Part 23 (1/2)

Lifting her mirror, she began the prayer to waken the stones: ”Heed me, that which opens in the east. Heed me, that which opens in the west.”

Alain did not tremble or run, as many would have, faced with sorcery such as she wove now out of starlight and stone. The hill woke beneath her. The awareness of the ancient queens gripped her heart, as though their hands reached through stone and earth and death itself to take hold of their living heir, to seize her for their own purposes.

Starlight caught in the stones and she wove them into a gateway of light. She scarcely heard Dorren's murmured ”fare you well” before he swiftly left her side, stepped into the gate-and vanished from her sight.

Alain took two steps forward to follow him. Adica pulled him back.” No. Do not follow him.” He moved no farther, yet his expression as he stared into the gateway of light had a blankness in it, as though his thoughts, his soul, his heart had left to cross into unknown country, where she could never follow. Unbidden, unexpectedly, her voice broke.” I would not have you leave me, Alain.”

The light faded, the gateway splintered and fell apart, and all at once she began to weep.

One of the dogs whined. Its jaws closed, gently but firmly, on her hand, drawing no blood but tugging firmly. Alain took her mirror out of her hands and looped it at her belt. He scolded the dog softly, and it released her, but Alain clasped her hand instead.

”Come,” he said, gently but firmly.” I give to the not-breathing ones. To the-the queens.” He struggled to recall the words Dorren had taught him.” To the queens I give an offering.”

To the queens. They still resided in her. The echo of their presence throbbed in tune to the beating of her heart. The queens demanded an offering only from those who begged for their help. Yet once that bargain was struck, no matter how bitterly the price weighed on the one who had braved holy ground to pet.i.tion them, it had to be fulfilled. Even she, especially she, could not escape promises made to the holy dead.

Like a stick thrown in a river, she went where the current pulled her. Alain led her down the eastern slope of the tumulus to the stone lintel that marked the sacred entrance to the queens' grave, the holy place for which the village was named. There lay the threshold of the pa.s.sageway that led into the secret womb where the ancient queens rested. Clouds crept up over the heavens, veiling stars one by one.

Alain groped for and found a torch. She struck flint and lit it. The torch bled smoke onto the corbeled ceiling, revealing the symbols of power carved into the stones: s.h.i.+ps drawing the sun down to the underworld, the spiral path leading the dead to the Other Side, the hands of the Holy Ones who had gone before, reaching for the four staffs of knowledge. Crouching at first, they were able to straighten up as the ceiling sloped upward, so that they walked upright into the low chamber where the queens rested in three stone tombs, each in her own niche.

The tombs bore carvings representative of each of the queens. The tomb of Arrow Bright, lying to the west, was carved with two sphinxes: the lion women of the desert from whom she had learned the secret ways of the Huntress. In the southern niche, Golden .

Sow's tomb gleamed with gold melted from phoenix feathers and beaten into the shape of a sacred sow, the spirit guide of the queen whose magic had made all the women of her tribe fertile and their children healthy. Last, in the niche that faced north, lay Toothless' cairn, more primitive than the others, for she had reigned in the days when the magic of metalworking was not known among humankind.

Here, deep in the womb of stone and earth, not even the wind could be heard.

She stepped forward to offer a prayer, but Alain pressed her back and stepped forward in her place. He stood straight and proud, bright and fearless, as he spoke words in his own language, which she could not understand.

What was he telling them? She knew they were listening, because the dead are always listening.

The torch blew out, leaving her caught in their vast silence. She couldn't even feel Alain's comforting presence nor hear the panting of the dogs.

The vision hit like a blast of light, searing her eyes.

Alain, dressed in clothing unlike any garb she has seen before, stands beside a stone tomb so remarkably carved into the shape of a supine man that she believes that in a moment the stone will come to life and the man will sit up. Stone dogs lie with him, one at his head and one at his feet. Alain weeps silently, tears streaming down his face. A company of women enters the house behind him, only it is no house but a high hall of cunning and astounding design, lofting impossibly toward the sky. Alain turns to the one who walks foremost among them, a queen so thin and wasted that she is ugly; truly, the Fat One gave none of her blessing here. In the heart of this queen lies thwarted spring, knotted coils twisted and bent around a withered spirit stained with fear. But Alain loves her. The young queen offers him nothing, and yet he loves her anyway.

Adica weeps, bitterly, and her tears wash the vision away until she floats on the vast waters. Foam licks around her as she is caught in the wake of an animal as sleek as a dragon and as swift as a serpent, driving through the sea. At first she thinks it is a living creature, lean and long, but then she sees it is a s.h.i.+p. It is utterly unlike the low-bellied, hide-built curraghs in which the coastal tribes scour the sh.o.r.eline for fish and fowl. A dragon's head carved out of wood adorns its stem. A creature like a man yet not one of humankind stands at the stem, searching as mist closes in around him. What manner of creature is he? What is he looking for?

But she knows as soon as she wonders, for within the vision she can see into the pumping ma.s.s of flesh veined with stone that serves him as a heart. He, too, is looking for Alain.

Mist sweeps in like a wave, blinding her. The tendrils that coil around her b.u.m as brightly as if they are formed out of particles of fire. She sees into them and beyond them.

There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. Yet one among them sinks, weighted with mortality. This one falls, blazing, into a threshold composed of tvisting blue fire, the pa.s.sageway between worlds. Through the gate this falling woman sees onto the middle world, the world known to humankind: there in the middle world, a huge tumulus ringed by half-ruined ramparts rests in silence. Dead warriors lie scattered along the rampart walls and curves. A killing wind has blown them every which way. Like leaves the dead lie tumbled up against a ring of fallen stones, some shattered, some cracked in half, that stands in ruins at the height of the hill.

Adica prays for the protection of the Fat One and the courage of the Queen of the Wild, though no words pa.s.s her lips-or if they do, she cannot hear them. She knows this hill and these ramparts, now worn away, crumbling under the hand of an immeasurable force she cannot name. She recognizes the ring of fallen stones, covered by lichen and drowned by age. It is Queens' Grave, but it is not the Queens' Grave she knows, with freshly dug ramparts ringing the queens' hill and a stone loom newly set in place on the summit in the time of her own parents.

It is Queens'Grave garbed as the Toothless One, the hag of old age. Its youth and maturity have long since been worn away by the bite of the seasons and the winds and the cold rain. It is like glimpsing herself as an aged woman, old and ruined and forgotten.

Yet one stone still stands within the stone loom. Clothed in blue-white fire, it shelters a dying warrior. Clothed in metal rings, slumped against the burning stone, he waits for death attended by tvo spirits clothed in the forms of dogs. The falling woman cloaked with blazing wings of aetherial fire whirls past Adica's sight. She reaches for the dying warrior, and as she grasps him and pulls him after her, Adica recognizes Alain. But the blazing woman's grip tears -away, off his shoulders, and he is lost, torn off the path that leads to the land of the dead so that he walks neither in the world where he lived or on the path that should take him to the Other Side. He is lost, with his spirit guides crowded at his feet, for the s.p.a.ce of a breath and a heartbeat, until the Holy One's magic, the binding power known to the Horse people, nets him and drags him in. He lands, bleeding, dying, and lost, on the great womb of the queens.

She gasped into awareness at the same moment his hand found her shoulder and closed there. He said her name and dropped down onto his knees behind her, his face wet against her neck.

”Alain,” she whispered. She turned to face him, together on their knees, and he clung to her, or she to him; it was hard to tell and perhaps they clung to each other, flotsam washed in a vast wave off the sea.

It seemed to her then that they knelt not on stone but on a bed of gra.s.s, under the stars on a night made for mysteries. Trees surrounded them. Nearby a waterfall spilled softly onto moss-covered rocks. How they had come to this place she did not know, only that the wind breathed into her ears with certain subtle and alluring whispers. He held her tightly, and as she s.h.i.+fted, moving her arms on his back, his hands found other places to wander as well. He murmured under his breath, but though his words remained a mystery to her, the language of the body needed no words to convey its message.

He spoke in other, wordless ways: I ought not, but I want to. I am unsure, disquieted, yet my desire is strong.

This was the offering. Yet still he hesitated.

She had not become Hallowed One because she thought sluggishly. She groped for and found the rope that bound his linen tunic tight at his waist, and when he kissed her, she unbound this crude belt so that the linen fell askew. She slipped her fingers down through his, twining their hands together, and with her free hand bound the rope around their clasped hands, once, twice, and a third time. She knew the words well enough: With this binding, we will holdfast together.

May the Fat One bless our union.

May the Green Man bring us happiness and all good things.

May the Queen of the Wild reveal what it means to walk together.

Like coals stored within a hollow log, he burned hot and shy. But in the end, the queens had their way. No doubt in their silent graves they still dreamed of that congress which is as sweet as the meadow flowers. She felt them inhabiting her body just as she knew their power blazed in her for this while, caught in an unnatural enchantment of their devising. Truly, in this place, what man could resist her?

Not he.

PART THREE.

THE VALE OF ICE.

WINTER laid in its usual store of bitter weather. For three days a viciously cold wind blew down from the north to turn the sh.o.r.es and shallows of the Veser River to ice. Every puddle that graced the streets of Gent had frozen through, and in some ways, Anna reflected, that was a good thing. It meant the stink froze, rainwater, sludge, and sewage in crackling sheets that little Helen liked to stomp on so she could hear them snap and splinter. At times like this Anna remembered the months she had hidden in the tanneries with her brother Matthias: the city had been cleaner when the Eika inhabited it, but perhaps that was only because it had been mostly deserted then.

Not anymore. Even in the dead of winter folk walked the frozen avenue alongside the freshly whitewashed wall marking the mayor's palace. Walled compounds faced the avenue on the other side. Well-to-do artisans and merchant families lived and worked in these compounds. A peddler trundled his cart up to one of the gates and called out, hoping for admittance. A servant boy emerged and, after looking the peddler over and examining the condition of his heavy winter tunic and cloth boots stuffed with straw, let him inside. At times, these signs of prosperity still amazed her. It had been less than two years since refugees and newcomers had flooded back to Gent after the Eika defeat.

Anna had learned to amuse herself with such thoughts when she took Helen along on errands because inevitably she did a great deal of waiting. With her arms full of wool cloth, she couldn't just grab hold of Helen's arm and drag her along. The little girl didn't understand any need for haste, nor did she seem to feel the cold even as Anna's fingers grew numb, through her wool gloves. Helen warbled like a bird, phrases that leaped up and slid down with lovely precision, as she stamped on a particularly fine landscape of thin puddles, creamy with frozen sh.e.l.ls that made a satis-fyingly sharp crack when they shattered.

”Here, now, little one, this is no weather for a child to be playing outside.” The voice came from behind them. Helen continued her singing and stomping without pause.

Anna turned to see Prior Humilicus walking down the street with several attendants. The cathedral tower loomed behind him, marking the town square that lay just past the northwest corner of the mayor's palace. The prior of the new monastery dedicated to St. Perpetua was a familiar sight in town these days, especially in the months since the abbot, Prince Ekkehard, had ridden off with Lord Wichman to fight in the east. Humilicus visited the biscop every day no matter the weather.

”Ah,” he said, seeing Anna's face and her burden.” You're the weaver's niece.” Like all n.o.ble folk, he had the habit of touching without asking. He stripped off his sheepskin mittens and fingered a bolt of cloth admiringly.” Very fine, indeed. A rich scarlet. Did Mistress Suzanne dye this wool herself?”

Anna nodded. Helen had come to the last of the string of frozen puddles and was crus.h.i.+ng the grainy ice that made a lacework of its miniature sh.o.r.eline.

The prior's lean face tightened and his lips pressed together.” You're the mute one, are you not? G.o.d have surely afflicted your family twice over.” Anna didn't like the way he examined Helen. From a filthy, abandoned, half-starved toddler, she had grown into an angelically pretty little girl, some four or six years of age.” She has a remarkably true voice,” he mused.” I wonder if she can be trained to sing hymns.”

His gaze s.h.i.+fted past Helen. The long wall of the mayor's palace had once been painted with vivid scenes of the death and life of the blessed Daisan but had been painted over for the third time three days ago. Humilicus picked up a rose encrusted in h.o.a.rfrost, examining the wilted flower with the kind of scrutiny most folk reserved for maggots crawling on rotten meat.” I thought all these leavings were picked up last week.”

”They were, Prior,” said the eldest of the monks, whose thin nose was blue with cold. A gust of wind shook the banners set atop the palace wall and set Anna's teeth chattering.” The biscop's clerics go around every week collecting such offerings. They brought in two wreaths, one carving, and four candles yesterday.”

Helen darted forward to pluck the rose out of Prior Humilicus' fingers, then scurried away to hide behind Anna.

”Here, now!” scolded the thin-nosed man.