by Kate Elliott
Her answer was to set me free.
When I rode into battle I called upon the Lord, and though the enemy surrounded me like bees to honey,
though they attacked me as fire attacks wood,
with the Lord’s name I drove them away.”
Ahead, travelers hastened to get off the road. Their party did so quickly as well, huddling along the verge. Anna appraised the plants along the forest’s edge but what could be gleaned had already been taken, either by the folk ahead of them or by the two armies which had so recently passed this way. She could go farther into the forest while they waited, find berries and mushrooms, but even as she stepped back to do so, a glimmer of color flashed in the trees, and she hesitated as the great procession rounded a corner. The sight of such grandeur stopped her, and she could only stare helplessly with the others.
“Open to me the gates of victory.
I will praise God,
for They have become my deliverer.
It is good to give thanks to God,
for Their love endures forever.”
Six standards were borne before the main procession. They fluttered sporadically and she caught only glimpses of startling and disturbing creatures embroidered on their rich fabric: a black dragon, a red eagle, a gold lion, a hawk, a horse, and another beast whose fierce profile she did not recognize. Behind them rode a man carrying a silver banner marked with twin black hounds.
Anna had never imagined she might see the king twice! The weight of the cavalcade thrummed through the ground and up into the soles of her feet. She gaped in awe as the king himself, attended by his fine noble companions, rode past. Beside the king rode the young lord who had spoken to them at Steleshame. Although the others laughed and spoke joyfully, Lord Alain looked somber—but at least no harm had come to him. He leaned sideways and for an instant she thought he would see her, but he was only speaking to the thin, dark man beside him.
“Sawn-glawnt!” breathed Gisela’s niece, the phrase more oath than word. She pulled a corner of her scarf up to conceal her face, hiding herself, but Anna did not see see Lord Wichman among the king’s attendants. She could make out none but the king and Lord Alain as individuals; they were too many and too bright to her eyes in their fine clothes and rich trappings.
After the king came soldiers, and after them the long train of wagons bumping along the rutted road. She swallowed dirt chipped up by their wheels and shielded her mouth from dust. After the passage of such an army, though, the road beyond was easier to tread and they made good time, coming to Gent in the late afternoon of the fourth day.
It was odd to cross the bridge into Gent when she had never crossed it going in the other direction to leave. Once within the walls, Gent had changed so completely from those months when they had lived in hiding that it was as if none of that nightmare had ever happened. Few people walked the streets compared to the many who had once lived here, but already the ring of hammers reverberated off the city walls. Carpenters and masons labored to rebuild; lads hauled away trash. Women washed moldering tapestries or hung yellowing linen and moth-eaten clothes out on lines to air. Children dragged furniture out of abandoned houses while the goats they had been set to watch over foraged in overgrown vegetable plots.
Gent smelled of life, and summer, and the sweat of labor.
They went to the tannery first, but it was deserted as was the nearby armory except for a handful of men sorting through the slag for usable weapons. They complained that the king’s forces had looted the armory for spear points and mail and axheads. A few dead Eika dogs lay here and there with flies crawling over them. Their eyes had already been pecked out by the crows.
Matthias found the shed where the slaves had slept, but though he overturned rough pallets and examined every scrap of cloth left behind, he found no trace of Papa Otto. They heard voices outside and hurried out to find Gisela’s niece talking to an ill-kempt man with the telltale stains of leatherwork on his fingers.
“I suppose some of the dead householders may have kin who’ll come to claim an inheritance,” he was saying to her. “Ach, but who’s to say if they’re telling the truth? Or if anything can be known about what was left behind?”
“That’s why I thought it worth the risk,” she replied, eyeing him with interest. Through the dirt Anna saw he was a young man, broad through the shoulders and without the dreary hopeless expression she had seen in so many of the slaves. “I can take a house here in town without worrying I’ll be thrown out for my pains. I saw how few escaped from Gent. Ah.” She saw Matthias and Anna and beckoned them over. Helen clung to Anna’s skirts and sucked on her dirty little finger. “These are the children I spoke of.”
He clucked his tongue and made an almost comical expression of amazement. “You hid here, in this tannery? Ach, now there’s a miracle that you survived and escaped. There were very few of us here at the end….”
“You worked here?” demanded Matthias. “As a slave to the Eika?”
The man spit. “So I did. Savages. I hid when the battle started. The rest of them fled, I suppose. But I’ve nothing to go back to.” He glanced at Gisela’s niece and shifted his shoulders somewhat self-consciously under his threadbare and dirt-stained tunic. “I thought I’d start fresh, here, at the tannery. So, lad, you know the craft?”
“Did you ever—” Matthias stammered while Anna pinched him to make him go on. “Did you know of a slave named Otto?”
“Nay, child, I never heard of such a one, but I only came recently. That’s why I lived.”
Matthias sighed and picked Helen up, hugging the little girl tightly against him as he hid his tears against her grimy shift.
But Anna only set her mouth firmly, determined not to lose hope. That didn’t mean that Papa Otto was dead. He might have fled, he might have been taken elsewhere….
“Come now,” said Gisela’s niece briskly. “You knew it was a slim hope to find him, poor man. But we’d best be moving on.” Here she glanced at their new acquaintance. “Though we’ll be back with Matthias. He’s a good worker, and very clever. But there’s so many folk coming back. We’d best stake out a claim before the best workshops are taken.”
Just behind the mayor’s palace, abreast of the old open market-place, they found a good-sized workshop with a sizable courtyard, a well, and access to the main avenue. Here the servingwomen began to sweep and wash out the interior while the servingman went to haul mud and lime to patch the walls. Anna drew water up from the well and filled the big dye vat while Gisela’s niece ventured out to see what kinds of pots and utensils she could scrounge from the palace kitchens.
“Come on,” said Matthias into Anna’s ear. He had been raking the courtyard with a rake unearthed from a jumble of forgotten and rusty implements, but he now set down the rake and tugged on her sleeve. “I just want to go see if the daimone is still there, or if we can find the tunnel. We’ll come right back.”
She thought about it. Everyone else was busy. No one would miss them, and what was it to the others, anyway, if they went to the cathedral to pray for the soul of Papa Otto, who had saved their lives?
It was a short walk to the cathedral, much quicker than the roundabout way they had taken months ago, that night when they had fled Gent. Now they could mount the stone steps in daylight. The long twilight lent a hazy glamour to the scene. The cathedral tower draped its blunt, elongated shadow sidewise over the steps as they climbed to the great doors. Beside the doors lay a heap of fresh garbage and when they ventured cautiously inside, they saw two deacons patiently sweeping away the litter that had made of the nave a kind of forest floor of loam and debris. Of the daimone there was no sign, and it was too dark to go down into the crypt. Anna discovered she didn’t want to go at all, and Helen began to snivel, faced with the gaping black stairwell.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” muttered Matthias. “Come, let’s go back. Hey, there!” Helen, having backed away from the crypt door, now ran outside, and Anna and Matthias ran after her
only to find her pawing through a gauzy cloud of down feathers that had surfaced in one of the piles of debris.
“She’ll take some teaching, poor thing,” said Matthias. “You may be mute, Anna, but at least you have your full kettle of wits. I fear our Helen does not.” He scooped her up and started down the steps while the little girl crowed an incoherent protest.
Something rested within the downy bundle. Anna nudged it with her toe and all at once the bundle of feathers tipped, rolled, and spilled open. A hairless creature the size of her hand plopped onto a lower step.
It was not a rat, not even a malformed rat. It lay there, the kind of dead white of things that never warm under the sun’s touch, its grotesque little limbs splayed in all directions. It didn’t have recognizable eyes, only nubs where eyes had tried to grow.
But at least it was dead.
Sun and shadow shifted and the rich golden glow of the westering sun touched the ghastly little corpse.
It shuddered. Stirred. Curled. And came to life.
Anna shrieked.
As if the sound startled it or gave it impetus, it darted away. She blinked and in that instant lost sight of it.
Matthias turned, ten steps down, and looked up at her. Helen quieted in his arms. “What is it, Anna?”
But she couldn’t speak to tell him.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
I have, to say the least, taken liberties with history as we know it—but then again that’s half the fun of fantasy. However, I’d like here to acknowledge a very few of the sources, without which the landscape of Crown of Stars would be much poorer.
Passages quoted or adapted from the Bible have been taken from The New English Bible (Oxford University Press, 1976). Some of the sayings of the blessed Daisan have been taken from the New Testament, others from The Book of the Laws of Countries: Dialogue on Fate of Bardaisan of Edessa (Van Gorcum & Co., 1965), translated by H. J. W. Drijvers. In addition, Drijvers’ Bardaisan of Edessa (Van Gorcum & Co., 1966) has been of immeasurable aid in my construction of the church of the Unities.
For Rosvita’s History I have drawn on Widukind of Corvey’s History of the Saxons, made accessible to me via a translation by Raymund F. Wood (UCLA dissertation, 1949).
The life of the real St. Radegund, a Merovingian queen, is translated in Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, edited and translated by Jo Ann McNamara and John E. Halborg with E. Gordon Whatley (Duke University Press, 1992).
I have also been inspired by the writings of Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, translated by William Harris Stahl (Columbia University Press, 1952); Virgil, The Aeneid, translation by W. F. Jackson Knight (Penguin Books, 1958); Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, translation by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Penguin Books, 1979); and the unknown author, possibly Einhard, of Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa, translated by Peter Godman in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (University of Oklahoma Press, 1985). Medieval Handbooks of Penance, by John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer (Columbia University Press, 1938) and Salvatore Paterno’s The Liturgical Context of Early European Drama (Scripta Humanistica, 1989) provided me with further glimpses of source material from the early medieval church and society.
I must also mention Valerie J. J. Flint’s The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press, 1991) and Karen Louise Jolly’s Popular Religion in Late Saxon England (The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), from which I derived a great deal of information on magic and its uses, and Alison Goddard Elliott’s Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints (University Press of New England, 1987), with its fascinating analysis of late antique and early medieval saints’ lives. C. Stephen Jaeger’s The Origins of Courtliness (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) and The Envy of Angels (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994) gave me, I hope, some insight into the court and clerical culture of the Ottonian period, which I of course adapted to my own lurid purposes.
Last, I must mention the work of Karl Leyser, in particular his wonderful Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society (Basil Blackwell, 1989), itself a treasure-house of inspiration for a fantasist.
APPENDIX
The Months of the Year:
Yanu
Avril
Sormas
Quadrii
Cintre
Aogoste
Setentre
Octumbre
Novarian
Decial
Askulavre
Fevrua
The Days of the Week:
Mansday
Secunday
Ladysday
Sonsday
Jedday
Lordsday
Hefensday
The Canonical Hours:
Vigils (circa 3:00 a.m.)
Lauds (first light)
Prime (sunrise)
Terce (3rd hour, circa 9:00 a.m.)
Sext (6th hour, circa noon)
Nones (9th hour, circa 3:00 p.m.)
Vespers (evening song)
Compline (sunset)
The Houses of Night (the zodiac):
the Falcon
the Child
the Sisters
the Hound
the Lion
the Dragon
the Scales
the Serpent
the Archer
the Unicorn
the Healer
the Penitent
THE GREAT PRINCES OF THE REALM OF WENDAR AND VARRE:
Duchies in Wendar:
Saony
Fesse
Avaria
Duchies in Varre:
Arconia
Varingia
Wayland
Margraviates of the Eastern Territories:
the March of the Villams
Olsatia and Austra
Westfall
Eastfall
OTHER KINGDOMS KNOWN TO THE WENDISH:
Salia
Aosta
Karrone
Alba
Arethousan Empire
Andalla (heathen)
Jinna Empire (heathen)
Polenie (pagan)
Ungria (pagan)
IMPORTANT CHURCH COUNCILS
77 Council of Darre: The biscop of Dariya (later called Darre) is named presiding biscop, or skopos, of the Daisanite Church.
243 Council of Nisibia: Outlaws adoption for inheritance purposes.
285 Second Council of Nisibia: Against determined opposition, presbyters are named as equal in honor to the biscops. Skopos Johanna II denies that her insistence on this matter has anything to do with a young presbyter, rumored to be her illegitimate son, whose career in the church she has championed.
327 Council of Kellai: Under the direction of the Skopos Mary Jehanna, the gathered biscops and presbyters proclaim that the Lord and Lady do not prohibit what is needful, and that therefore sorcery can lie within the provenance of the church, as long as it is supervised by the church. Only sorcery pertaining to fate, and knowledge of the future, is condemned and outlawed.
407 Great Council of Addai: The belief in the Redemptio—the martyrdom of the blessed Daisan in expiation for the sins of humankind followed by his ascension to heaven—is declared a heresy together with the revelation that he is the true Son, both Divine and Human, of the Lady. In strong language, the Skopos Gregoria (called “The Great”) declares that the only right belief is that of the Penitire, that the blessed Daisan fasted for six days and that on the seventh, having reached the Ekstasis—the state of complete communion with God—he was lifted bodily up to the Chamber of Light (the Translatus), and that the blessed Daisan himself claimed no greater maternity than that of any other human: a divine soul made up of pure light trapped in a mortal body admixed with darkness.
499 Council of Arethousa: The Emperor of Arethousa refuses to accept the primacy of the Skopos Leah I in Darre. A nephew of the emperor is installed as Patriarch. They adhere to the greater of the Addaian heresies, that accepting the semi-Divinity of Daisan, altho
ugh they do not acknowledge his martyrdom.
626 Council of Narvone: Presided over by the Skopos Leah III, whose predecesor Leah II had in the year 600 crowned the Salian king Taillefer as emperor of the reconstituted Holy Dariyan Empire, the Narvone synod confirms the ruling of the Council of Kellai but, in a deliberate repudiation of Taillefer’s powerful daughters, specifically condemns the arts of the mathematici, tempestari, augures, haroli, sortelegi, and the malefici, as well as any sorcery performed outside the auspices of the church.
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THE BURNING STONE
the third novel in KATE ELLIOTT’s
Nebula Award finalist fantasy series:
Crown of Stars
HE had run this far without being caught, but he knew his Quman master still followed him. Convulsive shudders shook him where he huddled in the brush that crowded a stream. His robes were still damp. Yesterday he had eluded them by swimming a river where the bluffs were too steep for them to get their horses down to the water, but he knew they hadn’t given up. Prince Bulkezu would never allow a slave to taunt him publicly and then run free.
At last he calmed himself enough to listen to the lazy flow of water and to the wind rustling through leaves. Across the stream a pair of thrush with spotted breasts stepped into view, plump and assertive. Ai, God, he was starving.
The birds fluttered away as if they had gleaned his thoughts instead of insects. He dipped his hand in the water, sipped; then, seduced by its cold bite, he gulped down handfuls of it until the front of his threadbare robe was spotted with drops. By his knee a mat of dead leaves made a hummock. He turned it up and with the economy of long practice scooped up a mass of grubs and popped them in his mouth. Briefly he felt their writhing, but he had learned to swallow fast.
He coughed, hacking, wanting to vomit. He was a savage, to eat so. But what had the Quman left him? They had mocked him for his preaching, and therefore had taken his book and his freedom. They had mocked him for his robes, his clean-shaven chin, and his proud defense of Lady and Lord and the Circle of Unity between female and male, and therefore treated him as they did their own female slaves or any man they considered sheath instead of sword—with such indignity that he winced to recall it now. And they had done worse, far worse, and laughed as they did it; it had been sport to them, to make a man into a woman in truth, an act they considered the second worst insult that could be given to a man. Ai, God! It had not been insult but pain and infection that had almost caused him to die.
