From The King in the
Stone, the sequel to Two Moon Princess
I wasn’t worried about getting
lost. I knew these mountains. Not the trees and the bushes and the animal
trails I sometimes crossed, but the broader picture. I recognized the shape of
the slope I was climbing, the changing outline of the mountain range that
closed the valley to the north, and the naked wall of white limestone on the
mountain across when I finally reached the outcrop.
But
the place itself––a wide ledge that had been hidden till then behind the rocks
––I didn’t know, and the cave I had expected wasn’t there. Instead a gnarled
oak sprung from the face of the mountain and it was under its heavy branches, I
saw the tomb for the first time. It grew from the earth in the middle of the
expanse seeming as much a part of the mountain as the granite stone from which
it had been carved.
I hesitated for a moment, breathless from the climb, in awe at the majesty the place commanded. It was one of these places where the wind comes to die, and the air, forever still, remains warm in the winter and cool in the summer, fragrant with the perfume of early spring. They are usually found deep in the forest in ancient oak groves. And for my people, they are sacred.
I stepped onto the ledge, with the reverence I would upon entering a temple, the rustle of my shoes upon the dry heather the only sound to break the silence. The soil, I realized when I came closer, had been excavated around the tomb that now reached up to my waist. Several scenes had been carved around its sides and on the slab that closed the monument, the lying figure of a knight emerged from the stone.
Eyes closed, his hair loose over his shoulders, he was dressed in a tunic that fell down to his knees and boots tight against his calves––the way noblemen dress in my world. A king, he was a king I knew, even before I saw the circlet on his forehead or the pommel of the sword he held over his chest, the pommel with three lines entangled in the shape of a mountain, the design of the House of Montemaior. My father’s House.
