Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (4 page)

But now, as the late summer twilight overtook her, the wind began to blow, and for some reason she couldn't shake the feeling that something was following her. She glanced back along the road, but it lay empty.

Never trust the appearance of emptiness.

Clouds brought an early dusk, and she unrolled her cloak and threw it over her shoulders as rain spattered down. Because the summer had been dry, the road did not churn instantly to mud, but even so, the way bogged down and she soon despaired of reaching any kind of shelter for the night.

God knew she did not want to sleep outside on a night o storm and rain, far from any human habitation.

The rain slackened. From ahead, she heard a faint jingling ofj harness, and for an instant she breathed easier. She had no fear! of lawful riders on the king's road.

For an instant.

Out of the darkening sky behind her, she heard a low reverberation, a tolling like that of a church bell. But she had passed no church since midday.

Was that sound the echo of a daimone's passing? Did such a creature pursue her again? She glanced back but saw no hollow-eyed daimone formed into the fair semblance of an angel gliding above the earth, saw no glass-feathered wings. Yet as the rising wind buffeted her, she felt a whisper:
"Liathano."

The air shuddered and rippled on the road far behind her, just where it hooked to the right around a bulge in the forest's girth, Columns of mist rose into the air like great tree trunks uprooted from the forest and spun into gauze.

Surely it was only a trick of the light. But claws seemed to sink into her, into her shoulders and deeper yet, right down to her heart, and those claws clutched at her, tugging her back toward the tolling bells. Why not just wait? Why not just slow! down and wait?

"Come to me, Liathano. Do not run any longer. Only wait for us, and you will find peace."

Her horse snorted nervously and flattened its ears.

"Waitfor us. Come to us."

She hesitated.

"Run, "
Da would answer.
"Run, Liath. "

The compulsion to wait slid from her like rainwater off a good roof. With fear and anger fueling her, she urged her mount forward. It eagerly broke into a canter. She glanced back, and her heart almost died within her. Creatures formed like columns of living oily smoke streamed along the road, chasing her. They; had voices, a rustling murmur like countless leaves stirred in a gale, underscored by that terrible dull tolling bell-voice. Thai they were living creatures she did not doubt.

And they were gaining on her.

She freed her bow from its quiver, readied an arrow. On the wind she smelled a hot stench like that of the forge. Her ho: bolted, and she let it run while she turned in the saddle and, drawing, measured the distance between her and her pursuers. She loosed, but the arrow fell harmlessly onto empty road.

The shout came as warning. "Hey, there! Look where you're going!"

Ahead, in the dimness, she saw a small party: two riders and an escort of four men-at-arms. A minor lord, perhaps, or a steward about the business of his lady: She did not recognize the sigil of a deer's head on white that marked the shields. They swung wide to make room for her headlong flight.

But as she drew breath to shout a warning to them in turn, light flashed to her right, and beyond the road where the ground swelled up to make a neat little tumulus, fire flashed and beckoned from a shadowy ring of standing stones.

An owl glided past, so close that her horse shied away right-ward, breaking off the road. She needed no more urging than that. With her bow in one hand and the reins in the other, she let the horse have its head. It jumped a low ditch to reach the grassy slope that marked the tumulus. From the road, men shouted after her.

A moment later she heard screaming.

The horse took the slope with the speed of a creature fleeing fire, and yet it was fire that greeted them in the center of the tiny stone circle: seven small stones, two of them fallen, one listing. And in the center stood an eighth stone as tall as a man of middling height; it burned with a blue-white fire that gave off no heat.

The shrieking from the road turned into garbled noises that no human ought to be able to utter. She dared not look behind. Ahead, the owl settled with uncanny grace onto the top of , and the horse leaped—

She shouted with surprise as blue-white flame flared all around her. Her horse landed, shied sideways, and stopped.

With reins held taut and the horse quiet under her, Liath stared around the clearing: beaten earth, a layer of yellowing scrub brush, and thin forest cover made up of small-leafed oak as well as trees she had never seen before. But her voice failed her when the man sitting on a rock rose to examine her with interest. Not a human man, by any measure: with his bronze-tinted skin and beardless face and his person decorated with all manner of beads and feathers and shells and polished stones, he was of another kinship entirely. Humans named his kind Aoi, "the Lost Ones,"
the ancient elvish kin who had long sinced vanished from thecities and paths trodden by humanity.

But she knew him, and he knew her.

"You have come," he said. "Sooner than I expected. You must) hide until the procession has passed, or I cannot speak for what judgment the council will pass on you and your presence here. Come now, dismount and give me the horse."

He looked no different than in the vision seen through fire,! although he was smaller in stature than she expected. The feathers with which he decorated himself shone as boldly as if they had been painted. The flax rope at his thigh was perhaps a finger longer than when she had last seen him, weeks—or was it months?—ago. A tremulous moan sounded from the depths of| the forest, and a moment later she recognized it as a horn call.j She shaded her eyes, and there along a distant path seen dimly under shadows she saw a procession winding through the trees. At the head of the procession, a brilliant wheel of beaten gold and iridescent green plumes spun, although no wind blew.

"How did I come here?" she asked hoarsely. "The creatures were chasing me, and then I saw an owl. . . and ." She turned in the saddle to see the stone still blazing, blue-white and cold. No owl flew.

"An owl," he mused, fingering a proud feather of mottled! brown and white, one dull plume among the many bright ones that trimmed his forearm sheath. He smiled briefly, if not kindly.
"My
old enemy."

"Then the horse leaped, and I was here," she finished haltingly. She felt like a twig borne down a flooding stream. Too much was happening at once.

"Ah." He displayed the rope and the fiber he twined to create it. "Out of one thing, we make another, even if there is no change or addition of substance. Sometimes it is the pattern that matters most. These strands of flax, alone, cannot support me: or aid me as this rope can, and yet are they not both the same; thing?"

"I don't understand what you're saying."

" is a gateway between the worlds. All of the stones are gateways, as we learned to our sorrow, but this one was not fashioned by means of mortal magics but rather is part of the fabric of the universe. To use it, one must understand it."

"I don't know anything," she said bitterly. "So much was kept hidden from me."

"Much is hidden," he agreed. "Yet nevertheless you have come to me. If you are willing, I sense there is a great deal you can learn."

"Ai, God. There's so much I need to know." Yet she hesitated. "But how long will it take? To learn everything I need to know?"

He chuckled. "That depends on what you think you need to know." But his expression became serious. "Once you have decided that, then it will take as long as it must." He glanced toward the procession in the forest, still mostly hidden from them in their small clearing. "But if you mean to ask how long will it take in the world of humankind, that I cannot answer. The measure of days and years moves differently here than there."

"Ai, Lady!" She glanced at the stone. The fire had begun to flicker down, dying.

"Why do you hesitate?" he pressed her. "Was this not the wish of your heart?"

"The wish of my heart." Her voice died on the words as she said them. Of course she must study. It was the only way to protect herself. She wanted the knowledge so badly. She might never have this chance again.

And yet—she could not help but look back.

"You are still bound to the other world," he said, not dismayed, not irritated, not cheerful. Simply stating what was true. "Give me your hand."

He was not a person one disobeyed. She sheathed her bow and held out a hand, then grunted with surprise and pain as he cut her palm with an obsidian knife. But she held steady as blood welled up, as he cut his hands in a similar fashion and clasped one to hers so their blood flowed together. His free hand he pressed against the stone. Fire flared, so bright she flinched away from it, and her horse whickered nervously and shied. But the old sorcerer's grip remained firm.

"Come with me," he said. "What has bound you to the world of human kin?"

The fire opened, and together they saw within.

When he sprawls in the grass under the glorious heat of the sun, he can hear everything and nothing. He shuts his eyes, tk better to listen.

A bee drones. A bird's repetitive whistle sounds from the treei His horse grazes at the edge of the clearing, well out of
"I made him a promise." As the vision faded, its passing throbbed in her like a new pain.

She knew better, she knew what she ought to do, what Da her to do. But none of that mattered. For a year she
of his other companions: three Eika dogs in iron collars
and
iron chains bound to an iron stake he has hammered into ground. Bones crack under their jaws as they feed. These th are all that remain to him of the beasts who formed his warband in Gent's cathedral. He hears their chains scraping each
she sounded.
on the others as the dogs growl over the tastiest bits of marrow He merly
let go of her hand and regarded her. He had no
A stream gurgles and chuckles beyond them: he has washel
expression on his face except the quiescence of great age. "It is
there, although he will never truly wash the filth and the shame ever such
with those who are young. But I do not believe your
of Bloodheart's chains off himself no matter how often he spills, water over his skin and cleanses himself with soap or sand m oil. Now he lies half-clothed in the sun to dry in merciful solil tude.

Of human activity he hears nothing. He has fled the captive ity of the king's court and found this clearing next to the tram, that leads northwest
—
in that direction
she
rode off on the king's^ errand eight days ago. Here, now, he relishes his freedom', bathing in sun and wind and the feel of good mellow earth and, grass beneath his back A fly lands on his face and he brushes it away without opening his eyes. The heat melts pleasantly into his skin. Where his other hand lies splayed in the grass he has tossed down th square leather pouch, stiffened with metal plates and trimmed. with ivory and gems, in which he shelters the book. He feels its
sparks when her shoulder brushed
weight just beyond his fingertips, although he does not need tii

touch it to know that it is still there, and what it means to him

a promise.
He keeps it always with him or, when he hunts on bathes, ties it to the collar of one of the dogs. The dogs are the,only ones among his new retinue he can trust.

Wind rustles in leaves, indifferent whispers so unlike the ones that follow his every movement among the courtiers
—
the one they think he can't near.

had thought him dead.

"I have to go back." Then, hearing the words as if someone else had spoken them, she hurried on. "I'll come back to you. I swear it. I just have to go back—" She trailed off. She knew young. But do not believe your path will be a smooth one."

"Then I
can
come back?" Now that she had made the choice, she regretted having to go. But not so much that she could bring herself to stay.

"I cannot see into the future. Go, then."

"But there are creatures pursuing me—

"So many mysteries. So much movement afoot. You must make your choice—there, or here. The gateway is closing."

The flames flickered lower until they rippled like a sheen of water trembling along the surface of the stone. If she waited too long, the choice would be made for her.

She reined the horse around and slapped its rump with the trailing end of her reins. It bolted forward, light surged, and her sight was still hazed with dancing spots and black dots and bright
Each day of the king's progress unfurls, flowers, and fades as in a haze. He waits.