The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

He smiled at her and walked away, but he was only going to sit on his bench of rock. He picked up the rope and began to twist the strands against his thigh.

“In the end, only one person can teach you everything you need to know, and that is your own self. If you wish to learn with me, you must be patient. Now.” He gestured toward the burning stone. “You must make your choice—there, or here. The gateway is closing.”

The flames flickered lower until they rippled like a sheen of water trembling along the surface of the stone.

She was still weeping, gentle tears that slid down her cheeks. “Ai, Lady! What must I do? How can I leave them?”

Yet she had known all along that it might come to this. She could never regret the choice she had made before and, knowing what she had known then, she would make the same choice again: to return to Sanglant.

But she knew a lot more now.

Now she knew who her enemies were. This decision had been made when Anne had tried to set her against Sanglant, when Anne had proved herself willing to let her own granddaughter die. This decision had been made when Brother Marcus had told them that Hugh had worked the sorcery of the crowns. This decision had been made when Anne had admitted that she had herself bound and commanded the daimone that had murdered Da. This decision had been made in that first glorious instant when they had emerged through the gate and called her “child.”

“I’m no use to him or to anyone until I master my own power,” she said softly. “They thought I should have wings, and if that’s true, then I have to find them—or find out what they meant and what they are.”

She crossed to the old sorcerer, set down her weapons, and sat at his feet. Without a word, he handed her strands of flax and, saying nothing more, resumed twisting flax fiber into rope against his thigh. She waited for a moment, expecting him—like Severus—to begin lecturing her. But he did not. He simply twisted flax into rope, humming a little under his breath.

Behind her, the burning stone flickered, faded, and the last glint of blue fire died into the stone until it was only a dark pillar, mute and as solid as rock. Slowly, clumsily, and with many false starts, she began to twist the slender, single strands into a stronger cord.

EPILOGUE

ON that morning some time after dawn, as he crawled out from the shelter of the stone that had shielded him and thus saved his life, Zacharias met a dragon. The creature stretched from one side of the valley to the other. Where its lashing, golden tail seemed to touch a mountaintop, plumes of snow and ice streamed off the summit, whipped free. Its great head huffed and blew beyond the ridge that bounded the valley to the southeast. Sparks rained from its nostrils like so many falling stars. Its belly had the color of sulfur and each claw, tipped with gleaming steel, was as big as a house. Its golden scales lay so close-knit, one overlapping the next, that they appeared like rank upon rank of glittering, impenetrable shield wall. It hung there for fully an hour, or perhaps more, while Zacharias knelt in awe and terror and watched the shimmering undulations of its belly and the clouds of ice billowing off the peak.

Then, with a clap like thunder, it flew up into the heavens and vanished in a wink of light.

After a while, he staggered out of the stone circle and found a stream, where he washed his face and soothed his reddened hands. Two goats wandered haplessly beyond the blackened reeds at the shoreline, and he was too much his grandmother’s grandson to leave them there alone. He used his rope belt as a tether.

About that time he noticed the ruined tower and hall below, and he realized that other people moved in the valley. He hid in the trees and watched for a while as two men and three women salvaged what they could from the wreckage. They seemed rather at a loss, as if they were unfamiliar with fetching and carrying, sorting and binding.

He saw no reason to trust them, not after everything that had transpired. He faded back into the woods. In time, and with the help of the goats, he made his way to a meadow high up on the northwestern slope. Here he found several precious items in an old cottage that graced one side of the clearing: rope, an old leather sole, a small cook pot, hazelnuts and withered elderberries stored in a gourd, and a torn scrap of parchment with numbers and diagrams written on it. He wasn’t really able to read or write or cipher. The biscop of Machteburg had ordained him as a frater because his capacious memory had never failed him: under examination, he had recalled flawlessly the various services with which churchmen ministered to believers and the stout declarations with which he was enjoined to convert the heathen.

But although he couldn’t really decipher it, he sat for a while studying that page in the shelter of the cottage while the goats tore up blackberry bushes and nettles outside. Someone had drawn circles and orbits, and stars in clusters like to the constellations his grandmother had traced for him in the sky: the Hunting Hound, the Stag, the Randy Goat, and the Rabbit. The church mothers had given the constellations other names, and yet all of these wise women and men had passed down certain immutable truths: that five stars wandered in the heavens through a band of stars known as the world dragon, that the Sun and the Moon walked northward and southward in winter and summer, that the passage of the year and the time of the night could be measured by the turning wheel of the stars.

he had known all along that it might come to this. She could never regret the choice she had made before and, knowing what she had known then, she would make the same choice again: to return to Sanglant.

But she knew a lot more now.

Now she knew who her enemies were. This decision had been made when Anne had tried to set her against Sanglant, when Anne had proved herself willing to let her own granddaughter die. This decision had been made when Brother Marcus had told them that Hugh had worked the sorcery of the crowns. This decision had been made when Anne had admitted that she had herself bound and commanded the daimone that had murdered Da. This decision had been made in that first glorious instant when they had emerged through the gate and called her “child.”

“I’m no use to him or to anyone until I master my own power,” she said softly. “They thought I should have wings, and if that’s true, then I have to find them—or find out what they meant and what they are.”

She crossed to the old sorcerer, set down her weapons, and sat at his feet. Without a word, he handed her strands of flax and, saying nothing more, resumed twisting flax fiber into rope against his thigh. She waited for a moment, expecting him—like Severus—to begin lecturing her. But he did not. He simply twisted flax into rope, humming a little under his breath.

Behind her, the burning stone flickered, faded, and the last glint of blue fire died into the stone until it was only a dark pillar, mute and as solid as rock. Slowly, clumsily, and with many false starts, she began to twist the slender, single strands into a stronger cord.

EPILOGUE

ON that morning some time after dawn, as he crawled out from the shelter of the stone that had shielded him and thus saved his life, Zacharias met a dragon. The creature stretched from one side of the valley to the other. Where its lashing, golden tail seemed to touch a mountaintop, plumes of snow and ice streamed off the summit, whipped free. Its great head huffed and blew beyond the ridge that bounded the valley to the southeast. Sparks rained from its nostrils like so many falling stars. Its belly had the color of sulfur and each claw, tipped with gleaming steel, was as big as a house. Its golden scales lay so close-knit, one overlapping the next, that they appeared like rank upon rank of glittering, impenetrable shield wall. It hung there for fully an hour, or perhaps more, while Zacharias knelt in awe and terror and watched the shimmering undulations of its belly and the clouds of ice billowing off the peak.

Then, with a clap like thunder, it flew up into the heavens and vanished in a wink of light.

After a while, he staggered out of the stone circle and found a stream, where he washed his face and soothed his reddened hands. Two goats wandered haplessly beyond the blackened reeds at the shoreline, and he was too much his grandmother’s grandson to leave them there alone. He used his rope belt as a tether.

About that time he noticed the ruined tower and hall below, and he realized that other people moved in the valley. He hid in the trees and watched for a while as two men and three women salvaged what they could from the wreckage. They seemed rather at a loss, as if they were unfamiliar with fetching and carrying, sorting and binding.

He saw no reason to trust them, not after everything that had transpired. He faded back into the woods. In time, and with the help of the goats, he made his way to a meadow high up on the northwestern slope. Here he found several precious items in an old cottage that graced one side of the clearing: rope, an old leather sole, a small cook pot, hazelnuts and withered elderberries stored in a gourd, and a torn scrap of parchment with numbers and diagrams written on it. He wasn’t really able to read or write or cipher. The biscop of Machteburg had ordained him as a frater because his capacious memory had never failed him: under examination, he had recalled flawlessly the various services with which churchmen ministered to believers and the stout declarations with which he was enjoined to convert the heathen.

But although he couldn’t really decipher it, he sat for a while studying that page in the shelter of the cottage while the goats tore up blackberry bushes and nettles outside. Someone had drawn circles and orbits, and stars in clusters like to the constellations his grandmother had traced for him in the sky: the Hunting Hound, the Stag, the Randy Goat, and the Rabbit. The church mothers had given the constellations other names, and yet all of these wise women and men had passed down certain immutable truths: that five stars wandered in the heavens through a band of stars known as the world dragon, that the Sun and the Moon walked northward and southward in winter and summer, that the passage of the year and the time of the night could be measured by the turning wheel of the stars.