The gust of wings and a sultry heat swept over her, and the golden griffin swooped down and took her shoulders in its claws.

With a jerk they lurched up, then down so she scraped her knees on rock, then up again, into the air. But not out of range.

More warriors had pressed forward on the road, spreading out at Zuangua’s order to get a better shot. The griffin could not gain height easily. Liath was too heavy. But the beasts, too, were tacticians.

Shouts and screams erupted down the line of waiting Ashioi as the silver male skimmed low over the line of march from behind. That disruption was all it took for them to get out of range and the silver to bank high and head inland.

Held in the griffin’s claws, knowing her weight was a burden, Liath dared not twist in the hope of seeing Eldest Uncle one last time. Her throat was dry and her heart ached. She feared that she would never see him again. What right had his brother and daughter to judge Sanglant out of their own anger at their ancient enemies and thus separate the old man from his only grandchild? Every right, they would say. But it made her angry that Eldest Uncle might never know his grandson or kiss the brow of his great grandchild, if Blessing still lived.

Nay, she knew it in her heart. She had seen true visions. Blessing had survived the cataclysm, just as Sanglant had.

“We will find her,” she swore.

The pain of the griffin’s grip tightening on her shoulders forced tears to her eyes, hot from pain, from anger, and from grief as they flew low over the wasteland and she saw it in all its hideous glory. A blasted wilderness of ash and stone and a skin of still smoking molten rock, cooling and hardening as the days passed. The channel deep into the earth was closed; the Old Ones had seen to that. But the devastation spread for leagues in all directions, and when at last she saw trees again, places where they hadn’t been incinerated, they were blown down all in the same direction. Many trunks still stood, scorched on one side. As they rested and flew and rested and flew, the worst of the destruction eased and she saw vegetation growing again but never sun and rarely rain. Now and again lightning flared to the north. Once, she saw a ragged man herding a trio of sheep along a dusty path; amazingly, he did not look up when the griffin called, as if he had at last decided it was better not to know.

It’s never better not to know.

The pain in her shoulders was bad, but enduring that pain brought her closer to her goal. What if she never knew what had happened to the others? If the griffins could not find Sanglant? If they never got Blessing back? Months, or at least weeks, had passed since she and Sorgatani and Lady Bertha and their retinue had stumbled into Anne’s ambush. She might never know whether her faithful companions had survived the storm. Hanna might be dead, and poor Ivar lost forever in the wilderness that is distance, time, and the events that drag us forward on an unwanted path. She had so few that she counted as some manner of kin or companion that she wept to think of losing any, and yet surely she had lost them years ago, the day she crossed through the burning stone and ascended the mage’s ladder. Sanglant was right: she had abandoned them.