by Kate Elliott
She returned to her tent and knelt before her pallet for a long time while she prayed to God to forgive her for what she was about to do.
When at last she emerged from the tent, the camp lay as quiet as any camp could be around her and the bright moon rode high above in the night sky.
Brother Simplicus had chosen to sleep outside next to the wagon, lying on his mantle on the ground. It was a warm night and pleasant. Gingerly she knelt beside him and teased out his two necklaces: One was a fine silver Circle of Unity, the other a tiny cloth pouch tied with a sprig of elder and smelling of licorice and a spice whose fragrance bit at Rosvita’s nose but whose name did not come to mind. Why would a monk in the Daisanite church be wearing a heathen amulet? She tucked both objects back under his robe.
There was no key. Hugh had kept the key himself.
The chest was indeed heavy, but Rosvita was a robust woman still even if her back was no longer as supple and strong as it once had been. She lugged it inside her tent and half-dropped it down on her pallet; the thick batting absorbed the thunk of a heavy weight hitting the ground.
She glanced behind her. Sister Amabilia snored on. Then she tested the haft. It was locked, of course, but she had expected that.
Under the light of the lantern she wedged her knife between haft and lock. It didn’t budge. With a grimace, she examined the keyhole. A sprig of juniper had been thrust into it, like a key. She scrabbled at it with her fingers, getting a grip on the slick needles, and pulled it out. Its touch stung her fingers and she dropped it with a soft curse and touched her smarting fingers to her lips, licking them until the pain subsided.
She undid the brooch from her cloak and probed into the lock with the pin. She was patient and at last found the right point to put pressure on. It unlocked with a soft pop. At once she glanced back, but Amabilia slept on, not even stirring. Rosvita lifted the lid.
The book.
Nested in a cowl of undyed linen, it lay on top of the rest of the chest’s contents: a man’s fine embroidered tunic and a woman’s pale gold silk overdress—a curious item for a churchman to carry with him—as well as two other books.
But she did not have time to puzzle out their titles in the dim light afforded her by the lantern. At this moment, in this place, she could not afford to be curious. She lifted the book out and turned it so the lettering on the spine glinted in the lantern light: The Book of Secrets.
Amabilia snorted and shifted in her sleep. Rosvita jerked back, startled. With a grimace, she wrapped the book in the linen cloth and thrust it under her pallet, then closed the chest and slipped a glove over her hand before she picked up the sprig of juniper and crammed it back into the keyhole.
Was it magic, hastily performed? She knew something of magic and of herbs but not enough to know if Father Hugh employed their power. God have mercy if he had.
Then she chastised herself for thinking such a thing of a good churchman like Hugh. He had proved himself, if not chaste, then at least a good adviser. He was learned and well-spoken.
And he had stolen a Book of Secrets.
“No better a soul than mine,” she murmured. She braced herself, legs bent, and grunted slightly as she picked up the chest and staggered outside. For some reason it seemed heavier now.
She replaced it in the wagon, brushed her hand over lock and wood to make sure there were no obvious signs of entry—such as Brother Simplicus might think to look for—and then retreated back to her tent.
Of guards she saw none, but they would be set out along the perimeter. The camp lay silent, brushed by the noises that attend any forest at night: the sigh of wind through the trees, the chirping of crickets, the eerie hoot of an owl.
The moon alone witnessed her sin.
When Rosvita reentered the tent, Sister Amabilia blinked up at her and rubbed bleary eyes as if to clear them. “What are you about, Sister?”
“I am merely restless,” said Rosvita. “And with a full bladder now emptied. Go back to sleep. We’ll need our strength tomorrow.”
Amabilia yawned, groped to find her walking staff laid on the ground beside her, and then, reassured by its presence, she went back to sleep.
Merely restless. Merely a liar.
Merely a thief.
She had spent more than half her life in the church and served faithfully and well, only to find herself now shaking in the shadow of a lantern, in a tent in the wilds of a forest night. Was it only her imagination or could she hear the howls of Eika and the screams of dying men on the wind that fluttered the tent flaps and twined round the tent poles?
“Sister Amabilia?” she whispered; but there was no reply.
She eased the book from under the pallet and opened it on the blanket, just where the light streamed with its honey glow. It was hard to see, especially with eyes no longer young and sharp as they once had been, but with her hands, leafing through the book, she discovered at once that the binding contained not one book but three, bound together. The third and last book was written in the infidel way, on paper, and in the language of the Jinna—which she could not read. The second book, bound into the heart of the volume, was of such brittle papyrus that she hesitated to touch it for fear it would crumble under her fingers. It, too, was composed in a language she could not read, but in this case she did not even recognize the letters. “Hide this” was written in Arethousan at the top of the first page of the middle manuscript, and there seemed to be other glosses, also in Arethousan, but the ink was unreadable in this light.
She turned back to the very first page of the first book, a good quality parchment leaf—and written in Dariyan, she noted even before she noted the substance of the words or the strange handwriting. Whoever had written this had been church-educated, certainly, for the lettering paraded down the page with a trace of Aostan formalism. But the “q”s curled strangely, and the “s”s had a Salian bent, while the “t”s and “th”s had the stiff, strong backs of a cleric trained in a Wendish institution. With most calligraphy she could read in the script where the scribe had gotten her training; this person wrote in such a hodgepodge of styles that she—or he—might have come from anywhere, or everywhere.
It was very strange.
But nothing like as strange, and disturbing, as the words themselves.
With mounting horror, she mouthed the first sentence.
“Through the art of the mathematici we read the alignment of the heavens and draw down the power of the ever-moving spheres to work our will on the earth. I will now set down everything I know of this art. Beware, you who read this, lest you become trapped as I have in the snares of those who seek to use me for their own ends. Beware the Seven Sleepers.”
A twig snapped outside and she started violently, slapping the book shut and shoving it under the blanket. God have mercy. She trembled like a sinner afflicted through God’s just judgment with a palsy.
The art of the mathematici.
The most forbidden of sorceries.
4
THEY left the horses with a half dozen of Captain Ulric’s men, the light cavalry from Autun. A few of the light cavalry had torches among their equipment; Lavastine ordered other branches collected from the brush, enough that each man carried two stout sticks.
Liath stepped into the cave mouth and took hold of a torch. There was no longer time to agonize over the gift she held within her, that Da had protected her against. Alain’s life—if he even still lived—hung in the balance.
Wood burns. The torch flared to life, flames licking and smoking with a resiny smell. Lavastine had come in behind her, and now she turned to see him staring at her.
“It’s a trick,” she said quickly. “An Eagle’s trick.”
“Not one I have heard tell of before now,” he replied, but he merely called to the forty soldiers who followed him, mostly light cavalry pulled off the field, and every fourth man lit torch or stick from the one she carried.
She set foot on the stairs. Lavastine followed directly behind her,
then some of his men and, last, young Erkanwulf and the other Autun soldiers. Captain Ulric brought up the rear. With each step downward the light of day faded, dimmed, grayed into oblivion. The rough stone gripped her boots though now and again a trickle of water slipped under her feet, welling up from some untraceable crack of moisture dripping through a seam in the rock. She kept the torch thrust forward to see the steps below her. They were so evenly spaced that she had to stop herself from trotting down them, from gaining too much speed. Ai, Lady, was Alain alive yet on the hill or were he and his troops destroyed by the fury of the Eika assault? Once she heard a man stumble and cry out behind her, and she slowed down, waiting, as did Lavastine, who matched her step for step. Tension coiled on him like a second skin, and he hissed between his teeth with impatience but said nothing as the man behind caught up and they descended again.
But after a hundred or more of such evenly placed steps even the most cautious man became bolder and their pace increased as they descended down and ever down.
They came to the base of the stairs, and the tunnel forged forward into a blackness so profound that it seemed alive. She walked out far enough to give them room to assemble behind her, forming up into twos. There was some jostling and whispering, and after a moment Erkanwulf appeared, wan in the light of her torch.
“I’ve been given leave to walk scout beside you,” he said, “since it’s well known I have keen eyesight.”
“I thank you.”
“Ai, Lord, but I can’t see a thing in front of us! Are you sure there’re no ditches or abysses to swallow us up?”
“There were none before. But that’s not to say none could have opened up since.”
He snorted. “I thank you, Eagle, for setting my heart at peace.”
“Forward,” said Lavastine behind her. “Let our pace be swift. Keep some distance between you—but not too much—so if we are attacked, we are not caught up the one upon the other.”
She went cautiously at first, but the way lay silent and pitch-black before her, a weight of still air stirred and lightened by their passing but by no other breath of life. All lay around her in the flickering gaze of the torches as she recalled it: the smooth walls, the beaten earth floor as though thousands had passed this way in some long ago time, the ceiling a hand’s reach above. Now and again she heard the scrape of a metal spear point on the rock, and a low curse from its bearer, shifting it down. Her bow and quiver rode easily on her back. She held the torch in her left hand and her good friend Lucien’s sword in her right. The torch burned without flagging, as did all the others. Erkanwulf walked on her left so the torch illuminated the way evenly between them. But after a while she began to forge ahead of him, sure of her path. Behind her, Lavastine strode swiftly, and his troops kept up by sheer force of his will if nothing else.
“Ai, Lord,” whispered Erkanwulf. “It’s sorely dark down here, Eagle. What if all that rock caves in on us?”
But she smelled only the metallic tang of earth, a distant whiff of the forge, and the dank moisture of a place long hidden from the sun. “Why should it fall now? If it’s lain here for so long?”
“The torches burn so strongly,” added Erkanwulf. “It’s uncanny, it is.”
“Hush,” said Lavastine from behind, although the tramp of so many armed men through the tunnel could not be hidden—or at least not by any gift she possessed.
They walked steadily and, like the torches, without flagging. She realized now that the journey out of Gent had taken so long for the most part because they had gone so slowly, and because the refugees had been mostly frightened children or the weak and the wounded. With forty robust soldiers behind her, she could lead at a brisk pace.
“What’s there?” muttered Erkanwulf even as she realized that in the far distance ahead she could see a dull lightening cast of fire. And as they neared she saw that, indeed, it was fire: A wall of it stretched from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, leaping and burning in the tunnel with all the frenzy of a gleeful pack of fire daimones at their dance.
“Defended!” said Lavastine angrily.
Liath stared. Defended. But why, then, had the Eika not used the tunnel as a way to ambush Lavastine’s army when it first arrived?
“Stay back,” she said to Erkanwulf. She strode forward with her torch outthrust to make a barrier, but as she neared the wall of flame, it faded in her sight to become a whisper, a haze, a memory of fire, nothing more.
“Eagle!” She felt Erkanwulf dart forward to grab at her as she stepped into the blaze. He screamed. She stopped and turned round to order him back only to see the look on their faces, as much as she could see expressions in the torchlight. Only Lavastine watched impassively. Erkanwulf staggered back, a hand thrown up to shield his face from the heat. The rest murmured or cried out, or covered their eyes to hide them from the horrible sight of a young woman burned alive.
“It’s an illusion,” she said.
Erkanwulf fell to his knees, gasping and coughing.
Lavastine stepped up beside him. What courage it took him to do so she could not imagine. Would she do the same, if she had only another’s word to go by? Around her, the ghost fire shimmered and leaped, burning rock no less than air.
“If Bloodheart has guarded this tunnel with illusion,” asked the count, “doesn’t that mean he must know of it?”
“Perhaps. But then why wouldn’t he have used it for an ambush? Nay, Count Lavastine, I think there is fire above, on the plain, and his illusion is all of one seam. Have you ever seen an orrery? A model of the heavenly spheres?”
“Go on,” said Lavastine curtly.
“As above, so below. His illusion may be one seamless part, and thus exists below the ground as well as above it. It’s possible that these illusions would be seen by anyone attempting to approach the city, that Bloodheart cast them without knowing they would extend here, too.”
“Or perhaps his soldiers wait for us, beyond.”
In answer, she stepped through. A man shrieked, was brusquely ordered to be silent. Beyond the wall of fire lay the silent tunnel, dark and quiet. She turned and could not see the fire from this direction at all, only a misty haze and the men waiting on the other side.
“Nothing,” she said. “Unless Bloodheart ordered his men to wait for us on the stairs. It would be very hard to fight up those stairs and win.”
“Making it a better place to set an ambush, then,” said Lavastine. “But what choice do we have but to go forward?” He nudged poor frightened Erkanwulf with the toe of a boot. “Come. She has the true sight. We must trust in her.”
“We must trust in St. Kristine,” she said suddenly, “for without her intercession we would never have found the tunnel. The heat will not burn you.”
“I can’t go through,” sobbed Erkanwulf, still with a hand flung up to protect his eyes.
“Nay, boy!” said Ulric from the back of the group. “Think of Lord Wichman and his stories. They saw illusions at Steleshame, but that was all they were.”
“I will lead.” Lavastine gripped his sword more tightly and walked forward into the fire.
Even so, Liath felt him trembling slightly as he halted beside her. One by one, with increasing confidence, his troops came along after. Only a few shut their eyes as they passed through the illusion.
They went on.
After a time, she stumbled on a bottomless abyss, too wide across to jump. But even as she stared, the gulf of air solidified into the rock floor, littered with pebbles and scored by old footprints unstirred for months by the passage of wind or any other traffic, even the tiny creatures of the dark, over them.
This time, when she moved forward across the gaping abyss, Lavastine walked right beside her—though when he took the first step out over the yawning chasm, she noticed that he shut his eyes.
She called back over her shoulder. “Shut your eyes! Shut your eyes and walk forward. Your feet will not lie to you.”
In this way the soldiers followed, shuffling beh
ind until the chasm lay behind them. With mounting confidence they went on. The torches burned steadily without consuming themselves.
“Are you a mage?” asked Lavastine softly, beside her. “Why do you possess this power to see through illusion? Where comes it from?”
How can I use it to my advantage? He did not say the last words aloud, but she heard such calculation in his tone.
“My father laid a—a mage’s working on me,” she said, hoping that she spoke the truth nearly enough that God would forgive her for lying.
Lavastine made no reply. She could not even imagine what he was thinking; she understood him less than any person she had ever met.
They went on, pressing into the darkness that would lead them to the crypt—and to the Eika. And to Bloodheart.
Liath led them and did not look back.
5
PRESSED back and back, Alain held his place in the second rank of shields, keeping low so that the spearmen behind him could thrust over him. He braced hard with his feet to shore up those in the front rank who bore the brunt of the Eika assault. His strength was all he had, for surely it must be obvious to all by now that he could not fight.
The Eika sagged back, and in the brief lull, he surveyed the hill. The west and south lines still held at the wall, but to the east, facing Gent, and at the north gate where Alain had thrown in his reserves, the army had fallen back and now presented a wall of flesh and steel instead of earthen ramparts to face the Eika stone. Alain hoped that someone would take his place in the ranks so he could gain a vantage point to observe the field below and the progress of his father, but those with shields were already at the fore and none stepped up to relieve him.
The Eika gathered their strength. They, too, presented a line of shields, rounds painted with cunning blue or yellow serpents twined into interwoven spirals. Twenty paces separated the two lines. Aside from an occasional arrow or thrown stone, or the Eika stooping to stab some poor wounded man left behind in the retreat, or the dogs feeding hideously on corpses, the Eika remained still.
