The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “The art of the mathematici, which is forbidden by the church.”

  “But which is studied in certain places nevertheless. Will you go with me, Liath, when I leave the king?”

  She could not answer. This, of all choices, was the one she had never expected to have.

  By late afternoon they heard a rhythmic chopping and soon came to half-cleared land, undergrowth burned out between the stumps of trees. A goshawk skimmed the clearing. Squirrels bounded along branches, chittering at these intruders. Just past a shallow stream they came to a natural clearing now inhabited by three cottages built of logs and several turf outbuildings. A garden fenced with stout sticks ran riot alongside the central lane, which was also the road. Several young men labored to build a palisade, but when they saw the Eagles, they set down their tools to stare. One whistled to alert the rest, and soon Liath and Wolfhere were surrounded by the entire community: some ten hardy adult souls and about a dozen children.

  “Nay, you can’t go this day,” said the eldest woman there, Old Uta, whom the others deferred to. “You’ll not come clear of the Bretwald before nightfall. Better you bide here with us than sleep where the beasts might make off with you. As it is, we’ve a wedding to celebrate tonight. It would be our shame not to show hospitality to guests at such a time!”

  The young men put on deerskin tunics and then set up a long table and benches outdoors while the women and girls prepared a feast: baked eggs; rabbit; a haunch of venison roasted over the fire; a salad of greens; coarse brown bread baked into a pudding with milk and honey roasted mushrooms; and as many berries as Liath could eat without making herself sick, all washed down with fresh goat’s milk and a pungent cider that went immediately to her head. She found it hard to concentrate as Wolfhere regaled the foresters with tales of the Alfar Mountains and a great avalanche and of the holy city of Darre and the palace of Her Holiness the skopos, our mother among the saints, Clementia, the second of that name.

  The bride was easy to recognize: the youngest daughter of Old Uta, she wore flowers in her braided hair and she sat on the bench of honor next to her husband. The bridegroom was scarcely more than a boy, and all through the meal he stared at Liath. There was something familiar about him, but she could not pin it down and no doubt it was only the strength of the cider acting on the astounding news Wolfhere had burdened her with that made her so dizzy.

  Her mother was alive.

  “Eagle,” said the young man, speaking up suddenly. “You were the one who led us out of Gent. Do you remember me? With no good humor, I’d wager. I’m the one as lost your horse, by the east gate.” Ruddy-cheeked from working in the sun, he looked little like the thin-faced lad who had wept outside Gent over losing her horse and losing his home that awful day; he had filled out through the chest and gotten rounder in the face. But his eyes had that same quick gleam.

  “Ach, lad, lost a horse!” The men groaned and the women clucked in displeasure. “A horse! If we only had a horse to haul those logs, or even a donkey—”

  “We could have traded a horse for another iron ax!”

  “Peace!” said Liath sharply. They quieted at once and turned to her respectfully. “Did he not tell you what occurred at Gent?”

  “Gent’s a long way from here,” said Old Uta, “and is nothing to do with us. Indeed, I’d never heard tell of it before they came.”

  “What’s Gent?” piped up one of the younger children.

  “It’s the place where Martin and Young Uta came from, child.” The old woman indicated the bridegroom and then a stout girl with scars on her face and hands. “We took them in, for there were many young people left without family after the raiders came. We’ve always use for more hands to work. It took us and the other foresters ten years to cut that road.” She nodded toward the track that led eastward out of the clearing into the dense forest. “Now we’re done, we can cut a home out of this clearing and be free of our service to Lady Helmingard.”

  “Well, then,” said Liath, looking at each in turn, “I’ll thank you not to be thinking it’s any fault of Martin’s that he lost the horse. The king’s own Dragons died saving what townsfolk they could from the Eika. There was nothing a boy could do against savages.”

  “Did all the Dragons die in the end?” Martin asked. She recalled now that he had been the kind of boy who yearned after the Dragons and followed them everywhere he could.

  “Yes,” said Wolfhere.

  “No,” said Liath, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Wolfhere astounded in his turn. “The prince survived.”

  “The prince survived,” echoed Wolfhere, on an exhaled breath. Liath could not tell if he were ecstatic or dismayed.

  “The prince,” breathed the young man in tones more appropriate for a prayer to God. “But of course the prince must have lived. Not even the Eika could kill him. Are they still there in Gent? The Eika, I mean.”

  “Nay, for two great armies marched on Gent in order to avenge the attack last year.” Her audience raptly awaited the tale, and even Wolfhere regarded her with that cool gray gaze, patient enough for obviously wanting to hear the story of how Prince Sanglant had survived the death both she and Wolfhere had visioned through fire.

  So she told the tale of Count Lavastine’s march and the terrible battle on the field before Gent, of Bloodheart’s enchantments and the Eika horde. She told of how Lavastine himself had taken some few of his soldiers as a last gamble through the tunnel and how Bloodheart’s death had shattered the Eika army, how King Henry’s army arrived at the very end—just in time. She could not resist dwelling perhaps more than was seemly on Sanglant’s great deeds that day, saving his sister’s line from collapse, slaying more Eika than any other soldier on the field. To these isolated forest folk the tale no doubt could as well have been told about heroes who had lived a hundred years before; she might as well have sung the tale of Waltharia and Sigisfrid and the cursed gold of the Hevelli for all that her words truly meant no more to them than a good evening’s tale.

  But they proclaimed themselves well satisfied when she had done.

  “A fitting tale for a wedding feast,” said Old Uta. “Now we’ve somewhat for you to take to King Henry, as a token of our gratitude for his generosity in granting us freedom from Lady Helmingard’s service, which she laid heavily on us.”

  Recalling the diploma she carried, Liath removed it from her saddlebags and read aloud to them King Henry’s promise that the foresters would be free of service to any lady or lord as long as they kept the king’s road passable for himself and his messengers and armies. The king had not yet put his seal on it, but the foresters nevertheless listened intently, touched the parchment with reverence, and examined the writing, which, of course, none of them could read.

  “I’ve a wish to go back to Gent,” said the scarred girl, Young Uta. “I don’t like the forest.”

  “You’ve a few years to work off first,” said Old Uta sternly, and the girl sighed.

  But Martin was satisfied with his new life. He had a bride, a place of honor, and security among his new kin. The foresters had meat in abundance and wild plants and skins to trade to the farming folk for grain to supplement what vegetables they could grow in their garden. Even in years made lean by a scant harvest there was game to be caught in the deep forest. They showed off their iron tools: two axes and a shovel. The rest of the tools were made of wood, stone, or copper. They had a storehouse filled with baskets of nuts and pips, shriveled crab apples, leather vessels brimming with barley and unhulled wheat, herbs dried and hung in bundles, and several covered pots of lard. From the rafters they brought down four fine wolfskins and a bearskin and these they rolled and tied and gave to Wolfhere to present to the king as a token of their loyalty and in honor of his recent visit to Weraushausen and the pledge made between foresters and king.

  When twilight came, they all escorted bride and bridegroom to the best bed in the hall and entertained them with songs and lengthy toasts. Oaths were sworn—Martin would
be given a place in the family in exchange for his labor—and pledges of consent exchanged. In a month or a year, a frater would probably walk out along the road into the forest, and then he could sing a blessing over the couple. It was always good to get the blessing of the church in such matters, when one could.

  “Come now!” said Old Uta finally, taking pity on the newlyweds, who sat bolt upright in the bed enduring the jests and singing. “It’s time to leave these young folk alone to get on with it!” With much laughter, the rest of them left the hall and went to sleep outdoors.

  But Liath was too restless to sleep. Wolfhere built a small fire, and by this they sat as stars bloomed in the darkening sky. Lying on her back, she pretended to sleep but instead studied the heavens. Summer was known as “the Queen’s sky.” The Queen, her Bow, her Staff, and her Sword all shone in splendor above. The Queen’s Cup stood at the zenith, the bright star known as the Sapphire almost directly overhead. Her faithful Eagle rose from the east behind her, flying eternally toward the River of Heaven, which spanned the night sky much as the forest road cut a swath through the dense woodland. The zodiac was obscured by trees and by a misty haze that had spread along the southern horizon, but she caught a glimpse of the Dragon, sixth House, between gaps among the tops of trees. Stately Mok gleamed in the hindquarters of the Lion, a brilliant wink between leaves.

  “I never thought to look for him,” said Wolfhere suddenly into the silence.

  “For whom?” she asked, then knew the next instant whom he meant. “Didn’t you ever try looking for my mother through fire?”

  “We can only see the living, and then only ones we know and have touched, have a link to.”

  “But I saw the Aoi through fire, after Gent fell.” She rolled to one side. He sat on the other side of the fire, his face in shadow. “I’d never met any such creatures.” She hesitated, then said nothing more about her encounter with the Aoi sorcerer.

  “That is indeed a mystery. I have but small skill in these matters, though I am adept at seeing. Had I ever suspected Prince Sanglant was alive, I would have looked for him, but I did not. We both saw him take a killing blow—” Here he broke off.

  “You are no more surprised than I was when I recognized him in the cathedral,” she admitted. But she could not make herself describe to Wolfhere how like a wild beast Sanglant had looked—and acted. Instead she changed the subject. “Da said—”

  Da’s words on the last night of his life remained caught forever in her city of memory. “If you touch anything their hands have touched, they have a further link to you…. They have the power of seeking and finding, but I have sealed you away from them.” If Da had only known her mother wasn’t dead, what then? Could she have saved him?

  “How could Da have thought she was dead if she wasn’t?”

  “How could we have thought Prince Sanglant dead, when he wasn’t?”

  “But if she was alive, then why didn’t she try to find us? She could see through fire. She knew we weren’t dead!”

  “She looked for you! But you are not alone in being hunted. Despite our small magics, distances are great and not easily traversed even for an Eagle who has a horse and the promise of lodging and food wherever she stops.”

  “But if she had to go into hiding, why couldn’t she take us? How could Da have thought she was dead? I remember—” Like fire taking to pitch, the memory of that night ten years past flared into life.

  “What do you remember?” he asked softly.

  She could barely find her voice. “Everything burst into flame, the cottage, all the plants in the courtyard, the stables and the weaving house, all the other buildings …” She shut her eyes, and there in the forest clearing with the whispering of the night woodland pressing in on her she dredged into the depths of that old painful memory. “And the benches. The stone benches. Even the stone burned. That’s when we ran. Da grabbed the book and we ran. And he said, “‘They’ve killed Anne and taken her gift to use as their own.’”

  She had to stop because her throat was thick with grief, and with more questions than she knew how to ask. Opening her eyes, she stared up at a sky now so brilliant with stars that it seemed a thousand burning jewels had been casually strewn across the heavens. A streak of light blazed and vanished: a falling star. Was it an angel cast to earth by God’s hand, sent to aid the prayers of the faithful, as the church mothers wrote? Or was it the track of one of those aetherical creatures born out of pure fire who, diving like a falcon, plunged from the Sun’s sphere to those nesting below?

  Wolfhere said nothing. The fire popped loudly and spit a red coal onto the end of her cloak. She shook it off and then sank forward to rest elbows on knees and stare into the fire. A long while passed in silence as the yellow flames flickered and died down into sullen coals. Wolfhere seemed to have fallen asleep.

  He had looked for her, but he had not been able to see her through fire. Was Da’s spell still hiding her? She had felt the presence of others looking for her, had felt the wind of their stalking, the blind grasp of their seeking hands. She had seen the glass-winged daimone. She had seen the creatures that stalked with a voice of bells and left flesh stripped to bone in their wake. Were they still out there? Could she, like a mouse, scuttle into places forbidden to her and spy them out?

  She made of the coals a gateway and peered into its depths. If only she could recall her mother clearly enough in her mind’s eye, then surely she could vision her through fire, actually see her again. But as the fire flared under the weight of her stare, she was suddenly seized by a foreboding of doom as real as a hand touching her shoulder—as Hugh’s hand had imprisoned her, binding her to his will.

  The fire leaped with sudden strength as if it were an unnatural being blooming into existence, wings unfurling into a sheet of fire, eyes like the strike of lightning, the breath of the fiery Sun coalesced into mind and will. Its voice rolled with the searing blaze of flame.

  “Child.”

  She shrieked out loud and scrambled backward, so terrified that she couldn’t gulp down the sobs that burst from her chest.

  Wolfhere started up. The fire winked out, that fast, to become ashes and one last spark of heat, a dying cinder, gone. “Liath!”

  She jumped up and ran out to the half-built palisade, logs felled and sharpened and driven into a ditch to make a barrier against the beasts of the forest. She leaned against one of the stout posts. With the bark peeled off, oak lay smooth against her shoulder and cheek; the foresters had done their work well, for the post did not shift beneath her weight.

  She was still shaking.

  An owl hooted and its shadow fluttered past, then vanished into the night.

  “Ai, Lady,” she whispered to the silent witness of stars and night breeze and the many busy animals about their nocturnal labors. “Sanglant.”

  II

  A LILY AMONG THORNS

  1

  IVAR had never prayed so much in his life, not even in his first year as a novice at Quedlinhame. His knees ached constantly. But Baldwin had taken it into his head that if he prayed enough he could protect himself from his bride’s attentions: He hoped that even a powerful margrave would be loath to disturb a young man at prayer, no matter how long she had been waiting to get her hands on him.

  So it proved for the first five days after they left Quedlinhame. But Ivar had ears, and he had grown up with sisters. Margrave Judith wasn’t so old that her holy courses had ceased. He even caught a glimpse of a stained cloth laid reverently on a blazing hearth fire.

  Women were specially holy at their bleeding time, not to be corrupted by base desire. Even a noblewoman such as Judith followed the wisdom of the church mothers in such matters. Ivar suspected that all Baldwin’s praying was a pretty show that counted for very little except to whet his bride’s appetite; sometimes while praying, Ivar glanced sidelong at the margrave watching Baldwin, who did indeed pray beautifully.

  “You oughtn’t to pray unless you pray from your heart,” said I
var. “It’s a sin.”

  It was late afternoon on yet another day of travel, west, toward the king. Ivar rode a donkey, as was fitting for a novice, but Baldwin had been given a proud black gelding to ride. No doubt Margrave Judith could not resist the chance to display two handsome creatures together.

  Right now, however, Baldwin came as close to scowling as he ever could. “You scold like Master Pursed-Lips. I am praying from my heart! You don’t imagine I want to marry her, do you?”

  “As if you have a choice.”

  “If the marriage is not consummated, then it is no marriage.”

  Ivar sighed. “She’s no worse than any other woman. You’ll have fine clothes to wear, excellent armor, and a good iron sword. You’ll have the Quman barbarians to fight in the march country. It won’t be so bad.”

  “I don’t like her,” said Baldwin in the tone of a child who has never before had to accept anything he didn’t like. “I don’t want to be married to her.” He cast a glance forward where Lady Tallia rode beside Margrave Judith. “I’d even rather marry—”.

  “She isn’t to be married!” hissed Ivar in a low voice, suddenly angry. “Not by anyone! God has chosen her to be Her handmaiden, to be the uncorrupted bride of Her Son, the blessed Daisan, as all nuns ought to pledge themselves to be.”

  “Why can’t I be chosen?” murmured Baldwin plaintively.

  “Because you’re a man. Women serve God by tending Her hearth, for they are made in God’s image and it is their duty to administer to all that She creates.”

  “If you preach a heresy,” whispered Baldwin, “then the church will punish you.”

  “Martyrdom isn’t punishment! The heathen Dariyans rewarded the blessed Daisan by flaying him alive and cutting out his heart. But God gave him life again, just as martyrs live again in the Chamber of Light.”