Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“Ai, God, look.” He choked, wincing as Adica’s touch reached the painful bite.

The phoenix had gotten here before them. The ship hadn’t burned, but its sails had. The planks had scorched but remained intact. Dead littered the beach like flotsam.

Not even an enemy deserved a death like this one, rent to pieces, burned, and mangled.

“I’ll make a poultice,” said Adica, letting go of his hand.

“Where has the phoenix gone?” asked Laoina nervously, but she headed down along the shore to collect weapons off the dead.

Was that movement, out on the sand? He hurried forward to kneel beside a body, one among two dozen, a formidable raiding party with their bronze swords and spears, and wooden shields overlaid with a sheet of bronze embossed with cunning scenes of war.

o;Let me see.” Adica raised the bitten hand to her mouth, but Two Fingers grabbed her arm and yanked her away.

“Do not! In the mouth, it will kill. In the hand, maybe he can live. Quickly we must go. If the phoenix returns, then are we all dead.”

“Let’s go,” said Alain, biting hard at his lower lip. That small pain alone allowed him to stay standing. The pain had thrust all the way up to his head. Maybe he might split in half from the agony. But Two Fingers was right. Shaking so hard he could barely get his fingers to work, he untied the armband and shoved it up his injured arm. At once, strangely, the pain eased enough that he could think again. His little finger, below the bite, was beginning to puff up. “I will live.”

“Quick quick,” said Laoina, taking him at his word. Behind, they heard hissing, as though the eyeless snakes had come to investigate down the tunnel, guiding themselves along their trail with flicks of their forked tongues. One of the corpses was actually blocking the cleft. Laoina shoved it out of the way.

“Follow me,” said Two Fingers.

They doused two torches and by a single light retraced their original path. They found another dead Cursed One afloat in the underground pool, his arms and leg leaking blood in rivulets that flowed toward the culvert. It wasn’t easy to wade across that water, its clarity polluted by bits of flesh and innards drifting free of the cavity ripped into his stomach. All the pale fish and salamanders had vanished. Faint gold streaks made the walls glow, the sign of the phoenix’s passage.

The cold water eased the pain in Alain’s hand, although a second finger had begun to swell.

Two Fingers followed the phoenix’s trail down a tunnel that ran as straight as an arrow’s flight. One torch guttered out, and he lit the second, but even so they walked on and on until Alain’s feet began to hurt from the unrelenting stone. He could not bend three of his fingers, but decided it was simply better not to look at them. Adica tried to talk to him, but he shushed her, afraid she would let her fear for him delay them.

The second torch spent itself, and Two Fingers lit the third. On they went. Eventually, the rock floor gave way to grainy sand.

Alain stopped to take in a deep breath. “Salt water.” The sharp scent cleared his head. His headache eased. He could not close his hand. It felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size, but when he looked at it in the dim light, it didn’t look much different.

Two Fingers extinguished the torch. There remained light enough to see Two Fingers place the partially burned torch onto a stack of other torches, some fresh, some half spent, set into a niche carved into the sloping wall. They emerged then out of a narrow cave’s mouth onto a strand so long that, with dusk falling, Alain could see no end to it on either side. Heavy clouds engulfed the sky, an angry horizon marked by the receding storm. The wind stung his fingers, its touch like the bite of the snake all over again. Angry red stripes lanced up his forearm, to his elbow, but where they reached the skrolin armband they simply ceased, as though cut off.

“Let me see,” said Adica, more insistently now. He held out his arm. Where her fingers probed gingerly, pain flared. He looked away, unwilling to see the angry swelling turn white where she pressed on it, as if it were already dead and rotting.

Sorrow and Rage took off running down the beach, stretching their legs at last. Many tunnels studded the cliff face that backed the strand. A ship lay beached on the sand, drawn up out of tide’s reach: sleek curves and pale, gleaming wood.

Seeing him stare, Adica spoke as she continued to probe. In a way, her matter-of-fact voice took his mind off the pain and off the fear of what the snake’s poison might be working in him. “Only the Cursed Ones build such beautiful ships, as fair as the stars and strong enough to sail out of sight of land. In such ships, the Cursed Ones crossed the world ocean. They came from the west many generations ago, in the time of the ancient queens. Here in human lands they crafted a new empire built out of human bone and human blood.”

“Ai, God, look.” He choked, wincing as Adica’s touch reached the painful bite.

The phoenix had gotten here before them. The ship hadn’t burned, but its sails had. The planks had scorched but remained intact. Dead littered the beach like flotsam.

Not even an enemy deserved a death like this one, rent to pieces, burned, and mangled.

“I’ll make a poultice,” said Adica, letting go of his hand.

“Where has the phoenix gone?” asked Laoina nervously, but she headed down along the shore to collect weapons off the dead.

Was that movement, out on the sand? He hurried forward to kneel beside a body, one among two dozen, a formidable raiding party with their bronze swords and spears, and wooden shields overlaid with a sheet of bronze embossed with cunning scenes of war.

Formidable, except that they were all dead now.

The man moaned, gurgling. His crested helmet had been half torn off his head, his wolf’s mask ripped clean off, but the death wound had come when claws had punctured his lungs.

“Poor suffering soul,” murmured Alain, kneeling beside him. His proud face reminded Alain bitterly of Prince Sanglant: the same bronze complexion, high, broad cheekbones, and deep-set eyes, although this man’s eyes, like a deer’s, were a depthless brown. Despite his wounds, he hissed a curse through bloody lips when he saw Alain looming over him, and in an odd way, Alain felt he could understand him, a dutiful soldier defiant to the last: “Although you defeat me, you’ll never defeat my people, beast’s child.”

“Hush, now,” said Alain. “I hope you find peace, Brother—”