Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

Then she chastised herself for thinking such a thing of a good churchman like Hugh. He had proved himself, if not chaste, then at least a good adviser. He was learned and well-spoken.

And he had stolen a Book of Secrets.

“No better a soul than mine,” she murmured. She braced herself, legs bent, and grunted slightly as she picked up the chest and staggered outside. For some reason it seemed heavier now.

She replaced it in the wagon, brushed her hand over lock and wood to make sure there were no obvious signs of entry—such as Brother Simplicus might think to look for—and then retreated back to her tent.

Of guards she saw none, but they would be set out along the perimeter. The camp lay silent, brushed by the noises that attend any forest at night: the sigh of wind through the trees, the chirping of crickets, the eerie hoot of an owl.

The moon alone witnessed her sin.

When Rosvita reentered the tent, Sister Amabilia blinked up at her and rubbed bleary eyes as if to clear them. “What are you about, Sister?”

“I am merely restless,” said Rosvita. “And with a full bladder now emptied. Go back to sleep. We’ll need our strength tomorrow.”

Amabilia yawned, groped to find her walking staff laid on the ground beside her, and then, reassured by its presence, she went back to sleep.

Merely restless. Merely a liar.

Merely a thief.

She had spent more than half her life in the church and served faithfully and well, only to find herself now shaking in the shadow of a lantern, in a tent in the wilds of a forest night. Was it only her imagination or could she hear the howls of Eika and the screams of dying men on the wind that fluttered the tent flaps and twined round the tent poles?

“Sister Amabilia?” she whispered; but there was no reply.

She eased the book from under the pallet and opened it on the blanket, just where the light streamed with its honey glow. It was hard to see, especially with eyes no longer young and sharp as they once had been, but with her hands, leafing through the book, she discovered at once that the binding contained not one book but three, bound together. The third and last book was written in the infidel way, on paper, and in the language of the Jinna—which she could not read. The second book, bound into the heart of the volume, was of such brittle papyrus that she hesitated to touch it for fear it would crumble under her fingers. It, too, was composed in a language she could not read, but in this case she did not even recognize the letters. “Hide this” was written in Arethousan at the top of the first page of the middle manuscript, and there seemed to be other glosses, also in Arethousan, but the ink was unreadable in this light.

She turned back to the very first page of the first book, a good quality parchment leaf—and written in Dariyan, she noted even before she noted the substance of the words or the strange handwriting. Whoever had written this had been church-educated, certainly, for the lettering paraded down the page with a trace of Aostan formalism. But the “q”s curled strangely, and the “s”s had a Salian bent, while the “t”s and “th”s had the stiff, strong backs of a cleric trained in a Wendish institution. With most calligraphy she could read in the script where the scribe had gotten her training; this person wrote in such a hodgepodge of styles that she—or he—might have come from anywhere, or everywhere.

It was very strange.

But nothing like as strange, and disturbing, as the words themselves.

With mounting horror, she mouthed the first sentence.

“Through the art of the mathematici we read the alignment of the heavens and draw down the power of the ever-moving spheres to work our will on the earth. I will now set down everything I know of this art. Beware, you who read this, lest you become trapped as I have in the snares of those who seek to use me for their own ends. Beware the Seven Sleepers.”

A twig snapped outside and she started violently, slapping the book shut and shoving it under the blanket. God have mercy. She trembled like a sinner afflicted through God’s just judgment with a palsy.

The art of the mathematici.

The most forbidden of sorceries.

4

THEY left the horses with a half dozen of Captain Ulric’s men, the light cavalry from Autun. A few of the light cavalry had torches among their equipment; Lavastine ordered other branches collected from the brush, enough that each man carried two stout sticks.

Liath stepped into the cave mouth and took hold of a torch. There was no longer time to agonize over the gift she held within her, that Da had protected her against. Alain’s life—if he even still lived—hung in the balance.

Wood burns. The torch flared to life, flames licking and smoking with a resiny smell. Lavastine had come in behind her, and now she turned to see him staring at her.

“It’s a trick,” she said quickly. “An Eagle’s trick.”

“Not one I have heard tell of before now,” he replied, but he merely called to the forty soldiers who followed him, mostly light cavalry pulled off the field, and every fourth man lit torch or stick from the one she carried.

She set foot on the stairs. Lavastine followed directly behind her, then some of his men and, last, young Erkanwulf and the other Autun soldiers. Captain Ulric brought up the rear. With each step downward the light of day faded, dimmed, grayed into oblivion. The rough stone gripped her boots though now and again a trickle of water slipped under her feet, welling up from some untraceable crack of moisture dripping through a seam in the rock. She kept the torch thrust forward to see the steps below her. They were so evenly spaced that she had to stop herself from trotting down them, from gaining too much speed. Ai, Lady, was Alain alive yet on the hill or were he and his troops destroyed by the fury of the Eika assault? Once she heard a man stumble and cry out behind her, and she slowed down, waiting, as did Lavastine, who matched her step for step. Tension coiled on him like a second skin, and he hissed between his teeth with impatience but said nothing as the man behind caught up and they descended again.

But after a hundred or more of such evenly placed steps even the most cautious man became bolder and their pace increased as they descended down and ever down.