Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (7 page)

"Eagle."

Liath started to her feet and turned, expecting to see a cleric come to escort her to Cleric Monica. But she saw only the top of a black-haired head.

"Do you know who I am?" asked the child. For an instant it was like staring into a mirror and seeing a small shadow of herself, although they looked nothing alike except in complexion.

"You are Duke Conrad's daughter," said Liath.

The girl took hold of Liath's wrist and turned over the Eagle's hand to see the lighter skin of the palm. "I've never seen anyone but my father, my
avia
—my grandmother, that is—and my sister and myself with such skin. I did see a slave once, in the retinue of a presbyter. They said she had been born in the land of the Gyptos, but she was dark as pitch. Where do your kinfolk come from?"

"From Darre," said Liath, amused by her blithe arrogance.

The child regarded her with an imperious expression. "You just rode in from the king's progress. Has there been news? My mother, Lady Eadgifu, should have had her baby by now but no one will tell me anything."

"I have heard no news of your mother."

The girl glanced toward the other children. Ekkehard and his companion had moved off to toss dice in the shadow of the colonnade, and the others kept their distance. Only the old statue remained, like a trusted companion. He had once held a sword, but it was missing. Flecks of blue still colored his eyes, and in the sheltered curve of his elbow and the deeper folds of the cloak spun out in folds of stone from his left shoulder Liath could see the stain of gold paint not yet worn away by wind and weather. Lichen grew on his stone sandals and between his toes.

Was it not said that the Dariyan emperors and empresses and their noble court were the half-breed descendants of the Lost Ones? This stone general looked a little like Sanglant.

"I'm a prisoner here, you know," the girl added without heat. She had the rounded profile of youth, blurred still by baby-fat and the promise of later growth, but a distinctly self-aware expression for all that. No more than nine or ten, she already understood the intricate dance of court intrigue. With a sigh, the child released Liath's hand and turned half away. "I still miss Berthold," she murmured. "He was the only one who paid attention to me."

"Who is Berthold?" asked Liath, intrigued by the yearning in the girl's voice.

But the girl only glanced at her, as if surprised—as Hugh would say—to hear a dog speak.

A cleric hurried up the central colonnade and beckoned to Liath; she followed her into the palace. In a spacious wood-paneled chamber Cleric Monica sat at one end of a long table otherwise inhabited by clerics only half awake, writing with careful strokes or yawning while a scant breeze stirred the air. The shutters had been taken down. Through the windows Liath could see a corral for horses and beyond that the berm of earth that was part of the fortifications. Wildflowers bloomed along the berm, purple and pale yellow. Goats grazed on the steep slope.

"Come forward." Cleric Monica spoke in a low voice. The clerics worked in silence, and only the distant bleat of a goat and an occasional shout from one of the children penetrated the room, and yet there lay between them all a companionable air as if this hush reflected labor done willingly together, with one heart and one striving. Two letters and several parchment documents lay at Monica's right hand. "Here is a letter for Sister Rosvita from Mother Rothgard at St. Valeria Convent. Here are four royal capitularies completed by the clerics at the king's order. To King Henry relate this message: the schola will leave Weraushausen in two days' time and travel south to meet him at Thersa, as His Majesty commands. Do you understand the whole?" "Yes."

"Now." Cleric Monica beckoned to a tiny deacon almost as old as Monica herself. Liath towered over the old woman. "Deacon Ansfrida."

Deacon Ansfrida had a lisp which, combined with the hauteur of a noblewoman, gave her an air of slightly ridiculous abstraction. "There has been a new road built through the forest. If you follow it, it should save you four days of riding time toward Thersa."

"Is it safe to ride through the forest?" Neither churchwoman appeared surprised by the question. The forests lay outside the grasp of the church; they were wild lands still. "I have heard no reports that the levy set to do the work met with any difficulty. Since the Eika came last year, we have been peculiarly untroubled by bandits." "What of other creatures?"

Cleric Monica gave a little breath, a voiced "ah" that trailed away to Wend
with the shuffling of feet and the
scratch of pens. But the deacon gave Liath a strange look. "Certainly one must watch out for wolves," replied Ansfrida. "Is that what you mean?" Better, Liath realized, to have asked the forests that question and not good women of the church. "Yes, that's what I mean," she said quickly.

"You may wait outside," said Cleric Monica crisply. "A servant will bring you a horse."

Thus dismissed, Liath retreated, relieved to get out from under Monica's searching eye. Beyond the palace she found a log bench to sit on. Here she waited again. The palace lay enclosed by berms of more recent construction; in one place where ditch and

earth wall stood now, she could see the remains of an old building that had been torn up and dug through when the fortification was put in. The palace loomed before her. With windows set high in its walls and six towers hugging the semicircular side like sentries, it appeared from the outside more like a fort than
^!
a palace. A jumble of outbuildings lay scattered within the protecting berms. A woman stood outside the cookhouse, searing a side of beef over a smoking pit. A servant boy slept half hidden in the grass.

Without the king in residence, Weraushausen was a peaceful place. From the chapel, she heard a single female voice raised in prayer for the service of Sext, and in distant fields men sang in robust chorus as they worked under the hot sun. Crickets buzzed. Beyond the river lay the great green shoulder of the untamed forest; a buzzard—scarcely more than a black speck— soared along its outermost fringe.

What would it be like to live in such peace?

She flipped open her saddlebags. The letters were sealed with wax and stamped with tiny figures. She recognized the seal from St. Valeria Convent at once by the miniature orrery, symbol of St. Valeria's victory in the city of Sai's when she confounded the pagan astrologers. Liath dared not open the letter, of course. Did it contain news of Princess Theophanu? Had she recovered from her illness, or did this letter bring news of her death? Was Mother Rothgard writing to warn Sister Rosvita that a sorcerer walked veiled in the king's progress? Would Rosvita suspect Liath? Or would she suspect Hugh?

Liath glanced through the capitularies: King Henry grants to the nuns of Regensbach a certain estate named Felstatt for which they owe the king and his heirs full accommodation and renders of food and drink for the royal retinue as well as fodder for the horses at such times as the king's progress may pass that way; King Henry endows a monastery at Gent in the name of St. Perpetua in thanks for the victory at Gent and the return of his son; King Henry grants immunity from all but royal service to the foresters of the Bretwald in exchange for keeping the new road through the Bret Forest clear; King Henry calls the elders of the church to a council at Autun on the first day of the month of Setentre, which in the calendar of the church is called Matthiasmass.

That day, according to the mathematici, was the autumn equinox.

Ai, God. If she held
The Book of Secrets,
could she open it freely here? Would she ever live in a place where there was leisure, and such safety as this palace offered? Was there any place she could study the secrets of the mathematici, wander in her city of memory, explore the curse of fire, and be left alone?

She laughed softly, a mixture of anger, regret, and giddy desire. Such a place had been offered her, when she had least expected it, and she had turned away in pursuit of a dream just as impossible.

A man emerged from the palace gateway leading a saddled horse, a sturdy bay mare with a white blaze and two white socks. She took the reins, thanked him politely, and went on her way.

AS the deacon had promised, the road ran straight east through the Bretwald. Birds trilled from the branches. A doe and half-grown twin fawns trotted into view and as quickly vanished into the foliage. She heard the grunt of a boar. She peered into the depths beyond the scar that was the road. Trees marched out on all sides into unknowable and impenetrable wilderness. The scent of growing lay over everything as heavily as spices at the king's feasting table. Like a rich mead, she could almost taste it simply by breathing it in.

But she could no longer ride through the deep forest without looking over her shoulder. She could not forget the diamone that had stalked her, or the creature of bells. She could not forget the elfshot that had killed her horse this past spring, although that pursuit had taken place in a different forest than this one. Yet surely all forests were only pieces of the same great and ancient forest. She had traveled enough to know that the wild places on earth were of far greater extent than those lands tamed by human hands.

There.

An aurochs bolted through the distant trees. Its curving horns caught a stray glance of sunlight, vivid, disturbing, and then it was gone. The noise of its passage faded into the heavier silence of the forest, which was not a true silence at all but rather woven of a hundred tiny sounds that blended so seamlessly as to make of themselves that kind of silence which has forgotten, or does not know of or care about, the chatter of human enterprise.

As the last rustle of the aurochs' passing faded, Liath heard, quite clearly, the clop of hooves behind her. She swung round in her saddle but could see nothing. What if it were Hugh?

Ai, Lady! That bastard Hugh had no reason to follow her. He would wait in the safety of the king's progress because he knew she had to return to the king. She had no freedom of her own to choose where she went and how she lived; she was a mere Eagle living on the sufferance of the king, and that was all and everything she had, her only safety, her only kin.

"Except Sanglant," she whispered. If she said his name too loudly, would she wake herself up from a long and almost painful dream and find the prince still dead at Gent and herself sobbing by a dying fire?

The sound of hooves faded as a wind came up, stirring the upper branches into movement punctuated by the eruption into flight of a dozen noisy wood pigeons. That suddenly, she saw a flash of red far back in the dim corridor of the road. At once she slipped her bow free of its quiver and drew an arrow to rest loosely along the curve of the bow.

A branch snapped to her left and she started 'round, but nothing showed itself in the thickets. What use was running, anyway? She and Da had scuttled from shadow to shadow, but in the end his enemies had caught them.

She reined up her horse and peered into every thicket and out along an unexpected vista of tree trunks marching away into shadow like so many pillars lining the aisles of a cathedral. Nothing. What approached came from the road. And she heard no tolling of bells.

Yet her face was flushed and she was sweating. She nocked her arrow and waited. A King's Eagle expected respect and safe passage. She had endured so much, she
had
escaped from Hugh twice.

She was strong enough to face down this enemy.

As the rider came clear of the shadow of the trees, she drew down on a figure dressed in ordinary clothing marked only by a gray cloak trimmed with scarlet. A familiar badge winked at his throat.

"Wolfhere!"

He laughed and, when he came close enough, called to her. "I'll thank you not to look quite so intimidating with that arrow aimed at my heart."

Startled, she lowered the bow. "Wolfhere!" she repeated, too dumbfounded to say anything else.

"I had hoped to catch you before nightfall." He reined in beside her. "No one likes to pass through the forest alone." He rode a surly-looking gelding. Her own mare, sensing trouble, gave a nip to the gelding's hindquarters to let it know at once which of them took precedence.

"You've ridden all the way from Darre," she said stupidly, still too amazed to think.

"That I have," he agreed mildly. He pressed his gelding forward into a walk and Liath rode beside him.

"It took Hanna months to track down the king, and it's only the twenty-fifth day of Quadrii."

"That it is, the feast day of St. Placidana, she who brought the Circle of Unities to the goblinkin of the Harenz Mountains." She saw immediately that he was trying not to smile.

"But you know perfectly well that no passes over the Alfar Mountains are clear until early summer. How did you get to Weraushausen so quickly?"