by Kate Elliott
“I beg your pardon!” said Alain. What had come over him? Yet what he felt now was nothing like the sinful, intense yearning that engulfed him when he thought of Tallia. He simply knew he must find some way to shelter Liath, just as he had known he had to save the Eika prince that awful night when Lackling was sacrificed in place of the Eika.
By now his eyes had adjusted well enough to the gloom that he could see her fairly well, sitting stiff and straight, her cloak draped in folds down to the floor, her single braid tucked away inside the hood. When she turned her head to stare at the fire, her eyes glinted with a spark of blue.
She only needed encouragement.
Haltingly, hoping to encourage her by his own open-heartedness, he told his story. It came out all in a jumble as he skipped from one thing to the next, watching her face by firelight to see how she responded. He told her of Fifth Son and the hounds, of Lackling’s murder by Biscop Antonia, of the guivre and Agius’ death. Of the vision he had seen in the old Dariyan ruins, the shade who spoke the name “Liathano” and then vanished in a maelstrom of fire and smoke and battle. Of the dreams he still had, his link to the Eika prince.
When he stumbled to a close, she held a hand out to warm it over the coals. “Artemisia describes five types of dreams: the enigmatic dream, the prophetic vision, the oracular dream, the nightmare, and the apparition. It’s hard to judge what you experienced. ‘Enigmatic’ because the meaning of your dreams is concealed with strange shapes and veils—”
“But they don’t seem like dreams at all. It’s as if I see through his eyes, as if I am him.”
“The Eika are not like us,” she said softly. “They wield magics we have no knowledge of.”
The comment surprised him into blurting out a careless thought. “Do you have knowledge of magic?”
Their silence drew out until it became like a living thing which, hiding in the shadows, does not know whether to bolt into the nether darkness or advance into the clear, clean light. Abruptly, in a low, almost monotone voice and in short bursts punctuated by silences, she began to talk.
She told him of a childhood faintly remembered, of the sudden flight she and her da had made from that pleasant home after the death of her mother. She told him of many years wandering in distant lands, and though she spoke as one who has lived every day in fear, he ached to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about all the far and curious places he had ever dreamed of visiting. It seemed, strangely, that inside her words he heard her wish for a safe haven, like the walls of a monastery, to which she could retire, while she had lived the very adventure he had always hoped for and known would be denied him. She had seen Darre and the wild coast of eastern Aosta. She had sailed to Nakria and roamed the ruins of dead Kartiako. She had explored the fabulous palace of the ruler of Qurtubah in the Jinna kingdom of Andalla and wandered the market stalls of busy Medemelacha in Salia. She had seen with her own eyes creatures and wonders he had never heard tell of, not even from the merchants of Osna village, the most traveled people he knew.
But for this she had paid a price. She had lost her father, murdered at night by sorcery with no mark left on his body. Even now, fell creatures stalked her—some of them inhuman and one all too human. Seeking sorcerous knowledge from The Book of Secrets as well as what secrets he was sure she held hidden inside her, a holy man of the church had made her his slave—and worse.
After such misery as made Alain wince to hear it, she had been rescued by Eagles. Yet she could not trust even them, certainly not Wolfhere. She couldn’t trust anyone except an Eagle named Hanna who was now, somehow, Father Hugh’s prisoner. Except Prince Sanglant, whom she had met in Gent—and he was dead. Except perhaps an Aoi sorcerer seen through fire, and she had no idea where he was. In the end, tormented again by Father Hugh, she had discovered the most terrifying knowledge of all: She held locked inside her a sorcerous power trapped in her bones or in her blood over which she had no control.
“I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what it means or what it is, how much Da locked away and how much he never knew of. I only know he was trying to protect me. What if I go back to the king’s progress? Hugh is holding Hanna as a hostage to make me come back. And if I don’t go back, then what becomes of her? Ai, Lady, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what’s going to become of Hanna. But if I go back to the king’s progress, Hugh will imprison me again. There’s nowhere to run anymore. I’m so afraid.”
“Then maybe you have to stop running,” he said reasonably.
Her laughter was sharp in reply. “And let them find me? Let Hugh trap me?”
“Find yourself.” The answer didn’t come cleanly; answers rarely did. But he sensed that they groped closer to the question now, and only when they could discover the question could they search out the path that would lead her to the answer she sought.
“Gnosi seaton,” she murmured. “‘Know thyself.’ That’s what the prophetesses of the ancient gods said at the temple of Talfi.”
His hand. The memory from his dream engulfed him so abruptly that he had to cover his eyes. “‘Let be your guide that which first appears to your eyes.’ It wasn’t the funeral at all. It was his own hand. That’s what she meant.”
“What funeral?”
He shook himself free of the windings of forgotten sleep. “My dream of Fifth Son, the one I had this night.”
“I only have nightmares,” said Liath, her voice so quiet that even the snap of twigs and roll of burning logs drowned it. “I’ve never had a true vision, except through fire—and that isn’t truly a vision but a gateway.”
Before he knew what he was about, he had pulled the leather thong up from around his neck and opened the little cloth pouch. He laid the delicate red rose on his palm for her to see. It gleamed uncannily in the firelight.
She stared. “The Rose of Healing,” she whispered. Her voice caught, broke, and she sniffed back tears. She did not attempt to touch it.
The petals burned on his palm. Quickly he replaced it in the pouch. Then, trembling slightly, he took another log and set it on the hot coals. It smoldered, caught, and blazed, flames dancing along its length.
She wiped her nose again with the back of a hand and looked up at him. She reached, hesitated, then laid a hand on his arm. The touch was so light it might not have been there at all, and yet in that simple act Alain understood that, as with the hounds, he had won her trust forever.
5
HE crept back upstairs when the first stirrings of dawn reached him. She had fallen asleep hours ago. Yet he could not bear to leave and instead had sat watch over her and the fire for the rest of the night.
Upstairs, his father was awake and waiting for him.
“Alain.” He nudged Terror out of his way and swung his legs out of bed, rose, stretched, and then turned to examine his son with a frown. “Open the shutters.”
Alain obeyed. The sting of cold air chased along his skin like so many gnats.
“Close it again,” said Lavastine after examining him. “Have we not spoken of this? You of all people must be more careful than most.”
“Careful of what?”
“I hope you are not about to say you went out to the pits to relieve yourself when we have a perfectly good chamber pot here, and a servant to carry it away in the morning?” Alain flushed, having finally realized where his father thought he had been for most of the night. “Where have you been?”
“Down in the hall, talking with—”
“Talking with?”
“That’s all!”
“Perhaps it isn’t fair to expect so much from you. It’s a rare man who in his youth can resist a fair morsel set before him. Had God wanted us to remain as pure as the angels, They could have molded us differently, I suppose.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Is it the Eagle? You know they swear oaths. They aren’t allowed congress of that nature with any but their own kind, on pain of being thrown out of their Order. But you’re a good-look
ing boy, and fair spoken, and she’s a long way from the king. We each of us have our weaknesses.”
“But we didn’t—!”
“So it was the Eagle.”
“I talked to her. You know I’ve always told the truth, Father! I heard her crying and I went to see—I comforted her, that’s all. Can’t you send another messenger in her place?”
“Why shouldn’t she return to court? That is her duty.”
“She has an enemy at court.”
“An Eagle has an enemy at court? Why should anyone at court even notice such an Eagle, unless she has brought the king’s displeasure down on herself?”
“It isn’t that at all. There’s a nobleman at court, an abbot, who wants to force her to become his concubine.”
“Indeed.” Lavastine walked over to the shutters and opened them again, framing himself in the full blast of cold air. He stared outside, examining some sight in the courtyard below. No one could ever doubt Lavastine ruled here. He did not have the height or bulk of King Henry or of his own cousin Geoffrey, but even standing in his bare feet, dressed only in a linen undershift as a robe against the chill, he had authority, that absolute assurance that all he surveyed lay under his command. Some gray colored his sand-pale hair; no longer a young man, neither was he old in the way of men entering their decline. Alain wished he could feel so sure of himself, could in the simple act of opening a shutter proclaim his fitness to stand in his ordained place in the world. Aunt Bel had that assurance; so had his foster father, Henri. “Perhaps it’s even understandable, if the nobleman is insistent enough. If she becomes his concubine, she’ll lose her position as an Eagle. Then, should he tire of her, she would have no recourse except to return to her kin—if they would take her in.”
“She has no kin.”
“Then it is doubly wise of her to resist such an arrangement. I admire her pragmatism. She is better off in the Eagles.” He shut and latched one shutter, leaving a draft of cold air to spill into the room while he called over Terror, Ardent, Fear, and Bliss and leashed them to a ring set into the wall. “But I remain puzzled. Why did she confide in you?”
Alain hesitated. For an instant, he wanted to say, “Because she’s a wild creature, like the hounds, and she trusts me,” but the notion was so outrageous that he knew he could speak no such thing aloud. “I don’t know.”
Lavastine had marked the hesitation. “If you have conceived some fondness for the Eagle … you understand why nothing must happen, Alain. You of all people must be more careful—”
As he hadn’t been when the servingwoman at Lady Aldegund’s manor had accosted him. Only the savagery of the hounds had saved him from giving in to base desire! Hadn’t he learned anything from that? “I wouldn’t—if I’m to marry Lady Tallia—” But this was too much. He sat down heavily on the bench and buried his face in Sorrow’s flank. The thick smell of dog drove all impure thoughts out of his mind—or most of them, anyway, though he could not banish the image of Tallia. And why should such thoughts be impure? Wasn’t it true that desire came from the Lady and Lord, that They had granted it to humankind so that woman and man could create children between them?
“What wouldn’t you do since you’re to marry Tallia?” asked Lavastine, sounding more curious than anything.
“She’s so holy, so pure. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t come to her as … pure as she will come to me.”
“A Godly sentiment, Alain, and I am proud of you for it. It is just as well that the Eagle leaves today. If you have conceived a fondness for her, it might prove hard to keep your pledge to your future bride.”
It took Alain a moment to sort through this. Then he jerked his head up. The untied hounds swarmed over to him, licking his hands. “Go away!” he said, irritated at their attention. “But I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t think of—” He stammered to a halt. With the window open, he could see his father’s expression clearly and read what it meant: Not that Alain was tempted by the young Eagle, but that Lavastine was.
Was this how Alain had been conceived? By a young man who, seeing a young woman, determined to have her in his bed no matter what she wanted? “Isn’t it written down by the church mothers that we must all come cleanly to the marriage bed?” he demanded, horrified to see Lavastine in this unflattering light. No word of scandal had ever touched Henri the Merchant.
Lavastine bowed his head and looked away. “So I am justly reminded of my own faults.”
“I beg your pardon, Father.” How had he come to blurt out such an appalling statement—even if it was true?
But Lavastine only smiled wryly and crossed the chamber to touch Alain’s hair as a praying man might touch a reliquary. “Never beg pardon for telling what is only the truth. Be assured I have learned my lesson in such matters. I have learned to confine myself to whores and married women, such as may be approached discreetly.”
“Father! But the church mothers enjoin us to—”
The count laughed sharply and called Steadfast over to him. She had become more restless of late; most likely she was going into heat. Already the males had begun to grow more irritable than usual. “I am not that strong, son. We must all learn the measure of our strength. Otherwise we exhaust ourselves striving for that which we can never gain.” He tied Steadfast up away from the others and frowned at her, then whistled for Sorrow and Rage. Good Cheer was, as usual, hiding under the bed. “Let the servants in, Alain,” he added curtly, motioning toward the door.
“But, Father, what about the Eagle?”
Lavastine was down on his knees now. Grabbing Good Cheer by the forelegs, he dragged her bodily out from her hiding place while she whined and attempted to lick him into leniency. He grunted, heaved her up, and wrestled her over to the wall while she leaned heavily against him, anything to impede his progress. “Cursed stubborn hound.” He patted her affectionately on the shoulder. Then he turned round.
“Well, then, boy, we shall keep the Eagle here with us, which is the only practical choice, is it not? She knows the lay of the land by Gent. She has walked in the city and remembers its streets and walls. She traversed this hidden tunnel. What use to us is her knowledge of Gent if she is with King Henry when we attack?” He lifted a hand, forefinger raised as the deacon did when she meant to scold her congregation. “But there will be no—”
“I never even thought of it!”
Lavastine smiled thinly. “Perhaps you did not. Not yet, at any rate.”
“Then you must make the same promise!” Alain retorted, still waiting at the door.
Steadfast barked, and all at once all the hounds began yipping and barking. “Hush! Stop that noise, you miserable creatures!” snapped the count, but he was not truly angry with them. He could not be. Just as, Alain saw suddenly, he was not angry at what Alain had said. Having been granted the heir he so long desired and despaired of ever having, he could not bring himself to chastise him. Nor, perhaps, did he even want to, though the demand had been impertinent.
“Very well. She will stay with us … untouched. We march to Gent after the Feast of St. Sormas. Once we have retaken the city, we will collect Tallia and return home.”
Collect Tallia. It made her sound like a chest of gold or a jeweled cup, a valuable treasure held by the king to be given out as a prize. Wasn’t that what she was, now that her parents had been disgraced and shorn of their position? But their disgrace did not strip from her the inheritance she received through her mother nor the royal bloodlines that tied her to both the ruling house of Wendar and the princely house that had once ruled Varre.
A servant scratched lightly on the door.
“What if we fail to take Gent?” asked Alain.
Lavastine simply looked at him as if he had uttered words in a language the count did not know. “They are savages, Alain! We are civilized people. The city of Gent fell because it was unprepared and overwhelmed. The same will not happen to us. Come now. We have spent far too long talking about a common Eagle who is no doubt more useful to us
when she flies as is her nature than when she is left bound to a post for us to admire her beauty. Let us get on with our day.”
6
HE had not spoken words in a long time except to respond to taunts or to call down the dogs. Indeed, it took him a long time—hours, perhaps days—to find the words that would say what he meant them to.
But he struggled, piecing them together. Never let it be said he did not fight until his last breath. He would not let Bloodheart and the dogs defeat him.
“Bloodheart.”
Was that his voice? Rasping and hoarse, he sounded brutish compared to the light, fluid tones of the Eika, who for all their ugly metal-hard bodies had voices as soft as the flutes Bloodheart played.
Bloodheart stirred on his throne, coming to life. “Is this my prince of dogs who addresses me? I thought you had forgotten how to speak! What boon do you ask?”
“You won’t kill me, Bloodheart. Nor will your dogs.”
Bloodheart didn’t reply, only fingered the ax laid across his thighs and the smooth bone flutes tucked into his girdle of glistening silver-and-gold chain links. Perhaps he looked irritated.
“Teach me your language. Let your priest teach me to read the bones, as he does.”
“Why?” demanded Bloodheart, but he might have been amused. He might have been angry. “Why should I? You are only a dog. Why should you want to?”
“Even dogs bark, and gnaw at bones for sport,” said Sanglant.
At that, Bloodheart laughed uproariously. He did not answer. Indeed, he left soon after to tour the armories and tanneries of Gent, to take his daily excursion down to the river.
But the next day the priest settled down just outside the limit of Sanglant’s chains and began to teach him the language of the Eika, to teach him how to roll and interpret the finely carved bones he carried in his pouch. And every day, lulled by Sanglant’s muted voice and intent interest—for what else did the prince have to be interested in?—the priest edged a little closer.