The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Perhaps our preaching has finally reached Prince Ekkehard’s heart,” Ivar said to Ermanrich that evening as they feasted on roast chicken flavored with mustard, honey cakes, greens, and a very coarse dark bread that he had to soak in ale to make edible.

“I don’t know,” said Ermanrich, looking doubtful. “It was very sudden.”

Ekkehard’s arms still hurt him too much to move, although otherwise they seemed to be healing well. He allowed Baldwin to feed him, and had further charmed the villagers by drinking out of the wooden cup, engraved with a swan, offered to him by a village elder.

“I pray you, my lord prince,” said Baldwin, smiling prettily, “let me take something out to our companion, Sigfrid, for otherwise I’m afraid he won’t eat.”

“Pray do so,” said Ekkehard, who like everyone admired Sigfrid for his humble devotion to God and the ease with which he shed sincere tears. But then, the noble expression shattered briefly, twisting into something else. “But don’t take him,” he said, waving toward the far end of the table where Ivar and Ermanrich sat. “Take the fat one.”

Ivar flushed. Ermanrich rose, leaning to whisper in his ear. “He’s just jealous of you because Baldwin loves you. Don’t mind it, Ivar.”

But he did mind it. He finished his meal in silence, shunned by the others now that Ermanrich and Baldwin were gone. They all despised him because Prince Ekkehard despised him, and yet hadn’t the blessed Daisan forgiven his enemies? Hadn’t He reminded his followers that we who live in flesh are all weak and subject to temptation? Each person certainly was glad when she acted rightly, and yet the body, born into the tainted world, often did not walk hand in hand with the unstained soul.

It was so hard to be good all the time.

It was so hard that night when he woke up from an uncomfortably vivid dream of Liath, and it took him a moment, panting to ease himself, to realize he’d been jostled by a foot. In the warm late spring night both shutters and door had been left open, and by the light of a nearly full moon he saw the pale shape of a woman dressed only in her undershift ease down onto the bed shared by Ekkehard, Baldwin, and Milo. Milo was a heavy sleeper under any circumstance, and Ekkehard had been dosed with juice of poppy because the pain as he shifted in his sleep made it difficult for him to rest.

But Baldwin was awake.

“My lord prince!” she whispered. “Your Highness—!” She lay a hand on Baldwin’s naked chest.

“I’m not the prince,” he murmured, although he did not attempt to remove her hand. “That is Prince Ekkehard, beside me.”

“But you’re so beautiful, my lord. Like an angel.” She reached inside the neck of her tunic. For an instant Ivar saw the pale expanse of her skin as she drew the cloth aside, and he had to close his eyes, he was so flushed everywhere and still aching from the dream that he thought he might lose himself entirely.

“I got me a feather, my lord” she was whispering. “An angel feather.”

He couldn’t help but look. She hadn’t exposed herself but rather a golden feather whose mellow glow set Baldwin’s handsome features alight and made the girl seem the prettiest he’d ever seen, dark hair, a small nose, a mole on her right cheek that moved as she smiled. “I knew it were a sign. I’ve had so many strange dreams ever since I saw them lights in the old stone circle, before the beast come. I dreamed that I’d be visited by an angel. So did Rodlinda and Gisela and Agnes, and she’s even been married since last autumn. Isn’t that you, my lord? Aren’t you the angel? Didn’t God send you to come in unto us and give us a revelation?”

Ivar had remained chaste since the day of his revelation, but God surely knew it hadn’t been easy.

“Ah!” Baldwin’s exhalation made him sound more pleased than surprised as the young woman, not waiting for his answer, moved down over him.

Ivar rolled up and away from snoring Ermanrich, who wouldn’t have woken up if a herd of stampeding horses had thundered past, and scrambled outside before he did that which would brand him forever or at least give Ekkehard another thing to make fun of him for. Mercifully, the moon’s light allowed him to trudge out of the village through orchard and wood until he reached the pyre, although he stepped on more stickers than he could count and his face and arms got scratched up by low-hanging branches.

Sigfrid had fallen asleep and some kindly soul had thought to drop a ragged blanket over him. His thin fox-face, in repose, was so innocent and sweet that at once Ivar’s doubts and desires evaporated and he could kneel with a clear heart. He didn’t know why, but he thought it important that someone pray beside the pyre of that brilliant creature which had killed nothing more than food for itself until it had been attacked by lustful men misled by fearful ones. Certainly it had frightened the villagers who, so they’d said, had come across the eviscerated corpses of deer, but wasn’t it natural for such creatures to feast on meat? Unlike humankind, animals had no liberty to change what they were and how they acted. Even a creature molded by God needed to eat. It hadn’t truly harmed anyone, and maybe it never would have.

Yet perhaps those visions he’d seen rising from the smoke off the pyre had been hallucinations, visions sent by the Enemy. Maybe it was only a matter of time before the beast would have begun preying on the villagers and their livestock. But he doubted it. He had been driven by fear and lust, too; by his own actions, he had helped to kill it.

He wasn’t sure of the time. Unlike Sigfrid and Ermanrich, he hadn’t learned how to chart by the rising and setting of stars when to begin Vigils, but when he heard a distant cockcrow, he began to sing, chanting the night prayer.

“Why do the wicked prosper, Lady,

while the pure of heart suffer torments on this earth?

Why do they who wear violence as their robe and talk nothing but malice

live in glorious wealth, untouched by trouble?”

Aurora came as he sang the Benedictus, and Sigfrid stirred and woke, kneeling to pray beside him although, of course, he could utter no words. They saw it long before anyone came to find them: a tiny red-gold fledgling bird fluttering among still-glowing coals. As the light rose, it buried itself deep among the ashes.

At midmorning Milo came to fetch them, looking angry that he had had to make the trip and a little nervous as he examined the still glowing pyre from a safe distance. “Prince Ekkehard wants you,” he called. “Isn’t that thing out yet? Why do you keep praying out here? It’s dead, isn’t it?”

Back at the village, Baldwin looked utterly exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all. He couldn’t stop yawning, and perhaps the prince would have noticed something wrong, but he was still woozy, recovering from the poppy juice.

“Perhaps Brother Sigfrid can explain it,” Ekkehard was saying as they came in.

Certain members of the village had gathered, come to complain about dreams and disturbances that had plagued them since the mysterious arrival of the beast.