PROLOGUE (49 page)

Two arrows bursting into flame in midair. Any soul would agree that it was a miracle wrought by the hand of a saint. But Rosvita did not believe in coincidence.

"In the guise of scholars and magi,"
Brother Fidelis had said to her last spring,
"tempting me with knowledge."
Why did his words come back to her now?

Theophanu knew as well as any why the Convent of St. Valeria was renowned: Its Mother Abbesses were known for their study of the forbidden art of sorcery.

was raining, again. Rain made Sapientia irritable; she was only happy when she was active "Fetch me wine, Eagle," she said, although she had servants to fetch her wine. "And milk. I want milk." Leaving the Thurin Forest had made Sapientia irritable. Riding south into the duchy of Avaria had made Sapientia irritable. Being pregnant made Sapientia irritable. "Read to me, Hugh. I am so bored. It isn't right I'm not allowed to ride out to the hunt just because I have a little fever." She yawned. "I am so tired always."

Hugh turned away from the great hearth of the king's hall in the palace of Augensburg. More restless than usual, for he was usually as smooth as cream resting in an untouched bowl, he had been shredding leaves and tossing them into the blazing fire. He did not look toward Liath nor even appear to notice her. He did not need to.

"I rather like Lord Geoffrey," Sapientia continued, rattling on despite her protestations of being tired. "He's a good hunter and he has very good manners. Father likes him so much he asked him to ride beside him on today's hunt. Poor Brigida. I suppose you wish he wasn't already married!"

"He's from Varre," retorted Brigida. "I don't know if my uncle Burchard would
want
me to marry a Vanish lord, not after what happened to my cousin Agius. And I don't know what kind of inheritance Geoffrey would bring as his dowry."

"Poor man. He lost his inheritance to a bastard!" The princess giggled.

Hugh looked up abruptly. "Isn't Lord Geoffrey heir to the Lavas count?"

"Indeed not!" Sapientia smiled with the satisfaction of a slow child who has, at long last, won a footrace against its rivals. "But you weren't at court then. Father pardoned Count Lavastine for his treachery and allowed him to name his illegitimate son as his heir."

"His
heir,"
murmured Hugh with such an odd inflection that Liath actually paused to stare at him.

He knelt beside a clay bowl filled with dried herbs. A strip of linen marked with a writing she could not read lay over his thighs, and as Liath watched, his hands tied the linen strip into a complex knot.

Binding.

The word leaped unbidden into her thoughts. A fragment of
The Book of Secrets
—which she had herself copied out of a penitential from a monastic library in Salia—rose up from the city of memory and stirred on her tongue. She murmured it under her breath.

" 'Hast thou observed the traditions of the mathematici, that thou shouldst have power through the binding and loosing made by that woven fabric formed out of the courses of the moon and the sun and the erratica and the stars, each in relationship to the others? These are the arts known to the daimones of the upper air, and it is written, "Whatsoever ye do in word or in work, do all in the name of Our Lord and Lady." If thou hast done this, thou shall be judged before the skopos herself.'''

But Ihere had been more, which she had not written down because it did not concern the astronomical arts.
"Hast thou made knots, and incantations . .
."

Hugh looked up at her as if he could sense her Ihoughts, and she flushed, afraid, when a smile touched his lips. He had not addressed a single word to her since the incident in Ihe forest, and that was worse than anything that had come before . . . because she knew, and he knew, that he was only biding his time.

"That Ungrian ambassador is so uncouth." The princess continued on obliviously, just as all the others seemed oblivious to Hugh's actions by the fire
—as if he had shielded himself from their curiosity. "The way he picks at his food as if it isn't fit for him to eat! You don't suppose Father means to marry the son of the Ungrian king to me, do you?"

"I think not, Your Highness." Hugh dumped the last of the herbs into the fire and stepped away, dusting white ash from his otherwise spotless tunic. The linen strip had vanished. "The L
^T
ngrian king is newly converted to the Faith of the Unities, praise God, and I believe he wishes L for a woman of Wendish kin to settle there so that she may bring her knowledge of the Circle of Unity and the example of her faith to his people."

"That might be a useful occupation for Theophanu when she returns from her pilgrimage. Where is my milk?"

A steward fetched wine and milk. Hugh left the hall for the guest rooms beyond. With the shutters closed, it was dim and smoky within the hall. The tapestries carried on the progress by King Henry had been hung over the frescoed walls for warmth, creating an odd mosaic of images, painted and woven, all jumbled up together. Freshly cut rushes smothered the floor. Three hearthfires burned, and lamps glowed on the far table where a dozen clerics worked. The rest, even Sister Rosvita, had gone out on the hunt.

Candles sat in clay bowls on all the mantelpieces; lit this morning, they would burn all day and through the night. It was the first day of the month of Decial, called Candlemass: the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. The heathens called it Dhearc, the dark of the sun, and on this day it was traditional to go hunting no matter what the weather was like, because on this day the sun and light, in the person of the regnant, at last defeated darkness and disorder, in the body of the wild game which would be killed and feasted upon. St. Peter the Discipla, whose feast day this was, had been martyred by being burned alive by unbelievers.

In
The Book of Secrets,
Da had written:
"When the sun stands still, certain pathways otherwise hidden become clear and certain weavings otherwise too tangled to unravel become straight. Thereby with what power you can bind a small spell into life on other days, you can bind your wish into life in an altogether greater manner at the hinges of the year. Therefore, be cautious."

Bind your wish.
Therefore, be cautious. She crouched by the fire. Two stone posts framed the hearth, carved with the forelegs and heads of griffins, and she touched the one nearest her, tracing its lion's claws. Tiny singed fragments of flowers lay scattered at the base and on the bricks; she rolled them between thumb and finger and sniffed. Lavender. A single apple seed lay on the flagstones. The scent from the fire was heady and thick, and she had to step back to let her head clear.

Was Hugh working magic? Ai, Lady, she could not regret saving Theophanu's life, but what if Hugh suspected
—what if the others discovered—that
she
had made those arrows catch fire? Would she be taken before the skopos to stand trial? And yet the thought gnawed at her, like a nagging pain: //
you can bring flame and see visions through fire, then why not other magics? Why did Da lie?

She was not deaf to magic. She was protected against it: against the magic of others and, perhaps, against her own. But she had no way to discover the truth, she had no one to confide in, no one to teach her. Suddenly Wolfhere's hints and gentle suggestions, his attempts to convince her to trust him, seemed both more sinister and more welcome. If only he were here now.

Hugh returned, carrying a book. She recognized Polyxene's
History of Dariya
at once. The binding was almost as familiar to her as her own skin. He had stolen it from her as he had stolen so much else. He seated himself beside Princess Sapientia, and two servants stood over him with lamps. The dozen clerics at the other end of the hall set down their pens, turning as flowers toward the sun, eager to hear him read.

"I shall read today from Polyxene," he began.

"What should I care about such an old history, and written about heathens, at that?" asked Sapientia.

He raised one eyebrow. "Your Highness. Surely you are aware that the
Dariyans,
who were said to be half of humankind and half of elvish kin, conquered and ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. Only in the myths and tales of the ancient Arethousans do we hear of older and greater empires, that of Sai's which was swallowed by the waves, or of the wise and ancient Gyptos peoples across the middle sea. After the destruction of the Dariyan Empire the many lands they had once held together in greatness became the haunts of savages, and uncivilized heathens fought over the spoils. It was only a hundred years ago that the great Salian Emperor Taillefer restored the empire, by the grace of Our Lord and Lady, God of Unities. He had himself crowned Holy Dariyan Emperor, but at his death his empire was lost to the feuding of his successors."

Sapientia's expression cleared, and she looked oddly thoughtful. "Father believes that it is the destiny of our family to restore the Holy Empire of Dariya."

"And so your family shall," murmured Hugh, "and be crowned in Darre before the skopos, as was Taillefer."

Liath shivered. Was this why Hugh had tried to murder Theophanu? So Sapientia would have no rival for the imperial throne, not just for the throne of the kingdom of Wendar and Varre?

He cleared his throat, took a sip of wine, and began to read out loud in his beautiful, almost hypnotic voice. " 'The fact is that we can obtain only an impression of a whole from a part, and certainly neither a thorough knowledge or an accurate understanding. It is only by combining and comparing certain parts of the whole with one another and taking note of their resemblances and their differences that we shall arrive at a comprehensive view.''

Was that what Da was doing all along in the first part of
The Book of Secrets?
In that first part he had written down so many snippets from so many different sources, compiling them so that he could better understand the knowledge hidden in the heavens. She yawned, feeling a sudden sense of numbing lassitude, then shook herself back awake.

" 'By what means and in what time the people we know now as the Dariyans first came to Aosta rests outside my consideration. Instead, I shall take as my starting point the first occasion on which the Dariyans left Aosta, crossing the sea to the island of Nakria.'
^>:

Sapientia snored softly. She had fallen asleep, as had two of her servingwomen; her other servants, seated around her, also nodded off. Liath had a sudden desperate fear that if she did not get up and get outside this instant, she, too, would fall asleep.

The youngest cleric spoke up from the other end of the room. "I beg you, Father Hugh, read to us of the seige of Kartiako."

The distraction gave her cover. She crept out the door but took a wrong turn and at once was confused. The Augensburg palace boasted two reception halls, a solarium, courtyards, barracks, guest rooms, chambers for the regnant and for the duke of Avaria, a safe room for the king's treasury, and a dozen cottages for envoys and servants. All this was built out of timber felled from the surrounding forest Only the bathing complex and the chapel were built of stone.

Liath had left her saddlebags in the barracks, but Sapientia held her on such a tight leash that she'd had no time to commit the palace layout to memory. She retraced her steps. In the hall, everyone was asleep
—and Hugh was nowhere to be seen. Backing out of the room, she tried again to find the barracks by cutting through a side corridor, but it only let her out through a tiny fountain courtyard where an old gardener sat dozing in the cold air on the lip of a frost-encrusted fountain. No water ran.

The reception room opened before her. Frescoes gleamed on the walls, splashes of color in the dim chamber. Great wooden beams spanned the ceiling. A languor hung over the hall. Two servants, brooms in hand, snored on the steps that led up to the dais and the regnant's throne, itself carved cunningly with lions as the four legs, the back as the wings of an eagle, and the arms as the sinuous necks and heads of dragons. A woman had fallen asleep by the hearth fire while mending a seat cover; she had pricked herself with her needle, and a tiny drop of blood welled on her skin.

Suddenly uneasy, Liath climbed spiraling wooden stairs to a long corridor. Built above the north block of buildings, the corridor was reserved for the king, his family, and his messengers; it provided a way for him to proceed from one quarter of the complex to another without walking through the common rooms below or setting foot in the muddy alleyways. She hurried down the narrow corridor, not wider than the width of her arms outstretched. Now she remembered; the barracks lay in the northeast corner of the palace complex.

She became consumed with the fear that something was following her. She felt breathing on her neck, spun around. The far end of the corridor, down which she had just come, lay blanketed in darkness except where spines of light shone through cracks in the wooden shutters. A footstep scraped on the stair.