by Kate Elliott
“Liath,” he said, his voice muted by the distance and the narrow walls. “Why are you still awake?”
She bolted.
She ran down the length of the corridor, scrambled, half falling, down the other stairs, banging her knee, wrenching a finger as she gripped a smooth square railing and shoved herself forward. It was dark in the palace, all the shutters closed against winter’s chill. Most of the nobles were out on the hunt. In every room she came to, every corridor she escaped down, those who had stayed behind slept.
Even in the barracks the soldiers rested, snoring, on straw mattresses on the floor. Her friend Thiadbold and a comrade slumped in chairs over a dice game and cooling mugs of cider. Beyond them, a ladder led up to the attic loft where she and the other Eagles slept. But as cold seeped in through the timber walls and the single hearth fire burned low and flickered out, she could not bring herself to go up the ladder. Once she climbed that ladder, she would be trapped.
She ran to Thiadbold. His Lion’s tunic folded at odd angles, creased by the twist of his body in the chair and the way his right arm was flung back over the chair back. His head lolled to one side, mouth open. She shook him.
“Please, I beg you, comrade. Thiadbold! Wake up!”
“Nothing you do will wake them, Liath,” he said behind her. He stood in the doorway, perhaps twenty paces away. He held a lamp in one hand. Its soft light gilded him, as gold does a painting or the favor of the king does a virtuous man.
“I’m very angry with you, Liath,” he added kindly, without raising his voice. “You lied to me.” Indeed, he sounded more hurt than angry. “You said you knew nothing about sorcery, and yet …” He lifted his free hand in a gesture of puzzlement. “… what am I to think now? Arrows bursting into flame in mid-flight. You are not asleep with the others.”
“Why do you want to kill Theophanu?” she demanded.
“I don’t want to kill Theophanu,” he said, as if disappointed she would think he did. He took a step forward.
There was another door at the far end of the barracks. But if she ran out now, he would get the book. Surely the book was what he had wanted all along.
“Liath! Stop!”
She did not stop, but when she reached the ladder, she scrambled up it, panting, heart so frozen with fear that her chest felt as if it were in the grip of some great beast. Heaving herself up over the top, she turned on her knees, grabbed the legs of the ladder, and yanked up.
And was jerked forward almost falling back down through the opening as Hugh caught the ladder from below and dragged it back down.
“Don’t fight me, Liath. You know it makes me angry.”
She fought him anyway, but though she was physically strong, he had the advantage, braced on the floor. It was a losing battle. It had always been a losing battle. And once he fought the legs back into their braces and settled his full weight on the bottom rung, it made no difference. The opening was too small for her to cast the ladder off and drop it away.
She scrambled back, scraping palms against the rough-hewn plank floors, rising and bumping her head against the low pitch of the ceiling. Her feet got tangled in gear, but she knew her own gear, knew it as well as the feel of Da’s hand holding hers when she woke at night from a bad dream. She grabbed the leather saddlebags, draped them over a shoulder. Her quiver caught on a beam above, and she stumbled.
“Liath.” He had no lamp, but she needed no lamp to see his shadow emerge into the loft and swing onto the floor.
Bent over, breathing in gasps more like whimpers, she drew her short sword.
“Now we shall have this out. And you will put away your sword, my beauty.” He walked forward two steps, one hand held out. “I have no doubt you can thrust that blade through me, but what will you tell them when they find me dead? You will be condemned for murder, and executed. Is that what you want? Give me the sword, Liath.”
“I’ll tell them you used sorcery to spell everyone to sleep and then tried to rape me.”
He laughed. “Why would anyone believe you? Can you imagine such a story coming to my mother’s ears and what she would say about it? A mere Eagle accusing a margrave’s son?”
Theophanu would believe her, but Theophanu had charged her to keep silence on the matter of sorcery. Theophanu had her own plans and, to a royal princess, an Eagle was simply another servant.
“I am right, as you know,” he added, his tone coaxing. “Put down the sword.”
“Get away from me,” she whispered. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“That is the choice given you after your da died. Be mine, or be dead. Which will it be?” He stopped, shifted, then fumbled with something unseen. A moment later he unlatched the shutter and opened it. The dull light of winter’s sky flooded into the loft, searing her eyes. And when she had done blinking and had finally, truly, to look upon him, he smiled. Cold air boiled in past him, a wind of ice drawn in to this, her prison, for her prison was any place where she was confined with him. The cold was itself the shackles, binding her as it curled around her, freezing her heart.
“Hush, my beauty,” he murmured softly. “Do not be scared of me. I won’t hurt you. I found a book at the monastery at Firsebarg, locked away in a chest which only the father abbot is allowed to open. I learned much from that book, as you see. ‘Lavender, for sleep.’ How did you make those arrows burst into flame? Do you even know? I can teach you what it means to have power, to know what is within yourself that you can use. I want only what is best for you. For you and for myself.”
The hilt of her sword felt like ice in her hand. He crossed the low attic to her, ducking his head, and took the sword out of her lax hand. His touch was warm, but his eyes were cold.
At last, she recognized that peculiar deep tone in his voice; she had learned well what it presaged, in the depths of winter in Heart’s Rest.
“I can’t wait any longer, Liath. And there is no one here to witness.”
“I’ll give you the book,” she whispered, voice half caught in her throat. Ai, Lady, she was begging. She was offering the only and most precious thing she had left to her, but losing that would be better than this again.
He shook his head impatiently. “You already gave me the book, and your submission, last spring, before Wolfhere stole them from me. I have been waiting a long time to get them back.”
She was too numb to resist when he gently stripped her of bow and quiver and saddlebag, when he lay her down on the hard plank floor. But when he kissed her, when his hand sought and found her belt, loosening it, she remembered finally through terror and numbing weakness one thing.
Wood burns.
6
THE road back to the king’s progress had proved so miserable and so full of hardships, appalling detours, and frustrations that Hanna had begun to wonder if Wolfhere might have gotten back with the news about Biscop Antonia before her. She had never seen the palace at Augensburg, of course, but two of her three remaining Lions had slept in the barracks there only two years ago while attending the king.
Now, with clouds sweeping in low over hills glazed with a thin crust of snow and with the last forest crossing behind them, they could see in the distance the market village and sprawling palace complex of Augensburg.
“That,” said Ingo, the most senior of the Lions, “is a lot of smoke. Even for Candlemass.”
“Lady’s Blood!” swore Leo. “Fire!”
Hanna had been walking in order to spare her horse. Now she mounted and left the Lions behind. Soon she came upon traffic that slowed her down as people rushed out away from Augensburg and others—farmers and foresters—rushed in, coming to aid the king against an implacable foe. They made way for her as best they could in the crush, but despite this she was forced to pull up just inside the low outer wall. Here she stared past river and market village, which lay to her left, and up at the palace, which lay on a low rise protected by its own inner palisade and the steep bluff on its other side. Her horse laid its ears back, t
rying to back up. The stench of burning was caustic as she breathed in.
Hanna had seen fire before, but never anything like this.
The fire roared. The hot wind streaking off the flames baked her where she stood, though the day was cold and beyond town a thin blanket of snow covered field and forest. Half the palace was on fire, sheets of flame rising into the heavens, a second wall that mirrored the wooden wall of the palisade. In the town, ash rained down on women loading their valuables into carts, on children carrying infants out of houses, on men and women hauling buckets of water up the rise toward the burning palace. Gaping, she sucked in ash; the sharp bite in her throat made her hack.
“Too little water!” shouted Folquin, the fastest runner among the Lions. Panting hard, he came up beside her and leaned, coughing, on his spear. “They’ll never put that out! Pray to the Lady it doesn’t catch the roofs in town.”
Hanna dismounted and thrust reins into the Lion’s hands. “Let young Stephen take the horse and hold it for us,” she said. “Then you and Ingo and Leo follow me up. We must aid those we can.”
“I pray the king is not inside—” he said, but she gave him a look, and he drew the Circle of Unity at his breast and shut up.
She ran up the hill, easily outpacing people burdened with buckets. A ragged procession filed past her down the hill, some with empty buckets, some with handcarts heaped with furniture and books and chests and every kind of item salvaged from the fire. A cleric clutched an ancient parchment codex to her chest; her face was streaked with ash and she had a weeping red welt on her right arm where her cleric’s robe was ripped open. Other clerics followed behind her, each holding something precious. One man had pressed unbound parchment sheets against him, hands struggling to keep them all together. A woman held her robe out as a basket, full of quills and inkpots, stands and styluses and tablets all jumbled together, ink leaking through the fine gold fabric of her rich vestment. The youngest of them stumbled behind, looking stunned, carrying a magnificent eagle’s feather quill and a little pot of red ink that, tipping, had stained his fingers. A child cried. Servants staggered under loads of bedding salvaged from the blaze.
“Make way!” cried a man in Lion’s tabard. “Make way for the princess!”
Hanna stepped aside as Princess Sapientia was carried past reclining on a camp bed. She looked only half conscious, but both of her hands clasped her swollen abdomen and she moaned as she passed Hanna. Behind her, sobbing or gabbling like panicked geese, more servants hauled chests, tapestries that kept coming unrolled, even the splendid chair carved with lions and dragons and an eagle’s wings that Hanna recognized as belonging to King Henry.
At the palace gate, grim-faced guards forced back the curious and only admitted those persons carrying water—as though such a trifle could stem the inferno. The wind off the fire singed her skin, and her eyes stung with heat and burning ash.
“Make way!” she cried, pushing forward to the guards. “Where is the king?”
“Out on the hunt, thank God!” shouted the one nearest her. He had no helmet; part of one ear was missing—but it was an old scar. His red hair was stained with ash. “There were few enough therein, by Our Lord’s Mercy, but surely some have perished.”
“Is there anything I can do?” she yelled. She had to yell to be heard above the roar of flames. Already her voice was hoarse from heat and ash.
“Nay, friend. This is one foe we can’t fight. Ah!” he exclaimed, a gasp of relief. “There’s one of your comrades who’s run mad. Can you calm her?”
Shifting to look past him, she saw a crowd of some twenty people, a handful of men in Lion tabards, servants, and one man in noble garb who directed the others. He had golden hair, and as she watched he reached to help two figures struggling out of the smoke: a dark-haired young woman in an Eagle’s scarlet-trimmed cloak who half-dragged and half-led a man in a singed and dirty Lion’s tabard.
“Liath!” Hanna bolted toward the fire.
A sudden pop sounded, followed by a low thundering gasp of air, a thousand breaths drawn in. People stumbled back from the courtyard, crying out, as the roof of the back portion of the palace collapsed in a huge unfolding bloom of flame and smoke and stinging red hot ash. Four men grabbed the harness shaft of a wagon loaded to bursting with iron-bound chests: the king’s treasure.
“Liath!” shouted the golden-haired nobleman as Liath turned and vanished back into the boiling smoke, back into the burning palace. He started after her. Three soldiers broke forward, grabbed him, and dragged him away from the raging fire.
“Liath!” Hanna cried, running forward. She hopped awkwardly sideways to avoid being run over by the wagon, which had now gathered speed as the men at the shaft got momentum. One small chest jolted, bounced, and fell out, splitting open at Hanna’s feet to spill delicate cloissoné clasps and buckles onto the cracking mud.
“My lord! There is nothing you can do! You must come away, my lord!” So the Lions shouted at the nobleman, and he cursed them once, without feeling, and then began to weep.
Ai, Lady. Surprise brought her to a jarring halt while fire blistered the timber walls of the palace and parched her lips. It was Hugh. He dropped to his knees as if he meant to pray, and only when the Lions hoisted him up bodily could he be persuaded to move back to safety as the fire scorched the peaked roof, spit, leaped the chasm of an alley between buildings, and kindled a new fire on the roof of the fourth quarter of the palace—the only quarter as yet untouched. Everything would go. Everything.
“Lady forgive me,” said Hugh as he stared into the blaze. “Forgive me my presumption in believing I had mastered the arts you gave into my hands. Forgive me for those innocent souls who have died needlessly.” He looked up, saw Hanna, and blinked, for an instant examining her as if he recognized her.
She almost staggered under the weight of his stare. She had actually forgotten how glorious he was.
Then he shook his head to dismiss her and spoke to himself—as if to convince himself. “Had I only known more, it would not have happened this way. But I cannot let her go….”
“Come, my lord,” said a servant, but Hugh shook him off.
“Father Hugh!” A new man had come running up; he was clearly terrified to stand so close to the blaze. “Princess Sapientia calls for you, my lord.”
Torn, he wavered. Rising, he could not bring himself to follow the servant.
“She is having pains—”
Clenching a hand, he glared at the raging fire, cursed under his breath and then, with a last—beseeching?—glance at Hanna, spun and followed the servant.
Liath had gone back inside the inferno.
“Keep your wits, Hanna,” she muttered to herself, recalling the first Lion’s words: “Your comrade has run mad.” Pulling her cloak tight over her mouth and nose, she pressed forward into the blaze.
“Come back!” they shouted, those Lions who remained. “Eagle!”
Her skin was aflame, but no flame touched her. She crossed into a great hall ragged with smoke and blowing ash. Heat boiled out. She saw nothing, no one, no figure struggling through the smoke. The thick beams supporting the ceiling above smoldered, not yet in open flame. A far wall cracked, splintering, burst by heat.
She heard the scream. It was Liath.
“Help me! God save us, wake up, man!”
Hanna could not take a deep breath, for courage or for air. But she ran forward anyway into the fire. Ash rained on her head. The boom and surge of fire raged around her as harshly as the tempest of battle. Smoke burned her eyes and the air tasted acrid.
She found Liath in the corridor behind, dragging a man so big and so burdened with armor that it was a miracle Liath had managed to get him this far.
“Hanna!” That she had breath to talk was astounding. “Oh, God, Hanna, help me get him free. There’s two more, but the beams have fallen—” She was weeping, although how could she weep when the heat should have wicked all moisture away?
Hanna did not
think, she merely grabbed the Lion’s legs and together they tugged him out of the corridor while the fire blazed closer. They had dragged him halfway across the hall when beams began to fall and the far walls to crack and disintegrate.
Just out the door her three faithful Lions were waiting, together with the red-haired Lion; Ingo and Leo grabbed their limp comrade and yanked him free as Liath turned and started inside again.
“Stop her!” screamed Hanna. Folquin wrapped his arms around the young Eagle and lifted her as she kicked and pleaded and wept, trying to get free—but he was a brawny, farm-bred lad and as strong as an ox.
“Liath!” Hanna shouted.
But there was no time to reason with her. They retreated in awkward haste as the great roof beams collapsed in the hall. The gates remained open but stood now deserted, and they paused outside the gates to look behind. Everyone had fled to safer ground. Townsfolk carried their buckets of water to the houses closest to the palace wall, dousing their roofs with water to stop the flaming ash from setting a new blaze. The market village was all there was left to save.
On the wind, a faint counterpoint to the blaze, she heard a hunting horn.
“Let me go back! Let me go back! There are two more—at least two more—” Liath struggled and fought and even tried to bite poor Folquin, whose leather armor had protected him from worse attacks.
“Hush, friend,” said the red-haired Lion sternly. “This one is dead, though you tried valiantly to save him. I doubt not the others have already died. No use risking yourself to drag out their bodies. May God have mercy on their souls, and may they come in peace to the Chamber of Light.” He bowed his head.
Gingerly, Folquin set Liath down, glanced at Hanna and, with a nod from her, let Liath go. Liath collapsed to her knees but simply sat trembling as the palace burned and ash drifted down like a light rain of snow upon them. Despite her forays into the raging fire, she had nary a mark or burn on her.