The mountains spew fire. So we are punished for our sins. The nobles will strike against me.

Already they blame me for what they term 'the Wendish folly.' Those who were once my allies have deserted me."

Antonia smiled. At long last, God had answered her, as she had always expected Them to do. "Do not fear, Your Majesty. God are testing us. Through our actions, we will reveal our true natures.

Then They will separate the wicked from the righteous. Anoint me as skopos, and I will set all to right."

"How can I anoint you, Sister," the queen asked bitterly, "when I have no allies and no army and you have no chair?"

"It is true I have no chair, but I possess the skopos' robes and scepter, which were abandoned by Holy Mother Anne. She did not respect God as she ought. Earthly concerns stained her, so she forgot what was due her position as God's shepherd on Earth."

"Perhaps. But all fell out as she predicted. The Lost Ones have had their revenge, and we survive in the ruins of their triumph."

"We are not yet ruined, Your Majesty. Be strong. I have one other thing Anne left behind." She crossed into her chamber. After a servingwoman helped her into a robe, she waved the woman out of the room and turned to her wooden storage chest. She had bound a burning spell into the lock in the form of an amulet identical to that Anne had used in the palace in Darre: wolfsbane, lavender, and thistle. Tracing a sign, she murmured the words of unbinding and protection before teasing apart the amulet and unlocking and opening the chest. She dug beneath layers of silk and linen and returned to the other room.

Adelheid had not moved, although by now day was rising and the servants had extinguished the lamps.

Two stewards entered, the second waiting as the first whispered to Lady Lavinia, who nodded.

"Very good, Veralia. Have the guards bring the prisoners to the courtyard. I'll be out in a moment." As the first steward hurried out, Lavinia bent her head to hear the message brought by the second, then turned to Adelheid. "Your Majesty, if you will attend me, there is water now for a bath and clean robes to change into. A meal to be served and wine to drink."

Adelheid did not move.

"I must go out for a moment, Your Highness," Lavinia continued, looking anxious when Adelheid did not respond. "My soldiers scout the countryside every day, seeking refugees.

Enemies. Allies. We cast a wide net, and now and again catch a handsome fish. Few march as boldly to our walls as you did."

Lavinia faltered as Antonia shook her head, enjoining silence. Mathilda's attendants had shoved the big table out of the way and up against a tapestry depicting the trials of triumphs of St. Agnes, the virgin whom fire refused to burn. Antonia set her burden down on this table and unwrapped the cloth covering. It gleamed in lamplight, polished and bright.

"That is Emperor Taillefer's crown," said Adelheid. Her expression sharpened. The fire that had refused to touch St. Agnes, tied to the stake for refusing to offer incense to pagan gods, had leaped into Adelheid's heart and caught there.

"Henry may be dead, Your Majesty, but his daughters live. You are still Empress, crowned and anointed."

"I am still Empress," she whispered, nodding.

God grant a certain light to some people that causes them therefore to draw the eye. As one watches a flame ignite in oil, Antonia watched Adelheid burn once more. The trials she had suffered had seared away her soft prettiness, but even this could not touch the core of her, which was iron.

"We must bide our time and make our plans carefully," the queen went on. "We must seek what advantage we can. We must act quickly to build a base of support. News must go out at once that there is a new skopos. Then folk must come to us to receive your blessing."

Perhaps she had underestimated Adelheid. Anger and suffering had honed her into a fitting weapon.

"Many will seek God's guidance," Antonia agreed.

"It's true I still have an army, if Lady Lavinia can feed and house us. There are other allies who will be desperate for guidance—as you say—in this time of trouble. Frightened people seek a strong leader." She touched each gem fixed to the seven points on the massive crown: gleaming pearl, lapis lazuli, pale sapphire, carnelian, ruby, emerald, and last of all banded orange-brown sardonyx, which represented God's hierarchy on Earth: God, noble, commoner.

"My lady!" The first steward reappeared at the door. Veralia was stout and brisk, a good captain of the hall. "The guards have brought the new prisoners, as you instructed. They are armed, but have offered no resistance, so Captain Oswalo deemed it best not to provoke a fight. They are heavily guarded."

Adelheid stepped forward. "What have you found, Lavinia?"

'A small band of Wendish folk, so I am told. I have already given instructions that any Wendish refugees are to be brought to me. We know not what jewels we may find among them. Veralia?"

"They were arrested by our soldiers yesterday, on the road that leads down out of the north."

"Wendish refugees should be fleeing to the north," said Adelheid.

"Captain Oswalo wondered at first if they might be spies, but— well—you will see, my lady.

Your Majesty. There is a young Wendish lord and his attendant, a cleric, a servingwoman, two barbarians, and a girl who claims to be the descendant of Emperor Taillefer."

Indeed, a piercing, immature voice was suddenly audible to every soul in the chamber, driven in from outside by powerful lungs and delivered in Wendish.

"I said I don't want to come here! I said it. Why does no one listen to me?"

"Perhaps because your voice is too loud," remarked a second voice, that of a youth. Its timbre caused Antonia's heart to race; she flushed, heat speeding to her skin.

"It has to be loud if no one can hear me!"

"Everyone can hear you, brat."

"I'm not a brat. I'm not! We need to keep going south, to Darre. I have to find my father, you know that. He's supposed to be in Darre, so that's where we're going. If we'd fought them to begin with, we wouldn't be prisoners now!"

"That's right. Because we'd all be dead. They outnumber us three to one."

"That never stopped my father! Did it, Heribert? Did it?"

The sound of that name made her dizzy. She thought she might collapse, but she forced herself to totter forward in the wake of Lavinia and Adelheid as they sallied out the door, their curiosity piqued by the childish outburst. Adelheid began to laugh, almost sobbing.

"How came this prize to me?" she asked Lady Lavinia.

"Do you know these folk?" Lavinia asked.

Antonia caught herself on the door's frame as she stared past Adelheid's shoulder.

"I know the one who is most important to me," said Adelheid.

Even Antonia, who had only seen her as an infant, recognized Sanglant's daughter in the lanky, furious girl straining to break free of a stolid young servant woman who held her by the shoulders. Whether the girl meant to kick the youth who stood with arms crossed in front of her, alternately making irritated faces at her and measuring his captors, or whether she meant to throw herself onto Lavinia's guards like a wild lion cub, Antonia could not tell. The servingwoman had a queer cast of skin but looked otherwise normal. There were, indeed, two barbarians, one man and one woman with dark complexions, slanted eyes, and outlandish tunics fashioned out of stiffened cloth nothing like woven wool. The woman wore an elaborate headdress. The man carried a quiver and a strung bow and seemed only to be biding his time, waiting for a signal.

There was a youthful servingman as well, a callow lordling of a kind she recognized from her days as biscop in Mainni, some minor noble's youngest son sent off to serve a higher born man.

She recognized the youth who was arguing with the princess. He had his father's look about him; no one could mistake him for another man's son.

But what bent her back and made her sag against the frame was the seventh in their party, dressed in well-worn cleric's robes. A careful observer might remark on a certain resemblance between the noble youth and the once elegant cleric, but few bothered to look closely in a place where they had no expectation of reward.

The princess broke free of her servant and marched right up to Adelheid.

"Who are you?" she demanded, planting fists on hips as she jutted out her chin. She looked to be about twelve or thirteen years of age, which was manifestly impossible, but her behavior suggested that of a much younger child. "You're dirty!"

The empress looked down on the child, not kindly. "I am the one who holds you hostage."

"You do not!"

The barbarian archer twitched and slid a hand toward his quiver.

"Put it down, Odei," said young Villam. "Best to see what they want before we get ourselves killed in a hopeless fight."

The man glanced at Princess Blessing, then nodded. He served the girl, but obeyed the youth, who already possessed his father's calm habit of command. Yet hadn't this boy died years ago?

She had a vague memory of a tale told of Villam's youngest son vanishing beneath a stone crown.

And hadn't Sanglant's and Liath's baby been born only five years past? This could not be the same infant she remembered.

There was one among the prisoners who could answer her questions. One who watched without expression as the other six looked, each according to her nature, alarmed, angry, rebellious, puzzled, thoughtful, or scared.

"Now we have something Henry's bastard son wants," said Adelheid. "If you will, Lavinia, lock them away, but do not neglect them. These are a fine treasure. This will serve us well."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Captain, place guards in the North Tower and install them there."

"Yes, my lady. At once."

"Will you ransom us?" asked the youth boldly.

"If it serves my purpose," replied Adelheid, looking him over. She nodded. "You must be Helmut Villam's son. The resemblance is remarkable. Are you one of his by-blows? I understood he had no legitimate sons still living."

The lad smiled, reminding Antonia even more of Villam, who had known how to use his charm to advantage. "That mystery must remain unanswered." His pause was not quite insolent, not quite proud. "Your Majesty."

She laughed, amused by him, liking his face and his manners, although he was still a youth and she long since a woman. Still, the gap in years was not that great. Stranger matches had happened. "Take them. I'll have that bath, Lavinia, with thanks."

"Go," said Lavinia to her captain.

Antonia stumbled forward and grabbed the cleric's sleeve as, in the confusion, he hesitated while the guards pressed the others into the courtyard. He turned and looked at her, not appearing at all surprised to see her. In the solemn morning light, his eyes appeared more blue than hazel. A trio of guards waited to escort him while the rest dispersed. The child had begun to complain again in that irritating voice.

"I don't want to go to the tower! I want to go to—"

"You deserted me," Antonia said, keeping her voice low so others would not hear. Long had it festered. Until this moment, she hadn't realized how angry he had made her. "You disobeyed me!

I never gave you permission to leave me."

"I remember you," said Heribert in a voice not his own. "He never liked you."

"What do I care if he liked me or not! He is a bastard, no better than a dog! It is your desertion of the one to whom you owe allegiance that offends God."

"I acted because of what was in my heart. I loved him, but he is lost to me and I can love no other."

She slapped him.

His face, so finely bred and once so familiar, seemed that of a stranger as he carefully drew his sleeve out of her grasp and turned to the guards. "I would follow them I know," he said with his back to her as if she were no better than a servant. No one to whom he owed fealty. No one who mattered one whit to him.

She fell, and fell, into the Pit, into a fit of coughing furious sickening rage, but he was already beyond her and she would not make a scene with servants walking past and Captain Falco watching beside the door with rebuking curiosity.

'Are you well, Your Excellency? I pray you are not ill."

Falco did not so pray. He distrusted her. Few could love the righteous. They envied and hated them instead.

But her son. Her own son, for whom she had sacrificed so much!

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20d...lliott%20-%20Crown%20Of%20Stars%2006%20-%20In%20the%20Ruins.html Heribert would be punished, of course. Did it not state in the Holy Verses that children were commanded to respect and honor their mothers and fathers, or else be stoned to death?

Yet Heribert was weak. She knew that because she had raised him to be weak and compliant. It was the bastard, the false one, the enemy—Prince Sanglant—who had corrupted him.

Therefore, it was Sanglant who had to fall.

PART THREE

ABVENTUS

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

WELL MET

1

THE adventus of Sanglant, son of Henry, into the ancient citadel of Quedlinhame at the head of his victorious army would be commemorated in poetry and song, Liath supposed, but no doubt the poets would sing of fine silken banners rippling in the breeze and gaily caparisoned horses prancing under the rein of their magnificently-garbed riders, a host splendid and brilliant beyond description, shining in the light of the sun. That's what poets did. This ragged army and dreary day offered no fodder for song, so song would make of them something they were not.

But march they did along the road, silent, weary, hungry, but not beaten. On this gray, late winter day, the view before them was dominated by the hill and its ancient fortress, now the cloister ruled by Sanglant's aunt, Mother Scholastica. The fields on one side of the road lay in stubble, and on the other a field of winter wheat had sprouted mostly weeds.

Scouts had ridden ahead to inform the abbess of their arrival, and that wise woman had sent her novices and nuns and monks out to line the road as a way of greeting the man who claimed the regnancy and who possessed, more importantly, the corpus of the dead king. Townspeople stood back, staring rather than cheering. They looked thin and pale. Like the wheat, they hadn't had much to subsist on over the winter. As the army trudged between the rows of robed novices and sturdy monks, Liath peered into those faces, although she knew Ivar was long gone from Quedlinhame.

On that other adventus, so well remembered, Henry's troops and clerics had sung triumphant hymns as a processional. That so many of Sanglant's still breathed was a testament to his leadership, but certainly their arrival stirred no festive mood and no songs. Not yet. The songs would be written later.

No one in Wendar had heard Henry, with his dying breath, name Sanglant as his heir. In Wendar, Sanglant would have to fight with intrigue, diplomacy, and force of personality. These weapons, which he liked least, he would of necessity wield most.

It was not going to be easy.

That, certainly, became clear as soon as they saw the welcoming party arrayed in the middle of the road: two men and two women in cleric's robes and a woman wearing the key and chain of the mayor. Liath sorted faces, and turned her attention inward in order to race through her palace of memory, marking names and features.

Sanglant was ahead of her in thought although he rode at her left hand on his gelding, Fest. She heard him mutter under his breath. The words escaped her, but the tone was sour.

"Ha!" said Duchess Liutgard, who rode to his left and was never shy of speaking her mind. "Now the game starts in earnest, Cousin. Where is your aunt? She has snubbed you by not coming out to greet you herself."

"Is the insult worse to me, or to my father?" asked Sanglant grimly. "He deserves better state than this trifling welcome."

A monk whose face seemed familiar to Liath came forward from the group and bowed his head.

"Your Highness. You are welcome here to Quedlinhame, ancient home of your father's grandfather's maternal lineage. I pray you, Your Highness, let me lead your horse into the town as befits your rank."

"You are the prior?" asked Sanglant.

"I am."

Sanglant looked at his cousin Liutgard, and for an instant Liath felt insulted in her turn, that Sanglant shouldn't look to her first, who came first in his heart. Yet Liutgard's understanding of court politics so far surpassed Liath's as Liath's understanding of sorcery exceeded Liutgard's knowledge of the magical arts. Sanglant, being a good commander, called for spears when he needed spears and swords when he needed swords.

"Where is Mother Scholastica?" Liutgard asked. "I am surprised she has not come to greet the regnant, as is fitting."

"Has he been anointed and crowned, my lady?" The prior did not appear cowed by the ranks of soldiers. "What of his siblings, Henry's other children? What transpires on the field of battle—of which we have not yet heard a full accounting—may be reexamined by clearer heads."

'As if you can possibly comprehend what we faced!" cried Liutgard, half rising in the saddle. Her horse danced sideways in response to her mood.

"We also suffered many losses in the storm. Your own heir—"

It was a cruel blow. Sanglant caught Liutgard's horse as her hands went slack on the reins. She was felled, speechless, and he must speak for her.

"What of Duchess Liutgard's heir?"

"Killed in last autumn's tempest by a falling branch when she was out riding," the prior said primly, as if some fault accrued to the girl.

"There is another daughter. Ermengard. Destined for the church, if I recall rightly."

The prior nodded. "Mother Scholastica did all that was proper. She brought the child to Kassel to take up her sister's place."

Liutgard jerked the reins out of Sanglant's hands and pressed her horse forward until it almost trampled the prior, who took several steps back as his own people crowded forward to protect him. She was hoarse with fury. "Mother Scholastica could bear these tidings to me herself, as would have been proper. Instead she allows me to come to this grief through your careless chatter!"

Sanglant turned to his captain and spoke quietly. "Fulk. We'll set up camp."

Fulk gave the order, and one of the sergeants blew the signal that marked the day's end to the march. Townsfolk scattered out of the way as soldiers rolled out wagons and dismounted from their horses.

A skree reverberated from the heavens as the griffins returned. At first glance, they might appear as eagles. Within moments, however, their true nature became apparent, and the townsfolk who had lingered to chat or trade with the soldiers screamed and ran for the safety of the walls. To his credit, the prior stood his ground as the two griffins landed with a whuff of wings and a resounding thump on the ground. The poor mayor, gone corpse white, knotted her hands and began to weep.

Liutgard reined her horse aside, her face white and her hands shaking.

"Prior Methodius, my tent flies the black dragon." Sanglant gestured casually toward the griffins.

"You will also know where I camp by the presence of my attendants."

"Have we your permission to retreat, Your Highness?" asked Prior Methodius, voice hoarse with fear.

"You may go."

They retreated slowly, like honey oozing down a slope. They were afraid to run despite wanting badly to do so. Sanglant dismounted on the road, holding himself under a tighter rein than he did his gelding.

"I wish the griffins had torn them to bits!" cried Liutgard. "She is challenging your authority, and mine! That was a good answer to their impertinence."

He smiled, although not with any pleasure. "I did not call the griffins. They always return about this time of day."

"It will be taken as a sign. There is no telling what alliances your aunt has formed in the last few years. King Henry was gone from Wendar for too long. Half of the Wendish folk beg us for aid, and the other half curse at us for abandoning them. We can never trust her now. She scorns us, who served Henry best!"

"What do you say, Burchard?" Sanglant asked, seeing that Liutgard was caught up in a passion.

Duke Burchard rode at Liutgard's left. His hands shook with a palsy, and he was always exhausted, at the end, so the poets would say, of his rope. He was not a warm man, Liath had discovered, but she respected him.

He turned his weary gaze to Liutgard. The duchess had the stamina to adjust to reversals and hardships. She had lost one husband, and must at this moment be too stunned to really absorb the news the prior had brought her.

"I will see you anointed and recognized, Your Majesty. Then I mean to go home, set my duchy in order, and die. I have seen too much." One of his stewards helped him down from his horse and led him away to a tent, the first up, where he could lie down.

So they went, some time later, into the royal tent salvaged out of the ruins of Henry's army. On the center pole, the red silk banner eagle, dragon, and lion stitched in gold flew above the black dragon.

Inside, Liath sat on a stool as Sanglant paced, while his stewards and captains came and went on errands she could not keep track of. Now and again he glanced at her, as if to mark that she had not escaped him, but he listened, considered, gave orders, and countermanded two of these commands when new information was brought to him. He knew what to do. She was superfluous.

Lamps were lit, and when she stepped outside to take in the texture of the chill winter air, she saw that it was almost dark.

On the road, a score of folk carrying torches approached. They halted when Argent coughed a warning cry and raised his crest.

She walked over to him. He bent his head and allowed her to scratch the spot where forearm met shoulder that he had a hard time reaching with beak or claws. His breath was meaty, and his huge eyes blinked once, twice, then cleared as the inner membrane flicked back. She should fear him; she knew that; but since Anne's death, her reunion with Sanglant, and the departure of the Horse people, nothing seemed to scare her, not even when it should. She watched, and she listened, but she spoke little and offered less advice.

"In some ways," she said idly to Argent as he rumbled in his throat, "it's as if all Da's training to be invisible has flowered. Do beasts know what their purpose is? Or do they simply exist?"

A voice raised in protest. "I pray you, Holy Mother, do not venture forward. The beasts could tear you to pieces."

"God will watch over me."

Liath remembered that pragmatic voice well enough; she watched from the anonymity of Argent's shoulder as Mother Scholastica dismounted from a skittish white mule. The torchlight illuminated her. Her stern face had grown lean and lined in the manner of a woman who has had to make many difficult, distressing decisions, but her back was still straight and her stride measured and confident as she approached the tent with her attendants scuttling behind. She did not glance even once at the griffins, although her attendants could not stop looking. The entrance flap swept open and Sanglant emerged to wait for her beneath the awning.

'Aunt," he said graciously. "You honor me."

"Where is Henry?"

He gestured toward the interior of the tent, but certainly he turned and went inside first, and she allowed him to do so, giving him precedence. A trio of clerics scurried in after her. Others waited outside, huddled under the awning as they whispered and, at intervals, cast glances into the night where the griffins waited. After a moment Liath realized that naturally they could see only shadows; she could see them because of the pair of lit lamps hanging from the awning and, of course, because of her salamander eyes.

She gave Argent a last vigorous scratch and went back to the tent. The clerics stared at her, but the guardsmen nodded and made no comment as she slipped past them.

"I bring unwelcome tidings, Liutgard," Scholastica was saying.

"You bring no tidings at all," replied Liutgard caustically. "I have already heard the news."

Even this disrespectful greeting did not jolt Scholastica's composure. Sanglant indicated that the abbess should sit in the camp chair to his left normally reserved for Liutgard. The stool to his right sat empty. He noted Liath's entrance with a glance, but otherwise kept his attention on his aunt.

"Where did Henry's death take place? In what manner did you find him? How can you verify that he was in thrall to this daimone? What of Queen Adelheid? Whose blow killed him? Where is his corpus now?"

"We brought his heart and bones from the south."

"His remains must be buried at Quedlinhame beside his mother."

"Naturally. Why else would I have come here, Aunt?"

"To be anointed as regnant. Do not trifle with me, Sanglant. Liutgard and Burchard support you.

Yet rumor has it that you aban-doned Sapientia in the wilderness."

"Never did any sour soul deserve that fate more!" laughed Wichman from the corner.

"Silence!"

It was startling to see Wichman cowed as he ducked his head and murmured, "I pray for your pardon, Aunt."

"Do not mock. I will not tolerate it. What of Sapientia, Sanglant? Are you responsible for her death?"

"We do not know if she lives, or is dead."

"Among the Quman savages, living is surely like death. We are not like the Salians or the Aostans or the Arethousans. We Wendish do not kill our relatives in our quest for power."

"I do not seek power, Aunt. I seek order, where it seems there is no other who can grant it. You witnessed the events of last autumn. We felt its effects most bluntly. I have soldiers who are scarred from burns they suffered in that wind and others who died coughing with ash in their lungs. I did what had to be done. That it is not worse with Wendar's army is due to my efforts. I will not have it said otherwise."

"So I witnessed." Liutgard stood with shoulders locked back, arms and neck rigid. "So I will swear, as will all of my soldiers and attendants."

"So I will swear," said Burchard wearily, "although my own daughter perished." He paused to touch Liutgard on the arm before continuing. "What became of Princess Sapientia I do not know, only what reports have been spoken of, but she could not have held the army together. Henry willed the kingdom to Sanglant on his dying breath. This I witnessed. This I swear."

Liath had by this time crept around the wall of the tent as nobles and guardsmen shifted to make way for her, not betraying her by giving her more notice than they would to a faithful hound seeking its master. She wasn't sure whether their deference annoyed her or placated her. She would never become used to this life. Never. But as Scholastica examined Burchard's seamed face, Liath slipped onto the stool beside Sanglant and hoped no one would call attention to her arrival, which no one did. There were five sturdy traveling lamps placed on tripods and another four hanging from the cross poles. The light gave every face a waxy quality, too bright, but there also gleamed on one wall the unfurled imperial banner. Gold-and-silver thread glinted in the crown of stars, which was embroidered on cloth and stained with tracks of soot that no one had been given permission to wash out. Even the rents and tears in the fabric had been left. The Wendish banner had been washed and repaired, but not the imperial one.

"It is not part of our law for the bastard child to inherit," said Scholastica, "but I have observed that laws are silent in the presence of arms. That Liutgard and Burchard speak for you gives strength to your case." She looked at each duke in turn, as if her disapproval could change their minds, but Burchard merely sighed and Liutgard glared back at her. "Let Theophanu and Ekkehard agree, and it will be done."

"I have already sent Eagles to Osterburg."

"I sent Eagles and messengers out as well, when I heard rumor of your coming. While you wait for their arrival, you must disperse your army. I cannot feed so many for more than three days.

Our stores are already low. The weather bodes ill for the spring."

"I will keep my army beside me."

"Will you take by force that which you can only win with God's favor, and the agreement of your peers?"

His frown was quick but marked. Unlike his father, Sanglant did not rage easily, and a few men muttered to see him brush the edge of anger. "I did not seek this position. I am my father's obedient son. I have done only what he wished."

"A man may turn away from a platter of meat when he has just eaten, only to crave it when he hungers. We are not unchanging creatures, Nephew. We wax and wane like the moon, and at times we change our minds about what it is we want. Although, I see, some things have not changed." She gestured toward Liath. "The last, if not the first, or so your grandmother divined.

Your concubine?"

"My wife," he said, his irritation even more pronounced.

"An Eagle is your wife?" she asked, as if he had claimed to have married a leper.

"Liathano is of noble birth out of Bodfeld."

"A minor family which can bring no worthwhile alliance to your position. Surely it would be wiser to seek a more advantageous match. Duke Conrad's daughter, or Margrave Gerberga of Austra's youngest sister, Theucinda. Margrave Waltharia herself, if it is true that her husband died on your expedition, leaving her free. There was some interest there before, between the two of you, I believe."

"I have what I need."

Scholastica turned her gaze and examined Liath with a look meant to intimidate. Strangely, Liath found herself caught between an intense boredom at the prospect of having to endure much more of this sparring and at the same time a feeling of being wrung so tight that like Sanglant she could not sit restfully but kept tapping one foot on the carpet.

"Your mother was a heathen?" asked Scholastica at last.

"No, not really, Holy Mother," said Liath, aware of how disrespectful she sounded and, for this instant, just not caring.

"A Daisanite woman of black complexion whom your father impregnated?"

"My mother was a daimone of the upper air, imprisoned by the woman who later made herself skopos. My father loved her. I am the result of that passion."

Was that a smile that shifted the lines in that grim expression, even for an instant? Liath had no idea, but she saw that such a bald statement did not confound the abbess although her three clerics made little noises of astonishment. In some cases, a smile is a sword.

"Do you have a soul?" the abbess asked kindly.

Half the people in the tent gasped, while the other half, shocked into silence, stared. Sanglant shifted, ready to rise and confront this challenge, but Liath set a hand on his forearm and he quieted, although she could feel the tension in his muscles, a hound barely leashed and poised to lunge.

'Are not all creatures created by God? I am no different than you, Mother Scholastica."

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth thinned, but it was impossible tell if she were offended or intrigued. "So you say. I understand that you are educated."

"Yes, I am educated as well as my father was able to teach me. I can read and write in three languages."

"You were condemned as a maleficus."

"I am not one. I was educated as a mathematicus."

"You admit it publicly, knowing that the church condemned such sorcery at the Council of Narvone? That you were excommunicated in absentia by a council at Autun?"

"I am not afraid of the church, Mother Scholastica." She was surprised, more than anything, at how weary she felt in defending herself, and how peculiar it was to be shed at long last of the fear that had so long hunted her. Da had taught her to fear; it was the only defense he had known. "I believe in God, just as you do. I pray to God, just as you do. I am no heretic or infidel. You cannot harm me if my companions refuse to shun me, and the skopos and her mages are dead."

As soon as she spoke the words, she knew them ill said. The abbess stiffened and turned deliberately away from her.

"I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, Sanglant," said Mother Scholastica.

"Especially not by one who was excommunicated. I have heard tales of this woman. She is infamous for seducing and discarding men."

"So you believe," said Sanglant. "I know otherwise."

"Even your father was not immune."

"My father was betrayed by his second wife, a pretty woman of impeccable noble lineage."

"Will your fate run likewise, Nephew?"

He laughed curtly. "Liathano has already made her choice, and I had no say in it. I will not beg her to stay, nor can I prevent her from leaving."

"Then why do you stay?" the abbess asked Liath, carefully not using her name, as if she were a creature that could not possess a name and therefore a human existence.

"Because I love him."

"Love is trifling compared to obligation, faith, and duty. Passion waxes and wanes like the moon of which we have spoken. It is more fragile than a petal torn from a rose. You may even believe that your motives spring from disinterested love, but you have not answered my question. What do you want?"

Liath had no answer.

2

I pray you, Sanglant, forgive me. I haven't the patience for court life."

"No," he agreed.

She sat on the pallet they shared, watching him where he sat cross-legged at the tent's entrance.

He twitched the flap open and looked away from her to stare out into the camp. The ring of sentry fires burned steadily; a few shapes paced, as he wished he could. In the royal tent he had room to pace, but he had acceded to Liath's wishes weeks ago and set aside a smaller tent where they could sleep alone.

Even in Gent he hadn't slept alone but rather with a pack of dogs as his attendants.

She coughed, bent slightly to scratch her thigh. He glanced at her. She had stripped down to a light linen shift so worn it was translucent. A lamp hung from the crossbeam of the tent, and by its flame he admired how the fabric curved and layered around breast and thigh and hip.

"No," he repeated. "When you were an Eagle, you had no power and had to endure what was cast before you. Now, you have defeated Anne and her Sleepers. Nothing keeps you here except the memory of Blessing—and your love for me. Otherwise, I have nothing you want, as my aunt suspects."

"Does she?"

Perhaps not. She is the third child, after Henry and Rotrudis. She placed in the convent early and invested as abbess by the time was fourteen. Obligation and duty are the milk she has drunk all her life. She must believe you seek power or advancement. She may not be able to believe otherwise."

"What do you believe?"

He shrugged. "I have nothing you want, Liath. Therefore, I believe you."

She smiled, so sweetly that he laughed, although the sight of her pained him now that he was so close to bearing the full weight of the burden his father had thrust on him.

"With Da, I learned to run from place to place. Fugitives only want never to be caught. They never think beyond their next escape route. I set myself against Anne, and I defeated her—if what we have seen these past months can be called a triumph. What is left to me? I have outrun those who sought to capture me. I have lost my daughter."

"As have Liutgard and Burchard lost theirs." He sighed. "And I will become regnant, as my father wished. Will you leave me? It is true you haven't the patience for court life."

From this angle he could see, also, the hill on which the fortress and convent of Quedlinhame stood, ancient seat of his great great grandmother's inheritance. Lucienna of Attomar had brought lands and wealth to the first Henry, together with allies enough to assure him of support when he reached for and took the throne of Wendar. Without Lucienna and her kin, the first Henry would not have become regnant. In honor of that connection, the old fortress had been turned into the most favored and wealthiest monastery in the land, shepherded always by a girl born into the royal line. Like young Richardis, his aunt, who had renamed herself Scholastica when she entered the church as a youthful abbess three decades ago. She was accustomed to wielding power, and to passing judgment. Henry had trusted her. But she did not trust Sanglant or his half-human wife.

A torch shone on the distant wall, marking the gate. Otherwise, it was dark. As usual, clouds obscured the sky. He let the canvas fall and turned to look at his wife. She remained outwardly as calm as a pool undisturbed by wind or debris. Like the stars, she was veiled. But he no longer believed she was hiding anything from him. All artifice and concealment had been burned away, first in her journey into the aether and then, finally, in the cataclysm itself.

"You said once—" To his surprise, he faltered with the words catching in his throat, but he drove himself onward. "You said that what you saw and experienced in the heavens, with your mother's kin, gave you peace."

She nodded. "Yes, peace. More than that. I found joy."

Jealousy gnawed like a worm, as the poets would say, and poets had a knack for speaking truth.

"Joy," he said hoarsely, hating the sound of the word, hating the sound of his voice because he knew that on this field he was helpless. He had no weapons and no strategy.

She caught his elbow and drew him close. "I did not stay there." She pressed her lips into the curve of his neck.

Once, this alone would have driven all thought of trouble from his mind. Now, there were many things he wanted to say, but he let them go.

3

FOR three days they remained encamped outside of Quedlinhame, waiting. Liutgard went into seclusion. By the second day folk came down from the town to trade with the soldiers, not that the soldiers had much to trade with. The men cleaned and repaired their gear, hunted in the woodlands despite the dearth of game, and herded the horses into meadowlands to graze and rest.

With so much time on her hands, Liath flew with the Eagles, although she was no longer truly one of their nest. The twenty who had survived the trek north out of Aosta had gained another fifteen comrades, coming piecemeal into their ranks once the army reached Wendar. Most recently a very young Eagle named Ernst who had been chafing at Quedlinhame for several months had arrived at camp, proclaiming himself eager to be out of that cage. Now, in the afternoon, a dozen Eagles sat together under an awning that protected them from a drizzle. The sky had a grayer cast than usual. The fortress hill seemed colorless, set against the dreary sky.

The soft light cast a glamour over the oak forest, while to the east the heavens had brightened to a pearllike gleam where the rain stopped and the clouds lightened. The sun never broke through.

"Not much snow in the mountains when we were crossing," Hathui was saying to Ernst. "Maybe more came after we crossed, But if there isn't snow, then the melt won't swell the rivers come spring."

"If spring ever comes," said Ernst. "We had no snow at all. It was uncanny warm all winter. First, there was so much rain the fields flooded. In parts of Osterburg, streets and houses both ran underwater, all the way up to my knees! Nay, wait, that flood came in Askulavre. The bad rainstorms were earlier, back in the autumn. But now there's only a bit of rain like this. And yet always cloud."

"My granddad said there was one winter when he was a lad they never saw sun, and all spring, too," said another Eagle, a southerner out of Avaria with curly dark hair and big, callused hands.

"He lost two of his brothers that next winter. It was worse the year after for they'd eaten most of their seed corn. He used to talk about that time a lot when he was blind and bedridden. I'd sit with him, just to hear the tale, for he liked telling it. Still, I wonder." He gestured toward the heavens.

"Crops can't grow without sun and rain in the right measure."

"Too warm all winter," said Hathui. "Too dry in the south last year, when we were down there. A terrible drought, so bad every blade of grass was brittle. Up here, everything is soggy. I've got mold on my feet!"

Everyone laughed, and for a while they talked about how their feet itched and how their clothes and tents stank of mildew. Everyone had mold on their feet except Liath, who was never sick and never plagued by fleas or lice or rashes. She sat as usual in the back. The other Eagles were accustomed to her presence in a way no one else could be. They ignored her. For her part, she braided fiber into rope as Eldest Uncle had taught her. At intervals she played surreptitiously at setting twigs to burn, honing her ability to call fire into smaller and smaller targets. Mostly, she listened to their news and their gossip and their conclusions as well as the information they had gleaned speaking to the locals. She listened to Ernst's earnest report of conditions in Wendar over the last six months or more, ever since that windstorm had swept over them. Folk even so far north as Wendar had felt and feared and marked this unnatural tempest, although they had no way of knowing the truth.

The Eagles with Henry's army had seen, and witnessed. Yet even they did not know the whole.

"I wonder," she said aloud, and noted how they all stilled and started and turned, then waited for her to speak. She smiled as she realized in what manner she fooled herself, wanting to believe they did not scrutinize her every least movement and word for hidden meanings. She was no longer an Eagle. That part of her life was gone.

"I'm just wondering," she said into their silence, "if the strange weather is an artifact of Anne's spell. It might even be an effect of the spell woven in ancient times under the Bwr shaman's supervision that rebounded on us. The Bwr shaman are tempestari, so the legends say."

"So we observed ourselves," said Hathui. "It was her magic that stemmed the blizzard that swept over us when we were in the east."

"Or created that blizzard."

Because she had power over the weather.

In a still forest, an unexpected wind may agitate the leaf litter, unearthing hidden depths and items long concealed by layer upon layer of detritus. She rose, tucking fiber and the short length of rope into a pouch. Thoughts skittered like mice fleeing across a church floor suddenly illuminated by a lamp. There was a pattern there, a plan, a potential action. All at once she was too restless to sit, troubled and stimulated by a hundred threads any one of which, teased out to its end, might give her an answer.

"I'll come with you," said Hathui.

Liath laughed as they crossed out into the drizzle, which was already fading into spits and kisses.

"Did Sanglant set you on me, to be my guard?"

"Something like that."

"Walk with me. Let me think."

They walked.

Time had passed unnaturally for her. It was strange to be walking in the Wendish countryside after she had traveled to such distant lands. A damp breeze stiffened her hands until she tucked them inside her sleeves and promptly stumbled on uneven ground, tripped, and had to flatten her palm on the ground to avoid pitching headlong into a mire of slimy grass and mud. She swore as she wiped her hand off. Hathui laughed.

They had set up camp beyond the fields that ringed the hilltop fortress, in scrub country used sometimes for cultivation and sometimes for pasture and sometimes left fallow. Stands of young beech grew in neat copses that had recently been trimmed back by woodcutters. Sapling ash grew in soggy hollows, everywhere surrounded by honeysuckle or fescue. She knelt beside a tangle of raspberry vines and brushed a hand over its thornlike hairs. Too tiny to light. She could not focus that tightly.

Yet.

From out in the woodland cover, they heard a horn.

"They've caught a scent," said Hathui. "Why didn't you go with him?"

"It reminds me too much of my life with Da. Look. There are the griffins."

They glided so far above that for a moment Liath imagined them no larger than eagles.

"They must be very high," said Hathui. "There they go."

The specks vanished into the south, toward hills and wilder forest lands.

Crashing sounded in the brush and they turned just as a dozen riders emerged laughing and shouting excitedly, a pack of hunters separated from the main group. She recognized Sanglant among their number. He rode over to them.

So often in these last months he had looked worn by the burden of ruling, but this moment he had that same reckless, carefree attractiveness she had fallen in love with back at Gent so many years ago. Not so long ago in her memory, not nearly as long as in his.

"What are you hunting?" he asked. "You have that look on your face." He nodded at Hathui, marking her presence, and she inclined her head in answer to his unspoken message.

"I am thinking," Liath said, "about the weather."

He regarded her curiously before turning in his saddle to give a signal to his retinue. They rode back toward camp. He dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to Hathui.

"What?" he asked.

"Even the sages and the church mothers did not understand the vagaries of the weather. Only God know why there is drought, or why fine growing weather. Why famine strikes, or plenty waxes and wanes across the years. But what if this weather—" She gestured toward the sky. "—is not natural weather, rather than another pattern in the unknowable pattern woven by God? What if these are unnatural clouds caused by the spell and the cataclysm? By the return of the Ashioi land? When a rock is flung into the sky and falls to earth, a puff of dust may rise where it strikes.

Volcanos blast smoke and ash into the air. So many rivers of fire ran deep in the earth on that day. So much was shaken loose. What if we made this ourselves?"

He considered, then shrugged. "If we did so? What then?"

"There are tempestari."

'Ah." He tilted back his head to look for a long while at the sky. Then he began to pace. "If only you had ridden east to Blessing. Li'at'dano might have helped you. If she lives."

"I think she does live. I'm sure of it. It's as if she speaks to me."

"Can you ask her, then?"

"I don't know how to speak in dreams." She shrugged, impatient with this train of thought.

'Anyway, had I ridden east, I wouldn't necessarily have realized how badly the weather is affected here in Wendar. We can't dwell on 'if onlys.' God know I regret losing Sorgatani. She could help me. Without Eagle's Sight, I can only wonder and wait."

Fest bent his head and snuffled among the raspberries, but finding no fodder to his liking he tugged toward greener pastures, and after a sign from Sanglant, Hathui let him lead her away.

"It's possible," he said. "I have myself considered how far the ripples of this spell will spread.

That the Ashioi land has returned is, I fear, the least of our troubles."

"I'm thinking . . ." She trailed to a halt.

He smiled at her, touched her cheek, and she leaned against his palm for a few breaths. With that touch, she might imagine herself in a place where troubles did not wind around her and weigh so terribly on them all. She might imagine peace and a quiet chamber furnished with an orrery brought north out of Andalla. She might imagine forest and fields and the brilliant dome of heaven with stars as distinct as the flowers in a spring meadow and as numerous as the sand on a pale shoreline.

Of a wonder, he did not move, content to stand with her as she dreamed.

At last she sighed. "Sister Rosvita once spoke to me of a convent dedicated to St. Valeria, under the rule of Mother Rothgard. In that place they kept certain forbidden records of the sorcerous arts. If I went there—it isn't that far from here—they might have the answers I seek."

"To make of yourself a tempestari? Do you mean to shake the winds loose and unveil the heavens?" He withdrew his hand, but he was laughing at her with such sweetness and pride that she felt tears fill her eyes, although they did not spill.

"If I must. If I can. It is what I can do."

"It is," he agreed, "if anyone can."

"I was named after her, the greatest sorcerer known to humankind."

"Who is not human."

"Perhaps that's why."

"When will you go? Should I escort you?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought beyond wondering."

"Then favor me in this way, Liath. Wait until this matter with my aunt is resolved. Let me be crowned and anointed and you beside me as my queen. After that you will command a retinue of your own. It will be a simpler matter to send you to this convent on your own progress."

She shook her head, smiling. "In this way, we're well matched, Sanglant."

"In what way?" he asked, shifting as might a hound that suddenly distrusts its master as she waves it toward a tub of bathwater.

"Where I am ignorant, you are wise."

'And in like manner, in the other direction?"

She laughed and kissed him. The day seemed at once hotter, brighter, brilliant, but she knew how fragile happiness could be and how swiftly it could pass, veiled by clouds.

4

THEY heard the horn midmorning the next day. Soon after, an Eagle cantered up to the royal tent, dismounted, and knelt before Sanglant. He was sitting, hearing the morning reports, but he waved the others away and they stepped back to make room for the Eagle.

"You are Gilly, sent to Osterburg."

She nodded. She was at least a dozen years older than he was, and slighter than most of the women who became Eagles, but she was tough like a whipcord. "I have returned in the retinue of Princess Theophanu, Your Majesty. I rode ahead to tell you this news."

"What message from my sister?"

She looked at Hathui, then back at the king. "She sends no message, Your Majesty. She herself rides to Quedlinhame. She'll be here today."

Because of the way the camp was sited, set back about a league from the town wall and surrounded by a blend of scrub trees and open ground, they heard a flurry of horns at midday but saw nothing. Soon afterward, Lewenhardt noted a trio of banners flying over the tower next to the owl standard marking the presence of Mother Scholastica, but it was too far away for him to make out their markings.

Near dusk, with a wind whipping up out of the southeast, a sentry came running to announce that a party approached from town.

"Let the men assemble." Sanglant took his place in the chair that his father had used while traveling. He drew his fingers over the carved arms: here an eagle's sharp beak, there a lion's rugged mane running smooth under his skin, and under this the hollows and ridges of its paws.

He set his feet square on the ground in front of him, although he had to tap his right foot.

A host came, led by Mother Scholastica on her white mule who, as abbess of the venerable and holy institution of Quedlinhame, was as powerful as any duke. Four monks and four nuns walked with lamps held high, lighting her way.

Behind her rode Theophanu on a gray mare. His sister wore a fine gown that appeared silver in the fading light, stitched with gold thread. There were other women with her. One he knew immediately, even with the lowering twilight and the distance, and he flushed and glanced at Liath, who sat frowning beside him, obviously uncomfortable but brave enough to stick it out.

She was squinting, head tilted to one side, trying to see something. Her hands tightened. She took in a sharp breath.

Waltharia, margrave of the Villams, had ridden to Osterburg and now come to Quedlinhame, no doubt because she had heard the news of his return. She wore a cloak. What she wore beneath he could not discern, but he knew well enough the feel of her, that old and pleasurable memory.

Desire stirred, and he shut his eyes briefly to fight it. He was a little embarrassed, in truth, because he still felt an abiding affection for her, and he knew that while it was all very well for Liath to accept and dismiss the existence of women who no longer had any chance to get close to him, it was a different matter entirely to have to dine and laugh with a woman who had been his first and most famous lover. Whom he had, not two years ago— well, never mind that. Perhaps Waltharia would hate him because her husband Druthmar had died in the south, fighting in his army. Perhaps, but he doubted it. She would grieve, and then find another husband; that was the way of the world.

He could not help anyway but be glad to see her, because he knew she would support him. He hoped she would support him. He needed her support.

Theophanu had come armored with other great nobles of the realm besides Waltharia: Wichman's twin sisters, Sophie and Imma, Biscop Suplicia of Gent, Biscop Alberada of Handelburg, two other women in biscop's surplices whose names he did not know, and three abbots. Margrave Judith's heir, named Gerberga, rode at Theophanu's right hand. He did not know her well. Beside her rode his younger half brother, Prince Ekkehard, dressed as a noble, not as a cleric, and in any case easy to overlook among the rest.

They were handsome women, each in her own way, splendid and terrible, a phalanx that could help him or harm him depending on their wishes and their whims. These were the powers of the realm in whose hands he must place his father's body and in whose eyes he must prove his worthiness to rule as regnant.

Three ranks of lesser nobles and courtiers rode behind them, all come to confront or placate the man who claimed Henry's throne. Belatedly, he noticed that it was one of these, in the second rank, who had caught Liath's attention. She stared, her expression fixed and cold and unreadable.

"I will not," she whispered, so low it was clear she meant no man or woman to hear her, but he had a dog's hearing, keener than that of humankind. "I have climbed the ladder of the mages. I have walked through fire and lived. That which harmed me can harm me now only if I allow it to, and I will not."

A cold shock ran through him. He ought to have noticed. He had not. But Liath had. She had seen his beautiful face first of all:

Hugh.

5

IT was a shock, but she let the anger and fear burn off her. A part of her would always remember; a part of her would always cringe. But not the greater part, not anymore. She could face what she had once feared without shrinking back from the expected blow.

Still, it was hard to wait beside Sanglant when she did not feel comfortable acting as his consort, a person whose power and authority must be seen and felt at all times in public, with so many faces watching her, measuring her, judging her.

The riders drew up on the road. Mother Scholastica raised a hand to halt the others. She surveyed Sanglant with an expression Liath could not interpret. At length, Princess Theophanu dismounted and assisted her aunt to dismount. After Mother Scholastica had both feet on the ground, the rest of the front rank dismounted in their turn. Liath did not know them all, but she was sure from their bearing, their pride, and their rich tunics and cloaks that they were nobles of the first rank, the equals whose support the regnant must obtain if he wanted the throne and crown of Wendar.

There were few men among them—so many men had died fighting in the wars—and she was reminded of Sanglant's confrontation with Li'at'dano and the centaurs, female all. He did not look in the least discomfited, but then, nothing about women made him un-comfortable. He neither feared nor exalted them, although it was certainly true that the Bwr shaman had annoyed him because of her lack of respect.

"Well met, Brother," said Theophanu, coming forward beside her aunt. She turned to Liutgard and spoke polite words of regret, which Liutgard accepted with a bitter glance for the silent abbess.

"I pray you, Theophanu, Aunt, sit beside me." He rose and invited them to step in under the awning where two stools had been set up to his right, but Mother Scholastica halted at the edge of the carpet, coming no farther, and Theophanu had perforce to stop beside her.

Silence reigned. Sanglant sat back down while they remained standing.

"Let us dispense with pleasantries," Mother Scholastica said. "Theophanu has ridden far. Let her speak plainly."

"So I will," said Theophanu in her cool way, "for I am weary, having ridden far. You have made a claim for our father's throne. You have in your possession his corpus, awaiting decent burial.

These things I acknowledge. Know this also: I have no army to fight you. I have a century of stout Lions, a hundred cavalry of my own retinue, and what levies we can raise out of Saony.

Fesse and Avaria stand with you, I see."

"We do," said Liutgard.

"We do," said Burchard, "and we witnessed Henry's last words, when he named Prince Sanglant as his heir. We witnessed much else, but it is too much to tell here." He ran a hand over his hair and staggered. Behind him, a steward steadied the old duke with a hand under the elbow.

"Others mean to stand with you as well," said Theophanu as one of the noblewomen in her entourage crossed the gap to approach Sanglant.

He stood and extended his hands, and this woman placed her folded hands in his as a sign of allegiance. Liath did not know the woman, but she had heard stories, and there were only so many women who wore the margrave's key and might exchange a glance as intimate as that with Sanglant.

"You are well come back to Wendar, Sanglant."

"I pray for your forgiveness, Waltharia. You will have heard the news. I did not even find Druthmar's body."

She was serious and sorrowful, wiping away tears, but not angry. She did not take the news too lightly, but she did not beat her breast and moan and wail. "I have wept, and will weep again,"

she said gravely. She and Liutgard exchanged a knowing glance. "He knew the risk, and served as he was able."

"He was a good man," said Sanglant.

"Yes." She looked past him to Liath, smiled with a strange expression, and spoke in a tone that balanced amused regret and sincere interest. "This is your bride, the one you spoke of?"

"It is."

"Well met, Liathano."

"Well met," Liath echoed, but she had a horrible, disorienting moment as she met Waltharia's honest gaze.

I will like her.

Waltharia smiled slightly, withdrew her hands from his, and moved to stand beside Liutgard and Burchard. Liath felt the other woman's presence like fire. It almost made her forget about Hugh, waiting with apparent humility in the second rank.

Beautiful Hugh.

He was not looking at her, and because of that, she kept glancing at him to see if he was looking.

"It is no surprise that Villam is loyal to Sanglant," said Theophanu. "Where is our sister Sapientia, Brother?"

Sanglant sat down. "She may be dead. Certainly she is lost."

"It was your doing," said Theophanu calmly, where another woman might rage or accuse.

"I do not deny that I took control of the army from her. She was not fit to lead, Theophanu. I did not kill her."

Liath could not help but think of Helmut Villam, and perhaps Sanglant did as well, because he chose that moment to look toward Hugh. The other man had his gaze fixed modestly on the ground.

Two noblewomen standing beside Theophanu spoke up.

"No loss. She was always foolish."

"You would say that! Knowing foolishness as well as you do!"

"I pray you, Sophie. Imma." Theophanu did not raise her voice, but the two women fell silent.

"Let us have neither quarreling nor levity. It is a serious matter to accuse one in our family of responsibility in the death of a sibling."

"We are not Salians or Aostans," remarked Mother Scholastica, "to murder our kinfolk in order to gain preference or advantage for ourselves."

"Or Arethousans, for that matter, happy to sell a sister into slavery or death if it means wealth and title for oneself." Wichman's comment came unexpectedly, for he had loitered quietly to the left of Duke Burchard this entire time.

"Have you a complaint, Wichman?" asked Sanglant.

"Not at all. Sapientia was weak, and a fool. She's better dead, if she's dead. Henry named her as heir only after he thought you were dead. I don't care if you're a bastard, Cousin. Although certainly I know you are!" He laughed. "I care if you can win the war and hold the kingdom together. If you will, grant me the duchy of Saony. I'll hold it honorably and support you."

Liath realized that Sophie and Imma were sisters, as they got red in the face and burst into nasty, passionate speech.

'And pass over the elder—!"

"You snake! You are a viper to strike so at our heels!"

"I pray you, silence!" said Sanglant. "Let me think on it, Wichman. I must consult with my sister, Theophanu. She has served ably as regent in my absence. Your sisters, as well, have a legal claim. My aunt's counsel must also be heard."

"But you will still decide," said Wichman with a sneer. "You have the army, and the strength, to do as you will."

"So be it," said Theophanu. "Spoken crudely, but with truth. I cannot stop you from becoming regnant, Sanglant, and I am not sure I wish to. I have struggled to maintain order in Saony and not lose our family's ancestral lands. In this way I have remained loyal to our father."

She paused, and Liath thought she meant to go on in this vein, to say something rash. But Theophanu did not possess a rash temperament.

"So you have," agreed Sanglant. "You have done well."

"I have done what I can. You will find that we are weak, and that the Enemy's minions are powerful. They have brought fear, famine, plague, strife, hunger, and heresy in their army. This is the battle you must fight now, Your Majesty." A hint of emotion had crept into her voice. Liath thought her tone sarcastic, but it was difficult to tell because her expression did not change and her tone remained even, except for that edge that made each word sharp and cold. "You will not find it as easy a war to win."

"No battle is easy, Theophanu," he said wearily. "I have seen too many of my trusted companions die. Our father died in my arms. What we won came at a great cost. Not just men at arms. The devastation I saw in Aosta was ..." He struggled for words, and finally shrugged. 'Aosta lies in ruins. We saw entire forests set ablaze, or flattened by the tempest. We saw a town swamped by a great wave off the sea. I have among my army some few clerics who escaped the holy city of Darre. They say that a volcano erupted to the west. That cracks opened in the earth throughout the plain of Dar and that poisonous fumes, the breath of the Enemy, foul the air so that no one can live there. Wendar has been spared such horrors, at least."

"Do you think so? We have suffered while you and our father abandoned us for other adventures, Sanglant. Do you not recall the Quman invasion? The endless bickering wars between Sabella and Henry? Plague in Avaria? The Eika assault on Gent? Drought and famine?"

"So you see," he agreed. "If we do not have order, then we will all perish."

"If you will." Mother Scholastica lifted her staff, and they stopped talking. "If you will give Henry's corpus to me, Sanglant, then those among my clerics who are trained in preparing the body for burial will do what is fitting. Let him be laid to rest now that he has returned to Wendar.

After that, we will hold council in the church where Queen Mathilda is buried. Let us pray that the memory of his wisdom guides us to do what is right."

"Very well," said Sanglant. "There is much to tell that you will not have heard."

"Much to tell." Theophanu looked at their brother, Ekkehard, but he remained standing passively beside his wife, Gerberga, who was now the margrave of Austra and Olsatia because she was Judith's eldest legitimate child.

No love lost between those two, she thought, for Ekkehard's stand suggested a coolness between him and his older wife. Hugh's silence suggested volumes, which Liath could not yet read.

How had Hugh come here? Where had he been? She had seen him briefly in the interstices of the great weaving, but he had vanished. Unlike the others, he had not died.

Of course not.

He shifted so slightly that no one who was not held by a taut thread to his presence would have noticed. She noticed. In the manner of a young woman who does not mean to inflame male desire by glancing up, just so, from under half-lowered lashes that suggest both desire and modesty, he looked up to meet her gaze.

It was all there to be seen, all that he wished for, everything he remembered. He had not changed.

But she had.

Sanglant muttered a curse under his breath. His sword hand tightened on the arm of the chair. He rose, and Hugh looked away from Liath.

"How soon can the funeral be held?" asked Sanglant.

"We will need an entire day to prepare the body," said the abbess. "The day after tomorrow is the Feast of St. Johanna the Messenger. It would be an auspicious day to commend his soul to God."

"So be it. I will bring his body to you at first light."

6

HE rose before dawn. Barefoot, wearing only a simple shift, he walked beside the cart as it creaked up the road to the gates of Quedlinhame. The grind of the wheels on dirt sang a counterpoint to the multitudes who had gathered along the road to mourn the passing of their king. Folk of every station cried out loud, or tore their hair, or wept psalms: ragged beggars and sturdy farmers, craftsmen and women with callused hands, silk-clad merchants, and simple laborers. They sobbed as the cart rolled past, although in truth there was nothing to see except a chest padded by sacks of grain so it would not shift when the cart lurched in potholes and ruts.

He wept, too, because it was expected of him but also because he grieved for his father, whom he had loved.

He had lost so much, including his schola, Heribert and Breschius, but he had gained the remnants of Henry's schola, and it was these who walked behind the cart carrying the Wendish crown and the Wendish banner to display to the crowd. They sang, in their sweet voices, the lament for the dead, although the wailing of the crowd almost drowned them out.

"Put not your trust in the great.

Not in humankind, who are mortal.

A person's breath departs.

She returns to the dust.

On that day her plans come to nothing."

At intervals he glanced back to be sure that Hathui was close by, guarded by Captain Fulk and his trusted soldiers. The others he did not fear for, but he knew Hathui might be in danger. Keep her close, he had told Fulk, and Fulk, unsmilingly, had agreed.

They toiled up the slope and halted before the gates of the town. The bell rang for Lauds, and with a shout from the guard and the squeal of gears, the gates were opened.

The townsfolk of Quedlinhame thronged the streets, falling back as Sanglant advanced in all his penitent splendor. The burden lay heavy. Soon he would be crowned and anointed, and after that day he would no longer be free. Duty would chain him as thoroughly as Bloodheart ever had, but duty had always chained him. Henry had known him better than anyone else. He had known that, in the end, the rebellious son would give way to the obedient one. He dared not blame his father.

Henry had loved him best of all his children, though it might have been wiser not to have a favorite. No doubt Sapientia, Theophanu, and Ekkehard had suffered for getting less, although by birth and legitimacy they should have had more. As each step took him closer to the church and the royal funeral, he wondered what had become of Mathilda and Berengaria, his youngest half siblings. Was Adelheid dead, or had she somehow, impossibly, survived?

Ai, God. What had become of Blessing? Would he ever know?

The crowd pressed in behind the clerics, giving no right of way to the soldiers and noble captains who accompanied him, but Fulk pushed past them with Hathui in train. Keeping her close. A dozen beggars wearing the white rags of professional mourners raised such a cry of shrieking and yelping that he could no longer hear the clerics' sweet song.

He set his face forward and trudged up the hill to the convent, where his aunt, his sister, and his noble brethren waited on the broad porch of Quedlinhame's church. He knew them for what they were: the dogs who would nip at his heels, just as Bloodheart had long ago predicted.

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

A VIGIL

1

LONG after the crowd of mourners and courtiers had left, deep into the night, he remained kneeling on the cold stone floor of the church, at the center of the apse. Sometimes he wept; sometimes he prayed; sometimes he breathed in the sweetness of God's presence. Why did one man live while another died? Why did God allow suffering? Why did the wicked flourish and remain so damned handsome, standing within the shield of their powerful relatives? As usual, he had no answers.

He heard the door scrape and soft footfalls. At first he thought it was the guard changing at the door, perhaps Captain Fulk checking on him, and on Hathui, who knelt silently about ten paces behind him.

Theophanu knelt beside him. She was accompanied by her faithful companion Leoba, who knelt with head bowed a little in front of the Eagle.

Theophanu set a candle, in its holder, on the floor.

"You mourn late," she said in her bland voice.

"Should I not?"

Instead of answering, she rested her head on clasped hands and murmured a lengthy prayer.

He remained silent, listening for God, but heard nothing except the sigh of wind through the upper arcades that housed the bells. Shadows hid the aisles and the painted ceiling. Even the ornamentation on the pillars was colorless, washed gray by night. Did God exist equally in the shadows and in the light?

"He loved you better," she said suddenly.

"I know. I am sorry for your sake, Theo. You didn't deserve to have less of his love."

She shrugged. "I became accustomed to it."

She was so frustrating. It was impossible to know what she was thinking. That was why folk didn't quite trust her. He just didn't have the patience, not anymore, but he held his tongue, waiting for her to continue.

She wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on the coffin that rested before the altar, draped by Wendar's banner. The mass had been sung. The hymns had gone on for hours. At dawn, Henry's remains would be laid in the crypt beside those of his beloved mother, Queen Mathilda.

After a while, she moved the candle two finger's breadths to the right.

"Do not forget me, Sanglant. Our father did, and I was patient. Do not believe that I will be as patient for you."

Sometimes in battle an opening appears that must be seized in the instant or forever lost. "I have need of you now, where you can serve Wendar most ably."

"Where is that, Brother?"

"Saony."

"As regent?"

"No, as Rotrudis' successor. As duchess in your own right." There it was, the merest crack seen in the lift of her chin and the crinkling of her eyes: he had amused her. "It is the obvious choice, Sanglant. Her daughters are fools and her son is a rutting beast. How better to placate me, who might challenge your claim to our father's throne, than by offering me a duchy?"

"You have administered Saony ably these last few years."

"So I have," she agreed coolly. "It is the least I deserve. But, I suppose, the most I can hope for."

"Is that a warning, or are you accepting the duchy?"

The dim light revealed an unlooked for glimpse of emotion as she glanced at him with eyes wide.

Almost he thought she might chuckle, but she did not. "I'm tempted to see it given to Wichman, just to see those two harpies claw themselves to death with jealousy."

Leoba choked down a laugh.

He snorted. "Wichman isn't temperate enough to be a good steward. Saony is the heart of Wendar and always will be."

"What of Sophie and Imma and Wichman? They cannot be so easily dismissed."

He shrugged. "Wichman will complain, as he has always done, but he will not challenge your right to the ducal seat or mine to place you there. As for the other two—in truth, Theo, what does it matter what they say?"

"They will run to Conrad for his support. They've threatened to before."

"Let them. How can those two help Conrad? Can you imagine him suffering their bickering and whining?"

"If he sees advantage in it, yes."

"A prince without a retinue is no prince," he countered. "Sophie and Imma bring him nothing."

"Except a claim—an excuse—to restore them to the place you have usurped from them. An excuse to march his army into Wendar."

"Is Conrad so ambitious?"

"Yes. He married Tallia. She has a claim to Wendar as well as to Varre. A claim as strong as yours, now that I think on it. Stronger, many would say."

"I can fill up an army with weak-minded fools and whining cowards, but that doesn't mean I can win a battle with them. Let Sophie and Imma run to Conrad if they wish. He is welcome to them.

I suppose Wichman is too closely related for the church to approve of a marriage between you and him."

"Wichman! Spare me that! He's a beast."

He was taken aback by her anger, which flooded forth so unexpectedly. "Nay, I meant it only as a jest—"

"I know. But you have spoken a truth despite yourself. The wars have killed all our men, and the rest are married."

"It's true the matter of a husband is a difficult one, but there must be a man sufficient to your needs and of suitable birth who can be found."

"A faint promise," she observed. "More whisper than shout."

He shrugged. "A realistic one. Do you accept, Theophanu?"

She fell silent, lips closed, eyes cast down, that veil of secrecy smoothing her features once again.

Behind the altar, each set on a tripod, three lamps burned steadily: one in the guise of a lion with flame flaring from its eyes and mane, one in the form of an eagle with fire snapping out of holes opening along the sweep of its wings, and the third in the shape of a dragon with head flung back and fire breathing from its jaws.

"Saony," she said, tasting the word, testing its flavor. "Yes. I will be duchess of Saony. That, at least, is something."

2

LIATH knew Sanglant would pray until dawn. He had told her he meant to do so. Sleep eluded her. She did not wish to return to the distant tent out where the woods would creak and rattle all night. Not even the company of Eagles tempted her. This night, Sanglant wanted to be alone as he prayed for his father's soul, and she did not want to stray far from him.

She stuffed two unlit candles into her sleeve as she left in procession with the rest of the mob, whose noise was for once muted by the solemnity of the occasion. Long ago she had learned how to fade into the background so others did not notice her. She slid smoothly from one group of mourners to the next until she came around past the necessarium and found a solitary path that led back into Quedlinhame's compound. She remembered the ground plan of the institution perfectly, of course. It was easy to find a shadowed corner and wait there for an hour or more as folk went to their beds and the readers settled to their night's round of prayer in the Lady's chapel.

When she was sure she was alone, she lit one candle, which she would not have needed had there been even a slip of moon visi-ble, and made her way to the library.

The library hall was as silent as the tumulus in which they had laid Blessing. Nothing stirred.

Shadows filled the distant corners, obscured the ceiling, and cloaked the tidy carrels and the latched cabinets set against the walls. She halted at the lectern and ran her fingers over the catalog as she listened, but she heard no noise at all from the hall, the neighboring scriptorium, or the warren of rooms behind her that housed the rest of the cabinets.

The catalog was latched shut but not locked. She popped the latch and opened it, turning each page as she sought the entry to Isidora of Seviya's famous Etymologies. Isidora's encyclopedic work would certainly contain information on tempestari. Da's book, so painstakingly compiled over years of wandering, had contained few references to the art of weather workers. It had been too crude a form of sorcery, something dabbled in by hedge witches and ignorant hearth wives, and he scorned it. He had reserved his attention for the secrets of the mathematici and the sciences of astronomy and astrology, although it seemed strange that he would name his daughter after a legendary weather witch whose power he had in no way comprehended. Li'at'dano had not woven trifling spells to make incantations against another farmer's crop, or with the blowing of conch shells and the shouts of revelers drive away a storm that threatened to disrupt a wedding or feast day. She was no fulgutari to divine the future by interpreting the strokes of lightning and the sound and direction of thunder. She was something altogether more powerful and more dangerous. Anne had learned enough to force the clouds to move north and away from the stone crowns so that weather would not impede her spell, and some glamour from that vast working remained to this day, shrouding the sun and chilling the Earth.

There. The entry listed the cabinet in which the Etymologies could be found. She began to close the book, but her eye caught on another entry, and a third, and more and more of them as she turned another page. It felt so good to feel the texture of parchment against her skin. It eased her heart to see each book and scroll listed in neat array, each one cataloged, each one accessible. So much set down over the long years. Folk would try to discover what they did not know. They would seek into the dark of mysteries and try to answer or explain. God had made humankind curious in that way, although at times it brought good and at times ill.

Perhaps it was his foot brushing the stone floor. Perhaps a brief cessation of the wind, barely heard where it moaned through the outer eaves. Perhaps he had taken in his breath at the wrong moment, in that hollow space where she inadvertently held hers. Perhaps it was only the scratching of a hungry mouse oblivious to the dangers awaiting it in the library hall.

She was not alone in the hall and had never been alone. He had been waiting in the shadows all along. She looked, and looking betrayed her.

"I knew you would come here," he said.

She started. She had been looking to her right, but his voice came from the shadows to the left, near one of the entrances to the tiny rooms in which the rest of the library collection rested in cabinets. She might have walked through that archway all unknowing, within reach of his hands.

Yet she had always been within his reach. She had never quite shaken him off.

"What is it you seek?" he asked her, and at last she saw his shape against the wall, just standing there to watch her.

Anger is a refuge when one is taken by surprise.

"Where is my father's book?" she demanded.

"It is safe."

/ can immolate him. Her heart beat like a fury battering against its cage. Reach deep into him and burn him until he was nothing but cinders, like those poor soldiers she had killed, all of whom had screamed and screamed as the agony ate them from the inside out.

"Better a clean death," she said, hearing how her voice shook and knowing he would interpret it as fear of him, when it was herself she feared. She would not be a monster, not even toward the one who had earned her hatred.

"You are right to be angry with me," he said in his beautiful voice, "because I wronged you."

"You abused me! Do not think to turn my heart now or ask me to forgive you."

"You are all that matters," he said, and she knew, horribly, that he was telling the truth as he understood it. Some things are true whether you want them to be or not. "I thought otherwise before, but I have seen things I cannot forget, terrible things. I regret what I have done in the past.

I pray you, Liath, forgive me."

"I am not a saint."

"No, you are fire!" He moved, but only to lean against a table as though he would otherwise have fallen to his knees. "Can you not see it yourself, in this dark room? You are ablaze."

So easily he unsettled her. This was not the battle she had anticipated.

"I want Da's book," she said, grimly sticking to the weapons at hand.

" 'God becomes what you are out of mercy.' "

"What are you saying?" He was only trying to knock her off-balance, as if he had not already.

He straightened. "Do you know what is in Bernard's book?"

Don't get angry. Don't flare up. Don't set the library on fire! She took a deep breath before she answered. She thrust aside the easy retort and kept her voice even.

"I know what is in Bernard's book. The florilegia he compiled over many years—all the quotes and excerpts he copied out relating to the art of the mathematici. There is also a copy of al Haithan's On the Configuration of the World, which Da obtained in Andalla."

'And one other text."

"In a language I don't recognize, glossed in places in Arethousan, which I also cannot read."

"I can read Arethousan. 'God was born in the flesh so that you will also be born in the spirit.' "

She had expected many things, guessing that she and Hugh would one day meet and that on that day she would have to remember her strength. But this so shook her that at first she could not speak.

He waited, always patient.

"That's a heresy! The church condemned the belief in the Redemption."

"At the Great Council of Addai. Yet what if the Redemption is the truth? What if the holy mothers were lying?"

"Why would they?"

"Who can know what was in their hearts? What if the blessed Daisan allowed himself to be martyred in expiation for the sins of humankind? What if the account bound into Bernard's book is true, the very words of St. Thecla the Witnesser herself? I have studied. The text your father hid in his book is an account of the redemption of the blessed Daisan, son of God. It is the witness of St. Thecla herself, and glossed by an unknown hand in Arethousan—because the original text is written in the tongue of Sais, as was spoken in ancient days. As was spoken by the blessed Daisan. It was his mother's tongue."

"It can't be."

"Perhaps not. Where did Bernard find this book and why did he bind it with the others?"

"I don't know. He never spoke of it. He must have found it in the east. It could be a forgery.

Arethousa is rotten with heresy."

"So the Dariyan church says. But it could also be the truth. Here." He stepped back from the table. "Judge for yourself."

It was impossible to stop herself from picking up the candle and approaching him, to see that in truth and indeed a book lay on the table. Was it Da's old, familiar, beloved book? That book was the last thing she had that linked her to Da except his love and his teaching, except his blood and his crime against the creature that had become her mother, whom he had killed all unwittingly and out of love.

Da's book.

She halted before she got into sword range. "What do you mean to do?"

"It's yours. I'm giving it back to you."

She tried to speak, but only a hoarse "ah" "ah" got out of her throat. She struggled against tears, against anger, against grief, against such a cascade of emotions that he moved before she understood he meant to and glided away through one of the archways and vanished into the shadows, just like that.

She bolted forward, sure that the book would vanish, too, become like mist and evaporate as under the glare of the sun, but when she reached to touch it, it was solid and so very very dear to her. She could still smell Da's scent on it, even though she knew that fragrance was only a memory in her mind. She grasped it, the heft of it, its weight. Metal clasps held the book together.

The leather binding was grayed with age, but it had been oiled and lovingly cared for, and the brass roses adorning the metal clasps had been polished to a fine gleam. She ran her fingers down the spine, reading with her touch the embossed letters: The Book of Secrets.

A masking name, Da had often said, to hide the true name of the book within.

She crushed the book against her chest, and wept.

3

VERY late in the night Ekkehard appeared in the church, looking tousled and sleepy with only a simple linen tunic thrown on over his shift. Yawning, he knelt to Sanglant's left. A pair of Austran guardsmen loitered a moment at the back, as if checking to make sure he didn't bolt out a side door, before retreating onto the church porch to pass the time chatting with Sanglant's soldiers.

"Where did you come from?" asked Theophanu. "Your wife's bed?"

Ekkehard had a way of hunching his shoulders to express discomfort that had always annoyed Sanglant. He was the kind of rash personality who either leaped before looking or looked away in order to pretend trouble wasn't there.

"I pray you, Theo," Sanglant said, "do not tease him. Let us honor our father's memory in peace."

"If only Sapientia were here," added Theophanu, "we might be in harmony again, just as Father always wished."

The tart comment surprised a laugh out of Sanglant. "I am not accustomed to this much bitterness from you, Theo."

"Forgive me, Brother. I forget myself."

"You sold me to the Austrans," said Ekkehard suddenly. "Like you'd sell a horse."

"For stud," commented Theophanu. 'About all you're worth at this point. You betrayed Wendar by aiding the Quman and showed disrespect to our father's memory by leaving Gent when you were meant to watch over it as a holy steward. Sanglant was merciful. Toward you, at least.

Perhaps not so merciful toward Sapientia."

"Sapientia sent me to my death," muttered Ekkehard. "I don't care if she's dead. Anyway, Gerberga's not so bad. She's not like her mother. Better married to her than trapped as abbot in Gent."

"I am glad you approve of your marriage," said Sanglant wryly, "since you had no choice in it.

Will Gerberga support me?"

"Yes." Ekkehard scratched the light beard covering his chin, and yawned again. "That's what she sent me to tell you."

'At what price?" asked Theophanu.

"Didn't she tell you already?" Sanglant asked. "You rode with her from Osterburg, did you not?"

"She is closemouthed, like her mother was, but a better companion. I like her well enough. She is a good steward for Austra and Olsatia."

"Why do neither of you ever listen to me?" said Ekkehard. "I have something to say."

"Why did Gerberga not approach me herself?" Sanglant asked. "Why send you in the middle of the night?"

"Because we can speak privately, and no one will mark it."

"Everyone marks it," said Sanglant. "How else did Gerberga know I was here?"

"Yes, but no one is surprised that the children of Henry should pray through the night to mourn him. He did the same for our grandmother."

"In truth," said Theophanu, "I'm surprised you did not come sooner, Ekkehard. It is fitting for a child to mourn his beloved father with a vigil."

Ekkehard had not once looked toward the coffin. He had shed no tears that Sanglant had seen during the lengthy mass and reading of psalms. "Do you want to hear, or not?"

"Go on. What does Gerberga want?"

"The marchlands of Westfall and Eastfall suffer because their margraves are dead in the wars.

You must appoint a new margrave for each one, to bring order. She would prefer that you listen to her desires in this matter, as she has suitable candidates in mind, but she will accept any reasonable lord of good family who will act in concert with her and agree to marry Theucinda."

"Theucinda must be fifteen or eighteen by now."

"She is only a little younger than I am. Gerberga says this, also: If Bertha lives, then she might become margrave of Eastfall, and you could let Theucinda marry the new margrave of Westfall."

"Ooof!" exclaimed Theophanu with an ironic smile. "A great deal of territory falls therefore into Austra's hands and that of her descendants. I would not recommend it. Make Wichman lord of East-fall and marry poor Theucinda to him! He'll fight the barbarians and rape the local girls, and be happy, although his wife might not be."

"That's not funny," said Ekkehard savagely. "Wichman is a beast! Theucinda doesn't deserve to be forced to marry him!"

Ah. For the first time, there was real passion in Ekkehard's voice.

"How much older is Gerberga than you?" Sanglant asked. "I trust she never leaves you alone with her younger sister."

"I would never!" he cried in a tone of voice that betrayed he had thought often of just what it was he would never do. "It's just she's a third child, like me. She knows what it's like . . ."He bit a lip and glanced sideways at his brother and sister, gauging their reaction. Like all of Henry's children, he was a good-looking young man, although he would have been more attractive had his features not been marred by a perpetual expression of sullen grievance. ". . . to be a third child."

"You are fourth," said Theophanu.

"Third, if one counts only legitimate children!" he retorted.

Even in the dim light, Sanglant could see how his younger brother's cheeks were flushed. His eyes had narrowed with anger, or resentment; in Ekkehard, it was hard to tell the difference.

"Do not forget," Sanglant said in his mildest tone, "that you were shown mercy, Ekkehard. You fought and killed your own countrymen."

'As did you! You rebelled against our father! Some say you killed him yourself and now pretend otherwise."

The thrust had no force in it, not for Sanglant, so he wasn't prepared when Theophanu slapped Ekkehard so hard that the blow brought tears to his eyes as he gasped. Leoba choked down an exclamation.

"I will have no fighting here to demean the memory of our father!" said Sanglant.

"Is this some poison Gerberga has been feeding you?" Theophanu demanded. "Who has said it?"

"No one." He wiped his eyes, trembling. "No one. Gerberga doesn't believe it. She told him so.

She said only a fool would believe you killed Henry, and anyway, Liutgard and Burchard would never support you if you had, and they were there and they saw it all. It's true about the daimone, isn't it? It's true?"

"It's true," he said, glancing toward Hathui, who despite her appearance of contrite prayer was no doubt listening closely. "Being true, as it is, I wonder that the margrave of Austra shelters the man who truly betrayed Henry."

Ekkehard sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of a hand.

Waiting for his brother to speak, Sanglant realized that he, too, was trembling, that he had in him reserves of hatred he hadn't known he possessed. Bloodheart was dead, and any power he had left to harm Sanglant resided in Sanglant's heart and head alone. He had other enemies, of course, some of whom had not yet declared themselves. But he had only one man he truly hated.

"That's the other thing she wants," said Ekkehard, his voice shaky. He glared at Theophanu. Her expression was cool and distant, without trace of the anger that had flared.

"That who wants?" asked Sanglant, who had now stuck in his head the image of his enemy, to whom God had given exceptional beauty. Why did the wicked flourish and the innocent suffer?

Why did God allow beauty to grow in a vat of poison?

"That Gerberga wants," said Ekkehard irritably, "in exchange for her support of your claim to the throne and crown of Wendar."

"Of course. Eastfall and Westfall must have strong margraves in these times. I am agreed to this, and I see no reason not to marry Lady Theucinda to a worthy man, a younger son, perhaps, who has not yet been claimed as another woman's husband."

"Or been killed in Henry's wars!"

"Enough, Theo! What is the second request, Ekkehard?"

He smiled, but it wasn't a kind smile. "There is something Gerberga wants very much, that she cannot have because of a promise she made to her mother when she was named as Judith's heir.

She can't go against a promise sworn to her mother, surely you see that."

"I see that. What is it she wants?"

Through the open doors, the graying of shadows heralded the approaching dawn. Birds cooed sociably. A creature scrabbled in the rafters. Then, once again, it was silent. Even the guards had ceased speaking in that undertone that had drifted at the edge of Sanglant's hearing all night.

"She wants to be rid of Hugh," whispered Ekkehard. "She hates him, but she promised her mother never to harm him, no matter what, and to give him shelter when he needed it. Margrave Judith loved him best of all. Just as our father loved you, the bastard, the least deserving."

An explosion of pigeons burst out of the arcade, fluttering away into the twilight sky. The sound of their passage faded swiftly as they flew over the town and out past the walls. Sanglant's senses were strung so tautly that he imagined them skimming over the fields. He felt he could actually hear the pressure of wing beats against the air as their flight took them over woodland and farther yet, racing south into the uncut forest lands where beasts roamed and lawless men hid from justice.

Theophanu clutched his hand, pressed tightly. "Beware. Hugh is the most dangerous of all."

A certain pleasant, malicious warmth suffused Sanglant. " 'Nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.' Was I not so cursed? Hugh can't kill me."

"Perhaps not," said Theophanu, "but he can strike at your kinfolk. At your Eagle. At your wife."

As if her words were an incantation, a shape appeared at the door, limned by the pallor of dawn.

Hathui was already on her feet, ready to move.

"Liath!" He started forward to meet her, but he had not gone halfway down the nave when he halted, seeing what she carried.

Memory struck hard.

She thrust the bundle she carried into his arms. "Keep it safe for me, 1 beg you," she said to him before she rode away to carry the king's word to Weraushausen, to Ekkehard and the king's schola. Years ago.

The book had been the talisman that had linked him to her in those days when he had thought of nothing except her, because the memory of her had been the only thing that had kept him sane when he suffered as Bloodheart's prisoner in Gent. The book had brought her back to him. He had kept it safe, and she had married him because she trusted him where she trusted no one else.

She thrust it into his arms.

"See here, Sanglant! Touch it! Look! It's Da's book."

"Where did you get it?" he said hoarsely, and even Theophanu exhaled at the anger that made his voice tight. "Hugh had this. Have you seen Hugh?"

Her expression was bemused, not frightened. She should be frightened and angry! "Not really. He saw me. He gave the book to me."

"Did he speak to you?"

She hesitated, seeing Theophanu and Ekkehard recoil at his tone. She saw Hathui but not with any indication that she understood the danger the Eagle was in. "I must speak to your aunt, Sanglant."

"Did he harm you?"

"Me? He can't harm me. I would have killed him if he'd tried to touch me."

Hugh had touched her somehow. Her mind was filled with him, or with what he had said to her, words she would not repeat to her own loving husband who thought at this moment that he was likely to batter himself bloody with jealousy.

"If he gave the book back to you, it's because he has some plot in mind."

"He might have copied it out. He's had it long enough. It's what I would have done." She spoke the words distractedly. She wasn't really listening. He knew how she fell away from the world when her mind started churning and turning, caught by the wheel of the heavens and the mysteries of the cosmos.

"He wants something he thinks he can get by disarming you in this way."

"He didn't disarm me!" she retorted indignantly, then frowned. "Well. It's true he took me by surprise."

"No doubt he hopes we're quarreling over it now. Sow discord. Plant doubts. Reap the harvest. I expect he's grown more subtle."

The comment made her fall back to earth and actually see him. She leaned against him, ignoring Theophanu and Ekkehard's stares, and with the book crushed between them she smiled so dazzlingly up at him that he got dizzy all over again. "Just as you have?" she asked him.

He laughed. "So easily I'm disarmed!"

"I pray you, Sanglant," said Theophanu, "if you will not have people say that she has wrapped you in a spell, then you ought not to act in public like a besotted fool. Even our father once asked this woman to become his mistress."

Ekkehard was staring with mouth agape and eyes wide. "Ivar of North Mark was in love with her, too," he murmured. "She was condemned as a sorcerer at Autun, at Hugh of Austra's trial, don't you remember? She was named as a maleficus. She was excommunicated by Constance and a council of biscops and presbyters! Henry raised no objection!"

"I wasn't there," said Sanglant, "or it wouldn't have happened."

Liath pushed away from him, but she left the book in his hands. "It's true enough, everything they say."

"Let us not have this argument again, Liath. You are my wife, and will be my queen."

"I pray you, Your Majesty," said Hathui. "Listen."

Footsteps drummed on the church's porch as with the flowering dawn came the many nuns and monks and clerics to sing the morning service. Mother Scholastica walked at their head, attended by the great nobles of the realm: Duchess Liutgard, Duke Burchard leaning on a staff, Margrave Gerberga, Margrave Waltharia, the children of Duchess Rotrudis, the four biscops, three abbots, and many more. Hugh was not among them.

Yesterday the assembly had sung the mass while, beneath, workers had prepared a place in the crypt beside Queen Mathilda. This morning Henry would be laid to rest, and the world would go on.

"Sanglant," said his aunt as she halted in front of him. He kissed her ring. She turned to his siblings. "Theophanu. Ekkehard." They kissed her ring in like manner as the monastics filed forward along the aisles on either side as a stream of bowed heads and folded hands.

"There is much yet to be discussed," said Mother Scholastica. She looked at Liath but did not, precisely, acknowledge her. "But that must wait. Who will carry Henry's bones into the crypt?"

"The great princes," said Sanglant, "as is fitting."

He stepped aside to allow Mother Scholastica to move forward into the apse and up to the holy altar. Hathui retreated into the shelter granted by Fulk and his soldiers. The great princes crowded up behind Sanglant as he knelt on the lowest step, Theophanu to his right and Ekkehard to his left. They were silent as Mother Scholastica raised both hands and the assembled monastics sang the morning service.

"Let us praise and glorify God, who are Eternal."

Sanglant could not keep his thoughts on the psalms, which flowed past him as might boats on a river spilling onward toward the eternal sea that is God. Memories of his father spun into view and then receded from sight: setting him on the back of his first pony, giving him his first set of arms, teaching him the names of birds, sending him out to his first battle arrayed in the Dragon's plumage, explaining somberly to him why he could not marry Waltharia, laughing over mead, repudiating and exiling Wolfhere, weeping at his injured voice, demanding that he accept his place as Henry's heir. Henry often said that it was necessary for the regnant to give in order to get what he wanted; he had given Sanglant everything, and in the end he had gained what he wished, although he had died to obtain it. His empire was shattered, but Wendar had not fallen. His son would not let it fall.

As the others stood, Sanglant realized he still held the book. He thrust it into Liath's hands, ensuring that all there saw the exchange and wondered at it. This, too, his aunt would mark now and question later. With his siblings and his cousins, he hoisted the box, and with incense trailing around them and the steady prayers of the monastics muffling the sound of so many footsteps, they carried the coffin down stone steps into the crypt. Down here the bones of his Dragons had rotted until they gleamed.

No. He shook his head, sloughing off the memory. That had been Gent, and this was Quedlinhame. This weight was that of his beloved father, not his faithful Dragons, but they had all died regardless. They were not protected by the curse that left him, in the end, safe from a death that could capture others but never his own self.

Lamps shone in splendor around the open tomb into which they placed the coffin, a glass vial of holy water, the neatly-folded but still bloody clothing in which Henry had died, and a dried bouquet of red dog roses, always Henry's favorites. There were none in bloom in Mother Scholastica's famous rose garden, so they had pillaged the herbarium for a suitable tribute. Later, a stone monument would be carved and placed upon the marble bier, but for now a slab of cedar carved with curling acanthus and stylized dog roses was slid into place. The stone made a hoarse scraping sound, as though it, too, grieved. There were more prayers, and the lamps, one by one, were extinguished.

Before the last lamp went out, he marked Hathui's position, close by him, in case there was trouble.

For a long while they breathed in the silence of the crypt. He rested with hands on the slab, but it was cold and dead. How deep did fire smolder within marble, he wondered? Could this dead tomb erupt into flame through Liath's perilous gift? For an instant, shuddering, he feared her, who might kill any of them and burn down the entire town around their corpses if it pleased her. If she were angry enough. If she were wicked and listened to the Enemy's lies.

In darkness, doubts crept into the heart.

"Enough," he said roughly, pushing away from the tomb.

Someone at the back of the crowd snapped fire to a wick. He hoped it was done naturally and not by Liath's sorcery, but no one muttered in surprise or made a sign against the Enemy. He saw the faces of his companions surrounding him. Liutgard of Fesse was frowning and pensive, lines graven deep around her mouth, and he supposed she was thinking of her daughters. Burchard of Avaria had his eyes shut, while Waltharia watched Sanglant expectantly. Theophanu seemed cast of the same marble as the effigies around her; Ekkehard looked bored. Gerberga, like Waltharia, studied Sanglant; meeting his gaze, she nodded to acknowledge him, to show that she had received his answer via Ekkehard. She had very much the look of her mother about her but without the cruel line of mouth that had betrayed Judith's essential nature: every creature under her power would do exactly as she wished or be punished for disobedience. Yet Henry had often said that Judith was a good steward for Austra and Olsatia; those who obeyed her, flourished.

Wichman was scratching his neck and eyeing Leoba, who was drawn tight against the shelter of Theophanu's presence. Wichman's sisters, Imma and Sophie, spoke together in whispers, a miniature conspiracy caught out by the unexpected light. The church folk stood together as a united group behind the formidable presence of his aunt.

Hathui, marking his scrutiny, nodded.

Liath stood behind him and to his left. He could feel her but not see her. It was as if she did not want to be seen.

"Nephew," said Mother Scholastica. "If you will assist me."

She did not need his aid to ascend the steps, but she desired to show the assembly that they acted in concert. In the church they remained for the brief service of Terce, and when the monastics had filed out to return to their duties about the cloister, he retired with his aunt and his most intimate noble companions and kinfolk, just a few, not more than a dozen or so, to her study.

She sat in her chair. The traveling chair, the royal seat carried into Aosta and back again, was unfolded for Sanglant, and benches drawn up in ranks for the rest. He was only prime inter pares, first among equals. Yet Liath remained standing behind him after the others sat. She still held the book. One of its corners pressed into his back. Hathui took up a position by the door. Fulk and the rest of the guard had places outside, guarding all the entrances.

Mother Scholastica lifted an owl feather from her desk. The point had been trimmed to make a quill. She wore clothing rich not by ornamentation but because of the quality of the dye and fineness of the weave. The golden torque that signified her royal kinship shone at her throat; the golden Circle of Unity that marked her status as a holy abbess hung from a golden chain; she displayed only two gold rings on her hands, needing no greater treasure to advertise her high rank both as the daughter of a regnant and as God's holy servant, shepherd over the most holy and important cloister founded and endowed by the Wendish royal house. She controlled so many estates and manor houses spread across so wide a region that half of Saony might be said to be under her rule.

"Very well, Nephew," she said. "You have the support you desire. None here will speak against you, and your army. You have brought Henry's remains home to be buried, which is the action of an obedient son and, perhaps, of a righteous ruler who has served God and his regnant honestly.

In three days' time I will anoint you. Then you will commence your king's progress through Saony, Fesse, and Avaria so that the lords and clerics and common folk can see that order has returned to our land."

He said nothing. She had not attacked yet. He was waiting for the first strike.

"You have proved your fertility at least twice over, according to reliable reports," she continued,

"although we know that one child is deceased and the other most likely so."

The book, against his back, shifted so that a corner dug painfully in against one shoulder. He wasn't sure if Liath was only startled, or if she'd done it on purpose. Twice over. He did not look at Waltharia.

"Yet there must be heirs. Among the Wendish only those who wear the gold ring—" She touched the torque that wrapped her neck. "—may become regnant. It's true you wear the gold ring, but before this no bastard child has contested for the right to rule. Many protest that an illegitimately-born child has no right to the throne. Custom argues in their favor. Yet I have studied certain histories in the last two days. One alternative is to allow you to rule as long as you designate as your heir a child legitimately born to one of your siblings."

Margrave Gerberga smiled and glanced at her young husband.

"I have no husband," said Theophanu, "and Sapientia is lost."

"Sapientia does have a child," said Gerberga. "Hippolyta. A girl not more than six or eight years of age now."

'And related to you as well," said Waltharia with a sharp smile.

"Hippolyta is unsuitable," said Mother Scholastica. "She is a bastard, like Sanglant, and born for another purpose. She has been in-stalled in a convent and will remain there. Do not argue this point further, I pray you. As for you, Theophanu, husbands can be found."

"So they tell me, but I have seen no evidence of it yet."

"Henry's children are not the only ones descended from the royal line," said Liutgard. "I have one daughter left to me. Ermengard is legitimately born."

Scholastica nodded. "It is something to consider. There is another course. That Sanglant marry a noblewoman whose rank and lineage will bring luster to his court, and support to his kingship.

Waltharia of Villam, for instance."

"Impossible," said Gerberga. "Such an alliance would give the Villains too much power.

However, I have a young sister, still a maiden, who has sufficient rank and lineage on both her mother's and father's side to become queen."

"I might then raise the same objection," said Waltharia. "But be assured, Gerberga, that I do not wish to marry Sanglant."

"I would object to either alliance," said Liutgard.

"I am already married," said Sanglant, who was growing tired of this maneuvering. They were like dogs circling and growling around a fresh carcass.

"If you must put her aside in order to gain the throne, I'll gladly take her into my own bed," said Wichman.

Liath coughed, and someone in the chamber tittered.

"I was just joking," said Wichman suddenly, sounding strangely nervous.

Waltharia, whose face Sanglant could see, looked ready to laugh.

"I am already married," he repeated.

His aunt was not done. "Married under the old custom of bedding as a wedding, a union not even blessed by a simple deacon. Married to a woman born into a lineage whose highest aspiration was to install one of its sons in the Dragons. She brings no noble connections, no treasure, no dowry, no lands—"

"She—"

"I am not finished, Nephew! And she is excommunicated. She cannot become queen in this state.

If she does, all of Wendar will be placed under anathema."

Each of the biscops nodded in turn. Scholastica had arrayed her allies carefully.

"Is this what you wish, Sanglant?" asked Henry's half sister, Biscop Alberada. "That no mass may be sung? That no soul receive burial in holy ground? All for the sake of one woman?"

"Who will enforce this anathema?" he demanded, knowing that his temper was fraying and that he was pressing forward recklessly. "The skopos is dead."

Scholastica set the owl feather onto the desk and folded her hands to rest on that surface. She had relaxed, he saw, believing the fight won.

"The skopos is never dead. St. Thecla lives in every skopos. God still rule, Sanglant, or had you forgotten that? It is true I am abbess here because your grandfather Arnulf the Younger placed me in this position, as befit my birth. These good abbots rule their institutions because of their good names and righteous ways. But each of these holy biscops received her mantle with the blessing of the skopos in Darre. They are her representatives here in the north, and there are others, besides, who have not had time or opportunity to meet with you yet. We—all of us—will enforce the anathema if you disobey us."

He fumed, but he was outarmed and outnumbered, and while it was all very well to live with Liath and ride with his army and ignore that distant excommunication brought down years ago in Autun, it was quite another thing to condemn the entire realm to spiritual exile.

"The accusation and sentence were unjust," he said at last. "She is innocent."

"The excommunication is valid until lifted."

"Then lift it!"

They watched him. One abbess, four biscops, and three abbots, most considerably older than he was and well versed in the intrigues of courtly power, presented a daunting force. As Mother Scholastica had so kindly pointed out, these were only the ones who had arrived here in time.

More would come, and it was likely they would bow to Scholastica's authority, not his.

"There is a second, and greater, objection," continued Mother Scholastica, "brought recently to our attention. She is accused of being a heretic as well. It is said that she is concealing secret texts which teach the most wicked heresy of the Sacrifice and Redemption. Even now the church struggles against the Enemy's minions, whose whispers have infected the countryside and towns with this infection. We have long wondered how the plague of heresy first came into our land. It has been suggested that this woman has possession of a book, a forgery out of the east, that is the source of the disease. As you can imagine, this is a serious charge."

"Hugh," muttered Liath. She moved the book, not to hide it, but to fix it more firmly against his back in case anyone tried to pull it out of her arms.

"Who has said these things?" demanded Sanglant. "Let him come forward and speak these accusations in public. The Enemy uses whispers murmured in darkness in order to cast doubt. I believe such matters must be examined in the light."

That he could damage Hugh's credibility he did not doubt, but he had already made his biggest mistake. He didn't realize it until Liath stepped out from behind him and walked right up to Mother Scholastica's desk without ceremony or any particular respect for the holy abbess' rank and preeminence.

First, make sure every commander knows their part in the plan.

"Liath," he said, warning her off, but she set the book on the table and opened it.

"Here," she said in that infuriating way she had, oblivious to the well gaping open at her feet as she stared up at the heavens. "The very question I meant to ask you, Mother Scholastica. This book I inherited from my father, but I do not read Arethousan. You see how the ancient language of Sais is glossed in Arethousan by a second hand."

The biscops and abbots crowded forward. Alberada's eyes narrowed; Suplicia of Gent's eyes grew wide. Others grimaced, and one old churchman set his lips together so tightly that the pressure wrinkled his clean-shaven chin.

Scholastica unclenched her hands, which had suddenly and painfully tightened, and touched the ancient parchment as though it were crawling with vermin. " 'Krypte!' " she said in the voice of a woman condemning souls to the Pit for disobedience. " 'Hide this!' " She traced her finger along the path of words, translating slowly. Like all church folk of her generation, she had learned Arethousan from Queen Sophia and her foreign retinue. " 'Many around have been fulfilled among us ... these miraculous signs and omens, all the things from the heavens. I write for you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, so you may know the truth regarding this thing in which you have been instructed by word of mouth.' "

"Who is Theophilus?" asked Liath.

"Silence!" Scholastica turned the page, searching among the letters, none of which had any meaning to Sanglant. Some she was able to read; others she skipped over. He could not tell the difference. " 'God is born in the flesh . . .' This is the heresy of dual nature!" She turned from white to red as she turned another page, and another. No one spoke or moved except Biscop Alberada, who wiped her brow and shuddered. " 'Then came the blessed Daisan before the judgment of the Empress Thaissania, She of the Mask. And when he would not bow before her but spoke the truth of the Mother of Life and the Divine Logos, the Holy Word, then she announced the sentence of death. This he met joyfully, for he embraced the promise of the Chamber of Light. But his disciples with him wept bitterly. So was he taken away and put to the flaying knife and his heart was cut out of his breast . . ."'

Her voice, ragged and chill, grew several degrees colder on these words, and her gaze, startlingly hot, lifted to sear Sanglant where he sat rigid, not knowing what to do, entirely at a loss, routed from the field. She was incandescent with anger, but she went on in a tone like a bell tolling for the dead.

" And a darkness fell over the whole land . . ."'

She broke off and rose. Even the church folk shrank back from her righteous wrath. The great princes tensed.

"A darkness, indeed! This is the source of the storm that has afflicted us! This is the heresy of the Redemption, and that of the dual nature! Brought into this realm, we now see, by a renegade monastic who strayed from the church and forgot his vows, and passed the poison on into his daughter."

The words dropped like iron, more damaging than a spear thrust or a sword's cut.

Only Liath did not appear to notice. She was too busy gazing in wonder at the open page. "Do you suppose it is a forgery, or the truth? How could one tell? It looks old, but the parchment might have been scraped clean and reused. It could have been discolored to appear old. Or it might be as it seems, centuries old. Is the Arethousan gloss written contemporaneously with the original, or was it glossed later? How can we know the truth of something that happened so long ago? One would have to gather evidence from many sources ..."

She looked up expectantly. Only then did she falter, and he saw her bewilderment and the slow dawn of understanding.

As he understood, too late.

Hugh knows her better than 1 do.

Hugh had guessed she would betray herself, once the book's existence was revealed, because she could not stop asking questions. Because she wanted to know the truth, whether the Earth rotated or the sun rotated, or if the winds were born in vast bellows or set in motion by the turning spheres, or why and how arrows shot into the heavens returned to a particular spot on the Earth. If an ancient manuscript was truth, or lie. She cared nothing for the politics of the situation or the church's traditions of orthodoxy.

In that way, of course, she was a heretic, just not in the way they imagined.

"I don't know where my father came by this text," she said. 'As I already told you, I can't read it. I only knew a little Arethousan. It was taught to me by Father Hugh."

"You have already condemned yourself," said Mother Scholastica. "You admit twice over this is your father's book." She turned pages. "Here, a florilegia of sorcery, the arts of the mathematici which were condemned at the Council of Narvone. And here—what language is this?"

"It's Jinna. This is a copy of the astronomical text On the Configuration of the World—"

"An infidel's black sorcery!"

"No, it's just a description of the workings of the heavens, based in part on Ptolomaia's Tetrabiblos. There's nothing heretical in that!"

"It must be burned."

"It will not be burned!" Liath grabbed the book right out of the Mother Scholastica's grasp, clapped it shut, and hugged it to her chest.

Sanglant shut his eyes momentarily, unable to bear the looks cast his way: some gasped, some gloated, some were genuinely shocked, and Wichman, at least, was enjoying the spectacle as he scratched at his crotch.

Liath tried reason, although she must see by now that reason would fail. "I had hoped, Mother Scholastica, that you and your scholars could examine this text ..."

"It must be burned."

"But don't you want to know?" She was indignant. "If it's true, then the church mothers lied to us.

If it is a forgery, then the heresy is discredited. It never serves any purpose to burn what you fear."

How passionately she spoke! Only he, among those in this chamber, understood how literally she meant those words.

Mother Scholastica turned away from her to Sanglant. "You cannot hide, Nephew, from the poison you have brought into the court. Do you see, now, how she seduced you?"

It was true that he could not hide. He opened his eyes to face them, all gazing expectantly at him.

Was Theophanu happy to see Liath discredited, or was she merely puzzled? Ekkehard looked bored. The margraves and dukes were waiting, as soldiers in battle, to see what command he would give, by which they would judge his worth. That Scholastica and the church folk held their line was evident to all.

He shifted ground.

"I demand that Hugh of Austra be brought before me. I charge him with Henry's murder, in collaboration with Adelheid of Aosta. I charge him also with the murder of Helmut Villam." He gestured toward the door. "I have with me this Eagle, called Hathui, known to many of you as Henry's loyal servant, a particular favorite of my father's. She is my witness. She saw both deeds committed with her own eyes and will swear that Hugh is the murderer."

Gerberga smiled tightly but said nothing, neither to support or to challenge him.

"That is a serious charge," said Mother Scholastica, "especially since it is known that you bear a long-standing grudge against Hugh of Austra, in part relating to the conduct of this woman." She indicated Liath without looking at her.

"That is not all." He was determined to press the attack on the only flank that hadn't collapsed.

"Hugh of Austra was accused and found guilty of sorcery at a trial in Autun. In that same trial, Liathano was excommunicated although she was not present to defend herself nor had she any folk at that assembly to speak in her favor. I demand that those who presided at that council be brought together a second time to reconsider the evidence."

"How will you manage that, Brother?" asked Theophanu. "Constance has been shut away by Sabella. She is a prisoner in Arconia in a place called Queen's Grave, so I am given to understand. You would have to invade Arconia to get her back."

"I am regnant of Wendar and Varre, am I not? I am Henry's heir. It is no invasion if my king's progress takes me to Autun to visit my aunt."

Mother Scholastica looked at each of the biscops in turn, and they nodded one by one. "It is a fair request. The matter of heresy must never be treated lightly, since heresy is punishable by death.

But be clear on this. I will not anoint and give the church's blessing to any soul who is an excommunicate."

He looked at Liath. She met his gaze, lifting one eyebrow as if his expression surprised or troubled her, and she nodded, just once. The exchange annoyed him. She knew what he had to do, and she didn't really care. She had never wanted to be his queen; she had only gone along with it for reasons even he did not truly understand. He would never understand her well enough to trap her as Hugh had done so easily.

Well. Liath had given up more than anyone here knew. He trusted her.

"My quarrel is not with God, whose servant I am. Let me be anointed and crowned here in Quedlinhame. After this, the king's progress will ride to Gent."

"Why to Gent?" asked Ekkehard. "I don't want to go to Gent."

"Gent is the birthplace of the first Henry, Duke of Saony and later king of Wendar. It is well to honor the founder of our royal line. In Gent's cathedral, Arnulf the Elder married the last of Varre's royal heirs to his own children. On that day, Varre's noble house and its right to rule Varre passed into Wendish hands. The holy biscop of Gent can anoint and crown me again in Gent, before the multitudes who live there and in the neighboring counties. Then the king's progress will ride west through Saony and into Fesse, and from there into Arconia. Into Varre."

"A wise choice," said Mother Scholastica. "I approve."

"And yet another reason," he added. "Many there will attest to the miracle of St. Kristine, who appeared to a young Eagle on the day that the Eika horde led by Bloodheart attacked the city.

That any of Gent's townsfolk survived the sack of Gent is due to that miracle, and to that Eagle who led some of the population to safety along a secret path revealed to her by the saint. Let the deed be remembered. I know there are witnesses in Gent who will recall that day."

Mother Scholastica frowned. "I've heard such a tale, but I don't see—" But she did see. She almost laughed, her mouth twisted up in an expression that wasn't a smile. "So be it. God wish justice to be done. Let it not be said that any trial was decided before all the evidence was weighed. Is there more, Sanglant?"

"That is all for now."

"I am not your enemy, Sanglant."

"In this matter?" He shrugged. "We are not enemies, Aunt. We both wish what is best for Wendar and our royal lineage. I am my father's obedient son, and you are God's obedient servant. So be it."

"So be it," she echoed. "Let Hugh of Austra be found. As for the 1 rest, we will make ready. In three days' time, Prince Sanglant will be crowned and anointed as king."

4

HE gave you the book to make you look guilty!" said Sanglant later that day, when they returned to the relative peace of their encampment beyond the town.

She sat on a bench with Da's book on her legs. It was comforting to stroke the cover, the brass fittings, the cool leather binding that was, in this one corner, flaking from age. It needed to be oiled.

"This book condemns you by its existence. That's why they want it burned."

"I will never let them burn this book, or indeed, any book!"

"You're being stubborn!"

She met his gaze calmly. "I am right."

He sighed, pacing, rubbing his head. "Maybe you are. I don't know."

"But they're right," she added, "that another woman, one trained to court, would be a more suitable queen."

He looked at her with disgust and left the tent. She heard his voice rise outside. "Fulk! Fulk! Is there any news of the fugitive yet?"

Moments of peace were not easily discovered on the king's progress. For once, remarkably, there was not a single soul in the tent with her. Only a thread of light filtered through the smoke hole at the center of the scaffolding that held up the canvas, but because she had salamander eyes she had light enough to read the beloved words. She knew them all by heart, of course, but it gave her such intense pleasure to touch each letter, each word, and let the meaning flower before her eyes.

Astronomy concerns itself with the revolutions of the heavens, the rising and setting of the constellations, their movements and names, the motions of the stars and planets, Sun and Moon, and the laws governing these motions and all their variations.

"Are you reading? Your lips aren't moving."

Liath was so startled she almost overset the bench, and then was so embarrassed that she laughed nervously as she identified the tall woman who had slipped quietly into the tent and stood examining the furnishings with interest: a bed, a table, two chairs, two chests, two benches, and a half dozen carpets overlapping each other.

"It is true, then. The servants must all sleep outside. I heard that in Arethousa the emperor dines in solitude at the high table, not sharing his platter or his conversation with his companions. It must be an eastern custom."

"Margrave Waltharia." She rose. "Pray, be seated."

"Thank you." She sat on the bench next to Liath, very close, and Liath had to sit down right next to her or risk insulting her offer of intimacy. She was dressed in skirts cut for riding, and she smelled of horses. "So, it transpires that you are not the great granddaughter of Emperor Taillefer."

"I was misled," said Liath cautiously, "by the woman who claimed to be my mother."

"You could have lied. No one would know differently, since according to all reports it is certain that the Holy Mother Anne—who claimed to be your mother—is now dead."

"It isn't the truth, so it would be wrong to say it was. Anyway, I never desired to be born to such a position."

"Yet you carry yourself as if it is already understood." The words were said without rancor.

Waltharia was not angry or suspicious, only blunt. "You are a puzzle. And you do gleam a little, in this dim light."

"Do I?" she asked, genuinely surprised. She looked at her hands but could see nothing unusual.

"Did you not before?"

"I don't know. No one ever said anything." No one but Hugh, but that was too intimate a confession to make to a woman she did not know, and one who had been, in times past, her husband's most famous lover. "Would you marry him, if you could?" Liath asked. "Mother Scholastica suggested it."

Waltharia shook her head without any sign that the question irritated her. "She's a canny tactician.

She was only saying that to draw out a reaction from the others. She'd no more wish me wed to Sanglant than Gerberga or Theophanu would."

"But would you?"

She smiled. She was not a beautiful woman, the kind who turns heads, but she was attractive, and strong, and healthy, and her gaze was clean and clear. She had power and knew how to wield it.

"No, I would not, although you are right to wonder, because I am powerfully attracted to him. I might have when I was young and my dear father was still alive—years ago—but what I wish for has changed. I am margrave of the Villam lands. There is much to be gained for a family who can hold on in the marchlands. I take the long view. Marriage to Sanglant would not substantially aid my house in any way that my loyalty to the Wendish throne does not already do. And it would restrict my power. No, I have in mind to marry Lord Wichman."

"Wichman! You can't be serious! He's a beast . . ."

Waltharia was already chuckling.

Liath smiled awkwardly. "Ah. You were only joking."

"It would be more tempting if he were not quite so coarse. To marry a son of the royal house would bring an important alliance to my family. Still, I have in mind some lord out of Varre, one who will be grateful for a measure of distance between him and his older siblings. Sanglant promises to bring one back for me when the progress returns from Varre."

"Will he know what you would like?" Liath felt herself bit as she said it, wondering how Sanglant might understand a woman like Waltharia so well that she would trust him to find her a husband.

Waltharia's mood turned somber with startling ease. Her face remained calm, but her hands twisted up the fabric of her riding skirt. "Druthmar was a good man. My father chose him for me.

I mourn him. You know, they never found his body. I must believe he is dead, but it is hard not to hope and pray that he is still alive and may somehow find his way back to me."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Waltharia looked at her for a long moment, then smiled softly and sadly. "So you are. I thank you for it."

Liath traced one end of the book compulsively, not knowing what to say next. The situation seemed so odd to her. At last, she blurted out, "I don't know why you're here. What do you want?"

"Your measure. You are a puzzle, and in a way you are an obstacle. I believe that Sanglant will be a better regnant for Wendar than any of his legitimate siblings. Wendar needs a strong regnant in these dark days."

"That's true. I know why you think I am an obstacle."

"Do you? Sanglant is so companionable and amiable and competent that it is easy to forget he is also like a dog in refusing to give up the things he craves. His father spoiled him. Even Queen Sophia—a very fine and strong-minded woman who was particular about her prerogatives—let the boy run wild in her chambers. He means to become regnant, despite being a bastard. He means to have you as his queen, despite the objections of most of the noble lords and clerics in this realm, who quite rightly object to your lack of rank, your suspicious heritage, and the evident fact that you know sorcery. That's leaving aside the charge of heresy, and the excommunication.

How these two desires can be reconciled is the question. I admit he has wrung victory out of defeat in terrible situations, but this battlefield is not the one he is accustomed to. Do you aspire to be queen, to rule beside him?"

"No, in truth, I do not. But I won't leave him."

'Ah. And if a compliant young woman of suitable rank can be found—God help her!—who would agree to be queen and accept you as his concubine? Would you accept such an arrangement?"

Liath frowned, but she owed him this much, that she truly consider such a course of action.

Waltharia waited, perfectly at ease as the light from outside faded and the space within the tent darkened until every shape was only a deeper cast of shadow, even her own. From beyond the walls of the tent came the many noises of the camp settling down as twilight fell over them: horses stomping and blowing, men singing or calling out orders, a wagon's creaking rumble as objects were moved, a dog's bark, the distant piercing cry of the golden griffin as it soared above.

Liath felt herself caught within the inner heart of the camp, unseen but measured as the outer seeming went about its public life.

"No, I couldn't live with such an arrangement."

Waltharia nodded. "So be it." Nothing in her tone revealed whether she approved or disapproved of Liath's answer. "It can be done, but it will not be easy. You must agree to be patient and to work at this one step at a time."

"I can be patient. There is a thing he lacks, Lady Waltharia."

"Is there?" she said with a laugh. "I have not yet discovered it, then. No, I pray you, I am only jesting. What do you need?"

"You see in what manner we are dressed. Sanglant's road has been a difficult one. He and his army escaped the cataclysm with little more than their weapons and horses and the clothes on their backs. A regnant cannot be anointed and crowned without vestments appropriate to such a ceremony."

"Yes, it's well you warned me. I will see that suitable robes are brought, although it will be difficult with his height. Still, it can be managed." Unexpectedly, she reached out and took Liath's hand in hers. 'Ah. Your skin is warm. Do you have a fever?"

"No. I'm never sick with such things."

"Is it true?" she whispered. "That your mother was a daimone of the upper air? A creature of fire?"

"It's true."

"What does it mean? Do you have a soul?"

'All creatures created by God have souls."

"Can you fly, as it is said daimones can?"

All at once, grief choked her as she remembered what she had lost. Barely, she was able to rasp out the words, although she didn't know why she should confess something so dangerous, so terrible, and so private to a woman she scarcely knew. Her rival. Possibly her ally.

"Once I could, but not on Earth. Only in the heavens."

"Have you walked in the heavens? Have you seen the Chamber of Light?"

"No. Only souls unchained by death can walk there. But I have climbed through the armature of the spheres, I have climbed the ladder of the heavens. I have seen . . . such things that I weep to recall them. So much light."

'As in the prophet's vision. Yet you are here."

She nodded, unable to speak.

"You were forced to return?"

She shook her head.

"Did you come back of your own volition, for him?"

"For him," she said hoarsely. "For the child."

'Ah." She turned Liath's hand over and placed the tip of a finger in the middle of Liath's palm, as if reading something from that touch. "That was a great sacrifice. I think even Mother Scholastica does not understand this."

"Why are you here, Lady Waltharia?"

"Do you think I mean to curry favor for my family by befriending you?"

"I admit ... I don't know what I was thinking."

"I have already told you. Wendar suffers, and Sanglant will be a strong regnant. To support him, I will support you. But you must help me. No more scenes like the one played today in Mother Scholastica's study. Do not hand them the weapon they can use to pierce you with."

"Yes, I understand that. I thought she would be my ally. She is a scholar! She ought to want to know the truth!"

"She is a daughter of the royal line and the most powerful abbess in the land. Scholarship is not her first consideration."

"No, perhaps not."

"Have you taken thought to what you will do when Sanglant goes to the church to be crowned and anointed?"

"Not yet. A little."

Waltharia nodded. "If there is aught else you wish to ask me, if you desire my counsel, send the Eagle with a message. My stewards know that she is allowed into my presence at any hour of day or night."

"The Eagle?"

Waltharia released her hand and stood. "The one who witnessed my father's murder."

She left as precipitously as she had come. In her wake, a woman entered bearing a lantern whose commonplace flame illuminated her familiar face and wry smile.

"Hathui! Were you outside all this time?"

"I brought the margrave here."

'Ah. It would make sense that you must speak with the margrave about her father, and what you saw."

"Yes, for my own part. For yours, however, she is only the first."

"The first?"

Hathui hung the lamp from one of the horizontal poles that supported the canvas ceiling. Then she turned, still smiling, and shook her head as she might at a child who refuses to go to bed when she's told. "Who will approach you, to gain your favor and your notice."

"There are others?"

"Oh, yes," said Hathui wickedly. "But I've put off the rest until tomorrow."

Liath laughed helplessly, angrily, and wiped tears from her eyes. "Books are easier to understand."

"For some."

"Ai, God, Hathui. What am I to do?"

"Learn quickly."

Hathui's scarlet-trimmed Eagle's cloak was certainly the worse for so much wear, and it had been mended in a dozen spots. Her brass Eagle's badge glowed in the lamplight.

"It was easier riding as an Eagle," said Liath. "I remember when I first saw you and Manfred.

And Wolfhere."

"I remember," said Hathui in a low voice, frowning.

"Do you think Wolfhere is dead?"

"No."

"Do you know where he is?"

"No."

"I didn't see him through the crown. He wasn't one of those weaving the spell. But Hugh was. It's strange, now that I reflect on it. It was only a touch, at the end, but he was thinking of you."

"Hugh of Austra was thinking of me?" Hathui's voice shook, and real fear creased her lips and eyes.

That expression made Liath recall that day back in Heart's Rest when Wolfhere had rescued her from Hugh. She had been so weak then, not in body so much as in spirit. As skittish as a calf, Hanna had once said. Hathui hadn't seemed frightened then. In fact, she had seemed as clever and strong as any woman can be who knows herself and her power and her place in the world and is satisfied with all of these things.

"The one who thought of you was with Hugh. Hugh was using him to absorb the power of the backlash that comes at the tail of such a powerful spell. Hugh must have known that the people who wove the spell would die, so he sacrificed this other man in his place."

"Who are you speaking about? I already know Hugh is a murderer twice over."

"Three times, then. This other man thought—that he would never see you again unless you met on the other side."

"The other side?"

"I don't know where that is."

"I know," Hathui whispered hoarsely. Even in lamplight, with shadows thrown helter-skelter by the sway of the lamp, it was easy to see how the blood had drained from her face. "My grandmother was an unrepentant heathen. Even after she professed to enter the Circle of Unity she still set out offerings for the Old Ones. You said Hugh is a murderer three times. What did you mean?"

"It was no one I had ever met, but I felt a kinship with him. He was seeking the same thing I seek.

The heart of the universe. His name ..." So much had happened so quickly; the spell had overwhelmed her. She had grasped his name, but she could not remember it.

"It must have been Zacharias!" murmured Hathui, weeping, "is he dead, then? Truly dead?"

"Yes. I felt him die, through the spell. Who is he?"

Hathui sank to the carpet as she sobbed. Liath knelt beside her, resting a hand on her shoulder, but she was helpless to comfort her.

"M-my brother. Ai, God. How? How?"

"Hugh of Austra was part of Anne's weaving."

"You destroyed the spell by killing Holy Mother Anne."

"No. I killed Anne, it's true. I did my part. But I had allies, whose names I do not know. It was the plan made by the ancient ones. I was only the final weapon they unleashed. Zacharias did his part as well. How they came in contact with him I do not know, but in the end he cast himself into the crown that Hugh was weaving. Northeast of here, somewhere out beyond the marchlands.

Because of what he did, the entire northern span of the weaving was knotted and tangled and thereby ruined."

"Zacharias did that?" Hathui gasped through her tears.

Not alone, Liath thought, but she hesitated. Others had done their part. Pale creatures erupting out of paler sands had consumed Brother Severus. An Eika prince had killed the pair of clerics weaving the crown in Alba.

"Zacharias accepted death, to save what he loved most."

For a long time they remained without moving, Hathui weeping, Liath beside her, wishing she knew what words of comfort would ease Hathui's grief but keeping silence, because silence was all she had to offer. A gust of wind rocked the tent, and long after it had departed the lantern's metal handle squeaked softly against the wooden pole as it swung back and forth, back and forth, the light cresting and troughing in the corners until at last the motion stilled.

'Ai, God," Hathui breathed. "So he is gone. Truly gone. Oh, Zacharias. He was probably afraid."

"We're all afraid. What lies within us can be as fearful a thing as all those terrors that lie without.

He had courage when he needed it."

"That is enough," said Hathui through her tears. She sat back on her heels and placed a hand over Liath's. "I'll stand by you, Liath, whatever comes."

"Will you stand by Sanglant?"

"He has already won my loyalty."

"Then I accept your offer gladly, Hathui, and I'll tell you, there is none I value more."

Hathui's gaze narrowed as she examined Liath's face. "Did you know your eyes shine when it's dark? I never noticed that before. It's like a touch of blue fire. What lies within you, truly, Liath?"

"Power enough," said Liath softly, "that I am afraid of what it can do if let go unchecked."

"No!" said Sanglant from outside, clearly annoyed, "but let word be brought to me at once if there is any news."

Liath stood. Sanglant entered, and indeed he looked mightily irritated. Then he saw Hathui. He knelt at once to set a hand on her shoulder.

"What is this? Have you come to some hurt?"

"No, Your Majesty. Liath recalled a vision she had. She knows what became of my brother."