The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  “There’d been a battle, my lord prince,” said the blacksmith. “This is what we found.”

  “Dragons!” His skin burned where he touched the armor, and he dropped the shoulder piece as though it had scorched him. Bile rose in his throat. He had lived as a beast among the bones of his faithful Dragons for a year; he had discovered their remains and the leavings of their armor in the crypt at Gent. His sight dimmed as he struggled to prevent memory from overwhelming him.

  “Ai, God! Look at that sky!”

  Thunder cracked.

  “Hold on to the tents!” cried Captain Fulk in the distance as soldiers raced among the tents. “This should blow through—”

  A wall of dark cloud, almost green, bore down on them. Wind whipped the tops of trees, and the folk waiting on the open ground ran for lower ground. Many threw themselves down on the earth as the wind roared over them, and even Hathui crouched and bent her head, tugging her cloak up to protect her face, but Sanglant stood.

  The world might cast a thousand arrows at him; his enemies might raise winds and storms to slow him down, but as the gale streamed around him, as the awning strained at ropes held by soldiers, he braced himself against the onslaught and let the blast of rain scour him. Wind screamed. Hail drummed across open ground as people cried in terror, horses neighed, dogs barked, the griffins screamed in challenge, and the wind howled on and on. The storm boiled over them like a huge wave.

  He had faced worse; and would face worse still. Hail peppered his head and chest. It had been too hot to wear his cloak, and he had nothing but his tunic to protect him, but he minded it not. The storm broke free the regrets and cautions that infested his heart.

  He missed Liath bitterly, but he had done the right thing, the only thing. He must strike south and strike quickly. Free Henry, and then turn his sights north to restore peace to the land. If Henry remained a prisoner in Aosta, Wendar could never be at peace, no matter who pretended to rule there. If Wendar was not at peace, then he and Liath could never live at peace.

  The storm blew past as quickly as it had come in, leaving the land strewn with branches, leaves, torn canvas, lost clothing, and every manner of weeping and wailing and shouts as folk picked themselves up and ventured to measure the damage, then cast themselves back on the ground as the female griffin launched herself into the air with a thunder of wings and flapped off on the trail of the storm.

  Hathui had thrown herself flat to the ground when the griffin sprang, and now she unbent and rose with a sheepish grin, helping up the blacksmith whose stalwart nerves had been undone by the sight of that beast leaping into the sky. The man had fallen into the pile of armor, whose polished iron surfaces were now scumbled by damp leaves and streaks of grass and twigs and even feathers. Pellets of hail had fallen in between the pieces, collecting in hollows on the ground.

  “Whew!” said Johann. “That was a strong one! We had a blow last month that near tore down the houses. And look there! Beasts ride the wind. Some folk say the end of the world is coming. Can’t say I blame them.”

  “Make ready.” Sanglant bent to pick up the shoulder piece. The rain had cooled the iron; it didn’t burn him now. “Take this armor. Build your houses as sturdily as you can. A storm is coming, Blacksmith. You and your people must be strong to survive it.”

  It alone of all the daimones bound into service in the vale had not fled on the day when its elder cousins had come calling with a conflagration that had set even the heights of the mountains on fire. Though the thread binding it to Earth had been severed by the edge of a griffin’s feather, although it was free to escape back to the sphere that had given it birth, it had remained to haunt the buildings and the orchard.

  As a lower form of daimone, it had little memory and less will, easily bound and easily trained, more like a hound than a man and yet unlike because it was a creature whose aetherical body could not be touched by earthly ills and earthly mortality.

  Yet its captivity had altered it, given it a semblance of human memory and will beyond that granted to its cousins. It persisted here, it waited, although it had forgotten what it waited for: A familiar touch. A familiar voice. A familiar presence. It lingered among the burned-out ruins.

  One dawn as the sun rose the dead stones sparked and spit out a stumbling collection of mortal beasts, some on two legs and others on four, a confusing starburst of colors and heat and voices. It raced down on the wind to investigate, curling around the newcomers. None saw it; they were blind. Only there was one they kept enclosed in a little house on wheels, and this one had power to see both what lay above and what lay below and when it insinuated itself through a crack the creature spoke to it, so it fled.

  It fled, but there remained a greater threat. The Bright One, child of flame, had returned, the one who had brought the conflagration down upon them. It concealed itself in the boughs of an apple tree, too frightened to approach the creature with a heart of flame yet so curious it wished to see what was going on. In the end apprehension mastered it, and it fled to the hut where it had in times before slept alongside the familiar presence of the one it longed for.

  There it hid until nightfall, venturing out when darkness might hide it from mortal eyes, but the Bright One and her retinue still inhabited the valley, and it feared they meant to stay and perhaps even to call the elder cousins down upon them all again in a terrible, incandescent bloom.

  “That is the River of Heaven,” the Bright One was saying to an audience of eight shivering souls seated by the stones beside the remains of a dying fire. “See how the Serpent is swimming across it.”

  “It’s so bright!”

  “Those are the souls of the dead, streaming upward to the Chamber of Light. Or so the church says.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “The ancient writers had many explanations. Look there! Mok still resides in the Unicorn. There is Jedu—that red star—rising with the Penitent. I do not see the Red Mage or Somorhas. The moon hasn’t risen yet, if it means to rise at all. The mountains block part of our view, as well. As the hours pass, we’ll look for the other wandering planets, but already I can guess that about four to six months have passed since we left the east.”

  “How can you guess that?”

  “It isn’t really a guess. The planets wander along the ecliptic in a regular pattern. Mok spends about one year in each house, Jedu from one to two months or as many as six months if it is in retrograde—”

  Two voices spoke, overlapping. “You’ve lost me!”

  “What is ‘retrograde’?”

  A ripple of laughter raced around the cluster of seated figures. The Bright One stood and went to lean against the wagon. Its door stood open, a stick propped against it to hold it wide, and a figure stirred, hidden behind a curtain of beads, peering outward.

  “Nay,” said the Bright One as she brushed fingers over the beaded curtain. “I’m going too fast. Let me start at the beginning. We stand on the Earth, which is a sphere. Earth lies at the center of the universe, so the scholars claim, which is also a sphere. But I wonder—nay, never mind that now. The Earth is encircled by the seven planetary spheres and by the outermost sphere, that of the fixed stars. Beyond that lies the Chamber of Light.”

  As her voice flowed on, the stars crept along their fixed paths across the heavens. Later, after the moon rose, the watchers slept, all except the Bright One and the hidden woman, who ventured outside, heavily veiled. These two spoke in quiet voices far into the night, and now and again held their faces close to the flames of a campfire, as if staring within.

  Toward dawn, the veiled woman climbed back inside her cage as the camp roused. By torchlight and moonlight men and horses made ready to depart. The Bright One wove threads of starlight into the stones, and one by one the visitors crossed through the brilliant gateway and vanished.

  Last of all, the Bright One turned, there at the verge.

  “Who are you waiting for?” she asked. Then she was gone.

  The bl
azing threads frayed and collapsed in a shower of sparks. Dust eddied around the base of the stones before settling. Shadows faded. The peaks dazzled as the sun crested the eastern heights and its light caught the blinding white snow fields. On one of those heights a cliff of snow calved loose and roared downslope in a tumble that shook the valley as a white haze rose off the mountain. The avalanche of snow and ice roared and boomed and at length slowed, gentled, and came to rest, still so high above the tree line that it was impossible to see any change in the shape of the mountain itself. The cloud of snow and ice sparkled and sank.

  A leaf drifted in on the breath of the avalanche, spinning and dancing, at play among the stones, but although the daimone chased it, the leaf was a dead thing, its spirit fled, and it could give no companionship to one who was lonely.

  Who are you waiting for? the Bright One had asked it, but only the wind moaning through the stones answered.

  “Who? Who?”

  3

  “YOUR Excellency, we’ve had word that the honored presbyter and his party arrive today.”

  Antonia set aside her book. The library in Novomo had so few volumes, even supplemented with those she had removed from the convent of St. Ekatarina, that she had been forced to reread St. Peter of Aron’s The Eternal Geometry three times in the last nine months, although she still didn’t comprehend more than a third of it. Lady Lavinia’s steward waited beside the door, hands folded, as Lavinia paced to the unshuttered window. Light pooled on the table, illuminating the precious chronicle and the huge map inked onto a sheep’s hide cured and treated but left intact instead of cut in sheets for vellum.

  “He will bring news of my daughter. There was talk of marriage to one of the king’s Wendish lords, although I would hate to see her forced to live in the cold north. Yet if Father Hugh thinks it for the best …”

  Lavinia was a loyal and righteous woman and certainly devout enough that she insisted Antonia deliver the sermon in her household chapel every Ladysday, but she had long since developed an unfortunate infatuation for the handsome presbyter and treated him more as if he were God’s bright messenger than one of God’s humble servants.

  “He would not countenance any alliance that might bring her to harm, not after saving her from Ironhead and introducing her into the queen’s household. She is quite the queen’s favorite, I hear. A marriage to a Wendish lord would improve the family fortunes. We could seek further alliances in the north for my kinfolk. But there is a boy of good family in southern Aosta, too, whose family has shown interest in a match with our house.”

  As she rattled on, still staring out the window, Antonia cut quills. The lady’s concerns were the heart of the round of life on Earth; a lady must steward her estates and prepare for the next season, breed her herds and tend her gardens. How her children married affected the prosperity of her household and the longevity of her line, and every noble lady and lord had a duty to perpetuate the lineage out of which they themselves flowered.

  These toiled worthily in the service of God, who had created all, but they had not been fitted with the task of supervision. That task fell to the elite.

  “With all this talk of the emperor and empress riding east to Dalmiaka to make war against the Arethousan Emperor—I don’t know what to expect. None of us know what to expect.”

  “Only God can see into the future, Lady Lavinia.”

  “So true, Your Excellency! So very true!”

  “Do not forget the tale of Queen Salome, who feared that a usurper would supplant her and so went to the witches and begged them to spy into the future on her behalf by raising the ghost of the prophet.”

  “Yes, indeed. So it came to pass that for her impiety, a worthy successor took her place.”

  “Yet was Queen Salome not a worthy regnant? She was humble. God Themselves raised her up to her high state. It was disobedience, not impiety, that caused her downfall. The witches did as they were told, and were not punished for their act. But the queen had disobeyed God’s voice when God commanded her to kill the tribe of Melia.”

  “She was a mother herself! She did not like to put children to death.”

  “God may often call upon us to do things that may seem distasteful to our imperfect understanding, but we must never hesitate. Obedience is righteousness.”

  With such lessons Antonia strove to educate Lady Lavinia and her household: Hugh had hidden her in plain sight, installed her as a member of Lavinia’s schola, although in truth few visitors came and went from the lady’s palace and fewer still from the court in Darre and least of all any clerics from the palace of the skopos, who might have cause to recognize and betray Antonia.

  “Very true, very true,” said the lady distractedly as she leaned on the casement and squinted out into the molten Setentre sun. “There! I see them.” She crossed to the door, paused, and turned. “Will you come to meet them, Your Excellency?”

  “I am not walking well today, Lady Lavinia. Best if I bide here and have a tray brought up for my supper.”

  “As you wish, Your Excellency.” She hurried out.

  Better if Hugh comes to me, as a steward attends his mistress. Perhaps the ploy was beneath her, but her position seemed weak and Hugh’s all the stronger, and she felt it necessary to do what she could to remind him of her lineage and stature and the respect he owed her. She heard only such news as had trickled northward in the months since Decial, when she had arrived here still reeling from her imprisonment. Little enough to feed on, but she had learned to survive on scraps, and she now possessed the entire library hauled out of St. Ekatarina’s Convent, most especially their chronicle, the work of many hands and many generations, a treasure-house of knowledge and observation.

  She had read through the chronicle so many times that she had memorized entire passages, and as she shifted in her chair, she studied the map with immense satisfaction, knowing her work in deciphering the tangle of hints scattered throughout the manuscript like gems in a field of wheat had proved fruitful.

  Sooner than she expected, Hugh came to wait on her. He, no less than she, knew they possessed information of incalculable value.

  “This is it?” he asked, after a perfunctory greeting and after banishing his servants from the chamber. There remained only one beardless, thin man who cowered at the door looking ready to flee and never spoke one word as Hugh set hands on the table and studied the map.

  From this angle, examining him, she understood why Lady Lavinia had cause to be grateful to this man beyond his service to the lady by saving her young daughter from rape. God favored few souls with such exceptional beauty. Yet he did not overplay his hand; he dressed plainly, without unseemly flourishes. He wore clothing of such fine weave it seemed invisible, his over-tunic dyed to a muted wheat gold and beneath it a reddish-golden under-tunic shining with the intensity of hot coals, barely seen but startling, the kind of detail that made you look twice. He wore three simple rings—emerald, citrine, and lapis lazuli—and his gold presbyter’s chain and Circle of Unity. Only the gold chain, and his cleanshaven face, marked him as a churchman, although one might guess at his vocation because his hands were so remarkably clean, nails trimmed, and the skin smooth and unlined. No calluses or blisters marred his hands, but in truth they looked strong enough to throttle any soul who did not do his bidding. The mute manservant shifted nervously, took a step forward to get a look at the map, but when Hugh glanced at him, he slunk back to the door and quivered.

  “This is the tale you gleaned from the convent’s chronicle,” said Hugh at last.

  “It is.”

  The sheepskin had arrived six months ago with the known lands inked in by a master cartographer, the hinterlands marked in cruder dimensions—a sheep’s head to represent the western island kingdom of Alba, the horns of a goat to suggest the northern reaches where the Eika barbarians nested, the blank emptiness of untracked deserts beyond the shore of the Middle Sea, and the geometric oblong marking the unknown reaches of the Heretic’s Sea that lay
north and east of the Arethousan capital. Dragons lay to the east and beyond them grass and sand and the distant glories of Katai. By careful measurement and guesswork, she had marked on this map each stone circle mentioned in the nuns’ chronology.

  “Every one you have marked here?” he asked.

  “Every one, to the best of my knowledge of the land and as well as it is described within the text. The nuns of St. Ekatarina’s recorded all things precisely. No fables and superstitions marred their pages. They set down what they heard as accurately as possible. I did the same.”

  “Here.” He placed a finger on the map east of the Wendish marchlands and a little north of the kingdom of Ungria, although the borderlands of such places could not be marked with any precision, since they fluctuated with the season and the year.

  She waited.

  “Here,” he repeated. His finger covered a circle representing a known crown, with the number of stones inked inside. Seven. “The Holy Mother has commanded me to journey east. I will oversee the crown discovered by Brother Marcus during his travels through the wilderness lands that lie north of Ungria and south and east of Polenie. Seven stones. One of the original crowns, so Mother Anne has decided.”

  “How will you get there? That is a journey of many months’ undertaking, through perilous country.”

  He removed his finger. The servingman moved a foot, and a plank creaked; and the poor man winced, as startled as if a lion had burst out of the woodwork. “I will travel by means of the crowns. Now that we have a better idea of the placement of each of the crowns, it is apparent—” He brushed a hand over The Eternal Geometry. “—that by using geometry the threads can be woven to open a passage from one specific crown to another. Depending on the rising and setting of the stars and their altitude at the time of passage, and allowing for angle and distance, I must reach east and north from Novomo using the threads from stars in those quadrants.”