She knew better, she knew what she ought to do, what Da would tell her to do. But none of that mattered. For a year she had thought him dead.
“I have to go back.” Then, hearing the words as if someone else had spoken them, she hurried on. “I’ll come back to you. I swear it. I just have to go back—” She trailed off. She knew how foolish she sounded.
He merely let go of her hand and regarded her. He had no expression on his face except the quiescence of great age. “It is ever such with those who are young. But I do not believe your path will be a smooth one.”
“Then I can come back?” Now that she had made the choice, she regretted having to go. But not so much that she could bring herself to stay.
“I cannot see into the future. Go, then.”
“But there are creatures pursuing me—”
“So many mysteries. So much movement afoot. You must make your choice—there, or here. The gateway is closing.”
The flames flickered lower until they rippled like a sheen of water trembling along the surface of the stone. If she waited too long, the choice would be made for her.
She reined the horse around and slapped its rump with the trailing end of her reins. It bolted forward, light surged, and her sight was still hazed with dancing spots and black dots and bright sparks when her shoulder brushed rough stone and they broke out of the ragged circle of stones with a flash of afternoon sun in her eyes.
Disoriented, she shaded her eyes with a hand until she could make out the road below. It was not yet twilight; an unseasonable chill stung the air. The Bretwald lay beyond the road, alive with birds come to feed at the verge. Crows flocked in the treetops. A vulture spiraled down and landed on a heap of rags that littered the roadside.
Of the fell creatures that had stalked her, there was no sign.
What had the old sorcerer said? “The measure of days and years moves differently here than there.”
Had she arrived earlier than she had left? Was that even possible, to wait here beside the road when she was herself riding on that same road, not yet having reached this point? She shook herself and urged the horse forward, looking around cautiously. But nothing stirred. The crows flapped away with raucous cries. The vulture at last bestirred itself and flew, but only to a nearby branch, where it watched as she picked her way up to the roadside and dismounted to examine the litter: a jumble of bones scoured clean; damp tabards wilted on the turf or strewn with pebbles as though a wind had blown over them; and weapons left lying every which way. With her boot she turned over a shield: A white deer’s head stared blankly at her.
She jumped back, found shelter in the bulk of her horse, who blew noisily into her ear, unimpressed by these remains.
The men-at-arms she had seen had borne shields marked with a white deer’s head. And she had heard screaming. How long could it have been? It would take months for a body to rot to clean bone.
The light changed as a scrap of cloud scudded over the sun, and she shivered in the sudden cold. She mounted and rode on, northward, as she had before. As dusk lowered, she studied the heavens with apprehension throbbing in her chest. Stars came out one by one. Above her shone summer’s evening sky. Had she lost an entire year?
Ahead, a torch flared, and then a second, and she urged her mount forward, smelling a village ahead. A low, square church steeple loomed, cutting off stars. They had not yet closed the palisade gates of the little town, which protected them against wild animals as well as the occasional depredations of what bandits still lurked in the Bretwald. The gatekeeper sent her on to the church, where the deacon kept mats for travelers and a simmering pot of leek stew for the hungry.
Liath was starving. Her hands shook so badly that she could barely gulp down stew and cider as the deacon watched with mild concern.
“What day is it?” Liath asked when at last her hands came back under her control, and the sting of hunger softened.
“Today we celebrated the nativity of St. Theodoret, and tomorrow we will sing the mass celebrating the martyrdom of St. Walaricus.”
Today was the nineteenth of Quadrii, then; the day she had fled the creatures had been the eighteenth. For an instant she breathed more easily. Then she remembered the bones, and the party she had almost met on the road.
“What year?”
“An odd question,” said the deacon, but she was a young woman and not inclined to question a King’s Eagle. “It is the year 729 since the Proclamation of the Divine Logos by the blessed Daisan.”
One day later. Only one day. The bones she had seen by the roadside had nothing to do with her, then. They must have lain there for months, picked clean by the crows and the vultures and the small vermin that feed on carrion.