Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (43 page)

A shuddering thrill ran through Alain. He touched his chest, where hung the tiny pouch that concealed his rose. It seared his fingers with cold through the linen of his summer tunic.

"Let me go," he said. By then others had come out to investigate. Reluctantly, Lavastine let Terror pull him back into the garden into the circle of his attendants.

Alain ran forward into a blizzard of dirt.

"Peace!" he cried, but they gave him no peace. Dirt stung his eyes and coated his tongue and lips. They were in a frenzy, barking so frenetically that he could no longer hear the nuns' singing over their deafening noise. A tiny body, white against the earth, darted, spun, and leaped.

Bliss' jaws snapped shut over it.

The other four hounds stopped barking instantaneously and formed a circle around Bliss, who swallowed. Then he slewed his great black head up to look at Alain. He pressed a dry nose into Alain's hand, snuffled there for one moment, and as suddenly turned away and broke into a ground-eating lope toward the woodland that lay beyond the fields.

Alain chased him, but the other hounds got in his way, mobbing him. Their weight threw him to the ground, and there he lay with Sorrow draped over on his chest, and Fear and Rage sitting on his legs. Steadfast trotted after Bliss but stopped at the wood's edge, like a watchman. The geese had clustered at the distant end of the field and, settling now, they waggled off to glean between rows of barley and spelt.

"What is going on, Alain?" Lavastine arrived, sword in hand. Four men-at-arms bearing torches and armed with spears attended him.

But when Alain tried to describe what he had seen, none of it made sense.

"Come," said Lavastine to the men-at-arms. "I've had enough of curses and superstition. Get a dozen more of your fellows and we'll search for the hound."

"But, Father—

"Peace!" snapped Lavastine. Alain knew better than to protest.

He walked with Lavastine into the forest, never leaving his side. The good sisters of St. Genovefa Convent had long since cleared out most of the underbrush and dead wood for kindling and charcoal. The open woodland gave sparse cover. There was enough of a moon to guide their feet, and the torches gave Alain heart, as if he could thrust the flame into any curse that tried to fly at him out of the darkness.

But the five hounds padded quietly along, content to let them search, which they did for half the night at least. They found no sign of Bliss.

When he stumbled at last into the chamber set aside for himself, Tallia, and their servants, he had to pick his way carefully over their sleeping attendants. It was black in the chamber, and he was too tired to undress, so he simply lay down in his clothes. With a hand, he searched the bed, careful not to wake her. But, like Bliss, she was gone.

Faintly, he heard voices singing Vigils, the night office. She had hidden herself away beyond the cloister walls. If only he could heave himself up off this bed and go in search of her, who was everything and the only thing he had ever wanted.

He slept.

He weaves his standard himself. From two spear hafts bound into a cross-shaft he strings up the bones of his dead brothers
—
those that can be recovered
—
and when the wind blows, they make a pleasant sound: the music of victory. Certain items
—
five hand bells, an ivory-hafted knife made of bronze, needles, a gold cup, iron fishhooks, and a thin rod of iron
—
he laces in among the bones to give variety to their song. He binds the five braids of his dead rivals at the top, ties strips of silk and linen torn from the bodies of Bloodheart's enemies below them to make streamers, and weights each dangling line of bone and metal with a pierced round of baked clay.

The entire tribe has assembled to watch this ceremony on the dancing ground of the SwiftDaughters. He stands facing the long slope that leads down to the beach where the ships are drawn up. Behind him stand the dwellings of his brothers and uncles, inarching up the long valley toward the fjall. On his left lie the storehouses held in common by the tribe, and on his right the longhall that belongs to OldMother, built entirely of stone and thatched with sod. The doorway gapes open, but he sees nothing stirring within its depths. SwiftDaughters stand in a semicircle in front of OldMother's hall. They have finished the long dance whose measures tell the story of Rikin's tribe all the way back to the dawning of the world.

That song has been sung, and his victory acknowledged: Fifth Son of the Fifth Litter will become chieftain of Rikin tribe.

He binds off the last strand of his standard and jams its sharpened base into the dirt so that it stands upright. From the ground he picks up a stone scraper and with it scrapes the residue of paint off his chest
—
the paint that marked his kinship to Bloodheart, who is now dead. With his fingers, dabbing in tiny pots of ocher and woad, he paints a new pattern on this chest, his pattern: a circle with two lines crossed inside so that they touch four points on the circle, one for each of the winds; north, west, east, and south.

"On these winds my ships will sail," he cries. They all listen. They are his tribe now, his to mold and use as a weapon. "On four winds to the far shores of the world, all the regions of the earth that are known to the WiseMothers."

A murmur arises among the soldiers, who kneel with that particular combination of patience and tension that mark them as wary of his reign. He has yet to prove himself before them. But they also do not truly understand
—
not yet
—
what he intends.

The chieftain's chair
—
which he alone had the foresight to salvage from the disaster at Gent
—is
brought forward, and he seats himself in it. "Come forward, each one, and bare your throat before me."

He extends his claws, and they come forward one by one. First the soldiers who followed him even through his disgrace stride up, confident, proud, ready to serve his will. They believe in his strength. After them the others come forward, some with reluctance, some with curiosity. A few he smells fear on, and those he kills at once. But Rikin's tribe is a strong one, and few among his uncles, cousins, and brothers have survived Bloodheart's campaigns by showing weakness.

It takes most of the day for each soldier to submit, but he minds it not; this is not a ceremony which should be hurried.

The sun sinks in preparation for a longer night than last night, each night waxing, each day waning, toward the midpoint that Alain Henrisson calls the autumn equinox and the WiseMothers call The-Dragon-Has-Turned-Her-Back-On-The-Sun. From the shore he hears the lap of waters stirred by creatures out in the depths. Have the merfolk come to witness? Have they come to pledge themselves to his rule?

He cannot yet leave his chair. There is other business to transact.

"Where is the priest?" he asks, and the priest shuffles forward, mumbling and chanting and humming in his reedy flute voice. "Do you have what I need, priest?"

"Do you hold safe what I most hold dear? " retorts the priest.

He smiles. "It lies safe in a place you will never find, Uncle. Do you have that which I demand in return for its safekeeping?"

"Must I not now walk many journeys?" the priest complains. "Must I not now trek on many fell paths? Do you think it will bind itself easily into my power and thus yours?"

"I will be patient a while longer," he answers.

Movement eddies at the back as the SwiftDaughters ready themselves to come forward, to escort him to the chair of OldMother. But he is not done yet. He gestures, and out of the shadows walk his slaves, in tidy lines, obedient to his wishes. They are not beasts, like the other slaves, but even so the tribesmen murmur in surprise and with distrust.

"What means this?" some of the RockChildren cry. And others: "Will we follow after the one who wears the circle of the Soft Ones and who lets these slaves walk in his train like honored warriors?"

"Challenge me if you wish," says Fifth Son, softly to show threat but loudly enough to carry. "But I am far ahead of you on the path, Brothers. I have defeated my rivals and walked without harm on the nesting ground of the WiseMothers. Can any of you say the same? Come forward and challenge me if you dare." He does not raise his voice or bellow, as Bloodheart would have. He does not rise, to make of his stature a challenge. He does not need to.

They fear him because he is different.

And they are not fools. They will wait, and measure him and run in his tracks as long as he walks the path of victory. Only a weak leader needs to look back over his shoulder; a strong leader need only scan the ground ahead, because he knows that his troops are faithful and that they run eagerly at his heels.

"Come forward, those who are born of human kin and who serve me."

They come hesitantly through the glistening obsidian spears and the gleam of claw, but they come, although he can smell fear on all of them except one. They dare not refuse him, and some have even become bold enough to hold their heads high. The chieftain and OldMother among them kneel before him, as he has taught them to do; he has seen this form of obeisance in Alain Henrisson's dreams.

The deacon Ursuline, like any OldMother, does not fear him
—
she alone of her tribe. She lifts her eyes to meet his gaze. "I have done as you asked, and you have no cause to be displeased by my service to you. What of our bargain?"

Said boldly, among those who could cut her throat in an instant. He bares his teeth to remind her of his power, but she has the serenity that walks with those who themselves walk hand in hand with the gods, even if it is only her circle god, whose footsteps he has never seen mark the earth.

"You have served me well. In this way I reward you: All the slaves of Rikin fjord may walk free of the pens and build longhalls, as is the custom of your kind. This they may do, as long as they submit to the will of their masters in all other ways. As long as they serve our purpose, they may live, and as long as there is peace among those who walk free of the pens, they may live. If there is not peace, then justice will be swift." He curls his fists toward his chest so that his unsheathed claws shine bright before him, slender blades of killing sharpness grown into his body. "Do you doubt me?"

"I do not doubt you," she answers gravely. "What of the other matter we discussed?"

The other matter. It takes him a moment to recall it, but it was the one she most desired. She would have left her kinfolk in the pens in exchange for this one thing. That he gave her both in exchange for her service is a mark of the generosity he has learned through his dream: That the chieftains and OldMothers of the human kind use gifts to keep their tribes together.

"With your own hands and such tools as we allow you, in your own time as long as it does not interfere with the tasks set for you by your masters, you may build a church for your circle-god and worship there."

She bows her head. In this gesture he sees both submission and respect.

But he is not altogether sure whether her submission is for him, her master, or for the circle-god whom she considers God of all Creation.

Yet, truly, he cares not which it is as long as she serves him on this earth. Where her feet will take her after death is no concern of his.

At last the SwiftDaughters come forward. Their hair shines in the sharp afternoon light, with gold like that of the sun, with a silver-white as pale as the moon, with the copper and tin and iron veins of the earth. No son of the tribe may enter OldMother's hall without her invitation, and her invitation comes only to those sons who will lead, breed, or die.

He might still die. OldMother may find him unworthy. But he doubts it.

He crosses the threshold and walks into OldMother's hall, into a darkness dense with the scent of soil and rock, root and worm, the perfume that marks the bones of the earth. The floor turns from beaten dirt to cool rock beneath his feet, a transition so abrupt that his head reels and he has to pause to steady himself. Air breathes onto his face, stirring like a great beast, and from where he now stands he gains the impression of a vast space opening out before him. He feels as though he stands on the edge of a vast abyss. Behind him, although he has made no turn, although no wall has come between his back and the wall of the house, the door has vanished. He stands in utter darkness.

Above, impossibly, he sees stars.

And below, too, beyond him and spread out like so many pinprick watch fires, he sees stars, glittering, bright and unattainable.