Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (26 page)

"I must agree with you, Your Grace. Unless these

were only half walls of stone and the rest built out of timber, but I doubt that. I have seen other ruins from the old Dariyan Empire, and they are without exception buildings of stone with perhaps a timber or thatched roof."

"Let us go, then, and I will ask you to speak of this to the count."

They bowed to her and began to walk back up through the ruins. Alain glanced back toward the altar house.

"Let Prater Agius pray, child. He has need of prayer. Come with me."

So he walked back to Lavas Holding with Biscop Antonia. Lackling trailed three steps behind, shying like a frightened pup at every flutter of the wind through the trees. The biscop sang hymns to the glory of Our Lady as they walked, and although Alain was far too much in awe of her to presume to join his voice to hers, her clerics did so gladly and with vigor.

For the next two days, Alain saw Agius in the same place, as if he did not or could not move: on his knees in the church, head bowed, clasped hands pressed against his forehead, praying in a low murmur that sounded rather like a stream's whisper heard from far off.

Alain served at table. Count Lavastine was polite to Lady Sabella, as of course he must be, but Sabella herself began to grow restive, even to look obviously annoyed ... as if she was not getting something she wanted.

Twice daily a slaughtered sheep was thrown into the shrouded cage by the scarred and silent man who was its keeper. Once, while out running the hounds, Alain heard the sounds of a creature eating, much like a hound gnawing on bones. But no one dared peek inside, not even the youngest, brashest men-at-arms.

On the evening of the sixth day of the Ekstasis Alain fed the hounds as usual, fed the Eika prisoner, who suddenly lifted his head as if he meant to howl but instead growled low in his throat and shook his chained hands at Alain. The hounds barked and raced to the gate, snarling. Alain quickly ran over to control them, but they milled around him, barking so loudly it was only by chance he heard soft voices from the other side of the gate. He set a hand on the ladder and began to climb, then froze, listening, as the hounds circled and whined below him. Because the stockade was sturdily built of logs lashed together with rope, each log the thickness of a man's leg, they could not see him through it, and he had not gotten high enough that those speaking on the other side of the gate could hear him.

But
he
could hear.

"He has agreed, but reluctantly, and only because I let it be plain that I would not leave until I received the creature as a present in return for our moving on. Now you must win me the other promises I need."

"It is all arranged for tomorrow night, after the Feast of the Translatus, Your Highness. We will remove the prisoner and convey him to the ruins, and there perform the rite. Strong blood will attract the spirits and draw them under my control."

"What of the hounds?"

"You will request tomorrow at the feast that they be tied up before nightfall."

"I see. Ulric brings news to me that the
guivre
is restless. It needs nourishment. We cannot afford for it to break out of its cage as it did two months past when it grew overly hungry."

"We must be patient, Your Highness. If anything remains after the sacrifice, we will transfer it to the cage. But what the
guivre
most needs we cannot procure for it here, as you know. Too many questions would be asked."

"I leave this in your hands, then. Do not fail me."

"I will not, Your Highness. Our Lady and Lord look favorably upon your appeal."

"So you say. But the clerics of the royal schola who walk in attendance on my brother's progress would not agree, I think. They interpret the ruling of the Council of Narvone differently, do they not, my dear biscop?"

"It is true they and I disagree on the use and benefit of sorcery within the church. So do you and I act together, Your Highness, as bents those whose claims have not received a just hearing."

"We leave day after next?"

"Yes, all will be accomplished by then, Your Highness."

The hounds barked halfheartedly a few times as the speakers walked away. Alain felt their absence as much by a cessation of the crawling prickling feeling along his skin as by the lack of their voices speaking out loud. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around one rung of the ladder that they hurt. He uncurled them and shook them free. He barely had time to collect his thoughts before Master Rodlin arrived to call him to evening service.

At the church, Alain knelt with the others, but he fixed his gaze first on the biscop and then on Prater Agius. Had Biscop Antonia truly spoken such strange and awful words?
Strong blood will attract the spirits and draw them under my control.
He could not be sure he had heard them correctly, or understood. She spoke Wendish with an accent; Antonia was a foreign name. Perhaps he should ask Prater Agius, but the frater appeared, as usual, wrapped in an inner tumult of his own. Alain did not know what to do.

He fretted all night, waking at every grunt made by the sleeping hounds, at every gust of spring wind that rattled the door of his lean-to, at every distant shout drawn by the breeze from the kitchens, where the preparations had already begun for the Feast of the Translatus. Once he rose and crept outside to check on the Eika prince, who was, as always, awake.

"Halane," came the whisper, soft on the night air. "Go free."

But Alain fled back to the lean-to and shivered in his blanket the rest of the long, long night. Strong blood. Whose blood? But he knew very well whom they meant.

He could not concentrate at the morning service. At the great feast, begun at midday, he served as always, but his hands and body moved as if separate from his mind. He could not make sense of anything the people around him were saying. He could not follow the play, performed by southern players who marched in Lady Sabella's retinue, depicting the journey and trials of St. Eusebe and the visions she was granted of the great mystery of St. Thecla's witnessing of the Ekstasis and the final miracle of the Translatus: the brilliant light that is the glory of God that rests on the wings of angels, which transformed chapel and Hearth into a vision of the Chamber of Light.

So proclaimed the actor playing the part of St. Eusebe, in rapture.
"And on the wings of angels the mortal body of the blessed Daisan was lifted up to the Chamber of Light where His spirit had already taken up residence with Our Lady and Lord."

The meal went on for hours. Agius stood by the door and did not eat.

When at last he was free, Alain ran back to the stockade. He had purposefully left the hounds loose, though Rodlin had asked him to chain them. The Eika prisoner still resided, silent, in his cage.

Did she mean to kill him? What was the Council of Narvone? Church business, obviously. Alain knew nothing of church business and ecclesiastic councils, nor anything at all about sorcery except that the deacons warned them all against false sorcerers and the taint of darkness that wandered the land in the guise of handsome men and women, seducers of the spirit and body, who promised much, took more, and gave nothing in return.

Count Lavastine had not promised to join Sabella's revolt; that was all anyone knew. He had remained polite but uncommitted. Just as he had, so many months ago, refused a summons from King Henry, so now he refused the entreaties, or demands, of Lady Sabella. He kept his own counsel and confided his inner thoughts to no one.

Alain sat among the hounds and let their hot breath, their heavy bodies and wet tongues, the friendly lash of their whipcord tails, surround him. Devil's or daimone's get they might be, but he trusted these hounds, for they trusted him.

They growled when Biscop Antonia came from the feast with her clerics to look in on the prisoner.

"We are leaving in the morning," she said sternly to Master Rodlin, "and Count Lavastine has given us leave to take the Eika prisoner into our entourage. All must be ready so we may leave early. Be sure the hounds are chained this night."

She went away again, quickly enough, but right away Master Rodlin berated Alain for not chaining up the hounds. "They'll be taking the Eika monster away in the morning," he said. "And good riddance." He left, looking irritated.

Alain was not sure whom he meant: good riddance to the Eika prince or to Lady Sabella and her entourage, who had pretty much eaten every scrap of food in the stronghold and were in addition commandeering five of the best horses from the stable? But even if Master Rodlin meant their visitors, it was also true no one would care if the Eika prince was killed or hauled away in a cage. Or if he vanished mysteriously in the night, never to be seen again. Why should they care? He was a savage, was he not?

But did not Our Lady and Lord create all things on this Earth? Was not every living thing beloved in Their eyes? Certainly not all creatures, human or otherwise, lived within the light of the Circle of Unity, and so such ungodly creatures might behave without mercy or in ways that ran against the laws of the church, but was it not then a service to Our Lady and Lord to bring them to the knowledge of the Unities?

What if he was
-wrong?
If he had misunderstood that
overheard conversation between Lady Sabella and Biscop Antonia? But it would be worse
not
to be wrong and to fail to act.

He made his decision at dusk. After chaining all but the two most loyal hounds, he took off the wooden Circle of Unity given him by Aunt Bel and hurried over to the cage.

"Sit, Rage. Sit, Sorrow," he commanded. The two hounds sat, obedient to his command. He unlatched the cage. The Eika prince watched him but did not attempt to speak. He slid the Circle on its leather string over the prince's head. Then, with a deep breath caught in for courage, he loosened the chains that bound the creature hand and foot and let him go free.

The hounds remained strangely silent. Nor did they leap forward to attack the prince.

The creature flexed his arms and legs, stretching. Then he turned.

He was fast. Alain didn't see the lunge coming until it was too late. The prince grabbed hold of Alain's left arm. With a powerful, almost careless swipe of one hand, the Eika prince slashed the back of Alain's hand with the white claws that sprouted from his knuckles. Blood spurted out. Alain was too horrified to move, too appalled at his own stupidity:
Now I will die. But surely the Lady and Lord will forgive me, if the error rose from compassion.
The hounds did not stir, did not bolt forward to attack the prince, and that itself was a marvel.

The Eika prince raised Alain's bleeding hand to his mouth and lapped up the blood. Alain was so appalled he felt dizzy. He could only stare as the prince cut his own left hand with his claws and lifted the hand ... for Alain to do the same, to return the gesture.

"Go free," said the prince.
"Paier sanguis."
Pay blood.

Sorrow whined. Rage growled deep in her throat, her head turning to look toward the gate.

There was no time to waste. Gagging, Alain took one lick. The blood was staggeringly sweet, like honey. He reeled back. His vision clouded. He heard, distantly, the murmuring of a small group of people as they advanced across the outer court. He heard the soft scrape of metal knives rustling against cloth. He smelled the fetid odor of the latrines, as if the people he heard were downwind from the latrines, although with the wind this night that should have been much too far away from the stockade for him to be able to hear or smell such things.

"Mi nom es fil fifte litiere fifte."
Then the prince was gone.

Alain dug his knuckles into his eyes, nibbing hard. The hounds nudged him, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a shadow on the ladder. It climbed, threw itself over the top, and vanished from his sight. He ran.

He got to the top of the ladder in time to see a thin wink of shadow fade into the forest. Gone free. Alain's hand throbbed. He touched the cut to his lips reflexively, tasting the sharp tang of blood.

The forest is alive at night with strange creatures. Bare feet sink into the loam of last autumn's fallen leaves. It is cool, and dark, and leaves skitter in the night breeze in patterns of shadow made plain against darker shadow.

Alain shook himself free. There! He saw a party of six people emerge from the palisade gate beside the latrines. Oddly enough, the taste of honey still lingering on his tongue, he knew at once the figure in the center was Biscop Antonia, although it was too dark to make out more than the suggestion of their presence.

They were coming here.

He scrambled down the ladder and unchained the hounds. He would face Master Rodlin's wrath in the morning and pretend to be asleep tonight. It was the coward's way; he knew that. He ought to confront her . . . but she was a biscop! A great woman of the court. He was nothing, no one, not compared to those of high rank.

He hid in the lean-to while they tapped on the gate.

The hounds leaped and barked and growled. After a while, the biscop and her party went away.

"All is prepared," he heard the biscop say with his newly uncanny hearing as she and her clerics walked back toward the palisade. "It is necessary that we act. We must find another to consecrate at the altar. One who will not be missed." The words faded into a sudden vision of running at a steady lope through the night forest.