The Gathering Storm (80 page)

So he did, as he allowed the Quman representatives to kneel before him. The griffin cowed them; he had been right about that.

“How came you to his service, Brother? I do not recall you from King Henry’s progress.”

“I am not Wendish, my lady. I was born in Karrone but sent
early to a marshland monastery. That is how I come to speak Wendish. I lost my hand in the service of the God, for I set out to bring the light of the Unities to those who live in darkness. It’s a convoluted tale, but this much may help you make sense of it. I was a slave among the Kerayit, taken to be a pura by one of their shamans.”

Astonished, she looked at him more closely, but no mystery clung to him. He seemed calm, and confident, a middle-aged man with handsome enough features that, she supposed, might attract the attention of a lonely young woman doomed to isolation. Of course, he had been young then.

“You do not live among the Kerayit now.”

Breschius’ smile was leavened by regret, an old sorrow never quite recovered from. “She died, and I came into the service of Prince Bayan. When he died, I swore to follow Prince Sanglant.”

“Why?”

“Can you not see why, my lady? Look at these Quman. They come to ally themselves with the man who defeated their greatest leader, the man who led the army that devastated their ranks. They see it, too. They will not resist him.”

Yet not every creature that encountered Sanglant succumbed to his charisma. Li’at’dano had not.

“Tell me this, then, Brother, since you lived among the Kerayit. Why do their males remain among the herds?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why is it only the female centaurs rode out to meet us?”

“Ah. Yes. That puzzled me as well, for the Kerayit I traveled with had little intercourse with the Horse people. But I learned the truth eventually. The Horse people are not like us. They are only female.”

“How can they only be female? What does that mean?”

“It means just that. They are only female.”

“How can they breed, then?”

“They have puras, do they not? The stallions. Only the female foals breed true. The males are all colts.”

An eerie whistling rose from the ranks of the Quman riders, and the hooded griffin tugged at its chains. It lifted its blinded head and screamed as the whistling grew more shrill. Sanglant stood and strode across the flattened grass as, above,
Domina appeared in the sky, circling. The last rays of the sun flashing in her iron wing feathers. The whistling ceased as the Quman fled to their horses and cowered when her shadow passed over them. But Sanglant moved in within range of the silver griffin, and before Liath could cry out a warning, he grabbed hold of the rope that bound the hood around its neck and yanked its head down.

“Fulk!” he shouted. “Bring me meat!”

There they stood, he and the griffin, engaged in a battle of wills as its mate shrilled an anxious cry and, at last, beat down to land in a flurry of wings while men shouted and dashed for safety. It infuriated Liath that he would put himself in danger so soon, but she clenched her hands and endured, teeth gritted and heart hammering madly. She knew better than to interfere. Some idiotically brave soldier ran over to the prince carrying a satchel; the young man had an arm already bound up in a sling, but that did not deter him. He even had a stupid grin on his face, relishing the danger, and would have stuck close if Sanglant had not ordered him to stand away.

Under the gaze of every soul there and with Domina poised tensely but still so close beside him that in a single pounce she could bury him under her claws, he fed the meat to Argent. The griffin ate neatly out of his hands, although certainly he was careful to keep his fingers clear of its vicious beak.

“The Quman follow those who wear the wings of a griffin, and now he means to tame one, not just kill it,” murmured Breschius admiringly beside her. The cleric was as much a fool as the rest of them! Yet it was true that Sanglant was a magnificent sight, uncowed by the griffin, master of his fate. “Now these who are here will bear this tale back to their tribes.”

AT long last the crowd dispersed, all but the two dozen attendants who swarmed in and around his tent, and she found herself seated on the pallet with her boots off and Sanglant wide
awake beside her, the barest smile illuminated on his face and the rest of him shadowed.

“I pray you, Heribert,” he said softly, “put that lamp out.”

Heribert rolled his eyes, but he rose from the pile of furs he slept on, licked his fingers, reached up to the lamp hanging from a cross pole, and pinched out the flame.

Sanglant sighed heavily.

A hundred thoughts skittered across Liath’s mind, and died.

All at once he enveloped her with his arms and let his weight carry her down onto the pallet, and there he lay with his body half on her and a leg crossing hers at the knee.

“You can’t know,” he murmured. “You can’t know. Not one day went by that I did not think of you. And mourn for you. And curse you. And want you. You can’t know how much I have been wanting you.”

By the feel of him pressed up against her, she had a pretty good idea. She wriggled a little, and his grip on her tightened so very gratifyingly as they kissed again and he eased a hand up under her tunic to brush the contours of her ribs.

Then someone coughed.

“I can’t,” she whispered, going rigid in his arms.

He tensed. “You
can’t
?” Anger tightened his voice. Whenever they spoke, his anger swam close to the surface, waiting to strike.

Yet this was no battle against him.

“There are so many people in here,” she whispered. A dozen or more, many of them still stirring as they settled down. That cough was likely an honest clearing of the throat, but it had startled her out of her passion nevertheless.

She felt his attention flash away from her. His fingers rapped a beat on her ribs as he puzzled over her words.

“They’re sleeping,” he whispered in reply.

“They’re not! Not all of them.”

“Then they soon will be.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They’ll pretend to sleep.”

It was nothing to him, who had spent his entire life in just such a mob, never truly alone, never knowing privacy and certainly never craving it. The only time he’d known solitude
was as Bloodheart’s prisoner, and even then he had been surrounded by Eika dogs, his pack; surely he’d been driven half mad because of his isolation.

“I just can’t,” she repeated, not sure if he could ever understand her. The press of them all around was too much. She could not ignore it. She could not endure it.

“I can stand this no longer,” he said hoarsely, in echo of her thoughts. “I don’t care where, but I do care when. And if I don’t do this now, I swear to you, Liath, I am going to die of frustration.”

He grabbed her cloak, her hand, tugged her up to her feet, and said, commandingly, to the tent at large, “No one follow us!”

Heribert began to chuckle, and then half the tent did as well. She was burning with embarrassment, but Sanglant took no notice because he never did. He dragged her out of the tent, and by the time he had ordered off half a dozen startled but swiftly amused guards, she was laughing, too, running with him out into the grass in her bare feet. She had left her belt behind, so the hem of her tunic lapped her calves.

When they reached the crest of the hill, she tripped him and they rolled, tumbling, wrestling, giggling, until the slope of the ground shifted and they came to rest where the ground cupped into a man-sized hollow. He kissed her so long and hard that she got dizzy. There was grass in her hair and up and down her sleeves and between her toes, and for a miracle the grass distracted him more than it did her. He cursed as he brushed himself off, and he shook out the cape and settled it over a swath of grass. After trampling the cloth to make a flat resting place, he drew her down.

She unbuckled his belt, suddenly intent on her task, on wanting to caress him, to feel his skin naked and pressed against her own, but he caught her hand in one of his.

“Nay, not yet. Not yet.” He kissed her knuckles before clasping her to him. “Ai, God. Let me savor it.”

They lay there for a while. She closed her eyes and let the chill spring breeze kiss her face. Nothing could make her feel cold now, with her arms wrapped around him and his around her. He breathed, as silent as the brilliant stars that blazed above them.

“Liath,” he said after a long time, “do you still love me?”

“You asked me this before. Weren’t you content with my answer the first time?”

“You don’t ask whether I still love you.”

Annoyance flashed, as brief as a falling star that streaked the night sky, and then she laughed and rolled up on top of him, trapping him beneath her.

“Do you still love me, Sanglant? I know you still desire me, that is obvious enough, but desire isn’t always love.”

“I still love you,” he said, the laughter gone out of him, “but I don’t know you. Are you still Liath under all these clothes? Are you still Liath under your skin? Are you still Liath at all, or a succubus come to plague me? Will you abandon me again?”

“Never willingly,” she whispered.

He shook his head brusquely; she felt the movement as much as saw it. Although her night vision was keen, sight mattered much less now than touch, than smell, than the taste of his despair and anger and the elixir of his arousal.

“I do not fear death. I only fear madness. I have cursed you for four years for abandoning me, because anger was the only thing that kept me from despair. I know that we have undertaken a great battle. I know that circumstances may force one of us to travel along a separate road from the other for a time, a short time, I pray. But I will have you pledge to me now what you pledged to me in Ferse village, our mutual consent made legal and binding by the act of consummation and the exchange of morning gifts. If we can have no marriage, then let it be done with. I can suffer and go on alone if I know this is the end. But I cannot love you this much and always wonder if you will leave me again as unthinkingly as my mother abandoned my father. As she abandoned me.”

The wind tickled her neck. A chill ran down her spine, and she shivered. The agony in his tone was awful to hear but Sanglant was not a subtle man. What he felt, he expressed. He knew no other way. He could be no other way.

“There,” he said, his voice a scrape. “I’ve said it. You know how badly I want you, Liath. God know how desperately I have dreamed of you by day and by night. Worst it was, by night. I have kept concubines briefly, or gone without, but
whichever it was, it never made any difference. I could never stop thinking of you and wondering if you ever intended to come back to me, if you really cared for me and the child. Or if you were dead. There were days, God help me, when I thought it would be simpler if you were just dead, for then I would know that you had not meant to leave me behind. That you still loved me truly. Not that you made a rash vow once when you thought I was safely dead, or spoke a pledge in a rush of infatuation and desire for me, but that it was the wish of your heart despite anything else the world and the heavens offered you. That you want me that much. As much as I want you.”

He gripped her wrists, pinning her hands to the ground on either side of his body.

“I must know, Liath. I must know.”

She wept silent tears, burned out of her by the force of his pain and his honesty. After a while she was able to speak past the quaver that kept strangling her words.

“I possessed wings made of flame.
Wings
. My kinfolk welcomed me into my mother’s home, a city encompassed by aetherical fire. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

“A river of fire flowed there, and I followed its current into both past and future. The ladder of the mages was laid plain. I glimpsed the mysterious heart of the cosmos. Nothing was closed to me. Nothing. Not even my own heart. Because that is what I fear most.”

“Your heart?” His gaze remained fixed on her, dark and terrible. The breeze swept strands of his black hair across his face, their movement too dim for mortal eyes to see—but not for hers. She knew now what she was, and what she was not.

“Just … just …” Each word was a struggle. The truth was so hard. “Being brave enough to trust. To love. Being brave enough not to hide. I don’t know—” Emotion choked her, and she shut her eyes to contain it, as if it might explode out through her gaze. Grains of fire trembled everywhere around her, in the grass, in the earth, in the wind itself, the seeds of a devastating conflagration. She dared not let them loose.

He lifted a hand to touch her chin. The caress of his fingers was like water, cooling, calming.

“I’m not like you,” she said, “so open. So honest and true.”

“So mad,” he muttered.

She smiled. The salty liquid of her tears tickled her lips.

“So mad. And so strong.”

“Am I?”

“You are. I don’t know if I can love fully and truly. Da and I lived apart from the world for so long. We hid ourselves away. We veiled ourselves from the sight of those who hunted us. When Hugh took me as his slave, I built an even higher wall to protect myself. It was easier that way; it was the only way I knew. But even when you came, though I let you in, that wall held firm. I was used to the wall. I felt safe with it to protect me. And then. When I ascended into the heavens, I saw everything I had ever wanted.”

She tilted her head back and through a blur of tears gazed at the beauty of the sky so shot through with stars that it seemed to hold as much light as darkness.

He was silent. He did not move except to release her wrists.

“I could have abandoned the world below to its fate. I could have left all this behind. Forever. Anne and her sleepers, Henry and his wars, everyone and all of it. Hanna and Ivar. You and the baby. I could have joined my mother’s kinfolk and cast off this flesh. But I had to know. I couldn’t leave you behind because I’ve never really known you. I don’t know if I can want you as much as you want me. I don’t even know how much that is. But I have to try. That’s why I came back.”