PROLOGUE (2 page)

The man squinted at Anna in the dim light, stepped forward abruptly, and took her chin in his hand. Matthias started forward, raising his belt knife, but Anna said, "No," and he stopped and waited.

After a moment the man let go and stepped back, brushing his eyes with a finger. "A girl. You're a girl, and no older than my little Mariya. The Lady is merciful, to have saved one."

"Where is your daughter?" asked Anna, bold now. This man did not scare her.

"Dead," he said curtly. "In the Eika raid that took my village not a month ago. They killed everyone."

"They didn't kill you," said Anna reasonably, seeingjhat he looked alive and not anything like the shade of a dead man
—not that she had ever seen such a thing, but certainly she had heard stories of them such as come back to haunt the living world on Hallowing Eve.

"Ai, they killed me, child," he said bitterly. "Killed all but this husk. Now I am merely a soulless body, their slave, to do with as they will until they tire of me and feed me to the dogs." Though he spoke as though living exhausted him, still he shuddered when he spoke of the dogs.

Anna sorted through this explanation and thought she understood most of it. "What will you do with us?" she asked. "Won't the Eika kill us if they find us?"

"They will," said the man. "They never leave children alive. They only want grown slaves strong enough to do their work. But I heard tell from one of the other slaves that there are no children in Gent, no bodies of children, simply no children at all. It's a tale they whisper at night, in the darkness, that the saint who guards the city led the children away to safety or up to the Chamber of Light, I don't know which."

"It's true," muttered Matthias. "All the children are gone, but I don't know where they went."

"Where are your parents, then?" asked the man. "Why were you not taken to safety, if the others were?"

Anna shrugged, but she saw her brother hunch down as he always did, because the misery still sank its claws in him although she did not recall their parents well enough to mourn them.

"They're dead four summers ago," said Matthias. "Our da drowned when he was out fishing, and our ma died a few months later of a fever. They were good people. Then we went to our uncle. He ran, when the Eika came. He never thought of us. I ran back to the house and got Anna, but by then there was fighting everywhere. You couldn't even get to the cathedral where most folk fled, so we hid in here. And here we stayed."

"It's a miracle," murmured the man. Out of the night's silence came sudden noise: dogs barking and a single harsh call, a word neither child understood. The man started noticeably. "They come 'round in the middle night to count us," he said. "I must go back. I won't betray you, I swear it on Our Lady's Hearth. May Our Lord strike me down with His heavenly Sword if I do any such thing. I'll bring more food tomorrow, if I can."

Then he was gone, retreating into the night.

They relieved themselves quickly in one of the stinking pits filled with dung and water, and paused after to look up at -the strangely clear sky, so hard a darkness above them that the stars were almost painful to look upon. They heard the dogs again and Matthias shoved Anna onto the ladder. She scrambled back up, and he came up behind her and closed the trap. After a hesitation, but without speaking, they devoured the rest of the cheese and bread
—and waited for tomorrow.

THE next night, long after sunset, the man came again and tapped on the door softly and said, "I am your friend."

Cautiously, Matthias opened the trap and peered down. After a moment he climbed down. Anna followed him. The man gave them bread and watched silently as they ate. She could see him a bit more clearly tonight
—the moon was waxing, and its quarter face slowly swelled, bubbling toward the full. Not particularly tall, he had the broad shoulders of a farmer and a moon-shaped face.

"What are you called?" he asked finally, hesitantly.

"I am called Matthias, and this is Anna, which is short for Johanna. Our ma named us after the disciplas of the blessed Daisan."

The man nodded, as if he had known this all along or perhaps only to show he understood. "I am called Otto. I am sorry the bread was all I could bring. We are not fed well, and I dare not ask the others for a share of their portion. I don't know if I can trust them, for they're no kin of mine. Any one of them might tell the Eika in return for some reward, more bread perhaps."

"It is very kind of you to help us," said Anna brightly, for she remembered that their ma had always told her to' be polite and to be thankful for the gifts she received.

The man caught in a sob, then hesitantly touched hei hair. As abruptly, he backed away from her. "Or perhaps like me, the others would gladly help, if only it meant find ing a way to see two more brought free of the savages. It isn't as if the Eika play favorites. I've never seen them seek to turn their slaves against each other by handing out special treatment. They despise us all. All are treated the same Work or die."

"Is it only here," asked Matthias, "in the tanneries, thai they've brought slaves?"

"They've opened up the smithies, too, though they've no one trained here in blacksmith's work. But we're slaves and expendable." His voice was hard. "It's fortune's chance I was sent here to the tanneries, though it stinks like nothing I've smelled before. It's whispered that at the forge men are burned every day and the Eika as likely to slit a burned man's throat as to let that man heal if he can't get up and keep working. I saw those Eika. I saw one pushed into a fire. It didn't burn. The heat left no scar on its body. They don't have skin, not like us. It's some kind of hide, like a snake's scales but harder and thicker. Dragon's get." He hawked and spat, as if to get the taste of the word out of his mouth. "The spawn of dragons and human women, that's what they say, but I don't see how such an unnatural congress could take place. But we should not speak of this in front of the child."

"I've seen nothing she hasn't seen also," said Matthias softly, but Anna felt at once that the man's simple statement, protecting her, confiding in the boy, had won over her brother's trust.

She finished her bread and wished there were more, but she knew better than to ask. Perhaps he had given them his entire ration. It would be rude to demand more.

"Fortune's chance," the man whispered bitterly. "Fortune had smiled more sweetly on me had she let me die with my children. But no." He shook his head, shifting, casting a glance back over his shoulder nervously, for surely he had reason to be nervous, as did they all. "For every-i thing, a reason. I was spared so that I might find you." He took a step forward, clasped Matthias by the hand and with his other hand touched Anna's hair gently. "I will find a way for you to escape here, I swear it. Now I must go. I tell them I use the privies each night at this hour, so I must get back. The Eika are strange creatures. Savages they are, surely, but they are fastidious; but perhaps that only goes to show that 'the path of the Enemy is paved neatly with well-washed stones, for the waters cleansing them are the tears of the wicked.' We may make soil only in one place, no pissing even except where they tell us to or on the new skins. That is why we may come out for a few moments' freedom in this way, even at night, for they cannot bear the stink of our human bodies near their own. But I dare not stay longer."

He came again the next night, and the next, and the next after that, bringing them pittances of food but enough to stave off starvation. Ale he brought also and once wine in a flagon, for there was little water to be found in and about the tanning pits and all of it foul-tasting.

He quickly discovered that Matthias had more knowledge of the tannery and its workings than any of the slaves set to work here; in three months' apprenticeship, Matthias had learned the rudiments of currying and tanning, enough to know what went on at each station and with each tool. The boy he treated politely, even kindly, but it was Anna he truly doted on. She sat on his lap and he stroked her haii and once or twice forgot himself and called her "Mariya."

No one disturbed the hides in their loft. Otto explained that he was in charge of overseeing them, and no slave had time to look into another's business. After several more nights passed, he began bringing more food.

"The Eika have increased our rations. They brought in more slaves to work the bakeries, but also, my boy, what you have told me and I have told the others is helping us work. They are pleased with us, so they feed us better." The moon was full, now, and Anna could see his expression, which was, as always, grim. "No good fortune for those taken to the smithies, or so I hear. As many are dragged out dead as walk in alive. Beasts!" He hid his eyes behind a hand, but she could see the anguished line of his mouth. "Soon the hides will be dry and they will be cartet off, and then there will be no place for you to hide."

"They'll hang up more hides, won't they?" asked Anna "Ah, child." He pulled her tight against his chest. "Tha they will, but I can't hide you here forever. I've asked her and there, but I don't know how to get you out of the city except
—"

"Except what?" demanded Matthias, for he, too, Ann knew, had been talking to her about any possible way fo them to escape from the city. Perhaps they could have don it during the spring, had they not been so frightened, bu they had been frightened, and the dogs had roamed th city every night. Now, with slaves in the city and all th gates watched
—or so he assumed—it would be even hard to escape.

"I don't know. It's just a story, and I don't know whether to believe it." But he clutched Anna, his lips touching he hair, a father's kiss. "I've heard some say there's a creature, a daimone, held prisoner in the cathedral. They say the Eika enchanter lured it from the heavens above where such creatures live and imprisoned it in a solid body like to our own. He keeps it chained to his throne."

Anna shuddered, but she felt safe on Otto's lap; he was holding her so securely.

"I am thinking," continued the man slowly, "that the magi say daimones know secrets hidden from human ken. If it is true the saint beloved of this city saved the children, if it is true she led them by hidden ways out from the cathedral to safety, then might not this daimone know of that hidden way? For can daimones not see into both the past and the future, farther than mortal eyes can see? If you offer the creature some gift, and if it hates the Eika as much as we do, might it not tell you of this secret way? It is a small chance, surely, but I can think of no other. The gates are guarded day and night and the dogs roam the streets." He shuddered, as they all shuddered, at the thought of the dogs. "You are children. The saint will smile on you as she did on the others."

"You will come, too, won't you, Papa Otto?" Anna rested her head on his chest.

He wept, but silently, tears streaming down his face. "I dare not," he said. "I dare not attempt it."

"You could escape with us," said Matthias. "God will show you mercy for your kindness to us, who are no kin of yours."

"God might, but the Eika will not. You don't know them. They're savages, but they're as cunning as weasels. They mark each slave, and if one slave goes missing, then others ret staked out in front of the dogs and the dogs let loose
» them. That way if any slave tries to escape, he knows what will happen to those left behind. I will not cause the death of those I work beside. I could do nothing to save my family. I will not save myself and by so doing kill these others who are as innocent as my dear children. But you two might escape, if you can find and speak to this daimone."

"But what could we bring it?" Matthias asked. "We have nothing
—" Then he halted and Anna saw by his crafty look hat he had thought of something. He reached into his boot
and drew out the prize of their extensive collection of knives, secreted here and there about their bodies. This one, looted from the corpse of a stout man richly dressed in the kind of clothes only a wealthy merchant or a noble could afford, had a good blade and a finely wrought hilt molded in the shape of a dragon's head, studded with emeralds for eyes. By this measure Anna saw Matthias trusted Otto fully; the knife was too valuable to show to anyone who might covet it and easily take it by force from a lad and his young sister.

Otto's eyes widened, for even by the moonlight the knife's quality was evident. "That is a handsome piece," he said. "And a worthy gift, if you can get so far."

"But how will we get into the cathedral?" asked Matthias. "The Eika chieftain lives there, doesn't he? Does he ever come out?"

The slow quiet brush of summer's wind, the night breeze off the river, stirred Otto's hair as he considered. Anna smelted on its wings the distant tang of iron and the forge, a bare taste under the stench of the tanning pits so near at hand. The man sighed at last, coming to some conclusion. "It is time to trust others. This information I cannot gain on my own. Let us pray, children, to Our Lady and Lord. Let us pray that we weak mortal folk can join together against our heathen enemies, for now we must trust to others who are no kin of ours except that we are humankind standing together against the savages." With this he left them.