The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

gnarled, hunched creatures clawing through tunnels of stone

a young woman, dressed in the most peculiar manner and with her face scarred, struck down by a spear made of light as she stands before a blazing stone crown

o caught her wrist as he crowded up beside her. “Dead people,” he whispered. “They bury dead people in here.”

A scream caught in her throat.

“I pray you,” murmured Heribert to the prince. The cleric had set down the lamp and now fussily arranged the blanket in the center of the chamber. With a grim expression, Sanglant laid his daughter on the blanket, tucking the ends around her feet, and kissed her twice.

The Quman youth crept in, staring about the vaulted chamber. He kept his hands away from his weapons, but it was comforting to see him armed together with the swords Matto and Thiemo carried and the knife she herself wore at her belt. Only the healer and Heribert carried nothing to defend themselves.

The prince lifted the lamp and shone it one final time into the face of each person there.

At last, he spoke. “It makes no matter whether my beloved daughter survives, only that you six were willing to serve her even in the face of death. I will never forget that. When we meet again, you will receive a just reward. No one has done me a greater service than you.”

There was nothing more to say. Anna willed him to go quickly so that she might not have to suffer his good-byes any longer. She might never see him again, the one she loved best in all the world. He held the lamp while they each of them sat down in a circle around the unconscious girl and once they had settled he placed the lamp beside Brother Heribert licked his fingers, and snuffed out the burning wick.

“Fare well,” he said.

He embraced Heribert last, then was gone. She heard his shuffling crawl up the tunnel.

“It’s strange,” said Matto in a whisper. “I can’t see any light at all. We can’t have come so very far, and there were no twists in the passage.”

She groped and found his hand, squeezed, and reached to the other side for Thiemo. There she sat holding on to each of them. The Kerayit healer crooned softly in a nasal voice. Although the words and the eerie tune made no sense, it was somehow soothing.

They waited.

The blackness was complete, drowning them. She could see nothing, not even Matto or Thiemo so close on either side of her, but the clasp of their hands comforted her. At length her trembling slowed and ceased. The cold grasp of reality overtook her; she might die, here and now, or she might not, but she had made her choice and now had only to wait.

It was strange to feel so calm.

“What’s that?” whispered Matto.

“Hush!” said Heribert, who was now their leader.

A barely audible rumble vibrated the ground under her thighs and rump, more felt than heard.

“The army is moving,” muttered Thiemo.

“No,” said Matto. “We couldn’t feel them, they’re too far from us.”

“Then what is it?”

“Hush,” said Heribert.

The Kerayit healer fell silent as a high, singing note thrummed at the limit of their hearing. A second voice joined the first, not a human voice nor even that of any living thing but of an entity so ancient and cold that its voice had great beauty but no warmth. Their harmony twisted through her bones and made fingers of cold fear race up and down her spine. She shuddered; the eerie counterpoint made her ears hurt, and the melisma of those voices stabbed her through the chest like knives whose blades had been soaked in icy water until they burned.

“Ai, God,” breathed Thiemo as in ecstasy.

Matto whimpered in pain.

Light flashed as swiftly as lightning, a blue fire, and in that instant she saw the six of them seated around the corpselike form of Blessing. The niches caught fire, blossoming into a labyrinth of passageways.

She saw into the tangle of the maze that flowered around them, reaching in all directions and in no direction, and anchored by a blazing stone pillar in whose heart lived past, present, and future woven each into the other in an unfathomable skein.

She saw.

A silver-gold ribbon winds through the heavens in twists and turns so convoluted that she cannot tell one side of the ribbon from another or if it even has two sides at all but only one infinite gleaming surface without end. The dazzle of stars blinds her, and then the glory of the heavens vanishes as a shadow looms, so huge that it covers half the sky. An immense weight bears down on her, crushing the air from her lungs. She struggles, but the weight passes right through her, and as she comes up gasping and choking and coughing for air, she sees