Clouds massed, black and brooding, over the hills and the great length of forest that bordered the village of Sant Laon. They sat, almost as if they were waiting, and the wind died down and tendrils of mist and spatterings of rain were all that came of them through the day. At evening mass, at a twilight brought early by the lowering clouds, Deacon Joceran spoke solemnly of storms called up by unnatural means, and she warned all the villagers to bar their doors and shutters that night and to hang an iron knife or pot above the door and a sprig of rosemary above the window.

"No matter who knocks, invite no one in. May the Father and Mother of Life bless us all this night."

So it was that not one soul saw the woman ride into town just ahead of the first fierce lashings of the storm. No one but Daniella.

The back door to the inn slammed shut and set the baby to crying, again, but it was only Uncle Heldric. His cloak seemed to sparkle in the lantern light of the hearth room of the farm house.

"Lord and Lady have mercy," said Aunt Marguerite, signing the circle of unity above her breast. "It looks like snow and ice on your cloak."

"And this midway through summer," said Uncle as he brushed the stain of snow off his shoulders. "'Tisn't a natural storm, Deacon was right in that." He cast his gaze round the room and found Daniella, where she sat on a stool in one shadowed corner, trying not to be noticed while she spun a hank of wool into yarn. "Girl, you take Baby upstairs and send down your brother. Seven of the sheep have got out and we must get they in before we lose the beasts to whatever walks in this storm. Night's coming on soon."

With the shutters closed and only a thin line of light showing around the cracks of the door and the window, it seemed like night already. A wind howled, whistling along the roof. Smoke from the hearth curled up toward the smoke hole in the roof, and a few flakes of snow spun into view in the patch of sky visible through the hole, only to melt at once, vanishing into the heat.

"I'll go," said Daniella. Upstairs lurked many things, not least her cousin Robert who had been pestering her for months now, ever since her first bleeding came on her, and anyway, unlike her brother Matthias, she wasn't scared of storms. She liked them. They had life in them, even if Deacon Joceran warned that some storms had demons and other unGodly life swirling in their winds and rain. Better outside in a storm than trapped in here.

"Ach, well," said Uncle, knowing her well enough to forgive her impertinence. And she was better with the sheep, and not afraid of her own shadow, the way Matthias was. "You come, then. Put on a tunic over that. It's bitter cold out. And the sheep clipped and likely to freeze."

"It won't last," said Aunt, but she drew the circle again, not wishing to tempt the Evil Ones.

Uncle merely grunted and Daniella was quick to abandon the baby, who had stopped wailing in any case and was now busily tearing the hank of wool to shreds and stuffing bits of wool into its mouth.

"Matthias!" Aunt called loudly, through into the common room, where the ladder that reached the loft rested against one bowed wall of the long house. "Come and mind the baby."

Daniella gave one last shuddering glance at the baby and hurried outside after her uncle. That's what came of simple acts of kindness, of hiring a landless man to work a season for them because he was fairspoken and likeable and down on his luck. He had stayed the summer, worked hard for the harvest and the slaughtering, and then gone on his way. . .but it had been her cousin Dhuoda who had died giving birth to the child he had gotten on her, and who knew where he might have been by then. Perhaps getting another pretty young woman with child, and going on his way. And with Dhuoda's death the life had gone out of the house.

That was the way of it, Deacon Joceran had said, that the Lord and Lady gather to their breasts the best-loved and the sweetest, to sing as angels crowned by stars.

Outside, the slap of winter wind on her face shocked her. She stopped, staring at the dusting of snow and the long tendrils of fog that laced through the village longhouses, coating half-ripened apples with frost and withering the asperia blossoms where they grew in clumps by the back door. Then Uncle shouted at her, his words lost in a gust of wind. She hurried after him.

Four sheep had strayed out onto the commons, huddling together near the pond, and she herded them back toward the stables, carrying a half-grown lamb over her shoulders. A cloaked woman--Mistress Hilde--ran from the porch of the church toward her own house, hunched over an iron pot which she sheltered from the wind and the gentle fall of snow as if it were as precious as a casket containing the bones of a saint. Daniella smelled, like someone's breath brushing her face, a distant stench like a rotting carcass, but then the door into the stables banged open, caught by the wind, and she chivvied the sheep in under shelter. Her cousin Robert, closing the door behind her, brushed against her suggestively. She shook him off. The old sheepdog lay crouched in the corner nearest the door into the kitchen, whining. He had urinated in the corner, so frightened that he wouldn't even move off the wet straw.

"Gruff," she said, coaxingly, "Gruff, come here, old boy," but he wouldn't come to her.

"Scared the piss out of him," said Robert, thinking it a great joke, but even so she could hear the shake in his voice. From the other side of the wall, she heard Aunt scolding Matthias, and that made her angry, too. It wasn't Matthias's fault that he was sickly, and that he'd been the one five years ago to find their Da's body in the slough after the spring rains where he had been caught in the branches and dragged under water, drowned by angry water nithies. Even Deacon Joceran had said so, that it was their revenge on Da for him building a dam and draining the south portion of the marsh for a new field. Matthias had been plagued by twitching and nerves ever since.

The door slammed open, shuddering in a new gust of wind, and Uncle Heldric kicked a sheep in before him and passed a bawling lamb to Robert. "Still one missing, the black," he said. "She got past me, tore off into the woods." He glanced back behind him, and Daniella saw by the taut lines of his mouth and the glint of white in his eyes that he, too, was afraid, of the storm, of venturing so far away from the house, which was protected by iron and rosemary. An iron knife hung above the stable door, rosemary over the shutters that opened onto the trough.

"I'll go," she said, because she knew he would let her, however reluctantly, however guiltily. The holding would go to Robert, with perhaps a field left over for Matthias, but there would be nothing for her except the kettle, knife and wedding shawl that had been her mother's together with the length of green bridal cloth that Dhuoda had been embroidering in expectation of her own betrothal, whenever that might have taken place, though it never would now. Nothing else could she expect to receive from Heldric and Marguerite's family, hard as times were and burdened now with three orphans, except for a necklace of amber beads that Dhuoda had, with her dying breath, left to her cousin.

As if it were a luck charm, Daniella brushed her fingers over the necklace of beads where it lay beneath her tunic, together with the Holy Circle she had inherited from her mother's mother. Uncle Heldric handed her his cloak. She wrapped it around her shoulders and went back outside. Hunched down against the tearing wind, she walked out toward the scattering of trees, not truly a wood, so many had been cut down for firewood, that marked the farthest edge of the great forest that lay to the east.

The black sheep was hard to find, for by now it was full twilight and the ewe's coat blended in to the fog and the dark lean curves of tree trunks. But Daniella listened and heard a frightened bleating. Her feet knew the paths in this wood better perhaps than her eyes did, and she knew where the sheep wandered. . .down by the stream that wound through the wood and emptied at last into the marsh. Only one branch stung her face as she made her way through the wood and came out on the bank of the stream where the little ewe was poised between the trees and the steep slope that led down to the trickle of water and reeds that was all that was left of the stream in the summer heat.

There was no point in chasing it home. It would run off again. She lunged for it, grabbed its hind legs just as it bolted, and brought it hard to the ground, both of them together. It bleated, terrified, and voided all over, luckily missing her, but she could smell excrement and piss. The trees whispered in the wind, calling names, one name, like an old name in a dream. She got to her knees and wrestled the sheep up and over her shoulders. Unaccountably, the ewe calmed. Daniella looked up.

There, on the opposite bank of the stream, were not trees, though she had with that first swift glance thought them trees, so well did they blend in with the wood beyond.

They were creatures.

She stood rooted to the ground with terror.

Like rushes grown thick and tall, they loomed above her, whispering, dark shapes leaning over the stream like gigantic reeds bent down in a strong wind. They were darker than the twilight and an odor like hot iron swelled out from them. Their stirring and rustling made a noise like the thousands of leaves in a forest blown in a stiff wind, anchored by the distant ringing toll of a bell, caught below, as if their bodies--if they truly had bodies--rang on the earth with each step. They had no hands she could see, no faces, and yet she knew instinctively that they could both grasp and see. She took a single step back, slowly, and then a second, the poor ewe draped over her shoulders.

A sharp wind blew a flurry of snow from the heights of the pines down on her. As if lifting themselves on that wind, the creatures leapt and crossed the stream, twelve of them, at least. They brushed past her, and she smelled the liquid iron of the forge hot and stinging against her nostrils, and their whispering voices spoke a name into the wind and the sound of that name tolled on the air, like bells rung to pass a dying soul up through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light where it would come, at last, to rest.

"Liathano."

Then they passed her, oblivious to her, to the weakly bleating ewe, and were gone, on toward the village.

Toward the village!

Daniella, shorn abruptly of her fear, ran after them, but her feet followed the worn and familiar paths, and the creatures were gone, made invisible by the twilight and the tall length of trees or by their own arts, she could not know.

By now, the village was empty, every door shut, every shutter closed, only, here and there, the glint of light showing a fire or lantern within. Only, and alone in the huddle of buildings, the door to the church stood ajar. Perhaps, as Deacon Joceran had said, the Father and Mother of Life need fear no demons, no creatures sent by the Evil Ones. Perhaps Deacon dared not shut her doors, for fear of showing fear.

Then Daniella saw a horse, standing, head down, against the wall of the churchyard. Its coat was the gray of stone, and only the saddle and the saddle blanket, trimmed with silver, and the winking lure of the bridle gave it away. No one in Sant Laon owned such a horse or such fine tack. A moment later the right side door to the church opened a bit further and a strange hump-backed Thing scuttled out, took the reins of the horse, and coaxed it up the steps in toward the church.

To profane the church. . .

But with that thought she recognized that the Thing led its horse in to safety, what safety the church might afford it. She smelled iron, borne on the wind, and she turned slowly and saw the tall, drifting shapes milling round the commons pond, as if they had lost their prey--lost the scent--there, by the water. The Thing vanished into the church and the horse behind it. Before Daniella realized she had made the decision she settled the ewe, quiescent now, more firmly onto her shoulders and ran to the church, taking the steps two at a time. She pushed past the door just as the startled Thing reached to close the door.

Only, by the light of seven candles lit round the Altar and protected by glass jars, Daniella saw it was no Thing at all but a young woman, dark-haired and dark eyed, her skin dusky colored like bread baked too long in the oven, her back misshapen. The horse was a fine beast, big-boned but not enormous, with an intelligent head--a nobleman's mount. Tied on beside the saddlebags were a tasselled bowcase of leather embossed with griffins and a quiver full of arrows. A small shield painted black hung from the saddle. The woman wore a sword at her belt. In all things, she looked like a normal woman, except for her misshapen back and the sun-blackened color of her skin.

She looked at Daniella and then at the ewe, and she removed her hand from her sword. Moving, she slammed the door shut, and barred it.

"It will do no good," she said, clearly enough, though her words bore the accent of other, foreign lands, "but only gives us respite. They do not fear the House of Our Lady and Lord."

"Who are you?" asked Daniella, who was unaccountably not afraid of this stranger, though the woman clearly knew and expected the creatures who hunted abroad this night to follow her here. "What are those creatures? Are they hunting--" She hesitated.

"Yes," said the woman calmly enough, turning to care for the horse. Rain began to pound on the roof above, so loud that Daniella could barely hear her words. "They are hunting me. If there is a door out beyond the altar, you should go, flee to your house. They do not know of you. They will not see you. You can find shelter in your own place, if your Deacon is wise and has told you all to protect yourselves with iron and herbs." She shifted her grotesque shoulders and with a casual gesture unhooked and shrugged off her cloak.

Daniella stared into the clear, cool green eyes of a baby.

It had a thatch of black hair but skin as pale as burnished gold, and it stared at Daniella solemnly, like a great Queen or King, marking her. It did not cry, though rain pounded loudly on the roof and a flash of lightning lit the glass windows followed hard by the crack and roll of thunder. Daniella jumped, the thunder came so suddenly, when any natural storm would have given warning, rolling steadily toward them over the hills. The baby flinched not at all. Dhuoda's child cried at any loud noise.

The ewe bleated softly and struggled. Daniella knelt, eased it off her back, and held it tightly between her knees, gripping its neck with both hands.

Strange shadows played over the altar and the wooden benches that lined the nave. Outside, through the windows, Daniella saw lines of darkness, swaying under the rain. A bolt of lightning lit the commons, blazing, and there was a sharp snap and the smell of iron.

"Ah!" said the woman triumphantly.

But more lines of darkness crowded round the windows, seeking entrance, as if supple trees moved in on the church from the forest.

"They're getting stronger," said the woman. "Once this storm would have dissolved them. Now it barely hinders their approach." She turned her gaze on Daniella, a dark mirror of the child's gaze. "They know where I am. You must leave."

She drew from her bow quiver a staff, black wood polished to a sheen. With it in her right hand she circled the altar with measured steps, pressing her boot into the stone floor every fourth step, as if she was trying to engrain some substance into the stone. She stopped, kneeling at the point of North, and struck the staff against the stone four times, speaking words Daniella did not understand. Abruptly, the rain stopped pounding overhead and the thunder, instead of rumbling away west, simply ceased.

"Did you bring the storm?" whispered Daniella. "Are you a tempestarii?"

Although the woman knelt too far away to have heard, she answered anyway, rising to her feet and shrugging the sling that held the baby down from her back and gently setting the child, still wrapped tight, in the center of the altar between the seven candles that marked the perimeter, as if this sanctity would protect it. The child watched with preternatural calm, although it was far too young to understand.

"No, I am not. I am much worse. I am a mathematici, a magi, you would call it, who draws power down from the stars and the moon and the sun."

"Then how is it you can stand on consecrated ground?"

"Beware," said the woman, and raised the ebony staff above her head.

Fear stabbed through Daniella, and she shied away from that expansive gesture. She lost hold of the ewe just as the door to the outside burst asunder. The ewe bolted for the commons.

"Catch!" cried the woman, throwing the staff up toward the roof. The wood winked, sparked, and as darkness shrouded the church and the ewe vanished into a pit of blackness, the staff blazed with light, sucking darkness into it.

With a crack as loud as thunder it splintered into shards. The air cleared, reeking of the tang of hot iron, as the remains of the staff fell to the floor in a hail. Then it was silent. The seven candles at the altar burned peaceably, and the baby watched without a sound. By the shattered door, the ewe lay still. Daniella crept over to it.

She gasped, gagging, and clapped a hand over her own mouth. The ewe was dead. It already stank like a carcass five days old.

Outside, it was still, but trees swayed in the wind, or were there more of these creatures? Daniella backed away from the door.

"What are they?" she asked, barely able to form the words.

"They are galla," the woman said, her voice hoarse on the 'g' as if it had formed an unholy conjoining with a cough, rough and guttural, a suggestion of the creatures themselves.

"You said you are not a tempestarii. Did they bring the storm, then?"

"I brought the storm. Water can dispel them, sometimes, but they are strong in numbers this day, and strong in this world. Wind and rain can hide a trail, but they know my scent too well by now."

Daniella's gaze caught on the woman's cloak where it had been left to lie on the floor. Odd traceries decorated the lining, as if signs or spells had been sewn into it. She shivered, but it was not only the strangeness of the cloak and the woman and the shards of the black staff that littered the floor. Now it had gone winter cold again, though the storm had vanished. She braced herself against a hard swell of chill air, feeling it like a wave coming in through the broken door.

The horse neighed suddenly and kicked out, overturning one of the benches.

"Blessing!" cried the woman, bolting toward the altar, toward the child.

A blast of wind gusted into the church and that fast, like the snap of fingers, the candles around the altar went out.

It was night, black and empty. Daniella dared not move for fear she would step into an abyss, for everywhere around her it was as black as the chasm of Hell. Cold darkness poured past her like water.

But the baby cried, once, sharply. The woman cursed. As black as the air now was, the stripes of the demons--the galla--were blacker still, and by their shadows Daniella saw them struggling with the woman, writhing as if to imprison her, as if to swallow her. From the altar rose a faint gleam, like a light shielded under cloth.

It was the child.

Daniella could not leave it to die. She clamped the cloak under one arm and dashed up the aisle. Her feet knew the way better than her eyes, from the many times she had come forward to taste of wine and bread at mass.

She flung the cloak toward the woman, praying, hoping, that it might distract the galla, and grabbed the child off the altar, clutching it against her chest, tucking Uncle Heldric's cloak over it, knowing common wool could not truly shield it.

A sizzling, snapping sound, like the rain of pebbles, like water boiling onto stone, scorched the air around her. She smelled fire and the acrid scent of the blacksmith's forge. An arc of flame shot up toward the roof and the galla scattered with the tolling of bells. They scattered like grass blown on the wings of a firestorm. Heat warmed Daniella's face, then the slap of cold. Dark shapes curled around her, a ring of cold, twisting tighter, ever tighter. She felt their circle shrink. She felt their hidden eyes upon her, felt their hands grasp, reaching, touching her and insinuating their bodiless hands into her, inside her. She began to cry, soundlessly, from sheer terror. The baby did not--could not--stir, but its green eyes shone like emeralds.

"Blessing," their iron voices said. "Child born of fire and blood." And then, like Death calling her name, they spoke again: "Daniella, daughter of Leutgarda and Gerard."

And against the hard scent of iron, enveloping her, she smelled, as if it was coming from the baby, like a warding spell, the pungent, sweet scent of roses.

Fire scorched the church. The candles on the altar burst into flame, and the darkness retreated from it. But it drew back only halfway down the aisle. There the entwined galla crouched, waiting, stirring, poised to engulf their prey. Benches crashed and toppled and Daniella caught a glimpse, through the shadow of the galla, of the gray horse plunging out through the doors. It vanished into the night--only it was not entirely night. The first line of gray, heralding dawn, limned the height of the trees. It had begun to rain again outside, but softly. How could it be near dawn? How could time pass so swiftly? Yet the hint of light to come soothed Daniella's terror. Surely the sun would dispel these creatures? But the galla waited, murmuring, creeping closer and ever closer by slow degrees, their approach like the echo of drowned bells.

The woman rose from her knees with a soft moan. She was hurt. Her dark skin was scored with thin white scars, as if she had been burned by fingers of ice.

"You have my blessing," she said, and she limped over and took the baby from Daniella's arms. "I have no means by which to thank you for this kindness. You owed me nothing."

"We all owe kindness," said Daniella. "It is what the Lord and Lady grant us, to ease our pain."

To her surprise, the woman wiped tears from her scarred cheeks. "I can give you nothing that will repay you in full for what you have done. Guard my horse for me, in case I ever return and find you again. His name is Resuelto."

Daniella was too stunned to reply. The galla shifted, easing nearer, but slowly, as if they feared another blast of fire. Their voices whispered, naming, marking.

The woman ducked her head and with an efficient movement slipped a chain off from around her neck. She held it out, and the galla shrank back, the darkness retreating, bending backward, away. On the gold chain hung a medallion of beaten bronze embossed with three symbols which Daniella could not read.

"Take this, put it on. This alone will protect you."

"Protect me?" Daniella stammered.

"They have noticed you and will always mark you. You will never be entirely safe from them without this, nor will anyone nearby you. Forgive me for bringing this trouble on you, that is all of the gift I can give in exchange for your kindness."

Daniella thought of the darkness writhing around the woman, thought of these creatures taking her and the baby, enclosing them, engulfing them, ripping life from them as they had from the black ewe, leaving a five day's dead carcass in their wake. She did not reach out for the amulet.

"Won't you need it?" she asked, thinking that no one needed her. At least this woman had a child she cared for, that was probably her own. And if she died, the child, too, would be another orphan, living on the sufferance, however kindly meant, of others.

"I must go elsewhere, where they can't follow." She hugged her child closer to her, with her free arm, and bent her head to kiss its cheek, by this small gesture revealing that she loved it, wept for it, fed it and sheltered it. As Dhuoda would have loved and sheltered her baby, though it was fatherless, had she lived.

"Take it," said the woman, and Daniella saw that she was adamant, that she would not stir until Daniella accepted the gift, though the galla whispered, muttering like bells, like words in dreams, like the language of the forest at night and all the wild places that are haunted, that care not for human kindness or human love and show no favor because, like the wood and the wild places, they cannot know a good man from an evil one.

Daniella reached out and took the amulet. The galla sighed and massed, drawing together into a great dark column, a vast funnel of night. Outside, the first pink rim of dawn rose along the treeline. The village was utterly quiet. No person stirred. Not even a lamb bleated, nor dog barked. The rain had stopped, although the sky was still dark with clouds.

Calmly, the woman gathered the child closer against her and walked past the massing galla and out the shattered door and down the steps to the lane that fronted the church. In a daze, Daniella watched her, watched the dark shape of the galla shift and turn and glide along the stone floor of the church, following the woman, bells ringing hollowly as they moved. Above, the whitewashed ceiling of the church was scorched, blackened by flame. The candles round the altar burned steadily, without flickering.

Daniella's feet seemed to move of their own accord toward the door. They echoed in the empty church, leaving the trailing sound of a second set of footsteps behind her. She emerged from the door, picked her way over the splintered wood, and halted on the steps.

The woman, cloak and bow and quiver slung over her back, still clutching her baby in one arm, knelt before a puddle of water in the lane. She passed a hand over it, palm down, and seemed to be speaking as she peered deeply into it. Behind her, the galla closed on her, spreading their cloak of darkness out to engulf her. And she was now unprotected.

Daniella opened her mouth to cry out, to warn her, but no sound came out. No sound but the scuffing of feet behind her. She turned her head to look behind her, only to see Deacon Joceran, blinking confusedly, pick her way across the entrance and halt, staring, at the black cloud that had expanded to cover most of the commons.

"They'll kill her," cried Daniella, and snapped her head back, starting down the steps.

Only to stop short, staring.

Dense fog smothered most of the commons except for a patch of clear ground around a smooth puddle. Daniella ran down the steps. The fog parted before her, and she crouched in the middle of the lane, beside the puddle, looking for remains. Surely the galla could not have utterly consumed both woman and child?

Though it rained softly, the puddle remained a still smooth surface, oddly unmarked by the raindrops Daniella felt on her head and arms and back, could see in other smaller puddles that filled the potholes in the lane. She stared into the water. There, in the clear pale blue water, she saw a reflection of the woman and the baby looking out at her, looking, peering, as if to see her, as if to say goodbye.

Then the image faded and the water turned muddy. Rain stirred its brown surface, spreading tiny ripples.

Slowly, the fog dissipated. The sun rose. Its edge cleared the trees and threw morning shadows long across the commons, striping the church.

"What has happened here this night?" Deacon Joceran asked, coming down the steps. Daniella rose. She ached everywhere, as if she had worked for hours, though it seemed no time at all had passed since she first saw the woman flee into the sanctuary of the church.

"I followed the black ewe into the woods," said Daniella, and told her the story. When she had finished, Deacon Joceran signed the circle of unity and asked to look at the medallion. She studied it for a long time. Daniella grew increasingly nervous. The church denounced magic and sorcery, all but those miracles granted to saints by the Lord and Lady and what healing magic that holy men and women of the church might use to succor the ill and dying. But magic roamed abroad nevertheless, everyone knew that, and some sought to tame it or wield it, and some sought to confine or destroy it, while the church demanded penance from those who touched it or who begged help from the magia and arioli and tempestiari who practiced the forbidden arts despite the ban.

But Deacon Joceran had lived many years in Sant Laon and had never once in Daniella's memory spoken out against Mistress Hilde's potions for lovelorn lads or old Ado's reading of thunder and the flight of birds and the movement of the heavens in order to predict the weather for the farmers, especially since old Ado was always right. Once she had mildly rebuked the congregation for giving credence to a travelling mathematici who offered, for a price, to read a man or woman's fate from the courses of the sun and moon and stars but who Deacon said was a charlatan.

Now she simply handed the amulet back to Daniella.

"These are strange and dark times," she said. "You must wear this. What will you do with the horse? How feed it? Such a horse must have grain, and there are those, alas, who will envy you the having of it, and its fine bridle and saddle. Some gifts are as much of a curse as a blessing."

The gray gelding grazed out on the commons. Like an orphaned child, it suddenly appeared to Daniella as more burden than bounty. But she rose determinedly and walked over to the horse. He allowed her to approach, but with stiff arrogance, like a noble lord forced to allow the approach of a simple farmer. One of the saddle bags was filled with more coin, coppers and silver, than Daniella had ever seen in her life, some stamped with King Henry's seal, others with that of his father and father's father, the two Arnulfs. The other bag contained a book.

Deacon Joceran walked over carefully, favoring the leg that had suffered from an infection this last winter, and when Daniella handed her the book and she opened the plain leather cover and read what was inside, she blanched. Daniella had never seen Deacon at such a loss before.

"These are terrible things," she whispered. "You must let no one see this."

"You must keep it, then, Deacon."

But Deacon Joceran closed the book and with hands trembling not with age, as they well might have, but with something else, fear or passion or some old memory, she thrust it firmly back into the saddlebag. "Once," she said, shutting her eyes against memory, "I dedicated my life to the convent, before I was cast out from the life of contemplation and sent into the world, to atone for my misdeeds. I was curious, and the old books speaking of the forbidden arts tempted me. They tempt me still, though thirty years have passed since those days. Hide it. Let no one know you have it. If a trustworthy friar passes through here, we can send it on to the Convent of Sant Valeria or to Doardas Abbey."

"But who was she, then, Deacon?"

"A mathematici indeed, child, whom we would call one of the magia. She spoke truth to you. Great powers lie hidden in the earth and in the heavens, and not all believe that the church ought to forbid their study. I have seen with my own eyes. . ." But she trailed off, and Daniella thought that perhaps age lay heavily on the old woman as much from what she had seen as from the passing of years. "Now you have seen, and those who see are marked forever. Go then, child. Go back to your house. I will speak to the congregation of the storm and what it brought, but I pray that the Father and Mother of Life will forgive me for not telling them all that occurred in the night."

Daniella led Resuelto home and installed him in the stables next to the sheep, whom he deigned to ignore. He allowed her to unsaddle him and rub him down, but when Uncle Heldric and Aunt Marguerite ventured out, exclaiming over the dark storm that had swallowed the village for the night, he snorted dangerously and would not let them near him. Matthias was afraid to come into the stables at all, with the big horse there, and Robert, for once, was so in awe of Daniella, or so afraid of what she might have seen and what might have seen her, that he left her alone, not brushing against her hips at every chance, not groping at her budding breasts or whispering suggestions in her ear when no one was nearby to hear.

So the day passed, and the next day, and the one after that, except that strange accidents occurred in the village. Mistress Hilde's prize goat escaped and was found drowned in the pond. Uncle Heldric and Master Bertrand, their neighbor, were hit by a falling tree in the wood, crushing Bertrand's foot and breaking Uncle's left arm. Milk curdled and the hens stopped laying eggs. Churns were overturned, looms unravelled, and the candles at the altar blown out every night. Every person in Sant Laon was struck by misfortune, great or small, every one except Daniella. Old Ado said the movements of the birds and the lizards warned of worse misfortune to come. Fog wrapped itself round the village at night and increasingly during the day, and out of that fog rose the whisper of bells and soft, guttural voices naming a name: "Daniella."

They have noticed you and will always mark you. You will never be entirely safe from them without this, nor will anyone nearby you. Forgive me for bringing this trouble on you, that is all of the gift I can give in exchange for your kindness.

At dawn on fourth day since the storm, Daniella woke abruptly and realized that Dhuoda's child, called Blanche for her pale hair, was gone from the bed. She dressed quickly and climbed down from the loft. No one was awake yet; Uncle and Aunt snored softly from their bed by the kitchen fire, and even Gruff lay curled up asleep on the bricks that lined the hearth. She ran outside. And there . . . .

There on the commons a dense blot of fog, as dark as the smoke from a blacksmith's forge, swirled round a crying, stumbling child, driving it toward the pond. Daniella cried out loud, and little Blanche, hearing her, bawled even louder and tried desperately to turn, to toddle back toward her aunt, but she could not. The galla forced her closer and ever closer toward the water.

Daniella ran. The fog parted before her, hissing, angry, and she grabbed little Blanche just as the little girl teetered on the edge of the pond, her dirty dress wet along the hem.

"Begone!" Daniella shouted, forgetting to be frightened because she was so furious. She pulled the amulet out from under her tunic and held it forward, driving them away. "Begone! What right do you have to torment the innocent?"

But all they said in answer was to whisper her name: "Daniella."

The sun rose and the fog faded to patches, retreating to the wood where it curled like snakes around the trunks of trees. Waiting. As it would continue to wait, forever, not knowing human time or human cares.

Daniella stood silently by the pond, soothing the weeping child, until Deacon Joceran came out of the church to discover what the shouting had been.

"I must leave," Daniella said, the knowledge hanging on her like a weight. She fought against tears, because she was afraid that if she wept now she would not have the courage to do what had to be done. "They will never leave the village, not until I am gone."

Deacon Joceran nodded, accepting what was necessary, what she could see was true.

Aunt Marguerite wept, when they held a council that morning in the church, Uncle and Aunt and the eldest in the village, those that had their wits about them still. Uncle Heldric offered Daniella his cloak, but he did not beg her to stay. He held little Blanche on his lap. She was smiling now, playing with his beard, and he even laughed a bit. He was fond of Dhuoda's child, what was left to him of his only daughter, favored child, the best-loved and the sweetest.

"You take my cloak," he said gruffly to her.

"You have nothing to replace it with," said Daniella. "Take my mother's wedding shawl in exchange."

"Nay, child," he replied, looking shamed by her generosity, "we have nothing else to give you. It is all you have left of her."

She gave Matthias four silver coins, which was all she could spare, knowing that she would need the rest for the care and feeding of the gelding, and Matthias sobbed as disconsolately as he had when their Da had been buried, and their Mother, dead bearing a child. He begged to come with her. Perhaps he even meant it, but with the coin he could buy himself a start on his own farm and get a wife, and like their Da he had the gift of understanding the land and the seasons, for all that he was scared of the wild lands surrounding the fields.

"You are meant to stay here," she said to him. To Blanche she left Dhuoda's bridal cloth, and to Robert, a single kiss of forgiveness.

"You must go to the Convent of Sant Valeria," said Deacon Joceran. "You must walk seven days east and ten days north, and there at the town known as Autun ask for further direction. At the convent you will find, if not protection, at least advice, for the Abbesses there are known for their wisdom and for their understanding of the forbidden arts. You must not linger too long in one place as you travel, or these creatures, these galla, may bring mischief onto the people among whom you stay, and you will be named as a witch or a malefici and driven out, or worse. Take this letter and give to the Abbess at the convent. They will take you in."

Daniella looked long and searchingly at the marks on the parchment, but they meant nothing to her, just as the book left behind in the saddlebags meant nothing.

"She will try to find me," said Daniella suddenly. "For the book, if nothing else."

"If she has the power, if she yet lives, she will find you," said Deacon, "but whether that would bode good or ill for you, I cannot say, child."

Daniella did not reply, but she felt in her heart that she left Sant Laon, the only place she had ever known, not just to spare her family, to spare the others, but to seek after that meeting, as if it was ordained whether she willed it or no.

Aunt Marguerite brought her bread and cheese, which she put in one of the saddlebags, and Uncle Heldric brought her mother's knife, which he had sharpened to a good edge. She tucked it in her belt, kissed Matthias one final time, and took the reins of Resuelto from Robert.

"Go with the Lord and Lady," said Deacon Joceran, signing a benediction over her.

"Go safely," said Aunt Marguerite. Little Blanche, caught up in her grandda's arms, began to cry, reaching her arms out for Daniella.

But Daniella turned quickly away from them and started down the lane, leading Resuelto, since she did not know how to ride. She did not want them to see the tears in her eyes. She did not want them to fear for her or grieve for her. It was bad enough that they must grieve for Dhuoda, for Da, for her Mother. Let them believe that she went with a light heart, that it was a fate she went to meet willingly. It was the only kindness she could show them, as she left them behind, probably forever.

The gelding walked with dignity beside her, ears forward, eager to explore the road ahead. She kept her eyes on the dirt lane and the wood, and as she passed under cover of the trees, she looked back once to see her village, free of any trailing mist or tendrils of fog, lying in the bright warmth of the noonday sun. The sky was clear above, as blue as she had ever seen it.

At last, with a wrench, she turned to face the road ahead once more, and she walked resolutely on toward unknown lands.
 

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All material Copyright Katrina Elliott 2000. All rights reserved.