The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

He touched his damaged throat, the voice that had never entirely healed.

Or almost as good as before.

It was still better than being dead.

“Sanglant!” Liath had braided her hair back, and her face was clean. It shone with joy. She grasped his hands.

“A powerful spell,” remarked the shaman, behind her. Her mare’s body filled half the space of the tent, and she loomed ominously over the raised pallet that rested on the ground before her. A slight shape lay curled up on the pallet. It was Blessing, unhurt but utterly slack. Normally Blessing slept with her hands closed into fists, tucked up against her chin; now she lay like a corpse.

“What have you done to my daughter?” he demanded.

Liath recoiled slightly, a movement checked immediately but not so quickly that he didn’t notice that her first instinct had been to pull away from his anger.

“Has she cast a spell on her?”

“Nay, love, she’s done nothing.”

“Then why does she lie there like a body that’s had its soul torn from it?”

“I pray you, Sanglant, do not speak such ill-omened words! Blessing fell into this stupor at about the same time I fell to Earth, or so we believe. She spoke, she said that she heard me and that I was all on fire. Ai, God.” The words were spoken regretfully. “She’s so big. Has it really been four years?”

“Three years! Four years! I’m no cleric to keep track. To me it seemed like an eternity, falling into the pit, but perhaps you suffered less hardship separated from me than I did from you!”

She took a step back, surprised by his anger, as was he. But it just kept boiling up, and boiling up, and he couldn’t stop it.

“How do you know this creature is not our enemy? She refused to help me find Blessing. Now I find Blessing here, in her clutches. How can you know that she did not injure our daughter?”

“Her people rescued Blessing from this man called Bulkezu. Blessing’s own servant Anna told me the story. Anna? Anna!”

“She is gone to fetch water, Bright One,” said the healer. Sanglant had not noticed her, but she sat by the entrance on a cushion, hands folded in her lap.

“Anna could have been bewitched—”

“She seemed a practical enough girl to me. Here now, love.” Liath eased up beside him and set her hands on his shoulders. He knew her expressions intimately; he saw that she was concerned, even apprehensive, and—surely—treating him as if he were a flustered hound that needed to be calmed before it could be settled for the night in its kennel. “You’re not healed yet. You should lie down and rest.”

“Why are you taking their side against me?”

That offended her, and she stiffened, shoulders going rigid as her chin lifted. “I take no one’s side. I am as much a prisoner, or a guest, of the Horse people as you are. As our daughter is. I have little more than a year to plan a great undertaking. I will ally with whom I must in order to stop Anne from bringing down upon us a cataclysm of such terrible strength and breadth that—God Above, Sanglant! You know what I speak of! You were at Verna. Why are you arguing with me?”

For the instant it takes to draw in a breath, a shimmering aura of flame trembled around her as though she were about to flower with wings of flame. This Liath had a terrible power. She was somehow the same woman who had vanished from Verna and yet now something else entirely, a creature not quite human and not quite the beautiful, graceful, scholarly, yet fragile woman he had married. The one he had saved from Hugh, from Henry’s wrath, from life as a fugitive.

The one who had needed him.

This Liath had killed Bulkezu with a single shot and driven off a pair of griffins with a blazing ring of fire. She spoke with the ancient centaur shaman as with an equal. She stared at him now forthrightly, her gaze a challenge.

“I don’t know you,” he said.

XVIII

GRIM’S DIKE

1

THE country north of Hefenfelthe was rich and sweet, as green as any land Stronghand had ever seen, laced with fordable rivers and manifold streams, and so gentle that it placed few obstacles in the path of his army. Spring brought frequent showers, but although it rained one day out of three, they made good time and met with occasional, if stiff, resistance as they marched north on the trail of the queen. Mostly they found abandoned villages and empty byres.

“The scouts have returned!” called Tenth Son, who marched with the vanguard.

Human outriders called down the line of march and the army creaked to a halt at a stagger as word reached the ranks behind. The van had come to the top of one of those gentle, if long, slopes that allowed Stronghand to survey the line of his army where it snaked back along the ancient Dariyan road. The paved road made their passage swift, although it exposed them to attacks from the surrounding woodland.