Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4) Page 347

Skirmishes are being fought far into the woods and as far away as the twin rivers, flowing northward to join at the base of Osterburg’s walls. Such melees do not warrant more than a glance. She seeks, and she finds two armies massed for battle just beyond the woodland, gathered on open ground. The Wendish fly the banner of Princess Sapientia, the sigil of the heir of Wendar and Varre, six animals set on a shield: lion, dragon, and eagle, horse, hawk, and guivre. A large force of Ungrians bearing the sigil of the double-headed eagle comes up behind the Wendish line, ready to strike at the center of the Quman line.

Already the Quman archers fire at will, to soften up their enemy, but the Ungrians give as good as they get, and the Wendish legions swing wide and begin a steady advance toward the flanks. The Quman force seems larger than it is. From this height, like a hawk circling, she sees that the wings they wear make them seem as if they have more soldiers than they really do.

Brute force will win this engagement today, unless that magic she tastes in the air and feels like a prickling along her skin turns the tide.

A rumble like thunder rises as the armies shift forward and charge. Dust billows into the air. The Wendish and Ungrian forces shriek and cry out, voices ringing above the pound of hooves, but the Quman advance in uncanny silence, goaded on by their prince, whose griffin wings shine and glitter in the sunlight.

Just as the two armies meet in a resounding clash, she finds a thread spanning the wind. Aetheric hornets gleam along its length, buzzing and chattering as it extends toward the armies. She speeds backward along the thread. Beyond the Veser in a makeshift camp, desperate prisoners huddle, awaiting the outcome of the battle, but the thread leads her an arrow’s shot away from the groaning, helpless captives, back across the river to a low rise on the east bank overlooking the plain. The glimmering thread curls into a line of horsemen: a dozen guards, one light-haired person dressed in ragged Wendish garb, and a strange man stripped down to trousers patched together from a hundred different pieces of fabric. Blue-black tattoos cover his torso; they seem to writhe and shiver as he chants. Unlike the other Quman warriors, he wears no blackened and shrunken head dangling from his belt, but his ornaments are gruesome enough: earrings made from shriveled human noses, a needle piercing the septum of his nose and each end of it adorned with a withered human ear.

He is a shaman. The thread of hornets spins out from his voice, twisted into life through the words of his spell.

The woman beside him raises her head. In that first instant, Liath does not recognize her because of the hatred that mars her expression as she gazes over the field of battle. Hate distorts the heart, leaving scars, as it has scarred her own heart. Remembering this, she knows her.

“Hanna!”

Hanna shakes her head as though to chase away annoying flies. Her hands are tied in front of her; she is a captive, forced to watch as the battle unfolds. The smooth wood of Seeker of Hearts feels cool against Liath’s palms. One arrow will not rescue Hanna, not with a dozen guards, and because she does not exist on Earth in bodily form, she cannot manifest fire. It is only her consciousness that has fallen to Earth; her body remains above.

But the Quman shaman is up to some mischief. Ought she to kill him? Might his magic alter the outcome of the battle?

She rises aloft on wings to survey the field of blood where the invisible spirit of Jedu now roams, where men kill and struggle. Sanglant and his men have not yet come into view. The gleaming thread unwinds across the carnage. In close quarters, Wendish spears and swords and chain mail hold up well against the more lightly armed Quman. Seen from Aturna’s heights, as from a ridgetop looking into the future, Liath feels sure that Princess Sapientia and her allies will win.

They don’t need her help.

At that moment she hears the faint cry of a voice she has never heard before that yet reverberates in her heart. She rises, seeking a broader view; the battle recedes below her. In her last glimpse she sees the hornets swarming forward to buzz around the banner of the Ungrian prince, the commander. Far away, too far away to aid him, the ancient Kerayit woman screams in horror and rage. Clouds bear in from the east. Lightning blinds Liath. Thunder cracks, and back where Blessing stands among overturned wagons, turning her head to stare gleefully at the heavens, it begins to rain.

“Lady, blessed saint, defend us!”

A shrill scream, cut off with an awful gurgle.

Liath smells the sharp iron scent of galla. With one step she covers weeks of travel, she leaps the towering Alfar Mountains and tumbles down into a weird landscape of rock chimneys and narrow plateaus rising like pillars out of barren ground. Someone has carved a convent into one of these vast rock pillars, a refuge in times of war. A scream echoes again, and she slides between rock, seeking the one whose prayers have touched her heart and reached her ears.