The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  She rides on as the battle flows forward, abandoning him.

  A hoof crushes his left hand as a Quman warrior rides over him; he is kicked in the cheek by the trailing leg of another horse. His helmet, strap severed, rolls off.

  The tide of battle passes over him. A man moans in agony nearby. Rain spits gently on his exposed cheek. Everything seems much darker now, and for a while he thinks his vision is fading, but then he realizes that the sun is setting; it really is getting darker. A fire has been lit under his ribs, and he thinks maybe it will burn him clean out from the inside. He understands now why it is easy for some men to lie down and die. But he still hears that poor man crying in agony. Reaching, he drags himself over the wings of a fallen Quman rider. He slides over the bloodied body and falls, facedown, in the mud, but with a grunt he pushes up again to his hands and knees, and the misting rain washes his vision clear. There, eye-to-eye, face-to-face, he stares at a dead Lion. He knows the man, but he can’t remember his name. It doesn’t really seem to matter now because what is a body without a soul? What animated the dead man once is now fled. As his own soul soon will fly. Yet he crawls on because he just can’t bear to hear that other man suffering.

  He finds a Quman rider writhing on the ground with little swipes and pumps of his limbs, all he can manage as he whimpers, poor soul. A deep cut through his abdomen has spilled his intestines over the ground, and he has been trampled as well.

  Ai, God, why does suffering plague humankind? When will it end?

  Distantly, he hears the ring of battle, lost over the northern slope of the hill fort. Isn’t this the heart of war?

  The Quman sees him, then, sees him staring. Their gazes meet. Maybe on the field of battle every soldier shares an undemanding. A dagger lies between them. The man moans words. It is a plea, surely. It is a prayer.

  Alain grasps the dagger and with all his strength lunges forward to cut the unresisting man’s throat so that he can have a merciful death, if this can be called mercy. Then he falls back, exhausted.

  Now he has dealt death. Now he will suffer death. In this way, he has served the Lady of Battles. He gropes at his chest but hasn’t the strength to pull out the little pouch that hides the rose. He hasn’t anything anymore, nothing that counts, no family, no comrades, no promises that bind him. He is alone now in death as he came alone into life, torn out of a dying woman.

  The misting rain turns heavier, soaking the ground. Dusk veils them, but the moon has risen. Yet how can he see the moon when clouds cover the sky? In the tumble of fallen stones, a pale light glows steadily brighter.

  Probably he should just lie down now and accept death, but something nags him, pushing him onward. He struggles toward the source of the light. He thinks that when he fought up here before that the stones all lay fallen in, torn down by human hands long ago or simply by the tidal forces of time and weather. Yet one stone stands now at the center of the ruin. It casts a faint bluish light, a ripple like water up and down its length. When he reaches it, he claws his way up its rough surface, bracing himself so that he can stand and see.

  Below, the last knot of Lions has made it to the ford. He recognizes Thiadbold’s red hair; somehow the captain has lost his helm. Prince Bayan and his cavalry cross the river. Farther to the north, Alain sees the army retreating in good order. At the ford, where some fifty Lions, all that remains of the first cohort, hold their position, the Quman close in.

  Upriver, a lower wave crests the bank and slides out onto the plain like a probing finger. Prince Bayan calls out, and the Lions retreat step by step into the shallow ford: There is rash and sentimental Folquin, quiet Stephen, brawny Leo, and fair-minded Ingo. The boldest of the Quman riders press their horses to the shore and even forward a few steps into the water.

  The river is rising. A swell of water spills into the Quman line, scattering their horses, and they pull back superstitiously as the Lions retreat in good order across the current and, at last, make it safely to the far shore. As soon as their unit clears the water, a flood roars downstream, borne out of the eastern hills. The river becomes impassable. He thinks maybe he sees creatures in the waves, spinning and twirling as they ride the foam, but he knows any visions he has now can’t be trusted.

  Pain stabs in his body. He coughs, and an agony like ripping claws tears through his chest. A warm liquid trickles down his lips, and he tastes blood. The world is silent except for the gurgle of his own breathing and the distant roar of the flooding river.

  Then, distinctly, he hears a bark. The blue fire flickering along the stone caresses his back. Oddly, it soothes him and sharpens his hearing. He hears another bark, and they tumble up against him, tails beating his body until the pain of their whip-hard tails slapping against him makes his head spin, but he is already spinning. Sorrow licks his hands and Rage leaps right up, a huge paw on either side of his slumped shoulders, and licks his face with that wonderful slobbery tongue.

  And he weeps, because he doesn’t want to leave them.

  It isn’t fair to leave them here alone in the world.

  Light flares. Cold fire smothers him, and with a sickening wrench he feels the ground jerked one way while he falls the other….

  Gone.

  Just like that, the link had shattered.

  Sunlight glared down on the water. Stronghand had to shade his eyes in order to see. To his left, a little island swarmed with a raucous colony of petrels. Water slapped the ship as they hit the swells off the open sea, rounding the cape that protected the inner bay leading into Kjalmarsfjord. The Alban boats had vanished onto the empty sea.

  Still, the tree sorcerers hadn’t truly escaped him. Once he had mopped up the last minor resistance among the clans and brought all the tribes and chieftains to acclaim his kingship, he would strike farther afield. All the RockChildren would follow him then, and none among humankind would be able to stop them.

  In the ship, his men roared in triumph, and he heard a distant echo from the inlet behind them, where his allies and tribe brothers celebrated.

  Today he had won a great victory.

  Yet all he felt was grief.

  3

  DEFEAT tasted oddly sweet. Anne had found them out, and yet for the first time in two years he stood whole, ready for battle, sword raised and a good sturdy horse at his back. For the first time, he saw more than potential in the woman he had married; he saw power manifest. She was more than incomprehensible calculations and annoying, repetitive questions and late night sojourns under the silent stars during which she sometimes seemed more interested in measuring the altitudes of stars than in, well, measuring him. She had earned the sword of power which is true sorcery, something you could use.

  If they could just get out of this together—

  Anne swung her staff away from the unraveling archway of light and pointed it, like an empress’ scepter, at Liath. When she spoke, it was with the tone of a regnant, with equal parts severity and mercy. “Liathano, I know you think that I killed your father, but I swear this to be true, you were not conceived of a carnal bond between Bernard and myself. Such a bloodline would be too weak for the path before you.” Liath, struggling stubbornly to reweave the patterns and angles of starlight within the stones, faltered as Anne went on. “Your family is not what you believe it is. Your enmity toward me is misplaced. Bernard had no right to steal you. He took what was not his to shape. Surely you see that destiny is upon us. Time is short. Let us not waste it bickering when our combined powers are all that can save this world from ruin.”

  From a distance he heard the faint, frantic bleating of a goat, a sound that faded into the stuttering grunts of a dying animal. Bells rang, far off at first and then closer, yet they sounded no more loudly in his ears. Three steps in front of him, Liath swung wildly with the arrowshaft as shadows poured like water down over them from the stone circle, tangling the last shimmering lines of her spell like a dark wind that shatters a dew-laden spiderweb.

  “We’re leaving Verna,” sai
d Liath.

  “That I cannot allow. Verna is where you must weave your part when the day comes. Here lies the center of it all. Can you not understand, child?” In the midst of the shadows Anne stood, radiant not because she shone with any brilliance of her own but merely because the shadows sliding past her were so utterly black that their blackness limned her form.

  Liath cursed under her breath as the sparking, fading lines of her spell tangled, like beheaded snakes, into knots perceptible now only because of the trail of mist left by their threads writhing against the unearthly blackness that swelled everywhere, consuming the heavens and the Earth. But her voice, in reply, was strong. “I am leaving with my husband and child.”

  “Ai, God!” continued Anne. “I tried to aid you, to prevent this ill conception, this child. Don’t you see, Liathano? Prince Sanglant has used you in a most devious way. He tried to kill you by getting a child on you, and look how close he came to succeeding! Only your strength saved you. You are deceived in him. He does not truly love you. He only wants you and the child to gain victory for his own people. When you are free from his influence, you will finally see clearly your duty to God and humankind.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Liath took one step toward Anne but seemed to fetch up against an unseen resistance, like a wall of air. Slowly, as against a heavy weight, she lifted her right hand, probing with the shaft; she narrowed her eyes. The gold feather gleamed.

  The hem of Anne’s robes caught on fire. Startled, Anne took a step back. Air swirled around her until it became a whirlwind, and the fire snuffed out.

  “You remain under his spell,” said Anne harshly. “So I am left with no choice. ‘Nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.’ Let God forgive us for trafficking with such evil creatures, but our cause is just.” She raised both arms. “Let the galla come and consume him and the child.”

  Bells tolled at his back, a throb that shuddered up through his feet. The stench of the forge boiled up the hill. The bitter scent made his skin tingle, as after the strike of lightning.

  The goat tied to Resuelto’s saddle, or its kid, made a sound so horrible that he actually shuddered, whipping around to brace for an attack. Blessing wailed as though something had bitten her.

  They were surrounded.

  These weren’t Anne’s captive daimones, feathery creatures formed out of air and water. Blessing’s wails turned to infant howls of pain and he felt a stinging, nasty burn pouring over his shoulders and a stab like razor-edged tusks goring his neck. He lunged toward Anne, thrusting with his sword.

  Shadows closed before and behind him, great columns of darkness shuddering and swaying in an unseen wind. They pressed against him, bodiless demons smothering him in their handless grasp. Their voice was the muttering of bells, and they whispered his name.

  “Sanglant. Come to us, and you will find peace.”

  With all his might he pushed his shoulder hard into a shadow, thrusting the sword farther in, but the creature did not yield. Where his arm lay against it, a thousand needles of ice penetrated armor and flesh. Blood rose in pinpricks on his exposed hand, and he felt the warmth of drawn blood sting all along the length of his arm. He recoiled, only to press backward into a burning cold that impaled his back. Blessing screamed, the terror of a tiny child who can only know pain but nothing of its cause. He struck wildly to either side, to free himself, but his sword cut harmlessly through streaming shadow. He twisted, trying to keep his daughter out of their grip.

  But he was surrounded. Their huge forms towered over him, bending until he could no longer see the sky. The air swelled with stinging heat until he could barely breathe. Their touch scoured his head until he licked blood from his lips. Blood dribbling from gashes in his scalp and face trickled into his eyes, obscuring his vision. Mail did not protect him. Their bodiless touch reached right through his armor and rent his flesh. Blessing screamed and screamed.

  “Call them off,” cried Liath from somewhere a long way away. He could see her because even through the black substance of their bodies, she shone. The shaft, cast aside, shone as well: the gold feather burned against the blackness and gave him light to see by. She had drawn her bow. She nocked an arrow, brushed a finger over the point—and the haft began to burn, flames licking up and down the length of it. She drew, sighted, and held there one instant as the galla swirled around her but did not close on her. He could no longer see Anne for blackness, but Liath could. Liath could hear Blessing’s screams. She loosed the arrow.

  Blazing, it flew. And stopped, dead in the air, held aloft by the galla or by Anne’s daimones, he could not know. Distantly, although truly it could be no more than a few paces from him, he heard Resuelto bolt and clatter away into the trees.

  “I’ll never aid you!” cried Liath. “Let them go free.”

  “I will let them go free when you pledge your service to the Seven Sleepers,” said Anne coolly.

  He heard it as a lie and knew Anne would never allow him to live. But he had no breath in his lungs to tell Liath so. Ai, God, were the creatures even now tearing Blessing to pieces on his back?

  How had he come to be on his knees? He tried to lift his sword, to beat them off, but he no longer had any strength in his arms, and his vision was blurring.

  Blessing’s screams continued unabated, a horrible counterpoint to the knell that throbbed in his ears and obliterated every other sensation until his head boomed with their voices, or maybe that was only his own dying pulse plangent in his ears.

  “With us you will find peace, Sanglant.”

  The air hissed and spun around him. An arrow buried itself in the ground between his hands, and suddenly, winking free of darkness, he saw unshrouded sky above and twinkling stars. A second arrow struck the ground just beyond his left hand, spitting dirt, and another galla vanished, winked out with a sizzle.

  These weren’t Liath’s arrows. With that odd narrow concentration given to a man in battle, he saw them clearly: shafts of an unknown wood and fletched with a metal hard feather that he knew at once, with a shiver of misgiving. A griffin’s feather.

  A third arrow struck off to his right, and he could see its trail, a faint smear of blue cutting through the fell creatures that attacked him. A fourth arrow skittered over the ground, sparks glittering in its wake. It had a slick stone point, ragged and deadly.

  A dull blue haze streamed from the center of the stone circle, like steam boiling out of a kettle. He saw through it to another place: a massive rampart, huge marble walls, and an ebony gate already half open. A woman emerged from that gate with bow drawn, and she had only taken one step before she shot again. He ducked instinctively, but the arrow flew over his head and he heard the sizzle of another galla banished from the sphere of Earth.

  In her wake he smelled the heavy scent of the sea, could even feel the salty sea air on his lips; in her wake, a man leading a laden pony stumbled out into the stone circle. Arrows sang from her bow, and with each shaft sparks sprayed and glittered in the air and galla flicked out of existence.

  He got to his feet and was rewarded by a sudden indignant squall from Blessing; she still lived. But already Anne’s voice rang through the darkness. Surprised by an unexpected enemy, she was not yet defeated. Like a general, she mustered her forces and called up reserves—or perhaps her reserves had only just arrived, called down from the higher spheres. Those who served her at Verna had the delicacy of air and the fluidity of water. These who came at her command at the height of battle had a harsher aspect: human-shaped yet faceless, with wings as pale as glass. They, too, had a voice of bells, a throbbing bass vibrato that made the air ring. They streamed like a wild wind and flung themselves at Anne’s enemy with the howling breath of a gale. Their tenuous bodies dissolved to become the tempest.

  Into such a wind, the woman could not shoot. But the man at her back grabbed an arrow out of the quiver and, holding it up by the point, he swung it in a circle around himself so that the griffin fletchi
ng tracked blue sparks in an arc.

  Galla swarmed up around him; Blessing wailed again, and as he fought to move forward, to get out from under them, he saw what damage the griffin feathers did: they harmed the daimones not at all, but in some way they severed the bond that Anne had used to bind her servants to Earth. One by one, daimones darted away into the heavens, to vanish into the night sky. Freed from Anne.

  That was what these intruders were here for: to free him from Anne.

  He recognized the woman now; he had seen her in his dreams. Wind still battered her, but she, too, had taken an arrow and with it in her hand, head thrust into the wind and her hair streaming back like a banner behind her, she cut a way toward him. With each swipe more daimones tumbled free of the cord that bound them to Anne’s spells. It seemed to him that many of Anne’s servants flung themselves willingly into the whirlwind of their fellows as if in attack—and in defeat—they sought liberty.

  He sheathed his sword and scrabbled for the arrows that had struck earth beside him. The griffin fletching cut into his palms, but he heeded it not. Let it not be said that he did not fight until his last breath. With stone-tipped arrows as his only weapon, he laid about himself furiously. The galla drew back, yet they did not flee. Could such creatures even know fear? Did cutting their earthly form cause them pain? Sundered, would their spirits drift endlessly like that of a fallen warrior who has lost his faith? They throbbed and swarmed around him, held back by the threat of griffin’s feathers, nothing more than that It took all his will not to lunge into them, only to hold them at bay. He could not expose Blessing to their touch again.

  A pale form slid into the circle he had drawn around himself, the length of his reach with the arrows. He began to lash out; caught himself as he recognized her fluid figure. It was Jerna, writhing, her aetherical mouth twisting and distorting as she tried to communicate with him even as another force seemed to drag her away.

  He struck, then, into her pale torso. A silver ribbon shredded into filaments and vanished, and at once Jerna flung herself on him. She coiled, all soothing coolness, over his shoulders and around the crying baby. Blessing’s sobs hiccuped to a stop, and for a moment, with the galla still hanging back, he had the unexpected leisure to survey the battlefield.