"Sorrow! Sit!"

Sorrow sat on the man's left arm, pinning him, and panted, drooling a little, as Alain stepped forward to look the man in the face.

"I know you. You're called Heric. You were a man-at-arms in Lavas Holding seven or eight years back."

The pungent smell of urine flooded as the man wet himself.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I pray you, forgive me!"

"For trying to kill me just now?"

Heric kept babbling. "It was my sin! Mine!"

Although it made his head ache a little, Alain remembered. "You were the one who put me in the cage."

"Don't kill me! Don't kill me!"

"What of the reward you received for bringing me in to Geoffrey? Surely he gave you something? How after all that do you come to be hiding in the woods wearing such rags?"

"Don't let them chop off my hand! I didn't steal anything!"

"Only my freedom!"

Heric screamed and jerked his leg, but Rage was only licking at the swollen toe. "I had to! You were an outlaw! You were a thief, the worst of all! You took what wasn't yours to have. So they all said!"

"Roll over onto your stomach."

"The beast'll bite me!" But he did so, easing his arm out from under Sorrow as the hound looked up at Alain for direction.

Heric had been a big man once, but hunger had worn him down. He hadn't a belt for the tunic, and a crude cord woven out of reeds tied back his unruly hair. This man had betrayed him. But Alain could find no indignation on his own behalf for this pathetic creature who had no shoes, no gloves, and only two arrows, one now broken, with which to kill himself some supper. He hadn't even a knife.

"Why are you here at Ravnholt Manor?"

"Heard deer and rats seen roundabout," Heric replied, head twisted to one side so he could speak without choking on dirt. "I'm hungry."

"Do you know what happened to those four women?"

"No."

"Ah." Centuries ago, as humankind measured time, Alain had been bitten by a blind snake hiding in the lair of a phoenix. The effects of that venom still coursed through his blood, and where the poison burned, he burned with outrage. "You're lying, Heric. I pray you, do not lie. God know the truth. How can you hide from Them?"

"I didn't kill anyone! It was the others. It was them who are guilty! Even here at Ravnholt. I just stood watch, I never hurt anyone! After you escaped the cage, after that storm and that monster—

ai, God! Then all those who were so friendly to me before, all them turned on me and cast me out! What was I to do? The woods-men—that's what they call themselves—they're not so particular!"

'Although an honest woodsman might object to a pack of bandits calling themselves by an honest name."

"We was hungry, just like others. Did what we had to do to get a scrap to eat."

"Murdered folk here at Ravnholt Manor? Where are the four girls who were taken?"

He sobbed helplessly into the dirt, nose running. He stank with fear. "I left them after they done it. I wasn't guilty. I didn't do it!"

'After they done what?"

"Killed them! Raped them and killed them. Said they might try to escape. I said they ought to spare 'em. But no."

"You touched none of those girls?"

"I didn't kill them!"

"But you raped them! Isn't that harm enough? And stood by and let them die after! Doesn't that stain your hands with their blood? The one who refuses to act to save the innocent is as guilty as the one whose hand strikes the blow!"

These words set Heric caterwauling and writhing on the earth like a man having a fit.

"Roll over and sit up."

Heric's sobs ceased and, cautiously, he rolled onto his back, then sat, not even brushing off the leaf litter and dirt and twigs that smeared his rags. He eyed first Rage, who wanted to get back to licking the infected toe, then Sorrow, who yawned hugely to display his teeth.

Alain took a few breaths to clear his anger. "I believe you are telling the truth about those poor girls, but I'll see those graves."

"There aren't no graves! The others slit their throats and cast them into the brush, that's all."

"Then you'll bury their corpses. Lead me there."

"Won't! It's close by the hidey-hole. We'll be killed, you and me. Twenty of them agin' two of us.

I have no weapon, not now you took mine . . . unless you want to give me back my bow."

"No, I don't want to. Come, then."

"We're not going there, are we?" His voice rose in panic. "I don't want to die."

"Did those girls want to die? Did they cry and plead, Heric? Did you hear them begging while you stood by and watched?"

"I turned my back!" he said indignantly. "I'm not a monster, to watch murder done!"

"If turning your back is not a monstrous deed, then what is?" He signaled with a hand. Tails lashing, the hounds waited for his command.

"Where are we going?"

"To Lavas Holding."

"Not there, I beg you! They'll hang me! They'll chop off my hands and then my head."

"If you're not guilty, why do you fear their justice?"

Heric spat into the dirt. Rage growled.

"Are you so wise?" he sneered. "What justice is there for a man like me? I served the old count faithfully, and what did I get for my good service? I got turned out by the new lord without even a thanks! An old hunting dog is treated better than I was! Lord Geoffrey will hang me just to be rid of another mouth to feed. He was happy enough to offer boots and clothes and a handful of sceattas when I brought you to him, for him to parade around the county. Because he thought folk would stop their whispering. And after— hsst!" He spat again. 'After that storm, after you escaped, those who cheered most to see you mad and chained slapped me and spat on me and called me an evil man. Because they feared it was God sent the storm to free you. Why should I not fear their justice? They'll be glad to hang me to make the shame pass from their own sinful hearts."

"I'll see you get justice."

Heric laughed hysterically. "How can you do that? How can you? What are you? Where are you come from? What happened to the madness that ate at you?"

After all, Alain found that spite still lived in his heart. 'A little late to ask those questions, isn't it?"

he said with a sour grin. He turned his back and began walking.

After a sharp rustle came a thump and a yelp of pain. Alain turned to see Sorrow sitting on Heric's chest again. With a growl the hound opened his mouth and gently closed his jaws right over Heric's face.

"Come," said Alain firmly. Sorrow eased back, scratched an ear as though he didn't know what for, and padded after Alain.

Blubbering, Heric rose and limped after, Rage bringing up the rear.

"One will always be awake," said Alain. "One, or the other."

"I'll come! I'll come!" He staggered along like a man walking to his death.

And, Alain reflected, it must seem so to him. It might even be true. Yet, however little Heric deserved mercy for his cowardice and his rapine, he must at least be judged only for the sins he had committed, not made into a sacrificial beast by those who wished to assuage their own shame with the blood of someone else.

They walked in a silence broken only by the wind's passage through branches still bare of spring buds. Except where evergreens gave cover, it was possible to glimpse vistas into the forest, a place of muted colors and a profound solitude. Now and again a clearing opened up; here and there coppices filled a well-husbanded section of woodland. They passed an old charcoal pit, two or three seasons in disuse, with leaves and dirt scattered in damp mounds and a half burned log laced with clinging vine. Human hands had teased a streamside clearing into an orchard made proud by a dozen trees, not yet far gone in neglect. Farther on, a wide meadow boasted a sturdy shelter suitable for a flock of sheep on summer pasture.

"This was a peaceful place once," said Alain. "Well tended and well loved."

"Maybe so," muttered Heric, "but they still kept a girl from Salia to serve the steward's son in whatever manner he wished."

"How do you know?"

"She got free and come to the bandits, that's why. It was she made the plan, and give the signal.

She knew the ways and times of the household, that's why. The others said she killed that one herself, the one who used her, but I didn't see it."

"Made she no protest when four girls were taken to be used in the same rough manner she was?

And worse, for they were killed after?"

"What did she care for them? She wanted revenge, and took it. It was she argued loudest that they were a nuisance and ought to go. I think it was for that she was jealous of the attention they got.

She liked keeping the men on a string, you know how it is. That girl at Lavas, called Withi, I liked her well, but she did do that to me, curse her. Went off in the end with a man who could keep her fed." His tone was self-pitying. "The Salian girl, she said also those other girls cursed her ill with words and slaps, back when she was only a concubine. So it was revenge twice over."

"Might she have been lying?"

'About what? Being taken to bed each night by a man she hated? The other girls slapping her and calling her a Salian whore? How would I know?"

Alain tramped on, unable to speak for the bitterness lodged in his throat. It seemed that injustice was woven through the world in inexplicable patterns, impossible to tease apart without unraveling the entire web.

"Seems like God are blind and deaf and mute," continued Heric, having gotten a good wind to fill the sails of his complaining. "But I heard a story about a phoenix. You heard it? They say a phoenix descended from heaven and tore the heart out of the blessed Daisan to make him suffer just like the rest of us. I wonder if it's true."

"I think that story was twisted in the telling."

"Huh. 'Truth flies with the phoenix.' That's what one of those girls cried out as they was cutting her throat. Well, she flew, anyway right up to the light, or into the Pit."

"Don't mock!"

Rage barked and Sorrow growled. Heric fell into a sullen muttering that was not audible enough to fashion into words.

They went on, and soon a second murmuring noise caught Alain's hearing. He lifted a hand and halted on the path just before it curved left. He recognized this place from his morning's passage along this way. In another twoscore or so steps they would come to the main road. As they listened, they heard the sound of a cavalcade moving along the as-yet-unseen track: harness jingling, wheels scraping along dirt, voices chattering, and a dog's bark. Sorrow whined but did not answer.

Heric whimpered. Alain looked back to see that Rage had gotten hold of the man's leggings as he tried to creep back the way they had come.

"That's a big party," he whined. "Listen! A hundred or more, Lord Geoffrey riding to war. Maybe come to have you killed!"

Alain shook his head. "They're riding toward Lavas Holding." He turned to the hounds. "Rage.

Sorrow. Stay. Guard."

He picked his way past fallen branches, more numerous close to the joining with the road as though the bandits had pulled down obstacles to cover their tracks. Soon he heard the procession in full spate but marked also with the giggling of children and an unexpected snatch of hymn from a voice he had heard before but could not quite place.

". . .who made a road to the sea

And a path through the mighty waters."

He came to the last turning, where the path hitched around a massive oak that served as a towering landmark. He recalled it from earlier years. The autumn storm had half torn it from the ground. Its vast trunk had fallen westward to leave roots thrust like daggers across the path. He used these as cover as he examined the road.

There were soldiers riding in pairs or marching in fours while between their ranks trundled carts and wagons filled with household goods and children and elders and caged chickens. Youths and sturdy looking women walked alongside, most of them carrying a bundle or two. A pair of clerics walked beside a wagon containing several fine chests. He saw—

Hathumodl

She sat on a wagon next to a white-haired woman placed among pillows. Another, older woman dressed in cleric's robes made up the third in the bed of the wagon. Her back was to Alain, but by the movements of her shoulders and hands she seemed to be talking in a lively way while the others listened, the white-haired woman with a smile of patient interest despite the pain etched into her face, and Hathumod with a scarcely concealed look of boredom.

The wagon passed and was gone beyond his line of sight through the trees before he realized who he had just seen. And where she must be going: Lavas Holding was about three days' journey west, and there was no crossroads that came sooner on the road than the holding itself.

Soon it would be dark. The cavalcade must camp for the night, most likely on the road itself.

Soldiers scanned the woodland as though they expected attack, but the upturned oak hid him because he did not move. What strange company was this? It was like an entire village on the move, not like a noblewoman's royal progress.

When the last ranks of infantry had passed, he waited a while longer, and at length a trio of silent outriders ambled by. He waited even longer until one last pair of men rode past with hands easy on the reins, their gazes keen and penetrating, and a bow and a sword, respectively, laid across their thighs.

It was one of these who saw him, although he hadn't meant to be seen.

"Whsst!" The young man's chin jerked around fast. He had his bow up and arrow ready, holding his horse with tightened knees, before Alain could take a second breath. The other man reined his horse around to face back the way they'd come, sword raised.

"I'll come out," said Alain in an even voice. "I've been waiting for you. What business has Biscop Constance in these parts? I heard she was a prisoner of Lady Sabella in Autun."

"Come out," said the archer. "What think you, Captain? Are there more? Should we shoot him?"

The other man's horse took one side step. "Let him come free if he moves slowly. Let's see what he knows first. Better the battle come sooner when we're ready for it than later when we're not."

Alain put his hands out with palms raised and turned toward them, and walked onto the road.

The captain narrowed his eyes, examining him. "I've seen you before."

"Gent!" said the young one. "In Count Lavastine's company. Wasn't he—?"

The captain hissed sharply between gritted teeth. "You're Lavastine's heir—the very one. Your claim was put aside in favor of Lord Geoffrey's daughter." He extended his sword as a threat.

"What brings you here? I heard you had marched east as a Lion."

"So I did. Now I am come back."

"To challenge Lord Geoffrey?"

"No. I have another purpose."

"What might that be?" asked the captain in a genial tone that made it clear he demanded an explanation.

In that woodland, sound carried far. The progress of the cavalcade had faded westward. With the promise of nightfall, the wind sighed to a halt.

A jingle of harness out of the east rang brightly in warning.

"Damn," said the captain. They had all heard it. 'As I feared."

"What are we to do, Captain?" asked the young man, looking exceedingly nervous but also determined and angry. "If they catch us ..."

"Who follows you?" Alain asked.

"Lady Sabella's soldiers," said the captain.

"If I can turn them back," said Alain, "will you take me to Biscop Constance? I ask only to speak with her briefly. Then I'll be on my way."

"Turn them back!" scoffed the young man.

"Hush, Erkanwulf! We must get the biscop to Lavas Holding. You ride and alert the rest. Form up with all soldiers to the rear and flanks, out into the forest. I'll stay here."

"No, Captain. Begging your pardon, Captain. It's you they need, more than me. I can wait behind and catch up. If I don't come, it's because I'm dead."

The captain considered. He was a thoughtful man, Alain saw, one who was neither too eager nor too cautious; a good commander. His features triggered an old memory, but if he'd seen this man at Gent, and he surely had done so, it was in passing. Many men rode in the war parties of other nobles. A lord might note faces and go on, not marking them because he had no authority over them.

With regret, the captain nodded. "So be it." He turned his measuring gaze on Alain. "If Erkanwulf brings me news that the ones who follow us turned back, then I'll see you have an audience with the holy biscop."

He sheathed his sword, gave a hard look at Erkanwulf, and rode on. He looked back twice before vanishing around a bend in the road.

"Best if I do this alone," said Alain.

"I'd rather die than betray my captain!"

"If you take the horse down that path, you can tie him up and then watch without being seen."

'And without hearing! You might tell them anything, the disposition of our forces, our numbers, our destination if they haven't guessed it already. You might be a spy in league with Lady Sabella."

"I might be, it's true, although I'm not."

Erkanwulf scratched his head. "I'm minded to believe you, although I don't know why. How will you stop them?"

A second jangle of noise rang closer. The first had been a trick of air and leaf, but this grew steadily in volume.

"Go," said Alain.

Erkanwulf hesitated only a moment, biting his lip, before he dismounted and lead his horse down the track that cut off toward Ravnholt Manor.

Alain set himself in the middle of the road with a hand on his staff and the other hanging loose at his side. He waited, breathing in the loamy air. The battered roadbed gave beneath his right foot where a trickle of groundwater seeped up to dampen the leather of his boots and creep in through the seams. A fly buzzed around his left ear. A bee wandered into the shadow of a copse of withered honeysuckle grown up along a patch of open ground. He waited, content to let the time pass. He felt the barest glimmer of sun above, like the kiss of a mouth through cloth. If the weather didn't change, then crops wouldn't grow or would grow weakly. The thought stuck with him and gave him courage.

In time, the first outriders appeared out of the east as shadows lengthened on the road. It was a good long straight stretch of track, open enough that he soon saw most of the company moving along. He faced about threescore riders. Half were mounted, dressed in surcoats bearing the sigil of the guivre of Arconia. A dozen of the infantry wore a tower sigil that he did not recognize. The others wore any kind of leather coat or tough jacket, men brought quickly into service for a specific task but not serving in the duke's milites on a permanent basis.

Their captain rode in the third rank behind a double line of anxious-looking younger men bearing small shields and short spears. He was a fearsome-looking man, grim with anger and horribly scarred. He was missing an eye, healed as a mass of white scar tissue, and old gashes scored his forehead and jaw. Now and again a man in the first rank would lift an arm to point out yet another mark of the passage of a significant cavalcade. They knew what they followed. They could not be turned aside through misdirection. They had marked Alain already and now sent scouts on foot into the underbrush, seeking to forestall an ambush. The shing of swords leaving sheaths cut the air. Shields were raised, and spears wavered. Some had bows, and these men set arrow to string and scanned the woodland for movement.

"Tammus!" shouted Alain. "Keeper!"

The captain started, and around him his men muttered. Slowly, the war band moved toward Alain as toward a trap they must spring.

"I am alone except for one witness, hidden in the trees," continued Alain, "and farther back two hounds guarding a criminal who consorted with bandits."

"A likely story," said the captain. "How do you know my name? Are you one of the biscop's men?"

"I am not."

"To what lord or lady do you owe allegiance?"

"I serve God, Captain Tammus. Whom do you serve, God or the Enemy?"

They murmured angrily at that, like bees stirred up by smoke, and one rash fellow actually rode out ahead of the front rank brandishing his sword.

"Fall back!" snapped the captain.

The man obeyed. The rest halted an easy spear's toss from Alain. A branch snapped in the woods.

"What do you want?" asked the captain. "I've no patience. We're close to our quarry and you're in our way."

Alain was close enough to see Tammus' eye flare as he reacted to a bold stare. The captain had but one hand. The other arm ended in a stump at the wrist, seared by fire.

"To pass, you must kill me, keeper."

One among the guard sniggered.

"Hush! Why do you call me that? How do you know my name?"

"You kept the guivre for Lady Sabella. I saw you feed a living man to it, once. That's how you kept it alive. I think you might have called yourself by a different name, then."

Tammus' gaze flickered, losing touch with Alain's as he traced the reaction of his men. Soldiers looked one at the other; hands fluttered as in sign language; a murmuring passed back through the ranks.

"Hush!" said the keeper. "I am Lady Sabella's servant. I do as she bids me. You are in my way.

We'll ride right over you. You have no weapon."

Alain caught his gaze again and held it. He challenged him as a hound might, with a stare from which one must back down and the other emerge triumphant.

"With your own hand you must kill me," he said, "or with your own voice you must command one of your men to slay me because you refuse to spill my blood with your own weapon. Either way, your hands are stained."

"I am the lady's servant," growled Tammus. "I do as she bids me." He could not now look away without losing face, not with every man among his company watching him.

Alain said nothing, only kept his gaze locked on the captain's. He remembered the night he had stumbled upon the guivre's cage, how it had been shrouded in canvas to conceal the monster within. He recalled the slack body of the drugged man who woke up too late to the fate that would consume him. He knew in his heart and in his limbs the touch of the guivre's gaze, which struck like the sword of God, for he had felt it that night. So did the creatures of God teach humankind what they needed to know.

"I've killed lots of men and in worse ways than cutting a man down on the road," muttered Tammus hoarsely.

"I know," said Alain, remembering that great eye and its power. "For I am the one who aided Brother Agius in killing that poor beast at Kassel. With a sword I killed it, and Lady Sabella's army was routed. Do you think you can kill me?"

A breath was the only sign; lips parted. Wind curled in leafless branches.

Tammus lost his nerve. He froze. Every man there felt it, heard it, saw it, knew it with the same instinct hounds have for weakness. It took only that one breath for the advantage to shift, for the battle to be lost.

Alain did not move. It was they who fled back the way they had come.

4

"YOUR Grace."

Alain knelt in the spot indicated by Captain Ulric.

"I don't know how he did it!" Erkanwulf was saying off to one side. Because of his mounting exasperation, his voice carried. "He just looked at them. They turned tail and ran. That was before I saw those monstrous black hounds!"

"I know who you are, or who you once were." Biscop Constance had aged horribly. Lines marked her face as deeply, in their own way, as Tammus' scars had disfigured him, and she favored her right side over the left as though it was agony to shift her left hip at all. But her gaze was calm and her voice was mild. "Beyond what

I witnessed myself, and what I learned when I ruled Arconia, I have heard just these last few moments such tales as make my head spin. You are a count's bastard son. A count yourself. A cheat and a liar and thief. A whore's son. A faithful Lion who died in the east in battle. You are, it appears, a man who commands the loyalty of fierce beasts. Who can turn back a war band on a forest lane with his gaze alone."

"I am the son of a Salian refugee, Your Grace. I was raised in an honest household of merchants out of Osna Sound. That is all that matters."

"Perhaps. Why are you come, Alain of Osna? What do you want from me?"

"I ask you to bring justice to the folk murdered at Ravnholt Manor, including four young women who were raped and murdered. Find their bodies, and bury them. Bring to trial the bandits who killed them."

As many as could crowd in around her shelter had come to see; everyone surely had heard the tale of the encounter on the road by now. They were silent, but their stares had an unexpected force, as powerful as that of the guivre.

"Is that all? I think there is more."

"I am looking for a woman."

She smiled, misunderstanding him. Hathumod touched the back of a hand to her mouth, repressing a sound. She stared at Alain with a remorseful gaze. There were others behind her whom Alain recognized from court, and from his sojourn at Hersford Monastery: among them the handsome young man who had once been Margrave Judith's husband. How long ago it seemed that he had walked up on that porch to interrupt a fight between Prior Ratbold and a ragtag collection of five clerics and two Lions! How these heretics had fetched up in Biscop Constance's train he did not yet know.

"The woman I am looking for was an Eagle," he continued, "and then afterward I heard a story that she ran off with Prince Sanglant."

"Liath!" A red-haired young man stepped forward so angrily it seemed he meant to strike.

"Brother Ivar!" Constance's tone was a reproof. Ivan shrugged a shoulder, shifted his feet, but did not move back to his former place beside the beautiful bridegroom whose name, Alain abruptly recalled, was Baldwin. The beauty was now, incongruously, dressed as a cleric. His eyes were wide, and his right hand fingered a gold Circle of Unity whose surface was chased with filigree.

He wore a ring, bright blue lapis lazuli.

Alain's breath caught; words vanished. He knew that ring, once most precious to him.

"Go on," said the biscop.

"I pray you," he said, finding his voice. "Where did you get that ring, Brother?"

There was a moment of confusion. Then Baldwin looked toward the red-haired Brother Ivar, who answered.

"In a tomb buried deep in a hillside, a heathen grave far east of here. What matters it to you?"

"Ivar," said the biscop softly, "I will suffer no disrespect toward those who come honestly before me."

"It was the same place we got the nail," said Hathumod, "and the Lion's tabard and weapons.

How came these things there, to such an ancient grave?"

To touch again the gift she had given him! The thought coincided with a curious look on the handsome cleric's face as the man clutched his other hand possessively around the one on which he wore the ring.

Fingers may brush, and yet after all two people may be separated by a gulf that cannot be bridged. "Never mind it," Alain murmured. Adica was gone. Taking the ring from a man who cherished it would not bring her back. Yet it was nevertheless difficult to speak through the pain in his heart.

"Liathano is indeed the one I seek. Have you news of her whereabouts?"

"Why do you wish to know? What business do you have with her?" demanded the redhead.

"Hush, Ivar!" Hathumod punched his arm. He shot a glance at her that pierced, but she only made a face at him.

"I would know the answers to these questions likewise," said Constance, "although I must tell you, in truth, Alain of Osna, that I do not know what has become of the Eagle. I have been held as a prisoner by my half sister Sabella for over five years. What news we have is scant, gathered by Brother Ivar and young Erkanwulf. King Henry has lingered many years in Aosta seeking an imperial crown. Sabella and Conrad between them have usurped the governance of Varre. Who can blame them, when Henry abandons his people? Princess Theophanu bides in Osterburg, protecting Saony, which is the ancient seat of my family's power. Prince Sanglant defeated a Quman army at the Veser River and afterward rode east seeking griffins and sorcerers with which to battle a mysterious cabal of sorcerers who he claimed intended to destroy the world. He is said to have ridden south to Aosta in pursuit of his father and the sorcerers. More than that I do not know."

'Ah," said Alain. "Some knew, then, of the coming storm. It was not in vain that the Old Ones spoke to me."

"The storm? The one that swept over us last autumn?"

"It was the final closing of a spell set in motion centuries ago."

He surprised her, who was a woman not easily startled. She touched her left ear as if she were not at all sure she had heard those words spoken. "What mystery is this you speak of? Have you some hidden knowledge of events lost in the past in the time of the blessed Daisan?"

"This took place long before the time of the blessed Daisan. They are hidden from us only by the passage of years. Only by death, which hides us all in the end. I pray you, have you any news of the one called Liathano?"

"Of her, no. She was lost in a haze of fire."

"Truth rises with the phoenix," murmured the beauty, and Alain felt the pinch of those words in his heart as though some unnoticed hand were trying to get his attention.

"What did you say?" he asked him.

" 'Truth rises with the phoenix,' " the young man repeated patiently, and his smile made the folk nearby murmur and point as if he had just done something extraordinary. "We who believe in the truth and the word speak so, to acknowledge the sacrifice made by the blessed Daisan, who died so that our sins might be forgiven."

'Agius' words are seeds grown in fertile soil," said Alain.

Constance shut her eyes, touched a finger to her own lips as she might touch the mouth of a lover.

" 'His heart's blood fell to Earth and bloomed as roses,' " Alain added.

She looked at him, just a look, that was all. That gaze, met and answered, nothing more, until her expression shifted, grew puzzled, almost intimate, and she extended a hand and beckoned him closer. She sat in a chair at the rear of the wagon in which he had earlier seen her riding. Her breath fogged the cold air. When he stood next to her, she touched his cheek.

"You are marked as with a rose," she said. "A curious birthmark. I've never seen such a one before."

"It is not a birthmark but the memory of a false oath," he said.

"It serves to remind me of ray obligation, something I cannot see except in the faces of other human beings."

"Who are you?" she asked him, and looked at Baldwin as if for an answer, but Baldwin did not speak. He was staring at the sky and he raised a hand and pointed.

"Is that the sun? See there. It's almost gone below the trees, but it has a bluish cast. As though haze screens it, not clouds."

First a soldier turned, then an elderly woman. Others, facing west like the biscop and Lord Baldwin, raised hands in supplication. A flood of crying and rejoicing lifted from the assembled cavalcade as a covey of quails flush in a rush of wings up from the brush.

"The sun! It shines!"

It was more a shimmer than the actual disk of the sun. No person could stare at the sun without going blind. Everyone knew that. But along the western sky the cloud cover had altered in some manner to reveal the sun's long hidden shape as if veiled behind only one layer of cheesecloth, not ten.

"A miracle!"

"This is the work of the Holy One!"

"Truth rises with the phoenix!"

They cried and pointed and stared, all shaken into such a tumult of excitement that Alain walked away, slipping from one gap to the next as he squeezed out of the crowd with no one paying him any mind. They stared at the western horizon. He walked east to the edge of the camp strung out along the road and into the trees. Close to the eastern end of the camp, three soldiers had been set to guard Heric.

Alain whistled softly, but no one noticed him. Word had raced more swiftly than he could walk and they were all gazing westward. Some began to sing a song he had never heard before.

"Truth rises with the phoenix, Truth rises like the sun."

Sorrow and Rage bounded up and trotted alongside as he settled into a long stride, heading east along the road. He hadn't much light left. He'd need to make good time, to get far enough that no one would come after him.

But after all, just as he got out of sight of the trailing end of the cavalcade's encampment, he heard slip-slapping footsteps and labored breathing.

"My lord! My lord Alain!"

He paused and turned halfway back, waiting. Sorrow whined. Rage yawned to show teeth. She did not run, precisely, but loped in an awkward, determined way, then stumbled to halt a few steps away. The hounds made her nervous, but she was brave enough to come close despite her fear.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"East on the trail of Prince Sanglant. If any know where she is, he will."

"Do you love her, my lord?" Tears streamed down her face.

"I hope that God have taught me to love all of humankind. But the kind of love you mean—no."

"If I could go with you. . . . Will you take me with you?"

He shook his head. "I pray you, Sister. Serve where you are needed most. Every storm leaves destruction in its wake. There is much to do."

"Yes," she said, bowing her head obediently. "I will do as you say." The words were thin, spoken through tears.

"You are brave and good, Hathumod. Your hands will do God's work if you let them."

She choked down a sob as she nodded. She had gone beyond speech and now could only stare as he gave a sign of farewell and walked away down the road. Where the road curved, he paused to look back. Eager to get on, the hounds wagged their tails.

She still stood there, fading into the twilight. She hadn't moved at all, as if caught in the guivre's stare.

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

THE IMPATIENT ONE

1

BECAUSE she was Feather Cloak, the blood knives insisted that she be carried in a litter when she traveled. The sacred energy coiled within her body must not be allowed to escape through the soles of her feet by touching the earth.

She did not like the blood knives. They were officious and grasping, set in their ways and bloated with self-importance, and it was obvious to her that they liked her less than she liked them. She did not follow the ancient laws in the manner to which they were accustomed.

Yet she was Feather Cloak. She had been elected, according to the custom of the land. Let them chew on that gristle!

For the time being, however, she thought it best to humor them in ceremonial ways. Thus she found herself on the road in a jolting litter carried by four men, with another eight walking in front or behind to take a turn when the current group needed a rest. They traveled in procession from the Heart-of-the-World's-Beginning to the city on the lake, called We-Have-No-More-Tears by the exiles but Belly-Of-The-Land resting on the Lake of Gold by those who had lived in the shadows, because that was the name they had called it in the days before exile. The turning wheel spun at the front, announcing her presence. Her son had come with them as well. He was ripe for adventure but not yet old enough to "put on the mask." He had the other baby slung to him, but he had dropped back to talk to one of the mask warriors, a young woman he fancied might see him as older than he was. In addition, she was accompanied by mask warriors, merchants, and judges come to witness the opening of the market, and a "bundle" of blood knives wearing scarlet tunics and the bright blue feathers of the death bird in their hair. Twenty of those blood knives in one place seemed like a lot.

"I am not accustomed to this," said Feather Cloak to her companion, White Feather, who was walking alongside the litter carrying one of the infants in a drop-back sling.

"No, neither am I," said White Feather.

"All the blood knives were gone by the time I was born."

"Yes," agreed White Feather with a flutter of her lips that resembled a grim smile. It was as much as she ever said on the matter. "So they were."

For the past two days they had been walking through an area of dispersed settlements, most of them lying off the main road. Now, as the raised roadway curved around a field of sap cactus, they came into a community abandoned during the exile but repopulated over the winter by those who had returned from the shadows. A large residence was raised on an earth platform. Small houses were set in groups around central patios. A remarkable number of people came out to greet them, more bundles than she could estimate easily. She could not get used to the crowds.

They had no doubt been alerted to her arrival by the runners sent ahead to announce the procession.

Those in the back of the crowd craned their necks to get a glimpse of her. These were all folk who had returned from the shadows. They stood differently, wore their hair differently, tilted their chins differently, and they hadn't the stick-thin wiriness common to those who had survived exile, who had never ever in their lives gotten enough to eat except now in the days of the return when the exiles wallowed in the riches that those returned from the shadows called dearth.

"We'll stop here for the night," she said, suddenly wanting to talk to the ones gathered here, who stared at her but kept silent for fear of their voices polluting her.

The blood knives began to protest that they were less than a third of a day's journey from the city on the lake, enough to make it by nightfall, but already the men who carried her heeded her command and bore her up to the residence while householders scattered to make room. The chief of the town was a man and a woman. Despite both being of middle years, they were newly married to judge by the blackened remains of wedding torches stuck in the ground on either side of the residence gateway.

They welcomed her easily, and with an efficient manner born of practice. A mat was brought and placed on the chief's seat. Here she settled, relieved to be out of the sway and lurch of the litter.

The blood knives swarmed, always wanting to control her least action, but White Feather swept them out ruthlessly so that Feather Cloak could nurse the babies.

After this, the chief brought sharp beer and sweet cactus fruit, gruel, toasted grubs, and fowl dressed in wild herbs and sweetened with sap. She still could not get used to the sight of so much food. Yet when at last she addressed the chief to thank them for the food, they apologized for the impoverished feast, which they said was nothing compared to what was due to her eminence.

"Let me speak to your council to hear how life goes for you here," she said.

The council was called hastily, elders, folk who had distinguished themselves, someone to represent each clan.

"We have no Rabbit Clan in our town," said the chief. "Nor Lizard Clan."

The blood knives stirred. "None out of the Rabbit Clan survived in exile," they said. "No one kept their House, as is proper."

Folk whispered, looking frightened. It was a dangerous thing to let the world slip out of balance.

"But there were so many before," said the lady chief. "We were the few, who walked out into the barbarian lands. Those who remained behind to tend to the land were multitudes. Yet now we are the many, and you, those who came out of exile, are the few."

White Feather seemed about to speak angry words, so Feather Cloak raised a hand, and all fell silent.

"The tale of our time in exile has already been told." She looked directly at the blood knives.

"Has an almanac yet been painted to record the tale of our struggle?"

"We have much ordering to do, to restore the Houses and the lines and the proper measure of tribute. We must recover and restore the ritual almanacs first."

"I would not like to see the tale lost," she said mildly, but as a warning. Let them chew on that!

She gestured to the council, inviting them to speak. "Is this the town you came from originally?"

They told their stories. The husband chief had been born here, even if raised in the barbarian lands. He had come to this home, because it was the only one he knew. A scattering of people who had claims that allowed them to labor in the surrounding lands had brought in other unlanded folk. Mostly, people worked the fields, but despite this, the community was sparsely settled compared to the days before exile.

"Not enough men to clear the fields," complained the lady chief. "We women are behind on our tribute offers of cloth. We can't harvest the fiber quickly enough. The fields are still green. We have no thread for weaving."

"What is your measure of tribute?" Feather Cloak asked them.

The list, reeled off from memory, seemed to her a staggering sum: feathers, paper, cloth in the form of short capes, incense from the smoke tree, and a range of agricultural goods for the temple and palace in the nearby city. But of course the birds were gone, the trees dead and any new growth yet seedlings, and the fields only newly sprouted with what little seed those who had survived the shadows had carried with them.

"The tribute lists must be redrawn," said Feather Cloak, as she said every day. "Until the people are healthy and the granaries are full, until there is seed corn in plenty, we must put all our effort into restoring our fields and our population."

"Tribute is necessary to maintain the universe," said the blood knives, as they said every day. "To keep the balance, we must pray, we must bleed, we must keep our oaths, burn incense, and offer sacrifices."

"So it must be done," she agreed, "but not to the measure in the days before exile, or we will be drained dry again!"

'All your blood knives are dead," they said, coming back to this point as they did every day. "It is no wonder the land was drained dry, that the balance was lost."

"You know nothing!" cried White Feather.

"Silence!" said Feather Cloak, and they gave her silence.

The council was made uncomfortable by this dispute. They feared the blood knives. They prayed to the gods. They followed the example of the one who was elected from among the elite to become Feather Cloak, meant to be a mature woman, pious, virtuous, generous, of an invincible spirit as well as possessing the unquenchable power of life, granted to her by the gods.

"I will set a measure of tribute for this year, and the next. The year after, a census will be taken and a new measure allotted."

It always struck her as strange that, while some in the communities welcomed this relief, others were made uneasy by it. When she called an end to the council, she saw the blood knives circulate out among the gathered council, whispering and plotting. All left her, so she was alone in the chamber, with a mat for sleeping and four strips of cloth hung from the post and lintel doorframe to give her privacy. The walls had been recently plastered and a painting begun on one wall, depicting the long march through the shadows with the sacred animals standing guard overhead.

"You must rest," said White Feather, bringing the babies back for another feeding.

Feather Cloak's son played the flute in a restful way, and out in the courtyard an unseen woman was grinding grain into flour in a soothing rhythm, but Feather Cloak could not find calm in her heart.

"Most of the blood knives must have stayed behind in the land, while these few walked out into the world," she mused. "Yet I never knew any blood knives. They were all gone by the time I was a child. And you, my elders, never speak of them."

White Feather looked at the mural, the images picked out with charcoal but only a few places colored in. The room was dim because night was coming. "They were weaker than our enemies.

They could not help us. They cried to the gods and wanted to follow the old ways in exile, when it was obvious to everyone by then that the old ways would kill us." Her voice grew tight and her jaw rigid. "That the old ways did kill us."

"We no longer live in exile," said Feather Cloak.

"It is difficult to leave exile. Even when you have come home. Especially when you have come home."

For all of Feather Cloak's life, the city on the lake had lain deserted although in the days before exile it had been the greatest city in the land which was at that time called Abundance-Is-Ours-If-The-Gods-Do-Not-Change-Their-Minds. When she was a young child, there had still been a few marshy areas through which a girl and her age mates might search for scrumptious frogs and crunchy insects, but by the time she had given birth to her first child even these wet depressions had dried out and the lakebed become a haven for nothing except a few inedible weeds and precious stands of hardy sap cactus.

Now, of course, after winter rains and spring rains, the lake had disgorged its share of the returning waters. She asked her bearers to halt on the causeway. From the height of the litter, she gazed over stretches of unbroken water rimmed by brilliant bursts of green where reeds and grasses burgeoned along the current shoreline. Vast flocks of birds of every description, most of them kinds she had never seen, ranged on the waters, clucking and wheedling and croaking and whistling each in their own tongue, and insects buzzed and chirred and in general made a nuisance of themselves. She-Who-Creates was busy!

The farmers had dug their canals out beyond that shoreline, figuring that the lake would continue to grow, although naturally no one had any idea if it would ever refill the old basin, or grow beyond it. Most of the adult population was out there today building more fields out of dirt and mud, or tending to young plants waxing in earth planted and tended over the last few months.

He-Who-Burns showed his face intermittently. Those who had walked in the shadows told her that in the days before there came for certain months of the year a time with rain, and after that a time when He-Who-Burns baked the Earth with his blazing fire. There were two seasons, together with the passages between them, tied to the equinox. It was still early in the year, in the time of rains when all things grew, watered both within and without in the field that is Earth.

Although the city had lost its abundance during the time of exile, it seemed that after all, having returned to Earth, that the gods had not changed their minds. They still wanted their children to flourish, to make a new home all over again.

"Feather Cloak! You are too bold!"

"Feather Cloak! You must not let the noonday sun touch you!"

"Feather Cloak! You were to approach on the eastern causeway. This is the causeway for merchants and artisans!"

"Feather Cloak! Have you come to begin work on restoring the temples? All else means nothing if the proper rituals are not observed!"

"How are you come to leave the sacred precinct in the Heart-of-the-World's-Beginning? Who allowed this to happen, in this month? It was not the proper time!"

The blood knives, the ones who had set up residence in the temple in the center of the city on the lake, had seen her coming. They swarmed like wasps out along the causeway to meet her, and to castigate her. She fanned herself with a fan built of green-and-gold feathers, the mark of the most holy bird sacred to She-Who-Creates, and because of this gesture they fell silent according to their own laws and their own customs.

"It is time to see the market opened," she said to them, and to her bearers she said, "We will move on."

The causeway was not yet surrounded by water, and there were some children off to one side digging in the mud for roots or seeking tadpoles, young frogs, grubs, crickets, or other such treats. They gaped to see the litter pass, and the blood knives shouted at them for their lack of respect and modesty.

"Why are they not at their study in the house of youth?" Feather Cloak asked them, and after that they considered her words more thoughtfully.

The procession entered the city through the gate of skulls and moved on toward the central precinct. Many folk had returned to the city, but in any case only one house out of twenty was inhabited. In the days before, according to the census undertaken in the days before by the blood knives, the city had been organized into five bundles of wards, and each ward had been organized into a bundle of neighborhoods each populated by forty households of ten to twenty people each.

It was difficult for her to imagine so many people, but the empty quarters told their own story.

Even the palace where she must stay, with its forgotten rooms and echoing reaches, must remind her of how many had died, how many had been lost.

A suite of rooms had been prepared in haste for her coming. The blood knives complained about the poor furnishings, the deterioration of the wall paintings, faded from their years in exile, the lack of a sumptuous feast. Nothing was good enough. The balance had been lost in exile.

"Enough!" she said. "Bring the judges to me, and the scribes. Word has gone out through the land at my order. Just as Belly-Of-The-Land lies at the center of the land, so will the central market be opened by official decree, so that all of the people will know that we Cursed Ones have taken possession of all of our land. As before, so again."

Folk began arriving that afternoon. By the next morning, as her bearers carried her to the market plaza, she could actually hear the steady hum of so many voices raised in common conversation that the sound seemed to permeate the entire city. The procession passed the temple plaza, marked off by walls and undulating stone serpents. Smoke rose from the house of He-Who-Burns, sited at the top of the great temple in the very heart of the city. Looking through the wide gate, she saw a bundle of young women dancing in their serpent skirts before the altar of She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband, calling, and clapping, and keeping time with the stamp of their feet. Runners passed in through the gates to the temple plaza, carrying cages with quail.

"The sacrifices must be made at sunset," said the blood knives. "The first day of the month of Winds must be sanctified by blood."

They never stopped.

"It would be best if you remained at the Heart-Of-The-World's Beginning," they said. "Our runners can bring you news of all that transpires in the land."

But could she trust the news they brought her? She did not voice these doubts aloud, and they went on.

"We insult the gods by not bringing in work gangs to whitewash and paint, to refurbish the house of the gods."

"Let the fields be raised and planted first," she said.

The oldest among them leaned in close, his breath sharp with the smell of pepper. "If you who were cursed to die in exile had not stopped performing the sacrifices, then you would not have lost the gods' favor."

She bent her head to look him in the eye, a look that would have quelled dissent among her own people, but he came from a different world. He feared the cloak, but he did not respect her.

"How do you know what we suffered in exile?" she asked him. "You walked between the worlds for the course of a Great Year, fifty-two cycles of fifty-two years, yet according to all reports I have heard, it seemed to those of you that you walked in the shadows for only some months. We lingered in exile for generations. The world you live in—in your heart—has not changed, but the world you come to is not the one you left."

"What we owe the gods does not change," he said. "If we remember the offerings, then the rain will fall at the proper time and the sun will shine at the proper time."

There is no arguing with a man who cannot see the world as it is around him. It was human sorcerers who had woven the spell that had exiled them, and human sorcery that had poisoned the lands beyond. She remained silent, and he mumbled complaints under his breath, tallying up his list.

But her brooding could not last. A market in her life in exile was any patch of ground where folk spread a blanket on which to display a handful of precious nuts or bruised tubers or reed mats or a wooden staff with a carved spear point. This plaza was only the entryway; the market took up the entire district, and even if it was by no means fully tenanted, it was truly overwhelming, more people than she had ever seen together at one time in her entire life.

Beyond stone-and-brick arcades lay streets and alleys where all different categories of merchandise were sold. There were grinding stones, bricks, tiles, wood hewn and shaped, shells, bones, and feathers. There was copper and tin, and bronze tools and weapons, and all manner of ornaments molded from gold and silver. There were spines from the sap cactus for needles for punches, and for sacrifice. There were mantles and tunics woven from its thread as well as tough cord and rope, and also its sweet sap for a syrup and a fermented sap strong enough to kick you.

There were arrowheads of wood and others of stone or bronze, even a few brought from human lands, forged of iron.

There was too much. And she barely glimpsed the streets where foodstuffs were sold: cactus fruit and delicate squash flowers just starting to wilt, birds plucked and hung while others fluttered in cages, rabbits, dogs, bees, eggs, and so many fish of such variegated types that she was amazed so many existed.

And all this seen and gawked at before they brought her to the central square of the market house where this mass of commerce was overseen by a bundle of judges, each in their own cubicle. In fact, the market came under the jurisdiction of a local authority, but her presence was acknowledged and feted with a series of speeches and poems deemed appropriate to the occasion.

The sacrifices, all those delicious quail, would come later.

Yet she wished she could set foot on the earth and just walk through the market, taking her time, taking in smells and sounds. She wept a little, to see such riches, although the judges assured her with the greatest embarrassment that if only the gods favored them, then in a few years the terrible poverty of today's fledgling market would be replaced by a decent selection as in the days before, and folk would have cacao beans and folded cloth with which to trade properly.

How could they not recognize how life flourished here, even if it seemed poor to them. There were so many people. There were so many children!

It was hard to concentrate, and doubly so when a parade of mask warriors chivvied a mixed herd of sheep and goats into view.

This was too much! She got to her knees, rocking the litter so that her bearers staggered. As the blood knives cried complaint, she swung down, let fall, and walked over to examine the beasts, who bawled and ba'aahed from the shelter of a makeshift corral over against the arcade leading to the street of live animals. Many folk gathered to stare, and especially she noted among them the wasted bodies and thin faces of those who had survived exile, yet they were only a few compared to their brethren who had come out of the shadows.

White Feather accompanied her, to protect her from the nattering of the blood knives, and a pair of judges came up quickly to ascertain what manner of trading was to go on.

It was Cat Mask, after all, who was leader of the group. He had a fresh scar on his left thigh but looked otherwise entirely pleased with himself.

"We have been tracking beyond the White Road," he explained to the market judges, "and brought these here, our prizes, to the market."

"For sacrifice!" cried the blood knives.

"Two of them," said Feather Cloak. "Let two suffice, two males. The rest must be sold for breeding stock."

Oh, they did not like to hear it, and some of the folk gathered to stare murmured in favor of the blood knives, while others murmured in favor of her decree.

"If we do not maintain the balance," said the blood knives, "then He-Who-Burns will darken."

"Clouds cover the sun in the north," said Cat Mask. "But He-Who-Burns shines on us here in our own country. It is the fault of the human sorcerers. Everyone knows that they are the ones who wove the spell. Now it has rebounded against them."

"You babble like a Pale Dog," cried the blood knives. "How long will our good fortune, if that is what you call it, last, if we do not restore order. How soon will He-Who-Burns turn his bright face away from us in anger and despair?"

"Two is enough, until there is plenty," said Feather Cloak, but they muttered and scowled to hear her speak. They were fighting her now for no other reason than to test her authority; she did not know how to counter them.

"See what else we brought," said Cat Mask, dismissing this as he might the whine of a mosquito.

Like all the young adults who had grown up in exile, he had never seen or conversed with one of the blood knives. "See, what we have brought from the lands beyond!" He and his mask warriors preened, being proud of themselves. "This herd is not the only one we captured."

There came in a line, dressed in wooden slave collars, a bundle of children: four infants, eight of toddling age, seven very young, and one older girl of nine or ten years of age who looked glassy-eyed with shock, staring only straight ahead. They looked nothing like the Bright One, having a different complexion and broader features and black hair more like to that of the Ashioi than Liathano's mass of fire-gold hair. They were not handsome children, not like those of her kind, but they were very young and there were so many in that one group. After so long in exile, she was still astonished by the sight of children.

"Brought you no captives?" asked the blood knives. "No warriors taken in honorable combat?"

Cat Mask shrugged. "The adults we killed were not warriors. It was too much trouble to bring them, so we killed them." He looked at his companions, and they shared winks and nods. 'And we were very hungry, so we ate them."

Everyone laughed, since it was disgusting to think of eating a stranger, and one with sour flesh, at that.

"We thought it worthwhile to bring these children. A bundle plus two."

"I only count a bundle," said the eldest of the blood knives.

"Oh, that's right," remarked Cat Mask, scratching his chin. "When we came through High-Hill we met with Lizard Mask's sister, who has settled there. She just lost her little son to the coughing sickness, so she took a pair of little boys thinking that, if she raised them, she might forget her grief over the other one."

"Very well," said the blood knives. 'A bundle will be enough. But you who raid into the lands beyond the White Road must bring us strong captives as tribute for the gods."

"If we can find any!" said Cat Mask with another laugh. "They looked pretty scrawny and weak.

We had to fatten these little ones up on goat's milk."

"It is their blood we need," said the blood knives, "not their flesh."

They stepped forward to take the children, but before they could lay hands on them White Feather pushed past them and scooped up one of the toddlers.

"I claim this one for mine, to raise as my own!"

Her voice was loud, and her tone harsh, and the child hiccuped and sniveled into the growing silence as the blood knives opened and closed their hands and folk pressed forward to see what was going on.

Before three breaths had passed, a man with the delicate frame of an exile stepped out of the crowd and pulled an infant out of the arms of one of the mask warriors. 'And I claim this one, to replace the child my wife could never have."

'And I!" said a woman, coming forward to put her hands on one of the little walking ones. "For I lost my child and my husband when the Pale Dogs raided our settlement, just before the shadows fell over us. I want this child to raise."

In her wake, other people in the market shoved forward—women and men both—and claimed children until only the oldest girl remained with her vacant stare and her vacant, terrified expression.

The blood knives raged, but they were few, and the crowd was many, and the folk who had a grip on the children looked very determined.

"These are the children of dogs! They are not our kind," the blood knives protested.

"How will they know anything different," asked White Feather boldly, "if they are raised among us?"

"It goes against our laws."

"It does not!" she retorted. "In the days before, some among humankind walked together with our people and painted the clan marks on their bodies. In this way, they became part of the clans, and their blood and our blood mixed."

"Yes! Yes!" cried the blood knives triumphantly. 'And that turned the balance. You see what came of it!"

White Feather was burning with anger now. She was as bright as the sun. "I will not listen to you!" she said in a voice that carried like sunlight over the market square, where all commerce had come to a stop. "I listened once, when the last of you still ruled us in exile. What fools we were!"

"You were fools to allow your blood knives to die without training up those who could succeed them."

"You know nothing, you who walked in the shadows while we struggled, while the land died around us! Hu-ah! Hu-ah! Let my words be pleasing to She-Who-Creates, who sustains us!"

Now she could not be interrupted.

"In those days as the land died and we died, the blood knives still ruled. Many had already died because there was not enough to eat. But in those days, when I was a child, there was a great sickness and most of the remaining people died. Dogs feasted on corpses, for there were none to prepare them for the death rites. Vultures grew fat on lean flesh. Bones lay everywhere. And still we died. After this, we abandoned the cities. The few of us who still lived scattered to the villages. There we lived as the fields withered and the birds laid fewer and fewer eggs. The lakes dried up, there were no more fish, and the rivers leaked away until they ran no more than a trickle of water. And still we died.

'At last the remaining blood knives decreed that in order to restore the balance and placate the angry gods we must offer to the gods the thing we valued most. I was young then, a young woman newly married. I had just given birth to my first child, a daughter.

"The blood knives took her from me and sacrificed her. They said I was young, I would have another, and that the blood of this one would save us.

"But my womb was parched. Like the land, it was dying. I had no other child. They sacrificed the only one I bore, and the sacrifice was for nothing. The land died because it was uprooted from Earth through the magic of the human dogs. This reason, and no other. We died, and we had no more children. Don't you see? The blood knives were wrong. And in the end they died, too."

She balanced the first child on her thin hip and grasped the wrist of the older girl as well, drawing her close. "I will take these two girls to replace the one I lost. They are mine, now. I claim them, according to the law, as is my right. I will not let the blood knives sacrifice any child of mine.

Not again."

The blood knives turned to Feather Cloak, who had set her feet on the dusty earth of the marketplace.

They said, "There must be a sacrifice."

"Two goats from that herd," she said, "and captives of war, strong warriors. But not these children."

The eldest leaned close, his breath sharp with the smell of pepper, and he whispered, "You will regret this."

2

AT the Heart-of-the-World, peace seemed to reign. In all the wide land that lay south of the great pyramid, called the Mountain of the World's Beginning, the Lost Ones had come home and made themselves busy in a hundred ways: building, sweeping, gossiping, mating, planting, fishing, hunting, trading, digging, bathing, carving, plaiting, weaving, grinding, sewing, minding the children, and all the rest besides.

But in the council chamber of the exiles, two brothers argued, while Feather Cloak and half a bundle of trusted councillors watched.

"How can you have managed so quickly, in no more than half a year," Zuangua was saying, "to make the priests so angry?"

"You were always first to complain of the power hoarded by the sky counters," said Eldest Uncle with a crooked smile.

"Yes, but I did so where they couldn't hear me! Yet the Feather Cloak must go to the marketplace, and you do not even counsel her in the proper way to observe the authority held by the priests. Now their knives are raised against you! They make no secret of it."

"Have you come here only to scold us?" asked Eldest Uncle.

Feather Cloak sighed. The journey back from the city on the lake had wearied her mostly because she could see what was coming. She had hoped for a respite, but hard on her heels had come Zuangua carrying a mantle-load of arrogant anger. She had refused to speak to him until Eldest Uncle could be fetched from the watchtower on the border where he made his home. Now, she listened as he shook his head impatiently at his twin brother's words.

"I came here to warn you! I speak up for you exiles as much as I am able, because of what binds us, my heart and your heart, but those of us who survived in the shadows have many complaints!"

"Complaints!" cried White Feather.

The others—Green Skirt, Skull Earrings, and seven others, all of them from those who had endured exile together—echoed her outrage.

"How can you have complaints?" asked Eldest Uncle in a milder tone, seeming half amused and half exasperated.

Zuangua held up a fist, showing its back to his aged brother.

"One." He lifted the little finger. "How have so many died? So many! We who walked beyond the White Road to fight the Pale Dogs and protect our homeland were less than a quarter of the people. Coming home, we discover we outnumber you twentyfold! How have so many died?

How has the land fallen empty in a span that is no more than your life?"

"A very few among us saw great grandchildren born," said Eldest Uncle with the patience of the old. "That is a long time."

He was not angry, although the accusation was insulting. Even Feather Cloak, normally the most placid of souls, found herself flushed, cheeks hot. She tucked her infant more tightly against her.

Those who had returned from the shadows could not possibly understand how precious each child had become. Green Skirt held the other baby with the fond attention of a besotted aunt, although the two women were not related by blood ties. White Feather had her own children to care for; the toddler was sleeping in a sling tied around the older woman's torso, and the girl was crouched by the wall, arms hugging her knees, eyes closed, rocking slightly on her feet.

"How long?" asked Zuangua. "How many years?"

"We could not count the round of years accurately. We had no sun and no stars by which to measure the calendar."

Zuangua had brought with him a pair of followers, a toughlooking woman wearing a fox mask and an older man with a merchant's sash slung around his torso. Fox Mask stood with arms crossed and feet braced aggressively. The merchant sat cross-legged and with a cold stare examined Feather Cloak's council members as though he would have liked to spit on each one.

"Very well," he said grudgingly. "It may be impossible to determine."

"So have we told the sky counters," murmured Eldest Uncle. "Many times over. But it appears they do not believe us."

"So it does. That brings us to my second point." Zuangua raised the next finger beside the little.

"What of the priests? No land can survive without order, for we see that it did not. Yet how can it be that every one of the blood knives died?"

None of the elders replied, and most looked at the ground. White Feather's baby stirred, made restless by the tension, and the infant Green Skirt was holding gave a single, flustered cry before the old woman shushed her gently.

This was a subject no one had ever spoken of, even during exile.

"I wait," said Zuangua.

Eldest Uncle rubbed his chin. He did not look at the others. "When the famine came, during the first generation, and we died in great numbers, the blood knives offered us no solution, only problems. And when the great sickness came, still they refused to change. They could not count the measure of the sky in that place, but all they spoke of was the way things used to be done. We worship the gods still, and properly, giving of our own blood in tribute, but those who used the power of the blood knife to keep themselves raised high above others are all gone. It is true. They are all gone."

The merchant coughed, for something in Eldest Uncle's tone made everyone uncomfortable.

Zuangua frowned. "It is difficult for me to know which of those words I like least, and which I dislike most." He still held up his hand, and now he raised the middle finger to stand beside little and next. "Three. Two of the twenty clans have vanished from among the exiles."

'And ten of the remaining clans number less than five bundles in their lineage. Yes. We know how many we lost."

"How can this be?" The merchant slapped his own chest three times. "I am born into Rabbit Clan.

Here in the land I find no house to welcome me!"

"There are others of the Rabbit Clan among those who survived in the shadows," said Eldest Uncle, "or so I am told."

"How could you let the clans die?" the man roared.

Eldest Uncle smiled sadly. "How can you know how it felt to watch the people die of hunger and thirst as the land failed? To smell the stench of the sickness that afflicted us? To watch fathers sing the death rites over their only child, and then fall themselves as their strength failed? What do you know of bones left to bleach on the hillside? Hu-ah! What could you have done better than what we did!"

Age gave a man power. Eldest Uncle, as well, was known as a sorcerer. He was a seeker after the grains of truth hidden in the mantle thrown over the universe which most folk call the world, for what most folk call the world is really only the things we can touch and smell and taste and hear and see.

"My apologies," said the merchant. He set hands on knees and inclined his head, just a pinch, toward the old man. "You must see how it appears to us, to wander in the shadows for so long, watching the Pale Dogs swarm over the Earth we love. To return at last to find our homeland . . ."He wiped away a tear, and this show of emotion seemed so unforced and genuine that Feather Cloak found her throat choked and her own eyes filling. "It is a land of bones."

"So it became," said Eldest Uncle. "So many died. We struggled to stay alive."

"I am not finished." Zuangua raised his forefinger, and showed the back of his hand to his brother, to all of them, open now except for the folded thumb. "Four. In the days I remember, the Feathered Cloak rose from the high lineages marked out by the gods from the heirs of Obsidian Snake, who led us over the seas."

For the first time, he looked at Feather Cloak directly. His regard distracted Feather Cloak for a moment, as it always did. His features were attractive, his bronzed complexion a handsome shade. He wore his long black hair unbound so its glossy fall would dazzle women's eyes. Yet one might admire in this same fashion Cat Mask and other warriors she had known all her life.

There was this difference: Zuangua had the look of a well-made sword already whetted in battle.

Compared to him, the others had no shine and no edge.

His smile was a challenge. She lifted a brow in response, refusing to be baited, not by his challenge and not by his sexuality. Still, it did her no harm to let him see she found him handsome. Some men, receiving women's regard, puffed up until their vanity made them foolish.

It would be interesting to see if Zuangua would succumb to that fault.

"He believes me unworthy of the Eagle Seat," she said without dropping her gaze, yet the words were directed not at Zuangua but to Eldest Uncle and her faithful councillors.

In Zuangua, doubt held no purchase, but she recognized by the flicker of his eyes that he had not expected her to meet his challenge.

"Are you finished?" she asked him. The infant stirred, smacking and searching, and without breaking her gaze from his she helped it find the nipple. Its suck calmed her.

He said nothing.

"War will come soon," she continued, still looking at Zuangua. "Today, it comes."

"Have you seen this in a vision, Feather Cloak?" asked Eldest Uncle.

"I do not need sorcery to see what stands right before my eyes. Choose now, councillors. I can argue one way, but my voice will soon be drowned out."

"Five," said Zuangua.

Abruptly he broke the gaze, gestured to his followers, and vanished up the tunnel leading to the entrance.

"Five objections," commented Green Skirt with the sardonic tone mastered only by women who have reached a certain age. "Did he speak 'five'? And leave the words unsaid? Or were we meant to understand him by his actions?"

White Feather sighed as she rocked her baby in her arms, the child fussing, getting hungry. "I do not remember the days before, except in the stories told by the grandparents. Now it seems I am sick of hearing about them. The land in exile is the one I know. Yet I am glad we have come home." She patted the child's back, and it murmured baby syllables, content to be held. The older girl had opened her eyes, gaze fixed on the woman who was now her mother.

"Everything has changed," said Feather Cloak. "It must, and it will. But the qualities and objects we valued in exile will not be valued here on Earth. As one strand straightens, so twists the other.

That is the way of the world."

They nodded. Eldest Uncle regarded her with a fond smile, Green Skirt with the savor of regret.

White Feather wore an exasperated frown and Skull Earrings looked tired, jowls drooping in the fashion of men who have finally hit their decline. The others sighed and murmured soft words meant to cheer her, but no one sounded cheerful. Above, wind moaned through the hole, and roots stirred as dust danced in the changeable light.

"I have one more question," she said as they looked at her. "What happened to the last of the blood knives?"

At first there was silence, a form of speaking measured only by gazes shifting between them, words left unspoken. At length White Feather's lips twitched in that flutter smile that suggested a grim sort of laughter, or a laughing kind of anger, or maybe a joke.

"We were very hungry," she said, "so we ate them."

3

FIVE days only, hardly any time at all. The horn was blown to summon a council at which Feather Cloak must preside.

Kansi-a-lari entered the underground chamber accompanied by bells and by Zuangua and a dozen of his adherents. Behind them, remarkably, walked the joined forces of Cat Mask and Lizard Mask. Many, warriors and craftsmen, female and male alike, walked in via the tunnel to stand in the cavernous council grounds facing the Eagle Seat where Feather Cloak presided. Blood knives huddled in clusters. More people waited outside who had walked all the way from their scattered settlements and newly populated towns. The cavern was jammed to bursting and could fit no more than those standing shoulder to shoulder. All had, of course, left their weapons outside, according to the law.

All but one.

Kansi-a-lari strode forward with a stone-tipped spear in her right hand. She halted five paces from the Eagle Seat, set the haft against the ground, and raised her left hand toward the ceiling and the distant sky, visible through the jagged gap in the roof. Dust motes painted the air with a red-gold haze.

"Say what you have to say," said Feather Cloak, repeating the ritual words.

"I challenge your right to sit on the Eagle Seat and preside over the councils of our people," said The Impatient One. "In the past six turnings of the moon we have rested and made offerings of our own blood. We have planted our fields. We have built and repaired our houses. We have numbered our craftsmen and our warriors and made an accounting of spears and swords. We must strike while humankind struggles."

"They outnumber us," said Feather Cloak.

"Yes! We must strike first, and swiftly."

"Just as you have done today."

Kansi glanced back at Zuangua, who shook his head, looking impatient and bored. "We have waited long enough," Kansi-a-lari said. "We have waited too long!"

Like her uncle, The Impatient One attracted the eye. Hers was the beauty of the jaguar, deadly and fascinating. She prowled among men, and few had the strength of will to resist her. With women, though, Kansi-a-lari behaved differently, knowing she could not sway them with a hard stare or a provocative hand placed on her hip. She liked men better, because she found them easier to control.

"If we strike," Feather Cloak asked, "to what purpose do our warriors fight and die?"

"To test the strength of humankind. I have sent scouts east and west. West is wasteland, but there is a great city northeast of here that we may profitably strike. They are rebuilding. They will not be ready for us."

"So you have said, but what do you intend?"

"Kill those who resist. Bring worthy captives home to offer to the gods. Fill our storehouses with their grain and their treasures. Set in place a governor to rule their farmers and merchants. That way their taxes will serve us, not our enemies."

Feather Cloak waited while the assembly discussed this proposition in low voices, among themselves, all the blood knives who remind silent, as if they had already known what she was going to say. In the cavern, no wind blew, and despite the cool weather it had gotten stuffy. The great golden wheel of the assembly, resting behind her, remained still. Only in the wind did it turn. In this way it represented the people: each discrete emerald feather was visible at rest, but when in motion the many individual parts blended to become one bright whole, indivisible to the eye's sight.

She sighed, seeing that she must speak although she knew it would do no good. "So soon you will press past the White Road? It is better to rebuild our own cities and till our own fields until our feet are firmly planted in the roots of this Earth."

Kansi-a-lari shrugged. "Human slaves can plant and build for us. With their labor, we leave more of our own people free to fight. So it was done in the days before."

"In the days before," said Feather Cloak, knowing her words clipped and short and irritated and knowing as well that to show annoyance was to weaken her own argument, "we made enemies who worked in concert to cast us out of Earth entirely! Have we learned nothing from the past?"

"Yes!" Kansi had that jaguar's grin that made men wonder and sweat. "They hate us. They fear us. But we have to learned to strike while they are weakened so they cannot attack us again! It is time to leave the ways of exile behind and embrace what is ours, this world we were sundered from for so long!"

"No. It is too soon. Let the young ones grow. Let us rebuild and make ourselves strong first."

Kansi turned in a circle, marking each person standing in the council chamber: the elders and the younger leaders, the warriors and the craftsmen, those born in exile and those so recently returned from the limbo of the shadows. The blood knives watched her hungrily.

"I have walked among humankind, those who live in these days, not the ones you remember from the past. I was born in exile, but I have not waited in exile and lost my spirit and my anger."

Eldest Uncle tugged on an ear, perhaps only to hide his irritation with his only child.

"Do you insult us, who have endured exile with you?" demanded White Feather.

"I say what I have to say. Listen! I have seen that humankind cannot be trusted. Especially not those who call themselves the mathematici. They are the ones who know the secret of the crowns.

They are the ones who could harm us again. Therefore: strike now! If she who sits as Feather Cloak will not lead us, then I will."

Among the warriors came a general stamping of feet and pounding of spear butts on the ground, but Feather Cloak shushed this rumble by raising a hand.

White Feather stepped forward. They had prepared for this.

"I say what I have to say!" White Feather displayed Feather Cloak's twin daughters, one in each arm. Their black hair peeped out of the striped cloth wrapped around those plump baby bodies.

The little ones were alert, watchful, quiet. "Those of you who walked in the shadows do not truly understand what became of this land in exile. We endured a great drought. Of water. Of life. We died! The carcasses of our mothers and aunts and fathers and uncles littered the land because none had the strength to send them to the gods!"

She swept her gaze around the chamber, challenging any to interrupt her. None did. "Know this!

Feather Cloak bore a son and now twin daughters, although most of our people became barren.

Even The Impatient One had to couple with a man born of humankind in order to conceive a son!"

"Done at the urging of the council!" cried Cat Mask, out of turn. "Not out of lust for power!"

"Do not throw sharp words at me, young one!" said White Feather. She was old enough to be his aunt, and he frowned, head twitching sideways just once, as he suppressed his annoyance. "We must not ignore how powerful Feather Cloak's magic is, that she retained her fertility when the rest of us ran dry. There is wisdom in choosing as leaders those who seek life, not death." She stepped one pace back. "I am done speaking."

Kansi-a-lari smiled.

Feather Cloak felt a cold current in her blood as at ice released into a summer stream. That was a predator's smile, having seen that its prey is now cornered.

"I have no argument against White Feather. Feather Cloak's magic and power served us well in exile. But we do not stand in exile any longer. I say what I have to say: I have walked in both worlds. Humankind is a threat. They outnumber us. We must move swiftly or be overrun. Our sorcery is stronger than theirs. I battled their strongest warrior, and I defeated him because I possess magic and he had only brute force. Our scouts suggest there is great destruction in their land. If they are in disorder, leaderless, and struggling to rebuild, even to survive, then now is our best chance. We may not get another."

Feather Cloak stood. The heavy feather cloak fastened over her shoulders spilled around her body, whispering in the tones of conspirators. She had regained her physical strength since the birth of her daughters, but as she faced her rival she knew that The Impatient One had chosen the right time to attack. Her resolve still suffered. She had not yet adjusted to what it meant to be home, on Earth, a place she knew only in story.

She raised both palms. The assembly stilled, not even a foot shifting on dirt, not even a hand scratching an arm. She still had that power.

"Let it be put to the vote," she said coolly. "Let each household delegate a speaker to cast their stone into the black basket or the white, as the gods decreed at the beginning of time. The assembly will meet on an auspicious day as chosen by the blood knives, at the Heart-of-the-World's-Beginning. I have spoken."

4

ANNA tasted dry grass as they rode through an archway of light into dawn. Chaff coated her moist lips. A smear of red lit hills and she stared, wondering what that light might signify.

"The sun!" murmured scarred John, who rode ahead of her. As her ears cleared, popping, she heard the other soldiers exclaiming at their first glimpse of the sun in months. Above, clouds obscured the night sky, but the eastern dawn rose with a startling glow as though the far hills were on fire.

Blessing snorted and, kicking, came awake. "Put me down!"

Anna twisted. "Your Highness! I pray you! Keep still. Your Highness! I am with you."

"Don't fight," said the one called Frigo, getting hold of the girl's ear and pinching.

She shrieked, a sound that ought to have woken the dead and certainly made every man there clap a hand over an ear as she sucked in air to shriek again. Without the slightest expression of anger or pleasure, Frigo tweaked her ear a little farther and she subsided into coughing and mewling.

He let go, and she stayed quiet.

The archway of light sprayed fountains of sparks as Lord Hugh strode out of the circle of stones.

Twilight shrouded him, but it was lightening quickly. He counted his party, nine soldiers and two prisoners, before turning to survey the crown. It had ten stones standing in eerily perfect order, as if recently raised.

"Where are we, my lord?" asked Frigo as Blessing sucked on her little finger and stared at Hugh with a look meant to slay.

'According to my map, we are many days east and somewhat north of Darre, but south of the latitude of Novomo." He consulted his memory; Anna could tell by the way his gaze went vacant as though he were looking at something inside himself. " 'Four leagues beyond Siliga, eleven stones.' "

He marked each stone and gestured toward a vast tangle of bramble that lay a stone's toss east of the circle just where the hillside had collapsed. Beyond, the land sloped down into a coastal plain.

Anna thought she could see water to the south beyond a desiccated landscape of pale grass and stands of paler bush, which were almost white, like stalks of slender finger bones.

"There must be a stone there," Hugh said.

Scarred John dismounted to investigate. The presbyter lifted the golden disk. He fussed with it, moving one circle on top of another, turned a crooked bar on the back, sighted toward the eastern horizon, read—lips moving—from the back, then shook his head. After this, he fished in the pack he wore, withdrew a square of waxed canvas, wrapped the disk up inside, and returned it to the pouch.

'Are we lost, my lord?" asked Frigo.

"I hope so," muttered Blessing.

"My lord! There is a stone under these brambles!" shouted John, withdrawing his spear from the mass of vines and thorns.

"We are not lost," said Hugh. "We are exactly where I hoped to be. I only wish to know what day.

According to my earlier calculations we should have lost three days in the passage. Yet I can't be sure. So be it. From here we ride east."

They nodded.

"Where are we going?" Blessing demanded.

Hugh looked at her, nothing more. Anna shivered, not liking the weight of his gaze. He was capable of anything. Blessing hadn't seen Elene murdered. Better, for now, not to mention it to the girl. It was hard to know how Blessing would react.

"Let me be precise," Hugh continued, catching each man's gaze to make sure he had their attention. "We will be pursued."

"My lord," said John, "if we've come so far as you say, how can any catch up to us?"

"I do not fear human pursuit." Hugh smiled patiently, as though he had heard this question a hundred times and would happily answer it a hundred more times without losing his temper. His amiable demeanor was what scared Anna most about him. "When the alarm is raised, you must retreat immediately within the circle. I cannot protect those who remain outside." He nodded to one of the other men, a sturdy fellow with broad shoulders and spatulate hands. "It is then that we rely on you, Theodore. We have but one arrow for each man in the party."

Theodore nodded. "Eleven in all, like the stones, my lord."

"But there are twelve of us!" said Anna.

Hugh's gaze was like ice, yet his smile remained. "You are expendable, Anna. If you are marked, then you will be killed. You must hope that Antonia does not think of you at all when she sends her pursuers." His gaze moved away from her. She was not, she saw, important enough to linger on. The red dazzle of dawn faded as the sun moved up into the sky, not visible as a disk but seen as a bluish glow behind a blanketing haze.

"Theodore? Do you understand your part?"

"I do, my lord," said the man stoutly. "I will not fail you."

"No," he said, with a nod that made the archer sit up straighter. "I believe you shall not."

Beyond the standing stones lay a village, a substantial settlement with a score of roofs surrounded by a livestock palisade and a ditch. No guard manned the watchtower now. They rode across the earthen bridge that spanned the ditch and pulled up before closed gates.

Theodore shouted a few times, but there was no answer. The silence made Anna nervous. The horses flattened ears and shifted anxiously. She did not hear anything except the wind, not even a dog's bark. Finally, scarred John volunteered to get inside. He dismounted and offered his reins to Liudbold, then tested the gate. It was, indeed, barred from inside. He tested the palisade, moved off around until he found a listing post that offered a place to fix rope. Soon he clambered up the side with bare feet braced against wood and hands advancing up the joined rope. They watched him keenly. His soft grunts were audible because it was so deathly quiet. Once, a few oddly shaped fields had been tended by farmers. There was a vineyard and a stand of twoscore olive trees scattered along a nearby slope. The road east cut up into a defile, quickly lost to view. From here they could not see the coastal plain.

John reached the top and balanced himself there on his belly as he scanned the village. His mouth opened. He jerked, as at a blow, and slipped backward. Anna shrieked, thinking he would fall, but he caught himself awkwardly and hand over hand rappelled down, hitched the rope off with a flip and a yank, and ran back. He didn't reach them before he bent to one knee and retched, although he hadn't much in his stomach to cough up.

"Move the men back, Captain," said Hugh to Frigo. He took the reins from Liudbold and waited while the rest turned their horses and moved off.

"Plague," said John when he came over with Lord Hugh. "Got the dogs, too, them that had eaten the dead folk left lying in the street. Good thing that gate is closed."

"We must be cautious," said Hugh. "Let's leave this blighted place. Frigo, set your scouts. We can't be sure we won't stumble across bandits. We've few enough in our party that a smaller group taking us unaware could do great damage."

"Yes, my lord."

They rode east through a land so dry that the vegetation snapped under the hooves of their horses.

There was little grass for grazing. The grain went faster, obviously, than Lord Hugh had planned, so he adjusted the rations. Where they passed the remains of juniper or olive groves all the trees had been felled in the same direction, shattered by wind. Of spring greens she saw only thistle and creeping vine.

This was rugged country, the kind of scrub-infested land that in Wendar would have been left to the shepherds as summer pasture. Along their path they passed three more silent villages before midday. Once, folk had lived and traded here. Anna wondered if they had all died or if some had escaped. She imagined children herding goats and sheep along those slopes. She imagined women walking to market with babies bundled on their backs and wheelbarrows heaped with onions and parsnips, or whatever strange food folk ate in these parts. Nothing tasty, she supposed.

It was so quiet, as though death had eaten the world and moved on, leaving only the stones and the empty buildings and the whitened grass. Now and again as they rode along a narrow passage with ridges rising steep on both sides, she imagined that refugees peered at her from the rocks above, but in truth she felt nothing. She felt that even the animals had fled, that nothing lived here anymore and that the clouds would never part and only dust would be her companion evermore.

Certainly, her tongue was sticky with dirt, but she didn't dare ask for more water. Therefore it was a surprise to her when scarred John came riding back from forward scout with the news that he had sighted a column of armed riders.

"Fourscore at least, my lord," he reported. "Not Aostan, by the look of them."

'Are these the ones you've been expecting to meet?" asked Captain Frigo. Blessing sat behind him, wrists tied, fingers gripping the back of his saddle. She tried to get a look around him, as if hoping to see a saint come to rescue her.

"It's hard to say without a look at them," said Hugh. He nodded at John.

"There's an abandoned village ahead, my lord. If we hide there, we might see them pass by without being seen ourselves."

"Is there no other cover?" Hugh asked. "I'd rather not ride in haste into a village that might be harboring the plague."

"Forest up along the hills," said Theodore, who had been riding inland for part of the morning and only recently returned, "but the trees are downed, just as we've seen everywhere else."

"Some rocks," said John, "this side of the village. Very rugged. As like to cut your hands as give you shelter. But enough to hide our party and give a little defensive protection. They're within view of the road."

"We'll go there. Hasten."

"They'll see our tracks," said Frigo.

"Drag sticks behind us, if you must, but we've little choice as we're badly outnumbered. We've ridden single file thus far. We must hope they believe us only a pair or three of riders."

Soon they saw the thread of dust rising far to the east that marked the passage of many mounted men. From her position in the middle of their group, it was difficult for Anna to tell how much of a flag they themselves raised. She had her own horse now, a stolid creature that moved along with the herd sniffing bottoms now and again but otherwise lacking curiosity and initiative. Not the kind of horse to escape on, even if she had anywhere to go and food and drink to run with.

Even if she might hope for shelter from an unknown band of soldiers.

The rock formation erupted out of the ground in the midst of dry plain. The sloping ground hid the village from sight, but scarred John assured them it was right over the crest, situated to have a commanding view of the road, which was the main east-west thoroughfare in this region. The red-brown rock spilled down the slope in a series of ragged ribbons, pooling into hummocks high enough to hide horses and men. Once they crossed into the formation, they had to move carefully on the rock. Two men cut their hands. One of the horses got a gash on his right foreleg. The rock was striated and quite rugged, oddly warm to the touch despite the lack of direct sunlight. It seemed freshly deposited, but naturally that was impossible.

Theodore trotted out to the road to survey the rocks and after a few minutes jogged back to say that they were well hidden. Two men had gone out on foot with sticks to brush away their tracks.

The rest drank sips of warm, sour ale as they waited. No one spoke.

"Gag the girl," said Lord Hugh suddenly. Blessing did not struggle as Frigo tied a linen cloth over her mouth and hobbled her ankles as a secondary precaution. Hugh examined Anna as well, then nodded, and the captain got another cloth and another rope. Blessing watched, gaze burning, as Anna was gagged. The cloth bit into the corners of Anna's mouth and she choked, then steadied her breathing. He hooked her hands up into the small of her back and made a knot, something easy for him to get her out of should they have to move quickly. After that, he ignored her.

She sat down, but the rock cut into her buttocks, so she stood up again, wishing for sturdier shoes. The captain fingered his sword's hilt. Certain of the soldiers soothed the more restive horses. Hugh climbed up beside scarred John to a ledge that allowed them a view over the landscape. He bent his head as if praying.

They waited. After a while, the pair of soldiers returned and squatted down with the rest, wiping sweat from their foreheads. A spiderweb trembled between two spines of rock. In a shadowed crevice, moss flourished where moist, hot air steamed up from a crack in the ground, stinking of rotten eggs.

The wind caught up puffs of dust at intervals but died as quickly. A brown seam appeared in the eastward sky above the rocks. Hugh's shoulders grew taut; he bent forward and pointed at a sight Anna could not see. Other men stationed in clefts and crevices within the fountain of rock saw it as well, and made gestures each to the other. Theodore set an arrow to his string.

Frigo handed Blessing's leash to Liudbold and climbed up to crouch beside Lord Hugh. Anna edged forward to listen.

"That's a general's banner," muttered scarred John. "What's such a lord doing with a century of men riding into Aosta?"

"So it's true," said Hugh. 'Adelheid hopes to make an Arethousan marriage for Princess Mathilda.

Why else would an Arethousan lord general ride into his enemy's lands in times such as these and with no greater force than that, if not to negotiate an alliance?"

"Hand her own daughter over to them?" Captain Frigo spat. "Their mothers are sows and their fathers asses."

"So it is said. But alliance with the north is closed to her, or so she believes. Her country is devastated. I know not how Arethousa fares. It would be a pragmatic decision."

"But Arethousans, my lord!" continued Frigo.

"Do not despair, Captain. Perhaps they mean to hand over a young princeling to Adelheid who can then be Mathilda's consort. Who is bold, and who is desperate?"

"They can't be trusted. They don't even believe in the true faith!" He hesitated. "But perhaps you know otherwise. Are these the ones we have ridden here to meet?"

Anna yawned, stretching her face, trying to ease the cloth jammed into her mouth. Frigo hadn't hobbled her. If she ran, would the lord general's party give her shelter? Or would Theodore plant an arrow in her back before she could reach them?

Did she want to return to Queen Adelheid? And how did they know Lord Hugh was right? The Arethousans might be going anywhere or just on a scouting expedition. They might be riding west to kill any foreigner they stumbled across.

"Look," said scarred John with a grunted laugh. "The one in the gold tabard. He's got but the one eye. Can you see it? Bet some Aostan captain got a taste of him!"

His companions sniggered.

"How can you tell, John?" demanded Theodore. "He's too far to see his eyes."

"Just 'cause I'm not blind like you! And you, the archer!"

"Quiet, now." Hugh lifted a hand as a signal to the men behind him. "Let them pass."

"What do you make of it, my lord?" asked Frigo. "What if they see our tracks?"

Hugh gave no reply. He was murmuring under his breath. A strange, sharp scent soaked the air, making Anna want to sneeze. A wind came up out of nowhere, blowing dust across the plain, obscuring the view. Hugh's men covered their faces with cloth. Grit stung Anna's skin, but all she could do was turn her face away and shut her eyes.

At length, the wind died as suddenly as it had come. They rose and shook dust out of the creases and crevices of their clothing, unbound their captives, and moved on. The rest of the troop set their faces forward, but Lord Hugh continually looked back, watching and listening, as if he expected a storm to sweep down on them out of the west.

5

IN the days before, less than four generations ago according to the estimate of the exiles but over two thousand seven hundred turnings of the year measured by the calendar of Earth, the first city built by those who sailed out of the west rested atop the Heart-of-the-World's-Beginning. This was a vast and sacred cavern whose mysteries could not be plumbed except by the gods' acolytes, the sky counters, who were also known as the blood knives. In the earliest times, so legend said, a plaza adorned with serpent-masked sculpted heads marked this holy chamber. Later a pyramid rose in a series of incarnations on the central plaza, dedicated to She-Who-Creates, who alone understands the secret heart of the universe.

The city grew out from this hub by means of two broad avenues. The Sun's Avenue woke to the east and lay down to sleep in the west, anchored at either end by a temple dedicated to He-Who-Burns in his rising and setting aspects. A second great avenue bisected the Sun's Avenue, this one along the north-south axis dedicated to She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband. By this means the avenues divided the city into quarters, according to the instructions of the most ancient elders who had undertaken to construct the city in obedience to the dictates of the gods.

So it had been, until the day the great weaving had severed the city, cut it as with a knife in a line that ran right through the huge pyramid sacred to She-Who-Creates. Now, at dawn, Feather Cloak ascended the staircase of the great pyramid and halted about a quarter of the way up on a wide terrace. Here rested a pair of stone benches, shaded by recently built thatch shelters, and from this isolated way station she surveyed the city and the crowd. The Impatient One climbed the steps behind her and took her place on the other bench. They did not speak.

It was possible from the height to see clearly the gash that separated what had been exiled from what had never left Earth.

Brilliantly painted serpent masks flanked the steep stairs. Below, color flooded the long stretches of wall demarcating the plazas that lined the south and east avenues. As was the custom, murals covered every wall to remind the people of their ancient lineages: black eagles, golden phoenix, red serpents clutching arrows in their jaws, howling red dogs, white spider women with their wisdom nets, hawks and lynx and tawny spotted cats. Lizards and rabbits and the graceful, deadly jaguar, and all the others besides.

Yet on the northwestern side, as sharp as any line drawn in sand, lay that portion of the city that had been left behind in the wake of the great weaving. It was a city of bones, stone scoured to gray, roofs lost to time and wind and rain, the open shells of buildings, and grains of sand coating the ancient roadway. The contrast disoriented her each time she tried to view the whole. It was impossible for the gaze to flash from ancient past to vibrant present so quickly, just as it is impossible to see a crone standing beside her own child self.

It was strange to think that, just as she stood between peak and base, she also balanced between the ancient past and the unexpected present. Below, as many of her people as could make the journey had gathered in the plaza. They were a multitude without number: twenty multiplied by twenty, and by twenty yet again and once more.

She had lived all her life in a dry and dusty world, sparsely inhabited with a dry and dusty people, thin, weary, and withered. But the exiles made up no more than one in twenty of the multitude below. So many had returned out of the interstices of time, still plump and fiery, inflamed with anger at an ancient war she knew only from Eldest Uncle's stories and those of her old grandparents and great-aunts and -uncles, now dead. Their fury was palpable, like the buzzing of bees, something felt in the air, through the stone, and in the motion of bodies gesticulating and swaying or standing in rigid stillness. They had walked in the shadows for fifty-two passages of fifty-two years, caught betwixt and between, neither living creature nor yet a ghost. They had not forgiven, and why should they?

They lacked the calm-minded clarity that allowed folk to make good decisions, she knew this, yet it still heartened her to see her people whole and living and strong. There were so many children, squirming and giggling and wiggling, held up to watch as the ceremony began.

The blood knives sang down the gods to witness, according to the law. Elders chosen from the clans, including Eldest Uncle, came forward to oversee that stones were cast fairly, and none cast twice. In lots of five, the household leaders came forward to cast their household's vote in the black baskets or in the white.

Black represented the dark face of She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband. In this way, she turned her back on her petitioners. White represented her bright face, and in truth her regard was nothing to be hoped for. If the white baskets ran full, then Kansi-a-lari's petition would be granted and the Eagle Seat and the feather cloak would pass to a new leader.

So came warriors wearing the mask of their lineage: a hawk, a lizard, a spotted cat, a long-snouted tepesquintli. Others were craftsmen with a feather headdress or short mantle or sash displaying their mastery at leatherwork or obsidian-knapping, weaving or paper making or carving, ceramics or surveying or mural painting or incense grinding. Farming households voted, as did the scribes who served the gods and the merchants who kept the blood of trade moving between towns. All those who tended to the life of the people had a voice, as the gods intended, but only one could lead—else chaos would reign as it had in the days of legend before the gods ordered all things to foster peace among the tribes.

It had not been so, not exactly like this, in the days before exile. According to Eldest Uncle, the priests who wielded the blood knives had in those days wielded more power than they ought, and it seemed that their time in the shadows had not changed their outlook. They were not bold enough to tear the cloak off her shoulders, but it was obvious they had only been biding their time.

The day lengthened, although the sun never grew hard and bright as it was said to have done in the days before. It was traditional to fast, although she could drink sap wine and spring water.

The stone reaches of the northern avenue and a segment of the western road remained for the most part deserted. No one wanted to walk where the hand of time lay starkly, just as no person wished to sleep beside the skeletons of her forebears. Better they be sealed away behind the brilliant paint of life. Wind teased along the deserted avenue, moaning faintly in the stones, causing a thin veil of grit to rise and, then, settle. The wind spread among the assembly. It rippled through feathers, tugged at the ends of capes and tunics, and tangled in children's unruly hair.

She tasted the sour burned smell of the lands to the northwest where molten fire had destroyed a wide swathe of land and everything that lived there. Through this wasteland their enemies would have to ride to reach them; through this wasteland their soldiers would have to journey to strike humankind. The country itself shielded them, or caged them. Marching straight inland, it was as yet impassable, and it was barely manageable going right along the shore.

The voting lasted all day and through the night, lit by torchlight. Her legs ached. At intervals she sat. On occasion she dozed.

Dawn blossomed, a new day. In the days before, the ceremony had normally lasted three days, but by midmorning the presiding elders raised their staffs to declare the vote finished.

Twenty baskets had been set out for each color, and now the contents of all must be consolidated into a few and any stray stones of the wrong color removed. She knew what the outcome would be, but she waited along with everyone else.

Close by the steps she saw Rain, the artisan who had fathered her twin daughters although not her son. He was a slender man, not at all impressive in the width of his shoulders; he had no belligerent lift to his chin. He had trained with weapons as all children must but followed a different path, and if one had clear sight one might see the humor that twisted up his lips and the intensity of intelligence in his gaze and the wiry strength of his arms and the clever skill in his hands. He was holding one of the infants, lashed in a sling against his body. From this distance she could not, in fact, tell which one it was, the elder or the younger, and she could not recall who had the other child. Any one of ten or twenty aunts or uncles might have claimed the precious bundle. In the six moons since their birth, she thought it possible that they had never once been set down.

Rain was speaking to one of the refugees, the newcomers, as she thought of them, although they were so old that across the duration of their shadowy exile the stones of the city had been scoured clean of the bright murals that gave the city its vigor. For an instant, seeing it was a young woman, a mask warrior, she felt the sting of jealousy. Then he happened to look up at her and, seeing her head turned his way, made a gesture with his free hand to show he was with her in spirit. The young woman turned and addressed a remark to a person who had up to this time been hidden behind a cluster of onlookers, and she saw it was her son. He was an upright boy, respectful and clever, but one look at his face told her that it was he who had a hankering to speak to this mysterious newcomer. He smiled and flirted in the manner of youths caught in a fever they did not yet understand and were not quite yet old enough to act on.

He was growing up. In this matter, at least, the world did not change.

She looked sideways, at last, to examine her rival. The Impatient One had her eyes closed, but her right foot tapped the stone to a brisk rhythm, like a racing heart.

The baskets were dragged out and set on the lowest step of the pyramid. Three baskets held white stones close to the brim with a fourth for the overflow. Only one black basket was lifted out, and it was not even half full.

No announcement was made. They all knew, even those who had, despite everything, cast their vote for her rule, that had sufficed for a rule in exile, but sufficed no more.

The Impatient One opened her eyes and lifted a hand to point toward the height of the pyramid.

Feather Cloak pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, for strength, and without replying began the ascent.

It was an exhausting climb. The steps were narrow, and the risers high, and when the platform that crowned the height opened at last before them she was dizzied. Clouds piled into stormy risers to the east. She thought she heard the growl of thunder, but it faded. The Impatient One, with a frown and a lift of the elbow, waited for her to begin the ritual.

First, the circuit of the platform, paced west to north to east to south. She wept to see the city laid whole around her, so long desired and now fulfilled. On the western face of the pyramid the lower stairs had crumbled away into a dangerous slope of loose shards and the weathered, broken remains of what once were stairs. It was possible to actually see the ragged joining where new met old, but it was disorienting. She felt she might fall and fall, tumbling down the slope into the forgotten past now yanked unexpectedly into line with the present.

Farther down, at the northwestern corner along the base, lay a field of impressive rubble jamming what had once been the sacred entrance to the Heart-of-the-Universe, the cavern beneath the temple.

She licked away a tear from the corner of her mouth as she returned from her circuit and walked to the center. She halted beside the blood stone and removed from the hem of the feather cloak a pair of sap cactus spines. One she handed to Kansi-a-lari.

"Will you cease work on the rockfall?" she asked the other woman. "If we could unearth the entrance to the Heart-of-the-Universe ..."

The Impatient One wiped sweat from the back of her neck. "Then what? Will the gods blast our enemies? Will the earth open up and swallow them? Will we gain the ability to see what they are doing without them knowing, or to move faster than they can move themselves between their weaving crowns?"

"Respect the gods," said Feather Cloak, shocked at such talk even from The Impatient One. "We have survived, and suffered. Let us seek peace, not confrontation."

'As you did, with the blood knives?" mocked the Impatient One.

"Do you think they are your allies? Do you think you can control them?"

The Impatient One smiled cruelly. "Blood will sate them."

She stuck out her tongue and held its tip with thumb and two fingers. Raising the spine, she touched its pointed end to the pink flesh.

Feather Cloak sighed. "With this blood," she said, "I let authority pass from my hand into the hand of the one who is chosen."

She settled down cross-legged on the blood stone, leaning over the shallow basin that marked its center. She held her own tongue and pierced it smoothly. The pain flashed like fire, and it throbbed, but sharp red blood dropped into the basin made by the blood stone.

Kansi-a-lari did the same. Where blood melded and mixed, it smoked, bubbling for the space of one breath before it dissipated into the air with a scent so acrid that both sneezed.

"With this blood, I accept authority into my hands from the one who came before."

Kansi held out her hands, palms up, and waited. At least she did not gloat, but she was, obviously, restraining her impatience with the leisurely pace of the ritual. She wanted to get on with it, get moving, make decisions, push forward.

The time for careful steps is done. The world she knew and understood was passing out of her hands. Fled, like a kiss stolen from a man who doesn't really want you.

The headdress. The rustling cloak. The spines. All these were transferred. These sigils of the authority released her, and she was only what she had been before, called Secha by her family and named The-One-Who-Looks-Hard-at-the-Heart as a child for her habit of staring at her playmates with a level gaze when she found their antics distasteful or mean-spirited.

She-Who-Sits-in-the-Eagle-Seat rose, hands raised heavenward to show her palms to the sight of the gods, who through the hands can see into the heart. She might stand at the height of the temple dedicated to She-Who-Creates for a day or a year, waiting for the gods to speak to her, although Secha doubted that The Impatient One could stand still for more than twenty breaths.

And indeed, not twenty breaths later, Feather Cloak grunted, wiped away the sweat beading her forehead, and set off to descend the steps.

In that moment of solitude granted her, Secha touched chin and forehead to acknowledge the gods. The sky had lightened. The clouds shone like the underside of a pearl, and she glimpsed the shimmering disk of the sun high above and tasted its heat on her bloody tongue and in the sticky hot dust kicked up by the feet of the multitude below.

At length she stood and followed Feather Cloak down the steep stairs.

Feather Cloak was met on the lower terrace by a swarm of people who wore emblems of rank not seen in Secha's lifetime: the marks of high lineage, of privilege, of priestly sanction and a warrior's prestige. Sashes; a blood knife banner; a beaded neckpiece; bright feather headdresses; long, clay-red mantles; gauntlets of precious shells strung together on a net.

Secha passed around them like a shadow, forgotten and unseen.

She was free, although the wound in her tongue burned and the taste of blood reminded her of the sharpness of defeat. No weight bowed her shoulders. She was only herself now, a woman with certain skills who must find her way in the new world whose landscape was still unexplored. The exiles and the ones who had walked in the shadows must build together. It would not be easy.

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

A TEMPTING OFFER

1

"ARE you sure he is dead?" asked Adelheid.

"There is no escape from the galla."

"Are you sure?"

When Antonia thought about Hugh of Austra, her gut burned and her heart hammered, and she had to murmur psalms until she calmed herself. "They are not mortal creatures, as we are. They desire only a return to the pit out of which they sprang. They will pursue those whose names they carry because when that soul is extinguished, the bond that binds them to Earth is broken."

"The world is a large place!"

"They do not seek as would a human scout. If he walks on Earth, they will find him by other means than the five senses. Had he vanished out of this plane of existence, they would return to me seeking release. Only I, or the death of that soul, can release them. They did not. Thus, he must be dead."

She and Adelheid walked through the enclosed garden beside the clematis. A few brave flowers budded among the leaves, but none had opened. Like her anger, they remained closed tight, waiting for more auspicious weather.

"What if he has a defense against them?" Adelheid worried at it, as a dog keeps chewing a bone long since shed of all its flecks of tasty fat and flesh. "Prince Sanglant did, with griffin feathers."

"Prince Sanglant is in the north. He is Hugh's sworn enemy. Think you Sanglant gave the man he most despises a dozen griffin feathers as a precaution?"

"Hugh might have stolen such feathers. He said he was at the Wendish court before he was exiled."

"It might be true he was at the Wendish court. Or he might have lied to us. Perhaps you believe Hugh stole Princess Blessing to return her to her father in exchange for peace between them? Or that the old Eagle is the one who murdered Lady Elene?"

"He was covered in her blood. And caught in the stables, trying to saddle a horse and make his escape."

"A crude ploy on Lord Hugh's part, I imagine, to distract us. The old man has no reason to murder the girl."

"Why would Lord Hugh want her dead?"

"She is his rival. She was educated by a formidable mathematicus."

"Then why not kill the old man at the same time?"

"He knows nothing important. Anne said so. His skills are trifles compared to what the rest knew.

He is no threat."

"Yet you had him returned to the dungeon, in chains. If we do not mean to kill him, and if he is no threat, then why not let him bide in the tower with Lord Berthold?"

'As Berthold has requested? No, I think not. The soldiers hate him, believing he murdered the young lady. They would believe themselves ill used if he did not suffer. In any case, it serves me to keep him in chains. I still have a use for him."

Adelheid shook her head, her face pale as she pinched tiny buds off a branch with nervous anger.

"These are wheels within wheels, like a toy from Arethousa. Easily broken. Difficult to fix. How can you be sure that Hugh is dead?"

Adelheid feared Hugh! That was the root of her displeasure.

"Do not despair, Your Majesty," said Antonia in a soothing tone. "Once the galla swarm, a man possessing griffin feathers must move quickly to save himself. To save all of his troop would be beyond his capacity. There is no way to shield oneself from their power, there is no ancient spell of warding. It is impossible—unlikely—nay, it is impossible."

"You cannot be sure! And the child, too! If she is dead, then Mathilda has no rivals in the second generation. I should have slit her throat myself. Now I will never know if she perished."

Almost, Antonia lost her temper, but fortunately soldiers appeared under the archway that led into the palace.

"Your Majesty! Holy Mother!"

Captain Falco hurried forward, and Adelheid paused beside the mosaic floor. He knelt before her.

The queen touched a finger to her own lips, hissed a breath, and spoke. "What news, Captain?"

"Your Majesty," he said, for he always put Adelheid first, although it was wrong of him to do so.

Afterward, he inclined his head toward Antonia. "Holy Mother. When we searched more carefully, we found where they had left the road."

"Did they go to the crown?" Antonia asked.

"It's true there was some disturbance by that path, but it appears they decided not to go that way."

"Because of the clouds, they could not weave," said Antonia. "God stymied them."

"Go on," said Adelheid impatiently. "What did you find?"

"Two days' ride down the road we found where they scattered into the woodland. They must have been fleeing from—" He broke off, and glanced nervously at Antonia; it was good that he feared her. "We brought the remains back in wagons, Your Majesty, although I admit we found no stray horses living or dead."

"What manner of remains?" Antonia asked.

"A tumble of bone, hard to sort out because cast here and there along the ground and amid bushes. We found twelve skulls. Two of them were somewhat smaller than the rest. Belt buckles, metal bits, such things. This as well, among the bones." He offered her a silver brooch molded in the shape of a panther grappling with a hapless antelope.

'Austra's sigil," said Antonia.

"He was wearing that when he arrived," said Adelheid breathlessly. Her cheeks became red as she took the brooch from the captain and weighed it in her palm. "Still, why ride south? Why not ride north?"

"He claimed to have been exiled from Wendar," said Antonia. "So he could not hope to find refuge there. Yet I, too, wonder what they hoped to find in the south."

"Twelve skulls," mused Adelheid, "but thirteen went missing."

She gave Antonia such a look, but Antonia refused to be drawn. There had been no reason to raise a galla to pursue Heribert.

"I left men behind to continue searching, Your Majesty," said the captain, "knowing you would wish to account for everyone."

"What if it was Hugh who survived?" Adelheid asked, still studying the brooch. "How can we know? Bones do not speak."

"Do you wish Lord Hugh dead? Or alive? Your Majesty." It was said sharply, but Antonia had tired of this conversation which they had repeated a dozen times since the morning four days ago when they had woken to find Lady Elene murdered, and Hugh, Princess Blessing, and Brother Heribert vanished together with nine soldiers including one of Adelheid's loyal captains.

"I wish Henry still lived," said Adelheid. She wiped an eye as though it stung. "He was a good man. None better."

She sank down on the stone bench and rested her elbow on her knee and her forehead on her palm, the very image of a woman mourning a lost lover. Her gaze strayed over the ancient mosaic, and her eyes glittered, washed with tears.

"So it went in the old story," she said, indicating the mosaic on which Antonia stood. The man was draped only in a length of cloth that did a poor job of covering his shapely body. The huntress' hair was as dark as Adelheid's, braided and looped atop her head in the antique style, common to Dariyans and depicted in mosaics, painted walls and vases, and sculpture. She had a bold nose and black mica eyes and the faintest memory of Prince Sanglant in tawny features.

"1 do not know the story," said Antonia impatiently, "nor am I sure I wish to know it."

Adelheid raised a startled face to look at her. "Surely you must know it! It is the first tale I was told as a child."

"The story of the blessed Daisan?"

The Aostans were tainted by their past, as everyone knew. Despite the loving and firm hand of God directing them to all that is right and proper, they persisted in remembering and exalting the indecent tales of ancient days.

"The story of Helen. When she was shipwrecked on the shores of Kartiako, she went hunting but found instead this man, here." She indicated the male figure who held a staff, and was standing beside an innocent lamb. The image of the lamb had sustained damage about the head, stones chipped away. "She thought he was only a common herdsman, but he was the prince of Kartiako, the son of the regnant. She did not discover his worth until it was too late. Thus we are reminded each time we walk in this garden not to let appearances deceive us. Not to reject too swiftly, lest we regret later."

'Are you speaking of Lord Hugh's return to Novomo, Your Majesty? Certainly you rejected him swiftly enough."

Adelheid looked at her without answering, expression twisted between annoyance and tears, and turned away to break off a twig of clematis. She rolled the leaves against her fingers until they were mashed to pulp.

"I was thinking of Conrad's daughter," she said reluctantly. "I regret she was killed in such a cowardly way. She did nothing to deserve it."

"Your Majesty!" Brother Petrus hurried down the steps with a pair of stewards at his heels. "The envoys have come, Your Majesty! They'll be here by day's end."

Adelheid rose and flicked away the last tear. "We must grant them a splendid reception. Captain Falco, muster all the guardsmen and soldiers. Let them line the streets and array themselves about the palace and the courtyard and the audience hall. Brother Petrus, let my schola assemble, every one. Send Veralia to me. She will supervise my stewards. She must consult with Lady Lavinia. I will go crowned and robed. Afterward, there must be a feast, as fine a meal as can be assembled at short notice." She recalled her company and belatedly nodded toward Antonia. "What do you wish, Holy Mother?"

Antonia hid her irritation. It was good to see Adelheid so lively, even if it was for a distasteful cause. "Surely you cannot mean to go through with this, Your Majesty?"

"What choice have I?"

"But your own daughter!"

"What choice have I?"

It had come to this. Hugh had come to them, and Adelheid had foolishly driven him off. Now his power was lost forever, and in addition they had lost two excellent hostages.

Worse, he had stolen Heribert, that faithless whore. But she could not let Adelheid know how cruelly this blow struck at her heart. She could never show weakness. She must forget Heribert, consider him dead, slice the cord herself. She should have severed the tie the day he ran away at Sanglant's order. In this matter, Hugh was blameless. It was Sanglant who had corrupted Heribert.

And in any case, once the searchers found him and returned him to Novomo, she could devise a suitable punishment.

"Holy Mother? Is there aught that ails you?"

"Nay, nothing. I am only reflecting that you are right. What choice have we?"

But after all, Hugh was the treacherous one, doubly so, with plans afoot she could not fathom.

Knowing that they must appear in greatest state before the arriving delegation so that no one would suspect their weakness, Antonia went to the chest sealed with sorcery to fetch Taillefer's magnificent crown of empire to place upon Adelheid's brow.

The amulet was sealed properly; yet after all when she opened the chest, she found an empty silk wrapping. Hugh had stolen it, no doubt to crown Sanglant's daughter as a puppet queen. And now it was lost in the woods, on the back of a panicked horse.

She could only rage while her servants cowered.

2

IN the afternoon of the third day, Lord Hugh and his party came down out of the hilly country closer to the sea's shore and found an abandoned town that looked as if it had been swept clean by a towering wave. Cautiously, John scouted in through the broken gates and afterward they all followed him. They found the bones of a dog scattered beneath a fallen beam in a ruined house but no sign of recent life. A stream spilled seaward, overflowing its banks where it met the wide waters. Its water had a brackish, oily taste, but they drank anyway and filled up their leather bladders so they wouldn't have to break open their spare cask of ale.

Lord Hugh prowled the town, seeking signs.

"See here," he would say, where spars had lodged in the gapped teeth of the ruined palisade. "A wave caused this. Yet inland the pattern of disturbance suggested a wind out of the east southeast.

There must have been two storms of destruction, one after the next. As ripples run in ponds, the second following the first."

The town had not been large, and the shattered remains of pilings suggested it had once boasted a wharf. Farther up the strand, fish had rotted, their bones strewn like twigs along the shore. The sea lapped the strand placidly. John tried fishing but had no luck. Blessing tried to run away and after had a rope tied to her waist and had to follow along behind Frigo like a dog on a lead. He was neither cruel nor kind to her but dispassionately amused. Hugh rarely looked at the girl at all, and when he did, he would frown and set his lips in an expression Anna could not interpret. A man might look so at a two-headed calf, or at the child sprung from the union of his bitterest rival and the woman he desired most in the world but could never have.

"Should we camp in the town, my lord?" asked Captain Frigo.

"What do the men say?" Hugh asked him. "I think the shelter will do us some good, but if they prefer a more open site, if they fear plague, that is as well with me."

Frigo nodded, scratching his beard. "They're muttering that it's well enough to walk a town like this in daylight, when night might bring ghosts, and devils carrying sickness. I think otherwise.

There's no sign of dogs or corpses. Deserted as we are here, it's best to have a defensible position.

They'll see the wisdom of staying within walls if anything attacks us by night. Wolves or bandits.

Those other things."

"Wisely spoken, Captain. Set up camp."

John and Theodore found a campsite that suited the nervous men. They planted their backs against the broken wall of a merchant's compound with a long storehouse along one side and a stable along another. The courtyard gave them space to set up a couple of lean-tos for shelter without having to camp right within the ruins where scorpions might scuttle and ghosts poke their knuckles into a man's ribs while he slept.

Scarred John unfolded a leather-and-wood tripod stool. Lord Hugh unrolled a map on top of the small traveling chest. He pinned the corners with an oil lamp, a heavy silver chain mounded up over a silver Circle of Unity, his knife, and his left hand. He studied the map, twisting a wick between thumb and middle finger but not yet lighting it.

"We escape tonight," Blessing whispered to Anna as the girl trotted past in Captain Frigo's wake.

The big man glanced at her. Anna wasn't sure how much Wendish he understood, but she guessed he couldn't follow her conversations with the princess as well as she could follow the Dariyan spoken between soldiers and master.

Under the shelter of sloped canvas, she unrolled the blankets she and Blessing shared, and there she sat to watch Lord Hugh as he stared at the parchment. The canvas ceiling rose and fell as a twilight wind gusted out of the east.

The men chatted companionably as they got the horses settled in the stables and sentries up onto the walls. Liudbold and scarred John set to work splitting wood from the abandoned houses to fuel the fire. Frigo sat on his saddle and, with Blessing trussed tight beside him, set to work dressing a sapling trunk with an adze.

Lord Hugh had that ability to build trust between himself and those who served him. In this same manner, Prince Sanglant led his men, knowing all their names, their home villages, their sense of humor, and which man needed a coarse joke or which a kind word to keep his spirits up. In this wilderness, Hugh's entourage was nervous and watchful but not terrified, because they trusted him.

In her mind's eye, she saw Elene's blood leaking over the chessboard and pooling around Berthold's slack fingers. She could not shake off the memory.

He glanced up, noted her regard, and dismissed it. Scarred John brought him a cup of ale. He thanked him, drained it, and handed back the empty cup. Bringing out flint and tinder, he made ready to light the wick.

A strange sound rang over the ordinary moan of the wind along the deserted walls. Every man quieted and froze in position, as though spelled. She saw their shapes like pillars, arranged out of all symmetry. For ten breaths at least, no one spoke or moved. The wind turned abruptly, and grew cold as winter's blast, swelling out of the northwest. The sound rang down on that wind.

"Sounds like bells," said Theodore in a low voice.

A horse snorted and sidestepped.

A man yelped and cursed. 'Ah! Ah! Right on my foot!"

"More fool you for standing there!" retorted his companion.

Lord Hugh moved his right foot to the ground, set the oil lamp beside it, and slipped the Circle and chain over his head. As he rolled up the map and stowed it in the chest, he spoke.

'All must retreat within the circle I draw. Bring the horses, too."

He took a bulging pouch out of the chest, closed it, and secured the hasp. His hands were steady as he spilled a line of flour in a circle big enough to contain men and horses together. A stench like the breath of the forge swept over them. Horses shied. Men shouted in alarm, and the three who had not yet crowded into the circle raced out of the dusk to join them. At their backs a dark storm advanced out of the heavens.

One skittish gelding broke and bolted.

"Let it go!" Lord Hugh shouted. "Come. Come. Are all within?" His gaze caught Anna, and as if struck she gasped and covered her mouth with a hand. "Not you. You must take your chances outside."

Scarred John drew his sword.

Blessing screamed and began to kick and pummel Captain Frigo. "No! No! No! I'll hurt you! Let her stay!"

He slapped her, but the pain meant nothing.

John's sword poked Anna's hip. She edged sideways, seeing one curve in the circle not yet sealed by flour. He poked her again. The edge bit into her flesh, and she sobbed and skipped out beyond the sword's reach.

"No! No!"

"Stop it!" warned the captain.

"Won't! Let her come back!" Blessing squirmed. She kicked him again, almost got her knee into his groin.

Frigo took out his horsewhip and, swearing, slashed the girl across the chest, but the pain did not daunt her.

Anna started to cry with terror as a stinging wind poured over them. It was not quite utterly dark; they had not yet crossed the boundary into night past which there is no returning. But what fell out of the heavens was blacker than night, towers of darkness that stank of iron and muttered like bells heard down a vast distance. She heard them speaking. She heard names.

Hugh of Austra. John of Vennaci. Frigo of Darre. Theodore of Darre. Liudbold of Tivura. Each of them named and marked.

Blessing of Wendar and Varre, daughter of Sanglant.

The only name that was missing was Anna's.

"Let her come back! Let her!" shrieked Blessing, writhing, slam-ming her fists into air as Frigo twisted away from her blows. He slugged her on her jaw, and she went limp just like that.

'As I thought," said Hugh conversationally to Anna as he bent to pour the last of the line into place, to seal the circle, "you were not deemed of sufficient interest that anyone could recall your name and birthplace, if they ever knew it. You are more likely to survive if you move away from us. Follow the horse."

Flour streamed onto the earth. Hugh was speaking words she did not recognize or understand, and as night and monsters crashed over them, the thread of flour met itself and between one heartbeat and the next the men and horses huddled inside vanished.

She screamed, choked, wept. Moaned.

A breath of stinking cold horrible air rushed past her, soaking her in a chill that stabbed all the way to the bone. Death! Death! She wet herself, but the hot urine soaking her leg jarred her wits into life. Darkness swept down as on a gale, and she fled, running as the horse had, but tripped over her own feet and hit herself hard. Elbows bled. She scrambled forward as a dark shape skimmed over her.

The horse had run itself into a corner. Kicking, it lashed out at the creature. Her vision hazed. The horse screamed as a black pillar engulfed it.

Sparks spit golden above her. An arrow fletched with a shimmering tail pierced the creature, and it vanished with a loud snap. Bones rattled to earth where the horse had been. Its flesh had been flensed and consumed. She scrabbled forward as another thing swirled into view above her. Its cold presence burned her. She sobbed. A second arrow bloomed as a splash of brilliance in the heart of shadow. With a hiss, it snapped out of existence.

The hardest thing she had ever done was in that moment to look back over her shoulder. Better not to see what would devour her, but she had to know. A haze of mist marked the spell in which Hugh had contained his retinue. Most of the galla swarmed about it, as if confused. Bells tolled in her ears. She choked on bile. She got to her knees and crawled, thinking she might not draw their attention if she remained low to the ground.

A third hiss, followed in a steady measure by two more; nothing careless, not in Theodore's aim.

She reached the scattering of steaming bones and fell among them. The clatter resounded into the heavens. A sixth bright arrow burned, and a seventh.

"Eight. Nine," she whispered, pressed among the bones, hoping death would shield her.

Hugh of Austra. So it murmured as it circled the sealed earth, seeking its prey but confused by the mist that concealed him. An arrow blossomed in darkness off to her right. With a snap and a roar of brilliance the tenth flicked out. A line like silver wire spun in an eddy of air before drifting to the ground.

If the galla had intelligence beyond that of hunting hounds, she could not see it in them.

Eleven. The last shadow pushed at the haze. Blessing.

The fire that bloomed within its insubstantial black form almost blinded her, like the flash of the sun.

In the silence, her ears rang with bells, and after a while she heard herself sniveling. She stank of piss. The bones in which she lay stank of hot iron. Her eyes stung as she wept. She could not stop herself. She just could not stop, not even when the spell he had raised dissolved and his soldiers broke out cheering. Not even when flame sprang from the oil lamp and they set about their encampment, each one as merry as if he had faced down his own death and laughed to escape it.

She could not stop, especially when Lord Hugh came into view, carrying the burning lamp. He paused to study the bones with more interest than he studied her, a touch of that ice-blue gaze.

The kiss of a winter blizzard would have been more welcome.

He was a monster, no different than the monsters that stalked him. Hate flowered, but she lowered her eyes so as not to betray herself.

"A cup of ale in celebration, my lord?" asked scarred John. She glanced up to see the soldier arrive with a cup in each hand.

Hugh smiled. Strange to think how beautiful he was. Impossible not to be swayed by beauty, by light, by an arrogance that, softened, seems like benevolence. All of it illusion.

So might the Enemy smile, seeing a soul ripe for the Abyss.

So might the Enemy soothe with soft words and a kindly manner: Come this way. Just a little farther.

They drank.

"Here, now," said scarred John, sounding surprised. "The girl survived! Yet see—is that the horse?" He made a retching sound. He shook with that rush which comes after the worst is over.

"That would have been us! Sucked clean of flesh!" He clutched his stomach, looking queasy.

"So would we all have been," agreed Hugh. "The Holy Mother Antonia controls many wicked creatures. She is a servant of the Enemy. Now you see why we must oppose her and Queen Adelheid, whom she holds on a tight leash."

The others gathered where Anna lay, humiliated. She did not know what to do except let them stare at her and pick through the bones around her as though she were deaf and mute. At last, she crawled sideways to get away from them. None stopped her or offered her a hand up. Her leggings were soaked through, and a couple of the men waved hands before noses and commented on the stink.

"Is it safe now?" they asked Hugh, kicking the remains of the horse. "Can we sleep?"

"It is safe. Before we left, I instructed Brother Petrus to scatter skulls and bones in the woodland a day's ride south of Novomo. After some fruitless searching, a loyal soldier will by seeming happenstance lead the searchers to these bones, and Mother Antonia will believe we are all dead, killed by those black demons, her galla."

They all stared at him.

He nodded to acknowledge their amazement. "I knew the plan would work because Antonia remains ignorant of the extent of my knowledge. I know a shield—this spell I called—that would hide us from the sight of the galla. I had in my possession griffin feathers to send them back to their foul pit."

"How did you come by such things, my lord?" asked scarred John, always curious. "It was said of the Wendish prince, the one who killed Emperor Henry, it was said he led a pair of griffins around like horses hitched to a wagon. But I never believed it."

Captain Frigo stood with Princess Blessing draped over his shoulders like a lumpy sack of wheat, but she was breathing. "Hush! It is not our part to question Lord Hugh."

Hugh's smile was the most beautiful thing on Earth, no doubt. If only he had been flensed instead of the poor horse.

"Questions betray a thoughtful mind, Captain. Do not scold him." He nodded toward John, who beamed in the light offered by the lamp's flame, content in his master's praise. Above, no stars shone. In the gray darkness, men settled restlessly into camp, still unnerved by their brush with death and sorcery. "I was brought up in the manner of clerics, John, to love God and to read those things written down by the holy church folk who have come before us. I had a book ... I have it still, since I copied it out both on paper and in my mind. In it are told many secrets. As for the griffin feathers. Well."

Anna clamped her mouth shut over the words she wanted to speak. Prince Sanglant had captured griffins. Had Lord Hugh done so as well? Had he, like Bulkezu, stalked and killed one of the beasts?

He twitched his head sideways, as at an amusing thought known only to himself. "Does it not say in the Holy Verses: 'He who lays in stores in the summer is a capable son?' I took what I found when the harvest was upon me."

'And in the morning, my lord?" asked scarred John.

'At dawn," he said, "we ride east."

At midday the wind that had been dogging them all day died. Dust kicked up by the horses spattered right back down to the earth. No trees stood, although here and there hardy bushes sprouted pale shoots. The rolling countryside looked as dead as if a giant's flaming hand had swept across it, knocking down all things and scorching the hills.

Blessing rode in silence behind Frigo. She had not spoken since he had knocked her unconscious, only stared stubbornly at the land ahead. Because Anna was watching her anxiously, fearful that she'd sustained some damage in her mind, she saw the girl's aspect change. Her expression altered. Her body tensed. She saw something that shocked her.

"God save us," said Frigo as the slope of the land fell away before them to expose a new landscape.

Now Anna saw it, too.

East, the country broke suddenly from normal ground into a ragged, rocky plain whose brownish-red surfaces bled an ominous color into the milky sky. Nothing grew there at all. It was a wasteland of rock.

"That's not proper land," muttered scarred John. "That's demon work, that is."

"I've never heard of such a thing," said Theodore, "never in all the stories of the eastern frontier, and I've been a soldier for fifteen years and fought in Dalmiaka with the Emperor Henry and the good queen." He glanced at Hugh. "As she was then."

Hugh had not heard him. He, too, stared at this wilderness with the barest of smiles. "This is the power that killed Anne," he said.

"What is it, my lord?" asked the captain. "Is it the Enemy's work?"

" 'There will come to you a great calamity. The rivers will run uphill and the wind will become as a whirlpool. The mountains will become the sea and the sea become mountains. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood.' "

Every man there looked up at the cloudy heavens as if seeking the hidden sun.

" All that is lost will be reborn on this Earth,' " he added.

They stared, hesitant to go forward.

Theodore broke their silence. "What's that, my lord?" he said, pointing east into the wasteland of rock. "I thought I saw an animal moving out there."

Hugh shook his head. "How can any creature traverse that? We'll have to move down toward the sea."

Although they did this, and although it was just possible to keep moving east by sticking to the strand, they rode anyway always with one eye twisted toward desolation. It was so cheerless and barren and frightening that Anna wept.

3

HE came with his entourage of treacherous Arethousans from whose lips fell lies, false jewels each one, because their ears had heard nothing but the teachings of the Patriarch, the apostate whose stubborn greed broke apart the True Church.

Adelheid's soldiers waited in ranks beside the gate and along the avenues. Servants swarmed like galla, each dressed in what best clothing they could muster. All must appear formidable, the court of queen and empress. The court of the skopos, the only true intermediary between God and humankind.

Adelheid did not rise to greet him as his retinue reached the court before the audience hall. She sent Lady Lavinia outside to escort him in, while Captain Falco hurried inside to report.

"This must be, indeed, the fabled one-eyed general, Lord Alexandras."

"The one we heard tales of when we marched in Dalmiaka?"

"The same, so it appears. It's said he became a lord by winning many victories for the emperor, who rewarded him with a noble wife and a fine title. He rides a handsome chestnut gelding and has a string of equally fine mounts, all chestnut. That suggests a man with vanity in his disposition."

"Well observed, Captain."

Adelheid wore a fine coronet of gold, but it looked a paltry thing to Antonia's eyes compared to the imperial crown she should have been wearing. Still, Adelheid herself, robed in ermine, with face shining, looked impressive enough to stop any man in his tracks and distract him from such tedious details as the richness of her ornaments.

The queen's gaze sharpened as movement darkened the opened double doors that led onto the colonnade fronting the hall. Antonia was seated to her right but at an equal height on the dais.

From the doors, they would be seen side by side, neither given pride of place: the secular hand in hand with the sacred, as God had ordered the world below.

General Lord Alexandras entered with a brace of men to either side. Three carried decorated boxes in their hands and the fourth an object long and round and wrapped in cloth. All were dressed in red tabards belted over armor, except for the general himself. He wore a gold silk robe belted up and cut away for riding but still marked at the neck and under the arms and around the hips with the discolorations of the armor he'd been wearing over it. He had just come from the saddle, had only taken time to haul off his armor, but Adelheid had wished for this advantage: that he not be allowed any time to prepare himself but would be thrown headlong in all his travel dirt fresh into the melee.

The empress did not rise. Naturally, neither did Antonia.

He paused to survey the hall and the folk crowded there. That half were servants and commoners he would not know just from looking; all were handsomely dressed, and the lords and ladies who attended stood at the front of the assembly. He had, indeed, but one eye, that one a startling blue.

The other was covered with a black patch. He was swarthy, in the manner of Arethousans, not particularly tall but powerfully built through the shoulders and chest, a man confident of his prowess in battle.

"Now we will discover," murmured Adelheid, "whether his wits are as well honed as his sword is said to be."

She raised a hand. He strode forward, his men coming up behind. He alone was armed, with a sword sheathed in a plain leather scabbard. Of the rest of his men, none entered the hall.

He stopped before the dais, snapped his fingers, and mounted the steps as the attendant carrying the long object unfolded the cloth and opened it into a sturdy stool. As the general reached the second step, the man quickly placed the stool to the left of Adelheid's throne and scurried back to kneel with the others.

General Lord Alexandras sat down.

Such audacity! Antonia found herself speechless. Indignant!

In the hall, folk caught their breath. Every gaze turned to the young empress.

Adelheid lifted one brow and measured him, and waited.

He snapped his fingers again. One by one the other men came forward, set their boxes at her feet, and opened them by means of cunning mechanisms fitted into the inlay decorating their exteriors.

From the first emerged a songbird, painted bright gold. It sang a pretty tune and turned back and forth, bobbing up and down as though alive. Adelheid forget herself so much that she clapped her hands in delight.

The second box revealed a rope of pearls of indescribable beauty. Each one was beyond price, and yet here were strung a thousand together. Light melted in their curves. Adelheid lifted up the rope, not without some effort, and let them slide across her lap.

General Lord Alexandras lifted two fingers, and the third man opened a jeweled box and displayed its contents to Antonia.

On a bed of finest gray silk lay the complete bones of a hand, fastened with gold wire.

'A song, to entertain," he said in Dariyan, indicating the cunning songbird with a gesture of his hand. His accent was coarse, but Antonia expected no fine words out of a lying Arethousan.

"Pearls, of beauty and richness. For the Holy Mother of your people," he finished, pointing at the skeletal hand, "a precious relic."

'A relic?" Antonia examined the bones. They had no shine to them, nothing to indicate their special holiness. "Any man may sell a finger bone and say it is the relic of a holy saint."

He shrugged, and it angered Antonia to see that her comment amused him. "So I am thinking.

Perhaps it is only the bone of a cow herder. But it come from the most holy sanctuary of the Patriarch of the True Church. This is the hand of the St. Johanna the Messenger, a holy discipla of the blessed Daisan. Still, if you think it a fake, I will take it away."

Adelheid's eyes widened. She still held the pearls, but her gaze fixed on the hand. 'A precious relic, indeed!" she breathed. "How came you to have it, General? Why bring it to us?"

He gestured. His four attendants touched their heads to the floor in the servile eastern style, backed away, and knelt at the foot of the dais.

"Your Majesty," he said. "Holy Mother. I have no fine words. I am only a soldier. I speak with plain words, if you please."

Antonia began to reply, knowing him impertinent and proud, but Adelheid forestalled her. The young empress was of that type of woman who is susceptible to the appearance of physical strength in a man, thinking that strong arms are preferable to strong faith and a righteous heart.

"Go on, General. I am listening."

When he met Antonia's gaze, it was clear he knew she did not approve of him. He judged her, as a man sizes up his opponent before opening battle, and made his attack.

"I ride a long road to come to Aosta. Many bad things I see. There is wasteland, a land of smoking rock. There is drought, dry land, sickness. There is empty land, all the people run away.

There is starving. Above, we see no birds but one time a great beast which has brightness like gold. We are attacked three times by beasts, these who have the form of men but the faces of animals. They are wearing armor which I see in the ancient paintings in the halls of Arethousa.

The Cursed Ones are returned to Earth. Now they stalk us."

"These are evil tidings," agreed Adelheid. "Yet much of this we know ourselves, here in Aosta."

"This we suffer together." He nodded.

"What do you want?" demanded Antonia. "You are a heretic, apostate, an Arethousan who lies as easily as breathes and who, like the fox, will steal eggs from a mother's nest to feed your own kits."

Adelheid's hands clenched on the pearls as she rounded on Antonia. "I pray you! Holy Mother, let him speak. I sent envoys to inquire about an alliance. I did not expect the lord general himself to answer my call."

"What lordship has he?" Antonia inquired sweetly. "Your proud lineage is known to all, Your Majesty. I am a daughter of the royal house of Karrone. What is he?"

He flexed his arms a little. By the breadth and thickness of his hands, one could read his lineage: a man of the sword, grown with the sword, risen by the sword, a general who had fought his entire life. "I married a noble wife," he said. "Born into the house of Theophanes Dasenia. She is cousin of the last emperor. Also, she is cousin two times removed to the Princess Sophia who marries your King Henry in early days. A clever, industrious woman, proud, a giver of alms.

Noble in all ways."

His breath caught. The assembly was quiet, hearing in his voice a grief that made Antonia, for a moment, feel an inconvenient thread of sympathy wrap her heart. Quickly severed.

"Dead, now." He was pale. Adelheid, too, had lost her color, and yet in all ways her looks had changed utterly since the general had entered the hall. His interest made her seem younger.

He looked at the empress, but what he saw Antonia could not read in his expression. "Arethousa is fallen, Your Majesty. The city is destroyed. Its people are exiles, those who live. Many more are dead. Even the great church is ruins."

Adelheid nodded, as if this did not surprise her. Why should it? She had seen Darre.

"What of the young emperor, General Lord Alexandras?" Antonia asked. "Does Lord Niko live?"

He nodded, but his gaze remained fixed on the queen as on the spear of his enemy, which might pierce him at any unguarded moment. "The emperor lives under the skirt of his aunt, Lady Eudokia. She and I were allies once."

"Once?" Adelheid asked quickly. "No longer?"

He smiled, as if Adelheid's question were suggestive of brilliance. How easily men of a certain age were dazzled by young, pretty women. Henry had fallen in just such a manner, it was said.

"This is what I say," he continued. "Lady Eudokia prefers blindness. She walks in the ruins and calls them a palace. I cannot be blind to what I see."

"What do you want, General?" Antonia asked, seeing it was wise to intercede before the conversation ran out of her control. "I believe that the Empress Queen Adelheid has made a rash suggestion that her daughter might marry the boy who is now Emperor of Arethousa. Is that what you have come to speak of? If so, let us move directly to the point. Speak bluntly as you soldiers phrase it!"

That one good eye fixed on her briefly and disconcertingly, and he marked her and acknowledged her, but he shifted his attention back to Adelheid.

They always did! Men were fools, not to see where the true power lay. They were unbelievers, not placing their trust in God's servants first. Not reaching for faith before earthly lusts. Always humankind failed, and it irritated her so much!

"This I hear also on my journey," he said. "Darre, this great city, also lies in ruins. Poison smoke kills the people who live there. Every person must flee. The city is dead."

Adelheid did not move, not to nod, not to shake her head. She had grown tense. The pearls pooled in her lap, but she was no longer touching them but rather the arms of her throne as she glared at him.

"What do you want, General? Have you come to mock me?"

"I want to live." He patted his chest. "I—and you, Your Majesty—stand atop these ruins. Two great cities. Two noble and ancient empires. All ruins."

She nodded but did not trust herself to speak. Tears filled the queen's eyes. She had seen so much and lost so much, and his words affected her deeply. All there, in that assembly, strained to listen.

He had that capacity, as did Adelheid: that he could draw to him those willing to follow. Like the pearls, he had luster, difficult to see when one first looked at his stocky body, bushy black beard, and terribly scarred face.

"Ruins, yours and mine. To the north, these Ungrians and Wendish, perhaps not so badly harmed.

To the east, the heathen Jinna and their fire god. These also, perhaps, have not suffered so badly as we do, but it is hard to say. Last, heed me. Listen well. To the south, the Cursed Ones return.

There is land where once there is sea. Already they raid into the north. When they gather an army and move in force . . . we will be helpless."

So silent was it in the hall that Antonia heard horses stamping outside. So silent was it that when someone coughed, half a dozen courtiers started as at a thunderclap. It was almost dark now and in this silence a score of servants began lighting lamps.

"This I know," said Adelheid at last. "There is long enmity between your people and mine, General. There is the matter of church doctrine, not easily put aside. But these are things, now, that matter less than the evils that besiege us. This is why I sent my envoys to ask for an alliance."