“No,” murmured Hathui to the younger one, “Do not go forward. We must wait our turn.”
“She’s wearing an Eagle’s badge,” whispered the younger one. She sounded ready to burst into tears.
“Ai, Lady,” swore Hathui. “Look at their faces.” And was silent.
The two new Eagles paused before the dais.
“Why have you come before me,” demanded the king, “when you know you are forbidden my presence?”
“We come from Gent,” said Wolfhere, “and we bear grievous news. Gent has fallen to an Eika assault, and the Dragons have been wiped out, every one. Prince Sanglant is dead.”
“Lady,” breathed Henry, clapping a hand to his chest. He spoke no other word. He could not speak.
Rosvita saw at once he was paralyzed by this terrible, terrible news. And because someone must act, she did so, though she felt as if someone else was acting, not her. She went to him and took his arm. Almost collapsed herself, because his whole weight fell on her and he appeared so close to fainting that it was only with the aid of the Eagle, Hathui, that she got him out of the hall and into the private chapel that opened onto a garden behind it.
There, he threw himself onto the stone floor in front of the Hearth, in his gold robes, heedless of the crown tumbling to the floor, heedless of his scepter, which slipped from nerveless fingers. He groped at his chest and drew from next to his skin an old scrap of cloth stained a rusty red.
He could not weep—not as the king must weep, easily and to show his sympathy for those of his people who suffer. This pain was far too deep for tears.
“My heart,” he murmured into the unyielding stone, “my heart is torn from me.” He pressed the cloth to his lips.
Hathui wept to see him.
Rosvita drew the Circle at her breast and then she knelt before the Hearth, beside the prostrate king, and began to chant the prayer for dead souls.
7
AFTER the hall was cleared and she and Wolfhere given bread and mead, after some hushed consultation between various noble lords and ladies whose names she did not know and whose faces all blurred into a single unrecognizable one, Liath was escorted to a small chapel.
Wolfhere did not come with her. Indeed, she saw they prevented him and led him away by another hall. A fine proud woman in biscop’s vestments brought her before the king, who sat on a bench, no longer in his fine robes and regalia. He was held upright by a cleric and several other attendants, one of whom wiped his face repeatedly with a damp cloth. Liath knelt before him. His right hand clutched an old bloodstained rag.
“Tell me,” he said hoarsely.
She wanted to beg him not to make her tell, not to relive the fall of Gent. Not again, Lady, please. But she could not. She was an Eagle, the king’s eyes, and it was her duty to tell him everything.
Not everything. Some things she could not—and would not—tell anyone: Sanglant’s face close to hers, the light in his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, the bitter irony in his voice when he told her, “Make no marriage.” The feel of his skin when she had touched him, unbidden, on the cheek. No, not that. Those were her memories and not to be shared with anyone else. No one need know she loved him. No one would ever know, not even Sanglant. Especially not Sanglant.
Telling the story would be like living through it again. But she had no choice. They all watched her, waiting. Among the crowd stood Hathui, and the Eagle nodded, once, briskly, at her. That gesture gave her courage. She cleared her throat and began.
Barely, barely she managed to get the words out. Terrible it was to be the bringer of this baleful news, and worse still to relate the story with the king staring at her as if he hated her, for whom else could he hate?
She did not blame him. She would have hated herself, too, did hate herself in a way for living when so many had died. At last she stumbled to a halt, having spoken the last and most damning part of the tale, the vision seen through fire. She expected them to question her closely, perhaps to lead her away in chains as a sorcerer. The king lifted a hand weakly, half a gesture. It was all he could manage.
“Come,” said the biscop. She led Liath away. Outside, she stopped with her under the arched loggia that opened out into a pretty garden, lilies and roses and brash marigolds. “You are Wolfhere’s discipla?” she asked, using the Dariyan word.
“I—? No. I don’t know. I am newly come to the Eagles, just after Mariansmass.”
“Yet you already wear the Eagle’s badge.”
Liath covered her eyes with a hand, briefly, stifling tears.
“What you saw in the fire,” said the biscop, going on in what she perhaps meant to be a gentler voice, “is known to us as one of the arts by which certain Eagles can see. Do not fear, child. Not all sorcery is condemned by the church. Only that which is harmful.”
Liath risked raising her head. The biscop was quite a young woman, really, pale and elegant in her fine vestments and tasseled biscop’s mitre.
“You are Constance!” exclaimed Liath, remembering the lineages Da had taught her, “Biscop of Autun.”
“So I am,” said Biscop Constance. “And I am evidently now Duchess of Arconia, too.” She said this with a hint of irony, or perhaps sadness. “Where were you educated, child?”
“My Da taught me,” said Liath, now cursing the fate that had separated her from Wolfhere. She did not have the strength to fend off pointed questioning of her past and her gifts, and certainly not from a noblewoman of Constance’s education and high rank. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace. I am very tired. We have ridden so far, and so quickly, and—” Almost the sob got out, but she choked it back.
“And you have lost someone who is dear to you,” said the biscop, and in her own face Liath saw a sudden and surprising compassion. “One of my clerics will show you to the barracks, where the Eagles take their rest.”
A cleric led her to the stables. There she found herself alone in a loft above the stalls. Shutters had been thrown open, admitting the last of the daylight. She flung herself down on the hay, then rose again, wiping her nose, and paced. It was as if, reciting the awful tale, she had passed some of her numbing grief off onto King Henry. Now she was too restless to rest. Grooms murmured below. She was utterly alone.
For the first time in months, for the first time since Hugh had taught her the rudiments of Arethousan—all those damned impossible verbs!—she was alone.
Carefully, she lifted The Book of Secrets out of her saddlebags and unwrapped it. She opened it to the central text, that ancient, fragile papyrus, dry under her skin as she ran a finger along the line of text, written in a language she did not recognize but glossed here and there in Arethousan. The Arethousan letters were still strange to her, but as she concentrated, opening doors in her city of memory, finding the hall where she had stored her memory of the Arethousan alphabet, she could transpose them in her mind into the more familiar Dariyan letters and thus form words, some of which she had learned from Hugh, most of which were meaningless to her.
At the very top of the page, above the actual text, was written a single word in Arethousan: krypte.
“Hide this,” she whispered and felt a sudden, sharp pain in her chest. Hide this.
She put a hand over her mouth, breathed in, calming herself, and then studied the text beneath. The letters that made up the text were totally foreign to her, unlike Arethousan letters, unlike the more common Dariyan letters; perhaps, faintly, they resembled the curling grace of Jinna letters although these had a squarer profile. She could not read them nor even imagine what language this was.
But a different hand had glossed the first long sentence with Arethusan words beneath, translating it; only that first sentence had been glossed completely. On the other pages brief glosses appeared here and there, a commentary on the text. But this sentence, at least, she could read part of. Perhaps it gave a clue as to the subject of the text. Perhaps that had been the scribe’s intent in translating that entire first sentence.
Painstakingly, pausing no
w and again to listen for the movements of the grooms below, she sounded out the first sentence.
Polloi epekheirēsan anataxafthai diēgesink peri tōn peplērophorēmenōn en hēmin teratōn, edoxe kamoi parēkolouthēkoti anōthen pasin akribōs kathexēs, soi grapsai, kratista Theophile, hina epignōis peri hōn katēkhēthēs logōn tēn asphaleian.
The light was getting dim, too dim for anyone to read—except someone who had salamander eyes.
“Many people…” she whispered, knowing the first word, and then skipped words until she found another word she knew and here she stopped short, heart pounding, breath tight in her throat. “…about magical omens…” She skipped back to the pluperfect verb, such an odd form that Hugh had taken pains to point out the form to her, “…magical omens which have been fulfilled among us. It seemed good to me…” Here again followed words she did not know, and then, again and suddenly, one she did. “…all the things from the heavens … to you to write about…” She shut her eyes, so filled with commingled horror and stark excitement that for a moment she thought her emotions would rend her in two like the Eika dogs. “Theophilus.” That was a man’s name. “…so that you may know about these— these words? These spells ?” Could it be spells? “…in which you have been instructed by word of mouth…” The last word she did not know.
Her hands shook. Her breath came in gasps. All the things from the heavens.
She heard voices below. Hastily she bundled up the book and stuck it away into her saddlebags just as people came up the ladder. It was Wolfhere and Hathui.
Hanna was with them. All the excitement, all the grief, all the days of longing and hope and sorrow, overwhelmed Liath. She threw herself into Hanna’s arms and both of them burst into wrenching sobs, the release of so many weeks of tension and fear.
“We must pray for Manfred’s soul,” Wolfhere said. He wiped a tear from his seamed face. They knelt together and prayed.
Afterward Wolfhere rose and paced. “I would give you Manfred’s badge, if I could, Hanna,” he said. “Though you did not see him die, you rode with him, and that counts for the same. You have in any case earned it twice over.” He sighed. “But it is now beyond recovery. Will you wait? I will commission a new one to be made.”
Hanna held tightly to Liath and Hathui, still holding their hands, and she nodded gravely.
“So will it be done,” said Wolfhere.
“I must return to the king,” said Hathui. She left.
“It is late, and we have ridden far and all suffered much,” said Wolfhere to the other two. “Let us rest.”
Liath found herself a pallet on which to sleep, a richer bed than any she had lain in since—
Hugh.
No. She was safe now. She need fear him no longer.
She set her sword, her good friend, beside her. Reached into the bowcase to touch the wood and horn of her bow, Seeker of Hearts. Last, she settled her saddlebags next to her body. She felt the book like balm against her soul and, nestled against it, hidden as well, the gold feather; she had hope now that she might in time puzzle out the secret of the inner text.
For the first instant she feared sleeping, but she was so very very tired she could no longer fight it off.
Hanna lay down beside her and put her arms around her. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered. “Oh, Liath, I am so glad you are alive.”
Liath kissed her on the cheek and wiped the last tear from her face. There was nothing more she could do, not now, except to rest and pray that her path would seem clearer in the morning. There was so much she had to learn and so much she must discover about herself, about the book, all the things Da had hidden from her for all these years.
krypte. “Hide this.”
“Trust no one.” Da had not meant to leave her alone. He had meant to protect her, for as long as he could.
“I love you, Da,” she whispered.
Sleeping in her friend’s embrace, she did not dream.
8
HENRY would not leave the chapel, or perhaps he simply could not. At last, with the efforts of several servants, he was taken to the bedchamber set aside for his use. There he lay silent and unmoving on the bed, not because he slept but because he did not have the strength to stand or to kneel or—even—to mourn. His children came in, Theophanu shepherding a trembling Ekkehard. No tears stained Theophanu’s face, but she was pale. Sapientia was sobbing noisily. As a girl, Rosvita recalled, Sapientia had idolized Sanglant, had followed him like a puppy even to the point of being annoying, but Sanglant had never lost his temper with her—not that he had had much of a temper, being in all things a tractable child. It might be that Sapientia truly mourned him, despite her jealousy at her father’s preference for the bastard over the eldest legitimate child. Rosvita had never observed that Sapientia was capable of duplicity.
Margrave Judith appeared in the doorway, spoke to a servant, and was ushered inside. She walked over to Rosvita. “News from Kassel,” Judith murmured, eyeing the king with interest and—perhaps—pity. “Helmut Villam has taken a turn for the better. It appears he will live.”
Roused by this whispering, Henry pushed himself up, though it was clearly exhausting for him to move at all. His face was graven with sorrow; he had aged ten years in one hour.
“Is it Villam you speak of?” he said. “What news?”
“He will live,” said Rosvita in a calm voice, which was surely what the king needed at this deperate time rather than more hysteria.
Sapientia caught in a sob and let it out, bursting into a new stream of tears.
Henry shut his eyes. Slowly, he lifted a hand, the cloth, to his face. He murmured something, a word. No, it was a name: “Alia.”
The touch of the old rag appeared to give him strength. “I want him gone!” he said. “Gone! Out of my sight. Send him south to Darre with the escort for Biscop Antonia.”
“Whom, Your Majesty?”
“Wolfhere! But keep the other one here, the one who also witnessed. Where is Hathui?”
She stepped out from the shadow by the doorway. “I am here, Your Majesty.”
“You will stay by my side,” he ordered.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“It is time,” he continued. His voice broke on the words, and yet none there would have mistaken him for anyone but the king. “Sapientia.” Startled, the young woman flung herself to her knees and clutched at the bedcovers, bowing her head. Henry reached out but did not quite touch her hair. This mark of affection he could not quite—not now, not ever, perhaps—bring himself to show for her. “You will ride out in the morning on your heir’s progress.”
Her sobs ceased. She began to speak.
He turned his back on her. “Go,” he said, the word muffled by the cloth in which he buried his face.
Rosvita began to move forward, to lead Sapientia away before she did something foolish, but Judith forestalled her. “Let me,” said the margrave. “I will see she is outfitted and sent properly on her way.”
“Thank you,” murmured Rosvita.
The margrave led Sapientia from the room. The servants hovered nervously, but Henry did not move. He had done what was necessary. He had done what should have been done months ago, but she was not about to tell him that now. Sanglant was a brave man and a good soul—half human though it was—but he was not meant to be king. She sighed, heartfelt. The servants brought water and cloth to bathe the king’s face.
Theophanu glanced toward Rosvita and asked a question with her expression. Rosvita shook her head. Better to take the living children away so as not to remind him of the dead one. With a slight nod, Theophanu led Ekkehard out of the chamber.
Henry did not respond, not when his servants offered him wine, not when they bathed his face. He was as stone, lost to the world. Together with the Eagle, Rosvita stood vigil beside him long into the dark night.
9
ALAIN could not sleep. The bed he had been given was too soft and too warm and too comfortable. He just could
not sleep. The hounds snored softly. Count Lavastine snored, too, in a hushed counterpoint to the hounds. Unlike most noblemen, Lavastine did not sleep in a room with his servants; no one dared sleep within range of the unchained hounds. Perhaps it was the very lack of bodies that made Alain keep starting awake. He had never slept so privately before. In Aunt Bel’s longhouse here were full thirty people sleeping at night, and in the stables—
Not my Aunt Bel any longer.
He sat bolt upright for perhaps the tenth time, and Sorrow woke and whined softly, seeking his hand and licking it.
Lavastine’s heir. This in his wildest dreams he had never imagined. He knew at that moment he would sleep no more this night, so he rose and dressed quietly and slipped outside, Sorrow at his heels. Rage slept peacefully and did not stir.
Outside, a servant woke instantly. “My lord, may I escort you?”
How quickly they changed their treatment of him. But he was Lavastine’s heir now, sealed by the king’s own words. He would control their fates and their families in ten or twenty years. He knew better, from serving in a lord’s household, than to try to go anywhere alone. It would never be allowed.
“Is there a chapel nearby?” he asked. “I wish to pray.”
One of the biscop’s clerics was found and Alain was escorted to a tiny chapel whose Hearth bore a fine jeweled reliquary box sitting in muted splendor on the polished wood of the altar. The chapel was not empty. A servant girl knelt on the stone before the Hearth, polishing the pavement with her own skirts.
In the next instant, just before she looked up, like a mouse caught in the act of nibbling at the cheese, he recognized her.
“My lady!” he said, aghast to find Tallia on her knees on the stone wiping the flagstone with her fine silk skirts. Her hands were red, rubbed almost raw by the unaccustomed work.
She stared at him, eyes wide and frightened. “I pray you,” she said in a whisper, “do not send me away. Let me unburden myself before Our Lady in this fashion, by the work of my hands, though it is unworthy of Her regard.”