Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (93 page)

"Nay," she agreed, wiping tears from her cheeks. "It can't be undone. He's dead. I saw Alain praying by his bier. Ah!" She grunted, legs smarting, all pins and needles, and got to her feet. Sanglant went with her to the cliff and she ran a hand lightly along the stubbly grain of rock as they walked alongside. The grass grew to the very foot of the sheer rock wall that then abruptly disintegrated into boulders, hulking things like monsters crowding the clearing. It was odd how they sat poised there, all jumbled up and yet with no sign that any had fallen farther to roll down onto the grass. It was as if an invisible hand had halted them and held them steady, there at the verge of the clearing. Snowflakes spun out of the air and lit on her cheeks. She smelled winter, but it didn't touch her.

"I'm sure it's one of Lavastine's hounds," said Sanglant finally. He licked a snowflake off a finger. "I know their smell."

Snow swirled around them, dissolving in the brook that gurgled down from the stones past their feet, powdering daisies and snowdrop and vetch and then melting away into the green grass like the tears of a child who's just been given a new toy. Be yond cliff and rock wall, winter engulfed the mountains while they stood here in eternal spring.

"But if that's true, how did it get here?" she asked. "Why did it come?"

Sanglant said nothing, only brushed his fingers over his neck, where he had once worn the gold torque of royal kinship.

SHE dreamed.

A golden wheel flashed in sunlight, turning. A withered hand scraped at the latch of a door made of sticks bound together, and slowly the door opened; she would see Fidelis' face at last. Would it resemble that of Emperor Taillefer, which she had seen carved in stone? It was so dark inside the hovel that she could only make out the shadow of a man, frail and ancient, and then the dream slipped through her mind like a fish twisting out of her hands, and as she stooped forward to enter the hut, she walked into a cavern whose walls gleamed as if they had been plastered with molten gold. Young Berthold slept at the base of a burning pillar of rock, surrounded by six attendants whose youthful faces bore the peaceful expression known to those angels who have at last seen God. The flames leaped heavenward, and she could actually see through them into another landscape so vivid that in an instant she was there, standing on a blanket of ice. A blizzard tore at mountain peaks, clouds streaming off the high rock summits, and the scream of the wind almost drowned the voice that spoke in her ear: "Sister, I beg you, wake up."

Her neck was cold and her shoulders were damp, and as she groped for purchase her hands slipped on dewy grass. A bee buzzed in and out of her line of vision. As a breeze came up, grass swayed into her face, tickling her nose. She sneezed.

"Sister Rosvita!" With exaggerated care, Fortunatus helped her sit. "You fainted. Are you well?" A rising sun glinted in her eyes, and she had to shadow her face with a hand.

"I'm very confused," she said feebly. "Where are we? Is Sister Amabilia here?"

"Hush, Sister." He was smiling stupidly and he patted her hand more in the manner of a man soothing a nervous hound. "We are safe. Here. Let me help you up."

Even with his help, she trembled as she stood. She had pressed too hard after her illness, and it was all hitting now. The scene was so impossibly strange that she knew she was still dreaming. But she heard the bee clearly enough, humming about its business, and her nose tickled most realistically, stung by pollen, and she sneezed again.

"God bless you," said Fortunatus.

Perhaps she wasn't hallucinating.

She stood on a grassy knoll sprinkled with sweet cicely, milk-white snowdrops, and the poisonous blue of wolfsbane, such a lovely flower that anyone might be forgiven for thinking it had some fine virtue when in fact it was deadly. Behind her, where the hill leveled off into a flat summit, a circle of standing stones crowned the height. Before her, the entourage had scattered down the hill like children at play, making for a ribbon of road worn into land below. Their spirits were infectious; they whooped and laughed and called out, and Fortunatus actually clapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the vista before them.

"Do you see it?" he cried. Beyond, nestled at the opening of a steep valley that cut up into high mountains, lay a walled town. "Brother Amicus says it is Novomo, fully a hundred leagues or more from the convent. One step has brought us this far! We are saved by a miracle!"

"No miracle," she said hoarsely, "and more likely damned than saved. Is this truly the winter we left behind us?"

But he hadn't heard her, he was laughing, and slowly the warmth of the day and the high spirits of the others melted into her and warmed her. The memory of poor Amabilia faded, as did the horror of the pit. She had chosen to seek aid from Hugh, knowing what he was, like a desperate woman using a tincture of wolfsbane to treat a child's raging fever knowing that the ointment was as likely to kill as cure. But they had lived; they had even escaped. For that, for now, she would be content.

As their cavalcade straggled toward Novomo they gained an escort of curious farmers and a handful of soldiers who had hastened out to see who they were and sent a message back to their lady. On the ride, Adelheid could speak of nothing but their mysterious journey.

"Only imagine if we can harness this power! Armies could move swiftly. We could always be a step ahead of our enemies."

"I beg you, Your Majesty," interposed Rosvita. "It is dangerous to rely on those who have gone against the church in order to learn such skills."

"Are you sorry we escaped?" demanded Adelheid.

Theophanu watched Rosvita, saying nothing. She seemed distant, preoccupied.

Rosvita sighed. "Nay, Your Majesty. But our situation was desperate. I would hope never to have to make such a choice again. It may be that we were lucky this time, and might be lost on a second attempt. Nor is it clear to me that such a gateway could accommodate an entire army. Can it be held open indefinitely? Do the gateways only accommodate small retinues? What if clouds cover the sky? In any case, I wonder if we have truly come through unscathed. Doesn't this landscape seem strange to you?"

"Those are the Alfar Mountains. Beyond Novomo lies St. Barnaria Pass. To the south the road leads to Darre, not more than ten days' ride. None of this seems strange to me, Sister."

"Not the flowers, or the warmth? What happened to winter, Your Majesty?"

That stilled Adelheid, and when an elaborate escort, alerted by the scouts, rode out from the city to greet her, she made no mention to them of the mysterious gateway through which they had traveled.

"Your Majesty!" The lady of Novomo dismounted and made her bow. She was shaken by Adelheid's appearance, and at once she began to look nervously around her at the copses of trees and the fields where dutiful farmers broke the ground for sowing. "God is merciful, Queen Adelheid. We heard that you were dead."

"Dead!" cried Adelheid.

"You have not heard? The skopos crowned John Ironhead king of Aosta over one month ago, in Darre."

"King!" cried Adelheid.

"We have been betrayed," said Theophanu coolly.

But Adelheid was not ready to bow under at the first sign of adversity, not after their astounding escape. "I am not dead, as you see, Lady Lavinia. I can march on Darre to take back what is rightfully mine!"

Lady Lavinia was an older woman with keen brown eyes and the sharp wariness of a lady who has learned to brew her own potions so that her enemies will have no opportunity to poison her through her own laziness. She gestured now toward the raggle-taggle retinue, all strung out behind queen and princess. The horses looked appalling in the clean light of day. Three were already bloating from a surfeit of fresh grass, and one had broken its leg, bolting after it came through the stones, and been put down. Most of the servants were on foot, and even some of the noble companions limped along, their once elegant clothing as filthy as six weeks under siege with only enough water for drinking and cooking could make them. No doubt they all stank, and would have been horrified at their own smell if they hadn't become accustomed to it.

"I beg your pardon, my queen, but with what army will you march on Darre? Once Ironhead hears that you are still alive, he will send his men to capture you. His spies are everywhere. Indeed, Your Majesty, I cannot march with you because my eldest daughter has been taken to his court to live as a hostage for my good behavior. You will find, I fear, that Ironhead has gathered many allies to him in this same manner. You must free them from their fear for their children before you can count on their loyalty. Many would willingly rally round you, because we know what Ironhead is, but in truth, there must be a chance of victory or we will all lose our lands." "If I can raise an army?"

Lady Lavinia only lifted her hands helplessly. She indicated her own escort, handsome enough in their bright tunics, with spears and helmets and a line of clerics carrying incense in polished censers. "Your kinfolk are dead, Queen Adelheid, may God grant them rest. Ironhead possesses your treasure, all the gold and silver and weapons you left at Vennaci. How will you raise an army great enough that the rest of us can trust our lives and land to your cause?"

Adelheid could not be daunted. Perhaps that quality made her shine. She raised an arm to indicate the mountains rising to the north. "I will lay my case before King Henry!"

A ragged cheer rose from Fulk's soldiers and was caught and echoed by her own retinue.

Lady Lavinia looked honestly relieved. "A wise decision, Your Majesty. I will do my best to shelter you, and I will gladly supply you with fresh mounts and provisions. I have always honored you and your kin, and I would not have you made Ironhead's prisoner—or his wife. But I cannot offer more than that, not now. My hands are chained."

"They will not remain chained forever," declared Adelheid. Less ragged than the others, she had worn her mail capelet for their flight, although a servant now carried her helmet. "Ironhead will never dare pursue us into Wendar, and I know that King Henry will not let this injustice go unpunished. Let us only shelter over the winter with you, Lady Lavinia, and we will cross into the mountains as soon as the passes open in late spring."

Lady Lavinia got a puzzled look on her face, and her clerics, those within earshot, whispered one to the next. "You have wandered far in the wilderness, Queen Adelheid. Spring and the new year came more than a month ago. Have you no clerics among you to calculate the days? Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Peter the Gatekeeper."

The third day of Avril!

Rosvita felt dizzy, quite out of her head for a moment until Fortunatus, walking beside her, reached up to steady her where she sat on a placid and bony mule. But she recovered fast enough. She had always had a good head for calculations, and this one took no great skill in any case, not with the signs all around them.

They had stepped into the circle of stones on the third day of Decial, at the full moon. Somehow, in that one step, they had spanned one hundred leagues...and four full months!

THAT'S
it!" cried Liath. She hadn't been able to sleep, and she'd been sitting on the bench by the open door, reading with her uncanny night vision under the unexceptional light of a waning quarter moon. " 'At this point it would be well to keep in mind that all bodies have three dimenstions: longitude, latitude, and altitude.' Ai, God! How could I not have seen it before? That's what I missed!"

Sanglant bolted up from the bed as she swore, a soldier's curse he hadn't even known she knew. She clutched at her belly, bit her lip, and grimaced.

"Ah! Ah! Ah! No, no, I don't need help." She waved him off, although her other hand still pressed against her abdomen. He held down the bench, which rocked as she rocked with the pain. "It's passing."

"Is the baby coming?"

"I don't know," she said disagreeably. "Ai, Lady. I don't want the baby to come now! I'm so close to the answer!" She groped for and found her sandals. "I'm going to walk over to the tower. I just need one more evening—" She cursed again and tossed the sandals aside in disgust, unable to reach her feet to bind them on.

"I'll come with you," he said as she heaved herself up, evidently having decided to go barefoot.

"Very well." She walked outside without waiting, still muttering to herself. She was in the grip of something larger than he was, the mystery she pursued, or the mystery of childbirth, or both together. Sanglant had seen women in the grip of labor become oblivious to the world as though all of life and the universe had squeezed into a cord that linked them, a solitary daughter, to the holy Mother of Life, She who had given birth to the universe.

He dressed hastily. The Eika dog trotted at his heels. Servants whispered around him, pinching his ears and teasing his hair, but when he didn't respond, they hung back at a distance and then vanished into the night to their revels. Only the watery nymph whom he had started calling "Jerna" dogged him, slipping along in his shadow as if to keep out of Liath's sight. The creature's shape had changed noticeably and disturbingly over the last months. He wasn't sure if both daimones and humans wore as their material forms a dull likeness of the angels, or if the servants, more essence than substance, merely copied human form while they were imprisoned on earth. But that vaguely female form she had worn was filling out, breasts, swelling, belly rounding in imitation of Liath. Why this yearning on her part? Didn't the daimones conceive and give birth in the same way as humans did? In truth, her presence had begun to bother him in other ways, just as his eye strayed to Sister Zoe more often than it ought.