The Gathering Storm (62 page)

Nothing.

The griffin stalked the perimeter of the hollow, tail lashing, but the night shadows blinded her, and while her sight
was keen and her aetherical sensitivity vivid, her other senses were not particularly strong. She flexed her wings. Up on the rocks, the daimone-woman seemed to be flexing as well, as if she struggled to unfurl invisible wings of her own, but despite her straining she could not defeat the weight of earth that, in the world below, dampened and shrouded the power of aether. She seemed reluctant to leave the shelter of the rocks, yet at the same time immensely restless, eager to depart.

The griffin paced, seeking signs left by the killer, but she found nothing. She grew drowsy, being a creature of day, and finally settled down near the blazing nest, her thoughts drifting. They would have to rebuild the nest, but it had been despoiled in any case and at least now they could use this same nesting ground rather than seek a new one. Fire purified. The heat soothed her as snow spun slowly to earth, flakes dissolving in waves of heat and smoke.

Too late, she heard a shout. She heaved up as a figure burst out of the night into the hollow. A second man lunged after the first. The two scuffled in the rocks, but the second man had already got the jump on the first; he knocked away the other’s weapon and, with a shriek of triumph, went for the kill.

The daimone-woman shot.

Her arrow pierced the heart of the killer. He toppled, his corpse tangling with the body of the living one—another hunter, this one with magic woven through his bones and flesh.

The griffin saw no reason to wait for the living one to choose his course, not protected as he was by sorcery. The night put her at too much of a disadvantage. She launched herself upward and snatched the daimone-woman away to safety. She was no heavier than a mountain deer. Below, the second hunter shouted after them, but she banked down into the lowland mist and flew a steady course for the sunning stone.

If the hunter dared pursue her, she would be waiting.

Meanwhile, she had saved a friend from the depredations of barbaric humans. The daimone-woman remained wisely still, not fighting against the grip of the claws. From this
height, a fall would kill. She flew higher, seeking the trail of the greater flowing water whose course would lead her to the sunning stone. A warm wind lifted off the crags. Were those few droplets of moisture rolling down her claws the last remnant of snow or the breath of the heavy lowland mist rising to greet her? What noise was it that the female made? If only they had speech in common, they might thank each other for the help they had given, each to the other, this cold night.

SANGLANT appeared out of the darkness as though hunting her. The sight of him surprised her so profoundly that she didn’t see her enemy’s stealthy approach. What was Sanglant doing out in this God-forsaken wasteland? Had his presence drawn her as she fell back into the world below? And if he were here, then where was Blessing?

These thoughts distracted her. Too late, she saw the other man leap out of the darkness and strike down Sanglant.

She drew. She shot. Seeker of Hearts did not fail her. But before she could do more than grab another arrow, the griffin took flight. Talons fastened on her shoulders and hauled her upward. She kicked once, and it tightened its grip. Pain shot through her flesh. The arrow slipped out of her hands, and she almost lost the bow.

No aetherical flame could burn in the world below, or at least, she had not strength enough to call it forth. She tried again, concentrating on the unfurling glory of the flames, but nothing came. She was earth-bound, a thing of flesh, and all that was fire was shrouded and chained by the hand of the world below. Even if she fought free, she would plunge to her death because she could no longer fly. She was a prisoner, caged by the weight of the Earth.

She wept, as much from the pain of the griffin’s grip as from frustration.

As the sun came up behind them, the mist burned away,
revealing a broad valley lush with grass. A river sparkled as the sun’s light lanced across it. Hills rose to the west, and behind them, eastward, lay the ridgeline of crags. The sight of this glorious landscape wiped away her tears.

How had the world come to be so beautiful?

Her mother, caged by a spell, had been given no choice but to remain on Earth and, in time, be subsumed into the earthly substance of the child she gestated in her aetherical womb.

Liath had chosen to return. She had wanted to return.

They followed the river’s winding southwestern course and the griffin dipped little by little until they skimmed close above waters swollen by snowmelt. Rocks broke the current at erratic intervals; minnows flashed and scattered below the surface. A deer bolted from grassy cover along the verge and leaped into the high grass beyond. A golden eagle clutched a spar and, still and silent, watched them as they passed by. Her boots brushed the cold water. The gurgling noise of the river rose to her ears.

Just as they reached the bank, the griffin released her and she tumbled to the grassy slope, almost slipping back into the water because she only had one free hand. Catching herself, she dug a knee into the dirt and grabbed a fistful of exposed roots. She scrabbled upward and threw herself panting into the grass, shaken but not harmed. Her bow rested crookedly on the ground beside her. Above, the griffin shrieked, its cry ringing in the air.

She clambered to her feet, brushing off her knees, and drew her short sword for protection. Eventually she discovered a long rock half concealed by grass where the river curved around a headland. Climbing it gave her a vantage point to survey the land.

Grass rolled out in all directions, so high that along the horizon she saw only the humped curve of the western hills and the ragged heights of the crags looming over them to the east. The sun had just cleared the eastern ridgeline. A few last tendrils of mist coiled alongside the riverbank as if caught in the bushes fed by the river water.

The golden eagle winged downstream on the trail of the griffin, saw her, banked, and flew away westward. A moment later an owl glided into view and settled onto a hillock about
an arrow’s shot from her position. It was huge, with mottled plumage and bold ear tufts.

“I know you,” called Liath. “What do you want? Where am I?”

It winked at her, big eyes closing and opening over amber irises and pinprick pupils. Then it flew away.

A low “chuff” sounded behind her. Startled, she turned, slipping on the curve of the rock, and caught herself. Froze. A silvery-hued griffin stalked up behind her. It was smaller than the one she had saved from the steppe hunter’s spear. Staring at this powerful and humbling beast, she wondered if she had been foolish to intervene.

Perhaps that warning she had called out—the words surprised from her by the speed of the hunter’s movement behind the griffin and her own distrust of his motives, the way he had abandoned her just as the griffin arrived—had set in motion the events that led her here, with a griffin a stone’s toss away looking ready to gulp her down whole.

It settled back on its haunches and examined her with interest, as might a dog scrutinize a human whom it suspected of harboring treats.

Beyond it, far enough away that it appeared half the size of the second one, the first griffin paced, stamping down the tall grass to reveal a low stone outcropping set where the land dipped in a broad hollow like a shallow bowl. The river burbled past behind them. Out of sight, a bird called out with a frantic “peewit” and, when she turned, she saw its tumbling flight over the pale expanse of grass.

Although she did not move, she felt herself falling. Tumbling. Memory washed over her, triggered by the sight of that wide, flat stone, of the waving grass, and of the griffins, one darkly iron in hue and the other as lustrous as silver.

Through the reflection of the mirrored armor worn by the angel of war she had suffered a vision. She had endured a memory that was no memory but a horrible premonition of the time to come. Was it not said by the ancient philosophers that in the aether, far beyond the bounds of earth, the angels and their kinfolk can see both backward and forward in time?

If she remained still, her feathers would blend into the pale
grass and only the keenest eye could observe her. Sanglant was intent on her mate, a silver-hued griffin asleep on the sunning stone. The prince’s spear was poised as he prepared to strike. His eyes calculated his next move, as did hers. She would not let him kill her mate.

She pounced. He spun to meet her, but the shaft of his spear shattered as her weight bore him to the ground. His knee jabbed into her belly, and he tensed to fight her off, grabbing desperately for her throat, palms scored with cuts as he clawed for purchase at her iron feathers.

She struck at his vulnerable eyes.

Dead.

The female griffin had killed Sanglant.

Here, by this stone.

Here, with these griffins, through whose eyes she had seen the whole. She had saved the very creature who would strike the deathblow.

“Ai, God,” she whispered. If she killed them, then they could not kill Sanglant. She sheathed her sword and fumbled for her bow, set an arrow to the string, and bent it. But the bow swung wildly in her hand, tugging her off the mark. However many times she pulled it back to aim at the breast of the nearer beast, it jerked away. She could not draw on either griffin. Seeker of Hearts would not slay them. Was there some virtue in the griffins that made it impossible to kill them? Or was it the sorcerous heart of the bow that twisted away from inflicting harm on the beasts?

To fight them with only a short sword was absurd, and suicidal.

“Think, you fool,” she muttered as the silver-hued griffin watched her with an almost comical amiability, as if her struggle with the bow amused and interested it. It made no move to assault her.

They do not stalk me.

These fearsome creatures had not attacked her. The larger ducked its head as hounds do to invite play.

In the sphere of Jedu, she had experienced the unfolding scene through the eyes of the griffin. Now, she stood in that very place, alive and present. Sanglant lived; she had seen
him herself. Therefore, he had not yet met his fate at the sunning stone. He would follow the griffin.

She pulled the hood of her cloak over her head to ward off the glare of the sun and, with her short sword resting over her thighs, settled down against the vantage stone to wait for him.

AS the fog lifted, Sanglant clambered down the slopes of the crags. Sometimes he scraped his hands and once, badly, his knees, but the discomfort only fueled his anger and frustration and urgency. The griffin had taken Liath. Bulkezu was dead and could not be forced to tell him what he had done with Blessing. And now he must hunt griffins in the midst of a wilderness whose landscape was utterly unfamiliar to him, nothing like the fields and woodland and hills he had grown up in.

He called out as he went and took numerous side trips to investigate hollows and overhangs, but he found no sign of Blessing or Anna nor even of Bulkezu’s passage. When he reached the valley, a little before midday, he struck out for the river.

His hearing and keen sense of taste and smell served him well; despite the bewildering lack of direction once he waded through the high grass, the scent of flowing water and the alteration in vegetation along the river as it wound through the valley guided him. Stunted fir trees grew along the banks, and it was in one of these copses that he halted late in the afternoon. He slid down the chalky slope that gave way where the ground formed a lip above the river itself, forming a bluff face not much more than an arm’s length high but crumbling and dangerous because of soft earth and the erosion caused by the snow melt that had swelled the river’s banks. As he crouched down with water swirling around his toes, he drank his fill and considered his situation. The cold water was like
a slap as he splashed it on his face and washed the worst grime off his hands. He was light-headed; hunger gnawed in his belly, but he had no more food and only the river water for his thirst and, at least, a waterskin to carry it in. His daughter was missing and possibly dead. His wife—

A griffin screamed. The shrill call reverberated from upriver.

He waited, but the call did not come again.

Liath, at least, he had a hope of finding. He used his spear to lever himself up the bluff, grasped the tough roots of a straggling bush, and scrambled up to catch his breath in the copse of fir. The sky overhead remained gloriously clear, the hard blue dome of the heavens dappled with streaming clouds like dissolving gossamer wings. He ripped up a handful of clover and ate the fresh leaves, knowing that these might provide him with some strength. He picked what he could find for later, rolling them into a bundle tied up with stems of grass and tucking them away into a sleeve. The rest of the foliage was unknown to him, and he dared not experiment. He could not afford any retching sickness brought on by poisonous plants. Last, he checked his weapons—the knife and the spear, good iron.

He had survived a year of captivity by Bloodheart. He would survive this, and he would find his daughter whether she was alive or dead. Best not to consider that, if she were dead, he could never avenge her. He had not been granted the immense satisfaction of killing Bulkezu himself.

He hiked upstream along the river, watching the sky and the billow of the grass as the wind moved across it. The day’s shadows drew long as the sun sank toward the golden curve of the western hills. The frosty sliver of the waxing moon crept above the dark crags. A harrier glided close to the river’s bank. A startled grouse rustled away into a taller stand of grass. Following its path, he almost stepped on an abandoned nest, half of it scattered by winter’s storms. He knelt, but it was too early for eggs.

Hunched low and unable to see over the grass, he heard the beating of wings and so kept still just as mice freeze when the shadow of a hawk passes overhead. A silver griffin—not the one that had carried off Liath—flew upriver not
a stone’s throw from his hiding place. He waited until the noise of its wings had faded, then followed its trail. By keeping to the tallest stands of grass, the occasional screen of shrubs or a narrow rank of such trees as could survive alongside the river, he kept out of sight. Where the river made a broad bend, the slope of the land rose on the riverside but fell gently away to the east to form a hollow.