The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

Ivar faced the crowd, now some two dozen in number. The mute girl stared at him, eyes wide, waiting.

The whole world was waiting.

“My friends,” he began.

4

IN the hours between Sext and Nones Rosvita sat in the library with the chronicle of St. Ekatarina’s convent open on the lectern before her. Most of the entries were innocuous enough: In the year 287: There was a great plague among the birds. In the year 323: The queen sent her youngest daughter to become abbess over us. In the year 402: A blizzard came untimely in Cintre and all the grapes withered. A party of clerics from Varre stayed three weeks in the guest hall. In the year 479: Certain omens were seen in the villages, and there was a comet that blazed in the southern sky for two months, and after this there was an earthquake. Many villagers came to the ladder to beg for bread. The king died in Reggio.

Would the chronicle record Queen Adelheid’s death? In the last months of the year 729: The queen starved to death at the convent of St. Ekatarina. Or there might be other outcomes. In the year 731: The queen was strangled by her husband, John Ironhead, after a child was born to her who had a legitimate claim to the throne. Ironhead named himself regent for the infant.

Could they trust Hugh? Would they condemn themselves by trafficking in magic, even to save their own lives? Could his claims possibly be true in any case?

Was history merely a record of one bad choice made in place of a worse one? They had so few options left, and all of them desperate. Yet did it have to be so? She had searched in many chronicles, had learned to read between the lines and in the marginalia so that she wouldn’t discover too late things that she ought to have known, that needed to be woven into the story so that her history of the Wendish people would be complete. There was always something that had been left hidden, something that had been forgotten.

What is in plain sight is hidden best, as the old saying went.

The pattern developed slowly and increased markedly over the last one hundred years, after the death of Emperor Taillefer. They began as marginalia but soon appeared within the main body of the text, listings that made no sense but mostly were linked with a comment about a noble entourage that had sheltered unexpectedly in the guest hall: Hersford in the duchy of Fesse, seven stones; Krona in the duchy of Avaria, nine stones; Novomo in the county of Tuscerna, eleven stones; Thersa in the duchy of Fesse, eight stones.

Mice scratched in the walls. “Sister Rosvita. I hope I do not disturb you?”

She started, slapping a hand down over parchment, then chuckled as Mother Obligatia hobbled in. “I thought you were mice, and then I remembered there aren’t any mice here.” She rose hastily and drew forward a bench so that Obligatia could sit.

“There are mice, surely enough. Most of us are mice, creeping along the halls of the powerful. If we do not stay out of their sight, they will crush us.”

“Strong words, Mother.”

“Surely the ways of queens and princes are no mystery to you.” She rested a hand on the Vita of St. Radegundis, which lay closed on the second lectern next to the almost finished copy, abandoned these hours by Sister Petra, who had gone to help carry water. “Have you found your answers?”

“Nay, I have only found more questions, Mother. I am too curious. It is the burden God have given me. What am I to make of entries like this one: ‘St. Thierry in the duchy of Arconia, four stones.’ The convent of St. Thierry is near the seat of the count of Lavas, is it not?”

“So it is,” said Obligatia, not looking at the chronicle. “I was raised in the convent of St. Thierry, although I never saw Lavas Holding myself. Who rules there now?”

“Count Lavastine, son of the younger Charles, grandson of the elder Lavastine. His heir is a well-mannered and serious young man, Lord Alain, although I must note that he was born a bastard and only accepted as Lavastine’s heir about two years ago.

“You are a true historian, I see. Lavastine had no legitimate heirs?”

“He was given no child born in legal marriage. Here is another entry, a place I have visited, above Hersford Monastery.” She touched the entry. “Seven stones, just as it says here. Ai, God, Villam lost his son there, who had gone to play among the stones.”

“The boy died?”

“I do not know. Young Berthold vanished with six companions. No one knows what became of him, but I had always assumed that he crawled too far in the darkness and fell, and was killed. Now I’m not sure what to believe. Poor child. He had the making of a good historian. He should have been put in the church.”

“Ah. It is always a terrible thing to lose a beloved child.”

“These are all stone crowns, are they not? When Henry was still prince, he lost his Aoi lover at Thersa, the one who gave him his son, Sanglant. She, too, vanished among the stones, so the story goes.” She turned another page, searched it, and read out loud. “Brienac in the lordship of Josselin in Salia, seven stones. Here, another with seven stones, in the ruins of Kartiako. I did not know there were so many stone circles.”

“No one can know, unless they look. That which is in plain sight is easily hidden.”

“But they were built a very long time ago, even before the Dariyan Empire. The chroniclers of that time mentioned them as being ancient then, and they wondered if giants had once roamed the earth. No one knows who built them.”

“Who do you think built them?”

“Giants, perhaps. But if it were giants, then why have we never found the remains of palaces fit for giants? I think Lord Hugh is right, that the Aoi must have built them.” It was difficult to say; giving Hugh any truth undercut her desire to condemn him utterly. “If that’s so, then their secret was lost.”

Within the walls of the convent, wind did not blow, only a faint whine heard as down a far distance. No oil burned in the library, and with the sun no longer overhead to pierce down through the shafts, it had become quite dim. Rosvita only noticed it now as she looked at the convent chronicle and had to squint to read the letters; the change had come so gradually.

“I do not want my secrets to be lost,” said Mother Obligatia. Her fingers brushed Rosvita’s like the flutter of a moth’s wings, moved on to the Vita. “I have held them close to my breast for many years. But this book is a sign.” She opened the Vita at random and read aloud.