Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“And the burning stone may remain hidden. What then? Will Cat Mask choose to hunt me down?”

“He surely will. Given the chance.”

“Then I must make sure he is not given the chance.” The silence hanging over the abandoned city made her voice sound like nothing more than the scratch of a mouse’s claws on the stone paving of a vast cathedral. “I could return to Earth.”

“So you could,” he replied agreeably. He whistled, under his breath, a tune that sounded like the wandering wind caught among a maze of reed pipes.

“Then I would be reunited with my husband and child.”

“Indeed you would, in that case.”

“My daughter is growing. How many days are passing while we speak here together? How many months will pass before I see her again?” Her voice rose in anger. “How can I wait here, how can I even consider a longer journey, when I know that Sister Anne and her companions are preparing for what lies ahead?”

“These are difficult questions to answer.”

His calm soothed her. “Of course, if this land does not return to its place, there might be other unseen consequences, ones that aren’t as obvious as a great cataclysm but that are equally terrible.”

“So there might.”

“But, in fact, no one knows what will happen.”

“No one ever knows what will happen,” he replied, “not even those who can divine the future.”

She glanced at him, but could not read anything in his countenance except peace. He had a mole below one eye, as though a black tear had frozen there. “You’re determined to agree with me.”

“Am I? Perhaps it is only that you’ve said nothing yet that I can disagree with.”

They walked a while more in silence. She pulled one corner of her cloak up over her head to shade her eyes. The somber ranks of stairs, the platforms faced with skull-like heads and gaping mouths or with processions of women wearing elaborate robes and complicated headdresses, the glaring eye of the sun, all these wore away at her until she had an ache that throbbed along her forehead. The beat of her heart pulsed annoyingly in her throat. When they came to the great pyramid, she sank down at its foot, bracing herself against one of the monstrous heads. She set a hand on a smooth snout, a serpent’s cunning face extruding from a petaled stone flower. Sweat trickled down her back. Heat sucked anger out of her. She would have taken off her cloak, but she needed it to keep her head shaded. The old sorcerer crouched at the base of the huge staircase, rolling his spear between his hands.

“Did you use magic to build this city?” she asked suddenly.

His aged face betrayed nothing. “Is the willingness to perform backbreaking labor a form of magic? Are the calculations of priests trained in geometry and astronomy more sorcery than skill? Perhaps so. What is possible for many may seem like magic when only a few contemplate the same amount of work.”

“I’m tired,” said Liath, and so she was. She shut her eyes, but under that shroud of quiet she could not feel at peace. She saw Sanglant and Blessing as she had seen them through the vision made out of fire: the child—grown so large!—squirming toward her and Sanglant crying out her name. “I’m so tired. How can I do everything that is asked of me?”

“Always we are tied to the earth out of which we came whether we will it or not. What you might have become had you the ability to push all other considerations from your heart and mind is not the same thing that you will become because you can never escape your ties to those for whom you feel love and responsibility.”

“What I am cannot be separated from who I am joined to in my heart.”

He grunted. She opened her eyes just as he gripped the haft of his spear and hoisted himself up to his feet. A man ran toward them along the broad avenue with the lithe and powerful lope of a predator. As he neared, she felt a momentary shiver of terror: dressed in the decorated loincloth and short cloak ubiquitous among the Aoi males, he had not a human face but an animal one. An instant later she recognized Cat Mask. He had pulled his mask down to conceal his face. In his right hand he held a small, round, white shield and in his left a wooden sword ridged with obsidian blades.

She leaped up and onto the stairs, grabbed her bow, slipped an arrow free, and drew, sighting on Cat Mask. Eldest Uncle said nothing, made no movement, but he whistled softly under his breath. Oddly enough, she felt the wind shift and tangle around her like so many little fingers clutching and prying.

Cat Mask slowed and, with the grace of a cat pretending it meant to turn away from the mouse that has escaped it, halted a cautious distance away. “I am forbidden to harm you this day!” he cried. The mask muffled his words.

o;And the burning stone may remain hidden. What then? Will Cat Mask choose to hunt me down?”

“He surely will. Given the chance.”

“Then I must make sure he is not given the chance.” The silence hanging over the abandoned city made her voice sound like nothing more than the scratch of a mouse’s claws on the stone paving of a vast cathedral. “I could return to Earth.”

“So you could,” he replied agreeably. He whistled, under his breath, a tune that sounded like the wandering wind caught among a maze of reed pipes.

“Then I would be reunited with my husband and child.”

“Indeed you would, in that case.”

“My daughter is growing. How many days are passing while we speak here together? How many months will pass before I see her again?” Her voice rose in anger. “How can I wait here, how can I even consider a longer journey, when I know that Sister Anne and her companions are preparing for what lies ahead?”