The Gathering Storm

Page 217

Two could play that game.
“I am Prince Sanglant.” In case you have forgotten.
Her expression did not change, but her chin lifted, so he knew she had taken the blow. Yet she went on in the same vein.
“I am come to make an alliance with you. You marched east seeking griffins and sorcerers. I see that you have captured your griffin. What of the second part of your quest?”
“I believe I can train a griffin to eat from my hands and come at my call. Are sorcerers as obedient?”
Anger sparked in her eyes—really sparked; it was uncanny how the blue fire of her irises flashed as though it burned.
“May we speak privately?” she asked finally.
He had enough strength to lift a hand. Fulk chased off the onlookers and finally only Fulk, Hathui, Breschius, and Heribert were left in attendance, hovering close, anxious and pale.
“I listen,” Sanglant said, in the formal manner.
“Where is our daughter?”
“With me; under my care and that of her loyal attendants who have served her faithfully for four long years, never leaving her side and even risking their own lives to keep her safe.” He read how the blow landed by the tightening of her lips and the twitch of her shoulder, but she did not reel or stagger.
“She suffers from a malady that cannot be healed by any ordinary physician. She will die if she is not protected by sorcery until we understand how we might heal her.”
“She has not died yet. I believe it was your return that injured her.”
“Sanglant!” Yet she hesitated. She thought, hard and deeply, although her expression gave away nothing. His attendants stared at her, amazed at her presence; amazed, perhaps, by this negotiation that was more like the maneuvering of rival families than the reunion of intimate partners.
Heribert seemed ready to speak, but Sanglant caught his gaze and, with a sharp sigh, Heribert shifted from one foot to the other and kept his mouth shut.
“Sanglant.” Again she hesitated, but only to gather her voice, to speak softly enough that even those standing nearby might not hear her words. “Why do you speak to me as though we are enemies?”
He did not care what others heard. He wanted witnesses. “Enemies? Worse than enemies! You abandoned me! Just left me behind in Verna. Your daughter is enchanted, spelled in a way no one here can comprehend, but you were not here to combat it. Now maybe she will die. I was left behind with all else. For four years! I thought you vowed to be faithful to me, but you proved no different than my mother. Husband and child, abandoned without thought.”
It was so good to fight back. He wanted his words to hurt her, and they did. He saw her face go gray; he saw her hands curl and her entire body quiver.
She was not without weapons of her own.
“Your mother was never married to King Henry.”
“That’s right! She’d made no pledge to him! She had no obligation to uphold! But you did! Why did you leave us? Why did you wait so long to return?”
Now she was really angry; she shone with it. “I did not abandon you! I was taken from Verna by my kinfolk. I never asked to go with them. When I could not follow them higher up into the heavens, I found myself in your mother’s land, where I learned all that Anne says is true, and worse besides, that her understanding of the truth is twisted by her own fanaticism. But now I have walked the spheres. I have seen through the gateway of the burning stone into the ancient past. I know what destruction awaits us if Anne weaves the spell a second time.”
She had really worked herself up. Her voice rang as if above the din of battle, carrying over the camp so that the griffin quieted and every soul stopped and turned.
“I did not leave you for four years. In the lands of the Ashioi, time does not run by the same measure it does here. There is an old sorcerer still alive there who lived in the days of the great cataclysm when his people and their land were torn from Earth. He is your grandfather, Sanglant. Still alive, although by our measure he would have lived—ai, God—twenty centuries or more. Yet he seems no older than an elder who boasts seventy years. When I walked in that far country, when I ascended the mage’s ladder and walked the spheres, it seemed to me that no more than seven days had passed. It seemed that I left Verna only a handful of days ago. I could not have returned sooner! I did everything I could. I suffered, and I learned, and I placed myself in danger, and I have grasped the heart of the power that is within me. Maybe I am the only one here who can stop Anne. Maybe that duty, that obligation, has been forced upon me. Maybe that obligation has to come first. Maybe the lives of untold countless thousands and tens of thousands have to count for more than one life, even the life and happiness of my beloved husband. I am sorry that four years passed for you! I would not wish for it to have happened in this way, but there was nothing I could have done differently. I could have stayed there, with my kinfolk, in a place much better and brighter than this one! But I chose to return to you. To Blessing. To Earth. To my father’s home. And I surely expected to come back to a better welcome than this!”