Page 43 (1/1)

"Where, then, is Liath?" Henry gestured toward the hall as if he expected her to step forward from a place of conceal claim, without her?"

It fell away, then, the pride and the anger and the confidence Sanglant began to weep silently, a few tears that slid down his cheeks He , after all, was a ation

"Dead, or alive, I cannot say," he whispered hoarsely "She was stolen from me I do not knohere she is now"

2

AS Liath descended the staircase the light faded quickly, yet where it grew diuish walls and steps with her salamander eyes The old sorcerer h she stood half a head taller It grewof voices swept up the staircase like a wind out of the Abyss

They walked down for a long tiular seah walls of excavated earth Eventually the staircase leveled out, and they walked down a short tunnel so round that a rod ht have punched it out to make a circle within the rock The tunnel opened into a broad cha far above theled into eain purchase against the rock Dustthe roof before they swirled into shadows

The sh steps to an oval hollow that regated They wore a bewildering variety of strange clothing: shifts sta their hair, sheaths studded with beads and colored stones bound around forearms and calves Most of the down toher nose, all except one

They had exotic faces, broad across the cheekbones, reddish or bronze in their co like the Wendish, but she could see Sanglant’s heritage in every face there There were not e enough to command an audience of hundreds, yet somehow the chamber felt crowded, as if the shades of those who had stood here in the past and ould stand here in the future filled the ened

She stood beneath the wings of an eagle whose semblance had been carved out of the stone archway above the tunnel Every person seated or standing within the chamber examined her Yet when she coh’s poisonous gaze, she could not fall into helpless terror She had walked through the fire and survived

Eldest Uncle shifted behind her, coughing gently

In the center of the oval, seated on an eagle literally carved out of the stone floor, sat a very pregnant woloriously feathered cloak draped around her shoulders Her hair was pulled back in a topknot Alone of all the woolden wheel, no longer turning because in this stone wo the wheel gloith a light of their own Feather Cloak lifted a hand and beckoned Liath to come forward

"I aesture She took a big step down, and then the second, to stand at the sa her hands, she opened them to show her palms out, empty "I come unarmed, as is your custom Eldest Uncle comes with e of e--"

That brought them to life

"Let her be cast out!" shouted White Feather, the wo the name of our ancient enemy into this chamber?" The distinctive shield of white feathers bound into her hair shook as if in response to her anger, and her words unleashed the others, a chorus of discordant views, too rapid an exchange for Liath to see immediately which one spoke ords

"It’s treachery! Kill her at once!"

"Nay, I would hear her speak!"

"We cannot trust any child born of humankind--"

"We are few, and they arenow, then ill surely all perish"

"I want to knohat Eldest Uncleher here without the per to us, however evil her naerently, hard to ignore because he was a strikingly attractive ly-tied loincloth and a plain hip-length cloak and adorned by nothingcat pushed back on top of his cropped hair He had a powerful baritone "I say this to you, sisters and brothers: Let her blood be the first we spill Let it, and the then us as we prepare to fight to take back as once ours"