The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

“So I have heard, as well as a great deal else. It is time Liath left this place.”

“For where?” asked Liath.

“And with whom?” added Sanglant.

“It is time for Liath to fulfill that charge which is rightfully hers by birth. She will come with me to my villa at Verna where she will study the arts of the mathematici.”

Sanglant smiled softly. Liath tensed, but whether with worry—or excitement—at the prospect he could not tell. And in truth, how well did he know her? The image he had made of her in his mind had little to do with her: In the brief days since she had returned, he had seen her to be both more—and less—than the imagined woman he had built his life around during those months of captivity. But he was willing to be patient.

“You speak of forbidden sorcery,” he observed. “One that the church has condemned.”

“The church does not condemn what is needful,” Anne replied. “Thus I am assured that God approve our work.”

“Our work?” he murmured.

Liath dropped his wrist and stepped forward. “Why did you abandon Da and me? Why did you let us think you were dead for all those years?”

“I did not abandon you, child. You had already fled, and we could not find you.”

“You must have known Da couldn’t take care of us!”

She had a puzzling face, one that didn’t show her years, yet neither did she appear young. “Bernard loved the world too much,” she said sadly, although her expression never varied from that face that reminded him most of Sister Rosvita when she was soothing Henry: the mask of affability that all successful courtiers wear. “It was his great weakness. He could not turn away from the things of the flesh—all that is transient and mortal. He delighted in the spring plants, in the little fawns running among the trees, in your first steps and first words, but these delights are also a trap for the unwary, for by these means the Enemy wraps his tendrils around those of good heart who are seduced by the beauty of the world.” She sighed in the way of a teacher who regards a well-loved if exasperating pupil. “I see his mark on you, Daughter. But his alone. No other hand has worked in your soul to corrupt you. To change you.”

“To change me?”

“From what you are meant to be.”

“Which is?” asked Sanglant.

“A mathematicus,” said Anne firmly. “Gather your things Liath. We will leave now and be gone long before day breaks.”

“With what retinue do we travel?” asked Sanglant.

She regarded him with that unfathomable gaze, and for an instant the chamber dimmed, and his skin trembled as if snakes crawled up his arms and legs, and he was shaken by a fear like nothing he had ever felt before: what an ant might feel in that shadowed moment before a hand reaches down to crush it.

Then the moment passed, and he merely stood in an ordinary chamber fitted out with the usual luxuries due to a fighting man of noble birth: two carpets thrown over the plank floor; a chest filled with clothing and linens; a table and, with it, a chair rather than a common bench; an engraved copper basin and pitcher for washing his face and hands as well as an enamel tray, several wooden platters, two bone spoons, two silver goblets and one bowl fashioned out of gold; a plush feather bed covered by a spread magnificently embroidered with the figure of a black dragon, sigil of his triumphs as a soldier. The globe of magelight illuminated every corner of the room and all that it held: every piece of it come to him out of his father’s treasury and his father’s favor, which was itself a kind of prison. His armor and weapons—his morning gift—gleamed under the light as if they had been enchanted with unknown powers. And perhaps they were: They had come to him through his own efforts.

“You propose to travel with us?” Anne asked finally.

“I am a king’s son, and whatever your lineage, my lady, you cannot look down upon my kin and my noble birth.”

“It is the sins of the world and the weaknesses of the flesh that I look down upon. Shall I subject my daughter to them further? Or save her from them by taking her away from all that tempts her?”

“The blessed Daisan said that within marriage we may find purification. Salvation arises out of creation.”

She folded her hands before her like a saint readying for prayer. “You are a learned man, Prince Sanglant.”

“Not at all. But I listen when the clerics read from the Holy Verses.” He allowed himself a smile, half lost on his lips and quickly passing away. He knew a battle joined when he met one; and, as always, he intended to win.