Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  How would Sanglant react when the sister he’d led to her doom reappeared on the scene?

  “There, there, lady,” said the seated attendant, chafing Sapientia’s hand between her own. “Best if you lie down again.”

  “She doesn’t speak,” said the elder nun in a practical tone, “and has not for many weeks, not since the cataclysm. Poor creature. We fear she lost her wits.”

  “Let her sit, if she will,” said a new voice, one rich with age and oddly familiar. “How bright she is! I see Bernard in her. The resemblance is remarkable. Dear child! Dear child! Let me hold your hand.”

  A person lay in the shadows of the second bed, a frail figure propped up on pillows. She was perhaps the oldest person Liath had ever seen, older even than Eldest Uncle. As if drawn by that voice, by an emotion in the words she could not name or resist, she moved a step closer and halted at the rim of the bed, staring into a seamed face that crowded her memory and made her sway, dizzy with bewilderment.

  “I know you. I have seen you before.”

  “Yes, yes, dear child. You are she. Bernard’s child.”

  “I am Bernard’s daughter.”

  “Sit. Take my hand. I will touch you.”

  One did not say “no” to a woman of such advanced years, a woman, moreover, who was wearing the ring of an abbess.

  Liath sat obediently and reached out hesitantly. That wrinkled, pale, withered hand gripped hers with a fierce strength. The eyes that examined her had a startling heavenly blue color, not unlike her own.

  “Bring the candle closer,” said the old woman. Her attendants knelt on the bed with the illuminating flame.

  “The galla!” said Liath, recognizing her. “You are the ones the galla stalked.”

  “It was your arrow that saved us,” said the old woman. “We would have been dead had you not come.”

  Liath found no words, although she searched. She had held on to that arrow through storm and battle and she knew now that she had done the right thing and saved the right person, only she did not know why.

  “The brightness is fading,” said the old woman.

  She blushed. “It only comes on me when I’m very angry. When any passion takes hold, it fans the flame.”

  “So I see. ‘Liathano.’ This is the name Bernard gave you.”

  “You speak of him as if you know—knew—him.”

  “Why, dear child,” she said with a chuckle, “I am grown absentminded in my last days. I have waited so long for this that I have supposed you already to know what I have so long dreamt on.” She had tears in her eyes and an expression of ineluctable joy on her face, a radiance that took Liath’s breath away. Those fingers stroked hers weakly. The contrast between the light touch of her frail hands and the strength of her voice was striking.

  “I am Bernard’s mother. Your grandmother. We are met at long last. My prayers are answered.”

  Surely this was how the ox chosen for Novarian’s slaughter felt when the first hammer blow slammed into its head to stun it before its throat was cut. Once chosen, there was no going back.

  The old woman had expanded to take up Liath’s entire consciousness, the entire cosmos, only her, this delicate crone who claimed so astonishingly to be her grandmother. That the universe should be both vast enough and narrow enough to encompass such a being could not be explained.

  No one spoke to trouble her marveling. There came in due time trailing into her consciousness a faint aroma of mildew rising out of the darkest corners of the bed and blending with it the fragrance of olive oil and sweet rose oil. She began to hear sounds: the rustle of the mattress as someone shifted position nearby; whispering voices as far away as daylight; the strain in her thigh because of the way she had twisted her knee under herself; the scrape of a bench being dragged over the plank floor; Thiadbold’s hearty laugh, from outside.

  His laugh brought her back to earth. The world recovered its normal proportions only it was forever altered by its possession of so simple a thing as a grandmother. Da’s mother.

  “Impossible,” she said.

  “Certainly unexpected,” said the old woman with amusement: “I am called Mother Obligatia. I am abbess—or was, for we are refugees now. I was abbess of the convent of St. Ekatarina’s. We bided there in our rock tower in Aosta for many years in peace. All that is gone. I have much to tell you, dear child, and many questions to ask.”

  “How can it be?”

  “Will you hear the tale?” It was difficult to tell if a sudden diffidence had overtaken her or if she was out of breath.

  “I will hear this tale,” said Liath, who found she could herself scarcely catch breath to form words. She leaned closer. “Rest when you must. I pray you, speak softly. Do not strain yourself.”

  How strange that it should seem that the old woman was comforting her, stroking her hands as she spoke in a voice that did not penetrate farther than the tiny audience drawn in tightly around her: Liath, and the two nuns who held light aloft. They, too, seemed to be weeping, in silence, as if their bodies resonated with whatever emotion thrummed in the soul of their abbess. The ridges and shadowed valleys of the rumpled blankets were the only landscape in this scene. Rain pattered over the roof and faded.

  “I am Bernard’s mother, but before that, I gave birth to another child.”

  The tapestry of Liath’s life and lineage had always concealed more than it revealed, but Obligatia’s story wove in many of the gaping holes. So it became clear as Liath asked questions where she must and answered those she could. An hour passed as the story unfolded. She drank a cup of ale, shared with the old woman. The grandmother. It was still unthinkable to use that word, but she must use it because although it might all be a fabrication or a mistake, she knew in her gut that this piece of the story made all the rest explicable.

  Bernard and Anne were half siblings. Obligatia herself had been used as a pawn in the dynastic schemes woven by the Seven Sleepers. It was hard to know what Biscop Tallia and Sister Clothilde had hoped for when they had shoved the fourteen-year-old-girl into the path of the fifty-year-old monk, except that they needed a compliant, kinless female to breed with the last direct legitimate son born to Taillefer. No one would ever know the whole, now that Anne was dead, and even Anne could not have comprehended everything because in many ways she had also been their pawn, their creation.

  “Some part of the tale I learned from Sister Rosvita,” Obligatia finished. “The rest I know of my own experience.”

  “Are you tired? If you must rest, I will wait.”

  The hand squeezed her; strength lived there still! “No, I will go on. I have lived past my rightful measure of years. I dare wait no longer, dear child. I held on only for this, to see you and to touch you. I can see in your face that my beloved boy Bernard was your father, but how comes it that Anne claimed to be your mother? Is it true?”

  “It is not. My mother was a fire daimone enticed to Earth and trapped here by a net of sorcery. Bernard loved her. Not Anne. The daimone was my mother. This I know because I have walked the spheres …”

  What walking the spheres entailed, and how she had come to do so, she explained to Obligatia, who showed no sign of distaste, distress, or fear at discovering—or at any rate having confirmed—that her granddaughter was not wholly human. She was kind and generous and affectionate and wise and calm and amusing and indeed she possessed every quality that Liath had ever dreamed she might find in a grandmother, the one she had long since resigned herself to never having and never knowing.

  “There is one thing, though,” Liath added. “Brother Fidelis was the son of Taillefer and Radegundis. My father was born to you and a lord born into the line of Bodfeld.”

  “I always called him Maus, to tease him. His name was Mansuetus, fitting enough, for he was quiet and small and gentle.” She chuckled. The memory was so old that it no longer seemed to cause her pain. “And nervous of his aunts and uncle, though he defied them to marry me.”

  “That quality runs t
rue, then,” said Liath with a laugh. “But who were your parents?”

  Obligatia smiled sadly. “No one knows. I was a foundling. I was raised at the convent of St. Thierry. I had a different name, then. Left behind like so much else.”

  “Where is St. Thierry?”

  “In Varre. In the duchy of Arconia.”

  Liath lifted the old woman’s hands and kissed each one and set them back on her blankets. “You lost two husbands and two children—all taken from you. How can it be you have lived so long without falling prey to grief and anger?”

  She lifted trembling hands toward Liath’s face, and Liath grasped them. “I suppose,” she said, her voice as shaky as her arms, fading as exhaustion overwhelmed her, “that in some part of me I was always waiting, I was always hoping.”

  “For what?” Liath asked her, and bent close to listen.

  “For you.”

  3

  “MOTHER Obligatia is a powerful ally,” said Hanna to Liath much later. They had shared a bowl of porridge—so strongly flavored with leeks that Liath could still taste them after two cups of ale—while Hanna told of her adventures in Aosta and farther east. Now, as Hanna finished her tale, they paused at the wall. Lions labored in what remained of the day’s light, lifting stones back into place.

  Thiadbold left off working to come speak to them. Like most of the other Lions, he had stripped down to his under-shift and was nevertheless sweating despite the cooling temperature. He had dirt streaked on his face and his hands were caked with earth. He had tied a kerchief around his hair to keep it clean; red strands curled around his ears, and he used a wrist to wipe a strand out of his left eye.

  “No stonemason would admire it,” he said, gesturing toward the hasty work and the laboring men, “but it will hold for a season or two until better work can be done.”

  Folquin, down the line, waved at them, then yelped and leaped when Leo dropped a rock a hand’s breadth from his foot.

  “How long will it take to fill it all in?” Liath asked.

  He shrugged. “A day or two, not more with this company.” He smiled at Hanna. “You’ve seen them in action.”

  “So I have,” she said, and Liath saw how she reddened, just a little, and how her smile turned crooked, just a little. “The best soldiers in the regnant’s army.”

  He laughed. “Fair spoken, and even true. These Lions have served faithfully through hard trials and hard losses.” He indicated the forest. “We’ve heard there’s a witch and a wagon out in the trees. Need you an escort?”

  “It’s close by,” said Hanna, “and there is some danger involved to your men, which I suppose you will have heard as well.”

  “That a look from the witch’s eyes brings death? We’ve heard such a rumor.”

  “To look on her will kill you, yes, and it’s no rumor. It’s a curse set on her, no sorcery that she sought of her own will.”

  “A terrible fate for any person, to be always alone,” he said, and Liath saw how he looked searchingly at Hanna and how she colored, and spoke to cover her discomposure.

  “Send a pair of archers out to that stump, there. If we have any trouble, or see any wolves, they’ll hear us shout.”

  Thiadbold wiped his forehead again as he looked at Liath. “You’ll not be having any trouble with wolves, I doubt.”

  “I hope not.” Liath brushed a hand over her bow. She had obtained a quiver and arrows and sword and sheath to replace those lost. The griffin-fletched arrows had a metallic smell. “We’re armed well.”

  “So you are,” he agreed cryptically.

  As soon as they crossed the ditch Liath said in a low voice, “He’s taken a fancy to you, Hanna. How well do you know him?”

  “Not that well!”

  “You’re blushing. He’s a good man, good looking, levelheaded, and has the regnant’s trust. Have you given no thought—”

  “Leave it, I pray you. I’ve walked no easy road these past few years.” But she relented, smiling with what looked like regret. “I admit all that you say of him is true. At another time, in another place—they’re good men, those Lions. They’re the company that rescued me from Bulkezu. I suppose when I see them I’m reminded of the monster.”

  “Bulkezu? He’s dead.”

  “Dead.” She halted and looked at Liath. “Sorgatani told me he was dead. How did it happen?”

  Liath reached over her own left shoulder and, again, touched the curve of her bow, which was strung, ready for battle. “I killed him.”

  Hanna covered her eyes and Liath took two steps before realizing that her friend was weeping. She turned back, hugged her, and they stood under the forest cover until Hanna was done.

  “There. I promised I wouldn’t do that.”

  “How badly did he hurt you?” whispered Liath.

  Hanna pressed a hand to her own forehead. “I saw horrible things, but I was never touched. Ai, God. I will never forget what I saw.”

  “No, of course you won’t. Nor should you.”

  “I wish I could. Is it bad of me to wish I could?”

  Liath took her hand. “No. Come, let’s go see Sorgatani.”

  A path frequented by sheep and littered with their droppings took them across a burbling stream into a meadow rimmed on three sides with an old earth berm, the remains of an ancient habitation. Along the fourth side the nuns, or their servants, had built a fence so they could corral livestock here. The painted wagon sat in the middle of the green, violets blooming around it. Four horses grazed peaceably. Brother Breschius crouched beside a fire, which was spanned by an iron tripod. He was crumbling herbs into an iron pot hung from the tripod’s upper supports when he heard their voices.

  “Lady!” he cried, striding to her with an expression of delight. “Ai, God! We thought you lost!”

  He would have knelt and kissed her hand, but she would not let him. He laughed when he saw she was determined in this, winkled his hand out of hers, unhooked a small bell from his belt, and slipped the tiny hood off its clapper. The overtones of its resonant ring echoed back from the forest.

  The door at the back of the wagon opened, and Sorgatani looked out. She saw him, and saw Hanna—and Liath. Her mouth dropped open.

  “Liath!”

  “It’s safe for you to come out,” said Hanna. “We’re alone.”

  Overtones still teased at the edge of Liath’s hearing.

  “Does the convent have a bell? Do you hear it?”

  “Hear what?” asked Hanna.

  Sorgatani paused on the steps.

  Breschius surveyed the clearing and the surrounding woods anxiously. “I hope you told them to keep well away. I only ring the bell when it’s safe for her to come out.”

  The breath of that sound floated on the breeze, lighter than the kiss of a butterfly’s wings on waiting lips. Liathano.

  “That’s no bell.” Liath got her bow out and an arrow free. “Get in the wagon. I’ll run into the trees to draw it away.”

  “Galla,” said Hanna. “I’ve heard them before.”

  “It’s after me. Get in the wagon. I can kill it easily enough with a griffin feather, but if you are in the way, it will devour you.”

  Breschius watched them, nervous but uncomprehending. “It’s getting dark. An archer is blinded by night.”

  “Not dark yet for me. Go, Hanna!”

  Hanna grabbed Breschius’ wrist and tugged him after. “Get inside, Sorgatani!”

  Liath ran out of the enclosure, then ducked into the trees, seeking open ground. Better to have met it in the clearing, but she could not control its movements there, where the wagon lay. As she jogged along, leggings rattling against underbrush, she felt its presence veer after her, heard the change of direction in its bell voice as it shifted its course. There was only one.

  Twilight turned to gray. The last of the day’s cloudy light sifted down through the canopy, which here consisted mostly of bare branches and the occasional pine or lonely spruce, densely and darkly green. She saw a light
ening beyond the trees, ahead of her, and dashed into a meadow cut by a trickling creek. She splashed through the water—it was no more than ankle-deep—and waded through knee-high grass until she reached a central place in the clearing. After turning, she listened; seeking, she examined the forest. The wind shifted, hiding the galla’s iron tang and muting its deep voice.

  From the trees behind her a warbler droned its chiff-chaff call, answered by the chatter of a magpie. She squinted, wondering, marveling. There was hope still, if the birds had returned to build their nests.

  She heard the sound more as a breath released, too late. She spun. An arrow bit into her thigh. Stumbling backward, she grabbed the haft of the arrow and to her amazement it came free, slipped right out of her flesh all bloody. Blood spilled down her leggings and around the curve of her knee.

  Ai, God, it stung, worse than the arrow that had pinned her to the corpse of a horse. She staggered, fell, but caught herself on a hand.

  Liathano. The galla’s voice rang in her heart like the pulse of her blood; it breathed with her as it closed in.

  She fumbled for her bow, dropped in the grass, but the pain spreading from the wound in her thigh boiled so hot that it burned her flesh from the inside out.

  This is what it feels like to be eaten alive by fire.

  Still kneeling, she fought to keep herself braced up on that hand. If she fell, she died. Grass tickled her face as she swayed. Her entire leg had gone to fire, and the fire sped into her chest until she could not breathe, only burn.

  When the shadows slid free of the forest and came running up to her, she understood at last. They were men with the faces of animals. The Ashioi had come. She had been poisoned.

  Liathano.

  To her right, the towering blackness that marked the galla’s mortal body swept out of the trees. The smell of the forge washed over her, blinding her. She fumbled with her right hand—the left was ash—and found the cutting feathers of the griffin-fletched arrow. Pain cut her fingers. She felt her balance going, her body toppling sidelong as the toxin roared into her mind, searing everything before it, even that lingering sour-leek taste from the porridge.