The captive staggered to a halt at the edge of a shaft plunging down into the earth. Light did not penetrate far; it was pitch-black below, empty, although a faintly sulfurous wind skirled up from the depths like the breath of a buried giant long asleep.
“We’ll need rope,” said Stronghand, understanding the risk he took. If his men were not loyal, they could strand him there. But OldMother wanted Alain; he wanted Alain. He had to take the chance. And, in truth, the gamble made his blood sing.
With rope lashed around his torso, he allowed himself to be lowered down and down and down, using his feet to balance himself away from the sheer wall and probing ahead with his spear until he found rock beneath him. He untied himself and tugged twice on the rope, then waited as both hounds, the miner, young Yeshu all strung about with coils of rope, and a Rikin soldier laden with four torches, an ax, and more rope arrived.
They were ready to explore. They tied more rope to the main rope and strung it behind them as the hounds sniffed forward into a labyrinth of passageways, blind alleys, one breakdown where blocks of stone littered the passageway, and a dead end—a sloping cavernous chamber ridged with ledges where the hounds snuffled with great interest for a long while before turning and leading them back in a different direction.
They scooted down a steep incline while the miner moaned under his breath until the sound so grated on Stronghand’s nerves that he whirled around and brought the edge of his knife to the man’s throat.
“There’s nothing here.” He knew the words as truth as he spoke them. No living scent touched his nostrils. He heard no echo of footfalls, no whisper of scuttling movement, no monster’s slither or the fluttering breath of an ancient evil lying in wait.
The pit lay empty. Deserted.
He snarled, low, and the hounds echoed his anger with growls of their own. They, too, knew the truth, but they led the party on regardless as the miner gulped down his sobs and Yeshu exclaimed at every pillar and shaft and new texture of rock. A new smell assailed them as they scrambled up a ramp into a large cavern.
“Bread!” Yeshu exclaimed as he ventured forward into the space, the light of his torch dancing over a field of mushrooms. Spoors settled where their feet kicked dust up.
“Corpses!” said Far-runner, the Rikin brother who accompanied them. “They’re growing mushrooms on corpses!”
The miner fell to his knees and vomited.
“There was someone here, then,” said Yeshu. “Someone who could think, and drag these bodies to this place, and plant them. There is an old legend among my people of a race of men who delved under the earth because of a curse placed on them by their enemies. I know lots of old stories, most of them nonsense. Maybe this one is true!” He laughed, delighted, and probed among the field with his staff, shifting bones, uprooting a clump of the fleshy white growth that was bound to a rib cage with pale tendrils.
“God protect us!” wept the miner, and retched again.
“Come,” said Stronghand, because the hounds were pulling him on, padding to the limit of the light and yipping, eager to move forward.
He quickly outpaced the others, hearing Yeshu’s voice behind him exclaiming over some marvel or another as they passed through glittering caverns and skirted sinks and trenches that gave out into other levels beneath. Another day he might wonder, but he felt himself close—so very close. Torchlight illuminated a wide cavern peculiarly ornamented with low structures constructed out of bones, but the hounds trotted down a path and he hastened after them even as Yeshu and Far-runner came out of the passage and broke into startled exclamations at the sight of this city of bones.
In the darkness the ceiling met the floor; where they met, a tunnel ramped down. The hounds scrabbled forward, Rage pressing into the tunnel with Sorrow nudging at her hindquarters, tails lashing. Then they barked and in some confusion backed out of the tunnel. He got down on hands and knees and, thrusting the torch before him, pushed into the tunnel.
A foul-tasting water had swallowed the passageway. The route was blocked.
The others came up to him as he stood and furiously kicked at the nearest house of bones, sending it rattling and clattering down. He would have smashed them all, if he could have.
“Is that wise?” asked Yeshu. “There might be a spell on those bones.”
“Gone,” he said. “Out of my reach. There’s no one down here, and Alain is gone.”
The walls ate the sound of his voice, but the rock could not absorb his anger and the blinding grief that, for the space of ten breaths, took hold of him. He choked out a breath and sucked one in, then turned to the miner.
“Pray you can swim,” he said. “We’ll tie a rope to your ankle and you’ll go in. If you reach the other side, you may flee, if you dare, or you may tug on the rope and we’ll haul you back. If you succeed, if there is a way out, then I’ll reward you with silver and riches, as much as you can carry.”
The man wept and gibbered, but Stronghand himself tied the rope to his ankle and drove him forward into the water. The rope paid out, and paid out, and paid out, and Yeshu said:
“No man can hold his breath that long.”
It ceased moving, then slackened slightly. They waited far past the point where a man might live so long underwater.
“Draw him in,” said Stronghand at last, and Far-runner took the line in hand over hand, hauling with all his strength, but a weight fetched up somewhere within the tunnel, and although all three of them yanked, they could not dislodge it.
“He’s fled, or drowned,” said Stronghand.
“That’s an awful way to go,” said Yeshu. A spark of fear brightened his expression as he looked at the creature he served.
Stronghand nodded. “I am not like you, Yeshu, but I deal fairly and I use the tools I have. Come. There’s nothing for us here.”
His loyal soldiers hauled them up; outside, in the blessedly fresh air, the log house was still smoldering, ringed by a garden of corpses. His men had methodically looted what they could, and as dawn shaded the trees from black to gray, scouts raced out of the forest.
“A war band approaches, flying the banner of the hawk.”
They had nothing to wait for, nothing to fight for. They had taken the chance and lost the gamble. Alain was still alive—he knew that—but the hounds had lost his trail and he did not have a strong enough force to fight off determined and organized resistance.
They ran west, and when three days later they reached the ferry, four ships waited by the far shore, just out of sight of the garrison. The merfolk had come when called and brought him a swift means of escape.
“What do we do now?” asked Last Son as they set sail, letting the current sweep them downstream toward the distant ocean. Oars beat the water to keep them in the main current. Stronghand stood at the rudder, watching the shoreline pass. The hounds lay at his feet, heads on their forelegs; they seemed as despondent as any creature he had ever seen, but they trusted him enough to return with him to the ships. At the stem, Yeshu and Far-runner had gathered an audience while they told their tale of wandering among the dead bones of the Earth. Men and Eika huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, comrades rather than enemies as they listened appreciatively. Because he looked closely, he saw two new faces among the assembly.
“Aren’t those two of the slaves we freed at the mines?”
“So they are. They followed us and were strong enough to keep up. They desire to join the army.”
“Is that so?”
“Will you take them?”
As he watched, he saw the stockier one, the more talkative of the two, raise his voice to add to the story being woven by Yeshu and Far-runner. The others did not shout him down. “It seems I already have. A man bold enough to run in our pack is bold enough to fight with us.”
Last Son nodded. “They call themselves ‘Walker’ and ‘Will.’ I’ve kept my eye on them.”
As he had not. He had thought of nothing except Alain, except how water and rock had defeate
d him, who was mortal and short-lived, unlike the Earth. Stronghand considered while oak forest slid past on the banks. In battle it was usually necessary to act precipitously, but in council a measured decision gave the best results. It was necessary to always keep your eyes open, to examine your position from every side before you chose your course of action.
He had not kept his eyes open.
But Last Son had.
“Why did you not take a name?” Stronghand asked.
Last Son grinned, displaying his teeth. “Last Son is a good name, too,” he said. “It’s the name I want. What do we do now?”
“My brother Alain wanders out there. To find him, I must plan carefully and not overreach. The Salians will fight us. The Wendish are strong. We will use Medemelacha as our foothold and we will push step by step inland, consolidating as we go, just as we are doing in Alba. That way we will find Alain but also gain more land for our empire. Piece by piece.”
“Yes,” said Last Son, nodding. “That is a good plan. That is why we follow you, Stronghand. Because you are not like the chieftains that came before you.”
6
“THEY say the end of the world is coming, Sister Antonia,” said the empress.
Adelheid gripped the railing of the balcony, knuckles white as she stared out over the city of Darre from the second story of the royal palace. Roof tiles baked under the sun. Heat shimmered. At this time of day, in the middle of the afternoon, the streets were deserted but the stink never abated; on a day like today, with no wind, it only subsided a bit with no breeze to spread its miasma over the palace hill. Perhaps the stench wasn’t quite so bad this year because so many people had fled the great earthquake and returned to the villages and fields of the countryside, where they felt safer.
In truth, Adelheid wasn’t looking at the city at all. She looked west toward the hills that bordered the sea. They all looked west when they had the courage to look. It was now possible to see the smoking mountain at all hours of the day and night, belching ash and sparks.
Antonia said nothing. She had a comfortable seat on an Arethousan-style couch, she was fed, and a servant stood beside her waving a fan so she didn’t get too hot. She knew when to be patient. She hadn’t caught her fish yet.
“If you get my daughters, and me, and the emperor through it safely, then I will give you anything.”
Ah. The line twitched.
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
Hooked. Now she needed only to reel her in. “Very well. You are at risk in the city. You and your daughters and household must move to a villa outside the city, but keep troops under the command of Duke Burchard garrisoned in strength in the city to protect your position here.”
“No. I would be a fool, and a coward, to abandon Darre and leave a Wendish foreigner, however loyal, in charge.”
Stubborn creature! Antonia suppressed a grimace of irritation. She knew better than to let anger show. People didn’t like to be reminded that they knew less than she did.
The empress went on speaking, oblivious to Antonia’s silence. “Henry has been absent for over a year now, fighting in Dalmiaka. If I leave Darre as well, then the people will say we abandoned them. I will not go.”
“It won’t be safe.”
“It will be less safe if I flee. The people of Darre want an Aostan regnant, not a Wendish regent. They will not tolerate Duke Burchard.”
“Leave an Aostan lady in control of the palace.”
“If I do so, the people will rise up and crown her queen. How does it benefit me to save the cow but lose the farm?”
Adelheid had a tendency to be pigheaded. In Antonia’s experience too much soft youthful prettiness gave girls an inflated notion of their importance. In addition, she listened too much to the common folk and spouted their rustic wisdom as if she were born to it; as if the rabble had the wisdom to rule themselves!
“If you will not go, Your Majesty, then at least send your daughters to a place of safety.”
A rumble whispered under their feet, shivering the ground. The balcony swayed, and the servingwoman who was fanning Antonia shrieked and then laughed as the rumbling subsided as quickly as it had come. A vase brimming with lavender teetered but did not fall.
“Just a small one, Your Majesty. Your Grace.” The servant curtsied nervously.
“The fan,” said Antonia. With a last anxious chuckle, the woman resumed stirring the air. “Your Majesty, I pray you—”
Adelheid had a pretty face, but when she clenched her jaw, she betrayed her obstinacy. “I cannot leave Darre. Look how they swarm out onto the street. They are frightened, Sister. They fear. If I abandon them, they will seek a different strong hand to rule them. To give them hope and strength. Henry charged me to stay. This is the empire we have won together, the heart of our regnancy. I cannot leave.”
“Your daughters would be safer in the countryside,” continued Antonia, sensing that the tremor had offered her an opening. “Take a dozen girls from the city to act as servants and companions and you will please the common folk, who will see you acting on behalf of their daughters as well as your own. Send them out of the city. They will be safe even as you suffer the same dangers as your subjects.”
There was no wind to cool them, but Adelheid endured the heat without wilting. These sweltering late summer days did not make her face mottle with unsightly red blotches, as it did Antonia’s; her complexion remained smooth and lovely. Her hair stayed neatly coifed under a linen scarf, held in place by a slender gold circlet that she wore at all times except for formal audiences, when she placed the heavy imperial crown on her own head. Sweat stippled her brow but otherwise she gave no sign in her silk robes of being hot, not as Antonia was.
“I don’t know …” she mused, still staring down at the city.
Voices called out in the hallway. The door into the chamber slammed open and a girl ran in, sobbing.
“Mama! Mama! Make the shaking stop, Mama! I’m scared!”
Adelheid turned as little Mathilda flung herself against her mother’s skirts and clung there, arms wrapped around her hips, shoulders heaving and shaking with far more violence than the tremor that had precipitated the girl’s outburst.
The nursemaid hurried in, accompanied by two guardsmen. She was an older woman, breathless from the run. Her bones popped and creaked as she knelt before the empress. “I pray pardon, Your Majesty. I let the princess run away from me.”
“What of Berengaria?” Adelheid asked sharply, one hand stroking her crying daughter’s head. “Where is she?”
“She slept through the tremor, Your Majesty. Such things do not trouble her. She is still an infant.”
“Very well.” She wiped Mathilda’s tears away with her thumb and tipped her head up so that the girl looked up at her. “Should you like to go to the countryside, Tildie? Would you like to be a shepherd?”
Mathilda sniffed hard. At four, she had a face both more handsome and less pretty than Adelheid’s, and was already tall and strong for her age, brown-haired, snub-nosed, with an endearing dimple in her left cheek.
“I should like that, Mama!” she cried, her tears forgotten. “I would much rather run outside. I hate Darre! I hate it!”
She was a passionate child. Antonia smiled as Adelheid melted before her daughter’s fierce will, so like her own. Yet Mathilda possessed her father’s famous ability to rage outwardly whereas Adelheid held her feelings on a tighter rein, pulled tight, concealed behind a prettiness that disarmed her antagonists. Henry was stronger, but Adelheid more dangerous.
“You hate the hot summer air and the walls,” said Adelheid sternly, “not the city.”
“Yes, Mama,” said the girl meekly. “I love Darre. Just it’s so hot and stinky. I wish I could climb trees like we do in Tivura.”
“So be it.” Adelheid nodded at Antonia to show that she had accepted Antonia’s advice. “You and Berengaria will go to Tivura for the rest of the summer, until Octumbre at least.”
&n
bsp; She clapped her hands, then stilled. “But what about you, Mama? Won’t you come with us?” Her lip trembled. Tears brimmed.
“I must stay in Darre until Octumbre. You know our duty is to rule. It will be your duty one day.”
“Yes, Mama.” She struggled and got the tears under control. At four, she already comprehended her destiny. “When will Papa come home?”
Adelheid glanced again over the city. “We must pray that the Lord and Lady grant him success very soon, and that he return swiftly. Go on, then. Go make ready. You will leave tomorrow.”
“Yes, Your Majesty’” said the nursemaid. She grunted and rose with some effort, wincing at the pain in her limbs. “Come, Your Highness. You must pick out which of your animals you wish to take with you.”
Adelheid kissed her daughter’s forehead and watched as she skipped out of the room, now holding onto her nursemaid’s hand and babbling happily about lambs and foals and how she absolutely must take all five of her whippet puppies.
“I am not sure you understand Aosta, Sister Antonia,” said Adelheid quietly once the doors had shut. She came back into the room and sat on a couch, took a cup of wine from a servant, and sipped. “This is not Wendar, where nobles rule and the common folk till the ground and pay their tithes to whichever lady commands them. The ‘rabble,’ as you call them, speak loudly in Darre, and if we ignore them, then they will rise against us. That is why I cannot leave, or leave Duke Burchard as regent, no matter how affectionately I admire him. The people have suffered much—the earthquake, two bad harvests, the shivering sickness. Many have fled to the countryside, but others from the country walk in rags to the city walls hoping to be given flour from my granary. I must feed them, or they will riot. They love me because I never deserted them, because I came back to save them from Ironhead. I will not desert them now.”
She tucked her feet up onto the couch, curled up like the leopard it was rumored she had once kept as a pet—lost when she had fled John Ironhead’s siege of Vennaci. She was small but lithe and alert; no fool, indeed.