The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“If we’re in the mountains, we must hope to find a pass that will lead us north to Wendar or south to Aosta,” Bertha continued.

Liath groaned and sat up.

“Liath!” Breschius loomed over her, a slice of apple crushed between his fingers.

ent to the door, spoke, and four guardsmen entered the room, men with broad shoulders and powerful hands.

“Hold him down.” Hugh turned to the brazier sitting forgotten beside one wall, slipped a glove on his right hand, bent, and withdrew a knife from the coals. Its blade gleamed white-hot.

The guardsmen pushed Zacharias to the floor.

He thrashed against their grip. “Ai, God! Ai, God! I pray you, mercy! I’ll do anything you want! Anything you want!”

“So you will,” said Hugh. “Hold him tight. One of you, take the head.”

Weak though he was, he struggled like a lion caught in a net, biting, kicking, scratching as the guardsmen cursed him, or laughed, each according to his nature.

They were stronger than he was. They were a vise. When they had him pinned and his head clamped between arms like iron claws, he still thrashed even if he could not move. He fought, and he twisted; he wept, and he begged, but they pried his mouth open and used tongs to fix hold of his tongue and hold it extended as Hugh brought the knife down. No glee animated that beautiful face, only the frowning intentness of a man sorry to be doing what was necessary.

When the blade touched, pain and fire exploded in his head, but the worst of it was that he did not pass out, not as he had that day long ago among the Quman when Bulkezu had mutilated him. He felt the knife slice, and he screamed.

It was the only speech he had left.

2

SHE stepped last of all through the archway of light that she had woven between star and standing stone. As the blue light enveloped her, it blinded her to the world below at the same time that it opened her sight into its interstices, paths leading off at every angle of past, present, and future. Yet her gaze remained fixed on a lodestone falling behind: Her daughter, a stranger to her, lay asleep on cold earth while each step took her farther away from the child because she had to follow the sparks made by the passing of Sorgatani’s wagon. She dared not lose them.

As she was losing Sanglant for a second time.

She saw in him flashes. With each step he and his army receded; with each step her vision blurred, or his army got larger, a mass of soldiers attended first by two Quman banners, then four, then eight, a succession of images, glimpses into the future as days or weeks passed outside the weaving.

How long would it be until she saw him again?

Emotions shone in as many colors as the blazing stars, woven together to create the thread of her being: a sense of triumph at the ease with which she had woven the crown, a gnawing doubt that she had done it wrong and they would end up cast onto unknown shores, grief at leaving her daughter and husband behind yet again, anger at Anne, the weight of responsibility she had taken on, desire in thinking of him but that would distract her so it must not be thought of except that he had a very particular way of laughing when—

“Liath!”

She stumbled on uneven ground and went down on one knee. A strong arm steadied her as her head reeled and her legs gave out. She would have fallen flat if someone hadn’t been holding her up.

“Just so tired,” she murmured, amazed.

A breeze chased her hair, whipping her braid along her shoulder. Dust eddied along bare earth.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

She looked up. Down the slope of a small mountain valley stood the familiar tower where she had studied for many months. She had left this place only days ago, or so it seemed.

Verna.

She went all hazy, breath punched out of her.

She woke to find herself lying on her cloak under the shade of an apple tree while Lady Bertha, seated beside her, cut worms out of apples. Bertha’s padded tunic was blotched with sweat. A cord tied her hair back from her face, although the ragged ends didn’t reach her shoulders.

“It’s summer, no doubt of it,” Bertha was saying to someone out of her line of sight.

Liath stared into the canopy of an apple tree whose contours she recalled clearly from her time spent in Verna. She had eaten many apples off this tree. Once she and Sanglant had snuck out here at night and made love under these branches while the night breezes—or Anne’s captured daimones—played around them. But he was far away now, lost to her. Months had passed for him while she had stepped through a single night. She could scarcely fathom it, yet the ache never left her and the apple tree reminded her bitterly of what she had left behind.

“If we’re in the mountains, we must hope to find a pass that will lead us north to Wendar or south to Aosta,” Bertha continued.