The Gathering Storm (5 page)

“Any expedition to the east must prove dangerous, and might take years to complete, if he even returns at all.” Theophanu beckoned. A servingwoman brought forward a silver cup on a wooden platter with sides carved in the likeness of twining ivy. “Here, Leoba.” She offered the cup to the noblewoman sitting at her feet.

“Is Aosta closed to us?” Leoba took the cup but did not drink. “How can it be that a messenger comes to us from Prince Sanglant, but not from King Henry? Why have we heard no news from Aosta when so many troubles assail us here? Where is the king?”

“And where is your venerable husband?” Theophanu smiled fondly at her companion. “I am no less troubled than you. It seems strange to me that I have sent three Eagles separately to Aosta and yet no word has come to us from my father.”

“With winter setting in, there’ll be none who can cross the Alfar Mountains.” Like Theophanu, Leoba was young and robust, but she had a hound’s eagerness in her face, ready to fling herself forward into the hunt, in contrast to Theophanu’s calm.

“We must wait.” Theophanu took the cup and sipped while her attendants whispered. A tapestry hung in the room between shuttered windows, so darkly woven that lamplight
barely illuminated the images depicted there: a saintly figure impaled by knives. Hanna’s hip twinged as if in sympathy as she shifted on the bench. A servant padded forward to refill the wine cup, and the princess sipped, eyes shuttered, as though she were mulling over a difficult question. She spoke in an altered voice, so smooth it seemed doubly dangerous.

“There is one thing that puzzles me, Eagle. You bring me a message from my brother, Sanglant. You speak of the death of Prince Bayan of Ungria, and of other worthy folk, in the battle against the Quman invaders. But you have spoken no word of Princess Sapientia. You served her once, I believe. What has become of her?”

The question startled Hanna, although she ought to have expected it. “She lives, Your Highness.”

“Where is she? Where is her army? Why have these Lions been sent at Sanglant’s order, and not hers? Is she injured? Lost? Separated from the army?”

“Nay, Your Highness. She rides with Prince Sanglant.”

“How can it be that my brother sends me greetings, but my sister does not? Wasn’t she named by Henry as heir to the throne of Wendar and Varre?”

Spiteful words came easily to her tongue. “Prince Sanglant commands the army, Your Highness. Princess Sapientia does not.”

The courtiers murmured, a warm buzz of surprise and speculation.

Only Theophanu seemed unmoved by Hanna’s statement. “Are you saying he has taken from her what is rightfully hers to command?”

“I cannot know what is in the mind of princes, Your Highness. I can only witness, and report.”

“Where goes Sapientia now?”

“East to Ungria with Prince Bayan’s body.”

“Did she consent to this journey, or was it forced on her?”

All the anger boiled back. Hadn’t Sanglant betrayed her and all those who had suffered at the hands of Bulkezu by leaving Bulkezu alive? Perhaps it was true that Sanglant was fit to rule, and Sapientia was not. But he was a bastard and meant for another position in life; he had usurped his sister’s place. He had let Bulkezu live. She could no longer trust a
man who would let a monster go on living after so many had died under its trampling rampage. Sapientia would have ordered Bulkezu hanged. Sapientia would not have saved him in the vain hope that he would somehow serve Wendar better alive than dead. Sapientia’s choices would have been different, had she been allowed to make the decision, as was her right as Henry’s eldest legitimate child.

But she hadn’t had the choice. “
This is
my
army now
,” Sanglant had said after the battle at the Veser. He might as well have torn the crown from her head. Yet no one in that host had refused him.

“The command was taken from her against her will,” Hanna said.

Everyone in the chamber began talking at once, and Hanna’s words were repeated back into the mob of lesser courtiers and servants crowded into the corridor.

“Silence,” said Theophanu without raising her voice. After a moment of hissed demands for quiet and a few last hasty comments, the gathered folk fell quiet. Like Sanglant, Theophanu had the habit of command, but she hadn’t his warmth and charisma; she hadn’t fought and suffered beside an army, as he had; she didn’t shine with the regnant’s luck, as he did.

“If that is not rebellion against Henry’s rule, then I do not know what is. So be it. Nothing can be done today. Eagle, I pray you, eat and drink well and rest this night. Tomorrow I will interview you at more length.”

Hanna slipped forward off the bench to kneel, shaking, too tired even to walk. “I pray you, Your Highness, may I keep company with the Lions? I have traveled a long road with them. I trust them.”

“Let it be so.” Theophanu dismissed her. Calling for her chess set, she returned to her amusements. Hanna admired her for her composure. No great heights of emotion for her, however unnatural that might seem in a family whose passions, hatreds, joys, and rages were played out in public for all to see. She was like a still, smooth pond, untroubled by the tides of feeling that racked Hanna. Theophanu, surely, would not succumb to jealousy or greed, lust or pride. Not like the others.

A servingwoman came forward to help Hanna up. Even standing hurt her, and she could not help but gasp out loud, but the gasp only turned into a painful cough.

“I beg pardon, Eagle. Let me help you out to the barracks. I can see you need some coltsfoot tea. Are you also injured?”

“I took a fall some days ago and landed on my hip.”

“I have an ointment that might help, if you’ll let me serve you. It came to me from my grandmother, may she rest at peace in the Chamber of Light.”

They moved out through the door, and the servants in the corridor had enough courtesy to stand back to let the two of them pass through, although it was obvious by their whispering and anxious looks that they wished to hear more extensive news of the troubles plaguing the borderlands and the southerly parts of the kingdom. Gent might lie peacefully now, but they had not forgotten what Gent had suffered under the Eika invasion just two years before.

“I’ll take any help you’ll give me, and thank you for it,” said Hanna. Weight pressed into her chest with each hacking cough. “Has the plague reached here?”

“Nay, it has not, thank God. But we’ve heard many stories from the south. They say that in the duchy of Avaria the plague killed as many as the Quman did. I don’t know if it’s true.”

Outside the palace they paused on a broad porch while Hanna rested, sucking in each breath with an effort. Such a short walk shouldn’t have tired her so much, but it had, and her hip hurt so badly that her vision blurred. A drizzle wet the dirt courtyard. The barracks lay across that impossibly wide expanse.

“You’re white,” said her companion. “Sit down. I’ll bring some lads to carry you over. You shouldn’t be walking.”

“Nay, no need. I can walk.”

The servingwoman shook her head as she helped Hanna to sit on the wooden planks. “You haven’t caught the plague, have you?”

“I pray not.” She leaned against the railing, shivering; aching, and with a dismal pain throbbing through her head and hip and chest. “It starts in the gut, not the lungs.” She glanced up, sensing the other woman’s movement, and got a
good look at her for the first time: a handsome woman, not much older than she was, with a scar whitening her lip and a bright, intelligent, compassionate gaze. “What’s your name? It’s kind of you to be so … kind.”

The servingwoman laughed curtly, but Hanna could tell that the anger wasn’t directed at
her.
“It takes so little to be kind. I’m called Frederun.” She hesitated; cheeks flushed. Her unexpected reserve and the color suffusing her face made her beautiful, the kind of woman who might be plagued by men lusting after her face and body. The kind of woman Bulkezu would have taken to his bed and later discarded. “Is it true you traveled with Prince Sanglant? Has he really rebelled against his father, the king?”

“What does it matter to you?” Hanna blurted out, and was sorry at once, throwing sharp words where she had only received consideration. Was sorry, twice over, because the answer was obvious as soon as the words were spoken.

“No matter to me,” said Frederun too quickly, turning her face away to hide her expression. “I only wondered. He and his retinue spent the winter here last year, on their way east.”

“You don’t grieve that Lord Hrodik is dead?”

Frederun shrugged. “I’m sorry any man must die. He was no worse than most of them are. He was very young. But I’m glad Princess Theophanu came, seeing that we have no lord or lady here in Gent. That will keep the vultures away.”

“But not forever.”

“Nay. Not forever.” As if she had overstepped an unmarked boundary, she rose. “Here, now, sit quietly and wait for me.”

As soon as she left, shame consumed Hanna. What right had she to torment a kindly woman like Frederun? She pulled herself to her feet and, jaw set against the pain, hobbled across the courtyard as rain misted down around her. She could walk, even if each step sent a sword’s thrust of pain up her hip, through her torso, and into her temple. She could walk even if she could not catch her breath. She could walk, by the Lady, and she would walk, just as Bulkezu’s prisoners had walked without aid for all those months, sick and dying. She was no better than they were. She deserved no more than they had received.

She was staggering by the time she reached the barracks, and for some reason Folquin was there, scolding her, and then Leo was carrying her back to a stall filled with hay. The smell of horse and hay made her cough. A spasm took her in the ribs.

“Ai, God,” said Ingo. “She’s hot. Feel her face.”

“I’ll get the captain,” said Folquin.

“Maybe they have a healer here in the palace,” said Stephen.

“Hanna!” said Leo. “Can you hear me?”

She choked on hatred and despair. Dizziness swept her as on a tide, and she was borne away on the currents of a swollen river. She dreamed.

In her nightmare, Bulkezu savors his food and guzzles his mead and enjoys his women, and even the gruesome wound is healing so well that folk who should know better turn their heads to watch him ride by. How dare he still be handsome? How can God allow monsters to be beautiful? To live even in defeat?

Or is she the monster, because despite everything she still sees beauty in him? Wise, simple Agnetha, forced to become his concubine, called him ugly. Surely it is Hanna’s sin that she stubbornly allows her eyes to remain clouded by the Enemy’s wiles.

A veil of mist obscures her dreaming, a fog rolling out of marshy ground beside which she glimpses the pitched tents of the centaur folk. Sorgatani walks through the reeds at the shore of the marsh. The fog conceals the world, and she knows that something massive is creeping up on her, or on the Kerayit princess, but Hanna cannot see it, nor does she sense from what direction it means to attack.

A woman appears, shifting out of the fog as though a mist has created her: she is as much mare as woman. Green-and-gold paint stripes her face and woman’s torso.

Sorgatani cries out in anger. “I have fulfilled all the tasks you set me! I have been patient! How much longer must I wait?”

“You have been patient.” When the shaman glances up at the heavens, her coarse mane of pale hair sweeps down her back to the place where woman-hips meet mare-shoulders.
“That lesson you learned well. The elders have met. Your wish is granted.”

“We will ride west to seek my luck?”

The centaur shifts sideways, listening, and after a moment replies. “Nay, little one. She must suffer the fate she chose. But we are weak and diminished. We cannot fight alone—”

She rears back, startled by a sharp noise, the crack of a staff on rock. “Who is there?”

The hot breath of some huge creature blows on Hanna’s neck, lifting her hair. She feels its maw opening to bite. Whirling, she strikes out frantically with a fist, but when her hand parts the mist, she stumbles forward into the salty brine of a shallow estuary, water splashing her lips and stinging her eyes as reeds scrape along her thighs.

She is alone, yet she hears a confusing medley of voices and feels the press of hands as from a distance, jostling her.

“It’s the lung fever. She’s very bad.”

“Hush. We’ll see her through this. She’s survived worse.”

A woman’s voice: “I’ve boiled up coltsfoot and licorice for the congestion.”

“I thank you, Frederun.”

Each time she strikes ax into wood and splits a log, she swears, as though she’s trying to chop fury and grief out of herself, but she will never be rid of it all.

Better if she lets the tide sweep her onward through the spreading delta channels of the lazy river and out onto a wide and restless sea. Yet even here, the horror is not done with her. Fire boils up under the sea, washing a wave of destruction over a vast whorled city hidden in its depths. Corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again as the sea floor rises.

A phoenix flies, as bright as fire. Or is it a phoenix at all but rather a woman with wings of flame? Delirium makes the woman-figure appear with a familiar face. Is that Liath, come back to haunt her? Is she an angel now, flying in the vault of heaven, all ablaze? As the creature rises, she lifts the slender figure of a man and two great hounds with her. But their weight is too great and with a cry of anguish and frustration the Liath-angel loses her grip on them and they fall
away, lost as the fog of dreams rolls across the sky to conceal them.

Hanna falls with them.

“How is she?”

“She’s delirious most of the time, Your Highness.”

“Will she live?”

“So we must pray, Your Highness.”