by Kate Elliott
“Some flowers will be trampled when an army marches to lift a siege, Brother. No one rejoices in destruction, yet at times it is the only way. Her grandmother taught her things she must not be allowed to use. We cannot take the chance. I will do penance for the deed.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Still … if you think her a risk, why leave alive the old man?”
“He is too weak and ignorant to threaten us. He’ll serve us by diverting suspicion. No doubt her death was more merciful than his will be.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Do not douse the sleeping fire until the lights on the hill have vanished. Do as you have been instructed. Let no one chance upon you in the tombs. All depends on timing and where you place the decoy.”
“I will not fail you, Lord Hugh.”
“I trust not. Afterward, await my return.”
“Yes, Lord Hugh. God go with you, Lord Hugh.”
The angel’s smile had something of irony in it. “So we may hope.”
He beckoned. A soldier took Blessing out of Anna’s arms and lifted her up to one of his companions, already mounted. Another took Anna up behind him. The rest made ready, and they rode out of the palace by the spies’ gate, a triple-guarded gate set into the palace’s outer wall that led to an escarpment and a steep trail carved into the northeastern face of the hill on which the town of Novomo had been built. Shale littered the hillside. They picked their way down. None spoke; only the rattle of rock broke the silence.
How far did the spell extend? Had he cast his web of sorcery across the entire town?
How could any person be so beautiful and so wicked?
At the base of the hill they stopped beside a vineyard, which lay quiet under the late afternoon sky. Nothing stirred except a single honeybee, searching for nectar.
“Brother Heribert,” said Lord Hugh. “Take such provisions as you can carry. Walk north, over St. Barnaria’s Pass. Do you know the way?”
“The way we walked when we came south?”
“Rumor has it you came down from the mountains. Return there, and follow the path north into Wendar.”
“Who will guide me?”
“You must guide yourself. You seek Sanglant, who calls himself regnant. When last I saw him, he was at Quedlinhame. Seek him, and do what you must.”
Without answering, the cleric collected a sack of provisions offered to him by one of the soldiers. He paused beside Blessing’s limp body to touch her knee, then went on his way through the vineyards, soon lost to view. The rest circled south to join the main road leading out of town. Twice Anna saw folk in the distance, laborers or farmers about their tasks. Once she saw a wagon at rest behind a tree, but she saw no sign of its occupant, only a mule with its head down, cropping grass. Twice she heard a dog bark. A large party had passed this way before them; she saw their dust ahead on the road, moving south.
As dusk lowered, they paused beside a chalky path that split off from the main road and climbed a nearby hill. Here they paused.
“Two riding up behind,” said the guardsman who rode as rear guard. “That’ll be Liudbold and Theodore. They’re late coming.”
“We’ll wait here,” said Hugh, and soon enough the two soldiers who had been left behind at the tower reached them.
“Theodore. Liudbold.” Hugh looked at them each in turn. “What is your report? I expected you sooner.”
“Begging your pardon, my lord,” said the one addressed as Theodore. “It were trickier than we thought. The old man had life in him. He was wakeful and struggling, and he got a fist in on Liudbold’s jaw here.”
Some of the other soldiers coughed and snickered as Liudbold touched a hand to the bruise forming on his face, but they fell silent when Hugh raised a hand.
“Yes, he fought the spell, with some success. That shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. What did you do?”
“Well, at first we thought of tying him up, but then we recalled that he was meant to look as if he’d freed himself. So we knocked him cold, hauled him upstairs, then rolled him in the blood and left him with the knife in his hand.”
“It will do,” Lord Hugh said kindly. “You kept your heads about you. Well done.”
Such praise would melt stone! The soldiers murmured, but Lord Hugh turned his horse onto the path and led the others away from the road. Behind, the pair of men riding in the rear guard swept their path to hide their tracks. Ahead, tall figures awaited them, stones arranged in a circle.
She said nothing, but by asking no questions caused Lord Hugh to notice her silence.
“How came you to Novomo, Anna? How did Princess Blessing and her party reach Aosta, and why? Where did you come from? How came you to lose her father and mother?”
She shrugged, pretending ignorance, as he studied her. She was sick at heart. It seemed beneath that mild gaze that he saw everything and knew everything.
“My lord presbyter,” said one of the soldiers, a man with a scar on his chin. “I can make her talk, if that’s what you’re wishing.”
He turned away. “Think nothing of it, John. I already know much of the tale. When I have need of the rest, I’ll get it.”
“I just don’t like to see you treated with such disrespect, my lord presbyter. It gripes me to think of the queen refusing to see you, after all you done for her and the common folk in Darre.”
“The queen is grieved by the loss of her daughter. It is to be expected.”
“Only you would be so forgiving, my lord.”
The other soldiers murmured agreement.
“Like that cleric you released to walk north. I think that one has lost his wits!”
Hugh nodded without smiling. “And so he has, poor soul.”
They came up to a flat space of ground, bare of vegetation, situated in front of the standing stones.
“Dismount quickly, all except the one with the servant and you, Frigo,” said Hugh, gesturing toward the man who carried Blessing. “Move when I give the command. Do not hesitate.”
Blessing slept. Anna could not go to her, sitting as she was in the grasp of a man much bigger and stronger than she was, but she saw that Blessing wore about her neck an amulet as well, only this one was woven with sprigs of lavender and a twisted knot that looked ready to strangle any unsuspecting neck caught in its grasp. It looked different than all the others.
Hugh gave his reins to one of the men. He placed his feet on a circle of pale ground, white with dust, and drew from his sleeve a strange golden implement like a wheel embedded within a wheel. This he raised to sight along the horizon. Then he turned to gaze toward Novomo, hazy in the fading light.
“We must be ready,” he said to his soldiers. “Make sure the supplies I mentioned are at hand. Her devils can follow us no matter how far we travel, so when I speak, you must obey exactly as I say.”
They murmured assent.
Anna laughed. “We can’t go!” she crowed. “You can’t weave a spell from the heavens when it is cloudy! You’re trapped here!”
He looked back at her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Was that a knife, winking in the hand of one of the soldiers?
“Wise, after all,” said Lord Hugh. “But I possess an instrument that tells me where every star will rise and set. The music of the spheres reaches through the clouds. It is only our weak eyesight that stymies us for, unlike the angels and daimones, we cannot see past that which blinds. With this instrument, I do not have to see what I have already measured in order to know it is there. I can weave even when clouds shroud the heavens. I can weave even in daylight, although I must not let my enemies guess that I can do so.”
As night fell, he wove, drawing light out of the heavens although no stars shone where any human eye could see. He wove an archway of light and, at his command—for who would refuse him?—they walked through it into another place.
XIV
THE GUIVRE’S STARE
1
TO walk from Osna village to Lavas Holding was normally a journey of five or s
ix days. Years ago, when Alain had walked with Chatelaine Dhuoda’s company, the trip had taken fifteen days because she had stopped in every village and steading along the way to accept taxes and rents or the service of some of the young people in the village. Now, although they stopped only at night for shelter, the roads had taken so much damage in last autumn’s storm that they were ten days traveling. Tangles of fallen trees barred the track. In two places streams had changed course and cut a channel right through the beaten path where wagons once rolled.
“God help us,” said the chatelaine in the late afternoon on the seventh day. She was the only one mounted. The rest walked. “What’s that?”
Alain went forward with five of the men at arms to discover a wagon toppled onto its side. The remains of several people lay scattered across the roadway and into the woodland on either side, disturbed by animals.
“How long have they lain here, are you thinking?” asked one of the lads, a fellow called “Fetch” by his comrades.
Mostly bone was all that was left of them, with bits of hair and patches of woven tunic ground into the earth and a leather vest half buried beneath dirt and leaf litter. It was impossible to tell how many had died here or how far wolves and foxes had dragged pieces of corpse.
“Months.” Alain wrenched loose an arrow fixed into the spokes of one of the wheels. “Bandits. Look at this fletching.”
The soldiers were young men, no one he knew from his time as Lavastine’s heir, although it seemed strange to him that so many new milites would have come into service in such a short time. They were all lads from villages owing allegiance to Lady Aldegund’s family, and had a lilting curl to their “r’s” when they spoke. They looked nervous as they scanned the trees and open clearings.
One shrieked. “What’s that? What’s that?”
It was only a white skull, caught in brambles, staring out at them.
“Go get it, Fetch,” said the eldest.
“I won’t. It might be cursed!”
“Have we a shovel or anything to dig with?” asked Alain. “Best we dig what grave we can and let these poor dead rest. It’s all we can do.” He looked at each of his companions in turn and shook his head. “Come now. Their souls have ascended to the Chamber of Light. They can’t hurt you. If it were your own brother lying here, wouldn’t you want him laid to rest so that animals would stop chewing on his bones?”
They had in their party only one shovel, but another man had an antler horn he used as a pick and the rest sharpened stout sticks and by this means and some with their bare hands they dug swiftly and deep. Blanche watched silently, sucking her thumb, and it was she who was first to help pick up bones that had been dragged away into the bushes and she who brought the skull and laid it on the heap collected in the pit. She wiped her hand on her skirt and sighed.
“Will I be just bones like that one day?” she asked.
“The part of you which is flesh will die, it’s true, and rot away to bone, but see how white and strong bone is. It’s to remind us of the strength of our souls, which lie hidden beneath flesh as well.”
She frowned at him but said nothing more. The chatelaine’s cleric said a prayer over the dead, and they filled in the hole. One of the lads shook out the leather vest and rolled it up; the leather only needed a bit of cleaning and oiling to restore it and there was no sense in letting such good leather go to waste.
“It’s getting late,” said Alain to the chatelaine. “We’d best think of camping for the night.”
“I don’t like to camp in a place of death,” she said. “We’ll go on a way.”
“Think you there are bandits still lurking?” Fetch asked Alain as they walked along at the front of the group.
“There might be.”
A branch snapped in the trees, and all the milites flinched and spun to look, only to see a doe spring away into the forest. They laughed and called each other cowards but hurried forward anyway to where the woodland dropped back into an open countryside marked by low, marshy ground and thickets of dense brush where the earth rose into hillocks. The road had been raised to cross this swamp, and it was out on the road they found themselves at dusk with nothing but mosquitoes and gnats and marsh flies for company.
“Light fires,” said the chatelaine. “We can see anyone coming from either side if thieves have a wish to attack us. The smoke will drive off the bugs.”
It was difficult to find dry wood, but enough was found that they breathed in smoke half the night and were bitten up anyway. The wind came steady out of the northeast. Late, very late, Alain woke and, startled, found himself staring up at the heavens. Blanche snored softly beside him.
Stars winked, and then were covered again by cloud.
“Ah!” he said, although he hadn’t meant to speak.
“Do you see?”
“I pray you, Chatelaine. Can you not sleep?”
“I cannot sleep, my lord. But I saw there a glimpse of hope. God smile on my journey. It is right that I sought you out. For months we have seen no sign of the sky. But now … now I have.”
“Any spell must ease in time.”
“You persist in believing that these clouds are the residue of a vast spell woven by human hands?”
“I know they are.”
“Not God’s displeasure?”
“It is true that some evils fall upon us without warning or cause. Yet so many of the evils that plague us we bring about by our own actions. Why should we blame God? Surely God weep to see their children act against what is natural and right. So the blessed Daisan would say. So Count Lavastine said. We aren’t made guilty by those things that lie outside our power, but we aren’t justified by them either. Evil is the work of the Enemy. It is easier to do what is right.”
“Think you so, my lord? It seems to me that humankind have in them a creeping, sniggering impulse to do what is wrong.”
“Yet none say it is right. Those who do wrong make excuses and tell stories to excuse themselves or even blame their folly on God, but their hearts are not free of guilt. That guilt drives a man to do worse things, out of pain and fear. It is a hard road to walk and more difficult still to turn back once you’ve begun the journey.”
She chuckled scornfully. “Many folk say they are doing right and believe it. The Enemy blinds them.”
“They blind themselves.”
“Who is to say that the wicked don’t flourish and the innocent fall by the wayside? Where is God’s justice when it is needed?”
He peered at her, but it was difficult to make out her face with the cloud cover cast again over the heavens. “It is in our hands, Mistress Dhuoda. We have the liberty to choose our own actions.”
“What if we choose wrong?”
He sighed, thinking of Adica. The wind sighed, echoing his breathing. Reeds rustled out in the marsh. A man rolled over, making a scraping noise against the ground as he turned in his sleep. Blanche snorted, seemed about to rouse, and settled back into slumber.
“Why didn’t God fashion us so we could do only what is right, and never what is sinful?” she continued.
“Then we would be no different than the tools we ourselves carry. If we did what is right, we would receive no merit from it, not if we had no choice. We would be slaves, not human beings.”
“It might be better so,” she murmured.
“Do you think so?”
“Sometimes I do,” she said, and after that nothing more.
At length he fell asleep.
2
THEY came to Lavas Holding on St. Abraames’ Day. From a distance, the settlement looked little different than the place he had first seen seven years ago—or was it eight? It was difficult to keep track.
The high timber palisade surrounded the count’s fortress with its wooden hall and stone bailey. Beyond the wall the village spilled down a leisurely slope to the banks of the river. Now, however, a fosse and earthen embankment circled the village and the innermost fields, orchards, and pasturage, cut in
two spots by the course of the river. Many of the locals looked familiar to Alain, but all of the men at arms were new and by the sound of their words not Lavas born and bred but from farther east.
“Where is Sergeant Fell?” Alain asked the chatelaine as folk pressed close to stare.
“He was given leave to retire back to his home village, with no more than ten sceattas for all his years of service. And likewise, the others, with little enough or nothing, turned off because Lord Geoffrey feels safer with milites brought from his wife’s kin’s lands to protect him. It’s brought grumbling, and rightly so.”
“Who is this, Mistress Dhuoda?” demanded one of the soldiers, coming out of the hall with a spear in one hand and a mug of ale in the other.
“Captain, I pray you, where is Lord Geoffrey?”
“He’s ridden out with the lady’s brother, to take a look at a bull.”
“The one belonging to Master Smith of Ferhold? He’s already said he won’t part with that one for any amount of sceattas.”
“He’ll part with it,” said the captain with a sneer, “if Lord Geoffrey wants to add it to his herd. Who’s this?” He squinted as if against bright sun and pointed toward Alain with his spear.
Servants edged closer to whisper and stare. There was Cook, looking thinner and older, and an astounded Master Rodlin with a pair of sleek whippets at his heel. The whippets lowered their heads, whining, and cowered behind the stable master, but Sorrow and Rage sat peaceably with their faithful gazes turned on Alain, waiting to see what he wanted them to do.
“Those are big dogs,” added the captain, and in his look and in the suppressed hiss of murmured voices there was a tense air as of a storm brewing.
Alain fixed his gaze on Cook and, taking Blanche’s hand, led the girl over to the old woman.
“My lord,” Cook murmured, with a glance toward the suspicious captain. Her hands were chapped and dappled with age marks, and her left hand had a kind of palsy, but her eye was still keen.
“I pray you, Cook,” he said quietly, “do not call me by a title that does not belong to me. I have a favor to ask of you.”