The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 379

He did not see her. As the first gray tiding of dawn filtered through the trees, the last of the line passed him, brought up, in the rear, by a proud young man of stature very like to his and a face that seemed eerily familiar, a man’s face molded out of the lineaments of his own mother. He was clad in a cuirass molded of bronze whose surface shimmered. The young warrior halted and stared at the prince. His hip-length white cloak swirled in an unfelt breeze. Leather tasses clacked softly about his thighs.

“Kinsman!” he called. “How is it you watch us pass and do not join us? It is near. It is close. Can’t you feel it?” He faltered, shifting his entire body as a shudder passed through him. “How can it be?” he demanded, voice changed. “You are not one of us, yet I recognize you. Who are you?”

This was no language Sanglant knew, yet he understood it anyway. It melted into him like the heat of the sun, which shines on all folk whether they know to call it the sun, or whether they are blind.

“I am Sanglant,” he replied, taking a step toward the path. “I am son of Henry, king of Wendar. I am son of Uapeani-ka-zonkansi-a-lari.”

The other man lifted his spear in a gesture of warding, or astonishment. Beaded sheaths covered his forearms and calves, and in the twilight they flashed, catching the attention of the warriors who had gone on and now paused, turning.

“Hasten! Hasten!” they called. “The time is near! We must hurry.”

“I know you!” cried the young warrior, tense with frustration. “Yet who are you? How do you claim descent from a name that cannot exist? Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari is the name my brother’s daughter would have carried had he ever sired a girl child, but he is many lifetimes gone, lost to me. Who are you?”

“Are you dead or are you living?” demanded Sanglant. “To my eyes you are a shade, a ghost. Yet you speak as if others have died while you survived.”

“We are dead and we are living. We are caught in the shadows, torn out of Earth yet not killed when the witch Li’at’dano guided the hands who wove the great spell that exiled our land and our people.”

“I am your kinsman! I am trying to help you—”

“It is too late. What is done cannot be undone. The exiled land will return.”

“Nay. Another cabal of sorcerers seeks to weave that ancient spell a second time, to cast the land back into the aether.”

“Do they still hate us? Does the witchwoman still brood over our ancient war?”

“She aids me. She is no longer your enemy.”

The other man laughed. “If she says so, then she lies to you, or you are foolish enough to believe her. How can she even be alive? We have seen ages pass. No one who lived in the time of the Exile can still be alive!”

“You are alive!”

“I am a shade, but I hope to live once more so that I can take my vengeance. Enough!” His comrades, a dozen masked warriors waiting a bow’s shot away, called again to him. The rest of the procession had vanished into the trees and dawn’s twilit haze. The man followed.

“Heed me!” called Sanglant angrily. “Do not turn your back on me! I do not lie. You know less than you believe you do. I have met the Horse shaman you call Li’at’dano. I have spoken with her. She still lives. She spoke freely of the ancient weaving, which she now regrets. She strives to prevent those who would banish the Lost Ones again. We must act as allies—!”

The warrior heeded him no more than had Lady Wendilgard. From down the path his comrades called to him, but their voices were too faint even for Sanglant to hear.

“I must go,” the warrior said. “The day dawns.” A strange note changed the timbre of his voice. He looked once more, piercingly, at Sanglant, then jogged away on the ancient road to join the others. As light rose to scatter night, they faded into the trees.

Hathui collapsed to the ground in a dead faint, completely limp, and he gaped, taken by surprise, then heard a clamor of voices as his escort fought their way through the forest to reach him. He knelt beside her, and she opened her eyes just as Sergeant Cobbo ran up with a worried expression on his face and a big dent in his helm.

“My lord prince! We’ve been searching for you all night. We thought we’d lost you when that gale blew through! That wasn’t anything natural! What’s amiss with the Eagle? Was she struck down?”

She rubbed her head and groaned, sitting up. “I got hit in the head by hail. I don’t remember anything after that.”

The prince looked toward the path, but he saw only butcher’s-broom and buckthorn beneath a spreading canopy of ivy-covered oak. The trail that had glimmered so clearly last night was invisible, and when he walked over to the bush he believed he had sheltered under, he found no trace of those chalk-white grains nor, when he kicked aside layers of matted leaf litter, did he uncover an old stone roadway. The drought had baked the dirt until it was as hard as rock. “My lord prince?”