The Burning Stone

“Do you think it possible that the stone crowns are harbors, gateways from one to the next? That we can actually travel between them?”



“I do not know, but I know what my predecessors thought. They believed it.” She drew a finger over the pages of the old chronicle delicately, as if she feared it might dissolve at her touch. “That is why they recorded the stone circles here. They thought there was a pattern, hidden in plain sight if they could learn to read it.”



A hand bell rang, the call to prayer.



“What have you decided, Sister Rosvita? Will you counsel in favor of Lord Hugh’s plan, or against it?”



“I don’t know. I must pray for God to give me counsel.”



Rosvita closed both books and left them on the lectern as she assisted Mother Obligatia to rise. She offered her arm to her, and although Obligatia braced herself on Rosvita’s elbow, her touch was so insubstantial that it seemed more like a memory than an actual presence.



With Theophanu and Adelheid and their noble ladies in attendance, the chapel was crowded. Its walls curved up into a dome, laden with symbols painted onto the whitewashed wall: St. Ekatarina sits in the center, arms extended to either side, palms out in the gesture of an open heart and complete surrender to God in Unity; a pale crown composed of stars burns at her brow, the mark of a saint; above her, twin dragons twine through hoary clouds, engaged in the fiery battle that denotes the conflict inherent in a creation stained by darkness; beyond that, as if seen from the mountaintop, a palace gleams in the sky, no doubt meant to represent the Chamber of Light where all souls return when the robes of darkness have at last been lifted from their spirit after their ascension through the seven spheres after death.



In deference to the several crippled or old sisters, railings had been set in rows so that, when they knelt, they might lean on wood. The dark grain was well polished, as if over the decades many of the nuns had needed a little such help at their prayers. After so many hours, Rosvita found herself exhausted. She, too, needed the compassionate support of the simple wood railing.



She had been ill for a long time and recovering for a much shorter one, and now she felt flashes of heat, sweat breaking on her forehead and down her spine. The hair at the nape of her neck was damp, and her palms slick.



Ai, Lady, she was tempted. Could Hugh bind the daimone? Could she see it done? She had never seen a daimone, of course, and the intense desire to see what she had never seen before and would likely never see again scalded her heart.



They sang from the Sayings of Queen Salomae the Wise, who had lived long before the birth of the blessed Daisan.



“Do not follow the path of evildoers. Turn aside. Avoid it.



For the evil man cannot sleep unless he has done wrong.



The evil woman cannot sleep unless she has caused someone’s downfall.”



Yet she and Theophanu would become accomplices to Hugh’s misdeeds and his terrible acts if they accepted help from him, if they allowed him to aid them with that same sorcery they had been so eager to condemn him for before.



“For although the lips of the sorcerer drip honey



and his speech is smoother than oil,



yet in the end he is as bitter as wormwood



and as sharp as a two-edged sword.”



Could she stain her own hands, even for a good cause? Yet she knew herself no saint, willing to die rather than compromise her own honor. If Adelheid died rather than submit to Ironhead, then Aosta would suffer. If Theophanu surrendered, then she and everyone in her party would endure imprisonment and possibly death at Ironhead’s hands.



Surely under these circumstances God would forgive them for setting foot briefly on the path known otherwise only to the wicked. Yet when did the end ever justify the means?



Mother Obligatia led the daily lesson in her frail voice. “Let us sing this day the hymn of creation, in honor of the feast day of St. Eulalia, she who was midwife to St. Edessia. Her hands brought forth that which is life to us, the blessed Daisan, who brought the Divine Word from heaven unto Earth.”



“Everything is placed upon nothing.



In this way the universe came to be.



Yet something streamed out from the Father of Life



and the Mother became pregnant in the shape of a fish



and bore him; and he was called the Son of Life.



As his soul descended through the seven spheres



he partook only of pure things.



He took into his spirit nothing impure as he descended.



But we know this to be true, that the world is impure.



We know this to be true,



that the impure world separated him from the Father and Mother



in whom he once dwelled without separation.”