The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “He is not so easily killed,” said Sister Anne, emerging from the tower with Sister Meriam walking slowly behind her, “although I am in agreement that his influence on Liathano works counter to our purposes.”

  Meriam had become increasingly frail over the past several months, and her voice was scarcely more than a whisper, thin and dry, but her mind had not lost any of its penetrating strength. “We were all young once, and the young are most susceptible to temptation. I sometimes think that only our absent Brother Lupus may have remained faithful to his vows.”

  “A commoner!” Severus looked toward the hall, now lit by wands of light that glowed as softly as will-o’-the-wisps. “Hardly the creature such as we ought to measure ourselves against, Sister Meriam.”

  “We had a saying in my country, Brother: that a rich man might as easily become a slave as a poor man might, if God so wills it. Fortune is fickle, and a poor man might become rich, or a slave become a general, by God’s design.”

  “The sayings of infidels can be of little interest to us,” retorted Severus coolly.

  “Let us go in to supper,” said Zoë, standing hastily. “Then perhaps we may eat our fill before the dog returns. I hate having to watch him eat.”

  “You must strive for detachment,” said Sister Anne in a calm voice. “What disturbs you is not his presence but some lingering touch of the Enemy within your own soul.”

  Zoë flushed. Since the arrival of Sanglant, Zoë had begun habitually, and no doubt unconsciously, to smooth her robes down against her body whenever she spoke of the prince. She did so now, brushing white, soft hands never marred by manual labor along the azure linen of her robe. In a way, it was a relief to Antonia; Heribert might have noticed Zoë’s lush charms, but it was now manifestly obvious that she had never noticed him. His purity was safe from her, at least. He noticed Liath, of course. Antonia had observed human nature for many years, and she had known at once that Liath had the unconscious warmth of beauty that attracts males as moths to the flame that will kill them. But Liath was pregnant, and her husband hovered at her side in all his bestial glory. Heribert would not interfere there. Males were easily led precisely because of their inclination to submit to any one of them who seemed stronger; that was why God had chosen women to administer Their church, because women were more rational.

  “He has brought discord in his wake,” said Severus, “but that, I suppose, is the legacy of his mother’s blood.”

  Poor Sister Zoë was a passionate being, despite her wish to live the contemplative life. Still flushed and flustered, she set off for the hall. Antonia could smell roasted lamb and freshly baked bread. Anne glanced toward the open door to the tower, made some internal decision, and followed Zoë. Severus waited only long enough to accompany Sister Meriam at her slow pace. For once, Antonia missed Brother Marcus, who for all his haughtiness had more conversation than the rest combined and was not afraid to speculate on the goings-on in the world outside, but he had left weeks ago to travel to Darre.

  A light still burned within the lower chamber of the old stone tower. Antonia glanced inside to see Liath seated on a bench at the new table recently built by prince and cleric. That they should set themselves to carpentry was appalling, of course, but on the other hand, the old table had been atrocious, gapped, listing, rotted at one corner. The new tables they had built for tower and hall were a great improvement.

  Liath was reading, her finger tracing words across the vellum page, her lips forming the words as she read but rarely uttering an actual sound. She was the quietest reader Antonia had ever seen, uncannily silent:

  “Ah,” Liath said suddenly, to herself. “If all things fall toward the center at an equal pressure, and if therefore the universe as a whole would be always pressing against the Earth on all sides and of a uniform nature, then the Earth would need no physical support to rest at the center of the universe.”

  “What are you reading?” asked Antonia. Liath was a strange creature; although she was Anne’s daughter, there was something unnatural about her, not least that she was capable of reading in such dim light.

  Liath started up, surprised, banged her thighs on the table, and muttered a word under her breath. “I beg your pardon, Sister Venia,” she said politely, closing the book. “I hadn’t realized it was dark. I’m reading Ptolomaia. I never had a chance to read the Syntaxis before, only excerpts from it. I see now that although I’ve read On the Configuration of the World there was a great deal hidden in its words that I never fully understood.”

  Antonia had never heard of a book called On the Configuration of the World, but she was not about to admit it to this ignorant child who still dressed like the common Eagle she once had been and who did not have the decency to conceal her unattractive passion for the crude creature she called “husband.” It was tremendously hard to see her as the daughter of Anne, who was arrogant and cold and in all other ways everything one would expect from the scion of a noble house. Just which noble house Anne was from Antonia was still not sure, because her compatriots had not yet taken her fully into their confidence, but she was not stupid: she was beginning to see the pattern that had been woven here.

  Liath wrapped the book in its leather binding and put it away in the cupboard, then frowned for a moment at the tablet on which she’d been writing, mathematical calculations drawn from an ephemerides, a collection of tables which showed the daily positions of the heavenly bodies. She hesitated, fingered the stylus, then made a correction to her calculations. “What do you think?” she demanded imperiously, thrusting the table out for Antonia to look at.

  It was immensely irritating that this callous young woman should grasp so easily what was for Antonia the most excruciatingly difficult part of the education of a mathematici. No wonder the church had condemned such arithmetic as the scratches of the Enemy’s fingers when they had sat in judgment on Biscop Tallia, an adept of the art and the daughter of Emperor Taillefer, at the Council of Narvone one hundred years ago. “That is for Sister Anne to correct,” said Antonia sternly. “I came only to tell you that it is time to go in to supper.”

  “Is Sanglant back yet?” demanded the girl. She had no respect for the dignity due her elders. She seemed quite unconscious of the elegant manners that Heribert, for instance, wore as unthinkingly as his robes.

  “He has gone to cleanse himself, I believe.”

  “Oh! I’ll go fetch him to supper.”

  Antonia began to reprove her, but she already slipped past, quick even with the early belly of pregnancy on her. Poor Sister Anne. The child had been poorly brought up. It must, indeed, be a daily affront to Anne to see her own daughter behave with the manners of a commoner and the thoughtless insolence of a petty prince. Sanglant might be uncouth, but even his manners, court-bred as he was, were better than Liath’s. Like a dog, he was trainable.

  Antonia followed her through the twilight, past the orchard and the vineyard, to the grassy meadow where a pond lay nestled against a slope, almost swallowed in darkness. She heard the two men laughing with that easy companionship common to the male kind, feckless creatures that they were.

  Then Sanglant called, suddenly, in the kind of voice that carries over the clash of battle: “Liath! God forbid you come any closer or you’ll despoil our chaste cleric, who stands here quite as his mother made him.” There was a loud splash.

  Alarmed, Antonia moved closer to see the moon’s light illuminating the water, where Heribert’s slender figure stood waist-deep, hands on his hips. Sanglant came spluttering up from the water next to him and burst into merry laughter as water sluiced off his chest and back and head. He had been dunked.

  “Don’t think me weaponless,” retorted Heribert in a bantering tone unlike anything she had ever heard from him before, “since I have the sword of wit at my service and you, alas—well, I’ll say no more.”

  “I just came to say that supper is waiting for us,” called Liath plaintively from the darkness.

  Sanglant emerged fr
om the water quite immodestly and shook himself all over like a dog, then patted himself dry with a tunic. He dressed hastily while Heribert remained discreetly in the water; when he was dressed, he vanished into the trees. There came murmuring, too indistinct to make out but with the timbre of love words.

  It was a puzzle, but like all puzzles it could be solved or, at worst, bludgeoned until it gave up its secrets: two children born out of mothers who were, if all accounts of Sanglant’s mother were true, powerful magi. No matter what the others suspected the Aoi of, no matter if they suspected the Aoi were not truly lost but only somehow hidden to the world of humankind, for all their knowledge they were fools to wish to kill Prince Sanglant. He had power writ large in him; he had been blessed by God with the power to lead. She knew what reputation was worth in the world. She had owned it once herself and had not given up her hopes and dreams. Her sojourn here in Verna was only a way station to something larger, something she could control with the knowledge she would gain from the mathematici here. Brother Severus was wrong: it was not God’s will that all Their chosen ones should let go of the world but rather that the wisest among them should rule it rightly. She was one of those chosen ones.

  “We’ll meet you there, Brother!” called Sanglant to Heribert.

  Antonia listened as their footsteps moved away in the direction of the hall. His usual throng of attendants—any of the servants who had not been commanded by Anne to various tasks—followed in his wake. It was uncanny how they clustered around him.

  By now the pond was gray and Heribert only a grayer shadow as he got out of the water and dried himself. How much had Liath seen of him? Surely the twilight had covered his nakedness, and if it had not, well then, that was a small price to pay while he unwittingly ingratiated himself with the prince who might someday prove of great use to her.

  3

  THE beekeepers of Vennaci had a special kind of smoke they burned to make the bees go to sleep. In the night they moved the hives up to the ramparts on either side of the great eastern gate, and made ready with small catapults.

  Adelheid’s army had assembled the day before and with a single sortie at dawn out of the eastern gate, in force, had done damage to Ironhead’s camp before his superior numbers forced them to retreat back into the city. Many had been captured; some had been killed. In the wake of their attack Theophanu had broken through the lines with a small escort and returned to her army, leaving Rosvita with Adelheid as a sign of good faith.

  Now, from the ramparts by the eastern gates, Rosvita watched the survivors assemble again before dawn, ready for a fight in which many would perish. She was impressed by their loyalty: Adelheid knew the secret of rulership, that as ye give, so shall ye receive. She was generous and she looked after her own. That was why they were willing to risk so much to win her the freedom to escape north.

  Ironhead had not been idle. He had drawn his forces up before the eastern gates for an assault, and as the sun rose, he brought his cavalry forward to repel a second sortie if it came.

  “Sister, I pray you, we must assemble at the north gate.” One of Adelheid’s clerics drew Rosvita away just as, from the hills to the north, she saw the first thick clots of smoke begin to rise: the signal from Theophanu. They hurried away through the quiet city. The citizens of Vennaci had either retreated into their houses to hide or now waited outside with such belongings as they could carry, hoping to flee in the wake of Adelheid’s escape. It was so quiet in the town that Rosvita heard the first clash of arms, as distant as a bell ringing in a church a league away. Theophanu’s army had attacked Ironhead’s camp, or so they hoped.

  At the north gate an armed escort of some one hundred soldiers surrounded Adelheid. Behind them came her train, wagons, servants, and livestock by now bawling and mewling. There came a shout from the eastern gates.

  Queen Adelheid sat on a fine black mare. Rosvita mounted, beside her, on a gray gelding, and just as she got on the horse, she heard a maddened roar erupt from the east.

  Adelheid laughed out loud. “They have thrown down the bees into Ironhead’s cavalry!” she cried as her soldiers cheered. “Come. Let us ride!”

  The north portal was flung open as her archers began shooting from the walls. Infantry clattered out to carve a path for the cavalry behind, and soon Rosvita was moving with them. It was horrible and exhilarating at the same time to ride out into battle armed only with prayers.

  An arrow whistled overhead. She ducked, felt taut muscles pull, cursed herself for age and infirmity. A spasm tore through her back, but she felt no blood. Her horse faltered as she gasped, and then a soldier came up beside her and grabbed the reins out of her hands. He yelled something at her that she couldn’t understand; sound roared in her ears, but whether it was the cacophony of battle or only her own fear and discomfort deafening her, she could not tell. She let him lead her, and set her thoughts to that task that had been drilled into her in the convent: praying.

  They trampled the line drawn up beyond the north gate, where three days ago she and Theophanu had crossed words with Ironhead’s bored and satiated guards. Now, Adelheid’s soldiers crossed swords with those same guards, cutting them down as their heavy horses thundered past. Wagons rumbled in their wake. Shacks crumbled under the weight of their charge, and then they were out on the plain. From this angle, she could see the cloud of battle before the eastern gate, observed only from this distance as a churning mass of maddened horses, thrown riders, smoke along the rampart, a seething struggle fading into a haze of dust. They pounded over abandoned fields, leaped irrigation ditches, skirted ranks of trees set up as windbreaks, and without further incident the front rank of cavalry with Adelheid at their head reached the first crumpled line of hills.

  They paused there, looking back. Dust obscured the plain around Vennaci, all but the high towers. The soldiers cheered. Adelheid stared at the city she had left behind, her profile stark against the autumn-gold hills behind. She wore men’s leggings under her gown, which was hitched up over the saddle, and a cunningly worked leather coat fitted to her small frame with a capelet of light mail over her shoulders and red leather flaps reinforced with metal plates draping down over her hips. On her head she wore only a conical helm with a scarf wound ’round her hair for padding. The ride and the wind had uncurled the scarf and now it rippled behind her, making of her the banner which her men followed. She was young, and in that moment on the hillside with battle raging behind her and only a fugitive hope of escape ahead, she was beautiful in the way of saints and God-touched generals.

  “We’re not out of danger yet,” she said abruptly.

  “There should be sentries here.” Rosvita recognized the steep-sided little valley through which she and Theophanu had walked those three days ago. Her back still ached, but as the pain subsided, she realized that she had only wrenched it. As she watched the stragglers come up behind them, she knew she had been lucky. Horses arrived without riders. Of the wagons and servants, only one clattered up—Adelheid’s treasury, richly guarded by an escort of twenty armed riders of whom four had weeping red wounds on their bodies. Adelheid surveyed this remnant with an expression of fierce defiance.

  In their wake came a captain, gloriously outfitted in mail and a tabard whose rich indigo was not muted by dirt. The crest on his helm had been knocked askew. “Your Majesty! Ironhead has rallied his forces. Soon they will understand our purpose. We must ride on now. The rest are lost to us.”

  “Then we will wait no longer,” she said stoutly. “May God watch over and protect those who have served me faithfully.”

  Captain Rikard took control of the troops, and they plunged into the hills with the wagon lurching and rattling behind them. A shout tore the air, coming from far behind, then they heard screams and the clash of arms. A rider appeared, vanished where the ground dipped, and reappeared. He wore Adelheid’s colors. The captain sent a trooper back as the rest pressed forward, and as soon as the trooper reached the messenger, they both turned to follow the
rest. Soon their shouts could be heard: “Ironhead has sent a large force in pursuit!”

  They came to a landmark Rosvita recognized, a forked tree at the meeting of two paths. As the captain began to direct the queen straight ahead, Rosvita hailed him. “The path toward Princess Theophanu’s encampment is this way!” she cried, indicating the path that ran to the right.

  Rikard shook his head. “If the Wendish forces are engaged with Ironhead, then we’ll be caught between his flanks. We must ride north. There are nobles faithful to the queen in Novomo.”

  Five soldiers split off and rode down the path that led to the Wendish camp. For an instant, Rosvita considered riding after them. But she did not. She had been charged with aiding Adelheid, and Adelheid would not be safe until she reached Wendar. Some truths taste bitter: like most second children, Theophanu was dispensable. Was that why Henry had sent Theophanu to Aosta instead of Sapientia, after Sanglant had refused him?

  The winding path broke through bracken and swathes of grass turned brownish gold. They pressed higher, each turn of the path taking them up in switchbacks until they had to get off and lead the horses. The midday sun made the rock outcroppings shimmer, but only Rosvita seemed to suffer under its heat although the soldiers, too, were sweating. On one rocky stretch the wagon finally broke an axle. A great wailing arose among the servants as Adelheid surveyed this calamity with a frown. Anger sparked in her eyes, but not for her servants.

  “We must keep the royal insignia and the crowns and the tribute lists at all costs,” she commanded. “But leave what we can’t carry of the rest of the treasure. Gold will be of little use to me if I am locked away with it all in my lap in a prison of Ironhead’s devising.”

  “If we could hide some it off the road, Your Majesty,” said one of the stewards, “then perhaps we could return and find it.”