Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  “’Prayers can’t make a field grow unless seeds are thrown in with them.’ Oof ! You’re crushing me. What does that have to do with—” She gasped as his fingers tweaked a nipple.

  “Just so,” he agreed. “Maybe a child won’t come from your womb, but there’s a certain ritual a man and woman must go through to get a child for themselves, and I don’t think we ought to neglect it.”

  “Again?” She laughed.

  Again.

  Morning came. The day passed uneventfully. Adica had so many duties that he barely got to see her. At dawn she rose to welcome the sun; after this she meditated up at the stone loom, in practice for the great weaving that she and the other Hallowed Ones would weave in only seventeen days. At midday they ate, and all afternoon she tended to the villagers or to the visiting warriors camped up on the hill, ministering to the sick, chasing away the evil spirits that thronged around the village, checking the newly slaughtered swine for disease, reading entrails for signs of good and bad fortune, watching the flights of birds for clues about the course and severity of the upcoming winter.

  So the next day passed as well, and the one after. There were acorns to be gathered, swine and geese to be fattened up before the winter slaughter forced them to choose which would be killed and which kept through the cold season. More adults, mostly young men, walked in to Queens’ Grave every day from the other villages, sent to guard the Hallowed One. Alain helped build shelters for them behind the safety of the embankments. He took his turn at watch, and in the afternoons tried with Urtan’s and Agda’s help to build a catapult while nearby Beor trained his growing war band how to fight with staves, halberds, and clubs. Bark or skins sewn together over a lattice of tightly interwoven sticks made crude shields.

  The trickle became a flood as more warriors and, increasingly, whole families with their flocks walked from the nearby villages to crowd in to Queens’ Grave, setting up an entire village of crude shelters within the safety of the ramparts. Everyone expected the Cursed Ones to attack as the days grew shorter and the nights colder. Alain discussed with Sos’ka and her companions the various ways the Cursed Ones often attacked: at dawn, on the wings of fog, just before sunset, now and again at night. Beor and the other respected war leaders listened, interjecting comments occasionally that Alain translated. The big man’s hands were always busy, binding spear points to hafts, fletching arrows, grinding the tips of antlers into sharp points. Pur the stone knapper now had two other stone knappers working with him as well as five apprentices. The first catapult had a hitch in it, so they started building a second. Torches burned all night along the palisade wall and up on the ramparts, and they had to make numerous expeditions into the forest to haul in cartloads of wood or armfuls of cow parsley and hemlock whose hollow stems, stuffed with fuel, made efficient little torches easy to hold in a hand. They hauled and stored so much water that he thought they might drain the river dry.

  On the eighth day after he had returned, the centaurs proved their worth as sentries by driving off a small party of Cursed Ones who had come to lurk at the edge of the woods. After that, the entire community stayed on alert. Folk rarely left the safety of the palisade and then only in groups of ten or more, even if they only walked the short path leading from the village gates to the outer ring of ramparts.

  “We’d better rebuild your old shelter up by the loom,” he told Adica that night, when they were in bed. She listened silently. She seemed so intent these past days, like an arrow already in flight.

  “I didn’t like it up there,” she said at last. “I was in exile, a stranger to my own people.”

  “But now I’m with you. You’ll be safer there. We’ll ask the centaurs to bed down up on the ramparts as well, since their hearing is so keen. The old shelter is still there, most of it. It hasn’t fallen in so badly that I can’t fix it. We’ll bring our furs. Maybe the ground will seem a little hard at first—”

  “Hush.” She sighed sharply, then kissed him until he had no choice but to be silent as she worked on him the magic he most desired.

  But she made no objection when he took Kel and Tosti up to rebuild her shelter. She even let him carry her holy regalia and her chest of belongings there, together with the furs and bedding, although he left her herbs and various small magical items in her house so she could fetch them during the day as she went about her duties.

  She seemed to care little where she slept, as long as he lay beside her. Yet only at night did her warmth get turned on him like fire. In the day, even sometimes at night when they lay together, she grew more distracted, more distant, with each passing day, as though the arrow receded farther and farther away, leaving him and all of them behind.

  The moon waned. Frost laid a coat of ice on the ground. The stars pulsed in the clear sky. For days there had been no clouds at all, although occasionally he heard thunder rumbling in the distance. At the new moon Adica woke before dawn and with only the adult women made the ceremony for the new month, hidden to men’s eyes. Anxiety gnawed at Alain. Envy ate at him. He hated every moment she spent away from him, although he could not have said why. Had happiness made him jealous? Yet what had he to be jealous of, who had her all to himself in the nighttime? Urtan had released him from the duty of nighttime watch, and not one adult sent up to do extra duty in Alain’s place complained. Strange, too, how after so many months of easiness, all the villagers and especially their White Deer cousins had stopped looking at Adica. He recalled now how nervous they had seemed around her when he’d first come to Queens’ Grave, but their uneasiness had waned and he’d forgotten about it as the months had passed and they’d made a place for themselves in the village. Now they feared her again, unspoken, apologetic as they talked to her less and ignored her more but continued to ask for her help when a fungus got into their stores of emmer or a sore afflicted their baby. Even Weiwara turned her children’s faces away when Adica walked by.

  “She’s gathering power for the great working,” she said, looking shamefaced, when Alain confronted her one day. “It’s dangerous for any of us to look upon a Hallowed One in the fullness of her power.”

  “What about me? I don’t fear her. I’ve taken no ill effects.”

  “Oh.” Her smile was taut, not really a smile. “You’re her mate. You’re different, Alain. You have the spirit guides to guard you against evil.”

  “It’s true that the Hallowed One’s power can bring evil spirits into the village,” Urtan said, when Alain asked him. But he fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable. “She doesn’t mean to. She’d do nothing to harm us. Not she, who is giving everything—but that’s her duty, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t talk about it,” said Kel, flushing bright red. “I’m not married yet. I have to go help my uncle split logs.”

  Alain went to Beor finally, hoping the man who had once been his enemy might prove more frank. But Beor only said, “She’s a brave woman,” and would not meet his gaze.

  So it went, until the day came that she walked to each house in the village and made a complicated blessing over it, to insure good health and fortune over the coming winter. As if she wouldn’t be there to watch over them. He followed along with her with Rage and Sorrow at his side, staying out of her way. It took half the day, but he finally understood the depth of her fears. He understood the solemn feast laid out that night: haunches of pork basted in fat and served with a sauce of cream and crushed juniper berries, roast goose garnished with watercress, fish soup, hazelnut porridge, a stew of morels, and mead flavored with cranberries and bog myrtle.

  He was woozy with mead by the time they walked the path up into the ramparts and ducked into their shelter. The cold night air stung. They snuggled into their furs, kissing and cuddling. Adica was silent and even more than usually passionate.

  “Is the great weaving tomorrow evening?” he asked softly.

  “Yes.” Even holding her so close, he could barely hear her whisper.

  “You’ll be free after the weaving? No more dema
nds made on you, beloved? You’ll be free to live your life in the village?” He heard his own voice rise, insistent, angry at the way Shu-Sha and the others had used her. She was so young, younger even than he was, and he thought by now he’d probably passed his twentieth year. It wasn’t right the other Hallowed Ones had made her duty such a burden.

  A few tears trickled from her eyes to wet his cheeks. “Yes, beloved. Then I will be free.” She drew in a shuddering breath, traced the line of his beard, touched the hollow of his throat, drew a line with her finger down to his navel and across the taut muscles of his belly. “I don’t regret the price I must pay, I only regret leaving you. I’ve been so happy. So happy.” She kissed him, hard, and rolled on top of him. She was as sweet as the meadow flowers and twice as beautiful.

  “I don’t want to sleep,” she whispered afterward. “I don’t want ever to leave you.”

  The notion dawned hazily in his mead-fuddled mind. “You’re afraid of the weaving.”

  “Yes.” She broke off, then continued haltingly. “I fear it.”

  “You’re afraid you’re going to die. I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Every person fears death. You’re the only one I know who isn’t afraid of dying.”

  “I’ll come with you tomorrow.” Obviously he should have thought of this before. The Cursed Ones might still attack. She and the other Hallowed Ones had to thread a weaving through the stones, a great working of magic. That much everyone knew, but the workings of sorcerers of course remained hidden from all but the Hallowed Ones themselves, just as only clerics could read the secret names of God. Knowledge was dangerous, and magic more dangerous still. But he would risk anything for her. “I’ll stand beside you at the working. You know I’ll never let any harm come to you. I swore it. I swear it.”

  “As long as we both live, I know you will never let any harm come to me.”

  “I’ll never let you leave me.” After a long while, after he made plain to her the depth of his feeling, she slept.

  But he could not sleep. He dared not move for fear of waking her, who was so tired. He dared not move, but as he lay there his heart traveled to troubled lands. He kept seeing over and over again the dying child held in the arms of its starving mother, to whom he’d given his cloak that day he’d ridden out hunting with Lavastine. He kept seeing the coarse old whore who had taken in Hathumod on the march east, to whom he’d given a kind word. He kept seeing the hungry and the miserable, the ones crippled by disease and the ones crippled by anger or despair. He kept seeing Lackling, the way he threw back his crooked head and honked out a laugh. He kept seeing the guivre, maggots crawling out of its ruined eye.

  So much suffering.

  Why did God let the Enemy sow affliction and grief throughout the world? Ai, God, didn’t the natural world bring trouble enough in its wake, floods and droughts, windstorms and lightning? Why must humankind stir the pot to roil the waters further?

  Could magic ease war and bring peace? He had to hope so. He had to believe that Adica and the other Hallowed Ones knew a way to coax peace out of conflict and hostility. That was the purpose of the great weaving, wasn’t it? To end the war between the Cursed Ones and humankind?

  In the morning, Adica carried her cedar chest out of the shelter, threw Alain’s few belongings out over the threshold and, before he realized what she was about, set the shelter on fire.

  “Adica!” He grabbed her, pulling her back as flames leaped to catch in the crude thatched roof

  She was shaking, but her voice was steady, almost flat. “It must be cleansed.”

  Sorrow and Rage whined, keeping their distance from the blaze. Up here on the highest point of the hill, with the stone circle a spear’s throw away, they stood alone as the flames licked up to catch in bundled reeds. The refugees from the other villages had built their shelters down among the ramparts, well away from the tumulus’ height and the power of the stones. A few children scouted out the billow of rising smoke, but older children snatched them away and vanished down the slope of the hill. No one disturbed them. The shelter burned fiercely. A huge owl glided through the smoke, but when he blinked, it vanished.

  Rage raised her head and loped away toward the lower ramparts. Many folk were climbing onto the walkway set inside the palisade, squinting toward the village below, pointing and murmuring.

  Smoke rose from the village like an echo of the smoke beside them. It took him a moment to identify the house in the village that had caught on fire.

  “That’s our house!” He tugged her forward to see.

  She said nothing. She did not seem surprised.

  “The only time people burn houses is when—” The knowledge caught as tinder did, burning as hot as the fire. “You do think you’re going to die!”

  “Nay, I don’t think it, love. I know it.” She didn’t weep as she held his hands. She had gone long beyond weeping. She held his gaze, willing him not to speak. “I could not bear to tell you before, my love. That I have been happy is only because of you. Everything that is good you’ve brought to me. I would never have it otherwise. But my duty was laid out long before. I will not survive the great weaving.”

  Panic and disbelief flooded him. Heat from the flames beat his face. It could not be true. He would not let it be true.

  “I’ll never leave you, beloved.” His voice broke over the familiar words, spoken so often. Had they been meaningless all along? He hated the fixed, almost remote expression that now molded her features into the mask of a queen far removed from her subjects. “I’ll walk with you into death if I have to. I won’t let it happen. I won’t. I won’t lose you!”

  “Hush,” she said, comforting him, embracing him. “No need to talk about what is already ordained.”

  But he would not give it up. He had stood by while Lavastine had died. He hated the grip of helplessness, a claw digging ever deeper into his throat. “No,” he said. “No.” But he remembered the words of Li’at’dano, that dawn when he had fallen, bloody, dying, and lost, at the foot of the cauldron. That morning when the shaman had healed his injuries and given him a new life in a place he did not know. He remembered what Adica had said, the first words he ever heard her speak.

  “Will he stay with me until my death, Holy One?”

  Li’at’dano had answered: “Yes, Adica, he will stay with you until your death.”

  “Hush,” she whispered. “I love you, Alain. How could I wish for anything more than the time we were given together?”

  “I won’t let it happen!” he cried, anger bursting like a storm.

  Was that thunder in the distance, rolling and booming? There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The shelter roared as flames ate it away. Smoke from the village, from their house, billowed up into the clear sky. The shrill cry of a horn cut the phantom calm lying over the scene. The adults stationed up on the palisade walkway, along the rampart, all began crying out, pointing and hollering. Rage, down at the cleft, began barking, and first Sorrow and then all the other dogs joined in until cacophony reigned.

  “The Cursed Ones!” cried the people, clamoring and frightened. “They have come to kill our Hallowed One!”

  Alain ran down through the upper ramparts and clambered up onto the walkway to see for himself. The Cursed Ones had come on horseback, more than he could count. He recognized their feather headdresses, short cloaks, and beaded arm and shinguards flashing where the sun’s rays glinted off them. Many wore hammered bronze breastplates. Each warrior wore a war mask, so that animal faces hid their true features. He saw only lizards and guivres, snarling panthers and proud hawks. With shouts and signals, they spread out to make a loose ring first around the village and also around the tumulus; he quickly lost sight of two dozen outriders who swung around to the east. The largest group, perhaps ten score, formed up on the stretch of land lying between the village and the hill. The sun’s light crept down the western slope of the tumulus as the sun rose over the stones.

  Adica, puffing slightly, cl
ambered up beside him. Her expression had altered completely from only a few moments before. She no longer had any comfort left to give him. She no longer had any thought except for the task she had to complete when evening came. “They’ll have to attack. Their only hope is to stop me from weaving my part of the working. They’ll be trying to strike at all seven of us, each in our own place.” She glanced up at the sky. “With the gods’ blessing you and the others released the Holy One from the Cursed Ones’ bondage so she could work her weather magic. The skies are clear. We have only to survive the day, and then we will be free of their curse forever.”

  He stared, trying to measure the force gathering in the village, where Beor, Urtan, Kel, and the others sheltered. Here, along the ramparts, even children armed themselves with clubs and staves. Hooves sounded below him as Sos’ka and her companions came up underneath the walkway. They had no way to get up the ladder to see over the palisade.

  “What is the Hallowed One’s wish?” Sos’ka cried. “We are here to protect her.”

  They had prepared for many things, but not for an army of hundreds. He faltered. How easy it was to be reckless with other people’s lives! But centaurs and human fighters watched him intently. They would not falter, no matter the cost. They had walked a harder road than he had, and for many more years. Determination would carry them forward.

  Yet he had seen the Cursed Ones close up as well, and surely the Cursed Ones held determination close to their hearts, too.

  No wonder war was a curse.

  One of the Cursed Ones rode within a bow’s shot of the village and loosed a burning arrow. It sailed over the palisade to land, sputtering, in the dirt. Another arrow flew, and a third and a fourth, then a shower. Children ran toward the safety of the houses, only to be driven back when the thatched roof of the men’s house caught and began to burn, twin to the fire that consumed Adica’s house, another funeral pyre.

  Sorrow and Rage panted below, gazing loyally up at him. It was easy to think now that his heart had died of sorrow yet again. It was easy to act because he knew he, too, would die. It was simply not possible to go on living without her.