The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Blinking, Zacharias raised his hands to block the light of a lamp, squinting as he studied the other man. “Are you a mathematicus?” he asked, groping at his chest for the scrap of paper he had held close all these long months.

It was gone.

Panic brought tears.

“Is it this you seek?” Marcus displayed the parchment that bore the diagrams and numbers that betrayed the hand of a mathematicus, a sorcerer who studied the workings of the heavens. “Where did you come by it?”

“In a valley in the Alfar Mountains. After I escaped from the Quman, I traveled for a time with the Aoi woman who calls herself Prince Sanglant’s mother, but she abandoned me after the conflagration.” His physical hurts bothered him far less than the sight of that precious scrap in the hands of another man. He wanted to grab it greedily to himself, but something about the other man’s shadowed expression made him prudent, even hopeful. If he could only say the right thing, he might save himself. “I found that parchment in a little cabin up on the slope of the valley. I knew then that I sought the one who had written these things. You see, when I wandered with Kansi-a-lari, she took me to a place she called the Palace of Coils. There I saw—”

He faltered because Marcus leaned forward, mouth slightly parted. “The Palace of Coils? What manner of place was it?”

“It lay out in the sea, on the coast of Salia. We had to walk there at low tide. Yet some manner of ancient magic lay over that island. We ascended by means of a path. I thought only a single night passed as we climbed, but instead many months did. The year lay coiled around the palace, and it was the year we were ascending, not the island. I cannot explain it—”

“You do well enough. Did you see the Aoi woman work her sorcery?”

“I did. I saw her defeat Bulkezu. I saw her breathe visions into fire. I saw her save her son with enchanted arrows. Oh, God.” A coughing fit took him and he spat up bile.

“Get him wine,” said Marcus. “I will hear what he has to say. Why did you not tell me that he traveled with Prince Sanglant’s mother? He can’t know what he saw, but careful examination may reveal much to an educated ear.”

“Better just to kill him and have done with it!” insisted Wolfhere.

“Nay!” Zacharias choked out the word. “She led me through the spirit world. I saw—” His throat burned. “I saw a vision of the cosmos!”

Spasms shook his entire body and made the bruise at the base of his neck come alive with a grinding, horrible pain. He folded forward, almost passing out.

After an unknown while, he struggled out of the haze to find himself bent double over his arms. Wolfhere had returned with a wine sack. Gratefully he guzzled it, spat up half of it all over his fetid robe before he remembered to nurse along his roiling stomach. He must go slowly. He had to use his wits.

“What is this vision of the cosmos that you saw?” asked Marcus when Zacharias set down the wineskin.

“If I tell you everything I know, then you’ll have no reason to keep me alive. It’s true I followed Prince Sanglant, my lord, but I only followed him because I hoped he would lead me to his wife, the one called Liathano. It’s her I seek.”

Marcus had an exceedingly clever face and expressive eyebrows, lifted now with surprise. “Why do you seek her?”

“I seek any person who can teach me. I wish to understand the mysteries of the heavens.”

“As do we all.”

“I will do anything for the person who will teach me, my lord.”

“Anything? Will you murder my dear friend Brother Lupus, if I tell you to?” He gestured toward Wolfhere, crouched within the pale aura given off by the lamp, his seamed and aged face quiet as he watched the two men negotiate.

A breath of air teased Zacharias’ matted hair, curling around his ear. Was this the whisper of a daimone? Was Marcus a maleficus, who controlled forbidden magic and unholy creatures? He shuddered, his resolve curdled by a flood of misgivings. Yet he couldn’t stop now. He was a prisoner. He was as good as dead. “I am no murderer, my lord. I haven’t the stomach for it. But I am clever, and I have an excellent memory.”

“Do you?”

“I do, my lord. That is why I was allowed to take the oath of a frater although I cannot read or write. I know the Holy Verses, all of them, and many other things besides—”

“That’s true enough,” commented Wolfhere. “He has a prodigious memory.”

“Is he clever?”

The old man sighed sharply. Why did he look so distressed? “Clever enough. He survived seven years as a slave among the Quman, so he says. Escaped on his own, so he says. Sought and found Prince Sanglant with no help from any other, so he says. He talks often enough of this vision of the cosmos that he was vouchsafed in the Palace of Coils. He entertains the soldiers with the tale. He says he saw a dragon.”

“I only tell them the truth!”

“Well,” said Marcus speculatively. “A dragon. Perhaps you’re too valuable to throw overboard to drown, Zacharias. Perhaps you can serve the Holy Mother in another fashion. Perhaps I will teach you what I know after all. That will serve as well as killing you will, in the end.”

Zacharias dared not weep. “You will find me a good student, my lord. I will not fail you.”