Night was not a good time to work through such a complicated tangle of thoughts. And she was tired again; exhaustion always came on suddenly. But she had left a lantern burning and a book out, so she returned to the tower. All was peaceful there, just as she had left it, the lantern burning quietly and the book resting open on the table, a moment suspended in time that roped her thoughts back to where they had been. Certainly she couldn’t throw a rock with enough force to test the theory of the Earth’s rotation. Compared to the heavens, the Earth was tiny, but that didn’t mean that to a human walking its surface it could be quickly traversed. She had seen ships come up over the horizon, sails and masts emerging first; that suggested not only a spherical Earth but one of immense size compared to a single human stride. It seemed to her that she need only find a place where the summer solstice sun at noon cast no shadow when measured against a stick stuck vertically in the ground as a marker. Then she could walk north along that same longitude, measuring her path, and on the next summer solstice sun she need only measure the shadow cast by another vertical marker at a different location. If there was again no shadow, then the Earth wasn’t spherical; but if there was, then she ought to be able to calculate the circumference of the Earth by multiplying the degree of the angle with the distance in leagues between the two points. In The Book of Secrets Da had written of a town far to the south, in sun-raked Gyptos, where St. Peter the Geometer had dug a well so exactly situated that on the summer solstice the Sun’s rays touched its bottom. If she walked north from that point…
“Your thoughts are far from here.”
She jumped and gasped aloud, almost comically, and was relieved to see Sister Meriam standing just outside the threshold, walking stick in her right hand. Liath helped her over the threshold.
“I saw a light,” said Meriam. “You have not woken Brother Severus?”
Liath looked toward the ladder that led to a trapdoor set into the ceiling. “I have been quiet.”
“That is well,” replied Meriam. She placed a gnarled hand on Liath’s belly without asking permission, but she had the authority of the ancient: Liath could not really be offended by her blunt speaking or intrusive manner. “You are growing as you should be. Where is the prince?”
“He’s sleeping.”
“So many knots.”
“What do you mean?”
Meriam removed her hand. Age had sucked her dry; she was so small that Liath felt like a giant beside her. “I mean what I say: so many knots in the threads that bind the life of humans one to the next.”
“Where do you come from?” asked Liath suddenly. “How did you get here?”
“I come from the east,” said Meriam wryly, indicating her dark skin.
“I know that!” Liath laughed, then caught herself and glanced up, guiltily, knowing that Severus would not take kindly to being woken. He didn’t like looking at her; her pregnancy disgusted him. But his disgust only made her wonder why a man with so much knowledge would even be bothered by such a common thing. What did it matter to him? “I mean,” said Liath, “where in the east? How did you get here?”
“I came as a sacrifice.”
“A sacrifice!”
“An offering.” She had an accent blurred by time and age, a hint of exotic spices and brutal sun. “I was sent as a gift by the khsh?yathiya to the king of the Wendish people, but the king had no use for me, so he gave me to one of his dukes. When I flowered I was brought to his bed. Some time after that, I gave birth to a son.”
“Are you saying,” said Liath slowly, astounded, “that you are the mother of Conrad the Black, duke of Wayland?”
“So I am.”
It seemed impossible to Liath that this tiny woman could have given birth at all, let alone to as robust a person as Duke Conrad. “But you have estates to administer. A child to watch over. Grandchildren! Why are you here?”
Meriam was too old to take offense at impertinent questions. “That I bore one living child and three dead ones did not change the path laid out for me. It only delayed it. Once my son came of age and gained his dukedom and a wife, then I had the freedom to retire. He no longer needed watching over.”
Liath choked back a snort of laughter.
“You have met him?” Meriam asked without smiling, but with the simple pride of a mother who knows the worth of her child.
Liath considered what to say, and chose caution. “He is hard to forget.”
“You are not at all like him.” Meriam brushed dry fingers over Liath’s arm. Despite her age, her hands bore no calluses; she had lived a noblewoman’s life from infancy to this day, never humbling herself with the day-to-day labor of living. Liath’s own hands bore calluses, the legacy of her life with Da, and Meriam’s light touch explored these briefly as well, as if Liath’s skin revealed her entire history, all from the brush of a finger. “You are not of Jinna blood. Who are your father’s kin? From whence comes this complexion?”
“All I know of my father’s kin is that he has a cousin who is lady of Bodfeld. But might it not come from my mother’s kin?”
Meriam looked at her strangely. “Has Anne not spoken to you of this?”
“Of what?”
“Then it is not my place to do so.”
When Meriam spoke with that tone of voice, Liath knew that it was useless to try to influence her to say more. Not even Brother Severus in all his arrogance could bully her. In the intimacy of a private meeting in the middle of a peaceful night, Liath couldn’t help but ask one more question. “You said that your path was laid out for you, but delayed. But you never really answered my question. Why are you here, Sister Meriam?”
Wind creaked the door. Shadows curled along the beams, a servant settling down to listen, or to sleep—if they ever slept. In the dim light it was easy to forget how old and frail Meriam was; her voice still had the strength of youth. “I was taken from the temple of Astareos, He who is Fire Incarnate, where I was to have been an acolyte in His service, a priestess of the Holy Fire. I had already learned enough then to know my task in life, for certain priestesses there had the gift of prophecy. That my fate led me elsewhere for a time is only another knot in the tangle of life.”