The Burning Stone

Page 29

“Sister Rosvita!”
A hand descended on her shoulder and she woke, dragged out of the dream by the urgent summons of the waking world. She grunted and sat up, blinking.
“I beg you, Sister Rosvita.” Nerves made young Constantine’s voice squeak like a boy’s. “The king wishes you to attend him. A steward is here to escort you.”
“I beg you, Brother, recall your modesty.”
He murmured apologies and turned his back as she slipped out from under the blanket and pulled on cleric’s robes over her undertunic. Sister Amabilia snored pleasingly in the bed; Rosvita envied the young woman her ability to sleep through anything. She considered the Vita and on impulse picked it up.
The king was out behind the stables, fully dressed as if he had never lain down to sleep the night before. He stood with one foot braced on a stump and a hand braced on that leg as if to give him a place to grip patience as he watched his son pace back and forth, back and forth, along the ground in a curving line that would soon wear itself visibly into the grass. For an instant Rosvita thought the prince was on a leash, but it was only that the pattern of his restless pacing marked the same ground over and over: as if he still paced in a semicircle at the limit of chains. Yet he had been freed from the chains of his captivity to Bloodheart over twenty days ago.
Dogs growled as Rosvita approached, making her neck prickle. Horrible beasts, they had huge fangs coated with saliva, and eyes that sparked fire. Their iron-gray coats lay like a sheen of metal over thin flanks. They lunged, were brought up short by chains, and contented themselves with barking and slobbering.
Seeing Rosvita, Henry gestured toward his son. “He has taken a mad plan into his head to ride out after one of my Eagles, without even an escort. Your advice, good Sister, will surely make him see reason where Villam and I cannot.”
Sanglant stopped pacing and stood alertly as if listening—to her, or to the birds singing their morning lauds. Was it true, as Brother Fidelis had said over a year ago, that the birds sang of this child born of the mingling of human and Aoi blood? Could the prince actually understand the language of the birds? Or was he listening for something else?
“Let me go, Your Majesty,” said Sanglant harshly. “Call off your dogs.”
The soldiers glanced toward the staked-down Eika dogs, who growled and yipped, sensing their disquiet. Henry looked toward Rosvita, expecting her to speak.
Quickly she collected her thoughts. “What troubles you, Your Highness? Where is it you wish to go?”
“She should have been back by now. I have been patient. But there are things stalking her.” He cast his head back to scent. “I can smell them. There is something else, something I don’t understand— What if she’s met with disaster on the road? I must find her!”
That he did not bolt for freedom was due only to the presence of his father. Henry would not have been king had he not had a gaze as sharp as lightning and a force of will as strong as any ten men. That will set to bear on the prince was all that kept Sanglant from bolting.
“How will you find this Eagle you seek?” Rosvita continued. “There are many roads.”
“But I smell death—! And the taint of the Enemy.” He shook himself all over, barked out something more like a howl of frustration than a curse, and suddenly collapsed to his knees. “Ai, Lady, I feel a dead hand reaching out to poison her.”
“As well chain him up like the dogs,” muttered the king, “as get sense out of him. No one must see him like this.”
“Your Highness.” Rosvita knew how to soothe distraught men. As eldest daughter in her father’s hall, that duty had fallen to her more than once as a child when rage overtook Count Harl. She had soothed Henry many times. She went forward now and cautiously but firmly laid a hand on the prince’s shoulder. His whole body shook under her touch. “Would it not be better to remain with the king’s progress than to risk missing her on the road? The Eagle you seek will return to the king. If you go hunting for her, how can you hope to find her when so much land lies between?”
He had a hand over his eyes and was, she now realized, weeping silently. But tears, at least, were a man’s reaction, not a dog’s. Emboldened by this small success, she went on. “We move again today, Your Highness. At Werlida they have stores enough to feed us all for a week or more. How many roads lead to Werlida? You could ride for months and miss her on the road. Only be patient.”
“Child,” said Villam gently, “all Eagles return to the king in time. If you wait with the king, then she will come to us eventually.”