PROLOGUE (53 page)

Smoke and the odor of burned roast drifted out of the cooking house, together with something tangier, so sharp it made his neck prickle. In the Quman camp he had learned to walk quietly, be
child
or
flame

cause Prince Bulkezu had liked his slaves to be silent and had once killed a man for sneezing in the middle of a musician's performance.

Her voice had the breathy quality of air. As he peered into the smoky interior, he saw a woman standing at the big block table, hands hovering over a platter ringed by four candles placed to form a square. An apple fanned into neat slices lay on the wooden platter, so freshly cut that the juice welling up from its moist flesh shone in the candlelight, making his mouth water. No one else was in the cookhouse.

"I adjure you by your name and your powers and the glorious place wherein you dwell, O Prince of Light who drove the Enemy into the Abyss. Let your presence rest upon this apple and let the one who eats of it be filled with desire for me. Let him be seized by a flame of fire as powerful as that fire in which you, Holy One, make your dwelling place. Let him open his door to me, and let him not be content with any thing until he has satisfied me—

Nay, there was someone else there, over by the spit. She emerged from the shadows, a woman of middling years. In the half light, Zacharias saw the wicked scar blazed on her right cheek, puffy and white.

"What madness is this, Frederun?"

The pretty servingwoman broke into tears.” I thought he was dead! I was so happy when I was his lover—

"Hush!" hissed her companion, laying a hand on the young woman's shoulder.” There's someone in the doorway."

Zacharias slipped away into the shadows. The wind shifted, and he smelled the privies, dug over by the stables. It still hurt to urinate, but he was no longer sure if the pain was actually physical or only an artifact lingering in his mind from those first weeks after Prince Bulkezu had mutilated him.

He found Sergeant Cobbo together with a dozen soldiers standing in the aisle between stalls, watching a chess game. Captain Fulk had set up a board and pieces on a barrel and brought two bales of hay to serve as seats. He had the dragon helm on his knee, with a hand curved possessively over its top. As Zacharias approached, the captain used an Eagle to take a Lion.

"My biscop takes your Eagle," said his opponent, the exiled Eagle known as Wolfhere. He paused, still holding the chess piece, and glanced up past Cobbo and the ring of watchers to catch Zacharias' eye.

"Come you from the prince?" The old man had a piercing intelligence and remained in all circumstances so calm that Zacharias did not trust him.

Zacharias explained his errand, and Cobbo designated a man to accomplish the task in the morning. The soldiers settled back to gossip about this turn of events.

"Will you play, Prater?" asked Fulk.” I can't best him."

"Nay, I've no knowledge of such games. They're meant for nobles and soldiers, not for simple fraters such as myself. I'm not one of those folk who will be moving pieces to and fro in a game of power."

Wolfhere chuckled.” Yet what harm might there be, friend, in learning the rules of the game, if only to protect ourselves?"

"I'm thinking you're not needing any protection, Eagle, beyond that which you already possess."

"Here, now," objected Fulk.” We're at peace in my lord prince's company."

"Nay, I've no quarrel with Wolfhere," said Zacharias.” He's a common man like myself."

"So I am," agreed Wolfhere genially, but his smile was like that of a wolf, sharp and clean. He had once been King Arnulf the Younger's favored counselor, yet now he rode in secrecy in Prince Sanglant's company because he had been interdicted and outlawed by King Henry, accused of sorcery and treason, a friend and boon companion to the very mathematici whose influence Prince Sanglant meant to combat.

Yet it was this man, so the story went, who had freed Liath from servitude at the hands of an unscrupulous and nobly-born frater. This man was a favorite of little Blessing's, and the ones whom Blessing liked the prince favored.

"Prince Sanglant's wife appeared to us in a vision," Zacharias said suddenly, wanting to prod the old man, to see him jump.

Wolfhere's lips tightened, that was all. He rolled the Eagle in his hand, thumb caressing the lift of its carven wings, as he lifted his gaze to regard Zacharias blandly.” This is unexpected news. How did she appear to you?"

"Quite unexpectedly. Truly, Wolfhere, you are a man who plays chess most masterfully. But you must ask Prince Sanglant for particulars. I dare not say more. The church frowns upon all sorcerous acts or even those who witness them."

Wolfhere laughed, setting down the Eagle, but Captain Fulk rose, cradling the dragon helm against a hip.

"Can you not tell us more, Frater? We have seen many strange things traveling with the prince. All of us have seen the daimone that suckles the young princess. We have seen stranger things besides, in Aosta, when we rode with Princess Theophanu. News such as this may be important to all of us. It seems to me that Prince Sanglant has not suffered the absence of his wife well, and I pray that they may be reunited soon."

"Or truly the prince will be united with some other woman," joked one of the soldiers.

"I'll hear no more of that, Sibold!" said Fulk curtly.” Which of you would act differently? It's no business of ours whether the prince chooses to live as a cleric, or as a man."

Wolfhere smiled.” True-spoken, Captain, yet it's true that Prince Sanglant has long been famous for his amorous adventures. Have I ever told you about Margrave Villam's daughter, she who is heir to the margraviate? It's said she was taken by such a passion for the young prince that—"

Zacharias eased out of the gathering and retreated to the yard. His hands, always chilled in the winter, got stiff with cold, but he lingered outside.

That the fault of concupiscence, the seemingly unquenchable desire for the pleasures of the flesh, plagued Prince Sanglant made him no different from most of humankind. Unlike many a noble lord or lady, and entirely unlike the Quman warriors, who took what they wanted at the instant the urge struck them, the prince struggled to keep his cravings under control. For that reason alone, Zacharias had cause to respect him.

Yet it was not the prince he sat in judgment on.

Nay, truly, he recognized the sinful feeling that had crept into his breast: He envied Wolfhere his knowledge. The exiled Eagle kept a cool head and a closed mouth, and despite Zacharias' hints and insinuations over the months of their trip, Wolfhere never admitted to the knowledge that Zacharias knew in his bones the old

man kept clutched to himself as a starving man clutches a loaf of precious bread and a handful of beans.

Was Zacharias unworthy? Prince Sanglant had taken Zacharias on in part because of his knowledge of the Quman but mostly because the prince had, underneath his iron constitution and bold resolve, a sentimental heart. He had taken Zacharias into his company because the frater had spoken of his vision of Liath, because Zacharias had brought him a scrap of parchment on which the prince's beloved, and lost, wife had scribbled uninterpretable signs and symbols, themselves a kind of magic, readable only by mathematici.

He touched the pouch at his belt, felt the stiff cylinder cached there: the rolled-up parchment, his only link to the knowledge he sought. Liath had studied the heavens, too. She had asked the same questions he had, and maybe, just maybe, she would listen with astonishment and fascination to his description of the vision of the cosmos that had been vouchsafed to him in the palace of coils.

Maybe she had some answers for him. Maybe she was willing to search.

Standing out under the pitiless winter sky, he prayed that she would be restored to Earth. Because if she wasn't, he had no one else to go to.

Shivering, he made his way back into the servants' hall and, by a minor miracle, found with no trouble the corridor off which lay the chambers reserved for the prince.

Someone had reached the door before him.

He knew her by the curve of her gown along her body, the way her shawl had fallen back to reveal the curling wisps of her light hair. He stepped back, staying in shadow. She hadn't heard him, or maybe she just wasn't paying attention, because she was waiting at the door.

It opened, finally, to reveal the prince.

"My lord prince," she said in a remarkably level voice, "you called for wine and refreshment?"

Sanglant held a candle whose yellow flame revealed the sharp lines of his face and the carefully fanned-out apple, eight slices making a blunt star, two on each side. A silver goblet shone softly in the candlelight beside it.

"Nay, I asked for nothing more," he said, but he didn't close the
child
or
flame
door, he only stood there. After a moment, she slipped past him to go inside.

With that uncanny sixth sense he had, as exquisite as a dog s, Sanglant looked directly at Zacharias, although surely he ought not to have been able to see him, drowned as the frater was in night's shadow.

"What is it, Zacharias?" he asked softly.

"Nay, nothing, my lord prince." Zacharias took two steps back, paused.” All is as you wish, Your Highness. I'll go now. Wolfhere has promised to teach me to play chess."

As he walked away, he heard the door close and latch behind him.

IT was too dark to see the landscape of the sphere of Erekes. As soon as the wind loosened its grip, Liath halted to take her bearings. A hot wind blasted her face. She missed her cloak, which she could have used to shield her skin, and more desperately she missed her boots. The surface she stood on scraped the soles of her feet, but when she moved forward to stand on what appeared to be smoother ground, her foot sank into a viscous liquid so cold that her toes went numb.

She jumped back, stumbled, and for a moment couldn't put any weight on that leg. At last sensation returned, but that was worse; her skin burned and blistered. Limping, she fell back to the shelter of a high outcropping whose bulky lee protected her from the worst of the blasting wind. The iron wall, and the gate, had vanished. She leaned against the stone, catching her breath, but the slick cold, as penetrating as melting ice, burned her fingers. She jerked away, and an instant later felt that same ulcerous pain lance up her hand.

She stood there in misery, half out of the wind and with a foot and a hand throbbing, and surveyed the landscape, what she could see of it. Beyond the shoreline, more a suggestion of textural change than an actual visible line, the landscape stretched into the distance as smoothly blank as a sea littered with fragments of lamplight. Darting fingers of brilliance moved upon that sea, illusive daimones bent upon unfathomable errands, but she could not hear the music of the spheres above the whine of that endless hot wind.

Was it the wind off the sun? Yet why then did the sun not shine here?

One question always led to another. She puzzled again over her brief sojourn among the Ashioi. How could time move differently there than on Earth? Why did day dawn and night fall with such an irregular rhythm? Why did no moon rise and set, wax and wane, in the country of the Ashioi?

Did it, too, travel the spheres? Or was there another plane of existence lying within or beside the universe which she did not comprehend? Eldest Uncle had shown her the twisted belt, his crude representation of the path on which he and his people had found themselves, but that didn't explain where they were right now in relation to Liath.

So many mysteries.

And it were better not to linger here, dwelling over them. She might stand here forever, lost in contemplation, except that the wind blew hot in her face and the ground rubbed uncomfortably against her bare feet. Like her heart, her hand and foot were going numb.

Cold crept up her wrist like poison. Wind scalded her eyes. She' couldn't feel the coarse sand under one foot, and the lack of feeling disoriented her so much it was hard to keep her balance.

Time to move on.

The path was clearly marked, once you thought to look for it. Those lamplit sparks were stepping stones, each one about an anil's length in diameter, set across the blistering sea. The challenge lay in stepping from one to the next with no staff for balance and feeling in only one foot. She hitched her quiver tightly against her body and set off, cautiously at first, more boldly after she got the knack of compensating for her crippled foot and navigating against the constant pressure of wind blowing so hard into her face that her eyes ran with tears.