The Burning Stone - Page 18/360

Liath glanced through the capitularies: King Henry grants to the nuns of Regensbach a certain estate named Felstatt for which they owe the king and his heirs full accommodation and renders of food and drink for the royal retinue as well as fodder for the horses at such times as the king’s progress may pass that way; King Henry endows a monastery at Gent in the name of St. Perpetua in thanks for the victory at Gent and the return of his son; King Henry grants immunity from all but royal service to the foresters of the Bretwald in exchange for keeping the new road through the Bret Forest clear; King Henry calls the elders of the church to a council at Autun on the first day of the month of Setentre, which in the calendar of the church is called Matthiasmass.

That day, according to the mathematici, was the autumn equinox.

Ai, God. If she held The Book of Secrets, could she open it freely here? Would she ever live in a place where there was leisure, and such safety as this palace offered? Was there any place she could study the secrets of the mathematici, wander in her city of memory, explore the curse of fire, and be left alone?

She laughed softly, a mixture of anger, regret, and giddy desire. Such a place had been offered her, when she had least expected it, and she had turned away in pursuit of a dream just as impossible.

A man emerged from the palace gateway leading a saddled horse, a sturdy bay mare with a white blaze and two white socks. She took the reins, thanked him politely, and went on her way.

5

AS the deacon had promised, the road ran straight east through the Bretwald. Birds trilled from the branches. A doe and half-grown twin fawns trotted into view and as quickly vanished into the foliage. She heard the grunt of a boar. She peered into the depths beyond the scar that was the road. Trees marched out on all sides into unknowable and impenetrable wilderness. The scent of growing lay over everything as heavily as spices at the king’s feasting table. Like a rich mead, she could almost taste it simply by breathing it in.

But she could no longer ride through the deep forest without looking over her shoulder. She could not forget the daimone that had stalked her, or the creature of bells. She could not forget the elfshot that had killed her horse this past spring, although that pursuit had taken place in a different forest than this one. Yet surely all forests were only pieces of the same great and ancient forest. She had traveled enough to know that the wild places on earth were of far greater extent than those lands tamed by human hands.

There.

An aurochs bolted through the distant trees. Its curving horns caught a stray glance of sunlight, vivid, disturbing, and then it was gone. The noise of its passage faded into the heavier silence of the forest, which was not a true silence at all but rather woven of a hundred tiny sounds that blended so seamlessly as to make of themselves that kind of silence which has forgotten, or does not know of or care about, the chatter of human enterprise.

As the last rustle of the aurochs’ passing faded, Liath heard, quite clearly, the clop of hooves behind her. She swung round in her saddle but could see nothing. What if it were Hugh?

Ai, Lady! That bastard Hugh had no reason to follow her. He would wait in the safety of the king’s progress because he knew she had to return to the king. She had no freedom of her own to choose where she went and how she lived; she was a mere Eagle living on the sufferance of the king, and that was all and everything she had, her only safety, her only kin.

“Except Sanglant,” she whispered. If she said his name too loudly, would she wake herself up from a long and almost painful dream and find the prince still dead at Gent and herself sobbing by a dying fire?

The sound of hooves faded as a wind came up, stirring the upper branches into movement punctuated by the eruption into flight of a dozen noisy wood pigeons. That suddenly, she saw a flash of red far back in the dim corridor of the road. At once she slipped her bow free of its quiver and drew an arrow to rest loosely along the curve of the bow.

A branch snapped to her left and she started ’round, but nothing showed itself in the thickets. What use was running, anyway? She and Da had scuttled from shadow to shadow, but in the end his enemies had caught them.

She reined up her horse and peered into every thicket and out along an unexpected vista of tree trunks marching away into shadow like so many pillars lining the aisles of a cathedral. Nothing. What approached came from the road. And she heard no tolling of bells.

Yet her face was flushed and she was sweating. She nocked her arrow and waited. A King’s Eagle expected respect and safe passage. She had endured so much, she had escaped from Hugh twice.

She was strong enough to face down this enemy.

As the rider came clear of the shadow of the trees, she drew down on a figure dressed in ordinary clothing marked only by a gray cloak trimmed with scarlet. A familiar badge winked at his throat.