The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

The third day of Avril!

Rosvita felt dizzy, quite out of her head for a moment until Fortunatus, walking beside her, reached up to steady her where she sat on a placid and bony mule. But she recovered fast enough. She had always had a good head for calculations, and this one took no great skill in any case, not with the signs all around them.

They had stepped into the circle of stones on the third day of Decial, at the full moon. Somehow, in that one step, they had spanned one hundred leagues … and four full months!

5

THAT’S it!” cried Liath. She hadn’t been able to sleep, and she’d been sitting on the bench by the open door, reading with her uncanny night vision under the unexceptional light of a waning quarter moon. “‘At this point it would be well to keep in mind that all bodies have three dimensions: longitude, latitude, and altitude.’ Ai, God! How could I not have seen it before? That’s what I missed!”

Sanglant bolted up from the bed as she swore, a soldier’s curse he hadn’t even known she knew. She clutched at her belly, bit her lip, and grimaced.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! No, no, I don’t need help.” She waved him off, although her other hand still pressed against her abdomen. He held down the bench, which rocked as she rocked with the pain. “It’s passing.”

“Is the baby coming?”

“I don’t know,” she said disagreeably. “Ai, Lady. I don’t want the baby to come now! I’m so close to the answer!” She groped for and found her sandals. “I’m going to walk over to the tower. I just need one more evening—” She cursed again and tossed the sandals aside in disgust, unable to reach her feet to bind them on.

“I’ll come with you,” he said as she heaved herself up, evidently having decided to go barefoot.

“Very well.” She walked outside without waiting, still muttering to herself. She was in the grip of something larger than he was, the mystery she pursued, or the mystery of childbirth, or both together. Sanglant had seen women in the grip of labor become oblivious to the world as though all of life and the universe had squeezed into a cord that linked them, a solitary daughter, to the holy Mother of Life, She who had given birth to the universe.

He dressed hastily. The Eika dog trotted at his heels. Servants whispered around him, pinching his ears and teasing his hair, but when he didn’t respond, they hung back at a distance and then vanished into the night to their revels. Only the watery nymph whom he had started calling “Jerna” dogged him, slipping along in his shadow as if to keep out of Liath’s sight. The creature’s shape had changed noticeably and disturbingly over the last months. He wasn’t sure if both daimones and humans wore as their material forms a dull likeness of the angels, or if the servants, more essence than substance, merely copied human form while they were imprisoned on earth. But that vaguely female form she had worn was filling out, breasts, swelling, belly rounding in imitation of Liath. Why this yearning on her part? Didn’t the daimones conceive and give birth in the same way as humans did? In truth, her presence had begun to bother him in other ways, just as his eye strayed to Sister Zoë more often than it ought.

It was easy to catch Liath on the path as she waddled along. He touched her on the arm and when she looked up at him in surprise, as if she’d just then realized he was following her, he kissed her. Momentarily distracted from her purpose, she leaned against him, smiling softly, gaze lifted to his face.

In the paddock, Resuelto stood sleeping, one leg cocked. The mules bunched somewhat apart, one resting his neck on another’s withers. It was very peaceful.

“Look,” she said, lifting a finger to touch his lips and then move his chin so that he had to look where she was looking: not at him at all, but at the heavens. “At dawn it will be the sixth day of Avril, and right now, at midnight, we see the same sky that in summer we’ll see at dusk and in winter we’ll see at dawn. There is the Dragon. There. Look. You can see red Jedu leaving the Scales. On the seventh of Avril, she enters the Serpent. The seventh is a day full of power and fluctuation in the heavens, because bright Somorhas and fleet Erekes also shift, moving from the Child into the Sisters. A time of strong beginnings.”

“Where are Somorhas and Erekes?” He could identify many of the constellations now and all of the wandering stars. After so many months with Liath, he could scarcely have failed to learn their names and histories.

“They can’t be seen right now because they’re still wandering too close to the sun. But Somorhas should return as evening star on the seventh, when she moves into the Sisters. Erekes is harder to see. But if we stood beneath the north pole, or at the equator, this sky on this night at this same time would look different. Longitude, latitude, and altitude.”

“It would?”

She took his hand as she started walking again. “The ancient Babaharshan magi and the Aoi sorcerers who taught them lived far south of here. As the observer moves south, the celestial equator moves higher in the sky. So does the plane of the ecliptic. To be at zenith, to ‘crown’ the heavens, means that a star stands directly above the observer at the highest point in the celestial dome.” She stopped again. “Look there. The Queen’s Bow stands almost at zenith.”

“She’s hunting the Dragon.”

“In another few hours, the Queen herself will stand at zenith, and at dawn her Cup and Sword will follow through the zenith behind her.”

“Because of the turning wheel of the stars,” he observed, and was gratified at the sudden, sharp smile she gave him, staggering in its heat.

“Exactly. Which brings us back to the tenth day of Octumbre in the year 735. Five years and five months from now.” Liath opened the door into the tower quietly, and Sanglant glanced up at the beamed ceiling as they entered, but he heard nothing. Severus slept upstairs, and woe to anyone who disturbed him. “Autumn’s sky at midnight is the Child’s sky, she who is Heir to the Queen. The Guivre swoops down upon the Child as she reaches for the Crown, but the Child is not defenseless. She is attended by the Queen’s Eagle, by the Sisters, who are her aunts, and by the Hunter who is also a prince. The Falcon flies before her, and behind her trails her faithful Hound.”

“And even if the planets change over the course of the years, the stars always rise at the same time.”

She hesitated, then laughed. It was such a bright sound that he had to laugh with her, and then he snorted, seeing her glance upward with exaggerated apprehension.

“Come, my love, if you’ll protect me from the fates woven into the stars, I’ll protect you from Brother Severus, no matter how grumpily he descends.”

“Ai, God.” She stiffened suddenly with a hand clasped to her belly. He felt the pain ride her, but she said nothing, only panted to let some of the pain out as he stroked her lower back. The nymph darted out of the night to stroke Liath’s belly, but Liath did not notice, and as she relaxed with an exhalation, Jerna slipped back into a pool of protecting shadow.

Recovering, Liath kneaded her belly with the heels of her hand, chuckling weakly. “I was only going to say that the fixed stars don’t always rise and set at the same time. It’s called the precession of the equinoxes, but the cycle takes place over such a long time, thousands of years—”

“Ai, Lady,” he groaned. “Five years is enough for me. God Above, Liath, just tell me this secret you’ve discovered so we can go back to sleep!”

She found a lantern, brought fire to the wick with a touch; the ease with which she brought fire was never less than startling, although he ought to have gotten used to it by now. Pregnancy had not dimmed her beauty, although certainly she tired quickly these days. Her face was softer and rounder, but her eyes were as brilliant and as fierce and her hair just as likely to escape in curls and wisps from the braid he made of it each evening.