King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

But she smiled. She had no fine, practical clothes, no long tunic cut for riding, like the other Eagles wore. She, like Liath, wore a mixture of her old clothes and castoffs from her married brother Thancmar, cut down and patched well enough, and likely to last some time. Birta was never one to stint on cloth, or weaving, or leggings, since she reckoned that if you paid half again as much for cloth that lasted twice as long, then it was a bargain. Hanna felt strange, dressed half as a woman and half as a man, but Liath had herself commented that this was what she had always worn, traveling with her Da.

Birta came up to her and hugged her hard. “Now mind you, Hanna,” she said into her ear, “that you look after yourself, and after Liath, too, for she’s more fragile than I thought and will need some time to heal.”

“I will. I promise it.” Then she hugged her father, who was speechless as always, and Karl again. “And a devil will plague you,” she added, holding onto his tunic, “if you don’t obey Mam and Pap in all things. Do you understand me?”

He gulped out a yes and scurried away to a safe distance. Hanna wiped a tear from her eye with the back of a hand.

Liath came out of the stables, leading her bay mare. If anything new and bulky rested in her saddlebags, anything rectangular, like a book, Hanna could not tell; she must have rearranged and reweighted the bags in order to hide the book. She did not look at Hanna but made her good-byes to Birta and Hansal and Karl. The locals had come out to gawk, but they remained respectfully back.

At last they mounted and followed Wolfhere down the south road. Of the five of them, only Hanna looked back as they passed around the bend and out of sight of the inn and the common. When the trees veiled the last house of the village and they walked their horses along the quiet road edged by broken fields and the steady march of forest, Liath spoke abruptly.

“I will never come here again.”

Hanna shuddered and was suddenly afraid.

“Do you so vow?” asked Wolfhere with a hint of a smile.

Liath started as if she had only now realized she had spoken aloud. “No,” she said. “No. I wouldn’t do anything so rash. It’s just I feel it’s true, somehow.”

“Anne was given to feelings,” said Wolfhere blandly. “Of that sort.”

Anne. Liath’s mother. Who had been a sorcerer. Who had been killed because of it There is much more here than meets the eye. But Hanna was determined to do whatever needed to be done to protect Liath.

“Come now,” said Wolfhere. “We’ve a long road before us.”

So they rode, with little talk and great single-mindedness. Their pace was unslacking—not hard, for the sake of the horses, but constant. By nightfall, Heart’s Rest lay far behind them.

PART TWO

THE DEEDS OF

THE GREAT

PRINCES

VIII

ON THE KING’S

PROGRESS

1

ROSVITA of Korvei, the least of the servants of Our Lady and Our Lord, to her most imperial majesty, Queen Mathilda, sends the most humble protestations of her complete devotion and heartfelt greetings in the Name of Our Lady, Whose renowned wisdom and singular glory illumines you, our gracious queen, mother to our most glorious King Henry, second of that name.

The message from her father lay on top of the next page, covering the words she had written yesterday before being interrupted first by a messenger from the north and then by the news of the argument that had erupted among the king’s counselors. She slipped the parchment into the pocket sewn in her outer tunic. Her fingers slipped down the smooth silk of her gold vestment, worn by all the king’s clerics. It was very fine to the touch. Like all worldly pleasures, she reminded herself wryly. The gold vestment, symbol of the king’s service, covered the coarse cloth she wore underneath, the black robe that marked her as coming, originally, from Our Lady’s Convent of Korvei.

She returned her attention to the book.

At your request I undertake to write of the deeds of the great princes and in addition I have taken pains to write a few words concerning the origin and condition of the Wendish people over whom King Henry, first of that name, was the first to reign, so that in reading of these deeds you may delight your mind, relieve your cares, and relax in pleasant leisure.

Here, yesterday afternoon, she had broken off. It was a relief to return to the quiet of the scriptorium after the uproar last night, which had lasted until King Henry retired from the feast. She consulted her wax tablet, with its worked and reworked sentences, crossed out and scratched over, then set her quill to ink and began writing again.

I confess, however, that I could not encompass all their deeds, but I am writing them briefly and not at length, so that their narration may be clear and not tedious to my readers. Therefore may Your Highness read this little book, being mindful of us and of the piety and devotion with which it was written.

Here ends the Preface to the First Book of the Deeds of the Great Princes.

Rosvita shifted on her stool. Her back was sore already. When she had first come to the King’s Chapel as a twenty-year-old fresh from Korvei Convent, she had been able to sit up long into nights broken only by the call to prayer and work by candlelight at the copying and recopying of old texts and, indeed, at texts she had herself composed despite the lack of humility such composition betrayed in one so young. But after twenty years of labor, first in the service of King Arnulf the Younger and now for King Henry, her body was no longer as supple and strong.