The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

Geoffrey’s smile in reply was as tight, and he did not look at Alain at all. But Alain knew he was thinking of his eldest and so far only child, Lavrentia, whom he had once believed would inherit the county of Lavas.

“Geoffrey!” cried one of the young lords from among a pack of them gathered by the stables. “You missed the best of it last night! Come, we’ll tell you!”

Geoffrey excused himself and hurried over to them, stopping only to pay his respects to King Henry, who greeted him cheerfully enough.

Alain stared and stared “Look!” he cried, pointing to a haze of dust along the river.

“It was a terrible risk, Alain,” said Lavastine suddenly. “What were you thinking to approach Prince Sanglant’s dogs in that way?”

“Poor creatures. But I wasn’t scared of them. That’s why they didn’t hurt me. If the prince would not treat them so brutally, they might have better natures.” Then he flushed, aghast at his own harsh words.

“Eika dogs do not have ‘better natures.’ Prince Sanglant has shown great mercy toward them. I would have had them killed outright. That they didn’t injure you is beyond my understanding, Son. You will not go near them again.”

“Yes, Father,” he said obediently. Then: “I see them!”

Margrave Judith’s procession came into view on the road. Her banner, a panther leaping upon an antelope, flew beside a banner marked with the Arconian guivre set between three springing roes, two above and one below, the sigil of the old royal house of Varre. Lavastine hissed in breath between his teeth and with a smile of triumph turned to Alain.

“Make ready, my child. What we have worked for will come to pass at Werlida.”

Suddenly, senses made sharp by anticipation, Alan could smell the harvest of summer’s growth, hear chickens scratching on wood, the piping call of a bullfinch, and the purl of the distant river. Far away, clouds gathered on the horizon, a dull gray that promised rain. Ardent yawned, a gape-toothed swallowing of air, and flopped down beside Bliss. Alain smelled ripe cheese and the last faint perfume of frankincense used in the morning service.

“Tallia,” he said softly, trying her name on his lips, but his throat clotted with emotion, and he could only stare as Margrave Judith’s party approached in all their glory—a sight that two years ago would have left him speechless at the splendor of their passing but which now had become commonplace. Father Hugh walked forward to kiss his mother’s hand; then Judith dismounted in her turn to greet King Henry.

Alain searched, but he could not see Tallia although he knew she must be among the group of women concealed by hoods and shawls.

Sister Rosvita and her clerics stood a few paces from him, and Alain heard their whispered comments.

“God Above! He has the face of an angel!”

“Sister Amabilia,” replied Rosvita sternly. “Do not stare so. It is unseemly.”

“‘A lily among thorns is my sweet flower among men,’” quoted the youngest of them, not without a quaver of awe in his voice.

“Brother Constantine and I are for once in agreement,” muttered Amabilia.

“Where does she find these succulent young morsels?” asked the fourth.

“Brother Fortunatus!” Rosvita scolded. Then, on a gasp, she spoke again. “Ivar! What means this?”

“God help us,” murmured Lavastine in a tone of astonishment. Alain tore his gaze away from his search for Tallia to see a blindingly handsome young man brought forward to be presented to the king. With him, like an attendant, walked another young man whose curling red-gold hair strayed out from the otherwise modest cowl of his novice’s hood. Rosvita moved forward to intercept the young men, but before she could reach them through the crowd, King Henry signaled for the march to begin. At once the courtyard fell into such a clamor and with so much dust hazing the scene that Alain had everything he could do to keep the hounds and himself next to his father.

With Margrave Judith now in the procession, Count Lavastine and Alain were relegated to the second rank behind Henry, Helmut Villam, Judith, Hugh, and Princess Sapientia. But Alain did not mind; he kept craning his neck around to try to get a glimpse of Tallia, but her group was lost to his gaze in the crowd behind.

It took until the afternoon to reach Werlida, a magnificent palace set on a bluff overlooking a broad bend in the river. They wound up a road from the river bottom and past a berm and a palisade wall into the lower enclosure. Here most of the wagons rumbled to a halt, scattering out among a village made up of sunken pit-houses for quartering servants and craftsmen, four large weaving halls, and a half dozen timber-post granaries. Alain caught the dusty scent of old grain stored in sacks and pots, then they moved out of range, upward through gateways with no less than three ramparts with ditches cut away on their outer slopes. From the height of the upper enclosure, he saw the river at the steep base of the bluff below. It curved around on three sides. Fields lay scattered among copses of woodland, and beyond them spread forest.