The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“We know that the Aoi vanished from earth long ago, leaving only their half-breed children behind,” said Anne. “It was those half-breed children who founded and built the Dariyan Empire.”

rst, 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—?”

“We know that the Aoi vanished from earth long ago, leaving only their half-breed children behind,” said Anne. “It was those half-breed children who founded and built the Dariyan Empire.”

“The Aoi are not utterly vanished from the earth,” objected Liath. “There are shades in the deep forest.”

“Are these shades truly of earth, or are they only trapped somehow between the living and the dead, between substance and aether, doomed to live as shadows?”

Like the servants, doomed to live in bodies that only mimicked those of humankind. But he did not voice the thought out loud. He knew better than to challenge an opponent in an open battle when he was outnumbered and held inferior weapons. He wasn’t desperate yet.

“You have not listened carefully, Liath,” scolded Anne. “Biscop Tallia was the first scholar we know of since the days of the Dariyan Empire who gained enough knowledge to calculate the message written in the heavens. For the heavens do not lie. They only record God’s creation. She discovered that on the date that you mentioned, great forces might be unleashed. From ancient records pieced together out of the archives of the old Dariyan Empire, she discovered that we have enemies lying in wait to destroy humanity. For this service to humankind, Biscop Tallia was humbled by the church at the Council of Narvone, because they envied her.”

When neither of them responded, she went on. “But Biscop Tallia did not let her knowledge die with her. She passed it on through her companion in the arts, Clothilde, who in her turn made sure that there would always be others to follow her. We are the ones who seem to be sleeping while the world wakes around us, only we are in fact waiting here in our hidden place to save humanity from that which threatens it. Seven is our number, because we are in number like to the seven planets: the Sun, the Moon, fleet Erekes, bright Somorhas, Jedu, who is the Angel of War, stately Mok, and sage Aturna.”

“The Seven Sleepers,” murmured Liath. “I’ve been so blind. Ai, God, here comes another one.”

He let her clutch him, fingers digging into his arm. There was nothing else he could do.

“You should not have allowed yourself to become distracted from your true purpose,” said Anne coolly, not moving to touch Liath as the wave came and went. “It is Bernard who is to blame for this weakness in you.”