by Kate Elliott
“Up there where the holy man lived,” said Prior Ratbold. “Brother Fidelis. We were wrong about the lion, and about so much else. Will you forgive us? It was wrong to send you to Autun. After all, perhaps it was the right thing, since you brought the blessings of the phoenix to Varre. Surely God had a hand, through you, in setting Biscop Constance free.”
“She’s a prisoner of the Eika!”
“But she is free of Lady Sabella’s treachery! If those Eika meant to kill her, they would already have done so.”
“They might plan to roast her alive and eat her!”
Ivar’s voice had risen. The villagers following in their wake looked at him with alarm and began to mutter among themselves. Children wept, and the dogs set to barking, which got the sheep restless. The herd dog broke into action. In the distance, unseen goats blatted, and a chorus of chickens serenaded them as monks rushed out of cloister and workshops to greet them.
“You shouldn’t say such things, Ivar,” said Baldwin in such a reproving tone that Ivar blushed.
Ratbold called over a young lay brother and told him to lead the horses to the smith’s workshop. No sooner had he stopped to speak to one man but a dozen more swarmed around him, asking advice and offering grievances and problems. In this babble and flood Ivar got washed away from the prior and found himself in an eddy as the newcomers met and mingled with those who had stayed behind. Baldwin tugged on his arm, and he followed him unresisting past the inner fence where they, as noble churchmen, needed no permission to enter.
On the steps of the church a young nobleman dressed in layman’s clothing watched the commotion. Ivar squinted and, with a shock, recognized that face. Impossible. He walked over. As soon as he moved in that direction, the youth’s gaze transferred smoothly to examine him with the kind of caution kept by a traveler who must size up every encounter for its degree of risk. He held his ground, moving only to say something Ivar could not hear, and as Ivar reached the steps a pair of young men came from the church to join him. One, like the youth, was a lord similar in station to Ivar himself: the younger son of a minor house. He knew his measure as he knew himself. But the look of the other man made him stop in his tracks and stare as a deep chill knifed into the pit of his stomach.
This grim fellow was a Quman, one of the killers who had almost murdered him and his friends. A godless heathen.
Yet this young man stood as easily behind the noble youth as would a trusted retainer. The Quman was half a head shorter than his companions, and he was broader across the shoulders and chest without being stout. He scrutinized Ivar, exchanged a glance with the second Wendish lord, and made no more threatening move than flexing his fingers. His knuckles cracked.
“Who are you?” asked the noble youth with the barest twist of arrogance. He, too, was measuring.
“You’re Lord Berthold, son of Villam,” said Ivar.
“So I am. I don’t know you.”
“No reason you should. Last time I saw you, you were lying asleep under the hill on heaps of treasure.”
Lord Berthold lifted his chin as if he’d been rocked back by a blow. “How came you to see this?” he demanded imperiously. “Tell me!”
“Just up here, by the crown up on the hill here. But the monks, and Father Ortulfus, did not believe our story and sent us as prisoners to Autun. It’s a long story. I could as well ask you, how came you here, and at this time?”
“Who are you?”
“Ivar, son of Count Harl of the North Mark.”
“God save us! Sister Rosvita’s young half brother! Can it be?”
“You know Rosvita?”
“I was one of the noble youths on the king’s progress. She taught me letters.” Berthold’s gaze turned intent as he stared at Ivar. His voice trembled. “What news of her? Everything is all gone tumbling. All the months have fallen like so many sticks scattering. I scarcely know where I am or what has befallen us. So many are lost, and only the remnants found.” Ivar had a difficult time following this chatter, and anyway, Lord Berthold had already switched streams, turning to the Quman youth. “Where is Brother Heribert?”
“Still at the well, he looks, my lord,” said the man in accented but comprehensible Wendish. “The old wolf, at the fire-worker’s hearth, he waits. At the smith.” He considered the word and said it again. “The smith. Of horses, the holy men keep none.”
“Maybe we should go on, on foot,” said the second lord, and the other two looked at him as if he had suggested they walk on their hands to get where they were going. Then they all laughed. Such a bond grew out of shared adversity. It could not be woven on any other loom.
“Where have you come from? Where are you going?”
“Strangely,” said Berthold lightly, “we ride north from Aosta, which is where we found ourselves.” His expression darkened, and he clenched his jaw and, with an effort, made himself smile, although it gave him a bitter edge. “We’re going to Kassel. We hear that all the dukes and ladies and princes become king ride that way. We have news, and edicts, and many things to tell, and we have come to much trouble to get here in order to tell them.”
Ivar felt silenced by this passionate, angry speech. As the son of a count, he was this man’s peer, certainly, although of course Villam’s son must outrank the child of a borderland count who rarely attended court to bolster his position. He knew himself an outsider, judged and found wanting.
“Tell me again,” said Berthold after a pause, but his stare was fierce and his tone threatening. “Tell me again how you came to see us sleeping under the hill. How many of us were there? Just me and Jonas, or more?”
Ivar glanced back. Baldwin was gone, and a quick survey of the area revealed no perfect blond head.
“The tale may have to wait until another day. My companion and I are riding to Kassel also. Our message is urgent. There’s an Eika army just passed this way. They’re taking the Hellweg, marching east. They’ve taken both Biscop Constance and Father Ortulfus prisoner. Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad left Autun before the Eika attack came, so they don’t know the Eika are moving up behind them.”
“With Prince Sanglant ahead and the Eika behind, they will be crushed,” mused Berthold, but Ivar could not tell if the prospect pleased or displeased him. “Jonas, I have a fancy to walk up the hill to the stone crown, and see for ourselves.”
“Must we, my lord?” Jonas had a pleasant face a little hollowed from privation. He was slender in the way of people who are working hard without eating quite enough, yet he had the height common to noble lords. “Let us not, I beg you.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I am just so weary.” He looked away. “Why take the chance?” he said in a low voice. “Best let them rest.”
“They might sleep there still! They might!”
“Seven in all,” said Ivar.
Berthold jumped down the steps and grabbed Ivar’s wrist. “Seven? Is that how many you saw?”
“Seven sleepers.” He shook his arm free. “You are two. Where are the other five?”
“Lost!” groaned Jonas.
Berthold said nothing. His grimace told a tale that Ivar wasn’t sure he cared to hear spoken out loud.
Behind, the monks and lay brothers scurried here and there within the grounds enclosed by the palisade, trying to get all the refugees settled for the night. Ivar smelled rain, but he didn’t hear its patter in the nearby trees. The wind skated gently past them, still blowing out of the east-northeast. It was getting dark. They had reached Hersford Monastery just in time.
Like a flash of lightning, Baldwin’s pale hair showed up within the crowd. Ivar raised a hand to hail him.
Jonas said, “Who’s that?”
Baldwin strode up, rubbing at his beard. “They just won’t listen to me! There’s another man at the smithy with a dozen horses needing shoeing. I told him we were in haste, that we ride with an urgent message, but he said—” He took a second look at the men waiting on the steps, and choked, indicating the Quman. “That’s a Qu
man, Ivar! I thought we’d escaped them!”
Even the Quman savage was staring at Baldwin with the look of a young bull stunned by a sledge blow between the eyes. Lord Berthold’s eyes had gone quite round.
“He’s not our enemy, Baldwin. In what direction have you come from, Lord Berthold?”
“From the west, and the southwest, before that. We have traveled all the way north from Aosta, through St. Barnaria’s Pass. We only arrived here at Hersford this morning.”
“Then have you been all this time before us? Did you not see the Eika massing before Autun?”
“We came up a woodsman’s path east of the Rhowne. It’s an Eagle’s path, known to our guide. We did not see Autun at all, nor any Eika.” These matters were of little interest to him. Impatiently, he turned to Jonas. “We should go up to the crown. Maybe we can still find them.”
Jonas took a step back, shaking his head. “They’re dead, Berthold. Don’t believe otherwise.”
“Who is dead?” asked Baldwin.
A file of monks appeared. Ivar moved aside. Even the margrave’s son shifted to let them pass into the church for Vespers and Compline. In their wake, Prior Ratbold hurried up.
“I pray you, my lords,” he said. “Pray with us. It would do us honor.”
Berthold ran a hand nervously through his hair, still staring toward the half hidden swell of hill and forest rising to the west-northwest. Jonas tugged on his sleeve, and he retreated backward and through the door, looking over his shoulder at the darkening sky. The Quman sank to his haunches in the posture of a man prepared to wait all night. The prior frowned at him without specifically inviting him inside, then turned his accusing gaze on Ivar and Baldwin.
“Will you come inside, Brother Ivar? Brother Baldwin?” The question was as much challenge as request.
“Perhaps it would be better if we rode on tonight,” said Ivar.
“Of course we’ll pray!” Baldwin mounted the steps and went inside.
Ivar hesitated, glancing toward the distant smithy, where smoke poured heavenward in a steady, thin stream that faded quickly from sight as the twilight deepened.
“It would be safer for you to leave at daybreak,” said the prior. “Strange creatures walk abroad in the night, half man and half animal. You would be hard-pressed to see Eika scouts approaching you. Or their dogs.”
Ivar shuddered. Ratbold was a hard but basically decent man with a sharp temper and a carefully hidden mean streak; he didn’t mind seeing others squirm.
“Let the monks and the good folk see that you do not fear to bide here,” the prior continued. “Their hearts tremble, for they know that Father Ortulfus is lost to the Eika.”
“Not dead,” said Ivar. “He wasn’t killed, but only taken prisoner.”
“Just so! I beg you, stand and speak this word before the assembly. They will believe you, for you have seen it with your own eyes. Let us pray together to God, and plead with God to restore him to us. Is that too much to ask of you?”
Ivar could not refuse. Before the service began, he raised his voice and told the assembly of monks what he had seen. Afterward, he knelt with the others when it was appropriate to kneel, and stood when one must stand to sing. The stone floor ground into his knees. His feet hurt, and his eyes stung from the fumes seeping off torches bound from wood not yet thoroughly dry, mark of a wet winter and wetter spring. With each breath he sucked smoke in, and a slow, throbbing headache flowered into life behind his eyes as the liturgy sang around him.
“Blessed is the Country born out of the Mother of Life. Blessed is Her Son. Blessed is the Holy Word revealed, now and ever and unto ages of ages.”
One of the holy men paced out the stations of the blessed Daisan’s life and ministry, the seven miracles, and the final redemption, but it all seemed so hazy and so unfamiliar. Baldwin was happy, speaking the responses with enthusiasm.
“Kyrie eleison. Lady have mercy. For healthful seasons, for the abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful times, let us pray.”
Beneath the impassioned voices, beneath the pattern traced by the monk’s feet, another, more shadowy form walked in the old manner, the words Ivar had grown up with, but he could no longer see those patterns clearly. He could no longer hear those old words as they were drowned in the new.
“For Thou art our sanctification, and unto Thee we ascribe glory, to the Mother, to the Son, and to the Holy Word spoken in the heavens, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Have mercy upon us.”
“Have mercy upon us,” he murmured, thinking his head would burst because of the pressure. The monks fell silent as they waited for leave to depart, but Ivar thought he would choke. He staggered out to the porch and there, blinking and wheezing, he found he had curled his hand into the sign of the phoenix.
Everything has changed. A cataclysm had shaken the church, and it would never be the same.
Pinwheels of light spun low along the dark horizon of hill, white and golden and hazy. He rubbed his streaming eyes.
“Look!” cried Lord Berthold, arriving beside him as if out of a hidden door. “Look, Jonas!”
“What is that?” Ivar asked. “Is that from the Eika army? Are they burning … ?”
A man ran out of the darkness and up onto the porch, where monks now crowded up behind the lord and whispered and pointed and stared.
“My lord!” The stranger had silver-white hair and humble clothing. “Someone is walking the crowns. Do you see?” He turned, revealing his profile to Ivar.
“You’re the Eagle!” Ivar said in a voice still hoarse from smoke, but the man ignored him, speaking with a frowning intensity to the equally grim Berthold.
“We can’t know who it is from this distance. Who is left who knows the secret of the crowns? Hugh of Austra, as we know. Antonia of Karrone—that traitor! Each bearing as false a heart as any body can nurture without turning to dust.”
“What do you mean?” Ivar took hold of the old man’s arm and shook him. “Don’t you know me?”
The Eagle looked first at the hand and second at Ivar’s face. “I don’t know you, my lord,” he said in a toneless voice.
“Leave off!” said Berthold, with a curse. “Let him go!”
“What does he mean?” demanded Ivar as he released the old man’s arm.
“I mean a mathematicus is coming. We must flee.”
“Without the horses?” Jonas asked.
“My lord.” The Eagle addressed Lord Berthold. “We must take with us everything that will reveal we were here lest we endanger these good and holy men. We must go at once.”
“Liath is a mathematicus,” said Ivar boldly, trying to get the man’s attention. The smoke had clouded his brain; he could not remember the old Eagle’s name.
“Very well,” said Berthold. “At once. Odei. Jonas. Get our things.” They raced off. “We need Brother Heribert, and Berda,” he added to the Eagle.
“I’ll fetch the good brother,” said the old man.
“I’ll meet you by the orchard gate, then,” said Berthold. “I’ll go at once to the lady’s garden.” The Eagle smiled, and the lord chuckled. “Yes, I beg you. One last glimpse at what is forbidden.” His brief laugh sank into a scowl. “Yet it will make me think of Elene again.” He rubbed his fingers together compulsively. “I will never be rid of her blood, Wolfhere. Never!”
“You did not kill her.”
“I should have been stronger!”
“I pray you, my lord, remember that even she, an adept, was helpless. You are not to blame.”
Berthold was younger than Ivar, with a way of shaking his head that made him appear passionate and headstrong, eager and bold; he shook himself all over, a young stallion champing at the bit, and plunged down the stairs. Wolfhere watched him stride away before walking back into the night. A monk hurried out of the chapel at the head of the procession and ran after Wolfhere. They consulted with heads bent together, although Ivar heard nothing except the rustle of robes and the shuffle of footst
eps as Hersford’s monks moved past him. Then the Eagle trotted away into the dark, and the monk flowed away in the stream of his brethren.
Ivar could not decide what to do.
Baldwin clattered down the steps and grabbed him by the arm. “Did you hear? The Holy Word of truth has reached this far! Even in this monastery they speak the righteous words of the Mother and Son. Truth rises with the phoenix!” He wiped away tears. He beamed, as the poets would say, and the last worshipers, leaving the hall, stared at him as they passed.
“Like an angel,” they whispered as they scurried away.
“Some sorcerer has walked through the stone crown,” said Ivar, waving toward the hill, now difficult to see against the blackening night. “It might be best if we don’t wait around to see who it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“An enemy, someone who will try to stop us. Come, let’s see if Lord Berthold will let us travel with their party.”
“Very well,” said Baldwin compliantly.
They hurried after Lord Berthold and found the young lord standing beside the gate that opened into the enclosed garden where Father Ortulfus’ pretty young cousin presided over that gaggle of noble ladies who had washed to shore at the monastery. The gate creaked open, and a young woman, hiding a smile behind a hand, let Baldwin in. Ivar squeezed in behind him. In the graveled courtyard, a table was set out under an awning and ringed by half a dozen tall tripods, each one supporting a burning lamp. Plain wooden bowls were set on the table beside several loaves of bread, still steaming from the oven, and a big pot that smelled very like dill-garnished porridge, nothing more elaborate. The cottages gleamed with a fresh coat of whitewash. The herb garden, glimpsed within the shadows, lay in trim boxes and rows.
“Oh!” said the serving girl, seeing Baldwin in the lamplight. With an effort, she looked past him toward the gate, which was opening again. “Here they come.”
Ivar and Berthold turned to see a little procession enter through the gate, led by Ortulfus’ cousin, the Lady Beatrix. There were five other persons with her, four in linen gowns like to hers and the last a stocky woman in foreign clothing and with features more like those of the Quman than of real people. As Ivar stared at this creature, Lady Beatrix approached with hands extended.
