Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 26

"Sanglant."

"Silence!" cried Sanglant in the ringing tones of a man accustomed to shouting orders above the chaos of battle.

Silence fell like a shroud. For an instant it was so quiet that Zacharias thought he had gone deaf, but then Hrodik giggled nervously.

The whirlpool spoke." Sanglant. Blessing?"

Blessing twisted around in her father's grasp and reached toward the eddying light, opening like an unshuttered window onto a place lying far beyond the walls of this world." Mama! Mama come!"

"Ai, G.o.d!" Sanglant's voice sounded ragged with hope, and pain." Liath?" He took a step forward." I can't see you. Where are you?"

Zacharias saw nothing through that window of light but a hard glare, like staring into a vale of ice when the cold winter sun dazzles you. Was this truly the woman he sought? Where was she?

The voice spoke again." 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."

"Come back to us, Liath!" cried Sanglant desperately.

"Wait for me, I beg you. Help me if you can, for I'm lost here. I need a guide. Is Jerna there?" A dark shape moved through the icy gleam, one arm outstretched and the other thrown up before its eyes. A blue light winked and dazzled on the outstretched hand, and on the figure's back hung a bow, visible because of fiery fire-red salamanders sliding up and down the inner curve of the bow. The figure reached. For an instant it seemed she would pa.s.s right through the curtain of light. Zacharias gasped and leaped back, slamming into Heribert, as Sanglant jumped forward to grab for her.

"Take my hand, Liath!" His hand swiped through empty air.

She said, "Yes! I see you!" just as Jerna's silvery form spun down from the ceiling to wrap protectively around Blessing's body." Come if you will, Jerna. Return to your home. The way is open."

The daimone spilled like water all down Blessing's body, soaking her in light and in the aetherical substance of her aery form. Blessing cried out in surprise and delight; a moment later, Jerna coiled into a slender reed, twisted, and vanished through the window of light.

The whirlpool collapsed as Sanglant leaped after her. He landed hard in the middle of the carpet, looking, if truth be told, a little foolish. Blessing laughed and clapped her hands, as though it had all been a trick for her amus.e.m.e.nt, but her father was white at the mouth, almost rigid. Blessing sobered, looking frightened by the man holding her with such a look of wretched anger on his face.

Heribert pushed past Zacharias and grabbed the whimpering child out of her father's arm. As though that movement freed him, Sanglant whirled around, grabbed the chair, and hoisted it.

He smashed it against the floor.

Splintered wood flew everywhere. Mistress Suzanne and her household fled the chamber. Even Lord Hrodik stumbled out in their wake.

Zacharias took a step forward to calm the prince, but Heribert stopped him with a gesture.

"But not for me!" cried Sanglant." The way is open, but not for me! Do I mean nothing to her that she should call someone else in my place?" He hoisted what remained of the heavy chair in his right hand, making ready to smash it again, when the girl, Anna, stepped right out in front of him. She hadn't fled with the others, nor did she show any fear.

"Are you truly a daimone from the heavens?" she asked in that sc.r.a.pe of a voice." Is that why you want to return there?"

The wrath of King Henry was famous throughout the land. n.o.bles feared the king's anger for good reason, although Henry was said to use it sparingly. Surely Prince Sanglant was the most easygoing of n.o.blemen, or so Zacharias had come to believe. For the first time, he saw the regnant's anger full in the prince's face, forbidding and intimidating, and it made him step back beside Heribert, who spoke soothingly to the sniveling Blessing. She had never seen her father so angry before.

Anna just stood there, waiting.

Sanglant opened his hand and with a shuddering breath let the chair drop. It hit the carpet with a thud, clattering on the shards of its broken legs.

It was suddenly very quiet. The coals in the brazier shifted, ash spilled, and the fire made a wheezing sound, quickly stifled. The torches blazed back up, as if Sanglant had sucked the flame out of them to fuel his anger, but probably it was only the backwash from the aetherical wind that had driven into the chamber and vanished as abruptly. The room looked very ordinary with its two handsomely carved chests, for storage, and the tapestries on the wall depicting the usual n.o.ble scenes: a hunt, a feast, an a.s.sembly of church women.

Sanglant stepped past the girl and walked to the side table. He poured water from a pitcher into a copper basin, splashed his face until water ran down his chin to drip into the basin, and swiped a hand across his beardless chin. Without thinking, he licked the drops of water off his palm. His back remained stiff with anger, or despair." Not an hour goes by that I do not think of her," he said to the basin, "yet does she call for me? Does she seek me? She lives, but she journeys elsewhere. Just like my mother."

"Have you a nursemaid for the child?" the girl asked in her funny little voice.

"I had one," he said bitterly, "but my wife took her from me."

"I can care for children."

"We are riding east to war, child. There will be no fine carpets and warm feet with my company. I've no use for camp followers who slow me down, and who run at each least glimpse of danger."

She had a hard stare, like a young hawk's. In a way she reminded Zacharias of Hathui: fearless, sharp, confident, and irritat-ingly persistent." I survived a spring and summer in Gent when Bloodheart ruled here. I'm not afraid."

The prince regarded her with a half-forgotten smile on his face. She stared right back at him. She had her hair pulled back in a braid, and she wore a good wool tunic, neatly woven, with two roses embroidered at the collar for decoration. A wooden Circle of Unity hung at her chest.

At the door, Matto cleared his throat." My lord prince? Here is the weaver returned to speak to you."

Mistress Suzanne appeared at the threshold, her face drawn and her hands wringing the fabric of her skirt as she sidled into the chamber." Your Highness, I-Ach, Anna! There you are! I thought we'd lost you."

"I'm going east," said Anna stoutly." I'm to be the nursemaid for the young princess."

"But, Anna-!"

"It's a sign, don't you see? Why else would G.o.d have given me back my voice now?"

"I pray you, Mistress Suzanne," said Sanglant." Outfit the girl with what she needs, and return her here in the morning. I'll see that she is well taken care of."

Even a prosperous weaver could not argue with a prince. Subdued but obedient, Mistress Suzanne took the girl and left.

"Want down, want down," insisted Blessing as she squirmed out of Heribert's arms. She rushed over to her father, seeking solace, and he picked her up.

"I pray you, Matto," he said, cuddling his daughter against him, "the helmet needs repadding. Have Captain Fulk see to it. We'll fit it more exactly tomorrow. I'll want more water for washing." Matto nodded and quickly fetched pitcher and helmet before leaving the chamber." Zacharias."

"Yes, my lord prince."

"We'll need a straw pallet for the girl. Sergeant Cobbo can see to it."

Zacharias glanced at Heribert, but the cleric only gave a puzzled shrug. With a bow, Zacharias left on the errand.

Unaccustomed to palaces, he quickly got lost, but a sympathetic servingman directed him to the servants' hall. He pa.s.sed through the mostly deserted hall and found a door that led outside. The hush of early evening hung over the courtyard. Stars glittered overhead. An unrelenting cold seeped through his clothes to chill his bones. His old scars ached, and he suddenly had to pee. Looking for a private place where no one might accidentally see his mutilation, he finally stumbled up to the door of the cookhouse, meaning to ask for directions to the privies.

Smoke and the odor of burned roast drifted out of the cooking house, together with something tangier, so sharp it made his neck p.r.i.c.kle. In the Quman camp he had learned to walk quietly, beCHILD or FLAME cause Prince Bulkezu had liked his slaves to be silent and had once killed a man for sneezing in the middle of a musician's performance.

Her voice had the breathy quality of air. As he peered into the smoky interior, he saw a woman standing at the big block table, hands hovering over a platter ringed by four candles placed to form a square. An apple fanned into neat slices lay on the wooden platter, so freshly cut that the juice welling up from its moist flesh shone in the candlelight, making his mouth water. No one else was in the cookhouse.

"I adjure you by your name and your powers and the glorious place wherein you dwell, O Prince of Light who drove the Enemy into the Abyss. Let your presence rest upon this apple and let the one who eats of it be filled with desire for me. Let him be seized by a flame of fire as powerful as that fire in which you, Holy One, make your dwelling place. Let him open his door to me, and let him not be content with any thing until he has satisfied me- Nay, there was someone else there, over by the spit. She emerged from the shadows, a woman of middling years. In the half light, Zacharias saw the wicked scar blazed on her right cheek, puffy and white.

"What madness is this, Frederun?"

The pretty servingwoman broke into tears." I thought he was dead! I was so happy when I was his lover- "Hush!" hissed her companion, laying a hand on the young woman's shoulder." There's someone in the doorway."

Zacharias slipped away into the shadows. The wind shifted, and he smelled the privies, dug over by the stables. It still hurt to urinate, but he was no longer sure if the pain was actually physical or only an artifact lingering in his mind from those first weeks after Prince Bulkezu had mutilated him.

He found Sergeant Cobbo together with a dozen soldiers standing in the aisle between stalls, watching a chess game. Captain Fulk had set up a board and pieces on a barrel and brought two bales of hay to serve as seats. He had the dragon helm on his knee, with a hand curved possessively over its top. As Zacharias approached, the captain used an Eagle to take a Lion.

"My biscop takes your Eagle," said his opponent, the exiled Eagle known as Wolfhere. He paused, still holding the chess piece, and glanced up past Cobbo and the ring of watchers to catch Zacharias' eye.

"Come you from the prince?" The old man had a piercing intelligence and remained in all circ.u.mstances so calm that Zacharias did not trust him.

Zacharias explained his errand, and Cobbo designated a man to accomplish the task in the morning. The soldiers settled back to gossip about this turn of events.

"Will you play, Prater?" asked Fulk." I can't best him."

"Nay, I've no knowledge of such games. They're meant for n.o.bles and soldiers, not for simple fraters such as myself. I'm not one of those folk who will be moving pieces to and fro in a game of power."

Wolfhere chuckled." Yet what harm might there be, friend, in learning the rules of the game, if only to protect ourselves?"

"I'm thinking you're not needing any protection, Eagle, beyond that which you already possess."

"Here, now," objected Fulk." We're at peace in my lord prince's company."

"Nay, I've no quarrel with Wolfhere," said Zacharias." He's a common man like myself."

"So I am," agreed Wolfhere genially, but his smile was like that of a wolf, sharp and clean. He had once been King Arnulf the Younger's favored counselor, yet now he rode in secrecy in Prince Sanglant's company because he had been interdicted and outlawed by King Henry, accused of sorcery and treason, a friend and boon companion to the very mathematici whose influence Prince Sanglant meant to combat.

Yet it was this man, so the story went, who had freed Liath from servitude at the hands of an unscrupulous and n.o.bly-born frater. This man was a favorite of little Blessing's, and the ones whom Blessing liked the prince favored.

"Prince Sanglant's wife appeared to us in a vision," Zacharias said suddenly, wanting to prod the old man, to see him jump.

Wolfhere's lips tightened, that was all. He rolled the Eagle in his hand, thumb caressing the lift of its carven wings, as he lifted his gaze to regard Zacharias blandly." This is unexpected news. How did she appear to you?"

"Quite unexpectedly. Truly, Wolfhere, you are a man who plays chess most masterfully. But you must ask Prince Sanglant for particulars. I dare not say more. The church frowns upon all sorcerous acts or even those who witness them."

Wolfhere laughed, setting down the Eagle, but Captain Fulk rose, cradling the dragon helm against a hip.

"Can you not tell us more, Frater? We have seen many strange things traveling with the prince. All of us have seen the daimone that suckles the young princess. We have seen stranger things besides, in Aosta, when we rode with Princess Theophanu. News such as this may be important to all of us. It seems to me that Prince Sanglant has not suffered the absence of his wife well, and I pray that they may be reunited soon."

"Or truly the prince will be united with some other woman," joked one of the soldiers.

"I'll hear no more of that, Sibold!" said Fulk curtly." Which of you would act differently? It's no business of ours whether the prince chooses to live as a cleric, or as a man."

Wolfhere smiled." True-spoken, Captain, yet it's true that Prince Sanglant has long been famous for his amorous adventures. Have I ever told you about Margrave Villam's daughter, she who is heir to the margraviate? It's said she was taken by such a pa.s.sion for the young prince that-"

Zacharias eased out of the gathering and retreated to the yard. His hands, always chilled in the winter, got stiff with cold, but he lingered outside.

That the fault of concupiscence, the seemingly unquenchable desire for the pleasures of the flesh, plagued Prince Sanglant made him no different from most of humankind. Unlike many a n.o.ble lord or lady, and entirely unlike the Quman warriors, who took what they wanted at the instant the urge struck them, the prince struggled to keep his cravings under control. For that reason alone, Zacharias had cause to respect him.

Yet it was not the prince he sat in judgment on.

Nay, truly, he recognized the sinful feeling that had crept into his breast: He envied Wolfhere his knowledge. The exiled Eagle kept a cool head and a closed mouth, and despite Zacharias' hints and insinuations over the months of their trip, Wolfhere never admitted to the knowledge that Zacharias knew in his bones the old man kept clutched to himself as a starving man clutches a loaf of precious bread and a handful of beans.

Was Zacharias unworthy? Prince Sanglant had taken Zacharias on in part because of his knowledge of the Quman but mostly because the prince had, underneath his iron const.i.tution and bold resolve, a sentimental heart. He had taken Zacharias into his company because the frater had spoken of his vision of Liath, because Zacharias had brought him a sc.r.a.p of parchment on which the prince's beloved, and lost, wife had scribbled uninterpretable signs and symbols, themselves a kind of magic, readable only by mathematici.

He touched the pouch at his belt, felt the stiff cylinder cached there: the rolled-up parchment, his only link to the knowledge he sought. Liath had studied the heavens, too. She had asked the same questions he had, and maybe, just maybe, she would listen with astonishment and fascination to his description of the vision of the cosmos that had been vouchsafed to him in the palace of coils.

Maybe she had some answers for him. Maybe she was willing to search.

Standing out under the pitiless winter sky, he prayed that she would be restored to Earth. Because if she wasn't, he had no one else to go to.

Shivering, he made his way back into the servants' hall and, by a minor miracle, found with no trouble the corridor off which lay the chambers reserved for the prince.

Someone had reached the door before him.

He knew her by the curve of her gown along her body, the way her shawl had fallen back to reveal the curling wisps of her light hair. He stepped back, staying in shadow. She hadn't heard him, or maybe she just wasn't paying attention, because she was waiting at the door.

It opened, finally, to reveal the prince.

"My lord prince," she said in a remarkably level voice, "you called for wine and refreshment?"

Sanglant held a candle whose yellow flame revealed the sharp lines of his face and the carefully fanned-out apple, eight slices making a blunt star, two on each side. A silver goblet shone softly in the candlelight beside it.

"Nay, I asked for nothing more," he said, but he didn't close the CHILD or FLAME door, he only stood there. After a moment, she slipped past him to go inside.

With that uncanny sixth sense he had, as exquisite as a dog s, Sanglant looked directly at Zacharias, although surely he ought not to have been able to see him, drowned as the frater was in night's shadow.

"What is it, Zacharias?" he asked softly.

"Nay, nothing, my lord prince." Zacharias took two steps back, paused." All is as you wish, Your Highness. I'll go now. Wolfhere has promised to teach me to play chess."

As he walked away, he heard the door close and latch behind him.

BEYOND THE VEIL.

IT was too dark to see the landscape of the sphere of Erekes. As soon as the wind loosened its grip, Liath halted to take her bearings. A hot wind blasted her face. She missed her cloak, which she could have used to shield her skin, and more desperately she missed her boots. The surface she stood on sc.r.a.ped the soles of her feet, but when she moved forward to stand on what appeared to be smoother ground, her foot sank into a viscous liquid so cold that her toes went numb.

She jumped back, stumbled, and for a moment couldn't put any weight on that leg. At last sensation returned, but that was worse; her skin burned and blistered. Limping, she fell back to the shelter of a high outcropping whose bulky lee protected her from the worst of the blasting wind. The iron wall, and the gate, had vanished. She leaned against the stone, catching her breath, but the slick cold, as penetrating as melting ice, burned her fingers. She jerked away, and an instant later felt that same ulcerous pain lance up her hand.

She stood there in misery, half out of the wind and with a foot and a hand throbbing, and surveyed the landscape, what she could see of it. Beyond the sh.o.r.eline, more a suggestion of textural change than an actual visible line, the landscape stretched into the distance as smoothly blank as a sea littered with fragments of lamplight. Darting fingers of brilliance moved upon that sea, illusive daimones bent upon unfathomable errands, but she could not hear the music of the spheres above the whine of that endless hot wind.

Was it the wind off the sun? Yet why then did the sun not shine here?

One question always led to another. She puzzled again over her brief sojourn among the Ashioi. How could time move differently there than on Earth? Why did day dawn and night fall with such an irregular rhythm? Why did no moon rise and set, wax and wane, in the country of the Ashioi?

Did it, too, travel the spheres? Or was there another plane of existence lying within or beside the universe which she did not comprehend? Eldest Uncle had shown her the twisted belt, his crude representation of the path on which he and his people had found themselves, but that didn't explain where they were right now in relation to Liath.

So many mysteries.

And it were better not to linger here, dwelling over them. She might stand here forever, lost in contemplation, except that the wind blew hot in her face and the ground rubbed uncomfortably against her bare feet. Like her heart, her hand and foot were going numb.

Cold crept up her wrist like poison. Wind scalded her eyes. She' couldn't feel the coa.r.s.e sand under one foot, and the lack of feeling disoriented her so much it was hard to keep her balance.

Time to move on.