The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  Alain stepped forward, unhooked the flask, and took out the stopper. Willibrod drank nothing stronger than vinegar, apparently, tinged with a scent so sharp it gave Alain a headache. He handed the flask to the other man. Even so, Willibrod could not hold it because he trembled so violently, and the flask tipped out of his hands and spilled onto the floorboards.

  Gasping and choking, Willibrod cried out in pain as liquid pooled over the wood and began to soak in. He flung himself onto the floor and writhed there, licking it up like a frantic dog.

  Alain dropped down beside him.

  “Don’t touch me!” Willibrod jerked back from Alain’s hand only to slam into the bed’s wooden frame, but the impact had no effect on him.

  “I pray you, Brother. Let me.” Alain salvaged the flask; perhaps a third of it had leaked out. The liquid stung his fingers and he winced at its touch.

  Willibrod yanked the flask out of his hand and set it to his lips, gulping desperately while Alain hastily wiped his fingers on his leggings. The vinegar was raising blisters on his skin.

  “What are you poisoning yourself with?” He blew on his hand, but blisters kept popping up where the liquid had burned him. Willibrod lowered the flask. His hands had stopped shaking, but his face was as ghastly as ever, his mouth caught in its eternal grimace. “The distillation of life,” he whispered, eyes lolling back like one drugged. “The souls of dying men. It makes a strong potion.” Had the pain of his affliction driven him insane? Yet the expression in his eyes had an awful clarity, the look of a man who knows he has done something so horrible that he can never atone for it.

  “Kill me,” Willibrod begged hoarsely, voice barely audible.

  The aroma of the vinegar and the putrid smell of sores and lesions stifled, as choking as smoke. Alain coughed, fighting for breath, and took a step closer to the other man just as a shudder passed through Willibrod’s frame, a palsy that made his body jerk and tremble. Alain bent to hold him down, but before he could touch him, Willibrod’s eyes shifted; the stark agony of his gaze dulled and his expression changed in the same manner that the sky changes color when a cloud covers the sun.

  “Stand back!” The stink of his breath startled Alain badly—it was like the stench that rises off the battlefield, attracting carrion crows. It was the reek of decay and despair, yet he spoke like a triumphant general. “Do not touch me! Why have you come here?”

  Outside, Rage barked twice, then fell silent.

  Alain stepped backward to touch the entrance flap. “You are not Willibrod any longer.”

  “Willibrod died in the attic under the care of the sisters of St. Benigna. Life did not leave him entirely, but he died nevertheless.” That death’s-head grin did not falter. “Now I am Father Benignus, taking my revenge on the world.”

  “You are taking your revenge on folk who never did you any wrong. Folk who had nothing to do with the pain inflicted on you by Biscop Antonia and Lady Sabella. The evil done to you does not justify the evil you do to innocent others.”

  “What makes you think I believe in right and wrong any longer? How did God reward my loyalty or the faithful service of my fellow clerics? Now I have power, and I will use it as the whim takes me. I do not serve either God or the Enemy. I serve only myself.” The potion had renewed him. He rose, looking vigorous and unexpectedly powerful, if no less hideous. “Are you with me, Brother Alain? Or do you prefer to die and let your soul feed mine?”

  2

  LIATH swept through the entrance and stopped short. It wasn’t only the run from Sorgatani’s wagon that made her heart race. What she saw made her tremble with anger and apprehension. The tent lay empty, its disarray evidence of the hasty departure of Sanglant and his retinue. He was gone, gone, gone. How could he be so stupid?

  A bowllike lamp placed on a closed chest kindled with the force of her feelings. Flame sheeted the surface of the oil.

  When she spoke, her voice shook. “He’ll have gone back to his army.”

  “So we believe.” The shaman did not venture past the threshold, only ducked her head down to examine the interior. Behind her, the misty late night haze dissipated as dawn’s twilight lightened the sky.

  “You saw him go?”

  “I did not, but others did.”

  “They didn’t stop him?”

  The oil burned so fiercely that she reached with her mind’s eye and shuttered it as one might shutter a window. Just like that, the flames died. Smoke curled up, vanished, and left a faint scent. She crossed to look down into the lamp. That brief flare had scarcely affected the level of the oil in the shallow lamp bowl. In Sorgatani’s wagon, while searching for Hanna, an entire bowl of oil had been consumed. She had imagined innocently, foolishly, that the force of her seeing had eaten up the oil quickly but now she realized that she had drifted within that gateway for far longer than she had guessed. She had searched for Hanna all night while Sanglant gathered up his daughter and his servant and staggered back to those he trusted.

  She kicked the pallet he had lain on. It felt good to have something to hit.

  “We’ll have to go after him,” she said, gathering up her weapons, which she had left on the ground between Blessing’s pallet and the tent wall.

  “Why must you go?” asked Li’at’dano as Liath came outside. The centaur shaman seemed honestly puzzled. “We are allies, you and I. There is much to be done if we are to combat these Seven Sleepers. We have a long journey ahead of us, unless you can weave the crowns.”

  “I’m going after my husband,” said Liath as she adjusted the weight of her sword and the angle of her quiver.

  “He is only a male. You can find another mate when it is time for you to breed again.”

  “Not one like him!” The comment gave her pause. She swept her gaze over the encampment. “Why are there no male centaurs among you? There are both men and women among your Kerayit allies, but I see no males among your kind at all.”

  Li’at’dano blinked. For a moment Liath feared she had insulted the shaman. Although her features looked very like those worn by humankind, there was a subtle difference in the way expressions played across her face that betrayed her essential otherness.

  She is like me but not like me, thought Liath. I cannot assume that she thinks as I do, or that our goals match exactly. We are allies, not sisters.

  “I pray you,” she said aloud, wishing she had asked Sorgatani more questions about the centaurs. With Sorgatani, she had felt so entirely comfortable; she had felt that no comment might be misconstrued, only explained or expanded on. She had felt understood, in harmony. “I pray you, I mean no insult if I have spoken of something that you consider taboo.”

  “We are as we are, and as you see,” said Li’at’dano finally. “That you are otherwise is a mystery to us. It is the great weakness of humankind.”

  “I don’t understand you, but I ask you, forgive me if I behave in any manner that goes against your ways. I must go after my husband. If there are any who will accompany me, I would appreciate an escort. I do not know where his camp lies.”

  “You have an escort already.” Li’at’dano pointed toward the western slope. “The beast fears and desires your heart of fire.”

  The griffin paced on the grassy hillside, keeping well out of range of the centaur bows. The rising sun gilded her feathers and she shone, her wing feathers shimmering as the light played across them, her beauty all the more striking because she was so huge and so dangerous and wild. Her tail lashed the grass; she was disturbed and anxious.

  “God help me,” murmured Liath. Yet there was no way but to go past her, not if she wanted to follow Sanglant.

  “West and north,” added Li’at’dano helpfully. “You can see the smoke of their campfires. Do not make us wait long. We must move quickly. The wheel of the heaven turns no matter what we do here on Earth.”

  “I know.” She turned back to meet the shaman’s gaze, which appeared to her cold and steady but not hostile, simply quite another thing from the lo
ok of humankind. “I could have remained with my kinfolk, beyond the heavens,” she said at last. “I could have turned my back on humankind entirely, but I did not. These are the chains that bind me to Earth. I cannot escape them now, nor do I wish to.”

  Li’at’dano nodded, an acknowledgment but not, precisely, comprehension. “It is not our way. I will not interfere with your customs, because you are not mine to command. Go quickly.”

  Go quickly.

  Suddenly the fear that something awful had happened to Sanglant and her daughter overwhelmed her. She had journeyed so far; what if she lost him now?

  As soon as the griffin saw Liath coming, she padded away, tail beating the grass like a whip. Liath followed her; no question that the beast knew where she was going, and Liath saw traces of a trail—not an actual path cut through the landscape but the evidence left by the passage of a small party some time earlier: broken stems of grass, beads of blood dried on glossy leaves; a spot where someone had lain down to rest. These minute signs reassured her, but they made her wonder.

  “Why do you lead me?” she asked aloud. “Why does this path interest you? What do you seek?”

  The griffin swung its huge head around to stare at her, its amber gaze unwinking. It ducked its head down and with a shudder unfolded its wings to flash in the sun like a host of swords before furling them along its body. They moved on at a brisk pace. Liath had to run to keep up with the griffin’s strides.

  She began to suspect the worst when, soon after, they reached a place where the ground was churned up by the trampling of many feet, where the soil had been ripped up by the force of claws digging into the ground.

  Sanglant had, after all, been hunting griffins. Yet he was far too weak to kill one. There wasn’t enough blood, only drops visible here and there. If he had been torn to pieces by the griffin, then it had not taken place here, and if he had slaughtered the griffin, a field of gore would have marked their struggle.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps as she sprinted, seeing the smoke of their campfires just over the next rise.

  The griffin bounded to the crest of the hill and paused there, shining in the midmorning sun to scream its rage as a challenge. Adrenaline hammered through her as she bolted forward, hoping she had not come too late. When she crested the rise and saw the unexpectedly large camp laid out in an orderly fashion below her, when she saw—and how could she miss it?—what Sanglant had done, she began to laugh or else, surely, she would have cried.

  3

  “THERE’S a griffin on the hill, my lord prince!” Even Captain Fulk, pushed to his limit, could sound frightened sometimes. “God Above! And a woman walking with it. She has a bow.” The hesitation that followed these words was so heavy that Fulk’s astonishment seemed audible. “Lord have mercy!”

  “My lord prince,” said Heribert softly. Joyfully. “It is Liath.”

  Sanglant had never known it could hurt to open your eyes, but it did. Everything hurt. Breathing hurt. The sunlight hurt, but he looked anyway at the dazzle of light on the eastern slope. It was hard to see anything with the sun so bright and the beast that paced there so very large and fierce-looking, its wings gleaming ominously as it stretched them wide.

  It screamed a challenge. Horses whinnied in fear, and he heard men shouting. In response to that cry the silver griffin strained and fought against the ropes and chains that bound it, but the soldiers had done their work well. One rope snapped, but the others, and the chains thrown over its deadly wings, held. Surly darted in to grab the thrashing rope and with the help of several of his fellows tied it down. No one got hurt this time, although it had been a different outcome hours ago when they had walked the hobbled, hooded griffin into camp and staked it down.

  “What do we do, my lord prince?” asked Fulk, still nervous. Horses stamped and whinnied, not liking the approach of the griffin one bit despite the calming work of their grooms.

  That griffin did indeed look fearsome. Its iron tang drifted on the breeze. It had, no doubt, come to rescue its mate. But what on earth was Liath doing walking beside it as though it were her obedient hound?

  “Where is Lewenhardt? We’ll need every archer. Spearmen set in a perimeter, in staggered ranks. Double the guard on the horses if you haven’t already.”

  He rested on a couch his soldiers had dragged out into the center of camp so that he could lie close—but not too close—beside his captured griffin and talk to it, when he didn’t doze off. It had to become accustomed to him.

  He gritted his teeth and made an attempt to stand, but he did not have the strength. Hathui and Fulk and Breschius moved to help him, but he waved them away impatiently.

  “Let her come to me. I need not move.”

  I cannot move.

  “My lord.” They glanced at each other; if thoughts were words, he would have heard an earful, but they remained mercifully silent. Liath started down the hill toward them while the griffin remained on the hill. Maybe it had intelligence enough to be wary of the soldiers forming up throughout camp, faces grim and weapons ready. Maybe she commanded it with words alone. Maybe she had that much power.

  “Do you wish for shade, my lord prince?” asked Hathui.

  “No,” he said, because the sun’s warmth—such as it was so early in the spring—soaked into his skin in a healing fashion, as though light itself could knit him back together again.

  His retinue gathered beside him, keeping well back from the hooded griffin. It had not liked entering the camp; the scent of horses stirred its blood, and Sibold had taken a gash to his shoulder and several men had been clawed, but in the end they had secured it without loss of life. Blinded by the cloak, it had submitted. Now it stirred again, knowing its mate was close. But that hood still constrained it. It hated and feared blindness.

  It was his, now, and he did not intend to lose it. Not even to his wife.

  She walked into camp, armed and glorious, and approached him, halting a body’s length from the couch on which he lay. He found himself distracted by that long snake of a braid falling over her shoulder and across one breast, all the way down past her waist. He remembered the way the tip of that golden-brown braid swayed along her backside when she walked.

  “Prince Sanglant,” she said in the formal manner, jolting him back to the cold, cruel present.

  Two could play that game.

  “I am Prince Sanglant.” In case you have forgotten.

  Her expression did not change, but her chin lifted, so he knew she had taken the blow. Yet she went on in the same vein.

  “I am come to make an alliance with you. You marched east seeking griffins and sorcerers. I see that you have captured your griffin. What of the second part of your quest?”

  “I believe I can train a griffin to eat from my hands and come at my call. Are sorcerers as obedient?”

  Anger sparked in her eyes—really sparked; it was uncanny how the blue fire of her irises flashed as though it burned.

  “May we speak privately?” she asked finally.

  He had enough strength to lift a hand. Fulk chased off the onlookers and finally only Fulk, Hathui, Breschius, and Heribert were left in attendance, hovering close, anxious and pale.

  “I listen,” Sanglant said, in the formal manner.

  “Where is our daughter?”

  “With me; under my care and that of her loyal attendants who have served her faithfully for four long years, never leaving her side and even risking their own lives to keep her safe.” He read how the blow landed by the tightening of her lips and the twitch of her shoulder, but she did not reel or stagger.

  “She suffers from a malady that cannot be healed by any ordinary physician. She will die if she is not protected by sorcery until we understand how we might heal her.”

  “She has not died yet. I believe it was your return that injured her.”

  “Sanglant!” Yet she hesitated. She thought, hard and deeply, although her expression gave away nothing. His attendants stared at her, amazed at her pre
sence; amazed, perhaps, by this negotiation that was more like the maneuvering of rival families than the reunion of intimate partners.

  Heribert seemed ready to speak, but Sanglant caught his gaze and, with a sharp sigh, Heribert shifted from one foot to the other and kept his mouth shut.

  “Sanglant.” Again she hesitated, but only to gather her voice, to speak softly enough that even those standing nearby might not hear her words. “Why do you speak to me as though we are enemies?”

  He did not care what others heard. He wanted witnesses. “Enemies? Worse than enemies! You abandoned me! Just left me behind in Verna. Your daughter is enchanted, spelled in a way no one here can comprehend, but you were not here to combat it. Now maybe she will die. I was left behind with all else. For four years! I thought you vowed to be faithful to me, but you proved no different than my mother. Husband and child, abandoned without thought.”

  It was so good to fight back. He wanted his words to hurt her, and they did. He saw her face go gray; he saw her hands curl and her entire body quiver.

  She was not without weapons of her own.

  “Your mother was never married to King Henry.”

  “That’s right! She’d made no pledge to him! She had no obligation to uphold! But you did! Why did you leave us? Why did you wait so long to return?”

  Now she was really angry; she shone with it. “I did not abandon you! I was taken from Verna by my kinfolk. I never asked to go with them. When I could not follow them higher up into the heavens, I found myself in your mother’s land, where I learned all that Anne says is true, and worse besides, that her understanding of the truth is twisted by her own fanaticism. But now I have walked the spheres. I have seen through the gateway of the burning stone into the ancient past. I know what destruction awaits us if Anne weaves the spell a second time.”

  She had really worked herself up. Her voice rang as if above the din of battle, carrying over the camp so that the griffin quieted and every soul stopped and turned.