Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (79 page)

Alain glanced back at Lavastine
—at his father—and then knelt before the king and was granted the signal honor of being allowed to kiss his hand.

"This cannot go unrewarded," said Henry. He had gained in spirits since the bitter confrontation with his sister. Indeed, he appeared almost elated.

Rosvita had a sudden feeling that Henry was about to commit an act whose repercussions would haunt him for a long, long time. She stepped forward, raised a rand to gain the king's attention
—but it was too late.

"By my power as king of Wendar and Varre and by the right of law recorded in a capitulary from the time of Emperor Taillefer, I grant you, Lavastine, Count of Lavas, the right to name this youth as the heir of your blood, though he is not born of a legitimate union. He may succeed to your title and to the authority vested in that title over your lands. Let my words become law. Let them be recorded in writing."

Ai, Lady. Everyone knew what this meant, why Henry's expression was so triumphant. He had made his choice. Now it remained only to see it through. Sapientia
kate eluott
started to her feet so suddenly her chair tipped over; she began to speak, stopped herself, and bolted from the hall instead. Ekkehard gaped. Theophanu raised one expressive eyebrow but made no other sign.

"Henry," muttered Constance softly enough that no one but Rosvita and the handful of others crowded onto the dais could hear her, "do you know what you are doing?"

"I know what I am doing," said Henry. "And it is past time I did it. Long past time.
He
is the only one I can trust to take my place as sovereign king when I take my leave of this Earth and pass up through the spheres to the Chamber of Light."

Constance drew the Circle at her breast to avert ill omen.

"No one," proclaimed Henry, louder now, "and no argument, can sway me from this course."

From the doors came a shout.

"Eagles! Make way for Eagles!"

They came in haste, two of them, travel-worn and weary. One was young and startlingly dark, as if a summer's sun had burned her so brown her skin had stayed that way. She bore a touch of summer's brightness with her still, so much that the eye lingered on her.

The other was Wolfhere, who had been banned from Henry's presence and Henry's court many years ago. But he strode forward with no sign that he remembered
—or chose to obey—that ban. The young woman looked riven by sorrow, the strong lines of her face set in a mask of wretchedness and hopeless longing. Wolfhere looked grim. Behind her, Rosvita heard the two Eagles, Hathui and her young companion, gasp out loud.

"No," murmured Hathui to the younger one, "Do not go forward. We must wait our turn."

"She's wearing an Eagle's badge," whispered the younger one. She sounded ready to burst into tears.

"Ai, Lady," swore Hathui. "Look at their faces." And was silent.

The two new Eagles paused before the dais.

"Why have you come before me," demanded the king, "when you know you are forbidden my presence?"

"We come from Gent," said Wolfhere, "and we bear grievous news. Gent has fallen to an Eika assault, and the Dragons have been wiped out, every one. Prince Sanglant is dead."

"Lady," breathed Henry, clapping a hand to his chest. He spoke no other word. He could not speak.

Rosvita saw at once he was paralyzed by this terrible, terrible news. And because someone must act, she did so, though she felt as if someone else was acting, not her. She went to him and took his arm. Almost collapsed herself, because his whole weight fell on her and he appeared so close to fainting that it was only with the aid of the Eagle, Hathui, that she got him out of the hall and into the private chapel that opened onto a garden behind it.

There, he threw himself onto the stone floor in front of the Hearth, in his gold robes, heedless of the crown tumbling to the floor, heedless of his scepter, which slipped from nerveless fingers. He groped at his chest and drew from next to his skin an old scrap of cloth stained a rusty red.

He could not weep
—not as the king must weep, easily and to show his sympathy for those of his people who suffer. This pain was far too deep for tears.

"My heart," he murmured into the unyielding stone, "my heart is torn from me." He pressed the cloth to his lips.

Hathui wept to see him.

Rosvita drew the Circle at her breast and then she knelt before the Hearth, beside the prostrate king, and began to chant the prayer for dead souls.

After the hall was cleared and she and Wolfhere given bread and mead, after some hushed consultation between various noble lords and ladies whose names she did not know and whose faces all blurred into a single unrecognizable one, Liath was escorted to a small chapel.

Wolfhere did not come with her. Indeed, she saw they prevented him and led him away by another hall. A fine proud woman in biscop's vestments brought her before the king, who sat on a bench, no longer in his fine robes and regalia. He was held upright by a cleric and several other attendants, one of whom wiped his face repeatedly with a damp cloth. Liath knelt before him. His right hand clutched an old bloodstained rag.

"Tell me," he said hoarsely.

She want to beg him not to make her tell, not to relive the fall of Gent. Not again, Lady, please. But she could not. She was an Eagle, the king's eyes, and it was her duty to tell him everything.

Not everything. Some things she could not
—and would not—tell anyone: Sanglant's face close to hers, the light in his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, the bitter irony in his voice when he told her,
"Make no marriage. "
The feel of his skin when she had touched him, unbidden, on the cheek. No, not that. Those were her memories and not to be shared with anyone else. No one need know she loved him. No one would ever know, not even Sanglant. Especially not Sanglant.

Telling the story would be like living through it again. But she had no choice. They all watched her, waiting. Among the crowd stood Hathui, and the Eagle nodded, once, briskly, at her. That gesture gave her courage. She cleared her throat and began.

Barely, barely she managed to get the words out. Terrible it was to be the bringer of this baleful news, and worse still to relate the story with the king staring at her as if he hated her, for whom else could he hate?

She did not blame him. She would have hated herself too, did hate herself in a way for living when so many had died. At last she stumbled to a halt, having spoken the last and most damning part of the tale, the vision seen through fire. She expected them to question her closely, perhaps to lead her away in chains as a sorcerer. The king lifted a hand weakly, half a gesture. It was all he could manage.

"Come," said the biscop. She led Liath away. Outside, she stopped with her under the arched loggia that opened out into a pretty garden, lilies and roses and brash marigolds. "You are Wolfhere's discipla?" she asked, using the Dariyan word.

"I
—? No. I don't know. I am newly come to the Eagles, just after Mariansmass."

"Yet you already wear the Eagle's badge."

Liath covered her eyes with a hand, briefly, stifling tears.

"What you saw in the fire," said the biscop, going on in what she perhaps meant to be a gentler voice, "is known to us as one of the arts by which certain Eagles can see. Do not fear, child. Not all sorcery is condemned by the church. Only that which is harmful."

Liath risked raising her head. The biscop was quite a young woman, really, pale and elegant in her fine vestments and tasseled biscop's mitre.

"You are Constance!" exclaimed Liath, remembering the lineages Da had taught her, "Biscop of Autun."

"So I am," said Biscop Constance. "And I am evidently now Duchess of Arconia, too." She said this with a hint of irony, or perhaps sadness. "Where were you educated, child?"

"My Da taught me," said Liath, now cursing the fate that had separated her from Wolfhere. She did not have the strength to fend off pointed questioning of her past
k
ate eluott
and her gifts, and certainly not from a noblewoman of Constance's education and high rank. "Begging your pardon, Your Grace. I am very tired. We have ridden so far, and so quickly, and
—" Almost the sob got out, but she choked it back.

"And you have lost someone who is dear to you," said the biscop, and in her own face Liath saw a sudden and surprising compassion. "One of my clerics will show you to the barracks, where the Eagles take their rest."

A cleric led her to the stables. There she found herself alone in a loft above the stalls. Shutters had been thrown open, admitting the last of the daylight. She flung herself down on the hay, then rose again, wiping her nose, and paced. It was as if, reciting the awful tale, she had passed some of her numbing grief off onto King Henry. Now she was too restless to rest. Grooms murmured below. She was utterly alone.

For the first time in months, for the first time since Hugh had taught her the rudiments of Arethousan
—all those damned impossible verbs!—she was alone.

Carefully, she lifted
The Book of Secrets
out of her saddlebags and unwrapped it. She opened it to the central text, that ancient, fragile papyrus, dry under her skin as she ran a finger along the line of text, written in a language she did not recognize but glossed here and there in Arethousan. The Arethousan letters were still strange to her, but as she concentrated, opening doors in her city of memory, finding the hall where she had stored her memory of the Arethousan alphabet, she could transpose them in her mind into the more familiar Dariyan letters and thus form words, some of which she had learned from Hugh, most of which were meaningless to her.

At the very top of the page, above the actual text, was written a single word in Arethousan:
krypte.

"Hide this," she whispered and felt a sudden, sharp pain in her chest.
Hide this.

She put a hand over her mouth, breathed in, calming herself, and then studied the text beneath. The letters that made up the text were totally foreign to her, unlike Arethousan letters, unlike the more common Dariyan letters; perhaps, faintly, they resembled the curling grace of Jinna letters although these had a squarer profile. She could not read them nor even imagine what language this was.

But a different hand had glossed the first long sentence with Arethusan words beneath, translating it; only that first sentence had been glossed completely. On the other pages brief glosses appeared here and there, a commentary on the text. But this sentence, at least, she could read part of. Perhaps it gave a clue as to the subject of the text. Perhaps that had been the scribe's intent in translating that entire first sentence.

Painstakingly, pausing now and again to listen for the movements of the grooms below, she sounded out the first sentence.

Polloi epekheiresan anataxafthai diegesink peri ton peplerophoremenon en hemin teraton, edoxe kamoi parekolouthekoti anothen pasin akribds kathexes, soi grapsai, kratista Theophile, hina epignois peri hon katekhethls logon ten asphaleian.

The light was getting dim, too dim for anyone to read
—except someone who had salamander eyes.

"Many people ..." she whispered, knowing the first word, and then skipped words until she found another word she knew and here she stopped short, heart pounding, breath tight in her throat. "... about magical omens ..." She skipped back to the pluperfect verb, such an odd form that Hugh had taken pains to point out the form to her, "... magical omens which have been fulfilled among us. It seemed good to me ..." Here again followed words she did not know, and then, again and suddenly, one she did. "... all the things from the heavens ... to you to write about..." She shut her eyes, so filled with commingled horror and stark excitement that for a moment she thought her emotions would rend her in two like the Eika dogs. "Theophilus." That was a man's name. "... so that you may know about these
— these words? These
spellsT
Could it be spells? "... in
which you have been instructed by word of mouth ..." The last word she did not know.

Her hands shook. Her breath came in gasps.
All the things from the heavens.

She heard voices below. Hastily she bundled up the book and stuck it away into her saddlebags just as people came up the ladder. It was Wolfhere and Hathui. Hanna was with them. All the excitement, all the grief, all the days of longing and hope and sorrow, overwhelmed Liath. She threw herself into Hanna's arms and both of them burst into wrenching sobs, the release of so many weeks of tension and fear.

"We must pray for Manfred's soul," Wolfhere said. He wiped a tear from his seamed face. They knelt together and prayed.

Afterward Wolfhere rose and paced. "I would give you Manfred's badge, if I could, Hanna," he said. "Though you did not see him die, you rode with him, and that counts for the same. You have in any case earned it twice over." He sighed. "But it is now beyond recovery. Will you wait? I will commission a new one to be made."

Hanna held tightly to Liath and Hathui, still holding their hands, and she nodded gravely. "So will it be done," said Wolfhere. "I must return to the king," said Hathui. She left. "It is late, and we have ridden far and all suffered much," said Wolfhere to the other two. "Let us rest."