Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

7

WHAT woke her? She lay still, listening, but heard nothing and saw nothing. A sour scent teased her; it was as pungent as rotten eggs but fading fast.

At length she decided that nothing unusual had woken her. She shifted, sitting up, and in that moment a puff of sulfurous air gusted against her cheek. She heard two scrapes as of a weight dragged across gritty rock, a sigh like those of a bellows, and again two scrapes. The stink of the air made her eyes water, but it had direction, wafting at her from the north-northwest if she deemed her back against the rock wall to measure due south. Out there, some movement made the air shift. Where there was a breeze, there was a breach to the outside.

She tested her thigh. The old blood was flaking off, and there was only a smear of moistness at one end of the wound where it had ripped a little. A long scab was beginning to form. She still ached throughout her body, but food and drink and rest had eased these hurts and her mind had regained its clarity.

I can win free, if I can only be patient and clever.

She sat for a long while and listened. The weight of rock oppressed her, but power lived here, too, felt as a hum deep in the earth. Kansi-a-lari had called this place “the Heart-of-the-Mountain-of-the-World’s Beginning.”

The Ashioi cities she had seen looked different than the towns and habitations erected by humankind, which rose haphazardly although any one might be built around a central building grounded with sacred power—a cathedral or church or, in older days, a fort. The crowns held power; weaving threads into a stone crown brought to Earth the melody of the spheres.

She breathed into her belly, into the stone, and it seemed to her that the deeper she breathed the deeper she fell. The Ashioi understood the power that lies in the landscape, and they built to encourage and enhance it. This heart was a kernel around which the city had risen. So deep, and so high, and pulsing with a force whose heat and contours, almost too faint for her to perceive, had the taste of the aether, funneled into this place as canals channel rainwater into a central pond.

o;You must stay here in Lavas and guard your daughter and these lands, Geoffrey. Captain Ulric and his company will remain behind. Consider that this may be a feint to draw you out.”

“Why? Lavas County is nothing to Sabella, surely. She wants you because you represent Henry’s claim to sovereignty in Varre. Because you are the rightful duke of Arconia, after Sabella forfeited the title by her own rebellion. She is the traitor! I am not. I am not! Anyway, if you go to her, she will have no reason to give up my sons. Then she’ll have you back, to do with as she please—even to kill—and she’ll still hold my sons.”

“No child of Arnulf would dare kill her own sibling,” said Constance. “We are not Salians!”

“I must go, or I’ll be dishonored!”

“You must stay, and guard Lavas together with Captain Ulric. I’ll leave you a hostage in your turn—this messenger.”

The young man started and took a step back, looking around as for an escape route, but Ulric had already moved his men into position to block his retreat.

“I will take my trusted retainers.” She gestured toward her clerics.

“Then it is all for nothing,” moaned Geoffrey, “freeing you from Queen’s Grave. All this! It has all rotted in my hands!”

“We are not dead and defeated yet, Geoffrey!” She got hold of her walking stick and pushed to her feet, and her smile might have come because of the pain of rising or her annoyance at Geoffrey, or because Sabella’s messenger looked so flummoxed at being outflanked as he realized he was now a prisoner. “Trust in God. I do.”

“Truth rises with the phoenix,” muttered a voice in the crowd.

“So I have come to believe.”

Ulric met her by the door into the inner apartments.

“Your Grace. We know that bandits haunt the roads, and worse things, perhaps. Wolves. Shadows. I trust God, but I wish you will take armed men on the road to protect you.”

“Sabella has kindly sent an escort. I’ll return with them, all except for the messenger, who will remain here. Most of my schola are too frail to travel, and I trust you will see them well cared for here, Captain. But I think a few of my faithful clerics can accompany me!” She smiled at Ivar, Sigfrid, Ermanrich, and Hathumod. Her gaze lingered longest on Baldwin, whom she examined with a slight frown.

“They may even be able to bear weapons,” said Ulric with a look of disapproval, “although I don’t know how much good they’ll do you in a fight, Your Grace.”

“We’ve fought!” said Ivar. “We’ve ridden into battle with Prince Ekkehard.”

Ulric began to roll his eyes, but stopped himself with an inhalation and a sharp cough.

“My bold clerics!” she said, and somehow, from her lips, the statement did not sound mocking.

7

WHAT woke her? She lay still, listening, but heard nothing and saw nothing. A sour scent teased her; it was as pungent as rotten eggs but fading fast.

At length she decided that nothing unusual had woken her. She shifted, sitting up, and in that moment a puff of sulfurous air gusted against her cheek. She heard two scrapes as of a weight dragged across gritty rock, a sigh like those of a bellows, and again two scrapes. The stink of the air made her eyes water, but it had direction, wafting at her from the north-northwest if she deemed her back against the rock wall to measure due south. Out there, some movement made the air shift. Where there was a breeze, there was a breach to the outside.

She tested her thigh. The old blood was flaking off, and there was only a smear of moistness at one end of the wound where it had ripped a little. A long scab was beginning to form. She still ached throughout her body, but food and drink and rest had eased these hurts and her mind had regained its clarity.