The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Not now,” said the woman, “but if the tide washes us back to shore, then it is better if there are less of them.”

“Nay, reckless one. Or have you forgotten the army of shanaret’zeri which pursues us?” He lifted his spear and shook it. Bells, tied to the base, rang softly. “So be it, ijkia’pe. I swear by He-Who-Burns that as long as you touch no one of us, we will touch no one of you. But I will stand here beside you while my people pass, and my spear will pierce your heart if you have lied to me.”

Alain stepped back from the path. “So be it. Captain Thiadbold, I pray you, tell the men to stand down. Let these people pass, and there will be no fighting.”

A woman’s voice, very human, spoke. He thought it might be that of the blonde Eagle who rode with them. “Listen to him, comrade. I think he sees more than we do.”

“Stand down,” said Thiadbold. “Let no man attack, by my order.”

The command passed down through the gathered Lions, an echo of the whisper of the shadowy procession as it moved on. The prince stood aside to wait beside Alain, although he kept his feet upon the stones, and now the shade-woman led the way, striding forward with her bow taut before her. She, too, wore a cuirass of gleaming bronze, but she had no sword, only an ugly obsidian dagger strapped to her thigh.

“God have mercy,” swore Thiadbold. By the sound of his voice, he seemed to be standing a few steps behind Alain. “I’ve never seen a woman that beautiful. I’d die happy if she plunged her dagger into my heart at the moment of release.”

The wind had come up, as if blown off the march itself, the procession winding by. They walked two abreast, with their unearthly bronze-complexioned faces and their strange garb, more beads and feathers than Alain had ever seen. Only a few wore metal, whether armor or decoration. All their weapons were of stone except for their arrows, which looked like slender, arm-length darts whittled out of bone. Not one man among them had a beard. Not one woman did not carry a bow. There were a few children, preciously guarded in the middle of the long line, naked bronze-skinned babies or long-limbed, silent youngsters with eyes as bright as stars. Every soul among them wore jade in an ear. Their passage was like the wind, and as Alain watched, he realized that in fact their feet didn’t quite truly tread on the ground. No grass bent. No dirt stirred.

They weren’t really here, not as he was.

Some man was crying in fear among the human crowd, babbling about a procession of shades come to haunt the waking world.

“Where do you come from?” Alain asked softly as the last dozen strode by, as silent as corpses, eyes alert although in truth they didn’t really seem to see him. “Where are you going?”

“We were caught between one place and the next when the world changed. We were swept out to sea where the ground always shifts beneath our feet. But I feel the tide turning. It is coming back in. As the reckless one said, mayhap the tide will wash us back onto the earth again. Then we will have our revenge.”

The prince swung into line behind the last of his soldiers.

Light rimmed the horizon. A cock crowed. The thin pinch of the last waning crescent moon floated just above the trees, fading into the dawn.

They vanished.

Had Alain been slugged in the stomach, he wouldn’t have felt any more like the wind had been knocked right out of him. The stream flowed past, gurgling over the stones, and now it ran the same way it had last night, northeast, into the forest. Or perhaps he had only been dreaming it, before.

“What was that?” demanded Thiadbold as everyone began to talk at once.

“Captain! Captain!” A man came running. “It’s Leo. He was sentry out by the forest. It’s elfshot, Captain! He’s terrible shot through with fever.”

Alain went to the forest’s edge with Captain Thiadbold, the blonde Eagle, and a nervous crowd of Lions, who promptly spread out in pairs to search among the trees. Dawn made them bold. There was no trace on the narrow track that any party, much less one of a hundred or more people, had passed over it during the night.

Leo was a man who didn’t say much, and then usually only to swear. He was shaking now, a hand clasped over his right shoulder, but the rash had already spread up his exposed throat. Sweat ran from his neck and forehead. His eyes had the glaze of shock.

“Nay, nay,” he was mumbling, trying to push away someone in front of him who didn’t exist. “Nay, nay. Be quiet now or they’ll hear you coming.”

“Get his mail off so we can see the wound,” said Thiadbold. He still wore his helm, covering his red hair, but Alain could just see the scarred ear where the leather ear flaps had been pulled askew. “I thought it was a dream,” the captain went on, looking at Alain. “That’s why I went along with what you said. That, and what Hanna said—” He gestured toward the Eagle, who had evidently scrambled up so quickly from her bed that she hadn’t belted up her tunic. “You sounded so sure of yourself—” He shook his head, frowning. Not quite suspicious, but looking as if he were sorry that he’d ever agreed to take on Henry’s new recruit.

“Many of us have seen strange things in these days,” said the Eagle. “Strange things in strange times.”

Her words produced a flood of anxious commentary from the assembled Lions, broken only when Leo screamed as three of his fellows pinioned him and pulled his mail coat up over his shoulders. Then, thrashing, he rolled on the ground like a madman.

“Hush,” said Alain, stepping forward and pressing him down by one shoulder. “God will help you if you will only be still.”

Leo moaned, spittle running from his mouth, then fainted.

There was no sign of any arrow in his shoulder nor, when Alain probed with his fingers at the little hole pierced in Leo’s shoulder, did he find a point or shaft broken off in the skin. But it was festering. Angry red lines already lanced from the wound, and his skin was rashing and blistering all around it. Alain set his mouth to the wound and sucked, spat, sucked again, spat again, until his jaws ached.

“Waybread and prayer for elfshot,” said Alain. “That’s what my Aunt Bel always said.”

“A poultice of wormwood to draw out the poison,” added the Eagle, but she gestured toward Thiadbold. “Your healer may know other charms.”

“I’ve never seen so strange a sight,” said Thiadbold. “Not once in my ten years as a Lion.” He wasn’t looking at Leo at all, but at Alain. “You were speaking to them, but I couldn’t hear a word they said. They were only shades. Shadows of the Lost Ones. How could you speak to them, who are ghosts? What manner of man are you?”