The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 159

She reached for him, seeking an answer to this mystery, but tumbled past, drawn by a force she could not measure and could not see. Eastward as the land lay, as the world spun, helpless against that great dragging weight, she was pulled far off course as by a grasping hand. What linked her to Earth, calling her back?

Was it Sanglant? The baby?

An instant she had to pray before she fell into a screaming blizzard, the cold so bitter that she could not take in a breath of air because her lungs froze and her face burned and her courage splintered, cracked, and shattered.

Cold.

She was numb with cold. She would never be warm again. Hugh would come, with his lamp, and lead her back into the church where he had made her his slave. She whimpered. God Above, let her imprisonment not happen again.

All this passed through her mind as swiftly as a rock drops from hand to ground. Then, as stinging snow bit into her skin and the wind screamed against her, she fought up to her knees, defying the storm.

She was not that girl any longer. She was no longer defenseless and alone. She had walked the spheres. She had found her mother’s kin. She had made peace with her father’s memory and his struggles. She had unlocked the door behind which Da had sealed her power.

Hugh no longer ruled her.

But cold could still kill.

The howl of the storm deafened her and she could not see more than a stone’s toss in any direction, blinded by snow. She knelt in grass bent earthward by the wind’s force; it, too, gave no shelter, but within its fibrous stems lived fire.

Downwind, she called fire out of the grass. Flames licked upward, burning fiercely in an arc of brightness, and she pressed as close to the fire as she dared, careful of her cloak and clothing. The blaze warmed her for a time, difficult to count how long she stood there shivering, but the blizzard beat against fire and bit by bit smothered the flames until they wavered, receded, and died.

The wind screamed, scattering the ashes. She tugged her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. Already, through her gloves, her fingers grew numb. Her ears hurt. Cold seared her.

Again she called fire, this time in a wider swath.

As the flames sprang to life in a semicircle around her, a hunched figure emerged from the blizzard, approaching her at a run. It was a man; that much she could see. He carried a spear.

She drew her knife and waited. No use shooting arrows in this wind. The heat of the fire melted the snow around her; icy water pooled at her feet, soaking her boots. The man halted a prudent distance from her, measuring her as she measured him. Although the clothing he wore appeared scarcely heavier than her own, he did not seem on the verge of death by freezing. He was, oddly enough, smiling as he surveyed her. Ice rimed his black hair, and he had a startling and massive scar across one cheek that marred his features but did not, quite, make him ugly. Otherwise he appeared as might any man caught out in such a storm: wary, freezing, desperate, and respectful of the fire burning at her back.

“I saw the fire,” he shouted, words almost inaudible under the scream of the wind. “Are you the one called Liathano? I did not think to find you in this country.”

She had never seen this man before. Or had she? Memory nagged at her, but she had no time for the luxury of caution. Questions must come later. Already she could not feel her feet, and the hot flames were losing their battle against the storm, dying down around her despite their initial fury. Against the blizzard, even fire could not triumph. By his coloring and the cast of his features, this man was one of the steppe tribesmen. Although barbarians, they knew this country as no other humans did.

“Do you know where we can find shelter?” she cried, pitching her voice to be heard above the wind.

He laughed, a mad and rather disturbing cackle. “Here there is no shelter but that found where griffins nest.”

“So be it,” she said, “for I will certainly die out here without shelter but may yet survive hidden within a griffin’s nest.”

He gestured with his spear. Within this storm, all directions looked the same to her. “Come,” he said.

Bracing herself against the wind, she followed him.

XV

A HAPLESS FLY

1

IN the great hall that had once belonged to the queen of Alba, Stronghand held court as winter winds blew a chill rain across the courtyard outside, visible through open doors.

“Bring the prisoners forward.”

A captain herded the captives up before the dais, adults and children all together, a pack of ragged fugitives. They had been living no better than animals out in the woods when a patrol had stumbled across their stick hovels and crude tents and rounded them up. Winter had rendered them too weak to fight and now the presence of his dogs, eager to kill, made them too scared to run away.