In the Ruins (27 page)

“So it was when we crossed through the crowns! I saw down many passageways!”

“Just so.”

Breschius fetched the tray and went out.

When he was gone, Sorgatani sat down on the bed beside Hanna and leaned closer to her. She smelled of a heavy, attractive musk, stronger than lavender. “But hear me, Hanna. For all my life, the burning stone was like a beacon. Yet when the Ashioi returned, its light faded. I can barely touch it, or sense it, barely see it. It’s as if I have gone blind.”

“Blind?” Sorgatani’s scent distracted Hanna badly. She found it hard to think.

“I think Eagles trained themselves to see through the many gateways of the burning stone, although they did not know what they were doing. It flared so brightly that many could see through its passages.”

“Do you think it was destroyed in the wake of the cataclysm?”

Sorgatani shook her head. “The burning stone is not an artifact of the great weaving. In ancient days, so it is told, the Holy One had the power to see and speak through the gateway. That was before the great weaving was set on the looms. But only she had the power to call the gate into
being, so it is told. The great weaving fed the power of the burning stone because Earth and heavens were joined by the thread of the Ashioi land, cast out into the aether. Now, that thread is severed.”

“So we are blind. What do we do now?”

“That is what you and I must decide.”

Hanna winced. “Do you really think Liath survived?” she asked, not wanting to trust to hope.

Sorgatani glanced toward the pura’s bed. A blanket was folded on the chest at the foot of the bed, but no one slept there. “Liath was alive up to the moment of the cataclysm. She was captured by the one called Anne, whom we fought. We would all have been killed, but Lady Bertha—a fine warrior!—broke us out of that camp. Afterward, my brave Kerayit raided their camp under cover of a fog I had raised, but they found no trace of her. So we waited nearby, concealed by my arts, because I felt that she was not dead but only biding her time. So she was. When that night came, when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens, she brought to life rivers of molten fire out of the deep earth. We fled, because otherwise we would have died as did all of Anne’s tribe. Every one of them. If Liath survived the deluge of fire, I do not know.”

For a long time Hanna was silenced by the force of Sorgatani’s tale. At last, she spoke.

“Why did you stay here in this country?”

“I stayed to find you, Hanna. I waited at my teacher’s side long enough while you suffered under the Quman beast’s whip. I would not allow it to happen again. I knew you were alive. When we found the holy women and their companions, we marked the trail of those who had taken you. So, here we are. What do we do now?”

Hanna let it go, at last, and sagged forward. Sorgatani caught her, and she lay her head against the Kerayit woman’s silk-clad shoulder and rested there most comfortably. “I want to go home,” she whispered. “But what will you do now?”

“I will go where my luck leads me, of course.” She whistled sharply, a sound that made Hanna cover her right ear, which was nearest to Sorgatani’s lips.

The door slid open. Breschius appeared, his figure limned by the fading light behind him.

“Let Lady Bertha know that tomorrow we turn our path north. We will cross the mountains and travel west to Wendar.”

He vanished as he closed the door.

After a pause, Sorgatani asked: “What will we find in Wendar? What manner of place is it?”

“It will be as strange to you as this wagon is to me,” she said, half laughing, half crying, and completely exhausted, too tired, indeed, to stand and seek out a place to rest. “As for what we will find there, I don’t know. I think the world has changed utterly. I have seen such destruction that at first it made no sense to me. A vast city flattened as with a giant’s hand. Refugees on the roads, many of them starving. Clouds of dust everywhere. How much worse may it be elsewhere? What if there is worse yet to come? I must seek out the regnant of Wendar, whoever that is now, and give my report. That I must do first. Afterward—”

“Afterward” was too vast a landscape to survey.

THE estate Ivar and Erkanwulf rode into looked very different from Ivar’s father’s manor and compound. It had no significant palisade, only a set of corrals to keep livestock in and predators from the forest out, and there was a wooden tower set on a hillock just off the road to serve as a refuge in times of trouble. An enclosure surrounded a score of fruit trees. Several withered gardens lay in winter’s sleep, protected by fences to keep out rabbits and other vermin. Four boys came running from the distant trees, each one holding a crude bow. Dogs barked. A barefoot child seated in the branches of one of the fruit trees stared at them but said no word. A trio of men loitering beside an empty byre greeted them with nods.

In Heart’s Rest the village had grown up around a commons, and in addition lay a morning’s walk from Count Hart’s isolated manor. Here, in Varre, houses straggled along the road like disorderly soldiers. Fields stretched out in stripes behind them until they were overtaken by woods. A tiny church had been built where the path they rode crossed with a broad wagon track. The house of worship was ringed by a cemetery, itself disturbed by a dozen recently dug graves. Wattle-and-daub huts with roofs low to the ground lay scattered hither and yon, but Erkanwulf led
them to the grandest house in the village, a two-storied stone house standing under the shadow of the three-storied wooden tower.

“Who lives here?” Ivar asked, admiring this massive stone structure and the single story addition built out behind it. There were also three sheds and a dozen leafless fruit trees.

“My mother.”

Before they reached the stone house, the church bell rang twice. Ivar looked back to see that two of the men who had greeted them beside the byre had vanished.

“She’s chatelaine for the steward here, my lord,” Erkanwulf added. “It was the steward who asked Captain Ulric to take me into the militia. They’re cousins twice removed on their mother’s side.”

It was cold, and even though it was near midday, the light had the faded glamour of late afternoon. They hadn’t seen the sun for weeks, not since many days before the night of the great storm and their rescue by the villagers who lived deep within the Bretwald.

A woman came out of the farthest shed. Her hair was covered by a blue scarf and her hands were full of uncombed wool. “Erkanwulf!” She turned and fled back into the shed. As though her cry had woken the village, a stream of folk emerged from every hovel and out of sheds and fields to converge on the stone house.

It was a prosperous village. Ivar held his mount on a tight rein, preferring not to dismount in case there was trouble. He counted fully twoscore folk ranging in age from toddling babies to one old crone who supported her hobbling steps on a walking stick. There were older men, and lads, but no young men at all, not one.

Erkanwulf dismounted and tied his horse to a post before running down the path and into the arms of a fair-haired girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. He grabbed her, spun her around, and kissed her on the cheek. Hand in hand they walked swiftly back to the stone house. His mother came out of the shed with her hands empty and a grim look in her eyes.

“Who is this?” cried the girl, breaking free of Erkanwulf’s
grip and walking boldly right up to Ivar’s horse. She had no fear of the animal. She rummaged in the pocket tied to her dress and pulled out a wizened apple, which was delicately accepted by the beast.

“Too high for the likes of you,” said Erkanwulf with a snort. “Unless you’re wanting a noble bastard to bring to your wedding bed.”

“You!” said the girl with a roll of her eyes. She grinned at Ivar. She was plump, healthy, very attractive, and well aware of her charms.

“And a monk besides,” Erkanwulf added.

“As if that ever stopped a man!” She laughed. She had lovely blue eyes, deep enough to drown in, as the poets would say, and she fixed that gaze on Ivar so hard that he blushed.

“Hush, you, Daughter,” said Erkanwulf’s mother. “Don’t embarrass me before this holy man. I beg your pardon, Your Excellency.”

“No offense taken,” Ivar said awkwardly.

The mother swung her gaze from the one to the other. It was difficult to say who blanched more, the sister or the brother. “What are you doing here, Erkanwulf? There came the lady’s riders looking for you last autumn. We had a good deal of trouble because of your disobedience. Best you have a good reason for bringing her wrath down on us.”

“What trouble?” He looked around the circle of villagers gathered and saw that their mood was sour, not welcoming.

When she did not answer, he said, “We can trust this man. I swear to you on my father’s grave.”

She held up a hand and folded down one digit for each offense. “Steward was taken back to Autun with both her son and daughter, as hostage for our good behavior. Bruno and Fritho were whipped for protesting. Your brother and four cousins took to the woods and hide there still, like common bandits, because the lady’s riders said they’d hold them as hostage against your return. Goodwife Margaret’s two grandsons were led off God know where, although they said they meant to make them grooms in the lady’s stables.” The
crone bobbed her head vigorously. “How is Margaret to plow her fields now? You best make a good accounting for yourself, Son, for as bad as all that is,” and now she folded in her thumb, and shook a fist at him, “we lost also our entire store of salted venison meant to husband us through to spring. They took it as tax, a fine levied against your desertion. New year is coming. Our stores grow thin. Much of what remains is rotting. What with this cold weather, too much rain all winter, and no sun for these many weeks, I fear more trouble to come. What do you say?”

“He came at my order,” said Ivar, “and in the service of Biscop Constance.”

Folk murmured. Some drew the circle at their breast while others made the sign to avert the evil eye.

“She’s dead, may God have mercy on her,” said Erkanwulf’s mother.

“She’s not dead but living in a monastery they call Queen’s Grave.”

“That’s what they said. That she was interred in Queen’s Grave.”

“It’s a place, not a graveyard,” he said patiently, seeing that the villagers had lost a bit of the suspicion that closed their features. “It’s a convent. She’s alive. Lady Sabella deposed her, although she had no legal right to do so since Biscop Constance was given her place as both biscop and duke by the regnant himself.”

“King Henry is Wendish,” said one of the men who had greeted them so suspiciously by the byre. “As is the biscop. At least Lady Sabella is daughter of the old Varren royal family on her mother’s side.”

“She’s a heretic,” said Erkanwulf’s mother. “Our deacon was taken away because she wouldn’t profess.”

“Was she? Has the truth come so far as out here to this place?” demanded Ivar.

“He’s a heretic, too,” observed Erkanwulf dryly, indicating Ivar.

“Hush, you,” said his mother before turning her attention back to Ivar. “It’s true enough, Your Excellency. The lady came riding by on her progress one fine day last spring.”

“It was summer,” interrupted Erkanwulf’s sister. “I recall it because the borage was blooming and it was the same color as his eyes.”

“Tssh! Hush, girl! We heard enough about all that back then. I beg pardon, Your Excellency. My children will rattle on. The lady prayed with us, and said if we professed the Redemption she’d send us salt and spices in the autumn. But none came. Because of your disobedience, Erkanwulf!”

“Still,” said her daughter, with a dreamy smile, “I liked listening to what the lady’s cleric had to say.”

“Because of his blue eyes!” said the old crone with a wheezy laugh. “Ah, to be young!”

“I am surrounded by fools!” cried the chatelaine, but even her expression softened as she allowed herself a moment’s recollection. “Yet it’s true he was the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. More like an angel than a man, truly. And so soft-spoken, with a sorrow in his heart. Why, his good counsel softened even old Marius’ heart and he patched up his ancient quarrel with his cousin William that they’d been nursing for twenty years.”

“That was a miracle!” observed the crone wryly. “And he
was
handsome! Whsst!”

“You’re the fools!” cried Erkanwulf, for whom this recital had become, evidently and all at once, too much to bear. “There can only be one young lord fitting
that
description, and he’s no cleric. He’s the lady’s kept man, her concubine. She beds him every night, and parades him during the day like a holy saint wanting only a shower of light to transport him up to the Chamber of Light!”

“You’re just jealous because Nan wouldn’t roll you!” retorted his angry sister.

“At least she doesn’t bed every man who comes asking!”

Everyone began talking at once, as many laughing as scolding, but his mother walked right over to him and slapped him. “You’ll speak no such disrespectful words, young pup! Nor have you explained yourself yet! Steward put herself out for you because she liked you and thought well of you. Now look where it’s gotten her! Speak up! The rest of you shut your mouths and listen!”