The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

Gold flashes, and the young princess steps forward. “I have found it at last,” she says. “My luck was born into this woman.”

“Ah,” says the old woman, the exclamation like the rasping of crickets. There is another noise from outside, a keening moan that sends shudders down Hanna’s back, and Hanna thinks that probably they aren’t in camp anymore, they have gone somewhere far away where dangerous creatures stalk the night grass because it is in the nature of dreams that one may travel quickly a long distance without moving.

“Ah,” repeats the old woman. “She will come with us, then.”

“No. She will not come with me yet. She must find the man who will become my pura, and then she will return to me, with him.”

The young princess turns to look at Hanna, and Hanna thinks maybe she can see through the dark irises of those beautiful almond eyes all the way back to the land where the Kerayits live and roam, among grass so tall that a man on horseback can’t see over it, where griffins stalk the unwary and dragons guard the borders of a vast and terrible desert strewn with grains of gold and silver. There waits a woman in that place, not a true woman but a creature who is woman from the waist up and from the waist below has the body and elegant strength of a mare. She is a shaman of great power and immense age, with her face painted in stripes of green and gold and an owl perched on her wrist. She draws her bow and looses an arrow spun of starlight. Its path arcs impossibly through the North Star, and with a high chime it pierces the heart of the young princess, who gasps and falls to her knees, a hand clasped to her breast.

Hanna leaps up at once to aid her, but as soon as she touches the young woman, she feels the sting of the arrow in her own breast, as though a wasp has been trapped inside her. It hurts.

She woke up suddenly as a hand touched her, brushing her breast. She sat up fast, and hit heads with the man who bent over her. Then her eyes adjusted to the graying light that presages dawn.

“Your Highness!” she exclaimed, scooting backward as quickly as she could.

Prince Bayan smiled charmingly as he rubbed his forehead. He wore his rumpled trousers, but nothing else, revealing much of his strong, attractive body. She smelled wine on his breath. “Pretty snow maiden,” he said winningly, without threat.

“Bayan!” Sapientia appeared at the entrance to the pavilion, clad only in a shift.

“She is awake!” cried Bayan enthusiastically. He staggered back inside and, after an annoyed glance at Hanna, Sapientia followed him.

Several of the servingwomen had woken and now hastened in to assist their mistress. They came out moments later, giggling, carrying the chamber pot, and Hanna felt it prudent to go with them down to the river. They washed among the rocks, finding safety in numbers, but in any case with the morning the carousing had died down, and about half of the soldiers seemed to be sleeping it off in a stupor while the other half had returned to the battlefield. When they returned to the tent, Brother Breschius asked Hanna to accompany him, and she did so reluctantly, only because she liked the old priest. In the hard glare of morning, the battleground was an ugly sight: vultures and scavengers had to be driven away, and the bodies were beginning to smell. More and more soldiers arrived to loot the enemy, but Hanna couldn’t bear to touch them even when she saw a good iron knife stuck in the belt of one dead man. He, like the others, wore slung at his belt one of those ghastly tiny human heads.

A burial detail was organized. Wendish soldiers dug mass graves, stripped the bodies, and rolled them in as Brother Breschius blessed each dead soul. But what the Ungrians did to their own honored dead was hardly less awful than the disregard with which they looted the enemy. Every corpse of their own kin was mutilated before being buried: a finger cut off, a tooth pried out of the jaw, and a hank of hair hacked off. These treasures were carefully wrapped up and given to certain soldiers, who carried them away together with the salvaged armor and weapons.

“Why do they do that?” Hanna asked finally as she and Breschius returned to camp. “Aren’t they given a proper burial and laid to rest as is fitting?”

“Oh, yes, as you saw. But they also believe that some portion of the spirit resides after death in the body, and each year at midwinter they burn the remains of their relatives in a bonfire. They believe that in this way the spirits of all those who died in the previous year are sealed away into the otherworld so that they can’t come back and cause mischief in this world.”

“But don’t they believe that their souls ascend to the Chamber of Light? How can they worship God if they don’t believe that?”