The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Shouldn’t we give them a decent burial?”

“It will take too long. Stay if you must. They belong to your kin, not mine.” But she didn’t leave immediately. A row of open-sided sheds had been left untouched. Their roofs sheltered craftsmen’s tools and paraphernalia: a woodworker and a stone knapper had once worked here, together with a leatherworker. Cured skins lay draped over crude sawhorses next to a dozen or more skins strung on frames to cure. She hefted tools, tested their balance, took a few, but it was the leather she found most interesting. She rolled it in her fingers, spat on it, tested its strength over her knee. Finally she took three skins and rolled them up, then scavenged in the half-burned bakehouse and returned with several blackened loaves and two leather bottles filled with cider. He stared, as stunned as an idiot. Wasn’t it wrong to take what wasn’t theirs? Yet the dead had no need of food. She tied skins, tools, and provisions on behind the horse’s saddle without a word, then turned and raised her spear as her gaze fastened on something behind him.

That noise wasn’t the wind. It was whispering.

He turned.

“Frater!” Four women, two adolescent boys, and an old man crowded together at the door of the burned longhouse. About a half dozen children huddled behind them. One woman held a baby in her arms. “Ai, God! Good frater! God have sent you to us in our time of need!” A woman stepped forward, arms outstretched as for a blessing. “We thought you was the raiders, come back. That woman with you—” She broke off as her gaze took in the terrible scene, a dozen men of various ages, one young and one very old woman lying dead on bloody ground. “She wears their coat.”

“She’s not Quman.” He was amazed at how hoarse his voice sounded. The words still did not come easily, and this village woman spoke with a thick dialect, a migrant from a different region than his own kinfolk.

“Thank God you are come to us, frater,” she went on, taking another step closer. “You can pray with us. You can tell us what to do.” The youngest of the women had begun to sob, and half the children followed suit. “We ran with the children, but the others had to stand behind to stop the raiders from coming after us. Ai, God! What did we do to bring God’s wrath down on us in this way?”

“Come,” said the Aoi woman. “We go.” She pulled the reins out of his hand and started walking.

The old man fell to his knees. “You have come in answer to our prayer!” he wheezed. “It has been many seasons since a holy deacon sang prayers in our presence. We begged for God to give us a sign, when we hid from the raiders in the forest.”

“Did they come today?” asked Zacharias nervously.

“Nay,” replied the woman. “It were yesterday afternoon, late. We didn’t dare come back till this morning.”

“Then they’re not too close, surely,” said Zacharias, but the Aoi woman did not look back or wait for him. He gripped his walking staff higher, took a step. The younger women began wailing like ghosts cursed to wander aimlessly after death. He hesitated even as the sorceress crossed behind the palisade and vanished from his sight, moving ever westward. “I can’t help you,” he said at last.

“But you’re a churchman,” cried the woman. “Surely you will stay long enough to say the blessing over these brave dead ones so their souls can ascend to God!”

“God have forsaken us.” How he hated them at that moment for their weeping and for the way they looked at him for salvation. He couldn’t even save himself. “Pray to the old ones, as your grandmothers did. Maybe then your luck will return.”

He turned his back on them and followed his mistress. Their cries and weeping followed him for a long time in the quiet forest, even after he could no longer hear them.

4

THREE days after the Eagle had delivered his message, Lavastine’s party reached the convent of St. Genovefa. Some playful soul had carved the gates into the shape of two great dogs, and this same spirit pervaded the guesthouses as well where every mantle and beam seemed to hold its share of dog faces or dogs cavorting or at the hunt or resting quietly as if in expectation of the martyred saint’s imminent return to care for her beloved comrades. The abbess sent her own servants to wait on the count and his heir and cousin, and after they were settled invited them to dine.

The abbess was startlingly young, scarcely older than Tallia. Second daughter of an ancient and noble house, Mother Armentaria had been invested into the church as abbess at age twelve. Her mother’s great-aunt had founded the convent and been its first Mother, and a woman of that family had always served as abbess. She had the habit of command, and the institution over which she reigned was a prosperous one. In sweet, haunting voices, her nuns sang praises to the Lady which the young abbess had herself composed in praise of God in Unity.

“Holy Mother, you who have brought life,

Blessed Thecla, you who have witnessed death,

In this female form God have brought us the highest blessing,

Let us praise you and rejoice in you.”

But she was still eager for news of the world.

“I heard that the king of Salia has offered one of his sons as consort and husband for Princess Sapientia. Will King Henry take this alliance? Some of the lands under my rule lie in the borderlands between Varre and Salia, and there has been trouble there, with Salian lords claiming the rights to those lands although I have charters that prove them mine. Such a marriage might bring these troubles to an end.”

“It is possible that the king will look east for such an alliance,” said Lavastine. “Report has it that the barbarians have increased their raids in the marchlands.”

“He has two daughters,” observed the abbess. “And two sons, even if one is a bastard. He may make as many alliances as he wishes, up to four, to benefit those of us who serve him.”

“Do you not serve God?” Tallia asked sharply.

Mother Armentaria’s reply was sharper still. “Will you not pray with us this night at Vigils, my lady Tallia? Then you may judge for yourself how we honor God.”

“I will pray gladly, and with a full heart, and for the entire night. And there is more, that you may wish to hear.”

Lavastine looked at her in surprise, but he could not object. Nor could Alain. When they left the table, Tallia escaped him, again, as she always seemed to be escaping him: into prayer. He could not follow her into the cloister reserved for women.