So faint they were, but she was desperate, and it rang closer and closer, floating across the vast black expanse of the cavern.
Liathano!
It knew her. It only wanted to go home, and she was its gateway.
The thought gave rise to ugly hope. She swept her awareness past the grains of fire and sought those attenuated veins of aether. Through the gateway she could find griffins. She might escape through the gateway.
She called her wings. As they flared, the towering black pillar that was the galla fluttered as in a strong wind.
She sought: At the heart of the aether lies the burning stone, the gateway—so far off, so faint…
It bloomed, frangible but present, a man’s height and breadth in size, shimmering with the pulsing blue aether.
The shaman stood there still—or had come again to seek her. The pale figure of the Horse woman wavered, limned in blue as she reached out her arms in a gesture of welcome.
“Liath!” called the shaman.
“I’m coming! There is a galla—” she cried out as she lunged forward, but her leg collapsed under her. Already the gateway was collapsing from man height to child height to knee height. Too late! Too weak! There was not enough aether to sustain it. Her wings shredded into sparks. The galla swept down upon her.
The shaman’s voice rang clear through the last hand’s span of the opening. “I am Li’at’dano. Come quickly, to me!”
It was the same name, blurred by the centuries into a word that breathed more softly from the lips but which in its essence had not changed.
It was the same name, and she had carried it for far longer than Liath had.
The stinging presence of the galla scorched her, but it passed her by and twisted through the vanishing gateway on the trail of the one called Li’at’dano. Liathano.
There came a cry of pain, and a dazzling blaze that flared as the galla engulfed and consumed its prey.
The last light of aetherical fire curled in on itself, and winked out as the gateway collapsed.
Dead.
Devoured.
Into silence, into darkness, Liath fell. Her ears rang and her pulse throbbed, beating wildly as she knelt on the cold stone and sobbed so raggedly that it seemed she could never stop.
8
THE weather held fine. It did not rain, or even feel like rain. They luxuriated in a string of pleasant early summer days that might have run warm had it not been for the constant veil that concealed the sun and cooled the land. All the noble lords and ladies watched Sabella day by day to gauge her mood; it was Conrad’s heartiness that warmed the party.
“So I said to her, ‘then, pray tell, if a woman as lovely as you has held to your vows these four years and had no congress with any man or his member, why does this toddling sprout cling to your leg and call you Mother?’ She looked me dead in the eye, and she spoke coldly, I will tell you! ‘Because I am abbess of this poor institution, my lord duke, not the serving maid you take me for. I am Mother to those who rest under my care.’”
His listeners laughed, and he went on. “It is a shame, truly, that God should steal such treasures and lock them in the church. I have rarely seen a finer looking woman, as ripe as Aogoste berries. But I had no fortune that day! Her scornful look was enough to wither any man! Still, I wondered about that little child. He had a dusky complexion, you know.”
One of the courtiers chortled. “Mayhap you came to her in the night, like an incubus, Conrad, eh! A year or two previous? She all unwitting? They say holy women have moist dreams!”
Conrad raised a hand to stop the chatter and laughter. “Not me! I would have recalled it! Mayhap, back in those days, the Dragons of those times might have ridden by. In truth, now I think on it, I recall there was talk of them sheltering a night or more in the convent’s guesthouse two years before I came calling. Where such men shelter, one at least might have found a more inviting hall to rest himself. For you know, this was at St. Genovefa’s Convent, and she the saintly patron of dogs.”
That brought a new round of laughter.
“Are you only prattling, Conrad?” asked Sabella, “or do you honestly believe it to be true? Did Sanglant get some bastard child on a holy abbess back when he was captain of Henry’s Dragons? Where is this supposed to have taken place? How can the child’s existence give us an advantage? Otherwise, do not waste my time.”
Her glare cowed the courtiers, but Conrad laughed. He had a remarkable smile, one that invited all folk to smile with him, and he was not afraid to poke fun at himself, although it seemed to Alain that he had made sure that the knife thrust more deeply into his unwitting rival’s flesh. “I will tell tales to please myself and my companions while we ride this dreary road. If not, then you must listen to me sing.”
