Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“What troubles you, Hanna? I see it in your face.”

Hanna looked back, looked ahead, even looked up at the canopy of green above them. The heady aroma of pitch caught in Liath’s throat; for such a long time she had smelled only mildewed leaf litter and the icy breath of unseasonable wintry winds.

“I admit, I’m still angry at Prince Sanglant for letting Bulkezu live when he should have executed him. I’m sorry to say so. It’s the truth. Whether it speaks good or ill of me, I don’t know.”

“It’s honest of you. None of us are saints.”

“That’s truth!” She smiled wryly, then frowned in a way that made Liath want to touch her, but she held back. “I should know better. If you trust him, so should I.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s thinking of Sorgatani just now that made me realize. The others fear her, because of what she did at Augensburg.”

“They knew the curse laid on her by her power. She never said otherwise, did she? Was she not honest with them?”

“Honesty is not the same as trust. It was worse than the poisoned arrows. They died only from looking at her.” She made a kind of hiccup, like a laugh or a cough. “Sorgatani told me you are like sisters, that you alone are not bound to her but’ are powerful enough to see her without dying. Did it not scare you the first time, knowing the nature of her curse?”

“I don’t remember thinking of it at all.”

Hanna halted and faced her, looking awful.

“I spoke too lightly,” said Liath. “Forgive me. Of course it would terrify them. As much as it must frighten folk to be around me.”

“Around you? Why so?”

Liath felt how crooked the smile must look on her face. “Because I can kill people, too.”

“So can we all, with a sword or a spear thrust. With our own hands, if we’re strong enough.”

“I can burn them alive. People fear me, and they should.”

“But you would never—!”

“Sorgatani would never, would she?”

“She cried, afterward.”

“Yet folk will look at her and see a foreigner. A demon.”

“Yes, truly, so they will.” With a sad smile, Hanna lifted her hand to touch Liath’s dusky cheek. “I am so glad we have found each other again, at last.”

Liath’s throat was choked, and her voice trembled. “At last,” she agreed. It was all she could manage to say without bursting into tears.

2

THE convent hid in a ravine whose entrance was so cleverly concealed that Liath would have walked right past it and kept moving southeast on the trail, on into the wilderness. Hanna turned aside where honeysuckle concealed a path. They made their way down a rocky track between high cliff walls of streaked stone. Two men could not walk abreast; it was barely wide enough for the packhorses to squeeze through. A bird whistled, and Hanna responded with a shout to identify herself. The clop of hooves and stamp of feet threw weird echoes into the air. These ceased when the ravine opened into a neat jewel of a valley. A stream crossed their path, straining its banks. Beyond, a substantial stone wall blocked the valley’s mouth, but it had crumbled in three places where floodwaters had eaten away its foundation. Fence segments woven of branches patched the gaps.

Beyond, a low stockade surrounded a whitewashed long hall and a collection of outbuildings. Chickens clucked. Goats bawled. Fruit and nut trees stood in tidy rows. Freshly turned earth marked a substantial garden.

Everyone turned out to greet them: lean soldiers armed with spears and swords, clerics in ragged robes, and a dozen nuns of varying ages dressed in sober wool robes and holding rakes and shovels and scythes in their hands. A party of Ashioi could have devastated their ranks in moments, had they only known where to find them.

Hanna was so excited that she raced forward, leaving her horse behind with one of the Lions. She was still very much the girl Liath remembered from Heart’s Rest—her first true friend—and yet the years had tempered and molded her to become something different as well: the good nature, the pragmatic eye, and the true heart remained unaltered, but when she wasn’t talking, she pinched her lips together in way that made Liath want to hug her, as if hugging could erase pain. What had she suffered that she did not speak of? Those gathered here might know.

Their joy at seeing Hanna could not be misinterpreted: they trusted and liked her.

Liath dismounted and approached with more caution as Sister Rosvita came forward to greet her. The journey had turned the cleric’s hair to silver, and she was as lean as a scarecrow, but she had a ruddy gleam to her face and vigor in her stride.

“Eagle! Or must I call you otherwise? We are hopelessly behind in our news. How do you fare?”