Hanna steadied herself. The bow hummed in her grip, as though trying to communicate. Its touch prickled her skin rather like the wasp sting that bound her to Sorgatani. Magic lives here, she thought, setting down the bow. She hoisted the quiver, and strained because of its unexpected weight. Tucked in with the arrows, wrapped in oilcloth, rested another object whose dimensions were familiar to her. She unwrapped it to glimpse the cover, but she already knew what it was. How had The Book of Secrets come back into Liath's possession?

No matter. Seeing it, she despaired.

She looked at her companions. "Liath would never have left these things behind of her own choice.

Never."

"Is she dead?" cried Sorgatani.

"The simplest answer is usually the best one," said Hanna. "Though it makes me sick at heart to think of it. Because it would also explain why the raiders disappeared."

"Ah," said Breschius.

She nodded. "They captured her, and ran with their prize."

"How could they have captured her?" demanded Sorgatani. "She is too powerful for them to bring down."

Breschius knelt, reached, and brushed his hand over the grass where, having some time ago been flattened, it was slowly springing back. "Blood." He sniffed it, but did not taste it, turned his hand up so the two women could see the red stain on his fingers.

Sorgatani tilted her head back and without warning trilled a high, long, keening wail that made Hanna shudder to her bones. Folk might cry so over the grave of one lost.

"She is always vulnerable to arrow shot," said Breschius pointlessly, since they could all see for themselves, "if she is taken unawares."

"Oh, God." Hanna collapsed to her knees. She thought she would faint, but she did not. She held on. "A poisoned arrow would kill her!"

"Stay, now." Breschius steadied her. "Why, then, would they take the body?"

"To prove they killed her," said Sorgatani. "Such is the custom among my people. A trophy. A prize."

How had it come to this, that she had found Liath only to lose her?

"This is not news that I look forward to bringing to Prince Sanglant," Breschius added.

She shook her head and rose. After all, she would go on. It's what she had done before. It's what Eagles must do, even if their hearts were broken. "You don't have to, because I will do so, as is my duty as the King's Eagle."

5

THE king's progress arrived in Quedlinhame late of an afternoon to find an Eagle waiting in the audience hall of the old ducal palace, dozing by a warm hearth. She had been wounded in the left shoulder, and although she wore clean, mended clothing and a linen bandage over the wound, it was clear she'd been lucky to survive an arduous road.

"What news?" he asked her, before tasting the drink offered him, before taking off his armor. His courtiers crowded into the hall, a smoke-stained structure about half the length and breadth of any of the newer palaces built by either of the Arnulfs. It dated from a time when the lords of Quedlinhame had more modest ambitions. "When did you arrive?"

"Four days ago, Your Majesty," she answered, overawed by him. If she wondered what had happened to King Henry, she knew better than to ask him. He had a vague memory that he had seen her years ago, younger, less weathered, but he did not clearly recall her name or her origin. Elsa, maybe, something common. "Ill news, I fear. I barely escaped with my life, as you can see. Kassel is fallen to treachery."

"Kassel!" Liutgard grasped Theophanu's arm to steady herself. "What news?"

"An unexpected attack by Lady Sabella's troops, out of Arconia. They arrived asking for guest rights. Lady Ermengard offered them respite for the night. There was talk that the company had been attacked. They said creatures lurking along the forest road assaulted them with poisoned arrows. Maybe that happened, or maybe it was a lie. At night, they rose up and killed most of the palace guard and took your daughter prisoner. The steward—that is, not her, but her son Landrik—got me out, with a horse, but he was shot down defending me so I could escape. I was wounded." She touched her bandaged shoulder, but it was obvious that the injury pained her far less than did the memory. "I knew some little-used paths, so I evaded them who pursued me. My lady, your daughter was alive last I saw her."

Having spoken, she wept.

"Let her sit down," said Sanglant. "What is your name, Eagle? You've done well."

"Elsa, Your Majesty," she said through tears. "Of Kassel, years past, before I became an Eagle."

Ambrose led her to a bench.

Liutgard let go of Theophanu and gripped Sanglant's elbow so hard he winced. "This I paid for following your father to Aosta on his fool's errand," she said, her voice hoarse and her expression grim.

"One daughter lost, and the other in the hands of a woman who has proclaimed herself my enemy through her actions!"

"Sit down, Liutgard," said Theophanu in her calm voice.

She allowed Theophanu to lead her to a bench, where she sat staring accusingly at Sanglant.

He nodded, acknowledging her anger. "We ride on in the morning, Cousin. I will not fail you."

By the door, Mother Scholastica watched them. She looked stern and annoyed and superior—and not one whit surprised.

He woke at dawn out of a restless sleep filled with the noise of horses being saddled and men making ready to ride. The bed he lay in had seen a hundred years of restless sleepers, no doubt. Boxed in and placed under the eaves at the midpoint of the hall, it had recently been furnished with a new featherbed and feather quilt, which kept him as warm as anything could, although he never really felt warm unless Liath lay beside him.

He sat up and drew one curtain aside to see that someone had already thrown the doors open.

Cold air blasted in as folk rose from their bedrolls and prepared to travel. Many still slept. All those up and moving wore Fesse's sigil.

Hathui walked in from outside. Seeing him awake, she hurried over. She smelled of the stables.

"Your Majesty."

"What news?" he asked her. "Any news of Liath?"

"None, Your Majesty. You can't expect to hear from her for many days."

He shut his eyes. He had abandoned his own daughter, as God witnessed. He had himself made, after all, choices no different than those Liath had made years ago, the same choices he had been so angry at her for making. So be it. At this stage of the journey, there was no going back.

"She will be well," he said hoarsely. "She is more powerful than any of us."

Hathui nodded, although she seemed pale. "Yes, Your Majesty. What is your wish?"

He beckoned to his servants, who came forward bearing his clothing and armor. "We can't wait here. Liath must follow us, as she'll know to do. We ride west, to Kassel."

VII

A CHANGE OF

DIRECTION

1

SHE burned.

As she twisted in the flames, she saw the face of Cat Mask hovering above her. First he was a cat, sleek and bold, and then he was a man, proud and handsome, with that beautiful reddish-bronze complexion she adored so much in Sanglant and the broad cheekbones and broad shoulders of a man who is not a hunting cat but only looks like one sometimes, as he did now. He had changed again.

He did not speak, but she heard him or she heard others speaking as she floated in a bed of fire.

The words came to her as through a muting veil. The hiss of their voices reminded her of the sound of water ebbing along a sandy shore. "The poison should have killed her." "She has sorcery in her blood.

She walked the spheres." "Walked the spheres? She was sacrificed? What can you mean?" "When we lived in exile, some who studied magic walked the spheres. They walked up into the heavens. I don't understand it, but it happened. Most who tried it died, but Feather Cloak survived. That is how she grew so powerful.

"This one did such a thing? I don't believe it. Walking up into the heavens! She was only lucky. Not all of the arrows are poisoned."

Cat Mask's voice was the only one she recognized. "All mine were poisoned! Why would a shallow arrow wound plunge her into this delirium? It is sorcery that spares her from the poison."

"She fell so fast. How could she have had time or opportunity to twist sorcery to save herself?"

"Maybe not sorcery but something deeper saved her. Secha—who was Feather Cloak before—banished this one when she walked in our country. Secha said this one had more than one seeming. More than one aspect."

”Abomination!"

"She said this one was heir to the shana-ret'zeri."

"Let her die!" murmured the other voices. "The blood knives can take her, and her blood will feed the gods."

"We can't give her to the blood knives," said a woman's voice, spiking over the others. "This is the prize he wanted."

Cat Mask's scorn was unmistakable. "You care for what that Pale Hair wants?"

"His knowledge is a weapon. It has already aided us. We sealed an alliance. Go to the stones and wait for him. When he comes, tell him what we have."

Cat Mask snorted in the manner of a proud man who has turned stubborn. "I will not act as his procurer. You do it yourself."

"Better yet, better yet," said a new voice. "Let Feather Cloak decide."

"Yes. Yes. Let Feather Cloak decide." Their voices caught her as on a breaking wave and drove her under.

2

THEY called him "count" and "my lord," and he rode at the head of the procession beside Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad and their noble companions, all of whom were eager to take part in the sport of capturing a guivre. The dirty and dangerous work would be done, of course, by the men-at-arms marching behind them, but this hunt had attracted an unusual crowd, several hundred folk at least. Duke Conrad ordered fourscore eager soldiers to remain with the force garrisoning Autun, and they went with frowns and sighs of displeasure but did not disobey.

For several days the cavalcade rumbled northwest—back the way Alain had come—along the main road. Of riders at the front there ambled two dozen noble folk on fine horses and behind them mounted soldiers. The wagons carrying hooks, nets, grapples, and the cage rattled along afterward, followed at the rear by the twoscore men-at-arms who would hunt on foot and three packs of hunting dogs with their handlers. The dogs barked incessantly, but no one minded, being accustomed to a clamor.

The first night they slept in comfort at an estate belonging to a royal monastery, the second at a lord's outlying manor house. They camped a pair of nights, but on the fifth night they spread their company around a village, and in the morning carried supplies out of the village storehouse although folk wept to see their stores depleted, for Sabella demanded all of the sacks of grain.

"This is our seed corn," said the man who set himself forward as their spokesman. He twisted his hands, fearful as he knelt before Sabella. He could not look her in the eye. "I pray you, lady. This is what we saved aside from last year, and not even all of it, for we've ourselves of necessity nibbled at it. With this weather! It's almost Quadrii, but the frosts still hit us every night." He gestured toward puddles rimed with ice. His hands were red from the cold. "We dare not plant."

"Soon it will be too late to plant!" called a woman from the crowd.

"I pray the weather turns soon." Sabella was already mounted, and impatient to depart. Her stewards would finish their provisioning and follow after the forward party. "I have need of these stores for the sake of the duchy."

The man grimaced anxiously and spoke again, gaze fixed on the ground. "If we've nothing to plant, we'll have no harvest. We'll starve."

"If we lose this war, if Wendish and Salians and bandits and Eika invade our shores and there is none to defend you, then your corpses will be rotting in your fields before you starve! Do not trouble me further!"

"I pray you," said Alain, for all the company remained silent and the villagers knelt in the dust,

"let them keep half of their stores. There is truth in what they say."

She glared at him—she was a woman who did not expect or appreciate being questioned—but he did not cower.

At length he said, more softly, "Their sweat and toil makes you rich."

Her expression tightened. Her courtiers hunched their shoulders, waiting for the blast, but it did not come.

Unexpectedly, she chuckled, not so much because he had amused her but because she was unused to being challenged. "Spoken like a frater. Very well. Let them keep half the stores. The rest we take."

3

LIATH woke into darkness. Her thigh throbbed. When she rolled to shift position and ease the pressure, her stomach spasmed and she retched, although she had nothing to throw up. Not even bile.

She hurt all the way down to the bone. Her lungs felt as ragged as if she had been breathing smoke, and perhaps in some way she had. She was burned clean, made weak and thirsty, but she was still alive—or so it seemed to her, because she could feel the rise and fall of her chest with each inhalation, because she could feel the gritty rock under the palms of her hands, because there was dried blood on her cheek where she had scraped her face. She possessed nothing except her clothes and her life. Her bow, quiver, book, knife, sword— all this was gone.

She rested until her stomach quieted and risked sitting up. For a while after that, she had to swallow convulsively and repeatedly as she struggled to control the nausea. She was so exhausted that the simple act of sitting seemed impossible, but she braced herself on her arms and hung on until she could think.

Even with her salamander eyes she could not penetrate the darkness. She must listen, and seek with her mind's eye, but all she sensed was air and rock.

I am buried alive in a vast cavern.

She had not the strength to grasp the tendrils of fire that slept within the rock, so she lay back down and rested. She probed the rent in her leggings and touched dried blood. Tracing the contours of the blood led her inward to the wound itself: a shallow, ragged hole that hurt to press anywhere near it.

She grunted and withdrew her hand, thinking of those who waited for her: Sanglant. Blessing.

Hanna and Sorgatani. A grandmother!

She slept.

Woke, hearing a noise, a stealthy murmur, a foot sliding along the ground. She sat up. She was still weak, but the nausea had lessened. She heard the sound again, although now it sounded more like someone sweeping, two scrapes, a silence, and a rapid series of scrapes.

Was it better to remain silent and hope to escape notice, or to assume that whatever creature made the noise already knew she was here? She chose prudence, and therefore silence.

Once more she heard the scraping but this time, after the second scrape, it did not resume.

Cautiously, she probed the wound, and while it remained tender and painful, it was already drying out and knitting. She rolled carefully onto hands and knees and found she could crawl without pain overwhelming her. She felt her way forward. The rock floor proved unnaturally level. No abyss gapped. No loose stones impeded her path. She counted each hand fall so she could gauge the distance, and at two hundred and eight the feel of the air changed markedly and in ten more hand paces she reached a wall. It rose sheer out of the floor, almost perpendicular. Its relatively smooth face and the curve where wall joined floor suggested that man-made effort had helped form it. Her thigh ached and her knees hurt and her hands stung, but the darkness made her too nervous to stand and walk. After a rest she felt around for anything to mark her place but could not find even enough loose pebbles to construct a marker. Finally, she eased down her drawers and peed, like a dog. She hadn't much; she desperately needed water, but waiting in the middle of the pit was no way to go about getting it.

She crawled. She was too weak to crawl quickly, so it was possible to taste the air and run her right hand up the rock face as high as she could go to search for an opening. She forced herself to pace a hundred hand falls before resting, and to rest no more than a hundred slow breaths before going on. Her knees became bruises and one of her palms bled, but the wound in her thigh did not reopen, so she kept going.

It was hopeless. She found four shards of rock, which she tied up in her sleeve. One was sharp enough to use as a weapon, if it came to that, and the others could mark her starting point if she ever got back there in such time that her mark was still moist. She found no trace of water and no hint of any kind of opening that might lead her out.

After one thousand three hundred and sixty-nine hand falls, she found a smear of liquid smelling of urine: her own mark. She had come full circle. If there was a tunnel leading out of this cavern it was either high up in the wall or somewhere out on the cavern floor, drowned in darkness and easy to miss no matter if she crossed and crisscrossed the floor a hundred times as she weakened, thirsted, and failed.

She was trapped.

There it was again: two scrapes, a silence, and two scrapes. But she listened for a long time after, and heard nothing more.

4

ROSVITA sat in the hall of the convent of St. Valeria with The Book of Secrets open on a table before her. She had stolen this book years ago, and lost it again soon after, so she had never had leisure to examine it page by page. A monstrous document, absolutely fascinating. The book contained three books. One was written on paper, in the infidel manner, and with the curling script used by the Jinna. It was impossible to decipher. The middle book was written on ancient, yellowed papyrus, the alien letters glossed here and there in Arethousan. "Hide this" read the first words of the gloss, and so Bernard had hidden it. Most of the text was not translated, but what was written in Arethousan allowed her to guess that this scroll preached the most dangerous heresy known to the church, that of the Redemption.

She hadn't the strength to consider it now. She turned to the first portion of the book.

The man called Bernard, Liath's father, had compiled a priceless florilegia. For years he had written down every reference he had found to the arts of the mathematici. She was familiar with the methods of timekeeping according to the rising of stars and constellations, but much of what was recorded here she found difficult and technical: quadrant, angle, equant point, trine, and opposition. There was a catalog of several hundred stars, including the latitude, longitude, and apparent brightness of each one, written in such a tiny hand that it was almost impossible to read. But other selections she could skim as she paused on each page to marvel at its secrets, many of them contradictory.

The whole universe is composed of nine spheres. The celestial sphere is outermost, embracing all the rest . . . In it are fixed the eternally revolving movements of the stars.

Beneath it are the seven underlying spheres, which revolve in an opposite direction.

Below the moon all is mortal and transitory. Above the moon, all is eternal. In the center is the Earth, never moving.

Her hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun are stationary, and that the Earth is borne in a circular orbit about the Sun.

It is easily demonstrated to anyone that the immutable aether is distributed over and penetrates all the wholly changeable substance around the Earth.

The most chance events of great importance clearly display their cause as coming from the heavens.

The stars weave the fate of humankind.

Maybe so, but God had created the stars and every part of the universe, as the blessed Daisan taught, and she recalled the blessed Daisan's words as well:

The sun and the moon and the fixed and wandering stars are subject to law, that they only do what they are ordered to do and nothing else. However, it is given to humankind to lead life according to free will.

"Sister Rosvita!"

The voice startled her out of her book. "I pray you, Sister Acella! I did not see you come in."

Sister Acella had the pouched mouth and narrowed eyes of an angry woman, and she did not hesitate to speak her mind. "What rumor is this I hear? You send the Eagle to call me, yet already I hear the soldiers saying that you mean to abandon the convent and force us to leave!"

"You must."

"We will not go."

With a sigh, Rosvita closed the book. She had lingered over it for too long since Hanna had dropped it in her lap together with the news that Liath was gone, possibly dead, and almost certainly in the hands of the Ashioi.

"Sister Acella, you must go. In the name of the regnant, I command it."

"Henry is dead! So they say. If the bastard Sanglant is king, you have no status in his progress."

"I maintain my position in the regnant's schola, having not heard otherwise."

"You cannot command me!"

"I can, and I will, because I must." She rose, sorry that it had come to this. "It is no longer safe here.

Do you think, Sister Acella, that I wish your treasure-house of books to fall into the hands of the Ashioi?

Into any hands, except that of the church?"

Acella remained silent, but she nodded, to show she would listen. Already, Rosvita saw in her expression the first bitter acceptance of the unfortunate truth.

"If one raid can come, so can another. I ask myself, how can the Ashioi raid in so many places so far apart in place and so close together in time? We ourselves suffered an attack in Avaria, and the one last night. We hear reports from these Lions of raids to the north and west. Everywhere, it seems.

Although it took our party weeks— months!—to journey over the Brinne Pass out of the south."

Acella looked at the book, and Rosvita opened it to display the closely written pages of the star catalog.

"The Ashioi are using sorcery. They are walking the crowns. Some among them can weave the crowns. We cannot take the chance that they do not know of this library. We must protect it at all costs.

You will pack up your books and take provisions and any animals and seed corn and cuttings from your best trees. All else, abandon. If we are fortunate, you may lead your sisters back here one day."

"We must burn the books, as it is written in our charter."

"I cannot allow it." She did not say, but she knew it was understood: I have a cohort of Lions to carry out my will.

"Do not be tempted by sorcery! That one, called Liathano—she cannot understand what we have studied for generations here at St. Valeria. Tempestari can change the weather, call in winds, or a storm, but this passes briefly. They can bring no great change."

"A spell woven thousands of years ago brought a cataclysm to us all. There must be a way to counteract its effects."

"Beware of tampering with what you do not understand, for if this tale is true of a spell woven long ago that brought about this cataclysm, then who knows what meddling will bring! This is why the church condemned these arts. They are too dangerous. No person can control them, not truly. So Mother Rothgard taught."

"I believe you," Rosvita said, "but we must not turn aside onto the path of deliberate ignorance if there is any possibility that we might save ourselves by walking a more treacherous road."

For a long time Sister Acella said nothing, but the subtle play of feeling on her face spoke as in words.

"It must be done," repeated Rosvita, "and the entire library given into the hands of Mother Scholastica at Quedlinhame, if you will not have it given to the custody of the king's schola."

"We dare not trust the king," said Acella, "who, if the rumor we hear is true, beds the very woman whose hands are black with sorcery."

She walked out, passing Hanna, who walked in.

Hanna looked at Acella's tense back, at Rosvita's expression, and whistled softly. "Did she protest?"

"She did. Never mind it, Hanna. What news?"

"Aronvald says that we can leave in the morning. All will be ready. There are a pair of wagons in one of the sheds that can be repaired easily." She paused, and Rosvita listened with her to the telltale sound of hammers pounding.

She still had a hand on the book. "Frater Bernard traveled in the east, and there he found strange things," she murmured.

"I beg your pardon, Sister?"

"Nay, nothing. If you will, Hanna, find Fortunatus and ask him to oversee the packing of the library. Him alone, none other. Let Heriburg and Ruoda aid him."

"You think Sister Acella will try to hide books from you?"

"Impossible to know. There must be a record in the library of every codex and scroll that is here. Ask him to find that, and match each book as it is packed away. Nothing can be left behind or forgotten."

"Yes, Sister." She hesitated.

"Is there something you wished to say, Hanna?"

"It's just—what did you think of Liath's plan, Sister? That she wanted to learn the arts of the weather workers, in order to banish the clouds and cold weather. Do you think the church would allow it?"

"I don't know."

"Do you condemn her for thinking so?"

"For thinking like a mathematici, which she is?"

"I suppose."

"Well, it is difficult to know if the ends justify the means in a case such as this one, after we have seen the terrible cataclysm wrought by sorcery. Had the ancient ones not troubled the orderly working of the universe with their spell, we would not suffer now. You must understand, Hanna, that I am skeptical at this notion that sorcery can save us when it is sorcery that harmed us in the first place."

"You saved us with sorcery, when you wove the crown and we escaped Lord Hugh."

"So I did." That knowledge tangled within her; part of her was exultant, remembering the brilliant arch shot through with heavenly light that she had woven with Mother Obligatia's help, and part of her trembled, knowing she had sinned with her eyes open. Was this how the Enemy had rebelled? Swollen with pride and yet with niggling doubts clawing at the underbelly, where darkness boils? "Having done so, I am still not sure it was right."

"I cannot believe otherwise. I am alive because of it."

Rosvita smiled. "I thank you, Eagle. I am not always sure that my path is a righteous one."

"That is why we trust you, Sister, because you lead us with honesty."

Unexpectedly, the words brought tears to Rosvita's eyes. Hanna saw it, and she leaned forward as if to touch Rosvita's hands but pulled back at the last moment with a wry smile, and hurried off on her errand. Eagles did not comfort noble clerics. It was not their place.

Yet the gesture reminded Rosvita of Hathui, whose dignity was unimpeachable. The Lord and Lady love us all equally in their hearts, Hathui had said. We are equal, before God.

Rosvita stepped outside, onto the porch, and watched the Lions and guardsmen at work, hammering, packing, hauling. There were sealed jars of oil and a basket of last year's apples hauled up from a cellar. There were precious iron and bronze tools, copper-lined buckets, and baskets filled with iron nails and tallow candles. Skeins of spun wool, wool cloth, a churn, a cream pot and paddle, strickles, parchments still stretched on frames, an ox yoke but no ox, and the convent bell with its clapper sheathed. The library was an annex built off the chapel and sharing its tile roof, and here Fortunatus directed half a dozen nuns as they wrapped and stowed books in baskets and in crates being nailed together on the spot by a pair of Lions. Sister Acella emerged from the infirmary, carrying bundles of dried herbs.

"Sister Rosvita, how may we aid you?" asked Sister Hilaria, coming out onto the porch with Diocletia beside her. "If you will sit with the Holy Mother, we will do what we can."

"Diocletia, if you will take an accounting of the bedding and household items in the hall, and pack what is necessary for the journey or too valuable to discard. Hilaria, I pray you, attend Sister Acella."

Hilaria smiled sharply. Nothing escaped her. "I'll see that no stray items are left behind."

It was a relief to return into the hall and seat herself under the eaves beside Mother Obligatia.

Princess Sapientia bided in the bed next to them, singing a nonsense song: tru la tru lee tru lo tru lye

where the river flows, did the crow fly

"Books are a precious treasure," said Mother Obligatia, when Rosvita had poured out her concerns to the old woman.

"Even books as dangerous as the ones hidden here?"

"Even so. In ancient days folk recalled all things in their heads and in this way passed down knowledge from mother to son and father to daughter. What is written in books is more easily lost."

"Do you think so?"

"Think of the library at St. Ekatarina's. I still weep to think of it abandoned, perhaps forever lost."

"We have a copy of your chronicle. My history. The Vita of St. Radegundis."

"So few! What if they were the only books which escaped this cataclysm? All of St. Marcia, lost!"

"There are other copies."

"A few, and those scattered. Eustacia's Commentary on her dream. St. Alisia's Memoria, and the holy writings of the Holy Mother, St. Gregoria. St. Augustina's wise words—although now that I think on it, she was a bit of a prig, running wild in her youth and then scolding others ever after. What of St. Peter the Geometer and his Eternal Geometry?"

"Which I do not fully understand."

The abbess chuckled. "You are not the first to make that admission. What of the Catechetical Orations of St. Macrina? What of Biscop Ariana's Banquet?"

"That's a heretical text. By an Arethousan!"

"So it is, but so entertaining. Have you never read it?"

"I have not!"

“Ah! She had a wicked eye and a wickeder tongue, that one, rather like our dear Brother Fortunatus. I cannot believe it is better that even her heretical writings be thrown out. Best they be remembered, so we remember how to argue against them. They are chronicles in their own way. Like Eusebe's History."

"Like the Chronicle of Vitalia," agreed Rosvita, recalling the books she and her novices had read in Darre, "and the Annals of Autun."

"Just so. Memory is our armor, and our weapon, Rosvita. Otherwise we are vulnerable again and again."

"So we are." Rosvita squeezed Obligatia's cold hands as gently as she would handle a newborn pup. "We must soldier on and do the best we can."

"Where do we go?"

"To the regnant."

"Ah. Then I shall meet my grandson-in-law." She smiled. "I look forward to it. A fine, brawny, handsome man, so they say."

"So he is. More than what he seems."

"Cleverer than he looks?" the old abbess chuckled.

"So it appears from the news we have heard of the battle in Dalmiaka and these new tidings from Wendar, if it is all true."

"tru lo tru lye tru la tru lee

where the river flows, did the deer flee"

"What will happen," Obligatia asked in a low voice, "when we are come with Sapientia?"

"I don't know. She does not seem capable of ruling." "Our chronicles tell us that fitness was no barrier to the kings of Salia and Aosta. There are here and there stories of feebleminded children raised up to the throne, and ruled by those who held their leading strings."

"It is not true of the Wendish, for we Wendish have always demanded that our regnants be worthy of the name." "Is Prince Sanglant that one? Worthy of the name?" "Laws are silent in the presence of arms, so it is said. Sanglant possesses the loyalty of the army. And, if the story is true, Henry's blessing, and the luck of the king, without which no regnant can prosper. The rest of his claim is not as strong.

According to the Lions, there is debate and dissension on the matter of his queen, who was excommunicated and is known to be a sorcerer. That cannot help him."

Mother Obligatia considered these words, and at length touched the book Rosvita held on her lap. "Will we see her again? Do you think her lost?"

"Like the books?" Rosvita had forgotten The Book of Secrets, clutched against her. She was afraid to let it go, as if it would vanish once no part of her body grounded it to the Earth. "She is lost to us. We must leave, quickly, before we are attacked again. We must pray we reach Quedlinhame and the king's progress safely. As for the rest, I cannot know. It is taught that the daimones of the upper air can see into both past and future. But we are mortal, you and I, bound to the present."

"Mere clay," agreed Obligatia, and the thought made her smile as she patted Rosvita on the hands in the same manner she would pat a child's head to comfort it. Her gaze strayed toward the nuns busy at their packing and came to rest on Sister Diocletia, who was peering into a chest and counting something on her fingers: eleven. At the far end of the hall, a young nun hung shutters and locked them into place against the coming departure. It was a sturdy hall, meant to weather storms and years. When all this trouble passed, it would still be standing.

"I would be at peace, having met her at long last," said Mother Obligatia, "but I have a few questions I must still ask her. Therefore, I am selfishly sure that she must still be alive and that she will return to us."

Rosvita nodded sadly. "That is hope enough for me, then. Let us pray you are right."

5

"LI-AT-DANO."

She woke disoriented and still blind. She hadn't meant to doze off, knowing that something moved in the darkness with her, but the lingering effect of the poison had swallowed her.

"Li-at'dano."

The voice was female, caustic, and familiar. It came from out of the darkness but from no particular direction.

"Why am I here?" she asked. It was difficult to speak. She was desperately thirsty.

"Accident, perhaps. The favor of the gods, perhaps. Do you know who I am?"

"I know who you are. Let me go free. Let me return to your son."

"The rock that cages you is more powerful than the sorcery that runs in your veins."

"Where am I?"

"You lie at the Heart-of-the-Mountain-of-the-World's-Beginning. You can burn stone, I suppose, but not quickly. It will tire you. You will not work your way free of this place easily."

"I will be dead of thirst and hunger before then. If that's your aim."

"It might be more effective than the snake's poison, now that I think on it. You will find water and food against the wall."

"Why keep me alive at all?"

"I have a use for you."

"Show yourself."

"I will not."

"I could burn you!"

"If you did, you would still be trapped. You do not know the way out. Only I do."

Liath rose, but she hadn't the strength to keep to her feet. She left one rock shard to mark her old position and moved as quickly as she could, hoping to creep up on her enemy. She had to crawl, despite knees and hands already abused and scraped raw. It hurt to crawl, and the ache in her thigh was worse than before.

Five hundred hand paces from her starting point, she found a cache of leather vessels where there had been none before. The water was cool, and there was enough for several days, if rationed carefully.

She drank first, almost weeping as she savored the touch of liquid in her parched mouth. She felt, then tasted, wedges of salty, dried fish, nibbled to test tough rounds of flatbread, and explored the oblong shape and smooth skin of a dozen sweet fruits. The softest proved easy to peel open with the edge of her rock scraper; its moist sweetness had a flavor she had never tasted before, like ambrosia, surely—the food of the gods in ancient Arethousa. She ate and drank cautiously, not sure if she would feel nauseated again, but the worst effects of the toxin had passed.

Food and drink then, enough for a hand or so of days.

Of Kansi-a-lari, whose voice had mocked her, she heard and felt no sign.

6

IVAR had been left behind with a dozen outriders to guard the horses in case the bandits slipped away from Captain Ulric and the strike force. They waited in a clearing ringed with beech trees. Faint trails of mist spun away through the forest. He gazed downslope, where oak trees encroached and bramble flourished. Beyond, at the base of the long hill, lay a fen populated by low-growing wet birch, stands of alder, and every manner of sedge and meadow grass. The captain knew better than to ride into such ground; the soldiers had gone in at dawn on foot.

Ivar and the others listened. Because of the lay of the ground, they heard the attack as if it were the peal of distant chimes: the ring of weapons clashing; a shout; a dog barking; a silence as the wind turned; and scattered shouts and noises as the wind shifted back. He blew on his hands. Sentries prowled at the edge of his sight. Two dogs snoozed on the damp ground. Above, clouds lingered, but it seemed to him that the mist was white and the heavens whiter still, as though the sun were trying to burn through.

"You'd think it'd be warmer, or that summer would come," muttered one of the grooms, stamping his feet.

"Hey!" shouted a sentry. "It's Erkanwulf!"

Ivar stayed aloof as the others crowded to meet the returning hero, who had blood on his cheek and a frown on his face.

"Well, it's over." He caught Ivar's gaze, and nodded. "Dedi got slashed on the thigh, and Guy got knocked cold, and a couple of lads have scrapes and bruises, but we're all safe. We took them by surprise. We got a dozen prisoners for the biscop. The rest are dead."

"For Lord Geoffrey," objected the man who had complained about summer. He was a Lavas retainer.

"For the biscop," repeated Erkanwulf. "For justice."

The smell of smoke cut the air, wafting up from the fen.

"What about those murdered girls?" asked Ivar.

Erkanwulf made a face. "Yeah, we found them. Dragged off to one side like rubbish. Seems to me they treat their soil better, burying it, like, so it doesn't attract flies. Animals had gotten into them. I didn't stay, but I know the captain meant to bury them there instead of hauling their bones back, which we couldn't do anyway seeing as how what was left was all scattered." He had gotten red as he talked, and he wiped his forehead with the back of a hand, although it wasn't at all warm.

"Bad?" asked Ivar, and Erkanwulf looked right at him and nodded. They had traveled far enough together that they no longer needed long explanations to be understood. "I could have said a prayer over them."

"Captain's orders," said Erkanwulf. "He wanted you to command the rear guard."

"He didn't want me to come along at all, as I recall."

"You're a cleric, Ivar. You're not meant to be soldiering."

But Ivar was restless. Since Biscop Constance had established herself at Lavas Holding, he felt himself betwixt and between. He had few clerical skills to bring to her schola, but likewise he was no soldier to serve her in that guise. In truth, as hard as that journey with Erkanwulf had been, he had liked it best of all the things he had experienced and suffered in the last few years. It made him think of Hanna, riding as an Eagle. On the road, he had felt that he was at least going somewhere, and the rescue of Baldwin had brought him a measure of peace even if Baldwin was no longer what he had been.

So are we all changed, he thought.

He wished Hanna was there, so he could tell her his thoughts as he had used to do, but no doubt she would only laugh at him. If she was even alive to do so. Fear pinched him, and he ducked his head, rubbing his eyes.

"Good land there at Ravnholt Manor," continued Erkanwulf, oblivious to these signs. "Shame to see it gone fallow, like, with no one left to farm it."

"There they come!" called a sentry.

Captain Ulric led the company out of the mist. Among that number walked Gerulf and Dedi, the two Lions Ivar and his friends had rescued at Queen's Grave. They saw Ivar and nodded to acknowledge him. Dedi was limping.

The victors had bound the bandits with rope at the ankles and wrists. The prisoners shuffled with heads down, broken in spirit, wounded, sniveling, and groaning. One man with a bloodied nose staunched the flow with a fist pressed against his blistered lips. A younger lad cradled a bleeding hand in the other arm. Lord Geoffrey walked at the end of the line, but everyone knew that Captain Ulric had plotted the raid and commanded it in all but name.

"They'll be shown more mercy than those girls they murdered," said Erkanwulf.

"How so?" asked Ivar, who was wondering how any folk could fall so low as these. They looked worse than he felt! They were the filthiest people he had ever seen, coated in dirt and worse things, besides their sins.

"They'll receive a trial, and their death'll come quick. Lucky for them." He spat.

"There was a woman, the one that man Heric said goaded them to murder the girls."

Erkanwulf looked away and wiped his mouth. "She was dead. I don't know who killed her."

The lad with the injured hand wept. To Ivar, the day seemed dark; the clouds would never lift.

Ravnholt Manor was avenged, but no one seemed likely to rejoice.

In Lavas Holding, the prisoners were locked into the kennels once reserved for Count Lavastine's famous pack of hounds. Ivar paused to speak to Sergeant Gerulf, who had been assigned to the first shift of guards.

"How is Dedi?"

"He'll do, as long as the wound doesn't get infected, but Biscop Constance knows a bit about healing and anyway that one, Brother Baldwin, can heal him, surely, if it comes to that."

"Maybe so."

"You doubt it?" asked Gerulf, with a hint of a smile. "They say he's a saint, that one."

Ivar sighed, but he and Gerulf had a bond sewn up out of grim circumstances survived together. "It's difficult for me to see Baldwin as—what you say."

"It might explain his handsome face, since some say that's a sign of God's favor." Gerulf chuckled.

"There now, my lord, I'm just joking. Dedi will do well enough. It was a shallow cut."

“Are you satisfied, still, with your service with Captain Ulric?"

"Duke Conrad assigned us to the captain, and I hold no grudge against the duke, since he treated us fairly considering the lady wished us all dead. It must have been for a reason that Dedi and I came to Ulric's troop. My loyalty remains to King Henry, my lord, and I serve Henry by serving his sister, don't you think?"

"If Henry still lives."

"Then Henry's heir. That's not all. There's a widow in Ulric's following I've a mind to marry. That lad Erkanwulf got to talking about taking a small company of men to settle Ravnholt Manor, now that it's abandoned. It's something to think about, especially for a man of my age. I'm content, my lord Ivar. Are you?"

Ivar shrugged, and Gerulf smiled crookedly, as if to say he knew what words Ivar would speak, if he dared—which he did not. Restlessness ate at him, a mortal disease. Somewhere, surely, events of great importance transpired and as usual he was stuck here waiting in the backwaters while the battle moved on and left him behind.

In the hall, Constance was seated beside the blazing hearth with her schola and young Lady Lavrentia in attendance, listening to testimony from a pair of woodsmen.

"That was a few years back, Your Holiness. We got a good look at these refugees, and we knew they was likely to be dead come winter. But the next year we swung back that way on the trail of a boar and they were still living. They said it was the cloak, that they had been blessed by God or some such. It were a little hard to understand them being as they did not speak quite right, coming up from the south as they did."

Baldwin and Sigfrid were writing, and Ermanrich was cutting quills on the opposite side of the table.

Lavrentia was seated awkwardly on a chair beside Constance, with her hands folded in her lap and her twin canes resting against her knees. She uttered no word and made no sign, and Ivar could not tell what she might be feeling except that when, on occasion, Constance smiled at her, the girl smiled back.

On the other side of a hall a trio of wounded soldiers lay on the floor. Hathumod knelt beside one of them, smearing a white salve on the cut that had opened his thigh. That was Dedi, grimacing at the pain, but then he gave a snort of a laugh as Hathumod said something that amused him.

The woodsmen left. A man twisting a soft cap in his hands walked forward hesitantly.

"Do not fear," said Constance gently. 'Are you the one who came all the way up from the southern borders of Lavas County? Lady Hildegard holds the land in that part of the county. I hear it was a long walk—five days!"

He dropped to his knees as if she had shot him. "Six, Your Holiness. I was sent by our village to bring our request to the count." He glanced around the hall apprehensively, looked at Lady Lavrentia, rubbed his cap against his chin, and coughed. "I wasn't sure who to speak to, Your Holiness."

Constance touched the girl on the arm, and she piped up in a clear, soft voice. "Where are you from?"

"We call it Shaden, my lady. Begging your pardon, Your Holiness, but is it true there's a new count?

We heard some folk say so, which is why we folk at Shaden thought to send one of us to speak, but it seems from what I hear at the holding they were talking nonsense."

"Lord Geoffrey still stands as regent for his young daughter, Lavrentia," Constance said, indicating Lavrentia. "Is that who you meant?"

He ducked his head, too flabbergasted to speak. The girl stared at him but said nothing, and finally looked at Constance.

Before her injuries, Constance might simply have overawed him, being a noble woman so grand and mighty that a simple farmer would be too tongue-tied to utter a word in her presence, but what she had suffered had made her less formidable in appearance, although Ivar knew that she had not changed.

"Lord Geoffrey is resting, and I am here with Count Lavrentia, as you see. We will write down your statement, here," she gestured to Sigfrid, "if you will tell us to what purpose your village sent you."

A man might frown so, Ivar thought, making ready for a charge against an armed and powerful enemy. But the man swallowed, braced himself by letting out a sharp exhalation, and began in a firm if slightly rushed tone.

"We lost our deacon last summer to the black rot, and most of our seed corn, as well as a dozen or more good folk in our village. We were hoping the count might see fit to send another deacon our way so that we can live properly and pray when it is fitting and hear the stories of the Holy Verses told out to us.

We were promised a few year back that we'd have the use of this new plough we heard tell of, to break up some bottomland, but we've heard no more of it. It would aid us this year especially with the weather bad as it is. We've had a score settlers come to our valley, driven out of a pair of villages that were torn right down in the great storm last autumn. We can't feed all without this new land put to the plough. And with them, we're asking we be allowed to pay a lower tithe this year, to hold back more of what we grow so as to feed the many more mouths we have and will have next winter. My lady. And if I may be bold, Your Holiness."

"Go on."

Sigfrid's quill scratched as he wrote. Baldwin was staring dreamily at the fire.

"We have a tax we pay to Lady Hildegard, but she died when the roof of her hall fell in the storm."

"Yes, it's been recorded," said Constance. "She left no immediate heirs. I've been told there is a cousin from farther east who will inherit, but there's been some trouble finding her."

"Yes, Your Holiness. So we pray, Your Holiness, for the lady's steward has dealt poorly with us in the past and now is threatening to come with men-at-arms and rob us to pay our back taxes. If the lady doesn't come soon, we are come to ask if another steward might be set over us who will govern more justly."

"You are bold," said the girl.

"Begging your pardon, my lady. We are desperate, Your Holiness. We thought all was lost last year, and then—" He faltered, twisting the cap.

Baldwin smiled in that way that calmed because it dazzled.

"Go on," said Constance kindly.

"There were signs and portents, Your Holiness. A scythe I had borrowed—I lost its iron blade in the pond, and yet it was returned to me although it was hopelessly lost in the water and weeds. My niece, a good girl, was killed when a wall fell in on her, I swear to you in God's name that she stopped breathing, but she lived, and lives still, a sharp-tongued brat but one we all love. These were portents of change. Don't you think?"

"Miracles," said Constance sternly.

He bowed his head.

"Tell us again, and in more detail," she said, "for I have a wish that my clerics will record all these stories. I have heard many tales these days, here in Lavas, and others on the road. Strange tidings."

Lavrentia looked at her hands.

Constance looked at Ivar and nodded, but he was of no use to her. He could barely scratch out his letters in the crudest fashion imaginable, and unlike some clerics he had no trained memory to recall the Holy Verses in their entirety or recite the genealogy of regnants and nobles back to the tenth generation.

The farmer began telling a confused story about a madman dressed only in dirt and moss. As Baldwin began writing, Ivar went outside where he kicked pebbles across the courtyard and all the way to the gate and farther yet to the fosse and walked aimlessly before coming to the little church where the peculiar and unsettling stone effigy of the last count rested.

He set foot on the porch but saw that another person knelt, praying and weeping, in the dim interior: Lord Geoffrey.

I am not the only troubled soul. And were his troubles so very desperate? Discontent was not the same as desperation. Watching the shadowed figure from the porch of the little church, Ivar sensed that, outside, he waited under the skies of a far finer day than the one that, inside, plagued Geoffrey with rain and tempest. Lord Geoffrey had lost his wife, and his cousin—if he had held much affection for the deceased Count Lavastine, which Ivar had no way of determining. His now-crippled daughter had only a tenuous hold on the county claimed in her name, and his two young sons were being held in Autun in the tender care of Lady Sabella. The local folk muttered against him, and some said openly that Geoffrey had usurped the place of the rightful heir in order to get the lands and title for his daughter and thus—because she was still a child—himself.

No wonder he wept.

Back by the gate, the watch bell rang. A pair of banners fluttered in the distance as a party of riders approached the holding.

"What news?" demanded Geoffrey, emerging from the church.

"I don't know," said Ivar, taken aback by that brusque tone.

"Didn't Biscop Constance send you? Who are those riders?"

"I know no more than you do."

"Then you know that this life is only tears and suffering! Or do you clerics have some psalm for that, to tell us otherwise?"

Ivar couldn't think of any. The psalms all ran together in his mind, praising God, smiting foes, rejoicing at deliverance, and punishing those who did not act as they should, although the blessed Daisan had taught that to act against what is right was, in a way, its own punishment since humankind knew that it were better and easier to do what is good than what is evil.

"The actions of humankind are a mystery," he said at last, "since many do evil things who ought to know better, and some do good when they mean to do ill."

Geoffrey grunted as if irritated and set out for the gate to greet the newcomers. Ivar hastened after him, and came to the hall in time to hear a haughty young man, with the bearing of a youth raised in a noble house, speak to Geoffrey and Constance while a crowd gathered to listen.

"Lady Sabella sends this message to Lord Geoffrey of Lavas, regent for Lavrentia, count of Lavas.

'Tidings have reached me that you are sheltering Biscop Constance, who has fomented rebellion against me. Turn her over into my custody, in Autun, or your sons will be forfeit, executed for your treason.' "

"Treason!" Geoffrey raged. The messenger held his ground, unmoved by the lord's anger. "They are children! The younger hasn't seen four summers." He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead and muttered curses while his daughter sat small and quiet behind him. "It would have been better if they had died with their mother!"

Lavrentia's face crumpled as she fought to restrain tears.

"Despair is a sin, Geoffrey," said Constance, taking hold of his arm and drawing his hands down.

"Am I to rejoice instead?"

She caught his gaze and held it, and after a moment his wild look subsided to something more like shame. Ivar squeezed forward through the ranks to his friends, who were waiting beside the hearth. The messenger glanced their way, attracted by Ivar's movement through the assembly, and dismissed them with a smirk.

"I would not have burdened you with my presence if I had known Sabella would threaten you in this particular way," said Constance.

"She's listening to Salian advisers!" Geoffrey seemed ready to laugh. "Salians are always murdering their children to clear their own path to the throne or to riches."

"So the chronicles suggest," agreed Constance in a mild tone that was meant to warn him, but Geoffrey was not able to listen.

"They might be dead already. Then nothing will be served by giving you up to her as well. Better stick with what we know is true. Or Sabella may be bluffing. She may not have the heart to kill two innocent children."

"Do you think so?" asked Constance.

He swayed, jerking side to side as though tugged this way and that by a sharp pull on a rope. "I don't know what to think! How can it have all gone wrong? I must go! I'll exchange myself for them!

Let her kill me if she wishes! I would welcome death!"

"Lord Geoffrey! For shame!"

He hid his face. His daughter sobbed into her hands, echoing her father. The company of retainers and servants stood in awful silence, and a few crept away like beaten dogs hoping not to be noticed. The messenger watched carefully, absorbing the scene into his memory so that, Ivar suppose, he might report Geoffrey's weakness to Sabella.

"You must stay here in Lavas and guard your daughter and these lands, Geoffrey. Captain Ulric and his company will remain behind. Consider that this may be a feint to draw you out."

"Why? Lavas County is nothing to Sabella, surely. She wants you because you represent Henry's claim to sovereignty in Varre. Because you are the rightful duke of Arconia, after Sabella forfeited the title by her own rebellion. She is the traitor! I am not. I am not! Anyway, if you go to her, she will have no reason to give up my sons. Then she'll have you back, to do with as she please—even to kill—and she'll still hold my sons."

"No child of Arnulf would dare kill her own sibling," said Constance. "We are not Salians!"

"I must go, or I'll be dishonored!"

"You must stay, and guard Lavas together with Captain Ulric. I'll leave you a hostage in your turn—this messenger."

The young man started and took a step back, looking around as for an escape route, but Ulric had already moved his men into position to block his retreat.

"I will take my trusted retainers." She gestured toward her clerics.

"Then it is all for nothing," moaned Geoffrey, "freeing you from Queen's Grave. All this! It has all rotted in my hands!"

"We are not dead and defeated yet, Geoffrey!" She got hold of her walking stick and pushed to her feet, and her smile might have come because of the pain of rising or her annoyance at Geoffrey, or because Sabella's messenger looked so flummoxed at being outflanked as he realized he was now a prisoner. "Trust in God. I do."

"Truth rises with the phoenix," muttered a voice in the crowd.

"So I have come to believe."

Ulric met her by the door into the inner apartments.

"Your Grace. We know that bandits haunt the roads, and worse things, perhaps. Wolves.

Shadows. I trust God, but I wish you will take armed men on the road to protect you."

"Sabella has kindly sent an escort. I'll return with them, all except for the messenger, who will remain here. Most of my schola are too frail to travel, and I trust you will see them well cared for here, Captain.

But I think a few of my faithful clerics can accompany me!" She smiled at Ivar, Sigfrid, Ermanrich, and Hathumod. Her gaze lingered longest on Baldwin, whom she examined with a slight frown.

"They may even be able to bear weapons," said Ulric with a look of disapproval, "although I don't know how much good they'll do you in a fight, Your Grace."

"We've fought!" said Ivar. "We've ridden into battle with Prince Ekkehard."

Ulric began to roll his eyes, but stopped himself with an inhalation and a sharp cough.

"My bold clerics!" she said, and somehow, from her lips, the statement did not sound mocking.

7

WHAT woke her? She lay still, listening, but heard nothing and saw nothing. A sour scent teased her; it was as pungent as rotten eggs but fading fast.

At length she decided that nothing unusual had woken her. She shifted, sitting up, and in that moment a puff of sulfurous air gusted against her cheek. She heard two scrapes as of a weight dragged across gritty rock, a sigh like those of a bellows, and again two scrapes. The stink of the air made her eyes water, but it had direction, wafting at her from the north-northwest if she deemed her back against the rock wall to measure due south. Out there, some movement made the air shift. Where there was a breeze, there was a breach to the outside.

She tested her thigh. The old blood was flaking off, and there was only a smear of moistness at one end of the wound where it had ripped a little. A long scab was beginning to form. She still ached throughout her body, but food and drink and rest had eased these hurts and her mind had regained its clarity.

I can win free, if 1 can only be patient and clever.

She sat for a long while and listened. The weight of rock oppressed her, but power lived here, too, felt as a hum deep in the earth. Kansi-a-lari had called this place "the Heart-of-the-Mountain-of-the-World's Beginning."

The Ashioi cities she had seen looked different than the towns and habitations erected by humankind, which rose haphazardly although any one might be built around a central building grounded with sacred power— a cathedral or church or, in older days, a fort. The crowns held power; weaving threads into a stone crown brought to Earth the melody of the spheres.

She breathed into her belly, into the stone, and it seemed to her that the deeper she breathed the deeper she fell. The Ashioi understood the power that lies in the landscape, and they built to encourage and enhance it. This heart was a kernel around which the city had risen. So deep, and so high, and pulsing with a force whose heat and contours, almost too faint for her to perceive, had the taste of the aether, funneled into this place as canals channel rainwater into a central pond.

She stood, and called her wings.

They flared golden, and she lifted a hand's breadth off the ground. A vast ceiling vaulted so high that its peaks lay in shadow. Above, frozen spears of lightning glistened, rock formations hanging from the ceiling like so many points. The cavern was immense, its far walls lost in dimness. The floor stretched smooth and unbroken.

Except there.

A narrow, black spire, somewhat taller than a man, rose out of the floor, so far from her that it was barely visible in the gloom. Blue fire flickered along its length where the aetherical glamour cast by her wings brushed it. Like a shadow, a second, insubstantial pillar blossomed into existence beside it, a burning stone through which she could see

"Liat'dano! Where are you?" The shaman speaks to her from beyond that gateway. The centaur woman is insubstantial but nevertheless present. She shades her eyes as against a harsh light and peers through the gateway toward Liath.

"I am here, at the Heart-of-the-Mountain-of-the-World's Beginning!" Liath cries.

"I have been looking for you, Daughter, but the aether is thin and the gateway closes. Come to me! Quickly!"

The pulse of the aether was too feeble, even here, to sustain her wings. They withered, and she dropped the hand's span to Earth and stumbled as too much weight came down on her injured leg. The glowing illumination faded and the burning stone dissolved into a pale nimbus, rapidly dissipating.

Caught in the last lambent twilight, a figure hunched out of the shadows and scuttled to the spire. It turned, and she saw that it was not human. It had luminous bulges where eyes ought to have been. Its skin had the look of granite.

Blackness swallowed her, and it. She heard two scrapes, that bellows sigh followed by two scrapes, and then nothing.

She dug deep, and fought to call her wings again, but the first effort had taken its toll on her and they only flickered, like the spark of a wick catching for an instant before snapping out. She could not get illumination enough to make her way to the black spire.

She had not hallucinated that creature. Indeed, she had a good idea of what it must be, because Mother Obligatia had told her of the inhuman creatures deep in the rock beneath the convent of St.

Ekatarina's whose charity had sustained the sisters for many months. In legend, humankind had many names for them: goblins and "Old Ones" and more besides.

Creatures who lived in the earth must have some means of moving around, just as moles shifted through tunnels. Where they could crawl, so could she. It was only a matter of having provisions and steady light.

Ai, God, if only the gateway of the burning stone had not collapsed so suddenly. If she could step through—reach Li'at'dano—she could gain her freedom and be reunited with Blessing, if her girl lived.

She must live.

"I will it so," she murmured, knowing that words are not magic in themselves but only because we weave them in a way that, like sorcery, creates a spell around our listeners.

She sat for a long while, breathing to quiet her heart and mind but also fighting against the exhaustion that washed at her and between one breath and the next swept over her. Pain from the wound in her thigh stabbed every time she twitched, and she braced herself against the wall to stop her legs from moving. Could she reach Li'at'dano? Thoughts wound down lazily, and she dozed off.

What had woken her?

Liathano.

Was that the shaman's voice? It nagged at her. She must have heard the shaman calling her name in the dream she had just been having, which had already faded, leaving a slow trembling ringing in her ears as if she had dreamed in sounds and not images.

Liathano.

One voice, tolling like a bell.

A sick dread infested her, shuddering her body inside and out.

Ai, God. A galla.

Kansi had captured her and meant to kill her. No, that was fear talking. She had no reason to believe that Kansi knew the galla or had ever used them.

Liathano.

The galla came from a plane outside of this world, and therefore they did not fully inhabit this world.

Air and water meant nothing to them. Heat and cold could claw no purchase into the forms that passed for their bodies. Rock did not halt them.

It was coming for her, and she had no weapon with which to kill it.

Liathano.

She was cold, and determined, and flush with the heat that comes of a racing heart and bitter knowledge. I am dead, but I will not go down without fighting.

She rose, fixed her feet and, ignoring the pain of her wound, sought by taste and smell and hearing for the direction of the galla.

Where is it coming from? There!

There! The cavern was pitch-black, without light enough even to see her own hand held right in front of her nose. But the galla was blacker still. Seen in such darkness, she perceived it as a void cut through onto another place, a worse place, a plane of existence racked with torment that, to the galla, seemed a blessed mercy compared to the torments of Earth. It was not like humankind, not meant to dwell in this world even for the space of a breath, her own, one in and one out, as she stood her ground and sought deep into the rock for the scattered grains of fire embedded within the structure of stone.

So faint they were, but she was desperate, and it rang closer and closer, floating across the vast black expanse of the cavern.

Liathano!

It knew her. It only wanted to go home, and she was its gateway.

The thought gave rise to ugly hope. She swept her awareness past the grains of fire and sought those attenuated veins of aether. Through the gateway she could find griffins. She might escape through the gateway.

She called her wings. As they flared, the towering black pillar that was the galla fluttered as in a strong wind.

She sought: At the heart of the aether lies the burning stone, the gateway— so far off, so faint . . .

It bloomed, frangible but present, a man's height and breadth in size, shimmering with the pulsing blue aether.

The shaman stood there still—or had come again to seek her. The pale figure of the Horse woman wavered, limned in blue as she reached out her arms in a gesture of welcome.

"Liath!" called the shaman.

"I'm coming! There is a galla—" she cried out as she lunged forward, but her leg collapsed under her. Already the gateway was collapsing from man height to child height to knee height. Too late! Too weak! There was not enough aether to sustain it. Her wings shredded into sparks. The galla swept down upon her.

The shaman's voice rang clear through the last hand's span of the opening. "I am Li'at'dano. Come quickly, to me!"

It was the same name, blurred by the centuries into a word that breathed more softly from the lips but which in its essence had not changed.

It was the same name, and she had carried it for far longer than Liath had.

The stinging presence of the galla scorched her, but it passed her by and twisted through the vanishing gateway on the trail of the one called Li'at'dano. Liathano.

There came a cry of pain, and a dazzling blaze that flared as the galla engulfed and consumed its prey.

The last light of aetherical fire curled in on itself, and winked out as the gateway collapsed.

Dead.

Devoured.

Into silence, into darkness, Liath fell. Her ears rang and her pulse throbbed, beating wildly as she knelt on the cold stone and sobbed so raggedly that it seemed she could never stop.

8

THE weather held fine. It did not rain, or even feel like rain. They luxuriated in a string of pleasant early summer days that might have run warm had it not been for the constant veil that concealed the sun and cooled the land. All the noble lords and ladies watched Sabella day by day to gauge her mood; it was Conrad's heartiness that warmed the party.

"So I said to her, 'then, pray tell, if a woman as lovely as you has held to your vows these four years and had no congress with any man or his member, why does this toddling sprout cling to your leg and call you Mother?' She looked me dead in the eye, and she spoke coldly, I will tell you! 'Because I am abbess of this poor institution, my lord duke, not the serving maid you take me for. I am Mother to those who rest under my care.' "

His listeners laughed, and he went on. "It is a shame, truly, that God should steal such treasures and lock them in the church. I have rarely seen a finer looking woman, as ripe as Aogoste berries. But I had no fortune that day! Her scornful look was enough to wither any man! Still, I wondered about that little child. He had a dusky complexion, you know."

One of the courtiers chortled. "Mayhap you came to her in the night, like an incubus, Conrad, eh! A year or two previous? She all unwitting? They say holy women have moist dreams!"

Conrad raised a hand to stop the chatter and laughter. "Not me! I would have recalled it! Mayhap, back in those days, the Dragons of those times might have ridden by. In truth, now I think on it, I recall there was talk of them sheltering a night or more in the convent's guesthouse two years before I came calling. Where such men shelter, one at least might have found a more inviting hall to rest himself. For you know, this was at St. Genovefa's Convent, and she the saintly patron of dogs."

That brought a new round of laughter.

“Are you only prattling, Conrad?" asked Sabella, "or do you honestly believe it to be true? Did Sanglant get some bastard child on a holy abbess back when he was captain of Henry's Dragons?

Where is this supposed to have taken place? How can the child's existence give us an advantage?

Otherwise, do not waste my time."

Her glare cowed the courtiers, but Conrad laughed. He had a remarkable smile, one that invited all folk to smile with him, and he was not afraid to poke fun at himself, although it seemed to Alain that he had made sure that the knife thrust more deeply into his unwitting rival's flesh. "I will tell tales to please myself and my companions while we ride this dreary road. If not, then you must listen to me sing."

Even Sabella must chuckle, although the softening lasted only a moment. "Best tell your tales, for I will have none of your singing without my good clerics to make it sweet."

"And your sweetest singer is fled," remarked Conrad with an innocent expression. "Fled to the angels from which he arose."

Her eyes flared, and her horse minced as she jerked the reins. Off along the verge, where the hounds padded, Rage barked, a rumble that startled the nearest horse and set off a chain of missteps among the riders and then the stewards and mounted soldiers behind. "Enough, Conrad!"

"She did not sing for me, that lovely creature," said Conrad, continuing as if he had not noticed the rogue current he had stirred into life. "Mother Armentaria, I think her name was. I do wonder about my cousin and that dark little creature who held the holy woman's skirts and stared at me with eyes so rich a brown. A taking thing. I don't know if it were girl or boy, but it was pretty enough to be either even if scarcely old enough to walk. It might have been a beggar's child, or a prince's. How can we know when the mother will not or cannot speak?"

He glanced at Alain before turning his attention back to his courtiers.

"It's said Prince Sanglant sowed a hundred bastards, being a bastard himself," said one of the younger courtiers, "but is it true?"

"He's a handsome man," said Conrad. "Were I born a woman, instead of a man, I suppose I might try a kiss from him. As it is, I can only envy him, for he has a fair beauty for a wife, a fine creature as bright as fire."

"Of uncertain lineage," said Sabella. "Both bastards, most likely. She is excommunicated and accused of being a sorcerer."

"Yes, truly," said Conrad with a crooked smile, "it is as well you and I, Sabella, make our way to save our grandfather's precious kingdom from such usurpers."

"Your great grandfather," she said curtly. "Tallia is your very distant cousin."

"Yes, indeed, distant enough that we might be married with the sanction of the church," he agreed cordially. He had an expression that might have been amused or annoyed. "Yet when I pressed my suit elsewhere, my dear cousin Henry deemed my cousin Theophanu too close to agree to the alliance."

"Don't speak to me of Henry!"

Her look was meant to quell, but Conrad smiled. "We are among allies, Sabella. No one in our retinues will cry to the church that I have married consanguineously. What is it? Seven degrees?

Eight? Six? Far enough except for Henry's taste, since he wanted no such connection between his children and mine."

"He feared you."

"Perhaps. I think all along Henry was only waiting."

"For what?" she asked him, and all the courtiers, heads turning side to side as they looked first at Sabella and then at Conrad and then back again, fixed their attention on Conrad.

"Waiting to find a way to raise Sanglant as heir above Sophia's children. He found it. We battle not Sanglant, but Henry's sentimental attachment to the child who could not have the thing Henry most wished to give him. He has gotten it anyway. Sanglant always did seem to get his own way, though he was never gloating or crude about it. The best of men!"

Sabella smiled harshly. "Say you so, Conrad? Will you be turning your milites east to join up with him? The best of men?"

Conrad had such an infectious way of laughing that everyone joined in. When the fit of hilarity had passed, he spoke in a voice whose easy charm did nothing to affect its sincerity. "I am sure of what I want, what I deserve, and what I intend to claim."

"Horses ahead, my lord duke. My lady." A sergeant called from the foremost line of riders, and a ripple—men checking swords, easing spears free—passed backward through the company. "Nay, it's only the scouts."

Atto returned with the trio of men sent ahead to help him seek out their way, and to make sure he did not bolt. Certainly the lad looked nervous enough, sweating and pale and hair a rat's nest since he couldn't stop running his hands through it. He consulted with Sabella's captain, and in time they came to a fork in the road. Instead of continuing on the main road, they cut into broken woodland along a rutted track where they had to ride two abreast. Their line of march stretched back a good ways. The other nobles competed for position, but Alain hung back and let the main part of the company pass before swinging into line with the wagons. He nodded at the soldier who was riding beside the great cage meant for the guivre.

"My lord," said Captain Tammus reluctantly, dropping his gaze while his hands clenched on the reins.

Sorrow growled, low in her throat, but Alain let the captain and these foremost wagons pass as well and came up behind the supply wagons with their barrels of ale and sacks of grain or flour and small woven sapling cages filled with squawking chickens and a furious goose. A trio of steers paced at the end of ropes. Two dozen sheep followed, pursued by a pair of shepherds and their clever dog. Behind the last wagon walked a half dozen men, each one pushing a flat-bedded cart on which lay the trussed carcass of a deer.

"Where have these come from?" he asked one of the stewards.

The woman rode a stocky pony and was young and weary, hair covered by a pale yellow scarf.

She wore a glove on her right hand and her left bare, revealing a rash prickling across her three middle fingers.

"You know the way of it, my lord," she said cautiously, recognizing him, as any good steward must recognize by sight every noble who rode with the lady. "Three our hunters brought down yesterday and the day before. We hung them all night, though they'll still be tough. The others came from the manor.

Folk are hunting deer in numbers early this year. The sheep we took as part of the tithe, together with the grain. Out in the forest we'll not find much provender, for few folk live in the wilderness. We must feed all with what we gain here."

He nodded, and to her evident relief he fell back to ride alongside the rear guard. Farther behind might be found the rear scouts, but he held his position the rest of that day. The land changed its character, and they entered a region of precipitous hills, rugged rocky outcrops, and low spines of rock protruding from otherwise unexceptionable earth. Streamlets flowed in plenty, and there was no sign of human habitation. Folk whispered that they were nearing the lair of the guivre, who hid within a maze of stony dikes. Even the animals grew nervous. A faint odor of rotting carcasses laced the breeze at intervals, but faded as quickly as he caught its touch.

9

KANSI'S voice came sooner than she expected, echoing out of the darkness. "What creature stalked our land? What was it?"

"Set me free, and I'll tell you," said Liath, hoarse from weeping and exhausted with rage.

"Tell me!"

Although Kansi-a-lari cursed her and commanded her, Liath did not speak.

After that came silence for a long while during which she slept, drank, ate, and slept again. Although she had taken no physical harm, she felt battered and she felt bruised, and the right side of her face where the galla had swept closest was as tender as if she had scraped it against rock. Strangely, the wound in her thigh did not hurt as much.

When the exhaustion passed, the rage remained, but now she knew better than to curse impotently at Kansi-a-lari, who had her own schemes and hopes but who had not, after all, called the galla. She hoarded her strength, and made her plans.

"Li'at'dano!"

It hurt to hear her name spoken in the antique manner, but although she wanted to scream in fury for everything she was guilty of and quite a bit she was not, she answered in as calm a voice as she could muster.

"Here I am. What do you want?"

"The answer to my question. That creature murdered a child, four adults, and many precious goats in its passage through our land. Flensed them to the bone. Is this your way of doing battle against us?"

"Lower down more food and drink. Then I'll tell you."

"I know how much you have. There is enough, if it's rationed."

"I want more. And a knife."

She laughed. "No knife. Knives you will have enough of, if I decide to give you to the priests."

After that came silence, but later, listening, Liath heard a faint scraping and a fainter thump.

Out of the darkness, Kansi spoke. 'Answer my question. I have done as you asked."

She is above me.

"I will," said Liath, "once I am sure I have what I want."

Since Kansi-a-lari was speaking from above, surely the provisions should have hit the floor in the same place she had found them the first time. Since it had not, there must therefore be other openings, hidden to her salamander eyes. Kansi-a-lari could not be speaking from a place where daylight gleamed, or Liath would have discerned any least particle of light's being. A cave above a cave? Rock sheltered Kansi. Liath could get no sense of her position, her scent, or even her presence except for her voice.

She walked the circuit of the wall, sweeping her feet and finding her leg aching, but sturdy. After 435 footfalls she struck riches: a dozen bulbous fruits; a dozen flat circles of bread; three big leather pouches swollen with a sweet tasting nectar; a cheese that tasted better than it smelled; eggs cushioned in greasy uncombed wool.

No knife.

"I am satisfied," she said, pitching her voice to carry upward, "that you have dealt fairly with me in this particular matter. Set me free."

"I will not."

"Then listen. The creature is called a galla. It comes from another plane of existence."

"From the aether?"

"I think not. Step sideways through a crack in a wall and you may come to a lost garden. Step sideways through the spheres, and there may be other worlds."

"A curious notion," said Kansi. "Go on."

"The galla are called, with blood, to this world. The one who calls them grants them their freedom in a name. This person they must hunt down and devour. When they have devoured the one they sought, the crack in the wall opens, and they can return to their home."

"Why did you call it?"

"I did not call it. I have been attacked by such creatures before. That is how I know what they are."

"How did you rid yourself of it? Is there a spell?"

She choked, but eventually found her voice, because she had to speak. "Griffin feathers dispel the galla. It is the only way to banish them, that I know of."

"You came to us naked except for your clothes. How did you banish this one?"

"You may believe I came to you with nothing, but I banished it nevertheless." She had to push on, before she thought too hard and burst into tears. She burned with anger, and she must remember the right person to blame. "I have no griffin feathers now. If another galla comes for me, I am helpless." She could not swallow; she could not speak lest her voice tremble. Yet, why not? Let Kansi believe her terrified. It was the truth.

"If you want me alive, understand that I am helpless now against the galla. And understand this: The galla are after your son as well."

"Zuangua says Sanglant has griffins. He is well protected. Wise boy!"

"He had griffins. They are flown back into the east to breed. He has seven feathers left him. For each galla that comes, he has one less. Do you mean to let him die once he runs out of griffin feathers?"

"I cannot fight these galla without griffin feathers? Then tell me, Liathano, if you care for my son: what sorcerer calls the galla to pursue you?"

Liath smiled, and her lips formed a silent prayer as she weighed her words and spoke. "I cannot know for sure, I admit. There is only one person who in the past had the knowledge and the skill and the desire to call galla. Her name is Sister Venia, although she was also once called Biscop Antonia of Mainni. I don't know where she is."

There came silence for such a long time that Liath finally decided that Kansi must have left. She peeled open one of the fruits and savored the sweet, sloppy mess inside. She tasted bitter to herself, wiping her chin with her fingers and licking off the trails of juice.

Kansi's voice slipped out of the darkness, surprising her. Her tone was cool, but it made Liath shiver. "My people will find her, and I will deal with her."

"Why do you keep me here?"

"That is a foolish question. You are—what would they call it at the court of Wendar, this game of carved pieces moved across a board? You are a pawn, in my keeping. With you in my hand, I have power over those who desire to take you for themselves."

"Who would that be?" Liath demanded, for it seemed strange and ominous that Kansi used the plural.

"The blood knives, and of course—" She broke off, then finished. "—my son."

"Sanglant wants peace. He needs peace, to rebuild after the cataclysm. Why do you wish to fight him?"

"I wish to protect my people. We cannot trust humankind."

"You let Henry raise him."

"That was all along the intention of the council of elders. A poor plan, which failed. We will do better, I promise you."

"Those days are long past. We must trust each other in order to survive."

"These are tiresome words. Do you even believe them yourself?"

"Sanglant is not your enemy."

There was no answer, and in time Liath had to accept that Kansi had gone.

So be it. She rested a while longer and ate and drank a little more, starting with the raw eggs, which were sure to get broken. Afterward she chipped away at one of the blunt rocks to get more of an edge on it. She took off her wool outer-tunic and stripped off the lighter linen under-tunic before putting the over-tunic back on. The wool itched, but it was better to save the sturdier, warmer tunic. With the scraper she severed threads and managed with real effort to separate the tunic so that with knots and curls she could hang all of her provisions safely around her hips. She finished the eggs, rose, and walked and jumped a little to test the security of her knots.

They held.

Facing the center of the cavern, she called her wings.

They flared and faded so quickly that it left afterimages against her eyes. She tried again, but it was no use. The undercurrents of aether still thrummed through this heart, but something was missing: Li'at'dano's power calling to her from the far side of the gateway.

Had it always taken two to open the gateway of the burning stone? Was there a thread woven between one and the other? Did she need more of a focus, or was the burning stone fading surely and slowly from the compass of the world?

She wiped away stinging tears and scratched her itching shoulders and allowed herself one burst of frustrated overpowering thwarted despairing fury, not a scream but a wash of emotion like the tidal surge that had obliterated the shore.

"Liath."

Just like that, she snapped alert. In like manner, a hound comes to point, sensing an enemy. Any creature does. She was clear and empty and as sharp as steel.

"Liath," he said again.

It was like an hallucination, because there was no possible way that Hugh of Austra should be speaking to her in this place at this time when she was imprisoned at the very heart of the land belonging to the Ashioi.

But it was his voice, and it was obvious from his tone that he knew she was there.

When she did not reply, he went on.

"I am a prisoner of the Ashioi."

This comment bestirred her, because for some reason she found it amusing. "Not so deep in prison as I am, it appears, since you are there, and I am here. How came they to capture you?"

"They caught me on the road as I was fleeing Queen Adelheid."

He paused again, and she played along. "What cause had you to flee Adelheid? Before, as I recall the story, you were her ally."

"No longer. Adelheid blames me for Henry's death."

"Can you possibly believe that I might believe you innocent of any share in Henry's death?"

"Believe what you will. Adelheid desired to kill me."

Liath forbore to comment, and in any case she was having a difficult time parsing his tone into its component emotions without the text of expression and his body's language to study.

"I took Blessing away from Adelheid," he added.

Blessing! The name felled her. She sank, found herself sprawled on the ground. Her hands had gone numb. Hugh's smooth words flowed over her as though she were stone.

"I freed her from captivity. Adelheid would have murdered her in revenge for the death of Berengaria."

She tried words on her tongue and found that she could speak. "Who is Berengaria?"

"The younger child. She had two by Henry, Mathilda and Berengaria."

Two children, Henry's youngest offspring. Of course she remembered them. They held a claim to the Wendish throne that many would consider more legitimate than Sanglant's, even if their mother was Aostan.

"I stole Blessing away to save her from Adelheid. The Ashioi captured us. We are prisoners here, as you are."

This story made no sense, but no matter. She wiped sweat from her forehead, although it wasn't hot.

"How did Blessing come into Adelheid's custody?"

"I don't know. She and her party were discovered by Adelheid's soldiers on the road near Novomo. How did the child's father come to carelessly leave her behind in Aosta? I would not have done so."

She hesitated, knowing she must phrase both questions and answers precisely in order to get the information she needed without giving away too much. "She was too ill to be moved," she said as evenly as she could.

He laughed. "She has recovered. Her uncle Zuangua is training her to be a warrior. You and I, however, have common cause. We desire to escape. I will help you."

She found herself trembling between one breath and the next, only there was nothing within arm's reach to strangle. At last, she sorted past laughter and weeping and found pragmatism. "In exchange for what?"

"Nothing. I seek only to aid Wendar."

The first shock survived, this made her smile cruelly. Surely Hugh was too subtle to believe that she would believe this!

"It is strange to me that small parties of Ashioi mask warriors strike in Wendar. They come unheralded and without any trace of how they have arrived and where they go after. Yet if a mathematicus had allied with the Ashioi, he might weave gateways through the crowns for such raiding parties. How would that be aiding Wendar?"

"My plan is deeper than it seems. I will destroy Feather Cloak."

"So you say. Many innocent souls have lost their lives."

"But the rest will live in peace because of it." He fell silent, awaiting her response.

What flowered within her was an astonishing sense of peace.

Hugh had no power of his own except what he could wreak against others, a man armed with a sword who must stand on the field against disciplined ranks of archers and cavalry. This made him no less dangerous. A man with a sword can still kill anyone who comes within arm's reach. As long as Hugh could twist others to do his will, he could, and would, harm his enemies and every innocent soul who got in his way.

He was the bastard child of a powerful noble who had used him poorly, giving him education and desire without any way to wield it or the strength of will to rein it in. Margrave Judith had put him in the church, where he could rise to be presbyter, as he had done by a circuitous route. But becoming presbyter was not enough for Hugh. He wanted a different sort of power, and he had no way to obtain it except through sorcery. He had wielded power through Adelheid's agency, by ensorcelling Henry, because he had no power in his own heart.

Any person with the will to do what is right has power of a kind, however frail a reed that may seem when it comes time to stand tall against the storm. But in the end, in God's heart, it is the only power that matters.

He had seen, before anyone but Da and those who knew what she was, that she had power he wanted to possess. But it was the fire at the heart of her that he desired, not her. Never her, that person whom Sanglant was perfectly willing to argue with, cajole, irritate, and love.

She had what Hugh wanted. She was what Hugh wanted to be.

"What is your plan?" she asked him.

"I have a rope. I'll throw it down to you, and haul you up. We can escape through the crown that stands near here."

"Where is it?"

"A few days' walk, beyond the White Road."

"Very well. Throw down the rope."

She heard it uncoil with a scraping slither. Its final lengths thumped lightly on the cavern's floor.

She fished for and found the greasy wool, tossed it high into the air, and called fire into this cloud. It blazed.

There! Alongside the smooth cavern wall dangled the rope, with no more than a single coil remaining on the ground. She reached it before the wool burned itself into nothing.

She jerked hard on the rope, but it held.

"I've made it fast. You must hurry. Tie it around your waist, and I'll haul you up."

"How did you come to find me?"

"You're imprisoned in a secret place in the midst of their great city."

"I know. How did you find me?"

"The priests are in a rage, claiming they are owed a sacrifice. A raiding party had taken a powerful captive, rumor said, but the members of that raiding party would not speak of it. The Feather Cloak need answer no questions."

"Feather Cloak?" She recalled Feather Cloak, that stern and pregnant leader who had banished her from Ashioi country.

"Sanglant's mother is Feather Cloak."

She caught a surprised laugh, making a kind of a snort.

Sanglant's mother had grasped the reins of power among the Ashioi. What had happened to the other Feather Cloak?

"It was Feather Cloak who told you I was here?"

"It was not. I am her prisoner, but I have other sources of information."

No doubt a woman—some flint-eyed warrior girl who spilled the truth to him in the hope of gaining his smile and, perhaps, a kiss. Women could be stupid, that was certainly true. Liath did not hope to be one of those women today. Hugh was certainly lying, she just wasn't sure what part of his story was false, and which truth.

Blessing is recovered. Alive. Living.

"I want a knife before I'll come up," she said, "to defend myself with. I have no reason to trust you."

"If you don't trust me, you'll remain their prisoner. At their mercy. Do you know what the priests do to their sacrifices? Why they are called the blood knives?"

"I want a knife. Or I won't come up."

"If I drop it, it might hit you."

She slid backward along the wall ten paces, and called. "A knife, or I won't come up."

"I pray you, Liath. If we wait too long, we may be discovered."

"A knife."

He wanted her so badly that he betrayed himself. An object rasped along rock. Silence swallowed its fall, then it rattled on stone.

What manner of fool gave a knife to a prisoner?

How had Hugh of Austra come to be allied with the Ashioi?

She moved forward in darkness, knelt, and patted the ground until its cool blade came under her hand. Good iron, this. The hilt bore an embossed crest which she read by touch: the letter 'A' surrounded by a circle.

"Liath, you must hurry," he said.

She rose, gripped the rope, and looked up. The rock clouded her vision, and the vision that lay beyond those things seen with the open eye. Rock was heavy and slow moving, but there was something there, a presence. It was as if she could smell the edge of Hugh, like smelling a perfume: lavender for beauty, wolfsbane for deadliness, and something less tangible, twisted and rotten.

She could not quite grasp him, but she forged with her awareness as high as she could reach up the rope to a place where it tightened against a curve in the ceiling, perhaps a narrow vertical tunnel.

There, where the rope receded into oblivion, she kissed the sleeping fire within it, and told it to burn.

His shout woke fire. The rope burned hard, far above her, just out of her sight. The red glow spit flakes of ash, and she yanked. The rope tumbled down around and on top of her, the fraying end smoldering and blackening at the tips.

"Ai, God! Liath!"

No need to answer. She had what she wanted. The glow gave just enough light for her salamander eyes. She coiled the rope over and under around shoulder and torso like a bulky sash, holding the slowly burning end out away from her, and tested the knots of the complicated arrangement of food and drink tied up against her body. It would hold.

She pushed into the darkness. When she approached the black spire, she found what she had prayed for: a stairway into the depths.

10

IN the late afternoon he rode into a clearing ringed by stately beech trees just coming into leaf.

Beyond lay a tangle of mixed woodland with many massive trees listing sideways or fallen to the ground and slender saplings and a thick layer of shrubs grown up in a profusion that blocked all lines of sight. An ancient wall formed a crumbling pattern within the clearing. No place along the wall was more than knee-high, but it provided a barrier of sorts where otherwise they must lie open to whatever the forest might bring them. Within this ruin he found canvas tents being erected and fires burning and the deer being skinned and butchered and prepared for spit roasting over the remains of stone hearths. The offal was thrown to the hunting dogs, to keep them strong, although in any village such fare would have been served up as a stew. Alain had put aside some bones saved out from yesterday's dinner, and these Rage and Sorrow gnawed on while he walked through the camp speaking here and there to servants and soldiers.

He came at length to the cloth screens set up on poles that divided the main portion of the camp from the smaller camp where the nobles would eat and sleep. No guards patrolled this gate, situated where a second inner ruin lay within the first.

Servants and soldiers moved about freely, but none lingered where the nobles sat on stools at their leisure while waiting for their roasting supper. The lords and ladies laughed and chatted, at their ease. He went to pee, leaving camp behind and stepping under the trees for a little privacy. The dogs lifted their heads and beat their tails one two, growling to warn him that he was being followed. Finished, he greeted Duke Conrad, who came accompanied by a swarm of nobles, servants, and faithful soldiers. Half of them followed the duke's lead in taking a piss, a social activity on any noble's progress, but when the duke was finished, he waved his retainers away and gestured toward a mossy stretch of thigh-high wall thrust up from the dirt and grown about with honeysuckle and crocus.

"A pleasant bench," Conrad said amiably, but in his smile Alain saw the expectation of obedience.

They sat, and considered the woods around them, oak and hornbeam with a scattering of ash and this one proud circle of beech, obviously planted decades ago for an unknown purpose. Ivy had worked its way along the shadowed folds. Sorrow and Rage settled at Alain's feet, staring fixedly at Conrad.

"You're a quiet one," said the duke, "most of the time." A servant approached, Conrad dipped his head slightly, and the man retreated. The swarm had spread out of earshot, leaving them a measure of peace. "What do you think of, Lord Alain? What goad whips your mount? Do you envy me my wife?"

"Do you believe I must?"

He smiled as he glanced away from Alain, then back again. "It would be natural to envy the man who holds the treasure you once possessed yourself."

Alain waited. Conrad, by all appearances a restless and energetic man, had the unusual ability to sit without the least appearance of becoming impatient. Men walked out in the woods, and over by the unseen fires singing broke out, a lewd song relating the amorous adventures of a young man peculiarly afflicted with a member whose size varied depending on the weather. "But when the sun came out, Oh!

When the sun came out!"

Conrad smiled slightly, but did not stir as the impromptu verses ground on.

Realizing that neither Conrad's silence nor the song was likely to end soon, Alain felt obliged to answer. "I was sorry to disappoint Count Lavastine, who hoped for an heir."

Conrad bent to pluck a plant out of the dirt. "Bastard balm." He crumbled the leaves in his big hand and tested the scent its oils left. "Not to my taste, the flavor of this plant. Did Lavastine believe you to be his baseborn son? Or was that only a lie? Not that it matters to me, mind you. I'm content with matters as they stand between you and me. But I'm curious." He indicated the hounds. "These give you a powerful claim. The tale was well known, that the black hounds answer to none but the rightful heir of Lavas County. That they would kill any other person who sought to claim them."

He whistled softly, extending his hand palm up. Both Rage and Sorrow whined piteously and thumped their tails on the ground as they looked at Alain for permission.

"Go on," Alain said, and the hounds crept closer to Conrad, snuffled at his knees, and groaned a little, not quite a growl, allowing him to rub their huge heads and fuss a bit over them.

"I like dogs," Conrad said. "They are more faithful than men— with the natural exception of my good retainers." His grin charmed effortlessly. "I trust my dogs not to turn on me. What about you?"

"Am I your dog?"

Conrad laughed. "A hard question. Yet again I must say, I don't know. You came to Autun with some purpose. We offered you Lavas, and you have not precisely turned us down. We spoke of your marriage to my daughter Berengaria, which might bring you to rule Varre at her side. Yet I see in you no grasping servility, seeking our favor in this scheme. I see no testing of bonds with the other lesser lords, whom you may one day hope to command. No clawing and biting and growling for precedence."

"I am sorry," said Alain. "I am not what you think I am."

"So it would seem," said Conrad as the hounds moved away from him to flank Alain. "Yet these hounds puzzle me. You puzzle me. What do you want?"

"Healing."

"Healing for the scar in your heart? From the marriage gone wrong? The lady torn from you and given to another? The loss of your father? The loss of Lavas County, and its riches?"

"I am but one man. Observe the world, Duke Conrad, and you will see what I mean."

"I have taken the measure of the world, Lord Alain. It is a cruel abode, containing many pits for the unwary. So do I act."

"So must we all."

Conrad looked closely at him. "You do not speak of Lavas County, or the woman who was once your wife and is now mine. You do not speak of my sweet daughter, Berengaria, who might possibly become your wife. You do not speak of a consort's chair."

"I do not."

Conrad folded his arms across his chest. Alain was tall, but Conrad had bulk in addition to height, arms made thick by many years riding to war and wielding the reaper's scythe. Alain had met few men more formidable than the duke of Wayland. He had a sword, and Alain only his crude staff, and his hounds.

Conrad made no move, although his frown suggested his displeasure. "A spy might speak so, sent into my ranks to learn my secrets. Yet it's also said that wise men speak in riddles. Seek you revenge for the wrong done to you when Henry took Lavas County out of your hands?"

"Was it wrong to cast me out as the count of Lavas?"

"I cannot answer that question! Lord Geoffrey has a legitimate claim in the name of his daughter. In his own name, truth to tell, since he is the great grandson of the last countess, Lavastina, and the grandnephew of Lavastine's grandfather, Charles Lavastine. Still, Geoffrey preferred to push his daughter forward instead of himself, since she is a girl and the old countess ruled by the ancient law."

"The ancient law?"

"Still held to in Alba, I might add, and in much of Varre. The identity of a woman's children is always known, since they have sprung from her womb. That of a man's offspring—well, no matter what anyone says, in the end it is always a matter of faith. Therefore, by that custom, a daughter will always hold precedence over a son because her heirs are assuredly the descendants of her foremothers.

Geoffrey chose to ally himself with the old custom, while Lavastine chose you, a boy of uncertain parentage. No doubt that influenced Henry's decision. Yet, for Geoffrey, the rule of Lavas County comes to the same thing, as his daughter is still a child and he must therefore be her regent for many years."

"She is an invalid now. Lamed in a fall from her pony."

Conrad had a ready sympathy for daughters. "Poor creature! What incompetent taught her to ride?

Or gave her the wrong mount?"

"Perhaps it was only an accident."

"Or justice served on her because of the sins of her father."

"An innocent child? I do not believe so."

"Do you know God's mind, then?" Conrad chuckled. "I ask my clerics every day, and they remain blind. Only my wife insists that she speaks with God's wishes brimful on her tongue, and in truth, Lord Alain, I despise her. She is a sniveling, lying, whining weakling, no better than a . . . a . . .

God know there is no creature I despise as much!"

"She deserves respect from the man who married her."

"So the church prattles, but they are not wed to her—although they were once, and cast her out because of all her puling and moaning! She brought me only one good thing, and that is Berry. Tallia is like to ruin the child if she got her way, which I will not let her do."

"Tallia brought you an alliance with Lady Sabella and a claim to the throne of Varre for your daughter."

"Yes, it's true. I am hasty in condemning her. A duchy for A Elf and a throne for Berry. Ai, God.

My poor Elene."

"Who is that?"

"Never mind," he said so curtly that both hounds stiffened, coming to stand, and growled, ears going flat. "Something I gave away, because I am an obedient son."

Amazingly, he wept. Alain was too surprised to speak because the duke's grief was so stark and expansive that it seemed the heavens themselves must weep in sympathy, although no rain fell and only the wind's rattle through late blooming leaves and the distant clatter of the company about its twilight business accompanied Conrad's tears.

He sighed but did not wipe away the remaining tears. He was a man who need never apologize for any strong emotion.

"I pray that which you cherish be restored to you," said Alain, unexpectedly moved by the display.

"Do you so? She is dead. I was warned it would be so, and I feel it in my heart. How, then, can she be restored to me? Even a miracle cannot bring her home."

"Who is she?" he asked again.

Conrad rose. He wore a light cloak against the cool evening. Its hem slid down to lap at his hips, and he moved away, answering only when he had gone several paces out, and even then casting the words over his shoulder as though they were a dart meant to wound. "My eldest child. My own beloved daughter. My chosen heir, who will not now sit in my place when the time comes. Henry had that advantage over me, did he not? I feel inclined to spoil his wishes."

"Who could have taken this beloved child from you?"

"My mother. To whom I owe my life."

Alain bowed his head.

Sorrow growled, and Rage lifted her ears. A familiar figure walked toward them, accompanied by a trio of young men whose handsome faces were illuminated by the lit lamps they carried.

"Here you are, Conrad." Despite her age, Sabella moved as easily as a much younger woman. She marked Alain, seated, and Conrad, standing, and the hounds with their alert if not quite threatening posture on either side of Alain. "I wondered where you had gone. Is there anything I should know?"

A suspicious woman will see intrigue flowing on all sides. No doubt the duchess of Arconia drank deeply at that river.

"You know everything I know," said Conrad, wiping his face before turning to face her.

She snorted. "I doubt it. Had you kept no secrets from me, I would not respect you."

Conrad gestured toward Alain. As for this one, you know what I know. He makes no claims, no demands, no refusals."

"None, but for grain. What do you make of that?"

"I judge him too subtle to measure."

"A common man pretending to an eminence he does not deserve?"

"Think you so?"

"He does not appear so to me," she admitted. "No common-born man speaks to Arnulf's heir with such words and such boldness. What have you to say to this, Lord Alain?"

"Nothing."

She had a twisted kind of grimace that posed as a smile. If she had ever known happiness, it was by now buried under a mountain of worldly cynicism that must make her dangerous because of the weight on her heart. "It is my experience that people do want things, and want them more the closer they are to grasping them. Are you a spy, sent to ferret out our secrets?"

"I am not."

"Yet here you are. Well. Lavas may be yours again, and more besides. Men are all the same. Easily teased to attention by a glimpse of treasure. Is that not so, Conrad?"

"So the church teaches," he said without looking at her, as if the shadows of the forest hid something he needed to see. "There's something out there," he said in a changed voice.

A sentry called out a challenge just as he spoke. A second call alerted the camp, but as the soldiers jumped to their feet and servants hustled to the safety of the wagons, pale figures wandered out of woods with hands extended, murmuring the familiar refrain.

"I pray you, noble one. Have you food?"

"Just a corner of bread for my child, I pray you."

"God's mercy, help us. Any that you can spare."

"Beggars!" said Sabella, retreating. "Captain! Chase them off."

Alain walked after her. "Surely you can spare your leavings for these poor creatures. They are harmless, and suffering."

"Chase them off!" she ordered.

Conrad fell back into the circle made by his retainers, all of whom had drawn their swords. "Be on alert," he called. "They may be a distraction, I'm thinking."

The beggars faltered before they entered the camp, seeing the weapons. Children sniveled, held tight against their mothers' hips, and all weeping, adults and small ones alike. They were afraid, and yet again and many times one of the half-naked, starving beggars would look behind toward the deeper darkness of the forest as if wolves were driving them into the light. From back in the camp Alain heard Atto cry out, and the sound of a scuffle.

"Stand ready!" Conrad's voice carried easily; he meant unseen others to hear him. "We'll slaughter them, my good fellows, and let the maggots clean their corpses."

"Nay! nay! I know these folk!" Atto's voice was a wail. "How comes it my kinfolk beg here in the wilderness? They live but a day's walk from Helmsbuch, cousins to us. I beg you! I beg you! Do not harm them! They are innocent!"

Soldiers clattered into position. Shields fell into line to protect the ranks if arrows flew from the woods. A horn called twice. Horses whinnied nervously.

"Step back!" called Conrad to Alain.

But it was Conrad and Sabella's soldiers, standing with their backs close to the fires, who were easiest to see. In the darkening twilight, Alain knew he appeared as no more than a shadow. The undyed linen-and-wool clothing of the beggars and their exposed limbs made them conspicuous, but he was cloaked by the fine dark colors of his clothing, by his gloves and boots, and by his dark hair and darker hounds. He was not at risk, not as the beggars were, caught between the noble company and whatever pushed at them from deeper in the woods.

He stood in silence, hearing the scrape of feet, the muttered comments of the soldiers, the nervous laughter of one of the lordlings, the tick of a branch clacking against another, the snuffling of horses, and the thump of a spear haft against the ground. A child whimpered. In the distance, an owl hooted, and he threw back his head, surprised, and listened as hard as he could. As he breathed, he caught the inhalation of the world and the slow trembling and settling of air as the earth cooled with the onset of night. Under the trees waited the wolves who hunted in this night, concealed by underbrush and broad tree trunks and the uneven carpet of the ground with its low rock dikes and knee-deep hollows. The outlaws were a sturdy, cautious band, and he listened carefully counting each man's breath: thirty-eight in all—no, there was the thirty-ninth, behind the bole of an ash. Not enough to attack a company some three times greater and better armed unless a cunning intelligence led them, but he smelled and sensed no such mind among their number, not unless it was hidden from him.

"Stay," he said to the hounds. He walked into the trees, as silent as death, and came up behind each crouching man out of the darkness and lay a hand atop each head, each one so unsuspecting that the touch made him freeze in terror.

Alain said only in a whisper, each time, "Go. Do not prey on the weak and helpless any longer."

They ran, a scattering of footsteps as the first he touched fled, and then the second. The sound turned briefly into a tumult, like a shower of hard rain, and pattered away into the depths as the last of them bolted. He waited, but all he heard were cautious shouts and answers coming from the camp as Conrad and Sabella shifted their sentries farther out to probe the darkness, and the quiet misery of the score of beggars abandoned betwixt the company and the wild.

He walked back to the hounds, and said, "Duke Conrad, I pray you. If you'll spare me a dozen loaves of waybread, I'll give them as alms to these poor beggars."

"Come into the light," said Conrad, and Alain did so, coming right up to the wall of shields set on the ruin of the outer wall. After a moment a soldier arrived with his arms basketing half a dozen loaves of the flatbread commonly baked by travelers on the coals overnight. These were several days' old.

"What has happened?" Conrad pushed past the shields to stand beside Alain, alert to the noises out of the woods.

Back in the camp, Atto sobbed.

"I believe they have fled, seeing a superior force. May I now feed these poor beggars?"

Conrad laughed. "A godly man is a good ally, so the church mothers tell us. I'll walk with you."

"I pray to God this shall be enough to strengthen these unfortunates," said Alain as they came among them. Conrad walked boldly, but it was clear he marked each one, looking closely at their rags and their emaciated limbs for sign of disease before he handed them a hank of bread out of his own hands. Filth and hunger and desperation did not make him flinch. Any person saw such things every day. But even a strong soul might quail at the mark of plague or leprosy.

These were only poor, landless, and starving, nothing out of the ordinary except that they had retreated so far into the wild lands and so near to the guivre's lair. When Alain and Conrad returned to camp, Sabella scolded them.

"Now the creatures will plague us," she said, "hoping for another morsel. You have only encouraged them. I hope they did not hear that lad shouting. I'll not be burdened with a train of beggars."

"Where, then, should they go?" Alain asked her.

"What concern is that of mine?"

"You are duchess here in Arconia, I believe," he answered. "Are these people not your concern?"

"Why should they be? What if those thieves creep back and try to surprise us a second time?"

"God have given you these lands to administer, have They not? It is your duty and obligation to be a just steward of these lands. Even beggars and outlaws are among your subjects."

"As inside, so outside, my clerics tell me. These beggars must have sinned grievously to be punished in such a manner."

"Do you believe it is only their own sins that have brought them so low? That they deserve whatever suffering they endure?"

"Each of us faces justice in the end. I do not mean to interfere with the punishment God has ordained for them."

"Justice must be tempered with mercy. What mercy should God show to you if you will show none in your turn?"

Conrad clucked, while the courtiers muttered their shocked outrage that their lady should be spoken to in such a manner by a man who had only the expectation of rank but no actual lands and title in his grasp.

"Do you speak so, to me?" she demanded. "Let them perish, if they have not the strength to survive.

I cannot aid them, and why should I, if it will harm my cause and weaken my rule? Food given to these wretches will not go to feed my soldiers and retainers, who aid me. What matters it, anyway? These creatures are the least of God's creation, far beneath us."

He shook his head. "Do not say so. In birth and death we are alike. Their bodies will turn to dust, just as mine will. Just as yours will."

Her aspect grew cold and she clenched her jaw tight before finding her voice. "This I will not endure! Captain! Bind him and cast him in the cage. He who insults me with such insolence will be first to feed the guivre."

"Feed the guivre?" cried Conrad. "You cannot mean to feed the beast on human flesh!"

"The monster must be strong so it can defeat Sanglant. Human flesh and human blood strengthens beasts as no other nourishment can. Take him!"

Her captain waited with a dozen men, eyeing the hounds and the man, and as they hesitated Alain met each guard's gaze in turn, looked each one right in the eye.

None ventured forward.

"Take him!" repeated Sabella furiously. "Why do you wait?"

All at once every dog in camp began barking. Only Sorrow and Rage remained silent as soldiers hoisted their shields and held their weapons ready. It was too dark to see anything in the forest, but a wind picked up, whipping the treetops into a frenzy. The beggars erupted, like the dogs, into a clamor, and crying and weeping they fled into the forest.

"It is not the bandits they fear," said Conrad. He stepped back toward the safety of the line with his sword drawn and his head cast back to scan the night sky. There was nothing to see except the darker toss and tumble of treetops as they danced in the wind. Unseen, but heard, a branch snapped explosively and crashed to earth.

"What is this?" demanded Sabella, and it wasn't clear if she spoke of Alain or the inconvenient storm.

An ungodly screech tore through the air, causing every man there to start and turn his eyes upward.

"Light! Light!" called the captain.

Men lit sticks and held them up as flaming torches, and perhaps half those kindling flames were whipped right out by the wind.

Overhead it flew, vast wings beating as it skimmed over the camp. It was far bigger than the first guivre Sabella had captured and maimed years ago. The flames cast glimmers along the scales of its underbelly, like golden waters rippling. From the company below there came no sound, not even gasps of surprise. There they all stood, rooted to the ground like stone and staring at the creature they meant to track down and make captive.

This was all the chance Alain needed. He had already made his decision. He had caught the scent. He saw its tail flick out of sight as it vanished into the night, flown into the northeast where the rough ground reached its worst. He whistled softly to alert Sorrow and Rage and, while the rest of the company stood frozen with shock and fear, he and the hounds walked away into the dark forest.