by Kate Elliott
“How is it that you speak Wendish so well?”
Sorgatani downed a second cup as well. “Humans are born with luck that leads them either into ill fortune or good fortune throughout their life. We who are shamans among my people have so much power within us that we have no room for luck to be born into our body, so our luck is born into the body of another. My luck was born in the body of a woman of the Wendish tribe. Because I see her in my dreams, I understand and speak her language.”
“This is a thing I have never heard of before. Is it common for the luck of a Kerayit shaman to be born into a foreigner?”
“Our luck is born where fate decrees, and where our path lies. It is my fate that my path lies west, intertwined with that of your people. I think you know her, because she speaks of you in her dreams. She is called Hanna—”
“Hanna!” Liath had not seen Hanna since Werlida, when she had fled Henry’s wrath with Sanglant. “Do you know where she is? Better yet, I’ll search. Is there a fire I can look into?”
Sorgatani lifted a hand, and the older servant brought the silver cup over on the tray, now cleared of bowls. She set it down before Liath and retreated.
Liath passed a hand over the shimmering surface of flame, as smooth as water licked by ripples of fire. With ease, she drove a path through the flame and sought Hanna.
Only the coruscating blue-white flicker of the burning stone met her seeking gaze, as if Hanna were caught within the gateway, wandering the ancients paths woven between the stone crowns.
“How can this be?” she whispered.
Shadows danced, and faded, making her dizzy, and she found herself back in Sorgatani’s tent. The oil in the cup had all burned up to reveal, in the bottom, an astonishing wheel of horses’ heads, spinning like a pinwheel, one galloping after the next, until she realized that she was staring at a pattern beaten into the silver. She took her hands off the cup. The jangling of tiny bells announced the arrival of the older servant, and the cup was removed.
“She does not walk on Earth,” said Liath, surprised to find she could still speak. The effort had tired her, and the question of Hanna’s fate weighed on her, an impossibly heavy burden. Hanna was her northern star, the one sure stable point in a tumultuous world. “I pray she is not dead.”
“She walks the crowns,” said Sorgatani carelessly, as if to walk the crowns was no greater a feat than a morning’s stroll down to the river.
“Who but the Seven Sleepers knows the secret of the crowns?”
“A woman, I think, whom Hanna saved from a deep pit, which you call a dungeon. Now they walk the crowns to escape those who pursue them. She is safe.”
“What woman?”
“I do not know how you call her. Your names are puzzling and difficult to pronounce.”
Liath squelched her frustration. This was no time to irritate her allies. “Do you have any way of knowing for how long she is safe?”
“Only the Holy One can see both ways through time. She can see across great distances and pierce the veil of time through the heart of the burning stone. Can you not as well?”
“I can see through fire, but not into the heart of the crowns. I saw glimpses of past and future when I crossed through the burning stone, but that sight is closed to me here on Earth.”
“Then what does it mean, to ‘see through fire’?”
“It is a gift known to those who have taken Eagle’s vows in my country, to see folk and places through fire. The Eagles are messengers for the regnant. In this way they can be also the regnant’s eyes and ears.”
“Can you teach me this sorcery? Or is it forbidden?” Her tone dropped wistfully. “There is so much I wish to learn, but there is much that is forbidden to me. We live under the tutelage of the Horse people. They have always been our allies and our mothers, our guardians.” She shifted sideways on the couch, smoothing out a lump in the embroidered cushion she sat on, moving a little closer to Liath. “I know I am impatient. Some days I hope that my fate leads me westward where I can see new things.”
“Are you a prisoner?”
As if a muffling blanket had dropped down around them, the hiss of burning oil became the only sound. Liath could not even hear the breathing of the two servants. Of the camp outside, surely audible through the walls, she heard nothing. It was as if magic had torn them away from normal intercourse with the world and thrust them into the heart of a maze, where sight and sound altered and warped until they might stand a spear’s length from their companions and yet be utterly separated from them by a wall of stone or a veil of sorcery.
“I am a prisoner of my power.” Sorgatani spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone with which the steward of an estate proclaimed which cattle were marked out for the Novarian slaughter. “The Horse people are immune, as are my blood kin and the other shamans. Those who serve me are bound to me by magic so that they do not suffer in my presence.”
“Nothing has happened to me.”
“You, like me, possess a soul that was passed on to you from another being. Mine came from my aunt. Yours came from a creature born of fire.”
“Have you seen with your own eyes the fate suffered by ordinary humans who are brought into the presence of one of your kind?”
“Nay. This lore I had from my teacher.”
“Has it been tested? If you have not seen it for yourself, how do you know it is true and not just a superstition?”
Sorgatani laughed bitterly. “What if it is true, Liat-ano? Am I to walk into a camp of strangers with no care that I may bring death down upon people I do not know? We tell stories, in our tribe, of how a Kerayit shaman destroyed an entire tribe, one who warred against us, by walking through their camp at midday. Every soul there died, and their tribe vanished from Earth and memory. I dare not risk it. I seek knowledge, not death. I am not a warrior.”
“I am no warrior either, although at times I must fight. After everything I have seen, I wish it were not to a war that I have returned, for there is so much to learn and to study. This war seems like a desert to me, a barren wasteland. But still, it must be crossed.”
“You speak as if with my own heart.” Sorgatani’s earrings chimed as she shifted on her cushion. Her words seemed freighted with reticence, the speech of a woman shy of speaking her deepest feelings because she had never had a close companion before, only the comradeship of duty, the tutelage of one more powerful than she, and the inevitability of the isolated life that she would inherit when she came fully into her powers.
Power frightened those who did not possess it, and well it might when It resided in the flesh of an otherwise ordinary woman.
“You must be lonely,” said Liath. The bitterness of the solitude she had suffered with her father as they lived as fugitives all those years was as fresh now as it had been when she had lived through it. It was impossible to trust when you were always running. It was hard to clasp hands with people soon to be left behind, never to be met again. Her years in Heart’s Rest had been Da’s last gift to her, and giving that precious respite to her, granting her the time to develop affectionate bonds with Hanna and Ivar, had killed him. He had given his enemies time to catch up with him, because he wanted to make his daughter happy.
Impulsively, Liath reached out. “We are alike, you and I. We might be sisters.” She grasped the other woman’s dark hand.
A spark burst where their skin touched. A report like the clap of thunder deafened her as she recoiled. The servants leaped up, bells jangling, but Liath nursed her hand and, when tears stopped stinging and she had enough courage, turned it over to examine it. Red blisters bubbled on her palm. They burned like sin.
“I pray you, forgive me!”
“Nay, you must forgive me.” Sorgatani sounded near tears. She cracked an order at the servants, and the older one hurried to the chest and brought out a tiny leather bottle. Bowing low before Liath, she produced a salve and, when Liath held out her burned hand, smoothed the sweet-smelling paste over the burned skin.
/> “I should have warned you not to touch me,” continued Sorgatani. “I should not have let you sit so close. If I could wish one thing it would be that you do not abandon me, now that you know the truth. You see how it is.”
“I see how it is,” said Liath, wonderingly, lifting her gaze. The sting had dissipated the sorcerous veil that disguised the Kerayit girl’s features. She could now see Sorgatani clearly—a beautiful, almond-eyed woman no older than herself, with black hair neatly confined in braids, an oval face broad at the cheekbones, and a lovely dark complexion. “I see you. I could not see you clearly before.”
Sorgatani stared back, taking her measure, and they both smiled and, in unison, glanced down. Liath blew on her palm. The cooling touch of her breath and of the salve eased the pain.
“May no person touch you? Can you never have a husband?”
“No Kerayit woman will ever have a husband. That is the law. We are the daughters of the Horse people. Just as they have no husbands, so do I and my sisters have no husband. There was one of us who married many years ago—it was allowed because he was her luck. When he died, the luck passed into the body of her son. They are both dead now, mother and son. Such is fate.”
“Do you live always alone, confined in this wagon?” Such a fate seemed so ghastly to Liath that she struggled to hide the pity in her tone. Sorgatani deserved better than pity.
“We have puras, who mate with us and bring us pleasure and give us company. You have a pura, do you not? The prince who hunted in the grass.”
“He is my husband,” she said, amazed that her voice emerged so evenly despite the turbulence of her thoughts. He is my beloved husband, but I scarcely know him.
“Oh! You are allowed husbands in the western lands, are you not? It is a custom common among barbarian women. If you don’t want your husband anymore, then perhaps I might have him as my pura, if you are willing to trade him to me. It is true I get lonely.”
What an idiot she had been to think that walking away from Sanglant’s anger would make the trouble go away. Over the years Sanglant had, perhaps, come to believe she would never return; maybe he had mourned her loss and, then, been blindsided by her reappearance. On top of that he was horribly wounded. The servant girl, Anna, had told her of his devotion to Blessing and how he had agonized over their daughter’s unnatural maturation. Anna had spoken a very little bit of their journey east, but only Li’at’dano’s words had brought home to Liath what a massive undertaking it was to lead a western army so far into the wilderness. Sanglant understood the threat Anne and the others posed; he was not afraid to face them down.
“He is still my husband, although we have been apart for so long. Have you no men in your own tribe whom you desire?”
Sorgatani’s shrug had an eloquent lift. “How is your hand?” she said instead. “Will it heal? Have I scarred you?”
Liath turned up her hands to expose the lighter skin of her palms. “It’s gone already,” she said, surprised to find it so. The merest sting, like the probing of a bee, and a sheeny pink flush shading the skin were all that betrayed which hand had touched Sorgatani.
“You are very powerful! I hope we can become allies.”
“I hope we can become friends.”
Sorgatani’s smile was, like a rare flower, beautiful and precious and bright.
Hammering blows stuttered against the door. The entire structure shuddered. In a cacophony of bells, the younger servant leaped up and slid the door sideways enough to peer through. Torchlight flashed through that gap. Outside, amazingly, night had fallen although Liath had no sense of so much time elapsing while she conversed with Sorgatani.
“Bright One!” The shaman’s powerful voice had the force of an avalanche. Even Sorgatani, unwittingly, trembled.
“Come quickly, Bright One! Prince Sanglant is missing. He has taken the child.”
2
PAIN made his head throb, and he knew that pain of such intensity, touching every point in his body, did not help him think straight. But he would not remain a prisoner in the centaur camp any longer. If he had no help from his wife in making his escape, so be it. He had survived four years without her. He had managed all that time. He could manage now.
“My lord prince! You shouldn’t try to stand, my lord!”
It was astonishing how much agony it cost him to stand. “My clothes, Anna.”
Dressing was child’s work, yet he grimaced as he pulled his wool tunic on over his under-tunic. He could not bend to bind on his leggings, so he sat on the chest and let Anna lace up his boots.
“Where is my spear?”
They had left his gear on the carpet next to his pallet, which suggested that he was not, precisely, a captive, but he ignored these distracting thoughts as he buckled his sword over his back, wincing, and threw his cloak over everything, pushed back on the left shoulder so he could draw his sword. Every time he moved, he felt a thousand daggers pricking him in each muscle; hot fire ran up his tendons. His chest ached horribly; each breath hurt.
“It’s here, my lord.”
“Are you strong enough to carry Blessing?”
“I think so, my lord. But—”
“Pick her up.”
“Her Highness Liathano has not returned yet, my lord. She went out with the shaman—”
“Anna!”
She knelt beside Blessing, got her arms around the girl, and heaved her up. Blessing wasn’t that much smaller than Anna but she was light, and Anna was strong and stubborn. She draped the unconscious Blessing over her shoulders like a sack of grain. Sanglant got a good grip on the spear. The extra weight of the sword across his back seemed like the hand of a giant, pressing him down, but he refused to give in to weakness.
The healer sat placidly by the door, watching his struggles without speaking, her kohl-lined eyes intent with curiosity and her broad face as expressionless as uncarved stone. As Sanglant reached the threshold, the healer rose.
“You are not healed,” she said in her gruff voice. “Not wise to walk.”
“I am returning to my army.”
He stepped out into the camp, leaning on the spear to support himself, and paused there, fighting to catch his breath, as Anna negotiated the threshold with Blessing and halted beside him. Twilight had descended, but the waxing moon gave off enough light that they might walk through the night grass with a reasonable certainty that they could mark their way.
The healer followed them. She was not much taller than Anna but considerably broader through the shoulders. She held a cured sheep’s bladder and a leather flask.
“Are you going to try to stop me?” asked Sanglant, feeling dangerous because his head reeled and the moon shone overly bright and the ground had a disconcerting sway to it.
“Nay, lord. I receive the duty to heal you. I follow you.”
“Don’t try to stop me.” Stubbornness was all the strength he had, that and this coiling, burning anger that drove him. Liath had abandoned him, stolen his victories, and chatted companionably with the creature who had kidnapped his daughter and refused to help him rescue the child from Bulkezu.
Something in this train of thought didn’t make sense, but he wanted to recover under the supervision of those he trusted—he did not want to be beholden to these uncanny creatures and their human companions.
He wanted allies who treated him with respect.
“They’re more like slaves, if you ask me,” he said to no one, or to Anna, as he hobbled through the grass toward the western ridge somewhere beyond which his army camped. The pain of healing had drawn his nerves so fine that he distilled the thread of his army’s campfires from out of the strong scents that surrounded him in the centaur encampment: boiled wool, blood, fermented milk, horse.
“Who is, my lord prince?” she asked, huffing as she walked.
Not many walked abroad through camp now it was dark and those who did made no attempt to stop him. Though he staggered frequently, he possessed sword and spear, even if he needed the
spear’s aid to walk. Tents loomed as obstacles but proved easy to walk around although the extra distance took its toll.
After an eternity they reached the edge of camp. He surveyed the long slope ahead and wondered how any person could reach the top.
“Will you have drink?” asked the healer solicitously, holding out the sheep’s bladder.
It contained drugged wine, no doubt.
“No,” he said, although he was desperately thirsty. He glanced back to survey the camp. A group of centaurs gathered a spear’s throw away. They consulted together but made no move to come after him. One carried a lamp. Its light played over their torsos; illuminating the curve of their breasts, the drape of bead necklaces, a pair of coarse, auburn braids hanging over the shoulder of one and reaching to that place where woman hips flowed away into a mare’s body.
That long hair reminded him of Liath, the way her braids would fall over her shoulders and sway along her backside as she walked.
Where had Liath gone? Why had she barged out after those few reasonable things he had said to her? Why hadn’t she returned? No doubt she had more in common with the shaman.
Liath had changed so profoundly; she was not the person he had married. It was like meeting a stranger who wears familiar clothing—or an old companion who can no longer speak a common language.
“Where are all the male centaurs?” he asked suddenly. “Don’t they ride to war? Or do they wait in the wilderness and let the mares do battle for them?”
The healer waited, obviously expecting him to answer his own question. When Sanglant said nothing more, she spoke as if to a particularly slow child. “No male Horse people walk on Earth.”
“They’re all crippled? Dead? Gelded?”
“No males,” repeated the healer helpfully. “Only horses.” She gestured toward the distant herds, mostly lost to sight on the opposite side of the encampment.
Sanglant shook his head irritably. He hated when things made no sense, but it wasn’t worth arguing about now. He started up the slope.