The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

When it was gone, Prince Ekkehard cried out in astonishment and all the villagers exclaimed in surprise and awe: the hurts of every soul there had miraculously vanished.

“You have witnessed the power of the Son and the Mother,” said Sigfrid, who alone among them seemed unamazed. His faith had never wavered. “Thus you are healed.”

But Ivar knew that its beauty had scarred him forever.

4

“DO not be so impatient. This is only a minor setback. We have over five years to train her to fulfill her part, more than enough time. You are allowing your natural distaste for her conduct to overshadow your reason, Brother. All will unfold by our design.”

“So you say. But there have been far too many surprises and setbacks up to now.”

Sanglant had to concentrate on staking down the log walkway, swinging his mallet at the same rhythmic pace he had been using before Severus and Anne had emerged from the tower and begun walking toward him. He didn’t want them to suspect he was listening. After ten months, they still hadn’t figured out how good his hearing was.

“It is true that she must be brought to see what folly it is to be bound by earthly desires. I hope that her confinement and illness have shown her the senselessness of indulging in carnal pleasure.”

“We must be rid of that—that brute!”

“Cautiously, Brother. I have tested his strengths in many ways, and I am afraid that the geas his mother set on him is stronger than our magic.”

“You mean you can’t kill him.”

“I cannot. But I have certain ideas. We still hold the strongest piece. We must only wait until we can use it against him.”

“You will never persuade her to turn on both husband and child!”

“We shall see, Brother. Let us speak of other things.”

They had been strolling down the new walkway all this while and now Sanglant stepped aside to let them pass.

“A good day to you, Prince Sanglant,” said Anne to him as they cut around the portion he was staking into place. Brother Severus grunted out something that might have been a greeting.

“Good day,” he said, resting the mallet over one shoulder. He had a wild urge to slam the wooden sledge into their smug faces, and for an instant the desire seemed blindingly clever, but he dismissed it as quickly. No doubt Anne protected herself, and anyway, he would hardly maintain Liath’s good opinion if he murdered her mother.

Even if she had just admitted to being the person who had tried to kill him.

“Will Liath be attending the noon meal?” asked Anne pleasantly, pausing just out of his reach. She could, he reflected, as easily have walked down the path to ask Liath that question herself. But she did not.

“Nay, I think not.” He jiggled a log with one foot; he had almost the entire walkway laid between tower and hall. He and Heribert had set the walkway over the worst muddy bits first as the spring rains ground the pathways into sludge, so that Severus and Anne did not even get their slippers dirty as they skirted this last missing section. “She’ll eat her meal at our cottage.” Then he smiled.

Anne’s hound growled at him, sensing his insincerity, perhaps. He had left his Eika dog staked down near Liath, a habit he had fallen into these last two months since the birth of Blessing.

“Very well,” said Anne, and she and Severus stepped up onto the other portion of the walkway and continued on. Sister Zoë stood just outside the door to the hall, pretending not to watch. Sanglant admired her from this distance, lush curves suggested by the drape of her robe, and she turned suddenly and vanished into the hall. He laughed, and one of the servants pinched him on the thigh, as if to scold him.

“Hush,” he said to it, still chuckling. “I’ve worked enough this morning. Surely I can amuse myself in such a harmless fashion.” But it had already flitted away toward the hall where, no doubt, it would be called upon to serve or clean. He smelled freshly-baked bread and realized then how hungry he was. The walkway could wait. Shifting the mallet to drape across both shoulders, he jumped over the logs and strode back along the winding path, through budding grapes and orchards green with leaves and young fruit, that led to his wife and child.

He heard her before he saw her.

“Nay, nay, of course he did the only thing he could. I can’t help but envy her, that she can nurse my daughter and I can’t.”

He came into sight of the hut to see Liath reclining on the couch Heribert had built for her so that she could lie outside and study in the books that Meriam and Venia brought for her. Heribert sat at the foot of the couch. He had been carving a rattle out of cherrywood, but knife and carving lay still in his hands as he and Liath watched Jerna nursing the baby under the shade of an apple tree.

It was truly an odd sight: he could see the bark of the tree through Jerna’s translucent body, and although she seemed to have no substance but air and water, she could still hold the baby for short periods of time, enough to nurse it, before it slipped through her pale body as through a thick pudding and sank softly to the ground.

“What do you think her milk is made of?” whispered Liath, but Heribert could only shrug.

“Blessing grows,” he said, as if that were enough. And it was enough.

Liath looked up and saw Sanglant. She got a silly grin on her face, swung her legs off the couch, and levered herself up by clinging to the curling seashell back so painstakingly carved by Heribert out of maple. “No, no,” she called. “I’ll come to you.”