Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 31

"Quick, quick," said the Akka woman.

"Stand there, to that side." Adica stationed herself on the chalk calling ground and studied the stars. The pa.s.sageway to the Akka loom was made most easily when the Ploughing Man's Eye rose in the east, but there were other, more circuitous routes to every loom just as there were many ways to pattern cloth. It was too late in the evening to catch and hold the threads of the Bounteous One and her swift, shy child, Six Wings. But the Sisters were rising, and their twin lights could be woven in with the scatter of stars known as the Shaman's Headdress and hooked to the Dipping Cup as it dipped into the north.

She raised the obsidian mirror, caught the light of the gold-haired sister and, by shifting the mirror slightly, the silver hair of her twin. Light caught in the stones. As she wove it in with the other stars, threads flowered to life among the flattened oval of the stones to form a pa.s.sageway leading to another loom.

She picked up her sack and, with the others behind her, crossed through into a snow as light as feathers, spitting from heavy clouds. They stood on a high plateau composed mostly of boulders tumbled every which way, covered with lichens and mosses and a dusting of snow. The rocky land gave way toward the horizon to heaps of golden stones jutting up like huge tumuli, untouched by snow. No trees gave shelter against the cutting wind. Only the circle of stones and the gleaming hillocks defied the swirling snow. Mountains cut an edge along the eastern horizon. The light was cloudy and gray, lightening with dawn, although Adica could not see the sun.

Their guide trudged away down a path worn into scant earth, more pebbles than soil, and marked out with a trail of chalk that, curiously, was free of snow. Adica hurried after her. Alain took up the rear guard with his dog-headed staff raised and the dogs at his heels. The path cut down through rock that fell by degrees into a steep valley smothered in trees and snow. Winter still lay heavily on this land. After a time, she saw clearings that had been hacked out of the forest. Pigs and deer had made tracks through these snow-drenched clearings. Otherwise they were a featureless white.

Down by the valley's mouth, near the arm of water that bounded the lowest reaches of the valley, rock corrals penned in reindeer. Three boats draped with felt rode high on logs, upturned above the sh.o.r.eline. A half-dozen smaller, sleeker skiffs lay drawn up on the rocky beach. Ice rimmed the shallows, but the deep waters lay as smooth as gla.s.s, unfrozen despite the bone-chilling cold.

Beyond the corrals, torches ringed a longhouse. This hall served the entire tribe as home, storage, and stable. Even Spits-last, their sorcerer, lived cheek by jowl with them, never knowing solitude.

Flakes of snow spun past. Although the wind had cut harshly on the plateau above, the shadow of winter burned more intensely within the valley's heart. The shock of the temperature change made her shudder. She paused once to catch her breath. Alain put an arm around her shoulders to warm her. His expression was grave.

"This country knows me," he said in his stumbling way, "and I know this country. In this country was born fifth son of the fifth litter, who became a strong hand." He shook his head, puzzling out the words."His hand is strong. Hei! I cannot speak the name. There were children of rock here, but I see them .not now. Many children of rock lived here when I saw it. They do not live here now."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"Quick!" The Akka guide beckoned impatiently." Walking One of Water people dead is, or not dead is. To her you must speak."

People came out of the long hall to stare at them. A boy doused torches as weak daylight rose. It was too cloudy for her to mark the position of the sun's rise against the distant cliffs and ridges. Beyond the hall she saw other structures, pit houses or burial mounds, dug into the ground. She had only visited Spits-last once, in his homeland, and it had been snowing then, too, drowned in winter's darkness.

They stepped into the long hall to be greeted by a powerful reek. The long, low s.p.a.ce was lit by three hearth fires and so smoky that the air seemed alive with particles. She smelled cattle and sheep, penned farther down. The taint of rotting crab apples hung in the air, a sweet tinge above the thick perfume of human bodies pressed together. Alain spoke a few words to his dogs, and they sat down, unmolested, on either side of the door. Their Akka guide made a path for them through the people by using her spear's b.u.t.t to poke and prod everyone aside, but Adica and Alain were not as lucky as the dogs: hands reached'forward to pinch her bare skin or fondle the strings of her skirt, until she pulled out of the grasp of one only to find another waiting to handle her. They breathed into her face, gabbled in their hard tongue, and poked and prodded her with their fingers as though to a.s.sure themselves that she was a living being.

Beside the second hearth fire, on a pallet, lay Falling-down side by side with a dead woman half-covered with pine needles. His eyes were closed. For an instant Adica thought.he, too, was dead. She knelt beside him and touched his hand, and he opened his eyes at once. He had the hazel eyes common to his tribe, rheumy with age but still sharply intelligent.

"Adica!" he said with pleasure in his brittle voice. She helped him up to a sitting position." I sent the Walking One of Tanioinin's people twelve days ago to fetch you. Alas that the loom brought you here so slow. My cousin is dead now. She died at sunset."

"What happened?"

Alain crouched beside the woman and, without any thought of death's dangers and taboos, brushed aside pine needles and placed a hand around the curve of her throat, listening.

Falling-down watched him with bemus.e.m.e.nt." Can this be the man the Holy One brought to be your husband? Where did he come from not to fear death?"

"He was walking the path to the Other Side. I don't know where he came from before that."

Alain sat back on his heels. The people who had crowded up behind him to stare skittered back, as if afraid that he, having touched that which was dead, would infect them. He did not appear to notice them as he looked at Adica.

"Her soul no longer lives in her body."

"So you see," said Adica to Falling-down." He knows when a spirit still walks in the land of the living. Why are you here, Falling-down? Why did you leave your tribe? Such a long journey is difficult for you. And it is so dangerous now to walk the looms, if the Cursed Ones stalk us."

He lifted a hand for silence. A child brought him a wooden cup filled to the brim with mead. He sipped at it before reciting his tale. The Akka Walking One translated his words to her people, who crowded around to listen.

"The ships of the Cursed Ones landed on the coast of our land. Scouts of our cousins the Reed people saw them. They sent a Running Youth to alert us. Then another Running Youth came. The ships put to land near the nesting ground of guivres. The guivres rose and feasted on them."

Voices murmured in satisfaction at this gruesome and well-deserved fate. The Akka woman spoke sharply, and the people quieted, not without a lot of pinching and protests, so that Falling-down could go on.

"We feel happy, when this news runs to us. Then the loom opens. This one, my cousin, who is a Walking One of our people, falls through. She is wounded. She brings a terrible story with her." As he got caught up in the awful tale, his words began to slip; past became present, and his careful use of Adica's language, learned over a lifetime, became sloppier." The Cursed Ones attack the people of Horn. All their houses and all their villages the Cursed Ones burn."

A general moan spread through the crowd, and was hushed, again, by the Akka woman's terse command.

"Evei the children they kill, cut cut." He made .a chopping motion with his hand. Children who had crowded up behind him to listen leaped back with frightened cries. But no one laughed." The people of Horn escape to the hills. Horn is old woman. She is not strong. She is more weak now. Maybe she die. But she send this Walking One, who is once my cousin, through the loom. She send her home, with the warning. Maybe Horn die already."

"But if Horn dies, then we can't weave the great spell!" cried Adica, shocked out of her silence. Alain set a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

"No more news brings this Walking One," said Falling-down, indicating the dead woman." She is not yet dead, in the home of my tribe, but no healer in my people can save her. So I bring her here. Healer woman of the Akka people is renowned."

Adica looked around, but she did not see the famous healing woman of the Akka people: a tiny woman who wore a cloak of eagle feathers." Even the Akka healing woman could not save her?"

"No. The Fat One turned her face away. After half a moon's journey, this Walking One dies. Now, Akka healing woman and our brother Tanioinin pray to the ancestor, the old mother of their tribe. But you, Adica. You have strong legs. I am too old, and Tanioinin cannot walk. Tell me this: Why did the Cursed Ones attack Horn's people and my people so close together? Why did they try to steal you?"

"The Holy One warned us. They've learned that we mean to act against them. They want to kill us so that we cannot work the great weaving."

"Yes. We must know if Horn lives. We must know if the Cursed Ones attack our comrades also, and if Shu-Sha is safe. Walking Ones are not strong enough alone to do this. You have strong legs and strong magic. You must warn the others."

She gestured toward the eaves." The sky is cloaked with clouds. We will have to wait until the stars shine again and the weather clears off."

"For that we cannot wait." He spoke so gravely that his words frightened her. She knew that the Holy One had power over the weather, but her magic was ancient and even more frightening, in some ways, than the blood magic of the Cursed Ones." We wait now in this house for the other Akka sorcerers to come. Tanioinin's brothers and sisters and the cousins of the healing woman, they will come down from their halls north of this place and south of this place. When they come, they will call that thing which can blow the clouds away so you can travel."

"Quick, quick," echoed the Akka woman. She stamped a foot and clapped her hands together. The crowd around them echoed her words, the foreign syllables sounding strangely on their tongues. Someone threw pine needles and a rain of dried herbs and tiny pebbles on the fire. The flames hissed and spit, and a thick cloud of smoke boiled up, drowning Adica. She coughed violently, starting back, and Alain found her by touch and drew her away as the Akka people sang in loud and rather discordant voices a song repeating the same words over and over: "nok nok ay-ee-tay-oo-noo nok nok."

When she had done blinking and could see again, the dead woman, and the pallet on which she had lain, were gone. Had they vanished through magic, or simply been carried off? She did not really care to know. The secrets of her own G.o.ds, and her own magic, were perilous enough.

"Come." By some mode of communication unknown to her, Alain found a raised pallet under the eaves and there, after setting down their packs, they lay down together. She was too tired to do anything but rest in his arms.

What if it all came to nothing? What if the Cursed Ones had discovered all their plans? What if the Cursed Ones used their blood magic to kill the human sorcerers who threatened them? Truly, she was willing to sacrifice herself knowing that her death would free her people from fear, but'it seemed the G.o.ds mocked her now. Without realizing, she had started to cry.

"Hush," said Alain, stroking her arms." Sleep, lovely one. Do not fear for what is to come. Just sleep."

His quiet voice brought her a measure of peace. With him held tightly alongside her, she slept.

ALAIN woke to humming. At first he thought it was Adica, who could be counted on to make all kinds of strange noises in the course of her prayers and spells. He smiled, so blindingly happy that he didn't even want to open his eyes, only soak it in. How strange to think that it was only after he'd lost everything that he gained what mattered most. Tightening his arms around her, he tucked her closer against him. Which was when he realized that the warm body lying alongside him wasn't Adica's but that of a rancid-smelling child.

"Hsst!" A woman clad in oiled sealskins jostled Alain and the child awake and, with an expression of urgency, beckoned to Alain to follow her. He b.u.mped his head on the eaves as he swung out of the bed and stood up too soon; everything was built for shorter people here in the north. The long hall was empty, silent and cool. Winter had sucked the warmth out of the fires. Except for Sorrow and Rage, sitting faithfully by the door, the three of them were the only ones inside. Muttering and rubbing his sore head, he followed woman and child outside.

The humming sounded out here as well, a sound that rang up through the ground to reverberate in his head. Sorrow whined, irritated by the noise, but Rage remained silent. The woman called urgently to him again, gesturing that he should follow, but he hesitated, looking for Adica.

"Ta! Ta!" cried the woman, beckoning. She hustled the child toward the mounds that cl.u.s.tered like a flock of sheep along the valley floor behind the long hall.

Alain hurried after her. Several people ducked down into the entrance of one of the mounds. Coming up behind them, he looked down a low tunnel, a smaller version of the pa.s.sage that led into the queens' grave at Adica's village. This pa.s.sage, too, was lined by stones, but it hadn't as sophisticated corbeling. In a crouch, he scuttled down the pa.s.sage to a chamber that smelled of vegetables stored for a long time in a cool place, slightly spoiled by damp. No light illuminated the chamber, yet it was warmer here beneath the earthen mound than outside. Bodies pressed against him, all smelling slightly of rancid oil.

"Adica?"

She did not answer. She wasn't here. He knew it in the same way he knew he had a hand at end of his arm. The moon had waxed full seven times since that day when he had found himself lying naked by the bronze cauldron up among the stones, but sometimes it seemed as if it had only been seven days, or as long as seven years. But in any case, he wasn't going to hide in here without knowing where she was.

Crawling backward, he ducked out into the fresh air. The cloudy light of afternoon made him blink. The constant throbbing hum continued unabated. Adica wasn't inside any of the eight mounds. The people crowded within seemed nervous, but not panicked. Each time he found his way in to one of the dark chambers, hands pulled him farther in, and when he made to leave, they plucked at him, urging him to stay.

But he had to find Adica.

He ran back to the long hall. It lay empty, and when the hounds snuffled around, they seemed unable, or unwilling, to find her scent. The hearth fire was burning low. How annoyed Aunt Bel would be to find a fire neglected! He fetched several dried cow pats and laid them on the coals, fanning the flame with a leather-and-wood bellows. The wheeze of the bellows didn't mask Rage's soft growl.

"Quick. Quick!"

He jumped. The Akka woman who had guided them here stood at the entrance to the hall." Into the houses of dirt you must go. The dragons come."

He whistled to the hounds and came out to stand beside the woman on the flat porch of hewn planks that fronted the hall. Now that it was light, he noticed the brilliant swirl of tattoos mottling her skin, red chevrons, white lines, and small black circles.

She frowned at him, gesturing irritably." Quick, you go."

"Where is Adica?"

"She goes above with the one who falls down when the spirit rides him and my brother who we call Tanioinin, something this means like the one who spits last. They walk to the high fjall." She gestured toward the path they had walked down that morning, where it wound up the valley and was soon lost among the trees. Mist lay heavily over the high land above, as though a huge creature steamed in its sleep. Then she gestured toward the arm of the sea that lay quiescent below. A dozen skiffs were beached on the icy sh.o.r.e, twice the number that had been there at dawn." The other sorcerers of my people come when he calls them. Now they will raise the dragons from their sleep to blow the clouds away. Then we walk the loom to the far land of the one whose G.o.d shines in her face."

None of this made sense, and he was actually becoming alarmed. He hadn't thought of his old life in months, but as if jolted by a spark of magic, he shuddered, remembering that terrible night when a locked door had blocked him from reaching Lavastine in his hour of need." Where is Adica?"

The Akka woman made a gesture of frustration." She go above with the other sorcerers. Now you must go to shelter. Only in shelter is it safe from the wind of the dragons."

"I go above, too."

"Foolish to walk after the sorcerers. You must to shelter go.

Yes?"

"No. I will go after Adica."

They regarded each other for the s.p.a.ce of five breaths. She flung up her hands, half laughing, half cursing." Come."

He fetched his pack and, with Sorrow and Rage, headed up the path that led to the fjall. The Akka guide strode beside him, seemingly unperturbed by this change of plan.

"You do not take shelter?" Alain asked her.

The woman had a tart grin, like that of a woman who has played a trick on a companion who tried to cheat her. She shook the necklace of bear claws and yellowing teeth that hung around her neck." This charm protects me."

Alain began to pant as the path steepened." I don't know by what name I should call you."

"I am elder sister of Spits-last." She did not break stride as she spoke, nor did she seem winded. Like a good Walking One, she had the stamina of an ox." In my people's tongue I am called Laoina."

They came clear of the denser growth of spruce and pine whose branches drooped under a heavy load of snow and into a thinning woodland composed mostly of birch trees, combed by the wind. A glow rimmed the eastern horizon, rather like the promise of dawn, but it had an amber gleam, rich and almost solid against the veil of clouds above. No part of the sky was visible, only low-hanging clouds, gray with unshed snow. The humming sounded louder here. The rocks seemed to vibrate with the noise. It was getting dark.

He hadn't realized he'd slept for so long. He ought to have stayed awake and watched over Adica. He hated being away from her for long. He was so afraid that something would happen to her.

"Quick. The dragons wake."

They broke into a jog. Alain puffed and wheezed, more out of anxiety perhaps than from being winded. He had heard stories of dragons, of course, but everyone knew they no longer existed on Earth. They had all been turned into stone a long time ago, like the one at Osna Sound which had become the ridge, running between the village and the now-destroyed monastery. But this talk of dragons made him nervous anyway. If they were just a story, then why did people hide away under mounds of earth?

So many things were different here. In seven months, he had not seen a single iron tool. Most of their implements were chipped out of stone. They made buckets out of bark, dug ditches with antlers, and carved canoes out of whole logs. Their ploughs were little better than a smoothed shaft of wood that couldn't turn more than a finger's depth of soil, and they didn't keep any horses, although they knew what they were. Even the grains and food were different: no wheat, no oats, no wine, not even turnips and cabbage, although big game was far more plentiful. He'd never eaten so much aurochs meat in his life.

In the afterlife, if that was what this was, maybe wine had been banished, but dragons still existed.

He tried to imagine them, creatures formed out of earth and fire. Their breath of flame might consume the unwitting traveler, and the unremarked lash of their thick tails might hammer soft flesh into the dirt.

Adica had gone up to the fjall to meet them.

He got a second wind and actually moved out in front of his companion, the nervous hounds lagging behind as though to watch their trail. As they picked their way onto the fjall, they came fully into the teeth of a strangely warm wind, almost seductively pleasant. He saw the stone circle immediately. Upright and in perfect repair, it looked nothing like the old ruined stone crowns he knew. It didn't seem right, somehow, that it should look so ... new.

A dozen human figures stood inside the stones. Eight wore the skins typical of the Akka people, furs and hides sewn into clothing. These eight bore stone mallets, and with those .mallets, to a rhythm they all seemed to understand, they beat on the stones.

The stones sang. High and low harmonics rang off the rock, throbbing through the air, as first one mallet, then the next and then a third, swung into a stone and dropped away.

Laoina stopped at the edge of the scree, hunkering down in the shelter of an overhanging boulder." We wait here."

But the humming of the stones drew him forward to the stone circle. At the center of the circle a woman wearing an eagle-feather cloak stood behind two men. One of them, tattooed like his Akka tribesfolk, sat on a litter. His frail body rocked back and forth in time to the ringing of the mallets on stone. Beside him, an ancient man with white hair and weathered skin had tucked his face into his cupped hands, praying.

Where was Adica?

Crossing the threshold, stepping over the invisible line that demarcated the inside of the circle of stones from the outside, Alain walked from a world filled with a throbbing hum to one of silence except for the murmuring of the two sorcerers, for surely that was what they were. They wore like an invisible mantle an aura of power, just as Adica did: the Hallowed Ones of their tribes chosen for their ability to walk the path of magic.

The old man, then, was Falling-down, whom Adica often spoke of fondly. The other, Tanioinin, seemed not much older than Adica, as far as Alain could tell, but he lived in a broken body. By the evidence of the litter, he could not even walk.

At last Alain saw Adica, curled up into a ball on the other side of Tanioinin. The hounds padded past him and nosed her. She started up, alarmed to see him. He hurried over to crouch beside her.

"I would have sent for you after the danger was over," she whispered.

"I do not leave you," he said stubbornly." Do not ask me to go, because I will not."

She knew him well enough not to argue when he spoke in that tone.

He indicated Tanioinin and bent closer to murmur in her ear. The singing of the stones concealed his words from anyone except her, who was accustomed to his whispered endearments." How can this one be a sorcerer? Can he even walk?"

"Spits-last is the most powerful sorcerer born into the human tribes." She regarded Tanioinin with an expression of respect and, perhaps, a little pity." His people nurtured and raised him because of his exceedingly clever and deep mind. He has served them as sorcerer for many years. But his body is so crippled that he is helpless in the middle world. Others have to take care of him. Only in the spirit world can he truly roam free. That is why he is so strong."

Alain could see by the man's blank expression and the way his eyes had rolled up into his head that he was already gone into the spirit world. He was calling to the dragons ... wherever they were.

Adica hissed under her breath, caught Alain's wrist, and pointed.

Those golden-stone hummocks arrayed along the eastern horizon like six giant tumuli were not stone at all. They glowed with the rich gleam of amber and the l.u.s.trous fire of molten gold. They hummed and, slowly, as he sank down-too stunned to cry out in astonishment-they woke.

They lifted great heads first. Their eyes had the winking fever of the hottest fire. Some had crests along their heads and necks, fans of gold unfolding as they rose. A tail lashed to dislodge boulders which smashed through the landscape, thrown about like peb bles. It was then that he realized how huge they were, and how far away. The noise of their waking rumbled and crashed around him, echoing against the heavens.

First one, and then a second, huffed mightily. Sparks rained from their nostrils. Fires bloomed and faded on rocks and among the mosses and low-lying scrub that lived in the fjall. Alain stared. Rage and Sorrow were whining, although it was hard to hear them above the distant crash and clamor of the waking dragons.

Adica struggled to her feet. She still held his wrist in a crushing grip; perhaps she had forgotten that she still held on to him. Mallets struck stone. The world hummed. As though drawn forward in a dream, Adica let go of Alain's arm and stepped forward, past the two murmuring sorcerers, to stand with arms raised at the threshold of the protective circle of the stone crown just as the first dragon launched itself into the air.

Alain leaped after her, but he did not even reach her. The backwash from the dragon's wings drove him to his knees. The screaming wind pounded him as a second, and then a third, dragon leaped toward the sky and caught the air under their vast wings, wider than houses. Their bellies shone like fire, and their tails lashed the air. Ice billowed off the distant eastern peaks, blown by their pa.s.sage. A fourth and fifth rose. Battered by the wind of their rising, Alain struggled to stay on his knees. A hot stream of stinging wind pa.s.sed over his back. His hair singed, and his hands and lips cracked under the sudden blast of heat as all his tears dried away. He crawled forward. Adica stood framed by the stone lintel, arms still raised. The wind did not batter her down, nor did she bow beneath it. She didn't need his help. She was the Hallowed One of her tribe, as powerful as the dawn, able to face without cowering the great creatures they had woken. All he could do was keep low to the ground and pray.

The dragons rose in glory, as bright as lightning. The wind of their rising stirred the clouds into a rage of movement, swirling in a gale stronger than any storm wind. As the dragons rose, the heavy layer of clouds began to break up, shredding in all directions. Drops of rain sizzled on stone. A single snowflake drifted down, dissolving before Alain's eyes.