by Kate Elliott
“Is that what you want? To kill someone?”
The other woman smiled slightly.
“At what do you wish to succeed, Caput Draconis?” Antonia said, curious now. She hated being curious. It put her at a disadvantage.
“I want only that we might all become closer to God,” murmured the woman.
“A worthy goal,” agreed Antonia. The moon set, and with its passing came the first glimmers of dawn. A bird sang. Stars had faded. Clouds massed now at the second of the three snow-covered peaks that guarded one side of the little valley. Thin streamers of mist rose from the ground and seemed to coalesce into shapes with human limbs and human hands and half-formed human faces. But that surely was only a trick of the light.
“But I must know if you have the strength and the will to aid us,” continued the woman, looking past Antonia to what stood behind her. “Some offering. Some sacrifice …”
Antonia knew at once, and a small fire of anger bloomed inside her. Such presumption! “Not that,” she said. “Not him.” She refused to show weakness by turning to make sure Heribert was still in one piece.
Now there was enough light for Antonia to see the other woman’s face: pale of complexion, it had a certain distant familiarity about it—but, as with the sparrows, she could not grasp how she knew it. She could have been as old as Antonia or as young as Heribert; no obvious sign of age, or of youth, marked her. Her hair remained tucked away in a scarf of gold linen. She wore a fine silk tunic dyed a rich indigo and leather shoes trimmed with gold braid. At her throat she wore the golden torque that signified royal kinship in the realms of Wendar and Varre and Salia. Though the granddaughter and niece of queens, Antonia had no right to such a symbol of her royal kinship. Karrone had been a principality allied to Salia not three generations ago, in the time of Queen Berta the Cunning. Berta had been the first of its rulers to style herself “Queen.” Neither did the petty princes of the many warring states of Aosta wear the torque. They, too, could not trace their royal blood back to the forebears of the legendary Emperor Taillefer.
“Very well,” said the woman. “Not him. But let that, then, be your first lesson. That is why you are neither caput nor cauda draconis but rather seventh and least of our order. You can only take as much power as you are willing to give of yourself.”
Antonia did not agree, but she was too wise to say so out loud. She gestured to Heribert, and he crept up beside her. She noted with some approval that, though he was silent and certainly quite frightened, he held himself straight and with the pride of a man who will not bow before fear. Or perhaps he had been stricken dumb by a spell thrown on him by this woman. He was not, as was his habit when nervous, murmuring a prayer.
“What do you want from me, then?” asked Antonia.
“I need a seventh. I need a person who has strong natural powers of compulsion, as you do. I am trying to find a certain person and bring that person here, to me.”
Antonia thought about power. Imagine how much good she could do with greater powers, with the ability to compel others to act as she knew they truly wanted to. She could return order to the kingdom, return herself to her rightful place as biscop and Sabella to the throne that was lawfully hers. She could go farther even than that: She could become skopos and restore the rule of God as it ought to be observed. “Let us imagine that I agree to join you. What happens then?”
“To come into our Order you must give something.”
“What is that?”
“You would not give me the young man. So give me your name, the secret, true name your father whispered in your ear as is every father’s right when a child is born of his begetting.”
Antonia flushed, truly angry now. This was impertinence, even from a woman who wore the golden torque. Although by what right she wore that torque Antonia, who knew the royal lineages of five kingdoms as if they were her own names, could not guess. “My father is dead,” said Antonia icily. “Both of my fathers. He who sired me died before I could walk or speak.”
“But you know.”
She knew.
And she wanted the power. She wanted the knowledge. She could do so much with it. So much that needed to be done.
She spoke it, finally. After all, Prince Pepin had not lived long afterward. His spite could not haunt her, for it had fallen with him into the pit.
“Venenia.” Poison.
The woman inclined her head respectfully. “So shall you be called Venia, kindness, in memory of that naming and to honor a new beginning. Come, Sister Venia.” She stepped outside the circle of stones. They followed her out onto grass moist with dew. Heribert gaped and knelt to touch, wonderingly, a violet.
“Come,” repeated the woman as she set off along a well-worn path that wound down the gentle slope toward the buildings below. A man dressed simply in a tunic and drawers came out to the gate and snuffed the lantern. Goats left the shed and moved in a mass—herded by what manner of creature Antonia could not tell—up into the gorse and heather.
“It’s so beautiful,” breathed Heribert.
It was beautiful as the sun rose and light washed over the little valley, all greens and rich browns, with a rushing stream bubbling and boiling through pastureland. The woman smiled at the young cleric, then continued down. Heribert hurried after her. Antonia lingered, staring at the peaks as the sun, rising in the east, set their proud heads glaring, ice glinting fire. She recognized them now, those three high peaks: Young Wife, Monk’s Ridge, and Terror. Just over the steep, impassable ridge on which the goats grazed so peacefully rested the hostel run by the monks of St. Servitius, hospitable souls making shelter for those travelers who braved St. Barnaria Pass.
VIII
THE HARVEST
1
ALAIN sat on Dragonback Ridge, halfway down the spine of the Dragon’s Tail, and watched the surge and fall of waves on the shore. Rage and Sorrow sat beside him, tongues out to catch the wind off the bay. Two men-at-arms loitered at a discreet distance. A seagull circled in the wind over the water; a tern took careful steps through the surf on the gravelly beach below. To the left, along the curve of the beach where it grew sandier, ships lay at their winter’s rest, set up on logs. Out in the surge, dark heads bobbed in the swells: seals … or mermen.
He scanned the distant islands, studded like jewels along the horizon, where fishermen and merchants might take refuge in times of storm if they were out on the open sea. He had survived a storm, caught out on these heights. That storm had changed his life.
After hunting, Lavastine and his retinue had ridden to the ruins of Dragon’s Tail Monastery. Alain could not imagine what his father expected to find there. Surely the villagers had gleaned from the wreckage every last unscorched bench and table and scrap of cloth, beehives, paving stones, spoons, knives, bowls, lanterns, candle wax and candles, salt basins, pickaxes, spades, hatchets, sickles, pothooks, baskets, shingles, all the fine small tools of the scribe’s trade, parchment leaves scattered from books whose jeweled covers had been ripped off and carried away by the Eika raiders. Anything that could be hauled would have been taken away and put to use, or shipped to Medemelacha for trade.
But the sight of the destroyed monastery had upset Alain so much that Lavastine had allowed him to go on ahead. Alain could have walked the long path along the rocky ridge all the way to Osna village but now, as he stared at the sleeping ships below, he knew he was afraid to meet the man he had called “Father” for most of his life.
He shut his eyes. The wash of late autumn sun was not warm enough to heat his fingers. The hounds whined; Sorrow stuck her moist nose into Alain’s palm. He set that palm down on gritty rock. In the old story, a Dariyan emperor versed in magic had come to this land and turned a dragon into stone, into this very ridge that swelled from the head up across a great back and down to the tip of the tail—where lay the now-burned monastery. Was there a dragon lying in enchanted sleep beneath this rock? If he stayed still enough, could he feel the pulse of the dragon’s heart�
��or only the fine grains of rock ground by wind, rain, and time into granules that crunched under a man’s boot?
As a boy, he had climbed this ridge many times, seeking a sign of the dragon’s presence. He had never found any, and Aunt Bel had told him more times than he could count that he dreamed so much he was as likely to stumble off the edge of the path and into the waters below as make his way safely through the world. “The world is here, Alain” she would say, knocking on the tabletop with her knuckles, then doing the same, sharply, to his head, “not here, though I think sometimes this table and your head are made of the same thing.” But she would smile to take the sting out of the words.
But if he only had the hearing of Fifth Brother, the keen hound sense of Rage and Sorrow, could he not hear the dragon’s breath under the weight of earth? Sense the contour of its spine under rock, the texture of its scales under dirt? Touch its dreaming mind, so like to his own?
The earth shuddered and moved beneath him.
He jumped to his feet, shaken and frightened. Rage barked and Sorrow howled, as if baying at the absent moon. The two men-at-arms hurried forward.
“My lord Alain, are you well? What is it?” They kept well clear of the hounds, who snuffled at rock and dirt, ignoring the soldiers.
“Did you feel it?”
“Ah, yes.” The men turned as the faint jingle of harness, the clop of hooves, and a murmur of jovial voices drifted up to them. “You’ve good hearing, my lord, as good as those hounds, I’d wager. There come my lord count and the others.”
Count Lavastine and his company emerged from the winter forest and made their way up the path to the high ridge. Even after two months on the road fighting Eika and mopping up ragtag packs of bandits, and after a week of hunting in the dense forest a day’s ride east of here, the count and his retinue still looked impressive with banners flying and dressed in tabards dyed bright blue and embroidered with two black hounds—the mark of the Lavas counts. Count Lavastine let none of his personal guard go into battle unarmed, and each man had at least a helmet decorated with blue ribands, a spear and a knife, and a padded coat under the tabard. Some, if they could afford it or had been lucky enough to glean such winnings from the field, had more armor: a boiled leather coat or a scale hauberk, a leather aventail, even leather bindings on their arms and legs. Like any good lord, Lavastine was generous with his winnings and always gave his men-at-arms their fair share of the spoils.
Alain mounted his horse and rode dutifully alongside his father. They crested the dragon’s back and started down the slope of shoulders and neck. A jutting boulder at the base of the ridge, lifting the height of three men, was commonly called the dragon’s head; it was crowned with a scraggly yew tree and the stubble of old climbing roses, planted years ago.
By this boulder the people of Osna village waited to greet Count Lavastine. Osna village was an emporium—a trading port—and as such it needed protection. Count Lavastine provided that protection … at a price levied in goods and services. And in any case, as Aunt Bel used to say, “It’s wisest to greet politely those as have better weapons than you do.”
Everyone stared at him. Embarrassed, he fixed his gaze on the reins twisted across his palm, but he still heard whispers, his name a mutter in the background.
They rode through the palisade gate and past the fields, halting in front of the church made proud and handsome by the contributions of Osna’s wealthiest families. But their wealth was nothing compared to the wealth he had seen at Biscop Constance’s palace and at the king’s court, or to that he enjoyed every day as heir to a count.
The rough-hewn longhouses, built of undressed logs patched with mud and sticks, looked shabby compared to the palaces of the nobly born. Yet weren’t they good houses built of good timber by the willing hands of good people? He had always thought himself well off when he lived here—though he had forgotten how strongly the village smelled of fish.
Was it pride that made him see modest Osna village differently now? Or only the experience of the wider world?
Deacon Miria declaimed a formal welcome. Count Lavastine dismounted, and Alain hurried to do the same, handing his reins to a groom but keeping a firm hold on the leashes of the hounds. He looked about him, then, and saw many familiar faces, people he had grown up with, people he knew well….
But he saw not a single member of his family.
Not my family any longer.
Not one of them stood among the crowd.
“Come, my lord,” said Deacon Miria. “I trust you will find the lodgings here in Osna village not beneath your notice.” She led them away … to Mistress Garia’s long-house. The men-at-arms remained behind to be dispersed into other households.
Why were they not honoring Aunt Bel with their presence?
Their path gave him a view of the entrance to Aunt Bel’s longhouse. A woman stood in the threshold, a ladle in one hand and the other holding a toddler on one hip. It was not Aunt Bel.
Why was old Mistress Garia’s daughter standing in the entrance of Aunt Bel’s house as if she lived there?
Afternoon eased into dusk. Garia and her daughters laid out a feast at which her own sons and grandsons served the count, his heir, and his most honored retainers.
Though a feast by Osna standards, it was poorer fare by far than the feast celebrated at Lady Aldegund’s manor. The bread was dark, not white; besides the ubiquitous fish, there were only two kinds of meat, pig and veal, and they were spiced only with pepper and such herbs as could be found locally; there were apples baked in honey but no sweet custard to melt on his lips. He blushed, thinking of the servingwoman and what she had wanted.
At a remove between courses, Mistress Garia came forward to offer Count Lavastine her eldest grandson as a retainer, to serve the count as a permanent member of his guard. “It is hard, indeed, my lord, to find places for all my grandsons. Our Lady has blessed my line with many healthy children, but the girls will inherit the workshop, and we do not yet have the means, as some do—” For the first time, her gaze darted to touch on Alain’s face, then away. “—to build another ship. Meanwhile, the boy is almost sixteen. I hope you will honor us with your notice.”
Your notice.
At those innocuous words, every person present turned to stare at Alain. “I—” he started to say.
Lavastine raised a hand. Alain fell silent. “In the spring, I will know my requirements. I will send word with my chatelaine, Mistress Dhuoda, when she comes around on her usual progress.”
Terror stood, baring his teeth, and Mistress Garia drew back, frightened. Alain quieted the hound and got him to lie down. Sorrow nudged up against him, sticking his head under Alain’s hand for a caress. The company returned their attention, firmly, to the table.
After the main courses, instead of entertainment, Count Lavastine questioned the townsfolk of Osna about the Eika.
Two Eika ships had been sighted the summer after the monastery had been sacked, another three this past summer, but they had all sailed by Osna Sound, keeping out beyond the islands. No reports had come of villages nearby being burned; no one had heard any rumors of winter encampments. A forester—one of Garia’s cousin’s sons who ranged wide looking for game and exceptional stands of timber—had seen nothing along the coast for two days’ walk in either direction, nor had he heard tales from those he met on his travels.
Lavastine questioned the merchants in greater detail, and from them he heard more varied stories. None had himself run afoul of Eika, but merchants traded not just goods but gossip. Four Eika ships poised along the coast just north of the rich emporium of Medemelacha had suddenly turned north and sailed away. A noble’s castle in Salia had been the scene of a vicious attack; one city had held out two months against a siege; refugees from a monastery burned on the island kingdom of Alba had arrived in a skin boat in Medemelacha late in the summer with an awful tale of slaughter and looting.
Alain sat dutifully and listened, but what he most wanted to ask he da
red not ask: Where was Henri? Why did he not sit among the Osna merchants? What had happened to his family?
Not my family any longer.
Mistress Garia’s bed, the best in the house, was given to the count and his heir for the night. Their servants commandeered pallets or slept on the floor around them, and, in the warmth of the longhouse with a hearth burning throughout the cold late autumn’s night, all were comfortable. The smell of old timber, the wreath of smoke curling along the roof beams, the smell of babies and sour milk nearby and of livestock crowded into the other end of the hall comforted Alain; they reminded him of his childhood. He had slept in such a house for many years, and his dreams had been good ones.
In the morning he drew Deacon Miria aside as the grooms saddled the horses and the soldiers made ready to leave. “Where are Bella and Henri? What has become of them and the family?”
“Alain!” Lavastine had already mounted and now gestured impatiently for Alain to join him.
“You’re a good boy, Alain, to ask after them,” she replied with a look compounded of sympathy, distaste, and amusement. Then she recalled to whom she was now speaking. “My lord.”
“But where are they?”
“At the old steward’s house. They come to Mass each week faithfully, but many of the others can’t forgive them their good fortune.”
“Alain!”
“Thank you!” He would have kissed the old deacon on the cheek but he was not sure, with so many folk standing about and staring, if the gesture was one he was now allowed to make. She inclined her head with formal dignity.
He mounted. As the count and his retinue rode out of the village, children trotted at a safe distance behind them, giggling and pointing and shouting.
“What did you ask?” demanded Lavastine.
They rode past the stink of pig sties and the winter shelters for the sheep and cows. They crossed through the southern palisade gate and skirted the stream which was bounded on its eastern shore by a small tannery and the village slaughterhouse—still busy with the butchering of the animals who couldn’t be wintered over. Alain held a hand over his nose and mouth until they got downwind. If the stench bothered Lavastine, he did not show it; his attention remained focused on Alain.