In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“‘His heart’s blood fell to Earth and bloomed as roses,”’ Alain added.

She looked at him, just a look, that was all. That gaze, met and answered, nothing more, until her expression shifted, grew puzzled, almost intimate, and she extended a hand and beckoned him closer. She sat in a chair at the rear of the wagon in which he had earlier seen her riding. Her breath fogged the cold air. When he stood next to her, she touched his cheek.

“You are marked as with a rose,” she said. “A curious birthmark. I’ve never seen such a one before.”

“It is not a birthmark but the memory of a false oath,” he said. “It serves to remind me of my obligation, something I cannot see except in the faces of other human beings.”

“Who are you?” she asked him, and looked at Baldwin as if for an answer, but Baldwin did not speak. He was staring at the sky and he raised a hand and pointed.

“Is that the sun? See there. It’s almost gone below the trees, but it has a bluish cast. As though haze screens it, not clouds.”

First a soldier turned, then an elderly woman. Others, facing west like the biscop and Lord Baldwin, raised hands in supplication. A flood of crying and rejoicing lifted from the assembled cavalcade as a covey of quails flush in a rush of wings up from the brush.

“The sun! It shines!”

It was more a shimmer than the actual disk of the sun. No person could stare at the sun without going blind. Everyone knew that. But along the western sky the cloud cover had altered in some manner to reveal the sun’s long hidden shape as if veiled behind only one layer of cheesecloth, not ten.

“A miracle!”

“This is the work of the Holy One!”

“Truth rises with the phoenix!”

They cried and pointed and stared, all shaken into such a tumult of excitement that Alain walked away, slipping from one gap to the next as he squeezed out of the crowd with no one paying him any mind. They stared at the western horizon. He walked east to the edge of the camp strung out along the road and into the trees. Close to the eastern end of the camp, three soldiers had been set to guard Heric.

Alain whistled softly, but no one noticed him. Word had raced more swiftly than he could walk and they were all gazing westward. Some began to sing a song he had never heard before.

“Truth rises with the phoenix,

Truth rises like the sun.”

Sorrow and Rage bounded up and trotted alongside as he settled into a long stride, heading east along the road. He hadn’t much light left. He’d need to make good time, to get far enough that no one would come after him.

But after all, just as he got out of sight of the trailing end of the cavalcade’s encampment, he heard slip-slapping footsteps and labored breathing.

“My lord! My lord Alain!”

He paused and turned halfway back, waiting. Sorrow whined. Rage yawned to show teeth. She did not run, precisely, but loped in an awkward, determined way, then stumbled to halt a few steps away. The hounds made her nervous, but she was brave enough to come close despite her fear.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“East on the trail of Prince Sanglant. If any know where she is, he will.”

“Do you love her, my lord?” Tears streamed down her face.

“I hope that God have taught me to love all of humankind. But the kind of love you mean—no.”

rprised her, who was a woman not easily startled. She touched her left ear as if she were not at all sure she had heard those words spoken. “What mystery is this you speak of? Have you some hidden knowledge of events lost in the past in the time of the blessed Daisan?”

“This took place long before the time of the blessed Daisan. They are hidden from us only by the passage of years. Only by death, which hides us all in the end. I pray you, have you any news of the one called Liathano?”

“Of her, no. She was lost in a haze of fire.”

“Truth rises with the phoenix,” murmured the beauty, and Alain felt the pinch of those words in his heart as though some unnoticed hand were trying to get his attention.

“What did you say?” he asked him.

“‘Truth rises with the phoenix,”’ the young man repeated patiently, and his smile made the folk nearby murmur and point as if he had just done something extraordinary. “We who believe in the truth and the word speak so, to acknowledge the sacrifice made by the blessed Daisan, who died so that our sins might be forgiven.”