The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Where is the child?”

Their voices rolled with the searing blaze of flame torn from the Sun. She was no longer on earth, she knew that then, and she was lost because the road had vanished before her and behind her. She covered her eyes but she was already sightless, blinded by their refulgence, and desperately she staggered backward, hoping to escape.

But she fell. She fell and the wind rushed past as though she had fallen and was falling and would fall for a thousand thousand years. Darkness swallowed her, and she saw no moon and no stars. She knew then which road she had followed: She had taken the last step over the precipice and now she was plunging forever into the bottomless pit, where her sins had led her.

XI

THE PALACE OF COILS

1

HAD Zacharias known how far away lay the palace of coils, he might not have followed her. They walked west through the marchlands that summer, and then, as the autumn rains and storms came and went, they walked through Wendar, tramping down the paths and old roads of the duchies of Fesse and Saony, on into the old queendom of Varre which now lay under the rule of Wendish kings. They came close enough to see the towers of Autun, but never did they enter any city or town. They hunted game and gathered herbs and reeds and flowers in the forests and wild lands. The horse did well enough on grass and weeds.

Sometimes at villages he traded pelts which he’d skinned or baskets or magical charms woven by Kansi-a-lari in exchange for flour or salt or cider. Once, they traded a charm for fertility to a barren householder in exchange for a length of cloth. The young farmwife’s monthly courses had ceased just after her marriage, but no child had ever come. Kansi-a-lari’s interest in this problem amazed Zacharias. She had so little interest in the doings of humankind, but for this barren woman she interrupted their trip for fully four weeks while she plied her with hazelnut porridge, marjoram tea, and various oils and potions out of blind nettle or jessamine. Zacharias watched her carefully; he had a good memory, and she knew things that were forbidden by the church. As if by a miracle, the young woman’s courses resumed for the first time in five years. The grateful householder sewed them tunics out of the cloth, and that made the trip easier, because now Kansi-a-lari could wear something other than the skin skirt and Quman jacket and he something other than his torn frater’s robes, something to make her look a little less foreign and him look more like a man. With these disguises they could even work for bed and board at outlying farms when their supplies ran low.

At Candlemass they paid two copper coins and a charm against warts to the ferryman who took them over the Olliar River, and when they stepped onto the opposite shore, they stood on Salian soil. Zacharias discovered to his surprise that Kansi-a-lari spoke Salian better than she spoke Wendish.

Here in Salia, it rained perhaps one day out of ten, never snowed, and even in the mornings no more than a film of ice coated such puddles as laced the ground. It was fine weather for traveling, but he sensed a tide of desperation in the countryfolk as they surveyed their sparse winter crops and their wasted woodlands. If the rains did not come soon, there would be no spring flowering. Because of their fear, the countryfolk wanted no outlanders in their villages, so he and the Aoi woman took to camping in the woods every night. It was no great hardship. They wore tunics, now, and leggings and cloaks made of fur. He missed ale and cider, but there were running streams aplenty to drink from, and he rarely suffered from the stomach complaints he had been plagued with while living as a slave among the Quman.

They came at last to a country rich in rocks, and here their path led them to the edge of the sea. Zacharias had heard tell of the sea, but he had never seen it, a river so broad the far shore lay beyond view. Waves pounded on the shore below at the base of a rugged cliff. Farther along, the cliff gave way to a crescent of sand where spume lay in pale arcs at the highest reaches. A stream poured down through rocks and cut a channel through the sandy beach to reach the sea. Salt stung his dry lips, and he wept tears of astonishment and exhaustion as he stared at the horizon and the westering sun. The ceaseless motion of the waves made him dizzy.

“Soon we will be there,” she said, shading her eyes against the sun. She licked her lips, as though tasting the salt in the air, then pointed west—to the horizon where the setting sun gleamed on surging waters. Or was that gleam the sun? Something else lay out there, so far away that it flickered bright against the dull waters and vanished, then reappeared as the angle of the sun brought it back into view.

“Churendo,” she said. Behind them, two goats had ceased their grazing along the rocky verge to examine them suspiciously. A tern waded along the crescent shore below, head dipping into the water, and out, in and out. Another joined it, then a third. Clouds brushed the sea to the south.

“We wait,” she said, “until the round moon returns.”

They camped in a hollow where weathered driftwood had collected. He built a rough shelter while she wove walls and roof from the tough sea grass. There they waited as the crescent moon waxed to full, and in long hours of observation he learned the sea’s rhythm as the tides rose and fell with uncanny regularity. The stream gave plentiful, sweet, cold water. They caught and ate the goats, netted some fish, and scraped off the inner bark of pines for bread. Zacharias even found a few shrunken radishes, which they threw together with withered leeks to make a stew.

On the day of the full moon, she insisted that they bathe. The water was desperately cold and the day no warmer, but she was adamant: to approach the churendo, they must be clean. They had become intimate in the way of companions on the road, and she was not afraid to examine his every crevice, his ears, his nostrils, the folds behind his knees, the place where Bulkezu had mutilated him, the skin between his toes. She used her knife to clean dirt out from under his finger and toenails. He felt like an animal being prepared for slaughter; when he was very young he had seen his grandmother wash a lamb for the spring sacrifice in this very way, checking it carefully for imperfections. But since Kansi-a-lari prepared herself in the same way, he thought maybe this was just part of some other ritual: one does not approach the holy places of the gods with unwashed ears and dirty toenails. He knew now that she had long since stopped considering him a man because she washed in front of him and allowed him to wash and check those places she couldn’t reach or see. He felt desire for her, for she was beautiful in a strange and uncomfortable way. Bulkezu had not mutilated his brain, after all. His skin flushed, and his heart beat faster, and the familiar hand of the Enemy reached into his gut to stroke at him temptingly. But there was nothing left to respond.

She let him wear tunic and leggings but no sandals, and on his hands and feet she painted white circles, like a slave’s manacles. Her own tunic and their cloaks and sandals she stored in the horse’s saddlebags.

It took her all afternoon first to oil herself and then to dress herself. From her five-fingered pouches she drew tiny gourds and cunningly carved nuts capped by equally tiny lids of leather, which contained seeds and dyes. She painted herself in strange swirling colors to match the tattoo that ran from shoulder to hand: burnt orange spirals on her belly and breasts, four-pointed yellow lozenges on her hips, small red circles on her buttocks, and harsh blue zigzags on her legs. On her hands and feet she painted white marks like leopard’s claws. She put on her skin skirt, tied tasseled bands around her ankles, calves, and knees, and around her neck she hung two necklaces made of polished mandibles. Into her hair she braided beads and into this beaded headdress she stuck a slender needle of bone, and three feathers: one as gold as the sun, one as green as the spring earth, one as black as the pit. She garlanded her spear with ribbons, and to the base of it she tied on the bells that she had stored away.

At dusk, they drank their fill of the sweet stream water, and she filled two leather bottles. After that, she gave him three seeds to eat, one dry, one bitter, one sweet. Then she led him and the horse down to the crescent beach. The tiny melody of the bells accompanied them, and every fifth step she shook the spear hard to make them sing loudly. There was no wind, but it was still bitterly cold. The tide was out, far out, as if the sea had been sucked away into the maw of some great monster who lived in the nethermost depths. They walked out on the crescent beach beyond the ridgeline of vanished breakers and then farther yet as the waters seemed to recede before them and the land behind them. On they walked, the sand gritty beneath his feet but amazingly firm. He turned once, to look back, and saw the cliffs so far behind that for an instant terror blinded him.

Long ago, he had known how to swim; a child in the marchlands learned early, just as he learned how to fish and weed and cut wood. But he had lived among the nomads for a long time, and they never entered the water because it was bad luck. Maybe he had forgotten how. Maybe the surging waves would sweep him away—

And then where would he go? Would his soul ascend through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light? Nay, he was no longer welcome there. Would he fall endlessly and eternally in the Abyss? And yet, what did he have to fear from the Enemy? Who was the Enemy to him, since he no longer feared and loved God?

o;Churendo,” she said. Behind them, two goats had ceased their grazing along the rocky verge to examine them suspiciously. A tern waded along the crescent shore below, head dipping into the water, and out, in and out. Another joined it, then a third. Clouds brushed the sea to the south.

“We wait,” she said, “until the round moon returns.”

They camped in a hollow where weathered driftwood had collected. He built a rough shelter while she wove walls and roof from the tough sea grass. There they waited as the crescent moon waxed to full, and in long hours of observation he learned the sea’s rhythm as the tides rose and fell with uncanny regularity. The stream gave plentiful, sweet, cold water. They caught and ate the goats, netted some fish, and scraped off the inner bark of pines for bread. Zacharias even found a few shrunken radishes, which they threw together with withered leeks to make a stew.

On the day of the full moon, she insisted that they bathe. The water was desperately cold and the day no warmer, but she was adamant: to approach the churendo, they must be clean. They had become intimate in the way of companions on the road, and she was not afraid to examine his every crevice, his ears, his nostrils, the folds behind his knees, the place where Bulkezu had mutilated him, the skin between his toes. She used her knife to clean dirt out from under his finger and toenails. He felt like an animal being prepared for slaughter; when he was very young he had seen his grandmother wash a lamb for the spring sacrifice in this very way, checking it carefully for imperfections. But since Kansi-a-lari prepared herself in the same way, he thought maybe this was just part of some other ritual: one does not approach the holy places of the gods with unwashed ears and dirty toenails. He knew now that she had long since stopped considering him a man because she washed in front of him and allowed him to wash and check those places she couldn’t reach or see. He felt desire for her, for she was beautiful in a strange and uncomfortable way. Bulkezu had not mutilated his brain, after all. His skin flushed, and his heart beat faster, and the familiar hand of the Enemy reached into his gut to stroke at him temptingly. But there was nothing left to respond.

She let him wear tunic and leggings but no sandals, and on his hands and feet she painted white circles, like a slave’s manacles. Her own tunic and their cloaks and sandals she stored in the horse’s saddlebags.

It took her all afternoon first to oil herself and then to dress herself. From her five-fingered pouches she drew tiny gourds and cunningly carved nuts capped by equally tiny lids of leather, which contained seeds and dyes. She painted herself in strange swirling colors to match the tattoo that ran from shoulder to hand: burnt orange spirals on her belly and breasts, four-pointed yellow lozenges on her hips, small red circles on her buttocks, and harsh blue zigzags on her legs. On her hands and feet she painted white marks like leopard’s claws. She put on her skin skirt, tied tasseled bands around her ankles, calves, and knees, and around her neck she hung two necklaces made of polished mandibles. Into her hair she braided beads and into this beaded headdress she stuck a slender needle of bone, and three feathers: one as gold as the sun, one as green as the spring earth, one as black as the pit. She garlanded her spear with ribbons, and to the base of it she tied on the bells that she had stored away.

At dusk, they drank their fill of the sweet stream water, and she filled two leather bottles. After that, she gave him three seeds to eat, one dry, one bitter, one sweet. Then she led him and the horse down to the crescent beach. The tiny melody of the bells accompanied them, and every fifth step she shook the spear hard to make them sing loudly. There was no wind, but it was still bitterly cold. The tide was out, far out, as if the sea had been sucked away into the maw of some great monster who lived in the nethermost depths. They walked out on the crescent beach beyond the ridgeline of vanished breakers and then farther yet as the waters seemed to recede before them and the land behind them. On they walked, the sand gritty beneath his feet but amazingly firm. He turned once, to look back, and saw the cliffs so far behind that for an instant terror blinded him.

Long ago, he had known how to swim; a child in the marchlands learned early, just as he learned how to fish and weed and cut wood. But he had lived among the nomads for a long time, and they never entered the water because it was bad luck. Maybe he had forgotten how. Maybe the surging waves would sweep him away—

And then where would he go? Would his soul ascend through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light? Nay, he was no longer welcome there. Would he fall endlessly and eternally in the Abyss? And yet, what did he have to fear from the Enemy? Who was the Enemy to him, since he no longer feared and loved God?