Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (45 page)

On the edge of a meadow he saw a thicket of nettles and briars.

He stripped, flung aside tunic and leggings, and threw himself into the thorns and stinging nettles. Sorrow and Rage began to bark, but they did not follow him in. He rolled back and forth until his skin wept blood and his whole body was a mass of welts. Only then did he crawl to his knees and stagger out.

On the leaves, on the cool forest floor, he bent double, convulsed with weeping and pain. Sorrow and Rage crowded him, licking his skin to ease him, but the fire burned so violently, the scratches stung like so many lashes, that they brought no comfort.

But he could think of Tallia with a calm heart.

Much later, he pulled on his tunic, although he could not bring himself to bind his leggings on over his inflamed legs. Every shift of the tunic on his shoulders as he walked back through the wood brought fresh pain. But he could think of Tallia with a calm heart.

Mercifully, Lavastine said nothing after Alain stammered out an explanation of going out in the woods to search for Bliss and thinking he had seen the hound in the middle of a nettle patch. An ancient nun came from the convent to spread a soothing ointment over his skin, all the while clucking her tongue. But even she did not ask how a man fully dressed could have gotten welts and scratches on every part of his body.

Bliss did not return that evening, and Lavastine, at last, declared that they would have to travel on. In the morning, the count gave an offering of silver plate at the chapel. Alain knelt beside him and was blessed by the abbess, who sang the service in front of a carved wooden altar brimming with faithful dogs. Tallia prayed beside him, and with his skin still stinging and sore, he could smile calmly and speak softly. Temptation had poisoned him, but pain had scoured him clean.

When they set out on the road, five hounds padded alongside, and the shadow of the sixth in his heart.

"WHY do you call them fixed stars," Sanglant asked, "if they always move? They rise like the sun and set like the sun. In winter different stars shine in the heavens than do in the spring or summer or autumn. So they must move or we would see the same ones all the time."

"We call them fixed stars because they don't move in relation to each other. The planets we call wandering stars because they move through the fixed stars along the ecliptic, along the path through the stars that we also call the world dragon that binds the heavens. Or the zodiac, because it's a circle of living creatures set into the heavens."

Sanglant was the kind of person who liked to touch. Right now he had an arm draped over her shoulders, and she loved its weight and warmth. After he had settled the horses for the night, he had searched her out and found her here where she had retreated to practice certain tricks Anne had taught her to control calling fire. But it was such a beautiful night that the stars had distracted her. The Queen stood at zenith, trailed by her Cup, Staff, and Sword. The Lion set west with the Dragon in pursuit, and the Serpent wound in sinuous splendor along the southern horizon while the Archer rose behind it with her bow nocked and ready. Of the planets only Mok was visible on its slow climb through the Lion toward the Dragon, which it would reach—she tried to calculate—in another month or two.

They had passed a tiny monastic estate a few hours ago but, as usual, had not stayed there for the night. Instead, as usual, they found more isolated accommodation. Behind them at the fringe of wood stood an old traveler's hut built out of brick in the Dariyan style. It had fallen down in disrepair, but the masonry walls were still strong and half the roof remained. The door stood ajar because it was too warped to close. A single light burned within, the magelight of Sister Anne who was now mediating or at prayer.

Even after twelve days on the road, Liath could not easily call her "Mother."

"Then if the stars are fixed, how do they move?" Sanglant demanded, laughing.

"It's like a turning wheel. See." She held up a hand, cupped it so the knuckles pointed up and the palm made a curve like a dome. He couldn't see well on a night when there was no moon, but he had his own ways of seeing: he let his free hand explore the shape of hers by touch. Which was very distracting.

After a while he remembered that he had asked her a question. By this time they were lying down. "What's like a turning wheel?"

"The heavens are." He had one arm under her neck and she had to shift to get comfortable. "Imagine a wheel with many sparks
fixed
on it. Now curve that wheel into a dome and join the dome with another dome so that it becomes a sphere. Those sparks are fixed to the inner surface of the sphere, so they don't move, but when the sphere moves, if it rotates in a uniform circular motion, then if you stand at the center of the sphere, the stars move because the sphere moves."

"What are you standing on there in the center of your sphere?" He still seemed amused. The truth, as she had come to learn, was that he was curious but also skeptical and quick to get bored by such talk, and that sometimes irritated her.

"You're standing on the earth, of course! The universe is a set of nested spheres, one inside the next with the earth at the center. Beyond the seventh sphere, which is the sphere of the fixed stars, lies the Chamber of Light—where our souls go after we die."

"Has any scout walked up through these spheres and returned to report on what she saw?"

"A blasphemous thought." Anne's voice, cool and yet perhaps faintly amused, came out of the dark.

Liath sat up at once and moved slightly away from her husband.

Husband!
The word still staggered her.

Yet something about Anne's presence made her feel unclean for the physical feelings she had for Sanglant. It was frustrating to be newly wed while traveling with a woman who thought you

ought to remain as pure as the angels, so frustrating that at times Liath toyed with heretical thoughts. God were male and female. Why should angels not be as well, and if they were, then where did infant angels come from? If God had joined in harmony to create the universe, why shouldn't angels join as well? In which case, there ought to be no shame for humans to join so.

She could have asked Da. But she didn't have the nerve to try out this argument in front of her mother.

Sanglant got to his feet to show respect. "Your knowledge is vast and impressive," he said lightly. Anne didn't daunt
him.
"But it makes no sense to me."

"Nor should it. You have your place, Prince Sanglant, as we have ours. You need know only that God have created the universe we stand in. That which they wish to make known to you they will reveal to you, Liathano." She turned away from him. "Come inside."

Liath hesitated.

"Go on," said Sanglant softly. "I must tend the dog."

The old hut had a mosaic floor, river stones pieced cunningly together to make an image of partridges picking up seeds in a thicket. Magelight illuminated the floor, which was chipped and worn and, at the end where the roof no longer covered it, broken and coming to pieces. Anne sat on a canvas stool. A fire burned in a stone hearth, newly swept out, and their cook pot bubbled with a stew that smelled so good that Liath's mouth watered. Along one wall, an insubstantial shape wavered, slipped like the antithesis of shadow toward the door, and vanished into the night. Anne frowned.

"They're afraid of me." Liath blurted it out, although she hadn't meant to. Although it was the truth.

Anne regarded her evenly. "It is time to eat our supper."

There were two bowls. Liath obediently dished out stew for Anne, then took some for herself and sat on a stack of bricks that served well enough as a bench. She blew on the broth to cool it. It had a savory odor, rabbit, leeks, herbs. They ate in silence, as always. It needed only a sister to read aloud from the Holy Verses for the atmosphere to match that of the convent.

When she was done, she went back to the cook pot to ladle out Sanglant's portion.

"Nay, child," said Anne softly. "We will talk first. You can bring him his supper later."

Annoyed, Liath set bowl and spoon on a hearthstone to keep it warm, and sat down on the brick bench. She had learned caution. Anne was nothing like Da. She seemed more a force than a person, like the hand of God reaching below the moon to touch mortal spirits. One did not speak rashly to the hand of God.

"Your education in the basic knowledge necessary to the mathematicus is sound. I am pleased with the answers you have given me these past nights."

"You said you would answer my questions when you had finished. May I ask them now?"

The fire had such a constant glare that Liath knew its flame arose from an unnatural source. Two logs lay within the stone hearth, but although fire licked them and curved around their sides, they were not consumed. Were those salamander eyes blinking in the depths of fire? Blue sparks winked and dazzled in the flames.

"You may."

Liath started up, suddenly aware that she had been staring into the fire like a madwoman. "How did you find me?"

"The spell Bernard concealed you with has worn away strand by strand since his death, just as this hut and indeed the great network of roads and towns and way houses built under the rule of the Dariyan empresses have all worn away with the passage of time and with none to care for them each day or month as is necessary. Until then, you were hidden from me."

"After Da died, I would sometimes hear a voice calling my name, but there was never anyone there. Was that you?"

"At times in remembered sorrow I spoke your name. You may have heard me. The link between us runs deeply, and could never be fully severed."

"But if Da knew you might be looking for us, why did he hide us? He thought you were dead!"

"If he thought I was dead, then he could not believe I was looking for you."

"But what about the creature that killed Da? What about the daimone I saw, and the demons that chased me on the road?"

The magelight sharpened, as if it reflected Anne's thoughts. A moth fluttered in through the door and danced along the ceiling, trying to get close to the light. "You must tell me precisely and in detail about each of these incidents."

She told of the voice of bells, Da's death, and the white feather. Of her encounter on the Osterwaldweg with the daimone and the glasslike feather it had left behind on the road, and of how she had sat so still that it had walked past her without seeing her. Of the creatures that dusk had spun out of the shadows, who had pursued her down the road beside the Bretwald and how she had hidden in a stone circle.

"How did you escape them?"

Words caught in her throat like stones. Finally she said: "I saw an owl." She could not lose her habit of caution. She did not mention the gold feather given to her by the Aoi sorcerer.

The stone circle, and the owl. That was all.

Anne watched her without expression. "An owl is a common creature to see in the night. Such creatures as you describe would not be halted by mere stone."

"T—they didn't see me," she stammered. "They passed me by." The horror of it struck her, and her next words came out harshly enough, because they at least were not half-truths. "There were other travelers on the road. They stripped them down to the bone but left their clothing and gear untouched. I'd never heard of such a thing before. I didn't know such creatures even existed, or what they're called."

"The minions of the Enemy walk on this earth in many guises," replied Anne with her usual calm. "But there are certain signs, and portents… Certain disturbances touch the fabric of the universe, of God's creation, and when that happens, gateways appear like rents in a cloth. Creatures who were once confined in other .planes of existence can cross through." Now her forehead furrowed, and she frowned the kind of unforgiving frown that the Lady might turn on an apostate. "Or be called."

"I thought daimones were called down from the spheres above the moon."

"They can be. Each sphere is home to unique kinds of daimones. Those in the lowest sphere are weakest while in each ascending sphere, they grow in power and aspect. Yet, in addition, there are other bridges, other lands that exist close by ours, even other ways of existing in the universe that we do not fully understand."

"You know so much." The easy way Anne spoke of these matters seized her twofold: awe at her knowledge, and violent curiosity because she wanted to understand the natural world herself, from the rocks and stones all the way to the highest sphere.

"Much knowledge has been lost. It is like this land we travel through now. We make our way on roads paved long ago by the ancient Dariyans, whose merchants and soldiers and administrators traveled widely and swiftly. How far we have fallen!"