The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Sometimes the mercy of death was preferable to living.

Yet.

Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath. He tried to speak her name but could get no voiced breath past his lips.

“He moves,” said the healer, speaking to someone unseen. “See you his finger, this twitch? Fetch the Bright One.”

A shadow skimmed the curved wall of the sky, distorted by corners and angles, and abruptly he recognized his surroundings: he lay inside a tent. He sensed a smaller body lying asleep near to his, but as the flap of the tent lifted a line of light flashed, waking every point of pain.

He gasped out loud. Agony shattered his thoughts.

“Sanglant.”

Her voice startled him out of the stupor of pain. This time he could speak.

“Liath? Where have you been? You abandoned us.”

She was crying softly. “I was taken away by my kinfolk, but I had no wings to fly with. I could not follow them nor return to you. But now I have walked the spheres, love. Now I’ve come back to you and our child.”

“Ah,” he said.

The light faded. He fell into darkness.

And woke.

He hurt everywhere, but the pain no longer was excruciating; it was only a terrible throbbing ache that radiated throughout his body. Air thrummed against the walls of the tent in a complex melody that rose and fell depending on the strength of the wind and minute shifts of its direction, although in general it seemed to be coming from the southeast.

He heard Liath’s voice.

“I can see nothing. I have little knowledge of healing. I do not understand why she should have fallen into this stupor. What can I do to wake her?”

“Look more closely, Bright One.” The shaman’s inhuman voice stirred unexpected feelings in his breast—irritation that she had dismissed him so easily, fear for his lost daughter, determination to hunt down Bulkezu.

Bulkezu was dead.

But not by Sanglant’s hand.

A strange scent tickled his nostrils, a light stinging heat that was both sweet and hot and yet not really a smell at all. It was the taste and touch of sorcery.

Liath caught in her breath in the way a woman might, prodded to ecstasy. “I see it! It’s a pale thread, there. She is still linked to the daimone that suckled her, who returned to the sphere of Erekes.”

“Nay, as you see, the thread is broken.”

o;I love him, but his is only one life. I would sacrifice my own life to save his, but I will not sacrifice the world. I will save as much as I can and see justice done. On this, I am determined.”

A sliver of a smile cracked that aged face. It was not an expression of amusement, yet neither did it mock. “You are an arrow loosed, Bright One. I wonder if you can be turned aside.” She ducked her head as a sign of respect, although not of submission. At last she closed the gap between them, and Liath had consciously to stop herself from taking a step back because of the weird aura of her presence, her very appearance, and because like any horse she loomed larger than one expected. She was big, and could crush a human skull with one good kick.

But she stretched out her hand and offered Liath an arrow from the quiver slung over her own back.

“We are not enemies, Bright One. This arrow I will give you, in addition to my aid in bringing this human to safety. There is a child held for safekeeping in my camp whom he has sired.”

“My daughter?” The bow slipped from slack hands to fall to the ground, the arrow click clacking down on top of it. “Blessing? How came she to you?” All the questions she had kept fettered ever since she had first seen Sanglant broke free. “What was Sanglant doing here, hunting griffins? How did he get here? Is he alone? Exiled? How far are we from Wendar? How fares my daughter? Was she with her father all along? How came she into your care? What grievance had that man who attacked Sanglant? How can we return to the west?”

Li’at’dano chuckled. “You are still young, I see. You spill over like the floodwaters.” She bent, picked up bow and both arrows, and gave them to Liath. “Let us return to the encampment. Once there I shall answer your questions.”

3

THE odd thing was that the healer who attended him was dressed as a woman but resembled—and smelled like—a man. He was giddy with pain, and therefore, he supposed, unable to make sense of the world properly. The sky had gone a peculiar shade of dirty white that did not resemble clouds, and it had an unfortunate tendency to sag down and billow up. The effect made bile rise into his throat, and the nasty taste of it only intensified the way pain splintered into a thousand pieces and drove deeper into flesh and bone.