The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)
The beardless man sneered. Lady Eudokia looked offended and had actually to drink wine before she could bring herself to express her disgust. “You have forgotten the proper rites and observances! Can it be that an educated churchwoman of the apostate church no longer recalls St. Nikephoras, who was patriarch and defender of the True Church?”
Geza called forward a steward from his entourage who, with great reluctance, admitted to knowing and keeping track of the calendar of the apostate Dariyans. “Begging your pardon, Exalted Lady,” the man said to Eudokia. “This is the day celebrated by the false shepherd in Darre as a feast day of one of her ancestors, called Mary Jehanna, who also donned the skopal robes in defiance of the rightful patriarch. Rebels and heretics, all!”
“That means it is already the equinox,” exclaimed Rosvita. “We were six months or more within the crown!” Her color changed. She swayed, and Ruoda and Gerwita steadied her. “Nay, not six months at all!”
She was so stunned that she was talking to herself out loud, the workings of her mind laid bare for all to see. The secret method of their arrival in Dalmiaka, too, was betrayed, but she was profoundly shocked. “The Council of Addai took place in the year 499, and if the Arethousan church has counted two hundred and thirty-six years … then it is not the year 734 but rather 735. We wandered within the crown for fully eighteen months! How it can be so much time slipped away from us?”
“What does she mean?” murmured Geza, face tightening with suspicion.
Lady Eudokia leaned forward, her hand greedily gripping the blanket that covered her legs. “The crowns! How comes it that you have gained this ancient knowledge long forbidden to those in the True Church?”
Rosvita glanced at the girls. The flush that had reddened her face began to fade. “I pray you, Sisters. I can stand. It was a trifling blow.”
Hanna hardly knew whether to breathe. They all stared at each other, trying to comprehend what Rosvita had just said. Was it true they had lost eighteen months in one night? Was this the cost inflicted by the crowns for those who thought to spare themselves the effort of travel? Fortunatus’ lean face had gone gray with fear, and the others muttered prayers under their breath or gazed in astonishment at Rosvita. Mother Obligatia had closed her eyes, although her lips moved. Only Petra appeared unmoved; she swayed back and forth, eyes still half shut, singing to herself under her breath.
Rosvita drew in a shaky breath and clasped her hands before her in an attitude something like prayer. “Exalted Lady, I have learned many things in my time. What is it you want of me? If you wish to learn what I know, then I must get something in return.”
“Your life?” Rosvita shrugged.
“The lives of your companions?”
“That I will bargain for, it’s true, yet they are free to choose their own course of action. If the intelligence I know is true, then it matters little what coercion you choose to inflict on me, or on them. ‘The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood.’ A storm is coming—”
“So Sanglant claimed!” retorted Sapientia.
“So he did,” said Geza. “He may have been obsessed, but he is no fool. We would be fools to discount what he said.”
“It was a ruse! A lie to catch us off guard! He meant to abandon me in the wilderness all along. I would have died if it weren’t for the Pechanek mothers! I never believed his story of a cataclysm!”
“I do,” said Lady Eudokia in a voice that commanded silence. “Our scholars have studied the ancient histories. We in Arethousa escaped the full fury of the Bwr invasion that destroyed much of Dariya five hundred years ago, but we remember it. We recall bitterly the anger of the Horse people; who swore to avenge themselves on the descendants of the Lost Ones because in ancient days the Lost Ones ripped the Earth itself asunder in their war against humankind.”
Eudokia spoke with as much passion as if the event had occurred last month, but Hanna could not fix her mind around such gulfs of time, years beyond counting. In Heart’s Rest a woman was considered rich in kinship who remembered the name of her grandmother’s grandmother.
“Now this Prince Sanglant seeks an alliance with the Horse people. How can we know whether he seeks to aid humankind, or his mother’s kinfolk, the Lost Ones? How can we trust any creature who is not fully human, as we are? Who does not worship God as we do?”
The crowd remained silent, not even a whisper, but Rosvita was not cowed by the lady’s zeal. “What do you want of me, Exalted Lady? Your Highness? Your Majesty? We are nothing, we fourteen wanderers. We matter not.”
“You fled my father,” said Sapientia. “That means you are guilty of some crime. You are guilty of sorcery! You admit it yourself!”
“No need, Cousin,” said Lady Eudokia to Sapientia. “It matters not what crime she was accused of back in Dariya. We march to Dalmiaka with or without her and her companions.”
“I think it wisest to keep them close by,” said Geza thoughtfully, with a respectful nod toward Rosvita.
“If it is possible her knowledge can aid us, then I think we must march with her and hold her in reserve,” agreed Eudokia.
“When our victory is achieved?” Sapientia asked. “What, then?”
“Do not disturb yourself on that account, my dearest,” said Geza, whose gaze never flicked by the least amount toward Eudokia, although any idiot could see that he and the Arethousan lady had cozened Sapientia between them. “You will be restored to your rightful place. His Exalted Lordship will be placed on the throne that belongs to him.”
“That’s me!” cried the boy with a big grin.
“All will be well,” finished the Ungrian.
“And you, King Geza?” asked Rosvita boldly. “What do you gain from these ventures?”
He did not smile, but he wasn’t angry either. He had Bayan’s ability to be amused, but his was a character much deeper and murkier than Bayan’s had ever been. “Certain territories along the Anubar River, which has for many years marked the disputed border between Arethousa and Ungria. And justice for my wife, who sought my aid after being abandoned by her brother in the wilderness.”
Sapientia smiled brilliantly at him; her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. He patted her hand, but no wise differently, Hanna thought, than he would have patted the head of one of his favorite dogs. Bayan had treated Sapientia with more respect.