Crown of Stars

“Li’at’dano? The centaur shaman? I did not.”

Sorgatani’s shoulders shook as she fought off another convulsion of grief. “Neither did I. I sense in my heart that she is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Dead. Devoured. Gone utterly.”

Hanna choked, finding no words. She pressed her hands into the thick carpet to steady herself. The air lay cold within the chamber. A curl of smoke from the altar fire spun upward and out the smoke hole into the hazy gray sameness of the Other Side, a place Hanna could never walk but which all Kerayit shamans had visited in their spirit trance—or so Breschius had told her. Sorgatani never spoke of it.

“I am cold,” said Sorgatani.

Hanna sat beside her on the bed and held her. Although they sat this way for a long time, and night passed, Sorgatani did not sleep.

In the morning, stepping outside, Hanna covered her eyes against the brightness. The clouds seemed higher and thinner and whiter than before.

“I believe the sun will break through,” said Rosvita, coming up beside her. They watched as horses and wagons were made ready in the courtyard of Goslar. The nuns of St. Valeria mustered under the cold eye of Sister Acella, who had laid a vow of silence on every sister under her command in protest of their removal from the convent. Lions waited patiently in marching order. Sergeant Ingo signaled to Rosvita that his troops were ready to go.

Servants loaded provisions, and the steward handed a cache of medicinal herbs to Sister Diocletia. The wagon holding Mother Obligatia had been repaired and refitted. It now held two pallets stretched lengthwise, one for the old abbess and the other for Captain Thiadbold, who was feverish and weak, sometimes delirious, but still among the living.

Rosvita sighed as the horses were led out of the stables. “In another time, we would send you ahead with the news of our coming. But any traveler alone on the road is not safe.”

“It was never safe for Eagles,” said Hanna.

“Less so now. It is those darts I fear. As you must, Eagle.”

“As I do,” murmured Hanna, looking toward Thiadbold. His eyes were shut. Sister Diocletia had shaved off his red hair to reduce lice and fleas whose presence might pester him to distraction as he healed. If he healed.

“Be patient,” said Rosvita.

“I’m a coward, Sister,” said Hanna. “I fear to be the one who must tell Prince Sanglant this news.”

“Do not fear.” Rosvita’s smile had a hard edge. “I will tell him what has passed on our journey. It is my duty and my right. There is a great deal he must know. I have a good many questions as well.” Like Liath before her, like Hugh of Austra, Rosvita carried The Book of Secrets everywhere she went. She held it now in a leather case slung across her back.

“The steward here says that Mother Scholastica anointed and crowned him, but now regrets that she acted.”

“It is difficult to know what to think,” agreed Rosvita. “Yet we have such treasures in our possession! This book compiled by Bernard of Bodfeld. The Vita of St. Radegundis. A copy of the chronicle of St. Ekatarina’s Convent. Annals from St. Valeria’s.”

“Books of sorcery!”

“Those, too.”

“And your history, that the others speak of.”

“A small thing, compared to the rest, although naturally I am pleased it survived the storm. There is truth to be found in these books. I know it in my heart. Yet what if the truth is a truth we do not want to hear?” Her expression darkened as she glanced up at the sky. When she looked back at Hanna, her gaze was so stern that Hanna took a step back.

“What could be wrong with the truth?”

Rosvita shook her head and, without replying, touched Hanna on the elbow and went to find her mount.

4

IN the Heart-of-the-World’s-Beginning coils a labyrinth as intricate and bewildering as the configuration of the human heart. Down deep, and deeper yet, the stairs descend. To find answers, or release from its prison, the questing soul must plunge into what seems all that is darkest but which is in fact a world of its own far below the outer world of light and air.

It was not her world, the land she knew well, nor yet was it the world of the upper spheres, where she had briefly journeyed and glimpsed her soul’s true home. Here beneath the weight of the earth lay a fastness whose existence she had never truly suspected.

At the base of the stairs she found herself in a circular chamber whose polished walls bore a strange manner of ornamentation: they were carved and jabbed with tiny ridges and holes detectable most easily by touch. Eight corridors opened off at even angles; one looked the same as another, all of them smoothly paved and wide enough that four horsemen might ride abreast in procession and still have room to clear their heads and have a groom walk alongside.