She settled back with a hand resting lightly on his throat to track the beating of his heart and so that she might, now and again, brush her fingers over his beloved lips.
The brilliance of the night sky staggered her. The River of Souls streamed across the western quadrant of the sky, dense with light. How could she have forgotten this stunning beauty? The sight of it never failed to quiet her soul.
Bright Somorhas hung low on the western horizon but sank quickly after the sun, leaving fiery Seirios as the first star that stayed visible as dusk deepened to night. She searched the heavens for clues.
It was spring, certainly, with the Dragon rearing up in the east and the Child lying down to sleep in the west. Aturna stood in the Lion, close to zenith, the only other wandering star visible to her, but there were many of the heavens’ most brilliant stars fixed up in the sky: the yellowish glare of the Guivre’s Eye; the bright head of the elder Sister; the bluish Eye of the Dragon; Rijil, the Hunter’s brightly-shod foot, and Vulneris, the red wound on his shoulder.
She brushed her hand over Sanglant’s shoulder and brought her fingers to her lips, tasting the blood. He lay frighteningly silent, not even murmuring as he was wont to do in sleep. Blood oozed but not with that same horrible gush she had seen when she first reached him.
Her helplessness wore at her as a constant ache, but she possessed no healing magic. She carried no cache of herbs for a poultice. She was not strong enough to carry him and had no horse. In the morning, when she could see, she would attempt to build a sledge to drag him.
Where could she take him?
The stars continued on their appointed rounds as the night spun onward. Where was she? When was she?
The Sapphire and the Diamond skated low along the northern horizon, and in the south, although the Bow and Arrow were visible, the Huntress who wielded them was not. She was about as far north as she had been in Wendar and likely a little farther south than Heart’s Rest. North and south were easy to calculate because of the altitude of the individual stars.
She sat with her mortally wounded husband in the midst of a vast wilderness, guarded by griffins, as the night wind played in her hair and whispered through the grass. The moon sank westward, followed by Aturna, the Red Mage. New constellations rose and with them the planets Jedu and Mok. The Angel of War gleamed balefully in the Serpent while the Empress of Bounty journeyed with the Unicorn.
Where had Mok stood, when last Liath walked on Earth?
It hadn’t been so long ago, after all, only seven or eight days, that she had last stared up at the glorious sky.
She searched into her city of memory, up through the seven gates that corresponded to the seven spheres, until she reached the crown of the hill where lay the observatory. Here, in nooks and crannies, she stored all her observations, marked with figures and images so she could recall each detail.
Mok’s path was easy to find and to recall, a golden alcove in which a robust woman presided from a throne, surrounded by cornucopia, sheaves of wheat, fatted calves and, on the domed ceiling of the alcove, sigils representing each of the Houses of the Night. Seven or eight or ten days ago, in Verna, she had marked the constellation of the Dragon with a tiny shining sheaf of wheat to indicate Mok’s progress.
Because Mok took about one year to travel through each House, that meant that the planet had in the intervening time journeyed through the Scales, the Serpent, and the Archer before reaching the Unicorn, spending about one year in each.
Four years.
Could she have been gone so long?
The heavens could not lie because, as the blessed Daisan had written, they had no liberty to govern themselves. Subject to the Lord and Lady’s immutable laws, they did what they were ordered to do and nothing else.
Four years, give or take six months. Would her daughter recognize her? Did Blessing even remember that she had a mother?
A worse thought intruded, as rot insinuates itself beneath the clean surface of a house, weakening the foundations and posts: Had Sanglant thought her dead, and remarried?
I have been gone too long.
In a year and a half at most, Mok would travel through the Unicorn and the Healer and touch the far boundary of the Healer.
When Erekes walks backward. When Bright Somorhas, walking backward, reenters the Serpent. When Jedu and Aturna enter the House of the Dragon. When Mok, retracing her steps, poises on the cusp between the Healer and the Penitent. On this same day, when the Crown of Stars crowns the heavens.
On that day, in less than eighteen months, when the Crown of Stars crowned the heavens, the way would be open for Anne to weave a great spell to cast the Aoi land back out into the aether, to create a second cataclysm. Unless Liath intervened.
Stopping Anne came before any other consideration. Even her husband’s life. Even her own happiness.
“I will not leave you again,” she whispered, but Sanglant could not hear her.
At dawn, Sanglant stirred without opening his eyes or seeming aware of his surroundings. He was hot to the touch but not gray with impending death. As the promise of the sun brightened the eastern sky, limning the crags with its pale glow, the griffins sank down on the sunning stone. She knew they were awake because of the way their lively tails flicked up and down.
She rose to stretch out her limbs, but at the movement the larger griffin startled up, staring eastward past the river. The second followed her lead. Liath, too, turned.
She had only seen centaurs in her dreams, majestic creatures more wild than civilized but immensely powerful and full of magic. There were not many of them—not more than a dozen—but as they approached, she stared in amazement and only belatedly thought to free an arrow from the quiver and draw her bow.
After marking her position, they turned downriver and disappeared from view. A little later she heard the rumble of hooves and saw them clearly in the light of the new sun spreading gold across the grass. The griffins padded restlessly back and forth on the sunning stone as though eager to retreat but unwilling to desert her.