“Something’s coming,” said Heribert. “Can you feel it, Anna? It’s like a weight descending. We’re not safe here.”
She stared at the high cavern in which they stood. Stalactites glittered under the net of fire. Thiemo snored softly, one hand cupped at his throat. Matto lay with mouth agape and eyes and hands fast shut. It was all true. They had crawled into the ancient burial chamber to protect Blessing and possibly to die, but they hadn’t died and indeed they were no longer where they had started out. The burial chamber had been dirt; this place was stone. In the burial chamber there had barely been room to stand upright in the center, this place could hold a council of twoscore nobles and their horses. In the burial chamber there had been a single entrance, a tunnel that led to the outside. Here, at least four passageways left the chamber at different directions. They might be anywhere.
She, too, felt a stiffening in the air, a tension in the earth, like the breath of a huge monster about to lunge out of darkness onto its hapless prey.
“Come quickly!” Blessing’s voice pierced the silence, although there was no sign of her in the chamber. “No! This way! You’re so slow! I said this way!”
“What a brat!” said a second voice, laughing.
“I am not a brat! I’m not!”
“You are!”
“I’m not!”
Blessing’s companion laughed merrily, and before Anna or Heribert could react two figures trotted into the cavern, the smaller grasping the larger by his wrist. Blessing dropped her grip and clapped her hands to crow in triumph.
“Look what I found, Brother Heribert! And not just that, but a pile of treasure!”
The earth shook violently. The net of blue fire sparked and dazzled, and began to pulse.
“Lord have mercy,” said Heribert, staring at Blessing, who looked painfully thin but otherwise emphatically alive and vital. Anna didn’t know whether to be giddy with joy or annoyed that Blessing after all hadn’t changed one bit and probably hadn’t a thought to spare for the sacrifice her attendants had made so willingly for her.
“I’m Berthold,” said the youth, a nice-looking boy most likely a little younger than Anna, fifteen or sixteen or so. He wore a handsome pale blue tunic of an excellent weave trimmed with yellow embroidery, a hip-length cape lined with pale fox fur, and soft leather boots bound up with laces. He held calfskin gloves casually in one hand, and at his waist rode a sword in a richly tooled sheath bearing the mark of the silver tree.
“Lord have mercy,” repeated Heribert, shifting his stunned gaze away from Blessing. “You must be Villam’s son.”
“So I am,” said the lad, not one bit surprised at being recognized. A noble youth out of a house as important as Villam’s expected to be known. “We crawled in here to explore but must have fallen asleep. The rest of my companions are still asleep. I could only wake up Jonas. He’s trying to get the others awake. I don’t know where this chamber came from!” He gestured toward the high ceiling, and the four sleeping men. “It wasn’t here when we explored under the tumuli yesterday. How did you get here?”
The earth shook once again. The pulse of the light had begun to shift in pitch until Anna could actually hear a melodic rise and fall shot through with an unearthly harmony. The temperature was beginning to rise.
“I want to get out of here,” said Blessing. “Something very very bad is about to happen.” She turned on Berthold. He stood a head taller than she did, although he wasn’t as tall as her father. “Help me wake them up!”
Berthold’s expression twisted, eyes opening in mock horror, mouth opening to an “o” of pretend fear. “Of course, my lady!” He spoiled the moment by laughing again. “Who made you regnant?”
She stamped her foot. “My father is Prince Sanglant. I am the great granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer. You have to do what I tell you to do!”
He snorted with amusement, glanced at Anna to estimate her station and importance, and nodded at Brother Heribert. “Who are you, Brother?”
“I am called Brother Heribert. I am a cleric in Prince Sanglant’s schola.”
“Is it true this brat is Prince Sanglant’s daughter?”
“I’m not a brat!”
“She is indeed, my lord.”
“How can she be the great granddaughter of Emperor Taillefer? Henry’s forebears have no connection to that noble house.”
Heribert hesitated just long enough for Berthold to go on, impatient as his thoughts skipped ahead.
“Prince Sanglant has a schola? How can he? He’s the captain of the King’s Dragons. I didn’t even know he had a daughter this old, but I suppose it’s no surprise given what everyone says about him and women. Heh! I wonder what Waltharia will have to say about that! She thought she walked that road first!”
“What road?” demanded Blessing.
Heribert flung up a hand as if to say, “stop.” “I pray you, Lord Berthold. We must untangle these lineages later. Princess Blessing is right. We’d best flee.” He wiped sweat from his brow. “I don’t like being trapped in here.”
“Nor do I,” admitted the youth, looking around. “Although it is the most amazing thing! Who could have dug such caverns? You should see the treasure back there! Golden helms and mounds of emeralds and garnets! Jeweled belts. Necklaces. I told them not to pick anything up, but they would cram their sleeves—all but Jonas, he’s the only one who listens to me—”
A temblor shook the earth so hard that Anna had trouble keeping her feet. The Kerayit healer moaned, fighting sleep but not quite able to wake. Thiemo and Matto didn’t stir at all. The blue fire had become so bright she had to squint. The cavern shone, walls gleaming. The stone sweat as heat swelled. It was like being trapped inside a box that had been thrown onto a fire.
“No one is listening to me!” shrieked Blessing. She pounced on Thiemo and shook him. “Wake up! Wake up!”
Without warning, the Quman soldier leaped to his feet, knife in hand as he assessed his surroundings. Over the last months Heribert had picked up the rudiments of the Quman speech. He spoke now, and the young man nodded abruptly, lowered the knife, and knelt beside Matto, shaking him. The Kerayit healer opened her eyes and, with a grunt, scrambled to her feet. She pointed to the fiery blue net whose brightness by now made the light in the cavern almost unbearable.
“Sorcery,” she said in halting Wendish. “Go now. Go quick.”
“Do you know the way out?” asked Heribert.
“I don’t,” said Berthold. “It’s all changed. It wasn’t like this at all yesterday when we crawled in here—”
“I know how to go!” exclaimed Blessing.
“Take her,” said Heribert to Anna. “We’ll have to carry Thiemo and Matto if we can’t wake them up.”
“Do you really think she knows anything?” demanded Berthold, more in disbelief than in anger. He had begun, finally, to appear nervous.
“I do know! I do!”
“Have you a better plan?” asked Heribert in his mildest tone. “I haven’t. One is as good as another. We’d best hurry.”
Thunder shook the cavern, a stalactite shuddered loose from the ceiling, crashed to the floor, and shattered into stinging shards. Anna caught one on her cheek. Blood trickled down her skin.
“Lord Berthold!” A young man no older than Villam’s son staggered out of a passageway. He shaded his eyes, brought up short by the blinding net of light. Another tremor shook them. A second stalactite cracked and fell, and the poor youth leaped aside and shouted out loud as he flung up his arms to protect himself. Dust and debris scattered.
“Where are the others?” demanded Berthold. He, too, was pale now. He, too, looked frightened.
“I can’t wake them!” said poor Jonas, who had been crying. “I don’t know what’s wrong!”
“This way!” cried Blessing, who had run to a different passageway, one opposite the tunnel that Berthold’s companion had just emerged from. “I said this way! We’ve got to hurry! The storm is coming. It will crus
h us if we’re in here!”
She shot off a quick command in the Quman language, surprising both Heribert and Anna, who hadn’t known she could speak any language other than Wendish. The Quman soldier got Matto under the arms and began dragging him.
“Here!” Galvanized, Anna ran forward and got hold of Matto’s ankles, heaving him up, but after ten paces his limp weight was too much for her, and she wasn’t weak.
“Help us, I pray you, Lord Berthold,” said Heribert. “Let’s carry these two free and come back for your companions.”
Berthold hesitated, then fixed his mouth in a grim line and ran over to Thiemo. “He looks familiar,” he mused, grabbing him under the arms. “Here, Jonas. Help me!”
The Kerayit healer came to Anna’s rescue, taking Matto’s ankles, and Anna after all had to pursue Blessing, who had already vanished up the passageway. The floor was seamless, swept clean of debris, pebbles, dirt. Threads of light pierced the stone itself, woven entirely through the underground labyrinth. With each tremor, with each pulse, tiny cracks fissured the stone. At any moment the entire place might splinter and collapse. This was not the fate she had expected. Panic lent her wings, and she raced on Blessing’s trail and would have plunged to her death had Blessing not screamed out loud just in time for Anna to stumble to a stop beside the girl, at the edge of an abyss.
The passageway ended in a wide, deep hole. It was as if a giant had stuck a spear far down into the earth and drawn it up again, leaving this empty shaft behind. The net of light that illuminated the labyrinth did not penetrate into its depths. There was no way across, and no obvious way down or up.
“Look,” said Blessing, pointing to the cliff face opposite them. “There’s a ledge there, and a passageway.”
“No way to reach it, Your Highness,” said Anna, barely able to speak. She couldn’t catch her breath. “We’ll have to go back and find another route.”
“Is, too!” Blessing ran to the edge where the walls of the passageway met the sheer curve of that huge shaft. She reached, she gripped, and between one breath and the next had clambered out along the wall toward the far side.
Fear strangled Anna’s voice. She was helpless, terrified, still woozy. She still could not believe that she was awake and in this terrible predicament. Ai, God. If only she could wake up and find herself back in Gent! The earth shook, and although Anna shrieked out loud, Blessing did not fall; she had too good a grip; she was fearless, that girl. Impossible. Already halfway across, clinging like a lizard to the rock face.
“Anna? Anna! Ai, God!” Heribert came up behind her, not far ahead of the rest.
“I’ll have to follow her.” Without waiting for his reply, because if she waited she would lose her courage, she ran to the edge and brushed a hand over the rock wall, finding handholds and narrow brims easily. Someone had carved these here. They couldn’t be natural, placed so cunningly and conveniently. She crept along the wall, knowing better than to look down. As long as she didn’t look down, she could believe that the ground lay one step below. It was easier that way to move across the rock face. It was easier that way not to panic.
“Princess Blessing, come back!” cried Heribert.
“Won’t!” Blessing leaped to the far ledge just as another tremor shook them. A rock fell from above, and Anna shut her eyes and held on, listening, but she never heard it strike bottom. She was by now breathing so hard that she was dizzy, and when she opened her eyes she saw that Blessing had disappeared into the far passageway.
“Go on, Anna!” shouted Heribert. “You’ve got to get her back! We can’t carry the rest across this!”
She heard the others arrive, heard their shocked exclamations and the buzz of discussion, but she could not concentrate on them to pick out words. She had to pick a path across the face, one handhold and toehold at a time, and at last she swung onto the far ledge which by now resembled a grand broad field, it looked so inviting and safe although it wasn’t more than an arm’s span in width. She landed there, panting, sweating, mouth dry, just as a horrible grinding roar shuddered up from the depths. In the passageway behind Heribert and the others, dust roiled, punched outward by a tremendous rockfall back the way they had come.
“Go, Anna! Go!” shouted Heribert before the dust engulfed him.
Despite the brilliant web of sorcery, she could not see Thiemo and Matto through the haze. She saw the blur of movement, glimpsed a Quman bow case and a Kerayit headdress, heard voices yell and shriek, but nothing more. Nothing more.
Far away, down that dark passageway lying behind her, Blessing called out impatiently. “Come! Come! Hurry!”
She ducked down, banging her head once on stone before getting the hang of the low ceiling. It was dark as the grave. No net of sorcery wove light to guide her footsteps. Twice she stumbled and bruised herself, and the third time she tumbled to hands and knees and yelped in pain.
A warm hand fastened on her shoulder. “Hurry! Where are the others?”
“They can’t cross, Your Highness.” She coughed. Dust had scoured her lungs. Grit abraded her palms. “They can’t carry Lord Thiemo and Matto across that wall. We’ve got to go back.”
“I can’t leave them behind!” cried Blessing, with a fury that caused her hand to tighten on Anna’s shoulder until it hurt. She should have been weak after her illness, but she wasn’t. “Papa says you never leave your companions behind. We have to rescue them.”
“I think there was a rockfall.” She coughed again. It hurt to cough. “We can’t go back the way we came. Ai, God. What if they’re all dead?”
The earth groaned and rumbled beneath them, around them, everywhere. They were trapped in a tomb and it was too late to save themselves. They would die here—
A body slammed into Anna, tripped over her, and went sprawling, knocking Blessing down.
“Highness!” Anna smelled the Kerayit healer, whose peculiar scent of sour milk and an unidentifiable musk always tickled her nose.
She sneezed. The others piled up behind them, trapped in the low tunnel. A cloud of dust blasted past them, choking the passage.
“Move! Move!” said Lord Berthold from out of the dust. “The whole place is collapsing.”
Anna scrambled forward, grabbing Blessing’s arm and pulling her along with her. They raced blind, tripping, stumbling, staggering, but the passage ran true, without turns or branches, until at length they stumbled onto stone steps, and climbed up them. Just as Anna realized that she could see through her stinging eyes, they emerged into a shallow cave carved out of a hillside by a massive collapse of dirt, as if half the side of the hill had fallen away. Dust puffed and billowed around them. Beyond, a sickly gray light bled color out of the air.
Anna crept to the opening. One by one the others joined her: Princess Blessing, Lord Berthold, his companion Jonas, the Kerayit healer, and last the young Quman soldier supporting Brother Heribert, who fell to his knees, hacking as though he meant to cough his lungs out. All of them wept blood from scrapes and cuts. All were covered with dust and dirt. Lord Berthold cursed and muttered, while Jonas tried to soothe him.
“They’re dead! Dead! I abandoned them! Ai, God, I’ve no honor left! I ran for my life. Better to have died—”
“Look!” shouted Blessing, and at the same moment the Kerayit healer cried, “Down!”
They dropped to their knees, but Anna stared anyway. She couldn’t stop staring. They looked out over a valley nestled between high peaks. Once the valley had boasted a fine rich forest along its slopes, but now the trees were tumbled and snapped, shorn down as though by a giant’s scythe. A vast creature hung suspended in the air, stretched across the hazy sky. It was there only for an instant, a flash of gold scales, before the sound of its wings thundered and it vanished beyond the peaks. Snow and ice crashed from the summit in a distant avalanche. The boom echoed on and on and on.
A pall of dust shrouded the sky. It was dim, but not dark; twilight, but not day. Now and again lightning stabbed through the cloudy
haze, unseen except as a ghostly glimmer, quickly gone. Once the noise of the avalanche faded, they heard no answering thunder. A monstrous orange-red glow rose along one horizon. Maybe it heralded the rising sun, but if so it was no sun she ever wanted to see.
“Is it day or night?” asked Anna.
No one answered her. Berthold wept with anger and shame, and his companion Jonas tried in vain to comfort him. The Kerayit and Quman cowered, covering their eyes and muttering prayers, each in their own language. Heribert wheezed, struggling to breathe. Even Blessing stood in shocked silence.
Something very bad had happened, just as Blessing had predicted.
As they stared, a light rain began to fall, hissing where it struck ground. It wasn’t rain at all but hot ash, so fine that it drizzled like rain only to burn and sizzle where it touched the earth. The ashy rain darkened the sky until that orange-red glow faded and Anna could no longer see the snowy peaks beyond. Dirt spit on her from the roof of the overhang. A huge weight fell right on top of them. The impact shuddered through the hill, and the overhang crumbled in on itself as a second crash sent a shower of fine dirt and clods of earth and rocks spilling over them.
Anna grabbed Blessing’s wrist and yanked her out into the ash fall. They ran, stumbling through loose dirt, sliding as the ground gave way underneath, coughing as ash burned their lungs. Only when they came to rest on ground that didn’t shiver beneath their feet did they turn. They had sheltered beneath a mound atop which stood a stone crown, and both hill and stones had collapsed. Two of the great menhirs leaned crazily, not yet fallen. The others had crashed down. One had smashed onto the slope just above the overhang, causing it to give way.
“Must … get … out … of … the … rain,” gasped Berthold.
“Where’s Brother Heribert?” Blessing wrenched her arm free from Anna’s grasp and floundered up through slippery dirt. “Brother Heribert! Brother Heribert!”
She found an arm sticking out of dark earth. The rest of him was buried.
Sliding and cursing, they struggled up along the unstable ground and with their hands dug him out and dragged him to firm ground. He was limp. He had already stopped breathing. The earth had choked him. Blessing howled in rage.