Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  “None, but for grain. What do you make of that?”

  “I judge him too subtle to measure.”

  “A common man pretending to an eminence he does not deserve?”

  “Think you so?”

  “He does not appear so to me,” she admitted. “No common-born man speaks to Arnulf’s heir with such words and such boldness. What have you to say to this, Lord Alain?”

  “Nothing.”

  She had a twisted kind of grimace that posed as a smile. If she had ever known happiness, it was by now buried under a mountain of worldly cynicism that must make her dangerous because of the weight on her heart. “It is my experience that people do want things, and want them more the closer they are to grasping them. Are you a spy, sent to ferret out our secrets?”

  “I am not.”

  “Yet here you are. Well. Lavas may be yours again, and more besides. Men are all the same. Easily teased to attention by a glimpse of treasure. Is that not so, Conrad?”

  “So the church teaches,” he said without looking at her, as if the shadows of the forest hid something he needed to see. “There’s something out there,” he said in a changed voice.

  A sentry called out a challenge just as he spoke. A second call alerted the camp, but as the soldiers jumped to their feet and servants hustled to the safety of the wagons, pale figures wandered out of woods with hands extended, murmuring the familiar refrain.

  “I pray you, noble one. Have you food?”

  “Just a corner of bread for my child, I pray you.”

  “God’s mercy, help us. Any that you can spare.”

  “Beggars!” said Sabella, retreating. “Captain! Chase them off.”

  Alain walked after her. “Surely you can spare your leavings for these poor creatures. They are harmless, and suffering.”

  “Chase them off!” she ordered.

  Conrad fell back into the circle made by his retainers, all of whom had drawn their swords. “Be on alert,” he called.

  “They may be a distraction, I’m thinking.”

  The beggars faltered before they entered the camp, seeing the weapons. Children sniveled, held tight against their mothers’ hips, and all weeping, adults and small ones alike. They were afraid, and yet again and many times one of the half-naked, starving beggars would look behind toward the deeper darkness of the forest as if wolves were driving them into the light. From back in the camp Alain heard Atto cry out, and the sound of a scuffle.

  “Stand ready!” Conrad’s voice carried easily; he meant unseen others to hear him. “We’ll slaughter them, my good fellows, and let the maggots clean their corpses.”

  “Nay! nay! I know these folk!” Atto’s voice was a wail. “How comes it my kinfolk beg here in the wilderness? They live but a day’s walk from Helmsbuch, cousins to us. I beg you! I beg you! Do not harm them! They are innocent!”

  Soldiers clattered into position. Shields fell into line to protect the ranks if arrows flew from the woods. A horn called twice. Horses whinnied nervously.

  “Step back!” called Conrad to Alain.

  But it was Conrad and Sabella’s soldiers, standing with their backs close to the fires, who were easiest to see. In the darkening twilight, Alain knew he appeared as no more than a shadow. The undyed linen-and-wool clothing of the beggars and their exposed limbs made them conspicuous, but he was cloaked by the fine dark colors of his clothing, by his gloves and boots, and by his dark hair and darker hounds. He was not at risk, not as the beggars were, caught between the noble company and whatever pushed at them from deeper in the woods.

  He stood in silence, hearing the scrape of feet, the muttered comments of the soldiers, the nervous laughter of one of the lordlings, the tick of a branch clacking against another, the snuffling of horses, and the thump of a spear haft against the ground. A child whimpered. In the distance, an owl hooted, and he threw back his head, surprised, and listened as hard as he could. As he breathed, he caught the inhalation of the world and the slow trembling and settling of air as the earth cooled with the onset of night. Under the trees waited the wolves who hunted in this night, concealed by underbrush and broad tree trunks and the uneven carpet of the ground with its low rock dikes and knee-deep hollows. The outlaws were a sturdy, cautious band, and he listened carefully, counting each man’s breath: thirty-eight in all—no, there was the thirty-ninth, behind the bole of an ash. Not enough to attack a company some three times greater and better armed unless a cunning intelligence led them, but he smelled and sensed no such mind among their number, not unless it was hidden from him.

  “Stay,” he said to the hounds He walked into the trees, as silent as death, and came up behind each crouching man out of the darkness and lay a hand atop each head, each one so unsuspecting that the touch made him freeze in terror.

  Alain said only, in a whisper, each time, “Go. Do not prey on the weak and helpless any longer.”

  They ran, a scattering of footsteps as the first he touched fled, and then the second. The sound turned briefly into a tumult, like a shower of hard rain, and pattered away into the depths as the last of them bolted. He waited, but all he heard were cautious shouts and answers coming from the camp as Conrad and Sabella shifted their sentries farther out to probe the darkness, and the quiet misery of the score of beggars abandoned betwixt the company and the wild.

  He walked back to the hounds, and said, “Duke Conrad, I pray you. If you’ll spare me a dozen loaves of waybread, I’ll give them as alms to these poor beggars.”

  “Come into the light,” said Conrad, and Alain did so, coming right up to the wall of shields set on the ruin of the outer wall. After a moment a soldier arrived with his arms basketing half a dozen loaves of the flatbread commonly baked by travelers on the coals overnight. These were several days’ old.

  “What has happened?” Conrad pushed past the shields to stand beside Alain, alert to the noises out of the woods.

  Back in the camp, Atto sobbed.

  “I believe they have fled, seeing a superior force. May I now feed these poor beggars?”

  Conrad laughed. “A godly man is a good ally, so the church mothers tell us. I’ll walk with you.”

  “I pray to God this shall be enough to strengthen these unfortunates,” said Alain as they came among them. Conrad walked boldly, but it was clear he marked each one, looking closely at their rags and their emaciated limbs for sign of disease before he handed them a hank of bread out of his own hands. Filth and hunger and desperation did not make him flinch. Any person saw such things every day. But even a strong soul might quail at the mark of plague or leprosy.

  These were only poor, landless, and starving, nothing out of the ordinary except that they had retreated so far into the wild lands and so near to the guivre’s lair. When Alain and Conrad returned to camp, Sabella scolded them.

  “Now the creatures will plague us,” she said, “hoping for another morsel. You have only encouraged them. I hope they did not hear that lad shouting. I’ll not be burdened with a train of beggars.”

  “Where, then, should they go?” Alain asked her.

  “What concern is that of mine?”

  “You are duchess here in Arconia, I believe,” he answered. “Are these people not your concern?”

  “Why should they be? What if those thieves creep back and try to surprise us a second time?”

  “God have given you these lands to administer, have They not? It is your duty and obligation to be a just steward of these lands. Even beggars and outlaws are among your subjects.”

  “As inside, so outside, my clerics tell me. These beggars must have sinned grievously to be punished in such a manner.”

  “Do you believe it is only their own sins that have brought them so low? That they deserve whatever suffering they endure?”

  “Each of us faces justice in the end. I do not mean to interfere with the punishment God has ordained for them.”

  “Justice must be tempered with mercy. What mercy should God show to you if you will sh
ow none in your turn?”

  Conrad clucked, while the courtiers muttered their shocked outrage that their lady should be spoken to in such a manner by a man who had only the expectation of rank but no actual lands and title in his grasp.

  “Do you speak so, to me?” she demanded. “Let them perish, if they have not the strength to survive. I cannot aid them, and why should I, if it will harm my cause and weaken my rule? Food given to these wretches will not go to feed my soldiers and retainers, who aid me. What matters it, anyway? These creatures are the least of God’s creation, far beneath us.”

  He shook his head. “Do not say so. In birth and death we are alike. Their bodies will turn to dust, just as mine will. Just as yours will.”

  Her aspect grew cold and she clenched her jaw tight before finding her voice. “This I will not endure! Captain! Bind him and cast him in the cage. He who insults me with such insolence will be first to feed the guivre.”

  “Feed the guivre?” cried Conrad. “You cannot mean to feed the beast on human flesh!”

  “The monster must be strong so it can defeat Sanglant. Human flesh and human blood strengthens beasts as no other nourishment can. Take him!”

  Her captain waited with a dozen men, eyeing the hounds and the man, and as they hesitated Alain met each guard’s gaze in turn, looked each one right in the eye.

  None ventured forward.

  “Take him!” repeated Sabella furiously. “Why do you wait?”

  All at once every dog in camp began barking. Only Sorrow and Rage remained silent as soldiers hoisted their shields and held their weapons ready. It was too dark to see anything in the forest, but a wind picked up, whipping the treetops into a frenzy. The beggars erupted, like the dogs, into a clamor, and crying and weeping they fled into the forest.

  “It is not the bandits they fear,” said Conrad. He stepped back toward the safety of the line with his sword drawn and his head cast back to scan the night sky. There was nothing to see except the darker toss and tumble of tree-tops as they danced in the wind. Unseen, but heard, a branch snapped explosively and crashed to earth.

  “What is this?” demanded Sabella, and it wasn’t clear if she spoke of Alain or the inconvenient storm.

  An ungodly screech tore through the air, causing every man there to start and turn his eyes upward.

  “Light! Light!” called the captain.

  Men lit sticks and held them up as flaming torches, and perhaps half those kindling flames were whipped right out by the wind.

  Overhead it flew, vast wings beating as it skimmed over the camp. It was far bigger than the first guivre Sabella had captured and maimed years ago. The flames cast glimmers along the scales of its underbelly, like golden waters rippling. From the company below there came no sound, not even gasps of surprise. There they all stood, rooted to the ground like stone and staring at the creature they meant to track down and make captive.

  This was all the chance Alain needed. He had already made his decision. He had caught the scent. He saw its tail flick out of sight as it vanished into the night, flown into the northeast where the rough ground reached its worst. He whistled softly to alert Sorrow and Rage and, while the rest of the company stood frozen with shock and fear, he and the hounds walked away into the dark forest.

  PART TWO

  THE BLOOD-RED ROSE

  VIII

  ON A DARK ROAD

  1

  SECHA sat cross-legged on a reed mat, holding her elder daughter in her left arm as the baby nursed while, with her right, she turned the wheels within wheels of the astrolabe. The astrolabe was a strange and cunning tool that gave power and precision to the one who understood how to use it. This particular one had been hammered and shaped and incised in the forges of the land once called Abundance-Is-Ours-If-The-Gods-Do-Not-Change-Their-Minds but now commonly named Where-We-Are-Come-Home or Feet-Dug-In-This-Earth. The smiths had copied it from the one possessed by the Pale Sun Dog, and it had been delivered to her three days ago by the latest band of eager young warriors off to try their skill in raiding, burning, and killing.

  She sighed as the alidade rotated smoothly through the scales inscribed into the disk. The cruder instrument she had used for the last two months had a tendency to stick. This was a well-made, handsome tool, a testament to the skill of her people’s artisans now that they were freed from the limbo of the shadows to again ply their metalworking. In the old days, so it was said, they had worked in bronze long before such knowledge had spread to the primitive Pale Ones. Now, of course, humankind bore weapons of hard iron, and it was the Ashioi who must scramble to forge stronger weapons and tools to combat their ancient enemy.

  “Secha!” Sparrow Mask called from the watchtower. “Dust on the road! Looks like a good-sized band! Maybe more!”

  “I hear you!” she called back, but she did not move. No wise woman dislodged a suckling infant from the nipple except for fire or blood.

  From her seat on the mat, unrolled on a plank walkway out under the cloudy sky, she surveyed the settlement built by humankind and taken over by her own people. The high palisade blocked her view of the landscape. The houses and hovels had heft and weight, constructed out of blocks of stone with tile or thatch roofs, but she could never live easily in this place. It was too dark and heavy. The humans lived without a temple raised up on an earthen platform; there was not even an altar. There was no market corner, no community salt pit or meeting ground. They did not decorate the exterior of their houses, and within the deserted eaves she had found tools and cloth and tables and benches and crude beds but little she found beautiful. She could find no house of youth where the children would be instructed. Altogether, she found their life poor even compared to the hardship she had endured in exile. They might possess the secret of iron, and various cunning tools that made work easier, but in all other ways they lived little better than savages.

  The baby loosed the breast, gurgled, burped, and dozed off. Secha called to White Feather, who came and took the child. The other infant slept as well; she always fed them one after the next—otherwise she would be feeding all day!

  Zuchia the weaver waved to her as she walked to the watchtower. From the building that had once housed the humans’ animals she heard the voices of the children reciting in unison.

  “These are the names of the days:

  Darkness

  Cave

  Stone

  Flint

  Jade

  House

  Reed

  Grass

  Flower

  Deer

  Buzzard

  River

  Sea

  Wind

  Lightning…”

  Their voices faded as she moved past, but she filled in the rest in her own mind: Rain. Storm. Hill. Mountain. Sky.

  She climbed the ladder and greeted Sparrow Mask, then looked southeast to the telltale dust.

  “Yes, larger than usual,” she said. “I wonder who is coming.”

  From this vantage point, she surveyed the place humankind had once called Siliga-Eleven-Stones but which the Ashioi had named Seven-Days-Walk-Beyond-The-White-Road. Moctua, who was also called Big-Eating, was cooking lizard at the charcoal pit beside the bread oven, seasoning the good meat with salt and herbs. Some of the young warriors who protected the outpost were digging irrigation canals through the desiccated fields. A square field of beans and precious mahiz had been planted, nursed with water hauled from the stream. A pair of women were half hidden within the orchard of oil trees, but she wasn’t sure what they were up to.

  There came the water haulers: a trio of emaciated adolescent humans who had shown up at the outpost two waxings of the moon ago and made it clear they would work in exchange for being fed. So they worked, and were fed the same gruel and honey as everyone else, and although they had at first refused lizard meat, soon they came to eat it.

  Over at the western limit of her sight, at a slant to the road, lay the heaped soil of the grave site where the corpses of
the human villagers—long dead before the Ashioi arrived here—had been buried and ringed with stones to keep unquiet spirits from roaming. It was an old superstition which the old ones had insisted on, but she had grown up in a different time, where death could not be sealed away even within a ring of stones dedicated to She-Who-Creates.

  “Death and life are warp and weft,” she said to Sparrow Mask, who still stared at the dust cloud. “I think those stones are unnecessary.”

  “It is the customary way.” He was a young man in appearance although centuries older than her, caught in the shadows for a time whose duration had little meaning to him—or to her. “We cannot cast away the old ways between one moon dark and the next. Look! Is that Feather Cloak’s wheel?”

  It was.

  Feather Cloak strode at the head of a substantial army. Sparrow Mask called down, and a pair of warriors opened the palisade gate. The water carriers paused in the middle of the fields to stare at the huge procession, and scuttled away toward the people working the fields, those they knew.

  “Where will they camp?” asked Sparrow Mask. “The southern quarter is the best camping ground, but it hasn’t been cleansed yet by the blood knives.”

  “Maybe they are not staying long.”

  Secha climbed down and walked back through the village, past the chanting voices.

  “Eighteen Bundles of days make one Year.

  Thirteen years make One Long Year.

  Four Long Years make one Great Year.

  When the Great Years run their full count,

  and the Six-Women-Who-Live-Upriver walk overhead,

  We are come back to where we began.”

  She walked out the gate and met Feather Cloak beyond the ditch, at the fork in the road. Here a path snaked up toward the stone crown, which was hidden from this vantage point by the irregular slope of the hill. She had heard tales of the great armies of the old days, marching on campaign, so numerous that it would take an entire day for the procession to pass any given spot, but these tales were legends to her, having little meaning in exile. The dust of their halting choked her. They were so many, wearing eager faces and bold bright clothing that made her chest squeeze tight with apprehension.