The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“If we look at the progression of the planets through the ephemerides …” She turned, pointed, even though she knew the marks were meaningless to him. “On the thirteenth day of Cintre of the year 735, four of the planets will be in retrograde, moving backward along the ecliptic: fleet Erekes at the cusp of the Dragon, both sage Aturna and bold Jedu in the Lion, and stately Mok in the Penitent. This suggests lines of force moving in the universe against established patterns. Only bright Somorhas, shining as the Evening Star, moves forward and on this day enters the Serpent.” Her finger moved off the precise and rather fussy hand of the unknown scribe and onto the pages she had herself filled in over the last seven months. “But by the eighteenth day of Cintre, Erekes and Aturna and Jedu will reverse themselves and travel forward again, as if restoring the universe to its rightful order. Yet in the month of Setentre, two months later, bright Somorhas will go into retrograde, followed in early Octumbre by fleet Erekes. It all culminates on the tenth of Octumbre in the year 735. Aturna and Jedu will stand at the cusp of the Lion and the Dragon while Somorhas and Erekes move in retrograde through the Serpent and Mok slides in retrograde along the cusp of the Penitent and the Healer. The waxing crescent Moon, which by midnight will have set below the horizon, will be in the sign of the Unicorn. The Sun at midnight sleeps at the nadir of the heavens in the sign of the Serpent, the harbinger of death and change who shucks one skin only to live again newly reborn in another.” She lifted both hands, palms out to mark a point flatly made. “But we live in the northern latitudes. In the latitude where the Babaharshan magi lived in their ancient cities, on the tenth of Octumbre in the year 735 at midnight, the Crown of Stars will crown the heavens.”

“But that’s exactly what Wolfhere—” He broke off. Through the open door he heard the night breeze sighing through trees and, half hidden in the rustle of leaves, a scuff like that of a large animal moving along the ground. Mice skittered in the walls behind the open cupboard where the magi stored their apparati: an astrolabe packed in velvet in a rosewood case, an armillary sphere that showed the motions of the heavens, a celestial globe with the stars marked out as pinpricks of silvery paint. A shutter creaked. “That’s exactly what Wolfhere said to me.

She had to brace herself on the table either from another wave of pain or from the shock. “He lied to me,” she whispered. “He must have known she was here all along.”

“Liath—” He lifted a hand to warn her. A footstep pressed the earth outside. Jerna, hovering near Liath, suddenly darted away and folded itself into the metal bands of the armillary sphere until it became only a shimmer among shadows.

“You are wakeful,” said Anne as she crossed the threshold. She did not ask what Liath was doing; she did not need to.

“We commonly reckon a year by the return of the sun,” said Liath, not looking up. She still breathed hard, as after a footrace, and her gaze seemed fixed on some sight beyond the book that lay open in front of her. “The Babaharshan magicians reckoned a year by the precession of the equinoxes, when all the stars would have returned to the same places from which they had started out and by this means restored the same configuration over the great distances of the whole sky. One of their ‘years’ would count as tens of thousands of years as we reckon years.”

“You have been reading Cornelia again,” said Anne.

“But there might be other ways to reckon a year. By the cycle of bright Somorhas every eight years, for instance. Or by the Crown of Stars crowning the heavens.” Liath finally straightened. She looked tired, and anxious, and triumphant. “Some people say the Aoi were always here, before humankind built cities. Others say that long ago the Aoi sailed to these shores in beautiful boats woven of gold and silver reeds, and that they ruled over the villages of humankind and in time offered to teach some of them the arts of sorcery.”

“To their everlasting regret, when human magi turned against them,” said Anne. “When humankind outbred them and filled the countries the Aoi ruled with unmatchable human armies. When humankind brought disease to their masters, which they could not combat.”

Liath frowned. “According to the Book of Chaldeos, the emperors and empresses of the Dariyan Empire reckoned years as we reckon years, by each return of the sun. But they also imitated the Aoi, whose calendar recognized a Great Year equal to fifty-two of our years. Even Chaldeos didn’t know how the calendar of the Aoi worked. That was lost with them two millennia ago. But their year began and ended when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens. They lived far south of us, or came from a land far south of where we live. They must have looked at the sky differently than we do.” Liath closed the book and set a hand on it, as if to keep it closed. Now she looked at Anne directly. “Who did the calculations in this book?”

At first, Sanglant did not think Anne meant to answer. But instead she walked forward and turned the book to the opening page of calculations. There was no preface, no explanatory note or signature, only the numbers. “Biscop Tallia.”

“The daughter of Emperor Taillefer.”

“The same one. She understood that some deeper secret underlay the mystery of the Lost Ones. So she calculated all the way back two thousand seven hundred years to a day when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens. On that midnight, the portents, as read in the lines of force woven through the heavens, opened the world to change, bringing the breath of the aether which is untainted by the touch of the Enemy into the air we breathe here below the Moon….”

“When portals open between the spheres. When great power can be unleashed for good or for ill. You said there are ways to reach between the spheres and even beyond them—” Liath grunted as another wave hit her. He caught her as she staggered, held her.

Anne watched him with a gaze so open and clear that it was like the cut of an ax: nothing subtle about it.

Sometimes, when he was tired or preoccupied, his mind would stop working for a while, like a stream suddenly clogged with leaves and dirt and stones that backs up, and up, until the accumulated force of the trapped water finally and abruptly drives a passage through the debris. “You’re talking about that great conspiracy of my mother’s people in which Wolfhere implied I was an active participant. But she abandoned me when I was barely two months old. If I am so deep in their confidences, then explain to me why I was left behind, and left ignorant.”

“It is a puzzle, truly. But you cannot deny what you are, Prince Sanglant.”

“I am a bastard. I can fight, and lead men in battle. If there is aught else you know of me which remains hidden to me, then please tell me now.”

Anne’s smile was slight. “You are not unversed in the art of the courtier, which some call intrigue. In some ways you are cunning, Prince Sanglant, but in most ways you are not, for like your dog that waits outside you show what you are on the surface. There is little else to know.”

“No onion, I,” he retorted, laughing again.

“He’s not—” began Liath hotly, defending him, but he touched her on the hand, and for once she shut her mouth on an imprudent comment.

“But a cup made of gold shows the whole of its substance on the surface as well,” continued Anne as if Liath had not spoken. “That makes it no less precious. You are here for a reason.”

“You are the thread that joins Aoi and human,” said Liath. “But for what purpose?”

Anne smiled, watching Sanglant as he watched her, opponents who had not yet drawn swords. “For as was written in the Revelation of St. Johanna: ‘And there will come to you a great calamity, a cataclysm such as you have never known before. The waters will boil and the heavens weep blood, the rivers will run uphill and the winds will become as a whirlpool. The mountains shall become the sea and the sea shall become the mountains, and the children shall cry out in terror for they will have no ground on which to stand.’”

“Chapter eleven, verse twenty-one,” said Liath automatically.

Anne continued. “Some say Johanna was speaking of a vision she had seen of a great cataclysm that would on an ill-fated day in the future overtake the world. But others claim that she recorded in her Revelation the words of one who had experienced in her own time such a cataclysm.”

“But you think St. Johanna wrote of the future,” said Liath, toying with the pages of the book, running a finger over the old writing as if the ink itself could reveal secrets.

“Nay,” said Anne. “I think she wrote of both past and future, of what happened two thousand seven hundred years ago, and of what will happen in five years if we do not stop it in time.”

This time, he felt it hit her before she moved, eyes widening, jaw setting hard as she reached almost blindly and grabbed his arm. Through her skin he felt the pulse of her heart and, distantly, a second pulse, fine and faint and swift, that slowed as the pain peaked and then quickened again. As the wave passed, Liath spoke in a whisper that carried no farther than the good wool of his tunic. “I have been to the place the Aoi now live.”

“Not lost at all,” he said aloud, amazed that he hadn’t seen it before. Had he not really believed her stories of the Aoi sorcerer? Or had he dismissed them as something inexplicable? “How could they have been lost if my mother could walk on earth? What if they were only hidden—?”