In the Ruins (13 page)

“The other Salian clerics at that time believed that Biscop Tallia had gone too far in studying the malefic arts of black sorcery. The Council of Narvone was convened and all sorcery associated with the mathematici as well as malefici was placed under ban. As was Biscop Tallia. Yet she did not cease her efforts. In time she discovered what she had long sought: a child born to Queen Radegundis, the last wife of Taillefer. This infant was raised in the church and became a monk. Soon after his birth, Tallia died, leaving her handmaiden, Clothilde, to continue her work.

“Clothilde was patient. Late in life, Taillefer’s son was tempted by a very young woman, a novice. On her he got a child. Afterward, he fled. But the child was taken from its mother and raised by Clothilde.”

“What became of the father and mother?” asked Sister Elsebet, listening intently now, as if she had heard some portion of this story before.

“Taillefer’s son? I think that he remained in the church. But the woman who gave birth to his child? I don’t know. I know only that Anne was the granddaughter of Taillefer, the child of Taillefer and Radegundis’ lost son. She was raised by Sister Clothilde as a mathematicus among a band of mathematici who called themselves the Seven Sleepers. They were asleep, they told themselves, waiting quietly until the time came to act. Anne was to be the agent of that act: to cast the Ashioi once and for all time away from Earth.”

“Would it not have been better had she done so?” asked Liutgard. She gestured toward the ragged army gathered around. “Would it not have spared us this?”

Liath shook her head. “No. You saw what tides of destruction the spell wrought. That devastation would have rebounded on Earth tenfold had Anne’s spell succeeded. It
would have been far worse. Earth is not meant to be sundered from Earth. The ancient ones—our ancestors—meant to save themselves. But by their own act they doomed us. I think they were ignorant. They did not know. Yet we are left with the consequences nonetheless.”

PART TWO

IN THE RUINS

ANNA clawed awake from a terrible dream. She lay with eyes closed, aware of the rise and fall of her breathing, and let the threads of that awful nightmare fade. An endless trek across a wilderness of grass under the hammer of a brutal winter cold. A blizzard turning to flowers. Bulkezu’s hand tightening on her throat. Blessing as limp as a corpse, wasting away, dying. Buried alive deep within an ancient tumulus. Worms crawling over and swallowing her body.

With each exhalation the images became more tattered until at last they dissolved into nothing, and with a sigh of relief she opened her eyes. It was still night. Clouds hid the stars. She couldn’t see anything, not even her hand in front of her face.

Even a moonless night was never this dark.

Her heart thundered. She whimpered, afraid to move or speak lest speaking and moving reveal her nightmares as truth. If she wished hard enough, it would all go away and she would be back in Gent sitting cozy by the fire in Mistress Suzanne’s weaving hall.

A voice mumbled a curse. Stone snapped on flint. A spark glittered, faded, then a second snap struck and its
spark caught a wick. As light bled into their grave, memory returned in a rush.

Prince Sanglant’s army had marched east in search of griffins and sorcerers. He had found them and much more besides, but Blessing had fallen ill with an aetherical sickness and had to be left behind, close to death. Six attendants stayed with her. In the hope that the spell woven by Princess Liathano through the stone crown would miraculously preserve Blessing in a kind of stasis, they had crawled into the grave mound between the stones. There they had waited until blue fire engulfed them and all sensation ceased.

Anna groaned and raised up on her elbows, staring around in shock. Brother Heribert had lit the lamp, and he, too, stared slack-jawed at their surroundings. Thiemo, Matto, the Kerayit healer, and the young Quman soldier still slept, each in his place in the ring around Princess Blessing. But the low, cramped chamber in which they had taken their place had vanished … and so had Blessing.

“Ai, God! Lord protect us! Lady have mercy!” Anna scrambled to her feet.

“What’s happened?” As Heribert rose, he almost lost his footing as a temblor rumbled through the ground. The flame wavered. A web of blue fire shuddered into existence around them, hot and bright.

“Something’s coming,” said Heribert. “Can you feel it, Anna? It’s like a weight descending. We’re not safe here.”

She stared at the high cavern in which they stood. Stalactites glittered under the net of fire. Thiemo snored softly, one hand cupped at his throat. Matto lay with mouth agape and eyes and hands fast shut. It was all true. They had crawled into the ancient burial chamber to protect Blessing and possibly to die, but they hadn’t died and indeed they were no longer where they had started out. The burial chamber had been dirt; this place was stone. In the burial chamber there had barely been room to stand upright in the center, this place could hold a council of twoscore nobles
and
their horses. In the burial chamber there had been a single entrance, a tunnel that led to the
outside. Here, at least four passageways left the chamber at different directions. They might be anywhere.

She, too, felt a stiffening in the air, a tension in the earth, like the breath of a huge monster about to lunge out of darkness onto its hapless prey.

“Come quickly!” Blessing’s voice pierced the silence, although there was no sign of her in the chamber. “No! This way! You’re so slow! I said
this
way!”

“What a brat!” said a second voice, laughing.

“I am
not
a brat! I’m not!”

“You are!”

“I’m not!”

Blessing’s companion laughed merrily, and before Anna or Heribert could react two figures trotted into the cavern, the smaller grasping the larger by his wrist. Blessing dropped her grip and clapped her hands to crow in triumph.

“Look what I found, Brother Heribert! And not just that, but a pile of treasure!”

The earth shook violently. The net of blue fire sparked and dazzled, and began to pulse.

“Lord have mercy,” said Heribert, staring at Blessing, who looked painfully thin but otherwise emphatically alive and vital. Anna didn’t know whether to be giddy with joy or annoyed that Blessing after all hadn’t changed one bit and probably hadn’t a thought to spare for the sacrifice her attendants had made so willingly for her.

“I’m Berthold,” said the youth, a nice-looking boy most likely a little younger than Anna, fifteen or sixteen or so. He wore a handsome pale blue tunic of an excellent weave trimmed with yellow embroidery, a hip-length cape lined with pale fox fur, and soft leather boots bound up with laces. He held calfskin gloves casually in one hand, and at his waist rode a sword in a richly tooled sheath bearing the mark of the silver tree.

“Lord have mercy,” repeated Heribert, shifting his stunned gaze away from Blessing. “You must be Villam’s son.”

“So I am,” said the lad, not one bit surprised at being
recognized. A noble youth out of a house as important as Villam’s expected to be known. “We crawled in here to explore but must have fallen asleep. The rest of my companions are still asleep. I could only wake up Jonas. He’s trying to get the others awake. I don’t know where this chamber came from!” He gestured toward the high ceiling, and the four sleeping men. “It wasn’t here when we explored under the tumuli yesterday. How did you get here?”

The earth shook once again. The pulse of the light had begun to shift in pitch until Anna could actually hear a melodic rise and fall shot through with an unearthly harmony. The temperature was beginning to rise.

“I want to get out of here,” said Blessing. “Something very very bad is about to happen.” She turned on Berthold. He stood a head taller than she did, although he wasn’t as tall as her father. “Help me wake them up!”

Berthold’s expression twisted, eyes opening in mock horror, mouth opening to an “o” of pretend fear. “Of course, my lady!” He spoiled the moment by laughing again. “Who made you regnant?”

She stamped her foot. “My father is Prince Sanglant. I am the great granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer. You have to do what I tell you to do!”

He snorted with amusement, glanced at Anna to estimate her station and importance, and nodded at Brother Heribert. “Who are you, Brother?”

“I am called Brother Heribert. I am a cleric in Prince Sanglant’s schola.”

“Is it true this brat is Prince Sanglant’s daughter?”

“I’m not a brat!”

“She is indeed, my lord.”

“How can she be the great granddaughter of Emperor Taillefer? Henry’s forebears have no connection to that noble house.”

Heribert hesitated just long enough for Berthold to go on, impatient as his thoughts skipped ahead.

“Prince Sanglant has a schola? How can he? He’s the captain of the King’s Dragons. I didn’t even know he had a daughter this old, but I suppose it’s no surprise given what everyone says about him and women. Heh! I wonder
what Waltharia will have to say about that! She thought she walked that road first!”

“What road?” demanded Blessing.

Heribert flung up a hand as if to say, “stop.” “I pray you, Lord Berthold. We must untangle these lineages later. Princess Blessing is right. We’d best flee.” He wiped sweat from his brow. “I don’t like being trapped in here.”

“Nor do I,” admitted the youth, looking around. “Although it is the most amazing thing! Who could have dug such caverns? You should see the treasure back there! Golden helms and mounds of emeralds and garnets! Jeweled belts. Necklaces. I told them not to pick anything up, but they would cram their sleeves—all but Jonas, he’s the only one who listens to me—”

A temblor shook the earth so hard that Anna had trouble keeping her feet. The Kerayit healer moaned, fighting sleep but not quite able to wake. Thiemo and Matto didn’t stir at all. The blue fire had become so bright she had to squint. The cavern shone, walls gleaming. The stone sweat as heat swelled. It was like being trapped inside a box that had been thrown onto a fire.

“No one is listening to me!” shrieked Blessing. She pounced on Thiemo and shook him. “Wake up! Wake up!”

Without warning, the Quman soldier leaped to his feet, knife in hand as he assessed his surroundings. Over the last months Heribert had picked up the rudiments of the Quman speech. He spoke now, and the young man nodded abruptly, lowered the knife, and knelt beside Matto, shaking him. The Kerayit healer opened her eyes and, with a grunt, scrambled to her feet. She pointed to the fiery blue net whose brightness by now made the light in the cavern almost unbearable.

“Sorcery,” she said in halting Wendish. “Go now. Go quick.”

“Do you know the way out?” asked Heribert.

“I don’t,” said Berthold. “It’s all changed. It wasn’t like this at all yesterday when we crawled in here—”

“I know how to go!” exclaimed Blessing.

“Take her,” said Heribert to Anna. “We’ll have to carry Thiemo and Matto if we can’t wake them up.”

“Do you really think she knows anything?” demanded Berthold, more in disbelief than in anger. He had begun, finally, to appear nervous.