Wind shook the cottage and rain lashed the walls and roof. Surely no one would venture out to this isolated hillside in such weather. Why had she responded to the summons? For weeks now they had been led through the hinterlands of Karrone and northernmost Aosta like idiot sheep. Lured by signs as elusive as sparrows, she found at each turn that these mysterious messages fluttered away just when she thought she might grab hold of them. But she had nowhere else to go. She could not return to Mainni, not yet, not now. The courts of King Henry of Wendar and Varre and Queen Marozia (her aunt) of Karrone were closed to her; they would only detain her again and send her south to Darre to await trial before the skopos. Many lesser nobles might take her in for a month or two, not yet knowing of the accusations made against her, but she hated living on the sufferance of others.
If she could not clear herself, if the false and misguided testimony of others was to be used against her, then she would simply have to bide her time until she could rid herself of her enemies. Until that time, she followed such will-o’-the-wisps as had led her here, to this Lady-forsaken cottage on a windswept barren hillside on the southern slopes of the Alfar Mountains. They had only reached the spot with difficulty; poor Heribert had had to walk alongside her mule up the rugged path that led here. Technically, she supposed, this cottage rested in the queendom of Karrone or perhaps on the northern boundaries of one of the Aostan principalities. But it was so isolated that in truth no princely jurisdiction reigned here, only that of wind and rain and the distant mercy of God in Unity.
The latch snicked open. A gust of wind slammed the old door so hard against the wall that one of the door planks splintered. Heribert yelped out loud. He lifted a hand to point.
She rose slowly. Biscop Antonia, granddaughter and niece of queens, did not show fear. Even if she were afraid.
A thing loomed outside the door, not one of the dark spirits such as she had learned to compel but something other, something made of wind and light, shuddering as rain rippled its outlines and wind shredded its edges into tatters. It wore the form of an angel, of which humankind is but a pale wingless copy, and yet there was no holy Light in its eyes. By this means Antonia knew the creature was a daimone coerced down from a higher sphere to inhabit the mortal world for a brief measure of time.
If a human hand could control such as this, then certainly she could learn to compel such creatures. She gestured Heribert to silence, for he was mumbling frantic prayers under his breath as he clutched his holy amulet.
“What is it you want?” she demanded. “Whom do you serve?”
The thing stretched as if against a hidden mesh of fine netting. I serve none, but I am bound here until this deed is accomplished.
It had no true mouth but only the simulacrum of a mouth, a seeming, as its corporeal body was obviously more seeming than physical matter. The rain, now waning, fell through it as through a sieve. Beyond it, through it, she saw the stunted trees and wild gorse as through thick glass, distorted by the curves and waves of its form. It was as restless as the wind, chafing in a confined space. Antonia was entranced. Into how small a space could such a creature be bound until it screamed with agony? Would fire cause it to burn? Would iron and the metals of earth dispel it or obliterate it entirely? Would water wash it away or only, like the rain, pour through it as a river pours through a fisherman’s net?
“Do you not serve that person who has bound you?” she demanded.
I am not meant to be trapped here below the moon, it answered, but not with anger or frustration such as she understood. Such as humankind felt. It had no emotion in its voice she could comprehend.
“Ai, Lady,” murmured Heribert behind her, his voice made delicate by terror.
“Hush,” she said without turning to look at him. His sensitivity irritated her at times; this was one of them. Sometimes boys took too much of their nature from their father’s transitory and fragile seed and not enough from their mother’s generative blood. “It cannot hurt us. It does not belong to this sphere, as any idiot can see. Now come forward and stand beside me.”
He obeyed. It had been a long time since he had failed to obey her. But he shook. Those pale, soft, perfectly manicured hands clutched at her cloak and then, sensing her displeasure, he merely sniveled and twisted the rings on his fingers as though the fine gems encrusted in gold—gems dug from the heavy earth—could protect him from this aery being.
“What is it you wish, daimone?” she asked the creature, and it swayed at the utterance of the word, “daimone,” for any being, mortal or otherwise, is constrained by another’s knowledge of its name and thus its essence.