Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Late, the nobly born went to their resting places while servants like Hanna scrambled for what comfortable pallets they could find. In a hall this large there were plenty of sleeping platforms built in under the eaves, and when Sapientia made no move to call Hanna to attend her to the chamber in which she slept more privately, Hanna found herself a snug place among a crowd of servingwomen. They lay close together, a warm nest of half-naked women covered by furs, and gossiped in the darkness.

“The Ungrians do smell. I told you.”

“Not any more than do the Wendish soldiers. Ai, God, did you see how poor Doda had to dodge that Lord Wichman’s hands all evening? He’s a beast.”

“He’s son of a duchess, so I’m sure he’ll have what he wants.” Nervous giggles followed this pronouncement. A woman shifted. Another sighed.

“Not in the biscop’s palace, friend,” replied a new voice. “Biscop Alberada’s stern but fair, and you’ll find no such wild behavior in this hall. Now I’ll thank you to hush so that I can sleep!”

But they didn’t all hush. Hanna drifted asleep, lulled by their whispering and the strange way they hissed their “p”s and “t”s, just as the folk had in that lonely village east of Machteburg where a Quman scouting party had attacked them. Where she’d seen Ivar again, seen how he’d changed so much from the impulsive, good-natured youth she’d grown up with. He had seen the miracle of the phoenix. Was it actually possible the story was true? Had God worked a miracle of healing and given Ivar and his companions, and Prince Ekkehard, a vision of truth?

She twisted the heavy emerald ring that King Henry had given her. Here, curled up beside the other women, she felt warm and safe in body at least, but her heart remained restless. She knew her duty. First and foremost she was Henry’s servant, his messenger, his Eagle, sworn to his service and to uphold whichever church doctrine he recognized, not to question the authority of those he acknowledged as the rightful leaders of the church. Yet what of her grandmother’s gods? Hadn’t they treated their followers fairly and granted them good harvests, or sometimes turned their faces away to bring bad times? What of the many other people who lived outside the Circle of Light? Were they all damned to fall endlessly in the Abyss because they held to a different faith? How would Brother Breschius, who had survived the wrath of a Kerayit queen, reply to such questions?

She fell away into sleep, and she dreamed.

There comes into the hall as silent as the plague one of the slave men kept by Bayan’s mother. His skin is so black that she can hardly see him in the smothering darkness of the hall, now illuminated only by the glowing coals of two banked hearth fires which are watched over by dozing servant girls. Yet he can see her where she lies half hidden among the other women. He beckons. She dares not refuse such a summons, just as she would never defy the will of the king. She recognizes power when she sees it.

She rises, slips her wool tunic over her shift, and pads barefooted after the slave man. He walks the paneled corridors of the biscop’s palace without a torch, yet manages not to lose his way. The rough plank floors scrape her soles, and once she picks up a splinter and has to pause, wincing, catching a gasp in her throat so that she won’t wake the soldiers who sleep in ranks on either side of the broad corridor.

The slave bends to take her foot in his warm hands while she balances herself on his shoulder, all the while aware of the taut strength of his body and the steady breathing of the sleeping soldiers around them. He probes, grips, and slips the splinter out. She would thank him, but she dares not speak out loud, and probably he does not understand her language anyway. They walk on in a silence that hangs as heavily as fog.

At last he opens a door and leads her into a chamber swathed in silk hangings, so many that she has to push her way through them until she comes free of their soft luxury and finds herself in the center of the room. It is cold here. No fire burns on the empty hearth.

The wasp sting burns in her heart as she faces the veiled figure that is Prince Bayan’s ancient mother. The old woman’s voice rasps with age and, perhaps, exhaustion brought on by weeks of weaving weather magic. “Where are you going?”

Hanna thinks probably she doesn’t mean anything so simple, that no common answer will do: “to the privies,” “west to the king,” “back to my home.”

“I don’t know,” she answers truthfully. Cold bites at her hands, making them ache, and her foot hurts where the splinter pierced her skin.

“No woman can serve two queens, just as no man can serve two masters,” remarks the ancient woman. One of her raddled old handmaidens hurries forward out of the shadows, bearing a tray.

A single ceramic cup, so finely crafted that its lip looks as thin as a leaf, rests on the enameled tray. Steam rises delicately from its mouth. “Drink,” speaks the cricket voice.

The spicy scent stings Hanna’s lips and burns her throat. As she drains the liquid, tilting her head back, she sees a scene engraved onto the bottom of the cup’s bowl: a centaur woman suckling a human baby at her breast.

“In the end,” continues Bayan’s mother, “you will have to choose.”

Cautiously, Hanna lowers the cup. Bayan’s mother sits sedately in a chair, her gnarled and wrinkled hands, age-spotted yet somehow still supple, resting in her lap. The veil conceals her face. The handmaiden waits patiently, like a statue, holding out the tray. Hanna sees no sign of the slave man who escorted her here. They are alone, the three of them, except for a green-and-gold bird perched in a cage that eyes Hanna warily as she sets the empty cup down on the tray. It lifts one foot, replaces it, then lifts the other in a stately if slightly anxious dance, waiting for her answer.

The handmaiden retreats behind the silk curtains, which rustle, sway, and fall silent. The only light in the chamber comes from a lamp. Shadows ride the walls, shifting as though they have caught the movements of unseen spirits.

“I have nothing to choose between,” says Hanna, feeling a little dazed. “I am King Henry’s Eagle.”

“And Sorgatani’s luck.”

The words seem ill-omened. Hanna shudders. “Sorgatani lived years ago. She’s dead.” She chafes her hands nervously, remembering that Brother Breschius lost a hand when the Kerayit princess he loved and served as her slave died all those years ago.

“Souls never die,” chides the old woman. “I had a cousin twice removed who is dead now, it is true. That may be the woman you think you speak of, the one who took the Wendish priest as her pura. But a name is like a veil, to be cast off or put on. It can be used again. You are Sorgatani’s luck, for so is my niece called. In the end, you will have to choose.”

The curtains stir as though in a wind. In those shimmering depths she thinks maybe she can see all the way to the land where the Kerayits roam and live among grass so tall that a man on horseback can’t see over it. Here, in her dreams, she has seen griffins. Here, in a distance made hazy by a morning fog rising up from damp ground, she sees the encampment of the Bwrmen, the dreaded centaur folk. Pale tents shift in the wind, felt walls belling out, and sagging in, as though they are themselves living creatures. She smells the tang of molten metal on the wind. An eagle drifts lazily above the camp, then plummets down, out of sight. A young woman wanders at the edge of that camp, dressed in a gown so golden that it might have been torn and shaped out of sunlight.

Across the distance, Sorgatani speaks, “Come to me, luck. You are in danger.”

Maybe Hanna could step through the silk curtains and find herself in a far land, in the wilderness, in the hazy morning. But she does not move. She speaks.

“I haven’t found your pura yet. I have no handsome man to bring you.”

The sun glints over the mist, riding higher, and its bright light flashes in Hanna’s eyes.