But as Desiderata looked at the brown, she thought it was perhaps a foreign textile, some wonderous silk of Morea or farther afield. The brown was itself made up of a thousand tiny patterns—there, of flowers, a riot of colour covering whole fields, if only for a few days, and then another portion with a border of birds so cunningly wrought that they appeared to move and sing, and another, a lady on horseback, riding with a hawk on her wrist…
The lady had a dignified face. The face of mature wisdom, and fecund strength. Motherhood and virginity, or perhaps something older and better than mere virginity—a serenity of strength.
Desiderata was on her knees, and her mouth was already saying the Ave Maria.
She raised her hands to the woman.
Who smiled.
“Oh, my child,” she said sadly. “Would that I might tell you they know not what they do.”
Her voice was low and clear, vibrant with energy. Just to hear her made Desiderata straighten her back.
The woman bent, a hand on Desiderata’s head and another on her back.
All of Desiderata’s pains fell away, leaving her only the ache of knowing how near to term her pregnancy was.
The pools of black became palpable, and manifested.
“Tar, you hypocrite!” said the dark voice.
“Ash, you try me.” The woman moved a hand.
“You interfere as freely as I do,” Ash said.
The woman interposed herself between Desiderata and the pool of darkness. “No,” she said. “I obey the ancient law, and you break it.”
Ash laughed, and nothing about the laugh was like a laugh save the outward sound. “The law is for the weak, and I am strong.”
The woman raised her arms. “I, too, am strong. But I obey the law. If you flout it, it will punish you. Stronger immortals than you—”
“Spare me your mythology,” Ash said. “I will have the child. Now you have interfered directly, breaking the compact. Now you are as much a law-breaker as I.”
“Spare me your immaturity. I did not strike the first blow, or the tenth. And you know—you must know—how tangled has become this skein.” She brought her arms together.
“So tangled that only I can follow it. Come, entangle yourself, and I will destroy you, too.” Ash’s voice grew in strength.
“Can you?” Tar asked.
“Enough that I know that this one will die by your hand.” Ash’s laughter was like the cries of souls in torment. “And the child either will never be born, or will be mine from birth, by the actions of your people.”
Even as he spoke, he grew, and as he grew, his assault on Desiderata’s mind became more intense, until it was like a barrage of trebuchets.
Had she not prepared…
But she had. Her golden wall of power accepted blow after blow.
The woman spoke again, even though by now she was surrounded by darkness.
“If you continue to waste your strength on mortals, you will in time teach them to fight you. Look—even now, this daughter of mine has built a wall you cannot easily breach. What if she teaches it to others?” She sighed. “Are you so sure that you can survive what is to come?”
“Survive?” Ash asked. “I will triumph.”
The blackness filled the room.
His power in the real was something against which Desiderata had no defence, and she was losing the will to breathe.
The woman was no longer visible. Desiderata had time to wonder what she was hearing—whether this apparent conversation between Satan and the Virgin was occurring in the real or in the aethereal. Or somewhere else.
Or just inside her head.
One of the golden bricks in her wall of solitude shifted. The shift was minute, but terrifying.
Ash chuckled, like blood running over a stone.
“You were a fool, woman, for coming to my place of power.” Satan’s voice was strong and level.
“Really?” the woman asked. “My power thrives equally in light and darkness.” She seemed to sigh. “Does yours?”
The progress of time outside in the room was glacial. Seas rose and fell. Lands shifted—mountains grew and then stone cracked and they eroded away. Erosion changed the shape of worlds hanging in the infinite universe of hermetical spheres.
Or so it seemed to Desiderata.
And then something in the cell was different.
The air smelled of decay. And mould.
But also of new life.
“Many things grow in the darkness,” the Virgin said. “And you cannot stop them.”
The choking blackness gave way to a thicker darkness and a wider range of smells. Earth. Old basements. A wine cellar and the wine. Old cheese.
“You!” Ash said.
“Of course,” the other voice said. “Many beautiful things grow in the darkness. But I am not restricted by the darkness, and you have made an error.”
Suddenly, light flooded the room.
The floor of the room was gone—the cold stones, the hole in the corner, the recess where plates were left.
All gone.
The floor was a hand’s breadth deep in rich loam. And now, in between beats of Desiderata’s rapidly beating heart, something sprouted in the soil, and strands of green—not the virulent green of the Wild, but the natural green of the wilderness—leapt from the rich soil and began to grow. It grew straight into the pools of darkness, piercing the darkness the way the light could not. Even as the green spikes grew, they developed barbs.
The Virgin allowed herself to sink onto a bench that had appeared.
The sound of a choir began—
A shriek began—
And both were buried under the voices of a hundred thousand angels—or perhaps faeries. The briars leapt to the ceiling, which was now a luminous gold. The briars gave forth blossoms, a profusion of them so rich as to beggar thought, and they burst into flower—red and white and pink roses, and the smell of roses swept the cell like a cleansing tonic and routed the darkness like an avenging army.
And then every blossom began to move—the petals began to fall and the legions of faery angels seized on each falling petal and carried them to the figure of the woman seated in the middle of the rose garden.
Desiderata sighed. For the first time in as long as she could remember, the black assault on her wall had ceased. “Oh, Blessed Virgin! You have saved me,” Desiderata said.
The woman turned slightly, and raised a corner of the wimple that hid her face. “This is not victory, my child,” she said. “Nor is this even the turning point. I have only restored equilibrium.”
“Liar!” shouted Ash. “Hypocrite!”
But he was very far away.
The first day of the tournament—the day of the Queen’s trial by combat—dawned grey and foggy.
The guards found the Queen asleep in her cell—a cell, they said, that had become a rose garden overnight. Many men—hard men—fell to their knees as the Queen emerged from the cell. She was dressed in a plain brown gown, and her pregnancy was so pronounced as to make her ungainly—yet she was not. She was calm, and beautiful.
They put her in a wagon. They did so with surpassing gentleness.
She was taken through the streets of the city, and she could see how few people there were. She knew nothing of what had passed, but she could guess much from the burned buildings and the silence.
But what men and women there were bent their knees as her cart passed. And many, many men, and not a few women, buttoned their hoods against the unseasonable cold and damp and followed the cart out to the tourney grounds.
The gates of the city were open and, outside the city, the lists and the stands and all the pavilions for a great tournament were prepared.
And mostly empty. Thousands had left the city.
They took her from the wagon and set her on a chair—not in the stands, the formal stands, to be above the lists, but at eye level with the men who would fight.
Only then, quite late in the proceedings, di
d she fully understand. Her understanding came from seeing the pole of iron, with a huge pile of wood already piled about it.
She did not avert her eyes. She looked at it.
She turned to one of the men guarding her. “Is that for me?” she asked. Her voice sounded deeper than she had expected.
“Your grace, I…” He swallowed.
“It is, if my champion fails,” she insisted.
Her guard nodded.
“Is my brother here?” she asked calmly.
Her guard would not meet her eye. “No,” he admitted.
In the middle-distance, emerging from the fog of early morning, she could see a great column of richly clad nobles and ladies approaching. At its head she saw the King, attired in his usual red. He appeared listless, puffy-eyed and absent as he approached.
By him was Jean de Vrailly, in armour, cap-à-pied. And around him were half a hundred other Galles, all fully armoured, even de Rohan. There was no shortage either of Alban nobles, men and women. Many of the Alban knights wore harness, too.
The King was directed by a sergeant-at-arms to the pavilion where he would await the events, but he rode past the gesticulating man, and his horse’s hooves rang on the ground as he approached like a bell tolling her doom.
But his face was working like an infant in the moment that the pain hits, just as it opens its mouth to cry.
One of the Galles—de Rohan—tried to take the King’s reins. “You must not speak to her,” de Rohan insisted. “She is a criminal and a heretic.”
The King jerked his reins expertly from the other man’s grasp, and just for a moment the Queen was reminded of who he truly was—or had been. The best knight.
The Queen rose, made a curtsey. “A boon, your grace!” she called. Again, her voice was as clear as a perfect spring day.
He nodded. He closed his eyes—as if he had to concentrate to hear her.
It came to her that he was drugged. Or crazed.
“Save our son,” she said.
The archbishop laughed mockingly. “Save your bastard?” He shook his head. “You—”
The King raised a hand for silence.
But the archbishop leaned down from his horse. “Shut her up,” he said. “Your bastard goes to the fire with you.”
“This is your God of mercy, my lord?” Desiderata asked, her voice gentle. “To kill the child with the mother? The innocent child? The heir of Alba?”
“God will know his own,” the archbishop spat.
The King was having trouble remaining mounted. A pair of guardsmen came and supported him. He tried to speak, but de Rohan waved, and the men-at-arms led his horse towards the Royal Pavilion.
De Rohan lingered. “Count your remaining breaths,” he said. He smiled.
Desiderata felt liberated. She’d seldom been so calm—so strong. “You enjoy making hell come to earth, do you not?”
De Rohan’s smile, if anything, grew. “It is all shit,” he said. “Don’t blame me for it.” He breathed on his vambrace and polished it on his white surcoat.
She met his smile with one of her own. “It must be terrible,” she said with the clarity of the edge of death. “To be both selfish and impotent. How I pity you.” She reached out a hand—not in anger, but in sorrow.
He flinched. “Don’t touch me, witch!”
She sighed. “I could heal you, if you gave me the time.”
“There’s nothing to heal!” he spat. “I see through the lies to the truth. It is all shit.”
“And yet from your shit grow roses,” she said. “Burn me, and see what grows.”
Now he backed his horse away. “No one will save you,” he said.
She smiled. Her smile was steady and strong, and utterly belied the fatigue graven into her face. “I am already saved,” she said.
Chapter Four
The Wild
Nita Qwan and his two companions, Gas-a-ho, the shaman’s apprentice, and Ta-se-ho, the old hunter, spent one of the most comfortable winters of their lives—even a life as long as Ta-se-ho’s—in the halls of N’gara. Food and warmth were plentiful. So was companionship. Gas-a-ho passed in one winter from a gawky boy with aspirations to the rank of shaman to a serious young man with dignity and a surprising turn of mind. Tamsin, the Lady of N’gara, had passed much time with him, and he had benefited from it.
Ta-se-ho had also benefited. He looked younger and stronger, and when the sap began to move in the trees, and when the preparations for war began to grow serious, it was he, despite his age, who sat down in the great hall and suggested that they leave.
“I have heard matrons and shamans agree that the early spring is the most dangerous time to travel,” Nita Qwan said. In fact, he sought nothing but reassurance. His wife would bear their first baby soon, and he wanted to be home.
He also wanted to be away from the endless temptations of the hall—flashing eyes and willing companions and the new seduction of fame. Nita Qwan the warrior. Nita Qwan, the Faery Knight’s friend.
Nita Qwan, Duchess Mogon’s ally.
Ta-se-ho nodded as he did when someone younger made an excellent point. “This is true. The soft snow of spring is the most dangerous snow. Heavy rain on snow is when those walking in the Wild die. Nonetheless—” The old hunter sat back. “It came to me in a dream—that the sorcerer’s people would have an even harder time. The Rukh? They would die faster than we, as the ice breaks and the waters move. His men? His allies? Without raquettes, they are dead. Even with them—this is a time of year when the People can travel. Not safely, but safer than our enemies. We know the ground and the snow and the little streams under the rotting snow.”
Unannounced, Tapio, the Faery Knight, appeared and sat. His recovery from his duel with Thorn had been rapid, but it had left its mark—his face was thinner and one shoulder sat higher than the other.
“Your people, oh man. They will need to move quickly. Sssilently.” He flashed a fanged smile. “Before Thorn can ssseize them.” He nodded to Ta-se-ho. “You think well, old hunter.”
“I had a dream,” Ta-se-ho said with a slight inclination of his head. “I was reminded by ancestors that we used the snow of spring to escape you.”
Tapio showed his fangs mirthlessly. “Perhapsss. Timesss change. Enemiesss change.”
“You killed many of the People, Tapio,” Ta-se-ho said.
Tapio raised a hand and moved it back and forth as if it was a balance point. “And now I will sssave many.” He looked around.
Duchess Mogon, utterly graceful despite the bulk of her big reptilian body, came and squatted down. Lady Tamsin was with her.
She waved a hand, casually, and a glowing curtain of purple fire descended on them.
Mogon gurgled. “It is time,” she said, as if she was answering a question someone had put to her.
“I had a dream,” Ta-se-ho said.
Mogon nodded. “My hearing is not limited to the tiny fraction of the world humans hear,” she said. “Nor am I so very old. You wish to move across the spring snow.”
Nita Qwan thought of his pregnant wife. “He proposes that we move the Sossag people now.”
Mogon shook her head. “My people are all but useless at this time. Until the sun warms the hillside, we have only our human allies to protect our fields.” She showed all her teeth. “Not that we are impotent. Merely that we do not go far abroad.”
Tapio looked at Nita Qwan. “Can you do it?” he asked.
Nita Qwan shrugged, his hands in the air. “Ta-se-ho says we can do it,” he said. “I am not really a great warrior and I know almost nothing about moving at this time of year, except that it will be brutally hard and very cold and wet.”
Ta-se-ho laughed. “When has the Wild been anything but cold and wet for our kind?”
Tapio nodded. “I will prepare you sssome toysss, that may make your journey easssier.”
Nita Qwan bowed. “The Sossag people thank you.”
Mogon snorted. “I will go home in a week or two, when t
he lake begins to break up,” she said. “Bring the People to me. We will be strong friends.”
“But not your warriors,” Tapio said.
Nita Qwan and Ta-se-ho nodded. “We know what to do.”
The journey around the inland sea was hard. It was so hard that, later, Nita Qwan thought that all his life as a slave had been nothing but a test for the trek.
There were only the three of them and three toboggans. Tapio and Tamsin gave them several wondrous artifacts; a clay pot that was always warm, day and night, and whose warmth seemed to expand or contract depending on where it was—on the toboggans, it was merely warm enough to warm hands, but in a small cave, it was like a large fire. Each of them had mittens, made of a light silky stuff by the lady Tamsin and her maidens, and the mittens were always dry and always warm. Gas-a-ho had a small staff with which he could make fire.
“I made it with Tapio’s help,” he said modestly. “He and the Lady taught me so much.”
Even with these items and several more; even with the best and warmest clothes made by all the Outwaller women at N’gara and with blankets provided by the Jacks and the good wishes of every man, woman, and creature in the fortress—even then, the trip was horrible.
Each day, they walked across soft snow. Their snow shoes plunged into the snow as far as their ankles and sometimes as deep as their knees, so that half an hour into the day, walking was already a nightmare and after eight hours, it was like walking in deep mud. Every stream crossing was treacherous, and required the careful, patient removal of the raquettes, the plunge up to the groin in deep old snow so that each man could cross, rock to rock, on now-exposed streams. Toboggans had to be carried across, and every day the streams rose. Ponds and small lakes were still highways for rapid movement on the ice, but the ice would break soon.
They went as fast as their muscles would allow.
Camps were made in places no sane man would camp in summer—on exposed rocks, in the snow cave created by two downed evergreens, under looming rock faces and in the middle of stands of birch. Fires sank into the snow and vanished unless supported by a lattice of sodden logs. They slept on their toboggans. No one bathed or changed clothes.