The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 352

By the time the path bottomed out onto level ground, she was limping and could no longer see anything except the high citadel walls in the distance, which did indeed resemble a crown set down among the trees. Yet down here in the valley the wind had a cool kiss, and there was shade, and ripe figs and impossibly succulent oranges to be plucked from trees growing right beside the rutted road. They crossed two streams, and the sergeant was gracious enough to allow them to pour water onto their hot faces and dusty hands, even over their hair and necks, before he ordered them onward.

They crossed a noble old bridge with seven spans, water sparkling and shimmering below, and passed under the archway of the ring wall. A lion, like that sacred to St. Mark, capped the lintel, although it had no face.

Once inside this wall they walked on a paved road with wheel ruts worn into the stone at just the wrong width for their wagons. Fields surrounded them, most overgrown and all marked out by low stone walls. There were more orchards and one stand of wheat nearing harvest. She heard ahead of them the shouts and halloos of a host of men, and the braying, barking, caterwauling, and neighing of a mob of animals. Where the road turned a corner around an unexpected outcrop of rock, they came into sight of an old palace of stone, still mostly standing, where three grand tents sprawled with banners waving and folk here and there on errands or just loitering. Men forged forward to gawk at them as their party lumbered in.

“Isn’t that the two-headed eagle of Ungria?” Hanna asked, but before she got her bearings or an answer two handsomely robed men with beardless cheeks and shrewd expressions rushed out from the central tent to meet them.

They spoke to Sergeant Bysantius in Arethousan, while Rosvita crept forward to stand beside Mother Obligatia and whisper a translation, although Hanna found that she could pick up much of what they said herself.

“They know we are coming and ask if we are the prisoners whom the king and his wife have asked for. The lady is pleased. We are to be escorted in at once, even without pausing to be washed.”

Soldiers trotted forward to hoist the stretcher out of the wagon. Sergeant Bysantius herded the gaggle of clerics forward. Heriburg clutched the leather sack containing the books, but Jerome left their chest behind. It contained nothing so valuable that it couldn’t be abandoned. Except for the books, they possessed nothing of value except the clothes on their backs—and. their own persons.

Who would ransom them? Who would care? Aurea crept up beside Hanna as they were pressed into the anteroom of the central tent, and clutched her hand. Her palms were sweaty, her face was pale, but she kept her chin up.

“Take heart,” said Rosvita softly to the girls. She exchanged a look with Fortunatus. He nodded, solemn. Even Petra had, for a mercy, gone silent, eyes half shut as though she were sleepwalking.

The anteroom was crowded with courtiers dressed in the Arethousan style but also in the stoles and cloaks of Ungrians. There were a lot of Ungrians. It seemed a face or three looked vaguely familiar to Hanna, but she wasn’t sure how that could be. She caught sight of a man short but powerfully broad with the wide features and deep eyes common to the Quman, enough like Bulkezu that she actually had a jolt of recognition, a thrill of terror, that shook her down to her feet, until she realized a moment later that the ground was shaking, not her.

A rumble swelled, then faded, a shiver through the earth like a great beast turning over in its sleep.

The crowd in the anteroom fell silent. Outside, a woman laughed, her high voice ringing over the sudden hush.

“Just a little one,” whispered Gerwita, her voice more like the squeak of a mouse. She let go of Ruoda’s hand.

Blood-red curtains shielded an inner chamber from the anteroom. A eunuch, resplendent in jade-green robes, appeared and held a curtain aside for them to pass. It was dim and stuffy within the inner chamber, which was lit by four slits cut into the tent’s roof and by two lamps formed in the shape of lamias—sinuous creatures with the heads and torsos of beautiful women and the hindquarters of snakes. A couch sat in the place of honor, raised on a low circular dais constructed out of wooden planks painted the same blood-red shade as the heavy curtains. Two young men, stripped down to loincloths, worked fans on either side of the woman reclining there at her leisure. She eyed the new arrivals as though they were toads got in where they did not belong. She had a dark cast of skin and black hair liberally streaked with gray, and she was fat, with a face that would have been beautiful except for the smallness of her eyes and the single hair growing from her chin. A blanket covered her body from her midsection down, and Hanna began to labor under an obsessive fancy that the noblewoman might actually herself be a lamia, more snake than woman.