Free King's Blood by Judith Tarr

the rest of them followed. A king learned to expect it.

CHAPTER 9
    Sacred offices in chapel made Edith think of a spider weaving her web. Abbess Christina spun each strand. The nuns’ voices lifted it up. Where it rose, the world was a little greyer, the light a little dimmer. The air did not fill the lungs as thoroughly.
    This trapped magic and wrapped it close and took it out of the world. Abbess Christina did not know that that was what it did. She thought she was praying—aloud for whatever the Church wanted her to pray for that day, and in her heart for the Normans’ fall.
    She had been praying harder since word came from Normandy that the king was dead. She had hated him with a true Christian hate; she had prayed not only for his death but for his destruction.
    It seemed her prayers had been answered. Now she was praying that the new king would be weak and a fool, and would fall quickly. The spider-threads were so thick that Edith could barely sit through the offices. She kept getting dizzy and wanting to fall over.
    Sister Cecilia was not doing anything to help. Her voice in the offices was sweet and clear, and the air was a little lighter for it, but that was all. Sometimes Edith thought she was helping with the web—making it thicker and heavier, until it sank under its own weight.
    Then the rest of the abbey was cleaner, and the parts of it that were farthest away from the chapel glistened with magic. Everything was gathering in one place and closing itself off. It would eat itself, Edith thought.
    It was a war. The whole of Britain was the battlefield. Parts of it were riddled with rot like a bad cheese, and parts of it were going bad. The parts that were still good were struggling.
    And now the king was dead. Cecilia seemed calm. She was waiting for the new king to come, and taking care not to fret.
    But Edith could feel deep underneath how Cecilia was afraid. Too much was changing. She was strong, but not strong enough in herself to shift the whole of the tide. The other Guardians were doing what they could, but they were far away, and there were not enough of them.
    Edith wanted to help, though she did not know what she could do. She was too young and small, and all she had was magic. She knew very little about how to use it.
    She could pray. But prayer was dangerous here. It could help, or it could do terrible harm.
    In the end she decided that if she prayed in one of the sunlit cloisters far from the chapel, it might not turn all webby and twisted. She slipped away when the novices were given their hour of recreation. That was supposed to be something suitable and approved, such as reading from the lives of the saints or working on an altar-cloth.
    If anyone asked, she would call it meditation on her sins. The sun was bright and the grass was very green. Bees were humming in the little orchard that grew along the wall, a row of pear-trees cut and shaped and tortured into lying flat against the stones. For trees so twisted out of their natural shape, they seemed remarkably happy. They were thick with leaves, and their fruit was round and sweet.
    She breathed in the scent, but she was too well trained to steal a pear. Not that she cared about sin, but discipline was important. It helped her to keep her mind on what she was praying for.
    The bees’ song had words in it. It was not a language she knew, but there was no mistaking what it was. She had been praying as she was taught, kneeling on the grass, hands together and head bowed. Now she raised her head and opened her eyes to the brightness all about her.
    She had slid sidewise out of the world again. Mostly she did it because she wished to, but sometimes, as now, it happened of itself. She was no more frightened than she ever was. Whatever world this was, it meant her no harm. The creatures who lived in it either paid her no mind or watched her in quiet interest. She could go where she liked and do as she pleased, and nothing seemed to