Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (115 page)

Marcus smiled slyly and let the scroll roll back up. He tied the ribbon back on, and handed the scroll to Anne. "It looks as if my theory is the correct one." If his smugness was meant to wound Severus, it evidently worked. The older man looked annoyed and sat back with a grunt.

"Interesting news," said Anne, although neither her tone nor her expression changed. She placed the scroll on the table. Liath stared at it fixedly; she seemed to want to pick it up, to study it again, but she did not. She only waited. "What shall we do about Darre?"

Marcus waved a hand dismissively. "Mother dementia is old and weak. She is no threat to us. Whether Ironhead or the old Adeline house rules in Aosta matters nothing to me, and I do not believe it should change our plans."

"Who rules always matters," said Meriam softly.

"That book is a danger to everything I worked so painstakingly to conceal," muttered Severus.

"I have worked for many years," cried Zoe, affronted, "and still I can only assist in the weaving of the gateways because of their complexity. I remain the sixth part of the dragon, and truly I am content with my position, I don't mean to suggest otherwise. But it seems impossible to me that an untrained man can through his own efforts open a gateway! With no help!"

"No help but Bernard's book," said Anne. "In the right hands, it would be a powerful goad as well as a powerful aid to one who has strength of will and a promising intelligence."

"Or the ability to lie convincingly," retorted Zoe.

"What do you say, Liath?"

Unlike Sanglant, Liath had learned how to control her expression; the feelings she carried in her heart did not show on her face. She was opaque. Not remote, like Anne, but veiled. "I have nothing to say." Yet it seemed a trifle hotter in the chamber.

Lady Above! This entire episode made plain what was wrong with these people. The Chamber of Light was a long way away. God hadn't put people on Earth so that they could twiddle their thumbs while waiting for death to claim them. This time on Earth was a test. And God had chosen certain, more righteous souls to make sure that all of humankind followed God's teachings, whether they liked it or not. Like cattle, they must be herded, or else the wolves—the minions of the Enemy—would eat humankind alive.

"Should we kill him?" asked Marcus.

Anne smiled coolly. She turned with deliberate calm to Liath. "Should we kill him, Liathano? You have some acquaintance with this man, I believe. I would value your opinion."

"Who are we to judge who shall be killed and who shall live?" replied Liath in a low voice, but now Antonia heard real anger beneath that opaque facade.

If Anne was offended by this reproof, she did not show it.

"Is it necessary to kill a person who may prove valuable to us later?" asked Meriam.

"When is it necessary to kill?" asked Anne. "We must only act in such a drastic way when there is no other choice, when there would be more dire consequences in letting a dangerous person live than in bringing death to him." The armillary sphere set on the shelf behind Anne spun suddenly, although there was no breeze. The planets shifted position and slowed, settling into a new configuration. "But Sister Venia has not yet spoken."

"I think," said Antonia carefully, "that the strength of your reactions is founded on a history and an association that I know nothing of. I joined you only recently. These names mean little to me. I am still young in the art." And increasingly curious. A man had been moving in court circles in Wendar with an interest in sorcery. It was a shame she hadn't found him first. "Who is this Wendish churchman sent to stand trial for sorcery? From what lineage does he spring? Who is this Bernard whose book you all speak of? Where is he now?"

"Bernard is dead," said Liath. "He was killed by a daimone. Someone had been hunting him for a long time."

The celestial globe sitting on the shelf beside the armillary sphere began to glow suddenly, the painted pinpricks on its surface—representing stars—brightening as if a flame, or one of the servants, had somehow wriggled inside. A ripple of light twined along one of the beams overhead, and the smell of charred wood scented the air. Outside, leaves rattled as a stiff wind shook them, then stilled. The gust shifted the door, which stood ajar.

Liath rose suddenly, as stiff as a dog which has scented danger. Carefully, she swung a leg over the bench, extricating herself, and as deliberately walked over to the door. "You killed him," she said. The sun's light limned her, made her even seem to glow a little, yet for all her taut anger, her expression was unreadable. The veil had fallen to reveal the monotone face and voice of anger overridden by shock.

It was unusual to see Anne stricken with more emotion than the adversary she faced. Her mouth tightened. Her hands closed over nothing, except, perhaps, memory. "He stole you from us. He almost ruined you in the years he had you in his keeping. He almost rendered you unfit, as we can see this day, as we have seen every day since you joined us. I did what had to be done. When you see the necessity of that, Liath, I will know we have finally undone the damage Bernard did to you."

"He loved you," whispered Liath. "He was your
husband.

Didn't you care for him at all? Didn't those oaths mean anything to you?"

"We cannot let affection, or hatred, cloud our judgment. We must be strong enough to kill the ones who stand in our way. We are all only tools in Their hands, and our lives are meaningless except as we act as the instruments of Their will."

"My God," said Liath, and she walked out.

There was silence, of a kind. The light in the celestial globe dimmed and winked out.

"Who was Bernard?" repeated Antonia.

"He was once one of us. He stole Liathano from us when she was only eight years old, and you can see what the years under his care wrought of her. That was eleven years ago. We have a great deal of work to do to make her into the vessel through which our plans can be fulfilled, our work completed, and Earth rescued from its terrible fate."

"Indeed," said Severus primly, "she was brought into this world precisely because she is, given what she is, the only one who has any hope of killing Prince Sanglant. 'No disease known to you will touch him, nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.' She is the only one who can stop them."

"But why would he steal her? Didn't he understand the whole?" As a mother herself, Antonia found Anne's cold-blooded statements startling, although one had to admire her single-mindedness. But wasn't it a little unnatural for a woman to be so willing to sacrifice her only child? How many noblewomen, and poor ones, too, had come to make confession at the altar in the great cathedral of Mainni, begging God to give them a child? She had lost count. Indeed, for a long time Antonia had wondered if the one sin, the one slip that had led to Heribert's birth, hadn't been God's way of allowing her to understand their desire. For as the blessed Daisan had said: "The road to purification arises out of conception and birth."

"Bernard was misguided," said Anne sternly. "He loved the world too well."

Marcus sighed loudly, pulling the ivory-covered book back toward himself and tapping on the filigree with impatient fingers. "Have we done with this scene?" he asked. "I am reminded of the theater in Darre, which is quite the rage these days now that Ironhead has taken the throne and is quite eager to investigate the charms of every stage dancer who strikes his fancy, which seems to be most of them. But I have other news. I found Lavrentia, just where Brother Lupus said she would be."

Anne turned and walked to the shelf. She reached toward the spinning armillary sphere, and its turning metal bands stilled abruptly. Without turning back, so that her face was hidden, she asked, "She is truly still alive?"

"She is Mother at the convent of St. Ekatarina."

"Brother Lupus was misled," said Anne quietly.

"Nay," said Marcus. "He was baldly lied to those many years ago. She must have grown suspicious. She must have taken refuge there, and the nun who was then mother of the convent must have taken her in and sent the message that she had died. I call that lying, myself."

"Forty years ago," muttered Severus. "It is a long time to live concealed from us."

"Have you ever visited the convent of St. Ekatarina, Brother?" asked Marcus, not a little sarcastically.

"Nay, I have not. I will thank you not to take that tone with me, Brother."

"Then I will only say that it is an isolated place and very difficult to gain access to. What are we going to do about her? Is she a danger to us?"

Anne did turn now. Whatever expression she had turned away to hide had vanished. She looked as cool and collected as ever. "Did she seem to you a danger?"

"She seemed evasive. She is called Mother Obligatia now, but I did not see her face. I had nothing to judge her by except her voice, and she sounded old and frail, not robust."

"Voices can be deceptive. We were misled once. There is more here than meets the eye."

Truly, thought Antonia, there was far more here than met the eye. Sister Anne did not have all of Earth under her control, although after a year or more at Verna one might begin to think so. Who was Lavrentia? Why was she important enough to be discussed in such terms? But she had already asked enough questions. She did not want to draw any suspicion that she might be less loyal to their cause than she appeared on the surface. Mercifully, Zoe did not fear to speak her mind.

"Who is this Lavrentia, and this Mother Obligatia, or what

ever you call her?" she demanded. "I've never heard of her. Of what interest is she to us?"

Even Marcus remained silent, watching Sister Anne.

"She was the woman who gave birth to me."

"Your mother!" cried Zoe, looking amazed at the revelation, or perhaps only amazed that a woman like Anne had actually
had
a mother.

"Nay. She was not my mother except that it was in her womb that I was conceived and nurtured, her womb from which I was expelled. I never saw her." Anne lifted the armillary sphere. It was large for her to carry alone, but the ripples that marked the servants helped her, blowing the air beneath her hands to give her lift. She set it down heavily, and the whole table shuddered under its weight. Erekes spun lightly. Mok shifted a finger's breadth, and the bright halo of the Sun shook but did not move. "The woman whom I consider my mother is the one who raised me. It is her influence that guided what I have become."

Antonia could puzzle out most of the rest, but a few questions remained unanswered. "Was this Lavrentia the daughter of Emperor Taillefer, or his daughter-in-law?" And if she had been related only by marriage, then how had Queen Radegundis hidden her son?

Anne merely looked at her, then spun Aturna. The mechanism was ponderous on the outermost sphere, and the planet of wisdom moved only a short way. "It is true that I am the daughter of Emperor Taillefer's son. But he and Lavrentia form the lesser part of my lineage. I was raised by a woman named Clothilde, and it was she who tutored me in the arts of the mathematici, just as she herself was tutored by Biscop Tallia. First and foremost, it is to Biscop Tallia that I claim kinship. In truth, the biscop was my aunt, but in every other way I think of her as the woman who created me. She is the mother who gave birth to all of us, the Seven Sleepers, the ones who, in the last hundred years, have labored to prevent this catastrophe."

So Liath, and so Sanglant: two children born out of enemy camps. If the Seven Sleepers prepared for cataclysm on Earth, then surely the Aoi were making their own plans—wherever they might be, concealed in the aether. Why else go to the trouble to travel through the veils that separated one sphere from the next? Why else send one of their women to Earth to make a child bred half out of humankind and half out of Aoi?

Once, she had supported Sabella's claim because she believed in it. But Sabella was under the care of Biscop Constance in Autun now. She held no grudge against Sabella for her failed attempt at the throne; God had chosen to lend Their support in another place. And perhaps They had chosen otherwise because, like the angels and the daimones, They could see both into the past and into the future. They had seen this day coming.

And she knew just,how to take advantage of it.

LIATH returned unexpectedly. Sanglant had just settled Blessing into Jerna's embrace. The infant was a silent, efficient eater; she would latch on and suckle, and when she was done, she was done. She had the heft to show for it, all pudgy arms and legs, but sometimes he wondered exactly what kind of nourishment she was imbibing, and why she seemed to be growing so fast.