Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

She leaped toward Blessing. Lightning blinded her, striking so close that her skin seemed to rip off her body. She flew away from the strike, blasted sideways by its power, and smacked hard onto the earth. She blacked out.

Startled back into consciousness, her scalp buzzed.

Thunder roared. Without meaning to, she clapped her arms over her head, shut her eyes, and prayed. Even with her eyes shut, a second lightning strike flashed through her eyelids to leave streaks in her vision. The crack and boom that came after deafened her. When she wiped her running nose, she opened her eyes to see blood on her hand.

“Oh, God.” She pushed up to hands and knees and with a curse struggled to her feet because she had to find Blessing. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious.

The Ashioi camp had dissolved into chaos as mask warriors raced to capture tents and gear blown to pieces by the wind, as others staggered for help because they were injured. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision of the jagged streaks etched into her sight. Her gaze tracked aimlessly over hillside and distant wall and jumbled field until with an effort she focused on what lay immediately around her.

The golden wheel burned. Smoke poured heavenward. All around her, the ground was scorched. A dozen bodies—two score—more—sprawled on the ground. They were charred husks, twisted and gnarled in grotesque figures, so blackened that their clothing and even their features had been burned off. The stench made her retch.

“Bright One!” Sharp Edge called at her ear, her voice like a whisper although it seemed clear from the stretch of her lips and the tightening of her eyes that she was shouting.

A shadow approached out of the north. A cloudburst raced toward them across the open ground, hammering into the dirt.

The rain struck.

Her companions pressed up beside her and spoke words, but she could not hear them over the pounding rain and the echo of thunder in her ears. She pushed into the ranks of the stunned onlookers.

Amazingly, Zuangua had survived. He was kneeling. Rain streamed down his body. Leaning on a spear, he cradled his left hand against his chest. His fingers were curled into a claw; streaks of weeping skin scored that arm. His neck was red and raw.

Seeing her movement, he looked up. As calmly as if he were greeting a long-expected friend, he shouted in a strong voice that penetrated her deafness. “So it happened in ancient days, when the Horse witch called lightning and struck down her captors, the blood knives. I saw it happen that day, as it happened this day. Is this your work, Li’at’dano?”

“It is not.” She would have grabbed him to shake him, but she could see any touch would overset his tenuous balance. “I am no weather worker. Are you all such fools to let a man like Hugh of Austra walk as your ally?”

“She was.”

The body lying at his feet was blackened and distorted, the feathered cloak reduced to wisps of bright green and gold mixing into the sodden earth. Her throat burned, and her stomach rose, and she turned away, catching a hand against her stomach. Behind her, she heard one of her companions retching. Anna bawled.

“Where is my daughter?”

“Not among the dead. The Pale Sun Dog has taken her.”

The rain lashed them. She sucked in air, but it tasted of ash and roasted flesh. She spat, but the flavor coated her tongue. She tried to catch rain in her mouth, but that only made the taste run down her throat, and she could not bear to swallow the ashes of the dead. There were at least a dozen dead and twice as many wounded. More, a hundred at least, stumbling, vomiting, mouths opening and closing with no sound she could hear, and one screaming in pain like a wounded rabbit, but the sound existed a hundred leagues from her, audible only because it was so high and so ghastly.

It was strange to discover that nothing could surprise her, not after that bolt called from the sky. She had always known Hugh capable of anything, limited only by the scope of his knowledge. While she walked the spheres, many years had passed on Earth; he had possessed Bernard’s book, and other resources besides. He had studied with Anne and the Seven Sleepers. The laws of inheritance and custom had denied him power in the world of regnant and noble. Yet it wasn’t true he had no power. He had reached for, and grasped, the only power available to him.

She touched the astrolabe tied to her belt. It was protected by a leather cover, slick beneath her fingers. Even clouds—even daylight—would not stop him from weaving the crown.

“Hai!” She turned her back on Zuangua. Buzzard Mask was vomiting, but hearing her voice he sat back, wiping his mouth although he still gagged and shuddered. She shouted. “Sharp Edge! All of you! We’ve been outmaneuvered. We’ll run for the crown and catch him there.”

“Wait!” Zuangua called.

She turned back. “Speak quickly.”

His niece’s twisted corpse held his gaze. “So briefly she came into her power. Now it is stripped from her and she returns to the earth which births us. Who will walk as Feather Cloak?” His smile was a challenge. “Will you, Bright One?”

“Don’t mock me! Go to Secha, who led your people in exile. She is not a fool.”

His expression and his smile were twisted because of the way his left side had been singed. Blisters were already forming along his arm and his cheek. “Secha has aided you. So has my brother. Some still listen to their words, but not many.”

“Nay, better yet, send an envoy to Sanglant. Let there be peace between Ashioi and humankind.”

He flicked his fingers in a sign of dismissal, as though casting away the evil eye. “I have had enough of humankind! Sanglant has made his bed among his father’s people. We know where his heart lies. This one, the Pale Dog, he will betray you as he has betrayed all others.”

“Yes.”

“He wishes to be the last sorcerer known among humankind.”