PROLOGUE (81 page)

On they went, at a steady pace, but the track was neglected and narrow and, after all, wagons cannot move as quickly as soldiers and horses.

Dusk came, and the captain found a decent clearing. He supervised the wagons as the drivers brought them into a circle, making a rough fortress of them. The livestock were driven inside and in these cramped quarters rank with the smell of ox and horse manure and crowded with drivers and grooms and servants terrified at being left this far behind and yet relieved at being in a relative vale of peace, they set up a spartan camp. Rosvita led the clerics in Vespers.

Princess Sapientia's servants worked efficiently and quickly to set up her pavilion. In this shelter they installed the baby. In the brief interlude between Vespers and Compline, Rosvita went in to pay her respects.

Little Hippolyte rested in the arms of her wet nurse with perfect equanimity. She had a bright gaze for such a young baby, dark hair like her mother, and eyes as blue as her father's. She had a happy gurgle compounded half of fat contentment and half of spit-up. In particular, she liked to grasp things: fingers, jewelry, rolls of cloth, the hafts of spoons and, once, that of a knife
—quickly taken away but not before she could wave it lustily about while her wet nurse squealed, her servingwomen crowed with laughter, and Rosvita finally and gently pried the dangerous knife from her chubby little fingers.

"Aye, she'll fight off the Eika for us!" chuckled the servants.

"Let us pray for her safety," said Rosvita sternly, which made them frown and grow serious. They were glad enough to kneel with her as she sang a brief Compline service over the baby to give it the protection of God's blessing for the night.

Then she excused herself and retired to find that her own orders had been carried out and her small traveling tent had been erected. A servant had lit a lantern and hung it from the central pole where its light cast distorted shadows over the cloth walls and the carpet pressed down over the meadow grass. Sister Amabilia had already lain down on her pallet and was now snoring softly. The other clerics, sitting outside the tent reserved for the men among their number, sat or stood around the wagon while they chatted softly
—and not without an edge of nervousness in their voices.

Rosvita made her way to the healers and begged an infusion of one of the herb women, something to calm nerves and bring sleep. It took only a few words to coax Brother Simplicus into drinking it, and there was even some left over for Brother Fortunatus. She regretted the deception of Brother Fortunatus but, unlike Amabilia and Constantine, he was not a sound sleeper.

She returned to her tent and knelt before her pallet for a long time while she prayed to God to forgive her for what she was about to do.

When at last she emerged from the tent, the camp lay as quiet as any camp could be around her and the bright moon rode high above in the night sky.

Brother Simplicus had chosen to sleep outside next to the wagon, lying on his mantle on the ground. It was a warm night and pleasant. Gingerly she knelt beside him and teased out his two necklaces: One was a fine silver Circle of Unity, the other a tiny cloth pouch tied with a sprig of elder and smelling of licorice and a spice whose fragrance bit at Rosvita's nose but whose name did not come to mind. Why would a monk in the Daisanite church be wearing a heathen amulet? She tucked both objects back under his robe.

There was no key. Hugh had kept the key himself.

The chest was indeed heavy, but Rosvita was a robust woman still even if her back was no longer as supple and strong as it once had been. She lugged it inside her tent and half-dropped it down on her pallet; the thick batting absorbed the thunk of a heavy weight hitting the ground.

She glanced behind her. Sister Amabilia snored on. Then she tested the haft. It was locked, of course, but she had expected that.

Under the light of the lantern she wedged her knife between haft and lock. It didn't budge. With a grimace, she examined the keyhole. A sprig of juniper had been thrust into it, like a key. She scrabbled at it with her fingers, getting a grip on the slick needles, and pulled it out. Its touch stung her fingers and she dropped it with a soft curse and touched her smarting fingers to her lips, licking them until the pain subsided.

She undid the brooch from her cloak and probed into the lock with the pin. She was patient and at last found the right point to put pressure on. It unlocked with a soft
pop.
At once she glanced back, but Amabilia slept on, not even stirring. Rosvita lifted the lid. The book.

Nested in a cowl of undyed linen, it lay on top of the rest of the chest's contents: a man's fine embroidered tunic and a woman's pale gold silk overdress
—a curious item for a churchman to carry with him—as well as two other books. But she did not have time to puzzle out their titles in the dim light afforded her by the lantern. At this moment, in this place, she could not afford to be curious. She lifted the book out and turned it so the lettering on the spine glinted in the lantern light:
The Book of Secrets.

Amabilia snorted and shifted in her sleep. Rosvita jerked back, startled. With a grimace, she wrapped the book in the linen cloth and thrust it under her pallet, then closed the chest and slipped a glove over her hand before she picked up the sprig of juniper and crammed it back into the keyhole.

Was it magic, hastily performed? She knew something of magic and of herbs but not enough to know if Father Hugh employed their power. God have mercy if he had.

Then she chastised herself for thinking such a thing of a good churchman like Hugh. He had proved himself, if not chaste, then at least a good adviser. He was learned and well-spoken.

And he had stolen a
Book of Secrets.

"No better a soul than mine," she murmured. She braced herself, legs bent, and grunted slightly as she picked up the chest and staggered outside. For some reason it seemed heavier now.

She replaced it in the wagon, brushed her hand over lock and wood to make sure there were no obvious signs of entry
—such as Brother Simplicus might think to look for— and then retreated back to her tent.

Of guards she saw none, but they would be set out along the perimeter. The camp lay silent, brushed by the noises that attend any forest at night: the sigh of wind through the trees, the chirping of crickets, the eerie hoot of an owl.

The moon alone witnessed her sin.

When Rosvita reentered the tent, Sister Amabilia blinked up at her and rubbed bleary eyes as if to clear them. "What are you about, Sister?"

"I am merely restless," said Rosvita. "And with a full bladder now emptied. Go back to sleep. We'll need our strength tomorrow."

Amabilia yawned, groped to find her walking staff laid on the ground beside her, and then, reassured by its presence, she went back to sleep.

Merely restless. Merely a liar.

Merely a thief.

She had spent more than half her life in the church and served faithfully and well, only to find herself now shaking in the shadow of a lantern, in a tent in the wilds of a forest night. Was it only her imagination or could she hear the howls of Eika and the screams of dying men on the wind that fluttered the tent flaps and twined round the tent poles?

"Sister Amabilia?" she whispered; but there was no reply.

She eased the book from under the pallet and opened it on the blanket, just where the light streamed with its honey glow. It was hard to see, especially with eyes no longer young and sharp as they once had been, but with her hands, leafing through the book, she discovered at once that the binding contained not one book but three, bound together. The third and last book was written in the infidel way, on paper, and in the language of the Jinna
—which she could not read. The second book, bound into the heart of the volume, was of such brittle papyrus that she hesitated to touch it for fear it would crumble under her fingers. It, too, was composed in a language she could not read, but in this case she did not even recognize the
letters.
"Hide this" was written in Arethousan at the top of the first page of the middle manuscript, and there seemed to be other glosses, also in Arethousan, but the ink was unreadable in this light.

She turned back to the very first page of the first book, a good quality parchment leaf
—and written in Dariyan, she noted even before she noted the substance of the words or the strange handwriting. Whoever had written this had been church-educated, certainly, for the lettering paraded down the page with a trace of Aostan formalism. But the "q"s curled strangely, and the "s"s had a Salian bent, while the "t"s and "th"s had the stiff, strong backs of a cleric trained in a Wendish institution. With most calligraphy she could read in the script where the scribe had gotten her training; this person wrote in such a hodgepodge of styles that she—or he—might have come from anywhere, or everywhere.

It was very strange.

But nothing like as strange, and disturbing, as the words themselves. With mounting horror, she mouthed the first sentence.

"Through the art of the mathematici we read the alignment of the heavens and draw down the power of the ever-moving spheres to work our will on the earth. I will now set down everything I know of this art. Beware, you who read this, lest you become trapped as I have in the snares of those who seek to use me for their own ends. Beware the Seven Sleepers."

A twig snapped outside and she started violently, slapping the book shut and shoving it under the blanket. God have mercy. She trembled like a sinner afflicted through God's just judgment with a palsy.

The art of the mathematici.

The most forbidden of sorceries.

THEY left the horses with a half dozen of Captain Ulric's men, the light cavalry from Autun. A few of the light cavalry had torches among their equipment; Lavastine ordered other branches collected from the brush, enough that each man carried two stout sticks.

Liath stepped into the cave mouth and took hold of a torch. There was no longer time to agonize over the gift she held within her, that Da had protected her against. Alain's life
—if he even still lived—hung in the balance.

Wood burns.
The torch flared to life, flames licking and smoking with a resiny smell. Lavastine had come in behind her, and now she turned to see him staring at her.

"It's a trick," she said quickly. "An Eagle's trick."

"Not one I have heard tell of before now," he replied, but he merely called to the forty soldiers who followed him, mostly light cavalry pulled off the field, and every fourth man lit torch or stick from the one she carried.

She set foot on the stairs. Lavastine followed directly behind her, then some of his men and, last, young Erkanwulf and the other Autun soldiers. Captain Ulric brought up the rear. With each step downward the light of day faded, dimmed, grayed into oblivion. The rough stone gripped her boots though now and again a trickle of water slipped under her feet, welling up from some untraceable crack of moisture dripping through a seam in the rock. She kept the torch thrust forward to see the steps below her. They were so evenly spaced that she had to stop herself from trotting down them, from gaining too much speed. Ai, Lady, was Alain alive yet on the hill or were he and his troops destroyed by the fury of the Eika assault? Once she heard a man stumble and cry out behind her, and the slowed down, waiting, as did Lavastine, who matched her step for step. Tension coiled on him like a second skin, and he hissed between his teeth with impatience but said nothing as the man behind caught up and they descended again.

But after a hundred or more of such evenly placed steps even the most cautious man became bolder and their pace increased as they descended down and ever down.

They came to the base of the stairs, and the tunnel forged forward into a blackness so profound that it seemed alive. She walked out far enough to give them room to assemble behind her, forming up into twos. There was some jostling and whispering, and after a moment Erkanwulf appeared, wan in the light of her torch.

"I've been given leave to walk scout beside you," he said, "since it's well known I have keen eyesight."

"I thank you."

"Ai, Lord, but I can't see a thing in front of us! Are you sure there're no ditches or abysses to swallow us up?"

"There were none before. But that's not to say none could have opened up since."

He snorted. "I thank
you,
Eagle, for setting my heart at peace."

"Forward," said Lavastine behind her. "Let our pace be swift. Keep some distance between you
—but not too much—so if we are attacked, we are not caught up the one upon the other."