PROLOGUE (51 page)

"My lord! There is nothing you can do! You must come away, my lord!" So the Lions shouted at the nobleman, and he cursed them once, without feeling, and then began to weep.

Ai, Lady. Surprise brought her to a jarring halt while fire blistered the timber walls of the palace and parched her lips. It was Hugh. He dropped to his knees as if he meant to pray, and only when the Lions hoisted him up bodily could he be persuaded to move back to safety as the fire scorched the peaked roof, spit, leaped the chasm of an alley between buildings, and kindled a new fire on the roof of the fourth quarter of the palace
—the only quarter as yet untouched. Everything would go. Everything.

"Lady forgive me," said Hugh as he stared into the blaze. "Forgive me my presumption in believing I had mastered the arts you gave into my hands. Forgive me for those innocent souls who have died needlessly." He looked up, saw Hanna, and blinked, for an instant examining her as if he recognized her.

She almost staggered under the weight of his stare. She had actually forgotten how glorious he was.

Then he shook his head to dismiss her and spoke to himself
—as if to convince himself. "Had I only known more, it would not have happened this way. But I cannot let her go..."

"Come, my lord," said a servant, but Hugh shook him off.

"Father Hugh!" A new man had come running up; he was clearly terrified to stand so close to the blaze. "Princess Sapientia calls for you, my lord."

Torn, he wavered. Rising, he could not bring himself to follow the servant.

"She is having pains
—"

Clenching a hand, he glared at the raging fire, cursed under his breath and then, with a last
—beseeching?— glance at Hanna, spun and followed the servant.

Liath had gone back inside the inferno.

"Keep your wits, Hanna," she muttered to herself, recalling the first Lion's words:
"Your comrade has run mad."
Pulling her cloak tight over her mouth and nose, she pressed forward into the blaze.

"Come back!" they shouted, those Lions who remained. "Eagle!"

Her skin was aflame, but no flame touched her. She crossed into a great hall ragged with smoke and blowing ash. Heat boiled out. She saw nothing, no one, no figure struggling through the smoke. The thick beams supporting the ceiling above smoldered, not yet in open flame. A far wall cracked, splintering, burst by heat.

She heard the scream. It was Liath.

"Help me! God save us, wake up, man!"

Hanna could not take a deep breath, for courage or for air. But she ran forward anyway into the fire. Ash rained on her head. The boom and surge of fire raged around her as harshly as the tempest of battle. Smoke burned her eyes and the air tasted acrid.

She found Liath in the corridor behind, dragging a man so big and so burdened with armor that it was a miracle Liath had managed to get him this far.

"Hanna!" That she had breath to talk was astounding. "Oh, God, Hanna, help me get him free. There's two more, but the beams have fallen
—" She was weeping, although how could she weep when the heat should have wicked all moisture away?

Hanna did not think, she merely grabbed the Lion's legs and together they tugged him out of the corridor while the fire blazed closer. They had dragged him halfway across the hall when beams began to fall and the far walls to crack and disintegrate.

Just out the door her three faithful Lions were waiting, together with the red-haired Lion; Ingo and Leo grabbed their limp comrade and yanked him free as Liath turned and started inside again.

"Stop her!" screamed Hanna. Folquin wrapped his arms around the young Eagle and lifted her as she kicked and pleaded and wept, trying to get free
—but he was a brawny, farm-bred lad and as strong as an ox.

"Liath!" Hanna shouted.

But there was no time to reason with her. They retreated in awkward haste as the great roof beams collapsed in the hall. The gates remained open but stood now deserted, and they paused outside the gates to look behind. Everyone had fled to safer ground. Townsfolk carried their buckets of water to the houses closest to the palace wall, dousing their roofs with water to stop the flaming ash from setting a new blaze. The market village was all there was left to save.

On the wind, a faint counterpoint to the blaze, she heard a hunting horn.

"Let me go back! Let me go back! There are two more
— at least two more—" Liath struggled and fought and even tried to bite poor Folquin, whose leather armor had protected him from worse attacks.

"Hush, friend," said the red-haired Lion sternly. "This one is dead, though you tried valiantly to save him. I doubt not the others have already died. No use risking yourself to drag out their bodies. May God have mercy on their souls, and may they come in peace to the Chamber of Light." He bowed his head.

Gingerly, Folquin set Liath down, glanced at Hanna and, with a nod from her, let Liath go. Liath collapsed to her knees but simply sat trembling as the palace burned and ash drifted down like a light rain of snow upon them. Despite her forays into the raging fire, she had nary a mark or burn on her.

"We are still too close," said Ingo.

There was a commotion on the road below. Hanna turned to see Hugh striding up toward them. Seeing Liath, he stopped dead. Such an expression transformed his face that it chilled her to her bones and yet made her want to weep in compassion for his pain. But he said nothing. He only looked. Perhaps that was worse. Then, wincing at a pain in his shoulder, he turned to limp away along the path. Servants and townsfolk and clerics swarmed him. Someone brought a chair on which to carry him, but he waved it away. Closer now, the hunting horn sounded again, high and imperative.

Liath broke into gulping sobs, so racked by them she could hardly breathe. Hanna gestured to her Lions to step back, and they ranged out, helping other Lions and guards pick up any detritus that could be saved without venturing too close: items lost from wagons or thrown down from the wallwalk; swords, shields, spears; clothing, saddlebags, scattered jewelry; a browned and blistered book, two carved stools, a sandal, a trail of ivory chess pieces. The fire burned on, but already the flames seemed less furious
— or perhaps she had become accustomed to the heat searing her face. Her hands were red with it, her lips so dry that licking them made them bleed.

"Liath." She crouched down beside her friend. "Liath, it's me. It's Hanna. You must stop this. Liath! There was nothing you could do to save them. You tried
—

"Ai, Lady. Hanna! Hanna! Why weren't you here before? Why didn't you come? Oh, God. Oh, God. I lost everything. Where is he? Please, Hanna, please get me away from him. You don't understand. I did it. /
caused it.
Why did Da lie to me?" On she went, more sobbing than words and all of them incoherent.

The horn blasted close at hand, and Hanna looked over her shoulder to see the magnificent train of the king and his hunting party emerge from the forest west of the blaze with the setting sun at their backs.

On Dhearc, the shortest day of the year, light triumphed at last over the advance of night. Candles were lit to aid in that battle. Some fallen candle, surely, had kindled this fire; the bitter irony did not escape her. But Hanna could only sniff back tears, feeling the heat of fire blazing on her cheek as she held Liath and tried to get her to stop shaking and babbling and crying, but Liath could only go on and on about fire and rape and ice and power and sleep as if she had truly lost her mind.

"Liath," said Hanna sharply, "you must stop this! The king has arrived."

"The king," whispered Liath. She sucked air in between clenched teeth. She struggled more fiercely than she had against Folquin's hold, but in the end she fought herself out of hysteria and into something resembling control. "Stay by me, Hanna. Don't leave me."

"I won't." Hanna looked up as she tasted a new scent on the wind. "Is it raining?" But there were only a few clouds. "Look at the fire. It's as if all the timber's gone." Indeed, the fire was ebbing, although it was as yet far too hot to venture close.

"Don't leave me, Hanna," Liath repeated. "Don't ever leave me alone with him, I beg you."

"Ai, Lady," murmured Hanna, suddenly afraid. "He didn't
—"

"No." Her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible. Her hands gripped Hanna's so tightly it hurt. "No, he didn't have time to
—" Her hands convulsed, her whole body jerking at some horrible memory. "I called, I
reached
for fire— ' Shaking again, she could not go on. The wind had come up, fanning the flames. Beyond, king and retinue approached. Already a small entourage had gone out to meet him and give him the terrible news, although surely he could divine the worst from any distance. The air stank of burning.

"Hanna, don't desert me," Liath breathed. "I need you." She rested her head on Hanna's arms. Her hair was caked with soot, as were her arms and hands, every part of her. She was so grimy that anything she touched came away streaky with soot. "I didn't know
—I didn't know what Da was protecting me from."

"What was he protecting you from?" Hanna asked, mystified.

Liath looked up at her, and her bleak expression cut Hanna to the core. "From myself."

>XER Amabilia had saved the
Vita of St. Radegundis.

This single thought kept leaping back so insistently into Rosvita's mind that it became hard for her to attend to the council at hand. Brother Fortunatus sat at her feet, hands still gripping the loose pages of her
History,
which he had grabbed instead of the cartulary he had been working on. She had thanked him profusely, as he deserved, poor child. But though it would have been a blow to lose the
History,
she could write it again from memory.

Sister Amabilia had saved the
Vita.
Had it burned, it could never have been restored. Brother Fidelis was dead. Only this copy remained, except for the partial, also saved by Amabilia, which the young woman had herself been copying from the original.

Rosvita felt sick to her stomach just thinking about it. What if the
Vita
had been lost? Gone up in smoke to join its creator, Fidelis, where he rested in blessed peace in the Chamber of Light?

"But it did not," she murmured.

Her clerics glanced at her, surprised to hear her comment while the king was speaking. She smiled wryly at them and made the gesture for
Silence
just as Amabilia opened her mouth to reply.

"...to the efforts of my faithful clerics who rescued my treasury and much of the business of the court, and mostly to Father Hugh. He stayed to the end until all who could be brought out of the fire were saved. He risked his own life with no thought for himself. Where is Father Hugh?"

"He is still with Princess Sapientia, Your Majesty," said Helmut Villam.

They stood or sat, all in disorder, in the hall of a well-to-do merchant. Even so, most of the court could not crowd in. They had slept out in the fields and forest last night, in barns and hayricks and under such shelter as could be found, safely away from the fire. Rosvita had been glad of straw for bedding; most of the court and the townsfolk rousted from their homes had been glad simply to have a roof of some kind over their heads. It had rained half the night. Now, in the morning, with the palace smoldering and a light rain still falling, Henry had felt it safe enough to venture back into town and take shelter there while he held council.

Burchard, Duke of Avaria, and his duchess, Ida of Ro-vencia, sat beside the king. Burchard had the look of a man who has touched Death but not yet realized it; Ida looked stern, tired, and very old, as befit a woman who has seen her two eldest sons die untimely.

The king himself looked tired. Though his tent had been salvaged from the fire, he had not passed a restful night. Last to sleep, sitting by his pregnant daughter's bed, he had been first to wake and with a number of attendants had walked to the palace to investigate the remains.

It was still too hot to enter. A few pillars stood, the remaining roof sloped precariously, about to cave in, and the stone chapel was scorched but otherwise intact. All the chapel valuables
—a reliquary containing the dust of the thighbone of St. Paulina, the gold vessels for holy water, and the embroidered altar cloth—had been saved.

"What of the cause?" asked the king now.

A palace steward came forward. He had obviously slept in his clothing and himself risked his life in the fire, for his sleeves were ripped and stained with soot and the hood of his cape was singed and blackened. "No one knows, Your Majesty. All the Candlemass candles were carefully watched. We always set them in clay bowls so if they spill there won't be danger of fire. Alas, the Lions have testified that some among their number fell asleep while gaming in the barracks. Perhaps they knocked over a lamp."