Crown of Stars

Liathano.



To her right, the towering blackness that marked the galla’s mortal body swept out of the trees. The smell of the forge washed over her, blinding her. She fumbled with her right hand—the left was ash—and found the cutting feathers of the griffin-fletched arrow. Pain cut her fingers. She felt her balance going, her body toppling sidelong as the toxin roared into her mind, searing everything before it, even that lingering sour-leek taste from the porridge.



She tried to speak but had no voice.



Cat Mask leaned over her. “What creature have you called down on us?”



Shifting the arrow a finger’s length got him to look down at it. “Kill it,” she whispered. “With—griffin—feather.”



A fox face loomed over her. “This is the one we seek! You’ve killed her!”



“Stand back! Let me aim!”



Liathano.



Dead anyway, she thought bitterly as her vision clouded, hazed over by a veil of darkness. The galla will devour me. Ai, God, Sanglant. The baby, the precious blessing. The flames devoured her, and she fell.



I couldn’t even warn Hanna.



A spark flew. In a shower of light, the galla snapped out of existence. And so did she.



4



HAVING once tasted the air roiling around a swarm of galla, Hanna now felt her flesh attuned to their presence. Although Liath had vanished into the forest, Hanna knew, at once, when the creature vanished, as she would know the instant a great weight pressing down on her body was lifted.



“Come!” She opened the door of Sorgatani’s wagon and clattered down the steps. She grabbed her staff, which she had left outside, leaning against high wheels. She stared around the clearing, hoping to see Liath reappear.



“What think you?” Breschius blocked the door. The Kerayit shaman stood behind him, rubbing her forehead.



“My face hurts,” she said. “So it hurts, before a storm front breaks. Something has happened.”



“The galla is gone.”



“Best you not go hunting her,” said Breschius, “with the night coming down. You’ll be stumbling through the dark all lost. There’s no telling what you might meet out there, wolves, darts, bandits.”



It had grown too dark to see more than shapes and shadows, no detail, and only the starless sky above, nothing to mark direction or the passing of time.



“I curse them for fools,” said Hanna fiercely.



“Who?” asked Breschius.



“The nuns, all of them, even Sister Rosvita, for leaving you out here.”



“No.” A lamp burned behind Sorgatani; the golden net that capped her black hair glittered in its illumination. “They are safe without me. I am safe alone.”



Hanna had learned not to argue with Sorgatani, who had become morose since the attack in Avaria. “Very well. You wait here for Liath. I’ll warn the nuns and Lions about the galla. Where one comes, another may follow.”



“Is there anything they can do if a galla comes?”



“No. That’s what they must know.”



She drew her sword. She didn’t much like the feel of it in her hand. She had no real confidence that she could kill with it, but like so many other things, it was necessary. She was lucky to have a sword—this one had belonged to one of Lady Bertha’s soldiers, now deceased.



A warbler trilled from the woodland, and she frowned. “I’ll come back at dawn. Stay inside.”



“I don’t like this,” said Breschius suddenly. “Best if you stay, Hanna. You’ll be safer if you bide by us.”



She ran as much to escape his pleading as to return to the convent. Something was wrong. She knew it, but she could not explain it. Liath should have returned—unless the galla had caught her. Devoured her.



She must not think like that.



Twilight ate at her vision, but she had walked this path a dozen times in the last few days. A breath—a pale arrow—whistled past her.



“Oh, God.” She ducked down, running with short, rapid steps, heart racing, utterly alert. She plunged out of the trees into the open ground surrounding the convent.



“Attack! Attack!” she cried, and heard her own voice choke on fear, and tried again. “To arms! To arms! Aronvald! Thiadbold!”



A shaft sprouted out of the ground a body’s length from her. She zigged and zagged, stumbled once, kept going although she had scraped her hand raw. Blood trickled off her palm. A torch bloomed at the wall, then a second and third and fourth, so much light she could see their figures scrambling to take up defensive positions where the wall protected them. The work they had done this afternoon would not be enough.