by Kate Elliott
Or so it seemed, until Sister Rosvita spoke in the most temperate of voices. “What do you fear, Mother Scholastica? It cannot be that you fear the truth.”
“These lies are the work of the Enemy.”
“Maybe so. None of us are without sin in this matter, I think. You yourself, Mother Scholastica—”
“I?”
“You crowned and anointed Sanglant, but at the same time it appears you were already in league with Duke Conrad and Lady Sabella. Theophanu knows by now that you were ready and willing to pass her over, although hers was the highest claim. Who will trust you, knowing you have shown two faces to those who sought your support?”
The abbess’ lips pulled back in a flash of teeth almost like a snarl. “I have remained loyal to Wendar and Varre. That has been my sole concern. Do you believe otherwise, Sister Rosvita? Of what do you accuse me?”
“Of what do you accuse yourself?” Rosvita asked mildly. Every gaze fixed on the abbess—every gaze, that is, but that of Rosvita. The cleric looked toward the lonely bier. In that moment, the light indoors changed markedly, from a pale filtered glow to a strong yellow glare, as the sun cleared the low-lying clouds. For the first time, Alain saw that the dead man was not, after all, alone and abandoned. The body was flanked by attendants: two nuns and a third figure so bent, doubled over by the head of the corpse, that he could not quite discern what it was. Sorrow whimpered. Rage turned tail and tried to slink away toward the door, but he snapped his fingers and she crawled back.
“Let us see it done quickly, then,” said Scholastica hoarsely. “We will hold a council immediately, to begin on the first day of summer, next year. I suppose presbyters, biscops, holy abbesses, and clerics can be called and make their way to Autun in so short a span of time.”
Rosvita nodded. “That is acceptable to me.”
“Autun?” Constance’s hands were trembling and her face was very pale. “Do you still hope for Conrad’s backing, Aunt? He remains duke of Wayland. It is Tallia who by right of birth is now duke of Arconia, and you will find her peculiarly sympathetic to the tale of the phoenix.”
“I have made my choice,” said Scholastica. Her face was white, and she groped for a cup of wine and drained it in one gulp. “Let messengers be sent. Now, I think we are done here.”
A tall, hawk-nosed Eagle crossed into the hall through the main doors, walked up to Rosvita, whispered in her ear, and retreated. Rosvita glanced toward Alain, and then raised a hand before Mother Scholastica could, by rising, call a halt to the conclave.
“That leaves only the question of the dead. Both Lady Sabella and Princess Sapientia were taken away last night by stewards and servants to be washed in preparation for their last journey.”
The man who had been pacing by the hearth stepped forward. “I am a faithful servant in Lady Sabella’s schola. We are only waiting now for the wagon and horses to be brought and her escort to be assembled. Best we leave right away. In summer, the flesh rots quickly. The lady must be buried in Autun, laid to rest beside her mother and her uncle—the last heirs of Varre.”
“Sapientia will go to Quedlinhame,” said Scholastica, “to be buried by her father’s ancestors, as is fitting.”
“What of Sanglant?” asked Rosvita.
“None dare touch him,” said Scholastica in a cruel voice, “for fear of his mother’s curse.”
“Many men wait outside who fear no such thing,” snapped Constance. Hathumod wiped her brow with a cloth, and after a moment the biscop went on. “But I would ask to hear the testimony of the holy mother who has sat beside his body throughout the last night.”
An ancient woman shuffled forward out of the shadows, held upright on either side by two nuns, women so thin they seemed more like cords of strong rope. She was so frail and bent that it was remarkable she could stand; a breath of wind might topple her. Age has its own authority. Even Mother Scholastica gave way before her, rising with every evidence of sincere respect to allow the old woman to sit in her chair.
Just as a child’s face hints at the adult visage to come, so the most aged and wrinkled bear in their face a memory of their youth. He saw her full in the light as she settled into the chair, and about the eyes and chin marked the family resemblance.
Heart-struck like a mute beast, his eyes swam with tears. His breath caught as in a cage so that he had to remember to breathe. His hands tingled. For an instant he felt himself weightless, as if his feet were no longer touching earth.
She spoke in a voice strangely powerful, corning from such a fragile, tiny frame. “I have sat vigil this night beside the body, for the sake of my granddaughter, as she would have done herself were she here. These are my observations. When I press a hand to his chest or against his throat, I feel no beat of his heart. No blood pulses from his open wounds. No breath eases from his lips or nostrils. A man cannot live whose heart is silent, and who has no breath. He is surely dead. Yet he does not stiffen or putrefy. He smells of rose water, as though he were but freshly washed. I swear to you that his wounds are healing, knitting and closing in a manner most unnatural.”
“Sorcery!” declared Scholastica. “So the curse remains, although his spirit is fled. This is the work of a maleficus, or of daimones out of the upper air. I say he shall be carted to Gent, where he ought to have died but did not. There is a crypt there that might hold him.”
Rosvita glanced again toward Alain, but she did not address him or otherwise indicate that she knew he was there and ought to be acknowledged. “Take him west, along the northern path,” she said, when he did not speak. “I will escort his body, if you will allow it.”
“West?” said Constance. “Why west?”
“What plot is afoot?” demanded Scholastica.
“I will attend the body as well,” said the old woman, “as is my right because of my kinship to this man.”
“Your kinship?” Respect for age was all very well, but Mother Scholastica had clearly swallowed her moment of humility and could endure no more. “Mother Obligatia, I pray you, forgive my bold speaking to a woman of your age and authority. But you are fled from your convent in Aosta and come to take refuge here in Wendar. What kinship do you speak of?” She looked accusingly at Rosvita. “Is there something I have not been told?”
Rosvita opened the topmost book of the three on her lap.
At long last, it was time.
Making ready to step forward, to fulfill his oath, Alain turned to command the hounds to accompany him.
Only to find that after all they had escaped him. He looked around, and saw Sorrow’s hindquarters vanish as the hound scuttled out the door. Rage had already fled. Aestan and Ēagor stuck their heads out into the courtyard, staring after the hounds, and then ducked back in again. Aestan was scratching his beard in confusion. Ēagor gestured to Alain, to alert him, and then both soldiers vanished outside.
Alain hurried after them, but the hounds had truly bolted and no one was willing to call them to heel. They had really run this time. He could not keep up with them as they raced down into Kassel town, out the gates, and loped east along the Hellweg.
He followed as well as he could, unwilling to give up their trail. At length an escort of riders caught up with him on the road, with spare horses, and he saw behind them a score of Eika soldiers trotting along at their own tireless jog.
These were powerful reinforcements, but even so, a man must pause to catch breath now and again, eat a slice of bread and cheese when he has not eaten since the day before, and take a drink. Horses must have water. Men muttered that those hounds were demon-get, surely, for how else could their unnatural stamina be explained?
In the end, it took him until midday to catch them, far east along the Hellweg in the midst of forest, but only one sharp word to bring them slinking and shamed to heel.
6
THE stockade surrounding Hersford Monastery had been built to keep wild animals out and livestock in. The gates could not sustain an assault by armed forces, but they were closed neverthel
ess when Liath limped up the road and halted beyond arrow range. The exertions of the previous day had caused her thigh wound to flare with pain. It was not fully healed. Maybe, with poison scarring the tissue, it would never fully heal.
Anna was her sole attendant. The servant held on to the staff as though it was the only thing that kept her walking.
Folk lined the stockade wall, armed with staves, scythes, sharpened staffs, shovels, and a trio of pitchforks. Beyond the monastic buildings, storm clouds piled up along the eastern horizon but with the wind at her back, she was safe from their rain for now.
“I pray you,” she shouted. “I am called Liath, daughter of Bernard. In earlier days I rode as an Eagle at the command of King Henry. I am a loyal servant of Wendar.”
To this introduction she got no answer.
“I seek a man named Hugh of Austra. He travels with a girl child, in appearance no more than twelve or fourteen years of age.”
In difficult times, strangers are met with distrust, and by their silence she judged her audience suspicious of her. A man dressed in a monastic habit stepped out through the gate and walked toward her, stopping at a distance perfectly balanced to allow him to see the intimate details of her expression but far enough away that he could bolt if she threatened him.
“I am Prior Ratbold. These holy brothers and poor refugees are under my charge. There are others with you, but they hide in the woods. Who are they?”
She did not turn, knowing better, but naturally Anna did, taken by surprise when, after all, they had decided ahead of time to leave the Ashioi in hiding.
The prior smiled crookedly as he glanced at the stockade. When he nodded, shovels and staves and fists were raised and shaken defiantly.
“So we were warned,” he said, turning back to face her. “Go on your way. This monastery is a place of refuge. It goes against God’s holiest law to abandon one who has begged for Her sanctuary.”
The wind shifted, skating in out of the north. Although it was summer, this wind blew chill, and Liath shivered. Far away, thunder growled.
“The girl he holds captive is my daughter, Brother Ratbold. I will come in and fetch her, whatever you say. I would rather do so peaceably.”
“That child he saved from the Cursed Ones? Painted like a savage and dressed in scraps? Growling and biting like a dog? He saved her from the clutch of the Enemy!”
“So you believe. He has told you lies and woven them to appear as truths. Let me pass. Once I have my daughter, I will leave you in peace.”
The prior had the tenacious look of a dog bred to go after vermin, and he had also the broad shoulders of a man once accustomed to wielding a stave or spear in defense of the innocent. He did not back down. “Every person who can bear arms has risen to the defense of this monastery today. All these were driven from their homes by the creatures of the Enemy. Many are dead, many more are missing, and worse still, what crops were sown are left unattended. Famine will stalk us in the seasons to come.”
“He could be sneaking out the back right now,” muttered Liath to Anna.
The girl shook her head. “Lord Zuangua sent his masks to circle the cloister. We’d have heard their signal by now if there was fighting back there. What will you do, my lady?”
Prior Ratbold had ceased speaking, seeing them talk between themselves. “What will you do?” he asked, in an echo of Anna’s soft words.
Liath took one step toward him, and he took one step back. “I am not your enemy. Whatever Hugh of Austra has told you is a lie.”
“You are a sorcerer. Is that a lie?”
“So is he.”
“You have killed men by burning them alive with fire called from your very hands. Is that a lie?”
“It’s true. God help me. Yet he has killed. The trail of death that follows him goes back many years.”
“Why should I believe you? You are excommunicated, are you not? Is that a lie?”
Sanglant would have fought this battle of words better than she could. Now that she had Hugh trapped, and knowing he had Blessing in his grasp, she lost hold of what little patience she had mustered. She lifted her left hand, thumb and forefinger raised.
She did not turn. She did not need to. She saw that her allies answered her signal by the expression of fear that fixed itself on Prior Ratbold’s face. He backed up slowly, like a man easing away from a rabid dog. Along the stockade, some folk screamed in terror while others shouted in anger; a child bawled; one man cried, “God help us!”
“Hold fast!” called the prior. He reached the gate but, instead of retreating inside, grabbed a stout staff handed out to him by another monk, hefted it in two hands, then twirled it to get his balance and grip. “The Lady will protect us.”
The mask warriors loped up to fall in on either side of Liath. All wore masks lowered, presenting a fierce array of animal faces: eagles and ravens, dogs and spotted cats, foxes and vultures and lizards and sharp-tongued ferrets. Zuangua had led a reserve force in a circuit of the stockade. He had given Liath a bone whistle, hanging from a leather cord around her neck, and she put this to her lips and blasted it three times—shree shree shree. An answer shrilled out of the eastern edge of the forest.
“They think you are allied with the Enemy,” whispered Anna.
Liath ignored her. All this was merely a skirmish distracting from what really mattered. She walked forward, alert to any movement along the stockade that would mark the release of an arrow. Arrows were the only weapon she really feared, beyond the galla. She guessed that one or more men accustomed to hunting in the wild wood stood among this group, and as she neared the stockade, she swept her gaze along the length of the palisade. She looked at every pale face in turn, no longer than it took to blink one’s eyes, and they shifted uneasily and betrayed by the cant and leveling of their shoulders what manner of weapon they hid.
There.
She sought with her mind’s eye the precise vision that saw into the essence of things and found those substances most thirsty for fire. She had learned over time how these textures and shapes felt from a distance: the cold slumber of iron, the sluggish whisper of stone, the eagerness of wood clasped in a warm embrace of flesh. There, a bow curved, the breath of flame quivering in its layers. With all her concentration fixed to the finest point of control, she called fire in a line along its length.
A shriek. A clatter as a person dropped it. Shouts and consternation broke out about twenty paces to the right of the gate. A man began sobbing hysterically. Someone was slapped.
She reached Prior Ratbold. He did not move, but his eyes were wide. His fear reminded her of Lady Theucinda, only he was a brave man ready to lay down his life to protect those who lay under his charge.
“I do not intend harm to anyone,” she said. He stared at her as he would at an adder and—as with an adder—he did not move, fearing perhaps that he might provoke a strike. “I want my daughter, and I mean to get her. If I am touched by any manner of weapon wielded by your people, this place will go up in flames.”
“It is wrong to surrender!” he gasped. “We must fight the Enemy. Better to die than to stand aside and do nothing while innocents perish.”
“I do not intend to harm any person within these walls, unless Hugh of Austra defies me. Let me retrieve my daughter, and you and all those with you will be left untouched. I promise you, on God’s holy Name.”
“You walk with the servants of the Enemy,” he croaked, letting go of the staff with one hand in order to indicate the line of Ashioi. “There they are! There they are! Begone, foul daimone!”
He curled his thumb around his middle and ring fingers to make the beast’s head, raising fore and little fingers as its horns: the sign of the phoenix, the mark of the heretics whose word had spread throughout the realm.
“Don’t you see?” she said, with a soft laugh. “I am not a servant of the Enemy. I am the phoenix, who walks living out of fire.”
She sought deep in the heart of heaven and Earth. The aether
ran shallow, drained by the cataclysm, but with an effort she found the stream that trickled through the distant stone crown. She gathered as much of it as she could, pulled it to her as carded wool is spun into thread—and her aetherical wings blossomed.
The sound of her wings unfurling cracked like distant thunder. The air sparked, and for an instant those wings blazed so brightly that the prior staggered back, covering his eyes. Folk wept, cried aloud, and prayed. Dogs began barking.
But the breath of aether was too weak to sustain her. The splendor faded as quickly as it had bloomed. Yet that glimpse had been enough. Folk fell back, hiding their eyes. They lowered their crude weapons, and the prior dropped to his knees and braced himself as for a blow.
This was not awe. It was terror.
She pushed open the gate. A wide dirt way led past outbuildings, past the guest compound where a score of faces peeped at her through gaps in the fence, past the beehives, past the stable with a half dozen horses poking their heads out to see what was up, and past a village of tents strung up where sheep would have grazed in more peaceful days. A cold wind chased her, growing in strength. That blast of winter air turned to ice as she broke into a run. Its chill fingers tugged at her. Its chill voice whispered.
Come in now.
The wind fluttered the tent flaps in the refugee camp. A door banged open, caught by a gust. The cold came on so suddenly that it could not have been natural. Memories crowded her, both in mind and in body. Cold ached in her bones. It hit hard, and painfully. Walking hurt, as the cold froze her joints, making each movement into agony. The cold dried her lips until they cracked and bled. The touch of wind on her skin was a slap, stinging and raw.
She did not suffer alone.
Folk huddled, wrapped in the rags of their clothing. Others scattered, seeing her come, while a few monks stood their ground beside the path. They watched her pass, although they made no move to stop her. Each one’s accusing gaze stung worse than the wintry wind. She was the monster they feared. Hugh had done his work well.