Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7) Page 111

Ivar led them off the track until he felt sure no one could see them from the road.

“We could lash twigs together, make torches to walk by,” suggested Baldwin as they rubbed down the horses.

“Light will give away our position. If they catch us, we’re dead.” They got the horses settled. Ivar threw down his cloak, and sat on it. “Why did you come after us?”

Baldwin smiled placidly. Somehow, miraculously, the dregs of twilight filtering through the trees managed to illuminate his perfect face and solemn expression, as serious as an angel. “Biscop Constance told me to hurry after and catch up with you.”

“What of Ermanrich and Sigfrid and Hathumod?”

“She ordered me to go.”

“Why?”

Baldwin sat beside Ivar. After a moment, he touched Ivar’s knuckles, a fleeting brush that made Ivar shiver and remember old times. He bent his head, as though he was ashamed.

“Ivar.” He hesitated.

There was so much they had never spoken of, one to the other: the affection they had once shared, the changes that time had carved in them, the sacrifice Baldwin had made because of his love for Ivar and the others. Ivar’s rescue of Baldwin that Baldwin had, by his unexpected cleverness, turned into a successful rescue of Constance. Only, of course, it had all fallen apart in the end.

As usual.

“I’m sorry, Ivar,” Baldwin whispered at last. “I love you best of all, I truly do, If … well … if there was something else you … I mean, peace is all I’ve ever really sought to be left alone. I hate being pestered all the time.”

“Never mind it,” said Ivar hastily, surprised to find himself both relieved and disappointed by this confession. “Peace you shall have, if I can get it for you. Although I doubt I can.”

“But you’re so brave! You always know just what to do!”

These words made Ivar smile bitterly, although Baldwin wasn’t looking at him. “You never answered me. Why did Biscop Constance send you after me?”

Baldwin sighed, and slumped to sit back to back with Ivar, shoulders and heads touching like comrades who, having no secrets, are entirely easy and trusting each with the other. “She told me that I, at least, must not be captured.”

“Captured! Are they going to be captured? Killed?”

Dreamily, Baldwin went on. “She thinks I am something I am not. That’s why she wanted to save me. I don’t know how to say ‘no.’”

Ivar wiped his eyes. Certainly it was true that, with Baldwin as his traveling companion, he did not have the luxury for panic or indecision.

“Never mind it, Baldwin. You did your best. We’ll stay quiet here, and hope for a little sleep. Do you want to take first watch?”

They were, after all, both too tired to watch and too wound up to do more than doze. They huddled in darkness, with no fire, off the road under the canopy of trees. Late at night a wind roared up out of the southeast, rattling branches and brush. Later still they heard voices and the clopping of horses and saw a torch bobbing in time to a man’s swinging walk. Too afraid to move, they held their breaths and prayed that the horses would stay quiet. The party passed by, moving east along the road, away from Autun. The night wind sighed and the forest creaked and muttered around them.

Of Biscop Constance and the others there was no sign.

3

HANNA dreamed.

Liath walks in darkness, her path illuminated by the merest dull red spark glowing from her fingers. The void that surrounds her is a pit of darkness so black that Liath herself can be seen glowing with a faint aura that seems like breath moving around her form. Out in the darkness, eyes gleam, and she calls to them, but they wink out, and no one answers.

She calls, and she listens, and where she hears the scattering of footsteps and sees the shadow of distant movement, she follows, although she does not know where she is going.

“Liath!”

Hanna bolted upright, heart hammering and a hand caught at her own throat. She turned to see Sorgatani weeping on her bed. Hanna sat on the carpets, wrapped in her cloak. Brother Breschius snored softly beside the threshold, his body blocking the entrance.

“What is it?” Hanna untangled the blankets and shuffled on her knees to the bed.

“She is lost,” said Sorgatani into her hands. “I dreamed her.”

“Liath? I saw her, too. Wandering in darkness.”

Sorgatani raised her head to stare at Hanna. The dark line that rimmed her eyes was smudged and runny from the tears. Her shift was twisted around her hips. “You dreamed it, too?” she whispered. Hanna nodded. “Then it is a true dream! What you and I dream, together, is a true dream. Did you see my teacher?”