“From my son.”

The resemblance, once noted, became obvious.

“Sanglant!” Was that the ground, shaking, or only emotion flooding her? “You’re Sanglant’s mother! Ai, God.” The one who abandoned him when he was only an infant. She could not say those words; to face a woman who had done nothing different than she had herself left her speechless, and confused. She turned to the old sorcerer. “And you are my daughter’s great grandfather, then?”

“Ssa!” Eldest Uncle leaped forward and whacked his staff hard against the ground, crushing a serpent’s head. Its body writhed, shuddered, and stilled. “I hate those things! Women never think before they take action! Blood! Sex! What do they care about consequences? Their wombs protect them. Their magic gives them power!” With a hiss, he smacked another serpent, hopped to one foot to avoid a third as more churned out of the meadow. “Quick! Climb a tree.”

They scrambled up branches, hanging awkwardly as a score of snakes slithered off through the ground litter, vanishing into the pine woods. The old sorcerer’s white cloak brushed the ground, but because of his precarious position he dared not pull it up. Each time a snake passed under it the white shell trim clacked softly, and the serpent would hiss and strike at the fluttering cloth before snaking hurriedly on.

Liath finally began to laugh at their ridiculous situation. “Are all the snakes poisonous?”

“Serpents are the creatures of women,” the old man muttered, thoroughly cross by now if only because he was hanging by knees and hands from the branches, “so of course they are poisonous, just as women are poisonous to men. That is why women rule.”

“That’s not so! Both women and men can rule in the lands I grew up in, although it’s true that inheritance is more reliable through the mother’s line.”

“Tss!” He hissed at a slender brown snake passing under his cloak. It reared up, hissing, then sank down and vanished into the undergrowth. “I will not be having this argument with you as well, Bright One. I have been arguing with my daughter for three days. What use for her to risk the dangerous journey to the land below a second time, only to return here to tell me that the men of the human tribes will not listen even to a woman’s counsel!”

“You have been to Earth? What of my husband?”

“Sanglant is as stubborn as his father!” The Impatient One swung down from her perch and prodded the ground around her with a stick. Satisfied that the last of the serpents had escaped from the meadow, she relaxed, if in truth a woman of her temperament knew how to relax. “Henri—” She said the name as a Salian would. “—refused to believe my tale, nor would he believe his son. He will walk blindly into the trap laid for him by the human sorcerers.” She spat on the ground. “I say, let him and his people suffer at the hands of the wicked ones. You claimed all along that there could be accommodation, my father, and I listened to you and acted to build a bridge—”

“Without anyone’s permission! Without thinking it through! Rash actions lead to broken bridges!”

The way her lips tightened, pressed hard together, betrayed her anger, but she went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “But now I no longer believe we can make peace if they will not listen in their turn. The old stories are true. Instead of wearing the masks of animals to borrow their power, humankind acts like animals in their hearts.”

“Nay! Not that argument again! The gold feather of peace was given to me by a stranger. He was no animal. I gave it to this one in my turn, because she came to me for aid. Now she has returned, and even you must admit that she has come back to me in peace.”

“Perhaps you would rather that she be your daughter, than that I am!”

“Silence!” cried Liath. Softly, she added, “I beg your pardon. You are welcome to argue all you like once I am gone, but I ask you to listen while I am still here. I came back, Uncle, only to tell you that I must return to Earth.” She turned to regard Sanglant’s mother. “I beg you, if you bear any love for your son and your granddaughter, tell me now if there is anything I should know before I walk the crossroads and return to the ones waiting for me. I do not know how long ago you came from there, or how long it has been since I left this place to walk the spheres. I do not know how many months or years have passed on Earth since I left. I do not know how long I have until the Seven Sleepers will bind their power to cast a great working. Nor do I understand how they mean to raise so much power that they can hope to create a spell strong enough to cast an entire land as vast as this one back again into the aether.”