Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

She circled the chamber, keeping well back from the rim. She blew on her rope’s end, causing flame to rise, and lifted her torch to see what was inside one of the holes.

  The flame reflected back at her, revealing a metallic object, like a sheet of bronze or iron, curled up exactly in the manner of a scroll.

  The creatures ignored her. One squatted nearby and, cautiously, she moved close enough to get a good look at what it was doing. It had unrolled one of those sheets and was running its fingers up and down gashes and gouges torn into the fabric. The sheets were as long as her arm span and a third as wide, yet as thin as Jinna paper. How could such an object lie flat after it had been rolled up so tightly? What magic—or smithcraft—was at work here?

  It took no notice of her scrutiny. None of them did. They did not lift their heads and sight, not as creatures did in the world above, the world of light and air. If the pool’s glow was visible to them, she saw no sign of it.

  But she recognized immediately what they were doing. Their task was like breath to her. She would have known that action anywhere, the way their fingers flowed along the lines. In the deeps, such creatures needed no light. They did not exist in light, not as she did. Their way was not so different from the mechanism she used, although she relied as well on her eyes for tracking and her lips for speaking each word as it crossed above the pointing finger.

  They were reading, and this was a library.

  5

  FOR five days Ivar and Baldwin pushed the horses as hard as they dared. They expected with each step to be set upon, but on that fifth day they were still alive and trudging along a dark and lonely path through forest land flowering with green. All morning they enjoyed open vistas beneath a high canopy, but in time they reached an area where humankind had gone about its business managing the woods by felling mature trees. Here, young beech and opportunistic ash grew in abundance among clouds of flowering honeysuckle and swathes of sweet-smelling woodruff. It smelled like glorious spring, although it was early summer.

  “There,” said Baldwin, pointing to a gap in the tangle. “A clearing.”

  They stumbled out of the woodland and into a hamlet, a good-sized holding with several sturdy houses, a byre, a roofed storage pit dug into the earth, a chicken coop, and a lean-to with a shattered roof. Not even a dog barked, and if there had once been chickens, they were fled. It was as silent as the grave.

  “Someone’s buried here.” Baldwin had a habit of stating the obvious, and after five days Ivar would just as soon that he kept his mouth shut.

  A dozen mounds of dirt lined the roadway, so fresh that no weeds had yet sprouted.

  “What do you think killed them?” Baldwin added, then went on nervously. “We’d better keep moving.”

  “You stay with the horses,” said Ivar. “Find water, and check that shoe again. I hope to God she doesn’t throw it before we reach a holding with a smith. I’ll do a quick search. There might be aught of food or drink we can take.”

  “I don’t like it. It’s too quiet. It creeps me, to see it all silent. Look! That trough is half full of water. I’ll water the horses there.”

  For the hundredth time, and with an overwhelming weight of guilt, Ivar wished that Baldwin was Erkanwulf, but he wasn’t. He handed over his reins, then made a quick reconnaissance to make sure no creature was hiding in obvious places. After that, he explored the houses. They had been deserted for many days. In one, a loom sat abandoned, a strip of blue cloth half finished but covered in dust. Another, left with the door open, had been ransacked by animals. A bowl had fallen from a table and lay upended on the packed earth floor. An animal had dug a hole trying to get into one of the chests, but the lock was fastened, and Ivar hadn’t the patience to try to pry it open.

  The third house had been shuttered and closed up, although deep scratches marked the door, as if wolves had been trying to get in. He shoved open the door, which stuck twice before yielding. The smell hit hard. One bed built into a corner stank. A fetid mess had congealed and dried in the tumble of furs and blankets. He approached cautiously, a hand over his nose and mouth, and pulled back the topmost blanket.

  The stench of rotting flesh boiled up at him. A half formed babe—not even as fully fleshed as a newborn—had been entombed in the blankets amid the leavings of birth: blood; feces; awful.

  He gagged and turned away. Falling to his knees, he could not stop himself from heaving and retching onto the floor. When the worst had passed, he crawled away, then stumbled out, not even searching for foodstuffs. The stink was fastened into his nostrils. Every time he took a breath he sucked it in again, and he coughed and gasped and gagged, trying desperately not to heave again.

  “Ivar! Ai, God, Ivar!” Baldwin ran over, having abandoned the horses at the trough. “What happened?”

  “Let’s go,” he said in a choked voice, staggering up. Each step made his throat seize up again, and by the time he reached the horses he had retched a dozen more times. Fumbling for the reins, he flung his body up and over, as clumsy as a rag doll. Good horse. She waited for him to get into the saddle while Baldwin fussed. “Get. Now. Go.”

  He couldn’t speak for forever. Baldwin stewed and fretted and his mount shied at every leaf fluttering on the road, until Ivar found his voice.

  “Dead thing,” he said. “We just go on. Dibenvanger Cloister is close along this way. I recall coming past here. They’ll have news.”

  When the cloister’s orchards appeared, he knew at once that they would find nothing different here. Death marched before and behind them.

  “It’s those creatures, the ones with animal faces,” said Baldwin in a low voice. “They’ve come before us. They’re the Lost Ones, only they’ve come back to get their revenge.”

  “We’re doomed,” muttered Ivar, and was ashamed to hear himself speak the words.

  “For shame! Ivar! Do you not believe in the phoenix?”

  “Of course,” said Ivar, and he added, “I have to.”

  “Don’t despair,” said Baldwin affectionately, and his smile was so kind and so heartening and so beautiful that Ivar found his own dark mood cracked by a sliver of hope.

  The cloister had housed a score of monks, novices, and lay brothers within a compound made of a tiny church, a miniature cloister with a separate novice’s house, a workshop, a byre, and a cunningly designed mill now at rest. The gardens had been turned over and planted. The millrace burbled. But no one was home. Because it was getting on toward evening, they loosed the horses into the byre, brushed them, and fed them from the store of grain. While there was still light, Ivar sent Baldwin to find what he could from the storehouse and herb garden while Ivar walked through the cloister. The slap of his feet made the only sound. The wind had died. Not even the earth seemed to breathe. Beyond the cloister lay the cemetery, budding with twenty-six fresh graves. Where had the others gone? He checked in every cell, but he found no bodies.

  “Must we sleep here?” Baldwin asked him when they met at the byre. “There must be better beds in the cloister.”

  “Yes, here by the horses. What did you find?”

  “These turnips, although they’re half rotten. Lavender. This oil, but I think it’s turned.”

  “Eh! Phew! Throw that out.”

  “Peas. How I hate porridge!” He set down bunches of herbs, neatly bundled, and displayed a pair of loaves so hard that the knife wouldn’t cut into them. “Plenty of grain, though.”

  Ivar nodded. “We can lade the spares, and walk as much as ride so they won’t founder. We’ll ride out at dawn.”

  They bedded down in the straw, back to back for warmth. That night they heard birds calling in the woods, as if a flock swept past from south to north.

  “Are those geese?” Baldwin whispered.

  “Hush! Those are no geese I’ve ever heard!”

  He did not sleep after that, but the next day he nodded off twice in the saddle. They pushed the horses on a fine edge. A knife seemed held to Ivar’s throat, ready to cut, but no one me
t them on the road coming or going. Over the next many days they traveled through a dozen more hamlets, all deserted. All ornamented with fresh graves. They might have been wandering alone in the world after Death had scoured the land. At length even Baldwin fell silent though, after all, it would have been preferable to hear his inane chatter.

  What had become of Biscop Constance and the others?

  Increasingly, Ivar’s thoughts drifted, unmoored by the solitude and the constant expectation of some worse surprise lurking around the next bend in the road.

  Life had been so easy in Heart’s Rest with Liath and Hanna. Bright and brilliant Liath; all of the old anger at her was wrung out of him, and he thought of her now with a nostalgic fondness. He could never have resisted her, and it was idiocy to think she would ever have looked twice at him. She had never been faithless. She had befriended him, and Hanna, and they had been friends to her in return. It was unselfish, in its way, a bond that came not from family ties but from outside them.

  Everyone said Liath was still alive. Rumor called her queen to Sanglant, but also a heretic and a maleficus. Excommunicated.

  Except that, if she were a heretic, that meant she believed in the True Faith, in the rising of the phoenix and the glorious Redemption.

  The road was overgrown where no summer work crews had hacked back weeds and brambles, but in other places they saw signs that a large company had recently passed this way: a broad clearing ringed with charred fire pits; swathes of grass grazed low and not yet recovered; remnants of leather and rivets and the shards of a broken pot. Shallow ditches where folk had relieved themselves and covered the leavings over. These, in turn, disturbed by creatures enticed by the odor.

  It was muggy. The cloud cover had burned so thin that he saw traces of shadow rippling along the furrows made by wagon wheels. Baldwin had pushed ahead. The tail of his spare mount flicked and vanished as the road rounded away in a bend.

  Everyone spoke of Liath. But what had happened to Hanna?

  Dear Hanna.

  All at once, he was weeping. Sobbing.

  Ahead, branches crackled out in the wood.

  Something is coming.

  He sucked in his breath and unsheathed the sword the sergeant had given him.

  A huge aurochs stepped onto the road. It bent a surly eye upon him before pacing majestically into the trees on the other side. Through his tears, he watched in awe as its broad back receded into the forest.

  “Ivar! Ivar!”

  The aurochs broke into a run and bolted into the trees. Why did that damn fool keep shouting, where their enemies might hear?

  He urged the mare forward and passed out from heavy cover into broken woodland, blinking, startled. Baldwin waved cheerfully, and Ivar squinted. A procession of no more than twoscore folk had halted on the road ahead of them, all turned back to see what was coming up from behind. A pair of dogs barked. These were villagers with handcarts and children, their hoes and shovels and scythes raised to do battle, and men in the brown robes of the faithful.

  “Monks!” called Baldwin. “Maybe these are the survivors from Dibenvanger Cloister.”

  As they trotted forward, the procession shifted as the children were thrust into the center and the monks and adult villagers fell shoulder to shoulder to meet the foe. But the closer Ivar and Baldwin came, the faster folk relaxed, staring and pointing.

  “I pray you!” called Ivar. “We’re out of Autun, riding east on the trail of Duke Conrad and Lady Sabella. What has happened here?”

  A man stepped out of the crowd. He held a spear as if he were a warrior, although he wore an abbot’s fine, if travel-stained, robe. He was young, vigorous, and handsome, ready to do battle with the worst the Enemy could throw at him. As he recognized them, his fierce, proud expression transmuted into one lit by a certain sarcastic gleam.

  “The dazzling Brother Baldwin, beloved of the angels! And Brother Ivar of the North Mark! You are returned to us! Be welcome!”

  “The angels?” said Baldwin, scratching at the light growth of beard that was coming in on his chin. “What do you mean, beloved of the angels? What angels?”

  “Is he an angel, Mama?” one of the little tykes cried, and some folk laughed nervously while others drew their hands in close against their chests.

  “Father Ortulfus.” Ivar dismounted and threw his reins over the mare’s head. He brushed the front of his tunic compulsively, for no good reason except that he wore a layman’s clothing instead of garb fit for a religious man.

  The abbot smiled with a sharp amusement.

  “How are you come here?” Ivar asked him.

  “I may ask the same.” He gestured at a burly monk whom Ivar recognized. “Prior Ratbold! The company must continue. We must reach Hersford before night falls.”

  Like the others, the prior was staring at Baldwin, only he was shaking his head. He raised both hands in the manner of a man warding off an attack, then turned and snapped a command at the stunned assembly. His words were echoed by the barking of the startled dogs, come to life, and the villagers shouldered their burdens and marched on with anxious faces and muttered comments. Children bent their heads and shuffled forward, but they glanced back at Baldwin so often that a couple of them stumbled and had to be hauled up by their ears.

  Father Ortulfus waited until the group was out of earshot. “What news?” he asked wearily. “Be quick, if there is anything I should know. The rest must wait until we come to Hersford.”

  “Is it safe there?”

  “Nowhere is safe, Brother Ivar. Have you not seen? Every habitation along this road has been attacked by raiders bearing poisoned arrows that kill with only a prick. Creatures with the bodies of men and the faces of animals As well, many folk have starved because the spring gleaning came late, and they had already lost so many livestock and stores to the storms of last autumn that they hadn’t enough stores to last out the season of want. What of Conrad and Sabella?”

  “Did they not come this way?”

  “I have not seen them at Hersford. There is another route they might have taken. If they were riding to Kassel, they would turn toward the Hellweg at the crossroads at die Eiche. That’s a better road, the main route through this region.”

  “Where is that? Did we miss it?” demanded Baldwin.

  Ortulfus smiled almost mockingly. “Fear not, friends. It lies a short way ahead. You may leave us there and go on your way. Yet tell me all before you go.”

  Ivar rubbed his face. He was so tired, and none of it ever made any difference. “We were come to Autun with Biscop Constance, whom you know.”

  “She lives?” The abbot’s expression changed. For a moment it seemed the sun had come out to illuminate him.

  “She lives, Father. She is burdened with troubles and injuries, but she is alive—or was when we saw her.” Quickly he sketched the scene.

  Ortulfus groaned aloud. “I have heard stories of these Eika raiders. I thought they were no longer a threat. And never a threat so far inland. If the biscop’s party moves so slowly, and they race up behind …” He looked away, too stricken to finish the sentence.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Ivar said. “She escaped them, or she is dead. We must reach Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad, so they can turn back to save Autun.”

  “They are not the only ones who can save Autun.”

  “Who else can you mean?”

  “Only this.” Father Ortulfus wore a Circle of Unity hammered out of finest silver, but his hand briefly folded to form the hand sign depicting the phoenix. “King Henry’s heir rides abroad in these lands. He defeated the invaders at Osterburg. He shattered their army and drove their remnants into the east. It is said he saved Henry from a terrible malefic spell set on him by an evil man. That he brought Henry’s army out of Aosta when no other man could have done so. He could save Autun.”

  “You are speaking of Prince Sanglant. Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad are riding to Kassel to fight him.”

  “Best we get moving.
” Ortulfus set out, striding easily.

  Ivar swung into the saddle and moved up alongside.

  “Will you ride, Father?”

  He glanced up. “Nay, Brother. I must walk beside those we have salvaged from the ruins.”

  “Is that why you are come here, to find the survivors?”

  “Yes. Ten or more days ago a woman staggered into Hersford. She brought with her a terrible story that none among us wished to believe. Who would believe the shadows that once roamed the deep forest would become flesh, and walk in daylight? We thought she was a lunatic, although we should have known better. Another came, crying the same tale, and more yet. So we set out to gather up what remained of the flock. You see them, there.”

  The party struggled at a staggeringly slow pace, but the monks chivvied them patiently, herding up straying toddlers and hungry goats, giving an arm to a stumbling man with an injured leg, taking turns pushing the pair of handcarts that held two elderly women too weak, it seemed, to move along on their own power. If the Eika were hunting behind them, these people had no chance to survive the encounter. If slender dog-women ghosted out of the forest with bows and knives, these people would all die.

  “Hersford is close,” said Ortulfus. “We boast a crossroads as well, a path leading east and a road that runs south and west. It joins up with the main road farther southeast from the crossroads at die Eiche.”

  “Did you not see Sabella’s and Conrad’s armies? No sign of them?”

  “We did not. As I said, the main road bypasses Hersford. But if you look at the road closely, you can see the signs that reveal they passed this way recently. Grass cropped. Manure and waste. Scraps of cast-off leather. Splinters of wood, and abandoned campfires. Back in Dibenvanger this army camped out the night on the green court within the cloister, some of them.”

  “I didn’t notice,” said Baldwin.

  “Perhaps the wind blew the signs away. Sabella and Conrad ride ahead of us. Thank the Mother they did not disturb Hersford in their haste to march on Kassel.”

  Ivar spoke. “What of these villagers? Did they see the armies?”