The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 308

And yet, if it wasn’t for their hatred of Sanglant, might she not have joined willingly in their cause? If the Aoi return would cause a cataclysm that would rip apart the Earth, if sea became the mountains and the mountains became the sea, then wasn’t it right to stop the Aoi before they wreaked such monumental destruction?

They might be wrong about Sanglant and right about the obligation laid upon them.

But how could she know?

“The Sisters,” she said as the wheel of the heavens shifted in her mind’s eye, turning through the centuries. For this alone she loved the stars: They were eternal and silent, uninvolved in the tide of conflict that continually racked the earth. “I think the Sisters would have been rising, and the Guivre would have been at zenith. Different stars would have different influence. If it’s true the Aoi built these stone crowns as a loom for magic, then the threads they were using would have been entirely different in each season than the threads made by the stars today.”

“But the Sisters still rise more or less in the same position, don’t they?” he objected. “Just at a different time of year. Or a different time of night.”

“It’s more complicated than that. All things change over time, even the heavens, but unless we had an unbroken chain of recorded observations reaching from their time into ours, we can only trust what we see with our own eyes. The rest is computation.”

“And it’s all very interesting, I’m sure,” he replied, a little exasperated, “but can you open a gate in the stones or not?”

“Ai,” she said on a sigh. “It should be possible. But I wouldn’t know where we’d end up. There had to be some system to the placement of the crowns. I’ve seen more than two dozen with my own eyes, scattered all over these lands, as far north as Heyetrop and as far south as the deserts west of Kartiako. I’ve heard of more. The Lion’s Claw woven at rising in spring might take you to one place, and the Lion’s Claw woven at setting in winter might take you somewhere else. Did you know there’s another shelf like to this one on the other side of the crown? So that you can sight into the west, to the setting of the stars.”

“And north and south as well, I suppose.”

“No, stars don’t rise and set to the north and south, but it’s probable that here or at other crowns you could, say, measure the southern limits of moonrise and moonset. The moon has a cycle of a little over eighteen years according to—”

“Liath, I beg you. Listen to what I’m saying. Does it matter where we end up as long as we’re free?”

She brushed Blessing’s hair with her lips. The baby had such a clean smell, fresh and warm. She was an astonishing gift to come from the simple act of two bodies joining, a blessing indeed. Sanglant set a hand on Liath’s shoulder and caressed her neck with a thumb.

“I brought something for you,” he said. “You wouldn’t wear it before. You said it was wrong for you to wear it, but I knew it was meant for you. I knew it was meant for you long before I understood why.”

“What if she’s lying?” said Liath as she touched her own throat. But he was already moving to slip the gold torque of royal kinship around her neck. It felt like a slave’s collar, as heavy as anything Hugh had ever bound her with.

“Of course she’s Taillefer’s granddaughter. She isn’t lying, Liath, and you don’t truly believe she is.”

“I saw his tomb at the chapel in Autun,” she said softly. “I prayed there with my father, once. I remember staring at his effigy and wondering how craftsmen could render any face so perfectly in stone. Da was weeping. I don’t know why. I suppose I’ll never know why. He holds a seven-pointed crown in his hand. The cleric in attendance said it was the emperor’s crown, the one he wore when he went abroad in his royal dignity, and that each gem represented one of the wandering stars. It marked his right to rule, that Emperor Taillefer ruled Earth just as God ruled in the heavens, that he had their imprimatur. But Da said that the crown was a funeral gift from Biscop Tallia, Taillefer’s favorite daughter. He said that she meant it to represent the seven spheres that the emperor’s soul would have to traverse to reach the Chamber of Light.”

The torque weighed hard on her neck. The two gold knobs dug into her collarbone. It still didn’t feel right. “It’s strange. I remember text so easily. But faces don’t always stay clear in my mind. When I think back, I just can’t see his carved face clearly enough to know if I resemble him.”