The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“We have been betrayed,” said Theophanu coolly.

But Adelheid was not ready to bow under at the first sign of adversity, not after their astounding escape. “I am not dead, as you see, Lady Lavinia. I can march on Darre to take back what is rightfully mine!”

Lady Lavinia was an older woman with keen brown eyes and the sharp wariness of a lady who has learned to brew her own potions so that her enemies will have no opportunity to poison her through her own laziness. She gestured now toward the raggle-taggle retinue, all strung out behind queen and princess. The horses looked appalling in the clean light of day. Three were already bloating from a surfeit of fresh grass, and one had broken its leg, bolting after it came through the stones, and been put down. Most of the servants were on foot, and even some of the noble companions limped along, their once elegant clothing as filthy as six weeks under siege with only enough water for drinking and cooking could make them. No doubt they all stank, and would have been horrified at their own smell if they hadn’t become accustomed to it.

“I beg your pardon, my queen, but with what army will you march on Darre? Once Ironhead hears that you are still alive, he will send his men to capture you. His spies are everywhere. Indeed, Your Majesty, I cannot march with you because my eldest daughter has been taken to his court to live as a hostage for my good behavior. You will find, I fear, that Ironhead has gathered many allies to him in this same manner. You must free them from their fear for their children before you can count on their loyalty. Many would willingly rally round you, because we know what Ironhead is, but in truth, there must be a chance of victory or we will all lose our lands.”

“If I can raise an army?”

Lady Lavinia only lifted her hands helplessly. She indicated her own escort, handsome enough in their bright tunics, with spears and helmets and a line of clerics carrying incense in polished censers. “Your kinfolk are dead, Queen Adelheid, may God grant them rest. Ironhead possesses your treasure, all the gold and silver and weapons you left at Vennaci. How will you raise an army great enough that the rest of us can trust our lives and land to your cause?”

Adelheid could not be daunted. Perhaps that quality made her shine. She raised an arm to indicate the mountains rising to the north. “I will lay my case before King Henry!”

A ragged cheer rose from Fulk’s soldiers and was caught and echoed by her own retinue.

Lady Lavinia looked honestly relieved. “A wise decision, Your Majesty. I will do my best to shelter you, and I will gladly supply you with fresh mounts and provisions. I have always honored you and your kin, and I would not have you made Ironhead’s prisoner—or his wife. But I cannot offer more than that, not now. My hands are chained.”

“They will not remain chained forever,” declared Adelheid. Less ragged than the others, she had worn her mail capelet for their flight, although a servant now carried her helmet. “Ironhead will never dare pursue us into Wendar, and I know that King Henry will not let this injustice go unpunished. Let us only shelter over the winter with you, Lady Lavinia, and we will cross into the mountains as soon as the passes open in late spring.”

Lady Lavinia got a puzzled look on her face, and her clerics, those within earshot, whispered one to the next. “You have wandered far in the wilderness, Queen Adelheid. Spring and the new year came more than a month ago. Have you no clerics among you to calculate the days? Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Peter the Gatekeeper.”

The third day of Avril!

Rosvita felt dizzy, quite out of her head for a moment until Fortunatus, walking beside her, reached up to steady her where she sat on a placid and bony mule. But she recovered fast enough. She had always had a good head for calculations, and this one took no great skill in any case, not with the signs all around them.

They had stepped into the circle of stones on the third day of Decial, at the full moon. Somehow, in that one step, they had spanned one hundred leagues … and four full months!

5

THAT’S it!” cried Liath. She hadn’t been able to sleep, and she’d been sitting on the bench by the open door, reading with her uncanny night vision under the unexceptional light of a waning quarter moon. “‘At this point it would be well to keep in mind that all bodies have three dimensions: longitude, latitude, and altitude.’ Ai, God! How could I not have seen it before? That’s what I missed!”

Sanglant bolted up from the bed as she swore, a soldier’s curse he hadn’t even known she knew. She clutched at her belly, bit her lip, and grimaced.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! No, no, I don’t need help.” She waved him off, although her other hand still pressed against her abdomen. He held down the bench, which rocked as she rocked with the pain. “It’s passing.”

“Is the baby coming?”

“I don’t know,” she said disagreeably. “Ai, Lady. I don’t want the baby to come now! I’m so close to the answer!” She groped for and found her sandals. “I’m going to walk over to the tower. I just need one more evening—” She cursed again and tossed the sandals aside in disgust, unable to reach her feet to bind them on.

“I’ll come with you,” he said as she heaved herself up, evidently having decided to go barefoot.

“Very well.” She walked outside without waiting, still muttering to herself. She was in the grip of something larger than he was, the mystery she pursued, or the mystery of childbirth, or both together. Sanglant had seen women in the grip of labor become oblivious to the world as though all of life and the universe had squeezed into a cord that linked them, a solitary daughter, to the holy Mother of Life, She who had given birth to the universe.

He dressed hastily. The Eika dog trotted at his heels. Servants whispered around him, pinching his ears and teasing his hair, but when he didn’t respond, they hung back at a distance and then vanished into the night to their revels. Only the watery nymph whom he had started calling “Jerna” dogged him, slipping along in his shadow as if to keep out of Liath’s sight. The creature’s shape had changed noticeably and disturbingly over the last months. He wasn’t sure if both daimones and humans wore as their material forms a dull likeness of the angels, or if the servants, more essence than substance, merely copied human form while they were imprisoned on earth. But that vaguely female form she had worn was filling out, breasts, swelling, belly rounding in imitation of Liath. Why this yearning on her part? Didn’t the daimones conceive and give birth in the same way as humans did? In truth, her presence had begun to bother him in other ways, just as his eye strayed to Sister Zoë more often than it ought.

o;If I can raise an army?”

Lady Lavinia only lifted her hands helplessly. She indicated her own escort, handsome enough in their bright tunics, with spears and helmets and a line of clerics carrying incense in polished censers. “Your kinfolk are dead, Queen Adelheid, may God grant them rest. Ironhead possesses your treasure, all the gold and silver and weapons you left at Vennaci. How will you raise an army great enough that the rest of us can trust our lives and land to your cause?”

Adelheid could not be daunted. Perhaps that quality made her shine. She raised an arm to indicate the mountains rising to the north. “I will lay my case before King Henry!”

A ragged cheer rose from Fulk’s soldiers and was caught and echoed by her own retinue.

Lady Lavinia looked honestly relieved. “A wise decision, Your Majesty. I will do my best to shelter you, and I will gladly supply you with fresh mounts and provisions. I have always honored you and your kin, and I would not have you made Ironhead’s prisoner—or his wife. But I cannot offer more than that, not now. My hands are chained.”

“They will not remain chained forever,” declared Adelheid. Less ragged than the others, she had worn her mail capelet for their flight, although a servant now carried her helmet. “Ironhead will never dare pursue us into Wendar, and I know that King Henry will not let this injustice go unpunished. Let us only shelter over the winter with you, Lady Lavinia, and we will cross into the mountains as soon as the passes open in late spring.”

Lady Lavinia got a puzzled look on her face, and her clerics, those within earshot, whispered one to the next. “You have wandered far in the wilderness, Queen Adelheid. Spring and the new year came more than a month ago. Have you no clerics among you to calculate the days? Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Peter the Gatekeeper.”