The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

With the candle gone, night shuttered the chamber in layers of shadow. Silence settled like so many owls coming to roost in the eaves.

Liath began to cry, and then to hiccup as she cried. Pain cut into her throat like a rope burn, winching tighter. Her shoulder hurt; her ribs ached; on her left hip a bruise throbbed painfully. Sanglant gave a soft sleeping snort and shifted on the bed.

“The book!” she said again, her voice made harsh by Hugh’s grip.

The figure moved to the bed. “He will not find a mathematicus to train him in its use, unless he comes to us.”

A light appeared suddenly from her upraised palm, a gently glowing globe lined with silver. She held it over the bed and its sheen of light illuminated the sleeping Sanglant—and the line of blood that traced the curve of his throat. With a casual gesture, she tipped back her cowl and veil so that the fabric draped along her shoulders rather like a small creature curled there.

She had pale hair drawn back into a braid that, curled into a bun, nestled at the back of her head. She wore no other head covering, and the shapeless robes concealed all else. From this angle, Liath could not see her face, only an ear and the suggestion of a strong profile, neither young nor old.

The woman bent forward and with the light held before her examined Sanglant with great interest. She touched his knees. She lifted each hand in turn to scrutinize palm and fingers before letting it fall limply back on the bed. She traced the swell of bone in his cheeks, parted his lips to study his teeth, and clasped his shoulders as if to gauge their strength. She pressed a hand on the old scar at the base of his throat, the visible mark of the wound that had ruined his voice, rubbed softly at the fresh raw wound only now beginning to heal, the mark of Bloodheart’s iron collar, and then ran a finger along the shallow cut made by Hugh’s knife to collect and taste his blood. Indeed, she behaved very like a noble lady who prefers to personally examine the fine stallion in question before she buys it to breed into her herd.

“So this is Sanglant,” she said in a tone of detached curiosity.

The name, uttered so dispassionately and yet with such a sense of ancient and hoarded knowledge, startled Liath into speaking. “Do you know him?”

“No mathematicus who studies the geometry of the heavens, who is aware of that which exists beyond human ken, is unaware of him. Even the daimones of the upper air whisper of his progress from child to youth to man.”

“Who are you?” Liath whispered. Her hands tingled sharply as blood flooded back into them. She tried to stand, but her knees gave out. She ached everywhere.

“Those in Duke Conrad’s party know me as Sister Anne from St. Valeria Convent.” She displayed a pleasant smile that by no means touched her eyes. She had an ageless face, hair made paler by the silvery light of the globe that hovered at her fingertips, and, most astonishingly, a torque nestled around her neck, braided gold that glittered in the magelight with each end twisted off into a nub that an unknown master craftsman had formed into a face resembling nothing as much as an angel resting in beatific ecstasy.

“You aren’t Sister Anne,” Liath blurted out. “I saw her. She was small, and old, and had wrinkled hands covered with age spots, and different eyes, brown eyes.”

“How can you have seen Sister Anne? Did you bide at St. Valeria Convent for a time?”

Liath hesitated, then realized how foolish it was to fear her. If this woman could turn aside Hugh’s spells so easily, then whatever she meant to do to Liath would be done whether or not Liath fought against it. “I saw her in a vision through fire.”

She smiled at this, looking truly pleased this time—no longer a mask. She lifted her arm slightly to let the globe better illuminate her face. “Don’t you know who I am, Liath?”

The globe pulsed with light. Liath struggled to her feet. She had a terrible bruise forming in her right thigh where Hugh had jammed his knee into it, and her shins throbbed where he had kicked her. The silvery gleam grew stronger, the globe spit white sparks, and suddenly the sparks blossomed into butterflies, flitting everywhere, winged light like glass flying off all around the room so that every corner became a field of splintering, swooping light. As with a breath breathed onto them from an unseen source, each white spark bloomed into color: ruby, carnelian, amber, citrine, emerald, lapis lazuli, and amethyst, stars fallen to earth and caught within this chamber, and each one engaged in a dance of such peculiar beauty that she could only stare in awe.

Then she knew, of course. But she could not at first speak, not because of magic but simply because she could not remember how to speak.