The Gathering Storm

Page 226

She sat up. Sanglant appeared not to have moved at all during the night. His color was better, his breathing slow and restful. She beckoned the healer and together they inspected the wound on his chest. The Kerayit shook her head, whistling sharply through her teeth as if she did not like what she saw.
“It looks as if it is healing,” whispered Liath, not wanting to wake Sanglant.
“Yes,” agreed the healer with a frown. “Is not natural, to heal quick. The wound must kill him. But it not kill.”
What kind of sorcery did Sanglant’s mother possess that she could knit magic into her son’s body? That was a question Liath had never asked Eldest Uncle, and perhaps even he could not answer her. He had not walked the spheres, but his daughter had. She had surpassed her father in power, if not in wisdom. Liath, too, had gained greatly in power by walking the spheres, but the power she had gained came really more in self-knowledge than in any heightened sorcerous strength. If anything, her ignorance seemed clearer to her now; the gulf between what she had seen and what she truly understood yawned as perilous as the Abyss.
“I will sit with my daughter,” she said when Fulk knelt to ask what commands she had for the army. “Let any who wish to speak with me wait outside, and I will come to them. Send Hathui to the centaur camp to convey this message: tomorrow morning we will ride out to a meeting place midway between this camp and that of the centaurs. There we can hold our council of war.”
Fulk regarded her unsmiling. She could not read him at all, though he did not seem to be a surly or uncommunicative sort. He struck her as exactly what he was: the kind of man you wanted at your back in a fight. Assuming he was on your side.
He nodded, rose to leave, but turned back briefly. “I will see that Argent and Domina are fed, my lady.”
“Argent and Domina?”
“The griffins, my lady. The prince named them.” Was he mocking her? Or sharing a joke?
She could only incline her head to show her approval.
She cradled Blessing’s head in her lap while Sanglant slept soundly beside them. In the child’s narrow face she sought desperately the memory of the infant Blessing had been. The chubby cheeks were gone, and it was difficult to trace a resemblance to father or mother because of the slackness that muddied her features. The girl’s color had faded to a sickly gray and her black hair tangled lifelessly. Her lips were as bloodless as those of a corpse. The healer squeezed a little honey and broth down her throat by slipping a hollow reed into her mouth and pinching fluid through, but such meager nourishment could only stave off the inevitable.
I gave up four years of her life, the only time she may have.
She wept silently but no great fist of grief gripped her chest; no wrenching sobs, no moans of sorrow. Do I not love her? If she loved her more, would she feel a fiercer grief? Yet the child’s slight weight seemed more comfort than sorrow. She mourned what she had lost, but she knew she could have done nothing else. The fire daimones had taken her without her own volition; once she found herself in the country of the Ashioi, she had comprehended the full weight of obligation. Duty might be cruel, but it was necessary.
Had she not made the sacrifice, Anne would win without a struggle. Anne had been willing to sacrifice Blessing to begin with; perhaps Jerna’s gift had been to gain Blessing four years of life with a doting father. Anne might still win, and Blessing might die, but Blessing would have died anyway without Jerna’s nourishment, and Anne had not triumphed yet.
Within the interstices of the burning stone lay many paths, some taken in the past, some branching into the present, and some only possibilities that would vanish when no foot took passage there. It was a madman’s game to second-guess oneself.
But it would have been nice to watch the child grow, to see her face animated, to hear her talk and laugh and sing, to feel her little arms thrown around her mother’s waist, as children did, and the warmth of her cheek pressed against her mother’s face. It would have been nice to soothe her tears and kiss her small hurts.
It had all just happened so fast—a handful of days like a coil of rope on one side that had been stretched out to its full extent on the other. The years had burned through her hands without her even realizing they had passed.
The dim tent made a fitting bower as the hours passed. Blessing’s attendants woke and went about their business, but they were inclined to murmur among themselves and approach her with questions and requests and at least four times Fulk himself came in to ask her to meet with one person or another outside the tent who had a niggling concern that for some reason they felt obliged to bring to her attention. Couldn’t they just do what needed doing and leave her alone?