“You have come precipitously from Darre,” said Anne to Marcus. “Tell us your news, Brother.”
“Darre is not the place it was,” he said, glancing toward Liath as if he weren’t sure whether she ought to be there or not. Perhaps he found the gold torque gleaming at her neck disconcerting, but like the rest of them, he did not mention it. “There is a new power at work in Darre. That is why I dared not risk speaking through fire.”
“What can you mean, Brother?” demanded Zoë. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that some other person might without our tutelage have learned to listen through fire or travel within the crowns?”
“The veils grow thin,” said Anne. “Other creatures walk abroad in this time. Bother Marcus, I commend your caution.”
“Any man must walk cautiously in the presbyter’s hall. I learned that years ago.” He was sitting across from Liath, and he reached across the table to draw the ivory-covered book to him. He opened it and idly turned the pages, but he wasn’t looking at the text, only considering. Anne watched him. Liath said nothing. “Queen Adelheid fled Darre when her husband died and the last of her male relatives were killed in the south. No sooner had she run than Lord John Ironhead rode after her. His origins are questionable, to say the least. It is commonly known that he is the bastard son of a nobleman put into service in his guards. He rose to captain and steward, slew his own half brother when that man came into the title, and married his widow, taking upon himself the title of Lord of Sabina. Ironhead besieged Queen Adelheid at Vennaci. Soon after this, Princess Theophanu together with a small army of Wendish soldiers came south over the mountains. They claimed to be on a peaceful mission to Darre to bring certain petitions from King Henry to the notice of the skopos. Ironhead of course assumed that they, too, were after Adelheid, and he attacked Vennaci. Adelheid and Theophanu vanished in the wilderness and were rumored to be dead. Ironhead returned to Darre with Adelheid’s treasure and a new adviser, a Wendish churchman who had, so we heard in the presbyter’s hall, been sent south to stand trial for sorcery. Yet as soon as Ironhead came to Darre, Mother Clementia crowned Lord John king of Aosta. I believe that this churchman bound a daimone and that he now controls the skopos through its agency.”
“Can this be true?” demanded Severus. “How could he have learned of the binding of daimones? I traveled extensively in my youth from monastery to monastery to erase every reference to sorcery and the art of mathematici that I could find.”
Brother Marcus was enjoying himself. He closed the book and lifted a finger, as if to enjoin patience. “When spring came, a new rumor infected the city. Queen Adelheid had reappeared in the north, and some claimed that sorcery had aided her in her flight from King John. Some claimed that stone crowns had been seen gleaming with starlight and moonlight.”