The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

o;Look at them spears!” cried one of them, whose face was at least as dirty as his feet.

“Come you to kill the beast?” cried another, galloping alongside the road until a ditch cut him off. Their friend had already taken off across a side path, leaping a rivulet, and vanishing into a crowd of waist-high berry bushes as if all the Enemy’s minions pursued him.

Word flew before them, and when they reached the village, they were met by a delegation of village elders, three old women and two bent men who seemed to have about a dozen teeth between them. What must have been the rest of the village population crowded behind: matrons; men and boys of all ages; little girls. Strangely, there seemed to be no young women of marriageable age among them. Dogs barked, and Thoughtless took a swipe at one scrawny yapper with his spear, nicking the poor creature in its hindquarters. Ivar had seen this scene before as they had traveled at a leisurely pace south and east from Gent: the village elders would offer a few poor gifts as a transparent bribe and then suggest that the group travel to a manor house or monastic farm farther up the road, one more fit to entertain a party of their consequence. Wichman would refuse because he preferred lording it at villages, where there was inevitably a handier supply of reluctant young women.

“God’s mercy,” cried the eldest of the sages, an old woman who had to lean on a stick to support herself. She had an odd way of clipping off her words at the end, the local dialect. “Our prayers are answered, my lords. Say that you have come to kill the beast!”

“What sort of beast might that be?” asked Wichman, scanning the huts and outlying sheds. Beyond, long fields tipped with green striped the ground, interspersed with ranks of fruit-bearing bushes and trees. Something pale flashed between two trees, escaping to the safety of the woods: a dog? a goat?

“Ai, a terrible creature not born of earth! Since Margrave Villam and Duchess Rotrudis drove back the Rederii these twenty years and brought them into the Light of God, we’ve had no trouble here. But now!” Several folk wailed out loud. “Shades in the forest there’ve always been, but this! First all manner of unGodly lights up in the old stones, and now the beast. Why has God seen fit to torment us?”

“What manner of beast is it?” repeated Wichman. He had his most irritating little smirk on his face.

“A terrible creature never meant to walk on earth. It come from the stones one night, flew out of a blinding light. As big as a house, it is, like an eagle, only it’s a monster sent by the Enemy to plague us. Its claws could lay open a cow with one rake. First it only took the deer, but we fear that—”

“Haven’t you any daughters but those little ones?” demanded Thruster suddenly. He was rubbing one thigh obsessively, sweating a little although it wasn’t very warm.

Every man and woman in the place went still and white. One child, piping up, got a slap on the mouth.

“Eaten!” said the woman in a quaking voice. She had warts on her nose and a stubborn gleam in her eye. “The beast took the deer first, and then our daughters.”

“I would have taken the daughters first and then the deer,” said Useless, “but this must be some agile relative of Eddo’s.” They laughed uproariously, including Thruster.

“Hold your tongues!” said Wichman, who hadn’t laughed. “Whose land is this?”

“It’s our own, my lord. I come with my husband, God rest him, to settle here when there wasn’t nothing but savages living here. It were the agreement made with King Arnulf’s stewards. We’re beholden to no lady but only to the king.”

He grunted thoughtfully. His horse, getting restive, danced a little sideways, and he yanked it back. “But I must keep my companions happy, or they won’t want to risk their lives. What can you offer us?”

“Food and shelter, my lord.”

“I know what you’re hiding,” said Wichman. “And I want it for myself and my men.”

“What’re they hiding?” cried Thruster eagerly.

Prince Ekkehard pressed his horse forward. Compared to his older cousin, he looked slight and almost frail, but he held his head as proudly and he was of course dressed magnificently. “I am Ekkehard, son of King Henry,” he said in a bold voice. “I have come to save you. I ask no reward for my companions and myself no matter what the risk to our lives, for I know my duty as a prince of this realm. Tell me more of this beast that afflicts you.”

In this way, Ivar found himself pressing through grass and chest-high foliage along an overgrown trail, following his guide, a thin and rather frightened boy whose speech was almost unintelligible. As Ekkehard’s least favorite companion, Ivar had been sent ahead to scout the stones, the lair of the mysterious and horrible beast, and his guide had evidently been chosen because he was one person the villagers wouldn’t much mind losing, poor lad.

Bait, Wichman had said, and his companions had all pounded each other on the back at this witticism and snorted and chortled. Baldwin had looked annoyed and begun to intercede, but Ivar had stopped him. He was proud to go, truly. He wasn’t afraid anymore because he trusted in God’s plan now even if he did still have uncomfortable dreams of Liath some nights. Anyway, it wasn’t fair to make the poor boy go alone.

He hiked up his novice’s robes as they forded a broad and shallow stream. Wet to the knees, he clambered out on the other side, keeping up a stream of prayer as he crept on behind the boy. God had a plan, of course, really She did, and he trusted Her, but he still wondered why his stomach couldn’t decide between leaping up out of his throat or dropping straight down out the other way, and if he kept his mouth moving he didn’t quite have to think so much. How many lost souls had he brought to the truth since his revelation on the streets of Gent? Enough that he could go straight to the hall of the martyrs? He and Ermanrich and Sigfrid had preached among the benighted so pugnaciously for the next week that eventually Brother Humilicus had gotten suspicious, and the biscop had had them hauled up before her on the charge of heresy.

They had escaped only because Ekkehard was leaving with Wichman the next day and, driven by Baldwin’s coaxing, he had used his princely authority to yank them out of the biscop’s very annoyed grasp. But he hadn’t been happy about it. And he still didn’t like Ivar.

Had there been enough souls saved in Gent? It was hard to tell, and the villagers they had preached to along the way had been reticent, but at least those humble souls hadn’t stoned them or driven them out. They’d listened, and whispered to each other. They’d even asked a few questions.

No one had said the work would be easy. God’s plan wasn’t all honey and pudding.

At times, Ivar wondered what God had planned for people like Lord Wichman, one of the most useless creatures ever to stalk the earth. Send a beast to kill a beast, Ermanrich had murmured as the expedition had armed and made ready to assault the beast’s lair, but he’d stopped giggling at his joke when Ekkehard had commanded Ivar to walk ahead. Ekkehard had given him a small horn, which he now clutched in his right hand, and he hoped he’d have a chance to use it.

“Hsst!” The boy waved him back with a stick, then motioned toward a jumbly dark rise ahead of them, an unnaturally round hill crowned with fallen stones and unpleasantly torn up trees. It suddenly seemed odd to Ivar that all birdsong had ceased. Sun flashed among the stones, but then Ivar blinked, seeing it flash again, seeing it move, as if sunlight had been caught within the ruined stone circle and was trying to break free.

“Uh, uh, uh,” grunted the boy in terror, and bolted.

From the heart of the stones the sun rose, although the sun was already midway down a western sky half hidden in the broken clouds, It was huge and brilliant, covered in gold. Ivar heard shouts from behind him; the rider had seen it, and anyway, as he gaped as it rose higher and higher, he realized that he had dropped the horn.

It was shaped something like an eagle with a tufted eagle’s head and a noble beak, but it was manifestly no eagle. They couldn’t grow so large, and eagles didn’t have gold feathers, as if they’d been gilded by flying too close to the sun. It was magnificent, with tail feathers that seemed to blaze and eyes that even from this distance sparked and glimmered like starlight. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.