The Burning Stone

“There is much we do not yet comprehend about the universe, but we know that there are many interstices within the fabric of the universe that may be traversed by those who know how to do so. We call that cluster of stars that the Child is reaching for a ‘crown of stars,’ yet don’t we also call the great stone circles which we find through the land ‘crowns’? Magic built those circles long ago, and I believe that it was the Aoi who built them, at the height of their power. I believe that those were the mechanisms by which the Aoi hurled themselves elsewhere. Did you and Bernard ever travel to the cliffs of Barakanoi, southeast of Aosta?”



“Yes, we did. I’ll always remember them because they were so sharp, the way the shoreline ends and the waters begin. I remember telling Da that I thought it was like someone had cut it clean with a knife.” But she faltered, looking up at Sanglant. He only shrugged. He had never been there. “There was a city there, and it ended, too. As if it had been cut away. I always thought part of it must have fallen into the sea. But it couldn’t have. There wasn’t any sign of ruins in the sea below. It ran deep there. There weren’t even any shoals, that’s what Da told me.



Anne nodded. “Those of us born out of the earth must have earth to stand on. Even magi such as the Aoi could not exist in the aether as do the daimones and the angels.”



“Are you suggesting,” demanded Sanglant, “that they used their magic to literally take a part of this earth with them into their exile?”



“What does it matter, anyway, if they’re gone now?” muttered Liath, rubbing her belly. “If they don’t walk on the earth any longer, then they can be no threat to us.”



Anne had not looked away from Sanglant since he had entered the chamber, just as one does not take one’s eyes from the poisonous snake with whom you share a cozy patch of ground. ‘An arrow shot into the air will fall to earth in time. Any great power unleashed in the universe will rebound someday in proportion to its original power and direction. What has been accomplished once may be accomplished again, and if a channel has already been dug, how much easier will the river flow back through where it is dry?”



“Are these riddles that I’m supposed to answer?” asked Liath irritably.



“No,” said Sanglant. “I think she is saying that the Lost Ones will return.”



“On the tenth day of Octumbre, in the year 735, at midnight,” said Anne, “when the paths between the spheres open and the crown of stars crowns the heaven.”



Liath pressed both hands against her abdomen and shut her eyes with the kind of sigh that a person lets out when she knows that the toil before her is bound to be much harder than that which she just finished. “Why do I feel like a puppet dancing to the jerk of someone else pulling the strings?”



“If they left because humankind had driven them to such desperate straits,” Sanglant asked, “then why would they want to return?”



“For the same reason, Prince Sanglant, that they would want a child born half of Aoi and half of royal human blood.” She gestured toward him. “To take back what was once theirs: sovereignty over this world.”



Wind rattled the shutters. An owl hooted in the night, and Sanglant heard the shriek of some poor creature caught in its claws. Anne shifted to look at Liath, who at that moment gripped his wrist and braced herself as another wave of pain washed over her, harder than any of the ones that had come before. She seemed to fall so far away from him, all her attention drawn inward, that it was as if she herself had been briefly cut away from him and from any part of the world beyond her womb, where the child now struggled to be born onto this earth.



“Sister Meriam should be woken,” said Sanglant. “She said she would act as midwife.”



Anne simply waited until Liath stopped panting. “That is why you are so important, Liathano. Why everything else in which you have engaged does not matter, and cannot matter.” A little sweat beaded on Liath’s forehead as she lifted her head and regarded Anne as much with annoyance for the interruption as with curiosity or awe for the solemn pronouncement being invoked.



“They have bided their time in safety hoarding their power and their magic. Now they mean to rule over us again as they once did millennia ago. They are strong and unmerciful. They will make cruel masters. They will sunder the world in order to take it back, for their return to this Earth will cause such a cataclysm as no creature alive has ever seen. ‘For the mountains shall become the sea, and the sea shall become the mountains.’”