The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 182

She sat back, surprised, her expression an odd combination of fear and startled, joyous revelation.

“Griffin feathers cut the threads of magic!” she repeated. Blue fire sparked in her eyes, the wink of fire caught and contained in her deepest heart. That spark blinded him, sent him falling and spinning although he lay supine on the ground.

He has wings, or must have, because he rises above the earth and above his body, above the grass like a dragon launching itself into flight, a little slowly, somewhat ponderous, but determined and powerful. He sees a man lying on the ground, his torso horribly slashed. His dragon’s vision is so keen that he can actually see the heart beating in that torn cavity, pulsing and darkly red. Blood spills over shoulder and arm, staining the cloth of his tunic, staining the grass and the soil. A beautiful woman kneels beside the body. Although she looks exactly as Liath looked three years before, she must be a witch able to conceal herself in the form of another. Yet she speaks with Liath’s voice and moves with Liath’s nervous grace and stares up defiantly as an owl glides into view and comes to rest a body’s length from the two humans.

Behind, griffins prowl like sentries, circling at a distance just beyond a scorching ring of fire now burning down to ash. The griffins are such magnificent creatures that his attention wanders away from the woman and man and the peculiar circle of dying flame. The larger griffin is darker in color, and its wing feathers boast the gleam of good iron. The other has a more silver cast and a smaller stature, but its feathers look just as wickedly sharp. The feathers glint where the light of the setting sun catches in them. As the silver one turns to pace back toward the sunning stone, it flexes its wings and several loose feathers shake free as a bird might molt. They do not precisely drift on the wind toward the ground as would a common bird feather, but neither are they as heavy as iron, and so fall straight down as would a sword or knife. A living griffin would provide an endless although not plentiful supply of its feathers while a dead one provides one set of feathers only. One could husband griffins as a farmer husbands geese, he supposes as he, too, drifts on the wind, thoughts shredding into insubstantial bits.

“I need help,” says the woman to the owl, although it is strange to think of a person talking to an owl, who is after all only a dumb animal. “I have no power against such a wound. I am helpless. I pray you, aid me now, if you can.”

A hand jostled him. The pain jolted him into awareness, and for a moment he was sorry that he was looking out of his own eyes up at the woman he loved most in the whole world.

“Liath?” he whispered.

Tears streaked her face. “My love,” she said.

Pain swallowed him, and the world went away.

XVII

THE BROKEN THREAD

1

AT the end of the second day’s journey their party took shelter with a minor lordling on a minor estate that barely had room for their entire company to sleep in the hall and stables. Lord Arno greeted them by name; the clerics had stopped this way traveling north toward Hersford. Although the road north and a rutted track leading west remained clear, a barricade made up of handcarts, a wagon, and felled logs had been thrown up across the road where it continued southward. The barrier was manned by a dozen field hands armed with staffs sharpened to a point, a single metal-tipped spear, shovels, and scythes.

Over a meager supper of tart cider, roasted chicken, and spring greens, the lady of the house took it upon herself to warn them.

“Go not down the southern road, Your Excellencies.” She looked exhausted, face pale, eyes dark with strain, and she rested trembling hands on her pregnant belly as she glanced at her husband, who was, it transpired, lame from a wound taken in the battle of the guivre, fought near Kassel.

“The western road will serve you better,” the lame man added. “You will not ride more than ten days out of your way. It is safer.” As he spoke, he gripped the arms of his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white.

“I must turn west, as I have already suffered unreasonable delay,” said Brother Severus, “but their road lies south to Darre.”

“I pray you, do not go that way, Your Excellency. All the farms are blighted with the murrain. We’ve heard that not one farm in ten has sheep, cattle, or pigs left to them. We turned back two families yesterday. They were trying to escape north with their flocks. We pray morning, noon, and night that our own herd has not caught the contagion.”

“Yet you let us pass these six days past. I saw no barricade then.”

“The blight had not come so far north, Your Excellency.” The lord called for more cider and apologized for the fourth time that there was no more wine to be had. The long hall in which they feasted was only scarcely longer and wider than Aunt Bel’s house in Osna village. Although the floor was swept clean, the tapestries on the wall had a shabby look about them and all the children, huddled under the eaves on straw mattresses, had runny noses. “We only blocked the road three days past. We’ve heard rumors that bandits have come into the countryside as well. We’ve heard dreadful stories—”