The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

“I haven’t been up here much,” said Heribert, poking around.

“Ah! Liath’s scribbling.” He displayed a parchment covered with diagrams and equations, then set it aside to pick up an old, cracked leather sole, turning it over to see if he could find a craftsman’s mark. He had Blessing tucked into one elbow. She, too, had fallen asleep, and Sanglant took her and settled her tenderly in the crook of Liath’s elbow. Liath murmured something, shifting position to pillow the baby against her. With her eyes shut and her lips brushing Blessing’s thick black hair, you could almost see a resemblance, but the baby’s face was still too unformed.

“Liath’s stronger,” said Heribert softly, glancing back to make sure that Jerna hadn’t followed them inside. “How much longer will you keep her innocent of that which you’ve discovered?”

“Lord help me, Brother, but I’ve only confided in you because I can’t stand not to talk!” He grinned to take the sting out of the words. “But as long as we have no way free of this place, and she’s still this weak, I choose this way of protecting her. Even if it makes me no better than Sister Anne.”

Heribert grunted good-naturedly. “A damning comparison, my friend. Yet if she doesn’t know the secret of the stones, then how can we run?”

“I would think that if I were them, then that would be the last thing I would teach her. It’s an odd thing in her, that she’s wise in some ways and so ignorant in others.”

“I don’t suppose everyone has had your wide experience of life, my lord prince.”

He said it jestingly, but Sanglant shuddered. “Nor would I wish it on them.”

“Hush,” said Heribert, echoing Sanglant’s own admonition to Liath, and for an instant Sanglant thought the cleric was comforting him. Then, looking at the cant of his head, he realized Heribert was listening.

Jerna was singing. But it wasn’t a song, it wasn’t even really a tune but more like the brook’s voice.

He slipped outside, Heribert right behind him.

He didn’t see her at first, only water slipping over the huge wall of boulders that blocked one edge of the meadow. Heribert tugged on his sleeve and drew him forward, pointing, face flushed and sweating with excitement.

She was singing her way into the rock fall, not gouging a path but opening one that had lain closed and invisible where the brook cut down through the rock.

He waited only long enough to stake down the dog on a long lead by the cottage door before he followed her into the rock fall. Heribert dogged him, clipping his heels once, once grasping at his salamander sword belt when he slipped on a slope of pebbles. But the path was obvious and clearly marked, once you knew you were on it, winding up beside the brook through a spill of boulders as big as cottages and skirting the edge of ragged cliff faces until it speared up a narrow defile and ended on a ledge that looked down into another place. Jerna would come no farther than the last tumble of stones, but Sanglant walked all the way out until the wheel-rutted path turned into a thin trail more like a goat’s path. He didn’t see any goats although two little gray birds flitted along a nearby rock face, probing in crevices with their slender bills. It was almost a different season here: snow still covered half the hillside although here and there, on the sunniest slopes, gorse bloomed. He took a few steps farther on, kicking snow off the path, and came to rest on an outcropping from which he could view the vista beyond.

Below, a road wound through a steep-sided pass bounded by cliffs and shadowed by three monumentally high peaks that gleamed in the sun. Mist shrouded the highest peak, but the others rose stark and clear against the blue vault of sky, so white that their glare hurt his eyes.

“God preserve us,” whispered Heribert, coming up beside him. “This is St. Barnaria’s Pass.”

“The Alfar Mountains!” breathed Sanglant. “I’ve never seen them except their foothills in the north. I’ve never ridden them, though I’ve heard tales.” He was astounded by the high peaks. He had seen them before, of course, from Verna: one had a distinctive crook, as though the summit had slipped slightly to one side. But from this angle, they seemed just so much more massive, and he hadn’t before appreciated the vast sheer face of the big middle mountain plunging down to the steep defile that cut into the land below, marking a pass. The road struck straight through the pass, engineered out of stone. Farther along, partially hidden by the thrusting shoulder of a ridge, he saw a cluster of buildings that resembled a monastery and was probably some kind of traveler’s hostel.