"A subtle player made that move. Her kinfolk out of Bodfeld are not even counts, nothing more than minor lords. Her father was dedicated to the church and should never have fathered a child. It can't even be proved that she is legitimate rather than a bastard. It can't even be proved she has a soul. Without your support, Sanglant, she is nothing more than an excommunicated practitioner of forbidden sorcery.

Subject to execution, if the church so desires."

"With such plain speaking, you can scarcely expect me to withdraw my 'protection,' " he answered. "I weary of this game."

"The throne, or the woman."

"It is a false choice. Why are you so stubborn?"

"Why are you so stubborn?" She was mightily displeased. Her anger made him uneasy, but he would not back down. "You are a fool, Sanglant. It would have been better if Henry had married you to Villam's heir, as Villain wanted."

"You were against the match at the time, as I recall."

"So I was. Then. Villam had already too much power in Henry's council."

"Waltharia is unmarried, at this moment. Would you object to her now?"

Scholastica hesitated. Liutgard looked surprised, but Theophanu smiled in that elegant, enigmatic way she had, giving away nothing.

"I would object," said Liutgard finally.

Scholastica still gave no answer.

"Had you someone in mind?" he asked his aunt.

"An alliance might be sealed," she said slowly, "with a princess out of Salia or Alba. Even, in these times, with the Polenie, although I account them rather small. A worthy match, bringing with it a worthwhile alliance. Something that will aid us."

"As Liath did. She saved us. All of us."

Scholastica's frown was hard and her tone bitter. "No one knows what she did. Not even you.

No one witnessed. She might have done or said anything. You do not know."

"I know what she told me. I know what happened. I know Anne is dead and her cabal of sorcerers scattered."

"How do you know that the great tempest was not brought about by that creature's magic? By her doing? Or with her as accomplice who then murdered her master? You do not know anything, Sanglant. You cannot prove anything. Those who accompanied her are lost. They cannot tell us what they saw. She is a sorcerer. A daimone's get. Soulless. Dangerous."

"Visited by a saint in Gent."

"An illusion!"

"An illusion—if you say so—believed by half the population and most importantly by those who witnessed. Those whose lives she saved!"

"They are fools, easily led! She could have said anything to convince them to follow her."

He rose slowly, hands loose, shoulders tight.

"Sanglant," whispered Theophanu, warning him.

"I was there!" he said, really angry now. "She saved lives at the risk of her own. She could have run, but did not. Don't tell me it was an illusion! All my Dragons died, and half the city besides!"

His anger did not sway her, nor did his height and his strength as he towered over her.

"You did not die." Her lined face showed no fear and no apprehension, only her stubborn will, not to be cowed by the likes of him. "Although it seems to me that you should have. It is said that your mother bound a spell into your flesh. It is said you cannot die. At times I have wondered if your courage in battle is due to honor and duty and loyalty, or to the knowledge that no matter how many of your men die, you will not suffer their fate."

Almost, he growled at her. She was his enemy, and he had not seen it before. She had lulled him when he stood before her with his army and his griffins and his father's blessed remains. But he had discipline. He remained silent.

"What if your concubine was in league with the sorcerers all along?" Scholastica continued, tight and controlled. "Now she is in a significant position of power. In your bed! The histories tell us that other women have ruled in such a way, although it grants them no dignity to do so."

He was too angry to speak.

Liutgard looked troubled. "It's true. All this talk of a secret cabal, these Seven Sleepers. It would make sense they would have a deeper plan."

Aunt," said Theophanu in her cool voice, "I pray you, if that is true, then why would Liathano deny that she is Taillefer's heir? There is no one to say otherwise, except her. We all believed it. Why would she throw away a claim to power if she sought power?"

"Are you defending her?" asked Scholastica.

"You have not answered Theo's question." Sanglant nodded at Theophanu, and he could not keep a smirk from his face. He liked seeing his aunt discomfited. She deserved it.

"She is subtle," said the abbess finally.

"She is not subtle," said Theophanu with a shake of her head. "She is a cub among wolves, here at court. She is awkward and as likely to say the wrong thing as to keep silence. Begging your pardon, Sanglant."

He shrugged. "It's true enough."

"Were she subtler," said Liutgard, "there would be less disquiet. But it's true, she's no courtier. She has not the least idea of the duties and obligations that bind the consort. Folk fear her, for they have heard many strange stories about her. Yet it seems there are those among the progress who champion her." She smiled a little. Maybe it, too, was a smirk, to answer his. "Eagles and Lions. Common-born folk."

"A common-born woman cannot become queen, not in Wendar," said Scholastica. "In Salia of old, as it says in the histories, a slave might become a queen if she caught a king's fancy and aroused his lust—"

Naturally, having said it, she stopped. She thought. She looked at Sanglant, and, God Above, he felt himself blushing.

"So it seems not only in Salia of old," she remarked, her voice fainted with an ugly tone. "I had forgotten that in her history, so it is said, she was for some time a slave because of her father's debts.

It was said she was Hugh of Austra's mistress—and he a fine and upstanding frater!"

Sanglant kicked away his chair and strode to the back of the hall, unable to stand still.

"Does this not trouble you, Nephew?" she said to his back.

He turned to make a retort, but paused.

Theophanu leaned forward to clasp her aunt's hands. Scholastica winced as Theophanu tightened her grip. "Never believe that she went to Hugh of Austra's bed willingly. If I say anything, Aunt, if you believe me at all, believe that."

"What do you know of the matter?"

"I know enough. She saved my life many years ago, when she was only an Eagle and I was—foolish and blind."

"What do you mean? Say more!"

Theophanu would not be drawn.

"Thus is the spider's web of deceit woven," said Scholastica as she pulled her hands out of Theophanu's grasp.

"You are being stubborn," said Sanglant, pacing back to stand with his hands on the wings of his chair.

"I am? You are the one being stubborn, Sanglant. You, a bastard, born of a foreign woman.

King Arnulf said all along that Henry was indecently obsessed with that woman. That Henry had made rash promises to bring her to his bed. I am only a few years younger than Henry. I recall it well!" She smiled mockingly. 'An obedient son. Our father's favorite. Yet for a woman he defied the king. How like Henry you are!"

"1 can think of no greater compliment than to be compared to my beloved father," he said grimly.

She cut him off. "Yet when I look at you, when any person looks at you, they see your mother's face. They see the face of a people already at war with us."

There, she struck the blow that stopped him. "At war with us? What do you mean?"

"You have not heard? Ah." Her eyes tightened. Her mouth became a flat line as she regarded him.

Liutgard shifted.

Theophanu sat back.

"I pray you, Nephew, account for me the disposition of your forces. Who rides with you, and who remains behind? Then I will tell you the reports I have heard. I hope they will surprise you."

"I am already surprised." He sat, but he was too restless to stay still. He tapped a foot a dozen or more times against the floor before switching to the other one. "What do you mean?"

"I mean villages and estates in the lands west of Quedlinhame have been attacked most viciously by the Lost Ones made flesh. Our enemies look like you." She surveyed the hall. Her silent clerics, her noble kinsmen, the distant guards: all had a similar Wendish robustness, light hair, big builds. His coloring and his features alone were markedly different. He alone was the bastard, with an outland mother.

Theophanu touched him on the knee as if to remind him that she, too, had an outland mother, a foreigner who had never quite been trusted by good honest Wendish folk. Still, Theophanu resembled her father more than her Arethousan mother.

"There are some who murmur that you have brought this down on us," said Scholastica. "There are many who wonder how you have come to be regnant. If it is all part of a larger plot to conquer Wendar from without and rule over us. You see, the survivors of these recent assaults have told us that when the Lost Ones attack, they call out your name."

3

"Can you not bide here?" she asked him, troubled because all yesterday evening he had gone about his business in such an unusual silence. "Until I return from St. Valeria?"

"To what purpose?" He turned as Ambrose set a covered pitcher of heated water down on the table beside the washbasin. Sanglant thanked the man. He was attentive to his servants. He knew their names and their histories and their skills and, it sometimes seemed, their sins. Ambrose poured. Sanglant washed his hands and face and accepted a cloth to dry himself. "Best march to Varre early in the season, before they expect me."

"If your aunt has spoken in their favor, might she not already have sent word of your intentions to them?"

"She may have. Hesitation still does not serve me well. Conrad and Sabella gain the longer I wait."

"Do they want Wendar, or only Varre?"

"Does it matter?" His expression dismayed her. He was Henry's son. She must not forget that.

Henry had ruled Wendar and Varre as had his father and grandfather before him. His heir must not lose what Henry had held so dear.

"What if there is a battle?" she asked.

He shook his head as Robert and Theodulf brought his under-tunic, leggings, and fine wool outer tunic. The dazzling blue seemed to shine in the dim room, which was lightened only by one burning lamp and the misty gray light, seen through the single open window, that heralded the coming day.

"Conrad does not want to fight me. His position remains strong as duke of Wayland. It is only Sabella who goads him on, if I am any judge of the matter. She eats at her bitterness. That is all that sustains her."

"Fierce words. Are you sure?"

He lifted both hands. "I cannot answer so many questions for which there is no good answer. You know that. Do what you must, and catch up to me quickly." He caught her shoulders, kissed her, and released her. "Go, before I change my mind. I have not forgotten about the galla we met upon the road. I also have in mind these stories of Lost Ones attacking helpless folk out in isolated villages and farmsteads."

"Do not forget bandits," she said, piqued by his strange mood. Anyway, she was scared, not for herself but for him. Yet this one thing she could not bring herself to say to him: Do not die, my love.

Only do not die, and I will be content.

"Bandits are the least of it. Yet you are armed and shielded by a power I cannot match. Do not fear to use it, if you must." He touched her on the arm, frowned at her, brushed a lock of black hair out of his eyes, and let her go. She blinked back tears, picked up her saddlebags, sword belt, and quiver, and left him.

Sickness dwelt in the pit of her stomach, a fear that made her heavy and weary and nauseated. This tangle had grown into an

impossible maze.

He would be regnant because his father had asked it of him. Some supported him because they loved him. Others supported him because he rode with an army at his back. His own relatives played a deep game on the chessboard, offering him a pawn on the one hand while they lent their strength to his rivals with the other. Had he been Henry's eldest legitimate child, there would have been no question, but he was not, and she was no fool. Her presence aided him not at all. What Theucinda said aloud snaked through the company like poison. It was Sanglant's weakness that he would hear no word spoken against her, and hers that she could not sacrifice herself on the hearth of duty. Me for the sake of the kingdom.

She could cast herself on the mercy of the unknown Mother Rothgard, pledge herself as a nun, and leave him free to marry as a man of his rank and position must, to save the kingdom in its darkest hour.

Ai, God! She laughed weakly, seeing her escort waiting. What a miserable nun or deacon she would make! Her life with Da had spoiled her. Like the twilight morning, she stood betwixt and between, not quite suited for anything and not quite willing to be content with that which it was reasonable and responsible to aspire to.

No doubt God frowned at her selfishness, but surely it were God who poured love into the world.

Surely to turn away from love was to turn away from God.

Unanswerable.

Or else she had only posed the question in such a way that she could hear the answer she wanted.

4

SHE brooded all that day as her party traveled a little worn path, but still took time to remark on the cool late spring landscape. They followed a trail through hilly country. The great estates and farming lands of Saony lay several days' ride west and east, anchored by Osterburg and Quedlinhame. Goslar was a hunting lodge built in uninhabited countryside where lords and regnants could find a profusion of game wandering the hills and dense forest.

None among the Eagles currently traveling with Sanglant had ever ridden this way, but Hathui had heard the directions from Wolfhere some years ago and had described them in detail to Liath.

By late afternoon of the second day they would come to a small outpost, a free holding established by settlers given the imprimatur of King Arnulf the Elder. Beyond that a river crossing and another two days' journey would bring them to the convent, sequestered in a tiny valley among rugged hills.

Liath walked in the van beside Captain Thiadbold, setting the pace along the soggy track. Her horse, saddled, was led by a groom. Ernst and Rufus rode behind her. Fore and back came the rest of the company, two-score Lions under the command of Thiadbold. Not as swift as horsemen, but, Sanglant had noted, a seasoned captain with disciplined infantrymen in his command would serve best for a journey through the wild forest hills. Common knowledge told that St. Valeria lay hidden in the hills so that the holy nuns who used scholarship to battle evil might make their study in peace. Or be cut off so none of them, tempted by the hope of power wielded through the black arts, could easily escape into the wider world.

“Although it seems to me," she said to Thiadbold, with whom she was having this conversation,

"there are folk aplenty who dabble in the black arts hoping to make their crops prosper or their heir fertile, or their rival barren. Would it not be better to train folk to combat it in its turn?"

"That may be. But some such folk will be tempted to use their power for ill, against the neighbors they're supposed to help."

"They do that anyway."

"That's true enough. The miller in my village was a prosperous man. He got a lust for a girl—a cousin of mine as it happens—and put out his old wife and made it plain to my aunt and uncle that he'd grind no grain until they gave the girl to him. They went to the deacon, who refused to help them because the miller tithed generously and she did not wish to offend him."

"So you see, my point is made."

His answering smile held a touch of irony. "The story's not done. He beat her and treated her cruelly, so at length her parents went to the lord to beg him to intercede. And when he saw the girl, he took her away to become his concubine."

"Beauty gave her no advantage."

"Maybe so. When her parents complained again to the deacon, the holy woman said only what we all know: That it is God's will that some are set high and others low."

"Is it? So say the noble clerics and ladies and lords who stand atop the tower."

"Not only them. So said my cousin, too, after she gave birth to a child who was given, as birthright, title to an estate."

"It's easy to say, if the advantage is yours. Yet every person stands equal in the Chamber of Light."

"Do you believe that?" he asked her, genuinely curious. He was not, she thought, a man tempted to philosophical speculation, but he had a keen eye and a good mind.

"I have to believe it. Else my sense of what is just would suffer grievous harm. I have met too many nobles who are fools to believe otherwise."

He chuckled, then looked around nervously before recalling, she thought, that there was no one to hear them except his own men. "Perhaps so. The church would not approve your words."

"Look!" She pointed. A lumbering shadow moving away into the forest and vanished in the brush.

“An aurochs! Mayhap we'll have game tonight for our supper."

They did. In the rear guard a scout hauled in a deer. At the fore, a pair of men ranging in the woods to seek out trouble shot an aurochs that had stopped to graze in a clearing a spear's toss off the road.

"It might do for a campsite," said one of the scouts, coming to report the kill to the captain. "There's an old stone circle, and cleared ground."

"Let me see," said Liath.

She went with an escort of a dozen soldiers while the rest waited on the road. At the clearing, the other man had already begun butchering the aurochs, and the sharp smell of its blood hit her first. As she pushed aside the low-hanging branches, she saw what manner of place they had come to.

She shook her head, scanning the wide span of ground where a low field layer of feather grass and flowering honeysuckle grew. No trees had encroached despite the passage of time. The stones stood upright.

"Some power has raised this crown recently," she said. "See the pattern of growth around them.

You can see where the stones once lay on the ground."

"Who could raise such big blocks of stone without leaving a track of their labor?" asked the scout.

Sorcery could raise the crowns, but she could not imagine anyone having so much power. After all, how many were left in the world who could even weave the crowns?

Me.

And Hugh of Austra.

She looked at Thiadbold.

He nodded. "We'll march on and hope to find a better spot."

"No," she said, because she did not like to surrender to fear. "Easier to rest here and eat that good aurochs. My mouth is already watering."

He shrugged. "If you don't like it, we'll move on. I've seen my fair measure of strange places. I know to respect their power."

She smelled nothing but vegetation, moist soil, and the innards of the dead animal spilling free as the scout cut a slit in its belly. "If bandits come upon us, we'll have a better view for our archers if we bide here with the stones as cover. What do you think, Captain?"

He took his time considering. He paced the circumference of the clearing, and walked through the stones, but there were no holes, tunnels, or hiding places. It was a dead place, all five stones standing, their faces unnaturally smooth and unmarked with moss or lichen. Although she had seen many a fallen stone cracked and hollowed by centuries of rain and ice, none of these stones showed any such wear.

"It seems dry," he said, and sent a man to fetch the rest of the company. "We'll set fires as our perimeter."

She laughed, liking his pragmatism. "Fair enough, Captain."

They ate well around six fires set at points around the clearing just beyond the crown's circle.

Deadwood came easily to hand. It caught and burned with relish, and the meat tasted good, better than any meal she'd had in days because she sat easily with her companions and chatted about nothing and everything.

Eventually she discovered that some among these men had known Hanna rather better than the others.

"Yes, it's true, lady," said the one called Ingo, a broad-shouldered, good-looking man with a scar and a wicked smile. "We knew her from before, from the march east with Prince Bayan, may he rest at peace in the Chamber of Light. We're them who found her at the Veserling. We ripped her from the hands of the monster. We marched with her west and got her settled at Gent, although she was deathly ill there. It's a miracle she survived, but survive she did. And she did come with us, then, to Osterburg.

After that she was sent south to Aosta. As you've already heard."

"She spoke of you," said the youngest of them, shyly.

"She is a good friend to me," said Liath. "I'd be pleased to know she has survived this tempest."

She found it easy to chat with these men. They acted, at moments, in awe of her knowledge and education, but Thiadbold and the cheerful scamp called Folquin had no fear of questioning her about what they did not understand. The older men could not be intimidated; they had seen too much. She had saved the life of one of their own. That was enough for them to accept her as a comrade. The endless battles waged on the royal progress had no claws here.

Later, when the sentry changed, those few men still awake lay down to sleep, but Liath was restless, as if the night's insomnia that often afflicted Sanglant had passed into her. You would think that afflictions might be rubbed from skin to skin or breathed from mouth to mouth. Anyone who studied medicine knew that sick people often left illness in their wake. Why not other afflictions as well?

She paced around the sentry circle, pausing between each bonfire to stare up at the heavens.

Clouds veiled the stars, yet it seemed to her that she could almost see the faint threads of their light trailing down into the waiting crown. Would it be possible to weave the crowns if the heavens weren't clear? Any good mathematicus armed with an astrolabe and a table and a knowledge of the date and approximate hour could predict which star was rising and which setting. Could point near enough to the place in the sky where this constellation, or that one, rode and turned as the hours passed.

She had none of these things, only her memory, and even her capacious memory could not quite hold as much information as an astrolabe. That, after all, was why the Jinna astronomers had devised them.

"Hey!"

The shout turned her around to stare at the bonfire burning at her back, beyond the crown, about forty strides away. A sentry staggered back, a hand clapped to his right shoulder.

" 'Ware! 'Ware! I've been shot!"

Sentries called out. A pair of men grabbed sticks and lit them out of the fires to create swift-burning torches. She ran to the cursing sentry. By the time she got there, the captain and Sergeant Ingo were standing beside him, examining the arrow. It was a shallow wound. The arrow danced up and down each time the man winced and swore.

"Where?" she asked him.

"Don't know," he said through gritted teeth. “Aih! Either pull it free or stop touching it!"

"Back here so I can see if the point is barbed," said Ingo, and hauled him away.

"Silence!" she said, as the camp roused around them, men calling to each other, swords thudding against shields and mail giving its distinctive slinky rattle as men armed themselves.

"Silence!" roared Thiadbold.

In that silence, quickly fallen, she heard a twig snap, straight ahead, in the trees. She needed no bow. She bent her will to the crown of the trees and called fire.

The forest flashed into a ghastly bright false day as treetops caught fire, revealing a dozen raggedly dressed men armed with spears and sticks and bows. They ranged just out of the halo of light given by the bonfires, under the shadow of the trees, but with sparks and ash raining down over them and the flames blazing above, they fled into the darkness. Arrows skittered after them, until Thiadbold called the cease. The Lions cheered and hooted to see their foe routed.

"That's a neat trick," said Thiadbold somberly, studying the flames, "that might turn a battle or two. Yet I wouldn't try it in dry lands. Will it spread?"

"I hope not."

This was no white-hot anger, no blast of fear, to create a wildfire. It was a bigger fire than she had intended, scorching six trees altogether, but with some effort she managed to pinch off its edges so it would burn itself out. The sentry had taken only a slight wound, quickly bandaged. The men settled down as the captain set out a double guard for the rest of the night.

Even so, Liath could not sleep. Only when the fire had died completely did she lie down, and even then whenever she closed her eyes she saw burning men, their flesh melting off their bodies.

Is this why Da had sealed her off from her own magic? Had he only been trying to protect her from herself? But this question struck her as impossibly naive. Da's motives could not be so easily divined, nor were they simple. Da was not stupid, even if he hadn't had the strength of will necessary to combat Anne.

Without the stars to mark the passing of time, the night dragged on as if forever, but at length the air lightened and a bird chirped. The sound made her jump. A bird! She rose, unsteady on weary legs, and listened hard and peered into the surrounding foliage, but she did not see it or hear that call again.

5

THE outpost had a name, Freeburg, and a population of some four-score wary persons housed in an impressive walled holding consisting of five thatched longhouses, a dozen or so smaller buildings and, remarkably, the blunt spire of a tiny chapel. One lonely cottager lived outside the walls, just where the path emerged from the forest, but it wasn't clear if this spry old fellow had chosen his exile or lived close by the protecting palisade on sufferance. He watched their company march past without saying a word and turned back to clearing his garden. Six bee hives lay within his fence.

The gates lay open. Folk worked in the fields and women washed clothes in the sparkling river.

Meat dried under fenced-in shelters, ready to be brought in and cured. The ring of a blacksmith's hammer surprised them; smiths, like gold, were usually found in more exalted settlements.

Folk paused to watch them. A dozen young men stood along the palisade rampart armed with bows.

"They're not trusting," murmured Liath to Thiadbold, but he only nodded thoughtfully and led the Lions right into what might be a trap, crossing over the ditch and through the open gate. The Lions halted inside the gate, in an open area with enough space for arms practice, or a market, or foot races. Soon they were surrounded. The council of elders met them.

"We heard news of you along the road," said their spokesman, a genial man with silver hair, silver beard, and a twisted smile from a palsy afflicting the left side of his face. He looked otherwise hale. "I'm called Master Helmand."

"I'm called Captain Thiadbold. We're on the regnant's business— my Lions and these three Eagles—on our way to St. Valeria's. If we might bide one night within your walls, we'd be grateful. We were attacked by bandits last night. One of our men got hurt, but we drove them off."

"Where was that?" asked Master Helmand as the folk around him whispered and nodded.

"There's a stone circle. That's where we camped last night."

"Old ghosts walk there. No one goes willingly to that place."

It was clear to Liath that the man thought them fools for having camped on haunted ground, but the confession seemed to peel off a layer of suspicion from his scrutiny. After all, how badly can fools threaten an armed village?

"You know the convent?" she asked him. "We had hoped to ask for a guide to show us the way."

"Oh, yes. They come twice a year to trade with us and sing a mass and read the prayers for the dead."

Liath gestured toward the chapel, seen now to be so small that no more than twenty folk could crowd into its nave. "You have a chapel, I see."

"Yet no deacon." He hesitated, glanced at the other elders, and went on as they fluttered their hands and nodded their heads eagerly. "Perhaps you'd take a request to the regnant, Eagle. We'll host you gladly, though we haven't much in our stores after this long winter and no good spring.

We're beholden to the regnant here, as you know. Freeholders. We have a charter!"

"Have you?" Liath asked with interest. "When was it written?"

He cleared his throat. Everyone looked embarrassed. "Well, then, in the time of the old Henry, father to the first Arnulf, long since. We only hear it read aloud but twice the year at spring and fall, and this year at springtide none came from the convent to us."

"Did they not?" Liath looked at Thiadbold. He shrugged. "Have any gone to see if there is trouble there?"

"The river flooded. The ford hasn't been passable for months. There's no other way through."

"Is there no hope of us winning through?"

He beckoned to a man standing up on the walls. This one came down, and it appeared he was a hunter and tracker for the holding, one who ranged wide.

"I'm called Wulf," the man said by way of introduction after Helmand had explained the situation.

He looked to be about Thiadbold's age, somewhere between late twenties and middle thirties, dark-featured, wiry, tough, with handsome eyes and a warp to his chin from an old injury. "I was up that way ten days ago. It might be better now. We can try."

"We must try," said Liath to him before turning to the elders. "We'll be grateful for your hospitality. I can read that charter for you, if you've a wish to hear it."

Oh, they did.

An entire ceremony had collected around the twice-yearly reading of their charter in the same way flotsam collects around a boulder rising from the sandy seashore. A table and chair were carried out into the open air and a cloth thrown over the table. Every household brought cups and drink and set them on the common table. Last, a pale horn was produced from a locked chest. Its call rang four times, once at each corner of the stockade, before they put it away. Lanterns were lit as the inhabitants gathered, stationing themselves in a tidy semicircle, children at the front, adults behind. All remained standing as Master Helmand emerged from the largest longhouse with a small cedar chest in his hands. He set it on the table, opened it reverently, and uncovered folded parchment. This he opened on the table, one hand pinning down the top and the other the bottom. Lanterns were set on either side, although there was still enough light for Liath, at least, to read the bold letters.

The text was succinctly written and began on the paler, flesh side of the vellum. The cream-colored grain side was blank and the corners showed a tendency to curl in that way. The parchment had a hole in it, and the scribe had drawn her ruled lines and written in her text around the flaw. The script had an old-fashioned look to it. For one thing, it used all uncials, as they had done in those days. The scribe's hand had no beauty; Liath could have done a better job. But she could read it.

" 'I, Henry, by the Grace of God in Unity, Regnant over Wendar, do grant to the inhabitants of Freeburg the customs and privileges written below . . ."' Reading, she was reminded of that day years ago in the forest holding west of Gent, when she had read aloud a charter very like to this one.

"Whoever shall acquire property by clearing wastelands shall hold it for the same price as her house. ...

No one, not the regnant nor anyone else, shall demand of the householders of Freeburg any requisition or aid. . . . They shall pay neither tariff nor tax upon their food or the wine they have grown in their own vineyards. . . . Whoever lives in the holding a year and a day shall afterward remain undisturbed.' "

The formula had a parallel construction to that diploma given to the freeholders in the Bretwald by the younger Henry, although the details differed. The villagers listened as intently as scholars as she read slowly and in a clear voice.

" 'This privilege was confirmed by Henry, by faith and oath approved and accepted by the following persons ... in the year 660 since the Proclamation of the Holy Word, on the 11th day of Sormas on the feast day of the Visitation.' " She looked up in surprise. "That's today!"

Having no deacon to count the calendar for them, they too, were shocked and delighted. They set to drinking with a cheer. First the children---who would lay claim to these lands when they inherited—drank. After them, the elders, who had husbanded the land, and last of all the householders who now worked the fields. There was enough for all, a rare enough thing, Liath thought as she sipped at the sour cider, which was starting to go to vinegar but had not quite turned.

On such an auspicious occasion all lingering suspicion vanished. Lions and Eagles were fed, and housed at random, some in the longhouses and some in byres or stock sheds on beds of heaped straw.

Liath asked for no place greater for herself than any other, and the captain, seeing this without commenting on it, offered her no primacy. For the first time in many days she slept soundly, half buried in a heap of scratchy straw with only a blanket beneath and one thrown over herself where she had wrapped herself in her wool cloak. In old days, long ago, she had often slept so on the road, traveling with Da and later as an Eagle. Slipping into sleep, she could imagine Da near at hand, murmuring under his breath, talking to himself, as he often did when there was no learned adult with whom to converse.

How he loved to chat. For all his lonely isolated ways, Da had loved people and loved talking and discussion and argument for argument's sake. He had had a restless, roving mind, unsettled, dissatisfied, and most likely unsatisfiable. She tucked her saddlebags against her chest. The book was a comforting presence, for all the trouble it had caused her. It was, in a way, Da's conversation with himself all those years. She wept a little, thinking of him, and fell asleep, and dreamed of Blessing as a tiny baby sleeping at peace in her arms.

"Liath? Ai, God! It is her!"

That Hanna's voice should so trouble her dreams did not surprise her, not after marching for two days with the Lions. They were in the dream, too.

"Well, I told you it was her," said one, sounding aggrieved.

"Since when should anyone believe your wild tales, Folquin?"

"Since I learned better from following your example, Ingo!"

"Liath!"

That a hand should touch her shoulder in such a familiar way, Jostling her out of sleep, did surprise her. She opened her eyes.

She was still dreaming.

For five long breaths she stared at the apparition, the dream figure floating before her but in fact not floating at all. The figure crouched in a manner very like that of any creature that has weight and heft. Her leggings creased and bunched around the knees. Her white-blonde braid of hair had pooled on her shoulder, and as the woman shook her head with a smile, it tumbled free down her torso.

"Hanna?" Liath sat up.

Then, after all, came the hugging and the weeping.

VI

NO GOING BACK

1

THEIR company set out at once for the convent.

"I rode from St. Valeria with a request for some laborers to come and rebuild the damaged wall,"

explained Hanna. "We thought to let our party rest there a few days in peace while I rode here to ask for aid."

"You managed the river crossing," said the one called Wulf. He hadn't been able to take his gaze off Hanna since she and Liath walked out of the byre. "Had you no guide? How high was the water running?"

As Hanna described her journey between convent and village—she had spent the night sleeping outdoors—Liath stared at her. It seemed she had walked into a dream, something hoped for so long that she could not believe it to be true. Had Sanglant stared at her in this manner when she had returned from the aether? Yet she felt less awkwardness with Hanna than she had at first with Sanglant. She felt, more than anything, relief, as though she had discovered that the hand she thought missing was, after all, still attached.

As Hanna finished talking, she glanced at Liath, grinned, and shook her head. "I still can't believe it.

I've thought of you so often over the years. I must still be dreaming. Sorgatani will be eager to see you!"

These astounding tidings must all be explained. As the two women chattered back and forth without pause the day seemed, as the poets said, to fly past. They marched along a grassy track barely more than a cow path footed in mud. The river still ran high— Hanna had managed the crossing because of the weight of her horse—and they strung a rope across for the Lions to grip so they would not get swept away in the current. After this, the way wound in rugged leaps and switchbacks up into steep, forested hills troubled by ancient ravines and fresh gullies. Now and again the woodsman exclaimed over a landslide that had obliterated a portion of the path, or a new waterfall pouring down through a cleft in a rocky outcropping. Trees had snapped and tumbled. It was, in truth, a miracle that Hanna had managed to get through at all, let alone with a horse.

"This is no ordinary steed," she said, "but Lady Bertha's own palfrey, a noble steed, impossibly brave and stronghearted. She's Wicked"

"Then why are you riding her?"

Hanna chuckled. "That's her name. The story goes that when Lady Bertha acquired her, the mare bit her. I don't know if it's true. She can jump, though, and she isn't afraid of anything."

"I pray you, Hanna, tell me again of what has transpired since the tempest last autumn. I cannot believe—Lady Bertha survived with some few others of those that accompanied me—and yet so close to home she is killed! Are you sure of what you saw?"

"I'll tell you again," said Hanna, soberly not taking offense at the question as Liath had known she would not. 'Ask me what questions you will. Maybe I'll remember something I've forgot. It was a horrible night. Those arrows flying out of the darkness!" She shuddered. "Should another have spoken to me of it, I would not have believed him."

She repeated the story. Hanna's testimony was well observed and, as far as it was in her power given her place within the night's events, related without too much emotion clouding her comments.

"Ashioi, then," Liath agreed. "They have attacked in other places as well. How can they have come so far north?"

"On their own two feet, I suppose."

"Well, then. Why?"

"To kill Wendish folk, I must guess. Or to kill Prince Sanglant. They called his name."

"Some think they are allied with him, now that he is regnant. That he means to conquer Wendar and Varre and hand the kingdom over to his mother's people."

"You do not think so."

Liath gave her a sidelong look and wondered if Hanna distrusted Sanglant. If Hanna distrusted her because of Sanglant. "I don't believe it."

When Hanna frowned, she looked years older. "I don't know what to think. I fear those warriors with their poisoned darts more than I ever feared Bulkezu and his Quman."

"Maybe so, but that doesn't make Sanglant their ally. He would never betray his father's memory."

A stream had changed course in the last months and cut a gully across the path. They had to dismount. The Lions scrambled down and cut enough of a ramp into the sides with shovels that the horses could negotiate the obstacle. Pine whispered above. The forest cover made the path dim as they moved forward along higher ground.

Hanna lengthened her stride. Hurrying to catch up to her, Liath found they were walking out in front of the others, beyond earshot.

"What troubles you, Hanna? I see it in your face."

Hanna looked back, looked ahead, even looked up at the canopy of green above them. The heady aroma of pitch caught in Liath's throat; for such a long time she had smelled only mildewed leaf litter and the icy breath of unseasonable wintry winds.

"I admit, I'm still angry at Prince Sanglant for letting Bulkezu live when he should have executed him. I'm sorry to say so. It's the truth. Whether it speaks good or ill of me, I don't know."

"It's honest of you. None of us are saints."

"That's truth!" She smiled wryly, then frowned in a way that made Liath want to touch her, but she held back. "I should know better. If you trust him, so should I."

"Thank you."

"It's thinking of Sorgatani just now that made me realize. The others fear her, because of what she did at Augensburg."

"They knew the curse laid on her by her power. She never said otherwise, did she? Was she not honest with them?"

"Honesty is not the same as trust. It was worse than the poisoned arrows. They died only from looking at her." She made a kind of hiccup, like a laugh or a cough. "Sorgatani told me you are like sisters, that you alone are not bound to her but are powerful enough to see her without dying. Did it not scare you the first time, knowing the nature of her curse?"

"I don't remember thinking of it at all."

Hanna halted and faced her, looking awful.

"I spoke too lightly," said Liath. "Forgive me. Of course it would terrify them. As much as it must frighten folk to be around me."

“Around you? Why so?"

Liath felt how crooked the smile must look on her face. "Because I can kill people, too."

"So can we all, with a sword or a spear thrust. With our own hands, if we're strong enough."

"I can burn them alive. People fear me, and they should."

"But you would never—!"

"Sorgatani would never, would she?"

"She cried, afterward."

"Yet folk will look at her and see a foreigner. A demon."

"Yes, truly, so they will." With a sad smile, Hanna lifted her hand to touch Liath's dusky cheek. "I am so glad we have found each other again, at last."

Liath's throat was choked, and her voice trembled. "At last," she agreed. It was all she could manage to say without bursting into tears.

2

THE convent hid in a ravine whose entrance was so cleverly concealed that Liath would have walked right past it and kept moving southeast on the trail, on into the wilderness. Hanna turned aside where honeysuckle concealed a path. They made their way down a rocky track between high cliff walls of streaked stone. Two men could not walk abreast; it was barely wide enough for the pack-horses to squeeze through. A bird whistled, and Hanna responded with a shout to identify herself. The clop of hooves and stamp of feet threw weird echoes into the air. These ceased when the ravine opened into a neat jewel of a valley. A stream crossed their path, straining its banks. Beyond, a substantial stone wall blocked the valley's mouth, but it had crumbled in three places where floodwaters had eaten away its foundation. Fence segments woven of branches patched the gaps.

Beyond, a low stockade surrounded a whitewashed long hall and a collection of outbuildings.

Chickens clucked. Goats bawled. Fruit and nut trees stood in tidy rows. Freshly turned earth marked a substantial garden.

Everyone turned out to greet them: lean soldiers armed with spears and swords, clerics in ragged robes, and a dozen nuns of varying ages dressed in sober wool robes and holding rakes and shovels and scythes in their hands. A party of Ashioi could have devastated their ranks in moments, had they only known where to find them.

Hanna was so excited that she raced forward, leaving her horse behind with one of the Lions. She was still very much the girl Liath remembered from Heart's Rest—her first true friend—and yet the years had tempered and molded her to become something different as well: the good nature, the pragmatic eye, and the true heart remained unaltered, but when she wasn't talking, she pinched her lips together in way that made Liath want to hug her, as if hugging could erase pain. What had she suffered that she did not speak of? Those gathered here might know.

Their joy at seeing Hanna could not be misinterpreted: they trusted and liked her.

Liath dismounted and approached with more caution as Sister Rosvita came forward to greet her.

The journey had turned the cleric's hair to silver, and she was as lean as a scarecrow but she had a ruddy gleam to her face and vigor in her stride.

"Eagle! Or must I call you otherwise? We are hopelessly behind in our news. How do you fare?"

Liath greeted her in the formal manner, clasping arms in the way of courtiers who do not quite trust each other but hope to by reason of their mutual love for the regnant. "It is a long tale. I have business here with Mother Rothgard. Is she here?"

Rosvita shook her head. "She is gone."

Disappointment did jab. She felt it under her ribs. "Gone where?"

"Dead." Liath heard no grief in Rosvita's voice, only weariness. "So we discover, arriving here ourselves only two days ago. Here is Sister Acella, who stands as mother to those nuns who remain."

It took time to sort things out. First, Liath greeted those few of Bertha's retinue who had survived—the sergeant and a dozen or so men. She felt sick at heart seeing so few of them, and yet they greeted her respectfully and with every evidence that they were relieved to be reunited with the woman who had marched them to their doom. Each member of Rosvita's schola made a pretty introduction; the only one she recalled from before was Brother Fortunatus, gone as lean as he once was chubby. The nuns of St. Valeria watched from afar as Sister Acella led her into the hall and sat her at a table, bringing a pitcher of ale.

"The Lions and the other Eagles will be thirsty, too," said Liath noting how only Rosvita and Acella sat with her. Hanna had not come inside. A pair of nuns watched her with uncomfortably intent interest from the shadows at the far end of the hall, but they did not approach.

"They will be taken care of," said Acella. "Tell me what you have come for."

"I'll do so, gladly, if you'll tell me what became of Mother Rothgard and how she died."

The tale was quickly told. Autumn's tempest had torn part of the roof off the long hall. Mother Rothgard had died after falling from a ladder while repairing the thatch. Floods had uprooted the wall, and wolves, growing bold, had killed four nuns over the course of the winter. Weaker souls would have abandoned the site, but few chose the isolated, difficult life at St. Valeria's in any event and those left had voted to bide in the hall and rebuild rather than flee the onslaught of so many troubles.

"Otherwise we would have to burn the books," said Sister Acella in her dour voice. She seemed a kind of cheerful cynic.

"Burn the books!"

"So it commands us in our charter. Such books as have been collected here must never leave this library or be copied and taken away. Otherwise they might fall into the wrong hands."

"Not even if the regnant commands it?"

Acella had a cordial laugh. Like all of her sister nuns, she was as thin as a reed but with real muscle in those arms, a woman who labored as hard as she prayed. "Especially if the regnant commands it. Our charter comes from the skopos, not the regnant. Many years ago, of course. We were founded in the last year of the reign of the Emperor Taillefer, back when this was wilderness for ten days' walk in every direction, beyond the frontier."

"A strange place to collect such dangerous and rare texts," said Liath, "when any raider might sweep down and carry them off."

"We are well hidden. And better guarded than you might think." She indicated the door, left open to admit a hazy midday light that did not, quite, penetrate to the rafters or under the eaves. "The labor of those Lions would be a great aid to us, if you can spare the time."

"A bargain, perhaps," said Liath, "as I come at the regnant's urging to seek knowledge. These clouds must be lifted so that crops can grow, else many will starve in the months to come."

Acella looked at Sister Rosvita, then back at Liath. She had a feather-light mustache, barely noticeable, the mark of a strong woman who has survived into middle age. "What knowledge is it that you seek? We have heard of you, the Eagle called Liathano. Princess Theophanu was healed here, some years ago. She said that you saved her life. We've heard you were excommunicated at a council in Autun. Has that been lifted?"

"I am here," said Liath, wishing that she did not have to dance this merry round again. "I pray you, if you mean to refuse me, do so at once. I do not have the courtier's gift of persuasion. I seek the secrets of the tempestari in the hope that sorcery can ease the cloud-ridden weather." She laughed, looked at her companions, realizing she had seen no sign of the Kerayit wagon, and sobered quickly. "Where is Sorgatani? She is a weather worker. She learned from the eldest of all, the ancient one."

"This is holy ground," said Sister Acella, smiling easily. "No heathen is allowed to set foot within the walls."

"You said yourself you've been attacked by wolves at least four times over the winter and spring."

Liath stared at them indignantly. "What if there is another Ashioi raiding party? You can't have left her alone out in the forest!"

They did not answer, although her voice rose passionately. Their silence dismayed her.

"Do you know what she is?" Sister Rosvita asked at last. "No one may look on her and live, only except those who are her slaves and her servants."

"Hanna is not her slave! Nor am I!"

"You? What are you saying?"

"That I have 'looked on her and lived.' "

It was the wrong thing to say. Sister Acella said nothing but Rosvita exhaled sharply, and then looked sorry she had done so.

Liath rose. "I pray you, show me, or tell me, where her wagon lies, and I'll go to her myself. As for the rest, let the Lions labor as long as I may consult your library."

"It seems we have no choice," said Acella dryly. "If we deny you?"

"If crops will not grow, folk will starve."

"Waters unleashed may irrigate one field while flooding the rest "

"Are these riddles, Sister Acella, that I am meant to answer?"

"They are cautions. Sorcery lies under ban, for good reasons. I have labored in these 'fields' all my life. We here in St. Valeria know that knowledge can be more dangerous than arms, that magic can do more harm than steel."

"The storm that swept us last autumn was no natural storm, but one raised long ago by sorcery.

How else to combat it except with sorcery of our own?"

"That path is a treacherous one."

"I prefer not to see folk starve when I might have done something to prevent it."

"Even if you will be damned for it?"

"The church may damn me, if they must. I do not believe God will."

Rosvita stood and pressed a hand to the shoulder of Acella to stop her from leaping to her feet.

The anger in Acella's face, however, could not be kept still. Her words were clipped and furious.

"That was ill spoken, Eagle. Do you claim to know God's mind?"

Liath raised a hand, then swept it back down to her side. "Do you?" She was too angry to speak further.

"I pray you, Sister Acella," said Rosvita placatingly. "Let us see the diploma this Eagle has brought from King Henry. She carries the regnant's seal and the regnant's authority."

"Henry is dead," said Liath. "Did you not know?"

"Dead?"

The cleric staggered. She paled. She swayed. Brother Fortunatus, who had stood all this time by the door watching them without trying to overhear, ran to help her sit down on the bench.

"Is this true?" The look on her face broke Liath's heart.

"It's true. He died in Aosta."

Rosvita hid her face in her hands.

Fortunatus looked at Liath. He was pale but not as shaken as Rosvita. "In Aosta? If this is true, then

..." Strangely, he glanced toward the shadowed end of the hall where those two watchful nuns stood as straight and alert as soldiers on guard. "Can it be that after all . . . ?"

Rosvita lowered her hands. Through tears, she looked at Liath.

"Who stands as regnant? Who granted you the power to ride to St. Valeria? Who rules these Lions? Who rules Wendar?"

"Sanglant."

She might have said "the Enemy" and seen them less shocked.

Sister Acella got to her feet. "Enough! I cannot allow her in the library, Sister Rosvita. We have no way of knowing if her tale is true. How can a bastard rule in Wendar? Not by right, but by the sword."

"Wait, Honored Mother," said Fortunatus placatingly. "Surely there is an explanation that comes with this news. Lady Bertha and her soldiers were sent into Dalmiaka as an escort to this one, Liathano. To battle against King Henry's enemies."

"To battle the skopos, so you say," hissed Sister Acella. "How can we know this tale is true?

How do we know that Prince Sanglant did not march into Aosta and kill his own father to gain the throne?"

Liath could barely force civil words out, but she knew she had to. She felt like slapping the bitch, with her smug expression and stony words. 'Ask the other Eagles, then, or the Lions."

Except the Lions had not witnessed the events in Aosta. Stupidly, she had not asked for anyone to march with her who had actually been with Sanglant on the field that night last Octumbre. She had no one with her who had witnessed Henry passing the crown of Wendar into the hands of his beloved son. She had not brought anyone with her who would be believed.

"If only Hathui had come!" She turned to leave, sick of them and of this turmoil in her heart.

"Hathui?" Fortunatus reached to catch her sleeve, but withdrew his hand before touching her.

"Hathui lives?" Rosvita asked. Grief hoarsened her voice.

"She is with Sanglant. She serves Sanglant."

"You may say anything you wish," retorted Sister Acella.

"So I may. In this case, it happens to be true."

"I pray you." Fortunatus placed a hand on Acella's elbow. "I pray you, Honored Mother. Sit down. Calm down." He was staring at Liath. They all were.

"God Above," whispered Acella, in the tone a woman might use when a minion of the Enemy has appeared on her doorstep. "She shines."

Liath took a step back, as if struck. She saw how they looked at her with fear and with doubt. It was the same expression she had seen when they spoke of Sorgatani, who was to them a kind of horror that might rise in the night to devour them. She had no words, no argument, to convince them.

She retreated, wanting to flee.

"I pray you, Liathano." The voice came from the shadows, a woman's alto beckoning her with clarity and composure. "If you will, the Holy Mother wishes to speak with you, lady."

"Let her be gone from this house!" cried Acella.

It pleased Liath to flout her, so she crossed the hall into the shadows where that pair of nuns waited. They were older women, wiry strong, determined. Their robes had worn so thin that in patches about the knee and shoulder, they were almost translucent, just waiting to rip. This she saw because she had salamander eyes, able to spy where light failed, and that was no doubt another argument against her.

"I thought Mother Rothgard was dead," she said. "What means this?"

"We serve another one," said the elder, stepping to one side to reveal a pair of beds built in under the eaves.

In the right-hand bed two woman sat, staring at her. With a shock, she recognized Princess Sapientia—but so changed! The princess gazed at her without reaction. The princess' companion, a nondescript woman in nun's robes, watched Liath with brows furrowed and lips turned down in an uneasy frown. The nun held the princess' hand as one holds the hand of a restless child, but Sapientia did not move or speak, only stared and stared as if her stare were her weapon. Or as if she did not know who Liath was.

No wonder Sister Rosvita was surprised to hear that Sanglant had taken the throne, when she had his legitimate sister riding with her.

"My lady?" she said, not sure what to say or how to approach this delicate matter. Ai, God.

Sapientia had vanished as a prisoner of the Pechanek Quman. She had no reason to love her brother and every reason to hate him, and here she sat. Her brooding stare was beginning to frighten Liath, who had long since lost her fear of most threats from knowing how easily she could destroy them. The desire for revenge was beyond her power, and it scared her.

How would Sanglant react when the sister he'd led to her doom reappeared on the scene?

"There, there, lady," said the seated attendant, chafing Sapientia's hand between her own. "Best if you lie down again."

"She doesn't speak," said the elder nun in a practical tone, "and has not for many weeks, not since the cataclysm. Poor creature. We fear she lost her wits."

"Let her sit, if she will," said a new voice, one rich with age and oddly familiar. "How bright she is! I see Bernard in her. The resemblance is remarkable. Dear child! Dear child! Let me hold your hand."

A person lay in the shadows of the second bed, a frail figure propped up on pillows. She was perhaps the oldest person Liath had ever seen, older even than Eldest Uncle. As if drawn by that voice, by an emotion in the words she could not name or resist, she moved a step closer and halted at the rim of the bed, staring into a seamed face that crowded her memory and made her sway, dizzy with bewilderment.

"I know you. I have seen you before."

"Yes, yes, dear child. You are she. Bernard's child."

"I am Bernard's daughter."

"Sit. Take my hand. I will touch you."

One did not say "no" to a woman of such advanced years, a woman, moreover, who was wearing the ring of an abbess.

Liath sat obediently and reached out hesitantly. That wrinkled, pale, withered hand gripped hers with a fierce strength. The eyes that examined her had a startling heavenly blue color, not unlike her own.

"Bring the candle closer," said the old woman. Her attendants knelt on the bed with the illuminating flame.

"The galla!" said Liath, recognizing her. "You are the ones the galla stalked."

"It was your arrow that saved us," said the old woman. "We would have been dead had you not come."

Liath found no words, although she searched. She had held on to that arrow through storm and battle and she knew now that she had done the right thing and saved the right person, only she did not know why.

"The brightness is fading," said the old woman.

She blushed. "It only comes on me when I'm very angry. When any passion takes hold, it fans the flame."

"So I see. 'Liathano.' This is the name Bernard gave you."

"You speak of him as if you know—knew—him."

"Why, dear child," she said with a chuckle, "I am grown absent-minded in my last days. I have waited so long for this that I have supposed you already to know what I have so long dreamt on."

She had tears in her eyes and an expression of ineluctable joy on her face, a radiance that took Liath's breath away. Those fingers stroked hers weakly. The contrast between the light touch of her frail hands and the strength of her voice was striking.

"I am Bernard's mother. Your grandmother. We are met at long last. My prayers are answered."

Surely this was how the ox chosen for Novarian's slaughter felt when the first hammer blow slammed into its head to stun it before its throat was cut. Once chosen, there was no going back.

The old woman had expanded to take up Liath's entire consciousness, the entire cosmos, only her, this delicate crone who claimed so astonishingly to be her grandmother. That the universe should be both vast enough and narrow enough to encompass such a being could not be explained.

No one spoke to trouble her marveling. There came in due time trailing into her consciousness a faint aroma of mildew rising out of the darkest corners of the bed and blending with it the fragrance of olive oil and sweet rose oil. She began to hear sounds: the rustle of the mattress as someone shifted position nearby; whispering voices as far away as daylight; the strain in her thigh because of the way she had twisted her knee under herself; the scrape of a bench being dragged over the plank floor; Thiadbold's hearty laugh, from outside.

His laugh brought her back to earth. The world recovered its normal proportions only it was forever altered by its possession of so simple a thing as a grandmother. Da's mother.

"Impossible," she said.

"Certainly unexpected," said the old woman with amusement. "I am called Mother Obligatia. I am abbess—or was, for we are refugees now. I was abbess of the convent of St. Ekatarina's. We bided there in our rock tower in Aosta for many years in peace. All that is gone. I have much to tell you, dear child, and many questions to ask."

"How can it be?"

"Will you hear the tale?" It was difficult to tell if a sudden diffidence had overtaken her or if she was out of breath.

"I will hear this tale," said Liath, who found she could herself scarcely catch breath to form words.

She leaned closer. "Rest when you must. I pray you, speak softly. Do not strain yourself."

How strange that it should seem that the old woman was comforting her, stroking her hands as she spoke in a voice that did not penetrate farther than the tiny audience drawn in tightly around her: Liath, and the two nuns who held light aloft. They, too, seemed to be weeping, in silence, as if their bodies resonated with whatever emotion thrummed in the soul of their abbess. The ridges and shadowed valleys of the rumpled blankets were the only landscape in this scene. Rain pattered over the roof and faded.

"I am Bernard's mother, but before that, I gave birth to another child." The tapestry of Liath's life and lineage had always concealed more than it revealed, but Obligatia's story wove in many of the gaping holes. So it became clear as Liath asked questions where she must and answered those she could. An hour passed as the story unfolded. She drank a cup of ale, shared with the old woman. The grandmother.

It was still unthinkable to use that word, but she must use it because although it might all be a fabrication or a mistake, she knew in her gut that this piece of the story made all the rest explicable.

Bernard and Anne were half siblings. Obligatia herself had been used as a pawn in the dynastic schemes woven by the Seven Sleepers. It was hard to know what Biscop Tallia and Sister Clothilde had hoped for when they had shoved the fourteen-year-old-girl into the path of the fifty-year-old monk, except that they needed a compliant, kinless female to breed with the last direct legitimate son born to Taillefer. No one would ever know the whole, now that Anne was dead, and even Anne could not have comprehended everything because in many ways she had also been their pawn, their creation.

"Some part of the tale I learned from Sister Rosvita," Obligatia finished. "The rest I know of my own experience."

“Are you tired? If you must rest, I will wait."

The hand squeezed her; strength lived there still! "No, I will go on. I have lived past ray rightful measure of years. I dare wait no longer, dear child. I held on only for this, to see you and to touch you. I can see in your face that my beloved boy Bernard was your father, but how comes it that Anne claimed to be your mother? Is it true?"

"It is not. My mother was a fire daimone enticed to Earth and trapped here by a net of sorcery.

Bernard loved her. Not Anne. The daimone was my mother. This I know because I have walked the spheres ..."

What walking the spheres entailed, and how she had come to do so, she explained to Obligatia, who showed no sign of distaste, distress, or fear at discovering—or at any rate having confirmed—that her granddaughter was not wholly human. She was kind and generous and affectionate and wise and calm and amusing and indeed she possessed every quality that Liath had ever dreamed she might find in a grandmother, the one she had long since resigned herself to never having and never knowing.

"There is one thing, though," Liath added. "Brother Fidelis was the son of Taillefer and Radegundis.

My father was born to you and a lord born into the line of Bodfeld."

"I always called him Maus, to tease him. His name was Mansuetus, fitting enough, for he was quiet and small and gentle." She chuckled. The memory was so old that it no longer seemed to cause her pain.

"And nervous of his aunts and uncle, though he defied them to marry me."

"That quality runs true, then," said Liath with a laugh. "But who were your parents?"

Obligatia smiled sadly. "No one knows. I was a foundling. I was raised at the convent of St.

Thierry. I had a different name, then. Left behind like so much else."

"Where is St. Thierry?"

"In Varre. In the duchy of Arconia."

Liath lifted the old woman's hands and kissed each one and set them back on her blankets. "You lost two husbands and two children—all taken from you. How can it be you have lived so long without falling prey to grief and anger?"

She lifted trembling hands toward Liath's face, and Liath grasped them. "I suppose," she said, her voice as shaky as her arms, fading as exhaustion overwhelmed her, "that in some part of me I was always waiting, I was always hoping."

"For what?" Liath asked her, and bent close to listen.

"For you."

3

MOTHER Obligatia is a powerful ally," said Hanna to Liath much later. They had shared a bowl of porridge—so strongly flavored with leeks that Liath could still taste them after two cups of ale-while Hanna told of her adventures in Aosta and farther east. Now, as Hanna finished her tale, they paused at the wall. Lions labored in what remained of the day's light, lifting stones back into place.

Thiadbold left off working to come speak to them. Like most of the other Lions, he had stripped down to his under-shift and was nevertheless sweating despite the cooling temperature. He had dirt streaked on his face and his hands were caked with earth. He had tied kerchief around his hair to keep it clean; red strands curled around his ears, and he used a wrist to wipe a strand out of his left eye.

"No stonemason would admire it," he said, gesturing toward the hasty work and the laboring men,

"but it will hold for a season or two until better work can be done."

Folquin, down the line, waved at them, then yelped and leaped when Leo dropped a rock a hand's breadth from his foot.

"How long will it take to fill it all in?" Liath asked.

He shrugged. "A day or two, not more with this company." He smiled at Hanna. "You've seen them in action."

"So I have," she said, and Liath saw how she reddened, just a little, and how her smile turned crooked, just a little. "The best soldiers in the regnant's army."

He laughed. "Fair spoken, and even true. These Lions have served faithfully through hard trials and hard losses." He indicated the forest. "We've heard there's a witch and a wagon out in the trees. Need you an escort?"

"It's close by," said Hanna, "and there is some danger involved to your men, which I suppose you will have heard as well."

"That a look from the witch's eyes brings death? We've heard such a rumor."

"To look on her will kill you, yes, and it's no rumor. It's a curse set on her, no sorcery that she sought of her own will."

"A terrible fate for any person, to be always alone," he said, and Liath saw how he looked searchingly at Hanna and how she colored, and spoke to cover her discomposure.

"Send a pair of archers out to that stump, there. If we have any trouble, or see any wolves, they'll hear us shout."

Thiadbold wiped his forehead again as he looked at Liath. "You'll not be having any trouble with wolves, I doubt."

"I hope not." Liath brushed a hand over her bow. She had obtained a quiver and arrows and sword and sheath to replace those lost. The griffin-fletched arrows had a metallic smell. "We're armed Well."

"So you are," he agreed cryptically.

As soon as they crossed the ditch Liath said in a low voice, "He's taken a fancy to you, Hanna.

How well do you know him?"

"Not that well!"

"You're blushing. He's a good man, good looking, levelheaded and has the regnant's trust. Have you given no thought—"

"Leave it, I pray you. I've walked no easy road these past few years." But she relented, smiling with what looked like regret. "I admit all that you say of him is true. At another time, in another place—they're good men, those Lions. They're the company that rescued me from Bulkezu. I suppose when I see them I'm reminded of the monster."

"Bulkezu? He's dead."

"Dead." She halted and looked at Liath. "Sorgatani told me he was dead. How did it happen?"

Liath reached over her own left shoulder and, again, touched the curve of her bow, which was strung, ready for battle. "I killed him."

Hanna covered her eyes and Liath took two steps before realizing that her friend was weeping. She turned back, hugged her, and they stood under the forest cover until Hanna was done.

"There. I promised I wouldn't do that."

"How badly did he hurt you?" whispered Liath.

Hanna pressed a hand to her own forehead. "I saw horrible things, but I was never touched. Ai, God. I will never forget what I saw."

"No, of course you won't. Nor should you."

"I wish I could. Is it bad of me to wish I could?"

Liath took her hand. "No. Come, let's go see Sorgatani."

A path frequented by sheep and littered with their droppings too them across a burbling stream into a meadow rimmed on three sides with an old earth berm, the remains of an ancient habitation. Along the fourth side the nuns, or their servants, had built a fence so they could corral livestock here. The painted wagon sat in the middle of the green, violets blooming around it. Four horses grazed peaceably. Brother Breschius crouched beside a fire, which was spanned by an iron tripod. He was crumbling herbs into an iron pot hung from the tripod's upper supports when he heard their voices.

"Lady!" he cried, striding to her with an expression of delight. “Ai, God! We thought you lost!"

He would have knelt and kissed her hand, but she would not let him. He laughed when he saw she was determined in this, winkled his hand out of hers, unhooked a small bell from his belt, and slipped the tiny hood off its clapper. The overtones of its resonant ring echoed back from the forest.

The door at the back of the wagon opened, and Sorgatani looked out. She saw him, and saw Hanna—and Liath. Her mouth dropped open.

"Liath!"

"It's safe for you to come out," said Hanna. "We're alone."

Overtones still teased at the edge of Liath's hearing. "Does the convent have a bell? Do you hear it?"

"Hear what?" asked Hanna.

Sorgatani paused on the steps.

Breschius surveyed the clearing and the surrounding woods anxiously. "I hope you told them to keep well away. I only ring the bell when it's safe for her to come out."

The breath of that sound floated on the breeze, lighter than the kiss of a butterfly's wings on waiting lips. Liathano.

"That's no bell." Liath got her bow out and an arrow free. "Get in the wagon. I'll run into the trees to draw it away."

"Galla," said Hanna. "I've heard them before."

"It's after me. Get in the wagon. I can kill it easily enough with a griffin feather, but if you are in the way, it will devour you."

Breschius watched them, nervous but uncomprehending. "It's getting dark. An archer is blinded by night."

"Not dark yet for me. Go, Hanna!"

Hanna grabbed Breschius' wrist and tugged him after. "Get inside, Sorgatani!"

Liath ran out of the enclosure, then ducked into the trees, seeking open ground. Better to have met it in the clearing, but she could not control its movements there, where the wagon lay. As she jogged along, leggings rattling against underbrush, she felt its presence veer after her, heard the change of direction in its bell voice as it shifted its course. There was only one.

Twilight turned to gray The last of the day's cloudy light sifted down through the canopy, which here consisted mostly of bare branches and the occasional pine or lonely spruce, densely and darkly green.

She saw a lightening beyond the trees, ahead of her, and dashed into a meadow cut by a trickling creek.

She splashed through the water—it was no more than ankle-deep—and waded through knee-high grass until she reached a central place in the clearing. After turning, she listened; seeking, she examined the forest. The wind shifted, hiding the galla's iron tang and muting its deep voice.

From the trees behind her a warbler droned its chiff-chaff call, answered by the chatter of a magpie.

She squinted, wondering, marveling. There was hope still, if the birds had returned to build their nests.

She heard the sound more as a breath released, too late. She spun An arrow bit into her thigh.

Stumbling backward, she grabbed the haft of the arrow and to her amazement it came free, slipped right out of her flesh all bloody. Blood spilled down her leggings and around the curve of her knee.

Ai, God, it stung, worse than the arrow that had pinned her to the corpse of a horse. She staggered, fell, but caught herself on a hand.

Liathano. The galla's voice rang in her heart like the pulse of her blood; it breathed with her as it closed in.

She fumbled for her bow, dropped in the grass, but the pain spreading from the wound in her thigh boiled so hot that it burned her flesh from the inside out.

This is what it feels like to be eaten alive by fire.

Still kneeling, she fought to keep herself braced up on that hand. If she fell, she died. Grass tickled her face as she swayed. Her entire leg had gone to fire, and the fire sped into her chest until she could not breathe, only burn.

When the shadows slid free of the forest and came running up to her, she understood at last. They were men with the faces of animals. The Ashioi had come. She had been poisoned.

Liathano.

To her right, the towering blackness that marked the galla's mortal body swept out of the trees. The smell of the forge washed over her, blinding her. She fumbled with her right hand—the left was ash—and found the cutting feathers of the griffin-fletched arrow. Pain cut her fingers. She felt her balance going, her body toppling sidelong as the toxin roared into her mind, searing everything before it, even that lingering sour-leek taste from the porridge.

She tried to speak but had no voice.

Cat Mask leaned over her. "What creature have you called down on us?"

Shifting the arrow a finger's length got him to look down at it. "Kill it," she whispered.

"With—griffin—feather."

A fox face loomed over her. "This is the one we seek! You've killed her!"

"Stand back! Let me aim!"

Liathano.

Dead anyway, she thought bitterly as her vision clouded, hazed over by a veil of darkness. The galla will devour me. Ai, God, Sanglant. The baby, the precious blessing. The flames devoured her, and she fell.

/ couldn't even warn Hanna.

A spark flew. In a shower of light, the galla snapped out of existence. And so did she.

4

HAVING once tasted the air roiling around a swarm of galla, Hanna now felt her flesh attuned to their presence. Although Liath had vanished into the forest, Hanna knew, at once, when the creature vanished, as she would know the instant a great weight pressing down on her body was lifted.

"Come!" She opened the door of Sorgatani's wagon and clattered down the steps. She grabbed her staff, which she had left outside, leaning against high wheels. She stared around the clearing, hoping to see Liath reappear.

"What think you?" Breschius blocked the door. The Kerayit shaman stood behind him, rubbing her forehead.

"My face hurts," she said. "So it hurts, before a storm front breaks. Something has happened."

"The galla is gone."

"Best you not go hunting her," said Breschius, "with the night coming down. You'll be stumbling through the dark all lost. There's no telling what you might meet out there, wolves, darts, bandits."

It had grown too dark to see more than shapes and shadows, no detail, and only the starless sky above, nothing to mark direction or the passing of time.

"I curse them for fools," said Hanna fiercely.

"Who?" asked Breschius.

"The nuns, all of them, even Sister Rosvita, for leaving you out here."

"No." A lamp burned behind Sorgatani; the golden net that capped her black hair glittered in its illumination. "They are safe without me. I am safe alone."

Hanna had learned not to argue with Sorgatani, who had become morose since the attack in Avaria.

"Very well. You wait here for Liath. I'll warn the nuns and Lions about the galla. Where one comes, another may follow."

"Is there anything they can do if a galla comes?"

"No. That's what they must know."

She drew her sword. She didn't much like the feel of it in her hand. She had no real confidence that she could kill with it, but like so many other things, it was necessary. She was lucky to have a sword—this one had belonged to one of Lady Bertha's soldiers, now deceased.

A warbler trilled from the woodland, and she frowned. "I'll come back at dawn. Stay inside."

"I don't like this," said Breschius suddenly. "Best if you stay, Hanna. You'll be safer if you bide by us."

She ran as much to escape his pleading as to return to the convent. Something was wrong. She knew it, but she could not explain it. Liath should have returned—unless the galla had caught her.

Devoured her.

She must not think like that.

Twilight ate at her vision, but she had walked this path a dozen times in the last few days. A breath—a pale arrow—whistled past her.

"Oh, God." She ducked down, running with short, rapid steps, heart racing, utterly alert. She plunged out of the trees into the open ground surrounding the convent.

“Attack! Attack!" she cried, and heard her own voice choke on fear, and tried again. "To arms! To arms! Aronvald! Thiadbold!"

A shaft sprouted out of the ground a body's length from her. She zigged and zagged, stumbled once, kept going although she had scraped her hand raw. Blood trickled off her palm. A torch bloomed at the wall, then a second and third and fourth, so much light she could see their figures scrambling to take up defensive positions where the wall protected them. The work they had done this afternoon would not be enough.

"Get cover! Get cover!" The light exposed them. She sprinted, making for the ditch. Arrows thunked into the dirt.

A horn lifted to sound the alert. Alarm! Alarm! it seemed to cry.

Awake! Stand ready!

“Archers! Hold your fire!" That was Thiadbold, taking command of his men from the shelter of the wall. Voice carrying from the far side of the compound, Sergeant Aronvald called for his three remaining archers: "Stand where you're covered! The rest of you, get down! Keep your heads down, dammit!"

She ran under the gate, dropped the sword, and fell panting to her knees as Ingo, Folquin, Leo, and Stephen ran to her. She'd had no trouble breathing while she'd been running but now couldn't get any air in.

"Hanna!"

"Got . . . to . . . warn . . . Arrows are poison. Dead ... if you're hit, you'll be dead. Dead."

She searched their expressions for some sign that they understood how serious the situation was.

On the ride here from the village, she had told the story of the attack at Augensburg, but who could believe that a man might sustain the merest scratch on his arm and yet die in convulsions?

Thiadbold knelt beside her. "Here, now, Hanna."

She grasped his arm so hard that he gasped. "You must take cover. If . . . any arrow cuts the skin .

. . they have poisoned arrows. It will kill at once. Even a scratch. Believe me!"

"I believe you!" he said with a glance over his shoulder toward the gate, being shouldered closed by a pair of brawny Lions. Barely visible as the night swept over them, Lions clustered in shield walls where the wall gapped. The wall had minimal defensive capability; no inner wall walk offered a vantage for sentries and archers. The nuns clearly had never used swords and bows and spears to defend themselves.

"Still," he added, "they'll be cautious about attacking against walls when it's dark."

"They'll shoot arrows." She coughed, and he helped her stand. Her sides heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. "They need only scratch ..."

A trio of arrows spat down out of the night, sticking in the dirt.

"Take cover!" shouted Thiadbold as men scattered, startled and dismayed. He looked at Hanna, frowning. Because he had his helm on, she could only see his eyes and the lower part of his face, but he looked as steady as ever. "They can't afford to waste arrows uselessly. If that's but a raiding party, they'll hoard their arrows and their poison."

"Maybe so, but we are no more than sixty or seventy people all told. If there are only ten raiders and each one has ten arrows, even that could kill every one of us."

"You fear them." He had his hand on her arm in the manner of a man comforting a loved one.

"I fear their poison. I saw my companions fall. Ai, God."

He nodded. "Have you a bow?"

"I do, but I'm only a middling shot. Sergeant Aronvald will have more weapons, for he kept with us the weapons of the soldiers we lost. He has only three good archers left but another half dozen strong bows. We've been making arrows as we go."

He released her and called to Ingo. "Sergeant, you're in charge while I go to the other side. Keep their heads down and their bodies under cover. Do not shoot unless you have a target. Let no man be exposed by the light of torches."

"Shall we douse the torches, Captain?"

He worried at his lower lip. "If only we had lit a ring of torches out beyond the wall we might see them coming, if they choose to storm our position." He shook his head impatiently. "But we have not.

Leave the torches be for now. Let no man stand where the light will give him away. Come, Hanna. Tell me the story again." He began walking and she sheathed her sword and jogged up alongside him, still puffing.

"Aronvald!" he called, and was answered from the shadows by the weaving shed, where a strong section of wall separated the shed and the orchard from the darkness of the forest.

"A good place to creep up close," he muttered.

She stumbled on a rock, an old building stone half buried in earth and grown over with moss—what in God's names was that doing here? Once a structure had stood here, but in the darkness she couldn't guess what it might have been. Wincing, she got to her feet and dusted off her gloved hands. Seeing her unhurt, Thiadbold hurried to consult with Lady Bertha's sergeant. The two men stood close together under the eaves of the weaving shed. Hanna looked around, getting her bearings. Her eyes had adjusted—as much as they ever would—to the dark; she hadn't seen this portion of the compound closely during daylight.

Sergeant Aronvald had lit no torches. His men waited in the shadows, four of them up on ladders to get aim over the wall. They were all in mail and helmets, some inherited from the dead. The half dozen Lions waiting below beside the narrow orchard gate wore brigandines and decent helmets. All had boiled leather greaves, gloves protected across the back of the hand with chain mail, and good boots—a soldier's stout friend on the march. This she had noted when she'd first met them at the village; after so long on the road she had learned to assess quickly what manner of armor her friends, and her foes, kept on them.

A moaning cry rose out of the forest, more wail than sob, an awful racket that made her cringe and then hate herself for her fear.

"What was that?" whispered one of the men as the sound died. Wind rattled branches. The orchard swayed as if each tree were trying to come unstuck, to move its roots, to flee that noise, which rose a second time, hung in the air, and faded.

"I don't like this," said another Lion.

She encountered no more obstacles as she came up beside Thiadbold and Aronvald, who were talking with the intensity of men who know a decision must be made swiftly and decisively.

"... fire," Thiadbold was saying. "So we can see them. We might see if we can shoot flaming arrows into the trees."

"It's not likely to work," replied Aronvald, " as it is so damp, but I tell you, Captain, it's better than no idea at all, and no idea is what I'm having, for we lost half our company and our good lady to these creatures."

"If that's what's out there. It might be bandits. We came across some the night before we reached Freeburg, but Liath chased them off. With fire, that is. Which is how I came to think of it."

"There's a trick to getting the flame to hold as the arrow flies."

"I'll put my men to work on it. Mayhap the good nuns have some pitch—here! Hanna!"

"I'll go and ask them at once, and take the message to Ingo, of what to expect," she said.

"Folquin and Leo can be in charge of fixing the arrows. They've done something like in the past, and are clever. Go."

This time she knew enough to skirt the stone that had tripped her before, and as she swung wide around it a golden light flared above her, hissing as it spit sparks. Had one of Aronvald's archers gotten fire fixed so quickly?

The bright missile pierced the thatched roof of the main hall and at once streamers of flame blazed down the slanted roof. A second arrow skittered along the incline and tumbled to the ground. Two more lit the sky, arcing in over the wall, but they missed the hall and skipped over the tiles of the small chapel, the only building not roofed in thatch.

" 'Ware! 'Ware!" shouted Aronvald. "Laurant! Tomas! Get to the horses! Go!"

She turned just as an arrow buried its burning head in the thatch that roofed the weaving shed. The roof of the hall smoldered but did not catch, but when a second arrow slammed into the weaving shed's roof, flames caught and leaped and danced. The light threw twisting shadows all around, and cast yellow into men's complexions as they backed away. Their enemy had settled on the same plan of attack: burn them out.

"Water! Water!" cried Thiadbold.

Horses neighed from the corral where they had been confined. If they panicked—

Sister Rosvita and Sister Acella appeared on the porch of the hall. Smoke leaked out of the door, wrapping them in a writhing gray aura that dissipated an instant later in the wind.

Must go, she thought, knowing herself vulnerable out in the open, but she could not make her feet move as a fire broke out in the thatch of a storage hut. A clamor began out by the main gate, men shouting an alert, men running. A man screamed.

"Hit! Hit!"

"Pull him back!" That was Ingo calling out commands. Ai, God. "Where's that cart? Faster, boys!

Get it in place! Keep your heads down!"

"It burns! Ai! Ai!"

"Hold him down! Get him to the hall!"

"Hanna!" The cry came from Thiadbold.

She turned toward him, and saw a streak, a shadow.

"Thiadbold!"

Too late. The arrow cut through his glove and stuck, bobbing as he cursed and yanked it free.

Aronvald, behind him, sprang forward, shoved the captain to the ground so hard that Thiadbold collapsed straight down on his back, arms flung out. The sergeant swung with all his strength and with precise aim. He severed Thiadbold's left arm midway along the forearm, cut it clean off.

Thiadbold seemed in shock, perhaps from hitting his head on the ground, as the sergeant dropped his own sword and fell to his knees, unbuckling his belt. There was blood, but Hanna was too far to see it gush from the wound, only trails of it rushing past Aronvald's kneeling figure. The flow slowed to a trickle.

Aronvald twisted. "Hanna!"

An arrow thudded into the ground a body's length from her. Another shivered in the earth behind the sergeant, who grabbed his sword and rose.

“Ai, God!" said a calm voice from the wall. "Sergeant, I'm hit. In the shoulder."

"Come down," said the sergeant in a voice just as calm. Dead men walk because they have no need to run, already knowing their fate. Thiadbold stared heavenward, his left hand lying at an impossible angle to his body.

Hanna got a foot to move at last, followed by the other. As in a dream, she saw an arrow circling spinning streaking out of the darkness from over the wall, lit by the hellish yellow of the flames as it found its target: it scraped hard across Thiadbold's remaining arm just above the elbow.

Aronvald, mute, raised his sword a second time.

"I would rather die than lose the other one, too," said the captain, his voice as even as if he were discussing the weather. "Get to cover, I pray you. Hanna, if you'll help me up."

He had, after all, been watching her this whole time; in this dim writhing light it had been impossible to tell. The roof of the weaving shed roared as the flames rushed skyward. The harsh smoke burned in her nostrils as—at last—she found her legs and dashed forward. Her eyes stung from the smoke pouring off the roof and along the beams and posts of the building. She grabbed Thiadbold under her arms and heaved him up as Aronvald ran to the wall and got there in time to catch a man collapsing down a ladder in convulsions.

That eerie cry wailed out of the forest as Hanna lugged Thiadbold along. His remaining hand clutched her shoulder. He could move his feet; he was still in shock. Blood pumped lazily from the stump of his arm. She got him up onto the porch. There was a pallet inside, one of several. She laid him down, and he grunted—with pain, perhaps, or with fear, or simply with relief. She didn't know and couldn't tell.

Sister Acella knelt beside him. "Sister! A length of stout cord, quickly! This belt hasn't stemmed the flow of blood. Get the coals hotter. I want a lotion of betony—"

"We've none left, Sister."

"Then dead nettle. Bay, if we have it. Best yet, feverwort. I know there is a small stock remaining."

She did not look up as she spoke. The younger nun hurried to do her bidding.

Smoke streamed down from the roof. Hanna coughed. She was weeping from the stink of it.

"Go, Hanna," said Sister Rosvita, coming up beside her. "If there's aught else you can do."

Out into the terrible rain of arrows.

Hanna shuddered, and yet how was she safer here if more burning arrows lit the thatch of this hall?

She hadn't delivered her message to Ingo about flaming arrows and Thiadbold's plan. From outside, she heard another bout of screaming, echoed by a second drawn-out wail, that hideous cry emanating from the forest. Under the eaves, clerics huddled in silence, their faces pale as they stared at her. She hated them for hiding here, but only for an instant. There was nothing they could do. They didn't wield weapons; they wielded pens and prayers, and, by the murmuring, she guessed they were praying as fiercely as they could.

Thiadbold had his eyes closed. Perhaps he had passed out. Convulsions would begin in moments, and in truth she just could not bear to see him die although she hated herself for her cowardice.

"Let me watch him." Rosvita crouched beside Thiadbold as Sister Acella got the cord she wanted and set to tying a better tourniquet.

Hanna retreated like the coward she was. She went onto the porch to see fire consuming the weaving shed and flames spurting along one corner of a hut, not quite catching, not quite dying. A ladder had been thrown up against the eaves at the far end of the hall and there stood Ruoda handing a bucket of water to Fortunatus, to throw atop the smoldering roof. They were just as exposed as she was, except they had nothing with which to defend themselves.

Ashamed, she ran for the front gate. No arrows struck around her. She came to the shelter of the wall, those stones shaped and settled one atop the other higher than a tall man could reach. The wall had a slight inward incline, being broader at the base than at its top.

"Hanna!" Ingo gestured to three bodies lying on the ground. 'As you said. Only a scratch and they died."

His whisper sounded to her like a shout. It had gone so silent around them that she did not even hear wind rattling in the branches, only the hiss and crackle of the fire. The heat of the blazing weaving shed pressed against them. Suddenly, thunder cracked the silence. Rain pattered, turning between one breath and the next into a downpour that took them so by surprise that no one moved, only got drenched until the deluge ceased as abruptly as it had started.

They waited, braced for the worst, but no attack resumed. It was as if the world had died beyond the walls' barrier, as if every living thing had died and maybe even the forest and the land vanished into the pit so they were surrounded only by an infinite black yawning nothingness.

"Hanna?"

"Eh! What?"

"You were whimpering, Hanna." That was Folquin's familiar, pleasant voice. She recognized it now.

"My head hurts."

He grunted his assent. He was crouched behind her, with Leo and Stephen close behind him.

"Think they're still waiting out there, Ingo?" Folquin asked.

"I'm not betting otherwise. Are you?"

"Well, I'd not volunteer to be the first to walk out past those torches, if that's what you're asking.

But Leo will gladly take that stroll, will you not, Leo?"

“After I piss on your grave," said Leo amiably.

"Who's dead?" asked Hanna.

"No one you knew," said Ingo. "But anyway, there is one we called Corvus for his black hair."

He pointed to the closest body. It was too dark to see the corpse's face; he was only the anonymous dead, unknown and now unknowable except as a name and a few anecdotes. "There's poor Ermo who had a girl he wished to marry back home. There, his cousin Arno, who was not quick in his wits but could split a cord of wood faster than any man I've seen."

The old, sick choking swelled in her throat, and she knew she was about to weep. She rose, instead. "I'd best see to the captain."

"Hurt?" asked Ingo, voice dropping into a register of dread.

"Is the captain dead?" whispered Folquin, laying a hand on her shoulder more for his own comfort than hers, she guessed.

"Let me go see," she said, "though I fear it."

Leo cursed under his breath. Stephen caught in his breath in a sucking sound, between clenched teeth. Folquin released her. Ingo rose with her.

"Let me know," he said quietly. "I'm next to be captain, as I'm most senior of those left. Better if he lives, to my way of thinking."

“And for the rest of us, not wanting to dance to Ingo's tune," said Folquin, trying a joke, but it fell flat.

She loped back to the hall, pausing at the steps that led to the raised porch. Beyond the wall she heard the wind sough through the trees, picking up again. The flavor of the night with its taste of dying smoke and scent of lush damp green growing things had shifted imperceptibly to something familiar and seemingly safe, almost like an ordinary night.

From inside, a man screamed in raw agony. She cringed away, then caught herself before she bolted. She stood there, gasping, as the cry cut off—as sharp as a sword's cut. Voices murmured. She smelled a horrible stench. Caught there, she wept freely until Sergeant Aronvald emerged from the hall, found her, and clapped her roughly on the shoulder.

"There, now, Eagle! Stop that! You're yet living. I lost another man."

Four in all.

"Is the captain—?"

He shrugged. "That nun is not one I'd want to cross. Whew! She burned the stump to stop the bleeding." He swayed a little. "Thought I would faint, but she never wavered." Abruptly, he stumbled sideways and vomited and, in between heaves, waved a hand at Hanna as if he wanted her to go.

Cautiously, she went inside to discover a dead man, a living one who had been wounded in the leg but not yet convulsed into death, and an unconscious Thiadbold with Acella kneeling beside him. Acello held the stump, which was all raw and singed and stinking, but was lecturing to a pair of younger nuns, one of whom looked interested and the other of whom looked like she was ready to follow Aronvald's example. All of Rosvita's young clerics except Gerwita had fled into the shadows. Hilaria sat at Thiadbold's head, holding his shoulders in case he moved. She had, evidently, helped Aronvald hold him down.

"It is the minions of the Enemy who kill," Sister Acella was explaining to her charges. "They can't be seen by mortal eyes. They inflame the humors that balance the body. Fire chases them out and will staunch the flow of blood, which would also kill him. We'll need salves to further staunch the bleeding, to ease the burn, and to lessen the inflammation. If we can hold the Enemy at bay, the captain may yet survive. I'll need dead nettle. Sister Hilaria, will you help me?"

All at once, the four nuns rose and walked away to the other end of the hall, where a single lamp burned. Above, noise thumped along the roof beam; someone had gotten up on the roof and was probing for hot spots. There was a leak down where Mother Obligatia lay. Hanna saw someone moving there, pacing back and forth. After a moment she recognized Sapientia's posture and form.

"Sister Acella knows a great deal about healing," said Gerwita in a small voice. "Do you think, when it is safe, that I might come study with her, Sister Rosvita?"

Rosvita smiled at the young woman, patting her hand gently. "Surely you may, child, when it is safe."

Hanna knelt beside Thiadbold and took his hand in hers. He still lived. His hand was warm. His fingers twitched, and she looked up to see his eyes open and fixed on her.

“Attack?" he said.

"Quiet for now," she answered.

Rosvita got up and, holding Gerwita's hand, moved away.

"You'd best sleep . . . while have chance."

She smiled at him. "I can't sleep now. You're the one must sleep."

He made a kind of grin although it was more a grimace. "Can't. Hurts too much. God!" His eyes hooded as he gathered strength, then opened again, so fixed on her that at once she knew what was coming and what Rosvita had seen that had caused her to slip away. Dying men said things they might otherwise keep secret.

"Have you given any thought . . . to what you will do . . . when you leave the Eagles?" He had a hard time talking, but he was determined. "Thought ... of marriage?"

She pitied him and hated herself, and pitied herself and hated him, all in the space of a breath.

She could not lie, yet dared not sadden him, not if he had a chance of living. Mostly, she expected he would die, yet even so she could not lie to him in his last moments, and anyway, what if Sister Acella had certain magical healing arts and he lived and she was faced with a promise she could not honor?

Best to speak what was true, even if it was only part of the truth.

"I am already promised. If I were not, I would be thinking about you a great deal, Thiadbold.

You're a good man."

He smiled, although he was in so much pain that his jaw was clenched and his neck as tight as rope pulled to the breaking point.

She bent and kissed him on the lips. To her surprise, she found it true as she tasted the sweat and sweetness of his mouth; she did find him attractive. On another day, in another place, she might have chosen him.

He slipped away into sleep, of a kind. She waited for a long while, and after a longer while she wondered if he had died from the poison.

Sister Acella eased down beside her. "If he lives out the week it is likely he'll survive the wound.

As for the others—six were struck, and four died at once. Some poison, it is agreed."

"Deadly," murmured Hanna, who was still holding onto Thiadbold's grimy hand. "Yet why did he and that other one not die?"

"Surely the arrows that struck them were not poisoned."

"Then did he lose that hand for nothing?"

“Ah." The nun had a way of smiling that suggested an old and deep conspiracy. "By cutting the first wound away from the rest of the body, Sergeant Aronvald saved his life—if that arrow was poisoned.

So, you see, we will never know. Are they gone?"

Hanna startled, lost in contemplating Thiadbold's curly beard, neatly trimmed and rather handsome and noble looking, now that she thought on it. "Are who gone?"

"Those who attacked us with poisoned arrows," replied the nun dryly.

She laid her hand on his chest, to feel his breathing, then rose. "Best to see, although I've heard no alarms." Ill at ease, she left.

Outside, the night remained silent but for the wind and the occasional restless whicker from one of the horses, under the control of half a dozen men. Those horses were precious, having survived a terrible journey. She saw Wicked standing among them, recognizing the mare's sleek contours.

Ingo stood at the gate with Folquin, Leo, and Stephen on watch to either side. Half the men were down, trying to sleep right up against the shelter of the wall. The weaving shed still smoked, but all the fires had gone out. It had stopped raining but still smelled of rain. The three dead men were gone.

"The captain still lives," she said to Ingo. "The nun says if he survives the week then he'll likely survive."

He sighed.

She said, "Let me stand a turn on watch, I pray you. I can't sleep. Better I look, in case there is something to be seen of the Kerayit shaman. Or had you heard that tale?"

He had. "Down," he said sharply to the others. "Hanna will stand sentry for a while."

The wall had a ledge built into it two thirds of the way up, alongside the gate, where a watcher could sit almost at her ease and keep an eye on the valley and on the cleft where the ravine gave way to open ground. From here also she could see the forested eastern stretch of the valley to which Sorgatani had been exiled. Hanna settled herself on slickly wet stone and surveyed the dark vista.

Of the four torches burning earlier three had gone out. The fourth burned fitfully atop a post. She saw the curve of a helmet at the edge of its aura, but after looking again that way, and a third time, realized that no man inhabited that helm. It had been propped there to draw arrow shot.

Was it a lie to tell half a truth? Was it right to spare a dying man another sorrow? Or had she only spoken that way to Thiadbold to spare herself the awkwardness?

I am already promised— to the Eagles.

Yet after all, alone on this wall, she knew she had not lied. What she had said, discounting the Eagles, was true enough, only she had not known it or had not admitted it to herself. Tears dried on her cheeks and still a few more slid from her eyes, a ceaseless trickling waterfall fed by sorrow and loss. Was this what it meant to have a broken heart? After all, her heart had promised itself what it would never have. Thiadbold would be a good man for a husband, but it would never be fair to him.

Yet why not? She could come to love him well enough. Love wasn't everything. In a marriage, it counted less than so many other qualities: respect, liking, trustworthiness, hard work, steadfastness, honor, alliance between families. Or she could stay in the Eagles, like Hathui, always and forever, because she loved being an Eagle even after all this, even after everything. Here she felt at home, standing watch in the middle of the wilderness with enemies all around and a few stout friends at her back, all in service to the regnant. Here she felt a measure of peace, perched on the wall with the damp air and the spattering of rain and the night wind breathing on her. Not knowing what the next day would bring and aching with the misery of wondering what has happened to the ones she loves.

Her family, mother and father, brothers, selfish sister.

Sorgatani. Liath.

Ivar.

With a groan, the weaving shed collapsed. Ash and smoke cast a pale cloud into the air, visible against the darker night. She followed its thread up, and up, and caught her breath as she craned back to stare at the heavens.

For the first time in months, stars shone where that brief storm had torn the clouds into rags. So it remained all night, just a few stars shifting as they passed across the zenith. At dawn, the red rim of the sun rose over the trees so bright and glaring that everyone came running outside to stare and rejoice despite their losses, and laughed and cried as the haze bled back over the heavens, covering the rift.

She saw no sign of anyone out in the trees.

"I must go look," she said to Ingo, who had remained below her, watchful but silent, all that time.

"I think it's a bad idea."

"I can't abandon Sorgatani."

"If all that's said is true, then she's in no danger. And can protect the frater who bides with her, as well. Say." He slanted a look at her, speculating. "A few have said he's her lover."

"He is not. For many years he served Prince Bayan, who was later Princess Sapientia's husband."

"Here, now." He reached up to help her clamber down, and Stephen climbed up past her to take her place, but Ingo kept his big hand on her upper arm and bent close, drawing her away to speak privately with her. He smelled of smoke—no doubt they all did—but he had a slight minty smell to him, as though he'd been chewing leaves.

"What?" she asked him, taken aback by his size and strength.

"Is it true? None of us have seen, but all speak of it. That Princess Sapientia lives?"

"She does."

"You've traveled with her all this time? Tell me the tale, Hanna, I pray you. We must know."

She hesitated, and he frowned.

"Sanglant is a strong ruler," he said, more quietly still, so close that he could have kissed her, but his interest in her had always been that of an older brother. "When he came to Osterburg, we were heartened for the first time since King Henry departed for Aosta. I pray you, Hanna, what does the princess intend? Will she challenge him?"

"I don't know."

He sighed, shoulders sagging, glancing away and making a face.

"She is ill, Ingo. Listen closely. In the days I have traveled with her—months now—I have not heard her speak. She suffers some disease of the mind. She's little better than a simpleton, although I have no right to say such a thing of a royal princess."

"Best to say it if it is true! Sanglant is regnant, and the army loves him, and we'll follow him, but there are those who mutter he is not the rightful heir. What will those noble folk do when Sapientia returns?"

"How can we know?"

"Who will you serve, Hanna, if you must choose?"

"Are you saying there may be civil war between them? The princess cannot feed herself, much less lead an army."

"An army can be led in her name."

"Who would do so? Her sister?"

"Nay, not Princess Theophanu, unless she plays a deeper game than we ever glimpsed. We bided in Osterburg for some two years or more, building walls and chasing down bandits. She's a faithful steward. King Sanglant named her duke of Saony, and she accepted."

"Then who?"

He shrugged. "Only wondering, that's all."

"Best I go and find Liath, if you wish to keep Prince Sanglant happy."

He considered this, still frowning.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"It would be easier for him were he to marry a proper queen, which he will not. Still, the captain knows her of old and speaks no ill of her, although some say she is a sorcerer and has used ill-starred magic to bind the regnant to her."

She shook off his hand. "I know her of old, too. I'll hear no ill words spoken of her. She is not what you say she is. Who has whispered these things? Who?"

He held up both hands as a shield against her anger. "Here, now. I'm only repeating whispers.

She's good to look on, as any man will tell you."

Hanna snorted. "There is more to her than whether men think her attractive!"

"Thiadbold swears she can hold her own in a fight. That she saved the life of a Lion, in his old cohort, a few year back. We saw it ourselves, just a few days back." He would not look at her.

Somehow, the words embarrassed him. "She called flame right out from the treetops. It's said she can burn a man alive, if she wishes."

Hanna said nothing.

"Doesn't that scare you?" He still would not look at her, and the sight of this big, strong man with a queasy look made her want for nothing more than to get away from him.

"I am not afraid of Liath," she retorted. "Nor should you be."

"Burned alive," he repeated. "What matter my weapons and armor then?"

"Best, in that case, that the regnant keep her tied to his bed," she said sarcastically, but he nodded in all seriousness.

"Perhaps so. Good strategy on the part of King Sanglant."

In his eyes, evidently, Sanglant could do no wrong. Strange that he never mentioned that Sanglant had used his own sister as a hostage and later abandoned her with his enemies. That Sanglant had kept Bulkezu alive. That Sanglant had marched against his own father.

Yet what choice had the prince had? Henry had been possessed by a daimone. Sanglant had saved his father, or come as close as anyone could. The Lions had told her the tale of the battle under the wings of the storm, which had been told to them by the soldiers who had survived, those who had witnessed, those who had returned from Aosta and the death of their emperor and their hopes for empire.

All this she could now put together, the last story she needed to understand the events of those days when she and the others had been prisoners of the Arethousans.

"Well, then," said Ingo uneasily, "I'll get the lads started on that wall again. How many do you want to come with you?"

"None. If the enemy waits, it's best if only I die."

"Nay," he said irritably, "I can't send you out alone—"

"Hey!" Stephen shouted from the wall and a moment later a second sentry, posted farther down, called out as well. "It's a man—he seems unarmed, coming out of the trees—he's got only one hand ..."

"Let me see." Ingo laced his fingers under her boots to give her a boost up. "That's Brother Breschius. Open the gate."

She met him just beyond the ditch. He grasped her hand as she came up beside him. He had tears in his eyes.

"I feared for you," he said, "when we heard the Lost Ones."

"Sorgatani?"

"Unharmed. As am I, as you see." He looked toward the walled convent. A score of heads had appeared along the wall, watching them, but no one ventured out. "She walked, last night, for we knew they would attack you."

"Did she scatter them? We heard an ungodly wailing."

"I know not what that was. Will you come? Liath did not return. Best we look for her."

“Ai, God," she whispered, sick at heart, with a dull grinding pain in her belly. Well, no doubt the worst would please Ingo, she thought furiously, hating him.

"We'll search more quickly with more scouts," he continued, "but if the Lost Ones bide in the woods, then they'll kill them."

"They did not kill you, walking here."

"I am no threat to them. They may fear Sorgatani, as they should."

She nodded. "I'll come alone, and Sorgatani will search with us." She ran back to the gate and told Ingo what she meant to do, and when he began to protest, she cut him off. "Let no man walk beyond these walls lest he see what will kill him. Believe what I say, and if you will not believe me, then believe Aronvald or Sister Rosvita. Stay close."

The path lay quiet. Nothing disturbed them, although water dripped now and again from branches. She stopped once to drink from a brutally cold stream. She had forgotten how thirsty she was, and she gulped down the water and felt her head ache as if the iciness of the water were trying to freeze it.

Sorgatani waited by her painted wagon, anxious as she scanned the forest. "They are gone," she said to Hanna without turning to see who it was.

“Are you sure?"

She pointed. "Liathano went in that direction. Come."

They made of themselves a line with Sorgatani in the middle and Breschius and Hanna to either flank. Moving into the trees, they found no bodies. If Sorgatani had killed any, then some had survived to carry away the dead. The light trailing through the trees had a brighter edge today, although haze again covered the sky. Was it thinner? Was there hope that the weather would change?

"Here!" called Breschius.

Hanna beat a path to him with her staff, cutting through thick-ets and slogging through a patch of mud that slimed her boots. He stood in a clearing staring down at an object hidden by grass.

Sorgatani stood beside him; she hid her eyes behind her hand, as if she did not want to see but knew she had to look. Hanna came up to them.

Liath's bow could never be mistaken for any other. It lay, strung, in the grass, carelessly dropped. Beside it her quiver rested untouched, still full of arrows. A polished black beetle crawled across the clustered shafts of arrows, then balked as it tested the cruel ledge made by a griffin feather.

"Do you think ..." whispered Breschius, as if the words actually hurt "... that the galla caught her?"

The beetle vanished down the shaft of one of the ordinary arrows, hidden by the stirring of grass as the wind gusted and died. A weight settled on Hanna's chest and she could not shake it loose. But she must observe. She must report. Such was her duty. She released a clenched hand and bent to pick up the bow.

"There would be bones. That's all the galla leave of their victims."

"Where is she gone?" Sorgatani scanned the forest. Only the wind cried in the trees.