The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  When she saw that he would not reply, she shrugged and busied herself tallying the provisions that remained to them: three hard black loaves, five strips of dried meat, two pouches of beans and withered peas, a hand-sized block of salt, and turnips that had a rancid smell.

  “You’ve never told me your name,” he said, in a burst of anger. “You know mine. I offered it when we met. But you’ve never given me yours in exchange.”

  She had a way of smiling that displayed threat as much as amusement. “In exchange for what?”

  “My service!”

  “No. That you gave in exchange for your life, which I saved from the one you call Bulkezu.” She hoisted one of the leather bottles looted from the burned village, the last that still held hard cider. Unstoppering it, she poured a little on her hand and lapped it up, made a face, but she took a draught anyway and passed the bottle on to Zacharias. The backwash of its heady flavor made him light-headed and bold.

  “It’s true I have nothing to offer you except—” His gaze lit on her skin skirt, and he shuddered, went on. “—except my knowledge of the Wendish people. That’s worth nothing to you, since you’ve traveled among them before, so it seems. But it would be simple kindness to offer me your name, after we have traveled so far together.”

  “Kindness? What is kindness?”

  “It is the custom of my people to exchange names,” he said finally. It angered him that she held more of him than he did of her. But they could never be equals, no matter what.

  The woman put all the provisions back in the pouches, keeping out only one loaf, which she broke to show a moist, thick, dark interior. She tried it, nodded, and broke the loaf into equal portions, handing one to Zacharias, then sat back on her heels as she chewed. Zacharias eased the second squirrel off the spit and they ate in silence while the fire guttered and sank to coals.

  She answered abruptly. “I am known among my people as The-One-Who-Is-Impatient. The Wendish people knew me as The-One-Who-Is-Not-Like-Us.”

  “What can I call you?”

  She had grease on her thumb, and she drew the thumb down one seam of her skirt so that the fat soaked into the skin, darkening it.

  Who had once lived in that skin, and how had he lost it? Her eyes had the hard green glare of emeralds. “The-One-Whose-Wish-is-Law.”

  “You have no real name?” The profusion of titles puzzled him.

  “A name is only what other people call me. Since I am a different thing to each one of them, I have many names.”

  “What do you call yourself?”

  She grinned. She had remarkably beautiful teeth, white, and straight. “You I will call More-Clever-Than-He-Looks. I do not need to call myself because I am already in my body. But if you need a title, you may call me Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari, or if that is too much for your tongue, then Kansi-a-lari.”

  This challenge at least he could meet. He had always been proud of his clever tongue. “Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari.” He stumbled over it, said it a second time, then a third after she corrected his pronunciation. By the fourth he could pronounce it well enough to please her, and she laughed.

  “Well, then, More-Clever-Than-He-Looks, build up the fire.”

  Brush and deadwood littered the area and were easy to collect. Twilight had barely deepened to night when he laid on more wood and watched the fire blaze. She rocked back and forth on her heels, palms out. Flames built, leaped, and melded into an archway. And through it:

  Fire.

  Nothing else, only fire. No figure of a man, such as they had seen before.

  Kansi-a-lari muttered words, like a curse. She wove her fingers together, making a lattice of them, and through this lattice she looked at the fire again, as through a screen. Zacharias saw only fire, as seen through a veil. She spoke another word. Dim shapes flickered to life in the fire. A lord rode on a handsome horse at the head of an impressive retinue. He had silvering hair and beard, a man in his prime. Standards flew before him: eagle, lion, and dragon.

  “The king!” breathed Zacharias in amazement, not because he had ever seen the king but because he recognized his sigils.

  But she frowned at this image of the king, seeking someone else.

  “Sawn-glawnt,” she said, more commanding now, but the image faded and fire danced and blazed. She spoke another word, and shadows appeared within the fire, sharpening into visions:

  A dead dog lies tumbled in leaves. Its ribs glare white against decaying black fur. A gaping hole sags in the flesh of its belly where something has eaten it away from without—or within.

  A man dressed in cleric’s robes sits in a shuttered room. He has the clean chin and short hair of a man sworn to the church, and his hair is starkly gold, as if a sorcerer had spun it out of pure metal. His hand trembles as he reaches to touch writing on a sheet of parchment that lies on the table before him. The vision is so clear that Zacharias can read the words: “To Mother Rothgard of St. Valeria, from the hand of Sister Rosvita of Korvei, now in the king’s schola, this message delivered to you by my trusted companion Amabilia of Leon. I beg you, Mother, to travel with Sister Amabilia to Autun. You are needed to testify to the events— The man smiles, revealing a chipped tooth—the only flaw in his beauty. He folds the parchment up. Underneath it lies a bronze Circle of Unity. Dried blood stains it. The man lifts it and spins it by its chain, and the vision spins and folds in on itself and becomes something else….

  A strange bronze-colored man hugs his knees to himself. He is shaped like a man, mostly, but he looks like no man Zacharias has ever seen. His hair gleams like polished bone, his skin has the scaly texture of snake hide, and he goes naked like a wild person except for a scrap of cloth tied around his bony hips. He holds in one hand a staff. With a sliver of sharp-edged obsidian he carves marks along the length of the wood, then dips a feather in little pots of ocher and paints the marks a dull red. Many small items he weaves together, rolls up, and stuffs inside the hollowed-out staff. Now and again he rocks back on his heels and throws his head back—Zacharias hears nothing—and howls, in triumph or in pain. A ripple crosses this vision, the shadow of great stone figures and a circle of smooth sand …

  … and they are flying above the grasslands, deep in the borderwild where griffins dwell. The grass grows taller than a man, even than a chieftain’s wife with her elaborate headdress. But as they skim down, a figure parts the grass, a face patterned green and white peers out with a great bulk of body behind. Wings flutter. An arrow flies, sharp, killing, aimed true at his heart.

  * * *

  “Hai!” cried Kansi-a-lari, leaping back and clapping her hands once, twice, as if the sound could shield her.

  The fire whoofed in and collapsed upon itself. The night birds had fallen silent. The moon shivered on the waters of the stream.

  She stood. Even in the pale moonlight he saw that her expression was more than usually grim. “He has vanished from my sight.” Then, eyeing him as a hunter eyes the deer that will provide her supper, she took a step back, touched her knife as she balanced for speed and striking—then seemed to change her mind.

  “Tomorrow we travel west. To churendo.”

  “What is churendo?”

  “The palace of coils.” She spun and walked out into the night.

  The quiet lay like death around him. Of all the usual night noises, he heard only the stream’s babble. Finally he knelt and reached forward to stir the fire with a stick, but turned up no burning sticks, no red embers. Puzzled, he put his fingers into the pale remains, rubbed substance between his fingers.

  It was dead ash, as if it had ceased burning days ago.

  5

  IVAR had never seen so many biscops and presbyters in one place. King Henry had convened the council on Matthiasmass, but it had taken two days of fractious arguments over precedent and rank—who would enter first, who would sit where—before the council could even be seated. Now they entered the hall on the fourth day of the proceedings, led by Biscop Constance of Autun, the king’
s younger sister. After her walked a haughty presbyter whose arrogance was legendary; he was said never to speak to any person whose mother was not at least a count. Then came several biscops and presbyters whose cities and names Ivar couldn’t keep straight, followed at the end by an elderly presbyter named Hatto who had not minded praying beside Ivar at the service of Lauds three days ago and, finally, by young Biscop Odila of Mainni, who had only recently taken up miter and crosier.

  The assembled biscops and presbyters took their seats in a semicircle at the head of the hall, facing the king’s throne. Once they had settled into their cushioned and gilded chairs, horns blew to announce the king. Every soul in the church knelt—except for the seated churchmen and women, whose dignity was too great to bow before mere worldly power. King Henry came in, robed and crowned in splendor.

  But what did earthly splendor matter when the only person you had ever truly loved walked away from you without a backward glance? And into the arms of another man! Even Hanna had left him. And Lady Tallia had been taken away. Ai, God. What did earthly splendor matter when their eyes remained closed to the truth? He clutched that thought to him as the king called his Eagle forward and had her recite the charges: an accusation of sorcery against Hugh, abbot of Firsebarg, countered by an accusation of sorcery against one former Eagle, called Liathano. Usually the regnant left such matters solely in the hands of the church. But everyone knew that King Henry had cause to hate the woman who had stolen away his favorite child.

  Biscop Constance rose, lifted a hand in the sign of peace, and the restless audience quieted expectantly. Ivar supposed sourly that some few people cared that justice be served and malevolent sorcery banished from the king’s progress. The rest just wanted the lurid details.

  The young biscop’s strong alto carried easily over the throng. ‘In the three hundred and twenty-seventh year after the Proclamation of the Holy Word by the blessed Daisan, the matter of sorcery was brought before the assembled biscops and presbyters at the Council of Kellai. In their wisdom, these elders proclaimed that the Lord and Lady do not prohibit what is needful, and that therefore benevolent magic may be practiced under the supervision of the church. But the council also proclaimed this: that it goes against nature for humankind to attempt to look into the future, and all such practices are condemned.”

  “Is it true you leave for Gent tomorrow, my lord prince?”

  The whisper distracted him. Annoyed, he glanced back to see Baldwin and Prince Ekkehard as thick as thieves and quite disinterested in the council.

  “It is true. I’m to ride out with twelve novices who’ll enter the monastery with me, and with that awful old Lord Atto to watch over us, as if we can’t command ourselves! Alas that we should part so soon, Baldwin, for I much prefer your company to any of the others.”

  “You honor me, my lord.” Baldwin had a habit of smiling prettily when he wanted something. “Court will seem a dreary place without you. What shall we do for singing? None of the court poets have your lovely voice, and perfect ear.” He brushed a finger along the lobe of Ekkehard’s ear, and the prince’s eyes widened. Baldwin leaned closer, whispered something, and Ekkehard looked even more startled. Baldwin caught Ekkehard’s hand in his and drew him away toward the entrance. He beckoned to Ivar, but Ivar shrugged angrily, turned his back on him, and tried to wriggle forward into the crowd. How could Baldwin also desert him, just when Liath’s fate was at stake?

  “We are each granted liberty by God to do or not to do what we will,” Biscop Constance was saying. “We are not merely an instrument set in motion to do God’s will but rather equal to the angels. Yet the flesh is often weak, and temptation as certain as the rising and setting of the sun each day. Certain members of the church could not resist the blandishments of the Enemy and so delved into the darker arts. At the Council of Narvone a hundred years ago such practices were roundly condemned: the arts of the mathematici, the tempestari, the augures and haroli and sortelegi, as well as those more horrible arts of the malefici, whose names I will not utter out loud. Be sure that the Enemy still tempts those who are weak in spirit. Be sure that we in the church will root them out. Let the accused be brought forward.”

  Ivar hissed in a breath when he saw Hugh. His heart thumped madly, like a hammer. Ai, Lady! How meek Hugh looked, barefoot and dressed in a humble robe fit for a novice undergoing his final vigil. But the plain brown robes rendered him no less elegant. Some penitents shaved their heads as an offering to God. Hugh had not touched a single strand of hair upon his handsome head except to trim it. He knelt humbly before the biscops, golden head bowed just enough—but not too much. A margrave’s son could not be too servile.

  A cleric read aloud from a parchment. “These are the charges laid against Father Hugh of Firsebarg Abbey, formerly of Austra.” The cleric had a deep voice that rolled across the hall like thunder. “That he has trafficked in malevolent sorceries. That he has harbored unclean texts in his possession. That he has attempted to murder by sorcerous means Princess Theophanu—”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd, spread and faded. There hadn’t been this good a show at court since Sanglant’s defiance. As people stirred, Ivar used his elbows to press closer to the front.

  “—and further, that he laid certain ligaturas upon her body to bring the elf-stitch down on her as a fever which nearly killed her.” He then read, out loud, three documents: the testimony of Princess Theophanu as dictated to Sister Rosvita, the testimony of Sister Rosvita, and a letter written last spring by Mother Rothgard of St. Valeria’s convent to Sister Rosvita. Finally he described a sketch of a brooch molded in the shape of a panther and twined with certain unmentionable signs and sigils, which had been a secret gift from Hugh to Theophanu.

  “What answer do you make?” Constance asked when the cleric had finished.

  Hugh’s voice was low, but by now Ivar was close enough to hear. He had such a beautiful voice. “I am guilty of a grave sin. I have let myself be tempted by that which is forbidden and now I kneel before you and ask you to pass judgment. When I was young I attempted certain spells—” With a shake of his head, as at a painful memory, he went on. “But I was justly punished and sent into the north to do penance by working among the folk there, many of whom still worshiped the old gods. There, alas, I was seduced.” He drew in a rasping breath and for an instant could not go on. Brother Hatto leaned forward intently. Biscop Odila looked nervous, and the wizened biscop of Wirtburg looked as if she had just discovered that underneath the savory platter of fowl laid before her writhed a nest of maggots. The silence in the hall was absolute as Hugh struggled to control himself.

  “God forgive me. I still dream of her every night.” Tears leaked from his eyes as he looked up beseechingly at the biscops and presbyters. “I pray you, Brothers and Sisters, release me from her spell.”

  How could he be so beautiful and so hateful all in one? Ivar would gladly have leaped forward and run him through in that instant, if he’d only had a sword.

  They began to ask Hugh questions, and he answered haltingly. He had first met Liathano in Heart’s Rest. Her father Bernard was commonly supposed to have been a monk who had lapsed in his vows and fled the church. Her mother was deceased. That her father was a mathematicus no one now doubted. Certain witnesses came reluctantly forward, Eagles, Lions, servants, to note that she often gazed up at the heavens and could name the constellations and track the movements of the wandering stars. Even Hathui came forward and, with a frown, testified that Liath had carried a book with her which she had tried to keep hidden.

  “Sister Rosvita says you stole the book from the woman called Liath,” said Constance. “Where is it now.”

  Hugh’s eyes widened with innocent alarm. “Sister Rosvita! I tremble for her soul, Your Grace. By her own testimony she betrays how she, too, was seduced by the maleficus, and yet she does not realize it.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Biscop Odila. It was the first time she had spoken. “What are you accusing
Sister Rosvita of? No one has ever had any cause to reproach her for her service!”

  “Does that not prove my point? By her own testimony she states that she knows of the book because she stole it out of a chest my own servant guarded! Ai, God, that she should come to this! And did she steal for herself, because she loves evil? No, indeed. She returned it to the very sorceress who had wrapped her spells around her!”

  The biscops murmured among themselves.

  “Did this Liathano bespell Princess Theophanu as well?” Constance looked skeptical. “She must have been very busy, if she had. Otherwise why would the princess make such accusations against you?”

  He bowed his head, refusing to answer. It was his mother who called forward a number of servants who had, in the way of servingfolk, noticed every small and out-of-the-way interaction. Princess Theophanu had been jealous of her sister, and they had seen certain signs that she had formed an unnatural passion for Hugh, which he had delicately attempted to turn aside. Assigned to Sapientia, the aforesaid Liathano had made no secret of how much she had disliked her royal mistress; she seemed to hold herself as high as the royal sisters; she had odd habits and a way of being secretive; she looked different; she could read and write and had a strange and troubling treasury of knowledge. Sister Rosvita had made overtures to her, and seemed interested in her well-being. Prince Sanglant was obsessed with her. Most men who saw her desired her, as if she had cast some kind of spell on herself to make men helpless before her.

  Through it all the king watched and said nothing.

  “What of the incident in the forest?” demanded the haughty presbyter. “No one questions that arrows were shot at Princess Theophanu.”

  Some who had witnessed the incident came forward. All noted how strange it was that the Eagle had cried out a warning when no one else had seen anything amiss, how she had been first to reach the fallen princess. Was it a sign of her innocence? Or of a plot gone awry?

  “What possible reason would an Eagle have to murder Theophanu?” asked Constance.