Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (105 page)

Nearby, Sigfrid was singing the Benedictus Domina, except Sigfrid couldn't sing anymore, and yet Ivar recognized that voice; he had sung beside Sigfrid so often in Quedlinhame that the other boy's sweet tenor had become his lifeline in the worst of his despair.

Sigfrid was singing, and weeping with joy, and as the auroral dawn breathed the first light and color into the heavy air Ivar saw that the mist had cleared to reveal the pyre grown to a monstrous height, golden-red coals like a thousand gathered stones heaped up upon each other until they rose higher than a man. Ekkehard, coming awake, stumbled up, arms pinwheeling as though he'd forgotten that he'd been injured, and staggered backward, and so did the others, but they ran up against the villagers, who had come in a throng to stare. Now even some of these ventured forward crying out that their toothache had vanished or their lameness been healed. Sigfrid sang with arms lifted toward the heavens, and Ermanrich, who was quite overcome but eminently practical, dragged him bodily back as the pyre heaved and shifted like a creature coming awake. Baldwin knelt so fixedly with hands clasped in prayer that Ivar thought he'd gone into a trance. He dashed forward to shake him, to wake him up, to warn him.

The rising edge of the sun glinted beyond the tumulus where the old stone ruins lay like the shattered and gargantuan crown of a long-dead queen. Day broke free from night.

The pyre opened. A cloud of fragrance burst over them. Flowers showered down around them, insubstantial petals vanishing as soon as they touched the earth.

It unfolded, wings unfurling, and the great beast rose as glorious as the day after a long, black, and hopeless night. It trumpeted. The sound rang from the heavens down to the Earth and back again, echoing on and on and on until Ivar knew that it wasn't an echo at all but an answer.

"The phoenix," cried Sigfrid. "It is the sign of the blessed Daisan, who rose from death to become Life for us all."

It took flight and rose so swiftly into the heavens that the last star winking into oblivion as the sun spilled light everywhere might have been the last flash of its being seen from mortal Earth.

When it was gone, Prince Ekkehard cried out in astonishment and all the villagers exclaimed in surprise and awe: the hurts of every soul there had miraculously vanished.

"You have witnessed the power of the Son and the Mother," said Sigfrid, who alone among them seemed unamazed. His faith had never wavered. "Thus you are healed."

But Ivar knew that its beauty had scarred him forever.

"DO not be so impatient. This is only a minor setback. We have over five years to train her to fulfill her part, more than enough time. You are allowing your natural distaste for her conduct to overshadow your reason, Brother. All will unfold by our design."

"So you say. But there have been far too many surprises and setbacks up to now."

Sanglant had to concentrate on staking down the log walkway, swinging his mallet at the same rhythmic pace he had been using before Severus and Anne had emerged from the tower and begun walking toward him. He didn't want them to suspect he was listening. After ten months, they still hadn't figured out how good his hearing was.

"It is true that she must be brought to see what folly it is to be bound by earthly desires. I hope that her confinement and illness have shown her the senselessness of indulging in carnal pleasure."

"We must be rid of that—that brute!"

"Cautiously, Brother. I have tested his strengths in many ways, and I am afraid that the geas his mother set on him is stronger than our magic."

"You mean you can't kill him."

"I cannot. But I have certain ideas. We still hold the strongest piece. We must only wait until we can use it against him."

"You will never persuade her to turn on both husband and child!"

"We shall see, Brother. Let us speak of other things."

They had been strolling down the new walkway all this while and now Sanglant stepped aside to let them pass.

"A good day to you, Prince Sanglant," said Anne to him as they cut around the portion he was staking into place. Brother Severus grunted out something that might have been a greeting.

"Good day," he said, resting the mallet over one shoulder. He had a wild urge to slam the wooden sledge into their smug faces, and for an instant the desire seemed blindingly clever, but he dismissed it as quickly. No doubt Anne protected herself, and anyway, he would hardly maintain Liath's good opinion if he murdered her mother.

Even if she had just admitted to being the person who had tried to kill
him.

"Will Liath be attending the noon meal?" asked Anne pleasantly, pausing just out of his reach. She could, he reflected, as easily have walked down the path to ask Liath that question herself. But she did not.

"Nay, I think not." He jiggled a log with one foot; he had almost the entire walkway laid between tower and hall. He and Heribert had set the walkway over the worst muddy bits first as the spring rains ground the pathways into sludge, so that Severus and Anne did not even get their slippers dirty as they skirted this last missing section. "She'll eat her meal at our cottage." Then he smiled.

Anne's hound growled at him, sensing his insincerity, perhaps. He had left his Eika dog staked down near Liath, a habit he had fallen into these last two months since the birth of Blessing.

"Very well," said Anne, and she and Severus stepped up onto the odier portion of the walkway and continued on. Sister Zoe stood just outside the door to the hall, pretending not to watch. Sanglant admired her from this distance, lush curves suggested by the drape of her robe, and she turned suddenly and vanished into the hall. He laughed, and one of the servants pinched him on the thigh, as if to scold him.

"Hush," he said to it, still chuckling. "I've worked enough this morning. Surely I can amuse myself in such a harmless fashion." But it had already flitted away toward the hall where,no doubt, it would be called upon to serve or clean. He smelled freshly-baked bread and realized then how hungry he was. The walkway could wait. Shifting the mallet to drape across both shoulders, he jumped over the logs and strode back along the winding path, through budding grapes and orchards green with leaves and young fruit, that led to his wife and child.

He heard her before he saw her.

"Nay, nay, of course he did the only thing he could. I can't help but envy her, that she can nurse my daughter and I can't."

He came into sight of the hut to see Liath reclining on the couch Heribert had built for her so that she could lie outside and study in the books that Meriam and Venia brought for her. Heribert sat at the foot of the couch. He had been carving a rattle out of cherrywood, but knife and carving lay still in his hands as he and Liath watched Jerna nursing the baby under the shade of an apple tree.

It was truly an odd sight: he could see the bark of the tree through Jerna's translucent body, and although she seemed to have no substance but air and water, she could still hold the baby for short periods of time, enough to nurse it, before it slipped through her pale body as through a thick pudding and sank softly to the ground.

"What do you think her milk is made of?" whispered Liath, but Heribert could only shrug.

"Blessing grows," he said, as if that were enough. And it was enough.

Liath looked up and saw Sanglant. She got a silly grin on her face, swung her legs off the couch, and levered herself up by clinging to the curling seashell back so painstakingly carved by Heribert out of maple. "No, no," she called. "I'll come to you."

It wasn't far, no more than one hundred steps, but he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from running to help her. She was still so weak, as if all her strength had been drained from her, poured out into the child. She couldn't even light a candlewick. But she could walk a hundred paces and only have to lean on him a little as they walked back together. The warmth of her body against him set off all kinds of sensations, but he carefully eased her back onto the couch, patted the dog, and went to wash his hands and face in cold water at the trough by the door.

By the time he returned, a procession of servants had brought trays of food up from the hall: ale, bread, soft cheese flavored with dill, and a pottage of rye meal flavored with salt and cream. She moved aside so that he could sit beside her, and on the whole they ate silently. He was still stewing over the conversation he'd overheard earlier. How had he overlooked that it might have been Anne all along, trying to kill him? She was the obvious choice.

Did Anne truly mean to set Liath against both him and the baby? And how did she mean to accomplish that?

"You're thoughtful today, my lord prince," said Heribert.

"Ah, but today is the feast day of St. Mercurius the Changeable," retorted Liath, "and many stranger things have happened on this day."

Becoming an invalid had released an unlikely store of humor from some recess deep in Liath's being. She wasn't always very funny, but he always felt obliged to laugh because he didn't want to hurt her feelings, and in any case, it was charming to see her try, who had been so unremittingly serious before.

"It is a strange day," he agreed. "For once I'm heartily sick of work."

"I wish we could go somewhere. I don't think I've ever stayed so long in one place as we have here, except for Heart's Rest, and Qurtubah. I'm used to being on the move. It's beautiful here, truly, but sometimes I feel like a prisoner."

Under the tree Blessing finished nursing and as she squirmed, needing to be burped, she began her slow sink through Jerna's arms and body. Heribert leaped up and ran to fetch her.

"We
are
prisoners," Liath added.

"Hush," said Sanglant, laying a hand over hers. "Come, my love, you're just tired of the view. We'll go to the old cottage up—

Heribert returned and sat down at his place on the couch, mulishly reluctant to give up the baby. He was making stupid faces at her, exaggerated eyes and grins, cooing and ooing, because Blessing had just started to smile, and it was truly astounding the lengths to which the three of them would go to coax one of those sudden half startled smiles out of the tiny infant.

"I don't know if I can walk that far," said Liath, but she bit her lip, looking up through the orchard and toward the slopes, as if she'd like to tackle it.

"Then you can ride Resuelto."

It was as easy to coax her as it was to coax a smile from Blessing, who was as yet a remarkably easygoing baby. They finished their meal and started up the path with the dog running point. Liath walked as far as she could, and when she faltered among the dogwood, Sanglant simply swung her up onto the back of Resuelto. Heribert had refused to give up Blessing, and Jerna trailed somewhat behind, nervous of Liath as she always was. The path was strewn with flowers and a layer of decaying pine needles. Here and there they passed stumps of trees he had chopped down.

"Ai, Lady," murmured Liath. "Is it terrible of me to wish there was somewhere else to study? Rosvita suggested the convent of St. Valeria, but I think I'm ruined for that now." She laughed as she looked at him in a way that made his skin flush. An invalidish wife made the marriage bed an uncomfortable place, at least for a man who, before Gent, had never needed to practice self-denial. "Imagine the king's schola if mathematici were among those welcome to get an education there!"

"Hush," he murmured, still thinking about the manifold comforts of the marriage bed. "If there are servants about, they'll carry your words to them below."

They came past the birch grove to the high clearing and the barrier of cliff and fallen boulders. Summer flowers had sprung up among the spring primroses and snowdrops. It was still difficult to tell the seasons in a valley where any apple tree bore bud, flower, and fully ripened fruit on every branch. But with Liath he had learned to watch the wheel of the stars, and he knew that summer was almost upon them. Out in the world beyond, the campaign season had begun. Did Henry fight in the east? Had he marched south to Aosta, or was he stalled in the north haggling with or threatening recalcitrant nobles? Had Eika attacked again, or had their defeat at Gent weakened them so badly that it would be a generation before they struck the northern coasts with the same fury they had under Bloodheart?

Remarkably, he could think of Bloodheart now without an unwanted growl slipping from him. He hadn't had a nightmare for two months. He helped Liath off Resuelto. She was so tired, and she dozed off as he settled her down on the pallet in the old hut that they'd made comfortable months ago, the only place they could escape the watchful eyes of Anne's servants. He had certain vivid memories of those days.

"I haven't been up here much" said Heribert, poking around.