The Gathering Storm
“We know of a plant that will soothe the wound. Rest. Listen to the Old Ones. We will bring nourishment, and brackweed for healing.”
“So be it,” she said.
Mosquito rolled sideways, got most of the way into the water, then vanished, with a heave of his tail. Water boiled up to her toes before subsiding across the uneven floor. He was gone. Gnat remained, silent and watchful.
She stretched full length against the earth and laid a cheek against the ground. The surface abraded her skin. For a long time she remained there with eyes open, just breathing, emptying her mind, trying not to remember the battle. Or Sanglant. Or Blessing. Or Hanna. Or Da. Or the fire daimones.
Let. It. Go.
She shut her eyes.
Stone was only a blanket covering the deeps of the Earth where fire flowed in vast rivers hotter than any forge. The Earth churns around a dragon’s heart of fire and a cold, heavy mass at its innermost core.
Listen. Swift. Daughter. Listen. The. Storm. Is. Coming. The. Earth. Will. Crack. To. Pieces. If. We. Do. Not. Aid. Her. Make. Room. Make. Room. Will. You. Help. Or. Hinder. Speak. Daughter. Can. You. Hear. Us.
The fires within the Earth were a conduit linking her to the Old Ones who spoke through the earth, who were part of the earth and yet apart from the earth, slow as ages yet with the sharp intellect of humankind and the powerful dreams of creatures long since vanished from Earth who were called dragons, children of fire and earth.
No. No. So. We. Thought. First. But. Now. We. Know. Better. This. We. Have. Learned. From. The. Fallen. One. The. Weaving. Must. Open. To. Allow. The. Song. Of. Power. The. Resonance. Between. Land. And. Land. Make. Room. Or.
“What of the Ashioi? Are they doomed?”
Make. Room.
Open the weaving to make room, to soften the blow, but close it before Anne could cast the Ashioi land away again.
“How?” she whispered as hope bloomed in her heart because now she recognized where she was. She knew how the threads connected them. She lay directly below the central crown. She lay buried in the earth, and they called to her through the ancient resonance that linked all the crowns each to the others. What they spoke of made a sudden, awful sense. She had to trust that they were her allies. She had no other choice, not anymore.
“How can we do this?” she asked.
4
THEY bound him to the wagon’s bed with chains that rubbed his ankles and wrists raw. Each jolt as the cart hit ridges and ruts in the road slammed him into the railing until his hip and torso bruised all along that side. Splinters stung in his bare arms, but he hadn’t enough give in the chain to be able to raise his hands to pick them out. When it rained, he got soaked; the sun burned him where no clouds protected him from its glare.
It was still a merciful existence because, slowly, over days or weeks, the rivers of blood receded from his sight. He was weak, and so dizzy more often than not that he could barely stand. He had long since forgotten what was real and what was hallucination: a hamlet might rumble into sight and children might throw rotting fruit at him, laughing and screaming, the two sounds too close to untangle because of the desperation ringing in their voices, and yet as he stared trying to make sense of the scene or wincing at the impact as a wormy apple struck him full in the abdomen, a flood would crash down drowning the huts and casting beams and thatching into foaming waves like kindling, but if he blinked, he might be staring at forest again or at the sea, for it often seemed he stood at the stem of a dragon ship with oars beating away at the waters and the wind blustering in his bone-white hair.
“Who are you?” cried the guardsmen who attended him as they jerked the wagon to a halt on the commons and folk ventured in from the fields or out from their workshops and cottages to see what their lord had brought ‘round on procession. “What’s your name, noble lord?”