The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “It is a strange day,” he agreed. “For once I’m heartily sick of work.”

  “I wish we could go somewhere. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed so long in one place as we have here, except for Heart’s Rest, and Qurtubah. I’m used to being on the move. It’s beautiful here, truly, but sometimes I feel like a prisoner.”

  Under the tree Blessing finished nursing and as she squirmed, needing to be burped, she began her slow sink through Jerna’s arms and body. Heribert leaped up and ran to fetch her.

  “We are prisoners,” Liath added.

  “Hush,” said Sanglant, laying a hand over hers. “Come, my love, you’re just tired of the view. We’ll go to the old cottage up—”

  Heribert returned and sat down at his place on the couch, mulishly reluctant to give up the baby. He was making stupid faces at her, exaggerated eyes and grins, cooing and ooing, because Blessing had just started to smile, and it was truly astounding the lengths to which the three of them would go to coax one of those sudden half startled smiles out of the tiny infant.

  “I don’t know if I can walk that far,” said Liath, but she bit her lip, looking up through the orchard and toward the slopes, as if she’d like to tackle it.

  “Then you can ride Resuelto.”

  It was as easy to coax her as it was to coax a smile from Blessing, who was as yet a remarkably easygoing baby. They finished their meal and started up the path with the dog running point. Liath walked as far as she could, and when she faltered among the dogwood, Sanglant simply swung her up onto the back of Resuelto. Heribert had refused to give up Blessing, and Jerna trailed somewhat behind, nervous of Liath as she always was. The path was strewn with flowers and a layer of decaying pine needles. Here and there they passed stumps of trees he had chopped down.

  “Ai, Lady,” murmured Liath. “Is it terrible of me to wish there was somewhere else to study? Rosvita suggested the convent of St. Valeria, but I think I’m ruined for that now.” She laughed as she looked at him in a way that made his skin flush. An invalidish wife made the marriage bed an uncomfortable place, at least for a man who, before Gent, had never needed to practice self-denial. “Imagine the king’s schola if mathematici were among those welcome to get an education there!”

  “Hush,” he murmured, still thinking about the manifold comforts of the marriage bed. “If there are servants about, they’ll carry your words to them below.”

  They came past the birch grove to the high clearing and the barrier of cliff and fallen boulders. Summer flowers had sprung up among the spring primroses and snowdrops. It was still difficult to tell the seasons in a valley where any apple tree bore bud, flower, and fully ripened fruit on every branch. But with Liath he had learned to watch the wheel of the stars, and he knew that summer was almost upon them. Out in the world beyond, the campaign season had begun. Did Henry fight in the east? Had he marched south to Aosta, or was he stalled in the north haggling with or threatening recalcitrant nobles? Had Eika attacked again, or had their defeat at Gent weakened them so badly that it would be a generation before they struck the northern coasts with the same fury they had under Bloodheart?

  Remarkably, he could think of Bloodheart now without an unwanted growl slipping from him. He hadn’t had a nightmare for two months. He helped Liath off Resuelto. She was so tired, and she dozed off as he settled her down on the pallet in the old hut that they’d made comfortable months ago, the only place they could escape the watchful eyes of Anne’s servants. He had certain vivid memories of those days.

  “I haven’t been up here much,” said Heribert, poking around.

  “Ah! Liath’s scribbling.” He displayed a parchment covered with diagrams and equations, then set it aside to pick up an old, cracked leather sole, turning it over to see if he could find a craftsman’s mark. He had Blessing tucked into one elbow. She, too, had fallen asleep, and Sanglant took her and settled her tenderly in the crook of Liath’s elbow. Liath murmured something, shifting position to pillow the baby against her. With her eyes shut and her lips brushing Blessing’s thick black hair, you could almost see a resemblance, but the baby’s face was still too unformed.

  “Liath’s stronger,” said Heribert softly, glancing back to make sure that Jerna hadn’t followed them inside. “How much longer will you keep her innocent of that which you’ve discovered?”

  “Lord help me, Brother, but I’ve only confided in you because I can’t stand not to talk!” He grinned to take the sting out of the words. “But as long as we have no way free of this place, and she’s still this weak, I choose this way of protecting her. Even if it makes me no better than Sister Anne.”

  Heribert grunted good-naturedly. “A damning comparison, my friend. Yet if she doesn’t know the secret of the stones, then how can we run?”

  “I would think that if I were them, then that would be the last thing I would teach her. It’s an odd thing in her, that she’s wise in some ways and so ignorant in others.”

  “I don’t suppose everyone has had your wide experience of life, my lord prince.”

  He said it jestingly, but Sanglant shuddered. “Nor would I wish it on them.”

  “Hush,” said Heribert, echoing Sanglant’s own admonition to Liath, and for an instant Sanglant thought the cleric was comforting him. Then, looking at the cant of his head, he realized Heribert was listening.

  Jerna was singing. But it wasn’t a song, it wasn’t even really a tune but more like the brook’s voice.

  He slipped outside, Heribert right behind him.

  He didn’t see her at first, only water slipping over the huge wall of boulders that blocked one edge of the meadow. Heribert tugged on his sleeve and drew him forward, pointing, face flushed and sweating with excitement.

  She was singing her way into the rock fall, not gouging a path but opening one that had lain closed and invisible where the brook cut down through the rock.

  He waited only long enough to stake down the dog on a long lead by the cottage door before he followed her into the rock fall. Heribert dogged him, clipping his heels once, once grasping at his salamander sword belt when he slipped on a slope of pebbles. But the path was obvious and clearly marked, once you knew you were on it, winding up beside the brook through a spill of boulders as big as cottages and skirting the edge of ragged cliff faces until it speared up a narrow defile and ended on a ledge that looked down into another place. Jerna would come no farther than the last tumble of stones, but Sanglant walked all the way out until the wheel-rutted path turned into a thin trail more like a goat’s path. He didn’t see any goats although two little gray birds flitted along a nearby rock face, probing in crevices with their slender bills. It was almost a different season here: snow still covered half the hillside although here and there, on the sunniest slopes, gorse bloomed. He took a few steps farther on, kicking snow off the path, and came to rest on an outcropping from which he could view the vista beyond.

  Below, a road wound through a steep-sided pass bounded by cliffs and shadowed by three monumentally high peaks that gleamed in the sun. Mist shrouded the highest peak, but the others rose stark and clear against the blue vault of sky, so white that their glare hurt his eyes.

  “God preserve us,” whispered Heribert, coming up beside him. “This is St. Barnaria’s Pass.”

  “The Alfar Mountains!” breathed Sanglant. “I’ve never seen them except their foothills in the north. I’ve never ridden them, though I’ve heard tales.” He was astounded by the high peaks. He had seen them before, of course, from Verna: one had a distinctive crook, as though the summit had slipped slightly to one side. But from this angle, they seemed just so much more massive, and he hadn’t before appreciated the vast sheer face of the big middle mountain plunging down to the steep defile that cut into the land below, marking a pass. The road struck straight through the pass, engineered out of stone. Farther along, partially hidden by the thrusting shoulder of a ridge, he saw a cluster of buildings that resembled a monastery and was probably some kind of trave
ler’s hostel.

  And indeed he saw travelers on the road, a retinue fit for a grand lady or a nervous merchant hauling spices and silks from the east: a half dozen wagons and a troop of some thirty mounted soldiers and perhaps as many on foot. They were coming from the south in a line that had gotten rather strung out along the way, in part because heavy snow still blocked portions of the road and the wagons were having a hard time getting through. Now, the vanguard turned in to the hostel, and several tiny figures emerged from one of the buildings to greet them.

  A banner opened in the breeze, revealing the lion, eagle, and dragon of Wendar. “Lord and Lady!” He heard his own voice tremble as he examined the riders making their way below. “It’s Theophanu. Ai, God, look there! It’s Captain Fulk and his men.”

  He had learned to make quick decisions. In battle, how swiftly and resolutely you moved often meant the difference between victory and defeat.

  “This may be our only chance,” he said, “for it’s clear they’ve hidden the path and we can’t come through without Jerna’s aid. You go on, Heribert. I have to go back to get Liath and Blessing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  One thing he loved about a troop of good soldiers was that once they trusted you, they knew better than to ask stupid questions. “This is our chance to escape. You descend now, go to Theophanu, and tell her that I’m coming. If we’re pursued, we may have to fight.”

  “But—but I can’t go! I’m an outlaw! I’m under censure by the church.”

  “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, Heribert. You’ve been a good friend to me, and I trust you. Throw yourself on Theophanu’s mercy. Tell her that I sent you and that I mean for you to reside under her protection, no matter what. Give her—” But he had nothing to give, not even a ring, nothing that she would know was incontrovertibly his, that he would never give up except in death. He had nothing, except their life together as children. “Remind her of the time we saved the robin’s eggs from Margrave Judith’s cat, and got that bastard Hugh a whipping for almost letting the cat drown.” He shoved Heribert forward. “Go!”

  No soldier had ever resisted that tone. Even a cleric might find his feet moving before his mind had fully agreed.

  Heribert stumbled down the path, fetched up in a drift of snow, arms waving like those of a jellyfish, slave to the currents he was caught up in. “I hate to leave you, my lord prince,” he called, looking as if he meant to turn around and come back.

  “Heribert,” he shouted, almost beside himself, knowing when action was needed and talking of no use, “if it’s true about the Lost Ones, that they’re to return in an avalanche of fire and blood, then King Henry needs to know! He needs to know that my daughter is the great-great-grandchild of Taillefer! Damn it! Just use your wits. Go!”

  Maybe Henry wouldn’t believe such an outrageous story, but it didn’t matter. Sanglant knew an opportunity when he saw one. He waited only long enough to see Heribert stagger on down the path. Then he turned and sped back up into the rocks. Jerna followed at his shoulder, agitated, plucking at him as if to haul him back, but he was in too much of a hurry to heed her now. He knew what burned in his heart: he was restless; he had recovered. His entire life he had lived as movement, striking when his enemy’s line was weak, training new Dragons, hunting, whoring—in all honesty he could scarcely call it anything else—riding from one skirmish to the next to protect his father’s kingdom. He wasn’t used to inaction, and it felt now as if he had finally woken up from a long, long sleep.

  “Liath!” he cried as he slipped out from the hidden crevice with Jerna whimpering behind him, and burst into the meadow. Flowers bloomed in such profusion that the meadow seemed more like a garden, a peaceful paradise.

  Except for the ugly stench of blood.

  His Eika dog lay by the cottage, throat cut. Green-copper blood soaked into the grass.

  Anne was waiting for him, standing patiently by the door with her hands clasped before her exactly in the manner of those of her namesake, St. Anne the Peaceful, whose image he had seen painted on one pier of Taillefer’s chapel in Autun. Her hound sat beside her, scratched up around the muzzle, skin stained with copperish fluid, but otherwise unharmed. It stiffened, growling when it saw Sanglant, but Anne stilled it with a touch on its head.

  “Brother Heribert will have to take his chances,” she said, “but I was rather hoping you might run, too.”

  He used a word so crude that at first he thought she hadn’t understood him, until she spoke.

  “Wicked there are in plenty, but you are right in your conclusions. The daimone acted under my orders. You will not find that path again. I had not counted on your loyalty to wife and child, although perhaps it should not surprise me. Dogs often go to the death protecting their own.”

  He was too angry at his own mistake to do more than gesture toward the dead Eika dog, his last and most faithful follower.

  “It would not let us pass. Sister Zoë overcame her abhorrence and carried Blessing down to the tower. Brother Severus led down the horse. Liath still lies asleep inside, since none of us have the brute strength to carry her and she would slip right through the servants’ arms.” She stepped aside so that he could pass by her, and he tried to draw his sword, but the servants swarmed about him and so clotted the air about his wrist that he could not move it up or down. “She is not meant for that world, Prince Sanglant. Did we neglect to tell you that she has been excommunicated and outlawed by a council presided over by your own father? Nay? That she has dwelt here and learned more of the secrets of the mathematici would only seal her fate. In Darre, they execute mathematici. Go then, leave us. I will still let you depart, alone. It is better this way.”

  Never let it be said that he did not fight until the last breath, or that he abandoned his own.

  He needed to say nothing. They both knew it was war.

  He walked past her, into the cottage, to get his wife, and with Anne at his heels and Jerna trailing skittishly behind, he returned mute and furious to Verna.

  5

  THE chapel at Autun commissioned by Taillefer and built by his craftsmen was the most beautiful building Hanna had ever seen, eight huge pillars separating eight vaults, each arch made of alternating blocks of light and dark stone. On the second level, slender columns rose higher yet, with a third tier of columns above them, illuminated by tall windows. Behind this grandiose octagon lay the ambulatory where hangers-on and servants like Hanna waited, able to see into the central space where the regnant might conduct his ceremonies or wait to be admitted to the apse beyond the eastern vault, where the altar lay.

  Taillefer’s tomb lay at the center, under the dome. The huge stone coffin was topped by a lifelike effigy, a stone portrait that despite his legendary craftsmen did not quite rival the effigy of Lavastine at Lavas Church. But jewels encrusted his stone robes, formed into stylized roses, and he held in his marble hands a gold crown with seven points, each point set with a gem: a gleaming pearl, lapis lazuli, pale sapphire, carnelian, ruby, emerald, and banded orange-brown sardonyx. A crowd of saints painted onto the stocky piers watched over him, each one so distinctive that Hanna felt that she knew them all, like old and familiar relatives.

  But almost everyone else was not observing the saints or the crown but rather the scene unfolding on the dais that held Taillefer’s remains.

  “No!” Tallia had flung herself at her uncle’s feet and was now clutching his ankles with her bony hands. “I beg you, Uncle, if you love me at all, do not leave me here with my mother.” Her sobs echoed liquidly in the chapel.

  If the scene had not been so embarrassing, Hanna would have laughed outright at the expression on Henry’s face. He rarely showed his true feelings so nakedly. “I pray you, Constance,” he said to his sister, who reigned as biscop and as duke, “remove her from my sight, if you will. I tender her into your care.”

  Biscop Constance had the reserve of a woman who is at peace with God and well aware that she also lies b
lameless in the eyes of the regnant. If she was as disgusted with Tallia as was Henry, Hanna could not tell from the smooth tenor of her face.

  “Tallia,” she said, pressing a hand onto the girl’s thin shoulder, “you must control yourself. You will stay under my care here. That your mother bides here as well is also through her own choosing. As I hear it, you cast aside a vocation at Quedlinhame and then a respectable marriage. Now you will stay at Autun until we see what is to be done with you.”

  “Pray do not give me into my mother’s keeping!” Tallia would not relinquish her grip on Henry’s feet, nor did her hoarse sobs quiet. Hanna hoped devoutly that Alain was not one of those Lions on guard duty right now, so that he would be spared this humiliating scene.

  Henry had some trouble keeping his balance with Tallia dragging at him like an anchor, but he was able to signal to his servants, and they moved to open the great doors. He clenched one hand and squared his shoulders, as if bracing for a blow.

  From where Hanna stood, she could not see the doors pushed open, but a wind blew in from outside and on its sharp summer breath followed an entourage of richly clad servants and noble companions with the jewel of their party glittering in their midst in tawny velvet robes ornamented with gold-embroidered sleeves. Her dark hair was shot through with silver, although she was still robust—she had been born out of a sturdy line. She wore the gold torque of royal kinship at her neck, and she strode forward with no more than a perfunctory nod for the biscop who was her jailer.

  “My God. Can this truly be my offspring lying here on the floor like the lowest sniveling beggar? The years have not improved her.” She turned to regard her brother with a sudden half smile. “Well, Henry, I hear my stepmother is dead, and I’m sorry for it, for she never treated me ill even if she did push her own children forward to take what was rightfully mine. You look tired, Brother. I hear we are to feast together tonight.” Tallia had broken out into fresh screams, as if she were being knifed to death. She rolled herself so hard against Henry’s legs that he almost fell over. “Oh, God,” continued Sabella, signing to the nearest of her servants. “Can we not be rid of this wailing?”