'Cursed bad news!" cried Wichman with a coarse laugh as he strode up. Men scattered from his path as he shoved aside one fellow rather than stepping around him. He halted beside Sanglant, glanced incuriously toward the sea, and turned to regard the men hard at work filling in the gaps in their defenses.

'Why hasn't Queen Adelheid attacked?" he demanded. "That ring of wagons won't hold off a determined sally from within the town walls. You haven't half the ditches dug that'll be needed."

'Well met, Cousin," said Sanglant, changing the ground before Wichman could get started. "What of the river?"

Wichman shook his head. "Drought. Someone tried a diversion of the trickle that was left up above the bluff where there's a bit of a waterfall, but in truth there's just no water coming down from the mountains. Fields are drying to nothing. We saw some mighty odd lights in the sky last night, I'm telling you. I lost six men to elfshot."

'Elfshot!"

'That's what the sentries said, but I'm thinking it was partisans skulking in the woods, scouts for the army that's marching right up on us as we speak. We heard shouts and screams in the distance, over to the west of our position."

Sanglant's escort turned. Each man and woman there stared at Wichman as though he had sprouted feathers.

'What do you mean?" asked Sanglant softly. "What army?"

'The one whose forward scouts caught a dozen of my men watering their horses at a pond this morning, that's who. A damned big army, for I saw them myself."

'I pray you, Wichman, slow down and speak more clearly. Is there an army marching this way? From what direction? How many? Who are they?"

Wichman grinned, enjoying the attention. "It seems you called, Cousin, and Papa heard you. There's a large army moving this way from the east out of the highlands."

The sky hadn't a cloud in it, but a rumbling roar of thunder shook through the heavens at that instant as though Wichman were its herald. The ground shuddered, rocked, and stilled. Men cried out, rushing here and there as if they could find steadier ground a few steps to left or right, but just as the yelling in the camp subsided a new noise arose as sentries pointed to the north above the distant line of trees. The griffins flew toward camp, growing larger; behind them, well into the woodlands to the northwest, a thread of smoke curled up into the sky. Was Lady Wendilgard marking her position for her father?

'What banner does this army fly?" asked Sanglant, voice tight.

'They're flying the banner of the regnant of Wendar and Varre as well as the crowns of Aosta, and a new flag as well."

'That of the skopos?" It was difficult not to grab Wichman by the throat and choke the information out of him.

'Nay. I saw no banner bearing the mark of the skopos. Only one I have seen a single time before, in the chapel at Autun: a banner embroidered with Taillefer's imperial crown."

Henry had crowned himself emperor!

All around the men whispered: Emperor. The word itself had magic, one that griffin feathers could not dispel.

Their murmuring died as they waited for Sanglant's response. The day, too, had gone utterly quiet, a strange, hard pressure in the air that made his ears seem full and muted his hearing. No wind stirred the banners in his camp; even Adelheid's pennants up on the walls of the town hung limp, curls of color. The world seemed to be holding its breath.

The blue of the midday sky had faded to an eerie silver cast until he felt he stood on the inside of a drum, waiting for the thump of a stick overhead to wake them up. To shatter the silence.

To bring Liath and Blessing back to him alive.

From far away, too faint for any man born solely of humankind to hear, a horn's ringing call caught his ear.

'To arms!" he cried, breaking the spell. "Sound the horn."

He wore mail at all times, but with battle imminent he allowed his guardsmen to add extra protection, the mark of the heavy cavalry that were his strongest pieces on the chessboard. He stood while Si-bold strapped on an iron breastplate over his mail shirt and greaves on his calves. Chustaffus waited, fully armed, with the black dragon banner held in his left hand. The rest of his personal guard clustered behind, mounts saddled and ready. All of them had iron helms and most had greaves and breastplates—his strongest troops. While Si-bold armed him, Captain Fulk gave his report.

'Our choices have dried in this heat, my lord prince. We cannot flee without water, nor can we withstand an assault from both town and field with our defense not yet set and the emperor's army so large."

As they spoke, stakes were being hastily set in the remaining gaps of the inner defense, between the circling wagons, to prevent a sally out of the town from breaking through their line.

Sanglant looked at Hathui. "Wendilgard's retreat has cost us. Shall we surrender and beg my father's mercy? He is renowned for being merciful."

She lifted her chin. "Truly, Your Highness, if it were King Henry, we might expect mercy. But the man we face will only wear Henry's face and speak with his voice. I saw what manner of daimone they forced into his body. I heard his voice condemn Villam, but I know King Henry would never have done so. If we surrender, we will be baring our throats to those who will show as little mercy to us as they did to him!" Without leaving him, her gaze shifted focus, seeing onto a scene he could not share: the events which had led her to take refuge with the regnant's rebellious son.

'So be it."

Sibold stepped back, having finished, and Sanglant mounted Re-suelto and took his lance from Everwin. Raising it, catching the attention of the men making ready to fight, he called out in the voice that would, soon enough, ring above the fray. "Upon every field, there is a victory to be found. Let us find ours."

Malbert handed up his helm, burnished, trimmed with the figure of a dragon so like the one he had once worn as captain of Henry's Dragons, back in the days when he had been his father's obedient son. So he was, still; it was Henry who had changed, not him.

Yet did it matter what story he told himself, now that the hour was upon them? Last night, with Wendilgard's departure, he had felt angry, sullen, worried, irritable. All that sloughed off him now. The decision had been made. He had ridden a long way to reach this moment. Now. At once. The anticipation of battle lightened his heart and lifted his mood. The griffins beat past overhead, heading out over the town.

As he rode with his escort behind him to the southern apex of such siege works as they had had time to throw up, he held his lance so the pennant tied on the shaft could dance in the breeze made by Resuelto's pace. He was already sweating freely. There wasn't a breath of wind.

The infantry had dug in to the northeast of the river along a line leading from the bluff where the river left the forest all the way to the shoreline. Because they had wanted to keep a portion of the river within their lines—if this trickle of water over stones still warranted such a noble title—the river split his force. Even over the course of the single day they had camped here the water level had fallen. When he pressed Resuelto down the bank and into the channel, the water came scarcely higher than the gelding's fetlocks.

Companies of Wendish, marchlanders, Quman, and centaurs followed him to the field, muddying what remained of the waters.

The infantry manned the defensive works, such as they were, with some of the ditches only half dug. There were too few soldiers to withstand an attack at multiple points. Still, infantry weren't the strength of his army. They crossed beyond the defensive works into the dusty open ground where he had room to maneuver, most of it level but crossed by a dry streambed that had once been a tributary of the river. He and a dozen men from his entourage rode up onto a rise from which they could survey the field while his army took their places.

He had thirty centuries of cavalry, more or less. The Quman clans formed up on the left flank and marchlanders on the right. His Wendish cavalry, a motley crew nominally under the command of Wichman but actually controlled by Captain Fulk, held the center— which should have belonged to Wendilgard's Avarians. What remained as a reserve force spread out as a second rank, broken up in groups of fifty to a hundred riders made up of his marchlanders and renegade Ungrians under Captain Istvan, Waltharia's picked heavy cavalry under the banner of Lord Druthmar, his own personal guard, and the Bwr. The griffins had flown out over the exposed flats to the water's edge, where they began to make their ponderous turn to come back in.

Few epics from heroic ages past ever sported such a strange array of beings and peoples. No poets had ever sung of such an army, many kinds joined together against a common foe.

Certainly he had had problems on the march. He had heard mutters against sorcery.

He had heard men whispering that it wasn't right to consort with pagans and heretics, or whether it was right for a child to challenge a parent or a lord to challenge the wisdom of the skopos. But their fear and their doubt was also their strength. They had, most of them, thrown over their old prejudices out of loyalty to him. The Wendishmen might distrust the Quman, but they granted them a measure of respect. And frankly, for the men, there was something heartening about fighting alongside centaurs, that ancient race that had once burned the holy city of Darre. Their inhuman nature was always visible to any man with eyes, yet they had a kind of beauty as well. Now and again Sanglant had seen a man stare dreamily at one of their Bwr allies, and more than a few times he had caught himself admiring their robust figures clad in nothing beside the accoutrements of war and wondering at the mystery of their existence. Now and again he had to remind himself that they weren't women at all. Now, like the rest of his army, they waited with spears or bows or swords held ready.

It was so damned hot. He prayed that he had not moved too soon, that this wait in the stifling heat would not sap his army, and indeed it was midafternoon before Henry's army marched into view and began to form up in battle array. Two well ordered contingents of infantry, one wearing the tabard of the King's Lions and the other Wendish milites out of Saony, flanked a mass of cavalry riding under his father's banner, the conjoined sigils of Wendar and Varre. The banner displaying the imperial crown flew gloriously above all the rest as a bannerman hauled it back and forth to let the fabric stream.

Henry's farthest left and right flanks were held by alternating bands of cavalry and infantry belonging to various nobles from Aosta. Missing was the banner of Duchess Liutgard of Fesse. Wich-man had noted this force but a few hours ago and now they were gone.

Indeed, Wichman left the center and rode back to inform him of this fact, galloping up onto the rise with a gleeful grin on his face.

'D'ya see that?" he called breathlessly as soon as he came within shouting distance of the prince. "That bitch will have taken a force around our flank. They'll go north into the woods and swing around to hit our defensive line from the northwest, where we're thinnest. Best to send the reserve to meet them."

'Do you think so?" Sanglant shook his head. "Henry will stall to give her time to arrive. He'll have her attack at the same time he'll signal Queen Adelheid to sally forth from the walls." Check, his father would say in a confident way that encouraged one to resign the game right then. "Nay, Wichman. The next move is mine. We'll not spread ourselves thin. We'll win this battle before Liutgard can get all the way around our position."

Wichman snorted. "Henry outnumbers us! That's just what's on the field. Who knows how many wait with the queen to attack us from the rear."

'Numbers aren't everything. We have winged riders, and Bwr, and griffins. We are bold, not cautious." He stood in his stirrups, lifting his lance as he gestured toward the imperial banner, then shifted his gaze to stare down his cousin. "I challenge you! Will it be you, or me, that captures the banner bearing the sigil of the crown of stars?"

Wichman laughed outright, outraged and delighted, and reined his horse around before Sanglant could say another word.

'Look there," called Hathui. A dozen riders rode forward from Henry's front line bearing the Lion, Eagle, and Dragon flag of Wendar. "They want a parley."

Sanglant nodded at Chustaffus, who lifted the black dragon banner once, twice, and thrice. They rode down the rise and advanced to the forefront of the host, dust spitting up where hooves struck. As they passed through the Wendish line, a cheer rose and continued until he gestured and Chustaffus raised the banner for silence. They stood at the edge of the tributary stream. Across the cracked and stony bed waited those who spoke for the emperor.

He recognized three of these noble courtiers, two armed and one a cleric.

It was the cleric, one of Henry's schola, who spoke. "Sanglant, the emperor Henry, your father, begs you to lay down your arms and embrace him as a son should. Have you forsaken God and parent alike? How can you rebel against the one who gave you life? He weeps, wondering what madness possesses his beloved son."

All suffered under the sun's hammer. Sweat flowed freely. Resuelto twitched his ears.

The heat would drain them long before courage flagged.

Sanglant rode forward four paces and cried out in a voice meant to reach as great a distance as possible. "Know it to be true: Henry is not himself. Those who call themselves his allies have abused his trust and insinuated a daimone into his body, so that he walks and talks to their command. If you do not believe me, then wonder why Henry did not return to Wendar when his Eagles brought him news of troubles in the north. He is a puppet dancing to the command of those who use him to their own ends. I have ridden across months and leagues to save my father, not to fight him. Will he come before me so that I may look into his eyes and know that he is truly himself?"

'The parent does not attend on the child! You are the one who must beg forgiveness of your father, my lord prince!"

'So I will, when he is free!" He turned to Sergeant Cobbo. "Sound the advance."

With his heels he urged Resuelto forward. The horn blew three sharp blasts, but before the second blast finished, Wichman was halfway across the stony bed at the front of the charge.

Taken completely by surprise by this breach of etiquette, the parley band broke into a full rout and raced helter-skelter back to their line. One mount stumbled, spilling the cleric to the earth. He rolled to his feet and ran.

Resuelto surged up the far bank, muscles bunched, ears forward; behind, Sanglant's guard pressed the charge. Before them the Wendish cavalry of Henry began to lumber forward, for they were heavily armored enough that it was difficult to get speed quickly, then rolled forward in a wedge, slow at first but gaining momentum. A cloud of dust rose behind them, blocking the view of the emperor's banner. From away to the left rose the eerie whistle of Quman wings as the winged riders began their own attack.

The lines met with a roar.

Sanglant veered left and thrust right to gain the unshielded side of a Wendish knight.

My countryman. The thought was fleeting, vanishing as quickly as it sparked in his mind.

He struck true; his lance pierced the man through his abdomen and passed clean through his body. With a backward yank Sanglant tried to rip the lance free, but the mail links of the other man's shirt held firm and their grip pulled the lance out of the prince's hand.

Now the clamor of battle joined swallowed him like a wave.

He unsheathed his sword. Its point rapped against his shield as he drew it over his head, that tiny sound in counterpoint to the cries of men and the screams of horses, each a melody of exhilaration or surprise or death. Slashing ever forward he drove on. No man could stand before him. In truth, each poor soldier he faced, however briefly, seemed incapable of grasping his peril amidst the dust and chaos, as if they loitered there expressly to be cut down in their confusion. Lifting his shield he caught a man across the face, unhorsing him as he hacked across the hindquarters of a mount, causing the beast to buckle and collapse to the ground. His eyes burned from the dust, and the heat, as he cut his way through the mass of cavalry in search of Taillefer's crown.

The glint of jewel-bright colors caught his eye: the stars in Taillefer's crown rising above the haze. He made for the banner, but slowed, seeing a wall of infantry placed between him and his goal. o^>±

Turning to his left, he faced another stalwart wall of unmounted Lions, advancing one measured step at a time. To his right another wall of infantry bristled with spears. Too late he realized he had pressed forward of his own troops.

'Yaaa aaah!" The cry came from behind him as Wichman, at full gallop, charged into the front wall, his mount leaping at the last moment. Fully half a dozen spear points pierced the horse's belly but its collapse created a huge breach. Sanglant and a dozen others pressed through the gap, which widened as men were cut down or broke formation. A last knot of horsemen stood between them and the emperor's banner, yet the regnant's banner of Wendar and Varre was nowhere to be seen nor was Henry and his distinctive armor and white-and-gold tabard anywhere in sight.

The defenders fought bravely and with skill but could not stand before Sanglant and his men. Yet as their numbers dwindled, so did Sanglant's, and even as he hacked his way closer to the imperial banner, so did the Lions re-form and close in behind them. Out beyond, within the dusty haze, new figures appeared, a fresh line of cavalry, and they charged.

Sanglant parried a blow, cut a man down as he thundered past, but as he was twisted to one side wrenching his sword free a spear slid past his thigh deep into Resuelto. The gelding convulsed, yet struggled forward bravely. Slowly, they fell away from the spear, as if it were possible to escape a blow already struck. Slowly, Resuelto crumpled. Blood gushed over Sanglant's leg, and he flung himself forward to escape being crushed, falling across Resuelto's neck as the horse collapsed completely, blood pumping from its flank.

His sword skittered out of his hand. A broken lance rolled between Resuelto's forelegs, maybe even the same one that had killed him. A horseman leaped right over them, striking down.

Sanglant ducked under the broken remains of his shield, then grabbed the hilt of his sword and brought it up hard. He wasn't sure what he hit; blood had got in his eyes, but he tumbled sideways as the horse stumbled to the ground and when the rider pitched forward Sanglant took him under the arm, cutting into the unprotected armpit.

'The crown of stars, the crown of stars!" The cry rose up from the Saony milites who hemmed them in, yet his countrymen seemed hesitant to strike down one of their own.

The imperial banner had fallen and was lost from view.

Of his own soldiers he saw none, only a crowd of unfamiliar tab ards and sharp blades. He jumped forward, lashing out first to his left and then to his right to keep them off-balance. His shield was shattered and his body pierced by inconsequential cuts, but he fought on.

Checkmate, his father would say.

He sensed it coming, but in his fatigue he was slowed. He spun to parry, but he was late. The point had just tipped his mail below the heart, inevitable in its trajectory, when it went flying as if by magic and the rider who wielded it was carried backward off his horse. The butt spike on the shaft of the imperial banner had taken the man down, and grasping this most noble of spears was Wichman, dragging the huge banner and its brilliant crown of stars in the dust.

With a smile, blood leaking from his lips, he spun the shaft in his hands to lift the fabric off the ground. "I win!" Wichman shouted.

They stood in an eddy, in that moment cut off from the ring and hue surrounding them, locked in a silence and stillness that captured them within its net.

Wichman laughed. In truth he blazed, shining in his glory, and the enemy scattered and shrieked, scrambling backward as the sun itself plummeted to the battlefield, so bright Wichman had to shield his eyes against its unexpected glare and Sanglant stepped back as the downrush from their wings struck him.

When the griffins landed, the earth shook. Their feathers gleamed even through the swirling dust that coated every man, every horse, and every weapon.

They pounced, falling upon the nearest men as hawks would upon a nest of baby mice.

Their talons, and the touch of their feathers, shredded flesh and metal. Undone by this assault, many soldiers—ai, God, his own countrymen—fell to their knees to pray while others dropped their weapons and ran.

Sanglant sheathed his sword and shook the remnants of his shield off his arm.

'Wichman! Follow me!"

He ran for Domina and leaped up onto her back, swinging a leg over and pushing himself up onto her shoulders. His armor saved him from the worst lacerations, but he bled all over her feathers from a hundred tiny gashes, and where his blood touched her plumage, it sizzled and gusted as tendrils of steam. Wichman ran for Argent, but it leaped skyward before he could reach it, and Domina with a harsh cry launched herself awkwardly at the same time, legs dragging as she thrashed to gain height with so much weight bearing her down.

The wings beat dust into his face. He lost sight of Wichman and the banner as the griffin rose into the air although he heard the duchess' son cursing, and he almost lost his seat as she swayed and plunged and rose again. Arrows chased them into the sky.

Below, the field of battle was chaos, obscured by dust so thick that he couldn't tell where his line ended and Henry's army began. It was quieter along the camp's inner siege wall, but Adelheid's defenders were firing blazing arrows into the ground in front of the line of wagons. Small fires scorched the dry grass, sending up billows of smoke, but the fires didn't threaten the wagons. Not yet. Behind the worst of the dust, the reserve held its ground, waiting for a signal.

It was a bumpy ride, nothing like a horse and far less comfortable. He had never been so frightened in his life, wondering if he were going to pitch right off and fall to his death, and although his gaze took in the scene below he found he could not utter a single word or call out to those below, so choked was he with fear.

At last, as the griffin circled in toward Fulk's position in the center rear, Sanglant caught sight of Henry's banner. It had moved far to the left, heading toward the woods.

About ten centuries of cavalry rode with his father, a substantial force. Through the heat haze he saw the front rank of Liutgard's troops moving slowly up and over the wooded bluff. They hadn't yet negotiated the steeper downward slope on the western side. He couldn't count her forces because the trees concealed their numbers.

Ai, God! Taillefer's banner had been a feint all along. Henry played chess with a subtle mind and a strong will. He would never let himself be taken easily, but he had taken his own son for a fool and dangled a line and caught him. So be it.

He had only one course of action left. Already the sun sank quickly toward the west.

Night would come, but Henry would not wait for dusk to make his final move.

The griffin shrieked a warning and landed with a rattling thump. Horses bolted; soldiers ducked; the impact shook him so hard that he slid, slipped, and tumbled to the ground. As soon as his weight was off her, she launched herself back into the air with a whuff.

Fulk came running, helmet off and hair matted to his head with sweat and grime.

Blood streaked his right hand, and as Sanglant got to his feet, Fulk turned and joyously signed toward a soldier coated with dust. It took Sanglant a moment to recognize Sibold through the filth. The young soldier whooped out loud, seeing the prince, and hoisted up the black dragon banner, torn, bloody, and stained, but not lost. A ragged cheer went up from the defenders. His troops pressed forward with renewed vigor.

'My lord prince! We thought you were lost!" cried Hathui, weeping, coming up in Fulk's wake. She handed him a square cloth so that he could wipe the dust and blood out of his eyes.

His palms and hands were sticky with blood. He was cut everywhere mail had not protected his skin, cloth torn and tattered, but the gashes were shallow, a mere nuisance.

He bent down and carefully picked up two gleaming griffin feathers. Shoving his knife between boot and leggings, he thrust the feathers into its sheath, although the leather showed signs of splitting where their edges sliced.

'How many of my men returned?" he asked.

Hathui stepped back to let Fulk approach. "None, my lord," said the captain, "except Sibold, who took the banner out of Chustaffus' dead hand."

There was no time for grief. Later, sorrow would stalk him, but he had to act now.

'What news?" Blood spattered the dirt around him. His tabard was in ribbons. Malbert ran up and offered him a full wineskin. Taking a swig, he rinsed his mouth and spat before swallowing an even larger mouthful.

'The men are falling back as we arranged, to hold the siege line. I've thrown Lord Druthmar in at the hinge where the streambed meets the river. Bands of Aostan light cavalry had broken past and were harrying the camp. One group of Bwr has lent support to the center."

The captain in charge of the centaurs, a big, stocky mare whose cream coat and blue-black hair made her stand out from a distance, galloped up to him. "My lord prince." She had been designated captain in part, Sanglant supposed, by reason of age and seniority, in the manner of mares, and in part because she could speak Ungrian. "We thought you lost."

'I am not, Capi'ra, as you see. How many of your folk have yet to be committed to the field?"

She stamped one hoof. "Two centuries wait." She indicated the Bwr reserve just visible behind the clouds of dust that marked the field of battle.

'Ride with me to the wood. Fulk, I'll need a new mount. Fest, if you have him close by."

The bay gelding was being held in reserve, and when he was brought forward, Capi'ra eyed him sidelong. Like the other centaurs she had unusually mobile, elongated ears, which she flicked now, but he could not discern emotion in her bland expression. "Have you no pura to ride?"

'No." He said it more sharply than he intended.

'What is your plan, my lord prince?" Fulk asked.

He took a last swig of wine. "We must hold our line on this field at whatever cost.

Adelheid's forces will attack at a prearranged signal, so be on your guard against it. I think they will wait until Liut-gard can flank us. That will be the crux of the battle. Right now her forces are strung out through the woods. We must rout them there before Henry can catch up to them. I need a shield."

'Your Highness." Hathui stepped forward. "Would it not be better for you to command from the rear? Send someone else?"

Sanglant's mood changed and he laughed. "Nay, Eagle. I trust Fulk for his steadiness, and steadiness is what is needed on the field. If we're not quick, we'll be engulfed. As well, there is a chance I may meet my father in the woods."

He took the shield Malbert brought, and as soon as the captain called her troops in, they rode, the centaurs falling in behind him and Capi'ra.

'We must rout Liutgard's forces quickly and turn back to support the Quman left," he told her.

The centaurs had exceptional stamina, and the heat did not seem to bother them as much as it did him and Fest. They raced up along the western side of the river to the bluff, moving in among the trees below the western slopes. Their pace slowed once they were in the wood, where shade gave relief from the sun. It was now the hottest part of the afternoon and Sanglant knew that as many men would fall to the heat as to the enemy.

It seemed that they traveled well into the forest before the lead scouts of Liutgard's troops were spotted with the rest of her riders strung back along the path, hidden from view, moving single-file or two abreast. The Bwr communicated with snorts and stamps whose meaning was unintelligible to him, but they moved away to form a line two deep winding through the woods parallel to the path. Those in the second rank had bows at the ready while the front rank held spears and shields.

Too late Liutgard's forward troops realized the threat. Capi'ra blew a sharp blat on a ram's horn and her centaurs closed at a trot. The Bwr had horn bows and they loosed arrows as they advanced, surprisingly agile at fending off tree branches and leaping around or over bushes as they plunged through the woods. Their skill with a bow was unsurpassed even by the Quman, who were renowned and dreaded as horse archers, and this skill began to take a toll. By the time he reached Liutgard's vanguard most of the forward soldiers were down although only one horse had been hit. There was no one to fight. Fest leaped corpses as he followed the centaurs back into the trees; the gelding had steady nerves but lacked imagination and thus was well suited for this kind of skirmish.

Their group wheeled around to attack again.

He heard Liutgard's voice—he could scarcely fail to recognize it, since they had grown up together at court—as she shouted for her people to form up for a charge. Yet as the centaurs drove forward again, shooting at will, whistling and calling in their high-pitched voices, the mounts belonging to the human soldiers did not shift, as if under a spell. Liutgard and her soldiers were stuck on horseback, unable to move, absorbing one after another flight of arrows. Her men began to panic as the front line of Bwr closed with spears lowered.

They hit the central rank of Liutgard's line with a resounding crash. Spears that did not strike flesh stuck in shields, and as the centaurs passed through the line, cutting to each side with long knives or thrusting with their spears, the horses began to buck and kick.

Riders were dumped onto the ground. Men trying to fight back could not hang on or even get in a good blow, but it was the betrayal of their mounts that panicked them most. In ancient legend it was said that the Bwr spoke to horses, and now it appeared to be true.

One by one, unhorsed, Liutgard's soldiers broke into reckless flight.

'At them," cried Sanglant, encouraging the pursuit. The centaurs answered with shrill, inhuman calls. He pressed Fest forward. The pursuit must be swift; Liutgard could be allowed no time to regroup. Yet the forest favored men on foot. Sanglant himself traded only a few blows, wounding one man before that one and his two companions leaped into a bristling thicket of thornbush and scrabbled away through its branches where he could not follow without dismounting.

Some centaurs pursued men through the woods while others shot arrows into those clumps of men hiding in the underbrush. Circling, the centaurs chose each shot carefully, seeking the best angle around a shield or a favorable gap in the branches.

They had not the numbers to keep the advantage for long. Behind the skirmishing line rose a cry.

'To me! To me! Fall back to the Eagle of Fesse!"

Duchess Liutgard, still mounted on a black mare and herself carrying her banner, rallied her men. A shield wall swelled around her as dismounted men overcame their fear.

It was natural to him that the ebb and flow of battle would dictate each move, each objective. Liutgard and her banner must fall to complete the rout.

A bristling wood of spears formed up in front of the duchess. A dozen centaurs joined him as they probed around the right flank of Liutgard's position. He saw his cousin clearly, just as she saw him: she was a proud, experienced fighter who knew how to shift ground in a skirmish depending on changing circumstances. She shouted commands, directing men to fill gaps or pointing out targets for her few archers, but it was obvious she knew exactly where Sanglant was.

aj.

He charged, not at her line but at a group of men seeking to join her, scattering them and dropping two before he continued around to the thinnest point in the wall of spears and shields.

'We must take her! Now!"

Capi'ra sounded her horn. More centaurs joined him, and they pressed forward through the trees as others attacked from the flanks. He was almost unhorsed when he glanced aside for one moment only to be thwacked hard on the helm by a tree limb. He fell sideways, caught himself on Fest's neck, and dragged himself upright in the saddle.

In close formation, the dismounted men had the advantage over the centaurs, but Capi'ra urged her troops on and they went without hesitation. He chased after them, ears still ringing, and where the clash unfolded he pushed forward to try to break a gap through to Liutgard herself, who had retreated a few paces back on the path. The melee had a muffled sound, arrows fluttering through leaves, the grunt of a man absorbing a spear blow to his shield, a yelp where a centaur was hit, the crack and snap of branches and dry leaf litter under the press of feet and hooves as soldiers shifted their position or fell. Some among the centaurs sat back and took leisurely aim, but with shields held close it was more difficult to pierce the enemy's ranks. This slow dance of attrition would not aid his cause. He pushed forward and struck hard to either side. Men gave way before him. He punched spear thrusts away with his shield. The line bowed inward as they gave ground.

Liutgard's voice carried above the fray.

'Sanglant! Give up this rebellion! Throw down your arms and your father will show you mercy!"

He could not answer. He broke through and with a dozen or more centaurs behind him galloped along the path, bearing down on Liut-gard. She was easy to mark: she wore a surcoat of white and gold, royal colors, although her banner was furled for the ride through the trees. She had loosened the straps of her helmet and pushed it back the better for her voice to be heard.

As Sanglant closed, she pulled her helmet down and braced. Five men stood between him and the duchess, and he fought furiously to reach her. He took the arm off an ax man and punched another aside with his shield, kicked a third man in the face who was attempting to rise after being bowled over by Fest.

He closed, and he met Liutgard's defiant gaze.

She is my favorite cousin.

The thought fled, and in its passing he hesitated. Then he struck, but the eagle banner swept down over him before his blow landed, blinding him, trapping him in the cloth.

She had caught him. His blade rang against hers as she parried, all the while pressing the banner against him that he might not escape it or bat it aside.

'To the Duchess!"

'Get him!"

'For Fesse!"

A spear slammed against his breastplate but did not penetrate; a sword glanced off his greave. The ululations of the centaurs guided him as he cut into the banner pole's shaft.

The cloth slithered down off him, falling to the ground and clearing his sight.

The press of men around him forced him back together with the centaurs who had come to his rescue. They formed a small phalanx and he shouted, calling others to join up with them. Liutgard fell back. Her ripped banner, its broken haft grasped by a sergeant, rose to shouts of triumph.

From up on the bluff a horn rang out three times. She had only to hang on until Henry reached her.

'Mark her! Mark her!" he cried to the centaurs at his back. If Bayan could die with an arrow in his throat, so could Liutgard. Fesse arrows struck his shield and one stuck, quivering there. Fest veered and stumbled as a spear grazed his withers.

Two centaurs fell; the others ululated and first Liutgard's horse THE (j AT

HERINliJIUKivi __ and then the others around her went crazy, and she could not run or fight. He closed.

A horn sounded to his left. Out of the woodland to the north swarmed many more men, some on horseback, some running. They wore the colors of Avaria.

'For Henry!" they cried. "Murderer! You murdered our lady! Traitor! Deceiver!"

In another ten breaths they would be upon him. A glance told him what took his breath away: These were Wendilgard's men.

Avaria's heir had betrayed him.

He had no choice but to retreat or else sacrifice what remained of his strike force.

They lost three centaurs pulling out, but with the enemy fighting their own mounts and using the cover of the trees they were able to pull back out of range where he found Capi'ra bleeding from a dozen shallow wounds.

He caught his breath while she tallied her forces. His mouth was parched and his neck and back soaked through with sweat. The pursuit came close behind; they had to move on, and quickly. He had to decide what to do. If he stopped even for a moment to think, to consider that he had been so close to murdering his own kinswoman, he would lose all.

'No worse than I expected," Capi'ra said in such a stolid and unemotional voice that her calmness struck him like a slap in the face. "No more than twenty dead. Yet we cannot take on such a large force, even broken up as they are within the woods."

'No," he agreed. The truth hurt, but he had to face it. "No. Henry closes in. Wendilgard has moved against us. Adelheid will attack our rear. We must pull the entire army back west and north through the woods before we are surrounded. We've lost the battle." x: E YE"

T IN Alba, at twilight, Stronghand strolled up to the stone crown and stared out over the fens. The horizon on all sides and most of the flat waters and half-drowned hillocks were hidden by a thick haze shrouding the land, but the sky above was so clear that it seemed stretched and thin, almost white. The sun was sliding into that haze, drowning.

Soon the stars would come out.

He ruled Eika and human alike; his ships roamed the seas and struck the coast at will; all of Eikaland lay under his rule, and most of Alba had capitulated and was falling into line. But when Old-Mother commanded, he must obey. He had reached Alba three days ago. Thoughts of Alain chafed him, always, but he had been given a task to complete.

'Father Reginar," he said, greeting the young churchman who waited eagerly and anxiously beside the stone crown together with five other clerics.

'Prince Stronghand." Reginar was young, callow, and arrogant, and hadn't the ability to hide his scorn, but he was no fool. Strong-hand's soldiers guarded him against those who might interfere with the spell he and his comrades meant to weave this night. For that reason, Reginar tolerated the Eika.

Stronghand bared his teeth, noting how the clerics flinched and stepped away from him. The sun set, and the first stars blossomed in the vault of the heavens. Far to the east, lightning stroked through the sky, although they were too far away to hear answering thunder.

'I pray you," said Reginar's companion, a woman holding a short staff. "If you will allow us, my lord prince, we will begin."

He nodded and retreated ten steps down the slope of the hill. There he clasped his hands behind his back as the woman took her place in the weaving circle. Three of his brothers joined him, as silent as mist. Ursuline waited in the camp below, leading the evening song. He heard many voices joined together, singing a hymn. Some of those who sang were RockChildren.

So. Now it would begin. The alliance the WiseMothers had made would prove wise, or foolish. No matter what transpired, the world would change, as he was already changed.

There was no going back.

When evening fell, the allied armies of Lady Eudokia and King Geza made camp in a protected hollow partway up the slope of the drought-stricken hills in Dalmiaka. There was no water to be had for prisoners, only a single flask of vinegary wine passed around between them, a few sips for each member of their party but no more than that. They weren't given any food at all, not even a dry scrap of wayfarer's bread.

Hanna was parched and her head ached from hunger and the unremitting heat. Mother Obligatia lay with a hand across her eyes, pale and breathing shallowly, while Sister Diocletia wiped sweat off the abbess' face with her own robes. Rosvita stood with a hand on Fortu-natus' elbow as they stared south into the darkening sky. The others clustered behind them, dead silent.

There were no clouds, not a wisp. The air had such a flat heavy cast to it that it seemed an unnatural color, almost green. The lay of the land allowed them a magnificent view out over a plateau to the south of their position. South lay the sea, although they couldn't see it from here. A huge lightning storm played across the southern expanse of the heavens, bolts lighting the entire sky, crackling side THE GATHERING ^TORM ^ __

ways or down to strike the earth. Distant thunder rolled in waves. A net of light sparked and dazzled in the sky as lightning danced around it.

'We are too late," said Rosvita. "We have failed."

Hanna wept.

Folk along Aosta's coastal plain northeast of Darre were frightened by the terrible omens that had plagued them in increasing numbers over the last months and weeks, but they welcomed a kindly old woman garbed in simple deacon's robes and attended by a pair of humble fraters. They did not realize that she was cloaked in a binding that made men's eyes skip past her and find her unremarkable unless she claimed their notice. They did not see that the fraters carried swords beneath their robes. They fed her and her escort, stabled their mounts, gave her their best bed to sleep in, and in the morning sent her on her way toward Darre with bread and cheese for her midday meal.

It was often difficult for her to sleep. The amulet blistered her skin, and this evening in particular it burned with a stinging touch that caused her at last to leave the soft feather bed of her hosts and go outside in the hope that the night wind might cool her. Although the skin, where the amulet touched, was red, only a single blister had raised tonight, like a bug's bite. Nothing to worry about, then. She had only to remain vigilant. Long ago her clerics had woven amulets under her guidance to protect Sabella's army from the guivre's stony gaze, and they had developed a terrible leprosy. Certainly in Verna she had learned more sophisticated and careful means of enchantment and sorcery, so most likely the clerics who had aided her then had not been righteous enough to withstand the corrupting effects of the binding's secret heart.

No doubt they had got what they deserved.

Outside she found no relief from the windless heat, however. She stood in the dirt yard between crude door and garden fence and stared at the heavens. Her guards crept out from the stable, rubbing sweat from their foreheads, and after a time every soul in that tiny hamlet—twenty or more, half of them children—staggered from their pallets to stand on the dusty track and stare up at the uncanny lights that played across the stars and the lightning flaring in sheets and chains across a cloudless sky.

The villagers wept with fear. Even her stalwart soldiers, chosen for their steadiness and loyalty to Adelheid and her daughters, cowered as they watched.

Antonia did not fear God's displeasure. She welcomed it. She would survive the coming storm. She would rule the remnant, and all would be well.

The road Ivar and Erkanwulf followed ran straight west through the Bretwald, a vast and ancient forest in western Saony close to the borderlands where Wendar met Varre.

All day, clouds gathered and the sky turned black as a storm approached. At dusk, rain poured down so hard it tore leaves off trees and gashed runnels into the ground. They were stuck out on a path in the middle of the forest, riding in haste, trapped by nightfall, and now sopping wet.

'We'd best find shelter," said Ivar. He dismounted and held his nervous mare right up at the mouth, trying his best to calm her, but the storm seemed to shake the entire world.

'Do you think we'll survive the night?" Erkanwulf's voice trembled and broke.

'Come on!" Fear made Ivar angry. "I've survived worse than this! We'll get back to Biscop Constance. Princess Theophanu charged us to do so, and we mustn't fail her."

'Charged us to take a message, but sent neither help nor advice! And how are you going to get back into Queen's Grave when you left as a corpse?"

'We won't fail her," Ivar repeated stubbornly, even though he wasn't sure it was true.

The rain hurt as it pounded them, and it didn't seem to be slacking up. He'd never seen it come down like this, as though rain from every land round about had been pushed over this very spot and now, letting loose, meant to drown them. They pulled their mounts under the spreading boughs of an old oak tree. Acorns thudded on dirt and hit them on the head. Rain drenched them. The horses tugged at the reins. Water streamed around their feet, and already the path had turned into a muddy, impassable canal, boiling and angry.

'Look!" cried Erkanwulf. "Look there!"

Out in the forest lights bobbed and wove. Erkanwulf took a step toward them and called out, but Ivar grabbed his cloak and wrenched him backward.

'Hush, you idiot! No natural fire can stay lit in this downpour! Don't you remember who attacked us before?" "Ai, God! The Lost Ones! We're doomed." "Hush. Hush." The lights turned their way.

When you have lost, discipline is everything.

Sanglant allowed himself a grim smile of satisfaction when he reached the edge of the forest with what remained of his army just as dusk spread its wings to cover them. They hadn't routed. When the call came to retreat off the field, they had moved back in formation and in an orderly manner, without panic. Now, perhaps, night would aid them and hinder Henry. So he hoped.

He had chosen to remain with the rear guard, letting Fulk lead the battered army northwest alongside Capi'ra and her centaurs. The remnants of the Quman clans, Waltharia's heavy cavalry, the Ungri-ans, the marchlanders, and his Wendish irregulars and cavalry followed Fulk and Capi'ra. He held shield and sword, with stalwart Fest beneath him and his banner and the last surviving members of his personal guard close at hand. Together with the griffins, a tight line of Villam infantry and marchlander archers under the command of Lewenhardt was all that separated him from the press of Henry's army. Although he had no real way to communicate with the griffins, they had sensed his need and during the entire retreat across open ground had roamed along the last rank roaring and shrieking whenever Henry's pursuing army came too close. Once or twice they pounced, but the press of spears and swords against them was heavy, and they did not like to get so close. Even iron feathers weren't proof against steel, although few arrows had enough force to pierce their skin.

Hathui stuck beside him despite the danger from arrows and the occasional spear chucked at them from the front line of Henry's advancing army. Henry's banner he could not see, but he recognized Henry's presence with each step that he retreated and with each lost, dead soldier he had to leave behind.

'He isn't pressing us as hard as he could," he remarked.

There was some jostling of position as the infantry shifted formation in order to move from open ground into the woods. A man in the final rank fell forward to his knees as a halberd hooked his shield and dragged him out of place. An ax blow felled him, but his fellows screamed and leaped forward to yank him back to safety. A moment later the injured man was carried out of the line past Sanglant and his mounted guard to the wagons, which trundled at an agonizingly slow pace down the narrow road that led through the forest. Two days ago they had followed Adelheid's army through more open land just south of the forest, on the narrow coastal plain, but open ground gave Henry's superior forces too much of an advantage. The forest offered cover, yet it had its own dangers. Sanglant recognized this road as the one Wendilgard had used yesterday when she had pulled back her troops.

His conversation with her, and his encounter with the shadow prince, seemed ages ago. An eternity had passed since she had turned her back on him. If he had known that she would betray her word and attack his rear, would he have cut her down when he had the chance? Could he kill his own kinfolk? Had his hesitation when confronting his cousin Liutgard sealed his fate?

Doubts would prove fatal. All this he could reflect over later. Right now, with Sergeant Cobbo at his side holding a torch aloft and the tramp of feet and murmur of men calling to each other to check their positions, he could concentrate on only one thing.

'It was a trap all along," said Hathui.

'My father has not lost his sense of strategy."

The thought gave him pause. If Henry could still outplay him in the game of chess, did that mean he had recovered his own mind? Had Hathui been mistaken in what she thought she had seen in the palace in Darre?

No. He believed Hathui. She was an Eagle, trained to witness and report.

The forest stymied the griffins and with a shrill call they leaped into the air. The downdraft from their wings sent men flying, and with a rush the last rank got itself together and pulled into place as Sanglant waited under the outermost trees for them to move in under the canopy. At Hathui's urging he moved forward behind the last wagon where the freshly wounded man groaned and moaned beside a half dozen of his injured comrades. The soldiers who had lugged their companion away from the line paused before the prince.

'My lord prince!"

'Your Highness!"

He gave them a blessing and they hurried back to take their place in the rear guard. It struck him, in that gloaming, how strange it was that men were willing to die for the sake of another man's honor or ambition and yet would struggle to stay alive in the oddest circumstances imaginable, in the teeth of any sort of vile disaster. A drowning man who battled to stay afloat might turn around and sacrifice himself without a moment's thought so that a comrade could reach safety. A mother would hang on with an iron will through weeks and months of starvation only to give the scrap of food that would save her to her beloved child. God had made humankind's hearts a mystery, often even to themselves.

Stars glittered above, seen in patchwork through oak boughs. The moon rode high overhead, but it wasn't bright enough tonight to offer much illumination. Far away to the east beyond the dark mass of the highlands the sky lit and flickered, then went dark.

Although he strained to hear, he heard no answering thunder.

Within the wood they had perforce to spread out between the trees to protect the wagons. The horses had easier going on the road, although it was slow in any case. All around he heard branches snap, leaf litter crunch beneath boots, and men curse as they lost their footing or were slapped in the face by a limb let loose by the man in front of them. Harness jingled. Horses whickered. Some man's dog whined. Once he heard the griffins call, but he had lost sight of them. Now and again an arrow whistled out of the darkness. Torches burned all along their route as men on foot lit the way for those with horses. These lights burned far ahead and out to either side, marking the limits of his army, while behind the enemy brought up torches as well, so that the forest seemed alive with fireflies.

In truth, they were an easy target, but although Henry's forces harried them, the king—the emperor—did not press an all-out assault. Henry, too, was impeded by night.

'He's holding off," said Sanglant to Hathui. "He's waiting. For what?"

'We're deep in enemy territory without support. Why should he risk losing more men than he needs to if he can pick us off piece by piece at less risk to his own? Too, I think his men are afraid of the griffins."

'As they should be. But the griffins can't help us now."

Lightning turned the sky to a ghastly gray-white. The silhouettes of trees leaped into prominence, and were gone, all except the afterimage. Distant thunder rumbled, then faded. His ears felt full, as though ready to pop. An arrow whooshed past to bury itself into the wood of the wagon just in front of them. Out in the forest, a man yelped as he was struck.

They held their position as they trudged along. The lightning storm flashed and boomed off to the east as they kept moving in formation, not breaking ranks. They had lost far too many men in the field, but he dared not number or name them now. They had retreated over the corpses of their own, but they had not left behind any wounded man who could be moved. Yet the heat had sapped them, and they had abandoned more horses than men. Half their supplies had been lost. Even at such a slow pace and with the mercy of night they could not go on much longer. He was still sweating; the night hadn't cooled down, and the air got thicker and more humid until it seemed difficult to take in a breath.

The sky lit so brightly that it blinded him. Thunder rolled in over them, wave upon wave of it, and a bolt of lightning ripped through the sky and hung against blackness for what seemed forever, burning itself into his vision so that when it flicked out he still saw it against the starry heavens like a twisting road delineating the path on which angels descended to Earth to collect the souls of the newly dead.

There were so many dead.

'My lord prince!" A man appeared out of the darkness with a comrade leaning on him, an arrow in his thigh. "Terrence here can't walk, but there's no room in the wagon."

Sanglant dismounted and broke the shaft off near the leg. The man gritted his teeth and did not scream. "Put him on the horse," he said.

'My lord!" cried Hathui.

Malbert and Sibold protested. "Ride our horses, my lord. We'll walk."

'Go on," he said. "I'll stay with the rear guard. We'll all get free, or none of us will."

He had seen the bones of his Dragons covering the flagstones in Gent Cathedral. He had no wish to be the last to remain alive, not again. No wonder his mother's blessing was in truth a curse. To survive might be a worse punishment than to die. How many people had he led to their deaths while he remained among the living?

A gust of wind rattled the trees and showered leaves and twigs down on them. As the line moved forward, he fell in with the last rank. The torches held by Henry's soldiers flared a spear's throw behind, but Henry's men did not speak, only followed. An arrow hissed out of the night and struck his shield, hanging there to join the stump of the arrow left by one of Liutgard's archers earlier that day. Lewenhardt moved up behind him, took aim, and shot. His arrow skittered away through brush. He heard laughter, followed by a captain's command to draw back.

'No more," he said quietly to Lewenhardt. "Save your arrows for daylight."

'Yes, my lord prince."

The archer stuck behind him, unwilling to leave, and Sibold came up as well, having given his mount to another man. Malbert might have come as well if he hadn't been carrying the banner. Except for a dozen men with Captain Fulk, they were all that was left of his personal guard. Lightning flashed, illuminating a straggling line of men following their trail, a hundred or more within view and the noise of thousands marching up from behind. They were gone again as night returned, their line shrunk to the pitch fire of torches.

Lewenhardt whistled softly. "I never thought there would be so many."

No one faltered. No one stepped out of line or wept with fear. They were good soldiers, the best. It was a curse to lead men to their deaths. He understood that well enough. He had done it so many times.

'Not this time," he muttered. Anger built. Like the pressure in the air, it throbbed through him. Not this time. He might have lost this battle and far too many men and horses but he would not lose his army no matter what he had to do to save them.

To the north, from the van, he heard a cry. A horn blatted, sounding the alarm. Had Henry sent men through the forest to surround them?

Wendilgard and her banner had not yet been seen, although some of her force had reinforced the Fessians. Did she still hold the old ruined fortress to their north? Had his army retreated into another trap?

'Sibold. Lewenhardt. Hold this line together no matter what. Keep a slow retreat until you hear from me. Hathui! Sergeant Cobbo! You'll come with me!"

Wounded Terrence he put behind the soldier now riding Sibold's horse. Leading Fest, he jogged up along the line with the sergeant lighting his way. It was narrow going. Often there wasn't room between wagon and trees and sometimes he had to wait with frustration welling while a wagon trundled past a gap before he could follow through; other times he cut through the undergrowth al though Fest didn't like the darkness and the footing. He passed wagons, marchlander infantry with spears resting on shoulders and grim expressions on their dust-stained faces, a quiet group of Ungri-ans with heads bowed, and at last he negotiated past the awkward wings of the Quman clansmen, not fit for the confines of woodland travel.

'Prince Sanglant!" Gyasi rode at their head. "I smell a powerful weaving taking shape.

We must take shelter."

The heavens caught fire, white and bright, but as he blinked everything went dark again. Thunder cracked over them. A net of lights sparkled high overhead before fading in spits and sparks.

Shouting broke out ahead on the road, echoed by the sudden ringing clash of a skirmish opening up at their rear. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. There was still no sign of clouds. The stars seemed so close he thought he might pull them down from the sky simply by reaching; they pulsed as if to the beating of his heart.

Something is coming.

He ran, dropping Fest's lead line and leaving Eagle and sergeant behind, stumbled, tripped once and fell hard, jolting himself right up through his shoulders. One greave, rent from a sword blow, pinched at the back of his knees. Drawing his knife he cut the straps as he picked himself up and ran on. If Wendilgard were there, he would slay her for her treachery. No quarter, no ransom.

Lightning flashed, and again, and again, and in each flash he saw the faces of his men, haggard, drained, but determined as they marched on into what fate they did not know, only believed that he would lead them to victory or to shelter.

Out in the forest an uncanny path gleamed. He saw it now, crossing the road at an angle. Not too much farther up the trail Wendilgard had camped yesterday, and beyond that, having lost his way because of anger and doubt, he had encountered the Lost Ones.

Surely they had moved on.

He ran. The transition from woodland to open space came abruptly. One moment branches whipped past him, the next he bolted out under the stars and right there, just beyond the last tree, he tripped and fell hard across a body, caught himself on an outflung arm. Lightning flashed again and he saw that he lay on top of the corpse of a man wearing the sigil of Avaria's lion, one of Wendilgard's soldiers. Dead with no apparent wound, no blood staining the ground around him, and quite stiff, which meant he had died many hours ago, long before Wendilgard's forces had attacked Sanglant's forces below the bluff.

Avarian dead lay scattered across the clearing throughout the ruins of Wendilgard's bivouac, under the shadow of those ancient walls. Again a flash illuminated the clearing.

A stone's toss from him lay the torn remnants of her proud banner and, across it, her body. Her red-and-white tabard was dusty but otherwise intact and unstained; her lips were pulled back in a rictus grin, and her eyes stared at the heavens although it was quite obvious she no longer saw anything.

Wendilgard was dead.

She had died fighting—but not against him. The Ashioi had killed her, the same ones he had met in the forest, and her Avarians had blamed him and taken what revenge they could by aiding Liutgard.

He jumped up and ran out into the clearing. It was dominated by a low hill on whose height a fortress had once stood, although it was now only shattered walls and fallen stones. He crossed the outer works of the fortress, so fallen and moss-covered that it appeared to be little more than a garden wall. Sanglant plunged right into the midst of a skirmish, his own men screaming and shouting as they fell back before the determined onslaught of the Ashioi. By the light of their torches he glimpsed the scene: the Lost Ones poured out of the fortress.

They had taken refuge there at dawn—so he guessed—as though it had been their place long ago and they defended it now against interlopers.

Night slammed down again. He rushed forward to the front ranks where men stumbled back, some falling to shadowy darts that dissolved as quickly as they struck. He pushed past the ragged line where Fulk and a few others held their ground to let the others retreat. He had thought the battle lost, but now he realized he had forgotten the one chess piece he had thought he would never dare to play, that he would, in fact, never want to play.

Hadn't his mother abandoned him? Had she loved him at all? Yet her blood had mingled with that of his father to create him. She would always be part of him, and never more so than now.

He pulled off his helm, gulped in air, then shouted. "Cousin! I pray you, Cousin! Heed me, who is son to Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari. I need your help!"

'Prince Sanglant!" Fulk called him back.

He jumped into the gap and raised his sword as the clearing lit again, casting a pallor over the melee. A rank of shades stared at him, many wearing the bodies of men but the faces of animals. They paused as he called out once more.

'Cousin! I am the son of Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari. Heed me! We are cousins.

Kinsmen. Why do we fight?"

The shades drew back to let the shadow prince approach. He and Sanglant stood among the corpses of Wendilgard's troop and a few fresh Wendish ones, facing each other with their soldiers at their back, all of his living and solid and all of the Ashioi insubstantial shades.

'You stand in our sacred ground, a fortress once dedicated to She Who Will Not Have A Husband. These others camped here, so we slew as many as we could and drove off the rest. Now we must hasten."

'I pray you, aid me, and I will aid you. I am pursued by an army of humankind who seek my destruction and who seek yours as well. Listen!"

A bolt of lighting scorched the sky, hanging in the air for three breaths before it flicked out, leaving behind an afterimage that cut a blazing line across the rank of shadow elves who stood listening. Waiting. He saw trees through the outline of their bodies. Far back, he heard a horn call ring out and the sound of clashing weapons, and a horse's screams.

'Why do you fight your own kinsmen?" asked the shadow prince.

'We fight those who are weaving a spell to cast your exiled land back into the aether. I am not a sorcerer. I do not understand by what means such a spell can be woven into being."

The other one laughed. "No more so am I a mage's apprentice, although my brother was. I prefer to hold a weapon in my hand. A spear is something I can comprehend. What is your name, Cousin?"

'I am called Sanglant, prince of Wendar and Varre, son of Henry and Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari. Who are you?"

'I am called many things. That is the custom among my people. Some called me Younger Brother, while others called me Gets-Into-Trouble. But you may call me Zuanguanu-kazonkiu-a-laru. Or Zu-angua, for I know that humankind has difficulty with our names."

Sanglant laughed. "I not least among them. So, Zuangua. Will you aid us against our enemy? I have no wish to harm them, only to drive them off so that I do not lose more of my men. The king I must capture alive. He has been made a prisoner by the sorcerers who also wish to harm your people. I carry two griffin feathers with me that will cut the threads of magic. Once he is free of the spell that binds him, he will no longer fight us."

The prince grinned, and Sanglant recognized that grin for he had felt it on his own face many times, born of a reckless and bold impulsiveness, the willingness to throw oneself forward into an unknown battle where the outcome was in doubt. "Will he not?

What if I desire battle? I have waited a long time to kill humans in revenge for what they did to my people. But very well. The time is near. If aiding you will aid my people, then I will aid you. If it does not, then I can kill you as easily as any other mortal man."

Zuangua lifted his sword. Lightning flashed, making his white cloak blaze before night returned. A woman standing beside him fitted out in warrior's armor and wearing a hawk's mask pushed up on her head brought a jewel-encrusted conch, bigger than her hands, up to her lips. She blew. The sound arched up just as thunder cracked, but where the thunder splintered and rolled away into silence the mournful note held on and on. The Ashioi warriors scattered into the woods, quickly lost in the darkness.

When the call faded, Zuangua gestured toward the ancient walls on the height. "Find refuge there for your wounded. The rest, range below. Together, we will fight."

'My lord prince!" cried Fulk as lightning shot white fire through the air. His anxious expression lit, and vanished, as blackness crashed down.

Sanglant shouted as thunder pealed right on top of them. "Go! Form a shield wall with those who are strong, and put the injured up in the fortress. Do not touch any of the Lost Ones who bide there. Go! Go!"

He himself turned back to Zuangua. "Will you hunt with me, Cousin? I seek my father, and I mean to free him." the afternoon of that day—the tenth of Octumbre—when Hugh led them up through the maze of ruins that surrounded the tumulus to wait beside the stone crown, Zacharias was ready. The high grass had been scythed for fodder. They waded through its stubble single-file with Hugh in the lead and Zacharias walking behind him, head high. He would make Hathui proud, although she would never know it.

The waxing crescent moon rode high in the heavens as the company spread out around the stones. There were two score guardsmen, Deacon Adalwif, a pair of Hugh's servants, and himself. Zacharias knew well the sandy patch of ground from which the threads were woven; he and Hugh had practiced here many nights in preparation. As the sun sank westward, Hugh nudged Zacharias to this patch and placed the weaving staff into his hands, then stood behind him. The light faded and the first stars winked into view in the darkening sky: the Diamond, Citrine, and Sapphire that graced the Queen's Sword, Staff, and Cup, with the Diamond so close to zenith it made him dizzy to stare up at it. It was cold, and bitterly clear; with a cloak Zacharias felt the fingers of winter clutching at his bones, but such trifles meant little to him this night.

No rain had fallen for two months and the river that ran below the tumulus was no more than a trickle over its stony bed, while livestock and villagers alike suffered from thirst. The young wheat, recently planted, had not yet sprouted, and the deacon and her villagers despaired, fearing it might never do so without autumn rains to germinate it.

Obviously Holy Mother Anne and her tempestari had done their work well, keeping the heavens clear for the weaving across so vast a span of land. Just as obviously they cared nothing for the consequences that fell hardest of all on the common folk. His folk. His kind.

Before his birth a King's Eagle had ridden through the Wasrau River Valley, where farming families crowded the arable land cheek by jowl, all paying heavy taxes and yearly service to one lady or the next in return for protection, right of way, and a pittance of grain during lean years, not always delivered.

King Arnulf the Younger had decreed that any family willing to risk the long journey east to the marchlands, there to farm rich upland country never before touched by a plow, would be freed of the yoke of lady's and lord's service, owing allegiance only to the regnant of Wendar. Most people stayed put: everyone knew that the marchlands were hard, dangerous country, close to the barbarians, where you were as likely to die in a Quman raid or have your daughters raped by Salavü or be eaten by griffins and lions as you were to prosper. His grandmother had packed up her household without looking back once.

His grandmother had understood the way of the world. She had journeyed east because she had hated the yoke of servitude more than she had feared danger and hardship. Now, for the first time since his captivity among the Quman, he was truly her grandson. Her heir.

'Ah," said Hugh, more breath than word.

At the hazy western horizon, still tinged with a fading gold, bright Somorhas winked briefly before heaven's wheel dragged her under. Mok, the Empress of Bounty, shone high in the southwest, on the cusp between the Penitent and the Healer.

'There," said Hugh, and there Zacharias saw, rising as the wheel turned, the cluster of seven stars known as the "Crown."

Tonight the Crown of Stars would crown the heavens.

,' pray you, Old Ones, give me strength.

You are strong, grandson. Do as we have taught you.

Zacharias felt Hugh's chest against his own back, as close as that of a lover, but when the presbyter's hand closed on his elbow his grip was iron, the chain by which he bound his servants to his will. He held Zacharias' hand, and thus the staff, steady.

'Now you will weave as I have taught you, Brother Zacharias. With this spell you will see into the heart of the God's creation itself if you do as you are bid. This, I promise."

Zacharias grunted; he had many sounds left to him, but without a tongue few of them made words. The Old Ones understood him nonetheless. They had offered him strength—and with strength came the opportunity to avenge Hathui's betrayal. He quieted his mind as Hugh began the chant.

'Matthias guide me, Mark protect me, Johanna free me, Lucia aid me, Marian purify me, Peter heal me, Thecla be my witness always, that the Lady shall be my shield and the Lord shall be my sword."

The staff caught the thread of the Crown of Stars and bound it into the circle of stones, and as stars rose and others set Hugh directed his arm so the staff wove these strands into a net that dazzled his eye and throbbed through his body.

Or was that the ground itself trembling? The moon set. Night passed more quickly than he had imagined once they were enveloped within the web of the spell, pulled one way as heaven's wheel strained at the stones, as each ply drew taut and, before it could snap,

was directed elsewhere to spin the pattern on into a new configuration.

There were rents in the sky, huge gaps, like tears in a tent wall through which a man might glimpse the world beyond.

He sees the ladder of the heavens reaching from the Earth high up into the sky, glimmering in a rainbow of colors, rose, silver, azure, amber, amethyst, malachite, and blue-white fire burning so hot that he cannot look at it directly. Disquiet assails him. The ladder is empty. All the aetherical daimones who once ascended and descended from Earth to the heavens and back again are absent. Or fled.

They have fled the power of the weaving. For an instant he quails. He shrinks. Fear swells. Then he recalls Hathui and the voice of the Old Ones. He is Brother. He is Grandson. He will act. He will be strong.

'Sister Meriam!" said Hugh.

An answering voice thrummed within the web of the spell; he glimpsed her frail form, supported by her granddaughter, in the midst of a wasteland of sand and shattering sky.

He felt her body beside his, although he knew it for illusion.

'I am here. I am here."

'Brother Marcus!"

The ruins of Kartiako rose as ragged shadows along a distant hillside before Marcus'

tense figure blocked the view.

'I am here."

The heavens turned. Night crept westward across the Earth although they were by now drowned in darkness, marching on through the early night hours toward midnight. So it was true, he thought, heaven and Earth stretched those threads out, and out, until they were as thin as a length of hair. It was true that the Earth and the heavens were spheres, for otherwise night would come all at once and at the same time in each place but instead the heavens turned and the stars rose above the horizon first in the uttermost east and later as night crept westward over the Earth.

The rents opened wider as the threads pulled taut.

Stars burn, each with its own color, each with its own voice, each with its own variegated soul.

He wept with joy at their beauty. The music of the spheres rang through his body as the spell caught him within its weft and warp.

'Hugh! Meriam! Marcus!"

He faltered, hearing a voice colder than any nightmare. The Holy Mother had joined her presence to the web.

'I am here," said Hugh, and Zacharias could say nothing, but of o,'/

course now it seemed obvious that Hugh had lied to him. Why give Zacharias the glory of weaving the spell when Hugh could take it all to himself? Why did he want another man standing in for him?

Yet what did it matter? He had to concentrate on the weaving. Patience. Soon this joy would end. What matter what came after? He knew what fate awaited him.

Every spell demands a sacrifice.

A fifth voice joined them, a man's voice unknown to Zacharias although he spoke his name: Severus. Hugh still chanted, but his hand fell away from the staff as Zacharias wove the threads. Hugh eased backward out of the net as a sixth woman wove herself into the spell, who called herself "Abelia."

The seventh crown waited, still silent, but within the song of the other crowns he sensed the net, yawning wide. He felt on his shoulders a prickle like the breath of impending doom, a great weight bearing down on them not precisely from the sky but from a place beside the sky, inside the sky, unseen but ready to explode out of the air.

L .

The scatter of stars known as the Crown of Stars had already climbed most of the way to the zenith, although it seemed he had only drawn six breaths in the interval since nightfall. Mok and the Healer sank down toward the southwestern horizon as the Penitent made ready to lay down her burden. In the east, the Lion poked his nose above the horizon while the Guivre flew aloft in triumph. The River of Heaven streamed right across the zenith, rising in the southeast and pouring its harvest of souls into the northwest.

Each star glittered like a jewel, etched onto the black vault of the sky. Each one sang in his heart as the seventh voice joined them out of the crowns. "Reginar." "I am here."

Hugh stood a hand's breadth behind him, no longer touching him although his chanting did not falter as he sang a tune as melodic as a hymn and far sweeter.

With the touch of the seventh circle, the crown lit with fire, burning heavenward, blue white and so brilliant that it hurt Zacharias' eyes although he felt no heat. The heavens shuddered. He stared into their depths and saw the shadow of a vast weight hurtling down on them not as rain falls from clouds or as an arrow is loosed from on high but approaching from within the net of the spell.

The spell buckled under the strain, but it did not break. The seven mathematici drew their strength together, making ready to seal and close the crowns, to cast the exiled land back into the aether. To close off Earth forever.

The stars splintered into rays of color, stems banded along their length with variant light, some streaming blue and some red. The Earth groaned. Mountains shifted; the waters churned. Because he was woven into the spell, he felt cracks racing out from the crowns into the deep places far beneath the surface of Earth, down and down to where rivers of fire steamed and crackled.

'Now!" cried Anne. Her voice rang through the seven crowns.

Out of the depths a voice called as though in answer.

Now, Grandson.

He cast himself through the archway. Because he still held the staff he dragged the threads in after him, tangling them, pulling them all awry and thereby disrupting the spell. It had to be disrupted at as many of the crowns as possible, so the Old Ones had instructed him. Without Zacharias, their plan could not succeed.

In the distance down the pathways of the spell he sees an island crowned by stones. A young abbot standing on the weaving ground gasps and turns just as he is cut down by an ax, but another cleric leaps forward to take his place, grasping the threads before they can unravel. Yet she, too, falls beneath a shower of ax blows. Beyond the crown, the ground heaves and collapses in on itself as half the island shears away. A huge winged creature rears up from underneath the dirt he hears Severus' voice crying out in fear and shocked anger as the glittering sand beneath his feet conies alive with translucent claws:

"What means this! What?" The claws drag him under.

Blue-white fire enveloped him, burning him. No earthly flesh could withstand such heat, yet he felt no pain, only the cold grasp of death engulfing him. He would never see Hathui again unless they met on the Other Side.

With his last breath: There.

Through tears he sees into the infinite span that lies beyond the heavenly spheres.

Folds of black dust form shapes like shifting clouds. Two suns spin each about the other, linked by pathways of red fire. A nautilus of light churns around a dark center. A spiral wheel composed of numberless stars whirls in a silence so vast it has weight. He is afraid, but he was once always afraid. Life is fear. Let it go.

So much light beckons, and yet gulfs of emptiness swell between the great wheels. This is the Abyss, into which all humankind falls in the end.

Let it go.

Death comes to all creatures, even to the stars.

He let go. He fell.

For a long time she lay in a state between sleep and waking, kept alive by bitter seaweed and an astringent juice brought to her by the brothers. At intervals she explored the passageways that led out of the cavern, using a trail of pebbles to mark her path, but even with her salamander eyes to guide her she at length came to labyrinthine tunnels without any illumination whatsoever, and so she returned, always, to the cavern.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway even if she had found a path that led to the surface.

She had a task she had to complete.

When she slept, or lay in a stupor, the old ones spoke to her; what a person might say in an hour took them days or even weeks. She couldn't be sure.

She held on. She would have one chance. She might never again see those she loved, but what did love matter when weighed against duty? She knew how to seal off her heart; she did so now, so that sentiment would not distract her. That skill she had learned from Anne.

Now.

The tremors came constantly, as if the Earth were adrift on a vast sea like a ship rolling and yawing on the waves. Deep in the Earth the old ones worked their ancient magic. They could not touch Anne; they could not even move, it seemed, but they had other means at their disposal. They channeled the deep rivers and spoke to those who had the patience to listen and the ability to travel.

We. Are. The. Children. Of. The. Cataclysm. We. Are. Guardians. Of. Our. Own.

Children. We. Are. Born. Of. Stone. And. Dragon's. Blood. And. Human. Flesh.

She roused as the sting of magic melted down through the Earth from the land above, winding her in a ghostly net of blue-white fire. She staggered up to her feet. Gnat and Mosquito lifted their heads to stare at her with flat eyes.

'Go far out to sea with your kinfolk," she said to them. "You will not survive if you remain close to shore."

They looked at each other. The eels that were their hair twitched and writhed, hissing, as though motion were speech.

'Go," she repeated.

They dragged themselves to the flooded passageway, slithered in, and vanished, leaving her alone. She knelt, pressing palms against the ground. She let her awareness fall as the net of magic twisted along her body and snapped in her hair, making it stand on end. She pierced with her mind's eye far down into the molten fields lying beneath the grinding crusts of stone. Where rivers of fire flowed, she swam, making her way out of the eddies of viscous pools into faster-moving streams so red-hot they melted their own path through rock. These rivers raged at flood stage, pushed and prodded by the Old Ones in their circles. Beneath the seeming solidity of the ground, a tumult of liquified stone seethed and boiled.

As night crept westward across the land and the stars rose, the weaving caught within the stones of seven circles, the great crown that spanned the northern lands and the Middle Sea. The net of the spell blazed. Through that net she saw the shadow of the Ashioi land manifesting out of the aether not as a stone drops from on high but shifting out of one aetherical plane of existence back into the world of mortal kind. Through the widening gaps aether poured down into the world below, invisible to mortal eyes but blazing with power that Anne and her cabal gathered into their loom.

She heard Anne's voice reaching out to the rest of the Seven Sleepers who wove the spell: Meriam, Marcus, Hugh, Severus, Abelia, Re-ginar.

'Now!"

A surge of emotion coursed through that net, its own kind of magic that works against those who oppose the one who is about to win: Anne knew that she had triumphed and that her enemies had lost. The warp and weft of the spell wove together into a vast glittering net that interpenetrated aether and Earth.

"Now!" echoed the Old Ones.

Now.

The Old Ones had searched and commanded, and at the three northern crowns their agents leaped into action. To the north, ice wyrms consumed Brother Severus. To the northwest, an Eika prince called Stronghand cut down the clerics gathered at the Alban stone circle. To the east in the wilderness north of Ungria, Hugh—nay, it was not Hugh at all. Hugh had set another in his place to absorb the backlash he knew was coming, a tattered, mute cleric named Zacharias. That other man flung himself bravely into the crown, knowing it would kill him, but by tangling the threads he knotted them all across the northern span of the weaving. One side of the spell began to unravel. Anne did not falter. She was stronger than Liath had imagined any mortal could be.

'Marcus! Meriam! Abelia!"

They did not fail her. Across the southern span the net held steady and with its thrumming architecture to bolster her Anne bent her will to the north and from her place in the center of the crowns she painstakingly wove the threads back together. The spell shuddered back to strength, weakened along that line but not shattered. The Earth groaned and quaked. The heavens ripped, turning white as lightning scorched the sky.

The waters of the sea were sucked out and farther out yet by an unnatural ebb tide until a broad swath of shoreline was laid bare, exposing ancient foundations, old roads, shipwrecks, and gasping fish.

There was no one in place to halt Meriam, Marcus, and Abelia because they could not reach them even with the Eika ships. They hadn't had time. Yet the Old Ones left no contingency unplanned for. Age gave them an advantage Anne did not possess: they knew how to think things through from beginning to end. They had one force left in reserve. One last weapon.

Liath was only sorry for Meriam's sake, because Meriam had been kind to her, but it had to be done. Best not to think about conse que^ices.

Swift. Daughter. Act. Now.

Aether poured through the net of the spell down to the Earth. Liath drew this bright, heavenly substance into her and used its power to unfurl her wings of flame. When those wings enfolded her in a sheltering cage of aetherical power, she reached down and farther down yet to the burning rivers—and called fire out of the deeps.

AJLvJlN Cj the outerworks of the ancient fortress Fulk ordered the men. Those who could still heft a shield formed a tight line behind the tumbled stones. As Bwr, Quman, and Ungrians filtered in, they were sent out into the clearing to cover the flanks to ensure safe passage from the line of retreat to the fallen arch of the gate. A dozen wagons trundled up, but the roadway leading up to the gate was impassable because of fallen stones and broken pavement, so after their cargo of supplies and wounded were hauled up into the ruined fort, they were rolled against the others to form a barrier, yet another makeshift wall to hold off Henry when he arrived.

'We'll be surrounded by Henry's army," said Fulk, following Sanglant up the ramp with men bearing torches before and behind.

'Perhaps. The Ashioi are powerful allies. They can't be killed because they aren't truly alive."

'That's so." The captain glanced from side to side nervously. Shadowy forms—old women clutching baskets and jars, lean children with eyes as bright as stars—glared at them from the alcoves and hollows where they had taken shelter. When lightning flared, they almost dissolved away entirely into the light. It was easier to detect their presence when it was dark.

'Can you smell it?" At the gate that led into the inner court, Sanglant paused while wounded trudged or were carried past into the shelter of what appeared to be a fallen chapel. "There's water here. We'll not be driven out by thirst, at least. You're in command, Fulk, unless Lord Druthmar is found."

He hurried down the ramp and back into the clearing, running once he gained level ground, careful of his feet given the many corpses littering the open space. To the south, where Henry's forces pressed the assault, Sanglant saw signs of his own stragglers losing order and flying. Men passed by, some weaponless, most wounded. Seeing their prince, those without weapons took heart and moved to go back to the fray, prying swords and spears out of the hands of corpses, but Sanglant ordered them up to the walls. They were being THE G AT HERINL, jiuRivi overwhelmed, yet the shadow elves would soon turn the pursuit upon the pursuers.

'Hai!" called Zuangua. "Make haste. We haven't much time!" He left Fest with Hathui and Sergeant Cobbo and followed Zuangua as best as he could, but it was hard going once they got into the forest. The shadow prince moved so gracefully between branches that his armor or cloak never snagged and his face was never scraped. He was unhindered by the poor light lent only by shaded starlight, setting moon, and irregular flashes of lightning. He was also silent and odorless in a way most disconcerting to Sanglant who knew men and beasts as much by their sound and smell as their faces and color. He existed, but he had no earthly substance, and more y than once Sanglant slammed up against an unnoticed tree that Zuangua effortlessly avoided.

They passed Malbert, still carrying the dragon banner, and a ragged group of grim soldiers marching double-time in tight formation. "Make haste, my lord prince!" Malbert called in an uncanny echo of Zuangua's words. "There's one group behind us. I fear they're lost." At last they came upon the rear guard huddled around an overturned wagon.

Wounded men had spilled out on the ground, and while some crawled or limped away down the path after the retreating line, Lewenhardt, Sibold with an arrow pierced through the meat of his neck, and six others held out around those of their injured comrades who could not move themselves. No few soldiers wearing the eagle of Fesse or the tricolor of Wendar lay dead or dying from their attempt to overrun these last few guardsmen, but a fresh assault pressed out of the trees on the heels of those who had fallen.

Zuangua danced up to the soldiers, startling them as he jumped up on the wagon and sliced the air with his obsidian-edged spear. The cut left a trail of sparks in its wake.

Lewenhardt, with an empty quiver at his back and his last arrow nocked, stood stunned, unsure if he should loose it at the shadow or at Henry's men.

'Lewenhardt! Sibold!" Sanglant came up beside them out of the gloom. "Take every man you can carry and go. We have new allies. We'll cover your retreat. There's a fortress ahead where Fulk's in command. Go!"

Sibold did not answer because the arrow in his neck, while not seeming to hinder his movement or threaten his life, shut him up. Seeing Sanglant, Henry's men shook off their doubt and with cries and shouts pelted forward. Lewenhardt released his arrow, taking one man in the thigh, then scuttled backward with the rest.

Out in the woods to either side, shrieks rent the air. The Ashioi had reached their prey.

Sanglant braced. He was not used to fighting on foot, but he could hold his own. Spears jabbed at him, but the light wasn't good enough for his enemies to hit true. Above, on the wagon, Zuangua swept his blade above the swarm of men, then struck among them like black lightning. His spear passed through armor and shield and deep into the bodies of his foes. With every blow a man fell, struck not through flesh but through soul, killing the being that animated the mortal shell. Lightning flashed, and flashed again, and a third time in quick succession, and as if it had torn a gap in the stillness a gale blew across their position out of the east. The trees creaked and no few swayed dangerously in that tempest. Leaves and branches rained down, striking men in the head and knocking them flat. A leafy branch crashed right down through Zuangua, and though the wind drove some men to their knees, although Sanglant had to dodge blows and branches alike, the shadow prince stood balanced upon the wagon's side as if it were a calm day. Men struggled to fight him, but none of their blows had any force against a shade.

Sanglant laughed, knowing how cruel an irony this was. He had found an army that death could not claim.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled; this time the Earth itself trembled beneath their feet. Men screamed out among the trees. The world had gone black except for bolts of lightning that lit the sky. The moon was gone and all torches blown out by that wind.

Only the firefly lights borne by the stalking Ashioi darted within the wood.

As quickly as it had come, the gale stilled. Zuangua trilled a war cry and that cry was echoed a hundredfold throughout the woodland. That cry had no words but every soul within earshot knew anyway what it meant:

Vengeance.

The Wendish army fled except for the few who fell to the ground speaking prayers or simply weeping at the judgment now laid upon them.

'The hour is at hand, Cousin! The sacrifices are ours to take." Zuangua leaped from the wagon, thrusting at will deep into the bodies of the men who had fallen to their knees. He gave no mercy; he sought none. Sanglant ran at his heels as a second gale crashed through the forest. The shouts and screams of men rose in counter point to the crash of falling branches and the roar of wind in the leaves. They pressed on as branches fell all about them, as the ground shivered beneath their feet, as lightning dazzled in wave upon wave until day and night melded and splintered and here and there in the forest trees exploded into flame where lightning struck and dry limbs and dry leaves flashed and blazed. Smoke curled among the trunks. Men ran, and fell where hissing darts pierced their bodies. A fiery rain pattered down around them, but it was only burning leaves.

There was no rain, no clouds. It was as hot as it had been in the daytime with the sun overhead.

There, unexpected, waiting unshaken in the road with a brace of noble companions at his back and his banner planted beside him, stood Henry.

The emperor needed no torch to light his way. He was a torch. His eyes gleamed with an unearthly light, cold and brilliant. A nimbus cloaked him, shedding that inner light onto the path and into the air. Where wisps of smoke trailed around his feet, the smoke glowed a ghastly silver.

Sanglant stumbled to a stop. Zuangua paused next to him as a dozen Ashioi ghosted out of the woodland to take up positions at either flank. The hawk-masked woman slipped into place at her prince's right hand with her bow drawn and her lips pulled back in a feral, unavian grin.

'This is your father?" Zuangua murmured. For the first time he sounded uncertain and even afraid. "I did not know any woman of my people would embrace a daimone of the lower sphere."

Sanglant wept to see him. Of course Hathui had told the truth. He could smell that this was not his father but an interloper residing within his father's shell. Perhaps Henry's noble companions suspected something was amiss, because they stared at the emperor in shock and then belatedly recalled that they must keep track of their enemies, now gathering before them. No human man could shine so brightly, not even one granted the luck of the king. Yet a lingering trace of his father still existed, hidden away beneath the daimone's presence. If he could reach the man, he might give him the strength to fight against the creature that possessed him.

'I pray you, Father," he said. "Let us call for a truce. Let us end this war."

'Kill him," said Henry.

Sanglant took one stride, another, and broke into a run. Behind, he felt the hesitation of his kinsmen; he marked it, but he was already at full speed and dared not stop. Would not stop.

He would rid Henry of the daimone. He would rescue him.

Henry's guard shouted. Several lords leaped forward to place their bodies between prince and emperor, but Sanglant took one in the thigh, shattering that man's mail, and another in the guts, thrusting so hard it split the man's mail shirt. He twisted the blade and pushed him aside with his foot. Three others fell to bolts of elf shot.

Henry had not even drawn his sword. He stared indifferently at the death of his companions.

'Damn you! You're not Henry!" Yet Sanglant could not strike his father. He seized him by the gold brooch that clasped his handsome cloak and yanked him, but he might as well have been pulling on a mountain.

Henry did not move until he himself struck. The back of his hand caught Sanglant under the chin and sent him flying backward, lifting him right off his feet. The prince landed hard, jaw cracking. Blood rimed his lips.

Zuangua lunged, but Henry dodged and raked Zuangua with a mailed hand. Bronze armor gave way as three wide furrows of blood opened across Zuangua's chest as if Henry's hand bore unseen claws. Astonished, Zuangua leaped back, still grasping his spear. Although the stark wound did not seem to hurt their leader, the Ashioi were now less eager to press forward.

Sanglant clambered, wincing, to his feet.

'Traitor," said Henry in another creature's voice. His voice had the timbre of a bell and it carried far into the forest, out to the ranks of his terrified army. His companions took a step back from him. "You have all along plotted with your mother's kind. Now we see the truth of it. Duke Burchard. Duchess Liutgard. My noble companions. My captains. Do you see it? Do you mark him for what he is?"

'Murderer!" cried Duke Burchard, rallying. "You betrayed my daughter!"

'Traitor!" cried Liutgard more passionately. "I believed that you were loyal!"

Sanglant stood, unsteady, as the ground shook and he struggled to focus his eyes. His ears were ringing and ringing although there was no thunder. Silence gripped the land, or he had gone deaf but for a whooshing that resolved itself into the griffins, circling above.

Ai, God! The feathers! He grabbed for his knife's sheath, but in the course of the battle the feathers had torn it right open. They were gone, and half the sheath with them. If only one feather would come drifting down from on high into his hand, he could succeed.

Henry—the daimone—laughed cruelly and lunged forward. Just in time Sanglant stepped aside and parried the blow, but that blow hit his shield so hard that wood disintegrated and he was sent reeling, and tripped, and stumbled, and barely fended off another cut from one of Henry's captains, then went down on a knee. The captain gasped sharply as a dart sparkled in his shoulder.

Sanglant got to his feet. Zuangua had leaped to cover him and now danced back and forth as Henry struck blow after blow, attempting to get through him to Sanglant. The shadow prince was bleeding from face and leg and gut, and still he fought while his warriors pressed back the nobles.

Sanglant pulled his knife out of his boot and leaped in to grab Henry from behind. He kicked him hard at the back of one knee as he wrapped his arm around his father's throat and pulled him backward. But the daimone caught the blade and just the touch of that hand shattered the iron blade into shards that sprayed out, caught fire, and spattered against the ground in a hissing hail of sparks.

Henry reached back and wrenched Sanglant's helmet right off his head. Before the prince could react, Henry twisted his fingers into Sanglant's hair. Sanglant squeezed harder, trying to choke him, but those fingers ground into his flesh and twisted as though to yank his head right off his neck. What claws had cut open the aetherical substance of Zuangua's shade had no purchase on mortal flesh, but the cutting edge of Henry's iron gauntlets cut into Sanglant's skin and seemed likely to sever tendons.

He struggled, but it was futile. Henry's unnatural strength could not be bested, not even by him. The pain made spots flash and fade before Sanglant's eyes. The world hazed as the daimone throttled him. His own grip slackened. He could not hold on.

Zuangua's black-edged spear stabbed right through his father's head. He felt the whisper of its passing as a hot tingle below his own chin.

Clutched so close, he actually felt the daimone die as the shadow blade pierced its soul and released it. That inhuman strength snapped and with an ungodly shriek it vanished into the aether, banished from Earth. He recoiled and collapsed onto his back with his father on top of him and his arm still wrapped around Henry's throat.

His gaze was forced heavenward as he fought for breath. Through the boughs he saw stars swollen to twice their normal size. The Crown of Stars stood at zenith, so bright it hurt his eyes. The wheel of the stars throbbed and pulsed until that music reverberated through his head and sank into his very bones, making him weak, shaking the Earth itself with a roar filled with bangs and loud knocks and tremendous booms rolling on and on and on and on. Successive waves of a sickly, nacreous light washed across the sky.

'For Henry!" shouted Liutgard behind him.

'For Wendar!" cried Burchard. "And the empress!"

Then it hit.

A wind blasted out of the southeast. Trees snapped and splintered as they were scythed down. Men tumbled to the ground. Horses screamed as the gale sent them flying.

The gale scorched the air and turned the heavens white, and the leaves of a butcher's-broom shriveled, curled, and disintegrated right before his eyes. His skin hurt.

He rolled to get his father's body beneath him, to protect him from debris, and in that movement saw Zuangua and his companions staggering backward and their bodies shifting and changing as the wind howled over them, as if that wind were filling them with substance, with earth, with mortality. Liutgard had flung her spear before she was herself hurled to the ground; the weapon carried on the wind but held true, piercing Zuangua in the shoulder where he clung to a toppled tree trunk.

The Ashioi prince screamed, who had gone untold generations without any pain except that hoarded in his heart. Blood as red as a mortal man's gushed from the wound.

The wind died abruptly, although Sanglant heard it tear away across the land, moving outward. He sat back on his heels. We must take shelter, Gyasi had said, and he knew it to be true: there was worse yet to come.

A horrible orange-red glare shot up into the heavens along the southeastern horizon. It looked as if the world had caught on fire. It reminded him of Liath, and a wave of sick dread coursed through him. Was she dead?

Henry groaned.

'Father!" He pulled off his father's gauntlets and helm, chafing his hands, staring into his eyes, which looked like any man's eyes in this strange half-light. "Ai, God! Father!"

Henry lifted an arm weakly. "Hush, son," he said in a voice entirely like his own familiar beloved voice. His hand brushed Sang-lant's hair and stroked it softly. "Hush, child. Go back to sleep. You are Bloodheart's prisoner no longer."

Sanglant wept.

Around him, folk began to shake out of their stupor, those who had not been knocked unconscious by debris or falling trees. He heard a thrashing out in the forest as men and horses came to their senses, got up, then fled or shouted for help or moaned in pain, depending on their injuries. An unseen soldier yelled out an alarm, but it was too late. A dust-covered, blood-soaked nightmare of a man stumbled out of the trees, laughing as coarsely as a madman. This creature steadied himself on the shaft of a banner pole from which hung a tattered banner so stained and ripped that it was almost impossible to mark what sigil had been embroidered thereon.

Almost, but not quite: it was a glittering crown of stars set on a sable field representing the night sky.

'Cousin! I have found you at last! God Above, you bastard, you abandoned me on the field! But this time I bested you. I won!"

Zuangua had roused; now he spoke a word. The hawk-masked woman leaped forward and, before Wichman realized what she meant to do, pulled the banner out of his hand. In an instant she stood back beside her captain, spear raised. Other Ashioi clattered in from the woods to form a grim wall made up of flesh and blood bodies and expressions filled with an ancient hatred.

The air was utterly still, the only sounds the cries of men and animals out among the trees, the snap of a weakened branch and the rustle and crash of its falling, and the steady filtering patter of falling ash.

'Let him go," said Liutgard sternly. She had regained her feet although she had lost her horse. Burchard lay on the ground, not moving; Henry's companions shook themselves off or writhed on the earth, and at least one had been crushed by a falling tree.

'Ah!" said Henry, blinking his eyes. "I'm dizzy. Sanglant, what has happened?"

The prince rose, but he knew already what faced him, standing as he did between the two sides and with what remained of his army, he prayed, safe within the fortress—but out of his reach. He was no different than his dragon tabard—one half smeared and grimy with earth and the other stained with blood. As inside, so outside.

'Now it is time to make peace," he said.

Liutgard scoffed at him. "Traitor and murderer! How is it you can speak their language if you have not long conspired with them? This disaster is your doing, Sanglant!

Let your father go."

Zuangua laughed harshly, for it was obvious he could not under stand one word Liutgard had said. "Peace? Nay, now it is time to make war. Who do you choose, Cousin? Humankind, or us?"

'Neither," said Sanglant furiously. "Both."

'Stand back, Liutgard," said Henry in a stronger voice. He attempted to rise but could not. Blood leaked from the wound in his head. He choked on blood, coughing and spitting, and raised an arm. "Sanglant! Help me. Help me sit up at least."

'Ai, God." Sanglant knelt beside him, still weeping. "Father, you must rest."

'Nay, I have rested long enough. I have suffered…" He coughed again; with each pulse of blood he grew weaker. Burchard groaned, and a captain helped him rise. The nobles drew closer to attend the king. "I have suffered under a spell! I saw Villam killed by traitors. God! God! My own dear wife conspired against me."

'Adelheid?" croaked Burchard as he knelt on the other side of the king. He had taken off his helm. "Not Adelheid!"

'What do you mean, Your Majesty?" Liutgard asked, coming up behind Burchard. She glared at the Ashioi, who held their position, as ready to strike as she was. "Yet it's true you were shining in a most unnatural way, there on the path. Is it true, what Sanglant claims? Were you ensorcelled and chained by a daimone?"

'Presbyter Hugh and Adelheid between them… with the approval of the Holy Mother… Anne… to force their own schemes forward. They thrust a creature into me…

into the heart of me…" He shuddered. Blood pumped from the wound. He sagged into Sang-lant's arms. "Hurry," he whispered. "Hurry. Listen!"

They crowded forward. Behind, Zuangua snorted at this display, but he held his place and his peace for the moment.

'These are my wishes… my last wishes… my dispensation, as is my right as regnant.

All my life I have wished… but custom went against it." His head grew heavier against Sanglant's arm, yet through sheer force of will he kept speaking although his face grew ghastly pale under the weird orange-red light as his life drained out of him through the hole made by Zuangua's spear. The shush of falling ash was the only sound beyond his labored breathing and the footfalls of men creeping closer to listen, to see, to seek comfort within the orbit of their dying king.

'What are you saying, Your Majesty?" asked Liutgard.

'My right… as king… to name my heir."

'Princess Mathilda is your heir, Your Majesty," said Burchard, troubled now, wiping ash from his face. "You named her yourself."

'Under duress… even Sapientia not worthy. This one." He reached across his chest, found Sanglant's other arm, and clutched it tight. "This one. Swear to me. Give me your oath. You will follow Sanglant. He becomes regnant after me. Swear it!" He choked and convulsed, but he held on. "Swear it!"

They swore it, each one of them, because Henry was their king, the one they had followed all this way.

'Ah!" he said when last of all Burchard and Liutgard knelt and gave their oath. He looked up into Sanglant's eyes. His own were free of any taint. "Ah! The pain is gone.

My son. My beloved son."

The light passed out of him. His soul was released, there one instant and in the next gone utterly.

Sanglant bowed his head, too stricken even to weep any longer. At first, the rustling seemed part of the strange night, more ash falling, perhaps, or leaves tickling down through dead and blasted branches.

Then he looked up.

They had knelt, all of them; all but the Ashioi, who waited. Tears streaked Liutgard's cheeks. Burchard sobbed silently, shoulders shaking. Beyond, as far back into the forest as Sanglant could see, captains and sergeants and men-at-arms knelt to honor their dead king.

Out of the gloom stumbled two recognizable figures—Lewenhardt and Hathui. The Eagle cried out and flung herself down beside Henry's corpse.

'He died as himself," said Sanglant as she wept, and she shook her head to show she'd understood because she could not speak through her grief. "He died as regnant."

'Tell me, Cousin," said Zuangua a little mockingly behind him. "What does this display of passion and weeping portend?"

Even Wichman had knelt, but he sprang up at the sound of Zuangua's voice and with a roar leaped forward and ripped the imperial banner out of the hawk-woman's grip. He stuck it into the ground behind Sanglant, and he laughed.

'What is your command, Your Majesty?" he said, the words almost a taunt.

Sanglant laid his father's body gently on the ground. He rose, shaking ash from his shoulders. Henry's blood streaked his hands. His sword, shield, and lance were gone, but his father's last gift to him had been the most powerful weapon of all.

'The storm is upon us," he said, letting his voice carry. Ash and grief and exhaustion made him hoarse—but then, his voice always sounded like that. "I do not know what else we will have to endure to gain victory."

What I will have to endure, he thought, if Liath and Blessing are dead.

'We have allies." He looked at Zuangua, but the Ashioi prince only shrugged, unable to comprehend his words, holding himself aloof. ,' hope we have allies.

'We have enemies. Some of them are those we trusted in the past."

And some, like Adelheid and Hugh and Anne, don't yet know what they have lost.

'Who follows me?"

'Your Majesty," said Duchess Liutgard and Duke Burchard. Said the noble companions who remained. Said the captains still living. Said Lewenhardt, speaking for his own faithful soldiers.

Henry's army echoed them, every one. They were his. He ruled them now.

ruled the heavens. Her net of magic spanned the Earth as the exiled land belonging to the Lost Ones shifted out of the aether in its attempt to return to its earthly roots. That net quivered under so much weight, but it held. Even lacking three crowns it would hold, it would cast the Aoi land back into the aether, but beneath the weaving the first intimations of doom swept across the land as lightning torched the sky and earthquakes shuddered across the entire continent of Novaria. What the Seven Sleepers did not understand and refused to understand and cared nothing for was that by dooming the Lost Ones they were dooming Earth. They could not change their course now. They would not. They had won.

Anne's triumph was as palpable as sand—and like sand, it could be washed away with one tidal surge.

Liath called fire from the deeps.

The eruption of molten rock exploded straight up through the heart of the stone circle that was itself the heart of the weaving. Liath felt Anne die. She felt Anne's life ripped from her. The skopos hadn't time even for a single startled exclamation. Between one breath and the next she was dead.

The souls of all of Anne's retinue and Anne's army were torn from their bodies as the power of the blast vaporized every living thing that stood or moved within a league of the crown. It stripped away the topsoil to expose the rock beneath. Ash and pulverized stone sprayed upward. The rock hammered to earth in a hail that struck up and down the coast and made the Middle Sea foam for leagues outward. The ash rose into the heavens as a churning plume that soon covered half the sky. Lava poured over what remained of the cliff face into the waters, where clouds of steam boiled upward to meld with ash and smoke.

Inside the shelter of her wings Liath witnessed all this and more, the massive destruction she and the WiseMothers had wrought in order to rip apart the spell. The stone crown was obliterated. Anne and her retinue were dead, utterly gone.

And this was only the beginning. This was not even the worst of it. As you sow, so shall you reap. Humankind and their Bwr allies had sown two thousand seven hundred and four years ago and now their descendants faced a bitter harvest.

The storm was coming.

Now.

She bound her wings tightly around her as the impact reverberated through the earth.

Shock waves coursed deep through the ground. Out of the ruptured sea rose a vast wave that radiated outward in all directions and which crashed against the cliffs of the erupting coastline in a blast of hissing vapor which at once cooled and heated and poured yet more impetus into the towering plume rising above the land. In a short time, or in hours, the wave would reach the other shorelines. There was nothing Liath could do to warn the thousands who would drown.

The displaced air from the impact swept outward in a vast ring that rolled over land and sea on all sides, uprooting trees, burning grass, and what close by resounded in an eerie silence was heard as a roar of bangs and knocks and booms far away and even in so distant a place as Darre itself. Folk stopped in the streets in terror and fear only to see a worse horror as the earth began to shake and the volcano long smoking and rumbling to their west erupted with a slurry of ash and mud. Down the western coast of Aosta other sleeping volcanoes shuddered into life. There was nothing Liath could do to warn those living too close to this rim of fire, now woken.

I had no choice.

No doubt Anne had spoken such words, too, as she convinced herself to take on the task that had led to her destruction, although she had believed herself all along to be the righteous one. To stop Anne Liath had made herself into Anne.

No matter.

The deed was done.

She cast herself onto a streaming river of fire and let it carry her to the surface, just in time, because already the flow abated as the WiseMothers withdrew the press of their minds. Already the salt water cooled and stiffened the outer layer of the flowing lava.

Already the flood of aether out of the heavens diminished, and the strength of her wings weakened; they began to shred and fall apart as the Earth reasserted its pull.

She found herself, naked, clutching only her bow, on a stairway formed out of the crust of a lava flow, all swirls and coils in the hardening skin. Everything else had burned off her, even the Quman quiver, even Lucian's friend—her sword. She ran up into the open air. A thin crust sizzled against her feet, cracking under her weight. Smoke hissed up from narrowing vents. Any other creature would have died in such heat and such fumes, but she was born half of fire, and this was her element.

A blessedly cool wind greeted her as she climbed to the rim of the crater made by the eruption and, reaching the top, wiped sweat from her brow. The wind that had blasted outward had left the air clean beneath a heavy layer of ashy cloud extending to all horizons. The sky turned a hideous red in the east, heralding sunrise.

She heard the shush and slap of a distant shoreline, which had once lain directly below the stone circle, and she wondered whether Gnat and Mosquito had survived. She wondered if anyone had survived, because standing on the crest of a ragged ridgeline with desolation on three sides, she felt she was alone in a vast new world.

EPILOUGE

Nothing is permanent except change.

There the shoreline had once gnawed at the base of cliffs, but no longer. She stared out over new land extending as far as she could discern to the south and east into the Middle Sea. Mist wreathed its heights and valleys in a silvery gleam. Far away, felt more than heard, a moaning call rose out of the mist, the cry of a horn summoning the lost.

The Ashioi had come home.

IN the distant haze where sky met sea, islands rose out of the sound like teeth marking the horizon. The water gleamed, as still and smooth as burnished metal; seen from the height of the ridge, the swells were lost under the glare of the sun. The carter and the guardsmen paused on the path to wipe their brows against the terrible heat.

He had no shelter and no water to slake his thirst, and anyway over the numberless days of his captivity he had grown accustomed to the sun's hammer. Today was especially hot and humid although he had an idea that it ought to be cooler, but he couldn't remember why, and there was no wind at all, only the expectation of wind and a pressure in his ears as though someone were squeezing the air all around them. The heavens to the west and north were hazy along the ocean but clear above, while thunderous clouds had piled up and up in a black mass to the east and south.

'Don't like the look of that," said Heric to his fellows, nodding to the east. "Must be a mighty tempest. Hsst! I've never seen clouds like those, not in all my life."

'Let's get on," said Ulf the carter. "I don't like being exposed up on this ridge."

'Dragonback, the townsfolk call it!" snickered Heric. "No doubt some girl or other does creep up here on a dark night with her lover to make dragonback! I'd do it!"

Ulf sighed. "The folk in Osna village weren't too friendly, neither. I didn't see no girls making eyes at us. I wish we was going back to Lavas Holding and rid of this stinking creature."

'Soon enough," said Heric. "We've a few holdings and villages yet to ride through before we're safe home."

Ulf snorted, scratching his nose, then spat on the dirt. He was not an unkind man, but he clung to his superstitions. "If we get safe home! Those clouds look ugly to me. These locals aren't any too happy to see us, neither. They're too worried about bad weather and a poor harvest to mind that foul creature."

'It's him what ruined their harvests with untimely rain and cold snaps! Brought about by his sin!"

'Maybe so." Ulf shrugged. The other three guardsmen yawned; they followed Heric's orders and ate their food but otherwise hadn't any enthusiasm for the job. "But enough's enough, that's what I say."

'Get on!" said Heric irritably. He had a willow switch and with this he slapped his mount's croup to get it moving.

Ulf had a softer hand on the oxen. The cart lurched forward and they creaked down the path at a steady clop. A scatter of buildings lay beyond the tail of the ridge, arranged around a roofless church and a stone tower, which was still intact. For a bit they lost sight of the ruins as the path reached the base of the ridge, wound through a tumble of boulders and then, turning to loam, struck through a quiet forest, but soon they emerged into overgrown fields and trudged up past broken gates to take shelter for the night in the tower. Ulf watered the oxen at a stream and set them to graze, and the horses were given their oats and let wander within what remained of the fence that had once kept livestock within the compound.

Before building a fire for their supper, they rolled the wagon up along one side of the church, offering a bit of shelter if it stormed. From here he could stare at the curving ridgeline or out over a stony beach onto the sound. The water was so still that it seemed like solid ground, where a man might walk for leagues and leagues on its surface out into the wild lands beyond the guardian islands. Out there, strange creatures traveled and wept, or so he remembered. There were fish with the faces of men and men with claws in their hands who raced across the sea on ships as sleek and effortless as dragons.

Memory came in flashes as sharp and as brief as lightning.

That window, half obscured by a rosebush run wild, opened into the scriptorium. The monastery boasted a precious Book of Unities bound between covers plated with gold and encrusted with jewels.

'I know this place," he whispered. He saw in his mind's eye an old man leaning on a stick, dressed in monk's robes. But he was dead, wasn't he? Hadn't they all died? The storm had come in off the sea and slaughtered them all and burned and destroyed their home as it would sweep in again.

'Shut him up, will you?" demanded Heric. "All that babbling about dead dead dead makes me want to hit him across the face, and I will!"

'Poor mad soul," muttered Ulf, but the carter brought him a crust of bread to gnaw on and, quite unexpectedly, a skin of ale so rich that he had to sip at it and not gulp it down lest he spew it all back up. At first it unsettled his stomach, but then it warmed him enough that he could curl onto the hard bed of the wagon amidst the remains of dirty straw, shut his eyes, and doze as the guardsmen gossiped by their fire in the shelter of the deserted tower. He heard their voices. "Don't like the look of the sky."

'What, them clouds? Not enough wind to blow them over us." "Nay, look at the color of that sky. It's not natural. There's some terrible nasty storm coming, mark my word."

'What bitch's tits did you suckle from? You've been barkening to the madman's voice."

'Oh, shut up, Heric. What have you got against him anyway?" "He stole my girl!" "A filthy beast like that? Not likely."

'He was all cleaned up in a lord's tunic and bright jewels. Of course he stole her! Thief and cheat—"

Thief and cheat, he slipped into darkness and he dreamed. A noble youth sleeps in the midst of a heap of gold and gems with six companions surrounding him, but out of the shadows creep gnarled figures whose skin gleams like pewter, whispering and tapping, seeking.

Seeking, rivers of fire forge new paths deep within the Earth, and the world trembles.

The storm is upon them.

The Holy One bends her gray head as she watches the sun set. From her vantage point beside the stone crown, the farthest east of its kind, she watches the weaving plotted and planned in ancient days come to life once more in the hands of those who are now her enemies, not her allies.

She is so weary. A part of her hopes this night will be her last, that she is too old to endure the force of the storm. She does not weep, because she has lived too long and made too many difficult choices to weep any longer along the trail of years, a path down which she can never return or retrace her steps.

But there was one whom she loved unforeseeably, inexplicably. Sorcery exacts a cost, although humankind in their immense arrogance have not always understood this principle, and each gesture, each choice, will be counterbalanced by a consequence of equal weight. Yet affection drowns reason. Although she knew it for a foolish act, she reached onto the paths of the dead and expended more power than she ought because she wanted to make happy the one she loved like a daughter. Adica. She had no daughter of her own among the Horse people; that was forbidden. She loved too well where she should not have loved at all, and that act of love rebounded on her in a way she never anticipated or desired. By meddling in the paths of the dead she dislodged the stream of her own soul.

For so long death has been denied her. She witnessed the unfolding effects of her great undertaking, and all did not transpire as she hoped it would. She lived while her people slowly died off and diminished, as humankind migrated into their ancient homeland, stole or gelded their puras, and hunted down their daughters one by one. She wants to sleep, but she must stay wakeful in order to save her people, whom she doomed although she never meant to. She will stay awake one more night and then she will lie down and die and let others carry the burden she has carried for so long.

Be careful what you wish for "Now!" cries Stronghand, heeding the command of the WiseMothers. He leaps forward with ax raised high. The blade glints and where light flashes Lightning turns the sky white and in the place of thunder he hears a hoarse, gleeful battle cry as the ground begins to shake 'Ai, God! Ai, God! Get the horses!"

He shuddered awake, startled up by the earth shaking under him, and jerked to the end of his chains as he stared at the shadows of men chasing their mounts off into the forest to the north. Even the oxen tossed their heads and trotted away, spooked by that earthquake; Ulf, cursing, ran after them. Iron bit into his wrists and ankles, drawing blood, as he strained after them, but they had forgotten him.

Overhead, the sky was a sheet of lightning that veiled the stars, painting the heavens a color as loathsome as that of a corpse, life and soul drained from it. Along the shoreline the water had receded far out past the line of ebb tide, exposing the seabed and a line of sharp rocks along the curve of the ridge. Fish flopped in the shallows. He drew in breath, although the air felt like soup in his lungs.

A rumbling roar shook the ground and pitched the cart sideways so hard that it tumbled over onto one side and the post to which he was bound cracked and broke in half. The tower groaned as it leaned sideways and then in a roar collapsed entirely. Dust and grit rolled over him, choking him. He lay stunned, hearing the screams of panicked horses far away.

The wind dissipated the cloud with a sudden fierce blow that blasted the shroud of dust out over the sea.

The ground hadn't done shifting. It pitched and yawed as though it were alive and when he was able to lift his pounding head, he saw the great Dragonback Ridge splinter as sheets of rock cascaded onto the waters of the sound. It buckled. The noise of its shattering deafened him. The booming and crashing hurt his ears so badly that it brought tears to his eyes. It moved.

The dragon's tail lashed sideways, snapping trees. As its flank heaved up, dirt roared into the sound and buried the old shoreline. Where it lifted a claw and set it down, the earth shook. Atop a slender neck, its head lifted into the heavens. It slewed round its vast body, bent its neck, and lowered its head down to the ground not a stone's toss from his cage where he lay trapped by his chains. He struggled to his knees to face it.

It had scales the color of gold, so bright that he squinted. Its eyes had the luster of pearls. A single tear of blood squeezed from a cut on its belly, splashed, then coursed down through the furrows made by its claws to gush over him. That viscous liquid burned right through his rags, down to his heart.

My heart is the Rose. Any heart is the Rose of Healing that knows compassion and lets it bloom.

He stared in shock at the creature's beauty as it blinked, examining him in return, then huffed a cloud of steam, reared its head up, and opened its vast wings. Their span shadowed the entire monastery. It bunched its haunches, waited a breath, ten breaths, a hundred breaths.

He heard the gale coming before he felt it; he heard it cutting through the forest, downing trees, a wailing wind out of the southeast.

The wind hit. The dragon leaped.

The gale whipped over him. The dragon's shadow passed, the weight of its draft battering him down. The sea raged out beyond the shore. God have mercy on any soul caught out in this storm, but every soul on Earth was caught in this storm whether they willed it or no, whether they huddled in shelter or braced themselves against it out in the open. The stars had gone out. All he could see above was a swirling haze mixed of dust and ash and wind and blowing foliage and trailing sparks from the vast net of the weaving that Adica had made and that was now at long last finished.

Someone would have to pick up the pieces.

The roar of the sea filled his ears and a huge wave swept over him although no wave could ever possibly wash so high up on the ground. He rolled in surf, caught under water, pinioned by the chains.

He drowned.

On the northeastern shore of the Middle Sea where the center jewel in the Crown of Stars blazes in glory, the Earth opens up to engulf the crown in a pillar of molten fire.

Across the land the Crown of Stars and the spell woven through it tangles and collapses in on itself. A shadow emerges out of the air to materialize up against the knife edge cliffs that abut this shoreline of the Middle Sea.

All down the western shoreline of the great boot ofAosta the ridge of volcanoes shakes into life. Lava surges out of the earth. Cracks yawn in once quiet fields. Mud and ash bury slopes and towns and streams.

The ocean churns as all the water displaced by the returning land floods outward, heading for distant coasts. Where the tidal wave hits, the shoreline is utterly drowned.

The Earth groans. Along the northern sea the mouths of rivers run dry as the land jolts a finger's span upward to counterbalance the abrupt weight that has slammed into the Middle Sea. In places, rivers run backward. Ports are left high and dry.

Everywhere the ground shakes. The windstorm that raked across the broad lands dissipates in wilderness where there are only dumb, uncomprehending beasts to sniff at its last gasping residue.

Deep in the earth, goblins race through ancient labyrinths, seeking their lost halls.

Out in the ocean, the merfolk circle, diving deep to escape the maelstrom above.

Out on the steppe lands, the Horse people hunker down in hollows that offer them some protection against the howling wind. The magic of the Holy One shelters them even as it drains the life right out of her.

Those who were most harmed in ancient days ride out the storm, for they have the least to lose now. It is humankind who suffer most. Maybe Liat'at'dano knew all along that this would be the case; maybe she planned it this way, harming the two greatest threats to her people— the Cursed Ones and her human allies.

Maybe the WiseMothers suspected humankind would take the brunt of the backlash.

Maybe they had no choice, knowing that the belt was already twisted, that the path was already cleared through the forest on which their feet must walk.

They speak to him through rock and through water, although the salty sea almost drowns their voice.

It. Is. Done. You. Have. Saved. Us.

The link retreats, and their presence withdraws.

The tidal wave sucked back into the sea, pulling every loose piece of debris with it into the sound. At first, the wagon was caught in that riptide, but the church wall trapped the wagon among its fallen stones and the chains held him. Battered but alive, he was left wheezing and choking on sodden ground as the water receded.

The sun came up. It was a cold, cloudy day; there was no blue sky visible, and an ashy haze muted the daylight, but nevertheless the world had survived. He had survived. He was weak and exhausted and sopping wet and hungry and thirsty and filthy and yet despite all this at peace.

It was done.

He had seen the beginning and now the ending. The crown of stars was obliterated.

The Ashioi had returned from their exile.

'Lord save us!" said a man's voice, heard as through a muffling cloak. "Can anyone have survived that? Go on, then, boys!"

Hounds barked. He heard them pattering through pools of muddy water, paws slip-slapping on the ground. He tried to open his eyes, but a salty grime encrusted them, and it wasn't until tongues licked him, wiping away all that blinded him, that he could see again.

'Sorrow!" he whispered. "Rage!"

They whined as they bumped up against him, waggling their hindquarters in ecstasy.

They were thin, and scruffy, and overjoyed. The salt had cracked the bindings that shackled him, and as the hounds swarmed over him, the chains fell away.

A man loomed into view. He uttered a gasp of shock, or a murmured curse, or perhaps a prayer.

"Alain?" He knelt beside him but didn't touch him, not yet. Instead he dragged the heavy chains off his body. He was weeping. "I heard, lad, but I had to see for myself.

They said you'd gone over the ridge. And that storm! Ai, Lady. There's at least three dead in the village and I haven't been back home yet to see how Bel and the others fared. My God. What man could be so cruel as to treat another man in this way?"

He cracked open his eyes. "Father?"

Henri looked much older; he had many more lines on his face, and his hair was gray.

But the face was so blessedly familiar, so beloved. There were tears on the merchant's cheeks.

'Ai, God, lad, can you forgive me? Even though you weren't the old count's son, you never deserved this. I raised you better than to lie and cheat in such a way. I suppose the old count chose for himself and how could you say him nay? There was a girl he'd bedded who bore a stillborn child near or about when you was born. He might have thought otherwise, might have insisted you were his. Old sorrows take men that way sometimes. I should have trusted you. I should have known you better. That's how I failed you, Son."

The words spilled out in a rush as strong as the tide, leaving Alain stranded and out of breath. He was still dazzled and shaken and stricken, and the hounds were laying half on top of him, pressing as close as they could.

Henri frowned, wiped away tears, and spoke again. "Off, you brutes!"

Amazingly the hounds crept back meekly, their soft growls more like groans of protest. Hesitant, as if he wasn't sure he had the right to touch him, Henri laid a hand on Alain's arm. "Here, lad. Come now, get up. Lean on me."

With help, Alain was able to stand, although his legs were shaky. The sea churned, the water a foamy, dirty gray, and the islands were half hidden within the murky haze. The ruins had been washed clean by the tide, and debris littered the old shoreline, but the strangest sight of all was the new inlet carved out where Dragonback Ridge had once risen. Trees lay tumbled like so many scattered sticks down a ragged, rocky slope that was cut, where the earth met the water, into channels separated by the heaps of dirt and rock that had sprayed out into the sound when the dragon woke. Along the curve of the bay, distant and mostly obscured by haze, he saw the tiny cottages and longhouses marking Osna village up on its rise overlooking the strand. The village was more or less intact as far as he could tell from this distance.

Henri stared, too. The hounds sat patiently. "I've never seen such a night as that," said the merchant in a quavering voice. "That dragon come alive. That tempest. That wave off the sea. It took Mis tress Garia's granddaughter with it. Maybe it's the end of days, after all. Maybe so."

'It is the end," said Alain, surprised at how steady his voice was. He glanced down at his naked body and was shocked to see how wasted and thin he'd become. "It is the beginning, too. There'll be hard times to come. But I pray the folk of Osna village have faced the worst. I pray they will be spared any greater hardships."

Henri looked at him searchingly, and with an odd expression of respect. "Do you know of this? Do you know if it were God's hands that brushed us?"

'I know of it. It was humankind caused this, not God."

The merchant reached up and wiped at his cheek, then frowned. "What's this mark on your face? You hadn't such a birthmark before. Is it a scar? It looks like a rose."

The Lady's Rose. For so long he had misunderstood what it was—or maybe the Lady of Battles had. Maybe she had misled him. Maybe the Lady of Battles was not his patron but his enemy.

'It's the Rose of Healing, Father. It's to remind me of how much there is to do. Adica didn't mean to cause so much harm, but now someone has to try to pick up the pieces. I'll do it. I must. But if I could just sleep a little first. If I could just eat something…"

'Bel will have my head! You've been starved and treated no better than a wild dog.

Here, now, come along." He began walking. Alain had to lean on him to stay upright, but it was easy enough; Henri had a strong arm. "I've a cloak to cover you and a horse for you to ride. You look too ill and worn to walk so far."

'Where are we going?"

'Home, Son. We're going home."