Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

He groped for words, but was too stunned to speak, and after a moment she smiled gently, took his hand, and kissed him as if in farewell.

The day her son rode out from the queen’s progress, the queen went into the Octagonal Garden to watch him go in something resembling privacy. Decades ago, Queen Sophia had commissioned a garden to be built at Werlida in the Arethousan style. It had eight walls, eight benches, eight neatly tended garden plots that bloomed with brilliant colors in spring and summer but were now brown with autumn’s rags. Eight radial pathways spoked in to the center where stood the monumental fountain formed in the shape of a domed tower and surrounded by eight tiers of angels cavorting and blowing trumpets. According to legend, the fountain had ceased flowing on the very day Queen Sophia died, but in fact the mechanism had failed years before because the Arethousan craftsman who had devised the cunning inner workings had died of a lung fever one winter and no one else knew how to repair it.

Or so Queen Theophanu had told Blessing, years and years ago, that winter when the king lay dying. That was the mystery. One night a humble visitor had called on the king in the middle of the night, unseen by everyone except the king himself, who spoke of their long conversation in expansive detail although everyone else was sure he had descended into his final delirium. Yet the fountain had begun running again that very night, and it splashed and gurgled still, many years later. She thought it actually spoke with the last words Stronghand had whispered to her, there at the end: Be merciful.

The memory soothed her heart as she stood on the gravel path and watched Fulk’s entourage reach the branching road and his banner turn north.

A magnificent vista opened before her. The land spread out as fields and villages, pastureland and scrub brush and woodland, and farther yet, the distant march of forest. The river vanished into the haze of trees.

From this palace almost fifty years ago her parents had sneaked away in the middle of night, defying King Henry, and at some point on their southerly journey or at Verna, she herself had been conceived. It was a fitting place for her son to ride out on a new path. Fulk was a good boy, but it was really her enduring love for Berthold that had caused her to let him go. Anyway, it was true enough that it served her purpose to have her son educated in the arts of the mathematici. She might gain any number of advantages large and small with this strategy.

Over time, she had discovered she was more Stronghand’s heir than her own beloved father’s. Impulse must not govern action, Stronghand had taught her; it was a struggle, but she had mastered herself over time.

They had lost part of Alba, regained it, yet were now struggling to keep a foothold there. In the wake of tidal inundations and severe alterations in the ocean currents, the Eika territories were splintering into four petty kingdoms. Ships sailing along the coast had mysteriously vanished, only to drift months later into port with all hands lost. Part of Varingia had been swallowed by Salia, Wayland had for a few years claimed to be an independent queendom with the support of Mathilda of Aosta, while the Villams now styled themselves as dukes, equal to Saony, Fesse, and Avaria. The North Mark had experienced a ten-year drought, followed by floods. In the east, the Polenie had been overrun by a Salavii uprising. All of southern Aosta still lay in ruins, scarred by continual volcanic eruptions, and Karrone had been terribly hard hit in the great earthquake that had driven so many people north as refugees. Meanwhile, her own cousins among the Ashioi pushed their borders northward at a slow but steady pace, causing the Arethousans to send to Wendar increasingly desperate pleas for alliances and treaties of mutual aid.

d never seen her weep; one tear, that was all, the day he had arrived at the queen’s progress two years ago. The high rafters swallowed all sound and ate at the light. The gloom in the corners was profound. He felt a surge of tenderness for her.

She sent me to the place she loved best.

“I w-would stay with you,” he stammered.

She snorted, and a mask twisted her expression so he heard the serpent’s tongue and saw the sword’s thrust that folk feared. “You would not!”

It had never been turned on him before.

She melted at once. “Ah, poor boy, I don’t mean it like that. I mean only that when a lad mopes about the stable yard and rides to every crown he can find, then he is not pining for his mother. However much he loves her. Anyway, it serves my purpose, as my uncle Lord Stronghand was used to say, and these days I suppose I have as little heart as he ever did.”

Chabi had remained silent and still all this time, showing neither surprise nor fear. “How does it serve your purpose, Your Majesty?”

“To count a son among my mother’s fabled nest of phoenix? To let one among the royal family hold in his hands those secrets, now that my mother is gone? Of course it serves me! The world is a restless place. Night comes quickly.”

“Yet the heavens are brilliant in their beauty.”

“Maybe for you, phoenix, but I have a habit of stumbling when it is dark. So, Fulk, what do you say?”

He groped for words, but was too stunned to speak, and after a moment she smiled gently, took his hand, and kissed him as if in farewell.

The day her son rode out from the queen’s progress, the queen went into the Octagonal Garden to watch him go in something resembling privacy. Decades ago, Queen Sophia had commissioned a garden to be built at Werlida in the Arethousan style. It had eight walls, eight benches, eight neatly tended garden plots that bloomed with brilliant colors in spring and summer but were now brown with autumn’s rags. Eight radial pathways spoked in to the center where stood the monumental fountain formed in the shape of a domed tower and surrounded by eight tiers of angels cavorting and blowing trumpets. According to legend, the fountain had ceased flowing on the very day Queen Sophia died, but in fact the mechanism had failed years before because the Arethousan craftsman who had devised the cunning inner workings had died of a lung fever one winter and no one else knew how to repair it.

Or so Queen Theophanu had told Blessing, years and years ago, that winter when the king lay dying. That was the mystery. One night a humble visitor had called on the king in the middle of the night, unseen by everyone except the king himself, who spoke of their long conversation in expansive detail although everyone else was sure he had descended into his final delirium. Yet the fountain had begun running again that very night, and it splashed and gurgled still, many years later. She thought it actually spoke with the last words Stronghand had whispered to her, there at the end: Be merciful.

The memory soothed her heart as she stood on the gravel path and watched Fulk’s entourage reach the branching road and his banner turn north.

A magnificent vista opened before her. The land spread out as fields and villages, pastureland and scrub brush and woodland, and farther yet, the distant march of forest. The river vanished into the haze of trees.

From this palace almost fifty years ago her parents had sneaked away in the middle of night, defying King Henry, and at some point on their southerly journey or at Verna, she herself had been conceived. It was a fitting place for her son to ride out on a new path. Fulk was a good boy, but it was really her enduring love for Berthold that had caused her to let him go. Anyway, it was true enough that it served her purpose to have her son educated in the arts of the mathematici. She might gain any number of advantages large and small with this strategy.

Over time, she had discovered she was more Stronghand’s heir than her own beloved father’s. Impulse must not govern action, Stronghand had taught her; it was a struggle, but she had mastered herself over time.

They had lost part of Alba, regained it, yet were now struggling to keep a foothold there. In the wake of tidal inundations and severe alterations in the ocean currents, the Eika territories were splintering into four petty kingdoms. Ships sailing along the coast had mysteriously vanished, only to drift months later into port with all hands lost. Part of Varingia had been swallowed by Salia, Wayland had for a few years claimed to be an independent queendom with the support of Mathilda of Aosta, while the Villams now styled themselves as dukes, equal to Saony, Fesse, and Avaria. The North Mark had experienced a ten-year drought, followed by floods. In the east, the Polenie had been overrun by a Salavii uprising. All of southern Aosta still lay in ruins, scarred by continual volcanic eruptions, and Karrone had been terribly hard hit in the great earthquake that had driven so many people north as refugees. Meanwhile, her own cousins among the Ashioi pushed their borders northward at a slow but steady pace, causing the Arethousans to send to Wendar increasingly desperate pleas for alliances and treaties of mutual aid.

And so on, and so forth, the unending turn of the wheel. Still, it could have been worse. Conrad’s daughter had changed her mind and cut all ties to Mathilda, who had only a scrap of land near Novomo left to call her queendom. The Ashioi had sent an envoy asking for a marriage alliance. Several trading guilds had established themselves along the Eika shores, and it seemed the Eika liked to trade as much as they liked to fight. Fearsome merfolk swam into ports asking after the health of brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and beloved partners they could certainly never have met or been in any way related to, especially considering that they seemed to have the memories of men who had been lost at sea, and yet in some places strange but lasting bonds were formed between fishermen and merchants and these savage water folk, each helping the others. A Quman muster pushing for an invasion into the marchlands had abruptly dissolved when a pair of griffins had carried away the most belligerent of the war leaders. The civil war in Salia—raging for over three decades—had at last died away, no doubt of exhaustion, and the constant debilitating flow of refugees into Varre had eased in recent years. Just last year, a peculiar party of envoys had arrived at Autun from a stunted, deformed folk calling themselves the Ancient Ones and claiming to be miners and scholars of natural history. Young Henry had come south from Rikin Fjord, and she thought he would be a steadying influence on the volatile Constance.

So, there was also a measure of peace to be found. They had survived the worst, surely. The cataclysm had hammered them forty years ago, and in many ways they were still recovering.

Her Dragon guard spread out along the spokes of the wheel, loitering, enjoying the sun, although the day was cold enough to turn hands white. Her Quman levy, refreshed every five years according to the pledge made by Gyasi forty years ago; her Eika nephews, as she called them, who were really grandsons and great grandsons out of Rikin Fjord; a few pale Albans; and one dark-haired Salavii man who had turned up one day holding a golden phoenix feather in his left hand and who had never left. Once, she had boasted a dozen bold Ashioi mask warriors in their number, but they had been recalled to their own country. Now, the remainder was strong Wendish and Varren soldiers, all wearing the sigil of the black dragon, her father’s mark.

The Quman in particular could never get enough of the stern-featured little statues of saints and angels that populated the garden, some freestanding and others half hidden in niches carved into the walls. What piqued their interest she had never understood, but they were at it again. They wandered in pairs to examine each sculpture, often kneeling beside one to point out particularities in its features. Four of them had gathered on the other side of the fountain to stare. She moved, curious to know what they were fascinated by, and found that after all another soul had come to seek peace in the garden. He was seated by himself on a bench, in the sun, with a book and several loose pages of vellum resting on his lap.