“Look!” cried Falcon Mask from up on the wall. “Is that an eagle?”
On the White Road, a hundred warriors raised their bows and each nocked an arrow.
“Let her go.” Eldest Uncle caught Liath’s gaze and lifted his chin in a gesture uncannily like that of his daughter. The message was unspoken: Now!
She bolted. Kansi leaped after her and got hold of the mantle’s hem, but as Liath strained and Kansi tugged, Eldest Uncle shut his eyes and muttered words beneath his breath. The binding cord fell away and the mantle slipped off her shoulders into the Impatient One’s clutching grip. Kansi stumbled as the tension was released. Liath ran.
“She is most dangerous of all—” cried Kansi.
Other voices called after her.
“That scrawny, filthy creature is a danger to us?”
“Not only a sorcerer, but … walked the spheres—”
“Let her go, Zuangua! I ask this of you, by the bond we shared in our mother’s womb.”
She stumbled over the White Road and tripped and banged her shin as she slipped over bare ground covered with ash and loose stone. The ground seemed to undulate of its own accord under her feet. Sharp edges sliced through her soles. Where her blood spattered on rock, it hissed, and the surface skin of rock gave way, cracking and steaming, as she leaped for a flat boulder whose surface remained solid. She smelled the sting of sorcery, a spell trying to slow and trap her: Ashioi magic, that manipulated the heart of things.
Liath sought her wings of flame, but the Earth bound her. She was trapped by the flesh she had inherited from her father.
“Hai! Hai!” shouted Zuangua far behind. “At will, archers! Do not let her escape!”
She had to turn back to face the attack. A score of arrows went up in flame, in a sheet that caught the next volley. But they would shoot again, and again. Arrows had felled her before. She had only one defense against arrow fire and she could not use it, not even to save her own life. Not again.
She would rather die than see another person melt from the inside out.
“I’ll trap her!” cried Kansi. “The rock will eat her!”
A third volley vaulted into the air toward her and erupted into sparks and a shower of dark ash as she called fire into the shafts. The rock beneath her splintered with a resounding snap. The ground cracked open, and she fell.
The gust of wings and a sultry heat swept over her, and the golden griffin swooped down and took her shoulders in its claws. With a jerk they lurched up, then down so she scraped her knees on rock, then up again, into the air. But not out of range.
More warriors had pressed forward on the road, spreading out at Zuangua’s order to get a better shot. The griffin could not gain height easily. Liath was too heavy. But the beasts, too, were tacticians.
Shouts and screams erupted down the line of waiting Ashioi as the silver male skimmed low over the line of march from behind. That disruption was all it took for them to get out of range and the silver to bank high and head inland.
Held in the griffin’s claws, knowing her weight was a burden, Liath dared not twist in the hope of seeing Eldest Uncle one last time. Her throat was dry and her heart ached. She feared that she would never see him again. What right had his brother and daughter to judge Sanglant out of their own anger at their ancient enemies and thus separate the old man from his only grandchild? Every right, they would say. But it made her angry that Eldest Uncle might never know his grandson or kiss the brow of his great grandchild, if Blessing still lived.
Nay, she knew it in her heart. She had seen true visions. Blessing had survived the cataclysm, just as Sanglant had.
“We will find her,” she swore.
The pain of the griffin’s grip tightening on her shoulders forced tears to her eyes, hot from pain, from anger, and from grief as they flew low over the wasteland and she saw it in all its hideous glory. A blasted wilderness of ash and stone and a skin of still smoking molten rock, cooling and hardening as the days passed. The channel deep into the earth was closed; the Old Ones had seen to that. But the devastation spread for leagues in all directions, and when at last she saw trees again, places where they hadn’t been incinerated, they were blown down all in the same direction. Many trunks still stood, scorched on one side. As they rested and flew and rested and flew, the worst of the destruction eased and she saw vegetation growing again but never sun and rarely rain. Now and again lightning flared to the north. Once, she saw a ragged man herding a trio of sheep along a dusty path; amazingly, he did not look up when the griffin called, as if he had at last decided it was better not to know.
It’s never better not to know.
The pain in her shoulders was bad, but enduring that pain brought her closer to her goal. What if she never knew what had happened to the others? If the griffins could not find Sanglant? If they never got Blessing back? Months, or at least weeks, had passed since she and Sorgatani and Lady Bertha and their retinue had stumbled into Anne’s ambush. She might never know whether her faithful companions had survived the storm. Hanna might be dead, and poor Ivar lost forever in the wilderness that is distance, time, and the events that drag us forward on an unwanted path. She had so few that she counted as some manner of kin or companion that she wept to think of losing any, and yet surely she had lost them years ago, the day she crossed through the burning stone and ascended the mage’s ladder. Sanglant was right: she had abandoned them.
I had no choice.
It was getting dark. She was as ready for a rest from the vista of desolation as the griffin was ready for a respite from the burden of bearing her. The landing in a broad clearing was a tumble, and she skinned one knee but didn’t break anything. A stream’s water, mercifully clear, slaked her thirst, but there was nothing to eat among the withered plants. God, she was so hungry! She was so cold, and her shoulders ached so badly. A claw had torn her skin above her right breast. Blood leaked through the tunic, and it hurt to move her arms to gather grass to press the wound dry.
For a while, as it got dark, she sat with eyes closed and tried to breathe away the pain. The female crouched protectively over her, letting her curl into the shelter of that soft throat and away from the cutting wing feathers, for she had not even a mantle to cover herself with. She dozed, although she had meant to gather sticks for a fire. The griffin huffed and wheezed all night, and Liath slept erratically, waking at intervals to glance at the heavens, but she never saw stars. It was very cold, but the griffin, like her, had fire woven into its being, and that kept her alive, just as the pigs had once kept her alive.
sought her wings of flame, but the Earth bound her. She was trapped by the flesh she had inherited from her father.
“Hai! Hai!” shouted Zuangua far behind. “At will, archers! Do not let her escape!”