The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  With these assurances to strengthen her, she was able to tell her story, careful to let no hint of her anger at Anne color her words. Hugh was surely well placed in Anne’s councils by now; she could only guess at his loyalties.

  “So you are free, after two years in captivity,” he said wonderingly, laughing. “In exchange for Sister Rosvita, it seems. A clever irony.”

  “Was Rosvita also a captive?”

  “She was. She …” He frowned as he glanced toward the stone circle, mostly hidden by the pinnacles that surrounded them. “She discovered things too dangerous for her to know. Holy Mother Anne, Queen Adelheid, and myself had to take action to help King Henry, who came under the influence of bad advisers, Rosvita among them.”

  The comment surprised her. Antonia had never hesitated to dispose of those who threatened her. “You did not simply eliminate her?”

  His smile would have broken the heart of any maid, soft and sad as that of a gentle lover thwarted in his plans by the arrival of a nobler suitor. “You are a woman, Sister Venia, and thereby fashioned out of stronger metal. I am sentimental, as men are. I admire Sister Rosvita too much to deal so arbitrarily with her. I had hoped for another solution.”

  She did not believe him, but the words sounded nice. He knew how to evoke sympathy while hiding his true motives.

  “A solution may yet be offered to those who are both patient and pure of heart, Father Hugh.”

  He laughed again, sweetly this time. “I fear I am not pure of heart, Sister Venia. I struggle with temptation as does every human soul.”

  No need to remind him of her own virtue; it usually irritated people, none of whom liked to be reminded of the select few upon whom God had showered Their favor.

  He hesitated before speaking again, this time with an odd tremor in his voice. “Tell me what else you recall of this fiery daimone borne up on wings of flame. How is it she banished the galla? By what signs were you sure it was a woman?”

  She had not forgotten what drove him. A man’s weaknesses were the harness under which he could be put to work.

  “I saw her only through what senses are granted to the galla, who come from another plane of existence. She was bright and powerful, most certainly a woman. You must not doubt me.”

  “I do not. Yet did she speak?”

  “If she spoke, I could not hear her. Yet Mother Obligatia spoke, when she saw her.”

  “The abbess also saw this apparition?”

  “Indeed she did. She recognized her.” “Recognized her?”

  “She called her ‘Bernard’ before realizing her mistake, that it was no man who stood before her but rather a creature with a woman’s form.”

  “Bernard,” he mused. “But of course there was a striking resemblance between father and daughter. Yet if that is true, then how—?”

  “You are puzzled by something, Brother Hugh.”

  He started as might a child who looks up to find himself discovered in the midst of secret mischief. “Nay, Sister. I am only wondering whether I seek a mule or a hinny.”

  She chuckled. “You are speaking of Liath. Do you suspect that she is not in truth Anne’s child?”

  Turning, he looked away as though to hide his face and what it might reveal, but when he turned back his expression remained bland, veiled. Only a certain tightening of the skin about his eyes betrayed his intense interest. “It is difficult to know what to think.”

  “The world is full of mysteries,” she agreed, watching him closely. “I trust that Anne will reward her supporters with that which they desire most, whatever my own feelings. Or at least, were I in her position, it is what I would do.”

  “Would you?”

  “Oh, I would. God reward us all in the end with that we desire most. It is the fate of most people not to understand their desire until they have been swept into the Abyss—but upon reflection they can see that their entire lives were simply one long dialogue with the evil inclination. Yet there are a few who remain clear-sighted and who serve God and receive what they deserve in the end.”

  “We must all hope to ascend to the Chamber of Light,” he said with a pious nod, “else we will suffer eternity with God’s face turned away from us.”

  “Is that what you wish, Father Hugh?”

  He trembled. The movement was slight but noticeable to a woman so long immured in the pit that she had come to rely on hearing, touch, and breath to capture any nuance of life and being around her.

  “Or would you risk everything only to possess her?”

  He could not answer.

  She smiled and rested a comforting hand on his fists where they were clenched in his lap. With his gaze lowered humbly, he displayed his profile to advantage; even in the shade his hair shone as though the sunlight were caught in it. It was difficult to imagine how any young woman could resist him.

  “Anne will never give her to you. But I will.”

  He flushed, but he did not look up at her. “That is a bold promise. How do you capture a woman who is only half humankind? How do you intend to defy Anne?”

  “Anne need not know that I still live. If she believes that I died here, then she has no reason to guard herself against me. I mean no harm to Anne. She has set herself a great and worthy task. There is no one else who can accomplish it except her—”

  “And those who aid her, the Seven Sleepers. Of whom you are, or were, once a part.”

  “It is true I learned much during my time among the Seven Sleepers. I also learned that when they weave a powerful spell, the weakest among them dies. The spell exacts its price for the power they draw down.”

  That she had startled him was obvious from the way he looked at her, leaned forward with hands pressing on the rock. Evidently he had never considered this striking and unfortunate possibility. “Is this true? The cauda draconis is struck dead?”

  “I have suffered in the pit for two years, Father Hugh, but those two years have given me time to ponder much that mystified me before. Surely I will be accounted weakest among the Seven Sleepers now. Anne gathers and manipulates the power of the sorceries we weave, but she does not risk herself. That is why she needs a cauda draconis, although in truth I proved stronger than she expected, I suppose, since it was poor foolish Zoë who died.”

  “Are you not willing to die in order to enact God’s will on Earth?”

  “Certainly I am. But I am not convinced that Holy Mother Anne knows everything, that she knows or understands all of God’s will. I come of royal stock in my own right. I served faithfully as biscop in the north before I was myself betrayed and cast aside. I have certain magics of my own and, as I said, I have been granted a very long time to meditate, pray, and think.”

  She smiled as he settled back. She had set wheels turning, made promises, exposed herself. He would now, of course, feel that he stood in a stronger position than she did, and that would make him reckless.

  “So you see, Father Hugh, I am at your mercy now. You may arrest me for disloyalty and turn me over to Anne, thus insinuating yourself into her good graces.”

  He was too elegant and well bred to protest that such a deed would be beneath him. The presbyters in the service of the skopos bought, sold, and betrayed each other at every opportunity in order to curry favor or gain a better position within the skopos’ court.

  “Or you can escort me elsewhere, somewhere isolated but civilized, where I might recuperate.”

  “Anne is a powerful sorcerer,” he objected. “She could obliterate either of us should her anger be turned against us. Indeed, she might at this very moment be spying upon us, since she has mastered the Eagle’s Sight.”

  Antonia drew an amulet, now withered and fragile, out from under her tattered and filthy robe. “If you have not protected yourself against farseeing, Father Hugh, then you are not as wise as you seem.”

  He touched a hand to his chest but revealed nothing. “Or I might encourage you, Sister Venia, and escort you to a private villa where you can recover your s
trength—only to turn you over to Anne later, when it serves my cause best.”

  “So you might. But I think that Anne will never give you Liath, and I think Liath is what you most desire.”

  Feet scraped on pebbles as one of the soldiers approached, pausing out of earshot. He inclined his head obediently as he waited to be beckoned forward.

  “What is it, Gerbert?” Hugh asked genially.

  “The boys have found a way through to the old convent, my lord. We need not climb back the way we came but can descend by way of the ladders they have on the other side.”

  “And the convent?”

  “Deserted, my lord. No one has lived there for a long time. It seems everyone fled, or has died. There were bones.”

  Hugh rose. “Pray bring four men and a chair or pallet on which to carry Sister Venia. I will investigate the convent myself, but I think it likely we will leave tomorrow. Have Cook prepare broth and porridge for our guest, something gentle on the stomach.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The man departed.

  Hugh did not sit down. He seemed pensive, even unsure. He was tempted but fearful, avaricious but restrained by caution, like a half grown colt deciding whether to bolt through the open gate of its familiar corral for the wide open woodland beyond.

  The rising sun had altered the shadows, and light began to creep up the stone on which she sat. Her eyes still hurt, but the pain was becoming bearable, slowly receding.

  “I know a place,” Hugh said at last, and offered her his hand.

  XIV

  THE APPROACHING STORM

  1

  IN the Kerayit language, Breschius told him, there were multiple words for the manifold gradations of cold. Not cold enough to freeze broth. Lambs must be covered cold. So cold that bronze water jars burst.

  Cold enough to turn dragon’s fire to ice.

  It was now cold enough to freeze piss, Sanglant reflected as he staggered back into the frail shelter of his tent. With three lit braziers set around the walls, the inside of the tent had warmed just enough that he could peel off the bulky furs that did not keep him warm outside. Malbert hung the furs from the cross braces. The prince was still bundled in the clothing that he would normally wear outside in the Wendish winter. His face ached from the cold blast.

  “How do these people endure it?” he demanded of the two dozen people crammed shivering in the tent.

  “I’m not cold,” said Blessing. “Come see the letters I wrote, Papa. I hope you like them.” She sat cross-legged on a feather bed on the opposite side of the tent and, indeed, wore nothing more than an ordinary wool tunic with her cloak thrown casually over her legs. Heribert knelt beside her. Fingers white with cold, he picked up the wax tablet on which he was teaching her to form letters.

  “My lord prince.” A woman dressed in the fashion of the Quman slaves stepped out of the crowd, dropping to one knee. “Her Most Glorious Highness, Princess Sapientia, commands that you attend her. At once.”

  The thought of going back out into the cold was enough to make a strong man weep with frustration, nor did he like the tone that Sapientia, after months on the road in the company of the Pechanek Quman, was taking with him. But this was no time to pick petty fights.

  He gestured for Malbert to help him back on with the furs. “Hathui. Breschius.”

  Frater and Eagle bundled themselves up, and Hathui grabbed a lantern.

  “What about my letters? Aren’t you going to look at my letters!”

  “I will tomorrow, little one.”

  “I want to go!”

  “You may not.”

  “You can’t stop me! I’ll go out whether you want me to or not!”

  “You will not, Blessing. You are too valuable a hostage. I cannot trust the Pechanek. If they get hold of you, then I will be forced to trade Bulkezu in order to get you back, and then the Quman will have no reason to guide us to the eastern lands where we can hunt griffins.”

  “I want to hunt griffins!” she cried, shifting ground. She would never admit she was wrong.

  “When you are old enough.”

  “I’m old enough now!”

  “Your Highness,” said Heribert gently, “you are not even a woman yet. Nor have you trained with arms for more than a few months, and in such limited circumstances because of this Godforsaken winter.”

  “You never looked at my letters! You hate me!” Blessing flung herself facedown on the feather bed and sobbed noisily. Her attendants fussed over her, trying to soothe her.

  It was a relief to step outside into the cruel slap of winter.

  “Is not the young princess old enough to be married, my lord prince?” asked the slave, falling into step beside Sanglant. She had a deadly way of looking sideways at a man, but he wasn’t sure if she meant to be provocative.

  “She is not yet a woman.”

  “She might still be betrothed and sent into the care of her husband’s family so that she would understand their ways.”

  “In what land were you born?”

  “In Avitania, my lord prince.”

  “Salian, then.”

  “That explains it,” muttered Hathui.

  Sanglant chuckled, sensing an undercurrent of hostility between the two women, who only ever met in such formal situations. “We have different customs. How came you to serve a Quman master?”

  “I was sold to an Arethousan merchant, my lord prince, and taken into the east to the estate of a noble family. There I was captured by a Quman raiding party.” She spoke the words with no sign of anger or grief.

  “You learned Wendish from a good teacher.”

  She glanced at Hathui. “Brother Zacharias was what he was.”

  “A slave like you!” retorted Hathui angrily.

  The slave nodded, choosing not to argue. Probably she had long since given up any notions of argument. She was a stolid woman in all ways, except for that amorous gaze, an open window in an otherwise shuttered-up house. She endured the cold without complaint, although she wore less clothing than he himself did: heavy felt trousers and tunic and a skin coat with the fur side turned in and wrapped tightly around her torso, all of which concealed the lush figure he recalled noticing in warmer days. Because she had the patience of a woman who has served a harsh master for many years and expects no release, she said nothing as he took his time making a spiral walk out of his own encampment, which was curled tightly around the two central tents.

  At the entrance to the tent placed beside his own, he stopped to speak to the guards.

  “How’s the prisoner, Anshelm?”

  “Quiet, my lord prince.”

  “It’s a change.”

  “Truly, it is, my lord prince. Barely a peep out of him since those Quman came. I never thought to see him wetting his leggings like a frightened boy, but I admit it gives me pleasure still to think on it.”

  Sergeant Cobbo pushed through the entrance flap. “I heard voices.” He bowed his head. “My lord prince.”

  Sanglant glimpsed the figure within, so heavily weighted with chains that it was a miracle the prisoner could sit upright, but sit upright he did. Before the flap cut off his view, Sanglant felt the force of Bulkezu’s gaze like the nip of a cold wind biting his face.

  Quiet, but not broken.

  “We was just talking of the prisoner, Sergeant,” said Anshelm. “Think he lost his voice when he caught sight of his mum?”

  Cobbo laughed. “Never did I think to see the day that beast would get his own back! How it made me laugh to see him humbled!”

  Unlike his soldiers, Sanglant gained no pleasure from Bulkezu’s humiliation and fear; he recalled his own too well. “Stay alert.” He nodded and went on.

  The camp was laid out in concentric rings, the tents set in uneven ranks so as to break up the blowing wind as much as possible. He paused at each tent to inquire after the soldiers within. Certain companies always had the privilege of being set up within the inner ring. When the healer came out to greet him, the man wheezed as th
e cold air hit his lungs.

  “Whew! Each night I think it can’t get any colder. Then it does!”

  “How many are sick this evening?”

  “Not more than twenty. Chustaffus was the worst of them yesterday, but he seems better today. These Quman witches have a brew that brings the fever down and clears out the lungs. After the first two, poor lads, we’ve not lost a single man to the lung fever, which I count a miracle. Chuf’s a strong fellow. I don’t fear for him now.” Sanglant nodded and went on.

  Resuelto and the remaining Wendish horses—about a third of the stock had died—had to be stabled at great inconvenience in shelters.

  “Nay, it’s true,” said the stable master while Sanglant groomed the gelding and, when he was done, fetched from his pocket the last of the apples they’d brought from Sordaia. It was withered, skin all loose, but Resuelto gobbled it up and slobbered on his shoulder, hoping for more.

  “We’ll lose another tonight,” continued the stable master. “Colic. They can’t take the weather, poor beasts. I’m nursing along six that are foundering, but two of those won’t last. The weak ones aren’t much to eat, either, with so little flesh left on their bones.”

  “I never thought to eat so much horseflesh,” said Sanglant wearily. Even sturdy Resuelto had suffered, losing the flesh that would give him some protection against the cold. Sanglant prayed that they had survived the worst of the winter, yet although Breschius and Heribert had counted off the days and assured him that the new year had come and that it was by rights spring, he had no idea how long this crushing cold might last.

  The stable master’s hands were seamed with work and hatched with white scars. He sniffed, wiped his nose. “Never stops running,” he said, then waved toward the crowd of horses. “I hope the meat doesn’t turn us into geldings like the ones we’re eating!”

  “They’re keeping up their spirits,” said Breschius when they left, continuing along the second ring of tents.

  “So they are. Here, now, Ditmar. Berro. How fares it with you this night?”

  “Well enough, my lord prince.”

  “We’re dicing, my lord.”