To these foreigners he was about to give his beloved daughter—their price for alliance. Blessing was the sacrifice, and it tore his heart knowing that without their help she would certainly die. Might be dead already.
He glanced back to the wagon trundling along, Liath riding guard beside it together with Anna, Matto, Thiemo, Heribert, the Kerayit healer, and a pair of soldiers.
Li’at’dano had freshened the paint on her torso. The green-and-gold stripes made a stark contrast to her silver-gray coat. She carried a bow, with a quiver slung across her back, and her attendants were armed in a similar fashion, although a few held wicked-looking spears, half tipped with obsidian and the rest with cruel steel points. They had striped their torsos as well and decorated their faces with chalky lines and ocher dots. He could imagine them, in their thousands, in a wild rampage through the streets of ancient Dariya, burning, pillaging, and killing.
Li’at’dano looked him over as she might a wild dog that has crept into camp hoping for scraps, and she waited with obvious indifference to his presence until Liath reined her horse up beside his. Only then did she stamp one foreleg to acknowledge their arrival. The other centaurs repeated the gesture and whistled softly.
Behind him, the two Quman who had agreed to come with him echoed that whistle. A partridge burst out of the grass, flying low over the ground, wings whirring as if in reply, and as it disappeared from view all the noise of their movements and voices faded until the only sound was that of the wind muttering through the long grass. Bugs chimed. Otherwise, it was silent.
Liath rode out into the gap between their two parties. She lifted a hand to gain their attention.
“We have little time, and few enough to undertake a dangerous task. This is what I know. Two thousand seven hundred and two years and some seven months ago the Ashioi were cast out of this world by human sorcerers working in concert through the stone crowns and under the guidance of a powerful shaman.”
She did not turn to look at Li’at’dano, but Sanglant did. The old centaur merely watched. Did she feel emotion in the same way humankind did? He doubted it.
“That spell caused untold destruction throughout the lands, and it did not work in the manner they had hoped it would. It did not cast the land of the Ashioi into the void forever. Even now the land of the Ashioi follows a path twisted back on itself that brings it home again to Earth. According to Brother Breschius and Brother Heribert, who have kept track of the passing of days, today is the nineteenth day of Yanu, in the year seven hundred and thirty-four after the Ekstasis of the blessed Daisan. When the crown of stars crowns the heaven, on the tenth day of the month of Octumbre in the year seven hundred and thirty-five, the spell will be complete. The land inhabited by the Ashioi will return to the roots from which it was torn free. According to the workings of the universe, all things must return to their rightful place.”
As she spoke in Wendish, certain centaurs murmured a running translation to their comrades as did Gyasi to the Pechanek Quman—one man and one woman—who had braved the displeasure of their tribes’ mothers to follow him. Now and again Liath would pause to let them catch up, but always, inexorably, she went on in that same calm voice, detailing the approaching storm.
“In nineteen months there will come death and there will come destruction. We have no way to escape the consequences of what was put into motion so long ago.”
She let them consider as she herself glanced over at Sanglant. He didn’t smile at her. He didn’t need to. He knew what he needed most to know of her: that she had changed and that she had not, the familiar weaving of her shot through with new threads.
That didn’t make what he had to do today any easier.
“The mathematicus known as Sister Anne intends to weave this ancient spell again, to banish the Ashioi and their land from Earth a second time. Of a certainty I know it will condemn the Ashioi. Their land has been cut off from Earth for so long that it dies. They are few, and they are weak. There are almost no children.”
Here she hesitated and, with an effort obvious to her husband although others might think she merely paused for breath, she did not look toward the wagon where Blessing lay dying.
“Perhaps there are those among you who care nothing for the fate of the Ashioi. Let me argue, then, in this manner. What effect Anne’s weaving will have on Earth itself I do not know, but I believe it will condemn many, many more people to die, countless people, and bring about wholesale destruction on a scale we cannot fathom. I have seen—”
She faltered as she was overwhelmed by memory, but she swallowed firmly and began again.