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Crown of Stars

Page 65

by Kate Elliott


  So, there was also a measure of peace to be found. They had survived the worst, surely. The cataclysm had hammered them forty years ago, and in many ways they were still recovering.

  Her Dragon guard spread out along the spokes of the wheel, loitering, enjoying the sun, although the day was cold enough to turn hands white. Her Quman levy, refreshed every five years according to the pledge made by Gyasi forty years ago; her Eika nephews, as she called them, who were really grandsons and great grandsons out of Rikin Fjord; a few pale Albans; and one dark-haired Salavii man who had turned up one day holding a golden phoenix feather in his left hand and who had never left. Once, she had boasted a dozen bold Ashioi mask warriors in their number, but they had been recalled to their own country. Now, the remainder was strong Wendish and Varren soldiers, all wearing the sigil of the black dragon, her father’s mark.

  The Quman in particular could never get enough of the stern-featured little statues of saints and angels that populated the garden, some freestanding and others half hidden in niches carved into the walls. What piqued their interest she had never understood, but they were at it again. They wandered in pairs to examine each sculpture, often kneeling beside one to point out particularities in its features. Four of them had gathered on the other side of the fountain to stare. She moved, curious to know what they were fascinated by, and found that after all another soul had come to seek peace in the garden. He was seated by himself on a bench, in the sun, with a book and several loose pages of vellum resting on his lap.

  Everyone knew the old cleric was her favorite, and that he had been so for years. Despite his age, he retained his remarkable beauty, but what was most curious about him was his lack of vanity considering his exalted station on the queen’s progress. Some unkind gossips whispered that in truth he had no great intelligence and had gained his prominent position simply by virtue of his appearance, and wasn’t even canny enough to understand the nature of his power, yet even these skeptics had to admit that he wrote with an elegant hand, none better even in the schola of the skopos, where he had come from. He copied charters and diplomas and letters, and in this way had served her for decades until in the end he became one of the last of those who really remembered the year of the cataclysm. Many had been children at that time, as she had been, but a child’s memories are malleable and elusive.

  She walked over and sat beside him on the bench. “What are you reading, Brother Baldwin?”

  He had been studying a dormant rosebush with what was, in truth, a slightly vacant expression, but he smiled amiably and stroked the spine of the book.

  “Just looking over what I wrote yesterday, Your Majesty.” He indicated the unbound vellum.

  After a moment, she said, patiently, “And what was that?”

  “What I promised to the Holy Mother—may she rest in peace. To continue the History of the Deeds of the Great Princes, and pass on my charge when it comes my time to rise beyond this world and ascend to the Chamber of Light. I fell behind because of the deal of business we got into this last summer.”

  “Read to me.”

  He picked up one of the sheets, studied its lovely curling script, frowned, and replaced it with another page. “I’ll start here,” he said.

  “No,” she said, curious now, and anyway she had always been goaded by a bit of a nasty temper. “Read that one you were first looking at.”

  He sighed as he looked at her with those remarkable blue eyes.

  “Go on!” She had ruled for many years and was no longer accustomed to being denied. Maybe she had never been so accustomed. Everyone knew she had been a brat as a child.

  He hesitated, touched a finger to the first word, and began to read, more haltingly than one might expect given the fluid beauty of his script.

  “At that time reavers were laying waste to the Osna coast. Although he was full seventy years of age, he took his sword and led his milites to drive off the invaders. No weapon touched him, but the exertion brought him low. He was carried to Lavas Holding, and there after resting a while he rose again, gave alms to the poor, and sat down joyfully to table. Afterward, he became feverish and tired. He bent his head forward as if he were already dead, but he was able to ask for the holy sacrament, the kiss of the phoenix. After this, his breath left his body, and with great tranquillity he released his spirit to ascend to the Chamber of Light. They carried him from that place and laid him in the church beside the bier of Lavastine the Younger. Even though it was then late, they announced his death to all the people.

  “Much praise was spoken of his great deeds, how he had cast the Eika out of Gent, scattered the Quman horde at Osterburg, led the ascent out of Aosta after the cataclysm, and erected churches and established monasteries and convents in the name of the Holy Mother and her Son.

  “In the night, with the count still at her vigil within, the church burned down, leaving only the stone bier of the younger Lavastine untouched among the ruins. Those who witnessed the conflagration reported that a phoenix rose out of the flames, but others said it was a dragon, and some said an angel.

  “The county passed to Lavrentia the Younger, daughter of Count Liathano and Prince Sanglant. Lavrentia was married to Druthmar, son of Waltharia Villam.”

  The fountain spilled its angels’ tears. Geese flew honking overhead, migrating south for the winter. The Dragons paced, out of boredom or to keep the chill out of their limbs, and she supposed she ought to feel the cold more deeply, but she did not. These days, she was often flushed with warmth.

  “There’s yet more on the page,” she said, prodded by a need to twist the knife. “Read that.”

  He was the calm beyond the storm. No matter how sharp her tongue, he remained unmoved. Or possibly he just missed all those jabs. He smiled sweetly, the very image of the ornament of wisdom, and continued more easily.

  “There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, nothing secret that shall not be made known.

  “In the year 778, after two years of losing most of their crops and brought close to starvation, the people of Osterburg were visited by a bountiful harvest.

  “Refugees fleeing the fighting east of Machteburg, where the Quman vanguard had attacked, arrived safely across the river, losing not one soul to battle or flood. They were attended through the wilderness and across the ford by a pair of black hounds.

  “A pack of wolves terrorized the king’s road in the Bretwald but were driven off by a lone traveler and his dogs.

  “The angel of plague rode into the valley of the Alse River. She carried a sword, and where she knocked upon a door with so many raps, then so many people inside would fall ill and die. But where the road took its turning into the next valley, she was met upon the way by a wanderer, who had blocked the road. Therefore the other valleys were spared, and the angel passed beyond the veil and troubled them no more that season. It is said of the traveler that he walked into the valley of the Alse River to bring aid to the afflicted, and was not seen again.”

  “What are these you write of?” she asked.

  “This is a change wrought by the hand of the Highest,” he read. “I keep a record, as I was commanded to do by Biscop Constance, of blessed memory.”

  He leaned forward so suddenly that she, trained for battle, shifted her feet under her for the leap, and every Dragon within sight changed stance and came to the alert, the movement rippling out through the ranks. She caught herself as he probed among the thorns and the last, withered leaves of the rosebush.

  “Look, here.” A pale bud pushed up out of last year’s growth.

  She lifted a hand, and the Dragons relaxed.

  “Here’s another,” he said, tracing it with a scribe’s precise and practiced touch. “And here. Can roses bloom in winter?”

  She thought of Fulk, and bowed her head.

  Looked on the parchment. She could read, of course. Her mother had insisted that she learn. There was more written on the page in his clear and lovely script.

  There was always
more. One life may end but another begins.

  The branches of the rosebush trembled in the wind. A horn rang, far off, that might be a greeting or a fare-thee-well. Or a pack of young riders out on autumn’s hunt, eager to try their skills, heedless of the ebb and flow around them.

  A child’s memory is malleable and elusive, and she had only seen him that one time, really, in the dark church at Hersford when her father had woken out of the Abyss into which he had fallen, although most people call it death.

  We are all changed by the tempest, each in our own way.

  Impulse must not govern action.

  Be merciful.

  Then you have done as he would have done. Go in peace.

  Some say he died in that distant valley and lies in an unmarked grave. Some say he was translated up to the Chamber of Light by the hand of God our Mother, because of his great holiness. Some say he took a vow of silence and retired to an isolated monastery to pray and to teach by his example of humility and good works. But there remains a story—among the common folk from whom he sprang—that he walks abroad still. That he walks unseen to the sight of mortal women and men, except to those in hunger, those who suffer, those in need. That as he walks among the common people he touches a few, and at his touch the rose of compassion blooms in their hearts.

 

 

 


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