“So it is, God help us. As long as I walked the spheres, the thread between them remained unbroken. But when I crossed back into the world below … think of a man on the shore and one in a boat on the river who remain in contact by both holding onto a rope. If that rope is cut, the one on the river will be borne away by the current.”
“She has drunk the milk of the aether and it has changed her. She has not grown in the fashion of a child of Earth, not if she was born only four years ago.”
“She’s grown so quickly.”
“In body, but not in mind. Now that thread of unearthly sustenance is cut off. She lies adrift, betwixt and between this world and the one above.”
“What can we do?”
“Ah. You have asked me a question I cannot answer. I have not walked the spheres, nor can any reach the ladder who are mired in Earth.”
“How came my father by such knowledge, then, that he could teach me and that I could use that knowledge to climb?”
The shaman chuckled. Something about the comradely wryness of her response aggravated Sanglant in the same way a constantly buzzing mosquito makes it difficult to sleep. The centaur had not treated him with such respect. He was not accustomed to being treated as anything lower than a king’s son, a prince of the realm, and captain of a powerful army. He was not accustomed to being expected to prove himself to another’s satisfaction.
“Liath!” he said, emphatically, and found he could sit up. The movement dizzied him. Pain stabbed in his chest. He clutched the pallet he sat on and waited for the agony to quiet, as it did. He recalled the process of healing well enough. He had gone through this torment more than once. It would swell and ebb in stages until he was as good as before.
He touched his damaged throat, the voice that had never entirely healed.
Or almost as good as before.
It was still better than being dead.
“Sanglant!” Liath had braided her hair back, and her face was clean. It shone with joy. She grasped his hands.
“A powerful spell,” remarked the shaman, behind her. Her mare’s body filled half the space of the tent, and she loomed ominously over the raised pallet that rested on the ground before her. A slight shape lay curled up on the pallet. It was Blessing, unhurt but utterly slack. Normally Blessing slept with her hands closed into fists, tucked up against her chin; now she lay like a corpse.
“What have you done to my daughter?” he demanded.
Liath recoiled slightly, a movement checked immediately but not so quickly that he didn’t notice that her first instinct had been to pull away from his anger.
“Has she cast a spell on her?”
“Nay, love, she’s done nothing.”
“Then why does she lie there like a body that’s had its soul torn from it?”
“I pray you, Sanglant, do not speak such ill-omened words! Blessing fell into this stupor at about the same time I fell to Earth, or so we believe. She spoke, she said that she heard me and that I was all on fire. Ai, God.” The words were spoken regretfully. “She’s so big. Has it really been four years?”
“Three years! Four years! I’m no cleric to keep track. To me it seemed like an eternity, falling into the pit, but perhaps you suffered less hardship separated from me than I did from you!”
She took a step back, surprised by his anger, as was he. But it just kept boiling up, and boiling up, and he couldn’t stop it.
“How do you know this creature is not our enemy? She refused to help me find Blessing. Now I find Blessing here, in her clutches. How can you know that she did not injure our daughter?”
“Her people rescued Blessing from this man called Bulkezu. Blessing’s own servant Anna told me the story. Anna? Anna!”
“She is gone to fetch water, Bright One,” said the healer. Sanglant had not noticed her, but she sat by the entrance on a cushion, hands folded in her lap.
“Anna could have been bewitched—”
“She seemed a practical enough girl to me. Here now, love.” Liath eased up beside him and set her hands on his shoulders. He knew her expressions intimately; he saw that she was concerned, even apprehensive, and—surely—treating him as if he were a flustered hound that needed to be calmed before it could be settled for the night in its kennel. “You’re not healed yet. You should lie down and rest.”
“Why are you taking their side against me?”
That offended her, and she stiffened, shoulders going rigid as her chin lifted. “I take no one’s side. I am as much a prisoner, or a guest, of the Horse people as you are. As our daughter is. I have little more than a year to plan a great undertaking. I will ally with whom I must in order to stop Anne from bringing down upon us a cataclysm of such terrible strength and breadth that—God Above, Sanglant! You know what I speak of! You were at Verna. Why are you arguing with me?”