The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  Swearing like a madman, he groped among the rocks until he found the arrow Liath had dropped wedged in a crevice. He wrenched it free and stood staring at it. He was staggered, his mind empty. The sight of Liath had utterly stunned him, who had always before acted swiftly and decisively in battle.

  Slowly, in the way a sleeping man wakes up bewildered at his surroundings and takes in only one small detail at a time, he really looked carefully at the object he held in one hand. He had fletched this very arrow for her back in Verna. He recognized the goose feathers, taken from the same wing, and the horsehair from Resuelto used to secure the plume.

  How could it be that after three years she still had this arrow? Had she lived all this time in no danger, a life of ease? Why was she here on the steppes? How had she got here?

  Why had she never sought him out in all this time?

  He wept without shame, as a man weeps when powerful emotion overcomes him. Anger, fear, loss, lust, duty, honor, frustration all tangled within his breast, a maze without end or beginning.

  Grimly, he walked back to Bulkezu’s body, but there was no sign on the dead man’s boots, sleeves, or trousers of where he had trod other than fragments of steppe grass and slivers of rock and dust. He had no blood on his hands.

  The arrow that had killed him was a mate to the one the prince held in his hand. He rolled Bulkezu up on his side and pushed the arrow through and out the back. Bits of flesh and heart clung to the point. Blood oozed sluggishly from the body, spilling over the rocks. The nest, still burning, crashed in on itself, wings of ash puffing up into the air to be dissipated by the wind.

  A griffin’s cry echoed along the crags. He stared out over the valley but saw no movement except the blanket of mist unraveling into drifts and patches and fingers of white. The brilliant sun rose higher into the sky, heralding a glorious new day.

  4

  SHE and her mate had fed well the day before. They had tracked a deer for two suns before bringing it to earth beside the headwater of the lesser flowing water. That the deer was unexpectedly plump despite the season had been the first good luck of their northerly journey. The flight from the wintering mountains had been hard because bitter cold still raged all along the route to the nesting grounds. Snow and rough winds lingered unseasonably late this year.

  Late snow made her nervous and wakeful as she curled in last year’s nest, beside her mate. The threads that wove the great nest of the world were disturbed by a shuddering touch so distant that it was barely tangible. She felt like a hapless fly settling down to rest on a dew-sparkled, innocent-seeming hair and feeling the brush of a spider’s foot at the very edge of its complicated web. Maybe the late snow was part of that disturbance. Maybe the nesting season would be disrupted by these unseen forces. Maybe the hatchlings, if there were any, would suffer and die.

  Even the Horse Tribe was on the move, gathered from the four winds into a confluence of herds. That by itself would make any creature uneasy.

  Now, a sound that was not a sound, a touch that was not a touch, a spark that was not precisely anything seen with the eye, troubled the air and caught her attention. Because she was wakeful, she smelled the exhalation of shrouded fire that swept along the hidden ways, those thrumming lines of force that wove the great nest of the world into one piece. At once, sensing the faint convulsion, her mate lifted his head. He was a little smaller than she, of course, not as strong, but clever and resourceful and never quarrelsome, as many males could be.

  “Go,” she told him in the language used by the griffins, not words precisely but comprised of small movements, scratching in the dirt, scents, and the rumbling pattern of her song. “We are come north too early. Go south along the greater flowing water to the sunning stone. I will meet you there.”

  It was a short journey, but it would get him out of the way and keep him safe. He took flight, and she waited a moment, marking his path as he beat southwest toward the winding trail of the water where it cut through the hunting grounds. Once he was well away, she flicked her tufted ears, flexing her claws, as she sought that chance-felt disarrangement in the normally calm surface of the great nest of the world. Was the shrouded fire already gone, or still wandering on Earth?

  There!

  She marked it as she would a banked fire smoldering beneath a snow-covered slope. It moved across the lowlands, where the blizzard smothered the landscape. From the crag’s edge she launched herself out into the air and fought the gale winds as she plunged into the storm. The swirl and roar of the wind delighted her, although it proved a distraction from the hunt. She dove through the turbulence, banked, rose, and dove again above the valley floor and along the rim where the high crags thrust out of the plateau. Here the winds made merry, roiled by the meeting of lowlands and high crags, and it was sheer pleasure to fly.

  By the time she recalled her purpose in hunting she had lost the trail. A hint of a warm front blowing in from the east clouded the exhalation of fire that had teased her. She felt it still, a constant but frail feather touch singing within the threads that bound the great nest of the world, but somehow it had moved up into the crags now, half swallowed by the deafness of stone. The cold wind still blew hard, but she tasted flower petals in the air.

  Circling back to the nest with flurries of snow spinning around her head, she came upon the intruder unexpectedly. The man darted out from the nest and thrust for her exposed underbelly, but he had miscalculated his distance. She landed and lunged for him, yet he slipped past her, as agile and slippery as a weasel, into the shelter of the rocks. The momentum of her lunge slammed her into the nest, which shuddered, but held, as it had held for years under the onslaught of storms.

  She screamed her rage, furious at losing him. His scent, curdling in the air, maddened her: he was a killer. A very few among humankind stalked in griffin country, murdering her kin. Of those few, most died at the hands of her cousins. This one bore the stink of success twice over.

  Why was he here yet again? Was it not enough that he had slaughtered and profaned two of her kinfolk? Had he also desecrated the nest?

  She ducked down and stuck her head inside the nest, the musty-cold familiarity tainted by the lingering stink of his killer’s touch. No hatchling could thrive here, not now. By his presence alone he had poisoned the nest.

  He had not been alone. A second creature had taken shelter within the cavernous nest. She looked, and was blinded.

  The veil that shrouded aetherical fire had little utility at such short range. No ordinary earthly creature gave off such a refulgence. This daimone blazed with an aura of fire. She shrank back, fearful of its terrible power, and bent her head to show respect. Low in her throat she sang a song of courtesy and esteem, and a soft whimper of appeasement.

  “Beware!” cried the fire daimone, leaping sideways.

  A spear point stabbed into her hindquarters, and she whipped her tail to dislodge the point. The killer danced away with spear still in hand. He was laughing.

  She pounced, but the light was dim. Humankind suffered and navigated the night better than she could. Stones rattled down as the daimone-creature bolted out of the nest and clambered up the untidy fall of rocks that rested uneasily to one side of the hollow.

  The griffin circled the hollow, but the killer had vanished into the darkness. Above, braced on the rocks, the daimone-woman drew forth a bow and bent it, an arrow set against the string, ready to fly. The bow had an aetherical flicker, flashes of a blue aura clinging to its curved outline. The wood core was yew, but the virtue inherent in the bow derived from the strips of bone glued to the core: not ram’s horn, but griffin bone. The essence of a dead griffin’s stolen potency and a remnant of its numinous soul welled up from those strips to infuse the entire bow with an enchanted power, sealed and bound by the yew core. Yet no stench of “murderer” permeated the daimone-woman. Although she wielded the bow, she had not tainted her hands killing any griffin.

  Hadn’t she cried out a warning? Didn’t that make
her an ally?

  Wasn’t her heart of fire beautiful?

  All lay quiet except for the moaning wind, yet only a careless hatchling would consider the killer gone for good. She lowered her head to peer for markings in the dirt that would reveal his path, but could make out nothing. It was too dark to see. A step whispered on the ground, the merest scuff of a foot on dirt.

  “Hai!” shouted the daimone-woman.

  The griffin shied sideways just as the spear was thrust out of the shadows, but although she swiped at the dark shape brushing past, she could not see him well enough to strike him.

  The daimone-woman cursed. Attuned to the great nest of the world and the threads that construct it, the griffin felt the creature waken the sleeping sparks of fire that resided in the sticks and branches and dried matter out of which she and her mate had built their nest over the years.

  Fire woke.

  The nest erupted into flame.

  Exposed, the killer stood rooted in the light. The griffin lunged. He fled back into the night as an arrow chased him, clattering on the rocks. Heat from the fire melted the snow in the hollow and sent rivulets streaming down the slope that plummeted westward into the valley.

  They waited for a long while as the nest burned. The daimone-woman readied a second arrow, her entire body tense as she scanned the darkness for any sign of movement.

  Nothing.

  The griffin stalked the perimeter of the hollow, tail lashing, but the night shadows blinded her, and while her sight was keen and her aetherical sensitivity vivid, her other senses were not particularly strong. She flexed her wings. Up on the rocks, the daimone-woman seemed to be flexing as well, as if she struggled to unfurl invisible wings of her own, but despite her straining she could not defeat the weight of earth that, in the world below, dampened and shrouded the power of aether. She seemed reluctant to leave the shelter of the rocks, yet at the same time immensely restless, eager to depart.

  The griffin paced, seeking signs left by the killer, but she found nothing. She grew drowsy, being a creature of day, and finally settled down near the blazing nest, her thoughts drifting. They would have to rebuild the nest, but it had been despoiled in any case and at least now they could use this same nesting ground rather than seek a new one. Fire purified. The heat soothed her as snow spun slowly to earth, flakes dissolving in waves of heat and smoke.

  Too late, she heard a shout. She heaved up as a figure burst out of the night into the hollow. A second man lunged after the first. The two scuffled in the rocks, but the second man had already got the jump on the first; he knocked away the other’s weapon and, with a shriek of triumph, went for the kill.

  The daimone-woman shot.

  Her arrow pierced the heart of the killer. He toppled, his corpse tangling with the body of the living one—another hunter, this one with magic woven through his bones and flesh.

  The griffin saw no reason to wait for the living one to choose his course, not protected as he was by sorcery. The night put her at too much of a disadvantage. She launched herself upward and snatched the daimone-woman away to safety. She was no heavier than a mountain deer. Below, the second hunter shouted after them, but she banked down into the lowland mist and flew a steady course for the sunning stone.

  If the hunter dared pursue her, she would be waiting.

  Meanwhile, she had saved a friend from the depredations of barbaric humans. The daimone-woman remained wisely still, not fighting against the grip of the claws. From this height, a fall would kill. She flew higher, seeking the trail of the greater flowing water whose course would lead her to the sunning stone. A warm wind lifted off the crags. Were those few droplets of moisture rolling down her claws the last remnant of snow or the breath of the heavy lowland mist rising to greet her? What noise was it that the female made? If only they had speech in common, they might thank each other for the help they had given, each to the other, this cold night.

  5

  SANGLANT appeared out of the darkness as though hunting her. The sight of him surprised her so profoundly that she didn’t see her enemy’s stealthy approach. What was Sanglant doing out in this God-forsaken wasteland? Had his presence drawn her as she fell back into the world below? And if he were here, then where was Blessing?

  These thoughts distracted her. Too late, she saw the other man leap out of the darkness and strike down Sanglant.

  She drew. She shot. Seeker of Hearts did not fail her. But before she could do more than grab another arrow, the griffin took flight. Talons fastened on her shoulders and hauled her upward. She kicked once, and it tightened its grip. Pain shot through her flesh. The arrow slipped out of her hands, and she almost lost the bow.

  No aetherical flame could burn in the world below, or at least, she had not strength enough to call it forth. She tried again, concentrating on the unfurling glory of the flames, but nothing came. She was earth-bound, a thing of flesh, and all that was fire was shrouded and chained by the hand of the world below. Even if she fought free, she would plunge to her death because she could no longer fly. She was a prisoner, caged by the weight of the Earth.

  She wept, as much from the pain of the griffin’s grip as from frustration.

  As the sun came up behind them, the mist burned away, revealing a broad valley lush with grass. A river sparkled as the sun’s light lanced across it. Hills rose to the west, and behind them, eastward, lay the ridgeline of crags. The sight of this glorious landscape wiped away her tears.

  How had the world come to be so beautiful?

  Her mother, caged by a spell, had been given no choice but to remain on Earth and, in time, be subsumed into the earthly substance of the child she gestated in her aetherical womb.

  Liath had chosen to return. She had wanted to return.

  They followed the river’s winding southwestern course and the griffin dipped little by little until they skimmed close above waters swollen by snowmelt. Rocks broke the current at erratic intervals; minnows flashed and scattered below the surface. A deer bolted from grassy cover along the verge and leaped into the high grass beyond. A golden eagle clutched a spar and, still and silent, watched them as they passed by. Her boots brushed the cold water. The gurgling noise of the river rose to her ears.

  Just as they reached the bank, the griffin released her and she tumbled to the grassy slope, almost slipping back into the water because she only had one free hand. Catching herself, she dug a knee into the dirt and grabbed a fistful of exposed roots. She scrabbled upward and threw herself panting into the grass, shaken but not harmed. Her bow rested crookedly on the ground beside her. Above, the griffin shrieked, its cry ringing in the air.

  She clambered to her feet, brushing off her knees, and drew her short sword for protection. Eventually she discovered a long rock half concealed by grass where the river curved around a headland. Climbing it gave her a vantage point to survey the land.

  Grass rolled out in all directions, so high that along the horizon she saw only the humped curve of the western hills and the ragged heights of the crags looming over them to the east. The sun had just cleared the eastern ridgeline. A few last tendrils of mist coiled alongside the riverbank as if caught in the bushes fed by the river water.

  The golden eagle winged downstream on the trail of the griffin, saw her, banked, and flew away westward. A moment later an owl glided into view and settled onto a hillock about an arrow’s shot from her position. It was huge, with mottled plumage and bold ear tufts.

  “I know you,” called Liath. “What do you want? Where am I?”

  It winked at her, big eyes closing and opening over amber irises and pinprick pupils. Then it flew away.

  A low “chuff” sounded behind her. Startled, she turned, slipping on the curve of the rock, and caught herself. Froze. A silvery-hued griffin stalked up behind her. It was smaller than the one she had saved from the steppe hunter’s spear. Staring at this powerful and humbling beast, she wondered if she had been foolish to intervene.

  Perhaps that war
ning she had called out—the words surprised from her by the speed of the hunter’s movement behind the griffin and her own distrust of his motives, the way he had abandoned her just as the griffin arrived—had set in motion the events that led her here, with a griffin a stone’s toss away looking ready to gulp her down whole.

  It settled back on its haunches and examined her with interest, as might a dog scrutinize a human whom it suspected of harboring treats.

  Beyond it, far enough away that it appeared half the size of the second one, the first griffin paced, stamping down the tall grass to reveal a low stone outcropping set where the land dipped in a broad hollow like a shallow bowl. The river burbled past behind them. Out of sight, a bird called out with a frantic “peewit” and, when she turned, she saw its tumbling flight over the pale expanse of grass.

  Although she did not move, she felt herself falling. Tumbling. Memory washed over her, triggered by the sight of that wide, flat stone, of the waving grass, and of the griffins, one darkly iron in hue and the other as lustrous as silver.

  Through the reflection of the mirrored armor worn by the angel of war she had suffered a vision. She had endured a memory that was no memory but a horrible premonition of the time to come. Was it not said by the ancient philosophers that in the aether, far beyond the bounds of earth, the angels and their kinfolk can see both backward and forward in time?

  If she remained still, her feathers would blend into the pale grass and only the keenest eye could observe her. Sanglant was intent on her mate, a silver-hued griffin asleep on the sunning stone. The prince’s spear was poised as he prepared to strike. His eyes calculated his next move, as did hers. She would not let him kill her mate.

  She pounced. He spun to meet her, but the shaft of his spear shattered as her weight bore him to the ground. His knee jabbed into her belly, and he tensed to fight her off, grabbing desperately for her throat, palms scored with cuts as he clawed for purchase at her iron feathers.