Sorrow and Rage whined, licking his face, as he sat back on his -r,'u.

heels. The WiseMothers, in their slow and patient way, also sought to mitigate the furious storm that was coming. The stone crowns were the key. If he could reach Stronghand and the WiseMothers, then maybe, for once, he could act. His knowledge might aid them. Adica's death would not have been in vain if by having witnessed he could save others. A horse halted beside him. "Are you praying?" asked Father Benignus.

He shook mud off his hands before wiping them on his leggings. "We should all pray, Father," he said, rising. "A storm is coming." The veil that concealed the man's face shuddered as Benignus shifted his seat in the way an exhausted man fears sliding off into the mire. Yet he did not dismount. He lifted a gloved hand and indicated that Alain should follow him.

Bartholomew had waited at Alain's side all this time, and he trudged alongside, keeping an arm's length from the hounds.

Alain surveyed the camp. Including the new arrivals, perhaps three score souls sheltered here, although fully a third of them did not bide here of their own free will.

They were the ones whose feet were bound so tightly with rope, as a horse is hobbled, that they could only shuffle as they went along on their errands carrying water, milking goats, and grinding grain. All of these captives were women, and there were no children in camp except for some infants bundled against their mothers' hips and three filthy toddlers sitting on their naked backsides in the mud and squalling like stuck pigs. Stinker, passing the children, swore loudly, slapped one hard, grabbed a second and shook it, and then for good measure slapped the young woman who came running to quiet their terrified shrieks. "Bitch! These screeching brats can be sold as easily as their sisters and brothers if you sluts can't keep their mouths shut!"

The rope on Alain's wrists had been little more than a show of docility. He shook it free now and ran over to place himself between the cringing woman and the stinking, scarred man, who looked eager to crack her across the face a second time. Maybe he was just waiting for an excuse.

'What manner of creature are you," Alain demanded, "who is such a coward that he must show his strength by bullying those so much weaker than he is?"

Heads turned. Dog-Ears guffawed outright and was kicked by his companion, Red.

Bartholomew said a few words too softly for Alain to make out. The captive women around the camp went as still as if they'd been touched by a guivre's eye, and although none of them looked toward him he was immediately and intensely aware that they all knew exactly what was going on.

'You ass-licking bastard!" roared Stinker, who had the fight he'd been wanting. He lunged.

Sorrow leaped at him, but Stinker had already anticipated an attack, shifting sideways, and thwacked the hound on the side of the head with his staff, laying the poor beast out.

Rage bolted back, yip-ping but not fleeing, and she kept her distance from the staff as she circled with a dog's measure, looking for an opening. Alain stood his ground, not even raising his arms to fend off the blow. The woman dropped to the ground behind him with a cry of fear and despair.

Father Benignus turned. A gust of wind rattled the trees.

'Eloie! Eloie! Isabaoth!" He lifted a hand and crushed something in his fist.

Stinker jerked up short an arm's length from Alain. His scream cut the air, and his face contorted into a rictus of agony as he twitched and danced, slapping himself silly and groaning and shrieking. His leggings soaked with piss, followed by the stink of his bowels as he voided them, and he gibbered and coughed up blood and finally, mercifully, collapsed in a stinking heap on the earth at Alain's feet.

Silence settled over the camp. The wind died.

One of the toddlers hiccuped a sob before being hustled away by the woman, herself sniffling and choking down tears. The other two children trotted after her on their scrawny legs. Hobbled women scooped them up and stood trembling, eyes lowered.

Sorrow whined and, with a grunt, padded gingerly over to Alain, who stroked him carefully and found the hardening bruise where the staff had struck him along the shoulder. Rage, still growling softly, loped up to stand beside him.

Stinker had fallen onto his back. The coarse burlap rags he wore had a fist-sized hole burned through the cloth. Alain knelt by the dead man's shoulders and reached toward the frayed burn.

'Don't touch it!" gasped Bartholomew. "Only Father Benignus is allowed—" He faltered and glanced up to where Father Benignus sat silent, shoulders bowed as if from exhaustion. Ducking his head, he waited for a blow.

No one moved.

Alain peeled away burned tunic from weeping flesh. Stinker wore an amulet around his neck, and it was this crude binding that had erupted into flame and scorched his skin.

He stank, indeed, and not just from the pulpy mess he had voided in his death throes. He had been burned from the inside out.

Alain rose and straddled the corpse, lifting his chin as he looked at Father Benignus.

"Is this justice?"

Bartholomew made a strangled noise. What had passed for silence before deepened into a dreadful anticipatory pause, the moment before the executioner's ax falls.

'What is justice?" replied Father Benignus in a voice so weary it might be called cruel.

He shook the reins and guided his horse forward, halting beside the corpse. With a stick, he fished for the amulet, hooked it, and yanked it hard enough to break the thong that held it around Stinker's neck. Flipping up the stick, he caught the amulet in his hand and rode his horse toward a wagon covered with a tent to make a kind of house on wheels.

'Bartholomew, bring him. I want no more interruptions."

'Yes, Father Benignus," whispered Bartholomew, scratching his warty nose. He did not look at Alain; he sidestepped Stinker's corpse and shied anxiously away from Sorrow's growl. "Come, then, you fool," he muttered in a low voice. "Can't you see how dangerous it is to keep the good father waiting?"

'Who are these women?" Alain demanded, not moving.

'Fair winnings."

'No better than slaves, fettered so. What happened to their children?"

'You ask too many questions. If you're stupid enough, you'll ask Father Benignus, not me. I'm just a poor man."

'Even a poor man is made in God's image, is he not? Is this right, what you do?"

Bartholomew had begun to shake, and by the sheen of sweat on his face and the pallor under his scruffy beard Alain suddenly realized that the man was terrified. He twisted the cloth of his tunic between his fingers, right over a slight bulge in the fabric where he, too, wore an amulet.

Alain shook his head. "I am sorry to see any man suffer so, but surely you and the others had committed grave crimes. I see the residue of them everywhere. I pray you, friend, give some thought to the fate of your soul."

'Here's the wagon," muttered Bartholomew. "Wait outside."

Father Benignus had handed the reins of his horse off to a stammering youth, who held its bridle while the hooded man swung awkwardly from the saddle to the bed of the wagon and, bending double, vanished inside the shelter.

'Stay!" Rage and Sorrow sat beside the wagon, but they looked ready to spring into action. As Alain scrambled up onto the tailgate, he heard the startled murmurs of the bandits in camp. Everyone was watching, as wolves watched an injured elk, waiting for its thrashing to subside enough that they can dart in to tear out its throat. He ducked in after Father Benignus.

'I knew you would come." Father Benignus had his back to Alain as he lit a candle and dropped the amulet into a bowl filled with a clear liquid. It hissed, and the liquid boiled and subsided, leaching a strong vinegar smell. "The others fear me, as they should. You should, too."

The tent vaulted just high enough that he could stand upright in the center of the wagon. The flame flickered uneasily as the man unwrapped the veil and took off his broad-brimmed hat. He had long, greasy hair that might once have been blond. That much Alain glimpsed in the dim light before Benignus turned to face him and sank down on a narrow bed, exhausted.

He was horribly disfigured. Lesions had eaten away half his face, exposing bone. His eyes wept pus, and sores had long since eaten his ears.

'Are you a leper?" Alain shuddered. Leprosy passed from one man to another by means of contamination. It would strike any man. It was God's worst punishment. Yet having come so far Alain would not retreat.

Because Father Benignus had no lips it seemed that he smiled all the time, a skeleton's grimace. His teeth were good, strong and white; he was only missing two.

'I am no leper." Benignus said mockingly in his soft voice. "I am least among men, but no leper. I am the one so easily forgotten even by those who used and discarded me. So easily forgotten by pawns and biscops alike, for you were only a pawn, as I was, weren't you? Although Father Agius kept you close. Did he pollute you with his heresy?"

Alain recognized his voice, even distorted as it was by his affliction. He remembered pale blue eyes.

'I know who you are. I called you Brother Willibrod once. You were a cleric in the retinue of Biscop Antonia. She set you and the others to binding and working. You made the amulets that protected Lady Sabella's forces from the spell laid on humankind by the glance of the guivre's eye. They hoped to win the battle against King Henry."

'But Father Agius killed the guivre! All our work for nothing! So we were abandoned, all of us who had poisoned ourselves doing God's work! All but Heribert, who never soiled himself with binding and working! We were left to the mercy of the sisters of St.

Benigna who locked us in an attic and left us to die!" Willibrod shook all over, then gagged, and reached for a flask hung from a nail pounded into the frame onto which the tent's fabric had been nailed. His palsied hand could not grip the leather flask.

Alain stepped forward, unhooked the flask, and took out the stopper. Willibrod drank nothing stronger than vinegar, apparently, tinged with a scent so sharp it gave Alain a headache. He handed the flask to the other man. Even so, Willibrod could not hold it because he trembled so violently, and the flask tipped out of his hands and spilled onto the floorboards.

Gasping and choking, Willibrod cried out in pain as liquid pooled over the wood and began to soak in. He flung himself onto the floor and writhed there, licking it up like a frantic dog. Alain dropped down beside him.

'Don't touch me!" Willibrod jerked back from Alain's hand only to slam into the bed's wooden frame, but the impact had no effect on him.

'I pray you, Brother. Let me." Alain salvaged the flask; perhaps a third of it had leaked out. The liquid stung his fingers and he winced at its touch.

Willibrod yanked the flask out of his hand and set it to his lips, gulping desperately while Alain hastily wiped his fingers on his leggings. The vinegar was raising blisters on his skin.

'What are you poisoning yourself with?" He blew on his hand, but blisters kept popping up where the liquid had burned him.

Willibrod lowered the flask. His hands had stopped shaking, but his face was as ghastly as ever, his mouth caught in its eternal grimace. "The distillation of life," he whispered, eyes lolling back like one drugged. "The souls of dying men. It makes a strong potion."

Had the pain of his affliction driven him insane? Yet the expression in his eyes had an awful clarity, the look of a man who knows he has done something so horrible that he can never atone for it. "Kill me," Willibrod begged hoarsely, voice barely audible. The aroma of the vinegar and the putrid smell of sores and lesions stifled, as choking as smoke.

Alain coughed, fighting for breath, and took a step closer to the other man just as a shudder passed through Willibrod's frame, a palsy that made his body jerk and tremble.

Alain bent to hold him down, but before he could touch him, Willibrod's eyes shifted; the stark agony of his gaze dulled and his expression changed in the same manner that the sky changes color when a cloud covers the sun.

'Stand back!" The stink of his breath startled Alain badly—it was like the stench that rises off the battlefield, attracting carrion crows. It was the reek of decay and despair, yet he spoke like a triumphant general. "Do not touch me! Why have you come here?"

Outside, Rage barked twice, then fell silent.

Alain stepped backward to touch the entrance flap. "You are not Willibrod any longer."

'Willibrod died in the attic under the care of the sisters of St. Benigna. Life did not leave him entirely, but he died nevertheless." That death's-head grin did not falter. "Now I am Father Benignus, taking my revenge on the world."

'You are taking your revenge on folk who never did you any wrong. Folk who had nothing to do with the pain inflicted on you by Biscop Antonia and Lady Sabella. The evil done to you does not justify the evil you do to innocent others."

'What makes you think I believe in right and wrong any longer? How did God reward my loyalty or the faithful service of my fellow clerics? Now I have power, and I will use it as the whim takes me. I do not serve either God or the Enemy. I serve only myself."

The potion had renewed him. He rose, looking vigorous and unexpectedly powerful, if no less hideous. "Are you with me, Brother Alain? Or do you prefer to die and let your soul feed mine?"

JLIATJHl swept through the entrance and stopped short. It wasn't only the run from Sorgatani's wagon that made her heart race. What she saw made her tremble with anger and apprehension. The tent lay empty, its disarray evidence of the hasty departure of Sanglant and his retinue. He was gone, gone, gone. How could he be so stupid?

A bowllike lamp placed on a closed chest kindled with the force of her feelings. Flame sheeted the surface of the oil.

When she spoke, her voice shook. "He'll have gone back to his army."

'So we believe." The shaman did not venture past the threshold, only ducked her head down to examine the interior. Behind her, the misty late night haze dissipated as dawn's twilight lightened the sky.

'You saw him go?"

'I did not, but others did."

'They didn't stop him?"

The oil burned so fiercely that she reached with her mind's eye and shuttered it as one might shutter a window. Just like that, the flames died. Smoke curled up, vanished, and left a faint scent. She crossed to look down into the lamp. That brief flare had scarcely affected the level of the oil in the shallow lamp bowl. In Sorgatani's wagon, while searching for Hanna, an entire bowl of oil had been consumed. She had imagined innocently, foolishly, that the force of her seeing had eaten up the oil quickly but now she realized that she had drifted within that gateway for far longer than she had guessed. She had searched for Hanna all night while Sanglant gathered up his daughter and his servant and staggered back to those he trusted.

She kicked the pallet he had lain on. It felt good to have something to hit.

'We'll have to go after him," she said, gathering up her weapons, which she had left on the ground between Blessing's pallet and the tent wall.

'Why must you go?" asked Li'at'dano as Liath came outside. The centaur shaman seemed honestly puzzled. "We are allies, you and I. There is much to be done if we are to combat these Seven Sleepers. We have a long journey ahead of us, unless you can weave the crowns."

'I'm going after my husband," said Liath as she adjusted the weight of her sword and the angle of her quiver.

'He is only a male. You can find another mate when it is time for you to breed again."

'Not one like him!" The comment gave her pause. She swept her gaze over the encampment. "Why are there no male centaurs among you? There are both men and women among your Kerayit allies, but I see no males among your kind at all."

Li'at'dano blinked. For a moment Liath feared she had insulted the shaman. Although her features looked very like those worn by hu mankind, there was a subtle difference in the way expressions played across her face that betrayed her essential otherness.

She is like me but not like me, thought Liath. ,' cannot assume that she thinks as I do, or that our goals match exactly. We are allies, not sisters.

'I pray you," she said aloud, wishing she had asked Sorgatani more questions about the centaurs. With Sorgatani, she had felt so entirely comfortable; she had felt that no comment might be misconstrued, only explained or expanded on. She had felt understood, in harmony. "I pray you, I mean no insult if I have spoken of something that you consider taboo."

'We are as we are, and as you see," said Li'at'dano finally. "That you are otherwise is a mystery to us. It is the great weakness of humankind."

'I don't understand you, but I ask you, forgive me if I behave in any manner that goes against your ways. I must go after my husband. If there are any who will accompany me, I would appreciate an escort. I do not know where his camp lies."

'You have an escort already." Li'at'dano pointed toward the western slope. "The beast fears and desires your heart of fire."

The griffin paced on the grassy hillside, keeping well out of range of the centaur bows.

The rising sun gilded her feathers and she shone, her wing feathers shimmering as the light played across them, her beauty all the more striking because she was so huge and so dangerous and wild. Her tail lashed the grass; she was disturbed and anxious.

'God help me," murmured Liath. Yet there was no way but to go past her, not if she wanted to follow Sanglant.

'West and north," added Li'at'dano helpfully. "You can see the smoke of their campfires. Do not make us wait long. We must move quickly. The wheel of the heaven turns no matter what we do here on Earth."

'I know." She turned back to meet the shaman's gaze, which appeared to her cold and steady but not hostile, simply quite another thing from the look of humankind. "I could have remained with my kinfolk, beyond the heavens," she said at last. "I could have turned my back on humankind entirely, but I did not. These are the chains that bind me to Earth. I cannot escape them now, nor do I wish to."

Li'at'dano nodded, an acknowledgment but not, precisely, comprehension. "It is not our way. I will not interfere with your customs, because you are not mine to command.

Go quickly."

Go quickly.

Suddenly the fear that something awful had happened to Sanglant and her daughter overwhelmed her. She had journeyed so far; what if she lost him now?

As soon as the griffin saw Liath coming, she padded away, tail beating the grass like a whip. Liath followed her; no question that the beast knew where she was going, and Liath saw traces of a trail-not an actual path cut through the landscape but the evidence left by the passage of a small party some time earlier: broken stems of grass, beads of blood dried on glossy leaves, a spot where someone had lain down to rest. These minute signs reassured her, but they made her wonder.

'Why do you lead me?" she asked aloud. "Why does this path interest you? What do you seek?"

The griffin swung its huge head around to stare at her, its amber gaze unwinking. It ducked its head down and with a shudder unfolded its wings to flash in the sun like a host of swords before furling them along its body. They moved on at a brisk pace. Liath had to run to keep up with the griffin's strides.

She began to suspect the worst when, soon after, they reached a place where the ground was churned up by the trampling of many feet, where the soil had been ripped up by the force of claws digging into the ground.

Sanglant had, after all, been hunting griffins. Yet he was far too weak to kill one.

There wasn't enough blood, only drops visible here and there. If he had been torn to pieces by the griffin, then it had not taken place here, and if he had slaughtered the griffin, a field of gore would have marked their struggle.

Her breath came in ragged gasps as she sprinted, seeing the smoke of their campfires just over the next rise.

The griffin bounded to the crest of the hill and paused there, shining in the midmorning sun to scream its rage as a challenge. Adrenaline hammered through her as she bolted forward, hoping she had not come too late. When she crested the rise and saw the unexpectedly large camp laid out in an orderly fashion below her, when she saw—

and how could she miss it?—what Sanglant had done, she began to laugh or else, surely, she would have cried.

'THERE S a griffin on the hill, my lord prince!" Even Captain Fulk, pushed to his limit, could sound frightened sometimes. "God Above! And a woman walking with it.

She has a bow." The hesitation that followed these words was so heavy that Fulk's astonishment seemed audible. "Lord have mercy!"

'My lord prince," said Heribert softly. Joyfully. "It is Liath."

Sanglant had never known it could hurt to open your eyes, but it did. Everything hurt.

Breathing hurt. The sunlight hurt, but he looked anyway at the dazzle of light on the eastern slope. It was hard to see anything with the sun so bright and the beast that paced there so very large and fierce-looking, its wings gleaming ominously as it stretched them wide.

It screamed a challenge. Horses whinnied in fear, and he heard men shouting. In response to that cry the silver griffin strained and fought against the ropes and chains that bound it, but the soldiers had done their work well. One rope snapped, but the others, and the chains thrown over its deadly wings, held. Surly darted in to grab the thrashing rope and with the help of several of his fellows tied it down. No one got hurt this time, although it had been a different outcome hours ago when they had walked the hobbled, hooded griffin into camp and staked it down.

'What do we do, my lord prince?" asked Fulk, still nervous. Horses stamped and whinnied, not liking the approach of the griffin one bit despite the calming work of their grooms.

That griffin did indeed look fearsome. Its iron tang drifted on the breeze. It had, no doubt, come to rescue its mate. But what on earth was Liath doing walking beside it as though it were her obedient hound?

'Where is Lewenhardt? We'll need every archer. Spearmen set in a perimeter, in staggered ranks. Double the guard on the horses if you haven't already."

He rested on a couch his soldiers had dragged out into the center of camp so that he could lie close—but not too close—beside his cap tured griffin and talk to it, when he didn't doze off. It had to become accustomed to him.

He gritted his teeth and made an attempt to stand, but he did not have the strength.

Hathui and Fulk and Breschius moved to help him, but he waved them away impatiently.

'Let her come to me. I need not move."

,' cannot move.

"My lord." They glanced at each other; if thoughts were words, he would have heard an earful, but they remained mercifully silent.

Liath started down the hill toward them while the griffin remained on the hill. Maybe it had intelligence enough to be wary of the soldiers forming up throughout camp, faces grim and weapons ready. Maybe she commanded it with words alone. Maybe she had that much power.

'Do you wish for shade, my lord prince?" asked Hathui.

'No," he said, because the sun's warmth—such as it was so early in the spring—soaked into his skin in a healing fashion, as though light itself could knit him back together again.

His retinue gathered beside him, keeping well back from the hooded griffin. It had not liked entering the camp; the scent of horses stirred its blood, and Sibold had taken a gash to his shoulder and several men had been clawed, but in the end they had secured it without loss of life. Blinded by the cloak, it had submitted. Now it stirred again, knowing its mate was close. But that hood still constrained it. It hated and feared blindness.

It was his, now, and he did not intend to lose it. Not even to his wife.

She walked into camp, armed and glorious, and approached him, halting a body's length from the couch on which he lay. He found himself distracted by that long snake of a braid falling over her shoulder and across one breast, all the way down past her waist.

He remembered the way the tip of that golden-brown braid swayed along her backside when she walked.

'Prince Sanglant," she said in the formal manner, jolting him back to the cold, cruel present.

Two could play that game.

'I am Prince Sanglant." In case you have forgotten.

Her expression did not change, but her chin lifted, so he knew she had taken the blow.

Yet she went on in the same vein.

'I am come to make an alliance with you. You marched east seek ing griffins and sorcerers. I see that you have captured your griffin. What of the second part of your quest?"

'I believe I can train a griffin to eat from my hands and come at my call. Are sorcerers as obedient?"

Anger sparked in her eyes—really sparked; it was uncanny how the blue fire of her irises flashed as though it burned. "May we speak privately?" she asked finally. He had enough strength to lift a hand. Fulk chased off the onlookers and finally only Fulk, Hathui, Breschius, and Heribert were left in attendance, hovering close, anxious and pale.

"I listen," Sanglant said, in the formal manner. "Where is our daughter?"

'With me, under my care and that of her loyal attendants who have served her faithfully for four long years, never leaving her side and even risking their own lives to keep her safe." He read how the blow landed by the tightening of her lips and the twitch of her shoulder, but she did not reel or stagger.

'She suffers from a malady that cannot be healed by any ordinary physician. She will die if she is not protected by sorcery until we understand how we might heal her."

'She has not died yet. I believe it was your return that injured her."

'Sanglant!" Yet she hesitated. She thought, hard and deeply, although her expression gave away nothing. His attendants stared at her, amazed at her presence; amazed, perhaps, by this negotiation that was more like the maneuvering of rival families than the reunion of intimate partners.

Heribert seemed ready to speak, but Sanglant caught his gaze and, with a sharp sigh, Heribert shifted from one foot to the other and kept his mouth shut.

'Sanglant." Again she hesitated, but only to gather her voice, to speak softly enough that even those standing nearby might not hear her words. "Why do you speak to me as though we are enemies?"

He did not care what others heard. He wanted witnesses. "Enemies? Worse than enemies! You abandoned me! Just left me behind in Verna. Your daughter is enchanted, spelled in a way no one here can comprehend, but you were not here to combat it. Now maybe she will die. I was left behind with all else. For four years! I thought you vowed to be faithful to me, but you proved no different than my mother. Husband and child, abandoned without thought."

It was so good to fight back. He wanted his words to hurt her, and they did. He saw her face go gray; he saw her hands curl and her entire body quiver.

She was not without weapons of her own.

'Your mother was never married to King Henry."

'That's right! She'd made no pledge to him! She had no obligation to uphold! But you did! Why did you leave us? Why did you wait so long to return?"

Now she was really angry; she shone with it. "I did not abandon you! I was taken from Verna by my kinfolk. I never asked to go with them. When I could not follow them higher up into the heavens, I found myself in your mother's land, where I learned all that Anne says is true, and worse besides, that her understanding of the truth is twisted by her own fanaticism. But now I have walked the spheres. I have seen through the gateway of the burning stone into the ancient past. I know what destruction awaits us if Anne weaves the spell a second time."

She had really worked herself up. Her voice rang as if above the din of battle, carrying over the camp so that the griffin quieted and every soul stopped and turned.

'I did not leave you for four years. In the lands of the Ashioi, time does not run by the same measure it does here. There is an old sorcerer still alive there who lived in the days of the great cataclysm when his people and their land were torn from Earth. He is your grandfather, Sanglant. Still alive, although by our measure he would have lived—ai, God—twenty centuries or more. Yet he seems no older than an elder who boasts seventy years. When I walked in that far country, when I ascended the mage's ladder and walked the spheres, it seemed to me that no more than seven days had passed. It seemed that I left Verna only a handful of days ago. I could not have returned sooner! I did everything I could. I suffered, and I learned, and I placed myself in danger, and I have grasped the heart of the power that is within me. Maybe I am the only one here who can stop Anne.

Maybe that duty, that obligation, has been forced upon me. Maybe that obligation has to come first. Maybe the lives of untold countless thousands and tens of thousands have to count for more than one life, even the life and happiness of my beloved husband. I am sorry that four years passed for you! I would not wish for it to have happened in this way, but there was nothing I could have done differently. I could have stayed there, with my kinfolk, in a place much better and brighter than this one! But I chose to return to you. To Blessing. To Earth. To my father's home. And I surely expected to come back to a better welcome than this!"

In the absolute stunned silence that followed this declamation a rolling rumbling whoosh of flame erupted along the ridge, causing the big griffin to take wing and circle away to a safer resting place. Grass sizzled and soldiers cried aloud. Smoke poured heavenward as Liath looked up, startled, and saw the spreading fury of the fires. With an intent gaze, attention shifting entirely and horribly away from him, she frowned. The fires snuffed out, just like that. Smoke puffed; ash sprinkled down over the camp and drifted away on the wind.

Sanglant had become suffused with an entirely unexpected—or foredoomed—flush of arousal just looking at her, being close enough really to smell the perfume of her. His anger made his senses that much more on edge and her presence that much more intimate, although they did not touch. She was so beautiful, not in the common way but in the remembered way, when he had dreamed of her those nights in Gent, when he had woken up beside her those nights in Verna and been astonished and delighted and utterly famished, starving for the touch of her skin, her hands, her lips.

Maybe he couldn't walk yet, but he had strength enough to move his arms. He caught her around the back of the neck, where skin and hair met at the nape. Just that touch made him drunk with ecstasy. He pulled her head toward him and kissed her. And kissed her.

And kissed her.

Her warmth melted him like the sun's fire, as though desire itself could knit him back together again.

'My lord prince! The griffin!"

He released Liath as she pulled away from him, jumping to her feet. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, as passionate as he was. But behind her, the griffin stalked through the line of tents. Men cowered, but the beast did not strike. Fulk stepped forward, spear raised, but Liath intercepted him.

'Don't move!" she said sharply.

Heribert had gone gray-white, like curdled milk, and Hathui tensed, her mouth a grimace, as she prepared herself for death. Only Breschius stared in outright awe, gaze lit with wonder, as the griffin swung its head to examine him. The frater looked ready to die at that moment, as long as he was slain by something so terribly beautiful.

Then the creature moved past him and loomed over Sanglant.

'Don't move," said Liath, but of course he could not move even had he meant to kill it.

An iron reek rolled off it like the heat of the forge, soaking him to the bones. He had to close his eyes; his face was sweating.

'Now what?" he asked, cracking open his eyes. He almost laughed. He was entirely helpless; it could take his head off, and even his mother's curse could not save him then.

Yet he could not keep his gaze away from his wife's form, glimpsed beyond that massive eagle's head. He knew what lay beneath Liath's tunic; he saw the curve of her hips, the swell of her breasts, and frankly after all this time the griffin seemed rather more a distraction than a danger. At this moment. At this instant. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to die if you expired in the arms of the one you loved best.

The griffin huffed, a wheezing cough, and the silver griffin uttered a yelping call in answer.

'Do you wish to free her mate?" Liath asked.

'No," he said defiantly. "I need griffin feathers. A live beast serves me as well or better than a dead one. I claim him."

'So does she." She, too, was laughing—although not aloud. Her expression sang with it. She didn't fear the griffins, and more importantly she still desired him.

The griffin lowered its head until that deadly beak hovered an arm's length from his face, seeking his scent or an understanding of his essence.

'Do you still love me?" he asked, thinking that he might die before he could take another breath. He had to know.

Now she did laugh. "I swore an oath to never love any man but you, Sanglant, so it scarcely matters, does it? I bound myself. I will never be free of you."

'Thank God."

The griffin huffed again, a noise that shuddered through its body, and lifted its head, then sat down on its haunches like a watchdog. The audible gasps of the soldiers and his attendants flowed around him like the murmur of a rising wind. An iron feather shook free and drifted down to slice through the grass beside his couch. He reached and found that if he grasped the quill and kept his fingers away from the feathered vane and edges, he did not cut himself.

'I couldn't even kill Bulkezu," he said in a low voice, staring at the feather. The anger wasn't gone, only swallowed. "I need this griffin, or you may as well lead the army yourself."

She grimaced as a shadow covered her face. "I am no leader. I am no regnant."

'You are Taillefer's heir!"

'I am not!" she cried triumphantly. "Anne is not my mother. I am not the child of any human woman. Do not burden me with Taillefer's legacy. I am rid of it."

He let go of the feather and shut his eyes as a spasm of pain twisted through his chest.

After a while, he could speak again.

'If you are not Anne's child—if you are not Taillefer's great grandchild. What of Blessing, then? What of her claims?"

'You are the child of a regnant, Sanglant. Blessing is Henry's granddaughter. Isn't that claim enough?"

No.

For all this time he had paraded Blessing in front of his allies as the rightful heir of Taillefer. To discover the claim wasn't true silenced him.

The griffin settled down to rest her eagle's head on her forelegs. She closed her eyes and huffed once more, the strength of that sound rippling through her shoulders and tawny haunches. Her tail slapped the ground, and stilled.

'I am not even Anne's daughter," she repeated so softly that he heard her only because of his unnaturally keen hearing. "I am the bastard child of my father, Bernard, and a captive fire daimone. It's true Da was born into a noble house, but it is the most minor of lineages."

'You said once that Sturm was your kinsman."

'So Wolfhere told me. I believe it to be true. But Wolfhere lied to me about Anne, so maybe he lied to me about that as well."

'Ai, God," whispered Sanglant as the tide of adrenaline and arousal ebbed, leaving him drained and exhausted and in so very much pain. "How can we know what is true and what is the lie? How can we choose the right path?"

'Griffins and sorcerers." Her gaze flicked toward the dozing griffin, and he saw in her expression that she wasn't quite as fearless as he thought—the creature made her nervous even though she believed it would not hurt her. "You have been walking on the right path all along. You have what you marched so far to get. Together we can turn back to the west and fight Anne."

'We will need a powerful army to defeat our enemies."

'I cannot bring you an army."

'Nor do I ask you to," he said irritably. "I boast a talisman better than griffin wings. I know how to raise an army. First, we must call a council…" Yet he was so weak he could not sit up. "I need two days to heal."

'The heavens revolve regardless of our hurts. We must move swiftly."

'I must have two days! I cannot—" He coughed, grimaced, and only her hands pressing on his shoulders stopped him from thrashing and thereby breaking open the wound. He grasped her fingers and with eyes shut just breathed, lips pinched together and his entire face knotted up as he waited for the agony to subside.

'My lord prince. Liath, what is wrong?"

'Bring him something to drink, I pray you, Heribert. Wine, if you have it."

'We have nothing but this nasty fermented mare's milk."

'That will do. It will ease the pain."

She eased her weight off his shoulder and brushed fingers caressingly along one cheek. He got hold of her braid and twisted it around his hand, letting its feel distract him, breathing out the pain with each breath until, piece by piece, he could relax.

'Blessing," he said at last, when he could speak. "What of Blessing?"

'It is no form of sorcery I understand. Perhaps Da wrote of it in his book, but I don't have his book anymore."

'Hugh has your father's book."

'Hugh is another danger," she agreed. "I will go back to Li'at'-dano. I will convey to her your wish for a council. I will ask her to do what she can to protect Blessing."

'Can we trust them? They destroyed the old empire. They feared and hated them. They fear humankind now."

'I trust Li'at'dano."

'Do you trust her with your daughter's life?"

'Do you trust me with it, Sanglant?"

'Ah!" It was an unexpected stab, a knife in the dark. The words came hard, after all that had passed, but he said them. "Do what you must."

The stink of Willibrod's sorcery filled the tent and made Alain's eyes run, yet he wept with sadness and disgust as well. Reaching behind his own back, he found the coarse cloth of the tent, the flap that covered the entrance, and gripped it. "I will not join you.

And you will not kill me. You have no power over me."

'I have power," whispered Willibrod.

'The power to turn men's hearts so they eat at themselves and succumb to the worst that is in them. The power to make others suffer. The power to prey on the weak. I am not weak."

'You are alone." Willibrod took a step toward him, but Alain held his ground and jerked the flap aside to let light stream in.

Willibrod shrieked, staggering backward. He groped for the hat and veil while, outside, Rage and Sorrow began such a clamor of barking that the folk who had crept close to listen scattered in fear.

'Can you bear the touch of the sun? Or the touch of the earth? You are vulnerable, Willibrod. By abusing your power you have forged the weapon that will kill you."

Willibrod was still whimpering in pain as he struggled to settle the veil over his face.

Alain stepped sideways out of the tent and stood on the lowered tailgate of the wagon.

Rage lunged toward Bartholomew and a gang of five other men who had sidled forward, and they bolted back to a safe distance. Red hefted his staff to protect himself, but the hound danced out of his range.

'Father Benignus is not master over life and death!" Alain pitched his voice to carry, knowing that the fear the bandits felt in the presence of Willibrod worked to his advantage. Anger made him reckless. "He can hurt you only as long as you wear the amulets he gave you."

'They protect us against death!" shouted Bartholomew. "No man wearing the amulet has died in battle."

'Against what implacable enemy have you fought? Poor peasants? Frightened children? Folk who have no better weapons than their shovels and hoes? Would you fare as well against armed men?

Because armed men will come soon. The levy of Lord Arno will ride alerted by my companions. How will you survive against trained men-at-arms?"

The wagon rocked under his feet, and he jumped off the tailgate and landed on the earth.

'Will Father Benignus protect you? He cannot even protect himself! Has light touched his skin since the day he first gathered you together? Have his feet touched this earth? He fears light and earth, because he is not a strong man but a weak one. He needs you for one purpose only, to bring him souls to drink to keep his husk alive for one day longer. In the end, he will eat your souls, too, because his hunger rules him."

He had them now. A score whispered, backing away, as Willibrod pushed past the entrance flap. The maleficus was once again veiled and gloved with not a speck of skin showing. Women cowered against the stone ridge.

'Kill him," said Willibrod. "The man who kills him can have his choice among the women tonight."

Alain took a step toward the gathered men. Theirs were a bleak line of faces, some worn and weary, some merely fashioned, like untrained dogs, to jerk where each least instinct pulled them.

'Is this the reward he gives you? That you can force women who get no pleasure from the act and will hate you afterward?"

'What care we if they hate us," cried Dog-Ears, "if we get the pleasure in doing them?

I was a slave in a lord's steading and there were no women for me there and never would be. Now at least I've something I hadn't before."

'I have a good wool cloak, and a silver necklace," said Red. "I never had such things before!"

'Enough to eat, and meat to share!"

The rest muttered in agreement. These were outlaws and outcasts, slaves and servants, homeless day laborers, the ones who, like Willibrod, were used and discarded according to the whim of the folk who had power over them. Why should they care if they gave way to the evil inclination? They had no hope anyway. Lord Arno's men would kill them like vermin, so they took what was offered by Willibrod since it was a feast compared to the leavings that had been cast in the dirt before them in their previous lives. He could not sway them with this argument. Bartholomew set arrow to string. Red and Dog-Ears took threat ening steps toward Alain, staffs raised, hesitant only because of the growling hounds. Their amulets dangled at their chests.

Their amulets.

That stink of vinegar held the key.

'Do you know how Father Benignus sustains himself?" Alain cried.

'Kill him!" shrieked Willibrod from the wagon. "It may be true that none of you die when you attack the poor and the helpless. But you fight among yourselves, and Father Benignus punishes those who break the peace. And when that man dies, his soul is captured by the amulet. When this man—" He gestured toward Willibrod. "—takes that amulet, he soaks it in water and drinks that man's soul. It gives him life for another day or another week. He feeds on you now. He drew you together only to use you. He bears no love for you. He cares nothing for any hardships you may have once suffered, nor does he care what cruelties you inflict upon others. He lives for no reason except his own hunger.

In the end, he will kill you all."

'Kill him!" shouted Willibrod, but the bandits held still, whispering each to his fellow, fingering the amulets, lowering their bows.

'Or I will kill you!" shrieked Willibrod. "Eloie! Eloie! Isaba—"

Bartholomew let the arrow fly.

It ripped through the tattered robes. Willibrod spun backward and slammed into the tent. Canvas ripped as the frame splintered, but he flailed and righted himself, still standing despite the arrow protruding from the center of his chest. He raised his hand to call down the curse.

'Eloie! Eloie!"

Sorrow leaped and got his leg in her jaws. The force of her bite overbalanced him. He staggered. With a horrible shriek he tottered, spun his arms, and lost his footing. His robes fluttered and his veil streamed open; he fell and hit the ground hard as Sorrow, yelping in pain, scrambled backward, shaking her head from side to side as though she had been stung. She buried her muzzle in the dirt.

Silence followed, hard and heavy. No sound of birds, no murmur of wind in the trees, no noise at all broke the unnatural hush.

Willibrod did not move. Around the camp, voices whimpered in fear. An infant squalled and was hushed by its terrified mother.

'Ai, God," said one of the men.

His voice shattered the spell that held Alain. He knelt beside Willibrod and plucked at his robes. The body beneath shifted, clacked, and rattled. What was left of him? Although Alain sniffed, he smelled nothing like the stench of putrefaction, only a hint of that vinegary tang. Bracing himself against the awful sight he might see, he lifted away the veil and hat to reveal a grinning skull, jaw agape.

Willibrod was gone. Only his skeleton remained, darkening where sunlight soaked into pale bone.

Rage leaped, growling furiously, and Sorrow lunged.

Too late Alain sprang up. A staff smacked into the side of his head. He went down in a heap, hands and legs nerveless, paralyzed by the blow, while all around him he heard the snarling battle of the hounds, outnumbered, and the screams and cries of the bandits, closing in.

'Go," he murmured, commanding the hounds, but he had no voice. His head was on fire, and the rest of him was numb.

Why had he turned his back? Even for that one moment, thinking that all of them were shocked by Willibrod's death and disintegration; even that one moment had been too long. Anger and grief boiled up. What had he done to his faithful hounds? Better that they run and save themselves. He stirred, fighting to get up, to protect them, to save them.

A second blow cracked into his back, and a third exploded in pain at the base of his neck, this flare of agony followed by a long, hazy slide as he was caught in the current of a sparkling river flowing toward the sea. Now and again he bobbed to the surface, hearing voices but seeing only a misty dark fog.

'He knows what we are! He knows what we've done! I say we kill him!"

'Kill him! Finish him off!"

'Nay! Hold, there, Red! Put down your knife!" That was Bartholomew, speaking quickly. "What profit is in it for us if we kill him?"

'We must be rid of him!" That was Dog-Ears. "This Lord Arno will be after us soon enough, if what this cursed one says is true. We'll have to abandon camp. We'll have to run, even split up. I say we kill him."

'Kill him! Kill him!"

'We could gain coin and bread if we sell him at the slave market with the women. He's strong and healthy. He'll bring a good price from the Salian merchants."

Where were Rage and Sorrow? He could not see, nor could he hear any trace of them.

Ai, God, were they dead? Had the bandits killed them? He had been careless, such a fool, to turn his back even for a moment.

The current caught him and dragged him under.

TRUST SAN CrJLAIN I slid from wakefulness to sleep so imperceptibly that the transition happened while she blinked. Heribert tucked blankets in around him as Liath beckoned to Hathui.

'I pray you, give me a report of what has transpired while I have been gone."

'Have you a day for the telling?"

Liath smiled wryly. "I have not. Tell me what is most important. I can learn the rest later. Come, you can speak to me while I sit with my daughter."

'I'll stay with Prince Sanglant," said Heribert.

Liath found Blessing attended by an old man whose naked torso was entirely tattooed with intertwined animals. His eyes widened when he saw her, and he backed away respectfully, humming in his reedy voice. The sound shuddered up and down her spine like the wandering of an unfinished spell, seeking an entrance.

Others bowed, acknowledging her: the Kerayit healer and a trio of anxious Wendish attendants—the young woman with the peculiar skin color called Anna, a youth by name of Matto, and a young lord named Thiemo who seemed sweet on Anna and annoyed with Matto,

although he and the other youth were of an age and might surely otherwise be expected to be friendly companions.

They are not so much younger than I am, thought Liath, but she felt immeasurably older. She had traveled so far that at times she felt as if she had aged one hundred years in the space of a few days. Still as she stood over the pallet on which Blessing lay, she could not imagine being old enough to be the mother of a child who appeared to be twelve or so years of age.

Nor was she. Blessing was barely four years old; it was only the aetherical link to Jerna that had accelerated her growth. Would her little girl burn brightly and live only a brief span? She might soon be older than her parents, tottering around in her second childhood and losing her memory of what had passed for a life.

It was too painful to consider.

'What is your name? What are you?" Liath asked the old man.

He nodded. "I am Gyasi. I am shaman of Kirshat tribe. I owe my life to this one." He indicated Blessing. "So I serve her."

'Have you any sorcery that can wake her?"

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, lifting his chin—a negative response. "This is powerful spell. I know not. I am helpless."

She stared down at her child, fallen so far away from her. Anna worked a comb through the girl's thick hair, and Liath wondered idly if it wouldn't be more practical simply to cut it short. Was her daughter vain of her hair? She did not even know such a small, intimate detail. She knew nothing of her, not really.

Blessing was a stranger.

'Hathui, I pray you," she said, voice choked with tears. "Tell me the tale of the years I have been gone."

The sun had reached the zenith by the time she emerged from the tent. Sanglant still slept. The griffin napped beside its mate, content to doze in the noonday sun. The soldiers had moved the skittish horses upwind. As they went about their tasks, the men circled warily around the griffins. They kept their distance from Liath as well.

They all treat me as though I'm something dangerous.

She called Captain Fulk to her and asked him to have Resuelto saddled. "I will ride back to the centaur camp."

'How many do you wish to escort you, Your Highness?" he asked.

'No escort. Heribert, you'll stay with Sanglant?"

'So I have been doing these four years," he said, but he kept looking over at the griffins. "Is it safe, my lady? Will they attack us once you are gone?"

'I hope not."

'Are you sure you'll have no escort, my lady?" asked Captain Fulk. "See there."

He gestured toward a tent shaped differently than the Wendish campaign tents—a mushroomlike felt shelter lying low to the ground, more a bulge than a tent. Three stocky young Quman men loitered under the angled awning, gazes fixed on the griffins, but after a moment Liath saw that Fulk was pointing toward two men standing in the shadow cast by the tent. They edged forward rather like starving beggar children might creep toward a forgotten crust of bread left lying on the roadside, trying very hard not to draw attention to themselves or the crust. They wore threadbare robes cut differently from those in the west and their red caps came to a curling point.

'What are two Jinna men doing here?"

'They were among the slaves your daughter freed from the ship. We offered them their freedom, but there's none here who can speak to them. I don't know if they stay because they don't know they are free or if they've nowhere else to go. They're good with horses.

They do their share of work. We've no complaints of their service, even though they're heathens."

The two young men dashed forward. Fulk leaped out, drawing his sword.

'Hold, Captain!" It had been a long time since Liath had spoken Jinna; she could read it better than speak it, but the basic words did not elude her. "Honored sirs, it is better if you approach with prudence."

The two men threw themselves down bellies to the ground and dipped their foreheads three times to the earth before rising to their knees and extending their hands, palms up and open.

'What means this?" asked Fulk, astonished.

Their postures looked uncomfortably like those of slaves offering submission to a master.

'What do you mean by this, honored sirs?" she asked, echoing Fulk's amazement.

One raised his head. He steepled his fingers and, hiding his eyes behind the "v" made by his hands, replied.

'Do not disdain your servants, Bright One. Let us serve you, who walk on Earth and speak with human speech. We recognize you as one of the holy messengers of Astareos."

'What are they saying?" asked Fulk as a number of Sanglant's soldiers gathered at a distance to watch. There was nothing to do in camp except stare at the terrifying griffins; these men welcomed a new source of entertainment.

Liath had forgotten how much she hated being the center of attention of any crowd; and all of Wendish court life was crowds. One could not be a prince without a retinue. No noble lady had ever traveled alone with just her father, making her way through the world.

One of the Jinna spoke. "If we have displeased you, if we have sinned by calling attention to your presence, Bright One, speak only the word and we miserable worms will slit our throats."

'No," she said hastily. "Do not hurt yourselves. I am surprised, that is all. No matter."

That was the first phrase one learned in Jinna, a word so useful and so complex that it could not be properly translated into Wendish. No matter.

'What is your wish, Bright One? We are your servants."

She did not want a retinue. She had never become accustomed to one. But as she glanced around the camp, seeing the shining bulk of the griffins, the herds, the tents, the patient army of men and women who had followed Sanglant across the wilderness simply because he had asked them to, she knew that what she wished for most— solitude—was to be denied her.

Duty came first.

'Obey this man, as you have been doing," she said at last, resigned to her fate. "He is called Captain Fulk. He is a good man. I must go to the camp of the Horse people. When I return, you may serve me."

They wept with gratitude.

She could have wept, with frustration, but she didn't have time. She didn't need the burden of their belief that she was something she was not.

'I pray you, my lady, what do they want?" asked Fulk again, too eaten up by curiosity to take heed of her sour expression.

'The Jinna worship Astareos, the fire god," she said at last. "It is no secret that, like Prince Sanglant, I am only half human. By some magic known to the Jinna, they must see my mother's soul in me. They think I am an angel."

'I will agree to attend a council," said Li'at'dano when Liath returned to the centaur encampment to begin the second phase of her campaign, "but I am not accustomed to the presence of males who claim to speak with authority. They are emotional and unstable. I grant you that a stallion may be a handsome creature, but all he is good for is fighting and breeding. Still, because I have known a few human and Ashioi males who have—what shall I say?—been able to think with the same rigor and intellect as a woman, I will allow all those you mention to join the council. In exchange—"

This was the part of negotiation Liath hated most: all the stipulations and exceptions and claims and demands.

'—the child will be given into the care of my people. She will be well cared for, bound around with magic so that she cannot suffer or weaken."

'And when she wakes?" "If she wakes."

'What if I give her to you only to discover that she is being held as a hostage? What if we succeed—as we must succeed—in defeating Anne, only to find Blessing used as a weapon held at our throats, to make us agree to whatever conditions you demand?"

'Desperate times call for desperate measures. You must trust me, Daughter. Are you not my namesake?"

Liath laughed angrily. "This is no argument." Li'at'dano inclined her head in agreement. "This is no argument, that is true. This is the argument: Already she grows weak. In three or four more days, without a cloak of protection, she will die."

Liath set her booted foot on the stairs that led up to Sorgatani's door and paused there to survey the horse herds that accompanied the centaurs and their Kerayit allies. These horses were nothing like the stocky beasts that now made up fully half of the mounts in San-giant's army—the herds bred by the centaurs were powerful and cleanly built, with long, slender legs and big heads. The Kerayit used oxen to pull their carts, but both men and women rode their lovely horses. Right now the members of the tribe labored about the necessary tasks of living while they waited for Li'at'dano's command to move on, women and men together although working at different tasks. Among the herds she saw mares and geldings and the stallions—the best among the males, the ones left intact.

There were foals, from yearling colts down to one lanky, awkward newborn, and foals among the centaurs as well, although not so many of those and all of them female.

It troubled her.

She rapped on the door. The younger servant admitted her.

Sorgatani knelt beside the brazier minding a tiny pot, set over the coals, in which herbs withered and smoked. The scent shot straight up Liath's nostrils and gave her a headache behind her eyes. She waved a hand back and forth in front of her face to dispel the smoke while Sorgatani chuckled.

'You should see your face!" The young Kerayit woman rose, gave the bronze spoon she held to the older servant, and sat down on the broad bed. "Sit beside me. There isn't as much smoke over here."

Indeed, a fair amount of the smoke spiraled up and out the smoke hole, through which Liath still saw that same gray shimmer, neither day nor night. In the world above, nothing changed. That surety lent a little peace to her anxious thoughts. She sat beside Sorgatani.

'I did not expect to see you back so soon, Liath."

'Here I am." She smiled. "I am come to negotiate, but I'm discovering how little I like it. When I traveled with my father, just he and I all those years, we made a decision and acted. We had no one else to placate or argue with or persuade."

'You lived and traveled alone, without kinfolk or tribe? Without herds? With no servants or companions? No cousins or aunts? Had you no mothers?"

'I had no mother."

'No mothers!" The confession shocked Sorgatani, but she recovered quickly. "I am seeing there hangs a tale from those words."

'So there does. If you travel with us west, to fight our enemies, then I can tell you that tale at length."

Sorgatani had a lively, expressive face and the bright eyes common to people who love life. It was as much this vitality that made her beautiful as the actual pleasing composition of her individual features.

'Is this how you open your negotiations? You are too blunt. You must begin by discussing the season, and whether a spring storm will drive away the warmth and how much it will rain before summer. Then you go on with complimenting my lineage, my herds, and the clothing my servants wear. We share the tales of our grandmothers. That is just to begin. The day after next you may come finally to the point of your visit.

Meanwhile, I must entertain you as befits a guest."

She beckoned. The younger servant padded forward to offer them both steaming cups of dried leaves steeped in hot water.

'What is this?" asked Liath. The brew had a minty smell, heady and tantalizing.

'We call it khey. I do not know if there is a word for it in your language."

'I don't think so." Liath sipped, and sighed. "That is good." She drank again before settling back to regard Sorgatani. "Can I be blunt? We must move quickly. It will take many months to travel back to the west. We haven't much time left. It will be difficult—"

'You intend to travel by land all the way back west. That might take years! The west is very far away." "How else are we to go?"

'Oh!" said Sorgatani. "Oh." She fiddled with her earrings—today she wore tiny golden pigs dangling on delicate chains. "If nothing has been said to you, then I do not have permission to speak." "Must you have permission to speak?"

'We are the daughters of the Horse people, given into their hands many generations ago. As daughters, it is our duty and obligation to obey our mothers."

'Your 'mothers.' But not your fathers. Where are all the male centaurs?"

Sorgatani stared at her blankly, hand dropping away from the tiny pigs. Liath might as well have said, "Where are all the talking dogs who rule as dukes among you?" "Do they kill them?" Liath pressed. "Do they kill who?" "Do they kill the colts?"

'Of course they don't kill the colts! No good herdsman does so. The choicest ones are held aside to be puras, and the rest are gelded. Geldings make sturdy and reliable mounts.

We can trade them, too, since we're known for the quality of our horseflesh. We trade along the oasis road. They prize our horses and pay well for them in silk, gold, spices, and khey, these leaves you drink." "Sorgatani. Where are the male Horse people?"

Sorgatani set down her cup and clapped her hands. The younger servant brought a tray of candied fruits, which she offered to Liath before taking some for herself. They were both sweet and spicy, tingling on her tongue as she waited.

'I see what you are asking," Sorgatani said after she had savored an apricot and a pair of peach slices crusted with sugar. She licked her lips for the last grains of sugar. "They are with the herds." "With the herds?"

'Yes. Of course they never leave the herds."

Liath drained her khey, pursing her lips at the sweet aftertaste. "What about the old stories of the Bwr assault on the Dariyan Empire? Their great general was Azaril the Cruel."

Sorgatani nodded gravely. "It's true she earned her name, and in the end the Horse people suffered because of her ambitions. They never recovered their strength after losing so many in her campaigns."

'But Azaril was a male, wasn't he? He took female prisoners hostage and forced them to marry him. There's a famous story about a saint—"

She faltered as Sorgatani chuckled.

'Is it said so, in the tales made by your people? Perhaps they saw what they believed must be true. I can only tell you what I know. Not all of the Kerayit tribes live beside the Horse people. We have grown more numerous than them. The remnants of the Horse people have retreated to their most ancient pasturelands as their strength wanes. I was sent away from my tribe to be the apprentice of the Holy One, so now I have lived among them and know some truths about their kind."

Liath could guess the rest: the centaurs had left their males behind to guard what was most precious, their homeland and the core of the herds. It seemed obvious now, but Sorgatani's expression made her think there were things left unsaid.

'Are you glad to study with the Holy One?"

'It is the greatest honor. She is eldest among the Horse people. She is a powerful shaman."

'Do you ever wish you could go home to your tribe?"

Sorgatani shrugged, saying nothing, although a tear glistened on her cheek.

Al sunset Liath rode back into the Wendish camp. Her Jinna servants ran up. One took Resuelto; the other offered stew and mare's milk while deftly opening a camp chair so she could sit. ^^ 'Where is Prince Sanglant?" she asked as Captain Fulk hurried up to her.

'He sleeps within the shelter of the tent, my lady."

'My daughter?"

He frowned, the gesture furrowing a shadow between his brows. "The same, my lady.

The healer has certain arts. She has managed to sit Princess Blessing upright and work a bit of broth and honey down her throat."

'Showed she no sign of waking?"

'None, my lady."

The griffins gleamed in the darkness, their wings faintly luminescent. With their heads set on their foreclaws they seemed to be slumbering.

'Have the griffins eaten anything? If they become hungry, they'll become more dangerous."

'Prince Sanglant has already seen to that, my lady." Fulk's tone held a hint of reproach.

"Two deer were brought in this afternoon."

'Ah." She should have known Sanglant, even as injured as he was, would not forget.

She ate mechanically, knowing she must eat to keep up her strength. The stew was hot but its flavor bland. Only the fermented mare's milk had bite enough to make an impression. Captain Fulk and the servant hovered, and the Jinna man took everything away when she was finished.

'Have you aught you wish to say to me, Captain?" she asked. "My lady," he said. That was all.

He walked with her to the tent where her husband and daughter slept. She did not know him—she could not tell whether he wished to speak and kept quiet because he feared her or whether he was content with circumstances as they stood. This was Sanglant's army, Sanglant's people, all of them loyal to Sanglant. She was simply not accustomed to moving within a mass of hundreds of people—as many as a thousand, she guessed, measuring the circumference of the camp. Sanglant lived and breathed this life; it was the one he knew best and loved most. He had never been happy in the isolation of Verna.

Even inside the tent there were a dozen souls present, half of them asleep and the rest chatting idly or finishing up their work before snuffing the flame from the precious oil lamps. They glanced at her but said nothing as she set down her weapons and her cloak.

She knelt beside Blessing and stroked the child's lank hair, matted from being pressed against the mattress, but although her daughter breathed, she was unconscious to the world. The Kerayit healer sat at the foot of the bed.

Liath took off her boots, and lay down beside Sanglant. There was just room enough on the traveling pallet to squeeze in beside him. The warmth of his body was a comfort to her. Because she had only left him a few days ago, by her reckoning, she had never got used to sleeping alone after those long months at Verna sleeping always beside him.

He slept deeply, his breath steady and his body still. He did not stir as she rested her head alongside his shoulder. He was warm and solid, and he smelled good.

She woke at dawn to see one of her Jinna servants curled up at the foot of the pallet like a faithful dog. The other crouched at the entrance, keeping watch as attendants moved in and out of the tent.

She sat up. Sanglant appeared not to have moved at all during the night. His color was better, his breathing slow and restful. She beckoned the healer and together they inspected the wound on his chest. The Kerayit shook her head, whistling sharply through her teeth as if she did not like what she saw.

'It looks as if it is healing," whispered Liath, not wanting to wake Sanglant.

'Yes," agreed the healer with a frown. "Is not natural, to heal quick. The wound must kill him. But it not kill."

What kind of sorcery did Sanglant's mother possess that she could knit magic into her son's body? That was a question Liath had never asked Eldest Uncle, and perhaps even he could not answer her. He had not walked the spheres, but his daughter had. She had surpassed her father in power, if not in wisdom. Liath, too, had gained greatly in power by walking the spheres, but the power she had gained came really more in self-knowledge than in any heightened sorcerous strength. If anything, her ignorance seemed clearer to her now; the gulf between what she had seen and what she truly understood yawned as perilous as the Abyss.

'I will sit with my daughter," she said when Fulk knelt to ask what commands she had for the army. "Let any who wish to speak with me wait outside, and I will come to them.

Send Hathui to the centaur camp to convey this message: tomorrow morning we will ride out to a meeting place midway between this camp and that of the centaurs. There we can hold our council of war."

Fulk regarded her unsmiling. She could not read him at all, though he did not seem to be a surly or uncommunicative sort. He struck her as exactly what he was: the kind of man you wanted at your back in a fight. Assuming he was on your side.

He nodded, rose to leave, but turned back briefly. "I will see that Argent and Domina are fed, my lady." "Argent and Domina?"

'The griffins, my lady. The prince named them." Was he mocking her? Or sharing a joke? She could only incline her head to show her approval. She cradled Blessing's head in her lap while Sanglant slept soundly beside them. In the child's narrow face she sought desperately the memory of the infant Blessing had been. The chubby cheeks were gone, and it was difficult to trace a resemblance to father or mother because of the slackness that muddied her features. The girl's color had faded to a sickly gray and her black hair tangled lifelessly. Her lips were as bloodless as those of a corpse. The healer squeezed a little honey and broth down her throat by slipping a hollow reed into her mouth and pinching fluid through, but such meager nourishment could only stave off the inevitable.

,' gave up four years of her life, the only time she may have. She wept silently but no great fist of grief gripped her chest; no wrenching sobs, no moans of sorrow. Do I not love her? If she loved her more, would she feel a fiercer grief? Yet the child's slight weight seemed more comfort than sorrow. She mourned what she had lost, but she knew she could have done nothing else. The fire daimones had taken her without her own volition; once she found herself in the country of the Ashioi, she had comprehended the full weight of obligation. Duty might be cruel, but it was necessary.

Had she not made the sacrifice, Anne would win without a struggle. Anne had been willing to sacrifice Blessing to begin with; perhaps Jerna's gift had been to gain Blessing four years of life with a doting father. Anne might still win, and Blessing might die, but Blessing would have died anyway without Jerna's nourishment, and Anne had not triumphed yet.

Within the interstices of the burning stone lay many paths, some taken in the past, some branching into the present, and some only possibilities that would vanish when no foot took passage there. It was a madman's game to second-guess oneself.

But it would have been nice to watch the child grow, to see her face animated, to hear her talk and laugh and sing, to feel her little arms thrown around her mother's waist, as children did, and the warmth of her cheek pressed against her mother's face. It would have been nice to soothe her tears and kiss her small hurts.

It had all just happened so fast—a handful of days like a coil of rope on one side that had been stretched out to its full extent on the other. The years had burned through her hands without her even realizing they had passed.

The dim tent made a fitting bower as the hours passed. Blessing's attendants woke and went about their business, but they were inclined to murmur among themselves and approach her with questions and requests and at least four times Fulk himself came in to ask her to meet with one person or another outside the tent who had a niggling concern that for some reason they felt obliged to bring to her attention. Couldn't they just do what needed doing and leave her alone?

Heribert sat beside her for a time, the only person who knew how to bide in silence.

He held Blessing's limp hand and wept silently. Outside, the soldiers followed their round of work, although once she heard a griffin's shriek and hard after that the sounds of crunching and tearing as the creatures set to work on a meal.

After some time, the sleeping Jinna woke and traded places with his companion, who crawled over to Liath.

'What is your will, Bright One? May this miserable worm bring you food?"

'What is your name?"

'Whatever name you wish to call me, Bright One."

'I wish to call you by the same name your comrade addresses you by."

'He calls me 'brother,' Bright One."

She smiled. "Are you brothers in truth, then?"

'We are, Bright One."

'Was it your father or mother who named you at your birth?"

He recoiled slightly. "It would be against God to name a baby before it lives through three summers and can speak like a human being."

'Then what name were you given when it was time to give you a name?"

He glanced up at her and as quickly averted his gaze. Like his brother, he was not nearly as tall as the average Wendishman. He had a complexion darker than her own and eyes so brown they were almost black, with thick lashes and heavy black eyebrows. She did not know how long he had been a slave, but something in the way he and his brother persistently insisted on serving her had a certain irritating charm.

'My child name was Mosquito, Bright One, and my brother was called Gnat. We bothered our aunts greatly, and so won these names from them. But when we were sent to the men's house to be sealed by fire—" He brushed the mark branded across his brow.

"—we were given our men's names, which I may speak aloud to no woman, not even one of God's messengers."

'Then I will have to call you Mosquito and Gnat, after the fashion of your aunts."

'That would be well, Bright One."

She chuckled, but her amusement only pleased him.

'I will take broth and heated water." She consulted with the healer. "These herbs can be steeped in water, so that I may wash my daughter."

All was done as she wished, but the tincture rubbed over her skin made no difference to Blessing's deteriorating condition. Sanglant slept all day, and Liath was driven outside in the afternoon to get fresh air, to survey the restless griffins and their nervous keepers, to walk for a while along the hills outside camp so that she might have solitude. The big griffin—Domina—paced a stone's toss behind. Grass raked along its legs, and now and again the touch of its feathers sent sliced stalks fluttering into the breeze, spinning and tumbling. Only its threatening presence kept Mosquito and Gnat at a distance; they seemed eager to stick as close as the bugs their aunts had named them after.

All these tents, soldiers, comradeship, and the seemingly incessant desire of every person there to chat about the most inane subjects, never leaving a person free simply to ponder without interruption, was driving her crazy. How did Sanglant endure it? How did anyone?

So much needed to be done as they prepared their counterattack against Anne, and she needed time to think. There was no paper to be had, so that she might make calculations, a tremendously difficult task even for a mathematicus and practically impossible if it had to be done all in the head, even for a person trained in the art of memory. How did one get anything done with these constant interruptions?

'Liath!" Hathui this time, returned from her errand. Only belatedly did she recall that Liath, once her comrade among the Eagles, was now something entirely else. "My lady!

If you will."

'What news, Hathui? You need stand on no ceremony for me."

'Do I not? You are changed, Liath."

'So I have been told," retorted Liath a little bitterly. "What news?" "This. That the centaurs will meet us just after dawn." Liath looked out across the encampment with its circle of tents, makeshift corrals made by rope strung into fences between squares of wagons, and a stretch of empty ground around the slumbering griffin. Farther out and well upwind of the griffins, soldiers kept a tight check on grazing horses, taken out in shifts so as to minimize the likelihood that the griffin would decide to steal a snack from among them. There were so many people, more than had lived in the neighborhood of Heart's Rest, certainly, and all of them loitering or working or gossiping or drilling. It was a king's progress, for wasn't Sanglant king among them in all but name?

'Tomorrow, then," said Liath, exhausted at the sight of such a large gathering.

'Will we ride west at last? I fear we may already be too late for King Henry." Hathui's gaze was steady. She expected bad news but did not fear to hear it. She had taken three scars to the face in the years since Liath had seen her last and walked with a limp. Her injuries had not dimmed her strong spirit, yet Liath glimpsed vulnerability in her expression.

'You are Henry's loyal Eagle, are you not, Hathui?" Pride sparked in her face. She lifted her chin. "I am." "Then I'll tell you truly. I just don't know. I've heard your tale, and I think it likely that his keepers must keep him alive until Princess Mathilda is older. It's even possible they don't actually wish to kill him, only to control him." Despite his twisted nature, Hugh had never seemed to Liath like a man who reveled in death. He would choke you until you yielded, but he would not gleefully spill blood. He liked things tidier and more elegantly disposed. "That's all we can hope for."

'What of you, Liath? You gave up your Eagle's badge to follow Prince Sanglant, yet now the prince has rebelled against his father. It was said you were the great granddaughter of Emperor Taillefer, yet now you deny it. What are you, then? King Henry's subject? Or do you also count yourself a rebel?"

Liath shook her head. "My fight goes so far beyond the regnant's authority that I cannot really consider his well-being as I make my plans. If we do not stop Sister Anne, then we may all die. What does his lineage and mine and yours matter then? Isn't it true that in the ^u.

Chamber of Light, before God, we all stand as equals? It may be we will find out."

'And what then?" Hathui's face and lips were chapped from months of battering by cold and icy wind, yet the sunshine of the last few days had burned her hawk's nose, now peeling. If it hurt, she seemed not to notice it. She had suffered worse, no doubt.

No, Hathui wasn't afraid of the truth. She could face down anything.

'What then?" Liath echoed. "I have walked the spheres. I have seen things I cannot describe, though when I close my eyes I can still see them as vividly as ever I did when I faced them. A daimone of glinting ice barring my path. A sea of burning water that ate through the flesh of my hand. A golden paradise rotten with illusion and false hope.

Wheels that spun and burned. A rainbow stairway that led up into the highest reach of the heavens. My mother's death. And more besides, far more."

Hathui nodded. Liath had not spoken in detail of her journey, not even to Sanglant, but the Eagle understood its momentous import. The wind stirred the grass around them. The sun sank westward and the lazy warmth of its glow melted into her skin.

'I have seen a crown of stars laid out across the land, spanning Taillefer's empire and far beyond. In ancient times seven sorcerers wove a vast spell to sunder the land. I do not believe that these seven wielded such power because they came of noble bloodlines. I believe they possessed hard-won knowledge, they possessed determination, they possessed courage. They feared and hated their enemy so much that they were willing to risk anything and everything to rid themselves of them. They were willing to die. And to kill."

Willing to die, and to take friend and foe with them into death. One of these victims she had known.

By unknown sorcery, Alain had come to inhabit the ancient past. What did he know of the great spell woven there? He might possess valuable secrets, crucial knowledge, if only she could find him. "And then?" Hathui coaxed.

'And then?" The comment left her scrambling to remember what she had been speaking about. "Only this. Why do God grant each one of us souls? Is the soul of King Henry weightier than yours? Or does each woman and man bear a burden of equal worth?

If King Henry can save us, then I will follow him gladly. But if he cannot, then I see no need to follow him blindly only because he is the son of a king."

'These are dangerous words."

'Are they? Or are they practical ones? Sister Anne is the granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer, but that does not mean we must do what she wishes us to do only because of her grandfather's imperial throne." Examining Hathui's wary expression, Liath shook her head, dismayed. "Nay, you yourself, Hathui, are worth far more than she is."

The griffin huffed behind them, and Hathui started, then sidestepped nervously, keeping her gaze half on the griffin and half on Liath as if she were not sure who posed the worst threat.

Would it always be like this? Liath knew her journey had changed her, and now she wondered if she could ever again live easily among humankind.

Sanglant was awake when she returned to the tent, and not just awake but up and moving with only a trace of the stiffness one expected in a man who had so recently suffered such grave injuries. In fact, he was sitting on a bench and eating, careful not to bolt his food but clearly starving. When she swept past the entrance flap of the tent, he looked up immediately, set down his spoon with a sharp rap on the camp table, and stood.

She had forgotten the way every action in any chamber he inhabited danced about the center—which was him. He did not clamor for attention; he just possessed the king's luck, the regnant's glamour, that brought all gazes to him whether they intended to look that way or not.

'Liath," he said. That was all. What he didn't say needed no words. He stared at her.

Devouring her with his gaze, as the poets said. He didn't even need to touch her.

Two unlit lamps caught flame.

She flushed, bent her mind to their fires, and snipped them off.

He laughed and, satisfied, sat back down and took up his spoon.

'My lord prince." Captain Fulk entered with a young soldier behind him.

'What is it?" Sanglant saw the second man and beckoned him closer. "What news, Lewenhardt? Were you on watch?"

'I was, my lord prince. Gyasi returns with two-score companions, half of them winged and the others women or boys. They'll be here within the hour."

'Very well. Place my best chair outside with an honor guard. Let it face west. Call all the captains. I will receive them there."

He was sitting on a bench cleverly fastened together so that it could be broken into easily transportable sections. He looked at Liath and slid to one side, making room for her.

When she sat, he gave her his spoon so she could share his stew. The smell, however bland and greasy, made her stomach growl and her mouth water, and she set to work, all the time so very aware of him beside her, every least shift of movement as he adjusted his posture or set weight on an elbow or nudged his foot up against hers. She had forgotten how big he was, something more, really, than just muscle and height and the breadth of his shoulders. This was the glorious prince she had fallen in love with at Gent—

miraculously recovered from his mortal wounds and fully in charge of the army that followed at his heels very like a well-trained and adoring hound.

For the next hour the flood of petitioners did not abate. No complaint was too trivial to address; no soldier too humble to be refused entrance; no decision too weighty, since he evidently had the gift of knowing exactly whether it needed immediate resolution or time for thinking over.

A horse must be put down, but its meat and gristle could be added to the stewpot, its hair and sinews used for stringing bows and strengthening rope, its hide scraped, its hooves boiled down. Two men had quarreled, and a knife had been drawn and one of them stabbed, although not fatally, but Sanglant simply assigned them to different units and forbade them from speaking.

'Shouldn't an example be set so other men don't pick fights?"

Liath whispered.

Although his foot lay hard against hers, he was careful not to touch or look at her in view of the men waiting their turn to address him.

'This is the time for a soft hand, not a firm one," he murmured so quietly that only she, and Heribert standing behind him, might hear. "No one will say so aloud, but it is a lovers' quarrel. My army has marched a long way without the comfort of women. Such things will happen. I won't punish them for seeking relief." He shifted restlessly and pulled his foot away from hers, as though it burned. But then he spoiled it by grinning, although he was not looking at her.

That grin had the force of a hundred caresses. She got very hot, but she was ready; she guarded the force of her desire, not wanting to light the tent on fire. She could control it—more or less. Yet holding it in only made her want him more.

Captain Fulk stuck his head in. "My lord prince."

Quickly he armed himself. He paused only to kiss Blessing before he went outside with Liath. There, a dozen captains and noble companions waited.

'Who's this fine heifer?" demanded a big man dressed in the embroidered tunic and fur-lined cloak of a nobleman. He leered at her as he looked her up and down, and she knew that she had seen him before, but she could not place him. "Can I have her when you're done?"

Sanglant stopped dead and turned. A hush choked off the conversations between the gathered crowd as everyone stilled. There are some things that have no physical body and yet can be felt as strongly as the slam of a rock into one's head.

'What did you say about my wife, Wichman?" he asked so pleasantly that Wichman went ghastly pale and took a step away from him, although Sanglant had not moved, not even his little finger.

Liath recognized him now—Duchess Rotrudis' reckless son, who had harried Gent for months and taken Mistress Gisela's poor niece into his bed against her will. Sanglant's interference irritated her; did he think her helpless? Yet she did not know how to respond.

She possessed no skill at crossing words like swords. She had power, but so did a spear—

and it was the person who wielded it who gave it direction and aim.

She fumed as Wichman retreated, as the other captains and nobles came forward to greet Sanglant and exclaim over his return to strength. To meet her warily or pleasantly, depending on their nature. She had to learn who they were, but names and titles spat at her in such quick succession that while all the names stuck she could not recall which name matched which face.

'And this is Lady Bertha, my strong right hand," Sanglant said last of all. "She is the second daughter of Margrave Judith."

That caught Liath's attention.

'You are Hugh's sister," she said, not having meant to speak any such words.

'So my mother told me." Bertha looked nothing like Hugh, having no particular elegance and less beauty, but she appeared tough and competent. "So he claimed, since it gave him the advantage of our support when he needed it. I might have wished otherwise, since I always detested him." She smiled mockingly as Liath schooled her expression, for she had never expected to hear Hugh spoken of so slightingly by his own kinfolk. "Have I offended you? Perhaps you held him in some affection."

Sanglant glanced at her, but she shook her head, aware of the way his shoulders tensed as he waited for her reply.

'I did not. I am only surprised."

'My mother spoiled him, and he only a bastard. Why should my sisters and I not resent him? Well, so be it. According to this good Eagle, he has earned his just reward and luxuriates in a position of great power and influence with many a noble lady begging for admittance to his holy bedchamber. It was ever so with him, and he always put them off, like dangling meat before a starving dog and then pulling it away before it could taste it.

He liked them to beg. And they did."

Sanglant was looking stormy, and while Bertha's sentiments might appeal, Liath did not find the noblewoman's manner particularly sympathetic. But she did not know how to change the subject.

Heribert stepped forward. "They are coming, my lord prince."

Bertha looked past Liath, and laughed. "Not as many as you wished, eh?"

Sanglant seated himself in the chair. "That depends on what they have to say." The others ranged around him, falling into obviously familiar patterns but leaving Liath unsure how to position herself. Where did she fit in?

She had felt so strong, walking the spheres, but there she had been acting alone. Here, maybe she would never fit into the tightly woven army that Sanglant led. She stared at the sun's fiery trail, a golden-pink layer sprawled out along the western hills. Ai, God, how cleverly Sanglant had placed himself: it seemed as if the sun set in order to do him obeisance.

Gyasi appeared at the head of a score of riders who pointed at the hooded griffin, exclaiming among themselves. They bore two banners, one marked with three slashes and the other with a crescent moon. Sanglant shifted in his chair, hand restless on his hilt of his sword, as Gyasi dismounted and led six of the Quman forward: four winged warriors and two women wearing impossibly tall conical hats ornamented with beads and gold. The two barbarian women were burdened with more jewelry even than Sorgatani, as if the weight of their gold determined how important they were.

As they advanced, Liath slipped sideways, out of the crowd. Wichman glanced at her as she slid past him, and he recoiled, bumping into Brother Breschius, who constituted the other half of Sanglant's schola.

'I pray you, Brother, attend me," Liath said softly, and Breschius obediently walked with her a stone's toss away from the rest. They halted near a group of soldiers come to stare and to keep their prince safe from the interlopers. "What do you know of these Quman?"

'Little enough."

'What do those markings mean?"

'It is the mark of a snow leopard's claw, the device of the Pechanek tribe. They are the ones who abandoned us the day we met the Horse people. The other—" He shrugged helplessly. "—I do not know. Brother Zacharias would have. He knew a great deal, for he had lived as a slave in the Pechanek tribe."

'I know no Brother Zacharias. Where is he now?"

'He fled with Wolfhere when we were in Sordaia."

'I heard a little of this tale. Is it certain that Wolfhere betrayed Prince Sanglant?"

Breschius shrugged. "Who can know? Both he and Zacharias are gone in the company of a small, dark man, a powerful sorcerer, so Gyasi says. That's all I know. I was with Prince Sanglant at the palace of the exalted Lady Eudokia. I did not witness the incident.

Only Brother Robert did, who was Lady Bertha's healer. The poor man died a few months ago of the lung fever. It is a miracle that Prince Sanglant kept so many of us alive. Yet perhaps not a miracle at all. He has the regnant's luck."

So he did, as he allowed the Quman representatives to kneel before him. The griffin cowed them; he had been right about that.

'How came you to his service, Brother? I do not recall you from King Henry's progress."

'I am not Wendish, my lady. I was born in Karrone but sent early to a marchland monastery. That is how I come to speak Wendish. I lost my hand in the service of the God, for I set out to bring the light of the Unities to those who live in darkness. It's a convoluted tale, but this much may help you make sense of it. I was a slave among the Kerayit, taken to be a pura by one of their shamans."

Astonished, she looked at him more closely, but no mystery clung to him. He seemed calm, and confident, a middle-aged man with handsome enough features that, she supposed, might attract the attention of a lonely young woman doomed to isolation. Of course, he had been young then.

'You do not live among the Kerayit now."

Breschius' smile was leavened by regret, an old sorrow never quite recovered from.

"She died, and I came into the service of Prince Bayan. When he died, I swore to follow Prince Sanglant."

'Why?"

'Can you not see why, my lady? Look at these Quman. They come to ally themselves with the man who defeated their greatest leader, the man who led the army that devastated their ranks. They see it, too. They will not resist him."

Yet not every creature that encountered Sanglant succumbed to his charisma.

Li'at'dano had not.

'Tell me this, then, Brother, since you lived among the Kerayit. Why do their males remain among the herds?"

'I beg your pardon?"

'Why is it only the female centaurs rode out to meet us?"

'Ah. Yes. That puzzled me as well, for the Kerayit I traveled with had little intercourse with the Horse people. But I learned the truth eventually. The Horse people are not like us. They are only female."

'How can they only be female? What does that mean?"

'It means just that. They are only female."

'How can they breed, then?"

'They have puras, do they not? The stallions. Only the female foals breed true. The males are all colts."

An eerie whistling rose from the ranks of the Quman riders, and the hooded griffin tugged at its chains. It lifted its blinded head and screamed as the whistling grew more shrill. Sanglant stood and strode across the flattened grass as, above, Domina appeared in the sky, circling. The last rays of the sun flashing in her iron wing feathers. The whistling ceased as the Quman fled to their horses and cowered when her shadow passed over them. But Sanglant moved in within range of the silver griffin, and before Liath could cry out a warning, he grabbed hold of the rope that bound the hood around its neck and yanked its head down.

'Fulk!" he shouted. "Bring me meat!"

There they stood, he and the griffin, engaged in a battle of wills as its mate shrilled an anxious cry and, at last, beat down to land in a flurry of wings while men shouted and dashed for safety. It infuriated Liath that he would put himself in danger so soon, but she clenched her hands and endured, teeth gritted and heart hammering madly. She knew better than to interfere. Some idiotically brave soldier ran over to the prince carrying a satchel; the young man had an arm already bound up in a sling, but that did not deter him.

He even had a stupid grin on his face, relishing the danger, and would have stuck close if Sanglant had not ordered him to stand away.

Under the gaze of every soul there and with Domina poised tensely but still so close beside him that in a single pounce she could bury him under her claws, he fed the meat to Argent. The griffin ate neatly out of his hands, although certainly he was careful to keep his fingers clear of its vicious beak.

'The Quman follow those who wear the wings of a griffin, and now he means to tame one, not just kill it," murmured Breschius admiringly beside her. The cleric was as much a fool as the rest of them! Yet it was true that Sanglant was a magnificent sight, un-cowed by the griffin, master of his fate. "Now these who are here will bear this tale back to their tribes."

AX long last the crowd dispersed, all but the two dozen attendants who swarmed in and around his tent, and she found herself seated on the pallet with her boots off and Sanglant wide awake beside her, the barest smile illuminated on his face and the rest of him shadowed.

'I pray you, Heribert," he said softly, "put that lamp out."

Heribert rolled his eyes, but he rose from the pile of furs he slept on, licked his fingers, reached up to the lamp hanging from a cross pole, and pinched out the flame.

Sanglant sighed heavily.

A hundred thoughts skittered across Liath's mind, and died.

All at once he enveloped her with his arms and let his weight carry her down onto the pallet, and there he lay with his body half on her and a leg crossing hers at the knee.

'You can't know," he murmured. "You can't know. Not one day went by that I did not think of you. And mourn for you. And curse you. And want you. You can't know how much I have been wanting you."

By the feel of him pressed up against her, she had a pretty good idea. She wriggled a little, and his grip on her tightened so very grati-fyingly as they kissed again and he eased a hand up under her tunic to brush the contours of her ribs.

Then someone coughed.

'I can't," she whispered, going rigid in his arms.

He tensed. "You can't?" Anger tightened his voice. Whenever they spoke, his anger swam close to the surface, waiting to strike.

Yet this was no battle against him.

'There are so many people in here," she whispered. A dozen or more, many of them still stirring as they settled down. That cough was likely an honest clearing of the throat, but it had startled her out of her passion nevertheless.

She felt his attention flash away from her. His fingers rapped a beat on her ribs as he puzzled over her words. "They're sleeping," he whispered in reply. "They're not! Not all of them." "Then they soon will be." "And if they don't?" "They'll pretend to sleep."

It was nothing to him, who had spent his entire life in just such a mob, never truly alone, never knowing privacy and certainly never craving it. The only time he'd known solitude was as Bloodheart's prisoner, and even then he had been surrounded by Eika dogs, his pack; surely he'd been driven half mad because of his isolation.

'I just can't," she repeated, not sure if he could ever understand her. The press of them all around was too much. She could not ignore it. She could not endure it.

'I can stand this no longer," he said hoarsely, in echo of her thoughts. "I don't care where, but I do care when. And if I don't do this now, I swear to you, Liath, I am going to die of frustration."

He grabbed her cloak, her hand, tugged her up to her feet, and said, commandingly, to the tent at large, "No one follow us!"

Heribert began to chuckle, and then half the tent did as well. She was burning with embarrassment, but Sanglant took no notice because he never did. He dragged her out of the tent, and by the time he had ordered off half a dozen startled but swiftly amused guards, she was laughing, too, running with him out into the grass in her bare feet. She had left her belt behind, so the hem of her tunic lapped her calves.

When they reached the crest of the hill, she tripped him and they rolled, tumbling, wrestling, giggling, until the slope of the ground shifted and they came to rest where the ground cupped into a man-sized hollow. He kissed her so long and hard that she got dizzy. There was grass in her hair and up and down her sleeves and between her toes, and for a miracle the grass distracted him more than it did her. He cursed as he brushed himself off, and he shook out the cape and settled it over a swath of grass. After trampling the cloth to make a flat resting place, he drew her down.

She unbuckled his belt, suddenly intent on her task, on wanting to caress him, to feel his skin naked and pressed against her own, but he caught her hand in one of his.

'Nay, not yet. Not yet." He kissed her knuckles before clasping her to him. "Ai, God.

Let me savor it."

They lay there for a while. She closed her eyes and let the chill spring breeze kiss her face. Nothing could make her feel cold now, with her arms wrapped around him and his around her. He breathed, as silent as the brilliant stars that blazed above them.

'Liath," he said after a long time, "do you still love me?"

'You asked me this before. Weren't you content with my answer the first time?"

'You don't ask whether I still love you."

Annoyance flashed, as brief as a falling star that streaked the night sky, and then she laughed and rolled up on top of him, trapping him beneath her.

'Do you still love me, Sanglant? I know you still desire me, that is obvious enough, but desire isn't always love."

'I still love you," he said, the laughter gone out of him, "but I don't know you. Are you still Liath under all these clothes? Are you still Liath under your skin? Are you still Liath at all, or a succubus come to plague me? Will you abandon me again?"

'Never willingly," she whispered.

He shook his head brusquely; she felt the movement as much as saw it. Although her night vision was keen, sight mattered much less now than touch, than smell, than the taste of his despair and anger and the elixir of his arousal.

'I do not fear death. I only fear madness. I have cursed you for four years for abandoning me, because anger was the only thing that kept me from despair. I know that we have undertaken a great battle. I know that circumstances may force one of us to travel along a separate road from the other for a time, a short time, I pray. But I will have you pledge to me now what you pledged to me in Ferse village, our mutual consent made legal and binding by the act of consummation and the exchange of morning gifts. If we can have no marriage, then let it be done with. I can suffer and go on alone if I know this is the end. But I cannot love you this much and always wonder if you will leave me again as unthinkingly as my mother abandoned my father. As she abandoned me."

The wind tickled her neck. A chill ran down her spine, and she shivered. The agony in his tone was awful to hear but Sanglant was not a subtle man. What he felt, he expressed.

He knew no other way. He could be no other way.

'There," he said, his voice a scrape. "I've said it. You know how badly I want you, Liath. God know how desperately I have dreamed of you by day and by night. Worst it was, by night. I have kept concubines briefly, or gone without, but whichever it was, it never made any difference. I could never stop thinking of you and wondering if you ever intended to come back to me, if you really cared for me and the child. Or if you were dead. There were days, God help me, when I thought it would be simpler if you were just dead, for then I would know that you had not meant to leave me behind. That you still loved me truly. Not that you made a rash vow once when you thought I was safely dead, or spoke a pledge in a rush of infatuation and desire for me, but that it was the wish of your heart despite anything else the world and the heavens offered you. That you want me that much. As much as I want you."

He gripped her wrists, pinning her hands to the ground on either side of his body.

'I must know, Liath. I must know."

She wept silent tears, burned out of her by the force of his pain and his honesty. After a while she was able to speak past the quaver that kept strangling her words.

'I possessed wings made of flame. Wings. My kinfolk welcomed me into my mother's home, a city encompassed by aetherical fire. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. A river of fire flowed there, and I followed its current into both past and future. The ladder of the mages was laid plain. I glimpsed the mysterious heart of the cosmos.

Nothing was closed to me. Nothing. Not even my own heart. Because that is what I fear most."

'Your heart?" His gaze remained fixed on her, dark and terrible. The breeze swept strands of his black hair across his face, their movement too dim for mortal eyes to see—

but not for hers. She knew now what she was, and what she was not.

'Just… just…" Each word was a struggle. The truth was so hard. "Being brave enough to trust. To love. Being brave enough not to hide. I don't know—" Emotion choked her, and she shut her eyes to contain it, as if it might explode out through her gaze. Grains of fire trembled everywhere around her, in the grass, in the earth, in the wind itself, the seeds of a devastating conflagration. She dared not let them loose.

He lifted a hand to touch her chin. The caress of his fingers was like water, cooling, calming.

'I'm not like you," she said, "so open. So honest and true."

'So mad," he muttered.

She smiled. The salty liquid of her tears tickled her lips. "So mad. And so strong."

'Am I?"

'You are. I don't know if I can love fully and truly. Da and I lived apart from the world for so long. We hid ourselves away. We veiled ourselves from the sight of those who hunted us. When Hugh took me as his slave, I built an even higher wall to protect myself.

It was easier that way; it was the only way I knew. But even when you came, though I let you in, that wall held firm. I was used to the wall. I felt safe with it to protect me. And then. When I ascended into the heavens, I saw everything I had ever wanted."

She tilted her head back and through a blur of tears gazed at the beauty of the sky so shot through with stars that it seemed to hold as much light as darkness.

He was silent. He did not move except to release her wrists.

'I could have abandoned the world below to its fate. I could have left all this behind.

Forever. Anne and her sleepers, Henry and his wars, everyone and all of it. Hanna and Ivar. You and the baby. I could have joined my mother's kinfolk and cast off this flesh.

But I had to know. I couldn't leave you behind because I've never really known you. I don't know if I can want you as much as you want me. I don't even know how much that is. But I have to try. That's why I came back."

The stars burned in the night sky. Did her kinfolk journey there, so high above? They had not mourned her leaving; the span of a human lifetime meant little to them. They had simply looked into her heart and let her go.

She cupped his face in her hands. "Look into my heart, Sanglant."

'Ai, God," he murmured, like a man who has received his deathblow, but he gazed at her face, searching.

Poised there, she waited as the wind rustled in the grass and a nightjar churred. In the distance an owl hooted.

'Fire," he whispered hoarsely, as though stricken by wonder; but then, his voice always sounded like that. "Fire is the heart of you."

He reared up, almost dislodging her from his lap, and crushed her in an embrace so tight that for a moment she could not breathe. "I am not waiting any longer," he added, half laughing and all out of breath, so vibrantly alive and awake and aware that his presence swallowed everything else, the heavens, the world, sound, and light.

Well. Everything except the grass tickling the sole of her left foot.

But when she kissed him, when he kissed her, that distraction, too, vanished.

EXCEPT for the presence of the daimone-woman, she could have made easy work of the hunter now sprawled, sleeping, on the grass, vulnerable and alone away from his tribe. Yet she had killed him once already, hadn't she? Hadn't that stab been enough to kill an elk or a bear?

He had recovered because of the magic woven into his bones.

There was more to this hunter than could be seen and smelled on his skin. He had captured her mate and proved his dominance over him. For her to kill the hunter now would be an affront to the dance of the males, who owned as their birthright the measure of their dance, each of them competing with the others for right of place.

So.

She could abandon her mate, or she could follow the hunter and the daimone-creature, who claimed the hunter as mate just as she had many seasons ago claimed hers.

Wind rippled in the grass, singing softly in her feathers. The ae-therical tides waxed and waned in every season, but the threads that bound the world were digging new channels; this she sensed. The world was in flux.

With her nest destroyed there could be no hatchlings this year. It would take an entire season to restore the nesting grounds, and she did not want to abandon her mate. Perhaps it was better to abandon the old ways for one season, to strike out into new territory, to follow the paths made by the thrumming lines of force as they wove into new patterns.

For as long as her mate remained a captive, she would follow the hunter.

Why not?

XX A NEW SHIP THE I know we are here," said Stronghand to his assembled chieftains and councillors in the hall at Weorod, where Lord Ediki sat on the lord's seat and presided over the servants and slaves who brought meat and drink around to each member of the gathering. "Yesterday, according to our allies, two Alban ships brought reinforcements to the island."

Rain drummed on the roof. Under the eaves at each side of the hall, children and dogs huddled, watching. Some had been slaves, others the children of those who ruled here before, but Ediki had commanded that each one be given opportunity to prove themselves no matter their birth. It was the way of the Eika, their new masters, so Lord Ediki proclaimed, as well as the ancient way followed by his ancestors.

'We have no ships on this shore," said Dogkiller. "How can we invade across the waters? It would be death to wade."

'We must scout the waterways that empty into the sea," said Flint. "Then our ships can sail in and attack from the north."

'Scouts we will have and in plenty," agreed Stronghand, surveying his company as he waited for Yeshu to finish translating into Alban. He himself spoke first in his own language and then in Wen-dish, but although he understood Alba well, he still stumbled over speaking it. "Manda, headwoman of the Eel tribe, has put fourteen boats and twenty-four skilled guides at our disposal. I need volunteers to search north."

About three score men—RockChildren and human alike—had crowded into the hall to listen and, as Stronghand had expected, half of them lifted their voices, clamoring to go.

They were the ones who sought honor and glory and riches, who gazed on Lord Ediki's new holdings with envy, or who simply craved the danger.

Stronghand lifted a hand, and the voices stilled.

'Two men will go in each boat. A gold nomia to every man who reaches the sea and our ships. For every ship guided back through the fens to our position here, I will give another nomia."

They were eager to start out, despite the dreary weather. As the company dispersed, he took Tenth Son outside. Many score soldiers had gathered to hear the council tidings, and they dispersed in groups, heading back to their tents and bivouacs or to make ready for guard duty. Tents had been thrown up within Weorod's stockade while the rest lay scattered between the stockade and the dike, using wagons and recently dug ditches to create barriers in case they were attacked unexpectedly. Everyone was waiting for the next assault, with varying degrees of patience. As long as the queen lived, she ruled.

Stronghand ducked under the shelter of an empty byre and stood there with Tenth Son as rain drizzled down around them, leaking through the thatched roof, which was not yet repaired after the winter. Although the stalls had been cleaned out, clumps of manure pebbled the floor, and the smell of animal and dung clung to the earth.

'I will take two brothers with me, but I wish you to remain behind, not because I do not trust you, but because I do."

Tenth Son nodded, accepting the statement—however startling it might be, since the RockChildren never spoke of trust between themselves.

'The standard stays with me. If I fall, then it will be of no use to anyone else. The magic is tied to my life."

'Yes," agreed Tenth Son. "If you fall, this army will splinter into a thousand spears, each one striking at the others. Why do you not wait for the ships?"

'If I wait for the ships, then the queen will know I am coming. If I go now, she will not expect a visitor. I will see this crown for myself.

I must know what it is they hope to accomplish there. In my dreams…"

He trailed off. He rarely spoke of his dreams because RockChildren did not dream, but he knew that many secrets lay half revealed in the dreams he shared with Alain, more precious than gems and gold. "What will you do when you get there?" asked Tenth Son.

"I don't yet know," he admitted. While most RockChildren would see the answer as weakness, Tenth Son could understand improvisation as a strength.

The rain let up as the gray afternoon darkened toward an early twilight. Clouds hung low and heavy. A child laughed. Nearby, Elafi and Ki squatted on the ground beside a small wicker cage. They had wished to see Stronghand's camp and the size of his army, and had explored and poked around for much of the day, but now they turned to their own preparations for this night's journey. Strangely, they were tying scraps of candles to the feet of two squawking pigeons. From the camp he heard the ring of a hammer beating out iron, but it was his companion who interested him most right now. "Why do you follow me?" he asked finally.

Because they were littermates, Tenth Son was very like to Strong-hand in looks, but although he, too, was rather more slender than most RockChildren, he had a hand's height advantage over Strong-hand and more bulk through the shoulders and chest. He was bigger and stronger, as most RockChildren were, but strength wasn't everything.

'I am not as clever as you are, Brother," Tenth Son said at last, "but I am clever enough to know that my fortunes rise with yours and will fall with yours. Hakonin and the other chieftains will not march behind my standard. If you die, I am nothing."

'What is it you want? You have been loyal to me in the manner of humankind. I would reward you, if that is what you wish."

Tenth Son bared his teeth. Like all warriors, he wore jewels drilled into his teeth to advertise his prowess. "Can you give me anything I ask for?"

'No. I cannot give you the moon or the sun. I cannot give you life beyond the one you are fated to live. I cannot make you anything but what you are."

Tenth Son nodded, satisfied with the answer. Against the gray afternoon backdrop, his braided hair gleamed as white as bone. "Those things I do not want. I want what even the slaves among the humans possess. I want a name."

Later, as they glided through the water of the fens, Stronghand brooded.

A name.

For generations the WiseMothers had hoarded names like gold and allowed only the chieftains of each tribe to take a name. The lowest slave among humankind bore a name; why not his own kind? Did the WiseMothers consider their grandsons lower than slaves?

Or had there never been any reason for names among creatures who gave little more thought to their lives than did the dogs that followed at their heels?

Did the two Rikin warriors who accompanied him desire names, too, or was it only Tenth Son who had caught the fever?

'You are thoughtful, my lord," said Ki.

She and Elafi paddled as quietly as ducks as the twilight gloom settled over them.

Even the pigeons, confined in a cage placed at Ki's feet in the belly of the canoe, remained silent. Reeds shushed along the boat, parting before the prow as they cut through a mire lying just northwest of the island where queen and crown waited. Here, near that island where her army sheltered, the birds had been hunted out, so they had the water to themselves and their progress flushed no betraying clatter of wings. From this direction the high face of the island looked as if it had been cut away by the swipe of a dragon's tail to leave a steep embankment as tall as two ship's masts set one atop the other. At the height could be seen the shoulders of two stones thrusting up into the slate-gray sky, fading from view as the light dimmed.

'Hush," said Elafi as he guided the boat alongside a low bank and under the sprawling branches of a willow. Stronghand ducked as branches scraped overhead and along the sides.

'Hush," repeated Elafi.

The greenery hid the land around them, but they still had ears.

'Did you hear something?" A woman's voice, speaking in the Alban tongue, floated on the air.

'Nay, I can't hear nothing for the slithering of these eels." Her companion was an aggrieved man.

'Here, now, set down that basket and have a look round."

'I will not! I'll never get this thing heaved back up, it's that heavy."

'Do it anyway, you fool! You've heard the news as well as I have, that the savages have come and burned Weorod Holding and killed our good queen's uncle and brother over there by Grim's Dike. They might be anywhere, skulking like serpents and creeping up to kill us. I think I heard something scraping along over there, by that tuft— where the willow is."

Elafi lifted a charm to his mouth and blew softly. "Look there," said the woman, after a moment. "It's a deer." Something skittered through sedge and branches nearby, ending with a soft plosh in the water.

She swore. "It was too quick for me."

'And an arrow wasted, when we've none to waste. It's too dark for you to find it now.

Let's get on then. Tide'll be coming back in. Venison would've been nice, I grant you, but all this talk of savages is making my skin crawl."

They waited in silence under the willow as twilight darkened imperceptibly into night and the voices moved away.

'Keep silence," said Elafi at last. "That means you, Ki." He pressed the branches aside with his oar and they nosed out of their hiding spot as the supple branches shushed over them, tickling their skin and faces with the touch of new leaves half unfurled all along the tree. With night came a ha,'y glamour hanging over the waters as though the clouds had drifted down to meet the fens. It was hard to see. Yet Elafi knew where he was going, and Stronghand felt the shift in current where it was slowed by beds of reeds or the smell of salty streams running beneath the smoother fresh water of the surface. The ebb tide had reached its lowest point.

A pintail swished past. Ki bent to the cage sitting at her feet in the bottom of the canoe. Beside it rested a hollow branch. Deftly—heard more than seen—she eased a coal from a hollow with copper tongs and set spark to wick, then released the two pigeons.

They fluttered up on the trail of the pintail, and the scraps of candles tied to their feet swayed, slipped loose, and spun down to the water below. Most sputtered and died in the water, but a pair tipped and bobbed, still burning.

'Swamp lights," whispered First Son of the Tenth Litter, who had taken his turns on sentry duty at the borderland where Weorod Holding sank away into the fenlands.

'A good trick," agreed Last Son of the Fourth Litter, turning to watch the lights behind them.

Elafi lit a tiny lamp and held it beyond the prow of the ship to light their way, while Ki lit other candles and set them on the water, tag ends that guttered as the wake jostled them, flared, and died. Out beyond the willow a true swamp light flickered and vanished.

Stronghand had to admire the cleverness of their use of misdirection.

They skirted the edge of a bed of reeds that gave them cover as they came right up under the crumbling cliff face. There rested an ancient willow tree, hoary with age, its trunk as thick as a giant's leg and its lowest expanse exposed by the ebb tide. This close, and with mist spreading its blanket over the landscape, the noises of the island carried easily: a horse's whinny, a barking dog, the rumble of a handcart over broken rock, the laconic call of a sentry to his companion, a shrill pipe accompanied by the patter of a drum and men singing in harmony. The music spun through the fog like a thread winding around him, drawing him into the haze.

Rope chafes his wrists and ankles as he shuffles along, tugged awkwardly at intervals when the wagon to which he is tied speeds up. Once he slams into the back, not anticipating that it has stopped. Sharp rocks cut his feet, and he shifts in the hope of finding gentler ground.

A man curses him; a whip stings his backside more in annoyance than because he has hindered the line. The pain makes him flinch, but he does not cry out.

He has no voice. He cannot see.

Blind and mute.

The canoe bumped up against the willow's trunk as Stronghand threw his head back, searching the mist, but like the swamp lights the vision was already gone. Vanished.

What had happened to Alain? Where were the hounds?

He hadn't the luxury for questions. They were vulnerable to attack here at the foot of the island cliff; a sentry moved far overhead.

'What's that light?" the sentry called.

Elafi grasped the trunk of the tree. He eased his fingers under the peeling bark and pried a piece of the trunk open to reveal a gaping hole large enough to admit the boat.

The willow was rotten inside but cunningly disguised so as to seem whole. Elafi and Ki pushed them through as, above, a second sentry replied to the first.

'Swamp lights. See, that one just winked out."

They glided under the willow's gnarled roots and came into a chamber awash in mud and stinking of decay. Rocking the canoe, Ki leaned precariously out over the stern to close up the opening behind them.

'From here we must climb," whispered Elafi.

They left the canoe, careful not to tip it, and waded through knee-deep sludge to a rock embankment. The air seeped like liquid into Stronghand's lungs; the mud oozed around his shins, slurping and sucking. He had never smelled anything so vile, and he was careful to keep the standard entirely out of the muck lest some poison in the sludge contaminate its magic.

Elafi's lamp illuminated the young man's face as he scrambled up the embankment. He lifted the lamp to reveal a maw ridged with huge teeth. The jawbone and teeth of some huge creature, yawning, made the archway through which they must pass into a low tunnel. "What is it?" asked First Son as Last Son grunted with surprise. "A wyvern," said Ki, behind him. "In ancient days the old sorcerers killed it and laid it here in the earth. A wyvern's bones hold magic. That's why it's never been found by our enemies."

Stairs made of slate slabs had been laid into the earth, braced on one side against the huge spinal column. As the creature had died, it had rolled to the right, and it was the impossibly long rib cage of the dead wyvern that gave support to the tunnel's damp earth walls, so it seemed they were climbing up inside its belly. Only Ki and Elafi could stand upright; the RockChildren had to hunch over as they climbed the stairs by feel, since Elan's body blocked most of the light. Maybe it was the magic lingering in the wyvern's bones. Maybe it was the darkness, or the proximity of the stone crown. With each careful step up to the next slate stair, flashes of sound and sensation ripped through Stronghand.

"I don't like the sound of that!" says one of the men— they all smell rank, that much he does know. "Move on! Move on! If we're caught here, we'll be slaughtered."

His fingers slipped along a smooth rib, but he steadied himself and took another step up.

"Get up, bitch! Or I'll kill the baby."

A woman sobs, crying for mercy.

He turns, seeking the direction of that despairing voice. Far away, as in a dream, he hears horses' hooves.

"Go! Go!"

"We'll split up and meet in the town."

He gropes, finds the weeping woman's arm, and helps her up. A switch cuts into his ear, the one that throbs all the time, the swollen one, and he jerks back as pain roars through his head.

He staggered and barely caught himself, hand grasping at dirt, claws shirking out to scrape earth and send it spattering to the ground.

'Stronghand?" First Son sounded surprised, as well he might to see any sign of weakness.

Elafi hissed. "Hush, now! Hush!"

They waited as Elafi went ahead into the darkness, the gleam of curved bone flashing above him with each step until the young man simply vanished.

Stronghand took a step forward to follow him. "I'll take the woman."

Screaming, she fights them. Her arm is torn from his grasp but as she is hauled away, she thrusts a bundle into his arms. The wagon lurches forward and he almost loses his footing as the rope snaps tight. He stumbles forward in its wake, clutching the bundle against him, wondering what it is. Moisture leaks onto his hands through cloth. For a while he has as much as he can do to trot along behind the rolling wagon, with staffs prodding him and the others who are bound.

There were more like him once, but over the course of many days— he can't keep track of how many— the rest fell behind or were taken away or died. He doesn't know. He can't see, and what he hears is often interrupted by gouts of pain that stab through his head.

He is missing something, though. He knows that much. Now and again he weeps with anger and despair.

As the wagon steadies onto a smooth forest path, the grassy track a pleasant tickle under his callused, battered feet, he pulls the cloth free and searches the bundle with a hand.

An infant. He is carrying an infant. Blood curdles in the hollow of its sunken chest.

It is already dead.

The torrent of sensation and emotion raged through him until he was overwhelmed, awash. He gasped for air as he staggered again, leaning on his staff to stop himself from falling. His feet slipped on something round and cylindrical, and he swayed as he struggled to regain his balance, to show no weakness before the others. The bone beads tied to the standard rattled softly. Stray bits of dirt spun past his nostrils and dusted his tongue.

'Careful." Elafi's touch on his arm came out of the darkness. "There are bones. You'll slip, just so. Just past here."

The tunnel debouched into a corbeled chamber, dry and dusty and crammed with neat piles of bones laid into alcoves that gleamed fitfully as Elafi turned all the way around to shine his light into each one. Stronghand straightened, as did First Son and Last Son, and stared somberly at this burial ground. Ki's breathing sounded very loud, as if she were frightened—or awestruck.

Yet what was there to be frightened of? He glanced back at the tunnel, all but this last portion of which had been formed by the framework of the wyvern's skeleton. The living could find uses for the dead.

'The wise ones of our tribe are buried here," said Ki.

'This will be my resting place," added Elafi.

'You are a sorcerer?"

The young man smiled. Dirt smudged his cheeks and nose, and his eyes seemed very dark. "Did you see a deer, out by the willow tree where we hid? The Albans did."

Stronghand nodded. "Are you more powerful than the tree sorcerers?"

'I am not unlike them. But alone, I cannot combat them. I am the last sorcerer in my clan."

'And it's a good thing you have a clever warrior like me to protect you!" said Ki.

Elafi smiled as he set the lamp in the center of the chamber, under the highest point of the corbeled ceiling, and nodded at Stronghand. "From here you must go on alone. What happens then is up to you and your gods."

'Where is the stone crown?"

Elafi gestured upward. "This chamber lies in the center, and the great stones beyond it, around it, with their feet in the earth. They chain it to the earth so the dead cannot escape."

Did all stone crowns conceal chambers at their heart? Did the WiseMothers incubate human bones? Or something else?

Yet ever since Alain's return, he had suspected what the truth might be. He just hadn't decided what to do about it yet. "Show me," he said.

Elafi pointed to one of the alcoves. "You'll crawl through there. The tunnel twists and turns back on itself, but I think you are slender enough to get through. You'll find a ladder. In ancient days it led up to the sorcerer's house, but you'll see that it's long since been covered over. That's why it's secret now. That's why the Albans know nothing of it.

There's a trapdoor set in place by my mother's father's father's uncle. You can crawl through the old foundation. A new shelter has been built over the old one. From underneath you can look out over the stone crown without ever being seen. Or you can squeeze out and walk into the stone circle, if you dare. The Albans and their tree sorcerers fear the stone crowns. They do not venture there at night. These circle priests may be more bold." He nodded at Stronghand. "You wear their mark yourself. Maybe you know."

'Maybe I do." He stabbed the standard's sharpened end down into the dirt and fixed it there before turning to First Son and Last Son. "Guard this."

One alcove contained only animal bones, arranged just like the others so that with a glimpse they looked the same as human bones. Laid there, Stronghand supposed, because it was no sacrilege to disturb them as he did, crawling past. He eased along a narrow passage that twisted back on itself twice; the second time the crooked bend was so sharp that he had to back up, unfasten his ax, and push it ahead of him. The iron head rammed against earth, but he was able to adjust the angle and shift it around the bend. Dirt made his ears itch. He pushed himself around that curve and wriggled forward over the wood handle. The axhead had come up against a wall of banked earth, and here he touched the bottom rung of a wooden ladder. It was too dark to see, and he hesitated, wondering if the visions would come again, would even cripple him, but nothing happened.

It was impossible to know what had happened to Alain. Without Alain's sight, he, too, was blind and lost in Alain's dreams. Yet it was still better than the lack he had suffered when Alain had vanished from Earth.

He got to his knees and slid the ax back through its loop before testing the rungs. One bent beneath his weight, but they held as he climbed. It was an unexpectedly long way up, with dirt pressing around him on all sides; the metal links of his long waist girdle scraped earth with a sound rather like a bird scratching for bugs. When he reached the topmost rung, he felt above him and after a bit found a metal latch. He fiddled with it until he identified the clasp that released it. Then he paused and listened.

He heard nothing at all.

After a while he braced his knees against the rungs, wiggled his ax up into his fighting hand, and released the clasp. He cracked it open to admit light and sound, but only darkness greeted him. Distantly he heard the muffled sounds of the camp.

It took a bit of doing to crawl out because the trap could not open fully; the ceiling above was too low and was in truth not a ceiling but a floor. The space had once been filled with dirt and debris—its film coated his hair and irritated his eyes—but one of Elafi's fore bears, perhaps that same uncle, had dug a passage through it. He felt along it, pushing his ax before him, and touched not just dirt but potsherds, scraps of wood, two nails, and once a bit of wool cloth, all smashed down into the earth. A footfall sounded directly above him, muted by floorboards and yet another layer—rushes or yet more earth; he could not tell. He squeezed along until the slope of the ground dropped suddenly out from below his hands. Groping forward, he found himself with room to crouch and an unexpected view past warped planks to the stone crown. Torches burned, star-tlingly bright, but the circular ground that lay between the partially restored stones was empty.

Yet he heard voices.

'It gripes me that we are beholden to these heathens. I don't trust them. They're coarse and low. They're rude and arrogant."

'Patience, Father Reginar." The second man spoke Wendish with rigidly correct grammar but a marked accent and frequent pauses to negotiate unfamiliar words. "As long as they control this crown by force of arms, we must ally with them."

'You just arrived here, Brother Severus. You don't know what they are. They are in bed with the Enemy! Such things they do—! Did you see that the queen has more than one husband? Four, at least, old and young, fawning on her. She takes a different one to bed every night, and there are even two youths to warm the bed of the ancient one. It's sickening. I don't think God would wish us to—" He had the petulant voice of a man accustomed to his every whim brought to fruition, but Severus' sharp reply cut him off.

"We have no other choice. Where are their sorcerers?" Chastened but not meek, the young man answered in a scornful tone. "They refuse to come here at night. They say it is forbidden."

'God Above! If they refuse to come up at night, then none of them can ever learn to weave the crowns!" "Yes, Brother. So we have discovered."

'Well. I have greeted their queen and made talk with her about an alliance between Queen Adelheid and Prince Henry and these Albans. Prince Ekkehard should prove docile enough to make a husband for her maiden daughter, if we can find him." "Wasn't my cousin offered to the church?"

'He may have been. If the skopos wishes him to serve her in this manner, none will protest."

'No, indeed, Brother Severus. No, indeed. That she singled me out for this honor!"

Only the young could fawn so enthusiastically. "That she singled me out to assist her in this great undertaking—!"

'Indeed." The snappish way Brother Severus spoke the word silenced the other man.

"Sister Abelia may prove more persuasive with the sorcerers, since they seem to defer to women. I detest waiting as much as you do, but we have no choice."

Stronghand wiggled one of the planks until it shifted, and he turned it sideways and squeezed through, then paused, lying up against the building as the two men walked out of the house not three paces from him, down a pair of steps, and onto the grass, still talking.

'Was it a difficult journey, Brother Severus? The dangers are many in these times."

'We had a delay, a detour. I had an errand to run for the skopos to the monastery at Herford, but we had swift riding after that and our crossing from Medemelacha went smoothly."

Herford. Alain had sojourned at Herford. Memory niggled Strong-hand like the annoying whine of a dog. Had he heard Severus' sour voice in his dreams?

'The war is going badly for the Albans, as you may have seen," continued the younger man, pleased with his tidings. "The queen's uncle and brother march to bring aid, but we've not heard yet from him, although there's a rumor now that his army was utterly destroyed by the Eika. Who can be worse? These Albans, with their pagan rites, or the godless Eika?"

'Our task is clear, Reginar. How God choose to punish the heathens matters nothing to us unless it interferes with our undertaking. It's true there are many dangers afflicting us, Albans and Eika, heretics and civil war. We avoided the Eika ships on the crossing, thank the Lord. I had to raise a small illusion—"

'But you taught us to detest the illusionist's skill as a tissue of lies, Brother! Unworthy of our talent and serious purpose!"

'So it is. But while one should rightly detest a lowly bard who sings for his supper and entertains the common folk with bawdy tunes unfit for cultured ears raised on the Heleniad and the Philologia of St. Martina, it is understood that God have created every creature with a purpose, however vulgar it may be."

'I have met a few such base creatures in my time!"

'Indeed. It is our task to rule and theirs to serve. In any case, on our journey the Lady's justice traveled with us, or we would not have made it this far and in such good time."

THE (j AT HER1NG JIUKIVI 'That is a blessing, Brother."

'So it is. Yet matters remain unsettled. There is much to do and less time than we need.

We have little hope of sending anyone north, if the seventh crown lies in Eika territory, as we believe it must. And although our brethren have found the Salian crown, the civil war there grows desperate. I fear Sister Abelia will not be safe when she travels there to supervise the others. Their work on restoring the crown goes slowly. They are having a difficult time finding workers willing to toil when they are always in fear for their lives."

Stronghand felt a very human urge to laugh. Truly, at times, it seemed forces far greater than he were at work, smoothing his path.

The two robed men crossed to the grassy sward lying within the great circle. The flickering torchlight weirdly shadowed the upright stones. Of the seven monoliths, four had yet to be raised. A third figure appeared, hurrying toward them past one of the fallen stones.

'Brother Severus?"

'Sister Abelia." They were mostly shadow, despite the torches; Stronghand could distinguish them by height and the distinctive way each one moved. Severus had arrogance, while the younger man, Reginar, moved with more boldness and less discipline. The woman had determination, at least; she was farthest from him and most difficult to see. "How have you fared?"

'Poorly, Brother Severus," she said with obvious disgust. "It is as Father Reginar says.

They will not enter the stones at night, no matter what argument I offer them. They say it is forbidden to them. I think they are craven."

Stronghand rolled up to his feet and padded forward as the two men absorbed her words. He marked one sentry, a stocky figure mostly hidden behind a straggle of brush; an arrow's shot down the hill lay tents. Otherwise, they were alone.

The wind gusted, and a misting rain hissed across the grass, gone as quickly as it had come. The young man pulled up his hood, but the old one took no notice. He seemed to be fuming, rubbing fingers over his balding pate, impatient to get on with their task and put annoying obstacles behind him.

Stronghand walked right up behind them, testing the ax's heft in his hand. The feel of the handle gripped in his palm always gave him a sense of well-being.

'What will we do, Brother?" asked Sister Abelia. Seeing the shadow of Stronghand's movement, she gasped and clapped her hands to her face, too startled to flee.

Stronghand bared his teeth as the two men turned, utterly surprised, and stumbled back from him in terror. Humans were so physically weak, and these weaker than most, unarmed and unprepared.

Yet it never served to underestimate them.

'There is an easy solution to your problems," he said in his perfect Wendish, before they could shout for help. He touched the wooden Circle that hung from his neck. "Make a new alliance."

SALANGANT rode at dawn into the council circle with his sword sheathed, his back straight and shoulders squared and strong, an orderly retinue of some twenty attendants and noble companions behind him, and a satisfied smile on his face. The centaurs had shown him scant respect when he first arrived, but that was before he had seen Bulkezu killed, hooded a griffin, and bedded his wife.

The smile faded as he surveyed the waiting centaurs, a score of them led by the ancient shaman, and the wagon that concealed the Kerayit witchwoman, herself attended by a dozen men armed in the steppe way with short bows, spears, and curved swords.

To these foreigners he was about to give his beloved daughter— their price for alliance. Blessing was the sacrifice, and it tore his heart knowing that without their help she would certainly die. Might be dead already.

He glanced back to the wagon trundling along, Liath riding guard beside it together with Anna, Matto, Thiemo, Heribert, the Kerayit healer, and a pair of soldiers.

Li'at'dano had freshened the paint on her torso. The green-and-gold stripes made a stark contrast to her silver-gray coat. She carried a bow, with a quiver slung across her back, and her attendants were armed in a similar fashion, although a few held wicked-looking spears, half tipped with obsidian and the rest with cruel steel points. They had striped their torsos as well and decorated their faces with chalky lines and ocher dots. He could imagine them, in their thou sands, in a wild rampage through the streets of ancient Dariya, burning, pillaging, and killing.

Li'at'dano looked him over as she might a wild dog that has crept into camp hoping for scraps, and she waited with obvious indifference to his presence until Liath reined her horse up beside his. Only then did she stamp one foreleg to acknowledge their arrival.

The other centaurs repeated the gesture and whistled softly.

Behind him, the two Oilman who had agreed to come with him echoed that whistle. A partridge burst out of the grass, flying low over the ground, wings whirring as if in reply, and as it disappeared from view all the noise of their movements and voices faded until the only sound was that of the wind muttering through the long grass. Bugs chirred.

Otherwise, it was silent.

Liath rode out into the gap between their two parties. She lifted a hand to gain their attention.

'We have little time, and few enough to undertake a dangerous task. This is what I know. Two thousand seven hundred and two years and some seven months ago the Ashioi were cast out of this world by human sorcerers working in concert through the stone crowns and under the guidance of a powerful shaman."

She did not turn to look at Li'at'dano, but Sanglant did. The old centaur merely watched. Did she feel emotion in the same way humankind did? He doubted it.

'That spell caused untold destruction throughout the lands, and it did not work in the manner they had hoped it would. It did not cast the land of the Ashioi into the void forever. Even now the land of the Ashioi follows a path twisted back on itself that brings it home again to Earth. According to Brother Breschius and Brother Heribert, who have kept track of the passing of days, today is the nineteenth day of Yanu, in the year seven hundred and thirty-four after the Ekstasis of the blessed Daisan. When the crown of stars crowns the heaven, on the tenth day of the month of Octumbre in the year seven hundred and thirty-five, the spell will be complete. The land inhabited by the Ashioi will return to the roots from which it was torn free. According to the workings of the universe, all things must return to their rightful place."

As she spoke in Wendish, certain centaurs murmured a running translation to their comrades as did Gyasi to the Pechanek Quman— one man and one woman—who had braved the displeasure of their tribes' mothers to follow him. Now and again Liath would pause to let them catch up, but always, inexorably, she went on in that same calm voice, detailing the approaching storm.

'In nineteen months there will come death and there will come destruction. We have no way to escape the consequences of what was put into motion so long ago."

She let them consider as she herself glanced over at Sanglant. He didn't smile at her.

He didn't need to. He knew what he needed most to know of her: that she had changed and that she had not, the familiar weaving of her shot through with new threads.

That didn't make what he had to do today any easier.

'The mathematicus known as Sister Anne intends to weave this ancient spell again, to banish the Ashioi and their land from Earth a second time. Of a certainty I know it will condemn the Ashioi. Their land has been cut off from Earth for so long that it dies. They are few, and they are weak. There are almost no children."

Here she hesitated and, with an effort obvious to her husband although others might think she merely paused for breath, she did not look toward the wagon where Blessing lay dying.

'Perhaps there are those among you who care nothing for the fate of the Ashioi. Let me argue, then, in this manner. What effect Anne's weaving will have on Earth itself I do not know, but I believe it will condemn many, many more people to die, countless people, and bring about wholesale destruction on a scale we cannot fathom. I have seen—

"

She faltered as she was overwhelmed by memory, but she swallowed firmly and began again.

'I have glimpsed the past. I know what immense destruction the spell caused then. I believe that if it is woven a second time, it will cause a terrible disruption in the fabric of Earth far greater than if the ancient spell, the first spell, simply ran its course. Many will die regardless; no one can change that now. But what Anne intends is not only wrong but will bring upon us all ruin and desolation.

'I cannot command any of you. I only command myself. I have seen Taillefer's crown spread across the land. I have a good idea of where each stone circle lies that Anne must control to weave the spell. Yet since the spell needs seven crowns to function, it may be possible for us to disrupt it by halting the weaving at one or two or half of the crowns. I will travel as quickly as I can to the central crown, where Anne will lead the weaving. I will stop her. Or I will die."

Resuelto flicked his ears back as Sanglant's hands tightened on the reins.

'Aid me if you wish. If you will not aid me, then I beg you, stand aside and do nothing to hinder me."

She let out a great breath and lifted her chin. She was so bright as the sun's light cast its brilliance over her. She was so beautiful. As much as Sanglant simply lusted after her, he gazed at her now with much more complicated emotions: desire, love, anger still stirring in its dark pit, but respect as well and pride in her strength. A little awe, perhaps, for the dazzling promise of the power she had unlocked within herself.

It was true she could not command men, but she would go where she meant to go and by having the courage to take that path, others would follow the trail she blazed. He could not battle Anne on any sorcerous plane, but without the strength of an army to back her up, Liath might never reach Anne, and certainly she could never control the chaos and dissolution that would inevitably erupt across Wendar and the other countries in the wake of the cataclysm.

Maybe God had a hand in bringing them together—for surely without each other they could not succeed.

'I have spoken as clearly as I am able," she finished. "I have told you what I know, as simply as I can. I must set forth soon, and quickly. Today if I can; tomorrow if I must."

She looked toward the wagon where Blessing lay surrounded by her faithful attendants, but she set her lips together in a thin line and lowered her hand. "That is all I have to say."

Silence followed her speech except for the ever-present drag of the wind through the grass. It was not warm, but today's strong blow did not make his bones ache with cold.

Clouds gathered along the eastern crags, breaking up into smaller clots as the peaks tore them apart. Nothing else moved.

'You know I am with you." Sanglant let Resuelto take two steps forward before reining him in. His voice carried easily. "I will do what is necessary to stop Sister Anne."

'What role do we play?" demanded Wichman, behind him. "I don't like all this talk of sorcery."

'Sorcery will not protect us from an arrow in the back. Anne will protect herself with soldiers as well as magic. That is why we need both griffin feathers and sorcerers.

Without soldiers of our own, we are too vulnerable to those who possess Henry's army."

Wichman grunted, and there was murmuring among those assembled to listen.

'Let's say it's true," said Lady Bertha, "for I've seen strange enough things that I'm less likely to doubt such tales than I was a year ago. Why should we help the Aoi? You say the land will return and that the one known as Sister Anne, who is also skopos over us all, will raise a great spell against the Lost Ones that will cause untold destruction. But what if this spell would make things better? What if it would banish the land of the Lost Ones so that we need never worry about them again? Wouldn't that leave us free to fight our own battles and restore King Henry to Wendar? The Lost Ones have no allegiance to us.

We can't know how many of them there are, and whether they'll be our allies or our enemies when they return."

Liath nodded. "A fair question, Lady Bertha." Recalling Eldest Uncle's trick, she unbuckled her belt, holding it high in one hand. "Imagine that this side of the buckle represents the land in which the Ashioi dwell." She spoke the words much as Eldest Uncle had, giving the belt a half twist and showing how a two-sided belt became a onesided belt because of that twist, and how the Ashioi land would return to the place it started. "The spell Anne means to weave can only work if the land lies on Earth. This means that the destruction will happen twice—once when the land intersects with Earth, and a second time when the new spell casts it away from Earth again. This is what we must not allow. We must seek to mitigate the return, and fight to prevent a second sundering."

Many among Sanglant's retinue spoke at once, calling out questions, but their voices quieted as Li'at'dano paced forward.

'What has been done, is done," she said. "I will aid you, Liathano, as well as I am able.

Let me send my apprentice, Sorgatani, with you."

'You will not come yourself?" Liath asked.

'My strength is bound to this land. If I leave it, I will die. I will send warriors in my stead, three hundreds of them, who will fight fiercely on your behalf." She beckoned to a stocky mare with a cream coat and, on her woman's head, startlingly black hair. "This daughter can be called Capi'ra. She will lead those who fight with you."

'Does Sorgatani know that those who escort me stand the highest risk of dying? We will battle at the center of it all."

'She knows."

Liath nodded. "Then we march as soon as we break camp."

Sanglant broke in before the shaman could answer. Liath had courage and power, but she had little idea of what made it possible to move an army. "We'll need help if we are to survive such a long and arduous journey. Can you supply us with guides? Food?

Supplies?"

Li'at'dano shifted her weight and made a gesture with her hands that finished with a touch to her bow strap. Had she been a horse, he thought, she would have flicked back her ears to show dislike. She addressed Liath, not him.

'Two days' ride from here lies a stone crown. It is an ancient monument that was erected here long before my people came to these pasturelands. If you can weave the crowns, then you can travel from one crown to another directly."

The glare of the sun sharpened. Wind snapped banners and pennants. He raced through the implications of the shaman's statement, and had to restrain a laugh even as he wanted to cry.

'Why did you not tell me this before?" exclaimed Liath, almost shivering with excitement. "Anne will never expect an attack from that direction! I can do it!"

'With an entire army?" demanded Captain Fulk, then recovered and looked at Sanglant. "My lord prince, if I may speak." He pressed his horse forward. When the prince nodded, giving him permission, the captain went on. "In this way Hugh of Austra saved Princess Theophanu and Queen Adelheid and their companies from an Aostan lord named John Ironhead, who meant to hold them as hostages."

'Hugh!" One word from Liath, that was all. She looked away, hiding her face from Sanglant's view.

'Go on," he said curtly to Fulk. He hated talk of Hugh. "Yes, my lord prince. We numbered seventy-five men and fifty horses, many fewer than we have here, and even so the path was fraying as the last of us crossed through, according to the report of Sister Rosvita. She was almost lost as the pathway collapsed behind us. I think it unlikely we can move an army of this size through the crowns."

'It is not possible," agreed Li'at'dano. "That any sorcerer accomplished what you speak of—to guide a group as large as the one you speak of—is astonishing. The crowns were meant to accommodate small parties only."

'Hugh did it," said Liath in a dangerously rash tone.

'With only seventy-five men and fifty horses," said Sanglant. "We have near a thousand. And a griffin, whose feathers are proof against magic."

'Ai, God," murmured Liath. "I had forgotten the griffin. Can such a creature even pass through the crowns?"

'If I may speak, my lord prince," said Hathui. "My lady. Consider this as well. Sister Rosvita told me that months passed in the moment that they stepped through the crown."

Fulk nodded. "As many of us here can attest."

She acknowledged him and went on. "In that same way, I suppose, four years passed here on Earth while you experienced only a handful of days passing in the world above, according to your testimony."

'Do you doubt her?" asked Li'at'dano.

Hathui's smile was sharp. "Nay, Holy One, I do not doubt Liath, for I knew her before, if you will remember, when she was one of that company to which I hold allegiance."

'Go on, Hathui," said Sanglant. He had primed her for a speech, although she had cleverly adjusted her terms with the unexpected introduction of the stone crown.

'Sorcery is dangerous, my lord prince, and uncertain. It seems unlikely the entire army can pass through the crowns in any case. In addition, if all of us travel together, then how can we alert our supporters elsewhere? We ought not to move in a single group. It would be better to split up."

'To split up?" he asked, knowing his lines as well as Hathui knew hers.

'When the storm comes, my lord, no one will be safe. Those who support the king and Wendar must know what to do. If they are not prepared, then whatever force convulses the Earth will be echoed by terrible strife among those who suffer and are afraid."

Li'at'dano beckoned Hathui forward. "You are wise, Daughter," said the old shaman.

"I would look at you more closely, for it is not given to every creature to learn wisdom."

'I thank you, Holy One," murmured Hathui, but she glanced at Sanglant as if to say,

"save me!" No one doubted Hathui's courage, but it was clear that the Horse people, and particularly the ancient one, made her nervous.

'Go on," said Sanglant, not wanting any of his people to show hesitation, and Hathui—

not without trepidation—nudged her horse closer to Liath's on the grass between the two groups, human and centaur, allied, yet in so many ways separate.

The shaman examined Hathui for a space before turning to Liath.

'She is a worthy daughter. Will you give her to me as part of our bargain?"

'She is sworn to the regnant," said Sanglant irritably. "One of his chosen Eagles. She must return to his hand at the end of her flight."

'A pity," mused Li'at'dano, but she made no further claim.

Liath saw the trap, but it was already sprung. "Will you and I not travel together?" she asked Sanglant.

Sanglant had never done a harder thing than what he did now. "To defeat Anne we need an army greater than the seven hundreds we have here. To defeat Anne we need an army greater even than that with which we defeated Bulkezu. A griffin brings me more than feathers to cut through the magic wielded by our enemies. It can bring me an army as well."

Liath opened her mouth to protest, then fell silent. He went on.

'I must ride west to gather as many Quman as I can. Margrave Waltharia holds troops in readiness, waiting only for my return. From the marchlands I will turn south and draw more Wendish troops as I go. Brother Breschius assures me that the Brinne Pass remains passable for much of the year, if the weather holds fair. I'll cross that way into Aosta, and march on Darre to free my father."

'But—!" Color had leached from her face, leaving her gray with shock, and her hands clenched the reins until her knuckles turned white. Her horse minced under her, sensing her tension. "But that means we must—"

She could not speak the word. Neither could he. He could scarcely bear to think of it: That means we must part. Must separate again, not knowing how many months or years would pass until they met. Not knowing if they would ever meet.

It gave him no pleasure to twist the knife into her belly. "It has to be done this way.

Do you believe that a griffin can cross through the crowns?"

She shook her head despairingly. "Nay. It seems likely its feathers will cut the threads of the spell. That way lies disaster for all who attempt the crossing."

'Anne has woven her net well. She controls not just sorcery, and the crowns, but Henry's and Adelheid's armies as well. We must match her. This is the only way."

She shut her eyes and said nothing, because she knew he was right. As much as he hated it, this was the only way.

'There remains one thing more, Holy One," he said, unable to bear her silence and knowing that if Liath had a chance to speak he would weaken. He gestured toward the wagon. "What of my daughter?"

Li'at'dano waited, and waited, but Liath neither spoke or opened her eyes. Tears wet her cheeks, but she made no sound, only sat there, rigid and suffering.

At last, the shaman inclined her head to Sanglant with a touch of disdain, yet just perhaps in the manner of a teacher acknowledging a pupil's apt question. "I have pondered deeply about the child. It may be I have thought of a way that will give us time to save her."

A.JL IJHLO LJ (jrjHL Anna was busy making ready to go, Matto still found time to pester her.

'Later, in the night, we could sneak out into the grass."

'And be eaten by the griffins?"

'The prince did it. Out in the grass."

She looked at him, and he flushed, shamefaced, and hoisted a chest into the back of one of the wagons.

Thiemo stalked over. "Are you bothering her?"

'Is it any of your business?"

They both seemed to have puffed themselves up with air, trying to look bigger and bulkier than they were, although indisputably Matto had the broader shoulders while Thiemo stood half a hand taller.

'Stop it!" said Anna. "Does it matter that you're jealous of each other? What will happen to us? Did you think of that? Will we abandon Blessing, or will we ask to stay with her?"

Stay with her. Out in this God-forsaken place, separated, perhaps forever, from their homeland.

She burst into tears. Matto and Thiemo shied away from her as she brushed past them, returning to the empty tent. Blessing had lain in the wagon all morning; no one wanted to disturb her, except for the healer who at intervals squeezed a bit of liquid down her throat through the reed.

What did it matter? Blessing was to be handed over to the centaurs, and the rest of them would journey back across the intermina ble steppe. It didn't bear thinking of. She began rolling up the traveling pallets, the last thing to go.

'I will not abandon her. But I don't want to stay here. I don't want to stay."

So it went with those who served. Yet she hadn't fared any better before the Eika invaded Gent, when she had lived under her uncle's harsh care. The Eika invasion had freed her from her uncle's house, but hiding in Gent had not made her and Matthias more comfortable. Quite the contrary. Matthias had been eager to apprentice himself out as soon as he was given the opportunity; he saw the worth of an orderly existence, with the promise of a meal every day and shelter over his head at night. War and plague and famine might afflict him—there was no defense against acts of God—but being a member of Mistress Suzanne's household gave him a measure of security.

Hadn't God wanted her to go with Blessing? Why else would she have got her voice back just then? Whatever power earthly nobles held over her, it was but a feather on the wind compared to God's power.

'Anna?"

'Go away, Matto."

'Nay, Anna, we'll not go. We've talked it over." Thiemo pushed in next to him, and they both knelt beside her where she was rolling up the last pallet. Everyone else had left the tent; after this tent came down, they would march.

'We've talked it over, Anna. We'll stay with you, both of us. No matter what. We won't leave Princess Blessing. Or you."

She couldn't speak because of the lump choking her throat. She tied up the pallet and picked up another, while Thiemo and Matto did the same. In silence they carried everything out to the wagon while soldiers dismantled the tent.

They traveled all afternoon, first overland to the river and then upstream through tall grass. That night she slept restlessly under the wagon while Thiemo and Matto kept watch. She woke to hear footfalls rustling in grass as they paced; the wagon creaked as the healer sat the unconscious girl up and forced a precious bit of fluid into her, enough to keep her alive one day more.

That was all they could hope for.

She rolled over but could not go back to sleep. The constant irritation of breathing grass all day made her throat raw and painful. The wind had turned cold, and she shivered in her blankets, wishing she had a warm body to share them with. But whatever she did, whichever man she chose, the other would be angry and jealous. How could she balance one with the other? What if they lived for years out here, alone together among a foreign people? How was it possible that Matto and Thiemo would not, in the end, come to blows? Or worse? What if they decided that neither of them wanted her?

She waited until they converged on the opposite side of the wagon and wriggled out, got to her feet, and dashed into the grass, bent over so they would not see her. Although she met no sentries, she didn't go too far; she could not get the iron stink of the griffin out of her head. The hooded griffin paced along at the head of the procession, obedient to its master, and the big female flew overhead but circled down at night to curl up beside its mate.

She heard them before she saw them, their muted voices whispering, and she stopped at the verge of a stand of stunted poplars growing just beyond the river's edge. Through furled leaves budding on the trees she saw an amorphous beast perched on a rock overlooking the river. She froze, heart racing, knowing how foolish she had been to leave the safety of camp. If she did not move, perhaps the beast would lumber off without noticing her.

Its murmured laugh made her shudder until, too late, she realized that she watched no beast at all but the prince romancing his wife, huddled close against her with a cloak thrown over their shoulders. How would it feel to sit with his arm tight around her, to feel his lips pressed close, to hear the murmuring of his voice as soft as the caress of the wind?

She sidled closer.

'Why didn't you speak to me before? Why wait until the council, if you planned it all along?"

'If I'd discussed it with you when we were alone, you'd have persuaded me otherwise.

I couldn't have done it. This way, there is no going back."

'Ai, God. I can't bear to think of leaving you when we might never… If I die, Sanglant—"

'Hush. Hush."

They hushed for a time, but eventually the lady composed herself. "I'll need perhaps fifty troops to protect me. That should be enough to move swiftly, enough to provide a real shield, but not so many that they'll be at risk when they cross through the crowns."

'Yes, twenty-five men and horses and twenty-five of the centaurs, and a few pack animals. You must take Breschius. For a captain… Wichman is daring and bold."

'Scarcely better than a savage!"

'Then which other?"

'Bertha seems competent and even-tempered."

'She's not even-tempered, but she knows when to stay cool."

'And won't be raping every comely girl her retinue passes by, I should think."

He chuckled. "As to that, if rumor is true, I can't say."

Liath made a sharp, disgusted sound and there was a flurry of movement beneath the cloak. "It's nothing to laugh over. How can you think it funny?"

'Forgive me, my love. You're right. Wichman's behavior is nothing to make light of."

He bent his head and for a while, as Anna stared, knowing she ought not to, he kissed his wife. She couldn't really see them clearly; there wasn't enough moon, but she could see shapes and she could feel that kiss through the air, as though it were a live thing nudging against her body.

After a while they disentangled, if not by much, and Liath spoke cautious words as delicately as if she were walking on ice.

'I know you were alone for many years, yet it chafes me, a betrayal."

'Who betrayed whom first?"

'I did not abandon you! I had no choice."

He was silent. The night lightened as the gibbous moon drifted free of clouds. Its silver ran on the waters.

'How many lovers?" Liath asked.

'How many? Ah." He hesitated, then sighed. "Well, first—"

'Nay, I didn't mean you must detail each one."

'Then why did you ask?" He got up, leaving her wrapped in the cloak, and paced to the river, where he scrabbled among the stones on the shore for a rock to toss into the rushing water. The plop of its splash was heard, not seen. "Not enough. Too many. And none of them were you. I hated you for leaving me."

And well you should have! Anna wanted to shout.

What woman could bear to abandon such a man? It was all very well to prate about necessity and duty, but if you really cared for a person that much, you would never leave them behind, no matter what.

Not unless they asked you to.

'Ai, God, Liath. This hurts more than any injury I've ever suffered. I can't bear to leave you again."

'I know. I know. But what choice have we, my love? We are prisoners of power. If we survive, we will be reunited. Now come. Don't stand so far from me."

'Hsst! Anna!" The whisper made her leap right off the ground because it came so unexpectedly and from directly behind her. "What are you doing out here?"

'I beg pardon, Captain Fulk! Just, um, just coming out to pee."

'If you're finished, you might want to go back into camp. It isn't wise for anyone to walk beyond the sentry line."

He pointedly did not look toward the river or the two figures now embracing. He waited until she sighed, and turned, and followed him back into camp.

The stone circle stood on what had been an island before the river had eaten a new channel. Now it lay on a point with one flank washed by the flowing waters. The old secondary channel had filled in at one end, creating a rock-strewn earthen bridge between the land and the low hill where the crown was erected. Soldiers led the horses to drink by turns in the slough while the prince, his wife, and the old shaman investigated the stone crown together with a dozen attendants.

There were few trees in this part of the world, and even the brushy scrub along the riverbanks was scoured low by the winter winds and heavy snow, so the crown was easy to see. The stones shone golden where the westering sunlight washed across them; a few glinted, light catching in crystals embedded deep, as if the stones were chiseled from granite or marble. There were nine in all, arranged not quite in a circle but in a figure that bore more resemblance to an oval. Two of the stones listed, and one stone stood perilously near a low bluff where the current wore away the earth. The grass between the stones had been trampled, revealing a hummock in the center.

'I've never seen a crown all standing in place, like that one," murmured Thiemo, shifting from one foot to the other as he, too, watched from beside Blessing's wagon.

'It makes me feel prickly all over," agreed Matto. The two youths shared a look that, all at once, made Anna feel left out.

Then they both glanced at her and the momentary camaraderie vanished as they turned away, hands clenching, backs stiff.

No one moved to pitch camp. Like Anna they waited anxiously, not sure what would happen next. The bulk of the army formed up farther out on the grass, separate from the small party that would accompany Liath. Farthest back, a dozen soldiers stood guard over the hooded griffin.

'What will happen?" asked Matto, unable to stand the suspense any longer.

'Look," said Anna. "They're coming back."

A strong, cold wind started blowing from the north, and the healer rose from her seat at Blessing's side to sniff at the air. With a frown, she shook her head.

'Snow," she said when Thiemo looked at her questioningly.

As the prince and his entourage clambered up to the waiting army, Captain Fulk hurried away to talk to a cavalcade of sergeants awaiting his orders. The powerful centaur attending the old shaman trotted away to her own group, and, as Anna watched, the two lines began integrating, units of centaurs lining up between mounted horsemen, with Kerayit bowmen in the van and Fulk commanding the rear guard. Only Bertha and her two dozen soldiers stood their ground, together with a dozen centaurs, the wagon belonging to the witch woman, and her Kerayit attendants.

The prince strode up to the open wagon where Blessing lay. He leaned over the side, reaching out to touch his daughter's pale face. Blessing breathed softly, but it was clear that it might well be only hours before her soul left her body. Liath came to stand beside him. A few tears glistened on her cheeks, and she wiped them away impatiently.

'We do what we must," she said.

'I know." He, too, was weeping, but he made no attempt to erase his tears. He stood there for a bit with his eyes shut and a hand resting on the girl's sunken, hollow cheek.

Liath said nothing. Maybe, Anna thought uncharitably, she was heartless; she didn't seem as upset as she ought to be. Or maybe, just maybe, what she showed on her face wasn't the mirror of her heart.

Maybe.

At last the prince sighed deeply and withdrew his hand. His gaze ranged over Blessing's attendants. He seemed to be counting them off.

'Well, then," he said. "This task I will command none of you to accept, but I offer it in any case. One chance we have to save her— that she be placed in the barrow at the center of the crown in the hope that the spell woven by my wife will capture her in a kind of sleep."

'Until when?" asked Heribert, stepping forward to stare brood-ingly at the girl.

Sanglant shrugged. "Until the crown of stars crowns the heavens. That is what we hope for. This is all we have. Otherwise, she will be dead by morning." He had to stop because of the tears, but he mastered himself. "The Holy One tells us that for the spell to work there must be seven. That means we need six to attend her. I cannot promise you life, or death. It may be that nothing will happen, and that after Liath departs you emerge unscathed. In that case you will march west with us. You may die. Or you may wake in a year and a half out in this God-forsaken wilderness. If that comes to pass, then the Holy One has given us her word that some of her people will be here to rescue you. So."

'I'll go," said Heribert instantly. The terrible expression on his face made Anna want to weep, but it was hard enough to listen without running away in fear. It was hard, knowing what she must do and yet fearing to do it.

'I go," said the healer in her broken Wendish. "The Holy One command me."

Gyasi stepped forward. "We serve the blessing through life and into death. My nephews and I will go."

'Nay, you I have need of, Gyasi. I need you as a guide and to interpret and persuade the Quman. You serve her better if you help me win the war."

'Then take of my nephews as many as you need, lord prince."

Sanglant nodded. "So I shall."

'I will go, my lord prince." Anna's voice shook as she said the words. She had never been so frightened in her life, not even when Bulkezu had taken her as a hostage.

'And I," said Matto.

'I will, too," said Thiemo, not to be shown up.

Sanglant nodded, his frown so deep that it looked likely to scar his face. "One of your nephews I'll need, Gyasi. One who can fight."

The shaman nodded.

Matto was white and Thiemo standing so rigid that he looked awkward. They said nothing, and looked not at each other nor at her, as if the merest meeting of eyes would shatter their resolve.

'She'll have to be carried in," said Liath. "They may as well take a few things."

'Like a burial," murmured Sanglant hoarsely. "In the old days they buried queens and kings in this manner, stowed with their trea sures." He shook himself and pushed away from the wagon. "Let it be done, then. I can bear this no longer."

'I'll carry her," said Matto.

'I will!" insisted Thiemo.

'Nay, neither of you," said Sanglant sharply. "I'll carry her."

They made a ragged little procession, laden with bundles, as they crossed what had once been a sandbar thrown up by the way the current had dredged into the earth. No one called after them, bidding them safe passage. Anna kicked stones rubbed round by the tumble of the water and left high and dry when the current shifted and this channel turned into a backwater. Once they reached the old island, she slogged up a gentle slope through low scrub. Gnats and tiny flies swarmed, and she batted them away and was relieved, really, to step past the stones into the ring because, for a miracle, no gnats or flies passed that invisible line.

The hummock revealed itself to be a barrow constructed in a way familiar to Anna from ones left behind by the ancient ones along the river north of Gent. It was larger than it had seemed from the mainland. A passage grave made by stones had been covered by turf, now overgrown with grass, yellow violets, and, to her surprise, a rash of variegated irises. The spray of flowers reminded her of funeral wreaths placed on the coffins of the dead, but she only gripped her bundle of clothes and oddments tightly and kept marching.

She glanced back once toward the army, forming up into a tight marching line, units close together and some of the wagons abandoned and rolled to one side, including the one in which Blessing had lain. Bertha's troop moved up behind them onto the sandbar, and halted.

'Let me kiss her now," said Liath. She kissed her daughter on the brow, then drew an arrow from her quiver and retreated out of the stone circle, stopping at a sandy patch of ground that faced east, so close to the bluff that one more step backward would send her tumbling into the river.

As she might deserve to, thought Anna, then squelched the thought, afraid that such feelings would doom her. She had to pray, to focus her thoughts on her dying mistress, but her hands did shake so that the bundle seemed likely to drop right out of her grasp even though it was loosely swaddled and easy to grip.

'Anna?" Matto sidled close up against her.

'Nay, you just leave her alone," muttered Thiemo.

'Stop it!"

Heads turned at her tone, but the solemn proceedings captured their attention again.

Li'at'dano sprinkled ocher over Blessing's limp body, then dabbed a spot on either of Sanglant's cheeks, drawing the spot out into a line, and finishing with a red mark on his brow. She marked the rest of them in the same fashion, and when it came Anna's turn, it was all she could do not to shrink away from the centaur. Those eyes seemed fiat, and the pupils weren't shaped right, and certainly no trace of human emotion enlivened that creamy face. She could kill any of them with a kick, if she wished—well, any of them except Prince Sanglant.

And when they woke—if they woke—this creature would be her keeper. She didn't fear Li'at'dano, precisely, but the thought of living among the centaurs for untold years made her suddenly very queasy.

The prince knelt by the low entrance and, with his daughter clutched tightly against him, edged forward on his knees into the grave. Heribert followed him, carrying a lamp and a blanket, and after him went the Kerayit healer dragging behind him the heavy leather pouch in which he carried the tools of his trade.

Then it was Matto's turn. He took in a deep breath and glanced back at Anna and Thiemo, but he said nothing, only got down on his hands and knees and crawled in after the others. Once he was inside, Anna ducked down under the lintel, able to walk in a crouch rather than have to crawl as the bigger men did. The smell of earth overwhelmed her. The ramped floor sloped down and as she pushed the bundle ahead of her, unable to figure out any way to carry it, the ceiling above receded until she was able to raise up a little and walk bent over. The passageway seemed to go on for longer than ought to be possible, given the outward dimensions of the hummock, and when she reached the chamber, the flickering lamplight suggested a chamber far larger than it had any right to be. The corbeled vault was so high that Sanglant could stand upright. The walls were pockmarked with niches, but the lamp didn't give enough light for her to tell what was stored in them.

Thiemo caught her wrist as he crowded up beside her. "Dead people," he whispered.

"They bury dead people in here."

A scream caught in her throat.

'I pray you," murmured Heribert to the prince. The cleric had set down the lamp and now fussily arranged the blanket in the center of the chamber. With a grim expression, Sanglant laid his daughter on the blanket, tucking the ends around her feet, and kissed her twice.

The Quman youth crept in, staring about the vaulted chamber. He kept his hands away from his weapons, but it was comforting to see him armed together with the swords Matto and Thiemo carried and the knife she herself wore at her belt. Only the healer and Heribert carried nothing to defend themselves.

The prince lifted the lamp and shone it one final time into the face of each person there.

At last, he spoke. "It makes no matter whether my beloved daughter survives, only that you six were willing to serve her even in the face of death. I will never forget that.

When we meet again, you will receive a just reward. No one has done me a greater service than you."

There was nothing more to say. Anna willed him to go quickly, so that she might not have to suffer his good-byes any longer. She might never see him again, the one she loved best in all the world. He held the lamp while they each of them sat down in a circle around the unconscious girl and once they had settled he placed the lamp beside Brother Heribert licked his fingers, and snuffed out the burning wick.

'Fare well," he said.

He embraced Heribert last, then was gone. She heard his shuffling crawl up the tunnel.

'It's strange," said Matto in a whisper. "I can't see any light at all. We can't have come so very far, and there were no twists in the passage."

She groped and found his hand, squeezed, and reached to the other side for Thiemo.

There she sat holding on to each of them. The Kerayit healer crooned softly in a nasal voice. Although the words and the eerie tune made no sense, it was somehow soothing.

They waited.

The blackness was complete, drowning them. She could see nothing, not even Matto or Thiemo so close on either side of her, but the clasp of their hands comforted her. At length her trembling slowed and ceased. The cold grasp of reality overtook her; she might die, here and now, or she might not, but she had made her choice and now had only to wait.

It was strange to feel so calm.

'What's that?" whispered Matto.

'Hush!" said Heribert, who was now their leader.

A barely audible rumble vibrated the ground under her thighs and rump, more felt than heard.

'The army is moving," muttered Thiemo.

'No," said Matto. "We couldn't feel them, they're too far from us."

'Then what is it?"

'Hush," said Heribert.

The Kerayit healer fell silent as a high, singing note thrummed at the limit of their hearing. A second voice joined the first, not a human voice nor even that of any living thing but of an entity so ancient and cold that its voice had great beauty but no warmth.

Their harmony twisted through her bones and made fingers of cold fear race up and down her spine. She shuddered; the eerie counterpoint made her ears hurt, and the melisma of those voices stabbed her through the chest like knives whose blades had been soaked in icy water until they burned.

'Ai, God," breathed Thiemo as in ecstasy.

Matto whimpered in pain.

Light flashed as swiftly as lightning, a blue fire, and in that instant she saw the six of them seated around the corpselike form of Blessing. The niches caught fire, blossoming into a labyrinth of passageways.

She saw into the tangle of the maze that flowered around them, reaching in all directions and in no direction, and anchored by a blazing stone pillar in whose heart lived past, present, and future woven each into the other in an unfathomable skein.

She saw.

A silver-gold ribbon winds through the heavens in twists and turns so convoluted that she cannot tell one side of the ribbon from another or if it even has two sides at all but only one infinite gleaming surface without end. The dazzle of stars blinds her, and then the glory of the heavens vanishes as a shadow looms, so huge that it covers half the sky.

An immense weight bears down on her, crushing the air from her lungs. She struggles, but the weight passes right through her, and as she comes up gasping and choking and coughing for air, she sees gnarled, hunched creatures clawing through tunnels of stone a young woman, dressed in the most peculiar manner and with her face scarred, struck down by a spear made of light as she stands before a blazing stone crown a young lord asleep with six companions curled around him a half naked warrior and his comrades striding along a path, stone-tipped spears in hand and revenge in their hearts; their bodies look like those of men and women but they wear animal faces: a wolf, a falcon, a griffin, a great cat, a curly-snouted lizard a man attended by two hands, his face obscured by shadow as he kneels beside a dead man whose flesh, horrifyingly, crumbles away until there is nothing left but bone Blessing, grown into a young woman, seated on a golden throne the Eika who caught them in the cathedral at Gent but let them go stands at the stem of a ship attended by grim warriors, his form outlined against the elaborately carved dragon prow; as the ship grinds up the slope of a beach he leaps out and at the head of his army assaults a creature half woman and half glittering wolf's-head. Bodies fall everywhere. Blood streams down the shore into the shallow waters where the churning makes them swirl and muddy until she sees, in their depths, the most awful sight of all:

Blessing's withered corpse, burning on a funeral pyre.

"No more!" she gasps as the visions wash over her in a flood and she drowns.

Blue fire swallowed her. Thiemo's hand convulsed in hers, and he fell against her.

Then, nothing.

THE ships arrived in threes and fives, guided by the men who had paddled northeast with Manda's tribesmen through the fens to the sea. As the fleet gathered, the holy island on which the queen sheltered began slowly to become wreathed in an impenetrable fog that each day spread farther out across the waters. Eight days after Elafi and Ki had guided him to the secret path that led beneath the hill, Stronghand readied his troops, detailed his plans, and moved his ships into position. He called for the attack at dawn.

Dawn never came, or so it seemed. The sun crossed the threshold of night, but no light penetrated the viscous mist risen from the fen. Even the ferocious dogs seemed subdued by its weight.

'We should wait until tomorrow," muttered Dogkiller. "Our ships will be scattered and our attack confused in this fog."

'No. This mist smells of tree sorcerers. The tidal swell is in our favor, high and strong.

My ship will lead the attack."

When Stronghand stepped to the stem of his ship, he thrust his banner before him. As they rowed into the gloom large drops of water condensed on the staff, and on the hull, as the mist thinned. Soon water dribbled off every surface and around and behind them shadow ships took form, more phantom than real. As they pushed forward the fog shredded into patchy wisps and the ships took on solid form. With a will the men bent to their oars, stirring the murky water as they skimmed across the wetlands. Dogs thrust their heads out over the railing to sniff at the air, their glossy flanks trembling with excitement. Now and again a ship snagged on a high lying shelf or on a bank of reed submerged by the tide, but otherwise the shallow draught of their ships served them well.

Points of fire flared on the islands as the Albans prepared for battle, but the water between them lay clear and open. Stronghand leaned forward to taste the wind: was that the scent of their enemy's fear, leavened with the stink of decay? As he turned to survey his flanks, those ships sweeping around to hit the island from the opposite side, the deck shook beneath him.

Tenth Son, at the stern, called out an incoherent warning. Behind them, other ships rocked, yet there was no wind beyond a trifling early morning breeze. Barking and yelping shattered the quiet; men shouted in alarm.

Darkly sinuous shapes writhed up out of the water.

The boat lurched sideways so suddenly that he fell against the railing and barely caught himself with his free hand, almost pitching right over the side. A dog skidded past him and fetched up hard, rattling the railings. Tentacles snaked up along the planks. He threw the standard onto the deck but before he could pull himself upright a vise gripped his ankle and he was tugged so hard he flew backward and plunged into the fen.

The water swallowed him. Spinning, he got himself oriented, but when he tried to stand his feet sank into silt. Roots and vines wrapped around his legs. The keel parted the muck above him. A flailing oar struck him on the head, and he staggered. The living roots embraced him, pulling him into the slippery mud.

His breath was going. His lungs were almost empty. He grabbed a root and drew his axe, hacking twice before cutting it through, yet for each one he sliced away another curled up to take its place. He worked methodically and efficiently, but his life was slipping away into the water.

Draining.

Darkness.

He was blind, hallucinating with something as close to panic as he had ever felt in his short life.

Chains scrape around his ankles and wrists, weighing him down as his captor bargains with a merchant.

"It's true he's blind, but look at him. All his limbs work. He's healthy. And he's as good as brainless. Doesn't even remember his own name."

The merchant grunts disgustedly. "You'd offer me a lame horse by telling me that it's easier for walking children to keep up with it? Nay, twenty sceattasfor him."

"Twenty! Robbery! I'll take forty, but only because he's blind. His hearing is sharp as a dog's. Look how strong he is!"

"Strong? Looks like he's in a stupor to me. He's probably mute and touched in the head to boot."

Moist hands test the muscles of his arms, squeezing and measuring. They pause to tap at metal.

"What's this pretty piece? Bronze, and cunningly worked, too. That would bring you a fair price down at smith's street."

"It won't come off," replies his captor reluctantly.

"Won't come off?" Fingers grope at the armband given him by the skrolin, the last thing he possesses that links him to what he was before he forgot everything. "What kind of fool—ai! Uh! Uh! Shit! It burned me!"

"You think we wouldn't have taken that off right away, if we could have? It's some kind of magic piece. A curse, maybe."

"Magic! Curses! Fifteen sceattas is more than generous for the likes of him."

"Fifteen! Thirty-five is my last offer."

What are'skrolin'? The word hangs in his memory, but he can make no image, can only remember the sound of clawed feet scuffling on stone. After all, he is blind.

The merchant's hands run down his flanks and prod his buttocks. Once he had clothing, but it has been stolen or sold. He wears only a loin-cloth and a frayed, stinking blanket thrown over his shoulders. The wind chills him, but it also brings to him a panoply of noise wrapping him around and drowning him.

"Oysters! Oysters!"

"Have ye heard the news? Two Salian dues have each claimed the throne. It's said their armies are marching."

"Are we safe here?"

A cart rumbles past. Chickens cluck. He smells the dusty aroma of unmilled wheat, tinged with decay— the last gleanings from a winter storehouse. He hears the steady, careful blows of a workman chiseling stone, the rasp of an adze dressing wood.

Two women laugh, but their voices fade as they walk on; like everyone else they take no notice of the interchange in progress. He is beneath notice, submerged into the background, just another commodity at the market town waiting to be sold.

A pig squeals as its throat is cut, an awful noise that goes on and on before, between one breath and the next, cutting off.

He shudders all over.

"Well, he can't likely escape if he's blind," agrees the merchant in answer to an unheard question. "I think I know who could take a lad like this, dumb and witless and blind but otherwise hale. Thirty sceat-tas. Take it, or go elsewhere."

"Done."

The last root parted under his axe. He thrust up with his legs and burst out of the water, gasping for air, hollow with rage. From the other ships, men cried out in horror.

Planks creaked as plants lashing up from the depths tried to pull apart planks and drag down keels. He sputtered and grasped the side of the listing ship. Tenth Son was first to reach him, hauling him up and over the side. He fell to his knees, grabbed the standard, which was lying untouched on the deck, and with his lungs on fire and his body shedding water and mud he struck the haft to the deck three times.

Roots withered and fell back into the muck. The churning waters stilled.

Next to him, a dog growled.

Still coughing, he surveyed the fleet. He had no time to dwell on the vision that had almost drowned him. One ship had capsized, its warriors and dogs lost to the swamp since RockChildren did not swim. Yet men would be lost to battle nevertheless. This battle had already begun as the magic of the tree sorcerers retreated before his talisman.

He lifted the standard. Drums sounded the advance as oars stroked to a beat. They closed with the shore. Flaming arrows shot by the Albans lit arcs through the sky and fell against shields held in place by warriors clustered on the foredeck of each ship. Before them the three islands rose out of the swamp. A hastily constructed earthen dike ringed the land, topped with a crude stockade neither stout nor tall. The enemy had scoured the island clean of vegetation for building, for fire, for fodder, and the stink of their overcrowded encampment drifted over the waters. Rising above all, at the height of the tallest island, the stone crown dominated the scene.

His ship scraped through reeds and grounded on the muddy shoreline. A second ship, and a third, slid up beside it. Dogs poured over the railing, eager for blood. His warriors leaped over the side and assailed the rampart. Unused masts were carried as rams, and soon they breached the stockade in a dozen places. Yet a hedge of Alban spears and shields filled every gap as soon as it was opened, and Alban archers darted to and fro behind the shield line, releasing shafts at deadly close range as they targeted the mass of dogs. With each push over the rampart, a countercharge drove the RockChildren back, but never all the way back into the water, never all the way back to their ships. More poured up on shore to support those in the vanguard.

The queen of Alba rose above the fray, her wolfs head helm shining and her banner held high behind her. A rank of tall shield-men as brawny as bears protected her, all armed with great axes.

'Tenth Son! Hold the standard and do not leave the ship. I'm leading a countercharge."

Against the queen, Stronghand himself must be seen to prevail, just as he had at Kjalmarsfjord been the one to throw his challenger Nokvi overboard to the merfolk.

The sun rose high in the morning sky. Its light made the stones atop the hill seem to glow. From the other side of the island he heard the flanking ships engage. Shouts and cries rose up into the sky like startled birds. "Now!"

He pushed into the front line, half a head shorter than most of his brothers. They struggled up over the rampart, clawed feet digging into tü^ ürt to keep their purchase as spears thrust against their shields in an effort to drive them back. Arrows poured in on their flanks, and many of his warriors staggered back or fell, but the rest held their line as others filled in. The Alban line stretched and thinned under the onslaught. Here and there an inward bulge formed as the RockChildren pressed hard down off the ramparts. The toll was grim on both sides, but he had a larger army and one final surprise to unveil.

Once again the queen appeared. She drove headlong into the flank of one of those bulges, cutting the forward forces off from reinforcement. With a score of Hakonin warriors, Flint charged to meet the Albans, but these queen's men had such unusual size and girth that they could each one meet the charge of an Eika and hold their ground. With shield pressed against shield, the struggle became a stalemate.

Stronghand was caught behind his own shield line as a dozen men filled the breach and another dozen pushed against the Eika, straining, grunting, while all about them axes cleaved shields, spears thrust, and arrows whistled. One huge man stalked into view, looming above the battling line. The queen gave way to let him through. He was massive, like a tree trunk animated and molded into the form of a man. His helm was closed over his face and only his beard could be seen, curly and green like moss. His ax crashed down onto the head of the warrior standing just to the right of Flint; the hapless soldier's skull split in two and blood poured out as the corpse collapsed, leaving a gap.

Three men sprang forward to meet the giant, but he swept them aside with a sideswipe of his shield as easily as a man dusts chaff from a table.

The earth beneath their feet trembled.

Again the ax rose and came down. Flint parried the blow with his shield, but the metal rim and wood body splintered and snapped and he dropped down like a stone under the weight of that awesome blow. Again the ground shook as if it would heave and buckle under the strain. The line shifted; the Eika, impossibly, lost heart in the face of such impenetrable strength.

The giant's ax rose again, poised to strike and break the line. The knoll exploded in golden flame and green fumes. A roar to curdle any creature's blood vibrated through the air. Beyond the stones, the wyvern rose up from the cliff face where it had been interred for centuries, a skeleton no longer but fully fleshed. Deadly venom dripped from its fanged mouth. Its wings beat a thundering rhythm, and clouds of dirt and a spray of poisonous vapor blew outward from the tremendous wind made by wings. It curled its tail tight, using it like a rudder, and swooped down toward the Alban queen.

The dogs ran for the water.

Half of the Alban men fled blindly, although there was nowhere to run, struggling and pushing and trampling as they shouted and screamed in terror. The rest stood transfixed, and only a handful of her guardsmen had the presence of mind to turn to face the new threat.

'Now!" cried Stronghand triumphantly, and with a howl of victory the Eika surged forward to crush the Alban lines.

Flint leaped to his feet and buried his ax in the chest of the giant, then danced sideways as the huge creature toppled and fell flat, crushing two Alban soldiers under his bulk. Stronghand raced through the breach and with a dozen men at his side hit the stunned guardsmen and bowled them over. Above, the wyvern dissolved into a rattling, tumbling shower of bones, the illusion fading in a roar of sound no less impressive than the panicked screams of the vanquished Albans as the Eika killed as many as they could.

Stronghand lunged just as the queen made ready to flee. She parried him and swung a blow with her sword, but he dodged, ducked inside her reach, batted her shield out of the way, and cut off her head. The wolf's head rolled sideways and came to rest with its muzzle leering at the sky. Her heart's blood gushed onto the earth from her severed neck.

'Go!" he called to First Son, who was waiting for the command. A score of soldiers trotted off through the chaos toward the stone crown.

Tenth Son slogged over to him through the sea of dead to give him the standard. "Not as good as Bloodheart's illusions," he commented. "The colors were too bright. But the poisonous spray was a nice touch. Do such creatures kill with venom?"

'I don't know. I've never seen such a beast before." All around them the killing went on as the remains of the battle swept toward and then ringed the Alban encampment. At the water's edge, the boldest dogs turned and loped back into the fray. "Come with me."

The remaining Alban soldiers stood back to back in a tight shield wall that enclosed the central camp and the huge white tent that had sheltered the queen and her lineage.

Two women wearing bands of gold around their foreheads stood under a white awning, one very elderly and the other so young she was still a girl. She wore armor but no helmet and did not look strong enough to heft the sword that she held in her left hand. Children cowered at the entrance to the tent, towheaded lads and lasses wearing the garb of noble kinfolk in stark contrast to the two score or more crudely garbed slaves huddled up against the walls of the tent. Caught, as Ursuline the deacon had once said eloquently,

"between the Enemy and the hindmost."

They alone were unarmed. Every adult in camp, not just the soldiers had some kind of weapon in hand, shovels, picks, pitchforks, sharpened stakes, and many a makeshift club.

Even the remnants of the tree sorcerers, young and old alike, held their leafy staves as if they were spears and not the staffs through which they wielded their magic. They knew their magic had failed them.

Stronghand beckoned to a trio of soldiers. "Lift me on a shield."

He set his feet at either side of the round shield, swayed as the soldiers hoisted him, and caught a fragile balance. His own warriors pulled back from the front line, and even the Albans fell silent, weapons at the ready, as they stared up at him. One archer shot at him, but he shifted sideways so the arrow grazed his left shoulder, the merest prick against his copper skin. The others held their fire.

'For some among you," he shouted, "there can be no mercy today. But those among you who are slaves, hear me. Cast aside your servitude and join us. Let the slave become the master, and the master become the slave. If you join us, you will live and be given land and the chance to start again. If you remain, then you will die with those who have ruled you."

The girl queen lifted her sword to point at the heavens. Was it fear or fury that transfigured her youthful face? "Kill them!" she shrieked.

Her armed countryfolk, all but the soldiers, turned as one mass and butchered the hapless slaves.

Stronghand leaped off the shield. "No mercy!"

The Eika surged forward.

No mercy they showed, not this day when Alain had been shown no mercy. Black anger scalded his heart, and he himself killed the queens and the screaming, terrified children.

When all the Albans were dead, he sat in the queen's gilded chair and surveyed the islands while his soldiers assembled before him. Most of the corpses lay twisted on the ground, although he had ordered his men to string up the bodies of the tree sorcerers from the masts of their ships. The dogs fed eagerly. Tents lay trampled; piles of bodies marked episodes of fierce fighting; a few horses and sheep had been killed, and one of the ships had caught fire and now smoldered as his men heaved buckets of water over the smoking deck. The slaughter had an especially pungent smell because so many had died in such a small area.

A lone hound, lean and gray, nosed through the wreckage and paused to lap at a pool of blood, ears down and body cowering. A trio of Eika dogs caught its scent and raced toward it, and it bolted, yipping. The chase vanished from his view but ended in a spate of frantic barking and a squeal of pain, cut short.

It was a bloody field, truly, but all battlefields were in the end. Humankind might glorify war or twist themselves into knots to justify their conflicts as necessary and right, but he knew better. They were a means to an end, one choice made instead of another—

effective, brutal, and if fought on the right battlefield with the right timing, decisive.

He had done what he needed to do to get what he wanted. Yet he could not erase the stain of Alain's suffering from his mind. It seemed he could never exult in his greatest victories.

Out on the fens a score of small boats appeared: Manda and her people paddled toward the holy island they hoped to reclaim.

'It will have to be cleaned up," he said to Tenth Son. "I wonder if they prefer the corpses burned, buried, or drowned in the water."

'Burning and drowning may pollute what is here," said Tenth Son. "If I were them, I would ask that the corpses be conveyed to the mainland and disposed of there."

Stronghand nodded. A score of his Rikin cousins approached, guarding his new allies, whom they had rescued from the shelter built up by the stone circle.

As he waited, he mused, and spoke at last to his companion. "I am not the OldMother, to grant you a name. But neither am I Bloodheart or any of the chieftains of old, content with what they could grasp for themselves alone. Nay. Why should I stop here? Why should I hesitate?"

Soldiers moved aside to make way for First Son and their allies.

They halted ten paces from him.

'As you commanded, Stronghand," said First Son. "None of the circle priests were killed."

He moved aside to allow Brother Severus to walk forward alone, leaving his dozen attendants behind him under the protection, or custody, of First Son's cohort. It was clear that while some accepted their changing circumstances with a stoic calm, others felt less sanguine and the one known as Father Reginar, certainly, looked ready to vomit as he stared at the feeding dogs.

'Lord Stronghand." Brother Severus spoke Wendish with a strong accent and an arrogant way of clipping off the ends of his words. If the carnage bothered him, he did not show it, but neither did he once look away from the matter at hand. "We have abided by our part of our agreement. Now we expect that you will abide by yours." He fished in one long sleeve and drew out a parchment scroll, freshly inked. "We have written up a contract, detailing our agreement. It wants only your mark to seal our bargain."

Stronghand rose, lifting his standard. With their usual patience, born of stone, the RockChildren waited. "What is to stop me from killing you now that I have you in my power?"

Severus sighed with the weariness of a man who is plagued by the stupid questions of foolish children. "We are sorcerers, my Lord Stronghand. You should fear our power."

'But I do not." He gestured toward the field of corpses that surrounded them and made sure to indicate the gruesome trophies dangling from the masts of his fleet. "The magic of the tree sorcerers did not defeat me. Why should yours?"

The corners of Severus' lips twitched up, but he was not smiling. He lifted a hand casually, and a wind stuttered up from the earth. The awning heaved as though an invisible creature shrugged up beneath it. The cloth of the tents all around them flapped and fluttered. Pennants snapped. The corpse of the youngest queen rolled as a movement within the soil heaved it sideways, revealing maggots where her heart's blood had pooled on the ground beneath her. Every dog feeding yelped and leaped, as if stung, and like a flock of locusts they bolted into the water and there they stayed, whining but fearful as blood and offal oozed from their muzzles to further muddy the spoiled shoreline.

Stronghand bared his teeth, nothing more. This Severus was not one to be trifled with or underestimated. Unlike most men, he could not be intimidated, and he was no fool.

'We are not so easy to kill," said Severus as wind rippled the waters and rocked the ships.

Stronghand let the sorcery subside without interfering with it. "Had I wished to kill you, I would have done so already. Be assured that I make no bargain unless I mean to keep it." He touched the scar on the back of his left hand to his own lips, remembering what had been sealed by blood when Alain had freed him from the cage.

Where was Alain now?

How could he find him, if he had no landmarks to show the way?

'I will mark your contract, but you must first read it aloud for my ears."

'Of course. Reginar?"

The young man had lost the edge of his arrogance, but he had a measure of courage, too, because he took the parchment from Severus and read in a voice that wavered at first but at length became steady and strong.

'This agreement of mutual aid and alliance spoken and sealed between the Holy Mother, Anne, in the person of her counselor, Brother Severus, and the one known as Stronghand, king among the Eika. In return for the help given to him by Brother Severus in defeating the queens of Alba and granting him material aid in claiming the queendom of Alba, Stronghand agrees to guard those who wish to restore the crown at Wyfell Island; they will abide beside the caretakers of the island in peace and will be allowed to study the ancient art of the mathematici within the confines of the stone circle. In addition, in return for our support and blessing, Stronghand will aid us in restoring and protecting the other crowns we seek, including one in the Eikaland and another in the kingdom of Salia. He will allow missionaries to move freely among his people and among the Alban heathens."

The text was hedged round with prologues and appendices, legal wordings that had to do with humankind's propensity for complicating matters best left simple. At last Brother Severus laid the parchment open on a board and held it out for his mark. He wet his fingers in the blood of the young queen and drew two slashes beneath the neat letters, none of which he could read.

That would have to change. If he meant to treat with humankind, he must be sure they were not tricking him through his ignorance.

'It is done," said Severus with satisfaction. "We will continue with our reconstruction as soon as you provide us with laborers—" Even a man of such self-control flinched when he surveyed the bloody corpses, the ruin of the battle, the restless dogs. "When the island is habitable again."

'Just so," agreed Stronghand.

He lifted his standard again, the gesture that brought quiet over his troops even to the limit of the islands. When he spoke, he spoke in the tongue of the RockChildren that few humans bothered to learn.

'Here we begin."

He stared over the fens toward the horizon. The last wisps of fog dissipated under the sun's cold light and a bracing north wind off the distant sea. It had not taken so long, after all, to destroy the Alban queendom: a few seasons, one long campaign.

'Once, in the old days, the chieftains of our people would have plundered Alba and sailed home to celebrate their prowess, gaining nothing more than gold and trinkets. We have walked all of our lives in the old ways. But there is more to gain here than treasure.

We need not be content with plunder alone. I say now, let us follow the old ways no longer."

His army waited. They had learned that it was worth their while to find out what came next. Severus and his retinue backed up as Stronghand paced forward; not one among them did not look uncomfortable as they glanced around and, perhaps belatedly, realized the size and power of the people to whom they had just allied themselves. A hundred-score warriors here on this island and countless more spread across Alba or waiting their turn in the land of their birth, which the humans called Eikaland. For the humans would name each thing, because names were power.

'There is something every human possesses that all but the greatest among us do not. It is a thing few have thought to ask for, and many have feared to obtain." In OldMother's hall, in a darkness dense with the scent of soil and rock, root and worm, the perfume that marks the bones of the earth, he had suffered her judgment and heard her words. He repeated them now, thrown as a challenge. "Who are you?"

They watched and they waited, Rikin and Hakonin, Isa and Vitningsey, Jatharin, what remained of Moerin, and many more, hands shifting on axes and spears, feet nudging aside corpses so that they might shift to get a better view.

'By what name will you be called when the measure of the tribe is danced? When the life of the grass is sung, which dies each winter? When the life of the void is sung, which lives eternal?"

'It's wrong!" cried Jatharin's chief, speaking for the first time. "You cast disrespect on the OldMothers, who alone can judge whether a son is worthy of a name!"

'Perhaps. But perhaps they are only waiting for us to take this thing for ourselves which up until now we have feared. We know each one of us his place in the litter from which we sprang. That place has defined us for long years. Why need it define us any longer? We are young in the world, and we will never grow old. Even the frailest Soft One can hope for a greater span of years than the strongest among us, my brothers."

He paused to let them survey the bodies strewn across the ground, to let them examine the dozen clerics clustered around Severus. The loose robes worn by the circle priests could not disguise the weakness of their bodies—or the sharpness of their minds, honed by learning and the ability to plan and plot.

'Why do we wait? Why should each one among us not possess a name? Why should each one among us not hope to be named in the dance that is the measure of each tribe?

Why should each one among us not seek to be named in the chronicles of the Soft Ones?

Let them know the names of the ones they fear."

He bared his teeth. He lifted his standard a little higher.

'Who is bold enough?"

Silence followed, dense and suffocating. It was one thing to follow the road of war and another to go against oldest custom, all the measure of safety they knew in their brief lives ruled by the Old-Mothers and the chieftains, strongest among them.

Tenth Son took a step forward. "I will be known. I want a name."

'By what name will we call you, Brother?"

'Trueheart."

Others called out then so swiftly that Stronghand knew some among the RockChildren had brooded over this question.

'Fellstroke!"

'Sharpspear."

'Longnose!"

'Ha! A good name for you, Brother!" cried Hakonin's First Son. "I will be called Q_uickdeath."

Some tapped their chests with a fist, claiming the name, while others merely spoke the word as if that were claim enough.

Many more remained silent, yet as the names were spoken, no one dared to object, not even Jatharin.

When the last namers fell quiet, he nodded and struck the haft of his standard three times on the ground.

'Alba belongs to the RockChildren whom humankind calls 'Eika.' We have work yet to do here in Alba to consolidate what is now ours, but we will not stop here. I turn my gaze east and I see Salia at war with itself, brother fighting brother. Where brothers fight, the land is weakened. So we know from our own struggles. That is why we were weak for so long."

The fen waters gleamed under the sun's hard light, a cold spring day so clear that he could distinguish each separate reed stalk out where beds of reeds grew thickly around hummocks of land. A body floated in the water, the cloth of the tunic billowing as ripples captured it. North lay the wash and the sea, with no one to hinder their journey. Geese flew high overhead. One of the clerics whispered to Brother Severus, but the old man shook his head impatiently ™ ~ tO ^ ^ ^ cav His army waited, restless as the geese, ready to be on the move again to fight the next battle, but the discipline he had honed in them held fast. Even the dogs sat obediently, licking their bloody muzzles and paws.

They were ready.

'We are weak no longer," he cried. "From this island we will launch a new ship, and we will call it Empire."

PART THREE CAUBA INTO THE PIT JHlJh ship lay at anchor beneath a cliff so high and sheer that it looked as if a giant had used a knife to slice through the island before carrying half of it away. To their right, the land dropped precipitously in ragged terraces and rock-strewn falls to the sea where it gave out in a curving line of islets and rocky outcrops thrust up to make of their harbor a sheltered bay. The water beneath them was, according to the ship-master, too deep to sound. Gentle swells rocked the deck.

Zacharias found the motion soothing after so many weeks beating before a stiff wind out of the north.

The intensity of the light dazzled him. He shaded his eyes, peering up to a tangle of white houses perched along the top of the high cliff. What a view! It made him dizzy to think of living so high, staring each day out over the brilliant sea.

Marcus stood beside him, hands gripping the rail as he watched a boat work its way between a pair of scrub-crowned islets before heading, true as an arrow flies, toward them. Four men worked the oars of the craft; she carried six passengers, one scarcely larger than a child. When the boat drew alongside, a sailor threw down a rope ladder.

Wolfhere clambered aboard first, together with the Arethousan-speaking sailor who had gone with him to interpret. The old Eagle blew on his hands and examined them with a frown; the rowing had raised a pair of blisters. Next came a pair of servants, hardy looking souls, a man and a woman dressed simply but in the finest cloth. Below, the childlike figure was lifted into a sling tied around a third servant's torso, a man with the muscular build of a soldier. In this way, hoisted like a pack, she was brought aboard.

Marcus hastened to the rope ladder. He had an odd expression on his face, one Zacha-rias did not recognize until the cleric clasped the hands of the ancient woman seated in the sling.

'You are looking well, Sister!"

He cared about her.

'Well enough for a woman who survived a shipwreck." Though she was strikingly foreign in appearance, with black hair and dark skin, her accent sat lightly on her tongue.

"Two months on this island has been efficacious for my lungs."

'I feared for you in Darre."

'The air in that city would fell the healthiest of bulls. Its stink nearly did me in, but the sea air has revived me."

Once she had been a beauty, black and lovely. Now her hair gleamed white, and her age-spotted hands trembled, but her gaze remained inquiring and keen. She caught Zacharias' eye and nodded. "Who is this?"

'A discipla," said Marcus.

'Ah." Her bland expression made Zacharias twitch nervously. "I will speak to him later."

The servants unfolded a canvas chair, and as they transferred the old woman into this more comfortable seat, the last two passengers clambered onto the deck: a second female servant and a handsome girl no more than fourteen or sixteen years of age, strongly built and with a complexion darker than that of the Wendish servant's, but not as dark as the old woman's.

'Grandmother, I will see that the cabin is made ready for you." The old woman and Marcus had been speaking in Aostan, which Zacharias could understand better than he could speak, but the girl spoke Wendish.

'Elene, I wish you to acknowledge my comrade, Brother Marcus, of the presbyter's college. We will travel with him until we reach Qahirah."

'My lady," said Marcus with the politesse of a man raised at his ease among the nobility.

'Presbyter Marcus." She inclined her head as between equals.

Whose child was this, so grand, powerful, and proud? So Wendish, yet with a heathen's looks?

He dared not ask.

'Will Brother Lupus stay with us, Grandmother?"

'For a time, but his task will lead him down a different road than the one you and I must travel. Now go below and see that all is made comfortable."

As the sailors lifted several trunks on board, Elene allowed the ship-master to escort her to the tiny cabin in the stern that she would share with her grandmother.

'I did not think you could force a man like that to give up one of his daughters," said Marcus. At the railing, sailors gathered to haggle with the local boatmen, trading from their personal stores.

'He is my son. He must do as I tell him."

'And sacrifice one? Is this the one he loved least?"

'No. She is the one he loved most." A flash of anger straightened Meriam's frail shoulders. "You make light of a father's love, Marcus, since you knew nothing of it yourself. My father wept sorely when I was taken to the temple of Astareos to become an acolyte there. That was before I was sent north by the khshayathiya as a part of the gift to the barbarian king. My son loves both his daughters as a man should. 'A father's blood is made weak by sons but strengthened by daughters.' They are both precious to him, since he will have no more by his beloved Eadgifu, may she rest at peace in God's light. But he knows his duty to his mother. He gave me what I asked for."

'His duty to his mother, or to the church? What about his duty to humankind in their war against the forces that threaten us?"

'When a man gives you the horse which will let you complete your journey, do not ask why he does so, in case the answer displeases you. Just be happy you got where you are going."

'Is that what your Jinna kinfolk say? The intention of your heart matters more than the action of your hands."

'Does the woman who gives grudgingly of a hundred loaves to the poor deserve less thanks than the man who gives only ten, but with a sincere heart? We may wish she gave out of a loving heart, but the bread feeds the hungry nonetheless." "Argued like a Hessi sage. Will you rest, Sister?" "In truth, I would be glad to."

The spectacle of Marcus showing affection and consideration astonished Zacharias.

He watched amazed as the presbyter assisted the old woman to her cabin.

All the while, Wolfhere remained at the railing, silent, staring north over the sea.

Because the weather remained fine, Zacharias took his lessons on deck.

'How many hours are there in a week?"

'One hundred and sixty-eight."

'How many points?"

'Six hundred and seventy-two."

'How many minutes?"

'One thousand six hundred and eighty."

'How many parts?"

These drills often took up half a lesson, Marcus testing him on what he had memorized previously before teaching him something new. If at intervals Zacharias chafed at the repetition, he reminded himself that, as a man ascends a mountain, they were making progress toward the summit.

'What is the period of ascent?"

'On leap years, from winter solstice to summer solstice the period of ascent is equal to the one hundred eighty-three days of descent from summer to winter. But otherwise the period of descent is shorter than the period of ascent because the Sun moves through the four equal parts of the universe in unequal times. From the winter solstice to the vernal equinox, ninety and one eighth days. From the vernal equinox to the summer solstice, ninety-four and one half days. From the summer solstice to the autumn equinox, ninety-two and one half days. From the autumn equinox to the winter solstice, eighty-eight and one eighth days."

'An apt pupil." Meriam reclined in a canvas sling rigged up near the stern so that she might take the air on deck. An awning shaded them, although its shelter offered barely enough room for four to sit together.

'He memorizes well," said Marcus. "Understanding has not yet taken hold. What are the zones of Earth?"

'There are five. Two arctic zones, one at each pole. Two temperate zones, where humankind lives. And a single torrid zone along the equator, within which no creature can live."

'Yet some live there nevertheless," remarked Meriam pleasantly.

'Tribes of humankind roam there, living in tents. Once it was said that sphinxes, the lion queens of old, made their home in the great desert."

'They may have once," retorted Marcus, "but they are legend now."

'Many things are called legend which may still exist unbeknownst to human sight."

Marcus laughed. "I am not as superstitious as you, Sister. I can only be sure a thing exists if I have seen it with my own eyes."

'Have you seen God, Marcus?"

'God I must take on faith, but I would rather see Them with my own eyes, to be certain."

Meriam smiled in her sharp way. "So may we all hope to do when we die, but not while living. Do not let the others hear you speak so heretically. Men have been burned for less."

'You can be sure that I do not intend to be one of them."

Summer had come and gone; the autumn equinox had passed, and now the course of days uncoiled inexorably toward the winter solstice. They had escaped Sordaia somewhat after midsummer and sailed south along the shore of the Heretic's Sea to the harbor of fabled Arethousa. Zacharias had not been allowed to disembark, but he had stood for two days at the railing and stared in wonder at the great city on its hills while the ship-master had supervised the unloading of timber, furs, and wheat from Sordaia's market and taken up wine, cloth, and iron knives.

In Arethousa, Wolfhere and Marcus had by unknown means received a desperate message that sent them southeast rather than west along the Dalmiakan coast toward Aosta. A strong wind called the halhim had delayed them along the Aetilian coast of the Middle Sea, forcing them to shelter for days at a time among its many pleasant islands until they had fetched up at an island the sailors called Tiriana, to rescue Meriam and her granddaughter.

That Meriam was a mathematicus needed never to be said aloud. Marcus informed the ship-master that they would detour to the port of Qahirah before returning to Aosta.

Offered a bonus, the man did not demur. Perhaps, in truth, he was wise enough to see he had no choice in the matter. In the end, he served the skopos, who was rich and powerful enough to command him despite the physical distance between his ship and her throne.

What mattered the intention in his heart as long as he did what he was told?

'Now," said Marcus, "we will continue with the spheres. Earth lies at the center of the universe…"

Bit by bit, the architecture of the cosmos took shape before Zacharias, yet at times he wondered if it really matched that awesome vision he had seen years ago in the palace of coils. Remembering it, he still trembled, but he did not speak of the vision to Marcus, who cared nothing for the experience of others. Marcus knew what he knew, and that was enough for him.

Elene never joined them. She took her lessons, if she had any, privately with her grandmother. Otherwise, she stayed in her cabin or stood on deck, staring north and east toward the lands she had left behind. Often she had tears on her cheeks, but she never cried out loud.

'Is she always this sullen?" Zacharias asked Wolfhere one afternoon as he watched the sailors changing tack as the wind shifted.

'Have you heard her speak a cross word to any soul on this ship?" Wolfhere spent as much time as Elene staring out to sea, but not in any fixed direction. Zacharias was as likely to find him staring south as north, east as west.

'I've not heard her speak more than ten words altogether."

'Well," said Wolfhere, as if that settled the matter.