In the Ruins (46 page)

She had trouble clambering out onto the floor above. By the time she got to her feet, Berthold had swarmed up the ladder behind her, and he stood there, skin flushed, eyes wide, and mouth open as he stared.

The queen was furious; spots of color burned in her cheeks. This kind of unrestrained anger never made her prettier.

The servant girl, Anna, had Blessing clasped in a tight embrace. The princess looked ready to kick, but did not.

A white-haired man was bound to a chair. Two guards stood behind him. Captain Falco, looking as angry as Antonia had ever seen him and bearing a fresh scratch on his face, had his big hands clamped around the wrists of a dusky young woman who appeared to be about the same age as Berthold.

“Elene!” young Villam cried, in the Wendish manner, dragging out each syllable:
Ehl-leh-ney
. “Elene of Wayland!”

Captain Falco released her. The newcomer turned to look at the elderly man, who nodded at her before looking toward Berthold.

“You look like Berthold, Villam’s youngest son,” said the one called Elene. “I remember you from the king’s schola, where I was held hostage.”

“You remember
me
?” said Berthold in the tone of a man who has just fallen heels over head in love.

“Of course. The others weren’t kind to me, not as you were. They called me names. They were jealous of my father, of course.”

“Elene of Wayland,” said Adelheid. She folded her hands and tucked them close against her belly as might a
child who has been warned not to snatch at a piece of sweet cake it particularly wants. “Are you Conrad’s daughter?”

The girl looked at her, just that, then turned her back most insultingly and crossed to kneel beside the elderly man. “Have they hurt you, Wolfhere?”

“Hush!” hissed Anna in a too-loud voice as Blessing squirmed in her arms. “Hush, my lady!”

“I want to go to Berthold!”

Anna let her go, and Blessing bolted across the room and flung herself so hard against Berthold that he staggered and almost plunged down through the trap.

“Brat! Hold, there! I can’t breathe.”

But he didn’t look at her. He had not once taken his gaze from Duke Conrad’s beautiful daughter, who had, against all expectation, turned up in Aosta under the protection of Brother Lupus, known as Wolfhere, the last of Anne’s cabal.

How very interesting.

“Enough!” Adelheid tugged pointlessly at her sleeves as she struggled to recover her composure. “Let the Eagle stew in the hole until he is willing to tell us why he travels north through Aosta without a retinue and with a duke’s heir in his talons. Conrad’s daughter may remain with her royal cousin for now.”

“I don’t want her!” retorted Blessing, who was still clinging to Berthold. “I don’t like her.”

“I’ll show you, you little beast!” said Elene, with a spark of gleeful spite as she spun to face Blessing. “You think I don’t know how to discipline nasty little sisters?”

“Hush, Blessing!” scolded Berthold. “Duke Conrad is your father’s cousin. You’ll treat Lady Elene with respect.”

“I won’t!”

Wolfhere spoke for the second time. “Princess Blessing. Be good, as your father—and Brother Heribert—would wish you to.”

The words silenced her. She sniveled, but kept her mouth shut.

Elene smiled. She looked at Wolfhere, and he at her, and some message passed between them that Antonia could
not read, but she understood its import. Prisoners as they were, fallen into the hands of enemies, they were not scared in the least.

They have a plan already
.

“Captain, take him quickly, before I lose my temper,” said Adelheid. She turned toward the trap. “Holy Mother! Why have you come?”

“To see the prisoners, Your Majesty. How are they come here, in these terrible days?”

“They were found walking north. How can a pair of travelers with but one sorry mare between them have survived the journey through southern Aosta? Yet neither deigns to speak. We will have to torture the Eagle to extract a confession. Captain!”

Falco untied Wolfhere from the chair. The old man’s hands were still bound, and he was bundled away down the ladder while Elene stared after him. Adelheid followed.

“Here, now, brat,” said Berthold, “let go.”

“Won’t.”

“How have you come here, Lord Berthold?” asked Elene.

“I pray you, Holy Mother,” said Berthold sweetly. “Will you lead us in prayer?”

The girl started, then lifted her chin to acknowledge the blow. She was not subtle, but it was clear that, like her infamous father, she was stubborn and strong. And hiding something. There was a perfume, if not quite a smell, about her that reminded Antonia of Anne and the tower in Verna: the stink of sorcery, that she knew so well herself.

“You are Meriam’s granddaughter,” Antonia said.

The girl looked at her, surprised. That youthful face had a great deal of pride, but she was also wary, guarded, watchful. She was thinking, plotting, planning.

“Who are you?” she asked imperiously.

“I am the Holy Mother of the faithful, child.”

“You are the skopos? Holy Mother Anne’s successor?” she asked. “Yet you speak Wendish. You’re not Dariyan-born. Did Holy Mother Anne choose you to succeed her?”

“God have chosen me to do their work on Earth.”

Elene giggled, her expression touched so slightly with
hysteria that Antonia almost missed it. Beneath the noble arrogance inherited from her father, she was fragile. The strength she had shown in front of Wolfhere had no deep roots. “I pray you, Holy Mother, intercede with the queen. Do not let them harm Wolfhere. He saved my life!”

There was a secret here, but she would have to probe carefully to uncover it. “How did he save you, child?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I pray you, Holy Mother,” broke in Berthold, “can’t you see she is exhausted? Let her rest. Surely you can interview her later.”

“Wolfhere must not be harmed!” Elene dropped to the floor, weeping.

“Let go, brat!” Berthold shook off Blessing. He crossed to Elene, grasped her hands, and knelt beside her. “I pray you, lady, do not despair. I won’t let Wolfhere be harmed.”

She lifted her face to stare up at him through her tears. Such a handsome couple! So young and so emotional, as the young were.

“Stop it!” said Blessing furiously. She stomped forward and tried to shove herself between Berthold and Elene.

“That’s enough, brat!” said Berthold sternly.

“Stop it, yourself!” Elene pinched the girl so hard on her backside that Blessing shrieked, leaped away, and flung herself into Anna’s arms, sobbing noisily.

“No one loves me! I hate all of you!”

Elene’s tears had dried. She looked at Berthold, measuring him, and he stared at her with all the intelligence of a young man who has fallen hard and helplessly into the snare of infatuation. She did not remove her hand from his. Tremulously, she smiled.

“No! No! No! He loves me, not her!”

“Your Highness,” said the servant girl, clutching the writhing child so tightly against her that the strain showed on her face, “I pray you, do not make a scene. Of course Lord Berthold loves you. We all do.”

“Even Papa got rid of me! No one loves me! No one! No one! No one!” She fell into a sobbing temper tantrum that took all the servant girl’s strength to contain.

Antonia smiled. “Lady Elene. What is it you wish?”

She released Berthold’s hands and stood. His concern had given her an infusion of strength. “I wish for Wolfhere to be released so he and I can continue north. I want to go home!”

“Queen Adelheid will not be so easily persuaded.”

“I have other—” She cut herself off, remembering prudence.

“I expect your grandmother has taught you some of her arts, child. I am not ignorant of Anne and her sorcery. I know Meriam. Is she dead?”

Elene’s shoulders curled. Her tense stance slackened. “Yes,” she whispered. “She’s dead. Anne knew it would kill them all, and she didn’t
care
! That’s what Wolfhere said.”

“Wolfhere would know, would he not, for he was Anne’s most loyal servant.”

Elene tilted her head sideways as a measuring smile teased her lips. “That’s right,” she said in a mocking tone.

Impertinent child!

“I don’t know what Wolfhere told you to convince you to travel with him. I stood among their number, once, before Anne tried to betray me. I saw what was coming. I saw who supported Anne, but I also saw that I would be sacrificed, so I chose a different path. That is why I survived.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Berthold.

Blessing sobbed on and on. “No one! No-o-o one!” The child had remarkable stamina, which was, no doubt, some unnatural inheritance from her parents.

“Of course you are right,” said Elene quietly. “I pray you, Holy Mother, do not let them harm Wolfhere.”

“I am sworn to God’s service, not to the trivial quarrels of humankind. Yet I hate to see suffering. It is possible that you and Wolfhere have information that may be of value to me.”

“I’ll tell you everything, if you’ll let us go.”

“Were you not already planning to escape? What manner of sorcery did your grandmother teach you?”

Elene twisted one hand within the curve of the other. She bit her lip.

“I know something of sorcery, Lady Elene. I am not without weapons of my own, cruel ones, more dangerous
than you can know. Ones whose reach flies farther than that of arrows or spears. Ones whose touch is deadly, and whose heart cannot be turned aside by any manner of plea or bribe. My servants are not of this world, and nothing on this Earth—nothing you have—can stop them.”

Blessing stopped crying, but she shuddered against her servant.

Elene hid her face in her hands. “I know who you are. My grandmother spoke of you. You’re the one who controls the galla.”

“That I am. Now do you see it is better to cooperate with me? Even if you used magic to escape, my servants can still hunt you down no matter where you run.”

“What are galla?” asked Berthold, his face twisted with nervousness and confusion and a touch of proud Villam outrage.

“Something very bad,” said Elene so faintly that her voice faded and was lost as, below, a bench scraped and a guard’s yell drifted up from the lowest level. She lowered her hands. “What do you want from us, Holy Mother?”

“I want the truth. Tell me everything you know, Lady Elene. I cannot allow you or Wolfhere to leave, but I will see that you are well treated and that Queen Adelheid does not harm you.”

“Yes.” Groping, Elene found a chair and sank into it with Berthold supporting her. Once she was sitting, he kept a hand protectively on her shoulder as she told her tale in a halting voice, backtracking often, repeating herself, and without question obfuscating where she could.

She was terrified, that was easy to see, and humiliated because she knew she was afraid. She made mistakes and revealed more than she meant to: how Meriam had demanded that her son sacrifice his eldest daughter to Anne’s cabal; how they had been shipwrecked but rescued by Brother Marcus; how Wolfhere had vanished in Qurtubah, near the ruins of Kartiako, because the others suspected he had turned against them; how a simple, illiterate brother called Zacharias had saved her from the monstrous akreva, taking the poison meant for her; how she and Meriam and their tiny retinue had crossed through the
crown into the deserts of Saïs, into a trackless waste where no creature lived or breathed; how Meriam had woven the great spell with Elene’s assistance, on that terrible night.

“She died.” Elene’s voice was more croak than human and her body shuddered as Berthold patted her shoulder. She did not cry. “She needed my strength, but she sent me back at the last moment. She had planned it with Wolfhere all along.”

“With Wolfhere? Planned what?”

“That he would follow us and return me to my father. She fulfilled her vow to Anne. She knew it was right, what they did. But the Seven Sleepers failed. The Lost Ones have returned. They will kill all of humankind if they can. In Jinna lands they still tell tales of the ancient war with the Aoi. My grandmother heard those stories when she was a child. You know what Anne meant to do—to banish the Lost Ones forever, so they would never trouble us again. Why did you abandon Mother Anne, knowing that her cause was just and necessary?”

“I saw no reason to sacrifice myself when I could serve God better by surviving. Did Anne know that she and all the others would die? That the weaving would extract its own cost? Did Sister Meriam know she was doomed? Did all of them die?”

By the way Elene lowered her eyes and sagged against Berthold, Antonia guessed she was about to lie. “I could not see into the weaving. I only know …” She wept.

Berthold shot Antonia an indignant glance. “Is this necessary?” He looked so much like his father that Antonia had a momentary sense of dislocation, as if she had been thrown by means of a spell back to the days of her youth. But she had to press on.

“What do you know, Lady Elene?”

“Something terrible happened. I don’t know who fought the spell, but it broke down in the north, and then something terrible happened. White fire, and a river of burning rock. My grandmother was …” Her lips twisted as she struggled not to sob out loud. “She was gone, engulfed utterly in a blast of light. Later, a wind flattened our camp. Our servants were killed, smothered in sand. There
came … a creature that dug out of the sands.” She covered her eyes with a hand. “A huge lion, but it had wings, and the face of a woman. It was going to kill me. Wolfhere came, and we escaped.”

“The ancient messengers of God.” A fire of excitement burned in Antonia’s heart. The rush of heady discovery made her giddy. “The oldest stories come to life! Is this true, that you have seen such things? One of the lion queens, the holy messengers of God?”

“I saw them.”

“What did Wolfhere do that allowed you to escape their just wrath?”

Elene grimaced and wiped her cheeks as she calmed herself. “Ask him. I fainted from loss of blood.”

“Can you mean they struck, and yet you survived?”

“Do you not believe me?”

Elene pulled her tunic up to display a length of bare thigh, supple and comely. Berthold flushed bright red and looked away, but Antonia saw the whitened scars from three cruel cuts that had torn the flesh and healed cleanly. A cat might leave such a mark, if it were very, very large.