Hanna heard, from the direction of Kassel, an answering shout of horns, followed by the blare and call out of the Varren camp. She pressed her mount—a calm mare, thank God—and raced down the road and into the forest with braids flying and her heart galloping in time to the staccato of hooves. A bronze face stared at her from the trees, but she did not look closely into the dense foliage. Better not to know. At any instant she expected a cold arrow to pierce her flesh, but none came.

The feeling that swelled in his heart was the one that humankind called "amusement." For how many winters had he gathered his forces, forged alliances, destroyed his enemies the tree priests, and studied the ways of the enemies of the Eika? Never had it occurred to him that they would be so dedicated to their own destruction, their own petty quest for power, that they would burn their own great hall even as he battered upon their door. Their scouts knew of his army, yet still they commenced their civil war, clan brother against clan brother.

His troops had marched down along and beside the road called by its builders the Clear Way, for its width and straightness. He had learned that it was built upon an ancient road engineered by the Dariyans, and it was therefore the quickest and easiest route from Autun to Quedlinhame. Hearing the start of the battle, he had backed his forces into the trees. Cavalry was always at a disadvantage within the forest.

"Last Son," he called. "We will advance to the rise where the road emerges out of the forest. There, it ramps down into the valley. In that place they have set a barrier across the road. We'll take that ground, and from the height we will watch. Do not throw down the banner that flies in that entrenchment.

Let them believe their own people still control the barricade."

"Lord Stronghand! A rider approaches along the road, out of the camp of the Wendish army!"

He saw her, and he knew her, because he had dreamed her once— the only person in all of humankind whose dream he had ever shared besides Alain. She was one of the messengers called Eagles, but in all other ways a mystery to him, except for her pale hair so white that it might have belonged on any good Eika brother.

"Let her pass," he said.

He smelled the sweat of her fear, and he admired the stoic courage that had propelled her onto a road she must know was overrun by her enemy. She galloped past. The sound of her passage faded. He lifted his banner and tapped it three times on the earth, that infinitesimal tremor enough to alert his brothers, whose rock-born heritage gave them a keen sensitivity to any whisper in the earth.

His force was mixed with various groups of human allies, most of them former slaves and poor folk out of Alba and the coastal reaches of Salia. Well trained and finely honed, eager for glory and the fruits of victory, they moved out. Scouts ran up in stages to report that there was minimal defense at the barricade because the soldiers stationed there were peeling back to meet the double-pronged attack of the Wendish host.

He looked back to see the wagon of the shaman come into view, rattling along the stone of a road meant for foot and horse traffic, not for wheels. The horses were skittish. The one-handed servant had dismounted to lead them, leaving the cleric to cling to the driver's seat. Strange that it should all fall into his hands so easily.

As this wing of his army surged forward, he called Last Son to his side and gave the standard into his keeping. Together, they advanced.

The barricade had been thrown across the road where it came out of the forest. Just beyond the barricade, the ridgeline sloped sharply down, and here the famous Dariyan ramp descended into the valley.

Thanking the Lady and Lord with each panting breath, Hanna pounded up to the wagons braced across the roadway and shouted at the only pair of faces she could see within.

"Let me pass! I am an Eagle in the service of Princess Theophanu! I carry a message for Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad!"

She got no answer.

From this vantage, she had a wide view of the valley. The wind was strong up here. Behind her, she heard the drumming of rain, yet the sun shone over the valley. Riders had plunged out of the city and were now punching deep into the northeastern edge of the Varren line, where the entrenchments were weakest and the surrounding hill face very steep. Turning, she saw the flash of color as Theophanu's army worked free of the eastern hills. As the princess' soldiers closed with the rear entrenchments, her infantry tightened their ranks, and archers, working in the gaps in groups of twenty or thirty, directed their fire into the wood picket and at the heads peeking above the half finished earthen berm. The shields closed on the picket, and great axes reached out to hew or pull down what obstacles they could. Few had fallen as far as Hanna could see from this distance, but pikes, axes, and arrows responded from the other side of the berm.

The battle had begun in earnest.

"Ai, God! Ai, God! Run!" screamed the soldiers manning the barricade. They were only a dozen, but they scattered like rabbits as a hawk dives, some down the ramp and some stumbling over the side into brush and trees.

She turned.

On the road behind her, coming up through the trees, marched the van of the Eika army, shield upon shield, approaching in silence except for the tramp of their feet. But even this sight and sound did not make her freeze with dread. Not this, but another thing.

Above the fray drifted a resonant whisper, so faint she only registered it because she had heard it before and knew what it was: the tolling of bell voices, each of them calling.

Sanglant.

Horns shrilled the alarm. The Varren camp—what Ivar could see of it—erupted into movement.

Lord Berthold called to their guards, who were staring nervously toward the royal tents. "What news, friends?"

But the guards gaped at the heavens as abruptly the sun broke through the clouds. They shaded their eyes with their hands, squinting under the bright glare, paralyzed.

A captain ran past, and shouted at them. "To arms! To arms! Get to your unit!"

"What of the prisoners?" they called after him.

"Leave them! We're under attack!"

They bolted.

Berthold dropped into a crouch, Odei, Jonas, and Berda gathered around him, kneeling. Ivar stood off to one side, but Brother Heribert was still picking through the mouse nest, dangling the dead creatures by their tails and swinging them gently back and forth as if this movement might restore them to life.

"Listen," said Berthold. "We have to stay here. Await Wolfhere."

"Shouldn't we make a run for it?" asked Jonas.

"No. The Varrens might kill us for trying to escape, and the Wendish attacking might mistake us for Varrens and we'd still be dead. Just stay put."

"Oh, God." Jonas pulled a hand through his curly hair and tugged on it nervously, grimacing when he yanked too hard. "I hate staying put."

Heribert looked up, a tiny corpse hanging by its tail from his fingers. "He comes." He dropped the mouse on the ground and, when he rose, stepped on it without seeming to see it. Bones crackled, but it had no juice left in it.

Jonas winced. Berda scrambled away as Heribert took a pair of steps closer. Berthold stood.

Shouts and cries clamored from the direction of the town. The rumble of charging horses shook the air. They dashed to the boards and tried to peer through the gaps, where they had a chance of seeing the field of battle. Working two of the boards to get the crack to open wider, Ivar caught a splinter in the stump of his missing little finger. Cursing, he squeezed it out, together with a tiny pinch of blood.

"Do you see?"

"It's too bright!"

"Could you move? It's my turn!"

A crash sounded behind them. All turned, except Heribert. Just beyond the byre gate, a wagon had broken its axle and tipped, spilling barrels and weapons onto the ground. One barrel rolled out of sight. Another had broken open, and ale soaked into the dirt. Men swarmed over the wreck, cursing.

An arrow whistled out of the sky and slapped harmlessly into earth. Berda lifted her head and sniffed at the air.

"Come quickly."

Ivar yelped. Jonas shrieked. Berthold jumped and stumbled. Even Odei, usually stolid and passive, skipped back to slam into the wall. Berda was already turning to acknowledge Wolfhere, who stood by the back wall. A cloud—like flour floating around a baker—of white mist evaporated as he beckoned. Light shone through a gap in the boards, illuminating his legs.

"Stay behind me. We'll run east. If we can make it up the ramp, we can hope to lose ourselves in the hills."

"Like we did before?" asked Ivar with a sneer.

"Better than staying here," said Berthold. "Caught in the middle."

"Put on these." Wolfhere placed on the ground six amulets, crudely woven out of grass and herbs. He shoved a board to one side, ducked down, and slipped through the opening. Heribert was gone after him before anyone else could react, and then Berthold dashed forward with his attendants behind. Only Ivar hesitated, but he hadn't the courage to stay behind.

He knelt to pick up the last amulet with his mutilated hand. It was as crudely and hastily woven as a child's daisy necklace, and when he lifted it to his nose, wondering what plants had been woven into it, he sneezed hard. Fern interlaced with wolfsbane; a few pale flowers he did not recognize were crushed in the tangle.

At the wagon's wreck, a sergeant showed up, shouting orders. Ivar pushed through the loose boards, then huddled there aghast, blinking in the sunlight, as he realized that the others were gone.

Around him, groups of soldiers sprinted toward the entrenchments, but of Wolfhere and the others he saw no sign at all among the farmstead's buildings, the pitched tents, and the many wagons. Maybe it was only the light that blinded him.

"Hey! You, there!" cried a sergeant, coming around the corner of the byre. "We need help here!"

Ivar settled the amulet around his neck. The sergeant pulled up short, whipped his head from side to side with a comical air, and scratched his head; giving up, he trotted away.

But now Ivar could see a faint cloudy trail twisting and turning away past the farmstead cottage, around and under wagons, and cutting across open ground where it zigged and zagged in the manner of a drunken man weaving to avoid obstacles. He ran after them, praying under his breath. His hand hurt.

Blisters rose on his palm, as though he had burned himself, and the scars on the stumps of his fingers began to ooze blood.

He jogged between tents, stumbled on a guide rope, jinked sideways to avoid a line of men marching double-time who did not see him, and paused midway toward the lines to catch his breath, hand pressed to his side. The pain bit deep in his hand. His neck was beginning to itch where the amulet brushed bare skin. He tugged it down, but that pressure broke it, and it unraveled to spill like water onto the ground. Steam hissed over him and dissipated in a cloud of stinging gnats that buzzed around him in two swift circles before roaring heavenward and transmuting into a blaze of falling embers.

"Hey! You there!" A brawny man armed in mail but no tabard strode toward him, brandishing an ax in each hand.

Ivar drew his sword.

"No, you fool! Take these axes and get east to Captain Sigulf's line there just north of the ramp.

Can you take a pair of spears as well?"

"Best run with these and send another man after me," said Ivar as he sheathed his sword and grabbed the axes. He took off. Without the amulet, he could not find their trail. He reached the road and ran toward the ramp visible in the distance because of its immense size. After a while, he had to stop to get his breath and to measure the lay of the land.

The sun's heat made him sweat. On all sides, dark clouds built as for a storm. Wind creaked and groaned in the far forest.

The valley of Kassel was like an uneven bowl, with its steeper, higher rim to the north and east and a lower rim to the south and west. Most of the western ground was striped with fields, a long stretch of land that terminated where the slopes rolled up a shallow rise and sprouted trees. A line of unevenly spaced fruit trees ran through the middle of the fields, parallel to a narrow waterway. The Varren camp had been planted where the more rugged eastern and northern slopes gave them some protection, and also to straddle the Hellweg where it cut diagonally from northeast to southwest through the valley Here, because of the contours of the earth, Ivar could sight easily both downslope and up, southwest and northeast.

On the northeastern flank, the siege works were under assault by cavalry smashing through the lines.

He watched, in awe of the power of the warhorses. Infantry advanced out of the town gates, pushing straight for the middle trenches and pickets. To the east and southeast, troops wearing the red and gold of Saony poured down off the hillside to press the outer works. The banner of Arconia flew above this line, moving up and back as troops needed reinforcement.

The famous road, the Hellweg, was easily visible from here where the massive ramp lifted off the valley floor in a smooth incline that reached the low ridgeline and struck thereafter straight into the forest.

Some idiot had thrown a barricade of wagons across the top of the ramp. He saw small figures poised there among the wagons. A rider—a tiny, toylike figure—galloped out of the forest along the road and pulled up before the barricade.

"Hai! Hai! For Conrad!"

The ground trembled beneath him. Several hundred horse trotted past, with Duke Conrad at their head. They moved twenty abreast, spilling to either side and splitting around Ivar where he stood on the road. He shut his eyes and held his ground and prayed, but they were past him before he finished the psalm. They thundered toward the northeastern flank.

Only a fool would run to the east now. The fighting was fierce all along the line of the valley from north to east to east-southeast. How Wolfhere expected to get up that ramp, even with sorcery, he could not imagine.

"God help me." He threw down the axes and ran for the west. If he could escape into the woods, then he might hide and crawl and get to Hersford Monastery safely. It was better than dying here.

The western siege works were lightly guarded as men peeled off in twos and threes when called to reinforce the entrenchments under attack. Ivar scrambled under a wagon whose wheels were wedged tight against blocks of wood. He skidded down the loose soil of a ditch and up the other side.

"Hey! You!" A soldier called to him from the pickets.

Ivar got up onto the level ground of fields, put his head down, and ran, expecting an arrow to slug him in the back, but no arrow came. Finally, he was winded and hurting and so ragged with pain that he dropped to his knees. He was well away, out of range, surrounded by shootlings of wheat or oats, he wasn't sure which because he was breathing hard and his eyes were watering and because anyway these fields had been trampled recently so there wasn't really much growing here, not as there should be.

His hand throbbed as if he had been stabbed. A shower of cold rain raked him and passed on, blurring the fields and rattling through the fruit lines standing a stone's toss west of him. A shallow irrigation canal cut away the ground just in front of his knees. He stared at the streaming water until he thought he would drown.

Must go on.

He struggled to his feet. With one long dash, he could reach the forest. Thank God the Eika had not come up along the southwest road yet.

Directly ahead, several score riders emerged from the cover of the woods and swept over the fields toward Varre's now mostly-unprotected western flank. Horns blared an alert. He turned to look behind.

Arconia's banner swung neatly away from the battle along the southeastern entrenchment and, with several hundred horse, raced to cut off this new threat.

He was trapped between. There was no chance he could outrun them. With a shout, he flung himself into the canal.

After working the flank, Sanglant's cavalry cleared the entire first line of defense. The Varrens retreated, or cowered in the dirt, or died, while the infantry advanced to the second line of defense built hard up against the base of the road where it ramped up the eastern slope. Here, trenches and barricades met them. Sanglant led the charge through gaps carved by the milites in the stockades. His lance was long since shivered in the corpus of some nameless Varren soldier, but he worked mayhem to either side with his sword. To his right, Liutgard's cavalry leaped shallow trenches and low pickets but were at once caught in a maelstrom of fighting and could not advance.

A rumble swelled as many hundreds of horsemen rolled down on them from the center of the Varren camp. A red stallion banner waved above the lead rank. Conrad was riding to meet him.

A single line of pickets separated Sanglant's line from the road, but the Varrens had massed here and were fighting fiercely as Kassel's milites struggled, numbers thinning. The milites had taken the brunt of the assault, and had been outnumbered to begin with.

Dust rose from the hooves of Conrad's approaching troops, obscuring the battle joined to the southeast, where Theophanu was trying to break through. Best she hurry. He could no longer see Liutgard's white tabard among the hundred riders stalled before a low berm off to the right. She—or her captain—was trying to get through to the road some hundreds of strides west, in order to come up behind.

"Give me one more breach!" His hoarse voice rose over the tide of battle. "One more, and the day is ours!"

But a quick survey showed he had only two-score horse still up, and at best several hundred infantry, some joined by riders who had lost their mounts but could still fight.

A shout rose as the milites forced the barricade in three places, throwing down the pickets and fighting in the trench. Sanglant swung around. Fest jumped a trench and got up the berm to the roadbed, where they stood alone with the road open before and behind, fighting clashing all along behind him, and a shallow slope leading south to the open ground before. Many hundreds of riders galloped out of the Varren camp toward Sanglant's breach.

Hooves rang on the road as the foremost rank of Conrad's heavy horse, four abreast, gathered their charge. With spear held overhand, in blackened mail and black tabard and riding a fine black gelding, Conrad closed, pushing out to the front of his company.

A score of Sanglant's own good cavalry got up on the road behind him. He urged Fest to a trot, a canter, and the gelding broke into a full charge with Sanglant having nothing but sword and shield to fend off that long spear.

For once, Sanglant was taken by surprise.

As they closed, Conrad released his spear and veered so short that, although he pulled toward the shallow slope, his horse stumbled to its knees but rose with rider still on its back.

The spear struck true, piercing Fest through the meat of the neck and coming to rest against Sanglant's mail along the curve of his hip and thigh. The gelding crumpled, spilling Sanglant forward.

The shaft of the spear splintered as Sanglant tumbled in a complete roll before pushing off his shield onto his feet.

The ranks hit each other, passed through—as cavalry sometimes did—with a few men going down and the rest reining hard to get their horses turned around to strike again.

As Conrad approached, high above, he drew his sword and whistled sharply. His men circled, but did not move in on Sanglant's unprotected back.

"I would not kill you, Cousin," Conrad cried. "Surrender, and I'll give you a grant of land, a wife of your choosing, and peace to live out your days. Once, I think, that was all you asked for."

These words struck him as might a sword's blow. They mocked him.

/ don't want to be king, he had told his father at Werlida, many years ago now. I want a grant of land, Liath as my wife, and peace.

What had changed? Was it only his oath to his father, sworn as Henry lay dying? Or had his heart changed? Did he now covet the very things he had long ago scorned?

All this passed in a heartbeat as he raised his sword and made ready to reply. It was strange how bright the sun was, and how high the dust bloomed where the horses rode, and how the music of war seemed muted once a man had fixed his will on the one who opposed him.

"Your son, or daughter, to marry my daughter, or son," added Conrad, "and in this way your line and mine shall rule jointly in the years to come. I am legitimately born, you are a bastard. The army loves you, but the church does not. I have Tallia and my own royal claim. It's the best offer you'll get. What do you say, beloved Cousin?"

Ai, God.

The wind spun a whirlpool of bright air up onto the roadbed. It swirled around him, making him blink, and then flinch. A chilling touch bit at his mouth. An icy breeze stung his nostrils. He staggered.

It poured into him like the breath of winter, and when it grabbed his throat he could not speak and when it swallowed his eyes he could not see and when it filled his limbs he could not move.

In the empty darkness that closed over him, all he heard was an echoing, inhuman voice.

"Where is he, the one I love? Where is Heribert hiding? Is he not in here? Where has he gone?"

6

HANNA abandoned her horse. She scrambled under the barricade and ran down the ramped road into the valley on the trail of the fleeing Varren guards. How stupid this was she considered only fleetingly knowing what was behind her. The battle raged to her right, and horsemen flying Conrad's stallion banner galloped up from the left. To the east, Theophanu's army brawled in the entrenchments. It was impossible to tell who was holding firm and who falling back. Ranks of cavalry danced through the western fields, too distant to make out clearly.

The fighting along the northeastern pickets and trenches had the look of men tiring, pacing their strikes, parrying more than charging, just trying to hold their position, but who was winning and who losing she could not tell. It was all a churning mass of men and horses running, crawling, limping among the ditches and dead men and scattered stakes and broken stockades.

She had gotten about halfway down the ramp and, miraculously, no arrow had stuck her when, just beyond the base of the ramp on level ground, a lone horseman wearing a magnificent dragon helm broke up out of the entrenchments and gained the road. Riders struggled after him. She bent to grab a spear fallen onto the road. Lifted her gaze. Stunned at what she saw, she dropped to her knees.

Conrad was charging, out in front of his men. The rest of his cavalry thundered in from the south.

Even if his remaining troops reached him, King Sanglant was hopelessly outnumbered.

"Tsst! Sorgatani ahn na i-u-taggar."

A cloudy swirl of air spun up the side of the ramp. A stout woman appeared on the road in a showering mist of white powder, out of nowhere. A moment before she had not been there.

She was not Wendish; she had a flat, reddish-brown complexion and wore stiff skirts and heavy boots very like those of Kerayit women. A scrap of dried vegetation fell from her neck. It hissed where it struck the stones.

"Berda!" A young male voice called out of empty air. Hanna heard scratching sounds, like squirrels scrabbling on rocks, but she saw no one nearby.

Below, Wendish riders pushed their horses up to the road, following their king. Above, the woman who had appeared out of nowhere dashed up the ramp.

Hanna shouted after her. "Come back! There are Eika—"

A pair of Eika strode into view at the top of the ramp. They paused to observe the battle with the kind of leisurely posture that a man might wear in contemplation of a pleasant run of hunting in a field overrun with grouse. One held a spear and the other a banner pole fixed with a crosspiece and hung with strips and strands that waved in the wind tearing along the heights. Storm clouds rose like a wall behind them, black towers piled high in the heavens. The woman ran straight up the broad ramp toward the invaders.

"Hanna!"

She recognized that voice.

She turned.

Wolfhere stood behind her.

She shrieked and jumped backward, ramming into another body. They both fell in a tangle. Now that she was touching him, she saw a young man dressed in lordly manner in a fine linen tunic dyed green and trimmed with handsome embroidery, leggings, and handsome calfskin boots well worn from walking.

Laid flat on the slope just below the rim of the road were two other young men, one Wendish and the other—she could never mistake those looks—born to the Quman tribes.

"Where did you come from?" she demanded of Wolfhere.

"G-g-got to get out of here!" the youth said raggedly He was out of breath. Blisters had blossomed around his neck, which was curbed by a crudely woven necklace of dried leaves and fern fronds. "But where do we go now, Berthold?"

She pulled away from him and pushed to her feet. Eika above, battle on all sides, and below a tableau that fixed Hanna's gaze as though she looked down a tunnel. A man wearing blackened armor and riding a black horse charged solo against the dragon-helmed king, the two closing along the road, weapons raised.

In one breath, they would collide.

"It is time to go, friend," said Wolfhere as though talking to himself. "Go find him."

One breath caught in a gasp of exhalation as, beside Wolfhere, a cleric fell to his knees with gaze lifted heavenward and mouth open.

Light spun in the air, like the flash of a mirror catching the sunlight, but when she blinked to protect her eyes, it winked and vanished. The cleric crumpled to the ground.

The crash of men meeting resounded. One horse stumbled, but came up with rider still on its back, while the other horse staggered and fell, tumbling its rider onto the ground. Men cried out in fear, while others shouted "huzzah!" or called frantic commands.

The young lord crawled whimpering back to his fellows, off the road. "For God's sake, let's get out of here. We're right in the middle of the worst of it, and we have no weapons! We'd be better hiding in the byre!"

Wolfhere knelt beside the fallen cleric and shook what appeared to be little more than skin and bones wrapped in tattered robes.

"What's happened to him?" Hanna knelt beside him.

"He's dead." Wolfhere grabbed the body by the ankles and dragged him off the road.

"What are you doing?" cried Hanna. She was stuck there, standing and staring first at Wolfhere, whose behavior made no sense and then at the appalling sight of Sanglant alone on the road, unhorsed, with only a shield and sword and no more than a score of riders to protect him against hundreds of mounted riders armed with spears and lances under the command of Conrad the Black.

Maybe if she could reach the duke before he struck the killing blow.

She took a step, and a second. A hand closed on her ankle and tugged her so hard she felt flat and barely caught herself on her hands before her face smacked into stone. The impact jarred up through her wrists and arms.

She shouted in pain. "What are you doing? Let me go help him."

"I cannot," Wolfhere said, his grip like iron chains. "I swore an oath long ago. Now, at last, I must pray it is fulfilled."

Stronghand's men cut a path through the barricade wide enough to allow the Eika army to pass through four abreast, and wide enough to admit the little wagon that bore the Kerayit shaman in whose body was woven a spell that killed. Stronghand pressed through the van and, together with Last Son, paused where level road hit the impressive ramp that carried the road down into the valley.

"Easy pickings," said Last Son. "Look there!"

A person dressed in stiff skirts bounded onto the road and ran right toward them. Halfway down the long ramp, the white-haired Eagle, who had been allowed to pass by his troops unharmed only a short while ago, hesitated out in plain sight where she was a target for every arrow and anxious spear.

Five other men scrambled up the rim where the ramped road gave way into a sloping side.

But Last Son was pointing to the far west, not at the people below. "I see the signals, from the forest's edge."

Light flashed where his troops caught sunlight on the faces of obsidian mirrors.

"Do you see her?" Stronghand had not looked west. He surveyed the sprawling battle, spreading in the valley as some units retreated and others advanced but in no order whatsoever. Here, the Wendish flourished; there, they collapsed. Among them, fighting in one place at the hand of the Wendish and in another place appearing on the side of the Varren levies, rode a woman who wore no distinguishing tabard, only plain mail, a battered shield, and a serviceable sword. He knew who she was all the same.

No man could stand before her, who dealt death on all sides: the Lady of Battles, beloved of humankind.

"What are you looking at?" asked Last Son.

"Never mind," said Stronghand. "Our work will be done for us, as they slaughter their own kind.

Hold the men back on all flanks. I'll hold to my word, that we will raise arms only against those who raise arms against us. Bring the Kerayit wagon forward."

Last Son gave him the standard before trotting off through the vanguard. Other Eika moved up alongside Stronghand, some silent, some laughing to see the carnage, some bored because they weren't fighting, and one sniffing at the air and rubbing at an ear as at a change in weather.

There was a change, a cold wind blowing out of the east and a hard hot iron scent, mingled with a dull boom that shuddered away and rose again and again. Rain pattered in the trees. Wind moaned and rattled as the storm strained against the unnatural leash holding it in: The power of his staff battled the storm, keeping it at bay.

There! Difficult to distinguish because of the shouts and screams and clangor of arms rising out of the valley, a shriek lifted from deep in the rear ranks of his army only to sigh away, buried under the din.

The human creature running up the ramp reached him. Showing no fear, it halted before him and spoke in the Wendish tongue.

"She is here. The holy one is with you. I am of her tribe. Let me join her."

He laughed. "What manner of animal are you?" he asked, because this one was like no other human he had met. It was dressed in the clothing and gold and bead baubles and headdress customarily worn by women and it moved with a woman's mannerisms, as he had learned to recognize them, but it smelled like a man.

"I am called Berda. Let me go to the holy one, lord."

Its lack of fear intrigued him. And he found loyalty commendable.

He signaled safe passage with a lift of his hand. The creature called Berda darted into the Eika army.

A duel between chiefs had broken out on the road below, where it leveled out, but its outcome did not interest him. His nose stung. An itch tickled his eyes. He shrugged uneasily, not liking the taste of the air.

He lifted his standard, testing the wind. An old magic licked his skin, quickly evaporating. This was not sorcery, then, but something natural. Perhaps after all it was only the tension of the storm that, lowering over them, could not break. No, they were safe from magic, as they had been since the day he bound the old sorcerer's magic into his staff.

He held his position, as still as stone, waiting for the tide.

The thumping feet of the Eika deafened Rosvita as the wagon rolled along, nestled within their ranks. They were like the ocean, stretching in every direction as far as she could see: a pair of them ducking past the bole of an ancient oak; a line of twenty to either side on the road; heads dipping in and out of sight in the woods; a sea of backs moving in disciplined order ahead of her.

How strange it was to see human soldiers marching with them, most with the golden-blond hair common to the Alban race. Conrad the Black's first wife had been a woman as fair as she was haughty, but her vexatious tongue had charmed Conrad and her milky-white skin, next to his dusky complexion, had caused a stir at court when she first arrived. They were a handsome couple, admired by all even though he had angered the Alban queen by stealing the princess away from her motherland.

Strange how the mind wandered, when it was trapped. A powerful wind raged at their back, heard as fury in the forest reaches. Rain sprayed them, but just when she expected to get hit by a squall, it faded off most uncannily. She shivered, although she wasn't cold. The horses felt it, too, or perhaps it was only the presence of the Eika—that unnatural smell like the flavor of stones baking in the sun—that unnerved them.

Through the door set into the cabin of the wagon, Sorgatani spoke, and although Rosvita tried to pity the Kerayit shaman, she feared her pitiless sorcery far more. / am not so openhearted.

"Hear you what comes?" piped the high voice. The accent rasped on the syllables. "Beware! We must run! Speak to Breschius."

All Rosvita heard was the tramp of a thousand and more marching feet, some slapping the roadbed and others trampling in the forest growth where branches scraped and leaf litter squeaked moistly underfoot.

Ahead, a vista opened where the hills gave way. The troops parted to let them through as they rolled past a crude barricade of old wagons meant to block the road but now shoved aside or chopped to pieces. Ahead, she saw the Eika standard, held by the one who called himself Stronghand. He seemed almost lost among the hulking bod-ies of his soldiers, who had crowded up to survey whatever scene unfolded in the valley below. What she heard—the clash of shield, the ring of sword and spear, the hissing of arrows, the cries of men and horses as they were cut down—told her the story of a battle raging beyond.

But after all, Rosvita did also hear a faint sound that rang eerily like the tolling of sonorous bells.

Something moved in the forest off to the right. A rabbit shrieked in death.

Or was that a rabbit?

The smell of the forge swelled around them. Pitiful screams trembled in the air, each cut short.

Breschius tripped, caught himself by the reins, and swung around to stare, with mouth agape and eyes squinted, back down along the road where they had come. The cart horses flicked their ears and jolted unevenly forward.

"Ai, God!" he cried, stumbling alongside. "Do you hear them, Sister?"

The tolling of bells had a voice. The voice spoke a name.

Sanglant.

"What is that?" Rosvita demanded.

"We must run! Those are galla!"

"Lord and Lady bless us!" She clutched the seat. A stinging wind blew up from behind. Now, too late, she heard the screams of men dying close at hand. Fear prickled her neck. She broke into a sweat.

Breschius wailed. "Ancient and most terrible!" he cried. "We have no weapon that can harm them!"

The horses kicked in their traces and tried to bolt, but the harness held them. Around them, Eika turned to face the threat coming up from behind. At first she saw nothing, as they saw nothing from which one should run, nothing that one could fight.

Pillars of blackness swayed within the trees, swarmed along the road. They were towers of darkness moving in daylight, ribbons torn from the darkest storm and ripping through the ranks of the living. Most of the human soldiers panicked, dropping to the ground or pushing to get out of the ranks so they could run, but the Eika met the threat with a steadfast courage she had to admire. They held their ground as the galla engulfed first this man, and then another. Some leaped against the foe only to vanish within. Others danced at the edge, only to find themselves taken from behind by another of the creatures. None fled as any sane man would. Soldiers were flayed to the bone, although the remnant left of each Eika so consumed was not white bone at all but the color and texture of stone. A few cried out warnings to their brothers. Most died in silence.

"Rosvita!" cried Breschius. "Run! I cannot leave the princess, but you can save yourself."

The galla sailed through the forest and skimmed the roadbed. The throbbing of bells deafened her. She was too frightened and bewildered to move except to clap her hands over her ears. The gesture made no difference. This sound was not carried on the air but through the bones of the earth.

Sanglant.

The wagon rolled to the highest point of the road, just where it turned into the long incline down a massive man-made ramp. Here Lord Stronghand stood, staring with a most human expression on his face as the galla swept down on them: he was purely astonished, gripping his standard and shaking it at them as though to drive them away. An Eika soldier leaped, and shoved him off the ramp. They tumbled away down a steep verge with pebbles and small rocks skittering away in ragged trails.

"Fast! Fast! Evil demons come!" As out of nowhere, a Kerayit woman appeared on the road, shouting as she grabbed the reins of the horses out of Breschius' hand. "The holy one must be saved!

Fast! Fast!"

She hauled, pulling them forward, yelling in a language whose words were meaningless to Rosvita but which might mean something to Breschius or Sorgatani. Breschius collapsed to his knees, giving way as the foreign woman swung up into the driver's seat. As the wagon passed him, Rosvita reached to grab him. He raised his hand to hers, and she grasped it, but his fingers slipped out of her hand as the newcomer whipped the horses ruthlessly into a run.

"Hei! Hei!" she called in a husky voice. "Make way!"

They left Breschius behind.

Rosvita yelped in fear as the wagon hit the incline. The weight of the wagon pressed it forward into the hindquarters of the beasts. The horses opened into a panicked gallop. A few people stood at the side of the ramp, heads slewing sideways as they stared upward in horror at the wagon careening down.

Farther below, horsemen blocked the road, but they reined aside to get out of the way There was one person in the middle of the road, staggering as though drunk.

The foreigner struggled with the reins, desperately trying to turn them aside from the man fixed in their path, but the horses had opened into a wild gallop and did not—could not—respond.

Rosvita shut her eyes. She whispered a prayer, asking forgiveness for her cowardice, and pitched herself off the side.

When she hit, her breath was knocked out of her as shoulder and hip took the impact. Pain stabbed. She rolled, hit the rim, and tumbled over the verge, coming to rest in a knob of grass grown in among the rocky in-fill.

Ai, God, she hurt as she crawled up the side and lay gasping. Breschius appeared on the ramp far above, calling after them. One moment she saw his familiar face, a good man who had served God faithfully and with joy his whole life long; the blackness devoured him as the galla glided through the space his body inhabited.

She shouted his name, too late, and because she was a coward, she scuttled back from the road as a dozen or more galla flowed down the slope, all fixed on one object.

Below, men scattered. All men but one.

When the wagon out of control and the horses in a blind panic hit the plane where the incline leveled out, the wagon bounced. An axle shattered. A wheel came loose.

The entire assemblage slammed right into the man wearing the dragon helm who stood in the center of the road. His body crumpled beneath hooves. The wagon lurched over him, then overturned and skidded with a grinding roar to one side as the horses screamed and, tangled in their harness, were jerked after it. The driver was thrown free and hit hard, lying still. One horse struggled to rise but fell back on a broken leg. The other did not move at all.

The man's body lay on its back on the ground, helm torn free, black hair fallen over the dark face.

There is something about a body that is dead that tells the eye even at a distance. Once the soul is fled, the flesh is nothing but meat.

Never had any held breath lasted as long. It seemed to Rosvita that she had gone utterly deaf, or that all the noises of the world had been smothered.

All but one. A grizzled hand closed on her arm. Pain jarred her shoulder, and she gasped and gritted her teeth.

"Good Lord. Can it be you, Sister Rosvita?"

Her vision was blurred, but she knew that voice. "Wolfhere?"

"Quickly, we must move back. We are not safe here. Crawl this way, out of the galla's path."

"What has happened?" she asked weakly as he dragged her off the ramp.

She was bleeding, scratched, battered, and addled, with a headache building inside her head like the pressure of a storm about to break. But she was too terrified to mind those small inconveniences. The breath of the forge sank into her as the galla passed. Their presence stung her skin like the touch of fire.

They sang in their deep bell voices, but in that tune sounded only one word over and over. Yet the tone in their voices had changed. She heard no statement but a question, as a child cries for its lost mother.

Sanglant?

Wolfhere flung himself down beside her and ducked his head to keep out of sight. "It did not play out as I intended," he remarked, not really seeming to speak to her but rather to himself as might a man accustomed to traveling a long road with only his own company to keep him occupied. "I cast a desperate throw, not sure it would work. Yet it seems I have succeeded at long last. He has been well protected by the geas his mother wove into his body."

"What do you mean?" she rasped, staring in horror as the galla swept down toward the body, as soldiers scrambled out of their way.

Even those most loyal to their captain and king were too terrified to stand their ground. "What did you intend?"

His voice came to her from a distance, as if muffled by wool, but it was nevertheless astoundingly cool, collected, and at peace.

"Sanglant's death. Just as King Arnulf commanded."

XI

AN UNNATURAL MEASURE OF LUCK

1

THE irrigation ditch was not more than an elbow deep and barely shoulders' width. Its bed was slick and slimy, but Ivar dug in anyway, swallowing water that tasted of dirt and the foul leavings of night soil. The thunder of hooves, closing in on his position, shook through the ground.

The two forces hit right above him. The crack of the impact clapped louder than any storm. Hooves pounded around him as horses were yanked sideways or backward, as men pressed the enemy. Water slopped over his head. He scrambled for purchase on the slippery sides, gulping water, coughing, trying to get out from under. When a broken spear clattered onto his back, he dragged himself out of the ditch and scrambled for the line of fruit trees. Cutting zigs and zags through the seething push and pull of the skirmish, he got free of it, only to stumble over a dying man. He wrenched the man's shield off his arm and ducked under it as he sprinted for the nearest tree. A line of riders broke off from the melee as a whip uncoils. He flung himself flat as they galloped over him. A hoof grazed his head, the merest clip, like the brush of the Lady's Hand. A mercy. A blessing.

He crawled like a worm through the weeds, with the shield held over his back. One blow in passing shivered it, but it did not shatter. Dirt ground into his elbows. He tasted a coating of weeds as pollen shaken loose by the skirmish dusted his mouth. The line of trees loomed before him, and he stumbled under their cover, such as it was. He huddled against the thickest trunk he could find. A small green apple, early lost from the branches, got under his thigh, digging a painful knot. Scant shelter this proved.

The trees were too far apart to provide cover. But it was the only shelter he had against the melee crashing around him. He peeked over the rim of the shield.

Wichman of Saony he recognized at once. No one else fought with such reckless disregard for life and limb. The lord yowled and cackled as if it was the greatest sport in the world as he drove a dozen of his riders in a wide sweep through a field and cut around to try to catch the flank of the guivre's company where the banner of Arconia flew. This path took him right between the trees, his company the weft pushing through the warp of the row of trees. He rode full out, ducking under low hanging branches, bellowing like a madman.

"For the phoenix! For the phoenix!"

Sabella rode with her troops, although she lagged behind to let the front rank meet the charge between ditch and trees. An Arconian captain leaned forward to gain a clean shot at Wichman's head.

Lord Wichman's lance caught the man high on the shoulder at the base of the neck and came out through his back with a spray of gore. Their horses collided. Wichman flew over the top of both horses and the other man's slack body, and landed on his back not ten paces from Ivar. His helmet flew off and rolled along the ground. Arconian riders whooped, and pursued him.

Unsteadily, Wichman rose by sliding with his back against the tree as he reached for his sword. But another soldier's lance struck him in the right shoulder, pierced armor and flesh, and pinned him to the tree.

The melee dissolved into chaos, spinning out to all sides as the fighting broke into knots of frantic battering and pressing. Only at this center did a weird lull descend.

Ivar caught his breath—two breaths—as his gaze was drawn outward over the field of battle; he could see everything, all the way to the walls of Kassel. The fighting was spread across these fields with no purpose or pattern he could discern, a jumble of motion punctuated by the ring of arms, the cries of the wounded, and the obstacles created by the now ruined siege works. Only the huge ramped road that led up the eastern slope into the forest stood clear, an easy landmark to spot from any distance.

Strangely, the only significant motion on that portion of the road was that of a runaway wagon flying down the ramp toward lower ground. A fence of men scattered on the high ridgeline, pouring away from the road. Thunder growled as the solid drumbeat that had shaken the air stuttered into an erratic hammer. Bells tolled. This deep throbbing so frightened him that he pushed up to his feet, meaning to bolt for the western woods. That resonance burned like fire along his skin Twenty men or more wearing Arconian tabards drew up before the trees. A single rider dismounted and pushed back her helm. Lady Sabella's face was streaked with sweat, and she was clearly straining, red in the cheeks and white with fatigue about the eyes.

"So, Wichman." She hefted a wicked-looking mace as she walked toward the helpless lord.

"This will put a stop to your rebellion. You're a pig of a man."

Wichman grinned, although it was more a baring of teeth as he struggled against the lance that had torn through his shoulder. He was pinned tight to that trunk. "That don't mean much, coming from you, Cousin."

She snorted. Her gaze skipped over Ivar, but then she halted, looked a second time, and fixed her gaze on him in a way that made him squirm. "Good God above! I thought I recognized you. You were dead, you faithless liar! It's your fault that I lost my noble prisoners and my pretty cleric. You son of a bitch."

He had not even a knife to defend himself. She raised the mace, and closed on Ivar.

A wild roar of voices lifted off the battlefield as a storm of rage and fear swept the field. Above all this, riding on the wind, a shrill cry rang down from the heavens. A vast shadow scudded over the valley of Kassel. Men staggered to a stop where it passed. Ivar could not move, although he bent his mind on a helpless struggle to get his legs to move. Even Sabella paused in mid-step, her mace lifted above her shoulder, in the act of commencing the blow that would smash Ivar's head in.

All became still. Thunder faded. The rattle of drums fell silent. Men simply ceased moving. Even the horses could only roll their eyes in fear. Moans rose from terrified men as from a choir, but these voices were soft, muffled by this heavy weight that drowned all creatures on the field of battle.

Wichman grunted. His hand twitched. His fingers curled around the hilt of his knife, and he eased it free of its leather sheath. Somehow, where all others stood in a stupor, as if turned to stone, he flicked his hand.

The knife flew, winking.

God knew that Wichman had always possessed an unnatural measure of luck, although only God knew why such an unpleasant man should gain what was denied to others.

The blade buried itself in Sabella's throat.

At first, she hung there as though held up by the same stupifying force that had seized all of them. A single drop of blood pearled from the wound.

That shrill cry raked through the valley a second time. This time Ivar saw the beast fly overhead. Its scaly hide shone with a poisonous glamour that made his eyes ache. Its baleful glare paralyzed all that looked its way, and because it was both beautiful and terrible, all men and women stared to see it fly above them.

"Call me a pig," muttered Wichman. He slumped. His eyes rolled up in his head.

Sabella dropped, with the mace still gripped in her hand and the knife embedded in her throat.

Ivar could not move and he could not hear, not the wind, not any cries of humankind, not the bells.

He thought he had gone deaf until the silence was broken by a mundane sound, heard from this distance only because of the uncanny hush.

It was the cheerful barking of a pair of hounds.

2

EVEN the plans of the canniest leader will sometimes go astray, because no person can anticipate the twists of fate. It is always the unexpected blow that brings you down.

He holds the standard devised by the old priest. Its haft is painted wood, and the cross guard is adorned with feathers and bones, unnameable leathery scraps, the translucent skin of a snake, yellowing teeth strung on a wire, the hair of SwiftDaughters spun into chains of gold and silver and iron and tin, beads of amethyst and crystal dangling by tough red threads, and bone flutes so cunningly drilled and hung that the wind moans through them. The haft hums against his palm as though bees have made their hive inside the wood.

This powerful amulet, woven in and into and of the wood pole with its cross guard, protects from magic all those he holds in his hand and under his protection.

Yet there are creatures in the world that have a power akin to magic, woven into their very bones, but which are not themselves magic wielded by the hand of another.

This truth he has overlooked.

When the bell voices throb in the forest, when the pillars of black smoke glide out of the trees and flense his soldiers, he knows fear for the first time. His Eika are the bravest of all soldiers; they do not fear death because they have already eaten death in order to become men and not remain dogs.

What stalks them now is not death but obliteration, and even so they leap to fight it although they are overwhelmed. What the creatures of darkness eat is the soul.

He is shaken. Standing on the road, surveying what he knew until this instant was to be his greatest victory, he is too stunned to move out of the way as the towers of black smoke cut through his soldiers and loom over him.

Last Son slams into him, and they tumble over the side of the ramped road and roll in a cascade of pebbles and dirt around and around and around. The standard is ripped to pieces, shattering. All its parts and pieces spill and spray in every direction Perhaps it was a root that tripped him up, or his own feet, or a hollow in the path they followed.

He fell sprawling and smacked into the dirt. The hounds at once swarmed him to lick his face and tug at his clothing. For too long—an instant or an eternity—he lay stunned as a growing wind shook the trees and the guivre chirped restlessly, tail thrashing in the brush.

He was blind to what lay outside him, but in his inner eye a vision of the past bloomed until he could see nothing else.

The Lady of Battles and her white warhorse climbing the Dragonback Ridge.

Brother Gilles stuck through with a spear by a ravening Eika marauder who rips the precious holy book out of the old man's trembling hands.

Aunt Bel standing in the doorway, staring out into the wet night wondering what has become of her foster nephew.

Sparrows eating crumbs off Lackling's hands as the half-wit weeps silently with joy.

Stronghand chained and a prisoner, howling to provoke the hounds.

Lavastine sitting at the count's table, measuring Alain with a keen blue gaze.

Lady Sabella with her hair plaited back and dressed in gold-and-silver ribbons, but left uncovered, like a soldier's.

Brother Agius hand in hand with Biscop Constance as they whisper late in the night, captive both in body to their enemy and in heart to each other—a marriage long ago forbidden and impossible. Beyond them, Biscop Antonia's eyes are open, and she watches as they comfort each other. She is a huge yawning maw sucking in life and air, a gate through which the most unnatural forces can cross. Envy is the shadow of the guivre, the wings of death.

She has called the galla from afar place that is no part of this world, or of the aether that circulates through all things, through the cosmos itself.

"Go," he whispered into the dirt. He shoved himself up. He faced the guivre and caught it with his stare. "Go! As I command you, who spared you once, this favor I am owed in recompense. Go to the field of battle. Fly there until I say otherwise."

On the ground it was an ungainly thing, but when it leaped and caught the high wind, it flew with a grace that makes a man smile with joy to see God's hand in the heavens working such beauty. It cried out once, and then he lost sight of it as it winged away over the trees. He brushed off his forearms and his legs, and pulled a twig out of his hair. Sorrow and Rage sat watching, panting although the wind was brusque enough to make eyes sting when you faced into it. The sky overhead was as dark as pitch, but it was not raining, although it ought to have been. The Lady had called this storm, and it followed no natural course.

"Come." He broke into a steady run. The hounds loped with him, one before and one behind. Yet it was too late. Too late. The battle had already started; he had not prevented it after all.

Except that it is never too late. The world continues on its path despite the accidents and tragedies and joys that unfold in the life of any given individual. You must press forward so long as you have breath. Toil in those fields that God cherish most. You have done as well as any man.

So Lavastine had said. But Alain had lost Tallia, and he had lost Lavastine as well. He had watched the count turn to stone, his own effigy.

Memories chased him as he ran, images rising and falling away in time to the beat of his footsteps pounding on earth.

A dawn battle against the Eika when the Lady of Battles rode at his side.

Henri accusing him of lying in order to gain a count's favor.

Liath weeping by the hearth fire.

The battle at Gent, and the ragged, half-wild prince stumbling away from the victory feast, retching because he was unable to tolerate food after starving for so long.

Tallia on their wedding night. Always there would be a measure of pain, remembering this.

Remembering the nail she had used to scar her own hands.

I have been tricked.

He had lost the county of Lavas in the end and marched east as a Lion, where he had killed a man to show mercy and had been himself killed.

Death had taken him to Adica, and death had taken Adica from him—although surely Adica had never belonged to him or he to her in those ancient days, forgotten now by humankind. Only the burial mounds remain, which is memory of a kind, a thing tangible but mute.

He had found peace at Hersford Monastery for a short time, yet peace had a fragile heart and this was soon broken. Falling into the hands of bandits, he had killed the man once known as Brother Willibrod, a creature without a soul who had sucked the life out of others to maintain his rotting shell.

After that, memory scattered. He lost his anchors—Rage and Sorrow—and it seemed to him that his memories of that time toiled around and around in an endless circle until a sharp blow sent him plummeting into the pit. He wandered for a time in darkness and after this in light, and for a time he was caged and after this the tempest rose and the sea swamped him and the dragon broke free of the earth that had imprisoned it for a time beyond memory. Beyond any memory but his own, who because of the intervention of sorcery had witnessed the ancient spell which had set all this in motion.

Who else recalled it?

One: the centaur shaman. But when he sought the breath of her soul in the living world, he could not find it.

Two: the WiseMothers, who were born out of that ancient conflagration and who had spread the nests of their children across the northern lands. But when he sought the spirit of their slow minds in the aether, he could not find them.

It falls to me to do what is right. That is reward enough in the eyes of God.

When he came to the forest's edge high above the fields, the lines of battle had already been drawn and overrun, but soldiers on all sides stood in an uncanny stillness, frozen by the guivre's stare. He stood on the edge of a steep hillside torn by an avalanche. It was loose with debris, too dangerous to cross or descend.

He called. The guivre swept a wide circle and came back to him. He grabbed the hounds by their collars and led them along a tree trunk that had fallen out into the open space to make a precarious ledge. The log slipped sideways under their weight. The hounds yelped in panic. The guivre swooped low as the log gave way and rolled out from under Alain's feet. Its claws fastened on his shoulders, and the startled hounds were silenced as they, too, were yanked upward with the collars biting into their vulnerable throats. Their weight seemed likely to pop his shoulders out of joint, but the guivre plunged with dizzying speed down along the barren slope and over its desolation of splintered and jumbled trunks, snapped and shredded branches, and scraps of vegetation marked by clusters of blooming cowslip and vine-pinks that had taken root since last autumn's tempest.

The lay of the ground—the steep slope dropping precipitously into a hollow backed up into a trio of low hills—had protected the walls of Kassel from destruction. Here the mass of debris had piled up into a fresh berm. The guivre skimmed low along the north and east flanks of the town. Soldiers were fixed at attention along the walls. No one pointed, and if any screamed, all Alain heard was the whistling of wind and a distant mutter as of humankind trying to find a voice.

Made mute and frozen by the guivre's roving gaze, every creature there stood helpless.

Ahead lay the scene of the worst slaughter: a line of siege works overtaken by a charge, men fallen every which way and horses broken down with wounds and shattered limbs. Cavalry had fixed in their tracks along the road—from the height he discerned the paving slabs and graded foundation of the old roadbed, strung so straight and turning at such precise angles that it could easily be seen to be the work of the old Dariyan Empire.

A ramp bridged the bluff that separated the valley from the higher forest to the east. Many soldiers stood paralyzed on the road and within the trees. Along the hills, Eika corpses lay strewn in horrifying numbers, and among them gleamed white bone remains of human soldiers, their bodies consumed by the passing galla.

A score of galla poured down along the ramp. The timbre of their bell voices rang both despair and pain.

He kicked as the guivre dropped low over the high end of the ramp. He and the hounds tumbled to earth, and because he released their collars they bounded away, barking as they found themselves free.

At the base of the ramp lay a wrecked wagon fallen on its side. The bodies of the two horses and the driver were wrapped in the tangle of harness. The cart held a tiny house built over its bed, which remained mostly intact, but the axles had splintered and the wheels shattered into a dozen spars and slivers. A single body sprawled in the middle of the road.

Not one soul moved except the galla. They had crossed into this world through a rent in the fabric of the universe; the guivre's stare could not hold them. They flooded down the ramp and churned in a whirlpool about the wagon and that one isolated figure.

He heard them call: Sanglant.

But they could not find Sanglant—they could not find his essence, the substance that caused him to be alive.

Alain approached along the road while, in a mirror of his own movement, a single mounted soldier drew close to face him from the other side of the picket of circling galla. The iron heat that roiled from them forced him to stop well back. That taste of the forge burned his skin and coated his tongue with a sour flavor. But the black pillars—each a void—eddied around the body fallen in the road. They did not approach or retreat; they seemed caught between purpose and confusion.

"He served me well for many long years, dealing death but never suffering death," said the Lady of Battles. "I wondered if any hand could stop him while his mother's curse protected him, but I think that now he is truly gone."

Sanglant had gone under the wheels and been besides pierced through his abdomen by a jagged spoke flung hard away in the wagon's crash. His mangled body was slack. The strap on his dragon's helm had been severed and the fanciful helmet itself had tumbled an arm's length from the man. A single griffin's feather had come to rest across his body, and possibly it was this guardian that held off the galla.

Possibly Sanglant was still alive.

The cold smile worn by the Lady of Battles goaded him forward. The hounds began to follow him, although they were terrified, so he commanded them to stay well back from the whirlpool of darkness.

He walked, and where he walked the galla swung wide around, avoiding him. His skin prickled where the tide of their passing brushed against him, but their touch did not devour him. As he walked through their ranks, he listened.

They had voices but not precisely words; they spoke, but not with a verbal language in the manner of humankind and her cousins. It sounded at first like the hissing of snakes, but even the hissing of snakes carries meaning. Deep within the tolling he heard what they were trying to communicate.

Pain. Pain. Pain. The breath of this world scalds us. We suffer. Let us go home. This soul called Sanglant is the gateway through which we can cross. Where has it gone?

He knelt beside Sanglant and pressed a hand to the side of that dark neck, but found no pulse.

Around him, the galla loomed, more deadly than storm clouds and as black as the Pit. He could see nothing beyond them, only this patch of road and the body of the prince. It was as if the world had vanished, or never existed. Only the Lady of Battles gleamed, a presence without physical substance that yet permeated the world.

In the beginning existed the four pure elements: light, wind, fire, and water. Above these dwelled the Chamber of Light, and below them, in the depths, the Enemy, which is darkness. By chance, as the elements moved and mingled, they transgressed the limits set them, and the darkness took advantage of the momentary chaos to rise out of the pit and corrupt them.

"You will ever be with us," he said to her, "but even so, I will never cease in the struggle against you."

"Stay beside me." Her smile was that of an irresistible temptress or a generous mother. It would be easy to believe that smile a worthy gift, and a worthier reward, but he knew better.

"So I will. You will not escape me."

He picked up the griffin feather. Rising, he stepped in among the galla.

"Go back," he said to them, extending his arm. They swayed into him, crowding as he cut through the black substance of the closest galla. With a snap, and a hiss, and a whiff of the forge, it vanished. The others followed, one by one, until the last agonized voice was drained from the world.

When he turned, hoping he had banished her, the Lady of Battles waited. The griffin feather held no power over her. He placed it on the body.

"The guivre holds these combatants in its thrall," she said, watching him. "It cannot do so forever.

Then they will fight. There is nothing you can do to stop it. You have admitted as much yourself. This is the way of the world."

"You are mistaken."

She laughed, turned her horse and, between one breath and the next, vanished into a shower of mist. Rain swept the field and passed swiftly into the west. Thunder boomed. The guivre shrieked, awaiting his command as it circled on an updraft.

He whistled. The hounds loped up to him, butting him with their great heads. He scratched the base of their ears and touched a palm to their cold moist noses. They turned from him and approached the body of the prince with more caution, ears down and tails stiff. Sorrow growled, and Rage nudged the body with her muzzle.

The dead man opened his eyes.

Rage startled back. Sorrow set up such a racket of barking that Alain clapped his hands over his ears. The body jerked in a most unnatural manner. Arms and legs shifted awkwardly as it clambered to its feet in a way no human person had ever moved. The griffin feather fell off its body to the road, and it seemed not even to notice.

"Who are you?" demanded Alain. He felt a little sick, seeing a puppet in what had once been a proud man.

"Where is he?" said Sanglant.

Although his strong tenor with its hoarse scrape sounded the same, Alain knew this was not Sanglant talking. Blood oozed from his belly, smearing the rings of his torn mail. Gray guts pouched from the ragged edges of the wound. One of his hands was smashed, and his leg left should not have been able to hold weight with the foot twisted sideways to the knee and the thigh crushed and shredded until flesh and bone were intermingled.

"Where is the one I love? They told me that I would find him if I came here, but he is not here."

"Whom do you seek?"

"The ones born of earth called him 'Heribert. ”I loved him because he favored me who was ugliest among my cousins, for we are born in the sphere of Erekes and many of us have not the beauty of our higher brethren. Yet he spoke kindly to me when others did not. But he walked away by the command of the prince of dogs and even when he returned to me he was not there. Only his shell. Where has he gone?"

"He is dead, I think," said Alain gently.

"What is death?" it asked him.

It used the face of Sanglant to speak, but its grimaces showed neither grief nor anger. It did not comprehend the emotions of humankind and could not imitate them or even know that it might strive to do so. It was a creature of the aether—its substance blazed blue behind the eyes of the prince—and although Alain did not know how it had been coerced out of the spheres and down to Earth, he could see that it had become trapped here because the daimones of the upper air have one thing in common with humankind: they can love.

"Our souls depart this Earth when it is time for them to ascend to the Chamber of Light, a place which lies above the uppermost sphere," he said. "Where is the soul of the body you now inhabit?"

"There is no soul here. It was here when I first came looking, and I pushed it aside while I searched for the one I love. But then a weight struck us and I felt how the threads that weave it to the flesh were severed."

"How can this be? No creature male or female can kill him. You are sure no other soul resides in that body?"

Horribly, it cracked its head sideways, looking up into the sky. Blood leaked from parted lips, although otherwise the face was unmarked, yet the vigor that made Sanglant handsome was extinguished. Here now was merely an assemblage of indifferent features. "I can apprehend its track. It has crossed out of the lower air into the sphere of Erekes."

“Ai, God," whispered Alain. His tears fell as Sorrow whined and Rage gave a hesitant wag to her tail. "He is a good man. Can you not fly after him and bring him back?"

Without anger, without curiosity, without desire, the daimone spoke. "Why should I?"

Alain shrugged helplessly. The hounds nosed his hands, and he stroked them, who loved him and who had stayed with him all this time only because of the affection that binds creatures one to the other.

This essence cannot be touched and cannot truly be named, but it exists in the world just as the Lady of Battles does, knit into the bones of the Earth and of every living creature that dwells on Earth or in heaven.

"Because Heribert loved him."

It stared at him as would a man who is amazed to hear you speaking in a language he expects to understand but does not. It blinked, but the movement was as steady as that of a sunning lizard. One shoulder twitched. It lifted a hand and regarded fingers and palm without expression.

Wordless, it staggered, limbs jerking, and turned around in a full circle as if seeking a missing friend.

Then the body collapsed onto the ground. Emptied.

He knelt beside it, but Sanglant was dead.

Weeping, he pressed a hand against the dead man's forehead. His voice was no more than a whisper. "God, please heal him."

But the corpse did not breathe, and did not stir. No heart's blood pulsed under the skin.

The guivre's hot breath blew over his back. It hit the road so hard that the shudder passed up through his feet. Its huge beaklike snout lowered until it was at a level with his face. Its breath was hot but not unpleasant; it smelled of calming frankincense.

Its long neck swayed hypnotically, and its eyes whirled until he fell into those depths and saw, within, the field of battle laid below him and all the forestlands and even farther beyond, as the land fell away until all earthly landmarks became tiny scratches on the vast tapestry that is the world. Rivers were threads of blue, and forest swathes of multicolored green. Towns and houses poked ragged holes in brighter colors. Here and there the many creatures crawled within the interstices of the weave as do mice within the church walls and among the meadow flowers. It seemed to him that each living thing appeared as an infinitesimal flare of light and heat against the colder and weightier spans of stone which buttress the architecture of life.

Spread across the lands lie the many stone crowns, a vast loom of magic. Faint passageways link them. Threads strung between crowns and stars grow taut, or loose, as the world shifts its position, ever rolling, and the stars rise and set on their endless round. A bright figure trailing a wispy blue ghost of aetherical wings races along one of those corridors in the company of shadowy companions; their trail leads them to a crown glittering above the solid, familiar compound that he recognizes as Hersford Monastery.

But greater wonders draw his gaze away.

For an instant he believes he can glimpse the span of the heavens and the spheres themselves: the pearl that is the Moon, icy Erekes, rosy Somorhas, the blazing furnace of the Sun, Jedu's angry lair, the hall of Mok, the dazzling light of Aturna. Beyond these and locked around them rests the realm of the fixed stars, with its heavy silver sheet of sky and flashing, molten surface of liquid aether.

And farther yet, beyond all, you may find the pure heart of the universe which is light and darkness, whirling in a silence so vast that it is both something and nothing, substance and void, an infinite span impossible to comprehend but also as finite as a grain of sand resting in the palm of his hand.

This is the Abyss, into which all of humankind falls in the end. Yet it is also the Chamber of Light, incandescent and encompassing, the rose of compassion whose bloom restores the world.

The guivre nudged him, and he fell flat on his buttocks and found himself back on the road with the hounds whining and his head aching from that guivre's breath blasting right into his face. What calmed others roused in him a nagging discontent. Restlessness stirred in his heart.

Liath was returning to Wendar, but she would come too late to save her beloved.

No matter. Grief and anger will always ride in the world. There was still work to be done.

He stood shakily and raised both hands. "I release you," he said to the guivre. "Go free, friend. You have honored the trust I placed in you."

Its chirp was as high and light as that of a baby bird, incongruous in such a huge and terrifying beast.

It opened its wings, spanning the width of the road, bunched its haunches, and sprang heavenward. The draft slapped him back down on the road. The hounds were flattened by it, and men and riders who had until now remained poised like statues were flung aside, tumbling to their knees, horses pushed sideways within the circle of that powerful gust. It gained height, circled once, and arrowed northwest, back toward its old haunts deep in the wild forestlands where few men dared hunt.

He dusted himself off, got to his feet although every muscle twinged, and sought the paralyzed figure of Conrad. The duke of Wayland had been tossed from his horse and was now grimacing, on his knees, struggling to rise and grasp his sword as the influence of the guivre waned. Alain drew the sword, wresting it out of the duke's hand, and heaved it to one side. It rang on the stone paving and tumbled off the roadbed.

Conrad blinked, shook himself, and with a roar of anger staggered to his feet. "What means this?" Then he saw the mangled body and the shattered wagon. "Ai, God!" he cried, stumbling forward to kneel beside the corpse. "What is this? Sanglant! Cousin!"

"Call off your men," said Alain.

Conrad looked up at him in surprise, noted the hounds, and with a shake of his head recognized him.

"Call off your men," repeated Alain. "The battle is over."

Movement stirred along the road, out in the siege works, and up along the ridgeline as soldiers found their legs and crept cautiously to get a view of the field. The silence was oppressive, but it also made men hesitant to strike the first blow at others as bewildered and groggy as themselves.

Alain trotted over to the Wayland's banner bearer, a towheaded lad still rubbing his eyes as he searched for the banner he had dropped which lay folded in the dirt. He wore a horn looped to his belt. Alain tugged it free before the lad had recovered enough strength to protest, and raised it to his own lips.

Four times he blew. The call rang over the field. When it faded, a second horn answered and then a third, one higher voice and one lower. A captain wearing Wendish colors fell to his knees beside Sanglant's body. He lifted a horn to his mouth. It stuttered a weak, weeping cry, and broke off as he folded forward in anguish. Conrad reached to comfort the captain, resting a hand on his shoulder.

To the southeast, a procession—mostly on foot—cut a path toward them, flying the banner of Saony. Of Arconia's banner there was no sign. Individuals rose from the cover they had taken. All converged on the wrecked wagon: a cleric in torn and dusty robes; a dozen soldiers groaning as they saw the wreck of their noble leader; a young Eagle with white hair; a pair of young, dazed-looking noblemen supporting an equally young man who bore the look and dress of the Quman tribes; a straggle of Eika shifting a cautious advance down the ramp while, above them, their brethren eased a pair of wagons onto the slope. Alain saw the one he sought at the head of this company. He was limping as he eased his passage with the broken haft of what had once been his standard. Alain handed the horn back to Conrad's standard-bearer and loped forward with the hounds at his heels.

"Brother!" he called.

The Eika raised a hand in salute.

When only a few paces separated them, Alain halted as Stronghand halted. They stared at each other because they were, in this way and at this moment, scarcely more than strangers although they had dreamed deep into the life of each other for so many years. Stronghand had changed. He had an Eika's posture, bold as predators are bold, accustomed to the kill, but a man's expression.

"I am come." Stronghand scanned the field with a look as weary and filled with pain as that of any human captain who has seen his soldiers scythed down before him. "I am come to find you, as Old-Mother and the WiseMothers commanded me, their obedient son."

3

SOLDIERS made room as Hanna pushed through the crowd to the body and its attendants. No more than a dozen people had reached the wreckage, but more were coming, shaking free of their stupor to stagger in from all sides. Men wept openly, while others stared in shock, eyes dry. The body had been horribly crushed and mutilated by its impact with the wagon. She could do nothing for the dead man.

But Sorgatani might yet be alive in the overturned wagon.

Turning, she stared into the face of a slender Eika warrior. Like all his kind, he smelled of the scent that rises off rocks baking in the sun. His eyes narrowed.

"I have seen you before." It was startling to hear human words issuing from an inhuman mouth.

She sidestepped without answering, flushed as adrenaline raced. He held no drawn weapon, but he looked as dangerous as any sharp spear and he had besides many ranks of Eika filing down the ramp after him. The front ranks of this silent army halted at a prudent distance rather than descending into the midst of the shaken crowd of Wendish and Varren combatants.

Sorgatani's sorcery could protect her if fighting broke out. It was a coward's instinct, but she was numb to the bone, still reeling from the torpor that had gripped her when the guivre screamed overhead.

Her skin burned with a fading memory of the passing of the galla. So close that they might have devoured her, as they had so many others.

All gone, although she did not know what had driven the galla away. Sanglant was dead, but his body was not consumed.

She shuddered, taking a too hasty step away, and tripped over the tangle of harness. A strong hand caught her. She looked up into the face of a young Quman warrior. Swearing, she yanked her arm out of his grasp, and jumped away.

"Hanna! Steady!" A hand braced her.

"Wolfhere! How are you come here?"

"It seems Sanglant is truly dead." The familiar face and his kindly expression soothed her.

"How can it be? I thought his mother laid a geas on him, that no creature could kill him."

He shrugged, surveying the wreckage. "What wagon is this? Not Wendish, by the decorations.

What manner of creature bides within? There is sorcery knit into those walls."

Hanna flushed. "A Kerayit shaman, that's all. She can have known nothing of this. It's an accident that her wagon struck the prince—the king—at all. You cannot—you must not—let the blame fall on her."

"So she is a woman," he murmured. "Nothing strange in that."

He looked at the broken form of the driver, who had fallen underneath the still living horse. The beast's hindquarters were crippled, and every time it tried to struggle up, it collapsed again on top of the driver's battered corpse. The other horse was quite dead, neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Flies buzzed around its open eyes, although, strangely, no flies afflicted Sanglant's corpse. "Lord Berthold, here is your healer. I fear she is dead."

A trio of young men pressed forward to surround the body of the Kerayit woman who had been driving the wagon.

"Where did she come from?" asked Hanna. "God Above! Where did all of you come from?"

She stepped back as the Quman picked a route past her. He knelt beside the dead woman and pressed his mouth to her mouth in a gesture nothing like a kiss.

Sitting back on his haunches, he spoke to his companions. "Dead in truth, Lord Berthold. No breath lives in her."

"A faithful servant," said the one called Berthold quietly, "if quite the ugliest woman I've ever set eyes on."

The Quman shrugged. "She was one of that kind. I know not your word. In our language, we say they have two spirits."

Hanna happened to be looking toward Wolfhere. Now the Eagle's gaze fixed on the young Quman.

His breathing quickened, and he leaned over him to frown at the body. It was true that the Kerayit had a coarse face and big hands; her felt skirts, hiked somewhat up because of the way she had fallen, revealed thickly muscled calves not quite those of even a soldierly woman.

"What do you mean?" The Eagle reached for the skirts to pull them up, but the Quman half drew his sword, a gesture hidden from everyone but the five clustered around the dead Kerayit. The movement was just enough to show that he would allow no desecration of the corpse.

"These, the Kerayit, are enemies of my own people. But we respect those of two spirits. It is ill luck to trouble these who are touched by the gods."

"Odei!" Lord Berthold spoke impatiently, seeing how folk moved around the corpse of the king not a stone's throw from them. "Let us do her honor, who kept faith with us, but let us not stand here talking about nothing. If you have something to say, say it."

"Have you not such kind of people among your tribes? A person born in a girl's body with the spirit of a man. If she can take on a man's life, then who will say she is not a man? This one, also. She holds a woman's spirit, and lives a woman's life, even if she wears a man's body."

"What are you talking about?" cried Berthold.

Wolfhere rose with a grim smile on his face. "So the riddle is solved. And the weapon unlooked for.

No creature male or female can harm him. It seems I am lucky rather than clever." He touched Hanna on the elbow. "Fare you well, Hanna. Stay strong, for the Eagles will need you."

"What do you mean?" she asked him, but his expression told her nothing and his gaze had already lifted beyond hers to reckon the movement of soldiers and nobles that churned in a massive current drawing them all to the heart of the battle: the fallen king.

"Yes, what do you mean, Odei?" demanded Lord Berthold. "Do you mean Berda is really a man?

And only dressed as a woman? And we didn't notice all this time?"

Odei's jump from crouching to standing grabbed Hanna's attention. Quman soldiers were notorious for being the most phlegmatic of men, immune to hardship, safe from emotion, but he was really angry.

"Berda was one person, with two spirits. So it is known among our people, who respect those so favored. We must give her proper burial rites." Seeing the stricken look on the young lord's face, his own expression softened. "You cannot know. You see only with your outer eyes. My uncle is a shaman. He taught his nephews to look with the inner eye."

"Wolfhere," she said, turning back.

The old Eagle had vanished. She turned all the way around, but he was nowhere to be seen among the milling crowd, with more on their way, and the banner of Saony and that of Fesse moving purposefully in their direction. All coming here. All wanting to blame someone.

"Oh, God." The wasp sting burned in her heart.

The axles had cracked. The wheels shattered. The driver's seat had torn free. Worse, the wagon had fallen onto the side with the only door. She slapped the skin of felt stretched taut over the unseen scaffolding that covered the bed of the wagon.

"Sorgatani! Sorgatani! Can you hear me? It's Hanna!"

Did the luck of a Kerayit shaman survive her death? Or was it the other way around? No person can survive without a measure of luck. She remembered the stories she had heard concerning the death of Prince Bayan and his powerful mother.

"Sorgatani!"

A feeble voice reached her. "Hanna. Here I am. But I'm caught beneath. . . ." The rattling cough made Hanna's jaw tighten with fear. "I'm caught. I can't get free."

"Be patient! Try not to move."

She grabbed for the first arm that came within her reach, which happened to be that of Lord Berthold, whoever he was—the name sounded familiar, but she didn't have time to figure it out.

"My lord! A team of men, I pray you, to set this wagon upright." When he hesitated, looking at her in confusion, she added in the tone she had learned from her mother, "Now!"

They were all addled by the cascade of events. He reeled back, beckoned to his companions, and started giving orders. The Quman youth dragged the corpse of the Kerayit woman aside so it could be readied for burial, and the other youth hailed passing soldiers and set them to work.

She trembled, running hot to cold and cold to hot. She had seen Breschius consumed by the galla. Ai, God! Who would serve Sorgatani now? She must find allies quickly if she meant to save the shaman's life.

So many voices crowded her, men wailing, women shouting commands, the tramp of feet, and a chaos of loose horses and dogs. So many smells assailed her, but death's perfume smote her hardest of all.

Tears veiled her sight. Mist spun out of the mountains of storm clouds that surrounded the valley, and the bright blue blaze of the sky overhead was starting to bleed to white as the cloud cover crept back in. The wind shifted west to east, and east to north, and north to south, whipping her braid in gusts that made her eyes tear. Men surrounded the wagon and got their shoulders and boots and hands around it and under where there were cracks and hollows in the roadbed to accommodate such levers as spars of wood and spans of iron.

As they shouted, heaved, and lifted, her gaze was drawn to the top of the ramp, far above. The Eika soldiers gathered at the height formed columns along either side of the road as wagons cleared the line of that foreshortened horizon and began a cautious and controlled descent.

There walked Brother Fortunatus. Safe! She wept to see him, to see others she knew. Behind them flew the proud standard of the Lions.

"Hanna! Hanna!"

But it was not their voices calling her. Their gazes, as all gazes, were pulled to the center of the whirlpool. To the dead man.

She looked west, and saw a figure hobbling at an awkward canter, waving to catch her attention.

He was filthy, as though dragged through the mud, and sopping wet with bits of vegetal matter and slops and drips of slime shaking off him as he ran. But despite the muck, anyone could see the startling flame red of his hair as he lunged up onto the roadbed, grabbed her elbows, and stared at her in disbelief. He had grown taller, his shoulders had gotten broader, and altogether he was a different person in stature and expression, but he was still the same rash, stupid boy she had grown up with.

The one she had always loved.

"Hanna!" He gaped at her as if the sight of her baffled him.

To her surprise—and manifestly to his, for he still looked dazed— he pulled her close and kissed her for a very long time.

"I pray you, excuse me."

They stumbled apart, Ivar blushing and Hanna reeling. The weather had changed, or the world had.

She wasn't sure which, but it had gotten hot all of a sudden.

There was a man standing beside them with two huge black hounds, although in truth the hounds were cringing as they gazed at the approaching wagons. One whined, and the other whimpered, tail and hindquarters tucked tight like a dog that fears it is about to receive a whipping. The man knuckled their heads affectionately with one hand, but regarded Hanna and Ivar apologetically as he brushed the back of his other hand along his chin, the gesture a man makes when he feels a little sheepish.

"I pray you, forgive me," he said. "But are you not an Eagle, called Hanna? The one who knows Liathano?"

She blinked. She knew she was gaping. Her lips were warm.

Ivar was still staring at her like a madman, with wide eyes and slack mouth. He appeared not to have heard the question at all. Only he said, without looking at the other man, "You're the one who was named heir to Lavas."

"So I was. I'm called Alain."

"Liath is lost," Hanna cried. "She's missing."

"She lives." He said it so calmly that she believed him. "I have a favor to ask of you, Eagle. Ride west along the path that leads from here to Hersford Monastery."

"I know it," said Ivar.

"Why?" said Hanna. "What of the Eika?"

"An Eika staff will grant you safe passage. Although I think with that hair you'll have no trouble with the Eika, for they must believe you to be kin to them."

"What do you want?" she said.

"Liath is coming to Hersford. It seems likely she will ride this way afterward."

"Ai, God." Hanna looked at the corpse.

The banner of Saony had reached the road, and the crowd parted to let Princess Theophanu pass through. She stopped dead beside her brother's body, gazing at him with such a lack of emotion that all at once Hanna felt grief rip straight into her ribs.

"She hides what she feels," remarked Alain. "But the currents run deep in that one."

“Ai, God," said Ivar. "Liath doesn't know!"

"I'll go." Hanna had thought nothing could be worse than reporting to Sanglant that Liath was missing, but now she knew that wasn't true. There was something much worse. "I'll go," she repeated, because it was better this way, that Liath not ride into Kassel unknowing.

"If you arrive before she leaves Hersford Monastery, convince her to stay there, if you can," Alain added. "I'll see you get horses, and that staff. I pray you, wait off to the side."

"What of Sorgatani?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, turning back.

"The Kerayit shaman. In the wagon. She may be injured."

"I'll see she is cared for."

"Nay, you don't understand! She is bound by a terrible sorcery. To look on her will kill you, or any man or woman. They fear her, those who came with us. But she is no threat to us! She must be cared for. Only I can do it."

He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. He had dark eyes, and an implacable stare that pinned her to the ground. She did not draw breath. "Hanna. Listen to me. I will see she is safe and cared for."

She nodded dumbly, and he moved off, and after a moment she shook herself and walked off to the place where he had told her to wait for horses.

"I'll go with you," said Ivar, following her. He was still red. He was still filthy, shedding muck and fingerling twigs with each step. Some of the mud had rubbed off on her tunic and cloak. But he clasped her hands between his. He bent to kiss her forehead, quite tenderly. "I'll not let you go alone. Never again, Hanna."

Dear Ivar.

She tried to speak, but the sight of him, his look, and his touch, strangled her, and all she could do was cry.

4

SIX carried the litter off the field of battle: Princess Theophanu, Duke Conrad, Duchess Liutgard, Captain Fulk, and two young lords, one chosen from each army to let the battered soldiers see that for now, at least, a truce had been called.

They trudged with their burden through the gate, along Kassel's broad north-south avenue, and up the steep street cut into the hillside that gave access to the fortified palace, home to the dukes of Fesse.

Many wept as they passed. Some of the townspeople who flowed out to line the streets whispered to see their duchess with her hair uncovered in grief, and dirt and tears and blood smearing her face.

Soldiers with their helmets tucked under their arms stared in shock as their commander and king was carried past. One man holding a bow broke down and had to be supported by his fellows. Even the slinking street dogs kept to the walls, whining with anxious respect.

Rosvita walked directly behind the litter. Behind her came Lord Alain and his hounds, escorting Stronghand, who marched at the head of a hundred loyal warriors. Seeing these creatures enter the town through open gates caused a hush to fall. Some people crept away into their houses, seeking refuge, while others—and many of the soldiers—fingered their weapons thoughtfully. The street dogs did not bark, only faded away into alleys and open spaces grown high with untended grass. Yet among that century of Eika walked a dozen human soldiers, fair Alban men with glossy golden hair and darker-haired men speaking in the Salian tongue. They walked not as slaves but as comrades-in-arms.

There are deep forces at work here, Rosvita thought, and she feared them.

It hurt both her shoulder and hip to toil up that slope to the palace, but Rosvita fixed her jaw and wept a little in order to tolerate the pain. She concentrated on placing one foot ahead of the next. A sharp twinge jabbed through her right hip each time that foot struck earth. Her right shoulder was already tightening into a screaming knot of agony. She was sweating and crying at the same time, too bewildered and stunned to know just what it was she was crying over.

Before they entered the palace through its wide double doors, the litter bearers paused in the forecourt to catch their breath. She halted with a grateful sigh. Turning, she caught in her breath. This vista she had admired before, years ago, when Henry had fought Sabella and defeated her. Then, too, a guivre had stalked the field, but the outcome had proved very different.

How quickly the outlook changes. Kassel town had gained population in the intervening years, much of it recent judging by the fresh look of hovels and houses erected within the shelter of the town walls. There was less open space, and more fields beyond the walls given over to cultivation. Yet half the ground outside— where fields of rye and barley had been sown—was trenched by siege works, while other fields had been trampled. The detritus of battle lay strewn as though a flood tide had swept over the valley floor.

Just outside the town gates, the armies of Wendar and Varre gathered their forces. They were frighteningly few compared to the many dead left lying on the ground beside the pickets or in the earthworks or across the flat fields. What she saw, looking farther afield, were Eika pulling their net in around the valley itself, ranks and ranks of infantry filing out of the forest. That portion of the army marching with Lord Stronghand along the Hellweg had certainly been decimated, but he had brought many more with him, too many to count. Thousands, she estimated. Even at this distance she could identify among his soldiers the human men who had turned their back on humankind to march with the enemy.

The Eika, it seemed, had arrived in time to witness the slaughter of both the Varren and Wendish armies. Lord Stronghand had merely to stand aside and watch them do his work for him.

She found the Eika lord standing directly behind Alain. He had a sharp, intelligent face, and he, too, studied the lay of the ground and the disposition of forces in the valley. What he thought of it she could not read in his expression, only that he measured and calculated and, moving to one side, spoke in a whisper to a pair of his attendant captains, Eika warriors like him although half a head taller.

The procession lurched up the steps. She hurried after, puffing and wheezing and gasping at the pain. The stone lintel that spanned the double doors leading into the feasting hall swam in her sight, a most welcome apparition, and she passed under it and into the hall itself where a flock of palace stewards and servants swarmed to set out benches for the coming assembly. The body was carried up to the dais.

The faithful Eagle, Hathui, came forward to grasp her hands. "Sister Rosvita!" She was weeping.

Ai, God, she was so weary. Too weary to think. Too weary even to wonder or grieve. It was as much as she could do to allow Hathui to lead her forward, in her authority as an honored cleric in the regnant's schola, so that she could stand at the head of the litter as it was placed across three parallel benches.

"He would want you," said Hathui in a choked voice, "to stand guard over his body now that his soul is fled."

"How can it be?" Rosvita asked her. "I thought—we had all come to believe—that somehow his mother's blessing would always protect him."

Hathui shrugged. She could no longer speak. Turning away, she hid her face.

Out of the massing crowd a young nobleman appeared carrying a chair, which he set behind her.

"Sister Rosvita," he said, smiling at her. "I pray you, you look tired. Please sit."

She blinked. It seemed apparitions would trouble her today, because this lad looked exactly like young Berthold Villain. "You were lost years ago," she told him, feeling foolish for speaking to a ghost, although in general ghosts could not fetch chairs.

"So I was, Sister, but I am found again. I pray you, Sister. Sit. I will tell you the tale later."

Berthold Villam!

This was a peculiar miracle, one impossible to believe, yet as he walked away to join a pair of young men—one of them foreign and almost certainly a Quman—she saw that he walked like Berthold Villam and he looked like Berthold Villam. Such a good boy, with the charm of his famous father and the sweet vitality of youth. The vision dizzied her. Gratefully, she sank into the seat, although at this level, steadied by the support, she must look on the mangled corpse at close quarters.

His face was undamaged, but his torso and legs were torn and twisted. Without the soul animating him, he was no more than a collection of parts and pieces; the handsome man who charmed effortlessly and led his troops with determination and assurance could not be glimpsed in this empty flesh.

More, and more still, crowded into the hall. Chairs for the great princes were set to either side of the pallet on which he lay, and one by one they took their places: Princess Theophanu, Duchess Liutgard, Duke Conrad. A murmur arose when the Eika commander sat in a chair beside the others, with two human and two Eika standing behind him in close council, often bending to whisper in his ear.

More were coming in. Mother Scholastica strode in with a look of thunderous anger. Although older than Rosvita, she appeared to have no aggravating aches and pains!

"Dead!" she exclaimed, pausing to examine the corpse. "So the report is true!"

"Mother Scholastica," said Rosvita in a low voice, gesturing to get her attention. "I pray you. What of my companions?"

"Among the living," she said curtly. As are the Lions who protected us. Princess Sapientia was not so fortunate."

"What can you mean?"

"She, too, is dead. Killed by the sorcery of that witch woman you sheltered."

This was too much to take in.

"Yet I suppose God's mercy works in ways beyond our understanding," continued Scholastica.

"Both brother and sister were unfit to rule. Now, they are gone, and we may hope for peace with Conrad and Tallia on the throne."

Rosvita tried to speak, to voice a thought, a prayer, an objection, but she could not. This she had wrought, and all for nothing.

Mother Scholastica was already moving away to confront the nobles seated on the dais. Her gaze swept them disdainfully. She gestured toward the Eika without looking at him.

"How comes that creature to sit among you as though he were a great prince of the realm?"

Lord Stronghand had a way of baring his teeth that mimicked a human smile without precisely being one. Jewels winked in his teeth, a barbarian's ornament, but his words were smooth and cool. "Mother Abbess, with all the respect that is due to a WiseMother of your stature and authority, I would suggest that it is the strength of my army that buys me a seat on this council."

Theophanu's mouth quirked. She said, "Aunt, have you not yourself observed that laws are silent in the presence of arms?"

"Let your stewards bring me a chair," said Scholastica, regarding Theophanu with disgust and turning her attention to Liutgard. "If there is to be a council, then I will stand at its head."

"Yes, Mother Scholastica," murmured Liutgard, gesturing for a steward, while Conrad sighed heavily and wiped his forehead with the back of a hand.

Stronghand looked with interest at Theophanu, and she met his gaze, although no emotion could be read behind her careful mask. It was no wonder no one quite trusted her even after all these years of faithful service to her father and his capricious wishes.

Seated in back of the others, behind the pallet, Rosvita had planned to observe without being herself noticed, but after all it took all her effort simply to pay attention. A terrible whisper kept clawing in her mind, saying that Mother Scholastica was right, that it was for the best that Sapientia had died. The poor witless creature could not even obey an injunction to hide her eyes, not to look upon that which would destroy her. She was no wiser than a toddling child. How could it be that she would not fall in the end into the hands of those who wished to put her on the throne and rule her through puppet strings?

That she could even think such thoughts horrified her. The dead man, mercifully, made no comment.

No doubt he, also, was not free of sin, for he had abandoned Sapientia in the wilderness. So there they were, the two of them, one living and one dead, who had brought Henry's eldest daughter to an end she did not deserve.

As though the Enemy had heard her thoughts and sent minions to harass her, two huge black hounds padded up to her and sank down on either side. Their tails thumped in a friendly manner, but that did not make her less nervous of those fearsome teeth. A moment later the young man who had once been Count of Lavas came to stand quietly behind her chair. She could not see his face without turning around, but Lord Stronghand nodded at him just as there came a shout of surprise from the doorway.

Conrad leaped to his feet. "Constance!"

Constance, Biscop of Autun and later Duchess of Arconia, was the second youngest of Henry's siblings, about the same age as Liutgard, but she looked older than Scholastica now. She was being carried in a chair tied to poles. Her bearers, astoundingly, were Eika soldiers. With the greatest delicacy, they placed her chair to the left of Lord Stronghand, whom she acknowledged with a nod.

Already benches were being drawn up. Clerics and nobles crowded onto these seats while captains and lords stood behind them. There was Fortunatus! He made a sign with his hand so she could know all was well, and the look of relief on his face assured her that the rest of her precious schola had indeed survived the onslaught unscathed. Farther back she saw Sergeant Ingo of the Lions standing beside the one-handed Captain Thiadbold, now able to walk on his own.

Yet where was Mother Obligatia? What shelter had they found for her? And what of the shaman?

What would happen to her?

What sign she made she did not know, but a hand brushed her shoulder, and that brief touch comforted her.

Last, and only with difficulty pushing their way through the crowd, came two litters. One was borne by a quartet of Arconian captains, and the other by stout clerics, four of Scholastica's most martial attendants. Behind them limped a white-faced man whose shoulder was wrapped in linen still stained with oozing red blood. Lord Wichman was so weak from loss of blood that he could not stand unaided but must lean on one of his captains. He reeled up the steps, dropped heavily into a chair behind Conrad, and seemed at once to lose consciousness, eyes closing and head thrown back.

The captains set down the body of Sabella, daughter of Arnulf and Berengaria, beside the corpse of her nephew. The clerics lowered the litter bearing Princess Sapientia's corpse and placed it beside that of her aunt.

Although the smell of sweaty and bloodstained bodies already permeated the hall, at once the stink of death struck Rosvita hard enough that she flinched from it: the strong sour smell of drying blood, the stench of loosened bowels and voided urine, all these indignities suffered by the dead were eye-wateringly apparent emanating from the two dead women, even though Sabella's body bore only a single wound and Sapientia's no trace of injury at all. No such stink wafted from the corpse of Sanglant, although he ought to smell worse having suffered such gashing wounds.

Mother Scholastica rose. "So are we all come."

The crowd in the hall—and those still pushing into crevices and hand's-width spaces along the back—grew quiet.

"So are we all come. All who are able-bodied and able-minded. For long years we were told that this prince's mother laid a geas on his flesh, that no creature male or female could kill him. But after all, we see that this was merely a tale told by Henry to aggrandize his favorite child. Sanglant's run of luck is over. Now he lies before us, who claimed the throne of Wendar and Varre although he had no right to do so."

"For shame," said Liutgard. "For shame, Mother Scholastica! Those of us who rode at his side out of Aosta and accepted his elevation will not have our decision so easily dismissed. His was the right.

Henry named him with his dying breath."

"It's true that my brother Henry showed partiality toward the infant, who was destined for another fate according to the custom of the Wendish people. None among you believe that Henry's decision was made with his dying breath. The day Sanglant was born, Henry confessed his wish to his father, King Arnulf, that he desired to make this bastard child his heir. I recall it!"

She surveyed the gathering with the pride and arrogance that her long years as abbess of the holy and powerful institution of Quedlinhame had granted her.

"I recall it, for I was already invested in the church and soon to become abbess. I was present in the councils of power, and in those councils held more privately with the king. So I tell you: this request went against all of Wendar's customs and traditions! The bastard child must be the king's Dragon, not the king himself. As well, the child was born of a foreign woman, with no maternal kin to support him and besides that an ancient and suspicious tale of old enmity dogging his heels. He could never be trusted."

"Yet he was best among us," said Theophanu in her cool voice.

Her flat statement caused Conrad to begin weeping again, for all his gestures were grand ones that every soul could join with. Many wept in the hall, some louder than others.

Arnulf knew the child could never be trusted," repeated Scholastica. She swept her hand to include the span of the hall and raised her voice yet more, a strong soprano that carried above the grief and anger of the crowd. "Henry was obsessed with the Aoi woman, but it was obvious to any eye that she did not love him but was at work on some hidden plan. This Arnulf saw. This he strove to prevent.

"So it comes, that my nephew is dead."

Wichman roused from his stupor. "His is not the only death today!" Then he laughed like a man driven mad by pain.

"No, indeed, it is not. Here also died Princess Sapientia, killed by sorcery. And Sabella—my elder sister."

Wichman coughed blood. With the sleeve of his gambeson, Conrad wiped the spume off Wichman's chin, and called servants forward, but the other man waved away these attendants.

"I will hear all of it. I will hear!" he croaked. "Now that Sanglant is gone, there's not one of you left who can best me in combat."

"Let him be," said Scholastica. Her gaze, bent on him, was not kindly. "Let him hear, if he wishes. All these claims are now thrown over. Their souls have ascended to the Chamber of Light.

Let us speak a prayer in their memory."

Rosvita wiped her brow, and even that slight movement made her shoulder pinch and smart. She murmured the responses as the abbess intoned the prayer, but her heart was numb and her thoughts strayed.

Where had Constance come from? How came it that she was escorted by Eika soldiers? Had Sorgatani survived?

Rosvita had left the field as soldiers struggled to right the wagon, and when she surveyed the assembly now, she saw no sign of Hanna's white-blonde hair although several times she caught her breath, thinking she had found her, only to realize that the Eika had hair just as bone pale.

Where was Wolfhere? He had spoken puzzling words by the roadside, and she began to think that if she could only recall them exactly that they would answer many questions, but exhaustion muddied her mind. It seemed to her that her eyes watered, that a faint perfume like rosewater drifted off the body of the dead man, a sweet and pleasing smell. She covered her eyes, dizzied.

A hand steadied her. "Patience," he murmured.

The voice soothed her; her thoughts cleared as Mother Scholastica called again for silence.

"Let it be known that a writ of excommunication has reached me, carried by diverse hands. The skopos who reigns in Darre has threatened to lay an anathema on Wendar and Varre if the people are ruled by a bastard half-breed, born to humankind's ancient enemy. Now that threat is lifted."

In the front row of benches, Lord Berthold jumped up. "Let me speak!" he cried. "I have been in Aosta in recent months. Let me tell you the truth about the woman who named herself skopos! She is no Holy Mother. She is the same Antonia, cast out as biscop of Mainni because she soiled her hands with bindings and workings. She knew the secrets of calling the galla. With them, she murdered her enemies without regard to any innocent souls who might be devoured by the galla. She is not Holy Mother! She only called herself by that name, but no college of presbyters elected her. They are all dead!"

"Silence!" cried Mother Scholastica, truly shocked. "What are you saying?"

He roared on. The intensity of voice raised from such a mild-seeming youth was astonishing. "Darre is gone. The holy city is uninhabitable, consumed by the Abyss. It is a place of fire. Pits of steam and poison. What authority can this woman have, who calls herself skopos? With what scepter does she rule?"

"Silence!" demanded Mother Scholastica, turning red. "Who are you?"

"I am Berthold. The son of Helmut Villam, his youngest child."

"Berthold of Villam is lost. Dead."

"I am found. Living. And I am not done speaking! This I have also to report. Blessing, the daughter of Sanglant, lives. She lived also as a prisoner in Novomo for many months, as did I and my companions. She was stolen away by Hugh of Austra, who that same day murdered Elene of Wayland."

His voice trembled, but he reined himself in.

"I will not tolerate this disrespect—" began Scholastica.

Conrad rose, and with a curt gesture signaled silence. Although he spoke in a measured tone, his anger had the force of a shout. "Where is the Eagle, Wolfhere? He knows the full tale, and I would like to hear it all now."

"I don't know where he is. I lost track of him after the end of the battle. But as for the manner of Elene's death, there's nothing he can tell you that I cannot answer, for I was there." He choked.

Brusquely, he wiped away tears. "That is not all, although to my mind it was the worst. There's this also: Queen Adelheid of Aosta has allied herself with the Arethousan general, Lord Alexandras. He fled a civil war in Arethousa, and now he is married to Aosta's queen. I heard also tales that the city of Arethousa was entirely destroyed in the tempest last autumn. Just as Darre was." He paused, so full of adrenaline that he was panting, flushed, and sweating.

"Is that all?" Conrad asked. Then shook his head, with a kind of grunting laugh that a man might make when he is mired in sorrow but caught nevertheless by life's irony. "To think of Villam's son making this strange journey. Ai, God, my poor Elene."

In answer, Berthold sat down and clasped his hands tightly in his lap.

Scholastica nodded at Conrad, and he smiled mockingly at her, but he sat down.

"So are we answered," she said. "Henry's obsession has been overthrown. Aosta and Arethousa have suffered God's wrath. Yet so have we." She glanced at the Eika lord—the first time by look that she had acknowledged his presence—but did not meet his inquisitive gaze.

The Eika lord listened and watched with a fierce and intelligent concentration that made Rosvita nervous. Despite the trappings— the primitive standard, the gaudy lacework that girdled his hips and thighs, the jewels drilled into his teeth, and the bare chest painted in spirals and crosshatches—he was not what he seemed. He might appear savage, but far more dangerous currents surged within.

"It is time to acclaim a proper regnant. One who will heal the land, not divide it. So my father Arnulf, of blessed memory, said to me before he died. Better, he said, that if Henry's obsession overtakes all, and my wishes are not followed, the line of Conrad rule rather than half-breeds."

"That would be acceptable to me," said Conrad mildly. "And to my heirs, all descended as I am from the first Henry. The blood of my daughter Berengaria flows also with Arnulf's blood, through her mother, Tallia of Varre."

So it came. The mask cracked. Theophanu rose in clear and blushing fury, a fine figure of anger who in that moment resembled her father in his famous wrath.

"It would not be acceptable to me. I love Conrad as my cousin, you may be sure. But in the absence of Sanglant and my elder sister Sapientia, / am Henry's rightful heir. I have waited too long. I have been shunted aside too many times. I will not sit quietly and see what is rightfully mine pass to my distant kin."

Such a hush might only be found during the Mass for the remembered dead, when the host of mourners and worshipers reflects upon their own sins. The peace endured a long time, broken at last by Mother Scholastica as she unclenched hands. Rosvita had not seen her curl them into fists, but the rigid line of her figure betrayed the tight control and bitter anger with which she regarded Theophanu.

"Beware Arethousans bearing gifts. You are too much your mother's daughter. None love you."

Theophanu lifted her chin to meet the blow. "Maybe so. But her lineage was of the highest order, a daughter of the empire. It was Arnulf himself who brought her to this country to marry his son."

Wichman stirred, barking out a coarse laugh. "A strange objection, Aunt, since Conrad was also born of a foreign bitch."

With a roar, Conrad jumped up, oversetting his chair, but when he whirled with an arm raised to clout Wichman, he caught himself.

Wichman chortled, then began again coughing up that pinkish spume.

"Carry him out of here," said Conrad with disgust. "He's sorely wounded."

"Nay, nay," rattled Wichman. "I meant what I said. I want to hear. Indeed, I'll risk my life to stay, for I wish to hear my aunt's reply to this puzzling question."

His words had not shaken Scholastica. She regarded him with scorn. "Lady Meriam was unexceptional. She was brought here as a child and embraced the true faith with sincerity and wisdom. I find no fault in her. Sophia, however, was never truly one of us. It is better this way. Conrad will rule, and his daughter by Tallia will be heir to the regnancy."

Theophanu took a step forward, making it easy for her to see each of the great princes in their chairs. To see the bodies of her brother and her aunt and her sister, whose blood she shared.

In Heart's Rest there is a saying: It is the mother's blood that tells.

The princess extended her left hand, palm open, although it wasn't clear whom she meant to include in the gesture. Her expression was clean, her anger strangled. Her voice was clear and strong.

"With Sanglant and Sapientia dead, I am Henry's eldest surviving child. Henry was your regnant. He ruled you well, all of you, before the tide took him. I am not beloved as my brother was, nor will I ever be. But I am wise and canny. I will rule as a prudent steward in troubled times. We must recover what is lost. We must fight against the chaos the tempest has left in its wake. Sanglant knew this. That is why you acclaimed him. That is why I stepped aside in his favor, although my claim was legitimate. Conrad is a fine warrior, but I am a better steward. That is my claim."

Conrad smiled, as though this were all an entertainment put on to make him laugh. "And will you lead us when battle is joined, Theophanu? Or will the armies of Wendar and Varre choose to follow me?"

"What battle? The battle is over. We have lost. Will you fight those who outnumber us tenfold? Will the flower of our armies, the strength of our men, be cut down when we need them most to tend and build and plant? When we need them to protect us from the beasts and renegades who have flourished these past few years? From the threat out of Aosta and Arethousa? From the threat of our ancient enemies, the Cursed Ones?"

Conrad made a hissing, contemptuous sound, indicating the silent Stronghand. "What solution do you propose to combat their army, then? Cousin?"

She smiled, although there was nothing of sweetness in it. "The sensible one."

With the slightest shift of her feet and shoulders, it could be seen that her outstretched hand was offered to the Eika prince, who watched her with a lively amusement, as if he had already guessed her intention.

"Let Lord Stronghand agree to become my husband, and he will rule beside me, consort to my regnant."

The Eika laughed, a shockingly human sound.

The uproar rising from all sides drowned all other words.

5

ALTHOUGH he respected Mother Ursuline and her sisters within the church for their strength, and admired the Hessi merchant women for their quick understanding of the shifting forces that had altered the currents of the northern seas trade, Stronghand had not yet found a woman born of humankind whose intelligence truly reminded him of the deep cunning at work in the mothers who directed the fate of the Eika.

But maybe this one came close.

The attack was so neat and so brutal that he had only seen it coming an instant before it struck. The rest of the assembly was blindsided, taken utterly off guard.

He rose and acknowledged her with a polite nod.

She looked him in the eye, asking a question by the way she lifted her chin slightly. The other great princes were stunned, but even so a few among them were thoughtful rather than outraged.

After a while, because of his silence, and hers, and the absolute silence of his ranks of warriors as they waited for his signal, the crowd's exclamations and muttering died away until he could speak and know he would be heard.

"It is a better bargain than I expected. What terms do you propose?"

"I will never countenance this!" cried Mother Scholastica.

Biscop Constance answered her. "I pray you, Aunt. I would speak."

At the sound of a strong, steady voice issuing from such a crippled body, folk listened respectfully.

Even Mother Scholastica waved a hand to show she would not interrupt, and Stronghand had certainly always understood that the mothers of the tribe must be listened to with full attention.

"Let me tell you in short measure my tale. You know that I was made biscop of Autun years ago, and more recently that Henry invested me as duke of Arconia after Sabella's failed rebellion. Later, I was deposed and sent to an isolated monastery called Queen's Grave, for no woman who entered it ever came out again. Queens of old often took refuge there from cruel husbands or rapacious relatives. Be aware that, although I hold no grudge against him, Conrad knew of my imprisonment and acceded to it."

The duke of Wayland stirred uncomfortably in his seat but made neither excuse nor denial.

"This I know," agreed Mother Scholastica. "It is because of your imprisonment that much bad blood arose between Wendar and Varre."

Constance nodded. "Sabella has passed beyond forgiveness or vengeance. Let it be."

"How came you to be released?" asked Duchess Liutgard.

"That is a tale for another day. I took refuge at Lavas Holding with Lord Geoffrey, who stands as regent for the young count, his daughter. Sabella discovered where I was and sent a troop of soldiers to fetch me. I came with the escort rather than risk the lives of innocent children that Sabella was holding hostage. Reaching Autun, we discovered that Sabella had already marched east with an army. On our way here, we were overtaken by the Eika. All of my small company were taken prisoner. So I can tell you something of these Eika and their leader."

"What would you tell us?" asked Theophanu.

Human women were not beautiful. The least of the SwiftDaughters was glorious compared to a body whose flesh was as soft and dull as half-baked dough. But this one had a certain cool presence to her that made her different than her sisters. She was not marked by the constant surge and ebb of emotion that marred their faces. One could look at her and feel restful.

Constance was seated to his left. She lifted a hand—any movement pained her for her body had been racked and ruined in recent years. Such was the weakness of human flesh. Yet a strong light burned within.

"Lord Stronghand spared our lives because we were clerics. He set me in the care of his council, among whom preside human as well as Eika. He spoke to me most respectfully, and over several nights we engaged in a long and fruitful conversation."

"God Above!" said Mother Scholastica. "As well take instruction from a wolf! What can you have talked about?"

Alone of the younger generation, Constance was not one bit intimidated by the older woman, perhaps because her authority sprang from the same source.

"Why, we talked about God, Aunt. And stewardship of land and estate. We talked of trade and trading routes. We discussed the legend of the phoenix, and the tales concerning the spawning of the Eika in ancient days. We spoke of the Cursed Ones, and of the tempest last autumn that swept over the lands.

And much more besides. I ask you, Mother Scholastica. Does Wendar suffer? Do folk in Varre starve and die? Since I was freed from Queen's Grave, I have collected stories. I have heard testimony. It seems to me that plague and famine harass us. Villages are raided by outlaws, and by the Cursed Ones wearing the masked faces of beasts. Crops do not grow without the sun. The summer is cold. Certain sea-lanes have changed in the aftermath of the tempest. Creatures prowl abroad that once slept. God enjoins us to build and sow, to reap and to husband. We are meant to be stewards. Now is the time for good stewardship, else many more will die and the land will lie in ruins."

Mother Scholastica had a sharp gaze, which she used now, looking first at Constance and then, with a frown and a crinkling of her brow, at Stronghand. "I consider you beyond corruption, Constance, but perhaps I am mistaken. Has being a prisoner all these years addled your keen mind?"

Constance did not bridle, although the words were meant to offend. Stronghand had come to respect her in the last few days. Although in constant pain, she possessed a mind of greatest clarity.

"Ask yourself this, Aunt. How comes this Eika army to this place, at this time? How did the battle cease, when it was so well begun?"

"The battle ended when those foul creatures—these galla raised by Antonia of Mainni who calls herself skopos—when these creatures of the Enemy swept down and devoured so many. The battle ended when Sanglant was killed. That was shock enough!"

Constance shook her head. With jaw set against pain and a deep crease above her eyes as she braced herself, she made to stand. Stronghand moved to aid her, but her servants were already there on either side, four of them who had traveled this far: two men and two women. The action—for she went white at the effort—brought a horrified hush onto the assembly.

"There is one who walks among us." Her voice rang out into the corners of the hall, even into the rafters. "The emissary of the phoenix, who dies and lives again in the blaze of God's glory. These signs I have seen: Miracles have blossomed in the land. The Rose of Healing flowers. I was mistaken for a brief time, blinded by appearances, and I thought I recognized the holy vessel. But now I comprehend that it is not my part to speak of that which has not yet revealed its presence." The younger of her female attendants—the rabbit-faced girl—had begun to weep silently, her gaze fixed stubbornly on the floor.

"You speak of heresy, with this talk of the phoenix," said Mother Scholastica, but she looked puzzled rather than angry.

Constance shook her head. "I speak truth. That disputation must take place in a different council.

A force has entered this assembly and brought a temporary peace upon us. It is up to us to make good—or ill—use of this chance. I would support this marriage if reasonable terms can be agreed upon. Lord Stronghand has shown himself to be an honorable—man—who holds to his agreements.

That is all I have to say. Now, I pray you, let me sit."

Theophanu stepped into the breach. She nodded at each of her kinfolk, all those who sat upon the dais, and at various faces staring up at her from the audience, noting them, examining their expressions. Constance's speech had changed the tenor of the assembly. Folk were now willing to consider this change of direction into unknown country.

"Let me address Conrad's objection first. He has brought war into Wendar, and besides countenanced Sabella's assault upon his cousin and my aunt, Biscop Constance. Yet his claim is a strong one. My brother Sanglant would have been first to call Conrad an honorable man." She looked at him, but Conrad was wary, like a dog, not at all cowed by her but unsure whether she meant to toss a bone or a rock in his direction.

"Think you," she asked him, "that Eika and humankind can breed? I do not. Therefore, it is unlikely that any child shall be born of our union. We are stewards, meant to shepherd these lands through the storms to come. So let us, as part of the terms, name our heirs now and see them anointed and crowned. Let there be no question about the succession."

Conrad shrugged. "I'm not greedy for my own sake," he said with an expansive gesture, opening his arms. "But I must look after the rightful claims of my children. On the field of battle I made Sanglant an offer, and I'm willing to stand by it, if you were to name one of my children by Tallia as your heir."

She looked at Stronghand.

He nodded fractionally. "I am still listening. I have agreed to nothing yet. I, too, must ask this same question. What of my children? I control a great deal of land. It is a tricky business holding together an empire."

She did not smile or simper or frown or knot her brow in anxious thought. She had a knack for cutting straight to the bone without preamble or pointless philosophizing and agonizing. "Have you a proposal, to deal with this matter?"

Oh, she was ruthless and single-minded. A rose among thorns, as the church mothers said.

He knew what he had to do. "In truth, I do have a proposal. That this man, called Alain, who stands quietly among us, act as mediator between our parties. I will accept any terms and treaty and alliance that he approves."

Constance nodded. The rabbit-faced girl sobbed out loud, then sucked in her breath noisily as she fought to choke down her crying while one of her companions comforted her.

Stronghand had keen hearing, as did all his kind. He heard the faint sigh made by Alain; it was the kind of grunt made by a person who has just realized that, in fact, he will have to haul those damned logs all the way back up the hill and that there is no use complaining because the master is harsh.

But, after all, he had begun to suspect that the WiseMothers had worked a deeper game than even he had ever truly understood. They had ploughed in their slow fashion, where years are as days and the life of their male children and SwiftDaughters flashes past in the blink of one heavy eye. Their spirits had walked in the heavens on the wings of the aether. A mortal could never know how far their vision extended.

The Eika were the children of the cataclysm, born in ancient days, and they, too, had been altered irrevocably by the tempest. The Old-Mothers would spawn a new generation, which would spawn a generation in its time, in the manner of all life. But the OldMothers would not march up to the fjall to commune with their mothers and grandmothers as they had all these centuries. That thread of immortality had been severed in the tempest last autumn. They, too, would breed and die in the way of mortal kind.

But the Eika were few, and humankind were many. He had no illusions about his empire. The lines of communication and supply would fray, and in the passing of the years the simple toll of numbers would overtake them. The ebb tide had left them tossing on exposed rocks like flopping fish at the mercy of rapacious gulls. There must be a way to save themselves before the feasting gulls swooped down.

One bond remained. Years ago, he and the youth called Alain Henrisson had become brothers, of a kind.

So must it be: brothers, of a kind. The road might seem dark now, but that was only because it remained in the shadow of what is not known. No mortal soul can see into the future. Maybe that is a blessing, although any commander would like such a weapon at his disposal.

Theophanu examined Alain with interest and without fear. "Heir to Lavas," she said. "I know what you once were. I wonder what you are now. Very well. I accept."

Alain stepped forward. He was dressed simply, a little trail-worn from his journey. He made no grand gestures. He did not raise his voice. Yet every soul there watched him, and every soul listened when he spoke.

"So be it." His authority was not that of the swordsman or captain; it was not that of the biscop or lord. It came from a deeper place. Even the vicious black hounds loved him, not with submission but only out of love for his pure heart.

"I will do as you ask," he said, "if all are agreed."

He waited. Not even Mother Scholastica gainsaid him.

So he nodded, not arrogantly but as if he were resigned. As if he were accepting his fate. As Theophanu and Stronghand would accept the terms he laid down, because on this day it was necessary.

No mortal soul can see into the future.

These were the words he spoke in the silent hall.

"Quarters will be cleared for the Eika army, but hall and throne will be shared by lady and lord.

"Morning gifts shall be given, each to the other in equal measure.

"Each shall reward among the retinue of the opposing army, gifts according to the honor and status of those companions. In this way bonds of trust and obligation will be formed.

"If one is attacked, the other will come to their aid.

"Among yourselves and in your own lands, you will govern according to the local custom and as you see fit. Such a vast territory will not hold together easily. Or at all. Therefore, as long as this alliance is sealed by the living bodies of each of these two who come to be partner in it, let no spear be cast that is meant to fix blame on another.

"No provocation is allowed among the survivors. All fought honorably. Let no word or deed, no insinuation, give offense.

"What each one brings to the contract will go to their own heirs, as long as they can hold it. To guarantee the peace, let ten beloved children from each lineage be raised in the heart of the other's hall.

"That is all."

He possessed the guivre's stare, whose vehemence had the strength to stop all creatures in their tracks. The easier to gobble them up. Yet after he surveyed the assembly, he simply nodded his head, a modest gesture that released them with his final words.

"Let this contract be sealed. Let the dead be buried. Let the survivors return to their homes."

XII

THE VITA OF ST.

RADEGUNDIS

1

LIATH crossed last through the archway woven into the crown at Novomo. Blue fire tore into hazy shreds. Sparks winked in a darkening sky as she emerged into a cool twilight breeze. The long slide to night had begun.

She found herself in a broad clearing, surrounded by a circle of standing stones and grassy mounds like ancient barrows. Forest stood on all sides. The ground was moist with recent rains. Drops of water dangled from grasses bent under that weight.

The ranks of mask warriors had spread out into the clearing, already on the hunt. A dozen were poking through the grass just beyond the stone circle.

Sharp Edge beckoned. "Look! There was an Ashioi camp here recently. One of the war parties came this way."

"Any sign of Hugh?"

They searched in the dusk but except for the unmistakable remains of that small encampment—a fire pit with charcoal slivers, a pair of white feathers tipped with a glue that would have held them in an arm guard, a broken, bloodied fox mask—they found nothing.

Zuangua limped over to her. He still held his left arm cradled against his chest. "A man and a child could easily have passed through this crown before the rain and left no obvious mark of their passage.

Day will bring light to our search."

"We can't let them get so far ahead of us!"

He shook his head, then retreated to the remains of the abandoned camp and sat down. A mask warrior rubbed salve into his wounds and tied a sling around his arm.

Liath stared and hunted until she thought her eyes would burn a hole in the stones, yet even her salamander gaze showed her nothing. In the end, she circled around to the campsite. Despair made her cold, but anger made her burn, and with a thought she called a blaze into the pit. Her companions leaped back as charcoal caught fire, snapping and cracking.

"Can you teach me to do that?" asked Sharp Edge breathlessly.

"Best we rest, Bright One," said Zuangua, who had not moved when the fire flared.

"And then?" she demanded.

The flames lit the mask warriors in such a way that they looked like beasts indeed, less than human but more than animals. While she searched fruitlessly, they had already set up sentry posts and sleeping stations and kindled another five campfires.

"My trackers have other ways of searching, but we must have light. We will not fail. Have you any idea where we are?"

"We are in Wendar, I'm sure of it," said Liath. "That being so, if we find no sign of Hugh or my daughter in the morning, all we can do is try to find Sanglant."

"You may do so. If the search for the Pale Sun Dog is abandoned, we will return to our own country if you will weave us a passage."

Liath looked at Sharp Edge, as did he.

The young Ashioi apprentice grinned defiantly. Like Anna and the four masks sent with Liath by Eldest Uncle, she had not been injured in Hugh's attack. "I don't want to go back," she said.

"She has joined me of her own free will," Liath said. "I have accepted her and put her under my protection."

"So I see. What path she chooses falls on her own head. I will not force her—or any of my people—to return with the rest of us." He shrugged—the movement cost him some pain—and turned away to talk to his fox-masked lieutenant. Now that they had settled down for the night, most of the warriors pushed their masks up on their heads, revealing more ordinary faces.

Liath and Sharp Edge moved away.

"He'll make no trouble," said Sharp Edge in a low voice. "I am free to do what I wish. I want to stay with you."

"Then I am pleased to have you. You are the third."

"The third of what?"

"The third of my nest of phoenix. That is what I will call you, no matter what others say."

"Who are first and second?" Sharp Edge asked with a petulant grimace. "I like to be first!"

"So you do. In this case, you are the first among your people, if we do not count Secha."

"I will not count her!" said Sharp Edge with a laugh. "What others claim a place in front of me?"

"A Kerayit weather witch and her slave, who is a cleric—a holy man—of my own people. Look here." She stared at the crown, counting its stones and studying the burial mounds that rose as hillocks at the edge of the firelight. "I feel I should know this place, yet I do not remember ever being here before. Look how straight and true all the stones stand!"

In their haste to follow Hugh, they had marched without sufficient traveling gear. Even Zuangua's warriors complained at length, but jokingly, about the cold. It was a form of companionship.

Everyone complained except Anna, who took her share of the night's waybread and ate alone away from the rest. The mask warriors shared out the watch according to Zuangua's command, but in the end Liath sat all night staring at the blind sky, unable to sleep because when she closed her eyes she remembered the vision she had suffered, the vision of Blessing in the custody of Hugh. Blessing, wed to Hugh. She retched, but her heaving brought up nothing. It was only nerves.

"Bright One, are you sick?" Sharp Edge squatted beside her.

"Sick at heart," she murmured.

Zuangua slept, or pretended to. The others huddled together for warmth. A night breeze moaned among the stones. In its voice she heard the groans of the forgotten dead long buried under earth.

They were surrounded by the dead, those buried here in ancient graves and those in the world beyond thrown into new graves, the countless le-gions who had died in the aftermath of the cataclysm and the armies of the suffering who would die in the months to come.

"How did he call lightning like that? How did he call the storm?" whispered Sharp Edge. "Can you work such sorcery?"

Her jaw was tight, and her voice bitter. "I do not know how."

2

DEATH has a smell and a taste, and it can be heard as a whisper and felt as a touch on the lips when that last breath sighs free of the abandoned flesh. What a man might see, walking through the dusk as it swallows the field of battle, is only a shadow of the full understanding of death. With his hounds, he may kneel beside first one man and then another, and he may wish he had the means to heal them all, but another figure rides beside him and among some of these wounded she has already severed the thread that binds the soul to the body. They are already dead, although those around them do not yet know. Although they themselves may still stare at the sky and at their companions, waiting for aid or water or a comforting word.

In this matter, on this day, the Lady of Battles will defeat him. Her hand has swept the battlefield before he reached it. He can only do so much in the aftermath. This evening as he leaves the council of nobles and walks out of Kassel into the surrounding fields, he knows who will live and who will die. Here is a young Wendishman with the merest scratch on his leg and a faint and confused smile on his pleasant face, but he has been trampled and badly broken inside.

Here is a Varren youth crying, with his shoulder torn open and flesh glistening as a battlefield chirurgeon plies a needle and thread to close it up and her assistant holds a salve of woundwort ready to bind into the injury, and already the lad's humors stabilize.

He hopes this terrible burden will lift soon, that he will wake in the morning restored to blindness, but possibly he will always be so cursed. So be it. He accepts the path God has given him to walk.

The hounds tug at his sleeves and lead him past a row of cooling bodies and a contingent of soldiers digging a long grave under the supervision of a weary cleric reciting psalms. There is a tiny chapel built here atop an old foundation; oak saplings push up around it. A few graves are marked with lichen-covered stones, now unreadable, as though this cemetery was used a century ago and then abandoned. Many will populate it tonight.

The hounds pad past tents marking the Varren encampment and into the entangling siege works that protected the southeastern flank of the Varren camp. They sniff up to a half-finished ditch. Water seeps into the dirt. With the shadows drawing long, it is easy to overlook soldiers fallen where pickets have collapsed. In the ditch, a man lies with his legs pinned by a log and his face inches away from being submerged in the rising muddy seepage.

"Here! Here!" Alain shouts, getting the attention of a trio of filthy soldiers wearing the stallion tabards of Wayland who happen to be walking past.

They do not know who he is, but they respond as soldiers do. When they see the man caught, they scramble down beside him, and with all four of them slipping and sliding and grunting and cursing and the hounds barking, they get the log lifted and the man— he is husky, no lightweight

— dragged out of the ditch.

"Tss!" says one man, with the grizzled look of a veteran. "A Saony bastard, all right."

So he is, with a crude representation of Saony's dragon stitched to his dark tabard. When Alain wipes away the mud crusting his face, he is seen to be young, and the Wayland soldiers mumble and mutter and scratch their heads and finally, with a certain practical fatalism, check him for injuries. He's been cut low, just above the hip, and one foot is broken. The gut injury, especially, is likely to turn black with imbalanced humors, although the youth so far smells no worse than the rest of the dead, dying, and wounded.

He sees her: The Lady of Battles rides across camp, coming into view between a pair of campfires. She is heading in their direction.

"What do we do with him?" asks one of the Wayland soldiers.

The veteran says, "There's the Wendish camp. They can fetch him when their folk make a sweep this way."

"Might not find him till morning," says the youngest of the three. "Because of the dark."

"Best we take him over there now," says Alain. "As you'd wish done if it was one of your men found by the Wendish. He needs care right away."

They look at him. Blood splashes their armor and their exposed skin, mixed with dirt and exhaustion. They don't say what they saw and suffered this day, but after a moment they find a span of canvas— once the awning of a tent— and roll the man onto it. With one holding each corner, they trudge across the encampment and find a cluster of Saony tents under the command of a captain whose right arm is bound up in a blood-streaked sling.

"God be praised!" cries the captain. "That's Johan! I thought we'd lost him. My thanks to you. Here's a sack of ale for your trouble."

The man's gratitude discomfits the Wayland soldiers, but they accept the ale and turn away, and they move hack toward the nearest cut of ditches and scramble down to keep looking. Alain lingers as the young soldier is carried off toward the chirurgeon's tent. Campfires flare up in a hundred places, tight rings where companies and militias have grouped themselves within the encampments and along the fields. Farther away, a line of campfires marks the Eika line at the forest edge. The air is strangely quiet, smelling of rain, but no rain falls. The storm threat has faded as a stiff wind pushes the weather away toward the west. The heavens are cloudy once more, and it seems likely to be an unusually chilly night although they are well come into the height of summer, days that should be long and lazy and hot bleeding into sticky warm nights.

Men will shiver tonight under a dark sky, with moon and stars shrouded like the dead.

"Brother," says a soft voice out of the darkness.

He turns to see the pair of Eika soldiers who have been shadowing him for the last hour. One is a brawny blond Alban youth with a lurid scar on his cheek; the other is a tall, muscular Eika with the bronze-skinned sheen common especially in Rikin Tribe.

"Need you an escort back to the hall?"

"Has Stronghand set you on me?" he asks them, amused by their earnest and stolid companionship.

"So he has, Brother," says the Eika.

"And charged us to be sure that you return safely to the hall," adds the Alban youth, who is eyeing him with curiosity. "How comes it that you speak the Alban tongue? Not many among your nation do so."

"It's in my blood," says Alain. "What are you called, you two?"

"I'm called Aestan, son of no woman who claimed me," says the Alban youth. "Once slave to the earl of the middle country, but now a free man and a soldier with the rights according to me thereby, under the charter of the new king, Lord Stronghand." He cocks a thumb at his companion. "This is my brother, called Tiderunner, although I just call him Eagor, which is what we call the flood tide in my country."

"Although his is the tongue that floods," says the Eika with a grin that displays four sparking jewels drilled into his sharp teeth.

Aestan punches him on the arm, and they shadowbox for a moment before recalling where they are and what their mission is.

"Have you lamps?" Alain asks them.

"We do, a pair of them," said Aestan, and adds, "They're not lit yet."

"As if he couldn't see so himself." retorts his companion.

"Heh! Having you for a companion, I begin to think all men are blind!"

Alain whistles. The hounds stand with heads high and ears pricked up, smelling and tasting the air. "There may be more wounded men lying out here who can be saved if they're found quickly."

They nod obediently.

He marks her in the distance, riding along a flank where men scramble through ruined pickets seeking survivors. The wings of dusk settle over the Lady of Battles until he can no longer see her, but he knows she still stalks the field. Always and ever she will ride. "We are not done yet, you and I," he says to her, knowing she can hear him at any distance. "I challenge you. I challenge you."

He turns to the soldiers. "Light a lamp, I pray you," he says.

Flint snaps. A flame leaps from the wick, and the lamp wakens, spilling light. He leads them out to search the darkening battlefield.

"He is coming," said Stronghand.

Duchess Liutgard and Duke Conrad had long since marched out to the Varren encampment to recover Liutgard's daughter, and returned to their separate quarters in this portion of the new palace.

The holy mothers had arranged to meet in the morning for a conclave.

Theophanu and Stronghand sat in chairs on either side of an open window, in the middle chamber of the suite reserved for the regnant. Her servants and stewards and his guardsmen and council members waited in attendance together with a half dozen of the messenger eagles.

All night he and she had sat thus, alone, just talking. She had described the forthcoming conclave at length—and with a subtle humor that repeatedly amused him—in terms that suggested it would be nothing more than a wrestling match argued with words rather than grappling. He had told the story of the Alban conquest. Of Aosta, there was rumor to chew over and discount. Of her father, the king, she spoke affectionately and yet with a kind of bitter reserve that betrayed ambivalent feelings. He told her of what he had seen at Gent in the days when his father, that belligerent warlord, still lived. They touched last on the afternoon's council, when the two of them had come to such an abrupt and instinctive accommodation.

Dawn would come soon.

Flambeaux smoldered in their sconces, trailing smoke and the waxy scent of herbs tucked in to sweeten their burning. A fire burned in twin braziers, because the humans found the night air cold, although the chill made no difference to him.

She wore a shawl draped over her shoulders; her hair was uncovered, twisted back in a single thick braid. She was easy to look on, unusual among humankind for not fidgeting or stretching her mouth into the grimaces called smiling and frowning. Like stone, she had patience and a smooth exterior. She was easy to talk to, and had an exceedingly clever mind, nor did she reveal too much in the manner of a person attempting to ingratiate herself where she feels inferior. He minded the same balance: they must learn enough of each other now to gain a worthy measure of trust, but not too much, lest the arrangement fall through before it is binding.

"If he is not truly the son and heir of Count Lavastine," she said, "then who is he? Who is his mother? Who his father?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to you, which tribe you are sprung from. You named your birth tribe and cousin tribes, and those who allied with you early, and those who came late or not at all. You remember their names.

Kinship always matters. He is bound to the county of Lavas in some manner. I would like to know how.

The count of Lavas controls a great deal of territory along the northeastern coast of Arconia and well inland. The one who rules there would be a welcome ally."

"Against Conrad and the heir to Arconia?"

"Yes. Conrad has multiple claims. His elder surviving daughter will be duke of Wayland after him.

His younger daughter by Tallia can claim the duchy of Arconia. The infant son—if the child still lives—also has a claim."

"Do you think it wise to honor the arrangement he claims to have made with Sanglant before the end? That Conrad's infant son, if he lives, marry Sanglant's young daughter, if she lives?"

"We must have heirs."

"My sons in the north and west, your kin here in the south and east."

"One daughter of Wendar to marry one son of the Eika in every generation, to keep the alliance."

"Should it hold," he said, with a flash of teeth.

"That promise lies beyond our power to enforce. We must raise those who will come after us to honor the agreement, and pray that they do."

"It's true that after death our hands clutch nothing but dust. That is fair. You remain suspicious of Conrad, it seems."

"I think it wise to distrust him. He is a likable man. But we hold weapons against him as well. If Lavas supports us, and we enrich Lavas with certain estates and toll routes currently claimed by the duke of Arconia, Lavas will counterweight Conrad's power."

He nodded. "As well, an emporium developed north of Medemelacha—in Osna Sound—would provide another staging ground for a fleet. Supported by the Lavas militia. Their placement along the coast makes them a bridge between the regions of the alliance."

"We'll have Arconia caught in a pincer, and keep her weakened. Cut off her access to trade.

Route trade through the north coast, which Lavas can control."

"A good plan. Especially if we institute a census, so we know who has survived and what taxes and tithes and tolls to expect, what regions were hurt most and which harmed least. But we must keep in mind this caution. The shorelines have altered all along the northern sea. It will take years to see how this upheaval has altered the nature and utility of the ports and coastal drainage."

"Yes. When we were in Gent—Sanglant and I—we saw that it may be necessary to abandon Gent's sea trade, although it remains a land crossroads. Much has changed."

So it had.

Hearing the click of nails on the stairs as the hounds padded up to the outer door of the suite, he rose. Now Theophanu also heard voices from the outer chamber as one of her servants admitted the visitors. She stood and went to the window. Resting a hand on the sill, she gazed over a garden made murky by night except where a pair of lamps hung from tripods beside a dry fountain. In that garden stood the battered Kerayit wagon and the dozen silent Eika soldiers who had pulled it all the way up here and now stood guard. The door to the wagon remained shut—in fact it was cracked—because he was no longer sure what would happen to his men were the sorcerer to step forth; his standard had been broken to pieces in the wake of the galla.

The door into the antechamber opened. Papa Otto looked in, and Stronghand nodded at him.

The man stepped back and spoke a few words to someone behind him. Then Alain came into the room with the hounds at his heels. The hounds halted on either side of the door, panting. Sorrow lay down and began licking a paw, but Rage was restless and kept shifting to find a more comfortable position.

"Why do we give this sorcerer protection when it seems she could easily kill us all?" Theophanu asked. She shivered in the cold night wind, but no fear or anger stained her voice. She was merely curious, seeking an answer so she could see what use to make of it.

"Compassion alone might make its claim," Alain said, "but if you must have a practical reason, then consider this. She is a weather worker of great power. A tempest brought this change of weather across the land. The heavens remain clouded. You see yourself that the crops do not ripen. That fruit stays green long past its time. Perhaps the skills of a tempestari could aid Wendar in some small way."

"Why should we trust sorcery now," asked Stronghand, "when we have never trusted it before?"

"That it exists and is used is not a matter of trust but a matter of truth. Yet also consider that the Kerayit are the allies of the Horse people. Their children, if you will, adopted into the clan long ago." He faltered. Stronghand watched the way he shuttered his eyes and exhaled a breath. Then shook himself, as if waking up. "The leader of the Horse people, their most powerful shaman, is dead. This woman must return to her people, because it is her obligation to do so. Perhaps she will become their leader. Do you wish her to depart as your ally, or your enemy?"

"She might be dying," said Theophanu. "No one knows how badly she was injured in the crash."

"She will live," said Alain.

"We could kill her," suggested Stronghand. "It would be the most practical measure."

"We could try," said Theophanu. "I suppose we would have to set fire to the wagon to force her to come out, place archers on all sides, but any of them who looked upon her in order to shoot would, on seeing her, die."

"It would be difficult," Stronghand agreed, "but with some careful thought and precise planning it could be done."

She considered him, and after this looked again down at the wagon. Seen at this angle—from the second story of the palace—the lamplight made the painted sigils, already streaked and scraped from the crash, give a kind of wiggle, as though they were alive and moving on the wood. "If she lives, she will always be a threat, no matter how far away."

"Any ally may turn into an enemy," Stronghand replied, "so all alliances must be cultivated in such manner that they will grow and not wither."

"We must decide what she wants, and what will bind her to us.

Where is that Eagle? The one called Hanna. I have heard that she can look upon the sorcerer and live. She must act as negotiator." She looked at him, and he at her, and they nodded.

"A reasonable plan," he said.

For a little while she said nothing, regarding him steadily. "It is a rare gift to consider all sides to a question without succumbing to judgment or emotion before the best or most practical answer is reached," she said to him.

She extended a hand. He took a step toward her and placed his hand on hers. She examined it thoughtfully. "I pray you, Lord Stronghand, show me your claws."

He stepped back, lifted his arms square in front of his body, and released the claws that lived within.

She did not flinch. "Thus are we all armed with unseen weapons. Better to see if we can seal a treaty with her, for now. Later, if she returns to her home, as she must, she will be very far away and thereby less of a threat."

"I agree," he said, sheathing his claws. "It is the most practical solution. For now."

"Yet where is the Eagle?" asked Theophanu.

"Riding toward Hersford Monastery," said Alain. "I pray you, Your Highness. Let a procession be made ready to depart as soon as possible for Autun."

"Yes. Mother Scholastica has already claimed the right to bury Sapientia in Quedlinhame. It's best to move Sabella's body to Arconia immediately, so the succession can be set in motion. We must consider where we should first be crowned and anointed. Quedlinhame, or Autun? And what of Sanglant? Where shall we bury him? He has no true home, not really, poor man."

Moisture winked in her eyes, the only real surge of emotion Stronghand had seen in her. In this, at least, her heart was strong: she had loved her brother and been faithful to him. So was he, in his own fashion, true to Alain.

"Let him be carried west as well," said Alain, "with a proper escort. Best if he's carried on a separate track from Lady Sabella and her retinue. There is a more northerly path leading west, that crosses the El River near Hersford Monastery."

He was clear and clean, like an unsheathed sword, beautiful yet filled with a deadly grace and wielded by an unseen hand. It was a mystery that Stronghand did not understand, but no greater a mystery, really, than the day the Eika had come into being long centuries ago, in the aftermath of the first great weaving. There is power in the universe that cannot fully be understood.

Theophanu said, "Who are you, Lord Alain?"

He smiled gently. "My mother is dead, although she was nothing more—and nothing less—than a starving refugee who used what coin she had to feed herself. I do not know who my father is."

"You do not answer my question."

He went to the door. "That I am here is the only answer I know. I pray you, forgive me, but there is one other person here I must meet."

"Before what?" she asked, hearing the unspoken portion of his words.

"I mean to escort Sanglant's body." He nodded at them, as at equals, and walked out. They heard him cross the other room and pad away down the stairs.

Two soldiers looked in. "Continue to guard him," Stronghand said.

"And as you go, send the Eagle called Hathui to me," said Theophanu.

They nodded and left, shutting the door.

"Is Constance right?" Theophanu said. "Is he a messenger sent from God?"

"I am not familiar with such creatures," said Stronghand, "so I cannot be sure what Biscop Constance means."

"You wear the Circle of Unity."

He touched the wooden Circle that hung around his neck, traced its circumference in the remembered way. "So I do. I wear it to remind myself of what once was, and what may be."

She had a way of turning and tilting her head the merest finger's breadth that marked a flash of new thought, an idea to be considered. "The nobles and peoples of Wendar and Varre will not accept you if you are not washed and made clean within the Light, under the authority of the church."

"Very well. I will be washed and made clean, in whatever ceremony is necessary."

She raised one eyebrow. "Do you believe in the Holy Word and in the Light of Unity?"

"Is belief a requirement?"

She laughed, and he smiled, in the human way, and she blushed, a surprising flush of color on her cheeks, quickly controlled as she continued speaking.

"The clerics would say belief is necessary, but I don't know what God would say Must we know we believe, or is it enough to follow God's precepts and live according to the law?"

He nodded. "The WiseMothers of my people possessed the ability to see beyond the veil which blinds their short-lived children. Perhaps the wise mothers of your kin also have this far-reaching vision."

"Perhaps. Some are wise and honest, but others struggle for power and advancement just like the rest of us. It is ever so. We are imperfect vessels, easily cracked by greed or anger or lust or envy or anguish or fear. Yet some among us are also steadfast and true-hearted. Sanglant was such a man. That is why I mourn him, who was best among us."

She wept without sobbing or keening, dignified in her grief.

He could not mourn, who had known this man only as Bloodheart's prisoner, among the dogs. The Eika do not weep.

In truth, it served him well that the captain called Sanglant was dead, because it eliminated a powerful rival, a man who might have outplayed him on the field of blood which is called battle. He was not happy about it; nor was he sad. He used what weapons he could gather.

The invisible tide of fate dragged men to the shore, or into deep waters where they drowned. He and his tribes of Eika had been cast ashore, orphaned on the wings of the same storm that had broken the ancient threads binding the WiseMothers to the aether that was their life. In the fjall of the heavens, the WiseMothers had dreamed of the past and of the future, too steep a climb for mortal legs. No longer would their children benefit from that farsighted vision.

Yet in their passing, they had birthed a new generation of First-Mothers, the dragon kind whose blood had burned fire into stone and flesh to create the Eika long ago. So the tide turns. Who knew what wrack would wash up on the shore out of the fathomless sea?

With an embroidered scrap of linen, Theophanu wiped her cheeks. "Well," she said. "All things die, that walk on Earth. So will we, when God will it." She glanced outside, and gasped. "Look!"

He moved to stand beside her, not touching her, but their shoulders—of a height—so close that her shawl brushed his bare arm as she pointed.

The wind had really picked up, blowing off all but those clouds caught along the horizon. Stars glinted against the veil of night.

"Some say the stars are the souls of the dead." Her hands gripped the sill so tightly that her knuckles were white—or perhaps it was only the cold that paled her skin.

"We call the stars 'the eyes of the most ancient Mothers.' "

She relaxed, shoulders dropping slightly "Do they watch over you, as kindly mothers do?"

"No. Those whose thoughts have passed into the heavens are indifferent to us, who live here upon the streaming waters and the silent earth. It is cold in the vale of black ice, which we call the fjall of the heavens. The north wind rises there. It is as sharp as a knife, a breath so bitter that it kills. Would we think them as beautiful if they were not so cold and so distant?"

When she did not reply, he turned his head to look at her, who stood so close beside him. A last tear slid down her cheek, one she did not wipe away, and she was looking at him, not at the glorious heavens.

"Perhaps not," she said in that cool, smooth voice that gave away nothing. "Yet we become accustomed to admiring the things we can never quite grasp, and have no hope of truly possessing."

It was obvious she meant more than she said, in the manner of humankind, but he could not quite read into the bones of her words. The span of life is short, and troublesome in large part because there is far more to understand than time to do it in.

He nodded carefully, to acknowledge that he had heard her. "Today we have won a great victory.

As for the rest, as we say in my country, we must take it one stone at a time."

3

AT dawn, Zuangua took control.

"We're not to move out of the camp until he gives permission," Liath said to Anna. "He says we've already trampled valuable sign."

Anna obeyed without protest. What else could she do? She was grateful to have been rescued from the country of the Ashioi, but she might as well have been flotsam caught in the current, spinning and tumbling. She stood beside the fire pit, and she watched, because she could do nothing else.

The trackers were one male and one female, maskless and naked except for sandals and a loincloth tied up between their legs so it would not drag on the ground. They made a circuit of the stone crown and slowly widened this spiral to include the grassy mounds. Here, alongside one of the mounds, the female tracker lingered, while the male tracker moved swiftly toward an obvious path breaking out of the trees on the southern side of the clearing.

"Hei!" called the female tracker.

Anna followed Liath and Zuangua, who hurried to the tracker's position. The woman pointed to scuff marks and broken stems of grass beside one of the narrow openings that led under a burial mound. They consulted, then looked around at the mask warriors who had gathered.

"Anna," said Liath. "You're the best fit."

They gave her a torch, lit by a touch from the lady. The way the flame flared made Anna tremble to think of having that kind of power, and she dared not say "no."

In the east, Prince Sanglant had been able to crawl through the passageway to the central chamber of the burial mound in which he had interred Blessing and her six attendants. He would never have fit in this tunnel. Even the Ashioi, none of whom were particularly tall, were a broad-shouldered, stocky people, too wide abeam to fit easily.

Anna got down on hands and knees. Shoving the burning torch before her, she edged forward with elbows leading and feet trailing behind. The smell of earth overwhelmed her. With each breath she sucked in drifting motes of earth, the ancient air of the tomb. Stone grazed her head. A bug scuttled over her hand, and she choked down a shriek. Her own body blocked much of the light from behind, and in any case the tunnel was long and the opening small enough that she was soon swallowed.

What if Blessing had been murdered, and stuffed into this hole? Her body, decomposing, riddled with worms and maggots?

But the torch met no resistance. It cleared the lowest point in the passage, where she had to shinny along the ground like a snake, and then suddenly the ceiling lofted away above her. She had come to the heart of the mound.

The flames whispered, echoing off the low vault of corbeled stone. Blank eyes stared at her from around the chamber. Hollow faces leered, mouths agape in white grins. Skeletons, dressed still in their finery, with wisps of hair capping their bony heads.

She screamed, slapped her hands over her face.

It was all a vision, a nightmare. Moaning, she tried to lower her hands, but she could not move, she could not think, she could not breathe.

They scuffed the dirt. They were moving, scrabbling toward her, reaching out with white fingers to scrape her flesh from her bones, to make her into one of them . . .

A touch brushed her shoulder.

She sobbed hysterically.

"Anna! Anna! They're dead. They can't hurt you!"

She groaned.

"Here, now, Anna. Just go back, then. I'll look around. God Above! They're wearing the silver tree, the mark of Villam! Could these be the companions of Lord Berthold, who were lost here?"

Shaking, still weeping, Anna lowered her hands.

Liath had crawled in after her, and now, standing but bent over so her head didn't graze the ceiling, she held a torch out and examined, each in turn, the remains of seven dead people. Mostly the flesh had been eaten away, although dried bits adhered in places and they still had much of their hair. The cloth of their garments had not decomposed as quickly. The mark of the silver tree was easily visible on their finely woven tabards. A naked sword lay over the legs of one; rust discolored it.

"These two are dressed differently," said Liath, pausing beside the last two, who lay at an awkward angle to the others, as if they did not belong. "Ai, God!" She held the torch closer, to get a better look.

These wore tabards stitched with the black dragon worn by the retainers sworn to serve Prince Sanglant. One of the tabards was patched in three places easily visible to the eye: a large patch at the dragon's right claw, a smaller mend at the sigil's snout, and a third at the shoulder.

Anna had mended that rip. That was her stitching.

"This is very strange," said Liath. "How came these seven dead men here? I am sure as I heard the tale that these barrows were explored after the disappearance of Lord Berthold, and no remains found.

These poor fellows must have crawled in here seeking shelter in recent months, and been lost."

"No," whispered Anna.

Liath turned to look at her. By torchlight, she did not look so very fearsome. The darkness crowding in on all sides made her appear more vulnerable. She was not much older than Anna herself, not truly. She had also traveled a long way, and faced terrible dangers.

"Who do you think they are?"

Anna wiped her cheeks, but the tears kept flowing. She had mended that tabard. She knew her own stitches.

"Those five," she said hoarsely, "they must be as you say. They must be Lord Berthold's retainers, the five he left behind. I told you—" She drew breath, caught her courage, and went on. After all, she had always known the truth in her heart. Now she must accept it. "I told you we had to run. That the caverns were collapsing around us."

"Indeed, you did," said Liath with a slight frown. "Then who are these two others?"

She had not Prince Sanglant's talent for names and faces; he would have known at once; he would not have had to ask. And after all this, Anna could not say their names aloud, although they resonated in her heart.

Thiemo and Matto.

Speechless, she covered her face with her hands.

4

AFTER she had crawled back out of the mound, and wiped off her clothing, Liath waited beside Sharp Edge as the tracker continued her search of the clearing. Poor Anna was huddled on the ground in a stupor, neither crying nor speaking. It was as if she had been struck on the head and gone mute.

"There is some vast labyrinth that connects the whole," she said to Sharp Edge. "Some of it is truly underground, hewn out of the rock, but another part must be the aetherical tributaries, shifting in their channels. We placed Blessing and her companions in a mound far to the east—hoping to save her life, which we did! Lord Berthold and his companions crawled into the mounds above Hersford Monastery.

And if Anna's account is correct, and I believe it is, then a group comprised of two from Hersford and five from the east escaped from the cataclysm at Verna, in the Alfar Mountains. How can this be?"

"It must be possible to map these channels," said Sharp Edge. "I'd like to do that!"

Liath shook her head, smiling slightly. Sharp Edge had a strong personality, a little hard to take, but her eagerness was like good wine: it made you want to drink more.

"A map," said Zuangua, "would allow war parties to strike more effectively." He was pale, hurting, but unbowed.

A distant "halloo" drew his attention. The female tracker stood at the northern edge of the clearing beside a narrow track that was, in truth, scarcely more than a parting of branches.

"She's found some scent," said Zuangua. "Liat'dano, go with Tarangi. Take a pair to follow her, but do not confront our enemy without me, if that's where the scent leads you. I'll send a bundle with Calta, on that big path, to see what they find. The rest will remain here with me."

Liath paused beside Anna, but the poor girl was so drawn into herself that she did not even respond to a murmured question. With a shrug, she hurried after the female tracker, already lost among the trees.

Buzzard Mask and Falcon Mask stalked behind, eyes wide as they stared around at this alien land. To her surprise, she had not taken more than a hundred steps when she followed Tarangi out of the trees onto a rocky outcrop. A spring leaked from a defile to make a small pool within the rocks. The ridgeline fell away before them in a jumble of cliffs and terraces. Set back against tree and rock, sheltered by the highest thrust of the ridge, a tiny hut stood in isolation. Moss ran riot on the thatched roof. The walls gleamed as though they were freshly whitewashed.

Tarangi had risen to both feet, brushing dirt and bits of grass and leaf from her bare chest.

"Nothing," she said to Liath. "The one we seek did not come here. There is an old magic protecting this place. Can't you smell it? It is powerful, but not angry. It is not against us, but it will reveal no secrets. I will not go in the hut."

"Is it a bad place? Has it a bad heart?"

" 'Bad'? No. It is peaceful but very strong. Like lightning, it is from beyond this Earth. I will not go there." She retreated into the trees and crouched in the shade to wait for them.

"Do we go back?" asked Falcon Mask, all her weight riding on her toes like a dog straining at a leash.

Best to hurry, but Liath herself felt leashed, as if something bound her here. "No. I want to look around first."

Falcon Mask dashed at once to the rock wall rising behind the hut and began to climb. She had a mad grin on her face. Buzzard Mask prowled to the edge of the open space, marking its boundaries.

The track itself went no farther. It ended here, where the hill ended, cut off by the precipitous drop in front and the rock wall behind. Forest covered the lands below. In the distance Liath saw a thread of smoke.

She walked over to the hut. Cautiously, she pushed on the door of lashed branches. It resisted for the space of two breaths, and then gave way. She held her breath. She knew where she was, absolutely and without doubt. The discovery of the skeletons beneath the mound had told her what she needed to know. This confirmed it. She knew who had lived long years in confines so small that a man could not lie down in comfort lengthwise. Had they buried his body elsewhere, or did his remains still rest inside?

She stepped over the threshold.

The narrow dirt floor lay empty and unmarked by even the dusty prints of woodland animals, which might be expected to have come scavenging. A wooden bowl and a wooden spoon hung from a wooden hook, strung up by a slender strand of fraying rope so dry that she feared that, if she touched it, it would crack and crumble.

A leather bucket had tipped over in one corner. A faint, sweet aroma drifted from that corner, but the curl of air inside the hut blew it away in an instant. She took another step in, righted the bucket, and found it empty but discolored at the bottom. Beneath, some creature had dug a hole in the ground, like a dog seeking a bone, but it was empty. There was no other sign of the holy man who had bided here for so many years.

This man was supposed to have been the only son and heir of Taillefer and Radegundis; the father of Anne; the husband, however briefly and illicitly, of Mother Obligatia. Once, Liath had believed that Brother Fidelis was her grandfather, but now she knew he was not. All they had in common, if the stories she heard could be believed—and she did believe them—was that he had once sat in the circle of the Seven Sleepers. That he had abandoned their councils, believing them to be corrupt.

He had taken the more difficult path, the life of an ascetic. Some had called him a saint, blessed with that halo of righteousness that the church mothers call the crown of stars.

It was ironic, then, that Brother Fidelis had the right to wear such a crown twice over, once as the heir to Taillefer's empire and once as a holy man who had cut himself off from the court of worldly power in order to pray for the souls of the living and the dead.

Bowl and spoon and bucket were all that remained of him, except his precious book, the Vita of St.

Radegundis, taken away by Sister Rosvita and still held in her possession.

"Bright One!" Buzzard Mask's voice was breathless, fading into a wheeze of terror.

She stepped sideways out of the hut, and turned. The shock actually made her go rigid. Not six steps from her lay a bold, golden lion, washing its paws with its tongue.

"Bright One!" hissed Falcon Mask from above and to the right. "Step aside. I have an arrow ready."

"Leap back," said Buzzard Mask, to her left. "I'll thrust at its heart."

"Hold."

The lion neither startled nor moved, but kept licking. An arm's length in front of its massive head and fearsome teeth rested a quite ordinary wooden staff.

"If it meant to leap, it would already have done so."

She took one step toward it, and paused. Lowered to a crouch, and paused. She might have been the wind, for all the notice it took of her. Its tongue worked at the pads. She reached, and touched the staff. Its huge slit eyes lifted. It stared at her for an age and an eternity, and she spun into that gaze, falling a man stands in darkness, holding a newborn. A woman cloaked in robes and shadow faces him, her graceful hands crossed at her chest. He is anxious and troubled. She is as patient and peaceful as death.

"It is a girl," he says with disgust and dismay. "I will not after all these years and all my expectations be superseded by a squalling brat. Yet I dare not. I dare not. . . it would be wrong to kill her."

The cleric answers, softly and persuasively. "I have a use for her. She will vanish. None will ever know, my lord, that she existed. I will be midwife to her transformation. Her twin brother will serve you well enough. No one will ever suspect there was another infant. Your mother is already dead, poor soul. The labor was too much for her."

"Yes, it must be," he said. "It is better so. I am old enough. My people trust me. They expect me to inherit, not to be ruled by an infant only because my mother insisted on the old custom.

Better live under a regnant now than suffer a regent for many years and all the instability that portends. Yet what seal will you give me? What pledge, what guarantee, that you will not crawl back here in fifteen years to plague me with her claim?"

Outside, heard through a shuttered window, a hound lifts its voice in a wailing howl, and a dozen similar howls answer. That eerie clamor makes him shudder, but he holds firm.

"Come, my lord. Let me show you the hounds. Then I will take the child, and you and your heirs will be guarded in truth by that which guarantees our bargain."

"It is better so," he repeats, trembling because he does not really believe his own words, but he follows her out through the door into the night.

Falling, Liath tumbled onto her rump as the lion rose and, with a gathering like that of a storm, loomed over her. Its hot, dry breath gusted; it yawned like the gates of the Abyss, displaying sharp white teeth.

"Bright One!"

It leaped and vanished into the rock.

Falcon Mask's arrow skittered over the dirt and clattered out of sight beyond the rocky slopes below. Liath heard the shaft snap, then a patter of smaller falls, and then silence. After a moment, she realized she was holding her breath, and holding the staff.

The two young mask warriors jumped into view, weapons raised and eyes flared with excitement and fear. "Where did it go?"

"It won't be coming back." She got up.