The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 305

In this way, they moved on. Folquin and Stephen jested with Alain and with the men around them as the day passed swiftly, a steady march under the canopy of the forest. By evening they cleared the thickest portion of the wood and, from a ridgetop lookout, could see the Veser River a half day’s march beyond. Incredibly, Leo was recovering and he ate so much at supper that they joked they’d all have to fast. No one mentioned Alain’s part in the incident, or at least not within his hearing.

Yet Alain was so tired he was dizzy, and he couldn’t eat. He bundled up his bread and cheese and eased away from the fire. He found Hathumod easily enough, sitting in the last twilight trying to mend a torn skirt, squinting at the needle. As he came up beside her, coughing softly to let her know of his approach, she started, jabbed the needle into her fingers, and cried out.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Hathumod,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Nay, my lord,” she said in a soft voice. Blood welled up on her forefinger, and without thinking she lifted the finger to her mouth to suck. She had gotten thinner. He wondered if she ever had enough to eat or if, like Tallia, she chose to fast.

He held out the bread and cheese. “You must eat this, Lady Hathumod, for you must keep up your strength. You can’t fast and also march all day. Truly, I don’t begrudge these beggars their share, but I haven’t enough to feed them all.”

She looked at him strangely. “Of course there will be enough, my lord, if it comes from your hands.”

It was impossible to argue with someone who talked like that. He wondered how many beggars she had really seen before running off in the wake of the Lions. Did she cherish an innocent belief that Lady Fortune smiled equally kindly on every soul, here on this earth? Was her faith more pure than his, or only more naive?

He left her, because he couldn’t bear the calm zealotry of her expression. He wandered up on the ridgetop, stumbling on rocks because he couldn’t see his feet well. Up on the ridge, he felt the open land to his left, falling eastward into mystery, the uncharted land that is every footstep into the future. He felt the forest off to his right, a restless, breathing beast that had much to say in the wind of night and many secrets to hide. Had the prince and his followers been marching into the forest, or out of it? He couldn’t now remember. Maybe it had been a dream.

But there was a flavor in the air tonight, something new that he hadn’t tasted there before. At times the world seems to shift and invert: inside turns out, and outside turns in; dreams become waking, and waking becomes a dream.

Crickets thrummed. An owl hooted.

When he closed his eyes he could see Stronghand riding the waves, his ship turning as the tide turned, heading out to sea.

Something was going to happen. He would gather ships and allies, and he would drive Nokvi to a final confrontation in which one would emerge the winner, and the other would be thrown into the sea.

A watchfire burned in the distance, marking Namms Dale’s new hall, so freshly built that the timbers still wept pitch and the aroma of pine was as heavy as incense. He was dizzy tonight, or perhaps it was only the veil of time opening and closing like bellows pumped by vast hands. Had dream become waking, and waking turned into dream?

The water chopped against the hull as the rowers set to. Stronghand shifted as they hit a swell, rode it, and plunged forward into the sound. A single lantern blazed at the stem, held aloft on a post. He knew the waters well, here. They would beach at a sand spit out in the sound and there he and his favored advisers—four warriors of his own tribe, two from Hakonin, and two human slaves—would take council, where the merfolk could send an emissary: a place between sea and land where neither held the advantage.

It washed him again, an invisible tide that overturned all things that lay in its path. He knelt on the deck to steady himself as the lantern swayed, back and forth, back and forth

and he is walking down through the camp where the Lions, still jumpy from their dawn encounter with the shades of the Lost Ones, have come to find entertainment among the whores. Lamp oil burns aplenty tonight; lanterns seemingly as numerous as the stars sway from branches. He smells venison roasting.

There, beside the fire where a raggedly-dressed boy turns a haunch of venison on a spit, he sees Hathumod holding what must be her only possession: a battered and smudged copy of the Holy Verses. Folk have gathered at the fire, mostly beggars and hangers-on but a few Lions also, but he is alert tonight, he knows the tide is turning and that anything might happen. Because he is alert he sees them coming, Lord Dietrich and his two cronies, big, broad bodies pushing arrogantly through the crowd as they make their way toward their prey and then, abruptly, sit down at the front, taking precedence over the others.