Crown of Stars

  “Before what?” she asked, hearing the unspoken portion of his words.

  “I mean to escort Sanglant’s body.” He nodded at them, as at equals, and walked out. They heard him cross the other room and pad away down the stairs.

  Two soldiers looked in. “Continue to guard him,” Stronghand said.

  “And as you go, send the Eagle called Hathui to me,” said Theophanu.

  They nodded and left, shutting the door.

  “Is Constance right?” Theophanu said. “Is he a messenger sent from God?”

  “I am not familiar with such creatures,” said Stronghand, “so I cannot be sure what Biscop Constance means.”

  “You wear the Circle of Unity.”

  He touched the wooden Circle that hung around his neck, traced its circumference in the remembered way. “So I do. I wear it to remind myself of what once was, and what may be.”

  She had a way of turning and tilting her head the merest finger’s breadth that marked a flash of new thought, an idea to be considered. “The nobles and peoples of Wendar and Varre will not accept you if you are not washed and made clean within the Light, under the authority of the church.”

  “Very well. I will be washed and made clean, in whatever ceremony is necessary.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Do you believe in the Holy Word and in the Light of Unity?”

  “Is belief a requirement?”

  She laughed, and he smiled, in the human way, and she blushed, a surprising flush of color on her cheeks, quickly controlled as she continued speaking.

  “The clerics would say belief is necessary, but I don’t know what God would say. Must we know we believe, or is it enough to follow God’s precepts and live according to the law?”

  He nodded. “The WiseMothers of my people possessed the ability to see beyond the veil which blinds their shortlived children. Perhaps the wise mothers of your kin also have this far-reaching vision.”

  “Perhaps. Some are wise and honest, but others struggle for power and advancement just like the rest of us. It is ever so. We are imperfect vessels, easily cracked by greed or anger or lust or envy or anguish or fear. Yet some among us are also steadfast and truehearted. Sanglant was such a man. That is why I mourn him, who was best among us.”

  She wept without sobbing or keening, dignified in her grief.

  He could not mourn, who had known this man only as Bloodheart’s prisoner, among the dogs. The Eika do not weep.

  In truth, it served him well that the captain called Sanglant was dead, because it eliminated a powerful rival, a man who might have outplayed him on the field of blood which is called battle. He was not happy about it; nor was he sad. He used what weapons he could gather.

  The invisible tide of fate dragged men to the shore, or into deep waters where they drowned. He and his tribes of Eika had been cast ashore, orphaned on the wings of the same storm that had broken the ancient threads binding the WiseMothers to the aether that was their life. In the fjall of the heavens, the WiseMothers had dreamed of the past and of the future, too steep a climb for mortal legs. No longer would their children benefit from that farsighted vision.

  Yet in their passing, they had birthed a new generation of FirstMothers, the dragon kind whose blood had burned fire into stone and flesh to create the Eika long ago. So the tide turns. Who knew what wrack would wash up on the shore out of the fathomless sea?

  With an embroidered scrap of linen, Theophanu wiped her cheeks. “Well,” she said. “All things die, that walk on Earth. So will we, when God will it.” She glanced outside, and gasped. “Look!”

  He moved to stand beside her, not touching her, but their shoulders—of a height—so close that her shawl brushed his bare arm as she pointed.

  The wind had really picked up, blowing off all but those clouds caught along the horizon. Stars glinted against the veil of night.

  “Some say the stars are the souls of the dead.” Her hands gripped the sill so tightly that her knuckles were white—or perhaps it was only the cold that paled her skin.

  “We call the stars ‘the eyes of the most ancient Mothers.’”

  She relaxed, shoulders dropping slightly. “Do they watch over you, as kindly mothers do?”

  “No. Those whose thoughts have passed into the heavens are indifferent to us, who live here upon the streaming waters and the silent earth. It is cold in the vale of black ice, which we call the fjall of the heavens. The north wind rises there. It is as sharp as a knife, a breath so bitter that it kills. Would we think them as beautiful if they were not so cold and so distant?”

  When she did not reply, he turned his head to look at her, who stood so close beside him. A last tear slid down her cheek, one she did not wipe away, and she was looking at him, not at the glorious heavens.

  “Perhaps not,” she said in that cool, smooth voice that gave away nothing. “Yet we become accustomed to admiring the things we can never quite grasp, and have no hope of truly possessing.”

  It was obvious she meant more than she said, in the manner of humankind, but he could not quite read into the bones of her words. The span of life is short, and troublesome in large part because there is far more to understand than time to do it in.

  He nodded carefully, to acknowledge that he had heard her. “Today we have won a great victory. As for the rest, as we say in my country, we must take it one stone at a time.”

  3

  AT dawn, Zuangua took control.

  “We’re not to move out of the camp until he gives permission,” Liath said to Anna. “He says we’ve already trampled valuable sign.”

  Anna obeyed without protest. What else could she do? She was grateful to have been rescued from the country of the Ashioi, but she might as well have been flotsam caught in the current, spinning and tumbling. She stood beside the fire pit, and she watched, because she could do nothing else.

  The trackers were one male and one female, maskless and naked except for sandals and a loincloth tied up between their legs so it would not drag on the ground. They made a circuit of the stone crown and slowly widened this spiral to include the grassy mounds. Here, alongside one of the mounds, the female tracker lingered, while the male tracker moved swiftly toward an obvious path breaking out of the trees on the southern side of the clearing.

  “Hei!” called the female tracker.

  Anna followed Liath and Zuangua, who hurried to the tracker’s position. The woman pointed to scuff marks and broken stems of grass beside one of the narrow openings that led under a burial mound. They consulted, then looked around at the mask warriors who had gathered.

  “Anna,” said Liath. “You’re the best fit.”

  They gave her a torch, lit by a touch from the lady. The way the flame flared made Anna tremble to think of having that kind of power, and she dared not say “no.”

  In the east, Prince Sanglant had been able to crawl through the passageway to the central chamber of the burial mound in which he had interred Blessing and her six attendants. He would never have fit in this tunnel. Even the Ashioi, none of whom were particularly tall, were a broad-shouldered, stocky people, too wide abeam to fit easily.

  Anna got down on hands and knees. Shoving the burning torch before her, she edged forward with elbows leading and feet trailing behind. The smell of earth overwhelmed her. With each breath she sucked in drifting motes of earth, the ancient air of the tomb. Stone grazed her head. A bug scuttled over her hand, and she choked down a shriek. Her own body blocked much of the light from behind, and in any case the tunnel was long and the opening small enough that she was soon swallowed.

  What if Blessing had been murdered, and stuffed into this hole? Her body, decomposing, riddled with worms and maggots?

  But the torch met no resistance. It cleared the lowest point in the passage, where she had to shinny along the ground like a snake, and then suddenly the ceiling lofted away above her. She had come to the heart of the mound.

  The flames whispered, echoing off the low vault of corbel
ed stone. Blank eyes stared at her from around the chamber. Hollow faces leered, mouths agape in white grins. Skeletons, dressed still in their finery, with wisps of hair capping their bony heads.

  She screamed, slapped her hands over her face.

  It was all a vision, a nightmare. Moaning, she tried to lower her hands, but she could not move, she could not think, she could not breathe.

  They scuffed the dirt. They were moving, scrabbling toward her, reaching out with white fingers to scrape her flesh from her bones, to make her into one of them …

  A touch brushed her shoulder.

  She sobbed hysterically.

  “Anna! Anna! They’re dead. They can’t hurt you!”

  She groaned.

  “Here, now, Anna. Just go back, then. I’ll look around. God Above! They’re wearing the silver tree, the mark of Villam! Could these be the companions of Lord Berthold, who were lost here?”

  Shaking, still weeping, Anna lowered her hands.

  Liath had crawled in after her, and now, standing but bent over so her head didn’t graze the ceiling, she held a torch out and examined, each in turn, the remains of seven dead people. Mostly the flesh had been eaten away, although dried bits adhered in places and they still had much of their hair. The cloth of their garments had not decomposed as quickly. The mark of the silver tree was easily visible on their finely woven tabards. A naked sword lay over the legs of one; rust discolored it.

  “These two are dressed differently,” said Liath, pausing beside the last two, who lay at an awkward angle to the others, as if they did not belong. “Ai, God!” She held the torch closer, to get a better look.

  These wore tabards stitched with the black dragon worn by the retainers sworn to serve Prince Sanglant. One of the tabards was patched in three places easily visible to the eye: a large patch at the dragon’s right claw, a smaller mend at the sign’s snout, and a third at the shoulder.

  Anna had mended that rip. That was her stitching.

  “This is very strange,” said Liath. “How came these seven dead men here? I am sure as I heard the tale that these barrows were explored after the disappearance of Lord Berthold, and no remains found. These poor fellows must have crawled in here seeking shelter in recent months, and been lost.”

  “No,” whispered Anna.

  Liath turned to look at her. By torchlight, she did not look so very fearsome. The darkness crowding in on all sides made her appear more vulnerable. She was not much older than Anna herself, not truly. She had also traveled a long way, and faced terrible dangers.

  “Who do you think they are?”

  Anna wiped her cheeks, but the tears kept flowing. She had mended that tabard. She knew her own stitches.

  “Those five,” she said hoarsely, “they must be as you say. They must be Lord Berthold’s retainers, the five he left behind. I told you—” She drew breath, caught her courage, and went on. After all, she had always known the truth in her heart. Now she must accept it. “I told you we had to run. That the caverns were collapsing around us.”

  “Indeed, you did,” said Liath with a slight frown. “Then who are these two others?”

  She had not Prince Sanglant’s talent for names and faces; he would have known at once; he would not have had to ask. And after all this, Anna could not say their names aloud, although they resonated in her heart.

  Thiemo and Matto.

  Speechless, she covered her face with her hands.

  4

  AFTER she had crawled back out of the mound, and wiped off her clothing, Liath waited beside Sharp Edge as the tracker continued her search of the clearing. Poor Anna was huddled on the ground in a stupor, neither crying nor speaking. It was as if she had been struck on the head and gone mute.

  “There is some vast labyrinth that connects the whole,” she said to Sharp Edge. “Some of it is truly underground, hewn out of the rock, but another part must be the aetherical tributaries, shifting in their channels. We placed Blessing and her companions in a mound far to the east—hoping to save her life, which we did! Lord Berthold and his companions crawled into the mounds above Hersford Monastery. And if Anna’s account is correct, and I believe it is, then a group comprised of two from Hersford and five from the east escaped from the cataclysm at Verna, in the Alfar Mountains. How can this be?”

  “It must be possible to map these channels,” said Sharp Edge. “I’d like to do that!”

  Liath shook her head, smiling slightly. Sharp Edge had a strong personality, a little hard to take, but her eagerness was like good wine: it made you want to drink more.

  “A map,” said Zuangua, “would allow war parties to strike more effectively.” He was pale, hurting, but unbowed.

  A distant “halloo” drew his attention. The female tracker stood at the northern edge of the clearing beside a narrow track that was, in truth, scarcely more than a parting of branches.

  “She’s found some scent,” said Zuangua. “Liat’dano, go with Tarangi. Take a pair to follow her, but do not confront our enemy without me, if that’s where the scent leads you. I’ll send a bundle with Calta, on that big path, to see what they find. The rest will remain here with me.”

  Liath paused beside Anna, but the poor girl was so drawn into herself that she did not even respond to a murmured question. With a shrug, she hurried after the female tracker, already lost among the trees. Buzzard Mask and Falcon Mask stalked behind, eyes wide as they stared around at this alien land. To her surprise, she had not taken more than a hundred steps when she followed Tarangi out of the trees onto a rocky outcrop. A spring leaked from a defile to make a small pool within the rocks. The ridgeline fell away before them in a jumble of cliffs and terraces. Set back against tree and rock, sheltered by the highest thrust of the ridge, a tiny hut stood in isolation. Moss ran riot on the thatched roof. The walls gleamed as though they were freshly whitewashed.

  Tarangi had risen to both feet, brushing dirt and bits of grass and leaf from her bare chest.

  “Nothing,” she said to Liath. “The one we seek did not come here. There is an old magic protecting this place. Can’t you smell it? It is powerful, but not angry. It is not against us, but it will reveal no secrets. I will not go in the hut.”

  “Is it a bad place? Has it a bad heart?”

  “‘Bad’? No. It is peaceful but very strong. Like lightning, it is from beyond this Earth. I will not go there.” She retreated into the trees and crouched in the shade to wait for them.

  “Do we go back?” asked Falcon Mask, all her weight riding on her toes like a dog straining at a leash.

  Best to hurry, but Liath herself felt leashed, as if something bound her here. “No. I want to look around first.”

  Falcon Mask dashed at once to the rock wall rising behind the hut and began to climb. She had a mad grin on her face. Buzzard Mask prowled to the edge of the open space, marking its boundaries. The track itself went no farther. It ended here, where the hill ended, cut off by the precipitous drop in front and the rock wall behind. Forest covered the lands below. In the distance Liath saw a thread of smoke.

  She walked over to the hut. Cautiously, she pushed on the door of lashed branches. It resisted for the space of two breaths, and then gave way. She held her breath. She knew where she was, absolutely and without doubt. The discovery of the skeletons beneath the mound had told her what she needed to know. This confirmed it. She knew who had lived long years in confines so small that a man could not lie down in comfort lengthwise. Had they buried his body elsewhere, or did his remains still rest inside?

  She stepped over the threshold.

  The narrow dirt floor lay empty and unmarked by even the dusty prints of woodland animals, which might be expected to have come scavenging. A wooden bowl and a wooden spoon hung from a wooden hook, strung up by a slender strand of fraying rope so dry that she feared that, if she touched it, it would crack and crumble.

  A leather bucket had tipped over in one corner. A faint, sweet aroma drifted from that corner, but the curl o
f air inside the hut blew it away in an instant. She took another step in, righted the bucket, and found it empty but discolored at the bottom. Beneath, some creature had dug a hole in the ground, like a dog seeking a bone, but it was empty. There was no other sign of the holy man who had bided here for so many years.

  This man was supposed to have been the only son and heir of Taillefer and Radegundis; the father of Anne; the husband, however briefly and illicitly, of Mother Obligatia. Once, Liath had believed that Brother Fidelis was her grandfather, but now she knew he was not. All they had in common, if the stories she heard could be believed—and she did believe them—was that he had once sat in the circle of the Seven Sleepers. That he had abandoned their councils, believing them to be corrupt.

  He had taken the more difficult path, the life of an ascetic. Some had called him a saint, blessed with that halo of righteousness that the church mothers call the crown of stars.

  It was ironic, then, that Brother Fidelis had the right to wear such a crown twice over, once as the heir to Taillefer’s empire and once as a holy man who had cut himself off from the court of worldly power in order to pray for the souls of the living and the dead.

  Bowl and spoon and bucket were all that remained of him, except his precious book, the Vita of St. Radegundis, taken away by Sister Rosvita and still held in her possession.

  “Bright One!” Buzzard Mask’s voice was breathless, fading into a wheeze of terror.

  She stepped sideways out of the hut, and turned. The shock actually made her go rigid. Not six steps from her lay a bold, golden lion, washing its paws with its tongue.

  “Bright One!” hissed Falcon Mask from above and to the right. “Step aside. I have an arrow ready.”

  “Leap back,” said Buzzard Mask, to her left. “I’ll thrust at its heart.”

  “Hold.”

  The lion neither startled nor moved, but kept licking. An arm’s length in front of its massive head and fearsome teeth rested a quite ordinary wooden staff.

  “If it meant to leap, it would already have done so.”