Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“What is death?” it asked him.

It used the face of Sanglant to speak, but its grimaces showed neither grief nor anger. It did not comprehend the emotions of humankind and could not imitate them or even know that it might strive to do so. It was a creature of the aether—its substance blazed blue behind the eyes of the prince—and although Alain did not know how it had been coerced out of the spheres and down to Earth, he could see that it had become trapped here because the daimones of the upper air have one thing in common with humankind: they can love.

“Our souls depart this Earth when it is time for them to ascend to the Chamber of Light, a place which lies above the uppermost sphere,” he said. “Where is the soul of the body you now inhabit?”

“There is no soul here. It was here when I first came looking, and I pushed it aside while I searched for the one I love. But then a weight struck us and I felt how the threads that weave it to the flesh were severed.”

“How can this be? No creature male or female can kill him. You are sure no other soul resides in that body?”

Horribly, it cracked its head sideways, looking up into the sky. Blood leaked from parted lips, although otherwise the face was unmarked, yet the vigor that made Sanglant handsome was extinguished. Here now was merely an assemblage of indifferent features. “I can apprehend its track. It has crossed out of the lower air into the sphere of Erekes.”

“Ai, God,” whispered Alain. His tears fell as Sorrow whined and Rage gave a hesitant wag to her tail. “He is a good man. Can you not fly after him and bring him back?”

Without anger, without curiosity, without desire, the daimone spoke. “Why should I?”

Alain shrugged helplessly. The hounds nosed his hands, and he stroked them, who loved him and who had stayed with him all this time only because of the affection that binds creatures one to the other. This essence cannot be touched and cannot truly be named, but it exists in the world just as the Lady of Battles does, knit into the bones of the Earth and of every living creature that dwells on Earth or in heaven.

“Because Heribert loved him.”

It stared at him as would a man who is amazed to hear you speaking in a language he expects to understand but does not. It blinked, but the movement was as steady as that of a sunning lizard. One shoulder twitched. It lifted a hand and regarded fingers and palm without expression.

Wordless, it staggered, limbs jerking, and turned around in a full circle as if seeking a missing friend. Then the body collapsed onto the ground. Emptied.

He knelt beside it, but Sanglant was dead.

Weeping, he pressed a hand against the dead man’s forehead. His voice was no more than a whisper. “God, please heal him.”

But the corpse did not breathe, and did not stir. No heart’s blood pulsed under the skin.

The guivre’s hot breath blew over his back. It hit the road so hard that the shudder passed up through his feet. Its huge beaklike snout lowered until it was at a level with his face. Its breath was hot but not unpleasant; it smelled of calming frankincense.

Its long neck swayed hypnotically, and its eyes whirled until he fell into those depths and saw, within, the field of battle laid below him and all the forestlands and even farther beyond, as the land fell away until all earthly landmarks became tiny scratches on the vast tapestry that is the world. Rivers were threads of blue, and forest swathes of multicolored green. Towns and houses poked ragged holes in brighter colors. Here and there the many creatures crawled within the interstices of the weave as do mice within the church walls and among the meadow flowers. It seemed to him that each living thing appeared as an infinitesimal flare of light and heat against the colder and weightier spans of stone which buttress the architecture of life.

Spread across the lands lie the many stone crowns, a vast loom of magic. Faint passageways link them. Threads strung between crowns and stars grow taut, or loose, as the world shifts its position, ever rolling, and the stars rise and set on their endless round. A bright figure trailing a wispy blue ghost of aetherical wings races along one of those corridors in the company of shadowy companions; their trail leads them to a crown glittering above the solid, familiar compound that he recognizes as Hersford Monastery.

But greater wonders draw his gaze away.

For an instant he believes he can glimpse the span of the heavens and the spheres themselves: the pearl that is the Moon, icy Erekes, rosy Somorhas, the blazing furnace of the Sun, Jedu’s angry lair, the hall of Mok, the dazzling light of Aturna. Beyond these and locked around them rests the realm of the fixed stars, with its heavy silver sheet of sky and flashing, molten surface of liquid aether.

And farther yet, beyond all, you may find the pure heart of the universe which is light and darkness, whirling in a silence so vast that it is both something and nothing, substance and void, an infinite span impossible to comprehend but also as finite as a grain of sand resting in the palm of his hand.

This is the Abyss, into which all of humankind falls in the end. Yet it is also the Chamber of Light, incandescent and encompassing, the rose of compassion whose bloom restores the world.

The guivre nudged him, and he fell flat on his buttocks and found himself back on the road with the hounds whining and his head aching from that guivre’s breath blasting right into his face. What calmed others roused in him a nagging discontent. Restlessness stirred in his heart.

Liath was returning to Wendar, but she would come too late to save her beloved.

No matter. Grief and anger will always ride in the world. There was still work to be done.

He stood shakily and raised both hands. “I release you,” he said to the guivre. “Go free, friend. You have honored the trust I placed in you.”

Its chirp was as high and light as that of a baby bird, incongruous in such a huge and terrifying beast. It opened its wings, spanning the width of the road, bunched its haunches, and sprang heavenward. The draft slapped him back down on the road. The hounds were flattened by it, and men and riders who had until now remained poised like statues were flung aside, tumbling to their knees, horses pushed sideways within the circle of that powerful gust It gained height, circled once, and arrowed northwest, back toward its old haunts deep in the wild forestlands where few men dared hunt.

He dusted himself off, got to his feet although every muscle twinged, and sought the paralyzed figure of Conrad. The duke of Wayland had been tossed from his horse and was now grimacing, on his knees, struggling to rise and grasp his sword as the influence of the guivre waned. Alain drew the sword, wresting it out of the duke’s hand, and heaved it to one side. It rang on the stone paving and tumbled off the roadbed.

Conrad blinked, shook himself, and with a roar of anger staggered to his feet. “What means this?” Then he saw the mangled body and the shattered wagon. “Ai, God!” he cried, stumbling forward to kneel beside the corpse. “What is this? Sanglant! Cousin!”

“Call off your men,” said Alain.