Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (33 page)

So he left her.
"We ride south."
This morning, those words had filled her with despair. Now those same words held all the world of possibility in them.

She lay down, but although she was still exhausted, she could not sleep. The straw ticking stuck her in new places every time she shifted on the pallet. The rain had started to pound again, a new shower, and the damp air brought the scent of mold creeping out from the wood. She sneezed.

A scratch came at the door and Hanna peeked in. She, too, wore a ring, symbol of her new status. "I thought you would want to know," she whispered, sitting on the bed next to Liath, "that it's back in the hiding place. You're free, Liath."

Free.

Liath was too tired to reply, so she simply laid her head against Hanna's arm.

Where was Hugh now? Getting farther away with each step, please the Lady. And yet was Wolfhere any better or just another one who wanted to imprison her in a cage of his own making? How had he known her mother? Had he known Anne was a sorcerer? Why had he sought and how had he found Liath over such a long trail, pursued for so many years? Why had Da never spoken of such a man, and why did she herself not remember him, from those old dim memories of the fine cottage and the bright garden?

Yet what was it Da always said? 'Wo
use regretting that you 're going to get wet, Liath, once you 've closed the door behind you on a rainy day."

The rain, and Hanna's warmth, lulled her to sleep.

LEAVETAKING
ALAIN
never found Lackling's body, although for days after, when he got a chance and deemed it safe, he went up and searched through the ruins for any sign of newly turned earth.

But he did not truly expect to find anything. The morning after that horrible night, by design he strayed past Lady Sabella's livestock train out beyond the palisade and took up a station where he might observe the shrouded cage and its mysterious occupant. With his oddly keen hearing, which he still had not grown used to, he overheard the keepers of the shrouded cage speaking among themselves.

"Not much meat left on the carcass but, aye, that will satisfy the beast for now, thank the Lady."

He only stopped looking after Lady Sabella's entourage packed up and left, a grand procession winding its way southwest on the road that led toward the lands controlled by the duke of Varingia. That night, Lavastine called all

his people together into the great hall and stood before them. Chatelaine Dhuoda and the clerics waited behind him, but to Alain's eyes they looked as mystified as the rest.

Lavastine looked pale and listless. He stood without moving for a long time, staring into the air as if he saw something there none of the others could see. It was so unlike him, a man made decisive by long habit and a tendency to impatience, that Alain felt a sick sour feeling growing in his stomach
—a feeling of dread. The hounds whined, crouching at their master's feet. Rage and Sorrow, as was their wont, sat panting and watching at Alain's heels; they remained, since the night of the sacrifice, remarkably subdued.

This, too, was marked. Most everyone in Lavas Holding now treated Alain with a skittish deference tinged with disgust, like a man who is afraid to spit on a leprous beggar lest he turn out to be a saint in disguise.

"We will leave," said Lavastine suddenly. "We will arm ourselves with weapons and supplies and leave on St. Isidora's Day. We will celebrate the Feast of St. Sormas at the hall of Lady Aldegund, wife to my cousin Lord Geoffrey. There they will be given a choice: join Sabella's rebellion, or lose their lands."

Everyone spoke at once, a rushing murmur.

"But that's barely twenty days!" exclaimed Cook indignantly. "To outfit all that,
and
do the spring sowing? There won't be time to do
either
right."

Others agreed, but Lavastine only stood and stared and eventually all the folk quieted, waiting for him to go on.

"After that," continued Lavastine in that same monotone voice, as if he had heard no objections, "we will ride on and join up with Lady Sabella and her army. We ride against Henry, unlawful king of Wendar and Varre." He lifted a hand imperiously. "So do I speak. Let none question me."

At first Alain could only sit stunned. Cook was right, of course; she usually was. It was a mistake to march out before the spring sowing had been completed. But after a time, like a puppy worrying at his boot, a kind of terrible helpless anger began to gnaw at him. He slipped a hand inside the slit neck of his outer tunic and felt down the leather string until he touched the rose. Its petals brushed his skin, and which was warmer, skin or rose petals, he could not tell.

Lavastine was leading his people to war.

But somehow this didn't seem
right.

As soon as he could, Alain excused himself from the hall. He made his way to the chapel, ordered Rage and Sorrow to sit, and there he waited by the light of the seven candles that illuminated the Hearth. As he expected, Agius soon arrived to pray. He knelt awkwardly, because Sorrow's bite still hampered his movement.

"Prater," said Alain softly. "Do you think it is sorcery?"

Agius made an impatient gesture. He knelt on the bare stone, but he did not rest forehead on clasped hands as he usually did. For once he was preoccupied by the events of the world. "The count might well have deemed this the wiser course. I cannot say."

"But what do
you
think?" Alain demanded. "He never showed Lady Sabella such favor when she was here. He avoided all her questions. He made no commitments. And we can't just plow half the spring fields and leave the autumn-sown wheat and all of that work to
—" He broke off. He had been about to say, "to Lackling and the others who aren't fit for war." But the words choked in his throat.

Startled by Alain's vehemence, Agius looked up at him. The frater was revealed, by candlelight, as a younger man than he usually appeared. The candle flame softened his harsh features, and the lines that scored his face blended with shadow to form a smoother profile. They were the lines, Alain realized, of a man who is never at ease with himself. He was probably not much older than Bel's eldest daughter, Stancy, who had celebrated twenty-five or so Penitires.

"She killed Lackling," Alain managed at last. "She killed him, and she a holy biscop!" This betrayal was perhaps the worst of all. Only imagine what Brother Gilles, that good gentle soul, would have said had he witnessed such a thing! "And now Lavastine says we will march to war when there's work in the fields to be done, and he even speaks of fighting against his own beloved cousin! It isn't natural!"

Agius sighed. "Come, Alain. Kneel beside me. There is much for you to learn about the ways of the world. Perhaps someday you will be allowed to turn your back on the intrigues of the world, as I have sought to turn mine. What the biscop did
—" He grimaced as he shifted weight onto his injured leg. Alain crossed hesitantly and knelt beside him. "Be sure that I will report it, if I can. But I may not be believed. She is a holy biscop, ordained by the hand of the skopos herself. Although my word is worth a great deal, there were yet only you and I who witnessed the act. If you were acknowledged, Alain, as Lavastine's bastard, your word would be worth more."

But at this moment, seeing the pale face and remembering the flat voice of Lavastine as he had announced his allegiance to Sabella in the hall, Alain was not sure he
wished
to be acknowledged as that man's kinsman. Especially if it would bring further notice upon him.

"But nevertheless, Alain, there are many reasons why noble lords and ladies change their allegiances. Many reasons, and few of them good ones. With such games do the great princes while away their days, for they do not turn their hearts and eyes to the Hearth of Our Lady as they ought. They are beguiled by the world and its pleasures. We cannot know that sorcery is the cause of the count's decision.

"But I know it is!" Alain burst out. "I
know\"

Agius raised an eyebrow. He looked skeptical. "By what means do you know? Are you an adept? Have you received training in the forbidden arts?"

Alain resisted the urge to bring the rose out, to show its bloom, to make Agius smell its fragrance. It was not the season for roses, certainly, but the count had a small garden protected from the winds, open to the sun and often warmed by braziers; roses there bloomed early and late. What if Agius, not believing his tale of the visitation of the Lady of Battles, accused him of stealing it?

Or, worse, what if Agius believed him? What if Agius decided that Alain's destiny was something that he, Agius, must manage?

"No," Alain said finally, humbly, bowing his head. "I know nothing of sorcery except the stories any child hears and the tales told by our deacon."

Agius made a gesture of dismissal, turning the conversation away from this discussion of sorcery. "You must wait and see, Alain. But in any case, these matters no longer touch me. I will remain here at Lavas Holding to continue my preaching."

"You're not coming with us?" At once, guiltily, he recalled Sorrow's bite; had he managed the hounds better, Agius would not be injured.

But Agius made no mention of the wound. "I am a frater, bound by my oath to serve Our Lady. Though I have stopped at this holding for a while, I do not serve the count, not as you do. As you must."

Sorrow, sitting patiently by the door, whined. Alain was reminded of his duties: Master Rodlin would be waiting for him. He rose.

"But, Brother Agius, what if Count Lavastine orders you to follow in his train?"

Agius smiled thinly. "Lavastine cannot order me, Alain. Nor will he try."

Nor, to Alain's surprise, did he try. They marched out on St. Isidora's Day soon after dawn, twenty mounted soldiers and eighty on foot with a train of twenty wagons. Frater Agius did not march with them. Chatelaine Dhuoda also remained behind to tend to Lavas stronghold.

Alain could not be sure whether he was sick at heart or terribly excited. Everything he knew he now left behind. Though he had not seen Osna town for over a year, still, it did not seem in his heart too far away; it was four days' journey in good weather and was part of familiar lands. Now, familiar lands vanished behind him, setting west. They crossed the Vennu River and marched east through unknown fields and strange hills.

He swung back and forth between these two emotions, dread and excitement, all that first day. But by the third day the intermittent drizzle and the slogging pace of the march dampened his spirits and left him with a persistent cough and a constantly dripping nose. His boots were caked in mud, and by the end of each day his feet and hands were chilled through.

Only during the day, if the sun came out while they were marching, did he feel comfortable. He and the hounds slept under a wagon at night, just outside the tent that was always pitched for the count. This way, at least, he stayed dry. Many of the other men-at-arms weren't so lucky, and they grumbled.

On the fourth day of the march, while he was watering the hounds at a stream, someone threw a stone at him from the bushes that grew in profusion along the stream's edge. The stone hit hard enough to bruise his shoulder. He yelped, and there came a snickering from the dense thicket. Then, of course, the hounds surged out of the stream and, growling and yipping, made for the bushes. By the time Alain restrained them, his tor-menters had gone, shrieking and scattering away into the wood. He did not see their faces, only their backs; there were three of them.

After that he was mostly left alone, although now and again a dead rat would turn up in his porridge. But because Agius was not there, he had no one to talk to, not really. Master Rodlin treated him politely but coldly, and for the rest, they either avoided him or were too important to notice him. Count Lavastine spoke to no one, except to issue curt orders. Care of the hounds was left to Alain and though the hounds were good companions
—

r

and increasingly obedient to his commands
—Alain was pretty much miserable through and through by the time they arrived at the stronghold where Lord Geoffrey and Lady Aldegund made their home.

Lord Geoffrey was surprised to see his kinsman, but he came out from the stronghold with the household clerics and his wife's chatelaine and various of her kin to greet Count Lavastine on the last stretch of road. They walked out on foot, as was customary. Lavastine did not dismount to embrace his cousin.

The bluff Lord Geoffrey looked taken aback. "I beg your pardon," he said, struggling for words as he examined Lavastine with alarm. "My dear Aldegund is in bed with a fever, but as all the children have had the affliction and recovered from it we do not fear for her. There is a healer with her." He hesitated on the word
healer,
as if he meant to substitute a different word and had thought better of it, then went on. "But the babe born at Lavas Holding is a fine healthy child, almost six months in age now, and has celebrated her first Penitire. There we anointed her with the holy water and gave her the name Lavrentia, as we promised you. What brings you to this holding, cousin? Have you come to celebrate the Feast of St. Sorrnas with us? And with such a retinue?"

For no one could overlook Lavastine's entourage. Even Sabella and her great retinue, when Alain had first seen them, had not appeared so obviously battle-ready and intended for war.