Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

Still she did not move. She was too stunned to move. She sat so still that eventually a trio of half-wild pigs, all tusks and bristles and sleek haunches, ventured out onto the path to investigate this bright interloper. But as soon as the lead pig nudged the white feather with its snout, the feather spit sparks, flashed and, with a whirlpool of smoke, dissipated into the air. The pigs squealed and scattered.

Liath laughed almost hysterically, but as soon as the fit passed, she was swept by such anger that she could barely get the book back into the saddlebag because her hands shook so. Was it such a creature that had murdered Da? Even that very one? Anger and terror warred within her, but anger won out. It hadn’t seen her. Da’s magic still protected her; whatever spell he had laid on her long ago had not died with him.

times, frustrated by her ignorance, she would simply close her eyes and imagine Da beside her on the quiet road. The sun’s warmth was like his presence, soothing and secure; oddly, she could never imagine him by her on cloudy days. Perhaps his spirit, looking down on her from the Chamber of Light where he now resided at peace, could only see her when his view down through the seven spheres was unobstructed.

“Do you suppose,” she imagined him asking now, “that souls have sight? Or is that sense reserved for those who wear an earthly body?”

“You’re trying to trick me, Da,” she would answer. “Angels and daimones don’t wear earthly bodies. They wear bodies made up of the pure elements, fire and light and wind and air, and yet they can see with a sight that is keener than that of humankind. They can see both past and future. They can see the souls of the stars.”

“Some have argued they are the souls of the fixed stars.” Thus would the argument be joined, over free will and Fate and natural law. And if not that argument, then a different one, for Da had a fine treasure-house of his own, knowledge earned over many years of study, and though his “city of memory” was not as finely honed as Liath’s—for he had taught her skills of memory which he had only mastered late in life—it was yet impressive. He knew so much, and all of it he meant to teach to his daughter, especially the secrets of the mathematici, the knowledge of the stars and of the movements of the planets through the heavens.

A sudden gust of wind fluttered the pages of the open book, set on her knee. Snow swirled past, but there were no clouds in the sky now. The cold wind brought memory.

Wings, settling on the eaves. A sudden gust of white snow through the smoke hole, although it was not winter.

Asleep and aware, bound to silence. Awake but unable to move, and therefore still asleep. The darkness held her down as if it were a weight draped over her.

A voice of bells, heard as if on the wind. Two sharp thunks sounded, arrows striking wood.

“Your weak arrows avail you nothing,” said the voice of bells. “Where is she?”

“Nowhere you can find her,” said Da.

“Liath,” said a voice of bells, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Heart beating wildly, she dared not move, but she had to look. Snow spun past like the trailing edge of a storm, flakes dissolving in the sun. A feathery gleam lit the track where it bent away northward, a roiling in the air like the fluttering of translucent wings as pale as the air itself.

Something came toward her down the road.

The fear bit so deep, like a griffin’s beak closing on her throat, that she could not draw breath. Certainly she could not run. Da’s voice rang in her ears: “Safety lies in staying hidden.”

She did not move.

“Liathano.”

She heard it then, clearly, the voice made of the echoes of bells ringing away long into an unbroken night. She saw it though it was not any earthly being. It did not walk the track but rather floated above it, as if unable to set its aetherical being fully in contact with the dense soil of the mortal world. It came down the track from the north, faceless, with only humanlike limbs and the form of a human body and the wings of an angel to give it shape.

It called her, alluring, not unmusical, with that awful throbbing bass vibrato in its tone. It wanted her to answer. It compelled her to answer.

But Da had protected her against magic. Silent, as still as stone, she did not move. She held her breath. A leaf blown free by the wind fluttered over her arms and came to rest on the open book, and then a second, as if the earth itself collaborated in hiding her.

The creature stalked past her, still calling, and went on up the road to the south and, at last, out of her sight. A single white feather swirled in the eddy left by its passing and drifted down to the ground. It was so pale that it shone like purest glass. Where she had tied it to a leather cord to hang around her neck, the gold feather left to her by the Aoi sorcerer burned against her skin as if in warning.

Still she did not move. She was too stunned to move. She sat so still that eventually a trio of half-wild pigs, all tusks and bristles and sleek haunches, ventured out onto the path to investigate this bright interloper. But as soon as the lead pig nudged the white feather with its snout, the feather spit sparks, flashed and, with a whirlpool of smoke, dissipated into the air. The pigs squealed and scattered.

Liath laughed almost hysterically, but as soon as the fit passed, she was swept by such anger that she could barely get the book back into the saddlebag because her hands shook so. Was it such a creature that had murdered Da? Even that very one? Anger and terror warred within her, but anger won out. It hadn’t seen her. Da’s magic still protected her; whatever spell he had laid on her long ago had not died with him.

With anger came revelation: All those years she had thought him a failed sorcerer when instead he had poured that power into keeping her hidden.

“I swear to you, Da,” she whispered, standing beside her horse with her eyes turned to the heavens where, perhaps, his soul looked down upon her, trapped on the mortal earth, “that I’ll find out what it was that killed you.”

“Nay, Liath, you must be careful,” she imagined him saying to her. He was always so afraid.

And for good reason. Was it the aetherical daimone itself that stalked them, or a human sorcerer, a maleficus, who had drawn it from its sphere above the moon and coerced it to do his bidding?

“I’ll be like a mouse,” she murmured. “They’ll never see me. I promise you, Da. I’ll never let them catch me.” With that, in her imagination, he seemed to be content.

A distant flock of sheep crested a rise and disappeared out of her view, an amorphous body herded by unseen dogs and a single shepherd. She did not want to stay here, where the creature had come so close. Apprehensive now and still unnerved by that unearthly sight and by the horrible, sick fear that had come over her when its inhuman voice spoke her name, she mounted and rode on. On this, her third day out of Quedlinhame, she could expect to come by nightfall to the palace at Goslar, so Hathui had told her. Please the Lady that she did; she did not want to sleep alone this night. And from Goslar, if the weather held, another four days of steady riding would bring her to Osterburg, the city and fortress favored by Duchess Rotrudis.