The Gathering Storm (69 page)

“What do you want, stranger?”

“I want your help to track down the queen of Alba and kill her, and to destroy the power of her tree sorcerers. When that is done, I will rule Alba and reward those who aided me.”

The sun rose. Light shone on the waters. A flight of geese flew low overhead, honking so loudly that Manda waited until they had passed before she resumed speaking.

“Their power you can never destroy. Their magic is very strong. It defeated us, my people’s claims to this land long ago, my clan and I not so many moons ago. The queen and her army drove us off the holy island where we have lived as caretakers back into the dawn of time. My mam was caretaker there. The right to the land and honor of the guardianship came from her mam before her and hers before her, back into oldest times. There’s enough land to grow a small crop of grain and keep a big flock of sheep and a gaggle of geese. That’s all gone. You see how they drove us off.”

She indicated the makeshift camp, the crude shelters, the open campfires, the ragged children. They had not escaped with much. But they did not seem hungry and desperate.

“You come with an army,” she said. “Will you attack them?”

“Should I?” he asked.

“Overland? No. You will all die in the fens.”

“What if we sail in from the sea?”

“It will be hard to sail to this place from the sea. It’s shallow. The tree sorcerers will raise a mist to confound you.”

“Our ships can sail in shallow water. The sorcerers’ magic will not disturb us. But we don’t know the path that will lead us from the sea to these islands.”

To his surprise, she shrugged. “Even I don’t know what
rivers lead to the wash and how they tangle in the fens. There are some who live on the seacoast who know, but it is these clans who guided the queen to the holy island. They will not help you. They are in league with the Albans.”

“Without help, our ships will get lost in the marshlands, won’t they?”

She cupped her hands over her mouth and gave a “courlee” call. A second cry answered from a distance, out among the reedbeds and mires. “That’s my other child, called Ki. My sister’s daughter—now mine. You can’t see her, and so can’t the white-hairs. To hunt in the fens you need a guide.”

“I need guides for my army, and I need a caretaker for the holy island.”

Her smile flashed like lightning, quickly seen and quickly gone, but her expression remained solemn. “Give me back the holy claim that my clan was charged with in the long ago days, and I will help you. But if you promise me, and cheat me, then you will fare no better than the queen. I have dreams, stranger. There is power in dreams.”

He nodded, acknowledging her blunt wisdom, and the naked threat in her words. “I know the worth of my allies.” He drew a finger around the contours of the wooden Circle hanging at his chest as he gazed out over the fens. From deep within this labyrinth the Alban queen might strike at will against his garrisons. From this shelter within the fenlands she might hold on for months or for years, a worm in his side. Alba would not be his until she was dead, her heirs executed, and her tree sorcerers shorn of their power.

Manda licked her lips as if tasting the last of the brew. “Show your trust, stranger. Let my children guide you out into the fens. They will show you the holy island and the queen’s camp, and you can judge for yourself if the fight is worth it.”

THIS reunion was not going as she had expected. Sanglant’s anger was palpable, and because Liath simply had no idea how to respond, she turned around and left the tent. His hostility and Blessing’s illness were too much to take in at once.

The shaman followed her outside, herding her toward the crest where they could see the landscape spread below them.

“Why do you allow this male to speak to you so disrespectfully?” she asked.

“He is my husband!”

“He is not like you,” said the shaman reasonably as they strolled up the hill.

Grass pulled along Liath’s thighs. The sun shone down. There was not a single scrap of cloud in the heavens. She had never seen a sky so vast, hills tumbling away on either side and the blue dome stretching away to the ends of the earth.

“No,” she agreed at last. He was no scholar; he was not bookish or thoughtful, not educated, not restful, a man interested more in action than in words. A good soldier, an excellent captain, and a loyal prince. Hugh had taunted him with the title “prince of dogs,” after his year as Bloodheart’s captive, and there was something to the name. But she did not
know what he was now. He had lived for
four years
without her, years which to her had seemed scarcely more than a week. “I don’t know how he has changed while I walked the spheres.”

“It is best to set aside a pura which has become unpredictable and dangerous.”

“That isn’t our custom. He needs time to recover from his wound.”
From his anger
.

The shaman flicked back her ears. Reaching the crest, they turned to look down at the centaur encampment settled near the base of a hollow.

“How can I save my daughter?” Liath asked.

“She did not die when the thread was severed. That must give us hope that she may yet recover.”

“She must eat and drink in order to live.”

“It may be possible to sustain her for a time by means of sorcery.”

“My father said that a cocoon changes a caterpillar to a butterfly. It’s a magical binding in and of itself. Would sorcery change her?”

“I do not know. But if we cannot wake her, it may be the only way to keep her alive until we discover how to heal her.”

Liath sighed.

To the east the land fell away into the valley; the distant river winked at them, light dazzling on the flowing water as it cut through the grass in giant curves. Farther east, the crags shone where the afternoon sunlight played across them, catching glints of color. To the west the sun blinded, but if she squinted she made out a countryside of hills rumpled up like the ridges in a furrowed blanket.

“Is that smoke rising?” she asked, pointing to threads of gray curling up into the sky.

The shaman had no need to narrow her eyes to see what Liath indicated. “Prince Sanglant’s army camps there.”

“He has an army with him? Where did he get an army? How long does it take to travel from here back to Wendar?”

“Many months of travel, I would imagine.”

“He brought an army so far with him? How can that be possible? He must have suffered many losses, of men and animals both.”

“I do not know. It is not a subject we discussed.”

“No,” said Liath, wondering what Li’at’dano
had
discussed with Sanglant or if she had discussed anything. “We must send word to his people that we are here. Why did he leave his army and go out into the grass alone?”

“To stalk the beast.”

“The griffins?”

“Nay. The man. The killer. But griffins as well. He seeks griffin feathers and sorcerers to combat these ‘Seven Sleepers’ you also have spoken of. He hoped to find both here in the grasslands.”

“Did he?”

“He found you, and he found me and those under my tutelage. As for the griffins—” She gestured toward the sky where one or both of the griffins circled, never content to let Liath out of their sight. “There they are.”

They walked down into the centaurs’ encampment. The layout had a subtle warp to it: the largest of the round felt tents lay in the center while the rest radiated out from it in a spiral pattern. The centaurs traveled light; despite their numbers she counted only twenty tents, ten of which lay in the outermost ring like a protecting corral although it wasn’t apparent that the centaurs wished to keep anyone out, or in, except wolves.

The centaurs had brought a number of their Kerayit allies with them, including the healer who attended Sanglant, and two dozen wagons, most of which were rigged to be pulled by oxen while only two were constructed to allow centaurs themselves to haul the vehicle. Most of the wagons sat along the outermost ring to provide a barrier, but one, gaudily painted and built like a tiny cottage on wheels, sat next to the centralmost tent where Blessing slept and Sanglant healed.

There were horses, too—real horses, but they were kept separate, watched over by both centaurs and their human allies. Nearby, some men sheared sheep, collecting greasy wool in huge leather pouches.

As Liath and the shaman came into camp, centaurs surveyed Liath curiously but did not approach. A few coltish centaur children followed their dams, and half a dozen colts did as well, nudging at the teats of the centaur females. All of the
adult centaurs carried bows slung over their backs and a quiver full of arrows.

A trio of human women cooked mutton stew in an iron kettle slung over a campfire; another polished jesses and leather hoods for goshawks while her companion mended a cage; a pair beat wool while next to them others poured boiling water over beaten wool in preparation for making the felt with which they covered their tents and made their rugs and some of their clothing. Five men were engaged in churning milk in a skin vat; the milk bubbled. Its tart scent stung Liath’s nostrils. Suddenly she realized how hungry she was.

“Come,” said the shaman. “There is one more you must meet, because we two will not be enough to defeat those who oppose us.”

“We are allies, then? You have not said so before this.”

“If we were not allies, you would not walk beside me, nor I beside you. I am not foolish enough to set myself and my people against one whom even the griffins fear. You are not like the other humans, Bright One. Your father has given you the form worn by those born into the tribe of humankind, but your heart and your soul had their birth in the heavens.”

“It is true I do not stand easily in either world, here or there. It is hard to choose. I cannot have both.”

“Then you have chosen.” They halted in front of the painted wagon. “Here lives my apprentice. She has met her luck, so now she must remain hidden from the sight of those who are not her family or her slaves. But you, I think, exist beyond such earthly prohibitions. You and she must meet. Go in.”

“I do not wish to break any prohibitions if it means harm may come to another.”

Li’at’dano had a horsey way of laughing, more like a snort. “The harm comes not to Sorgatani but to the one afflicted by her power. I believe you are powerful enough to be safe.”

Liath laughed. A queer sense of exhilaration filled her. “Then I pray you are right.”

She felt no fear, only curiosity, as she mounted the steps that took her up to the high bed of the wagon. Before she could scratch on the door, it opened, sliding sideways along
the wall, and she stepped over the threshold as she ducked inside.

She expected to feel closed in, but magic was at work here; it tingled right down to her bones. The inside of the wagon was considerably larger than the outside. There was no other way to account for the spacious chamber that greeted her astonished gaze, which resembled the interior of a round tent. The corners of the space were lost in shadow and possibly did not properly exist. Walls fluttered in the breeze, sagging gently in and out, although she could have sworn that, outside, they were constructed of wood planks. Above, spokes supported the round felt roof, radiating out from a central pole that, set straight up, pierced a smoke hole. Definitely, absolutely, she had seen no central pole sticking out of the wagon’s roof. The heavens glimpsed through the smoke hole had a gray shimmer shot through with shifting sparks, not the hard blue shine of the open sky.

On the left-hand side of the tent sat a boxed-in bed with a chest resting at its foot. A colorful felt blanket ornately decorated with bright animals—a golden phoenix, a silver griffin, a red deer—spread tautly across the mattress, tucked in on all sides. A layer of rugs and two cushions completed the furnishings, because the rest of that left side of the tent lay empty; it was uninhabited. An altar stood in front of her, beyond the center pole, containing a golden cup filled to the brim with oil with the surface lit and burning, a mirror with handle inlaid with gold and pearls, a silver handbell, and a stoppered flask. Beside the altar table squatted a portable stove. Coals glowed within this brazier, and a bronze bucket sat on a slab of rock beside it, filled with ash, smoking slightly. A young woman crouched beside the brazier with an iron ash shovel gripped in her right hand; she stared up at Liath as one might gape at a bull that comes crashing into church in the middle of prayers. A second woman, much older, stood next to a high bench; she paused in the act of pouring a white liquid into cups. She held a beautiful double-spouted silver ewer, the necks, heads, and open mouths of camels forming the spouts.

“You are called Bright One because you shine.”

Liath looked around for the source of the voice.

The third person in the room sat on a broad couch. Her figure was veiled by a gauzy net of finest translucent silk that tented the wide couch, strung up on posts set into the four corners. Next to this couch-bed stood a tall chest cunningly worked into a shelf fitted with large and small drawers, each one lovingly painted with antlered deer and arrogant rams. Beside it a beautiful saddle was set up on a wooden tree, its side skirts brushing the carpet; the silver ornaments that decorated the frame and seat winked in the smoky light. A bridle had been thrown carelessly across the cantle.