Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (51 page)

"The Lost Ones," said Anne. "They seek the gateways." She turned away from Liath. "So, Prince Sanglant. Will you walk with us when night comes and we open the gate?"

"The Lost Ones," he repeated, dumbfounded, and knowing he sounded like a fool. "But they're gone. They vanished long ago, even before the old Empire. The old Dariyans, the empresses and emperors, they weren't even true elves, they were only half-breeds."

"Like you."

"Like me," he said harshly. "But nevertheless the Aoi went away so long ago that maybe they're just a story."

"Except for your mother?"

He closed his mouth on an angry retort. On such a field, she would rout him. He knew when to shut up.

"Where did they go, then?" asked Liath. Abruptly Sanglant understood what she concealed with her expression: She didn't want her mother to know that she had spoken with an Aoi sorcerer, that she had passed through one of the gates and returned. Where had she traveled on that journey?

"Where, indeed," said Anne, echoing Liath's question. "In Verna, where we have some measure of protection, you will see what answers we have come to."

Twilight came and, with it, stars, like exclamations, each one unseen, unspoken, and then suddenly popping into view. Anne rose, shook out her robes, and took the reins of her mule. Sanglant made haste to get Resuelto and the other mule while Liath brought up the rear. Just before entering the stones Anne knelt and began to diagram in the dirt, using her staff to draw angles and lines. After a bit she rose and considered first him and then Liath.

"This may damage your eyes," she said at last, and she found cloth with which to blindfold them.

"But I want to learn—!"

"In due time, Liath. You would not want to go blind, would you?"

Liath fumed, but Anne waited until it became obvious that they would go no farther this night unless they acquiesced. Sanglant had to crouch for Anne to reach him, to tie the cloth over his eyes. The procession made a complicated skein: one pack mule at the front where Anne could reach it, he behind holding Resuelto with Liath mounted on the gelding, holding in her hands the lead for the other mule and the reins of the mare. In this way he waited. He heard Anne's staff scratching in the dirt. A thrumming rose from the ground. The dog whined, ears flattening. The horses stirred nervously, although the mules merely stood with stubborn patience, waiting it out. Even through the cloth he thought he saw light flickering.

Without warning, the mule started forward. He kept one hand on its girth and the other on Resuelto's reins and managed to move forward into the stones without stumbling. The ground shifted under his feet, disorienting him. The night air had a gentle touch, like spring. His ears buzzed, and it took him a moment to realize that he was
hearing
voices, like the servants' voice, but many more and all in a jumble.

Shapes brushed past him. Fingers pinched his body. At once, he tore off the blindfold. The night sky shone clearly with no trace of cloud except for huge dark shapes that were not cloud at all but mountain. Three figures were walking up a path to greet them, but he could not see their faces. Anne walked down to speak with the people below, who had halted on the path. He saw now the shimmer and dance of aery spirits flocking around him, and shying away from Liath.

"She drew down the power, from what she read in the heavens, and opened a pathway," breathed Liath. She had also pulled down her blindfold. "Da spoke of it, but he never attempted it. Sometimes I thought it was just a story he made up. But it
is
true. There
are
threads woven between the souls of the stars. The sage Pythia said that if you listen closely enough, you can hear the song made by the spheres as they turn. Each one striking a different note in relation to the other, always changing. An endless melody."

"Hush," he said softly. "I hear them."

"The music of the spheres?" She strained, listening, but obviously heard nothing, probably only faint sounds of wind and small animals rustling in the leaves.

"The servants."

She had dropped the reins of her horse, leaving it to explore the luxuriant grass, and now she touched his elbow, began to speak as she peered around her, trying to see them. But he touched a finger to her lips to still her.

And he listened.

Slowly their voices came clear, or perhaps only the ones that had traveled with them had modulated their tone enough that he could now begin to understand them.

"Where are we?" he whispered.

But they only answered.
"Spring."

They were very excited, clustering close, shying off, always coming back. They circled round in a dance that was not a dance, half seen against night and blazing stars.

Suddenly it all became clear, not in words precisely but in the way they fluttered in and out, venturing to touch Liath but frightened of something about her, cautious, yet curious, pulled by that curiosity in the same way that the servant had hovered around the dead mule. They were attracted to something never before experienced and strange to them, who were not formed of earth.

He laughed with a sudden wild happiness and pulled Liath against him to whisper in her ear.

"They say you're carrying a child."

ZACHARIAS poked at the skinned and spitted squirrels and watched clear fluid dribble down. "We can eat."

This night they had made camp beside a stream, within the shelter of trees grown up among a tumble of boulders: shelter, defense, and water. For the first time in days, she had allowed Zacharias to make a fire while she snared squirrels. They had seen no sign of Quman raiders since the burned village, uncounted days ago. Once, as a churchman, he had kept track of the days and always known which saint's praise to sing at Prime and Vespers. Now he watched the sun rise and set, that was all. Today had been a day like any other summer's day, made more pleasant because he had not yet been killed and beheaded by his enemies.

She crouched beside him and took the larger portion of the first squirrel, as she always did. He did not begrudge it to her. "You are always looking over your back," she observed. "Are you a prince among your people that the Quman should pursue you so? You do not seem like a prince to me."

"I am a freeholder's son and grandson," he said proudly, "not a lord."

"Then why do the Quman want you?"

"Among the Quman I was a slave, but I publicly mocked the war leader of the clan who owned me, the one called Bulkezu. I mocked him in front of the
begh
—the chieftain—of a neighboring tribe, in front of his wives and daughters. Bad enough for a man to do it, but for me—Bulkezu cannot let the insult go unavenged."

She licked her fingers and sat back on her haunches. "You are not a man?" Fat dripped from the cooking meat and sizzled on the coals beneath. He did not answer, "Ah," she said suddenly. "You are missing the man-thing. The man part. I do not know what it is called in this language."

Was that the heat of the fire searing his face, or his own shame?

When she saw that he would not reply, she shrugged and busied herself tallying the provisions that remained to them: three hard black loaves, five strips of dried meat, two pouches of beans and withered peas, a hand-sized block of salt, and turnips that had a rancid smell.

"You've never told me your name," he said, in a burst of anger. "You know mine. I offered it when we met. But you've never given me yours in exchange."

She had a way of smiling that displayed threat as much as amusement. "In exchange for what?" "My service!"

"No. That you gave in exchange for your life, which I saved from the one you call Bulkezu." She hoisted one of the leather bottles looted from the burned village, the last that still held hard cider. Unstoppering it, she poured a little on her hand and lapped it up, made a face, but she took a draught anyway and passed the bottle on to Zacharias. The backwash of its heady flavor made him light-headed and bold.

"It's true I have nothing to offer you except—" His gaze lit on her skin skirt, and he shuddered, went on. "—except my knowledge of the Wendish people. That's worth nothing to you, since you've traveled among them before, so it seems. But it would be simple kindness to offer me your name, after we have traveled so far together."

"Kindness?
What is
kindness?"

"It is the custom of my people to exchange names," he said finally. It angered him that she held more of him than he did of her. But they could never be equals, no matter what.

The woman put all the provisions back in the pouches, keeping out only one loaf, which she broke to show a moist, thick, dark interior. She tr. Zacharias eased the second squirrel off the spit and they ate inied it, nodded, and broke the loaf into equal portions, handing one to Zacharias, then sat back on her heels as she chewed silence while the fire guttered and sank to coals. She answered abruptly. "I am known among my people as The-One-Who-Is-Impatient. The Wendish people knew me as The-One-Who-Is-Not-Like-Us." "What can I call you?" She had grease on her thumb, and she drew the thumb down one seam of her skirt so that the fat soaked into the skin, darkening it.

Who had once lived in that skin, and how had he lost it?
Her eyes had the hard green glare of emeralds. "The-One-Whose-Wish-is-Law."

"You have no real name?" The profusion of titles puzzled him.

"A name is only what other people call me. Since I am a different thing to each one of them, I have many names."

"What do you call yourself?"

She grinned. She had remarkably beautiful teeth, white, and straight. "You I will call More-Clever-Than-He-Looks. I do not need to call myself because I am already in my body. But if you need a title, you may call me
Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari,
or if that is too much for your tongue, then Kansi-a-lari."

This challenge at least he could meet. He had always been proud of his clever tongue. "Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari." He stumbled over it, said it a second time, then a third after she corrected his pronunciation. By the fourth he could pronounce it well enough to please her, and she laughed.

"Well, then, More-Clever-Than-He-Looks, build up the fire."

Brush and deadwood littered the area and was easy to collect. Twilight had barely deepened to night when he laid on more wood and watched the fire blaze. She rocked back and forth on her heels, palms out. Flames built, leaped, and melded into an archway. And through it: Fire.

Nothing else, only fire. No figure of a man, such as they had seen before.

Kansi-a-lari muttered words, like a curse. She wove her fingers together, making a lattice of them, and through this lattice she looked at the fire again, as through a screen. Zacharias saw only fire, as seen through a veil. She spoke another word. Dim shapes flickered to life in the fire. A lord rode on a handsome horse at the head of an impressive retinue. He had silvering hair and beard, a man in his prime. Standards flew before him: eagle, lion, and dragon.

"The king!" breathed Zacharias in amazement, not because he had ever seen the king but because he recognized his sigils.

But she frowned at this image of the king, seeking someone else.

"Sawnglawnt,"
she said, more commanding now, but the image faded and fire danced and blazed. She spoke another word, and shadows appeared within the fire, sharpening into visions:
A dead dog lies tumbled in leaves. Its ribs glare white against decaying black fur. A gaping hole sags in the flesh of its belly where something has eaten it away from without
—
or within.

A man dressed in cleric's robes sits in a shuttered room. He has the clean chin and short hair of a man sworn to the church, and his hair is starkly gold, as if a sorcerer had spun it out of pure metal. His hand trembles as he reaches to touch writing on a sheet of parchment that lies on the table before him. The vision is so clear that Zacharias can read the words:
"To Mother Rothgard of St. Valeria, from the hand of Sister Rosvita of Kor-vei, now in the king's schola, this message delivered to you by my trusted companion Amabilia of Leon. I beg you, Mother, to travel with Sister Amabilia to Autun. You are needed to testify to the events—
The man smiles, revealing a chipped tooth
—
the only flaw in his beauty. He folds the parchment up. Underneath it lies a bronze Circle of Unity. Dried blood stains it. The man lifts it and spins it by its chain, and the vision spins and folds in on itself and becomes something else. . . .

A strange bronze-colored man hugs his knees to himself. He is shaped like a man, mostly, but he looks like no man Zacharias has ever seen. His hair gleams like polished bone, his skin has the scaly texture of snake hide, and he goes naked like a wild person except for a scrap of cloth tied around his bony hips. He holds in one hand a staff. With a sliver of sharp-edged obsidian he carves marks along the length of the wood, then dips a feather in little pots of ocher and paints the marks a dull red. Many small items he weaves together, rolls up, and stuffs inside the hollowed-out staff. Now and again he rocks back on his heels and throws his head back
—
Zacharias hears nothing
—
and howls, in triumph or in pain. A ripple crosses this vision, the shadow of great stone figures and a circle of smooth sand…