The Gathering Storm (96 page)

Hathui’s anguished testimony crowded back into his mind, for with his excellent memory he had certainly forgotten nothing she had said to Prince Sanglant, although it was difficult to think with such a roar around him and so many bodies pressing forward to look at him, at the miracle. He was the cripple the new emperor had healed.

“Take him,” said Hugh’s voice, almost lost in the uproar.

The stretcher rocked and he rose into the air, reaching, grasping, gasping.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

They shoved past the yammering hordes and hurried out through a side door and then by halls and courtyards heedless of his pleading to be let down, to return to the king who was not king any longer but now emperor. All that way he heard, fading, the noise of the multitude and, in counterpoint, a hymn.

They came at last to a silent chamber where sunlight streamed through open windows to illuminate murals painted on the wall. They set him down on a pallet in a corner behind two handsome chairs placed on a low dais, drew a curtain, and left him alone except for two guards at the door.

There he wept, but for what reason he was not sure.

A miracle!

Maybe he wept for the lie.

STRONGHAND’S ship sailed into Rikin Fjord on a calm day in late spring. Deacon Ursuline was among those who came to the strand to greet him, and she looked hale and healthy, as did all those who labored in the fields and pastures.

“My lord,” she said, inclining her head respectfully. He had learned to interpret human facial expressions and it appeared that she was actually glad to see him. “We have received word of your triumphs in Alba. I pray that some few of the young people I am training in the way of God may be sent to that land to bring the Light to those who worship the Enemy.”

“The queen of Alba is dead,” he agreed, “and her heirs with her. If there are any tree sorcerers left, they have fled into
the wilderness and the high country. I do not wish to lose you, Deacon, because you keep the peace here in my birthplace, but if there are any disciplas you wish to send to Alba, I will see that they will with the next ships that journey there.”

“You are generous, my lord.”

“Perhaps. If belief in your God makes the Alban people obedient and prosperous, then it is worthwhile to have them believe.”

“It is true that good deeds are most fruitful when they rise from a righteous heart, but you do the work of God despite your disbelief, my lord.” She looked past him at the group of clerics disembarking down a ramp. “It seems you have brought clerics of your own, my lord. What are these?”

“They have come to seek the wisdom of the WiseMothers, although I do not believe they understand what they will find. Make them welcome, Deacon, and feed them. I must give my report to OldMother.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “She will be glad to hear it, my lord.”

He had taken a step away but turned back, caught by her tone and the odd choice of words.

She anticipated him. “We have been good stewards of this land, my lord, as you will see, and have served you faithfully. You have been gone for a long time, so I have gotten into the habit of consulting with OldMother when I have questions.”

“Have you?”

“We have much to learn from each other.”

“As do I, it seems.”

She glanced at him sharply and pushed her scarf back from her head self-consciously. Although her face and hands were clean, her nails had dirt under them and the hem of her robe was stained, as though she had recently come from the gardens. “Does this displease you, my lord?” Her tone was not at all submissive. Quite the contrary.

He bared his teeth, the merest flash, and had the pleasure of seeing her eyes widen in alarm and, an instant later, an ironic smile lift her lips.

“Had OldMother not wished to speak with you, she would never have allowed you to set foot in her hall,” he answered. “So be it.” Yet as he strode up to Oldmother’s hall, he puzzled over her words. It should not have surprised him that Old
Mother would speak with the one who stood as OldMother for the Soft Ones, weak as they were, but nevertheless the comment disquieted him. No son of the tribe entered Oldmother’s hall without her invitation, and her invitation came only to those sons who would lead, breed, or die. He had never heard of any time in all the long years since the RockChildren walked the Earth that one among the OldMothers had spoken to humans. Why now?

The SwiftDaughters had seen him coming by means of watch fires that burned along the fjord to alert the inhabitants of approaching ships, and they gathered outside the hall to welcome him. He had forgotten the unexpected beauty of their forms, or perhaps he had simply never appreciated it. Their hair shone with the gleam of ore, and this glamour wove veins of light into their skin as well, so that the midday sun made them shimmer. They moved with a grace no clumsy human limbs could imitate, and their cold lips and bright eyes held a wealth of expression as they danced in greeting. Yet like his cousins they were, as far as he knew, nameless; unlike most human females, they would never breed and produce hatchlings of their own.

Wasn’t that the weakness of the RockChildren, who were stronger in so many other ways? Humankind would always outnumber them.

He crossed the threshold into the vast dimness of OldMother’s hall, with its impossible sweep of stars glittering above despite the hall having a roof. As he walked forward, the ground transformed from beaten dirt to hard rock beneath his feet. An abyss opened before him, and he dared walk no closer to OldMother’s high seat. A winter wind chilled his face and torso, blowing up from unimaginable depths. Ice formed on his braid and coated his lips.

Her voice scraped. “You are bold, Stronghand. You set your ships onto the seas and fight to possess other lands than the one you were born to. You force the many chieftains to bow down before one leader, who is yourself. You seek both the living and the dead. You invite sorcerers into our homeland who care nothing for us although it is their kind who gave us life. What will come of these plans?”

“That remains to be seen. I use the tools I find.”

“In aiding the strangers, do you not put your own plans in jeopardy?”

“Perhaps. I will take the risk. They speak of a great cataclysm set into motion by their ancient enemies, whom they call the Aoi—the Lost Ones.”

Her silence encouraged him to go on, yet it seemed to him that she was not alone, that many more presences listened as he spoke. “They seek a stone crown in these northern lands through which they desire to weave a spell that will reach across the lands from north to south, from east to west.”

“They will find what they seek,” she replied, “yet it is not what they think it is.”

“They claim to seek only knowledge and wisdom, but I can see that they seek power as well.”

“In this you follow the path of humankind, Stronghand. Use caution.”

“I do.”

“You have a question.”

The statement caught him off guard, but he knew how to recover quickly, and he knew better than to attempt to deceive OldMother. “Why did you not give your sons names?”

“Because they never asked for them.”

“Now they do.”

The blistering wind abruptly calmed, and ceased. He saw nothing, only darkness, but OldMother’s presence enveloped him.

“An inescapable storm is coming, Stronghand. This my sisters and I know. Prepare yourself and those who shelter under your hand. In this storm long ago the RockChildren were born. The Mothers of our tribes do not wish our children to perish, but to survive, when it returns.”

“What must I do?”

“Step forward.”

He knew better than to disobey. One step plunged him into the chasm, falling and falling through blackness.

turning and turning and turning and a pause for unquiet sleep with the muttering of the madman infesting his dreams, and then up again, and again, and again, a hopeless round of labor that has neither beginning nor end, and still the wheel
turns under his feet as he walks endlessly and never gets anywhere, the wheel rumbling around and around until he no longer recalls anything except this pit of darkness and the turning of the wheel.

Every time as he drifts off to sleep, the madman plodding in the traces whispers such a tale of blood and fear and anger that images pollute his dreams until all he sees is fire and weeping, although at times he has a momentary flash of surprise that he can see at all, even if only in his dreams
.

“No, no, I pray you my lord leave her be she is just young yet an innocent my daughter if it please you she’s never done any ai God the blood no you must look you will look I’ll kill you look at the baby at her face I’m glad he is dead is that what you’ve done to her?”

The water drawn up from the depths to keep dry the shaft below spills endlessly into the ditch where it will flow onward to a pool where the next wheel draws it up to the next level and up and up, and the flood never ends, it just keeps turning and spilling
.

“Nay do not you go there I will kill him dead and cut off his balls and why shouldn’t I just look at the blood I hate you my poor child for it won’t bring anyone back kill you kill you kill you.”

He falls because there is no bottom to this pit, it just goes on and on, and one day the pain of the madman reaches his tongue at long last, and a thing stirs there he no longer has a name for
.

He speaks, although his voice is rough from disuse
.

“Why do you despair?”

A horrible silence follows his words except for the rumble of the wheel and the splash and gurgle of running water and the echoes of the wheels above, whose turning never ceases
.

Silence
.

“Who are you?” asks the madman, although he does not stop walking the wheel which mutters under the tread of his feet, hard as fate. “What happened to the mute?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have they put a new one down here? Did the mute die? Are you a spy for them, come to wiggle out with my secrets? I know where the treasure is buried, it’s buried with my treasure,
my sweet, my innocent. And if I could have killed him who despoiled her I would have but he took what he wished and went his way for he was a lord among men and we are only the dirt he walked on. Did you see the blood?”

“I can’t see. Was harm done to someone you cared for?”

“Don’t mock me!” the madman roars, pounding his fists against wood. The wheel ratchets to a stop. “Don’t mock me! I protected her! All of them! But what could I do, for they had swords and spears and I only my hoe and shovel and them made of wood, nothing to do when they came round God I was helpless I was afraid 1 let them take the girl for fear of what they would do to the rest of us though she wept and clung to me and now I am punished for it, for wasn’t I a coward, didn’t I kill her with my own hands by not fighting them?”

The madman weeps, while above voices shout and there comes the noise of men descending to discover what has happened to the wheel. The one who was once silent rises from the cold pallet of stone where he rests and gropes along the passage. In an odd way he can see the walls, because his body senses the presence of stone so close that he feels its respiration, each breath seeping like the damp through its pores, as slow as ages upon ages. It’s as if the stone wishes to speak to him but its voice can’t quite reach him.

“Hurry,” he says as he feels against his cheek the up-welling of cold from the lowest shaft. He grasps the rim of the still wheel. “You must walk. Or they’ll whip you.”

“What care you for a man with blood on his hands? I am a murderer! I am! I am! I killed him, the one who done it! Not him, but his servant, for I couldn’t touch him! I killed the one who took the leavings when the lord was done. It was all I could do. She was a good girl. She was a good girl. It was all I could do. My firstborn. My treasure.”

But the madman begins walking, weeping and blubbering until words and sobs meld together, for it is a different whip that goads him on
.

“Ai, God,” he says as he listens to the roll of the wheel and the disjointed rambling of the madman. “No wonder you grieve. I wish you may find peace.”

No chasm after all.

Stronghand stumbled into a ditch, and his feet slipped on gravel as water purled against his shins. The shock of spring water wrenched him into awareness, and he noticed how still it had become, as if the world held its breath.

Into this troubling silence OldMother spoke.

“We see into the heart of the Earth and we sense the threads that bind the heavens. Our memories stretch long, and long, into the past, but a shadow lies over our sight. We do not see everything. We are blinded where our memory most needs sight. The threads that weave heaven and Earth are not haphazard. Find this one who lives in your dreams. He has sight where we have none.”

“He is blind! He has lost his memory, even his name. How can he help you?”

“It is difficult to know who is lost and who is blind. Do you know?”

The question gave him pause. “I do not. What of the foreigners I brought, the circle priests? They, too, have a quest.”

“My daughters will guide them to the fjall. There we shall see if they are wise or foolish, whether their plans threaten us or aid us. As for you, son of Rikin: Find him. He has seen what we have not. He can tell us what we need to know.”

TOO weak to move, Zacharias lay on the pallet and stared through a gap in the curtain at the murals decorating the walls, scenes from ancient days of the first empire and before, the
Lay of Helen
and the triumphs of the Son of Thunder, and scenes he did not recognize of doe-eyed women riding on the backs of winged sphinxes. Because the servant hadn’t completely closed the curtain separating him from the chairs, he could also gaze across the floor toward the doors that opened onto the corridor. The alternating pattern of white-and-black tiling on the floor made him dizzy, and he faded into a doze but started awake when a babble of voices surged. The doors
were thrown open by guards. Folk streamed into the chamber. Their bright clothing and ringing voices made his head hurt so badly that he covered his eyes with a hand. Since he hadn’t the strength to flee, he could only hope to remain overlooked here in the shadows.