Kate Elliot - Crown of Stars 01 - King's Dragon

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KATE ELLIOT
**VOLUME ONE of CROWN OF STARS**
King’s Dragon
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My thanks to Katharine Kerr for supplying me with a title when all seemed lost;
to my husband, Jay Silverstein, for his continued support while he has himself
been engaged in a great enterprise; to the Reverend Jeanne Reames
Zimmerman, O.S.L., for her immense aid with matters classical and linguistic; to
my sister, Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen, whose knowledge of the medieval milieu
was invaluable; to Dr. John W. Bernhardt, whose lecture on itinerant kingship in
Ottonian Germany inspired the setting; and to Widukind of Corvey, monk and
historian, whose History of the Saxons—made accessible to me through
a translation into English by Raymund F. Wood—spoke to me across a thousand
years.
Since this is a fantasy, many details borrowed from our Middle Ages—large
and small—have been altered, but all mistakes are mine alone.
PROLOGUE
On a hill surrounded on three sides by forest and on the fourth by the ruins of
a fortress stood a ring of stones. They crowned the hill with stark beauty, like the
bones of a castle buried so deeply in the soil that only the battlements of the
tallest tower rose above the earth. It was said by some that chambers lay
beneath the standing stones, rooms filled with treasure, with haunts, with
creatures not of human form. It was said that passageways led out from these
chambers like rivers stretching from a landlocked lake, leading from this hill
across the land, even to the cold sea in the north, even to the great mountains far
to the south.
On the third day of the month of Avril, as afternoon faded into twilight and the
full moon shone low in the darkening sky, a lone traveler made her way up
through the tumbled stones of the old fortress. She wore leggings, a plain linen
tunic, and sandals laced up to her knees, human clothing which she had become
accustomed to here in this foreign land but not what she felt comfortable in. With
a staff gripped in one hand and a small pouch tied to her belt, she negotiated the
maze of walls as if she knew it by heart.
The ruins lay on a gentle incline, stretching from the banks of a narrow river up
to where the last wall, no taller than a year-old child, lay crumbling into the dirt
and grass. The forest rose beyond. A single watch fire burned on the other side
of the river, past the stumps of felled trees and fields newly burned for a spring
planting of barley, marking the only village that lay within sight of the hill crowned
by stones.
The traveler paused before she stepped over the last wall of the fortress. She
threw back her hood. Her hair was so pale it seemed to shine with a light of its
own. She reached into the pouch and drew out a scrap of torn cloth, stained with
red. With a grimace, she made to cast it to the ground, as if by throwing it away
she would free herself from its binding power before she passed into the wild
majesty of the stones.
But she paused, cocking her head to one side, listening. And she cursed. She
hesitated, and that moment was enough for the lead horseman to spot her.
It was dusk, but her hair was bright and his eyes were young and keen, and he
was looking for her.
“Alia!” he cried. “Beloved!” Recklessly, he urged his horse forward, picking his
way up through the fort. More riders appeared behind him. He paused, reining
his mount aside, so men on foot, carrying torches, could catch up and guide him
forward. He used only one hand on the reins. In his other arm he carried a
bundle of cloth tucked against his chest.
She winced away from the sight of that small burden. The vow she had made
years ago, as humans measured time, seemed rash and ugly now. She had
stood up in front of the assembled council and spoken boldly, but she had not
known then what she would suffer in the world of men.
Then her gaze caught on a banner. A battle-scarred man in a gold and black
surcoat closed the gap between himself and the young prince. Upright and
arrogant in the saddle, he held in one hand the dragon banner, symbol of the
elite guards who protected the heir and by extension the kingdom itself: a black
dragon coiled on a gold background; a cluster of seven brilliant stars studded the
gold field above the dragon’s figure. She traced this constellation with her gaze to
remind her-seif of what it stood for, the Crown of Stars worn by the ruler of the
ancient Empire, half-forgotten now in the world of humankind but destined to
return. It was for this she had made the sacrifice.
By this time, aided by her hesitation, the young prince had pulled his horse up
beside her. Torches threw wings of light over the ruins, and their heat surrounded
her like a prison built with walls of fire.
“Why did you follow me?” she asked. “You knew I intended to leave.”
“How can you leave?” he demanded, like a child wailing against being
abandoned. But he was so young, barely a man, only eighteen years old
according to the calendars of this world. With an effort he schooled his
expression to one of haughty disdain and tried a different path. “Surely you will
stay until the child is a year or two old, so you might know that it lives and
thrives.”
“No disease known to you will touch him, nor will any wound inflicted by any
creature male or female cause his death.” She spoke without thinking.
A murmur, like the breath of wind through a forest, passed through the
assembled soldiers, those close enough to hear her prophesy whispering her
words to those who stood farther away. The old soldier urged his horse forward
to halt beside the young prince. The dragon banner lapped over the saddle,
brushing the young man’s arm.
At that moment, the bundle stirred. The baby woke, batting aside the
swaddling with blind infant groping. She saw the black shock of hair that crowned
the baby’s head, the tiny face and its open, staring eyes, as vivid as fine green
jade, its skin that marked it as flesh of her flesh, a fine burnished bronze nothing
like the northern pallor of the young prince’s complexion even where it was
roughened by exposure to sun and wind. The tiny hand closed on a corner of the
dragon banner, gripping it with infant strength. The men-at-arms pointed and
exclaimed over this omen: The bastard child born of no human woman sensed its
fate already, though it was not yet two months old.
The prince turned his face away, not wanting to look. Instead, he carefully—so
carefully!—handed the baby over to the old soldier, who gave the banner into
another man’s hands in order to hold the infant. Then he dismounted, gestured to
his men to move away, and faced her. “You care nothing for the child?” She did
not look after the old soldier as he guided his horse to a patch of ground less
racked with loose stone and sudden sharp drop-offs that might catch a horse
unawares.
“He is no longer mine.”
“How can you say so? He is the most beautiful child I have ever seen!”
“Only because he is yours!”
“Yours as well!”
“Not mine! I carried it inside me, gave birth to it, bled enough blood to cover
the fields that surround the village we just passed through! Never mine, and
never meant to be. Leave me, Henri.” She had never learned the eastern accent
and still spoke his name as a Salian would. “I never promised you anything but
the child. Let me go in peace.”
The young man said nothing for a long time, or at least, not in words. He had
an expressive face, but he was learning to control it. She wondered, watching
him, what he wanted to say, and what he would say. When she had first met him
a year ago, he’d always blurted out the first words that came to his tongue. Now,
made heir by right of fertility, he was learning to think before he spoke.
“I do not want to let you go,” he said at last. “By the invocation of your name,
Alia, I beg you to stay with me.”
“Alia is not my name, Henri. It is only what you call me.”
“You aren’t well enough to go. You were so ill after the birth.”
“I arn well enough now.”
“Then why did you come to me? Don’t you love me at all?” His voice broke on
the last words and a moment later he caught himself and tensed, his face
freezing into a mask of stone.
That mask, she thought, will be the one he wears most often when he
becomes king.
She thought of telling him the truth, because she did not dislike him. He was
still young, a little callow, but he had strength in him, and he was ambitious, and
clever, and handsome in a human way, elegant and proud.
But the truth was not hers to tell, nor his to know. King he might become, but
he was only a pawn in hands whose power was greater than his would ever be
as regnant of two kingdoms. She and he were both pawns, and this gave her
some sympathy for him.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. “I am not immune to human
charms,” she lied. “But my duty lies elsewhere.” That at least was true.
She could not bear to hear more from him. She could stay in this world no
longer. It weighed too heavily on her; it had stolen so much of her precious blood.
She fingered the scrap of bloody cloth, torn from the sheets in which she had
given birth; it—and what it signified, her link to the child—was the last thing that
bound her here. She let go of the bloody rag, and it fluttered to the ground.
As he knelt to pick it up, she stepped across the last crumbling wall. He rose,
calling after her, but he did not try to follow. Nor could she really hear his voice
any longer as the stones rose up before her and she heard at last the faint music
of their alignment singing to her.
With her inner sight she touched the wind stone, the stone of light, the stone of
blood, of water, of fire, the other stones, each according to its properties. Here, in
the human world, in order to touch the heart of any object, to find and manipulate
its essence, she had to trace winding paths around the walls and barriers built by
human magi, for they chose to constrain and then master what they could not
understand. But as she entered the precinct of stone, those walls fell away. She
lifted a hand. Mist arises from the commingling of water and air, and so mist rose
around her, at her suggestion, hiding her from view as she entered the ring of
stones.
Above her, unobscured by the mist that surrounded her, stars shone. She read
their alignment and called down the power that sang from them and melded it to
the alignment of the stones, each to each, a choir raising its voice to heaven. She
called to the heart of her own land, and at the altar of fire and blood a portal
opened.
Neither a door nor a wispy shimmering of air, it looked like an arbor, a lush
flowering vine grown over an arch. She smelled snow and felt the cold sting of a
winter wind beyond. Without hesitation she stepped through and left the world of
humankind behind.
Prince Henry, heir to the kingdoms of Wendar and Varre, watched Alia walk
away from him, up into the ring of stones. He steeled his face, his heart, his
whole body, and when the mist rose and covered her, he simply tightened his
hand on the scrap of cloth she had left behind that contained all he had left of
her: her blood.
Three of his men stood beside him, holding up torches to drive back the mist
that had swollen suddenly from the ground, a night-crawling fog that surrounded
the stones. Light flashed within the stone ring. A chill wind stung his lips. A
perfect crystal flake of snow spiraled down on the last of the wind and dissolved
on his boot.
Mist still clung about the stones.
“Shall we go up, my lord, and look for her?” asked one of his men. “No. She is
gone.”
He tucked the cloth into his belt and called for his horse. Mounted, he took the
baby back into the crook of his arm and, with his entourage around him, began
the slow descent of the hill. The baby did not cry, but its eyes were open, and it
stared at the heavens, or at its father, or at the dragon banner. Who could tell?
A breeze swelled out from the stones, and mist rolled down over the ruins from
the height of the hill, swathing the crumbling buildings in a sudden thick fog and
hiding the moon. The men picked their way carefully, men on foot grabbing hold
of horses’ harnesses, the rest calling out to each other, marking distance by the
sound of their voices.
“You are better off without a woman like that,” said the old soldier suddenly to
the prince in the tone of a man who has the right to give advice. “The church
would never have accepted her. And she has power over the ways of nature
which it were better not to meddle with.” The dragon banner hung limp, sodden
with the weight of the fog, as if this unnatural mist was trying to drag the banner
down.
But the prince did not reply. He kept his gaze on the torches surrounding him,
like watch fires, light thrown against the gloom.
A ring of seven candles, light thrown against the gloom.
Watchers stared into a mist that rose from a huge block of obsidian set in their
midst. Their faces were hidden by darkness.
In the mist they saw tiny figures, a young nobleman carrying an infant, ringed
by his faithful followers. Slowly these figures descended through a fortress, seen
half as ruins, half as the ghost of the fortress that was once whole. The tiny
figures walked through walls as if they were air, for they were air, and it was only
the memory of what was once there, in the minds of some few of the watchers,
that created the ghostly walls, the suggestion of the past built anew.
“We must kill the child,” said one of the watchers as the mist faded, sinking
into the black stone. With it faded the image of the prince and his retinue.
”The child is too well protected,” said a second. “We must attempt it, for they
intend to shatter the world itself.”
The first among the watchers shifted, and the others, who had been
whispering among themselves, stilled into an uncanny silence.
“It is never wise to seek only to destroy,” said she who sat first among them.
Her voice was rich and deep. “That way lies ruin only. That way lies darkness.”
“Then what?” demanded the first speaker. He shrugged impatiently.
Candlelight glinted off his white hair.
“Just as the Enemy turns the faithful from the Path of Light toward the Abyss,
so can unbelievers be turned away from their error to see the promise of the
Chamber of Light. We must counter the power given into the hands of this
unwitting child with power of our own.”
“There is this difference.” said the second speaker, “that while we know our
opponents exist, they do not know of us.”
“Or so we believe,” said the first man. He sat stiffly, a man of action
unaccustomed to long stillnesses.
“We must trust to Our Lord and Lady,” said the woman, and the rest nodded
and murmured agreement.
The only light given to their circle was that flickering from the candles, bright
flames throwing sharp glints on the surface of the obsidian altar, and that from
the stars above and the round, still globe of the moon. Great blocks of shadow
surrounded them, an entourage of giants.
Beyond, wind muttered through the open shells of buildings, unseen but felt,
the last relics of a great empire lost long ago to fire and sword and blood and
magic. The ruins ended at a shoreline as abruptly as if a knife had sheared them
off. Surf hissed and swelled at the verge. Sand got caught up on the wind and
swirled up from the shore into the circle, catching on tongues and in the folds of
cloaks. One of the watchers shivered and tugged a hood hard down over her
hair. “It’s a fool’s errand,” this one said. “They are stronger than we are, here and
in their own country.”
“Then we must reach for powers that are greater still,” said she who sat first
among them.
They responded to her words with expectant silence.
“I will make the sacrifice,” she continued. “I alone. They wish to sunder the
world while we desire only to bring it closer to the Chamber of Light toward which
all our souls strive. If they bring one agent into the world, then we must bring
another. Of ourselves we cannot defeat them.”
One by one they bowed their heads, acquiescing to her judgment, until only
one man remained, head unbowed. He rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder
and spoke. “You will not be alone.”
In this way they considered in silence. The great ruins lay around them,
echoing their silence, the skeleton of a city unattended by ghost walls or visions
of past grandeur. Sand skirled up the streets, spattering against stone, grain by
grain erasing the vast murals that adorned the long walls. But where the walls
marched out to the sea, where the knife-edge cut them clean, the shadow form of
the old city mingled with the waves, the memory of what once had been—not
drowned by the sea but utterly gone.
Stars wheeled above on their endless round.
The candles illuminated the gleaming surface of the obsidian altar. In its black
depths an image of the distant ring of stones, far to the north, still stood, and the
last torches borne by the prince’s retinue flickered and faded into nothing as they
passed beyond view.
PART ONE
I A STORM FROM THE SEA
When winter turned to spring and the village deacon sang the mass in honor
of St. Thecla’s witnessing of the Ekstasis of the blessed Daisan, it came time to
prepare the boats for the sailing season and the summer’s journeying to other
ports.
Alain had tarred his father’s boat in the autumn; now he examined the hull,
crawling beneath the boat where it had wintered on the beach on a bed of logs.
The old boat had weathered the winter well, but one plank was loose. He
fastened the plank with a willow treenail, stuffing sheep’s wool greased with tar
into the gap and driving the nail home onto a grommet also made of wool.
Otherwise the boat was sound. After Holy Week his father would load the boat
with casks of oil and with quern-stones brought in from nearby quarries and
finished in workshops in the village.
But Alain would not be going with him, though he had begged to be given the
chance, just this one season.
He turned, hearing laughter from up the strand where the road ran in to the
village. He wiped his hands on a rag and waited for his father to finish speaking
with the other Osna merchants who had come down to examine their boats, to
make ready for the voyage out now that Holy Week had ended.
“Come, son,” said Henri after he had looked over the boat. “Your aunt has
prepared a fine feast and then we’ll pray for good weather at the midnight bell.”
They walked back to Osna village in silence. Henri was a broad-shouldered
man, not very tall, his brown hair shot through with silver. Henri spent most of the
year away, visiting ports all up and down the coast, and during the winter he sat
in his quiet way in his sister Bel’s workshop and built chairs and benches and
tables. He spoke little, and when he did speak did so in a soft voice quite unlike
his sister’s, who, everyone joked, could intimidate a wolf with her sharp tongue.
Alain had darker hair and was certainly taller, lanky enough that he was likely
to grow more just as certain spring days are likely to bring squalls and sudden
bursts of rain. As usual, Alain did not quite know what to say to his father, but this
day as they walked along the sandy path he tried, one more time, to change his
father’s mind. “Mien sailed with you the year he turned sixteen, even before he
spent his year in the count’s service! Why can’t I go this year?”
“It can’t be. I swore to the deacon at Lavas Holding when you were just a new
babe come into the world that I would give you to the church. That is the only
reason she let me foster you.”
“If I must take vows and spend the rest of my life within the monastery walls,
then why can’t I have just one season with you to see the world? I don’t want to
be like Brother Gilles—”
“Brother Gilles is a good man,” said Henri sharply.
“Yes, he is, but he hasn’t set foot off monastery lands since the day he entered
as a child of seven! It isn’t right you condemn me to that. At least one season
with you would give me something to remember.”
“Brother Gilles and his fellow monks are content enough.”
“I’m not Brother Gilles!”
“We have spoken of this before, Alain. You are of age now and promised to
the church. All will pass as Our Lord and Lady have decreed. It is not for you or
me to question their judgment.”
By the way Henri set his mouth, Alain knew that his father would not reply to
any further argument. Furious, he strode ahead, his longer strides taking him out
in front of his father, though it was rude. Just one season! One season to see
something of the world, to see distant ports and unfamiliar coastlines, to speak
with men from other towns, from other lands, to see something of the strange
lands the deacon spoke of when she read the lessons and saints’ lives of fraters
—the wandering priests—who brought the Holy Word of the Unities to barbarous
lands. Why was that so much to ask? He crossed through the livestock palisade
and by the time he reached Aunt Bel’s longhouse, his mood was thoroughly foul.
Aunt Bel stood in the garden examining her newly planted parsley and
horseradish. She straightened, measuring him, and shook her head. “There’s
water to fetch before feasting,” she said.
“That’s Julien’s job today.”
“Julien is mending sail, and I’ll ask you not to question me, child. Do as you’re
told. Don’t argue with your father, Alain. You know he’s the stubbornest man in
the village.”
“He’s not my father!” shouted Alain.
For that he got a sharp slap in the face, delivered with all the force of thirty
years of kneading bread and chopping wood behind it. It brought a red stain to
his cheek and silence to his lips.
“Never speak so again of the man who raised you. Now, go on.”
He went, because no one dared argue with Bel, elder sister of Henri the
merchant and mother of eight children, of whom five still lived.
He sat at the evening’s feast in silence and went in silence to the church. The
moon was full, and its pale light filtered in through the new glass window which
the merchants and householders of Osna had bought for the village church. But
with moonlight and candlelight there was illumination enough to see the walls,
whitewashing over timber, painted with the huge murals depicting the life of the
blessed Daisan and the deeds of the glorious saints and martyrs.
The deacon raised her hands in the blessing and began to sing the liturgy.
“Blessed is the Country of the Mother and Father of Life, and of the Holy Word
revealed within the Circle of Unity, now and ever and unto ages of ages.”
“Amen,” he murmured with the congregation. “In peace let us pray to Our Lord
and Lady.” “Kyrie eleison.” Lord have mercy. He clasped his hands and tried to
pay attention as the deacon circled the church, pacing out the stations marking
the blessed Daisan’s life and ministry, bringing to the faithful the Holy Word
granted him by the grace of the Lord and Lady. “Kyria eleison.” Lady have
mercy.
On the walls stark pictures stood out brightly in the light cast by torches.
There, the blessed Daisan at the fire where first he encountered the vision of the
Circle of Unity. And again, the blessed Daisan with his followers refusing to kneel
and worship before the Dari-yan Empress Thaissania, she of the mask. The
seven miracles, each one depicted with loving detail. And last, the blessed
Daisan dead at the Hearth from which his spirit was lifted up through the seven
spheres to the Chamber of Light, while his great disciple St. Thecla wept below,
her tears feeding the sanctified cup.
But to Alain’s eyes, there in the midnight church, other more shadowy forms
lay as if hidden beneath the bright murals, their outlines embellished with fine
gold, their eyes like jewels, their presence like fire on his soul.
The fall of the ancient city of Dariya to savage horsemen, its last defenders
clothed in gleaming bronze armor, spears and shields raised as they fought a
hopeless fight but with the honor of men who will not bow down before an
honorless enemy.
Not images from the church at all, but the stories of brilliant lives of old
warriors. They haunted him.
The fateful Battle of Auxelles, where Taillefer‘s nephew and his men lost their
lives but saved Taillefer’s fledgling empire from invasion by heathens.
“For healthful seasons, for the abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for
peaceful times, let us pray.”
The glorious victory of the first King Henry of Wendar against Quman invaders
along the River Eldar, where his bastard grandson Conrad the Dragon charged
his troop of cavalry straight into the midst of the terrible host of Quman riders,
breaking their line and sending them scattering back to their own lands, hunting
them down like animals as they fled.
“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
speak with the Holy Word upon their tongues.”
The last ride of King Louis of Varre, just fifteen years old but undaunted by the
approach of raider ships on the northern coast of his kingdom, killed at the Battle
of the Nysa though no man knew whose hand had struck the final blow. Had it
been that of a raider prince, or that of a traitor serving the schemes of the new
king of Wendar who would, because of Louis’ death, become king of Varre as
well?
Instead of the voice of the deacon, reading the lesson, Alain heard the ring of
harness, the clash of swords, the snap of banners in the wind, the sweet strength
of the gathered warriors singing a Kyrie eleison as they rode into battle.
“For Thou art our sanctification, and unto Thee we ascribe glory, to the
Mother, to the Father, and to the Holy Word spoken in the heavens, now, and
ever, and unto ages of ages.”
“Amen,” he said, stumbling into the response as the congregation raised its
voice as one in the final exclamation. “Let us depart in peace, in the Name of Our
Lord and Lady. Have mercy upon us.”
“Have mercy upon us,” echoed his father, his voice as soft as the whisper of
leaves on the roof.
He put an arm around Alain as they left the church and made their way by
torchlight back to the longhouse. “It is as it must be,” he said, and Alain sensed
that this was the last word Henri would ever speak on the matter. The choice had
been made long ago, one to the sea, one to the heart of God.
“What was my mother like?” Alain asked suddenly. “She was beautiful,” said
Henri. Alain heard the raw scrape of grief in his father’s voice. He dared not ask
more, for fear of breaking the wound wide open.
So they went inside and drank a last cup of warmed mulled wine. At dawn,
Alain went down to the strand and saw them off, rolling the boat down the logs
and onto the beach, shoving it into the waves. They loaded it with the cargo.
Cousin Julien was white with excitement; he had gone once before but only to a
nearby Varren port. He had never gone south for an entire season.
“Do honor to your kin,” said Henri to Alain. He kissed Aunt Bel and then got in
the boat last of all. The oarsmen began to row, and Julien fussed with the square
sail.
Alain stood on the beach long after the others had gone back up the road to
the village. He stood until he could no longer see any trace of sail on the gray-
blue waters. At last he turned away from the sea, knowing Aunt Bel had work for
him to do. With a heavy heart, he walked back to the village.
In the distant haze where the sky met the sea, the islands that dotted Osna
Sound rose as dark peaks of earth marking the horizon. When Alain stood,
shading his eyes with a hand, and stared out across the bay toward the islands,
the water gleamed like metal. It lay still and smooth, and from the height of the
Dragonback Ridge the swells were lost under the glare of the sun. Up here, he
could not feel a breath of wind. Out beyond the islands he saw a veil of low
clouds pushing in toward land. Rain was coming.
For an instant, caught by a trick of the light, a white sheet of sail stood out, the
merest speck that vanished into the horizon of cloud and iron-gray water as he
watched. Perhaps it was his father, making his way out through the islands.
Alain sighed and turned away from the sea. He tugged on the rope, pulling the
donkey away from a tuft of grass. It moved reluctantly, but it did move. Together
they walked on, kicking sand up from the path that ran along the spine of the
ridge, leading from the town to the monastery. The surf muttered far below.
The path began to slope down toward the Dragon’s Tail, where the monastery
lay. Soon Alain caught a glimpse of buildings spaced out around the church with
its single tower. He lost sight of them again as the path cut down through
tumbled boulders along the landward side of the ridge and, farther down still,
turning to loam, wound through quiet forest.
He came out of the forest into cleared fields and soon enough trudged through
the open gates and into the monastery that, on St. Eusebe’s Day, would be his
home for the rest of his life. Ai, Lord and Lady! Surely his guilt stained him red for
all to see: The boy who loved the Father and Mother of Life and who yet rebelled
in his heart against entering Their service. Ashamed, he stared at his feet as he
skirted the outbuildings and arrived, finally, at the scriptorium.
Brother Gilles was waiting for him, patient as always, leaning on a walking
stick.
“You have brought the tithe of candles from the village,” the old monk said
approvingly. “Ah, and I see a jar of oil as well.”
Alain carefully unloaded the baskets slung by a rope harness on either side of
the donkey. He set the bundle of candles, rolled up in heavy cloth, down on the
tile floor of the scriptorium. Brother Gilles propped the door open. The few small
windows were open as well, shutters tied back against the wall, but even so at
the central lecterns it was dim work for the monks copying missals and
摘要：

KATEELLIOT**VOLUMEONEofCROWNOFSTARS**King’sDragonAUTHOR’SNOTEMythankstoKatharineKerrforsupplyingmewithatitlewhenallseemedlost;tomyhusband,JaySilverstein,forhiscontinuedsupportwhilehehashimselfbeenengagedinagreatenterprise;totheReverendJeanneReamesZimmerman,O.S.L.,forherimmenseaidwithmattersclassical...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：357 页 大小：1.59MB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-05

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