The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

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.

*   *   *

“Hai!” cried Kansi-a-lari, leaping back and clapping her hands once, twice, as if the sound could shield her.

The fire whoofed in and collapsed upon itself. The night birds had fallen silent. The moon shivered on the waters of the stream.

She stood. Even in the pale moonlight he saw that her expression was more than usually grim. “He has vanished from my sight.” Then, eyeing him as a hunter eyes the deer that will provide her supper, she took a step back, touched her knife as she balanced for speed and striking—then seemed to change her mind.

“Tomorrow we travel west. To churendo.”

“What is churendo?”

“The palace of coils.” She spun and walked out into the night.

The quiet lay like death around him. Of all the usual night noises, he heard only the stream’s babble. Finally he knelt and reached forward to stir the fire with a stick, but turned up no burning sticks, no red embers. Puzzled, he put his fingers into the pale remains, rubbed substance between his fingers.

It was dead ash, as if it had ceased burning days ago.

5

IVAR had never seen so many biscops and presbyters in one place. King Henry had convened the council on Matthiasmass, but it had taken two days of fractious arguments over precedent and rank—who would enter first, who would sit where—before the council could even be seated. Now they entered the hall on the fourth day of the proceedings, led by Biscop Constance of Autun, the king’s younger sister. After her walked a haughty presbyter whose arrogance was legendary; he was said never to speak to any person whose mother was not at least a count. Then came several biscops and presbyters whose cities and names Ivar couldn’t keep straight, followed at the end by an elderly presbyter named Hatto who had not minded praying beside Ivar at the service of Lauds three days ago and, finally, by young Biscop Odila of Mainni, who had only recently taken up miter and crosier.

The assembled biscops and presbyters took their seats in a semicircle at the head of the hall, facing the king’s throne. Once they had settled into their cushioned and gilded chairs, horns blew to announce the king. Every soul in the church knelt—except for the seated churchmen and women, whose dignity was too great to bow before mere worldly power. King Henry came in, robed and crowned in splendor.