PROLOGUE (40 page)

"The Eika," said Alain. "Fifth Son. I think he's going to get married. But not in any way we understand."

Lavastine regarded him without answering until Alain grew uncomfortable, as if he had said something wrong or made a comment more fitting to a farmer than a count's heir.

"Father?" he asked, not liking the count's silence. Henri had been silent in that way.

But Lavastine quirked his lips finally, upward, signifying approval. "It is a portent. We have spoken of this before, but it has come time to act on it. We will send my cousin Geoffrey to the court of King Henry."

Speaking of Geoffrey, whose open dislike of Alain still crawled fresh along his skin, made the young man nervous. "Come," he said to the hounds. He tied leashes around the necks of Rage and Sorrow and old Terror and Bliss, the four favored to sleep at night in the tower chamber with their masters. He tied the ends of the leashes to a hook set into the wall and then rapped on the door with a staff. It opened at once, servants entering
—not without their usual nervous glance toward the hounds—with two pitchers of steaming water scented with mint, basins and cloth for bathing his face, and a clean covered chamberpot. "It is time for you to be betrothed, Alain." "Betrothed!" He let the servants wipe his face. The water heated his face, a touch of summer, and every least curve of skin on his hands was washed until his hands smelled of the herb garden. The scent of warmth and summer made him think of Tallia, and he bent over the table to shield himself, lest he betray his feeling to anyone, even to Lavastine.

"When Geoffrey asks King Henry for a marriage alliance between you and Lady Tallia, it will remind Geoffrey of the order of things in Lavas now. As he needs reminding." Any discomforting memories of the visit to Aldegund's manor vanished with the mention of Tallia's name. "Tallia," Alain breathed. "But
—she's the daughter of a duke and of Henry's own sister."

"Half sister. Alain, my son, you must understand this about marriage. Henry must marry the girl to some lordling or else put her in the convent. As long as she is in the convent, there is always the chance some lord will abduct her and marry her against Henry's will. The king does not want to marry her to a lord whose power is already too great, or to a lord or lady's son he does not trust. He needs me, and you, because the counts of Lavas bow to no duke or margrave, and yet we are not as powerful as some of the great families of Wendar and Varre. Nor as weak as others. He would be wise to grant us this alliance. Especially since we saved his army, his kingdom, and his life at Kassel. Lady Tallia is a small price to pay, I think."

"Just as the gold and silver you gave to my foster family was a small price for you to pay," said Alain, suddenly bitter again.

"For their fostering of you? A small price, indeed, Alain. Never begrudge the seed you sow in good soil, for it is the harvest that comes from that sowing that will determine whether you live or die the next spring. Think not only for this day, but for the one that is to come. In this way, Lavas has prospered and it will continue to do so under your stewardship."

"Yes," whispered Alain, promising it, determined to make it true. He did not want to fail Lavastine, now or ever. How keenly he felt, suddenly, that need to have Tallia beside him. It was more than liking, more than advantage. It was simpler than that. Perhaps it was not altogether pure. "Tallia," he said, trying her name out on his tongue. Wondering how he would speak to her once they were married, once they were alone in the intimacy of the bridal chamber. He flushed and looked up in time to see Lavastine smile, so quick he might not have glimpsed it.

"And sooner," said Lavastine casually, "rather than later." Alain's face burned. Was the sin of lust emblazoned on his face? "It is vital you secure the succession as soon as possible." The count turned to the servants and signed to them to open the door. Sorrow barked. Bliss whined, tail whipping against tapestried wall, as the door was opened and the servants braced themselves well back from the path that would be taken by the hounds.

Alain let the servants help him with his boots, and then he unhooked the hounds and led them down the curving staircase to the outside where they could run
—under his supervision, of course.

He sat on a bench. The snow of last week had melted, though it was still cold. The cloudy sky had the look of porridge. He chafed his hands to warm them. A servant, seeing him, ran into the hall and emerged soon after with gloves. Soft rabbit fur caressed his hands as he slipped them on.

He had, in these moments when the hounds ran, a brief time to himself. Everyone kept well away and Lavastine was already about his business, business Alain would join as soon as he put the hounds into the kennel. He closed his eyes and drew a picture of Tallia in his mind's eye, all wheat, like the harvest, frail, bending under the weight of the wind, of her mother's ambition and her father's ancestry, and yet always whipping back. She seemed so...unreachable. So clean. So pure and holy, she who scarcely ate a crust of dry bread when riches sat on her plate.

That night when he lay down on the bed beside his father, he closed his eyes and thought of her again. She had never been far from his thoughts all day. The idea that he might actually marry her was so incredible that he might as well dream of being a fatherless bastard child raised by commoners suddenly elevated to the rank of heir to a powerful count.

God bringeth low and llfteth up.

With this comforting thought and the vision of Tallia as close as his own cloudy breath in the chill air, he slept.

Rain edged with slivers of ice batters the canvas tents of their camp. His warriors do not need the tents to sit out the storm, though it makes the wait more comfortable. But the human slaves do. Another warleader would let the slaves sit in the freezing rain and half of them would die. So are the weak winnowed from the strong. But
he
is not like the others.

He touches the Circle at his breast, circles his finger around its smooth grain in memory of the gesture made by the child
—
seen but not forgotten
—
at the door of the crypt in the cathedral at Gent. That child he had let go free, because she had reminded him of Alain.

The slaves sit in the warm billow of smoke and heat from the fire he has allowed them to start, up against a rock face beneath the canvas tent. One man stares at him, then looks quickly away when he realizes he has attracted his master's attention.

"Why do you stare?" he asks. In his dreams he has learned the language of the Soft Ones.

The slave does not reply. The other slaves look away quickly, hunching their shoulders, their way of trying to avoid notice, of pretending to be invisible as the spirits of air and wind and fire are invisible to all but enchanters.

"Tell me," he commands. Wind stings his neck and tines of ice shatter on his back where he crouches at the open end of the shelter.

"I beg your pardon, master," says the slave without looking up again, but even so he cannot keep the hate out of his voice.

"You saw something." The long winter's night shrouds them, blanketed by the ice storm and serenaded by the howling wind. By the red sullen light of fire he watches the slaves stare at their knees and their hands, even this one, the one who spoke. The one whom he caught looking. "I will know."

"You wear the Circle of Unity, master," says the slave at last, knowing that to disobey is to die. "But you do not worship God."

He touches the Circle, drawing his finger round its curve with that same remembered gesture. "I do not hide the Circle."

"It is the way you touch it, master." The man's voice gains strength, of a kind. "It reminded me of. . . someone I once knew."

Someone this man does not wish to speak of. Bored by the storm, irritated by the delay, since no ship can brave the seas in such conditions, he forces the slave to go on. "Do you have a family as, I think, is common among your kind?"

"No, master." Here, finally, the slave lost his fear and let his hate take wing. "Your people murdered them, all of my kin: my wife, my sisters, even my poor innocent children."

"Yet you serve me." This human interests him. He has fire, perhaps even some stubborn strength of earth in him. The penned slaves who have lived among the RockChildren for many generations are more like dogs than people, but these new slaves to whom he has given sticks for weapons, better food, and decent clothing all come from the southern lands, and they think before they bark. That is why he believes they will be useful.

"I have no choice but to serve you," replies the slave.

"You have the choice to die."

The slave shakes his head. "You wear the Circle, but you do not know God. The Lady weaves and the Lord cuts the thread when our time has come. It is not for us to choose to die. Death comes to us by Their will."

He examines the other slaves, who hunker down. One, at the limit of the canvas, shaking in the raw wind, turns and turns about until another slave, closer in, sees her plight and changes places with her, there at the edge of the shelter where the fire's warmth scarcely reaches and the wind's breath bites with killing cold. After a bit, yet a third slave takes the worst place. They help each other live. Is this the mercy that Alain Henrisson spoke of?

"Do you have a name?" he asks.

The slave hesitates. He does not want to offer his name. The other slaves stare, watching, surprised out of their pretense of mute stupidity. None of these, to whom he has given favor, are mute or stupid; he has studied his slaves carefully, just as he studies his livestock.

Still the slave does not speak.

He lifts a hand and unsheathes his claws.

"My name is Otto," the slave says at last and reluctantly.

The others whisper and then silence themselves. He can smell their nervousness beneath the hot pitch smoke of the fire and the cold blast of the storm.

"Do you all have names?" he asks.

To his surprise, they do all have names. They speak them, one by one, a sound drawn out of each one as an arrow is pulled from a wound, carefully, with respect.

Are they all enchanters, then? No, he reminds himself, they are merely different. They are not RockChildren. They are weak, and yet, in their weakness, they survive by helping each other.

He sheathes his claws and shifts backward far enough that he can stand outside the shelter of the canvas awning roped down and angled to give them shelter at the cliff face. The canvas flaps and moans in the tearing wind.

He steps out from its sheltering angle into the full fury of the storm. The icy wind drives into his face, its touch like that of thousands upon thousands of knives flung from the wind's hand into the wild air.

He listens as the wind pounds him and the ice stings his face. Dimly he can see the ships drawn up on a rocky beach, five ships now, since two new ships came with him out of Hakonin's fleet. He sees his soldiers hunkered down, waiting out the storm with the patience of stone, and the dogs lying in jumbled heaps like fallen boulders.

He listens. It is said among his people that on this far western shore in the wintertide, when storm wracks sea and land, one can hear the keening of dragons
—
the FirstMothers
—
who in ancient days bred with the living spirits of earth and gave birth to his kind.

But all he hears is the wind.

PART THREE
THE ORNAMENT OF WISDOM IX THE WINTER SKY ON bitterly clear nights he saw stars through certain sections of unpainted glass window whose patterns themselves formed the shapes of stars, some with five and some with six points. On this night he watched the moon's light ease across the gulf of darkness that was night in the cathedral, its glow a wavering dim light as illusive as a will-o'-the-wisp.

There came to him in an instant the searing memory of Count Hildegard and her retinue fleeing to the gates. It had all been a trick, an illusion. He had seen what he wanted to see, what
Bloodheart
wanted them all to see, the count and her ragged army in flight, when in fact Bloodheart had cast a glamour over his own Eika troops to make them appear human. In that way the Eika had gained entry into the city, and stalemate had turned to slaughter.

Only Liath had been clear-sighted enough to see through the illusion. If only he had such sight as that, he could make out a way to escape his captivity. But his gifts from his mother did not include sight beyond that common to humankind. And in any case the chains, and the dogs, were no illusion.