The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “Now we are outside,” she said. She drew her knife and drew the blade over her palm. She smeared her blood over the ebony surface of the gate, then cut Zacharias’ hand in the same manner, and nicked the horse on the shoulder; this blood, too, she smeared on the gate.

  Her fingers probed the shadows beside the gate, caught a lever, and pulled. The door swung open outward on silent hinges. She stepped over the threshold, and he followed her only to find that he stood in a narrow lane that ran parallel to the black stone path outside. High stone walls rose on either side. The horse balked, but when seawater lapped the threshold to drown its hooves, it bolted inside.

  She tugged the gate closed against the rising tide. He glanced up anxiously: were the stone walls high enough, and watertight enough, to keep them safe from the waters? But when he knelt to brush the ground, it was as dry as bleached bone racked by a summer of rainless heat. She began to walk to the right, widdershins, and he followed her. After about the time it would take to sing the service of Terce, a short hour, they returned back to where they had started, at the ebony gate.

  “Now we are inside,” she said.

  His hand smarted. He was very thirsty, but she offered him nothing to drink. He was abruptly so tired that, trembling, he leaned against the stone walls—

  “Grandson.”

  He jerked back. “What is that?” he demanded. “There’s something alive in the stone. It’s speaking to me in my grandmother’s voice.”

  “There is nothing alive here,” she said firmly. “We have entered churendo, the palace of coils. Here the three worlds meet. Do not be surprised by what you see and hear.”

  “What are the three worlds?” he asked, but she had already started walking left, deocil, and he had to follow her with the horse in tow. “What’s the use of walking around again?” he demanded of her back. “Isn’t there a path that leads up?”

  She stopped abruptly and turned. Her stare shut his mouth, and when she began walking again, he followed silently, humbled.

  They walked the dusty path, grit scuffing and slipping under his toes. They circled the hill deocil, as they had outside, but when they returned to the ebony gate it was no longer ebony; it was no longer the same gate but rather a gate of palest rose stone. He gazed out to see the sea surging and rising below. Craning his neck, he could even see the corbeled entrance that marked the ebony gate, now half underwater below them. Then he saw the moon. They had been walking for a scant hour yet the moon lay low on the horizon, almost swamped by the sea, a waning quarter moon surely a good six days past full. Feeling dizzy, he swayed and caught himself, bracing a hand on the stone. But when he touched the stone, he saw through rose quartz onto a different sea, not a sea at all but a river snaking up through sharp-spined hills.

  Ships ghost up the river, slender and predatory. The prow of the lead ship is long and lean, carved into the shape of a dragon’s head. Creatures like men but not men stroke at the oars and sometimes, as they skate the shallows, their oars break through a skin of ice. Stone and metal spearheads gleam as sun catches them, rising low over the northeastern hills. Ahead, the river swirls white around a series of posts; someone has staked the river so that ships can’t sail up it.

  But the creatures in the ships merely anchor their ships to the stakes and from this base they harry the countryside, burning and killing. Halls and cottages blaze under the pale light of a sun that never rises more than halfway up the sky. Soon night falls, gray and icy. Fires dot the slopes and valleys like an uneven procession of torches. Late into the night they gutter and fade as a storm sweeps in. There is only darkness.

  She vanishes around the curve of the lane, still winding up deocil. He grabbed the horse’s reins and followed. He did not want to be left behind. He felt the ground slope under his feet, growing steadily steeper. They were climbing.

  The next gate shone with a pale iron gleam. The tide was low. Dawn’s light rimmed the eastern horizon, a sullen gray along the rocks. Stars gleamed fiercely above. He saw no moon. Was that its reflection in the torpid waters below? He leaned forward, pressing a hand against the gate.

  * * *

  A woman sits in a chair carved with guivres. She wears the gold torque of royal kinship at her throat and a coronet on her brow. Her hair runs to silver, and her face is lined with old angers and frustrations. Her tower chamber is elaborately and richly furnished, but the two guards standing just on the other side of the door betray its purpose: it is a prison, nothing more. She lifts a hand and beckons forward the messenger who has come, a nondescript woman dressed in the robes of a cleric.

  “What have you brought me?” she asks in a voice too low for the guards to hear, and in any case they are bored and at this moment chatting with an unseen comrade out on the stairs. “You are certain Biscop Constance knows nothing of this?”

  “Nay, Your Highness,” replies the cleric. “The biscop had a new cote built, but this pigeon came to the old one. That is how I came to know of it, through certain faithful of your servants who do not approve of a Wendish biscop being set over them as liege lord and biscop both.”

  “Give it to me,” orders the woman. The cleric obediently hands it over, and the woman unrolls a thin strip of linen, rather dirty and damp, marked with letters. She returns it to the woman. “Read it to me.”

  The cleric puzzles over it for a while, since some of the letters are stained and blurred, but at last she reads aloud. “To she who is rightfully queen over Varre and Wendar. Hold fast. Do not despair. There is one who has not forgotten you and who will return to aid you in time.”

  “That is all?” demands the woman.

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “What of the mark, there, at the end?”

  “It is some kind of sigil, but I cannot make it out.”

  The woman grunts, then, and gestures toward the fire “Burn it.”

  A shutter has been taken down to admit air. Through it, he sees the dawn sky and the distant moon: the last sliver of the waning crescent moon setting below trees that range alongside a broad, noble river.

  “Pale Hunter, protect me,” he gasped as he shoved himself away from the gateway and staggered backward, colliding with the massive wall behind. There was no way up, no way down, except the way he was going. But maybe he shouldn’t be praying to the Pale Hunter at all. Maybe he should be praying to the Hanged One, who killed himself for wisdom, hanging nine nights and nine days under an ash tree while ravens fed on his liver. But he doesn’t remember. That was a long time ago, and his grandmother’s ways were a curiosity to him; he already believed in the Circle of Unity and the Mother and Father of Life because his parents believed, because he obeyed them, because he liked the sermons given by the frater and later because the words written in the Holy Verses rang so sweetly in his ears that he memorized them, every one.

  Now, standing alone with the horse in the narrow lane, he couldn’t recall a single word of all those psalms he had once known by heart; he could only remember his grandmother’s prayers. She hadn’t been blessed with beautiful words or elegant phrases, but she had known how to get straight to the point.

  “Oh, Fat One, here are the first leeks from the garden. They’re a little small, but very sweet. Please let my daughter have the second child she longs for. Here are some apple pips I saved over from last harvest. The fourth tree on the left didn’t produce well this past autumn. If you choose not to honor it with fecundity this year, then I’ll have my son-in-law cut it out and we’ll plant a nice hazel tree instead in your honor. I’ve a nice sapling down by the river in mind for you, a good strong one that’s not yet too big to be transplanted. I’ll lay a stick of it here, next to the pips, so you can smell how holy it is.”

  That next winter, he remembered, she had had his father cut out the apple tree and planted the hazel instead; his mother had borne a strong, healthy daughter, whom she had named Hathui. Hazel tree and Hathui had flourished together, and every autumn his grandmother secretly set out an offerin
g of the first hazelnut porridge before The Fat One’s altar, by the spring in the hills behind their holding. He always went with her; he never told.

  She was gone.

  She was long dead. And his companion had vanished up the path, away around the curving walls.

  He shook himself free of memory, terrified of being left behind in this place of visions and shadows. The horse plodded stolidly behind as he hurried forward, and his legs burned as he hurried to catch up. At last he caught sight of her. She seemed so high above him, and the air shimmered strangely as though they pressed through another substance entirely, something outside of air, beyond air. His knees hurt. His throat burned. The sun shone with a light as pale as the marble walls.

  The third impossible gate appeared, a sudden azure like river waters frozen and set upright between two stone pillars. Beyond the gate, the sea boiled and lashed under a cloudy sky torn by storm. Foam sprayed the rock walls. He could not see the distant land at all. He stepped back, ready to walk on. He didn’t want to lose sight of Kansi-a-lari again.

  But she had paused by the azure gate. “Who is there?” she asked, and in answer, she placed her palm against the pale blue gate.

  Banners fly outside a fine wood hall, and servants rush hither and thither carrying wood and chests and cloth and shovels and bags of bread so fresh that he can see the steam rising and rounds of hard cheese and a cage full of brightly-colored songbirds. Snow dusts the ground. As the sun rises, the full moon sets. Horses are brought ’round, breath steaming in the cold, and suddenly people burst from the hall like chickens erupting from their henhouse to escape a fox.

  That is the king. Anyone would know the king, even if, like Zacharias, he had never seen him before except in a vision. His courtiers swirl around him like the tidal currents, some in, some out. Messengers come and go as he waits for his horse to be brought forward. A woman in an Eagle’s cloak stands with her back to the king, listening to one of her comrades, who looks as if he has just ridden in. She turns, then, a tall, hawk-nosed woman who is so astoundingly familiar that he can only gape as she speaks her comrade’s message into the ear of the king.

  “Your faithful Eagle Udala has come from Varre, Your Majesty, with news from Biscop Constance that all remains quiet in Autun despite rumors of witchcraft in the lands to the west. There is drought in Salia. Udala also brings a message from Lord Geoffrey, cousin of Count Lavastine. He has heard that the count died not two or three months ago of evil sorcery. He begs you to come to Lavas Holding, for he accuses the man who claimed to be Lavastine’s bastard of using witchcraft to dupe Lavastine into naming him as his heir. He begs you to come when you can, to pass judgment on this matter.”

  Zacharias stares, astounded, as the king scratches his beard thoughtfully, not angry, merely considering. He would never have known her by her face alone, for she has changed over the years since he last saw her, grown up and filled out. But the memory of her voice lies forever lodged in his deepest heart; so much of what he remembers is words and voices.

  Who would have thought it? She was such a bold, scrawny girl. It is his sister, Hathui, wearing an Eagle’s cloak and standing at the right hand of a king.

  The king’s horse is brought up. He mounts and rides away.

  “Ah,” said Kansi-a-lari beside him, the same sound a person might make who has finally pulled a thorn from her foot. She set her right hand on her left shoulder as though to say, “I greet you,” as though to say, “I am resigned to my unhappy fate.”

  She walked on, and he walked beside her. The fourth gate had the luster of amber, but because she did not hesitate, he did not stop; he did not want to be left behind. The steep lane became stairs, steepening as they made their way up the hill. He understood now, finally, that the path was a spiral one, curling in toward the top.

  The fifth gate surprised him. It gleamed like amethyst, washing the scene behind it of sea and night sky with a brush of palest violet. There was no moon. He couldn’t make sense of the stars, all topsy-turvy and in the wrong place. Disoriented, he stumbled and fell against the horse. Jostled, he braced himself against the rock, but his hand slipped to the slickly damp surface of the gate just as Kansi-a-lari cried out a warning.

  “Do not look!”

  But he was already gone.

  A young woman with hair as black as obsidian, almond eyes, and the broad cheekbones and dark complexion of the eastern tribes kneels on grass like a slave instead of the princess she obviously is. She wears a gown woven of gold thread so sumptuously rich that it shimmers as she shifts. Her head is bowed, but her gaze, looking up at the creature that stands before her, is bold.

  The creature is like nothing he has seen before, but he knows what it is, one of the Bwr people, the fabled ones who live in the deep grass. She is a woman, or a mare; she is both, and neither. She wears her coarse hair in braids, and a coarse pale mane runs down her naked back, and it is also braided, twined with beads and tiny mice bones. Her face and upper body are striped with green-and-gold paint. Her body below the waist is that of a fine mare with a coat so magnificently gray that it almost seems silver.

  “Come back to me,” the creature is saying, “when you can bring to me these things. The claws and grease of a bear. Mole’s teeth. The bones of a mouse, with none missing. Threads from a dead man’s shroud. A dragon’s scale. The shed skin of a snake. The ashes of a fire that burned on the night of a full moon. Two coals, still burning, from the hearth of a pregnant woman. One amber bead. Lapis lazuli carved in the shape of a god. An owl’s feather. The shell of a—”

  She breaks off and at once he understands that she is aware of him. She moves her left arm out of shadow to reveal an owl perched like a falcon on her wrist.

  “Go,” she says to the owl. It takes wing abruptly and silently.

  Kansi-a-lari wrenched him away so painfully that he gagged, gasping for breath. Spasms racked his stomach, just under his rib cage. His left elbow throbbed.

  “You will ruin everything,” she said harshly. “Do not look through the gate of Shagupeti again.”

  They climbed on. The path was all stairs now, winding up around the hill with the towering walls on either side, the endless walls, he never saw any break in them from this side, no trace of dwelling places or ladders or paths or halls or wells or of any kind of animal or bird, not even ants and spiders. The fort was empty, except for the three of them, she, he, and the horse; except for the visions.

  The sun shone, but he could not see it as he trudged up stair after stair. He tried to count them but could not. He was too thirsty to count. She gained ground on him, impatient with his sluggish pace, and got out of his sight, but he was just so tired and his knees hurt and he knew he would catch up to her in time because there was nowhere else he could go.

  When he came at last upon her again, she stood motionless before the sixth gate, both of her palms pressed against the gleaming green banded stone, like malachite worn so thin that it had become no thicker than a veil.

  She spoke and, speaking, received an answer. He crept closer to listen.

  “Be cautious, Cousin,” said a voice through the veil. “We are not the only ones walking the paths. New gateways have opened, although this was not unexpected. Walk cautiously in the world of humankind. You are a long way from home, and the paths grow increasingly more unstable. Do not take too long about your errand, or you will not be able to return.”

  As he came up beside her, she pulled her hands from the gate and turned to regard him evenly. “Come,” she said. He had to follow her. He didn’t dare pause to touch the gate, to see what she had seen. To whom was she talking?

  Now each stair step was like one carved by titans, knee-high, and the poor horse had to scramble like a mountain goat from ledge to ledge. But it was a hardy creature; like all Quman horses, it had never received any pampering. Those who couldn’t keep up were killed and thrown into the stew pot. It was a strong little horse, fit for a chieftain like Bulkezu to ride, it had the heart of
a prince, and no damned stairs were going to keep it from following.

  He was out of breath and had to stop to get his wind back when they came to the seventh gate. He had to stop to lift a hand over his eyes, because the sight of the gate blinded him, all blue-white fire, not stone at all, not wood, but some substance that was as bright as a blacksmith’s forge and yet as cool as the winter air. He feared it, and he stayed well back, but he could not help but stare because he knew in his gut that beyond that gate lay a place no man had ever before seen, that no man could ever see.

  He saw movement, coming closer, the flutter of wings within a burning fire as though some terrible creature were about to emerge out of the brilliant gate to engulf him.

  He screamed. And then something dark and hot and heavy shadowed his eyes.

  “Quickly,” she said, dragging him forward by the elbow.

  He whimpered, struggling, and finally yanked off the creature that shrouded him. She had thrown his cloak over his head.

  “Do not look back,” she said. “The veil is thinning. They have become aware of that which lies far below them, and they are terribly dangerous. If they touch you, you will be burned to ashes in one blink of an eye.”

  “Was there truly something there?” he gasped. “What was it?”

  “I think in your tongue you call them ‘angels.’”

  All at once, the path cut sharply to the right. They passed under a corbeled archway topped by two massive stones carved to look like lionesses, fierce and protective. His ears rang to the sound of three deep thunderous notes, and blood trickled from his nose. She let go of his arm, and he staggered in her wake out into an oval plaza paved entirely with marble and ringed with hip-high marble walls cut so perfectly that when he knelt and ran his finger along the thin crack that joined two, he found no mortar within, only the perfect fit of two blocks of masterfully-dressed stone.

  The wind cut unmercifully up on this height, and he was glad to have the cloak to swing over his shoulders as he regained his balance and stood. It was a cloudless, cool night made stinging by the wind’s roar. Sea ringed the island, shushing rhythmically at the base of the rock. No clouds concealed the heavens. The Queen’s Sword, Staff, and Cup glimmered in the east; the light of the bloated moon, now setting, had washed away the western stars, all but the brightest ones. He knew the boldest of the stars and constellations. Any child did who stared at night up at the heavens, hoping to see an angel.