“Something’s coming,” said Heribert. “Can you feel it, Anna? It’s like a weight descending. We’re not safe here.”

She stared at the high cavern in which they stood. Stalactites glittered under the net of fire. Thiemo snored softly, one hand cupped at his throat. Matto lay with mouth agape and eyes and hands fast shut. It was all true. They had crawled into the ancient burial chamber to protect Blessing and possibly to die, but they hadn’t died and indeed they were no longer where they had started out. The burial chamber had been dirt; this place was stone. In the burial chamber there had barely been room to stand upright in the center; this place could hold a council of twoscore nobles and their horses. In the burial chamber there had been a single entrance, a tunnel that led to the outside. Here, at least four passageways left the chamber at different directions. They might be anywhere.

She, too, felt a stiffening in the air, a tension in the earth, like the breath of a huge monster about to lunge out of darkness onto its hapless prey.

“Come quickly!” Blessing’s voice pierced the silence, although there was no sign of her in the chamber. “No! This way! You’re so slow! I said this way!”

“What a brat!” said a second voice, laughing.

“I am not a brat! I’m not!”

“You are!”

“I’m not!”

Blessing’s companion laughed merrily, and before Anna or Heribert could react two figures trotted into the cavern, the smaller grasping the larger by his wrist. Blessing dropped her grip and clapped her hands to crow in triumph.

“Look what I found, Brother Heribert! And not just that, but a pile of treasure!”

The earth shook violently. The net of blue fire sparked and dazzled, and began to pulse.

“Lord have mercy,” said Heribert, staring at Blessing, who looked painfully thin but otherwise emphatically alive and vital. Anna didn’t know whether to be giddy with joy or annoyed that Blessing after all hadn’t changed one bit and probably hadn’t a thought to spare for the sacrifice her attendants had made so willingly for her.

“I’m Berthold,” said the youth, a nice-looking boy most likely a little younger than Anna, fifteen or sixteen or so. He wore a handsome pale blue tunic of an excellent weave trimmed with yellow embroidery, a hip-length cape lined with pale fox fur, and soft leather boots bound up with laces. He held calfskin gloves casually in one hand, and at his waist rode a sword in a richly tooled sheath bearing the mark of the silver tree.

“Lord have mercy,” repeated Heribert, shifting his stunned gaze away from Blessing. “You must be Villam’s son.”

“So I am,” said the lad, not one bit surprised at being recognized. A noble youth out of a house as important as Villam’s expected to be known. “We crawled in here to explore but must have fallen asleep. The rest of my companions are still asleep. I could only wake up Jonas. He’s trying to get the others awake. I don’t know where this chamber came from!” He gestured toward the high ceiling, and the four sleeping men. “It wasn’t here when we explored under the tumuli yesterday. How did you get here?”