One of the clerics limped out of the crowd and whispered into Vindicadus’ ear, then shoved him, pressuring him forward.
“My lord. I beg you. What news of the king? I know—we knew—you rebelled against him.”
“My father is dead.”
They cried out loud at that. He heard their whispers: Murderer. Patricide.
“Your Majesty,” said Fulk in loud voice. “Here comes Duchess Liutgard.”
Her mount picked its way down the slope. Her banner bearer rode to her left and her favored steward to her right. She gasped when she saw the refugees. Her face grew even whiter. Seven of them ran forward and flung themselves into the dirt before her, careful of the hooves of her horse, but she dismounted and tossed the reins to her steward before walking in amongst them and taking their hands, calling them by name.
“How has this happened? Why are you here?” she demanded.
They spoke all at once, words tumbling each over those of the others. “… blast of wind … rumblings, then a terrible quake … fire in the sky … glowing rock, flowing everywhere.
“Riots. A storming of the palace. Flight through the ruined streets.
“All is chaos, my lady,” wept the eldest, who was not more than forty. “I am called Elsebet, a cleric in Emperor Henry’s schola. We lost half of our number in the first day, and half again as many in our trek here. We dared not attempt the Julier Pass. This one, Brother Vindicadus, was once in the service of Presbyter Hugh and before him Margrave Judith. He knew of an eastern pass that was little traveled. You see what remains of the king’s schola. We lost so many. Is it true? Is it true the regnant—the emperor—is dead?”
“Henry is dead,” said Liutgard as she looked at Sanglant. “That we are any of us living now is due to my cousin, Sanglant. Henry named him as heir as he was dying. It was—” Her voice broke, but she went on. “It was the wish of his heart to see Prince Sanglant become regnant after him. Henry was not himself at the end, not for the last two or three years. He was ensorcelled by his queen and by Presbyter Hugh. It was Sanglant who freed him from their net. Hear me!” Her voice rang out above the murmurs. “It is true. I swear it on my mother’s and father’s graves. I swear it by the Hand of the Lord and Lady. Sanglant is regnant now over Wendar and Varre. He is the one we follow. He is leading us home.”
“We’ll set up camp here for the night,” said Sanglant quietly to Fulk. “We must make room for these.”
“We haven’t enough to feed them, Your Majesty.”
“We cannot abandon them. They are our countryfolk. If I cannot save them, then who will?”
Fulk nodded, and left to give the orders.
They settled down to camp in marching order as dusk crept over them. Every man and woman slept fully clothed and with weapons beside him, although many put off their mail. The horses were rubbed down, watered, and fed; it was their good luck to find an unpolluted stream close by. With Lewenhardt, Surly, and a limping Sibold in attendance, Sanglant walked down through the line of march, pausing to speak to many of the soldiers, and fetched up at last with the rear guard.
The centaurs, led by Capi’ra, had volunteered for this onerous task, and he supposed the sight of them alone might have deterred many a rash attack from behind.
“Anything?” he asked her after their greeting.
“The same as every day. We see signs of men following on our tracks, but they fade away. Fewer today. There are fewer folk living here, and if they would not attack us when they have greater numbers, then they will fear to attack us when they are only a handful.”
He nodded. It was almost dark. Night came early now, not just because of the time of year. Even during the day the clouds obscured the sun. His skin ached for light. Everyone felt its lack.
“It is strange to walk among you,” said Capi’ra after a silence. “Your kind are so reckless. I will be glad to return to my homeland.” She snorted, a horsey sort of chuckle. “No offense meant to you, Sanglant. We are not easy here. The land looks wrong. It smells funny. The winds aren’t the ones we know.”
“Look!” he said, squinting. “I thought I saw a flash.”
“Lightning?”
He beckoned. “Lewenhardt. Come forward. Do you see it?”
The archer rode forward and stared south into the dark sky. He began to shake his head, then stiffened. “Could it be?” he whispered, then shouted aloud. “The griffins! It is the griffins, Your Majesty!”
Sanglant rode forward past the rearmost line, head bent back to stare heavenward as the news was called down the line of march so men could control their horses. Dogs barked.
Lewenhardt came up beside him. “They’re flying low. One has something … something in its grip … a deer, perhaps? If they’ve been hunting….?”
“Ai, God,” breathed Sanglant.
Such a bolt of adrenaline slammed through him that he thought he would go blind. He slipped getting off Fest and stumbled running forward downslope as the griffins dipped low and lower still, Domina weighed down by the burden she carried. The precious burden brought all this way to him, the one who had decreed that they must move on and leave her, unsought and unfound, behind.
I am no better than she was. I did what I thought was necessary.
Domina stooped that last short drop and when Liath was a man’s height from the ground the griffin released her and she tumbled, hitting hard. He fell to his knees beside her, wondering if she was alive or dead, but he knew she was living and not just because she laughed and cried and embraced him so tightly with her head pressed against his shoulder that when she pulled away he could see the impress of his mail on her cheek.
He was struck dumb.
“The Lord and Lady have blessed us,” she said, wincing as she used him as a support to clamber to her feet. “The griffins found you.”
He was paralyzed, still on his knees as she gritted her teeth and tested her shoulders, shrugged them up and down, drawing circles with her arms. Blood stained the pale cloth of her sleeveless shift, but any fool could see she wasn’t badly hurt, only tired, thin, dirty, and very sore.
She stared at him, seeking into his heart. At last, she kissed him on the lips. She tasted salty, and a whiff of something like brimstone trailed off her body. He shut his eyes, savoring her touch, needing only to let all the flavors of triumph and horror and joy mix within him.
In time he found himself, his words, his strength.
“With you,” he murmured, “anything.”
He rose, holding her close although it was clear she was not going to fall.
“Is it true you are regnant now?” she asked.
“I am. How could you know?”
“I met Zuangua.”
“Ah. What of your companions, the ones who departed with you through the crown?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I lost them months ago.” She shuddered. “It was a terrible thing, Sanglant. Terrible. Anne is dead.”
Said in such a voice, raw with grief. He had no need to question. Anne was dead. Liath had done what needed doing, although the cost had been high. He felt a wild laugh rise, and swallowed his fear and sorrow and anger, because they had not yet come close to knowing the full weight of the storm or how far it had spread its wings.
“You’ll tell me what I need to know,” he said. “Come. I can get you a bit of food at least. You’re too thin, my love.”
“What of those we left behind?” she demanded, clinging to him so he couldn’t take a step. “What of Blessing? Heribert? Where is Hanna? What about Ivar? And Sorgatani and Bertha? Are they all lost?”
“I don’t know.”
She let go of him to cover her face with her hands. He waited while she trembled, lost in a battle for which he carried no weapons, but at length as the night darkened and the griffins settled down with coughs, scratching in the dirt, and distantly a voice called for folk to lie back down and get some sleep by God … at length she sighed and lowered her hands.
“Ther
e,” she said. “There. All done. Where are we going?”
“Home to Wendar.” He took her hand as they walked up toward the army, who stared in astonishment. How could they not? He was their regnant now, and Liath would be their queen.
2
AT night, high in the Alfar Mountains, Liath stood beside a fire and told the story to several hundred listeners, who would in their turn pass the tale back to the rest of the army. Many more crowded up in the darkness, waiting in utter silence, but because she told the tale as a poet declaims into a shuttered hall, not as a captain shouts, her voice did not reach as far as his might have, pitched to pierce the clamor of battle.
Still, he could not tell the tale as she could. He left her to it while he sat in his father’s chair, which, because it was the regnant’s chair, was now his. The small chest containing Henry’s ashes, bones, and heart sat on the ground to his left, pressed up against the legs of the chair. He did not like it to rest too far from him, day or night.
“My knowledge is incomplete,” she began—as she would! “But this is what I know which is certain, as well as what I believe must be true based on the stories and experiences I have myself heard and seen. All this was hidden or forgotten for long years, for generations, a time beyond our imagining. It was forgotten or became legend long before the birth of the blessed Daisan, who brought Light to us all. This tale must come to light now. It should be known to as many people as possible, if we are to make sense of what we must do next.”
He marked their audience. Closest sat the most noble of his companions, Duchess Liutgard, trembling Duke Burchard, Lord Wichman who was, for once, paying attention, and the other lords and a few ladies who had marched south with Henry or with him. Beyond them crowded the clerics of the king’s schola, led by Sister Elsebet, and those church folk who rode in the retinue of one or the other noble. He noted that the man known as Vindicadus had found a place close enough to hear, although he had no noble patron who might speak up for him. Behind this rank stood the captains and stewards who ordered the army and farther back yet waited sergeants and soldiers and servants hoping to catch what they could.
All must hear, so that they would understand.
He had ordered this assembly. The tides of destruction they had experienced had made them wonder and had made them fear. Any explanation was better than none, no matter how strange it might sound even when it was the truth.
“Two thousand seven hundred and four years ago, the Horse people allied with seven sorcerers from seven human tribes against a common enemy, known to them as ‘The Cursed Ones’ or the Ashioi. They wove a spell of power using the music of the spheres. This is the sorcery we call ‘the mathematica.’ This spell they threaded through seven stone circles, which they called looms and we call crowns. This spell ripped the homeland of the Ashioi out of the Earth and cast it into the aether.”
“What is the aether?” someone called.
“That part of the universe that lies within and beyond the upper spheres. It’s one of the five elements. The others are air, water, fire, and earth. Aether is the most rarified and pure. Unlike the others, it is untainted by darkness. Beyond the upper spheres, so the scholars teach, exists only aether, nothing else.” She hesitated and, hearing no further question, continued. “All the Ashioi were flung into the aether with their land, all except those who were not actually in their homeland at the time. These other Ashioi were pulled halfway but not completely out of the world. Their shades haunted the forests and trails of Earth for centuries as elves who shot poison darts at any person unlucky enough to stumble across them.”
“Those are just tales told to scare children,” said a voice from the crowd.
It was Vindicadus, once Hugh’s servant. Sanglant had not expected to hear a challenge so soon.
Liath smiled, but her look was grim. “I have met shades while traveling through the deep forest. They are not tales. Their elfshot killed my horse. And drove off bandits.”
Among the sergeants there came a flurry of movement. A white-haired man pushed forward into the ranks of the captains. “Let me speak!” he cried. “I have served with Prince Sanglant. He himself freed me and my four men from Salavii merchants who had captured us and meant to sell us into the east.”
“What’s your name?” asked Liath.
“This is Gotfrid,” said Sanglant, before the old soldier could answer. “I recall you from Machteburg. What is it you have to say, Sergeant?”
“Just this.” He surveyed the assembly with the hard gaze of a man who has seen enough that he no longer fears the disapproval of others. “I and my men—we survived the attack of Lost Ones. We saw our comrades fall beneath the sting of their darts. If you doubt the lady, then I pray you, answer me how I could have seen them as well. Two of my men are still with me. They will tell as well, if you ask, what they saw.”
“What of the other two?” Sanglant asked, knowing the answer because he had already heard the tale.
The man gestured with his hand, a flick, as dismissal. His throat and chin tightened.
Folk murmured, but it was hard to tell who they believed.
“Is there anyone else here who wishes to speak about the existence of the Lost Ones?” asked Liath.
No one did. The heckler had vanished back into the crowd. Sanglant could, in a manner of speaking, smell that he still lingered, and he wondered what twisted loyalty held the man to Hugh of Austra. Liath was already going on.
“As centuries passed, the story of the great spell was lost until it became nothing more than legend. The Ashioi came to be known as the Aoi, the Lost Ones. The knowledge used to weave the spell was lost also, because, I believe, all seven of the sorcerers who wove it were killed in the backlash from the spell.”
A murmur followed this statement, quickly stilled.
“Perhaps they left no apprentices to carry on their learning, although that would surprise me.”
“Perhaps those who were left behind chose to forget,” said Sister Elsebet. “What the church has condemned must be immoral.”
“This was before the time of the blessed Daisan,” said Liath. “They would not have been able to follow the rulings of the church.”
“They might have known in their hearts that it was wrong,” retorted the cleric.
Liath nodded amiably. “There are many possible answers. Perhaps their apprentices were too inexperienced, or too secretive, or too horrified to pass on the knowledge. Perhaps they were told not to. We’ll never know, since we have no way of asking.”
“I pray you, Lady Liathano,” said Duchess Liutgard with a doubting smile, “how can you tell us this knowledge was lost when you stand here before us branded as a mathematicus yourself? The Holy Mother Anne boasted of her sorcery, and taught these arts openly in the skopal palace these last two or three years.”
Liath nodded, echoing the other woman’s formality. They did not know each other. Liutgard knew of Liath only as the Eagle who had stolen Henry’s favorite child away from the glorious alliance Henry had promised him. Yet it seemed to Sanglant that Liath was deaf to whatever undertones sang through the nobles as they measured her. She was focused, simply and always, on understanding the truth.
“A good question, my lady. If you will allow me to unfold my argument, then the map will become clear to all, I hope.”
Liutgard nodded. She was, Sanglant thought, not afraid to offer Liath a reasonable chance to explain herself.
“In time, certain half-Ashioi, half-human descendants of the original Ashioi built a powerful empire in the southern lands bordering the Middle Sea. They called it Dariya, and called themselves Dariyans. As it was sung by the poet,
‘Out of this people came one who ruled
as emperor over men and elvish kind both.’
“The Dariyan Empire soon ruled much of the northwestern continent and the lands along both the northern and southern shores of the Middle Sea. We are traveling on a road paved by this empire. Eventually, the Horse people—the Da
riyans and historians call them the ‘Bwr’ which is derived, I think, from the word—”
She broke off, catching herself, and, as a rider shifts her mount’s direction, got herself back on the main path.
“The Horse people became aware of the Dariyan Empire. They feared and hated the Dariyans because the Dariyans were descended in part from the hated Ashioi. In the early 200s, the Bwr invaded in a host and burned and pillaged the city of Dariya. It’s likely that in the course of their invasion they contracted a plague that decimated their numbers. They retreated to the eastern steppe that was their ancient homeland to protect themselves against further incursions by humankind, although humankind had once been their chief allies.”
Burchard coughed. “Are these Horse people you speak of not the same ones who ride with us, as our allies? Does this mean they are still our enemy? Or our friends?”
Liutgard’s mouth tightened as she looked past Sanglant to the honor guard attending at his back. Her forces had taken the worst of the centaur assault. She had no reason to love the Horse people.
Sanglant glanced behind. Captain Fulk and Captain Istvan stood behind his chair, alert to the disposition of his most loyal forces. Capi’ra and her sergeants waited in shadow, seeming at first glance like women mounted on horses, but he could hear their soft whickering commentary although he could not understand what they were saying. Beyond them rested the slumbering griffins with their wing feathers touched by the light of the camp’s bonfire.
Smoke stung his face as the wind shifted. He fanned a hand to drive it away although in truth it made no difference.
“The Horse people are our allies, Burchard,” he said.
“Your allies,” said Liutgard.
“Mine,” he agreed, “and thus, for the moment, yours, Cousin. I pray you, Liath, go on.”
“I pray you!” cried a voice from the back, that damned servingman again. “You speak of the lives and empires of the heathen, yet you have not said one word about the blessed Daisan! Do you even believe in God?”