Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (94 page)

It was easy to catch Liath on the path as she waddled along. He touched her on the arm and when she looked up at him in surprise, as if she'd just then realized he was following her, he kissed her. Momentarily distracted from her purpose, she leaned against him, smiling softly, gaze lifted to his face.

In the paddock, Resuelto stood sleeping, one leg cocked. The mules bunched somewhat apart, one resting his neck on another's withers. It was very peaceful.

"Look," she said, lifting a finger to touch his lips and then move his chin so that he had to look where she was looking: not at him at all, but at the heavens. "At dawn it will be the sixth day of Avril, and right now, at midnight, we see the same sky that in summer we'll see at dusk and in winter we'll see at dawn. There is the Dragon. There. Look. You can see red Jedu leaving the Scales. On the seventh of Avril, she enters the Serpent. The seventh is a day full of power and fluctuation in the heavens, because bright Somorhas and fleet Erekes also shift, moving from the Child into the Sisters. A time of strong beginnings."

"Where are Somorhas and Erekes?" He could identify many of the constellations now and all of the wandering stars. After so many months with Liath, he could scarcely have failed to learn their names and histories.

"They can't be seen right now because they're still wandering too close to the sun. But Somorhas should return as evening star on the seventh, when she moves into the Sisters. Erekes is harder to see. But if we stood beneath the north pole, or at the equator, this sky on this night at this same time would look different. Longitude, latitude, and altitude." "It would?"

She took his hand as she started walking again. "The ancient Babaharshan magi and the Aoi sorcerers who taught them lived far south of here. As the observer moves south, the celestial equator moves higher in the sky. So does the plane of the ecliptic. To be at zenith, to 'crown' the heavens, means that a star stands directly above the observer at the highest point in the celestial dome." She stopped again. "Look there. The Queen's Bow stands almost at zenith."

"She's hunting the Dragon."

"In another few hours, the Queen herself will stand at zenith, and at dawn her Cup and Sword will follow through the zenith behind her."

"Because of the turning wheel of the stars," he observed, and was gratified at the sudden, sharp smile she gave him, staggering in its heat.

"Exactly. Which brings us back to the tenth day of Octumbre in the year . Five years and five months from now." Liath opened the door into the tower quietly, and Sanglant glanced up at the beamed ceiling as they entered, but he heard nothing. Severus slept upstairs, and woe to anyone who disturbed him. "Autumn's sky at midnight is the Child's sky, she who is Heir to the Queen. The Guivre swoops down upon the Child as she reaches for the Crown, but the Child is not defenseless. She is attended by the Queen's Eagle, by the Sisters, who are her aunts, and by the Hunter who is also a prince. The Falcon flies before her, and behind her trails her faithful Hound."

"And even if the planets change over the course of the years, the stars always rise at the same time."

She hesitated, then laughed. It was such a bright sound that he had to laugh with her, and then he snorted, seeing her glance upward with exaggerated apprehension.

"Come, my love, if you'll protect me from the fates woven into the stars, I'll protect you from Brother Severus, no matter how grumpily he descends."

"Ai, God." She stiffened suddenly with a hand clasped to her belly. He felt the pain ride her, but she said nothing, only panted to let some of the pain out as he stroked her lower back. The nymph darted out of the night to stroke Liath's belly, but Liath did not notice, and as she relaxed with an exhalation, Jerna slipped back into a pool of protecting shadow.

Recovering, Liath kneaded her belly with the heels of her hand, chuckling weakly. "I was only going to say that the fixed stars don't always rise and set at the same time. It's called the precession of the equinoxes, but the cycle takes place over such a long time, thousands of years—

"Ai, Lady," he groaned. "Five years is enough for me. God Above, Liath, just tell me this secret you've discovered so we can go back to sleep!"

She found a lantern, brought fire to the wick with a touch; the ease with which she brought fire was never less than startling, although he ought to have gotten used to it by now. Pregnancy had not dimmed her beauty, although certainly she tired quickly these days. Her face was softer and rounder, but her eyes were as brilliant and as fierce and her hair just as likely to escape in curls and wisps from the braid he made of it each evening.

She took the ephemerides out of its cupboard and opened it to the back. He recognized where the precise writing of an unknown, scribe ended and Liath's began, full of ink blots, blurred letters, and sudden breaks.

"If we look at the progression of the planets through the ephemerides . . ." She turned, pointed, even though she knew the marks were meaningless to him. "On the thirteenth day of Cin-tre of the year , four of the planets will be in retrograde, moving backward along the ecliptic: fleet Erekes at the cusp of the Dragon, both sage Aturna and bold Jedu in the Lion, and stately Mok in the Penitent. This suggests lines of force moving in the universe against established patterns. Only bright Somorhas, shining as the Evening Star, moves forward and on this day enters the Serpent." Her ringer moved off the precise and rather fussy hand of the unknown scribe and onto the pages she had herself filled in over the last seven months. "But by the eighteenth day of Cintre, Erekes and Aturna and Jedu will reverse themselves and travel forward again, as if restoring the universe to its rightful order. Yet in the month of Setentre, two months later, bright Somorhas will go into retrograde, followed in early Octumbre by fleet Erekes. It all culminates on the tenth of Octumbre in the year . Aturna and Jedu will stand at the cusp of the Lion and the Dragon while Somorhas and Erekes move in retrograde through the Serpent and Mok slides in retrograde along the cusp of the Penitent and the Healer. The waxing crescent Moon, which by midnight will have set below the horizon, will be in the sign of the Unicorn. The Sun at midnight sleeps at the nadir of the heavens in the sign of the Serpent, the harbinger of death and change who shucks one skin only to live again newly reborn in another." She lifted both hands, palms out to mark a point flatly made. "But we live in the northern latitudes. In the latitude where the Babaharshan magi lived in their ancient cities, on the tenth of Octumbre in the year at midnight, the Crown of Stars will crown the heavens."

"But that's exactly what Wolfhere—" He broke off. Through the open door he heard the night breeze sighing through trees and, half hidden in the rustle of leaves, a scuff like that of a large animal moving along the ground. Mice skittered in the walls behind the open cupboard where the magi stored their ap-parati: an astrolabe packed in velvet in a rosewood case, an armillary sphere that showed the motions of the heavens, a celestial globe with the stars marked out as pinpricks of silvery paint. A shutter creaked. "That's exactly what Wolfhere said to me."

She had to brace herself on the table either from another wave of pain or from the shock. "He lied to me," she whispered. "He must have known she was here all along."

"Liath—" He lifted a hand to warn her. A footstep pressed the earth outside. Jerna, hovering near Liath, suddenly darted away and folded itself into the metal bands of the armillary sphere until it became only a shimmer among shadows.

"You are wakeful," said Anne as she crossed the threshold. She did not ask what Liath was doing; she did not need to.

"We commonly reckon a year by the return of the sun," said Liath, not looking up. She still breathed hard, as after a footrace, and her gaze seemed fixed on some sight beyond the book that lay open in front of her. "The Babaharshan magicians reckoned a year by the precession of the equinoxes, when all the stars would have returned to the same places from which they had started out and by this means restored the same configuration over the great distances of the whole sky. One of their 'years' would count as tens of thousands of years as we reckon years."

"You have been reading Cornelia again," said Anne.

"But there might be other ways to reckon a year. By the cycle of bright Somorhas every eight years, for instance. Or by the Crown of Stars crowning the heavens." Liath finally straightened. She looked tired, and anxious, and triumphant. "Some people say the Aoi were always here, before humankind built cities. Others say that long ago the Aoi sailed to these shores in beautiful boats woven of gold and silver reeds, and that they ruled over the villages of humankind and in time offered to teach some of them the arts of sorcery."

"To their everlasting regret, when human magi turned against them," said Anne. "When humankind outbred them and filled the countries the Aoi ruled with unmatchable human armies.

When humankind brought disease to their masters, which they could not combat."

Liath frowned. "According to the
Book of Chaldeos,
the emperors and empresses of the Dariyan Empire reckoned years as we reckon years, by each return of the sun. But they also imitated the Aoi, whose calendar recognized a Great Year equal to fifty-two of our years. Even Chaldeos didn't know how the calendar of the Aoi worked. That was lost with them two millennia ago. But their year began and ended when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens. They lived far south of us, or came from a land far south of where we live. They must have looked at the sky differently than we do." Liath closed the book and set a hand on it, as if to keep it closed. Now she looked at Anne directly. "Who did the calculations in this book?"

At first, Sanglant did not think Anne meant to answer. But instead she walked forward and turned the book to the opening page of calculations. There was no preface, no explanatory note or signature, only the numbers. "Biscop Tallia."

"The daughter of Emperor Taillefer."

"The same one. She understood that some deeper secret underlay the mystery of the Lost Ones. So she calculated all the way back two thousand seven hundred years to a day when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens. On that midnight, the portents, as read in the lines of force woven through the heavens, opened the world to change, bringing the breath of the aether which is untainted by the touch of the Enemy into the air we breathe here below the Moon..."

"When portals open between the spheres. When great power can be unleashed for good or for ill. You said there are ways to reach between the spheres and even beyond them—" Liath grunted as another wave hit her. He caught her as she staggered, held her.

Anne watched him with a gaze so open and clear that it was like the cut of an ax: nothing subtle about it.

Sometimes, when he was tired or preoccupied, his mind would stop working for a while, like a stream suddenly clogged with leaves and dirt and stones that backs up, and up, until the accumulated force of the trapped water finally and abruptly drives a passage through the debris. "You're talking about that great conspiracy of my mother's people in which Wolfhere implied I was an active participant. But she abandoned me when I was barely two months old. If I am so deep in their confidences, then explain to me why I was left behind, and left ignorant."

"It is a puzzle, truly. But you cannot deny what you are, Prince Sanglant."

"/ am a bastard. I can fight, and lead men in battle. If there is aught else you know of me which remains hidden to me, then please tell me now."

Anne's smile was slight. "You are not unversed in the art of the courtier, which some call intrigue. In some ways you are cunning, Prince Sanglant, but in most ways you are not, for like your dog that waits outside you show what you are on the surface. There is little else to know."

"No onion, I," he retorted, laughing again.

"He's not—" began Liath hotly, defending him, but he touched her on the hand, and for once she shut her mouth on an imprudent comment.

"But a cup made of gold shows the whole of its substance on the surface as well," continued Anne as if Liath had not spoken. "That makes it no less precious. You are here for a reason."

"You are the thread that joins Aoi and human," said Liath. "But for what purpose?"

Anne smiled, watching Sanglant as he watched her, opponents who had not yet drawn swords. "For as was written in the
Revelation
of St. Johanna: 'And there will come to you a great calamity, a cataclysm such as you have never known before. The waters will boil and the heavens weep blood, the rivers will run uphill and the winds will become as a whirlpool. The mountains shall become the sea and the sea shall become the mountains, and the children shall cry out in terror for they will have no ground on which to stand.'"

"Chapter eleven, verse twenty-one," said Liath automatically.

Anne continued. "Some say Johanna was speaking of a vision she had seen of a great cataclysm that would on an ill-fated day in the future overtake the world. But others claim that she recorded in her
Revelation
the words of one who had experienced in her own time such a cataclysm."