The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“You don’t grieve that Lord Hrodik is dead?”

Frederun shrugged. “I’m sorry any man must die. He was no worse than most of them are. He was very young. But I’m glad Princess Theophanu came, seeing that we have no lord or lady here in Gent. That will keep the vultures away.”

“But not forever.”

“Nay. Not forever.” As if she had overstepped an unmarked boundary, she rose. “Here, now, sit quietly and wait for me.”

As soon as she left, shame consumed Hanna. What right had she to torment a kindly woman like Frederun? She pulled herself to her feet and, jaw set against the pain, hobbled across the courtyard as rain misted down around her. She could walk, even if each step sent a sword’s thrust of pain up her hip, through her torso, and into her temple. She could walk even if she could not catch her breath. She could walk, by the Lady, and she would walk, just as Bulkezu’s prisoners had walked without aid for all those months, sick and dying. She was no better than they were. She deserved no more than they had received.

She was staggering by the time she reached the barracks, and for some reason Folquin was there, scolding her, and then Leo was carrying her back to a stall filled with hay. The smell of horse and hay made her cough. A spasm took her in the ribs.

“Ai, God,” said Ingo. “She’s hot. Feel her face.”

“I’ll get the captain,” said Folquin.

“Maybe they have a healer here in the palace,” said Stephen.

“Hanna!” said Leo. “Can you hear me?”

She choked on hatred and despair. Dizziness swept her as on a tide, and she was borne away on the currents of a swollen river. She dreamed.

In her nightmare, Bulkezu savors his food and guzzles his mead and enjoys his women, and even the gruesome wound is healing so well that folk who should know better turn their heads to watch him ride by. How dare he still be handsome? How can God allow monsters to be beautiful? To live even in defeat?

Or is she the monster, because despite everything she still sees beauty in him? Wise, simple Agnetha, forced to become his concubine, called him ugly. Surely it is Hanna’s sin that she stubbornly allows her eyes to remain clouded by the Enemy’s wiles.

A veil of mist obscures her dreaming, a fog rolling out of marshy ground beside which she glimpses the pitched tents of the centaur folk. Sorgatani walks through the reeds at the shore of the marsh. The fog conceals the world, and she knows that something massive is creeping up on her, or on the Kerayit princess, but Hanna cannot see it, nor does she sense from what direction it means to attack.

A woman appears, shifting out of the fog as though a mist has created her: she is as much mare as woman. Green-and-gold paint stripes her face and woman’s torso.

Sorgatani cries out in anger. “I have fulfilled all the tasks you set me! I have been patient! How much longer must I wait?”

“You have been patient.” When the shaman glances up at the heavens, her coarse mane of pale hair sweeps down her back to the place where woman-hips meet mare-shoulders. “That lesson you learned well. The elders have met. Your wish is granted.”

“We will ride west to seek my luck?”

The centaur shifts sideways, listening, and after a moment replies. “Nay, little one. She must suffer the fate she chose. But we are weak and diminished. We cannot fight alone—”

She rears back, startled by a sharp noise, the crack of a staff on rock. “Who is there?”

The hot breath of some huge creature blows on Hanna’s neck, lifting her hair. She feels its maw opening to bite. Whirling, she strikes out frantically with a fist, but when her hand parts the mist, she stumbles forward into the salty brine of a shallow estuary, water splashing her lips and stinging her eyes as reeds scrape along her thighs.

She is alone, yet she hears a confusing medley of voices and feels the press of hands as from a distance, jostling her.

“It’s the lung fever. She’s very bad.”

“Hush. We’ll see her through this. She’s survived worse.”

A woman’s voice: “I’ve boiled up coltsfoot and licorice for the congestion.”

“I thank you, Frederun.”

Each time she strikes ax into wood and splits a log, she swears, as though she’s trying to chop fury and grief out of herself, but she will never be rid of it all.

Better if she lets the tide sweep her onward through the spreading delta channels of the lazy river and out onto a wide and restless sea. Yet even here, the horror is not done with her. Fire boils up under the sea, washing a wave of destruction over a vast whorled city hidden in its depths. Corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again as the sea floor rises.

A phoenix flies, as bright as fire. Or is it a phoenix at all but rather a woman with wings of flame? Delirium makes the woman-figure appear with a familiar face. Is that Liath, come back to haunt her? Is she an angel now, flying in the vault of heaven, all ablaze? As the creature rises, she lifts the slender figure of a man and two great hounds with her. But their weight is too great and with a cry of anguish and frustration the Liath-angel loses her grip on them and they fall away, lost as the fog of dreams rolls across the sky to conceal them.

Hanna falls with them.