Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (86 page)

Rosvita took the horn from Mother Obligatia and blew: the sound arced, and sputtered, and then she tried again and this time it grew low and deep, resounding off the rocks, until she ran out of breath and it stuttered and failed. She heard an answering horn at once, and they waited.

Hugh strained to hold the lines in their new configuration, and yet as the entourage rumbled up the path and the moon slid along its night's road, some lines fell into place while others had to be nudged back into the pattern.

Captain Fulk and his soldiers came into view with Adelheid and Theophanu directly behind them, lamps raised to light their way, and they halted in astonishment as Rosvita and Mother Obligatia quickly stepped off the path.

"Quickly," said Hugh, almost panting from exertion although he hadn't moved from his kneeling position. His face was hidden; only the lines of his back and neck and the catch in his voice revealed his tension. His hair gleamed like gold. "You must go through now while the heavens—while the heavens are in this conjunction. Quickly. The path will close."

"Dear God," said one of the soldiers, and Captain Fulk told him to hush.

"But I don't know—" Hugh went on, almost hoarse from exertion.

"You don't know what?" cried Theophanu sharply. Like Adelheid, she was now mounted; her groom walked beside her with one hand on the bridle of her horse. The others crowded up behind them, horses whickering, servants and companions nervous and mumbling.

—where you'll come out."

Adelheid laughed. She spurred her horse forward, past the soldiers, past Captain Fulk, skirting Hugh, to pass under the gleaming arch, where she vanished. Just like that.

Whether Theophanu hated to be shown up or suspected as cowardly, or had simply handed her fate into Rosvita's hands without thought to the consequences, Rosvita could not guess. "Captain!" Theophanu called now, and Captain Fulk shouted the marching orders. His soldiers started forward with the grim expressions of men who have been ordered to march off a cliff for the good of their lady.

"Ai, God!" said Rosvita as Theophanu passed her, looking only at the frighteningly beautiful lattice shining in the night in front of her. "Mother Obligatia! I must speak to you."

"I never thought—" Obligatia's whispered words were almost lost beneath the tramp and creak of the entourage moving forward.

"Listen to me! I've no proof, and if my suspicions are true then the knowledge will be dangerous to you and to those in your charge—" A horse brushed close, knocking her off-balance, and she had to catch herself against rock, scraping her palm.

"Steady, child." Mother Obligatia used her stick to fend away a straying servant who looked ready to bolt. "Knowledge is always dangerous. Come, Daughter. Move away where we won't be jostled." She drew Rosvita out of the way, hard up against a pinnacle. Moonlight made alabaster of her face, made her young again, an innocent maiden used and discarded.

Rosvita found she was breathing heavily and that she had broken out into a weeping sweat. Her stomach ached, and she was so tired. But she had to hurry. "I think Fidelis was Queen Radegundis' lost child. That he was Taillefer's last and only legitimate son. If that's so, then you gave birth to Taillefer's granddaughter, conceived in and born out of a legal and binding union. If I'm correct, then it's not surprising that there are folk abroad in the world who seek you out, now that they know you are still alive, now that they may wonder how much you know. If I'm correct, then it means that Wolfhere is far more than what he seems. It cannot be coincidence that he appears so often in your tale."

"Well," said Mother Obligatia with the kind of smile a queen gives when she is finally handed proof that her best companion and adviser has been plotting treason all along, "that is a great deal bluntly said, Sister."

"Sister Rosvita!" The cry came from the retinue, and she looked up to see Brother Fortunatus waving frantically at her even as he was pushed and prodded along. He tried to get out of line, to join her, he gestured and called to her, but he was forced along as the main party pressed on after the queen and the princess, the most reluctant thrust forward by the most loyal. A horse balked and had to be whipped. She could not see Hugh, for the path into the crown lay between her place and his. Threads of light still drew taut between the heavens and the earth, twined among the stones, and the stars seemed to pulse—or maybe she was so exhausted that she was seeing things.

"I was the only novice Clothilde ever brought to St. Radegundis' convent," said Obligatia suddenly. "Does that not seem strange to you? Doesn't it seem strange that she looked the other way when Fidelis and I met? That she herself witnessed our pledge of consent and, because she witnessed, gave legitimacy to our union?"

"She must have desperately wanted Taillefer's legitimate son to sire an heir in his turn."

"But if the Eagle's part in this tale is no coincidence, then Clothilde's actions must be equally suspect. If this is all true, then she must have known who Fidelis was. She must have agreed to keep his birth secret. But why wait so long, then, for his marriage? Why not sooner, before all those who might have supported him were dead and a new lineage established on the throne of Salia? Why wait until he was full fifty years of age?"

The answer came in an instant. It was obvious, if you believed the fantastic premise. "She waited until Queen Radegundis was dead."

"'Radegundis swore to marry no earthly prince.' And swore the same for her son, perhaps. Ai, God, poor Fidelis. He was a man with a full heart. If that's so, if Queen Radegundis wanted to spare him the chains of worldly power, then Clothilde did not serve Queen Radegundis as well as the tales sing, did she? Yes I can well believe it, having suffered her attentions."

"From this distance we cannot know what was in either woman's mind."

"To randomly pluck a foundling girl from an obscure convent and carry her so many leagues and across two realms on such a subtle conspiracy that in the end came to nothing. It seems incredible."

"But it didn't come to nothing. Where is your daughter? What happened to her? I mean to find out."

The last of the horses had crossed, and the rearguard, fallen into a robust drinking song perhaps to lend themselves courage, marched two abreast into the archway.

"Hurry, Sister!" cried Mother Obligatia, clutching Rosvita's hand briefly, then thrusting her forward. "Find out what you can!"

Rosvita hurried forward with her heart pounding like a hammer and her breath short and painful and her knees ready to give out. The dirt was all churned and scuffed, and she kicked fresh manure in her haste, but the pungent scent exploded and gave her strength somehow to hasten on as the last soldier vanished through the shining archway. A leather pouch lay discarded on the ground just beside the glowing arch. She bent to pick it up and felt the familiar lines of the
Vita
together with the unbound pages of her
History.
Fortunatus had taken the copies and gone on, had left these for her, and with a gladdened heart she hastened after him only to hear her name,
"Rosvita,"

voiced as softly as a whispered curse, behind her. Light flared as she turned to look back, standing with one foot within the circle and one outside it on night-soaked earth, hoping to see Mother Obligatia, but she only saw Hugh. He stood with his staff dangling from his hands, staring after her with an unreadable expression as the threads burned and tangled and the swelling moon bloated like a dead thing until it encompassed the entire sky.

Ai, God, what had she done? She had agreed to let him proceed with his plan. She had persuaded Theophanu to allow it to happen. With her complicity, at her urging, she had caused for

bidden sorcery to flower in this holy place. Horrified, she stepped backward and was instantly awash in light, disoriented, pathless.

But Sister Amabilia met her there in the light, smiling although her throat was cut and blood ran down the front of her cleric's robes.

"Dear God, Sister," cried Rosvita, hurrying to embrace her. "Where have you been?" But she could not catch Amabilia in her arms; no matter how close she came or how fast she hurried after her, Amabilia remained always the same distance away.

"J
am murdered, Sister. They came upon me out of the forest
and slew me and my escort, but they took nothing but the letter I carried for Mother Rothgard and the Circle of Unity I wore at my heart. I thought I would live to be as old and wise as you, Sister, but it was not to be. Yet do not mourn for me, for I have been granted God's embrace. Only beware, Sister. You are in danger as well."

"Ai, God, Amabilia! Can this be true?" She wept, and her tears became slivers of ice in the cold wind. "No one writes as beautifully as you do. How can I work without your jesting and your kind heart beside me?"

"Guard yourself, Sister. Guard those we love. Stay on the path."

Amabilia was gone. There was no one there. It had only been a vision, and no doubt a false one at that, and the road was gone as well, only her tears turned to ice beneath her feet that burned and pierced her, each step an agony. The leather pouch tucked under her arm grew hot, blistering her skin, and she swung it out and away from her and drew out the
Vita
to save it. But it was the book itself that cast off light and heat. Sigils woven into the cover of the book ignited like coals come alight, magical bindings and protections sewn into leather and into the parchment itself, strange symbols and familiar ones, the signs representing the planets and the sun and the moon, the Circle of Unity, Arethousan letters and other ones she did not know, peeping here and there from within Fidelis' meticulous hand.

Who was Fidelis protecting himself against? From whom was he hiding?

And then they loomed above her, manifesting out of the light, resplendent and terrible, spirits burning in the aether with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives, and when their gaze struck her, it was like being struck by lightning.

"Where is the child?"

Their voices rolled with the searing blaze of flame torn from the Sun. She was no longer on earth, she knew that then, and she was lost because the road had vanished before her and behind her. She covered her eyes but she was already sightless, blinded by their refulgence, and desperately she staggered backward, hoping to escape.

But she fell. She fell and the wind rushed past as though she had fallen and was falling and would fall for a thousand thousand years. Darkness swallowed her, and she saw no moon and no stars. She knew then which road she had followed: She had taken the last step over the precipice and now she was plunging forever into the bottomless pit, where her sins had led her.

HAD Zacharias known how far away lay the palace of coils, he might not have followed her. They walked west through the marchlands that summer, and then, as the autumn rains and storms came and went, they walked through Wendar, tramping down the paths and old roads of the duchies of Fesse and Saony, on into the old queendom of Varre which now lay under the rule of Wendish kings. They came close enough to see the towers of Autun, but never did they enter any city or town. They hunted game and gathered herbs and reeds and flowers in the forests and wild lands. The horse did well enough on grass and weeds. Sometimes at villages he traded pelts which he'd skinned or baskets or magical charms woven by Kansi-a-lari in exchange for flour or salt or cider. Once, they traded a charm for fertility to a barren householder in exchange for a length of cloth. The young farmwife's monthly courses had ceased just after her marriage, but no child had ever come. Kansi-a-lari's interest in this problem amazed Zacharias. She had so little interest in the doings of humankind, but for this barren woman she interrupted their trip for fully four weeks while she plied her with hazelnut porridge, marjoram tea, and various oils and potions out of blind nettle or jessamine. Zacharias watched her carefully; he had a good memory, and she knew things that were forbidden by the church. As if by a miracle, the young woman's courses resumed for the first time in five years. The grateful householder sewed them tunics out of the cloth, and that made the trip easier, because now Kansi-a-lari could wear something other than the skin skirt and Quman jacket and he something other than his torn frater's robes, something to make her look a little less foreign and him look more like a man. With these disguises they could even work for bed and board at outlying farms when their supplies ran low.

At Candlemass they paid two copper coins and a charm against warts to the ferryman who took them over the Olliar River, and when they stepped onto the opposite shore, they stood on Salian soil. Zacharias discovered to his surprise that Kansi-a-lari spoke Salian better than she spoke Wendish.

Here in Salia, it rained perhaps one day out of ten, never snowed, and even in the mornings no more than a film of ice coated such puddles as laced the ground. It was fine weather for traveling, but he sensed a tide of desperation in the countryfolk as they surveyed their sparse winter crops and their wasted woodlands. If the rains did not come soon, there would be no spring flowering. Because of their fear, the countryfolk wanted no out-landers in their villages, so he and the Aoi woman took to camping in the woods every night. It was no great hardship. They wore tunics, now, and leggings and cloaks made of fur. He missed ale and cider, but there were running streams aplenty to drink from, and he rarely suffered from the stomach complaints he had been plagued with while living as a slave among the Quman.