Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

They walked down for a long time. At some point she stopped feeling the regular seams of worked stone and touched only the seamlessly rough walls of excavated earth. Eventually the staircase leveled out, and they walked down a short tunnel so round that a rod might have punched it out to make a circle within the rock. The tunnel opened into a broad chamber whose walls were illuminated by a small opening far above them. Plants had grown through the opening; roots dangled into empty air and twined along the ceiling, trying to gain purchase against the rock. Dust motes danced along the roof before they swirled into shadows.

The smooth floor descended down two high steps to an oval hollow that marked the meeting place, where the council members had congregated. They wore a bewildering variety of strange clothing: shifts stamped with colored patterns, feathers adorning their hair, sheaths studded with beads and colored stones bound around forearms and calves. Most of them wore some kind of cloak, pinned at one shoulder and draping down to mid-thigh. Each of the women wore a heavy jade ring piercing her nose, all except one.

They had exotic faces, broad across the cheekbones, reddish or bronze in their complexions. They looked nothing like the Wendish, but she could see Sanglant’s heritage in every face there. There were not more than thirty, waiting for her in a chamber obviously large enough to command an audience of hundreds, yet somehow the chamber felt crowded, as if the shades of those who had stood here in the past and who would stand here in the future filled the empty spaces.

Silence reigned.

She stood beneath the wings of an eagle whose semblance had been carved out of the stone archway above the tunnel. Every person seated or standing within the chamber examined her. Yet when she compared their stern and even hostile expressions to Hugh’s poisonous gaze, she could not fall into helpless terror. She had walked through the fire and survived.

Eldest Uncle shifted behind her, coughing gently.

In the center of the oval, seated on an eagle literally carved out of the stone floor, sat a very pregnant woman with a gloriously feathered cloak draped around her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back in a topknot. Alone of all the women, she wore no jade ring in her nose. Behind her stood the golden wheel, no longer turning because in this stone womb there was no wind. The emerald feathers trimming the wheel glowed with a light of their own. Feather Cloak lifted a hand and beckoned Liath to come forward.

“I am here,” Liath said in response to that languid gesture. She took a big step down, and then the second, to stand at the same level as the others. Lifting her hands, she opened them to show her palms out, empty. “I come unarmed, as is your custom. Eldest Uncle comes with me, to show that I mean no harm to your people. In the language of my people, I am called Liathano, and I seek knowledge—”

That brought them to life.

“Let her be cast out!” shouted White Feather, the woman who had come to see Eldest Uncle. “How dares she bring the name of our ancient enemy into this chamber?” The distinctive shield of white feathers bound into her hair shook as if in response to her anger, and her words unleashed the others, a chorus of discordant views, too rapid an exchange for Liath to see immediately which one spoke what words.

“It’s treachery! Kill her at once!”

“Nay, I would hear her speak!”

“We cannot trust any child born of humankind—”

“We are few, and they are many. If we do not seek understanding now, then we will surely all perish.”

“I want to know what Eldest Uncle means by bringing her here without the permission of the council. The human woman is nothing to us, however evil her name. It is Eldest Uncle who must stand before our judgment.”

One stepped forward belligerently, hard to ignore because he was a strikingly attractive man clothed only in a cunningly-tied loincloth and a plain hip-length cloak and adorned by nothing more than a wooden mask carved into the shape of a snarling cat pushed back on top of his cropped hair. He had a powerful baritone. “I say this to you, sisters and brothers: Let her blood be the first we spill. Let it, and the memory of the one who helped to ruin us, be used to strengthen us as we prepare to fight to take back what was once ours.”

“Silence.” They fell silent at once. Feather Cloak did not rise from her stone seat. Her crossed legs cradled her huge belly, which was half concealed by the stone eagle’s head thrusting up from the floor. The feather cloak pooled over the wings of the bird, giving the woman the appearance of a creature both humanlike and avian. Under her light shift, her breasts were swollen in the way of pregnant women, round and full, and Liath was struck by such a sharp jab of envy that she had to blink back tears.

Where was Blessing now? Who was caring for her?

Feather Cloak curved a hand around her belly. “Remember that this child will be the first born on Earth since our exile. Shall it be born to know only war, or to know peace as well?”

“You have taken the Impatient One’s counsel to heart!” snarled Cat Mask. “She threw away her loyalty to her own people to go walking among humankind. You know what she did there!”

“You are only angry that she tossed your spear out of her house!” cried another young man, laughing unkindly after he spoke. He wore a mask carved in the shape of a lizard’s head, elaborated with a curly snout. “Very proud you are of that spear, and it galls you to think that another man—not just another man but a human man might have been allowed to bring his spear into her house!”

This insult triggered a flurry of mocking laughter among some of the others and a clash, like rams locking horns, between the two men that was only halted when a stout older man stepped between them.

Dressed more conservatively than the other men, with his chest covered by a tunic in the manner of the women, he made for an unsettling sight with a necklace of mandibles hanging at his chest and earrings fashioned to resemble tiny skulls dangling from either ear.

“The Impatient One chose negotiation over war.” With a single finger on the chest of each of the young men, he pushed them apart as though they weighed no more than a child.

“We cannot negotiate with humankind,” objected White Feather.

“What do you mean us to do?” asked an elderly woman in a deceptively sweet voice. “We have dwindled. How many children are left to us, and how many among us remain capable even of bearing or siring a child? Where once our tribes filled cities, now we eke out a living in the hills, on the dying fields. If there is one left where ten stood before, then I am counting generously. We will be weak when we stand on Earth once more. We must seek accommodation.”

Cat Mask gave a barking laugh of disgust. “Accommodation is for fools! We have enough power to defeat them, even if we are few and they are many.”

“So speaks the Impulsive One,” retorted the old woman. She had a scar on her left cheek, very like a wound taken in battle. Her short tunic ended at her waist and below that she wore a ragged skirt, much repaired, striped with rows of green beads. Little white masks, all of them grinning skull faces, hung from her belt. “I ask you, The-One-Who-Sits-In-The-Eagle-Seat, let the human woman walk forward and speak to us. I, for one, would hear what she has to say.”

“Come forward,” said Feather Cloak.

Liath walked forward cautiously. The council members moved as she walked, shifting position so that they stood neither too close nor too far, yet always able to see her face.