She scanned the vale. In the shadows to the east she saw now a peculiar wagon built into a tiny house. Even veiled by shadows its colors gleamed. It alone of every object she had glimpsed in the last ten or twelve days was not coated with a layer of ashy dust. Either it had been washed clean, or the dust could find no purchase there. Sorcery works in strange ways.
“It’s Sorgatani!”
Her tongue was dry. Her vision blurred, and she swayed as the exhaustion brought on by their long walk combined with a flash of anxiety to make her knees weak and her hands damp. She had yearned to meet this mysterious stranger again and yet she feared to meet one who had laid such a frightening obligation on Hanna’s head. What did it mean to be the luck of a Kerayit shaman? It seemed she was about to find out.
“As for the others,” said Rosvita, “there in that wagon resides the pagan sorcerer we are not allowed to see. This troop of soldiers is led by Lady Bertha, who is Margrave Judith’s second daughter. They accompanied Prince Sanglant’s wife to the shores of the Middle Sea to combat the Holy Mother Anne. It seems they emerged from the crown into the midst of Anne’s camp and were set upon. In the battle, Liath was separated from the others and lost. The rest escaped. They have wandered these lands since the cataclysm, seeking news of Liath, if she yet lives.”
These words flowed past Hanna, who heard little and comprehended less as she stared at the wagon and its bright patterned walls, where lion and antelope and horse figures loped into an unseen but understood vista beyond the sight of mortal kind, known only to those who have walked between the worlds and mounted the pole of the world tree into the heavens. The utterance of Liath’s name acted as a hook and yanked her back to herself, a fish floundering out of water.
“Liath was here? What happened to her?”
“That you must ask the one you call Sorgatani. Fewer than half of Lady Bertha’s soldiers survived the battle. Come, you are wanted.”
A powerfully built woman strode up. She carried herself with the arrogance of noble birth, a thing so unconscious that Hanna knew at once this soldierly-looking female must be Margrave Judith’s daughter. There was little resemblance between her and her mother, and even less to her beautiful half brother.
“This is the Eagle?”
“I am Hanna, my lady. I serve the Emperor Henry.”