The Burning Stone

  Had he seen the shadow of an angel, there at the seventh gate?

  “Zacharias.”

  She hobbled the horse by the gateway and strode to the wall to lean out. Her body shone with an uncanny glamour, like polished bronze. The skin skirt swayed around her hips and thighs, and the fold of her arms concealed her chest. A gold chain curled loosely over her wrist. She inhaled deeply.

  “Can you smell it?” she said. “Day and night are in balance again. Spring has come. The world between is rich with growth. How long it has been since I have smelled such richness!”

  He stared at her, bewildered. How could it be spring? They had reached the sea a few weeks after the winter solstice, no more. It had only taken them one night to cross the sands and climb the island fort. Hadn’t it?

  The gleam of dawn twilight edged the eastern land on the far horizon as the moon sank below the western waves. She pushed away from the wall and raised her spear, shook it once, twice, three times. “Come. Follow in my steps.”

  From the archway she walked in a straight line toward the center of the plaza. He followed her, but the closer he moved toward the center, the more he felt that the ground began to melt beneath him, that he was walking first on stone, then on mud, then through sludge that dragged at his feet as it soaked away his strength. A shallow pit lay at the center of the oval, and here Kansi-a-lari knelt. He had to crawl to get there, pressing through air that seemed more like water pouring against him, a channel opening out of the pit. At its edge, he felt forward and suddenly he was falling, sliding, spinning, until he fetched up with a bump against Kansi-a-lari, who stood at the center of the shallow incline with her feet braced on either side of a depression just large enough to hold a human heart. His forehead ached from the impact. Her closeness made him dizzy, something overwhelming in her scent, or her power, or the air. He looked up.

  “Pale Hunter,” he breathed, but he could no longer see the sky, only a kind of pure hazy light that emanated from all places and no place. Beyond that light, as through bubbled glass, he saw a golden ladder striking up from the center of the shallow pit right through Kansi-a-lari herself and beyond her, reaching into the sky. It receded into the heavens far, and farther yet, until it became a thread. He thought he saw figures ascending and descending through a rainbow of colors, rose, silver, azure, amber, amethyst, malachite, and blue-white fire, but they were of such various pale forms and they moved with such slippery grace that he thought maybe he was just hallucinating. He passed a hand over his eyes, and looked down.

  Far below, down through the rock itself, so far beneath that it seemed impossibly far, as far as it might take a man to fall in a day or ten days or a year, he saw the restless, surging waters, as black as tar, topped with white foam.

  But when he touched the shallow curve of the pit, he only felt cool marble under his fingers.

  “What is this place?” he whispered. He hardly had any voice left. Maybe she meant him to die of thirst. Maybe it was a kind of sacrifice to her gods.

  “This is churendo,” she repeated, somewhat impatiently. “The palace of coils. Here meet the three worlds, the world above, the world between, and the world below.”

  “Ai!” he whispered fearfully. “What lies below us? Is it the Abyss?”

  “I know not this ‘abyss’ you speak of,” she answers. “Below us lie the waters of chaos. Above us lies the sea above, which you call in your tongue, ‘heaven.’ That is where our ship sails, and we must bring it home to its harbor. But all is not yet ready for our return, and yet we cannot delay, because in the world between the days pass regardless. They do not wait for us. Ai, Sharatanga protect me! I cannot find him looking through the world of earth, but in the palace of coils, nothing is concealed to our sight. Where has he gone?”

  She turned to the north and lifted her spear, shaking it four times. She spoke first in her own language and then, as if respecting his presence, in Wendish. “Jade Skirt, here is my blood.” She drew a fine needle out of her hair and carefully pierced her tongue. Blood dripped onto the marble and slid away into the fist-shaped depression. “Ask your sister to hear my words.” She turned to the east and lifted the spear, shaking it three times. “Flower Skirt, here is my blood.” It dropped, still, from her tongue, beads of it scattering, sliding, into the bowl carved out of the marble paving. “Ask your sister to hear my words.” She turned to the south and lifted the spear, shaking it two times. “Serpent Skirt, here is my blood. Ask your sister to hear my words.” She turned to the west and lifted the spear, shook it once. “Lightning Skirt, here is my blood. Ask your sister to hear my words.”

  Last, she looked heavenward, raising the spear without shaking it, so that the bells only rustled but didn’t ring. “Kerawaperi, here is my blood. Hear my words. Show me what is concealed to my eye.” She squatted over the fist-shaped pit. She did something under her skirt with the needle; blood dripped down, swirling and melding in the small depression.

  Still squatting, she untied the five-fingered pouch and took out an acorn. She twisted the tiny cap free and tipped the acorn over. A black, viscous liquid like tar oozed from it, elongated, then fell, sizzling when it hit her blood.

  “The waters of chaos,” she said. “Take these as an offering.”

  She cast away the acorn and searched in the bulgy teats of the pouch, brought out another. This one, uncapped, produced a liquid more gold than water, so light it seemed to drift upward slightly on the air before it floated down to meld with the others in the depression. “Five drops from the sea above. Take these as an offering.”

  She clucked her tongue once, twice, and twice again quickly, and beckoned to Zacharias. Fear gripped his belly. But he crawled forward. Now she wanted him. This was to be the sacrifice, his own heart puddling beneath her feet.

  “It is better from the male part,” she said, “but you have none left. Stick out your tongue.” She held the needle lightly in her hand.

  Ai, it hurt. He squeezed shut his eyes and prayed to the Hanged One for courage. When his blood flowed and she began to speak, he opened his eyes to look.

  “Take this, the blood of a creature who will live and die on the world between. Let the three worlds be joined here.” Finally, she stood, uncapping one of the leather bottles. He gasped. Thirst had congealed his throat. Now, suddenly, his heart pounded as fiercely as with any desire he had ever felt for her body. He could smell the water, sweet clear, and strong.

  She poured all of it into the fist-shaped depression, and as it spread and spread, backed up while she stayed with her feet in the water. She plucked the feathers, one as gold as the sun, one as green as the spring earth, one as black as the pit, and let them fall.

  When they struck the water, a steam rose from it, a mist that eddied, then cleared. Within the mist he saw a vision so lifelike that he felt he ought to be able to reach out and touch the woman within.

  A young woman with skin the color of burned cream reads by candlelight, lips moving but making no sound. Her right hand turns the pages, one by one. Her left hand rests on her hugely pregnant belly.

  He heard a hiss, sharp, between clenched teeth; a moment later he recognized it as Kansi-a-lari’s breath, her voice. “He is nearby. I can feel him.”

  A man moves into the room cautiously. He is tall, broad-shouldered, graceful in the way of big men who are at ease in their bodies. There is a glint in his eyes that might be fury—or laughter. This man he has seen twice before in visions.

  His companion breathed out a Salian word, sharply, on an exhalation: “Sanglant!” She stamped her foot three times, and shook the spear threateningly toward the sky with a high cry like that of a hawk.

  The vision vanished together with the water and tinctures she had poured out on the marble floor. Wind cut the mist into tatters and the sun rose on a bright spring morning full of promise. They stood alone on an oval plaza; the sea huffed and murmured below. The Aoi woman had a grim, satisfied smile on her face. She handed him the other leather bottle.
/>
  “Drink now. After that, we will eat what is left of our stores. We will rest here for a day, and begin our descent tomorrow at dawn.”

  He would have gulped it all down, but he had too much respect for his good companion, the horse, so he poured water into his palm and let it snuffle it up. Only then did he sip himself, three swallows, then three more, sparingly.

  When he had his voice back, he turned to her. “Who was the young woman? She was beautiful.”

  “I don’t know.” She sat at her ease by the shallow pit, eating the last of the dried goat’s meat.

  “Who was the man?”

  She shredded the tough meat to tatters and ate each string of it, then licked her fingers before she finally replied.

  “That is my son.”

  2

  TALLIA whined and complained, but in fact once any order was given firmly enough, she obeyed it. It was the tack he ought to have taken all along. He understood that now, finally. She certainly outranked him, but birth wasn’t everything; she was weak, just as Lavastine had said. He remembered Duchess Yolande’s hints and intrigues about crowns and thrones. Yet Tallia wasn’t even strong enough to rule herself. How could she be expected to rule a queendom?

  It took her a long time to recover because she had come so close to starving herself. For a while she lay ill, often feverish. Certain foods gave her the flux. Others she vomited up. At first she refused food from any hand but his, so he had to feed her minuscule portions six times a day like the invalid she was. But growing up in Bel’s house he had spent time caring for sick children, he knew how to handle them, obstinate one moment and malleable the next. Eventually she became accustomed to eating normally again, and after some weeks she began to gain strength. The Feast of St. Herodia came, and went, the month of Askulavre wept to its chill conclusion, and Duchess Yolande did not arrive.

  In the last days of Askulavre, heavy gray clouds covered the sky and for two days it snowed industriously. For weeks they could travel no farther than the river and the little convent dedicated to St. Thierry. It had been established by Lavastine’s grandfather, Charles Lavastine the Elder, the year his mother, Countess Lavrentia, had died giving birth to her second child, Lord Geoffrey’s grandfather, who had also been named Geoffrey.

  St. Oya’s Day came, and Tallia proved strong enough to sit beside him as he welcomed the girls who in the year past had been blessed with their holy courses. She garlanded them with wreaths of juniper and holly, since the snow precluded the customary violets. At church that day, the girls so recognized were allowed to sit on the women’s benches in recognition of their new status. But St. Oya’s Day released nothing in Tallia’s womb. Her breasts did not swell, as they would if she were pregnant. No holy blood stained her thighs as the moon waxed and waned. Several gnarled wisewomen from the village examined Tallia and said that because of her illness her womb had withered and needed time to become fertile again, time together with various teas steeped in blind nettle and dittany, or a potion of Lady’s Mantle, every woman’s cloak against illnesses of the womb. Given time and a diet strong in meat and beans, they said, her womb would swell again and be ready to grow a child. But they warned him that, until then, he and she must not resume the marriage bed.

  He was cautious with her, but he made it clear to her that once she had recovered, they would, they must, make a child between them. She only stared at him with those huge, delicate eyes.

  Like a bitter joke, Rage came into season. He penned up Sorrow and let her run with Fear, but she didn’t settle. As with Tallia, he would simply have to wait.

  Fevrua was understandably known as the month of hardship, with winter stores run out and spring not yet arrived. But under Lavastine’s stewardship, there were provisions enough for his own people, and Alain managed well, leaving to Chatelaine Dhuoda that which she did best and for his own part judging disputes: a rock wall had fallen and now the two house holders quarreled over the exact boundary line; a young man had gotten a young woman pregnant and they wanted to marry, but his parents had already arranged a good match for him and they wanted the pregnant girl’s family to either desist in their claims or else provide an equivalent dowry; a laborer had murdered one of his comrades, but they had both been drunk; mold had ruined a precious store of rye and the farmer in question accused his neighbor of working a charm against his grain because she was mad at him for not letting her son marry his daughter, even though in truth her son was a good-for-nothing slut. Winter disputes, Aunt Bel always said, had a flavor of boredom about them, petty and sullen. He did his best to resolve these disputes with common sense and a clear eye.

  By the Feast of St. Johanna the Messenger, Tallia had recovered sufficiently to walk out among the poor who came and went in the shantytown built in the woods to the west of Lavas village. Many of them had trudged north away from Salia in the hope of finding shelter here. Every ragged family gave a different story, drought, famine, fighting among lords, Eika raids, and in truth none of them really knew what was going on, only that in Salia there was suffering, no work, and nothing to eat.

  There was not enough for everyone. There never would be.

  Often he wept at night, having seen another tiny corpse. It seemed so horrible. It seemed so unjust.

  Often he set aside a loaf from his own platter, little enough, and himself passed out those loaves late in the evening when he took the hounds out for their last run. And those poor souls had so little that the next day they might speak of one loaf having become twenty, enough to feed forty people; and then some few of his own people might grumble, hearing such rumors, saying he wasted their living on strangers while others would retort that his own folk had plenty and it was the sign of a generous lord who didn’t hoard what he didn’t need.

  Often he prayed by Lavastine’s stony corpse, but he never received an answer.

  Come Mariansmass and the first day of spring, the snow melted off, violets bloomed in profusion, and the bier in the church of St. Lavrentius was at last complete. It seemed appropriate to lay Lavastine to rest on such a fine day, with a nip in the air that, like his cool way of showing approval, refreshed one’s heart, and with a sky evenly composed of high, light clouds and blue heaven, neither too dark nor too bright.

  It took all morning to get the body down the stairs on a sledge. Instead of rigging up horses, they simply tied stout ropes to the sledge and a dozen men gladly volunteered to haul the body to the church. A short walk under normal circumstances, it took an hour to drag the heavy corpse to its resting place, while in the church the deacon led the congregation in the Mass celebrating the martyrdom of St. Marian the discipla. The congregation looked on in silence as workmen used a combination of levers and ropes, stones and pulleys to hoist the body onto the bier. Afterward, they placed Terror at his feet and Steadfast above his head, to accompany him in death.

  Then, with Alain and Tallia kneeling beside the bier, the deacon sang the mass for the dead, and led the congregation in hymns. The bells rang to conclude the service, and as the assembly filed out, each one of them touched one or the other of Lavastine’s feet before leaving the church. Tallia went away with her servingwomen to see about the funeral feast being readied in the kitchens.

  Alain found it hard to leave. Somehow, leaving Lavastine alone in here meant he was truly, finally, dead. “Ai, God,” he prayed, “let him not lie in darkness. I pray you, Lady and Lord, let hope arise out of sorrow.” He touched the cool forehead, as hard and as smooth as granite. “I promise you,” he whispered, “that I will see your rightful heir installed as count after me.”

  “My lord count!”

  For an instant he didn’t reply, waiting for another voice. Then he brushed a finger over the pale stone lips, turned, and acknowledged one of his stewards.

  “A messenger, my lord! Duchess Yolande arrives today with full forty folk in attendance!”

  The snow had melted, but a blizzard of activity met Alain when he hurried back to the hall. He had little enough
to do but wait: his people knew their jobs, and he allowed them to perform them without interference.

  In the late afternoon, after the service of Nones, the retinue marched into view, fine banners and polished spears, bright tabards and merry songs. For a moment he forgot himself, recalling that time—so long ago—when he had first seen a noble retinue, when he had seen Lady Sabella’s progress. It had seemed like a vision sent from heaven to him, then; now, he could not help but calculate how many days they would stay, how much meat and bread they would eat—leaving less to distribute among the poor—and how much mischief they would cause with their gossip and intrigue.

  The cavalcade wound its way to the gate amidst much laughter and shouting. His own people lined the road to stare as he waited on the porch of the hall with the westering sun on his face, Tallia at his side, and Sorrow, Rage, and Fear sitting obediently at his feet.

  “What do you these long faces mean?” cried Duchess Yolande as she dismounted to kiss Tallia’s cheek. She looked stout, well-fed, and cheerful. Despite her weeks of recovery, Tallia looked thin and sallow beside her. “It is spring, and we should rejoice. Ah, Count Alain. See whom I met on the road! I have brought him to you so that you may celebrate spring together.”

  Riding at her side as if he were her kinsman was Lord Geoffrey. He greeted Alain with dutiful politeness, kept carefully back from the hounds, and paid his respects to Tallia. By then, Yolande had heard about their day’s work, and she insisted on being taken to see the bier.

  She chattered on as they walked. “I meant to come earlier, indeed, but I was brought to bed early with this child. Thank God he has proved strong despite his small size.” Alain had seen no sign of the child, who seemed to be in the care of a nurse back with Yolande’s entourage. “So we rested a while at Autun, where I was brought to bed. I was so grateful for the prayers of the biscop that I named the child Constantius, in her honor. He’s quite dark-haired like his father, more’s the pity. Ah, well. But Autun was quite the maze of gossip. I would hear one thing one day and then quite the opposite the next. Henry is discontented with his children. He banished Sanglant from court for consorting with one of his own Eagles, but then the Eagle was excommunicated and outlawed for malevolent sorcery. It seems she cast a spell on the prince because Henry meant to set the bastard up as king after him and she wanted to be queen. But Sanglant was such a womanizer anyway that I wonder if it can be true. More likely he seduced her than the other way around!”