The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

Alain had lost his appetite for the hunt. “But surely sometimes desperation may drive you to sin,” he objected, watching branches whip and still as the forward party vanished into the trees.

“It is true that we aren’t made guilty by those things that lie outside our power, but certainly we aren’t justified by them either. Evil is the work of the Enemy. It is easier to do what is right.”

“You were laid under a compulsion. What you did while under that spell was no choice of your own.”

“And that, my son, is why the church must keep her hand closed tight around all matters pertaining to sorcery.”

All five black hounds broke into a chorus of barking. Steadfast and Fear bounded away into the brush. Lavastine pulled up and began to dismount, but suddenly Terror was beneath him, nudging him with his head as if to keep him in the saddle.

“I’ll go look,” said Alain quickly. Sorrow and Rage bristled, hackles up. They had coursed silently around to place themselves between Lavastine’s horse and the undergrowth where the other two hounds thrashed and barked within a thicket that rattled and swayed as if a wild wind had been bound into the spot.

“My lord count.” Several servingmen rode forward, but Alain pressed past them, dismounted, and with his sword out forged into the brush, batting aside branches, getting a mouthful of dry tern leaves as he shoved through. Sorrow followed him, still barking. Rage stayed behind with Terror. Steadfast and Fear had cornered something in the densest comer of the thicket strewn with brier and fern. He saw it, a flash of dead white darting here, and then back, seeking an exit. Dread hit like the blast of cold wind, making him shake.

“Alain!” called Lavastine.

“Don’t follow me!”

It darted past Fear’s snapping jaws. Alain cut. His sword hit loam, sprayed bits of leaves. Steadfast leaped past him. Sorrow bounced. A creature scurried away under the leaves. He saw it again where leaves parted and it darted into a screen of briers, that unnatural white gleam like bone washed clean and polished by the sea. He stabbed again at it but only got his hand scratched by thorns.

There it was again. He stabbed. And missed.

The thing scuttled past Fear. That fast, it turned to bolt toward the horses. Sorrow snapped. Alain jumped after it. Beyond, he saw movement among the trees, horsemen closing in.

“Don’t dismount!” he cried, but no one could hear him over he clamor of the hounds barking. Steadfast dove headfirst into a bush. She yelped, and then, abruptly, everything was still except for the distant blare of a hunting horn.

Terror growled, and Rage joined him, and then Sorrow and Fear as well, a shield wall of hounds at Steadfast’s back. The sound crawled up Alain’s spine like poison. His neck prickled, and he spun round, sword raised. A flutter in the leaves. He backed at the bush, but a wren struggled away, broke free, and flew off.

That ragged breathing was his own.

“Alain?” Lavastine forced his horse into the brush. “What is going on?”

Alain dropped the sword into the forest litter, caught Steadfast by her collar, and dragged her back. Blood swelled from her right forepaw and even as she licked it, whimpering, the wound began to swell strangely.

“We must get her back home. I fear—” He broke off and glanced up at the servingmen, who had clustered around and all gawped at him. He gestured as Lavastine would, and the servants moved away. Alain continued in a low voice. “I saw it again, the size of a rat but without any color at all. I even thought Bliss had simply eaten it, taken it into himself to save you, but I must have been wrong. Ai, Lord! It’s the dead hand of Bloodheart, the creature Prince Sanglant spoke of. It’s followed us this far.”

Lavastine considered him in silence, then shifted his gaze to Steadfast. A leaf spun on the wind and settled to earth. “Put her over my saddle. It would be prudent to return now and let the others hunt as they will.”

There were many things Alain wanted to say on the ride back, but he could not make them into sentences that made sense. It was a long, quiet ride with Steadfast draped awkwardly over the neck of the nervous horse, but Lavastine kept a firm hand on the rein and the other on the hound’s back. At the stables, they handed over the horses to Master Rodlin and Lavastine himself lugged the hound up to his chamber, leaving Alain to venture into the hall where the women had settled for the day.

They had taken over the upper half of the hall, and he paused by the door, hesitant to enter, as he watched them laughing and talking. Even Tallia engaged in the debate with an eagerness she rarely displayed for Alain. Set in the pride of place, as befit her birth, she shared a couch with the stout, handsome young woman who called her “cousin.”

Duchess Yolande made him nervous. Halfway through her second pregnancy, she was far enough along that she didn’t care to go hunting, and if she did not go hunting, then no other woman in her train would go either. But neither were any men welcome to spend the day with the ladies, whom she had organized into a symposium in the Dariyan style, with couches and wine and certain intellectual questions to be debated.

“The Dariyan physician Galené clearly states that males are like deformed creatures,” she was saying now. “But I suppose it is not their fault that they are the product of weaker, more sickly seed. That is why they cannot develop wombs, as females can.”

“But She who is Mother to us all chose to voice the divine word through the lips of a man,” objected Tallia.

“A man gave voice,” corrected the duchess, “but a woman witnessed. It was the holy Thecla’s testimony which gave rise to the church.”

“Even so,” insisted Tallia, “men can also aspire to become like angels.”

“Who are formed in the shape of women.”

“Better to say that women are formed in the shape of angels,” corrected the duchess’ deacon, who seemed by turns to rein the young duchess back and then egg her on.

“But we are all of us capable of being like the angels in purity of purpose and the sincerity of our prayer, if nothing else.” Tallia remained stubborn on this point.

“Your beliefs, my lady, are well meant,” chided the deacon but in the most delicate manner possible, “but the church explicitly condemned as heresy the wrongful notion of the sacrifice and redemption at the Council of Addai. You must pray for God’s intervention in this matter.”