“I am not your enemy!”
“I could argue that you are my enemy twice over. Still, I will be willing to speak with you as if you were a female, Prince Sanglant, but only when you have proved your fitness to lead.”
The words angered him, but he replied as evenly as he could. “How may I do that?”
“Have you not already spoken of it? Males prove their fitness in the same fashion, whether human or horse. They exist to breed, and to protect the herd when brute force is needed. There is a beast loose in the grass—”
“You have seen him?” Hope shone briefly. Anger sparked, blazing hot and strong. “He has taken my daughter captive!”
“Destroy the beast that stalks in the grass,” she repeated. “Then I will speak to you again.”
“Will you not help me save my daughter?”
She raised an arm. A huge owl glided in to perch on the centaur’s glove. Breschius gasped out loud. The centaur leaned closer to the owl, but even with his keen hearing, Sanglant made out only a rustling as soft as downy feathers rubbed together. She launched the owl back into the air, and it flew away over the ranks of the centaurs, quickly lost to sight.
She examined Sanglant again. “Hunt, Prince Sanglant. If you return, then we will negotiate.”
With a flick of her tail, she sidestepped, turned, and walked up the hill to her army.
Hathui had got a spear from Captain Fulk and now hastened up the slope to bring it to Sanglant. He unfastened his cloak and turned it inside out, hiding the bright red cloth and exposing the pale fox-fur lining, which blended better with the grass.
“My lord prince.” Hathui handed him the spear, the best balanced of those he possessed. Fulk had chosen well, of course. “I beg you, my lord prince, go carefully. We are all of us—all of Wendar and Varre—lost if you are lost to us.”
“I am lost if I let a man like that kidnap and despoil my daughter.”
“He wants you to follow him. Surely he must kill another griffin, and defeat you, in order to restore his honor and position. Princess Blessing is merely bait.”
“So I hope,” said Sanglant as he surveyed the sky and the slope of the hill. “That will make it easier to find him.”
“Shall I attend you, my lord prince?”
“Nay. Repair camp. Find a more sheltered spot, if you can. Fortify yourselves against unexpected attack, from whatever quarter. Take what you need from what the Quman abandoned. Do not forget that they may creep back and ambush you, but I think that Gyasi can warn you if they approach.”
“If we can trust him,” said Hathui.
“I trust that he seeks revenge against those who wronged him. Watch him, but do not ignore what he has to say.”
“As you wish, my lord prince,” said Breschius.
“What if Bulkezu’s tribe claims him?” asked Hathui.
“They fled before they could collect on their bargain, taking my sister with them. No matter.”
He hefted the spear. Storm clouds piled up to the east where a line of crags erupted out of the high plateau. He smelled the tempest on the west wind. Out in the grasslands, up in the highest lands beyond the reach of the centaur witch, winter still ruled.
Its chilly blast could not possibly be as savage as his anger.
“Bulkezu is a dead man now.”
4
FOR a moment only, as she crossed through the heart of the burning stone, she kept hold of Alain and his hounds. Then the weight of the world below ripped them out of her grasp, and she spun, between the worlds, balance lost, the Earth turning beneath her as she fell back into the world she had left behind days ago. She glimpsed the winking glimmer of the crown of stars, laid out across the land, but the turning spheres caught her in their rotation, propelling her away from the lands she knew. The heavy elements of earth and water dragged her down as her wings disintegrated, their aetherical substance too fragile to exist in the world below.
As she passed from the aether into the net of the solid world, she fell through a nether world, betwixt and between, neither grounded in the world below nor afloat in the aether like the Ashioi homeland. She glimpsed a band of shadowy figures on the march, outfitted with spears and bows, children and dogs, both male and females armed and ready. They wore clothing like to that worn by the Lost Ones, and the young man leading them looked strangely familiar to her although she knew she had never seen him before. He looked a little like Sanglant.
He glanced up, sensing her, but he could not see her. “Soon!” he called to the people following him. “We have not much longer to wait. Make haste! Make ready!”