The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

But he had never forgotten the feel of that cloth. Around Queen Sophia’s bed had hung a gauzy veil that seemed to dissolve like mist when he clenched it in his small fist.

Now he clawed at a substance as filmy, struggling to free himself from a tangle of gauzelike sleep that had wrapped around him: The dogs would kill him if he couldn’t wake up.

Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

Dreams fluttered at the edge of his vision: Hugh of Austra, his handsome face poisoned by jealousy, setting a knife to his throat; people and animals dead asleep throughout the palace grounds like so many corpses left strewn on the field after a battle; an owl skimming east; depthless waters roiled suddenly by the movement of creatures more man than fish; the Aoi woman whose blood had healed him loping at a steady pace over interminable grasslands with a filthy servant riding at her heels on a pony decked out in Quman style.

She stops to scent the air, brushes her hand through the wind as if reading a message. The servant watches her almost worshipfully; he has no beard, and wears a torn and dirty robe that might once have belonged to a frater as well as a Circle of Unity at his neck. He waits as she lifts her stone-tipped spear and rattles it in the wind. The bells attached to its base tinkle, shattering the silence around him—

“And now, at last, I have found you.”

He bolted up, growling, and was on his feet with arms raised to strike before he came entirely awake. In Bloodheart’s hall, speed had been his only defense. Speed—and a stubborn refusal to die. From under the window the Eika dog growled weakly but did not otherwise stir.

“Sanglant!” Liath crossed to him and pulled his arms down, then stood there with one hand on his wrist. An uncanny light gleamed in the chamber, sorcerer’s fire: heatless and fuelless. He steadied himself on her shoulder, and she winced—not from his touch, but from pain.

“What has happened?” He moved to stand in front of Liath, to protect her from the intruder, but she stopped him.

“This is my mother.”

The gauze still entangled his mind. Her mother. He could see no trace of Liath in this woman’s face, except that the unconscious pride with which Liath carried herself was made manifest in this noblewoman’s carriage and expression: That she wore a gold torque did not astonish him, although it surprised him. Was she of Salian descent? She watched him without speaking and indeed without any apparent emotion except a touch of curiosity.

“What do you want?” he asked bluntly. “We are wed, she and I.”

“So I have heard, as well as a great deal else. It is time Liath left this place.”

“For where?” asked Liath.

“And with whom?” added Sanglant.

“It is time for Liath to fulfill that charge which is rightfully hers by birth. She will come with me to my villa at Verna where she will study the arts of the mathematici.”

Sanglant smiled softly. Liath tensed, but whether with worry—or excitement—at the prospect he could not tell. And in truth, how well did he know her? The image he had made of her in his mind had little to do with her: In the brief days since she had returned, he had seen her to be both more—and less—than the imagined woman he had built his life around during those months of captivity. But he was willing to be patient.

“You speak of forbidden sorcery,” he observed. “One that the church has condemned.”

“The church does not condemn what is needful,” Anne replied. “Thus I am assured that God approve our work.”

“Our work?” he murmured.

Liath dropped his wrist and stepped forward. “Why did you abandon Da and me? Why did you let us think you were dead for all those years?”

“I did not abandon you, child. You had already fled, and we could not find you.”

“You must have known Da couldn’t take care of us!”

She had a puzzling face, one that didn’t show her years, yet neither did she appear young. “Bernard loved the world too much,” she said sadly, although her expression never varied from that face that reminded him most of Sister Rosvita when she was soothing Henry: the mask of affability that all successful courtiers wear. “It was his great weakness. He could not turn away from the things of the flesh—all that is transient and mortal. He delighted in the spring plants, in the little fawns running among the trees, in your first steps and first words, but these delights are also a trap for the unwary, for by these means the Enemy wraps his tendrils around those of good heart who are seduced by the beauty of the world.” She sighed in the way of a teacher who regards a well-loved if exasperating pupil. “I see his mark on you, Daughter. But his alone. No other hand has worked in your soul to corrupt you. To change you.”

“To change me?”

“From what you are meant to be.”

“Which is?” asked Sanglant.

“A mathematicus,” said Anne firmly. “Gather your things Liath. We will leave now and be gone long before day breaks.”

“With what retinue do we travel?” asked Sanglant.

She regarded him with that unfathomable gaze, and for an instant the chamber dimmed, and his skin trembled as if snakes crawled up his arms and legs, and he was shaken by a fear like nothing he had ever felt before: what an ant might feel in that shadowed moment before a hand reaches down to crush it.