The Gathering Storm (139 page)

My heart is the Rose. Any heart is the Rose of Healing that knows compassion and lets it bloom.

He stared in shock at the creature’s beauty as it blinked, examining him in return, then huffed a cloud of steam, reared its head up, and opened its vast wings. Their span shadowed the entire monastery. It bunched its haunches, waited a breath, ten breaths, a hundred breaths.

He heard the gale coming before he felt it; he heard it cutting through the forest, downing trees, a wailing wind out of the southeast.

The wind hit. The dragon leaped.

The gale whipped over him. The dragon’s shadow passed, the weight of its draft battering him down. The sea raged out beyond the shore. God have mercy on any soul caught out in this storm, but every soul on Earth was caught in this storm whether they willed it or no, whether they huddled in shelter or braced themselves against it out in the open. The stars had gone out. All he could see above was a swirling haze mixed of dust and ash and wind and blowing foliage and trailing sparks from the vast net of the weaving that Adica had made and that was now at long last finished.

Someone would have to pick up the pieces.

The roar of the sea filled his ears and a huge wave swept
over him although no wave could ever possibly wash so high up on the ground. He rolled in surf, caught under water, pinioned by the chains.

He drowned.

On the northeastern shore of the Middle Sea where the center jewel in the Crown of Stars blazes in glory, the Earth opens up to engulf the crown in a pillar of molten fire. Across the land the Crown of Stars and the spell woven through it tangles and collapses in on itself. A shadow emerges out of the air to materialize up against the knife edge cliffs that abut this shoreline of the Middle Sea.

All down the western shoreline of the great boot of Aosta the ridge of volcanoes shakes into life. Lava surges out of the earth. Cracks yawn in once quiet fields. Mud and ash bury slopes and towns and streams.

The ocean churns as all the water displaced by the returning land floods outward, heading for distant coasts. Where the tidal wave hits, the shoreline is utterly drowned.

The Earth groans. Along the northern sea the mouths of rivers run dry as the land jolts a finger’s span upward to counterbalance the abrupt weight that has slammed into the Middle Sea. In places, rivers run backward. Ports are left high and dry.

Everywhere the ground shakes. The windstorm that raked across the broad lands dissipates in wilderness where there are only dumb, uncomprehending beasts to sniff at its last gasping residue.

Deep in the earth, goblins race through ancient labyrinths, seeking their lost halls.

Out in the ocean, the merfolk circle, diving deep to escape the maelstrom above.

Out on the steppe lands, the Horse people hunker down in hollows that offer them some protection against the howling wind. The magic of the Holy One shelters them even as it drains the life right out of her.

Those who were most harmed in ancient days ride out the storm, for they have the least to lose now. It is humankind who suffer most. Maybe Li’at’dano knew all along that this would be the case; maybe she planned it this way, harming
the two greatest threats to her people—the Cursed Ones and her human allies.

Maybe the WiseMothers suspected humankind would take the brunt of the backlash. Maybe they had no choice, knowing that the belt was already twisted, that the path was already cleared through the forest on which their feet must walk.

They speak to him through rock and through water, although the salty sea almost drowns their voice.

It. Is. Done. You. Have. Saved. Us.

The link retreats, and their presence withdraws.

The tidal wave sucked back into the sea, pulling every loose piece of debris with it into the sound. At first, the wagon was caught in that riptide, but the church wall trapped the wagon among its fallen stones and the chains held him. Battered but alive, he was left wheezing and choking on sodden ground as the water receded.

The sun came up. It was a cold, cloudy day; there was no blue sky visible, and an ashy haze muted the daylight, but nevertheless the world had survived. He had survived. He was weak and exhausted and sopping wet and hungry and thirsty and filthy and yet despite all this at peace.

It was done.

He had seen the beginning and now the ending. The crown of stars was obliterated. The Ashioi had returned from their exile.

“Lord save us!” said a man’s voice, heard as through a muffling cloak. “Can anyone have survived that? Go on, then, boys!”

Hounds barked. He heard them pattering through pools of muddy water, paws slip-slapping on the ground. He tried to open his eyes, but a salty grime encrusted them, and it wasn’t until tongues licked him, wiping away all that blinded him, that he could see again.

“Sorrow!” he whispered. “Rage!”

They whined as they bumped up against him, waggling their hindquarters in ecstasy. They were thin, and scruffy, and overjoyed. The salt had cracked the bindings that shackled
him, and as the hounds swarmed over him, the chains fell away.

A man loomed into view. He uttered a gasp of shock, or a murmured curse, or perhaps a prayer.

“Alain?”
He knelt beside him but didn’t touch him, not yet. Instead he dragged the heavy chains off his body. He was weeping. “I heard, lad, but I had to see for myself. They said you’d gone over the ridge. And that storm! Ai, Lady. There’s at least three dead in the village and I haven’t been back home yet to see how Bel and the others fared. My God. What man could be so cruel as to treat another man in this way?”

He cracked open his eyes. “Father?”

Henri looked much older; he had many more lines on his face, and his hair was gray. But the face was so blessedly familiar, so beloved. There were tears on the merchant’s cheeks.

“Ai, God, lad, can you forgive me? Even though you weren’t the old count’s son, you never deserved this. I raised you better than to lie and cheat in such a way. I suppose the old count chose for himself and how could you say him nay? There was a girl he’d bedded who bore a stillborn child near or about when you was born. He might have thought otherwise, might have insisted you were his. Old sorrows take men that way sometimes. I should have trusted you. I should have known you better. That’s how I failed you, Son.”

The words spilled out in a rush as strong as the tide, leaving Alain stranded and out of breath. He was still dazzled and shaken and stricken, and the hounds were laying half on top of him, pressing as close as they could.

Henri frowned, wiped away tears, and spoke again. “Off, you brutes!”

Amazingly the hounds crept back meekly, their soft growls more like groans of protest. Hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure he had the right to touch him, Henri laid a hand on Alain’s arm. “Here, lad. Come now, get up. Lean on me.”

With help, Alain was able to stand, although his legs were shaky. The sea churned, the water a foamy, dirty gray, and the islands were half hidden within the murky haze. The ruins had been washed clean by the tide, and debris littered the old shoreline, but the strangest sight of all was the new inlet
carved out where Dragonback Ridge had once risen. Trees lay tumbled like so many scattered sticks down a ragged, rocky slope that was cut, where the earth met the water, into channels separated by the heaps of dirt and rock that had sprayed out into the sound when the dragon woke. Along the curve of the bay, distant and mostly obscured by haze, he saw the tiny cottages and longhouses marking Osna village up on its rise overlooking the strand. The village was more or less intact as far as he could tell from this distance.

Henri stared, too. The hounds sat patiently. “I’ve never seen such a night as that,” said the merchant in a quavering voice. “That dragon come alive. That tempest. That wave off the sea. It took Mistress Garia’s granddaughter with it. Maybe it’s the end of days, after all. Maybe so.”

“It is the end,” said Alain, surprised at how steady his voice was. He glanced down at his naked body and was shocked to see how wasted and thin he’d become. “It is the beginning, too. There’ll be hard times to come. But I pray the folk of Osna village have faced the worst. I pray they will be spared any greater hardships.”

Henri looked at him searchingly, and with an odd expression of respect. “Do you know of this? Do you know if it were God’s hands that brushed us?”

“I know of it. It was humankind caused this, not God.”

The merchant reached up and wiped at his cheek, then frowned. “What’s this mark on your face? You hadn’t such a birthmark before. Is it a scar? It looks like a rose.”

The Lady’s Rose. For so long he had misunderstood what it was—or maybe the Lady of Battles had. Maybe she had misled him. Maybe the Lady of Battles was not his patron but his enemy.

“It’s the Rose of Healing, Father. It’s to remind me of how much there is to do. Adica didn’t mean to cause so much harm, but now someone has to try to pick up the pieces. I’ll do it. I must. But if I could just sleep a little first. If I could just eat something….”

“Bel will have my head! You’ve been starved and treated no better than a wild dog. Here, now, come along.” He began walking. Alain had to lean on him to stay upright, but it was easy enough; Henri had a strong arm. “I’ve a cloak to cover
you and a horse for you to ride. You look too ill and worn to walk so far.”

“Where are we going?”

“Home, Son. We’re going home.”