Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“It’s the same story he’s been telling every night,” whispered Folquin. A dozen or more Lions had come to stand here as well, positioned out of the smoke that streamed south-east from the fires. Those nearest turned irritably and told him to be quiet so that they could hear.

Prince Ekkehard was an attractive youth, still caught on that twilight cusp between boy and man. With his right arm up in a sling and his hair blown astray by the cold wind, he made an appealing sight. Most importantly, he had a bard’s voice, able to make the most unlikely story sound so believable that you might well begin to swear you’d seen it yourself. He had his audience enraptured as he came to the end of his tale.

“The mound of ashes and coals gleamed like a forge, and truly it was a forge for God’s miracles. It opened as a flower does, with the dawn. Out of the ashes the phoenix rose. Nay, truly, for I saw it with my own eyes. The phoenix rose into the dawn. Flowers showered down around us. But their petals vanished as soon as they touched the earth. Isn’t that how it is with those who refuse to believe? For them, the trail of flowers is illusory rather than real. But I believe, because I saw the phoenix. I, who was injured, was healed utterly by the miracle. For you see, as the phoenix rose, it gave forth a great trumpeting call even as far as the heavens, and we heard it answered. Then we knew what it was.”

“What was it?” demanded Lady Bertha, so intent on his story that she hadn’t taken a single draught of mead, although she did have a disconcerting habit of stroking her sword hilt as though it were her lover.

Ekkehard smiled sweetly, and Hanna felt a cold shudder in her heart at the single-minded intensity of his gaze as he surveyed his listeners. “It was the sign of the blessed Daisan, who rose from death to become Life for us all.”

Many in his audience murmured nervously.

“Ivar’s heresy,” Hanna muttered.

“Didn’t the skopos excommunicate the entire Arethousan nation and all their vassal states for believing in the Redemption?” demanded Lady Bertha. “My mother, God rest her, had a physician who came from Arethousa. Poor fellow lost his balls as a lad in the emperor’s palace in Arethousa, for it’s well known they like eunuchs there, and he came close to losing his head here in Wendar for professing the Arethousan heresy. It’s a pleasing story you tell, Prince Ekkehard, but I’ve taken a liking to my head and would prefer to keep it on my own shoulders, not decorating a spike outside the biscop’s palace in Handelburg.”

“To deny what I saw would be worse than lying,” said Ekkehard. “Nor is it only those of us who saw the miracle of the phoenix who have had our eyes opened to the truth. Others have heard and understood the true word, if they have courage enough to stand up and bear witness.”

“Are there, truly?” Lady Bertha looked ever more interested as she swept her gaze around her circle of intimates. After a moment, she settled on a young lord, one Dietrich. Hanna recalled well how much trouble he’d caused on the early part of their journey east from Autun last summer, when she’d been sent by the king with two cohorts of Lions and a ragtag assortment of other fighters as reinforcements for Sapientia. But at some point on the journey he had changed his ways, a puzzling change of heart that hadn’t seemed quite so startling then as it did at this moment.

Slowly, Lord Dietrich rose. For a hulking fighting man he seemed unaccountably diffident. “I have witnessed God’s work on this Earth,” he said hesitantly, as though he didn’t trust his own tongue. “I’m no bard, to speak fine words about it and make it sound pretty and pleasing. I’ve heard the teaching. I know it’s true in my heart for I saw—” Amazingly, he began to weep tears of ecstatic joy. “I saw God’s holy light shining here on Earth. I sinned against the one who became my teacher. I was an empty shell, no better than a rotting corpse. Lust had eaten out my heart so I walked mindlessly from one day to the next. But God’s light filled me up again. I was given a last chance to choose in which camp I would muster, whether I would chose God or the Enemy. That was when I discovered the truth of the blessed Daisan’s sacrifice and redemption—”

Hanna grabbed Folquin’s arm and dragged him away. “I’ve heard enough. That’s a wicked heresy.”

The light of many fires gave Folquin’s expression a fitful inconstancy. “You don’t think it might be true? How else can you explain a phoenix? And the miracle, that all their hurts were healed?”

“I’ll admit that something happened to change Lord Dietrich’s ways, for I remember how you Lions complained of him on the march east this summer. Is it this kind of talk that people are fighting over?”