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“My lord presbyter,” said one of the soldiers, a man with a scar on his chin. “I can make her talk, if that’s what you’re wishing.”

He turned away. “Think nothing of it, John. I already know much of the tale. When I have need of the rest, I’ll get it.”Advertisement

“I just don’t like to see you treated with such disrespect, my lord presbyter. It gripes me to think of the queen refusing to see you, after all you done for her and the common folk in Darre.”

“The queen is grieved by the loss of her daughter. It is to be expected.”

“Only you would be so forgiving, my lord.”

The other soldiers murmured agreement.

“Like that cleric you released to walk north. I think that one has lost his wits!”

Hugh nodded without smiling. “And so he has, poor soul.”

They came up to a flat space of ground, bare of vegetation, situated in front of the standing stones.

“Dismount quickly, all except the one with the servant and you, Frigo,” said Hugh, gesturing toward the man who carried Blessing. “Move when I give the command. Do not hesitate.”

Blessing slept. Anna could not go to her, sitting as she was in the grasp of a man much bigger and stronger than she was, but she saw that Blessing wore about her neck an amulet as well, only this one was woven with sprigs of lavender and a twisted knot that looked ready to strangle any unsuspecting neck caught in its grasp. It looked different than all the others.

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Hugh gave his reins to one of the men. He placed his feet on a circle of pale ground, white with dust, and drew from his sleeve a strange golden implement like a wheel embedded within a wheel. This he raised to sight along the horizon. Then he turned to gaze toward Novomo, hazy in the fading light.

“We must be ready,” he said to his soldiers. “Make sure the supplies I mentioned are at hand. Her devils can follow us no matter how far we travel, so when I speak, you must obey exactly as I say.”

They murmured assent.

Anna laughed. “We can’t go!” she crowed. “You can’t weave a spell from the heavens when it is cloudy! You’re trapped here!”

He looked back at her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Was that a knife, winking in the hand of one of the soldiers?

“Wise, after all,” said Lord Hugh. “But I possess an instrument that tells me where every star will rise and set. The music of the spheres reaches through the clouds. It is only our weak eyesight that stymies us for, unlike the angels and daimones, we cannot see past that which blinds. With this instrument, I do not have to see what I have already measured in order to know it is there. I can weave even when clouds shroud the heavens. I can weave even in daylight, although I must not let my enemies guess that I can do so.”

As night fell, he wove, drawing light out of the heavens although no stars shone where any human eye could see. He wove an archway of light and, at his command—for who would refuse him?—they walked through it into another place.

XIV

THE GUIVRE’S STARE

1

TO walk from Osna village to Lavas Holding was normally a journey of five or six days. Years ago, when Alain had walked with Chatelaine Dhuoda’s company, the trip had taken fifteen days because she had stopped in every village and steading along the way to accept taxes and rents or the service of some of the young people in the village. Now, although they stopped only at night for shelter, the roads had taken so much damage in last autumn’s storm that they were ten days traveling. Tangles of fallen trees barred the track. In two places streams had changed course and cut a channel right through the beaten path where wagons once rolled.

“God help us,” said the chatelaine in the late afternoon on the seventh day. She was the only one mounted. The rest walked. “What’s that?”

Alain went forward with five of the men at arms to discover a wagon toppled onto its side. The remains of several people lay scattered across the roadway and into the woodland on either side, disturbed by animals.

“How long have they lain here, are you thinking?” asked one of the lads, a fellow called “Fetch” by his comrades.

Mostly bone was all that was left of them, with bits of hair and patches of woven tunic ground into the earth and a leather vest half buried beneath dirt and leaf litter. It was impossible to tell how many had died here or how far wolves and foxes had dragged pieces of corpse.

“Months.” Alain wrenched loose an arrow fixed into the spokes of one of the wheels. “Bandits. Look at this fletching.”

The soldiers were young men, no one he knew from his time as Lavastine’s heir, although it seemed strange to him that so many new milites would have come into service in such a short time. They were all lads from villages owing allegiance to Lady Aldegund’s family, and had a lilting curl to their “r’s” when they spoke. They looked nervous as they scanned the trees and open clearings. pqdm.com