AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll hear no more of that, Sibold!” said Fulk curtly. “Which of you would act differently? It’s no business of ours whether the prince chooses to live as a cleric, or as a man.”
Wolfhere smiled. “True-spoken, Captain, yet it’s true that Prince Sanglant has long been famous for his amorous adventures. Have I ever told you about Margrave Villam’s daughter, she who is heir to the margraviate? It’s said she was taken by such a passion for the young prince that—”
Zacharias eased out of the gathering and retreated to the yard. His hands, always chilled in the winter, got stiff with cold, but he lingered outside.
That the fault of concupiscence, the seemingly unquenchable desire for the pleasures of the flesh, plagued Prince Sanglant made him no different from most of humankind. Unlike many a noble lord or lady, and entirely unlike the Quman warriors, who took what they wanted at the instant the urge struck them, the prince struggled to keep his cravings under control. For that reason alone, Zacharias had cause to respect him.
Yet it was not the prince he sat in judgment on.
Nay, truly, he recognized the sinful feeling that had crept into his breast: He envied Wolfhere his knowledge. The exiled Eagle kept a cool head and a closed mouth, and despite Zacharias’ hints and insinuations over the months of their trip, Wolfhere never admitted to the knowledge that Zacharias knew in his bones the old man kept clutched to himself as a starving man clutches a loaf of precious bread and a handful of beans.
Was Zacharias unworthy? Prince Sanglant had taken Zacharias on in part because of his knowledge of the Quman but mostly because the prince had, underneath his iron constitution and bold resolve, a sentimental heart. He had taken Zacharias into his company because the frater had spoken of his vision of Liath, because Zacharias had brought him a scrap of parchment on which the prince’s beloved, and lost, wife had scribbled uninterpretable signs and symbols, themselves a kind of magic, readable only by mathematici.
He touched the pouch at his belt, felt the stiff cylinder cached there: the rolled-up parchment, his only link to the knowledge he sought. Liath had studied the heavens, too. She had asked the same questions he had, and maybe, just maybe, she would listen with astonishment and fascination to his description of the vision of the cosmos that had been vouchsafed to him in the palace of coils.
Maybe she had some answers for him. Maybe she was willing to search.
Standing out under the pitiless winter sky, he prayed that she would be restored to Earth. Because if she wasn’t, he had no one else to go to.
Shivering, he made his way back into the servants’ hall and, by a minor miracle, found with no trouble the corridor off which lay the chambers reserved for the prince.
Someone had reached the door before him. He knew her by the curve of her gown along her body, the way her shawl had fallen back to reveal the curling wisps of her light hair. He stepped back, staying in shadow. She hadn’t heard him, or maybe she just wasn’t paying attention, because she was waiting at the door.
It opened, finally, to reveal the prince.
“My lord prince,” she said in a remarkably level voice, “you called for wine and refreshment?”
Sanglant held a candle whose yellow flame revealed the sharp lines of his face and the carefully fanned-out apple, eight slices making a blunt star, two on each side. A silver goblet shone softly in the candlelight beside it.
“Nay, I asked for nothing more,” he said, but he didn’t close the door, he only stood there. After a moment, she slipped past him to go inside.
With that uncanny sixth sense he had, as exquisite as a dog’s, Sanglant looked directly at Zacharias, although surely he ought not to have been able to see him, drowned as the frater was in night’s shadow.
“What is it, Zacharias?” he asked softly.
“Nay, nothing, my lord prince.” Zacharias took two steps back, paused. “All is as you wish, Your Highness. I’ll go now. Wolfhere has promised to teach me to play chess.”
As he walked away, he heard the door close and latch behind him.
X
BEYOND THE VEIL
1
IT was too dark to see the landscape of the sphere of Erekes. As soon as the wind loosened its grip, Liath halted to take her bearings. A hot wind blasted her face. She missed her cloak, which she could have used to shield her skin, and more desperately she missed her boots. The surface she stood on scraped the soles of her feet, but when she moved forward to stand on what appeared to be smoother ground, her foot sank into a viscous liquid so cold that her toes went numb.
She jumped back, stumbled, and for a moment couldn’t put any weight on that leg. At last sensation returned, but that was worse; her skin burned and blistered. Limping, she fell back to the shelter of a high outcropping whose bulky lee protected her from the worst of the blasting wind. The iron wall, and the gate, had vanished. She leaned against the stone, catching her breath, but the slick cold, as penetrating as melting ice, burned her fingers. She jerked away, and an instant later felt that same ulcerous pain lance up her hand.
She stood there in misery, half out of the wind and with a foot and a hand throbbing, and surveyed the landscape, what she could see of it. Beyond the shoreline, more a suggestion of textural change than an actual visible line, the landscape stretched into the distance as smoothly blank as a sea littered with fragments of lamplight. Darting fingers of brilliance moved upon that sea, illusive daimones bent upon unfathomable errands, but she could not hear the music of the spheres above the whine of that endless hot wind.
Was it the wind off the sun? Yet why then did the sun not shine here?
One question always led to another. She puzzled again over her brief sojourn among the Ashioi. How could time move differently there than on Earth? Why did day dawn and night fall with such an irregular rhythm? Why did no moon rise and set, wax and wane, in the country of the Ashioi?
Did it, too, travel the spheres? Or was there another plane of existence lying within or beside the universe which she did not comprehend? Eldest Uncle had shown her the twisted belt, his crude representation of the path on which he and his people had found themselves, but that didn’t explain where they were right now in relation to Liath.
So many mysteries.
