The Gathering Storm (135 page)

Before his birth a King’s Eagle had ridden through the Wasrau River Valley, where farming families crowded the arable land cheek by jowl, all paying heavy taxes and yearly service to one lady or the next in return for protection, right of way, and a pittance of grain during lean years, not always delivered.

King Arnulf the Younger had decreed that any family willing to risk the long journey east to the marchlands, there to farm rich upland country never before touched by a plow, would be freed of the yoke of lady’s and lord’s service, owing allegiance only to the regnant of Wendar. Most people stayed
put: everyone knew that the marchlands were hard, dangerous country, close to the barbarians, where you were as likely to die in a Quman raid or have your daughters raped by Salavii or be eaten by griffins and lions as you were to prosper. His grandmother had packed up her household without looking back once.

His grandmother had understood the way of the world. She had journeyed east because she had hated the yoke of servitude more than she had feared danger and hardship. Now, for the first time since his captivity among the Quman, he was truly her grandson. Her heir.

“Ah,” said Hugh, more breath than word.

At the hazy western horizon, still tinged with a fading gold, bright Somorhas winked briefly before heaven’s wheel dragged her under. Mok, the Empress of Bounty, shone high in the southwest, on the cusp between the Penitent and the Healer.

“There,” said Hugh, and
there
Zacharias saw, rising as the wheel turned, the cluster of seven stars known as the “Crown.”

Tonight the Crown of Stars would crown the heavens.

I pray you, Old Ones, give me strength
.

You are strong, Grandson. Do as we have taught you
.

Zacharias felt Hugh’s chest against his own back, as close as that of a lover, but when the presbyter’s hand closed on his elbow his grip was iron, the chain by which he bound his servants to his will. He held Zacharias’ hand, and thus the staff, steady.

“Now you will weave as I have taught you, Brother Zacharias. With this spell you will see into the heart of the God’s creation itself if you do as you are bid. This, I promise.”

Zacharias grunted; he had many sounds left to him, but without a tongue few of them made words. The Old Ones understood him nonetheless. They had offered him strength—and with strength came the opportunity to avenge Hathui’s betrayal. He quieted his mind as Hugh began the chant.

“Matthias guide me, Mark protect me, Johanna free me, Lucia aid me, Marian purify me, Peter heal me, Thecla be my witness always, that the Lady shall be my shield and the Lord shall be my sword.”

The staff caught the thread of the Crown of Stars and
bound it into the circle of stones, and as stars rose and others set Hugh directed his arm so the staff wove these strands into a net that dazzled his eye and throbbed through his body.

Or was that the ground itself trembling? The moon set. Night passed more quickly than he had imagined once they were enveloped within the web of the spell, pulled one way as heaven’s wheel strained at the stones, as each ply drew taut and, before it could snap, was directed elsewhere to spin the pattern on into a new configuration.

There were rents in the sky, huge gaps, like tears in a tent wall through which a man might glimpse the world beyond.

He sees the ladder of the heavens reaching from the Earth high up into the sky, glimmering in a rainbow of colors, rose, silver, azure, amber, amethyst, malachite, and blue-white fire burning so hot that he cannot look at it directly. Disquiet assails him. The ladder is empty. All the aetherical daimones who once ascended and descended from Earth to the heavens and back again are absent. Or fled
.

They have fled the power of the weaving. For an instant he quails. He shrinks. Fear swells. Then he recalls Hathui and the voice of the Old Ones. He is Brother. He is Grandson. He will act. He will be strong
.

“Sister Meriam!” said Hugh.

An answering voice thrummed within the web of the spell; he glimpsed her frail form, supported by her granddaughter, in the midst of a wasteland of sand and shattering sky. He felt her body beside his, although he knew it for illusion.

“I am here. I am here.”

“Brother Marcus!”

The ruins of Kartiako rose as ragged shadows along a distant hillside before Marcus’ tense figure blocked the view.

“I am here.”

The heavens turned. Night crept westward across the Earth although they were by now drowned in darkness, marching on through the early night hours toward midnight. So it was true, he thought, heaven and Earth stretched those threads out, and out, until they were as thin as a length of hair. It was true that the Earth and the heavens were spheres, for otherwise night would come all at once and at the same time in each place but instead the heavens turned and the stars rose above the horizon
first in the uttermost east and later as night crept westward over the Earth.

The rents opened wider as the threads pulled taut.

Stars burn, each with its own color, each with its own voice, each with its own variegated soul
.

He wept with joy at their beauty. The music of the spheres rang through his body as the spell caught him within its weft and warp.

“Hugh! Meriam! Marcus!”

He faltered, hearing a voice colder than any nightmare. The Holy Mother had joined her presence to the web.

“I am here,” said Hugh, and Zacharias could say nothing, but of course now it seemed obvious that Hugh had lied to him. Why give Zacharias the glory of weaving the spell when Hugh could take it all to himself? Why did he want another man standing in for him?

Yet what did it matter? He had to concentrate on the weaving. Patience. Soon this joy would end. What matter what came after? He knew what fate awaited him.

Every spell demands a sacrifice.

A fifth voice joined them, a man’s voice unknown to Zacharias although he spoke his name:
Severus
. Hugh still chanted, but his hand fell away from the staff as Zacharias wove the threads. Hugh eased backward out of the net as a sixth woman wove herself into the spell, who called herself “Abelia.”

The seventh crown waited, still silent, but within the song of the other crowns he sensed the net, yawning wide. He felt on his shoulders a prickle like the breath of impending doom, a great weight bearing down on them not precisely from the sky but from a place beside the sky, inside the sky, unseen but ready to explode out of the air.

The scatter of stars known as the Crown of Stars had already climbed most of the way to the zenith, although it seemed he had only drawn six breaths in the interval since nightfall. Mok and the Healer sank down toward the southwestern horizon as the Penitent made ready to lay down her burden. In the east, the Lion poked his nose above the horizon while the Guivre flew aloft in triumph. The River of Heaven
streamed right across the zenith, rising in the southeast and pouring its harvest of souls into the northwest.

Each star glittered like a jewel, etched onto the black vault of the sky. Each one sang in his heart as the seventh voice joined them out of the crowns.

“Reginar.”

“I am here.”

Hugh stood a hand’s breadth behind him, no longer touching him although his chanting did not falter as he sang a tune as melodic as a hymn and far sweeter.

With the touch of the seventh circle, the crown lit with fire, burning heavenward, blue white and so brilliant that it hurt Zacharias’ eyes although he felt no heat. The heavens shuddered. He stared into their depths and saw the shadow of a vast weight hurtling down on them not as rain falls from clouds or as an arrow is loosed from on high but approaching from within the net of the spell.

The spell buckled under the strain, but it did not break. The seven mathematici drew their strength together, making ready to seal and close the crowns, to cast the exiled land back into the aether. To close off Earth forever.

The stars splintered into rays of color, stems banded along their length with variant light, some streaming blue and some red. The Earth groaned. Mountains shifted; the waters churned. Because he was woven into the spell, he felt cracks racing out from the crowns into the deep places far beneath the surface of Earth, down and down to where rivers of fire steamed and crackled.

“Now!” cried Anne. Her voice rang through the seven crowns.

Out of the depths a voice called as though in answer.

Now, Grandson
.

He cast himself through the archway. Because he still held the staff he dragged the threads in after him, tangling them, pulling them all awry and thereby disrupting the spell. It had to be disrupted at as many of the crowns as possible, so the Old Ones had instructed him. Without Zacharias, their plan could not succeed.

In the distance down the pathways of the spell

he sees an island crowned by stones. A young abbot standing
on the weaving ground gasps and turns just as he is cut down by an ax, but another cleric leaps forward to take his place, grasping the threads before they can unravel. Yet she, too, falls beneath a shower of ax blows. Beyond the crown, the ground heaves and collapses in on itself as half the island shears away. A huge winged creature rears up from underneath the dirt

he hears Severus’ voice crying out in fear and shocked anger as the glittering sand beneath his feet comes alive with translucent claws: “What means this! What?” The claws drag him under.

Blue-white fire enveloped him, burning him. No earthly flesh could withstand such heat, yet he felt no pain, only the cold grasp of death engulfing him. He would never see Hathui again unless they met on the Other Side.

With his last breath:
There
.

Through tears he sees into the infinite span that lies beyond the heavenly spheres. Folds of black dust form shapes like shifting clouds. Two suns spin each about the other, linked by pathways of red fire. A nautilus of light churns around a dark center. A spiral wheel composed of numberless stars whirls in a silence so vast it has weight. He is afraid, but he was once always afraid. Life is fear. Let it go
.

So much light beckons, and yet gulfs of emptiness swell between the great wheels. This is the Abyss, into which all humankind falls in the end
.

Let it go
.

Death comes to all creatures, even to the stars
.

He let go. He fell.

NOW.

For a long time she lay in a state between sleep and waking, kept alive by bitter seaweed and an astringent juice brought to her by the brothers. At intervals she explored the
passageways that led out of the cavern, using a trail of pebbles to mark her path, but even with her salamander eyes to guide her she at length came to labyrinthine tunnels without any illumination whatsoever, and so she returned, always, to the cavern.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway even if she had found a path that led to the surface. She had a task she had to complete.

When she slept, or lay in a stupor, the old ones spoke to her; what a person might say in an hour took them days or even weeks. She couldn’t be sure.

She held on. She would have one chance. She might never again see those she loved, but what did love matter when weighed against duty? She knew how to seal off her heart; she did so now, so that sentiment would not distract her. That skill she had learned from Anne.

Now
.

The tremors came constantly, as if the Earth were adrift on a vast sea like a ship rolling and yawing on the waves. Deep in the Earth the old ones worked their ancient magic. They could not touch Anne; they could not even move, it seemed, but they had other means at their disposal. They channeled the deep rivers and spoke to those who had the patience to listen and the ability to travel.

We. Are. The. Children. Of. The. Cataclysm. We. Are. Guardians. Of. Our. Own. Children. We. Are. Born. Of. Stone. And. Dragon’s. Blood. And. Human. Flesh.

She roused as the sting of magic melted down through the Earth from the land above, winding her in a ghostly net of blue-white fire. She staggered up to her feet. Gnat and Mosquito lifted their heads to stare at her with flat eyes.

“Go far out to sea with your kinfolk,” she said to them. “You will not survive if you remain close to shore.”

They looked at each other. The eels that were their hair twitched and writhed, hissing, as though motion were speech.

“Go,” she repeated.

They dragged themselves to the flooded passageway, slithered in, and vanished, leaving her alone. She knelt, pressing palms against the ground. She let her awareness fall as the net of magic twisted along her body and snapped in her hair, making
it stand on end. She pierced with her mind’s eye far down into the molten fields lying beneath the grinding crusts of stone. Where rivers of fire flowed, she swam, making her way out of the eddies of viscous pools into faster-moving streams so red-hot they melted their own path through rock. These rivers raged at flood stage, pushed and prodded by the Old Ones in their circles. Beneath the seeming solidity of the ground, a tumult of liquified stone seethed and boiled.

As night crept westward across the land and the stars rose, the weaving caught within the stones of seven circles, the great crown that spanned the northern lands and the Middle Sea. The net of the spell blazed. Through that net she saw the shadow of the Ashioi land manifesting out of the aether not as a stone drops from on high but shifting out of one aetherical plane of existence back into the world of mortal kind. Through the widening gaps aether poured down into the world below, invisible to mortal eyes but blazing with power that Anne and her cabal gathered into their loom.

She heard Anne’s voice reaching out to the rest of the Seven Sleepers who wove the spell: Meriam, Marcus, Hugh, Severus, Abelia, Reginar.

“Now!”

A surge of emotion coursed through that net, its own kind of magic that works against those who oppose the one who is about to win: Anne knew that she had triumphed and that her enemies had lost. The warp and weft of the spell wove together into a vast glittering net that interpenetrated aether and Earth.