“Une lec¸on. Pour tous,” she seems to be saying, although that makes no sense.
In his last fractured moments of consciousness, the man accused of giving away secrets, condemned for talking when he should have kept silent, holds the coveted object tight in his hand until his grip on life slips away and the small grey disc, no bigger than a coin, rolls on to the floor.
On one side of it are the letters NV. On the other is an engraving of a labyrinth.
IV
Pic de Soularac
Sabarthe`s Mountains
For a moment, everything is silent.
Then the darkness melts. Alice is no longer in the cave. She is floating in a white, weightless world, transparent and peaceful and silent.
She is free. Safe.
Alice has the sensation of slipping out of time, as if she is falling from one dimension into another. The line between the past and present is fading now in this timeless, endless space.
Then, like a trap door beneath the gallows, Alice feels a sudden jerk, then a drop and she is plummeting down through the open sky, falling, falling down towards the wooded mountainside. The brisk air whistles in her ears as she plunges, faster, harder towards the ground.
The moment of impact never comes. There’s no splintering of bone against the slate grey flint and rock. Instead, Alice hits the ground running, stumbling along a steep, rough woodland track between two columns of high trees. They are dense and tall and tower above her so she can’t see what lies beyond.
Too fast.
Alice grabs at the branches as if they will slow her, stop this headlong flight towards this unknown place, but her hands go straight through as if she’s a ghost or a spirit. Clumps of tiny leaves come away in her hands, like hair from a brush. She cannot feel them, but the sap stains the tips of her fingers green. She puts them up to her face, to breathe in their subtle, sour scent. She cannot smell them either.
Alice has a stitch in her side, but she cannot stop because there is something behind her, getting steadily closer. The path is sloping sharply beneath her feet. She is aware that the crunch of dried root and stone has replaced the soft earth, moss and twigs. Still, there is no sound. No birds singing, no voices calling, nothing but her own ragged breathing. The path twists and coils back on itself, sending her scuttling this way and that, until she rounds the corner and sees the silent wall of flame which blocks the path ahead. A pillar of twisting fire, white and gold and red, folding in on itself, its shape ever shifting.
Instinctively, Alice puts up her hands to shield her face from the fierce heat, although she cannot feel it. She can see faces trapped within the dancing flames, the mouths contorted in silent agony as the fire caresses and burns.
Alice tries to stop. She must stop. Her feet are bleeding and torn, her long skirts wet, slowing her down, but her pursuer is hard at her heels and something beyond her control is driving her on into the fatal embrace of the fire.
She has no choice but to jump, to avoid being consumed by the flames. She spirals up into the air like a wisp of smoke, floating high above the yellows and oranges. The wind seems to carry her up, releasing her from the earth.
Someone is calling her name, a woman’s voice, although she pronounces it strangely.
Alais.
She is safe. Free.
Then, the familiar clutch of cold fingers on her ankles, shackling her to the ground. No, not fingers, chains. Now Alice realises she is holding something in her hands, a book, held together with leather ties. She understands that it is this what he wants. What they want. It is the loss of this book that makes them angry.
If only she could speak she could perhaps strike a bargain. But her head is empty of words and her mouth incapable of speech. She lashes out, kicks to escape, but she is caught. The iron grip on her legs is too strong. She starts to scream as she is dragged back down into the fire, but there is only silence.
She screams again, feeling her voice struggling deep inside her to be heard. This time, the sound comes rushing back. Alice feels the real world rushing back. Sound, light, smell, touch, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Until, for a fraction of a second, she pauses, enveloped suddenly by a translucent cold. It is not the familiar chill of the cave, but something different, intense and bright. Within it, Alice can just make out the fleeting outline of a face, beautiful, indistinct. The same voice is calling her name once more.
Alais.
Calling for the last time. It is the voice of a friend. Not someone who means her harm. Alice struggles to open her eyes, knowing that if she could see, she could understand. She cannot. Not quite.
The dream is starting to fade, setting her free.
It’s time to wake up. I must wake up.
Now there’s another voice in her head, different from the first. The feeling is coming back to her arms and legs, her grazed knees that sting and her scuffed skin sore where she fell. She can feel the rough grip on her shoulder, shaking her back to life.
“Alice! Alice, wake up!”
THE CITE ON THE HILL
CHAPTER 1
Carcassona
JULHET 1209
Alais jolted awake, bolt upright, her eyes wide open. Fear fluttered in her chest, as a bird caught in a net struggles to be free. She pressed her hand against her ribs to still her beating heart.
For a moment, she was neither asleep nor awake, as if some part of her had been left behind in the dream. She felt she was floating, looking down on herself from a great height, like the stone gargoyles that grimaced at passers-by from the roof of the cathedral church of Sant-Nasari.
The room came back into focus. She was safe in her own bed, in the Chateau Comtal. Gradually, her eyes became accustomed to the dark. She was safe from the thin, dark-eyed people who haunted her at night, their sharp fingers clawing and pulling at her. They cannot reach me now. The language carved in the stones, more pictures than words, which meant nothing to her, all vanished like wisps of smoke in the autumn air. The fire too had faded, leaving only a memory in her mind.
A premonition? Or a nightmare only?
She had no way of knowing. She was afraid of knowing.
Alais reached for the night-curtains, which were hung around the bed, as if by touching something substantial she would feel less transparent and insubstantial herself. The worn cloth, filled with the dust and familiar smells of the castle, was reassuringly coarse between her fingers.
Night after night, the same dream. All through her childhood, when she had woken in terror in the dark, her face white and wet with tears, her father had been at her bedside, watching over her as if she was a son. As each candle burned down and another was lit, he whispered of his adventures in the Holy Land. He told her of the endless seas of the desert, the curve and sweep of the mosques and the call to prayer of the Saracen faithful. He described the aromatic spices, the vivid colours and the peppery taste of the food. The terrible brilliance of the blood-red sun as it set over Jerusalem.
For many years, in those hollow hours between dusk and dawn, as her sister lay sleeping beside her, her father had talked and talked, setting her demons to flight. He had not allowed the black cowls or the Catholic priests to come near, with their superstitions and false symbols.
His words had saved her.
“Guilhem?” she whispered.
Her husband was deeply asleep, his arms flung out claiming ownership of most of the bed. His long dark hair, smelling of smoke and wine and the stables, was fanned across the pillow. Moonlight fell through the open window, the shutter pinned back to let the cool night air into the chamber. In the gathering light, Alais could see the shadow of rough growth on his chin. The chain Guilhem wore around his neck shimmered and glinted as he shifted position in his sleep.