Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (89 page)

He saw movement, coming closer, the flutter of wings within a burning fire as though some terrible creature were about to emerge out of the brilliant gate to engulf him.

He screamed. And then something dark and hot and heavy shadowed his eyes.

"Quickly," she said, dragging him forward by the elbow.

He whimpered, struggling, and finally yanked off the creature that shrouded him. She had thrown his cloak over his head.

"Do not look back," she said. "The veil is thinning. They have become aware of that which lies far below them, and they are terribly dangerous. If they touch you, you will be burned to ashes in one blink of an eye."

"Was there truly something there?" he gasped. "What was it?"

"I think in your tongue you call them 'angels.'"

All at once, the path cut sharply to the right. They passed under a corbeled archway topped by two massive stones carved to look like lionesses, fierce and protective. His ears rang to the sound of three deep thunderous notes, and blood trickled from his nose. She let go of his arm, and he staggered in her wake out into an oval plaza paved entirely with marble and ringed with hip-high marble walls cut so perfectly that when he knelt and ran his finger along the thin crack that joined two, he found no mortar within, only the perfect fit of two blocks of masterfully-dressed stone.

The wind cut unmercifully up on this height, and he was glad to have the cloak to swing over his shoulders as he regained his balance and stood. It was a cloudless, cool night made stinging by the wind's roar. Sea ringed the island, shushing rhythmically at the base of the rock. No clouds concealed the heavens. The Queen's Sword, Staff, and Cup glimmered in the east; the light of the bloated moon, now setting, had washed away the western stars, all but the brightest ones. He knew the boldest of the stars and constellations. Any child did who stared at night up at the heavens, hoping to see an angel.

Had he seen the shadow of an angel, there at the seventh gate?

"Zacharias."

She hobbled the horse by the gateway and strode to the wall to lean out. Her body shone with an uncanny glamour, like polished bronze. The skin skirt swayed around her hips and thighs, and the fold of her arms concealed her chest. A gold chain curled loosely over her wrist. She inhaled deeply.

"Can you smell it?" she said. "Day and night are in balance again. Spring has come. The world between is rich with growth. How long it has been since I have smelled such richness!"

He stared at her, bewildered. How could it be spring? They had reached the sea a few weeks after the winter solstice, no more. It had only taken them one night to cross the sands and climb the island fort. Hadn't it?

The gleam of dawn twilight edged the eastern land on the far horizon as the moon sank below the western waves. She pushed away from the wall and raised her spear, shook it once, twice, three times. "Come. Follow in my steps."

From the archway she walked in a straight line toward the center of the plaza. He followed her, but the closer he moved toward the center, the more he felt that the ground began to melt beneath him, that he was walking first on stone, then on mud, then through sludge that dragged at his feet as it soaked away his strength. A shallow pit lay at the center of the oval, and here Kansi-a-lari knelt. He had to crawl to get there, pressing through air that seemed more like water pouring against him, a channel opening out of the pit. At its edge, he felt forward and suddenly he was falling, sliding, spinning, until he fetched up with a bump against Kansi-a-lari, who stood at the center of the shallow incline with her feet braced on either side of a depression just large enough to hold a human heart. His forehead ached from the impact. Her closeness made him dizzy, something overwhelming in her scent, or her power, or the air. He looked up.

"Pale Hunter," he breathed, but he could no longer see the sky, only a kind of pure hazy light that emanated from all places and no place. Beyond that light, as through bubbled glass, he saw a golden ladder striking up from the center of the shallow pit right through Kansi-a-lari herself and beyond her, reaching into the sky. It receded into the heavens far, and farther yet, until it became a thread. He thought he saw figures ascending and descending through a rainbow of colors, rose, silver, azure, amber, amethyst, malachite, and blue-white fire, but they were of such various pale forms and they moved with such slippery grace that he thought maybe he was just hallucinating. He passed a hand over his eyes, and looked down.

Far below, down through the rock itself, so far beneath that it seemed impossibly far, as far as it might take a man to fall in a day or ten days or a year, he saw the restless, surging waters, as black as tar, topped with white foam.

But when he touched the shallow curve of the pit, he only felt cool marble under his fingers.

"What is this place?" he whispered. He hardly had any voice left. Maybe she meant him to die of thirst. Maybe it was a kind of sacrifice to her gods.

"This is churendo," she repeated, somewhat impatiently. "The palace of coils. Here meet the three worlds, the world above, the world between, and the world below."

"Ai!" he whispered fearfully. "What lies below us? Is it the Abyss?"

"I know not this 'abyss' you speak of," she answers. "Below us lie the waters of chaos. Above us lies the sea above, which you call in your tongue, 'heaven.' That is where our ship sails, and we must bring it home to its harbor. But all is not yet ready for our return, and yet we cannot delay, because in the world between the days pass regardless. They do not wait for us. Ai, Sharatanga protect me! I cannot find him looking through the world of earth, but in the palace of coils, nothing is concealed to our sight. Where has he gone?"

She turned to the north and lifted her spear, shaking it four times. She spoke first in her own language and then, as if respecting his presence, in Wendish. "Jade Skirt, here is my blood." She drew a fine needle out of her hair and carefully pierced her tongue. Blood dripped onto the marble and slid away into the fist-shaped depression. "Ask your sister to hear my words." She turned to the east and lifted the spear, shaking it three times. "Flower Skirt, here is my blood." It dropped, still, from her tongue, beads of it scattering, sliding, into the bowl carved out of the marble paving. "Ask your sister to hear my words." She turned to the south and lifted the spear, shaking it two times. "Serpent Skirt, here is my blood. Ask your sister to hear my words." She turned to the west and lifted the spear, shook it once. "Lightning Skirt, here is my blood. Ask your sister to hear my words."

Last, she looked heavenward, raising the spear without shaking it, so that the bells only rustled but didn't ring. "Kerawaperi, here is my blood. Hear my words. Show me what is concealed to my eye." She squatted over the fist-shaped pit. She did something under her skirt with the needle; blood dripped down, swirling and melding in the small depression.

Still squatting, she untied the five-fingered pouch and took out an acorn. She twisted the tiny cap free and tipped the acorn over. A black, viscous liquid like tar oozed from it, elongated, then fell, sizzling when it hit her blood.

"The waters of chaos," she said. "Take these as an offering."

She cast away the acorn and searched in the bulgy teats of the pouch, brought out another. This one, uncapped, produced a liquid more gold than water, so light it seemed to drift upward slightly on the air before it floated down to meld with the others in the depression. "Five drops from the sea above. Take these as an offering."

She clucked her tongue once, twice, and twice again quickly,and beckoned to Zacharias. Fear gripped his belly. But he crawled forward. Now she wanted him. This was to be the sacrifice, his own heart puddling beneath her feet.

"It is better from the male part," she said, "but you have none left. Stick out your tongue." She held the needle lightly in her hand.

Ai, it hurt. He squeezed shut his eyes and prayed to the Hanged One for courage. When his blood flowed and she began to speak, he opened his eyes to look.

"Take this, the blood of a creature who will live and die on the world between. Let the three worlds be joined here." Finally, she stood, uncapping one of the leather bottles. He gasped. Thirst had congealed his throat. Now, suddenly, his heart pounded as fiercely as with any desire he had ever felt for her body. He could smell the water, sweet clear, and strong.

She poured all of it into the fist-shaped depression, and as it spread and spread, backed up while she stayed with her feet in the water. She plucked the feathers, one as gold as the sun, one as green as the spring earth, one as black as the pit, and let them fall.

When they struck the water, a steam rose from it, a mist that eddied, then cleared. Within the mist he saw a vision so lifelike that he felt he ought to be able to reach out and touch the woman within.

A
young woman with skin the color of burned cream reads by candlelight, lips moving but making no sound. Her right hand turns the pages, one by one. Her left hand rests on her hugely pregnant belly.

He heard a hiss, sharp, between clenched teeth; a moment later he recognized it as Kansi-a-lari's breath, her voice. "He is nearby. I can feel him."

A man moves into the room cautiously. He is tall, broad-shouldered, graceful in the way of big men who are at ease in their bodies. There is a glint in his eyes that might be f
_ury
—
_or
laughter. This man he has seen twice before in visions.

His companion breathed out a Salian word, sharply, on an exhalation: "Sanglant!" She stamped her foot three times, and shook the spear threateningly toward the sky with a high cry like that of a hawk.

The vision vanished together with the water and tinctures she had poured out on the marble floor. Wind cut the mist into tatters and the sun rose on a bright spring morning full of promise. They stood alone on an oval plaza; the sea huffed and murmured below. The Aoi woman had a grim, satisfied smile on her face. She handed him the other leather bottle.

"Drink now. After that, we will eat what is left of our stores. We will rest here for a day, and begin our descent tomorrow at dawn."

He would have gulped it all down, but he had too much respect for his good companion, the horse, so he poured water into his palm and let it snuffle it up. Only then did he sip himself, three swallows, then three more, sparingly.

When he had his voice back, he turned to her. "Who was the young woman? She was beautiful."

"I don't know." She sat at her ease by the shallow pit, eating the last of the dried goat's meat.

"Who was the man?"

She shredded the tough meat to tatters and ate each string of it, then licked her fingers before she finally replied.

"That is my son."

TALLIA whined and complained, but in fact once any order was given firmly enough, she obeyed it. It was the tack he ought to have taken all along. He understood that now, finally. She certainly outranked him, but birth wasn't everything; she was weak, just as Lavastine had said. He remembered Duchess Yolande's hints and intrigues about crowns and thrones. Yet Tal-lia wasn't even strong enough to rule herself. How could she be expected to rule a queendom?

It took her a long time to recover because she had come so close to starving herself. For a while she lay ill, often feverish. Certain foods gave her the flux. Others she vomited up. At first she refused food from any hand but his, so he had to feed her minuscule portions six times a day like the invalid she was. But growing up in Bel's house he had spent time caring for sick children, he knew how to handle them, obstinate one moment and malleable the next. Eventually she became accustomed to eating normally again, and after some weeks she began to gain strength. The Feast of St. Herodia came, and went, the month of Askulavre wept to its chill conclusion, and Duchess Yolande did not arrive.

In the last days of Askulavre, heavy gray clouds covered the sky and for two days it snowed industriously. For weeks they could travel no farther than the river and the little convent dedicated to St. Thierry. It had been established by Lavastine's grandfather, Charles Lavastine the Elder, the year his mother, Countess Lavrentia, had died giving birth to her second child, Lord Geoffrey's grandfather, who had also been named Geoffrey.

St. Oya's Day came, and Tallia proved strong enough to sit beside him as he welcomed the girls who in the year past had been blessed with their holy courses. She garlanded them with wreaths of juniper and holly, since the snow precluded the customary violets. At church that day, the girls so recognized were allowed to sit on the women's benches in recognition of their new status. But St. Oya's Day released nothing in Tallia's womb. Her breasts did not swell, as they would if she were pregnant. No holy blood stained her thighs as the moon waxed and waned. Several gnarled wisewomen from the village examined Tallia and said that because of her illness her womb had withered and needed time to become fertile again, time together with various teas steeped in blind nettle and dittany, or a potion of Lady's Mantle, every woman's cloak against illnesses of the womb. Given time and a diet strong in meat and beans, they said, her womb would swell again and be ready to grow a child. But they warned him that, until then, he and she must not resume the marriage bed.