In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“Were you not already planning to escape? What manner of sorcery did your grandmother teach you?”

Elene twisted one hand within the curve of the other. She bit her lip.

“I know something of sorcery, Lady Elene. I am not without weapons of my own, cruel ones, more dangerous than you can know. Ones whose reach flies farther than that of arrows or spears. Ones whose touch is deadly, and whose heart cannot be turned aside by any manner of plea or bribe. My servants are not of this world, and nothing on this Earth—nothing you have—can stop them.”

Blessing stopped crying, but she shuddered against her servant.

Elene hid her face in her hands. “I know who you are. My grandmother spoke of you. You’re the one who controls the galla.”

“That I am. Now do you see it is better to cooperate with me? Even if you used magic to escape, my servants can still hunt you down no matter where you run.”

“What are galla?” asked Berthold, his face twisted with nervousness and confusion and a touch of proud Villam outrage.

“Something very bad,” said Elene so faintly that her voice faded and was lost as, below, a bench scraped and a guard’s yell drifted up from the lowest level. She lowered her hands. “What do you want from us, Holy Mother?”

“I want the truth. Tell me everything you know, Lady Elene. I cannot allow you or Wolfhere to leave, but I will see that you are well treated and that Queen Adelheid does not harm you.”

“Yes.” Groping, Elene found a chair and sank into it with Berthold supporting her. Once she was sitting, he kept a hand protectively on her shoulder as she told her tale in a halting voice, backtracking often, repeating herself, and without question obfuscating where she could.

She was terrified, that was easy to see, and humiliated because she knew she was afraid. She made mistakes and revealed more than she meant to: how Meriam had demanded that her son sacrifice his eldest daughter to Anne’s cabal; how they had been shipwrecked but rescued by Brother Marcus; how Wolfhere had vanished in Qurtubah, near the ruins of Kartiako, because the others suspected he had turned against them; how a simple, illiterate brother called Zacharias had saved her from the monstrous akreva, taking the poison meant for her; how she and Meriam and their tiny retinue had crossed through the crown into the deserts of Saïs, into a trackless waste where no creature lived or breathed; how Meriam had woven the great spell with Elene’s assistance, on that terrible night.

“She died.” Elene’s voice was more croak than human and her body shuddered as Berthold patted her shoulder. She did not cry. “She needed my strength, but she sent me back at the last moment. She had planned it with Wolfhere all along.”

“With Wolfhere? Planned what?”

“That he would follow us and return me to my father. She fulfilled her vow to Anne. She knew it was right, what they did. But the Seven Sleepers failed. The Lost Ones have returned. They will kill all of humankind if they can. In Jinna lands they still tell tales of the ancient war with the Aoi. My grandmother heard those stories when she was a child. You know what Anne meant to do—to banish the Lost Ones forever, so they would never trouble us again. Why did you abandon Mother Anne, knowing that her cause was just and necessary?”

“I saw no reason to sacrifice myself when I could serve God better by surviving. Did Anne know that she and all the others would die? That the weaving would extract its own cost? Did Sister Meriam know she was doomed? Did all of them die?”

By the way Elene lowered her eyes and sagged against Berthold, Antonia guessed she was about to lie. “I could not see into the weaving. I only know …” She wept.

Berthold shot Antonia an indignant glance. “Is this necessary?” He looked so much like his father that Antonia had a momentary sense of dislocation, as if she had been thrown by means of a spell back to the days of her youth. But she had to press on.

“What do you know, Lady Elene?”

“Something terrible happened. I don’t know who fought the spell, but it broke down in the north, and then something terrible happened. White fire, and a river of burning rock. My grandmother was …” Her lips twisted as she struggled not to sob out loud. “She was gone, engulfed utterly in a blast of light. Later, a wind flattened our camp. Our servants were killed, smothered in sand. There came … a creature that dug out of the sands.” She covered her eyes with a hand. “A huge lion, but it had wings, and the face of a woman. It was going to kill me. Wolfhere came, and we escaped.”

“The ancient messengers of God.” A fire of excitement burned in Antonia’s heart. The rush of heady discovery made her giddy. “The oldest stories come to life! Is this true, that you have seen such things? One of the lion queens, the holy messengers of God?”

“I saw them.”

“What did Wolfhere do that allowed you to escape their just wrath?”

Elene grimaced and wiped her cheeks as she calmed herself. “Ask him. I fainted from loss of blood.”

“Can you mean they struck, and yet you survived?”

“Do you not believe me?”

Elene pulled her tunic up to display a length of bare thigh, supple and comely. Berthold flushed bright red and looked away, but Antonia saw the whitened scars from three cruel cuts that had torn the flesh and healed cleanly. A cat might leave such a mark, if it were very, very large.

“Very well,” said Antonia. “I believe you, Lady Elene. You will remain here in the custody of Queen Adelheid. Do not forget the galla.”

She left them, but it was difficult to concentrate on the discrete rungs of the ladder with her thoughts in a tumult. What power did Wolfhere have? He seemed the least powerful of Anne’s cabal, the one who wandered in the world to give reports back to the others because it was the only thing he could do. Yet he and Antonia were apparently the only ones who had survived out of Anne’s cabal. There might be others of Anne’s schola who had received some training in the arts of sorcery, but it was likely they had perished in Darre or cowered in fear in some hiding place. Without a strong leader, they were no more than boats set adrift without oars or rudder.

On the lower floor, Heribert still stood by the window. By all appearances he hadn’t moved at all since she had gone upstairs. His glance touched her, then flicked away.

His disinterest infuriated her. She struck with the only weapon she had. “If Prince Sanglant loved you, he would not have abandoned you.”