Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“Best we get moving.” Ortulfus set out, striding easily.

Ivar swung into the saddle and moved up alongside.

“Will you ride, Father?”

He glanced up. “Nay, Brother. I must walk beside those we have salvaged from the ruins.”

“Is that why you are come here, to find the survivors?”

“Yes. Ten or more days ago a woman staggered into Hersford. She brought with her a terrible story that none among us wished to believe. Who would believe the shadows that once roamed the deep forest would become flesh, and walk in daylight? We thought she was a lunatic, although we should have known better. Another came, crying the same tale, and more yet. So we set out to gather up what remained of the flock. You see them, there.”

The party struggled at a staggeringly slow pace, but the monks chivvied them patiently, herding up straying toddlers and hungry goats, giving an arm to a stumbling man with an injured leg, taking turns pushing the pair of handcarts that held two elderly women too weak, it seemed, to move along on their own power. If the Eika were hunting behind them, these people had no chance to survive the encounter. If slender dog-women ghosted out of the forest with bows and knives, these people would all die.

“Hersford is close,” said Ortulfus. “We boast a crossroads as well, a path leading east and a road that runs south and west. It joins up with the main road farther southeast from the crossroads at die Eiche.”

“Did you not see Sabella’s and Conrad’s armies? No sign of them?”

“We did not. As I said, the main road bypasses Hersford. But if you look at the road closely, you can see the signs that reveal they passed this way recently. Grass cropped. Manure and waste. Scraps of cast-off leather. Splinters of wood, and abandoned campfires. Back in Dibenvanger this army camped out the night on the green court within the cloister, some of them.”

“I didn’t notice,” said Baldwin.

“Perhaps the wind blew the signs away. Sabella and Conrad ride ahead of us. Thank the Mother they did not disturb Hersford in their haste to march on Kassel.”

Ivar spoke. “What of these villagers? Did they see the armies?”

“I have not yet asked, but most of these have been hiding in the woods. Camping under the trees. They fear to return to the villages where they once lived.”

“It’s easier to hide among the trees,” said Baldwin confidingly. “That’s what we did.”

Ortulfus’ sharp smile was softened by this confession. “I’m sure it’s true, Brother Baldwin, but you would be well served to spend the night within Hersford’s walls before you ride on.”

“How high are your walls, Father?” Ivar asked with a laugh, although he didn’t mean his comment to sound so cutting.

“Faith keeps them strong,” said Ortulfus without the least sign of irony. He frowned at his refugees. Their tight group was spreading out into a straggle, the faster like a rope tugging on those who lagged behind. “Faith is all we have.”

6

OF course it made perfect sense to Liath that, at the heart of the world, she would find a library, a repository of knowledge.

Of course she settled by the entrance, in a quiet spot, and sat and watched them, trying to make sense of their purpose and their manner of language. After all, if there was a book, she would some day wish to read it!

Typically, a goblin would tap along the wall beside one of the holes and, after completing a set of tests at various compass points around the hole, would withdraw the scroll and carefully unroll it into a flat sheet. The copper armband, pressed into the unrolled fabric, caused the writing to unveil by means of a magic she did not understand. It seemed the language was read by touch; she simply saw no evidence that they read through their eyes or by speaking words aloud.

At length, after napping and eating, she wandered again among them—or among a different group, perhaps, as she could only tell them apart with difficulty. The tone of their skins, like those of the Eika, had substantial variation; in addition, each had a distinctive pattern of growths crusting its skin. Whether male or female she could not tell.

What riches did they peruse?

Theology? Mathematics? Physics? It seemed unlikely that the science of astronomy concerned those who dwelled under the ground, but geometry surely held their interest, for she had seen the proportioned chambers through which their maze of tunnels ran. They seemed savage in appearance, clothed only in barbaric ornaments, but they had devised the secret of writing, so surely the mechanical sciences engaged them. All sciences are matters of use before they become matters of art. How far they had come in matters of art she could not know, because she had no way to communicate. Did they possess the art of logic? Ethics? Physics? Did they search out and consider the causes of things as found in their effects? Had they recorded somewhere the reason for the tremblings and shakings that afflict the Earth? Was it true that the collapse of buried mountains deep within the Earth caused tremors? Or that the pressure of gusting winds in subterranean caverns tilted the ground and caused it to swing briefly this way and then that? What of the rivers of fire that flowed in the bowels of the Earth? Surely, living underground, they had wondered why gold is soft and iron is hard. Out of what arises the color of a gemstone? Was it true that death did not put an end to things through annihilation, but only broke up their constituent components into new combinations?

So many questions!

Of what essence were the goblins formed? Was there metal mixed within them? Had they any kinship to the Eika? All this remained a mystery. That these creatures existed at all astounded her. Of course she had heard the stories, tales told by grandmothers and old uncles at the hearthside in the cold of winter when folk must huddle indoors to protect themselves against the bitter cold. Back in those days, she had dismissed the stories.

But just as things cannot be created out of nothing nor, once born, be summoned back to nothing, tales do not spring from empty vessels. So the philosopher wrote.

Here walked the ancient ones, the crawlers in the deep, fabled miners, known also as goblins.

They moved in a pattern, some shuffling out while others shuffled in, all seen by her within that faint pulsing glow emanating from the pool. The substance in the pool was not air, not liquid, not flame, and certainly not earth.