Crown Of Stars 05 – The Gathering Storm – Elliott, Kate

PROLOUGE

SHE dreamed.

In the vault of heaven spin wheels of gold, winking and dazzling. The thrum of their turning births a wind that spills throughout creation, so hot and wet that it becomes a haze. This mist clears to reveal the tomb of the Emperor Taillefer, his carved effigy atop a marble coffin. His stern face is caught eternally in repose. Stone fingers clutch the precious crown, symbol of his rule, each of the seven points set with a gem: gleaming pearl, lapis lazuli, pale sapphire, carnelian, ruby, emerald, and a banded orange-brown sardonyx.

    
Movement shudders inside each gem, a whisper, a shadow, a glimpse.

    
Villam’s son Berthold rests peacefully on a bed of gold and gems, surrounded by six sleeping companions. He sighs, turning in his sleep, and smiles.

    
A hand scratches at the door of a hovel woven out of sticks, the one in which Brother Fidelis sheltered. As the door opens, the shadow of a man appears, framed by dying sunlight, his face obscured. He is tall and fair-haired, not Brother Fidelis at all. Crying out in fear, he runs away as a lion stalks into view.

    
Candlelight illuminates Hugh ofAustra as he turns the page of a book, his expression calm, his gaze intent. He follows the stream of words, his lips forming each one although he does not speak aloud. A wind through the open window makes the flame waver and shudder until she sees in that flame the horrible lie whispered to her by Hugh.

    
Heresy.

     She knelt in the place of St. Thecla as the holy saint witnessed the cruel punishment meted out by the empress of the Dariyan Empire to those who rebelled against her authority. The blessed Daisan ascended to the sacrificial platform. He was bound onto a bronze wheel. Never did his smile falter although the priests flayed the skin from his body. Joy overwhelmed her, for was she not among the elect privileged to witness his death and redemption? The floodwaters of joy wash back over her to burn her. Is this not the heretical poison introduced into her soul by Hugh’s lies? Yet what if Hugh isn’t lying? Has he really discovered a suppressed account of the redemption? It surpasses understanding. In her confusion, the dream twists on a flare of light. In a high hall burn lamps molded into the shapes of phoenixes. Their I flames rise from wicks cunningly fixed into their brass tail feathers. Here I the skopos presides over a synod called to pass judgment over the heretics. The accused do not beg for mercy; they demand that the truth be I spoken at last. Her young brother Ivar stands boldly at the forefront. Who will interrogate them? Who will interrogate the church itself? If the I Redemption is true, if the blessed Daisan redeemed the sins of human-! kind by dying rather than being lifted bodily into heaven in the Ekstasis I white he prayed, then have the church mothers hidden the truth? Or only I lost it?

    
Who is the liar?

     ‘Sister, I pray you. Wake up.”

     Dark and damp swept out from the dream to enclose her, and the ] cold prison of stone walls dragged her back to Earth. Light stung her I eyes. She shut them. A warm hand touched her shoulder, and she heard Brother Fortunatus speak again, although his voice had a catch in it.

     ‘Sister Rosvita! God have mercy. Can you speak?”

     With an effort she sat up, opening her eyes. Every joint ached. The chill of the dungeon had poisoned her to the bone. “I pray you,” she said hoarsely, “move the light. It is too bright.”

     Only after the light moved to one side could she see Fortunatus’

     face. He was crying.

     Her wits returned as in a flood. “How long have I been here? Without the sun, I cannot mark the passing of days. I do not hear the changing of any guard through that door.”

     He choked back tears. “Three months, Sister.”

     Three months!

     A spasm of fear and horror overcame her, and she almost retched, but her stomach was empty and she dared not give in to weakness now. Strength of mind was all that had kept her sane in the intermiable days that had passed since that awful night when she had heard the voice of a daimone speak through Henry’s mouth.

     ‘What of King Henry? What of Queen Adelheid? Has she not even asked after me? Have none spoken for me, or asked what became of me? God above, Brother, what I saw—

     ‘Sister Rosvita,” he said sharply, “I fear you are made lightheaded by your confinement. I have brought you spelt porridge flavored with egg yolks, to strengthen your blood, and roasted quince, for your lungs.”

     They were not alone. The man holding the lamp was Petrus, a presbyter in the skopos’ court, Hugh’s admirer and ally. What she needed to say could not be said in front of him, because she dared not implicate Brother Fortunatus, the girls—Heriburg, Ruoda, Ger-wita—and the rest of her faithful clerics. If she could not protect herself, then certainly she had no hope of protecting them. Her father’s rank and her own notoriety gave her some shelter, which was probably the only reason she was not dead; she doubted Fortunatus and the others could hope for even such small mercies as being thrown into a cell beneath the skopos’ palace.

     Fortunatus went on. “Sister Ruoda and Sister Heriburg bring soup and bread every day, Sister Rosvita, just after Sext, although I do not know if you receive it then.”

     He watched her with an expression of alarmed concern as she worked her way down to the bottom of the bowl. She was so hungry, and she supposed she must smell very bad since she was never given water to wash. But no disgust showed on Fortunatus’ lean face. He looked ready to begin weeping again.

     ‘You have not been eating well either, Brother. Have you been ill?”

     ‘Only worried, Sister. You wandered off in a sleeping dream that night, as you are wont to do, and never returned. It did not take us long to discover where you had wandered to in your delirium, alas.”

     He smiled and nodded as if she were a simpleton whom he was soothing, but she read a different message in the tightening of his eyes and the twitch of his lips.

     ‘Three months,” she echoed, scarcely able to believe it. In that time she had meditated and prayed, and slept, knowing that whatever she suffered at the hands of men would only test the certainty ‘f her faith in God. Yet who had lied to her? Hugh? Or the church mothers? She could not shake that last desperate dream from her thoughts.

     ‘Truly, the weeks have passed,” Fortunatus continued blandly.

     ‘King Henry has ridden south with his army to fight the rebel lords, the Arethousan interlopers, and the Jinna bandits in southern Aosta. Queen Adelheid and her advisers rode with him. Since I could not go to the king, I asked for an audience with the skopos. After eight weeks of patient waiting, for you know that the cares of the world and of the heavens weigh upon her, I was admitted to her holy presence two days ago, on the feast day of St. Callista. She refused to release you, but she agreed that you ought to be allowed exercise in the corridor each day between the hours of Sext and Nones. Her generosity is without measure!”

     Amazing, really, how he kept his voice steady, how he managed to keep sarcasm from his tone. The horrors of her confinement, the intense focus of mind she had brought to her prayer to keep herself from utter despair, were lightened by hearing him and by clasping his hand.

     ‘The Holy Mother also gave me permission to pray with you every Hefensday. So do you find me here, Sister, with such provisions as I was allowed to carry as well as a blanket. As long as I am allowed, I will come every Hefensday to pray.”

     ‘Then it is almost the first day of Decial. The dark of the sun.” Facts were a rope to cling to in a storm at sea. Knowing that she lay confined in this dungeon while, above, the good folk of Darre celebrated the feast day of St. Peter the Disciple, on the longest night of the year, amused her with its irony. “Does the Holy Mother wish me kept in this cell indefinitely?”

     ‘If it is the Enemy’s doing that causes you to walk in your sleep, Sister, then you must be kept apart to avoid contaminating others. There will be a special guard to walk with you at your exercise, one who is both mute and deaf.”

     She bowed her head. “So be it.”

     They would never be left alone, and even if they thought they were alone, Anne could still spy on them by means of magic. She could no longer speak frankly to him, nor he to her. Hugh knew that she had seen the king ensorcelled by a daimone and Helmut Villam killed by subtle magic at Hugh’s hands, and yet Hugh still had not had her killed.

     She was ill, she was hungry, and she was imprisoned in darkness in the dungeon beneath the holy palace, but by God she was not dead yet.

     ‘Let us pray, then, Brother, as we will pray every Hefensday, if God so will it.”

     She knelt. The straw cushioned her knees, and she had grown accustomed to the aggravation of fleas and the scrabbling of rats. If her limbs were unsteady and her voice ragged, and if she shifted the wrong way because the glare of the lamp hurt her eyes, at least she had not lost her wits.

     God willing, she would never lose her wits.

     As Fortunatus began the service of Vespers, she knew at last what time of day it was: evening song. To this scrap she clung with joy. In an appropriate place she chose a psalm, as one added prayers of thanksgiving or pleading in honor of the saint whose feast day it was.

    
“It is good to give thanks to God for Their love endures forever. Those who lost their way in the wilderness found no city to shelter in. Hungry and thirsty, they lost heart, and they cried out to God, and God rescued them from their trouble. God turn rivers into desert and the desert into an oasis, fruitful land becomes wasteland and the wilderness a place of shelter. The wise one takes note of these things as she considers God’s love.”

     When they had finished, Fortunatus answered her with a second psalm.

    
“Blessed be the Lord and Lady,

    
who snatched us out of the haunts of the scorpions.

    
Like a bird, we have escaped from the fowler’s snare.

    
The snare is broken, and we have flown.

    
Blessed be God,

    
who together have made heaven and Earth.”

     Too soon, he had to leave. He kissed her hands as servant to master, wept again, and promised to return in one week. It was hard to see him, and the light, go. It was agony to hear the door scrape shut, the bar thud into place, and the sound of their footsteps fade. Fortunatus might return in a week, as he had promised, or he might never return. She might languish here for a month, or for ten years. She might die here, of hunger, of lung fever, or of despair, eaten by rats.

     It was hard to remain hopeful in the blackness where Hugh had cast her.

     But she had heard the promise implicit in Fortunatus’ choice of prayer:

    
Like a bird, we have escaped from the fowler’s snare.

     The King’s Eagle, Hathui, had escaped and flown north to seek justice.

    

     PART ONE

 

     THE air smelled of rain, heavy and unseasonably warm, and the wind blowing in from the east brought with it the smells of the village: woodsmoke, ripe privies, and the stink of offal from the afternoon’s slaughter of five pigs. Just yesterday Hanna and the cohort of Lions and sundry milites who were her escort had journeyed through snow flurries. Now it was temperate enough to tuck away gloves and set aside cloaks as they ate a supper of freshly roasted pig as well as cold porridge and a bitter ale commandeered from the village larder. Yet neither the food nor the familiar smells of the Wendish countryside brought her comfort. East lay the object of her hatred, still living, still eating. Her choked fury was like a scab ripped open every single day.

     ‘Come now, Hanna,” said Ingo. “You’re not eating enough. If this cut of roast won’t tempt you, I can surely dig up some worms.”

     She ate obediently, knowing how her mother would have scolded her for the unthinkable sin of refusing to eat meat when it was available, but her heart was numb. Hate had congealed in her gut, and she could not shake it loose.

     ‘Ai, Lady,” said Folquin. “You’ve got that look on your face again.

     I told you I would kill him for you. I’d have snuck right into his tent when he was asleep and stabbed him through the heart.”

     For months, as a prisoner of the Qunian, she had shed no tears. Now every little thing, a stubbed toe, a child’s giggle, a friend’s helpless grimace, made her cry. “I can’t believe Prince Sanglant let him live,” she said hoarsely. “He should have hanged him!”

     ‘So said Princess Sapientia,” commented Leo, “and so she’s no doubt continuing to say, I suppose, for all the good it will do her.”

     ‘Anything could have happened since we left the army,” suggested Stephen quietly. “Prince Sanglant could have changed his mind about killing him. Once the army reaches Handelburg, then the holy biscop might agree with Princess Sapientia and demand his execution. Princess Sapientia is the rightful heir, after all, isn’t she? Prince Sanglant is only a bastard, so even though he’s the elder, doesn’t he have to do what she says?”

     Ingo glanced around to make sure none but the five of them were close enough to hear. Other campfires sparked and smoked in the meadow, each with its complement of soldiers eating and chatting in the gray autumn twilight, but certainly far fewer Lions were marching west back into Wendar than had marched east over a year ago.

     ‘You don’t understand the way of the world yet, lad. Princess Sapientia can’t rule if there’s none who will follow her.”

     ‘What about God’s law?” asked Stephen.

     Ingo had a world-weary smirk that he dragged out when dealing with the youngest and most naive members of the Lions. “The one who rules the army rules.”

     ‘Hush,” said Leo.

     Captain Thiadbold walked toward them through the overgrazed meadow, withered grass snapping under his feet. Trees rose behind the clearing, the vanguard of the Thurin Forest.

     Ingo rose when Thiadbold halted by the fire’s light. “Captain. Is all quiet?”

     ‘As quiet as it can be. I thought those villagers would never stop squealing. You’d think they were the pigs being led to the slaughter. They’ve forgotten that if they want the protection of the king, then they have to feed his army.” Thiadbold brushed back his red hair as he looked at Hanna. “I’ve had a talk with the elders, now that they’ve calmed down. It seems an Eagle rode through just yesterday. Princess Theophanu’s not at Quedlinhame any longer. She’s ridden north with her retinue to Gent.”

     Sometimes it was difficult to remember that the world kept on although she’d been frozen in place.

     When she did not speak, Ingo answered. “Will we be turning north to Gent?”

     ‘Quedlinhame is closer,” objected Hanna wearily. “We’ll be another ten days or more on the road if we turn north to Gent.”

     Thiadbold frowned, still watching her. “Prince Sanglant charged us to deliver his message, and the king’s Lions, to his sister and none other. We must follow Princess Theophanu.”

     The others murmured agreement, but Hanna, remembering duty, touched the emerald ring on her finger that King Henry himself had given her as a reward for her loyalty. Duty and loyalty were the only things that had kept her alive for so long. “So Prince Sanglant said, but what will serve King Henry best? The king needs to know what has transpired in his kingdom. His sister rules over Quedlinhame convent. We might deliver ourselves to Mother Scholastica with no shame. She will know what to do.”

     ‘If Prince Sanglant had wanted us to deliver his message to Mother Scholastica, he could have sent us to her. It seems to me he meant his message, and these Lions, for Theophanu.”

     ‘Not for Henry?” Rising, she winced at the painful ache in her hips, still not healed after the bad fall she had taken fourteen days ago during the battle at the Veser River. Pain had worn her right through, but she had to keep going. “Is your loyalty to the king, or to his bastard son?”

     ‘Hanna!” Folquin’s whisper came too late.

     Thiadbold studied her, a considering frown still curving his lips. She liked Thiadbold better than most; he was a good captain, even-tempered and clever, and unflappable in battle. The Lions under his command trusted him, and Prince Sanglant had brought him into his councils. “I beg pardon for saying so,” he said finally, “but it’s the chains you stubbornly carry of your own will that weigh you down the most. No use carrying stones in your sack if you’ve no need to.”

     ‘I’ll thank you, Captain, to leave me to walk my own road in peace. You didn’t see the things I saw.”

     ‘Nay, so I did not, nor would I wish any person to see what you saw, nor any to suffer it, but—

     She limped away, unwilling to hear more. He swore and hurried after her.

     ‘Truce, then,” he said as he came up beside her. “I’ll speak no more on this subject, only I must warn you—”

     ‘I pray you, do not.”

     He raised his hands in surrender, and his lips twisted in something resembling a smile but concealing unspoken words and a wealth of emotion. A spark of feeling flared in her heart, unbidden and unexpected. She had to concede he was well enough looking, with broad shoulders and that shock of red hair. Was it possible the interest he had taken in her over the last two weeks, after the battle and then once Prince Sanglant had sent them away from the main army to track down Theophanu, was more than comradely? Was he, however mildly, courting her? Did she find him attractive?

     But to think of a man at all in that way made her think of Bulkezu, and anger and hatred scoured her clean in a tide of loathing.

     Maybe Bulkezu had died of the wound to his face that he had received at the Veser. Maybe it had festered and poisoned him. But her Eagle’s Sight told her otherwise.

     She halted beside a pile of wood under the spreading branches of an oak tree that stood at the edge of the forest. Acorns slipped under her feet. Most of the wood had been split by the Lions and taken* away to feed campfires, but a few unsplit logs remained. Thiadbold crossed his arms, not watching her directly, and said nothing. There was still enough light to distinguish his mutilated ear, the lobe cut cleanly away and long since healed in a dimple of white scar tissue. He had a new scar on his chin, taken at the Veser.

     Ai, God, so many people had died at the hands of Bulkezu.

     Rolling a log into place between several rocks, she grabbed the ax and started chopping. Yet not even the gleeful strike of the ax into wood could cut the rage and sorrow out of her.

     The wind gusted as a hard rain swept over them. Soldiers scrambled for the shelter of their canvas tents. She retreated under the sheltering canopy of the oak. Out in the open, campfires wavered under the storm’s force. One went right out, drowned by the heavy rain, and the dozen others flickered and began to die. Distant lightning flashed, and a few heartbeats later, thunder cracked and rumbled.

     ‘That came on fast,” remarked Thiadbold. “Usually you can hear them coming.”

     ‘I felt it. They should have taken shelter sooner.”

     ‘So must we all. Prince Sanglant is a man who hears the tide of battle before the rest of us quite know what is about to hit us. He’s like a hound that way, hearing and smelling danger before an ordi nary man knows there’s a beast ready to pounce. If he fears for the kingdom, if he fears that his father will not listen while black sorcery threatens Wendar, then I, for one, trust his instinct.”

     ‘Or his ambition?”

     ‘Do you think so? That all this talk of a sorcerous cabal is only a cloak for vanity and greed? That he is simply a rebel intent on his own gain and glory?”

     ‘What did the great nobles care when the common folk were murdered and enslaved by the Ojuman? How many came to the aid of the farmers and cottagers? They only thought to defend themselves and their treasure, to nurse along their own petty quarrels. They left their people behind to suffer at the hands of monsters.”

     ‘So that may be. I will hardly be the one to defend the likes of Lord Wichman, though it was God’s will that he be born the son of a duchess and set above you and me. Some say that the Quman were a punishment sent from God against the wicked.”

     ‘Innocent children!”

     ‘Martyrs now, each one. Yet who can say whom God favor? It was Prince Sanglant who defeated the Quman in the end.”

     She could think of no answer to this and so fumed as rain pelted down, drumming merrily on the earth. Drenched and shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. A gust of wind raked the trees while thunder cracked. Branches splintered, torn free by the wind, and crashed to the ground a stone’s toss away. Out in the meadow, a tent tore free of the stakes pinning it to the ground, exposing the poor soldiers huddled within. She recognized three wounded men who couldn’t yet move well; one had lost a hand, another had a broken leg in a splint, and the third had both his arms up in slings to protect his injured shoulders. The canvas flapped like a great wing in the gale, trying to pull free of the remaining stakes.

     Thiadbold swore, laughing, and ran out into the full force of the storm. For a moment she simply stood there in the wind and rain, staring, slack. Then a branch snapped above her, like a warning, and leaves showered down. She bolted after Thiadbold and together, with the belated help of other Lions, they got the tent staked down again while their injured comrades made jokes, humor being their only shield against their helpless condition.

     At last Thiadbold insisted she walk over to the village and ask for Eagle’s shelter at a hearth fire. There she dried out her clothing and dozed away the night in relative comfort on a sheepskin laid over a sleeping platform near the hearth. She woke periodically to cough or because the ache in her hip felt like the intermittent stabbing of a knife, thrust deep into the joint.

     Would she never be rid of the pain?

     The next day they chose a lanky youth from the village to take a message to Mother Scholastica at Quedlinhame. No person among them, none of the Lions and certainly not any of the villagers, could write, so the lad had to be drilled until Hanna was sure he had the words right and could repeat them back at need. He proved quick and eager, learning the message thoroughly although eventually they had to chase away a chorus of onlookers who kept interrupting him to be helpful.

     ‘I’d be an Eagle, if I could,” he confided, glancing back to make sure his father could not hear. The old man was complaining to Thi-adbold about losing the boy’s labor for the week it would take him to walk to Quedlinhame and back at this time of year when the fields were being turned under and mast shaken down for the pigs and wood split. “It must be a good life, being an Eagle and serving the king.”

     ‘If you don’t mind death and misery.” He looked startled, then hurt, and a twinge of guilt made her shrug her shoulders. She hated the way his expression lit hopefully as he waited for her to go on. “It’s a hard life. I’ve seen worse things than I can bear to speak of—” She could not go on so stood instead, fighting the agony in her hip as tears came to her eyes.

     But he was young and stupid, as she had been once.

     ‘I wouldn’t mind it,” he said as he followed her to the door of his father’s small but neat cottage. “I’m not afraid of cold or bandits. I’ve got a good memory. I know all the psalms by heart. Everyone says I’m quick. The deacon who comes Ladysday to lead mass sometimes asks me to lead the singing. B-but, I don’t know how to ride a horse. I’ve been on the back of a donkey many a time, so surely that means I can easily learn how to sit a horse.”

     She wiped tears from her cheeks and swung back to look at him, with his work-scarred hands and an undistinguished but good-natured face that made her think of poor Manfred, killed at Gent. She’d salvaged Manfred’s Eagle’s brooch after Bulkezu had torn it from her cloak, that day the Quman had captured her. She’d clung to that brass brooch and to the emerald ring Henry had given her. Together with her Eagle’s oath, these things had allowed her to survive.

     The lad seemed so young, yet surely he wasn’t any younger than she had been the day Wolfhere had asked her mother if it was her wish that her daughter be invested into the king’s service. In times of trouble, Wolfhere had said, there was always a need for suitable young persons to ride messages for the royal family.

     ‘Is it your wish to be invested as an Eagle?” she asked finally.

     The boy’s strangled gasp and the spasmodic twitch of his shoulders was answer enough. Even the father fell silent as the enormity of her question hit him. His younger sister, left behind when the loitering villagers were chased out, burst into tears.

     ‘Yes,” he whispered, and could not choke out more words because his sister flung herself on him and began to wail.

     ‘Ernst! My son! A king’s Eagle!” The father’s tone was querulous, and Hanna thought he was on the verge of breaking into a rage. But hate had clouded her sight. Overcome by emotion, his complaints forgotten, the old man knelt on the dirt floor of his poor house because his legs would not support him. Tears streaked his face. “It’s a great honor for a child of this village to be called to serve the king.”

     So was it done, although she hadn’t really realized she had the authority to deputize a young person so easily. Yet hadn’t Bulkezu taught her the terrible power borne by the one who can choose who lives and who dies, who will suffer and who survive?

     ‘If you mean to earn the right to speak the Eagle’s oath, then you must deliver this message to Mother Scholastica and bring her answer to me where I will bide with Princess Theophanu. If you can do that, you’ll have proved yourself worthy of an Eagle’s training.” She unfastened her brooch and swung her much-mended cloak off her shoulders. “You haven’t earned the Eagle’s badge yet, my friend, nor will you happily do so. But wear this cloak as the badge of your apprenticeship. It will bring you safe passage.” She turned to regard Thiadbold, who had kept silent as he watched the unfolding scene. “Give the lad the dun pony. He can nurse it along the whole journey, or perhaps Mother Scholastica will grant him a better mount when he leaves Quedlinhame.”

     The lad’s family wept, but he seemed sorry only to leave the sister. The company of Lions marched out in the late morning with the sky clearing and yesterday’s rain glistening on the trees and on wayside nettles grown up where foliage had been cut back from the path. Hanna and the Lions took the turning north and rode for Gent. The lad was soon lost around the bend as he continued west toward Quedlinhame along the northern skirt of the Thurin Forest, but for what seemed a long time afterward she could still hear the poor, artless fool singing cheerfully as he rode into his new life.

     ‘HANNA? Hanna!”

     Blearily she recognized Folquin’s voice and his strong hand on her elbow, propping her up. She had fallen asleep on the horse again, slumped over. In a panic she began whispering the message from the prince which she had committed to memory, afraid that it had vanished, stolen by her nightmares. But as he pushed her up, an agony of pain lancing through her hip tore her thoughts apart. Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away to focus, at last, on the sight that had caught the attention of her companions.

     After many days of miserable rainy weather, their path had brought them to an escarpment at the border of hilly country, and from this height they had a good view north along the river valley. A broad stream wound north through pastureland and autumn fields, and she recognized where they were with a clarity so ruthless that it pinched. Here among fields of rye the Eika and their dogs had attacked them, when she, Manfred, Wolfhere, Liath, and Hathui had ridden toward Gent in pursuit of Prince Sanglant and his Dragons. Here, when King Henry had come with his army to fight Bloodheart, she had seen the chaos of battle close at hand as Princess Sapientia had urged her troops forward to descend on the Eika ships beached on the river’s shore.

     ‘Hanna?” Folquin’s tone was sharp with concern. “Are you well? You didn’t finish your porridge last night nor eat the cold this midday.”

     ‘Nay, it’s nothing.” She sneezed. Each breath made a whistle as she drew it into her aching lungs. Yet what difference did it make if she hurt? If she shivered? If she went hungry or thirsty? Nothing mattered, except that Bulkezu still lived.

     Harvested fields lay at peace. Cattle grazed on strips of pasture. The rotund shapes of sheep dotted the northwestern slopes, up away from the river bottom lands where grain flourished. A few tendrils of smoke drifted lazily into the heavens from the walled city of Gent. The cathedral tower and the mayor’s palace were easily seen from this distance, their backdrop the broad river and the white-blue sky,

     empty of clouds today. Was that the regent’s silk fluttering from the gates, marking Theophanu’s presence? The chill wind nipped her face, and she shuddered.

     ‘Best we move on quickly,” murmured Leo in a voice so low she thought he did not mean for her to hear him.

     At the western bridge, a welcoming party greeted them: thirty mi-lites braced in a shield wall in case the approaching soldiers were marauders or enemies. One of Princess Theophanu’s stewards stepped out from behind the shields to greet them as Hanna rode forward beside Thiadbold.

     ‘I bring a message from Prince Sanglant, from the east,” Hanna said. “The prince sends as well these Lions, to strengthen Her Highness’ retinue.”

     ‘God be praised,” muttered the steward. She gave a command, and the shield wall dispersed.

     As the Gent milites clattered back through the gates, they swept through a little market of beggars and poor folk gathered in the broad forecourt beyond the ramparts, almost trampling a ragged woman with a basket of herbs for sale. The milites did not even notice their victim, tumbled in the dirt while the folk around her muttered uneasily, but Hanna hurried over to help the beggar woman to her feet, only to be spat at for her pains.

     ‘Here, now,” said Thiadbold as he came up beside Hanna, “never a good deed but goes unpunished by the frightened.” His smile melted the old woman’s anger, and she allowed him to gather up marjoram, cinquefoil, and dried nettle. “No harm done, mother, once it’s all set to rights.”

     Hanna felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Her heart thumped annoyingly, and her breath came in short gasps.

     ‘Come, now, friend,” Thiadbold said as he took hold of the reins of her horse so she could mount again, “she was scared, and acted out of fear.”

     ‘Next time those soldiers will cripple some poor soul, and never bother to look back to see what they’ve wrought. Ai, God.” She got her leg over the saddle, but the effort left her shaking. “I still have nightmares about the ones who cursed me.”

     ‘There was nothing you could have done to help them. You were as much a prisoner as they were. You did your duty as an Eagle. You stayed alive.”

     Words choked in her throat.

     ‘What are you speaking of?” demanded the steward, who had waited behind to escort them. “We’ve heard rumors of Quman, of plague, of drought, and of foul sorcery, but seen nothing. Rumor is the speech of the Enemy. Lord Hrodik rode off with Prince Sanglant. There’s been no news of him. We’ve been praying every day for news from the east.”

     ‘In good time,” replied Thiadbold, glancing at Hanna.

     The steward sighed heavily, then laughed. She was a short, stout woman, with a clever, impatient face and, apparently, a sense of humor. “So do God teach us patience! Come now. Her Highness, Princess Theophanu, will be eager to hear news of her brother.”

     They made their way through the streets of Gent, their path cleared by Theophanu’s milites. Once their party entered the palace compound, the steward directed Thiadbold and the Lions to the barracks above the stables but took Hanna immediately to the opulent chamber where Theophanu held court. The vivid colors made her dizzy: a purple carpet, gold silk hangings on either side of the royal chair where Theophanu sat studying a chessboard, a dozen noble companions garbed in reds and blues and greens. Four braziers heated the chamber, but the atmosphere of the chattering women gave it life and energy. As Hanna entered, the women looked at her expectantly, murmuring one to the other.

     ‘From the east!”

     ‘From Sapientia, do you think? I recognize her. She is the Eagle who served Sapientia before.”

     ‘Make haste to speak, Eagle!”

     ‘I pray you, let us have a moment’s calm.” Theophanu rose. At her gesture, a serving woman hurried out of the shadows cast by the silk hangings and carried the chessboard away to a side table. “You look pale, Eagle. Let ale be brought and some bread, so that she may refresh herself. And water, so that she may wash her hands and face.”

     Her companions were not so patient. “How can you stand it? After all these months!”

     ‘After everything we’ve suffered, waiting and wondering! After Conrad’s insolence at Barenberg!”

     ‘Yes!” cried others. “Let her speak first, and eat after.”

     Theophanu did not need to raise her voice. “Let her eat. We will not die of waiting, not today. I pray you, Eagle, sit down.”

     Two servants carried forward a bench padded with an embroidered pillow onto which Hanna sank gratefully. Ale was brought as well as a fine white bread so soft that it might have been a cloud, melting in Hanna’s mouth. A servingwoman brought a pitcher of warmed water, a basin, and a cloth, and washed Hanna’s hands and face herself, as though Hanna were a noblewoman. The women around Theophanu muttered to each other under their breath, pacing, fiddling with chess pieces, quite beside themselves to hear the message she had brought. One dark-haired woman dressed in a handsome green gown turned the corner of the carpet up and down with her foot, up and down, while servants gathered at the open doors, spilling back into the corridor, eager to hear news from the east. Theophanu alone showed no sign of impatience as she sat in her chair, as easy as if she already knew what Hanna was going to say.

     It was hard to really enjoy one’s food and drink under such circumstances, and better, perhaps, simply to have done with the message she had carried in her memory for so many long and weary days. When she rose at last to stand before the princess, she heard the crowd exhale in anticipation, and then, like an angry toddler making ready to scream, fall silent as they each one drew in breath.

     Hanna shut her eyes to call the message to her tongue.

     ‘This message I bring from Prince Sanglant, to his most glorious, wise, and beloved sister, Princess Theophanu. With these words I relate to you the events which have transpired by Osterburg and in the east.”

     She had repeated the words to herself so many times that they flowed more easily the less she thought of which word must come next. Not even the wheeze in her chest or her frequent coughs could tangle the message now as she recounted the events of the last two years.

     King Henry had sent her and two cohorts of Lions east to aid his daughter. Their party had met up with Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan and soon after faced a Quman army under the command of Bulkezu. Only Bayan’s wits had saved the army from a catastrophic defeat. That terrible retreat toward Handelburg with a battered army had been the best of a bad year. It had started going worse once they had reached Handelburg, where Biscop Alberada had condemned Prince Ekkehard as a heretic. Sapientia’s jealousy had made Hanna a target, too, and so she had ridden out with Ekkehard and the other excommunicated heretics into winter’s heartless grip.

     Better not to think of what had happened next, if she could speak the words without listening to what she was saying. Better not to think of the Quman invasion of the marchlands and eastern Wendar that had caught her in its net. Better not to think of the destruction Bulkezu had inflicted on the poor souls unfortunate enough to stand in the path of his army. Plague and misery had stalked them, and only after much suffering had she caught a glimpse through fire, with her Eagle’s Sight, of the war council held by Bayan and San-giant. Was it she who had persuaded Bulkezu to ride to the city of Osterburg? Or was it God who had inspired her voice? Outside Oster-burg, on the Veser River plain, Sanglant had defeated the Quman, but Bayan had been killed in the battle together with so many others, including Lord Hrodik, The Lions had been particularly hard hit, losing fully a third of those left to them, two proud cohorts shrunk to one.

     She had to stop; the effort of speaking was too great. The crowd stood shocked into silence at her litany of war, famine, drought, plague, disease, heresy, and countless villages and towns destroyed.

     Theophanu lifted a hand, a gesture as casual as a lazy swipe at a fly. “All of which,” she said, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone although no trace of emotion blotted her smoothly handsome face, “are not unknown to me. We saw each other last at Barenberg, Eagle, where I was helpless to combat the invaders and had no recourse left me except to pay them off temporarily. I am glad you survived your captivity.”

     Hanna really looked at her then, seeing in her dark eyes, steady gaze, and firm mouth the mark of a personality not tumbled every which way by the prevailing wind. “That is not all, Your Highness. Indeed, according to your brother Prince Sanglant, that is the least of it.”

     Theophanu had the intelligence of a churchwoman, hidden at times by the inscrutable eastern temperament she had inherited from her mother. She rose to her feet before Hanna could continue. “My brother speaks, I believe, of a sorcerous cabal whose plotting will destroy Wendar and bring a cataclysm upon the land.”

     ‘That is so.” Surprised, Hanna lost track of her laboriously memorized words. “If I may have a moment, Your Highness, to collect my thoughts…”

     A fit of coughing seized her.

     Theophanu waited her out before going on. “Do not forget that I was at Angenheim when Sanglant came with his child and his mother. I heard him speak. Yet I heard nothing to make me fear sorcery more than I already do. It seemed to me that he spoke rebellion against our father, the king. Perhaps he does not know his own mind. Perhaps his mother’s blood taints him—”

     ‘Or it is a madness set on him by the witch he married?” said one of her courtiers.

     ‘Perhaps,” replied Theophanu so skeptically that it took Hanna a moment to realize that the “witch” they spoke of was Liath. “But if a cataclysm does threaten us, then surely our enemy are the Lost Ones, not those who would protect us against them. I cannot believe that my brother acts wisely in this case. But I am grateful to him for sending me what remains of the Lions who marched east last summer. Why did he not come himself?”

     ‘When I left him, he meant to escort the body of Prince Bayan to Ungria, Your Highness. From Ungria he intends to journey farther east into the lands where sorcerers and griffins may be found.”

     ‘Can such stories of the east be true?” demanded the woman in the green dress. She had pressed forward to listen, and now sat on a pillow beside Theophanu’s chair. “Marvels and wonders. Snakes that drink blood. One-legged men who hop everywhere. Did you see such things in the marchlands, Eagle?”

     ‘Nay, I did not, my lady, but we did not ride even so far as the kingdom of Ungria. Most of the time I was in the march of the Vil-lams, or in Avaria and even here into Saony. I do not know what lies beyond Ungria—”

     Except that in her dreams she did know, for she had seen the Ker-ayit princess Sorgatani wandering in desert lands or through forests of grass growing higher than a man’s head. She had felt the claws of a living griffin grip her shoulders. She had touched the silver-and-gold scales of dragons heaped into dunes on the edge of habitable lands. She had seen the tents of the fabled Bwr people, whose bodies combined those of humankind and horse.

     ‘Any expedition to the east must prove dangerous, and might take years to complete, if he even returns at all.” Theophanu beckoned. A servingwoman brought forward a silver cup on a wooden platter with sides carved in the likeness of twining ivy. “Here, Leoba.” She offered the cup to the noblewoman sitting at her feet.

     ‘Is Aosta closed to us?” Leoba took the cup but did not drink. “How can it be that a messenger comes to us from Prince Sanglant, but not from King Henry? Why have we heard no news from Aosta when so many troubles assail us here? Where is the king?”

     ‘And where is your venerable husband?” Theophanu smiled fondly at her companion. “I am no less troubled than you. It seems strange to me that I have sent three Eagles separately to Aosta and yet no word has come to us from my father.”

     ‘With winter setting in, there’ll be none who can cross the Alfar Mountains.” Like Theophanu, Leoba was young and robust, but she had a hound’s eagerness in her face, ready to fling herself forward into the hunt, in contrast to Theophanu’s calm.

     ‘We must wait.” Theophanu took the cup and sipped while her attendants whispered. A tapestry hung in the room between shuttered windows, so darkly woven that lamplight barely illuminated the images depicted there: a saintly figure impaled by knives. Han-na’s hip twinged as if in sympathy as she shifted on the bench. A servant padded forward to refill the wine cup, and the princess sipped, eyes shuttered, as though she were mulling over a difficult question. She spoke in an altered voice, so smooth it seemed doubly dangerous.

     ‘There is one thing that puzzles me, Eagle. You bring me a message from my brother, Sanglant. You speak of the death of Prince Bayan of Ungria, and of other worthy folk, in the battle against the Quman invaders. But you have spoken no word of Princess Sapi-entia. You served her once, I believe. What has become of her?”

     The question startled Hanna, although she ought to have expected it. “She lives, Your Highness.”

     ‘Where is she? Where is her army? Why have these Lions been sent at Sanglant’s order, and not hers? Is she injured? Lost? Separated from the army?”

     ‘Nay, Your Highness. She rides with Prince Sanglant.”

     ‘How can it be that my brother sends me greetings, but my sister does not? Wasn’t she named by Henry as heir to the throne of Wendar and Varre?”

     Spiteful words came easily to her tongue. “Prince Sanglant commands the army, Your Highness. Princess Sapientia does not.”

     The courtiers murmured, a warm buzz of surprise and speculation.

     Only Theophanu seemed unmoved by Hanna’s statement. “Are you saying he has taken from her what is rightfully hers to command?”

     ‘I cannot know what is in the mind of princes, Your Highness. I can only witness, and report.”

     ‘Where goes Sapientia now?”

     ‘East to Ungria with Prince Bayan’s body.”

     ‘Did she consent to this journey, or was it forced on her?”

     All the anger boiled back. Hadn’t Sanglant betrayed her and all those who had suffered at the hands of Bulkezu by leaving Bulkezu alive? Perhaps it was true that Sanglant was fit to rule, and Sapientia was not. But he was a bastard and meant for another position in lif_e; he had usurped his sister’s place. He had let Bulkezu live. She could no longer trust a man who would let a monster go on living after so many had died under its trampling rampage. Sapientia would have ordered Bulkezu hanged. Sapientia would not have saved him in the vain hope that he would somehow serve Wendar better alive than dead. Sapientia’s choices would have been different, had she been allowed to make the decision, as was her right as Henry’s eldest legitimate child.

     But she hadn’t had the choice. “This is my army now,” Sanglant had said after the battle at the Veser. He might as well have torn the crown from her head. Yet no one in that host had refused him.

     ‘The command was taken from her against her will,” Hanna said.

     Everyone in the chamber began talking at once, and Hanna’s words were repeated back into the mob of lesser courtiers and servants crowded into the corridor.

     ‘Silence,” said Theophanu without raising her voice. After a moment of hissed demands for quiet and a few last hasty comments, the gathered folk fell quiet. Like Sanglant, Theophanu had the habit of command, but she hadn’t his warmth and charisma; she hadn’t fought and suffered beside an army, as he had; she didn’t shine with the regnant’s luck, as he did.

     ‘If that is not rebellion against Henry’s rule, then I do not know what is. So be it. Nothing can be done today. Eagle, I pray you, eat and drink well and rest this night. Tomorrow I will interview you at more length.”

     Hanna slipped forward off the bench to kneel, shaking, too tired even to walk. “I pray you, Your Highness, may I keep company with the Lions? I have traveled a long road with them. I trust them.”

     ‘Let it be so.” Theophanu dismissed her. Calling for her chess set, she returned to her amusements. Hanna admired her for her composure. No great heights of emotion for her, however unnatural that might seem in a family whose passions, hatreds, joys, and rages were played out in public for all to see. She was like a still, smooth pond, untroubled by the tides of feeling that racked Hanna. Theophanu, surely, would not succumb to jealousy or greed, lust or pride. Not like the others.

     A servingwoman came forward to help Hanna up. Even standing hurt her, and she could not help but gasp out loud, but the gasp only turned into a painful cough.

     ‘I beg pardon, Eagle. Let me help you out to the barracks. I can see you need some coltsfoot tea. Are you also injured?”

     ‘I took a fall some days ago and landed on my hip.”

     ‘I have an ointment that might help, if you’ll let me serve you. It came to me from my grandmother, may she rest at peace in the Chamber of Light.”

     They moved out through the door, and the servants in the corridor had enough courtesy to stand back to let the two of them pass through, although it was obvious by their whispering and anxious looks that they wished to hear more extensive news of the troubles plaguing the borderlands and the southerly parts of the kingdom. Gent might lie peacefully now, but they had not forgotten what Gent had suffered under the Eika invasion just two years before.

     ‘I’ll take any help you’ll give me, and thank you for it,” said Hanna. Weight pressed into her chest with each hacking cough. “Has the plague reached here?”

     ‘Nay, it has not, thank God. But we’ve heard many stories from the south. They say that in the duchy of Avaria the plague killed as many as the Quman did. I don’t know if it’s true.”

     Outside the palace they paused on a broad porch while Hanna* rested, sucking in each breath with an effort. Such a short walk shouldn’t have tired her so much, but it had, and her hip hurt so badly that her vision blurred. A drizzle wet the dirt courtyard. The barracks lay across that impossibly wide expanse.

     ‘You’re white,” said her companion. “Sit down. I’ll bring some lads to carry you over. You shouldn’t be walking.”

     ‘Nay, no need. I can walk.”

     The servingwoman shook her head as she helped Hanna to sit on the wooden planks. “You haven’t caught the plague, have you?”

     ‘I pray not.” She leaned against the railing, shivering, aching, and with a dismal pain throbbing through her head and hip and chest. “It starts in the gut, not the lungs.” She glanced up, sensing the other woman’s movement, and got a good look at her for the first time: a handsome woman, not much older than she was, with a scar whitening her lip and a bright, intelligent, compassionate gaze. “What’s your name? It’s kind of you to be so… kind.”

     The servingwoman laughed curtly, but Hanna could tell that the anger wasn’t directed at her. “It takes so little to be kind. I’m called Frederun.” She hesitated, cheeks flushed. Her unexpected reserve and the color suffusing her face made her beautiful, the kind of woman who might be plagued by men lusting after her face and body. The kind of woman Bulkezu would have taken to his bed and later discarded. “Is it true you traveled with Prince Sanglant? Has he really rebelled against his father, the king?”

     ‘What does it matter to you?” Hanna blurted out, and was sorry at once, throwing sharp words where she had only received consideration. Was sorry, twice over, because the answer was obvious as soon as the words were spoken.

     ‘No matter to me,” said Frederun too quickly, turning her face away to hide her expression. “I only wondered. He and his retinue spent the winter here last year, on their way east.”

     ‘You don’t grieve that Lord Hrodik is dead?”

     Frederun shrugged. “I’m sorry any man must die. He was no worse than most of them are. He was very young. But I’m glad Princess Theophanu came, seeing that we have no lord or lady here in Gent. That will keep the vultures away.”

     ‘But not forever.”

     ‘Nay. Not forever.” As if she had overstepped an unmarked boundary, she rose. “Here, now, sit quietly and wait for me.”

     As soon as she left, shame consumed Hanna. What right had she to torment a kindly woman like Frederun? She pulled herself to her feet and, jaw set against the pain, hobbled across the courtyard as rain misted down around her. She could walk, even if each step sent a sword’s thrust of pain up her hip, through her torso, and into her temple. She could walk even if she could not catch her breath. She could walk, by the Lady, and she would walk, just as Bulkezu’s prisoners had walked without aid for all those months, sick and dying. She was no better than they were. She deserved no more than they had received.

     She was staggering by the time she reached the barracks, and for some reason Folquin was there, scolding her, and then Leo was carrying her back to a stall filled with hay. The smell of horse and hay made her cough. A spasm took her in the ribs.

     ‘Ai, God,” said Ingo. “She’s hot. Feel her face.”

     ‘I’ll get the captain,” said Folquin.

     ‘Maybe they have a healer here in the palace,” said Stephen.

     ‘Hanna!” said Leo. “Can you hear me?”

     She choked on hatred and despair. Dizziness swept her as on a tide, and she was borne away on the currents of a swollen river. She dreamed.

    
In her nightmare, Bulkezu savors his food and guzzles his mead and enjoys his women, and even the gruesome wound is healing so well that folk who should know better turn their heads to watch him ride by. How dare he still be handsome? How can God allow monsters to be beautiful? To live even in defeat?

    
Or is she the monster, because despite everything she still sees beauty in him? Wise, simple Agnetha, forced to become his concubine, called him ugly. Surely it is Hanna’s sin that she stubbornly allows her eyes to remain clouded by the Enemy’s wiles.

    
A veil of mist obscures her dreaming, a fog rolling out of marshy ground beside which she glimpses the pitched tents of the centaur folk. Sorgatani walks through the reeds at the shore of the marsh. The fog conceals the world, and she knows that something massive is creeping up on her, or on the Kerayit princess, but Hanna cannot see it, nor does she sense from what direction it means to attack.

    
A woman appears, shifting out of the fog as though a mist has created her: she is as much mare as woman. Green-and-gold paint stripes her face and woman’s torso.

    
Sorgatani cries out in anger. “I have fulfilled all the tasks you set me! I have been patient! How much longer must I wait?”

    
“You have been patient.” When the shaman glances up at the heavens, her coarse mane of pale hair sweeps down her back to the place where’ woman-hips meet mare-shoulders. “That lesson you learned well. The elders have met. Your wish is granted.”

    
“We will ride west to seek my luck?”

     The centaur shifts sideways, listening, and after a moment replies. “Nay, little one. She must suffer the fate she chose. But we are weak and diminished. We cannot fight alone—

     She rears back, startled by a sharp noise, the crack of a staff on rock. “Who is there?”

    
The hot breath of some huge creature blows on Hanna’s neck, lifting her hair. She feels its maw opening to bite. Whirling, she strikes out frantically with a fist, but when her hand parts the mist, she stumbles forward into the salty brine of a shallow estuary, water splashing her lips and stinging her eyes as reeds scrape along her thighs.

    
She is alone, yet she hears a confusing medley of voices and feels the press of hands as from a distance, jostling her.

     ‘It’s the lung fever. She’s very bad.”

     ‘Hush. We’ll see her through this. She’s survived worse.”

     A woman’s voice: “I’ve boiled up coltsfoot and licorice for the congestion.”

     ‘I thank you, Frederun.”

    
Each time she strikes ax into wood and splits a log, she swears, as though she’s trying to chop fury and grief out of herself, but she will never be rid of it all.

    
Better if she lets the tide sweep her onward through the spreading delta channels of the lazy river and out onto a wide and restless sea. Yet even here, the horror is not done with her. Fire boils up under the sea, washing a wave of destruction over a vast whorled city hidden in its depths. Corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again as the sea floor rises.

    
A phoenix flies, as bright as fire. Or is it a phoenix at all but rather a woman with wings of flame? Delirium makes the woman-figure appear with a familiar face. Is that Liath, come back to haunt her? Is she an angel now, flying in the vault of heaven, all ablaze? As the creature rises, she lifts the slender figure of a man and two great hounds with her. But their weight is too great and with a cry of anguish and frustration the Liath-angel loses her grip on them and they fall away, lost as the fog of dreams rolls across the sky to conceal them.

    
Hanna falls with them.

     ‘How is she?”

     ‘She’s delirious most of the time, Your Highness.”

     ‘Will she live?”

     ‘So we must pray, Your Highness.”

     didn’t know it. We’ve all watched over you. I thank God that you look likely to live.”

     ‘Ah.” All she remembered was the dreaming, although she knew that long stretches had passed in which she was intermittently aware of the struggle it took to draw a single breath, of fever and chills washing through her as though she were racked by a tidal flow.

     ‘Listen, Hanna.” He took hold of her hand. “We’re leaving Gent. Princess Theophanu is marching with her retinue to Osterburg. Duchess Rotrudis has died at last. The princess must go there swiftly to make sure the old duchess’ heirs don’t tear Saony into pieces.”

     ‘Yes.” She had a vague recollection that Prince Sanglant had given her a message to take to his sister, and an even mistier memory that she had, perhaps, delivered it.

     ‘We leave after Sext. Today.”

     Her head throbbed with the effort of thinking. “How long?”

     ‘A week or more—”

     ‘She’s asking how long she’s been sick,” said a second voice from the door.

     ‘Folquin?”

     He hurried in to kneel beside her, and suddenly Leo and Stephen pressed into the room as well.

     ‘Captain said that until she’s stronger— ‘ began Stephen hesitantly.

     ‘She might as well know from us.” Folquin’s shoulders were so broad that they blocked her view out the open window. He bent close to her, setting a huge hand on her shoulder as gently as if she were a newborn baby. She didn’t remember them all being so large and so very robust. “You’ve been sick with the lung fever all winter. You almost died. It’s spring. Mariansmass has come and gone. It will be Avril soon.”

     Her mouth was so dry that her tongue felt swollen. Still, she managed to smile despite cracked lips. The passing of seasons meant little to her. It was just nice to see their familiar faces, but exhaustion already had its grip on her again. She wanted to sleep. Yet would she be abandoned once they left? Ingo and the others had rescued her from Bulkezu, after all.

     ‘Who will look after me?”

     ‘There’s a good woman here, by name of Frederun. She’s been nursing you all winter. She’s head of the servant’s hall here at the palace. Princess Theophanu thinks well enough of you to leave her good companion, Lady Leoba, as lady over Gent. You’ll travel to Os terburg once you’re strong enough to ride. We’ll see you soon, friend.”

     They fussed over her for a little longer before being called away, but in truth she was relieved to be able to rest. She’d forgotten how exhausting they were, yet she had an idea that they hadn’t always seemed so, back before her illness, before Bulkezu.

     Days passed, quiet and unspeakably dreary. Her hip had healed, but even to stand tired her and walking from her bed to the door and back again seemed so impossible a task that she despaired of ever regaining her strength. Her ribs stuck out, and her abdomen was a hollow, skin stretched tight over hipbones. Some days she hadn’t the will to eat, yet Frederun coaxed her with bowls of porridge and lukewarm broths.

     The passing days became weeks. Avril flowered, and with it the feast day of St. Eusebe, when apprentices sealed themselves into service to a new master. She had recovered enough that she could walk to a chair set outside in the sun, in the broad courtyard, and watch as a dozen youths were accepted into the palace, seven years’ service in exchange for a place to sleep and two meals every day. Lady Leoba herself came by to speak with her, and Hanna even managed to rise, to show the new lady of Gent proper respect.

     ‘I see you are healing, Eagle.” The lady looked her over as carefully as she might a prized mare whom she had feared lost to colic. “My lady Princess Theophanu hoped we could join her by the Feast of the Queen, but I’ve sent a messenger to let her know we’ll be delayed until the month of Sormas. It was a lad who said you had deputized him as an Eagle. He went by the name of Ernst. Do you remember him?”

     At first she did not, but when Lady Leoba gave her leave to sit down again, a hazy memory brushed her: the village, the thunderstorm, the eager youth Ernst. For some reason, tears filled her eyes. She didn’t cry as much now but that was only because the world seemed so stretched and thin that it was difficult to get up enough energy to cry.

     ‘Hanna?” Frederun appeared at her side. She had sent the new apprentices to their duties in stable, hall, kitchens, or carpentry. Dressed in a fine calf-length tunic worn over a linen underdress, she looked quite striking with her bountiful dark hair caught back in a scarf and her cheeks rosy with sun. “You look tired again.”

     ‘I’d like to go back to bed.”

     ‘Nay, you must take three turns around the courtyard first. Otherwise you’ll not get stronger.”

     Hanna did not have the stamina to resist Frederun’s commands. She did as she was told, because it was easier to obey than to fight. Yet, in fact, she did get stronger. The invalid’s spelt porridge soon had a hank of freshly baked bread to supplement it, and infusions of galingale and feverfew gave way to cups of mead and mulled wine. Light broths became soups, and soon after that she could eat chicken stewed in wine, fish soup, and periwinkles cooked up with peas. By the beginning of the month of Sormas she took her meals in the servants’ hall rather than alone in her room. Gent remained peaceful, a haven, but its quiet did not soothe her. She did not care to explore the city and kept to herself within the confines of the palace compound. Those like Frederun, who tried to befriend her, she kept at arm’s length; the others she ignored. When young Ernst returned late in the month of Sormas with an urgent summons for Lady Leoba, Hanna greeted his arrival with relief. It was time to move on.

     Leoba and her retinue rode out the day after Luciasmass, the first day of summer. Fields of winter wheat and rye had grown high over the spring, turning gold as summer crept in. Gardens neatly fenced* off from the depredations of wild creatures and wandering sheep stood around hamlets sprung up along the road. Children ran out to watch them ride by. Some enterprising farmers had planted apple orchards to replace those chopped down during the Eika occupation, but these were young trees not yet bearing fruit. As they rode south along the river, fields gave way to pasturelands and a series of enclosed fields of flax and hemp near palisaded villages built up in the last two years to replace those burned by Bloodheart and his marauding army. The cathedral tower remained a beacon for a long while as they rode, but eventually it was lost behind trees. Settlements grew sparser and children more shy of standing at the roadside to stare.

     Ernst insisted on riding beside her. “I’ve never seen such fine ladies as those in the princess’ court! Do you see the clothes they wear for riding? All those colors! I’ve never seen so much gold and silver. God must truly love those to whom They grant so much wealth. I have so much food to eat that every night I have a full stomach! Sometimes I’m allowed to eat the leftovers off the platters the noble folk eat from. I had swan, but some spice in it made my tongue burn!”

     He sat a horse well. It hadn’t taken him long to learn, but his simple belief in the glamour of an Eagle’s life would prove a more stub born obstacle to overcome. She kept silent, and eventually he shut up The warm days and cloudless sky of Quadrü did not cheer her. Each league they traveled seemed much like the last, although there was always something new to look at and plenty of folk willing to offer them a meal of porridge and bread in exchange for news. The local farmers and manor-born field hands had heard rumors of bandits, cursed shades, and plague, but hadn’t seen any for themselves, nor had any of them heard until now of the great battle at Osterburg. Again and again she felt obliged to repeat the story. It was her duty, after all.

     Would it have been better to have stayed in Gent, safe behind bland walls? Yet she had grown tired of the friendliness of Gent’s servants and of her caretaker, Frederun. Everyone knew Frederun had been Prince Sanglant’s concubine when he’d wintered over in Gent the year before, on the road east; they spoke of it still, although never in Frederun’s hearing. He had given her certain small tokens, but she had stayed behind, bound to the palace, when he had ridden on. The prince had had a child with him, but no one knew what had happened to his wife, only that she had, evidently, vanished when the daughter was still a newborn infant.

     What had happened to Liath?

     When she closed her eyes, she saw the fever dream that had chased her through her illness, the hazy vision of a woman winged with flame whose face looked exactly like Liath’s. At night, she sought Liath through fire, but she never found her. King Henry, Hathui, even Prince Sanglant no longer appeared to her Eagle’s Sight, and Sorga-tani came to her only in stuttering glimpses, clouded by smoke and sparks. It had been so long since she had seen Wolfhere that she had trouble recalling his features. Only Bulkezu’s beautiful, monstrous face coalesced without fail when she stared into the flames. Even Ivar was lost to her, invisible to her Eagle’s Sight although she sought him with increasing desperation. Had her sight failed her? Or were they all, at last, dead?

     She felt dead, withered like a leaf wilting under the sun’s glare.

     Rain delayed them. “It will ruin the harvest,” Ernst muttered more than once, surveying sodden fields, but Hanna had no answer to give. She had seen so much ruin already.

     After twenty days, they rode into Osterburg under cover of a weary summer drizzle that just would not let up. A gray mist hung over the fields, half of them abandoned or left fallow after the tram pling they had received from two armies but the rest planted with spring-sown oats and barley and a scattering of fenced gardens confining turnips, peas, beans, and onions. Stonemasons worked on scaffolds along the worst gaps in Osterburg’s walls, but although there were still a number of gaps and tumbled sections, the worst stretch had been repaired. Inside, the streets seemed narrow and choked with refuse after so many days out on the open road.

     Stable hands took their horses in the courtyard of the ducal palace. She and Ernst walked at the rear of Lady Leoba’s escort as they crowded into the great hall, glad to get out of the rain. A steward, the same stout, intelligent woman who had met the Lions outside Gent, escorted them up stairs to the grand chamber where Princess Theophanu held court.

     Despite the rain, it was warm enough that the shutters had been taken down to let in the breeze. Theophanu reclined at her ease on a fabulously padded couch, playing chess with one of her ladies while her companions looked on in restful silence. Two women Hanna did not know but who bore a passing resemblance to the notorious Lord Wichman fidgeted on chairs on either side of Theophanu; it was hard at first glance to tell which one was more bored, irritable, and sour.

     ‘Ah.” Theophanu looked up with a flash of genuine pleasure. “Leoba!” They embraced. Theophanu turned to address the women sitting to either side of her. “Cousin Sophie. Cousin Imma. Here is my best companion, Leoba. She is out of the Hesbaye clan, and was married last summer to Margrave Villam.”

     ‘But isn’t she dead yet?” asked the one called Sophie, with a leer. “How many wives has Villam outlasted?”

     ‘Nay, it will be a test of the Hesbaye and Villam clans to see which one can outlast the other on fourth and fifth marriages,” retorted her sister.

     Leoba colored, but Theophanu drew her attention away, making room on the couch for Leoba to sit beside her. “How fares Gent?”

     ‘Well enough. A spring sowing of oats and barley was put in on the fallow fields. The winter wheat and rye crop has flourished. There are four excellent weaving houses. Each one produced enough cloth over the winter and spring that there is surplus for trade. The market brings in folk from three days’ walk away. Merchants have sailed in from as far as Medemelacha. They pay the regnant’s tax willingly enough. The year the city lay under Eika rule hurt their custom and their routes to the east. There’s to be a harvest fair that will likely bring folk from a week’s walk. Gent is a prosperous place. I have brought five chests of coin and treasure to give into your coffers.”

     ‘That is Saony’s tax!” cried Imma. “It belongs to our family.”

     ‘Nay, Imma,” said Theophanu mildly, “it belongs to the regnant, and to Saony. You have not been named as duchess, I think?”

     ‘Because I am the elder!” said Sophie triumphantly.

     ‘You are not!”

     ‘I pray you, Cousins, let us not hear this argument again. I have been left as regent while King Henry remains in Aosta. I must judge. As I have already told you, I mean to let my father decide who will succeed my aunt, may she rest in peace, as duchess of Saony. I have only been waiting for an experienced Eagle, one who has traveled before across the Alfar Mountains.”

     Every person in the chamber turned to look at Hanna.

     ‘Dare you send another?” asked Leoba. “You have sent all three of the Eagles left in your care south to Aosta and not heard one word from any of them, whether they lived or died or even reached the king.”

     ‘Do I dare not send one more? You did not hear the news, Leoba? My cousin Conrad the Black celebrated Penitire in Mainni as though he were king! He allowed the biscop to receive him outside the city and escort him into the palace as she would if it were my father who had come. The feasting lasted a full three days in the royal manner. He has taken Tallia of Arconia as wife and got her pregnant. She rides with Conrad rather than remaining in the custody of my aunt Constance, in Autun, as my father decreed. If this is not rebellion, then I don’t know what is.”

     ‘Conrad would support my claim to Saony,” said Sophie, her expression shifting with animal cunning, “if I offered to support him and Tallia. You forget that, Theophanu. You are not my only recourse.”

     ‘But Conrad is not here, you stupid cow,” said her sister, “nor is he king of Wendar, although it seems he would like to lay claim to the kingship of Varre by right of the body and blood of his new wife.”

     ‘Where is the king of Wendar?” demanded Sophie. “Can he be king if he has abandoned his people?”

     ‘Henry is king over Wendar and Varre,” said Theophanu, “and God have given their blessing to him. I trust you will remember that, Cousins.”

     ‘I remember seeing your troops ride in after your brother stripped us of half our mounted soldiers for his mad journey east! Yet you haven’t half the army Sanglant has, nor could you drive out the Quman invaders. And you can’t do anything to stop Conrad!” Sophie’s peevish expression vanished abruptly as she glanced at her sister who, like a cat, seemed ready to wash her paws with disdainful triumph, seeing that her enemy was about to fall into a trap of her own making.

     ‘Do not think I am unsympathetic to your plight, Theophanu,” Sophie went on quickly. “If Sapientia cannot rule after your father, then you are the rightful heir. You have not received what you deserve.”

     ‘But you’ll have honey poured on you now.” Imma sneered as she reached for her wine cup. “Whom do you mean to flatter and cozen, Sophie? Conrad, or Theophanu?”

     ‘It’s true enough, nor can any of you admit otherwise!” said Sophie. “Theophanu was left to be regent for King Henry but given no support. Henry has an army in Aosta, and Sanglant rides east with the army that defeated the Quman. What are you left with, Cousin?”

     ‘My wits.” With an enigmatic smile, Theophanu gestured toward the windows. “It seems the rain has passed. I intend to ride today. My head is quite stuffy from all this chattering. Eagle, you will attend me.”

     In this way, Hanna found herself back on a horse and riding beside the princess along the verge of muddy fields where, last autumn, battle lines had been drawn and armies had clashed. Beyond the western shore of the Veser lay the hills where the Quman army had made its camp and where Bulkezu’s prisoners had huddled in those last desperate hours. To the east she recognized the ragged band of forest that concealed the Veserling, where Ingo and the others had rescued her.

     ‘Where are the Lions, Your Highness? They came to you early in the spring, did they not?”

     Theophanu nodded. “I keep them in the city to remind my cousins of my authority. These days, they work on the wall. It was let fall into shameful disrepair by my aunt, may she be at peace. I think she must not have been at all well these past few years.”

     Together with two stewards, three servants, and a half dozen of the princess’ noble companions, they skirted several ditches half full of rainwater, an attempt to drain off the excess water collecting on the fields, and approached a low hill that rose out of the plain like a bubble. Theophanu waved her companions back but beckoned Hanna forward with her, and with some difficulty the two women urged their mounts up the slippery rise to the top. Aider and oak had been cut back here only recently, and they had to be careful of burned out stumps laying traps for their mounts’ hooves. Wood rush and bramble bush proliferated. Dill had taken root, flowering in yellow clusters alongside cream-colored bells of comfrey. Yet at the height of the hill, in one man-sized spot, the lush greenery turned to blackened ground, as bare as if salt had been sown on the earth.

     ‘It’s said that this is where Bayan died.” Theophanu pulled her mare up beside the barren patch of ground, surveying it dispassionately. “I never met him. What was he like?”

     Hanna dismounted, kneeling to touch the earth. A wasp sting came alive in her chest as her fingers brushed the scorched ground. She knew in her bones that Bayan had been killed here, but the eerie sensation that coursed up her hand lasted only an instant. It was only dirt, after all. Catching her breath, she rose. “He was a good man, Your Highness, may he rest at peace in the Chamber of Light. He was no fool.”

     ‘A good match for Sapientia.” Was that sarcasm in Theophanu’s tone? Hanna could not tell.

     ‘She trusted him, Your Highness. With his guidance she gained in wisdom.”

     ‘Then my father chose wisely.”

     ‘In truth, I believe he did. Bayan’s death grieved Princess Sapientia mightily. Things might have turned out differently for all of us, and for the kingdom, if Prince Bayan had not died at Bulkezu’s hand.”

     ‘The Quman prince himself killed Bayan, in combat?”

     ‘Nay, Quman magic killed Prince Bayan. And his mother.”

     Such a complicated expression swept over Theophanu’s face that Hanna looked away, embarrassed. But when Theophanu spoke again, no trace of emotion sullied her voice.

     ‘Have you command of the Eagle’s Sight?”

     No one stood near enough to hear them. The rest of their party waited obediently at the base of the little hill. “I do, Your Highness.”

     ‘Surely you have sought sight of my father.”

     Ashamed, she lowered her gaze. “My Eagle’s Sight is clouded, Your Highness. I have looked for him, but I cannot see him.”

     ‘Is it possible that another hand has clouded your sight?”

     What a fool she had been! Cherbu had concealed Bulkezu’s army for many months with magic. Surely a knowledgeable sorcerer could shield herself against the Eagle’s Sight. Yet Wolfhere had never spo ken of such things to her. Perhaps he had not wanted her to know, so that he could always keep an eye on her.

     ‘It could be possible,” she admitted. “I know little about magic, and less about the Eagle’s Sight save that I can seek for visions of those I know through fire and sometimes hear them speak.”

     ‘You have done nothing wrong, Hanna. The king himself rewarded you with that ring you wear, and therefore I know that he considered you a faithful and trustworthy subject. That is why I am glad you are with me now. My father must understand that I am in an impossible position. The duchy of Saony cannot go to one of Ro-trudis’ children. Their greed and mismanagement will only weaken the duchy. But I haven’t troops or authority to install another in their place, and either one of my cousins will ride straight to Conrad if she thinks he will take her part. I have no army, or little enough of one—” She gestured impatiently toward distant Osterburg. “—and Sanglant has taken the rest.”

     ‘It seems a large army for even a commander with Sanglant’s reputation to march so far into the wilderness, Your Highness. They must all be fed and housed.”

     ‘It’s true enough. We’ve heard reports from various places that all of the infantry was dispersed after the battle, sent home to tend to planting. Villam’s daughter is said to be supporting Sanglant. It’s rumored that she’s holding a portion of his army in reserve, in the marchlands, for when he returns from Ungria and the east. It could be true. She wanted to marry him once, but it wasn’t allowed because he was only a bastard.”

     Wind tugged at the princess’ hair, bound up with silver pins, but no trace of feeling troubled her expression. Was it possible that the calmer Theophanu looked on the outside the more she raged in her inner heart? No wonder many in the king’s court dared not trust her, if she concealed the truth of her heart behind a veil of composure. Yet after watching Bulkezu do as he willed, giving his whims and frenzies full rein, Hanna could admire a person who had the fortitude and discipline to hold herself in, check.

     ‘I might have been allowed more, born a bastard,” Theophanu murmured. As if she had just heard herself, she looked directly, almost defiantly, at Hanna, who gazed back steadily, unafraid.

     ‘I beg your pardon, Your Highness, for speaking so boldly. I am also a third child, and what was granted to my elder siblings was not possible for me. That is why I joined the Eagles, rather than accept a marriage I would have found distasteful. I am proud to serve King Henry.”

     Theophanu’s smile was thin. “Then you and I are perhaps the last folk here in Wendar who remain faithful of our own will to the rightful king. Do you fear magic, Eagle?”

     ‘I fear it, Your Highness, but I have seen too much now to let the threat of magic halt my steps.”

     ‘I am glad to hear you say so, because I must rest all my hopes on you. I have sent three Eagles to Aosta, but none have returned to me although I sent the first more than a year ago. You must travel to Aosta and find my father. I will give you a message to bring to him, but in truth it will be up to you to make him understand that his position here in Wendar is weakening, even here in Saony, our clan’s ancient home. Conrad troubles the west while Sanglant troubles the east. My cousin Tallia is a dangerous pawn in Conrad’s hands, and I have heard no message from my aunt Constance in Autun for many months. I cannot hold here in the center for long, when even my cousins plot to seek help from those who would undermine Henry’s authority. Not when famine and plague afflict Avaria. Not when we hear rumors of civil war from Salia. If the king hears your tale of the Quman invasion and the terrible destruction brought down onto Wendish lands, if he knows the extent of the plots whispered against his rule, surely he will return.”

     Did you hear that? Hanna?” Hanna had been lost in thought, repeating Theophanu’s message to herself for the hundredth time, but the pitch of anxiety in Ernst’s voice started her into alertness. “I didn’t hear anything.” “You weren’t listening. Hush. It will come again.” Fog swathed the beech forest in the central uplands of Avaria through which she and Ernst rode, thirty or more days out of Osterburg; she had lost count because the weather had not favored their journey. They had suffered many delays because of day-long downpours, swamped roads, and pockets of plague they’d had to take de tours to avoid. This clinging fog was the least of the hindrances they had faced.

     Above, the sky appeared gray-white, almost glaring, while around them slender trees faded into the fog, their shapes blurred by the mist. Deer darted away, vanishing quickly into the fog, but otherwise there was no sign of life except for the chuckling calls of thrushes, the exuberant song of a blackcap, and the occasional rustle of some small animal thrashing away through the dense field layer of wood rush, or into a stand of honeysuckle. Although the world was obscured, these sounds carried easily enough.

     She listened.

     Nothing, except for the steady clop of hooves, two mounts and two spares. Nothing, except for the sough of an east wind through the summer leaves. East lay memories, and no matter how hard she tried to squeeze them out of herself, they still swelled inside her with the ache of an old wound. On a chill summer’s day like today, her hip hurt. Where fog wrapped its tendrils around trees, she kept catching glimpses of strange figures from her dreams: centaur women stalking warriors with the bodies of humans and the faces of wolves and lynx; Sorgatani kneeling among reeds at the margin of a vast. swamp; a pair of griffins hunting in the tall grass; a longship ghosting through a tide of mist like a beast swimming upriver toward unsuspecting prey; men with humanlike faces and the tails of fish swimming through the fogbound trees as through a pillared underwater city.

     ‘Nothing,” said Ernst with disgust. “But I know I heard something. It sounded like fighting.”

     His indignation made her smile. To her surprise, the youth had proved to be a decent traveling companion. He no longer talked too much, he did his share of the work, and he never faltered or complained.

     ‘If I never see any fighting again, I will be content,” she said.

     All at once the wind shifted, and she heard the distinctive clap of weapons striking.

     ‘It’s ahead of us. Come on.”

     She slipped her staff free from its harness across her back and, laying it ready over her thighs, pressed her horse forward along the path. With a gasp of excitement, or fear, Ernst drew the short sword the princess had given him and rode after.

     Because of the swallowing fog they came upon the skirmish unexpectedly where the forest opened into a clearing marked by a tumble of stones and a crossroads. A tall woman in a battered Eagle’s cloak had taken shelter with her back to the remains of a stone wall, fending off three ragged bandits armed with staves and a knife.

     ‘Hai! For King Henry!” cried Hanna.

     ‘For King Henry!” bellowed Ernst behind her, voice cracking.

     Hanna got in a good whack at one of the bandits before they ran like panicked hogs into the trees, dropping their weapons in their haste to flee.

     ‘Do we go after them?” shouted Ernst, barely remembering to rein his horse back from the fence of beech trees.

     ‘Hold!” Hanna peered into the forest, but the fog shielded the bandits’ flight, although she heard branches cracking and shouts fading into the distance. Her heart raced from the exertion, but her hands were perfectly steady. Was she glad they had got away? Or would she have gladly killed them?

     Maybe it was better not to know.

     She turned to see the Eagle doubled over.

     ‘Comrade! Are you hurt?” Dismounting, she ran over, grabbed the woman’s arm, and saw who it was. “Hathui!” The shock caused her to step back, and she slammed hard into stone.

     ‘Nay. A cut on the arm, that’s all.” Hathui straightened with a grimace. “Hanna! How is it you come here? Where are the bandits?”

     ‘Fled,” called Ernst cheerfully from the forest’s edge. “We routed them!”

     He dismounted to collect the two staves. The horses bent their heads to graze. The fog seemed to be making an effort to lift, and they could see pretty far into the forest by now. Far back into the misty haze among the trees, nothing moved.

     ‘God above,” swore Hathui. Blood trickled through her fingers where she held them clamped tight just below her left shoulder. “Have you something I can bind this with? He slashed me. Lad, look for my horse. She can’t have strayed far.”

     Hanna’s shoulders throbbed where she’d hit the stone wall. Lichen slipped under her fingers as she pushed forward, finally sweeping away the grip of shock. “Ernst! Go on! Keep your eyes open. We don’t want those men creeping back with their friends to attack us.”

     She had nothing to say to Hathui. Surprise had mangled her tongue. She hurried to the horse tied on behind the saddled gelding and fished out the roll of linen in their stores packed by Theophanu’s stewards for just such an eventuality.

     Hathui limped over to a ramp of stone half overgrown by a bram ble bush heavy with berries. With a grunt, she eased down to sit on the stone and carefully released her fingers. Blood leaked through a gash in her sleeve. The cloth had been mended once, just above the fresh rip, tidy white stitches set into the dirty gray wool that matched a dozen mended tears in her Eagle’s cloak. Her dark hair was caught back in an untidy pony’s tail, and a smudge of dirt darkened her hawk’s nose. Fresh blood smeared one corner of her mouth.

     ‘Best move quickly,” she said without raising her head as she delicately pulled aside torn cloth to examine the cut. She was breathing hard but did not look likely to faint.

     Hanna had seen worse wounds. The blade had caught the surface of the skin and torn it back raggedly, but not deeply. She unfastened Hathui’s Eagle’s brooch and helped her pull off the tunic, then painted a paste of crushed marigold flowers over the cut before binding it up with a strip of linen. Hathui got her tunic on, wincing, just as Ernst returned triumphantly, leading the sorriest-looking mare Hanna had ever seen.

     ‘My thanks, lad.” Hathui limped forward to take the reins from him. “I’m called Hathui. Are you one of us?”

     ‘I’m called Ernst,” said the youth, staring at her with admiration. Hathui was not, Hanna supposed, a handsome woman, but she was impressive: tough, proud, and looking like she’d ridden through a storm of demons and survived. “I mean to be an Eagle. That’s why I’m riding with Hanna.”

     ‘Well met.” After greeting him, Hathui rubbed the mare’s nose affectionately and checked her saddlebag, which seemed to hold nothing more than half a loaf of dry bread and an empty wineskin. Finally, she looked up. “Ai, God, Hanna, it’s good to see you. Where are you bound?”

     ‘Aosta. What news, Hathui? Have you come from the king? I’ve been sent with an urgent message from Princess Theophanu—”

     Hathui’s face drained to white, bled dry, and she sank down onto the fallen stone with a grimace of pain. “You must ride straight back to Princess Theophanu!”

     ‘The king’s dead?”

     ‘Not dead when I left him.” Hathui spoke so quietly it was difficult to hear her voice. “I pray he is not dead now.” Tears trickled down her cheeks, and her breathing became harsh. “That I should take so long to get even this far! And I do not know how far I have left to go.”

     Her expression made Hanna tremble as the older Eagle grabbed her sword hilt and pushed herself up, looking grim and determined. “We must make haste, you to Princess Theophanu and I— Can you tell me, Hanna? Where is Prince Sanglant? I have followed rumors that lead me east, but I may be following a cold trail, God help me, for he is veiled to my Eagle’s Sight. I must reach Prince Sanglant.”

     Ernst had wandered close to listen, but Hanna chased him off. “You’re sentry, Ernst! You must keep watch. Those brigands could come sneaking back and kill us while we’re not looking!”

     She picked up one of the bandits’ captured staves, which was not much more than a stout walking stick carved to a nasty point at one end, and beat down the bramble bush around the stone bench so she and Hathui could sit without fear of thorns. It felt good to batter down the bramble bush, to hear the snap of vines and watch bits of leaf spill like chaff onto the ground, revealing more of the old stone ruin. By the pattern of the tumbled stones and their neatly dressed edges, she guessed this had once been an old Dariyan way station. Dariyan messengers, folk like herself, had sheltered here long ago.

     ‘Sit down,” she said. Hathui sat, shaking and still pale. “You must tell the whole.”

     Haltingly she did, although Hanna had never before heard Hathui sound so unlike the confident, sharp-tongued Eagle she had met in Heart’s Rest five years ago. While she talked, Ernst paced out the edge of the clearing, riding a short way down each of the three paths that branched out from the clearing: one led north back toward Theophanu, one east, and one southwest. Each time he returned he glanced over at them and their hushed conversation before resuming his circuit of the forest’s edge.

     Hathui spoke more with rasp than voice. “I bring no message from King Henry, only news of his betrayal. Hugh of Austra has connived with Queen Adelheid and the skopos herself, the Holy Mother Anne, to make Henry their creature in all ways. I know not with what black spells Hugh has sullied his hands, but he trapped an unearthly daimone and forced it into the king, who was all unsuspecting. Now the king speaks with the daimone’s voice, for the daimone controls his speech and his movements.”

     ‘How came Hugh of Austra into the councils of Queen Adelheid and the skopos?”

     ‘He is a presbyter now, forgiven for all his sins,” said Hathui bitterly. “I know little of the new skopos save that she claims to be the granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer. She also claims to be Liath’s mother.”

     Could it be true? Hanna had seen Liath’s child, with Sanglant, in the few days she had remained at the prince’s side beyond the Veser, when the prince himself had interviewed her at length about the time she had spent as a prisoner of Bulkezu and the Quman army. Before he had sent her away to carry word of his victory and his plans to his sister. She had heard this tale herself, but it seemed as unlikely then as it did now.

     Or perhaps it was the only explanation that made sense. Wind made the leaves dance and murmur. A brown wren came to light among the brambles, eyeing Hanna and Hathui with its alert gaze before fluttering off.

     ‘There is more,” said Hathui at last, sounding exhausted, her shoulders slumped. “The infant Mathilda is to be named as heir. Adel-heid wanted Henry to stay in Aosta to fight in the south, although it was his intent to return to Wendar. That is why they bound him with the daimone. Now he only does what they wish.” “Why go to Sanglant, then?” “He must be told what has happened.”

     ‘He is himself a rebel against the king. You must take this news to Theophanu at once!”

     ‘Nay, to Sanglant. So Rosvita counseled me. She said…” Hattiui grasped her injured arm again, shutting her eyes, remembering. Her words were almost inaudible. “She said, ‘a bastard will show his true mettle when temptation is thrown in his path and the worst tales he can imagine are brought to his attention.’ Ai, Lady. She allowed herself to be taken prisoner so that I might escape. I do not know if she lives, after all this time. I have searched with my Eagle’s Sight, but I see only darkness.” To Hanna’s horror, indomitable Hathui began to weep. “I fear she is dead.”

     Rosvita meant little to Hanna beyond being Ivar’s elder and half sister. “When did this happen? How long have you been traveling?” She wiped her cheeks with the back of a hand. “Months. Since last year. I had to ride west, toward Salia. Even then I came too late to the mountains. Snow had already closed the pass. So I laid low and lived as I could, all winter. They hunted me. A dozen times or more I saw soldiers wearing Queen Adelheid’s livery along the roads. It was only three months ago that I was able to fight my way through the snow and into Salia, and then I had to travel in the wilderness, or at night, until I came at last to Wayland. There I found that Duke Conrad’s soldiers would as soon throw me in prison as aid me. I have not come easily to this place.” She patted the cold stone, almost with affection. “Those bandits were the least of the troubles I’ve faced. I fear I have a long and difficult journey still ahead of me.”

     ‘So you do, if you will not turn north to bring your tidings to Theophanu. Prince Sanglant rides to Ungria. He left last autumn from Osterburg, after the battle there, although I do not know how he fared this past winter. He is hidden to my Eagle’s Sight as well. You would be a fool to ride east after him. You must take this news to Princess Theophanu—”

     ‘Nay!” She rose, striding toward her horse. “I must ride to Sanglant! I will do as Sister Rosvita commanded me, for she is the last one I know who is loyal to the king now that Hugh has murdered Margrave Villam.”

     ‘Villam!” The words came at her like barbs, pricking and venomous. “May God save us if it’s true.” And yet… “We’ve heard no news from Aosta. Nothing. Princess Theophanu sent three Eagles to her father with desperate tidings—”

     ‘One at least delivered that message, but she has been detained in Darre. Perhaps the others have as well, if they reached the court after I fled. They will not let Theophanu’s Eagles leave Aosta now. King Henry knew that he was needed in Wendar! He meant to return!” She halted beside the tallest segment of wall, which came to her shoulder; a pair of fallen wooden roof beams lay covered in nettles and moss at her feet. Her expression was set and stubborn. Unshakable. “I go to Sanglant, Hanna. Sanglant will avenge his father’s betrayal. He will save Henry. No one else can.”

     ‘Sanglant is not the man you think he is, Hathui. Do not ride to him, I beg you. Princess Theophanu—”

     ‘No.” Hathui tied a stave to her saddle and made ready to mount. “I will not be bent from my task.”

     This was the stubbornness that King Henry had admired so much that he had made Hathui his favored Eagle and, indeed, an intimate counselor whose opinion he consulted and trusted. Hathui loved the king.

     But she was wrong about Sanglant.

     ‘Very well,” said Hanna at last. “Ernst will return to Theophanu.”

     The answer gave Hathui pause as she swung onto her mare and, turning, gazed with an expression of dismay at Hanna. “What do you mean to do?”

     ‘I mean to do as Princess Theophanu commanded me. I will ride to Aosta to the king.”

     ‘Hanna!”

     ‘I can be as stubborn as you, Hathui.” But as she spoke the words, she felt the wasp sting burn in her heart. Was she turning away from Sorgatani because the Kerayit princess had not rescued her from the Quman? Was she punishing Sanglant, who had betrayed his own people by letting Bulkezu live? Or was she only doing what was right?

     ‘You can’t have understood what I’ve told you—

     ‘I understand it well enough. I will deliver Theophanu’s message, as is my duty. I will deliver my report about the Quman invasion to King Henry, as I swore I would. I shall see for myself how he responds.”

     ‘You cannot trust them! What they might do to you—

     ‘They can do nothing worse to me than what I’ve already suffered.”

     Imperceptibly, as they spoke, the sun had burned off the fog, and now light broke across the clearing. Dew sparkled on nettles and glistened on ripe berries, quickly wicked away by the heat of the sun. The morning breeze faded and a drowsy summer glamour settled over the green wood, broken only by the song of birds and the caw of an irritated crow.

     The light of camaraderie had fled from Hathui’s face, replaced by the expression of a woman who has seen the thing she loves best poisoned and trampled. “So be it. You have chosen your path. I have chosen mine.”

     Enough, thought Hanna. ,’ have made my choice. The core of rage that these days never left her had hardened into iron. As long as Bulkezu lived, she would never give loyalty, aid, or trust to the man who had refused to punish him as he deserved.

     ‘So be it,” she echoed.

     There were three paths leading out of the clearing. She would ride hers alone.

    

     PART TWO THE UNCOILIN YEAR

    

     AN ADDER IN THE PIT

     IN the east, so it was said, the priests of the Jinna god Astareos read omens in fire. They interpreted the leap and crackle of flames, the shifting of ash along charred sticks, and the gleam of coals sinking into patterns among the cinders, finding in each trifling movement a message from the god revealing his will and the fate of those who worshiped him. But no matter how hard Zacharias stared at the twisting glare of the campfire, he could not tease any meaning from the blaze. It looked like a common fire to him, cheerfully devouring sticks and logs. Like fire, the passage of time devoured all things, even a man’s life, until it was utterly consumed. Afterward, there was only the cold beauty of an infinite universe indifferent to the fate of one insignificant human soul.

     He shuddered, although on this balmy summer’s night he ought not to be cold.

     ‘What do you think, Brother Zacharias? Do you believe the stories about the phoenix and the redemption?”

     Startled, he glanced up from the fire at Chustaffus. The stocky soldier regarded him with an affable smile on his homely face. “What phoenix?” he asked.

     ‘He wasn’t listening,” said Surly. “He never does.”

     ‘He’s seeing dragons in the fire,” retorted Lewenhardt, the archer.

     ‘Or our future,” said quiet Den.

     ‘Or that damned phoenix you won’t shut up about, Chuf,” added Surly, punching Chustaffus on the shoulder.

     They all laughed, but in a friendly way, and resumed their gossip as they ate their supper of meat, porridge, and ale around their campfire, one of about fifty such fires scattered throughout pasture-lands outside the Ungrian settlement of Nabanya. Why Prince San-giant’s loyal soldiers tolerated a ragged, cowardly, apostate frater in their midst Zacharias could never understand, but he was grateful for their comradeship all the same. It allowed him to escape, from time to time, the prince’s court, where he served as interpreter, and the grim presence of his worst enemy who was, unfortunately, not dead yet.

     ‘Prince Ekkehard was a traitor,” said Den. “I don’t think we should believe anything he said.”

     ‘But he wasn’t the only one who spoke of such stories,” insisted Chustaffus. “Men died because they believed in the redemption. They were willing to die. Takes a powerful belief to embrace martyrdom like that.”

     ‘Or a powerful stupidity.” Surly drained his cup and searched around for more ale, but they had drunk their ration. “I don’t believe it.”

     ‘It wasn’t heresy that saved Prince Ekkehard,” said black-haired Everwin, who spoke rarely but always at length. “I hear he was treated like a lord by the Ojuman. If that Eagle’s testimony was true, and I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t believe it, then there’s many honest, God-fearing folk who died while Prince Ekkehard ate his fill of their plundered food and drank stolen wine and dandled women, none of them willing to have been thrown into his bed. They might have been any of our sisters forced to please him or die.”

     ‘Prince Ekkehard wasn’t the only one who survived,” objected Chustaffus. “Don’t forget Sergeant Gotfrid of the Lions, and his men. They escaped the Ojiman, and shades in the forest, and bandits who sold them into slavery before the prince redeemed him. Gotfrid is a good man. He believed in the phoenix. Even that Lord Wichman admits he saw the phoenix.”

     ‘Give it a rest, Chuf,” said Lewenhardt. “If I have to hear about that damned phoenix one more time, I swear I’m going to put an arrow through the next one I see.”

     Den, Johannes, and Everwin laughed longest at this sally, but Chustaffus took offense, and it fell to Zacharias to coax the glower off the young soldier’s face. As a slave to the Quman, he’d learned how to use his facility for words to quiet his former master’s dangerously sudden vexations.

     ‘Many a tale is truer than people can believe, and yet others are as false as a wolf’s heart. I wonder sometimes if I really saw that dragon up in the Alfar Mountains. It might have been a dream. Yet, if I close my eyes, I can still see it gleaming in the heavens, with its tail lashing the snow on the high mountain peaks. What am I to make of that?”

     The soldiers never got tired of his story of the dragon.

     ‘Were its scales really the size and color of iron shields?” asked Lewenhardt, who had a master archer’s knack for remembering small details.

     ‘Nothing that big can fly,” said Surly.

     ‘Not like a bird, maybe,” said Lewenhardt. “It might be that dragons have a kind of magic that keeps them aloft. If they’re made of fire, maybe the earth repels them.”

     ‘Kind of like you and women, eh?” asked the Karronish-man, Johannes, who only spoke to tease.

     ‘Did I show you where that Ungrian whore bit me?” Lewenhardt pulled up his tunic.

     ‘Nay, mercy!” cried Johannes with a laugh. “I can dig up worms enough to get the idea.”

     ‘Someone’s been eating worms,” said Surly suddenly, “and not liking the taste. There’s been talk that King Geza is going to divorce his wife and marry Princess Sapientia. That’s the best way for the prince to get rid of her.”

     ‘Prince Sanglant would never allow that!” objected Lewenhardt. “That would give King Geza a claim to the Wendish throne through his children by the princess.”

     ‘Hush,” said Den.

     Captain Fulk approached through flowering feather grass and luxuriant fescue whose stalks shushed along his knees and thighs. Beyond him, poplars swayed in the evening’s breeze where they grew along the banks of a river whose name Zacharias did not yet know. Where the river curved around a hill, an old, refurbished ring fort rose, seat of the local Ungrian noble family. Beyond its confines a settlement sprawled haphazardly, protected by a palisade and ditch but distinctively Ungrian because of the many stinking corrals.

     Every Ungrian soldier kept ten horses, it seemed, and folk who walked instead of riding were scorned as slaves and dogs. Yet who tilled the fields and kept the gardens? The farmers Zacharias had seen working in hamlets and fortified villages as Prince Sanglant and his army followed King Geza’s progress through the Ungrian kingdom were smaller and darker than the Ungrian nobles who ruled over them. Such folk were forbidden to own the very horses they were scorned for not riding.

     All the men rose when Fulk halted by the fire’s light.

     Lewenhardt spoke. “Captain. Is all quiet?”

     ‘As quiet as it can be, with the army marching out in the morning.” Fulk surveyed the encampment before looking back over the six soldiers seated around the fire. “I posted you out here to keep alert, not to gossip.” He nodded at Zacharias. “Brother, I come from the prince. You’re to attend him.”

     ‘I thought he had Brother Breschius to interpret for him tonight. Isn’t it only Ungrians and Wendishmen at the feast?”

     ‘I don’t answer for His Highness. You’re to come at once.”

     Surly began whistling a dirge, breaking off only after Chustaffus punched his arm.

     ‘You take your watch at midnight,” said Fulk to his soldiers, i.’ I’ll be back to check up on you.”

     That sobered them. Zacharias rose with a sigh and followed Fulk. They walked along the river, listening to the wind sighing in the poplars. Although the sun had set, the clouds to the west were still stained an intense rose-orange, the color lightening toward the zenith before fading along the eastern hills to a dusky gray.

     ‘I miss the beech woods of home,” Fulk said. “They say we’ll ride through grasslands and river bottom all the way to the Heretic’s Sea. There are even salt marshes, the same as you’d see on the Wendish coast, but lying far from the seashore. When I left home to join the king’s service, I never thought to journey so far east. But I suppose you’ve seen these lands before.”

     ‘I have not. I traveled east the first time through Polenie lands.”

     ‘Did you see any one-legged men? Women with dogs’ heads? Two-headed babies?”

     ‘Only slaves and tyrants, the same as anywhere.”

     Fulk grunted, something like a laugh. Like all of Sanglant’s personal guard, he wore a pale gold tabard marked with the sigil of a black dragon. “The Ungrians are a queer folk,” he continued, humoring Zacharias’ curtness. “As friendly as you please, and good fighters, yet I know their mothers didn’t worship God in Unity. I’d wager that half of them still sacrifice to their old gods. One of the lads said he saw a white stallion being led out at midwinter from the king’s palace, and he never saw it come in again for all that King Geza spent the Feast of St. Peter on his knees in church. God know they’re half heretics themselves, for it was Arethousan churchmen who first brought the word of the blessed Daisan to these lands.”

     ‘It is Brother Breschius who presides over mass, not an Arethousan priest.”

     ‘True enough. It’s said the last of the Arethousans fled Ungria when we arrived with Prince Bayan’s body last autumn. They’re worse than rats, skulking about and spreading their lies and their heresy.”

     ‘It seems to me that there’s heresy enough in the ranks of Prince Sanglant’s army. I hear whispers of it, the phoenix and the redemption.”

     Fulk had a deceptively mild expression for a man who had survived any number of hard-fought battles and had abandoned King Henry to join the war band of that king’s rebel son. His lips twitched up, as though he meant to smile, but his gaze was sharp. “If you toss an adder into a pit without water and leave it alone, it will shrivel up and die soon enough. But if you worry at it, then it will bite you and live.”

     In silence they left the river and followed the track across an overgrazed pasture to the palisade gate. The ring fort had been built along the bend in the river, but in recent times houses, craftsmen’s yards, and shepherds’ hovels had crept out below the circular ramparts and been ringed in their turn by a ditch and log palisade.

     The two men crossed the plank bridge thrown over the palisade ditch and greeted the guards lounging at the open gates. With the king in residence, the Quman defeated, and a good-sized army camped in the fields beyond, the watch kept the gates open all night because of the steady traffic between town and camp. In Ungria, peace reigned.

     Half a dozen soldiers were waiting for Fulk just beyond the gate, leaning at their ease on the rails of an empty corral. As soon as they saw their captain, they fell in smartly behind him.

     ‘A captain cannot appear before the prince without a retinue, lest he be thought unworthy of his captain’s rank,” said Fulk wryly. “You came alone to get me.”

     ‘So I did. I wanted to get a good look at camp without being noticed. Smell the mood of the men.”

     The settlement had a lively air. A summer’s evening market thrived near the tanners’ yard, although the stench of offal, urine, and dung at times threatened to overpower the folk out bargaining over rugs, bronze buckets, drinking horns, pots of dye, woolen cloth, and an impressive variety of shields. Small children with feet caked in dried mud ran about naked. A woman sat beside a crate of scrawny hens, calling out in an incomprehensible tongue that seemed only half Ungrian to Zacharias’ ears, shot through with a coarser language closer to that spoken out on the grasslands.

     Horses pounded up behind them. Zacharias glanced back just as Fulk swore irritably. A sweep of pale wings brushed the dark sky; in an instant the riders would be upon him. The frater shrieked out loud and dropped hard to the ground, clapping his hands over his head. Death came swiftly from the Quman. They would strike him down and cut off his head. Terror made him lose control; a hot gush of urine spilled down his legs.

     But the horsemen swept past, ignoring him, although in their passage they overturned the crate. Freed chickens ran squawking out into the market. One of the birds ran right over Zacharias, <claws digging into his neck.

     ‘Here, now,” said Fulk, grasping his arm to pull him up. “Did you get hit?”

     They hadn’t been Quman after all, come to behead him. It was only a group of Ungrian cavalrymen wearing white cloaks, the mark of King Geza’s honor guard.

     Fulk’s soldiers ran down the chickens and returned them to the woman, who was cursing and yelling. At least the commotion hid Zacharias as he staggered to his feet. The darkness hid the stain on his robe, but nothing could hide the stink of a coward. As long as he feared the Quman, and Bulkezu, he was still a slave. Blinking back tears of shame and fear, he tottered over to the dirty watering trough and plunged in as Fulk and his soldiers shouted in surprise. Chickens, goats, and children made an ear-splitting noise as they scattered from his splashing. He was sopping wet from the chest down when he climbed out. Someone in the crowd threw a rotten apple at him. He ducked, but not quickly enough, and it splattered against his chest.

     ‘For God’s sake,” swore Fulk, dragging him along. “What madness has gotten into you now, Brother?” The ground sloped steeply up and the ramparts loomed dark and solid above them.

     ‘I fell into a stinking pile of horse shit. Whew! I couldn’t attend the prince smelling like the stables.” As they walked into the deeper shadow of the rampart gates, lit by a single sentry’s torch, he found himself shaking still. “Next time those Ungrian soldiers will cripple some poor soul and never bother to look back to see what they’ve wrought.”

     ‘Here, now,” said Fulk, taken aback by his ferocity but obviously thrown well off the scent, “it’s a miracle you weren’t trampled, falling like you did.”

     The passage through the ramparts took a sharp turn to the left, and to the right again, lit by torches. Sentries chatted above them, up on the walls from which they watched the passage below. One of the soldiers was singing a mournful tune, his song overwhelmed by the hubbub as they came into the central courtyard of the inner fort.

     The nobles were feasting in the hall, late into the summer night, in honor of St. Edward Lloyd, a cunning and pious Alban merchant who had brought the faith of the Unities as well as tin into the east. Zacharias heard singing and laughter and saw the rich glow of a score of lamps through the open doors. Servants rushed from the kitchens into the hall, bearing full platters and pitchers, and retreated with the scraps to feed the serving folk, the beggars, and the dogs.

     Fulk gave the bright hall scarcely a glance and headed straight for the stables, currently inhabited by the rest of Sanglant’s personal guard and a sizable contingent of Ungrian cavalrymen. Wolfhere met them at the door.

     ‘It isn’t raining,” the old Eagle said, looking Zacharias up and down in that annoyingly supercilious way he had, as though he had guessed the means and nature of the injury and found the frater wanting yet again.

     ‘An accident.” The words grated, harsh and defensive.

     Wolfhere shrugged. “This way, Captain. We got her porridge and ale, as the prince requested. She said she’d rest and bathe after she’d delivered her report.”

     Instead of heading up a ladder to the loft where the soldiers quartered, the old Eagle led them past stalls, about half of them stabling a horse and the rest storing arms, armor, or barrels of grain and ale, down to an empty stall where Heribert and Sergeant Cobbo hovered beside a tall, dark-haired, big-boned woman who had a stained Eagle’s cloak thrown around her shoulders and a mug of ale at her lips.

     Was the floor heaving and buckling? His knees folded under him so fast that he had to brace himself against the wall to stay upright.

     ‘Well met, Eagle.” Fulk stepped into the halo of lamplight. “You’ve ridden far.” Straw slipped under his boots as he moved forward and the Eagle, lowering her mug, stood up to greet him.

     Hathui.

     Only a strangled gasp escaped Zacharias’ throat. He tugged at his hood, pulling it up to conceal his face, but she had already seen him. For the length of time it might take a skilled butcher to cut a calf’s throat she stared at him, puzzled, her hawk’s gaze as sharp as a spear’s point. He was so changed that she did not know him. If he was careful, he could make sure that she would never know who he was, never be ashamed by what he had become. He turned to hide his face in the shadows.

     Her eyes widened as recognition flared. She dropped the mug. Ale spilled down her leggings; the mug hit and shattered on the plank floor. Her lips formed his name, but no sound came out. Staggering, she folded forward and fell as though she’d been slugged and, reflex-ively, as he’d always done when she was only his little sister and had got into trouble yet again, he leaped forward to catch her.

     She clutched him hard. “Ai, God.” She was as tall as he was, with a strong grip and a rank smell. “I thought you were dead.” ,

     I am dead. I am not the brother you knew. But he could not speak.

     ‘God’s mercy,” said Wolfhere softly, much surprised. “I knew you had a brother, Hathui, who walked into the east as a frater and was lost. Can this man be the same one?”

     She wept, although she’d never been one to weep as a child, scorning those who cried; her beloved older brother had been the only soul ever allowed to see her rare bouts of tears.

     ‘Hush,” he said, remembering those days bitterly. Memories swept over him with such strength that he felt nauseated. Now she would know. Now she would despise him.

     ‘I thought you were dead,” she repeated, voice hollow. Tears still coursed down her face, but her expression had changed, taut and determined, the hawk’s glare focused again on its distant prey. “All things are possible, if you are truly alive after all this time. My God, Zacharias, there is so much for us to speak of, but first I must deliver my news to the prince.”

     She nodded to the others and strode out of the stables. He was left behind to follow in her wake, fearing the worst: that she brought ill news, and that he had been called because Prince Sanglant intended to bring in the captive Quman and needed Zacharias to interpret. Yet why not? Let the worst be known at once, so that her repudiation of him would come now, the pain of her rejection suffered immediately. That was better than to be left lingering, malignant with hope.

     They pushed into the hall past servants and hangers-on, brushing aside a pack of hopeful dogs waiting for bones. Hathui walked with a pronounced limp, as if she had aggravated the old childhood injury that had left her with a slight hitch in her stride. Was it really almost two years ago when he had glimpsed her that day in Helmut Villam’s presence? Zacharias had kept back in the shadows, and Hathui had not recognized him. Since that day, she’d grown thin and weary and worn, and her sunken cheeks made her hawk’s nose more prominent, bold and sharp. But when they pushed through the crowd and came before the high table where King Geza presided over the feast, she stood proudly in her patched Eagle’s cloak and tattered clothing and spoke in the voice he remembered so well, confident and proud. “My lord king of Ungria, may all be well in your kingdom. I pray you, forgive my abruptness.”

     The hall grew quiet as the feasting nobles settled down to listen. Sapientia sat in the seat of honor to Geza’s right while Sanglant sat between the robust but gray-haired King Geza and Lady Ilona, a ripely handsome and fabulously rich Ungrian widow. Brother Bres-chius leaned down to whisper into Geza’s ear as Hathui turned her attention to the royal siblings.

     ‘Your Highness, Princess Sapientia, I come from Aosta bearing news. My lord prince, my lady, I have traveled a long and difficult road to reach you. It has taken me almost two years to come so far, and I have escaped death more than once.”

     Sanglant rose to his feet, holding a cup of wine. He wore a rich gold tunic embroidered with the sigil of the black dragon and finished with red braid, and his black hair had been trimmed back from his beardless face. No person could look at him and forget that his mother was not born of humankind.

     Yet neither could they forget that he was a prince, commander of the army that had defeated the Quman. Even, and especially, Sapientia, dressed in all the finery appropriate to a noblewoman, looked as insignificant as a goldfinch perched next to a mighty dragon. “You bring ill news,” said Sanglant.

     Hathui almost choked on the words. “I bring ill news, Your Highness, may God help us all. King Henry has been bewitched, ensor-celled with the connivance of his own queen and his trusted counselor. He lives as a prisoner in his own body. You are the only one who can save him.”

     JoJLJcS J>IJN Cjr had a disconcerting habit of leaning so far out tower windows that it seemed in the next instant she would fall, or fly.

     ‘Look!” She had crawled up into the embrasure of an archer’s loophole and was still—barely—small enough to push into the narrow opening so that she could look down into the forecourt. “My father has left the feasting hall. I don’t like it when he makes me stay here, like I’m in prison. Doesn’t he have enough prisoners to lord it over? Why does he pick on me?”

     ‘Your lord father does not like it when you behave as you did this morning,” said Anna for the tenth time that evening. “When you act like a barbarian, then you must be treated as one.”

     Matto sat by the cold hearth, a lit lamp dangling above him. He had made use of the long and dreary afternoon to oil the young princess’ harness until it gleamed. Looking up, he winked slyly, and Anna blushed, gratified and irritated at the same time.

     Blessing forced her shoulders through the loophole. Anna hastily grabbed her trailing feet just as the girl called out, words muffled by the stone. “Who’s that with him? It looks like an Eagle! He’s coming back here!”

     Anna tugged, grunting, but Blessing was either stuck or was holding on. “Matto!”

     He was more than happy to set down the harness and help her, because it gave him an excuse to put his arms around her as he grasped hold of Blessing’s ankles as well. “Your Highness!” he said. “I pray you, do not get stuck in there or we will be the ones who will face your father’s anger.”

     There was a pause.

     Blessing wriggled backward, half slid down the stair-step embrasure, and hopped to the carpeted floor. Despite everything, the girl had a profound sense of fairness and did not like to see her attendants blamed for her misadventures.

     ‘Well, there is an Eagle with him,” she said defiantly. “I don’t know where she came from, or how she could have found us out here in Ungria. I hate Ungria.”

     ‘We all know you hate Ungria, Your Highness,” said Anna wearily, allowing herself to lean against Matto’s broad chest. His hand tightened on her shoulder.

     ‘Thiemo won’t like that.” Blessing had a sweet face still, although she stood as tall as many a nine- or ten-year-old child, but her expression was sharpened by a spark of malicious glee as she bared her teeth in something resembling a grin. “I hear him coming up the stairs now.”

     Anna stepped out from under Matto’s arm.

     ‘I’m not afraid of him!” Matto muttered as the latch flipped up.

     The door had a hitch to it, and the floor was warped, so it took Thiemo a moment to shove it open. To be safe, Anna took two more steps away from Matto.

     ‘My lord prince is returning,” said Thiemo, addressing Blessing. “Your Highness.” His gaze quickly assessed Anna, and Matto, and the distance between them, and then he grinned winsomely at Anna, the smile that always made her dizzy. How could it be that a lord like Thiemo even noticed a common-born girl with skin stained nut-brown from the tanning pits?

     Blessing’s tunic was twisted around from climbing. As Anna helped the girl to straighten herself and found a comb to brush her untidy hair, Thiemo and Matto gathered up the harness, neatened up the chamber, and did not speak one word to each other. The two young men had never been friends, since the gulf in their stations did not truly permit such intimacy, but had once been friendly companions in Blessing’s service. Not anymore.

     The clamor of footsteps and voices echoed up from below. Lamplight glimmered and, all at once, fully a dozen people crowded into the tower chamber. Blessing scrambled up to hide in the stair-step embrasure, crouching there like a sweetly featured gargoyle with Thiemo and Matto standing as guards to either side of the opening. Anna retreated to the hearth while Prince Sanglant and his noble companions and loyal followers took up places around the chamber. His sister seated herself at the table with her faithful companion Lady Brigida at her side and the others ranged about the room, standing respectfully or sitting comfortably on the bed or the other bench, according to their station. It was the usual retinue: Lady Bertha of Austra, Brother Heribert, Wolfhere, that nasty Brother Zacharias,

     whose robes were damp, Captain Fulk, kind Brother Breschius, even-tempered Lord Druthmar, who commanded a contingent of Villam cavalry, and the one they all called the Rutting Beast, the notorious Lord Wichman. The only Ungrian present was Istvan, a noble if rather grim captain who, like Brother Breschius, had thrown his loyalty to Sanglant after Prince Bayan’s death at the Veser. Anna had expected to see the prince’s mistress, Lady Ilona, whose favorite gown Blessing had so thoroughly ruined this morning, but evidently she did not hold an intimate enough rank within the prince’s personal circle to be invited into this private assembly.

     Sanglant paced, wearing a path from the door to the window and back again, but his attention remained fixed on the battered Eagle who had been given Anna’s stool for a seat, the only common-born person in the room not on her feet. This was no arrogant privilege granted her by reason of her Eagle’s status; she looked too exhausted to stand on her own. But although her shoulders drooped, her keen gaze did not waver from the prince’s restless figure.

     ‘So it’s true,” Sanglant said at last. “Wolfhere glimpsed the truth with his Eagle’s Sight, but we had no way to confirm what he had seen.” He glanced at Wolfhere, who regarded the other Eagle with a thoughtful frown, as though the news she had brought were nothing more troubling than the screech of a jay.

     ‘We must march on Aosta at once!” cried Sapientia. *

     Sanglant barely glanced at her, nor did she try to interrupt him when he spoke. “With what magic will we combat those who have imprisoned the king? Nay. This changes nothing, and in truth only makes our course more clear. We must continue east. That is the only way to defeat our enemies.”

     ‘But, Your Highness,” objected the Eagle, “I have been already two years seeking you. How can we know what has befallen King Henry in that time? He is hidden to my Eagle’s Sight. He may be dead. They may do any foul deed to him that they wish!”

     ‘And so may they continue to do,” said Heribert quietly. “I have seen the power of the sorcery they wield. We cannot fight it with spears or swords.”

     ‘But, Your Highness,” pleaded the Eagle, “if you ride east, into unknown country and the lands where the Quman breed, it may be years until you return to Wendar. What will happen to your father meanwhile?” She knelt at the prince’s feet, her presence forcing him to stand still.

     ‘They need Henry alive in order to rule through him,” said Sanglant. “His Wendish armies will desert Adelheid and her advisers if Henry dies. The nobles and their retinues will return to Wendar without the king to lead them.”

     ‘There is the child, Your Highness.” The Eagle’s voice was soft, but Sapientia all at once burst into noisy exclamations.

     ‘Abandoned! Set aside! And for a toddling brat!”

     Wichman snorted, but fell silent at a glance from the prince.

     ‘It is true that the child can become queen in Henry’s place, but she cannot yet be three years of age.” Sanglant looked toward the embrasure where his unnatural daughter had concealed herself in the shadows of the window’s stone archway. Blessing was not more than three years old, but she appeared so much older that King Geza had suggested to Sanglant that he betroth her to Geza’s favorite child, a brash fifteen-year-old boy whom many whispered had been all but anointed as heir despite having a dozen older brothers.

     ‘Regents have ruled through three-year-old children before, Your Highness,” said Wolfhere. “This girl, Mathilda, would no doubt be easier to control than a mature man of Henry’s stature and experience.”

     ‘Are you suggesting we give up our quest?”

     ‘Nay, I do not, my lord prince, but I implore you to listen carefully to what Hathui has seen and heard. I trained her myself, and King Henry saw her worth and raised her up to stand at his right hand as a trusted adviser.”

     Sanglant’s lips twitched, as though he wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown. “Just as you stood beside my grandfather, King Ar-nulf?”

     Wolfhere shrugged, unwilling to be drawn into an argument so old that Anna could only guess at its contours. Intimately involved as she was in the care of Blessing, she often witnessed the interactions between Sanglant and his closest counselors. Despite Wolf-here’s status as a respected elder, she had seen tempers flare and accusations thrown like knives.

     Sanglant returned his gaze to the younger Eagle. “I do not question your loyalty to my father, Hathui. You have proved it by riding so far to seek my help.”

     ‘What of the king?” she demanded.

     ‘To fight the rebellious lords of Aosta, to fight the Jinna bandits and the Arethousan usurpers, it seems to me they must have Henry to lead the army. Why kill him if they can control him with sorcery? Why control him with sorcery if they felt powerful enough to kill him and still keep the crown of Wendar on the child’s head? Nay, let us pray that my father lives, and that his queen and her counselors will keep him alive until the child is old enough to stand up at the war council herself.” He glanced again toward the embrasure, but the shadows hid his daughter from view. Only her eyes winked there, two sparks of fire. “We cannot fight the sorcerers unless we have a hope of winning, and we have no hope of winning unless we can protect ourselves against their magic.”

     ‘Griffin feathers,” murmured Zacharias. His face was flushed, and he was perspiring.

     ‘I fear the Kerayit will not care about Wendish troubles, Your Highness,” said Breschius softly. “They may not choose to aid you.”

     ‘So you have said before. I do not neglect your counsel, Brother. But Anne’s plotting threatens the Kerayit as much as any people. No place on earth will be safe.”

     ‘And we could all die tomorrow,” added Lady Bertha cheerfully.

     Wichman guffawed, caught sight of Anna, and gave her a wink. She shifted nervously. He had tried to grope her once, although San-giant had put a stop to it, but the duchess’ unruly son still made her uneasy.

     ‘Set aside for a babe in arms!” muttered Sapientia. Yet it had been months since anyone had paid much attention to her, and although she still had the luster of the royal blood, she had faded in an intangible way, like silver left unpolished. “Did the Wendish nobles not hear my father confirm me as heir? How can they bow before an infant inAosta?”

     ‘What of Wendar itself, my lord prince?” Hathui asked.

     He paced to the door, pausing there with his back to the assembly.

     ‘I should return to Wendar!” cried Sapientia.

     ‘I wonder if my sisters still quarrel over Saony,” remarked Wichman, “and if Ekkehard has managed to stick his key into his wife’s treasure chest yet.”

     Sanglant ignored these comments as he replied to the Eagle. “I commanded a cohort of Lions to attend Theophanu. I sent many levies of fighters back to their farms. As you can see, I rode east with less than a thousand soldiers. Two thirds of the army we had at the Veser no longer rides with me. They must defend Wendar until I return.”

     ‘Can they?” Grimacing with pain and favoring a leg, Hathui rose to stand defiantly in the middle of the room. “Do you know what I have seen in the two years I have traveled, struggling to reach you, _my lord prince?”

     From no other common-born person might a noble lord hear such a tone, but it had long been understood that Eagles had to have a certain amount of freedom to speak their mind if their information was to be of any use to their regnant. She went on without asking his leave.

     ‘Salia lies torn apart by civil war, plague, and drought. Bandits lurk along every road. I heard little news of Varre as I rode through Wayland, and received nothing but scorn from the retainers of Conrad the Black. It is said that he celebrated Penitire in Mainni as if he were king, with Sabella’s daughter Tallia beside him as his new wife. Avaria has been swept by plague. I rode through more than one empty hamlet, and as many where the path was blocked by fallen trees and villagers standing there with scythes and shovels to guard themselves from any who might bring the contagion into their homes.

     ‘Princess Theophanu refuses to name any of Duchess Rotrudis’ children as heir to the duchy of Saony, but both the daughters have threatened to seek Conrad’s aid to gain the ducal seat.”

     ‘Two sows rooting in the mud while the boar looks on!”

     ‘I pray you, Wichman,” said Sanglant, “let the Eagle finish her report without interruption.”

     Hathui continued. “Cousins fight among themselves to gain lands and titles come free because there have been so many deaths in the recent wars. Riding through the marchlands, I saw fields withered by drought. I saw children laid low by famine, with their stomachs swollen and their eyes sunk in like those of corpses. In Eastfall, it rained every day for two months straight and black rot destroyed half their stores of rye. Heretics preach a story of a phoenix offering redemption. It is no wonder that people listen. The common folk fear that the end of the world is coming.”

     Wichman laughed. “What evil does not plague Wendar?”

     Hathui was not so easily cowed. “I have heard no report of locusts, my lord, nor has there been any news of Eika raids along the northern shores these past two years.”

     ‘A spitfire! Do your claws come out in the bed, too?”

     Impatiently, she turned back to Prince Sanglant. “Princess Theophanu has sent three Eagles to Aosta and heard no answer from her father in reply to her pleas for help. I crossed paths with a fourth— Anger creased her lips, quickly fled. “—last summer, who rode south to seek the king. I saw with my Eagle’s Sight that she crossed the Alfar Mountains safely this spring, but as soon as she came near to Darre she was lost in the sorcerer’s veil.

     ‘Conrad of Wayland acts as if he is king, not duke. Yolanda of Varingia is embroiled in the Salian wars. Biscop Constance remains silent in Arconia. Liutgard of Fesse and Burchard of Avaria ride at Henry’s side in Aosta. Saony has no duke. Theophanu cannot act with the meager forces she has at her disposal. Who will save Wendar, my lord prince? Who will save the king?”

     Sanglant said nothing. Within the embrasure, Blessing shifted, feet rubbing on stone. Sapientia wept quietly while Brigida comforted her. The others waited. Anna glanced over toward the window to see both Thiemo and Matto looking at her. Heat scalded her cheeks, and she looked down. What would happen if they came to blows? Would Prince Sanglant banish them for creating trouble? She didn’t want to lose either of them, but matters could not remain in this tense stalemate. She was going to have to choose. And she didn’t want to.

     ‘You have the army and the leadership, my lord prince,” continued Hathui. “Turn your army home.”

     ‘I cannot.”

     ‘You can! Henry left Wendar in a time of trial. If he had stayed in Wendar, he would not have become bewitched. He ought to have stayed in Wendar and not ridden off to Aosta in search of a crgwn. And neither should you!”

     ‘I am not riding to Aosta in search of a crown.” Anna heard the edge creep into the prince’s voice that meant the Eagle’s words had angered him, but perhaps the Eagle did not care, or did not know him well enough, to heed the warning.

     ‘But you are riding east, in search of other tokens of power. Some have named you as a rebel against your father. I see for myself that you have usurped your sister’s command of this army.”

     Silence, cold and deadly.

     Yet wasn’t it true? Even though nobody said so?

     A sharp snap caused everyone to jump, but it was only Wolfhere treading on a twig carried up to the room in the crowd. Lord Wich-man chuckled, looking at Sapientia to see what she would do, thus challenged. Lady Bertha folded her arms across her chest, her smile thin and wicked.

     Sapientia stared up at her elder brother, waiting. In a strange way, thought Anna, Prince Bayan had trained her to listen to him and wait for his approval before acting or reacting. Now she looked to Sanglant in the same way. Over the last three years she had been broken of the habit of leading.

     ‘I have done what I must.” The hoarse scrape of his voice lent a note of urgency and passion to his words; but then, he always sounded like that. “I have never rebelled against my father. Nor will I. But the war is not won yet. Adelheid and her supporters have traded in the king for a pawn who speaks with the king’s voice but without Henry’s will. Who will act as regnant now? I say, the one who can save him by acting against Anne and her sorcerers.”

     Heribert cleared his throat and spoke diffidently. “Do not forget that Anne sits on the skopos’ throne. She is no mere ‘Sister.’ She is Holy Mother over us all. To go against her, my lord prince, you must war against the church itself.”

     ‘Even those who call themselves holy may be agents of the Enemy,” murmured Wolfhere.

     ‘As you well know,” replied Sanglant with a mordant laugh, moving restlessly toward the table. “Is there wine?”

     ‘Return to Wendar, my lord prince,” said Hathui stubbornly. “Raise an army, and ride to Aosta to save the king. I beg you.”

     He allowed Heribert to pour him a full cup of wine, which he drained. “No.” He set down the cup so hard that the base rang hollowly on the wooden table. “I ride east, to hunt griffins.”

     AFTER the conference with the king’s Eagle, Sanglant made his way to the privacy of Lady Ilona’s bedchamber. Her four attendants slept soundly on pallets lined up along the far wall, and Ilona lay naked on her stomach among the tangled bedclothes. Smiling slightly, she watched him as he stripped, then raised an eyebrow when he went to the unshuttered window instead of coming immediately to her bed.

     ‘What are you thinking?” she asked.

     Sanglant lingered by the window, staring east, yet all he saw was stars and campfires and, beyond them, unknown country lost in darkness. The moon had not yet risen. The night was mild, the breeze a caress against his skin. “That my daughter is impossible.”

     ‘She is only jealous. She wants you to herself. She does not like this attention you pay to a woman. It was only one gown. I have others.”