In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

o;I think she does live. I’m sure of it. It’s as if she speaks to me.”

“Can you ask her, then?”

“I don’t know how to speak in dreams.” She shrugged, impatient with this train of thought. “Anyway, had I ridden east, I wouldn’t necessarily have realized how badly the weather is affected here in Wendar. We can’t dwell on ‘if onlys.’ God know I regret losing Sorgatani. She could help me. Without Eagle’s Sight, I can only wonder and wait.”

Fest bent his head and snuffled among the raspberries, but finding no fodder to his liking he tugged toward greener pastures, and after a sign from Sanglant, Hathui let him lead her away.

“It’s possible,” he said. “I have myself considered how far the ripples of this spell will spread. That the Ashioi land has returned is, I fear, the least of our troubles.”

“I’m thinking …” She trailed to a halt.

He smiled at her, touched her cheek, and she leaned against his palm for a few breaths. With that touch, she might imagine herself in a place where troubles did not wind around her and weigh so terribly on them all. She might imagine peace and a quiet chamber furnished with an orrery brought north out of Andalla. She might imagine forest and fields and the brilliant dome of heaven with stars as distinct as the flowers in a spring meadow and as numerous as the sand on a pale shoreline.

Of a wonder, he did not move, content to stand with her as she dreamed.

At last she sighed. “Sister Rosvita once spoke to me of a convent dedicated to St. Valeria, under the rule of Mother Rothgard. In that place they kept certain forbidden records of the sorcerous arts. If I went there—it isn’t that far from here—they might have the answers I seek.”

“To make of yourself a tempestari? Do you mean to shake the winds loose and unveil the heavens?” He withdrew his hand, but he was laughing at her with such sweetness and pride that she felt tears fill her eyes, although they did not spill.

“If I must. If I can. It is what I can do.”

“It is,” he agreed, “if anyone can.”

“I was named after her, the greatest sorcerer known to humankind.”

“Who is not human.”

“Perhaps that’s why.”

“When will you go? Should I escort you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought beyond wondering.”

“Then favor me in this way, Liath. Wait until this matter with my aunt is resolved. Let me be crowned and anointed and you beside me as my queen. After that you will command a retinue of your own. It will be a simpler matter to send you to this convent on your own progress.”

She shook her head, smiling. “In this way, we’re well matched, Sanglant.”

“In what way?” he asked, shifting as might a hound that suddenly distrusts its master as she waves it toward a tub of bathwater.

“Where I am ignorant, you are wise.”

“And in like manner, in the other direction?”

She laughed and kissed him. The day seemed at once hotter, brighter, brilliant, but she knew how fragile happiness could be and how swiftly it could pass, veiled by clouds.

4

THEY heard the horn midmorning the next day. Soon after, an Eagle cantered up to the royal tent, dismounted, and knelt before Sanglant. He was sitting, hearing the morning reports, but he waved the others away and they stepped back to make room for the Eagle.

“You are Gilly, sent to Osterburg.”

She nodded. She was at least a dozen years older than he was, and slighter than most of the women who became Eagles, but she was tough like a whipcord. “I have returned in the retinue of Princess Theophanu, Your Majesty. I rode ahead to tell you this news.”

“What message from my sister?”

She looked at Hathui, then back at the king. “She sends no message, Your Majesty. She herself rides to Quedlinhame. She’ll be here today.”

Because of the way the camp was sited, set back about a league from the town wall and surrounded by a blend of scrub trees and open ground, they heard a flurry of horns at midday but saw nothing. Soon afterward, Lewenhardt noted a trio of banners flying over the tower next to the owl standard marking the presence of Mother Scholastica, but it was too far away for him to make out their markings.