Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 2

"In this next sun's year is the time of greatest danger. If the Cursed Ones suspect that we mean to act against them, then they will send their armies to attack us. We need every ally we can find, whether Red Deer, or White Deer, or Black Deer. No matter how strange other tribes may seem to us, we need their help. If you are still alive after the next year's dark of the sun, you will no longer have to fear."

Orla made the sign to avert evil spirits and spat on the ground, and many did likewise, although not Beor. The younger ones withdrew to get on with their work or to check their bows and axes. As the villagers dispersed to their tasks, only the elders and the war captain remained.

"I will go with the war party," Adica said. They had no choice but to agree.

She went to her old house to gather healing herbs and her basket of charms. Inside, the small house lay musty, abandoned. She ran her fingers along the eaves. One of the rafters still leaked a little pitch, and she touched it to her lips, breathing in its essence.

Outside, Beor waited with a party of nine adults whom he trusted to stand and fight, should it come to that. They walked armed with bows, carrying spare arrows tipped with obsidian points, and axes of flint or copper. Agda had a stone ax, and Beor himself carried the prize of the village: a halberd with a real bronze blade fixed at right angles to the shaft. He had taken it off the body of a dead enemy.

As they set out, the Swift loped past them with her dog at her heels, but she took the turning that would lead her on to Spring Water: Dorren's village.

No need to think of Dorren now. Adica could enjoy, surely, this transitory peace, walking under the bright sun and reveling in the wind on her back. It wasn't as hot as it had been on Falling-down's island home. She walked at the back of the band, keeping an eye out for useful plants. When she spotted a patch of mustard and stepped off the path to investigate, Beor dropped back to wait for her. The others paused a short way down the path, out of earshot but within range in case of attack.

She ignored Beor as best she could while she harvested as much mustard as she could tie around with a tall gra.s.s stem and set into her traveling basket. He fell in beside her as soon as she started on down the path. She did not look at him, and it seemed to her, by the way he swung the shaft of his halberd out before him, that he did not look at her. Yet it was still comforting to walk beside another person, companions on the long march. Ahead, the rest of the band set out, keeping a bit of distance between them.

"The elders spoke to me yesterday." His voice was a little hoa.r.s.e, the way it got when he was aroused, or irritated." They said that the reason we never made a child between us was because your magic has leached all the fertility from you. They said that if I don't give up thinking of you that evil spirits will drain me, too, and I'll never be able to make a child with another woman."

Her feet fell, one step and another and another. She couldn't make any thoughts come clear. The sun was bright. The path wound through woodland where a fresh breeze hissed through leaves.

"I never wanted any woman like I wanted you. But that has to be done with now. So be it. The elders say that Mother Nahumia's eldest daughter over at Old Fort just last moon set her man's hunting bag outside the door and made him leave. She'll be looking for a new man, then, won't she?"

"You'd have to go to Old Fort," said Adica, since he seemed to expect her to say something." You'd have to live there."

"That's true. But I've a mind to leave. I've even thought of walking farther east, to hunt for a season with my Black Deer cousins."

"That's a long way," said Adica, and heard her own voice trembling, not able to speak the words without betraying the fear in her own heart.

"So it is," he agreed, and he waited again, wanting her sympathy or regret, perhaps, or an attempt to talk him out of this rash course of action. But she couldn't give him more. She had already offered her life to her people, and the magic hadn't even left her a child to keep her name alive among them.

"You're a good war captain, Beor," she said." The village needs you. Will you at least wait until my work is done before you go? Then maybe it won't matter that they lose you " Here she faltered. It was forbidden to speak aloud of the great weaving, because words were power, not to be carelessly cast to the four winds in case the Cursed Ones overheard them." At least wait until then."

He grunted but made no other answer, and after a bit picked up their pace so that they fell in with the others. Since the others feared speaking to her, and would not look at her, she might as well have been walking alone.

The sun had risen halfway to noon by the time they reached Four Houses, a scatter of a dozen sheds, huts, pit houses, and four respectable compounds, each one boasting a round house at each corner with a thatched roof and a rock wall built into storage sheds between. A half-dozen adults labored at a ditch, digging with antlers and hauling away the dirt in bark buckets.

The war captain of Four Houses was a stout woman with two scars who went by the name Ulfrega and who wore the string skirt that marked her as a woman old enough to choose a marriage partner. By the evidence of the pale birth threads that decorated Ul-frega's belly above the band of her low-slung skirt, she had survived several pregnancies.

Ulfrega led them down past the river, through woodland rife with pigs, and along a deer trail that led to the Red Deer settlement. Two round houses and six storage pits lay quiet under the summer sun. Strangely, one of the round houses was entirely burned down to the stone half wall while the other stood as fresh and whole as if it had been built a month ago and lived in only yesterday. There was also a stone corral and a hayrick and a very neatly laid out vegetable garden, lush with ripening vegetables. Flies buzzed. A crow flapped lazily away as they approached. Even the village dogs had fled the carnage. The village lay empty except for a single abandoned corpse.

The Red Deer settlers had begun digging a ditch, too, and had gotten a rampart and ditch halfway around the settlement.

"Too little, too late," said Ulfrega, gesturing toward the half-dug ditch and the fallen and partially burned rampart. Debris from the fight lay everywhere: arrowheads; a shattered spear shaft; and one of the Cursed Ones' swords, a flat length of wood edged with obsidian, although most of that obsidian was broken or fallen off. Ulfrega picked up an arrow shaft and fingered the obsidian point quickly before tucking it away into the leather satchel she wore slung over one shoulder.

"You're late to build a ditch as well," said Beor.

She shrugged, looking irritated." The other raids always came over by Three Oaks and Spring Water."

"It's not so far to travel between them, not for the Cursed Ones."

"Hei!" She spat in the direction of the corpse." In open country they may move quickly, but they're slower when they bring their horses into the woodland. There's a lot of dense growth between Three Oaks and here."

"That didn't save these people."

The rest of Beor's people fanned out to scavenge for obsidian points and whatever was ripening in the garden. They avoided the corpse.

"I'll chase the spirit away," said Adica. No doubt the Four Houses people had been waiting for her to settle the matter. Both Beor and Ulfrega made the gesture to avert evil spirits and delicately stepped away from her. She rummaged in her basket and got out the precious copper bowl, just large enough to fit in her cupped hands, that she used for such workings. At the outdoor hearth she struck sparks with flint and touched it to a dried sc.r.a.p of mushroom to raise a fire, then poured blessing water from her waterskin into the bowl and set it on a makes.h.i.+ft tripod over the flames to heat. The others vanished into the woodland to seek out the trail of their enemy or to hide while she worked magic.

While the water heated, she stared in silence at the corpse.

His fall had torn his wooden lynx's mask from his face. He had proud features and a complexion the color of copper. His black hair had been coiled into a topknot, as was customary for his kind, and all down his arms various magical symbols had been painted with blue woad and red ocher, one twined into the next. Yet truly his s.e.x mattered little: it was an adult, and therefore dangerous, because it could breed and it could fight.

No animal scavengers had touched the body. The Cursed Ones protected their spirits with powerful spells, so she would have to be cautious. Luckily, none of the Four Houses people had tried to strip the corpse, although he wore riches. A sheet of molded bronze protected his chest, so beautifully incised with figures of animals that she could not help but admire the artistry. Across the breastplate a vulture-headed woman paced majestically toward a burnished sun while two dragons faced each other, dueling with fire. It was hard to reconcile the creatures who stalked and terrorized humankind with ones who could fas.h.i.+on so many beautiful things. His bronze helmet, crested with horsehair, had rolled just slightly off his head, lying askew in the dirt. Someone had trampled the crest during the fight, the crease still stamped into the ground.

A leather belt fastened with a copper buckle held tight his knee-length skirt, all sewn of a piece. The cloth lay so smooth and soft over the body that she could not help but touch her own roughly woven bodice and the string skirt. With such riches as they had, why did the Cursed Ones bother to attack humankind at all?

But didn't they look upon humans as they did upon their own cattle? Maybe it was true that, before the time of the great queens, humankind had roamed like animals, eating and drinking and hunting and rutting, no different than the beasts. But that wasn't true now.

Hanging a sachet of juniper around her neck for protection, she picked out four dried leaves of lavender, then walked to the north and crumbled one between her fingers. Its dust spilled on the ground. To the east, south, and west, she did the same, forming a ring of protection. Standing to the west, she crouched and cupped her hands over her nose to inhale the fading lavender scent, strong and pure. She murmured words of power and protection into her hands.

The water boiled. With bone tongs she lifted the copper bowl off the heat and brought it over to her basket. She dropped old thistle into the water and waited, hands raised, palms out.

The spirit manifested in her palms as a tiny vortex. Then she saw it rising from the body, slippery and white. It quested to the four corners but could not break free, bound by the spell of lavender. As it spun like a whirlwind, its plaintive voice first growled then mewled then whined, and suddenly the cloud of the spirit, like a swarm of indistinct gnats, sprang heavenward, running up the tunnel made by the four directional wards. She jumped forward to sprinkle lavender dust on the corpse's eyes and dab lavender into the corpse's ears and nostrils and over its lips. Pulling up the skirt, she wiped paste of lavender over its man part, then rolled the corpse over so she could seal it completely.

Far above, she heard a howl of despair. She clapped her hands three times, stamped her feet, and the sensation of a vortex swirling in her palms vanished. The spirit had fled to the higher world, up the world axis made by the wards.

Yet it had left a treasure behind: under the corpse lay a bronze sword.

Cautiously, she ran her hands over the metal blade. It, too, had a spirit, fierce and implacable. This blade had bitten many lives in half, and sent many spirits screaming from their bodies. Yet who should carry such a dangerous and powerful being? No one in the White Deer tribe, not in all the nine villages that made up the people, had a sword like this.

She found vervain in her basket, rolling it between her hands and letting it fall onto the sword, to placate that vengeful spirit and to temporarily mute its l.u.s.t for blood.

In addition to the bronze breastplate, the helmet, the sword, the belt, and the loose linen tunic, the dead one had carried a knife, and also a pouch containing four common river pebbles, a sachet of herbs, a conch sh.e.l.l, and a small wooden cube engraved with magical symbols.

After stripping the corpse, she dragged it into the burned house and covered it with firewood. She marked the ruined threshold with hexes and threw the dead man's sacred pouch and his war rior's mask in after. As she shoveled hot coals onto the fallen thatch, the pyre began to burn.

Seeing smoke, Ulfrega led the others out of the wood." No one will settle here again," observed Ulfrega before she hurried after Beor to examine the treasure.

"Do not touch it," said Adica quickly. Smoke boiled up from the funeral pyre." The Cursed One's magic lives in those things."

"But I use this halberd, and it was taken from the Cursed Ones." Beor eyed the bronze sword with naked hunger.

The vision hit her so hard that she couldn't breathe.

Beor runs with the sword in his hand, leading a crowd of wild-eyed young people, running east to fight their own kind, humankind, burning their homes and stealing their cattle and goats.

This was the madness that the Cursed Ones had brought into their hearts!

Gasping, she found herself braced on her hands and knees. Everyone had stepped away from her. She was sweating, although a cloud covered the sun.

Unbidden, she wept, torn by grief. What would the White Deer people become, after she was gone? Were none of them strong enough to resist the implacable spirit that lived in the sword? Was this what the vision promised her, that her people would be consumed by its anger and l.u.s.t? Were they fated to be poisoned by this legacy of the Cursed Ones, called war?

The rank smell of burning flesh washed over her, and she floated on that smoke into a more complicated vision, one without beginning or end.

There would be peace and war, kindness and cruelty. There would be honor, and shame.

All this would come to humankind.

It was already here.

Perhaps it was even true that the grandmothers had lived in a peace and loving-kindness unknown to the White Deer tribe now. Or perhaps the ancestors had fought their own battles, as simple as anger between friends or as complex as old enmities between tribes.

What would come, would come. She could only do her duty, here and now. So had the Holy One spoken. So had she agreed, knowing that it was the only way she had to protect her people.

The vision faded. Trembling, she got to her feet to find that the others had retreated to hunker down by the intact roundhouse and chew on stalks of dried meat, waiting for her to come out of her trance. She never had to explain herself. She went down to the nearby stream and cut reeds with her stone knife, then braided them into rope strong enough to bind and carry the dead one's treasure. With this bundle hoisted over her shoulders and her basket tapping at her hip, she walked back to Four Houses. The others followed at a safe distance, keeping their voices low.

They feared her, because she had magic and they had none, because she saw what they could not see. That was how the G.o.ds chose, giving sight to some and leaving the rest blind.

Sometimes, she knew, it was more merciful to be blind.

THEY sheltered that night at Four Houses. The people hustled out of her way when she approached. Fathers pulled their children in through the gates that barred off the family compounds, where her glance could not scar or cripple any of these most precious young ones. No one invited her inside, and Beor was wise enough or fearful enough of what she might do if she were angered that he and his party sat outside, too, taking the meal that the Four Houses adults shared with them.

They ate well: fresh venison and swan; a malty beer almost thick enough to scoop up with her fingers; cheese; and late season greens, rather toothy and fibrous. The Four Houses people kept their dogs tied up so that they could eat in peace without the constant begging menace.

That night she slept outside, alone, in the shadow of one of the hayricks. Yet she could not help stroking the smooth cloth once worn by the dead Cursed One. She could not help crus.h.i.+ng its soft weave against her cheek. It didn't comfort her.

In the morning, they walked back to their village. Everyone wanted to see the bronze sword, but she kept it hidden. Its spirit still wept for its former master; it was still angry. She carried the treasure up the hill and wove a warding out of herbs and charms into an old cowhide. In this hide she wrapped sword and armor. A shallow hole just outside the stone loom made a convenient temporary grave.

She knelt by that hole for a long time, but no visions came. Finally, she walked down to the river and washed the linen s.h.i.+rt until no taint of the Cursed One lingered in it. Returning up the hill, she found a platter of food left by her shelter, a pottage now cold and congealed, a mug of ale dusted with a scattering of vegetal matter blown in by the wind. After she hung the linen cloth over the shelter to dry, she ate. No one ever turned down food. No one else ever had to eat alone.

It was a warm summer evening, golden and endless with promise, but she clutched only emptiness at her heart.

Binding on her hallowing clothes, she walked the familiar path to the stones as night fell. Stars bloomed above like the campfires of the dead. Was there a new star among their number, the spirit of the Cursed One she had banished from the Earth yesterday? She could not tell.

With certain gestures of ritual respect, she walked into the stone loom. The great stones seemed to watch her. Kneeling before the cauldron, she sipped at the water before flinging a handful into the air to seed the wind with its holiness. With arms folded across on her chest, she breathed herself into the trance necessary to the working, walked each step of the great weaving so that she would make no mistake when the time came and thus sever the threads. When she had walked it through in her mind's eye without mistake, she walked it again.

But she could only remain deep in the working trance for so long. After a while, she eased herself free of it. She was tired, but not sleepy. Bowing her head, she waited.

Maybe she was only waiting for hope, or release. Maybe she was only waiting for the wind. Or for death.

It was a long night.

Mist crept up into the stones and wreathed her, cold and soft. The stars breathed in and out, souls sighing for their lost home. A nightingale sang.

An owl hooted.

She started up out of a doze. Her knees ached, her left foot was asleep, and as she s.h.i.+fted to banish the needles of evil spirits, come to plague her while she napped, she saw the owl glide in noiselessly on its great wings and settle on the cauldron. Swiftly, she covered her eyes with a hand.

Dawn lightened the eastern horizon. The mist retreated, like a creature withdrawing its claws, until its coils wrapped only the westernmost stones. A blue-white light flared before her eyes. The breath of the Holy One tickled her neck, smelling of gra.s.s. Hooves tapped the ground as the Holy One danced away.

The ground shuddered beneath her knees, throwing her back. Some force reached into her guts and yanked them one way while she was jerked in the other direction. The movement tore her in half and yet she was entire, whole and panting with exertion and fright. Her tongue had swollen, and her head spun with a myriad dizzy tumbles, as though she were rolling bodily down a steep hill even as she knelt unmoving beside the cauldron.

Something deep in the cosmos had come undone. The world murmured around her, unsettled and curious, and she heard birds coming awake in the forest and the distant howling of wolves. The breath of the stars grazed her neck, burning her with their fierce heat, as implacable as the souls of swords. She heard a gasp, and then all was silent except for the movements of the Holy One, murmuring quiet words.

Except for another voice, low and confused.

Except for the rank scent of blood, and an unknown smell that smothered her until she understood what it was: wet dog.

Startled, she looked up to see two huge black dogs, as large as half-grown calves, standing alert on the other side of the step stone. She rose cautiously, but the dogs made no move against her, nor did they growl or bark.

A naked man lay on the ground on the other side of the cauldron. He had the lean male body of one who is no longer a youth and yet has not been a man for many years.

The Holy One waited, unmoving, a spear's length away from the prostrate body. A litter of b.l.o.o.d.y garments lay heaped on the ground before her.

Adica circled the cauldron cautiously, murmuring words of protection. Was this a conjuring man, walking abroad with his spirit guides?

The dogs nosed the body as though smelling for life before settling down contentedly on either side of the p.r.o.ne man. They did not try to bite her as she slid in between them to touch the man on the shoulder. His skin was as soft as a rose petal, marvelously smooth. He was much less hairy than the men of the Deer clans, but he hadn't the bronze complexion that marked the Cursed Ones. Pale and straight, he was like no person she had seen before. She traced the line of his shoulder blade, his skin warm under her hand. He breathed softly and slowly.

"Here is the husband I have promised you, Adica," said the Holy One." He comes from the world beyond."

His scent was as sweet as wild roses. His ear, the one she could see, had a whorl as delicate as that of a precious seash.e.l.l, brought in trade from the north, and his lips had a delicate elder-violet tinge, as if he had recently been very cold.

She spoke softly, afraid to disturb him." Did he come from the land of the dead?" Because of the way he was lying, it was hard to make out the shape of his face.

"Truly it was to the land of the dead that he was walking. But now he is here."

Her hand rested on the curve of his shoulder. He had a young man's thighs and b.u.t.tocks, but she could not quite bring herself to accept that he was truly a male. Yet her heart pounded loudly. Wind sighed through the stones, scattering the mist as the sun's hard face rose higher in the sky.

It was hard to speak when hope battered so harshly against her fears. Her voice broke on the words she finally forced out." Will he stay with me until my death, Holy One?"

"He will stay with you until your death."

The calm words. .h.i.t her like grief. She wept, sitting back on her heels to steady herself, and didn't notice that he stirred until he heaved himself up onto his forearms to look at her. He looked no less startled than she did, yet he also seemed as dazed as if he had taken a blow to the head. His skin had the pallor of one who has been ill. A small red blemish in the shape of a rose marked his left cheek, like the brands the Horse people used to mark their live stock. Despite the blemish and his paleness, he had a pleasing face, expressive and bright.

Before she understood what he meant to do, he brushed a finger gently along the scar that fire had left on her cheek, lifting a tear off her skin. The moisture surprised him so much that he exclaimed out loud and, reflexively, touched tongue to finger, tasting for salt.

"Who are you?" she asked." What is your name, if you can share it?"

His eyes widened with surprise. He replied, but the words that came out of his mouth sounded like no language she had ever heard. Perhaps this was the language spoken in the land of the dead, incomprehensible to those who walked in the middle world known by the living.

He pushed unsteadily up to hands and knees, sat back on his thighs, and suddenly realized that he was naked. He grabbed for the tangled cloth lying an arm's length away, but when his fingers closed on a patch still wet with blood, he recoiled with a cry and scrambled backward, looking around as if to seek the aid of the Holy One.

No trace of the Holy One remained within the stone loom. Her owl, too, had vanished.

"Come," she said, extending her hands with palms up and open in the sign of peace." Nothing will harm you here."

The dogs had not moved, so he settled down cross-legged, hands cupped modestly over his lap. To show that she was a human woman, she took off the golden antlers and unbound the bronze waistband, setting them to one side. He watched her with a wary respect but without the fear that dogged every glance thrown her way by the villagers she had grown up with and lived beside for the whole of her life. Either he was still confused, or he was simply not afraid. Yet if he had walked the path that leads into the land of the dead, then perhaps he no longer feared any fate that might overtake him in the land of the living.

The smell of blood hung heavily in the air. The garments that lay in a jumble in the gra.s.s were stained with bright-red heart's blood, just now beginning to dry and darken. The dogs showed no sign of injury, and although he bore a fresh pink scar under his ribs, quite a nasty wound, it was cleanly healed and wasn't weeping.