Ivar did not move. He wanted to hear her speak again. She had a kind of monotonously fascinating voice, pure and quietly zealous. And she was female, and young.
“For the blessed Daisan was born not of earthly mortals but out of Our Lady, who is God. He alone was born without any taint of darkness. So did he suffer. By the order of the Empress Thaisannia, she of the mask, he was flayed alive because of his preaching, as was their custom with criminals and those who spoke treason against the Dariyan Empire and its ruler. His heart was cut out of him, and where his heart’s blood fell and touched the soil, there bloomed roses.”
Sigfrid made the sign of the Circle against what is forbidden—against this most erroneous and dangerous heresy. But he did not move away. None of them moved. They were caught there, spellbound, as the thunder rumbled closer and the first drops of rain darkened the dirt around them.
“But by his suffering, by his sacrifice, he redeemed us from our sins. Our salvation comes through that redemption. For though he died, he lived again. So did God in Her wisdom redeem him, for was he not Her only Son?”
She would have gone on, perhaps she did go on, but the wind picked up and lightning flashed bright against lowering clouds and thunder pealed overhead. The stinging bite of rain drove them to the shelter of the colonnade. Whether she ran in as well Ivar could not know, but he imagined her, kneeling still, soaked and pounded by rain as she prayed her heretical prayers. That image disturbed him greatly for many nights to come.
IV
ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
1
THE king and his entourage rode south from Quedlinhame. Liath rode northeast through scattered woodland amid rolling hills with a message for Duchess Rotrudis, the king’s sister. She followed the Osterwaldweg, a grassy track that ran north from Quedlinhame and slanted east-northeast at the confluence of the Ailer and Urness Rivers, themselves tributaries of the Veser. In the morning the track, crisp with frost, glittered in the cold sun as though an angel had blown its sweet breath over the rutted road. By evening, wagon traffic, sun, and the usual passage of a swift autumn storm overhead had turned the path to a sludge that would refreeze over the long night.
It was always windy and sometimes quite chill, but in the late afternoon the sun would often shine brightly. During those times Liath would find a patch of sunlight while her horse foraged along the verge of the track. Sometimes, if the way lay empty, she would open The Book of Secrets and read words she had long since memorized or puzzle over the brief Arethousan glosses in the inner book, the most secret ancient text. Alas, without time to study or preceptor to continue her teaching, she had already forgotten much of what little Arethousan she had learned from Hugh. But perhaps if she forgot everything he had taught her, she would truly be free from him.
Other times, frustrated by her ignorance, she would simply close her eyes and imagine Da beside her on the quiet road. The sun’s warmth was like his presence, soothing and secure; oddly, she could never imagine him by her on cloudy days. Perhaps his spirit, looking down on her from the Chamber of Light where he now resided at peace, could only see her when his view down through the seven spheres was unobstructed.
“Do you suppose,” she imagined him asking now, “that souls have sight? Or is that sense reserved for those who wear an earthly body?”
“You’re trying to trick me, Da,” she would answer. “Angels and daimones don’t wear earthly bodies. They wear bodies made up of the pure elements, fire and light and wind and air, and yet they can see with a sight that is keener than that of humankind. They can see both past and future. They can see the souls of the stars.”
“Some have argued they are the souls of the fixed stars.” Thus would the argument be joined, over free will and Fate and natural law. And if not that argument, then a different one, for Da had a fine treasure-house of his own, knowledge earned over many years of study, and though his “city of memory” was not as finely honed as Liath’s—for he had taught her skills of memory which he had only mastered late in life—it was yet impressive. He knew so much, and all of it he meant to teach to his daughter, especially the secrets of the mathematici, the knowledge of the stars and of the movements of the planets through the heavens.
A sudden gust of wind fluttered the pages of the open book, set on her knee. Snow swirled past, but there were no clouds in the sky now. The cold wind brought memory.
Wings, settling on the eaves. A sudden gust of white snow through the smoke hole, although it was not winter.
Asleep and aware, bound to silence. Awake but unable to move, and therefore still asleep. The darkness held her down as if it were a weight draped over her.
A voice of bells, heard as if on the wind. Two sharp thunks sounded, arrows striking wood.
“Your weak arrows avail you nothing,” said the voice of bells. “Where is she?”
“Nowhere you can find her,” said Da.
“Liath,” said a voice of bells, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Heart beating wildly, she dared not move, but she had to look. Snow spun past like the trailing edge of a storm, flakes dissolving in the sun. A feathery gleam lit the track where it bent away northward, a roiling in the air like the fluttering of translucent wings as pale as the air itself.
Something came toward her down the road.
The fear bit so deep, like a griffin’s beak closing on her throat, that she could not draw breath. Certainly she could not run. Da’s voice rang in her ears: “Safety lies in staying hidden.”
She did not move.
“Liathano.”
She heard it then, clearly, the voice made of the echoes of bells ringing away long into an unbroken night. She saw it though it was not any earthly being. It did not walk the track but rather floated above it, as if unable to set its aetherical being fully in contact with the dense soil of the mortal world. It came down the track from the north, faceless, with only humanlike limbs and the form of a human body and the wings of an angel to give it shape.
It called her, alluring, not unmusical, with that awful throbbing bass vibrato in its tone. It wanted her to answer. It compelled her to answer.
But Da had protected her against magic. Silent, as still as stone, she did not move. She held her breath. A leaf blown free by the wind fluttered over her arms and came to rest on the open book, and then a second, as if the earth itself collaborated in hiding her.
The creature stalked past her, still calling, and went on up the road to the south and, at last, out of her sight. A single white feather swirled in the eddy left by its passing and drifted down to the ground. It was so pale that it shone like purest glass. Where she had tied it to a leather cord to hang around her neck, the gold feather left to her by the Aoi sorcerer burned against her skin as if in warning.