Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

1

THEY used an old ruse, but it worked. With rope loosely bound around her hands, Liath walked with the young Ashioi woman called Sharp Edge in front and the four guards—Dog, Spotted Leopard, Buzzard, and Falcon—behind.

o;Adelheid,” he said.

“Oh, God,” the queen said.

“She might have turned on us at any time.”

“She is more powerful than we are. This is the only way to protect ourselves. There is much in the world we do not like that we must suffer because it is the only way to achieve the ends we seek.”

Blood warmed Antonia. Her hearing remained keen and focused. These were Hugh’s words, pouring from Adelheid’s treacherous mouth. She tried to speak, to chastise the queen, but nothing came out.

“We give them her body,” agreed Alexandros, “and they leave.”

Antonia still had eyes. Adelheid glided away toward the door, but too quickly her form receded into a darkening distance, out of sight although she was almost close enough to spit on.

“Tell Captain Falco,” he said to Adelheid, “to send this message. We meet their demand. Hurry! Of this act, speak to no person.”

“She will betray you!” Antonia croaked, her voice nothing more than a whisper, but he heard her. He flinched. “She holds power over you, knowing you murder me. This she will use when she finds a new man to support her.”

He grinned, the hateful creature. His breath stank of onions, sweetened by a touch of mint. “You are dead, old woman. What passes in the land of the living is out of your hands.”

But he was wrong. He was so wrong.

He turned half away from her, not paying attention to her as he listened and looked toward Adelheid at the door.

She was failing fast, but she found her voice.

“Ahala shin ah rish amurru galla ashir ah luhish.”

Her voice gurgled, and blood sputtered from her lips.

Her voice was almost without sound, too broken for him to hear, but the galla did not hear with ears of flesh.

“Let my blood draw forth the creature … out of the other world. Come out, galla, for I bind you with unbreakable fetters. This blood which you must taste… makes you mine to command. I adjure you, in the name of the holy angels whose hearts dwell in righteousness, come out, and do as I bid you.”

He thought her already dead. He twisted the blade free with a casual turn and released her, stepping away. Her body slid to the marble floor, a restful place but cold.

I adjure you. No words passed her lips, but the galla heard. Avenge me.

A shadow loomed over her. Adelheid screamed, and Alexandros swore furiously and scrambled away from the killing touch of its black form. In the far distance, a door slammed open and shouts and the clatter of footsteps fell away.

As the tendrils of that darkness snaked forward, she felt these limbs seize on her blood. She felt its suck, draining her life as it filled the emptiness within. It had neither personality nor substance as she understood them; not fish or fowl, not male or female, not thinking and yet neither was it a dumb beast. It desired to fill itself with her because it had no real existence in this world, which to it was nothing but agony. Its wordless, soundless howl of pain consumed her.

Its killing caress also sharpened her mind and her heart.

The desire for revenge is a mortal failing. She must do God’s work, here at the end. Adelheid is weak, but her child will rule after her; neither is a worthy target. Alexandros acts out of fear, because he is a treacherous Arethousan, corrupted by the false church and thereby willing to strike at the most holy skopos. The worst sort of criminal.

But he is still human.

Now that she has seen them, she knows that the abominations threaten God’s order more than any other. Anne was right, after all. They were banished from Earth once. God cannot want them here, because they are a perversion. It is the Ashioi who must be harmed. They must be stopped, before anything else.

Hugh has joined them, but even Hugh is no more than a parasite, like the galla, sucking away the power that resides in others. The leader in the “feathered cloak” has no name that she knows. But there is one who does. One she tried to harm before, who might yet possess griffin arrows.

She must try.

God’s work comes before all else, even before trifling thoughts of revenge. She herself is nothing compared to God’s glory and God’s justice.