The progress of the hunters sounded a steady din through the litter and deadwood on the forest floor. Breaking through a dense growth of bracken, they flushed a covey of partridges. The king’s huntsmen laid about themselves and clubbed some down, dragging the dogs still with the company out of reach of the birds. Ahead, braches belled.
“Deer!” cried a forester. The chase was on.
Now the forward group itself split into two groups, King Henry and the older nobles falling behind to leave pride of chase to the younger adults. Sapientia rode to the fore, Liath laboring after her on a gelding more hardy than agile. Lord Amalfred, Lady Brigida, young lords and ladies shouting and whooping in their excitement, all pressed forward. Theophanu came up beside Liath, face intent. The panther clasp sparked in a flash of sunlight through the branches. She glanced back over her shoulder and, reflexively, Liath did as well. Hugh was behind them, but his presence was curiously lost to Liath as if for once he was not aware of her at all. His head was bent over his saddle and his lips moved soundlessly. With his left hand he clasped a tiny gold reliquary hung on a golden chain around his neck.
Sapientia disappeared into bracken. Lord Amalfred’s horse shied back, refusing to cross through the heavy growth of fern, and he kicked it forward, angry.
“Your Highness!” A forester called out to Theophanu. “A path! This way!”
Faced with a wall of bracken or a clear, if narrow, path, Liath chose to ride after Theophanu, but the princess’ horse was superior to hers in these woods, fearless and surefooted. Theophanu forged ahead as if she meant to catch up and pass her royal sister. As if she meant to have for herself what her sister wanted to possess.
“Out of the way! Out of the way!” cried a man behind her, and Liath just got her gelding aside before a group of some dozen young nobles including Lord Amalfred pounded past on the track. “I see the deer!”
“A deer! A deer!” The others took up the cry.
Liath saw it, too, a handsome doe springing away before them, bolting through the trees. Amalfred and the others pulled up, taking aim.
Except it wasn’t a deer. It was Theophanu, riding farther ahead of them into trees still wreathed with morning mist. It was an illusion. The memory of Gent hit her so like a blow that her hands went lax on the reins and she gasped aloud. An illusion that only she could see through. Even Sanglant, who wanted to believe, had not dared to.
She screamed. “Halt! Don’t shoot!” She yelled as loudly as she was able. “Your Highness! Say something! Pull up your horse!”
Did her warning reach that far?
Theophanu slowed her horse and began to turn, as if she had heard….
“Ai, Lady!” cried one of the noblemen. “It’s slowed. Now’s your chance!” He turned to wave a new rider forward. “Princess Sapientia. Come forward.”
But Lord Amalfred had already drawn down. “This one is mine!”
“Stop!” cried Liath, but Hugh rode up beside her and set his hand on her arm. Her voice vanished.
Theophanu was still turned, raising a hand in acknowledgment; there was an instant when her face registered the tableau behind her. Her expression froze in horror.
Amalfred shot. Another lord shot. The arrows sped toward their target.
She would not be powerless this time! She wrenched her arm out of Hugh’s grasp. Please God let her bring fire through her eyes alone. Let the fire in the vision of the burning stone pass through her as through a doorway, as though a daimone of the fiery sphere above had reached down below the moon and pressed its blazing touch onto the speeding wood of the arrows.
Both arrows ignited in midair. Theophanu threw herself off her horse. The wailing and shouting that deafened Liath now was its own conflagration.
“My God, the princess!”
“A miracle! A miracle!”
“Lord Amalfred, what meant you by this?”
“But I saw a deer. These others—!”
As all protested that they, too, had seen a deer, Sapientia began to sob noisily. Liath threw her reins over the horse’s head, dismounted, and ran forward; she stubbed her toes on a log, jumped over another only to have her boots sink into the dense litter of fallen and rotting leaves in her haste to reach Theophanu.
The princess’ hair lay in disarray, braids fallen loose, her riding tunic twisted at her hips, her gold-braided leggings ripped at the knees, her face scraped and stained with dirt. She shoved herself up and reached for her knife as Liath dropped down beside her. “Have you come to finish the job at her bidding?”
Liath threw up her hands to show she was empty-handed. “Your Highness! Are you hurt?”