The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

into the nave of a church where a young man kneels, praying beside a stone bier. His head is bent and his hair hangs forward to conceal his face, but she knows him at once. She would know him anywhere even without the two black hounds sitting beside him, his faithful attendants.

“Alain,” she whispers as heat sears her face and he falters as he prays as if he has heard the echo of her voice in his heart. He looks up, but it is only to mark a servant entering with a lit candle. The inconstant light falls on the bier, and there she sees Count Lavastine at last, silent as he rests, until she realizes it is not him at all although it could as well be him, the image is so astounding lifelike. For an instant she feels a profound amazement, respect for the unknown craftsman who has carved this monument in stone; then, curiously, she feels sorrow, as she might for a kinsman.

“He’s dead,” she says.

But the words spin her away and she slips through a second archway, the familiar one that draws her always into its grip like desire. Through the burning stone she stares at the empty glade and dying trees. An azure feather lies discarded in the dirt. The Aoi sorcerer is gone.

“Liath!” he said sharply, hand on her wrist as he tugged her back.

Her face burned, and for an instant she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t remember where she was.

“Hush,” he said. “You’re crying!”

She remembered him and who he was and what he was to her, and for a while she only rested her face against his chest while she sniffled. But it was so uncomfortable, with her huge belly always getting in the way.

“Ai, God,” she muttered, half laughing. “I’ll be glad to get this child out of me!”

He kissed her on the forehead and released her. “What did you see?”

“You didn’t see it?” she demanded, as she always demanded, no matter how many times they tried. “I thought your mother’s blood tuned you to magic.”

“So it might have,” he said with a half grin, “but it still doesn’t make me able to see through fire, nothing more than shadows. Did you see Lavastine?”

“He’s dead,” she said, and Sanglant replied with a gusting sigh, an “ai!” of despair. “Lord Alain has become count in his place. But he only had two hounds beside him. Maybe the others were in the kennel.”

“Ai, God. We should have followed him. I’m sure it was Bloodheart’s curse that killed him.”

“The curse that was meant for me,” she murmured.

“Peace, my love. What’s done is done. It was God’s will, or it was an accident, but there’s no undoing it now.”

“Nay,” she agreed, wiping tears from her cheeks. “It can’t be undone. He’s dead. I saw Alain praying by his bier. Ah!” She grunted, legs smarting, all pins and needles, and got to her feet. Sanglant went with her to the cliff and she ran a hand lightly along the stubbly grain of rock as they walked alongside. The grass grew to the very foot of the sheer rock wall that then abruptly disintegrated into boulders, hulking things like monsters crowding the clearing. It was odd how they sat poised there, all jumbled up and yet with no sign that any had fallen farther to roll down onto the grass. It was as if an invisible hand had halted them and held them steady, there at the verge of the clearing. Snowflakes spun out of the air and lit on her cheeks. She smelled winter, but it didn’t touch her.

“I’m sure it’s one of Lavastine’s hounds,” said Sanglant finally. He licked a snowflake off a finger. “I know their smell.”

Snow swirled around them, dissolving in the brook that gurgled down from the stones past their feet, powdering daisies and snowdrop and vetch and then melting away into the green grass like the tears of a child who’s just been given a new toy. Beyond cliff and rock wall, winter engulfed the mountains while they stood here in eternal spring.

“But if that’s true, how did it get here?” she asked. “Why did it come?”

Sanglant said nothing, only brushed his fingers over his neck, where he had once worn the gold torque of royal kinship.

4

SHE dreamed.

A golden wheel flashed in sunlight, turning. A withered hand scraped at the latch of a door made of sticks bound together, and slowly the door opened; she would see Fidelis’ face at last. Would it resemble that of Emperor Taillefer, which she had seen carved in stone? It was so dark inside the hovel that she could only make out the shadow of a man, frail and ancient, and then the dream slipped through her mind like a fish twisting out of her hands, and as she stooped forward to enter the hut, she walked into a cavern whose walls gleamed as if they had been plastered with molten gold. Young Berthold slept at the base of a burning pillar of rock, surrounded by six attendants whose youthful faces bore the peaceful expression known to those angels who have at last seen God. The flames leaped heavenward, and she could actually see through them into another landscape so vivid that in an instant she was there, standing on a blanket of ice. A blizzard tore at mountain peaks, clouds streaming off the high rock summits, and the scream of the wind almost drowned the voice that spoke in her ear:

“Sister, I beg you, wake up.”

Her neck was cold and her shoulders were damp, and as she groped for purchase her hands slipped on dewy grass. A bee buzzed in and out of her line of vision. As a breeze came up, grass swayed into her face, tickling her nose. She sneezed.

“Sister Rosvita!” With exaggerated care, Fortunatus helped her sit. “You fainted. Are you well?” A rising sun glinted in her eyes, and she had to shadow her face with a hand.

“I’m very confused,” she said feebly. “Where are we? Is Sister Amabilia here?”

“Hush, Sister.” He was smiling stupidly and he patted her hand more in the manner of a man soothing a nervous hound. “We are safe. Here. Let me help you up.”

Even with his help, she trembled as she stood. She had pressed too hard after her illness, and it was all hitting now. The scene was so impossibly strange that she knew she was still dreaming. But she heard the bee clearly enough, humming about its business, and her nose tickled most realistically, stung by pollen, and she sneezed again.