Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“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.

“Is that meant to make me trust you?” She didn’t change her stance.

After a moment he wedged the shield between arm and torso and used his free hand to lift his mask so that she could see his face. He examined her with the startled expression of a man who has abruptly realized that the woman standing before him has that blend of form and allurement that makes her attractive. She didn’t lower her bow. Wind teased her arrow point up and down, so she couldn’t hold it steady. With an angry exclamation she sought fire in the iron tip and let it free. The arrow’s point burst into flame. Cat Mask leaped backward quite dramatically.

Eldest Uncle laughed outright, hoisting his spear. The bells tied to its tip jangled merrily. “So am I answered!” he cried. He frowned at Cat Mask. “Why have you followed us, Sour One?”

“To make you see reason, Old Man. Give her over to me now and I will make sure that she receives the fate she deserves. Humankind are not fit for an alliance with us. They will never trust us, nor any person tainted by kinship to us.”

“Harsh words,” mused Eldest Uncle as Liath kept Cat Mask fixed in her sight while the arrow’s point burned cheerfully. “Is it better to waste away here? Do you believe that your plans and plots will succeed even if nothing hinders our return? Have we numbers enough to defeat humankind and their allies, now that they are many and we are few?”

“They fight among themselves. As long as they remain divided, we can defeat them.”

“Will they still quarrel among themselves when faced with our armies? Do not forget how much they hated us before.”

“They will always hate us!” But even as he said those words, he glanced again at Liath. She knew the expression of men who felt desire; she had seen it often enough to recognize it here. Cat Mask struggled with unspoken words, or maybe with disgust at his own susceptibility. Like Sanglant, he had the look of a man who knows how to fight and will do so. He was barely as tall as Liath but easily as broad across the shoulders as Sanglant, giving him a powerful, impressive posture. “And we will always hate them!”

His expression caught in her heart, in that place where Hugh still presided with his beautiful face and implacable grip.

“Hate makes you weak.” Her words startled him enough that he met her gaze squarely for the first time. “Hate is like a whirlpool, because in the end it drags you under.” With each word, she saw more clearly the knots that bound her to Hugh, fastened first by him, certainly, but pulled tighter by her. “That which you allow yourself to hate has power over you. How can you be sure that all humankind hates your people still? How can you be sure that an envoy offering peace won’t be listened to?”

He snarled. “You can never understand what we suffered.”

The flame at the tip of the arrow flickered down and snapped out, leaving the iron point glowing with heat. With deliberate slowness, to make it a challenge, she lowered the bow. “You don’t know what I can or cannot understand. You are not the only one who has suffered.”

“Ask those who are dead if they want peace with humankind. How can we trust the ones who did this to us?”

“The ones who did this to you died so long ago that most people believe you are only a story told to children at bedtime.”