Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“Since I learned better from following your example, Ingo!”

“Liath!”

That a hand should touch her shoulder in such a familiar way, jostling her out of sleep, did surprise her. She opened her eyes.

She was still dreaming.

For five long breaths she stared at the apparition, the dream figure floating before her but in fact not floating at all. The figure crouched in a manner very like that of any creature that has weight and heft. Her leggings creased and bunched around the knees. Her white-blonde braid of hair had pooled on her shoulder, and as the woman shook her head with a smile, it tumbled free down her torso.

“Hanna?” Liath sat up.

Then, after all, came the hugging and the weeping.

VI

NO GOING BACK

1

THEIR company set out at once for the convent.

“I rode from St. Valeria with a request for some laborers to come and rebuild the damaged wall,” explained Hanna. “We thought to let our party rest there a few days in peace while I rode here to ask for aid.”

“You managed the river crossing,” said the one called Wulf. He hadn’t been able to take his gaze off Hanna since she and Liath walked out of the byre. “Had you no guide? How high was the water running?”

As Hanna described her journey between convent and village—she had spent the night sleeping outdoors—Liath stared at her. It seemed she had walked into a dream, something hoped for so long that she could not believe it to be true. Had Sanglant stared at her in this manner when she had returned from the aether? Yet she felt less awkwardness with Hanna than she had at first with Sanglant. She felt, more than anything, relief, as though she had discovered that the hand she thought missing was, after all, still attached.

As Hanna finished talking, she glanced at Liath, grinned, and shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. I’ve thought of you so often over the years. I must still be dreaming. Sorgatani will be eager to see you!”

These astounding tidings must all be explained. As the two women chattered back and forth without pause the day seemed, as the poets said, to fly past. They marched along a grassy track barely more than a cow path footed in mud. The river still ran high—Hanna had managed the crossing because of the weight of her horse—and they strung a rope across for the Lions to grip so they would not get swept away in the current. After this, the way wound in rugged leaps and switchbacks up into steep, forested hills troubled by ancient ravines and fresh gullies. Now and again the woodsman exclaimed over a landslide that had obliterated a portion of the path, or a new waterfall pouring down through a cleft in a rocky outcropping. Trees had snapped and tumbled. It was, in truth, a miracle that Hanna had managed to get through at all, let alone with a horse.

ormula had a parallel construction to that diploma given to the freeholders in the Bretwald by the younger Henry, although the details differed. The villagers listened as intently as scholars as she read slowly and in a clear voice.

“‘This privilege was confirmed by Henry, by faith and oath approved and accepted by the following persons… in the year 660 since the Proclamation of the Holy Word, on the 11th day of Sormas, on the feast day of the Visitation.’” She looked up in surprise. “That’s today!”

Having no deacon to count the calendar for them, they, too, were shocked and delighted. They set to drinking with a cheer. First the children—who would lay claim to these lands when they inherited—drank. After them, the elders, who had husbanded the land, and last of all the householders who now worked the fields. There was enough for all, a rare enough thing, Liath thought as she sipped at the sour cider, which was starting to go to vinegar but had not quite turned.

On such an auspicious occasion all lingering suspicion vanished. Lions and Eagles were fed, and housed at random, some in the longhouses and some in byres or stock sheds on beds of heaped straw. Liath asked for no place greater for herself than any other, and the captain, seeing this without commenting on it, offered her no primacy. For the first time in many days she slept soundly, half buried in a heap of scratchy straw with only a blanket beneath and one thrown over herself where she had wrapped herself in her wool cloak. In old days, long ago, she had often slept so on the road, traveling with Da and later as an Eagle. Slipping into sleep, she could imagine Da near at hand, murmuring under his breath, talking to himself, as he often did when there was no learned adult with whom to converse. How he loved to chat. For all his lonely isolated ways, Da had loved people and loved talking and discussion and argument for argument’s sake. He had had a restless, roving mind, unsettled, dissatisfied, and most likely unsatisfiable. She tucked her saddlebags against her chest. The book was a comforting presence, for all the trouble it had caused her. It was, in a way, Da’s conversation with himself all those years. She wept a little, thinking of him, and fell asleep, and dreamed of Blessing as a tiny baby sleeping at peace in her arms.

“Liath? Ai, God! It is her!”

That Hanna’s voice should so trouble her dreams did not surprise her, not after marching for two days with the Lions. They were in the dream, too.

“Well, I told you it was her,” said one, sounding aggrieved.

“Since when should anyone believe your wild tales, Folquin?”

“Since I learned better from following your example, Ingo!”

“Liath!”

That a hand should touch her shoulder in such a familiar way, jostling her out of sleep, did surprise her. She opened her eyes.

She was still dreaming.

For five long breaths she stared at the apparition, the dream figure floating before her but in fact not floating at all. The figure crouched in a manner very like that of any creature that has weight and heft. Her leggings creased and bunched around the knees. Her white-blonde braid of hair had pooled on her shoulder, and as the woman shook her head with a smile, it tumbled free down her torso.

“Hanna?” Liath sat up.