PROLOGUE (66 page)

And burn.

Wood ignited with a roar. Fire shot upward to lick the branches of the nearest tree. Liath stumbled away from the searing heat. The hounds yelped and slunk backward, growling.

"Lord Above!" swore Alain. He took another step away from her and drew the sign of the Circle at his breast
—as if for protection.

Falling to one knee, Liath stared at the fire. Gouts of flame boiled up into the sky. Branches hissed. Grass within the ring of penetrating heat sizzled and blackened. Only when it was this wet dared she attempt to call fire; only when it was this wet was it safe to attempt an act whose consequences she could not control.

A light rain began to fall. Alain pulled his hood up over his head and took a hesitant step toward her. Liath stared into fire and in her mind twisted the leaping flames into an archway that would let her see into another part of the world.

"Hanna," she whispered.
There.
The sight was more of a whisper than a scene unfolding before her.
Hanna stands beside Hathui; all else is shadow.
But Liath could see by the set of Hanna's shoulders, the sudden grin she flashed at a comment made by the older Eagle, that she was well. Hugh hadn't harmed her.

Reaching inside her cloak, she drew out the gold feather. It glinted fire, bright sparks, a reflection of the blaze. Alain murmured an oath. The hounds growled.

"Like to like," she murmured. "Let this be a link between us, old one."

As a curtain draws aside, revealing the chamber behind, so the fire's roar without abating shifted and changed in pitch. A low rumble like distant thunder shivered around her. The veil parted and within it, beyond it, she saw the Aoi sorcerer.

Startled, he looks up. Flax half twisted into rope dangles from his hand. "What is this?" he asks. "You are the one I have seen before."

She sees through the fire burning before her, which is fed by wood, but sees also through fire burning an upright pillar of stone. This mystery attracts her notice. She must speak, even if it might attract those who are looking for her. But her first words are not those she had intended. "How do you make the stone burn?" she demands.

"Rashly spoken," he replies. With that, he begins to roll flax into rope against his thigh. But he appears to be thinking. He regards her unsmiling through the veil of fire, but he is not unfriendly. "You are of the human kin," he says. "How have you come here? Yet I see my gift reached you."

She grasps the gold feather tightly, mirror to those trimming his leather gauntlets. "You have touched that which I have touched. I do not know how to read these omens."

"I beg you," she says. "I need help. I made fire
—"

"Made it?" His smile is brief and sharp. "Fire exists in most things. It is not
made."

"No, no." She speaks quickly because she does not know how long she has before she and Alain are interrupted, and this man
—
no man
—
this Aoi sorcerer is the only creature she can ask. "I called it. It's as if the element of fire lies quiescent within the wood, and remembers its power suddenly and comes to life."

"Fire is never quiescent. Fire rests within most objects, in some more deeply than in others."

"Then in stone it rests more deeply than I can touch. Why can that stone burn?"

He pauses, flax rope draped over his thigh. "Why do you ask questions, child?"

"Because I need answers, old one. I need a teacher."

He lifts the rope and twirls it through his fingers. The white shells on his waist-length cloak clack together as softly as the whisper of leaves on the forest floor. He turns, glancing once behind him, then back at her. "Are you asking me to teach you?"

"Who else will teach me? Will you?" The fire does not burn more fiercely than the hope which leaps up in her heart.

He considers. Shells, stones, and beads wink and dazzle in the firelight. He wears a round jade spool in each ear. His hair, bound simply into a topknot, is as black as the veil of night, and he has no beard. His dark eyes regard her, unblinking. "Find me, and I will."

At first she cannot find her voice, as if it has been torn from her. Then, struggling, panicking, she gasps out words. "How do I find you?"

He lifts a hand, displaying the rope, gesturing toward the burning stone. "Step through. The gateway already exists."

She rises, takes a step forward, but the heat is too strong. She can't move any closer.

"I can't," she says, half weeping. "I can't. How do I get there?"

"One strand of flax has no strength." He twines a single unwound thread of flax around a finger. Straining, he snaps it through. Then he wraps the finished rope around a hand. "Twined together, they make a strong rope. But it takes time to make rope, just as it takes time to twine strands of knowledge together to make wisdom."

Abruptly he stands, glancing around as if he has heard something. "They are coming."

In that instant she sees beyond him down a path which snakes oddly through the trees. A short procession winds its way along the path, rather like King Henry's progress but in smaller numbers. Bright colors so overwhelm her sight that she can make no sense of what walks there. One thing she sees: a round standard carried on a pole, a circular sheet of gold trimmed with iridescent green plumes as broad across as a man's arms outstretched. It spins, like a turning wheel. Its brilliance staggers her.

"You must go," says the sorcerer firmly. He licks a finger and reaches forward with it into fire as though to douse a wick. Moisture sizzles and snaps, popping into her face. She jerks back, blinks, then with a gasp leans forward again. But the veil has closed.

She saw nothing but raging fire and the mist of water rising as steam into the cool spring air.

"Liath!" A hand closed on her elbow, but it was only Alain, kneeling beside her. "I thought you were going to walk right into the fire."

She licked her finger, reached out toward the fire as if to extinguish it
—but nothing happened. "If only I could have."

"Now, there," he began, meaning to soothe her while behind him the hounds growled at the flames.

She shook out of his grasp and stepped back. The skin on her face felt baked; when she touched it, it smarted. "I saw the Aoi sorcerer. He said he'd teach me, if I could find a way to get to where he is."

He glanced at the fire suspiciously. "Can you trust a Lost One? They don't even believe in the God of Unities!"

"Maybe that's why," she said slowly, trying to understand it herself. "I'm a curiosity to him, that's all. He doesn't
want
anything from me
—unlike the others."

"But why can you see him through fire?"

"I don't know."

"It is a mystery, like my dreams," he agreed, mercifully letting the unanswerable question drop. He raised a hand in front of his face, absorbing some of the heat. "How it burns!" he exclaimed, and she hung her head, ashamed, thinking he would realize what a monstrous thing she had done and be repelled by her now that he knew what she was: sorcerer's child, untrained, ignorant, and uncontrollable. "Only think of what you could do with such fire!"

"Haven't I already done enough?" she asked bitterly, thinking of the Lions she had killed.

"We are none of us without sin," he pointed out. "But if you could learn to do something useful with it . . ."

"Call it down on the Eika," she replied caustically. "Burn Gent and all the poor dead bodies rotting there!"

"Nay, don't say that! If you could only scare them with it, enough to make them run
—"

"Ai, Alain! You've fought the Eika. Fire won't scare them."

"And there are slaves in the city, or so it has been reported. If the city burned, they would burn, too." He frowned, then looked at her. "We must tell my father."

"No!" This she had no doubts about. "If the king knew I had burned down the palace at Augensburg, if the biscops knew, what do you think they'd do with me?"

Troubled, he busied himself with flicking ashy flakes of wood off his cloak. "They'd condemn you as a maleficus and send you to stand trial before the skopos," he said reluctantly. "But / would speak up for you! trust you."

"They'd only accuse me of binding you with charms. Nay, they'd never trust a maleficus who can call fire. And why should they believe I can't control it? Only that I don't want to
—or that I'm more dangerous for being flawed."

"You can't control it?" He glanced nervously toward the raging fire.

"I can't even put it out," she said with disgust. "I can only make it light."

"But I must tell my father, Liath. He won't condemn you. He has too much on his own conscience to cast stones at others."

"But he might order me to call fire onto Gent, wouldn't he? If he did, and if I could do it, how many innocent slaves will die in the conflagration?"

He hesitated. By his expression he clearly feared she was right, that Count Lavastine would sacrifice a few slaves, even if they had once been honest freeholders, for the sake of taking Gent. For the sake of getting a noble bride for his heir.

Out of mist and rain and steam, they heard a shout. "They've discovered I'm gone," Alain said. "You cut around the back. Then they won't know you've been gone. If they find this fire, they won't associate it with you."

"Yes, my lord." She was not sure whether to be grateful or amused by his high-handedness. He had nothing of the nobleman's arrogance but, like Da, he had an inexplicable dignity about him that made it impossible to do anything but respect him.

Darting forward, he grabbed a brand in each hand out of the fire and jumped back. "No use letting the poor soldiers shiver in this rain. We can start other fires with this. Go on!"

"How will you explain that?" she demanded, but he only smiled, mocking himself more than her.

"I am the count's heir. No one will question me except my father, and there's no reason he need ever hear about it. Now go on. I will say nothing of what I've seen today." He dashed off into the woods in the direction of the shouting. The hounds loped behind him.

She lingered by the fire, but she knew that if she looked within it now, no veil would part, no gateway would open. With a sigh, she started by a roundabout way back to camp. Ai, Lady. Her knee was sopping wet; the baggy cloth of her leggings alternately stuck to her skin and, as she walked, peeled off only to slap back again, cold and slimy.

But such discomfort mattered little against the offer the Aoi sorcerer had made to her:
"Find me."

ROSVITA thought she recognized the book Father Hugh now carried with him. But he had such an elegant way of keeping it close against him or tucked away in the carved chest that one of his servants carried along behind him, of closing it softly, as if without thinking, or laying his hand over the binding to half conceal it, that she could never get a good look. She wasn't
quite
sure that it was, in fact, the same book she had seen Liath carrying last autumn on the very day Princess Sapientia had returned to the king's progress.

Rosvita hated being curious, but she had come to accept the fault and, perhaps, embrace it a little too heartily.

After seven days, the infant girl was anointed with holy water and perfume and given the name suggested by her father: Hippolyte, after the blessed saint. A robust child, she wailed heartily, indignant at the cold touch of water on her skin, and flushed a bright red from head to toe. Sapientia left seclusion and pleaded with Henry to let the court travel the four days to Thersa, whose accommodations were far more pleasant than these.

King Henry's good humor could hardly be improved upon. But Rosvita had observed that a man or woman who held their own child's child felt a certain triumph, as at a victory over the fragility of life on this mortal earth. Without argument, he relented. The entire court bundled itself and its possessions up yet again and headed off. God were gracious: The weather for the short journey was mild and sunny. At Thersa they settled in for a three-week stay so that the new mother and child could gain strength before continuing north to Gent.

"Perhaps it is time to lay his memory to rest," said Henry in a low voice one evening, and Rosvita merely murmured encouragement.

So it was arranged. A small party rode out the next morning, consisting of King Henry, Helmut Villam, Rosvita and three clerics, Father Hugh, and a company of Lions with an Eagle in attendance. A track led through greening fields to a village whose residents hurried to greet them. Father Hugh passed out sceattas to the householders; King Henry blessed the little children, held up for him by their mothers and fathers so he could set a hand on each dirty head. A little-used path led to a stream's edge. Here, clumps of grass waved in the rush of high water. The steep banks had overflowed slightly, but only the Lions got wet; the ford proved passable for the riders.