In the Ruins (9 page)

Eldest Uncle and the young warrior were the same man, but one was old and one was young.

Eldest Uncle covered his eyes and trembled. The other shook his head like a madman.

“Brother!”

“How can this be?”

It was only a whisper. Two whispers. She did not know which one spoke. Buzzard Mask released his hold on the old man, and the young one took a step toward the old one and as of one thought they embraced, holding tight, two creatures who in their hearts are one.

“Do you understand it yet?” asked Sanglant’s mother. As she came up beside Liath, she indicated the men with a lift of her chin. She laughed, but not kindly, sensing Liath’s bewilderment.

“Why do you dislike me so much?” Liath asked her.

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“How can you dislike someone you don’t know?”

“I had to listen to my son talk on and on about you in the days we were together—you, and battle. Those are the only two things he’s ever thought deeply about, if a man can be said to think deeply where his cock is concerned.”

“You don’t like your own son?”

“He’s not what I wanted.”

Liath smiled sharply, wishing she could intimidate others with clever words and the stiffening of her shoulders, as Sanglant could. “He’s what he is, no more and no less than that. If you don’t like it, you missed your chance to make him something else, didn’t you? He is Henry’s son, not yours.”

“Born of humankind,” said Kansi with a sneer.

“Look!” cried Falcon Mask from the wall. She had braced herself with one hand on the highest course of stone as she rose, balancing precariously with drops before and behind. She pointed at the heavens.

The two men released each other, stepping back from the embrace to stare as one at the cloudy sky. How strange it was to see a man both old and young, the same man, as if time had split him into two parts and in its circular discursion finally caught up with itself. There was a wink of light against the clouds as quickly gone.

“We saw two griffins,” said the young man. “But our arrows scared them off.”

Hope leaped in Liath’s heart, but she said nothing.

Eldest Uncle rested a hand on the other one’s shoulder, taking strength there, and gazed at the procession waiting on the White Road. “Who are these? Where have you all come from?”

“We were caught between the worlds in ancient days. Now you have returned, and we are released from the shadows.”

“There are more of you?”

“I was with one group, but we met up with many others. There are more, still, coming this way.”

“All those sent to the frontier before the end,” said Eldest Uncle.

“What do you mean?” asked Sanglant’s mother and Buzzard Mask at the same time.

“I must sit down,” he said apologetically, but it was the young one who helped him up to the tower most solicitously, who sat beside him, staring intently at his face as though to memorize every wrinkle and crease.

“I never thought to see you again,” said the young one. “I thought you were lost to me.”

“I, too. I despaired, but then I lived.” They had an easy way of touching, a hand placed carelessly on the other’s knee or shoulder. It was as though there was a misunderstanding between them and they had forgotten that normally there is an infinitesimal space between one body and the next, that which separates each solitary soul from another.

“You are old.”

“I am eldest.”

“Not bad looking, for an old man! Not like that warty, flabby old priest of a Serpent Skirt.”

They laughed together, almost giggling, suddenly younger than their years, boys again. Brothers. Twins.

“Don’t you see what this means?” demanded Sanglant’s mother with fists on hips, looking disgusted as she watched them slap each other’s arms. “More will come from the north! Cat Mask’s army will grow. We need not fear our enemies any longer, not with such a force.”

“Cat Mask’s army?” asked the young one, turning away from his brother. “Who is Cat Mask? What has he to do with me?”

“Hsst! She-Who-Creates has much to answer for! Will you strut and preen like the rest of the young men and fight for command like so many pissing dogs?”

His eyes narrowed. “You are my daughter by blood. My niece. Do not speak so to your elders, young one!”

“You are younger than I am! I have a grown son! I can speak any way I please!”

“Evidently your daughter more than mine, Zuangua,” said Eldest Uncle with a wheezy laugh. “Quick to temper, slow to wisdom. Both impatient. So I named her, remembering you.”

Instead of answering, Zuangua rose and stared north, a gaze that swept the horizon. Now Liath saw the resemblance to his twin brother, to his niece, and to Sanglant. The lineaments of his face had the same curve and structure. She felt the warmth of a mild, woken desire, seeing him as an attractive man. Until he looked straight at her. His expression shifted, the tightening of lips, the merest wrinkling of the nose, but she felt his scorn, she knew that he recognized her interest and rejected it. Rejected
her
.

His sneer scalded. She wasn’t used to indifference from men. She hadn’t desired or sought their interest, truly, but she had become used to it. Even King Henry, the most powerful man she had ever met, had succumbed.

So I am repaid for my vanity
, she thought, and was cheered enough to smile coldly back at him.

He turned away to address his brother. “We will return, all of us who were caught beyond the White Road when the spell was woven. We who were once shadows are made flesh again. We want revenge for what we suffered. We will return day by day, more coming each day until we are like the floodwaters rising. Once we are all come home, we will make an army and destroy humankind. Our old enemy.”

“We are stronger than I thought!” murmured his niece. “Already more have joined the march than survived in exile!”

“It is not the right path,” said Eldest Uncle.

“So you have always claimed, but see what they did to us.” Zuangua gestured toward the barren wilderness. “This is what humankind made—a wasteland. You are old. Our people are diminished. Kansi said so herself, and if these rags are the best you have to wear, then I see it is true. The humans are many, but they are weak and the cataclysm has hurt them.” He touched the stained cloth that bound his shoulder. “Their king gave this wound to me, but I killed him. He is dead and your grandson risen in his place.”

Risen in his place
.

Liath took a step back. The others did not notice, too intent on Zuangua’s speech.

“He seeks an alliance. We did act in concert when his need was great, but now we must consider him a danger. We cannot trust humankind.”

“We trusted them in the old days.”

“A few. The others always fought us, and will do so again. They will never trust us.”

“They won’t,” said Kansi. “They hate us. They fear us.”

“Do you speak such words even of your son?” Eldest Uncle asked.

“His heart lies with his father. I do not know him.”

“None of us know him. Better to learn what we can, scout the ground, before we act precipitously.”

“Better to act before we are dead!” retorted Zuangua. “So your daughter has advised me.”

“So.” Eldest Uncle sighed and shut his eyes a moment. “The first arrow has pierced deepest. You will believe her, despite what anyone else has to say.”

Liath had backed up four steps by now, one slow sweep at a time so as not to attract attention.

“Look!” cried Falcon Mask from up on the wall. “Is that an eagle?”

On the White Road, a hundred warriors raised their bows and each nocked an arrow.

“Let her go.” Eldest Uncle caught Liath’s gaze and lifted his chin in a gesture uncannily like that of his daughter. The message was unspoken:
Now
!

She bolted. Kansi leaped after her and got hold of the mantle’s hem, but as Liath strained and Kansi tugged, Eldest
Uncle shut his eyes and muttered words beneath his breath. The binding cord fell away and the mantle slipped off her shoulders into the Impatient One’s clutching grip. Kansi stumbled as the tension was released. Liath ran.

“She is most dangerous of all—” cried Kansi.

Other voices called after her.

“That scrawny, filthy creature is a danger to us?”

“Not only a sorcerer, but … walked the spheres—”

“Let her go, Zuangua! I ask this of you, by the bond we shared in our mother’s womb.”

She stumbled over the White Road and tripped and banged her shin as she slipped over bare ground covered with ash and loose stone. The ground seemed to undulate of its own accord under her feet. Sharp edges sliced through her soles. Where her blood spattered on rock, it hissed, and the surface skin of rock gave way, cracking and steaming, as she leaped for a flat boulder whose surface remained solid. She smelled the sting of sorcery, a spell trying to slow and trap her: Ashioi magic, that manipulated the heart of things.

Liath sought her wings of flame, but the Earth bound her. She was trapped by the flesh she had inherited from her father.

“Hai! Hai!” shouted Zuangua far behind. “At will, archers! Do not let her escape!”

She had to turn back to face the attack. A score of arrows went up in flame, in a sheet that caught the next volley. But they would shoot again, and again. Arrows had felled her before. She had only one defense against arrow fire and she could not use it, not even to save her own life. Not again.

She would rather die than see another person melt from the inside out.

“I’ll trap her!” cried Kansi. “The rock will eat her!”

A third volley vaulted into the air toward her and erupted into sparks and a shower of dark ash as she called fire into the shafts. The rock beneath her splintered with a resounding
snap
. The ground cracked open, and she fell.

The gust of wings and a sultry heat swept over her, and the golden griffin swooped down and took her shoulders in
its claws. With a jerk they lurched up, then down so she scraped her knees on rock, then up again, into the air. But not out of range.

More warriors had pressed forward on the road, spreading out at Zuangua’s order to get a better shot. The griffin could not gain height easily. Liath was too heavy. But the beasts, too, were tacticians.

Shouts and screams erupted down the line of waiting Ashioi as the silver male skimmed low over the line of march from behind. That disruption was all it took for them to get out of range and the silver to bank high and head inland.

Held in the griffin’s claws, knowing her weight was a burden, Liath dared not twist in the hope of seeing Eldest Uncle one last time. Her throat was dry and her heart ached. She feared that she would never see him again. What right had his brother and daughter to judge Sanglant out of their own anger at their ancient enemies and thus separate the old man from his only grandchild? Every right, they would say. But it made her angry that Eldest Uncle might never know his grandson or kiss the brow of his great grandchild, if Blessing still lived.

Nay, she knew it in her heart. She had seen true visions. Blessing had survived the cataclysm, just as Sanglant had.

“We will find her,” she swore.

The pain of the griffin’s grip tightening on her shoulders forced tears to her eyes, hot from pain, from anger, and from grief as they flew low over the wasteland and she saw it in all its hideous glory. A blasted wilderness of ash and stone and a skin of still smoking molten rock, cooling and hardening as the days passed. The channel deep into the earth was closed; the Old Ones had seen to that. But the devastation spread for leagues in all directions, and when at last she saw trees again, places where they hadn’t been incinerated, they were blown down all in the same direction. Many trunks still stood, scorched on one side. As they rested and flew and rested and flew, the worst of the destruction eased and she saw vegetation growing again but never sun and rarely rain. Now and again lightning flared to the north. Once, she saw a ragged
man herding a trio of sheep along a dusty path; amazingly, he did not look up when the griffin called, as if he had at last decided it was better not to know.

It’s never better not to know
.

The pain in her shoulders was bad, but enduring that pain brought her closer to her goal. What if she never knew what had happened to the others? If the griffins could not find Sanglant? If they never got Blessing back? Months, or at least weeks, had passed since she and Sorgatani and Lady Bertha and their retinue had stumbled into Anne’s ambush. She might never know whether her faithful companions had survived the storm. Hanna might be dead, and poor Ivar lost forever in the wilderness that is distance, time, and the events that drag us forward on an unwanted path. She had so few that she counted as some manner of kin or companion that she wept to think of losing any, and yet surely she had lost them years ago, the day she crossed through the burning stone and ascended the mage’s ladder. Sanglant was right: she had abandoned them.

I had no choice
.

It was getting dark. She was as ready for a rest from the vista of desolation as the griffin was ready for a respite from the burden of bearing her. The landing in a broad clearing was a tumble, and she skinned one knee but didn’t break anything. A stream’s water, mercifully clear, slaked her thirst, but there was nothing to eat among the withered plants. God, she was so hungry! She was so cold, and her shoulders ached so badly. A claw had torn her skin above her right breast. Blood leaked through the tunic, and it hurt to move her arms to gather grass to press the wound dry.

For a while, as it got dark, she sat with eyes closed and tried to breathe away the pain. The female crouched protectively over her, letting her curl into the shelter of that soft throat and away from the cutting wing feathers, for she had not even a mantle to cover herself with. She dozed, although she had meant to gather sticks for a fire. The griffin huffed and wheezed all night, and Liath slept erratically, waking at intervals to glance at the heavens, but she never saw stars. It was very cold, but the griffin, like
her, had fire woven into its being, and that kept her alive, just as the pigs had once kept her alive.