In the Ruins

by Kate Elliott

  “These are the clothes that belonged to one of her servants.”

  “Her slaves? I will wear no slave’s robes, however rich they may appear!”

  “You are no slave, Hanna. You are Sorgatani’s luck. These are the only spare clothes we have until yours dry and can be repaired.”

  “What of the woman who wears these?”

  “She is dead.”

  “Then who serves Sorgatani? I know it is said—what you told me once—ai, God! It seems so long ago! You told me that a Kerayit shaman can be seen by no person except her blood kinfolk along her mother’s lineage, her slaves, her luck, and her pura, who is also her slave. How came you by these garments?” She had found, now, a cloth belt and a heavier wool tunic to throw over the silk underrobe. Beneath them came baggy linen drawers dyed a soft purple. The soft leather boots had to be fastened by garters to the broad belt, which was studded with gold plates embossed with the heads of griffins.

  “Both her slaves died in our flight, alas, as did all nine of the Kerayit guardsmen who fought so that she might not be captured. Without any to serve her, Sorgatani would have perished as well, because of the geas laid upon her kind.”

  “Then who serves her?”

  As quickly as she asked the question, she knew the answer. He did not turn, or shift at all, but his shoulders tightened and the angle of his head altered subtly and dangerously.

  “You became her pura?” she asked, as shocked as she could be.

  He chuckled. “Certainly she is beautiful, but alas, she made no such tempting offer. I accepted the chains that make me her slave.”

  “Do you not serve God, Brother? How can you serve both God and an earthly master?”

  “Is it not a worthy service to save the life of another, even if she is a heathen? So I do believe. If I did not serve her, she would have died. No one else in Lady Bertha’s troop was willing to take on the duty. In any case, without Sorgatani’s protection, we would have been discovered and killed long ago, and we would not gain a steady supply of meat to feed ourselves.”

  “Are you content, Brother?”

  “I am resigned, Hanna. God command me to serve. I have discovered that I am often surprised by the unexpected nature of that service.”

  She could not interpret his tone, and found that she did not want to think too hard about what he might have sacrificed and what it might mean that she was about to meet a woman who had claimed a relationship to her that Hanna did not remotely understand. “What of Sister Rosvita and her companions? Did Sorgatani find them, too?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Following your trail, we fell upon them hiding in the woods and so took them in.”

  “Following my trail? That of the Arethousan army?”

  “No, although truly it was not difficult to follow the army’s dust cloud as it marched. You are Sorgatani’s luck. Brought so close to you, how could she fail to know where you were? Thus were you found, and rescued. Come, are you ready?”

  She sighed as she clasped her belt and smoothed a hand over the bumps and ridges made by the embroidery. Such fine cloth would only be worn by the most noble of princes, in the west, and yet the Kerayit clothed their slaves in this finery. “Yes. As ready as I will ever be.”

  Her hair was tangled and she had no comb, but it was cleaner than it had been before. Her stomach growled, and she willed away a flash of dizziness as the wind shifted to spill the fat smell of meat past them.

  “Leave your old clothing,” he said. “I’ll see that it is cared for.”

  “I thank you.”

  She was aware of the camp as a scene unfolding beyond her reach. When they reached the wagon, she mounted the steps and touched the latch tentatively.

  “Go on,” said Breschius gently. “Don’t set your foot on the threshold.”

  She slid open the door and stepped over the threshold, ducking so as not to hit her head. The Kerayit were either much shorter than Wendish folk, or they disdained to waste space simply to accommodate height.

  She stumbled as she entered the interior, assaulted by its disproportion. The inside was larger than it had any right to be. She felt dizzy, but the fit passed as she pushed the door closed behind her and straightened up into a spacious, circular chamber richly furnished and eerily quiet. It had a round, felt roof, although definitely the wagon had conveyed no such thing on the outside. A central pole pierced the smoke hole, and the heavens, seen through that hole, shone with a silvery sheen shot through with flashes of light that might be distant lightning or sparks from a nearby fire.

  “What manner of place is this?”

  “This is where I live, Hanna. Be welcome here.”

  Sorgatani stepped out from the shadows. She was as beautiful as Hanna remembered from her dreams, if features molded so differently from those known in Wendish lands could be called beautiful. Hanna thought they could. She had not forgotten Bulkezu.

  Sorgatani’s black hair was braided and pinned up against her head, and she wore as a crown a net of delicate golden chains that fell past her shoulders to brush her robe of golden silk. The simple beauty of that fabric put the gaudy embroidery of Hanna’s tunic to shame, and she had a sudden uncomfortable insight that what had seemed a rich garment to her inexperienced gaze might not be one in truth when compared to the fineness of Sorgatani’s garb.

  Hanna advanced cautiously to the central pole. There Sorgatani met her and extended both hands, palms up and open. She did not touch her. She kept a hand’s breadth of distance between them, air that felt alive to Hanna’s skin, as if it had the same breath and soul that animated all living things.

  “We are met after long apart,” said the Kerayit woman. “My luck has been taken prisoner by others, but now I have reclaimed you.”

  “I am not your slave!”

  Sorgatani withdrew her hands. “Did I say you were? I forget you do not know the customs of the Kerayit.”

  “Forgive me. I do not mean to offend. Yet I must ask—is it true you traveled with Liath? Is she alive? Where did you first meet her?”

  “Far east, in the grasslands, we met. I accompanied her because it was thought my sorcery could assist her, but it proved not to be true.” She sighed. “I liked her.”

  That sigh, her expression, the slump of her shoulders: all these touched Hanna in a way no other claim could have. Impulsively she grasped Sorgatani’s hands in hers. The other woman’s hands were callused and her grip, like Hanna’s, was strong. “She is my friend, too. If yours as well, then we are sisters, are we not? In friendship, at least.”

  Sorgatani’s dark eyes widened, and her mouth opened, but only a gasp came out.

  Hanna released her. “I beg pardon.”

  “No. None is needed. It is just—I am not accustomed to being touched.”

  “So Brother Breschius told me.” Compassion spilled like light. “It must be difficult, living so alone.”

  “It’s true I am lonely, Hanna.” She smiled shyly. “When are you going to bring me my pura?”

  “Ai, God! I’m not sure I’m fit for such a duty! There is much I do not know. I am the King’s Eagle, but your luck as well. I do not know what it means. A man cannot serve two masters.”

  “You do not serve me! You are my luck, that is all.”

  Hanna set a palm to her forehead. “I’m dizzy. Is there any place I may sit down?” She began to move to the broad couch to the left of the door, but Sorgatani steered her to a similar couch set on the right side of the door. “Women don’t sit or sleep on that side. Here.” She seated her on an embroidered cushion, then clapped her hands.

  The door slid open and Breschius entered, carrying a tray in one hand which he balanced adroitly with his stump. It contained a fine porcelain cup steaming with an aromatic brew and a bowl of leek-and-venison stew. He placed the tray on the bed and retreated to the opposite side, where he knelt on a layer of rugs.

  “Eat.” Sorgatani busied herself opening and shutting drawers in a tall chest standing beside the couch
. At her back rested a saddle set on a wooden tree, decorated with silver ornaments and draped with a fine bridle.

  Hanna tried not to wolf down her food, knowing it better to eat slowly to spare her stomach the shock of rich food. The tea eased the cold, as did the cozy warmth in the chamber, which emanated from a brazier. As she ate, she studied the furnishings: an altar containing a golden cup, a mirror, a handbell, and a flask. The couch, more like a boxed-in bed, behind Breschius was covered by a felt blanket displaying bright animals: a golden phoenix, a silver griffin, a red deer. No familiar sights greeted her, as would have been the case in any Wendish hall or house she’d had reason to bide in when she rode her messages for King Henry. In the land of the Kerayit, she was a stranger.

  “I saw you in dreams, sometimes,” she said at last, not knowing how to speak to one whose language she ought not to know; not knowing how to interpret the many things she saw that were unfamiliar to her. “I looked for you through fire, but these many days I have not been able to see you, or anyone.”

  Sorgatani turned. It was apparent she had been waiting for Hanna to speak, thus showing she was finished eating.

  “Your Eagle’s Sight, do you mean?” Sorgatani looked over at Breschius. The net that covered her hair chimed in an echo of his anklets and bracelet. Her earrings swayed, a dozen tiny silver fish swarming on the tide of her movement. “Liath spoke of this gift. She taught me its rudiments.”

  “She taught you!”

  “Is it meant to be hoarded only to your chieftain’s messengers?”

  “So I always understood.”

  “Yet who taught them? Have you ever asked yourself that? And why?”

  “Why were we taught? So that we might see and speak across distances, and thus communicate with each other and with the regnant. In this way the regnant gains strength.”

  “For what purpose? Nay, do not answer that question. All chieftains wish to be strong so they can vanquish those who stand against them. Yet before I learned to see through fire, I learned about the nature of the heavens and the mysteries of the crowns. For all my life I have been able to perceive beyond the veil of the world the gateway which we here in the middle world see as a burning stone. In its flames those with sight can see across long distances, and some can even hear and speak words. The Holy One, whose knowledge is ancient and terrible, can glimpse past and future.”

  “So it was when we crossed through the crowns! I saw down many passageways!”

  “Just so.”

  Breschius fetched the tray and went out.

  When he was gone, Sorgatani sat down on the bed beside Hanna and leaned closer to her. She smelled of a heavy, attractive musk, stronger than lavender. “But hear me, Hanna. For all my life, the burning stone was like a beacon. Yet when the Ashioi returned, its light faded. I can barely touch it, or sense it, barely see it. It’s as if I have gone blind.”

  “Blind?” Sorgatani’s scent distracted Hanna badly. She found it hard to think.

  “I think Eagles trained themselves to see through the many gateways of the burning stone, although they did not know what they were doing. It flared so brightly that many could see through its passages.”

  “Do you think it was destroyed in the wake of the cataclysm?”

  Sorgatani shook her head. “The burning stone is not an artifact of the great weaving. In ancient days, so it is told, the Holy One had the power to see and speak through the gateway. That was before the great weaving was set on the looms. But only she had the power to call the gate into being, so it is told. The great weaving fed the power of the burning stone because Earth and heavens were joined by the thread of the Ashioi land, cast out into the aether. Now, that thread is severed.”

  “So we are blind. What do we do now?”

  “That is what you and I must decide.”

  Hanna winced. “Do you really think Liath survived?” she asked, not wanting to trust to hope.

  Sorgatani glanced toward the pura’s bed. A blanket was folded on the chest at the foot of the bed, but no one slept there. “Liath was alive up to the moment of the cataclysm. She was captured by the one called Anne, whom we fought. We would all have been killed, but Lady Bertha—a fine warrior!—broke us out of that camp. Afterward, my brave Kerayit raided their camp under cover of a fog I had raised, but they found no trace of her. So we waited nearby, concealed by my arts, because I felt that she was not dead but only biding her time. So she was. When that night came, when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens, she brought to life rivers of molten fire out of the deep earth. We fled, because otherwise we would have died as did all of Anne’s tribe. Every one of them. If Liath survived the deluge of fire, I do not know.”

  For a long time Hanna was silenced by the force of Sorgatani’s tale. At last, she spoke.

  “Why did you stay here in this country?”

  “I stayed to find you, Hanna. I waited at my teacher’s side long enough while you suffered under the Quman beast’s whip. I would not allow it to happen again. I knew you were alive. When we found the holy women and their companions, we marked the trail of those who had taken you. So, here we are. What do we do now?”

  Hanna let it go, at last, and sagged forward. Sorgatani caught her, and she lay her head against the Kerayit woman’s silk-clad shoulder and rested there most comfortably. “I want to go home,” she whispered. “But what will you do now?”

  “I will go where my luck leads me, of course.” She whistled sharply, a sound that made Hanna cover her right ear, which was nearest to Sorgatani’s lips.

  The door slid open. Breschius appeared, his figure limned by the fading light behind him.

  “Let Lady Bertha know that tomorrow we turn our path north. We will cross the mountains and travel west to Wendar.”

  He vanished as he closed the door.

  After a pause, Sorgatani asked: “What will we find in Wendar? What manner of place is it?”

  “It will be as strange to you as this wagon is to me,” she said, half laughing, half crying, and completely exhausted, too tired, indeed, to stand and seek out a place to rest. “As for what we will find there, I don’t know. I think the world has changed utterly. I have seen such destruction that at first it made no sense to me. A vast city flattened as with a giant’s hand. Refugees on the roads, many of them starving. Clouds of dust everywhere. How much worse may it be elsewhere? What if there is worse yet to come? I must seek out the regnant of Wendar, whoever that is now, and give my report. That I must do first. Afterward—”

  “Afterward” was too vast a landscape to survey.

  VIII

  THE PHOENIX

  1

  THE estate Ivar and Erkanwulf rode into looked very different from Ivar’s father’s manor and compound. It had no significant palisade, only a set of corrals to keep livestock in and predators from the forest out, and there was a wooden tower set on a hillock just off the road to serve as a refuge in times of trouble. An enclosure surrounded a score of fruit trees. Several withered gardens lay in winter’s sleep, protected by fences to keep out rabbits and other vermin. Four boys came running from the distant trees, each one holding a crude bow. Dogs barked. A barefoot child seated in the branches of one of the fruit trees stared at them but said no word. A trio of men loitering beside an empty byre greeted them with nods.

  In Heart’s Rest the village had grown up around a commons, and in addition lay a morning’s walk from Count Hart’s isolated manor. Here, in Varre, houses straggled along the road like disorderly soldiers. Fields stretched out in stripes behind them until they were overtaken by woods. A tiny church had been built where the path they rode crossed with a broad wagon track. The house of worship was ringed by a cemetery, itself disturbed by a dozen recently dug graves. Wattle-and-daub huts with roofs low to the ground lay scattered hither and yon, but Erkanwulf led them to the grandest house in the village, a two-storied stone house standing under the shadow of the three-storied wooden tower.

  “Who lives here?” Ivar asked,
admiring this massive stone structure and the single story addition built out behind it. There were also three sheds and a dozen leafless fruit trees.

  “My mother.”

  Before they reached the stone house, the church bell rang twice. Ivar looked back to see that two of the men who had greeted them beside the byre had vanished.

  “She’s chatelaine for the steward here, my lord,” Erkanwulf added. “It was the steward who asked Captain Ulric to take me into the militia. They’re cousins twice removed on their mother’s side.”

  It was cold, and even though it was near midday, the light had the faded glamour of late afternoon. They hadn’t seen the sun for weeks, not since many days before the night of the great storm and their rescue by the villagers who lived deep within the Bretwald.

  A woman came out of the farthest shed. Her hair was covered by a blue scarf and her hands were full of uncombed wool. “Erkanwulf!” She turned and fled back into the shed. As though her cry had woken the village, a stream of folk emerged from every hovel and out of sheds and fields to converge on the stone house.

  It was a prosperous village. Ivar held his mount on a tight rein, preferring not to dismount in case there was trouble. He counted fully twoscore folk ranging in age from toddling babies to one old crone who supported her hobbling steps on a walking stick. There were older men, and lads, but no young men at all, not one.

  Erkanwulf dismounted and tied his horse to a post before running down the path and into the arms of a fair-haired girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. He grabbed her, spun her around, and kissed her on the cheek. Hand in hand they walked swiftly back to the stone house. His mother came out of the shed with her hands empty and a grim look in her eyes.

  “Who is this?” cried the girl, breaking free of Erkanwulf’s grip and walking boldly right up to Ivar’s horse. She had no fear of the animal. She rummaged in the pocket tied to her dress and pulled out a wizened apple, which was delicately accepted by the beast.

  “Too high for the likes of you,” said Erkanwulf with a snort. “Unless you’re wanting a noble bastard to bring to your wedding bed.”