The Gathering Storm

  She settled back with a hand resting lightly on his throat to track the beating of his heart and so that she might, now and again, brush her fingers over his beloved lips.

  The brilliance of the night sky staggered her. The River of Souls streamed across the western quadrant of the sky, dense with light. How could she have forgotten this stunning beauty? The sight of it never failed to quiet her soul.

  Bright Somorhas hung low on the western horizon but sank quickly after the sun, leaving fiery Seirios as the first star that stayed visible as dusk deepened to night. She searched the heavens for clues.

  It was spring, certainly, with the Dragon rearing up in the east and the Child lying down to sleep in the west. Aturna stood in the Lion, close to zenith, the only other wandering star visible to her, but there were many of the heavens’ most brilliant stars fixed up in the sky: the yellowish glare of the Guivre’s Eye; the bright head of the elder Sister; the bluish Eye of the Dragon; Rijil, the Hunter’s brightly-shod foot, and Vulneris, the red wound on his shoulder.

  She brushed her hand over Sanglant’s shoulder and brought her fingers to her lips, tasting the blood. He lay frighteningly silent, not even murmuring as he was wont to do in sleep. Blood oozed but not with that same horrible gush she had seen when she first reached him.

  Her helplessness wore at her as a constant ache, but she possessed no healing magic. She carried no cache of herbs for a poultice. She was not strong enough to carry him and had no horse. In the morning, when she could see, she would attempt to build a sledge to drag him.

  Where could she take him?

  The stars continued on their appointed rounds as the night spun onward. Where was she? When was she?

  The Sapphire and the Diamond skated low along the northern horizon, and in the south, although the Bow and Arrow were visible, the Huntress who wielded them was not. She was about as far north as she had been in Wendar and likely a little farther south than Heart’s Rest. North and south were easy to calculate because of the altitude of the individual stars.

  She sat with her mortally wounded husband in the midst of a vast wilderness, guarded by griffins, as the night wind played in her hair and whispered through the grass. The moon sank westward, followed by Aturna, the Red Mage. New constellations rose and with them the planets Jedu and Mok. The Angel of War gleamed balefully in the Serpent while the Empress of Bounty journeyed with the Unicorn.

  Where had Mok stood, when last Liath walked on Earth?

  It hadn’t been so long ago, after all, only seven or eight days, that she had last stared up at the glorious sky.

  She searched into her city of memory, up through the seven gates that corresponded to the seven spheres, until she reached the crown of the hill where lay the observatory. Here, in nooks and crannies, she stored all her observations, marked with figures and images so she could recall each detail.

  Mok’s path was easy to find and to recall, a golden alcove in which a robust woman presided from a throne, surrounded by cornucopia, sheaves of wheat, fatted calves and, on the domed ceiling of the alcove, sigils representing each of the Houses of the Night. Seven or eight or ten days ago, in Verna, she had marked the constellation of the Dragon with a tiny shining sheaf of wheat to indicate Mok’s progress.

  Because Mok took about one year to travel through each House, that meant that the planet had in the intervening time journeyed through the Scales, the Serpent, and the Archer before reaching the Unicorn, spending about one year in each.

  Four years.

  Could she have been gone so long?

  The heavens could not lie because, as the blessed Daisan had written, they had no liberty to govern themselves. Subject to the Lord and Lady’s immutable laws, they did what they were ordered to do and nothing else.

  Four years, give or take six months. Would her daughter recognize her? Did Blessing even remember that she had a mother?

  A worse thought intruded, as rot insinuates itself beneath the clean surface of a house, weakening the foundations and posts: Had Sanglant thought her dead, and remarried?

  I have been gone too long.

  In a year and a half at most, Mok would travel through the Unicorn and the Healer and touch the far boundary of the Healer.

  When Erekes walks backward. When Bright Somorhas, walking backward, reenters the Serpent. When Jedu and Aturna enter the House of the Dragon. When Mok, retracing her steps, poises on the cusp between the Healer and the Penitent. On this same day, when the Crown of Stars crowns the heavens.

  On that day, in less than eighteen months, when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens, the way would be open for Anne to weave a great spell to cast the Aoi land back out into the aether, to create a second cataclysm. Unless Liath intervened.

  Stopping Anne came before any other consideration. Even her husband’s life. Even her own happiness.

  “I will not leave you again,” she whispered, but Sanglant could not hear her.

  At dawn, Sanglant stirred without opening his eyes or seeming aware of his surroundings. He was hot to the touch but not gray with impending death. As the promise of the sun brightened the eastern sky, limning the crags with its pale glow, the griffins sank down on the sunning stone. She knew they were awake because of the way their lively tails flicked up and down.

  She rose to stretch out her limbs, but at the movement the larger griffin startled up, staring eastward past the river. The second followed her lead. Liath, too, turned.

  She had only seen centaurs in her dreams, majestic creatures more wild than civilized but immensely powerful and full of magic. There were not many of them—not more than a dozen—but as they approached, she stared in amazement and only belatedly thought to free an arrow from the quiver and draw her bow.

  After marking her position, they turned downriver and disappeared from view. A little later she heard the rumble of hooves and saw them clearly in the light of the new sun spreading gold across the grass. The griffins padded restlessly back and forth on the sunning stone as though eager to retreat but unwilling to desert her.

  How had she won their loyalty? She could not guess.

  Respectful of the drawn bow she held, the herd came to a halt out of range of arrow shot. They were all female; they wore no garments, only paint to decorate their torsos, and the shapely curve of their woman-bodies was impossible to miss. Two of the centaurs hauled a wagon between them, bar and tongue fashioned so that they might draw it without using their hands.

  A silver-gray centaur trotted forward alone, bearing no weapon except a quiver of arrows slung across her back. It was a brave thing to do, considering the proximity of the griffins. She held no strung bow in her hands as she halted at the edge of the burned area. She had no way to defend herself if they sprang.

  Now that she was closer, Liath realized that she was not gray as much as ancient, her coat faded because of her immense age as a crone’s black hair turns to silver. Green-and-gold stripes half covered the horn-colored skin of her woman’s body. Her eyes bore an inhuman luminosity. There was, too, something oddly familiar about her, a tugging sense of connection, as though they had met before.

  One of the griffins gave a shrill cry as an owl skimmed in over the river. The centaur lifted an arm to receive the bird on a forearm sheathed in leather.

  Liath lowered her bow.

  “Well met,” she called in Wendish, not sure if the other one could understand her language, “if you are friend to us. I am called Liathano in the speech of humankind. I pray you, we are in grave need of your help if you are willing to give it.”

  The centaur approached with stately dignity across the burned out area. Ash puffed where she placed her hooves. Once she had to sidestep to avoid a hot spot, not yet burned out.

  “You are Liathano,” she said. “Known as Bright One.”

  “How do you know me?”

  “I walk within the paths marked out by the burning stone, which is the gateway between the worlds. I cannot ascend into the spheres because I cannot lea
ve Earth, but I have seen the traces of your passage. I have glimpsed you. I know your name, because it is the same as my own.”

  “I have an Arethousan name,” protested Liath. “How can our names be the same?”

  A spark flared in the city of memory, recalling to her mind memories she had seen in the heart of the burning stone when, for an instant, she could see time, past, present, and future as a single vast landscape stretching out on all sides.

  A centaur woman parts the reeds at the shore of a shallow lake. Her coat has the dense shimmer of the night sky, and her black woman’s hair falls past her waist. A coarse, pale mane, the only contrast to her black coat, runs down her spine, braided with beads and the bones of mice.

  “Look!” she cries. “See what we wrought!”

  She looses an arrow.

  “Li’at’dano!” Words stuck as though caught by thorns.

  Years ago, a humble frater by name of Bernard had named his daughter after an ancient centaur shaman written of in the chronicles of the Arethousans, who had witnessed and survived the Bwr attack on the Dariyan Empire. Some called her undying. All called her powerful beyond human ken.

  “Liathano,” she repeated stupidly, in the softened consonants of the western tongue. It was too difficult to believe and yet it stood smack in front of her. “How can you still be alive?”

  The centaur lifted her arm to release the owl, which flew away to find a resting place in the shrubs along the river’s bank.

  “I am not human, nor even half human, as you are. We are another kind entirely, born out of the world before humankind walked here. That is why your people fear us, and hunt us, and war against us, all except the Kerayit tribe, whom we nurture as our daughters. I am not like you, Bright One.”

  “No. You are not.”

  She was legend made flesh. It was impossible that any creature might live so long, generations upon generations, yet she knew in the core of her, the heart of fire that had once belonged to her mother; that it was true.

  “You made the cataclysm,” Liath said.

  “I do not possess the power of working and binding.”

  “You taught the seven who wove it.”

  “It is true that I encouraged those who devised and wove the great spell. None of us understood what we would unleash. I regret what I did.”

  “Do you regret it enough that you would be willing to stand aside and see your old enemies return to the world below? The land where the Ashioi dwell was torn from Earth. That you know. I have set foot in the exiled land. It is returning to the place it came from. And it should. It must. I came back to stop the Seven Sleepers. They wish to weave a second spell atop the first and cast the Ashioi back into the aether. If you intend to aid them, or hinder me, then we are enemies.”

  The old shaman indicated Sanglant, whose eyes had not opened. He showed no sign of consciousness; he wasn’t aware the centaurs had arrived or that this conversation was taking place. “Is it not rash to provoke me when I have the means to save this man? You may be throwing away his life.”

  Because he lay so still, it was easy to admire the handsome lines of his face and the clean lines of his limbs. He had not lost any of his strength or beauty. He did not look as though four years had passed although perhaps there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the product of worry and strain. Those hands had stroked her once; those lips had kissed her in a most satisfactory manner, and would again, she prayed.

  He was only one man. Lives would be lost no matter what happened, but a second cataclysm would affect unimaginable numbers, would wipe out entire villages and towns and, as she had seen, perhaps whole civilizations. In the heart of the burning stone she had witnessed the cataclysm as it had ripped the heart out of uncannily beautiful cities built by creatures not of humankind yet somehow like them in their clever industriousness: the goblins and the merfolk. They existed as legends, stories told about beasts not as dumb as cattle yet animals still. But maybe the stories weren’t true; maybe humankind had forgotten the truth or hidden it so as to hide the shame of what it had done all unwittingly.

  “I love him, but his is only one life. I would sacrifice my own life to save his, but I will not sacrifice the world. I will save as much as I can and see justice done. On this, I am determined.”

  A sliver of a smile cracked that aged face. It was not an expression of amusement, yet neither did it mock. “You are an arrow loosed, Bright One. I wonder if you can be turned aside.” She ducked her head as a sign of respect, although not of submission. At last she closed the gap between them, and Liath had consciously to stop herself from taking a step back because of the weird aura of her presence, her very appearance, and because like any horse she loomed larger than one expected. She was big, and could crush a human skull with one good kick.

  But she stretched out her hand and offered Liath an arrow from the quiver slung over her own back.

  “We are not enemies, Bright One. This arrow I will give you, in addition to my aid in bringing this human to safety. There is a child held for safekeeping in my camp whom he has sired.”

  “My daughter?” The bow slipped from slack hands to fall to the ground, the arrow click clacking down on top of it. “Blessing? How came she to you?” All the questions she had kept fettered ever since she had first seen Sanglant broke free. “What was Sanglant doing here, hunting griffins? How did he get here? Is he alone? Exiled? How far are we from Wendar? How fares my daughter? Was she with her father all along? How came she into your care? What grievance had that man who attacked Sanglant? How can we return to the west?”

  Li’at’dano chuckled. “You are still young, I see. You spill over like the floodwaters.” She bent, picked up bow and both arrows, and gave them to Liath. “Let us return to the encampment. Once there I shall answer your questions.”

  3

  THE odd thing was that the healer who attended him was dressed as a woman but resembled—and smelled like—a man. He was giddy with pain, and therefore, he supposed, unable to make sense of the world properly. The sky had gone a peculiar shade of dirty white that did not resemble clouds, and it had an unfortunate tendency to sag down and billow up. The effect made bile rise into his throat, and the nasty taste of it only intensified the way pain splintered into a thousand pieces and drove deeper into flesh and bone.

  Sometimes the mercy of death was preferable to living.

  Yet.

  Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath. He tried to speak her name but could get no voiced breath past his lips.

  “He moves,” said the healer, speaking to someone unseen. “See you his finger, this twitch? Fetch the Bright One.”

  A shadow skimmed the curved wall of the sky, distorted by corners and angles, and abruptly he recognized his surroundings: he lay inside a tent. He sensed a smaller body lying asleep near to his, but as the flap of the tent lifted a line of light flashed, waking every point of pain.

  He gasped out loud. Agony shattered his thoughts.

  “Sanglant.”

  Her voice startled him out of the stupor of pain. This time he could speak.

  “Liath? Where have you been? You abandoned us.”

  She was crying softly. “I was taken away by my kinfolk, but I had no wings to fly with. I could not follow them nor return to you. But now I have walked the spheres, love. Now I’ve come back to you and our child.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  The light faded. He fell into darkness.

  And woke.

  He hurt everywhere, but the pain no longer was excruciating; it was only a terrible throbbing ache that radiated throughout his body. Air thrummed against the walls of the tent in a complex melody that rose and fell depending on the strength of the wind and minute shifts of its direction, although in general it seemed to be coming from the southeast.

  He heard Liath’s voice.

  “I can see nothing. I have little knowledge of healing. I do not understand why she should have fallen into this stupor.
What can I do to wake her?”

  “Look more closely, Bright One.” The shaman’s inhuman voice stirred unexpected feelings in his breast—irritation that she had dismissed him so easily, fear for his lost daughter, determination to hunt down Bulkezu.

  Bulkezu was dead.

  But not by Sanglant’s hand.

  A strange scent tickled his nostrils, a light stinging heat that was both sweet and hot and yet not really a smell at all. It was the taste and touch of sorcery.

  Liath caught in her breath in the way a woman might, prodded to ecstasy. “I see it! It’s a pale thread, there. She is still linked to the daimone that suckled her, who returned to the sphere of Erekes.”

  “Nay, as you see, the thread is broken.”

  “So it is, God help us. As long as I walked the spheres, the thread between them remained unbroken. But when I crossed back into the world below … think of a man on the shore and one in a boat on the river who remain in contact by both holding onto a rope. If that rope is cut, the one on the river will be borne away by the current.”

  “She has drunk the milk of the aether and it has changed her. She has not grown in the fashion of a child of Earth, not if she was born only four years ago.”

  “She’s grown so quickly.”

  “In body, but not in mind. Now that thread of unearthly sustenance is cut off. She lies adrift, betwixt and between this world and the one above.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Ah. You have asked me a question I cannot answer. I have not walked the spheres, nor can any reach the ladder who are mired in Earth.”

  “How came my father by such knowledge, then, that he could teach me and that I could use that knowledge to climb?”

  The shaman chuckled. Something about the comradely wryness of her response aggravated Sanglant in the same way a constantly buzzing mosquito makes it difficult to sleep. The centaur had not treated him with such respect. He was not accustomed to being treated as anything lower than a king’s son, a prince of the realm, and captain of a powerful army. He was not accustomed to being expected to prove himself to another’s satisfaction.