The Burning Stone

“Moerin’s chieftain is old Bittertongue, is he not?” asks Stronghand, still staring at the unfolding battle made bright by the last gleam of the sun on trusting spears and the flowering of torches all along the path of the fighting.



“Nay, old Bittertongue died in a raid last spring. There is a new chief who has taken advisers from the island known to the Soft Ones as Alba. He has named himself Nokvi in the style of the humanfolk.”



“Look!” Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter stands at Stronghand’s side, one of his standard bearers by reason of his sharp eyes and unusual strength. He raises an arm and points up into the darkening vale. “Where the great house stands. Look there.”



Flame flowers into life as bold as fire can be when let loose. Stronghand sets a foot up on the lip of the uppermost plank and leans out, staring into the twilight as the great house goes up in a towering blaze of fire. Torches ring the burning hall. He smells oil, quick to flame. “Listen!” says Stronghand, and all the men within sound of his voice quiet and listen.



Nokvi, chieftain of the Moerin tribe, has trapped Namms’ war leader and his fighting men inside the hall, coated the hall with oil, and set it alight, burning them alive. Not even the tough hides of the RockChildren can withstand such an inferno.



“Do we attack?” asks Tenth Son.



“With eight ships?” Stronghand cuts down sharply with his left hand, to signify “no.” “I came to make an alliance with the Nammsfolk, not to fight them. We must learn more of this ‘Nokvi’ before we fight him. Winter is coming on, and soon no ships will sail. But there are other ways to gather our forces even against a leader who has allied with the humans of Alba.”



He hates to turn away without that alliance he came for. It smacks of cowardice. But he is not a fool. He is not blinded by the lust for glory. He seeks something harder, and colder, and longer lasting than the brief if brilliant flare of battle glory.



He lifts the warhorn to his lips and blows the retreat.



The sound brought Alain sharply back to himself, a mewling that seemed remotely familiar and yet utterly strange.



“My lord count!”



Alain bolted up to lean over Lavastine, but the count might as well have been a stone statue. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.



He was dead.



A weight nudged against Alain’s leg and abruptly he remembered the chamber he stood in, and he realized that Sorrow, Rage, and Fear had collapsed to the ground and lay beside Lavastine’s deathbed like helpless pups, whimpering. It took him a moment longer to register the waiting attendants, who all stared nervously at the hounds, awaiting their reaction. The steward who had just spoken had not been addressing Lavastine.



“My lord count. Come away. There’s nothing you can do.”



The words struck like the tolling of a bell. But it was the bell, which had begun to ring at the old church, tolling the dead soul up through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light. He stood, although his legs did not really feel like his own legs.



There was nothing he could do. He rested a hand on Lavastine’s cold forehead, then bent to kiss it. He might as well have been kissing stone. He touched the eyes, to close the eyelids as was customary. But he could not close them. They were frozen that way; hardened open, perhaps. Ever vigilant, even in the grave.



There was truly nothing more he could do here. The servants parted before him, a whisper of movement away as the hounds heaved themselves up and fell in behind him, who was now their master. But they did not growl or even seem to notice the servants around them. They walked at his heels as though they were sleepwalking, as meek as lambs.



He walked silent, down the tower steps and along the dark corridor to the great hall. Where a door opened to the courtyard, a breath of crisp air stung his face, and the taste of it brought him a vivid and painful memory of autumn afternoons toiling outside Aunt Bel’s longhouse with his foster father, Henri, making rope or repairing sailcloth. But that life had fallen behind him. God had marked him out for greater things. He walked past the open door and into the dense and anticipatory silence of the great hall.



There he sat in the carven chair reserved for the count of Lavas. Sorrow, Rage, and Fear sat at his feet.



After a while, Tallia ventured into the hall with her attendants. With lips drawn white and hands shaking, she took her seat beside him.



Slowly, from hall and hut and stable, from village and kitchen, from field and courtyard, servingfolk, soldiers, farmers, and attendants gathered in the hall in ranks alongside the tables. Torchlight made their expressions fitful, shadowed now by hesitancy, lit now by respect, made constant by a certain wariness toward the hounds and, perhaps, toward him. At last the bell finished tolling.