Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 27

The path was clearly marked, once you thought to look for it. Those lamplit sparks were stepping stones, each one about an anil's length in diameter, set across the blistering sea. The challenge lay in stepping from one to the next with no staff for balance and feeling in only one foot. She hitched her quiver tightly against her body and set off, cautiously at first, more boldly after she got the knack of compensating for her crippled foot and navigating against the constant pressure of wind blowing so hard into her face that her eyes ran with tears.

The dark sh.o.r.e receded behind her, quickly lost, until only the sea surrounded her, yet she felt the presence of hulking shapes around her, impossible to distinguish. The wind stank of bitter wormwood. Will-o'-the-wisps twinkled and vanished in the distance. Even in darkness, the landscape seemed as desolate as a woman's heart that has been scoured clean.

That fast, just before she took her next step, the wind turned. One instant it blasted her face with heat; the next it buffeted her from behind with an arctic chill. The sudden s.h.i.+ft caught her off guard, almost tumbling her off her safe perch on a broad stepping stone. Light washed the landscape.

She stared.

The sphere of Erekes was a vale of ice, a blinding sea of whiteness.

She had always a.s.sumed that Erekes, often hidden by the sun's glare, would reflect something of the sun's substance: burned, charred, or at least a desert. But of course, that was the weakness of a.s.sumption. Erekes wasn't any of the things she had expected.

Wasn't that the lesson of the sword? If you go into battle thinking you know what to expect, the hand of confusion will always sow chaos and death in your ranks.

Yet how could she have prepared herself for this? Instead of a neat trail of beacons leading her forward, she stared at a confusing scatter of stepping stones sprayed across the icy sea, too many to count. She took an arrow and, reaching, touched the stone directly in front of her. The arrow sank through the illusory stone and, sizzling from the bite of that poisonous seawater, dissolved into ash. Only the iron tip remained, floating on the gelid surface.

Three other stepping stones remained within reach and beyond them, hundreds more, receding to an impossibly near horizon. In daylight, it was impossible to tell which of the stepping stones was real and which illusion. The sea of ice had no limit, none that she could see, and she had only seventeen arrows left. Lucian's friend, her sword, would have come in awfully handy right now, since it appeared that the icy liquid couldn't burn iron. But she had thrown it away.

The knife edge of the wind tore into her back. Her tunic flapped around her knees. Her long braid writhed against her back, distracting her, until she finally flipped it over her shoulder, where it whipped against her jaw. She couldn't feel her left arm from hand to elbow, and her right leg was numb from the knee down.

A pale shape flitted in front of her, careless as a breeze. Had this daimone come to taunt her? Or did it hope to guide her? Could she hope for their aid?

"Are there any here who were made captive at Verna?" she called." Do you know me? I am Liathano, daughter of Anne and Bernard, wife of Sanglant, mother of Blessing. Can you help me?"

She saw more of them spinning and swooping among the staggeringly bright ice floes. Their movements seemed entirely random, unfixed and purposeless. What did they care if she triumphed, or failed?

The poison filtered up her limbs. She needed a guide quickly, a creature who could survive in the aether. Truly, she only knew where to find one such creature. She had to act fast.

On Earth she had learned to mold fire into a window. It proved no different here. Even in the sphere of Erekes, frozen in ice, fire came to her call.

It flared up with an audible crack, followed by a murmurous clattering like a thousand wings battering against an unbreachable wall. The sound died quickly. In the ice floes nearest her, daimones fled from the heat.

She wrapped fire into an archway, a window to see onto distant Earth.

"Sanglant," she called, because the link to him was the strongest chain she had.

With her poisoned hand raised to shadow her eyes, she kept the living one outstretched toward the archway of fire, bleeding and burning sparks and swirling air onto another vista, pale and blurry as through a veil. Were those vague shadows human forms? The sea hissed around her.

"Sanglant!" she cried again. A small child's body took form beyond the archway, so bright that it shone even into Erekes, casting a shadow." Blessing?" Her voice caught on the beloved name.

To her shock, she heard an answer.

"Mama! Mama come!"

Ai, Lady! Blessing was so big, speaking like a two-year-old. Had so much time pa.s.sed in the other world already, although she had only lived among the As.h.i.+oi for a handful of days? She wanted them so badly, but she hardened her heart. How easy it was to harden her heart.

"Sanglant, if you can hear me, know that I am living, but I am on a long journey and I do not know how long it will take me." To get back to you. She faltered. He was only a shadow dimly perceived across an untold distance. Blessing blazed in the realm of shadows, but Liath could not really be sure if anyone else heard her or even was aware of the rift she had opened between Earth and the sphere of Erekes.

"Wait for me, I beg you! Help me if you can, for I'm trapped here. I need Jerna."

Surely if Blessing had grown so large, Liath need not feel guilty about stealing Jerna away. A child of two could thrive on porridge and soft cheese, meat and bread and goat's milk.

A daimone flashed as a silvery form across the shadows, beyond the veil.

"I see you!" She reached out just as Jerna's gleaming, wispy form coiled protectively around Blessing, soaking the child in Jerna's aetherical substance. Blessing cried out in surprise and delight, a sweet sound that cut to Liath's heart. But she could not stop now. No time to savor it. The poison had reached her left shoulder, and her right hip. If she couldn't escape the sea of ice, she would die.

"Come if you will, Jerna. Return to your home. The way is open."

As she reached into the whirlpool of light, wind cut her hand to ribbons. She jerked back, crying out in pain as the archway of fire collapsed into a hundred shards that spun on a whirlwind out into the sea. Reeling back, she remembered too late that she would only fall into the poisonous sea.

But she never plunged into the depths. A cool presence wrapped itself around her, lifting her.

In the aether, Jerna's luminescence dazzled. She had form as much as softness and only the vaguest memory of the human shape she had worn on Earth.

"Come," she said, a murmur made by the flow of her body through the aetherical wind. On Earth, Liath had not understood the speech of the daimones, not as Sanglant had. Here, all language seemed an open book to her." The blessing needs me no longer. This last act I will grant you, her mother, so I can become free of humankind."

She twisted upward on a trail of gauzy mist that flowered into life as Jerna ascended. Liath's arm and leg throbbed painfully, all pins and needles, where Jerna's substance wrapped them in a healing glow. The pain made her head pound, and the reflection of light off the ice floes and the white sea blinded her until, dizzy, she couldn't tell what was up and what was down and whether earthly directions had any meaning in the heavens.

A rosy glow penetrated the ice-white blaze of Erekes' farthest boundary. Silky daimones cl.u.s.tered along a series of arches that formed not so much a wall as a porous, inviting border, an elaboration of detail so sensuously formed that she wondered if earthly architects saw this place in fevered dreams.

"Now am I come to my home," whispered Jerna.

But as they reached the many-gated border, weight dragged Liath down once again.

"I cannot carry you within," said Jerna." You still wear too much of Earth about you, Bright One. For the sake of the blessing you allowed me to nurse, I have carried you thus far, but I can hold you no longer."

Liath panicked as she slipped out of Jerna's grasp. Ai, G.o.d, she would plunge back into the poisonous sea. Her clumsy fingers found her belt buckle. As she loosened it, the leather slithered down her legs, caught on her foot, and the belt and the items. .h.i.tched to it-her leather pouch and her sheathed iron eating knife-fell away.

Jerna released her. The many-gated wall pa.s.sed beneath her, and she tumbled into the sphere of Somorhas, whose warm and rosy light embraced her.

THAT first night out of Handelburg, huddled in miserable cold in such shelter as a half-ruined ancient hill fort afforded them, Hanna suggested to the prince that he and his party all shave their heads. That way they could tell-any folk they met that they'd battied lice and perhaps no one would suspect they had been excommunicated for heresy. Probably she risked excommunication herself for suggesting it, but it was the most practical thing to do.

She refused to shave her own head. Until that moment, she'd never known, or even considered, that she might be vain of her white-blonde hair. Maybe she hadn't minded Prince Bayan's attentions as much as she had protested to herself and to others. Maybe Princess Sapientia's jealousy had saved her from temptation.

G.o.d worked in strange ways.

When a snowstorm stranded the party for a month in a fortified village five days' march west of Handelburg, Ekkehard spoke sternly to his retinue.

"I don't know how long it will be until we can come clear of this village," he said, "but there's to be no preaching."

." But, my lord prince," objected Lord Benedict, always the first to speak when an opinion was asked, "it's a worse sin to remain silent when we can save lives with the truth!"

"That's true, but I made a promise to Prince Bayan that I wouldn't preach until the war is over and Bulkezu is defeated. I'll lose face if I don't keep my promise, and no one will ever respect me. We'll ride to the Villams and fight the Quman alongside them." How he would fight the Quman when his wounded shoulder still hadn't healed was a consideration no one addressed.

"We're not riding to your father, my lord prince?" Lord Frithuric was the biggest of Ekkehard's cronies, a strapping lad somewhat younger than Hanna.

Ekkehard shuddered." I'll not throw myself on my father's mercy just yet. He's probably still mad at me for stealing Baldwin from Margrave Judith."

Lord Lothar was the eldest of the youths and, in Hanna's opinion, the only one with a feather's weight of sense." But Margrave Judith is dead, my lord prince. Her daughter, Lady Bertha, didn't care one whit about Lord Baldwin, except for that trouble about the marriage portion."

"True enough," observed Ekkehard thoughtfully. He had so thoroughly absorbed the mannerisms of the better bards who came through the royal progress that the inflections of his stock phrases all sounded as though they were copied from some epic poem, weary p.r.o.nouncements of doom, wise musings, angry retorts, and n.o.ble resolutions." Remember what Bayan said. We'll have no one to preach to if we lose this war to the Quman savages. G.o.d would want us to fight to make Her lands safe for Her true word."

"Very true, my lord prince," they agreed, all six of his n.o.ble companions, Lord Dietrich's two cousins, and nineteen miscellaneous others who had survived that five-day ride. One poor man had drowned during a river crossing, and there had been a great deal of discussion whether this meant his faith in the Sacrifice and Redemption hadn't been strong enough to save him. Hanna personally thought that it was because he had slipped, fallen, and panicked because he hadn't known how to swim. No one had been able to reach him in time.

"Let us all remember the phoenix," finished Ekkehard portentously as he ran a hand through the stubble of his hair, scratching it cautiously as though it might at any moment sprout thistles." The phoenix rises in its own time. We must have faith that we have other tasks to accomplish before the church is ready to embrace the truth."

With a party of twenty-eight visitors in a village populated by no more than sixty souls, half of whom were children, there were indeed plenty of tasks to accomplish. Hanna knew how to make herself useful and did so, figuring their party would be better off building up a store of goodwill considering how much food they were eating. She carded and spun wool, sewed, cooked, ground grain, churned b.u.t.ter, and spent many a pleasant hour combing the hair of her new friends. Luckily, most of the cast-off soldiers also had practical gifts. They helped dig out the village after the first, and worst, snowfall, repaired those portions of the palisade they could reach through the drifts, built benches and tables, dug out two canoes from logs, searched out lost sheep, and otherwise kept themselves busy. Lord Dietrich's two cousins set themselves to caring for the horses, although of course the presence of twelve horses in such a village was a terrible strain on the forage supply. Because of the heavy snow, Ekkehard was able to take his lads hunting only twice, but at least both times they brought back game to supplement the common house table. Hanna hated to think what hunger these villagers would suffer as winter gave way to the privations of early spring, with all their stores eaten up by their unexpected visitors.

Of course it was inevitable that this respite wouldn't last, even though Ekkehard entertained the villagers every night with a princely rendition of one of the many epics he had memorized. Song couldn't subst.i.tute for food, once all was said and done. Small irritations multiplied into fistfights. A householder complained that her entire store of apples had been eaten, so Ekkehard gave her a gold armband as rest.i.tution to keep the peace. Despite his religious vows, he took up with a village girl, although neither she nor her mother seemed displeased at the prospect of the rings and other little gifts he offered in exchange for her favors.

Lady Fortune smiled upon them. The main road, such as it was, was almost pa.s.sable the morning Lord Manegold was discovered in the hayloft with the blacksmith's young wife and her younger sister. Murder was averted when the two hotheads, Thiemo and Welf, were prevented from stabbing the furious blacksmith by the intervention of his adulterous wife, who threw herself bodily over her p.r.o.ne husband. By then it was already clear they were no longer welcome to stay in the village.

Prince Ekkehard was furious when they rode out at midday." If I'd known she was willing, I wouldn't have settled for Mistress Aabbe's daughter, who isn't half as pretty."

"I would have shared her with you," protested Manegold. He wasn't as handsome as the infamous Baldwin, of course, but nevertheless was an appealing sight to girls who liked pretty, blond young men born into a n.o.ble house and unburdened by any notion of consequences. His blackening eye only added to his enticing good looks." But I'd only just discovered myself how very willing she was! And that sister! You wouldn't think a common-born country girl would know how to do all those things!"

The villagers crowded together at the main gate, pitchforks and staves in hand, to make sure the prince and his retinue actually left. Four of the soldiers walked at the front, breaking trail. Lord Welf rode directly behind them, carrying Ekkehard's gold-and-red battle banner. This tattered and much-mended piece of cloth had, like Ekkehard himself, been rescued off the battlefield by the tumulus, so its presence was considered a sign of good luck as well as status, marking the progress of a royal prince. However meager his retinue might be.

"Perhaps, my lord prince," said Hanna reluctantly, "in the future you and your followers might be more cautious in your amorous trysts. In a marchland village such as this, the blacksmith is an honored member of the community and not to be insulted in such a grave way." "You haven't the right to say that kind of thing to me!" replied Ekkehard indignantly.

"I ride as the king's representative, my lord prince. The villagers were generous with their hospitality. I am sure King Henry would think it unwise to repay their generosity in such a way that they throw us out."

"How will King Henry ever know if there's no one to report to him?" demanded Lord Thiemo, laying a hand on his sword hilt.

"It's treason to kill a King's Eagle," said Lord Dietrich's elder cousin.

"So it is," snapped Ekkehard." Leave her be."

"How is being a traitor worse than being a heretic?" asked Lothar, genuinely puzzled.

Ekkehard had no answer to such a difficult question." It doesn't matter anyway. I promised Prince Bayan I'd see the Eagle safely to the seat of the Villams, and so I will. After that, she's on her own to return to the king."

But Hanna noted how Lord Dietrich's cousins fell a little behind, talking intently to each other where the others could not hear them.

A warm sun rapidly turned the snow to heavy slush, and Hanna pitied the men who had to walk at the front to make a way for the horses. The weather remained changeable, freezing at night, sometimes warm and sometimes cold with a froth of snow during the daytime. One horse slipped and broke a leg, and although they ate well of its flesh over the next few days, the poor man who'd been thrown in the accident and hit his head finally lost consciousness completely and died of a seizure. One of the soldiers who did most of the trail breaking lost the use of his feet to frostbite, and when the infection began to stink, he begged them to kill him, but Ekkehard hadn't the guts for it. Instead, they abandoned him in a hamlet in the care of an old woman who claimed to know herbcraft. Hanna smelled the stink of witchcraft in that place, but there was nothing she could do to countermand Ekkehard's orders. She could hear the man's screaming for leagues afterward, long after they had marched out of earshot.

That night, Lord Dietrich's cousins and seven men deserted.

In the morning, Ekkehard would have upbraided the sentries, except it was the very men who'd been on watch who had left. They followed the trail made by the others, bold prints across virgin snow, but as the day wore on, bitterly cold, one of the foot soldiers fell gravely ill and had to be carried by his comrades. They fell farther and farther behind.

Here in the marchlands, forest ranged everywhere, woodland cut frequently by meadows, marsh, and higher heath lands. They took refuge that night within the remains of a deserted village. Most of the buildings had fallen in or been demolished but one had half a roof intact. Thatch scavenged from the outbuildings made decent sleeping pallets, and there was plenty of wood for a fire.

Ekkehard paced impatiently at the limit of the fire's light as the rest of them listened to the sick man struggle to breathe. Lord Lothar, too, was ill; his breath rattled in and out as he huddled miserably by the fire. Hanna stood with one foot up on the ruined foundations, watching the land.

The stars s.h.i.+mmered beyond a veil of night haze, strangely luminous. Snow-shrouded trees lay in perfect stillness. The moon's light etched shadows across the abandoned village and once or twice she thought she saw the shade of one of the lost inhabitants scurrying across the common yard on an errand, but it was first an owl and a second time simply a phantasm glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. The snow lay untouched except where their own feet had churned it. A sentry, stationed in the ruins of a pithouse right on the edge of the forest, coughed. Behind her the horses, crowded in with the men for warmth, stamped restlessly.

She stroked her hands down her braid. A cold suspicion was growing in her that Bayan had sent them all out here knowing they might well die. Was he more ambitious than he seemed? Did he mean to eliminate any possible threat to Sapientia's crown? Was it actually possible that Bayan could flirt as outrageously as he had with her and then send her out on such a dangerous journey? After all, the Quman could be anywhere, although surely they wouldn't ride abroad in this weather. Only a fool would march cross-country at the mercy of winter-a fool, or an Eagle sent about the reg-nant's business.

But, of course, Bayan hadn't made her an Eagle. She'd accepted the position, knowing its dangers. Any person who rode long distances was at risk, and if anything her Eagle's cloak and badge gave her a measure of security most travelers never knew.

Nay, Bayan wasn't bent on revenge or intrigue. In truth, Prince Ekkehard was a nuisance: young, untried, immature, and reckless. And as big a fool as Ivar to get mixed up in heresy. In Bayan's place, she would probably have done the same thing. Only she wished right now that she was snug in that sleeping platform in Biscop Alberada's hall instead of standing out here in the middle of wilderness with no fortified holding within a day's ride on either side. This was just the kind of place a small party like theirs could be attacked and overwhelmed.

In the distance, a wolf howled, the only sound in the lonely landscape. Whispered talk died by the fire as men paused to listen, but nothing replied to that solitary call. A twig snapped at the fringe of the trees.

Was that a shape, creeping in among the snow-laden branches? Were those pale wings, advancing through the trees?

"Who's there?" demanded the sentry. His voice trembled.

"Hsst!" Ekkehard stepped forward, sword drawn, to stand beside Hanna." What do you see, Eagle?" he whispered. Behind, his companions drew their swords while the soldiers scrambled to ready spears and s.h.i.+elds. Hands shaking, she hoisted her bow and nocked an arrow.

There was nothing there. Snow tumbled from a heavily-laden fir tree, shrouding the imagined wing shape, and all was still. The moon's light cast a drowsy glamour over the silent forest.

"Hai!" cried the sentry, so startled that his spear fell, clattering on stone foundations.

It arrived noiselessly and settled down in the midst of a stretch of untouched snow. Despite its size, it did not break through the hard crust. It was the largest owl she had ever seen, with tufted ears and a coat of mottled feathers, streaked with white at the breast. The owl gazed at her, unblinking, incurious, looking ready to s.n.a.t.c.h her up as it would a delectable mouse.

"That would make a tasty meal," muttered Ekkehard, elbowing Hanna." Shoot it."

"Nay, my lord prince," she answered, suddenly afflicted by dread at the thought of shooting this magnificent creature, "for everyone knows that the flesh of an owl is like poison to a human being."

Ekkehard hesitated. In that instant, the owl took flight and was gone.

"d.a.m.n it! We've few enough provisions, Eagle. One owl shared between us wouldn't have sickened any one of us more than the rest!" He seemed ready to go on chastising her when Lord Benedict hurried up.

"Your Highness, come quick. The sick man is vomiting blood, and the old sergeant thinks he's going to die. You'd better give him a blessing so his soul will be safe when he pa.s.ses to the Other Side."

The poor man did die, a little before dawn. Hanna paced all night, wrapped in her cloak, too cold and nervous to sleep, while the moon set and the forest sank into a deeper slumber. As Ekke-hard's company drifted in and out of their fitful sleep, interrupted now and again by Lord Lothar's hacking coughs, she wondered if she would have been better off if the deserters had invited her to join them.

They found their bodies the next day.

They had saddled up their remaining eight horses in the morning and started down the road, following the tracks left by the others. The cold had frozen a crust over the snow heavy enough to take a man's weight for a few moments before he broke through, and while that made the traveling easier for the men, it doubled the effort for the horses. Hanna quickly dismounted to lead her horse, and after a few more struggling steps, the young lords did so as well. They weren't fools about horseflesh. Hanna had long since observed that many n.o.ble folk had more concern for their hounds, horses, and hawks than for the common people bound into their service.

"Look here," said Frithuric, who had taken the lead as usual." There's a set of tracks leading off the path, into the forest. Back toward the abandoned village. Should we follow them? Maybe one of these d.a.m.ned deserters had a change of heart and came back to look for us."

"Nay," said Ekkehard impatiently, "we'll want shelter tonight and I've no intention of wasting time on them, since they're the ones who left us behind."

They went on, breath steaming in the cold air. The exercise made Hanna sweat, but her feet stayed cold and her toes ached incessantly. They had followed the path for less than half a league when Lord Frithuric, still ranging ahead, gave a strangled cry. Hurrying forward, they saw him beside a wayside shelter, chasing away crows.

Lord Dietrich's cousins and their seven fellow deserters had made their final stand at the wayside shelter, vainly attempting to use its walls as protection. Three of the men were missing their heads; the rest were simply dead, stripped of their weapons, any decent armor, and, of course, the three horses. Blood soaked the snow. Fire had scorched the thatch before burning itself out harmlessly. Singed straw lay scattered downwind along the snowy ground as far as Hanna could see. By the evidence of hoofprints, the deserters had been attacked by at least a dozen hors.e.m.e.n. A few stray feathers trampled in the snow or caught beneath the corpses left no doubt that their a.s.sailants had been a Quman raiding party.

No one dared-speak for fear their voices would carry on the still winter air across the sea of snow and blanketed forest to the waiting Quman. Surely they were still out there.

They hadn't the time or the energy to dig graves in the frozen ground, so they just left them for the wolves, not even building a cairn of rocks over them as they had for the man who'd died during the night. What else could they do?

As the others made ready to go, Hanna grimly followed the tracks of the raiding party a short way, just to get an idea what direction they were heading. That was the eeriest thing of all: the Quman riders had obviously ridden back down the trail toward the abandoned village. One man had been bleeding enough to leave a faint trail of blood in his wake, quickly churned away by the pa.s.sage of his fellows. It seemed possible, in retrospect, that the solitary hoofprints veering off from the trail a stone's throw from the abandoned village had been those of a Quman scout rather than one of the deserters. Had it only been a dream that she'd seen pale wings moving among the trees last night?

Of course it had. If the Quman had spotted them, they would have attacked. They hadn't spotted them, and they hadn't attacked.