PROLOGUE (21 page)

A year ago, Ivar would have dismissed all these concerns with a wave of the hand and with grandiose plans that came to nothing. But he was older now, and he had, amazingly, learned something.

"All right, then," he said, as calmly as he could, for she was still leaning against him. "You will marry no man but me."

She gave a caught-in laugh, more a sob perhaps. "I could never have married
him.
If not him, then you, because I can trust you." But she said it wistfully, as if she still mourned that other man whose name she dared not utter out loud.

Ivar felt he might float, he was so happy. She
trusted
him.

In time, he thought, she would forget the other man. In tune she would love Ivar alone and only remember as a kind of hazy dream that she had spoken so about another man, a dead man. A dead man was no rival to a living one. And, because he had learned, for the first time he
thought
rather than acted impulsively. She was kinless, so needed kin, clan, family. There was Hugh to deal with; but Ivar
wanted
his revenge on Hugh, and he understood Hugh well enough to know that if Ivar had Liath, then, sooner or later, Hugh would appear. There remained only how to get out of the monastery. He must find a way to escape. But this would take planning.

"It will take time," he said at last and with reluctance. "Will you wait for me?"

She smiled sadly. "I will stay an Eagle. That much I can promise you. They are my kin now."

"Hush," he said suddenly, pressing her away from him. A rustling more like mice than wind sounded from the hidden corner of the room. "Who's there?" Ivar demanded.

She came out quietly from behind a row of cabinets. It took Ivar a few moments to recognize her in the dim room, and then his mouth dropped open in astonishment.

"Are you my sister Rosvita?" he demanded.

"Ai, Lady," swore Liath. She jerked away from him.

"Yes, Ivar." As soon as the cleric spoke, he knew it for truth. "My brother," she continued, expression bland and eyes bright with
—laughter? anger? He did not know her to be able to judge. "My brother novice," she went on, gesturing toward his coarse brown robe, "this is most irregular. I will have to report you to Mother Scholastica."

But at those words, Ivar exulted. "Very well," he said, drawing himself up. "I will go willingly." Brought to Mother Scholastica's notice for the sin of consorting with a woman, surely
—
surely
—the mother abbess would throw him out of Quedlinhame once and for all time.

It was a serious enough offense that Ivar had only to wait through Sext, the midday prayers, kneeling like a penitent on the flagstone floor in front of Mother Scholastica's empty and thereby imposing chair, before the door opened behind him and the abbess entered her study. Rosvita walked with her. Ivar could not read his sister's expression. He wished he knew her, so that he might guess what she had told the abbess, might guess whether Rosvita was sympathetic or hostile to his cause. But he did not know and dared not guess.

"I gave you no leave to look up, Brother Ivar," said Mother Scholastica.

He flinched and dropped his gaze, watched feet shift, a dance whose measure and steps he could not follow. To his horror, Rosvita retreated from the room to leave him alone with the formidable abbess. He clenched his hands together, wrapping the fingers tightly around each other, and bit down on his lower lip for courage. His knees hurt. There was a carpet, but he had been strictly enjoined not to kneel upon anything that would soften his penance.

Mother Scholastica sat down in her chair. For a long while, though he dared not look up, he knew she studied him. A knob, an uneven hump in the stone, dug into his right knee. It was so painful he thought he would cry, but he was afraid to utter any complaint.

She rules with a rein of iron,
so they all said. She was the king's younger sister. Why had he ever ever thought, in that wild liberating moment in the library, that he could face her down?

She cleared her throat as a prelude to speaking. "In our experience," she said, "when the king visits Quedlinhame with his court, there runs in his wake like the wash of a boat on the waters a shiver of restlessness through those of the novices and some few of the brothers and sisters who are not at that moment content in their vows. Always a few, seduced by the bright colors and the panoply and the excitement, mourn their loss of the world and seek to follow the king. It is our duty to rescue these fragile souls from their folly, for it is a fleeting temptation, dangerous but not, I think, unforeseeable." "But I never wanted
—
^:

"I did not yet give you leave to speak, Brother Ivar." He hunched down, nails biting into knuckles. She did not have to raise her voice to make him feel humiliated and terrified.

"But I do mean to give you leave to speak. We are not barbarians, like the Eika or the Quman riders, to enslave you for no cause but our own earthly enrichment. It is your soul we care for, Ivar. Your soul we have been given charge of. That is a heavy burden and a heavy responsibility." She paused.
"Now
you may speak, Brother."

Given leave to speak, he also took the chance to shift his right knee off the digging knob of rock. Then he took a breath. Once begun, he could not hide his passion. "I don't want to be here! Let me go with the king. Let me be a Dragon
—"

"The Dragons are destroyed."

"Destroyed?" The news shook him out of his single-minded fury.

"They were overwhelmed by a force of Eika, at Gent."

Destroyed.
Trying to make sense of this, he looked up at her. He had never actually seen Mother Scholastica from this close before; only the rare novice, like Sigfrid, came into contact with the abbess. She had a handsome face, her hair tucked away inside a plain linen scarf draped and folded over her head and twisting in neat lines down over her shoulders. She wore dark blue robes to distinguish her from the other nuns, a gold Circle of Unity studded with gems on a gold chain that hung halfway down her chest, and the golden torque that signified her royal kinship around her neck. Her gaze remained cool; she was not one bit flustered by this meeting or by the circumstances which had brought him here. He had a sudden, awful notion that she had judged many a boy or girl whose complaint was similar to his.

He would not let himself be overawed by her consequence! He was also the son of noble parents, if not of a king. "Then
—then they'll need more Dragons," he blurted out. "Let me go, please. Let me serve the king." "It is not my decision to make."

"How can you stop me if I refuse to take vows as a monk when my novitiate is ended?" he demanded.

She raised an eyebrow. "You have already pledged yourself to enter the church, an oath spoken outside these gates."

"I had no choice!"

"You spoke the words. I did not speak them for you." "Is a vow sworn under compulsion valid?" "Did I or any other hold a sword to your throat?
You
swore the vow." "But
—"

"And," she said, lifting a hand for silence
—a hand that bore two handsome rings, one plain burnished gold braid, the other a fine opal in a gold setting, "your father has pledged a handsome dowry to accompany you. We do not betroth ourselves lightly, neither to a partner in marriage—" He winced as she paused. Her gaze was keen and unrelenting. "—nor to the church. If a vow can be as easily broken as a feather can be snapped in two—" She lifted a quill made from an owl feather from her table, displaying it to him. "—then how can we any of us trust the other?" She set down the feather. "Our oaths are what make us honor
‍
able people. What man or woman who has forsworn his noble lord or lady can ever be trusted again?
You
swore your promise to Our Lady and Lord. Do you mean to forswear that oath and live outside the church for the rest of your days?"

Said thus, it all sounded so much more serious. No man or woman who made a vow and then broke it was worthy of honor. His knees ached; his back hurt. His hood had slipped back, and the hem of his robe had doubled up under his left calf to press annoyingly into the flesh.

"No. I
—" He faltered. Had he actually imagined scant hours ago that he could get the better in a debate with Mother Scholastica?

"Why now, Ivar?" She, too, shifted in her chair, as if her back hurt
her,
and for one uncharitable moment he hoped it did. "You are a good boy and never rebellious, never like this.
Was
it the king's arrival?"

He flushed. Of course she must already know.

"You are tempted by the presence of so many women who are not bound by vows," she went on, as if toying with him, though her voice remained level and her expression clear and calm. "Do not be ashamed to admit such to me, Ivar. I understand that we who pledge ourselves to the church have to battle the temptations of the flesh in order to make ourselves worthy. Those who remain in the world do their part as well, but theirs is a different path. We in the church strive to set the darkness behind us, to make of ourselves an immaculate chamber, to set aside the taint of darkness that lies within each of us, that is part of each of us. For did the blessed Daisan not preach that although we are bound by our nature, God's goodness to humankind was in giving us liberty?"

" 'Keep clear of all that is evil,' " responded Ivar dutifully, for these sayings had been drilled into the novices, " 'which we would not wish to befall ourselves.'''

"Good is natural to us, Ivar. We are glad when we act rightly. As the blessed Daisan said, 'Evil is the work of the Enemy, and therefore we do those evil things when we are not masters of ourselves.'"'

"But
—but I don't want
this
path. Not this one. I want—"

"Can you be sure?"

"It isn't
women
—it isn't just any—"

"One
woman?"

He betrayed himself, but surely that did not matter. She already knew. He caught in his breath abruptly, a stab of pain in his lungs. What had happened to Liath? What if she was thrown out of the Eagles?

"A woman who traveled with the king's progress," continued Mother Scholastica in that same emotionless voice. Not emotionless, no
—she spoke without being torn by emotion, without the violent feelings that ripped him apart from within.

Ai, Lord. The memory of embracing Liath
—even in the stink of the privies . . .

"This, too, will pass, Ivar. I have seen it happen so many times."

"Never!" He leaped to his feet. "I will always love her! Always! I loved her before I came here, and I will never stop loving her. I promised I would marry her
—"

"Ivar. I beg you, take hold of yourself and remember dignity."

Panting with anger and frustration, he knelt again.

"As the blessed Daisan said, 'For desire is a different thing from love, and friendship something else than joining together with evil intent. We ought to realize without difficulty that false love is called lust and that even if it gives temporary peace, there is a world of difference between that and true love, whose peace lasts till the end of days, suffering neither trouble nor loss.' "

He could not speak. He stared fixedly at one of the paned windows which let light into the study. A branch scraped the glass as it swayed in a rising wind, and the last remaining leaf dangled precariously, ready to fall.

"You must have your father's permission to marry. Do you?"

There was no need to answer. He wanted to cry with shame. None of this had gone as he had planned.

"Do not think I take this lightly, child," she said. He risked a glance up, for a certain note of compassion had surfaced in her tone. She did indeed have an expression on her face that he could almost call sympathetic. "I can see you are firm in your resolve and passionate in your attachment. But I am not free to let you go. You were given into my care by your father and your kin, you spoke your vows
—willingly, I thought—and were taken into this monastery. It would be unwise of me to let every young person walk free at each least impulse toward the world."

"This isn't an
impulse!"

She lifted her ringed hand for silence. "Perhaps not. If it is not an impulse, as you claim, then time will not dull it. I will send a message to your father, and you will wait for his reply. What you propose is not an undertaking to be entered into lightly, just as we should not any of us enter into the church lightly." By this mild rebuke she scolded him. "There remains also the young woman to be considered. Who is she? She has a name, I have discovered
—an unusual name, Arethousan. Who are her kin?"