Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

From the village below she heard voices raised in song. It took her a moment to recall that Mother Orla’s eldest granddaughter had recently crossed the threshold that brought her to the women’s mysteries and would by now be emerging from the women’s house, ready to take her place as an adult in the village.

She stood on the ramparts listening to their laughter and the old familiar melodies. Before, the villagers would have wanted her there to hallow the celebration, but now her presence would only make them uncomfortable. What if evil spirits wiggled in, in her wake, and poisoned the new young woman’s happiness just as such spirits sometimes poisoned sweet wells or fresh meat? The villagers’ fear outweighed their affection.

Why had the gods let the Cursed Ones afflict humankind? Couldn’t they have chosen a different way for humankind to rid themselves of their enemy? Was it so impossible that she be allowed some happiness as mate with a man like Dorren, with his withered hand and gentle heart? Why was it the Hallowed Ones who had to make the sacrifice?

But she shook her head, impatient with such thoughts, borne to her on the night wind by mischievous spirits. With a little spell, spoken out loud, then sealed by the touch of pungent mint to her lips, she chased them away.

Only the Hallowed Ones possessed the magic to do what was necessary. So it had fallen to her, and to the others.

She had been called down this path as a child. She had never known nor wanted any other life than that of Hallowed One. She had just never expected that her duty would be so harsh.

Sleeping, that night, she did not dream.

2

SHE woke abruptly, hearing the call of an owl. By the smell of dew and the distant song of birds in the woodland, she recognized the twilight before dawn when the sun lies in wait like a golden-eared bear ready to lumber over the horizon.

The owl called again, a deep to-whit to-whoo.

She scrambled up. After dressing, she opened the cedar chest to get out her sacred regalia. A hammered bronze waistband incised with spirals fit around her midriff. She slipped on the amber necklace she had hoped to give to Dorren: amber held power from the ancient days, and her teacher had told her always to emphasize her tribe’s power and success when it came time to meet with their allies. She set her hematite mirror on her knees before carefully unwrapping the gold headdress from its linen shroud. The headring molded easily over her hair. Its antlers brushed the curved ceiling before she ducked down in a reflexive prayer.

“Let your power walk with me, Pale Hunter, you who are Queen of the Wild.”

Tucking the mirror into her midriff, she crawled backward out of the tent on her hands and knees. Outside, she straightened to stand as tall as a stag, antlers gleaming, the gold so bright she almost thought she could see its outlines echoed against the sky. Clothed in power, she walked the path that led into the stones.

At the center of the stone loom lay the step stone, as broad across as her outflung arms but no higher than her knee. The sacred cauldron rested on the slab, as it had since her teacher’s youth. Here, years ago, Adica had knelt to receive the kiss of power from the woman who had taught her almost everything she knew. She wept a little as she said a prayer in memory of the dead. Afterward, she touched the holy birds engraved on the cauldron’s mellow bronze surface and named them: Father Heron, Mother Crane, Grandmother Raven, and Uncle Duck. She kissed each precious bronze leaf, and with one hand skimmed a mouthful of water out of the cauldron and sipped at it, then spoke a blessing over what remained in her palm and tossed it into the air, to seed the wind.

Kneeling before the cauldron, she waited with eyes closed as she breathed in the smell of dawn and heard its sounds: the distant roll of the lazy harvest river, the disgruntled baaing of goats, the many voices of the morning birds calling out their greetings to the waiting sun.

She heard the flutter of wings and felt the owl settle on the rim of the cauldron, but she dared not look up, for the Holy One’s messenger was a powerful creature full of so much magical force that even a glimpse of it could be fatal. A moment later hooves rang down a distant path of stone, then struck on a needle-strewn path, and finally the waist-high flax rustled as a large body passed through it. The warm breath of the Holy One brushed the hairs on the back of her neck. Her gold antlers stirred in the sweet wind of the Holy One’s presence.

“You have been crying, Adica.” Her voice was like the melody of the river, high and low at the same time. “I can smell the salt of your tears.”

Hadn’t they dried over the night? Yet surely it was impossible to hide anything from a shaman of the Horse people. “I have been lonely, Holy One. The road I walk is a solitary one.”

“Haven’t you a husband? I remember that you were not pleased when the elders of your village decreed that you should marry him.”

“They have taken him away, Holy One. Because death has lain its shadow over me, they fear that any person I touch will be touched by death as well.”

“Truly, there is wisdom in what they say.”

There was silence except for the wind and the throaty coo of a wood pigeon.

She glanced up to see the land opening up before her as the sun burned the mist off the river. Swifts dived and dipped along the slow current. People already worked out in the fields, harvesting barley and emmer. A girl drove goats past the fields toward the woodland.

The words slipped from her before she knew she meant to say them. “If only I had a companion, Holy One, then the task wouldn’t seem so hard. Of course I will not falter, but I’ll be alone for so long, waiting for the end.” She bit back the other words that threatened to wash free, borne up on a tide of loneliness and fear.

“I beg you, Holy One, forgive my rash words. I know my duty.”

“Alas, daughter, your duty is a hard one. Yet there must be seven who will stand when the time comes. Thus are you chosen.”

“Yes, Holy One,” she whispered.

Unlike the villagers she watched over, Adica had seen and spoken with people from distant lands. She knew that the land was broad and people few, and true humans fewer still. In the west lay fecund towns of fully fifty or more houses. The gray northern seas were icy and windswept, cold enough to drain the life from any human who tried to swim in them, yet in those icy waters lived sea people with hair composed of eels and teeth as sharp as obsidian. She had seen, far to the east, the forests of grass where lived the Holy One’s tribe, cousins to humankind and yet utterly different. She had even glimpsed the endless deserts of the southern tribes, where the people spoke as if they rolled stones in their mouths. She had seen the Cursed Ones’ fabled cities. She had seen their wondrous ships and barely escaped to tell of it. She had seen the Cursed Ones enslave villages and innocent tribes only to make their captives bow low before their bloodthirsty gods. She had seen what had happened to her teacher, who had joined the fight against the Cursed Ones only to be sacrificed on their altars.

“We are all slaves of the Cursed Ones, as long as the war they wage against us never ends.” The Holy One shifted, hooves changing weight as she backed up and then came forward again, the unseen weight of her massive body looming behind Adica. Once, when she was a child, Adica had seen the Holy One’s people catch up to and trample the last remnants of a scouting party of the Cursed Ones, and she had never lost that simple child’s awe of their size and power. As much as she feared the Cursed Ones’ magic, she was glad to be an ally of the Horse people, the ones who had been born out of the mating of a mare and a human man.

“Yet perhaps—” The Holy One hesitated. In that pause, hope whispered in Adica’s heart, but she was afraid to listen. “Perhaps there is a way to find one already touched by the hand of death who might be your companion. That way you would not be alone, and he would not be poisoned by your fate. You are youngest of the chosen ones, Adica. The others have lived long lives. You were meant to follow after your teacher, not to stand in her place at the great weaving. It is not surprising that you find it harder to walk toward the gate that leads to the Other Side.” Did a hand touch her, however briefly, brushing the nape of her neck? “Such a promise should not be beyond my powers.”