, or barrels of grain and ale, down to an empty stall where Heribert and Sergeant Cobbo hovered beside a tall, dark-haired, big-boned woman who had a stained Eagle's cloak thrown around her shoulders and a mug of ale at her lips.

Was the floor heaving and buckling? His knees folded under him so fast that he had to brace himself against the wall to stay upright.

'Well met, Eagle." Fulk stepped into the halo of lamplight. "You've ridden far." Straw slipped under his boots as he moved forward and the Eagle, lowering her mug, stood up to greet him.

Hathui.

Only a strangled gasp escaped Zacharias' throat. He tugged at his hood, pulling it up to conceal his face, but she had already seen him. For the length of time it might take a skilled butcher to cut a calf's throat she stared at him, puzzled, her hawk's gaze as sharp as a spear's point. He was so changed that she did not know him. If he was careful, he could make sure that she would never know who he was, never be ashamed by what he had become. He turned to hide his face in the shadows.

Her eyes widened as recognition flared. She dropped the mug. Ale spilled down her leggings; the mug hit and shattered on the plank floor. Her lips formed his name, but no sound came out. Staggering, she folded forward and fell as though she'd been slugged and, reflex-ively, as he'd always done when she was only his little sister and had got into trouble yet again, he leaped forward to catch her.

She clutched him hard. "Ai, God." She was as tall as he was, with a strong grip and a rank smell. "I thought you were dead." ,

I am dead. I am not the brother you knew. But he could not speak.

'God's mercy," said Wolfhere softly, much surprised. "I knew you had a brother, Hathui, who walked into the east as a frater and was lost. Can this man be the same one?"

She wept, although she'd never been one to weep as a child, scorning those who cried; her beloved older brother had been the only soul ever allowed to see her rare bouts of tears.

'Hush," he said, remembering those days bitterly. Memories swept over him with such strength that he felt nauseated. Now she would know. Now she would despise him.

'I thought you were dead," she repeated, voice hollow. Tears still coursed down her face, but her expression had changed, taut and determined, the hawk's glare focused again on its distant prey. "All things are possible, if you are truly alive after all this time. My God, Zacharias, there is so much for us to speak of, but first I must deliver my news to the prince."

She nodded to the others and strode out of the stables. He was left behind to follow in her wake, fearing the worst: that she brought ill news, and that he had been called because Prince Sanglant intended to bring in the captive Quman and needed Zacharias to interpret. Yet why not? Let the worst be known at once, so that her repudiation of him would come now, the pain of her rejection suffered immediately. That was better than to be left lingering, malignant with hope.

They pushed into the hall past servants and hangers-on, brushing aside a pack of hopeful dogs waiting for bones. Hathui walked with a pronounced limp, as if she had aggravated the old childhood injury that had left her with a slight hitch in her stride. Was it really almost two years ago when he had glimpsed her that day in Helmut Villam's presence? Zacharias had kept back in the shadows, and Hathui had not recognized him.

Since that day, she'd grown thin and weary and worn, and her sunken cheeks made her hawk's nose more prominent, bold and sharp. But when they pushed through the crowd and came before the high table where King Geza presided over the feast, she stood proudly in her patched Eagle's cloak and tattered clothing and spoke in the voice he remembered so well, confident and proud. "My lord king of Ungria, may all be well in your kingdom. I pray you, forgive my abruptness."

The hall grew quiet as the feasting nobles settled down to listen. Sapientia sat in the seat of honor to Geza's right while Sanglant sat between the robust but gray-haired King Geza and Lady Ilona, a ripely handsome and fabulously rich Ungrian widow. Brother Bres-chius leaned down to whisper into Geza's ear as Hathui turned her attention to the royal siblings.

'Your Highness, Princess Sapientia, I come from Aosta bearing news. My lord prince, my lady, I have traveled a long and difficult road to reach you. It has taken me almost two years to come so far, and I have escaped death more than once."

Sanglant rose to his feet, holding a cup of wine. He wore a rich gold tunic embroidered with the sigil of the black dragon and finished with red braid, and his black hair had been trimmed back from his beardless face. No person could look at him and forget that his mother was not born of humankind.

Yet neither could they forget that he was a prince, commander of the army that had defeated the Quman. Even, and especially, Sapientia, dressed in all the finery appropriate to a noblewoman, looked as insignificant as a goldfinch perched next to a mighty dragon.

"You bring ill news," said Sanglant.

Hathui almost choked on the words. "I bring ill news, Your Highness, may God help us all. King Henry has been bewitched, ensor-celled with the connivance of his own queen and his trusted counselor. He lives as a prisoner in his own body. You are the only one who can save him."

JoJLJcS J>IJN Cjr had a disconcerting habit of leaning so far out tower windows that it seemed in the next instant she would fall, or fly.

'Look!" She had crawled up into the embrasure of an archer's loophole and was still—

barely—small enough to push into the narrow opening so that she could look down into the forecourt. "My father has left the feasting hall. I don't like it when he makes me stay here, like I'm in prison. Doesn't he have enough prisoners to lord it over? Why does he pick on me?"

'Your lord father does not like it when you behave as you did this morning," said Anna for the tenth time that evening. "When you act like a barbarian, then you must be treated as one."

Matto sat by the cold hearth, a lit lamp dangling above him. He had made use of the long and dreary afternoon to oil the young princess' harness until it gleamed. Looking up, he winked slyly, and Anna blushed, gratified and irritated at the same time.

Blessing forced her shoulders through the loophole. Anna hastily grabbed her trailing feet just as the girl called out, words muffled by the stone. "Who's that with him? It looks like an Eagle! He's coming back here!"

Anna tugged, grunting, but Blessing was either stuck or was holding on. "Matto!"

He was more than happy to set down the harness and help her, because it gave him an excuse to put his arms around her as he grasped hold of Blessing's ankles as well. "Your Highness!" he said. "I pray you, do not get stuck in there or we will be the ones who will face your father's anger."

There was a pause.

Blessing wriggled backward, half slid down the stair-step embrasure, and hopped to the carpeted floor. Despite everything, the girl had a profound sense of fairness and did not like to see her attendants blamed for her misadventures.

'Well, there is an Eagle with him," she said defiantly. "I don't know where she came from, or how she could have found us out here in Ungria. I hate Ungria."

'We all know you hate Ungria, Your Highness," said Anna wearily, allowing herself to lean against Matto's broad chest. His hand tightened on her shoulder.

'Thiemo won't like that." Blessing had a sweet face still, although she stood as tall as many a nine- or ten-year-old child, but her expression was sharpened by a spark of malicious glee as she bared her teeth in something resembling a grin. "I hear him coming up the stairs now."

Anna stepped out from under Matto's arm.

'I'm not afraid of him!" Matto muttered as the latch flipped up.

The door had a hitch to it, and the floor was warped, so it took Thiemo a moment to shove it open. To be safe, Anna took two more steps away from Matto.

'My lord prince is returning," said Thiemo, addressing Blessing. "Your Highness." His gaze quickly assessed Anna, and Matto, and the distance between them, and then he grinned winsomely at Anna, the smile that always made her dizzy. How could it be that a lord like Thiemo even noticed a common-born girl with skin stained nut-brown from the tanning pits?

Blessing's tunic was twisted around from climbing. As Anna helped the girl to straighten herself and found a comb to brush her untidy hair, Thiemo and Matto gathered up the harness, neatened up the chamber, and did not speak one word to each other. The two young men had never been friends, since the gulf in their stations did not truly permit such intimacy, but had once been friendly companions in Blessing's service. Not anymore.

The clamor of footsteps and voices echoed up from below. Lamplight glimmered and, all at once, fully a dozen people crowded into the tower chamber. Blessing scrambled up to hide in the stair-step embrasure, crouching there like a sweetly featured gargoyle with Thiemo and Matto standing as guards to either side of the opening. Anna retreated to the hearth while Prince Sanglant and his noble companions and loyal followers took up places around the chamber. His sister seated herself at the table with her faithful companion Lady Brigida at her side and the others ranged about the room, standing respectfully or sitting comfortably on the bed or the other bench, according to their station. It was the usual retinue: Lady Bertha of Austra, Brother Heribert, Wolfhere, that nasty Brother Zacharias,

whose robes were damp, Captain Fulk, kind Brother Breschius, even-tempered Lord Druthmar, who commanded a contingent of Villam cavalry, and the one they all called the Rutting Beast, the notorious Lord Wichman. The only Ungrian present was Istvan, a noble if rather grim captain who, like Brother Breschius, had thrown his loyalty to Sanglant after Prince Bayan's death at the Veser. Anna had expected to see the prince's mistress, Lady Ilona, whose favorite gown Blessing had so thoroughly ruined this morning, but evidently she did not hold an intimate enough rank within the prince's personal circle to be invited into this private assembly.

Sanglant paced, wearing a path from the door to the window and back again, but his attention remained fixed on the battered Eagle who had been given Anna's stool for a seat, the only common-born person in the room not on her feet. This was no arrogant privilege granted her by reason of her Eagle's status; she looked too exhausted to stand on her own. But although her shoulders drooped, her keen gaze did not waver from the prince's restless figure.

'So it's true," Sanglant said at last. "Wolfhere glimpsed the truth with his Eagle's Sight, but we had no way to confirm what he had seen." He glanced at Wolfhere, who regarded the other Eagle with a thoughtful frown, as though the news she had brought were nothing more troubling than the screech of a jay.

'We must march on Aosta at once!" cried Sapientia. *

Sanglant barely glanced at her, nor did she try to interrupt him when he spoke. "With what magic will we combat those who have imprisoned the king? Nay. This changes nothing, and in truth only makes our course more clear. We must continue east. That is the only way to defeat our enemies."

'But, Your Highness," objected the Eagle, "I have been already two years seeking you.

How can we know what has befallen King Henry in that time? He is hidden to my Eagle's Sight. He may be dead. They may do any foul deed to him that they wish!"

'And so may they continue to do," said Heribert quietly. "I have seen the power of the sorcery they wield. We cannot fight it with spears or swords."

'But, Your Highness," pleaded the Eagle, "if you ride east, into unknown country and the lands where the Quman breed, it may be years until you return to Wendar. What will happen to your father meanwhile?" She knelt at the prince's feet, her presence forcing him to stand still.

'They need Henry alive in order to rule through him," said Sanglant. "His Wendish armies will desert Adelheid and her advisers if Henry dies. The nobles and their retinues will return to Wendar without the king to lead them."

'There is the child, Your Highness." The Eagle's voice was soft, but Sapientia all at once burst into noisy exclamations.

'Abandoned! Set aside! And for a toddling brat!"

Wichman snorted, but fell silent at a glance from the prince.

'It is true that the child can become queen in Henry's place, but she cannot yet be three years of age." Sanglant looked toward the embrasure where his unnatural daughter had concealed herself in the shadows of the window's stone archway. Blessing was not more than three years old, but she appeared so much older that King Geza had suggested to Sanglant that he betroth her to Geza's favorite child, a brash fifteen-year-old boy whom many whispered had been all but anointed as heir despite having a dozen older brothers.

'Regents have ruled through three-year-old children before, Your Highness," said Wolfhere. "This girl, Mathilda, would no doubt be easier to control than a mature man of Henry's stature and experience."

'Are you suggesting we give up our quest?"

'Nay, I do not, my lord prince, but I implore you to listen carefully to what Hathui has seen and heard. I trained her myself, and King Henry saw her worth and raised her up to stand at his right hand as a trusted adviser."

Sanglant's lips twitched, as though he wasn't sure whether to smile or frown. "Just as you stood beside my grandfather, King Ar-nulf?"

Wolfhere shrugged, unwilling to be drawn into an argument so old that Anna could only guess at its contours. Intimately involved as she was in the care of Blessing, she often witnessed the interactions between Sanglant and his closest counselors. Despite Wolf-here's status as a respected elder, she had seen tempers flare and accusations thrown like knives.

Sanglant returned his gaze to the younger Eagle. "I do not question your loyalty to my father, Hathui. You have proved it by riding so far to seek my help."

'What of the king?" she demanded.

'To fight the rebellious lords of Aosta, to fight the Jinna bandits and the Arethousan usurpers, it seems to me they must have Henry to lead the army. Why kill him if they can control him with sorcery? Why control him with sorcery if they felt powerful enough to kill him and still keep the crown of Wendar on the child's head? Nay, let us pray that my father lives, and that his queen and her counselors will keep him alive until the child is old enough to stand up at the war council herself." He glanced again toward the embrasure, but the shadows hid his daughter from view. Only her eyes winked there, two sparks of fire. "We cannot fight the sorcerers unless we have a hope of winning, and we have no hope of winning unless we can protect ourselves against their magic."

'Griffin feathers," murmured Zacharias. His face was flushed, and he was perspiring.

'I fear the Kerayit will not care about Wendish troubles, Your Highness," said Breschius softly. "They may not choose to aid you."

'So you have said before. I do not neglect your counsel, Brother. But Anne's plotting threatens the Kerayit as much as any people. No place on earth will be safe."

'And we could all die tomorrow," added Lady Bertha cheerfully.

Wichman guffawed, caught sight of Anna, and gave her a wink. She shifted nervously.

He had tried to grope her once, although San-giant had put a stop to it, but the duchess'

unruly son still made her uneasy.

'Set aside for a babe in arms!" muttered Sapientia. Yet it had been months since anyone had paid much attention to her, and although she still had the luster of the royal blood, she had faded in an intangible way, like silver left unpolished. "Did the Wendish nobles not hear my father confirm me as heir? How can they bow before an infant inAosta?"

'What of Wendar itself, my lord prince?" Hathui asked.

He paced to the door, pausing there with his back to the assembly.

'I should return to Wendar!" cried Sapientia.

'I wonder if my sisters still quarrel over Saony," remarked Wichman, "and if Ekkehard has managed to stick his key into his wife's treasure chest yet."

Sanglant ignored these comments as he replied to the Eagle. "I commanded a cohort of Lions to attend Theophanu. I sent many levies of fighters back to their farms. As you can see, I rode east with less than a thousand soldiers. Two thirds of the army we had at the Veser no longer rides with me. They must defend Wendar until I return."

'Can they?" Grimacing with pain and favoring a leg, Hathui rose to stand defiantly in the middle of the room. "Do you know what I have seen in the two years I have traveled, struggling to reach you, my lord prince?"

From no other common-born person might a noble lord hear such a tone, but it had long been understood that Eagles had to have a certain amount of freedom to speak their mind if their information was to be of any use to their regnant. She went on without asking his leave.

'Salia lies torn apart by civil war, plague, and drought. Bandits lurk along every road. I heard little news of Varre as I rode through Wayland, and received nothing but scorn from the retainers of Conrad the Black. It is said that he celebrated Penitire in Mainni as if he were king, with Sabella's daughter Tallia beside him as his new wife. Avaria has been swept by plague. I rode through more than one empty hamlet, and as many where the path was blocked by fallen trees and villagers standing there with scythes and shovels to guard themselves from any who might bring the contagion into their homes.

'Princess Theophanu refuses to name any of Duchess Rotrudis' children as heir to the duchy of Saony, but both the daughters have threatened to seek Conrad's aid to gain the ducal seat."

'Two sows rooting in the mud while the boar looks on!"

'I pray you, Wichman," said Sanglant, "let the Eagle finish her report without interruption."

Hathui continued. "Cousins fight among themselves to gain lands and titles come free because there have been so many deaths in the recent wars. Riding through the marchlands, I saw fields withered by drought. I saw children laid low by famine, with their stomachs swollen and their eyes sunk in like those of corpses. In Eastfall, it rained every day for two months straight and black rot destroyed half their stores of rye.

Heretics preach a story of a phoenix offering redemption. It is no wonder that people listen. The common folk fear that the end of the world is coming."

Wichman laughed. "What evil does not plague Wendar?"

Hathui was not so easily cowed. "I have heard no report of locusts, my lord, nor has there been any news of Eika raids along the northern shores these past two years."

'A spitfire! Do your claws come out in the bed, too?"

Impatiently, she turned back to Prince Sanglant. "Princess Theophanu has sent three Eagles to Aosta and heard no answer from her father in reply to her pleas for help. I crossed paths with a fourth— Anger creased her lips, quickly fled. "—last summer, who rode south to seek the king. I saw with my Eagle's Sight that she crossed the Alfar Mountains safely this spring, but as soon as she came near to Darre she was lost in the sorcerer's veil.

'Conrad of Wayland acts as if he is king, not duke. Yolanda of Varingia is embroiled in the Salian wars. Biscop Constance remains silent in Arconia. Liutgard of Fesse and Burchard of Avaria ride at Henry's side in Aosta. Saony has no duke. Theophanu cannot act with the meager forces she has at her disposal. Who will save Wendar, my lord prince? Who will save the king?"

Sanglant said nothing. Within the embrasure, Blessing shifted, feet rubbing on stone.

Sapientia wept quietly while Brigida comforted her. The others waited. Anna glanced over toward the window to see both Thiemo and Matto looking at her. Heat scalded her cheeks, and she looked down. What would happen if they came to blows? Would Prince Sanglant banish them for creating trouble? She didn't want to lose either of them, but matters could not remain in this tense stalemate. She was going to have to choose. And she didn't want to.

'You have the army and the leadership, my lord prince," continued Hathui. "Turn your army home."

'I cannot."

'You can! Henry left Wendar in a time of trial. If he had stayed in Wendar, he would not have become bewitched. He ought to have stayed in Wendar and not ridden off to Aosta in search of a crgwn. And neither should you!"

'I am not riding to Aosta in search of a crown." Anna heard the edge creep into the prince's voice that meant the Eagle's words had angered him, but perhaps the Eagle did not care, or did not know him well enough, to heed the warning.

'But you are riding east, in search of other tokens of power. Some have named you as a rebel against your father. I see for myself that you have usurped your sister's command of this army."

Silence, cold and deadly.

Yet wasn't it true? Even though nobody said so?

A sharp snap caused everyone to jump, but it was only Wolfhere treading on a twig carried up to the room in the crowd. Lord Wich-man chuckled, looking at Sapientia to see what she would do, thus challenged. Lady Bertha folded her arms across her chest, her smile thin and wicked.

Sapientia stared up at her elder brother, waiting. In a strange way, thought Anna, Prince Bayan had trained her to listen to him and wait for his approval before acting or reacting. Now she looked to Sanglant in the same way. Over the last three years she had been broken of the habit of leading.

'I have done what I must." The hoarse scrape of his voice lent a note of urgency and passion to his words; but then, he always sounded like that. "I have never rebelled against my father. Nor will I. But the war is not won yet. Adelheid and her supporters have traded in the king for a pawn who speaks with the king's voice but without Henry's will.

Who will act as regnant now? I say, the one who can save him by acting against Anne and her sorcerers."

Heribert cleared his throat and spoke diffidently. "Do not forget that Anne sits on the skopos' throne. She is no mere 'Sister.' She is Holy Mother over us all. To go against her, my lord prince, you must war against the church itself."

'Even those who call themselves holy may be agents of the Enemy," murmured Wolfhere.

'As you well know," replied Sanglant with a mordant laugh, moving restlessly toward the table. "Is there wine?"

'Return to Wendar, my lord prince," said Hathui stubbornly. "Raise an army, and ride to Aosta to save the king. I beg you."

He allowed Heribert to pour him a full cup of wine, which he drained. "No." He set down the cup so hard that the base rang hollowly on the wooden table. "I ride east, to hunt griffins."

AFTER the conference with the king's Eagle, Sanglant made his way to the privacy of Lady Ilona's bedchamber. Her four attendants slept soundly on pallets lined up along the far wall, and Ilona lay naked on her stomach among the tangled bedclothes. Smiling slightly, she watched him as he stripped, then raised an eyebrow when he went to the unshuttered window instead of coming immediately to her bed.

'What are you thinking?" she asked.

Sanglant lingered by the window, staring east, yet all he saw was stars and campfires and, beyond them, unknown country lost in darkness. The moon had not yet risen. The night was mild, the breeze a caress against his skin. "That my daughter is impossible."

'She is only jealous. She wants you to herself. She does not like this attention you pay to a woman. It was only one gown. I have others."

'You are very forgiving."

'No. I am patient. She grows quickly, your daughter. Soon enough she will become a woman, and she will desire men herself."

'Oh, God," he groaned.

'Then you will be jealous," she said with a chuckle, "because you will no longer be first in her heart. She will be torn between father and lover. If she is wise and fortunate, she will choose to follow her own destiny in the end, not that of a man."

'I am chastened," he replied, clapping a hand over his heart. "Now I realize that you have not given that gown a second thought, although its fate has been nagging at me all day. What are you thinking of, then?"

She smiled, stretching. The single lamp gave off enough light for him to admire the mole on her left hip, the curve of her buttocks, and a glimpse of rosy nipple as she shifted. With an exaggerated sigh, drawn out and almost musical, she rolled up onto her side. He felt the familiar stirring, heat suffusing his skin.

He had met the persuasive widow last autumn, when they had finally arrived at King Geza's court in Erztegom. She had propositioned him within a week of their first encounter, but it wasn't until the winter, when they were confined by a succession of blizzards within the town walls, that he had finally allowed her to seduce him. The arrangement had lasted through the spring.

He crossed the room to sit on the bed.

'I am thinking of the sorrow in my heart," she said warmly, "now that we journey close to the borderlands."

'Are you sorry I'm leaving?"

'But of course! Now that you are leaving they are at me again, all those grasping relatives! Marry this lord! Marry that lord! Don't be selfish with your wealth and independence! How good it was when they could not insult me with their offers because they feared to anger you!"

He grinned, twining a strand of her copper hair between his fingers. "You could enter a convent."

'I think not! All this praying would be very bad for my knees. I am very careful of my knees. Among my people it is said that after too much kneeling, you can no longer ride a horse."

'Then will you let your uncle choose a husband for you?"

'That old fool! It is very lucky he cannot touch my inheritance, or he would have married me himself even if the church would call him a whore for it. Is that the right word?"

He withdrew his hand from her hair. "That would be incest."

'So it would. I am thinking of marrying the one they call the White Stallion, Prince Arhad's eldest son by the Arethousan woman."

'Ah. The lady with the white-blonde hair."

'Yes, that one. Why is it that men find her so fascinating? Already she is an old woman, at least forty. I cannot see it."

'Women can be beautiful in many different ways." He traced the shape of her body from the shoulder, along the dip of her waist, and up along the ample curve of her hip.

Her copper-colored hair and lush figure did not make him think of Liath each time he set eyes on her. Ilona had her own exceedingly pleasant charms.

She stretched to savor the touch of his hand. "Men who find so many women beautiful in so many different ways are the ones who break their hearts and steal their treasure!"

'Ilona, has any man ever broken your heart?"

'Of course not!"

'Or stolen your treasure?"

'Do not laugh at me, you heartless man. My mother chose my first husband very carefully!" She burst into the laughter he found so attractive. "When she found us in bed together! It was a good thing he was the son of a princely family. Alas that he died so young. My second husband smelled bad. I am determined not to make this mistake two times."

'Thus the White Stallion? He's handsome enough, a good fighter, young, and he looks clean and maybe he even smells good." That was another thing he liked about Ilona: she smelled good. She burned perfumed oils in the lamps that lit her chamber, oil of violets, if she had them, or vervain or sage. Tonight a garland of sweet woodruff hung on a nail above the window, stirred by the soft breeze. Even from this distance he could smell its dusky scent.

'He is not so powerful in Geza's court that he will think he can rule me. I do not like to be ruled." She shifted onto her back and eased herself up onto the bolster that lay along the head of the bed,

resting her head on a bent arm. "You would make a bad husband for me, Sanglant."

'You're not the first to have said so."

She laughed again and let her free hand caress his shoulder. "Ah, yes. What was I going to say?" She seemed distracted by the feel of his skin, and certainly the way she stroked him made it difficult for him to pay attention to her words. "Of course. The White Stallion. My mother as a girl spent three years among the veiled priestesses. They serve the Blind Mother, who is one of the gods worshiped by those who follow the old ways.

My mother would be amused to think that even though I abandoned her ways to embrace the God in Unity, I will have brought a man called by the name of the Blind Mother's companion to serve in my bed."

By this time he had relaxed onto one elbow, beside her, but the comment made him sit bolt upright. "Do you mean that when a white stallion is sacrificed at midwinter, he is going to be husband to the Blind Mother? That is not how I heard the ritual explained."

'You heard what the men say. This is what the women know. Our grandmothers brought the old ways from the grasslands when we came to Ungria four generations ago.

Out in the wild lands, the Ker-ayit shaman women still take a handsome young man as a companion, to keep their bed warm."

'As a slave, Brother Breschius told me. A pura, which means 'horse' in the Kerayit speech." For an instant, Sanglant had trfe uneasy feeling that Ilona had been playing with him all along, these past months, as though she were pretending that he were her pura.

Maybe she wasn't as fond of him as he had become of her. But it was impossible to guess anything when she laughed like that, and maybe it didn't really matter.

'The White Stallion, the pura, is also a sacrifice, for the well being of the tribe. Be careful that the Kerayit women do not demand you for a pura, Sanglant, in exchange for their help to defeat your western sorcerers. Because there will be a price. The Kerayit and their masters make no bargain without exacting a steep price in return."

afraid to go to sleep." Hathui clutched Zacharias' hand as they sat together on the lip of the stone water trough set in the broad courtyard in front of the stables. "When I wake up, you might not be here any more."

'I'll be here." He wanted to weep. How could he be so happy, reunited with his beloved sister, and yet so terrified? "I won't be going anywhere."

'I'm sorry I thought you were dead," she replied, lips curving in an ironic smile. The moon had finally risen, chasing scattered clouds, and because he knew her expressions so well he could interpret them although there wasn't really enough light to see her clearly.

"Not very faithful of me."

'Nay, do not say so. You couldn't have known."

Her hand tightened on his as she stared across the silent courtyard. A spear's throw away, two guards walked the ramparts. Their figures paused beside a torch set in a tripod above the gate; the flickering firelight glimmered on their helmets. "Zacharias, can I trust him? Is he worth giving my loyalty to, until the king is restored?"

'What other choice do you have, except to return to Aosta?"

'I can go to Princess Theophanu. That's what Hanna said I should do. Had I done it last summer, when I met Hanna, we might be in Aosta with an army by now."

He shuffled his feet in the dirt, blotting the lines where a servant had raked away manure and litter earlier that evening. The smell of horse lay heavily over them. Nearby a dog barked, then fell silent when a man scolded it. He saw the dog suddenly, a dark shape scrambling along the rampart in the company of a guard, its leash pulled taut. Choking him.

He rubbed his throat as the nasty whispers surfaced in his mind. She would hate him when she found out the truth. She would despise him, which would be worse. It was bad enough being a coward, but he could not bear it if she turned away from him with contempt.

'Yet who else?" she asked, unaware of his silence, his struggle, his agony. "Who else can save Henry? Who can fight Hugh of Austra,

and Holy Mother Anne? Princess Sapientia is like a lapdog, suffered to eat and bark but kept on a chain. She cannot lead this army. Yet what can Princess Theophanu do against Hugh of Austra's sorcery? She fell under his spell once before. She might do so again."

He did not need to answer, simply to listen as she worked her way through her own argument. She wasn't really asking for his advice; she was trying to convince herself because she was desperate.

'Sister Rosvita told me to come here. She must have known the prince's worth. She must have had a reason. She has served the king loyally, and wisely. What else do I have to go on?"

'You'd better sleep. The path will show more clearly in the morning." Up on the ramparts, the guard dog growled. A person emerged from the stable carrying a candle; its light splashed shadows around them. Without turning, he knew who had come to look for her.

'Hathui? You'd best sleep." Wolfhere sounded concerned, even affectionate. All those humiliating years while Zacharias had lived as a slave among the Quman, Wolfhere had trained and ridden with Hathui, her mentor among the Eagles. She respected Wolfhere; she'd said so herself, as they'd eaten in the soldiers' barracks after being dismissed from the prince's chamber.

She would never respect her own dear brother, not once she knew the truth.

She let go of Zacharias' hand. "True enough, old man. So many times in the past months I despaired of finding Prince Sanglant. Yet now that I'm here, my path seems just as troubled. Where will it end? Have you an answer?"

'You say it was Sister Rosvita who sent you to find my lord prince," the old Eagle answered. "She is a wise woman, and a faithful counselor to King Henry. Stay with us, Hathui. That is the only way to save Henry."

She grunted, half a chuckle, rising to her feet with a grimace. "Spoken by the man whom King Henry put under ban. You've never liked him."

'Nay. I've never disliked him. It is Henry who did not trust me."

'Wisely," muttered Zacharias, but neither heard him. Hathui had already begun moving away, pausing when she realized he wasn't following her.

'Where do you sleep, Zachri?" she asked, using the pet name she'd called him when she was too young to fit his entire name to her tongue.

'Elsewhere," he said softly, hoping Wolfhere would not hear. It hurt to hear her use that fond old name. He was no longer her cherished older brother, the one she followed everywhere. He was no better than the dogs, sleeping wherever he found a corner to curl up in. No one tolerated him enough that he had a regular pallet—or perhaps it was more fair to say that Anna could not stand him, he could not himself bear to sleep near Wolfhere, and the camaraderie of the soldiers grew painful after a few nights. He could only exist on the edge, never in the heart.

She came back to hug him. "There's room enough in the stall where I've been given straw—

'Nay, nay," he said hastily. Tears stung his eyes. "Go to sleep, Hathui. I'll see you in the morning."

She remained there a few breaths longer, staring at him in the hazy halo of light wavering off Wolfhere's candle. She was trying to understand his hesitation, knowing him well enough to see that there was something wrong. But she could not yet see what he had become. She still saw the older brother who had walked proudly into the east to bring the light of the Unities to the barbarians. How could she know that he had become lost in the umbra? That he had compromised his honor, submitted to the worst indignities, and licked the feet of those who owned him, in order to stay alive? It was only when they had threatened to cut out his tongue that he had fled. Shouldn't he have offered up his tongue, his very life, before he had sacrificed his faith and his honor?

'You look tired, Zacharias," she said at last, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek.

"You should sleep, too. I'll be looking for you at first light, to make sure you aren't a dream."

She went inside the stables with Wolfhere. The light fled. So small a thing had the candle's flame been, to cast so harsh a light onto his soul.

When she found out the truth, she would hate him. And she would find out the truth in the end, because the one person who knew everything still traveled with Sanglant's army and had no better way to amuse himself. He would know. He would see Zacharias'

weakness, his fears, and his hopes. He would destroy Zacharias' last chance for redemption, as long as he still lived.

Zacharias got to his feet and staggered like an old man to the door of the stable. It was dark inside, Wolfhere's candle vanished entirely, although he heard a murmur of voices that faded. Half of the stalls were empty; at this time of year, and in a peaceful city, many of the horses had been put out to pasture beyond the inner walls. But soldiers stored other things here as well.

Groping, as quietly as he could, he found a stout spear leaning with its brothers in a stall. He slipped his fingers around it, eased it free, and crept out of the stable. Hands trembling, breath corning in gasps, he hugged the shadows, having to steady himself on the butt of the spear every time his knees started to give out. The haft kept wanting to spring right out of his grasp, but he clutched it tightly.

He would not lose Hathui, not after losing everything else.

Beside the great hall lay the old keep, said by the locals to have been built in the time of the ancient Dariyans, although Heribert had firmly proclaimed that it could not possibly have been built by Dari-yan engineers: the technique and stonework were too crude. With a new hall and stables now built inside the ring fort's restored walls, the old keep was considered too drafty and damp for the king and his court. But stone made good prison walls.

The two Ungrian soldiers standing guard at the entrance to the keep knew him by sight and let him pass. Up the winding stairs lay the tower rooms where King Geza kept certain prisoners who traveled with him wherever he went—his first wife, an unrepentant pagan whom he had divorced on his conversion to the Daisanite faith and whom he was forced to hold hostage so that her angry kinfolk did not murder him for the insult; an Arethousan priest who had poisoned a young Ungrian princeling but whom Geza dared not execute because of the priest's connections to the Arethousan royal court; an albino boy who was either a witch or a saint, too craz^ to be allowed to roam about on his own and too valuable to be given into anyone else's care.

Others, too, slept confined in chambers, but they weren't the dangerous ones, only hostages. Usually the dangerous ones were killed outright.

As he should have been killed, the day they captured him.

Zacharias used the butt of the spear to feel his way down the curving stairs to the lower level, where stone foundations plumbed the ground. It was cooler here, damp, smelling of mold and decay.

'Who's there?" asked the guard in Wendish, rising from the stool where he waited out the night in the dank, dark dungeon. An oil lamp hung from a ring set into the wall. The light barely illuminated the hole cut into the plank floor and the ladder lying on the planks beside it. "Oh, it's just you, Brother. What brings you here so late?"

Would his trembling hands and sweating brow give him away? He must not falter now. His glib tongue had always saved him before.

'My lord prince has sent me to interrogate the prisoner."

'In the middle of the night?"

He raised a finger to his lips and beckoned the soldier closer, so that they wouldn't wake the prisoner. "Malbert, when did you come on vvatch? Did you hear that an Eagle rode in?"

'An Eagle? Nay, I've heard no such news. From Princess Theo-phanu? News of Wendar?" Malbert came from the northern coast of Wendar, near Gent, and was always eager for news of the region where he'd grown up.

'Nay, she brings news from Aosta. King Henry is ill. He's being poisoned by sorcery."

'God save him!"

'Prince Sanglant doesn't know whether to ride east or return to Aosta. I'm to ask the prisoner again of the eastern lands. See if he'll talk, give us any information."

Malbert snorted. "As if he would! He'll laugh at you."

But not for long.

'If he's groggy from sleep, he might reveal something. How many days to the eastern swamps. Where the griffins hunt."

'Hasn't the prince come to listen and watch? Where is he?"

'Well. Well. Just where most men wish they were in the dead of night. Heh, yes. He's gone to his bed."

Malbert grinned. "I wish I were in as sweet a bed as he's in now. But I can't come down with you. You know the rule."

'It's better if he thinks I'm alone. I've got this spear with me to keep him honest."

He bit his tongue to hold back the frantic words that wanted to spill out: to silence him.

That was the only way. Hathui must never know.

Malbert had an open face and was himself too honest not to let his skepticism show.

They all knew how disgracefully Zacharias had behaved in a skirmish before. "So you say. I'll keep watch from above."

They slid the ladder down through the hole until it rested on the dirt beneath. Malbert held the lamp over the opening to light Zacharias' descent. With the spear tucked under one arm, he climbed down into the pit.

Although the prince had had the pit swept clean the day they had arrived here, it still stank of garbage, urine, and feces. Dirt squeaked under his feet as Zacharias steadied himself. Malbert lowered a second, newly lit oil lamp to hang from a hook hammered into the underside of the plank floor. Drops of water beaded on the stone walls, dripping onto the soil. The stink of closed-in air almost choked him, but hatred drove him on.

The prisoner lay silent, still asleep, on a heap of straw. Chains draped his recumbent body, iron links fastened to the wall. Without chains he was too dangerous, so the prince had discovered. No matter that Zacharias had warned him. Two servants had died and three soldiers been injured in that first and only escape attempt one month after the battle at the Veser. Yet even the heavy chains did not weaken him. They barely contained him.

Do it now, while the fever burned. Do it for Hathui, so she need never know. So she need never spit in her brother's face.

Sweat dripped in his eyes and tickled the back of his neck. Flushed, heart pounding as though he were running, he stumbled forward. Triumph flooded him as his hands wrapped tight around the haft of the spear and he thrust hard at the exposed back of the man lying in the straw.

He should have done this long ago.

Lithe as a serpent, the shadowed figure twisted, and his manaclec forearm batted the spear aside. The point drove into the dirt beneatl the straw. Quick as a striking snake, he grabbed the haft with his right hand and with his left wrapped the chains shackling his arms around the point. Linked by the shaft of wood, the two men stared at each other. A smile quivered on Bulkezu's lips as he slithered to his feet, confined only by the limit of his chains.

The wound that had torn a flap of skin half off his cheek .had healed remarkably well, but the ragged scar marred his beauty. No one could possibly look at him now and wonder how a man so handsome could be so monstrous. It had never been true that God so wrought the world that those things They lavished loving care on by granting them beauty were, because of their beautiful nature, therefore also good. Sometimes you met evil in the guise of beauty. You had to be careful.

'So the worm comes with a long knife to poke at the lion."

Bulkezu thrust. Propelled backward, Zacharias hit the opposite wall, first his back, then his head colliding with cold stone. His shriek was cut short as the butt of the spear, still with his own hands clutching it, jammed hard into his gut, pinning him against the wall.

'Impotent worm," said Bulkezu in his soft voice. Now that he had hold of one end of the spear, he could reach anywhere in the cell. "But worms aren't men, they're only worms. They can't even bark like dogs or rut like them, can they?"

How he hated that voice, and the bubbling laughter, sweet with delight and with the cunning madness that had made Bulkezu the greatest chieftain of his day, that had allowed him to unite many of the Quman tribes into an army with which to ravage Wendar. All he could do was grasp the haft more tightly.

If he let go, it was all over.

Adjusting his grip, bending slightly at his knees, Bulkezu lifted Zacharias from the floor and slammed him against the wall again. A second time the Quman pitched him against the stone as Zacharias screamed with anger and pain.

Malbert's face appeared above like some sort of angel illuminated by the lamp's glow.

He shouted down unintelligible words as Bulkezu kept battering Zacharias against the wall and Zacharias kept holding on.

Was that the sound of footsteps, clattering on the floor above? Impossible to tell.

Again and again, Bulkezu slammed him against the wall as spots sparked like fire before Zacharias' eyes and sound roared in his ears. A stone fell from above, then a second, but the angle was wrong, the trapdoor set too far to one side. The guards could not reach Bulkezu as he battered Zacharias against the wall again, and again. Yet was that frustration growing in the monster's laugh?

If he could only hold on a moment longer. He had escaped the Quman in the first place simply by holding on, by not giving up. He had to remember that.

A new voice rang above the fray.

'Zacharias!"

Horror gripped him, and his throat burned as bile rose.

Hathui would witness it all.

Again, Bulkezu thrust, and Zacharias smashed into the stone behind him, but this time when his head hit his vision hazed and darkened. The shaft of the spear slid out of his weakening grip. His legs no longer held him up. He toppled over, hit the ground and, as his sight faded, he braced himself for the final, killing thrust.

JHUc could not sleep. Again. Not even the soft bed and the voluptuous woman breathing softly beside him, her full breasts pressed against his arm, could soothe his agitated thoughts tonight. He slipped from the bed as quietly as he could, pulled on his tunic, swept up leggings and belt and court shoes from the bench where they had been left in a heap. Ilona did not wake. She never did, when he was restless—not as Liath had, attentive to his moods—or perhaps she only pretended to sleep, having got what she wanted out of him and being unwilling to give more of herself than her body.

She was loyal to Ungria, not to him, loyal to her estates and her young children, who would inherit her portion when the time came. No reason she should offer him her heart, her confidences, any intimacy beyond that shared in the bed, two lonely people finding release.

For some reason it bothered him mightily that, as much as she enjoyed his company, she seemed to harbor no actual love nor even any particular companionable affection for him at all.

One of her serving women woke and, with barely a glance at him, no more than a respectful bob to acknowledge his princely rank, opened the door to let him out. In this same way she would let out a scratching dog.

He walked barefoot down the hall, down the stairs, feeling his way by touch to the entrance to the great hall. The feast had ended. Men snored in the hall, reeking of drink and urine. A dog growled, and he growled right back, silencing it.

The whole world seemed asleep, able to rest—as he could not.

Yet that wasn't all that was bothering him. Something wasn't right; he could smell it.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he stepped out into the open air, taking in a deep breath, listening. His hearing had always been as good as that of a dog.

Shouts and motion roiled the night over by the old keep, where the prisoners were kept.

He ran, reaching the door to the keep just as Wolfhere did.

'Trouble?" he asked.

From inside a guardsman shouted unintelligible words and he heard the voice of the Eagle, Hathui, raised in fear. Taking the stairs three at a time, he fetched up beside a clot of guardsmen, all crying out and exclaiming, one of them on his knees dropping stones through the open trapdoor.

'Damn fool," cursed one as Hathui tried to push past him to get to the ladder. "The damn fool took a spear. Now the prisoner's got hold of it."

'Give me a sword," said Sanglant.

Malbert handed him a sword. He grabbed it before dropping down through the trap, practically sliding down the rungs and slats with a single hand for balance. His eyes had already adjusted for the dim light, although an oil lamp swung unsteadily to his right, creaking.

Movement flashed in his vision.

Leaping from the ladder he spun, sword raised, breaking the spear in two as Bulkezu thrust at the prostrate figure slumped against the opposite wall. Left with only a splintered half, the Quman chieftain hefted it and threw it as a javelin at Sanglant's torso.

With a cut of his sword, the prince struck it down in flight.

Bulkezu hit the limit of his chains and came up short, jerked back by unyielding stone.

He was shaking—with laughter or with rage. It was impossible to tell. Was he mad, or merely feigning madness? How could any man stand to be chained and a prisoner for as long as Bulkezu had been without succumbing to insane delusions?

That ungodly cackle echoed within the stones. "I'm a cleaner man than you, prince, because I rid myself of the worms that crawl into my tent."

'This one still lives."

'Oh, God, Zacharias." Without being asked, Hathui scrambled down the ladder to crouch beside her brother, who moaned and struggled, trying to get up. "Nay, don't try to stand. You're safe now."

'Does the worm have a paramour?" Bulkezu whispered.

In the lamp's mellow glow, Sanglant saw the cheiftain's lips still fixed in that mad smile.

Hathui looked up, more curious than frightened now that her brother's assailant was disarmed. "Who is this, my lord prince?" Then her expression changed so entirely that Sanglant stepped sideways, startled, as if her gaze were an arrow that he had to avoid.

'I know who you are!" she exclaimed as Zacharias climbed grog-gily to his feet, a hand clapped to the back of his head.

Bulkezu's smile vanished. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the Eagle, annoyed and puzzled. He was always at his most dangerous when exasperated.

'Hathui." Zacharias staggered forward between his sister and the chained prisoner.

"He's dangerous."

'I know that." She stepped past him to confront Sanglant. "My lord prince, I demand satisfaction. His Majesty King Arnulf the Younger sent his subjects east to settle pagan lands and in exchange he promised they could rule themselves with the king alone, and no lady or lord, set over them as their ruler. The king's law sets a price for certain crimes, does it not?"

'So it does," said Sanglant, glancing at Bulkezu. The prisoner clearly had no more idea than his captor did what she was talking about.

'This man raped me when I was a virgin of but fourteen years of age. He cut me, too, and after that the wisewoman of my village said I would not be able to bear children. So I set my sights on the King's Eagles. Otherwise, I would have stayed in my village and inherited my mother's lands, and had daughters of my own to inherit in their turn. Do I not have a claim, my lord prince?"

"He raped you, Hathui?" croaked Zacharias. He looked around wildly, grabbed the broken haft of the spear, and hoisted it.

'Stay." Sanglant yanked the spear out of the frater's hand and tossed it against the ladder. "Do nothing rash, Brother. Is this true, Prince Bulkezu?"

Bulkezu laughed again. "One looks like another. I don't remember. It must have been years ago. But I recall clearly what I did to the worm. Does she know, your paramour, that you have no cock, Za-ch'rias? That we cut it off because you told us you'd rather lose your cock than your tongue? Does she know that you let men use you as a woman, just so you could stay alive? Does she know that you watched others die, because you wanted yourself to live? That it is you who taught me to speak the Wendish language, so that I could understand the speech of my enemy without them knowing?"

Zacharias screamed with rage and leaped toward Bulkezu. Sanglant swung to grab him, but Hathui had already got hold of her older brother. She stood almost as tall and had the strength of a woman who has spent years riding at the king's behest.

'Stay, Brother, do nothing rash," she said, echoing Sanglant's words. "What does it matter what this prisoner says to you or about you?"

Despite himself, Sanglant took a half step away from the ragged frater, a little disgusted by Bulkezu's accusations and repelled by the thought of a man so mutilated.

What kind of man would watch his own kind die without doing all he could to prevent it?

What kind of man would submit to any indignity, just to save his own life? For God's sake, what kind of man would rather lose his penis than his tongue?

'What answer do you make to these accusations?" he asked, struggling to keep contempt out of his tone. It was remarkably easy to believe that Zacharias had done these vile things. The frater never acted like a real man. Whatever drove him—and he wasn't without courage—he so often faltered, recoiled, and hid. Nor had he ever truly become a full member of Sanglant's court. He loitered on the fringe, not quite accepted, never able to push himself forward to join with the others.

To the prince's surprise, the frater wept frustrated tears. "All true," he gasped. "And worse." His expression was so bleak that pity swelled in Sanglant's heart. "I'm sorry, Hathui. Scorn me if you must—"

"Sorry for having been a slave for seven years to this monster?" She dropped Zacharias' arm, took three steps forward, and spat into Bulkezu's face. The Quman chieftain flinched back from her anger, surprised rather than scared. "I will lay my case before the prince and demand full recompense. And for the crimes you committed against my brother as well." She did not wait for his response. "Come, Zacharias. It was foolish of you to come down here, but I suppose you were afraid that I would turn away from you if I knew the truth." Her anger hadn't subsided; it spilled out to wash over her hapless brother. "I would never turn away from you. What a man suffers when he is a prisoner and a slave, under duress, cannot be held against him. Come now, let's get out of this stinking pit."

Zacharias croaked out her name, broken and pathetic, but he followed her obediently up the ladder. Malbert's face appeared.

'My lord prince?"

'I'm coming," said Sanglant, turning to pick up the two halves of the spear.

Bulkezu wasn't finished. "She wore the badge of an Eagle. Are all the king's Eagles also his whores?"

'A weak thrust, Prince Bulkezu, and unworthy of you." He set a foot on the lowest rung, stretched, and handed the broken spear to Malbert, then passed up the sword as well.

Bulkezu's lips had a way of quivering, almost a twitch, that San-giant had learned to recognize as a prelude to his worst rages. "What weapons do you give me?" he asked in that voice, as soft as feathers but poisoned at its heart.

'I'll give you a spear, as I promised, once you have guided me to the hunting grounds of the griffins. On that day you'll go free—"

'And until that day? You'd have done better to kill me if you're so afraid of me that you must shackle me, as a dog must a lion. At least Zach'rias is an honest worm. You call yourself a man but you act like a dog, slinking and cowering."

Sanglant laughed. That surge of restlessness that had driven him from Ilona's bed swept back twice as strong. For two years they'd made their slow and circuitous way eastward, delayed by blizzards, snow, high water, rains, and bouts of illness in the troops and the horses. He had never seen as much rain and snow as he had in the year and a half since the battle at the Veser. Rain had drenched the land, causing floods and mildew in the grain, and snow had buried it for two winters running, as if God were punishing them for their sins.

But God's hand alone had not caused all their troubles. They had also been delayed by the necessity of making nice to King Geza, whose lands they had to cross. He didn't like Geza nearly as much as he'd liked Bayan, and Sapientia's presence was a rankling sore, a constant source of frustration.

Or perhaps it had just been too long since he'd had a good fight.

'Malbert!"

'Yes, my lord prince."

'Throw me down the key and pull up the ladder."

'My lord!"

'The key!"

Cursing under his breath, Malbert hauled up the ladder through the trapdoor, then threw down the key, which Sanglant caught in his left hand. Bulkezu did not move as Sanglant unlocked his wrists and tossed the key to the wall, but he struck first, still quick after months of being chained. Sanglant ducked the blow. Catching wrist and arm, he drove his foe headfirst against the stone wall. Staggered, Bulkezu dropped to his knees, only to dive for Sanglant's legs. They went down together, rolling and punching, until Bulkezu sat for an instant atop Sanglant's chest. Bulkezu's hands closed on his throat, but he twisted out of the choking grip, flipped the Quman over, and sprang back to his feet, laughing breathlessly, flushed, his heart pounding in a most gratifying manner as he allowed Bulkezu to crawl back to his feet in grim silence.

Above, the lantern rocked as men crowded around the trapdoor to stare down. He heard their whispers as they laid wagers on how many blows it would take their prince to lay the prisoner out flat.

All at once he was tired of the charade. What kind of contest was it, really, to fight a man chained up for almost two years? Bulkezu remained remarkably strong, yet what kind of man was he, to torment another as Bloodheart had once tormented him?

Bulkezu struck for his face. Sanglant blocked the blow and delivered his own to Bulkezu's gut, knocking him back, then stepped in, turning sideways as Bulkezu kicked out so the blow glanced off his thigh. As he closed, Bulkezu lunged for his throat.

Sanglant seized his wrists and they froze a moment, locked, motionless.

'No creature male or female may kill me," Sanglant muttered, "so it was never a fair fight."

With a curse, Bulkezu twisted his hands free, spinning to strike with his elbow.

Sanglant caught the blow on his forearm and delivered a sharp punch below the ribs followed by a flurry of blows that made the men watching from above cheer. Bulkezu collapsed limply to the ground.

'On that day you'll go free," Sanglant repeated, "and we'll see which man wins griffin feathers."

Malbert pushed down the ladder and climbed down, eager to help shackle the prisoner.

'Nay, I will do it." Let him do the dirty work himself, chaining a warrior who would rather die fighting than leashed like a slave—or a dog. But perhaps Bulkezu deserved no better than the fate he had meted out to the many people he had enslaved and murdered.

What was justice? What was right?

'Here's the key," he said, handing it to Malbert, glad to be rid of it, although he would never be rid of the responsibility for what he chose to do.

Yet his night's work wasn't done. He crawled up the ladder to discover that King Geza had been alerted by his own guard. Sanglant met him just outside the keep. The king came attended by a half dozen of his white-cloaked honor guard, young men with long mustaches and scant beards. Geza was about ten years older than Bayan, rather more burly, gone a little to fat, and keenly intelligent. He had the luck of the king, that powerful presence, but he lacked the wicked sense of humor that had made Bayan a good companion.

'A problem with the prisoner?" he asked through his interpreter. Was he suspicious, or amused?

'He insulted my father," replied Sanglant.

'Ah." Geza spat on the ground to show his contempt for the prisoner. "Is he dead now?"

'Not until he's given me what I need."

Geza nodded and took his leave, returning to his bed. He had been grateful enough to get Bayan's body back, and he had stinted in no way in making Sanglant a welcome guest in the kingdom of Ungria, yet it remained clear that he was only waiting for Sanglant and his army to leave and that he was by no means happy at the thought of that same army returning to cross Ungrian lands on their road back to Wendar. He had even suggested that Sanglant take his army north into the war-torn Polenie lands. Yet he didn't want to fight Wendish troops either; after all, he and King Henry were nominally allies. When Geza had offered one of his sons as a new husband for Sapi-entia, Sanglant had actually flirted with the idea—for the space of three breaths.

As Geza and his entourage crossed the courtyard to the hall, Sanglant caught sight of Hathui and Zacharias over by the stables, she with her arm around his waist as if she were holding him up. Wolf-here stood by the doorway, lighting their way with a lamp as they ducked inside. How had Zacharias hidden his mutilation all these months? No one had even suspected. But then, Zacharias kept to himself, never truly part of the group, and in truth he stank because he so rarely washed.

'My lord prince!" Heribert hurried up, hair mussed and face puffy with sleep.

"Everyone is saying you killed Bulkezu."

'Rumor has already flown, I see. Thank the Lord we're moving on tomorrow. These Ungrians sing too much."

'You haven't complained of Lady Ilona's attentions." "She's worst of all! I'm nothing more than a stallion to her, brought in to breed the mare. No more women, Heribert." The cleric chuckled. "Isn't that what you said in Gent?" "I mean it this time!"

Mercifully, Heribert did not answer, merely cocked an eyebrow, looking skeptical as he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to comb it down. The first predawn birds cried out, heralding the day to come.

'The Ungrian camp followers will stay behind when we leave Geza's kingdom. Who will be left to tempt me? Pray God the sorcerers we find will know how to get Liath back."

'Yet what lies beyond Ungria? A trackless plain, so they say. How will we find these griffins and sorcerers you seek?"

Sanglant smiled, but in his heart he felt no peace, knowing that some choices were ugly, made for expediency's sake rather than being ruled by what was just. "That is why Bulkezu still lives. He'll guide me to the griffins in exchange for his freedom—and a chance to kill me."

IV THE SUMMER SUN AT the Ungrian town of Vidinyi, King Geza made his farewells and turned his court west to return to the heartland of his kingdom. A small fleet of broad-beamed merchant ships and a dozen smaller, swifter galleys had been put at the disposal of Prince Sanglant. After off-loading their cargoes of wine, oil, and silk from the Arethousan Empire, they took on grain for the return journey downriver as well as the two thousand horses, eight hundred soldiers, and two hundred or more servants with their miscellaneous carts and pack animals.

The river seemed as broad as a lake to Sanglant as he stood on deck, Heribert beside him, watching the lengthy and difficult process of coaxing horses up onto the ships.

Beyond the wharves, earth-covered fires burned along the strand. Because there was no wind and the air lay heavy and humid, wraithlike streamers of smoke from these fires stretched out along the shoreline, screening willow scrub and sapling poplars.

'They can't get much more charcoal near town," Heribert said. "Look how far back the woodland is cut."

'They're using charcoal for their ironworks, to forge more weapons. Ungria grows stronger every year and expands its border east ward." Sanglant gestured toward the new palisade wall surrounding Vidinyi. "They say it's a seven-day trip downriver to the Heretic's Sea. We won't be gone from Ungria fast enough for my taste."

'Missing Lady Ilona already?"

'I suppose I deserve that! Missing Bayan, more like. He was the best of them."

'If what Brother Breschius and Zacharias say is true, and considering the example of Bulkezu, you may look more kindly on the Ungrians once we are out on the plains at the mercy of the Quman and the Kerayit."

'Maybe so. But Geza delayed us here for his own reasons. He's a stubborn man and more conniving than he seems."

'Hoping to convince Sapientia to marry one of his sons? Or hoping to loose us into the wild lands so late in the season that the winter finishes us off?"

'Hard to say. He's not simple. No doubt the barbarians are more honest about what they want."

'Our heads? Our horses?"

'Our selves as their slaves and puras?" He laughed curtly, wiping sweat from the back of his neck. "Something like that."

The woodland had indeed been cut back on all sides of the town, but when they at long last cast off and the press of the current took them round a bend out of sight of Vidinyi, forest gradually took hold on either side until it became a monotonous fence of trees broken at intervals by clusters of low houses dug into the ground. The folk about their daily chores stared as they passed; some of the children shouted greetings; then the little village would be lost behind a new screen of forest as if it had never existed.

In those stretches of wilderness between holdings, he heard nothing except the intermittent beat of oars keeping them in the main channel and the lap of water at the bows. Once he saw a hawk half hidden among the branches of a poplar. Above, the sky was a vivid blue. In the distance the rugged mountains lifted up from a horizon untouched by haze, as though the air were somehow purer there, closer to the heavenly aether.

If he looked hard enough, could he see Liath shining in the heavens? But the air was clear, only scraps of clouds and the bright sun, concealing neither angels nor daimones.

He had seen no sign of her since that awful day at Gent. Two and a half years had passed since then; it was almost as though their brief life together was only a dream remembered as if it were real.

'Do you suppose she is dead, Heribert?" he asked finally.

Heribert sighed. The slender cleric had never been one to tell him only what he wanted to hear. That was why Sanglant prized his companionship. "How can we know?

I'm sorry."

'Papa! Look at me!"

Blessing had got herself into the furled rigging of the lateen sail and shinnied halfway up the mast, clinging to a rope.

'Oh, God!" Heribert hurried toward her, unsteady enough on the rocking ship that he careened into one of the sailors.

'No matter," called Sanglant after him, laughing. "She'll either fall and kill herself, or she won't."

But it quickly became clear that the captain of the ship wished no brat getting in the way, and soon enough Sanglant found himself presiding over his sullen daughter at the bow of the ship.

'On this boat, you obey the captain, who is like the regnant."

'He's only a common man, Papa."

'In your first battle, will you tell Captain Fulk he's wrong when he gives you advice just because he was born the son of a steward and you are a prince's daughter? A wise ruler knows how to listen to those who may know something she does not, and seeks out advisers who tell her the truth rather than those who simply flatter."

Ai, God, she was well grown enough to pout, arms crossed and shoulders hunched as she stared at the river. Here, as forest gave way to marsh, a heron took wing, slow flaps along the shallows until it was lost in the haze that clung to the waters. Would her life pass as swiftly as the bird's flight? Would she become an old woman before he reached thirty? He could not bear to think of losing her in such an unnatural way, having to watch as age captured her and made her its prisoner. How soon would she flower and be ready to wed? She still had a child's body, all innocent grace and coltish limbs, as lively and strong as any creature let run free. Thank the Lady she was not yet showing signs of the woman she would become; the longer he could put off such considerations the better. Yet he would have to choose carefully what man she married, because she would need every advantage when it came time to restore to her what was due her: her birthright as a descendant of the Emperor Taillefer.

In such moments, watching her, he despaired. She had much the look of Liath about her, delicate features, that creamy brown complexion, and unexpectedly blue eyes, but she had the night-black hair of the Aoi and a cast of features that reminded him of his own mother. The older she grew, the more the resemblance sharpened. By appearance alone, no one would take her for Taillefer's heir; she had not the look of the west at all.

Maybe there was something of Henry in her—she had his rages, after all, and his generous ability to forgive—but as hard as ever he looked he could see no resemblance to Anne, not one bit. That made him glad.

She had such a fierce expression of affronted ire on her sweet face that he almost laughed, but he knew better than to laugh at her. She struggled, lower lip thrust out and quivering, a tear welling from one eye to slide down a cheek. Heribert moved forward to console her, but Sanglant checked him with a gesture. Anna, Thiemo, and Matto, standing alertly nearby, knew better than to intervene when he had laid down a punishment.

'Papa," she said finally, gaze still stubbornly fixed downriver. The prow of the ship cut the current to either side as the oars pulled them on and the current pressed them forward.

Ahead, the gray-green waters purled around a snag that thrust up out of the water. "I would listen to Captain Fulk. I would. When can I start training to arms?"

'You're too young—" he began, the old refrain, then broke off. Why deny what was obvious to any fool traveling with his army, of whom he was obviously the chief example? He had himself been sent at the age of seven to begin his training. Six months ago she had been too young, but for Blessing a few months was like to a year for any normal person. If he did not start training her now, it might be too late, she might be grown and past her prime before she had a chance to prove herself. If she were doomed to a brief life, at least he must try to give to her all that he could, including her heart's wish: to be a soldier like her father.

'Look!" she shrieked as a cry rose from the warship running before them, the vanguard of their fleet.

The spar had grown to reveal itself as the topmost ruins of an ' ancient tower, now drowned in the shallows of the river by rising waters and a change in the river's course.

Like all earthly power, the fortification had fallen in the end, its builders and queens long forgotten. But in the eddy where the river parted around that base of crumbling stone, something waited and watched. Shouts shattered the silence as other oarsmen and sailors saw what lashed in the murky water. Their cries rang out with fear and horror. Yet there it floated, a creature from nightmare, more fish than man with flat red eyes, a lipless mouth, and no nose, only slits for breathing. Each strand of its writhing hair was as thick as an eel with beady little eyes and a snapping mouth.

'Lord save us," murmured Heribert, clinging to the rail. He had gone white.

Thiemo cursed and drew the Circle of Unity at his breast, and Matto grabbed Anna as though to shield her from the sight of that ghastly thing, but she shook him off, shaking and stuttering as she gaped.

'Look, Papa!" cried Blessing, as blissful as a child who sees the first snow of winter swirling down to the ground. "It's a man-fish! I want to swim with it!"

He grabbed hold of her as they shot past, the current pouring them through a narrowing funnel between high bluffs. Yet it seemed for a long while after that he could hear the cries and alarmed shouts behind them as the other ships passed, one by one.

'What does it portend?" demanded the captain of the ship, his words translated by Brother Breschius. "An evil thing, to see one of the sea brothers swimming up the river."

"Have they a name?" asked Sanglant.

'Nay, my lord prince. My grandfather spoke of them, for he was a ship-master as well.

He said they were just a legend." He gestured, spitting on the deck and stamping his left foot, then recalled where he was and before whom he stood, and hastily drew the Circle of Unity at his chest as would any God-fearing man. "An evil omen, my lord prince."

'Perhaps. Did your grandfather say whether such creatures had intelligence, or whether they were only dumb beasts?"

'They have cunning, my lord prince, and hunger. It was always said they would eat any man who fell overboard."

'Yet did your grandfather or any man who sailed with him ever see such a man-fish?"

'Nay. They had only heard tales."

Tales aplenty ran round their camp that evening when they lay up alongside the shore for the night in a stretch of marshy wilderness teeming with birds. From the deck Sanglant could see five ships, one ahead and four behind, as well as a few fires burning on the strand upriver, but only the foolhardy or the thick-skinned ventured to shore, where gnats and stinging flies swarmed. It was, if anything, hotter and stickier than it had been earlier in the day.

When Captain Fulk rowed back from the foremost galley and Bertha, Wichman, Druthmar, and Istvan arrived from upriver, rather fly-bitten, he called a council. Many old tales came to light but only after he had gone round his council to hear what each member had to say did he see Zacharias standing at the back of the gathering between Hathui and Wolfhere. The frater's expression gave Sanglant pause.

'Have you something to say, Brother Zacharias?"

The frater stammered out a meaningless denial. "N-n-no, my lord prince. N-nothing."

'Have you ever seen such a creature yourself?"

The hesitation betrayed him.

'Tell me," he commanded.

Hathui bent closer to her brother and said a few words into his ear, too quietly even for Sanglant to hear above the whispering of the folk around him and the lap of water against the ship's hull. The wind brought the smell of the marsh, heavy with decay.

'It was a dream, my lord prince, a vision. You know that I traveled for a time with your mother, who took me to a place she called the Palace of Coils."

'The spiral gate!" muttered Wolfhere, but Zacharias paid him no heed as he went on.

'There I saw many visions, but it also seemed to me that for a short time I became such a creature as we saw today. I swam with my fellows, out in the salt sea, following a fleet of ships."

Zacharias shuddered. "That's all."

He was lying; there was more, but Sanglant doubted he could coax it out of him.

Perhaps Hathui could.

'That is all?"

'First we hear tales of a phoenix and now we see a merman," remarked Lady Bertha with pleasure. Strife and difficulty amused her.

'It was damned ugly," said Wichman. "I thought mermaids had great milky breasts huge enough to smother a man. This was a nasty fiend!"

Bertha smiled. "It's said that in the end times all the ancient creatures of legend will crawl out of their hiding places to stalk the earth once again."

'Now we shall see the truth of it," said Sanglant, looking at Wolf-here as he spoke.

The old Eagle made no reply as he crossed to the railing to stare at the scattering of fires along the shoreline.

They returned to their places, but no man washed in the river water. No one knew how close in to shore the merfolk could swim. As he did every night, Sanglant gave orders to bring the chained Bul-kezu up from the hold to take the night air, under guard. Only a few men were fit for the task, since Bulkezu might in the middle of the night taunt them in his soft voice, which was his only weapon, trying to make them angry enough to get within his reach.

After Bulkezu was chained to the mast, Blessing crept up close to her father where he stood at the stem of the ship; she stared at the Quman chief. His chains clanked and rattled as he stretched, flexing his muscles, testing the limit and strength of the chains.

Bulkezu never stopped testing those chains. He never despaired. Perhaps he was too crazy to do so. Perhaps he was too cunning, or too sane. It was the only way he had to keep up his strength.

'I would rather be dead than a prisoner like that," Blessing whispered, leaning against her father and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her head came almost to his chest.

"Wouldn't it be more merciful to kill him? He must hate you."

As I hated Bloodheart.

'No prisoner loves his jailer," he said at last.

'Do you think if I'd jumped in the river that merman would have eaten me?"

'I don't know."

The river flowed past, more sluggish now as it was glutted with waters leaking out of the marshland. A chorus of frogs chirped, then fell silent as though a passing owl had frightened them. There came a moment of deeper silence, with the flowing waters of the river and the steady lap of waves against the hull the only sound. A hard slap hit water out on the river, answered by a second and a third.

'They're talking," said Blessing.

'Who is talking?"

'The merfolk."

'How can beasts talk?"

'They do! They're watching us."

He smiled, but an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades made him reluctant to laugh at her comment. "It's too dark to see them."

'No, it isn't. There are eleven of them. They travel in packs. Like dogs. They came to spy on us."

Was she just making up a fanciful story to amuse herself on the long journey? Or had she inherited an uncanny sense from the blood of her parents?

'Is there more you can see that you haven't told me?"

'Well, I can see Mama sometimes."

The casual comment came like a jolt, like a man riding a placid gelding that suddenly bucks and bolts. He broke out in a sweat, skin tingling as if he were beset by a swarm of gnats. "What do you mean?"

'Only sometimes. She's still trapped in the burning stone. She's trying to find her way back."

How difficult it was to keep his voice calm. "Is there anything we can do to help her?"

She shrugged, painfully unconcerned. "We just have to wait. The merfolk are waiting, too, you know."

'What are they waiting for?"

He could feel her concentration by the way her small body tensed against his. At the mast, chains scraped against wood as Bulkezu shifted position again. His guards—

Malbert and Den tonight— chatted quietly with each other, reminiscing about a card game they'd lost to a pair of cheating Ungrian soldiers.

'Oh!" said Blessing, sounding surprised and a little intrigued. "They're waiting for revenge."

AS the river broadened and grew sluggish winding its way through marshy wilderness, Zacharias spent more time on deck watching the riot of birds that flocked everywhere: ducks, egrets, storks, terns that skimmed along the flat sheet of the water, cormorants.

Once, but only once, a gray crane. Hathui never moved far from his side unless she was called away by the prince. It seemed strange and terrible to him to stand beside his beloved younger sister in this companionable silence. He kept waiting for Hathui to come to her senses and repudiate him, but she never did.

Instead, she questioned him about Sanglant's retinue, their names and character. "And the three young folk who attend Princess Blessing? There's trouble brewing there."

He glanced toward the bow where Anna stood between the two young men. Matto was shorter but broader through the shoulders, strong enough to wield an ax with deadly measure. Thiemo, half a head taller, still retained a whippet's slenderness, but he had a cool head in most circumstances, a loyal heart, and a charming smile.

Anna had changed markedly since that day in Gent when Sanglant had taken her into his retinue. She had bloomed.

'True enough," he said. "She was a scrawny thing when she first became Princess Blessing's nurse." Anna would never be truly pretty, but she had a quality of candor about her that made her as attractive as girls with unblemished complexions and handsomer features. She had also matured quite startlingly, with a voluptuous body that any sane man would crawl a hundred miles to worship.

'They're like dogs snarling over a bitch in heat. Doesn't anyone else see it?"

'What's to be done? They're young. They can't help it." "Poor girl," she said disapprovingly, but her gaze was caught by a thicket of dense shrubs hugging the shoreline, branches brilliant with red berries. "Look at the hawthorn!" she cried with real passion.

Briefly the land rose out of the mire, and poplars and willows took hold, leaves flashing as the wind disturbed them, before the ground leveled again into grassy banks that looked inviting but were more likely sodden, swampy traps infested by the ubiquitous stinging flies. He scratched his chin, batting away a swarm of gnats; it was bad enough out on the water.

'Hathui…"He wanted to speak, but he was too afraid.

'Yes?" When he did not reply, she went on. "Did you mean to say something?"

'No, no. A strange country, this one. There aren't many people living in these reaches.

I admit I never thought a river could seem more like a marsh or a lake than a river."

'Yet there's still a current that pulls us east. Have you seen the Heretic's Sea?"

'I have."

'What is it like?"

'Filled with water." Slavers had captured him within sight of those waters. "The shores are crawling with heretics and infidels. Thus the name."

'What do the heretics and infidels call the sea?"

Surprised, he looked at her, but she was studying the shore, smiling as she watched sheep grazing on a spit of land watched over by a skinny boy and his companionable dog which ran to the edge of the water and barked enthusiastically, tail wagging. She kept her gaze on them until they were lost to sight and at last she said, "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

•?<*

Nothing, he wanted to say sourly, but he was ashamed of his ill temper. "The infidels, who worship the Fire God whom they name Astareos, call it the Northern Sea, because it lies north of their own country. I don't know what the Arethousans call it. Maybe they call it the Heretic's Sea, too."

'Why would they do that?"

'Because they think we are heretics!" he said with a laugh, but Hathui stared at him.

'How could they think we are heretics when we are the ones who worship God in Unity in the proper manner? The skopos is God's deacon on Earth." Her expression darkened as it always did when she thought of Darre, and Aosta, and the stricken king. "I pray we will find what we seek, and quickly."

'The grasslands are wide. Do not think it will be so easy to find anything on those trackless wastes, and especially not griffins and sorcerer women."

'Have you ever seen these Kerayit?"

'I saw one of their war bands but I've never seen the cart of one of their sorcery women. Nor have I seen their masters, the Bwr people, the ones who were born half of humankind and half of a mare."

'Are there really such creatures?"

The water slipped past, a mottled brown ripe with vegetation and dirt. "I have seen one in my dreams. I was never more frightened than at that moment."

'Never?" she asked softly.

He flushed. "What do you mean?"

"Never, Zacharias?"

He said nothing, and when it was clear to her that he would not answer, she glanced toward the prince and spoke in a different tone, as if introducing a new subject. "What about the merfolk?" »

'Let it be, Hathui! I beg you. Let well enough alone."

But he had exasperated her, although it was the last thing he wanted. "You can never be content, can you?" she said. "That's why you left the village, isn't it? You can't find peace."

'Peace was torn from me by Bulkezu! It's his fault I can't find peace!"

'Nay. You won't let yourself be at peace. You suffered. You did what you had to, to survive. I don't blame you for that. We've all done things we aren't proud of. But don't think you can run away from the Enemy. The demons can't give up their grip on you until you let them go."

He did not answer, and at last she let him be. For a long time they simply stood at the rail together, watching the shoreline slide past. It was a measure of peace. It was as much as he could ever hope for, that much and no more.

]B I the next morning the grassy banks became overrun with reeds until all through the afternoon it seemed they sailed upon a brown ribbon cast through a green sea that stretched to the horizon on all sides. So many channels cut through the reeds that Anna marveled that the ship-master could navigate so unerringly along the main channel, if there even was one anymore. They tied up that night alongside a spit of land, but no one dared disembark because of the flies, and because they had not forgotten that glimpse of the merfolk.

At dawn they set out again, passing spits of land overgrown with rushes. There seemed to be nothing but reeds, water, and sky; they had left the land behind them but not yet entered the sea. Yet in the end the last islands of rushes fell behind and the brown water of the river poured into the blue of the Heretic's Sea, mingling until the earthy color was utterly lost. The rushy delta lay green in the west. All else was either the blue of sky or sea.

Anna stood next to Blessing at the railing. She had never seen anything so vast in her life. Even Blessing, for once, was stricken to silence by the immensity of the waters and the answering sky, mottled with clouds. The wind whipped her braid along her shoulders and rippled her clothing across her skin like a caress.

'I've seen the sea before," Thiemo was saying boastfully to Matto. "The Northern Sea.

I rode there with Prince Ekkehard, when we were at Gent."

'I'm just a poor country boy, my lord," retorted Matto in a tone that made her wince.

"I've never seen such sights."

They both chose that moment to look at her, testing her reaction, and she flushed and looked away over the waters.

'They're following us," said Blessing, head turned to gaze at the ships behind.

v

'Of course, my lady. We'll all sail together, just as we marched together."

'No. I mean the men-fish. They want to know where we're going. They're following us. But I don't think they can follow us up onto land."

Anna shuddered, but although she peered at their wake, she saw no merfolk.

For seven days they sailed north and east along the sea, always in sight of land and mostly in good weather, disturbed by one bracing squall out of the north. They often saw other ships sailing southeast, and three times the ship-master caught sight of a sail that looked like a skulking privateer, but no lone pirate wished to attack a fleet and so they continued on their way unmolested. On the eighth day they put into the port of Sordaia.

At least five hundred Arethousan soldiers stood in tidy ranks along the waterfront, alerted by the number of ships, and it quickly became obvious that any attempt to disembark would be met with force. The governor of the town, an Arethousan potentate from the imperial capital, had sent a representative to speak to the arrivals. The Most Honorable Lord High Chamberlain in Charge of the Governor's Treasure, Basil, had no beard but was not a priest. He was, Brother Bres-chius explained, a eunuch.

'He's had his balls cut off?" exclaimed Matto, horrified. He , glanced at Anna and blushed.

'Like Brother Zacharias," said Thiemo, "but this one doesn't look the same. He looks softer."

'What was done to Brother Zacharias was nothing like this," said Breschius gently.

"That was mutilation. No doubt the operation on this man—if we can call him such—was carried out when he was, a boy. It's considered a great honor."

Thiemo laughed nervously, and Matto was too embarrassed and appalled to speak.

After lengthy introductions and some kind of tedious speech on the part of the eunuch, Sanglant sent Brother Heri-bert, who spoke Arethousan, to the palace with an assortment of gifts—a cloak trimmed with marten fur, a gold treasure box, delicately carved ivory spoons, and an altar cloth embroidered with gold thread. The negotiations took the rest of the day, ending in the late afternoon after Prince Sanglant agreed to go with a small party to the palace the next day as a hostage for the good behavior of his troops.

'The Most Honorable Lord High Chamberlain Basil informs me that we are allowed to set up camp in an abandoned fort built by the former Jinna overlords outside the town walls," said Heribert, still flushed and sweating from traveling back and forth between harbor and palace in the hot summer sun.

'There won't be time to disembark many before it gets dark," said the ship-master, examining the sun. "Maybe it's better done tomorrow."

'Or we could send a smaller force tonight to begin setting up," said Fulk. "That's what I recommend."

'Is it safe?" asked Hathui. "The few who disembark tonight will be easy to kill, if these Arethousans intend treachery."

'It seems a foolish way to provoke our anger," said Sanglant. "We can disembark fighting, if need be. How would it benefit them to anger us in such a petty way?"

'They are Arethousans, my lord prince," remarked Lady Bertha, who had been rowed over from another ship. "They imbibe treachery with their mother's milk. You can't trust them."

'Nor do I. Nevertheless, Captain Fulk has the right of it. Captain, send one hundred men tonight. Not Wichman or any of his company. There should be time for them to reach the fort and reconnoiter before it's too dark to see."

'I want to go! I want to go!" cried Blessing.

'No." Sanglant beckoned to Breschius. "I need Heribert to attend me at the palace and you to remain here with the ships until everyone is off. You are the only ones who can speak Arethousan. There must be no misunderstandings."

'Yes, my lord prince."

'I want to go see the palace tomorrow with you, Papa!"

'No. You'll stay with the army."

'I don't want to stay! I want to go!" The girl grabbed the railing ready to fling herself over the side and swim for shore.

"No."

The confinement of a sea voyage had not improved Sanglant's temper, nor had a day cooling his heels in the harbor made him patient. When he grabbed his daughter's arm, the girl whimpered.

'I will." Her mouth quivered, but her ga,'e remained defiant.

'You will not." The prince turned to Anna. "You'll go, Anna, to set up camp for your mistress. And take—" his gaze flicked to Matto and Thiemo, pushed to the back during the day's negotiations. "Lord Thiemo, you'll go as well."

'I want to go!" Blessing tried to wriggle out of her father's unforgiving grasp.

'If you give me any trouble tonight, Blessing," her father added softly, "you won't even be allowed off this ship tomorrow when the troops disembark. You'll stay here locked in the cabin until we leave this port. Is that understood?"

Fighting back tears, she nodded but did not resist when Sanglant thrust her into Matte's care. Yet Matto's furious expression could have wilted flowers as he watched Anna. She felt his gaze like the prick of an arrow on her back as she descended the gangplank. Although she stood on solid earth, the ground still moved and it was difficult to keep her feet under her. With Matto and Blessing both so angry, she dared not look back as they marched away. The unsteady ground made her a little nauseated, and the flap of canvas from the rolled-up tent she was carrying that got loose from the ropes and flipped over her eyes only made the dizziness worse. She staggered as they ascended a broad avenue through the town. With the canvas obscuring her vision she could only see her feet, garbage, and an occasional pile of dog shit. The town stank in a way the ship had not; there wasn't enough wind to chase out the smell. Voices rang all around her—the streets were crowded—but she heard not a single recognizable word.

How had she ever come so far from Gent? What if she died here in this land of barbarians and foreigners? Was this God's punishment upon her for her sins? Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit her lip hard until the pain calmed her down. Crying never did any good.

Yet it seemed a long and lonely walk out to the fort. Sunset washed the land with pale gold when she finally negotiated a narrow plank bridge over a steep-sided ditch, a yawning abyss that made her tremble, and found herself in the fort. She allowed the rolled-up canvas to slide down onto the ground. Her shoulders ached, but at least the ground had stopped swaying. It was good to be back on dirt.

As she stretched the knots out of her shoulders, she examined the empty fort. A wall built of stamped clay surrounded the interior buildings, which resembled a bee's hive, a series of cell-like rooms built haphazardly in sprawling units. A number of soldiers wandered out to explore. She followed them.

'Those infidels lived like pigs," observed Lewenhardt as he retreated from yet another chamber filled with mounds of rubbish and dried excrement.

'Or else they kept their animals stabled here," said Den.

'Don't look like cow shit to me," said Surly.

'What do you think, Brother Zacharias?" asked Chustaffus. "Do infidel kings stable their soldiers like beasts? Is there no hall for the men to eat together with their lord?"

Zacharias shaded a hand against the sun. "I don't know the customs of the Jinna, but I see no hall, only these small rooms."

'This one is empty!" shouted Lewenhardt, who had gone on to the next. The majority of the little chambers lay empty, each one just big enough to sleep four men, but no more than that, more like stone tents than proper barracks.

'Enough of that!" called Sergeant Cobbo. "Get to work. We'll need tents set up, and you lot haul whatever you can find over to that gate to build a barrier."

Anna was helping Den post rope lines to keep horses from straying into the tented area when the last of the advance force arrived: a dozen horsemen who had to dismount by the gate in order to lead their horses across the plank bridge over the pit. It wasn't precisely a true gate. The old gates had long since fallen down and, evidently, been carted away, and only the deep ditch protected the entrance, although a fair bit of debris—posts, planks, discarded wheels—had been dragged over to form a makeshift wall on the inner side of the pit.

Was that Thiemo among them? She shaded her eyes to get a better look.

'Hey!" said Den. "Don't let the rope go slack!"

She went back to work, but as it began to get dark, there was no point in doing more.

She wandered over to the horse lines but did not find him there. What was she thinking?

Usually she shared a bed with Blessing every night. She wasn't used to so much freedom.

She could not stop thinking about finding him, yet she didn't want to appear to be seeking him out. She climbed a narrow staircase that led up to the walkway along the wall, to survey the camp. A pinkish-purple glow rimmed the western horizon, although the east lay in darkness. The town revealed itself as glimmers of distant lamplight.

Below, campfires burned and Sergeant Cobbo began singing. A footstep scuffed on the wall, but it was the watchman in the corner watchtower.

'Anna."

When he took hold of her arm, out of the dark, she gasped, and he slipped an arm around her, pressing her close. He was a head taller than her, broad through the shoulders but with a young man's slen-derness in the torso and hips.

'I have something to show you," he whispered, breath sweet against her ear. "Come with me."

'I have to go back—" she began, suddenly nervous. Suddenly elated.

'We're stuck here for the night, Anna. There's no one else who needs us. Come this way."

'I can't see."

'Shhh. We'll go slowly."

In the dark it wasn't easy to retrace their path along the wall, where they could have tumbled off the inner side at any moment and fallen two man-lengths to the hard-packed dirt below. It took a fair bit of groping, and tangling, and holding on to each other, to negotiate the worn steps, and by the time they reached the ground they were both giggling yet trying not to, fearing that Cobbo or some other soldier would find them.

'This way."

Thiemo still had hold of her hand, but as he started along the base of the wall, she hesitated. He turned back to her, ran a hand up her arm to her shoulder to caress the curve of her neck.

'Anna? I found a place where no one will find us. It's clean, too. I left a blanket there."

She wanted him so badly. Even to touch him made her hot in a way the sun's heat never did.

'What will happen then?" The future opened before her like the wide waters of the sea, fathomless.

His lips brushed hers, light as a butterfly's kiss at first, suddenly insistent. When he finally pulled back, they were both breathing in gasps. Anna clung to him. t 'We could be dead tomorrow," he murmured.

What about Matto? But she could not speak Matto's name out loud. Matto would be in Thiemo's place now, had Prince Sanglant sent one and not the other. And if it were the prince himself, holding her in the darkness?

She dared not walk down that path. Thiemo was a lord, but only the eighth child of a minor count. That was why he had been sent to ride in Prince Ekkehard's retinue, to make his own way as a noble servant to a higher born man. He was disposable, the kind of boy sent into the Dragons. Maybe that was why he wasn't as haughty as the other nobles, because he was assured of so little.

'Death is sure " she whispered, and if not now, then later. Some-dav None of them knew what kind of trouble the prince was leading them into. Maybe the prince himself did not know. Anything could happen.

Anything.

'Thiemo." The top of her head barely came to his c wasn't difficult to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down to kiss her again.

What would she be sorry for, the day she died?

Not this.

V IN the morning Zacharias slept late, having made a bed for himself in blessed solitude in one of the little chambers. By the time he stumbled bleary-eyed into the hammer of the late morning sun, all men, beasts, and belongings were accounted for, Captain Fulk had posted guards at the gate and lookouts on top of the wall, and the men were assembling on the open ground in front of the gates. Lord Wichman, Lord Druthmar, and the other nobles watched from beneath the shaded luxury of spacious awnings, lounging at their ease while they sipped wine and played chess and listened to one of their number playing a lute.

Fulk's speech to the soldiers was stern.

'You will not go into the town unless you have been commanded to by myself or by Prince Sanglant. No markets. No brothels. No taverns. Is that understood?"

Dismissed, they sulked in the dusty fort, having nothing more to look at than each other and nothing more than sour beer to drink.

'No wonder this place looks like prison," said Surly. "That's what it is."

'I always wondered what Jinna women look like," mused Lew enhardt. "Is it true they dance naked through fire to worship their god?"

'You might wish," laughed Johannes, "until you had to do the same thing. And then the fire would burn off your—"

'Hush," said Den. "Here comes the captain."

'Brother Zacharias!" Captain Fulk nodded at his soldiers and they moved away. "The prince wishes a small party to investigate the market, to scout what's available for provisions and guides for the journey east. You've lived in the grasslands, Brother. You'll know what kinds of things we must look for."

'Wagons." He remembered wagons too well.

'You've said so before," said Fulk with the skepticism any westerner might show who did not understand the grasslands. "We don't know how long we'll be delayed here. We'll need supplies and plenty of ale or wine to drink, with this hot sun. Wolfhere will go with you, as will Lady Bertha's healer, Robert, who can speak somewhat of the Arethousan language."

Their departure was delayed at the gate when Blessing ran up. "Take me with you! I hate it here!"

'My lady!" Matto arrived, huffing from the exertion in the heat. "You must come back to the tent now. You know what your father the prince told you."

'I don't want to stay here! I want to go see the governor's palace. I want to see people with big ears like tents. Maybe they have a phoenix in the market." Matto started, looking guilty, as the girl crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. "I want to go with them."

Wolfhere softened as that glare was directed at him. "What harm if she comes with us?"

'Has the sun cooked your head?" demanded Zacharias. "There's a slave market in this port!"

'I want to see the slave market!"

Anger made him clench his jaw, but he struggled to remember that she was only a child. "It's no merry thing to be sold in a slave market, my lady, as I should know. What's to stop some Arethousan thief from seeing what a proud, fine noblewoman you are and stealing you away and selling you to the infidels?"

'I'd bite him!"

'He'd slap you so hard you'd lose your wits," retorted Zacharias, earning himself a sharp glance from Fulk.

Blessing was hopping from one foot to the other; she hadn't heard. "I'd bite him five times, until he let me go!"

'For God's sake, Wolfhere, dissuade her from this foolish notion!"

'A day of freedom would not harm the child," muttered Wolfhere irritably. "I don't like the heat and the dust any better than she does. This is an unnatural place."

'Unnatural, indeed! How can you think it safe for her to go wandering in the market when we don't even know how we'll be greeted by the townsfolk?"

Blessing screwed up that adorable face and put her fists on her hips; she was steering hard for a big storm.

'My lady." Captain Fulk motioned for Matto to step back. "I will personally escort you into the market, but not today. Any disruption may harm your father's negotiations with the governor. You would not want that."

Captain Fulk was the only person besides her father she truly respected. Everyone else she either ignored or had wrapped up tight on a leash like an adoring dog. Her frown was so terrible that Zacharias was surprised that it didn't draw in clouds to cover the heartless sun.

'I'll go anyway," she muttered.

'I must obey as your royal father commanded me, Your Highness, and keep you in this camp. If I do not, he will strip me of my rank and cast me out of his war band, and he would be right to do so."

She could never bear the thought of any one of those she had a fondness for being torn from her. With a wounded sigh, she stalked away, Matto hastening after her while Fulk shook his head helplessly.

'Where is Anna?" the captain asked, but no one knew.

'Let's get out of here," Zacharias said to his companions, "while we still can."

'A willful child," observed Lady Bertha's healer as they hurried toward the gate.

Robert was bald, short, and fat, but he had neat hands, nimble fingers, and an easy smile—remarkable considering how much suffering he must have seen in the course of his work. "Yet it seems to me that her body grows faster than her mind does. When shall the one catch up to the other?"

'When, indeed?" murmured Wolfhere.

The guards offered suggestions about what they wanted most from town: wine, women, or at least a sweet apple. Then they had to walk the plank bridge.

The entrance to the fort was guarded by an exceptionally deep, vertically-sided ditch, too steep to climb and dug all the way across the opening. Into this chasm Fulk had lowered Bulkezu. Zacharias saw the Quman begh pacing below. The prisoner looked up at the sound of men crossing the plank bridge that provided the only access into the fort.

'I smell the worm creeping out. Do you go to sell yourself in the slave market, worm?

Do you miss it so?"

Zacharias stumbled forward, leaping for solid ground, and did not wait for the others as he hastened along the dirt track that circled around the wall and back toward town. But they caught up to him nevertheless. Mercifully, they did not mention Bulkezu.

'The builders seem to have feared the steppe more than the sea," observed Wolfhere as he surveyed the placement of the fort, with its gates facing the water, not the land.

'They say there are men in the grasslands who can turn themselves into wolves," said Robert.

'Do you listen to everything you hear?" asked Wolfhere with a laugh.

'I hear many strange things, and I've found it unwise not to listen to them." Robert was a westerner from the borderlands between Varingia and Salia. He had never explained how he had come into the service of marchland nobles, far to the east of his birthplace, and Zacharias did not choose to ask, considering that he had once glimpsed a slave brand on Robert's right shoulder. He'd met a few Salians sold into slavery among the Quman tribes, cast out of their homes by debt or poverty. Those whom hunger or abuse hadn't killed had died of despair.

They soon came to the sprawling borderlands of the town, gardens, corrals, orchards, and the hovels and houses of those who could not afford a space to live inside the wall.

Children trotted alongside, shouting in their gibberish tongues. They had all sorts of faces; they might be kin to Quman horseman or Aostan merchant, to Arethousan sailor and Jinna priest, to dark Kartiakans or to the sly and powerful Sazdakh warrior women with their broad faces and green eyes. Yet there were no blond heads among this pack.

Wolfhere stood out like a proud silver wolf among mangy, mongrel dogs.

The guards at the gate did not wish to admit them into town, but Robert had a few Ungrian coppers for bribes.

They crossed through a tunnel cut into the wide turf wall and emerged into the streets.

The lanes stank alarmingly, strewn with refuse baking in the heat, and yet even so they were crowded with folk busy about their errands and mindful of where they set their feet.

'Beware pickpockets," said Zacharias. A few heads turned to look at him, hearing an unfamiliar language. Wolfhere's hair caught attention, too, but mostly they were left alone. Too many travelers came into a port like Sordaia for three scruffy visitors to create lasting wonder.

They passed windowless walled compounds, all locked away, a dozen of the distinctive octagonal Arethousan churches, and once a circular Jinna temple with its stair-stepped roof and central pillar jutting up toward the heavens, tattered streamers of red cloth flapping idly from the exposed portion of the pillar as a lazy wind out of the north teased them into motion. The barest ribbon of smoke spun up along the pillar's length, suggesting the fire within.

'Is it true they burn worshipers alive?" whispered Robert as soon as the temple was lost to view. "That their priestesses copulate with any man brave enough to walk into the fire?"

Wolfhere snorted.

'I don't know." Zacharias glanced around nervously. "But it's death for any person who has witnessed those rites to speak of them. Be careful what you say lest you hit on something true, and find a knife between your ribs."

'Can anyone here understand us?" asked Robert. "I haven't heard a single soul speaking Wendish."

It was more obvious still once they reached the marketplace that sprawled in a semicircle around the harbor with its docks and warehouses. Zacharias heard a dozen languages thrown one upon the other and melding together into a babble, but he never heard one clear Wendish word out of that stew. Here, in the port of Sordaia, the north traded with the south but they had journeyed so far into the east that the west, their own land, seemed only a tale told to children. Ships unloaded cloth and spices and precious jade trinkets for the rich beghs of the grasslands, those who cared to trade rather than rob.

Timber floated down the river from the northern forests lay stacked, ready for loading, beside fenced yards heaped with fox and bear furs and soft marten pelts. Open sheds sheltered amphorae of grain destined to feed the great city where the Arethousan emperors reigned supreme over their country of heretics.

The slave market was always open.

Even Robert stopped to stare at a line of fair-skinned, redheaded, and entirely naked young women who, roped together, were prodded up onto a platform so buyers could examine them. Jinna merchants with their hair covered, Hessi women with their faces veiled,

Arethousan eunuchs with beardless chins, and other folk whose faces and apparel Zacharias did not recognize fondled legs for strength and breasts for firmness, tapped teeth, and studied the lines of palms.

'Must we watch?" demanded Zacharias, sweating heavily, seeing the tears on their faces as their bodies were sold away to new masters. If he stood here any longer, he would have to recall the day it had happened to him. "They don't need onlookers staring at them in their misery!"

They moved on to the wharves where two ships were just mooring as the noon sun began its fall westward. The ships that had ferried Sanglant's army here were already taking on cargo, eager to depart. Robert and Wolfhere went to find the ship-master who had sailed with Sanglant, since the man knew Sordaia well and had promised to recommend honest merchants. Zacharias did not follow them at once, his attention caught by the interplay between a groom and the magnificent gray stallion the man was trying to coax down the gangplank of a newly arrived merchant ship. A step forward was followed by a nervous shy back, while meanwhile a traveler waited impatiently on the deck, eager to disembark but impeded by the skittish horse. The man hopped aside to avoid being kicked.

A westerner, Zacharias thought, noting the light cloak and broad-brimmed hat worn by the waiting traveler. Although not a particularly tall man, his arrogant stance marked him as a person of noble birth, and his robes and the carved ebony staff he leaned on suggested a man of clerical vocation. He had a servant with him, a stocky, stoop-shouldered fellow whose torso was slung about with rolled-up bundles and a small sealed wooden chest, almost too much for a single person to carry. The groom coaxed the stallion forward again. It took a step, snorted, and shied back.

That was enough for the westerner. He made some comment to the groom, and the man, sweating profusely, bobbed his head as though a thousand apologies would not suffice and reined the stallion aside with an effort, the horse sidestepping and tossing its head, restless and unhappy. It was a beautiful beast, not unlike Prince Sanglant in its fierce, masculine beauty, alive to the touch of the wind and the pitch of the ship on the waters as it rubbed up against the pilings. Others had come to watch; such superb creatures were not seen every day. No doubt it was for this reason that women admired Prince Sanglant so very much.

A person bumped into him; it was the heavyset servant from the ship clearing a way through the gathered crowd for his master.

Dressed in clerical robes, the nobleman passed next to Zacharias, the brim of his hat tilted in such a way that the frater got a look at his face: a dark-haired man, clean-shaven like a churchman, with a pursed, judgmental mouth. His gaze swept the crowd, skipping past Zacharias as he moved briskly after his servant.

Was there something familiar about him? Or was it only that any westerner looked familiar in a land filled with barbarians?

The press of the crowd had cut him off from Wolfhere and Robert. He was alone. Ai, God, it was in a place like this that he had been taken by slavers. The shaking hit so suddenly that he thought his feet would drop out from under him. His throat closed tightly and he couldn't draw breath. He swayed, dizzy, and his palms became clammy.

No one else was troubled by the shaking ground. It was only him. Frantically, he plunged through the crowd and, glancing beyond the turbaned heads of Arethousan market-wives and the red caps and ponytails of Jinna merchants, saw Wolfhere pushing his way through the crowd. Robert was nowhere in sight.

Zacharias raised a trembling hand, meaning to call out, but no words came.

Wolfhere's expression changed as abruptly as an avalanche alters the side of a hill. His eyes widened in surprise, eyebrows lifting. His seamed face opened with a glimpse of panic, or joy, before closing tight into a stony mask as he turned, saw Zacharias, and shoved through the crowd toward him.

Zacharias' heart was pounding so hard he was out of breath. He could not fight against the crowd as it shoved him away from Wolf-here. The stallion trumpeted in fury and fear, and he was half spun about by the force of a man knocking into him in time to see the horse break away from the hapless groom. With a graceful leap, the stallion plunged down the gangplank and landed in the midst of the crowd, trampling a hapless bystander.

People screamed and scattered.

Zacharias yelped out loud, too terrified to move. The crowd surged around him as people fought to get out of the way of the frenzied horse, now bucking and kicking like a demon.

'Fool of a groom!" Wolfhere, emerging from the mob, grabbed hold of Zacharias'

wrist. "He should have waited until evening and peace— ' The next word lodged in his throat. Only a croak came out. "God help us!"

Screaming, the stallion reared. It had cleared the space around it, although a dozen people lay on the ground, some stirring and crawling away, others lying motionless where they had fallen. Blood smeared the stones. The groom was shouting to his fellows on the ship, and they had brought rope, but they didn't leap into the fray quickly enough.

Because one bold soul strode forward to confront the gray stallion. One person was eager to test herself against the wild creature that now terrorized the docks. One small, stubborn, and recklessly foolhardy child too spoiled to understand the meaning of caution or the strength of an animal many times her size and vastly more powerful.

'Blessing!" Wolfhere was trapped behind a brace of brawny sailors loudly laying bets on whether the girl would go down under the horse's hooves.

'Brother Lupus!" cried a voice triumphantly from behind Zacha-rias. "I have tracked you down at last!"

I O Sanglant's surprise, the Arethousan governor did not greet her visitors at the marble portico to the governor's palace house but made them wait in the sun without offering them even the shade provided by the colonnade that ran along the forecourt. A smooth-cheeked eunuch, declared—in Arethousan—that he had to properly learn their names and titles before they could be announced to the Most Exalted Lady Eudokia.

'We're being snubbed," murmured Sapientia, her skin flushed either from heat or annoyance. "Treated as if we're impoverished supplicants! Made to stand out in the sun like commoners! The governor should have met us personally and escorted us in!" *

'Hush." In truth Sanglant did not know what to make of the eunuch's supercilious attitude, looking them over as though they were a prize lot of horses brought in for the master of the house to consider buying. Sapientia quieted, still fuming. "Heribert, I pray you, do what you can."

While Heribert haggled with the eunuch in Arethousan, Sanglant glanced at the other companions he had chosen to accompany him: Lady Bertha, because she had insisted on coming, Captain Istvan because he had traveled to Arethousan towns before, three young lords who had the sense to remain silent, Hathui, and twenty of his most levelheaded soldiers. All sweated profusely. It was nearing midday, when the sun's hammer seemed doubly strong. Bertha winked at him. She alone seemed to be enjoying herself.

No doubt the heat accounted for Heribert's rising anger as he and the eunuch, looking cool in his linen robe and jeweled slippers, descended into a snappish disagreement. It ended when the eunuch retreated through the doors.

'What were you arguing about?" Sanglant asked when Heribert returned to him.

'The title by which you and Princess Sapientia will be introduced to the governor, my lord prince. The chamberlain insisted that the word meaning 'lord' and 'lady' will do, a title I refused to accept. We struck a bargain. The soldiers will remain outside, in decent shade, within shouting distance, and you and Her Highness shall be referred to as

'princeps.''

'Ah."

'Do not trust the Arethousans, my lord prince. They are devious, greedy, and will flatter you while they steal your purse. Rank means everything to them. Bargain where you must, but do not give way in any matter that will make you seem low in their eyes."

'Why do we accept these insults?" demanded Sapientia. "We should just leave!"

'We'll need the assistance of the governor to fully equip ourselves for a trip into the grasslands," said Sanglant, rather tired of having to point this out to Sapientia once again.

"We'll need guides as well."

'Don't we have Bulkezu for a guide?" she retorted. "Is that not why you spared his life?"

'I would not put my trust in him alone, but I promise you, Sister, he will serve us in the end. As for the governor, we must travel as diplomatically as we can. Better we leave no trouble in our wake that we must deal with on our way back."

The heavy doors opened silently, hauled back by unseen figures, and the eunuch reappeared, his jade-green robes swirling about his legs as he indicated that they could follow him. Once within the palace, the heat became bearable. Marble floors graced the colonnades. The palace had the appearance of great wealth considering its location in a frontier trading town. They passed several courtyards with fountains running merrily and glimpsed chambers fitted with gold-and-ivory ornamentation and jewel-studded divans.

Finally, they entered a shaded arbor overgrown by thick grapevines and screened off by cunningly worked lattices. A dozen soldiers stood at guard, holding spears. A trio of eunuchs whispered in one shadowy corner beside a table laden with wine and fruit. Two slaves worked fans on either side of a couch, whose occupant reclined at leisure, eyeing them as though they were toads got in where they did not belong. She was past the prime of life, with gray showing in her elaborate coiffure and two coarse black hairs growing out of her chin, but the precious rings on her stubby fingers and the gleam of gold weighing heavily at her neck indicated her rank. A simple gold circlet crowned her head.

Sanglant could get no good idea of her height or shape because of the light blanket draped over her form. For all he knew, she could have been a lamia, hiding a serpent's body where her legs were supposed to be. Certainly she had no welcoming smile in her expression, nor did her tiny molelike eyes examine him with interest, only with contempt.

Two rickety stools had been placed before her, the kind of seat a stable boy might sit on while milking his cows. "Are we meant to sit on those?" hissed Sapientia. "Surely there is another couch," said Sanglant to Heribert before he turned to the eunuch who had led him in. He knew how to edge his smile into a threat. He knew how to step forward in a manner that was not aggressive but made best use of his size. He knew how to loom. "I cannot sit on such a humble seat, but I can stand over my dear cousin, the Exalted Lady Eudokia, if need be."

Of course, it did not do for him to seem so large and threatening and the governor to seem an invalid in his presence. A pair of servants lugged in a second couch and set it down at a discreet distance from the governor.

Sapientia sat first, at the head. Sanglant waited until Bertha and Captain Istvan took the stools, on either side, and the others ranged behind him in an orderly half circle appropriate to their respective stations before seating himself at the foot of the couch. It was so low that he had to stretch out his long legs, an obstacle for the eunuchs hurrying forward to offer wine.

Despite his thirst, he could barely drink the noxious combination that tasted like pitch, resin, and plaster mixed into a nasty brew. Abruptly, the governor spoke. She had a remarkably mellow voice,

quite at odds with the unpleasant lineaments of her face, and it was impossible to tell from her tone what manner of words she uttered. Heribert flushed, hot color in his cheeks.

'So speaks the Most Exalted Lady, Eudokia," he said, stalwartly forcing a placid expression onto his face. " 'I am duty bound to give a courteous reception to those of noble blood who come to my province. I know you are the daughter of Princess Sophia, my cousin, who was exiled to the barbarian kingdoms because of her sins. Yet how can I entertain in good faith the children of a master who has most impiously invaded lands in Aosta long sworn to serve the Most Just and Holy Emperor of Arethousa, my kinsman?

This hostile invader has captured the holy city of Darre which rightfully belongs to those of us who profess the true faith. He has forced my countryfolk into exile. He has burned cities who pledge their faith to the Most Just and Holy Emperor, he has massacred loyal citizens. He sends his heretic priests to roam in our westernmost province of Dalmiaka, plotting what manner of evil and mischief I cannot guess.'"

Sapientia had got so red that she looked fit to swoon, but Sanglant laughed curtly, laying a steadying hand on her arm. "If that is to be our welcome, Heribert, then I pray you let her exalted ladyship know our response." A eunuch bowed before him, offering him more wine, but he waved him away. "My father did not invade Aosta. The embattled citizens begged him to save them from murderers and bandits. The rightful queen was assaulted in her own palace by usurpers, so it came to my father to restore to her what had been stolen from her by rebels and traitors. Your most exalted emperor would have done the same thing to lords who had sworn fealty to him and then revolted against him.

Furthermore, it is well known that all of Aosta once knelt before the Emperor Taillefer, whose greatness is known even into the east. It is only in later years that it came under the hand of the east. The folk of the south speak the same language as those of the north.

They belong as one kingdom, not sundered into many."

The Most Exalted Lady Eudokia raised her thick eyebrows. She had rouge-reddened cheeks, not enough to disguise her age, but her hands were as soft and white as a girl's, as though she had done nothing more strenuous in her life than dip them in rose-scented baths.

'With what force of ships will your master defend the south?" she asked through Heribert. "Last year he rode south from Darre with his wife and all his army, his Wendish and his Varrens, with Aostans and Karronish, yet he could not take one small city. His soldiers are gluttons and drunks. They run from mice. What will they do when my cousin the Most Just and Holy Emperor sends troops against your master to take back what he has stolen?"

'Well, then, you shall see the worth of Wendish soldiers, will you not? I have fully eight hundreds of good, tried soldiers at my back, encamped outside the city. We will willingly take the field against your own troops if you are impatient to test our strength."

She gestured to her servants, who hurried forward with a platter of peeled grapes. She chose among them, popping the most succulent into her mouth. As she chewed, her cunning gaze flicked from San-giant to Sapientia and back again. No wind stirred the arbor except that created by the slaves, who were dripping with sweat. The heat was bearable mostly because he was not moving. Oddly enough, his irritation with his host's arrogance made him patient, although Sapientia shifted restlessly, gulping at the wine and then wincing at its wicked bite.

'Let me speak bluntly." Lady Eudokia waited for Heribert to translate before she went on. "Why are you here? If you had wanted another princess for your master, you would have traveled to Are-thousa, for it is only the Most Just and Holy Emperor who can dispose of his cousins and sisters and daughters. In any case, it is well known that your master married the Aostan widow. I have not heard that your people follow the idolatrous Jinna custom of marrying more than one spouse at a time, or is it possible that you are still as barbaric as the Ungrians?"

Captain Istvan snorted audibly, but said nothing.

'Perhaps it is you who wish a princess for your own bed," she went on, confronting Sanglant with her gaze but still refusing to use his name or dignify him with any kind of title.

'I am already married," he said sweetly, "or else surely I would ask for your hand in marriage, Lady Eudokia."

Was that amusement or anger that made her lips twitch? She beckoned for the servant and ate another dozen grapes before indicating that the man should offer the platter to her guests. Sapientia ate* eagerly, but Sanglant waved him away.

'Then what brings you here? Have you come to embrace the true faith and cast aside the apostate heresy that the Dariyan clerics preach?"

'Outrageous!" exclaimed Sapientia, a grape poised before her lips. "Do you not suppose," Sanglant murmured, "that there stand among the servants one who can understand Wendish? Do not be incautious."

'Oh!" She studied the attendant servants as if she could puzzle out their linguistic skills simply by the cut of their faces. "How do I respond, my lord prince?" asked Heribert.

"Say this, Heribert." Battling with wits he found himself nervous, palms damp. He smoothed his tunic over his thighs, the movement draining off a sliver of his tension, and continued. "Most Exalted Lady Eudokia. What do you know of sorcery?"

Sapientia turned to him, startled, and grasped his wrist, but Eudokia, amazingly, chuckled. She clapped her plump hands. A eunuch bowed before her while she whispered into his ear. He left the arbor by a side door.

They waited in silence while the servants brought around grapes, figs, and sliced apples, still moist. Sanglant touched nothing. A sense of foreboding crept along his spine like the brush of venomous fingers. He shifted, marking Lady Bertha and seeing that she, too, sat erect, watchful, ready, as did Captain Istvan. The Eagle, Hathui, dipped her chin to show that she was alert. Sapientia nibbled anxiously on grapes, frowning between bites.

The eunuchs returned. One waited in the corner while the other knelt before Lady Eudokia, pale golden robes rustling into folds around him. He held a lidded ceramic pot.

Lady Eudokia began to hum, slipping sideways into a wordless chant, as she removed the lid and slowly lowered her hand into the pot. Was that a bead of sweat on the eunuch's face, trickling alongside his nose? Probably it was only the heat.

'God Above!" whispered Sapientia, hand tightening on Sanglant's wrist as Lady Eudokia removed her hand from the pot.

A banded asp twisted upward to encircle her wrist. It reared its head back, hood flaring, and struck the hapless eunuch on the forearm.

Sapientia gasped. One of the lordlings shrieked. The pot slipped from the servant's hands and shattered on the floor, shards scattering everywhere. He cried out, choking, as he slapped a hand over the bite, but already the flesh swelled horribly, a red mortification creeping onto the offended hand. Lady Bertha and Captain Istvan leaped to their feet, but Sanglant raised a hand to caution them, and they paused with knives half drawn, unwilling to sit down again but respecting Sanglant's command.

One of the other eunuchs hurried over with an uncovered pot into which Lady Eudokia gently deposited the writhing snake. He clapped a lid over it and placed the pot on the floor beside the stricken man, who was gasping for breath as a drop of blood squeezed out of his right eye. The noise of his labored breathing and his whimpering moans was the only sound in the arbor except for the wheeze of the bellows worked by the slaves. The sleeve of his robe, covering the bitten arm, had gone tight because of swelling flesh.

'Basil." The green-robed eunuch padded forward and offered Lady Eudokia a gold cup and a shallow bowl filled with fragrant herbs. She took hold of the stem in her right hand and with her left sprinkled crushed herbs into the cup while muttering all the while words whose meaning Sanglant did not understand.

'Beroush. Beroush… keddish gedoul." She switched into the familiar cadences of Arethousan, and Heribert bent down to whisper a translation.

'

'I invoke and beseech you, in the name of the seven blessed angels, in the name of the blessed Daisan who rebuked the poisonous serpents, let this become a cup of healing and cleansing, let the one who drinks from it be cured of poison. I adjure you, holy one, nameless one. Quickly! Quickly!'"

The stricken eunuch collapsed onto his back, clawing at his throat as beads of blood dripped out of the side of his mouth. His arm had grown to monstrous proportions, swollen all the way to the shoulder, and his face, too, had begun to swell. Sanglant had never seen poison work so fast.

Basil knelt beside his fellow eunuch and captured his head between his hands, prying his teeth open so Lady Eudokia could let droplets fall into the man's mouth. He thrashed weakly, fading, as blood leaked from his eyes like tears. Stilled, and went limp.

'He's dead," whispered Sapientia.

'No," said Sanglant. "He is still breathing."

Lady Eudokia poured the rest of the wine into her servant's slack mouth, although most of it slipped down his cheeks to stream away along the cracks in the flagstones.

Already his face looked less swollen, and the wine had washed away the last of the blood, red drowning red.

'Sorcery," said Lady Bertha. "Look at his hand."

'Sorcery," said Lady Eudokia, although it wasn't clear if she were responding to Bertha's comment. Heribert kept up a running translation. "I am familiar with sorcery, son of Henry. It runs in the blood of the women of my house, but we do not spend it unwisely, because sorcery exacts other costs, not so evident to you now but dangerous just the same. Is it sorcery you have come for?"

'You are not alone in commanding sorcery, Most Exalted Lady. Not every person who wields such powers uses them wisely, or well, or to the advantage of humankind."

'An odd notion, Prince Sanglant. I use sorcery to the advantage of my family. Why should I use it to benefit others, who might be my enemies? Have you come to seek help from me against your barbarian magi? I will not interfere in quarrels that are beneath my notice." "What if this one is not beneath your notice? Sorcery can be harnessed in many ways. Its effects can cause tremors far beyond its point of origin. Do you know of the ones we call the mathematici, who weave threads of starlight into crowns formed of stone?"

Her color changed. Like the man bitten by the snake, her skin flushed and a tremor passed through her body. She dropped the cup, which landed squarely on the body of the prone eunuch before rolling off his chest to ring as it struck stone. The bitten eunuch groaned and sat up, rubbing his arm.

A door opened and closed, and a young eunuch in gold robes hurried in to whisper a message into Basil's ear. Basil, in turn, bent down to speak to the lady. Her color restored, she nodded and spoke a command.

'Go, now." Basil's green robes flared as he stepped away from the couch. "A suite has been made ready. You can retire there. We will call you when it is time to dine." "But—"

Sapientia rose.

'Nay, Sister, let us do as we are bid. The army should be safely settled in by now, with a market close at hand. We must be patient." "It could be a trap!" she muttered.

He bent close, to whisper in her ear. "I think we can fight our way free of a palace protected by slippered eunuchs."

'Bayan never insulted the worth of the Arethousan legions. He fought them once.

Have you?"

Stung, Sanglant turned away from her and walked after the eunuch. The others followed obediently, murmuring together.

Basil showed them into two adjoining rooms which opened onto a porch looking over a sere garden. A fountain burbled merrily out in the sun. The spray made rainbows, quickly wicked away. A bed of rosemary was the only ornament; other plots of earth lay barren.

Within the suite a small group of attendants loitered and with gestures offered to bathe their hands and feet, to set up a chessboard, to settle them on divans piled with pillows so that they could rest. Silken tapestries graced the walls, depicting scenes of elaborate feasts and girls picking flowers.

'What do you make of it?" Heribert asked.

'My sister, or these handsome rooms?"

Heribert raised an eyebrow, wickedly, but shook his head. "Which man was bitten by the snake?" he asked. "Nay, I refer to the Most Exalted Lady Eudokia."

'I expect that the walls, and the servants, have ears. If I were the master of this house, I would make sure that at least one among these attendants could speak Wendish."

He sat down on one of the couches, stretching out amongst the pillows, yawning. All that sun, riding up to the palace, had made him tired, and he did not plot intrigue well when he was tired. It was easier to fight.

He dozed fitfully, waking frequently while around him his retinue talked quietly among themselves or napped. Breschius played chess with Lady Bertha. Sapientia snored softly. Flashes of dream brightened and faded as he twisted in and out of sleep. Liath weaving light among standing stones. Severed threads curling and writhing like beheaded snakes, like the serpent winding its way up Eudokia's wrist. Bells. An arrow flowering into flame. Bayan, dead, and Sapientia walking in chains, a prisoner. Who had done this to her?

He started awake, troubled and restless, and this time got to his feet. Walking outside, he staggered when he hit the sunlight; in the shady arbor, he had forgotten its strength.

Hathui strolled up beside him.

'By the fountain we are surely safe from listening ears, my lord prince."

The fountain's spray beckoned. He sat on the lip of the fountain and let the cooling mist float over him, beads collecting on his neck, sliding under the heavy torque, moistening his lips and hands. Hathui followed, shading her eyes with an arm. The rest of them prudently waited in the shade, watching him—or still sleeping away the heat of the day.

'Do you think she knows of the Seven Sleepers?" Hathui asked once she stood within the corona of the fountain's noisy spray. "Or is in league with them?"

'I don't know. The church condemned the mathematici a hundred years ago. I do not know if the Arethousan patriarch did the same.

Perhaps Brother Breschius knows. I suppose it will be difficult to tease out the truth."

'Do you think the asp was really poisonous?"

He laughed. "It seemed poisonous enough to me. Just as well I left my daughter back at the fort for safekeeping, since she would insist on handling the serpent herself. The question we must ask is whether it was magic, or herb-craft, that saved the eunuch. We cannot trust the Arethousans, nor should we try to bring them into affairs they are better left out of. If it's true that my father wars against their agents and vassals in southern Aosta, then they will either seek to hinder us in order to harm him, or they will help us hoping to weaken him."

'You would rather trust to barbarians and pagans, my lord prince? To these Kerayit that Brother Breschius speaks of?"

'They have less to gain whether we succeed or fail, do they not?"

'Yet how do we find them?"

'How do we find them?" he echoed. "Or am I simply a fool to think I can pit myself against Anne?"

'Someone must, my lord prince. Do not forget your father, the king."

Here in the courtyard, open to the air, he heard noises from the town, a stallion's defiant trumpeting, the rumble of cartwheels along cobbles, a man shouting.

He smiled grimly. "Nay, I do not forget him. Am I not his obedient son?"

'Alas, my lord prince, not always."

He grinned as he looked up at her, delighted by her dead-pan expression and the lift of her eyebrows. "It is no wonder that my father trusted you, Eagle."

'Nor have I ever betrayed that trust. Nor do I mean to do so now."

'Still, you sought me out."

'Because I believe that you are the only one who can save King Henry—"

A shout disturbed the drowsy afternoon. Feet clattered on stone in counterpoint to cries and objections. He jumped to his feet and called out to the others just as the door into the suite was thrown open and a soldier thrust inside as if on the points of spears.

'My lord prince!" The man was too short of breath to croak out more than the title.

"Prince Sanglant!"

'Here I am." Sanglant strode into the shadow of the whitewashed porch. "What is it, Malbert?"

'Your Grace!" The eunuch Basil shoved past Malbert with a furi- ^ us expression. His Wendish was startlingly fluent. "This man in—y,'aded the sanctuary of the palace. He injured one of my—"

'I beg you, silence!"

The eunuch faltered, mouth working, face a study in contempt ^nd insulted dignity.

But he kept quiet.

'Malbert?"

The soldier still breathed hard. "My lord prince," he gasped, fight ! for air. "Your daughter—is missing." was too terrified to move as the stallion gathered itself to bolt.

The groom edged down the gangplank. Wolfhere ^hoved at the backs of the sailors who, like the rest of the crowd, tracked away fearfully to give the frightened horse room. Only Blessing stood her ground.

'Brother Lupus!" The cleric appeared out of the crowd and grasped Wolfhere by the shoulder. "I thought I might find you tracking Prince Sanglant as well. Come. We must hasten."

'Now is not the time!" Wolfhere pulled free of the cleric, not difficult since he stood half a head taller and had the build of a man who has spent his life in the saddle, not in court.

'My God." The other man looked beyond him as the sailors shrank away, leaving a gap between which one could see the tableau, stallion poised, girl motionless. "Is that the child, grown so large? I had thought her no more than three. Or is this another bastard child belonging to the prince?"

The stallion danced sideways, tossing its head. The groom reached the base of the plank.

'No time to waste," murmured the cleric.

Something about the way he tilted up his chin and squinted his eyes skyward triggered a cascade of memories. Something about the way he lifted his left hand, as if giving a benediction or a command, spilled recognition into plain sight.

Zacharias had seen him before. He was one of those who had re mained in the valley after Kansi-a-lari defeated the sorcerers. He was one of the Seven Sleepers.

As was Wolfhere.

Light flashed around the cleric's head. The sky darkened as a cloud scudded in to cover the sun, and that same wisp of light caressed Zacharias' neck before flitting on to twist across the sprawl of bodies. It tangled within the mane of the restive stallion curling around its ears. Was he hallucinating? The stallion snorted and backed so hard into the groom that the poor man tumbled off the wharf and fell with a shriek and a splash into the filthy water.

Blessing took another step forward. The stallion reared, trumpeting.

Zacharias could not shift his feet. Wolfhere thrust past the men blocking his way and sprinted to her, bearing her bodily into the safety of the crowd as Blessing shouted in protest and kicked him. The cleric turned.

'Who are you?" the man asked in his prim voice, his lips set in a terse line. "Too late for questions, since you have already seen me." A breath of wind teased his ear. A flutter of breeze wrapped around his face and choked off the air. Light crackled before his eyes.

Faded. He fell.

Woke, sick to his stomach and with the ground heaving beneath him. He rolled backward, bumped up against a lumpy sack, and opened his eyes. It was dark except for a dull glow beyond his feet, too diffuse to make out. He could not tell where he was, but the splintered wood planks stank of old vomit and dried piss and the floor kept tilting gently up and down, up and down.

He heard footsteps, the scrape of an object dragged over the ground, and hurriedly shut his eyes.

"I'll search him, then." That was the cleric speaking in his thickly accented Wendish.

Zacharias willed his breathing to slow, his body to relax, so the cleric would think him asleep. Hands patted his body, an intimate but efficient touch. "God have mercy. Does the man never wash?"

'He doesn't like his disfigurement to be seen, so I suppose that accounts for him not bathing. I told you it was rash to grab him, Marcus. Couldn't you have left well enough alone? Now we'll have to kill him."

Even after the years he had survived as a slave, the years he had learned to absorb whatever humiliation was meted out to him, it was hard not to suck in his breath, not to whimper in fear.

That was Wolfhere's voice.

Hadn't he guessed all along that Wblfhere could not be trusted?

'I take no chances," said the other man, not to be distracted from his search. "He saw me with you and might carry tales back to the prince." Quickly enough those hands found the little pocket sewn into Zacharias' robes; those hands extracted the folded parchment and retreated. By some miracle, Zacharias kept his breathing steady, did not open his eyes.

Do not let them know. Wait it out. Patience is its own reward.

'Do you recognize this?" asked Marcus.

'The scratchings of a mathematicus. You know I am not skilled in calculation."

'Nor in intrigue. This bears the mark of Liathano's idle musings. How did the eunuch come to possess it?"

'I do not know. He is a secretive man, much taken by an interest in arcane matters. He believes he has seen some vision, a glimpse into the secret nature of the cosmos. I do not claim to understand it. But he will ever have at me, wanting to be taught the hidden knowledge of the universe."

'Is that so? Hmm."

Wolfhere's laugh was sharp. "Do you think to recruit him? He is a coward. Not to be trusted. He says so himself. I have witnessed his cowardice with my own eyes."

'I was thinking more of throwing him over the side once we are well out at sea. But I wonder what it is that he thought you could teach him. Why he thought you were traveling with Prince San-giant."

A good question, but Zacharias could scarcely concentrate; it was hard enough to hold his bladder so he wouldn't piss himself from fear. "Throwing him over the side." No wonder the ground rocked beneath him. He was on a ship.

'One of us must watch those who present the most danger. Hasn't that always been my task? I am the messenger who rides in the world."

'Not you alone. I have done my part among the presbyters and clerics in Darre." "It is not the same." "No, it is not, for they are all cultured men and women. You have J

fulfilled the part your birth suited you for. Now you are needed to play your part elsewhere, Brother Lupus."

'I am needed here. Prince Sanglant poses a threat. One of us must watch him."

'I do not disagree with you, but we no longer have the luxury of letting you range at will. The wheel of the heavens turns, whether we will it or no. You know what part you are meant to play."

'Is there not another one who can be trained? Surely there is still time."

'Unlike Eagles, Sleepers do not retire, Brother. They die and are replaced. Sister Zoe no longer stands with us. Alas."

'She is truly dead?"

'So she is, in the same conflagration in which we lost Liathano. I will miss her, the good woman. But we have found a strong mind to replace hers. He is called Hugh of Austra. Perhaps you know of him."

'Hugh of Austra! Margrave Judith's bastard son?"

'The same. With his help, Anne has unlocked the secret of the crowns and how the movement of the stars acts in concert with the stones. Now we are close to understanding the weaving by which our ancestors rid themselves of the Lost Ones."

'The seven circles—"

'We are far beyond that. Seven circles, each of seven stones. We were deceived by erroneous notions. Sister Anne believed that the crown at Verna was the key, but it is not.

Meriam now believes that the crowns were laid out to surround the land of the Aoi, that in this way the ancient sorcerers bound that land within the circle of the spell. Therefore, there must be at least one crown south of the middle sea, one east of it, one west, and so on. We have discovered unexpected allies in Alba among the tree sorcerers and their queen. With their help, we know where the westernmost circle lies. Brother Sev-erus will journey there after he has identified the second circle, which we believe lies in southern Salia. I have myself in the course of my long search for you discovered a crown here in the east, in the wilderness between Ungria and Handelburg, at a place called Queen's Grave. Do you know of it?"

'Bayan and Sapientia fought the Quman at a spot called Queen's Grave about three years ago. There was a tumulus there erected in ancient days, so I heard—"

'The same. I ventured into the burial chamber, but it had been disturbed by grave robbers. I also saw the leavings from the battle, bones of horses and men picked clean, countless shards of arrows.

There is a crown on top of the hill. The local folk were easily ner_ suaded that it was in their interest to hoist the fallen stones upright with rope and dirt ramps, under my supervision. Yet you were not there when the battle was fought, were you, Wolfhere?

How is it that we lost track of you? I see that you wear an amulet to protect yourself from aetherical sight. Are you hiding from us?"

'Nay. I was trapped by the cunning of one of my own comrades an Eagle. My old nemesis, who hates me sorely. She retired to the service of Waltharia, the eldest child of Helmut Villam. When we passed by that way, she convinced Prince Sanglant that if he sought to act against sorcerers he must protect himself by means of such amulets. I couldn't refuse to wear one without making him distrust me."

'You should have left him months ago. It serves no purpose."

'Do you think Prince Sanglant poses no threat to Sister Clothilde's hopes and plans?"

'I think even if he can succeed in gaining allies, and these griffin feathers you speak of, that it will be too late, and too little, against us."

'Perhaps. But how will we know how great a threat he poses if none of us are witness to what he is doing?"

'Any person can spy on Prince Sanglant."

'Not any person can gain his trust."

'That may be. I do not know how much of a dog's instinct he has for enemies. But it matters not, Brother."

'If you think it does not matter, then you are a fool."

'You forget yourself! You were raised as Anne's servant, not as our peer!"

The silence stank of anger and old resentment. Zacharias might have cheered to see Wolfhere spoken to in such a way, but he had himself been born to freeholders who had risked farming in the marchlands in order to be beholden to no lord, only to the regnant.

'I crave your pardon, my lord," said Wolfhere at last in a tight voice.

'So you must. I expect you not to forget your place again. Now. As soon as my servant returns with slaves, we will cast off. There's little enough tide in these waters."

'Where do we go?" Was Wolfhere's tone ironic? Or angry? Did the needle of rank still jab him? Was he humbled by Marcus' disdain? He had such a hold over his emotions, and the muffling effect of the dark hold muted his voice just enough, that Zacharias could not guess how he felt. "Do we return to Darre?"

'Nay. We are to journey south to assist Sister Meriam in her search in the lands south of the middle sea. We hear stories of a crown set near the ruins of Kartiako. Meriam believes that another crown must lie south of the holy city of Sai's. It will be a pilgrimage into a new land."

'A dangerous one. Jinna idolaters rule those lands."

'It is difficult to know who truly rules the desert. But first I must deliver my cargo, and the child, to Darre."

'The child." The words, spoken so softly, barely reached Zacharias' ears although he lay not a body's length from the two men. "I am against it. It is dangerous to act so boldly."

'As the time approaches, we must not fear to take risks. We have hidden for too long."

'If we kidnap the child, Prince Sanglant will not rest until he recovers her."

'Then he cannot hunt griffin feathers and sorcerous allies in the east, can he? He will have to choose. One, or the other."

All at once, Zacharias realized that he lay not against a sack but against a body, limp and small. It was Blessing, unconscious and, presumably, tied up as he was. With some effort, he wiggled his arms until his hands touched her body. His searching hands brushed her fingers.

She responded. Her small hands, tied back as his were, clenched hard, tightening over his thumb. She squeezed again, a signal, and he squeezed back, then traced the pattern of the rope binding her wrists, seeking the knot. She made no sound, nor did she move except for that brief, fierce, silent communication.

The rope was wet and swollen, impossible to unknot especially at the angle he was forced to work on it. He despaired. He would be thrown to the fish, and she carried off to Darre as a hostage. Prince Sanglant had fought so hard to protect her, but it appeared that, after all, the sorcerers would win.

A ghost of a breeze tickled his nose, making him sniffle and snort.

'What's that?" asked Marcus, standing.

Footsteps sounded on the deck above them and a voice called down through the hatch in clear but understandable Aostan. "Your man has returned, my lord cleric. He's brought a dozen likely looking slaves, half of them Quman by the looks of them and the rest foreign creatures from the east. It isn't often we get a coffle of only male J.S.V

slaves. Most buyers prefer women. Shall we quarter them below, or on deck?"

No breeze could penetrate belowdecks, but a breeze played around him nonetheless.

As Marcus moved away to the ladder, Blessing whispered.

'Yes. Free me."

Of course he would try, but he could not work miracles! God had forsaken him, or he had forsaken God…

She was not talking to him. She was talking to the spirit of air that played around his head. A cool touch swirled around his fingers. The strands of rope that bound her hands softened and parted, unraveling like so much rhetted flax. She flexed her wrists, and the rope fell away, leaving her free.

'Yes." Her voice had no more force than the stirring of a breeze against the skin. "Him, too."

His bonds loosened and he slipped swollen hands forward to his chest. A sensation as of a thousand pricking needles infested his palms and fingers as the blood and humors rushed back.

Free.

But still trapped.

Chains rattled above.

'Anna says you're a sinner and an unbeliever," murmured Blessing under cover of the thump and scrape of chains on the ladder as slaves descended into the hold. "Are you?"

'I don't know what I believe, Your Highness," he whispered. "But I think we had better consider how to escape rather than whether I'm apostate."

'But what about your soul? Won't you be cast into the Abyss? Doesn't that scare you?"

'Nay, Your Highness. I have seen a vision of the cosmos. I am not afraid."

'Aren't you? Everyone says you're a coward." She said it without malice.

He twisted to see. The hold lay low and long, its far end shrouded in gloom. The cleric stood with his back to his prisoners, directing his own servant as that man prodded the slaves forward into the hold. Poor suffering souls. Zacharias wondered briefly what horrible fate awaited them at the hands of their new master.

Wolfhere stood in profile, but he turned his head and noticed Zacharias' movement.

Lamp glow and shadow mixed on his face, making his expression impossible to read. He did not move.

'Be ready," whispered Blessing.

A shout rang out from the coffled slaves. Chains clattered to the floor as iron manacles fell open. Blessing leaped to her feet.

'Follow me!" she shouted, jumping for the ladder. "You are free!"

Zacharias found himself on his feet before he realized he meant to obey. The slaves hesitated, dumbfounded or in a stupor. How long had they been captives, heeding the call of the whip, the binding of shackles?

Marcus spun around as Blessing reached the ladder. He leaped forward to grab the girl around the legs. Zacharias charged past the motionless Wolfhere and slammed into the small cleric. All three-cleric, frater, and child—fell sprawling on the floor. One of the slaves bolted, striking down Marcus' servant, and in his wake the others erupted into motion. Trying to untangle himself from Marcus, who lay on top of him, Zacharias saw only a blur of bodies before a figure paused beside him, legs wreathed in the tattoos marking those duman who had chosen the shaman's path.

'The child," said the man in a recognizable Ojuman dialect. "The child with magic saves us."

The sounds of fighting carried down from above decks. Marcus swore, kicking, as the slave tugged Blessing free. She shrieked with triumph and rushed up the ladder as effortlessly as a spider. Zacharias fought to his knees, lunged for the ladder as the last of the slaves made their escape.

'Stop him!" barked Marcus. "Wolfhere! For God's sake, go after her!"

The servant raised his staff as Zacharias grabbed the rungs.

A blow smashed into the back of his head.

Then, nothing.

v: i daughter is out of control! How can it be that she escaped your care and was almost kidnapped?"

Anna knelt with her back to Prince Sanglant, trembling, waiting for the switch to fall on her shoulders. He was in a rage like none she had ever seen. Matto had got twenty strokes, and Thiemo had demanded that he receive the same number even though as a noble lord he did not have to be humbled in such a way. She would have lost respect for him if he hadn't shared the punishment. Both she and Thiemo knew who was truly to blame.

Now it was her turn.

'It was my fault, my lord prince," she said through her tears. "I did not keep her at my side. She asked leave to go dice with the soldiers, but I didn't go with her. That was when she ran away. She must have crept out through the drainage ditch."

She had been crying all day, first in anger because of the terrible fight that morning between Matto and Thiemo, then with fear when she had discovered Blessing missing, and later out of relief when the girl had returned late in the day with an unexpected retinue in tow.

Now, at last, she wept silently, in terror. Better to crumble to dn than endure the prince's fury.

'And to add to the injury, this insult! Have you corrupted n daughter with these whispers about the phoenix?"

At least the whole troop wasn't looking on, only Captain Fulk Sergeant Cobbo, Brother Breschius, and the Eagle, her face drav and serious. In the distance she heard Blessing shrieking wit thwarted anger. Sanglant had ordered the girl shut up in one of th little cells. Maybe he was ready to whip his daughter, too. Maybe h was going there next, once he had finished with her.

The heat made the earthen walls and the dusty ground bake The sun's glare on her face made her squint. Sweat trickled down her spine.

'Is it true?" he roared.

The switch whistled past her back. The tip stung a shoulder blade as it whipped past, barely touching her. She burst into tears, shaking hysterically.

'I crave your pardon, my lord prince. But the words I spoke are only the truth."

Flinging herself forward onto the ground, she pressed her face into the dirt.

He cursed so furiously that she imagined him transforming from man into rabid dog, back into a beast like the ragged, stinking dai-mone she had once thought him when she had seen him years ago as a captive in the cathedral of Gent.

'My lord prince," said Brother Breschius in the mildest of voices, "she is only a girl, barely a woman. What purpose does it serve to terrorize her in this way?"

She sobbed helplessly as the prince slapped the switch into the ground, once, twice, thrice, to emphasize his words. Dirt sprayed up with each bite, spitting into her face.

'My daughter is a willful. Spoiled. Impossible. Brat! Now it transpires that she is soaked in heresy as well. And has the nerve to tell her own father that I am damned!"

'It cannot have helped to find her surrounded by a brace of slaves who worship her as the magician who freed them," said Breschius. "It must be a frightening sight, my lord prince, to see your daughter growing into her heritage."

Sometimes silence was worse than shouting.

All she saw were his boots, six steps, a sharp turn, and six steps back, turn again. Only a very, very angry man paced like that, each step clipped and short. Anger flooded out of him until she thought she would drown. Sobs shook her entire body no matter how much she tried to hold them in. Fully a woman now, in the old tradition. Oh, God, why had she done it? Now Matto and Thiemo hated each other, and she had selfishly and stupidly and dishonorably neglected her duty to Blessing. What did people do who were turned out in the midst of a foreign country with no kinfolk to aid them? Didn't she deserve to be sold as a slave or murdered by beggars for her shoes? "What of your brother, Eagle?" the prince demanded harshly, still pacing.

'I beg your pardon, my lord prince. My own sorrow clouds my mind. Did Zacharias choose to stay with the traitors rather than follow her to freedom? I pray it is not so. Yet if he wanted to follow but could not, then he may now be a prisoner. Or dead."

'I should not have let Wolfhere and Brother Zacharias go into town, my lord prince,"

said Captain Fulk. "I should have known that Princess Blessing would try to follow them.

I should not have let Wolfhere go unattended…"

'Nay." The boots stopped a hand's breadth from Anna's nose. Her tears had dampened the pale dirt, turning it dark. "I am to blame. I should never have trusted Wolfhere. I knew what he was. My father is not a poor judge of character, but I let my anger blind me. So be it. Get up, Anna."

No one disobeyed that tone.

She scrambled up. Dirt streaked her tunic and leggings, smeared her face. Her nose was runny, but she dared not raise a hand to wipe her face clean. She swallowed another sob.

'I have unfinished business," he said to the others. "Lady Eudokia will not be pleased that I left the palace so abruptly. She'll consider it an insult."

'But you left Princess Sapientia and Brother Heribert and most of the rest of the party behind," said Breschius.

'Yes. Now I must retrieve them and complete the negotiations. Brother Breschius, remain here with Captain Fulk." He paused, glancing toward the cell where Blessing was confined. The girl's screams and protests had not diminished, although her actual words were muffled by the earthen walls. She was a persistent child. Wiser and less stubborn ones would have given up shrieking by now, silenced by fear of what was to come or even by an idea that it was better to placate than to annoy.

Not Blessing.

The slaves she had freed knelt beside the door, forbidden to see her although they refused to move away.

'Faithful servants," the prince observed sardonically. "Let them remain there until I can deal with them. Very well, Captain. You're in charge."

He left with a few soldiers hurrying after him.

'Go on, child," said Brother Breschius kindly. "You've sinned, and been punished.

Now go and make it right."

'How can I make it right? Will the prince turn me out?"

'Not this time. Ask forgiveness from the one you've harmed the most, and swear to never again neglect your duty. Princess Blessing wasn't lost. Think of it as a warning to not allow yourself to be distracted again."

Did he know? She flushed. Surely only she and Matto and Thiemo knew what had transpired last night. She ducked her head respectfully and ran off to the dark cell near to the one where Blessing was confined. The door was so low that she had to crawl inside, but within it was blessedly cool and dark. She smelled blood and sweat and saw the shape of two prone figures in the dim filtering light. Even those unmoving shapes still had the power to awaken in her the desires that had broken free last night. What a fool she was!

'Anna?" Matto groaned and shifted.

'Don't move," she whispered, touching his ankle. "Has anyone put a salve on your back?"

'Sergeant Cobbo did," said Matto, "and swore at me the whole time. Oh, God, Anna.

Why did you have to do it?"

'You're not the only one who suffered," exclaimed Thiemo.

'You sorry excuse for a man. You only took those lashes because you were afraid that Anna would comfort me if I was hurt and you weren't!"

'You've no right to speak to me in that way!"

'That's right! I'm only a poor common boy, your randy lordship. Nor should I covet what you've already taken for your own, isn't that right?"

'Shut up!" Anna kicked Thiemo in the leg before he could respond. It was hard to feel affectionate toward him, smelling the whipping he and Matto had taken, remembering how close that switch had come to her own back.

'Serves you right," hissed Matto, rearing up. "Serves you right, you stinking goat—"

Unthinkingly, she set a hand on his back to press him down, and he howled with pain.

She jerked back her hand; it came away wet vvith blood.

'Shut up!" She wanted to cry, but her chest was too tight. "Haven't we done enough harm?"

TOE doors to the governor's palace were closed and Sanglant and his small retinue were, once again, forced to wait outside while the eunuch who acted as gatekeeper vanished into the interior. At this time of day, however, the shadows slanting away from the palace's bulk gave them some respite from the heat. He had only a dozen men with him; the rest he had left with his sister within the palace courtyard a few hours before.

As he waited, he fretted. He had thought himself so clever, leaving Blessing with the main body of troops in the fort while he negotiated with Lady Eudokia. That way Blessing would stay out of trouble and could not be used as a hostage if the worst happened and the governor plotted intrigue.

But Blessing was getting older every day, far too quickly. Thinking of what had happened made him so angry that he had to twist his fear and fury into a knot and thrust it out of sight. He could not let such feelings cripple him.

Ai, for the love of God, how had Blessing got so wild? What had he done wrong?

He heard the tread of many feet a moment before the heavy doors were thrust open from inside and a troop of Arethousan soldiers marched out. In their midst strode a general, or lord, recognizable by his soldier's posture and his shrewd, arrogant gaze as he looked over Sanglant and offered him a swift grin that marked Sanglant as his accomplice, or his dupe. The man had broad shoulders, powerful arms, and only one eye, the other lost, no doubt, in battle. He was a fighting man.

Sanglant nodded, recognizing a kindred spirit whether that man were ally or enemy, and they assessed each other a moment more before the general was hailed by one of his officers and turned his attention away. The troop crossed the broad plaza to the stables where saddled horses were being led out.

Basil appeared in the entryway, recognizable by his jade-green robes although his round, dark, smooth Arethousan face looked much like that of the other eunuchs: ageless and sexless.

'My lord prince," he said. "You are welcome to dine."

They entered through the long hall and Sanglant was brought to a broad forecourt where a servant washed his hands and face in warm water poured out of a silver ewer.

The soldiers remained behind as the prince was shown into an arbor whose vines were all artifice, gold leaves and stems twining around a wood trellis. Cloth wings slit at intervals offered shade but allowed the breeze to waft through. No breath of wind had stirred the air outside; he heard the wheeze and groan from the fans as the slaves stood out in the sun, hidden from view behind the cloth as they worked the bellows to keep those beneath the arbor comfortable.

The Most Exalted Lady Eudokia had already seated herself to dine at a long, narrow table with a cloth covering the area just before her while the rest of the long table lay bare. Princess Sapientia reclined in the place of honor to Eudokia's right, and a boy of some ten years of age, a dark-haired youth with little beauty and a slack expression, fidgeted on a couch placed to the lady's left, at the end of the table. Two servants attended him, spooning food into his mouth and wiping his chin and lips when he dribbled. A dozen courtiers ate frightful silence as servants brought around platters all of which reeked of garlic, onion, leeks, oil, and fish sauce. Lady Bertha hac been given a place fifteen places down from the head of the table; the rest of the party he had left behind with his sister was absent, all but Heribert, who stood behind the princess with a composed expression and one hand clenched.

Sapientia looked up and smiled as Sanglant entered. Lady Eudokia gestured to Basil, who indicated that he should take the only seat left vacant: on the couch beside the youth.

The child wore princely regalia but in all other ways seemed inconsequential, and Sapientia's smirk confirmed that Lady Eudokia was, in her petty, Arethousan way, taking revenge on him for their earlier verbal sparring and his precipitous departure.

'I pray you, Prince Sanglant," said Lady Eudokia through Basil, who remained beside her as her interpreter, "drink to my health if you will." He drank a liquor that tasted of fish, bravely managing not to gag, and she went on. "Her Royal Highness my dear cousin princess Sapientia has entertained me with a recounting of the many Barbaric customs of your father's people. Is it true that a prince must prove himself a man by breeding a bastard upon a woman, any creature no matter how lowborn or unattractive, and only thereafter can he be recognized as heir to the regnant? Are you the whelp produced out of such a union?"

Sapientia's cheeks were red with satisfaction. "I am," he said.

'A half-breed, spawn of the Cursed Ones, is that so as well?" "It is!" exclaimed Sapientia.

'They are all gone, eradicated millennia ago," objected Eudokia. "It can't be true."

'It is true," said Sanglant evenly. He would not give Sapientia the satisfaction of seeing that her dart had struck home.

'You might be Jinna born and bred, or your dam might have been a whore transported westward from beyond the eastern deserts to suit the pleasure of a prince."

Sapientia giggled, then covered her lapse with a sip of wine. The servants brought around a platter of some kind of meat swimming in a foul brine that stank of rancid oil.

The courtiers gobbled it down. Sanglant could not bring himself to eat more than a bite.

'A bastard, yet like a eunuch you wear no beard. Is it true you have fathered a bastard of your own who travels with you?"

'My daughter is no bastard." He set down his knife for fear he would otherwise fling it at her—or at Sapientia, who glared at him, caught between glee and embarrassment. "I am married, and she is legitimately born to myself and my wife."

'Do they let bastards marry among the barbarians? We do not allow such a thing here.

It would taint the blood of the noble lineages, but no doubt the Wendish themselves are a bastard race so it is no surprise they should allow their blood to become polluted. Yet, if you wish, I will foster the child with me. Bastards' get are notorious for the trouble they get wrapped up in. I can raise her as befits a noble servant and make sure she is not led astray by the Dariyan heresy."

'I think not," said Sanglant.

'What else do you mean to do with her?" demanded Sapientia. She drained her cup of wine, as if for courage. "There's nothing for her in Wendar, Brother. She's got no land and no prospects, no matter what you say. And she's a brat. I say, be rid of her, and we'd all be happier. Don't think that I don't suspect that you hope to use her to usurp my position, as I've told my dear cousin Eudokia while you've been gone chasing after her.

Oh. Dear. Did you find her again?"

All that saved Sanglant from a furious retort was the sight of Her-ibert, quite pale, brushing a finger along his closed lips as a warning. Instead, he downed a cup of the noxious-tasting liquor and let the burn sear away the edge of his anger. "She is safe. She will remain so. So have I sworn. So, I pray, will you remember."

'I will remember," she muttered, flushed, her cheeks sheeny with sweat.

Lady Eudokia smiled unctuously, clearly amused by their unseemly sparring. "It is ever the way with brothers and sisters to quarrel." She reached over to pat the youth's flaccid cheek with a pudgy hand. "Alas that I quarreled with my own brother in the past, but now he is dead in battle and his sweet child come to bide with me."

The boy smiled uncertainly at her, glanced at Sanglant with fear, and spoke, in a whisper, words Sanglant could not understand. At once, servants brought him a tray of sweets and he picked daintily at them as Sapientia brooded and Sanglant fought the urge to jump up and walk anywhere as long as it got him away from that which plagued him, which at this moment was just about everything. He found refuge in a strategic retreat.

'I had hoped to discuss with you what arrangements we may make for our journey east."

'I am sure you do. But before we do so, I pray you, tell me which synods does the holy church of Wendar recognize? Or perhaps it is too young to recognize any, for truly we have heard no word of it here where we live. As you know, Arethousa is the ancient home of the Witnesser, St. Thecla. We were first to accept the Proclamation of the blessed Daisan."

'Do you think, Sapientia," he said hours later as afternoon waned when at last they could break free of the long feast and return on horseback to the fort, "that by belittling me and my daughter in front of our enemy you have made Wendish-folk look like lions or like fools?"

'Who is to say she is our enemy?"

'Can she be otherwise? Did she say anything except words meant sneer and laugh and gloat? You were just as angry as I at her ' ults, when we first came into her audience chamber this morning!"

'Maybe I changed my mind while you were gone." Sapientia's cheeks were still red.

She lifted her chin, but her smile trembled as if it might collapse at any instant. "You have stolen what is mine and vou might as well be holding me prisoner just like Bulkezu for all that you listen to me, although you pretend to the others that we command jointly.

Don't think I am too stupid to know what you intend by your daughter! You want her to rule in my place, and if not her, what is to stop you from supporting Queen Adelheid and her infant daughter? You were jealous of Bayan, and now you're jealous of me. I won't rest until I have back what is mine by right of birth."

'I have taken nothing from you! I have never betrayed you."

Her gaze had an uncanny glamour, and for once he was chastened by her anger. "What do you take me for? A lion? Or a fool?"

'YOU sorry fool."

Out of nowhere, cold water drenched Zacharias' head and shoulders. Sucking and gasping, he inhaled salt water, nasty and stinging. He gagged but had nothing in his stomach and finally fell back, clutching his belly and moaning.

The dead didn't suffer like this.

Footsteps padded over the planks.

'God Above, but it stinks down here," said the cultured voice of Brother Marcus. "So.

He's still alive."

'Were you hoping he would die?"

That voice certainly did belong to Wolfhere, but Zacharias could not recall where he was or why Wolfhere would be talking about him while the floor rocked so nauseatingly up and down.

'It would make my life easier, would it not? We'll throw him overboard once we're far enough away from land that there's no hope he can swim to shore."

'If he can swim."

'I'll take no chances.'

'Will you throw him over yourself or have your servant do the deed?"

'I will do what I must. You know the cause we serve." The words were spoken so coolly that Zacharias shuddered into full consciousness, his mind awake and his nausea dulled by fear. Bulkezu had at least killed for the joy of being cruel. This man would take no pleasure out of killing, but neither would he shrink from it, if he thought it necessary.

'Monster," Zacharias croaked, spitting out the dregs of sea-water and bile. He struggled up to sit. His chest hurt. The back of his head throbbed so badly that he might as well have had a cap of iron tightening inexorably around his skull.

'Brother Zacharias." A hand settled firmly on his shoulder. "Do not move, I pray you.

You've taken a bad blow to the head."

'I can swim. I escaped Bulkezu by swimming. It'll do you no good to throw me overboard."

'Who is Bulkezu?" asked Marcus.

'A Quman prince," answered Wolfhere. "Perhaps you have forgotten—or never knew—the devastation the Quman army wrought upon Wendar. King Henry never returned from Aosta to drive them out. It was left to Prince Sanglant to do so."

'Are you the bastard's champion? I'm surprised at you, Brother Lupus. What matters it to us what transpires on Earth? A worse cataclysm will come regardless to all of humankind, unless we do our part."

Blinking, Zacharias raised his hands to block the light of a lamp, squinting as he studied the other man. "Are you a mathematicus?" he asked, groping at his chest for the scrap of paper he had held close all these long months.

It was gone.

Panic brought tears.

'Is it this you seek?" Marcus displayed the parchment that bore the diagrams and numbers that betrayed the hand of a mathematicus, a sorcerer who studied the workings of the heavens. "Where did you come by it?"

'In a valley in the Alfar Mountains. After I escaped from the Quman, I traveled for a time with the Aoi woman who calls herself Prince Sanglant's mother, but she abandoned me after the conflagration." His physical hurts bothered him far less than the sight of that precious scrap in the hands of another man. He wanted to grab •t greedily to himself, but something about the other man's shadowed expression made him prudent, even hopeful.

If he could only y the right thing, he might save himself. "I found that parchment in a little cabin up on the slope of the valley. I knew then that I sought the one who had written these things. You see, when I wandered with Kansi-a-lari, she took me to a place she called the Palace of Coils. There I saw-He faltered because Marcus leaned forward, mouth slightly parted. "The Palace of Coils? What manner of place was it?"

'It lay out in the sea, on the coast of Salia. We had to walk there at low tide. Yet some manner of ancient magic lay over that island. We ascended by means of a path. I thought only a single night passed as we climbed, but instead many months did. The year lay coiled around the palace, and it was the year we were ascending, not the island. I cannot explain it—"

'You do well enough. Did you see the Aoi woman work her sorcery?"

'I did. I saw her defeat Bulkezu. I saw her breathe visions into fire. I saw her save her son with enchanted arrows. Oh, God." A coughing fit took him and he spat up bile.

'Get him wine," said Marcus. "I will hear what he has to say. Why did you not tell me that he traveled with Prince Sanglant's mother? He can't know what he saw, but careful examination may reveal much to an educated ear."

'Better just to kill him and have done with it!" insisted Wolfhere.

'Nay!" Zacharias choked out the word. "She led me through the spirit world. I saw—"

His throat burned. "I saw a vision of the cosmos!"

Spasms shook his entire body and made the bruise at the base of his neck come alive with a grinding, horrible pain. He folded forward, almost passing out.

After an unknown while, he struggled out of the haze to find himself bent double over his arms. Wolfhere had returned with a wine sack. Gratefully he guzzled it, spat up half of it all over his fetid robe before he remembered to nurse along his roiling stomach. He must go slowly. He had to use his wits.

'What is this vision of the cosmos that you saw?" asked Marcus when Zacharias set down the wineskin.

'If I tell you everything I know, then you'll have no reason to keep me alive. It's true I followed Prince Sanglant, my lord, but I only followed him because I hoped he would lead me to his wife, the one called Liathano. It's her I seek."

Marcus had an exceedingly clever face and expressive eyebrows lifted now with surprise. "Why do you seek her?"

'I seek any person who can teach me. I wish to understand the mysteries of the heavens." "As do we all."

'I will do anything for the person who will teach me, my lord." "Anything? Will you murder my dear friend Brother Lupus, if i tell you to?" He gestured toward Wolfhere, crouched within the pale aura given off by the lamp, his seamed and aged face quiet as he watched the two men negotiate.

A breath of air teased Zacharias' matted hair, curling around his ear. Was this the whisper of a daimone? Was Marcus a maleficus, who controlled forbidden magic and unholy creatures? He shuddered, his resolve curdled by a flood of misgivings. Yet he couldn't stop now. He was a prisoner. He was as good as dead. "I am no murderer, my lord. I haven't the stomach for it. But I am clever, and I have an excellent memory." "Do you?"

'I do, my lord. That is why I was allowed to take the oath of a frater although I cannot read or write. I know the Holy Verses, all of them, and many other things besides—"

'That's true enough," commented Wolfhere. "He has a prodigious memory."

'Is he clever?"

The old man sighed sharply. Why did he look so distressed? "Clever enough. He survived seven years as a slave among the Quman, so he says. Escaped on his own, so he says. Sought and found Prince Sang-lant with no help from any other, so he says. He talks often enough of this vision of the cosmos that he was vouchsafed in the Palace of Coils. He entertains the soldiers with the tale. He says he saw a dragon."

'I only tell them the truth!"

'Well," said Marcus speculatively. "A dragon. Perhaps you're too valuable to throw overboard to drown, Zacharias. Perhaps you^can serve the Holy Mother in another fashion. Perhaps I will teach you what I know after all. That will serve as well as killing you will, in the end."

Zacharias dared not weep. "You will find me a good student, my lord. I will not fail you."

'We shall see." Marcus fanned his hand before his face. "You must clean up. I cannot bear your stench. Brother Lupus?"

Wolfhere's lips were pressed as tight as those of a man determined not to swallow the bitter brew now on his tongue. "Do you intend to go ahead with this?"

'We are few, and our enemies are many." Marcus had a cherub's grin that made Zacharias nervous. The cleric's riotous black curls save his round, rather bland face an angelic appearance, almost innocent.

Almost.

'If this man can and will serve us, then why should I cast him away? We can all serve God in one manner or another. This is the lesson I learned from the one who leads us."

'So you did," said Wolfhere sardonically. "Very well. Are you satisfied, Zacharias?

Will you do as Brother Marcus says?"

Such a thrill of hope coursed through Zacharias that he forgot his nausea, and his pain.

"You will teach me?"

'I will teach you everything that I can," agreed Marcus with an ironic smile, "as long as you will serve me as a student must serve his master. Do as I say. Be obedient. Do not question."

'I can do that!"

Did Wolfhere whisper, again, "You sorry fool!"? It was only the creak of the ship rolling in the waves. It was only memory, mocking him.

'Let it be done," said Marcus, who had heard nothing untoward. "I will teach you the secrets of the heavens, Brother Zacharias. I admit you into our holy fellowship."

'Then I am yours," cried Zacharias, beginning to weep. After so long, he had found what he sought. "I am yours."

-U^JL^JLJ. , ^,' the slaves."

Sanglant indicated the thirteen men who knelt in front of the cell where Blessing was confined. Sergeant Cobbo herded them over. These were not foolish men, although they were barbarians and in fidels. They recognized him for what he was, even if they seemed to have offered their allegiance to his young daughter. They knelt before him, a ragged but defiant looking crew, half naked, sweating profusely in the heat, but unbowed by his appraisal.

Six were Quman, stripped down to loincloths. Despite the dirt streaking their bodies, they had made an effort to keep their hair neat, tying it back into loose braids with strips of cloth. They had pleasant, almost docile expressions. They looked like the kind of young soldiers who are happiest singing a song around the fire, good-natured, easy to please, and unlikely to fight among themselves. The seventh of their number bore tattoos all over his torso, twisted animals amid scenes of battle and carnage, griffins eating deer, lions rending hapless men, and a belled rider mounted on an eight-legged horse riding over corpses.

Of the other six, four might have been any manner of heathen— Salavü, Polenie, Starviki, or otherwise—with matted dark hair, wiry arms, and thick shoulders, and stolid expressions that did not conceal a rebellious spark in their gaze although their ankles and wrists bore the oozing scars of shackles.

'Are any of these men Daisanites?" asked Sanglant. Breschius knew an amazing store of languages, and he spoke several now, getting responses from all four of the men.

'They are all heathens, my lord prince. Sold into slavery by raiders. This Salavü man says it was Wendish bandits who took him prisoner and sold him to an Arethousan merchant. He wishes to return to his home. The other three say they will gladly enter the service of your daughter if they will be allowed a servant's portion, a meal every day, and her promise as their lord never to abandon them."

'Let the Salavü go, then. I want no slaves in my army."

Breschius spoke in a guttural tongue. The Salavü man rose nervously, looking as though he expected a whip to descend.

'It is a long road to Salavü lands," remarked Captain Fulk. "If he can make it home safely, then he's both strong and clever."

'Give him bread, ale, and a tunic," said Sanglant. "I'll not have it said I turned him out naked." »

Even as Breschius began to speak, the man bolted for the gate, ready for a spear thrust to take him in the back. Fulk whistled, a piercing signal, and the guards leaped back so the man could sprint out of the fort unobstructed. The remaining three heathens shifted fearfully, but Breschius calmed them with a few words.

'He had no reason to trust us," said Sanglant, "but I doubt me he'll get far." He turned his attention to the last two slaves. They were much darker and wore torn robes and ragged pointy felt caps over cropped hair. Sanglant frowned as he studied them. These two kept their heads bowed, their gazes lowered, although they also looked to be young, strong men.

'These two are Jinna, are they not?" he asked Breschius. "Are they believers?"

'Do you see the brand on their cheeks?" "Is that their slave mark?"

'Nay, my lord prince. Or rather, I should say, yes, but not in the way you think. Every young Jinna man marks himself in this way when he becomes an adult. It is the way he enslaves himself to the god's worship. No Jinna man may marry if he has not branded himself a slave to their fire god."

'Yet it's men who made them slaves on Earth, not their god. Tell them they may go free if they wish."

'I do not speak their language, my lord prince." He spoke to them anyway, giving up when they made no response. "They must not be merchants, my lord, or they would know at least one of the languages commonly used by traders."

'Then we must hope that gesture will suffice. What of these Quman? But you do not speak Quman as well as did Brother Zacha-rias, do you, Breschius?"

Anger flowed back quickly, although he had thought he had banished it. He clenched his left fist and glanced toward Blessing's cell. In the interval while he was gone she had fallen quiet. Maybe she had just screamed herself hoarse.

'Very poorly, my lord prince. I never preached among the Quman. I beg your pardon—"

Before Sanglant could respond, the old tattooed Quman man lifted both hands, palms facing the heavens. "Great lord," he said in passable Wendish, "hear me, who goes by the name Gyasi. Many seasons ago, when I am young, the spirits speak into my ear at that day when the moon is dark and hungry. They tell—told—me that in the time to come, a child will save me from the iron rope. Her I must serve. So it happens, this day, that their prophecy comes to pass. I act as the spirits tell me. I do not disobey my ancestors. I will be as a slave to your daughter. These sons of my tribe will also follow her." "Where did you learn to speak Wendish?" asked Sanglant. "In our tribe, we keep slaves from the western people. I can speak the language of all the slaves of my tribe. This way, they obey the begh and his mother. There is less trouble."

'On their left shoulder they bear scars," said Breschius. "The wolf's muzzle, the mark of the Kirshat clan."

'How did you come to be a slave?" asked Sanglant. "You wear the markings of a shaman. How can such a powerful man become a slave?"

'I refused to heed the call of the Pechanek begh when he calls for war against the western lands. I tell—told—the war council that Kirshat clan should not follow that Pechanek whore, Bulkezu. But they send their sons to him because they fear him. As punishment for bad advice, they sell—sold—me and my sisters' sons into slavery. Three have died. These six, the strong ones, survive."

'Bulkezu!" Sanglant laughed. "Bulkezu will trouble you no more. I hold him as my prisoner, here in this camp."

The old shaman nodded, unmoved by this revelation. "The spirits told me of Bulkezu's fate." He turned to his nephews, speaking in the Quman language. Two spat on the ground. A third laughed; the last two grinned. There was something uncomfortable about the merry gleam in their expressions, the crinkling of eyes, and the gleeful baring of teeth as they contemplated the downfall of their enemy. "You are a great lord, in truth," added Gyasi, "to humble Bulkezu. But you wear no griffin wings. How can you defeat the man who killed two griffins? Bulkezu is still greater than you." "We shall see. I march east to hunt griffins." The shaman's eyes widened. He tapped his forehead twice on a clenched hand, touched both shoulders, and patted his chest over his breastbone, across a tattoo depicting a bareheaded man copulating with a crested griffin. "That is a fearsome path, great lord. You may die."

Sanglant smiled, although he had long since ceased to find his mother's curse amusing. "No creature male nor female may kill me. I do not fear the griffins. Can you guide me across the grasslands to the nesting grounds of the griffins?"

'Nay, great lord. Mine is the power of the wolf, to stalk the ibex and the deer. I am not a griffin fighter. The secrets of the nesting grounds have been lost to our people. No warrior in three generations among the Kirshat tribe has worn griffin wings. We are a weak clan now. Our mothers die young. Our beghs have forgotten how to listen to the wisdom of old women. That is why the war council did not refuse when Bulkezu demanded soldiers for his army."

A shout rose from the guard on watch, followed by the call of the horn, three blats, signifying that an enemy approached. Soldiers hurried out of the shade where they had been resting, lifting shields, hoisting bows or spears, and headed for the vulnerable gate.

The slaves looked up, but did not rise. Sanglant jogged over to the guard tower that flanked the gate. Up on the walls facing northeast, men gestured and pointed. Fulk and Hathui followed him while Sergeant Cobbo herded the remaining slaves back to the cell where Blessing broke her silence and began to cry out again.

'Let me out! Let me out! Anna! I want you! Daddy!" Sanglant clambered up on the wall to the crumbling guard tower with Fulk and Hathui beside him. The pair of guards on duty—Si-bold and Fremen—muttered to each other as they watched. They had marked the riders because of dust, although the troop was still too far away to make out numbers and identifying marks.

Below, in the gate, a dozen men were pulling back the bridge of planks thrown over the pit. Shadow concealed the depths of that steep-sided ditch where Bulkezu was imprisoned. Was Bulkezu moving along the base of the pit, alert to the new development? Already Sanglant heard the unmistakable flutter and whir of wings, faint but distinctive. He shaded his eyes as he squinted westward at the riders approaching the fort through rolling grasslands that stretched out north and west to the horizon. "Quman,"

he said to Fulk.

Fulk shouted down into the courtyard. "Get Lewenhardt up here!" He shaded his eyes, peering at the cloud of dust. "Are you sure, my lord prince? I can't see well enough." "I hear wings."

'Sibold," ordered Fulk, "sound the horn again. I want every man along the wall and a barrier thrown up at the gate to reinforce the ditch. Quman."

Sibold swore merrily before blowing three sharp blats on the horn. Half the men had assembled and the rest came running, buckling on helmets or fastening leather brigandines around their torsos. Above the clatter and shouting Sanglant heard his daughter's muffled shrieks from the cell where he had ordered her shut in.

'My lord prince!" Lewenhardt scrambled up the ladder to the watchtower platform and leaned out as far as he dared over the railing. He wore a ridiculous floppy-brimmed hat that shaded his eyes better than a hand could.

Sanglant set fists on the wall, rubbing the coarse bricks until all thought of Blessing was rubbed out of his mind and he could concentrate on the distant sound that he alone, so far, could hear. He blocked out all other distractions, the sound of planks being dragged across dirt, boots scraping on steps and ladders as men climbed into position along the walls, the sobs of Blessing, a bell ringing in the town… as he listened for the sough of wind through grass, the beat of the sun on earth, the rumble of distant hooves, and the whistle of wings. He listened to their pitch and intensity.

'Griffin wings." He braced himself to get a better look.

Was that a thin shriek caught on the wind, a man crying out in fear and pain? It happened too fast, cut short. He could not be sure.

The wings sang, not in a great chorus and yet more than a few individual voices.

'Not much more than fifty," he said. "Certainly less than one hundred."

'That's a fair lot of dust they're kicking up," commented Fulk. "Can they be so few?"

'More than one hundred," said Lewenhardt. "Perhaps as many as two hundred. They don't all have wings."

'How can they not have wings?" demanded Fulk. "Where is Brother Breschius?" asked Sanglant. "Fremen," said Fulk, "fetch the good brother." Sanglant looked back toward town, visible from here as a jumble of walls and roofs broken by the high tower of the governor's palace and the pale dome marking the Jinna temple. The steady slope of the ground toward the sea caused the land to melt into a shimmering dark flat, the expanse of peaceful waters. Ships were cutting loose from the quay, oars beating as they moved away from the port to escape a possible attack on the town. The ship Wolfhere had escaped on was already out of sight; according to Robert of Salia, who had found Blessing and her new retinue and escorted them back to the camp, that ship had left the harbor before Sanglant had even got the message that Blessing had vanished. Ai, God, what was he to do with his unnatural daughter? How had he been so stupid as to trust Wolfhere? "I see their wings!" cried Sibold triumphantly. "God Above!" swore Lewenhardt as other men along the wall got a better look at the riders. The restless glimmer of wings flashed in the light drawn out across grass, sun caught in white and gray feathers.

'What do you see?" He brushed his fingers along his sword hilt.

'I see griffin wings, my lord prince. One pair. And towers, fitted with gold."

Men hammered away down, knocking beams and wagons into place on either side of the pit.

'A hard barrier to cross," observed Sanglant as he looked down, "but not impossible.

Here comes the frater. Perhaps he knows the secret of these'towers.'"

Fremen came running back with the middle-aged frater in tow. Breschius had some trouble with the ladder because he only had the one hand, but he used his elbow to hook the rungs and hold himself while he shifted his remaining hand and moved up his feet. By the time he got to the top, the approaching riders were slowing down as they neared the fort. The soldiers setting the barricade in place on the outer side of the pit ran across the last two planks, which were then drawn back into the fort. The town had sealed its gates.

The great bell ceased tolling.

'We're on our own," said Fulk, a little amused. "We've no friends among the townsfolk. Did the governor not like you, my lord prince?"

'The governor does not trust us, Captain. Why should she welcome an army of our size into her territory? If she fights us, she may win, but she and her troops and her town will suffer. If she loses, then she loses all. I suppose she hopes we'll take the brunt of the attack and allow her to finish off the rest."

'But we outnumber them."

'The governor? Or those Quman?"

Fulk laughed. "They are wise to fear you, my lord prince."

'Are they?" Or was he simply a fool, chasing madness? The moment he first saw the port town and the broad grasslands spreading north from the sea, he knew he had ridden into a world unlike anything he had ever experienced. With Zacharias gone and possibly dead, he was more than ever dependent on Bulkezu's knowledge. Bulkezu would have many opportunities to betray him or lead him and his army astray. Bulkezu was smart enough to kill them, if he chose to sacrifice himself with them. Yet in such a vast expanse, how could Sanglant track down griffins and sorcerers without the help of someone who knew the land?

'Women!" said Lewenhardt, laughing. "There are Quman warriors with that troop, but there are women as well. Those towers are their crowns. They're hats, of a kind."

'I didn't know the Quman had women," said Sibold, hefting his spear. "I thought they bred with wolf bitches and she-cats."

'It's true that Quman women wear crowns like these towers " said Breschius. "I've seen none of them close at hand, myself."

'Not more than two hundred riders," said Fulk. "Look at their standard. They bear the mark of the Pechanek tribe."

'Ah." Sanglant nodded. "That makes sense. They've come for Bulkezu."

'Do you think so, my lord prince? How would they know we were here, and that we had him?"

'Their shamans have power," said Breschius, "although nothing compared to the power of the Kerayit sorcerer women." "Quman magic killed Bayan," said Sanglant. "My lord!" said Fulk. "If they are after you—!" "Nay, do not fear for me, Captain. Their magic cannot harm me." He touched the amulet that hung at his chest, but the stone made him think of Wolfhere and that made him angry all over again. He must not think about the Eagle's betrayal, and his own gullibility. He must concentrate on what lay before him.

The riders came to a stop at about the limit of the range of a bal-lista, close enough to get a good estimate of their numbers and appearance but not so close that the men in the fort could pick out details and faces. No more than sixty wore wings, but the griffin-winged rider shone beyond the rest, glittering and perilous. About thirty of the riders wore conical hats trimmed with gold plates. One of these hats was so tall, at least as long as Sanglant's arm, that he could not imagine how a person could ride and keep it on her head.

A youthful figure wearing neither wings nor one of the towering hats broke forward from the group, balancing a limp burden across the withers of the horse.

'Lewenhardt, what is it the rider bears before him?" "It is a corpse, my lord prince."

When the rider reached the halfway point between the Quman and the fort, he tipped the burden off the horse and onto the ground.

Lewenhardt winced. "I think that corpse may be the slave who ran from us, my lord prince." »

'And into their grasp, may God have mercy on his soul. Captain, fetch the shaman, the one who calls himself Gyasi." "Can you trust him, my lord prince?"

'We've no one else who can interpret for us. He can prove his worth, or the lack of it."

Fulk clambered down the ladder.

The rider approached to within arrow shot of the walls before reining in his horse 'That boy's not more than twelve or fourteen years of age, I should think," said Lewenhardt.

"Showing off," asked Sanglant, "or expendable?" "I know little enough about the customs of the Quman, my lord prince," said Breschius, "but no boy among them can call himself a man and wear wings on his back until he has killed a man. Thus, the heads they carry."

Sibold shuddered all over. "A nasty piece of work, those shrunken heads." He had a sly gaze, a little impertinent, but part of his particular value as a soldier was his reckless streak. "They say that Lady Bertha didn't bury her mother's head when she took it off Bulkezu but carries it with her as a talisman. Is that true, my lord prince?" "You can ask her yourself, Sibold."

The soldier laughed. "I pray you will not command me to, my lord. She frightens me.

She's cold, that one. I think she may be half mad." "Sibold."

He ducked his head, but the grin still flashed. "Begging your pardon, my lord prince."

'Here is the shaman, my lord prince." Breschius moved aside to make room on the platform as Fulk returned with Gyasi.

'What does this mean?" Sanglant indicated the single horseman and the mass of riders beyond.

'He are a messenger, great lord." He lifted his hands to frame his mouth and let loose a trilling yell.

The rider started noticeably but recovered quickly and urged his mount forward again, halting just beyond the shadow of the wall. He called out in the Quman tongue.

'Great lord, this young worm names himself as the messenger of the mother of Bulkezu, who have come seeking the man who keeps as a prisoner her son." "Go on."

"The mother of Bulkezu wish to know what you want to trade for her son."

'What I wish to trade?" Sanglant leaned against the wall. The heat of the sun washed his face, the swell of wind tugged at his hair. "Which of those is the mother of Bulkezu?

Do you know?"

'They are the mother of Bulkezu," agreed Gyasi, nodding toward the troop of women and their winged escort.

Sanglant glanced at Breschius, but the frater shrugged. It was hard to tell how well Gyasi understood Wendish. "I cannot trade Bulkezu I have defeated him in battle and kept him alive in exchange for a chance to win his freedom. I need him to guide my army safely through the grasslands and lead us to the lands where we may hunt griffins and meet sorcerers."

'Is this what you truly wish, great lord? It is a troublesome road. Many troubles will kiss you."

'This is what I truly wish. I cannot give up Bulkezu. Yet what bargain might I strike with his tribe, so that they will not hinder me?"

Gyasi hummed to himself in a singsong manner, a man pondering deep thoughts.

"People are tricky. One man may promise life to his brother and after this stab him in the back."

'There are those who are still angry that you allowed Bulkezu to survive the battle whole and healthy, my lord prince," said Breschius. "I do not forget that he was the one responsible for Prince Bayan's death. Neither does Princess Sapientia." "Yet you ride with me, Brother Breschius."

'As does Princess Sapientia. Yet I do not think she had much choice in the matter, although she is the heir."

'Is she? King Henry has other children. He has a child by Queen Adelheid, do not forget, whom he may favor. Why do you remain with me, Brother Breschius? Whom do you serve?" "I serve the truth, my lord prince, and God." "And me?"

Breschius' smile brought light to his face. He was a man too humble to be in love with his own cleverness but too wise to denigrate himself. "Whatever risk you may pose, my lord prince, I believe we are in more danger from those who seek to wield sorcery without constraint than from your ambition."

'I pray you, my lord prince," said Hathui, who had remained silent until now. "I would object to Bulkezu returning to his tribe. He has never paid what he owes me for the damage he did to my person."

Sanglant turned back to the Quman shaman. "Tell the boy all I i have said and say also that there is one among my servants who | has a personal grievance against Bulkezu, who stole her honor and harmed her body. She seeks recompense. For these reasons, we will not release him. Yet we do not seek war with his people. Once I have my griffins and have met my sorcerers, Bulkezu can go free. Until then, perhaps they will consider a truce."

Gyasi relayed the offer, and the messenger gave a shout of acknowledgment before returning to the troop. They watched him pull up beside the rank of women. After some time, the boy returned with two riders beside him, one of whom wore a tall, conical hat sheathed in gold plates, dazzling in the sun, and draped with bright orange-and-ivory beads strung together like falling curtains of color. Her tunic was bright blue, cut away at knee length and slit for riding, and beneath it she wore striped trousers of blue and green with beads sewn around the knee and the ankle. Beneath the weight of her garments he could barely make out her face, dark, unsmiling, with broad cheekbones and pale lips.

The other rider was also a woman, but she wore only a soft felt hat, drab and unornamented, against the sun, and a plain leather tunic with loose trousers underneath.

Her hair had the golden brown sheen of a westerner or a hill-woman; surely she was no Ojiman, most likely a slave if the thick bronze bracelets on either wrist indicated her status.

The boy delivered his message and, once he had done speaking, tossed a cloth bundle onto the ground. Wings of cloth spread to reveal a dozen gold necklaces.

'What does he say?" demanded Sanglant.

'The gold, to pay for honor stolen."

Hathui's eyes widened as she leaned over the brick rampart, staring at the bounty of gold lying below. "I accept!" she said breathlessly. "God Above! I can dower my nephews and nieces with such riches!"

'And the two women?" Sanglant asked.

Gyasi scratched the tattoo of the eight-legged horse and its rider decorating his scrawny chest. The rider wore a conical hat like those of the mothers, but its features showed no markedly female cast. He hummed and mumbled to himself, bobbing his head and hopping on one foot like a nervous crow. At last, he spoke. "The mother will see Bulkezu before she negotiate further. That way she can see if he are truly living, and not dead."

Sanglant grinned, feeling the familiar rush of exhilaration as he considered not whether but how far to leap. He called to the men at the gate. "I'm coming down. Throw a plank over the ditch. Keep your arrows and spears ready."

'My lord!" Their astonished cries were answer enough, but they obeyed, as they always did. Otherwise they would not have followed him so far and on such a dangerous road.

He scrambled down the ladder, leaving most of his attendants above to keep watch, and jogged over to the barrier. Clambering over the wagons, he set foot on a broad plank just now thrust out over the ditch by one of the soldiers. From below, Bulkezu's mocking laughter rose to greet him. The prisoner's figure stood half lost in the shadow, face upturned to study him, features ghostly and indistinct.

'Is the prince come to fight me? Will the dog leap into the pit to battle the griffin? Or does it fear me still?"

Sanglant heard the approaching hooves, and his blood sang with the pitch of approaching battle as he strode over the plank. The wood rocked beneath him, but he did not lose his balance. He did not fear a fall.

'Throw down the worm, so that I might make a meal of it. Or does the dog-prince take his pleasures with the crawling things?"

He jumped lightly onto solid ground as the riders rounded the corner of the fort and stopped, as he stopped. They faced each other. The woman was too young, surely, to be Bulkezu's mother; her nose was too flat, more stub than nose, for her to be handsome, but she had brilliant black eyes, as wicked as those of a hawk, and a ferocious frown so marked that his grin faded and he paused, wondering if he had miscalculated their intentions.

The slave woman beside her looked Sanglant over quite frankly, as though appraising his worth and his possibilities for stud, while her mistress, ignoring Sanglant, rode to the lip of the ditch and looked down. The slave really had quite an attractive shape under that leather tunic, full, round breasts, red lips, an amorous gaze—

It was too quiet. No one was talking Looking down into the pit, he was so startled he almost lost his balance and fell.

Bulkezu had bolted away from the shadow of his kinswoman. Up against the far end of the pit, he cowered like a rabbit run into a corner. The fearsome begh who had united the Quman hordes, slaughtered untold hapless Wendish-folk, and defeated Prince Bayan in battle was utterly terrified.

Sanglant's soldiers cried out, jeering at the man they had all come to hate. They pressed up along the walls, against the wall of wagons, every one of them, crowding next to each other to see him shamed.

'Silence!" cried Sanglant.

They gave him silence.

The woman lifted her gaze to look at Sanglant. A hawk might look so, measuring its prey. He kept his gaze steady on hers, neither retreating nor advancing, and after a moment she reined her mount away. By now, Gyasi had reached the wall of wagons, standing up on the bed of one to survey the scene with alarm.

'Great lord! Have a care!"

The gold-crowned woman reached her attendants and spoke to the lad. When she had finished, the boy spoke.

'What does he say?" asked Sanglant when the lad stopped.

'She ask if you are the stallion to be held in kind until Bulkezu is returned to them."

'She wants a hostage to ensure our good faith."

'It is common among the tribes to exchange a valued daughter or son for another, to keep the peace. She makes a powerful offer, great lord. If you give her yourself in surety, then her tribesmen will grant you escort across the plains. This we call the gift for the knives."

'The gift for the knives?"

'So no man will stab you in the back."

'Will other Quman tribes respect that, should we come across them?"

'Perhaps, great lord. They scatter to the winds after the fall of Bulkezu. Maybe there are wolves who will nip at your heels, but no army will fight you when you have so many soldiers to yourself. No tribe will be so bold to fight the man who defeated the dreaded Bulkezu. He is the man who killed two griffins. No other begh in the generations of our tribes have done so."

'An escort and a pledge of safe conduct—in exchange for a hostage? One valuable enough to me, and to them, that they will expect me not to abandon my hostage into their hands? One of worthy rank? One too valuable to lose?"

'Until you depart this land and return Bulkezu."

Brother Breschius appeared beside Gyasi, looking wan and troubled. "You know what savages the Quman are, my lord prince. How can you seal a treaty with them, knowing they are Wendar's great enemy?"

'Who is not, these days? I do not trust the Arethousans, nor have I any reason to believe they have guides who can lead us where we need to go. Nay. Lady Eudokia cannot help us, nor can we trust her."

'Do you know the customs of the steppe peoples, my lord prince?" Breschius pressed his case fervently. "If the lady wishes you to attend her tribe as a hostage, it is not only your presence she wants. You are a great lord strong enough to defeat her son. Among these people, the old mothers breed men like horses. They'll want your seed for her bloodline and her tribe."

'God help me," said Sanglant. "A stallion brought in to breed the mares." Lady Ilona had warned him, in her own way. But he hadn't believed her. He hadn't thought he'd be making bargains so soon.

The sun bled gold across the grass as its rim touched the western hills. Soon it would be dark. The soldiers waited in a remarkably uneasy silence. Even Blessing had, at long last, stopped shrieking.