Crown of Stars

Page 215

The sound of her wings unfurling cracked like distant thunder. The air sparked, and for an instant those wings blazed so brightly that the prior staggered back, covering his eyes. Folk wept, cried aloud, and prayed. Dogs began barking.
But the breath of aether was too weak to sustain her. The splendor faded as quickly as it had bloomed. Yet that glimpse had been enough. Folk fell back, hiding their eyes. They lowered their crude weapons, and the prior dropped to his knees and braced himself as for a blow.
This was not awe. It was terror.
She pushed open the gate. A wide dirt way led past outbuildings, past the guest compound where a score of faces peeped at her through gaps in the fence, past the beehives, past the stable with a half dozen horses poking their heads out to see what was up, and past a village of tents strung up where sheep would have grazed in more peaceful days. A cold wind chased her, growing in strength. That blast of winter air turned to ice as she broke into a run. Its chill fingers tugged at her. Its chill voice whispered.
Come in now.
The wind fluttered the tent flaps in the refugee camp. A door banged open, caught by a gust. The cold came on so suddenly that it could not have been natural. Memories crowded her, both in mind and in body. Cold ached in her bones. It hit hard, and painfully. Walking hurt, as the cold froze her joints, making each movement into agony. The cold dried her lips until they cracked and bled. The touch of wind on her skin was a slap, stinging and raw.
She did not suffer alone.
Folk huddled, wrapped in the rags of their clothing. Others scattered, seeing her come, while a few monks stood their ground beside the path. They watched her pass, although they made no move to stop her. Each one’s accusing gaze stung worse than the wintry wind. She was the monster they feared. Hugh had done his work well.
He had not worked with words alone. Fear of her, of what he had told them of her, could not drive them back, but the harsh weather did. They shuddered in the gale pouring down onto them out of the north. They retreated to porches, where the walls offered meager shelter. But the closer she came to the main compound, the harder it became to fight the winter. Men struggled even to walk. They bent, folded over, as they pushed their way to buildings that might shield them.
The wind howled down. With each breath, with each step, she felt the ice spreading. Where a walkway led between two dormitories, a passageway into the central courtyard, she discovered two novices curled up and sleeping, their lips blue and their fingers white from cold, breath bleeding white clouds into the air.
Cold kills, but she dared not stop to help them.
Her feet rapped on stone as she came out of the covered walkway into the famous unicorn courtyard, with its pillared colonnade, rose garden, and trim hedge of cypresses. Four stone unicorns reared on their hind legs. They gleamed, having been scrubbed clean since she saw them last, and all streaks had been scoured from the mosaic basin. Water spouted from their horns in four arched streams, but as she crossed the empty cloister those slender sprays of water crackled and turned to ice, falling in a patter of shards to earth.
And still the cold wind pressed down from the heavens, until it seemed the air cut as with knives.
The scent of burning—of blessed heat perfumed with lavender—teased her with the sting of magic. Sorcery, like the wind, poured down over her, over all of them. This was Hugh’s work. What did he care how many died, as long as he got what he wanted? Always he worked his worst against those helpless to stand against him.
The wind tore away that trace of warmth. She pushed on, hunched over as she fought across the courtyard to reach the chapter house and the side entrance to the church. Her hands were so numb she could scarcely bend them. Her eyes frosted open.
It was so cold.
Cold had defeated her once, when only the pigs had offered her comfort. But the spark of will had never quite died, not even in the depths of that awful winter in Heart’s Rest, although she had surrendered in the end in order to save her own life.
Not this time.
All the guilt and grief of those days, which she had carried with her for so long, had burned away. Now the cold, the sorcery, was simply another battle to fight.
A monk sprawled across the doorway into the church, unconscious or asleep. He was shockingly pretty, so perfect in feature that briefly she felt moved to smile, but she could not really move her lips. She knelt beside him and pressed her hands to his cheeks. He had lost so much heat that his skin actually was colder than her chapped and freezing hands. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing. Ice rimed his nostrils. With the fine touch of one wielding a needle and not a knife, she carved warmth out of her own core and poured it into his flesh. Although his skin turned red, he rattled and stirred, and a mist of milky breath poured from him as he coughed out a gasp and sucked in air. His eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake. The magic would not let him wake, and save himself.