The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

Who had done this?

“Stop, friends!” Ermanrich was saying behind him. “Gather ’round! I can tell you of this mystery, which has been hidden from you. Here is the truth! Listen!”

Ivar began to turn round, to silence him—and bumped into a girl of perhaps twelve years of age. She was stout, well-formed, with the golden-blonde hair common to these parts and a peculiar cast of skin, a kind of reddish, nutty brown. She grabbed his elbow and looked him right in the eye, as if trying to see into his heart. Dirt smeared her chin but she was otherwise clean. A well-polished wooden Circle of Unity hung at her chest.

“What is it, child?” he asked, in the way of fraters. She tugged on his elbow, then signed, “Come,” in the sign language used by churchfolk. Ermanrich was well launched into a sermon, and townspeople gathered to listen, some with interest, some with scorn, some no doubt because they had nothing better to do.

The girl pulled at him again, and signed again.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

She didn’t reply, but she pointed at the pictures and made stroking movements, as with a brush. Abandoning Ermanrich, he followed her.

She walked quickly, ducking into an alley. A stray dog nosed through trash. A broken pot had been abandoned in a shadowed corner under overhanging eaves. They emerged onto a street and walked alongside the wall of the palace compound from whence Lord Wichman lorded it over the town; he had topped the walls with bright banners, red and gold, black and silver, that fluttered in a wind off the river. The girl tugged on Ivar’s hand, and they cut through a courtyard where a dye-pot bubbled over an open fire and a delicately-formed girl-child of some four years played with a doll sewn out of scraps of cloth. She looked up and babbled meaningless syllables at them, but Ivar’s companion only made the sign of “silence” toward the girl before pulling him on. Beyond well and cistern stood a small door; Ivar had to duck his head to avoid hitting it. They came into an alley made dark by houses built out over the narrow lane until they almost touched walls above. Rounding a corner, he blinked away the sunlight.

There, alongside a freshly plastered compound wall, a crowd of about fifteen people had assembled to stare. The girl tugged him forward, and when the townsfolk saw that she came attended by a frater, they stood aside to let Ivar through.

Beyond them, working feverishly, a slight, robed figure drew figures on the wall and filled them in with dyes: pollen gold, willow purple, cornflower blue, juniper brown. The blessed Daisan, released from the mortal clothing of his skin, rises to the Chamber of Light to rejoin his Holy Mother. His disciplas, below, weep tears of joy—

The painter turned to dab at a pot of ink, and Ivar saw his face.

“Sigfrid!”

He jerked up, spilling the pot, turned full to face his accuser. His thin face looked sweetly familiar, but there was something wrong with the set of his jaw.

“Ai, God! Sigfrid! What are you doing here?” Ivar leaped forward and grasped him by the arms, then hugged him. “How did you come to leave Quedlinhame?”

Sigfrid wept a few tears. His gentle face shone with joy as he embraced Ivar in his turn. Then, with ink-stained hands, he pointed to his feet and signed, “Walk.” His feet, like Ermanrich’s were sore-ridden, callused, and filthy.

“We were there, Sigfrid, at the death of Queen Mathilda. Baldwin and I were in hiding because we ran away from Margrave Judith, and we escaped with Prince Ekkehard, but we couldn’t stay in Quedlinhame Convent with the prince because we thought they might recognize us, but we went to the church anyway and we heard you, we heard you jump up and start preaching. They dragged you away. Did they throw you out? How did you come to be here?”

Sigfrid didn’t answer. That supple, sharp mouth merely smiled softly, betraying the intelligence that lit his being. Sigfrid was alive in a way the rest of them weren’t. Once he believed, he believed with all of him, every particle. Ivar saw it shining from his face, and for an instant he was seized by the ugly claws of jealousy: Why should Sigfrid be granted such certainty while he spun in this agony of doubt?

But wasn’t that only the voice of the Enemy, seeking to make him hate his friend?

He grabbed him by the shoulders. “Sigfrid, speak to me.”

Sigfrid indicated the wall, and his hands and then opened his mouth.

They had cut out his tongue.

“God’s mercy!” cried Ivar. “Who did this to you? Was it bandits on the road?” Sigfrid shook his head, all the time regarding Ivar with an expression brimming with unspilled joy.

Ivar felt his breath coming in gasps as the awful truth dawned. “They did this to you at Quedlinhame?”