Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

Ai, Lady, no one can save her. Hugh has returned, as he promised he would. How foolish she was to think she had escaped him. All this time she thought she had at last won free of him, but she cannot now and never will be free of him on the realm of earth where his power is vast and hers insignificant, only here, in the vision made by fire, where he cannot follow her. And in the vision made by fire, other things stalk her.

She needs help so desperately and she does not know where to turn.

Through the endless twisting halls she seeks the gateway that will lead her to the old Aoi sorcerer.

There! Seen in shadow, in a dark dry corridor walled in stone, she sees two people walking, searching as she is.

There! A boy sleeps with six companions, heads pillowed on stone, feet and knees covered by heaps of treasure, armbands of beaten gold, rings, gems, vessels poured out of the silver of moonlight, and smooth scarlet beads that are dragon’s blood turned to stone with exposure to the air.

ert gazed at the sky, then at the circle, and whispered, “It’s the eastern-facing doorway. Does that mean something?”

“Of course it means something,” she said. “It means this doorway looks toward the rising sun, perhaps at midwinter or midsummer.”

He shuddered. As the sun set behind the hills opposite them, west across the eerie architecture of stones, it threw long shadows out from the stones that made weird patterns, almost like writing, on the short grass. The rising moon, its pale face lifting above the distant mountains, heralded night.

Enter by this gate, said the daimone.

“Certainly,” said Antonia graciously. “I will follow you.”

I go no further. I cannot enter the halls of iron. My task is done once I have guided you here.

“If we choose not to go?”

It vanished. One moment its disturbance roiled the air, the next the sun slipped down below the hills and the moon breathed paler light across a landscape empty of wind or the pulsation of air that had marked the daimone’s presence.

“What do we do?” whimpered Heribert, shivering harder. “We don’t know what’s in there. How could anyone drag such huge stones up these foothills?”

“We enter,” said Antonia calmly. “We have no fire, no food, no shelter. We’ll freeze out here. We have chosen to put ourselves at the mercy of our mysterious correspondent. We must go forward.” And take our revenge for this insulting treatment later, she finished in her own thoughts. Such sentiments she could not share with poor, weak Heribert.

She did not wait for him to go first. They would be here all night while he gathered up his courage. “Take hold of my cloak,” she said, “so that we can by no means become separated.”

“But it’s only a stone circle. We’ll freeze—!”

When she walked under the threshold, the heavy stone lintel almost brushed her head; Heribert had to duck. But they did not come out into the empty center of the circle with the twilit sky above them and tattered clouds blowing past the rising moon.

Once under the circle, once circled by stone—below her feet, above her head, and on her right and left—they crossed into earth without any obvious transition. They walked into a darkness relieved only by a pale globe receding before them—the constant moon—and yet when she put her hands out to either side she pressed stone walls, ragged to her touch. Stone made a ceiling above them, and smooth paving led their feet forward into the hidden dark.

Heribert caught in his breath and tugged at her cloak. “We’re in a tunnel!” he gasped.

“Come,” she said, more impressed than afraid. “This is powerful magic. Let us see where it leads us.”

2

THERE are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds that blow above the sphere of the moon, and now and again their gaze falls like the strike of lightning to the earth below, where it sears anything it touches. Their voices have the snap of fire and their bodies are the conjoining of fire and wind, the breath of the sun coalesced into mind and will.

All this she sees inside the vision made by fire. Here she runs as would a mouse, silent and watchful, staying in the shadows. She braves the unknown passageways and the vast hidden halls where other creatures lurk. This skill alone—that of seeing through fire—Da did not strip from her, or perhaps the skill manifested only because Da died. It may be all that saves her, if she can learn to use it to spy on those who seek her out, to hide herself from whatever—whomever—murdered Da.

It may even be that someone who also can see within the vision made by fire can help her. Can save her.

Ai, Lady, no one can save her. Hugh has returned, as he promised he would. How foolish she was to think she had escaped him. All this time she thought she had at last won free of him, but she cannot now and never will be free of him on the realm of earth where his power is vast and hers insignificant, only here, in the vision made by fire, where he cannot follow her. And in the vision made by fire, other things stalk her.

She needs help so desperately and she does not know where to turn.

Through the endless twisting halls she seeks the gateway that will lead her to the old Aoi sorcerer.

There! Seen in shadow, in a dark dry corridor walled in stone, she sees two people walking, searching as she is.

There! A boy sleeps with six companions, heads pillowed on stone, feet and knees covered by heaps of treasure, armbands of beaten gold, rings, gems, vessels poured out of the silver of moonlight, and smooth scarlet beads that are dragon’s blood turned to stone with exposure to the air.