Child of Flame (Page 151)

“Well, then.” He hesitated again. She studied him. He wasn’t handsome or ugly but rather comfortably in between, with the broad shoulders and thick arms of a soldier. He was, perhaps, the same age as the king but rather more weathered by the hardships of life in the infantry, and if he stumbled with his words it was because he’d had a soldier’s education, not a cleric’s. “Think of a rose blooming all of a sudden in your heart.” He gestured toward the silent forest, all chill and white, a sea of winter. “Think of a rose blooming there, in the snow, where you’d never think to see it. Wouldn’t that be a miracle? Wouldn’t you know that you’d stumbled upon a little sliver of God’s truth?”

“I suppose so.”

He spoke so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him. “A holy one walks among us. But we mustn’t speak of it, because God hasn’t chosen to make Her messenger known yet. But the rose bloomed in my heart, Eagle. I have no better way to explain it, how I knew it was truth when I heard the preaching about the Sacrifice and Redemption. The rose bloomed, and I’d rather die than turn my back now. I’d rather die.”

There wasn’t a breath of wind.

“Those seem ill-chosen words, friend, considering our situation,” said Hanna finally, not unkindly.

“We’ve had poor luck, haven’t we? God is testing us.”

“So They are.” The cold seeped down into her bones. She chafed her hands to warm them. “But Lord Dietrich was stricken down and died when he professed the heresy.”

“I think he was poisoned by the biscop.” Gotfrid spoke these words so calmly that Hanna expected the sky to fall, but it did not. All she heard was the muffled noises of their party, hidden among the firs: a low mutter of conversation, the sting of smoke in her nostrils from a fire, the stamp and restless whickering of the horses. Twice she heard Lord Lothar’s hacking cough.

“That’s a bold charge,” she said at last.

“You think so, too,” he said grimly, “or else you’d leap to her defense. I think she poisoned him because she saw he wouldn’t back down. He was the strongest of us in faith. She hoped to frighten the rest of us into recanting.” He leaned toward her, close enough that his breath stirred her hair. “Don’t think there weren’t others among the crowd who had heard and believed. They hold the truth in their hearts as well.”

“But hadn’t the courage to step forward.”

“Well,” he said generously, “not everyone is ready to die, if it comes to that. Someone has to survive to spread the truth, don’t they?”

She chuckled, finding it amusing that they could debate matters of heresy while running for their lives through this vale of ice. “I like living, and I wouldn’t mind a nice hot cup of spiced wine right now.”

“Well, lass, truly, so would we all.”

But back in their refuge, there wasn’t anything but stale bread. She did manage to sleep curled up in her cloak until one of the soldiers woke her for a turn at watch. Within the shelter of the trees, with so many bodies crowded together, it had actually gotten not warm, of course, but bearable. As she pushed her way out through the stinging branches, she felt all the warmth sucked away by a raw cold so profound that for a moment she thought it might seize her heart. She came to the edge of the thick stand of trees and at once floundered into a thigh-high drift of new snow, all powdery soft. Snow slipped down her leggings to freeze her ankles and toes. She staggered back into the shelter of the firs and tried to make sense of the scene before her.

She heard it, and felt it, more than saw it, because it was still too dark to see. She tasted that flavor the air has when snow falls thick and fast and the clouds weigh so heavily that one knows a blizzard is on the way. Flakes settled on her nose, and cheeks, and eyelids, and melted away.

Ai, God, if the Quman didn’t kill them, then they would freeze to death in the coming storm.

A thread of falling snow, dislodged from a branch just to her right, hissed down past her ear. She went as still as a rabbit who has just sensed the shadow of an owl. Something was out there.

Beyond the veil of snow, wraithlike figures darted forward among the trees.

Quman.

Nay, not Quman at all. There was just enough light now, a hint of dawn, that she could make out their outlines: Slender and pale, these creatures walked rather than rode. Dark hoods obscured their faces, and where their feet brushed the snow they did not sink down through the light powder, nor did they leave tracks. They were shadows.