PROLOGUE (67 page)

"Yes," she whispered, not sure what question she was answering, except that arousal warred with nausea as her thoughts sharpened for an instant. She had to get out of here. She lurched out of the chair, tipping it over behind her, and fled to the door.

But instead of the safety of the servants' corridor, she stumbled into an anteroom so soft with carpets that her bare feet made no sound as she hurried across the room to the only open door. Out of breath, she leaned against a doorframe painted with a mural depicting the ancient Emperor Tianathano driving a chariot pulled by griffins.

In the dim chamber beyond, a man was reading aloud from the Holy Verses in a voice so beautifully composed and melodious that like a roped lamb she was drawn in past a carved wooden screen into a vast and subdued bedchamber shrouded by approaching death.

" 'In those days,' " the voice declaimed,” 'young Savamial came into the service of God. One day she was given the task of sleeping beside the holy curtain that concealed the glory of God. The lamp burning beside the holy curtain had not yet gone out, and while Savamial lay sleeping in the temple the voice of God called out to her, and she answered, "I'm coming." She ran to the veiled

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woman and said, "Here I am. You called me." But the veiled woman replied, "I didn't call you. Go back to sleep.' " That harmonious voice made her head throb painfully. A single lamp hung from a tripod set beside the bed. It illuminated an aged woman, so frail that the hands lying on the coverlet were seamed with blue veins, as pale and thin as finest parchment. Her eyes were closed. One could only tell she was alive because she had the merest brush of color in her cheeks and, once, an eyelid flickered at the expressive lift of the reader's voice. Another man stood back in the shadows, looking on with a rapt face. The reader's face was concealed from Liath because his back was turned, but she saw how his robe fell in elegant drapery from his shoulders. His hair gleamed golden in the lamplight as he continued to read.

" 'So she went back and lay down again. But God called a second time, "Savamial!" Savamial got up and ran to the holy woman and said, "Here I am. You called me.' "

"Hugh," Liath breathed, lips moving although she hadn't meant to make a sound. A sick, horrible pain clutched in her guts, and she could not move.

He turned to see who had come in.” Who is there?" he asked softly. She knew she should run, but her legs moved her forward into the soft glow of the lamplight. Seeing her, he looked surprised and even a little shy. Was he actually blushing as a youth might faced with the lady for whom he has conceived a sweetly guileless passion? It was hard to tell because the light was behind him.

He carefully closed the book and handed it to his companion, who took it without demur as Hugh rose and came to stand before her. Already the knot in her gut and the aching in her head subsided, subsumed under a flood of new thoughts.

She had actually forgotten how beautiful he was—not a shallow beauty that bloomed quickly and withered with the next season, but something bone-deep, unfathomable because golden hair and a certain arrangement of features cannot by itself create a pleasing face. Why had God seen fit to shower him with that combination of lineaments and expressiveness, charm and intensity, whose sum is beauty?

"Liath! I—" He broke off, confused and flustered.” Where have you come from? Why are you here?" He glanced back at the el derly presbyter, who stood serenely by the bedside of the aged woman, watching the lamplight twist over her pallid face.” Nay, come, let's go outside to talk. I can't understand how it is you've come here."

But they had barely crossed the threshold into the anteroom, and her lips parted to speak, she not even knowing what she meant to say, when a middle-aged presbyter with the stout girth of a person who's eaten well since childhood hurried into view.

"Thank God, Your Honor. I hoped to find you here. How is the Holy Mother?"

"She has not changed, alas, Brother Petrus. May God have mercy. I've been reading to her."

"Yes, yes." The stout presbyter was clearly in a mounting frenzy, hands twitching, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a child who has to pee.” You must come at once. The king—

"Of course I'll come." Hugh looked at Liath, opening his hands as if to say, "what can I do?" "Will you wait?" he asked her in a low voice.” Or perhaps, I don't know, I can't believe— Nay, perhaps you'll not wish to wait."

Perhaps it was curiosity that goaded her, even as it occurred to her that there was nothing about him now at all threatening.” I'll come with you, if I may," her voice said.

His face lit. He smiled sweetly, then looked away as if embarrassed at his own reaction.

"I pray you, Your Honor, I fear there'll be violence if you don't come quickly—

"Don't fear. Brother Petrus. Let us go."

One lavishly decorated corridor led to the next. She was lost in a maze of staircases and archways, colonnades and courtyards. At last they crossed out of one palace compound and into a second. Here, where the great hall abutted a long wing of princely chambers, they stepped outside into a small courtyard ringed by fig and citron trees. In the center, on a dusty oval of ground, soldiers took arms training. Yet under the rosy light of a cloudy day, so strangely bright that she realized she had no idea what season or hour it was, something in the ring wasn't going right.

One man, wearing a grim iron helm and a heavily padded coat, was in the process of pounding some poor youth into the dirt.

Brother Petrus was so out of breath that he could barely wheeze out an explanation.” You know how it is ... a woman down at prayers in the cathedral... he saw her …conceived a lust... had her brought to him…but then he was called out of his chambers ... and returned to find her gone. He's in a fury. You know how he hates to be crossed."

Hugh's mouth tightened. He lifted a hand to his face, laying the back of that hand to his cheek as though at a memory unlocked for and unwanted. The iron-helmed man had a blunted sword carved from wood, but by now he was simply laying into his victim as though he'd forgotten everything except that reflexive snap, over and over, of his sword arm. The young man was crying out loud, begging for mercy. Soldiers stood back, uneasily, but no one moved to stop them.

Hugh unbuckled his belt and stripped out of his presbyter's robe to reveal a simple linen tunic and leggings beneath, the kind of thing worn by a noble lady's younger son when he rides off in the retinue of his elder cousin. He was tall, lean, and strong. He gestured. A servant, running, brought him a padded sword.

"Nay, my lord king," he said in a clear, carrying voice as he stepped out onto the oval, "this poor lad's not much of a contest, is he? I'll test you."

The king hesitated between one blow and the next, lifting his head. Liath caught a glimpse of a cruel gaze behind the visor. He spoke with the voice of a man plagued by a surfeit of spleen.

"No doubt it was your doing the woman was taken out of the palace, my precious counselor."

"She was a married woman praying for God to heal her sick child. She has both a father and a husband in the mason's guild, my lord king. How does it benefit you to insult the men who build and repair the city walls?"

"I'd have given her back unharmed!"

Seeing that Hugh had no helmet, the king pulled off his before leaping forward. Hugh was ready for him. He hadn't the breadth of shoulder of a man always in armor, but clearly he had trained for war. And why not? Abbots and churchmen often led contingents to war. Such a man must be ready, even in the midst of prayer, to answer when the regnant called.

The king had far less grace than a bull. He had strength, exas peration, and experience as he thrashed and struck, but there came no physical pleasure in watching him at work. As elegant as an ax, his whore had said of his lovemaking, all pumping and grunting. Watching him fight, Liath could well believe it.

Watching Hugh fight, she saw how Hugh measured his opponent and worked him patiently, saw the grace of his movements, never too subtle or too bold. Sweat broke first at the back of his neck. Somehow, she remembered that: how he would get a sheen of sweat there and down-between his shoulder blades. How his hands would get moist. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. His gaze never left his opponent; like a lover, he had eyes for no one else.

Not even for her.

She found her hands at her own throat, and she was trembling hard, choking, shaking all over. The dance of swordplay went on regardless, bruises traded, a cut lip, hair gone damp with sweat. The king had a scar on one cheek that flared vividly the more he sweated. He had a look about him that suggested he didn't fight so much for love of fighting but rather because he wanted to win. Hugh was overmatched, both in size and in prowess, but since Hugh didn't care about winning, he could focus all his efforts on defense.

Her hands fell to her side. Strange that she had reacted like that. She had nothing to fear. Eventually the king stepped back and, panting, tossed his padded sword aside. He wiped sweat from his brow as he chuckled.

"Well fought, Counselor. I'll make you a fighting man yet."

"Alas, it cannot be, my lord king, for God has chosen me for other work. I must go back to attend the Holy Mother."

"And I must go to the barracks to inspect the new troops. You'll attend me at the feast tonight."

"As you wish, my lord king."

The king called his captains together and they strode off the field.

Hugh lingered to speak to a steward, making sure that provision had been made for the injured man's care.

The courtyard cleared, leaving Hugh alone with Liath. Two servants loitered under the colonnade, ready to hurry forward at his

command. He mopped his face with a cloth and joined her in the shadow of a fig tree.

"You've come to get the book. I'm surprised you came alone. You have no reason to trust me."

No, I don't,
she thought fleetingly, but her voice said, "The book."

He gestured, inviting her to walk with him.” I've found an old scholar here who is familiar with the writing in the central portion."

It had been so many months since he had stolen Da's
Book of Secrets
from her that it took her a moment to understand what he meant. Da's book was actually three books, bound together. The first book, written on parchment, contained a florilegia on the topic of sorcery: quotes and comments copied out of other books by Da over the years. The third book, written in the infidel way on paper, was a copy of al-Haithan's astronomical tract
On the Configuration of the World.
She had never been able to read the middle book. Written on papyrus in a language unknown to her, it remained a mystery. A different hand than the original had penned in a few words in Arethousan as a gloss to the text, and some of these she had puzzled out, because Hugh had taught her a little Arethousan.

Hugh had taught her, in those terrible months when she had been his slave in Heart's Rest.

She stopped dead under the colonnade, shivered convulsively as the memory of that winter night shuddered through her body. Had she gone utterly mad to walk here beside Hugh as though he were an ordinary man? He took two steps more, noticed that she had halted, and turned back quizzically to regard her. Seeing her face, his expression changed.

"I beg your pardon. I have been too bold. One of my servants will show you safely out of the palace. Please believe you have nothing further to fear from me."

"/
don't fear you, I hate you,”
she wanted to say, but her voice said, "What do you mean?"

He looked away diffidently.” It is impossible to believe what I read in that ancient text. Nothing I ever expected, for I admit I had thought, and hoped, that I would find written there an ancient study of sorcery, mastery of knowledge long since hidden from us."

"Did you?" she demanded, unable not to want to know what secrets the ancient text held.

"What I read changed my life. God has shown me how wrong I have been, and how I must change." The shadow gave depth to his expression, his handsome eyes, the curve of his mouth as he frowned.” Nay, but it began before that. First of all it was the woman who took you away from Werlida. She humbled me. She made me think. Change does not come easily."

A mellow wind chased itself through the colonnade archways, stirring the wisteria wound down and around the stone pillars. A faint chiming ring serenaded them, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from, everywhere and nowhere. The two servants waited patiently a stone's toss away, by the archway that led out toward the courtyard linking the two palaces, one secular and one religious, regnant and skopos.