Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Fortunatus bent over her. A faint light limned the unshuttered window and open door that led out into the garden. Birds trilled their morning song.

Soldiers had come to wake the king. Henry emerged from his bedchamber with a sleepy expression. He was barefoot. A servingman fussed behind him, offering him a belt for his hastily thrown on tunic.

“Your Majesty! Prince Sanglant just rode out of the palace grounds with more than fifty men-at-arms and servants in attendance. He took the road toward Bederbor, Duke Conrad’s fortress.”

Henry blinked, then glanced at Helmut Villam, who at that moment walked into the room. “Did no one make any effort to stop him?”

The sergeant merely shrugged helplessly, but Villam stepped forward. “I spoke to him.”

“And?”

Villam shook his head. “I advise you to let it rest for now.”

“Bring me my horse,” said Henry.

Before the others could rouse, he was off. Rosvita made haste to follow him, and she reached the stables just in time to commandeer a mule and ride after him. Besides a guard of a dozen soldiers, he rode alone except for Hathui, whom he engaged in a private conversation. When Rosvita caught up with the group, he glanced her way but let her accompany him without comment.

At first, she thought he meant to pursue his son, but once past the palace gates they took a different track, one that led past the monastery and into the forest, down a narrow track still lush with summer’s growth.

The path wound through the forest. Alder wood spread around them, leaves turning to silver as the autumn nights chilled them. A network of streams punctuated the thick vegetation, low-lying willow and prickly dewberry amid tussocks of woundwort and grassy sedge. A rabbit bounded away under the cover of dogwood half shed of its leaves. The hooves of the horses made a muffled sound on the loamy track. Through a gap in the branches, she saw a buzzard circling above the treetops.

The track gave out abruptly in a meadow marked by a low rise where a solemn parade of hewn stones lay at odd angles, listing right or left depending on the density of the soil. One had fallen over, but the main group remained more or less intact.

“Here?” asked Henry.

“This far.” Hathui indicated the stone circle. “She went in. She did not come out, nor have I seen any evidence she walked through the stones and on into the forest beyond. There isn’t a path, nothing but a deer track that’s mostly overgrown.”

He beckoned to Rosvita. “Your company passed through one of these gateways, Sister. Could it not be that the Aoi have hidden themselves in some distant corner of Earth, biding their time?”

“It could be, Your Majesty. But with what manner of sorcery I cannot know.”

“Yet there remain mathematici among us,” he mused, “who may serve us as one did Adelheid.”

She shuddered, drawing in a breath to warn him against sorcery, but he turned away, so she did not speak. Light spread slowly over the meadow, waking its shadows to the day, and these rays crept up and over the king until he was wholly illuminated. The sun crowned him with its glory as he stared at the silent circle of ancient stones. A breeze stirred his hair, and his horse stamped once, tossed its head, and flicked an ear at a bothersome fly. He waited there, silent and watchful, while Hathui made a final circuit of the stones.

“What news of the mountains?” he asked as the Eagle came up beside him at last.

“Most reports agree that the passes are still clear. It’s been unseasonably warm, and there is little snow on the peaks. If God will it, we will have another month of fair weather. Enough to get through the mountains.”

On the ride back he sang, inviting the soldiers to join in. Afterward, he spoke to them of their families and their last campaign. At the stables, a steward was waiting to direct him to the chapel where Adelheid, Theophanu, and their retinues knelt at prayer.

Henry strode in like fire, and Adelheid rose to greet him with an answering strength of will. Theophanu waited to one side with inscrutable patience as the king made a show of greeting his fair, young queen. But he did not neglect his daughter. He kissed her on either cheek and drew her forward so that every person, and by now quite a few had crowded into the chapel, would note her standing at his right side.

“Theophanu, you will remain in the north as my representative.” He spoke with the king’s public voice, carrying easily over the throng. The news carried in murmurs out the door and into the palace courtyard, where people gathered to see how Henry would react to the news of Sanglant’s departure.

What Theophanu’s expression concealed Rosvita could no longer guess. Was she glad of the opportunity or angry to be left behind again? She only nodded, eyes half shuttered. “As you wish, Father.”

Henry extended an arm and took Adelheid’s hand in his, drawing her forward to stand by his left side, as he would any honored ally. “Tomorrow,” he said, addressing the court with a sharp smile, “we continue our march south, to Aosta.”

3

LIGHT lay in such a hard, brilliant sheen over the abandoned city that Liath had to shade her eyes as she and Eldest Uncle emerged out of the cave into heat and sunlight. The stone edifices spread out before her, as silent as ghosts, color splashed across them where walls and square columns had been painted with bright murals. She retrieved her weapons from the peace stone and the water jar from the pyramid of skulls. Her hands were still unsteady, her entire soul shaken.

She and Da had run for so many years, hunted and, in the end, caught. She had been exiled from the king’s court, yet had not found peace within her mother’s embrace. Now this place, too, was closed to her. Was there any place she would ever be welcome? Could she ever find a home where she would not be hounded, hunted, and threatened with death?

Not today.

The huge carved serpent’s mouth lay empty, although she heard the incomprehensible sound of the councillors’ distant conversation, muted by the labyrinthine turnings of the passageway, each one like a twist of intrigue in the king’s court, muffling words and intent.