This went on all morning and past midday, when folk from outlying farms arrived to pay their respects and deliver their rents or taxes.
In the late afternoon Alain took his leave. He knelt before his aunt and said the traditional words: “It is customary for a conversus to stand vigil at the gates, Aunt, to prove his desire to enter into the service of Our Lord and Lady.”
“Go with my blessing, child, and with the blessing of your father.” She kissed him on the head.
He rose and made his good-byes to the rest of the family. Three of Aunt Bel’s children were now adults with children of their own, so there were many farewells. Last of all, he gave the baby a kiss, hugged his aunt a final time and, with a shake of his shoulders, set off.
By now the wind had picked up. The netting shed doors banged restlessly against the hex poles. A misting rain began to fall. Glancing behind, he saw Chatelaine Dhuoda hastily moving her table into one of the houses that bordered the common, to do the rest of her business under shelter.
The rain began to fall in earnest as he passed through the livestock fence that bordered the village and set a steady pace for the three hours’ walk back to the monastery.
The wind increased as he climbed the path that led up the ridge. Dirt churned into mud and stuck to his soft leather shoes, seeping through the stitches. His small pack scarcely gave him enough ballast as he reached the dragon’s back height and headed out into the full force of the wind. Now he was alone, only the wide swell of the bay, choppy and white-frothed, below him. The high forest hills stretched out behind. Both the village and the monastery were hidden by the ridge’s convoluted path along the middle rim of the bay.
Alain had to lean forward into the wind to make headway. He wondered briefly about the ship he had seen yesterday. Was it caught outside the shelter of the bay, or had it put into one of the many island coves to wait out the storm? He turned his face into the wind and looked seaward. He gasped. Amazement stopped him in his tracks.
The storm was coming in, fast. He had never seen such a storm as this.
Half the bay was gone, obliterated from view. A flat bank of mist scudded toward him, pursued by a dense curtain of dark cloud that engulfed everything in its path. In moments he was surrounded, fogged in. He could not see three strides before or behind himself. He hunkered down before the first fierce gusts hit, turned his back on the bay, and bent his head.
The wind roared as if the dragon beneath this petrified dragon’s back had come to life. Even crouched, he fell forward to his knees from the force of it. Roiling black clouds girdled him. Bitter, hard rain drenched him, hammering in sheets. Between one breath and the next he was soaked to the skin.
This was not natural rain.
Even as he thought it, the pounding rain ceased entirely, although the wind did not slacken. Surely this was the punishment sent on him for betraying, in his heart, the pledge given in his name to the service of Our Lord and Lady. Or else it was a trial.
He struggled to his feet and turned again into the gale. Despite everything, despite his own desire, he would reach the monastery. He would not shame his father and aunt. The wind tore at his hair, stinging his eyes. His lips, wet half with salt spray and half with cold rain, parched in the harsh current of air that whirlpooled around him.
The fog lightened. An eerie light glowed down the straight road that led along the dragon’s back height. An unearthly presence, it grew closer, and broader, dispelling the fog as it went… but only around itself. He saw with a strange kind of distant tunneling sight that the storm closed back around once the light passed. He smelled spring blossoms and the fresh blood of slaughter.
A rider approached. Armed in bright mail, it guided its horse forward at a sedate walk, untroubled by the raging wind. Alain thought about running, but it was so brief a thought that it was ripped away on the air almost as quickly as it formed. Because he had to stare.
The horse was beautiful, as white as untouched snow, almost blinding, and the woman—
He could not have moved even if he had tried. She reined her warhorse in beside him. She was a woman of middle age, scarred on the face and hands, her boots muddied and scuffed, her coat of mail patched here and there with gleaming new rings of iron. Her long sword, sheathed in leather, swayed in front of him. A battered, round shield hung by her knee, tied to the saddle. She shifted in the saddle to examine him. They stood in dead calm. Three strides beyond the storm raged around them.
Her gaze was at once distant and utterly piercing. If her eyes had color, he could not make it out. They seemed as black as a curse to him. He stared up at her, and a cold fear gripped his heart.
