The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Sacrifices.

The Alban queens ruled in the old way, offering blood to their gods in exchange for power. The circle god of Alain’s people did not reign unchallenged here. Even the gods warred among humankind, seeking preeminence.

Let it be done, then. If these seven had been left behind, then they could not even be worth enough to his enemies to hold for ransom or as a bargaining chip. Lifting his sword, he stepped forward

his feet hit the ground so hard that all breath is sucked from his lungs. He staggers, gasping for air so that he can call out to her, but Adica is lost to him, torn away into the whirlwind. He grabs for her, but his hands close on dirt. Grass tickles his face. He smells rain and hears a muted roar, like that of a lion, but it is only the wind caught in trees or perhaps the rush of unseen wings, fading.

Gone.

The hounds lick his face, whining and whimpering, nosing at him, trying to get him to stand. He lifts his head.

Huge shapes surround him. He has fallen into the center of a pristine circle of raised stones. Beyond the circle, four mounds mark the perimeter, grown high with grass and a scattering of flowers. His heart quickens with hope.

But this is not the place he knew and came to love. An encircling forest cuts off any view he might have of lands beyond the clearing. The tumulus, the graves of the queens, the winding river, and the village are all gone. What peace he found will be denied him. Adica’s love, given to him freely, has been ripped away.

She is dead.

He knew it from the first when he was dragged unknowing into her country, but maybe he never believed. Maybe he thought he really had died. After all, he ought to have died. He had been so close to death after the battle with the Lions on that ancient tumulus that a part of him had chosen to believe he wasn’t living anymore but rather had passed over to the other side, the field of paradise that borders the Chamber of Light, where his soul could rest at last in peace.

Ai, God. Peace mocks him, for what he has seen and experienced this night is surely more horrible than the worst of his fears.

How could the Hallowed Ones have done it? Did they know what they wrought? Was it worth such destruction to spare a few?

The hound Sorrow shoves his head under Alain’s stomach and pushes. Rage tugs at his hand. Struggling, he gets to his feet, but he no longer knows where he is or what lies in store for him. The hounds herd him toward the forest’s edge where a track snakes away into the trees. Face whipped by branches, he presses along the trail. Eventually, it broadens into a path padded by a carpet of pine needles. He just walks. He must not think. He must not remember. If he only walks, then maybe he can forget that he is still alive.

But maybe it is never possible just to walk, just to exist. Fate acts, and the heart and mind respond. The path breaks out of the forest onto a ridgeline. A log lies along the ground like a bench, and he pauses here to catch his breath. The hounds lick his hands as he stares at the vista opening before him.

A river valley spreads out below, a handful of villages strung along its length like clusters of grapes. Closer lie the plaster-and-timber buildings of a monastery and its estate. The bleat of a horn carries to him on the stiff wind that blows into his face, making tears start up from his eyes. An entourage emerges from woodland, following the ribbon of a road. He counts about a dozen people: four mounted and six walking alongside two wagons pulled by oxen. Bright pennants flutter in the breeze.

He has to speak, he has to warn them.

Running, he pounds down the path. He has to stop and rest at intervals, but grief and panic drive him on. Always he gets up again, heart still racing, breath labored, and hurries down the path until it levels off and emerges out of forest onto a trim estate, fields laid down in rows, orchard plots marked off by pruned hedges, the buildings sitting back behind a row of cypress. Bees buzz around his head and one lights on his ear, as if tasting for nectar. Geese honk overhead, flying south.

A trio of men in the robes of lay brothers work one of the fields, preparing the ground for winter wheat. One leads an ox while another steadies the plow, but it is the third who sees Alain stumbling out of the woodland. He runs forward with hoe in hand, held there as if he has forgotten it or, perhaps, as if he may use it as a weapon.

Lifting a hand in the sign of peace, the lay brother halts a safe distance from Alain and calls out a greeting. “Greetings, Brother. You look to be in distress. How may we help you?” His comrades have stopped their work, and one of them has already hurried away toward the orchard, where other figures can be seen at work among the trees.

Alain feels the delicate tread of the bee along his lobe and the tickle of its antenna on his skin. Its wings flutter, purring against his ear, but it does not fly.

“Can you speak, Brother?” asks the man gently as, behind him, several robed figures emerge from the orchard and hasten toward them. “Do not fear. No harm will come to you here.”

The bee stings. The hot poison strikes deep into him, coursing straight into the heart of memory. Weeping, he drops to his knees as images flood over him, obliterating him:

In an instant, magic ripped the world asunder.

Earthquakes rippled across the land, but what was seen on the surface was as nothing compared to the devastation left in their wake underground. Caverns collapsed into rubble. Tunnels slammed shut like bellows snapped tight. The magnificent cities of the goblinkin, hidden from human sight and therefore unknown and disregarded, vanished in cave-ins so massive that the land above was irrevocably altered. The sea’s water poured away into cracks riven in the earth, down and down and down, meeting molten fire and spilling steam hissing and spitting into every crevice until the backwash disgorged steam and sizzling water back into the sea.

Rivers ran backward. The seaports of the southern tribes were swallowed beneath the rising waters, or left high and dry when the sea was sucked away, so that they abruptly lay separated from the sea by long stretches of sand that once marked the shallows. Deltas ran dry. Mountains smoked with fire, and liquid red rock slid down-slope, burning everything that stood in its way.

In the north, a dragon plunged to earth and ossified in that eye blink into a stone ridge.

The land where the Cursed Ones made their home was ripped right up by the roots, like a tree wrenched out of its soil by the hand of a giant. Where that hand flung it, he could not see.

Only Adica, dead.

Wings of flame enveloped him, blinding him.

“I didn’t mean to leave her, but I couldn’t see.” He has been speaking all along, a spate of words as engulfing as the flood-tide. “The Light blinded me.”