The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

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.

“Drink with me.” Her voice was light and airy but firm. She gestured for Liath to move forward. Liath’s footsteps made no sound on carpets laid over a woven grass mat. As she approached, the other woman swept aside the gauze veil so that Liath could sit on an embroidered cushion at the opposite end of the couch.

Liath had never had trouble seeing in dim light, but the breath of sorcery hazed her vision; she could not get a clear look at the other woman’s face although she sat little more than an arm’s length from her. She wore a robe woven of golden silk. Her ornaments gleamed in the dim light: a tall headdress stamped with gold from which hung streamers of beads and gold lacework, and earrings curved like reed boats dangling fish from a dozen lines which brushed her shoulders. Whenever she shifted, the earrings chimed softly and the gold lacework rustled.

The older servant, too, rang: she wore anklets and wristlets sewn with tiny bells and silver earrings that danced and sang when she moved. She carried the silver ewer over and poured them each a cup of the heady brew, stinging and sharp, from the camel’s mouth. When Liath drank, it went right to her head.

“You are the one who bears the name of my teacher,” said the other woman.

“In my own tongue I call myself Liathano.”

The other woman tried this several times but could not produce the softer consonants, so in the end she laughed, amused at her efforts.

Liath laughed with her, warming to her lack of arrogance. “You are called Sorgatani.”

“So I am. I, too, am named after one who came before me. Because she died the year I was born, her name and her soul passed into me.”

“Do the souls of your people not ascend to the River of Light?”

“They remain on Earth. Souls endure many lives. We are born again and again into the world below. Do your people not know this truth also?”

Liath shook her head. “I have seen many things recently that have made the world above and the world below look very different to my eyes. Yet it’s true my people do not believe as you do. The Lord and Lady bide in the Chamber of Light, which exists beyond the world above. It is there that our souls ascend after we die, to live in peace and harmony with God.”

xpected 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.

“Drink with me.” Her voice was light and airy but firm. She gestured for Liath to move forward. Liath’s footsteps made no sound on carpets laid over a woven grass mat. As she approached, the other woman swept aside the gauze veil so that Liath could sit on an embroidered cushion at the opposite end of the couch.

Liath had never had trouble seeing in dim light, but the breath of sorcery hazed her vision; she could not get a clear look at the other woman’s face although she sat little more than an arm’s length from her. She wore a robe woven of golden silk. Her ornaments gleamed in the dim light: a tall headdress stamped with gold from which hung streamers of beads and gold lacework, and earrings curved like reed boats dangling fish from a dozen lines which brushed her shoulders. Whenever she shifted, the earrings chimed softly and the gold lacework rustled.

The older servant, too, rang: she wore anklets and wristlets sewn with tiny bells and silver earrings that danced and sang when she moved. She carried the silver ewer over and poured them each a cup of the heady brew, stinging and sharp, from the camel’s mouth. When Liath drank, it went right to her head.

“You are the one who bears the name of my teacher,” said the other woman.

“In my own tongue I call myself Liathano.”

The other woman tried this several times but could not produce the softer consonants, so in the end she laughed, amused at her efforts.

Liath laughed with her, warming to her lack of arrogance. “You are called Sorgatani.”

“So I am. I, too, am named after one who came before me. Because she died the year I was born, her name and her soul passed into me.”

“Do the souls of your people not ascend to the River of Light?”

“They remain on Earth. Souls endure many lives. We are born again and again into the world below. Do your people not know this truth also?”

Liath shook her head. “I have seen many things recently that have made the world above and the world below look very different to my eyes. Yet it’s true my people do not believe as you do. The Lord and Lady bide in the Chamber of Light, which exists beyond the world above. It is there that our souls ascend after we die, to live in peace and harmony with God.”

“That is very strange,” said Sorgatani. She was silent, then broke into delighted laughter. “What do your souls do in this chamber of light? Do they dance? Do they eat? Do they find pleasure in the bed? Do they ride and hunt?”

A churchwoman might have been offended by such a questions, but to Liath they suggested a mind with an affinity to her own. “There is some disagreement among the church mothers on this point, actually. Some say that only our souls can exist within the Chamber of Light, that we will dissolve into the eternal bliss that is the presence of God. Others say that our bodies will be fully resurrected, that we will exist bodily in the Chamber of Light but without any taint of the darkness that gives rise to the evil inclination. The Enemy will have no foothold in the Chamber of Light.”