The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“My service!”

“No. That you gave in exchange for your life, which I saved from the one you call Bulkezu.” She hoisted one of the leather bottles looted from the burned village, the last that still held hard cider. Unstoppering it, she poured a little on her hand and lapped it up, made a face, but she took a draught anyway and passed the bottle on to Zacharias. The backwash of its heady flavor made him light-headed and bold.

“It’s true I have nothing to offer you except—” His gaze lit on her skin skirt, and he shuddered, went on. “—except my knowledge of the Wendish people. That’s worth nothing to you, since you’ve traveled among them before, so it seems. But it would be simple kindness to offer me your name, after we have traveled so far together.”

“Kindness? What is kindness?”

“It is the custom of my people to exchange names,” he said finally. It angered him that she held more of him than he did of her. But they could never be equals, no matter what.

The woman put all the provisions back in the pouches, keeping out only one loaf, which she broke to show a moist, thick, dark interior. She tried it, nodded, and broke the loaf into equal portions, handing one to Zacharias, then sat back on her heels as she chewed. Zacharias eased the second squirrel off the spit and they ate in silence while the fire guttered and sank to coals.

She answered abruptly. “I am known among my people as The-One-Who-Is-Impatient. The Wendish people knew me as The-One-Who-Is-Not-Like-Us.”

“What can I call you?”

She had grease on her thumb, and she drew the thumb down one seam of her skirt so that the fat soaked into the skin, darkening it.

Who had once lived in that skin, and how had he lost it? Her eyes had the hard green glare of emeralds. “The-One-Whose-Wish-is-Law.”

“You have no real name?” The profusion of titles puzzled him.

“A name is only what other people call me. Since I am a different thing to each one of them, I have many names.”

“What do you call yourself?”

She grinned. She had remarkably beautiful teeth, white, and straight. “You I will call More-Clever-Than-He-Looks. I do not need to call myself because I am already in my body. But if you need a title, you may call me Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari, or if that is too much for your tongue, then Kansi-a-lari.”

This challenge at least he could meet. He had always been proud of his clever tongue. “Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari.” He stumbled over it, said it a second time, then a third after she corrected his pronunciation. By the fourth he could pronounce it well enough to please her, and she laughed.

“Well, then, More-Clever-Than-He-Looks, build up the fire.”

Brush and deadwood littered the area and were easy to collect. Twilight had barely deepened to night when he laid on more wood and watched the fire blaze. She rocked back and forth on her heels, palms out. Flames built, leaped, and melded into an archway. And through it:

Fire.

Nothing else, only fire. No figure of a man, such as they had seen before.

Kansi-a-lari muttered words, like a curse. She wove her fingers together, making a lattice of them, and through this lattice she looked at the fire again, as through a screen. Zacharias saw only fire, as seen through a veil. She spoke another word. Dim shapes flickered to life in the fire. A lord rode on a handsome horse at the head of an impressive retinue. He had silvering hair and beard, a man in his prime. Standards flew before him: eagle, lion, and dragon.

“The king!” breathed Zacharias in amazement, not because he had ever seen the king but because he recognized his sigils.

But she frowned at this image of the king, seeking someone else.

“Sawn-glawnt,” she said, more commanding now, but the image faded and fire danced and blazed. She spoke another word, and shadows appeared within the fire, sharpening into visions:

A dead dog lies tumbled in leaves. Its ribs glare white against decaying black fur. A gaping hole sags in the flesh of its belly where something has eaten it away from without—or within.

A man dressed in cleric’s robes sits in a shuttered room. He has the clean chin and short hair of a man sworn to the church, and his hair is starkly gold, as if a sorcerer had spun it out of pure metal. His hand trembles as he reaches to touch writing on a sheet of parchment that lies on the table before him. The vision is so clear that Zacharias can read the words: “To Mother Rothgard of St. Valeria, from the hand of Sister Rosvita of Korvei, now in the king’s schola, this message delivered to you by my trusted companion Amabilia of Leon. I beg you, Mother, to travel with Sister Amabilia to Autun. You are needed to testify to the events— The man smiles, revealing a chipped tooth—the only flaw in his beauty. He folds the parchment up. Underneath it lies a bronze Circle of Unity. Dried blood stains it. The man lifts it and spins it by its chain, and the vision spins and folds in on itself and becomes something else….

A strange bronze-colored man hugs his knees to himself. He is shaped like a man, mostly, but he looks like no man Zacharias has ever seen. His hair gleams like polished bone, his skin has the scaly texture of snake hide, and he goes naked like a wild person except for a scrap of cloth tied around his bony hips. He holds in one hand a staff. With a sliver of sharp-edged obsidian he carves marks along the length of the wood, then dips a feather in little pots of ocher and paints the marks a dull red. Many small items he weaves together, rolls up, and stuffs inside the hollowed-out staff. Now and again he rocks back on his heels and throws his head back—Zacharias hears nothing—and howls, in triumph or in pain. A ripple crosses this vision, the shadow of great stone figures and a circle of smooth sand …

… and they are flying above the grasslands, deep in the borderwild where griffins dwell. The grass grows taller than a man, even than a chieftain’s wife with her elaborate headdress. But as they skim down, a figure parts the grass, a face patterned green and white peers out with a great bulk of body behind. Wings flutter. An arrow flies, sharp, killing, aimed true at his heart.

nswered abruptly. “I am known among my people as The-One-Who-Is-Impatient. The Wendish people knew me as The-One-Who-Is-Not-Like-Us.”

“What can I call you?”

She had grease on her thumb, and she drew the thumb down one seam of her skirt so that the fat soaked into the skin, darkening it.