One of the griffins gave a shrill cry as an owl skimmed in over the river. The centaur lifted an arm to receive the bird on a forearm sheathed in leather.
Liath lowered her bow.
“Well met,” she called in Wendish, not sure if the other one could understand her language, “if you are friend to us. I am called Liathano in the speech of humankind. I pray you, we are in grave need of your help if you are willing to give it.”
The centaur approached with stately dignity across the burned out area. Ash puffed where she placed her hooves. Once she had to sidestep to avoid a hot spot, not yet burned out.
“You are Liathano,” she said. “Known as Bright One.”
“How do you know me?”
“I walk within the paths marked out by the burning stone, which is the gateway between the worlds. I cannot ascend into the spheres because I cannot leave Earth, but I have seen the traces of your passage. I have glimpsed you. I know your name, because it is the same as my own.”
“I have an Arethousan name,” protested Liath. “How can our names be the same?”
A spark flared in the city of memory, recalling to her mind memories she had seen in the heart of the burning stone when, for an instant, she could see time, past, present, and future as a single vast landscape stretching out on all sides.
A centaur woman parts the reeds at the shore of a shallow lake. Her coat has the dense shimmer of the night sky, and her black woman’s hair falls past her waist. A coarse, pale mane, the only contrast to her black coat, runs down her spine, braided with beads and the bones of mice.
“Look!” she cries. “See what we wrought!”
She looses an arrow.
“Li’at’dano!” Words stuck as though caught by thorns.
Years ago, a humble frater by name of Bernard had named his daughter after an ancient centaur shaman written of in the chronicles of the Arethousans, who had witnessed and survived the Bwr attack on the Dariyan Empire. Some called her undying. All called her powerful beyond human ken.
“Liathano,” she repeated stupidly, in the softened consonants of the western tongue. It was too difficult to believe and yet it stood smack in front of her. “How can you still be alive?”
The centaur lifted her arm to release the owl, which flew away to find a resting place in the shrubs along the river’s bank.
“I am not human, nor even half human, as you are. We are another kind entirely, born out of the world before humankind walked here. That is why your people fear us, and hunt us, and war against us, all except the Kerayit tribe, whom we nurture as our daughters. I am not like you, Bright One.”
“No. You are not.”
She was legend made flesh. It was impossible that any creature might live so long, generations upon generations, yet she knew in the core of her, the heart of fire that had once belonged to her mother; that it was true.
“You made the cataclysm,” Liath said.
“I do not possess the power of working and binding.”
“You taught the seven who wove it.”
“It is true that I encouraged those who devised and wove the great spell. None of us understood what we would unleash. I regret what I did.”
“Do you regret it enough that you would be willing to stand aside and see your old enemies return to the world below? The land where the Ashioi dwell was torn from Earth. That you know. I have set foot in the exiled land. It is returning to the place it came from. And it should. It must. I came back to stop the Seven Sleepers. They wish to weave a second spell atop the first and cast the Ashioi back into the aether. If you intend to aid them, or hinder me, then we are enemies.”
The old shaman indicated Sanglant, whose eyes had not opened. He showed no sign of consciousness; he wasn’t aware the centaurs had arrived or that this conversation was taking place. “Is it not rash to provoke me when I have the means to save this man? You may be throwing away his life.”
Because he lay so still, it was easy to admire the handsome lines of his face and the clean lines of his limbs. He had not lost any of his strength or beauty. He did not look as though four years had passed although perhaps there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the product of worry and strain. Those hands had stroked her once; those lips had kissed her in a most satisfactory manner, and would again, she prayed.
He was only one man. Lives would be lost no matter what happened, but a second cataclysm would affect unimaginable numbers, would wipe out entire villages and towns and, as she had seen, perhaps whole civilizations. In the heart of the burning stone she had witnessed the cataclysm as it had ripped the heart out of uncannily beautiful cities built by creatures not of humankind yet somehow like them in their clever industriousness: the goblins and the merfolk. They existed as legends, stories told about beasts not as dumb as cattle yet animals still. But maybe the stories weren’t true; maybe humankind had forgotten the truth or hidden it so as to hide the shame of what it had done all unwittingly.