The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

He murmured apologies and turned his back as she slipped out from under the blanket and pulled on cleric’s robes over her undertunic. Sister Amabilia snored pleasingly in the bed; Rosvita envied the young woman her ability to sleep through anything. She considered the Vita and on impulse picked it up.

The king was out behind the stables, fully dressed as if he had never lain down to sleep the night before. He stood with one foot braced on a stump and a hand braced on that leg as if to give him a place to grip patience as he watched his son pace back and forth, back and forth, along the ground in a curving line that would soon wear itself visibly into the grass. For an instant Rosvita thought the prince was on a leash, but it was only that the pattern of his restless pacing marked the same ground over and over: as if he still paced in a semicircle at the limit of chains. Yet he had been freed from the chains of his captivity to Bloodheart over twenty days ago.

Dogs growled as Rosvita approached, making her neck prickle. Horrible beasts, they had huge fangs coated with saliva, and eyes that sparked fire. Their iron-gray coats lay like a sheen of metal over thin flanks. They lunged, were brought up short by chains, and contented themselves with barking and slobbering.

Seeing Rosvita, Henry gestured toward his son. “He has taken a mad plan into his head to ride out after one of my Eagles, without even an escort. Your advice, good Sister, will surely make him see reason where Villam and I cannot.”

Sanglant stopped pacing and stood alertly as if listening—to her, or to the birds singing their morning lauds. Was it true, as Brother Fidelis had said over a year ago, that the birds sang of this child born of the mingling of human and Aoi blood? Could the prince actually understand the language of the birds? Or was he listening for something else?

“Let me go, Your Majesty,” said Sanglant harshly. “Call off your dogs.”

The soldiers glanced toward the staked-down Eika dogs, who growled and yipped, sensing their disquiet. Henry looked toward Rosvita, expecting her to speak.

Quickly she collected her thoughts. “What troubles you, Your Highness? Where is it you wish to go?”

“She should have been back by now. I have been patient. But there are things stalking her.” He cast his head back to scent. “I can smell them. There is something else, something I don’t understand— What if she’s met with disaster on the road? I must find her!”

That he did not bolt for freedom was due only to the presence of his father. Henry would not have been king had he not had a gaze as sharp as lightning and a force of will as strong as any ten men. That will set to bear on the prince was all that kept Sanglant from bolting.

“How will you find this Eagle you seek?” Rosvita continued. “There are many roads.”

“But I smell death—! And the taint of the Enemy.” He shook himself all over, barked out something more like a howl of frustration than a curse, and suddenly collapsed to his knees. “Ai, Lady, I feel a dead hand reaching out to poison her.”

“As well chain him up like the dogs,” muttered the king, “as get sense out of him. No one must see him like this.”

“Your Highness.” Rosvita knew how to soothe distraught men. As eldest daughter in her father’s hall, that duty had fallen to her more than once as a child when rage overtook Count Harl. She had soothed Henry many times. She went forward now and cautiously but firmly laid a hand on the prince’s shoulder. His whole body shook under her touch. “Would it not be better to remain with the king’s progress than to risk missing her on the road? The Eagle you seek will return to the king. If you go hunting for her, how can you hope to find her when so much land lies between?”

He had a hand over his eyes and was, she now realized, weeping silently. But tears, at least, were a man’s reaction, not a dog’s. Emboldened by this small success, she went on. “We move again today, Your Highness. At Werlida they have stores enough to feed us all for a week or more. How many roads lead to Werlida? You could ride for months and miss her on the road. Only be patient.”

“Child,” said Villam gently, “all Eagles return to the king in time. If you wait with the king, then she will come to us eventually.”

“She will come to me eventually,” he whispered hoarsely.

Villam smiled. “There speaks a young man touched by the barb young men feel most keenly. You must be patient in your turn, Your Majesty. He has endured much.”

The king frowned at his son but, as the clerics gathered in the manor hall behind them raised their voices in the opening verses of Prime, his expression lost some of its utter gloom.

“She’s a handsome enough young woman,” continued Villam, almost coaxingly. “It would do him good to recover his interest in women.”

“What is it you mean, son,” asked the king, “by the taint of the Enemy? By a ‘dead hand’?”

Suddenly, as if alerted by a noise only he could hear, Sanglant bolted to his feet and yanked up the stake that held the dogs. With them yammering and dragging at the chains, he made for the horses watched over by a nervous groom. The horses shied away from the frenzied approach of the pack, and the prince had to beat the dogs back with his fists to make them stop lunging for the underbellies of the horses. With growls and whines they obeyed him, and he swung onto a horse and with the dogs’ leashes still in his grip and a square pouch slung over his shoulder, he rode away toward the river.

The king looked toward Hathui. She nodded, as at a spoken command, and commandeered a horse to make haste after Sanglant. With barely audible groans, the four soldiers followed her.

“I despair of him,” muttered Henry.

“Let him recover,” advised Villam. “Then give him the Dragons again. Battle will restore his wits.”

But Henry only frowned. “Ungria’s king has sent an envoy. He offers his younger brother as a bridegroom for Sapientia.”

Rosvita regarded him with surprise. “I thought you favored the suit of the Salian, Prince Guillaime. Or the son of the Polenie king.”

“Savages!” murmured Villam, who had fought against the Polenie before their conversation to the faith of the Unities. “You’d do better to marry her to young Rodulf of Varingia, and seal his sister the duke’s loyalty in that way. Sapientia will need the loyalty of Duchess Yolande of Varingia when she comes to the throne.”

“He’s always been an obedient son,” said Henry, still staring in the direction his son had ridden. “But I must set the foundation on stone, not sand.”

Villam glanced at Rosvita and raised his eyebrows as if to question her. What on earth was the king speaking about? She could only shrug.