He barred the door behind them and suddenly bent over, racked by coughs. Recovering, he placed the book on the table and threw his cloak onto the bench. Went at once and poured himself ale.
“Da,” she said, hating to see him this way, but he only took another draught. To her horror, his hands shook. “Da, sit down.”
He sat. She set the astrolabe on the shelf, rested bow and quiver in the corner, and hung the partridges from the rafters. Placing a log on the fire, she turned to watch her father. As she shifted, the plank floor creaked under her feet. It was such a bare room. She remembered richer, but that was long ago. Tapestries, carved benches, a real chair, a long hall, and wine served from a pitcher of glass. They had built this little cottage themselves, dug out the ground, driven posts in, sawed planks from felled logs and set that planking over the cellar, caulked the log walls with mud and straw. It was rough but serviceable. Besides the table and bench that doubled as their clothes chest, there was only her father’s bed in the darkest corner and their one luxury—a walnut shelf, the wood polished until it shone, its surface carved with a pattern of gripping beasts curling down the sides, their eyes painted red.
Da coughed again and fumbled to open the book, searching for something in the dense text written within. Moving to help him, she passed by the window. The shutters were still open, and through the thin skin tacked over the opening, rubbed so fine that it was translucent, she saw a dim light. It bobbed closer, following the well-worn path that descended to the village.
“Someone is coming,” she said, going to the door.
“Don’t open it!”
His voice cut her, and she flinched. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She stared at him, frightened by his abrupt and manifest terror. “Was that new star an omen? Have you read of its coming? Does the book speak of it?” They never called it by its title. Some words, spoken aloud, called attention to themselves.
He slapped the book shut and clutched it against his chest. Jumping up, he grabbed his bow out of the corner, then, with book and bow, walked across to the window. Suddenly he relaxed, his expression clearing. “It’s only Frater Hugh.”
Now it was her turn to shudder. “Don’t let him in, Da.”
“Do not speak so harshly, child. Frater Hugh is a good man, sworn to Our Lady and Lord.”
“Sworn to himself, you mean.”
“Liath! How can you speak so? He only wants instruction. He is no less curious than are you yourself. Can you fault him for that?”
“Just give me the book, Da,” she said more gently, to coax it from him. What she now knew of Hugh was too dangerous to tell Da.
But Da hesitated. Four other books sat on the shelf in the corner, each one precious: Polyxene’s encyclopedic History of Dariya, The Acts of St. Thecla, Theophrastos of Eresos’ Inquiry into Plants, the Dreams of Artemisia. But they did not contain forbidden knowledge, condemned by the church at the Council of Narvone one hundred years ago.
“But he might be one who could help us, Liath,” he said, abruptly serious. “We have been running for so long. We need an ally, someone who could understand the great powers that weave their trap around us. Someone who could help us against them—”
She snatched the book out of his hands and scrambled up the ladder that led to the loft. From her shelter under the peaked roof she could see down into half the room and easily hear anything that went on below. She threw herself down on her straw mattress and pulled a blanket up over her. “Tell him I’m asleep.”
Da muttered an inaudible reply, but she knew once she had made a decision, he would not gainsay it. He closed the shutters, replaced the bow in the corner, then opened the door and stood there, waiting for Frater Hugh.
“Greetings, friend!” he called. His voice was almost cheerful, for he liked Hugh. “Have you come to watch this night with me?”
“Alas, no, friend Bernard. I was passing this way—”
I was passing this way. All lies, delivered in that honey-sweet voice.
“—on my way to old Johannes’ steading. I’m to perform last rites over his wife, may her soul rise in peace to the Chamber above. Mistress Birta asked if I would deliver this letter to you.” “A letter!” Da’s voice almost broke on the word. For eight years they had wandered. Never once had they met anyone Da knew from their former life. Never once had he received a letter or any other kind of communication. “Ai, Blessed Lady,” he murmured hoarsely. “I have stayed too long in this place.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Father Hugh. The light of his lamp streamed in through the window, illuminating her father’s figure in the threshold. “You look ill, my friend. May I help you?”
Da hesitated again, and she held her breath, but he glanced up toward the loft and then, slowly, shook his head. “There is nothing you can do. But I thank you.” He reached out for the letter. Liath ran her fingers along the spine of the book, feeling the thick letters painted onto the leather binding. The Book of Secrets. Would Da invite Father Hugh inside? Da was so lonely, and he was afraid. “Will you sit with me for a while? It’s a quiet night, and I fear it will prove to be a long one.”
She eased backward into the deepest shadows of the loft. There was a long pause while Hugh considered. She could almost feel, like the presence of fire, his desire—his wish to enter, to coax Da into trusting him more and yet more until at last Da would trust him with everything. And then they would be lost.
“Alas, I have other duties this night,” Hugh said at last. But he did not leave. Lamplight shifted, spilling in turn into each of the four corners of the room below, searching. “Your daughter is well, I trust?” How sweet his voice was.
“Well enough. I trust the Lady and Lord will watch over her, should anything happen to me.”
Hugh gave a soft laugh under his breath, and Liath curled farther into the shadows, as if hiding could protect her. “I assure you They will, friend Bernard. I give you my word. You should rest. You look pale.”
“Your concern heartens me, friend.” Liath could see Da’s little smile, the one he placated with. She knew it was not sincere—not because of Hugh, but because of the letter, and the owl, and the athar, the strange new star shining in the heavens.
“Then a blessed evening to you, Bernard. I bid you farewell.”
“Fare well.”
So they parted. The lamp bobbed away, descending the path back toward the village, toward, perhaps, old Johannes’ steading. Surely Frater Hugh would have no reason to lie about such a serious thing. But he was hardly “passing by.”
“He is a kind man,” said Da. “Come down, Liath.”
“I won’t,” she said. “What if he’s lurking out there?”
“Child!”
It had to be said, sooner or later, if not the whole truth. “He looks at me, Da. In such a way.”
He hissed in a breath in anger. “Is my daughter so vain that she imagines a man heartsworn to the church desires her more than Our Lady?”
Ashamed, she hid her face in shadow although he could not see her. Was she so vain? No, she knew this was not vanity. Eight years of running had honed her instincts.
I was passing this way.
Hugh stopped by the cottage often to sit and visit with Da; the two men discussed theology and the writings of the ancients and now, six months into their acquaintance, they had begun tentatively to discuss the hidden arts of sorcery—purely as an intellectual exercise, of course.
Of course.
“Don’t you see, Da?” she said, struggling to find words, to find a way to make him understand without telling him the thing that would ruin them, as it had in the city of Autun two years ago. “Hugh only wants your knowledge of sorcery. He doesn’t want your friendship.”
Hugh stopped by often, but now, since St. Oya’s Day, he had also begun “passing by” when he knew Da was out on an errand or on a laboring job, though Da’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he wasn’t really strong enough for day labor. Liath would have gone, but
as Da always said: “Someone must stay with the book.” And he didn’t want her out alone.
“I was passing this way, Liath. Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are? You’re a woman now. Your father must be thinking of what will become of you—and of all that he has taught you, and everything that you know of him and his travels and his past. I can protect you… and the book.” And he had touched her on the lips as if to awaken the breath of life in her.
For a pious brother of the church to proposition an innocent girl not yet sixteen was obscene, of course. Only an idiot would have mistaken his tone and his expression; Liath had never much liked Hugh, but this had shocked and horrified her because Hugh had by this action betrayed Da’s trust in him in a way Liath could never ever reveal.
If she told Da, and Da believed her, he would accuse Frater Hugh, might even attempt to strike him. Two years ago in Autun something like had happened; Da in his impetuous way had attacked the merchant who proposed a concubine’s contract for Liath but only managed to get himself a beating by the city guards and the two of them thrown out of the city. But if Da accused Hugh, if he attacked Hugh, he would make a powerful enemy. Hugh’s mother was a margrave, one of the great princes of the land, as Hugh himself made sure everyone knew. She and Da had no kin to protect them.
And if she told Da, and Da did not believe her, then … Ai, Lady. Da was everything to her, he was all she had. She could not take such a risk.
“Da?” In all her long silence, he had not replied.
“Da?”
When she heard a pained grunt from below, the faint crackling of parchment, she half slid and half jumped down the ladder. Da crumpled the letter and threw it into the fire. Flames leaped, flaring. She jumped forward, grabbed—and Da slapped her hand.
“Leave it be!” He was pale and sweating. “If you touch anything their hands have touched, they have a further link to you.” He sank down onto the bench, resting his forehead on a hand. “We must leave tomorrow, Liath.”
“Leave?”
“They will not let us rest.”
“Who, Da? Who are we running from? Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because your ignorance is all that protects you. They have the power of seeking and finding, but I have sealed you away from them.” So he always said. In time. When you are stronger. “If we go in the morning, we’ll have several days’ start at least. We should not have stayed here so long.”
They had stayed here so long because she had begged him to. Because for the first time in her life she had made friends. Standing in the center of the little cottage, her head almost brushed the rough planking of the loft. Da was a shadow in firelight, half formed, half sunk in gloom, but she could see him clearly despite the dimness. It was a joke between them: salamander eyes, named for the salamanders, the tiny spirits who inhabited the element of fire. Liath remembered seeing them, many years ago before her mother died, their forms as liquid as water, their eyes sparks of blue fire.
No longer. No matter how closely she peered, no matter how long, she saw only flames leaping and sparking in the hearth, consuming the wood until it burned as red coal, ashes sifting down to make a dark blanket beneath.
“She is not strong enough yet,” he said into his hand.
“I’m strong, Da. You know that.”
“Go to bed, child. Keep the book with you. We’ll take what we need in the morning and go.”
She swallowed tears. They would go, and leave behind two years of contentment. This was a fine place, this village, or had been at least until Frater Hugh had arrived last autumn. She could not bear the thought of leaving her friends behind: two friends—imagine!—as close as if they were her own kin, of which she had none. Only her father.
But they would go. Whatever drove Da drove her along with him. She would never abandon him.
“I’m sorry, Liath. I’m a poor excuse for a father. I haven’t done well by you. I should have—” He shook his head. “I was made weak by blindness.”
“Never say so, Da!” She knelt beside the bench and hugged him. He had aged so fast in the past two years, since that beating in Autun. His hair was now gray, that had once been rich brown. He walked bent over, as if under an invisible burden, who had once strode hale and straight. He drank enough ale for four men, as if to drown himself, despite that they could not pay for so much. There was little enough work to be had in such an isolated spot for a man who was no longer strong enough for field labor, whose only skills were drawing hex signs against foxes around hen coops and setting down on parchment or strips of bark the words of women and men wishing to make contracts with colleagues many leagues away or send letters to relatives. But they had managed.
“Go to bed, daughter,” he repeated. “We must leave early.”
Because she did not know what else to say, she did what he had asked of her. She kissed his cheek. She let go of him and stood. Pausing by the fire, she searched in the flames but the parchment was burned to nothing. To ashes. Her father sighed heavily. She left him to his thoughts, for certainly she could not fathom what they were or where they led him.
In the loft, she stripped to her shift and lay down under the blankets, tucking the book against her chest. The fire’s shadow danced on the eaves, and its soft pop and roar soothed her. She heard Da pouring more ale for himself, heard him drink, it was so quiet.
So quiet.
“Trust no one,” he murmured, and then her mother’s name, on a dying breath: “Anne.”
Many nights she heard him speak her mother’s name, just so. After eight years his sorrow still sounded fresh, as raw as a new knife cut. Will I ever be bound to someone so tightly? She wondered.
But the dance of shadows, the rustling movements of her father below, the shush of wind over the steep roof, the distant whisper of trees, all together these weighed on her, bearing her down and down. She was so tired. What was that strange star that came to life in the Dragon? Was it an angel? A daimone of the upper air?
She fell into sleep.
And sleeping, dreamed.
Fire. She often dreamed of fire, cleansing, welcoming. There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. At their backs a wall of fire roars up into black night, but there is nothing to fear. Pass through, and a new world lies beyond. In the distance a drum sounds like a heartbeat and the whistle of a flute, borne up on the wind like a bird, takes wing
Wings, settling on the eaves. A sudden gust of white snow blew down through the smoke hole, although it was not winter.
Asleep and aware, bound to silence. Awake but unable to move, and so therefore still asleep. The darkness held her down as if it was a weight draped over her.
Bells, heard as if on the wind.
Had old Johannes’ wife passed on into the other life? Did the bells ring her soul’s ascension to the Chamber of Light? One bell to toll her past each sphere and the last three for the Alleluia of the voices of the angels raised to greet their new kinswoman.
But the bells were a voice shuddering in the air. Two sharp thunks sounded, something hard striking wood. If she could only look, she could see, but she could not move, she dared not move. She had to stay hidden. Da said so.
“Your weak arrows avail you nothing,” said the voice of bells, whether a man or a woman she could not tell. “Where is she?” Liath felt that voice against her like the touch of something old and corrupt dragged over her skin.
“Nowhere you can find her,” said Da, panting, out of breath as if he’d been running.
Sweat started up on her forehead as. she strained to move. But it was only a dream, wasn’t it?
The fire flared suddenly until it flashed, brilliant, and sparks glinted in sudden bursts and then all was dark and quiet.
She slept.
And woke. It was the hour before dawn, the light more a suggestion of gray. She stirred, caught herself with the book pressed against her arm, fingers tingling, half asleep.
Something was not r
ight.
Da had fallen asleep draped over the bench, arms thrown over the table, head lolling at an odd angle. His bow, strung, lay on the floor beside him. Cold all over, she scrambled down the ladder.
Da was not asleep.
The shutters were closed and barred. The door was barred. For eight years, wherever they stayed, there was always a fire in the hearth. Now the hearth lay stone cold.
And there, as if tracked out of the hearth itself, a slender footprint dusted with gray ash. Two of Da’s arrows stuck out from the log wall beside the hearth.
And on the table, next to Da’s right hand, lay a white feather of a kind she had never seen before, so pale it shone.
Wind whistled down through the smoke hole, stirring the feather, smoothing the ash footprint and scattering its lines until no trace remained. She reached for the feather. …
Leave it be!
She jerked her hand back as if Da had slapped it. If you touch anything their hands have touched—
“Where is she?” the voice had said. And Da refused to answer.
She stared at his body. He looked so old, as if his mortal frame would crumble into dust at the slightest touch of wind.
Trust no one.
The first thing she did was to hide the book.
2
THE slow drip of water nagged Liath out of her restless sleep. “Da?” she asked, thinking the trough behind the cottage had sprung a leak again. Then, opening her eyes into the gloom of the cell, she remembered. Da was dead. Murdered.
The thin slit of a window, set high into the earthen wall, admitted only a dim streak of light that the stone floor absorbed like a dry plant soaks in water. The drip still sounded. Liath curled up to sit. Dirt clung to her tunic, but she was too filthy and too tired to brush it off. Her face still hurt from Frater Hugh’s blows. She lifted fingers to her right cheek. Winced. Yes, it had bruised. Her left arm ached, but she did not think it was broken. She allowed herself the barest of smiles: small favors.
She sat forward onto her knees. The movement brought with it a lancing pain in her head, and for an instant she was back in the cottage. She was kneeling on the bench next to Da’s body. It seemed to stiffen as she watched. The door banged open and the draft pushed the white feather against her bare skin.