Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 52

About fifty people had cl.u.s.tered close to watch and listen. The two men who had a.s.saulted her sidled in as well, staring with a bitter, unsparing hatred, as if she were responsible for everything they had suffered and lost.

"I was riding from the east last winter. I left Handelburg at the order of Princess Sapientia, she who is heir to King Henry, to bring word to him of the Quman invasion. I was caught out in a snowstorm, in a forest, and was myself captured by the Quman."

"You've been with the beast all this time?"

She didn't see who had asked that question." So I have," she admitted, wetting the corner of her cloak in water again, trying to squeeze the caked gunk off it.

The tall man pressed forward. He'd found a stick, too, although he used it to support his weight." And you didn't wh.o.r.e with the beast all that time? How then are you so clean and fat, Eagle? Where did you get that ring?"

Quicker than she'd thought possible, he struck. His first blow glanced off the side of her head. She fell hard as the mother screamed, and the jolt when she caught herself on her arms sent pain stabbing into her injured eye. Head stinging like fire, she groped for and found her stick and brought it up just in time to catch his next blow on wood. Her stick shattered, and she scrambled backward, crablike, as his stick thwacked down in the gra.s.s first to her right and then to her left.

He raised it again. Fury knotted in her stomach. She threw herself forward and slammed into him, knocking him down. They wrestled. A thistle p.r.i.c.kled on her back, and she flipped him over and jammed him face down into it. He shrieked, shuddered, and fell still.

Thank G.o.d for all that fighting with her elder brother Thancmar. Thank G.o.d her adversary had been so weakened by hunger. Breathing hard, she grabbed his unbroken stick and rose, staring down his trembling companion. Beyond, the Quman guards watched impa.s.sively, arms crossed.

Her face throbbed.

What had happened to Bulkezu's promise to the owl's master to see that she came to no harm? Blood leaked from her temple where the stick had caught her, and her ear throbbed painfully.

"I'm a King's Eagle, d.a.m.n you," she said harshly, "and I received this ring from King Henry's own hand in recognition of my service to him. What you do to me is as if you were doing it to the king himself."

"Where's the king, then?" Tall Man's comrade confronted her. Now that he stood, she could see by the way his tunic hung on him hew much flesh he'd lost." Why hasn't the king come to aid us?"

His words were echoed by other prisoners, many more of whom slunk closer to see what the commotion was all about." Where is the king while we're suffering here?"

"I don't know," she admitted. But she had a good idea where he might be, and she didn't want to tell these people that particular story. The crown of Emperor Taillefer would seem a sorry treasure to them who had lost everything, had watched their homes burned, their fields trampled, their daughters and sisters being raped, and their townsfolk slaughtered." I don't know. But I know this, my friends. We'll all die if the strongest among us don't help the weakest."

"Easy for you to say, eating like a queen and sleeping between the beast's silks. Maybe he threw you out now, but that doesn't change what you were before."

She pointed the stick at him and let the end press against his sternum, pus.h.i.+ng hard enough that he skipped back a half step. No one laughed, or even spoke. They had fallen silent." It's true I ate the food he gave me, and ate better than any of you have. But I never slept between his silks. He never raped me." She let the stick fall to her side, keeping it ready for a fast strike, and turned so they could all see her Eagle's badge." He didn't dare touch me." She hesitated. A complicated kind of hope and cynicism warred in their expressions. What did these folk know of Kerayit women and shamans who had the body of a woman joined with that of a mare? "He didn't dare touch me because he didn't dare insult King Henry. For what he does to me it's as if he does it to the king himself. He knows in the end that the king will have revenge. For me. For all of us."

As would she, by G.o.d.

At that instant, she knew what she had to do. Bulkezu had forgotten one thing when he'd thrown her out of his tent.

"But the king needs our help. And I need yours."

The guards did not stop her as she gathered firewood at the fringe of the forest, although maybe they thought she was crazy for thinking of building a fire on such a hot day, especially when she had nothing to eat. Twilight closed over them as she laid sticks for a fire. Wool thread teased off the sleeve of her tunic made a bowstring and a supple branch the tiny bow, wood sc.r.a.ps and dry leaves the tinder, and a notched wedge of wood a cup for her hand. With the bowstring looped around a stick, she drilled the end of that stick into the tinder until friction woke heat, heat smoke, and smoke fire.

Flames licked up through the kindling. Prisoners gathered around, as many as could stand doing so in order to block the view of the Quman guards, and the old man began telling a story.

"Here we begin by telling the tale of Sigisfrid, who won the gold of the Hevelli. He was born out of a she-wolf and a warrior- Hanna sat cross-legged by the fire, letting the tale drift past her, riding the flow of the words. Under Bulkezu's constant watch, she dared not use her Eagle's sight. But here, among the prisoners, she was free.

"See nothing, not even the flames," Wolfhere had told her." It is the stillness that lies at the heart of all things that links us."

"Liath," she whispered. The fire wavered, and for a moment she saw faint shadows of men clothed in armor, she heard the clash of arms, but the vision faded into the snap of flame. Liath remained hidden from her. Was she dead?

Was everyone she cared for dead?

"Ai, G.o.d," she whispered, "can I not find you, Ivar? Where have you gone?"

A new log made the fire flare with blue streaks of heat, hot and bright. Were there women moving in the flames? Queens walked under a grave mound, one young, one old, and one as golden as the sun, but they held out empty hands and by the hard flint gleam in their eyes she knew them for the old G.o.ds, the Huntress, the Fat One, and the Toothless Hag who cuts the thread of life.

Ivar was lost to her.

For a while she sat mired in grief while some other hand fed the flame and the fire burned merrily on, twisting and popping.

She is the owl, gliding over the treetops, searching for the one she has lost. The streaming wind carries her far to the east, to the land where the gra.s.s grows as high as a man. Two griffins stalk at the edge of sand, closing in on their prey.

Tents s.h.i.+mmer in the distance, but it is the woman wandering on the sh.o.r.e of the desert who catches her eye. Here, among the Bwr-folk, Sorgatani has no need of veils or concealment. As she walks, she speaks pa.s.sionately to her companion.

Hanna has never before seen the Bwr shaman so clearly: her glossy gray mare's coat and the creamy color of her woman's skin. Her face and upper body are striped with green-and-gold paint. Pointed ears, tufted with coa.r.s.e black hair, peek out through her unbound hair which falls like silver water all the way to the place where her torso slips easily from a woman's hips into a mare's shoulders. She holds a bow in her hands, the horn curve carved with the semblance of pale dragons.

"Why can we not attack?" Sorgatani is saying fiercely, hands gesturing wildly." He spits on us by holding her prisoner."

"She had a chance to come to you," replies her companion." Now she suffers the fate she chose."

"Is there noway to rescue her? Is our magic of so little use?"

"Do not forget that magic protects him as well." She shakes her head as might a cleric surveying the ruins of her once magnificent church." We are not what we were. Our numbers are much diminished because of the plague. Now is our time of greatest weakness, so we must use caution. We dare not reveal ourselves too soon. But do not fear-" She glances up, her gaze sharp as an arrow." Who watches ? "

In that moment it took her to inhale a gasp and let it out again, Hanna sees Wolfhere, brow furrowed, staring at her through the flames.

He is gone as though a hand wiped him clean off a slate. Lamps b.u.m, brighter points of light within the leaping fire.

A familiar voice is speaking. She had heard it so often that it takes her several breaths to get over her surprise that, after all these months, she is listening to Prince Bayan." If it is true Bulkezu rides north along the Veser, then what prevents him from swinging wide, around this city, and going on his merry way, as Prince Sanglant says? Bulkezu can leave a force of small size camped outside the walls, and with this force he can trick d.u.c.h.ess Rotrudis so she will believe he sets a siege at her gates. Then, if she so believes, she will not harry him until for her and for Saony it is too late."

Hazy figures too indistinct to see clearly s.h.i.+ft within the fire. She can make out none of their faces, but the man who speaks next she recognizes immediately as Sanglant." And he can do as much damage as he likes. Or he could strike west before he even reaches Osterburg and go for Ka.s.sel or the Rhowne heartlands near Autun. The best we could hope for in that case would be that he drives all the way to the western sea and spends his fury laying waste to ^alia."

" What do you think we should do, Prince Sanglant? " How have they all come together? How many have gathered? For surely that voice belongs to Captain Thiadbold, of the Lions. Seated figures obscure him, a host of grim warriors holding a council of war. Lamplight shoots blinding lances across her vision, so that all she can do is hear.

"I say we march hard and try to reach Osterburg before he does."

His words fade as a hand catches her shoulder and draws her backward. Briefly, so briefly, she sees a black-haired child asleep on a bed of furs, and it seems as though aflame b.u.ms at the child's heart, blue-white and almost a living thing, nvisting and hissing.

"Liath," she whispered, starting out of her trance as the hissing rose in pitch. She fell back and caught herself on her hands.

Cherbu sat on the other side of the fire, whistling death onto the fire. Flames curled and died, subsiding into red coals. Ash settled. A cool wind stirred the forest. Far away, a wolf howled despairingly.

"So." Bulkezu crouched behind her, his hand gripping her shoulder. This time, he wasn't going to let go until he got what he wanted." Where is she?"

The prisoners had all slunk away or pretended to sleep. She could scarcely blame them for abandoning her to those whom they had no power to resist. No doubt they were happy to have escaped punishment. The night guards stood farther back, half hidden by darkness. That she could see them at all was because of the waxing quarter moon, riding high over the treetops.

A scarecrow danced under the nearest tree, dangling from a rope. Nay, not a scarecrow but a man. She recognized him by his clothing: Boso, hanged by the neck.

An owl hooted, but although she glanced past the swaying corpse, she saw no sign of the bird. Maybe that sound was only a lingering hallucination from the vision seen through fire.

Maybe hope woven together with fear made you see those half truths that made living bearable, when otherwise you would only lie down and die.

Bulkezu spoke again, and this time his hand tightened on her shoulder. His breath, sweetened by mint, tickled the side of her face that he had bruised." Where is Liathano, the sorcerer who can raise such a fire that it consumes an entire palace?"

Trapped. Beaten. Maybe it had all been a trick to force her to reveal what slight power she had, the knowledge called Eagle's sight.

She fell forward to hide her face in her hands. She knew her shoulders were shaking, shuddering. Pray that he believed it was utter defeat convulsing her.

She thought hard about Ivar, the way he had laughed at his own stupid jokes, the time they had hidden in the branches of the lovers' oak and rained a basketful of pine needles down on her brother Thancmar and his sweetheart, the expedition to old Johan's house to recapture the russet chicken, endless races in the meadow, the first and only time he kissed her, before Liath came, before Liath had unwittingly ensnared him.

When there were enough tears, she lowered her hands.

"Osterburg," she whispered." She's at'Osterburg."

INTO THE DARKNESS.

HORN was dead, and her spirit had vanished into the darkness. As keening and crying broke out, Adica struggled to stay calm. Was that Horn's soul she had seen, twisting upward? Had she really heard Shu-Sha's booming voice? Had they any chance of defeating the Cursed Ones if the Holy One had been taken prisoner? Alain knelt beside Horn's body, but before he could touch the slack corpse, her young apprentice yanked his hand away.

"Shu-Sha calls for our aid," said Two Fingers." Yet how can it *be that she has called to us over such a great distance, using Horn's body?"

There was no time to ponder such questions." We must go quickly if we are to have any chance to save the Holy One," said Adica." Horn said there was a path we could take."

Two of Horn's people came forward and spoke in low voices to Laoina." Come," said the Akka woman. She led them into a tunnel, torches bobbing alongside.

Two Fingers examined Alain's injured hand by torchlight. He shook his head, raising a puzzled eyebrow." It heals," he said, before turning to grasp Adica's hands in his own." Weave well, little sister." Then he was gone, so fast, and the light vanished with him. Probably she would never see him again. She caught in a gasp of pain. The darkness was like claws, tearing at her, exposing the fear she had so ruthlessly shoved away all this time. She struggled to fight it back down, to seal it up so that it would not betray her.

In the darkness, Laoina spoke in the tongue of Horn's people and was answered by a man. She translated." This person has come to guide us. We must climb down into the heart of the Earth. There lie paths unknown to humankind, where the Bent People live. They are the ones who can guide us on unseen roads to the fort of Shu-Sha's tribe." Another hurried dialogue ensued, and Laoina went on." This man says, where we go, dogs cannot follow. Dogs we must leave."

Alain did not raise his voice." I will not leave them." Laoina sighed sharply as the unseen man replied." He says you must stay here, then."

Would Alain leave her to stay with the dogs? Adica thrust the ugly thought aside." I won't go on if he does not. Let a way be made to bring the dogs with us."

An argument ensued. Other voices joined in, whispers cutting in from the darkness.

"They are not liking this stubbornness," explained Laoina." They say they understand the mountain roads and you do not. They ask, do you mean to jeopardize all the coming generations of humankind for the sake of two dogs and this man?"

"Who can say they are not more important than you and I can know?" Her own teacher had spoken with this imperious tone, and many of the people in the Deer tribes had resented her for it even while fearing her. Adica had chosen a different way, but now she fell back on what she knew would work." Are we to leave behind a man who can be seen by an eye that is blind to the mortal world? If he must walk only with spirit guides, then so be it. Find a way it can be done, and do it quickly."

There was silence, followed by Laoina's soft translation. Footsteps padded away, unseen." They beg your pardon, Holy One. We must wait while they fetch what we will need."

Alain put his arms around her. She rested her head on his chest.

closed her eyes, wanting peace even for a brief while. He said nothing; he did not need to. He would stay with her until the end. That was what the Holy One had promised her. Sorrow and Rage pushed against her, moist noses slipping between the braided cords of her skirt to wet her skin. Laoina s.h.i.+fted, tapping at the floor with the b.u.t.t of her spear as she waited. The erratic rhythm lulled Adica. Alain's body was so solid against hers. He hummed softly, as patient as the wind.

Let her fall forever into this moment and none other, let all that came before and all that would come after not exist, only this. She dozed, or slipped into a vision; in the darkness it was hard to tell.

She walks into a blazing hall of light. Brightly dressed people throng the hall. They are so many that she cannot count them, far more even than all the folk who live in her village. How can a single building be so large that it can hold such a crowd? Their speech, their songs, the platters on which they eat, the tide of food flowing in and out of the hall, all this overwhelms her. Surely she has fallen into the Fat One's hall, overflowing with plenty. She never thought it would look so bewildering, a path with no landmarks she can recognize.

Yet there is one other wandering like a lost soul through the hall, unseen by any of the feasting mult.i.tude. At first she believes it is another woman, naked except for the bow she holds in her hand and a single arrow fletched with a phoenix's feather. Naked except for her hair, hanging like a veil across her torso. A ring blazes with blue-white fire on her hand.

Then she recognizes her mistake. It is not a woman but a creature of flame in whose heart burns a blue-hot fire as bright as the blazing ring.

Then she recognizes her mistake. The stranger is woman and "fire both; one cannot be untangled from the other.

Sorrow's warning bark woke her. Her left foot, wedged against the wall, had fallen asleep. She stamped it until it stopped tingling, turning the dream over in her mind. She could find no hidden meaning in it. Best to let it rest for now.

"Come," said Laoina.

They made their way without lights along a tunnel that sloped steadily downward. The barest luminescence gleamed along the walls, fungus growing on k.n.o.bs of rock. The growth gave off just enough light so that she could see her feet and hands and the dim figures of the others, walking before and behind her. Their guide was a man, lightly dressed, as thin as a reed. The tunnel ended abruptly at the lip of an abyss where-a~flirnsy woven ladder vanished into the chasm.

"How do we get the dogs down?" asked Laoina.

The guide lit two torches before bringing out rope. A series of ladders linked ledge to ledge down a cliff face so vast that the meager glow from the torches only made the cavern and rock wall bulk ominously beyond the frail arc of light. It was a laborious task to lower the dogs from one ledge down to the next, especially having to light their way with torches, swaying at the ends of rope, that spat pitch and burning flakes of ash at erratic intervals. Alain did most of the work, never complaining despite the pain it must cause his healing hand. Adica took her turn as well, bracing, paying out line, catching the big bodies and letting them down onto narrow ledges, some of which were small enough that two people couldn't stand one beside the other. Her arms ached and her back was a belt of pain by the time they reached the bottom. A spark of hot ash stung her eyelid. The only mercy was that the dogs, perhaps aware of their predicament, were as gentle as lambs. If only they had weighed as little.

But Alain would never have left the dogs behind. Nor would he ever abandon her.

As soon as they were all safely to the bottom, the guide extinguished the torches anxiously, as though their light was a forbidden luxury. Laoina whispered prayers, and Alain spoke softly to the dogs in his own language. Deep within the earth, the sweat cooled on her body and she s.h.i.+vered as a breeze brushed her face. As warm as dragon's breath and just as sulfurous, that breeze made her light-headed. To think even for a moment of the mountain of earth above her was to panic. How could air alone hold up heavy rocks and the weight of spans of earth? Surely it must all come tumbling down on top of her head. Fumes danced around her head. Spots of light flashed into existence and winked out, disorienting her.

In the instant when one of those lightning flashes illuminated the night, she saw the guide kneeling before the cliff face as though he prayed. He made a strange movement with one arm. Chimes rang out high and sweet.

Light flooded the chasm.

She s.h.i.+elded her eyes, blinking furiously, blind. As abruptly, the light vanished. The dogs barked. A body b.u.mped into her.

"Holy One." The honorific sounded much the same in any language, even squeezed by fear as it was now. He slipped an armband over her hand and up past her elbow.

"He says, you must give this to what creature comes to the summons, and tell them of Horn's wishes." Laoina's voice shook as she translated. Adica had never heard her sound so frightened." Then they must do as Horn wishes. That is the bargain."

"What creature-?"

He scurried away without answering. She heard him scrambling up the ladder.

"He abandoned us," whispered Laoina hoa.r.s.ely.

"What does he fear?" asked Alain out of the darkness.

The air eddied around them as unseen things set in motion whirled into life. The sulfurous breath of the underground wind blew hot in her face, and she coughed until her eyes watered. Light bloomed. That glow came in part from the armband she wore, twin to the armband now gleaming softly on Alain's arm, "Skrolin," she whispered.

"Look!" Laoina stood clearly visible in the soft lighti The beads woven in her braids gleamed eerily. She pointed toward a low tunnel so smoothly faced and perfectly ovoid that fear kicked Adica in the gut. This was no natural tunnel. Someone had shaped it.

Sorrow and Rage growled, standing stiffly, ears alert. A bubble of light expanded out of the tunnel. No human creature held that lamp, and no flame known to human folk or their Hallowed Ones burned within the globe the creature carried, dangling from a chain. Laoina dropped to her knees. The dogs lunged, but Alain caught them by their collars and dragged them back with all his strength, straining and cursing.

Adica had seen so many marvels that one more could not jolt her. She had known since she was a child that many strange and unknowable creatures walked the Earth, and that humankind was young to the land. She had glimpsed the skrolin in the tunnels when the Cursed Ones had kidnapped her, but she had never seen one as close and as clearly as she did now.

The grotesque figure came to a halt before them. Bent and gnarled, it did not have skin as humans had skin, nor was it scaled like the lizards and snakes that crawl along the ground. Its skin glittered the way granite did when caught in sunlight; leprous growths more like crystalline rocks or salt cones than a scabrous disease encrusted that skin. The pale bulges that seemed to be its eyes clouded and cleared as if mist boiled within. Bent and gnarled, it wore an a.s.sortment of chimes and charms which rang softly as the spherical lamp swayed back and forth at the end of its chain.

She found her voice." We have come from my sister, known to me as Horn." She extended her arm to display the armband. Without any acknowledgment, the creature turned and walked with a rolling gait back into the tunnel.

"So much unknown to me lives here in this country," murmured Alain. As the light receded, they followed down this smoothly surfaced tunnel road. Adica had never seen a path so straight and so easy. The creature leading them did not look back. They walked for a long time until without warning the tunnel ended on a ledge bordered by a railing that brought them up short.

Nothing in her life or experience, not even that one sight she had had years before of the great city built by the Cursed Ones, had prepared her for the vista that opened before her now. The skrolin lived not in dank and dark caves in the ground but in a city so vast and complicated that it made the great temples and palaces and gardens built by the Cursed Ones look like crude models fas.h.i.+oned by children. Just as mice might gnaw a maze of tunnels through a round of hard cheese, opening up the very heart of the cheese as they nibbled outward, so the skrolin had fas.h.i.+oned their city into and out of the rock itself, that made up the heart of the Earth.