King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 224

Her hands shook. Her breath came in gasps. All the things from the heavens.

She heard voices below. Hastily she bundled up the book and stuck it away into her saddlebags just as people came up the ladder. It was Wolfhere and Hathui.

Hanna was with them. All the excitement, all the grief, all the days of longing and hope and sorrow, overwhelmed Liath. She threw herself into Hanna’s arms and both of them burst into wrenching sobs, the release of so many weeks of tension and fear.

“We must pray for Manfred’s soul,” Wolfhere said. He wiped a tear from his seamed face. They knelt together and prayed.

Afterward Wolfhere rose and paced. “I would give you Manfred’s badge, if I could, Hanna,” he said. “Though you did not see him die, you rode with him, and that counts for the same. You have in any case earned it twice over.” He sighed. “But it is now beyond recovery. Will you wait? I will commission a new one to be made.”

Hanna held tightly to Liath and Hathui, still holding their hands, and she nodded gravely.

“So will it be done,” said Wolfhere.

“I must return to the king,” said Hathui. She left.

“It is late, and we have ridden far and all suffered much,” said Wolfhere to the other two. “Let us rest.”

Liath found herself a pallet on which to sleep, a richer bed than any she had lain in since—

Hugh.

No. She was safe now. She need fear him no longer.

She set her sword, her good friend, beside her. Reached into the bowcase to touch the wood and horn of her bow, Seeker of Hearts. Last, she settled her saddlebags next to her body. She felt the book like balm against her soul and, nestled against it, hidden as well, the gold feather; she had hope now that she might in time puzzle out the secret of the inner text.

For the first instant she feared sleeping, but she was so very very tired she could no longer fight it off.

Hanna lay down beside her and put her arms around her. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered. “Oh, Liath, I am so glad you are alive.”

Liath kissed her on the cheek and wiped the last tear from her face. There was nothing more she could do, not now, except to rest and pray that her path would seem clearer in the morning. There was so much she had to learn and so much she must discover about herself, about the book, all the things Da had hidden from her for all these years.

krypte. “Hide this.”

“Trust no one.” Da had not meant to leave her alone. He had meant to protect her, for as long as he could.

“I love you, Da,” she whispered.

Sleeping in her friend’s embrace, she did not dream.

8

HENRY would not leave the chapel, or perhaps he simply could not. At last, with the efforts of several servants, he was taken to the bedchamber set aside for his use. There he lay silent and unmoving on the bed, not because he slept but because he did not have the strength to stand or to kneel or—even—to mourn. His children came in, Theophanu shepherding a trembling Ekkehard. No tears stained Theophanu’s face, but she was pale. Sapientia was sobbing noisily. As a girl, Rosvita recalled, Sapientia had idolized Sanglant, had followed him like a puppy even to the point of being annoying, but Sanglant had never lost his temper with her—not that he had had much of a temper, being in all things a tractable child. It might be that Sapientia truly mourned him, despite her jealousy at her father’s preference for the bastard over the eldest legitimate child. Rosvita had never observed that Sapientia was capable of duplicity.

Margrave Judith appeared in the doorway, spoke to a servant, and was ushered inside. She walked over to Rosvita. “News from Kassel,” Judith murmured, eyeing the king with interest and—perhaps—pity. “Helmut Villam has taken a turn for the better. It appears he will live.”

Roused by this whispering, Henry pushed himself up, though it was clearly exhausting for him to move at all. His face was graven with sorrow; he had aged ten years in one hour.

“Is it Villam you speak of?” he said. “What news?”

“He will live,” said Rosvita in a calm voice, which was surely what the king needed at this deperate time rather than more hysteria.

Sapientia caught in a sob and let it out, bursting into a new stream of tears.

Henry shut his eyes. Slowly, he lifted a hand, the cloth, to his face. He murmured something, a word. No, it was a name: “Alia.”

The touch of the old rag appeared to give him strength. “I want him gone!” he said. “Gone! Out of my sight. Send him south to Darre with the escort for Biscop Antonia.”