Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (36 page)

"Jealousy is a sin." Just yesterday she had been able to hate him with all her passion, but, trapped by him against the bed, all that anger drained away. Numbness oozed from his hand like poison down her arm, invaded her chest, spread with the inevitable doom of a plague brought down by angels upon those who have turned their back on God's Holy Word.

"Then I will fall forever into the Abyss—but you will be at my side! Forever. We will ride out in the morning, back to Firsebarg. You and I—

"Vrmcess Sap'ientia—"

"What do I care for Sapientia? Ah, my beauty, how long I have waited for this. Perhaps the wait truly only makes it sweeter."

He pressed the knife against Sanglant's vulnerable throat. A line of red started up, not quite seeping.

"Ai, God," she breathed. She had nothing but fire, and fire would destroy what she loved.

"Take off your clothes, so I can see you who are dark and lovely."

Why hadn't Da's spell that protected her against all other magics protected her against Hugh's? Unless what Hugh had woven onto her during that long winter in Heart's Rest had not been any kind of spell at all but only cruelty and abuse.

Was it better to die with Sanglant?

"I told you what I wanted." He pressed the knife harder, and Sanglant actually murmured and shifted—but he did not wake. He could not wake. Hugh pressed the knife harder until blood trickled down the prince's neck.

The dog lunged, dragged itself forward, and gripped Hugh's trailing foot in its mouth; even weakened the dog had a sharp bite. Hugh jerked back and swore in pain, kicked free of the dog, and then kicked it back into the corner.

Which gave her time and chance.

She dove for her short sword.

He wrenched her back just as she got a grip on the handle. Slammed her against the wall. "I'll kill him! I promise you, I'll kill him. You're mine, damn you."

She fought him, trying to catch his hands so the blows wouldn't land; trying not to explode into a fire made manifest by terror. There Sanglant breathed, so peaceful, but so far away now that Hugh loomed everywhere. She would never be free of him. But at least if she fought, she would be dead.

"God damn you!" He took her throat in his hands.
"You are mine
Or no one's."

"Hush, Brother. Calm yourself. I fear you are overwrought."

Hugh did not register the voice. Over his shoulder, Liath saw the door standing open.
She had barred that door.
Stunned into immobility, she felt the back of her head hit the wall as Hugh shook her by the throat, but she could only stare, limp and passive, as a veiled figure crossed the threshold and glided into the room.

"Brother," it said in a woman's sorrowful yet commanding alto, "this is unseemly behavior for any soul indeed and yet how much worse in a man sworn to the church and educated in its ways. Alas, how God's children have fallen!"

Now
his grip slackened. His eyes widened, and his lips parted with astonishment. He let Liath go and she slid down the wall as though she hadn't any bones left and sat hard, jolting her spine, on the floor. Beside her, the Eika dog lay under the window like a dead thing.

He raised a hand, pointed it at the hooded figure as a threat— or as prelude to a spell.

But her hand, pale and smooth, rose in response, and abruptly Hugh clapped a hand to his throat. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.

"Such a lovely countenance, such an elegant voice, to be poisoned by such trivial weaknesses as lust and envy. I pity you, Brother." She stepped aside from the door. The opening yawned wide and as dark as the pit beyond, where nothing stirred. She might have walked into the chamber from out of thin air, and yet she had weight and substance and her footfalls made a faint noise as she moved. "You are not as powerful as you think you are, although I admit you have strength of will and a promising intelligence. Such a great talent to be wasted tormenting a helpless girl. You must scour all such base feelings from your soul and be purified by God's love. Then you will understand that the power we have on earth, the lusts that hunger in our flesh, are as nothing compared to the promise of the Chamber of Light. All is darkness, below. Above—" She gestured eloquently toward the ceiling, but by the sweep of her arm she included the high heavens in that gesture. "—there is only that light which is God's gentle breath."

Hugh could not speak, although he tried to. He tried to grasp his knife, but it kept slipping out of his fingers. He was helpless. And Liath exulted in her heart to see him so.

"Go, Brother. 'Heal thyself.' But do not trouble me or this child any longer."

He coughed out something, not words—perhaps a curse that had gotten stuck in his throat. He stumbled over to the table and fumbled for the candle and at last got the bronze handle squeezed between thumb and forefinger. Even so, he could barely stay upright; he grunted like a pig as he groped along the table. Then,suddenly, he dropped to his knees and got his arm under the strap to the leather pouch which before the struggle had been hooked to the dog.

"The book!" Liath tried to get up, but her bones had all melted and she could not move.

He staggered out, and the veiled figure just let him go.

With the candle gone, night shuttered the chamber in layers of shadow. Silence settled like so many owls coming to roost in the eaves.

Liath began to cry, and then to hiccup as she cried. Pain cut into her throat like a rope burn, winching tighter. Her shoulder hurt; her ribs ached; on her left hip a bruise throbbed painfully. Sanglant gave a soft sleeping snort and shifted on the bed.

"The book!" she said again, her voice made harsh by Hugh's grip.

The figure moved to the bed. "He will not find a mathematicus to train him in its use, unless he comes to us."

A light appeared suddenly from her upraised palm, a gently glowing globe lined with silver. She held it over the bed and its sheen of light illuminated the sleeping Sanglant—and the line of blood that traced the curve of his throat. With a casual gesture, she tipped back her cowl and veil so that the fabric draped along her shoulders rather like a small creature curled there.

She had pale hair drawn back into a braid that, curled into a bun, nestled at the back of her head. She wore no other head covering, and the shapeless robes concealed all else. From this angle, Liath could not see her face, only an ear and the suggestion of a strong profile, neither young nor old.

The woman bent forward and with the light held before her examined Sanglant with great interest. She touched his knees. She lifted each hand in turn to scrutinize palm and fingers before letting it fall limply back on the bed. She traced the swell of bone in his cheeks, parted his lips to study his teeth, and clasped his shoulders as if to gauge their strength. She pressed a hand on the old scar at the base of his throat, the visible mark of the wound that had ruined his voice, rubbed softly at the fresh raw wound only now beginning to heal, the mark of Bloodheart's iron collar, and then ran a finger along the shallow cut made by Hugh's knife to collect and taste his blood. Indeed, she behaved very like a noble lady who prefers to personally examine the fine stallion in question before she buys it to breed into her herd.

"So this is Sanglant," she said in a tone of detached curiosity.

The name, uttered so dispassionately and yet with such a sense of ancient and hoarded knowledge, startled Liath into speaking. "Do you know him?"

"No mathematicus who studies the geometry of the heavens, who is aware of that which exists beyond human ken, is unaware of him. Even the diamones of the upper air whisper of his progress from child to youth to man."

"Who are you?" Liath whispered. Her hands tingled sharply as blood flooded back into them. She tried to stand, but her knees gave out. She ached everywhere.

"Those in Duke Conrad's party know me as Sister Anne from St. Valeria Convent." She displayed a pleasant smile that by no means touched her eyes. She had an ageless face, hair made paler by the silvery light of the globe that hovered at her fingertips, and, most astonishingly, a torque nestled around her neck, braided gold that glittered in the magelight with each end twisted off into a nub that an unknown master craftsman had formed into a face resembling nothing as much as an angel resting in beatific ecstasy.

"You aren't Sister Anne," Liath blurted out. "I saw her. She was small, and old, and had wrinkled hands covered with age spots, and different eyes, brown eyes."

"How can you have seen Sister Anne? Did you bide at St. Valeria Convent for a time?"

Liath hesitated, then realized how foolish it was to fear her. If this woman could turn aside Hugh's spells so easily, then whatever she meant to do to Liath would be done whether or not Liath fought against it. "I saw her in a vision through fire."

She smiled at this, looking truly pleased this time—no longer a mask. She lifted her arm slightly to let the globe better illuminate her face. "Don't you know who I am, Liath?"

The globe pulsed with light. Liath struggled to her feet. She had a terrible bruise forming in her right thigh where Hugh had jammed his knee into it, and her shins throbbed where he had kicked her. The silvery gleam grew stronger, the globe spit white sparks, and suddenly the sparks blossomed into butterflies, flitting everywhere, winged light like glass flying off all around the room so that every corner became a field of splintering,swooping light. As with a breath breathed onto them from an unseen source, each white spark bloomed into color: ruby, carnelian, amber, citrine, emerald, lapis lazuli, and amethyst, stars fallen to earth and caught within this chamber, and each one engaged in a dance of such peculiar beauty that she could only stare in awe.

Then she knew, of course. But she could not at first speak, not because of magic but simply because she could not remember how to speak.

Ai, God. Memory flooded, surfacing, as she turned back to face the one who held the globe of light. "Muh—Mother?"

She had a headache from the pounding her head had taken against the wall. Sparks swirled around her eyes, and then everything vanished, leaving her with a steady gleam of magelight and a cool, pale woman of vast power and middling height who regarded her with a thoughtful gaze unsullied by emotion.

"You have grown up, of course. Your beauty is unexpected and has caused you trouble, I see."

"Why have you come?" Liath asked stupidly.

She released the globe and it bobbed to the ceiling, sank, and drifted to a balance just below the eaves. "I have come for you, of course. I have been looking for you and Bernard for a long time. And now, at last, I have found you."

DURING her reign as Queen of Wendar and Varre, Sophia of Arethousa had been accused by certain clerics of the sin of living in luxury beyond what was seemly for humankind, and some had muttered that God had punished her for the excessive luxury of her habits by striking her down with a festering sore: as inside, so outside.

But Sanglant recalled her fondly. She had always in her cool way suffered Sanglant to roam in chambers made opulent by the extravagant display of the many fine possessions she had brought with her from Arethousa. As a child he had loved to explore those chambers: the bold tapestries, the rich fragrance of incense smothering the air, the bright reliquaries and crosses set on elaborately-carved Hearths inlaid with ivory and gems, the plush carpets on which a young boy could lie for hours while tracing their intricacies with a finger, the sumptuous silks that he would run his hands through just to feel their softness. Once he had accidentally broken a crystal chessman, one of the handsome horsemen he loved to play with as he imagined himself among their number, and although the piece was irreplaceable, she had merely ordered a matching piece carved out of wood and had said no more about the incident. His freedom in her chambers had ended when he turned nine and was sent off to learn to fight—to his fate, as he thought of it then.

But he had never forgotten the feel of that cloth. Around Queen Sophia's bed had hung a gauzy veil that seemed to dissolve like mist when he clenched it in his small fist.

Now he clawed at a substance as filmy, struggling to free himself from a tangle of gauzelike sleep that had wrapped around • him: The dogs would kill him if he couldn't wake up.

Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

Dreams fluttered at the edge of his vision: Hugh of Austra, his handsome face poisoned by jealousy, setting a knife to his throat; people and animals dead asleep throughout the palace grounds like so many corpses left strewn on the field after a battle; an owl skimming east; depthless waters roiled suddenly by the movement of creatures more man than fish; the Aoi woman whose blood had healed him loping at a steady pace over interminable grasslands with a filthy servant riding at her heels on a pony decked out in Quman style.