The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  Sapientia had got so red that she looked fit to swoon, but Sanglant laughed curtly, laying a steadying hand on her arm. “If that is to be our welcome, Heribert, then I pray you let her exalted ladyship know our response.” A eunuch bowed before him, offering him more wine, but he waved him away. “My father did not invade Aosta. The embattled citizens begged him to save them from murderers and bandits. The rightful queen was assaulted in her own palace by usurpers, so it came to my father to restore to her what had been stolen from her by rebels and traitors. Your most exalted emperor would have done the same thing to lords who had sworn fealty to him and then revolted against him. Furthermore, it is well known that all of Aosta once knelt before the Emperor Taillefer, whose greatness is known even into the east. It is only in later years that it came under the hand of the east. The folk of the south speak the same language as those of the north. They belong as one kingdom, not sundered into many.”

  The Most Exalted Lady Eudokia raised her thick eyebrows. She had rouge-reddened cheeks, not enough to disguise her age, but her hands were as soft and white as a girl’s, as though she had done nothing more strenuous in her life than dip them in rose-scented baths.

  “With what force of ships will your master defend the south?” she asked through Heribert. “Last year he rode south from Darre with his wife and all his army, his Wendish and his Varrens, with Aostans and Karronish, yet he could not take one small city. His soldiers are gluttons and drunks. They run from mice. What will they do when my cousin the Most Just and Holy Emperor sends troops against your master to take back what he has stolen?”

  “Well, then, you shall see the worth of Wendish soldiers, will you not? I have fully eight hundred of good, tried soldiers at my back, encamped outside the city. We will willingly take the field against your own troops if you are impatient to test our strength.”

  She gestured to her servants, who hurried forward with a platter of peeled grapes. She chose among them, popping the most succulent into her mouth. As she chewed, her cunning gaze flicked from Sanglant to Sapientia and back again. No wind stirred the arbor except that created by the slaves, who were dripping with sweat. The heat was bearable mostly because he was not moving. Oddly enough, his irritation with his host’s arrogance made him patient, although Sapientia shifted restlessly, gulping at the wine and then wincing at its wicked bite.

  “Let me speak bluntly.” Lady Eudokia waited for Heribert to translate before she went on. “Why are you here? If you had wanted another princess for your master, you would have traveled to Arethousa, for it is only the Most Just and Holy Emperor who can dispose of his cousins and sisters and daughters. In any case, it is well known that your master married the Aostan widow. I have not heard that your people follow the idolatrous Jinna custom of marrying more than one spouse at a time, or is it possible that you are still as barbaric as the Ungrians?”

  Captain Istvan snorted audibly, but said nothing.

  “Perhaps it is you who wish a princess for your own bed,” she went on, confronting Sanglant with her gaze but still refusing to use his name or dignify him with any kind of title.

  “I am already married,” he said sweetly, “or else surely I would ask for your hand in marriage, Lady Eudokia.”

  Was that amusement or anger that made her lips twitch? She beckoned for the servant and ate another dozen grapes before indicating that the man should offer the platter to her guests. Sapientia ate eagerly, but Sanglant waved him away.

  “Then what brings you here? Have you come to embrace the true faith and cast aside the apostate heresy that the Dariyan clerics preach?”

  “Outrageous!” exclaimed Sapientia, a grape poised before her lips.

  “Do you not suppose,” Sanglant murmured, “that there stand among the servants one who can understand Wendish? Do not be incautious.”

  “Oh!” She studied the attendant servants as if she could puzzle out their linguistic skills simply by the cut of their faces.

  “How do I respond, my lord prince?” asked Heribert.

  “Say this, Heribert.” Battling with wits he found himself nervous, palms damp. He smoothed his tunic over his thighs, the movement draining off a sliver of his tension, and continued. “Most Exalted Lady Eudokia. What do you know of sorcery?”

  Sapientia turned to him, startled, and grasped his wrist, but Eudokia, amazingly, chuckled. She clapped her plump hands. A eunuch bowed before her while she whispered into his ear. He left the arbor by a side door.

  They waited in silence while the servants brought around grapes, figs, and sliced apples, still moist. Sanglant touched nothing. A sense of foreboding crept along his spine like the brush of venomous fingers. He shifted, marking Lady Bertha and seeing that she, too, sat erect, watchful, ready, as did Captain Istvan. The Eagle, Hathui, dipped her chin to show that she was alert. Sapientia nibbled anxiously on grapes, frowning between bites.

  The eunuchs returned. One waited in the corner while the other knelt before Lady Eudokia, pale golden robes rustling into folds around him. He held a lidded ceramic pot. Lady Eudokia began to hum, slipping sideways into a wordless chant, as she removed the lid and slowly lowered her hand into the pot. Was that a bead of sweat on the eunuch’s face, trickling alongside his nose? Probably it was only the heat.

  “God Above!” whispered Sapientia, hand tightening on Sanglant’s wrist as Lady Eudokia removed her hand from the pot.

  A banded asp twisted upward to encircle her wrist. It reared its head back, hood flaring, and struck the hapless eunuch on the forearm.

  Sapientia gasped. One of the lordlings shrieked.

  The pot slipped from the servant’s hands and shattered on the floor, shards scattering everywhere. He cried out, choking, as he slapped a hand over the bite, but already the flesh swelled horribly, a red mortification creeping onto the offended hand. Lady Bertha and Captain Istvan leaped to their feet, but Sanglant raised a hand to caution them, and they paused with knives half drawn, unwilling to sit down again but respecting Sanglant’s command.

  One of the other eunuchs hurried over with an uncovered pot into which Lady Eudokia gently deposited the writhing snake. He clapped a lid over it and placed the pot on the floor beside the stricken man, who was gasping for breath as a drop of blood squeezed out of his right eye. The noise of his labored breathing and his whimpering moans was the only sound in the arbor except for the wheeze of the bellows worked by the slaves. The sleeve of his robe, covering the bitten arm, had gone tight because of swelling flesh.

  “Basil.” The green-robed eunuch padded forward and offered Lady Eudokia a gold cup and a shallow bowl filled with fragrant herbs. She took hold of the stem in her right hand and with her left sprinkled crushed herbs into the cup while muttering all the while words whose meaning Sanglant did not understand.

  “Beroush. Beroush … keddish gedoul.” She switched into the familiar cadences of Arethousan, and Heribert bent down to whisper a translation.

  “I invoke and beseech you, in the name of the seven blessed angels, in the name of the blessed Daisan who rebuked the poisonous serpents, let this become a cup of healing and cleansing, let the one who drinks from it be cured of poison. I adjure you, holy one, nameless one. Quickly! Quickly!”

  The stricken eunuch collapsed onto his back, clawing at his throat as beads of blood dripped out of the side of his mouth. His arm had grown to monstrous proportions, swollen all the way to the shoulder, and his face, too, had begun to swell. Sanglant had never seen poison work so fast.

  Basil knelt beside his fellow eunuch and captured his head between his hands, prying his teeth open so Lady Eudokia could let droplets fall into the man’s mouth. He thrashed weakly, fading, as blood leaked from his eyes like tears. Stilled, and went limp.

  “He’s dead,” whispered Sapientia.

  “No,” said Sanglant. “He is still breathing.”

  Lady Eudokia poured the rest of the wine into her servant’s slack mouth, although most of it slipped down his cheeks to stream away along th
e cracks in the flagstones. Already his face looked less swollen, and the wine had washed away the last of the blood, red drowning red.

  “Sorcery,” said Lady Bertha. “Look at his hand.”

  “Sorcery,” said Lady Eudokia, although it wasn’t clear if she were responding to Bertha’s comment. Heribert kept up a running translation. “I am familiar with sorcery, son of Henry. It runs in the blood of the women of my house, but we do not spend it unwisely, because sorcery exacts other costs, not so evident to you now but dangerous just the same. Is it sorcery you have come for?”

  “You are not alone in commanding sorcery, Most Exalted Lady. Not every person who wields such powers uses them wisely, or well, or to the advantage of humankind.”

  “An odd notion, Prince Sanglant. I use sorcery to the advantage of my family. Why should I use it to benefit others, who might be my enemies? Have you come to seek help from me against your barbarian magi? I will not interfere in quarrels that are beneath my notice.”

  “What if this one is not beneath your notice? Sorcery can be harnessed in many ways. Its effects can cause tremors far beyond its point of origin. Do you know of the ones we call the mathematici, who weave threads of starlight into crowns formed of stone?”

  Her color changed. Like the man bitten by the snake, her skin flushed and a tremor passed through her body. She dropped the cup, which landed squarely on the body of the prone eunuch before rolling off his chest to ring as it struck stone. The bitten eunuch groaned and sat up, rubbing his arm.

  A door opened and closed, and a young eunuch in gold robes hurried in to whisper a message into Basil’s ear. Basil, in turn, bent down to speak to the lady. Her color restored, she nodded and spoke a command.

  “Go, now.” Basil’s green robes flared as he stepped away from the couch. “A suite has been made ready. You can retire there. We will call you when it is time to dine.”

  “But—” Sapientia rose.

  “Nay, Sister, let us do as we are bid. The army should be safely settled in by now, with a market close at hand. We must be patient.”

  “It could be a trap!” she muttered.

  He bent close, to whisper in her ear. “I think we can fight our way free of a palace protected by slippered eunuchs.”

  “Bayan never insulted the worth of the Arethousan legions. He fought them once. Have you?”

  Stung, Sanglant turned away from her and walked after the eunuch. The others followed obediently, murmuring together.

  Basil showed them into two adjoining rooms which opened onto a porch looking over a sere garden. A fountain burbled merrily out in the sun. The spray made rainbows, quickly wicked away. A bed of rosemary was the only ornament; other plots of earth lay barren.

  Within the suite a small group of attendants loitered and with gestures offered to bathe their hands and feet, to set up a chessboard, to settle them on divans piled with pillows so that they could rest. Silken tapestries graced the walls, depicting scenes of elaborate feasts and girls picking flowers.

  “What do you make of it?” Heribert asked.

  “My sister, or these handsome rooms?”

  Heribert raised an eyebrow, wickedly, but shook his head. “Which man was bitten by the snake?” he asked. “Nay, I refer to the Most Exalted Lady Eudokia.”

  “I expect that the walls, and the servants, have ears. If I were the master of this house, I would make sure that at least one among these attendants could speak Wendish.”

  He sat down on one of the couches, stretching out amongst the pillows, yawning. All that sun, riding up to the palace, had made him tired, and he did not plot intrigue well when he was tired. It was easier to fight.

  He dozed fitfully, waking frequently while around him his retinue talked quietly among themselves or napped. Breschius played chess with Lady Bertha. Sapientia snored softly. Flashes of dream brightened and faded as he twisted in and out of sleep. Liath weaving light among standing stones. Severed threads curling and writhing like beheaded snakes, like the serpent winding its way up Eudokia’s wrist. Bells. An arrow flowering into flame. Bayan, dead, and Sapientia walking in chains, a prisoner. Who had done this to her?

  He started awake, troubled and restless, and this time got to his feet. Walking outside, he staggered when he hit the sunlight; in the shady arbor, he had forgotten its strength. Hathui strolled up beside him.

  “By the fountain we are surely safe from listening ears, my lord prince.”

  The fountain’s spray beckoned. He sat on the lip of the fountain and let the cooling mist float over him, beads collecting on his neck, sliding under the heavy torque, moistening his lips and hands. Hathui followed, shading her eyes with an arm. The rest of them prudently waited in the shade, watching him—or still sleeping away the heat of the day.

  “Do you think she knows of the Seven Sleepers?” Hathui asked once she stood within the corona of the fountain’s noisy spray. “Or is in league with them?”

  “I don’t know. The church condemned the mathematici a hundred years ago. I do not know if the Arethousan patriarch did the same. Perhaps Brother Breschius knows. I suppose it will be difficult to tease out the truth.”

  “Do you think the asp was really poisonous?”

  He laughed. “It seemed poisonous enough to me. Just as well I left my daughter back at the fort for safekeeping, since she would insist on handling the serpent herself. The question we must ask is whether it was magic, or herb-craft, that saved the eunuch. We cannot trust the Arethousans, nor should we try to bring them into affairs they are better left out of. If it’s true that my father wars against their agents and vassals in southern Aosta, then they will either seek to hinder us in order to harm him, or they will help us hoping to weaken him.”

  “You would rather trust to barbarians and pagans, my lord prince? To these Kerayit that Brother Breschius speaks of?”

  “They have less to gain whether we succeed or fail, do they not?”

  “Yet how do we find them?”

  “How do we find them?” he echoed. “Or am I simply a fool to think I can pit myself against Anne?”

  “Someone must, my lord prince. Do not forget your father, the king.”

  Here in the courtyard, open to the air, he heard noises from the town, a stallion’s defiant trumpeting, the rumble of cartwheels along cobbles, a man shouting.

  He smiled grimly. “Nay, I do not forget him. Am I not his obedient son?”

  “Alas, my lord prince, not always.”

  He grinned as he looked up at her, delighted by her deadpan expression and the lift of her eyebrows. “It is no wonder that my father trusted you, Eagle.”

  “Nor have I ever betrayed that trust. Nor do I mean to do so now.”

  “Still, you sought me out.”

  “Because I believe that you are the only one who can save King Henry—”

  A shout disturbed the drowsy afternoon. Feet clattered on stone in counterpoint to cries and objections. He jumped to his feet and called out to the others just as the door into the suite was thrown open and a soldier thrust inside as if on the points of spears.

  “My lord prince!” The man was too short of breath to croak out more than the title. “Prince Sanglant!”

  “Here I am.” Sanglant strode into the shadow of the whitewashed porch. “What is it, Malbert?”

  “Your Grace!” The eunuch Basil shoved past Malbert with a furious expression. His Wendish was startlingly fluent.

  “This man invaded the sanctuary of the palace. He injured one of my—”

  “I beg you, silence!”

  The eunuch faltered, mouth working, face a study in contempt and insulted dignity. But he kept quiet.

  “Malbert?”

  The soldier still breathed hard. “My lord prince,” he gasped, fighting for air. “Your daughter—is missing.”

  3

  ZACHARIAS was too terrified to move as the stallion gathered itself to bolt. The groom edged down the gangplank. Wolfhere shoved at the backs of the sailors who, like t
he rest of the crowd, backed away fearfully to give the frightened horse room. Only Blessing stood her ground.

  “Brother Lupus!” The cleric appeared out of the crowd and grasped Wolfhere by the shoulder. “I thought I might find you tracking Prince Sanglant as well. Come. We must hasten.”

  “Now is not the time!” Wolfhere pulled free of the cleric, not difficult since he stood half a head taller and had the build of a man who has spent his life in the saddle, not in court.

  “My God.” The other man looked beyond him as the sailors shrank away, leaving a gap between which one could see the tableau, stallion poised, girl motionless. “Is that the child, grown so large? I had thought her no more than three. Or is this another bastard child belonging to the prince?”

  The stallion danced sideways, tossing its head. The groom reached the base of the plank.

  “No time to waste,” murmured the cleric.

  Something about the way he tilted up his chin and squinted his eyes skyward triggered a cascade of memories. Something about the way he lifted his left hand, as if giving a benediction or a command, spilled recognition into plain sight.

  Zacharias had seen him before. He was one of those who had remained in the valley after Kansi-a-lari defeated the sorcerers. He was one of the Seven Sleepers.

  As was Wolfhere.

  Light flashed around the cleric’s head. The sky darkened as a cloud scudded in to cover the sun, and that same wisp of light caressed Zacharias’ neck before flitting on to twist across the sprawl of bodies. It tangled within the mane of the restive stallion curling around its ears. Was he hallucinating? The stallion snorted and backed so hard into the groom that the poor man tumbled off the wharf and fell with a shriek and a splash into the filthy water.

  Blessing took another step forward. The stallion reared, trumpeting.

  Zacharias could not shift his feet. Wolfhere thrust past the men blocking his way and sprinted to her, bearing her bodily into the safety of the crowd as Blessing shouted in protest and kicked him. The cleric turned.