Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

“Let me in, I pray you!” he shrieked. He was obviously a local farmer, scared out of his wits and in pain. “I beg you! They spared me only so I could bring a message.”

“It’s a trick,” said Adelheid. “They want us to open the gates. They believe we will be merciful. Kill him.”

Alexandros signaled with a hand, and a dozen archers raised their bows and sighted.

“What message?” called the captain of the watch.

“Just this.” The man sobbed hoarsely, and for a moment Antonia thought he would be unable to talk, but fear goaded him. He croaked out a muddled speech. “The ones … the Lost Ones they call themselves, come home, they say. Ai, God! God have mercy! Let me in, I pray you!”

“The message!” called the captain.

“Just this. Ai, God!” A glance over his shoulder proved him terrified. He huddled on his knees and stretched his hands toward the soldiers half seen on the wall. “That one, they call her who wears the feathered cloak, she is the leader among them. She is mother to a field of blood. So we see! So we see! All my kinfolk slaughtered …” He choked on his weeping. He collapsed forward onto his hands. To the south, past the hill on which stood the stone crown, smoke rose from a dozen conflagrations as the enemy moved out across the countryside.

“Sanglant!” muttered Adelheid. “These are his allies! His kinfolk!”

“Blood calls to blood,” said Antonia. “Evil begets evil. He could never be trusted, after all.”

The farmer struggled up to his knees, looking back again as though he expected the minions of the Enemy to ride down upon him. And were they not there, in truth? The Lost Ones had been banished from Earth because they were the creatures of the Enemy, and now the allies of the Enemy had collaborated in their return.

“Let me speak!” he gasped. “Let me in, I pray you. Help me!”

“Your message,” repeated the captain. The archers had not shifted position. They were ready to loose.

“The feathered cloak sends this message. She wants peace between your kind and hers.”

A few guardsmen snickered, but most held to silence.

“She wants peace, but she comes with a demand. Peace, between you, in exchange for one person.” He trembled and coughed. He could, it seemed, barely scrounge up enough courage to go on. “The Holy Mother! She says, peace in exchange for the Holy Mother, who is a foul sorcerer and must be laid into death.” He bawled and pounded fists on the ground. “Forgive me! I pray you! I am only sent to speak the words. Help me!”

“She fears the galla,” said Adelheid. “But how comes she to know of them?” She turned to Antonia, and her frown was fearful and her bright eyes stricken with a kind of wildness. “How is Hugh of Austra still alive? You told me that he must be dead!”

“He can still be killed,” said Antonia. “Give me a prisoner, some man who deserves death. Let me raise a galla! He is so close. He cannot avoid the Abyss, not now. Not here.”

“Is this wise?” asked Alexandros. “A fearful thing, to kill a helpless man in front of the soldiers.”

Adelheid nodded. “A fearful thing, indeed. The enemy will see what we are capable of. That will make them fear us!”

Below, the farmer at the gates wept and pleaded, creeping forward to pound at the closed gates. Adelheid called one of her sergeants, and he was sent to roust a prisoner out of the dungeon. As they waited, the sun rose and slipped behind the skin of clouds running along the horizon. The light changed to a high sheen like the reflection of lamplight off pearls, something higher than the dull gray of a cloudy day but less than direct sunlight. Still, it heartened Antonia that they had been dazzled even for so short a time. Wind and time and tide must wear away the veil of clouds, just as in the end evil is ground down by the weight of God’s justice.

“What would you have us do with the messenger, Your Majesty?” asked the sergeant of the watch, sent by the captain to inquire.

“Do not open the gates,” Adelheid said.

Alexandros said, “Leave him below. Then we can see what these Lost Ones do. If they kill him. If they spare him. If they ignore him. By their action, they speak to us of their nature and their plan.”

The Lost Ones only waited, arrayed in ranks as they watched the walls and waited for a response.

The sergeant returned leading a wary, filthy prisoner, the worst sort of scum, a man with an unkempt beard and a rotten smell to him, unwashed, toothless, and pestered by flies and fleas. He’d scratched his arms raw in patches, and he could barely shuffle on bandy legs. With the butt of his spear, the sergeant forced him to his knees, and he whimpered, too weak to fight and too stupid to beg for mercy. But he was still living, and the living possessed the blood of life.