The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

A creature rustled in the thicket. The hounds went wild. Terror closed his jaw over the count’s hand and tugged him backward while Steadfast and Fear leaped into the brambles, teeth snapping on empty air. Hackles up, Sorrow and Rage circled the bramble bush and Ardent and Bliss tore up and down between Lavastine and the thicket.

But there was nothing there.

“Peace!” snapped Lavastine. He so disliked it when his orders were not obeyed instantly.

Steadfast yelped suddenly, a cry of pain. The other hounds went into such a wild frenzy around the thicket that servants and noblemen scattered in fear, and then the hounds spun and snapped and bolted away as if in hot pursuit, the entire pack running downstream along the embankment.

“Alain! Follow them!”

Alain quickly followed the hounds, with only a single servant in attendance. The hounds ran far ahead now, scrambling in a fluid, furious pack down to a rocky stretch of beach. He glanced back in time to see Lavastine strip and make his careful way—as had the other courtiers before him—down the slope to the river. While the younger men braved the crossing to follow after the prince, the king and his mature councillors took their ease in the shallow water and talked no doubt of Gent and the Eika and recent reports of Quman raids in the east and certain marriage alliances that must be accepted or declined.

The hounds had disappeared, so Alain broke into a trot and found them clustered just around the river’s bend on the last strip of narrow beach. Stiff-legged, they barked at the water. Alain thought he saw a flash of something tiny and white struggling in the current. Then, slowly, their barking subsided into growls, growls to silence, and the hounds relaxed into a steady vigilance as they regarded the flowing river.

Had he only imagined that flash of movement? The sun made metal of the water as it streamed along. Its bright flash made Alain’s eyes tear, and he blinked rapidly, but that only made the water shimmer and flow in uncanny forms like the shift of a slick and scaly back seen beneath the waves or the swift passage of a ship along a canyon of water.

Ahead lies the smoke of home, the cradle of his tribe. Who has arrived before him? Will he and his soldiers have to fight just to set foot on shore, or has he come first to make his claim before OldMother so that she may prepare the knife of decision?

The fjord waters mirror the deep blush of the heavens, the powerful blue of the afternoon sky. The waters are so still that each tree along the shore lies mirrored in their depths. Off to one side a merman’s slick back parts the water and a ruddy eye takes their measure; then, with a flick of its tail, the creature vanishes into the seamless depths.

Teeth closed on his hand and, coming to himself, he looked down to see Sorrow pulling on him to get his attention. Only three hounds remained; the others had vanished. He started around to see his attendant sitting cross-legged, arms relaxed, as if he’d been waiting a long time.

“My lord!” The man jumped up. “The other hounds ran back to the count, and I didn’t, know how to stop them, but you was so still for so long I didn’t know how to interrupt you….” Trailing off, he glanced nervously at the remaining hounds: Sorrow, Rage, and poor Steadfast, who sat whimpering and licking her right forepaw.

“No matter.” Alain took Steadfast’s paw into his hand to examine it. A bramble thorn had bitten deep into the flesh, and he gentled her with his tone and then got hold of the thorn and pulled it out. She whimpered, then set to work licking again.

A flash of dead white out in the streaming flow of the river distracted him. Downstream, a fish appeared, belly up. Dead. Then a second, a third, and a fourth appeared farther downstream yet, dead white bellies turned up to sun and air, gleaming corpses drawn seaward by the current. Beyond that he could make out only light on the water.

Rage growled.

“My lord.” The servant had brought his horse.

But he walked back instead, to keep an eye on Steadfast. The thorn had done no lasting damage. Soon she was loping along with the others in perfect good humor, biting and nipping at her cousins in play. Alain would have laughed to see them; it was, after all, a pleasant and carefree day.

But when, across the river, he saw the fishermen trudging home with their baskets full of plump fish, the image of the dead fish caught in the current flashed into his mind’s eye and filled him with a troubling foreboding—only he did not know why.

4

THE quiet that pervaded the inner court of the palace of Weraushausen had such a soothing effect, combined with the heat of the sun, that Liath drowsed on the stone bench where she waited even though she wasn’t tired. Fears and hopes mingled to become a tangled dream: Da’s murder, Hugh, the curse of fire, Hanna’s loyalty and love, Ivar’s pledge, the shades of dead elves, Lord Alain and the friendship he had offered her, the death of Bloodheart, Sister Rosvita and The Book of Secrets, daimones hunting her and, more vivid than all the others, the tangible memory of Sanglant’s hair caught in her fingers there by the stream where he had scoured away the filth of his captivity.

She started up, heart pounding; she was hot, embarrassed, dismayed, and breathless with hope all at once.

She could not bear to think of him because she wanted only to think of him. A bee droned past. The gardener who weeded in the herb garden had moved to another row. No one had come to summon her. She did not know how much longer she would have to wait.

She walked to the well with its shingled roof and whitewashed stone rim. The draft of air rising from the depths smelled of fresh water and damp stone. The deacon who cared for the chapel here had told her that a spring fed the wells; before the coming of the Daisanite fraters to these lands a hundred years ago its source had rested hidden in rocks and been worshiped as a goddess by the heathen tribes. Now a stone cistern contained it safely beneath the palace.

Was that the glint of water in the depths? if she looked hard enough with her salamander eyes, would she see in that mirror the face of the man she would marry, as old herbwomen claimed? Or was that only pagan superstition, as the church mothers wrote?

ounds had disappeared, so Alain broke into a trot and found them clustered just around the river’s bend on the last strip of narrow beach. Stiff-legged, they barked at the water. Alain thought he saw a flash of something tiny and white struggling in the current. Then, slowly, their barking subsided into growls, growls to silence, and the hounds relaxed into a steady vigilance as they regarded the flowing river.

Had he only imagined that flash of movement? The sun made metal of the water as it streamed along. Its bright flash made Alain’s eyes tear, and he blinked rapidly, but that only made the water shimmer and flow in uncanny forms like the shift of a slick and scaly back seen beneath the waves or the swift passage of a ship along a canyon of water.

Ahead lies the smoke of home, the cradle of his tribe. Who has arrived before him? Will he and his soldiers have to fight just to set foot on shore, or has he come first to make his claim before OldMother so that she may prepare the knife of decision?

The fjord waters mirror the deep blush of the heavens, the powerful blue of the afternoon sky. The waters are so still that each tree along the shore lies mirrored in their depths. Off to one side a merman’s slick back parts the water and a ruddy eye takes their measure; then, with a flick of its tail, the creature vanishes into the seamless depths.

Teeth closed on his hand and, coming to himself, he looked down to see Sorrow pulling on him to get his attention. Only three hounds remained; the others had vanished. He started around to see his attendant sitting cross-legged, arms relaxed, as if he’d been waiting a long time.

“My lord!” The man jumped up. “The other hounds ran back to the count, and I didn’t, know how to stop them, but you was so still for so long I didn’t know how to interrupt you….” Trailing off, he glanced nervously at the remaining hounds: Sorrow, Rage, and poor Steadfast, who sat whimpering and licking her right forepaw.