PROLOGUE (89 page)

"I remember you," says the man, and then turns and runs as if expecting an arrow in the back. At once, one of his cousins raises his bow and nocks an arrow for the easy shot. He springs forward and bats bow and arrow down.

The rash cousin swears. "You are weak to let them run!" It takes only a moment to kill him for his disrespect. Then he turns on the others. "Question me if you must, but do not disobey me. I intend to accomplish what Bloodheart could not accomplish because he was not willing to use the lessons of the WiseMothers to guide him."

He waits as blood leaks onto his feet and the fire that animated the cousin spills onto the earth and soaks into the ground. No one speaks.

"Then, go," he orders, for he has already seen what the count set in place here. A cunning man, the count, a worthy foe.

Soon the other ships begin to come, fleeing the death of Bloodheart and the collapse of his army and his authority. He watches dispassionately as they founder on the black tide. Soon the mouth of the Veser is awash in wreckage as some swim free of the chain and the piles to cast up on the western shore. Those who will not bare their throats before him his soldiers kill.

Soon he will have to dismantle the chain so he can sail through safely himself and return to Rikin fjord with his prize, but for this night, at least, he will destroy as many of his rivals as he can.

There will not be many survivors from those who gathered at Gent
—
and those who survive will belong to him.

His followers do their work well, and efficiently. He climbs to the little fort and from this vantage point he watches as the heart of Old-Man, the moon, sinks into the west and the stars, the eyes of the most ancient Mothers, stare with their luminous indifference upon the streaming waters and the silent earth. In the fjall of the heavens, the vale of black ice, only the cold holds sway and their whispering conversations take lifetimes to complete. But they are nonetheless beautiful.

IT was night, but Liath could not sleep.

She had sent Hathui to sleep and offered to stand middle night watch, as one Eagle always did, over the king's pavilion together with the guards.

With the moon one day past full, only the brightest stars were visible. But she could not even concentrate enough to watch those stars and read their secret turnings in the language Da taught her, the language of the mathematici.

Sanglant was alive.

Alive.

Yet so changed.

Yet not changed at all.

"Eagle."

The whisper came out of the shadows, twisted from the steady breath of the night breeze on the many pavilions staked out around her. She stiffened and turned to seek out the voice.

Two guards with torches appeared out of the gloom. A third man led a mule, and there, on the mule's back, sat a woman in the robes of a cleric. But she did not venture in far enough that the guards beside the king's tent could see her face.

Cautiously, Liath walked out to meet her.

It was Sister Rosvita, looking drawn and anxious.

"Aren't you with the train?"

Rosvita allowed her servant to help her dismount and then waved him and her guards away. They retreated and stood a few paces off. "I was, but I had to leave and come here, and the moon gave enough light for the journey."

"But some Eika may still haunt the woods!"

"It was not as far as I feared it would be. We saw no Eika. I must speak to you, Eagle. It is by the Lady's grace that my path brought me directly to you."

To Liath's amazement, the cleric took a bundle wrapped in linen from a bag tied to the mule's saddle and held it up before her. Liath knew immediately what it was.

"How did you?" she whispered, scarcely able to force the words out.

"Do you know what is in here? Nay, do not trouble yourself to answer. I see that you do. I know you can read Dariyan..." The cleric spoke in a rush, clearly agitated though Liath had never seen her anything but calm before. "Why should I give this back to you?"

She was half the cleric's age. She could easily snatch the book from her and run. But she did not, though neither could she compose an eloquent or compelling reply. "It's all I have left of my da!"

"Was your da a mathematicus?"

There was no use in lying. Rosvita had obviously read in the book. "Yes."

"And what are
you,
Eagle?" the cleric demanded.

"Kinless," she said flatly. "All I have are the Eagles. I pray you, Sister, I am no threat to anyone."

Rosvita glanced up at the stars as though to ask them if this was truth, or a cunning dissemblance. But the stars only spoke to those who knew their language, so she did not. "I dare not keep this," she said in a low voice.

"How did you get it?"

"That does not matter."

"Can you
—how much did you—?" But she was afraid to ask. She shifted. Beyond, the three servants who had escorted the cleric huddled close, sharing something from a leather bottle. She thought she smelled mead, but there were so many smells mingling and unraveling in the air around them that she could not be sure if it was honey's fermented sweetness or the aftertaste of drying blood.

"I cannot read Jinna, although you can." It was not a question. "And the fourth language is unknown to me. I had only a moment to look at the Arethousan and the Dariyan, but I needed no more than that to recognize what I was seeing. Lady protect you, child! Why are you riding as a common Eagle?"

"It is what was offered me."

"By Wolfhere."

"He saved me from Hugh."

The moonlight bleached Rosvita's face of expression, but she shook her head and then simply offered the book to Liath.

Liath grabbed it and clutched it against her chest.

"I think it properly belongs to you," said Rosvita softly, hesitantly. "Pray God I am right in this. But you must come speak to me, Eagle, of this matter. Your immortal soul is at risk. Who are the Seven Sleepers?"

"The Seven Sleepers," Liath murmured, memory stirring.
"Beware the Seven Sleepers."
Or so Da had written. "I only know what he wrote in the book."

"You've never heard the story as related in Eusebe's
Ecclesiastical History?"

"Nay, I've not read Eusebe."

"In the time of the persecution of Daisanites by the Emperor Tianothano, seven young people in the holy city of Sal's took refuge in a cave to gain strength before they presented themselves for martyrdom. But the cave miraculously sealed over, and there they were left to sleep."

"Until when?"

"Eusebe doesn't say. But that is not the only place I have heard that name. Do you know of a Brother Fidelis, at Hersford Monastery?"

"I do not."

" 'Devils visit me in the guise of scholars and magi,'" quoted Rosvita, recalling the conversation vividly, " 'tempting me with knowledge if only I would tell them what I knew of the secrets of the Seven Sleepers.'''

"Were they the ones
—?" Liath broke off. Wind rustled the canvas of tents, and she was suddenly reminded of the daimone who had stalked her on the empty road. She shuddered. "I don't know what to do," she murmured, afraid again. Da always said:
"The worst foe is the one you can't
) j
see.

Rosvita extended a hand in the fashion of her kind, a deacon about to offer a blessing. "There are others better able to advise you than I. You must think seriously about making your way to the convent of St. Valeria."

"How can I?" Liath whispered, remembering her vision of stern Mother Rothgard. "The arts of the mathematici are forbidden."

"Forbidden
and
condemned. But it would be foolish of the church not to understand such sorcery nevertheless. Mother Rothgard at St. Valeria is not a preceptor I would wish to study under. She has little patience and less of a kind heart. But I have never heard it whispered that she is tempted by her knowledge. If you cannot bring yourself to trust me, then go there, I beg you." She glanced behind toward her servants. "I must return to the train, or they will wonder why I am missing. Morning comes soon."

She paused only to stare at Liath, as if hoping to read into her soul. Then she left.

Liath was too stunned to move. Her arms ached where they clasped the book, and one corner of the book pinched her stomach, digging into her ribs. She stood there breathing in and out with the breath of the night. A flash of white startled her and she spun to see a huge owl come noiselessly to rest on the torn-up ground just beyond the nimbus of lantern light that illuminated the awning of King Henry's pavilion. It stared at her with great golden eyes, then, as suddenly, launched itself skyward and vanished into the night.

"Liath."

Of course he knew.

She didn't turn to face him. She couldn't bear to.

"You've stolen the book," he said, astonishment more than accusation in his voice. "I left the field as soon as it was clear we'd won the battle and rode all the way back to the train, only to find it missing. How did you manage it? What magic did you employ?"

She would not turn to face him, nor would she answer him, so he grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her round to slap her so hard that guards looked up from their station by the awning.

But they knew the silhouette of a noble lord by his bearing and his clothes, and they knew she was only a common Eagle. With a few coughs, they looked away again. It was none of their business.

Furious, he took her by the elbow to drag her away, but her feet were rooted to the earth. She could not struggle, she could not fight, she could not flee. Her cheek stung.

Ai, Lady, was he using sorcery on her? But then what had Da protected her from, if not against this? He had protected her against other forms of magic. Why had he never protected her against Hugh?

"Damn you, Liath," he said, sliding down that slippery slope to anger. "It is
my
book and you are
my
slave. Tell me so. Repeat it back to me, Liath. 'I am your slave, Hugh.' You will never escape me."

Had Hugh plumbed her soul far enough down, had he imprisoned her heart so tightly in the frozen tower, that he could control the rest of her at his will?

She was helpless. She would never break free.

As his grip tightened, her boots shifted on the ground, failing, falling; she began to slide into the darkness.

"Say it, Liath."

Too stupified by fear even to weep, she whispered the only word that she could force out of her throat: "Sanglant."

THE rats came out at night to gnaw on the bones. The whispering scrape of their claws on stone brought him instantly out of his doze.

But he did not want to open his eyes. Why did God torment him in this way, giving him such dreams? Why had his mother cursed him with life? It was better to die than to dream that Bloodheart was dead and he was free. In this way, Bloodheart chained him more heavily, weighted with despair.

The dogs whined nearby, tails thumping against the ground. One growled.

"Hush, son," said a voice like his father's. A hand touched his hair, stroking it gently as his father had done years ago when he was a child and delirious with grief at the loss of his nursemaid, the woman who had nursed him and helped raise him. She had died of a virulent fever, and though he had sat at her bedside for days despite her whispered pleas and the commands of his father that he must leave her or risk catching his death, he had not left
— and he had not gotten sick.

"
'No disease known to you will touch him.'
'

The hand stroking his hair now had weight and warmth.

He bolted upright, growling, and then flinched back from what he saw: not the cold nave of the cathedral but the interior of a pavilion, its contours softened by the warm glow of a lantern. His father sat in a camp chair beside the pallet on which he had been sleeping. Two servingmen slept on the ground; otherwise they were alone.

The king did not withdraw his hand but held it extended and brushed a stinging end of hair out of Sanglant's eye. "Hush, child," he said softly. "Go back to sleep."

"I can't sleep," he whispered. "They'll kill me if I sleep."