Crown of Stars Read online

“Wolfhere brought the Eagle’s Sight to our order,” she said.

  “Did he?” The statement surprised him.

  “I thought this knowledge was handed down from regnant to heir. Before that time, we rode, and we observed, but we could not see or speak through fire.”

  “No wonder King Arnulf made Wolfhere his favorite. Eagle’s Sight granted him a powerful advantage.”

  “Yet Eagle’s Sight is closed to me now. I can see only snatches, glimpses.” She nodded at Liath. “This blindness affects all of us, so this one believes. The sight has been somehow damaged in the wake of the tempest that swept over us last autumn.”

  “That’s what we were speaking of,” said Liath to Sanglant, “just now.”

  “Explain it again, I pray you.”

  Liath had a way of frowning that wasn’t actually a frown but more of a thoughtful grimace as she collected her thoughts, a task of undoubted complexity since she knew so many complicated things.

  “I think that Eagle’s Sight runs on the threads of aether. Aether resides in the heavens, beyond the mortal Earth. Normally it is rarefied and weak here in the lands below the moon. The crowns channel and intensify these threads of aether, which is how they can be woven into a gate. But Eagle’s Sight touched the aether differently. It was drawn through a portal, which some of us saw as a standing stone burning with blue fire. That stone acted as a crossroads. The stone was itself the portal, between this world and the higher spheres. It was created by the spell woven in ancient days when the country of the Ashioi was torn from its roots and flung into the heavens. Through that portal aether filtered down to Earth in greater quantities than it normally would. So, once the portal between the aether and Earth was severed by the return of the Ashioi land, then the Eagle’s Sight was diminished, so damaged that it is as if we cannot see at all. The crowns were raised long ago, before the portal was opened by the spell in ancient days. The crowns should still weave, but our Eagle’s Sight is lost to us. Possibly forever. I don’t know.”

  “My lady.” The old woman’s voice and demeanor had changed. She bent her head respectfully. “I thought you were an Eagle, one like me.”

  “So I am! Well. So I was.”

  “Now I see you are not who I thought you were. Else you would not address the king regnant with such familiarity. Who are you? Are you the one—?” She broke off.

  “What one?” asked Liath.

  Hedwig shook her head. “No need to ask. You are the one Wolfhere sought when he came back from his exile.”

  “His exile?” asked Sanglant.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. You must know of this, surely. When Arnulf died, Henry exiled Wolfhere. Or perhaps it was later, after the prince was born. That would be you, Your Majesty.” Her hands shook as she smoothed down the rumpled bedclothes. “Nay, nay. My memory weakens. You were a boy when King Arnulf died, Your Majesty. You had already been born and survived some years.”

  “I was five or six,” he agreed. “I remember his passing and my father’s grief. I recall, too, that Wolfhere vanished for some years.”

  “Yes, that was his exile, as soon as King Henry could compass it. But I knew Wolfhere was not dead. He’s the kind that’s hardest to kill—those who most deserve death! At intervals I glimpsed him through the fire, but I could not see where he was or what he was doing. Then—how easily we lose track of the time—he returned. The Eagles never cast any one of us out, you see.”

  “I’m surprised he came back,” said Liath. “Or that King Henry allowed him to return.”

  She chuckled, then coughed. “So you may be, my lady. I convinced King Henry to take him back.”

  “You did?” asked Sanglant with a laugh.

  “I did,” she replied in the voice a woman of her kind used to remind a boy that he was not permitted to pilfer from the kitchen on such an important feast day. “Wolfhere was too valuable. He had done so much for the Eagles, and for Arnulf. King Arnulf trusted no one better than Wolfhere. The young prince—that would be you, Your Majesty—was old enough to be more easily protected. You were not at risk. But Wolfhere was indifferent to you in any case, perhaps because by then your sisters were born. He was seeking someone else.”

  Liath nodded. “Yes, he was.”

  “I pray you, Mistress Hedwig,” said Waltharia, “I’ve heard this tale before but not, I see, all of it. If you are the one who argued for Wolfhere’s return, then what made you and Wolfhere fall out later?”

  It was difficult for the woman to lift her hands, but she managed to get one hand off the covers, indicating Liath. “This girl. Wolfhere felt no loyalty to Henry, to Arnulf’s son, not as he should have. He felt no loyalty to Wendar, not as he should have. He returned only to discover what news he might. Of this one. I soon realized that was the only reason he came back. So I no longer trusted him.”

  She coughed again, and the steward found wine, and Liath helped her drink.

  “Where is Wolfhere now?” asked Waltharia.

  “No one knows,” said Sanglant. “He escaped me in Sordaia. Maybe he is dead.”

  “What does it matter what has become of Wolfhere?” Waltharia asked.

  Liath handed the cup back to the steward. For a while, she sat with hands folded on her lap, gazing at Hedwig.

  Sanglant listened to the old woman’s labored breathing, with its telltale sign of a consumption eating at her lungs. She was ill. She was old. That she had survived so long with her crippled legs and body and failing health was entirely due to Waltharia’s care of her. What did this old woman mean to Waltharia? Why should the Villams give her shelter?

  “This is what I understand of the matter,” said Liath. “Wolfhere sought me because my father stole me from the Seven Sleepers. It was their intent to wield me as a weapon against Sanglant, whom they considered to be a tool of the Lost Ones in their plot to conquer humankind.”

  Waltharia eyed him sidelong. She seemed about to laugh, but did not. “A strong spear,” she said.

  Liath snorted. Sanglant flushed.

  “Wolfhere did not betray you, Liath,” said Hathui suddenly. “He protected you. Was it Wolfhere who led you back to the Seven Sleepers?”

  Liath regarded Hathui with a curious smile. “He told them where I was to be found. So it was that Anne found me in Werlida and lured me to Verna. Do you think matters transpired otherwise, Hathui? Is there something you know that we do not?”

  They all looked at the Eagle, even Hedwig.

  “No man can serve two masters,” said Hathui. “I believe that there were two people that Wolfhere loved above all others: Anne, and Arnulf. In that way he is like the story of the man who at the full moon turns into a wolf, loyal to both parts of himself and yet unable to be whole. Torn between two bodies.”

  “You speak truly enough,” said Waltharia. “No man may serve two masters. How can a man torn between two masters serve either one faithfully? He must choose one, or the other, because in time they will come into conflict.”

  “What is his secret?” Liath asked. “He is the last of the Seven Sleepers who knew Anne well, who knew all or most of what she intended. If he still lives, I must find him, because I believe he has secrets yet to reveal.”

  “What if he does not?” asked Hathui. “What if he is exactly what he seems, and nothing more?”

  “A traitor?” asked Waltharia with an acerbic laugh.

  “A wolf among men?” asked Sanglant, “loyal to no one?”

  “A servant meant to carry messages,” retorted Hathui. “By all accounts, although I never saw him, King Arnulf was a kinder master than Anne.”

  “Weary,” whispered Hedwig.

  Liath leaned forward. “We have exhausted you. I pray you, pardon us.”

  “He was weary,” Hedwig repeated, strengthened, it seemed, by a hint of annoyance that she was dismissed so easily when it was to her that Liath had come in the first place. “When I saw him here. The last time. Weary. Troubled. Sad. So might a man be who is at war within himself. Such a man can n
ever be trusted. He can never trust himself.”

  Her breath whistled. The speech had winded her. They waited, listening to her labored breathing.

  Finally, Liath shook herself and rose. “I thank you for what you have told me, Hedwig.”

  The old Eagle’s fingers stirred but she could not, it seemed, lift them off the blanket. Nor could she speak. She wheezed a little.

  “I will send Clara to attend you,” said Waltharia.

  They left, stepping out into the cold, dark night. The wind stung nostrils and eyes as they walked across the courtyard. At the entrance to the hall, servants were dispatched to take coals, a hot poultice, and an attendant to sit out the night with the old woman.

  “Why do the Villams shelter her?” he asked. “Has she no family to take her in?”

  Waltharia’s smile made him uncomfortable, and she glanced first at Liath and only after that at him. “She was for a short time one of my father’s many, many mistresses.”

  The Eagle was so old a woman that it was easy to forget that Villam, too, had lived a long life.

  “My mother, before she died, made me swear to take her in if she needed shelter in her old age.”

  “Your mother? Why would she trouble herself in such a way?”

  She glanced at Liath. They looked. They smiled, each a little. They did not look at him. “Because my father would not. My father was a good man and a strong and canny margrave, Sanglant, but thoughtless in other ways. Hedwig was one of my mother’s young servants. She became an Eagle after—well, it was considered a disgrace in her family. They threw her out. Had my mother not made provision for her care, she would have died as a pauper.”

  “This history surprises me,” said Liath. “I thought the Eagles took care of their own.”

  “So they do. Not many survive to such a respectable age. When they are too crippled or old or ill to ride, they are pensioned off, just as old Lions are—those who survive their service. The Villams accepted the pension for the care of her.”

  “It was a saying among the Dragons,” remarked Sanglant with an unexpected swell of bitterness, “that all Dragons died young, guarding the honor of the regnant.”

  “Will you muster a flight of Dragons?” Waltharia asked him. “You must think of these things, you know. There are Eagles and Lions to be recruited, to strengthen your army. And Dragons, to fly swiftly to where the need is greatest.”

  He frowned. “Who to lead them?”

  “Sapientia has a daughter, does she not?”

  “Still a child, not more than six or eight at the most. Nay. Let me see what noble youths are cast up at my feet. Then I’ll decide what to do.”

  Liath had stepped out from under the eaves and stood staring up at the sky as if her gaze could pierce the clouds. He thought she wasn’t paying attention, but she spoke. “I will have my own mustering, of scholars.” She chuckled. “A nest of phoenix. That’s what I’ll call them.”

  “Phoenix?” Waltharia was startled, and showed it.

  “I think not!” said Sanglant.

  Liath turned to look at them. He could only see her shape, but he knew that her vision, in such darkness, was much keener than his. What she saw, seeking in their expressions, he did not know. “The phoenix flies, like the eagle. It is born out of fire, out of passion, and renews itself. Would the phoenix not be a fine beast for scholars?”

  Sometimes she was so naive!

  “I pray you, Liath,” he said, then faltered, hearing how annoyed he sounded and knowing it was not her but his memories of Blessing that hurt him.

  Hathui stepped forward. “Perhaps you are not aware that the phoenix has become spoken of in the same breath as the heresy, the Redemptio. A story circulated—”

  “If Wichman can be believed, it was true enough,” said Sanglant, “since he was among those who slaughtered the beast.”

  “Slaughtered a phoenix?” Liath breathed, horrified.

  “The townsfolk said it preyed on their cattle. But there was talk of a miracle, a mute man healed, and so on, and now—nay, Liath, no nests of phoenixes for you unless you are determined to turn heretic yourself.”

  “I am not,” she said thoughtfully, “but it interests me to hear this tale. I must speak to Wichman.”

  “When I am present!”

  “If you wish. I do not fear him.”

  “Prince Ekkehard witnessed the whole as well,” pointed out Hathui unhelpfully. “Although I admit most of those who were present in that party are now dead in the wars.”

  “Ekkehard and Wichman!” Liath said, in tones of astonishment.

  “Not now,” said Sanglant, “I pray you. Morning is soon enough.”

  “Soon enough,” said Waltharia, backing him up, as was her duty as margrave. “My hands have turned to ice. Let us go in.”

  2

  LIATH was up as soon as night grayed with the early twilight.

  He groaned and said, closing his eyes, “Neither Wichman nor Ekkehard will have risen yet, my love. Wait but a moment. Come back under the covers with me.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  She dressed without servants to aid her, not calling anyone in, and he heard the door open, felt the draft of frosty air from the stairwell kiss his cheeks—better had she done it!—and the thud of its closing. A decent interval later the door opened and he heard the stealthy footfalls of four servingmen as they entered the chamber and busied themselves as quietly as they could with water, coals, clothing, and the rest of his gear and necessaries. He still thought of them as Den’s brother, Malbert’s cousin, Johannes’ uncle, and Chustaffus’ brother, although in fact their names were Johannes, Robert, Theodulf, and Ambrose. Warm air breathed along his skin as the one of them—that would be Johannes, who had an unevenness in his gait due to a deformity in his right foot—moved a brazier closer to the bed in preparation for his rising.

  Outside, he heard voices raised to that pitch of intensity that betokens an upset bubbling into an emergency. He cracked an eye, but it was still dim in the chamber and would be until they had his leave to take down the shutters.

  “No,” came Hathui’s voice from outside. “I’ll go in now.”

  The door opened. He sighed and sat up, giving in to the inevitable. When he had been captain of the King’s Dragons there had been days when he’d had to move at first light, and swiftly, but there had also been days when he’d had no more pressing engagement at dawn than … well, never mind that now.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She gestured toward the door, which meant that trouble was coming. “Margrave Gerberga.”

  Robert handed him his under-tunic, and he slipped it on and swung out of bed as Ambrose took down first one shutter, then the next. The chill exhalation of the outdoors sighed in, bringing with it the smell of smoke, dung, and freshly split wood. A carpet insulated him from the plank floor, and it was just as well since he was still barefoot but decently attired when Gerberga stormed in, face red and braided hair pinned back for her night’s rest.

  “He’s gone!” she cried. “Vanished!”

  Only the peers of the realm or his intimate servants dared storm in without announcing themselves. After Gerberga came Theophanu, expression so blank that he marveled, wondering if she were furious or joyful.

  “This is not the first time Ekkehard has acted rashly,” Theo said to Gerberga as if continuing a conversation begun earlier. “Do not forget that he stole Lord Baldwin from your mother.”

  “Damn him!”

  “And that he then debauched himself in Gent while pretending to be an abbot in a monastery founded by his own father,” added Theophanu with such a look of composure that Sanglant imagined her actually laughing inside—if Theophanu ever laughed. “And after that betrayed his own countryfolk and rode with the Quman monster.”

  “When I find him …” Gerberga glared at Sanglant as if he had spoken and, without addressing another word to him, departed in the same manner as a summer squall, leaving a
moment of sparkling clarity behind.

  “Hathui,” he said, “go see that horses are saddled.”

  She nodded and left.

  “When you find him, then what?” asked Theophanu coolly. “I am surprised you allowed the marriage to Gerberga to take place without making it clear to Ekkehard that he must respect your wishes. By this act, he challenges your authority.”

  “Theo,” he said mildly, seeing how everyone else there had gone very quiet indeed, “I do not for a moment suppose that Ekkehard has anything in mind other than his own gratification, since he has never appeared to have more than one thought in his head at a time.”

  She watched him with an expression of calm consideration that made him stand to alert as though she had a knife she might pull.

  “They love you,” she said.

  “Who loves me?”

  “All of them. These servants. The Eagles. The soldiers. The common folk. It’s you, the bastard, they look to, to save them, although I am the legitimately born child. There are a few who do love me, my dear retinue, but they are a trifle compared to the ones who love you.”

  Since there was no answer to this, he said nothing.

  “They stare at you so, Sanglant. I suppose I do, too.” Her smile sharpened her expression. “I know better, yet I can’t help myself. I’m no different than they are. I believe you can save us, if anyone can.”

  “Perhaps. I am only first among equals. Without the strength of the duchies and the marchlands, Wendar will fall.”

  “As Varre has?” she challenged him. “Fallen to Sabella and Conrad’s ambitions?”

  “So we will see, when the king’s progress marches west. You are steady, Theophanu. I need you at my back.”

  She had their father’s height and the robust build common to their ancestors, yet a hint in her coloring and eyes and the unnatural opacity of her expression marked her half foreign blood. Never trust Arethousans bearing gifts.

  “Always at the back.” There came a spark of emotion into her face he could not interpret: resignation, amusement, envy, or anger, or some other, less simple, reaction. He knew her well enough, but in truth, he did not know her well.