Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (14 page)

somehow broke free of his chains, and then his cage, he would have the hounds to contend with.

"He'll need that wound looked at," said Master Rodlin, eyeing the prince from a watch platform built on stilts against the stockade, "but I daresay he'll be as likely to bite the healer as the hounds would."

The prince watched them. Blood still leaked from the wound although he seemed oblivious to it.

A cleric appeared, peering first nervously in at the kennel gate, first at the hounds, then at the Eika. "Master Rodlin. Begging your pardon, Master," he cried, finally finding the man above him. "His lordship wishes to see you and the boy."

"Which boy?" asked Master Rodlin. At once everyone else, and belatedly Rodlin himself, looked toward Alain. A moment later even the Eika prince turned his stare on Alain. Alain fidgeted. Rage and Sorrow, sitting at his feet, growled.

"Everyone out," said Rodlin. The haste with which the soldiers and handlers retreated brought a contemptuous grin to the Eika's lips, a savage baring of his sharp teeth. "Come with me, Alain." Rodlin disappeared down the stairs that led from the platform to the ground. Alain let go of the hounds. They bolted away and began to race around the kennel, barking. Rage and Sorrow followed him to the gate, but he rubbed their great heads roughly and promised them he would be back. Then he slipped outside and shut the gate. The handlers chained it tightly closed.

"Follow me," said Rodlin curtly. They walked together in silence, the cleric padding before them, into the hall.

Alain had never been permitted past the great hall where everyone ate. Rodlin led him out through a door that opened onto a tiny courtyard alive with color and fragrant with herbs and flowers, then up a curving staircase that led to a circular chamber in the stone tower. The chamber had been whitewashed, and a magnificent painted glass window depicting St. Lavrentius' martyrdom let light stream into the room. There was, amazingly, a second window in the chamber, though this one had no glass; its shutters were open wide to admit light and air. Count Lavastine sat behind a table, attended by Chatelaine Dhuoda, Lord Geoffrey, Frater Agius, and the captain of the Lavas guard.

Count Lavastine glanced up from some documents as Rodlin and Alain entered the room. The cleric crossed the chamber to take his station beside Lord Geoffrey. Rodlin bent one knee in a brief but clear obeisance, and Alain copied him, shaking in the knees.

But Lavastine looked away and returned to his other business. "I believe we are free of the threat for this season," he said to Lord Geoffrey. "I have no further need for you and your men-at-arms. You may return to your wife's estates when you are ready."

"Yes, cousin." Lord Geoffrey nodded. Though a good head taller and quite a bit heavier than his kinsman, Geoffrey seemed hopelessly overawed by his elder cousin, Lavastine. "But we hope you will suffer our presence a month or two more. My precious Aldegund is young and this her first confinement. It would be well
—"

"Yes, yes!" Lavastine tapped his fingers impatiently on the table. "Of course you must not leave until Lady Aldegund has given birth and she and the child gained strength for the fiveday's journey." His lips thinned as he gave Lord Geoffrey what might have been intended as a smile. "It is this child, is it not, if it is granted life and health by God's hand, who will be named heir to my lands."

"Unless you marry again," said Geoffrey gravely. But even Alain knew that as kindly and evidently unambitious a man as Lord Geoffrey might harbor ambitions for his children. The Lavas lands were considerable.

Count Lavastine made a sudden sign as if against the evil eye or a bad omen.

"I beg your pardon," said Geoffrey quickly. "I did not
—"

"Never mind it," said Lavastine.

Alain's knee, crushed into the carpet, was beginning to hurt. He attempted to shift
—

Like lightning, Lavastine's gaze jumped to him. "Master Rodlin. This is the boy? What is his name?"

"Alain, my lord."

Lavastine looked Alain over. Seen so close and without his mail, the count was slighter than he had first appeared. He had a narrow face and hair of a nondescript brown, but his eyes were a keen blue. "Your parents?" he asked. "What village are you come from?"

"Son of Henri, my lord," Alain choked out. He could scarcely believe that he was talking to a great lord. "I never knew my mother. I'm from Osna village, on the Dragonback
—"

"Yes. The monastery there burned down early spring. A royal benefice." He paused for long enough that Alain wondered if he was pleased or displeased that a monastery which had received its grant of land and rents from King Henry had burned down. "And it's a port, too, one of the emporia. Do you know aught of that?"

"My father is a merchant, my lord. My aunt is a successful householder in the town and she manages what he brings home and manufactures goods for him to trade, finishing quernstones, mostly, in the workshop."

"Have you handled hounds before?"

"No, my lord."

"You went up to the old ruins on Midsummer's Eve. Did you see anything there?"

A casual question, seemingly. Alain dared not look anywhere but at the count, and yet hardly dared look
at
the count. He struggled, trying to sort out his thoughts and decide what to say.

"Well?" demanded Lavastine, who clearly had little patience for waiting on others.

Should he admit to his vision? What might they accuse him of? He felt Prater Agius' gaze on him, searching, probing. Witchcraft? Forbidden sorcery? The taint of devil's blood? Or ought he to deny the vision altogether and imperilhis soul for the lie?

Lavastine stood up. "So you did see something." He paced to the open window and stared out onto the forest and hills beyond. "Master Rodlin, you will take this young man on as your deputy. He will assist you in caring for the hounds."

Disappointed, Alain began to bend his knee again, since Rodlin, too, was backing up, readying himself to leave. At least it was a step up from digging out latrines.

The count turned back from the window and for an instant stopped Alain short, measuring him. "You will report as well to Sergeant Fell, who will begin training you as a man-at-arms."

While Alain gaped, too stunned to respond as he ought, the count strode back to the table and sat down. "Frater Agius, tell Deacon Waldrada I would speak with her before supper." The frater nodded and, with a piercing glance toward Alain, left the chamber. "Captain." Lavastine turned his attention away from Alain as thoroughly as if he was no longer in the chamber. "We will set stockades all along the Vennu shore this autumn. I will call out an extra levy for this work. If we set them up in these patterns
—

Rodlin touched Alain on the elbow. "Come."

Alain started and, turning, walked with Rodlin toward the door. But his eye caught on the two tapestries that hung on either side of the door. One depicted the Lavas badge: two black hounds on a silver field. But the other depicted a scene, and it was this he stared at.

A prince rides with his retinue through a dark forest. A mountain rises in the distance, touched at its height by the smoky gray of the mountain's breath eking into the twilit sky. A shield hangs from the prince's saddle: a red rose against a sable background.

Rodlin took him by the arm and tugged him out of the chamber while behind Count Lavastine discussed with his captain and kin and retainers his plans for the autumn and winter building and for the introduction of a new, heavier plough for breaking new fields in forest country.

A red rose on a shield. Of course the vision had been a true one. He had only to be patient.

In the castle yard, waiting while Rodlin spoke with Sergeant Fell, Alain brushed his fingers over his tunic. The younger soldiers lounged at their ease around the yard. Having nothing better to do, they stared at him and whispered among themselves.

Even through the cloth the rose felt warm to his touch, as if
she,
knowing somehow that he was to train as a soldier, was pleased. He shivered, though the day was warm. He felt blessed, indeed, to be granted his heart's wish. But he wondered now how
safe
it was to have come to the notice of such a power, whether she had been a dead saint walking abroad on Earth or the angel of war descended from the realm of the stars to mark out her champion ... or her next victim.

THE TREASURE-HOUSE
WHAT
she hated most about Hugh was the way he watched her constantly. He was waiting. The effort of simply guarding her tongue, her every action, for every moment in the day was exhausting. He was waiting. Sooner or later she would betray herself.

She hated it most in the evenings after she had finished her work, when she ought to have been free of him at least for the hour between Nones and Vespers, before she settled down on her bed of straw in the pig shed for the night's sleep. Had he left her alone, she could have observed the heavens, held onto the memory of her old life with Da. But usually Hugh sat up until late on a chair placed out back, watching her, waiting for her to do
something
that would betray her to him.

Her only defense was to pretend she knew nothing: Da had taught her no secrets, of the heavens or otherwise; she said nothing when Hugh sat outside with the astrolabe in his hands, turning it over, spinning the alidade, tracing the lines on the plates with his fingers, and obviously having no idea how to use it even to tell time.

That Hugh, an educated churchman, did not recognize the athar, the spectacle that shone now so brightly in the Dragon that it cast as much light as the quarter moon, appalled her. And frightened her. She had never before realized how forbidden the knowledge of the heavens must be, which she had begun to learn at her Da's knee as effortlessly as a duck takes to water.

"Sorcerers and navigators,"
Da always said,
"study the heavens because they must."

Now and again, when she judged she was alone, she observed as well as she could. Da always wrote down his observations in the margins of
The Book of Secrets
in a tiny, precise hand. She had perforce to write them in her mind.

"For as it is written in the
Memoria
of Alisa of Jarrow, 'Knowledge is a treasure-house and the heart is its strongbox.' Make of your memory a great city, Liath, and map its streets as if you walked them in your own body. This is your own, your secret city, and in this city place all that you wish to remember, giving each thing a seal or a portrait by which you can recognize it. Each thing shall be set in its rightful place, in its rightful order, and by this means you shall be as wealthy as any king. Knowledge is an incorruptible treasure which can never lose its brightness."

So over the years and with much concentration, she had made her memory into an imaginary city she pictured in her mind, so complete that with her eyes shut she could walk through it as though it really existed:

On a great lake rests an island, perfectly round, its sides sloping gently to a small circular plateau. The city rises upon the island, seven levels ringed by seven walls, each wall painted a different color. Within the uppermost walls, on the plateau, lies a plaza bounded by four buildings, one at each compass point; in the center stands a tower of stone. The observatory, a circular building built of marble, sits on the north-south axis, on
the point of north, its eye toward the north star, Kokab, and the constellation known as the Guardian.

When she stood outside on those summer nights, in the yard between the chapel and the pig shed, and looked up at the heavens, she made a picture in her mind of this observatory, its curved walls, the sighting stones and gaps, the central pillar. She imagined the twelve arches that represented the twelve houses of the zodiac, also known as the Houses of Night, the world dragon that binds the heavens.

In the house of the Dragon she placed, in her memory, a seastar such as she had once seen in tide pools along the Andallan coast. This seastar with its six arms glowed with a bright white light, like the spectacle. She placed it within the curved archway of the Dragon at fifteen degrees, so that she would always remember at what degree it had resided in the constellation. Around it she affixed imagined seals so she would remember where the Sun and Moon and other planets were, to what degree in which Houses; then in five or twenty years, if she were even alive then, she could show to another mathematicus
—another sorcerer trained in the knowledge of the stars—precisely where and when the spectacle had first shone forth.

But summer passed and, three and a half months after it first appeared, the star faded, its sparking brightness diminishing. She could still see it, a star blended in among the others that made up the constellation of the Dragon, but it was now an ordinary star. Perhaps this was how angels were birthed: a brilliance to announce their nativity followed by the long steady glow of Our Lady's and Lord's work. Perhaps it was merely a comet, as mathematici called those stars which had tails and sometimes moved across the sphere of the Sun.

She had not known until then that she had hoped, somehow, that Da would return, that he was not truly dead, that he would miraculously rescue her. The strange star had shone forth on the night Da died as if it were a harbinger of death; certainly, she realized now, Da had thought of it that way. As the athar faded, so her hope faded. He was dead, gone, passed up through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light. He wasn't coming back. She was alone.