Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (30 page)

Sanglant looked to see if anyone remained. It was worse even than she expected: everyone had abandoned them except for a dozen Lions and the soldiers who had escorted them from Ferse.

Now the captain of these men stepped forward. "My lord prince. We will gladly help you with the dogs. Then we must take you before the king, at his order."

"Bury them," said Sanglant. "I doubt if they'll burn." He got his arms under the injured dog, hoisted it, and lugged it to the chamber set aside for his use. Lions fanned out to give him room to walk. The courtyard had emptied except for servants, who whispered, staring, and fluttered away. Dust spun around the corners of buildings. She smelled pork roasting over fires. A sheep bleated. Distant thunder growled and faded.

"Eagle!" whispered one of the Lions as they halted before the door while Sanglant carried the limp dog over the threshold. She recognized her old comrade, Thiadbold; his scar stood stark white against tanned skin. "I beg your pardon!"

"Call me Liath, I beg you, friend." She was desperate for friends. That Sanglant's own loyal dogs had set upon the king . . .

"Liath," Thiadbold glanced toward the door, which still yawned open. From within she heard Sanglant grunt as he got the dog down to the floor. "We Lions have not forgotten. If there is aught we can do to aid you, we will, as long as it does not go against our oath to the king."

Tears stung at his unexpected kindness. "I thank you," she said stiffly. "Please see that my horse is stabled, if you will." Then she remembered Ferse and the morning gift. "There is one thing. . . ." She had only finished explaining it when Sanglant called to her.

The Lion nodded gravely. "It is little enough to do for him."

She went inside.

"Have we no servants available to us?" Sanglant asked her.

"Only the soldiers set on guard."

He knelt beside the dog, which lay silent at the foot of the bed as at the approach of an expected kindness—or of death. It did not move as he ran his hands along its body to probe its injuries: a smashed paw, a slashed foreleg, a deep wound to the ribs and another to the head that had shorn off one ear. Its shallow panting, the grotesque tongue lolling out, was as quiet as a baby's breath. She had never been this close to an Eika dog before. She shuddered.

He smiled grimly. "Best that we save this one, since it's all that remains of my retinue." He drew from the collar the short chain affixed to the leather pouch, now scarred where gems had been pried off. "It guarded your book most faithfully."

Despite his disgrace, the soldiers had not deserted Sanglant. Their captain, Fulk, brought him water in a basin together with an old cloth which he tore into strips to bind up the dog's wounds. She tidied her clothing, unbelted sword and quiver and bow and laid them beside the bed with rest of her gear. She dared not approach the king wearing arms. When Sanglant finished with the dog, and she had taken a draught of wine for her parched throat and reminded him to straighten up his own tunic so he should not appear completely disreputable, the soldiers escorted them to the king's audience chamber. It was not far, because the king had given Sanglant a chamber in one wing of his own residence.

They found the king seated on a couch with his arm bandaged and his expression severe. Sapientia sat at his right hand, Theophanu at his left. He dismissed all of his attendants except for Helmut Villam, Sister Rosvita, and Hathui. Liath caught a glimpse of Hanna, face drawn tight with fear, before she vanished with the others. A half-dozen stewards remained.

Liath knelt. But her hands were steady. Sanglant hesitated, but then, slowly, he knelt also: supplicant before the king's displeasure.

"What did Hugh say to you?" Henry asked Sanglant in a perfectly collected voice.

The question surprised her, but Sanglant got a stubborn look on his face and set his mouth mulishly.

"What did he say to make you attack him in that way?" repeated the king, each word uttered so distinctly that they fell like stones.

Sanglant shut his eyes. " 'Do you cover her as a dog covers a bitch?' " He croaked out the words, his voice so harsh she could barely understand him. Then he buried his face in his hands in shame. And she burned.

An unlit candle set on the side table snapped into flame.

Henry started up in surprise, and Sapientia leaped up beside him and took hold of his elbow, to steady him. Villam murmured a prayer and drew the sign of the Circle at his breast. But Theophanu only glanced at the candle and then nodded to Rosvita, as if to answer a question. Hathui sighed softly from her station behind the king's couch.

"What is this, Sanglant?" demanded Henry. "A sign of your mother's blood at last?"

"Merely a trick, learned as a child and then forgotten," said Sanglant without looking at Liath.

"Nay," Liath said, although her voice shook. "I cannot let you shoulder the burden which is properly mine,"

"Sorcery!" hissed Sapientia. "She's bewitched Hugh. That's why he's gone mad for her. Just like she's bewitched Sanglant."

"You're a fool, sister!" retorted Theophanu. "She saved my life. It's your beloved Hugh who is the maleficus!"

"Hush," said the king. He touched Sapientia on the arm and she let him go at once so that he could walk forward. The injury to his shoulder had not wounded the dignity of his gait. Frozen, Liath dared not move as he stopped in front of her and then circled her as a man does a caged leopard he means to slay. "Have you bewitched my son?"

"Nay, Your Majesty," she stammered, dry-eyed with terror.

"How can I believe you?"

"She has not—!" Sanglant began, head flung back.

"Silence! Or I will have you thrown out while I conduct this interview in your absence. Now. Speak."

The king could crush her flat in an instant, with the merest flick of his hand command his soldiers to kill her. "It's true I know some few of the arts of sorcery, as part of the education my father gave me," she began hesitantly, "but I'm untrained."

"Hah!" said Sapientia as she paced behind Henry's couch. Sanglant shifted where he knelt, as if he, too, wanted to pace.

"Go on," said the king without looking toward his daughter. His gaze, fixed so unerringly on Liath, made her wonder if perhaps it wasn't better just to get that spear through the guts and have done with it.

"My Da protected me against magic, that's all. He told me I'd never be a sorcerer." It all sounded very foolish. And dangerous.

"Her father was a mathematicus," said Rosvita suddenly. Ai, Lady: the voice of doom.

Henry snorted. "She arrived at my progress an avowed discipla of Wolfhere. It
is a
plot."

"Wolfhere didn't want her to leave," said Sanglant. "He argued against her leaving him, most furiously. He wanted her to stay with him."

"The better to fool you into taking her with you. And
marrying
her! A royal prince!"

"Nay, Father. Hear me out." Sanglant did rise now. Sapientia stopped pacing and with flushed cheeks studied her half brother. Theophanu, as cool as ever, had clasped her hands at her belt. Villam looked anxious, and Rosvita, who might be her best ally or her worst enemy, wore a grave expression indeed. "Hear me out, I beg you."

Henry hesitated, fingered the bandage that wrapped his arm. Oddly, he glanced back toward Hathui.

"I cannot know everything that is in Wolfhere's mind," Hathui said, as if in response to a spoken question. "I have no doubt he has seen and done much that I have never—and will never— hear about. But I do not think he ever intended Liath for any path but following him—and—" She glanced toward Sapientia, who had paused beside the window to run her fingers down the ridges of the closed shutters. "—to free her from Father Hugh."

Amazingly, Sapientia said nothing, appeared not even to hear the remark except that her tracing faltered, stopped, and began again.

At last, Henry nodded to Sanglant. "You may speak."

"You wouldn't have taken Gent without her aid. She killed Bloodheart."

"She? This one?"

"You did not hear the story from Lavastine?"

"She was under his command. What story is there to tell?"

"If you cannot believe me, then let Lavastine come before you and tell the tale."

"Lavastine was ensorcelled before," began Sapientia. "Why not again—?"

"He and his retinue left this morning," said Henry, cutting her off, "So his tale must be left untold."

"Count Lavastine has gone?" Now Sanglant paced to the door, and back, like a dog caught on a chain. Liath hissed his name softly, but he worried at his knuckles until Henry brought him up short by placing an open hand on his chest and stopping him. "I must ride after him—to warn him— If the curse does not follow her—" He faltered, came back to himself, and glanced around the room. "A messenger must be sent. You cannot begin to imagine Bloodheart's power."

"It was rumored that he was an enchanter," said Villam.

Sanglant laughed sourly. "No rumor. I myself witnessed—" He swiped at his face as if brushing away a swarm of gnats that no one else could see. "No use telling it. No use recalling it now, what he did to me."

That quickly, she saw Henry's face soften. But it was brief. He touched the bandage again, and his mouth set in a grim line. "There is much to explain."

Sanglant spun, took Liath by the elbow, and pulled her up.

She did not want to fight against that pull, but she also did not want to stand rather than kneel before the king. "Only someone with magic could have killed an enchanter as powerful as Bloodheart."

"Explain yourself."

"You know yourself he had powers of illusion, that he could make things appear in the air that had no true existence. Or perhaps you didn't see that. We saw it." He grimaced and turned to look at Liath. "She alone—Ai, Lord! Had I only listened to her at Gent, my Dragons would still be alive. But we let them in, we opened the gates, thinking they were our allies."

"Young Alain spoke of a curse," said Henry, "but I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"He had protected himself against death," Sanglant went on, not hearing the comment. "He had taken his heart out of his own body so that he could not be killed. He protected himself with some kind of grotesque creature that he kept in a chest. He spoke a curse at the end, but whether he released the creature I can't know. I didn't see it again. By all these means did Bloodheart protect himself." He turned to gesture toward her, and with that gesture everyone looked at her . "No man or woman acting alone could have killed Bloodheart. But
she
did."

The silence made Liath nervous. She stared at the couch, finest linen dyed a blood red and embroidered with a magnificent hunting scene in gold-and-silver thread: Henry, standing in front of her, obscured part of it, but she could see lions grappling with deer, and a stag bounding away in front of three riders while partridges flushed from cover.

"That is why a messenger must be sent to Count Lavastine," finished Sanglant. "If Bloodheart's vengeance doesn't stalk Liath, if she is somehow protected against magic by her father's spells, then it must be stalking Count Lavastine. Bloodheart's magic was powerful—"

"Bloodheart is dead," said Henry.

"Yet no harm can come," said Hathui suddenly, "in sending an Eagle to warn him, even if naught comes of it."

"It was the hound," said Sanglant. "The hound that died. It smelled of Bloodheart."

"What must we tell him?" asked Hathui. "How does one overcome such a curse?"

Sanglant looked helplessly at Liath, but she could only shrug.

In truth, like Henry, she didn't truly understand what he was talking about: Was this a madness brought on by his captivity, the months in chains he had spent at Bloodheart's feet? Or was he right? Did some terrible curse stalk her or, thwarted by Da's magic, stalk Lavastine instead?

"Send an Eagle," said Henry to Hathui, "telling everything you have learned here. Then return." She nodded and left quickly.

Henry touched his injured arm, winced—and caught Sanglant wincing at the same time, as if in sympathy, or guilt. Villam helped the king seat himself on the couch. Henry looked tired, but thoughtful.

"Others have noticed her," Henry said, studying Liath.

"Never be noticed."
Da had been right all along: That way lay ruin. But it was too late now. She could have stayed with the Aoi sorcerer, but she had not. She could have ridden on with Wolfhere, but she had not. She could not undo what had been done.