The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

His mistress stood, lifted her staff again, and again measured it against the stars. Her smile came brief, fierce, and sharp. “Co-yoi-tohn,” she said, pointing northwest.

“You’re looking for him,” said Zacharias suddenly.

From behind, a panther coughed and then, more distantly, wings whirred.

Zacharias yelped, drew his knife and peered eastward, but saw nothing—no winged riders among the silver-painted grass. The woman cast a glance over her shoulder. She scented the wind, then shrugged her pack down from her shoulders, pulled out a hard, round cake, and sat to eat. She offered none to him. Zacharias sharpened a stick and spitted the grouse, careful to make sure the viscera he had cleaned out and stuffed back in did not fall out of the cavity. He was too hungry to wait long. He offered the first grouse to her; she sniffed, made a face that actually made him laugh out loud.

Then he caught himself, cringing, but she took no offense. She tore off a strip of meat, fingered it, touched it to her lips, licked it, chewed a corner, grunted with surprise, and finished it off, then extended a hand imperiously for more. He was starving, and he ate every bit of his own grouse even though it made his belly ache. She went so far as to crack the bones and suck the marrow out.

But when they were done, they did not rest. She rose, licked her fingers a final time, kicked dirt over the fire, and indicated the direction she had earlier pointed out.

“Co-yoi-tohn,” she repeated. “What you would call, west of northwest.”

“But where are we going?” he asked. “Who was the man we saw in the fire?”

She only shrugged. Light tinged the east, the first herald of dawn. “Now we begin the hunt.”

3

SURELY, wicked souls consigned to the pit could not have spent an evening’s span of hours in more torment than did Alain at his wedding feast.

The merriment he could stomach, barely, but the constant laughing toasts and crude jokes made him want to curl up and shrink away, and he was acutely conscious of Tallia beside him so still and withdrawn that he felt like a monster for wanting so badly what she clearly feared.

But surely, when all was quiet and they were alone, he could persuade her to trust him. Surely, if he could gentle the ferocious Lavas hounds and win the trust of Liath, he could coax love from Tallia.

She had on a blue linen gown fantastically embroidered with gems and the springing roes that signified her Varren ancestry. A slim silver coronet topped her brow, Henry’s only concession to her royal kinship except of course for the delicate twist of gold braid that circled her neck. She wore her wheat-colored hair braided and pinned up at the back of her head; the style made her slim neck seem both more frail and more graceful. Wanting simply to touch it, to feel the pulse beating at her throat, made him ache in a peculiarly uncomfortable spot and even when he had to go pee he dared not stand to leave the table for fear of calling attention to himself in a most embarrassing way.

He and Tallia shared a platter. He tried hard not to dip the elaborate sleeves of his tunic into the sauces that accompanied each course of the meal. Tallia did not eat more than a crust of bread and drink two sips of wine, but he was ravenous and though he feared it made him look gross and slovenly in her eyes, he could not help but eat heartily until a new toast would remind him—like a kick in the head from a panicked cow—that later this night he would at long last meet his heart’s desire on the wedding bed, where nothing more could come between them. Then he would be so stricken with nausea that he was sorry he had eaten anything.

Likewise, he gulped down wine one moment out of sheer nerves only to refuse the cup the next when with sick fear he recalled jokes he had heard at his Aunt Bel’s table about bridegrooms who had drunk themselves into such a sodden fog that they could not perform their husbandly duty.

Lavastine spoke little and then only to respond laconically to congratulations thrown his way. He needed to say nothing; this triumph had cost him plenty in the lives of his men, but he had gained a nobly-connected bride for his heir together with a seat, by virtue of her lineage, among the great princes of the realm.

Certain distractions gnawed at the edges of the feast: Liath returned, and Prince Sanglant made such a spectacle of himself that Alain was briefly diverted from his fear that Tallia would faint dead away at the high table; the tumblers caught Tallia’s attention with their tricks, and for a happy if short span of time he got her to smile at him as he admired—not her, never her, let him show no interest in her or she would retreat as totally in spirit as a turtle pulls into its shell—but rather the lively cartwheelers and rope-balancers, thin girls of about Tallia’s age who had a kind of hard beauty to their faces composed of equal parts skill and coarse living.

The tumblers retreated. Wine flowed. Toasts came fast and furious and then—Ai, God!—it was time.

Servingwomen cleared off their table, he hoisted Tallia up and climbed on after, and eight young lords actually carried the table with the pair of them on it to the guesthouse set aside for their bridal night; crude, certainly, and boisterous as every person there laughed and called out suggestions, but Alain didn’t mind the old tradition if only because Tallia had to hold on to him to keep from sliding off. She looked terrified, and actually shrank against him when he put an arm around her to pull her firmly to his side. She was as delicate as a sparrow.

“Here, now,” he whispered. “I’ll hold you safe.” She trustingly pressed her face against his shoulder.

The crowd roared approvingly.

Ai, Lady, Perhaps it was he who would faint. He was deliriously happy.

They let the table down unsteadily by the threshold, and he helped Tallia down. She still clung to him, more afraid of the crowd than of him.

“Who witnesses?” cried out someone in the crowd.

A hundred voices answered.

The king himself came forward to speak the traditional words. “Your consent having been obtained, let this marriage be fittingly consummated so that it can be legal and binding. Let there be an exchange of morning gifts at this door after dawn to signify that consummation.” He laughed, in a fine good humor after enough wine to soak a pig, a good meal, and the company of thrilling entertainers and all his good companions. “May you have God’s blessing this night,” he added, and as a mark of his extreme favor offered Alain his hand to kiss. Alain bent to one knee, took the king’s callused hand, and kissed the knuckles. Tallia, sinking to both knees beside him, pressed her uncle’s hand to her lips with a faint sigh. The lantern light made their shadows huge along the wall, like elongated giants.

Lavastine stepped forward to open the door for them, an unexpected gesture more like that of servant than lord and father. Alain caught his hands as well and pressed them to his lips. Everything seemed so much larger and fuller this night: the noise of the crowd, the brush of wind on his face, his love for his father which suddenly seemed to swell until it encompassed the heavens, the joyous barking of the hounds, who had not been allowed to escort them for fear that they would frighten Tallia and become too unruly among such a large and boisterous crowd.

Lavastine took him under the elbow and raised him up. This close, Alain saw a single tear snaking a path down the count’s face. Lavastine paused, then took Alain’s head gently between his hands and kissed him on the forehead.

“I beg you, Daughter,” he said, turning to Tallia. “Make him happy.”