Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

The trail that led into the crown was scumbled by the passage of many feet. The crown itself, and the rolling landscape, lay empty but for the eight Ashioi she saw now.

Sharp Edge turned. “You are awake!” She grinned fiercely, pleased with herself, trotted over at once, and solicitously helped Secha to her feet as if the older woman were a crone so crippled by age that she could not walk by herself. “Let’s go down. I didn’t want to wake you. Maybe we can leave these barking dogs in the fields and talk about what we learned! I have some ideas! That Pale Dog shouldn’t be allowed to clutch all he knows to himself! This weaving could be done even without the astrolabe. We would have to have clear weather, of course, but the stones and the notches in the hill—do you see how they align with the stones?—could act as a cruder tool to remind the weaver where the stars will rise and where they will set, which is north and which is south.”

aised her shuttle, which was long and thin and well worn, easy to grip. She fixed her feet in the chalk and measured her angles, which were also traced out in lines of chalk laid down around the stone circle. The astrolabe and his catalog of stars allowed him to weave even if he could not see the heavens unveiled by clouds because the stars did not change their places, but the chalk lines marked around the circle helped her measure and weave correctly. Hook the wrong star, and you would end up in the wrong crown, many days or weeks of walking away from your chosen destination. It was a cunning puzzle, a genuine pleasure, and if she envied anything, she envied the Pale Sun Dog his knowledge of how to weave these looms that was far greater than hers. She was dependent on what he told her, on his directions. She wanted to do it all by herself. She was not accustomed to being any man’s servant.

Sharp Edge moved to crouch beside the Pale Sun Dog, watching as he rose with a sigh and sighted along the observing bar of the astrolabe. He adjusted the rete slightly, showed it to Sharp Edge, and she stepped over to make a similar tiny adjustment to the astrolabe held by Secha. He measured the Scout’s Torch, its altitude and azimuth, and although she had turned to watch, and although Sharp Edge watched avidly as well, he moved swiftly, rotating the rete.

“Here,” he said. “Here are your angles for the gate to Novomo’s crown. Thirty-one degrees altitude. Seventy-five degrees azimuth. There you catch the head of the golden-haired Sister.”

She sighted to the clouds. She reached with her shuttle, and caught the thread and wove it into the angles as he had taught her and as he coached her, standing behind. The gateway of light budded and blossomed. As soon as that brilliant archway shone before her, the forward ranks sprang into step at a brisk jog. They vanished through the gateway, rank after rank, until the Pale Sun Dog called a warning. Then the march ceased, and she closed the archway. She was panting, sweaty, and tired, yet the night’s work had only begun.

“The Lion’s Claw,” he said, taking his measurements.

She wove, and the army moved, each rank of four running tight up against the one before it. They ran silently, only the drum of their feet to accompany the faint music running down the threads from out of the heavens.

“The Ladle,” he said.

Much later, the Scout’s Torch plunged to the horizon.

She closed this gateway as the heavens continued on their inexorable turn. She swayed on her feet, and Sharp Edge stepped onto the weaving ground and steadied her.

“I can weave,” said the young woman.

It was true, although Secha hated to give up the tools, the power, the way the music coursed through the net within the stones and hummed in her body. But she would drop if she kept on, and the gate would crash down on those who traveled through it. She stepped out of the weaving ground, and Sharp Edge took her place, fitting her feet into the imprints left by Secha. Astrolabe and shuttle changed hands. Secha stumbled back several paces and would have fallen, but one of the other apprentices got a hand under her arms and eased her down.

The Pale Sun Dog spoke. “The Queen’s Bow, where the jewel shines.”

A cup was thrust into Secha’s hands. She sipped without thinking and sagged, almost dropping the cup as the fermented sting of mahiz liquor hit her throat. Drops spilled. Hands removed the cup, and she slumped sideways, blinking as the gateway opened before her, blinding her. It was so bright. She shut her eyes.

When she woke, she lay curled on the ground with a shawl draped over her shoulders and torso. Her feet were bare, and cold, and it was early in the day with a light haze covering the heavens. In another breath, it would all burn off.

Laughter startled her. With a grimace, she sat. Every muscle hurt, although she had not exerted herself physically. She should not be this tired.

Looking around, she saw only a handful of people standing where pale grass covered the hillside. Three bored warriors were squatting farther down the road, just where it curved over the hill and out of sight; they were rolling bones, counting the marks, and calling out wagers. Sharp Edge was the one laughing, telling a tale to a semicircle of four admirers. She had a hand on one hip, and the hip jutted out provocatively. That girl would cause some trouble!

The trail that led into the crown was scumbled by the passage of many feet. The crown itself, and the rolling landscape, lay empty but for the eight Ashioi she saw now.

Sharp Edge turned. “You are awake!” She grinned fiercely, pleased with herself, trotted over at once, and solicitously helped Secha to her feet as if the older woman were a crone so crippled by age that she could not walk by herself. “Let’s go down. I didn’t want to wake you. Maybe we can leave these barking dogs in the fields and talk about what we learned! I have some ideas! That Pale Dog shouldn’t be allowed to clutch all he knows to himself! This weaving could be done even without the astrolabe. We would have to have clear weather, of course, but the stones and the notches in the hill—do you see how they align with the stones?—could act as a cruder tool to remind the weaver where the stars will rise and where they will set, which is north and which is south.”

Secha rubbed her neck and turned in a slow, complete circle that took in the lightening sky, the massive stones, and the irregular slope of the surrounding hill covered with calf-high grass and a sprinkling of yellow-and-white flowers. To the south the bramble had been cleared away; the land ran in a gentle incline down a long, long slope, and a distant glint marked where shore met sea a morning’s walk away. To the west, a goat ambled into view right at a pronounced notch in the sheltering hillside. It spotted them and dipped its head truculently before vanishing back the way it had come.

It was so quiet that she heard a distant ring of hammer on stone, from the village.

“All gone?” Secha asked, but except for the trampled path she saw no sign of the army.

Sharp Edge nodded, still grinning. “All gone.”

2

THE duke’s banner did not fly from the tower in Autun. The party escorting Biscop Constance rode through empty streets in a town lying quiet beneath dreary skies. At the stairs leading up to the palace on the hill, they waited while a sturdy chair with arms was found. Fixing poles beneath the seat, soldiers braced the poles over their shoulders and carried Constance up the steps, walking sidewise to negotiate switchbacks and pausing at landings to catch their breath.

“Lady Sabella is gone, Your Holiness,” said the steward who came out into the courtyard to meet them. A few servants paused to stare at Baldwin. Otherwise, the place appeared almost deserted. The dust of the courtyard was darkened by the drizzle, which slackened and ceased as a wind blew up from the south.

The sergeant said, “Still out hunting the guivre?”

“No, she and Duke Conrad returned days ago from that expedition. She and Autun’s milites have marched east in the company of Duke Conrad and his army. There’s talk that Varre is to be invaded by the usurper and his army, out of Kassel.”

“I came about the matter of two young boys,” said Constance, “the sons of Geoffrey of Lavas.”