Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“I would be a fool to do so, and a worse fool not to think Adelheid won’t offer herself to Henry in exchange for his help. She was last seen in Novomo and is known to have marched north over the mountains with what remained of her retinue and in the company of Princess Theophanu. What if the nobles choose to rally to Adelheid’s cause? What if Henry claims the king’s throne of Aosta by right of marriage to its queen?”

The bells ceased ringing. In the hollow silence, Antonia heard the whispering purl of the wind through the parapet railings and the myrtle wreaths. The lamp’s flame flickered, faded, and died.

“With me at your side, my lord king,” said Hugh mildly, “you have nothing to fear from King Henry.”

XIII

A VISION OF TIMES LONG PAST

1

SHE has heard of the queens of the desert in stories told around the hearth fire by night. Many creatures stalk the wild lands, where humankind dare not tread. But she never thought to see them with her own eyes.

Yet if she dreams, then is it true sight or only desire that causes her to look upon them, who prowl the wilderness? Perhaps it is a vision of times long past, and soon she will see the queen Arrow Bright, young and perilous, riding on the back of a lion queen out onto the sands to learn the mysteries of hunting from the ones who have long since proved themselves mistresses of the art of stalking and killing.

It must be a vision, because even as she watches she sees a small human figure step out from the shelter of a huge rock with his hands outstretched in the gesture of peace. Two black dogs, made small in contrast to the towering sphinxes, growl softly at his heels.

“Alain!” Adica jerked, and a hand pressed down on her shoulder.

“Quiet,” whispered Laoina.

Adica lay in such shade as a boulder afforded. Rocks dug into her shoulder and hip, but she didn’t have the strength to stand. Weakly, she groped to touch the bag her head rested on and found that it was her own fur cloak, bundled up. Just beyond it, within reach of her fingers, lay her pack with her precious regalia.

Laoina gasped, sudden and sharp. The ground shuddered. The boulder’s shadow slid off Adica abruptly and the sun blasted her eyes. Laoina threw herself prostrate onto the ground. Rolling onto her back, Adica looked up into the inhuman face of a woman, looming above her. With a forepaw, the lion woman had rolled aside the boulder to expose the two hiding behind it. The boulder rested in the curve of her paw like a ball ready to be rolled along the ground.

Her silvery mane streamed out as though a wind raked it. The lion woman regarded them with amber-colored eyes. The slit pupils made her look far more inhuman than the Horse people; although the centaurs had horses’ bodies, they had the torsos and faces—and eyes—common to humankind. The lion woman’s face had a human cast, but Adica saw nothing of human intelligence behind it.

“I pray you,” said Alain’s voice, from behind the sphinx, “we come in peace. We mean no trouble to your kind.”

The lion woman pushed the boulder away. It tumbled, crashing and rumbling, down to the base of the slope. Beyond it, nestled in the broad hollow at the base of the slope, lay the distant stone loom. Adica did not remember how she had gotten from there to here. Heat rippled in the air. Laoina had not stirred, but now the lion woman casually placed her paw, claws still sheathed, on the Akka woman’s back, and rolled her over.

Adica struggled up to her knees. “I beg you, Lady Queen.” Her voice had a hoarse squeak to it, parched dry. “We seek the tribe of humankind who are led by the holy woman, Brightness-Hears-Me.”

The lion woman cocked her head to one side, listening to a sound Adica could not hear, and sat back on her haunches. She lifted the paw touching Laoina and licked it thoughtfully. She had wicked-looking teeth, sharp and plentiful. After an excruciatingly long while of grooming her paws, she rose and strolled away as if she had forgotten her captives. Perhaps she just wasn’t hungry.

Laoina staggered up to her feet. She said something in her own language, an oath, perhaps, before speaking to Adica. “Never I think to see a maoisinu so big.”

“What is that?” exclaimed Alain, crouching beside Adica. “Ai, God, we must get you out of the sun.”

With a grimace and a groan, Adica struggled to her feet, still dizzy from the backwash of the spell that had woken the dragons. “Did you measure the stones?” she asked Laoina. “Where will we find the tribe of Brightness-Hears-Me?”

Laoina had only to point to the oasis below them, rising out of the desert. “We go, quick quick.”

With Alain’s support and the broad back of the dog called Rage to lean on, she managed to pick her way down the hill and across the sand and pebble-strewn flat, baked hard by the merciless sun. The journey seemed to take forever, as if the oasis kept receding before them. The lion woman had vanished. Maybe she had only been an hallucination.

The smell of water hit. They staggered forward into the shade of tall trees whose fronds waved in the breeze. It was much cooler within the shelter of plants. Resting, they sipped water as they gathered their strength. The sounds of an unseen human encampment drifted to them: singing, a hammer pounding on metal, the braying of a donkey and the indignant bleating of goats.

“Look!” said Alain.

A short figure swathed head to toe in voluminous robes approached them cautiously, both hands extended with palms out and open in the gesture of peace. Painted swirls and patterns of a deep blue color marked its palms. Adica quickly opened her own hands to show that they, too, came in peace. They followed their guide along a narrow path that led between gardens of dense bushes and trees laden with clumps of a tiny, green fruit. Purple-and-white flowers as broad as hands drooped toward the ground. Rushes lined the banks of a canal so narrow they could step across it, the rushes sliding and scraping along their thighs. Sweat streamed off Adica’s back. Her legs prickled from the heat.

They crossed a second canal, wide enough that Adica was grateful to wade across, glad to get her feet wet. Finally, they came to the center of the garden where lay a pool of water about as far across as she could throw a stone, lined with rocks and cut by canals radiating out like six spokes of a wheel. Rage and Sorrow waded into the water to drink. Beyond this spring, small gardens bloomed with greenery, thickly scented herbs, young shoots of einkorn, and trees laden with fruit, reddish like apples but rather more swollen and round. Vines were staked out on hummocks of earth. Beyond the gardens lay tents, more than Adica could count at one glance. There stood among these tents one greater than the others: high and broad, the tent cloth so white that she had to shade her eyes from its brilliance. All around them, the people of the tribe of Essit went about their work. Most of them were covered from head to toe in flowing robes. Only their eyes and hands could be seen. A few, adorned with copper bracelets, worked out in the sun clothed in shifts and a loose head covering; these people had brands burned into their cheeks.

The children ran about naked, shrieking and giggling, pausing only to stare and whisper at the strangers, keeping their distance. Beyond the encampment, herds of sheep and goats and donkeys made a cacophonous racket.

Their robed guide led them to the holy tent. Soft pillows awaited the travelers beneath the pleasant shade afforded by a striped awning. While they reclined at their ease, two youths brought them wine in golden cups and a basketful of moist brown nutlike fruits. Only their hands were visible, soft and young, patterned with henna. A young person played a four-stringed harp. With brown eyes, thick lashes, and a delicately formed face, the youth could have been male or female; it was impossible to tell. A ring of brass pierced the youth’s nose; bracelets adorned the wrists, and a brand marred her—or his—cheek.

Under cover of the rippling melody, Alain leaned forward. “A woman watches us from inside.”