Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (19 page)

voice made her shiver. To gain this man's dislike was one thing; to gain his enmity, something else.

Hugh smiled, his ugliest, most insincere smile, made the worse because it affected his beauty not at all. "Certainly not, Count Harl. I would never question your honor. But your son is young and impulsive. And my property is quite valuable to me."

For the first time, Harl looked straight at Liath, so hard a gaze that she had no choice but to meet his eyes. He was appraising her
—teeth, face, build, youth, strength—and whether he thought her worth unlikely or obvious she could not tell from his expression. At last he looked back at Hugh.

"You may rest easy, Frater. Your
property
will remain safe from my son. There is a monastery in Quedlinhame where my first wife gave birth safely in a storm, many years ago now. I have wished for these many years to endow them with some manner of thanksgiving. I intend to send Ivar south to be invested as a monk there. He will trouble you no longer."

Liath gasped. Ivar went white. Hugh's lips moved, not into a smile but into an expression so deeply satisfied it was almost obscene.

"Now get out," said Harl brusquely.
"If
you please. I've work to do. Ivar! You will remain with me."

Ivar cast her a last, despairing glance as Hugh shepherded her out in front of him. A man-at-arms escorted them down the hill to the palisade wall, where Hugh's gelding waited, tended by a stable boy.

"You'll ride with me," said Hugh.

"I'd rather walk."

He struck her, hard, and only by instinct did she duck away quickly enough that the blow glanced off the side of her head.

"You will ride." He mounted and waited there, the reins of his gelding tight in his hands, until she at last lifted a hand and he pulled her up behind him.

The ride back was long, and it was silent.

But he was warm.

That night winter blew in in earnest. It was cold, bitter cold. She could not sleep. She shuddered, there with the pigs, and rose in the middle of the night and stamped her feet, up and down, up and down, until daylight. She was so tired while she did her work that day that once he came upon her dozing on her feet. Or perhaps twice. Her shoulders and head were so bruised from his beatings that one more made no difference.

Clouds came the next night and with them snow. That eased things a little, for though it was damper it was slightly warmer. But all the next week, with snow still blanketing the ground, it was clear. So cold it was, all day. With every scrap of clothing she possessed, still she shivered all day. By evening she was numb with cold. She ached with it. She tried to move constantly, though she was exhausted, even when she was in the kitchen, shifting, stamping, trying to get warmth past the surface and down into her bones. She would never be warm again. It was a constant pain consuming her, the coldness.

He ordered her out of the warm kitchen at dusk. She shuffled out to the shed
—she no longer had the energy to lift her feet—and sat next to Trotter. Even with the pigs it was still cold. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until the rhythm of her rocking lulled her into stupefaction. It was so cold.

She realized that she was going to die if she stayed out here. Not this night, but another one, tomorrow perhaps, or the next night, or the one after that. She wondered if she cared. Ai, Lady, and at once she knew, was horrified to know, that she did care. It was like a tiny, hated fire burning deep inside, that will to live.

"I don't want to die," she whispered. Her lips were too dry, too cracked with cold, too stiff, to form the words. She shuddered convulsively. Ai, Lady, she had not even the energy for that; there were not even tears left her. She was going to die, and she did not want to.

At first, seeing the light, she could not imagine what it might be. The athar, the spectacle, come down from the

heavens? It staggered, swayed, bobbing up and down until she thought she was dreaming, seeing visions. But the light brought a breath of warmth, halting before her clouded gaze. It was the lamp.

"Liath." His voice was soft. "Come in now, Liath." He might have been coaxing a hurt child, or a wounded dog. "Come in now."

She shuddered, rocking. He placed a hand on her shoulder, gently, to stop her. "Liath," he said in the same quiet, soothing voice, "come in now." Then he removed his hand. And waited.

For the space of ten breaths, fought in, fought out, she just sat there. She was numb with cold. She ached with it, down to her heart. Anything was better than this.

She struggled, trying to get to her feet, and once he saw that she was trying to get up, he helped her. Only helped her, never pushed her, just guided, once her feet set off of her own choice for the kitchen.

It was gloriously, marvelously warm. Steam rose, or so it seemed to her, until she saw that he had made a bath, hauled the water and heated the water by himself. The tub sat in front of the roaring fire in the hearth. She just stood there while he unwrapped her filthy blanket, while he helped her out of her filthy clothing, carefully removing each piece. He handled these things fastidiously, with his gloves on, but once she was naked he stripped the. gloves from his hands and rolled up his sleeves and helped her into the warm water.

The warmth hurt, like a hundred prickling tiny needles, elf-shot, stabbing her all at once; She wept dry tears. He scrubbed her with a stiff brush, chafing her skin,, and that hurt even more, but she did not have the energy to protest.

With the pain came warmth, flooding down through her skin. Heat streaked off the fire. The hot water seeped into her flesh, into her bones. Periodically he would rise and fetch more hot water from the kettle for the bath; twice he disappeared outside with the buckets and filled

up the huge kettle with water so cold it hissed as he poured it in.

He took a clean, soft cloth and washed her, her hair, her face, her hands and chest and abdomen, her hips and her thighs, her calves and her feet. While he washed her he sang, low, in his beautiful voice, a sinuous line of chant, only notes, no words. She was sinking with lassitude, with warmth. But she was still numb.

He took her by the hands and lifted her from the water. With a soft cloth he dried her. He wrapped her in a blanket of a fine plush weave and stood back from her.

He said nothing. He simply watched her. He did not smile, or frown. He had almost no expression, or at least no expression she could understand, on his face. But she had long since passed the point where she might have gone back out with the pigs. Da always said,
"There's no use swearing vows if you don't mean to keep them."

She turned and walked down the narrow corridor to his cell. Two lamps burned, their light twin fires. The brazier glowed red with heat. The Dariyan lesson book of magic lay open on the table. She did not even glance at it but went to the bed and sat on its edge.

He followed her. Now he closed the door behind him and stood, leaning against it, to stare at her. His sleeves were still rolled up, revealing his pale, muscled forearms and their fine down of light hair.

"Will you teach me Jinna?" he asked. His voice was still soft, and his words sounded more like a question asked out of curiosity than like a charge driven to win the battle. Indeed, he almost sounded surprised.

She nodded. That was all. That was everything.

"Ah," he said. Then he was silent.

She finally looked up, because his silence was so odd. He was studying her. His expression was disturbing the more because he looked nakedly hungry.

"You don't even know what you are, do you?" he asked. "A treasure-house, as it says in the holy book. 'My bride is a garden locked, a treasure-house barred. I have come to the garden, my bride, and I have eaten my honey. I have drunk my wine. Eat, friends, and drink until you are drunk with love.' '

Unbidden, the next stanza rose in her mind as clearly as if she heard the words spoken aloud: /
sleep, but my heart is awake. Come, beloved, I will open the door.

But she sat, as still as the bitter cold air outside, and watched while he undressed in front of her. Her flesh might be warm, now, might even be awake, but her heart had frozen straight through. She simply watched, unable to feel anything, until at last he was naked. Then she blushed and looked modestly away. That made him laugh.

In an instant he was beside her. He held her with one hand supporting her back and lowered her onto the luxurious softness of the featherbed. Stripping the blanket from her, he covered them both with the feather quilt.

"You're still cold," he whispered, running his hands down her arms and up her abdomen to her breasts. "Liath, say something to me."

This close, he was overpowering. She gathered up enough courage to meet his gaze. What she saw there cracked some of the ice off her numbness. Tears stung at her eyes. She turned her head away and shut her eyes and lay rigid in his arms. But she did not otherwise move or try to escape.

"I know what you want," she said softly. "But it's locked away. It's locked away, and you'll never get it."

"We aren't speaking of the book anymore, are we, my beauty?" He was a little amused, a little angry, but he shifted, embracing her, and he sighed, and suddenly his skin, against hers, went from cool to warm to hot. He said, under his breath, so quiet she barely heard him, " 'You who sit in my garden, my bride, let me also hear your voice.' '

His voice trembled, he was so overwhelmed by feeling, not just passion, what others called lust, but something stronger, something more frightening. He wanted not just her body, not just the book. He wanted her. There were deeper things still, things she only now realized might exist, the child of two sorcerers, deaf to magic but hiding something so far inside herself that even she could not see it.

But he could. If Liath had feared him before, it was nothing to the fear she felt now. He had enough training, enough knowledge, to see. He had sight, that allowed him to see past the
seeming.
For now, right now, as Hugh shifted against her, caressing her, she saw what the truth must be.

Da had been running all those years to protect
her.
To hide
her.
Whoever
—or whatever—had killed her mother now wanted
her.
She was the prize, the treasure. Only she did not know why.

Hugh sighed, his breath warm and sweet against her cheek. She kept her eyes clenched shut.

"Don't be afraid," he said softly. "I'll not be rough with you, not here. Not ever, here."

He knew what he was doing.

She found the city, standing fast in her memory. She set foot on the white shore against which lake water lapped in slow ripples as even as her heartbeat, and she ascended the spiraling avenue paved with marble, its seams so perfectly joined that it appeared as one smooth flat endless surface, twisting ever tighter as it approached the height. And as she climbed, as she passed through each higher gate, seven in all, she locked them each one behind her until she came to the summit.

She found the frozen tower of her heart and barred it with vines and thorns and spears of iron. Inside she went by the single door and up a ladder to the highest room, to the chamber of doors that Da had given her; this chamber only he had envisioned for her, four doors, north, south, east, and west, and a fifth door, set impossibly in the center of the room, which was locked even to her. Each door she locked with a brass key, locking herself in. Only in the door that opened to the north did she limn the shade of a door, a secret door that led into wilderness. There she laid a little path through trials great and small, through forests trackless and ways mysterious, to obscure it from view, so that only one who truly knew her heart might find this way in. Into that wilderness, into the trackless, tangled wild lands, she threw the key. If any man sought that key, let him look at his own peril.

She clung to that, to that vision, to save herself.

Hugh was gentle. He was warm. He spoke sweet words to her. At last, he slept.

She lay awake, sealing the city of memory shut, each wall seamless and strong, until she was safe within it. Until she was alone and unreachable but for the little path where Hanna might enter, undisturbed. At last she allowed herself to relax, although Hugh still circled her with a heavy arm. At last, in the marvelously soft, the gloriously warm bed, she slept.
J
LjLJi next day Hugh hired a woman and man from the hamlet down near Count Harl's holding to come in daily and do all the work about the church.

They dutifully cleaned out the cell next to his while he rummaged around in the storage rooms and found a serviceable table and one broken chair, soon mended. The hired man, Lars, killed a goose, and while Dorit cooked it, Liath made quills. Hugh opened two locked chests from the storage room, and they revealed unexpected treasures: parchment and ink, a wax writing tablet and stylus, and other necessaries of a church schoolroom as well as two more rugs (neither as fine as the Arethousan carpet in his cell) and other comforts.

Liath studied. If she studied, she could forget everything else, push it away as if it didn't exist. For part of the day they spoke only Dariyan together. For the second part he taught her, letter by letter, word by word, the language of Arethousan, and she taught him Jinna with its curling letters she herself could only write awkwardly. For the last part she read aloud to him from the books her father had left. She read about healing herbs and the pharmacology of flowering plants in the
Inquiry into Plants.
She read about omens and portents and visions seen while sleeping in Artemisia's
Dreams.
She read history, of the trials and blessed acts of St. Thecla, founder of the Church of Unities in Darre, first and greatest disciple of the blessed Daisan and the first martyr to the faith when she stood firm against the persecutions of the pagan emperor. And she read of the early days of the Dariyan Empire, during its greatest triumphs, as written by Polyxene, an Arethousan scholar in the imperial Dariyan court whose stated intent in writing her history was to discover "by what means the Dariyans, who are known to us as being not of human kin, succeeded in less than fifty-three years in bringing almost the whole of the inhabited world under their rule."