Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Adica recognized then, in his expression, the terrible pain he had suffered before. It was not only she who had found shelter in their bond. He had as well.

Horn snorted, made a whistling, throaty sound as a palsy shook her. Her apprentice rushed forward and bathed her face with what was left of the spilled potion, and this effusion calmed the old woman. When her body ceased its trembling, she lay slack, her good eye closed and the vacant eye staring unseeingly toward the ceiling as at a particular group of brightly-painted pipers dancing around an elk, coaxing it into their snares.

No one knew what to do at first. Cider was brought, along with rather fermented, withered, tasteless greens, and barley cakes that had been fried in lard and left to congeal in the recesses of the cave. Adica ate what was given her. She knew that, driven from their village and their stores, they had little enough to offer a guest.

Abruptly, Horn woke and, in her normal slurred whisper, began speaking where she had left off before Alain had knelt beside her. “Laoina and the Akka warriors she brings will shelter here, with my people, until the time comes for the great working. Afterward they will be free to return to their home. Those among my people who live will build a new village so that we need never again dwell in a place poisoned by the Cursed Ones. Those who die will catch up to me on the path that leads to the Other Side. Girl, take them to the Bent People. I still hold the power of fire over them, and they owe me one last boon.” She fumbled with her good hand at an armband, her fingers slipping as she tried to tug it off. “Return this to the Bent People. They will do my will in this matter.” Horn took in a breath, and as she let it out, spoke faint words. “Let that be the end of it.”

A feather floated down out of the darkness and came to rest on Horn’s lips. Adica waited for her to take in another breath, for the feather to stir, but nothing happened. Her chest did not rise. Her whole body slackened. The pale wisp that was her spirit rose out of her body, taking a form like that of the big-bellied woman carved into the cavern wall, so different than the frail, elderly body she now inhabited.

A wind rose sudden and strong. The torches blew out, plunging them into darkness. The pale substance of Horn’s spirit twisted as the wind spun it around.

“Hear me! Hear me!” It spoke in a new voice, deep and booming. “She is taken! Come quickly, or all is lost. The Holy One has been captured by the Cursed Ones. We have not enough strength to rescue her. Come quickly, or all is lost!”

“Shu-Sha!” cried Two Fingers.

A thunderous knock resounded through the chamber. Adica leaped up just as the wispy spirit shattered into a thousand glittering lights, quickly extinguished. The young apprentice wailed out loud.

Quickly, the torches were relit, but Horn was dead, and her spirit had vanished into the darkness.

PART FOUR

A MIRROR ON

THE PAST

XIV

JEDU’S ANGRY LAIR

1

THE flames scoured her clean. They emptied her of emotion, of her past, of all her links to any substance except fire, because she was fire. Long ago Da had constructed and then locked a door in the citadel of her palace of memory, hiding from her the truth of what she truly was. Even as the fire of the Sun consumed her, the pure fire of her innermost heart burned more brightly even than the blast of the Sun, waves of heat and golden towers of flame. The door remained in place, but now she could peer through that keyhole and understand exactly what it was she saw writhing and burning, the thing that Da had locked away from her: her secret soul, the blue-hot spark that had given her life and that permeated her substance.

I am only half formed out of humankind. She needed no words, no voice, because the fire itself was her voice. The daimones who took me at Verna are my kin.

I am fire.

Exultant, she reached easily into the blazing fire of the Sun and transformed it into wings. On these wings she rose on the updraft of an uncurling flare to the limit of the Sun.

Yet even so, to her surprise, she had not left everything behind. Maybe she could never leave everything behind. She still had her bow and quiver of arrows; she still had the gold torque, cold at her neck, that bound her to Sanglant, and the bright beacon of lapis lazuli, the ring Alain had given her. But nothing else, only the fire that suffused the physical form she called a body.

Jedu’s baleful glare bathed the horizon in a bloody red, the home of the Angel of War. The gates were guarded by a pair of sullen but dreadful daimones, carrying spears carved of crystal. Skulls dangled from their belts, and their faces shone with blood lust. She strung her bow and nocked an arrow, lit it so it burned.

They laughed, seeing how pitifully small she was. Although she was fire, they did not fear her. They were big as castles, with thighs as broad as a house and arms as stout as tree trunks.

“Pass through, pass through!” they cried mockingly, with voices that boomed and crashed. “We’ll watch the sport while you’re hunted down and killed, Bright One.”

“I thank you,” she said, seeing no reason to stay and quibble with creatures who looked ready to squash her like a bug.

She passed through the arch as their voices followed her, deep and resonant. “Go as you please, Child of Flame, yet you will lose something of yourself on the path!”

She tumbled into Jedu’s angry lair.

2

AT dawn, Bulkezu ordered the vanguard driven forward with the lash to swarm the walls of Echstatt. Maybe the hapless men, women, and children would find mercy in the Chamber of Light, since they had certainly found none at Bulkezu’s hands. He used his prisoners wisely, if one called ruthlessness wisdom. By pressing the unarmed mob up against the walls first, he ensured that Echstatt’s defenders used up much of their precious store of arrows, javelins, and hot tar on folk who could do nothing to harm them in return.

Hanna refused to weep while Bulkezu watched her. He liked to watch her, just as he liked to make her watch each assault as his army struck deep into the heart of Wendar, having long since outflanked his pursuers. He was trying to batter her down, breach her walls, but she would not give in.