They were, after all, both too tired to watch and too wound up to do more than doze. They huddled in darkness, with no fire, off the road under the canopy of trees. Late at night a wind roared up out of the southeast, rattling branches and brush. Later still they heard voices and the clopping of horses and saw a torch bobbing in time to a man’s swinging walk. Too afraid to move, they held their breaths and prayed that the horses would stay quiet. The party passed by, moving east along the road, away from Autun. The night wind sighed and the forest creaked and muttered around them.

Of Biscop Constance and the others there was no sign.

3

HANNA dreamed.

Liath walks in darkness, her path illuminated by the merest dull red spark glowing from her fingers. The void that surrounds her is a pit of darkness so black that Liath herself can be seen glowing with a faint aura that seems like breath moving around her form. Out in the darkness, eyes gleam, and she calls to them, but they wink out, and no one answers.

She calls, and she listens, and where she hears the scattering of footsteps and sees the shadow of distant movement, she follows, although she does not know where she is going.

“Liath!”

Hanna bolted upright, heart hammering and a hand caught at her own throat. She turned to see Sorgatani weeping on her bed. Hanna sat on the carpets, wrapped in her cloak. Brother Breschius snored softly beside the threshold, his body blocking the entrance.

“What is it?” Hanna untangled the blankets and shuffled on her knees to the bed.

“She is lost,” said Sorgatani into her hands. “I dreamed her.”

“Liath? I saw her, too. Wandering in darkness.”

Sorgatani raised her head to stare at Hanna. The dark line that rimmed her eyes was smudged and runny from the tears. Her shift was twisted around her hips. “You dreamed it, too?” she whispered. Hanna nodded. “Then it is a true dream! What you and I dream, together, is a true dream. Did you see my teacher?”

“Li’at’dano? The centaur shaman? I did not.”

Sorgatani’s shoulders shook as she fought off another convulsion of grief. “Neither did I. I sense in my heart that she is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Dead. Devoured. Gone utterly.”

Hanna choked, finding no words. She pressed her hands into the thick carpet to steady herself. The air lay cold within the chamber. A curl of smoke from the altar fire spun upward and out the smoke hole into the hazy gray sameness of the Other Side, a place Hanna could never walk but which all Kerayit shamans had visited in their spirit trance—or so Breschius had told her. Sorgatani never spoke of it.

“I am cold,” said Sorgatani.

Hanna sat beside her on the bed and held her. Although they sat this way for a long time, and night passed, Sorgatani did not sleep.

In the morning, stepping outside, Hanna covered her eyes against the brightness. The clouds seemed higher and thinner and whiter than before.

“I believe the sun will break through,” said Rosvita, coming up beside her. They watched as horses and wagons were made ready in the courtyard of Goslar. The nuns of St. Valeria mustered under the cold eye of Sister Acella, who had laid a vow of silence on every sister under her command in protest of their removal from the convent. Lions waited patiently in marching order. Sergeant Ingo signaled to Rosvita that his troops were ready to go.

Servants loaded provisions, and the steward handed a cache of medicinal herbs to Sister Diocletia. The wagon holding Mother Obligatia had been repaired and refitted. It now held two pallets stretched lengthwise, one for the old abbess and the other for Captain Thiadbold, who was feverish and weak, sometimes delirious, but still among the living.

Rosvita sighed as the horses were led out of the stables. “In another time, we would send you ahead with the news of our coming. But any traveler alone on the road is not safe.”

“It was never safe for Eagles,” said Hanna.

“Less so now. It is those darts I fear. As you must, Eagle.”

“As I do,” murmured Hanna, looking toward Thiadbold. His eyes were shut. Sister Diocletia had shaved off his red hair to reduce lice and fleas whose presence might pester him to distraction as he healed. If he healed.

“Be patient,” said Rosvita.

“I’m a coward, Sister,” said Hanna. “I fear to be the one who must tell Prince Sanglant this news.”

“Do not fear.” Rosvita’s smile had a hard edge. “I will tell him what has passed on our journey. It is my duty and my right. There is a great deal he must know. I have a good many questions as well.” Like Liath before her, like Hugh of Austra, Rosvita carried The Book of Secrets everywhere she went. She held it now in a leather case slung across her back.

“The steward here says that Mother Scholastica anointed and crowned him, but now regrets that she acted.”

Tags: Kate Elliott Crown of Stars Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net