Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (60 page)

He nodded. " 'The ladder by which the magi ascend.' Can you recite it?"

She had tried so hard not to think of these things while she had been Hugh's slave that it took her some little time to walk back through the city of memory, to mark the gates, the levels of the great city in which all her knowledge was stored. "There are seven rungs on the ladder, which correspond to the seven spheres of the heavens. First is the rose of healing. Then the sword of strength. The cup of boundless waters. The ring of fire, which is known to us also as the Circle of Unity, the symbol of our Lady and Lord who together form the God of Unities. The throne of virtue. The scepter of wisdom. And the Crown of Light, which we also know as truth."

Wolfhere nodded. "These are the tools the magi use. Follow with me, in your mind's eye. Through the ring of fire we may see a vision of another place." He drew his hands farther apart and stared fixedly at the black stone. Liath felt his silence reach a new and deeper level, as if he were drawing away from her, although of course he did not actually move. But she had never learned to build the ring of fire in her own mind; Da hadn't taught her the mental exercises beyond the sword of strength. She stared at the expanse of stone that lay between Wolfhere's hands, one palm down, the other palm up. Her grip tightened on the torch. The air itself seemed to grow taut. Wolfhere sucked breath in between his teeth. His pupils widened, then shrank to pinpricks as at a sudden bright light. She saw nothing except black stone. "What do you see?" he whispered, as if the words took effort. "Nothing."

He shook his head suddenly and his pupils expanded. He seemed to be searching. "I, too, see nothing," he murmured. "Campfires, tents, their ships, and a kind of darkness that shades the center of their camp." He shut his eyes, then lifted his hands off the stone and, rather like a dog letting itself off guard, shook himself slightly all over. He looked at Liath. "This enchanter shields himself against my sight. That bodes ill, I fear. My powers are not strong, but as an Eagle I am adept at certain things. Seeing is one of them. You saw nothing as well?" "I saw nothing." But her nothing was not, she real—

king's dragon

ized, the same nothing as he had seen. She had truly seen
nothing.
Da had been right all along; she was deaf to magic.

But then how had she managed to cause the torch to catch flame?

Wolfhere frowned. "I have never heard Eika were accomplished magi, or that they had any skill at the forbidden arts, or even knowledge of them. They are savages, after all. But I no longer doubt Prince Sanglant. There is a presence among them who controls great power. That must explain
—" He ran a hand over the slab of obsidian. "Strange." "Explain what?"

But now an edge came to his voice. "Sit still," he ordered. He traced a ring on the stone and then rested his hands, one palm up, the other palm down, a shoulder's width apart. He stared at the black surface, intent, concentrating. She saw nothing, but she felt a breath like wings brushing her cheek.

"An eagle!" he breathed sharply, starting back. "An eagle in flight, plummeting to earth." He jumped up. "Come, Liath. We must go back. I don't know what this portends." Hastily, he collected his weapons from the floor, and they hurried back to the stairs that led out of the crypt. When Liath stuck the torch back in a sconce, it snuffed out as soon as it left her hand, plunging them in darkness. Wolfhere grunted, sounding surprised, but he said nothing. They climbed the stairs by feel and hastened out of the cathedral.

It was dark and still overcast, but after the blackness of the crypt, the night did not seem heavy. The Eika drums sounded louder now; they usually reached their peak at midnight.

As they walked swiftly back toward the mayor's palace Liath recalled Wolfhere's broken sentence. "You said the presence of an enchanter might explain something."

"Ah." For the space of twelve steps, clipped and hard and rapid on the plank walkway, he considered. "When

we rode into Gent, I cast a spell to attempt to delay the advance of that group of Eika who were coming after us. Nothing more than an illusion. My skills are not great, and I am only adept at certain arts of seeing. I warned you to ignore what you saw."

The flight to Gent was still graven in her mind with the vivid colors of a freshly painted mural. What he spoke now made her suddenly understand that which she had almost forgotten, because it had made no sense at the time.

A flash, a glittering of light like afire's light seen from inside a dark room.
Her horse had almost thrown her, and Manfred had flung a hand up to cover his eyes, as it to protect himself from a much fiercer vision.
A tingling on her back. The tiny winkings of fireflies.
But that was all she had seen. Either Wolfhere's magics were indeed very small, or else . . .

"I knew there must be some kind of sorcery at work," he continued. "Now I know it is more powerful than I feared. To dissipate my illusions is one thing. To cloud my seeing is entirely another."

Or else she had seen only the faint edge of his magic
—or not
his
magic at all, but the barest trace of the enchantment that had protected the Eika against it. "You've thought of something," Wolfhere said. "No. Nothing." Until she understood it herself, she would not confess this mystery to him. It would give him power over her, more power than he already had, "Only what Da said: 'To master knowledge is to have power from it.' '

"True words," commented Wolfhere. The palisade marking the inner fortress, the mayor's palace, rose before them in the gloom. She heard the distant buzz of many voices speaking at once.

Were they true words? When Da said,
"trust no one,"
had he meant her to include
himself?
She was deaf to magic, yet he had begun to teach her the arts of the , magi. She was deaf to magic, yet she had some kind of power; she had seen it manifested twice, once when she |

king's dragon
had burned the Rose of Healing into the table in Hugh's study and this night in the crypt, when she had caused the torch to light.

"Is that all you have thought of?" he asked.

She remained mutely silent.

"Have I made any attempt to harm you, Liath?" he asked gently, if a little accusingly. "To bring you to harm?"

"You brought me to Gent!" But she said it with a wry smile, hoping to distract him.

They came though the wooden gateway into the courtyard of the mayor's palace. The stone-paved courtyard was awash in torchlight, smoke and flames setting a yellow haze over the people gathered like so many bees swarming. This was a new crowd, smaller than the one this morning, and agitated in a completely different way. "Alas that I did," he murmured. Then he grabbed her by an elbow and with a grim expression pulled her through the crowd, shoving Dragons and rich merchants and the mayor's retainers ruthlessly aside so that he and Liath could get to the center.

There, they found the mayor, Manfred, and Prince Sanglant
—and an Eagle, battered beyond belief, his cloak torn, his head wrapped in a bloody, dirty cloth, one arm hanging useless at his side, and his horse dying at his feet.

He looked up, saw Wolfhere emerge out of the crowd, and tried to get to his feet, but staggered. Manfred steadied him.

"Find a healer," Prince Sanglant ordered, signing to his Dragons. "Bring a stretcher, and wine." His closest attendants, the scarred-face woman and the man with the limp, hurried off.

Mayor Werner's complexion had a ghastly white cast under torchlight. But it was not only the light but also his expression. He looked like a man who had seen his own grave.

"Lie down, my son." Wolfhere knelt beside the Eagle and lowered him onto Manfred's bundled cloak. "What is your news?"

Liath crept closer. Blood soaked the Eagle's tunic, and he breathed in ragged bursts. The broken end of an arrow protruded from his chest. She caught in a gasp and took an involuntary step closer. The next instant, a hand caught her by the shoulder.

She knew before she looked, felt in her whole being, that she had come up beside the prince and that it was he who had stopped her from going forward. His hand seemed to burn her shoulder even through the cloth, though she knew it was only the shame of her desire that made her feel his presence so keenly. She risked looking up at him because it would be cowardly to do otherwise. But when their eyes met, he was the one who looked away. He let go of her and even took a half step away. She had a sudden uncomfortable notion that her presence troubled him.

The Eagle coughed, spitting blood. Ai, Lord, the arrow had caught him in the lung. It was only a matter of time.

"Bad news." His breath came in bursts now. His skin flushed a deep red as he struggled to speak. "Count Hildegard. Riding to Gent. Many troops. We were ambushed. I escaped to
—

"He came to the east gate less than an hour ago," said Sanglant. "These folk brought him here." He gestured toward the crowd, which by dint of glares and simple force from the prince's everpresent escort of Dragons, had finally moved back, giving the rest of them air. "Though he would have gotten through the streets more quickly had they stayed in their beds and not swarmed out into the streets to get in his way."

"What of Count Hildegard?" Wolfhere asked. The man coughed again, this time clots of blood, and when he spoke, Liath had to bend forward to hear him. "I don't know. Perhaps she won free. Our Lord
—

He went into convulsions. Liath threw herself forward and helped hold his shoulder down, Manfred opposite her, while Wolfhere leaned on a leg and Sanglant grasped the other. As if from a distance she heard Mayor Werner wailing and the cries and sobbing of the crowd. The Eagle went lax. Liath sat back, looked up to find Sanglant staring at her, his hands resting on the man's left leg. The prince stayed there, poised like that, for a long breath. Wolfhere muttered a curse and hunched over, ear to the injured man's chest.

"No need," said Sanglant, not taking his gaze off Liath. "He's stopped breathing. There is no pulse of blood. He's dead." That strange hoarse scrape in his voice lent a verisimilitude of grief to his words that she did not see in his expression; not that he was pleased, either, just that death no longer grieved or surprised him.

She looked away in time to see Manfred cover his eyes with a hand. Wolfhere remained bent over the body for a long while, his face hidden. Finally, he straightened.

"He is dead." He sat on his heels while beyond Mayor Werner wept copious tears, although not, Liath suspected for the dead man but rather for the loss of hope.

Sanglant lifted a hand. The Dragons drove the onlookers out of the courtyard. "This is no time to weep," the prince said, rising and turning to Mayor Werner. "He was a brave man, and he deserves this honor: that we not lose heart because of the news he paid his life to bring us. Count Hildegard may yet win through." "If she does not?"

"If she does not," replied the prince, "if her force is utterly broken, then we will ration food more strictly and settle ourselves in for a long siege. We have good water supplies here. There is yet hope that Wolfhere's companions will reach King Henry. Some of my own men still reside outside the walls, and they will harass the Eika until we can either break out or another force comes to break in."

Finally Wolfhere moved, but only to unpin the brass badge the dead Eagle wore at his throat. It was wet with blood and drying spume. He wiped it off on the tatters of the dead man's cloak. Then he rose, and Manfred and Liath rose with him. Wolfhere extended a hand, open, the badge lying on it, winking in the torchlight.

"What are the precepts which govern the conduct of an Eagle, Liath?"

They were simple enough. She had memorized them easily. "Serve the king and no other. Speak only the truth of what you see and hear, but speak not at all to the king's enemies. Let no obstacle stand in the way of your duty to the king, not weather, not battle, not pleasure, not plague. Let your duty to your kin come second, and make no marriage unless to another Eagle who has sworn the same oaths as you."

She could not help it. She glanced toward Sanglant, who had turned back to watch her, or to watch Wolfhere, she could not tell which. His gaze was steady and a bit imposing, but he made no sign or sound.

Yet as she took a breath, to finish, she saw that Manfred also watched her, but with an odd expression, as if he was watching to see what she would do or how she would react. Had she been blind? Was his affection for her something more than that of comrades? She dismissed the thought quickly and with impatience; to believe so was vanity, nothing more. Just because Hugh had desired her and no other woman in Heart's Rest did not mean every man desired her.

Manfred smiled sadly at her. She smiled back and continued.

"Aid any Eagle who is in need, and protect your comrades from any who might harm them. And, last, abide by your faith in Our Lady and Lord.

"Do you swear to abide by these?" Wolfhere asked.

It was quiet now that most of the crowd had been chased away. The mayor had stopped wailing. He huddled behind Sanglant, his servants clustered round him with solemn faces and hands clasped in prayer. Torches flared, and as the wind shifted it blew smoke into her nostrils, stinging and bitter. From the east, stronger now, she heard the Eika drums.

"I do so swear," she said quietly, understanding now what was going on.