“This is churendo,” she repeated, somewhat impatiently. “The palace of coils. Here meet the three worlds, the world above, the world between, and the world below.”
“Ai!” he whispered fearfully. “What lies below us? Is it the Abyss?”
“I know not this ‘abyss’ you speak of,” she answers. “Below us lie the waters of chaos. Above us lies the sea above, which you call in your tongue, ‘heaven.’ That is where our ship sails, and we must bring it home to its harbor. But all is not yet ready for our return, and yet we cannot delay, because in the world between the days pass regardless. They do not wait for us. Ai, Sharatanga protect me! I cannot find him looking through the world of earth, but in the palace of coils, nothing is concealed to our sight. Where has he gone?”
She turned to the north and lifted her spear, shaking it four times. She spoke first in her own language and then, as if respecting his presence, in Wendish. “Jade Skirt, here is my blood.” She drew a fine needle out of her hair and carefully pierced her tongue. Blood dripped onto the marble and slid away into the fist-shaped depression. “Ask your sister to hear my words.” She turned to the east and lifted the spear, shaking it three times. “Flower Skirt, here is my blood.” It dropped, still, from her tongue, beads of it scattering, sliding, into the bowl carved out of the marble paving. “Ask your sister to hear my words.” She turned to the south and lifted the spear, shaking it two times. “Serpent Skirt, here is my blood. Ask your sister to hear my words.” She turned to the west and lifted the spear, shook it once. “Lightning Skirt, here is my blood. Ask your sister to hear my words.”
Last, she looked heavenward, raising the spear without shaking it, so that the bells only rustled but didn’t ring. “Kerawaperi, here is my blood. Hear my words. Show me what is concealed to my eye.” She squatted over the fist-shaped pit. She did something under her skirt with the needle; blood dripped down, swirling and melding in the small depression.
Still squatting, she untied the five-fingered pouch and took out an acorn. She twisted the tiny cap free and tipped the acorn over. A black, viscous liquid like tar oozed from it, elongated, then fell, sizzling when it hit her blood.
“The waters of chaos,” she said. “Take these as an offering.”
She cast away the acorn and searched in the bulgy teats of the pouch, brought out another. This one, uncapped, produced a liquid more gold than water, so light it seemed to drift upward slightly on the air before it floated down to meld with the others in the depression. “Five drops from the sea above. Take these as an offering.”
She clucked her tongue once, twice, and twice again quickly, and beckoned to Zacharias. Fear gripped his belly. But he crawled forward. Now she wanted him. This was to be the sacrifice, his own heart puddling beneath her feet.
“It is better from the male part,” she said, “but you have none left. Stick out your tongue.” She held the needle lightly in her hand.
Ai, it hurt. He squeezed shut his eyes and prayed to the Hanged One for courage. When his blood flowed and she began to speak, he opened his eyes to look.
“Take this, the blood of a creature who will live and die on the world between. Let the three worlds be joined here.” Finally, she stood, uncapping one of the leather bottles. He gasped. Thirst had congealed his throat. Now, suddenly, his heart pounded as fiercely as with any desire he had ever felt for her body. He could smell the water, sweet clear, and strong.
She poured all of it into the fist-shaped depression, and as it spread and spread, backed up while she stayed with her feet in the water. She plucked the feathers, one as gold as the sun, one as green as the spring earth, one as black as the pit, and let them fall.
When they struck the water, a steam rose from it, a mist that eddied, then cleared. Within the mist he saw a vision so lifelike that he felt he ought to be able to reach out and touch the woman within.
A young woman with skin the color of burned cream reads by candlelight, lips moving but making no sound. Her right hand turns the pages, one by one. Her left hand rests on her hugely pregnant belly.
He heard a hiss, sharp, between clenched teeth; a moment later he recognized it as Kansi-a-lari’s breath, her voice. “He is nearby. I can feel him.”
A man moves into the room cautiously. He is tall, broad-shouldered, graceful in the way of big men who are at ease in their bodies. There is a glint in his eyes that might be fury—or laughter. This man he has seen twice before in visions.
His companion breathed out a Salian word, sharply, on an exhalation: “Sanglant!” She stamped her foot three times, and shook the spear threateningly toward the sky with a high cry like that of a hawk.
The vision vanished together with the water and tinctures she had poured out on the marble floor. Wind cut the mist into tatters and the sun rose on a bright spring morning full of promise. They stood alone on an oval plaza; the sea huffed and murmured below. The Aoi woman had a grim, satisfied smile on her face. She handed him the other leather bottle.
“Drink now. After that, we will eat what is left of our stores. We will rest here for a day, and begin our descent tomorrow at dawn.”
He would have gulped it all down, but he had too much respect for his good companion, the horse, so he poured water into his palm and let it snuffle it up. Only then did he sip himself, three swallows, then three more, sparingly.
When he had his voice back, he turned to her. “Who was the young woman? She was beautiful.”
“I don’t know.” She sat at her ease by the shallow pit, eating the last of the dried goat’s meat.
“Who was the man?”
She shredded the tough meat to tatters and ate each string of it, then licked her fingers before she finally replied.
“That is my son.”
2
TALLIA whined and complained, but in fact once any order was given firmly enough, she obeyed it. It was the tack he ought to have taken all along. He understood that now, finally. She certainly outranked him, but birth wasn’t everything; she was weak, just as Lavastine had said. He remembered Duchess Yolande’s hints and intrigues about crowns and thrones. Yet Tallia wasn’t even strong enough to rule herself. How could she be expected to rule a queendom?
It took her a long time to recover because she had come so close to starving herself. For a while she lay ill, often feverish. Certain foods gave her the flux. Others she vomited up. At first she refused food from any hand but his, so he had to feed her minuscule portions six times a day like the invalid she was. But growing up in Bel’s house he had spent time caring for sick children, he knew how to handle them, obstinate one moment and malleable the next. Eventually she became accustomed to eating normally again, and after some weeks she began to gain strength. The Feast of St. Herodia came, and went, the month of Askulavre wept to its chill conclusion, and Duchess Yolande did not arrive.
In the last days of Askulavre, heavy gray clouds covered the sky and for two days it snowed industriously. For weeks they could travel no farther than the river and the little convent dedicated to St. Thierry. It had been established by Lavastine’s grandfather, Charles Lavastine the Elder, the year his mother, Countess Lavrentia, had died giving birth to her second child, Lord Geoffrey’s grandfather, who had also been named Geoffrey.