And already she could tell that the deity within approved what she was about to do. There had been a time when temple sacrifices had mostly appeased its hunger; now it urged her more and more often toward death and destruction. Its appetite seemed to grow with what it fed on. Once that would have daunted her, but she was not so easily dismayed now.
A brazier filled with coals, as yet unlit, stood in the exact center of the roof. From her bosom she drew a silver phial set with precious stones. Breaking the wax seal and pulling out the stopper, she tipped the phial over the brazier and spilled out a few grains of red powder. They ignited at the first touch of moonlight and set the coals ablaze.
Stirring the fire with a wand tipped with crystal, she began to sing, to weave signs on the air. Calling forth mighty natural antagonisms, she set element warring against element. As she worked her spell, in the sweet intoxication of so much power, her breath came and went in an uneven rhythm. Around her, the very air quaked; it tasted of iron and ashes; it hissed and moaned. Under her feet, the stones of the tower writhed.
Then she sent the power on its way, with screaming winds and thunderclouds pulsing with the tumultuous forces building inside them. She stirred the seas to fury; she piled waves like mountains. Drawing frigid air down from the north, and hot air from the south, she brought them together with a mighty concussion.
In Apharos, doors were torn from their hinges; shutters went whirling off into the sky. A monstrous wave crashed on the western side of the island, with such force that the spray was felt a mile inland. It engulfed two fishing villages, and then sucked them out to sea when it retreated again.
Farther out to sea, lightning slashed open the sky. On ships as far away as Erios, winds ripped sails from their masts, cracked spars, dashed dozens of ships to atoms on rocky shores. A fleet of Ouriána’s own galleys, rowing hard against the pull of a great whirlpool, were swallowed one by one. The captain of the last to go died cursing the enemies of the Empress, little knowing that she herself had worked the ruin of so many good ships.
The gale raged for a day and a night before it blew out. The silence that followed was like a mighty shout, so accustomed had the ears of the islanders become to the noise that had preceded it.
29
The hour being well after midnight, Sindérian lay down to rest while Prince Ruan kept watch. Although she was convinced that anxiety and exhaustion would keep her awake, she sank at once into the oblivion of utter fatigue and woke with the morning sun in her face.
There was no breakfast, because their food supplies had disappeared with the horses. She spent the rest of the morning purging what remained of the poison in Kivik’s blood, while Ruan went off to the east to recover some of the horses. Aell remained in the camp with an aching head and one arm in a sling, refusing further treatment, and Sindérian could not help but glad of it. Meanwhile Skerry slept through the morning. She knew that when he woke there was still much to be done on his behalf.
Ruan came back shortly after noon, riding one horse and leading another. They made a hurried meal from the supplies he had recovered, before he went off to bring in the other horses while Sindérian and her father tended her patients. Skerry, she soon discovered, was burning with fever. There were purple weals where the puncture wounds in his chest had been, and she feared that whatever sickness infected the manticore had passed into him. But in the cool of the evening his fever broke, proving her fears were groundless.
It was obvious by the next morning that none of her patients were strong enough to ride. They would require at least another day to rest. Ill fortune continues to follow us wherever we go, she said to Faolein.
Our entire party might have been killed.
And yet, he answered, with his usual calm, nobody was killed. The outcome could have been very much worse.
Even so, the delay might well prove fatal to all their hopes. I almost believed, she said, flinging herself down on the grass, that the winds of the world were beginning to blow in our favor.
Neither for us or against us, I think, he replied. I believe we have come to a period in time, however brief, when it will be possible to choose our own course. Let us choose wisely.
They rode out the following morning, setting a gentle pace for the sake of their wounded. As if in answer to their need, there were several days of mild, bright weather, almost springlike, during which Aell and the Skyrran princes rapidly recovered.
Then the weather turned again, and the wind blew colder. They spent one night in one of the ruined villages, in a building that was miraculously little damaged: three walls left standing, and most of the roof remaining. Another night, of savage winds and smothering darkness, they spent in the inadequate shelter of a knot of trees. The next two days were wholly occupied skirting a morass of black, oozing mud and wet green mosses.
“We are a little to the north of Ceir Eldig,” said Prince Ruan, after a week’s travel from the Whathig Wood. “Another day and a half should bring us there, if we don’t turn west and pass it by.”
“Let us wait until tomorrow to decide,” said Sindérian. There was something in the mention of that fallen city that set her heart racing, that sent an undercurrent of excitement racing along her nerves. As they topped a rise, a ray of sunlight struck through the clouds—and suddenly the Sight which had eluded her these many months returned to her, strong and true.
A great panorama of the earth spread out before her; distances were compressed; mountains proved no barrier. From the ground below to the vault of the atmosphere above, there was no impediment. She saw into the sumptuous chambers of palaces, and into the huts of peasants, into ships and cities, and into the nine underground kingdoms of the dwarves. Yet no mind could hold so much, and it passed so quickly that she could never hope to absorb or remember it.
Nevertheless, that brief vision left clarity behind it.
Be the lightning rod, Sindérian. So Faolein had said on the shores of the sea, and ever since then her resolve had been steadily growing stronger. Don’t be like the weathercock changing direction with every wind that blows. Be the lightning rod instead. She had known for many weeks what she must do. But now she knew the place and the hour.
When, at Sindérian’s suggestion, they stopped well before twilight, Prince Ruan saw no reason for concern. Everyone was weary of travelling, wounds were still aching, and they had reached a little grove of linden, birch, and hawthorn with a stream running through, where they could water the horses and set up a camp sheltered from the wind.
It was only after supper, when he realized that Sindérian had slipped away without him noticing it, that his suspicions were aroused. “Where has she gone—did anyone see her leave?” he asked the others.
No one had. Catching some of his uneasiness, they were all about to go out searching for her when she reappeared. Her dress was damp and her hair dripping wet; she had apparently found a spot, farther down the stream and screened by bushes, where she could bathe. Without a word to anyone, she sat down by the fire to dry her gown and comb out her hair.
The other men, sensing nothing amiss, returned to their seats on the ground and to the conversation that had occupied them before Ruan raised the alarm. But there was something about her—a strange, fey air—that continued to disturb him.
As the sun went down the western sky and the moon climbed above the trees, Ruan kept an anxious eye on her across the fire. She was humming a song he could not quite catch. And he knew, he knew, as he watched her throw herbs on the fire and plait her hair into a braid of seven strands, that there was something afoot that she was telling no one. Her eyes, ordinarily so candid, were full of hidden things, of wizardly mysteries.