Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4) Page 342

A white-haired figure sat with head bowed on the first step. He was dressed in a plain cleric’s tunic. As she caught her breath, rose, and stepped forward, he raised his head.

It was Wolfhere.

Nay, not Wolfhere. That was only the guise she saw, the man with secrets who knew more than he let on.

“You are the guardian of this sphere,” she said. “I would ascend the steps.”

“You have come a long way,” he agreed, “but I warn you, you have only one arrow left. Use it more wisely than you did your others. There is one close to you whom you can save, if you can learn to see with your wits rather than act on your fears.”

He moved aside.

She hesitated. Was it a trick? A test? But she had to ascend to reach her goal. No other way was open to her now.

She set her foot on the first step. “I thank you,” she said to the guardian, but he was already gone.

The steps felt smooth and easy beneath her bare feet. As she climbed, sparks and flashes like lightning shot off the thrumming wheels that spun high in the air on either side of the stairs. The brilliant light of the wheels grew more intense as she climbed. Through clouds of gold drifting above she saw into a chamber of infinite size. Nests of blue-white stars glowed hotly, the birthplace of angels. Thick clots of dust made strange and tangled shapes where they billowed across an expanse of blackness. A faint wheel of stars, like an echo of the golden wheels on either side of her, spun with aching slowness. Beyond all this lay silence, deep, endless, unfathomable.

A flash of blue fire caught her gaze: the crossroads between spheres and worlds. Its flames shuddered and flared, bright one instant and then fading as if that fire pulsed in time to the heart of the universe. In flashes she saw through the distant crossroads into other worlds, other times, other places, glimpses half seen and quickly gone:

a girl standing with her arms full of flowers; a woman seated at a desk, writing with a strange sort of quill on sheets of paper, not vellum, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail and her dark coat cut in a style Liath has never seen; Count Lavastine’s effigy in stone, with two stone hounds in faithful attendance; an egg cracking as a barbed claw pokes through from inside the shell; the slow trail of molten rivers of fire as they shift course; a centaur woman galloping across the steppe, expression alive to the beauty of speed and power; a woman dressed only in a corded skirt, suckling twin infants; Emperor Taillefer himself, proud and strong, at the height of his power, as he watches his favorite daughter invested as biscop.

Inside a pavilion, Ironhead’s concubine, the pretty one with black hair, smooths Lord John’s hair back from the crown of his head in a gentle gesture as he sleeps. Then she takes a stake and, with a hammer blow, drives it through his temple so hard that the point of the stake cleaves his skull to pierce the carpet below. Blood pools, changing color as it snakes out in a stream along the ground, drawing her gaze along its twisting length until Liath sees the man watching from a shadowed corner in the tent.

Hugh.

He lifts his head, as if he has sensed her. She bolts down another branch of the crossroads, forward in time.

Longships ghost out of the fog wreathing the Temes River. With heartless efficiency, silent and almost invisible, they beach along the strand below the walled city of Hefenfelthe. The great hall built by the Alban queens rises like the prow of a vast ship beyond the wall, long considered impregnable. Because of the power of the queens and their tree sorcerers, Hefenfelthe has never been taken by fighting. Eika warriors swarm from the ships as mist binds the river, concealing them. A torch flares by the river gate. The chain rumbles, and as the vanguard races up to the walls, the gate swings open. What cannot be gained by force can be gained by treachery. Stronghand pauses as three men dressed in the rich garb of merchants scurry out of the gate, signaling frantically as they hurry forward to welcome the army they betrayed their own queen for. His lead warriors cut down the traitors. No man can serve two masters. If they would betray their own people for mere coin, then they can never be trusted. His army pours past the bodies, although dogs pause to feed on the corpses and have to be driven forward. He waits on the shore as the sun rises, still obscured by mist. The first alarms sound from inside the city, but it is already too late. Threads of smoke begin to twist upward into the heavens, blending and melding.…

She paused, aware again that she stood far up the stairs, the sphere of Aturna glittering below, beyond the golden wheels, and the universe opening beyond her.

A silver belt twisted through the gulf, marking the path of the country of the Aoi, now drawn inexorably back toward Earth. It was impossible to tell one side of the ribboned surface from the other or if it even had two sides at all but only one infinite gleaming surface. With her gaze she followed it down past the spheres descending below, each gateway a gem cut into a sphere’s bright curve, all the way down to where Earth lay exposed below her, too broad to encompass with her outstretched arms here at the height of the spheres. Its curve, too, was evident where the line of advancing dawn receded to the west and night rose in the east. Taillefer’s crown gleamed, spread out across the land, seven crowns each with seven points, the great wheel set across many realms and uncounted leagues: the vast loom of magic.