Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Laoina tugged on his foot. “Come back down, quick. That fort belongs to the Cursed Ones.”

He dropped back down. Adica still slept. Rage snuffled along the cave’s wall. “I thought you said we were in the land of Shu-Sha’s tribe.”

“So we are. But the Cursed Ones have killed or enslaved most of her people and have driven the rest into hiding.”

“Why do the Cursed Ones hate humankind so much?”

She regarded him with a quizzical look. “They need blood, or else their gods will turn against them. Maybe, too, they are like old man Joa, who buried ten skins and six stone axheads in the ground so nobody else could have them. Then he died, and when a girl accidentally found them two summers later, the skins were no good anymore. So maybe he did keep them for himself by spoiling them for anyone else. There are some people who are always wanting more, an extra piece of deer meat even though they already have enough, a handful of extra spear points even if another person must go short.”

“You think the Cursed Ones are selfish in that way.”

“Don’t they have enough already?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sighed sharply. “If this isn’t the land of the dead, then where are we?”

“In the land of Shu-Sha’s tribe—” But she broke off, seeing that wasn’t what he had meant.’

“I have seen dragons, and a phoenix, and lion women. I have seen a great city beneath the sea, where the merfolk live. I have seen the land underground where the ones called skrolin bide. I’ve seen the Cursed Ones, and I think they look very like the man I knew as Prince Sanglant.” He fingered the head of his staff, rubbing his thumb along the snarling dog’s mouth, touching each carven tooth. “The valley where your people live I saw in my dreams. But other people lived there once, who called themselves the Rock Children and whose mothers were like living stone.”

Laoina looked troubled. “These I have not seen, my friend. I know of no people calling themselves children of the rocks. As for the rest well, I am a Walking One, so I have seen many things, more than most. I admit that the city of the Bent People and the sea city of the merfolk confuse me, for how can it be that they have such strong magic and we have so little knowledge of them?”

“They live in rock and in water. How could we know of them, who live where we cannot?”

“Then why do they not show themselves to us? Nay, there is an answer already. What if they do not care for those of us who live where they do not? What if they do not need us as the Cursed Ones do? Maybe we have nothing they want.”

“I have seen merfolk in my dreams,” he murmured, thinking of Stronghand. “But they were like beasts. Such creatures could not have built a great city.” He knelt beside Adica, stroking her hair, wanting to wake her up gently. “All that matters, here and now, is that I protect Adica. But sometimes I just don’t understand where I am.”

“Maybe it is better that way,” she said softly, but when he looked up, surprised at the compassion in her tone, she had turned away as if to hide her expression.

Adica still did not stir, although she breathed evenly enough. He kneaded her clenched hands but could not get them to open, tapped her knees, stroked her under her chin, but she gave no response. At last he sat back on his heels. “She’s in a trance.” He’d seen it before; it was one of the things that made her a Hallowed One, fits taking her, convulsions, long sleeps. “How do we escape this cave?”

Laoina made a sign against evil spirits, then spat. After that she crouched beside Alain and regarded Adica dispassionately. After all, she must have been used to the twitching and drooling, the blank stares or the sudden unbreakable sleeps, since her younger brother was the Hallowed One of the Akka tribe. “First we must wait for night.”

Maybe there was a more harrowing way to descend into a defile overlooked by a ruthless enemy’s fort than on a moonless night with an unconscious woman tied to your back and the knowledge that your two faithful companions, left in a shallow cave, would die of thirst if for any reason you didn’t return to them within two days. At the moment, Alain couldn’t think of one.

Laoina climbed right below him, murmuring directions: a ledge off to the right broad enough to brace his left foot; a fall of shale to be avoided; a sturdy root grown out of the hillside, suitable for grasping.

Better to imagine himself blind as he negotiated. His arms ached horribly, and his healing hand had begun to hurt like fire. His fingers were scraped raw, and he kept inhaling dust stirred up by his passage. Adica wasn’t particularly heavy, but she was a dead weight, and the ropes that bound her to his back cut into his chest and hips. Her breath tickled his neck, but she did not respond at all. Maybe she would never wake up.

Nay, better not to think like that. He had sworn to protect her, and he would.

Laoina had many skills. She, too, was heavily laden. The only things they had left behind with the hounds were the last of their provisions and all of the water, poured out into a shallow depression in the rock. She was a patient climber and a good guide as they crept down the steep slope. It was a different world than the one he knew, even than the one he’d grown used to at Queens’ Grave. The tough shrubs smelled different, resinous or sharply aromatic, and bore narrow-bladed leaves. Many of the plants had thorns that stung his skin or caught in Adica’s corded skirt. Once they came across a narrow cave mouth where a large bird had built its nest, now empty. Here he rested on his side in a hollow of twigs lined with grass and hair and skin and the bones of the small creatures it had carried here to feed its young.

“When we make war,” he said to Laoina, who was crouched beside him, “it’s like feeding the bones of our children to our enemy and even to ourselves, isn’t it?”

“They’ll eat our children whether we fight them or not.” Wind sighed along the slopes, rustling the shrubs around them. “I’d rather fight.”

“That isn’t what I meant—” Out of the gulf of air, he heard a man’s laughter, high and sharp.

They kept still, knowing how exposed they were, yet surely with only the stars to light them they couldn’t be seen from above.

“Come,” whispered Laoina. “There’s better cover along the stream.”

They half slid down the last incline before it bottomed out where a stream cut through the rock. Alain was so scratched up that his skin wept trickles of blood. The pain in his injured hand had settled into a dull throbbing. Laoina held branches aside as they pushed through the dense curtain of trees to get to the stream itself, a gurgling channel of water flowing over exposed rocks, but he still stung everywhere from branches scraping him. With Laoina’s help he untied Adica’s limp body and finally settled on slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of turnips, except maybe a sack of turnips was less unwieldy.

It was hard work wading downstream in the darkness, even with Laoina testing every step before him and with his staff to steady himself. He slipped once on a rock that tipped as he brought his weight down on it. The butt of his staff glanced off a stone and flew up as he fell down to bang his knees so painfully that tears flowed, warm salt tears sliding away into the cold spring-fed waters.

“Let me carry her,” whispered Laoina.