Elegy for a Lost Star (26 page)

“What do we do now, Father?” he whispered. His voice sounded far younger than his years.

Lasarys stared at the leaping flames, lost in thought. Finally his eyes met those of the young priests-in-training.

“We must go to Sepulvarta, to the holy city,” he said softly, glancing about to be certain they were not seen. “The benison is there; we must find Nielash Mousa and tell him of the terrible sights we have witnessed. But we must go carefully; Talquist has spies everywhere.”

“Sepulvarta is a week by horseback,” Dominicus said in a low voice. “How will we make it there, crossing the desert without supplies, without aid? We will surely die, or worse, be discovered.”

“Not if we are discreet and careful,” answered Lasarys. “Talquist believes we are dead. In the eyes of the world, we must be—at least until we
can speak to the Blesser of Sorbold and inform him of what happened this hideous night.”

He pulled up the hood of his cassock in the bitter sand wind; a moment later the others followed his example, and his lead, out through the dark alleys of Jierna'sid, into the vast desert beyond.

I
n younger days Gwydion Navarne had loved the winter carnival.

The feast was a tradition begun by his grandfather and continued by his father for the dual purposes of celebrating a secular holiday with the people of his province and gathering with the leaders of the two religious factions, the Filidic nature priests of Gwynwood and the adherents to the faith of the Patriarch of Sepulvarta, to observe their common rites at the time of the winter solstice. The fact that the event had traditionally fallen on or around Gwydion's birthday had counted among his reasons for considering it special, at least when he was a young child. When he was somewhat older, especially after his mother's murder when he was eight, he began to realize that even a party of tremendous merriment could be more of an obligation than a chance for enjoyment, at least where the host was concerned.

His father, Stephen Navarne, had loved the carnival even more than he had. There was something about the arrival of First Snow that made Stephen's already jolly nature even more cheerful. Gwydion recalled fondly the sound of the traditional trumpet volley on the morning when the first cold flakes appeared, signaling that winter had begun. The thrill in Stephen's aspect was infectious, even to habitually grumpy household servants, who preferred a few more moments of sleep to the joy of being blasted out of bed by the duke's horn at something that could not be avoided, like the coming of snow. On the morning of First Snow they could be seen bustling around with a new energy, smiling at each other, laughing even as they went about their tasks.

The winter carnival in Stephen's time was the event of greatest goodwill in the year, when religious acrimony, land disputes, and other matters of contention were put aside for the sake of harmony, friendly competition, and good fun. On the day of First Snow, the year's official contest was announced, revels of differing sorts—a treasure quest, an ice-sculpture challenge, a poetry competition, a footrace with a unique handicap—along with traditional sport and games of chance, awards for best singing, which Lord
Stephen insisted upon judging himself, comedic recitation and performance dance, as well as folk reels, man-powered sleigh races, snow sculpting, and performances by magicians, capped finally by a great bonfire. It was an enormous undertaking, an expensive endeavor, a revel without peer, and a source of renewal for the spirits of the people of the central continent.

Until the year of the bloodshed.

Gwydion, standing now on the balcony of the library overlooking his ancestral lands, breathed in the air in which the tiny drops of frozen moisture were finally falling; First Snow had come late that year, only a day before the winter carnival was scheduled to begin, known as Gathering Day. He watched in relief as the snow began to blanket the ground, the large feathery flakes wafting down on a brisk wind. The carnival games and revels were generally better after a few weeks of accumulation, the drier the better, but Gwydion was not in the mood to be particular about the kind of snow.

Mostly because until the moment it started to fall, he was wondering if its absence was a sign, a portent that tragedy would strike again.

It had been three years since the last winter carnival, the first one that had been celebrated within the boundaries of the high wall his father had built around the lands nearest the keep, to protect his populace from the horrific and random violence that had been a scourge across the continent. The wall had been a saving grace when a cohort of mounted soldiers from Sorbold, under the demonic thrall of a F'dor spirit, had attacked the carnival and the merrymakers who had just finished witnessing the penultimate event of the festival, a sledge race that took place beyond the barrier in an open field. The mayhem that ensued had been ghastly; before Stephen and his cousin, Tristan Steward, the Lord Roland, had shepherded the terrified festivalgoers back inside the walls, more than five hundred of them were dead. Gwydion would never be able to expunge from his memory the look of controlled terror on his father's face as he hoisted Gwydion and Melisande over the wall into the care of the defenders, and the relief he saw in Stephen's eyes once they were out of harm's way, as he turned and went into battle.

Why are we doing this again?
Gwydion wondered; he had asked himself the question repeatedly since the day two months prior when Rhapsody and Ashe had declared their intent to resume the carnival.
The magic of it all is broken now. How can there be a winter carnival without my father? His spirit
was
the winter carnival
.

Ashe's hand came to rest on his shoulder; Gwydion looked up at his godfather, now taller than himself by only a hand's measure. The Lord Cymrian's cerulean blue eyes, considered a sign of Cymrian royalty, were fixed on the fields of revel, where scores of workers now scrambled to erect
stages, tents, bonfire pits, and reviewing stands. The vertical pupils in those eyes contracted in the brightness of the rising sun.

“Looks as if the weather is favoring us after all,” Ashe said. “I was afraid we might have to beseech Gavin the Invoker to summon the snow if the warm winter continued.”

Gwydion nodded but said nothing. Ashe's father, Llauron, had been the previous Invoker, the leader of the Filidic order of nature priests that tended the holy forest of Gwynwood. In that last, terrible carnival, Llauron had broken the charge of the demonically compelled regiment by summoning winter wolves from the snow itself, spooking the horses of the Sorbold cavalry and buying the fleeing populace time to get inside the gates. Llauron had given up his human body for the elemental form of a dragon, the blood he inherited from his mother, Anwyn, daughter of the wyrm Elynsynos, and now was off communing with those elements, hovering near but never seen. Ashe rarely spoke of his father; Gwydion once told his godfather that he understood his loss, but the Lord Cymrian had looked away and merely said that the situations were very different.

“The guests began arriving yesterday,” Gwydion said as the falling snow began to thicken. “No problems thus far.”

Ashe turned to him and took him by the shoulders.

“There will be no problems, Gwydion. I've taken every possible measure to prevent them.” He gave the young man's arm a comforting squeeze. “I know you are worried, but try not to let it overshadow the import of these days. This is a special moment for you, and for Navarne. There is good reason for revelry and merrymaking; the future is being well assured with your ascension.” He smiled reassuringly, the corners of his draconic eyes crinkling with fondness. “Besides, rather than worrying, you should be saving your strength for the tug-of-war. My team intends to drag yours mercilessly through the mud, and there is a considerable amount of it this year. You best pray that the ground freezes quickly.”

A smile finally came to the corners of the young man's mouth.

Ashe saw the change, and patted his ward's shoulder. “That's better. Now, I understand that Gerald Owen has taken it upon himself to convince the cooks to make an early batch of Sugar Snow, just for you, Melly, and me, as soon as there is enough accumulation to cool the boiling syrup.” He shielded his eyes and glanced at the back of the buttery, where the falling snow had covered the bricks with a thick layer of pocketed white, coating the graceful limbs of the silver-trunked trees with frosting. “I think it may almost be ready.”

Gwydion laughed halfheartedly and turned to leave the balcony. Just before he reached the door, he heard his godfather call his name quietly again.

“Gwydion?”

“Yes?”

Ashe did not turn, but continued to stare off over the now-white fields of Navarne as the carnival came to life below him.

“I miss him, too.”

F
aron did not understand what had happened to him.

Initially after he had awoken on the plate of the Scales he thought, in his limited capacity to reason and understand, that he had died. The blinding light and the intense heat had scorched his withered flesh in agonizing purity; Faron was no stranger to pain, but this suffering was so overwhelming that he imagined it could only be the death he longed for. So when the light vanished, and the sky above him cleared, he was despondent.

The father he had been waiting to reunite with was not there.

He did not remember breaking away, did not have any concept of the obstacles that had attempted futilely to rein him in, to thwart his escape. He had merely run as fast as he could, once the concept of running had come to him, away from the pain and into the warmth of the desert he could feel beyond the Place of Weight.

Now he wandered that desert alone, passing over, and sometimes through, the sand and dry scrub as naturally as if it had been air. The Living Stone body that encased his spirit was born of the earth, and it had no weight to him while he was touching the ground. If anything, every step he took, every moment he felt the sunbaked ground beneath his feet, brought him new strength.

He no longer unconsciously thought of himself as neuter; something nascent in the stone warrior's spirit had instilled in him a gender, though it was not something he realized other than innately. It had imbued him with memories as well, fragments of images that flashed through his primitive mind which were beyond his understanding. There were scenes of battle, of endless marches, that came and went with the speed of a half-formed thought, leaving him confused. There were other images that came to his mind as well, human memories and scenes that were decidedly not from the mind of a man, but from the Earth itself; instinctive thoughts that whispered to him on the most elemental of levels.

Winter comes
, it said.
The fallow time. The sleeping time
.

But for now the sun was high. The earth was warm beneath his stone feet.

Giving him strength.

In the distance he could feel the scales as surely as he had felt them in his glowing pool of green water. Each called to him with a vibration unique in
all the world, vibrations that had been an integral part of his makeup before the awakening. He could not see them yet, but he could sense the directions from which they called. Thinking about them both soothed his tortured mind and agitated him as the missing vibrations nagged at his consciousness.

And there was something more, something even more distant. In the back recesses of his conscious mind, fragmentary and shrouded in the darkness of ambiguity, was the memory of fire.

Dark fire.

“T
his is mortifying,” Rhapsody said.

Ashe sighed. “So you've indicated three times already in the last hour,” he said indulgently, watching his wife wriggle uncomfortably in her thick cape beneath an even thicker blanket. She was ensconced on a large padded chair with a high back in the center of the reviewing stand, her feet propped on a tufted ottoman, her distended belly elevated to a point that she could barely see over it. Ashe leaned over and kissed her cheek, rosy from the wind, and brushed a strand of golden hair out of her eyes.

“I can stand,” she insisted.

“Well, that makes one of us,” Anborn chimed in humorously. He was seated to her left, watching the parade of festivalgoers from the reviewing platform as well. “Now you know how I feel.”

“She can't stand, either,” Ashe retorted. “When she stands she vomits or gets light-headed.”

“I vomit and get light-headed when I sit as well,” Rhapsody said crankily. “At least if I'm going to be sick, it would be nice to be able to
see
who I am going to be sick
on
.”

“Oh, m'lady, by all means, don't aim at the peasantry,” said Anborn, nudging her playfully. “Turn your lovely head clockwise toward your husband. He is, after all, responsible for your woes—or at least he thinks he is.”

Rhapsody glared at Anborn, then settled back down beneath the blanket, attempting to maintain a pleasant official expression. The crowd of merrymakers was a blur to her, a sea of jumbled faces and clothing passing beneath the flapping banners of colored silk that hung from Haguefort's towers and guardposts and the reviewing stand on which they were seated.

Melisande hovered nearby, her face shining with excitement, rimmed in a fur hat that matched the muff that encased her hands. Her black eyes were sparkling in the wind, her nose and cheeks red with the bite of it.

“Look at the puppets!” she said gleefully to Rhapsody as a line of giant articulated harlequins paraded past the reviewing stand, their limbs controlled by the large sticks of their puppetmasters, who walked behind them, dwarfed by their size.