In the Ruins (Crown of Stars #6)

In the Ruins (Crown of Stars #6) Page 70

She no longer heard shouts and calls but once she heard a dog’s booming bark; once she heard a horse neigh; once she heard a woman’s sobs.

“How far—?”

He raised a hand, and she stopped speaking. A silver bracelet ornamented with tiny bells gleamed at his wrist.

They walked what she judged to be about the distance from her mother’s inn to Count Harl’s hunting cottage, where if she left at dawn bearing a round of cheese destined for the count’s table she would get there soon after midday. He gave her a leather bottle filled with sour-tasting water. She drank whenever her throat got too dry. The fog held steady for a long while, but gradually it thinned until the landscape emerged around them, insubstantial at first but gaining weight and texture.

Up here in the hills, Arethousa was a drier land by far than Heart’s Rest. Wendar boasted lush forests grown thick with undergrowth. The density of foliage washed a hundred hues of green across the hillsides. Arethousa, by contrast, was a land of gold and brown. Even the leaves had a dusty pallor and were often waxy or more like thorns than leaves. The ground layer crackled beneath her feet where she stepped on straggling vines and runners. The grass was brittle, and its chaff irritated her nose as she kicked it up with each step.

The tree cover was sparse. Often they crossed out from under what passed for shade and into a meadow of pale grass or spiny thornbush, where they caught such light as gleamed from the veiled heavens. Once, pausing, she pointed toward a lightening in the cloud cover.

“Do you think the sun is breaking through?” she asked.

“Hurry,” he said. “We’re losing the thread as the fog dissipates. Come, Hanna.”

It seemed to her that the frater’s vision was more subtle than hers. Although mist drifted within the trees and in patches across open ground, she had lost sight of the pulsing thread of light that led them. Still, she was free, she was unharmed, and although she was ravenous and light-headed, on the whole she felt content. It was an odd feeling, really, one she had rarely experienced in the last several years. She felt at ease and untroubled. At long last, it seemed, she was walking in the right direction.

He followed a defile down along stony ground, whistling the familiar melody to the psalm “Do not hide Your face from me in my time of trouble.” An animal trail led through a grove of oak trees, the only oaks she had seen for many days. They emerged into a clearing protected by high rock walls and cooled by the splash of a slender waterfall pouring off a cliff face. A scrape sounded behind them, and she turned to see a sentry, unseen until now, slip away into the trees back along the track.

A campsite had been laid out around a pool worn into the rock below the falls. Lean-tos woven out of branches and reeds substituted for canvas tents. A fire burned under an overhang. There were two dozen or more horses confined by a fence made of thorny bushes, and a score or more people at work or rest in whatever shade they could find. She smelled meat roasting. The scent so overpowered her—she hadn’t eaten meat for months, and nothing more than a portion of gruel for days—that she staggered as the pain of hunger bit into her stomach. Breschius steadied her. Folk looked up, their faces pale beneath a layer of grime.

“Hanna!”

They reached her before she registered their identity. She was hugged and only then did she meet the gaze of Brother Fortunatus over young Gerwita’s dark head as the novice wept to see her. Fortunatus smiled as Gerwita let Hanna go and stepped aside for Sister Rosvita to come forward.

“Hanna!” The cleric embraced her. “God be praised. We feared that you were dead, but the witch told us that you yet lived.”

“The Arethousans took me prisoner,” she said, astonished to find herself crying. “Oh, it is good to see you, Sister Rosvita. Are all of you here?”

“All of us, by the grace of God. And one more—” She looked back over her shoulder to a woman sitting alone on a rock beside the pool, as might an outcast.

“That’s Princess Sapientia!”

“So it is.”

“Ai, God! What happened to her retinue?”

“We’re not sure. She rarely speaks, but it appears that King Geza divorced her and abandoned her.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I saw him speak the words just before the Arethousans took me.”

“For your Eagle’s Sight?” Rosvita released her while the others clustered around, saying little but smiling like fools.

“For my Eagle’s Sight,” replied Hanna bitterly. “Which has abandoned me rather like King Geza abandoned Princess Sapientia. How came you here? Who are these others?”