The Burning Stone

  “You are silent,” Wolfhere observed. They hadn’t eaten since taking bread and cider at midday at an isolated farm, but he ignored the platter set on the bench beside him, although a fresh cut of roast pig steamed up most invitingly.

  Liath concentrated on the food because she was starving. Wolfhere would get his answer soon enough. She had gulped down most of the food on her half of the platter when she saw him make his way through the crowd of retainers who had flocked around the entrance to watch the entertainment within. Embarrassed to be caught bolting her food, she wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and stood. Wolfhere jumped up as Sanglant eased free of the crowd and walked toward them.

  “What means this?” Wolfhere demanded again.

  “What matters it to you? What right do you have to interfere?” But she was only angry at him because of the fearful pounding of her own heart as the prince stopped before her. He had filled out in the past twenty days and had his hair trimmed neatly, but the haunted look in his eyes hadn’t dissipated. He wore a rich linen tunic trimmed with silver-and-gold-threaded embroidery, cut to fit his height; with a sword swinging in a magnificent red-leather sheath at his belt and several fine rings on his fingers, he looked very much the royal prince and courtier. Only the rough iron collar bound at his neck spoiled the picture. Perhaps it choked him: He seemed unable to speak, and now that he stood so close she could not think of one single word.

  “Do not forget the oath you took as an Eagle,” said Wolfhere suddenly. “Do not forget the news I brought you, Liath!”

  “Leave us,” said Sanglant without taking his gaze off Liath.

  Not even Wolfhere dared disobey a direct command. He grunted with irritation, spun, and stalked off without taking supper or ale with him.

  “I kept the book safe for you, as I promised.” His hoarse voice made the words seem even more fraught with meaning; but his voice always sounded like that. “The question I asked you … have you an answer for me?” Shouts and laughter swelled out from the hall, and he glanced back toward the doors and muttered something under his voice more growl than words.

  “You were half mad. How can I be sure you meant what you asked?”

  He laughed—the old laugh she recalled from Gent when, under siege, he had lived each day as if he cared not whether another came for him. “Ai, Lady! Say you will marry me, and let us have done with this!”

  Impulsively, she raised a hand to touch his face. No trace of beard chafed her fingers. This close, she could smell him: sweat, dust, the fading scent of recently-dyed cloth, all of it sharp and overwhelming. Nothing of his Eika prison remained. In the wild lands beyond the city of memory, frozen under ice, the summer sun flooded the wilderness smothered in ice with a heat so intense that it ripped through her with the power of liquid fire: A torch flared across the yard, surprised murmurs rose from inside the hall, and she staggered under the hideous memory of the palace at Augensburg going up in flames.

  He drew her hand down to his chest. His touch was like the wash of cool water, soothing, quieting, healing. Where he held her hand pressed against his tunic, she felt the beat of his heart. He was not less unsteady than she was.

  Lady Above! This was madness. But she couldn’t bring herself to move away.

  Suddenly, Sanglant threw back his head and half-growled, pushed her brusquely aside as he stepped forward. Surprised, turning, she saw Hugh behind her with an arm outstretched to grab her. She yelped and began to bolt, but Sanglant had already put himself between her and the enemy. She began to shake, could do nothing more than press a hand weakly against Sanglant’s back.

  “Hugh,” said Sanglant in the way that a devout man utters one of the thousand names of the Enemy.

  “She is mine.” Hugh looked so consumed by rage that for an instant she scarcely recognized the elegant courtier who graced the king’s progress. Then he controlled himself. “And I will have her back.”

  Sanglant snorted. “She belongs to no man, nor woman either. Her service as a King’s Eagle is pledged to the regnant.”

  Hugh did not back down. Sanglant was taller, and broader across the shoulders; certainly Sanglant had the posture of a man well-trained at war. But Hugh had that indefinable aura of confidence of a man who always gets what he wants. “We may as well set this straight now so that there are no further misunder-standings between us, my lord prince. She is my slave and has been in the past my concubine. Do not believe otherwise, no matter what she tells you.”

  The words fell like ice, but Sanglant did not move to expose her. “At least I do not number among my faults having to compel women to lie with me.”

  The difference between them was that Hugh made no unstudied movement, allowed no unthought expression to mar either his beauty or his poise, while Sanglant made no such pretense—or perhaps he had simply forgotten what it meant to be a man, a creature halfway between the beasts and the angels.

  The smile that touched Hugh’s lips fell short of a sneer; rather, he looked saddened and amused as he slid his gaze past Sanglant to fix on Liath. She could not look away from him. “‘Whoever has unnatural connection with a beast shall be put to death,’” he said softly.

  She grabbed the cup of ale and dashed the liquid into his face. Shaking, she lost hold of the cup. It thudded onto the bench, rolled, and struck her foot. But the pain only brought her fully awake, out of the blinding haze of desire that had surged over her when she first walked into the hall and saw Sanglant waiting for her.

  Someone laughed; not Sanglant. The prince’s fingers touched her sleeve, to rein her back.

  Hugh laughed, delighted, even as he licked ale from his lips. He did not wipe the ale from his face or blot it from the damp front of his handsomely-embroidered tunic, grape leaves entwined with purple flowers. She was so painfully alive to the currents running between them that Hugh’s laughter came this time with revelation: Her defiance excited him physically. He laughed to cover it, to release an energy fueled of fury and lust.

  “I am an Eagle.” The hate she felt for what he’d done to her spilled into the words. “I pledged my service to King Henry.” But with each of her defiant words, his fury built; she could feel it like an actual hand gripping her throat. He would hit her again. And again. No matter how much anger she spat at him he was still stronger. If Sanglant’s fingers had not steadied her, she would have fled.

  But Hugh liked the chase.

  “I’m not your slave!”

  “We shall see,” said Hugh, all elegance and hauteur even with the last traces of ale trickling along the curve of his jaw. “We shall see, my rose, whether King Henry judges the matter in my favor—or in Wolfhere’s.” With a thin smile, confident of victory, he left them.

  It took five heartbeats for the words to register, and when they did, she went weak at the knees and collapsed onto the bench. “He’ll take it before the king. He’ll protest he didn’t consent to give me up, that Wolfhere bought off the debt price unlawfully. You know how the king hates Wolfhere!”. Her chest felt caught in a vise. “I’m lost!”

  “Liath!” His hand cupped her elbow and he lifted her up. “I beg you, Liath, look at me.”

  She looked up. She had forgotten how green his eyes were. The wildish underglaze in them had not vanished entirely, but it had fled back as if to hide, leaving him with a clear gaze, determined and dead stubborn.

  “Liath, if you consent to marry me, then I can protect you from him.”

  “You’re half mad, Sanglant,” she murmured.

  “So I am. God Above! I’d be nothing but a beast in truth if you hadn’t saved me! No better than those dogs that bite at my heels. But you waited for me all that time. Knowing that, I kept hold of what it means to be a man instead of becoming only a chained beast for him to torment.”

  “I don’t understand you. Ai, Lady! It’s true what Hugh said of me, made his slave and his—” The shame was too deep. She could not get the word out.

  He shrugged it away as if it meant nothing to him, th
en drew her aside. “Let us move away from here. Half the crowd is watching us instead of the entertainers.” But he paused abruptly, glanced back. A not inconsiderable number of the folk gathered outside the hall, having no good view in to where the tumbling troupe entertained king and company, had turned to watch a scene no doubt as entertaining, as well as one sure to make them the center of attention at every table and fire for the next few days when it came time to gossip about court. Some pointed; other simply stared, servants beside wagoneers, grooms and doghandlers, laundresses with their chapped hands and servingwomen with trays wedged against their hips, giggling or whispering although they stood too far away to hear words. Had they all seen her throw the ale into Hugh’s face? Could they possibly wonder what Sanglant’s interest in her betokened? Hadn’t he been famous for his love of women?

  That had all been before Bloodheart.

  “Nay, let them see,” he muttered. “Let them know, and carry the tale as they will in any case.” He took her hands in his, fingers curling over hers, enveloping them. “Liath, marry me. But if you will not, I will still protect you. I so swear. I know I am—am—” He winced, slapping at his ear as if to drive off an annoying bug. “—I am not what I was. Lord in Heaven! They whisper of me. They say things. They ridicule me. If I only—Ai!” He could not get words out. He seemed helpless, and furious at his helplessness like a captured wolf beating itself into a stupor against the bars of its cage. “If only my father would give me lands, then there I could find peace. Ai, God, and the quiet I pray for, with you at my side. I only want healing.” His voice was ragged with heart’s pain; but then, his voice always sounded like that.

  But to whom else would he have made such a confession? To no one but her.

  Hadn’t she turned away from the Aoi sorcerer for this? She kissed him.

  It didn’t last long, her lips touching his, although it was utterly intoxicating. He jerked back, stumbling.

  “Not out here!” A flush suffused him.

  “Wise counsel, Your Highness,” said a new voice, flatly calm and wry along with it. “Liath!” Hathui walked toward them out of the gloom. She stopped neatly between them, fittingly so: taller than Liath, she was not of course nearly as tall as Sanglant but substantial nevertheless. “Your Highness.” The bow she gave him was curt but not disrespectful. “The king your father is concerned that you have been absent for so long. He asks that you attend him.”

  “No,” said Sanglant.

  “I beg you, Your Highness.” She faced him squarely. “My comrade is safe with me. I will keep an eye on her.”

  “Liath, you haven’t yet—”

  “Nay, she’s right.” It was like struggling to keep your head above water in a strong current. She had to stroke on her own. “Just—now—it would be better.” It had all happened so quickly.

  He stilled, took in a shuddering breath. “I have the book.” He strode off.

  “He looks like he’s headed down to the river for a long cold swim,” observed Hathui. She made a sign, and half a dozen Lions took off after him, keeping their distance.

  Liath nudged the empty cup with her toe and bent to pick it up.

  “Rumor flies fast,” added Hathui, taking the cup out of Liath’s hand and spinning it around. It had a coarse wood surface, nothing fine—but sturdy and serviceable. She snorted. “Did you really toss ale in his face?”

  “What am I to do?” she wailed.

  “Courageously spoken. You, my friend, stick next to me or to Wolfhere. Else I fear you’ll do something very foolish indeed.”

  “But Hugh means to protest the debt price. He’ll take the case before the king, and you know how the king hates Wolfhere. What if he gives me back to Hugh?”

  “You don’t understand King Henry very well, do you?” said Hathui coolly. “Now come. There’s a place above the stables set aside for Eagles—and well protected by Lions. You’ll be safe to sleep there. Perhaps your head will be clearer in the morning.”

  She followed Hathui meekly. “Prince Sanglant has nothing, you know,” said Hathui suddenly. “Nothing but what the king gives him, no arms, no horse, no retinue, no lands, no inheritance from his mother except his blood—and that is distrusted by most of the court.”

  “Nothing!” Liath retorted, furious on his behalf that he could be judged and found wanting in such a crass material manner, then faltered. Hathui spoke truth in the only way that mattered outside the spiritual walls of the church. “But I don’t care,” she murmured stubbornly, and in response heard only Hathui’s gusting sigh.

  In a way, it was a relief to find the stables tenanted by dozing Lions, a few Eagles, and by Wolfhere sitting outside on a log with a lantern burning at his feet while he ate supper. He looked mightily irritated but mercifully said nothing, only touched Hathui’s shoulder by way of greeting and whispered something into her ear which Liath could not hear. But she didn’t have Sanglant’s unnaturally acute hearing.

  “Go to sleep, Liath,” he said stiffly once he deigned to acknowledge her. He was still angry. “We’ll speak in the morning.”

  Shouts rang out from the distant hall, followed by laughter and a burst of song.

  “They’re carrying bride and groom to their wedding bed,” said Hathui.

  “Bride and groom?” asked Liath, startled. “Who is wed this night?” She could have been wed this night, by the law of consent. But it had happened too fast. She had to catch her breath before she took the irrevocable step.

  Hathui laughed but Wolfhere only grunted, still annoyed. “I like this not,” he muttered.

  “That there’s a wedding?” she asked, still confused.

  “That you were blind to it and everything else going on hereabouts,” he retorted. “Go on, Hathui. The king will be looking for you.”

  She nodded and left, her proud figure fading into the gloom.

  Liath did not like to be alone with Wolfhere. He had a way of looking at her, mild but with a grim glint deep in his eyes, that made her horribly uncomfortable.

  “I beg you, Liath,” he said, his voice made harsh by an emotion she could not identify, “don’t be tempted by him.”

  Torches flared distantly and pipes skirled as drums took up a brisk four-square rhythm. Dancing had begun out in the yard. No doubt the celebration would last all night. Wolfhere scuffed at the dirt and took a sip of ale, then held out the cup as a peace offering.

  “Hugh will ask the king to give me back to him,” she said abruptly.

  Wolfhere raised an eyebrow, surprised. “So he will, I suppose. He threatened as much in Heart’s Rest the day I freed you from him.”

  “The king hates you, Wolfhere. Why?”

  The smile that quirked up his mouth was touched with an irony that made his expression look strangely comforting and, even, trustworthy: A man who faces his own faults so openly surely cannot mean to harm others for the sake of his own vanity or greed.

  “Why?” he echoed her. “Why, indeed. It’s an old story and one I thought had been put to rest. But so it has not proved.”

  Still she did not take the cup from him. “It has to do with Sanglant.”

  “Everything has to do with Sanglant,” said Wolfhere cryptically, and would say no more.

  2

  THE day passed in quiet solitude. A heavy mist bound the circle of stones, cutting them off from the world beyond. The Aoi woman meditated, seated cross-legged on the ground, her eyes closed, her body as still as if no soul inhabited it. Once, Zacharias would have prayed, but he no longer had anyone to pray to. For part of the day he dozed; later, he plucked and gutted the two grouse the Aoi woman had shot at dawn.

  It had been a great honor for his kinfolk when he, a freeholder’s son, had been ordained as a frater in the church by reason of his true singing voice, his clever tongue, and his excellent memory for scripture. But none of these were qualities the Quman respected in a man. They had cut so much from him that he could scarcely recall the man he had once been, proud and determined and eager
to walk alone into the land of the savages to bring them into the Light of the Unities. It had all seemed so clear, then. He had had many names: son, nephew, brother. Brother Zacharias, a title his mother had repeated with pride. His younger sister had admired him. Would she admire him now?

  At twilight the mist cleared off, and he walked nervously to the edge of the stone circle, but saw nothing, no one, no sign of Bulkezu or his riders on the grass or along the horizon.

  “We need a fire.”

  He started, surprised and startled by her voice, but she had already turned away to rummage in one of her strange five-fingered pouches. He checked the horse’s hobble, then descended the hill to the stream that ran along the low ground. With the moon to light him, he found it easy enough to pick up sticks. The night was alive with animals, and each least rustle in the undergrowth made him snap around in fear that one of Bulkezu’s warriors waited to capture him and drag him back to slavery.

  It seemed mere breaths ago that he had heard Bulkezu’s howl. The sound of it still echoed in his ears, but slowly the gurgle of the stream and the sighing of wind through reeds and undergrowth smeared the memory into silence.

  He sloshed in the stream, testing reed grass with his fingers until he found stalks to twist together into rope as his grandmother had taught him. But he was still skittish, and he made such a hasty job of it that no sooner had he returned to the stone circle than the reed rope splayed and unraveled, spilling sticks everywhere.

  The Aoi woman merely glanced at him, then indicated where to pile the wood.

  “I will be worthy of you,” he whispered. If she heard him, she made no answer.

  She crouched on her haunches to build the fire, sparked flint until wood lit. As she spoke lilting words, odd swirls of light fled through the leaping fire, twining and unraveling to make patterns within. Reflexively, Zacharias began to trace the Circle at his chest, the sign to avert witchcraft. But he stopped himself. If the old gods had been good enough for his grandmother, they would be good enough for him. The old gods had protected his grandmother; she had lived to an incredible age, and she had outlived all but two of her twelve children. Her luck had always held.