Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 73

"But I swore to serve you," he whispers, astonished, because he really never thought that this of all things would happen to him. He never thought that he would be the one to die on the battlefield.

"So you have served me." The voice of the Lady of Battles, as low and deep as a church bell, rings in his head." Many serve me by dealing death. The rest serve me by suffering death. This is the heart of war."

"Adica!" He bolted up, struggling to sit, gaze blurring as the sun glared in his face. Familiar hands pressed him back.

"Hush, my love. Lie down." Her tears fell on his face." I feared for you." She kissed him. For a moment, he saw two of her, his dear Adica sitting next to the Hallowed One in her antlered garb, haughty and aloof as she knelt before him.

Why wasn't the sun rising beyond the stones? He saw it, swollen and hazy, riding low over the indistinct palisade in a blaze of vivid red-gold. Smoke drifted in streamers among the distant trees.

Nauseated, he lay back, and after a moment, beyond the agonized throbbing in his head, he heard the clash of battle." What happened?"

"You were hit in the head by a stone."

It was a struggle to-recall what had happened." They've broken through on the east slope, by the sacred threshold!" He got up to his feet before she could stop him and staggered, catching himself on one of the hounds before he could fall. It was hard to tell which one; he couldn't quite focus.

"Adica?" He turned, and saw her.

She had bound on her gold antlers and bronze waistband, the regalia of a Holy One, a woman of power. He could still hear the battle, but the sun now set in the west.

"How long?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely. Where once had lain the birch shelter where they had slept, and made love, now lay smoldering coals and white ashes lifting on the dusk breeze.

"All day," she said." We've held them off all day."

At what cost?

He saw, then, that what he had first thought was the setting sun was in truth the village in flames, all of it burning or fallen in. The palisade had been breached in a dozen spots; in some places fire had eaten it away. Bodies filled the ditches, pinned on stakes or simply broken. He could not see what had happened to the villagers, but what remained of the Cursed Ones still fought desperately along the tumulus, trying to break through. Yet as desperately as they fought, the White Deer people fought more desperately still. He caught a glimpse of Sos'ka down by the cleft.-Streaked with blood, she vanished in a hail of spears. The other hound ghosted in just as he sagged forward, and he caught himself on that strong shoulder.

"Are they all dead? Did I lie here all day, while they died?"

Behind him, she spoke." Beor and the other fighters broke out of the village in the afternoon to try to reach this place. When the attack came, Weiwara led the children and old people into the forest. I made a prayer for them. I burned pine leaves, to grant them invisibility. I hope some made it. It will be safer for them there."

"Kel? Tosti? Urtan? Beor?"

"I don't know what became of them." Her tone sounded so distant, too calm, as though Adica had gone and the Hallowed One, a detached, unapproachable woman he didn't really know, had kidnapped her form and now walked the Earth in his beloved Adica's body.

The sun's lower rim touched the horizon.

"Alain." Her voice, so sweet to his ears.

He turned. She had come forward. They stood alone on the height, with the stones behind her and the fighting raging all around. Every last soul had gone down to try to stem the Cursed Ones, just for this one final hour. That was all she needed now.

Weeping, he caught her by the arm." Must you do this, Adica? Ai, G.o.d. How can I bear it?"

"Think how many will die if we do not succeed. Think how many have already died, protecting me!" Anger flared at last." My heart grieves to leave you, Alain. You know how much I do love you. But don't stand in my way. Don't break the love we share by bowing to selfishness. My life does not belong to me but to my people. And it does not belong to you either."

"You lied to me! You knew all along!"

Blinking back tears, she kissed him." I couldn't bear to see you unhappy."

She kissed him again. Hugged him for a long time, arms wrapped tightly around him. And left him, walking proud and tall, her antlers towering above her as though they would touch the heavens. She walked to the calling ground. She set her feet in that chalk circle, with her head raised proudly as the light waned and CHILD or FLAME twilight crept up the eastern sky, although the last purple-rose of sun's glow lingered in the west. The bowl of night began to fill up with darkness. The last glint of the setting sun caught and tangled in her shining antlers, making her seem no longer human.

She had lied to him all along. But had her lie been any different than the one he had spoken to the dying Lavastine? She had only wanted to spare him pain and fear.

He broke forward to come up behind her." So be it. Then I'll die with you." Behind him, Sorrow and Rage whined.

Her back stiffened, tensing as she heard his words. She did not answer, but neither did she tell him to leave. The first star winked alive in the dusk sky, brilliant Somorhas setting in the west, almost drowned in the last glimmer of the sun. With a shuddering breath, she raised her mirror to catch its light. Stars bloomed quickly now, as if in haste, and with her staff she wove them, one by one, into the loom. Through the soles of his feet he heard the keening of the ancient queens and the cries of anguish from the battlefield. Threads of starlight caught in the stones and tangled into a complex pattern made strong by the bright light of Mok shining on the cusp between Healer and Penitent.

She had other names for the stars.

"Heed me, that which opens in the east.

Heed me, that which closes in the west."

Did he hear other voices, an echo of her own, singing along the gleaming spell, tangled in the threads of light woven through the stone loom?

"Let the shaman's beacon rise as our weaving rises.

Answer our call, Fat One."

As she wove, she wept. He saw it, then, the cl.u.s.ter of seven stars he knew as the Crown of Stars but which she called the Shaman's Headdress. As it rose in the east, she caught its light in her mirror. That light tangled around him, and he grew so dizzy that he would have fallen over if the hounds had not shouldered under him to hold him up. Above, stars wheeled slowly, ascending out of the east, climbing, climbing, until he realized that the spell had woven around him as well, that they were caught inside it as time pa.s.sed, as the night wheeled forward from dusk to midnight. The Shaman's Headdress crept up the sky. The battle raged on, torches blazing along the walls, the cries of the wounded m.u.f.fled by the throbbing ache in his temple where a bruise swelled. A child screamed, sobbing frantically.

"Let what we have woven come loose. *

Let each on our place hold the pattern."

She sang their names, her voice unbearably beautiful as it echoed along the glittering threads of the spell." Spits-last. Falling-down. Adica. Hehoyanah. Brightness-Hears-Me. Two Fingers. Shuashaana!"

It was midnight. The Dragon rose in the east, and in its wings rose Jedu, the Angel of War, near to the pale rose star of the ancient one, the Red Sage, known as Aturna. The Lady of Plenty, brilliant Mok, set in the west as the Penitent laid down his heavy burden, touching the horizon.

The Crown of Stars reached the zenith, high overhead, crowning the heavens. Below the earth, unseen, the sun reached nadir.

"Let the weaving be complete!" she cried, her voice joined to six others, resounding, triumphant.

Light flashed in her antlers and ripped through her like lightning.

"Adica!" he screamed, leaping forward, but the hounds knocked him flat or maybe it was the ground beneath his feet shaking and shuddering that threw him down before he could reach her. Light exploded before his eyes. A howl of fear rose from the throats of the Cursed Ones. Their attack faltered and they broke, running.

But it was too late.

Magic tore the world asunder.

Earthquakes ripple across the land, but what is seen on the surface is nothing compared to the devastation left in their wake underground. Caverns collapse into rubble. Tunnels slam shut like bellows snapped tight. The magnificent cities of the goblinkin, hidden from human sight and therefore unknown and disregarded, vanish in cave-ins so ma.s.sive that the land above is irrevocably altered. Rivers of molten fire pour in to burn away what survives.

Fire boils up under the sea, washing a wave of destruction over the vast whorled city beneath the waves, home of the merfolk. Where once they danced and sang to rhythms born out of the tides, corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again like a fish thrashing in its death throes. The sea floor rises. Water pours away into cracks riven in the earth, down and down and down, meeting molten fire and spilling steam hissing and spitting into every crevice until the backwash disgorges steam and sizzling water back into the sea.

The caves in which Horn's people have sheltered flood with steaming water. A storm of earth and debris buries Shu-Sha 's palace. Ma.s.sive waves obliterate a string of peaceful villages along the sh.o.r.es of Falling-down's island. Children scream helplessly for their parents as they flail in the surging water.

White fire spears up into the dragons which, launching into the sky in alarm, have barely gotten into the air above the fjall where Spits-last and his kinsfolk stand in the midst of their stone loom, one old wisewoman by each stone and the crippled sorcerer in the middle. Screaming rage and pain, the dragons plunge, but before they can reach the safety of the earth their hearts burst. Blood and viscera rain down on the humans desperately and uselessly taking shelter against the stones. The hail of scalding blood burns flesh into stone, melding them into one being.

A tsunami of sand buries the oasis where the desert people have camped, trees simply flattened under the blast of the wind. The lion women race ahead of the storm wave but, in the end, they, too, are buried beneath a mountain of sand. Gales scatter the tents of the. Horse people, Winds so strong that what is not flattened outright is flung heavenward and tossed roughly back to earth, so much fragile chaff. All the trees for leagues around Queens' Grave erupt into flame, and White Deer villagers fall, dying, where arrows and war had spared them.

"Adica!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely, straggling against the jaws of Rage and Sorrow as he fought forward to throw himself down beside her crumpled body.

She was already dead.

White fire exploded from the crest of the hill, slicing open the stone loom, and swallowed him.

SHE moved fast, grabbing the haft of Cat Mask's spear below the point. Just as he jerked back, startled, she found the memory of fire within the wood and called flame. With a shout of pain and surprise, he dropped the spear and jumped backward as she rose, holding the burning spear in her hand, thrust out to challenge them. It hissed and sparked, as bright as though she held lightning.

"I am not your enemy!" The warriors facing her backed away nervously as the haft of the spear burned into nothing yet left her skin unscathed. She caught the obsidian spear point as it fell and p.r.i.c.ked her middle finger. Blood welled up.

"Child! Do nothing rash!" Eldest Uncle's shout came from the pine grove behind her.

She dared not turn to see him, not with fifty armed warriors staring her down. Masks closed their expressions to her; she saw proud hawks, fierce panthers, snarling bears, and biting lizards. Cloaks covered their shoulders, and while most of these short cloaks were woven of linen, a few had the look of skin, cured and cut. Some of the warriors displayed bare torsos but most wore short, heavily-quilted tunics marked by sigils: a feather, a reed, a knife, a skull. All wore tattoos along their arms or on their chins, ranging from simple lines to more complicated hatching, diamonds or dots faded to blue.

Cat Mask drew a flint knife and lunged toward her. She squeezed her finger and let blood fall. Where it struck the ground, ten serpents boiled up out of the earth, hissing and coiling. Cat Mask leaped back. Another drop of blood spattered, and a third and a fourth. Flowers swayed alarmingly as serpents slithered through them. Warriors shouted in fear and backed away. One bright-banded snake slid right over her foot, and she sprang up in dismay. Snakes seethed everywhere, coming to life among the flowers.

She unfurled her wings of flame and rose above the meadow, fire streaming off her.

That was enough for Cat Mask's war band. To a man, they broke and ran for the river.

She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked away the blood as she settled down at the edge of the pine wood, beside Eldest Uncle and a young-looking woman. The two Ashioi threw up hands to protect their faces from the hot wash of her wings, so she furled them, pulling them down inside, bound tight into her soul where they had, after all, resided all along.

"So," said Eldest Uncle, looking her up and down with a charming grin. He hadn't forgotten the pleasure of admiring a young woman's body." You walked the spheres. You have found your answers, and your power."

"I have discovered the truth," she admitted, blushing as she remembered modesty. She didn't know where to place her hands. A glance toward the meadow showed the brilliant flowers still dancing drunkenly as the tangle of serpents raised by her blood worked their way outward through the dense growth. All her clothing lay out there, surrounded by snakes.

"So," said the woman standing beside Eldest Uncle as she, too, measured Liath, "I am not surprised at the attraction."

"Who is this?" asked Liath, looking her over, although truly it was difficult to stand confidently when she wasn't wearing a st.i.tch of clothing. The other woman, however, wore only a pale, skin skirt cut off raggedly at knee length. She had a powerful torso, with broad shoulders and full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. A double stripe of red paint ran from the back of either hand all the way up her arms to her shoulder, covered in one spot by a garment draped over her left forearm. A green feather stuck jauntily out of the topknot she had made of her hair, a match to her jade-green eyes. Her eyes, the cast of her face, seemed familiar.

"This one is my younger daughter, the child of my old age," said Eldest Uncle with a glint of anger in his expression as he glanced at his companion. He did not seem pleased to introduce her." The-One-Who-Is-Impatient. Who has caused enough trouble!"

Old angers boiled below the surface as father and daughter looked at each other and, as with one thought, away. The woman shifted and the folded garment hanging over her arm spilled open.

"That's my tunic," cried Liath, "the one I left in the saddlebags, on Resuelto. Ai, G.o.d! It was you, standing at the river's edge and wearing my tunic, when I first walked the flower trail." She grabbed the cloth, shook it open and, without asking permission, slid into it. Properly clothed, she could speak without embarra.s.sment." Where did you get it?" "From my son."

The resemblance, once noted, became obvious." Sanglant!" Was that the ground, shaking, or only emotion flooding her? "You're Sanglant's mother! Ai, G.o.d." The one who abandoned him when he was only an infant. She could not say those words; to face a woman who had done nothing different than she had herself left her speechless, and confused. She turned to the old sorcerer." And you are my daughter's great grandfather, then?" "Ssa!" Eldest Uncle leaped forward and whacked his staff hard against the ground, crushing a serpent's head. Its body writhed, shuddered, and stilled." I hate those things! Women never think before they take action! Blood! s.e.x! What do they care about consequences? Their wombs protect them. Their magic gives them power!" With a hiss, he smacked another serpent, hopped to one foot to avoid a third as more churned out of the meadow." Quick! Climb a tree."

They scrambled up branches, hanging awkwardly as a score of snakes slithered off through the ground litter, vanishing into the pine woods. The old sorcerer's white cloak brushed the ground, but because of his precarious position he dared not pull it up. Each time a snake pa.s.sed under it the white sh.e.l.l trim clacked softly, and the serpent would hiss and strike at the fluttering cloth before snaking hurriedly on.

Liath finally began to laugh at their ridiculous situation." Are all the snakes poisonous?"

"Serpents are the creatures of women," the old man muttered, thoroughly cross by now if only because he was hanging by knees and hands from the branches, "so of course they are poisonous, just as women are poisonous to men. That is why women rule."

"That's not so! Both women and men can rule in the lands I grew up in, although it's true that inheritance is more reliable through the mother's line."

"Tss!" He hissed at a slender brown snake pa.s.sing under his cloak. It reared up, hissing, then sank down and vanished into the undergrowth." I will not be having this argument with you as well, Bright One. I have been arguing with my daughter for three days. What use for her to risk the dangerous journey to the land below a second time, only to return here to tell me that the men of the human tribes will not listen even to a woman's counsel!" "You have been to Earth? What of my husband?" "Sanglant is as stubborn as his father!" The Impatient One swung down from her perch and prodded the ground around her with a stick. Satisfied that the last of the serpents had escaped from the meadow, she relaxed, if in truth a woman of her temperament knew how to relax." Henri-" She said the name as a Salian would." -refused to believe my tale, nor would he believe his son. He will walk blindly into the trap laid for him by the human sorcerers." She spat on the ground." I say, let him and his people suffer at the hands of the wicked ones. You claimed all along that there could be accommodation, my father, and I listened to you and acted to build a bridge-"

"Without anyone's permission! Without thinking it through! Rash actions lead to broken bridges!"

The way her lips tightened, pressed hard together, betrayed her anger, but she went on as though he hadn't spoken." But now I no longer believe we can make peace if they will not listen in their turn. The old stories are true. Instead of wearing the masks of animals to borrow their power, humankind acts like animals in their hearts."

"Nay! Not that argument again! The gold feather of peace was given to me by a stranger. He was no animal. I gave it to this one in my turn, because she came to me for aid. Now she has returned, and even you must admit that she has come back to me in peace." "Perhaps you would rather that she be your daughter, than that I am!"

"Silence!" cried Liath. Softly, she added, "I beg your pardon. You are welcome to argue all you like once I am gone, but I ask you to listen while I am still here. I came back, Uncle, only to tell you that I must return to Earth." She turned to regard Sanglant's mother." I beg you, if you bear any love for your son and your granddaughter, tell me now if there is anything I should know before I walk the crossroads and return to the ones waiting for me. I do not know how long ago you came from there, or how long it has been since I left this place to walk the spheres. I do not know how many months or years have pa.s.sed on Earth since I left. I do not know how long I have until the Seven Sleepers will bind their power to cast a great working. Nor do I understand how they mean to raise so much power that they can hope to create a spell strong enough to cast an entire land as vast as this one back again into the aether."

Eldest Uncle bpwed his head, burdened by memory." We only suffered. We never fully understood what magic they wove against us."

"I should have listened to Cat Mask," muttered his daughter." The humans can never be trusted. Maybe he's the one I should be talking to now." She began to walk away but paused to face Liath." My son is no better than an exile in his own country. He turned his back on his father when Henri would not listen either to him or to me, and walked away to find some means to fight the sorcerers on his own. That is how I left him and the child. You would know better than I if he can succeed."

"You left him to face the Seven Sleepers? Alone? Your own son?"

"You left him," echoed the other woman, "to face your enemies? Alone? With what weapon do you stab me, Sister? Surely only with the one that impales yourself. I almost died giving birth to him. Did he greet me with any warmth when I saved his life and that of his daughter? Nay, he treated me as a stranger, despite our kinship. I will not shed any more blood or tears on that field." Hoisting her staff, she walked haughtily away, heading back through the pine woods toward the old watchtower.

"She has no heart," murmured Eldest Uncle sadly when she had vanished down the trail." She sacrificed it to the G.o.ds long ago when she walked the path of the spheres."

"Did she walk the seven spheres as I did, and return?"

"That she ascended the path cannot be doubted. That she returned alive you see by her presence. What she sacrificed on her journey none know except her. I can only guess." He sighed." My child, you have changed. What did the fire daimones tell you?"

"I am their child," she said softly, humbled by the knowledge. Had her own mother given less than Sanglant's? She had given her life and her substance to bring a child into the world. She had given her very soul." I am more, and less, than what I thought I was. But at least I am free of the chains that bound me and the veils that hid the truth. Tell me truly, Uncle. Do your people hate mine? Is there any hope for peace?"

"Mustn't there always be hope for peace? We must believe there is because I know that the other side of peace brings the worst kind of grief. I lost those most dear to me. I am not alone in the tears I have wept many a night remembering those who are gone before their time." He smiled, a wry twist of his mouth. His face was so old, lines and wrinkles everywhere, creases made equally by frowns and by smiles, by laughter and by tears. He extended a hand, hesitated, and touched her gently on the arm." Hate is a fire fanned easily into a storm that burns everything in its path." Tears welled up in his eyes even as he blinked them away. It was hard to see the resemblance between him and Sanglant except for the color of his skin and the dark splendor of his hair, still glossy and thick despite his great age." I beg you, my child. Save us. Do not let the descendants of the sorcerers of old destroy us utterly as they attempted to do when I was a youth."

"I will not," she promised him, then she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He flushed mightily, hard to see on that copper complexion but easy to make out by the spark of emotion, the slight narrowing, in his sharp old eyes." I will see you again, Uncle. Be looking for me." "Fare you well, Daughter."

The flower meadow waited, silent, barely stirring in the soft breeze. Heat drowned her as she walked forward into sunlight, into the haze of bright color, pale bells of columbine, lush peonies, banks of poppies, and a rich cloud of lavender. She stayed on the path, careful to mark each patch of ground before she set her foot down. The thought of all those serpents made her queasy. She gathered up all her things, dressed properly, and girded on belt, sword, and quiver, pouch, knife, and cloak. The gold torque she stowed in her pouch.

The trail led her through the chestnut woods, and she crossed the river, which ran even more shallow than before. The glade where she had first seen and met the old sorcerer lay empty except for the flat stone on which he often sat to twist flax into rope. A few dried stalks lay scattered on the ground around the rock. A breeze rustled through desiccated leaves. Not even a fly buzzed. Silence drowned her like a heavy veil.

The land was dying. It would die, unless it returned to the place it belonged. Just as she had to return to the place she belonged.

She had a long way to go to get back to them, and a longer path yet to map out once she reached their side. Reaching into the heart of fire, she called the burning stone. It flared up in the center of the clearing, blue fire racing up and down its length. Grasping her bow more tightly, she stepped through into the crossroads between the worlds, where the river of fire ran as aether through the spheres, its many tributaries linking past and future, present and infinity. Through the endless twisting halls she searched for the gateway that would take her back to Earth. Infinite doorways offered glimpses into other worlds, other times, other places, present and past, half seen and swiftly vanished.

A boy sleeps with six companions, their beds made of precious treasure, shining baubles and golden armbands, silver vessels and ivory chests, scarlet beads and ropes made of pearls.

A winter storm swirls snow around a monastery where a large encampment of soldiers shelters, some in outbuildings, others in tents. Hanna, in the company of Lions, chops wood. Her face is taut, her body tense, but each time she strikes ax into wood and splits a log she swears, as though she's trying to chop rage and grief out of herself.

A woman clothed in the robes of a nun meets a sandy-haired, slender young man at the edge of a birch forest. Waves of wind ripple light through silver leaves. To him she gives the leashes of a half-dozen huge black hounds in exchange for a tiny swaddled figure, an infant girl sleeping softly as she is handed over from one grim-faced guardian to the other.

An army marches in good order through the gra.s.sy plains of the eastern frontier. Poplars line the banks of creeks and shallow rivers, giving way to hawthorn and dogwood and at last to the broad expanse of feather gra.s.s and knapweed. Spring flowers carpet the open lands with white-and-yellow blooms, as numerous as the stars. Is that Sanglant marching at the head of the army, a glorious red cape streaming back from his shoulders and a gold torque winking at his neck? Is that Blessing, grown impossibly old, looking like a well-grown girl of five or six? At the confluence of two rivers, a king waits to receive the army in peace. His banner flies the double-headed eagle of the Ungrian kingdom. Strange that the first gift Sanglant offers to him, as they meet and clasp hands and give each other the kiss of peace, is a wine barrel.

A woman, aged and arthritic, sits in her tower room, writing laboriously. A map lies open on the table beside her, a crude representation ofSalia, held down by stones at each curling corner, but the figures on the wax tablet interest Liath more: a horoscope written for a day yet to come, or a day long past, when cataclysm racked the Earth. The elderly cleric lifts her head to call for an attendant. The woman who comes is the same woman who gave the hounds and took the child, although here she looks much older as she offers her mistress a soothing posset.

"What news, Clothilde?" asks the first woman in the tone of a n.o.blewoman born to command. Is this Biscop Tallia, Taillefer's favorite child? Her voice is already smoky from the growth in her neck that will kill her.

"It is done, Your Grace," says the other woman, "just as we planned. The girl is pregnant. The child she bears will be related to the emperor through both parents."