The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “I saw a light,” said Meriam. “You have not woken Brother Severus?”

  Liath looked toward the ladder that led to a trapdoor set into the ceiling. “I have been quiet.”

  “That is well,” replied Meriam. She placed a gnarled hand on Liath’s belly without asking permission, but she had the authority of the ancient: Liath could not really be offended by her blunt speaking or intrusive manner. “You are growing as you should be. Where is the prince?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  “So many knots.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Meriam removed her hand. Age had sucked her dry; she was so small that Liath felt like a giant beside her. “I mean what I say: so many knots in the threads that bind the life of humans one to the next.”

  “Where do you come from?” asked Liath suddenly. “How did you get here?”

  “I come from the east,” said Meriam wryly, indicating her dark skin.

  “I know that!” Liath laughed, then caught herself and glanced up, guiltily, knowing that Severus would not take kindly to being woken. He didn’t like looking at her; her pregnancy disgusted him. But his disgust only made her wonder why a man with so much knowledge would even be bothered by such a common thing. What did it matter to him? “I mean,” said Liath, “where in the east? How did you get here?”

  “I came as a sacrifice.”

  “A sacrifice!”

  “An offering.” She had an accent blurred by time and age, a hint of exotic spices and brutal sun. “I was sent as a gift by the khshāyathiya to the king of the Wendish people, but the king had no use for me, so he gave me to one of his dukes. When I flowered I was brought to his bed. Some time after that, I gave birth to a son.”

  “Are you saying,” said Liath slowly, astounded, “that you are the mother of Conrad the Black, duke of Wayland?”

  “So I am.”

  It seemed impossible to Liath that this tiny woman could have given birth at all, let alone to as robust a person as Duke Conrad. “But you have estates to administer. A child to watch over. Grandchildren! Why are you here?”

  Meriam was too old to take offense at impertinent questions. “That I bore one living child and three dead ones did not change the path laid out for me. It only delayed it. Once my son came of age and gained his dukedom and a wife, then I had the freedom to retire. He no longer needed watching over.”

  Liath choked back a snort of laughter.

  “You have met him?” Meriam asked without smiling, but with the simple pride of a mother who knows the worth of her child.

  Liath considered what to say, and chose caution. “He is hard to forget.”

  “You are not at all like him.” Meriam brushed dry fingers over Liath’s arm. Despite her age, her hands bore no calluses; she had lived a noblewoman’s life from infancy to this day, never humbling herself with the day-to-day labor of living. Liath’s own hands bore calluses, the legacy of her life with Da, and Meriam’s light touch explored these briefly as well, as if Liath’s skin revealed her entire history, all from the brush of a finger. “You are not of Jinna blood. Who are your father’s kin? From whence comes this complexion?”

  “All I know of my father’s kin is that he has a cousin who is lady of Bodfeld. But might it not come from my mother’s kin?”

  Meriam looked at her strangely. “Has Anne not spoken to you of this?”

  “Of what?”

  “Then it is not my place to do so.”

  When Meriam spoke with that tone of voice, Liath knew that it was useless to try to influence her to say more. Not even Brother Severus in all his arrogance could bully her. In the intimacy of a private meeting in the middle of a peaceful night, Liath couldn’t help but ask one more question. “You said that your path was laid out for you, but delayed. But you never really answered my question. Why are you here, Sister Meriam?”

  Wind creaked the door. Shadows curled along the beams, a servant settling down to listen, or to sleep—if they ever slept. In the dim light it was easy to forget how old and frail Meriam was; her voice still had the strength of youth. “I was taken from the temple of Astareos, He who is Fire Incarnate, where I was to have been an acolyte in His service, a priestess of the Holy Fire. I had already learned enough then to know my task in life, for certain priestesses there had the gift of prophecy. That my fate led me elsewhere for a time is only another knot in the tangle of life.”

  “The you were always meant to be a magi, the way I was?”

  Meriam chuckled, age amused by youthful blindness. “Nay, not as you were. I came here to save what I can.”

  “Save it from what?”

  “‘When the crown of stars crowns the heavens …’ Ah. But you haven’t completed your calculations yet.”

  That casual remark threw Liath again, like a flung stone falling to earth far from its original resting place. Those damned calculations. What had she overlooked?

  “You will know it when you see it,” said Meriam, answering a question she hadn’t asked.

  “Why must you all make it like a puzzle?” demanded Liath. “Why can’t you just tell me what I’m looking for?”

  “Because you won’t truly understand what it is we work toward until you have discovered it for yourself.” Liath began to protest, but Meriam raised a hand for silence. “It is all very well to protest that because you have seen a horse ridden, you know how to ride. But you don’t know how to ride until you have yourself ridden. Isn’t that true?”

  “I don’t see—”

  “You don’t see because you persist in thinking that the art of the mathematici is like a story, something you can understand equally well whether it is read to you or you read it yourself. But the art of the mathematici isn’t a story, it is a skill, like riding a horse, or fighting, or administering an estate, something that takes time and effort to master. Would you set an apprentice weaver to weave the king’s royal robes? Ask a novice to illuminate the Holy Verses? Trust your life to a pilot who had never before sailed through these shoals? You, of all people, must understand fully.”

  “Why?” Then Liath laughed, having picked up the habit from Sanglant. “Never mind, Sister. I know what you will say. You will say that when I understand fully, then I will also understand why I must understand fully.”

  “There lies the beginning of understanding.” Was Meriam amused? It was hard to tell. She was too ancient to be easily read. Like all the magi, she held layers within layers in herself, none of which were readily peeled off.

  “Is that why you’re here, to understand?”

  “Nay,” she replied so quietly that a hundred misgivings congealed into a dreadful foreboding in Liath’s heart, and the night no longer seemed so tame. “I am here to save my child and my child’s children from what will come.”

  Sanglant woke abruptly, was on his knees on the bed ready to lunge for his attacker before he realized that it was dawn and that Liath had just closed the door behind her on her way out. He shook sleep and fear and memory out of his head.

  Sometimes he thought the dreams of Bloodheart would never end. Sometimes he remembered that one night out of two he slept in peace and didn’t dream at all.

  He had woken in the night when Liath returned, and they had had a long conversation that he didn’t recall with any clarity now except that in addition to eating all the cheese and bread she had gone on about not being able to trust this nest of mathematici into which they’d been thrown. Maybe he hadn’t really been awake. Sometimes he didn’t know when Liath’s sudden attacks of foreboding were just shadows woven out of her own fears or real premonitions of a truth she only glimpsed. He knew better than to trust a nest of mathematici, especially ones as powerful and as hidden as these. Especially knowing that at least one among them wanted to kill him. Perhaps Liath only suffered because she wanted to trust them. She wanted them all to have her open delight in knowledge, to want to know things for their own sake. She wanted them to be simple, and honest, and pure.

 
; But he had lived for a long time in court. He had fought in more battles than he cared to count, and he would fight again if need be and pray to God afterward for peace. He had seen a lot of people die. Truly, there were some people who could be trusted, some open, honest souls like his poor, dead, faithful Dragons, or even some old, wily ones, like Helmut Villam, who would hold fast at your back when you were fighting for your life. There might even be some pure souls in this world, but he doubted it.

  Most people in this world, he had found, were agreeable—as long as you treated them agreeably in your turn—but they were far from pure. Even after a life of running and hiding, Liath could be remarkably naive.

  But with God as his witness, he had never desired a woman as much as he desired her. And he had desired, and consorted with, a lot of women in his time.

  He grinned, dressed, rousted out the dog, and went outside to find Liath shooting arrows at herself.

  At first he gaped stupidly as he saw her out in the meadow beyond their hut: He had never before seen such a display of idiocy. She aimed directly above her head as if shooting at the heavens, drew, and loosed the arrow.

  “Liath!” he shouted, bolting for her.

  She had her back to the sun, and to him, and she had thrown her head back to watch the arrow fly up and up and up, and then, as any fool knew it would, slow, tumble, turn, and fall back to earth. At her. She took a step back, caught her foot in a hole in the ground, and fell down hard just as the arrow whoofed into flame above her head and showered to earth as ash, sprinkling her hair.

  “Liath!” he cried, kneeling beside her, but she was laughing and rubbing one hip where she’d landed hard.

  “I didn’t see the hole!” she said cheerfully.

  “You would have seen it if you’d kept your eyes on the ground and looked where you were going!”

  “But then I couldn’t have watched the arrow’s flight!”

  “Ai, God,” muttered Sanglant, helping her up and, for good measure, taking the bow out of her hand. He rested a palm on her abdomen to listen for the child. Its heart beat steadily, quickening as it stirred, slowing as it settled again. No harm taken. “What on God’s Earth were you doing?”

  “Just that. I’m trying to see if the Earth rotates. Because if it does, then surely an arrow shot high enough would land some distance away from the archer. That’s because the archer, standing on the Earth, would have moved as the Earth rotates in the time it takes the arrow to reach the height and fall—”

  “On your head!”

  “Not if you have sufficient height or speed of rotation.” She winced, kneading her bruised hip again, then rubbed the remains of the arrow into the grass with one sandaled toe, looking thoughtful.

  The rising sun shone behind her, struggling up over the mountain peaks. She hadn’t rebraided her hair yet, and wisps of it trailed around her face, curling delicately along her neck. How often did he catch himself just admiring her, as if nothing else existed in that moment? It was as if a part of her had settled down inside him, taken up residency in his soul, long before he had realized she was there. He was more her captive than he had ever been Bloodheart’s, and yet in this case the chains were of his own making, and they weren’t truly chains at all. That which bound them remained invisible and yet no less strong because of that. It was at moments like this that he felt blinded by happiness.

  She glanced up to see him watching her, then smiled brilliantly and indicated her bow, which he now held. “Do you want to try?” she asked brightly.

  It was at moments like this that he thought he would probably never understand her.

  X

  IN PLAIN SIGHT

  1

  SORROW, Rage, and Fear woke him this morning as they did every morning, with dog kisses, sloppy tongues licking his face. They didn’t cease pestering him until he rolled out of bed, washed his face and relieved himself, and let a servant bring him tunic and hose. He led them down the stairs and outside, where they ran, tucking their tails and tearing around like wild things, barking with pleasure, snapping at garlands of ice on low-hanging branches. It hadn’t snowed yet, although Candlemass, the first day of winter, was only a week away, but every morning the ground sparkled with a coldly beautiful frost.

  When the hounds had run off their high spirits, he whistled them back, and they followed him meekly to the hall. He seated himself in the count’s chair, and his people came forward as they did every day, wary of the hounds who lolled at his feet out otherwise respectful: this week so many apples had been pressed and laid aside into barrels for cider; goats had gotten into winter wheat at the Ravnholt manor, and the man who worked the field wanted the woman who owned the goats to pay him a fine for the damage they had caused; a laborer up by Teilas wished for the count’s permission to marry at the new year, the shepherds had cut out fifty head of cattle for the Novarian slaughter, those animals deemed unworthy to be wintered over; his clerics wished to know which grain stores should be opened next for the distribution of bread to the poor. Duchess Yolande had sent a messenger to say she would arrive to celebrate the Feast of St. Herodia with her beloved cousin. They had, therefore, about six weeks to make preparations to house and feed her entourage. The falcons and merlins must be flown There was hunting to do, both as sport and for meat to smoke against the lean months of late winter and early spring.

  He took something to eat at midday and then, as always, he climbed the stairs to the chamber where Lavastine’s corpse lay as cool as stone, without any taint of decay. Terror lay on one side of the bed, Steadfast on the other, two faithful attendants seemingly carved out of granite. Here beside the draped bed Alain prayed every day, sometimes for an hour or more as the fit took him, but today he merely laid a hand on Lavastine’s cold brow, feeling for the spirit buried deep within. It was difficult to believe his spirit was flown when he lay here so perfectly hewn as by a master sculptor, in death as in life. Alair wept a little, as he always did, out of shame for the lie.

  Ai, God. Tallia had not been visited by her monthly courses since the death of Lavastine over two months ago. Everyone said she was pregnant, and Tallia herself had begun to murmur about holy conception and a shower of golden light visiting her while she was at her prayers, which these days took up most of her waking hours. Alain could not help but hope against hope even though he knew what Aunt Bel would say: “No cow will calve without that a bull covers her first.” It was one of her ways of saying that work wouldn’t get done unless someone did it, and he was bitterly aware that he hadn’t done his work.

  But he was simply too tired to fight past Tallia’s resistance It was hard enough to get her to eat more than a crust of bread each day. It was hard enough to get up each morning himself and sit in the count’s chair and ride the count’s horse and speak with the count’s voice; he kept expecting Lavastine to walk into the room, but Lavastine never did.

  But as Aunt Bel would say: No use for the child to cry over what’s been spilled; she’s better off cleaning it up and getting on with it. Lavastine would have agreed with her. Alain shook himself, kissed the granite brow, and left.

  Aunt Bel was much on his mind as he walked to Lavas Church with three clerics and two stewards in attendance, to oversee the work going on there. In the spring he and Tallia must go on progress through their lands, to show themselves, to receive oaths and give oaths in return. How would he be received at Aunt Bel’s steading? With surprise? With the respect due his position? Or with scorn and anger? He could not bear to think of Henri; it still hurt too badly, even after all this time. It infuriated him that Henri, of all people, would believe that he could lie and cheat to gain advantage in his life. Maybe it would be better simply to ride on by and not see them, not now. He could wait. There was always another year.

  But that was the coward’s way.

  The stone workers sat outside the church in the sun eating bread and cheese. Strangely, Tallia’s attendants also waited outside the church, clustered like a flock of lost doves o
n the entry porch.

  “My lord count.” Lady Hathumod came forward hesitantly. She looked troubled. “Lady Tallia asked to be left in solitude to commune with God.”

  “So she shall be. I’ll go in alone.” He signaled his own attendants to wait outside, and the hounds flopped down at the threshold.

  He hadn’t seen her since yesterday and, pausing in the nave of the shadowy church, he didn’t see her at first as his eyes adjusted. Light from the east-facing windows fell on the altar. Midway along the nave, the stone bier was rising slowly, dressed stone by dressed stone, to make a fitting resting place for Lavastine’s corpse.

  Her slight figure knelt on the steps before the altar, shoulders hunched and shaking. He walked forward so quietly that she didn’t hear him, and as he came up beside her, he heard her grunting softly with pain.

  “Tallia?” He gently touched her on the shoulder.

  She cried out and jerked back from him. In that moment, he law what she had been doing: scraping at the wounds on her palms and wrists with an old nail. Blood oozed from the jagged cuts. Pus inflamed the gash on the palm of her right hand. Seeing his horrified expression, she began to weep helplessly.

  He did not know what to do, except to take the nail away from her.

  Finally, he coaxed her back to their chamber. He settled her on their bed and chased away her servingwomen, even Hathumod. She only stopped weeping because she was too weak to cry for long. Her face was sunken, almost skeletal, her skin so translucent that the veins showed blue. She hadn’t washed in a long time: he found dirt behind her ears and a collar of grime at her neck. Her feet were filthy, and her knees scabbed and scaly from all those hours of kneeling. Her wrists felt so thin he thought he might have been able to snap them in two were he angry enough.

  But, strangely, he wasn’t angry. He was just very tired.

  “Tallia,” he said finally in the tone Aunt Bel might have used after she’d sat up three nights running with a deathly ill child who, past the point of danger, had now begun to whine that she didn’t like her gruel, “you are not well. You will remain in bed and you will eat gruel and bread pudding every day, and greens and meat, until you are strong enough that you don’t forget yourself in this way again.”