King's Dragon

Page 223

“I—? No. I don’t know. I am newly come to the Eagles, just after Mariansmass.”
“Yet you already wear the Eagle’s badge.”
Liath covered her eyes with a hand, briefly, stifling tears.
“What you saw in the fire,” said the biscop, going on in what she perhaps meant to be a gentler voice, “is known to us as one of the arts by which certain Eagles can see. Do not fear, child. Not all sorcery is condemned by the church. Only that which is harmful.”
Liath risked raising her head. The biscop was quite a young woman, really, pale and elegant in her fine vestments and tasseled biscop’s mitre.
“You are Constance!” exclaimed Liath, remembering the lineages Da had taught her, “Biscop of Autun.”
“So I am,” said Biscop Constance. “And I am evidently now Duchess of Arconia, too.” She said this with a hint of irony, or perhaps sadness. “Where were you educated, child?”
“My Da taught me,” said Liath, now cursing the fate that had separated her from Wolfhere. She did not have the strength to fend off pointed questioning of her past and her gifts, and certainly not from a noblewoman of Constance’s education and high rank. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace. I am very tired. We have ridden so far, and so quickly, and—” Almost the sob got out, but she choked it back.
“And you have lost someone who is dear to you,” said the biscop, and in her own face Liath saw a sudden and surprising compassion. “One of my clerics will show you to the barracks, where the Eagles take their rest.”
A cleric led her to the stables. There she found herself alone in a loft above the stalls. Shutters had been thrown open, admitting the last of the daylight. She flung herself down on the hay, then rose again, wiping her nose, and paced. It was as if, reciting the awful tale, she had passed some of her numbing grief off onto King Henry. Now she was too restless to rest. Grooms murmured below. She was utterly alone.
For the first time in months, for the first time since Hugh had taught her the rudiments of Arethousan—all those damned impossible verbs!—she was alone.
Carefully, she lifted The Book of Secrets out of her saddlebags and unwrapped it. She opened it to the central text, that ancient, fragile papyrus, dry under her skin as she ran a finger along the line of text, written in a language she did not recognize but glossed here and there in Arethousan. The Arethousan letters were still strange to her, but as she concentrated, opening doors in her city of memory, finding the hall where she had stored her memory of the Arethousan alphabet, she could transpose them in her mind into the more familiar Dariyan letters and thus form words, some of which she had learned from Hugh, most of which were meaningless to her.
At the very top of the page, above the actual text, was written a single word in Arethousan: krypte.
“Hide this,” she whispered and felt a sudden, sharp pain in her chest. Hide this.
She put a hand over her mouth, breathed in, calming herself, and then studied the text beneath. The letters that made up the text were totally foreign to her, unlike Arethousan letters, unlike the more common Dariyan letters; perhaps, faintly, they resembled the curling grace of Jinna letters although these had a squarer profile. She could not read them nor even imagine what language this was.
But a different hand had glossed the first long sentence with Arethusan words beneath, translating it; only that first sentence had been glossed completely. On the other pages brief glosses appeared here and there, a commentary on the text. But this sentence, at least, she could read part of. Perhaps it gave a clue as to the subject of the text. Perhaps that had been the scribe’s intent in translating that entire first sentence.
Painstakingly, pausing now and again to listen for the movements of the grooms below, she sounded out the first sentence.
Polloi epekheir?san anataxafthai di?gesink peri t?n pepl?rophor?men?n en h?min terat?n, edoxe kamoi par?kolouth?koti an?then pasin akrib?s kathex?s, soi grapsai, kratista Theophile, hina epign?is peri h?n kat?kh?th?s log?n t?n asphaleian.
The light was getting dim, too dim for anyone to read—except someone who had salamander eyes.
“Many people…” she whispered, knowing the first word, and then skipped words until she found another word she knew and here she stopped short, heart pounding, breath tight in her throat. “…about magical omens…” She skipped back to the pluperfect verb, such an odd form that Hugh had taken pains to point out the form to her, “…magical omens which have been fulfilled among us. It seemed good to me…” Here again followed words she did not know, and then, again and suddenly, one she did. “…all the things from the heavens … to you to write about…” She shut her eyes, so filled with commingled horror and stark excitement that for a moment she thought her emotions would rend her in two like the Eika dogs. “Theophilus.” That was a man’s name. “…so that you may know about these— these words? These spells ?” Could it be spells? “…in which you have been instructed by word of mouth…” The last word she did not know.