The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“No word from Margrave Judith?” she asks. “The Quman will be in her territory soon.”

“No word,” he says softly. “But north we must ride along the Oder River. There hope we to meet up with her forces. Then we can to attack.”

The woman steps out into the soft lamplight. The blanket she holds so tightly glitters, gold thread tracing antelopes and bounding lions no bigger than her hands. She, too, has well-muscled shoulders, compellingly white, and the prince rests a hand caressingly on one of them. A wind sighs along the cloth face of the pavilion. Bells sewn to the fringe of the awning chime in a hundred light and ever-changing voices.

Bells chimed, and Zacharias started back, flailing a little as he got his balance.

“The tide comes in,” she said. She shook her spear a second time, an incantation of bells that echoed along the narrow path. The high stone walls seemed to sing back in answer to their song, but as the sound faded, she merely began walking again, downward as the spiral steepened and small stair-steps became evident in the path.

He shook himself out of inaction and followed her, but she seemed already so far below him, a thousand leagues away through a substance as murky as the glass bowl that had sheltered the single burning candle. Mist cloaked the sky, and he only knew the sun’s position by a whitening glare of haze above.

The next gate shone with a pale iron gleam not unlike the mist that lay dense along the top of the stone walls. Beyond the gate lay a cover of fog so thick that it might have been a host of sheep gathered together, blotting out the earth and sea beneath. Oddly, he could see a few stars overhead and a quarter moon sliding in and out of wispy clouds.

He was so tired suddenly, and very thirsty. He leaned into the wall, bracing himself, unwilling to see any more visions, but his fingers slid anyway along the slick wall and he touched the iron gate and saw beyond it.

A woman sits in a chair carved with guivres. She wears the gold torque of royal kinship at her throat and a coronet on her brow. Her hair runs to silver, and her face is lined with old angers and frustrations. A girlish young woman with hair the color of wheat kneels before her, trembling. She wears only an undershirt, the linen cloth woven so fine that he can see the shape of her body beneath. She is very thin.

“Constance has gone on progress through her duchy,” says the seated woman with a tone no less iron than the gleaming gate. “You could have ridden with her, but you chose to remain here.”

“She promised me—” sobs the kneeling woman.

“I made no promises to you. I have my allies, and they have their price. You threw away one husband, Tallia. Now you will do as I bid you. Let that be the end of it.” She rises from her chair. “Gerhard,” she calls to one of the guards. “I will walk in the garden now. Let our guest enter.”

The guards standing at the door move aside to admit a man. He walks into the room with the kind of effortless force of a thunderhead. He isn’t particularly tall but his broad shoulders and his somewhat bow-legged swagger suggest a man who has fought in many battles and ridden a long way to get here.

“Duke Conrad,” says the silver-haired woman, greeting him with a nod. “I have met the terms of our agreement.” She gestures toward the sobbing young woman, who has clasped her hands in prayer. “I’ve cleaned her up a bit, although I can’t imagine why any man would find her appetizing.” Without waiting for an answer, perhaps even finding the entire transaction distasteful, she walks out of the chamber.

The young woman walks on her knees until she can rest her clasped hands on the ornate altar set against one wall. “I pray you, Cousin.” Her thin body heaves as she moans. “I have sworn myself to God’s service as a pure vessel, a bride to the blessed Daisan, the Redeemer, who sits enthroned in Heaven beside his Mother, She who is God and Mercy and Judgment, She who gave breath to the Holy Word. I beg you, do not pollute me here on Earth for mere earthly gain.”

As she speaks, he walks around her in a slow circle in the way of a thirsty man eyeing a particularly noxious pool of slime he must decide whether or not to drink from. “Have you done?” he asks when she falls silent, staring at him with huge eyes more hollow than bright.

She flings herself facedown on the floor. “I am at your mercy,” she cries, face pressed to the carpets. “Do you mean to defile what has been made holy by God’s touch?”

“Ai, God,” he says in disgust. He is oddly shadowed, a trick of the light, perhaps, or else his complexion is much darker than that of most Wendish folk. Standing above her groveling form, he surveys her with a prim frown quite at odds with the sheathed energy with which he holds himself “If only my dear Eadgifu hadn’t died,” he says as the girl snivels at his feet. “She was a real woman. What I would give for one more tumble in bed with her!”

“Lust is the handmaiden of the Enemy,” she sobs.

“I beg you,” he puts in, “pray do not delude yourself into thinking that you stir one grain of lust in me, Lady Tallia. It is your lineage I desire, not your person. Doubly descended from the throne of Wendar and the throne of Varre, and with so little to show for it! I would rather have my Eadgifu back. But God have made Their will manifest, and now we will be wed.”

“Did not the blessed Daisan enjoin us to cleanse ourselves of the stain of darkness that contaminates us here on Earth?”

“So he did.” He laughs, but he is not very amused. “I believe he preached that the road to purification lies through conception and birth.”

“Nay,” she cries, as he kneels beside her and sets a hand on her side, rolling her over. She scuttles back out of his reach. “That is the lie. You are mistaken in believing the error.” She fetches up, panting, against the heavy chair in which the elder woman had sat earlier. She opens her hands as though to reveal a sign, but it is only her palms, marked by pus and weeping sores. “Don’t you know of the blessed Daisan’s sacrifice and redemption? I am no more worthy than any other vessel, and yet God has chosen me—”

“Nay, your mother and I have chosen you. Good God. Get your servants to wash your hands properly after we’re through. Come now. Let’s get this over with.” He grabs her by an armpit and tugs her up toward the canopied bed, “Ai, Lady! You smell like sour milk. Don’t you ever wash?” He sits her on the bed, not ungently, but she falls back bonelessly and lies limp on the feather mattress as he begins to disrobe, quickly and without any amorous words or passionate glances. “Get you pregnant I must, so get your pregnant I will.”

When he is down to almost nothing, she begins to sob violently. She bolts from the bed, trying to find somewhere to hide, but there is quite obviously nowhere to hide. She runs to the door and pounds on it, but her bony fists make scarcely any sound, and the heavy door is shut tight. No one answers.

Zacharias recoiled. He could not bear more of it. It was too horrible.

“This is not the mating ceremony I remember,” said Kansi-a-lari with cool disdain, and as he reflexively wiped his hand on his robe, he realized that she was still watching the scene unfold through the gate, her eyes narrowing, then widening; her mouth parted on an exhaled breath as she drew back swiftly. Then she chuckled. “Nay, that is not as I remember it. Maybe the years have changed human kin. They do such violence to each other.” She shivered, as if a spider had crawled up her spine or the Enemy’s fingers touched her at the base of the neck. “Let us go on. Now I worry. Now I know I did not leave all my doubts behind. Why have they hidden my son?”

It was hard going as they set off again. He felt as though he were walking through a huge vat of mud. Soon he was taking two breaths for every step, and then three, and then four. Only the horse seemed unaffected, even a little impatient.

He got a rhythm going—step, breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe, step, breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe—and he would not have stopped as the path curled away to reveal the second gate worn thin, a pale pink rose incised with faint letters and incomprehensible sigils. But she stopped. Her eyes flared as she set a palm against the stone of the gate. He saw, first, the quiet sea below and, for a miracle, the distant shore lying clean and clear under a night sky. Stars blazed. He saw no moon.

oung woman walks on her knees until she can rest her clasped hands on the ornate altar set against one wall. “I pray you, Cousin.” Her thin body heaves as she moans. “I have sworn myself to God’s service as a pure vessel, a bride to the blessed Daisan, the Redeemer, who sits enthroned in Heaven beside his Mother, She who is God and Mercy and Judgment, She who gave breath to the Holy Word. I beg you, do not pollute me here on Earth for mere earthly gain.”