Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  After a moment, in which the entire garden and all its inhabitants seemed to hold a collective breath, waiting for the explosion, the girl bit her lip and said nothing. She moved forward to shyly kiss her mother, but like the hounds she swung back to her father’s side.

  “How soon can we expect Lord Stronghand?” asked Sanglant, resting an arm over his daughter’s shoulders affectionately. She leaned against him.

  “He will arrive by the Feast of the King.”

  “Captain Fulk, best take her to the armory and see what needs fitting. We haven’t much time.”

  “Yes, my lord prince.”

  Sanglant nodded, studied Hanna’s state of dress and dust, and called a steward. “See that this Eagle is given whatever she needs, something to drink, and a bath, if she desires it. If you could wait until the count wakes, and give your message then?”

  “I’d be glad of it, my lord prince,” she said.

  “Oh!” said Liath. “You must be thirsty. Come, I’ll go with you.” She took Hanna’s arm, and then turned to the prince. “And your hunt?”

  He shook his head. “Escaped us again. There’s a score of them, we think, under a cunning leader. I have in mind a trap.”

  “What is he hunting?” Hanna asked as Liath led her past the barracks to the bathhouse. “Wolves?”

  “Outlaws. A pack of them have been preying on the outlying farmsteads to the north. There was so much trouble all last winter along the eastern road that we finally had to bring in the folk who lived there and resettle them in Lavas and Ravnholt. There’s been a great deal of stockade building this spring. Wolves, too, coming out of the south. And a raid hit our southwestern border, up out of Salia.”

  “I saw new fields cleared.”

  “We’ve absorbed many new settlers, and we feed a hundred milites as well, courtesy of the queen regnant. You’ll have to ask Sanglant about the ploughs. What luck with the Eagle’s Council?”

  “Sending the Eagles through crowns? Not many favor it. Not more than one or two, I admit. It’s too much. They fear it.”

  “Let it be, for now. The queen and king will come to see its utility, once enough have the skills.”

  They talked of a hundred things and of nothing as Hanna bathed and Liath sat on a stool beside her. Much later, after she was clean and dry, they returned to the tower.

  Count Lavrentia was awake, propped up on pillows, attending to the business of the county with the prince and a chatelaine seated beside her. The count and her grandson-in-law were a good match, and it was well he had an administrator’s bent of mind, since Liath was distracted and soon after Hanna’s long recital slipped out of the room with a pair of her companions: the Ashioi woman and a man Hanna recognized as an archer who had long fought beside the prince.

  At length, disputes were resolved, capitularies sealed, a bull requested for breeding by a nearby manor, a pair of merchants out of Medemelacha interviewed and given the right to set up trading houses at Osna Sound, tithing for St. Thierry’s Convent, some question about building, and a report from the Osna shore about five boats that had put in to the ruined monastery and departed again, none knowing who these folk were or where they had come from or what they were looking for. Everyone was anxious about plague, having heard rumors of sickness along the Salian border and in parts of Wayland and Varingia.

  “You are weary, Grandmother.” Sanglant dismissed the stewards, and bent to kiss the old woman on either cheek. “Rest. I’ll go make sure she doesn’t fall into a well.”

  She chuckled, but it was true she was pale and trembling with fatigue, although she had been awake no more than three hours. “Pray the child takes after you, Son,” she said to him affectionately.

  The hounds whipped their tails hopefully as the prince went to the door, and she released them to seethe after him.

  Outside, the afternoon had drawn long shadows over the open courts. The exposed rafters of the new building formed hatch-mark shadows on the dirt. The squat spire of the old church could be seen over the palisade. Hammers rang from the outer town. Nearby, two men were sawing planks out of logs. The kitchens boiled with activity, and the smell of chickens roasting on a spit gave the air a rich savor.

  Sanglant had a long stride, but Hanna kept up with him. He whistled a merry tune—actually, now that she recognized it, she recalled its bawdy words. Although he was stopped five times so his opinion might be solicited on some matter or other, he remained fixed to his path with a pleasant determination that soon led them out beyond both old berm and new stockade and onto a path that led up a steep hill. A shout came from behind, and they paused to see a soldier toiling up the slope behind them. Sanglant brushed hair out of his eyes, surveying the wide and open valley that held Lavas Holding. Folk had turned toward home, coming in from the fields and orchards and woodland stretched out on all sides.

  “Is it well with you, my lord prince?” she asked quietly, not sure if he would deign to answer.

  At first he looked startled. Then he laughed. “God have granted me what I most wished for. How can it not be well?”

  “It seemed …” He was a generous man, warm spirited and charming, easy to confide in and trust. He looked and acted content, but a man might hide his inner heart behind a mask of outer seeming. “It might be said that you lost a great deal, my lord prince.”

  A crown. A spell woven into the flesh that made you invulnerable.

  She did not say these things out loud.

  “I lost nothing that I regret losing.” He smiled, looking not at her but at Lavas Holding. “A grant of land, Liath as my wife, and peace. You can be sure I’ll hold tight to them. No onion I, Hanna. I am as you see me.”

  “My lord!” The soldier had the ragged voice of a man who has had his throat damaged in battle, and never healed. “They promised me that I could go first, and now Lewenhardt has gotten the jump on me! Damn him to the Pit!”

  “So he may well fall into the Pit this very night. God Above! Will you two never be content?” He spoke cheerfully; he was amused.

  “I was promised!” said the soldier stubbornly.

  “Come, then,” he said. “Best if we hurry.”

  It was a fair long walk curving up along the hill and into the woods behind, much cut back now, the path beaten into a broad path where two wagons might roll abreast.

  The tree line ended abruptly at the edge of ruins. Beyond an outer wall of stone lay an ancient fort in the style of the old empire, Dariyan work. The light drew long and late in summer, and the fallen walls and buildings shone with an aura of gold where the sun’s rays pulled across them. Most of the building stone was grainy and dark, but the centermost building—its roof long since fallen in—had been built in a marbled white stone that had a soft gleam. The outer walls of this building had been cleared away to expose its paved, platform of a floor, an ovoid altar stone, and the six pillars that had once supported the roof.

  Here Liath and her disciplas had gathered, with four horses tethered nearby. Here, as Hanna and the prince and the soldier walked up, she heard Liath speak.

  “Name the seven spheres and their order.”

  “The sphere closest to the Earth is that of the Moon!” said Sharp Edge, jumping in before anyone else could utter one word.

  They were an unruly lot. Most were young and reckless, although Liath was grateful to have a pair of older and wiser heads among them. It was her own fault, truly. In addition to stamina, strength, courage, and adventurousness, they had to have the patience and wit and desire to learn the art of the mathematici. Sometimes they weren’t easy to get along with. She was just like them.

  “The second is that of the planet Erekes, and the third planet is Somorhas, the Lady of Light. Fourth is the sphere of the Sun. Fifth is Jedu, Angel of War. Six is Mok. Seventh and last—Aturna.”

  “The realm of the fixed stars,” added Berthold. He was irritated with Sharp Edge, as well he might be. She was a terrible tease, and did herself no favors, but as much as young men hated he
r for it, they came panting for more. “And beyond all of this, the Chamber of Light, the home of God, and the phoenix.”

  “And the ladder by which the mage ascends,” said Sharp Edge, taunting him. “First to the rose, the touch of healing”

  “Enough!” Liath braced herself, and pushed to her feet. She was getting ungainly, but she felt good, strong, energetic. Not a day’s worth of sickness with this pregnancy. “Ah, there’s Sibold!”

  Lewenhardt groaned.

  The other man punched the archer on the shoulder as he swaggered past. “Thought you’d slip past me!”

  “Enough!” she repeated, seeing the change in the light as afternoon trickled away into long summer dusk. “Take your places. Shar. Sibold. Get the horses.”

  Wood burns when touched by threads of starlight, so no crown of wood would serve her, and they had not the leisure in such troubled times to invest a host to raise the huge menhirs as was done in the days of the ancients. But it transpired that the old Dariyans had copied the ladder of the heavens in their architecture. An oval formed by six tall stone pillars could form a gateway as well as any other crown.

  A glow still rimmed the western horizon, but she caught the Guivre’s Eye as it peered over the northeastern rim of the world and wove its thread into warp. She anchored the gate on the Healer’s outstretched arm, rising out of the southeast. Behind her, the disciplas who would learn to do this watched and measured. She had twelve so far, but more would come and more would be born. Eagles were brave souls, and tough messengers, but phoenix could bridge vast distances as long as they had the means and the knowledge to waken the crowns.

  A gate flowered over the altar stone.

  Her sight had grown keener since the cataclysm, and the current of aether was gaining strength, an upwelling out of the heart of the universe. A road paved with blue fire led straight into the uttermost east, held open briefly by this conjunction of stars. There, as down a long corridor sparkling with light, a veiled Sorgatani waited for the messengers who would come to her.

  But there are many roads and many turnings. Sometimes we choose the path we walk on, and sometimes other forces compel our feet onto an unexpected track. Not everything happens according to our will, but neither are we slaves to the law, mere instruments of the mover.

  Here we wander in a vast weaving whose twists and turns are like a palace of coils where windows reconnoiter both past and future, a sight denied to mortal kind. Only the daimones who bide above the moon can see in all directions.

  We are not the only ones walking the paths.

  The goblins hammer in their halls of iron. In the depths, the merfolk excrete a substance that they shape into buildings like pearls, while far above them a slender dragon boat cuts the swells of the Middle Sea. There is Secha, studying an astrolabe!

  The path takes a sharp turn. A lion pauses in rocky desert flatlands and looks back, except it is not a lion—it has the torso of a woman—and when it sees her, it spins and pounces, only to vanish in a rush of wings as a pair of golden dragons washes the many threads into ripples of light as they land on a nest cupped into a hollow of hot sand.

  So many mysteries to unravel! So much to discover! Almost, she lost the road, but she pulled it tight again.

  “Go. Go,” she called to them.

  Sharp Edge and Sibold did not hesitate. They were bold and eager. They crossed under the glittering arch and walked into the east, Sharp Edge to teach and learn from the Hidden One and Sibold to guard her and care for the horses and gear.

  The threads pulled taut as the stars wheeled on their nightly round. It was time to close the gate, and yet she was caught betwixt and between. Always, the yearning to go, and always, the yearning to stay.

  There!

  An old man rides alone on a lonely road, his back to her. She cannot see his face, but she knows who he is, the last of his kind. Almost she calls to him, but he has already faded from sight.

  She hears the tentative noises of folk beginning to shuffle their feet, yawn, murmur a song. Argue good-naturedly. A stomach growls with hunger. Someone coughs.

  Sanglant laughs, a bright sound that lights the world, and, of course, those who are not caught in the weaving as it unravels laugh with him.

  A hound yips.

  She sees the black hound as it halts to stare back at her through the crown woven out of the stars. Its mate pauses beside it, also looking back. The hounds can see her, because she is heir to Lavas. They gave her a litter of puppies, but they themselves never belonged to her.

  Ahead of them on the path, a dark-haired man walks into a meadow. There is still sunlight, shadows falling long but not yet swarming to overtake the grass and bramble vines laced along the edge of the trees. He must be walking farther west where it is still day, or perhaps this is another day, one not yet come. The salamander eyes she took from her mother can discern shapes in what to humankind may seem darkest night.

  He pauses where a wild bramble rose has sprouted out of the grass. Its twisting vine boasts only one delicate blood-red bloom, but that is enough to lend the snarl of branches an intense beauty. Because he bends to look more closely, she sees many buds forming within the pale leaves, not yet flowered. It’s only that one must be patient, and resolute.

  He straightens, calls his hounds, and walks on, into the haze that marks the land beyond. She takes a step, and another, to follow him.

  “Liath,” Sanglant said, behind her. “Where are you going?”

  After all, the gate scattered into a spray of incandescent sparks, and she turned, and came home.

  EPILOGUE

  ON a hill surrounded on three sides by forest and on the fourth by the ruins of a fortress stood a ring of stones. Some said they were the bones of a castle buried so deeply that only the battlements of the tallest tower rose above the earth. A few claimed that sleeping youths lay drowned in slumber in hidden chambers deep in the ground.

  Most simply called them the wings of the phoenix.

  On the twelfth day of the month of Setentre, the feast day of St. Ekatarina, the afternoon faded swiftly to twilight as a company of riders splashed across the ford and pushed through the ruins. A pair of watch fires burned on the other side of the river, marking the sentry towers of the prosperous village that lay within sight of the hill crowned by stones.

  “Are you sure, my lord prince?” asked the eldest of the riders, a battle-scarred man wearing the black-and-gold surcoat of the elite Dragon guards. “This is the third night, and we’ve seen nothing … Better we rest and make ready. The queen’s progress will leave Thersa tomorrow.”

  The first threads were faint, flowering into brilliance only as the archway snapped fully into existence.

  “Hai!” cried the youth, urging his horse forward with his best companion right behind him and the older men trailing after with the kind of looks best known and understood by men who were once as impulsive in days long past.

  She came clear in a shower of sparks as the gateway spit and dissolved around her. Her companion was an older man, well armed and well seasoned. He led a string of three horses in the manner of a traveler accustomed to long journeys. Both wore the distinctive black cloak trimmed with gold braid that marked the phoenix messengers and under that a plain wool tunic in the Wendish style, but instead of leggings she wore trousers like an easterner, and her black hair was tied back in braids and covered by a lacy waterfall of gold beaded netting that framed her striking dark-skinned face and those astonishing blue eyes.

  The most glorious woman in all the world!

  He dismounted, dropped his reins, and ran down to meet her. Seeing him, she halted as she came up to the low wall that separated the fort from the crown.

  “Fulk! How are you come here?”

  He hopped from one foot to the other, wanting to touch her hand, or her face, or her hair, but settled down finally and rubbed his beardless chin sheepishly. “They sent me to court for seasoning.”

  “Past time! You must be all of—eigh
teen!”

  “As if you’re so much older,” he retorted, and at once hated himself for the way it sounded.

  “A world older!” she said with that laugh that always made him feel a child. “I might as well be your aunt.”

  “But you’re not,” he added recklessly, and blushed at his boldness.

  The rest of the company guided their horses to level ground, greeted the other messenger and folded him into their ranks, and waited while four men lit torches.

  “Well met, Captain,” she called.

  The captain of Fulk’s company lifted a hand in greeting, smiling a little.

  What man would not!

  As they rode back, she chatted easily with the men she knew among his retinue, soldiers she had spent many years with when she was fostered at Lavas Holding. The new men looked at her askance because she had not the look of his own lineage, which they had become accustomed to, but of something stranger. She was the daughter of the Hidden One, yet in her the blood of the uttermost east mingled in equal portions with the blood of the west.

  “How long have you been back with the queen’s progress?” she asked him as they reached the road and she abandoned the soldiers to move up alongside him.

  “Two years now.”

  “You must have come to the progress, then, right after—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, I pray you. I was there when it happened.”

  She shrugged. For a while they rode in silence, serenaded by the steady clop of hooves. Two men walked before them, carrying torches, and two a few ranks behind. The road wound away into the trees, slipping in and out of drifts of rising mist.

  The torchlight made the gold-work shimmer around her face. Her expression lapsed into a blank absence, as if she were thinking of a lost lover or some particularly intriguing mathematical problem, but after a moment she shook herself and indicated the young man riding to his right.

  “Who is this? We haven’t met.”

  “This is my best companion, Henry.”