by Kate Elliott
“Not all in Varre have been so friendly,” she said, thanking him.
“Aid the traveler as you would wish to be aided were you in their place, that’s what our grandmother taught us.” He hesitated, looking troubled. “I hope you know my sister meant nothing by her mention of the dark shades walking abroad.”
“I carry messages for the king, friend. I do not report to the biscops.”
He flushed. “You know how women are. If the old ways were good enough for our grandmother, then—” He restlessly hoisted his threadbare tunic up higher through his rope belt.
“You live close by the forest. Why shouldn’t you see the old gods of your people still at work here?”
This startled him. “Believe you in the Tree and the Hanged God?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I traveled to many strange places with my da and—” She broke off.
“And?” Did he look curious or merely tired and worn out? By the age of his children she guessed he was only about ten years older than herself, yet he looked as old as Da had at the end, aged by constant work and worry and by grief at the death of his wife. “Godesti says that if my dear Adela had given gifts to the Green Lady at the old stone altar, then she wouldn’t have died, for the Green Lady helps women through their labor. Is it because she did as the deacon from Sorres village commanded and turned her heart away from the old ways? She prayed to St. Helena when her birth pains came on her, but maybe the Green Lady was angry for not receiving any gifts. Is that why she died?”
“I don’t know your Green Lady. But I lived in Andalla once, with my da. The Jinna women there didn’t pray to Our Lord and Lady, they prayed to the Fire God Astereos, yet they survived and bore healthy children—many of them, at any rate. I’m sorry about your wife. I’ll pray for her soul. Maybe it had nothing to do with God—except that God watch over us all,” she added quickly. “Maybe the child didn’t move right within her. Maybe it was breech and couldn’t come out. Maybe some sickness got into her blood and made her weak. It might be any of those things, or something else, and nothing to do with God at all, just as”—she gestured at the path behind them—“this track was washed away by a combination of rain and rockslides, not because the creatures of the Enemy made mischief here to bedevil you—”
“I pray you!” He drew the Circle at his breast hastily, and then another sign, something she didn’t recognize but which was clearly pagan. “The shades might be listening.”
“The shades?”
“The souls of dead people too restless to board the ship of night and sail to the underworld. Or worse …” He hefted his walking staff, twirled it once, dropping his voice to a whisper. “… the shadows of dead elves. Their souls are confined in a dark fog. They have no body, but they weren’t released from the earth either. They aren’t allowed into the Chamber of Light, but they have nowhere else to go if they were killed on this earth. They haunt the deep forest. Surely you know that, you who have traveled so much.”
“The shades of dead elves …” She stared at the forest around her: leafless winter trees stood dark against the gray-white sky with undergrowth of all shades of brown and dull green and the pale yellow of decay interwoven beneath; evergreens skirted the edge of open areas. All of it was dense with growth and fallen limbs and the tangle of a wild land untouched by human hands. Had that been Sanglant’s fate? To wander the earth as a shade, because he could not ascend through the seven spheres to the River of Heaven and thence stream with the other souls into the Chamber of Light? Was he near her now?
Then she shook herself roughly, and her horse stamped and shook its head as if in sympathy. “Nay, friend,” she continued. “The blessed Daisan taught that the Aoi were made of the same substance as humankind. Some of the ancient Dariyan lords converted to the faith of the Unities. So why should the blessed Daisan turn elvish kin away from heaven if they served God faithfully? And even if they do live here, why should they concern themselves with us?” Suddenly, Liath realized she didn’t believe the souls of dead people lurked in the forest. And she wasn’t afraid of the shades of dead elves. Of course, many other things might lurk in the forest, wolves and bears least among them. “To be fearless is to be foolhardy and likely dead,” Da always said. But away from Hugh, fear did not ride constantly on her shoulder.
“Who knows what lingers in this forest.” The man looked around nervously, afraid even in a morning light that painted the gray-limbed trees and stubborn clouds of morning with the burnished light of pearls. “Near the ford there may be bandits. But by dusk tomorrow you’ll come to a big town called Laar.”
They parted. He seemed relieved, but whether to be returning to the safety of his village or to be rid of her and her uncomfortable views Liath could not be sure. She did not mean disrespect to the old gods or the saints. But it was not God or the shades of dead elves or the half-formed creatures who served the Enemy who had caused her to miscarry last winter. No, indeed. It was the very abbot whom these villagers praised.
Snow drifted down between the bare branches of trees. She walked most of the day to keep warm and to spare her horse. The road was good, considering what little use it must get. Two wagon ruts wide, it remained clear of undergrowth, and puddles hidden beneath a film of ice were the worst of its treacheries.
Was there really any point to being in a hurry? It had taken Hanna months to reach the king. No one would know why she had herself been delayed, and in any case, Count Lavastine would be unlikely to muster an army before summer. Spring, with sowing and swollen rivers and muddy roads, was not the time for an army to march. The Eika surely could make no attack down the Veser River in the full flood of springtide.
Yet she owed it to the people of Gent to make sure the message arrived as soon as it could. She owed it to Sanglant’s memory, so that his death could be avenged.
Late in the day, snow turned to sleeting rain and she escaped the downpour by sheltering under a huge fir tree; its limbs made a kind of cave where they arched to the ground. She tied up her gelding and piled twigs and sticks on the cold ground, surrounding them with a firewall of stones. Then, biting her lip, she reached through the window of fire that she could see in her mind’s eye and called flame.
Flames shot up from the little heap of twigs, stinging the branches above. She jumped back. The horse snorted, kicked, snapped a rein, and bolted out of their shelter.
“Damn!” she swore. She ran after the horse. Luckily, it calmed quickly and waited for her. Wet and shivering, she led it back to the overhang. The fire had settled down, and now, half ashamed, she fed it in the normal manner. The horse ate such leavings as she could glean from the nearby undergrowth and she chewed on a hard end of bread and a sour handful of cheese.
It was cold, that night, but the fire burned steadily. Fir needles rained down on her at erratic intervals. Though she slept fitfully, this rough shelter with fir needles sticking through her cloak and the breath of winter wind chafing her neck and chilling her fingers was far better than any fine, warm, elegant chamber shared with Hugh. If winter harmed her, it would not be because it wished to but because of its indifference to her fate. Somehow, that vast and incomprehensible indifference comforted her. The stars wheeled on their round whether she died or lived, suffered or laughed. Against the eternity of the celestial sphere and the great harmony sung in the heavens, she was the merest flash, so brief in its passing that perhaps the daimones coursing in the aether above could no more comprehend her existence than she could comprehend theirs. After all those years running with Da, after what she had endured with Hugh, it was a great relief to be unworthy of notice.
Yet she was still not free. She so desperately needed a preceptor—a teacher.
Could Wolfhere see her through the fire? Was Hanna well? Coals glowed, and it was the work of a moment to feed sticks to the fire. Flames leaped up, bright yellow, and she pulled out the gold feather.
“Hanna,” she whispered as she spun the feather’s tip between thumb and forefinge
r, spinning the faint breath of air stirred by that turning into the licking flames of fire and twisting out of those flames a gateway through which she could see….
Sapientia sits restless in a chair, obviously unwell. Of all her attendants the only one whom she tolerates for more than a moment is Hanna, who speaks soothingly to her and gets her to drink from a silver cup. Of Hugh there is no sign.
The feather brushes Liath’s palm, and fire snaps and wavers. Now she sees a dim loft carpeted with straw. A man stirs, and in his unquiet sleep she recognizes him. It is Wolfhere. He murmurs a name in his dream and, that suddenly, as if a voice called to him, he wakes, opening his eyes.
“Your Highness.”
Liath’s sight blurs and sharpens, and she sees a pallet on which a woman lies in a desperate fever, clothes soaked in sweat. She is no longer in the loft. Here a trio of women stand over the patient, tending her. By their clothing Liath recognizes them as a servingwoman, an elderly nun, and the Mother Abbess of a convent.
“Your Highness? It is I, Mother Rothgard. Can you hear me?”
Mother Rothgard wrings out a cloth and turns the sufferer over to press the damp cloth to her forehead. As the lax face rolls into view, Liath recognizes Princess Theophanu, but so changed, all vitality burned out of her, leached away by fever. Mother Rothgard frowns and speaks to the servingwoman, who hurries out. She unfastens the princess’ tunic and eases it open to examine the young woman’s chest: Beads of sweat pearl on her nipples; moisture runs down the slope of her shoulder to vanish into her armpits. The thunder of Theophanu’s heartbeat, frantic, irregular, seems to resound in the small chamber. She wears two necklaces; one is a gold Circle of Unity, and the other—a panther brooch hung from a silver chain.
This brooch Mother Rothgard lays in her palm and examines. Turning it over with a finger, she traces writing too faint for Liath to see. The abbess has a clever face made stern by perpetual frowning.
“Sorcery,” she says to her attendant. “Sister Anne, fetch me the altar copy of the Holy Verses, and the basket of herbs sanctified under the Hearth. Speak of this to no one. If this ligatura comes from the court—even if Princess Theophanu survives—we cannot know who are our allies and who our enemies. This bespeaks an educated hand.”
Mother Rothgard speaks a blessing and Theophanu grunts, and the vision smears into the dull glow of fading coals.
The rain had slowed to a shushing patter, and as Liath replaced the gold feather against her chest and clasped her knees for warmth, the twilight faded into the chill expectation of dawn.
Sorcery. How powerful had Hugh become? Was she herself no longer immune to his magic? Had she ever been?
With this disquieting thought like a burden weighing on her, she saddled her horse and made ready to leave. As she took its reins to lead it out from under the shelter of the overhang, a stabbing pain burned at her breast. She pressed a hand to the pain … where the gold Aoi feather lay between tunic and skin.
In that pause, standing motionless and still half-hidden by the hanging evergreen branches, she heard a twig snap. Mounting, she drew her bow and an arrow out of its quiver. She laid the bow across her thighs and started west on the forest road, one hand on the bow, one on the reins.
A covey of partridges took wing, a sudden flurry, startled out of their hiding place. She stared into the undergrowth but saw nothing. But the crawling sensation grew: Someone—or something—watched her from the shelter of the trees.
She urged her horse forward as fast as she dared. With the next town so far ahead, she couldn’t risk exhausting her horse, and anyway the road was cut here and there with gashes, holes of a size to trap a horse’s hoof. Nothing appeared on the forest road behind her, nothing ahead. In the forest, all she saw was a tangle of trees and little sprays of snow where wind rattled branches.
Abruptly, dim figures appeared in the shadows of the forest, darting around the trees like wolves following a scent.
A whoosh like the hiss of angry breath brushed her ear, and she jerked to one side. Her horse faltered. An arrow buried itself into the trunk of a nearby tree. As delicate as a needle, it had no fletching. Pale winter light glinted off its silver shaft. Then, in the space of time it takes to blink, it dissolved into mist and vanished.
The scream came out of nowhere and seemingly from all directions: a ululating tremor, more war cry than cry for help. It shuddered through the trees like the coursing of a wild wind.
Maybe sometimes it was better to run than to stand and fight.
Galloping down the forest road, she hit the opening in the trees before she was aware that trees had been hacked back from either side of a wide stream. At the ford, a dilapidated bridge crossed the sluggish waters.
A party of men blocked the bridge and its approach. They raised their weapons when they saw her. She pulled up her horse and while it minced nervously under her, she glanced behind, then ahead, not sure what threatened her most. The men looked ill kempt, as desperate as bandits— which they surely were. Most of them wore only rags wrapped around their feet. A few wore scraps of armor, padded coats sewn with squares of leather. Only the leader had a helmet, a boiled and molded leather cap tied under his scraggly beard. But they stood in front of her, surly and looking prepared to run; they were tangible, real. She had no idea what had let loose with that scream.
“I am a King’s Eagle! I ride on the king’s business. Let me pass.”
By now they had guessed that she rode alone.
“Wendar’s king,” said the foremost, spitting on the ground. “You’re in Varre now. He’s no king of ours.”
“Henry is king over Varre.”
“Henry is the usurper. We’re loyal to Duchess Sabella.”
“Sabella is no longer a duchess. She no longer rules over Arconia.”
The man spit again, hefting his spear with more confidence. He cast a glance at his comrades, who were armed with clubs fashioned from stout sticks. Two came off the bridge and began to circle around on either side to flank her. “What the false king says of Duchess Sabella don’t mean anything here. It’s his mistake to send his people here and think his word protects them. We’ll treat you better, woman, if you give up without a fight.”
“I’ve nothing worth anything to you,” she said as she raised her bow, but they only laughed.
“Good boots, warm cloak, and a pretty face,” said their leader. “Not to mention the horse and the weapons. That’s all worth something to us.”
Nocking the arrow, she drew down on the leader. “Tell your men to pull back. Or I’ll kill you.”
“First rights,” said the leader, “to the man who drags the rider off the horse.”
The two men charged. The one to her right made the mistake of reaching her first. She kicked him, hard under the chin, and as he reeled back she turned just as the other man reached her. Her string drawn back, she held her arrowhead almost against his face as he grabbed for her boot. And loosed the string.
The arrow drove through his mouth. He staggered and dropped.
No time to think. They had no bows. She could outrun them.
As she pulled her mount around, she saw shadows in the forest. They moved like hunters and yet at once she knew they weren’t men, no kin of these bandits come to aid them. They carried bows as slender and light as if they had been woven from spider’s silk twisted and folded together a thousandfold to make them as strong as wood.
Caught between the one and the other. She had no reason to trust either side.
The man she had kicked struggled back, grunting, and jumped for her.
Living wood in damp winter cold burns poorly … she reached for fire and called it down on the old bridge.
The logs and planks caught fire with a burst, a snap and whuff of flame. The men on the bridge screamed, jumping to safety into the river’s cold waters, floundering there or leaping for the shore. Her horse screamed and bolted. A thin silver arrow gashed its flank and fell to the ground. The man coming after her yelled
in terror, then crumpled as he groped at a silver needle embedded in his own throat.
She rode for the river. Men scrambled away, fleeing from her—or from what pursued her, half hidden in the forest behind. The cold water came as a shock, coursing past her thighs as she urged her horse across the stream. The animal needed no pressing; it, too, was smart enough to run. The water flooded its rump and washed away the thin stream of blood that ran from the cut made by the arrow. For a moment, Liath felt the horse lose its footing; then they were struggling up the far bank, breaking through the film of ice that rimed the shoreline.
From behind she heard screaming; she did not pause to look. In the center of the road, stunned into immobility, stood one of the bandits. He stared in horror at the burning bridge and at his comrades falling on the other side or thrashing their way down the cold stream.
“Do you think King Henry leaves his Eagles unprotected?” she cried. He bolted into the woods, running from her—or from what lay behind her. She turned.
The burning bridge flared like a beacon. No shadows emerged from the forest, and the bandits had scattered. The bridge would be ruined. As she stared, she realized she could not put the fire out—she did not know how. She tried reaching, imagined a fire dying to embers and embers dying to dead coals, but the bridge burned on with the glee of a raging fire. It terrified her. She had no way to control it.
Then they came out of the forest. They had bodies formed in human shape, even the suggestion of ancient armor, hammered breastplates decorated with vulture-headed women and spotted lions without manes. But she could see the trees through them. They were more like a dense smoky fog forced into an alien shape, humanlike and yet not human at all—and they were coming after her. One raised its bow and shot at her, but the silver arrow, a wink against the sun, vanished in the flames. They came to the stream’s bank, well away from the scorching flames that devoured the old bridge, but they did not attempt to cross the water.
