The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  The SwiftDaughters had seen him coming by means of watch fires that burned along the fjord to alert the inhabitants of approaching ships, and they gathered outside the hall to welcome him. He had forgotten the unexpected beauty of their forms, or perhaps he had simply never appreciated it. Their hair shone with the gleam of ore, and this glamour wove veins of light into their skin as well, so that the midday sun made them shimmer. They moved with a grace no clumsy human limbs could imitate, and their cold lips and bright eyes held a wealth of expression as they danced in greeting. Yet like his cousins they were, as far as he knew, nameless; unlike most human females, they would never breed and produce hatchlings of their own.

  Wasn’t that the weakness of the RockChildren, who were stronger in so many other ways? Humankind would always outnumber them.

  He crossed the threshold into the vast dimness of OldMother’s hall, with its impossible sweep of stars glittering above despite the hall having a roof. As he walked forward, the ground transformed from beaten dirt to hard rock beneath his feet. An abyss opened before him, and he dared walk no closer to OldMother’s high seat. A winter wind chilled his face and torso, blowing up from unimaginable depths. Ice formed on his braid and coated his lips.

  Her voice scraped. “You are bold, Stronghand. You set your ships onto the seas and fight to possess other lands than the one you were born to. You force the many chieftains to bow down before one leader, who is yourself. You seek both the living and the dead. You invite sorcerers into our homeland who care nothing for us although it is their kind who gave us life. What will come of these plans?”

  “That remains to be seen. I use the tools I find.”

  “In aiding the strangers, do you not put your own plans in jeopardy?”

  “Perhaps. I will take the risk. They speak of a great cataclysm set into motion by their ancient enemies, whom they call the Aoi—the Lost Ones.”

  Her silence encouraged him to go on, yet it seemed to him that she was not alone, that many more presences listened as he spoke. “They seek a stone crown in these northern lands through which they desire to weave a spell that will reach across the lands from north to south, from east to west.”

  “They will find what they seek,” she replied, “yet it is not what they think it is.”

  “They claim to seek only knowledge and wisdom, but I can see that they seek power as well.”

  “In this you follow the path of humankind, Stronghand. Use caution.”

  “I do.”

  “You have a question.”

  The statement caught him off guard, but he knew how to recover quickly, and he knew better than to attempt to deceive OldMother. “Why did you not give your sons names?”

  “Because they never asked for them.”

  “Now they do.”

  The blistering wind abruptly calmed, and ceased. He saw nothing, only darkness, but OldMother’s presence enveloped him.

  “An inescapable storm is coming, Stronghand. This my sisters and I know. Prepare yourself and those who shelter under your hand. In this storm long ago the RockChildren were born. The Mothers of our tribes do not wish our children to perish, but to survive, when it returns.”

  “What must I do?”

  “Step forward.”

  He knew better than to disobey. One step plunged him into the chasm, falling and falling through blackness.

  turning and turning and turning and a pause for unquiet sleep with the muttering of the madman infesting his dreams, and then up again, and again, and again, a hopeless round of labor that has neither beginning nor end, and still the wheel turns under his feet as he walks endlessly and never gets anywhere, the wheel rumbling around and around until he no longer recalls anything except this pit of darkness and the turning of the wheel.

  Every time as he drifts off to sleep, the madman plodding in the traces whispers such a tale of blood and fear and anger that images pollute his dreams until all he sees is fire and weeping, although at times he has a momentary flash of surprise that he can see at all, even if only in his dreams.

  “No, no, I pray you my lord leave her be she is just young yet an innocent my daughter if it please you she’s never done any ai God the blood no you must look you will look I’ll kill you look at the baby at her face I’m glad he is dead is that what you’ve done to her?”

  The water drawn up from the depths to keep dry the shaft below spills endlessly into the ditch where it will flow onward to a pool where the next wheel draws it up to the next level and up and up, and the flood never ends, it just keeps turning and spilling.

  “Nay do not you go there I will kill him dead and cut off his balls and why shouldn’t I just look at the blood I hate you my poor child for it won’t bring anyone back kill you kill you kill you.”

  He falls because there is no bottom to this pit, it just goes on and on, and one day the pain of the madman reaches his tongue at long last, and a thing stirs there he no longer has a name for.

  He speaks, although his voice is rough from disuse.

  “Why do you despair?”

  A horrible silence follows his words except for the rumble of the wheel and the splash and gurgle of running water and the echoes of the wheels above, whose turning never ceases.

  Silence.

  “Who are you?” asks the madman, although he does not stop walking the wheel which mutters under the tread of his feet, hard as fate. “What happened to the mute?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have they put a new one down here? Did the mute die? Are you a spy for them, come to wiggle out with my secrets? I know where the treasure is buried, it’s buried with my treasure, my sweet, my innocent. And if I could have killed him who despoiled her I would have but he took what he wished and went his way for he was a lord among men and we are only the dirt he walked on. Did you see the blood?”

  “I can’t see. Was harm done to someone you cared for?”

  “Don’t mock me!” the madman roars, pounding his fists against wood. The wheel ratchets to a stop. “Don’t mock me! I protected her! All of them! But what could I do, for they had swords and spears and I only my hoe and shovel and them made of wood, nothing to do when they came round God I was helpless I was afraid 1 let them take the girl for fear of what they would do to the rest of us though she wept and clung to me and now I am punished for it, for wasn’t I a coward, didn’t I kill her with my own hands by not fighting them?”

  The madman weeps, while above voices shout and there comes the noise of men descending to discover what has happened to the wheel. The one who was once silent rises from the cold pallet of stone where he rests and gropes along the passage. In an odd way he can see the walls, because his body senses the presence of stone so close that he feels its respiration, each breath seeping like the damp through its pores, as slow as ages upon ages. It’s as if the stone wishes to speak to him but its voice can’t quite reach him.

  “Hurry,” he says as he feels against his cheek the up-welling of cold from the lowest shaft. He grasps the rim of the still wheel. “You must walk. Or they’ll whip you.”

  “What care you for a man with blood on his hands? I am a murderer! I am! I am! I killed him, the one who done it! Not him, but his servant, for I couldn’t touch him! I killed the one who took the leavings when the lord was done. It was all I could do. She was a good girl. She was a good girl. It was all I could do. My firstborn. My treasure.”

  But the madman begins walking, weeping and blubbering until words and sobs meld together, for it is a different whip that goads him on.

  “Ai, God,” he says as he listens to the roll of the wheel and the disjointed rambling of the madman. “No wonder you grieve. I wish you may find peace.”

  No chasm after all.

  Stronghand stumbled into a ditch, and his feet slipped on gravel as water purled against his shins. The shock of spring water wrenched him into awareness, and he noticed how still it had become, as if the world held its breath.

  Into this troubling sile
nce OldMother spoke.

  “We see into the heart of the Earth and we sense the threads that bind the heavens. Our memories stretch long, and long, into the past, but a shadow lies over our sight. We do not see everything. We are blinded where our memory most needs sight. The threads that weave heaven and Earth are not haphazard. Find this one who lives in your dreams. He has sight where we have none.”

  “He is blind! He has lost his memory, even his name. How can he help you?”

  “It is difficult to know who is lost and who is blind. Do you know?”

  The question gave him pause. “I do not. What of the foreigners I brought, the circle priests? They, too, have a quest.”

  “My daughters will guide them to the fjall. There we shall see if they are wise or foolish, whether their plans threaten us or aid us. As for you, son of Rikin: Find him. He has seen what we have not. He can tell us what we need to know.”

  4

  TOO weak to move, Zacharias lay on the pallet and stared through a gap in the curtain at the murals decorating the walls, scenes from ancient days of the first empire and before, the Lay of Helen and the triumphs of the Son of Thunder, and scenes he did not recognize of doe-eyed women riding on the backs of winged sphinxes. Because the servant hadn’t completely closed the curtain separating him from the chairs, he could also gaze across the floor toward the doors that opened onto the corridor. The alternating pattern of white-and-black tiling on the floor made him dizzy, and he faded into a doze but started awake when a babble of voices surged. The doors were thrown open by guards. Folk streamed into the chamber. Their bright clothing and ringing voices made his head hurt so badly that he covered his eyes with a hand. Since he hadn’t the strength to flee, he could only hope to remain overlooked here in the shadows.

  The emperor and his consort ascended to the dais and seated themselves to the acclaim of the crowd, although many fewer people had the privilege of so close an audience with Henry in this more intimate setting. Clerics and stewards crowded around behind the chairs, and through their legs Zacharias watched as one by one nobles came forward, knelt before the emperor and empress, and pledged their loyalty.

  A buzz of conversation undercut these proclamations. A pair of clerics whispered, standing so close that they almost stood on him, yet they seemed unaware that he lay just a footstep behind the curtain.

  “So, after all, the skopos chose the first day of Sormas, as I told you she would.”

  “So you did.” Spoken grudgingly.

  “That Bright Somorhas, the Fortunate One, should come into conjunction with the Child’s Torque, signifies the rightful ascension of the true heir.”

  “That’s true enough, but I thought the signs were most auspicious for the twenty-second of Novarian, last year.”

  “The Arethousan usurpers still had a foothold in the peninsula then. It would have seemed premature to claim an empire he did not control. It would have been tempting fate.”

  “So the skopos said. Yet how could you or I or anyone have foreseen it would take three years to drive the bandits and usurpers and rebels out of southern Aosta?”

  “That’s all in the past. The last Arethousan heretic has fled, the Jinna bandits are dead, and Tiorno has capitulated at last—Look! But speak the name, and the Enemy winks into view! There is Lady Tassila and her nephew. Now that her brother is dead she is regent for the boy, but she intends to claim the duchy for herself and install her own children after her.”

  “Can she do that?”

  “Why not? Her brother fought against King Henry until last winter. The boy might bear a grudge because of the death of the father. He can’t be trusted. There’s this new campaign they speak of, to take back the Dalmiakan shore from the Arethousans. They’ll need Lady Tassila’s troops and her loyalty in the army. I heard that Empress Adelheid—”

  “Hsst.”

  In a different tone, they spoke in unison. “Your Excellency.”

  Feet shifted. The cloth of their robes creased as the two clerics dipped knees and heads, blocking his view of the chamber.

  “I pray you,” said Hugh kindly. “If you would attend me?”

  “Of course, Your Excellency! What do you wish?”

  “Pray go to my chambers. Ask for my steward. He has in his keeping a small chest that I need brought to me.”

  “Of course, Your Excellency!”

  They hurried off. Zacharias saw a fine, clean, strong hand take hold of the curtain and, with a firm tug, twitch it entirely shut, closing him into a tunnel of darkness. Beyond the muffling curtain the oaths continued.

  For a long time he lay there, fretting and anxious. He knew how to run, but he didn’t know how to fight. He could babble, but he could not talk himself out of the maze he had stumbled into. Hathui had fled because she had no real power in the king’s court except the king’s favor, now turned against her. Yet he had pledged his loyalty to Marcus in exchange for teaching. His loyalties ought to lie here, but the bond with Hathui clutched too tight. If he betrayed her, then he was nothing but a soulless slave in bondage to those who meant to ruin or even kill her.

  After some time, he groped around the pallet and, as softly as he could, rolled himself off into the gap between the mattress and a wall. He rested. When he could breathe normally again, he pushed up to hands and knees and crawled forward along the wall, trembling and sweating. He had not gone farther than the length of the pallet when he collapsed and lay there for what seemed a year before he could try again. The curtain that concealed the wall rippled as folk moved along its length. Once or twice it sagged in so far that it brushed him; the gap between curtain and wall wasn’t more than the span of his arms.

  No one noticed.

  He kept crawling.

  Maybe there were miracles, or perhaps the curtain only served to allow servants to come and go in concealment. A door revealed itself to his questing fingers, and with great effort he rose to his knees and pushed up the latch. It opened inward. He fell into the adjoining chamber and lay there stunned and aching and gasping with his head and half his torso on a carpet and his hips and legs on the other side of the threshold.

  At last he dragged himself through and pushed the door shut with a foot. The latch clicked into place.

  He sprawled with eyes shut, unable to move. Just lay there as his muscles twitched and he thought he might melt into the rug whose fibers pressed into his cheek. A friendly whippet nosed him, licked his face, and, when he did not respond, curled up congenially against the curve of his bent knees.

  Perhaps he slept.

  The next thing he knew, hands took hold of his arms and dragged him over the rug as the whippet whined resignedly. He cracked his eyes open to see that day had fled. Lamps lit a chamber hazy with shadows that congealed into things he could recognize: a table carved of ebony wood, a magnificent broad bed hung around with curtains, two massive chests, a woman dressed in cloth of gold trimmed with purple who turned to regard him with a faint expression of surprise on her pretty face.

  “Is this the same one?” she asked as the hands released him, turning him over and dropping him supine on the floor a body’s length from her.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. This is the one.” Hugh stepped out of the shadows or perhaps through an unseen door. A servant scuttled past him to place a brazier full of red-hot coals next to a wall, then vanished back the way he had come. “I cannot stay long. It must be done quickly.”

  The empress nodded, still staring curiously at Zacharias, but as she approached the bed, her attention shifted to the man lying asleep there, whom Zacharias had not seen before.

  It was the emperor.

  “Ai, God,” she whispered as she sank down beside her husband, her hands clasped in prayer. “Can we save him, Father Hugh?”

  “We can, but we must not falter, although the road seems dark. You have given him the sleeping draught?”

  “Yes. He fell asleep just after the midnight bell. My servingwomen will not disturb us. They believe that he and I inte
nd to make a new child tonight, one born of empire, not just to a mere king and queen. The four guards outside are those I would trust with my life. They will not betray us.”

  “So we must hope. If they do, all is lost, for then the skopos will know what we intend.”

  The shimmer of lamplight twisted across her face, making her look young and vulnerable, but there remained an iron tightness to the set of her mouth that suggested she was bent on a cruel course. “Aosta belongs to Henry and me at last, Father. Henry would go north if he could. You know this.”

  “I know this.”

  “Yet now we are told that it is the emperor’s destiny to ride east, into Dalmiaka to make war on Arethousa. And for what? For what? For a heap of stones, so my spies tell me! I had hoped we could be quit of this awful daimone by now, that we could restore him.”

  “We dare not.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek as she regarded the sleeping emperor. “Look at him as he sleeps! Look at his beloved face!” She touched his cheek tenderly, brushed her fingers through his hair. “Now and again I swear to you, Father Hugh, just as he wakes I see him, a glimpse of him, behind his eyes. He is angry. I swear this to you. He is angry that this cruel thing has been done to him! And done by the ones who love him most!”

  “It was the only way to protect him. The Holy Mother will kill him if he does not do exactly as she wishes.”

  “I know the skopos claims that this crown of tumbled stones is all that will save the world from a terrible cataclysm. That our empire must hold the lands where the crown lies. So must we war against the Arethousans who control that territory now!”

  “She is a woman obsessed with but one thing,” he agreed.

  “Henry is not to be ordered about like a common captain, not even by the skopos! He would have insisted on marching north to Wendar now that our task here is through, now that the Empire is restored. He’s heard the reports of all these Eagles, bearing dire tidings. But if we’d abandoned Aosta before, we would have lost it forever. Now that our work in Aosta is done, we can march north to Wendar safely. The skopos can lead an army herself into Dalmiaka to fight the Arethousans. The chronicles tell us of Holy Mothers who have sent armies to do their bidding. Who have accompanied their soldiers. Why must she force Henry to her will?”