The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

A rumble swelled, then faded, a shiver through the earth like a great beast turning over in its sleep.

The crowd in the anteroom fell silent. Outside, a woman laughed, her high voice ringing over the sudden hush.

“Just a little one,” whispered Gerwita, her voice more like the squeak of a mouse. She let go of Ruoda’s hand.

Blood-red curtains shielded an inner chamber from the anteroom. A eunuch, resplendent in jade-green robes, appeared and held a curtain aside for them to pass. It was dim and stuffy within the inner chamber, which was lit by four slits cut into the tent’s roof and by two lamps formed in the shape of lamias—sinuous creatures with the heads and torsos of beautiful women and the hindquarters of snakes. A couch sat in the place of honor, raised on a low circular dais constructed out of wooden planks painted the same blood-red shade as the heavy curtains. Two young men, stripped down to loincloths, worked fans on either side of the woman reclining there at her leisure. She eyed the new arrivals as though they were toads got in where they did not belong. She had a dark cast of skin and black hair liberally streaked with gray, and she was fat, with a face that would have been beautiful except for the smallness of her eyes and the single hair growing from her chin. A blanket covered her body from her midsection down, and Hanna began to labor under an obsessive fancy that the noblewoman might actually herself be a lamia, more snake than woman.

e time the path bottomed out onto level ground, she was limping and could no longer see anything except the high citadel walls in the distance, which did indeed resemble a crown set down among the trees. Yet down here in the valley the wind had a cool kiss, and there was shade, and ripe figs and impossibly succulent oranges to be plucked from trees growing right beside the rutted road. They crossed two streams, and the sergeant was gracious enough to allow them to pour water onto their hot faces and dusty hands, even over their hair and necks, before he ordered them onward.

They crossed a noble old bridge with seven spans, water sparkling and shimmering below, and passed under the archway of the ring wall. A lion, like that sacred to St. Mark, capped the lintel, although it had no face.

Once inside this wall they walked on a paved road with wheel ruts worn into the stone at just the wrong width for their wagons. Fields surrounded them, most overgrown and all marked out by low stone walls. There were more orchards and one stand of wheat nearing harvest. She heard ahead of them the shouts and halloos of a host of men, and the braying, barking, caterwauling, and neighing of a mob of animals. Where the road turned a corner around an unexpected outcrop of rock, they came into sight of an old palace of stone, still mostly standing, where three grand tents sprawled with banners waving and folk here and there on errands or just loitering. Men forged forward to gawk at them as their party lumbered in.

“Isn’t that the two-headed eagle of Ungria?” Hanna asked, but before she got her bearings or an answer two handsomely robed men with beardless cheeks and shrewd expressions rushed out from the central tent to meet them.

They spoke to Sergeant Bysantius in Arethousan, while Rosvita crept forward to stand beside Mother Obligatia and whisper a translation, although Hanna found that she could pick up much of what they said herself.

“They know we are coming and ask if we are the prisoners whom the king and his wife have asked for. The lady is pleased. We are to be escorted in at once, even without pausing to be washed.”

Soldiers trotted forward to hoist the stretcher out of the wagon. Sergeant Bysantius herded the gaggle of clerics forward. Heriburg clutched the leather sack containing the books, but Jerome left their chest behind. It contained nothing so valuable that it couldn’t be abandoned. Except for the books, they possessed nothing of value except the clothes on their backs—and. their own persons.

Who would ransom them? Who would care? Aurea crept up beside Hanna as they were pressed into the anteroom of the central tent, and clutched her hand. Her palms were sweaty, her face was pale, but she kept her chin up.

“Take heart,” said Rosvita softly to the girls. She exchanged a look with Fortunatus. He nodded, solemn. Even Petra had, for a mercy, gone silent, eyes half shut as though she were sleepwalking.

The anteroom was crowded with courtiers dressed in the Arethousan style but also in the stoles and cloaks of Ungrians. There were a lot of Ungrians. It seemed a face or three looked vaguely familiar to Hanna, but she wasn’t sure how that could be. She caught sight of a man short but powerfully broad with the wide features and deep eyes common to the Quman, enough like Bulkezu that she actually had a jolt of recognition, a thrill of terror, that shook her down to her feet, until she realized a moment later that the ground was shaking, not her.

A rumble swelled, then faded, a shiver through the earth like a great beast turning over in its sleep.

The crowd in the anteroom fell silent. Outside, a woman laughed, her high voice ringing over the sudden hush.

“Just a little one,” whispered Gerwita, her voice more like the squeak of a mouse. She let go of Ruoda’s hand.

Blood-red curtains shielded an inner chamber from the anteroom. A eunuch, resplendent in jade-green robes, appeared and held a curtain aside for them to pass. It was dim and stuffy within the inner chamber, which was lit by four slits cut into the tent’s roof and by two lamps formed in the shape of lamias—sinuous creatures with the heads and torsos of beautiful women and the hindquarters of snakes. A couch sat in the place of honor, raised on a low circular dais constructed out of wooden planks painted the same blood-red shade as the heavy curtains. Two young men, stripped down to loincloths, worked fans on either side of the woman reclining there at her leisure. She eyed the new arrivals as though they were toads got in where they did not belong. She had a dark cast of skin and black hair liberally streaked with gray, and she was fat, with a face that would have been beautiful except for the smallness of her eyes and the single hair growing from her chin. A blanket covered her body from her midsection down, and Hanna began to labor under an obsessive fancy that the noblewoman might actually herself be a lamia, more snake than woman.

A dark-haired, homely boy of about ten years of age sat at the base of her couch, holding a gold circlet in his hands and trying not to fidget. A general outfitted in gleaming armor stood behind her, striking because he had one eye scarred shut from an old wound while the other was a vivid cornflower blue, startling in contrast to his coarse black hair and dark complexion. He stood between the two slaves, so straight at attention, hands so still, that he might have been a statue. But he blinked, once, as he caught sight of Hanna’s white-blonde hair, and then a man laughed, such a loud, pleasant, hearty sound that Hanna’s attention leaped sideways to the king and queen seated on splendidly carved chairs to the right of the Arethousan lady on her dais.

Nothing could have shocked her more—except the appearance of a lamia slithering in across the soft rugs.

The king and queen sat on a dais of their own, rectangular and exactly as high as that on which the Arethousan noblewoman presided. Two banners were unfurled behind their chairs—the doubleheaded eagle of Ungria, and the red banner adorned with eagle, dragon, and lion stitched in gold belonging to the regnant, or heir, of Wendar. Behind the queen stood three grim-faced Quman women, one young, one mature, and one very old: They wore towerlike headdresses covered in gold, and when Hanna looked at them they made signs as one might against the evil eye.

The king laughed again. He was a big, powerful man not quite old but not at all young. “It’s as if a breath of snow has come in. I’ve never seen hair so white!” He turned to his queen, taking her hand, but her expression was as sour as milk left too long in the sun.

“That’s just what your brother used to say,” Princess Sapientia said. “She is my father’s Eagle, but I don’t trust her. Nor should you.”

Hanna gaped, but she knew better than to defend herself.

“These folk are known to you, King Geza?” asked the Arethousan lady. Behind her, the one-eyed general was smiling at a jest known only to himself.

“They are known to me!” said Sapientia. “That woman is Sister Rosvita, one of Henry’s intimate counselors. I have never heard an ill word spoken of her, although it’s true some are jealous that the king honors her so highly when her lineage is not in truth so high at all.”

“Will she know the usurper’s mind?” asked the lady.

“She might.”

They spoke Arethousan slowly enough that Hanna could follow its cadences; Geza and Sapientia were not fluent, and the noblewoman evidently disdained to use a translator.

“Sister Rosvita, step forward,” said the lady.