'Let the children show me the entrance. I'll take Brother Zacharias to carry a lamp and Gerbert to guard the entrance behind me so none follow."

'You'll take no others in with you?"

'Have I anything to fear? The bones of the heathen dead have no power over me, Deacon. Nor over you either."

'Yes, my lord. In truth, my lord, you have the right of it." But she still looked frightened.

And why not? Zacharias had leisure to reflect as Gerbert waded into a knee-deep pool of water lying up against a precipice cut into the high face of the earthworks about halfway around the hill from the little village and their camp. A trickle of water had, over the years, eroded the face of the earth away to reveal an entryway, two stones capped by a lintel, once buried, Zacharias supposed, by the tumulus and now half concealed by a curtain of moss. If the children hadn't explored here, none of the others might ever have noticed. Gerbert hacked away the moss with his sword.

'Come." Hugh held a lamp aloft as he waded into the water and squeezed through the opening.

The spring sun lay a warm hand across Zacharias' shoulders, quite in contrast to the freezing water that iced his toes and calves as soon as he followed Hugh into the narrow tunnel, which was just higher than his head and quite dark. His hand shook, causing the light from his lamp to tremble as it illuminated stone walls incised with spirals and lozenges. He was afraid of the dark, but Hugh frightened him more. The corridor widened enough that a man might slosh through the knee-high water without scraping his shoulders on either wall.

'What's this?" murmured Hugh.

Zacharias almost ran into a queer scaffolding that, twisting out of the water, was filthy with pale worms which after a moment he recognized as the remains of rotting feathers.

He retched, struck so hard by memory that he emptied his stomach into the water before he could stop himself.

'I pray you," said Hugh, stepping sideways to avoid the stink, "what is wrong, Zacharias?"

He couldn't answer.

'Ah." Hugh groped in the water and fished up a skull patched with tufts of black hair.

"I take it these are the infamous wings of a Quman warrior, and this, I suppose, his head.

He must have crawled in here to die after the battle. This certainly is no ancient queen laid to rest by her devout servants. Come." If the matter now floating like scum atop the water disgusted him, he gave no sign of it, although it was difficult to interpret his expression in the shifting light and shadow that played across his face as he moved on.

Sweating and anxious, Zacharias waded obediently after. The tunnel floor sloped imperceptibly upward. The water receded and gave way to a shoreline and grainy earth as they walked cautiously into the darkness. Hugh halted to study the symbols carved into the stone: more spirals and lozenges, and long strips of hatching and even, here and there, dots and lines that looked like a calendar. What if Hugh found another daimone imprisoned here and let it capture Zacharias' body? He whimpered.

'What was that?" Hugh asked, pausing, then went on.

The tunnel opened into a broad chamber, a black pit made eerie because of the flickering play of their lights over the floor. The walls remained in shadow, and the ceiling lofted so high above them that it, too, was hidden.

'There she lies, poor soul." Hugh walked a circuit of the chamber, shining his lamp into three alcoves built into the corbeled chamber. Shaking his head, he returned to the stone slab that marked the center of the chamber.

'I had thought I might find Blessing here with her attendants," he mused, more to himself than to Zacharias. "But perhaps that was a false vision, not a true one. It makes no sense. Why would Sanglant leave his daughter sleeping beneath one of the crowns?

Held in safekeeping? Yet I can still find her. Surely that was Liath traveling in the same manner we walk—through the crowns. Who was traveling with her? A sorcerer of great power; I felt her power in my bones."

He knelt beside the skeleton laid out on the slab. The dead queen gleamed under the light because the gold that had once decorated her clothing had long ago fallen in among her bones.

'What are these?" Hugh touched a pair of golden antlers that lay on either side of her grinning skull. "Riches! Best we make no mention of this, Zacharias. I see no need to rob the dead. Let her lie in peace." He leaned forward, still on his knees. "Here, what's this?"

He reached past her to lift a crude obsidian mirror off the dirt; despite the passage of years, its glossy surface still caught the lamplight and flashed sparks into the concealed depths of the chamber. Where shadows moved.

They walk out of the alcoves, ancient queens whose eyes have the glint of knives.

Zacharias yelped in terror, stumbled, and dropped to his knees into a clot of rotting garments that crumbled beneath his hands. His lamp spilled to the floor, guttering as oil leaked onto the dirt.

'Don't be frightened, Zacharias," said Hugh kindly as he lifted the mirror and with an expression of amazement and a clever grin directed light along the walls and up at the ceiling by using the mirror to reflect it. "Of course. Of course. What if she was one of the ancient ones, a mathematicus? What if she used a mirror to capture the light of the stars?

Why did Anne never think of this?"

The oil spilled over the ground caught fire and blazed up, and by this light Zacharias discovered himself wrist-deep in a heap of decayed clothing and rusted mail, the remains of a leather belt curled under his fingers and turning to dust as he stared. The fading outlines of a black lion exactly like those worn by the King's Lions rested a hand's breadth below his weeping eyes.

'Who's there?" said Hugh sharply, raising his lamp.

A chill breath of air coiled around them and the fires went out.

There are three of them. They are angry at this intrusion, but they are also intrigued by the exceptional beauty of the one who desecrates their tomb. They have not quite yet forgotten the memory of life that sustains their spirit. They have not quite yet forgotten the sweet perfume of the meadow flowers that bloom in the spring.

Zacharias lost all sense of up and down, and he fell, but only smashed his face into the bundle of clothing that dissolved all at once into nothing until, when he took a coughing, wheezing breath, it was as if he inhaled all the dust of what had once lain there, sucked up into his mouth and lungs.

The blackness chokes him. Salt water bubbles against his eyes and lips, popping in his nostrils. His lungs hurt, but he keeps swimming although the tunnel is entirely drowned.

If he goes too far, he will not have enough air in his lungs to swim back, yet what difference does it make? Where else can he go? Without memory, he is dead anyway.

He is like the skrolin, trapped in a cul-de-sac whose tunnels only take him around in circles. He must go forward to free himself as well as them.

His lungs burn. His head slams into the ceiling, his fingers scrabble against rough walls, and his feet push along rock as he thrusts forward and all at once comes flailing to the surface. He drags himself out into air and lies spewing with his lungs on fire and his eyes stinging and the world hazing to darkness.

Agony slices through his body as a cold hand brushes the top of his head and an icy finger tugs on his ear as if to drag him back into the water.

He was no longer lying half in and half out of water but rather on the dusty remains of the burial chamber.

A dry voice whispers through his mind. "He has already been claimed."

Zacharias recognizes them; they are his grandmother's gods, the young Huntress, bright and sharp, the Bounteous One, and the Old Woman, toothless with age.

"I fear you," he whimpers, although he cannot truly speak. He says the words in his mind, and they hear him. "You are the gods my grandmother worshiped. She was loyal to you."

"The days when we ruled on Earth are long forgotten. Our power has faded."

"I remember you!"

"You remember us. You are our grandson."

He weeps, feeling their affectionate touch. Where his tears meld with the dust, the earth speaks to him in a voice as heavy as stone, reaching him through the ancient ones who linger within the tomb.

Can. You. Hear. Us? Are. You. The. One. We. Seek? Help. Us.

"I hear you. I will help you. Tell me what to do." His lips and his mind form the words although the breath that escapes him is little more than a rising and falling of vowel sounds, not real words at all.

The earth replies not with sound but with its voice throbbing up through his head.

Listen. Wait. You. Are. Not. The. One. We. Seek. But. We. May. Have. Need. Of. You.

The. Crown. Can. You. Reach. And. Touch. The. Crown?

"lean."

Light flared. Hugh cursed.

'Damn it. There must be a hidden opening somewhere, to let in a breeze like that.

Zacharias! For God's sake, man, get up off the floor. Is the lamp ruined? And broken, too." His shoulders heaved as he sighed. "Well, no matter. I'll take this mirror. We'll leave the rest undisturbed."

With some difficulty because of the pain still cutting through his body, Zacharias pushed himself up to hands and knees and, as Hugh's light bobbed away down the tunnel, to his feet. He bent to pick up the fallen lamp and such a wave of dizziness and disorienta-tion swept him that he moaned.

Hugh's lamp stopped. There was silence.

From this distance and angle Zacharias could only see Hugh's face framed by the wavering light, golden and beautiful and utterly frightening. The presbyter studied him a moment more, then turned his back.

'Come quickly. I've no wish to linger. There's nothing here of interest."

The ancient queens waited in the shadows, but they did not advance, only watched. He tingled all over, staggered, dizzy. Hurting.

Changed.

Hugh had seen and heard nothing. He had allies that Hugh knew nothing of, that Hugh could not combat.

'Zacharias?"

All his life Zacharias had struggled to keep silence, to speak prudently or not at all.

All his life he had failed at this task. He had cast away his faith in God, turned his back on the Lord and Lady, on his kinfolk, and on the calling that had taken him into the east and slavery years ago. He had walked as a beggar through the world, starved for sustenance, fearful and cowardly. He had no words, he had lost his tongue, yet he had been changed utterly.

All the fear was gone. Vanished.

'Go, grandson," the queens whispered as they faded into the tomb. "Return to us when you can."

He would return. He would sneak back into the tomb somehow, risking Hugh's wrath. The queens waited for him, and a nameless ally needed his help.

'Zacharias!"

That tone had once had the power to make him choke with fear. Now he only smiled to himself and, after a last glance around, followed Hugh into the light.

I JHLJh Word is the surest sign of God's grace," Sigfrid said to his audience, who were seated on the sloping grass with hoods and shawls pulled up over their heads to protect them from the glare of the afternoon sun. "Only with words can we speak to others and bring them into the light. Is it not true that those who do not believe are, as the blessed Daisan says,'the prey of every fear because they know nothing for certain'?"

Several heads nodded. Ermanrich sidled to the left to get into the shade creeping out over the hollow where the community gathered.

'When the elements mingled and were corrupted by darkness, it was the voice of God, the Word of Thought, that separated darkness out from the others and propelled it into the depths where it naturally belongs. Because it was the Word that gave birth to this world, it is our words that give birth to the community of believers on Earth."

'Tell us the story of the phoenix and the miracle, Brother Sigfrid!" cried one of the novices. "Tell how God restored your tongue!"

The others begged Sigfrid to tell the story yet again, although in the last year and a half he had told it a hundred times. Because Ivar stood at the back of the crowd, he easily slipped away and climbed out of the gentle amphitheater composed by the natural contours of the ground. Here the inhabitants of the cloister assembled on fine days to discuss the Holy Book and the ineffable mystery of God as well as the more tangible acts of humankind which had confined them in this prison.

At times like this, he just felt so unspeakably weary.

The amphitheater stood at the limit of the grounds, which were measured on one side by the rocky ridge that closed off the northern end of the vale, ringed to the east and west by a straggling line of forest and the steep slopes of hills, and opening to the south on a vista that looked up the vale over the buildings and fields of the cloister to the palisade.

He shaded his eyes to peer into the distance. The estate had turned gold, with only a few greens to relieve the pallor. It had been a hot, dry summer, and the crops had suffered because of it. Dust smeared the sky beyond the palisade. Someone was coming, horsemen and perhaps wagons, if he judged the height and density of the cloud correctly.

He left Sigfrid and his listeners and jogged along the track that led past fields of seared wheat and rye and the withering vegetable gardens to the central compound. He trotted past the weaving hall and took advantage of the shady porch fronting the infirmary to cool his head before cutting across the last strip of open ground to reach the main compound.

The audience chamber lay empty, so he crossed it and walked out onto the portico that faced the inner courtyard. The fountain—a playful trio of dancing bears—had long since run dry, and buckets had to be hauled in every day to keep the herb bed and the roses watered. The grave post dedicated to poor Sister Bona had been freshly whitewashed; her ivory Circle dangled from a nail hammered into the wooden post. It had been over one year since her death, and yet the memory of that awful day remained as vivid as if it had happened last week—the first shock of it, like a punch in the belly, transformed into a numb ache.

One nun knelt among the herbs, weeding. The other attended the biscop, who sat in the shade at her writing desk, which had been moved out onto the portico because of the extreme heat.

Constance looked up, hearing Ivar's footsteps, and extended a hand to greet him warmly. "What brings you here to me, Brother Ivar? You have deserted the company at the very hour when your discussions may yield the ripest fruit."

He kissed her hand, then dropped to his knees before her. "Someone is coming, Your Grace. I saw a cloud of dust as I stood outside the amphitheater."

'Ah." She smiled softly.

'I am anxious, Your Grace. I fear this cloud brings ill news."

'It may be, but we can do nothing to prevent its arrival. Go to the gate, if you will, and see what comes our way. I will wait in the audience chamber."

'Yes, Your Grace."

'Sister Eligia, I pray you, assist me." The young woman hastened to Constance's side, offering her the walking stick, supporting her arm, and helping her negotiate out from behind the desk.

'Do not hesitate to go before me, Brother," said Constance. "The community has more need of legs than my royal honor, which has not served us well these past two years."

He sketched a bow and hurried out through the chamber, hearing the scrape of her ruined leg against pavement and the tap of her stick as she moved one laborious step at a time off the portico. He rapped on the door. The guards opened it, looked him up and down, then let him through. The door thudded shut behind him.

He was free—they all were except the biscop—to walk where he willed within the confines of the palisade. He strode down the track that led past the sheep pasture and the bramble fields where the goats made their home, arriving at the closed gates at the same time as the new arrivals. Harness jingled and a man cursed a recalcitrant mule. A pair of dogs barked. A woman laughed as the captain called down jovial curses from the parapet as a greeting for the soldiers come to relieve the last crop of guards.

'… bastard whoresons. It's quiet enough, I grant you, but all we have to amuse ourselves is dicing. There aren't even any fine ladies in want of swiving in the village, for they've sworn to have nothing to do with us on account of they've been corrupted by the prisoner and her lying words. You'll be wishing yourself off at the wars after a few days stuck here!"

'You must not have seen any fighting if you think battle is preferable to a quiet backwater like this."

'I've seen fighting enough!"

'You must be Captain Tammus. We've heard of your loyal service to Lady Sabella."

'It's true enough she can't trust every man who offers her service just because she has gold and swords, but I've long pledged my loyalty to her. She knows the worth of my oath. I've these scars and this stump to prove it. Who are you?"

'Captain Ulric, of Autun."

'Ah. Yes, Captain, I recall you now."

'I've brought relief for the men on guard here. I also have a message for the biscop."

'Very well. Your men can leave the wagons here and choose accommodations in our camp—which you see is decent enough, warm in the winter and lots of wood and water, although the river is running low this year. I'll have my guards cart the goods into the cloister. Your men will need to know the lay of the land before they begin their guard duties. As for now, I'll escort you to the biscop myself."

'Very good."

When the gates swung in, Ivar concealed himself behind a stack of empty barrels and crates as a dozen soldiers escorting two wagons trundled past bearing the usual offerings of salt, oil, and candles. He recognized the name "Ulric" from that unlucky day he and the others had entered Autun expecting to be tried for heresy and instead were sent off to smother in this cloister, their lives spared because of Baldwin's sacrifice.

Perhaps Captain Ulric had news of Baldwin.

He followed the wagon to the compound, then tagged along as Captain Ulric, Tammus, and two attendants walked to the biscop's audience chamber. Captain Tammus cherished the same surly frown he always wore, which went well with his belligerent stride and coarse language. He had indeed suffered horrific injuries in his lady's service, although Ivar didn't know what battles he had fought in: he was missing one hand and one eye, and nasty scars twisted across the right side of his face. In contrast, Ulric was a middle-aged man with a pleasant face, easy to look at, tall and well built with the bow-legged walk common to cavalrymen. His cheeks and nose were burned red and peeling, but the faces of his attendants were shrouded by the hoods they'd pulled up to shade themselves from the hot sun.

Ivar slipped into the audience chamber and stood along the back wall, unnoticed except by the biscop, of course, and by Captain Ulric, who glanced back as the door was shut on them and marked Ivar with a widening of the eyes and a stiffness in his expression.

He doesn't trust me.

Why should he?

Ivar had been named as Sabella's enemy, and Captain Ulric served her, or Duke Conrad, who was her ally. Even Gerulf and Dedi had vanished into Conrad's army; he had heard no word of them in eighteen months, just as he had no knowledge of Baldwin's whereabouts and whether he suffered or flourished under Sabella's care.

'You may come forward, Captain," said Constance kindly, "and kiss my ring."

Tammus bent the merest angle, just enough not to insult her outright, and kissed her ring, although he sneered as he glanced back to invite Ulric to come forward. The cavalryman knelt before her chair and bent his head respectfully. Were those tears in his eyes? From this distance it was impossible for Ivar to tell, and Captain Ulric blinked, rose, and retreated, coughing behind his hand either because of dust in the room or to cover a strong emotion.

Ivar felt a swirl of dangerous currents at work in the chamber, but he couldn't identify their locus or the shifting eddy of these tides. He leaned against the wall, pretending to an ease he did not possess.

'What news, Captain?" Constance asked.

'I bring word from Lady Sabella. She means to visit you within the next fortnight."

'Ah." By no means could any person read Constance's reaction. She nodded, hands curled lightly over the arms of her chair, seeming relaxed. Or resigned.

'There'll be a great deal to be made ready," said Captain Tammus. "We'll have to deplete our stores to feed her retinue. The village near here hasn't any grain stores left to them, and it's not harvest yet."

'Harvest this year will not yield much," replied the biscop. "You've seen the fields."

'I'll have to send men out hunting again. We'll take half a dozen sheep from your flock."

Constance nodded, although she knew as well as Ivar did that their flock was sorely depleted. None of the ewes had birthed twins this spring, a sign, Sister Nanthild said, of drought to come, and indeed drought and unusually hot weather had afflicted them. What rains had come had arrived untimely, and in one drenching flood that had washed sprouts out of dusty fields, churned them into muddy lakes, and then hardened the land into cracked earth when the sun returned to beat on them as a hammer flattened red-hot iron on the anvil.

'It will be good for Lady Sabella to see the conditions of the lands hereabout, which have suffered greatly over the last winter and into this summer," she said. "Is there any other message, Captain?"

'That is all, Your Grace. Otherwise, as you know, I am under orders to make no communication with you or any of those residing under your care."

'I understand the terms of my confinement well enough. It seems a long journey to come here all this way merely to bring me a single message."

He looked at Tammus before risking further comment. "I have escorted a new complement of guardsmen to replace the levy that has been here for three months."

'Will you replace Captain Tammus?"

Tammus snorted.

Ulric shrugged. "Nay, Your Grace. Lady Sabella has named him as your keeper. So he mil remain as he has served well and faithfully these past two years."

'So he has," agreed Constance without a glimmer of sarcasm. "I hope you will accept some wine, Captain, after such a long journey in these hot days."

'That I will, gladly and with thanks."

'Captain Tammus will show you the way."

Ivar remained where he was as the two captains retreated to the doors and filed out with Ulric's escort behind them.

All but one.

As they passed through the doors, Ulric asked Tammus a flood of questions, while behind him the second of his hooded attendants sidestepped without missing a beat and by Ulric's misdirection managed to remain inside the chamber when the doors were shut behind the other men.

The stranger cast back his hood and strode forward to kneel before her chair, the movement accomplished so decisively that Ivar had no time to respond before it was done.

He could have knifed her, but instead he grasped her hand as a supplicant.

'Your Grace, I have only a few moments to speak with you. I pray you, heed me."

She studied him, gaze shifting over his face and figure, and nodded to indicate that she recognized him. "Lord Geoffrey of Lavas. How does your daughter, the young countess, fare?"

'Ill, Your Grace. Lavas county and all the western lands fare ill, and have done so ever since you were deposed. God are angry. This is our punishment: we suffer drought and untimely rains. Refugees fleeing north from the Salian wars confound us. Bandits have made the roads unsafe. There will be famine this winter. We hear tales of plague and murrain, although thank the Lord and Lady we've seen none of that in our lands, pray God that we be spared. There's even talk that my sweet Lavrentia is not in truth the rightful heir!" "How can that be?"

'Nay, nay, I make no mind of it. It's only the idle talk of desperate folk." With a shaking hand he drew the Circle of Unity at his breast. "Another scourge strikes at us from the sea. The Eika have returned! They harry in Salia along the coast. We hear rumors that they are moving inland and north. I pray you, Your Grace. Lady Sabella usurped your rightful place, granted to you by King Henry, the true king. We will support you."

'Do I understand that Captain Ulric is your ally in this?"

'As well as he is able. He was always your true and loyal servant, but he must protect his men."

'Yes, he cannot fight Sabella and Conrad with only a single troop of skirmishers. Yet my position is weak, Lord Geoffrey, as you must observe. I am crippled. I rest here as Sabella's prisoner. It will prove difficult to throw off this yoke. Conrad is a powerful ally, and his ambitions do not accord with mine."

Geoffrey had not yet let go of Constance's hand. "So you see us, Your Grace. My wife's kinfolk have remained loyal to Henry through many difficulties, but now Lady Sabella has taken my wife's two children as hostage in Autun."

'Even Count Lavrentia?"

'She remains in Lavas because of the rumors—"

'Which rumors?"

He clenched his hands, jaw tight, voice cold. "That the rightful heir lives and waits, wandering in the wilderness until all Lavas cries out for his return. It is said there were miracles—but it's all lies! Even Lady Sabella sees how precarious the situation is, so Lavrentia remains with me in Lavas while Aldegund and our sons serve Sabella in Autun.

Yet Varre suffers under Sabella's rule. Lavas suffers. And I dare not act against Sabella or Conrad unless we are certain we have sufficient backing to win."

She considered him somberly. "I have no means to communicate with those who might support me, and I have no army—only bands of faithful soldiers who need a commander in order to act in concert. What news of Princess Theophanu?"

'I hear rumor she bides in Gent. I have also heard a rumor that Prince Sanglant rode into the wilderness to raise a great army of savages in order to wrest Wendar from her, or to restore it to his father. But rumor is a fickle lover, as I know well. I do not know what to believe. They say Henry was crowned emperor in Aosta."

'Emperor!" For the space of three breaths Constance was too shocked, or angered, to speak. "Surely he commands a great enough army that he might come to our rescue rather than chase dreams in the south!"

'If only he knew our plight."

'If only. I sent an Eagle, but none returned. I have no messengers to send, Lord Geoffrey. You must send one of your people to Gent."

'Captain Ulric has offered me one of his men-at-arms as a messenger, Your Grace, but I have come to beg you to write a missive yourself and send one of your people with the soldier, with a message penned in your own hand and sealed with your own ring.

Otherwise how can the princess believe us? She must know what Sabella and Conrad hatch between them. She will believe any messages of peace or war to be a trap laid to ambush her."

'Emperor," whispered Constance. "Whether this bodes well or ill I cannot say." Her gaze had strayed. Now she squeezed Geoffrey's hand and let it drop, indicating that he should rise. "They will look for you, and if you are discovered here, all is lost. I can write a message, and perhaps, if we are fortunate and God favor our suit, I can smuggle it out to you before you depart in the morning. Captain Tammus has strict directions from Sabella to count our number each evening, as you will see, because Sabella fears precisely what you suggest—that one of these who swear loyalty to me will escape to take news of my plight to my kinfolk. I dare not risk it. The punishment is severe, as we have seen to our sorrow."

'Punishment?"

'I sent a novice to carry word of my whereabouts to Princess Theophanu. She was brought back ten days later and dumped in my courtyard, mutilated and quite dead.

Captain Tammus promised the same fate to any other member of my entourage who attempts escape."

'I'll go," said Ivar.

Lord Geoffrey started around, as startled as if he had forgotten Ivar was there.

Constance smiled grimly. "So you have said many times, Brother Ivar. Yet by what means might you succeed when poor Sister Bona died so horribly?"

'They will not hunt down a dead man, Your Grace."

'A dead man!" Geoffrey's skin washed so pale that Ivar feared the man might faint, as though Ivar's words had, for him, a deeper and more pernicious meaning.

'A dead man cannot carry my message, Brother Ivar. What do you propose?"

'We are prisoners, too, Your Grace. I have considered our situation at length, but it is only recently while in conference with Sister Nan-thild that it has occurred to me that we may hold the means in our hands to smuggle out one brave soul. With Lord Geoffrey's plea, it seems the time may be right."

'Sister Nanthild is a wise woman, it's true, but only God can restore the dead to life once the soul has left the body."

'We need only the appearance of death, Your Grace."

'I see." Her gaze held him, and he looked away first, because she saw too deeply and too well. "You are willing to take the risk, Brother Ivar? Knowing that you leave your compatriots behind, under my care, and that it is possible you will never see them again?"

'I am. These are desperate times, Your Grace."

'And you chafe in these bonds, whereas your friends are content enough to rest here after the troubles they have endured. Very well, Brother Ivar." She held out a hand, stained with ink and heavy with calluses where she gripped her quill, and he knelt before her and kissed her biscop's ring. "I, too, am desperate. Lord Geoffrey, you must go.

Appoint a rendezvous and have your man wait there for five days. If Brother Ivar has not arrived there in that time, he will not come at all. That is all I can promise."

That evening Sister Nanthild brewed a concoction of valerian, pennyroyal, and two drops of a milky liquid she called "akreva's sap." In the morning, Ivar screwed up his courage and drank the potion in one gulp as Sigfrid, Ermanrich, and Hathumod huddled next to him, weeping and grimacing.

'You must take care." Hathumod's nose always got bright red when she cried. "I can't bear to think of losing you, Ivar, but I know you are doing what must be done. There isn't anyone else the biscop can trust."

'Many she can trust," said Sigfrid, "but none as strong. Ivar must go."

Ermanrich wiped his tears and said nothing, only held Ivar's hand and, after a moment, walked with him to the fields so that the convulsions would be witnessed by as many guards as possible.

Ivar hoed for a while, but his heart wasn't in it. He kept waiting, knowing each tremor that rippled through his muscles would be followed by a harder one. Once a shudder passed through him with such force that he dropped the hoe. When he bent to pick it up, he lost his balance, pitched forward onto the ground, and sucked up a quantity of dusty soil and a shriveled weed just an instant before hooked out of the earth.

'Ivar!" shrieked Hathumod.

He spasmed. A hot flood of urine spilled along his legs, soaking into the ground. He tried to rise, but his arms were useless; they would not respond.

'Plague!" shouted Ermanrich, weeping again.

Shouts rang in the distance. Shudders passed through his frame in waves, strong at first and then each one receding as his vision blurred and hearing faded.

In a waking dream he watched the sky pass overhead, a pale blue almost drained white by the heat of the sun. One cloud spilled past and was lost. He was awake and aware, but not really awake, still dreaming, because he could not move at all, could not truly even feel his own limbs or the rise and fall of his chest. Maybe this was what death felt like.

Maybe he was dead, and the gamble had failed.

The ground juddered beneath him as the heavens rolled past above, and after a long contemplative interlude it occurred to him that he was lying in the cart that made runs between the village and the palisade. The shroud covering his body had slipped off his face, and the sun beat down hard. He'd be burned; he knew that much. Sun always burned him if he didn't keep covered, but he couldn't move to cover himself and there was some reason he ought not to. Some secret. He had a secret he was keeping.

'Whist! There! What's that, Maynard?"

'A whole cavalcade. Some mighty noble, I wager."

'Must be the lady duchess."

'Ai, yes, so it must." Maynard hawked and spat. "So. For her."

'Careful. She'd as like ride her horse over you as spare you for the mines, so they say."

The cart jounced over the ruts that made the road as the carters pulled their vehicle aside so the noble procession could pass unimpeded. He heard the clamor of the approach, hooves, talk, a smattering of song, and the rumble of wagon wheels, all wafting over him as the summer breeze did, felt and forgotten and beyond him, now, who was dead. Or so he remembered.

Sparks of memory clotted into recollection. He was carrying a message for Biscop Constance, written on a tiny strip of parchment that they'd rolled up in a bit of oiled sheepskin and which he now concealed within his cheek like a squirrel storing nuts against the coming winter dearth. He was only pretending to be dead.

That was a relief!

'Is that a corpse you're hauling?" a voice asked.

'Don't come no closer. One of the folk in St. Asella's died a nasty death, and they feared it's some manner of plague brought up from the south with the soldiers."

'God save us! Have they all fallen sick?"

'Nay, none other. It might only be demons that chewed away the poor lad's vitals. But they're taking no chances so we're to haul him out to the woods where there's an old church abandoned in days gone. Our deacon'll say the rites over him there."

'Let me see him!"

This new voice belonged to a woman. Ivar recognized that imperious tone, rankling and sour. A face loomed to one side. It was a woman past her prime, mounted on horseback, seen out of the corner of his vision and after a lengthy gasp of shade—for she blocked the sun—the light blasted him again and he would have blinked but he could not.

'He's not breathing, my lady duchess," said another person. "Ought we to turn aside?"

'Nay, I do not fear the plague. We've had no word of it in this region. No doubt some other ill felled him. Elfshot, maybe."

'True enough, my lady. We've heard many a tale of shades haunting the woods in greater numbers than ever, bold as you please and afflicting the common folk who do fear even to seek wood and game though they've need of it. Do you suppose that's what felled this young fellow?"

'It might have."

With the easy stream of their conversation flowing past, his thoughts began to coalesce into proper order, although their sluggish pace frustrated him. The carters would dump him in the wood at an old oak tree where the old gods had once demanded sacrifice. A chapel dedicated to Saint Leoba stood there now, proof against lightning, a boon to the righteous. As he must be, if he meant to carry word of Biscop Constance's plight to Princess Theophanu.

'Still, he looks familiar," Lady Sabella mused, but although she kept talking her voice receded as she moved away, now disinterested. "I don't see many folk with hair that coppery-red shade. He must hail from the north…"

The shriek would have made any man jump, except one dosed with a potion that made him more dead than alive.

'Ivar? Ai, God. Ivar! It's Ivar! Nay, Lord, it can't be! Lady protect him! I thought he would be safe!"

'Lord Baldwin! Come back here!"

A figure hurtled over the cart's edge and landed so hard on Ivar that, had he not been paralyzed, he would certainly have betrayed himself.

'Ivar! It can't be! Ai, God! Ai, God!"

Tears poured in a flood. Baldwin clutched Ivar's hands and chafed them, repeating the same words over and over, crying and groaning, his pretty face twisted with grief. "Ai!

Ai! Ai!"

'Come, Lord Baldwin! This man may have died of the plague. Get off him!"

'Then I wish I would die, too. And so I would, if it would bring him back! I would share death with him if I could! Don't touch me!"

'Baldwin! Come!" Sabella spoke as if to a dog. Weeping, Baldwin tugged a ring off his hand and twisted it onto Ivar's right forefinger. "Take something of me into the afterlife," he sniveled. "Ai, God! Ai! Ai!"

'Get him off there," ordered the lady. "I've had enough!"

Baldwin was hauled off, kicking and shouting, and dragged away while Ivar lay helpless, screaming inside, guts all knotted up with bitter fury and an ugly relief that the charade had passed the direst test of all.

Baldwin thought he was dead. Baldwin—who had sacrificed so much—would mourn him, although he still lived. Ivar would not suffer, but Baldwin would. The others dared not risk telling Baldwin the truth, not as long as he rode in Lady Sabella's train.

Not as long as he slept in Lady Sabella's bed, whether willing or no.

'Friend of his, you think?" said Maynard to his comrade.

'Didn't look like no brother or cousin, if you ask me. Mayhap they were fostered together."

'No doubt. Whist! You stubborn ass! Get along!"

The donkey brayed a mighty protest, but the cart jerked and they set off again as the sun glared down, burning his skin, scalding his eyes, making tears run from the face of a dead man who wasn't dead at all.

But Baldwin would never know.

I JHLJc merchants who lived and traded in the emporium of Mede-melacha had wisely surrendered without a fight, warned by their Hessi compatriots that it were better to yield than die, but upstream on the Helde River the due d'Amalisses had retreated inside a fortified town, seat of his power. By the time Stronghand reached the scene of the siege, Quickdeath had forced a battle by driving prisoners up against the walls at the point of Eika spears and, on their bleeding and mangled backs, swarming the walls.

The river was choked with corpses as the Eika burned and looted the town.

'This is not what I intended," said Stronghand when Quickdeath came before him to gloat over his victory. "This town cannot serve us burned to the ground. The fields cannot yield grain if no farmer is left to till and harvest."

'But we are rich!" Quickdeath had brought a score of warriors and two score dogs as escort; they shouted and cheered, displaying the baubles, fine cloth, and silver coins they had plucked from the ruins. "And the chief of this town is dead!"

Bodies dangled from the burning palisade. As the wind shifted, smoke chased away carrion crows come to seek their own fortunes.

'You are rash." Stronghand did not rise from the chair where he sat. A choice few of his littermates stood at his back while the handful of chieftains who had joined up with him in Medemelacha kept their distance. Ironclaw stood foremost among them, watching and waiting. The bulk of Stronghand's army remained in Alba under the command of Trueheart, but in the months since the death of the Alban queen he had sent out smaller groups to strike hard along the coast, casting a net of terror as widely as they could. "We are not yet ready to push inland. If we stretch ourselves too thin, we will break. War bands are more susceptible to ambush than large armies. Your orders were to harry the coast, nothing more."

Quickdeath laughed, baring his teeth. "And if I do not wish to heed those orders?

Maybe I am rash. But you are too cautious!" He gripped his ax more tightly as his men pressed forward threaten ingly. If the lesser chieftains chose to stand by and not intervene, then Quickdeath's party easily outnumbered his own.

Stronghand did not smile. He no longer needed to make explicit threats, to puff himself up, to make himself appear bigger and fiercer for, in truth, Quickdeath was far more impressive in appearance than he ever could be. "You mistake caution for cowardice because you do not understand it. A cautious man watches and guards, and uses forethought, a skill I do not think you have yet mastered."

Quickdeath snorted disdainfully and hefted his ax, knowing he had the advantage in numbers. The blood of his men was hot with victory. Before them, Stronghand seemed so small.

'Yet it is true that any leader needs a reward," continued Strong-hand. "Let this precious jewel serve to reward you as you deserve, for the victory you have achieved this day."

'Do you think to bribe me?" asked Quickdeath, but like any Eika warrior, he hesitated.

Last Son brought the chest, carved out of ivory, banded with gold, and ornamented with cabochons of pale aquamarine and dark red garnets, and placed it on Stronghand's thighs, then retreated to stand by the others.

'I will not have it said I give grudgingly to those who fight in my army."

Quickdeath flashed a smile, leaped forward with a laugh, and grabbed the chest off Stronghand's lap. "Now both your army and your treasure will be mine!" he cried as he flipped open the lid.

Stronghand's men knew this as the signal. They froze in place, as did Stronghand, knowing stillness was his weapon now. The rash ones did not understand caution, or stillness. The ice wyrms were deadly, but fragile. Even starlight burned them. They were sightless, but Quickdeath's startled movement offered target enough. He dropped the chest. The tiny ice wyrm scuttled across the dirt to the closest thing that moved. And stung.

Quickdeath's scream pierced the heavens themselves. His warriors scattered in fear, except for two bold and loyal dogs who jumped growling into the fray, but the sun had already blasted the tiny creature to dust. Stronghand signaled, and Last Son struck down the dogs while Quickdeath twitched and croaked in agony as the venom coursed through his body. Their blood spattered his writhing body.

'Leave him," said Stronghand, rising. He picked up the ivory chest and frowned at it while two of his brothers collapsed his chair and made ready to leave. "A pretty thing,"

he said, "but the knowledge possessed by the craftsman who made it is worth far more than the object itself, however brilliant these gems shine."

The chieftains approached.

'Did you know he would challenge you?" asked Ironclaw.

'I knew he was rash, and scorned caution. That was all I needed to know."

'How did you come by that ice wyrm?"

Stronghand bared his teeth to show the jewels drilled there, as sharp as starlight. "Any one of us may brave the sands where the ice wyrms dwell."

'Yet how many would think to do so? And survive the attempt?"

Stronghand let the chieftains think this over. Quickdeath's warriors would return in time, although by losing their war leader they had lost claim to their victory. They had learned their lesson. They would not rebel again.

'Come," he said. "I will see what remains of the town."

The detritus of battle looked much the same whatever country he was in. The Salian dead cast into the river bloated just like any other; their blood stained the waters with the same hue. Their famished children bawled and whimpered in the same fashion as any freshly orphaned waif cleft so suddenly from its parent. Flames ate wood regardless, and the drought that had plagued Salia all summer encouraged the conflagration and made it burn even hotter so that by the time he reached the town gates, most of the buildings inside were on fire, smoke and ash rising into the sky to paint it a boiling gray. The gates had been razed, an impressive feat of destruction, and the defenders had created a second barrier with a jumble of carts and wagons, but these, too, had been smashed and pathways cleared through their remains where Quickdeath's troops had made their charge.

'Blow the horn," he said to Last Son when he had tired of walking among the dead. "I want all of our warriors to withdraw from within the walls."

He gave orders that the last refugees were to be allowed to depart with whatever goods they could carry, stipulating only that any man carrying a sword was to be killed. Ash dusted his bone-white hair and coated his face and torso. The air stank of burning and death, yet it was not death that bothered him but the loss of this town's useful purpose, its craftsmen and storehouses, its gardens and tanneries, its merchants and smithies and marketplace.

The towns were the wheels that would drive his cart; the sails and oars that could propel his ships. A certain belligerent industry smoldered in the towns, at odds with the languorous round of existence that defined the countryside, where most of the common folk labored in the fields in some form of servitude to their noble masters.

'What will you do with this place?" asked Ironclaw. He had stuck close by Stronghand's side and seemed, perhaps, to regard him with a new respect.

'We must not overextend ourselves. But I would rebuild such towns when it is convenient to do so. Let them be filled with artisans and laborers who will pay a tithe to our coffers in exchange for freedom to work."

'Why not make them slaves?"

'A man who is whipped is like a coal beneath ashes—still hot with resentment."

'Then whip him until the spark dies."

'If the spark dies, then he is no more than a beast, without spirit or thought. Nay, I will make slaves where it benefits me, but let artisans and freeholders grow in such soil that will provide me with a rich crop."

'You are not like the chieftains who have come before you," remarked Ironclaw, but the comment rang like iron in Stronghand's ears, a decisive stroke. Ironclaw's caution had yielded; his distrust had given way to approval.

'No," he agreed. "I am not."

In the distance, out where stragglers fled into the surrounding woodland, a pair of beasts loped out of the forest. Something in their dark shapes triggered an avalanche of recognition. Around him, Eika dogs began barking, churning forward in a frenzy while their masters beat them back.

'Hold!" he cried, and his soldiers took up the cry as it carried outward so that no one there attacked the creatures who approached. He handed his standard to Last Son and ran toward them, and it was true, after all, that he knew them.

Their ribs showed, and dirt and leaves matted their black flanks. One had a torn ear and the other limped, but he knew them, and they knew him. They swarmed up with ears flattened and hindquarters waggling. Even starved and weakened, they were big enough to knock a man down and rip out his throat. His own dogs ringed them but stayed clear, warned off by the hounds' growls and snaps.

'Yes," he said, grinning as they licked his hands. "Yes, you have found me. Now you must lead me to Alain."

XXV UNEXPECTED MEETINGS ROSVITA dreamed.

Prince Sanglant rides at the head of a great army up to a noble hall. Atop the roof flies the banner of Avaria: the powerful lion. A thirtyish woman regally gowned strides out to meet him. She is one ofBurchard's and Ida's heirs; the hooked nose and the characteristic droop of her lips confirm it. She is cautious but not unwelcoming.

"We have much to speak of," the noble lady says to the prince as she takes hold of his bridle in the same manner that a groom holds the horse so his lord can dismount. "You know what grief my family has suffered. My elder brothers both dead in their prime, fighting Henry's wars. Now my mother and younger sister have died of the plague, my duchy is ravaged, and I fear that my father is being held against his will in the south, if he is not already murdered as they say Villam was. Henry has not remained loyal to us as we have been to him."

A thunderclap shudders the heavens overhead, and Rosvita is borne away on the dark wind, far away, until she sees her young half brother Ivar lying dead in the back of a cart, his body jolted this way and that as the cart hits ruts in the track. Grief is an arrow, killing her; then his eyes snap open, and he stares right at her. His blue eyes are the sea; she falls into the waters as night roars in to engulf her.

She swims in darkness as the last of her air bubbles out from her lips. Rock entombs her. She is trapped. The memory of starlight dazzles only to unravel into sparks that wink out one by one as the last of her breath fades and she knows she will drown.

A spatter of cold and damp brushed her brow and melted away, and a second cold splash kissed her lips, startling her into consciousness, but she still could not see, only heard the sound of the sea roaring and sucking around her as the waters rose and fell and rose again, battered against rocks. She was blind and mute and too weak to struggle.

Where am I? What has become of us?

Fortunatus' dear voice emerged unexpectedly out of the black sea.

'Sister, I pray you. Can you hear me? Nay, Hanna, it's no use. I can't wake her."

'We'll have to carry her. We must go quickly, or we'll be captured. Those are King Henry's banners. How came his army here so quickly?"

'Better to ask how many weeks or months passed in the world while we walked between the crowns. They could not have known where we were going, since we did not know it ourselves."

'The Holy Mother is a powerful sorcerer. Perhaps she can see into the future."

'That may be, Eagle, but I think it unlikely since she would have to have known Sister Rosvita had the knowledge to weave the crowns. Best to ask ourselves where we are, and why the king and the skopos have led an army to this same shore."

Hanna's laugh was bitter. "You are right, Brother. No matter what the answer, we are in the place we least wanted to be! Hurry!"

Gerwita whimpered. Ruoda coughed, echoed by Jehan. These sounds roused Rosvita as no others could. They must make haste, or it would all have been for nothing. She could not expect mercy from the skopos for herself and particularly not for her attendants, for whom she was responsible.

'Ungh," she said, clearing her throat, trying to force a word out. Her eyes were sticky, but she peeled one open to see a head swaying an arm's length above her, face turned away as it surveyed a sight hidden to her. The crown of his head was bald, and his hair was thinning, streaked with gray. Even Brother Fortunatus was growing old. A snowflake twirled down to become lost on his shoulder. He looked down, saw her waking face, and smiled as brightly as a child, a beacon of hope.

'Sister Rosvita!"

The others crowded forward, an ocean of faces, too many and yet too few. Where was Sister Amabilia? How had she got lost? Others seemed only vaguely familiar to her, as if she had known them once, a long time ago, and then forgotten them. Weren't those Hilaria and Diocletia from St. Ekatarina's Convent? Their expressions appeared so anxious that their fear gave her strength, and strength reminded her that Sister Amabilia was surely dead. The old grief, muted now if no less painful, gave impetus to her resolve.

'I can stand."

It took Hanna and Fortunatus to aid her, and her legs trembled under her as she licked her fingers and used the saliva to wet her still-sticky eye until the moisture loosened the gunk that had sealed it shut.

'How long have I been unconscious?" she asked as she blinked to clear the blurriness from her vision.

The sky stretched hazy dark above them, and although she found it difficult to get her bearings, she fixed on the spray of light that blanketed the vista before them: a hundred fires, two hundred, even more, laid out in an unreadable pattern that sloped away from them to an unknowable horizon lost to night. Snow dusted the ground, and the wind had a bite. A few flakes spun past.

'Long enough to pray. It was dusk when we walked out into this place, with only a few stars in the heavens to draw us here. The clouds came in swiftly. We can't escape by the crown even if you were strong enough to weave it again."

'Where are we?"

They answered with silence.

She attempted again to get her bearings.

In waking, she had struggled with confusion, but as she took in the ragged group she remembered everything. Heriburg still clutched the satchel that held the precious books, her History and the copy begun by Sister Amabilia and continued by other hands, as well as their copy of the Vita of St. Radegundis. Besides the clothes on their backs, a few knives, and Hanna's weapons, the books were all that remained of the possessions they had carried away from Darre. Jerome sat on the one chest they had filled with certain provisions and treasures saved by the sisters from the convent and hauled with them through the crown. For they had not escaped the convent alone.

'Mother Obligatia! Where is she?"

'Here I am, Sister."

Sister Hilaria stepped aside to let Rosvita pass. With Fortunatus' aid she knelt beside the pallet on which the old abbess lay. Obligatia was so physically weak that it was always a surprise to hear how strong her voice was and to see the powerful spirit in her gaze—she bore the intensity of a much younger person.

'So," said Mother Obligatia. "A gamble, which you won, Sister. You have woven the crowns and brought us here."

'If only we knew where here is!"

'There are not many stone circles with precisely seven stones, as this one has."

'Seven in all or seven still standing?"

The stones rose at the brink of a cliff, and although she could pick out seven massive pillars she could not be sure if others lay toppled along the ground. They seemed to be standing on the edge of the world with the wind beating and moaning through the stones and the waters spilling over rocks far below, gurgling and whispering. Landward, the ground sloped away down a long, gentle distance that couldn't quite be called a hill.

There might have been heights beyond where the army was camped, but without stars or moon it was difficult to tell what was shadow and what the land itself. Just beyond their group Teuda sat beside poor Sister Petra, who rocked back and forth babbling as Teuda soothed her.

'Seven in all," said Mother Obligatia.

'How are we situated?" Rosvita asked. "You saw the last of the setting sun."

'The sea lies south, more or less," said Hanna. "We're looking north."

'It's still winter, by the look of this snow. You're sure it is King Henry's army?"

'I am sure," said Hanna. "The skopos is with him."

'How could they have journeyed here so swiftly?" Rosvita rubbed her eyes wearily.

Fortunatus kept a hand on her back to support her.

Hanna went on. "When I was in Darre, I was taken before the skopos. The Holy Mother spoke of a crown by the sea in Dalmiaka. Or we might have arrived in southern Salia or even as far west as Aquila."

'As I remember from reading the chronicles," said Obligatia, fin gers still woven through Rosvita's, "there are crowns with seven stones in all three of those places."

'I wove east, or I meant to. This must be the Middle Sea at our backs."

'We might be in the north," said Hanna, "but if that were so, we would be in Eika lands now. I don't see how King Henry could have marched here with such an army."

'You agree this must be the Middle Sea at our backs?"

'It seems most likely, unless there are other seas we know nothing of. Yet then how could King Henry know of them? If we are come to Dalmiaka, this might be the selfsame crown that the skopos spoke of."

'The simplest explanation is often the best one," said Fortunatus. "If a maiden's belly swells, it was more like a man who got her with child than a shade or an angel, no matter what story she tells the deacon. If the Holy Mother did not know where we were going, then isn't it likely she came here of her own accord not expecting to meet us?"

'Ill fortune for us," whispered Gerwita, sniffling.

Ruoda coughed, and her spasms set off Jehan.

'Hush!" said Aurea from the gloom, where she kept watch. "Look there! Torches!"

With a grimace, and aided by a spike of adrenaline, Rosvita got to her feet. Fortunatus kept hold of her elbow. Standing, she had a clear view of the land northward. A procession approached from the distant camp, no more than two abreast but more lights than Rosvita could easily count winding toward them.

'They are seeking us," sniveled Gerwita. "They know we're here!"

'They must have seen the threads of the spell sparking," said Fortunatus.

'I pray you, let us go!" said Hanna.

'Where shall we go in such darkness?" asked Aurea, always practical. "We dare not light a torch."

'We do not fear the darkness," said Sister Hilaria. "If you can carry Mother Obligatia and the chest, then Diocletia and I can take turns leading the group. Night seems bright enough to my eyes. Teuda will bring up the rear. Let me take the staff so that I can test shadows and beat aside brush."

'A wise solution." Rosvita grasped hold of Gerwita's shoulders. "Sister Gerwita, I am still weak from my labors. Fortunatus must help carry Mother Obligatia. If you cannot support me, then you must leave me behind."

Gerwita's choked sobbing ceased. "I shall never leave you behind, Sister! Here, let me put my arm around your back. Can you lean on me? That's right!"

Heriburg had the books, which she refused to relinquish. Ruoda and Jehan had themselves to care for, and it was clear that both of the young novices suffered from a severe grippe but would not complain. It fell, therefore, to Jerome to carry the chest and Fortuna-tus and Hanna to lift the pallet while Hilaria and Diocletia took the van, each carrying a staff. Teuda and Aurea brought up the rear, shepherding Sister Petra, who showed a tendency to stray if she were not led.

'Have you a rope that you might tie on her?" Rosvita asked gently, and after brief consideration Teuda used Petra's belt as a leash, so that the woman would not run off and delay them—or give them away.

In this fashion they stumbled east parallel to the cliff with the sea to their right and the wind stiff against their faces as it blew in off the water. It was cool but not cold. A salty damp pervaded everything, and as they walked, the fine blanket of snow faded into patches and at last gave way as a warm breeze rose out of the southeast. The ground was rocky and tremendously uneven, but there were few enough trees and large shrubs so Rosvita, walking directly behind Diocletia, did not find herself scratched and mauled too often as the nun flattened or broke off any offending branches. Even as Rosvita's eyes got accustomed to the dimness, she still felt half blind, but the nuns walked as confidently as if they held aloft torches to light their way. Gerwita steadied her, and indeed the girl trudged along like an old soldier, as surefooted as sin. Behind, Jerome tripped once, landing with a grunt of pain and the heavy thump of the chest, but he insisted he was unhurt and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. They had to go on. They all of them glanced back frequently, and Rosvita felt a great sense of relief when the lay of the land cut off any view they had of the torchlit parade that snaked its way ever nearer to the stones.

'Will they follow our trail?" Gerwita whispered.

'It may be, but we must pray they detect nothing until morning."

'I hope so."

'Careful," said Diocletia, ahead of her. "There's a cut in the ground five steps ahead.

When I touch you, stop, and I'll help you over."

Rosvita relayed the message back to the others. In four more steps she found herself passed from one strong hand to the next as Diocletia and Hilaria helped her over a ditch cut into the ground by a dry streambed. She and Gerwita waited on the other side while the pallet was laboriously handed across, and the rest followed, using the staffs for balance. After a brief rest, they moved on.

In this way, although she was so weary that she was shaking all over, they walked and walked and walked, pausing to rest only when they reached an obstacle of rock or earth or, once, a dense tangle of thorny burnet they had to detour around. Gaps appeared in the cloud cover, revealing stars and, intermittently, the waxing gibbous moon. No one spoke except to pass warnings down the line; once, Petra bleated like a goat, and they heard a distant answering blat from the night. Gerwita giggled nervously. Ruoda coughed.

Eventually, the ground began to slope noticeably upward and the noise of the sea receded as they climbed, pressing inland until they came to a forest of pine with a light layer of shrub whose spines and thorns caught in their clothing. When Jerome dropped the chest a second time after stumbling over a root, Rosvita insisted they stop and rest.

Every soul there dropped to the ground like a stone except Hilaria and Diocletia, who consulted with each other and then split up, Hilaria to scout forward and Diocletia to range back along their trail to make sure they weren't yet being followed. Gerwita fussed over Rosvita.

'I pray you, child, I am too weary to move, but perhaps you could see if Brother Jerome is injured in any way."

'Of course, Sister!"

Hanna groaned and moved over to sit beside Rosvita, blowing on her hands. "I'll have blisters!"

'How do you fare, Eagle?"

'Well enough. Mother Obligatia weighs so little. It's a miracle she still lives."

'A miracle, perhaps, or stubbornness. Never underestimate the power of obstinance."

Hanna chuckled, then sobered. "Is it true she is Liath's grandmother?"

'Twice over."

'Ai, God! I pray we find Liath again, and that Mother Obligatia survives long enough for them to meet."

'I believe that it is that hope which keeps the good mother alive."

They breathed in silence for a while, listening to the murmur of wind through the pines and underbrush, to the hacking coughs of the companions, to Petra's mumbling conversation held with herself. The scent of myrtle and wild sage gave the night a bracing flavor. Their party sat so close together that it was easy to mark all of them as much by feel as by sight, although by now the wind had blown the clouds into scraps that left the sky in tatters with the moon's face revealed.

'I can no longer hear the sea," said Rosvita, "yet that was all I heard in my dreams."

'There was light enough to see when we first walked out of the crown. The stone circle stands at the edge of a great cliff. I got dizzy looking down to the water. It was so far below. And all up and down the coast I saw neither dunes nor beaches, but only a line of sheer cliff. It seemed strange to me, so sharp. I've seen the shore of the northern sea, and it's so very different, very flat. The waves creep in a long ways before they draw out again."

'I've never seen the sea."

'Not in all your travels with the king?"

Rosvita smiled. "Are you surprised, Eagle? I expect you are better traveled than I am."

'Although you ride with the king's progress? I wouldn't have thought so. You're from the North Mark, just as I am. The sea is not more than a day's walk from my village and your father's manor."

'I was sent south as a child to enter the schola before I ever rode to the sea. Nay, I have never seen it, although I would like to."

Hanna lifted her hands and blew on them to ease the raw skin. Rosvita shifted her weight from one buttock to the other; the litter of pine needles was a prickly cushion.

Gerwita whispered to Jerome; Aurea brought round a skin of cider, almost turned to vinegar, which she offered first to Rosvita and then to Hanna, and it was only after she had gone on to Fortunatus where he sat beside Mother Obligatia that the Eagle replied.

'I have dreams, but they seem like true dreams, like visions of things that are happening, not dreams at all. I was told in a dream that I am the luck of a Kerayit shaman. Do you know what that means?"

'The Kerayit? Are they not a barbarian tribe far to the east? I be lieve that Prince Bayan's mother came of that savage race. Beyond that…" She shook her head. "… I know little enough, but I am always eager to learn more. What does it mean to be the luck of a Kerayit shaman?"

A nightjar churred, and Hanna started, half rising to her feet. "It is the wrong time of year for a nightjar to call out to its mate!"

'Unless winter is past and this is the last snow of spring."

'Hush!" hissed Aurea. "Someone is coming!"

Brush rattled as Diocletia strode out of the underbrush into the clearing where they had thrown themselves down.

'Up!" she said, pitching her voice low. "They are already on our trail. I saw a dozen or more torches back on our path. They were rising and dipping as the men holding them bent to examine the ground. We must move on."

Fear lent them strength. Hanna pressed her palms to her cheeks before going back to the pallet. Gerwita hurried back to aid Rosvita in standing.

'I won't leave you!" she said predictably, but Rosvita only smiled and tried not to groan as she started forward. She ached everywhere. She was already exhausted.

'This way," said Diocletia, heading into the brush.

'What about Sister Hilaria?" protested Heriburg.

'Come along," said Diocletia, not waiting for them.

They had not gone more than a hundred paces when they stumbled out from under the cover of the wood into an olive grove where, under the light of the moon, Hilaria stood facing a brace of men armed with hoes and a trio of silent dogs standing at alert.

'I can take them," muttered Hanna.

Hearing them, Hilaria raised a hand although she did not turn. "I pray you, Sister Rosvita, come forward. These speak no language I know. Perhaps they are Arethousan."

They were not, nor did they appear to recognize that tongue when Rosvita begged for aid. They had the look of farmers, stocky and powerful, and when they beckoned, Rosvita felt it prudent for their party to follow. Perhaps Hanna could dispatch them, but Mother Obligatia could not flee if anything went wrong.

Yet as they walked behind the farmers through the grove and then between the rows of a small vineyard, twisting and turning on a well-worn path, Rosvita did not feel that their captors were precisely suspicious but only wary. They neither threatened nor barked, not even the dogs. The path brought them to a village, no more than ten houses built with brick or sod in a style unknown to her together with a building whose proportions she recognized instantly: this squat, rectangular structure looked more like a barracks than a church, but by the round tower at one end and adjoining graveyard, she knew it was an Arethousan church.

A bearded man wearing the robe of a priest with a stole draped over his left shoulder waited on the portico of the church attended by a score of soldiers. Torches revealed their grim faces. The priest wore a Circle of Unity at his chest with a bar bisecting it, the sigil of the Arethousan church.

'I pray you, Holy Father," said Rosvita in Arethousan, stepping forward once their party came into the circle of light and the others had set down their burdens. "Grant us respite and shelter, for as you can see we are holy sisters and brothers of the church, like you, who seek a moment's rest before we go on our way."

'You are not like me." The priest's upper lip turned up with disgust as he looked them over. He had curly hair falling in dark ringlets almost to his shoulders but this angelic attribute did nothing to soften his sneering expression. "You are Daryans. How is it you butcher my language, woman?"

She knew her grammar was good, but he seemed determined to remain unimpressed "I am Sister Rosvita, educated in the Convent of Korvei. I pray pardon if I torture the pronunciation of your words."

'Just as your people torture the words of our blessed Redeemer and blight the Earth with every manner of heresy. Only among we Arethousans have your false words been strangled and killed. Sergeant Bysantius, what shall we do with them?"

The sergeant had the look of a typical Arethousan, short and stocky, with black hair and a swarthy face, but he had a shrewd expression as he assessed them. He was obviously a man accustomed to measuring the worth of the soldiers he meant to send into battle. "There's a Daryan army out there, Father, commanded by the usurper and the false mother. How are these few Daryans come here? Did they lose the army that shelters them? If so, how much ransom might we receive from the usurper to get them back?"

'Best to take them to the patriarch in Arethousa," said the priest.

Sergeant Bysantius' gaze rested on the pallet and Mother Obligat-ia's frail form. "Just so," he said finally. "We're pulling out tonight. I haven't the men to fight a force as large as that one."

'Surely a dozen good Arethousans can slaughter their entire expe dition! They are the feeblest of nations. The lord of Arethousa is the only lord who has stout soldiers and command of the sea."

'True enough," agreed Sergeant Bysantius, but there was something mocking in his tone that made Rosvita like but distrust him. "I'll take these prisoners to the lady of Bavi and she can send them on to the patriarch. What of you, Father? Do you stay and fight?"

'My people expect me to stay. Not even the slaves and murderers who make up the Daryan army dare strike down a man of God! Take what you came for, and go!"

'Very well." Bysantius turned away and gave orders to his men, who dispersed about their business.

'What did he say?" asked Hanna, and the others crept closer—as much as any of them dared move a single step—as Rosvita told them what she had heard.

A cart rolled up, and after loading sacks of grain, two barrels of oil and two of wine, and a cage of chickens into the back, the soldiers made room for Mother Obligatia's pallet, braced among the sacks in a way that would, Rosvita noted, offer the old abbess something resembling a more comfortable ride. It appeared that in addition to the provisions, the sergeant had come for recruits. As his party formed up, they prodded into line two frightened young men whose mothers and sweethearts, or sisters, wept in the doorways of their huts.

A pair of soldiers jogged into the village from the direction of the olive grove.

'Sergeant! There's a patrol of the Daryans, coming this way!"

'Let's be off, then," said Bysantius. He had a horse. The rest walked, and so did Rosvita and her companions, trudging along the dusty road at a numbing pace, their way lit by the torches the soldiers carried, until at dawn the sergeant had pity on Rosvita and the coughing Ruoda and allowed them to sit in the back of the cart. Their party moved not swiftly but steadily, pacing the ox, yet as Rosvita stared back down the road up which they'd come she saw no armed band pursuing them. The countryside was sparsely wooded, and quite dry, although the ground was brightened by a spray of flowers.

'It must be spring," said Ruoda quietly, voice hoarse from coughing. "How long did we walk between the crowns?"

'Three or four months. I don't know the date."

The girl sighed, coughed, and shut her eyes.

'Sister Rosvita." Obligatia was awake; she too examined the road twisting away behind them, the sere hillsides, and the pale blue sky. "Do you think we have escaped the skopos?"

'I pray so. Perhaps the priest put them off. Perhaps Henry's patrol believed that it had been Arethousan soldiers all along and gave up the chase."

'In whose hands will we find safety?"

Rosvita could only shake her head. "I don't know."

They marched inland at this leisurely pace for three days, stopping each night in another village where they gathered new provisions to replace what they ate as well as a pair or three of reluctant recruits. Once an old man spat at the sergeant, cursing in a language Rosvita did not recognize. Gerwita screamed as Bysantius stabbed the offender, then left his body hanging from an olive tree, a feast for crows.

'I wonder if we would have found more mercy at the hands of the skopos," said Hanna that night where they settled down to sleep in a cramped stable, enjoying the luxury of hay for their bed and cold porridge and goat cheese for their supper.

'

'Learn the artifices of the Arethousans and from one crime know them all,' " muttered Fortunatus.

The sergeant kept a watch posted on them all night, and in the morning they set out again.

Today Sergeant Bysantius gave up his horse and during the course of the morning walked beside the wagon.

'So, Sister," he said, "how comes the usurper to these lands? Why does he wish to rob us of what rightfully belongs to another?"

'You must know I cannot speak in traitorous terms of my countryman and liege lord. I pray you, do not press me for information which I cannot in good conscience give. Even if I knew it, which I do not."

He grinned. He had good teeth, and merry eyes when he was smiling. "The Daryan soldiers that come marching in that army weren't just of the old city where the heretics will burn. They say the new Emperor of Dar is a northern man, an ill-mannered barbarian."

She smiled blandly, knowing better than to rise to this trivial bait.

'He's a Wendishman, they say, king of the north. The masters like to say that Daryans and northerners are louts and liars, goat-footed and braying like asses. I've seen them fight, though."

'Have you fought against them?"

He grinned again but did not answer, instead calling for his horse in a language she did not recognize, and for the first time it occurred to Rosvita that Sergeant Bysantius, like her, spoke Arethousan without the pure accent that the priest had scorned her for lacking.

JN early afternoon the carters dumped Ivar out of the wagon beside the appointed meeting place, but it was only after they had rumbled away and their voices had faded into the distance that a young man stepped out from behind the massive oak tree that dominated the clearing. He was slender, with pale hair, and carried a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.

'You're Brother Ivar," the soldier said. "I recognize you."

Ivar spat out the tiny scroll concealed in his mouth, then groaned as he staggered, trying to catch his balance, and sat down hard instead. His limbs still weren't working right. "How can you recognize me? I don't know you."

'It's the red hair. I was there when you were brought by the prior of Herford Monastery to stand before Duchess Sabella for judgment."

'Ah." The memory of that humiliating day still made him hot with anger. The other man—no older than himself—squatted beside him. Ivar squinted at him, finding that his eyes hurt and his back ached and that he had a headache starting in like a mallet trying to pound its way out of his skull. "I don't recognize you."

'I'm called Erkanwulf. I belong to Captain Ulric's troop. We served Biscop Constance, and now—" Here his tone crept lower, ragged with disgust. "—now we serve Lady Sabella, whether we will it or no."

'Had you a choice in the matter?"

'Captain Ulric told us we'd a choice whether to stick with him or go back to our homes. He said we had a chance to bide our time and wait for the right moment to restore Biscop Constance. He said if we rebelled against Lady Sabella now, we'd be killed."

'So he chose to be prudent."

Erkanwulf shrugged. "That's one way to put it. We could have ridden to Osterburg.

That's where they say Princess Theophanu has gone to ground. She's made herself duchess of Saony what with her father gone south and her sister and brother lost in the east."

'Why didn't you do that?"

'Captain Ulric said he wanted us to stick close by the biscop, so that we might keep an eye on her, in her prison. Make sure she remains safe. Now that the king has abandoned us for the foreigners in the south, there's no one else to aid her. Here, now, let's get you out of the sun."

He helped Ivar to his feet and led him to the shelter of the little chapel, which was no more than a curved stone wall roofed with thatch, open on one side to the air. The remains of a larger structure lay half buried in the earth around it. Inside the chapel a log had been split and each half planed smooth of splinters to make a bench; Ivar collapsed gratefully onto one of these seats. The altar consisted of little more than a mighty stump greater even than that of the remaining oak giant that dominated the clearing. A big iron ring affixed to an iron stake had been driven into the center of the stump, and spring flowers woven into a wreath garlanded the ring. A wooden tray had been set on the stump, laden with an offering of dried figs, nuts, and a pungent cheese that made Ivar's headache worse.

He was trying to remember what had happened to Sapientia and Ekkehard, but they had vanished with the rest of Prince Bay an's army that awful night, and he and his companions had found themselves adrift and lost, three years of traveling swept away in a single night punctuated by blue fire.

'Eat something," said Erkanwulf, bringing him the tray. "They said you might feel poorly. We can stay a night here, mayhap, but we'll have to move swiftly if we want to get out of Arconia before Lady Sabella's loyal soldiers wonder if there's anything amiss.

If we can cross into Fesse, we should be safer, but, even so, Sabella's people have been growing bold."

'Bold?"

'Duke Conrad pushes into Salia. There's a civil war, so they say, one lord fighting the next and the only heir a girl. Isn't it outrageous? A Salian princess can't inherit the throne, only be married to the man who will sit there."

Ivar grunted to show he agreed, but he had to pee, and he was feeling distinctly queasy with that powerful stink of goat cheese right beneath his nose, yet he wasn't sure he had the strength to get up off the log bench.

'Do we have horses?" he asked finally. "Or can you ride?"

'I can ride!" Erkanwulf slapped the tray down beside Ivar and moved away, his shoulders tense, by which Ivar deduced muddily that he had offended him. "My lord." He walked out into the clearing, quiver shifting on his back, and fastidiously wiped off the tiny scroll before tucking it into his belt pouch. Now he didn't need Ivar at all.

Who did, after all? Not even and not especially his own father, who had given him to the church as a punishment, knowing that Ivar had far different hopes and dreams, which by now had disintegrated into ashes and dust.

It was all too much. He retched, but there was nothing more than bile in his stomach, and after a few heaves he just sat there shaking and wishing he had actually died on that cart. He rubbed his hands together to warm them and caught a finger on the ring Baldwin had slipped on his finger—a fine piece of lapis lazuli simply set in a plain silver band. Ai, God! The token reminded him of Baldwin's stricken face; he had to survive if only to let Baldwin know he wasn't dead. It wasn't fair to allow Baldwin to go on grieving over a man who was still living.

Yet why did living have to entail so much misery?

For some reason he wondered where Hanna was, or if she were still alive, and the thought of her made him begin to cry, a sniveling, choking whine that he hated although he couldn't stop because his stomach was all cramped and the mallet in his head kept whacking away in time to the pulse of his heart. Just before he wet himself, he managed to push up and reel, stumbling, to the edge of the forest and there relieve the pressure. He shuffled back to the bench and curled up beside the stump, praying for oblivion.

Lady Fortune, or the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, had mercy on him. He slept hard, without dreams, and woke a moment later although by now it was dusk. An owl hooted. He recognized that sound as the one that had startled him awake.

His headache was gone and although his mouth was dry and had a foul taste, he could stand without trouble even if every joint felt as stiff as if he needed a good greasing.

'Erkanwulf?" he croaked. "Ho, there! Erkanwulf?"

There was no answer.

I've been abandoned.

Wind creaked the branches. Twigs rattled and murmured like a crowd of gossips. A pale light bobbed away among the boles, and he rubbed his eyes, thinking some mischievous demon had corrupted his sight to make him see visions, but the light still wove and dipped like that of a will-o'-the-wisp. He got a sudden creeping pricking sensation in his shoulders and back although he stood with his back to the curving chapel wall, which was a stout shield, a comfort to the righteous.

'Erkanwulf," he whispered, but no answer came, nor did he see any movement except that of the ghostly light.

He heard voices. He took a step back and rammed up against the stump, tipped backward, and was brought up short by the huge iron Circle. The sharp cold of iron burned through cloak and tunic to sear his flesh.

A torch wavered into view, followed by a second, and a dozen soldiers thundered cursing into the clearing. They stopped and turned, standing back to back and holding out their torches to survey the lay of the ground.

'This must be the old church what the man said," said one of them. "But there's no graveyard, just this old tree and that bit of a ruin there." He gestured toward the chapel, but evidently none of them saw Ivar hiding in the shadows. "Captain was right. It were some kind of trick to sneak a man out—"

They stilled so abruptly that the hush that fell had a presence as though it were itself a vast and ominous creature stalking the stalkers. Light flickered deep within the woods. A breathy whistle broke the silence, then stuttered to a stop. Branches rustled. A cold wind brought goose bumps to Ivar's neck.

'Hai!" shouted one of the soldiers before pitching over onto his face. A thread of light glimmered in his back, then dissolved into dying sparks that winked out one by one.

Shades emerged from the forest on all sides, creatures that had the bodies of men and the faces of animals: wolf, lizard, lynx, crow, bear, vulture, fox, and more that he could not identify as their darts flew into the clot of soldiers, most of whom shrieked and ran while a few lifted shields and leaped forward to fight. Yet the shades had no solid substance, nothing to receive the strike of an ax; they could kill but were themselves immune.

Half of the soldiers escaped, blundering back the way they had come, thrashing through the woodland cover until the noise of their flight ceased. Half lay on the ground, bodies contorted and twisted as though their last moments had been agony, yet no blood marked their bodies where the elfshot had pierced their skin. Shades flowed away into the forest in pursuit, but a fox-faced man and a vulture-headed woman turned to stare right at Ivar. Both were stripped to the waist, wearing nothing more than loincloths across their hips, leather greaves and arm-guards decorated with shells and feathers, and stripes of chalky paint that delineated the contours of their chests. She was young; that seemed obvious enough by the pertness of her breasts, but whatever lust Ivar would otherwise have felt to see so much nakedness was killed by the cruel curve of the vulture's beak that was her face and the blank hollow behind its eyes.

They are masks, he thought, waiting as they raised their short bows and sighted on him. Instinctively, he raised a hand, although it would afford no protection against their poisoned darts. The lapis lazuli ring Baldwin had slipped on his finger winked blue.

They lowered their bows, glanced each at the other, and faded away into the forest.

He stood there shaking so hard he couldn't move as the jolt of adrenaline coursed through him. It paralyzed him as efficiently as Sister Nanthild's concoction had mimicked death.

But after a long while it, too, faded, and the night noises of the forest returned piecemeal, first an owl's plaintive hoot, then a whisper of wind and the wrangle of branches, and finally the clear and loud snap of a breaking tree limb.

He leaped sideways and crashed into the stone wall, bruising his shoulder, but it was Erkanwulf returning with four horses on a string, two saddled and two laden with traveling packs filled with grain. Ivar could smell the oats even from this distance. The young soldier carried a lantern, and he stopped in confusion and fear as the light crept over the dead men.

'I-Ivar?"

'I'm here." He stepped out of the chapel, shaking again, shoulder on fire and tears in his eyes. "Where were you?"

'I hid the horses. What happened? How did they find us? Did you kill them?"

'No. I don't know. Shades came out of the trees. Ai, God! They're probably still wandering nearby! Let's get out of here!"

Erkanwulf's eyes got very round, and his mouth dropped open, then snapped shut.

"Here." He thrust one lead into Ivar's trembling hands. "I've heard they come back to eat their kills. We'll take the carter's track until light. They can't abide human-made roads."

'A-are you sure?"

'I'm sure that elfshot kills." He, too, started to shake with fear, making the lantern light jig across the corpses. The lack of blood made the scene more gruesome. The corpses had already begun to stiffen.

Erkanwulf snuffed the lantern, hoping that the moon would give enough light to guide them. They fled east along the track, walking until dawn with the nervous horses on leads behind them, but they were too afraid to stop. When dawn came after an eternity of walking, they found a deer trail that wandered east, and they kept going at a steady walking pace because, after all, fear prodded them on, so it was only when they reached a stream and had to stop the horses from drinking too much cold water while overheated that they remembered that while they might march on they had to rest and graze the horses.

'Why didn't they kill you?" Erkanwulf asked after they had watered and rubbed down the horses and turned them out to graze.

Ivar washed his face and drank from the rushing stream before he answered. "I don't know." He touched the ring, but its polished surface told him nothing. "I just don't know."

JHlJc lay winded and gasping, recovering from the panic that had seized him just before the last of his air gave out. For a long time he sprawled in blackness, his only reference points the touch of water on his toes and the grind of pebbles and sand against his skin where he had dragged himself out of the flooded tunnel. The ground sloped gently upward until, at the limit of his reach, it humped up into a curved shelf of rock.

The air swelled thickly in his chest; it seemed as heavy as the darkness surrounding him.

He could see nothing, not his hand, not the floor, not even the armband that had before this faithfully lit his way in the depths.

After a longer while he shouted, but the caverns swallowed his voice. He heard no answering reply nor the scuffle of curious scouts.

Again he called out.

Again, silence answered.

Buried deep under the ground one heard silence in an entirely new way. No sound but that of his own breathing disturbed the air. If he shifted, then his knee might scrape rocks; his toe might lift out of the cold bath of water and cause a droplet to splash. That was all.

He stood and reached above his head, searching, but could not touch ceiling. He took in air, called out again, and a fourth time, and a fifth, and each time the sound of his voice faded and failed as he stood in a stillness so lucid that he finally understood that this was a dead place where nothing lived. He had swum into a blind pocket.

Without light, he could not explore to see how wide this cavern spanned or where tunnels might spear into stone to make roads that would lead him to light or help. He dared not move away from the water lest he could not find it again and, thus trapped, starve and die.

If he could not explore, then he would have no choice except to swim back to where his companion waited, where there was food and a chance to live buried in a gravelike prison. This taste, like defeat, soured in his mouth. There had to be a way out. "What are you?"

He shrieked and leaped backward, stumbling into the water, slipping, and falling to his knees. Then he began to laugh, because he recognized that rumbling whisper. The creature had been crouched in front of him all along, yet he had not sensed it. It made no sound of breathing. Now, it scraped away from him, retreating from the unexpected laughter, and he controlled himself quickly and spoke.

'I pray you, Friend, I am a messenger. I am come from your own tribesmen who are lost beyond this tunnel."

'They are lost," agreed the voice. "One among us watches since the time they are lost.

If the deeps shift, then the path may open. How are you come through the poison water?"

'It is not poison to me. I am not one of your kind." "You are not," it agreed. "We speak tales of the long-ago time when a very few of the creatures out of the Blinding dug deep.

So do they still, but only to rob. Once they brought gifts, as it is spoken in the old tales.

Once there was obligation between your kind and ours. No more."

The words made his head hurt. Each phrase was a bar prying him open, cracking the seals that bound him; thoughts and memories spilled into a light too bright to bear. A great city. A journey through the dark. Adica.

'No more," he echoed, pressing his face into his hands as his temple throbbed and his skull seemed likely to split open. But despite his pain, he had a message to deliver. "Can you help them? Some still live, beyond the tunnel, but they are trapped. Can you help them?"

'Come," said the voice. "The council must decide."

It shuffled away, but he had to call after it.

'I can't see to follow you."

"See?"

"I am blind in this darkness."

It said nothing, and he tried again.

'The light above that blinds you, that you call the Blinding, is what I need to see. This place, where you can see without light, it is a blind place to me."

Out of the blindness cold fingers grasped his arm, tapped the armband, and jerked back. "Poison water!" It hissed and gurgled and went still, as though that touch had poisoned it.

He waited, and after a bit it spoke again.

'Such talismans we make no longer. The <magic> flees after the great calamity. Hold to me and follow like a <young one>."

He reached out, grasped its cool hand, and trusting that it did not mean to lead him to his doom, he stumbled after it as it moved away with a strange rolling gait into a blackness so profound that he might as well have been walking into the pit.

The earth trembled beneath his feet, rocking him, then stilled.

'What was that?"

'The earth wakes," said his guide. "The wise ones shift their feet, and the deeps tremble."

'Ah." His head was hurting badly again, and so they walked for a long while without speaking. He had to concentrate on walking; because each step jolted the pain in his head to a new location and back again, he came to dread the movement although he had no choice but to go forward.

After a long, long time he had to rest.

'I must drink," he said to his guide, "or I will fail."

'Drink?"

'I thirst. I must have water or some wine or ale, something to moisten my tongue and body."

'Wait here." The creature let go of his hand and before he understood what it was about, he heard it scrabble away over or along the stone and knew himself utterly lost.

He had no choice but to trust it—otherwise he certainly would die—so he lay down on the stone and slept. It woke him an unknown time later and put into his hands a bowl carved out of rock and filled to the brim with a brackish but otherwise drinkable water.

When he had drunk it down, his head didn't hurt quite so badly and, although his stomach ached with hunger, he could go on. They walked on for what seemed ages upon ages or a day at least up above where the passage of the sun and the moon allowed a man to measure the passing of time. Time seemed insignificant here, meaningless. Twice more the stone shuddered and stilled beneath and around them, causing him to pause as he swayed, heart hammering with instinctive fear, although his guide seemed untroubled by the shaking.

The second time, as the shaking subsided, he heard the noise of a distant rockfall, a scattering and shattering echo upon echo that propelled in its wake an avalanche of memory in his own mind: He remembered two young men with wiry black hair and short beards, surefooted as they climbed across and up a vast swath of rockfall that had long before obliterated one slope of a valley. "Shevros!" he breathed. "Maklos."

There had been another man with them, and two more companions, but to think, to struggle to name them, made his head throb. "Come," said the guide, tugging him along.

They walked for another day, perhaps, or so he guessed because in addition to the pain that crippled his head he was now growing weak with hunger and again faint and irritable with thirst. The darkness ate away at him until it filled him and he was empty, even those sparks of memory lost in that vast ocean where night reigns and indeed a thing beyond night because night is elusive and transitory and this blackness had no beginning or end.

The armband abraded his skin where the last of the salt water still stung, and at last when they stopped for him to rest again—the skrolin needed no rest—he slipped off the armband and rubbed the inside with the filthy loincloth he still wore which had dried while he walked. He blew on it until it felt dry and clean—as clean as anything could be under such conditions—and eased it back up on his arm.

'Come," said his guide, stamping twice on the ground as though impatient, and it seemed the stamp and the low rumbling growl that came from deep in the creature's body performed as an incantation, or else it had been the irritant of the salt that had poisoned the armband, because a soft glow rose from the metal and the darkness retreated.

He stared in amazement. They stood in a high tunnel whose ceiling was perfectly round while the path they walked on was level. No natural cave would appear so regular.

If an arrow forged out of the iron had been shot by a giant's bow and pierced stone, it might bore a shaft such as this.

"Come," repeated his guide. "We are close."

The creature had a pale cast of skin and a handful of crusty growths patching its squat body. It grabbed for his hand, but he took a step away, not meaning to.

'I can see."

Pale-skin's huge eyes whirled as it regarded him. He had no way to interpret its expression. It had no expression, in truth, only features that mimicked those of humankind perhaps simply because he insisted on seeing the resemblance.

We recognize only that which we already know.

"I can see to follow you," he said. "I am steadier on my feet if I walk alone. But I will have to eat very soon, and drink again."

'So much?" it asked. "Your body is inefficient to need so much fuel."

'I am no different than any other man."

'You are a creature of the Blinding. So. Come."

They walked on, but he was getting light-headed from lack of food, and his tongue felt swollen and heavy. Yet within ten hundred paces, not seen at first because the glow of his armband lit his way no more than a stone's toss in any direction, the tunnel's walls became pillars marking the advent of a hall of monumental proportions, so vast that the feel of the air changed as they walked through a forest of pillars, a woodland carved out of the stone, each pillar rising up to an unseen ceiling spanning far beyond the reach of the light, each pillar studded with gems that dazzled before fading into the darkness as he passed, a glimpse of riches soon gone.

'What is this place?" he asked.

'The old ones built it, so legend says."

It was more like a forest than any building he had ever seen; there was no layer of undergrowth, and no sky, but the pillars marched out on either side in uneven ranks, and each column had as different a look to it as any individual tree might—some resembling each other as oak tree resembles oak tree, yet different in the pattern of gems or decoration on its surface or the width or smoothness or curve of the pillar itself. Pale-skin divined a path by means of touching each pillar and moving on to the next, sometimes backtracking before heading out in a new direction, but always moving into the vast forest itself, endlessly on, into the wilderness.

In the midst of the forest a clearing opened. They came to the rim of a shallow bowl cut into the stone so unexpectedly that he almost tripped and fell, stopping himself on the brim, teetering there for one breath, then stepping back. In that bowl, along the level base, a hundred boulders rested all helter-skelter, and that was only what he could see within the halo made by the light, for the bowl itself was too wide for the glow of his armband to illuminate the whole of it. When he blinked, he realized that of course these were not boulders at all but a congregation of skrolin.

His legs crumpled under him, and he sat hard on the lip, where the floor gave way. He was too dizzy and weak to negotiate the sloping side. There he sat while a low rolling scraping sound shifted around him, disorienting him, and he fought to stay sitting and not simply keel over.

After a long time he became aware that Pale-skin squatted beside him holding two objects in his hands: a loaf of clavas and a stone bowl filled to the brim with water. The smell of the water made his mouth hurt, and in fact his lips were so dry and cracked that the moisture stung them and they bled, the iron bite of his blood blending with the metallic taste of the water. He forced himself to drink less than he wanted, to eat only a corner, not to gorge, and afterward he was so tired that he curled up on stone and slept.

When he woke, he drank and ate again, and now he had the strength to stand, for it was apparent that the boulders—the skrolin—had moved while he slept, changing position to create a clear path for him down into the bowl.

The slope wasn't so steep that he staggered, but it was still difficult to keep his balance. Pale-skin followed him, bearing more water and clavas, acquired from an unknown source. The skrolin moved only their heads as he passed, watching him, and that shifting rumbling sound followed him as he descended because they all of them fell in behind. He came to a round amphitheater cut into stone with a series of circular ledges and, in the middle, a shallow pit like the fighting ground for cocks or dogs.

Most of the skrolin gathered on the ledges, but Pale-skin led him down by stages to the pit where eleven skrolin waited. Each one wore an armband, but his was the only armband that gleamed, and when he got close to them, he saw that the armbands they wore were pit ted and faded and scratched and even tarnished green with age, ancient objects whose potency had withered.

He sat down cross-legged in the center of the pit. All around, up into the ranks of the amphitheater and beyond that into the darkness which the glow of the armband could not penetrate, he felt them watching him, the force of many gazes, of interest and curiosity and of something more besides that had the scent of hope or longing.

'I am a messenger," he said. "I swam through the poisoned tunnel to bring you a message from those who were lost when the earth trembled and drowned the tunnel through which they traveled. Some among them are still alive. Can you find them and help them to escape the trap they are in?"

His words brought silence. He listened. He heard his own breathing, nothing more. If they pulled air into lungs and let it out again, as did humankind, he could not hear it.

They were as silent as the stone around them. They seemed more than half stone themselves.

Finally, when he thought there would be no reply, a rush of clicking and stamping and rubbing and tapping swept through the assembly. After a long while, the noise subsided.

Pale-skin had retreated, and in its place one with a gold sheen and a dozen crystalline growths mottling its skin shuffled forward to confront him. It wore draped about its body a number of chimes and charms that rang softly. With a deft movement, at odds with its clumsy body, it stripped the armband off its own long limb and held it out for him to see.

'You wear a talisman," it said. "But the talisman you wear lives. The talismans we wear are long dead."

A sigh of grief shuddered through the assembly.

'Is it true that the shining city existed in the long-ago time? Is it true? Or is it only a story we tell."

He nodded. "It is true. I saw it. I was there."

'Tell us! Tell us!"

He told them what he remembered, which wasn't much, only flashes of sights and sounds, a memory of a vast city glimpsed deep in the earth, of pillars clothed in jewels, of a marketplace that lapped a river, of caverns streaked with veins of gold and copper and wagons that moved without horse or oxen to pull them. But as he spoke, the words took on substance, as though he were weaving the city right there before them, as if their listening and his words were the hands and the clay out of which a pot could be formed.

He created the world they had lost, and they believed him, because they wanted to.

'But it is gone," he said. "It was all gone. They destroyed it."

Adica destroyed it.

The pain struck, doubling him over, because he could not see or hear with the lance of guilt and grief assaulting him. Adica had destroyed it, but she had died in a wall of blue fire and after that he recalled nothing. Only her death, and the destruction of the world.

He fell forward onto the floor, body pressed against the stone, hands clenched and teeth gritted but the pain did not cease. Adica hadn't meant to do so much damage, surely.

She hadn't meant to kill innocents in order to save her own, had she? Hadn't it all been an accident, a misunderstanding?

The magnificent cities of the goblinkin vanish in cave-ins so massive that the land above is irrevocably altered. Rivers of molten fire pour in to burn away what survives.

Adica had seen the skrolin cities. She had known they existed. Perhaps she and the others had not comprehended the scope of the destruction they would unleash. Yet if they had known, would they have gone ahead anyway? He could not bear to think that she might have, so it was a mercy that pain blinded him, hammered him, until he could not think.

But he could still see.

Rivers run deep beneath the Earth, flooded with fire. This is the blood of the Earth.

These are the ancient pathways that mold land and sea and weave the fabric of the world.

Far away down the threads woven through the depths of the Earth by the fire rivers lie intelligences of an order both keener and slower than his own, sensing the measure of time in whose passing a human life spans nothing more than the blink of an eye.

Their minds touch his down the pathways of fire. Their thoughts burn into him.

You. Are. The. One. We. Seek.

The toll of their words rings in his head like the clamor of bells oh so slow, slower than the respiration of the skrolin.

Tell. Us. What. You. Know.

They peel away his memories, which are opaque to him but somehow clearly seen by these ancient minds for whom the unfolding of a tree from sapling to a great decayed trunk fallen in the forest flies as swiftly as a swallow through a lady's hall at wintertide.

He catches glimpses of their sight as they pillage his memories: the glittering archway that Adica wove; brave Laoina with her staff; wise Falling-down; crippled Tanioi-nin; the veiled one and the fearsome lion women; doomed Hehoyanah and Hani's mocking smile; dying Horn; the camaraderie of Shevros and Maklos who took him across the white path which marks the border of Ashioi lands.

He weeps, because he knows all that he loved is lost to him not just because it is fled across the span of years but because the old ones are tearing those memories away as they search. They are not done with him yet.

Will. The. Weaving. Save. Us. Or. Doom. Us.

They meant well, he says, but they killed more than they saved. They caused immeasurable devastation.

Ah!

They speak. They confer for hours, for days, for weeks, for months, for years, or for an instant only. He can't measure them.

This. Is. What. We. Needed. To. Know. Now. We. Can. Act.

They withdraw. On the wind of their leaving he sees beyond the borders of the Earth where the cosmos yawns, immense and terrifying. He cries out in fear and wonder because this abyss is both beginning and end, a circle that turns back in on itself. He hears its voice, not male or female and as vast as eternity: I am what I was and what I am now and what I will be.

And woke with jumbled, painful memories that faded into a merciful haze. All was gone, veiled and shrouded.

He was still lying on the floor of the pit, and he was so tremendously thirsty. The skrolin waited beside him as if no time had passed and yet by the measure of his thirst he thought that hours had passed or a day, but it was impossible to know. He found the bowl of water and gulped it down, and that gave him the strength to eat half the remaining clavas with the manners of a man, not a beast.

At length, he croaked out a word, and the skrolin tapped and rubbed the ground and each other in response.

'Where do you go?" asked Gold-skin, who now spoke for the others. "What do you see?"

Only broken images remained in his head, which was beginning to hurt again. "A terrible fire destroyed your city. What happened after that I do not know."

'We know. We know. The tale passes from one to the next down the long watches.

First the survivors fight for many watches, each with the others, one <guild> against the next. After long and long the fighting exhausts the few who are left and it is agreed that some will tunnel turn ward and some will tunnel antiturnward. Long and long we seek in the depths, but the shining city is gone and so some speak of it as only a story. Across many watches an archive is collected, things found among ruins, in hidden corners, but the archive remains closed to us, as if it never existed. So the quarrels begin again. The shining city is a story only. It is the truth. No one can agree. Now we are scattered. The talismans are dead. The archives are lost to us without the key. This is how you find us, with your story of the shining city. We wish to believe. We fear to believe. Is it true?"

'It is true."

All around they stamped their feet and tapped and clicked until Gold-skin lifted the dull armband it had once worn and everyone hushed.

'Proof," it said. "Bring one from the archives. Bring one. Bring two. Bring three. That will be proof."

'What are the archives?" He touched the bowl of water, but he had drained it dry. Pale-skin, who had grasped his needs, picked up the bowl and hurried off into the darkness.

'They are proof. Closed to us, or open to us, they are proof. Or they are baubles, nothing more. Now we wait. Now we find out."

Waiting among the skrolin took hours or days; he had entirely lost track of time. Pale-skin brought a whole bucket carved out of stone and filled with water as well as a dozen loaves of clavas. Many times he had to relieve himself by leaving the amphitheater and walking out into the pillars for privacy. He drank that entire bucket and a second one and ate all the clavas before a dozen skrolin returned bearing three massive scrolls forged out of metal—pewter, maybe, since it seemed too hard to be silver. They set these on the ground in front of him, unrolled them, and without further ceremony stepped back. The sheets were as long as his arm span, as wide as the length of his shin, and yet as thin as a leaf. How they could lay flat when they had just been so tightly rolled up he could not imagine.

One by one, the eleven skrolin who bore an armband came forward to press their talismans into a square etched into the center of each scroll. After a pause in which every creature there seemed ready for nothing to happen, yet something to happen, the skrolin would remove the armband and step back.

When they had finished, they all looked expectantly at him.

He saw the pattern, but he didn't know what it meant. He crouched beside the unrolled sheet, slipped his armband off, and pressed it onto the sheet.

Light flashed. The armband glowed red hot, and he yelped and released it, but it did not roll away; it was stuck to the metal. Light undulated down the length of the sheet in waves, a stark white light followed by successive ripples of gold, pale yellow, silver, and a last dark surge which drove furrows into the surface, gashes and gouges too thin to measure yet he knew what they were.

He recognized writing when he saw it, although these marks were alien to him.

No sound issued from the skrolin.

They stood, like stone, without speaking or moving, stunned or shocked or ignorant.

But he knew. He understood. The miracle had happened. All that had separated them from their ancestors was their access to the knowledge that their kind had accumulated in the ancient days. These scrolls held their memories, closed to them for untold years and centuries. In this same way the pain had choked off his own life from him, glimpsed in snatches as transitory as the tales the skrolin had told themselves over and over since that day when the great weaving had destroyed them.

How long they stood in silence he could not measure. In the depths of the earth, he possessed no gauge by which to quantify time.

They stood in silence for as long as they needed to absorb what he had wrought. They stood in silence while he unrolled the other two sheets, pressed his armband to the centers, and watched as these, too, revealed their secrets.

At length, Gold-skin turned to him.

'A life for a life. A payment. An obligation. You do not belong here, you consume too much fuel. We will trade. One among us will lead you to the Blinding so you can return to your own kind. That is your life, in exchange for the talisman."

My own kind.

He no longer knew who his own kind were. He could only remember the wheel, and the garden of clavas growing among the rotting flesh of the dead.

'What of your kinfolk?" he asked. "The ones who are trapped? What of them? Can you rescue them now? I can help you. I made a promise to them."

They gave him no more speech. Pale-skin clasped him tightly, pinning his arms to his side, and hoisted him with awkward strength.

'What of them?" he called, desperate for an answer, but none came.

For hours or days Pale-skin carried him through the labyrinth that is utter night, stopping three times to give him water and clavas, and depositing him at long last, and unceremoniously, on a shelf of rock where grains of soil slipped beneath his fingers although he still could not see.

'Climb up," said Pale-skin. "Climb up. You have done us great wrong. You have done us great good. We will not forget."

It rattled away, and he was left alone in the pit. But he probed and touched and sought for handholds, however useless it seemed, because he did not want to die in the pit. So he climbed up and up and up and just when he thought he had been abandoned at the base of the Abyss and must climb for an eternity without ever reaching the top, he discovered a certain alteration in the darkness revealing contours across the rock. He saw a crack of light far above.