The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “He did not seem a merciful man.” Theophanu took another bunch of grapes from the platter and neatly plucked the ripe fruit from the stalk. “But I do not have sufficient strength in troops to drive him away alone.”

  “If we coordinate our attack? You attack as my own forces sally out of the walls?”

  “It is possible. Before I left, I agreed on certain signals with my captains. They are ready to attack if need be. But what is the number of your forces? How many may you rely on?”

  They discussed the option, but dismissed it finally, with reluctance. Ironhead still had too great an advantage, even if they attacked on two fronts.

  “How long can you withstand the siege?” Theophanu asked. “I could return to my father and assemble a larger army. Nay. Even if we can still cross the mountains, we couldn’t return until spring.”

  “By then our stores will be exhausted.” Adelheid gestured toward the table. “The palace gardens cannot feed everyone, and the sentries on the wall have told me that Ironhead has already set engineers to work to try to dam the river. Nay, cousin. This morning my clerics brought word to me that guards at the north gate saw a vision in the night sky, of an army made of flame. Surely that sign was the herald of your arrival. I believe this is part of God’s plan. Now is our last, best chance to act.”

  “Ironhead will soon know the disposition of my forces,” added Theophanu, “and then he will know that I dare not fight him. At that point, I will be forced to withdraw.”

  “He won’t let you go. You are at risk here as well. He would as gladly marry a Wendish princess as another woman, if he cannot have me. His first wife he took by force as well, after he’d murdered her husband. She came from the south, although her family’s lands are now in the hands of the Arethousan generals. Thus she was of no more use to him. No; there must be some way out.”

  “Perhaps you can escape in the same way we got in, disguised as a cleric, or as some other sort of woman.”

  Adelheid laughed. “As a whore? I know what they say of me. It might work, I alone with one other might be able to get away, but I will not leave my loyal subjects in Ironhead’s hands, especially not my good soldiers. You see what he will do to them. No, but still I must get to Henry. Is it true his queen is dead and he has not yet remarried?”

  “It is true, Cousin. My mother, Queen Sophia, died three years ago. Indeed, I will not conceal from you the wish of my father’s heart.” Theophanu paused, and a sly smile graced Adelheid’s pretty red lips as she waited for Theophanu to finish. “That you will marry his son.”

  “His son?” Adelheid flushed red. “He must be very young, no, this prince?”

  “No, Sanglant is certainly five and twenty by now, and rich in reputation as a warrior and a captain—”

  Adelheid jumped to her feet, and the leopard, who had seemed asleep, sprang up so quickly that Rosvita let out a yelp of alarm. “This Sanglant you speak of, he is the bastard, no? I will marry no bastard! Is Henry crippled? Is he too old to sire children, or too sick to ride to war?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” replied Rosvita, not waiting for Theophanu. “He remains strong in every way.”

  “Then what would a woman like me want with a young man when I can have a man in his prime, who is still strong, and who has proved he knows how to rule? Let us only come free of this place, and make our way safely to his court, and I will offer him my hand and the king’s crown of Aosta. Do you think he will turn me away?”

  Even subtle Theophanu was taken by surprise by this outburst. But Adelheid was magnificent in anger and distress, and she offered Henry what he had wanted all along. Sanglant had disgraced himself by refusing such a rich reward. Why should Henry turn away from it, now that circumstances were so changed?

  Theophanu rose, walked to the balcony’s edge, and leaned against the balustrade to look down the steep side of a hill covered in olive trees. Between each tree lay a squat beehive. Farther down lay an orchard whose trees grew all the way to the inner wall. “My father is not a fool, Cousin.” She stared downslope for a long time until Adelheid grew curious, or impatient, and crossed to stand beside her. Rosvita was careful to keep her distance from the spotted leopard, who stood alert by the young queen’s side, tail lashing, as the queen stroked its head absently.

  “What are you thinking, Cousin?” Adelheid asked finally, breaking the silence.

  Theophanu smiled, cool and almost mocking, as she cupped her chin in a hand and surveyed the olive grove and the beehives. “I am thinking that I have an idea. We have other allies if only we think to use them. Tell me, Cousin, do Ironhead’s horses wear much armor?”

  2

  THERE was no reason for the tree to fall at that moment, and from that direction. His keen hearing saved him: a creak where he should have heard nothing, the first splinter of a tree’s weakened stump as it groaned into a fall, the alarmed whispering of his ever-present companions. One tweaked him, hard, on the thigh, and he jerked sideways, then leaped out of the way as a huge ancient fir tree crashed down through the forest cover and smashed onto the spot where, an instant before, he had been standing. Branches and coarse needles scratched him as he spun away out of their reach. The shuddering noise of its fall echoed off the surrounding cliffs.

  Sanglant was so stunned that he actually stood gaping among the firs and spruce and scattering of ash that covered the hillside, ax hanging loosely from his hand, as the branches of the fallen tree shook, quivered, then quieted, and the last echoes rolled away. There was no sign of disease along that vast length, no brown in the dense coat of needles, no infestations riddling the bark. His breath came in clouds in the air, here on the highest slopes at the fringe of the enchanted valley, where winter could reach. Snow dusted the ground, fading on the slopes below into grass and spring flowers.

  Healthy trees do not fall by themselves.

  He shook himself out of his stupor and whistled to the dog. It raced down the length of the fallen fir, lost itself in a thicket, and yipped wildly, came racing back with whip-tail tucked between its legs. After the incident with the soup, he had taken to carrying his sword with him. He leaned his ax against the trunk of the tree he’d meant to fell, scarred now by his first half dozen strokes, and grabbing up the sheath, drew his sword. It had good balance, although it was a little light to his hand now that he had put on weight and gained strength working with Brother Heribert on his construction projects.

  He growled softly, scenting the air. One of the servants flashed by him, strange because she had no scent but rather a texture, in the way cloth has texture, a difference felt by touch, not seen or heard or smelled. Others crowded around, until he felt smothered by their presence.

  “Hush, I beg you,” he said, to still their chattering. They quieted. He listened, but heard nothing. He followed the tree to its base. The huge trunk had been cut away, a wedge taken out of it so smoothly that as he ran his fingers along the severed stump he knew no ax had hewn this. It looked more as might an apple sliced by a knife. He got down on his knees and sniffed along the ground, but smelled nothing.

  “What has done this?” he asked the spirits. They would not answer, only crowded together. He did not smell their fear, precisely; it was more like a weft woven through the pattern of their being, abrupt, rough, and startling, they who were not creatures of earth at all but some kindred of the daimones whose natural home was the airy heights below the moon, or so Liath had told him. Easy to catch and enslave, these airy spirits served the five magi who lived at Verna.

  Just as, in cold truth, he and Brother Heribert served them by building and hewing. Indeed, it was particularly irritating to see that someone in this valley had the means to fell trees with far less effort and time than he had to expend and yet was unwilling to share that knowledge with him and Heribert, the ones who had to perform all the hard physical labor of building decent living quarters for everyone. A king’s son ought not to serve others in this way, no matter how exalted their rank, and yet for the time bei
ng, and with Liath’s pregnancy and studies advancing, he was willing to bide his time. He was willing to work and eat and enjoy this interlude of peace.

  But the surreptitious attempts on his life were beginning to get annoying.

  He explored the forest briefly but, as he expected, found neither sign nor trail of his assailant. He did not expect another attempt today; whoever didn’t want him here was a little clumsy, as witness the incident with the soup, someone unused to murder, perhaps, or someone who consistently underestimated him. Obviously no one in this valley knew of the curse his mother had laid on him, or they wouldn’t have bothered to try killing him.

  He went back and felled the tree he had come for, then set to the tedious work of trimming branches off the trunk of the great fir. He paused only to take bread and cheese and ale in the midafternoon, and several times to sharpen his ax, but even so, as dusk neared, he had only cleared half of it. His back ached, and his tunic was clammy with sweat. He slung the sheathed sword over his back and headed downslope on an animal track.

  Firs and spruce gave way to oak, to beech and ash, then to orchard. He paused at the vineyard to pluck a few ripe grapes and, savoring these, went on. Shadows drew long over the dilapidated stone tower, the old sheds, and the newly-finished hall, so raw that it still seemed to gleam. Heribert worked at the sawhorse, stripped to the waist with his robes tucked into his belt. He had the slight elegance of a cleric, wiry now with muscle, and the callused hands of a carpenter. He was planing smooth a plank.

  “Peace, Brother,” said Sanglant, laughing as he came up. “You’ll shame me if you don’t stop working and join me at the pond.” Heribert grinned without looking up from his work. “Some day,” Sanglant observed, “I expect an avalanche to wipe out this entire unnatural valley, but, by God, while the rest of us flee to safety, you’ll stand your ground and be swallowed up under it because you damned well are determined to get a last corner curved just so.”

  Heribert chuckled, but he continued to work. His ever-present helper, a robust creature who seemed as much wood as air, blew wood shavings off the plank as quickly as they flew up from the plane. Sanglant sat on a neat stack of unfinished planks that he and Heribert had sawed out of logs over the last week, and several servants settled around him like so many contained whirlpools of air. He had become accustomed to their presence. While Heribert finished the plank to his liking and touched up the corners, the prince watched two of the magi, one old woman and one young one, who sat outside the stone tower on a crude bench arguing in a language he didn’t know. They were too far away to hear him and Heribert, and as usual did not appear to notice them.

  “I dearly would like to see our Sister Zoë naked even just one time, for I think she must be a rare sight to behold under that robe.”

  Heribert snorted as he measured the corners with a square, then grunted, satisfied with the proportions.

  “But I fear me,” continued Sanglant, “that she despises the male kind.”

  “Or the male member.” Heribert shrugged the sleeves of his cleric’s robe back on and retied the rope belt at his waist. The servant made the odd noise that signified “farewell,” and slipped away into the uncut logs piled nearby. “She was married very young to a man who used her cruelly, so I’ve heard. She killed him with a spell when she was sixteen, after three years of abuse in his bed.”

  Sanglant shook his head. “If only she’d done it sooner! How came she here?”

  “She fled to her aunt, who was a nun at St. Valeria. By one means and the other they ended up here.”

  “Ah,” said Sanglant. “But which is the aunt?”

  “Dead, now, so they say.” Heribert had started to put away his tools. Now he paused. “Do you think Sister Zoë is the one trying to kill you?”

  “Who can know? Sister Zoë and Brother Severus prefer not to speak to me at all. They despise me, I think. To Sister Meriam, I am an object of complete indifference. To our fine and mighty Sister Anne, I do believe I am only another tool, one she hasn’t yet discovered a use for.” He gestured toward the older woman who sat next to the voluptuous Zoë. “Only Sister Venia treats me kindly.”

  Heribert colored. “The more subtle they are the more fair they appear. Do not trust her.”

  “So you have said before, and since she is your aunt, I suppose I must trust your judgment since you surely know her far better than I do. A fair face can conceal a foul heart.” He grinned, thinking of Hugh. Although it was certainly no Godly sentiment, he liked to remember how he’d last seen Hugh, bleeding and beaten on the ground, at the mercy of the dogs. But thinking of the dogs made him think of his father, and he sighed. Two of the servants brushed against him, their light touch like balm on his scratched-up skin.

  “You’d think Sister Anne would put a stop to the attempts to kill you,” Heribert was saying as he tied up his tools in a cleverly-sewn pouch of his own devising.

  “Maybe it’s a test. Or perhaps she doesn’t know.”

  Heribert laughed sharply. “I don’t believe there is anything she doesn’t know. But surely Liath might have some insight into her mother’s mind that we lack. You should confide in her.”

  He considered, but finally shook his head. “Nay. It would worry her needlessly, and she would insist we leave—and that, I fear, would cause more problems than it would solve in every way. She needs to be here, at least until the child is born and she has recovered her strength.” Then he smiled wryly. “And in any case, Heribert, I haven’t found that she can keep secrets very well, although she thinks she does. If she gets angry, she’ll blurt it all out and accuse everyone just because she is so indignant on my behalf. I like knowing that they don’t know that I know.”

  “Unless they do know that you know, and, knowing that, know that you believe that they don’t know that you know, so that this is only a more convoluted game than even you perceive, my friend.”

  “Ah, but you forget that I was raised on the king’s progress. Certainly I have seen almost every knot that can be tied when it comes to intrigue.”

  Heribert hesitated, looking troubled. “You must be careful, my lord prince,” he said, using the title as he always did when he meant to tease, or to be serious. “A nest of mathematici is a nest of dangerous creatures, indeed.”

  “Why do you stay, Heribert?” asked Sanglant suddenly.

  Heribert’s smile was mocking. “I fear leaving more than I fear staying. I’m not a brave man, as you are, my lord prince. I’m not a warrior in my heart, as many churchmen are. I’m afraid of what they’ll do to me if I try to go. In any case, there is no way out except through the stone circle, none that I’ve ever found. I don’t know the secrets of the stone.” He put his leather tool pouch away in the shed he and Sanglant had built beside their working ground, where Heribert now slept. “Truth be told, I’m content here. I was never given a chance to build before.”

  “Well, my dear friend,” replied Sanglant, standing, “it’s a handsome edifice you’ve built. But right now I want to be clean. Shall we go?”

  The servants swirled around him as he rose, tickling his chin and tweaking his ears. He had enough natural quickness that he could pinch them in turn, a form of teasing they delighted in because he could do no harm to their aetherical bodies. Laughing, he chased them until they scattered, their delicate laughter chiming on the breeze. Heribert only shook his head and, together, the two men went to the pond to wash themselves free of the sweat and dust of an honest day’s work.

  Sister Venia, formerly known as Biscop Antonia of Mainni, watched her illegitimate son and his companion vanish into the dusk. Perhaps it was inevitable that the two men, thrown together under such circumstances, would become friends. Whatever his virtues, Prince Sanglant was uncouth, uneducated, and only half human, scarcely a fit companion for a young man who had been molded carefully from childhood on to become the ornament of wisdom and the shining vessel of God’s grace. Still, the prince could hardly fail to be uplifted by the company of such an a
stonishingly fine young cleric.

  “I don’t like the way he looks at me,” said Sister Zoë abruptly. “He has a lewd eye.”

  “Brother Heribert?” cried Antonia, astounded by the accusation.

  “Heribert? Nay, I speak of Prince Sanglant.”

  “Ah, yes. He is much attached to the flesh, I believe.”

  Zoë shuddered.

  “None of us can escape the flesh.” Brother Severus emerged from the tower, lantern in hand. “Not while we still walk on this earth, at any rate. He’s a bad influence on the girl. As long as he is around, there is no hope she can learn with a focused mind. Pregnant!” He said the word with distaste. “She is not what we were led to expect.”

  Zoë shuddered again. “It’s disgusting. I can hardly stand to look at her, with that swelling belly. It’s a deformity of the clean flesh she might have, had she kept herself a pure vessel.”

  “Who among us has been given leave to cast the first stone?” asked Antonia mildly. “Not one of the women in this valley is unstained, even Anne, who gave birth to the girl, after all. For the men, of course, I cannot speak.” But she often wondered about Severus, the old prune. He had the kind of self-important arrogance that in her experience might cover a multitude of sins, now since conveniently forgotten.

  He only raised an eyebrow. “That is of no matter. We expected a pure vessel, but now we receive one that is broken. It is not just this carnal marriage that has made her so, but her entire association with that creature. The prince is a danger to everything we’ve worked for. See how the servants cluster around him when they ought to be engaged in tasks for us.”

  “Better under our eye than where he can work mischief hidden from us,” retorted Antonia.

  “An argument Sister Anne has used. It may even be true. But it seems to me that we could simply rid ourselves of him once and for all time, and that would be the end of it.”