"Mayhap not," said Henri, "for it seemed to me there was peace in Medemelacha, and order, too.

I saw no beggars on those streets."

"Driven out or murdered," suggested Aunt Bel, "so as not to bother them who didn't wish to share. Who stole all good things for themselves."

"Perhaps," said Henri, "but I saw Eika and human folk working side by side. None of them looked like they were starving. I don't know. What do you think, Alain?"

Alain had been staring at the clouds, wondering if the light had changed, heralding a change in the dense layer and perhaps promising sunshine. The talk had flowed past him, although he heard it all. "War brings hunger in its wake. What is this now, these clouds, these sickly fields, this fear and these portents, if not echoes of an ancient war?"

"It's God's will if the sun don't shine, or the rains don't fall," said Artald. "So Deacon teaches."

"That storm last autumn was not made by God," said Alain. "That was made by human hands, in ancient days."

They looked at him, as they always did, as if they did not know if he were a madman or a prophet, and then looked at each other and away again, at the trees, at the clouds, at the startling appearance of a robin hopping along the ground under the skeletal branches of an oak.

"Look there!" cried Stancy. "Look at that!"

"Mayhap spring will come after all," said Henri.

The others kept walking, but Alain halted and with a gesture commanded the hounds to move away down the road. Blanche hovered beside him as he moved slowly forward until he was close enough to kneel and stretch out his hand. He breathed, finding the rhythm of the wind in the weeds and the respiration of the tree. The bird hopped toward him, then onto his palm, turning its head to stare at him first with the right eye, then the left. That gaze was black and bright, touched with a shine.

"Come quietly and slowly, Blanche, and kneel beside me. No fast movements."

Scarcely breathing, she crouched next to him and held out her hand. After a moment, the robin hopped onto her fingers, gave her that same piercing examination, and abruptly spread its wings and flew away.

She burst into tears. "How do you do that?"

"Just be patient, little one. If you find what is quiet within yourself, even the wild creatures will trust you."

"No one trusts me."

"That robin did."

She sniffed, wiping eyes and nose.

"Best come now," he said. "Let's hope we see more birds this spring, for it's an ill portent to have them all vanish like that." He tilted his head back to look up into the bare trees. "For so it was then. An ill portent."

"Here, lad, are you having another headache?" Henri had returned, leaving the others waiting up the road. "Let me help you up if you're not feeling well. No need to go on today if you've a mind to go back home."

"No, no, Father. I'm well enough. Just remembering a forest once where all the birds had fled.

But there was a terrible black heart alive in that place. That was why they fled. They feared evil."

Henri looked around nervously as Blanche whimpered. "Think you we're haunted?"

"Here?" He patted Blanche tenderly on the head. "Nay, I think it was the wind blew the poor creatures so far that it's taken them this long, those that survived, to find their way back home."

"So it may be," said Henri, still holding his arm and gazing at him. "So it may be. A poor creature may be blown a far way indeed before it turns its gaze toward home."

They caught up to the others, who set on their way without question or comment. They smelled the tannery before they saw it, and marked the square steeple of the village church rising above trees. In the common ground and meadow in front of the church, an assembly had gathered by the chair and table where the count's chatelaine held court to choose young folk to serve for a year at Lavas Holding and to receive the tithes and taxes the village paid to the count in exchange for his protection in times of war. Alain did not at first recognize the old woman who sat at the table. It was not until she looked up and saw him walking among his kinfolk, and turned her face away in shame, that he realized this woman was Chatelaine Dhuoda, but so aged with white hair and wrinkled face that anyone might be excused for mistaking her for a woman twenty years older.

She rose and, bracing herself on a cane, came around the table. As the crowd parted to let him through, she dropped to her knees.

"I beg you, my lord, return to Lavas Holding. Forgive us our sins. Come back."

Henri whistled under his breath. Sorrow barked. The chatelaine, noticing the two black hounds, wept quietly.

"Does Lord Geoffrey know you are here?" Alain asked.

"He does not, my lord. He is the false one. He lied to gain the county for his daughter."

"Did he? Is he not descended legitimately from the brother of the old count, Lavastina, she who was mother of the first Charles Lavastine and great grandmother of Lavastine?"

"He is, my lord."

"How has he lied?"

"If he had not lied, then why do we suffer? He abused you, my lord, because he feared you. Why would he fear you if he did not believe that you were, in truth, Lavastine's rightful heir?"

He nodded. "I'll go, Mistress Dhuoda."

"To Lavas Holding?"

"I'll go, because I must. But I pray you, do not address me as 'my lord.' It isn't fitting. I am not the heir to Lavas County."

"Yet the hounds, my lord!" Angry, she gestured toward the hounds, who sat one to his right and one to his left. "The hounds are proof! They never obeyed any man but the Lavas heir!"

"Is that the truth?" he asked her. "Or are you only looking at it from the wrong side? Any man but the Lavas heir, or any man but the heir of the elder Charles?"

"I don't understand you, my lord. The hounds themselves are the proof."

"I am ready to leave," he said, "as soon as you are able to go."

It took her only until midday to collect what little Osna village could afford this year in taxes, and as Lavas Holding hadn't the wherewithal, so she said, to feed any more mouths, she took no young folk out of the village to serve the count for the customary year. The cleric with her filled in the account book that listed payments and shortfalls, and there were far more of the latter than the former.

"It seems you will leave us again," said Aunt Bel to Alain, "and it grieves me that you go. I do not know when we will see you."

"I do not know," he told her. "My path has been a strange one. I know only that our way must part here."

She wept, but only a little. "There is always a place for you with us, Alain, though I think you are not really ours."

He kissed her, and she hugged him. The others, too, gave him in turn a parting wish and a kiss or an embrace, depending on their nature.

"I pray you," he said to Stancy and Artald, "stay strong, and keep the others well. Do not let the family splinter."

"Be temperate," he said to Julien, and to Agnes, "Don't wait forever. Marry again in another year, if you've had no word of your lost husband."

"I should go to Medemelacha myself!" she said fiercely, but in an undertone, so the others wouldn't hear. "But Uncle won't let me. He says it's the place of women to guard the hearth and men to do the dangerous traveling, as it says in the Holy Verses. Everyone says I should just marry Fotho, but I don't want to! I want to go to Medemelacha and see if there's any news of Guy."

"Then make a bargain. If they let you go this spring, when the sea is passable, and if you find no word of him, you'll make no objection to marrying as Aunt Bel wishes."

All this time Blanche clung to his arm, lips pinched together and expression so curdled that it would turn sweet milk to sour.

He came to Henri last of all.

"I am sorry to see you leaving, Son. But I know you must go. You were never ours, only a gift we held for a time until it was reclaimed."

At last, what calm had sustained him shattered. Alain could not speak as he embraced the man who had raised him. Blanche began to wail.

"No! No! I won't let you go!"

Henri looked both amused and annoyed, as they all did when dealing with Blanche. "You'll have a hard time scraping that barnacle off."

"Perhaps." Alain did not try to dislodge her, although the others came swarming to scold at her and tug at her. "Perhaps best not to," he said, which made them all regard him in surprise.

"What do you mean?" Aunt Bel asked.

Julien was flushed, looking ashamed, and Agnes rolled her eyes in disgust.

"She doesn't thrive," said Alain. "She's like a tree growing all twisted, and not straight. Let me take her with me as far as Lavas Holding."

"Who will care for her?" demanded Agnes. "Who would show kindness to a creature as unlikable as she is?"

"They'd as like turn her out with the chickens as keep her in the house," said Stancy. "Poor mite."

She looked at Julien, who only ducked his head. "If you'd speak up for her more, Jul, and scold her when she's deserved it, then she might not be what she is."

"No! I won't let you leave!" Blanche shrieked, too caught up in her tantrum to listen.

"I can see that she is taken care of."

"I don't like it," said Aunt Bel. "Lavas Holding hasn't enough to take in young folk for their year of service, the chatelaine said so herself. I won't have it said I turned out my own grandchild and sent her to scratch with the chickens."

"Do you trust me, Aunt Bel?"

"Well, truly, lad, I do."

"Let me see what can be made of her in fresh soil." That they none of them liked the child made them too ashamed to agree. "Blanche! Hush!"

She quieted, but kept her arms locked around his waist. Tears streaked her dirty face as she looked first up at him and then at the others.

Aunt Bel looked at each member of her family in turn, but they only frowned or shrugged. "Very well, Alain. It may be for the best."

"What for the best?" muttered Blanche, with a distrusting sniff.

"You will come with me as far as Lavas Holding," he said to her, "as long as you behave and do exactly as I say. Which you will."

The words stunned her. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and frowned around it.

"But she's no clothing, nothing. I'll not send a pauper—!"

"It will be well, Aunt Bel. Best we go now, and let it be swift. The chatelaine is packing up."

They wept, as did he. Blanche did not weep, not even when her father kissed her, not even when Agnes gave her the fine blue cloak off her own back that had been part of her wedding clothes.

It was hardest for Alain to let go of Henri, and in the end it was Henri who broke their embrace and set a hand on Alain's shoulder to look him in the eye. "Go on, then, Son. You'll do what's right." He brushed a finger over the blemish. "Do not forget us."

"You are always with me, Father."

Alain kissed him one last time. He slung his pack over his back and, with Blanche clutching his left hand, he followed Chatelaine Dhuoda and her skeletal retinue out of Osna village and back into the world beyond.

2

AT first, Anna wasn't sure what noise had startled her out of sleep. Blessing breathed beside her, as still as a mouse and all curled up with head practically touching bent knees. There was a servingwoman called Julia, a spy of the queen's, who slept on a pallet laid over the closed trap, but her soft snoring kept on steadily. Then the scuff sounded again, and after that a single rap of wood against stone.

Anna raised up on one elbow to see Lady Elene leaning out the window, looking ready to throw herself to her death. Anna heaved herself up and stumbled over to her, stubbing a toe on the bench, cursing.

"Look!" said Elene. As Anna moved up beside her, Elena's hair brushed her skin, a feather's touch, and Anna shivered and gulped down a sob for thinking so abruptly of Thiemo and Matto, whose hair might have brushed her in such a way.

"What lies off there?" Elene pointed. "See those lights?"

From this vantage, in daylight, one might gaze south over countryside falling away into rolling hills. Not a single candle burned in Novomo. The town was as dark as the Pit. Closer at hand, Anna inhaled the strong scent of piss from that spot along the curve of the tower where the soldiers commonly relieved themselves.

But distantly, like a show of lightning along an approaching storm front, she saw a shower of sparks and an arc of light so radiant that her breath caught as she stared.

"What is that, my lady?"

"There must be a crown out there, although Wolfhere never spoke of it. Someone is weaving in that crown. Yet how could they do so, with no stars to guide them?"

"Why do you need stars, my lady?"

"It's the secret of the mathematici, Anna. I can't tell you. But I can say that it is weaving, of a kind. You must have stars in sight to guide your hand and eye."

Anna liked the way Lady Elene talked easily to her. She was proud, but not foolish, and she had taken Anna's measure and measured her loyalties and while it was true that the daughter of a duke did not confide in a common servant girl, she did not scorn her either. Indeed, the more it annoyed Blessing when Lady Elene paid attention to her particular attendant, the more Lady Elene showed her favor to Anna, which Anna supposed was ill done of her, but in truth it was nice to have a mature companion who did not sulk and shriek and throw tantrums at every least provocation. It was pleasant to speak to a person whose understanding was well formed and who had a great deal of wit, which she did not always let show to those she did not trust.

"Yet look!" She was more shadow than shape, but with a sharp breath she shifted and Anna felt the pressure of her hips against her own as Elene stretched out her hand again. "That's someone come through the crown from elsewhere. Who could it be? Who might have survived?"

Anna shivered again, mostly from the cold. "Who else knows the secrets of the crowns, my lady?"

"Marcus and Holy Mother Anne and my grandmother are dead, as is that other woman out of the south. Sister Abelia, they called her."

"How do you know they are dead?"

"I wish to God I had not witnessed, but I did. They are dead. Yet one of the others might have survived. The ones in the north I could not see after the weaving was tangled."

"If it's true, could you trust them, my lady?"

"Not one of them, so Wolfhere says."

"Can you trust Wolfhere, my lady?"

"So you have asked before!" Elene laughed, although her amusement was as bitter as her tone.

"He is the only one I would trust. Well, him, and my grandmother, and my poor dead mother, may she rest in the Chamber of Light, but she can't help me now."

"What of your father, the duke, my lady?"

She shrugged, shoulder moving against Anna's arm. "He gave me up, knowing I would die. He did as his mother asked, and I obeyed."

Daring greatly, Anna placed a hand over Elene's as comfort, and Elene did not draw her hand away. They watched until the spit and spark of light vanished, and for a long time after that they continued watching, although there was nothing to see.

"Holy Mother! I pray you. Wake up."

Antonia had the habit of waking swiftly. "What is it, Sister Mara?"

"Come quickly, I pray you, Holy Mother. The queen has sent for you."

She allowed her servants to dress her in a light robe and a cloak. For so late in spring it was yet cool as winter when it should have been growing steadily warmer as each day led them closer to summer. Lamps lit her way, although a predawn glamour limned the arches and corners of the palace.

A score of folk blundered about on the open porch before the queen's chambers. They parted to let her through, and she made her way inside to find another score of them cluttering the chamber and all of them dead silent, even those who were weeping. Within, Mathilda slept. Adelheid sat on her own bed with Berengaria limp in her arms.

Only the dead know such peace.

Adelheid looked up. "So it has come, Holy Mother. She has breathed her last." Her eyes were dry, her expression composed but fixed with an inner fury caged and contained.

"Poor child." Antonia pressed her hand on the cold brow, and spoke a prayer. The tiny child had lost almost all flesh during its long illness. With its spirit fled, it seemed little more than a skeletal doll, its skin dull and its hair tangled with the last of the sweating fever that had consumed it.

"Even now she climbs the ladder that leads to the Chamber of Light, Your Majesty. You must rejoice for her, for her suffering has ended."

"Mathilda is all I have."

Antonia found this shift disconcerting, although she admired a woman who had already thought through the practicalities of her situation. "You are yet young, Your Majesty. You may make another marriage."

"With what man? There is no one I can trust, and none whose rank is worthy of me."

"That may be, but you will have to marry again."

"I must. Or Mathilda must be betrothed, to make an advantageous alliance."

"Mathilda!"

"Hush, I pray you, Holy Mother. I do not want her to wake."

"If no suitable alliance exists for you, how should it exist for her, Your Majesty?"

She did not answer. From the other chamber they heard the ring of a soldier's footsteps. A woman came running in.

"Captain Falco has urgent news, Your Majesty."

"I'll come." Adelheid handed the dead child to the nurse, who accepted the burden gravely but without any of the tears that afflicted the rest of them. Her eyes were hollow with exhaustion, that was all.

Adelheid rose and shook out her gown. Strange to think of her dressed when she ought to have been sleeping, but she often watched over the child at night these latter days since everyone knew that the angel of God came most often in the hour before dawn to carry away the souls of the innocent.

Captain Falco waited in the outer chamber. He was alert, his broad face remarkably lively. "You will not believe it, Your Majesty! Come quickly, I pray you."

Only one fountain in Novomo's palace still played, with a splash of water running through its cunning mechanism. In this courtyard, where there was also a shaded arbor and a fine expanse of lavender and a once splendid garden of sage and chrysanthemums, Lady Lavinia hovered under the arcade and wrung her hands, looking flustered as she stared at a man washing face and hands in the pool.

Antonia caught up short, stricken and breathless, but Adelheid did not falter. She strode out to him as eager as a lover, and as he rose and turned, obviously surprised to see her, she slapped him right across the cheek. Half her retinue gasped. The rest choked down exclamations. She did not notice. Fury burned in her. She looked ready to spit.

"You killed Henry!"

He touched his cheek. He did not bow to her nor make any homage, yet neither did he scorn her.

"We were allies once, Your Majesty."

"No! You seduced me with your poisonous arguments. It's your fault that Henry is dead!"

"Surely it is the fault of his son, who killed him. And, if we must, the fault of Anne, who would have killed Henry had you and I not saved him by our intervention." He spoke in a calm voice, not shouting, yet clearly enough that everyone crowding about the courtyard heard his reasoned words and his harmonious voice. "I beg you, Your Majesty! I pray you! Do not forget that we wept and sorrowed over what had to be done. But we agreed it together. We saved him. It was his son who killed him."

"If you are not gone from Novomo by nightfall, I will have you executed for treason."

She swept her skirts away so the cloth would not brush against him, and walked off. In a flood, her retainers followed her, leaving Antonia with a stricken Lady Lavinia and a dozen serving folk who by their muttering and shifting did not know what to do or where to go.

"Is your daughter well, Lady Lavinia?" Hugh asked her kindly.

She stifled a sob, and said, only, "Yes, Lord Hugh. She survived the storm, which is more than I can say for many."

"God has favored you, then. I am gladdened to hear it."

She sobbed, and forced it back, and wavered, not knowing what to do. Perhaps she loved him better than she loved Adelheid. It would be easy to do so.

"Lady Lavinia," said Antonia. "If you will. I shall set matters right. The queen is distraught, as you know, because of her grief."

"Yes! Poor mite. Yes, indeed."

"Then be at rest, and do what you must. Lord Hugh, come with me, if you please."

He bowed his head most humbly and with that grace of manner that marked him, and with his boots still dusty from whatever road he had recently walked, he went with her to her chambers.

There she sat him down on a bench and had the servants bring spiced wine. A cleric unpinned his brooch and set his cloak aside.

"What is this?" he asked, observing the room. "There hang the vestments belonging to the skopos."

"I am now mother of the church, Lord Hugh. Be aware of that."

The news startled him, but he absorbed it, sipping at the wine not greedily but thoughtfully.

"Much has changed. I have heard in this hour fearful stories. The guards at Novomo's gate told me that Darre is a wasteland."

"So it is, as terrible as the pit. Stinking with sulfur and completely uninhabitable. Now. Listen.

You have done me a favor in the past, and I shall return it, although I am not sure you are what I had at first hoped."

He smiled, but she could not tell what he was thinking. He was beautiful, indeed, and weary, and she did not yet know where he had come from and what story he would tell her, but it did not hurt her eyes to watch him as she related all that had happened in the last six months and the plight confronting this remnant of Aosta's royal court. He never once flinched or exclaimed or cried out in horror. Little surprised him, and that only when she revealed what prisoners they had in hand.

"Truly?" he asked her, and repeated himself. "The daughter of Sanglant and Liath? Truly?" He flushed.

"Be careful, Lord Hugh, else you reveal yourself too boldly."

"What do you mean?"

"Do not think I do not know."

That caught him, because exhaustion made him vulnerable.

"I have an idea," she added, "but it will take time, and plotting, and patience."

He lifted a hand most elegantly to show that he heard her, and that he was willing to let her proceed.

"What prospects have you, Lord Hugh? Why are you come here, to Aosta, when you were sent north by Anne into the land of your ancestors to work your part in the weaving?"

He smiled, but did not answer.

"Where have you come from?"

"From Wendar. I survived Anne's sorcery, as you have surely already understood. I set another in my place and in this manner I am living and he is dead."

"In this manner," she noted dryly, "did Sister Meriam sacrifice herself in favor of keeping her granddaughter alive."

"I am not Sister Meriam."

"Indeed, you are not, Lord Hugh."

"What do you want of me?"

"Queen Adelheid needs a husband. Why should it not be you?"

He rocked back, almost oversetting the bench, then steadied it. "I am a presbyter, as you see me, Holy Mother. It would be impossible. I cannot marry."

"If I gave you dispensation to leave the church, you could marry. There was often talk among the servants and the populace about what a handsome couple you and Adelheid made. Henry being older, and you so young and beautiful and beloved by the Aostans of Darre."

"I am faithful to God, Your Holiness. I do not seek marriage."

"You lust. Can you say otherwise?"

His lips thinned. His hands curled into fists. His eyes were a cold blue, as brittle as ice. "I am faithful, Your Holiness."

"To God?"

He shut his eyes.

"To a woman you can never have."

That fierce gaze startled, when he opened his eyes so abruptly. "I had her once!" He slammed a fist into the bench, then set his jaw and shut his eyes again and took in three trembling breaths before he quieted himself. "I am faithful to her. To no one but her. And after her, to God. And after God, to Henry."

"Who is dead."

"I did my best to save him!"

"I do not doubt it," she said, to mollify him. "What of Henry's son? Is she with Prince Sanglant?"

He could not speak. He was shaken, and tired, and so gnawed through with jealousy that he had become fragile with it, ready to fall to pieces but not yet shattered.

"This is too much and too quickly," she said more gently. "You are only arrived after a long and undoubtedly arduous journey. How came you here?"

"I journeyed by horse southwest from Quedlinhame until I found a crown. With my astrolabe it was a simple enough thing to measure precisely my route to Novomo. This I have taught myself that Anne did not know and had not mastered. I can go anywhere whose destination is known and measured. Two weeks only I lost in the crossing. Soon I shall have it down to a handful of days."

'And all alone, no retinue at all."

"None, except the beast, who resides in the lady's stables now. I have fled those who do not trust me. Even my own kinfolk were turned against me by poisonous words." Weary, indeed, to admit so much so honestly.

"I do not trust you, Lord Hugh. Why should I?"

"Trust that I have no power save my knowledge of the arts of the mathematici. My mother is dead, and my sisters hate me. Queen Adelheid wishes me gone. That bastard who calls himself king has the power to banish me."

'And he holds the woman you desire close to his heart."

"Damn him!"

He wept tears of rage.

The sight so astounded her that she could not move except to wave away the servants who had come into the room, hearing his distress. Her amazement allowed her the patience to wait him out and to explore the lineaments of his anger, shown in the curl of his hands, the stiffness of his jaw, and the way his lower lip trembled like that of a thwarted child. She had never seen him lose control so nakedly.

So might an angel cry, hearing of an insult to God which Their creature was powerless to avenge.

When he had calmed a little, she touched his hand. "I will speak with the queen. You will rest.

Later we will speak again. There is a pallet in the outer chamber. No one will disturb you. Ask for food and drink, anything you desire."

"You cannot give me what I desire," he said, voice still hoarse with tears.

"You ought to desire God's favor, Lord Hugh, not a mere woman. Mere flesh."

"You do not know what she is."

"But I do know. I saw what she is, and a fearful thing it was to see. You forget I was there at Verna. I think even my galla might not touch one such as she. She is very dangerous, and no doubt that makes her sweeter and brighter in your eyes. I think she is too dangerous to let live."

"No!"

"Then chained. Dead, or chained.'

He had not dried his eyes, but the tears lingering on his face did not mar his beauty. "I will do anything to get her back."

"Will you? Will you even marry Adelheid?"

With his chin dipped down, his gaze up at her had an almost flirtatious quality. "How will that aid Adelheid's cause, or my own? Or yours, Your Holiness?"

"In no possible way, if Adelheid does not forgive you and take you back into her counsel. As for the rest, consider who is Adelheid's heir—younger by far and easier to steer on a proper course."

That made him think. He sat in silence, gaze drawn in as at an image she could not touch, although she could guess it: Antonia as skopos and Hugh as the deceased queen's consort, ruling Mathilda as regents.

"Best to rest, Lord Hugh," she added kindly, "and see if sleep and food ease this trouble that disturbs your mind."

"It never will," he whispered to himself.

She nodded, humoring him, but he was far gone, and indeed when he was taken aside to the waiting pallet, hidden behind a curtain, he slept at once and heavily, dead to the world, as it was said by the poets, who knew from sordid experience how cravings make a man pregnable who might otherwise be fortified with temperance.

He slept all day and all night while the queen was caught up in her sorrow, seeing her younger daughter wrapped in a shroud and carried in a box to the crypt in Novomo's fine church, the only suitable place to lay a princess to rest. The bell tolled seven times, to ring the dead child's soul up through the spheres. A posset laced with valerian helped the queen to sleep as well, that same night.

The next morning dawned peacefully, as Lady Lavinia had cause to remark when Antonia met her by the fountain after Prime.

"I've had word that a train of merchants will reach Novomo by midday. They have ridden all the way from the eastern provinces. One is said to have come as far as from Arethousa! The queen, even in her grief, is sensible of their long journey and wishes to see them feasted properly this afternoon."

"She is wise. If there is no entertainment, then I think a prudent feast cannot be seen as improper despite her sorrow. The child was not yet two, after all. We cannot be surprised when infants die, as so many do. I do not object."

Lavinia put a hand into the water and, after a while, looked up. "I pray you, Holy Mother. Will the queen forgive him? He was always faithful to her, and most especially to Henry. I never heard an ill word spoken of him, never a whisper."

"What do you mean, Lady Lavinia?"

"I do not think it right he should be banished, but I cannot go against the queen's wishes."

"What if he should marry the queen?"

"He is a holy presbyter! He is wed to God's service. It would pollute him to marry!" She faltered.

Her cheeks were stained red, as if the sun had pinked them, but of course there was no sun, only the monotony of another cloudy day.

"It would be a shame to stain the beauty of a man as beautiful as he is."

"I do not know if it would be right, Holy Mother."

"It is not your place to interpret God's wishes."

"No, Holy Mother."

"Still, there is something in what you say. He might not be the right one. Yet the queen must marry again."

"She mourns her dead husband, Holy Mother."

"Henry?"

"Indeed, Holy Mother. She held a great affection for the emperor in her heart."

A strange way Adelheid had taken, thought Antonia, to show her fondness, but perhaps it was true that she had believed, or convinced herself to believe, that she had no other choice. Hugh, naturally, would fall into any scheme that offered him power, but it wasn't as clear to Antonia what he felt he would gain by wielding such malevolent sorcery. Possessed by a daimone! Still, perhaps he, too, had done it only out of loyalty to Henry and Wendar. She doubted it. Henry, through the daimone, would have given him anything he wanted. Anything.

Was it actually possible that a man with as much beauty and intelligence as Hugh was so very . . .

small when all else came to be measured? That he was himself chained by being fixed on one thing? Who was slave, and who was master, then? One had escaped while the other still polished his shackles.

"You are a practical woman, Lady Lavinia. Have you a recommendation?"

She sighed and looked toward the fountain. Water wept into the circular pool at the base. "Many nights such thoughts have troubled me, Holy Mother. I am a widow, and have not remarried. I find there is a lack of men whose lineage and temperament please me. In these cruel days, the queen must choose wisely or not at all."

"Has she spoken to you of such matters?"

Lavinia's hesitation was her answer.

"What passes in private between you and the queen I will not intrude upon, but remember that God know all your secrets, Lady Lavinia. If you must unburden yourself, do so to me."

"I am your obedient servant, Holy Mother."

Perhaps. It was difficult to know whom Lavinia served. She was an ordinary woman, devoted to her lands, which she administered prudently, and to her children and kinfolk, whom she protected as well as she could. She remained loyal to Adelheid in part, Antonia supposed, because she thought Adelheid's regnancy would serve her and her estates best compared to that of another overlord. But if her heart stirred, it stirred in defense of Lord Hugh.

Thoughtful, Antonia returned to her chambers only to find that the servants had fed him a hearty portion of cheese and bread when he had woken, and afterward gotten him a cloak.

"Where has he gone?"

"Holy Mother!" They stared at the floor. "Did we do ill, Holy Mother? He went as he wished. It was just after you departed these rooms, Your Holiness, to sing the dawn prayers. Was it meant otherwise? Had it been better had we kept him beside us?"

"No. No. Do not think me angry. Have you any notion of where he meant to go?" For his actions would reveal his thoughts.

Why, to pray, they assured her, and she believed them. That is, she believed that they believed that was where he had gone. Why should he tell them the truth?

She knew where he intended to go. What would attract him first, beyond anything. He must have power to get what he wanted. Antonia had merely shown him the path.

"Come, Felicita. Give me my audience robes . . . no, not the heavy ones, for I mean to walk some while afterward in them. Send for Brother Petrus. He's gone? Very well. You will attend me, Sister Mara. No, no hurry. Let me rest my feet a moment. I must see the queen. It is likely she will wake late, out of her grief."

And, waking late, would leave Hugh waiting in her antechamber to see her and to beg her forgiveness. No need to rush there to interrupt his pleading. He would plead so very beautifully, after all. Not even Adelheid would be able to resist him.

But after all, Adelheid slept in a stupor all morning. There passed an interlude of alarm around midday during which Antonia hurried to the prisoners' tower to make sure that the captives had not been disturbed. Yes, the sergeant told her, the holy presbyter had indeed come by, but after hearing that the princess was afflicted with a mild sickness in her stomach, he had ventured only into the dungeon.

It was a chilly, nasty, dirty place. She had to lean on the arm of a guardsman to make sure she did not slip on the steps, which had no railing. The large open chamber had been fitted with three smaller cells built with mortared brick. In the darkest of these, Wolfhere sat on straw with his hands in his lap and his manacles resting along his legs. He blinked as the lamp lit him and regarded her with a bored resignation that irritated her. Despite the burns on his face and neck, he had never told her anything secret, only commonplace tales that helped her not at all. In time he would. It was only a matter of patience. Eventually the solitude and the rats would drive him insane, and he would tell her everything in exchange for a glimpse of sky.

"Your Holiness," he said in that bland way that made her twitch and wish to hit him.

"What did he want?" she demanded.

"He wanted to know who the father of the esteemed cleric Heribert might be."

She would have burned him then had she any fiery implements on hand, but she had to content herself with a gentle smile. "A strange question to ask of a lowly Eagle."

He shrugged. His nails had gotten so long they curved, and his beard was matted and filthy. In fact, he reeked. "Perhaps not so strange a question to ask of a man who knows the Wendish court well."

Almost, she slapped him, but she tweaked the sleeve of her robe instead, smile fixed. "To what purpose do you seek to annoy me? You have not answered my question."

"He also asked me how I was come here, and where I had been, so I suppose that means he is himself newly come to Novomo."

"What did you tell him?"

"Nothing more than I have told you, Your Holiness. I think he came more to gloat at my ill fortune. But you may ask him yourself. I am sure he will tell you, as he and I are old enemies."

'Are you so, and on what ground?"

His smile was keen, and it reminded her of how tough a man he was to be able to smile with such strength after so long in captivity. "I had twice the great pleasure of rescuing a young woman from his grasp. I suppose he will never forgive me."

"Liathano. This is an old story."

"It is a story that will never get old for Hugh of Austra."

That flash startled her. "Is it possible you are more clever than you seem, Wolfhere?"

"What answer can I give that will satisfy you? God are my witness, that I am only myself, and nothing more."

"So you say. I am not done with you, Wolfhere."

He winced, the first sign of weakness she had surprised from him. "I am the obedient servant of God and regnant, Your Holiness."

"Servant of Anne."

"Of God and regnant, Your Holiness. Then, now, and always. Nothing more." He spoke with such finality that, for an instant, she believed him.

Hugh was discovered walking in Lavinia's enclosed garden beside the poplars, chatting amiably with Brother Petrus, whom he had known in the skopos' palace.

"Holy Mother," he said, bowing in the manner of presbyters as she approached. "I beg your pardon, Your Holiness. I was restless, thinking on those things we spoke of yesterday."

She was flushed from the annoyance of having wondered where Hugh had gone, and perhaps for this reason. Brother Petrus bowed and retreated hastily, leaving them to their talk.

"I have taken some trouble to find you, Lord Hugh."

"Gardens give me solace, Your Holiness. Forgive me."

"Did you not fear that Queen Adelheid would make true her threat to see you executed?"

"I was told that she slept, Your Holiness. Lady Lavinia gave me leave to walk in the garden."

'And leave to go to the prisoners' tower, and interview the Eagle?"

"I admit I was greatly surprised to discover Wolfhere in Novomo. What can it mean that he is here?"

"What did you hope to learn from him?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "He was Anne's servant. Surely he knows something of Anne—her plans, her sorcery, her history, her books—things that might be of value to us."

"If he does, I have not yet discovered it! Despite my best efforts. He is a stubborn man!"

"He made some pact with Sister Meriam, it appears," he mused. "Why?"

'As yet, that mystery remains unanswered. We can discuss it later, Lord Hugh. I must go to my audience chamber for the afternoon. Many supplicants appear before me. There is a great deal of trouble in the world that wants fixing, now that God's wrath has fallen upon us."

"Just so," he agreed. "I feel myself weighted by trouble, as though the Enemy had gotten a claw into my heart."

"Do as I ask, Lord Hugh, and you will gain that which you seek."

It was cloudy, as always, but seemed brighter in this corner of the garden where he walked. He paused beside a clump of carefully tended vervain to run a hand over its pale spurs. "It is so difficult," he murmured, "to gain that which one seeks. Have you ever wondered, Your Holiness, about these tales of a heresy sprung up in western lands. The tale of the phoenix—have you heard it?"

"Lies whispered by the Enemy's minions! No doubt such calumnies are but one among many misdeeds that have brought God's hand down upon us."

"Truly, many speak who know nothing. Still, one wonders where such tales came from and why they arose."

"I do not wonder! The Arethousans cast them at us, hoping they would fly among us like a plague. Let ten thousand fall to the contagion! In this manner they hope to weaken us, but it will not happen. We will remain strong as long as we remain in God's favor."

'And when I have cast away my vows and am wed to Adelheid, what then? Is she to be killed, Your Holiness, so that Mathilda may rule in her place and we as regents over her?"

"Even the walls may have ears, Lord Hugh! Be more discreet, I pray you!"

"I crave your pardon, Your Holiness. But I am confused as to the manner of the plan, its working out, and its fulfillment. Must I lie with her?"

"Is she not desirable? Other men call her so. She is deemed very pretty."

"So is a rock polished by the river, before it is set beside a sapphire."

"You will persist in your obsession."

"How will my marrying Adelheid gain me what I seek?"

"Is that your only objection? I cannot promise you the thing you want, but earthly power may grant you weapons you do not currently have. What kinfolk will aid you?"

"None."

"What princes will assist you?"

"None."

"You have only me. I can use you, and if you aid me, then I will reward you. So God command us. Those who serve will be given what they deserve."

He nodded, having wandered by this time to a stand of skullcap. He twisted off a leaf. "The queen trusted me once. She may not do so again, even though I gave her no reason to distrust me. Yet if she refuses to trust me, there are ways to encourage her."

The garden was still in its ragged spring garments; a few violets bloomed late; deep blue peeped from close stalks of rosemary. "So there are, but cautiously, Hugh. Cautiously."

"I am ever so," he agreed humbly, gaze cast down.

Satisfied, she beckoned for her attendants. "I will call for you later. Do not come to the feast tonight. We shall begin our persuasion of the queen tomorrow."

3

LADY Elene always woke before dawn to pray. Because she had taken a liking to Brother Heribert's strange manners, she insisted he climb the ladder to pray beside her every morning. Of course if Elene would pray, then Lord Berthold would come up with Heribert to pray also, Lord Jonas trailing at his heels. Blessing sulked on her pallet. Anna always dressed and knelt behind the nobles. Because she did not know the verses and psalms by heart, she must repeat them after the others had finished. Elene always remembered, as a courtesy, to ask the cleric who attended them to allow time for Anna's response. In fact, to include Brother Heribert she had to, because he had not been quite right in the mind ever since the collapse of the hill on top of him and could scarcely recall his own verses and prayers, which he had once known better than anyone.

The others knelt on soft carpet. Anna knelt on the hard plank floor with her hands covering her face, the better to concentrate on God's will. The better to disguise her words when she spoke

"She" for "They." No one knew that the phoenix had touched her heart. No one but Blessing, who had learned to keep silent about this one thing after that time when Prince Sanglant had punished his daughter's servants for exposing her to heretical words. Blessing hated to see her servants punished, knowing she would never be punished herself. It was the one thing about her that gave Anna hope.

"Blessed be You, Mother and Father of Life," said Lady Elene.

"Blessed be You, Holy Mother," whispered Anna into her hands.

"Blessed be You," repeated Brother Heribert in his awkward voice.

Lord Berthold yawned.

Lord Jonas made no sound. He often fell asleep kneeling, eyes open.

Blessing gulped down a false sob, stifled under her blankets.

On the floor below, the trap thumped open, landing hard. Anna flinched, hands coming down.

Berthold rose, and Blessing's sniveling ceased.

"Blessed is the Country of the Mother and Father of Life, and of the Holy Word revealed within the Circle of Unity," continued Elene stubbornly, ignoring the clatter of feet beneath, "now and ever and unto ages of ages."

A cleric's cowl appeared in the open trap. The woman climbed higher and revealed herself as Sister Mara, one of the Holy Mother's faithful attendants. She looked around the room. After a moment, she climbed all the way up and spoke in whispers to Julia, who shook her head. They walked around the room and opened up both chests while Lady Elene kept praying as if they weren't there. At last, Sister Mara left.

When prayers came to an end, Berthold said, "What was that all about?"

"Begging your pardon, my lady. My lord." Julia rubbed her brow with the back of a hand, looking nervous. Normally she had a robust confidence, but she seemed tired after speaking with Sister Mara. "You're to stay within today, all day. No garden."

Elene raised an eyebrow and looked at Berthold, who shrugged.

Blessing popped up from the bed, unaware and unashamed of her nakedness, although by now she showed the signs of blossoming womanhood. "I don't want to stay in."

"Shut up, brat," said Berthold gently. "Please cover yourself."

"I don't want—"

"Do shut up!" snapped Elene.

"I hate you!"

"I hate you, you evil creature! I'll pinch your ears if you don't stop whining."

Blessing clapped hands over ears and huddled under the blankets until, sometime later, after the others had gone down to the lower floor to entertain themselves with chess and reading, Anna was able to coax her out.

"I don't feel good," whimpered the girl. "I got a cut on my leg."

"How could have you gotten—" But it was no cut, of course. "Princess Blessing. Your Highness.

Oh, dear."

"Is anything amiss, Anna?" asked the servingwoman, Julia, from the window, where she sat and sewed.

"Sit down," Anna said sternly, and Blessing sat cross-legged. A few drops of blood stained the bedding, but it wasn't too bad. "I pray you, Julia, Princess Blessing is feeling poorly. Might you go down and ask the sergeant if we can have a posset, something to settle her stomach? It must be what she ate last night."

Julia glanced sharply at her. Perhaps she suspected. Perhaps she had overheard, although Blessing had whispered. But she went leaving Anna and the child alone.

"Now, Your Highness, listen closely and listen well."

"My tummy hurts."

"I know it does. And so it will do, about once every month, for a good long while now."

"Why?"

"You know a woman's courses."

"That you get?"

"Yes, as you've seen, the Lady favored women by giving them the power of life, while men have only the power of death. That is why we can bleed every month and survive it. Now you have started bleeding."

"What does that mean?"

She bit her lip, worried it, then plunged on. "It means you must be secret, Blessing." How difficult a thing this was to get across to a child who had the understanding of a five or six year old but the body of a budding adolescent! 'Among my people, a girl isn't likely to be wed until she's older and she and her betrothed have the wherewithal to set up a household. But among noble families sometimes girls are married as soon as they begin bleeding."

"Why?"

"Why marry? To form alliances. To make treaties. To consolidate an inheritance."

"Why not when they're little, like me?"

"Girls are betrothed all the time when they're children. But no man will bed a wife until that girl is a woman and can grow a baby inside her."

"Is Lady Elene old enough? Why can't she get married and leave us? I hate her!"

"We are all prisoners, Your Highness. Our captors may do with us as they wish, even kill us.

That's why you must be silent and secret."

For as long a while as Anna had ever seen Blessing sit and think, the child frowned and considered. She was a lovely girl, with a complexion neither light nor dark and with shining thick dark hair falling halfway down her back that must be combed and braided and pinned up. Her eyes seemed sometimes green and sometimes blue and sometimes a hazel shading toward brown, a blend of her father and mother. Like both father and mother, she drew the eye; folk watched her; even the soldiers did, sneaking a look while pretending not to. Beauty is dangerous among the innocent, who might be ravaged when they least expect it.

"If I were Queen Adelheid," Anna said at last, "I would use you, Your Highness, as a pawn in a game of chess."

"I am the great granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer! She can't do anything without my permission!"

"She can do anything she wants, Your Highness! How will you stop her? If Queen Adelheid knows you are bleeding, she may think it worth her while to marry you off and be rid of you that way. Right now she thinks you're still a child."

Blessing stared at her hands, then drew a finger along her inner thigh and stared at the blood painting her nail.

"Think what a prize you are, Your Highness. Many men might desire to take you for a wife only because of who your parents are. Some may hope to reward themselves. Others might hope to punish your father or mother."

Tears slipped down the girl's face. "Why does my father never come, Anna?"

"He does not know where you are. We haven't any way to let him know. If any of us escape, Holy Mother Antonia will hear of it and send horrible demons after us to eat us alive. That's what Lady Elene says."

"I don't believe her! I hate her!"

"You should! You must! You will! She is like your mother, trained as a sorcerer. She knows. We are trapped, Your Highness. And you are more vulnerable than ever now! Do you understand me? Lady Elene is our friend. So is Lord Berthold and Brother Heribert. And Lord Jonas. And our servants, Berda and Odei. But no one else. We can trust no one else."

Footsteps rattled on the ladder. Blessing folded her hands over her loins as soon as Julia's head appeared and sat there stubbornly, refusing to budge, until Anna wrestled a shift on over her bare shoulders. A moment later, the healer appeared.

"Berda, come here!" said Anna.

"Small queen sick in her belly?" The healer knelt by the pallet.

Anna turned her back to Julia and lifted two fingers to seal her lips. The healer nodded. Blessing, still sitting cross-legged, pulled her shift up to her hips to show the blood streaking her thighs.

Berda nodded. "A drink calms the belly," she said in her odd voice. Her broad hands smoothed the shift back over the girl's legs. She touched the girl's forehead, throat, and her collarbone on each side.

"Some sickness in the food," she said. "Have you piss this morning?"

Blessing shook her head.

"Come, small queen."

They went to the corner, where the chamber pot was tucked away behind a bench, and Blessing did her business. Julia came over to look, but after Blessing rose, Berda squatted quickly with her heavy felt skirt concealing this complicated maneuver, since the steppe women, Anna had seen, wore both skirts and trousers. She then peed in her turn, and rose with a grimace.

"Moon turns," she said. "I am bleeding. Must move my bed to upstairs."

It was a habit of the Kerayit healer to sleep downstairs with the men most of the month, and upstairs with the women during her bleeding, although it seemed to Anna that it had not been more than two weeks since her last sojourn upstairs. Never mind it. They would burn that bridge after they had crossed it. She looked at Berda, and the healer nodded, covered the pan, and offered it to Julia to dispose of, as was her duty.

"I fetch drink of herbs for the small queen. She rest this day."

Rest she did. Berda found clean rags for her, to catch the blood, and pretended they were her own. It was not so difficult, once the ruse was begun; Julia, like the other Aostans, found the healer so peculiar that she didn't like to get close to her.

Afterward, they went about their usual routine. Water must be brought up for washing, and the buckets taken downstairs and emptied and rinsed out. The morning chores broke up the monotony of the day, so Anna eked out each least errand, dawdling where she could. She didn't even mind it when, after the upstairs was tidied and washed, she was sent down to empty the dungeon bucket. The old man didn't scare her, although the stink was bad. After the first few weeks, the soldiers simply stopped going down with her because they hated the pit, and she was free to make quick conversation with the Eagle, mostly a detailed account from her of yesterday's doings, and perhaps a few oblique sentences passed back and forth between him and Lady Elene.

This morning, though, the soldiers loitered nervously by the outer door, as if keeping an eye out for someone they expected to come along at any moment. Anna had a clean bucket in one hand as she reached the head of the steps that cut down into the gloom. The sergeant on duty glanced back into the chamber and saw her.

"Here, now," he said, lifting a hand to get her attention.

But she was already descending along the curve of the stair with the cold stone wall brushing her shoulder and the bucket dangling over air as soon as she cleared the plank flooring. It was quite dark, but she knew the feel of the wall and the angle of each step by now. She could have gone down with her eyes closed, and indeed she paused partway down, in the shadows, and closed her eyes, because she heard voices.

The tower rose in levels, with the deepest chamber dug out of the earth and markedly colder than the ground floor and the other rooms stacked above. The space below was used to store beans and onions, and here also three small cells had been bricked in. From her place on the stairs, with the dampening of sound and the lack of any footsteps clomping above, she heard them speaking in low voices. One of those voices was familiar to her; the other had a strange, enchanting timbre that seemed to stick her feet right where they were so that she didn't dare, or want, to move.

"You cannot escape because Antonia controls the galla."

"I do not fear the galla."

"You should."

"Perhaps."

"Then why do you not escape? If you can, why don't you?"

"Is that not obvious? I have those to whom I am responsible. If they cannot run, then 1 cannot run."

"Thus meaning, you cannot protect them from the galla. Is it Princess Blessing, or Conrad's daughter, who holds you here?"

"Why can it not be both?"

"I heard the story once that you tried to drown Prince Sanglant, when he was an infant."

"It's a story that has been told many times, and on occasion in my hearing."

'An interesting tale, and if true, a shame you did not succeed. Although it might make a man wonder what allegiance holds you to Princess Blessing. Is it her father you seek to serve? Her mother? Anne's tangled weaving, still to be obeyed? Or do you merely have a weakness for these caged birds?"

"It's true I do not like to see such bright creatures imprisoned by cruel masters." Wolfhere sounded bored beyond measure, tired of the game. "What do you want, Lord Hugh?"

"Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

Wolfhere sighed.

"You were seen last in the company of Brother Marcus and Sister Meriam. You ran from them.

Yet now you appear here, with Meriam's granddaughter in your care. Where were you? How did you escape the cataclysm?"

"Fortune favored us," said the old man dryly.

"You were least among the Seven Sleepers. Cauda draconis, the tail of the dragon. They told me that you were too ignorant to weave the crowns. Is that true?"

"Yes, it's true. I was never taught the art of the mathematici. Mine was the gift of Eagle's Sight, and of the skills necessary to a messenger who spends his life on the road. Thus, I am peculiarly situated to survive long journeys through hostile lands."

"Why should I believe you?"

"It matters little to me if you believe me or not, Lord Hugh. Why should it? The battle is lost, and Anne is dead."

"Thus your purpose for being."

"Thus my purpose for being," said Wolfhere in a flat voice. "What is it you want? Or are you merely here to gloat?"

"It's true I have no liking for you, Eagle. You stole from me the thing that is rightly mine. I mean to have it back."

"How will you accomplish that? Liath is dead, is she not? Like the others."

She heard the other man take in a raggedly drawn breath, sharp and sweet. "Not dead. Not dead."

Abruptly, the old man's tone became edged. "Where have you seen her? How do you know?"

"Where have I seen her? In Wendar, my friend. Standing beside the bastard who calls himself king."

"I have heard the tale of Henry's passing. I wasn't sure it was true."

"Oh, true it is, and the prince of dogs crowned and anointed by Mother Scholastica herself, although I think she was not best pleased in the doing."

"So it is true. And Liath has survived, so you say." No doubt he was eager to hear these tidings, but he kept his voice low and even.

"Can you not see her yourself, with your vaunted Eagle's Sight? Have you not spoken with your discipla, Hathui, who has gained the protection of the new king and stands in his very shadow?"

There was a long pause, and a quiet shuffling of feet above her. Anna glanced up to see a shadowed form bent over the trap, looking down toward her, but it was obvious that his eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness below.

"You may as well know that I am blind," said Wolfhere. "Since the cataclysm."

"Blinded? Useless and helpless, then. Master of nothing, servant to no one. Yet why tell me so?

Why confess as much to me, Eagle?"

"Because I hurt, Lord Hugh. If I tell you that you can gain nothing from torturing me, then perhaps you will not do so."

"Ah. I suppose it is the Holy Mother—or the queen—who sees you used so ill. What do they want to know?"

"Nothing I would tell you, if I would also not tell them. Leave us be, Lord Hugh. I do not know what is your purpose here. I ask you only for this favor: leave us be."

"What will you give me in return?"

"In return for what?"

"For leaving you be."

"So we come around again to my first question: what do you want?"

"Who is Liath's father?"

"Bernard."

"And her mother?"

"A daimone of the upper spheres. I am surprised to hear you ask."

"It was once a closely guarded secret."

"Yes, once it was. Back when we still held some measure of control over her. Anne took you into the Seven Sleepers. I am not surprised that you lived, when others died, but I am surprised you ask me questions you must already have heard the answers to."

"Folk may lie."

"I am shocked to hear it."

Lord Hugh chuckled. "Is it safe to let you live, Eagle?"

"Oh, indeed it is. I would even call it necessary."

"Think you so?"

"Of course I must. Leave us be, Lord Hugh. We have nothing you want."

"No, no," said the other man musingly. "I'm not sure you do have anything I want."

She felt warm breath on her neck and heard the merest croak of the step just above the one she stood on, where it had a wobble.

"Hsst!" said the sergeant in her ear. "Up out of here, girl, or we'll all be in trouble."

They fled up, and just in time, for the sergeant had just shoved her out the door and over to the pits to pretend she was at some kind of filthy work with her head bent down to hide her face when she heard all the soldiers with bowing and scraping in their voices as some august presence departed the tower and went on his way.

"Idiot," said the sergeant, coming over to her and yanking the pail out of her hand. "No one was to disturb them! I'll take care of the prisoner today. You go back up, and keep your mouth shut and your feet where they belong."

"How was I to know?" she said, and he slapped her.

Later, as the cloistered hours passed without incident, the sergeant relented and came up himself to gossip with Lord Berthold, his favorite. The queen's younger daughter had died the day before, which explained the tolling of the bell. There was anyway to be a feast that night, if a solemn one, because an envoy had come from a distant land, but he wasn't sure where, maybe Arethousa, come to parley with the grieving queen. So that was why it was that Berthold and his retinue could not leave the upper chambers for any possible reason this day.

Therefore they expected no visitors late in that afternoon with the courtyard gone quiet and a murmur rising from the great hall whose roof could be seen from the east facing windows. There, most of those who lived in the palace had gathered to feast or to serve. The smells rising from the kitchens made Anna's stomach hurt and her mouth water.

Berthold and Elene played another game of chess by the window, glancing at each other in a way that Anna recognized as dangerous and that, mercifully, Blessing did not see for what it was. Two attractive young people thrown together for hours and days and weeks on end. How well Anna knew where such intimacy led! She wiped her eyes, but there weren't any tears left for Thiemo and Matto. They had vanished under the hill with Berthold's companions, with their old life, with all that had transpired before the storm.

Heribert sat beside Blessing, who for once was frowning at tablet and stylus and with awkward strokes getting some of her letters right. Anna sat down on the carpet near Blessing's feet, and went back to mending a tear in Blessing's other shift. Julia sat on the bench, embroidering. Lord Jonas was downstairs playing dice with Odei; those two could go at it for hours, and the spill of dice across the floor was, like a poet's song at a feast, a steady accompaniment to other labors.

Berda sat in a shadowed corner grinding a root into powder. The light came gloomy through the open windows, and it was cool, but no one wanted to shutter themselves in.

Elene sniffed, wiped her nose, and looked up, holding a lion in one hand. "Do you smell that?"

Berthold stifled a yawn. "Smell what? I hate sitting indoors all day"

Berda glanced up as well. "It is sharp," she said, touching her nose.

The lady frowned. She did not set down the lion. "Now it's gone. I thought. ..." She, too, yawned, and caught herself.

Even Anna yawned and almost pricked herself with her needle. Her grunt of frustration set off an avalanche of yawns among all of them, except Heribert.

"The curve here, Your Highness. It is uneven."

"I'm just tired! I can do better!"

"Yes," he agreed. "So it appears from the way you are yawning. There is a sharp glamour in the air. It tingles in the bones."

Berthold pushed the chess pieces aside and pillowed his head on his arms. "Just a nap, and we'll start again."

Elene's head lolled back. The lion fell out of her hand, and when it struck the floor she jerked upright. "What is that?" she demanded. "A glamour ... a spell ..."

Anna was so tired. The languor smothered her. The walls spoke in whispers, reminding her of the peace of the sleep which awaits every soul, the crossing into death. . . .

Soft footsteps mounted the stair-step ladder. A middle-aged man appeared in the opened trap. He was named Brother Petrus, one of the holy clerics who served the Holy Mother.

"Up here, my lord," he said as he clambered out.

She pricked herself with the needle, and the pain woke her. A drop of blood swelled.

Blessing had fallen asleep against Heribert's shoulder. Berthold roused dully, lifting his head.

Elene struggled, reaching for the lion she had dropped on the floor. Berda snored softly, head lolling back against the wall, her throat exposed.

An angel climbed out of the trap and paused to regard the chess table and the pair of young nobles fighting sleep.

"Well," he said in a melodious voice so soothing Anna was sure he tamed wild beasts with it. She recognized it immediately as the voice of the man who had been talking to Wolfhere. "Conrad's doomed daughter and Villam's lost son. How unexpected this is. How handsome they look together, dark and fair!"

Elene grunted, got hold of the lion, and dug it into her palm. Her eyes flared. "Who are you?

What sorcery . . . 7"

The chess piece rolled out of her hand, landed on a corner of carpet, and tumbled off that onto the plank floor. Her eyes fluttered as she fought to keep awake.

"You know tricks, Lady Elene, but you are inexperienced."

Anna thrust the needle into her hand again, and the pain burst like fire and focused her mind, but it was so hard to fight. It was so much easier to sleep.

He turned and saw Blessing. "Ah," he said, voice catching. "So old already. Just as I'd hoped. ..."

From this angle, seated crosswise to Blessing and slightly behind her, Anna saw his expression darken.

"How can it be that you still wake?" he asked.

Before she could answer, Brother Heribert said, quite clearly, "Who are you?"

"Better I should ask, who are you? You are Brother Heribert, a particular intimate counselor of the prince, guardian of his daughter. Before that you were a cleric in the schola of the biscop of Mainni, rumored to be her—" He laughed. Anna ducked her head and, feeling the dizzy drag of exhaustion pulling her down, jabbed the needle in. "God in Heaven! Look at your eyes! How comes this? I thought I was the only one who knew this secret. Why are you here?"

"I am looking for the one I love. They say it is the other one who stole him. The one called Sanglant."

"Who stole him?" The angel shifted back on his heels as might a man who has been struck, then rolled forward to his toes, and regained his balance. "Who stole who?"

"Lord Hugh?" asked Brother Petrus, who was fingering an amulet looped at his neck. "Ought we not hurry, my lord? It will be dark soon."

"Yes." The angel nodded, but he looked only at Heribert, not at Brother Petrus. "Who is lost, and who is blind?" he said to himself. "Can it be? Tell me, friend, if the other one stole him, then do you want to get back this one you seek?"

"I don't know where he is."

"Gone utterly, I fear, if what my eyes tell me is true, and I think it must be. But I know who killed him."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that his soul is fled from Earth."

"How do I find him?"

"Seek you his killer and get your revenge. Kill the one who killed him."

"Will it bring him back, if I kill the one who killed him?"

The angel's smile would brighten a hall shrouded in darkness. "Oh, yes. Certainly. Delve deep, and seek him at his heart. Drive out the soul you find there. That will kill the one who killed him.

The one called Sanglant."

"But he loved him! He trusted him!"

'Alas," the angel said in a gentling voice, as a mother might soothe a weeping child. "So it happens among humankind, that the ones we love most are quickest to betray us."

"How will I go?"

"Come with me now. I will set you on your way. Brother Petrus, there is an attendant who serves the princess. Find her, and place an amulet around her neck . . . Ah!"

Elene grunted, struggling against the spell, lips moving as she murmured an incantation.

"Petrus, the knife."

"Your hands, my lord. Let me do it, if it must be done."

"I'll not let others stain their hands so mine may remain clean. This is my decision, not yours." He took a common kitchen knife, good sharp iron, out of Petrus' shaking hands, and went to the table. Grasping Elene by the hair, he set the knife to her pulsing throat.

Elene tried to struggle, but she could not.

Anna shrieked, but the only noise that escaped her was a moan. She staggered up, but she was too slow with that lethargy weighing her down. She was too slow, and it was already too late.

He cut.

Elene's blood spurted over the board, spattering Berthold's sleeve and hair, although he was too fast asleep to stir. Blood flowed. A Dragon and a Queen toppled sideways in the first gush. The rest of the pieces were soon awash, islands in a red sea.

Hugh braced her body in the chair and dropped the bloody knife onto the carpet. He walked over to Anna and grasped her. She sagged against him; she could not help herself.

"Is this another so afflicted?" He raised her hand, smoothed a finger over the three spots of blood, and teased the needle out of her fingers. She was helpless to resist. Only his strong arm held her up.

"Quickly, Brother Petrus!"

A movement, an arm sweeping past her face, and a sweet smelling fragrance wafted into her nostrils. She came alert to see a smoky mist dimming her sight through which she saw all those sleeping and heard an uncanny hush drawn over the palace grounds as though every living creature had been muzzled and shod in wool.

His eyes were so very blue that she thought she should drown in them. "I am taking Princess Blessing. You have now a choice. You may come with me, to attend her, or you may stay behind."

Her mouth worked, but she got no words out.

He smiled sadly.

Oh, that smile. She might die hoping for another taste of that smile. She had never seen a man as beautiful as he was.

"What is your name?"

'Anna, Your Grace," she whispered.

"Anna," he said, making music of her name. "Carry the princess. We must make haste."

"If I won't, Your Grace? If I refuse to go?"

"Then a more faithful servant will carry her," he said in the most kindly voice imaginable, and it chilled her to hear it, because he did not raise his voice or look angry. He was no Bulkezu, to howl and rage. He did not look like a man who had just cut the throat of a defenseless young woman. 'And you will wake later, hoping she is well cared for but never knowing if she will be."

Weeping, she gathered up Blessing, although the girl had grown enough to weigh heavily in her arms. It took all her courage to look at him again, and all her courage to speak words he might not want to hear. "There are some things we need, Your Grace—"

"There is nothing you shall need that has not already been prepared. We have taken everything from this town that we want. Brother Petrus, let us go swiftly, as you advise."

"Yes, Lord Hugh."

So they went, leaving the chamber and the dead girl and her sleeping companions behind. Below, four soldiers waited; they also wore amulets. Lord Jonas and Odei sprawled on the floor among a scattering of dice. Brother Heribert followed like a dog, hesitant, twitchy, but determined.

"Unchain the Eagle," said Lord Hugh to two of the soldiers. "Make sure there is blood on his hands, and the knife in his possession. Then meet us at the appointed place."

In the barracks below soldiers slept, draped over benches or snoring on pallets. Two sat on either side of the door, slumped against the stone wall. One had his mouth open, and the way drool trickled out scared her.

Their feet crunched on gravel as they crossed along a wing of the palace, moving swiftly. Guards slept on benches and on paving stones. One had an arm slung somewhat around a pillar as though embracing it. In the courtyard facing the great hall a dozen servants had dropped platters of food and flagons of drink. A pair of dogs had fallen down asleep in the act of filching a fine haunch of beef intended for the queen's table. From the hall itself, glimpsed through open doors, came only silence. One of the soldiers grabbed a pair of plump roasted chickens and tied them up into a handkerchief which he fastened to his belt. The scent of all that good, warm food made Anna's stomach grumble, and she hated herself for feeling a hunger that Lady Elene would never again know. Blessing stirred, whimpering, but did not wake.

Five more soldiers waited by the barracks, holding the reins of fourteen horses, four of them laden with packs. Every wakeful creature there wore an amulet around its neck like to the one Anna wore. By the horses, Lord Hugh nodded at Brother Petrus.

'All the rest is done as I commanded?"

"It is all arranged, Lord Hugh. All will be done as you have ordered. Yet I am not sure, my lord.

Was there some other fate that you intend for Lord Berthold? Villam's son is tainted with Villam's treachery in plotting against Emperor Henry, may he rest at peace in the Chamber of Light."

"Villam's son means nothing, although there is, I think, some mystery regarding his disappearance and reappearance. Leave him as he is. Find out his secret, if you can. He may trust you if you befriend him after we are gone."

Petrus hesitated.

"Go on, Brother. You must not fear to speak freely to me."

"Why the young lady, Your Grace? She was beautiful. Proud, it's true, but lovely. It's like trampling a flower in bloom."

"Some flowers will be trampled when an army marches to lift a siege, Brother. No one rejoices in destruction, yet at times it is the only way. Her grandmother taught her things she must not be allowed to use. We cannot take the chance. I will do penance for the deed."

"Yes, Your Grace. Still ... if you think her a risk, why leave alive the old man?"

"He is too weak and ignorant to threaten us. He'll serve us by diverting suspicion. No doubt her death was more merciful than his will be."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Do not douse the sleeping fire until the lights on the hill have vanished. Do as you have been instructed. Let no one chance upon you in the tombs. All depends on timing and where you place the decoy."

"I will not fail you, Lord Hugh."

"I trust not. Afterward, await my return."

"Yes, Lord Hugh. God go with you, Lord Hugh."

The angel's smile had something of irony in it. "So we may hope."

He beckoned. A soldier took Blessing out of Anna's arms and lifted her up to one of his companions, already mounted. Another took Anna up behind him. The rest made ready, and they rode out of the palace by the spies' gate, a triple-guarded gate set into the palace's outer wall that led to an escarpment and a steep trail carved into the northeastern face of the hill on which the town of Novomo had been built. Shale littered the hillside. They picked their way down. None spoke; only the rattle of rock broke the silence.

How far did the spell extend? Had he cast his web of sorcery across the entire town?

How could any person be so beautiful and so wicked?

At the base of the hill they stopped beside a vineyard, which lay quiet under the late afternoon sky. Nothing stirred except a single honeybee, searching for nectar.

"Brother Heribert," said Lord Hugh. "Take such provisions as you can carry. Walk north, over St.

Barnaria's Pass. Do you know the way?"

"The way we walked when we came south?"

"Rumor has it you came down from the mountains. Return there, and follow the path north into Wendar."

"Who will guide me?"

"You must guide yourself. You seek Sanglant, who calls himself regnant. When last I saw him, he was at Quedlinhame. Seek him, and do what you must."

Without answering, the cleric collected a sack of provisions offered to him by one of the soldiers.

He paused beside Blessing's limp body to touch her knee, then went on his way through the vineyards, soon lost to view. The rest circled south to join the main road leading out of town.

Twice Anna saw folk in the distance, laborers or farmers about their tasks. Once she saw a wagon at rest behind a tree, but she saw no sign of its occupant, only a mule with its head down, cropping grass. Twice she heard a dog bark. A large party had passed this way before them; she saw their dust ahead on the road, moving south.

As dusk lowered, they paused beside a chalky path that split off from the main road and climbed a nearby hill. Here they paused.

"Two riding up behind," said the guardsman who rode as rear guard. "That'll be Liudbold and Theodore. They're late coming."

"We'll wait here," said Hugh, and soon enough the two soldiers who had been left behind at the tower reached them.

"Theodore. Liudbold." Hugh looked at them each in turn. "What is your report? I expected you sooner."

"Begging your pardon, my lord," said the one addressed as Theodore. "It were trickier than we thought. The old man had life in him. He was wakeful and struggling, and he got a fist in on Liudbold's jaw here."

Some of the other soldiers coughed and snickered as Liudbold touched a hand to the bruise forming on his face, but they fell silent when Hugh raised a hand.

"Yes, he fought the spell, with some success. That shouldn't surprise me, I suppose. What did you do?"

"Well, at first we thought of tying him up, but then we recalled that he was meant to look as if he'd freed himself. So we knocked him cold, hauled him upstairs, then rolled him in the blood and left him with the knife in his hand."

"It will do," Lord Hugh said kindly. "You kept your heads about you. Well done."

Such praise would melt stone! The soldiers murmured, but Lord Hugh turned his horse onto the path and led the others away from the road. Behind, the pair of men riding in the rear guard swept their path to hide their tracks. Ahead, tall figures awaited them, stones arranged in a circle.

She said nothing, but by asking no questions caused Lord Hugh to notice her silence.

"How came you to Novomo, Anna? How did Princess Blessing and her party reach Aosta, and why? Where did you come from? How came you to lose her father and mother?"

She shrugged, pretending ignorance, as he studied her. She was sick at heart. It seemed beneath that mild gaze that he saw everything and knew everything.

"My lord presbyter," said one of the soldiers, a man with a scar on his chin. "I can make her talk, if that's what you're wishing."

He turned away. "Think nothing of it, John. I already know much of the tale. When I have need of the rest, I'll get it."

"I just don't like to see you treated with such disrespect, my lord presbyter. It gripes me to think of the queen refusing to see you, after all you done for her and the common folk in Darre."

"The queen is grieved by the loss of her daughter. It is to be expected."

"Only you would be so forgiving, my lord."

The other soldiers murmured agreement.

"Like that cleric you released to walk north. I think that one has lost his wits!"

Hugh nodded without smiling. 'And so he has, poor soul."

They came up to a flat space of ground, bare of vegetation, situated in front of the standing stones.

"Dismount quickly, all except the one with the servant and you, Frigo," said Hugh, gesturing toward the man who carried Blessing. "Move when I give the command. Do not hesitate."

Blessing slept. Anna could not go to her, sitting as she was in the grasp of a man much bigger and stronger than she was, but she saw that Blessing wore about her neck an amulet as well, only this one was woven with sprigs of lavender and a twisted knot that looked ready to strangle any unsuspecting neck caught in its grasp. It looked different than all the others.

Hugh gave his reins to one of the men. He placed his feet on a circle of pale ground, white with dust, and drew from his sleeve a strange golden implement like a wheel embedded within a wheel. This he raised to sight along the horizon. Then he turned to gaze toward Novomo, hazy in the fading light.

"We must be ready," he said to his soldiers. "Make sure the supplies I mentioned are at hand. Her devils can follow us no matter how far we travel, so when I speak, you must obey exactly as I say."

They murmured assent.

Anna laughed. "We can't go!" she crowed. "You can't weave a spell from the heavens when it is cloudy! You're trapped here!"

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20d...lliott%20-%20Crown%20Of%20Stars%2006%20-%20In%20the%20Ruins.html He looked back at her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Was that a knife, winking in the hand of one of the soldiers?

"Wise, after all," said Lord Hugh. "But I possess an instrument that tells me where every star will rise and set. The music of the spheres reaches through the clouds. It is only our weak eyesight that stymies us for, unlike the angels and daimones, we cannot see past that which blinds. With this instrument, I do not have to see what I have already measured in order to know it is there. I can weave even when clouds shroud the heavens. I can weave even in daylight, although I must not let my enemies guess that I can do so."

As night fell, he wove, drawing light out of the heavens although no stars shone where any human eye could see. He wove an archway of light and, at his command—for who would refuse him?— they walked through it into another place.

XIV

THE GUIVRE'S STARE

1

TO walk from Osna village to Lavas Holding was normally a journey of five or six days. Years ago, when Alain had walked with Chatelaine Dhuoda's company, the trip had taken fifteen days because she had stopped in every village and steading along the way to accept taxes and rents or the service of some of the young people in the village. Now, although they stopped only at night for shelter, the roads had taken so much damage in last autumn's storm that they were ten days traveling. Tangles of fallen trees barred the track. In two places streams had changed course and cut a channel right through the beaten path where wagons once rolled.

"God help us," said the chatelaine in the late afternoon on the seventh day. She was the only one mounted. The rest walked. "What's that?"

Alain went forward with five of the men at arms to discover a wagon toppled onto its side. The remains of several people lay scattered across the roadway and into the woodland on either side, disturbed by animals.

"How long have they lain here, are you thinking?" asked one of the lads, a fellow called "Fetch"

by his comrades.

Mostly bone was all that was left of them, with bits of hair and patches of woven tunic ground into the earth and a leather vest half buried beneath dirt and leaf litter. It was impossible to tell how many had died here or how far wolves and foxes had dragged pieces of corpse.

"Months." Alain wrenched loose an arrow fixed into the spokes of one of the wheels. "Bandits.

Look at this fletching."

The soldiers were young men, no one he knew from his time as Lavastine's heir, although it seemed strange to him that so many new milites would have come into service in such a short time. They were all lads from villages owing allegiance to Lady Aldegund's family, and had a lilting curl to their "r's" when they spoke. They looked nervous as they scanned the trees and open clearings.

One shrieked. "What's that? What's that?"

It was only a white skull, caught in brambles, staring out at them.

"Go get it, Fetch," said the eldest.

"I won't. It might be cursed!"

"Have we a shovel or anything to dig with?" asked Alain. "Best we dig what grave we can and let these poor dead rest. It's all we can do." He looked at each of his companions in turn and shook his head. "Come now. Their souls have ascended to the Chamber of Light. They can't hurt you. If it were your own brother lying here, wouldn't you want him laid to rest so that animals would stop chewing on his bones?"

They had in their party only one shovel, but another man had an antler horn he used as a pick and the rest sharpened stout sticks and by this means and some with their bare hands they dug swiftly and deep. Blanche watched silently, sucking her thumb, and it was she who was first to help pick up bones that had been dragged away into the bushes and she who brought the skull and laid it on the heap collected in the pit. She wiped her hand on her skirt and sighed.

"Will I be just bones like that one day?" she asked.

"The part of you which is flesh will die, it's true, and rot away to bone, but see how white and strong bone is. It's to remind us of the strength of our souls, which lie hidden beneath flesh as well."

She frowned at him but said nothing more. The chatelaine's cleric said a prayer over the dead, and they filled in the hole. One of the lads shook out the leather vest and rolled it up; the leather only needed a bit of cleaning and oiling to restore it and there was no sense in letting such good leather go to waste.

"It's getting late," said Alain to the chatelaine. "We'd best think of camping for the night."

"I don't like to camp in a place of death," she said. "We'll go on a way."

"Think you there are bandits still lurking?" Fetch asked Alain as they walked along at the front of the group.

"There might be."

A branch snapped in the trees, and all the milites flinched and spun to look, only to see a doe spring away into the forest. They laughed and called each other cowards but hurried forward anyway to where the woodland dropped back into an open countryside marked by low, marshy ground and thickets of dense brush where the earth rose into hillocks. The road had been raised to cross this swamp, and it was out on the road they found themselves at dusk with nothing but mosquitoes and gnats and marsh flies for company.

"Light fires," said the chatelaine. "We can see anyone coming from either side if thieves have a wish to attack us. The smoke will drive off the bugs."

It was difficult to find dry wood, but enough was found that they breathed in smoke half the night and were bitten up anyway. The wind came steady out of the northeast. Late, very late, Alain woke and, startled, found himself staring up at the heavens. Blanche snored softly beside him.

Stars winked, and then were covered again by cloud.

'Ah!" he said, although he hadn't meant to speak.

"Do you see?"

"I pray you, Chatelaine. Can you not sleep?"

"I cannot sleep, my lord. But I saw there a glimpse of hope. God smile on my journey. It is right that I sought you out. For months we have seen no sign of the sky. But now . . . now I have."

'Any spell must ease in time."

"You persist in believing that these clouds are the residue of a vast spell woven by human hands?"

"I know they are."

"Not God's displeasure?"

"It is true that some evils fall upon us without warning or cause. Yet so many of the evils that plague us we bring about by our own actions. Why should we blame God? Surely God weep to see their children act against what is natural and right. So the blessed Daisan would say. So Count Lavastine said. We aren't made guilty by those things that lie outside our power, but we aren't justified by them either. Evil is the work of the Enemy. It is easier to do what is right."

"Think you so, my lord? It seems to me that humankind have in them a creeping, sniggering impulse to do what is wrong."

"Yet none say it is right. Those who do wrong make excuses and tell stories to excuse themselves or even blame their folly on God, but their hearts are not free of guilt. That guilt drives a man to do worse things, out of pain and fear. It is a hard road to walk and more difficult still to turn back once you've begun the journey."

She chuckled scornfully. "Many folk say they are doing right and believe it. The Enemy blinds them."

"They blind themselves."

"Who is to say that the wicked don't flourish and the innocent fall by the wayside? Where is God's justice when it is needed?"

He peered at her, but it was difficult to make out her face with the cloud cover cast again over the heavens. "It is in our hands, Mistress Dhuoda. We have the liberty to choose our own actions."

"What if we choose wrong?"

He sighed, thinking of Adica. The wind sighed, echoing his breathing. Reeds rustled out in the marsh. A man rolled over, making a scraping noise against the ground as he turned in his sleep.

Blanche snorted, seemed about to rouse, and settled back into slumber.

"Why didn't God fashion us so we could do only what is right, and never what is sinful?" she continued.

"Then we would be no different than the tools we ourselves carry. If we did what is right, we would receive no merit from it, not if we had no choice. We would be slaves, not human beings."

"It might be better so," she murmured.

"Do you think so?"

"Sometimes I do," she said, and after that nothing more.

At length he fell asleep.

2

THEY came to Lavas Holding on St. Abraames' Day. From a distance, the settlement looked little different than the place he had first seen seven years ago—or was it eight? It was difficult to keep track.

The high timber palisade surrounded the count's fortress with its wooden hall and stone bailey.

Beyond the wall the village spilled down a leisurely slope to the banks of the river. Now, however, a fosse and earthen embankment circled the village and the innermost fields, orchards, and pasturage, cut in two spots by the course of the river. Many of the locals looked familiar to Alain, but all of the men at arms were new and by the sound of their words not Lavas born and bred but from farther east.

"Where is Sergeant Fell?" Alain asked the chatelaine as folk pressed close to stare.

"He was given leave to retire back to his home village, with no more than ten sceattas for all his years of service. And likewise, the others, with little enough or nothing, turned off because Lord Geoffrey feels safer with milites brought from his wife's kin's lands to protect him. It's brought grumbling, and rightly so."

"Who is this, Mistress Dhuoda?" demanded one of the soldiers, coming out of the hall with a spear in one hand and a mug of ale in the other.

"Captain, I pray you, where is Lord Geoffrey?"

"He's ridden out with the lady's brother, to take a look at a bull."

"The one belonging to Master Smith of Ferhold? He's already said he won't part with that one for any amount of sceattas."

"He'll part with it," said the captain with a sneer, "if Lord Geoffrey wants to add it to his herd.

Who's this?" He squinted as if against bright sun and pointed toward Alain with his spear.

Servants edged closer to whisper and stare. There was Cook, looking thinner and older, and an astounded Master Rodlin with a pair of sleek whippets at his heel. The whippets lowered their heads, whining, and cowered behind the stable master, but Sorrow and Rage sat peaceably with their faithful gazes turned on Alain, waiting to see what he wanted them to do.

"Those are big dogs," added the captain, and in his look and in the suppressed hiss of murmured voices there was a tense air as of a storm brewing.

Alain fixed his gaze on Cook and, taking Blanche's hand, led the girl over to the old woman.

"My lord," Cook murmured, with a glance toward the suspicious captain. Her hands were chapped and dappled with age marks, and her left hand had a kind of palsy, but her eye was still keen.

"I pray you, Cook," he said quietly, "do not call me by a title that does not belong to me. I have a favor to ask of you."

She nodded, dumbstruck. The captain coughed and looked around to mark the position of his soldiers, but only five or six were in view, loitering by the stables or at the corner of the hall.

"Keep watch on this child for me, if you will. She is the daughter of a man I called brother."

Cook regarded him, nodded, and extended a hand.

"Go on, Blanche. Do as I say."

She bit her lip, she looked up at him with a frown, but she placed her grimy hand in Cook's aged one without protest.

"I pray you, Lord Alain," said Dhuoda, coming up behind him. "We must not stand here in the courtyard like supplicants, else he'll take action." She indicated the restless captain.

"I'll wait in the church."

"Nay, my lord! You'll wait in the lord's audience chamber. It would be fitting!"

"I pray you, Mistress Dhuoda," he said in a softer voice. "Make no trouble for the innocent souls standing here around. I prefer to wait in the church, if you don't mind it. I wish to pray beside the count's bier."

"Of course!" She flushed red. "Of course, my lord!"

"Who is this man?" demanded the captain, stepping off the porch that fronted the hall. "He's not welcome here!"

Somehow or other the servants got moving right away and impeded his path, leaving Alain and Dhuoda to walk in solitude out to the stone church set apart from the other buildings beyond the palisade.

"What does Lord Geoffrey fear?" asked Alain, indicating the new earthworks.

"He fears justice, my lord. He fears Lady Sabella."

"Why should he fear her? Is she not in the custody of Biscop Constance in Autun?"

"Not for many years, my lord. Lady Sabella usurped her old seat. She holds Biscop Constance prisoner and rules Arconia again. Lord Geoffrey offered his allegiance to Biscop Constance, but it's likely the noble biscop cannot help us. There are bandits roaming the lands. Have you not heard of our troubles?"

"What particular injuries has Lavas Holding sustained?"

"Ravnholt Manor was burned to the ground last autumn a few weeks after the great storm. Eight people were murdered, and perhaps more, because it was hard to discover remains within the ruins of the hall. A dozen or more we found later hiding in the woods, but four girls were never accounted for although witnesses had seen them alive and running from the conflagration. They were not little ones but youths, and one recently wed. You will have no doubt about what the bandits wanted with them, poor things."

"Did no one seek them out? What happened to the bandits?"

"There was a single skirmish, my lord, two days later. Then the bandits vanished, or so Lord Geoffrey's scouts said. I don't know the truth of it."

"Do you not believe them?"

She shrugged, reluctant to say more. After the silence grew thick, she went on. "The girls who were taken were only servants' daughters. Two were slaves—their parents had sold them into service to discharge the debts they owed Ravnholt's steward."

"Did Ravnholt's steward not seek to recover those lost souls?"

"The steward was killed in the raid."

"Who is in charge there now?"

Her dark look matched the dreary day and the ominous swell of wind in distant trees. "Lord Geoffrey left the land fallow. Said he'd see to it later. Yet we've desperate need of planting.

Surely you know ... it's hard to think of planting with frosts still coming hard every night. There is a blight in the apple trees here and eastward. There may be no apple crop at all this year. In the south a black rot has gotten into the rye ..." She looked sideways at him, blushing again. "Yet you must know, for that's where you were found, wasn't it? In the south, by a mill."

"Mad, so they tell me," he said as they came up to the church and its narrow porch. He stepped into the shadow and turned to look at her, who stood yet in the muted daylight.

"Not mad," she said, but she didn't mean it. "You had the dancing sickness, my lord."

'And much else besides, I am thinking. I sustained an injury to my head. For a long while I wandered without my faithful hounds. I was lost and blind." He snapped his fingers, and the hounds waggled up to him and licked his hands. He patted them affectionately and rubbed his knuckles into their great heads, just how they liked it, and scratched them behind their ears.

She wrung her hands together, gaze fixed on the dirt. "Now you are come back to us, my lord."

"No," he said kindly. "I am only passing through. I will not stay."

She wept silently, nothing more than tears running down her cheeks.

"Do not despair," he said. "The one you seek will come."

He went inside into the gloomy nave, so shadowed that he had to stop four steps in and stand there for a while to let his eyes adjust. The hounds panted beside him.

"Come," he said at last.

They walked forward to the bier set halfway along the nave, flanked by benches. Rage and Sorrow sat at the foot of the bier, below Terror, and Alain knelt at Lavastine's right hand. The statue had been "dressed" in a long white linen shift overlaid with a wool tunic dyed to the blue that had always been Lavastine's preferred color. The cloth looked well brushed, though a little dusty. An embroidered border of leaping black hounds encircled half the hem, the kind of painstaking work that revealed the hand of an experienced needleworker. He wondered if the embroidery was work begun recently and as yet unfinished or if some woman's heartfelt task had been interrupted. Lavastine's feet were vulnerably bare, and his sharp features were as familiar as ever, with his beard neat and trim and eyes shut. No doubt folk new to the holding believed this a masterful piece of stone carving. Who would believe this was the man himself?

Bowing his head, Alain rested his brow against that cool cheek.

"I pray you," he whispered, "forgive me for the lie. I gave it up in order to enter the land of the meadow flowers, but now I am come home to this Earth and I must confess it to you. I said Tallia was pregnant only to spare you heartbreak, knowing you were slipping away. I do not regret sparing you pain on your deathbed. I regret only that I failed in the one task you set me. Still, it was not to be. God made it so. They knew I was not your rightful heir. If Tallia had gotten pregnant, then the threads would have tangled even more. No good rule can be based on a lie.

And, God help me, Father, had Tallia not betrayed me, I would never have met Adica. I'm sorry I could not be the son you desired, but that does not change the love I cherish for you."

When he ceased speaking, a quiet so profound settled into the church that he thought he could hear the earth's slow respiration, the breath of stone. Pale daylight gleamed on the altar and the golden vessel and the Book of Verses, left lying open as if the deacon had been interrupted in the midst of her prayers. Behind him lay the side chapel dedicated to St. Lavrentius, who had died before the time of the Emperor Taillefer while bringing the Circle of Unity to the Varrish tribes.

It is here, he thought, that it began. He had met the Lady of Battles on the Dragonback Ridge, but he wondered now whether that was coincidence or fate or free will? Was it in her nature to ride that path when a storm blew in off the sea? Had it only been accident that they had converged there? Or had she ridden that way on purpose, knowing she would meet him and in such an hour when he would have no choice but to save those he loved by pledging himself to her cause?

It was here, in this shadowed nave, that the answer lay. Beneath him lay the crypt where the counts of Lavas slumbered in death, although their souls had surely ascended to the Chamber of Light. Here in the aisle of the nave rested the last of the line of the elder Charles.

What had he been hiding?

Sorrow whoofed softly, and in answer Alain heard the skittering of mice near St. Lavrentius' altar as they scattered into their hideyholes. Once he and Lackling had knelt in that chapel at this very same time of year; Lackling had wept when one trusting little creature had crept into his hand and let him stroke its soft coat. Now, all rustling and scratching ceased.

The door opened, and a man—face shadowed by the daylight behind him—entered alone.

"You are come," the man said, more in sadness than in anger, yet there was anger as well, throttled by the stink of fear. The door closed behind him, and he halted. "Take it! Take it! It has rotted in my hands!"

"I pray you, Lord Geoffrey. Sit, if you will. I have not come here to take anything from you that is yours by right."

Geoffrey choked down a sob of fury, but he did not move. "You have outwitted me at every turn!

Was it nothing but a dumb show that you turned up here babbling and dancing? Did you mean to tempt me to do what I did, and thus discredit myself by making me seem a cruel and bitter man?

By making me seem afraid of you?"

"Are you afraid?"

"I am always afraid!" he roared. The hounds barked, first Sorrow and then Rage, and he took a step back. "They still guard you, then, those beasts."

"Sorrow and Rage are my faithful companions."

"What do you want? Why have you come back?"

"I came because Chatelaine Dhuoda asked me to return to Lavas Holding with her. Before that, I lived quietly over the winter by Osna Sound, recovering from the injuries that plagued me and the wound in my heart."

"Dhuoda is a traitor!"

"Is she?"

"No! No!" He began to pace along the entryway, falling out of sight behind a square pillar only to reappear at the wall, where he spun and strode back the other way. The walls trapped him. He could only turn, and turn again. "She told me straight out she meant to go. She is my kinswoman.

She has the right to question me."

He halted, facing the aisle. His face was pale and anguished, his hands clenched.

"Was Lavastine your father?" His voice scraped out the question. He bowed his head an instant, then raised it defiantly.

Rage turned to face him but did not otherwise move. Sorrow remained seated, snuffling at Terror's stone hindquarters as if seeking a scent.

Alain rose as well. He kept one hand on Lavastine's quiet hand, feeling the swell and hollow of knuckles and the intricate ridge of a petrified ring caught forever on the right forefinger. The gem, too, had gone to stone. He could not recall what color it had been.

Geoffrey went on in an enraged, triumphant rush. "Cook said your mother traded her body for food. They called her 'Rose' for her beauty. She was beautiful enough that every man desired her.

Cook said any man who lived here and was old enough to thrust his bucket into her well could have been your father, for many did. She turned no one away. All but Lavastine. He wouldn't take what other men had used. He never slept with her, not for want of her trying. That's what Cook told me. She kept silence when my cousin raised you up for fear of offending him. For fear he'd have her silenced!"

He was panting like a man who had been running.

"What do you say to that?" he finished.

"In truth," Alain said, "I believe that the halfwit boy Lackling was Lavastine's bastard son."

Geoffrey hissed out his breath but made no retort.

"I do not believe I was Lavastine's son by the laws that rule succession, those of blood. Yet I called him 'Father' and he called me 'Son.' I cannot tell you now that those words meant nothing."

"They mean nothing legal!"

"What they mean matters only to me, and mattered to him. That is all."

"What do you want, damn you?"

"Let me see you," said Alain.

After a hesitation, Geoffrey came forward. In the filtering of light that illuminated the Hearth, Alain could see the other man's features. Geoffrey was changed. He had once looked far younger and more carefree, a good enough looking man, but now his face was scored with lines and fear haunted his gaze. His mouth furrowed his face in a frown that seemed set there, as in stone.

Despair marked his forehead in a dozen deep wrinkles.

"You are troubled, Lord Geoffrey."

"This county is troubled! One thing after the next! I even rode east—but there was no help for it!

Laws are silent in the presence of arms, so the church mothers say. Those who ought to rule are set aside, and those who rule turn their gaze away from the plagues that beset us, seeking only their own advancement and enrichment and pleasure."

He shook a fist although not, it seemed, at Alain, but rather at Fate, or at God, or at some unknown individual whom Alain could not see and did not know. Rage growled, and Geoffrey lowered his hand quickly to his side but did not unclench it.

"So I am served, a taste of the supper I served to you! Have you come to gloat?"

"I am here for another reason," Alain said, smiling faintly, because he knew pain lifted that smile as well as an appreciation of its irony. "Strange that it took me so long and over such a road to see it. I pray you, Lord Geoffrey, sit down."

"I will not!"

Alain sighed. Where his hand lay on Lavastine's, he had a wild and momentary illusion that the dead count's stone skin warmed; he breathed, in that instant, the pulse of another, as slow as the pulse of the earth but no less steady. Down, deep in the earth, the rivers of fire that burn in the heart of the mortal world flow on their mighty course, and behind them, so distant that it is like reaching to touch the stars, dwells an old intelligence, weighty but not dim. Down he fell, remembering the touch of those ancient minds on that day when the bandits had brought him to Father Benignus' foul camp. That day Alain had killed Father Benignus by revealing to his followers that he was nothing but a shell that sustained its own life by feeding on the souls of those he had murdered.

Only his skeleton remained, darkening where sunlight soaked into bone. The stench of putrefaction faded as anger boiled up and men snarled and shouted, closing in. Rage leaped, growling furiously. A sharp blow cracked into the side of his head.

Gasping, he came up for air and found himself after all in the silence of the church, with Geoffrey standing stiff and arrogant before him and the hounds quiescent, not moving at all, ears down.

He steadied himself on Lavastine's cold arm. "One boon I ask you, Lord Geoffrey."

"What is that?"

"I have brought a child with me, a girl seven or eight years of age. She is the eldest child of one I once called 'brother,' a good man who has now a wife and child. Although he was betrothed to the girl's mother, they never wed. Let her serve, I pray you, in your retinue. Honor her as the granddaughter of one of your faithful householders in Osna Sound. Treat her well. Let her serve Chatelaine Dhuoda. If she has the wit to learn to mark accounts and learn to write and read, let her do so. If she has not such wit, let her serve in the kitchens under Cook's tutelage."

For a while Geoffrey said nothing. At last, as if puzzled, he scratched his beard. "What means this girl to you? Why do you bring her here?"

"Nothing good will come of leaving her where she was. Best she make a new start, if she can."

"That's all? Is she pretty? Is she meant to tempt me, or some other man? Is she your by-blow, meant to twist my daughter's heart and loyalty if she grows up beside her?"

"None of these things. A tree will grow twisted if the wind rakes it incessantly. Better she grow true, if she can. I hope it may be possible for her to do so here at Lavas, away from an otherwise good family that does not like her. That is all."

"You always had a care for the unfortunate!"

"Do not mock the unfortunate, Lord Geoffrey. They suffer more than the rest of us do."

"For their sins!"

"Do you think so? Rather they suffer for our sins. Is it not a sin to look the other way when you might extend a hand to one who is drowning? Is it not a sin to eat two loaves of bread when you might share one with those who are starving? Suffering is the task God set us. We choose whether to take action or turn away. Thus are we judged."

Geoffrey broke down and wept. "It is all gone wrong! My daughter—lamed in a fall from her pony! My dear wife dead in childbirth days after the terrible storm. Our sons held as hostages in Autun. Bandits afflict the forest and prey on the farmers. Plague eats at our borders. Hoof rot strikes down our sheep and cattle. All the birds are fled as if we live in a desert. And more besides. Far more! Too much to tell! How have I offended God?"

"You know that answer better than I do, Lord Geoffrey. Better to ask what you can do to set things right. Do you believe that your daughter is the rightful heir to Lavas County?"

"There is no other that I know of."

"If one such should appear, would you offer your loyalty to that one?"

"There cannot be another claimant! Count Lavastina had but two sons, Charles and, eighteen years later, my grandfather, the first Geoffrey. There my cousin lies." He pointed at the bier. "He is the last of the elder lineage. I am the only surviving descendant of the younger. Who else could there be?"

"Have you never wondered how the elder Charles acquired his fearsome hounds?"

Geoffrey shrugged.

"I do not know the answer," continued Alain, "but I wonder. Fear left me to seek another. And there was one person the hounds feared. Is there a connection between them?"

"You speak in riddles to torment me!"

"I pray you, forgive me. Something was set wrong long ago, in Lavas County. If we set it right, then it may be like a rock thrown into a still pool. Its ripples may spread to wash over the entire pond."

"These are mysteries! Conjecture! If you do not claim Lavas County, then what matters it to you who does?"

"Justice matters."

Geoffrey shrugged impatiently. "There is something more to this! Who is your father?"

Alain shook his head, distracted from his thoughts and, in truth, a little annoyed, but he let the irritation go. "My father? Henri of Osna is my father. As is Count Lavastine. As might be the shade of the lost prince in the ruins up on the hill. As might be the man who was also my grandfather, if he shared his own daughter. Or another man never named and never known. This is the truth." He lifted his hand from Lavastine's arm and stepped forward to stand between the hounds, so close to Geoffrey that he might reach out to touch him. "My path was marked the day the Lady of Battles challenged me. I know to whom I owe a son's love. Beyond that, I care not because it matters not."

"It makes no sense to me. You say you do not wish to contest my authority as regent for my daughter, or her claim, unless one comes who has a better claim than ours to the county of Lavas.

You say that, knowing there are no other surviving descendants of the elder Charles and the first Geoffrey."

"I have no reason to suppose there are descendants of those men, besides yourself and your daughter and young sons."

"Then how—? What—? You are saying you believe there is another surviving descendant of my great great grandmother, Count Lavastina. She had no surviving siblings, no nieces or nephews to contest the elder Charles' portion. The family lineage is written carefully by the Lavas clerics, but there is no record of it!" He grinned, the gesture more rictus than smile.

"If it could be proved that a rightful claimant existed, would you step aside?"

"My daughter inherits nothing except Lavas County."

"If it could be proved that there exists a person whose claim supersedes hers, would you withdraw her claim?"

Geoffrey gestured recklessly, a broad swipe. Sorrow barked at the abrupt movement but at a word from Alain held still. "Why not? You're a fool to speak so! If you'll give your pledge to make no claim yourself, to reject the claim Lavastine made on your behalf, then I'll pledge in my turn to accept that claim which supersedes that of my daughter. But it must withstand scrutiny! Biscop Constance herself, or a council of church folk with equal authority, must certify the truth of the claim. You can't pass off some girl—is that it? Is that the story of the child you want to leave here?"

"No. She is the unwanted granddaughter of a householder from Osna Sound, nothing more."

"Very well, then! We'll make these pledges publicly and have them written down. You'll depart, and leave me and my daughter in peace!"

Alain smiled sadly. "Beware of making such a pledge lightly, Lord Geoffrey, and only because you believe it will not turn around to bite you."

"I just want you gone before the sun sets!"

"So be it."

3

GEOFFREY had a guard waiting outside, and these dozen sullen men escorted them back to the hall with Mistress Dhuoda. The chatelaine twisted her hands fretfully as they walked.

"Sit here until the folk hereabouts can be assembled, enough to swear to what they see and hear,"

said Geoffrey brusquely once they had come into the hall. He took his captain aside and gave him orders, and sent Dhuoda to fetch his daughter from the upper rooms.

Alain sat on a bench in the corner of the hall. The hounds lay down at his feet. He sat there so quietly that after a while, when most of the guards went out to round up an assembly, it seemed they had forgotten him. On this cold spring afternoon no one used the hall. It appeared, by the arrangement of tables, that no feast had entertained the rafters for a good long time. The high table was pushed up against the wall of the dais; neither chairs nor benches rested beside it. A pair of tables and benches sat end to end by the wide hearth, where a fire burned, although it did not warm the corner where he waited. In the good days, under Lavastine, fully four or five score people might crowd into the hall for a grand feast. Now it appeared that a dozen ate by the fire, perhaps on warmer days, and that otherwise folk ate in their own chambers or houses, or in the barracks and kitchen. The floor was recently swept clean except for a spattering of bird droppings just to the left of where the entrance doors opened wide to the porch.

Alain gazed at the rafters by the door. A pair of swallows had been used to build their nest there, tolerated because swallows were thought to bring good luck, but he saw no activity.

Voices buzzed from outside, but no one came in past the two guards standing on the long porch, whose backs he could see. Once, long ago, he had sat in the high seat and presided over Lavas county, her lands and her people. He did not regret what he had lost. Those days seemed like a dream, something glimpsed but never really held. Once Tallia had sat beside him as his wife.

How he had loved her! Yet what had he loved, truly? A dream. A wish. An illusion. She was not the person he had made her to be in his mind. Perhaps we can only be betrayed where we have allowed ourselves to be blinded. If we know a man is evil or untrustworthy, then we cannot be surprised if he acts dishonestly or in a way that harms others. If we see clearly, we cannot be surprised.

It was easy now to recall those days and see Tallia for what she truly was: weak in spirit, petty, frightened, cruel in a small-minded way, and intent on getting her own way, without regard to others. The broken vessel, Hathumod had called her, too fragile to hold the weight of the heresy she claimed with the authority of one who has witnessed. She had lied about the nail, but in fact when he thought back through his sad marriage, she had not lied about wanting to marry him. Her uncle had forced her to marry. She had stated openly from the beginning that she prayed every day and every night for a chaste marriage and perpetual virginity.

He had wanted to believe otherwise so badly that in the end he had betrayed Lavastine by lying to a man he respected and loved. Ah, well. It was done and could not be undone.

Dust filtered down around him. Sorrow's tail thumped on the floor. A horse neighed outside, challenging another. A door creaked behind him, being opened. He wondered if he had dreamed that second betrayal, the one at the mines. Those months were as a puzzle to him, seen in glimpses all hacked into parts that could not be sewn back into a complete tapestry.

Tallia had been pregnant, and she had ordered her steward to cast him into the pit because she had recognized him and feared he would recognize her and harm her. Which betrayal burned worst? That she had tried to have him killed, or that she had given another man the thing she had refused to him?

Desire is a fiend that devours its victims while they still live and breathe.

And still. What she had refused him, Adica had offered freely and with the sweetness of meadow flowers. Who could say which woman valued herself more highly? The one who gave that which was precious to her, or the one who lied to hold it all to herself?

"I pray you, I beg your pardon, my lord. Forgive me."

He almost overset the bench because he was so startled by the familiar voice. The hounds remained still. Rage's tail thumped once. Cook bent into an awkward bow before him. Arthritis stiffened her back.

He wiped his forehead, shook his head to cast off his thoughts, and took her hand as he stood.

"Do not bow, Cook. I pray you. Ah! Here is Blanche!"

The girl squeezed up against him, hugging his side.

"I must speak before the rest come in," Cook continued, wheezing. "They're holding them all outside. I snuck in the back way."

"Sit, I pray you."

"It's easier for me to stand with my aching bones, my lord. Let me just say my piece, and I won't bother you more."

"Go on."

She had lost several teeth, which made her cheeks sunken, but her gaze remained firm and intelligent. "I beg your pardon, my lord. I did not mean for Lord Geoffrey to discredit you. Last year I told him what I did know, because he asked me for the truth."

"You said nothing but what you knew to be true. You have no need to apologize for it."

"Yet I'm sorry. I never believed he would treat you so cruelly. I wouldn't treat a dog so, chained and caged like that! So I told him!"

"Then you did me a service for speaking when you might have kept silent. Never mind it." He patted Blanche on the head. "What of the girl?"

"Oh! This one?" The pinched look left her face. She gave a grand smile and tweaked the girl's ear fondly. "What a hard-working little creature she is, isn't she, then? She stuck beside me all this time and did everything I asked of her. Good with a knife! Very careful handed, which you don't often see in a child this age. I can't trust just any lass with peeling and cutting. Washed me up turnips and parsnips, cutting out the soft spots, of which there are plenty, for these are the end of our winter store and some of them mostly mush by now."

Blanche blushed, face half hidden against Alain's tunic, but she was smiling proudly.

"Will you keep her in the kitchens, then, as your helper? And keep care of her? Can you do that?"

"For you, my lord? Willingly. I swear to you I will do by her as I would for my own granddaughter."

"You'll stay here, Blanche."

"I want to go with you, Uncle," she said into the cloth.

"You can't." He only needed to say it once. "Here you'll stay. Tell me you understand."

She spoke in a muted voice while her arms clutched him. "I stay with Cook."

A dozen soldiers tromped onto the porch and came into the hall, placing themselves to either side of the dais. A pair of servants carried the count's chair in from another chamber and set it in front of the high table. Folk moved cautiously into the hall behind the soldiers, their movement like the eddying of river currents caught in a backwater. A few crept close to him and knelt furtively, whispering words he could not really hear because of the shifting of feet and murmur of voices.

A door banged—open or closed. The assembly quieted as Lord Geoffrey entered with his young daughter. It was difficult to tell her age. She had a childish face and was short and slender and in addition walked with a pronounced limp, but despite her pallor she kept her chin high and gaze steady as she looked first at Alain and then over the assembled soldiers and local people for whom she was responsible as Count of Lavas. The hounds growled, a rumble in their throats too soft for anyone but him, and perhaps Blanche, to hear.

Lavrentia alone sat. Even her father remained standing.

"Let me hear your pledge," she said in a high, clear voice. She lifted a hand to give him permission to approach, and Alain smiled to see the gesture, which echoed Lavastine's decisive ways.

He set Blanche aside, giving her into Cook's arms, and mounted both steps to stand on the same level as the lady. He did not approach her chair nor kneel before her. Instead, he turned to face the crowd. The hounds stood side by side on the first step, and the soldiers nearby shrank back from them.

"I pray you, listen!"

As though a spell had been cast over the multitude, they fell quiet and listened. Not a murmur teased the silence, although one person coughed.

"I make this statement freely, not coerced in any way. I came here of my own accord under the escort of Chatelaine Dhuoda. You know who I am. I am called Alain. I was born here in Lavas Holding and grew up in fosterage in Osna village. Count Lavastine of blessed memory believed I was his illegitimate son and named me as his heir. I sat in the count's chair for some months before King Henry himself gave the county into the hands of Lavrentia, daughter of Geoffrey.

This you know."

Geoffrey was white, shaking, and strangely it was his young daughter who brushed her small fingers over her father's clenched fist to calm him.

"This is what I must say to you now, so you can hear, and remember, and speak of it to others who are not here today. I am not Lavastine's heir. I am not the rightful Count of Lavas."

"Nay! Nay! Say not so, my lord!"

"We won't believe such lies—!"

"I knew he was a grasping imposter."

"What of the testimony of the hounds?"

"I pray you!" said Alain. "Grant me silence, if you will."

They did so. There was another cough, a shuffling of feet as folk shifted position, a handful of murmurs cut off by sibilant hisses as neighbors shushed those who whispered, and, from outside, a chorus of barking, quickly hushed.

"I will depart this place by sunset with nothing more than what I came with, all but this one thing: this pledge made by Lord Geoffrey. That his daughter, Lavrentia, will rule as Count of Lavas but will stand aside if one comes forward with a claim that supersedes hers and is validated by a council of respected church folk or by Biscop Constance of Autun."

"I swear it," growled Geoffrey. The hounds growled, in unison, as if in answer or in challenge.

Geoffrey wiped his brow. The girl bit her lip but did not shift or otherwise show any fear in the face of the fearsome black hounds. Pens scratched as a cleric, seated by the fire, made a record of the proceedings on vellum.

Alain descended from the dais and went over to the bench where his pack lay. He hoisted it, whistled to the hounds, and before any person there could react, he kissed Blanche, made his farewells to Cook, and walked to the door. He came outside past the brace of guards and was out into the courtyard and practically to the gates before he heard the rush of sound, a great exhalation, as the folk inside the hall rushed outward to see where he was going.

They crowded to the gate and some trailed after him to the break in the fosse that met with the eastbound road. A handful kept walking behind him all the way into the woodland until it was almost dark and at last he turned and asked them kindly to go back before it was too dark for them to see.

There was a lad, weeping, who sidled forward, grasped his hand, and kissed it.

"I pray you, be well," said Alain. "Do not weep."

There was Master Rodlin, without the whippets, who stared at him and said, "What of the hounds? They follow you still. Is that not the mark of Lavas blood? And if not, then what is it?"

"They cannot answer, for they do not have human speech," said Alain. "They chose to follow me long ago to help me on my path.

398

Serve the rightful heir, Master Rodlin, as faithfully as you did Count Lavastine."

"When will that one come?" he demanded.

"Like the hounds, I cannot answer. If Lavrentia is the rightful heir, you must serve her with the same loyalty you showed to Count Lavastine."

Rodlin frowned but grabbed the lad's hand and led him away. The holding was hidden by the trees and the stone tower by a twilight that caused colors to wash into one dim background.

One remained, wringing her hands. "Do you remember me?" she said. "Will you curse me, for teasing you when you first were come here? Do you hate me for it?"

Her eyes were still as startling a blue as when he had met her years ago. She had a well-fed look to her and her belly curved her skirts in such a way that he supposed she was in the middle months of pregnancy.

"Did you ever meet the prince in the ruins?" he asked her.

Her lips twisted into a resigned smile. "Did you lie to me that night when we both went up to the ruins?"

"No, I did not. I saw him."

"Then you saw more than I did! I looked, but I saw nothing. Or maybe that's just how it goes when a girl is young and stupid. I married a good man who works hard and can feed me and my younger sisters and our child. There are only shadows in those ruins now."

"Have you walked there since?"

"I went there at midwinter, just a few month back. Because I thought of you, in truth. Because we saw you in the cage. I didn't think that was right. It was Heric done it, and I cursed him for it."

She paused, waiting.

"What do you want?" he asked her. "You did no wrong to me, and I none to you, I think."

"I just wanted to see you in the dusk," she said, "to see if the shadows made you look like they say that prince did. To see if you might be his by-blow, as some whispered. Shadow-born.

Demon's get."

"Do you think I am?" She puzzled him. She was cleaner and prettier than she had been before, better cared for in both dress and manner, and while she did not seem precisely friendly, neither did she seem spiteful.

"You're not what you seem," she said, turning away. She took three steps before turning back to look at him. "There was nothing in those ruins, not even shadows, because there was no moon to make shades. But if you want to hear the weeping of ghosts, go to Ravnholt Manor."

Because of the cool weather and the clouds, the abandoned path leading to Ravnholt Manor was not at all overgrown or difficult to pass except for some fallen branches and a thick cushion of leaf litter. He came into the clearing at midday two days after his departure from Lavas. He discovered eight graves dug beside a chapel that was just big enough to seat a half dozen worshipers beside its miniature Hearth. From a distance, the mounded graves still looked fresh, but that was only because so few weeds had grown in the dirt. It wasn't until he came up close that he saw how the earth had settled and compacted. A deer's track, its sides crumbling, marked the corner of one mound. A rat sprinted away through the ruined main house, whip tail vanishing into a hole in the rubble. Otherwise it was silent.

No. There. He heard a faint honking and, looking up, saw a straggling "v" of geese headed north, not more than a dozen. He put a hand to his face, feeling tears of joy welling there, and he smiled.

Rage and Sorrow snuffled around the fallen outbuildings. There was a weaving shed, a privy, two low storage huts, and a trio of cottages. The byre hadn't burned, but its thatched roof had fallen in. Alain poked through the rubble of the longhouse with his staff, but he found nothing except broken pots, a pair of half eaten baskets, and the remains of two straw beds dissolving into the ash-covered ground.

A twig snapped.

"What do you want?" asked a voice from the woods, a man hidden among the trees. The voice seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it.

"Just looking for the four women who were taken from this place by bandits."

He felt a breath, an intake of air, and threw himself flat. An arrow passed over his head and thunked into a charred post behind him. Barking wildly, the hounds charged into the trees. By the time Alain scrambled to his feet, he heard a man shrieking in terror.

"Nay! Nay! Call them off! I beg you! Anything! Anything!"

Alain pushed through the brush to find Sorrow standing on top of a man. His right wrist bled where Rage had bitten him. A bow carved of oak lay on the ground atop a fallen arrow. The man writhed, moaning and whimpering, as Sorrow nosed his throat.

A ragged wool tunic covered his torso. It had been patched with the overlarge stitches that betray an inexperienced hand. His hands were red from cold. He was also barefoot; his feet were chapped, heavily and recently callused, and the big toe of his right foot was swollen, cracked, and oozing pus and blood.

Alain picked up the arrow and broke it over his knee, then unstrung the bow and tied it onto his pack.

"Mercy! Mercy! It was my sin! I am the guilty one!"