Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 1

CROWN OF STARS**

Child of Flame.

KATE ELLIOT.

PROLOGUE.

OFF to the southeast, thunder rolled on and on. But in the broad ditch where three youths and two gravely injured soldiers had taken refuge from the battle, the rain had, mercifully, slackened. A wind out of the north blew the clouds away, revealing the waxy light of a full moon.

Ivar listened to the sounds of battle carried by the breeze. They'd scrambled down into die ditch from an embankment above, hoping to escape the notice of their enemies. They hadn't found safety, only a moment's respite, caught as they were behind the enemy's line. The Quman warriors would sweep down from the earthen dike and slaughter them, then cut off their heads to use as belt ornaments. Or, at least, that's what Baldwin seemed to think as he babbled confusedly about Quman soldiers searching the huge tumulus and its twisting embankments, lighting their way with torches.

From his place down in the slippery mud at the bottom of the ditch, Ivar didn't see torches. There was a lambent glow emanating from the crown of the hill, but it didn't look like any torchlight he had ever seen.

Sometimes, when a situation was really bad and there was nothing you could do about it, it was just better not to know.

"Careful," whispered Ermanrich." This whole end is filled with water. G.o.d's mercy! It's like ice."

"Come on, Dedi, come on, lad," coaxed the older of the two wounded Lions to his young companion, but the other man didn't rouse. Probably he was already dead.

Ivar found the water's edge, cupped his hands, and drank. The cold cleared his head for the first time since he had lost his fingers, and finally he could sit back and survey just how bad their predicament was.

Moonlight cast a glamour over the scene. The pool of water had formed up against a steep precipice, the face of the hillside. Over the course of uncounted years a trickling cataract had worn away the cliff face to expose two boulders capped by a lintel stone. Starlight caught and glimmered in one of the stones, revealing a carving half concealed behind tendrils of moss. Ivar negotiated the pool's edge so as not to get his feet wet-not that he wasn't already slopping filthy with mud-and traced the ancient lines: they formed a human figure wearing the antlers of a stag.

"Look!" Baldwin pushed aside the thick curtain of moss draping down over the stones to unveil a tunnel that cut into the hillside.

Their side had lost the battle anyway, and they were cut off from Prince Bayan's retreating army and all their comrades, those who had survived. How could an ancient tumulus be worse than the Quman? Ivar squeezed past the opening, wading in. Cold water poured down into his boots, soaking his leggings and making his toes throb painfully. He couldn't see a thing.

A body brushed against him." Ivar! Is that you, Ivar?" "Of course it's me! I heard a rumor that the Quman fear water. Maybe we can hide here, unless this pool gets too deep." The ground seemed firm enough, and the water wasn't deeper than his knees. Plunging his arm into the freezing water, he groped for and found a stone, tossed it. The plop rang hollow. Water dripped steadily ahead of them.

Something living scuffled, deep in the heart of the tumulus." What was that?" hissed Baldwin, grabbing Ivar's arm." Ow! You're pinching me!"

It was too late. Their voices had already woken the restless dead. A wordless groan echoed through the pitch-black tunnel.

"Oh, G.o.d." Ivar clutched at Baldwin's arm." It's a barrow. We've walked into a burial pit and now we'll be cursed."

But the voice made words they recognized, however distorted they might be by the stone and the drip of water." Is it you? Is it Ermanrich'ss friends?"

"L-Lady Hathumod?" stammered Baldwin.

"Ai, t-thank the Lady!" Her relief was evident despite the blurs and echoes." Poor Sigfrid was wounded in the arm and we got lost, and-and I prayed to G.o.d to show me a sign. And then we fell in here. But it's dry here where we are, and I think the tunnel goes farther into the hill, but I was too afraid to go on by our-selves."

"Now what do we do?" whined Baldwin softly.

"Let's get the others and we'll go as deep as we can into the hill. The Quman will never dare follow us through this water. After a day or two they'll go away, and we can come out."

"Just like that?" demanded Baldwin.

"Just like that. You'll see."

They trudged back to the mossy entrance, where they found Er-manrich shuddering and coughing as he clawed at the moss.

"Ai, G.o.d! There you are! I thought you'd been swallowed." He heaved a ragged sigh, then went on in a low voice, making a joke of his fear and relief." Maybe even the hills think Baldwin is handsome enough to eat, but I don't know what they'd be wanting with an ugly redheaded sot like you, Ivar."

"Dirt is blind, otherwise you'd never get inside. Come on." Ivar waded over to the conscious Lion." Friend, can you walk?"

"So I can, a bit, lad. But Dedi, here-" The old Lion got suddenly hoa.r.s.e.

"We'll carry him," said Ivar hastily." But let's get him out of that mail first. Ermanrich, give me a hand, will you? Baldwin, you help the Lion in, and keep ahead of him in case there's any pits."

"Pits? What if I fall into a bottomless hole?"

"Baldwin, we haven't got time! Here." He found the unconscious Lion's sword sheath." Take this sword and use it to feel your way forward."

Amazingly, Baldwin obeyed without further objection. He helped the old Lion to his feet and steadied the soldier as he hobbled to the tunnel.

It wasn't easy to get mail off an unconscious man." I think he's already dead," Ermanrich whispered several times, but in the end they wrestled him out of his armor.

Nor was it easy to haul him in through the tunnel even without his armor. He was a big man, well muscled, so badly injured that he was a complete dead weight. Luckily, the water did not rise past their thighs before an upward slope brought them shivering out of the water onto dry ground. The weight of the hill pressed above them. Dirt stung Ivar's nostrils, and his mutilated hand burned with pain.

"Thank G.o.d," said Baldwin out of the darkness. Ivar and Ermanrich set down the unconscious soldier, none too gently, and Ivar straightened up so quickly that he banged his head hard against the stone ceiling. The pain made tears flow, and in a way he did want just to sit down and cry because everything had been such a disaster. He really had thought they'd win the battle. Prince Bayan's and Princess Sapientia's troops had looked so magnificent arrayed against the Quman army, and even the dreaded Margrave Judith had ridden out with such a strong host that it seemed impossible that everything had fallen apart, including their line. Prince Ekkehard had vanished in the maelstrom, his companions were scattered or dead, and they were all that was left. Probably they were the last remnant of Bayan's army left on this side of the river: two badly injured soldiers, four novice monks, and one lost nun.

The battle had started very late in the afternoon, and now night settled over them. Two hours at the most separated them from that glorious place where they'd waited at the front of the right flank, ready to sweep into battle. It just didn't seem possible everything had gone wrong so fast.

But meanwhile, someone had to go back to make sure that the Quman hadn't followed them under the hill. Cold, wet, and shivering, Ivar braced himself for the shock of wading back into the water that drowned the lower reaches of the tunnel. His leggings already clung to him like icy leeches, and his toes had gone numb from cold.

A hand snaked out of the darkness to grab at his sleeve." Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?" Baldwin asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"Nay. It's better if I go alone. If something happens to me, it'll take you and Ermanrich and Lady Hathumod to carry the injured Lion."

Baldwin leaned closer. Despite the long weeks of travel in harsh conditions, the terror of a losing battle waged as afternoon gave way to dusk, and the desperation of their scramble over the ancient earthworks, Baldwin's breath was still as sweet as that of a lord sitting in pleasant splendor in his rose garden, drinking a posset of mead flavored with mint." I'd rather be dead than go on without you."

"We'll all be dead if the Quman find that armor and figure out that we're hiding in this tunnel. Just stay here, Baldwin, I beg you."

Behind, in the stygian blackness, Sigfrid's gentle voice fell and rose in a melismatic prayer. Somehow, the darkness warped time. Hadn't it just been moments ago that they had stumbled upon that hidden opening? It seemed like hours.

Beneath Sigfrid's quiet prayer Ivar heard Hathumod murmuring words he couldn't quite make out. She was answered, in turns, by monosyllabic grunts from the old Lion and whispered questions from Ermanrich. He could not see, not even Baldwin, who stood right next to him. He felt them, though, huddled together like frightened rats under the weight of earth and rock.

He took the unconscious Lion's sword from Baldwin and tested the grip with his good hand, squeezed and relaxed until the leather grip gave enough to fit the curve of his hand. With gritted teeth, he surged forward into the water and shuddered all over again as the tunnel floor plunged down and the icy water enveloped his legs.

With the sword drawn tightly against his left leg, Ivar approached the entrance in relative silence. He smelled the distant stench of the battlefield. Night crows cried far away, alerting their cousins to the banquet. A pebble rolled under his boot, and he grunted softly, balancing himself. The wound on his right hand sc.r.a.ped stone. He caught back a gasp of pain as a hot trickle of blood bled free. Pain stabbed up his hand, and he stumbled forward. The stumps of his missing fingers, shorn off right at the second knuckle, jabbed into a moist tapestry of moss. Tears streamed from his eyes and made salty runnels over his lips. After a while, the pain subsided enough for him to think.

He had reached the entrance. Cautiously, with his good hand, he fingered the tendrils of moss which streaked the crumbling entrance. Behind this curtain he waited, listening. He couldn't see anything, not even the sky. It seemed as dark beyond the curtain concealing the tomb's entrance as it had deep within. The heavy scent of damp and earth and wet moss shrouded his world.

But he could hear the distant murmur of a host moving, hooves, shouts, one poor soul screaming, the detritus of movement that betrays two armies unwinding one from the other as the battle ebbs and dies.

From close by, he heard a grunt, a low breathing mutter.

The sword shifted in his hand before he was aware he had changed his stance. The Lion's discarded armor spoke with that voice granted to all things born of metal: when hands disturbed it, it replied in a chiming voice.

Just as he had feared: a Quman soldier had found the discarded armor.

He lunged through the curtain. The Quman soldier had wings curling up above his back where he bent over the mail and helmet. Ivar ducked down to get under the wooden contraption. Just as the other man spun, he thrust. The short sword caught the winged soldier just under his leather-scaled shirt. With his wounded arm he reached out and wrapped his forearm around the man's head and with all his weight pulled him in through the entrance. Wood frames snapped against the lintel as Ivar fell into the water with the Quman landing face first in his lap. The sword drove to the hilt between the enemy's ribs.

Water licked Ivar's lips as he pressed the man down, holding him under. The man twisted one way and then the other, trying to raise his head out of the water, but Ivar countered each movement j with a sideways push on the hilt of the sword. Steel grated against I bone, causing the warrior to convulse and lose whatever advantage he had gained. His black hair floated like tendrils of moss. Ivar tasted blood in the water. All at once, the Quman went limp.

Ivar shoved the dead man deeper into the pool and staggered to his feet. His body ached from the cold. He dipped a hand in the water to scrub at his face, to wash the taint of blood away, but all around him the pool seemed polluted by the life that had drained into it. He carefully slipped past the moss and found clear water outside.

Lightning streaked the sky, followed by a sharp thunderclap. A voice called out a query. On the earthworks beyond, a man's shape, distorted by wings, reared up against the night sky, questing: an other Quman soldier, looking for his comrade. Ivar's position at the base of the ditch, within the shadow of the lintel, veiled him. A moment later the shadow moved on, dropping out of sight behind the earthworks.

A drizzle of rain wet Ivar's cheeks. With a swelling roar, the river raged in the distance like a mult.i.tude of voices raised all at once, but he couldn't see it, nor could he see stars above. A bead of rain wound down his nose and, suspended from its tip, hung there for the longest time just as he was suspended, unwilling to move for fear of giving himself away.

Finally he set down his sword, rolled up the mail shirt, wrapping it tight with a belt, and looped the helmet strap over his shoulder. With the sword in his good hand and his injured hand throbbing badly enough to give him a headache, he felt his way back under the lintel. Gruesome wings brushed his nose, one splintered wooden frame sc.r.a.ping his cheek as feathers tickled his lips. Outside, rain started to fall in earnest. Thunder muttered in the west. If they were lucky, rain would obscure the signs of their pa.s.sage and leave them safe for a day or two, until the Quman moved on. Then they could sneak out and make their way northwest, on the trail of Prince Bayan's and Princess Sapientia's retreating army.

In his heart, he knew it was a foolish hope. The Quman had scouts and trackers. There was no way a ragged band of seven, four of them wounded and most of them unable to fight, could get through the Quman lines. But they had to believe they could. Otherwise they might as well lie down and die.

Why would they have been granted the vision of the phoenix if G.o.d had meant for them to die in such a pointless manner?

Baldwin was waiting for him where the tunnel floor sloped upward and out of the water.

"Come see," said Baldwin sharply." Gerulf got a fire going."

"Gerulf?"

"That's the old Lion." Baldwin tugged him onward, steadying him when he stumbled. Weariness settled over Ivar's shoulders. He shivered convulsively, soaked through. He wanted nothing more than to drop right where he stood and sleep until death, or the phoenix, came for him. Or maybe one would bring the other, it was hard to think with the walls wavering around him.

Strange sigils had been carved into the pale stone, broad rocks set upright and incised with the symbols of demons and ancient G.o.ds who plagued the people of elder days: four-sided lozenges, spirals that had neither beginning nor end, broad expanses of hatching cut into the rock as though straw had been pressed crisscross into the stone.

Yet how could he see at all, deep in the heart of a tomb? With Baldwin's help, he staggered forward until the tunnel opened into a smoky chamber lit by fire. He stared past his companions, who were huddled around a torch. The chamber was a black pit made eerie by flickering light. He could not see the ceiling, and the walls were lost to shadow. He sneezed.

Just beyond the smoking torch, a stone slab marked the center of the chamber. A queen had been laid to rest here long ago: there lay her bones, a pale skeleton asleep in the torchlight, its hollow-eyed frame woven with strands of rotting fabric and gleaming with precious gold that had fallen around the skull and into the ribs. Gold antlers sprang into sight as Gerulf shifted the torch to better investigate his comrade's wound.

"You shouldn't have lit a fire in a barrow!" cried Ivar, horrified." Everyone knows a fire will wake the unholy dead!"

Frail Sigfrid sat at the unconscious Lion's head, nearest to the burial altar. He looked up with the calm eyes of one who has felt G.o.d's miraculous hands heal his body." Don't fear, Ivar." The voice itself, restored to him by a miracle, was a reproof to Ivar's fear." G.o.d will protect us. This poor dead woman bears us no ill will." He indicated the half-uncovered skeleton, then bent forward as the old Lion spoke to him in a low voice.

But how could Sigfrid tell? Ivar had grown up in the north, where the old G.o.ds still swarmed, jealous that the faith of the Unities had stolen so many ripe souls from their grasp. There was no telling what malice lay asleep here, or when it might wake.

Ermanrich and Hathumod sat together, hands clasped in a cousinly embrace. Both had lost a great deal of flesh. How long ago it seemed when the four youths and Hathumod had served together as novices at Quedlinhame, yet truly it wasn't more than a year ago that they had all been cast out of the convent for committing the unforgivable sin of heresy.

Baldwin circled the stone altar and its dead queen, crouching to grasp one of the gold antlers. The light touch jostled the skeleton.

Precious amber beads scattered down among the bones, falling in a rush.

"Don't disturb the dead!" hissed Ivar. But Baldwin, eyes wide, reached right in-to where strands of desiccated wool rope, whose ends were banded with small greenish-metal rods, curled around the pelvis. His hand closed over a small object, a glint of blue.

"Look!" he cried, with his other hand lifting a stone mirror out of the basin made by her pelvic bones. The polished black surface still gleamed. As Ivar took a panicked step forward to stop Baldwin from further desecration, he saw his movement reflected in that mirror.

"Ai, G.o.d, I fear my poor nephew is dead," murmured Gerulf." I swore to my sister I'd bring him home safely."

Other shadows moved in the depths of the mirror, figures obscured by darkness. They walked out of the alcoves, ancient queens whose eyes had the glint of knives. The first was young, robed in a splendor as bright as burning arrows, but her mouth was cut in a cruel smile. The second had a matron's girth, the generous bulk of a n.o.ble lady who never wants for food, and in her arms she carried a basket spilling over with fruit. The third wore her silver hair braided with bones, and the wrinkles in her aged face seemed as deep as clefts in a mountainside. Her raised hands had the texture of cobwebs. Her gaze caught him as in a vise. He could not speak to warn the others, who saw nothing and felt no danger.

Hathumod gasped." What lies there?" Her words sent ripples through the ghosts as a hand clears away algae from an overgrown pond.

Ivar found his voice." Baldwin! Put that down, you idiot!"

As Baldwin lowered the mirror in confusion, Hathumod crawled forward. Her hand came to rest on a bundle so clotted with dirt and mold that her hand came away green, and flakes fell everywhere, spinning away to meld with the smoke from the torch. Like Baldwin, she was either a fool or insensible. She groped at the bundle, found a faded leather pouch that actually crumbled to dust in her hands, leaving nothing in her cupped fingers except, strangely, a nail marked by rusting stains.

She began to weep just as Gerulf shook loose the rotting garments: a rusted mail shirt that half fell apart in his hands, a knife, a decaying leather belt, a plain under-tunic, and a tabard marked brilliant fire with her arms extended as if in we* for her, grasping for any lifeline.

Touched her hands.

And knew nothing more.

I.

THE HALLOWED ONE.

AT sunset, Adica left the village. The elders bowed respectfully, but from a safe distance, as she pa.s.sed. Fathers pulled their children out of her way. Women carrying in sheaves of grain from ripening fields turned their backs on her, so that her gaze might not wither the newly-harvested emmer out of which they would make bread. Even pregnant Weiwara, once her beloved friend, stepped back through the threshold of her family's house in order to shelter her hugely pregnant belly from Adica's sight.

The villagers looked at her differently now. In truth, they no longer looked at her at all, never directly in the face, now that the Holy One had proclaimed Adica's duty, and her doom.

Even the dogs slunk away when she walked by.

She pa.s.sed through the open stockade gate and negotiated the plank bridge thrown over the ditch that ringed the village. The sun's light washed the clouds with a pale purplish pink as delicate as flax in flower. Fields flowered gold along the river plain, dotted here and there with the tumbled forms of the grandmothers' old houses, now abandoned for the safety of the new village. The grandmothers had not lived in constant fear as people did these days.

When she reached the outer ditch, she raised her staff three times and said a blessing over the village. Then she walked on.

By the river three men bent over the weir. One straightened, seeing her, and she recognized Beor's broad shoulders and the distinctive way he had of tilting up his chin when he was angry.

How Beor had protested and complained when the elders had decreed that they two could no longer live together as mates! Yet his company had never been restful. He had won the right to claim her as his mate on the day the elders had agreed to name him as war captain for the village because of his conspicuous bravery in the war against the Cursed Ones. But had the law governing her as Hallowed One of the village granted her the right to claim a mate of her own choice, he was not the one she would have picked. In a way, it was a relief to be rid of him.

Yet, as days and months pa.s.sed, she missed the warmth of his body at night.

Beor made a movement as if to walk over to catch her, but his companion stopped him by placing a hand on his chest. Adica continued down the path alone.

She climbed the ma.s.sive tumulus alone, following the path up through the labyrinthine earthworks. As the Hallowed One who protected the village, she had walked here many times but never in as great a solitude as that she felt now.

Nothing grew yet on the freshly raised ramparts except young sow-thistles, leaves still tender enough to eat. Far below, tall gra.s.s and unharvested grain rippled like the river, stirred by a breeze lifting off the sun as it sank into the land of the dead.