The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“The light blinded me,” he said. “I walked too quickly from inside the hall into the open air.”

His head rang with the sound of that roaring, the unceasing stream. I know where he is! It was difficult not to shout aloud with joy and triumph.

“Are you sure you are well, my lord?”

He attacked with questions, to give himself time to recover. The scent of blood had been so strong. The hallucination had almost subsumed him.

“What brings you to Medemelacha, Deacon Ursuline?” he asked. “I am surprised to see you.”

“No less surprised than I am to be here, my lord. I was sent at the command of OldMother.”

This was staggering news, but he knew better than to let his amazement show by any gesture or expression. “What message do you bring, Deacon?”

Yet his heart raced, and he could scarcely quiet his trembling limbs. Alain was at Lavas Holding. Now he could sail to rescue him, and do it quickly before worse harm was done to him. What had sent him mad? Why was he being punished in this way? Or was it punishment at all? There were other plagues abroad; they spread among humankind as maggots in rotting flesh. No man, or woman, was immune. Alain had wandered into places where he might well have taken sick.

All the more reason to save him and take him to the WiseMothers, as they had commanded him to do.

“Yes, my lord,” she said, as if he had spoken out loud. “OldMother wishes you to sail to Alba at once, to the stone crown where Brother Severus has left several adepts to perform the ceremony on the tenth day of Octumbre. There is little time left if you are to reach there by the proper day.”

“What about Alain?” he demanded. His passion startled her; she took a step back, and the Rikin brothers crowded around to listen circled nearer, pressing forward, as if they expected to see blood spilled.

Rivers of blood.

The wind was rising. A cloud covered the sun, blown in off the sea, and out beyond the harbor he saw rain coming in across the water, changing the color of sea and sky.

“OldMother said nothing of a person called Alain,” Ursuline said after a moment’s consideration. “Is that one of Brother Severus’ adepts? I can tell you, I do not care for these noble clerics. They sneer at a woman like myself although my lineage is perfectly respectable. They think themselves above the work of shepherding the common folk from birth to death, although certainly the blessed Daisan spoke of the importance of the ordinary work of living, of choosing what is useful and good instead of what is evil. Every person faces this struggle, not only the high and mighty!”

She was indignant. Her expression gave him pause.

“OldMother made no mention of Alain?” he asked again.

Yet OldMother knew. OldMother herself had told him to find Alain.

“She said this.” Her voice changed pitch, deepened and roughened. “‘Stronghand must go at once to the Alban crown, there to set in motion what is necessary. Now we understand what we need to do.’ I am to go with you.”

“Said she no more than this?”

“Is that not an express command?” she demanded of him. “Yet if that is not enough, then she bade me give you this to remind you of her power.”

She unfolded her right hand to display four ephemeral items: a tiny white flower, a lock of downy infant’s hair, the shards of an eggshell, the delicate wing bone of a bird. These things he had once placed in the hand of the youngest WiseMother as she climbed the path to the fjall to join her grandmothers.

“My lord Stronghand!” Yeshu jogged up, face red, tunic plastered with sweat. “The man’s gone. His boat’s already put to sea, that’s what they said, him and two big black dogs, but he can’t be far yet. The tide’s not with him. He must be moving right up along the coast. Do you want men sent out in pursuit? We’ll catch him soon enough.”

He reached for the precious items cupped in Ursuline’s hand, but she closed her fingers over them and pulled her hand away gently, so as not to seem defiant in front of the others.

He saw now the trap Ursuline had laid.

“No. Let him go. No matter.”

Ursuline was born out of humankind, weak and soft, but like the WiseMothers she bore within her the capacity to gestate life. Therefore, the mothers ruled. They alone could create life, and destroy life before it came into autonomy.

She understood their power, and now she challenged him. The stab in the back he had long expected had come from the most unlikely place. Ursuline lead shifted her alliance. She obeyed him not for himself alone but because he obeyed the wishes of OldMother. She knew who ruled the Eika; he was simply their servant. For some strange reason, caught up in the exhilaration of war and conquest, he had forgotten.

Of course he had no choice. To go against OldMother was beyond him. He bowed his head, knowing he had lost Alain and the hounds. He had failed his brother.

“I am OldMother’s obedient son,” he said. “Tomorrow we sail for Alba.”

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