'Hush, Daughter," murmured Rosvita, squeezing her hand. "We are in good company. They will not let us come to harm."

For an eternity they moved through a darkness that had direction and space only because now and again the flow of air would shift and faint scents or stinks touch them before fading away: rotten eggs, yeast, the sting of an iron forge, lichen and, strangely, salt water. Mercifully, the floor remained level. No one tripped or ran into anything, although they could not see their own feet much less any landmark around them.

Soon, a steady, labored wheezing drifted into audibility, like a blacksmith's bellows or a man stricken by lung fever struggling to breathe.

'So might a sleeping dragon sound," said Fortunatus out of the darkness, "as some poor deluded treasure hunter crept up on it."

Hilaria laughed. "So might it, indeed, had we such a creature hidden in this labyrinth. It is no dragon, Brother, but something stranger and more unexpected."

The faintest brush of color limned the walls, shading blackness into a rainbow of subtle grays. The tunnel down which they walked split at a crossroads, branching off in five directions, but Diocletia led them toward the light, toward the whistling wheeze.

'God save us," said Gerwita faintly, pressing up behind Rosvita as the tunnel opened into a cavern no larger than a village church, the rock walls marked with odd striations, ribbons of color painted onto the rock.

Here, the nuns had constructed a crude living quarters. Four pallets lay along one wall, three neatly made with feather bedding and one heaped up untidily. At the single table and bench a thin woman wearing tattered nun's robes sat fretfully twisting her hands; she did not look up as they entered. Three medium-sized chests, enough to store clothing or a small library of scrolls, sat beneath the table. j't't dozen assorted pots and amphorae lined the far wall, half lost in shadow, although Rosvita found it remarkable that she could see at all. Two oil lamps rested on a rock shelf in the cavern wall, but neither one was lit.

'What is making the light?" Hanna murmured.

'What is making that noise?" asked Fortunatus.

The untidy pallet stirred, like a beast coming alive. "Have they come safely?"

'God be praised!" Rosvita rushed heedlessly across the cavern to kneel beside the pallet. "Mother Obligatia! God is merciful! You are still alive."

'Sister Rosvita!" A painfully thin hand emerged, shaking, from under a blanket. Rosvita grasped it, careful to hold lightly so that she might not crush those ancient bones. "I had prayed to see you again, but I confess I did not hope that God would bless us so. We are prisoners here, but against what enemy we do not know. Have you come to rescue us?"

Rosvita laughed bitterly. Obligatia looked so ill that it was impossible to understand how someone so frail could still live except through stubbornness, a sense of duty, or the simple inability to give up hope. Age had worn her skin to a dry fragility; a touch might crumble it to dust.

The others ventured cautiously into the cavern, spreading out so they wouldn't feel cramped, glancing around nervously, looking for the source of the light and that constant wheezing whistle. Sister Diocletia leaned down beside the seated woman and spoke to her ir an undertone. It was Sister Petra, the librarian and scribe. She lookec so changed, as though half of her soul had fled, leaving the rest behind in a broken vessel.

'Pray tell me what has transpired, Mother Obligatia. Why have you fled the convent? Where are the others?"

'There are things we never dreamed of that still walk the Earth although they are mercifully hidden to our sight most of the time. Pray that it remain so. We have seen-" That strong voice faltered. body was weak, but her gaze remained sharp and solid, fixed on vita. "We have seen terrible things, Sister."

Look!" said Hanna from the other side of the cavern. "It's the lichen that gives off a glow."

'I have gone over the events so many times that I begin to feel as though I have lived through them a hundred times or more. Yet first, Sister Rosvita, tell me. We sent poor Paloma, that good girl, to Darre to seek you. Did she ever find you there?"

'God have mercy on her. She found us, but she was murdered. We had no way to send word to you. Nor do we know who killed her, or why. We can only guess."

The sigh that escaped Mother Obligatia's lips whispered out like an echo to the rhythmic wheeze that serenaded them: schwoo schwhaa schwoo schwhaa. "I feared as much. I knew she would not abandon us. I pray she rests at peace in the Chamber of Light with Our Mother and Father of Life." She murmured a prayer, and Rosvita joined her, the words falling easily from her tongue. How many times had she said the prayer over the dead?

Too many.

'After that a cleric came. She sought access to our library, saying she came from the schola in Darre to examine old chronicles. We had no reason to distrust her."

'You do not think she came to study old chronicles in the library?" Rosvita asked, rearranging the bolster that allowed the old woman to lie somewhat propped up. Obligatia grunted in pain as Rosvita helped her sit up.

'The good sisters move me frequently," she said, "yet still I have sores from being bedridden. Yet is it not a just punishment for my blindness?"

'Your blindness?"

'She called herself Sister Venia."

Heriburg and Fortunatus had crept forward to listen.

'I recall no such cleric," said Heriburg.

'The name seems passing familiar," said Fortunatus. "There are so many clerics in the palace schola, but I believe a woman who went by that name served the skopos."

Obligatia's lips pulled up, but not in a smile. "I know she did not. She came to kill us. She murdered poor Sister Lucida and used her warm blood to summon a creature that had no earthly form or substance and a stench like iron. This thing she sent to kill us, or to kill me, I suppose, although the only one it killed was Sister Sindula. It consumed Sindula as though it were fire, leaving only her scorched bones. May God have mercy on her." A frail hand sketched the Circle of Unity in the air. "Yet I believe I was Sister Venia's target all along They know who I am, and they will stop at nothing to murder me.'

'So be it. I have no kind words in which to tell you this, Mother Obligatia. I found out what happened to your daughter."

Obligatia shut her eyes. A tear squeezed out from the closed lids sliding down to dissolve in the whorl of one ear. "My daughter," she said softly. "Even after so many years, I still grieve for what I lost."

How did one speak, in the face of such sorrow, knowing that the next words would only compound sadness? She had to go on. Without the truth being laid bare, they had no hope of winning free.

'Your daughter is now the skopos. She is called Anne, and she is a mathematici, a powerful sorcerer."

'My daughter." The words brushed the air as might a feather, a tickle, ephemeral. Obligatia was silent for a long time, but she wept no more tears. "Then it is my daughter who wishes to make sure I am dead."

Rosvita looked up to see Fortunatus' dear face close by, pale with concern. "We should have listened to Prince Sanglant. He warned us against Anne and her cabal of sorcerers before we traveled south to Aosta. We did not heed him."

'How could we have guessed?" said Fortunatus. "Do not biame yourself, Sister."

'Now that they have raised Taillefer's granddaughter to a position worthy of her eminence, she fears what I know," said Obligatia. "What I am."

'Perhaps," said Rosvita. "But do not think others elevated Anne. She raised herself. When Holy Mother Clementia died, may she rest at peace in the Chamber of Light, Anne came before the king and queen and displayed her power to them. In this way, she seduced them into supporting her election as skopos. She told him-" She recalled the words as clearly as if they had been spoken an hour ago. That was the price she paid for her prodigious memory: that every painful moment she had ever endured might be relived with awful clarity at unlocked for and unwelcome intervals. "She said, 'Without my aid, you will have no empire to rule.' "

'You have a powerful memory, Sister."

'I spent two years in the dungeon of the skopos. I had time to meditate, to pray, and to read back through my book of memory."

Yet this time had allowed her to complete, in her mind, her long neglected History. It had allowed her to master the skill that might allow them to escape their current predicament.

The wheeze sucked in and out, and by now she recognized on her skin the slight pressure in and suction out of air that accompanied the sound, not a breeze but more like the action of a bellows shifting the air. The temperature within this cavern remained cool, yet not as cold as the chill night would be outside. Fearing for their lives, they remained in more comfort than Hugh's men. The irony made her smile.

'I had another child," said Obligatia into their silence. "Another child." She faltered, her voice trembling as badly as her hands. She groped down the blanket that covered her slight body until she found Rosvita's hand and clutched it tightly. "What became of Bernard? I saw him- 'You saw him?"

'Nay, nay, I saw him in his child."

'You saw his child?"

Sister Hilaria returned with a bucket of water, which she set down beside the abbess. Kneeling next to the pallet, she dipped a linen cloth into the water and bathed the old woman's forehead and throat. "You are tiring her, Sister Rosvita," she scolded.

'So I must, if we are to survive this. What do you mean, Mother? How could you have seen his child? If this man is the one I think he is, he had no child."

Hilaria looked up sharply. "She does not lie."

'Nor do I mean to say she does-"

'Hear me first," said Mother Obligatia gently. "When the demon came for us, we knew we would all die. It consumed Sister Sindula as easily as we breathe, and nothing we could do would stop it from devouring us as well. But there appeared out of the air a daimone. I do not believe it was an angel. It was a woman with wings of flame, yet one who bore an earthly bow and arrow. It was she who pierced the creature with her dart and banished it from Earth. It was she who warned us to bind the sorcerer who had attacked us. It was she-"

She began to weep quietly, unable to go on in the face of overwhelming grief. Hilaria dabbed cooling water on her forehead, murmuring words of comfort.

Rosvita burned. Shame afflicted her, to witness this woman's sorrow and yet exult in it. She was so close. In her heart, in her bones, she understood that she had suffered in the dungeon, risked everything, to arrive at this moment.

'She saved our lives. Yet I knew her. I knew her." Obligatia pushed the damp cloth away from her forehead. "I pray you, Hilaria. I will not die in this hour." By the set line of her frail jaw and the stubborn and fixed nature of her gaze, Rosvita saw it was this memory that had kept her alive for so long. She had recovered the strength of her voice; she had mastered her sadness, as must all those who live to a great age, for otherwise they would have died of grief long ago.

'I saw her, Sister Rosvita. I saw Bernard's child. I saw him in her face. I do not know what she is, where she came from, or where she went. Can you explain what happened?"

The others had gathered close by to listen, struck dumb, it seemed, by the intensity of Obligatia's testimony and her question.

But not every one of them.

'You saw Liath." The Eagle pressed forward to stand beside Rosvita, towering there with her robust figure and her pale, northern coloring, her hair as colorless as snow. "I've seen her, too, these past two or three years, glimpses of her but nothing more than that. She had wings of flame. I thought they were visions, hallucinations. But now I have to believe that what Prince Sanglant said is true. She was taken away, up into the heavens, by fiery daimones."

'I do not forget how we heard her voice manifest out of a whirlpool of air," said Fortunatus grimly. "That day when Prince Sanglant returned to the king's progress. That day when we saw that he had allowed his daughter to be suckled by a daimone."

'When did that happen?" Hanna demanded of Fortunatus.

'Before he rode east. Before you met up with him."

'Yes," she agreed thoughtfully. "That would make sense. It would fit with what you and Sister Rosvita have told me of your own history, and conclusions."

'Liath is Anne's daughter," Rosvita said, as if hitting the nail hard enough would drive it into impenetrable rock. "How can she be the daughter of Anne, yet look like Bernard, if the story Prince Sanglant told us is true? If only one of her parents is human?"

'It could be true if Holy Mother Anne is the one who is lying," said Hanna.

For a moment there was silence, except for the wheeze, and Gerwi-ta's sniffling, and Ruoda's cough.

If the Holy Mother were lying.

Hanna went on, her tone like ice. "Why shouldn't she lie? If she needed Liath, and everyone who knew her, to believe that Liath was descended from Emperor Taillefer? I knew Bernard. He loved his daughter. And they looked alike. Even though she was burned brown on her skin, any fool could see they were father and daughter, just as a puppy or foal may bear the markings of its sire."

'My grandchild," murmured Obligatia. "Can it be true? Bernard had a daughter? Can it be true?" How cruel the look of hope on her face. "Does he live still, my son?"

Hanna knelt beside the pallet. She was not a beautiful woman, more strong than handsome, yet her expression became so suffused with compassion that it shone from her in the manner of all true beauty, born of the inner heart and not the outer seeming. "I am sorry, Mother. He died years ago trying to save his daughter from those who pursued her. I saw his dead body."

'My son." The words trailed into nothing, but Obligatia did not weep. Perhaps she had no more strength for weeping.

'He was a good man, with no more frailties than any one of us suffer, and many virtues. He helped others until there was nothing left for himself. But he feared those who sought to find him and Liath. He did the best he could. He loved her."

Schwoo schwaa schwoo schwaa.

Had they fallen under a spell? To Rosvita, it seemed they had. No one moved or spoke.

Only Mother Obligatia was strong enough to break that spell. She had survived too long to be overmastered.

'Why does my daughter wish to kill me, Sister Rosvita?"

Rosvita glanced at Fortunatus, at Hanna, but they only shook their heads. "I do not know. I can only guess. She has not given up. A presbyter of noble birth waits below the rock. Tomorrow at dawn he will send soldiers up the north face to capture us."

'He cannot reach us here."

'How can we sustain ourselves, trapped within the stone with no source of food or drink? How have you survived these past two years?"

'Where is Teuda?" Obligatia asked.

'She is coming, Mother," replied Hilaria. "She has seen to the prisoner, and gathered enough bread for everyone."

'Help me stand," said Obligatia.

With both Rosvita and Hilaria to support her, the old abbess was able to rise. She insisted on being helped to the bench, although the effort clearly taxed her. Sister Petra, still squeezing her hands anx iously and murmuring in an undertone, fell silent when Obligatja patted her soothingly on the arm as one might a nervous hound.

'Sister Petra has not been well since that awful day," said Obli-gatia without apparent irony, considering her own weakened condition. Yet her expression had such clarity and strength of will that Rosvita could not help but contrast the old woman's energy and evident sanity with the bewildered gaze of Petra as she stared at the shadows, mouth moving but no words coming out. "Sister Carita died soon after we fled here, may her spirit rest at peace in the Chamber of Light. Hilaria, Diocletia, and Teuda have remained rocks."

'God granted us strength," said Diocletia, who had risen in order to give Obligatia room to sit on the bench. "We serve you as faithfully in this life as we will serve God in the next, Mother."

Obligatia bowed her head, aware of the burden of their loyalty. Rosvita, looking up, saw her own dear companions gazing at her with that same dreadful and wonderful steadfastness. Like Lavas-tine's hounds, they had chosen with their hearts and now could never be swayed.

'Pray God we are worthy of their loyalty," she murmured to herself, but Obligatia's hearing had not suffered.

'Amen," the old woman whispered. She braced her hands on the table and with an effort pushed herself up to stand as Rosvita hurried to steady her with a hand under her elbow. "In this way I maintain my strength. My task on this Earth is not finished. I have a few more things left to do."

'Here is Teuda." Diocletia hurried to a passageway that struck into the rock opposite the tunnel through which they had entered. She met there the lay sister whom Rosvita recalled as a gardener. Teuda carried a large clay pitcher filled with water and a basket, which she set on the table. It was filled with white cakes shaped like small loafs of bread but formed of a substance Rosvita did not recognize. It had no smell. Obligatia led the blessing over drink and food, sat, and indicated that Teuda should pass the bread around. When Rosvita bit into the cake handed to her, she discovered it had no taste as well as no scent, its consistency firm but not hard, with some give when you pressed on it without being spongy.

'What is it?" asked Hanna, too suspicious to eat.

'We call it bread," said Teuda. "Do not turn your nose up at it, my friend. It comes to us as a gift. Without it, we would all have died of starvation months ago."

'A gift from whom?" asked Hanna, unappeased. "Sister Hilaria said there are creatures that bide in the earth. Has this something to do with them?"

As with one thought, Teuda, Hilaria, and Diocletia looked at Bother Obligatia. Only poor Sister Petra did not respond; she nibbled at her cake as might a mouse, glancing up frequently at the shadows as though expecting a cat to spring.

'I heard a tale once," said Ruoda, who had been silent for so long because of the grippe that afflicted her, who had struggled to keep moving although she was feverish and ill. "I heard it said that the wealth of the Salian kings comes from a deep mine that strikes far into the earth, where lies a treasure-house of gold. Or iron. No man can suffer the deep shafts and live, so they say. They say that the Salians have made slaves of a kind of creature lower than humankind but above the common beasts, who burrow in the earth and seek silver and gold."

Obligatia nodded. "Long ago, creatures carved this labyrinth out of the rock. It runs deep. We have explored only a tiny portion of it. Paloma used to bring rolls of string down and unravel them behind her, so she could find her way back, yet even she discovered merely how much lay beyond our knowledge. What cunning and skill they must have had to construct such a vast network!"

'Do you mean to say that all this, and more, is not natural? That it was hewn from the rock?"

'Just as the convent was, yet even there the founding sisters merely expanded on what already existed. This labyrinth is, we believe, but the top layer of the onion. We will never know the truth." Gerwita began to weep again, her nerves stretched so fine that any least brush set them jangling.

'Pray go on!" said Rosvita. "What mystery lies beneath the rock?

Truly, I stand amazed."

Eating the bread had restored Obligatia enough that she could sit straighter and sip at the metallic-tasting water Teuda poured into a wooden cup.