Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 37

"Where is Rage?" he asked Sorrow." Find Adica." The hound rose with a ma.s.sive yawn and a grunt, yipped once, and padded silently away. Alain grabbed his staff and followed him. Spires of rock loomed above them, swathed in darkness. Only the eastern ridges still caught the last of the sun. He met Laoina coming back around the rock face." You come, quick." Laoina pointed to the sky." Night come. Stars come."

o r They collected their gear before following the tracks. The cliff face gave way to a defile, descending in stair steps. Here, the air smelled of water. Hardy plants grew in the walls, finding any purchase that they could. Some had p.r.i.c.kly skins, harsh to the touch, and others lay low along the ground, snaking through tiny crevices.

The defile ended in a steep wall. Here an unknown tribe had erected a stone loom of peculiar design, constructed out of pillars instead of megaliths. Adica walked among the pillars, measuring their distance and angle, glancing frequently at the sky as twilight fell. The pillars had the sheen of granite but the feel of snakeskin frozen into stone. The upper portion of each column was carved into the torso of a woman, arms pressed flat along a scaly gray side. Fanciful stonework decorated the capitals, stonework ropes and vines that half-concealed the sly faces of smiling girls. It took Alain a moment to see that these wreaths of vines and ropes were actually carven snakes.

A flash of gold caught his eye. He knelt at the base of one of the pillars. Sand poured over his hand as he fished out a gold necklace constructed of small squares of gold, each one impressed with the image of a winged G.o.ddess dressed in a layered skirt, attended by two lions and flanked on either side by rosettes like those that decorated the palaces of the Cursed Ones. How had it come to be lost here?

He held the necklace up against Adica's throat." It looks most beautiful when worn by beauty." The gold squares looked uncannily cold against her skin, as chill as the touch of death despite their grave among the warm sands.

Shuddering, she pushed his hands away." That is not mine to wear. Old magic haunts it."

Surprised at her vehemence, he buried it back in the sand." I take not that thing which is not ours. Where are the lion women?"

She rose, glancing up at the heavens." We must walk the loom. Come."

Rage growled softly, standing stiffly alert at the opening of a creva.s.se that thrust into the rock face blocking the lowest end of the defile. A threatening scent wafted out from the creva.s.se. Behind them, Laoina whistled a breathy melody as sinuous as a charm. Sorrow trotted over to Rage and took up the watch.

"Quick." Laoina pointed toward the dogs with her spear." We go, quick quick. Some thing comes." The first stars popped into sight overhead." I do not know how much time has pa.s.sed," said Adica, backing away to find a vantage point to get her bearings." Do you see the moon? Hei, let the days not have pa.s.sed too rapidly, I pray you, Fat One. Let it not be too late."

"What must I look for?" asked Alain, coming to stand beside her." Teach me how to help you weave the looms."

'Two Fingers' land lies west of here. So if we would travel west, I must weave west." She studied the sky, intent and purposeful as she held her mirror poised by her chest." The stars do not move in relation to each other. But how high or low they stand in the sky can change. See there." She pointed to a bright curve of stars, glittering in the clear desert air." At our village, the Serpent crawls along the hilltops. Here in the desert lands it gains invisible wings that allow it to soar. There is its red eye, that bright star. Yes, that one. Step back, now. I'll bind the first thread-"

Lifting her mirror, she angled the reflective face until the image of the star caught in it. She had already forgotten him as she fell into the rising and falling chant of her spell. So quickly, she pulled away from him, as though a chasm had ruptured between them. Yet how could he help but stare as she worked her magic? She looped her weaving around the stars known as the Holy Woman's Necklace, still high in the sky and setting toward the west, and wove a gate to western lands. He had never stood so close before. He could actually hear the thrum of the threads through the soles of his feet, deep in his bones. The gate arced into being just as the hounds yelped with fear and skittered backward. Alain raised his staff as they bounded into view. Night fell.

"Go!" cried Adica, caught in the maze of her weaving.

A sibilant hiss echoed along the stone cliffs around them. Laoina needed no more urging: she bolted through the threshold.

"Go!" cried Adica when Alain hesitated." I will follow you."

"I won't leave you!" he cried. The hounds raced through the gateway, vanis.h.i.+ng through the archway, abandoning them-or scared off.

What on Earth was dreadful enough to make his faithful hounds run off like that?

A grinding weight sc.r.a.ped along rock behind him. He whirled, holding his staff ready, keeping his body between the creva.s.se and Adica, but all he could see was shadow. A heavy footfall shuddered the ground as one of the lion women padded past him, eerily silent." Alain!"

A hiss answered Adica's call. A serpentine creature emerged from the creva.s.se, winding sideways in the manner of a snake. Except it wasn't a snake.

It had creamy-pale skin and a torso like that of a woman with the face of a girl newly come to womanhood, fey and curiously aloof. Her hair writhed around her head as though in a whirlpool of air, or as if her hair itself were alive, a coil of hissing serpents." Alain!" The gate glimmered, threads snapping. The sphinx leaped forward to attack, and Alain heard Adica's fading cry. He jumped back through threads sparking and hissing into a blinding sandstorm.

Drowning in sand, he flailed wildly. He could not breathe. Hands grabbed him. He stumbled as they dragged him along. Bowed down by the force of the sandstorm, he tugged up a corner of his cloak to s.h.i.+eld his face. Sand dribbled down his chin. Dry particles coated his mouth, and every time he swallowed sand sc.r.a.ped the moist flesh of his throat until he thought his throat was on fire.

They stumbled over rough ground for an eternity as sand battered them, scouring his exposed skin. Certainly he could see absolutely nothing. All at once he felt a ma.s.sive wall looming before him. A strong grip tugged him sideways, and he fell forward down a smooth slope and cracked his knees on stone. Far away up the tunnel, wind screamed. He spit and coughed and finally vomited a little, so choked with sand that he shook helplessly. His eyes stung with sand, and sand clogged his ears. His hair shed gritty particles with each shudder.

Where was Adica? Had she escaped the storm? He struggled to his feet just as a man spoke to him in a language he did not know. He spoke again in the tongue of the White Deer people, with an accent even stranger than that of Laoina but a rather better grasp of the niceties of the language.

"Rise, stranger. Walk forward, if it pleases you. A place we have for you to bathe yourself."

Alain squinted through sand-scoured eyes. A swarthy man with a proud face and an aquiline nose examined him. Was that compa.s.sion quirking up his mouth? With an elegant gesture, he indicated a tunnel lit by oil burning in a ceramic bowl. Alain glanced back the way he had come. Three robed figures hunkered down at the entrance, armed with spears. They stared out into the storm, a void of wind and earth and spirits howling in the air. What they feared beyond the storm itself he did not want to consider, not after he'd seen the face of that snake woman.

He had never expected to see so many strange things, like visions drawn out of the distant past. The forest around Lavas Castle boasted a herd of aurochs and the occasional chance-met unicorn, swiftly seen and as swiftly gone, and there were always wolves, but the great predators that plagued humankind in the old legends, the swamp-born guivres, the dragons of the north, the griffins that flew in the gra.s.slands, did not wander the northern forests and in truth were scarcely ever seen and commonly believed to be nothing more than stories made up to scare children. Maybe the three men were only guarding against their enemies, the Cursed Ones. It just seemed impossible that anyone could navigate through such a storm." Where is the Hallowed One?"

"She came before you, before the storm hit. Come with me." "I must see that she is safe."

The guide's glance was honed like a weapon, cutting and sharp." This to me she says you will ask. She already goes to Two Fingers. I shall show this to you, from her, to mark she is safe." He opened a hand to display one of Adica's copper bracelets." The dogs also came safely to our halls. Now, we go." He turned and walked away down the tunnel.

Ceramic bowls had been placed just far enough apart along the tunnel that the last glow of light from one faded into the first share of light from the next as they walked. In this way, they never quite walked in darkness and yet only at intervals in anything resembling brightness. The rock fastness smelled faintly of anise. Alain shed sand at every step. Probably he would never be rid of it all. The tunnel emptied onto a large chamber fitted with tents of animal skins stretched over taut ropes. The chamber lay empty. A goldworker had been interrupted in the midst of her task: her tools lay spread out on a flat rock next to a necklace of surpa.s.sing fineness, a pectoral formed out of faience and shaped into two falcons, facing each other. Two looms sat unattended; one of the weavings, almost finished, boasted alternating stripes of gold, blue, black, and red. A leather worker had left half-cut work draped over a stool. A child's wheeled cart lay discarded on the ground; a wheel had fallen off, and the toy cart listed to one side.

His guide waited patiently while Alain stared about the chamber, but at last the man indicated the mouth of a smaller tunnel." If it pleases you."

This second tunnel, shorter and better lit, opened into a circular chamber divided by a curtain. The guide drew the curtain aside and gestured toward a pool. He wasn't one bit shy. He watched with interest as Alain stripped, tested the waters, and found them gloriously warm. With a sigh, Alain ducked his head completely under. Sand swirled up all around him before pouring away in a current that led out under the rock.

"You are the Hallowed One's husband," said the man as he handed a coa.r.s.e sponge to Alain." Are you not afraid of her fate eating you?"

"I am not afraid. I will protect her."

The man had a complexion as dark as Liath's, and bold, expressive eyebrows, raised now in an att.i.tude of skepticism." Fate is already woven. When the Shaman's Headdress crowns the heavens, then the seven will weave. No thing can stop what befalls them then " He touched a finger to his own lips as if to seal himself to silence." That we may not speak of. The Cursed Ones hear all things."

"Nothing will befall Adica," said Alain stubbornly.

The man grunted softly but, instead of answering, rinsed out Alain's clothing in the pool.

After Alain had gotten almost every last grain of sand out of the lobes of his ears and from between his toes, he examined his body. Winter had made him lean, and the work had strengthened him. He had welts at the girdle of his hips where the sand had worked down, and his heels were red and raw. Yet the sunburn he had gotten in the desert was utterly gone, not even any trace of peeling skin, as though days or even weeks had gone by in the instant it had taken him to step through the gate.

"You are a brave man," said the guide solemnly, handing Alain his wet, wrung, and somewhat less sandy clothing.

Alain laughed. It sounded so ridiculous, said that way." Who is brave, my friend? I want only to keep the one I love safe." He began to dress, dripping as he talked." What are you called, among your people?" "It is permitted to call me Hani. What is it permitted to call you?"

"I am called Alain. Do your people always live in the caves?"

"No. Here we take refuge from the attacks of the Cursed Ones."

Here was a subject Alain could understand. When had the Cursed Ones first attacked? How often did the raids come these days, and from what directions? Hani answered as well as he could." Do you believe the Cursed Ones walk the looms?" Alain asked.

"It may be. Or it may be they beach their s.h.i.+ps along the strand and hide them. That way they can make us think they know how to walk the looms."

"Then you would fear both their raids and their knowledge because you do not know how much they know."

Hani gave Alain an ironic smile, peculiar to see on that proud face." This I am thinking, but the Hallowed Ones and elders of my people do not listen to me."

As they talked, each in his halting command of their common language, they walked back to the main cavern before ducking behind a hide curtain that concealed yet another tunnel. They made so many twists and turns, pa.s.sed so many branching corridors, that Alain knew he would never find his way out again without a guide.

At intervals he heard down the maze of tunnels the sound of the storm screaming outside. Sand stirred up by its pa.s.sage dried out his lips. But the sound faded as the pa.s.sage dipped down to a circular aperture carved into the rock. Alain stepped high over a band of rock thrust across the corridor at the same time as he ducked to avoid the low ceiling; and pa.s.sed into a world bathed in red, walls painted with ocher.

Hani bent, bowed, and murmured a prayer. A stickily sweet per fume hung in the air. They came into an antechamber carved out of the rock, stairs and doors, carved niches and stepped ceilings, all painted reddish orange. It was like stepping into a womb, the ancient home of the oldest mothers of humankind.

People waited here, sitting or kneeling in silence, shawls draped over their hair. He saw no children. Laoina knelt here, head bowed, by a second doorway, this one carved out of the stone in imitation of a lintel and frame made of timber.

She shaded her eyes with a hand as though to s.h.i.+eld them from a bright light. When Alain paused beside her, she glanced up with a grimace of relief." We did not lose you! Wait with me."

He still did not see Adica. Ignoring Hani's startled protest, Alain stepped over the threshold.

Inside, torches illuminated three people, two of them veiled and the third Adica. The cloud of incense choked him. Sorrow and Rage sat on either side of the threshold, waiting for him.

In silence, with a bent head, Adica waited as the veiled man chanted over a swaddled bundle held in his arms. His free arm lifted and fell, lifted and fell, in sweeping motions in time to his chant. He was missing two fingers on that hand.

A wide-mouthed white-and-red pot sat at his feet, incised with spirals whose smooth line, like that of a wild rose, was broken by nublike thorns. He bent to settle the bundle inside the pot, and in that instant, the cloth covering the bundle parted enough for Alain to see an infant's face, gray and composed in death. Two Fingers covered the mouth of the pot with a lid.

The second adult stepped forward to place the pot beside a dozen similar pots, set neatly on shelves carved out of the rock within the niche. Then both retreated to the middle of the chamber, singing their prayers.

Adica saw Alain. Her expression was soft, and sorrowful, but a smile of relief twitched her cheeks as she touched a finger to her lips. Despite her occasional strangeness, he understood the language of her body well enough: she wanted him to stay where he was, so that he wouldn't interrupt the ceremony. Nodding, he stepped back to stand by the threshold between Sorrow and Rage. The chanted prayers ceased. Silence struck the chamber, powerful and thick as the smoke from the incense. Yet it wasn't complete silence. The wail of wind whistled at the edge of his hearing, fading in and out. He thought, for an instant, that he heard a baby crying, but the sobs blended with that faint howl of wind to become an undifferentiated sound, low and long.

Two Fingers' a.s.sistant unhooked her veil to reveal a young face marked with severe features and a furious frown. She shook a string of stone, bone, and polished wood beads, shattering the silence. Alain heard the crowd in the antechamber rise and move away.

A curtain of s.h.i.+mmering cloth was hung over the threshold; strands of thread worn into a metallic glitter striped the fabric, gold wings woven into a blue-dyed wool hanging, further elaborated with beads and sh.e.l.ls. Two Fingers let his veil fall. He had a solemn face, weathered by sun and sand, and a clean-shaven chin. It was difficult to tell how old he was except for the crow's-feet at his eyes. He spoke the conventional greeting, displaying his three-fingered hand with his palm out and open. The scar showed clearly, a cleanly-healed wound that ran raggedly, as though a beast had bitten off his fingers." Why have you come, daughter? What news brings you?"

Adica told him the story of their hasty journey. Two Fingers listened intently while Hani and Laoina translated from behind the curtain. He interrupted at intervals for clarification, woven as this tale was through the barrier of imperfectly understood translations.

"Truly," Two Fingers said when Adica had finished, "we feared the worst. Now we must post guards at every loom, because the Cursed Ones raid as they wish."

"Have they learned the secret of the looms?" asked Alain." Or are these raiding parties sent out to make you believe that they know more than they do?"

Two Fingers grinned. When he smiled, his face was transformed; he had a dimple." Is this the husband of Adica who speaks, or my cousin's son Hani? It may be that they send out raiding parties who roam for many moons or even seasons. So have they done in the past, to plague humankind. It may only seem to us that they travel through the looms, when perhaps they cloak themselves in other magic that we do not understand. Yet what does it matter, if they have killed Horn and broken the weaving?"

"Do not say so," retorted Adica sternly." We have walked a long path together. We cannot let them defeat us now."

"We must know for certain," Two Fingers agreed thoughtfully." How can I and my companions find Horn's people without walking into a trap?"

Once Hani's voice ceased, Two Fingers considered. Alain stared at the niche, with its offerings of pots. Did each one contain a dead infant? Was the thickly burning incense covering the smell of putrefaction? The red paint, like a coating of blood, lay heaviest along the inset stone walls of the niche. Painted figures of women with heavy thighs and pregnant bellies reminiscent of the Fat One danced up and down the walls of the niche, celebrating the innocent dead or protecting them. It was hard to know which.

"The storm may last for days. There are some among my tribe who believe that the Cursed Ones afflict us with harsh storms to break our spirit."

"What do you believe, Two Fingers? The Cursed Ones know many secret things. Can it be they can weave the weather as well?" He lifted his mutilated hand in a gesture of surrender." I know little enough. Storms grow worse each year, so it seems. But I am not sure even the Cursed Ones can work such powerful magic that they can raise storms in a land so far from their own." "They have s.h.i.+ps."

"So they do. How does a storm benefit them when they are at sea, unless they can bend each breath of wind to their will?" Again, he made that dismissive gesture, glancing at his young a.s.sistant. The woman frowned back at him. Nothing seemed able to break her concentration, or that startling frown." It matters not, for all will be decided soon enough. The month of Adiru comes to an end. Now the sun stands still-"

"Has so much time pa.s.sed?" Adica demanded harshly." When we left our tribe, we had just welcomed spring!"

Was it already summer? Adica had told him that time pa.s.sed differently when one walked the looms, but how could that happen when only a pair of days had gone by?

"So much time has pa.s.sed," replied Two Fingers with a solemn nod." The time of weaving will not wait for us. It will come whether we are ready or not."

"We must be ready." Adica wore that stubborn expression which Alain had learned to respect.

Two Fingers nodded." If we are to succeed, one among us must reach Horn's land to see if she yet lives. I will travel there with you." "It is hard enough risking my own self," said Adica." You must not risk yourself as well."

"Nay, for I have Hehoyanah to follow me." He gestured toward the young woman." She will work my part of the pattern. You cannot be replaced, Young One, since you have no apprentice. Although it is true you have a powerful spirit walking with you." He gestured toward Alain, marking him with an astute glance. His dimple peeped again as his lips quirked up, but the smile was brief." I must make sure you arrive safely in your own land."

Adica's shoulders stiffened. She yanked at the sleeve of her bodice the way she always did when she was irritated." So easily do the old sacrifice the young. Does your apprentice embrace her fate gladly, that you have pa.s.sed onto her so unexpectedly?"

Alain began to step forward, to soothe her, but thought better of it as Two Fingers' a.s.sistant lifted a corner of her veil up to cover her face, hiding her expression. Better not to interfere. This was out of his hands.

Two Fingers gazed on Adica blandly, as if the anger boiling in her heart slipped off of him like water. Yet his voice was not easy." Do you think the old gladly bury the young?" He gestured toward the silent pots at rest in the painted alcoves." Do not let your own eyes cloud what you see. I am sorry for the burden the young have been forced to share with the old. But we have no choice unless we choose to let the Cursed Ones win this war and subject all humankind to slavery."

Such words made Alain nervous. Why did everyone speak so stubbornly about fate and death? Adica was so young that although it was true that all people must expect to die in time, and perhaps untimely, she ought to have many long years to live. With Alain at her side.

The wind whined distantly, like the lost and fading wails of an infant torn from his mother's breast.

"Come." This time Two Fingers' curt smile did not bring out his dimple." We cannot wait for the storm to falter of its own. We must walk the phoenix path into Horn's land."

From a ceramic dish resting in one of the niches, he scooped up a paste of red ocher and brushed Adica's forehead with the color, marking her. After a hesitation, he did the same to Alain. He veiled himself before the curtain was drawn aside so they could leave the chamber.

In the larger chamber, six people remained. Laoina looked relieved to see them, and she fell in beside Adica at once. Two Fingers spoke to each of his tribespeople in turn, a complicated and intimate phrasing that made Laoina shake her head in bewilderment.

Hani stepped up beside Alain." In this way, the Hallowed One says good-bye to his family."

So it was. Two Fingers was taking his leave: a hand on a brow, a low string of instructions, the touching of two foreheads, like a kiss or a meeting of minds.

Last of all, Hehoyanah clasped hands with him. She had the kind of stiarp pride that makes the expression seem naked, as though all veils between the inner fire and the outer mask had been torn away. Kneeling, she bowed her head to receive a blessing from him. Then she rose and crossed to Adica. She held up both hands, palms out, and Adica pressed her own palms against hers. The other woman's hands were shorter and stubbier, but they looked strong enough to wring the neck of any young man cra.s.s enough to insult her. She, too, had missing fingers and the same kind of raggedly-healed scar.

"So do we walk together," said the young woman." I will know you when the time comes, Adica."

"May your G.o.ds and your people bless you for what is to come, Hehoyanah."

"There is but one G.o.d," retorted Hehoyanah, "who dwells in all places and is never seen."

"Tsst!" muttered Laoina at the same time as Hani grimaced, as one might when an otherwise tolerable kinsman starts in for the tenth time about the hunt where he single-handedly killed an aurochs." How can one know of a G.o.d who can't be seen, and has no dwelling place?"

"I pray you," said Alain, stepping forward in astonishment. Only when they all stared at him, puzzled, did he realize that he'd slipped back into Wendish. With difficulty he groped for words in the language of the White Deer people." Know you of the G.o.d who is two made one?"

i "G.o.d is only one!" Hehoyanah objected." G.o.d is not of flesh but of spirit."

Two Fingers chopped through this discussion with a brisk gesture." So speaks the one whose face must be veiled, for she has looked upon G.o.d's spirit, and the radiance of the Holy One still s.h.i.+nes in her face too brightly for mortal eyes. This is not the time, Daughter, for such talk as this."

"If I do not speak, then it is as if I am wors.h.i.+ping the idols myself!"

"By this means am I rewarded for sending you to dwell among a foreign people! Daughter, you will obey me in this. I do as the G.o.ds command me, and as necessity makes plain. My task is to rid humankind of the Cursed Ones. If all humankind falls under the lash of the Cursed Ones, then what can your G.o.d say to us and how may your G.o.d rescue us then?

"G.o.d rescues those who believe," Hehoyanah retorted." Do what you have pledged, Daughter, for I have given you my teaching in return for your obedience. If I return, and you live, then you may do as you think right, because then I will not be here to argue with you. Come."

He walked out of the chamber, down the tunnel. Adica and Laoina followed him.

Alain hung back, beckoning to Hani." I ask you, friend, if you will tell her that I know of the G.o.d she speaks of. She is not alone in believing."

Hani looked at him strangely." Has this G.o.d walked so far as the White Deer tribe?" "G.o.d do not walk."

"Then how comes the G.o.d to the north? How can the G.o.d live both in the desert and in the frozen wasteland?"