Liath propped her chin on a cupped fist and frowned at the Eagle. He was a likable, even-tempered young man who reminded her vaguely of Ivar but perhaps only because of his red hair.

They looked nothing alike, and he did not have Ivar's inconvenient and ill-timed passions.

She sighed. Heart's Rest seemed impossibly distant. That interlude with Hanna and Ivar, innocent friends, could never have happened in a world as blighted as this one. How blind she had been in those days! Hanna's friendship was true enough, but Hanna had been struggling with her own obstacles, which Liath had blithely ignored. Ivar had never been her friend; she had pretended otherwise because his infatuation with her had made her uncomfortable.

Because he had seemed so callow, compared to Hugh. As much as she had hated Hugh, she had never truly stopped comparing Ivar to him, and found Ivar always wanting although he was honest and true.

"Hanna is my friend," she said at last, seeing that the others— Rufus, dark-haired Nan, and an older man all the other Eagles called Hasty because of his deliberate way of doing things but whose name was Radamir—watched her. "I wish we had news of her."

"I don't know if she survived the earthquake," said Rufus. "That one that collapsed St. Mark's. I heard a rumor that she and some of the king's schola crept away during the tumult. I was gone by then. She had been placed in Presbyter Hugh's retinue, but Duchess Liutgard was unhappy about it. He never allowed Hanna to make her full report to the king—that is, the emperor."

She questioned him further, but he hadn't much more to relate although it all emerged in greatest detail, since Eagles honed their ability to memorize and recollect.

"I pray she still lives," Rufus finished. "She is a good woman."

"If any can survive this, Hanna can."

Behind, a commotion signaled the approach of Sanglant and his entourage: the tread of footsteps, the babble of conversation, a chuckle, a muttered wager. It never let up. Tonight he spoke with his cousin, Liutgard, whom he seemed to trust, while that bastard Wichman trailed behind making crude jokes to the Ungrian captain, Istvan, who bore his witticisms stolidly. A bevy of nobles swarmed around; a steward waited at his right hand; soldiers loitered beyond the firelight, never straying far.

He stood straight and held the centermost place among his retinue, with that astonishing ability to know where each of his attendants were without skipping from place to place like an anxious dog seeking a pat on the head. But she could see in his face and bearing that the journey and the obligations thrust upon him were exhausting him. He was strong, but even the strongest must rest.

Soldiers had already pitched the journeying tent in which they slept. Thank the Lord and Lady that it was too small to admit more than two people.

She caught Captain Fulk's attention, and he nodded at her and chivvied the king toward his pallet, separating him smoothly away from the others. Liath wasn't sure if Fulk liked her, or even respected her, but on this account, at least, they understood one another.

She took her leave of the Eagles and, as Sanglant's attendants made ready to sleep, dispersed to their own encampments, or settled in for guard duty, she crawled into the tent and pulled off her boots.

"You must come with me when I tour the army," he said impatiently. "You must be seen at my side, as my consort. As co-regnant."

"I pray you, give me time. I am not yet accustomed to it."

She doubted she would ever become accustomed to it. She needed peace, and silence, and the company of books, but she dared not tell him that, not now. Not yet.

He seemed about to say something, but did not, and stripped off the rest of his clothing instead. In general, unless attack was imminent, he preferred to sleep naked, and he was warm enough to protect her against the cold, which always debilitated her.

"I will never get used to cold," she said as she pulled off her shift and, shivering, pressed herself against him skin to skin while pulling furs and cloaks over them.

"Yet you burn!" he whispered, kissing her.

"Umm," she said.

But after a moment he lay back, and she rested her head on his shoulder and waited. She was getting to know him. At moments like this, he had something in his mind troubling him that he would at length spit out.

'Are you still angry with me?" he asked. "For forbidding you from going after Blessing?"

Guilt, like a hungry dog, will stare and stare. She had lived with its presence all day until it had become a dead weight in her stom-ach. His breathing was steady. Hers was not.

"Oh, love, had I insisted on going, I would have gone, and you could not have stopped me."

He caught in his breath as if slapped, but said nothing; then let it out again, and still said nothing.

She went on, because his silence hurt too much. "I abandoned her. In Verna, first, even though it wasn't my choice to leave. For the second time out on the steppes, when we left her behind knowing she was close to death. And now, this time, for the third. So many voices chase through my head. What use is such a long journey when there are others who can make it for me? Who are better able to endure the trek. Who can serve in this way, as I can serve in others."

He still made no answer except to stroke her arm, shoulder to elbow, shoulder to elbow, his way of pacing when he was lying down.

"I do not even know Blessing. I may never know her. That is the choice I face. That is the choice I made."

"I could have gone," he said angrily, hoarsely, but his voice always sounded like that. "Yet she is one child. Wendar and Varre and all who live there—all who survived the cataclysm—may fall into chaos. Without the order imposed by the regnancy, there will be war between nobles, between duchies and counties. That is the choice I made. It is the obligation I accepted, although I never sought it. How is your choice different?"

"I am not Henry's heir. I am not even Taillefer's great grandchild. I am the daughter of a minor noble house, nothing more."

"That strangely makes me think of Hugh of Austra, who would not have cared one whit for the daughter of a minor noble house, if that is all you were."

'Ah! That was a cruel blow."

"So it was intended to be. I grieve for Blessing. No one does more than I do. I admit I didn't always like my sweet girl, but I always loved her. Love her. If she is dead, Liath, if she already died, then we made the right choice."

"I saw her."

"You are blind in your Eagle's Sight. What was this vision, then? True, or false?"

"I believe it was true. I saw Blessing. I saw Li'at'dano. I think I saw Wolfhere. I saw a vision of you, when you took in the Wendish refugees who had fled Darre. Henry's schola, most of them."

"That's right," he admitted. "It might well have been a true vision."

"Or it might have been a dream. I might only have wanted to see her so badly. ... It seemed so real. I saw her arguing with a youth, a young man—"

"Thiemo? Matto?"

"I never saw him before."

"Might it have been the past you saw?"

"Nay—she was the age she was when we left her." But not yet as old as in that terrible vision when she had seen Blessing held prisoner by Hugh. "It was the present, or the future. I'm sure of it. It means she lives."

"If that is so, and if Gyasi brings her back to us safe and alive, then we made the right choice."

"What if she dies because one of us did not go to her?"

"Then we will be responsible. How else can we judge? What else can we do? Each day I must choose, and some may die, and some live, because of decisions I make."

"Ah, God. It is no good task. So many are already dead."

'And yet more would be dead, if you had not confronted Anne and killed her. You know it is true."

"It is true," she said reluctantly, "but I feel no triumph in victory."

"That is because we gained no victory. All we managed was no defeat."

"I met a party of farmers in Aosta. After the griffins rescued me from Zuangua. These farmers had lost their homes to the windstorm. Passing troops had stolen what remained of their stores.

No doubt it seemed fitting to that lord and his army to do so, for he must supply his own in order to fight."

"So he must, but he will not eat the next year if all those who farm for him die of starvation."

One of the knots plaguing her stomach relaxed. "I suppose that is only one tiny injustice among so many great ones. Yet it makes me think of words Hathui once said: 'The Lord and Lady love us all equally in Their hearts.' "

"That being so," he murmured in reply, "why did God make Wichman the son of a duchess and Fulk, who is in every way his superior as a man, the son of a minor steward without rank or standing except that which I give him? Why did I live when all my faithful Dragons died?"

"The church mothers have an answer to all these questions, else we would fall endlessly into the Pit for wondering."

"What is their answer?"

"I can quote chapter and verse, but in the end, their answers are all the same: Humankind cannot know the mind of God."

"As dogs cannot know the mind of their master, although they strive to be obedient?"

She laughed.

"I must acquire a pack of loyal hounds, who will sit at my feet and growl at the faithless and remind me of how untrustworthy courtiers can be. Poor things."

"The dogs, or the courtiers?"

"Do you remember my Eika dogs? What awful creatures they were, not dogs at all, truly. Yet I miss them in one way. I never had to guess their intentions. I could always trust them to go for my throat if they thought I was weakening."

She hesitated, and he felt the tension in her and turned to kiss her cheek. "Say it. Do not fear me, so that you think you must hold your tongue."

"Very well, then. Must you be king? With the dogs always circling around?"

"I must," he said, taking no offense at her question. 'Alas that my father is dead. I wish it were otherwise."

"He has other children."

"They are not fit. Sapientia you know. Theophanu is capable, but she is too reserved and hasn't gained the love and support of those she would need to lead. Ekkehard is too light-minded.

Henry's children by Adelheid are too young, and anyway they will receive little support in the north if Adelheid were to claim the Wendish throne for them. They may hope to inherit Aosta if they have survived the storm. Nay, let it be. Henry wished for this for many years. Now it has come to pass. I am his obedient son."

But because she lay so close against him, she felt his tears.

4

SOON the Arethousan army, in retreat, began to meet refugees on the road. As Hanna tramped along behind the wagon to which her new guards had tied her, she studied the folk huddled at the side of the track. Like most Arethousans, they were swarthy and short, with broad faces and handsome, dark eyes. The women displayed a voluptuous beauty that fear and poverty could not yet disguise. They carried bundles on their backs and sniveling children in their arms. Some pushed handcarts piled with belongings. Now and again she would see a man holding the halter of a donkey. More often a family had two or three scrawny goats tied together on a single lead.

Once she saw a bloated corpse, but it wasn't obvious how the man had died.

They stood silently as the army passed. After a time she began to think they were like the mosaics seen in churches in Darre, figures with kohl-lined eyes and magnificent robes frozen forever against a backdrop of open woodland. Only once did she hear one speak.

"I pray you, I'll do anything for a piece of bread for me and my child." A skinny young woman clutched a slack-eyed, emaciated child to her hip as she twitched her rump awkwardly to attract the notice of the soldiers.

Bysantius strode forward before any man could step out of line. He slashed at her face with the quirt. She cried out and retreated up the slope through dry grass that crackled around her. A man emerged out of the woods from behind a stand of prickly juniper. He was tugging up the drawers under his tunic as he sauntered back to join the rest, but before he'd gone three steps a woman appeared.

"You never gave me what you promised!" she shouted.

He didn't even look back. "I took what you offered, whore!"

Men sniggered, but glanced nervously toward their sergeant.

Bysantius stuck his quirt into his belt and drew his knife before the soldier could step down onto the path. "Pay her what you promised."

The soldier—he was young and cocky—pulled up short, eyeing the knife. "I've nothing to pay her. I eat what the rest of us do, when it's handed out at night. I've no coin, as you ought to know, Sergeant. I'm to be paid with land."

"Then you're a thief."

The column staggered to a halt as soldiers poked and pulled at each other, turning to see the confrontation.

"Thieves are punished with death, by the lord general's order. Any man who takes without permission is a thief."

"Here, here," said the man, extracting a crust of bread from his sleeve, "no harm done." He turned, tossed the bread at the woman, and hurried back into line, his face red and the rest hooting at him. The woman scrabbled in the dirt and, scooping up the crust, ran away into the woods.

"Get on!" Bysantius added a few curses, sheathed his knife, and strode up the line brandishing his quirt.

Hanna, too, had stashed away a bit of her last night's meal, nothing more than a bit of dry cheese, the last cut off a round. She fished it out of her sleeve and hissed.

"Tss! Here, you!" The young woman with the child had been weeping, huddled on the hill. Hanna tossed the cheese at her, but the wagon jerked forward and she stumbled to her knees and then scrambled to get up before she was dragged, and by the time she got herself stable again, she had lost sight of mother and child.

She was, therefore, doubly hungry that night, but as she ate the thin gruel out of the pot she couldn't regret what she had done.

"Mind you," said Sergeant Bysantius, coming over to crouch beside her, "the infant will die a day later rather than sooner. You're just prolonging her misery."

"Perhaps not. You can't know what will happen. Why are all these refugees on the road?"

He scratched his neck. It was a mark of the general's respect for the sergeant that he had been given command of the rear guard, but the dry and dusty conditions, the constant kick of dust all day long, had caused his skin to rash. "Nothing good, I'm thinking," he said. "Nothing good."

Years ago she, Liath, Hathui, Manfred, and Wolfhere had ridden east into the rising sun, traveling toward Gent. On that ride she had seen streams of refugees fleeing the Eika invasion. They had come on carts and on foot, leading donkeys or carrying crates that confined squawking chickens.

They had hauled children and chests and sacks of withered turnips or baskets filled with rye and barley. The road, damp with rain, had churned to mud under the crush of so much traffic. Yet, despite their desperation, those Wendish refugees had not had the despairing, hopeless look of Arethousa's wretched, fled from what every man and woman in the army referred to always and only as "the city."

For days, stories passed up and down the line, but in the end even these rumors and purported eyewitness accounts could not prepare them for their first sight of "the splendid daughter of the sea," the great capital city of the empire of Arethousa. Chained to the wagon, Hanna could not see as the vanguard of the army reached a distant rise. The entire unwieldy column staggered to a halt as the men in the front seized up and the ones behind pushed forward to clamor for news.

That news swept through them like wind. She leaned against the wagon's tailgate with eyes closed and let the rush pour over her. It was so good to rest.

"... only the walls survived ..."

"You're a fool to believe it. Have you seen?"

"Nay, but it's what they're all saying!"

"So did the refugees, poor cattle. Doesn't mean they're right. A giant wave! Tssh! Let's go—"

"Stay in line!" The sergeant's quirt struck, variously, wagons, flesh, and the dirt. "Stay in line!

Don't break ranks!"

She opened her eyes. The soldiers leaned forward like hounds straining at their leashes, quivering, anxious, eager to race forward. But they held their ranks. A rider in the red tabard that marked the imperial scouts galloped back along the line of march and pulled up beside Bysantius.

"General Lord Alexandras desires your attendance at a council," said the man. "I'm to command the rear guard in your absence. He says to bring the Eagle."

The rider looked around, seeking her, but because days of dust had veiled her pale hair, he didn't mark her. He dismounted instead and handed the reins to Bysantius, who smiled grimly and shouted at the guards to unlock Hanna's leg irons.

Her new guards were called Big Niko and Little Niko by the other soldiers, although the two were the same height. They were phlegmatic fellows who made up in attention to detail what they lacked in conversation and wit. They untied her from the rope that tethered her to the wagon, then unshackled her ankles. It felt strange to walk without the chafing on her legs, without the weight, without the cubit's length of restriction clipping her stride. Bysantius swung onto the horse, then extended a hand to help her up behind him.

She disliked his closeness. He stank, but no doubt she did as well. Given the conditions in which they had marched, anyone would reek. That he didn't smell worse was remarkable. He was, without question, a powerfully built man. She tried holding onto the cantle, but as they started forward her awkward seat behind the saddle forced her to cling to his belt. Her head, shoulders, and breasts pressed against his back. Mercifully, he said nothing about the intimate nature of their position. He had enough to do to press forward along the line with soldiers calling to him for news at every step. Here, so close to the city, the way was broad, paved in the center with wide, dusty lanes to either side for additional traffic. What remained of forest sat far back from the road and then only to the south. North was clear-cut, the sloping land studded here and there with clusters of sad hovels now overrun with refugees. Folk stood in doorways, watching mutely as the army passed. If they owned livestock, their animals were well hidden. She heard not even one chicken's squawk or a goat's complaining bawl. Uncounted fresh graves lay in ranks behind each village and along the roadside.

The road led up a long incline and at length they reached the height of the rise where Lady Eudokia and the general had halted with their close companions. All faces were turned toward the east. Besides the shifting of feet and the occasional protest of a horse held on too tight a rein, there was no sound except for a soughing whisper that might be the surf.

Bysantius let out his breath all in a hissed sound. He was rigid. His broad shoulders hid half the view, but by craning her neck to peer past his back she saw a wash of cloudy sky that blended into the glitter of a distant sea and, beyond it, the contours of another land lying away across the narrow strait. Off to her right, slopes ran down to a coastal plain and the sea, but the crowd to her left concealed the sight they all stared at.

"Sergeant Bysantius!" General Lord Alexandras' voice cracked the silence.

The sergeant started, shaken out of his stupor. He turned parallel to the shore, and she saw everything.

The land beyond was a jumble of muted colors, a formless wilderness without trees or houses.

The general waited just where the road began to pitch and wind away down toward a peninsula jutting out into the winter-gray sea waters. The promontory had a rounded gleam, ringed by pale stone and paler spume where water rolled up against the shore. The rugged lines of its heights and valleys con fused her, while at her back she heard groans and tears from the folk gathered on the road. Many fell to their knees and beat their hands on the ground.

"What catastrophe has overcome us?" said the general, his voice little more than a scrape.

The curtains that screened the exalted lady's litter from the sun and prying eyes had been thrown back so Lady Eudokia could see the full sweep of the scene. Her lips were pressed tight, but she did not weep. Beside her, her nephew picked at his nose as he whistled tunelessly under his breath, scuffing his feet, knocking his knees together, and otherwise behaving as though he wished they could get moving before he died of boredom.

"Only sorcery could encompass so much destruction," she said. "But see. The walls are intact."

"In a manner of speaking." He wiped tears from his face. "A man's heart is intact when his beautiful mistress sends back the bracelets and baubles he has given her and takes up with another man, but he is ruined nevertheless."

"Men are slaves to their desires, it is true. He is ruined, but he is not dead, and in time he will forget her. This is a bad analogy, Lord General. Think rather—we must rebuild, because the one who rebuilds will rule those who are grateful for the restoration of what was lost."

"Arethousa was not built in a day, exalted lady."

"No use waiting, then. We must inventory what remains, and what manner of workforce we have at our disposal, and what stores survive to feed our army and the people. If God is merciful, this winter will be mild."

"If God is merciful, there will be rain, and the sun will emerge from behind these damned clouds!

How can you not weep?"

"Tell me my tears will build a palace, and I will weep. Let us build and plan our revenge, even if it is my nephew's children who must lead our armies into war. We must act quickly in case any of my cousin's partisans have escaped. We must take control of the city while there are none to resist us."

This time the general almost did break down, but with an iron will he controlled his body, his expression, his voice, and his entire being. "That is not a city. That is a ruin. Ai, God. My dear wife."

The words sparked connections in her mind. What had bewildered her came clear. The peninsula was covered not by rocky terrain and fallen stones but by a vast city so huge that she had not recognized it for what it was. Its walls ringed the shoreline. Double walls made a skirt across the headland. What splendor these ruins might once have possessed she could only guess at. They were too big to comprehend, and the extent of the destruction staggered her because it made no sense. She traced the distant lines that marked the ground but could not measure palaces, churches, houses, or stables in the jumble. From this distance she saw nothing she could recognize as rooftops, no spectacular domes, only stair steps of tumbled stone in heaps and mounds that she had at first mistaken for natural formations.

Surely this was an ancient ruin. Not even the gale wind could have destroyed so much and on such a scale. It was difficult to grasp, much less hold onto, their grief. It all seemed so remote, no more than an idea they had all long clung to.

"A wave drowned all, so we have been told," said Lady Eudokia. "How can any wave be large enough to overwhelm the city? It must have been some other thing, a spell perhaps, rising out of Jinna lands. Rising off the sea."

"Look there!" said Bysantius, pointing.

A gauzy mist was rising off the strait. Wisps of fog wafted up out of the ruins as the breeze blew in off the sea. Fog rose every place there was water. It seemed the ruins were awash, because the mist thickened, poured upward, and advanced inland toward their position as a wall of white like a towering wave off the sea. It swallowed the ground, the view, the sky.

"God save us," muttered Bysantius, but he held his position.

General Lord Alexandras drew his sword.

"Leave off," snapped Lady Eudokia. "Put me down, you fools. Bring me my chest. Let me see what I can do to dispel this unnatural mist."

No natural mist moved in such a manner. Hanna twisted to look behind her. Men backed away, making signs against evil. Her ears popped, and the few dogs remaining among the army began barking. As the fog advanced on a strong wind off the sea, the beasts tucked tails between legs and ran. Their fear, like a shower of arrows, struck throughout the ranks.

"Hold fast!" cried the general.

"Shit!" swore Bysantius.

"You clumsy fools!" swore Lady Eudokia, her voice cracking with anger as one of her eunuchs lost his grip on the chest and it spilled to the ground.

The fog swept in. Between one breath and the next they drowned Not in water, but in a veil of concealment so thick that she could no longer see the general or the exalted lady. Even the head of Bysantius' horse swam in and out of view. A tinkling of bells teased her ears, then faded.

Once, years ago, in the custody of Bulkezu, she had seen an opening and bolted, but he had caught her, of course. Of course. Yet why be ruled by fear, as were those bawling and shouting around her?

She saw her chance.

She pushed back over the mare's rump, slid down, and landed as Bysantius called out sharply.

"The prisoner! The Eagle!"

She dared not run for the sea, not knowing what had destroyed the city and what might still lurk under the waves or on the far shore. She ran south instead, knocked into soldiers before she saw them, shook loose and kept going before they realized what hit them. She tripped once, three times, ten, but her bruised shins and aching elbows goaded her on. This time she would escape.

This time it would be different even if she died in the wilderness or was hacked to death by angry Arethousan farmers.

That thought gave her pause enough to come panting to a halt, adrift in the fog with a sparse grove of trees around her, gnarled and low like the ubiquitous olives. She heard the clamor of the army behind her, surging as would the ocean in a storm as waves strike higher rocks and disintegrate into spray.

"Form ranks! Form ranks!" cried Sergeant Bysantius, his voice ringing out of the fog. Yet she sensed no body near to hers. That he sounded close was a trick of the weather.

Maybe it wasn't so wise to wander alone, chained, and foreign in a land so notoriously unforgiving to strangers. Beware Arethousans, so went the saying. They were treacherous and deceiving, liars and heretics. But they had fed her, and the sergeant and her guards had kept her safe from those who would have been happy to assault her. She stumbled forward until she lurched into a tree, and sagged there with leaves and twigs tracing the contours of her back as she tried to catch her breath. The damp air chilled her lungs. She heard a nagging chimelike sound, as though her ears were ringing. As though her mind and heart were overwhelmed and dazzled. The choice seemed impossible: give up her freedom and live, or run and die.

"Hanna!"

The voice startled her into action. Despite knowing it was the wiser course, she could not sit quietly and be recaptured. Not again. She bolted, and slammed right into a body, oversetting him.

'Ah! Ow! I pray you, don't run, Hanna. Come with me."

That the words were Wendish was all that stopped her from scrambling away into the fog.

"Quickly." He grasped her arm with surprising strength. She could barely see his face, yet sound carried well in the fog by some trick of the wind. A horn belled. Men shouted, and she heard Bysantius' voice raised above the rest.

". . . the Eagle. I'll cut off your cocks myself if she escapes. . . ."

"Come," said her rescuer. "We must hurry. This way."

"Brother Breschius? How can it be?"

"Run now, answers later. Quiet. Easier for them to hear us than see us."

He slipped his hand down her arm until he held her wrist, then set off briskly into the forest with her stumbling behind. She had so many questions she thought she might burst, but the speed of their retreat and the single-minded intensity of his silence as he wove his way through the fog-shrouded trees without ever smacking into one kept her silent. Behind, she heard shouting and curses, the thrash of men cutting through underbrush. A hazy flicker of light marked torches.

"They're following us!"

"Hush. Do not fear. Listen to what is in your heart. If you do, you'll see the way as well as I do."

What was in her heart right now was a yammering like that of dogs racing after a terrified rabbit.

Yet beneath the fear she listened for the sound of her feet slapping the ground, echoed by Breschius' surer tread and the constant singing of delicate bells. She listened for the susurration of leaves as the wind blew the mist in from the distant shore. A man's shout rose out of the background whispers, but faded as the frater took a sudden right-hand shift in direction. She had lost track of where they were going, knew only that they still jogged through the sparse forest she had observed from the road as they had walked this day. It was prickly; every shrub and tree stabbed at her. Thorns scraped her face, but they were softened by the weight of the fog, whose passage was silent. Fog could not be heard, only seen and tasted and smelled. Its clammy touch made her hands and face grow stiff with cold. Her tongue tasted the brine of the waters. Ghostly faces loomed out of the fog but were swept away before they touched her. She fell into them. She saw with their eyes what they had seen:

The sea rises without warning and inundates the coastlands and the shining city and its impregnable walls. A wall of water rages through the strait, pouring through to reach the Heretic's Sea beyond, but in the city that wave washes all the way into the hills before dissipating and spilling back into the strait. As suddenly as the sea swelled, it now empties until long stretches of shoreline are left bare to the sky, revealing mud-slicked rocks and here and there the remains of boats and ships foundered close to land.

Indeed, a brave man— or a foolhardy one— cries out that he can walk across to the far shore, and he sets out with walking staff and a bundle of cheese and bread slung over his shoulder. Of those who have not already drowned, and they are many because the first wave is not the deepest, some grab up what possessions and children they can easily lay hands on and hasten for the hills, but others forage through the flooded streets and down to the glistening shoreline, seeking treasure.

All those who had not fled drowned when the second wave came, and then the third. Only afterward did the disturbance subside.

All along the coastal plain, remnants of this flood tide pooled within the fallen ruins of the city and in hollows and declivities in the land. No sun dried them out, and the earth was so saturated by water that it could not drink all that had swamped it. It was from these waters that the fog was called. Its essence could almost be tasted. What had been left behind could be bound to the will of one trained in weather magic and condensed by means of the sorcery she had learned from her teacher into a fog that would bewilder her enemy, the ones who held her luck hostage. This tempestari had sent her slave into the heart of the camp and bound him with spells so no one would discover him. Now he followed the torch of her power back to the place where she and her companions waited.

On all sides the fog concealed the land, but where Breschius walked, he walked as on a skein of silk teased out of the fog, a silvery path that led around every obstacle and wove around the contours of the landscape in a labyrinth that would confuse their pursuers. Hanna saw it now as clearly as he did. She no longer stumbled. He let go of her wrist, and together they settled into a swift walk which tired them less than running but still moved them swiftly away from the army.

She no longer heard shouts and calls but once she heard a dog's booming bark; once she heard a horse neigh; once she heard a woman's sobs.

"How far—?"

He raised a hand, and she stopped speaking. A silver bracelet ornamented with tiny bells gleamed at his wrist.

They walked what she judged to be about the distance from her mother's inn to Count Harl's hunting cottage, where if she left at dawn bearing a round of cheese destined for the count's table she would get there soon after midday. He gave her a leather bottle filled with sour-tasting water.

She drank whenever her throat got too dry. The fog held steady for a long while, but gradually it thinned until the landscape emerged around them, insubstantial at first but gaining weight and texture.

Up here in the hills, Arethousa was a drier land by far than Heart's Rest. Wendar boasted lush forests grown thick with undergrowth. The density of foliage washed a hundred hues of green across the hillsides. Arethousa, by contrast, was a land of gold and brown. Even the leaves had a dusty pallor and were often waxy or more like thorns than leaves. The ground layer crackled beneath her feet where she stepped on straggling vines and runners. The grass was brittle, and its chaff irritated her nose as she kicked it up with each step.

The tree cover was sparse. Often they crossed out from under what passed for shade and into a meadow of pale grass or spiny thornbush, where they caught such light as gleamed from the veiled heavens. Once, pausing, she pointed toward a lightening in the cloud cover.

"Do you think the sun is breaking through?" she asked.

"Hurry," he said. "We're losing the thread as the fog dissipates. Come, Hanna."

It seemed to her that the frater's vision was more subtle than hers. Although mist drifted within the trees and in patches across open ground, she had lost sight of the pulsing thread of light that led them. Still, she was free, she was unharmed, and although she was ravenous and light-headed, on the whole she felt content. It was an odd feeling, really, one she had rarely experienced in the last several years. She felt at ease and untroubled. At long last, it seemed, she was walking in the right direction.

He followed a defile down along stony ground, whistling the familiar melody to the psalm "Do not hide Your face from me in my time of trouble." An animal trail led through a grove of oak trees, the only oaks she had seen for many days. They emerged into a clearing protected by high rock walls and cooled by the splash of a slender waterfall pouring off a cliff face. A scrape sounded behind them, and she turned to see a sentry, unseen until now, slip away into the trees back along the track.

A campsite had been laid out around a pool worn into the rock below the falls. Lean-tos woven out of branches and reeds substituted for canvas tents. A fire burned under an overhang. There were two dozen or more horses confined by a fence made of thorny bushes, and a score or more people at work or rest in whatever shade they could find. She smelled meat roasting. The scent so overpowered her—she hadn't eaten meat for months, and nothing more than a portion of gruel for days—that she staggered as the pain of hunger bit into her stomach. Breschius steadied her. Folk looked up, their faces pale beneath a layer of grime.

"Hanna!"

They reached her before she registered their identity. She was hugged and only then did she meet the gaze of Brother Fortunatus over young Gerwita's dark head as the novice wept to see her.

Fortunatus smiled as Gerwita let Hanna go and stepped aside for Sister Rosvita to come forward.

"Hanna!" The cleric embraced her. "God be praised. We feared that you were dead, but the witch told us that you yet lived."

"The Arethousans took me prisoner," she said, astonished to find herself crying. "Oh, it is good to see you, Sister Rosvita. Are all of you here?"

"All of us, by the grace of God. And one more—" She looked back over her shoulder to a woman sitting alone on a rock beside the pool, as might an outcast.

"That's Princess Sapiential"

"So it is."

'Ai, God! What happened to her retinue?"

"We're not sure. She rarely speaks, but it appears that King Geza divorced her and abandoned her."

"Yes, yes, of course. I saw him speak the words just before the Arethousans took me."

"For your Eagle's Sight?" Rosvita released her while the others clustered around, saying little but smiling like fools.

"For my Eagle's Sight," replied Hanna bitterly. "Which has abandoned me rather like King Geza abandoned Princess Sapientia. How came you here? Who are these others?"

She scanned the vale. In the shadows to the east she saw now a peculiar wagon built into a tiny house. Even veiled by shadows its colors gleamed. It alone of every object she had glimpsed in the last ten or twelve days was not coated with a layer of ashy dust. Either it had been washed clean, or the dust could find no purchase there. Sorcery works in strange ways.

"It's Sorgatani!"

Her tongue was dry. Her vision blurred, and she swayed as the exhaustion brought on by their long walk combined with a flash of anxiety to make her knees weak and her hands damp. She had yearned to meet this mysterious stranger again and yet she feared to meet one who had laid such a frightening obligation on Hanna's head. What did it mean to be the luck of a Kerayit shaman? It seemed she was about to find out.

'As for the others," said Rosvita, "there in that wagon resides the pagan sorcerer we are not allowed to see. This troop of soldiers is led by Lady Bertha, who is Margrave Judith's second daughter. They accompanied Prince Sanglant's wife to the shores of the Middle Sea to combat the Holy Mother Anne. It seems they emerged from the crown into the midst of Anne's camp and were set upon. In the battle, Liath was separated from the others and lost. The rest escaped. They have wandered these lands since the cataclysm, seeking news of Liath, if she yet lives."

These words flowed past Hanna, who heard little and comprehended less as she stared at the wagon and its bright patterned walls, where lion and antelope and horse figures loped into an unseen but understood vista beyond the sight of mortal kind, known only to those who have walked between the worlds and mounted the pole of the world tree into the heavens. The utterance of Liath's name acted as a hook and yanked her back to herself, a fish floundering out of water.

"Liath was here? What happened to her?"

"That you must ask the one you call Sorgatani. Fewer than half of Lady Bertha's soldiers survived the battle. Come, you are wanted."

A powerfully built woman strode up. She carried herself with the arrogance of noble birth, a thing so unconscious that Hanna knew at once this soldierly-looking female must be Margrave Judith's daughter. There was little resemblance between her and her mother, and even less to her beautiful half brother.

"This is the Eagle?"

"I am Hanna, my lady. I serve the Emperor Henry."

"Emperor! Well, I hope his quest for Taillefer's crown has served him well, but I fear he has only served the plots and plans of those who ensorcelled him."

"I fear so, my lady."

She beckoned, and a pair of soldiers showed Hanna to the stump of a tree hollowed and marked by ax blows, where an armorer plied his trade mending armor. Lady Bertha followed them and watched with interest as Hanna laid her chain across the log and leaned away, grimacing, as the men took turns hammering at the links until one shattered.

"You can manage with that for now," said the lady. "Go on, then. Sorgatani is anxious to see you."

"Yes, my lady. How did you know how to find me?"

"Hanna," said Breschius.

She followed him. Rather than leading her first to the isolated wagon, he took her aside to the rim of the pool, where a naturally stepped rock ledge gave access to the water just out of sight of the main camp.

"You must wash first," he said. "You can't come into her presence so dirty as you are. I'll get clean clothing for you."

"Where will any of you have clean clothing?" She gestured toward the camp. "It looks as rustic as the hideout of bandits."

"Wash," he said, and left her there.

She stripped and carried her filthy tunic and leggings into the water with her. It was cold enough, God knew, and the water more bracing than the chilly air, but nevertheless with her teeth chattering and her eyes stinging she endured it and scrubbed her hair and scalp with her fingers and rubbed down her skin as well as she could, crying and laughing together because it hurt to get clean. The shackles on her wrists and ankles had rubbed her skin raw in spots, but after the first sharp pain, the ice of the water numbed her injuries.

Breschius returned with a square of folded cloth draped across his left forearm, held in place with his stump pressing it down from above. He chimed when he walked. It seemed he wore anklet bells as well as the belled bracelet. He placed the clothing on the rock and sat with his back to her at the top of the stair-step ledge. His hair, cut short, was clean, and his clothing had been washed and mended. Even his hand was not as dirty as those of the soldiers she had seen working and loitering in camp.

"Were you with Liath?" she asked.

"I was. Sorgatani, Lady Bertha, and Her Highness Lady Liathano came from the uttermost east, passing through two crowns until we came to the shore of the Middle Sea. There we met the forces of the skopos. Many of our people were slain, but we escaped because . . . because the lady called fire."

The tremor in his voice gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. When she said nothing, not sure what to say, he went on.

'Although we were pursued, Sorgatani used her weather magic to conceal us. So we escaped to these hills. Here we have remained."

"Where is Liath?"

"Dead, perhaps. Living, perhaps. We do not know."

She heaved herself up onto the lowest ledge, shaking and trembling. 'Ai, God, I pray she is not dead."

"Sorgatani does not think so. She believes she lives still, although we do not know where she is."

"Is that why you stayed here? Seeking her?"

"No."

She found a ragged but clean scrap of linen on the top of the pile and rubbed off as much of the water as the cloth could absorb. Despite the chill in the air, it was still warmer out of the water than in it. He remained silent, back still turned, as she shook out a silk robe that barely reached her knees although it had perhaps been meant for a shorter, stouter woman. Certainly it was broad enough for her shoulders and hips. It was a rich red, embroidered with golden dragons grappling with golden phoenixes.

"This is no Wendish tunic!"

"These are the clothes that belonged to one of her servants."

"Her slaves? I will wear no slave's robes, however rich they may appear!"

"You are no slave, Hanna. You are Sorgatani's luck. These are the only spare clothes we have until yours dry and can be repaired."

"What of the woman who wears these?"

"She is dead."

"Then who serves Sorgatani? I know it is said—what you told me once—ai, God! It seems so long ago! You told me that a Kerayit shaman can be seen by no person except her blood kinfolk along her mother's lineage, her slaves, her luck, and her pura, who is also her slave. How came you by these garments?" She had found, now, a cloth belt and a heavier wool tunic to throw over the silk underrobe. Beneath them came baggy linen drawers dyed a soft purple. The soft leather boots had to be fastened by garters to the broad belt, which was studded with gold plates embossed with the heads of griffins.

"Both her slaves died in our flight, alas, as did all nine of the Kerayit guardsmen who fought so that she might not be captured. Without any to serve her, Sorgatani would have perished as well, because of the geas laid upon her kind."

"Then who serves her?"

As quickly as she asked the question, she knew the answer. He did not turn, or shift at all, but his shoulders tightened and the angle of his head altered subtly and dangerously.

"You became her pura?" she asked, as shocked as she could be.

He chuckled. "Certainly she is beautiful, but alas, she made no such tempting offer. I accepted the chains that make me her slave."

"Do you not serve God, Brother? How can you serve both God and an earthly master?"

"Is it not a worthy service to save the life of another, even if she is a heathen? So I do believe. If I did not serve her, she would have died. No one else in Lady Bertha's troop was willing to take on the duty. In any case, without Sorgatani's protection, we would have been discovered and killed long ago, and we would not gain a steady supply of meat to feed ourselves."

'Are you content, Brother?"

"I am resigned, Hanna. God command me to serve. I have discovered that I am often surprised by the unexpected nature of that service."

She could not interpret his tone, and found that she did not want to think too hard about what he might have sacrificed and what it might mean that she was about to meet a woman who had claimed a relationship to her that Hanna did not remotely understand. "What of Sister Rosvita and her companions? Did Sorgatani find them, too?"

"In a manner of speaking. Following your trail, we fell upon them hiding in the woods and so took them in."

"Following my trail? That of the Arethousan army?"

"No, although truly it was not difficult to follow the army's dust cloud as it marched. You are Sorgatani's luck. Brought so close to you, how could she fail to know where you were? Thus were you found, and rescued. Come, are you ready?"

She sighed as she clasped her belt and smoothed a hand over the bumps and ridges made by the embroidery. Such fine cloth would only be worn by the most noble of princes, in the west, and yet the Kerayit clothed their slaves in this finery. "Yes. As ready as I will ever be."

Her hair was tangled and she had no comb, but it was cleaner than it had been before. Her stomach growled, and she willed away a flash of dizziness as the wind shifted to spill the fat smell of meat past them.

"Leave your old clothing," he said. "I'll see that it is cared for."

"I thank you."

She was aware of the camp as a scene unfolding beyond her reach. When they reached the wagon, she mounted the steps and touched the latch tentatively.

"Go on," said Breschius gently. "Don't set your foot on the threshold."

She slid open the door and stepped over the threshold, ducking so as not to hit her head. The Kerayit were either much shorter than Wendish folk, or they disdained to waste space simply to accommodate height.

She stumbled as she entered the interior, assaulted by its disproportion. The inside was larger than it had any right to be. She felt dizzy, but the fit passed as she pushed the door closed behind her and straightened up into a spacious, circular chamber richly furnished and eerily quiet. It had a round, felt roof, although definitely the wagon had conveyed no such thing on the outside. A central pole pierced the smoke hole, and the heavens, seen through that hole, shone with a silvery sheen shot through with flashes of light that might be distant lightning or sparks from a nearby fire.

"What manner of place is this?"

"This is where I live, Hanna. Be welcome here."

Sorgatani stepped out from the shadows. She was as beautiful as Hanna remembered from her dreams, if features molded so differently from those known in Wendish lands could be called beautiful. Hanna thought they could. She had not forgotten Bulkezu.

Sorgatani's black hair was braided and pinned up against her head, and she wore as a crown a net of delicate golden chains that fell past her shoulders to brush her robe of golden silk. The simple beauty of that fabric put the gaudy embroidery of Hanna's tunic to shame, and she had a sudden uncomfortable insight that what had seemed a rich garment to her inexperienced gaze might not be one in truth when compared to the fineness of Sorgatani's garb.

Hanna advanced cautiously to the central pole. There Sorgatani met her and extended both hands, palms up and open. She did not touch her. She kept a hand's breadth of distance between them, air that felt alive to Hanna's skin, as if it had the same breath and soul that animated all living things.

"We are met after long apart," said the Kerayit woman. "My luck has been taken prisoner by others, but now I have reclaimed you."

"I am not your slave!"

Sorgatani withdrew her hands. "Did I say you were? I forget you do not know the customs of the Kerayit."

"Forgive me. I do not mean to offend. Yet I must ask—is it true you traveled with Liath? Is she alive? Where did you first meet her?"

"Far east, in the grasslands, we met. I accompanied her because it was thought my sorcery could assist her, but it proved not to be true." She sighed. "I liked her."

That sigh, her expression, the slump of her shoulders: all these touched Hanna in a way no other claim could have. Impulsively she grasped Sorgatani's hands in hers. The other woman's hands were callused and her grip, like Hanna's, was strong. "She is my friend, too. If yours as well, then we are sisters, are we not? In friendship, at least."

Sorgatani's dark eyes widened, and her mouth opened, but only a gasp came out.

Hanna released her. "I beg pardon."

"No. None is needed. It is just—I am not accustomed to being touched."

"So Brother Breschius told me." Compassion spilled like light. "It must be difficult, living so alone."

"It's true I am lonely, Hanna." She smiled shyly. "When are you going to bring me my pura?"

"Ai, God! I'm not sure I'm fit for such a duty! There is much I do not know. I am the King's Eagle, but your luck as well. I do not know what it means. A man cannot serve two masters."

"You do not serve me! You are my luck, that is all."

Hanna set a palm to her forehead. "I'm dizzy. Is there any place I may sit down?" She began to move to the broad couch to the left of the door, but Sorgatani steered her to a similar couch set on the right side of the door. "Women don't sit or sleep on that side. Here." She seated her on an embroidered cushion, then clapped her hands.

The door slid open and Breschius entered, carrying a tray in one hand which he balanced adroitly with his stump. It contained a fine porcelain cup steaming with an aromatic brew and a bowl of leek-and-venison stew. He placed the tray on the bed and retreated to the opposite side, where he knelt on a layer of rugs.

"Eat." Sorgatani busied herself opening and shutting drawers in a tall chest standing beside the couch. At her back rested a saddle set on a wooden tree, decorated with silver ornaments and draped with a fine bridle.

Hanna tried not to wolf down her food, knowing it better to eat slowly to spare her stomach the shock of rich food. The tea eased the cold, as did the cozy warmth in the chamber, which emanated from a brazier. As she ate, she studied the furnishings: an altar containing a golden cup, a mirror, a handbell, and a flask. The couch, more like a boxed-in bed, behind Breschius was covered by a felt blanket displaying bright animals: a golden phoenix, a silver griffin, a red deer.

No familiar sights greeted her, as would have been the case in any Wendish hall or house she'd had reason to bide in when she rode her messages for King Henry. In the land of the Kerayit, she was a stranger.

"I saw you in dreams, sometimes," she said at last, not knowing how to speak to one whose language she ought not to know; not knowing how to interpret the many things she saw that were unfamiliar to her. "I looked for you through fire, but these many days I have not been able to see you, or anyone."

Sorgatani turned. It was apparent she had been waiting for Hanna to speak, thus showing she was finished eating.

"Your Eagle's Sight, do you mean?" Sorgatani looked over at Breschius. The net that covered her hair chimed in an echo of his anklets and bracelet. Her earrings swayed, a dozen tiny silver fish swarming on the tide of her movement. "Liath spoke of this gift. She taught me its rudiments."

"She taught you!"

"Is it meant to be hoarded only to your chieftain's messengers?"

"So I always understood."

"Yet who taught them? Have you ever asked yourself that? And why?"

"Why were we taught? So that we might see and speak across distances, and thus communicate with each other and with the regnant. In this way the regnant gains strength."

"For what purpose? Nay, do not answer that question. All chieftains wish to be strong so they can vanquish those who stand against them. Yet before I learned to see through fire, I learned about the nature of the heavens and the mysteries of the crowns. For all my life I have been able to perceive beyond the veil of the world the gateway which we here in the middle world see as a burning stone. In its flames those with sight can see across long distances, and some can even hear and speak words. The Holy One, whose knowledge is ancient and terrible, can glimpse past and future."

"So it was when we crossed through the crowns! I saw down many passageways!"

"Just so."

Breschius fetched the tray and went out.

When he was gone, Sorgatani sat down on the bed beside Hanna and leaned closer to her. She smelled of a heavy, attractive musk, stronger than lavender. "But hear me, Hanna. For all my life, the burning stone was like a beacon. Yet when the Ashioi returned, its light faded. I can barely touch it, or sense it, barely see it. It's as if I have gone blind."

"Blind?" Sorgatani's scent distracted Hanna badly. She found it hard to think.

"I think Eagles trained themselves to see through the many gateways of the burning stone, although they did not know what they were doing. It flared so brightly that many could see through its passages."

"Do you think it was destroyed in the wake of the cataclysm?"

Sorgatani shook her head. "The burning stone is not an artifact of the great weaving. In ancient days, so it is told, the Holy One had the power to see and speak through the gateway. That was before the great weaving was set on the looms. But only she had the power to call the gate into being, so it is told. The great weaving fed the power of the burning stone because Earth and heavens were joined by the thread of the Ashioi land, cast out into the aether. Now, that thread is severed."

"So we are blind. What do we do now?"

"That is what you and I must decide."

Hanna winced. "Do you really think Liath survived?" she asked, not wanting to trust to hope.

Sorgatani glanced toward the pura's bed. A blanket was folded on the chest at the foot of the bed, but no one slept there. "Liath was alive up to the moment of the cataclysm. She was captured by the one called Anne, whom we fought. We would all have been killed, but Lady Bertha—a fine warrior!—broke us out of that camp. Afterward, my brave Kerayit raided their camp under cover of a fog I had raised, but they found no trace of her. So we waited nearby, concealed by my arts, because I felt that she was not dead but only biding her time. So she was. When that night came, when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens, she brought to life rivers of molten fire out of the deep earth. We fled, because otherwise we would have died as did all of Anne's tribe. Every one of them. If Liath survived the deluge of fire, I do not know."

For a long time Hanna was silenced by the force of Sorgatani's tale. At last, she spoke.

"Why did you stay here in this country?"

"I stayed to find you, Hanna. I waited at my teacher's side long enough while you suffered under the Quman beast's whip. I would not allow it to happen again. I knew you were alive. When we found the holy women and their companions, we marked the trail of those who had taken you.

So, here we are. What do we do now?"

Hanna let it go, at last, and sagged forward. Sorgatani caught her, and she lay her head against the Kerayit woman's silk-clad shoulder and rested there most comfortably. "I want to go home," she whispered. "But what will you do now?"

"I will go where my luck leads me, of course." She whistled sharply, a sound that made Hanna cover her right ear, which was nearest to Sorgatani's lips.

The door slid open. Breschius appeared, his figure limned by the fading light behind him.

"Let Lady Bertha know that tomorrow we turn our path north. We will cross the mountains and travel west to Wendar."

He vanished as he closed the door.

After a pause, Sorgatani asked: "What will we find in Wendar? What manner of place is it?"

"It will be as strange to you as this wagon is to me," she said, half laughing, half crying, and completely exhausted, too tired, indeed, to stand and seek out a place to rest. "As for what we will find there, I don't know. I think the world has changed utterly. I have seen such destruction that at first it made no sense to me. A vast city flattened as with a giant's hand. Refugees on the roads, many of them starving. Clouds of dust everywhere. How much worse may it be elsewhere?

What if there is worse yet to come? I must seek out the regnant of Wendar, whoever that is now, and give my report. That I must do first. Afterward—"

'Afterward" was too vast a landscape to survey.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20d...lliott%20-%20Crown%20Of%20Stars%2006%20-%20In%20the%20Ruins.html VIII

THE PHOENIX

1

THE estate Ivar and Erkanwulf rode into looked very different from Ivar's father's manor and compound. It had no significant palisade, only a set of corrals to keep livestock in and predators from the forest out, and there was a wooden tower set on a hillock just off the road to serve as a refuge in times of trouble. An enclosure surrounded a score of fruit trees. Several withered gardens lay in winter's sleep, protected by fences to keep out rabbits and other vermin. Four boys came running from the distant trees, each one holding a crude bow. Dogs barked. A barefoot child seated in the branches of one of the fruit trees stared at them but said no word. A trio of men loitering beside an empty byre greeted them with nods.

In Heart's Rest the village had grown up around a commons, and in addition lay a morning's walk from Count Harl's isolated manor. Here, in Varre, houses straggled along the road like disorderly soldiers. Fields stretched out in stripes behind them until they were overtaken by woods. A tiny church had been built where the path they rode crossed with a broad wagon track. The house of worship was ringed by a cemetery, itself disturbed by a dozen recently dug graves. Wattle-and-daub huts with roofs low to the ground lay scattered hither and yon, but Erkanwulf led them to the grandest house in the village, a two-storied stone house standing under the shadow of the three-storied wooden tower.

"Who lives here?" Ivar asked, admiring this massive stone structure and the single story addition built out behind it. There were also three sheds and a dozen leafless fruit trees.

"My mother."

Before they reached the stone house, the church bell rang twice. Ivar looked back to see that two of the men who had greeted them beside the byre had vanished.

"She's chatelaine for the steward here, my lord," Erkanwulf added. "It was the steward who asked Captain Ulric to take me into the militia. They're cousins twice removed on their mother's side."

It was cold, and even though it was near midday, the light had the faded glamour of late afternoon. They hadn't seen the sun for weeks, not since many days before the night of the great storm and their rescue by the villagers who lived deep within the Bretwald.

A woman came out of the farthest shed. Her hair was covered by a blue scarf and her hands were full of uncombed wool. "Erkanwulf!" She turned and fled back into the shed. As though her cry had woken the village, a stream of folk emerged from every hovel and out of sheds and fields to converge on the stone house.

It was a prosperous village. Ivar held his mount on a tight rein, preferring not to dismount in case there was trouble. He counted fully twoscore folk ranging in age from toddling babies to one old crone who supported her hobbling steps on a walking stick. There were older men, and lads, but no young men at all, not one.

Erkanwulf dismounted and tied his horse to a post before running down the path and into the arms of a fair-haired girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. He grabbed her, spun her around, and kissed her on the cheek. Hand in hand they walked swiftly back to the stone house.

His mother came out of the shed with her hands empty and a grim look in her eyes.

"Who is this?" cried the girl, breaking free of Erkanwulf's grip and walking boldly right up to Ivar's horse. She had no fear of the animal. She rummaged in the pocket tied to her dress and pulled out a wizened apple, which was delicately accepted by the beast.

"Too high for the likes of you," said Erkanwulf with a snort. "Unless you're wanting a noble bastard to bring to your wedding bed."

"You!" said the girl with a roll of her eyes. She grinned at Ivar. She was plump, healthy, very attractive, and well aware of her charms.

'And a monk besides," Erkanwulf added.

'As if that ever stopped a man!" She laughed. She had lovely blue eyes, deep enough to drown in, as the poets would say, and she fixed that gaze on Ivar so hard that he blushed.

"Hush, you, Daughter," said Erkanwulf's mother. "Don't embarrass me before this holy man. I beg your pardon, Your Excellency."

"No offense taken," Ivar said awkwardly.

The mother swung her gaze from the one to the other. It was difficult to say who blanched more, the sister or the brother. "What are you doing here, Erkanwulf? There came the lady's riders looking for you last autumn. We had a good deal of trouble because of your disobedience. Best you have a good reason for bringing her wrath down on us."

"What trouble?" He looked around the circle of villagers gathered and saw that their mood was sour, not welcoming.

When she did not answer, he said, "We can trust this man. I swear to you on my father's grave."

She held up a hand and folded down one digit for each offense. "Steward was taken back to Autun with both her son and daughter, as hostage for our good behavior. Bruno and Fritho were whipped for protesting. Your brother and four cousins took to the woods and hide there still, like common bandits, because the lady's riders said they'd hold them as hostage against your return.

Goodwife Margaret's two grandsons were led off God know where, although they said they meant to make them grooms in the lady's stables." The crone bobbed her head vigorously. "How is Margaret to plow her fields now? You best make a good accounting for yourself, Son, for as bad as all that is," and now she folded in her thumb, and shook a fist at him, "we lost also our entire store of salted venison meant to husband us through to spring. They took it as tax, a fine levied against your desertion. New year is coming. Our stores grow thin. Much of what remains is rotting. What with this cold weather, too much rain all winter, and no sun for these many weeks, I fear more trouble to come. What do you say?"

"He came at my order," said Ivar, "and in the service of Biscop Constance."

Folk murmured. Some drew the circle at their breast while others made the sign to avert the evil eye.

"She's dead, may God have mercy on her," said Erkanwulf's mother.

"She's not dead but living in a monastery they call Queen's Grave."

"That's what they said. That she was interred in Queen's Grave."

"It's a place, not a graveyard," he said patiently, seeing that the villagers had lost a bit of the suspicion that closed their features. "It's a convent. She's alive. Lady Sabella deposed her, although she had no legal right to do so since Biscop Constance was given her place as both biscop and duke by the regnant himself."

"King Henry is Wendish," said one of the men who had greeted them so suspiciously by the byre.

'As is the biscop. At least Lady Sabella is daughter of the old Varren royal family on her mother's side."

"She's a heretic," said Erkanwulf's mother. "Our deacon was taken away because she wouldn't profess."

"Was she? Has the truth come so far as out here to this place?" demanded Ivar.

"He's a heretic, too," observed Erkanwulf dryly, indicating Ivar.

"Hush, you," said his mother before turning her attention back to Ivar. "It's true enough, Your Excellency. The lady came riding by on her progress one fine day last spring."

"It was summer," interrupted Erkanwulf's sister. "I recall it because the borage was blooming and it was the same color as his eyes."

"Tssh! Hush, girl! We heard enough about all that back then. I beg pardon, Your Excellency. My children will rattle on. The lady prayed with us, and said if we professed the Redemption she'd send us salt and spices in the autumn. But none came. Because of your disobedience, Erkanwulf!"

"Still," said her daughter, with a dreamy smile, "I liked listening to what the lady's cleric had to say."

"Because of his blue eyes!" said the old crone with a wheezy laugh. 'Ah, to be young!"

"I am surrounded by fools!" cried the chatelaine, but even her expression softened as she allowed herself a moment's recollection. "Yet it's true he was the handsomest man I've ever seen. More like an angel than a man, truly. And so soft-spoken, with a sorrow in his heart. Why, his good counsel softened even old Marius' heart and he patched up his ancient quarrel with his cousin William that they'd been nursing for twenty years."

"That was a miracle!" observed the crone wryly. 'And he was handsome! Whsst!"

"You're the fools!" cried Erkanwulf, for whom this recital had become, evidently and all at once, too much to bear. "There can only be one young lord fitting that description, and he's no cleric.

He's the lady's kept man, her concubine. She beds him every night, and parades him during the day like a holy saint wanting only a shower of light to transport him up to the Chamber of Light!"

"You're just jealous because Nan wouldn't roll you!" retorted his angry sister.

'At least she doesn't bed every man who comes asking!"

Everyone began talking at once, as many laughing as scolding, but his mother walked right over to him and slapped him. "You'll speak no such disrespectful words, young pup! Nor have you explained yourself yet! Steward put herself out for you because she liked you and thought well of you. Now look where it's gotten her! Speak up! The rest of you shut your mouths and listen!"

No captain could have controlled his unruly band of soldiers more efficiently. They quieted, coughed, crossed arms, shushed children, scuffed feet in the dirt, and waited for Erkanwulf to start.

Ivar forestalled him by raising a hand. "I'll speak."

"Begging your pardon," said the chatelaine hastily, as he'd known she would. He was a churchman, but in addition he sat mounted on a fine horse, and carried a sword.

"I escaped from Queen's Grave with the aid of Erkanwulf, here, and his captain."

"Hush!" muttered Erkanwulf. "I won't have him getting in trouble."

"He'll be in trouble soon enough," said Ivar

"What trouble?" demanded the chatelaine. 'Are you speaking of Captain Ulric? He's a good man, local to these parts. I want you to make no trouble for him."

"You'll make no trouble for him if you'll bide quietly once we've left and say no word of our passing. We rode to Princess Theophanu—"

"That's one of the Wendish royals," said one of the old fellows wisely, and gained a clout on the backside from the crone.

"Hush, you! Let the brother speak!"

"Do you live better under the rule of Lady Sabella than you did under Biscop Constance?" he asked them.

One by one they frowned and considered until the chatelaine said, grudgingly, "Biscop Constance ruled fairly. If she promised a thing, then it was delivered. The lady's companions take what they wish when they want and tax us according to how the fit takes them."

"Who rules in Wendar and Varre?" he asked.

"Sabella's daughter rules in Varre," they agreed, "together with her husband, the Wayland duke, the one with burned skin. Conrad the Black."

"You'd accept the rule of Lady Tallia over that of the rightful regnant, King Henry?"

"What kind of kinship does Henry hold to us? It's his elder sister Sabella who is born out of the Varren royal house. Not Henry. He was born to a Wendish mother, nothing to do with us. He never came here anyway. Once or twice to Autun. That's all. It's nothing to do with us."

"I don't like that heresy," said the chatelaine.

Several others murmured agreement.

"The story of the Redemption sounded fair enough to me," said Erkanwulf's sister, then flushed.

'And not just because of that cleric."

"This one is a heretic, too, so 'Wulf says," replied the crone. "So what's to choose between them?

Is all the royals heretics now?"

"No, not all of them," said Ivar reluctantly, seeing by their expressions that he could not win this battle using his careful arguments. They were not Wendish. He was. In a way, he had already lost.

"I'd stand up for Duke Conrad," said the old man. "He's of good blood even with that foreign creature that gave birth to him, but the old duke, Conrad the Elder, was his father. Nay, I say enough with the Wendish. Let them plough their own fields and leave ours to us who are born out of Varren soil."

"So be it," said Ivar. "Come, Erkanwulf. We'd best ride now, while we've still light." He turned his attention to the chatelaine, who made no gesture to encourage them to stay. "I pray you, give us a loaf and cheese. If all goes well, and you aid us by keeping silence, we'll rid you of the Wendish now biding on Varren earth."

"What did you mean, back there?" Erkanwulf demanded as they rode out not long after. He was surly, having argued again with his sister and gotten only a perfunctory kiss from his mother. "

'Rid Varren soil of those from Wendar.' I thought we meant to aid Biscop Constance! I can't help that those fools back there don't see her for what she is—a finer steward by far than Lady Sabella!"

"No use arguing with them. They can't help us anyway. In truth, if many of you Varrens feel the same way, then we must act quickly.

I thought there might be many who hated Lady Sabella's rule. Those villagers by Queen's Grave were willing enough to help us."

"They have to feed and house the guards. At least two girls from that village was abused by the guards, if the story I heard is true. The folk there have no reason to love Lady Sabella. But as for others—what is one regnant to them, compared to another? They pay tithes either way, and live at the mercy of the weather and bandits and wolves and what measure of taxes the stewards take on behalf of the nobles each year."

"Surely they must have seen that Biscop Constance was a fair ruler?"

Erkanwulf shrugged. "How many winters did she rule in Autun? The local folk know only that some Wendish noble was set in place by the Wendish king. We Varrens have no reason to love the Wendish, my lord. That's an old grudge, for sure."

"Yet you and your captain and his men were willing to aid Biscop Constance in getting a messenger out."

"We took her measure, my lord, when we served her in Autun. We know her for what she is. But there's war in Salia now. Our borders are at risk. Captain Ulric may no longer be barracked in Autun. He may have been sent southwest to fight. Or he may refuse to help us now. Maybe he's done as much as he's willing to do to aid Biscop Constance. I don't know. Duke Conrad is fair to soldiers. He's a good man to fight for."

"Surely you know Captain Ulric well enough to know what's in his mind! He sent you to aid me, after all."

"We've been gone for months. Things have changed."

They rode in silence for a while along the path that cut through woods. Ash and sycamore swayed softly among oak and beech and hornbeam. It was cloudy, as always these days, and cold and dry. The rains of last autumn had evidently poured all their moisture into the earth in the space of a month or so of incessant rain. Over the winter there had been little snow, although the clouds never lifted, and in time the roads had dried enough for Ivar and Erkanwulf to set off again from their refuge in the Bretwald.

"I didn't like leaving," said Erkanwulf after a while.

"What? Your village? They didn't treat you very nicely."

"Nay, not them. You see why I left! No, I liked that steading in the Bretwald. They were good, decent, kind people. That's the kind of place I'd like to settle down, not that I'm likely to."

"What do you mean? Settle in Bretwald?"

Erkanwulf was about the same age as Ivar, not as tall, and lanky in the way of a young man who never quite got enough food as he could eat growing up. He was tough—Ivar knew that—but he shrugged like a man defeated. "If I leave Captain Ulric's company, I'll have to go back to my village and let my mother make a marriage for me. Who else would have me? I'd be an outlaw if I left the place I'm bound to by birth."

"They took in strangers in the Bretwald."

"That's true. Refugees from Gent. I liked it there, with no lord holding a sword over their head and telling them what to do."

"Until bandits realize how wide that road is, and attack them who have no lord to defend them."

"They'd need more hands, then, wouldn't they? A man who had some experience fighting would be of use to them." Erkanwulf brooded as they moved through the woods. No birds sang. Except for the murmuring wind and the soft fall of their horses' hooves, there was no sound at all. The quiet made Ivar nervous. He hadn't felt quite right since that terrible night when wind and rain had battered them and killed Erkanwulf's horse. They had commandeered the old nag Erkanwulf rode from a village whose name Ivar had already forgotten. Those folk hadn't greeted them kindly, but they'd offered them shelter and given up the old mare in exchange for some of Princess Theophanu's coin. Those villagers didn't love the Wendish either, and with King Henry gone so long from his usual progress around the countryside, they saw no reason not to turn their hearts toward the old stories of Varren queens and kings who had once ruled these lands without any Wendish overlord telling them what to do.

A long time ago, so it seemed, he had been young and thoughtless. He smiled, thinking back on it. Perhaps not so long ago. But so much had happened. He had been thrown headlong into a world whose contours were more complicated than he had ever imagined as the neglected youngest child of the old count up in Heart's Rest.

"For all I know, my father is dead by now, and my brother Gero become count in his place."

Erkanwulf glanced at him, his expression unreadable. "What has that to do with us? My lord?"

"Nay, nothing. I just thought of it. I just thought how the world is changed, as you said yourself.

Not just because of that storm or Biscop Constance's imprisonment, or any of those things, but because I left my father's estate and journeyed farther than I ever expected to go. I can't be that youth that 1 once was. When I think of how I was then ... I don't know. It's just different now.

We've chosen our path. We can't go back."

"Huh. True enough words."

"What do you think we'll find in Autun?" Ivar asked.

Erkanwulf only sighed. "I hope we find what we're looking for. Whatever that may be."

2

IT snowed the morning they crossed the river on the ferry and moved into a straggle of woodland near the southern gate of Autun. They stumbled over two corpses half hidden under branches and mostly decomposed. Skulls leered at them, so they moved on. In the ruins of an old cottage abandoned among the trees, they stabled the horses with fodder and water, tying their thread-worn blankets over the animals' backs. After that, they trudged overland to the city walls. No pristine stretches of fresh white snow blanketed the fields. It was all a muddy gray.

They passed several clusters of huts and cottages, shutters closed and doors shut against the cold.

No one was about. Once they heard a goat's bleat; once a child's weary wailing dogged them before fading into the distance.

Erkanwulf led them first along the river and thence to a postern gate. They approached cautiously, hoods cast up over their faces. Ivar hung back as Erkanwulf strode forward to confront the two men hanging about on guard.

A conversation ensued; he knew them. After a moment he beckoned Ivar forward and without further conversation they were hustled past the gates and into the alleys of the city. Autun was a vast metropolis; Sigfrid had told him that perhaps ten thousand people lived there, cheek by jowl, but Ivar wasn't sure he believed it. That was an awful lot of people, too many to comprehend.

Even Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia's combined armies hadn't numbered more than ten or fifteen centuries of soldiers in addition to auxiliaries and militia.

On this late winter afternoon, few braved the streets. In one square a trio of beggars huddled by a public fountain, hands and faces wrapped in rags to protect themselves from the bitter cold. The tiny child's face was thin from hunger, and he scooted forward on his rump, like a cripple without use of his legs, to catch the copper coin Ivar tossed to them.

"Bless you, Brother!" the mother croaked, surprised.

"Where the phoenix flies, there is hope of salvation," he said to her.

Her face lit. "Truth rises with the phoenix!" she answered triumphantly. "Bless you! Bless you!"

Unnerved, he hurried after Erkanwulf, who had not waited.

"We're trying to come in quietly," scolded the young soldier when Ivar caught up to him. "Don't leave a trail."

"They were hungry."

"Everyone is hungry! A coin will gain them bread today, if there's any to be had, but nothing tomorrow."

"God enjoin us to ease suffering where we can. What is that she said about the phoenix?"

"Hush."

They hurried across a broader avenue and stood in the narrow alley waiting for a score of mounted soldiers wearing the stallion of Wayland to pass before they scurried through the sludge to a narrow path between two-storied wood houses. The walls tilted awkwardly, shadowing their path, and the shadows made it almost as dim as twilight as they sidestepped refuse left lying in the cracked mud. Because it was cold, it did not stink, but it would, when spring brought warm weather.

"I'll never get used to cities," muttered Ivar.

"It's not so bad," said Erkanwulf. "A man's freer here, where he can get rid of his past. And safer too, inside walls."

"Only if those who are guarding you are trustworthy."

His companion chuckled. "True enough. Wait here." He left Ivar.

The side street debouched into a square at whose center stood a post where men could be tied for whipping. Beyond that lay the barracks; Ivar recognized them from his brief visit to Autun two years back. It was getting dark in truth. An aura of red lined the western sky, what he could discern of it beyond buildings and in the shadow of the clouds. Erkanwulf's cloaked figure skulking at the barracks door, and vanishing inside, was rather like that of the shades they'd encountered in the forest that awful night last autumn. Ivar shuddered and wrapped his cloak more tightly around his torso as the chill of night crept into his bones. He'd been cold for a long time, and when he stood still he felt it most of all.

No one moved in the deserted square. Now and again dogs barked. Wheels squeaked as a wagon passed down a distant street. Someone coughed, and a moment later a man came out of a house, stopped to look at Ivar, and strode away past the barracks, soon lost as night concealed his tracks.

With so many people crammed all into one small space, surely there should be more noise, like the pastures and fields and compound of his father's estate which had always been busy with coming and going except in the worst winter and spring storms.

He shivered and stamped his feet. They had agreed that if Erkanwulf was gone too long, then Ivar would retreat back to the cottage in the woods, but just as he was beginning to get really anxious the side door to the barracks cracked open and a figure slipped out and hurried across to him. Ivar groped for his short sword and began to draw it, but relaxed as Erkanwulf trotted up, breath steaming.

"Come on! Captain's here, off duty, and willing to hear us out. Hurry!"

They ran across the square and were ushered into a lamplit room at the end of the barracks hall where Captain Ulric slept and ate. The captain was sitting on a bench beside two of his sergeants, all three picking at the remains of a chicken.

Ivar's eyes watered, but he forced himself to look at the captain instead, trying desperately to ignore the trickle of moist juices. He was so hungry.

"I didn't expect to see you again, Brother Ivar," said the captain, although his tone wasn't unfriendly. He meant what he said.

"With your help, Captain, we were able to reach Princess Theophanu."

"So Erkanwulf led me to understand. What news?"

"None. Her Highness sorrows to hear of her aunt's plight, but she has no army and no treasury and cannot act against Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad. She offered us coin, fresh horses, good cloaks, and such weapons as we might use to defend ourselves, but nothing more than that. She bides in Osterburg at the seat of the duchy of Saony. That is all."

"The Wendish king, the first Henry, was duke of Saony before he became king." Ulric pushed the chicken away but paused with a hand on the wooden platter as he caught the desperation of Ivar's gaze. "You two look hungry."

He shoved the carcass toward them, then engaged his sergeants in conversation while the two young men stripped every last scrap of meat and fat from the bones. Ale was brought, and the cup refilled after they had drained it. That, and the warmth and smoky draft from the lamps, made Ivar so tired that he forgot his rehearsed arguments.

"Do you mean to support Biscop Constance, or not?" he demanded. "If you do, I have a plan that may allow us to free her. If not, then I pray you will let me go my way without hindering me, and let Erkanwulf remain here with no punishment. He's been a loyal soldier."

"Oh, I know it," said Ulric without looking at Erkanwulf, but Erkanwulf grinned at hearing those words and his shoulders lifted as he self-consciously rubbed the dirty stubble of a beard grown along his jaw. "But if you free Biscop Constance, what then? She has no loyal soldiers and no treasury. She is in no wise different than her niece in Saony. Better she remain safe in Queen's Grave. If she escapes, Lady Sabella will hunt her down and this time kill her."

"We must move quickly. I will need your help, horses, provisions, men to escort us. A special seat built onto a saddle so that the biscop can ride, because she is crippled."

"If all this comes to pass, then what?"

"We will ride to Wendar, to the town of Kassel. That way, Lady Sabella holds no noble Wendish hostage in Varre. Once the biscop reaches the duchy of Fesse, she can choose herself whether to ride to Osterburg."

Ulric was a cautious man. They both spoke in low voices. His sergeants, cool, stalwart men who spoke no word but only listened, sat so still and alert that a mouse could not have crept through that tiny chamber without being caught. Ivar wasn't sure whether they were listening to the conversation or listening for sounds from outside, in the barracks where the last conversations of men making ready for rest played out, and out of doors beyond the single closed shutter.

"A large guard protects the palisade and gates enclosing Queen's Grave. How are they to be suborned?"

"Not at all. They will believe they are only following Lady Sabella's orders."

For the first time, Ulric looked surprised. One of the sergeants rolled his eyes and tapped a foot thrice on the ground, as though impatient with this nonsense.

"Nay, hear me out." Ivar hadn't known how passionate he had become about this idea over the last few weeks. He had a debt to pay twice over, and perhaps, if he were honest, he could admit that it was as much for himself as for the biscop that he wanted so badly to succeed. "I know someone in Sabella's retinue. I hope to persuade him to steal what we need."

Once Captain Ulric had heard the whole thing, he sat for a while in thought with his bearded chin propped on a hand, then stood. "Very well. I'll give you cover until dawn. After that, you must leave Autun, and Arconia, and never come back. Or, at the least, never be caught. If you come into my custody, I will be forced to treat you as a criminal and hand you over to Lady Sabella. I can assure you, she will not be merciful."

3

IN the end he needed no particular disguise, only a cap drawn down over his head to cover his red hair. Any lowly servant could be found wearing such a thing to keep his ears warm in this cold winter weather. His robes, although cut for riding, were dirty and patched enough to pass as those of a laboring man, and the months of labor at Queen's Grave had given his chapped hands something of the look of those of a man born and bred to labor. He was hidden in plain sight with his gaze cast down and a slump in his shoulders to minimize his height; the sons of noble houses had a tendency to grow tall. Count Harl had always noted this with a certain arrogance, sure of God's favor manifest in the straight limbs and handsome faces of his children, but after so long on the road Ivar had begun to think it was more likely that he had simply gone hungry less often as a child than folk like Erkanwulf and frail Sigfrid.

Captain Ulric had friends among the servants. One of these, an amiable woman with dark hair and pale blue eyes, took him with her when she made her evening rounds carrying buckets of coal to fill the braziers in the lady's suite. He staggered under a pole laid over his shoulders as she weighted it down with two full buckets on either side, their handles hooked into notches cut into the wood. A cover hid the hot coals, but heat radiated off the bronze buckets, warming him.

"Come along," she said, "but say nothing." She carried only the empty buckets, tongs, and shovel, so he was sweating and his legs shaking by the time they climbed the steps that led up to the old palace, once the imperial winter residence of Emperor Taillefer.

They passed by the broad porch of the famous octagonal chapel where lay the emperor's tomb. A pair of bored guards stood on watch, chatting as they chafed hands and stamped feet to keep warm.

"Yes, the lad would have been whipped to death, I'm thinking, and all for a loaf of bread, but the lord cleric intervened and got him sent to the church as a servant instead. Hoo! That was a stroke of fortune."

"Or God's work done through man's hands."

"Truth rises with the phoenix! Here, now, did you hear about—"

"Come!" whispered his guide, seeing how Ivar had slowed to listen. He hurried after her.

The central palace, built all of wood, was an echoing hall and terrifically cold within, but they passed through to a separate wing where the lady and her personal retainers made their home.

Like Count Harl, but unlike her brother the regnant, Sabella had planted herself in one place and traveled only brief circuits of the countryside when the mood took her or a pocket of discontent needed quelling.

Beyond the smaller audience chamber lay a series of rooms that housed her attendants and clerics. They passed through the tiny room set aside for her schola, dark and empty now. The sloped writing desks were veiled by shadows, and chests and cabinets sealed tight against vermin.

Beyond that lay a handsome chapel, lit at this hour by a dozen lamps molded into the shape of guivres. Quietly, they set down the buckets next to a trio of braziers. A woman knelt on cold stone although there were carpets aplenty to cushion her knees. Her wheat-colored hair was braided back from her face and covered with a mesh of gold wire threaded with pearls, held in place with a golden coronet. Because her back was to them, Ivar could not see her face, but he did not need to see her face. He had stared at her back, at her profile, at her pale, drawn features through that hole in the fence in Qyedlinhame often enough that he would know her anywhere and instantly. It wasn't only her rich burgundy underrobe and fur-lined overtunic that betrayed her as a woman of highest station. It wasn't only the heavy golden torque shackling her slender neck that announced her royal status.

He recognized as well that particular way she had of clasping her hands, perfected in those days when it had hurt her to press her palms together because of the weeping sores, her stigmata, the mark of her holiness and the sign of the Lady's favor. The ones she had inflicted herself, by digging at her skin with a nail, so Hathumod claimed.

If Tallia had been lying about the sores, then was it possible she had lied about the heresy as well? What if the phoenix was a lie?

Nay, God had sent Tallia to test their faith. She was the flawed vessel that leaked God's word but could never hold it. They had seen the truth when the phoenix rose and healed Sigfrid.

She prayed all in a rush, words crammed together.

"Let them be chaff in the wind.

Let their path be dark and precipitous.

Let the unworthy fall to their deaths.

They hid a net to trap me.

They dug a pit to swallow me.

Let that net trap them, and the pit swallow them!"

Meanwhile, Johanna, the servant, transferred ash into the empty buckets and hot coals into the braziers.

'Are we done?" asked a childish voice.

"Do not disturb me!" Tallia exploded. Leaning back, she exposed a small child kneeling on bare floor in a position that had, previously, concealed her existence from Ivar. She cracked the little girl across the cheek, her own expression suffused with rage. By the movement of her body under her robes, it was obvious she was hugely pregnant. "How many times have I told you!"

"I don't want to pray so many times. Papa said—"

"You'll fall into the Abyss with the others! You'll do as I say, Berengaria!"

The girl had pinched, unattractive features. Her skin was blotchy, neither dark nor pale, and she seemed all mismatched somehow, nose too small, lips too large, nothing quite right on her. Her sullen expression only exaggerated her sour looks.

"Must you make so much noise!" cried the lady, turning to glare at Ivar and Johanna. 'Aren't you finished yet, bumbling around like cattle?"

"Yes, my lady. I pray pardon, Your Highness," said Johanna in a mild voice. "But I am always taken by the holy whisper of God when I pause here. It's as if I hear Her voice, whenever you pray."

Tallia's expression softened, although she still had a tight grip on her daughter's tiny wrist. The child whimpered as the princess frowned. "That's right. I've seen you before. I remember you.

What is your name?"

"I'm called Johanna, Your Highness. After the discipla who was martyred in such a cruel way, yet loving God and professing Her worship and Her Unity, now and forever."

Horribly, that fervid gaze turned on Ivar, and he ducked his head but not before seeing how her eyes narrowed and a cunning, frightened look came to her face. "Who is this, then? He looks familiar, but I don't know ..."

"He's my cousin from the countryside, Your Highness, come new to town. He was here some months back helping out but had to go back to aid his ill mother, who passed up to the Chamber of Light after many months of agonizing sickness, may God grant her peace now that she is well shut of the world." Johanna was a babbler, and it was obvious she had learned long since how to lie to avoid the lady's ill temper.

Ivar kept his shoulders bowed and his face cast down, hoping Tallia would not recognize him.

"Does he believe in the Redemption? I'll have no servant toiling in my house who is a heretic!"

"Oh, he believes, indeed, Your Highness!"

"He must say so himself! He must! People lie to me. They say they're dead and then they're alive again. They say I will rule, but then they keep the reins in their own hands. They babble about the phoenix, when the phoenix doesn't matter, and only because of his handsome face and pretty ways

—"

Into this tirade clattered the duke, emerging out of a different door with an older and extremely handsome daughter in tow. He was dressed for riding, as was the girl, and he slapped his gloves against his thigh to announce his arrival.

Tallia ceased speaking as though he had struck her.

"Where's Berry?" he roared.

The girl shrieked, leaped away from her mother, and pelted across the floor to throw herself into her father's arms. In that instant, her face was transformed. "I wanted to go! I wanted to go!" she cried.

"For the sake of God and peace, Tallia, you told me she was too sick to go riding!"

"She is ill in her soul, my lord," she said, shuddering, a hand on her belly.

"Too sick! Puling and moping will kill her, not keep her healthy! Do you want her to die as did the two others?"

"You can't talk to me like this!"

The older girl, just broaching puberty, rolled her eyes in a way that reminded Ivar strikingly of the sergeant with Captain Ulric. Indeed, she had a martial stance that suggested she trained and rode and knew how to handle weapons.

"I told you," repeated Conrad. "I told you to let the child have done with all this praying. That's what clerics are for. Twice a day is enough. She needs exercise and a good appetite."

Tallia was white with anger, but the little girl held onto her father with an unshakable grip.

"Let me stay with you, Papa. Let me stay with you!"

"Of course you'll stay with me, as you should."

"I hate you!" Tallia whispered.

He laughed. "That's not what you said last time you came crawling to my bed."

Tallia sobbed, then cast a glance of pure loathing at the older daughter and throttled her own tears.

Johanna tugged at Ivar's sleeve. "Let's go."

He set his neck under the yoke and lifted the buckets. He sidled sideways through the door and trudged after Johanna as they walked down a corridor that ended in a set of double doors.

"It's like poison," she said in a low voice. "Most of the time, thank the Lady, they stay in Wayland where they belong, but Lady Sabella will have her daughter in Autun to give birth with her own midwives attending."

"Why? Hasn't Wayland any midwives?"

"It's agreed between them. If the young queen gives birth to a boy, Lady Sabella gets him to raise.

If a girl, naturally, the duke takes her. The last two died before they were weaned. Only the eldest has survived so long, and her not yet seen five summers."

"Lady Tallia doesn't want to raise her own sons?"

Johanna paused before the doors with a hand on one latch. "Lady Tallia has no say in any decision, for all that she's the last descendant of the royal house of Varre and they call her queen.

She's a frightened, petty, mean-hearted creature. For all that, I do pity her, caught between the stallion and the guivre." She flicked a glance at the closed door, as if she could be heard by listening ears. "Have a care, Brother Ivar. The stallion is hot-tempered and hotheaded yet honest in its passions and will kick and bite to protect its fillies. It's the guivre's cold glare that will kill you."

She lifted the latch and opened the door for him to slide through, careful as he balanced the pole on his shoulders so that the buckets would not clang against the walls.

In this fine chamber a middle-aged man with attractive features strummed a lute and sang a cheerful song about the fox that devoured the chickens despite the farmer's efforts to hold it at bay. Tapestries covered the walls, and a dozen or more lamps, fearsome guivres with flame spouting from their eye sockets, gave light to the pleasant company collected around Lady Sabella. Her hair was half gone to gray, but she seemed otherwise vigorous and alert as she reclined on a couch and chatted with a circle of companions: several noblewomen, two men in cleric's robes, and a blond man who sat with his back to Ivar. Two stewards waited beside the hearth next to a table laden with platters of meat and bowls of sweets and fruits, lightly picked over but otherwise ignored. They watched for any sign or gesture from their mistress. One marked the entry of the two servants and nodded at them briskly, a signal to get on with their work.

A third cleric sat at a writing desk, intent on his calligraphy, head bowed and pen scratching easily on parchment. Ivar skipped over him and fixed his gaze on the back of the blond man seated beside Sabella. There was something wrong about his shoulders. They were too broad, and his hands, when he gestured, were as wide as paddles, the hands of a man comfortable wielding a great sword with little thought for its weight and the thickness of the pommel.

Definitely not Baldwin.

"Hsst!" Johanna nudged Ivar toward the brazier placed beside the writing desk.

Obviously Sabella kept Baldwin sequestered. Perhaps after they had replenished the coals in this chamber, they would move on to the noble duchess' most intimate inner chambers.

He set down the buckets and looked up into the confounded gaze of the cleric who had, until an instant before, been so busy writing that his face had been concealed.

Writing!

His fingers were stained with smudges of ink. The parchment was virgin; no one had written on it before. Ivar had just enough experience of the cloister to know that the knife had seen little use in scraping away mistakes, although half the page was covered with flowing, handsome letters.

The cleric's pale skin flushed pink, and a single tear trembled at the lower rim of his right eye.

Snapping his mouth shut, he fixed his gaze back on his quill, checked the tip, dipped it in ink, and set back to work. The letters poured out of his hand fluidly, fluently. He wasn't even copying from an exemplar, but writing from memory.

Even the masters at Quedlinhame, who had spoiled him because of his handsome face and pliant manners, had agreed that Baldwin was too stupid to learn to read and write beyond the simplest colloquies meant to teach ten year olds.

Johanna appeared at Ivar's elbow, nudging his foot. He winced, and aided her as she stoked up this brazier and moved on to the rest placed around the chamber to warm Lady Sabella and her entourage where they lounged at their ease.

"As dreary as this winter has been, at least the Eika have not raided," the blond warrior was saying.

"Nay, Amalfred, all last year they confined their raids to Salia," remarked one of the women.

"Easy pickings there."

"If Salia falls, then why not strike at us?" he retorted.

"We shall see. The merchants say it's too early to sail yet, that the tides and winds aren't favorable. They say some kind of enchantment has troubled the seas. We'll be safe if the winds keep the Eika from our shores."

"Perhaps." Lady Sabella's gaze flicked incuriously over the two servants as they went about their task in silence. She glanced toward the cleric, who was bent again over his writing.

Ivar could not interpret the way her lips flattened into a thin line that might betoken suppressed passion, or disgust. The two emotions were, perhaps, related, he supposed as he kept his face canted away from her. He had himself swung wildly between those feelings, back in the days when restraint had been the least of his concerns, when he and Baldwin had run away with Prince Ekkehard and his companions. Right now, however, he was as flushed and out of breath as if he'd been running. Who could have thought he had missed Baldwin so very dearly?

"Perhaps?" asked the warrior. He was a man boasting perhaps thirty years. He spoke with the accent of the west and was most likely a border lord. "Pray enlighten us with your wisdom, Your Highness."

"Perhaps," she repeated, her gaze sliding smoothly away from Baldwin, as if he were of no account. "The Eika are not all that threaten us, although it is true they raided all along the Salian shore last summer and autumn. According to reports."

"My lands are overrun with Salians," said one of the women.

"With our stores low, their presence threatens us," answered Sabella. "We must act in concert to drive them back to their homes."

"What of those who accept the truth?" asked the lord. "The heresy of the Translatus is still accepted by the apostate clergy in Salia. If the refugees who have accepted the truth return home, they will be executed."

"Then their blood will be on the hands of their masters. God will judge. But the winter has been cold. Our stores are low. Strange portents trouble us. Nothing has been the same since that terrible storm that struck last autumn. I have refugees of my own from within my duchy to feed. I cannot feed Salians as well. Let the Eika conquer them—and feed them! To the fishes, if necessary."

"Ha! They say there are people in the sea who eat human flesh."

"They say some in the west who are starving eat human flesh, Lord Amalfred," observed Sabella.

"Brixians, perhaps. They're the only Salians who would degrade themselves in such a way."

"My lord," said one of the clerics sternly, "if such folk are starving, then God enjoins us to give them aid and compassion."

"Well," continued Amalfred boldly, "if Lady Sabella grants me those stores, then I can feed my restless soldiers who mutter about rebellion."

"I pray you, Your Highness," said Baldwin without looking up from his writing desk. How pleasing his voice was, compared to the coarser voices of Sabella's companions. "Those rations of grain are meant to go to the poor in Autun, Your Highness. There are so many who haven't enough to eat."

"The poor of Autun cannot aid me," said Sabella, "but Lord Amalfred's hungry soldiers can fight to protect the Varren borderlands."

'And gain a little territory in Salia for themselves," added one of her companions.

Sabella laughed, but she looked again, frowning, at the pair of servants. "Haven't you done? What slow pair of fools has been foisted on me now? What are your names?"

"I pray you, Your Highness," said Baldwin sweetly without looking up from his writing desk. "I have forgotten again whether it is the monastery of Firsebarg or that of Felden which desires a new abbot to rule over them, now that their lord father has been absent so long."

"Firsebarg, Baldwin! Why won't you attend the first time I tell you these My sister Rotrudis'

useless whelp, Reginar, has gone missing since last year. Must I remember everything for you?"

Johanna tugged on Ivar's sleeve, and he hastily followed her out of the chamber by a side door.

They came into a narrow courtyard abutting the wall.

"Wait here a moment, I pray you," Johanna said, indicating he should set down the buckets. "I must use the necessary. Then we'll get on with our work."

She had lit a taper from one of the braziers and by its light slipped into one of the closed stalls built out from the wall.

Up here on the height it was cold and the wind bit hard. He blew on his hands and stared about him, but there wasn't much to see. A pair of torches lit a distant gate. He could not see the town below but felt the expanse of air. All other souls slept. Only Lady Sabella had riches enough to burn oil at night.

He stared at the door, and at last it creaked open and creaked shut. A light appeared, and a pale head loomed before him. Without speaking, he grabbed the cap that covered Ivar's head and ripped it off, then held the lamp close to see the color of his hair. With a muttered oath more like a moan than words, he grabbed Ivar's left hand first, released it, and grasped the right one. There winked the lapis lazuli ring, gleaming in lamplight.

He shut his beautiful eyes and his legs gave out as he sank onto the stone in an attitude of prayer.

His hands shook, and Ivar pulled the lamp from his grasp before he dropped it.

'Ai, God. How can it be? You were dead. I saw you myself. I touched you. I pressed that ring onto your cold hand. You were dead."

"It was a ruse, Baldwin. I am sorry you had to suffer, not knowing the truth." He set down the lamp and, hesitantly, placed a hand on Baldwin's shoulder. "I was never dead, only drugged. I escaped from Queen's Grave to take a message to Princess Theophanu."

Baldwin surged up and embraced Ivar tightly, bursting into tears.

Ivar was at first too choked up to speak, but he understood how little time they had. "Surely your absence will be noted."

"Yes, yes," murmured Baldwin into his shoulder. "I came out to use the necessarium, but she'll wonder and suspect. She keeps me prisoner. You can't imagine how awful she is, always watching me."

"You saved our lives."

"I know." He said the words not with anger or accusation, but simply because they were the truth.

He released Ivar, then grasped his hands in his own and stared keenly at him. There was a look in Baldwin's handsome face that had never been there before, but Ivar could not identify what it was. The light from the lamp, shining up from below, highlighted the perfect curve of his cheekbones and lent sparks to his lovely eyes. The midnight blue of his robes blended into the night, making him appear almost as an apparition, not a real human being at all. He had lost none of his unfortunate beauty.

"Why are you here, Ivar? I knew you wouldn't abandon me."

"Will you escape with me, tonight?"

"Yes."

"I need one thing."

"What?"

"Parchment, ink and quill, Lady Sabella's ducal seal, and a person who can write in the manner of her schola. We'll need a letter to the guard at Queen's Grave, an order to release Biscop Constance and her retinue."

"I can get those things by midnight," said Baldwin.

"Even the seal?"

"Even the seal. I can write whatever you want."

"I saw that—I saw—Baldwin, how did you learn to write so well? Can you read now, too?" He grimaced, hearing how he sounded, but Baldwin neither smiled nor frowned.

"She doesn't like it when I pray and act the cleric," he said softly. "It reminds her of her daughter, so it gives her a disgust of me. That's why I prayed so much, and practiced my letters so hard.

Once I learned, I found I was good at it. Everyone says I have a beautiful hand for letters. They all praise me. I know every word in every capitulary and cartulary that comes out of her schola. I have the seal of Arconia, Ivar. I am the seal. That's what she calls me. See?"

From the folds of his robe he pulled a small object tied to his belt. Ivar fondled it, feeling the ridges and depressions of a tiny carving impressed into stone. He hadn't enough light to read its features, but it felt like the sigil of a prince by which that prince set her approval and authority onto every letter and document that left her schola.

"I'll come as soon as all have gone to their beds. She won't want me tonight because she's in her blood. Meet me at the river gate. We'll need horses."

"That's taken care of, Baldwin. But if you can slip away so easily, why haven't you done so before?"

"Why would I? What have I to live for, if I am alone? Here, I had some hope of finding a way to free the others. I saw them." His voice trembled at the edge of tears. "I saw them in Queen's Grave, but we were never allowed to speak. I must go."

He released Ivar's hand, gave him a last, searching look, took the lamp, and hurried back inside.

The door shut.

Ivar simply stood there, dumbfounded. His thoughts were all tumbled. He gasped in a breath that was also a cry.

"Hoo!" Johanna came up beside him so quietly that Ivar hissed in surprise. "That one! Some say he's a saint."

"A saint?" He was flushed, and trembling, and, truth to tell, a little irritated. Since when did Baldwin tell him what to do with so much cool assurance?

"He's so even tempered, despite the way she treats him."

"Does she abuse him?"

"She's got a bad temper. She despises those she has no respect for, and treats them worse. She hates herself for loving his beauty so much. Duke Conrad's the better prince. All know that. But Lord Baldwin slips food to the starving and a kind word to the weary, behind her back. No natural person can be so beautiful. That's why he must be favored by God. Now, come. We've one more chamber, and then I'm to take you back to the barracks."

He pulled his cap back over his hair and followed her. His thoughts rolled all over each other in a confusing jumble that he just could not sort out. Nor had he managed it when at last Johanna delivered him to Captain Ulric and he gave his report to the captain and his companions.

"Very well," said Ulric, who like most experienced military men knew how to act quickly.

"Erkanwulf, you'll ride south with the cleric after he has delivered the seal and the order."

"Won't he ride to Queen's Grave with me?" asked Ivar.

"She'll be after him. He'll have to lead her on a chase while we rescue Biscop Constance. If they escape, they'll meet up with us later. If that meets with your approval, my lord."

When they had escaped the Quman, the others had looked to Ivar to lead them, but here it was different: he could only follow as the captain told him what they were going to do and only afterward asked permission as a courtesy, given the difference in their ranks.

Yet there was hope. He agreed to everything Captain Ulric said.

Quietly and in shadows, the war band left their barracks by ones and twos. Slowly, the stables were emptied out. Ivar walked with Erkanwulf through deserted streets with a taper to light their way, leading four horses whose hooves clopped hollowly on the pavement of stone.

They waited for hours and hours at the river gate although, in truth, it wasn't longer than it would take to sing the morning mass. The gurgle of the river serenaded them. The wind brought the smell of refuse. It was otherwise silent and dark. He could barely distinguish the walls of Autun behind him where he stood huddling at their base on the broad strand between gate and river's edge. A score of boats had been drawn up onto the shore. The wharves were farther downstream, by the northern gate. A rat scuttled into the wavering, smoky light given off by the taper, froze, and vanished when Erkanwulf threw a knife at it. The blade stuck in the ground, and he leaned down to pull it free.

"Where are the others?" Ivar asked.

"Most of them will remain behind to join the force that hunts for us. They'll join us later. A dozen men wait for you past the ferry. Here is Captain Ulric."

The captain emerged from the river gate, spoke tersely and in a low voice with the pair of guards who had let them all through, and stepped back to allow Baldwin to pass through. Baldwin paused with a hand half raised in the air, as if touching something he had not seen for years. He turned, searching, and found Ivar.

"They say I'm to ride south, so that she'll follow me and not suspect what's happening. Is that right?"

"That's right, Baldwin. That's the plan. She'll follow the light that shines brightest to her."

Baldwin reached into his sleeve and withdrew a rolled parchment bound with leather. "Here it is.

A letter calling for the biscop's release and stating that as long as she departs Varre and never returns she is free to go, otherwise her life is forfeit. I thought it was most believable done that way. She's not merciful."

He offered it. Hand shaking, Ivar took it from him. He was hot and cold at once. Words had abandoned him. He tugged the lapis lazuli ring off his finger and pressed it into Baldwin's warm palm.

Baldwin slipped the ring onto his own finger, held Ivar's gaze a moment longer, and turned to the captain. "I'm ready."

"Erkanwulf will guide you," said the captain.

The pair moved away into the night, although the taper's light was visible for an interminable interval as they made their way up the strand.

The parchment Ivar held paralyzed him. That quickly, Baldwin was gone, torn from him again.

And anyway, he was so unaccustomed to succeeding that it seemed impossible he just had.

"I'll ride with you to the ferry," said the captain. "Sergeant Hugo will accompany you to Queen's Grave. The rest of us will meet you as soon as we can on the road to Kassel. Go then. Go with God. May She watch over you."

Only later, after he had crossed the river and felt its swirl and spray against his face, did he realize that Captain Ulric had spoken those last words without a trace of self-consciousness.

May She watch over you.

In Autun, at any rate, belief in the Redemption had triumphed, and he had to wonder: was it Lady Tallia's example, or Baldwin's, that had won the most converts?

4

WITH his hair concealed under a dirty coif and a boiled leather helmet on his head, Ivar stood among the dozen soldiers who acted as his cover and watched as Sergeant Hugo delivered the false order to Captain Tammus.

"Being sent into exile?" demanded the scarred captain after the deacon who presided over the camp's chapel read the missive out loud.

"I just does as I'm told," said Sergeant Hugo with a shrug. "Still, there's troubles along the Salian borders worse these days than ever. I hear tell of famine. Lady Sabella needs all her troops for other business. Best to be rid of them. They can starve in Wendar as well as here."

"Easier to kill them." Tammus had a way of squinting that made his scars twist and pucker. He was an evil-looking man, with a vile temper to match, but he wasn't stupid. Ivar was careful to keep his head lowered. Tammus might remember his face. There had been only three young men interred in Queen's Grave, and his "death" had been so very public and unexpected and dramatic.

His hands felt clammy. Despite the chill, he was sweating.

"No orders about killing," said Hugo without expression. "We're to escort them to the border with Fesse and let them go on their own. That's all I know."

Tammus grunted. He took the parchment from the deacon and sniffed at the seal, then licked it, spat, and handed it back to the woman.

"It is genuine," said the deacon, sure of her ground but hesitant as she eyed him fearfully. She had, Ivar saw, a fading bruise on her right cheek. "The seal is that of the duchess, which she keeps on her person. The calligraphy is in an exceptionally fine hand. I recognize it from other letters she has sent this past year."

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand as he surveyed the dozen men-at-arms waiting beside horses, two carts, and a dozen donkeys and mules. They had tracked down Captain Tammus easily enough in the camp that lay outside the palisade. His was the largest house, two whole rooms, and the only one whose walls were freshly whitewashed. The camp looked unkempt and half deserted. Mud slopped the pathways. Ivar heard no clucking of chickens, although the guardsmen had once held a significant flock, taxed out of the nearby villages. Bored and surly-looking soldiers had gathered, but there were only a dozen of them, of whom half scratched at rashes blistering their faces and two limped. They looked to be no match for Hugo's troop, who were healthier and had, in addition, a strength of purpose that lent iron to their resolve.

Why did we not think to do this sooner?

It was a foolish thought. Until his escape, no one in Queen's Grave had opportunity to speak freely to those outside.

"You have until nightfall," Tammus growled at last.

Hugo hesitated, as if to argue, but did not. He snapped his fingers, and his men mounted and rode briskly to the gates, which were opened at Tammus' order. After they rode through, the gates were shoved shut behind them.

"Something's wrong," said Ivar.

He dismounted. The bare ground, covered with a sheen of ice, crackled beneath his boots as he walked forward. He knew this landscape well enough. He had had many months to learn its contours. He had lost track of the time since he had escaped, but it had been nine or ten months, early summer then and the end of winter now. In that time the tidy gardens, fields, and orchards had gone untended, so it appeared. Worst, a dozen new graves marked the cemetery plot north of the infirmary. He recognized them because of the heaps of earth, yet not one bore a wooden Circle staked into the ground or a crude headstone.

It was deadly quiet. Not a soul stirred, not even come to see what the noise was or to investigate the whickering of horses and the sound of armed men.

He dropped his reins and ran for the compound, past the abandoned sheep pasture and the wildly overgrown bramble where once goats had feasted. The front door was stuck, canted sideways because of broken hinges. He yanked it open, grunting and swearing and crying, and tumbled into the vacant entry hall, sprinted, shout-ing, into the biscop's audience chamber, but it, too, lay empty. Even her writing desk was gone. He bolted out into the courtyard. Sister Bona's grave lay bare, untended except for a dandelion.

Abandoned.

Were they all dead? But if so, wouldn't Captain Tammus have known? Or had he simply ceased to care?

"Ivar?"

He spun, hearing that gentle voice but seeing no one. "Hathumod? Ai, God!" He was weeping with frustration and fear. "Where are you? Where is everyone?"

Forever ago, or so it seemed because it was a moment he preferred not to recall, pretty young Sister Bona had crawled out of the courtyard past a loose board. It jiggled now, and he grabbed it and wrenched it to one side, then cursed, because he'd gotten a splinter deep in his palm.

Hathumod's face blinked at him out of the shadows.

"What are you doing in there?" he demanded.

"Ivar! Oh, Ivar." She was weeping. "I thought you were dead."

"I pray you, Hathumod. Come out! What are you doing in there?"

She shoved the loose board aside and clambered out. Once, she would have been too stout to squeeze through, but she was so thin now that it hurt to look at her, all skin stretched over knobby bones. She had lost that rabbity look, although her protruding front teeth stood out more starkly than ever with no plump cheeks to give harmony to her features.

"We have stores hidden in here that we don't want the guards to know about."

"Where is everyone?"

"We had to retreat to the amphitheater, at the head of the valley. It was too dangerous to stay here."

"Why?"

She stared at him as if he had said something particularly stupid. "Because of the sickness, of course!" Her lips quivered. She burst into tears. "So many dead we couldn't bury them decently.

And we were all feared we would die, too."

"Who still lives? What of Sigfrid and Ermanrich? What of the biscop?"

"Th-they live. Th-they aren't the ones. . . . It's been so awful." She tried to gulp down her sobs.

She rubbed angrily at her face, but she could not stop crying. His intense relief at discovering that some still lived made him furious.

"Take me to them! We have only until nightfall."

"F-for what?"

"To free you."

She wailed, bawling.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Hathumod! We must go quickly!"

"I—if only you'd come last autumn. Half our number are dead."

"Hurry!"

He grabbed her wrist and she followed him meekly outside. Hugo's men had fanned out to explore the compound, but Ivar called them back.

"There are stores hidden behind a loose board in the courtyard. Get those, and abandon the rest.

There was a terrible sickness here. The demons who cause it might still be lurking. Sergeant, stay here and make ready. Half your men and the mounts come with us."

They rode down the path that led past the vegetable garden and the grain fields. Hathumod wept, unable to stop herself.

"Who feeds them?" asked one of the soldiers. "Ground's not been broken up or even ploughed."

"The guards are feared to come in," Hathumod sobbed, "on account of the sickness."

They had built a pair of huts within the hollow of the amphitheater, protected somewhat by the high ridgeline. Four scrawny goats grazed in brambles at the limit of their tethers. Six sheep mowed the amphitheater slope; none had lambed or were even pregnant. Ivar did not see the community's ram.

The monastics had heard the sound of horses and were waiting, clustered around the seated biscop. Like the others, Constance had grown thin, and thinness made her look old, frail, and weary. No more than a dozen huddled fearfully with the forest at their back. Ivar recognized Sigfrid's impossibly petite form at once, but Ermanrich seemed to be missing. Nay, that was him standing next to Sigfrid, only he was shrunken in girth, a stick looking none the healthier for having lost his energetic stoutness. His face was pale and his chin scumbled with a half grown beard, but it was his features that lit first.

"Ivar! It's Ivar! I knew he would come back!" He hobbled forward; something was wrong with his right foot, and as soon as Ivar dismounted he flung his arms around him in a warm embrace.

"No time." Ivar pushed him away. He gauged the heavens and the shifting light that marked the waning afternoon. "We must leave now, while we have the chance. We have an order, sealed by Lady Sabella's seal and thereby binding. You are exiled from Varre, free to go as long as you cross into Wendar and do not return."

Some wept, but Biscop Constance in her calm way asked the first, and only, question. "Who has written this false command, knowing themselves a rebel against Lady Sabella? Such an act is treason, punishable by death. Was it one of the clerics I trained? I thought them all exiled from her court."

"It was Baldwin."

"Baldwin!" cried Ermanrich.

"Baldwin can't write," objected Hathumod from behind him.

"That is enough," said Constance. "I will need assistance. I cannot ride."

Ivar nodded. "We have a cart and two mules to draw it. We have mounts for everyone. How are there so few left?"

"There are three out in the woods gathering," said Constance, "but it is true we are few in number. Sister Nanthild was first to die of the illness. It struck after the night of the wind. We lost half our number. It is only since we left the compound and came to live here that the deaths have ceased. I believe that the well is poisoned. You see how weak we are. If you had not come, Brother Ivar, I fear we would all have perished by summer from starvation. The guards refused to cross the gate or even bring us baskets of grain. The ram died, and the only pregnant ewe miscarried. We have not seen the sun for so many months we have forgotten what it feels like to enjoy its brilliant lamp. Plants cannot flourish without sun. Likewise, rainfall is erratic. God is angry, so I am convinced."

"We must hurry." He did not like to think that it might all be for naught, that he might rescue them and yet still fail. The world had so changed that he no longer recognized it. Like a cloudy day, it had gone all shadowed and dim. "Let us go."

The three gone into the woods to forage were found. The rest had to bundle up their valuable possessions, to fold them into saddlebags and cloth sacks and or toss them into the back of the second cart or over the withers of their mules: blankets, cloaks, tunics, weed hooks, shovels, sickles, and scythes as well as awls, knives, kitchen implements, and a salt cellar; a silver ewer and four copper basins; needles, skeins of yarn, three spindles, and six fleeces also used for bedding; a leather chest containing the biscop's scribal tools; two psalters, three Holy Verses, and four other books, one of them a scroll of St. Augustina's Confessions and another a history of Varren princes. What remained of their stock of dried herbs taken from the infirmary and stored in a small wooden chest. An ivory-and-gold reliquary containing the bones of the left hand of the founder, Queen Gertruda.

They met up with Sergeant Hugo at the gates with daylight to spare and rumbled out through the guards' encampment in a silent line of riders with the two carts positioned in the middle of the procession. Captain Tammus stared. He seemed ready to spit, but like them, he said nothing. No one, apparently, wanted to risk touching them. Before they'd rolled out of sight, a half dozen guards ran through the open gates to see what they could loot. The last Ivar saw of the gate was the men running back out again with nothing in their hands, scared off, no doubt, by the sight of those forbidding graves.

Then the curve of the road cut off the view, as it always did. Each path drew its own landscape.

He understood that now. Something always got left behind, and sometimes it was even something you wanted to lose, but mostly the things you wanted to lose stayed with you.

He laughed, and Sigfrid, riding awkwardly astride a donkey, turned to look at him.

"How are you come to us, Ivar?"

"Let us ride until nightfall. Then I'll tell the tale."

They rode in silence, despite their joy, for it appeared Constance's schola were too weary and exhausted to sing. Their pace was killingly slow, burdened by the grind of the two carts and the awkward seats of several of the monastics who, like Sigfrid, had never learned to ride and yet were too weak to walk far. Through stubbornness and God's will they turned east onto a half hidden trail into the deeper forest and made it as far as that same clearing where Ivar had met Erkanwulf the previous summer. The thatched roof that covered the old stone chapel still held.

They settled Biscop Constance and the weakest nuns in its shelter while the soldiers set up a half dozen traveling tents for the rest of them, in case it rained. The sergeant set out sentries and ordered a big fire built in front of the chapel. There was plenty of deadwood to be gathered and split for burning. Wind soughed through the leaves of the giant oak.

"Erkanwulf and I saw shades here," said Ivar, chafing his hands as he stood before the fire. "They killed some of the men pursuing us and drove the rest away, but they didn't touch us. I don't know why."

"We heard no news of that," said Sigfrid. "Do you mean to say Captain Tammus suspected all along and sent soldiers to fetch you back?"

"I must believe so. Did no one confront the biscop?"

They turned. She had come forward, leaning on her stick and supported by Sister Eligia, one of the survivors.

"We have heard nothing, no news at all from the outside world for the last nine months, Brother Ivar," she said. A pair of soldiers rolled a log up behind her as a bench, and she sank down and thanked them graciously. "Sabella passed by to gloat that same day you left us, but she did little more than inform me of Tallia's latest stillborn child as well as rumor from the south that the Wendish army had been lost in the east and that a cabal of malefici meant to cast a spell to drown the world in water. I could not make sense of her report. There came a night soon after when unnatural lightning coursed through the skies and a powerful wind ripped past us. Poor Brother Felix was crushed by a falling tree limb. Sister Gregoria broke her leg so badly that it festered and even Sister Nanthild's medicines could not heal her. That was a grim omen, for soon after, the sickness struck us down one by one. Give us your report, I pray you, Brother Ivar. Did you reach my niece, Theophanu? Is it she who has sent you to aid us now?"

Except for the sentries, every soul there drew close to hear.

"Princess Theophanu sent word that she has no army and no treasure and cannot aid you, Your Grace."

Sister Eligia cried out, but Constance touched her forearm to quiet her. "Go on. How do you come to us now, then, with Lady Sabella's seal?"

"We took matters into our own hands, Erkanwulf and I." He told the story at length, and was interrupted often. The soldiers who knew somewhat more of the matter offered comments at intervals. The sergeant brought around ale and cheese and days-old bread, and they drank and ate with a will, and gratefully, for they were all so hungry. When Ivar had finished his story, Constance nodded. She lifted both hands in the manner of a biscop calling her flock to prayers.

"Let us sing in thanksgiving, Brothers and Sisters." She had a light soprano, clear and true, and the others followed easily, accustomed to her lead.

"Exalted be God, our deliverer,

Who has rescued me from my enemies

And saved me from lawless men."

But not delivered yet. Ivar brooded as the others settled down to sleep on blankets and furs.

Having been cast out into the wilderness, they were content to be free. Ivar sat with knees drawn up and chin on knees. Beside him, Ermanrich snored softly.

"You are troubled, Ivar," murmured Sigfrid.

"We must wait for Captain Ulric. It could all come undone if Lady Sabella suspects and sends another troop after us. If Captain Tammus rides quickly to Autun and discovers the truth."

"A journey of some days. We are safe for the moment. That isn't what troubles you."

Ivar frowned, but it was Sigfrid asking: so frail in his body and so strong in his mind, a curious vessel for God's favor but a precious and holy one nonetheless. "I wonder if I could have acted otherwise. I should have insisted that Hanna go with me when my father sent me south to Quedlinhame. I shouldn't have spoken so harshly to her when we next met. What if Hanna won't forgive me? Why was I so unfair to Liath as to think she might love me in the same way I loved her? Was I blind? And what of Baldwin?"

'Are you afraid of Baldwin?"

He shrugged off the question by turning it. "We would all be dead without his sacrifice."

"Yes," agreed Sigfrid calmly, "but he was only following the example of the blessed Daisan, was he not? Not every person is given the blessing of sacrifice, Ivar. We have reason to hope that he will escape and reunite with us, do we not? God has rewarded Baldwin for thinking of others before himself."

"Is that meant as a rebuke to me?"

"Only if you hear it that way." Sigfrid chuckled. "I missed you, Ivar. No one else frets in quite the way you do."

The words cut through the knot that had for many days been stuck in his throat. Before he knew it, he was weeping, tears streaming down his cheeks as he struggled not to sob out loud and wake Ermanrich and the two soldiers who were crowded into the tent with them and sleeping soundly.

After a while, Sigfrid asked, "What do you fear, Ivar?"

"I fear I lost something but I don't know what it is. That I'll only recognize it when it's too late."

"Two days," said Sergeant Hugo. It was agreed they dared wait so long in the clearing before moving east again through the forest. The first day passed quietly enough. Constance rested, yet was never alone. By turns, and as if by accident, each soldier approached her and spoke privately to her as a man might to his deacon when he had a trouble to confess. Some spoke at length, others more briefly.

Hunters returned with two wasted and sickly deer, which they ate anyway because their food stores were so low, and a grouse, whose meat was shared among the monastics. The nuns gathered morels and blewits, and Hathumod found an old stand of couch grass in a nearby clearing and dug up the now-bitter roots. With these victuals they ate well enough, although they had to drink water from a nearby stream and many developed a flux.

Sergeant Hugo and his soldiers went through all their tack, greasing and repairing it. They carved arrows out of stout shoots in case they ran out of metal-tipped ones. The nuns scoured the woods for anything edible that might be dried or boiled for carrying.

The second day Ivar spent most of his time with Constance recounting again and again the story of his travels with Erkanwulf, repeating details or, on occasion, recalling ones he had forgotten or overlooked. Every utterance made by Theophanu, Rotrudis' children, or their courtiers had to be reexamined. Had he been Liath, he would have recalled every word he had heard, but he was not Liath. He was the flawed vessel, and he worried that he had forgotten something important.

"Of the walls, again. There was building going on?"

"No, but there was one scaffolding. That would have been on the western wall, I think. I remember the light shining on it as we rode out. No one was working there."

"Within the hall, was there any new work being done? Any repairs? Were the walls freshly whitewashed?"

A whistle shrilled from the woods, down along the trail where the string of sentries ran out farthest.

Sergeant Hugo jumped to his feet. Soldiers grabbed spears, swords, and bows. A bird's trill rang out, and several among them whooped and clapped.

Captain Ulric rode at the head of his troop, his usually pleasant features creased with anxiety and a certain grim relief at seeing them. The rest of his men spread out so as not to overwhelm the clearing. Soon there were almost threescore folk gathered around the ancient chapel: Hugo's dozen, the fifteen monastics, and about thirty men at arms, all mounted, with the captain. It was strange, though, since Ivar had thought that the captain commanded almost a century of men.

"We are at your service, Your Grace," Ulric said after he dismounted and knelt before her. She extended a hand. He kissed her ring. "I pray pardon for coming so late."

"That you have done this much was beyond my expectation, Captain. I know all among you have kinfolk. A few have wives and children of your own. What will become of them? My half sister Sabella is known to wreak her revenge on the helpless when she cannot find those who angered her."

"This we knew, Your Grace. It is why we waited so long to act."

"Why act now?" she asked him, but glanced at Ivar as the words faded and Ulric did not immediately reply. "Brother Ivar convinced you?"

"He gave me the means, but it was not his argument that convinced me. In truth—" He paused to grin at Ivar with a look that seemed half apologetic. "—there have been other portents and omens.

Dissatisfactions and fears."

"Stories of grace," she said, "as I have been hearing these two days."

He nodded. "Stories of God's grace. Of the phoenix. We all know them, Your Grace. We know they are true. But the lady is reckless. She punishes those who work the land and shows mercy to those who are most cruel and greedy. The wars to the west have taken the lives of a score of my militia, but their families gained no bounty for their sacrifice, not even a payment for each lost man, as is traditional. The weather is wrong, Your Grace. I am no farmer, but I know the way of the seasons. First came that unnatural wind that blew down houses and smashed trees throughout the woodlands. we've had no sun for months, not since the autumn. We had untimely rain last summer and little enough this winter. The stores in Autun grow low. The lady has not husbanded them wisely, not as you would have done, seeing that each family received a ration to last them through the lean months and seed corn if they lost their store to wind and bad weather. Lady Sabella has lost God's favor, so I believe. She has usurped what does not belong to her. Thus we are come. This one—Brother Ivar." He nodded toward Ivar. "I took his plea as a sign that it was time to act. We have gathered our families and left behind our homes to follow you, Your Grace."

"Where is Baldwin?" demanded Ivar. "Didn't you find him? Is he lost?"

"Nay, nay, he is with the others, he and Erkanwulf, a few hours behind us. We rode ahead to find you. We must move rapidly, Your Grace. Our desertion will be known too soon. Because we are so many, and laden with carts and children, we will not move as swiftly as Lady Sabella's mounted cavalry when they ride on our trail. We have done what we can to cast doubt upon our road, but they will discover it."

"I see." All this time, Constance had held his hand. She let go, and he pressed it briefly to his forehead, gaze cast down. "You have stepped onto a path from which there is no turning back."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"You have put yourself into my hands."

"Yes, Your Grace."

She was used to command. She had been born into the royal family, and had been younger than Ivar was now when the biscop's staff had been placed in her right hand.

"I must ask of you and your company that you ride a more difficult and thorny path even than the one you have embarked on now. I have interviewed Brother Ivar at length. It seems clear to me that my niece Theophanu cannot aid me, perhaps will not aid me, and may not even have the means to feed and house my growing retinue. She may even see me as a threat, and certainly as a reminder of her weakness. Avaria is too far. While it is true I might find refuge in Fesse, I am determined to take the harder path."

The captain blanched, as might a man preparing himself for worse news than what he has just heard. "Your Grace." He bowed his head and thereby accepted his fate.

"Sabella usurped my place and imprisoned me because she rightly feared to murder me outright, although I am sure she hoped my injuries would kill me. They did not. Now I am free to act as I was not before. I will not ride into exile in Wendar. Henry set me as steward over the duchy of Arconia. No more would I trust a steward of my own who fled in time of trouble. I cannot act in a way I would myself condemn. We must rouse the countryside and fight to restore what is ours."

Ivar was too stunned to speak, and yet his heart thrilled to hear her impassioned words. She was crippled by her injuries, but she was not weak. Examining her proud face and brilliant eyes, he saw that she was in some measure stronger than she had been before her fall.

"Your Grace." Ulric clenched one hand. The other rested on his sword hilt.

The men murmured, their voices like the rush of wind through leaves. Farther away, a hawk skreed, and Ivar glanced up to see the bird glide away over the treetops. The fire popped loudly as a stick, burned almost to ash, broke into pieces. Sister Eligia coughed.

"I can offer nothing but uncertainty," said Constance, "but this I promise: We will win Arconia back."

Every man and woman knelt, and some sighing and some with a grin and one weeping and several with expressions of grim fatalism, promised to serve her and her cause.

Even Ivar knelt. How could he do otherwise? Still, he was a little disgusted that he had planned so well and now had to watch the arrow curve off target.

"Where must we go?" he demanded.

She nodded. "That, too, I have considered. We must circle north to avoid capture, and then west to a place where we will find support and refuge. We will ride to Lavas County and seek aid and comfort from Lord Geoffrey."

"Best to travel as one group," said Captain Ulric as they waited for the baggage train to arrive.

"We might split into many smaller groups and hope to reach Lavas County undetected, but every small group will therefore be more vulnerable. Our trail is easily followed if we travel together, but we are also protected by our numbers. Lady Sabella will have to hear of our journey, and our road, and raise a large enough force to meet us without fear of being defeated by our numbers.

That will take time and forethought, and may give us the advantage we need. Yet we must also consider, Your Grace, what we will do once we reach Lavas County. Of a certainty, Lady Sabella or Duke Conrad will send an army to drive us out."

"As we travel, we will discuss what choices we have," Constance agreed. She paused and turned her head as though seeking something.

The soft light cast its muted glamour over the clearing. Horses grazed at the sparse grass. They were being led in groups to water at the nearby stream, heard as a quiet laughter beneath the constant noise of men walking, talking, hammering a stronger axle into one of the carts, and, here and there, singing.

"I woke at midnight in the deep wood

I woke at midnight when the moon was new

There I saw a kindling fire

A bright fire!

Truth rises with the phoenix.

So spoke the holy one:

Truth rises with the phoenix."

"What song is this?" Ivar whispered to Sigfrid, who sat crosslegged beside him with his bony hands folded in his lap and his thin face composed and calm.

"I've not heard those words before," said Sigfrid, "but I know the melody well enough." He hummed along, picking up the refrain at once.

"Truth rises with the phoenix," echoed Ivar. Wind rippled, bringing a spatter of rain. He wiped his eyes as the mizzle shushed away into the trees. Above the chatter of men and the clatter of branches, he heard the tramp and rumble of an approaching procession.

Naturally, Baldwin rode at the front on a handsome roan mare. His seat was matchless. Even his clerical robes, cut for riding, fell in pleasing folds and layers about his legs and was swept up in back to cover his mount's flanks. A well-dressed girl of about fourteen rode beside him on a sturdy gelding. She was so dazzled by Baldwin's attention to her that she did not notice the captain approaching with a frown on his face.

"Louisa! Come at once to pay your respects to the holy biscop."

Her eyes widened. She startled and touched the linen scarf that mostly covered her dark hair.

"Yes, Father. I pray you, Brother Baldwin, excuse me."

He smiled at her, and she flushed.

"Shameless!" muttered Ivar.

Beside him, Sigfrid chuckled. "You are no different than any of us. Poor Baldwin. Do we truly love him, or only his beauty? Yet he looks well."

He looked well. He cast his gaze anxiously over the multitude, found what he sought, and smiled so brilliantly at Ivar and Sigfrid that Ivar actually heard murmurs from the followers who with their carts and donkeys and bundles were moving in a sluggish flow into the clearing. Many faces turned to watch the young cleric as he dismounted and pressed through the crowd. Hands reached out to touch his robe, and seemingly unconsciously he brushed his fingers across the foreheads of small children pushed into his path.

Ermanrich whistled under his breath. "You'd think he was a saint the way they treat him."

"Ivar!" Baldwin surged forward to embrace him, weeping with happiness. "Ai, God! Sigfrid!

Ermanrich! Hathumod!" He kissed each of them, tears streaming in a flood of joy.

"You must greet Biscop Constance," said Ivar, whose temper had sparked with unfathomable annoyance.

"It worked?" Baldwin asked as guilelessly as a child inquires about the ineffable mystery of God.

"She is free?"

Biscop Constance approached them, leaning on her staff and assisted by Sister Eligia. "I am free, Brother Baldwin, in no small measure because of the risk you took in Sabella's court."

"Baldwin!" Ivar tried to keep his voice to a whisper, but his irritation kept pushing it louder. "It's not right to make the holy biscop approach you. You should have gone to her first!"

Baldwin dropped to his knees before the biscop. When she extended her hand, he pressed her ring to his lips. His tears wet her hand. Remarkably, she also had tears on her face.

She, too, was blinded by his beauty.

Ivar found himself wiping rain off his face, only it had stopped raining and he had already dried his face once.

'Are you the one?" she asked Baldwin.

"I am Lady Sabella's seal. I admit to worse things I did. I was her concubine, it's true, but I'm not proud of my sins, Your Grace." His face was so open and innocent that it appeared that whatever he had done he had done without malice or forethought.

"We have all done that which displeases God."

'And God's mercy has saved us. I have sworn an oath to God, that I will serve Her alone and for the rest of my days, as penance for my sins and in service of Her glory, which has come down to us out of the heavens and casts its brilliance across the Earth."

Constance examined him closely. 'Are you that one I have heard whispers of? The rose among thorns?"

He shook his head, bewildered by her comment. The captain's daughter had come as close as she dared to stare at Baldwin, but her father drew her back with a look that might scar.

"Truth rises with the phoenix," said Constance.

He blushed. "Oh. That. It's true I made up words to pass the time, and set them to a melody I liked to sing. It was an easy way to help folk remember the phoenix."

"Then it's true, for surely you have a form most like to the angels." She bowed her head.

Baldwin looked up at Ivar and mouthed the words, "What's true?"

Ivar could only shrug.

She raised a hand and by this means brought silence to the assembly crowded around to hear. "A great evil has fallen upon us. Famine, sickness, war, and dissension plague us. God is angry, yet She has not forsaken us as we have feared. Many here have heard the stories of God's grace."

"Truth rises with the phoenix!" cried a woman from the back, and other voices echoed her.

"Do not fear the days to come," said the biscop as folk around her knelt. "Her glory has come down to us out of the heavens and casts its brilliance over the Earth. If we will only believe, then we will be safe. God will answer us in our time of trouble, grant our every desire, fulfill our every plan. She sends us help from her sanctuary." She raised Baldwin to his feet as he smiled pliantly with that look of beautiful incomprehension that in Quedlinhame had so charmed his praeceptors.

"A holy one walks among us."

Behind Ivar, Hathumod burst into tears.

5

"YOUR Excellency! I pray you, forgive us for disturbing you. Come quickly, Your Excellency!"

The servant's voice was shrill with a panic that roused Antonia out of a restful sleep. She grunted and slapped a hand over her eyes to shut out the flicker of lamplight as the clumsy servant leaned over her and the sting of oily smoke made her cough.

"Your Excellency!"

"I have woken."

The fool woman remained poised there, as stupid as a cow. "Come quickly."

In the adjoining room, little Berengaria began to wail as Mathilda's shrieks filled the air. The servant groaned and fled, leaving Antonia to rise in her shift and grope her way through the dark room to the opened door that led from one chamber into the other. There was, mercifully, lamplight, and a trio of servants hastily shoving a heavy table out of the way.

Young Mathilda was spinning, arms straight out and rigid, hands in fists. "Get away, you beast! It has red eyes! Why can't anyone else see them?" She sobbed gustily.

"Your Highness, if you will only sit down—"

"Shan't! You're trying to kill me! Just like Mama and Papa! They're never coming! You did it!

You did it!"

She swung wildly, battering her attendants. They skittered back to circle as nervously as a pack of dogs waiting to have a stone thrown at them.

One of the double doors leading out into the courtyard creaked open and Captain Falco slipped in. He was dressed, armed, and alert. He slept athwart the doors on the pavement outside, but despite his constant faithful presence and the quiet surroundings in Novomo where they had bided many weeks now, Mathilda still suffered from night terrors.

"I hate you! I hate you!" she shouted, but it was not clear whom she hated, or what she feared.

"Your Highness," ventured Captain Falco.

"Go away! Go! Go!" She stamped her feet over and over, drumming them on the floor, and flailed with her arms as she screamed and screamed. It was as if she was possessed by a demon.

"Your Highness!" said Antonia sternly.

A nursemaid had caught up Berengaria, who could not cry for long before starting to cough, and bent her efforts to soothing the little one.

"Take her into my chamber," said Antonia. "Get her away from her sister! You should have done it at once, when you saw the fit coming on."

The nursemaid whimpered, and started for the other door, but Mathilda leaped forward and grabbed at her shift.

"No! You shan't steal her away! She's mine!"

Berengaria set up a wail that at once broke into racking coughs, and the child was wheezing and gasping for breath as Mathilda began to jump up and down shrieking with each leap, completely out of control.

"Captain Falco! You must restrain her!"

He hesitated. He hated to do it. He knew the princess fought him, and despised him, although he had never done one thing to harm her. Indeed, his softness had done the most damage, no doubt.

A stern hand must control a hysterical child.

"Captain!"

She would not do it herself. Last time, Mathilda had bitten her.

He turned his head, caught by a new sound. Out in the courtyard, torchlight gleamed. She heard a cacophony of voices and the clatter of many feet advancing on them. Falco drew his sword and stepped into the doorway, calling for his men. Mathilda was still screaming. The hapless nursemaid scuttled to the safety of Antonia's chamber.

There came a slap, like an arrow thumping into wood. Falco fell to his knees and cried out. The second door slammed open, and an apparition appeared—gaunt, filthy, and ragged but entirely alive.

"Mama!"

Mathilda flung herself forward and hit her mother so hard that the queen would have tumbled over if so many attendants were not already pressing up behind her. All of the princess' hysteria collapsed into noisy, grieving, frightened sobs. She clung to her mother for what seemed an hour while no one spoke and Adelheid grasped her, dry-eyed, until at last the girl cried herself to sleep.

By this time the nursemaid had crept back into the room with her mouth gaping open like a simpleton's and Berengaria silent and slack in her arms.

"Captain," said Adelheid in a low voice.

He had by now recovered from his shock and joy. At her direction, he took Princess Mathilda out of her arms and carried her to her bed. The child was so heavily asleep that she did not even stir.

Adelheid beckoned to the nursemaid, who brought Berengaria to her. The toddler was still awake but now too weak after her fit of coughing to do more than gaze blankly at her mother.

"What is wrong with her?" The hoarse quality of Adelheid's voice did not change. She did not weep, or storm, or show any sign of anger or joy.

"It's the cough, Your Majesty," said the nursemaid, stumbling over the words. "She's had that cough since the storm that overset us all."

"Demons were set loose in the world," said Antonia briskly. "They have found a way in to where weakness and innocence offer ripe pickings."

Adelheid glanced at her, but Antonia could not interpret what feelings, if any, stormed beneath her pinched features. It was not that the young queen was no longer pretty, although certainly she had lost her bloom. It was as if the light that animated her had been snuffed out. She was cold and hard, like a woman who would never laugh again.

"Have you no honey for her throat?" asked the queen, speaking sternly to the nursemaid. "Ground up with chestnut meat, it might soothe her. She has always suffered these fits, as I'm sure you have not forgotten." She noted each of the other attendants with her gaze. "I would have a bath, although I am sorry to disturb you all from your rest."

Lady Lavinia pushed forward out of the throng. "Let us only be thankful you have survived, Your Majesty. Anything in my power to give you is yours."

"You have endured the storm better than many," observed Adelheid. As servants scurried off to haul and heat water and lay out clothing, she walked forward into the chamber to stand beside the bed shared by her daughters.

"The wind caused much damage, Your Majesty," said Lavinia, "but my people have set to work with a will to repair roofs and fences and walls with winter coming on. For a few days afterward there was some ash fall, but not so much that we could not sweep it off the streets and dig out the few ditches and pits that it disturbed. Still, there has been no sun for many months. It has been a hard winter."

For a long while Adelheid watched her daughters. Berengaria, too, had fallen asleep, but her thin face was pale and she whistled with each exhalation. A steward brought in cracked chestnuts, and the nursemaid sat down at the table to grind them into a paste she could mix into honey.

Beyond, in the courtyard, torches and lamps were lit and servants scurried to and fro. Captain Falco had vanished, replaced by two solemn guardsmen. Lavinia yawned silently and rubbed her eyes, but did not stray by one step from Adelheid's elbow. The lady of Novomo was worn and worried but steadfast. She had lost less than most: her daughter had been sent north soon after Adelheid's departure for Dalmiaka, and so had weathered the storm in her mother's hall. Of her close kin, all were accounted for; all were alive.

Soon it would he dawn, such as dawn was these days without any sight of the sun's disk ever appearing to promise that the light of God's truth would soon illuminate all of humankind. God had clouded the heavens as a sign of Their disapproval.

"I have seen such things. . . ." murmured Adelheid, more breath than speech. She did not weep, although her tone harrowed her listeners.

"What have you seen, Your Majesty?" asked Lavinia, wiping a tear from her own face.

"God's wrath. I was spared only because I prayed to God that I might see my daughters once more. That they are safe is the best I could hope for. Henry is dead, murdered by his own son."

"Patricide!"

The servants whispered together, and this rush of conversation, like the press of wind through trees, flowed outside into the courtyard from whence it would no doubt be blown throughout the entire palace and town.

Henry is dead, murdered by his own son.

Adelheid turned. "What must I do, Sister Venia? I had this report from an Aostan lord who saw Henry fall. Prince Sanglant has claimed the Wendish throne for himself although he is only a bastard and thereby has no right to take it. The Wendish folk have deserted us. The Aostan lords and ladies have fled to their castles, those who survived. The plain of Dar has been swallowed by the Enemy. Darre itself is a ruin. No one can live there. The western coast has burst into flame.