Crown of Stars

  Constance was seated to his left. She lifted a hand—any movement pained her for her body had been racked and ruined in recent years. Such was the weakness of human flesh. Yet a strong light burned within.

  “Lord Stronghand spared our lives because we were clerics. He set me in the care of his council, among whom preside human as well as Eika. He spoke to me most respectfully, and over several nights we engaged in a long and fruitful conversation.”

  “God Above!” said Mother Scholastica. “As well take instruction from a wolf! What can you have talked about?”

  Alone of the younger generation, Constance was not one bit intimidated by the older woman, perhaps because her authority sprang from the same source.

  “Why, we talked about God, Aunt. And stewardship of land and estate. We talked of trade and trading routes. We discussed the legend of the phoenix, and the tales concerning the spawning of the Eika in ancient days. We spoke of the Cursed Ones, and of the tempest last autumn that swept over the lands. And much more besides. I ask you, Mother Scholastica. Does Wendar suffer? Do folk in Varre starve and die? Since I was freed from Queen’s Grave, I have collected stories. I have heard testimony. It seems to me that plague and famine harass us. Villages are raided by outlaws, and by the Cursed Ones wearing the masked faces of beasts. Crops do not grow without the sun. The summer is cold. Certain sea-lanes have changed in the aftermath of the tempest. Creatures prowl abroad that once slept. God enjoins us to build and sow, to reap and to husband. We are meant to be stewards. Now is the time for good stewardship, else many more will die and the land will lie in ruins.”

  Mother Scholastica had a sharp gaze, which she used now, looking first at Constance and then, with a frown and a crinkling of her brow, at Stronghand. “I consider you beyond corruption, Constance, but perhaps I am mistaken. Has being a prisoner all these years addled your keen mind?”

  Constance did not bridle, although the words were meant to offend. Stronghand had come to respect her in the last few days. Although in constant pain, she possessed a mind of greatest clarity.

  “Ask yourself this, Aunt. How comes this Eika army to this place, at this time? How did the battle cease, when it was so well begun?”

  “The battle ended when those foul creatures—these galla raised by Antonia of Mainni who calls herself skopos—when these creatures of the Enemy swept down and devoured so many. The battle ended when Sanglant was killed. That was shock enough!”

  Constance shook her head. With jaw set against pain and a deep crease above her eyes as she braced herself, she made to stand. Stronghand moved to aid her, but her servants were already there on either side, four of them who had traveled this far: two men and two women. The action—for she went white at the effort—brought a horrified hush onto the assembly.

  “There is one who walks among us.” Her voice rang out into the corners of the hall, even into the rafters. “The emissary of the phoenix, who dies and lives again in the blaze of God’s glory. These signs I have seen: Miracles have blossomed in the land. The Rose of Healing flowers. I was mistaken for a brief time, blinded by appearances, and I thought I recognized the holy vessel. But now I comprehend that it is not my part to speak of that which has not yet revealed its presence.” The younger of her female attendants—the rabbit-faced girl—had begun to weep silently, her gaze fixed stubbornly on the floor.

  “You speak of heresy, with this talk of the phoenix,” said Mother Scholastica, but she looked puzzled rather than angry.

  Constance shook her head. “I speak truth. That disputation must take place in a different council. A force has entered this assembly and brought a temporary peace upon us. It is up to us to make good—or ill—use of this chance. I would support this marriage if reasonable terms can be agreed upon. Lord Stronghand has shown himself to be an honorable—man—who holds to his agreements. That is all I have to say. Now, I pray you, let me sit.”

  Theophanu stepped into the breach. She nodded at each of her kinfolk, all those who sat upon the dais, and at various faces staring up at her from the audience, noting them, examining their expressions. Constance’s speech had changed the tenor of the assembly. Folk were now willing to consider this change of direction into unknown country.

  “Let me address Conrad’s objection first. He has brought war into Wendar, and besides countenanced Sabella’s assault upon his cousin and my aunt, Biscop Constance. Yet his claim is a strong one. My brother Sanglant would have been first to call Conrad an honorable man.” She looked at him, but Conrad was wary, like a dog, not at all cowed by her but unsure whether she meant to toss a bone or a rock in his direction.

  “Think you,” she asked him, “that Eika and humankind can breed? I do not. Therefore, it is unlikely that any child shall be born of our union. We are stewards, meant to shepherd these lands through the storms to come. So let us, as part of the terms, name our heirs now and see them anointed and crowned. Let there be no question about the succession.”

  Conrad shrugged. “I’m not greedy for my own sake,” he said with an expansive gesture, opening his arms. “But I must look after the rightful claims of my children. On the field of battle I made Sanglant an offer, and I’m willing to stand by it, if you were to name one of my children by Tallia as your heir.”

  She looked at Stronghand.

  He nodded fractionally. “I am still listening. I have agreed to nothing yet. I, too, must ask this same question. What of my children? I control a great deal of land. It is a tricky business holding together an empire.”

  She did not smile or simper or frown or knot her brow in anxious thought. She had a knack for cutting straight to the bone without preamble or pointless philosophizing and agonizing. “Have you a proposal, to deal with this matter?”

  Oh, she was ruthless and single-minded. A rose among thorns, as the church mothers said.

  He knew what he had to do. “In truth, I do have a proposal. That this man, called Alain, who stands quietly among us, act as mediator between our parties. I will accept any terms and treaty and alliance that he approves.”

  Constance nodded. The rabbit-faced girl sobbed out loud, then sucked in her breath noisily as she fought to choke down her crying while one of her companions comforted her.

  Stronghand had keen hearing, as did all his kind. He heard the faint sigh made by Alain; it was the kind of grunt made by a person who has just realized that, in fact, he will have to haul those damned logs all the way back up the hill and that there is no use complaining because the master is harsh.

  But, after all, he had begun to suspect that the WiseMothers had worked a deeper game than even he had ever truly understood. They had ploughed in their slow fashion, where years are as days and the life of their male children and SwiftDaughters flashes past in the blink of one heavy eye. Their spirits had walked in the heavens on the wings of the aether. A mortal could never know how far their vision extended.

  The Eika were the children of the cataclysm, born in ancient days, and they, too, had been altered irrevocably by the tempest. The OldMothers would spawn a new generation, which would spawn a generation in its time, in the manner of all life. But the OldMothers would not march up to the fjall to commune with their mothers and grandmothers as they had all these centuries. That thread of immortality had been severed in the tempest last autumn. They, too, would breed and die in the way of mortal kind.

  But the Eika were few, and humankind were many. He had no illusions about his empire. The lines of communication and supply would fray, and in the passing of the years the simple toll of numbers would overtake them. The ebb tide had left them tossing on exposed rocks like flopping fish at the mercy of rapacious gulls. There must be a way to save themselves before the feasting gulls swooped down.

  One bond remained. Years ago, he and the youth called Alain Henrisson had become brothers, of a kind.

  So must it be: brothers, of a kind. The road might seem dark now, but that was only because it remained in the shadow of what is not known. No mortal soul
can see into the future. Maybe that is a blessing, although any commander would like such a weapon at his disposal.

  Theophanu examined Alain with interest and without fear. “Heir to Lavas,” she said. “I know what you once were. I wonder what you are now. Very well. I accept.”

  Alain stepped forward. He was dressed simply, a little trail-worn from his journey. He made no grand gestures. He did not raise his voice. Yet every soul there watched him, and every soul listened when he spoke.

  “So be it.” His authority was not that of the swordsman or captain; it was not that of the biscop or lord. It came from a deeper place. Even the vicious black hounds loved him, not with submission but only out of love for his pure heart.

  “I will do as you ask,” he said, “if all are agreed.”

  He waited. Not even Mother Scholastica gainsaid him.

  So he nodded, not arrogantly but as if he were resigned. As if he were accepting his fate. As Theophanu and Stronghand would accept the terms he laid down, because on this day it was necessary.

  No mortal soul can see into the future.

  These were the words he spoke in the silent hall.

  “Quarters will be cleared for the Eika army, but hall and throne will be shared by lady and lord.”

  “Morning gifts shall be given, each to the other in equal measure.”

  “Each shall reward among the retinue of the opposing army, gifts according to the honor and status of those companions. In this way bonds of trust and obligation will be formed.”

  “If one is attacked, the other will come to their aid.”

  “Among yourselves and in your own lands, you will govern according to the local custom and as you see fit. Such a vast territory will not hold together easily. Or at all. Therefore, as long as this alliance is sealed by the living bodies of each of these two who come to be partner in it, let no spear be cast that is meant to fix blame on another.”

  “No provocation is allowed among the survivors. All fought honorably. Let no word or deed, no insinuation, give offense.”

  “What each one brings to the contract will go to their own heirs, as long as they can hold it. To guarantee the peace, let ten beloved children from each lineage be raised in the heart of the other’s hall.”

  “That is all.”

  He possessed the guivre’s stare, whose vehemence had the strength to stop all creatures in their tracks. The easier to gobble them up. Yet after he surveyed the assembly, he simply nodded his head, a modest gesture that released them with his final words.

  “Let this contract be sealed. Let the dead be buried. Let the survivors return to their homes.”

  XII

  THE “VITA” OF ST. RADEGUNDIS

  1

  LIATH crossed last through the archway woven into the crown at Novomo. Blue fire tore into hazy shreds. Sparks winked in a darkening sky as she emerged into a cool twilight breeze. The long slide to night had begun.

  She found herself in a broad clearing, surrounded by a circle of standing stones and grassy mounds like ancient barrows. Forest stood on all sides. The ground was moist with recent rains. Drops of water dangled from grasses bent under that weight.

  The ranks of mask warriors had spread out into the clearing, already on the hunt. A dozen were poking through the grass just beyond the stone circle.

  Sharp Edge beckoned. “Look! There was an Ashioi camp here recently. One of the war parties came this way.”

  “Any sign of Hugh?”

  They searched in the dusk but except for the unmistakable remains of that small encampment—a fire pit with charcoal slivers, a pair of white feathers tipped with a glue that would have held them in an arm guard, a broken, bloodied fox mask—they found nothing.

  Zuangua limped over to her. He still held his left arm cradled against his chest. “A man and a child could easily have passed through this crown before the rain and left no obvious mark of their passage. Day will bring light to our search.”

  “We can’t let them get so far ahead of us!”

  He shook his head, then retreated to the remains of the abandoned camp and sat down. A mask warrior rubbed salve into his wounds and tied a sling around his arm.

  Liath stared and hunted until she thought her eyes would burn a hole in the stones, yet even her salamander gaze showed her nothing. In the end, she circled around to the campsite. Despair made her cold, but anger made her burn, and with a thought she called a blaze into the pit. Her companions leaped back as charcoal caught fire, snapping and cracking.

  “Can you teach me to do that?” asked Sharp Edge breathlessly.

  “Best we rest, Bright One,” said Zuangua, who had not moved when the fire flared.

  “And then?” she demanded.

  The flames lit the mask warriors in such a way that they looked like beasts indeed, less than human but more than animals. While she searched fruitlessly, they had already set up sentry posts and sleeping stations and kindled another five campfires.

  “My trackers have other ways of searching, but we must have light. We will not fail. Have you any idea where we are?”

  “We are in Wendar, I’m sure of it,” said Liath. “That being so, if we find no sign of Hugh or my daughter in the morning, all we can do is try to find Sanglant.”

  “You may do so. If the search for the Pale Sun Dog is abandoned, we will return to our own country if you will weave us a passage.”

  Liath looked at Sharp Edge, as did he.

  The young Ashioi apprentice grinned defiantly. Like Anna and the four masks sent with Liath by Eldest Uncle, she had not been injured in Hugh’s attack. “I don’t want to go back,” she said.

  “She has joined me of her own free will,” Liath said. “I have accepted her and put her under my protection.”

  “So I see. What path she chooses falls on her own head. I will not force her—or any of my people—to return with the rest of us.” He shrugged—the movement cost him some pain—and turned away to talk to his fox-masked lieutenant. Now that they had settled down for the night, most of the warriors pushed their masks up on their heads, revealing more ordinary faces.

  Liath and Sharp Edge moved away.

  “He’ll make no trouble,” said Sharp Edge in a low voice. “I am free to do what I wish. I want to stay with you.”

  “Then I am pleased to have you. You are the third.”

  “The third of what?”

  “The third of my nest of phoenix. That is what I will call you, no matter what others say.”

  “Who are first and second?” Sharp Edge asked with a petulant grimace. “I like to be first!”

  “So you do. In this case, you are the first among your people, if we do not count Secha.”

  “I will not count her!” said Sharp Edge with a laugh. “What others claim a place in front of me?”

  “A Kerayit weather witch and her slave, who is a cleric—a holy man—of my own people. Look here.” She stared at the crown, counting its stones and studying the burial mounds that rose as hillocks at the edge of the firelight. “I feel I should know this place, yet I do not remember ever being here before. Look how straight and true all the stones stand!”

  In their haste to follow Hugh, they had marched without sufficient traveling gear. Even Zuangua’s warriors complained at length, but jokingly, about the cold. It was a form of companionship. Everyone complained except Anna, who took her share of the night’s waybread and ate alone away from the rest. The mask warriors shared out the watch according to Zuangua’s command, but in the end Liath sat all night staring at the blind sky, unable to sleep because when she closed her eyes she remembered the vision she had suffered, the vision of Blessing in the custody of Hugh. Blessing, wed to Hugh. She retched, but her heaving brought up nothing. It was only nerves.

  “Bright One, are you sick?” Sharp Edge squatted beside her.

  “Sick at heart,” she murmured.

  Zuangua slept, or pretended to. The others huddled together for warmth. A night breeze moaned among the
stones. In its voice she heard the groans of the forgotten dead long buried under earth. They were surrounded by the dead, those buried here in ancient graves and those in the world beyond thrown into new graves, the countless legions who had died in the aftermath of the cataclysm and the armies of the suffering who would die in the months to come.

  “How did he call lightning like that? How did he call the storm?” whispered Sharp Edge. “Can you work such sorcery?”

  Her jaw was tight, and her voice bitter. “I do not know how.”

  2

  DEATH has a smell and a taste, and it can be heard as a whisper and felt as a touch on the lips when that last breath sighs free of the abandoned flesh. What a man might see, walking through the dusk as it swallows the field of battle, is only a shadow of the full understanding of death. With his hounds, he may kneel beside first one man and then another, and he may wish he had the means to heal them all, but another figure rides beside him and among some of these wounded she has already severed the thread that binds the soul to the body. They are already dead, although those around them do not yet know. Although they themselves may still stare at the sky and at their companions, waiting for aid or water or a comforting word.

  In this matter, on this day, the Lady of Battles will defeat him. Her hand has swept the battlefield before he reached it. He can only do so much in the aftermath. This evening as he leaves the council of nobles and walks out of Kassel into the surrounding fields, he knows who will live and who will die. Here is a young Wendishman with the merest scratch on his leg and a faint and confused smile on his pleasant face, but he has been trampled and badly broken inside. Here is a Varren youth crying, with his shoulder torn open and flesh glistening as a battlefield chirurgeon plies a needle and thread to close it up and her assistant holds a salve of woundwort ready to bind into the injury, and already the lad’s humors stabilize.