The Gathering Storm (98 page)

“Henry will ride east with the skopos. When he returns from Dalmiaka, our position will be strong. That’s when we can march north to restore his authority in Wendar and Varre. For now, all we can do is watch the passes and prepare ourselves.”

Hugh chuckled. “You are a strategist, Your Majesty. It is well that you are, because you must fight this battle alone. I will ride north soon in preparation for the great weaving.”

“Why must you go?”

“Because the Holy Mother demands it.”

“What of Henry?”

“Anne will take the ribbon. She will watch over the emperor.”

“I don’t like it. Dare we trust the Holy Mother with him? She might do anything without you or me there. That we hold Henry is the only sword we have to protect ourselves from her.”

“There is much in this world that we do not like that we must suffer because it is the only way to achieve the ends we seek. If we do not make a show of trusting her by giving her the ribbon, then she will know we do not trust her. She may come to believe that we act against her. She is more powerful than we are right now. We must be patient. We will bide our time. The day will come when all that we seek will come to pass.”

Too late, Zacharias searched for the door. He still lay on his back, and the door lay a very long way away, an impossible distance but his only hope. If he could escape this chamber, he could warn someone—anyone—even fall at the
feet of the skopos herself and use his tongue to condemn these two, who had forced him to betray his beloved sister.

“Very well.” Adelheid’s footsteps sounded on the carpet as Zacharias hunched his shoulders to see if he could squirm backward.

“Will you kill him?” the empress asked in a cool voice.

“He is innocent,” said Hugh. “Brother Marcus promised him that he would be taught the secrets of the mathematici. Yet, as he is, he is a danger to himself and to the emperor because he knows too much.”

Too late Zacharias realized that they no longer spoke of Prince Sanglant. It was Hugh who had come to stand next to him, not Adelheid; she remained by the emperor’s bed.

“Is he so educated that he can learn the secret paths known only to the mathematici?” she asked.

Hugh’s beautiful face wore an expression of compassion, but his eyes were cold. “There is much he can learn. But, no, he is not educated. Yet it is precisely because he cannot write or read that we can show him mercy.”

Zacharias got his elbows under him and heaved himself up. On the bed Henry slept, yet a stiffness in his limbs suggested that the emperor did not rest entirely at peace. The red ribbon lay across his throat, unmoving.

“Will you teach me?” he demanded through his tears, then hated himself for succumbing even for a moment to that consuming desire. “Nay! I will not be taught by you, who made me betray my sister!”

“I will teach you to weave the crowns,” said Hugh patiently. “If you learn well, you can take my place as cauda draconis when the time comes.”

A grim exhilaration goaded him on. “I’ll not consort with those who mean harm to my sister!”

“I will need all four guards,” said Hugh to the empress. “You are certain of their loyalty?”

“They wear the amulets you wove for them.”

“Ah. Then we need not fear that they will betray us.”

She went to the door, spoke, and four guardsmen entered the room, men with broad shoulders and powerful hands.

“Hold him down.” Hugh turned to the brazier sitting forgotten beside one wall, slipped a glove on his right hand,
bent, and withdrew a knife from the coals. Its blade gleamed white-hot.

The guardsmen pushed Zacharias to the floor.

He thrashed against their grip. “Ai, God! Ai, God! I pray you, mercy! I’ll do anything you want! Anything you want!”

“So you will,” said Hugh. “Hold him tight. One of you, take the head.”

Weak though he was, he struggled like a lion caught in a net, biting, kicking, scratching as the guardsmen cursed him, or laughed, each according to his nature.

They were stronger than he was. They were a vise. When they had him pinned and his head clamped between arms like iron claws, he still thrashed even if he could not move. He fought, and he twisted; he wept, and he begged, but they pried his mouth open and used tongs to fix hold of his tongue and hold it extended as Hugh brought the knife down. No glee animated that beautiful face, only the frowning intentness of a man sorry to be doing what was necessary.

When the blade touched, pain and fire exploded in his head, but the worst of it was that he did not pass out, not as he had that day long ago among the Quman when Bulkezu had mutilated him. He felt the knife slice, and he screamed.

It was the only speech he had left.

SHE stepped last of all through the archway of light that she had woven between star and standing stone. As the blue light enveloped her, it blinded her to the world below at the same time that it opened her sight into its interstices, paths leading off at every angle of past, present, and future. Yet her gaze remained fixed on a lodestone falling behind: Her daughter, a stranger to her, lay asleep on cold earth while each step took her farther away from the child because she had to follow the sparks made by the passing of Sorgatani’s wagon. She dared not lose them.

As she was losing Sanglant for a second time.

She saw in him flashes. With each step he and his army receded; with each step her vision blurred, or his army got larger, a mass of soldiers attended first by two Quman banners, then four, then eight, a succession of images, glimpses into the future as days or weeks passed outside the weaving.

How long would it be until she saw him again?

Emotions shone in as many colors as the blazing stars, woven together to create the thread of her being: a sense of triumph at the ease with which she had woven the crown, a gnawing doubt that she had done it wrong and they would end up cast onto unknown shores, grief at leaving her daughter and husband behind yet again, anger at Anne, the weight of responsibility she had taken on, desire in thinking of him but that would distract her so it must not be thought of except that he had a very particular way of laughing when—

“Liath!”

She stumbled on uneven ground and went down on one knee. A strong arm steadied her as her head reeled and her legs gave out. She would have fallen flat if someone hadn’t been holding her up.

“Just so tired,” she murmured, amazed.

A breeze chased her hair, whipping her braid along her shoulder. Dust eddied along bare earth.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

She looked up. Down the slope of a small mountain valley stood the familiar tower where she had studied for many months. She had left this place only days ago, or so it seemed.

Verna
.

She went all hazy, breath punched out of her.

She woke to find herself lying on her cloak under the shade of an apple tree while Lady Bertha, seated beside her, cut worms out of apples. Bertha’s padded tunic was blotched with sweat. A cord tied her hair back from her face, although the ragged ends didn’t reach her shoulders.

“It’s summer, no doubt of it,” Bertha was saying to someone out of her line of sight.

Liath stared into the canopy of an apple tree whose contours
she recalled clearly from her time spent in Verna. She had eaten many apples off this tree. Once she and Sanglant had snuck out here at night and made love under these branches while the night breezes—or Anne’s captured daimones—played around them. But he was far away now, lost to her. Months had passed for him while she had stepped through a single night. She could scarcely fathom it, yet the ache never left her and the apple tree reminded her bitterly of what she had left behind.

“If we’re in the mountains, we must hope to find a pass that will lead us north to Wendar or south to Aosta,” Bertha continued.

Liath groaned and sat up.

“Liath!” Breschius loomed over her, a slice of apple crushed between his fingers.

“Don’t look at me so! I’m well enough. Weaving the crown taxed my strength, that’s all.”

“Do you know where are we?” asked Bertha.

“Ai, God. I fear I do. We’ve come to the ruins of Verna. In one night we’ve come from the uttermost eastern wilderness all the way to the centralmost massif of the Alfar Mountains.”

Bertha whistled appreciatively. “It’s true that with such power a man could strike all unexpected at his enemies. Eagles could cross vast distances with only a few strides.”

“Except for this matter of days and months passing in that night,” said Breschius, apparently continuing a conversation Liath’s waking had interrupted.

“
When is it?
” Liath demanded. “On this all our success depends.”

She set a hand on Breschius’ shoulder and stood. The earth stayed steady as she swept her gaze over the scene: Heribert’s fine hall was charred and fallen, the old tower was blasted with stones crumbled at its base, and the sheds had burned down. Soldiers picked grapes in the riot of greenery that marked the vineyard, untended for several years. Fir and spruce covered the upper slopes of the valley except where fire had ripped through, leaving the skeletons of trees. Three mountains, Youngwife, Monk’s Ridge, and Terror, towered above, their immense heights more rock than snow.

“Summer,” she said. From farther away, she heard the splash of water over rocks; many streams drained down into the valley to feed the overgrown garden and the pond, hidden behind a grove of leafy beech. The sun stood high overhead.

“It is summer, my lady,” agreed Brother Breschius, “or so it seems.”

Their party had not set up camp, but the men had taken advantage of the slope and breadth of the valley to graze, water, and rest the horses. Sorgatani’s wagon rested in the middle of a sward of new grass; her cohort of Kerayit warriors ranged around like a fence, although obviously the marchlanders had been warned to stay clear.

Liath’s Jinna servants, Gnat and Mosquito, knelt a stone’s toss from her, trembling like dogs straining against a leash; it was only after she nodded at them that they settled back on their heels to wait with more patience. Sorgatani’s young servingwoman crouched in the shade of the next apple tree, watching Liath. Heat rippled through the mountain air, or was that an aery daimone? She had never been able to see them before, but now she detected flickers of movement.

“We arrived at dawn,” said Bertha, “and you slept all morning.”

“We’ll have to wait for nightfall,” Liath said. “I’ll try to speak to Hathui with Eagle’s Sight, and after that I’ll measure the stars. We must decide whether we march, or attempt the crowns again.”

“If I recall the lay of the land correctly” mused Bertha, “we can scarcely come much closer to Aosta than this and still tread quietly.”

“Nay.” She shook her head, disappointed with herself. “Had I more experience weaving the crowns, we would not have landed here. I have seen the Crown of Stars laid out across the land. South and east of here, near the shore of the Middle Sea, lies the central jewel of that crown. That is where we must go, because Anne will go there as well. If we are not too late—if this is only a few months after we set out from the east—then there is time, a full year or more.”

Breschius licked the sticky remains of the apple off his fingers. “We could march through Aosta and along the eastern shore of the sea to seek this crown.”

“So we could. And fight every step of the way, first through Aosta and then into Dalmiaka, which is ruled by the Arethousans. Should we survive, we’ll have lost the element of surprise. That is all that gives us an advantage. I’ll observe the stars tonight while the army rests and prepares. Tomorrow night we cross again.”

“I pray you, my lady,” said Breschius softly, “teach me how to calculate the date by means of the stars. I know that when the Dragon rises at dusk it is spring-tide and that the Child rises to the zenith at midnight during autumn. Mok rides around the Houses of the Night every twelve years, and the Evening Star and the Morning Star are the same and rise and set according to a regular pattern. Can you teach me?”

She smiled at the frater. His answering smile gave his face a liveliness that revealed his strong heart, his courage, and an affectionate warmth that brought a touch of red to her own cheeks, Seeing that he was a comely man, if rather old—certainly past forty.

“Yes, Brother. I will need my own schola of mathematici if I am to combat Anne.”

“A schola!” muttered Bertha in tones of disgust. Then she laughed. “We have only one cleric. Is that enough for a schola?”

“It makes no matter to me whether a discipla is a cleric or a woodcutter’s child, Lady Bertha. I will teach any woman or man who brings patience, a good memory, and a willingness to learn.”

By the lift of her head Liath could see she had startled the noblewoman. “Any woman or man?”

“Any, no matter their station in life or what they are now, as long as they will work, for it is a difficult and dreary labor and few will have the taste for it. At dusk, assemble those who wish to watch and listen.”

“What will you do?” Breschius asked.

“I know what day we left the steppes because you and Heribert kept a close record of the days during your journey. It is possible we have skipped months or years by traveling through the crowns.”

“How can that happen?”

“I walked in the land of the Aoi for only a few days while
years went by here on Earth. When we cross through the crowns, we touch the aether, where time passes differently than it does in the world below. I suppose there must be a way to calculate how much time any crossing would take. We know how long ago the Aoi land was cast into the aether. If we knew Eldest Uncle’s exact age, we could discover how long a day in the aether expands into a day or month here on Earth. Then, if we knew how far we wished to travel between two crowns, we might predict how long we would spend within the crowns as we cross that distance. Unless there is some other factor that alters the measure of days. What if the time doesn’t remain as a constant, if a day measured within the aether doesn’t always equal a month on Earth but fluctuates—”