Crown of Stars (Page 225)

Marking the wagon and the riders, she staggered as if hit. The two who stood beside her caught her. They held her, because she could not walk. The wagon’s driver brought the conveyance to a stately halt in the middle of a grassy field. She jerked out of their arms and dashed to it, flung herself against the side with a thud, yanked the shroud off the body, and saw his slack face.

Wind raked through the trees and rippled the grass.

What greater cataclysm can there be than this, that which tears the world asunder?

This is the poison that strikes deep, the bee’s sting, the nectar of anguish. How can it be that life goes on? What point is there in living? Ai, God. So we fall into the Pit as the black Abyss rips open under our feet.

3

DEAD. Dead. Dead.

All the rest, hands touching her and pressing her this way and that, voices murmuring, faces leering into view and fading away, the roar of the wind and the shuffle of feet and hooves and wheels grinding on dirt and doors shutting and an unexpected laugh heard down the distance and the trickling splash of water and a cough, all this was noise.

She sank into the tide.

“Let me go to her.”

Not party to the storm of discussion that followed the arrival of Sanglant’s cortege, Hanna stuck close to Liath until the body was laid on a bier in the nave of Hersford’s church. Lamps were lit along the aisles and blazed beside the Hearth at the eastern end as dusk fell. Liath clung to his dead hand. She said no word; she was lost. Father Ortulfus scattered sprigs of cypress over the body. Mother Obligatia was carried in, with her attendants and Sister Rosvita at her side. Seeing that others attended Liath for the time being, Hanna sought out Sorgatani.

“Is this a good idea?” Ivar dogged her path as she crunched along the gravel walkway that led along one side of a dormitory. She wasn’t quite sure whether his presence was gratifying or aggravating. “I heard some awful story just now, that one look from her eyes and you’re a dead man.”

“I’m never a dead man, Ivar, and anyway, it’s the guivre’s stare that paralyzes you. You must stay outside, though. It’s true that if you looked on her, you would die.”

“Well, then, I’m not going to let you look! I’ll not risk you dying, not now!”

“You managed it before!”

“That’s not what I meant!”

Before she could turn under the covered walkway that cut between two dormitories into the famous unicorn courtyard where, she had heard, they had hauled Sorgatani’s wagon, Ivar dragged her to a stop.

“You can’t go into the cloister anyway. Only men can—this is a monastery.”

“Shut up, Ivar,” she said, and kissed him on the lips, which shut him up for long enough that she was able to shake her hand out of his grasp and get five steps ahead of him.

The unicorn fountain streamed quietly, water burbling down horns and forelegs. The rose garden was neatly trimmed, but only a few flowers bloomed, their color delicate in the deepening light of the dying afternoon. Outside was brighter than inside; it was still possible to distinguish bees circling among the flowers.

She was not sure why they had pulled Sorgatani’s wagon all the way in to the fountain courtyard and hidden it beside the hedge of cypress, but cypress was said to protect against death. And, in truth, someone had set up a pair of braziers on either side of the wagon and thrust an evergreen bough of cypress into each one. The smell made her nose tickle; she wiped her eyes.

Atop the battered wagon perched a huge owl. She blinked, and it became a thread of smoke winding skyward.

The entire roster of Lady Bertha’s surviving guardsmen had set up camp in the courtyard, although she wasn’t sure who they were guarding from whom. She nodded at Sergeant Aronvald. The wagon creaked under her weight as she set a foot on the step. The wood step gave a high snap and twisted slightly.

“Careful,” he said. “That’s cracked, there.”

The men skittered away behind the hedge as she opened the door, stepped over the threshold, and slid the door closed behind her.

The interior of the wagon was a shambles. The tall chest of drawers had fallen onto its side; two of the drawers were broken; silks and silver bowls and utensils had been shoved into a pile. The boxed-in bed listed, one leg broken off, although the bed on the other, empty side of the chamber stood intact and seemingly untouched. On the altar, the golden cup lay on its side, the flask rested against the handbell, and a crack sliced through the gleaming surface of the round mirror.

Sorgatani sat on the bed with one arm in a sling and her head back and resting against pillows piled up over the saddle. Seeing Hanna, she rolled to rise, set a foot on the floor, and winced.