Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (47 page)

Ai, Lady! She did not regret coming with her mother. They'd had no alternative in any case. But it was so hard to understand her. Understanding was like a gulf of air she had to leap, but she didn't know how—and she wasn't sure she liked the lay of the land she glimpsed on the other side, where she was meant to go.

A thread brushed her cheek, and she started up to see one of the servants hovering in front of her, exploring her face with its translucent fingers. It skittered away like a leaf and came to rest in the shadow of the trees, a thread of light with a vaguely male shape, nothing she could pinpoint to distinguish it from the other servants except that the other two seemed vaguely female.

"Liath." Sanglant approached out of the night, and she hugged him, hard. This, she understood: that he was solid, and present. Her shield.

"It makes you wonder, though, doesn't it?" he said into her hair.

"What makes you wonder?" She could have stood here forever and remained content, but he was restless. He was always restless, could never quite be still, even in sleep, like a dog aware of a threatening scent in the air.

He touched his neck, the old habit. Both scars—the chafing left by Bloodheart's iron slave collar and the cut left by Hugh's knife—had healed to leave a band of lighter skin and a thread of white, a neck ring of scar tissue. But then, strangely, he curved a palm around her neck, the pressure of his thumb at her throat.

"Why does your mother wear a gold torque?"

THE rats came out at night to gnaw at the bones. He heard their claws skittering on stone, heard the dogs growling as they crept close enough to clamp their jaws down over his throat, and he bolted up—

Awake.

He was sitting, arms raised to strike, as out of breath as if he'd been fighting. The bed of leaves he'd laid down yesterday at twilight shifted under him. Stars glittered above. The Eika dog whined softly. Liath stirred, murmuring his name.

"Hush," he said softly. "Go back to sleep."

She tugged the blanket over her hips, pillowed her cheek on an arm, and was out, that quickly. He knew he would not sleep again.

"Ai, God," he whispered. "Lord protect me from my dreams." He eased away so as not to wake her. He did not bother to pull on his tunic, but he grabbed his sword belt. A hazy night stillness lay over everything except for the faint rustling of wind in leaves, not enough to dispel the weight of summer's heat. Nearby he heard the chuckling stream at which they'd watered their horses that evening. This night they had camped in woodland just off the old Dariyan road they followed southeast into lands more wilderness than cultivated. This night no intact Dariyan way house had appeared at the expected mile marker, only a ruin torn apart long ago by scavengers. The servants had lashed branches together to make a small shelter for Sister Anne, but Sanglant was used to harsher conditions than these from campaigns. He was happy to collect leaves and, with the dragon sigil quilt thrown over all and a blanket atop, make a bed of them on the ground by the fallen way-house wall.

He was happy...or at least content. The day-to-day rhythms of the journey kept him moving, and when he moved, he didn't think. If he stayed still for too long, the old nightmare clawed up, as it had this night—and most nights—in his dreams.

He touched his throat, realized he had done so, and shook his hand violently as if to shed the chains that had once shackled him. He was free. But the memories still weighed as heavily as the chains ever had. He had been Bloodheart's prisoner for a long time.

Something rustled in the trees, and he spun and growled, caught himself. Froze.

A wolf padded out into the clearing. Its amber eyes gleamed softly as it stared at him. A second wolf, lighter, emerged from undergrowth beside the first. He drew his sword. Its ring, coming free of the scabbard, drew an answering bark, crisp, short, and clear, from the lead wolf. A third ghosted into the clearing a short way from the first two, and halted.

How many more were out there?

"Liath," he said softly.

She stirred but did not wake.

He eased a step sideways, toward her. The Eika dog slept on, too, and it usually woke at once if any danger threatened him, but it had remained terribly weak since Werlida.

A fourth wolf, black enough that it seemed more shadow than body, arrived in the clearing. It growled softly, and he, that fast, unthinking, growled in reply. The lead wolf barked again, like an order. Two more wolves loped into the clearing and halted.

"Liath!" he said, more sharply.

She stirred, yawned sleepily, and murmured his name on a question.

"Get your weapons," he said without varying his tone of Three of the wolves broke away to circle them. Liath sat up, grabbing her bow.

Light streaked off the shelter, a silvery thread more thought than form. It bore human lineaments, but in the darkness it shimmered. It slid under the nose of the lead wolf, evaded a snap, and a moment later was joined by one of its comrades. Together, they pulled on the tails of the wolves and otherwise pinched and teased them until the entire pack turned tail and vanished into the forest. The servants disappeared after them, their laughter as soft as the wind.

"Cover yourself."

Sister Anne emerged from the shelter with the third servant hovering at her side. Liath yanked the blanket up to her shoulders. Sanglant ignored her and went to the edge of the clearing to listen, but although he stood there for a long time, he heard no trace of wolves.

When he turned back, Anne had gone inside. He sheathed his sword and knelt beside Liath, kissed her, then recalled that Anne was, presumably, still awake. He sat back on his heels.

"What happened?"

"Wolves. The servants chased them away. Go back to sleep. I'll stand watch."

"I thought my mother said that the servants would stand watch."

"And so they do, but I can't sleep now." But he didn't tell her it was more because of dreams than wolves. The servants had done a better job of dispelling the wolves than he ever could have. She hesitated, then lay back down, a sumptuous curve under the blanket. For an instant he was tempted—but two of the servants had gone into the wood and had not yet returned. He pulled on his tunic and bound up his sandals, then dragged a fallen log close to the old, ruined way house, midway between Liath's bed and the shelter, and sat down.

As he sat, he watched the stars. He tried to imagine fixed stars and wandering stars, spheres and epicycles, all these words that Liath used so easily—but it only made him impatient. He got to his feet and began pacing; he couldn't sit still although he knew full well that a sentry needed to be still. But when he was still, the weight of chains seemed to settle on him, whether Bloodheart's chains or the chains his own father wanted to bind him with.

King and emperor, with every prince and noble going for his throat.

He shuddered, spun to walk back the way he had come—

They had returned without him noticing.

He stared.

He had seen enchantment while under Bloodheart's rule. As a child, he had seen certain small creatures hidden in the shadows, peeking out from bushes, half-hidden among the leaves of the deep forest where children weren't allowed to play, but he had explored there nevertheless. He knew magic lived in the^. land, and although he hated the thought of it, he knew some part of it lived in his blood, his heritage from his mother.

This was enchantment of a different order, creatures from another plane of being—
from a higher sphere,
Liath would say.

They danced on the grass, hands interlinked and perhaps even melded in some inhuman way, because they were made more of light than of flesh. They sang an eerie, angular melody that had no words but only a kind of keening throb. Their dance was at once joy and sorrow, braided together until they could not be unwoven one from the other.

If they knew he watched, they gave no sign of knowing. They only danced.

He neither saw nor heard nor smelled any trace of the wolves.

He watched the servants for a long time, until the predawn light made gray of tree trunks and the servants faded into the light of the coming day and vanished from his sight except where light played along the branches of the shelter, corresponding in no way to the sun, which had not yet risen above the treetops. He heard a giggle at his ear, felt fingers tweak his earlobe and a breath of wind tickle his cheek. Laughing, he went to saddle the horses.

Despite the encounter with the wolves, Anne led them deeper into woodland and lightly settled territory. The next day at about midday they came to a crossroads. It was a lonely place at the base of a rugged hill made forbidding by an outcropping of stone halfway up the steep slope. Someone had cut back the trees to make a clearing, but one huge old trunk had been left.

"We'll turn east here," said Anne.

"Not south?" Liath glanced at her mother, surprised.

"East," repeated Anne.

They reached the actual crossing of paths, and as he came up beside the huge old stump, Sanglant saw that carvings decorated the wood: stag-headed men, women with the heads of vultures, a wolf. Oak leaves, all dried up and crinkly now, littered the base, and someone had piled a cairn of stones on top. Those stones had red stains on them, blood long since dried.

"Sacrifice," said Anne harshly. "And worse things." She dismounted and walked over to the stump. Without expression, she took apart the cairn stone by stone. At its base, half sunk into the rotting center of the trunk, lay an amulet, somewhat decayed. She swept it off the stump with a branch. "This is the work of the Enemy."

Sanglant watched her with interest, waiting to see what would happen. Perhaps it was true that the Enemy prodded weak-willed souls to work harm in the world in this fashion. But he had seen men resort to stranger rites before battle, and of them, as many who prayed to the gods of their grandmothers were as likely to live as those who prayed to God. Nevertheless, it was true that such displays displeased the Lord and Lady, and they had to be eradicated.

Anne turned to where Liath sat on her horse. "Burn it."

Liath paled. She did not move or reply "The gift of fire is in your nature. Burn this place, where the minions of the Enemy have set their hands."

"No. The people hereabouts only do it to protect themselves and their animals from harm on their journeys, or to guarantee good weather while they're on the road. Why should we harm them when what they've done gives no harm to us?"

"This is Bernard talking through your lips. He traveled too much and was too lenient in his judgments."

"Da always said we should leave well enough alone."

"I left you with him for too long."

"Which way do we go?" answered Liath stiffly. She looked furious.

"You will not do as I ask?"

"I will not. You don't understand what you're asking me to do."

"I am one of the few who do understand." Anne glanced toward Sanglant. He saw the air shimmer around Anne, and suddenly he heard the servants, whispers cutting at the high end of his hearing: words about fire, and burning, but what they used of language was too distorted for him to understand more.

"I say we should ride on," he said. "Surely there is a deacon hereabouts who will deal with these old superstitions in a fitting manner. Isn't that why God have ordained some to dedicate their lives to the church, to be weapons devoted to God's working in the world?"

"Many were conceived and born to be weapons, Prince Sanglant, and yet have no knowledge of their destiny."

"Spoken like my father, Sister Anne. But I am not such a^ one. And neither is my wife."

She measured Liath a final time. "The iron does not know what it will become until it has been hammered in the fire."

"Let us ride on," he said again. Liath urged her horse forward, taking the right fork.

Anne remained behind. "It would be going against God's will to leave such a shrine behind as a temptation to the unfortunate and foolish people who may be lured to pray and give offerings here only because it exists."

"We'll wait for you ahead." Sanglant rode on, following Liath. The Eika dog padded listlessly beside him. Up the road, Liath had halted in the shadow of the rock outcropping.

"I don't understand your mother's position in the world. Is she sworn to the church, or is she a great lady with many estates under her rule? Who are her kin?"