The Burning Stone
Wind moaned through the rocks. Within the fire the shadow moved, shifting like a person swaying before a large fire. A tiny light bobbed impossibly behind, a candle caught within the flames—or only the image of a candle, seen through fire.
“You discovered the one whom we all thought dead, who may yet be a threat to us. Armed with this knowledge, we can act. And despite everything, Brother, you found the girl.”
Wolfhere shook his head impatiently. Rosvita could not see his face, but everything she needed to know she heard in his tone. “Found her, and then lost her again.”
The wind tugged at her robes, as cold as winter, and she shuddered. Flames shivered in that wind, and for an instant she thought the branches and coals would be scattered. Then, inexplicably, the wind died. Wolfhere rested his forehead on his fists. In the silence Rosvita heard the voice clearly; not young, not old, it was without question female.
“Fear not. She is back in our hands.”
8
WAVES chop the hull of the ship as they drive north along the landward side of the island of Sovi. Oars beat the sea in a rhythm as steady as the drum of his heart. He shades his eyes against the glint of sun on the waters. Is that movement in the sound ahead? Or only the hump of a rocky islet?
“Ships!” cries the watchman. “To the north, near the fjord’s mouth!”
He had hoped to skate in down the long fjord waters and take them unawares, but Skelnin’s chieftain is no fool, and not unambitious on his own account. He has scouts, he has ears. He will not go down without a fight. He may even believe he can triumph this day—and it is possible he will. But unlikely.
The watchman tolls off the number: one, four, nine, twelve, fifteen longships in all, and a number of fishing skiffs that no one bothers to count. His own forces number only fourteen longships, but Skelnin’s ships come at him like sheep, bunched without order. They will fight with no plan beyond killing.
At his shout, his own ships are lashed together, three abreast like islets on which Skelnin’s warriors will run aground, with five to guard his flanks and strike at will where there is an opening. The cauldrons of hot oil are readied; stones moved; spears lowered.
He himself stands in the stern of the middle ship in the middle raft. The captain of each ship looks not at Skelnin’s ships but on Rikin’s chief. As the ships close the gap, he lifts his standard as a signal.
In each ship two poles are raised, each one capped with an iron hook. Each hook holds a cauldron filled with oil bled from the ocean leviathans and mixed with certain powders that intensify its burning. At his order, brands are lit from the fire boxes set by the lowered masts, and when fire touches the oil within the cauldrons, black smoke boils forth.
A rain of arrows showers down, and his own men loose a sheet of arrows in answer. A few warriors drop, those who have not tucked under their shields in time; one spins and falls over the side to vanish in the gray seawaters.
The first of Skelnin’s ships reach the platforms, grinding along broadside. Shields are locked and spears bristle to repel boarders as others knock away grappling hooks. The Skelnin RockChildren jeer and cry as they try to leap the gap, but he only watches; he can hesitate one instant more as two more ships move in against his own and as his other ships, too, are attacked.
He won this battle when the cauldrons were lit.
The first rocks fly, crashing against wood. The prow of his ship with its glaring dragon stem clashes with the proud boar’s head stem of the Skelnin chieftain’s ship. Now they are surrounded on three sides. He lifts the standard a final time.
The cauldrons swing out and a searing waterfall pours down upon the enemy. It spreads into the enemy ranks, spattering on flesh and wood like the wet hot heart of the earth itself, as fierce as the molten rock that runs in the veins of the earth. As the ships scrape each other, his own warriors press the attack where panic erupts among the enemy.
One ship begins to burn. The shield line breaks, and Skelnin’s warriors scatter as his own press their advantage, leaping across the gap and striking with their axes to clear the ship. The dead and wounded are thrown into the sea, as he had promised: when he surveys the waters, he sees the ripples that have followed in his wake boil to life as the merfolk net the feast he has promised them.
So the battle runs. Three of Skelnin’s ships blaze into fiery death; four are cleared and taken; three try to bank away into flight, but his own ships, those left to guard his flanks, race after them. Four fight on as though courage itself may bring victory.
But he knows better. Fortune favors the bold, and the cunning.
The last of Skelnin’s ships are grappled in by three of his own ships, and their crews overwhelmed. The ships of the fisherfolk are of little account. Most have fled already and those that attempted to join the melee were sunk with rocks. But caught in the middle of the battle, Skelnin’s chieftain roars on, his own picked warriors fighting beside him with the blind fury of berserkers. That they will lose is evident to all. Now the last dozen of them press forward, and with a great roar of hopeless rage they beat down the shields on the steerward side of his own ship, thrust somewhat out before the others by the tide of the battle. With a stunning leap the hugest of them—Skelnin’s chief himself—forces his way over the side. The ship rocks wildly behind him, tipping one of his own men and one of Rikin’s into the water. Their heads bob, white as tiny icebergs, and suddenly Skelnin’s man is dragged flailing into the depths.
Skelnin’s chief shrieks out his fury and knocks aside two of Stronghand’s crew as though they are feathers. With a curse on his lips, he charges Stronghand.
Such strength is a weakness. Reliance upon it makes one’s mind weak.
As Skelnin’s chief bashes his way toward the aft of the ship, clubs and spears and axes rain down upon him. His boar-tusk helm shatters, and the bone of his head shines through his torn scalp like snow upon a peak, but he still comes. Is it possible that fury can transcend the limits of flesh? Poised in the stern, hand upon his own iron-tipped spear, Stronghand watches with interest as Skelnin’s chief staggers on. But in the end even the greatest will bleed, and flesh becomes dust just as the great cliffs that loom over them will become sand in the end to be scattered in the breeze—or so the WiseMothers say.
Struck behind the knee and pierced through his throat, Skelnin’s chief collapses a spear-length from Stronghand’s feet.
A roar of triumph lifts from his warriors, a shout that shudders the air and echoes off the distant dark cliffs. Now they will believe in him. Now others will flock to follow his standard. He surveys the carnage without pleasure, but also without pain. This is the way such things are accomplished. For other tasks, other methods will prevail.
Those of the wounded who seem minded to surrender, and to live, he lets pledge loyalty to Rikin fjord. Those of his men who flounder in the sea are fished out, untouched—it was the bargain he made. Most of the dead they tip into the water, as he promised, but he lets his own dogs, now unleashed, tear Skelnin’s chief to pieces.
The clamoring of dogs ripped Alain out of his dream. He half fell off the bed. The rug had slipped and the cold floor against his bare feet brought him fully awake.
Tallia stirred. “What is that noise?” she murmured, a soft complaint.
He wore his shift, as he always did to bed—unnatural in a marriage bed, but it was Tallia’s wish. Now he fumbled for his sword and sheath and bolted for the door, where servants rolled aside, coming awake themselves as they scrambled to get out of his way. An amulet wrapped the latch, and he got his fingers around the cord and yanked it free. He flung the door open so roughly that the ligatura—blessed and bound by the deacon—that hung from the threshold rained onto him, dried herbs and parchment scraps inscribed with verses from the holy book. He brushed his hair free of them as he ran down the stairs to the level below. The walls stank of incense from the nightly rounds the deacon made with her censer, swinging it back and forth to drive away evil creatures from within the w
alls. A smoky light permeated the curving stairs from below—the fire of torches.
Fear clutched his heart.
It had been so quiet for a month after Steadfast’s death. He had begun to believe that they were free, that the curse was nothing but ravings spun into being by the prince’s disordered mind.
The door into Lavastine’s chamber was latched from the inside, and servants already crowded there. Several bore torches aloft to light the others, who were slamming their shoulders into the heavy door to force it open. Alain stumbled onto the landing, slipping on the litter of pine needles that had been strewn on the floor to drive away evil. Even through the heavy wooded door the noise of the hounds was deafening.
“Let me through!” The men parted before him, but he grabbed two of the stoutest and all together they hit the door with their full weight, hit it again as inside hounds went wild. One of them yipped in pain, a high yelp, followed by a furious crescendo of barking.
“Terror!” It was Lavastine’s voice.
“Father!” cried Alain. With servants on either side, he slammed against the door again. It shuddered, creaking. A ligatura had been laced above this door as well, fastened more tightly, but now its component parts began to drizzle down on them: sage, withered dill, oak twigs, and linen strips written with signs, smelling faintly of cypress.
“Alain, don’t come in!” shouted Lavastine. “It’s in here.”
“Again!” His shoulder was numb, so he turned to use the other. They hit the door, and it creaked again, but did not budge.
“My lord!” A soldier came panting up the stairs, carrying two axes. He was followed by another soldier carrying a torch.
Alain grabbed one and set to work with a will, out of his mind with fear, hacking madly as the hounds scrabbled and barked on the other side; so close, so impossibly far. He could not hear the count, except for a string of curses. Ai, God, if the thing had gotten into the room, then his father could not risk a dash across the floor to open the door. He was alone in the dark, helpless except for the hounds.
Wood shattered under the blade. Beside him, the soldier wielded the other ax with the trained strokes of a man who has seen battle many times, and indeed the torchlight gave enough clarity for Alain to glimpse the man’s face: one of the veterans of the Gent expedition.
“Is it an assassin?” a servant wailed.
“Nay, an evil curse!” shouted another. “The dead hand of the Eika, avenging hisself on the count for his victory at Gent!”
Haze made the landing yellow as Alain chopped. Wood splintered, and his blade cracked through, hung up in the wood. The hounds fell silent except for a whimper coming from one of them.
“Hold!” Lavastine’s voice came abruptly, from the other side of the door. “Stand back.”
They all obeyed without thinking. The latch moved. The door creaked, shifted, grated.
“It’s stuck,” said the soldier, and he and Alain got their shoulders behind it and shoved. It gave way all at once, and Alain fell into the room, staggered, and caught himself, blinking. The shutter lay wide and the thinnest gray streak of light blurred the horizon. Servants crowded in behind him, but the silence was frightening, and intense.
Lavastine stood barefoot, in a shift, on the stone floor. In his right hand he held his unsheathed sword, in his left a knife. Sorrow and Rage growled at the men until Alain bade them hush. They were so tense that even then they growled, but they sat. Terror lay on the floor licking one of his hind legs, and Fear crowded directly behind Lavastine, a headless bulk.
The torchlight made shadows dance crazily in the room as the servants moved forward, muttering, afraid.
“Father!” Alain found his voice and stumbled forward to grasp Lavastine’s wrist. His skin was terribly cold, but his face was flushed. “Ai, God! What happened?”
Lavastine opened his hand and the knife fell to the floor with a thud. Fear growled, a rumbling in his throat. He moved around Lavastine, and Alain had a brief glimpse of something white dangling from his jaws before the hound opened his mouth to drop a sickly white ratlike creature at Lavastine’s feet like an offering. It looked quite dead.
But it was too late anyway.
Alain’s gaze, drawn down, stopped at the count’s bare feet, pale, well-groomed, and clean… except for two spots of blood on his ankle, set close together. Lavastine said nothing, only set a hand on Alain’s shoulder for support and with Alain beside him limped back to the bed, where he sat down.
But his expression was perfectly calm. “Call the deacon,” he said. “I have been bitten.” The servants wailed aloud, all clamoring at once, but he raised a hand for silence. “Nay, God is merciful.”
“Merciful!” cried Alain, aghast. He did not want to look at the creature that lay exposed on the plank floor, but one of the soldiers poked it with the haft of its ax, and it did not stir, made no movement. It was completely lifeless.
“Now it is dead and cannot harm you, Son.” Finally, one of the soldiers hurried away down the stairs. Lavastine touched Alain. His fingers seemed as cold as marble. “See that it is burned, but out away from the village where the smoke cannot poison anyone.”
Across the room, Terror whimpered, and suddenly the count’s cool expression faltered, and the shadow of death flickered in his eyes. “Ai, God. My old Terror. Most faithful.”
“Here, now,” said Alain brusquely, “sit there, Father.” He grabbed the knife from the floor and cut a cross over the wound, then set his own mouth to it and sucked, although Lavastine began to protest but gave up. His blood tasted as bitter as hope. Alain spat it out on the floor, sucked again, and again, and then did the same for Terror while the servants hurried to get hot water, cloth to bind the wound, and a shovel to carry away the dead creature. The deacon came as the sun rose. She busied herself making a poultice, and Alain sent a messenger to the monastery of St. Synodios, asking them to send their Brother Infirmarian at once.
Lavastine sat throughout as calm as stone, and never once cried out in pain, never cursed the Eika enchanter, only waited, stroking Terror’s head, and watched with that least smile, the one that denoted his approval, while Alain ordered the servants and then, finally, because there was nothing else to do, knelt beside him and prayed.
PART TWO
THE TURNING WHEEL
VIII
THAT WHICH BLINDS
1
“HERE comes the young lord!”
Alain heard the shout rise up as his entourage rounded the forest path and came to a halt in a clearing. Ten huts stood along the path with narrow garden strips stretching out behind each one. A score of cows grazed along the forest’s verge. Fields of winter rye sprouted beyond the village. He dismounted and gave his reins to a groom.
“This is the disputed land?” he asked his steward, but already the village folk swarmed forward and in the old tradition began clamoring all together to get his attention.
A steward brought his stool, and he sat down, although that did nothing to mitigate the outcry. So he just sat, calmly regarding them with Sorrow on one side, Rage on the other, and Fear flopped down at his feet, and after a while one and then another stopped shouting and gesticulating as, one by one, they realized he did not intend to speak until there was silence. In time, because he was patient, they all stood respectfully before him and waited.
“It has come to the attention of my father, Count Lavastine, that certain disputes have disrupted the peace of this village and that several men have been injured in fighting. It is my father’s will that no feuding be allowed on his lands, so I have come I settle the matter. Let those with an interest each come forward—No!” He had to raise his voice as several crowded forward at once, arms raised to get his attention. “Each person will have opportunity to speak, no matter how long it takes.”
Their testimony took a while to give, and it was cold word especially since he was obligated to sit still and listen under a chill autumn sky. But he had a fine, fur-lined wool cloak, and in add
ition, he never wanted for hot cider brought to him by the village children. He listened, because he was good at listening, and after a while as the village folk saw they would truly each be heard, a certain temperance settled over their speech and they began to accuse less and explain more. Once he had sorted through their complaints of each other and the petty injustices and quarrels over the meadowland, grazing rights, division of rents paid to their lord out of the common rye fields, how to parcel out the remaining fallow lands, and how often to let the fields lie fallow, he lifted a hand for silence.
“This is the root of what I hear you say: that you have a prospered so well under the rule of Count Lavastine that there isn’t enough land for your children to inherit so they can each have a portion as large as the one you have worked in your time.” They dared not quarrel with his opinion, but he saw the idea take hold in their minds. Once he had seen the pattern emerge, he knew how Lavastine and Aunt Bel would answer it and he wanted to do the best he could. In truth, he could have sent a steward to deal with the problem, but with Lavastine ill he needed to be seen. And anyway, staying busy kept his mind off Tallia.
“It is my will as heir to these lands that you be rewarded, not punished, for your hard work, but it is also necessary that these disputes end. Therefore, in the name of my father, I will allow you to cultivate clearings within the forest, which has up to now been reserved for foraging, pigs, and hunting. But you must take only two harvests from any field there, and then move on to clear new fields, and you must not return to any field previously cleared for at least ten years. For every five measure of grain reaped, one shall be given to the count’s granary. For one plowing a year you shall have the use of an iron-sheathed plow from Lavas Holding. In the name of my father, and in my own name, I have spoken.”
They were satisfied. He saw it in their expressions as they bent their knees to him, as they said, “Bless you, my lord.” No doubt details remained to be worked out, but those could be left to the stewards. Quarrels would still erupt because they always did. But he was content that he had done his best.