had enjoyed the feast and the songs, but she had felt no different except for the changes in her body. But ever since St. Oya’s Day Da treated her differently: He made her read and recite and memorize at a furious pace, like heaping wood on a fire and expecting it to blaze brighter and hotter.
Yesterday, by the reckoning of days and years she had learned at Da’s knee, had been the first day of the new year. She had turned sixteen. And this year when she and Da had gone to the village church for the celebration of Mariansmass—the name the church gave to the day of the spring equinox—she had sung in the congregation as a young woman, no longer as a girl at the children’s benches.
“Liath?” Da waited.
She bit at her lip, wanting to get it perfect because she hated to disappoint him. She took a breath and spoke in the singsong voice she always used when she first memorized the words and sequences her father taught her.
“By this ladder the mage ascends:
First to the rose, whose touch is healing.
Then to the sword, which grants us strength.
Third is the cup of boundless waters.
Fourth is the blacksmith’s ring of fire.
The throne of virtue follows fifth.
Wisdom’s scepter marks the sixth.
At the highest rung seek the crown of stars,
The song of power revealed.”
“Very good, Liath. Tonight we’ll continue our measurements of the ecliptic. Where is the astrolabe?”
The instrument dangled by its ring from her thumb. She lifted her arm out straight before her and sighted on the delicate cluster of stars called “the Crown,” now descending into the west. It was so clear this night that perhaps she could see the seventh “jewel” in the crown of stars; usually only six were visible, but she had keen enough sight that she could sometimes make out the seventh. She was about to calculate the altitude and rotate the brass rete when a movement caught her eye. An owl took flight from a tree on the edge of the clearing. She followed the bird with her gaze, up, its wings pale against the night lit only by stars and a crescent moon. And there, low in the east—
“Look, Da! No, there. In the Dragon. I’ve never seen that star before, and it’s not one of the planets. All the other stars are in their rightful places.”
He peered into the sky. His eyes were no longer as keen as hers, but after a moment he saw it: a star out of place in the constellation of the Dragon, Sixth House in the Great Circle, the world dragon that bound the heavens. It was of middling brightness, although even as Liath stared she thought it grew brighter; the light it cast wavered as if it were throwing off sparks.
“Lady’s Blood,” Da swore. He shivered, although it was warm for a spring night. A white shape swooped past them. The owl struck not ten paces from them, and when it rose, it bore aloft a small, struggling shape in its claws. “So descends the greater upon the smaller. Let’s go inside, daughter.”
“But, Da, shouldn’t we measure its position? Shouldn’t we observe it? It must be a sign from the heavens. Perhaps it’s an angel come down into the lower spheres!”
“No, child!” He pulled his cloak tight and turned his face deliberately away from the sky. His shoulders shook. “We must go in.”
Clutching the astrolabe, she bit back a retort and followed him meekly inside their cottage. It was really too warm inside, with a fire still roaring in the hearth. But the fire always roared, and Da was often cold. She remembered being a little girl, when he could with a single gesture call butterflies of rainbow light into being for her to chase through the herb garden. All that—if they were true memories and not illusions brought into being by her own desire—had died with her mother. All she had left were memories clouded by the years and by the endless miles they had journeyed, across the sea, over mountains, through new lands and strange towns. That, and a fire always burning in the hearth.
He barred the door behind them and suddenly bent over, racked by coughs. Recovering, he placed the book on the table and threw his cloak onto the bench. Went at once and poured himself ale.
“Da,” she said, hating to see him this way, but he only took another draught. To her horror, his hands shook. “Da, sit down.”
He sat. She set the astrolabe on the shelf, rested bow and quiver in the corner, and hung the partridges from the rafters. Placing a log on the fire, she turned to watch her father. As she shifted, the plank floor creaked under her feet. It was such a bare room. She remembered richer, but that was long ago. Tapestries, carved benches, a real chair, a long hall, and wine served from a pitcher of glass. They had built this little cottage themselves, dug out the ground, driven posts in, sawed planks from felled logs and set that planking over the cellar, caulked the log walls with mud and straw. It was rough but serviceable. Besides the table and bench that doubled as their clothes chest, there was only her father’s bed in the darkest corner and their one luxury—a walnut shelf, the wood polished until it shone, its surface carved with a pattern of gripping beasts curling down the sides, their eyes painted red.
Da coughed again and fumbled to open the book, searching for something in the dense text written within. Moving to help him, she passed by the window. The shutters were still open, and through the thin skin tacked over the opening, rubbed so fine that it was translucent, she saw a dim light. It bobbed closer, following the well-worn path that descended to the village.
“Someone is coming,” she said, going to the door.
“Don’t open it!”
His voice cut her, and she flinched. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She stared at him, frightened by his abrupt and manifest terror. “Was that new star an omen? Have you read of its coming? Does the book speak of it?” They never called it by its title. Some words, spoken aloud, called attention to themselves.
He slapped the book shut and clutched it against his chest. Jumping up, he grabbed his bow out of the corner, then, with book and bow, walked across to the window. Suddenly he relaxed, his expression clearing. “It’s only Frater Hugh.”
Now it was her turn to shudder. “Don’t let him in, Da.”