The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  Not even rats stirred in the hall. He heard the whisper of Compline, muted by distance, stone walls, and the ripening comprehension of the Lavas clerics.

  This morning, for the first time, Lavastine had not been able to be sat up in his bed. His body was now too heavy to move. Prayers and physic, all to no avail.

  For the first time, Alain sat in the count’s chair.

  The hall lay shrouded by twilight, but it was easier to test this seat in private, without the stares and bows, the expectations and petitions, that would greet him later when everyone assembled to see him take the seat of power. This way he could get used to it slowly—if he could ever get used to it.

  He started up guiltily out of the chair as a procession entered the hall: Tallia with several attendants. They lit her by torchlight so she could cross to his side unmolested by benches and table corners.

  “You didn’t stay for Compline.” She had certain secretive habits left over from her childhood, and now, touching the count’s chair, she leaned closer to him in the manner of a thief planning mischief with an accomplice. “I prayed for this… for God to strike him dead as an unbeliever. You see, don’t you, that it is best this way? God answered my prayers in this way because She wishes me to build a chapel in Her honor.” She faltered, pressed a hand over his as if to seal his approval.

  Alain could only stare. Behind, a servingman hurried into the hall.

  “My lord Alain!” The servant was weeping. “He’s very bad, my lord. You must come quickly.”

  Alain left Tallia to the ministrations of her fluttering attendants. He took the steps two at a time. A servant held the door open as he strode into the chamber where Lavastine lay in his curtained bed as still as stone. Fear kept watch at his bedside.

  Alain knelt at his side and took hold of one of the count’s hands: it had the grain of pale granite. It stirred only because Alain lifted it. Lavastine’s eyes moved; his lips parted. That he still breathed Alain knew because he still lived: His chest gave no telltale rise and fall, God’s breath lifting and descending to feed his soul.

  A musky odor permeated the room, fleeting, gone. He looked up to see Sorrow, Rage, and Fear cluster around Terror, who lay at the foot of Lavastine’s bed.

  Lavastine murmured words. His voice was almost inaudible, a thin wheeze, but Alain had spent many hours beside him these past fifteen days, and he could still understand his few, labored words. “Most faithful.”

  It struck Alain as sharply as any blow had ever shuddered his shield in battle: Terror was dead, had died in the last hour, passed beyond mortal existence. That was why the others sniffed at him, seeking the smell of their father-cousin and not finding it. His spirit had fled. Ai, God! Lavastine’s would soon follow.

  He pressed a hand to the count’s throat, but there was no warmth, no pulse.

  “Alain.” By some astounding force of will he still lived, although he was by now completely paralyzed. “Heir.”

  “Father. I’m here.” It tore his heart in two to watch Lavastine’s suffering, although in truth it wasn’t clear he was in any pain. His brow remained as unlined as ever, even as it took on that grainy, stonelike cast, as if he were transmuting into an effigy carved from rock.

  But Lavastine was nothing if not stubborn, and determined. Had he had more expression left him, he would have frowned. One eyebrow twitched. His lips quirked ever so slightly. “Must. Have. Heir.”

  From the chapel in the room below, the clerics began to sing a hymn from the Holy Verses: “A remnant restored in an age of peace.”

  “On that day, say God, We will destroy all your horses among you and break apart all your chariots. We will raze the cities of your land and tear down your fortresses. We will ruin all your sorcerers, and no more augeres shall walk among you to part the veil that allows them to see into the future. We will throw down all the works made by your own hands. In anger and fury will We take vengeance on all nations who disobey Us.”

  Alain was weeping, He could not bear to let Lavastine go in hopelessness. “She’s pregnant,” he whispered, too softly for anyone else to hear. Hearing himself speak, he said it again more boldly. “Tallia is pregnant.”

  Was that a stirring in Lavastine’s face, the breath of an expression across skin made marble by poison? Was that a swallow at his throat, a spark of joy in his eye? A smile on his lips?

  Surely God would forgive Alain the lie. He only meant it to make his father happy, in his last hour.

  “We’re to have a child, Father,” he continued. It got easier as each word slipped out. “There will be an heir, just as you decreed.”

  “Children of Saïs, you shall shepherd your foes with the sword, the sacred pillars shall be raised from their ruins, and all who hate you shall be destroyed.”

  A breath escaped Lavastine, a last shaping of words. “Done. Well. My. Son.” As Alain watched, his eyes began to glaze over, a stippling, granules speckling the white of his eye as his iris turned to sapphire. After the long struggle, it was all going so quickly now, but perhaps his soul had been tethered to faithful Terror, and with Terror gone, he sped, too, on the final journey. Perhaps he had only waited for news of this.

  Silence reigned.

  Alain wept bitterly. His tears soaked the coverlet and ran like rain off stone down Lavastine’s arm. The hounds growled softly but did not interfere as several servingmen came forward, and the steward pressed a finger against the count’s cold lips.

  “God have mercy,” the steward said softly. “He is gone.”

  Alain leaped up and grabbed a candle, held it before Lavastine’s lips. The flame stirred, the merest flicker.

  “He still lives!” he cried. A servant took the candle from him gently. He flung himself down beside the bed, still weeping, still gripping the cold hand, and prayed with all his heart in it and his own hands wet with tears. “I pray You, God. Spare my father’s life. Heal him, and I will serve You.”

  “My lord Alain. Come away. He is beyond us now. He has gone to our Lord and Lady.”

  “The flame moved. He still breathes.”

  “That was your own breath, my lord. He is gone.”

  He shook off the hand impatiently, and Sorrow growled, echoing his mood. The servants moved back as he bent to pray. Surely God had power to heal any poison, any injury. This was only a trifle, compared to Their power. “I will do as Tallia wishes, or as You wish. I will swear my life to the church, forever, gladly, if only You heal my father, Lady. If only You give my father back his strength and his life, Lord. I will sire many strong children if that is Your will, or remain celibate, if You so choose, but please, I beg you, God, heal him. Don’t let your loyal servant die. Give me a sign.”

  The tapestry on the wall rippled lightly as though a wind had stirred it, except the shutters were closed up against wintertide. It shuddered again as if a hand shook it and, shaking, shook him. His vision had gone all tight until he could only see the scene depicted in the tapestry: A prince rides with his retinue through a dark forest. A shield hangs from the prince’s saddle: a red rose against a sable background.

  And there: hidden in the shadows of the tapestry. Why hadn’t he seen them before? Black hounds trailed alongside, a trio of them, dark and handsome. He could hear their footsteps padding on the earth, could hear the creak of harness and the steady clop of horses’ hooves. Wind made the branches dance, and because it had just rained, they were showered with drops from the leaves like the tears of watery daimones. He rode among the servants, innocent, invisible because he was one among many. He felt protected by the darkness and the shadows, by the wall of forest that towered on either side of the road. It made him bold, and he pressed his horse forward. As he came up beside the prince, he saw with a shock that it was no prince at all but a woman dressed as a man, as if in disguise. She was older than he had first guessed, with a cold, stubborn expression. The brooch that pinned her cloak shut was a fine jeweled replica of the red rose painted on the shield hanging at her thigh. What nobl
e house bore the red rose as its sigil? She turned, unsurprised to see him ride up beside her, and said: “How fares the child?”

  But there is torchlight coming up beside him, blinding him for a moment, and he no longer rides along the forest path but instead rocks in the breeze that is not a breeze but rather the timber of a ship beneath his feet, swaying gently on the water. Headland blots out the stars along the eastern horizon. Along the dark shore torches bob, massing, darting forward. He hears the schiiing of metal ringing against metal as a skirmish spreads up the twilit vale toward the great house built two generations ago by the famous chieftain Bloodyax of the Namms tribe.

  Another war leader has arrived at Namms Dale before him.

  A small boat ties up alongside his ship, and a scout—Ninth Son of the Twelfth Litter—scrambles on board to give his report. “It is Moerin’s tribe, nineteen ships, come to settle an old feud against the Nammsfolk.”

  “Moerin’s chieftain is old Bittertongue, is he not?” asks Stronghand, still staring at the unfolding battle made bright by the last gleam of the sun on trusting spears and the flowering of torches all along the path of the fighting.

  “Nay, old Bittertongue died in a raid last spring. There is a new chief who has taken advisers from the island known to the Soft Ones as Alba. He has named himself Nokvi in the style of the humanfolk.”

  “Look!” Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter stands at Stronghand’s side, one of his standard bearers by reason of his sharp eyes and unusual strength. He raises an arm and points up into the darkening vale. “Where the great house stands. Look there.”

  Flame flowers into life as bold as fire can be when let loose. Stronghand sets a foot up on the lip of the uppermost plank and leans out, staring into the twilight as the great house goes up in a towering blaze of fire. Torches ring the burning hall. He smells oil, quick to flame. “Listen!” says Stronghand, and all the men within sound of his voice quiet and listen.

  Nokvi, chieftain of the Moerin tribe, has trapped Namms’ war leader and his fighting men inside the hall, coated the hall with oil, and set it alight, burning them alive. Not even the tough hides of the RockChildren can withstand such an inferno.

  “Do we attack?” asks Tenth Son.

  “With eight ships?” Stronghand cuts down sharply with his left hand, to signify “no.” “I came to make an alliance with the Nammsfolk, not to fight them. We must learn more of this ‘Nokvi’ before we fight him. Winter is coming on, and soon no ships will sail. But there are other ways to gather our forces even against a leader who has allied with the humans of Alba.”

  He hates to turn away without that alliance he came for. It smacks of cowardice. But he is not a fool. He is not blinded by the lust for glory. He seeks something harder, and colder, and longer lasting than the brief if brilliant flare of battle glory.

  He lifts the warhorn to his lips and blows the retreat.

  The sound brought Alain sharply back to himself, a mewling that seemed remotely familiar and yet utterly strange.

  “My lord count!”

  Alain bolted up to lean over Lavastine, but the count might as well have been a stone statue. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.

  He was dead.

  A weight nudged against Alain’s leg and abruptly he remembered the chamber he stood in, and he realized that Sorrow, Rage, and Fear had collapsed to the ground and lay beside Lavastine’s deathbed like helpless pups, whimpering. It took him a moment longer to register the waiting attendants, who all stared nervously at the hounds, awaiting their reaction. The steward who had just spoken had not been addressing Lavastine.

  “My lord count. Come away. There’s nothing you can do.”

  The words struck like the tolling of a bell. But it was the bell, which had begun to ring at the old church, tolling the dead soul up through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light. He stood, although his legs did not really feel like his own legs.

  There was nothing he could do. He rested a hand on Lavastine’s cold forehead, then bent to kiss it. He might as well have been kissing stone. He touched the eyes, to close the eyelids as was customary. But he could not close them. They were frozen that way; hardened open, perhaps. Ever vigilant, even in the grave.

  There was truly nothing more he could do here. The servants parted before him, a whisper of movement away as the hounds heaved themselves up and fell in behind him, who was now their master. But they did not growl or even seem to notice the servants around them. They walked at his heels as though they were sleepwalking, as meek as lambs.

  He walked silent, down the tower steps and along the dark corridor to the great hall. Where a door opened to the courtyard, a breath of crisp air stung his face, and the taste of it brought him a vivid and painful memory of autumn afternoons toiling outside Aunt Bel’s longhouse with his foster father, Henri, making rope or repairing sailcloth. But that life had fallen behind him. God had marked him out for greater things. He walked past the open door and into the dense and anticipatory silence of the great hall.

  There he sat in the carven chair reserved for the count of Lavas. Sorrow, Rage, and Fear sat at his feet.

  After a while, Tallia ventured into the hall with her attendants. With lips drawn white and hands shaking, she took her seat beside him.

  Slowly, from hall and hut and stable, from village and kitchen, from field and courtyard, servingfolk, soldiers, farmers, and attendants gathered in the hall in ranks alongside the tables. Torchlight made their expressions fitful, shadowed now by hesitancy, lit now by respect, made constant by a certain wariness toward the hounds and, perhaps, toward him. At last the bell finished tolling.

  “My lord count,” said their spokeswoman, chatelaine of this holding, Mistress Dhuoda.

  For an instant he did not reply, waiting for another to answer. But that voice never came.

  “Come forward,” said the count of Lavas, “and I will honor your oaths, and make my own to you in turn.”

  IX

  A NEST OF MATHEMATICI

  1

  THEOPHANU made cunning use of the information they had gained from Wolfhere: She used the lay of the hills around Vennaci to conceal the numbers of her troops and in this way pretended to lay in a countersiege with a large force that, so it appeared, surrounded the force mustered by John Ironhead.

  He quickly called for a parley. Theophanu went in state with twenty attendants; Rosvita served as interpreter, since the language spoken in Aosta was intelligible to any person who understood Dariyan.

  Ironhead was blunt and impatient. He no sooner had his servants bring round a chair and wine than he started in. “King Henry wants to marry Queen Adelheid himself.”

  Theophanu eyed him over her wine, which she sipped at her leisure under the shelter of a fine canopy woven of scarlet cloth. “God be with you, Lord John,” she replied finally. “The weather is very fine here in the autumn in Aosta, is it not?”

  Once out of the mountains, the rain had stopped and the skies were cleared. The light was so bright that at midday every person and thing, the tents, the banners fixed to spears, the rank of guards, the distant line of tethered horses, seemed sharpened in outline.

  “I see no point in pleasantries, Princess Theophanu. I have reinforcements coming. The lords of Aosta support me. They do not want a foreigner to rule over them.”

  “Yet you are not the only prince of Aosta who wishes to marry Adelheid. It is obvious. Lord John, that the man who marries Queen Adelheid can lay claim to the vacant kingship.”

  Ironhead had a face as blunt as his tongue, undistinguished except for the scar on his cheek, and his prominent Dariyan nose. The depth and brightness of his dark eyes saved him from being ugly; certainly he looked determined, and he stuck stubbornly to the topic that interested him most. “Henry wants to marry Adelheid himself,” he repeated.

  Theophanu replied before Rosvita translated, since she could understand somewhat of his words. “No, indeed, that is not the intent of King Henry.”

  “The
n why are you here?”

  “Merely to pay my respects to Queen Adelheid. If you will give me an escort through your lines, I will enter the city and leave you alone.”

  “Impossible. I cannot allow it.”

  “Then we are at an impasse, Lord John.”

  “So we are, Princess Theophanu.” A servant refilled his cup as he waved forward a captain who had come up at the head of a group of soldiers chained together as prisoners. Most of the prisoners were short of stature, broad through the shoulders, and even darker in hair and face than the Aostans.

  “These are the ones?” Ironhead asked of his captain.

  “Yes, my lord, the very ones captured yesterday when they attacked out the eastern gate.”

  Ironhead looked them over contemptuously. His own soldiers, rough-looking men who wore a ragtag assemblage of tabards and armor that they had probably scrounged off many battlefields, spat at the prisoners.

  “Well, then, take care of them, but be sure it is within sight of the walls, as usual.”

  “What will be done with these prisoners, Lord John?” asked Theophanu. “Surely they have served their mistress faithfully. That is no crime, not in Wendar, at any rate.”

  He snorted and called for more wine. They had not, pointedly, been offered food, but it was possible that the siege weighed as heavily on John’s supplies as it must on those besieged within the city’s walls. “These are mercenaries from Arethousa, not faithful retainers. We all know what a bloody-minded, vicious people the Arethousans are, as well as untrustworthy.” He smiled without taking the sting from the words. Did he know Theophanu’s mother was an Arethousan? Was the bait meant for her? Theophanu merely regarded him with a cool stare. “There are a fair number of these Arethousan flies buzzing ’round Adelheid’s honey, and I see no reason to encourage them to stay. Take them off!” he shouted to the captain. “Use your knives wisely. Don’t cut too deep.”