The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

“I’ve heard the tale of Desideria. I’ve heard the glorious Life of Taillefer sung in court. In all those stories the poets lament the terrible fate of Hiltrude’s two sons. But never have I heard them speak of other legitimate male children. His third wife had no children, so the poets say, and the fourth had only one daughter. But I’ve always wondered about St. Radegundis.”

“What is it you wonder?”

He took a long look at the congealing stew, as if trying to decide whether to bolt it down right now or to be polite. After a moment, manners won out over hunger, and he merely toyed with the spoon’s handle as he answered. “All the stories agree that Queen Radegundis was great with child when she knelt for hours beside Taillefer’s sickbed and prayed for his release. But no story that I’ve ever heard relates what happened to the child she carried. She enters the convent, and there she lives her saintly life. Surely someone would have remarked on the fate of the last child born to Taillefer.”

Anne regarded him with maddening tranquillity. “I do not speak aloud of everything I have learned or that I suspect. That would be foolish, and especially here, on the road, where all manner of creatures might overhear us.”

Abruptly, Sanglant laughed and began to eat his stew.

“Pray excuse me.” Liath went outside. She paced along the side of the old hut down to the sagging double doors that marked the entrance to the lean-to. They had used it as a stable, and she heard from inside the snuffling of the Eika dog and the soft noise of the horses at rest. She leaned there, shut her eyes, and breathed.

Ai, Lady! She did not regret coming with her mother. They’d had no alternative in any case. But it was so hard to understand her. Understanding was like a gulf of air she had to leap, but she didn’t know how—and she wasn’t sure she liked the lay of the land she glimpsed on the other side, where she was meant to go.

A thread brushed her cheek, and she started up to see one of the servants hovering in front of her, exploring her face with its translucent fingers. It skittered away like a leaf and came to rest in the shadow of the trees, a thread of light with a vaguely male shape, nothing she could pinpoint to distinguish it from the other servants except that the other two seemed vaguely female.

“Liath.” Sanglant approached out of the night, and she hugged him, hard. This, she understood: that he was solid, and present. Her shield.

“It makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?” he said into her hair.

“What makes you wonder?” She could have stood here forever and remained content, but he was restless. He was always restless, could never quite be still, even in sleep, like a dog aware of a threatening scent in the air.

He touched his neck, the old habit. Both scars—the chafing left by Bloodheart’s iron slave collar and the cut left by Hugh’s knife—had healed to leave a band of lighter skin and a thread of white, a neck ring of scar tissue. But then, strangely, he curved a palm around her neck, the pressure of his thumb at her throat.

“Why does your mother wear a gold torque?”

VII

INSTANTIA

1

THE rats came out at night to gnaw at the bones. He heard their claws skittering on stone, heard the dogs growling as they crept close enough to clamp their jaws down over his throat, and he bolted up—

Awake.

He was sitting, arms raised to strike, as out of breath as if he’d been fighting. The bed of leaves he’d laid down yesterday at twilight shifted under him. Stars glittered above. The Eika dog whined softly. Liath stirred, murmuring his name.

“Hush,” he said softly. “Go back to sleep.”

She tugged the blanket over her hips, pillowed her cheek on an arm, and was out, that quickly. He knew he would not sleep again.

“Ai, God,” he whispered. “Lord protect me from my dreams.”

He eased away so as not to wake her. He did not bother to pull on his tunic, but he grabbed his sword belt. A hazy night stillness lay over everything except for the faint rustling of wind in leaves, not enough to dispel the weight of summer’s heat. Nearby he heard the chuckling stream at which they’d watered their horses that evening. This night they had camped in woodland just off the old Dariyan road they followed southeast into lands more wilderness than cultivated. This night no intact Dariyan way house had appeared at the expected mile marker, only a ruin torn apart long ago by scavengers. The servants had lashed branches together to make a small shelter for Sister Anne, but Sanglant was used to harsher conditions than these from campaigns. He was happy to collect leaves and, with the dragon sigil quilt thrown over all and a blanket atop, make a bed of them on the ground by the fallen way-house wall.