Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

All at once every dog in camp began barking. Only Sorrow and Rage remained silent as soldiers hoisted their shields and held their weapons ready. It was too dark to see anything in the forest, but a wind picked up, whipping the treetops into a frenzy. The beggars erupted, like the dogs, into a clamor, and crying and weeping they fled into the forest.

“It is not the bandits they fear,” said Conrad. He stepped back toward the safety of the line with his sword drawn and his head cast back to scan the night sky. There was nothing to see except the darker toss and tumble of tree-tops as they danced in the wind. Unseen, but heard, a branch snapped explosively and crashed to earth.

“What is this?” demanded Sabella, and it wasn’t clear if she spoke of Alain or the inconvenient storm.

An ungodly screech tore through the air, causing every man there to start and turn his eyes upward.

“Light! Light!” called the captain.

Men lit sticks and held them up as flaming torches, and perhaps half those kindling flames were whipped right out by the wind.

Overhead it flew, vast wings beating as it skimmed over the camp. It was far bigger than the first guivre Sabella had captured and maimed years ago. The flames cast glimmers along the scales of its underbelly, like golden waters rippling. From the company below there came no sound, not even gasps of surprise. There they all stood, rooted to the ground like stone and staring at the creature they meant to track down and make captive.

This was all the chance Alain needed. He had already made his decision. He had caught the scent. He saw its tail flick out of sight as it vanished into the night, flown into the northeast where the rough ground reached its worst. He whistled softly to alert Sorrow and Rage and, while the rest of the company stood frozen with shock and fear, he and the hounds walked away into the dark forest.

PART TWO

THE BLOOD-RED ROSE

VIII

ON A DARK ROAD

1

SECHA sat cross-legged on a reed mat, holding her elder daughter in her left arm as the baby nursed while, with her right, she turned the wheels within wheels of the astrolabe. The astrolabe was a strange and cunning tool that gave power and precision to the one who understood how to use it. This particular one had been hammered and shaped and incised in the forges of the land once called Abundance-Is-Ours-If-The-Gods-Do-Not-Change-Their-Minds but now commonly named Where-We-Are-Come-Home or Feet-Dug-In-This-Earth. The smiths had copied it from the one possessed by the Pale Sun Dog, and it had been delivered to her three days ago by the latest band of eager young warriors off to try their skill in raiding, burning, and killing.

She sighed as the alidade rotated smoothly through the scales inscribed into the disk. The cruder instrument she had used for the last two months had a tendency to stick. This was a well-made, handsome tool, a testament to the skill of her people’s artisans now that they were freed from the limbo of the shadows to again ply their metalworking. In the old days, so it was said, they had worked in bronze long before such knowledge had spread to the primitive Pale Ones. Now, of course, humankind bore weapons of hard iron, and it was the Ashioi who must scramble to forge stronger weapons and tools to combat their ancient enemy.

“Secha!” Sparrow Mask called from the watchtower. “Dust on the road! Looks like a good-sized band! Maybe more!”

“I hear you!” she called back, but she did not move. No wise woman dislodged a suckling infant from the nipple except for fire or blood.

From her seat on the mat, unrolled on a plank walkway out under the cloudy sky, she surveyed the settlement built by humankind and taken over by her own people. The high palisade blocked her view of the landscape. The houses and hovels had heft and weight, constructed out of blocks of stone with tile or thatch roofs, but she could never live easily in this place. It was too dark and heavy. The humans lived without a temple raised up on an earthen platform; there was not even an altar. There was no market corner, no community salt pit or meeting ground. They did not decorate the exterior of their houses, and within the deserted eaves she had found tools and cloth and tables and benches and crude beds but little she found beautiful. She could find no house of youth where the children would be instructed. Altogether, she found their life poor even compared to the hardship she had endured in exile. They might possess the secret of iron, and various cunning tools that made work easier, but in all other ways they lived little better than savages.

The baby loosed the breast, gurgled, burped, and dozed off. Secha called to White Feather, who came and took the child. The other infant slept as well; she always fed them one after the next—otherwise she would be feeding all day!

Zuchia the weaver waved to her as she walked to the watchtower. From the building that had once housed the humans’ animals she heard the voices of the children reciting in unison.

“These are the names of the days:

Darkness

Cave

Stone

Flint

Jade

House

Reed

Grass

Flower