by Kate Elliott
“Peace!” Lavastine frowned at the hounds, who swarmed around him more like puppies frightened by thunder than loyal fighting hounds.
A creature rustled in the thicket. The hounds went wild. Terror closed his jaw over the count’s hand and tugged him backward while Steadfast and Fear leaped into the brambles, teeth snapping on empty air. Hackles up, Sorrow and Rage circled the bramble bush and Ardent and Bliss tore up and down between Lavastine and the thicket.
But there was nothing there.
“Peace!” snapped Lavastine. He so disliked it when his orders were not obeyed instantly.
Steadfast yelped suddenly, a cry of pain. The other hounds went into such a wild frenzy around the thicket that servants and noblemen scattered in fear, and then the hounds spun and snapped and bolted away as if in hot pursuit, the entire pack running downstream along the embankment.
“Alain! Follow them!”
Alain quickly followed the hounds, with only a single servant in attendance. The hounds ran far ahead now, scrambling in a fluid, furious pack down to a rocky stretch of beach. He glanced back in time to see Lavastine strip and make his careful way—as had the other courtiers before him—down the slope to the river. While the younger men braved the crossing to follow after the prince, the king and his mature councillors took their ease in the shallow water and talked no doubt of Gent and the Eika and recent reports of Quman raids in the east and certain marriage alliances that must be accepted or declined.
The hounds had disappeared, so Alain broke into a trot and found them clustered just around the river’s bend on the last strip of narrow beach. Stiff-legged, they barked at the water. Alain thought he saw a flash of something tiny and white struggling in the current. Then, slowly, their barking subsided into growls, growls to silence, and the hounds relaxed into a steady vigilance as they regarded the flowing river.
Had he only imagined that flash of movement? The sun made metal of the water as it streamed along. Its bright flash made Alain’s eyes tear, and he blinked rapidly, but that only made the water shimmer and flow in uncanny forms like the shift of a slick and scaly back seen beneath the waves or the swift passage of a ship along a canyon of water.
Ahead lies the smoke of home, the cradle of his tribe. Who has arrived before him? Will he and his soldiers have to fight just to set foot on shore, or has he come first to make his claim before OldMother so that she may prepare the knife of decision?
The fjord waters mirror the deep blush of the heavens, the powerful blue of the afternoon sky. The waters are so still that each tree along the shore lies mirrored in their depths. Off to one side a merman’s slick back parts the water and a ruddy eye takes their measure; then, with a flick of its tail, the creature vanishes into the seamless depths.
Teeth closed on his hand and, coming to himself, he looked down to see Sorrow pulling on him to get his attention. Only three hounds remained; the others had vanished. He started around to see his attendant sitting cross-legged, arms relaxed, as if he’d been waiting a long time.
“My lord!” The man jumped up. “The other hounds ran back to the count, and I didn’t, know how to stop them, but you was so still for so long I didn’t know how to interrupt you….” Trailing off, he glanced nervously at the remaining hounds: Sorrow, Rage, and poor Steadfast, who sat whimpering and licking her right forepaw.
“No matter.” Alain took Steadfast’s paw into his hand to examine it. A bramble thorn had bitten deep into the flesh, and he gentled her with his tone and then got hold of the thorn and pulled it out. She whimpered, then set to work licking again.
A flash of dead white out in the streaming flow of the river distracted him. Downstream, a fish appeared, belly up. Dead. Then a second, a third, and a fourth appeared farther downstream yet, dead white bellies turned up to sun and air, gleaming corpses drawn seaward by the current. Beyond that he could make out only light on the water.
Rage growled.
“My lord.” The servant had brought his horse.
But he walked back instead, to keep an eye on Steadfast. The thorn had done no lasting damage. Soon she was loping along with the others in perfect good humor, biting and nipping at her cousins in play. Alain would have laughed to see them; it was, after all, a pleasant and carefree day.
But when, across the river, he saw the fishermen trudging home with their baskets full of plump fish, the image of the dead fish caught in the current flashed into his mind’s eye and filled him with a troubling foreboding—only he did not know why.
4
THE quiet that pervaded the inner court of the palace of Weraushausen had such a soothing effect, combined with the heat of the sun, that Liath drowsed on the stone bench where she waited even though she wasn’t tired. Fears and hopes mingled to become a tangled dream: Da’s murder, Hugh, the curse of fire, Hanna’s loyalty and love, Ivar’s pledge, the shades of dead elves, Lord Alain and the friendship he had offered her, the death of Bloodheart, Sister Rosvita and The Book of Secrets, daimones hunting her and, more vivid than all the others, the tangible memory of Sanglant’s hair caught in her fingers there by the stream where he had scoured away the filth of his captivity.
She started up, heart pounding; she was hot, embarrassed, dismayed, and breathless with hope all at once.
She could not bear to think of him because she wanted only to think of him. A bee droned past. The gardener who weeded in the herb garden had moved to another row. No one had come to summon her. She did not know how much longer she would have to wait.
She walked to the well with its shingled roof and whitewashed stone rim. The draft of air rising from the depths smelled of fresh water and damp stone. The deacon who cared for the chapel here had told her that a spring fed the wells; before the coming of the Daisanite fraters to these lands a hundred years ago its source had rested hidden in rocks and been worshiped as a goddess by the heathen tribes. Now a stone cistern contained it safely beneath the palace.
Was that the glint of water in the depths? if she looked hard enough with her salamander eyes, would she see in that mirror the face of the man she would marry, as old herbwomen claimed? Or was that only pagan superstition, as the church mothers wrote?
She drew back, suddenly afraid to see anything, and stepped out from the shadow of the little roof into the blast of the noonday sun.
“I will never love any man but him.” Was it that pledge which had bound her four days ago in the circle of stones where she’d crossed through an unseen gateway and ridden into unknown lands? Had she really been foolish enough to turn away from the learning offered to her by the old sorcerer?
She shaded her eyes from the sun and sat again on the bench. It had heavy feet fashioned in the likeness of a lion’s paws, carved of a reddish-tinged marble. That same marble had been used for the pillars lining the inner court.
Because the king was not now in residence at Weraushausen, a mere Eagle like herself could sit in the court usually reserved for the king rather than stand attendance upon him. It was so quiet that she could believe for this while in the peace that God are said to grant to the tranquil soul—not that such peace was ever likely to be granted to her.
A sudden scream tore the silence, followed by laughter and the pounding of running feet.
“Nay, children. Walk with dignity. Slow down!”
The children of the king’s schola had arrived to take their midday exercise, some more sedately than others. Liath watched as they tumbled out into the sunlight. She envied these children their freedom to study, their knowledge of their kin, and their future position in the king’s court. One boy climbed a plinth and swung, dangling, from the legs of the old statue set there, an ancient Dariyan general.
“Lord Adelfred! Come down off there. I beg you!”
“There’s the Eagle,” said the boy, jumping down. “Why couldn’t we hear her report about the battle at Gent?”
Next to the statue stood Ekkehard, the king’s youngest child. He resembled his father although he had the sle
nderness of youth. At this moment, he wore a sullen expression as if it were as fine an adornment as his rich clothing and gem-studded rings, in sharp contrast to the austere expression of the stone soldier. “I asked if I could ride back with her, to my father,” he said, “but it wasn’t allowed.”
“We must be going back to the king’s court soon,” retorted the other boy, looking alarmed. By the slight burr in the way he pronounced his Wendish, Liath guessed he was from Avaria, perhaps one of Duke Burchard’s many nephews. “King Henry can’t mean to leave us here forever! I’m to get my retinue next year and ride east to fight the Quman!”
“It won’t matter, forever,” muttered Prince Ekkehard. He had a sweet voice; Liath had heard him sing quite beautifully last night. In daylight, without a lute in his hand, he merely looked restless and ill-tempered. “Soon I’ll be fifteen and have my own retinue, too, and then I won’t be treated like a child. Then I can do what I want.”
“Eagle.”
Liath started to her feet and turned, expecting to see a cleric come to escort her to Cleric Monica. But she saw only the top of a black-haired head.
“Do you know who I am?” asked the child. For an instant it was like staring into a mirror and seeing a small shadow of herself, although they looked nothing alike except in complexion.
“You are Duke Conrad’s daughter,” said Liath.
The girl took hold of Liath’s wrist and turned over the Eagle’s hand to see the lighter skin of the palm. “I’ve never seen anyone but my father, my avia—my grandmother, that is—and my sister and myself with such skin. I did see a slave once, in the retinue of a presbyter. They said she had been born in the land of the Gyptos, but she was dark as pitch. Where do your kinfolk come from?”
“From Darre,” said Liath, amused by her blithe arrogance.
The child regarded her with an imperious expression. “You just rode in from the king’s progress. Has there been news? My mother, Lady Eadgifu, should have had her baby by now, but no one will tell me anything.”
“I have heard no news of your mother.”
The girl glanced toward the other children. Ekkehard and his companion had moved off to toss dice in the shadow of the colonnade, and the others kept their distance. Only the old statue remained, like a trusted companion. He had once held a sword, but it was missing. Flecks of blue still colored his eyes, and in the sheltered curve of his elbow and the deeper folds of the cloak spun out in folds of stone from his left shoulder Liath could see the stain of gold paint not yet worn away by wind and weather. Lichen grew on his stone sandals and between his toes.
Was it not said that the Dariyan emperors and empresses and their noble court were the half-breed descendants of the Lost Ones? This stone general looked a little like Sanglant.
“I’m a prisoner here, you know,” the girl added without heat. She had the rounded profile of youth, blurred still by baby-fat and the promise of later growth, but a distinctly self-aware expression for all that. No more than nine or ten, she already understood the intricate dance of court intrigue. With a sigh, the child released Liath’s hand and turned half away. “I still miss Berthold,” she murmured. “He was the only one who paid attention to me.”
“Who is Berthold?” asked Liath, intrigued by the yearning in the girl’s voice.
But the girl only glanced at her, as if surprised—as Hugh would say—to hear a dog speak.
A cleric hurried up the central colonnade and beckoned to Liath; she followed her into the palace. In a spacious wood-paneled chamber Cleric Monica sat at one end of a long table otherwise inhabited by clerics only half awake, writing with careful strokes or yawning while a scant breeze stirred the air. The shutters had been taken down. Through the windows Liath could see a corral for horses and beyond that the berm of earth that was part of the fortifications. Wildflowers bloomed along the berm, purple and pale yellow. Goats grazed on the steep slope.
“Come forward.” Cleric Monica spoke in a low voice. The clerics worked in silence, and only the distant bleat of a goat and an occasional shout from one of the children penetrated the room, and yet there lay between them all a companionable air as if this hush reflected labor done willingly together, with one heart and one striving. Two letters and several parchment documents lay at Monica’s right hand. “Here is a letter for Sister Rosvita from Mother Rothgard at St. Valeria Convent. Here are four royal capitularies completed by the clerics at the king’s order. To King Henry relate this message: the schola will leave Weraushausen in two days’ time and travel south to meet him at Thersa, as His Majesty commands. Do you understand the whole?”
“Yes.”
“Now.” Cleric Monica beckoned to a tiny deacon almost as old as Monica herself. Liath towered over the old woman. “Deacon Ansfrida.”
Deacon Ansfrida had a lisp which, combined with the hauteur of a noblewoman, gave her an air of slightly ridiculous abstraction. “There has been a new road built through the forest. If you follow it, it should save you four days of riding time toward Thersa.”
“Is it safe to ride through the forest?”
Neither churchwoman appeared surprised by the question. The forests lay outside the grasp of the church; they were wild lands still. “I have heard no reports that the levy set to do the work met with any difficulty. Since the Eika came last year, we have been peculiarly untroubled by bandits.”
“What of other creatures?”
Cleric Monica gave a little breath, a voiced “ah” that trailed away to blend with the shuffling of feet and the scratch of pens. But the deacon gave Liath a strange look. “Certainly one must watch out for wolves,” replied Ansfrida. “Is that what you mean?”
Better, Liath realized, to have asked the forests that question and not good women of the church. “Yes, that’s what I mean,” she said quickly.
“You may wait outside,” said Cleric Monica crisply. “A servant will bring you a horse.”
Thus dismissed, Liath retreated, relieved to get out from under Monica’s searching eye. Beyond the palace she found a log bench to sit on. Here she waited again. The palace lay enclosed by berms of more recent construction; in one place where ditch and earth wall stood now, she could see the remains of an old building that had been torn up and dug through when the fortification was put in. The palace loomed before her. With windows set high in its walls and six towers hugging the semicircular side like sentries, it appeared from the outside more like a fort than a palace. A jumble of outbuildings lay scattered within the protecting berms. A woman stood outside the cookhouse, searing a side of beef over a smoking pit. A servant boy slept half hidden in the grass.
Without the king in residence, Weraushausen was a peaceful place. From the chapel, she heard a single female voice raised in prayer for the service of Sext, and in distant fields men sang in robust chorus as they worked under the hot sun. Crickets buzzed. Beyond the river lay the great green shoulder of the untamed forest; a buzzard—scarcely more than a black speck—soared along its outermost fringe.
What would it be like to live in such peace?
She flipped open her saddlebags. The letters were sealed with wax and stamped with tiny figures. She recognized the seal from St. Valeria Convent at once by the miniature orrery, symbol of St. Valeria’s victory in the city of Saïs when she confounded the pagan astrologers. Liath dared not open the letter, of course. Did it contain news of Princess Theophanu? Had she recovered from her illness, or did this letter bring news of her death? Was Mother Rothgard writing to warn Sister Rosvita that a sorcerer walked veiled in the king’s progress? Would Rosvita suspect Liath? Or would she suspect Hugh?
Liath glanced through the capitularies: King Henry grants to the nuns of Regensbach a certain estate named Felstatt for which they owe the king and his heirs full accommodation and renders of food and drink for the royal retinue as well as fodder for the horses at such times as the king’s progress may pass that way; King Henry endows a monastery at Gent in the name of St. Perpetua in thanks for the victor
y at Gent and the return of his son; King Henry grants immunity from all but royal service to the foresters of the Bretwald in exchange for keeping the new road through the Bret Forest clear; King Henry calls the elders of the church to a council at Autun on the first day of the month of Setentre, which in the calendar of the church is called Matthiasmass.
That day, according to the mathematici, was the autumn equinox.
Ai, God. If she held The Book of Secrets, could she open it freely here? Would she ever live in a place where there was leisure, and such safety as this palace offered? Was there any place she could study the secrets of the mathematici, wander in her city of memory, explore the curse of fire, and be left alone?
She laughed softly, a mixture of anger, regret, and giddy desire. Such a place had been offered her, when she had least expected it, and she had turned away in pursuit of a dream just as impossible.
A man emerged from the palace gateway leading a saddled horse, a sturdy bay mare with a white blaze and two white socks. She took the reins, thanked him politely, and went on her way.
5
AS the deacon had promised, the road ran straight east through the Bretwald. Birds trilled from the branches. A doe and half-grown twin fawns trotted into view and as quickly vanished into the foliage. She heard the grunt of a boar. She peered into the depths beyond the scar that was the road. Trees marched out on all sides into unknowable and impenetrable wilderness. The scent of growing lay over everything as heavily as spices at the king’s feasting table. Like a rich mead, she could almost taste it simply by breathing it in.
But she could no longer ride through the deep forest without looking over her shoulder. She could not forget the daimone that had stalked her, or the creature of bells. She could not forget the elfshot that had killed her horse this past spring, although that pursuit had taken place in a different forest than this one. Yet surely all forests were only pieces of the same great and ancient forest. She had traveled enough to know that the wild places on earth were of far greater extent than those lands tamed by human hands.