No wonder Sister Rosvita was surprised to hear that Sanglant had taken the throne, when she had his legitimate sister riding with her.
“My lady?” she said, not sure what to say or how to approach this delicate matter. Ai, God. Sapientia had vanished as a prisoner of the Pechanek Quman. She had no reason to love her brother and every reason to hate him, and here she sat. Her brooding stare was beginning to frighten Liath, who had long since lost her fear of most threats from knowing how easily she could destroy them. The desire for revenge was beyond her power, and it scared her.
How would Sanglant react when the sister he’d led to her doom reappeared on the scene?
“There, there, lady,” said the seated attendant, chafing Sapientia’s hand between her own. “Best if you lie down again.”
“She doesn’t speak,” said the elder nun in a practical tone, “and has not for many weeks, not since the cataclysm. Poor creature. We fear she lost her wits.”
“Let her sit, if she will,” said a new voice, one rich with age and oddly familiar. “How bright she is! I see Bernard in her. The resemblance is remarkable. Dear child! Dear child! Let me hold your hand.”
A person lay in the shadows of the second bed, a frail figure propped up on pillows. She was perhaps the oldest person Liath had ever seen, older even than Eldest Uncle. As if drawn by that voice, by an emotion in the words she could not name or resist, she moved a step closer and halted at the rim of the bed, staring into a seamed face that crowded her memory and made her sway, dizzy with bewilderment.
“I know you. I have seen you before.”
“Yes, yes, dear child. You are she. Bernard’s child.”
“I am Bernard’s daughter.”
“Sit. Take my hand. I will touch you.”
One did not say “no” to a woman of such advanced years, a woman, moreover, who was wearing the ring of an abbess.
Liath sat obediently and reached out hesitantly. That wrinkled, pale, withered hand gripped hers with a fierce strength. The eyes that examined her had a startling heavenly blue color, not unlike her own.
“Bring the candle closer,” said the old woman. Her attendants knelt on the bed with the illuminating flame.
“The galla!” said Liath, recognizing her. “You are the ones the galla stalked.”
“It was your arrow that saved us,” said the old woman. “We would have been dead had you not come.”
Liath found no words, although she searched. She had held on to that arrow through storm and battle and she knew now that she had done the right thing and saved the right person, only she did not know why.
“The brightness is fading,” said the old woman.
She blushed. “It only comes on me when I’m very angry. When any passion takes hold, it fans the flame.”
“So I see. ‘Liathano.’ This is the name Bernard gave you.”
“You speak of him as if you know—knew—him.”
“Why, dear child,” she said with a chuckle, “I am grown absentminded in my last days. I have waited so long for this that I have supposed you already to know what I have so long dreamt on.” She had tears in her eyes and an expression of ineluctable joy on her face, a radiance that took Liath’s breath away. Those fingers stroked hers weakly. The contrast between the light touch of her frail hands and the strength of her voice was striking.
“I am Bernard’s mother. Your grandmother. We are met at long last. My prayers are answered.”
Surely this was how the ox chosen for Novarian’s slaughter felt when the first hammer blow slammed into its head to stun it before its throat was cut. Once chosen, there was no going back.
The old woman had expanded to take up Liath’s entire consciousness, the entire cosmos, only her, this delicate crone who claimed so astonishingly to be her grandmother. That the universe should be both vast enough and narrow enough to encompass such a being could not be explained.
No one spoke to trouble her marveling. There came in due time trailing into her consciousness a faint aroma of mildew rising out of the darkest corners of the bed and blending with it the fragrance of olive oil and sweet rose oil. She began to hear sounds: the rustle of the mattress as someone shifted position nearby; whispering voices as far away as daylight; the strain in her thigh because of the way she had twisted her knee under herself; the scrape of a bench being dragged over the plank floor; Thiadbold’s hearty laugh, from outside.
His laugh brought her back to earth. The world recovered its normal proportions only it was forever altered by its possession of so simple a thing as a grandmother. Da’s mother.
