Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (27 page)

Mi nom,
the Eika prince had said, using the Salian words. My name is Fifth Son of the Fifth Litter. Alain shook his head. He was still dizzy, from fear, from excitement, from guilt, from the taste of blood. He had heard wrong.

"One who will not be missed."
The hounds whined. Sorrow finally nosed loose the latch on the lean-to door and shoved inside, pressing himself up against Alain, licking his face and then, like a healer mending wounds, the fresh cut on his hand.

There was only one person in this stronghold besides the Eika prince who would not be mourned or missed should he vanish. Fear nosed his hand and licked his fingers.

He whistled the hounds to obedience and took Sorrow and Rage with him for protection. But by the time he got to the stables, Lackling was gone.

Stricken, terrified, he took the two hounds up the old path that led by dim and twisting ways into the hills, to the old ruins. He ran, as well as he could, but the path was narrow and the turns sudden and more than once his foot caught on a patch of loose rock or on a root and he slipped, going down hard. The hounds loped along beside him, stopping only to lick and nuzzle him when he fell.

When he came at last to the edge of the clearing and looked out over the old ruins, he thought for an instant that the waning gibbous moon had splintered into two moons and that its other half burned in the ruins, attended by brilliant Seirios, the star known to navigators as the Burning Arrow. But those were lanterns, not moon or star. They stood around the altar house like sentries. A hazy light rose from within, shining up out of the roofless walls.

Lackling screamed.

Rage and Sorrow threw back their heads and howled, as at the moon, a long, frantic yipping howl. He grabbed their collars and jerked them back before they could bolt down into the ruins; they stilled instantly. Ai, Lady, what should he do? What could he do? He heard a thin voice raised
—not in song but in a sinuous chant that had no end, rising and falling, curling in on itself and then opening outward. Beneath it he heard mewling, the whimpering of a terrified creature.

He hissed out breath through clenched teeth. He shook, he was so terrified. But he must go forward. The hounds growled suddenly. A shadow appeared at the edge of the forest. Rage and Sorrow stood up, bristling, and tried to drag themselves out of his hands to attack the intruder.

"Halt," he said softly. The shadow moved forward and resolved into Prater Agius. "Sit." The hounds sat.

"Do not go down," said Agius. His face was pale and his eyes shadowed.

The mewling went on, a counterpoint to the eerie chanting. The light from within the altar house walls grew slowly brighter, and within its glow he caught sight of a huge shadow, thrown against the sky, which then vanished. The mewling turned into hiccuping yelps of terror. The hounds jerked forward, dragging Alain with them.

Agius grabbed at Alain's arm to stop him, and Rage spun and snapped at the frater.

"Stop! Sit!" hissed Alain.

Agius took advantage of Alain's hesitation to grab hold of his arm. The frater had a strong grip. "Do not go." he said in that same low, somber voice. He ap-

peared oblivious to the hounds, growling near his feet. "She would only kill you as well, and then what would be the point?"

"Then I must go back to the castle and get help!"

"It is too far. You would be too late."

Held fast, with the awful chanting and those terrible whimpering cries that were all Lackling could manage of words, Alain felt his resolve slipping away.
There is nothing you can do.
How could he act against a biscop?

Below, light flared with an orange heat, as if new wood or some other unknowable element had been thrown on the fire. Lackling sobbed outright, and his piteous half-formed terror cut Alain to the heart.

"I must try to help him!" He pulled away but Agius caught him again. The hounds, dragging him toward the ruins, jumped back and Sorrow sank his teeth into Agius' robe, but still the frater did not let go of Alain or even cry out in pain.

"Let go!" Horrified, Alain cuffed Sorrow and, caught up in pulling Sorrow off the frater and in keeping Rage from bolting down into the ruins or attacking the frater as well, he noticed too late when the wind turned and the hounds stilled abruptly, unnaturally.

The smell of smoke and a whiff of something else, herbs, something unclean, wafted up from the stones. There came suddenly a horrible gurgling scream and with it a thin scent like flesh burning. Agius' hand tightened on Alain's arm. The hounds, ignoring Agius now, closed ranks in front of Alain, pressing him back as if they, too, meant to stop him from running forward.

"Witness," whispered Agius. "As St. Thecla witnessed the Passion of the blessed Daisan, so must you and I witness this suffering." It was obscene to listen to Agius speak so composedly while below, out of Alain's reach, Lackling was being tortured, murdered, sacrificed in place of the Eika prince. And for what?

Wind gusted. Rain spattered down, drumming across the ruins in a sudden slap of cold air; then all was still.. . utterly still, except for a haze of smoke rising from the

altar house. Uncannily still, except for the thin reed voice that sounded as if it was buried under rock, and a tiny mewling, like a kitten's, so soft Alain could not understand how he could hear it. But of the normal scuffles and whispers of wind and night birds and the many small animals of forest and glade, there was no sign, as if all had vanished or been struck dumb.

Agius let go of Alain and he knelt, bowing his head. "It is a sign," he whispered, "that I should go out and preach the true word of His Passion, which was His suffering and sacrifice, and of His redemption."

A smell rose out of the ruins like the breath of the forge, hot and stinging. The hairs rose on Alain's arms, on the nape of his neck. Agius lifted his head. The hounds whined and slunk back, cowering, against Alain's legs.

Alain felt a
presence
—many presences—at his back. A shimmer ran through the air like the wind made visible. He heard the biscop speak strong words he did not recognize, only that they must be words of power. Below, in weirdly elegant harmony with her voice, sang the formless, hopeless whimpering that was no longer quite human. Alain wept, but he did not move. He had condemned Lackling and was now powerless to save him.

The stench of burning iron filled the air. Shapes less black than night's darkness filtered past him, shades slipping through the night. They touched him, shuddering out and away, his human body an obstacle to their passage. They wore not human shapes, nor the humanlike shapes of the dead Dariyan princes, the elves who were the elder sisters and brothers of humankind. They wore no shape at all, truly, but that of rushes blown in the breeze that sweeps the lakeshore, bending and swaying and straightening. They seemed otherwise oblivious to him, to the hounds, to the frater, who stared gaping and silent after them.

Down they went, their substance passing through the stones as if the stones were no substance to them. Up they crept from the stream. In they came from all sides.

"Strong blood will attract the spirits and put them under my control."

They pressed in upon the altar house and, with a
whuff
like a candle snuffed out, the lanterns all went out. But the glow still shone from within, brighter, until it, too, was shadowed and veiled by the shades called by blood and magic. Until Alain could see nothing but darkness, swallowing the center of the ruins, and hear nothing but the biscop's voice.

A thin bubbling wail. Then silence. And at last, in the far distance, the faint sound of bells. The hounds collapsed to the ground and lay there, like helpless pups, whimpering.

Alain shook, weeping. The moon came out from behind clouds he had not seen cover the sky, to reveal the silent, empty ruins. The wind began, and at once clouds scudded in to cover the moon and the stars. Rain fell, at first a mist and then harder, until he was soaked and any trace of scent or sound was lost. He stood until he was drenched, seeking, listening, but he saw nothing and no one.

Lackling was dead.

A. last the squall passed.

From the altar house there was no sign of movement or life, "I hope they're all dead!" said Alain with a vehemence that startled him. He had never known he could
hate.

Agius rose stiffly to his feet. "Come, Brother," he said. "There is nothing we can do now except remember what we have seen, pray it never happens again, and testify where it may do some good."

"Shouldn't we go down, see if Lackling
—?"

"If the biscop still stands within, guessing we have witnessed all, do you think she would hesitate to kill us? Martyrdom is an honorable profession, my friend, but not if it is lost and forgotten."

He began to walk up the path, into the forest.

"What were they?" Alain whispered.

Agius stopped and turned to face him. "I do not know."

"Did you know she meant to do this?"

"That she is a sorcerer? It is known within the church that Biscop Antonia and her adherents differ with the skopos on the place of sorcery within the church. That she might herself indulge in the use of sorcerous knowledge is surely to be expected."

"That she meant, tonight, to . . . to . . . ?" He could not form words to describe the horrible thing that had happened.

"The Holy Days are times of great power, Alain. What else is sorcery but the knowledge of the power that lies at rest in the earth and in the heavens, and the means and will to bind and shape it to your own use?"

Water dripped from the trees. All remained silent below.

"Come, Alain," said Agius urgently. "We must start back." Like a halfwit, Alain followed him, and the hounds went with him as though they were sleepwalking. "It is true," continued Agius in that same grotesquely cool voice, "that I did not know at first she meant to sacrifice the Eika prisoner. Your act of unexpected mercy
—

"Led only to a worse crime!" Alain's shout reverberated. Sorrow whined.

"Hush!" You may repent your action now, certainly. But the Lady works in mysterious ways. So gave She her only Son to atone for our sins. See this rather as a sign of the infinite mercy of Our Mother, who art in Heaven, who leads this innocent to a more blessed life
king's dragon
above, in the holy brightness of the martyrs which illuminates the Chamber of Light."

"A
—a sign?" They started down the narrow path, Agius in the lead. As soon as they passed the first sharp bend in the path, the frater lit a lantern.

"From God, of the sacrifice of Her Son on this day which we in our error call the Feast of the Translatus, when it should be known as Redemptio: our salvation from sin through the sacrifice of Our Lord, Daisan. As St. Thecla witnessed the Passion of the blessed Daisan, so must you and I witness this suffering."

"But the blessed Daisan fasted and prayed for seven days! He didn't suffer!"

"So has the church taught falsely for years. So this truth was proclaimed as a heresy at the Great Council of Addai over three hundred years ago. But the truth can never be destroyed. For this is the truth: The blessed Daisan was flayed alive by the order of the Empress Thaissania, she of the mask, as was the custom of those times when a man was accused of being a criminal. And when his heart was cut out of him, his heart's blood bloomed on the Earth as a red rose. But though he suffered and died, he lived again and he ascended to the Chamber of Light, having by his suffering cleansed us of our sin. For it is only through the pity of the Son, the blessed Daisan, through His suffering and His redemption, that we the sinners on this Earth are allowed into heaven."

A heresy.
This was truly a heresy, so troubling, so against everything Alain had ever been taught, that for an instant he forgot the altar house, the fate of poor Lackling. Agius was a heretic of the worst kind.

"But the blessed Daisan was a man like any other," protested Alain. "We all attain the Chamber of Light if we strive to cleanse ourselves of the taint of darkness
—"

"That
is the heresy," said Agius softly. "Here is a branch, Alain. Step over it carefully."

Drops of rain spattered down from the trees onto his hands; only then did Alain realize he was still weeping.

"In the beginning were the four pure elements, light, wind, fire, and water. Above them resided the Chamber of Light, and beneath them their enemy, darkness. By chance, the elements transgressed the limits set on them and the darkness availed itself of this to mingle with them." The delicate solemnity of the frater's voice drifted over Alain like a eulogy for the dead, numbing him as he picked his way down the path, following the lantern. The hounds walked behind him, still whimpering, as meek as lambs.

"From this chaos God, the Mother of Life, ordered the world with the Divine Logos, the Holy Word, but there remains in this mixture a quantity of darkness. That is why there is evil in the world. Only the blessed Daisan of all things on this Earth is untainted by darkness. Only through His redemption can we be saved."

Alain gulped down a sob. "I killed him," he gasped, the enormity of what he had seen hitting him with fresh impact.