Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

After such misery as made Alain wince to hear it, she had been rescued by Eagles. Yet she could not trust even them, certainly not Wolfhere. She couldn’t trust anyone except an Eagle named Hanna who was now, somehow, Father Hugh’s prisoner. Except Prince Sanglant, whom she had met in Gent—and he was dead. Except perhaps an Aoi sorcerer seen through fire, and she had no idea where he was. In the end, tormented again by Father Hugh, she had discovered the most terrifying knowledge of all: She held locked inside her a sorcerous power trapped in her bones or in her blood over which she had no control.

“I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what it means or what it is, how much Da locked away and how much he never knew of. I only know he was trying to protect me. What if I go back to the king’s progress? Hugh is holding Hanna as a hostage to make me come back. And if I don’t go back, then what becomes of her? Ai, Lady, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what’s going to become of Hanna. But if I go back to the king’s progress, Hugh will imprison me again. There’s nowhere to run anymore. I’m so afraid.”

o;I want to understand!” he said, angry that she would think he didn’t care. He sought and found her hands where she had wrapped them in an end of her cloak. “There is so much fear in you, Liath. What are you running from?” He leaned forward without thinking and kissed her on the forehead. A few stray ends of her hair tickled his nose. Her entire body stiffened and at once he dropped her hands and leaned back. Sorrow, behind them, growled softly and scrabbled forward, but not too much, not too close.

“I beg your pardon!” said Alain. What had come over him? Yet what he felt now was nothing like the sinful, intense yearning that engulfed him when he thought of Tallia. He simply knew he must find some way to shelter Liath, just as he had known he had to save the Eika prince that awful night when Lackling was sacrificed in place of the Eika.

By now his eyes had adjusted well enough to the gloom that he could see her fairly well, sitting stiff and straight, her cloak draped in folds down to the floor, her single braid tucked away inside the hood. When she turned her head to stare at the fire, her eyes glinted with a spark of blue.

She only needed encouragement.

Haltingly, hoping to encourage her by his own open-heartedness, he told his story. It came out all in a jumble as he skipped from one thing to the next, watching her face by firelight to see how she responded. He told her of Fifth Son and the hounds, of Lackling’s murder by Biscop Antonia, of the guivre and Agius’ death. Of the vision he had seen in the old Dariyan ruins, the shade who spoke the name “Liathano” and then vanished in a maelstrom of fire and smoke and battle. Of the dreams he still had, his link to the Eika prince.

When he stumbled to a close, she held a hand out to warm it over the coals. “Artemisia describes five types of dreams: the enigmatic dream, the prophetic vision, the oracular dream, the nightmare, and the apparition. It’s hard to judge what you experienced. ‘Enigmatic’ because the meaning of your dreams is concealed with strange shapes and veils—”

“But they don’t seem like dreams at all. It’s as if I see through his eyes, as if I am him.”

“The Eika are not like us,” she said softly. “They wield magics we have no knowledge of.”

The comment surprised him into blurting out a careless thought. “Do you have knowledge of magic?”

Their silence drew out until it became like a living thing which, hiding in the shadows, does not know whether to bolt into the nether darkness or advance into the clear, clean light. Abruptly, in a low, almost monotone voice and in short bursts punctuated by silences, she began to talk.

She told him of a childhood faintly remembered, of the sudden flight she and her da had made from that pleasant home after the death of her mother. She told him of many years wandering in distant lands, and though she spoke as one who has lived every day in fear, he ached to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about all the far and curious places he had ever dreamed of visiting. It seemed, strangely, that inside her words he heard her wish for a safe haven, like the walls of a monastery, to which she could retire, while she had lived the very adventure he had always hoped for and known would be denied him. She had seen Darre and the wild coast of eastern Aosta. She had sailed to Nakria and roamed the ruins of dead Kartiako. She had explored the fabulous palace of the ruler of Qurtubah in the Jinna kingdom of Andalla and wandered the market stalls of busy Medemelacha in Salia. She had seen with her own eyes creatures and wonders he had never heard tell of, not even from the merchants of Osna village, the most traveled people he knew.

But for this she had paid a price. She had lost her father, murdered at night by sorcery with no mark left on his body. Even now, fell creatures stalked her—some of them inhuman and one all too human. Seeking sorcerous knowledge from The Book of Secrets as well as what secrets he was sure she held hidden inside her, a holy man of the church had made her his slave—and worse.

After such misery as made Alain wince to hear it, she had been rescued by Eagles. Yet she could not trust even them, certainly not Wolfhere. She couldn’t trust anyone except an Eagle named Hanna who was now, somehow, Father Hugh’s prisoner. Except Prince Sanglant, whom she had met in Gent—and he was dead. Except perhaps an Aoi sorcerer seen through fire, and she had no idea where he was. In the end, tormented again by Father Hugh, she had discovered the most terrifying knowledge of all: She held locked inside her a sorcerous power trapped in her bones or in her blood over which she had no control.

“I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what it means or what it is, how much Da locked away and how much he never knew of. I only know he was trying to protect me. What if I go back to the king’s progress? Hugh is holding Hanna as a hostage to make me come back. And if I don’t go back, then what becomes of her? Ai, Lady, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what’s going to become of Hanna. But if I go back to the king’s progress, Hugh will imprison me again. There’s nowhere to run anymore. I’m so afraid.”

“Then maybe you have to stop running,” he said reasonably.

Her laughter was sharp in reply. “And let them find me? Let Hugh trap me?”

“Find yourself.” The answer didn’t come cleanly; answers rarely did. But he sensed that they groped closer to the question now, and only when they could discover the question could they search out the path that would lead her to the answer she sought.

“Gnosi seaton,” she murmured. “‘Know thyself.’ That’s what the prophetesses of the ancient gods said at the temple of Talfi.”

His hand. The memory from his dream engulfed him so abruptly that he had to cover his eyes. “‘Let be your guide that which first appears to your eyes.’ It wasn’t the funeral at all. It was his own hand. That’s what she meant.”

“What funeral?”

He shook himself free of the windings of forgotten sleep. “My dream of Fifth Son, the one I had this night.”

“I only have nightmares,” said Liath, her voice so quiet that even the snap of twigs and roll of burning logs drowned it. “I’ve never had a true vision, except through fire—and that isn’t truly a vision but a gateway.”

Before he knew what he was about, he had pulled the leather thong up from around his neck and opened the little cloth pouch. He laid the delicate red rose on his palm for her to see. It gleamed uncannily in the firelight.

She stared. “The Rose of Healing,” she whispered. Her voice caught, broke, and she sniffed back tears. She did not attempt to touch it.

The petals burned on his palm. Quickly he replaced it in the pouch. Then, trembling slightly, he took another log and set it on the hot coals. It smoldered, caught, and blazed, flames dancing along its length.

She wiped her nose again with the back of a hand and looked up at him. She reached, hesitated, then laid a hand on his arm. The touch was so light it might not have been there at all, and yet in that simple act Alain understood that, as with the hounds, he had won her trust forever.

5

HE crept back upstairs when the first stirrings of dawn reached him. She had fallen asleep hours ago. Yet he could not bear to leave and instead had sat watch over her and the fire for the rest of the night.