Child of Flame

Page 17

No trace of the Holy One remained within the stone loom. Her owl, too, had vanished.
“Come,” she said, extending her hands with palms up and open in the sign of peace. “Nothing will harm you here.”
The dogs had not moved, so he settled down cross-legged, hands cupped modestly over his lap. To show that she was a human woman, she took off the golden antlers and unbound the bronze waistband, setting them to one side. He watched her with a wary respect but without the fear that dogged every glance thrown her way by the villagers she had grown up with and lived beside for the whole of her life. Either he was still confused, or he was simply not afraid. Yet if he had walked the path that leads into the land of the dead, then perhaps he no longer feared any fate that might overtake him in the land of the living.
The smell of blood hung heavily in the air. The garments that lay in a jumble in the grass were stained with bright-red heart’s blood, just now beginning to dry and darken. The dogs showed no sign of injury, and although he bore a fresh pink scar under his ribs, quite a nasty wound, it was cleanly healed and wasn’t weeping.
Where had the blood come from?
“Do these belong to you?” she asked, cautiously reaching out to touch the closest garment. The wool shone with a brilliant madder gold, and when she shook it out, she recognized under the bloody stain the image of a spirit fixed to the gold garment: a lean and powerful lion woven of black threads set into the gold.
He jerked away from the sight. His face was so expressive, as if his soul permeated all of his physical being from the core to the surface rather than being lodged in some deep recess, as was true for most people. Perhaps he wasn’t a person at all but the actual soul, manifest on the physical plane, of the warrior who had once worn these garments and who had died in them. Perhaps he had killed the man who had worn them, and now recoiled from the memory of violence.
She examined a second garment of undyed wool, bloodier even than the lion cloth, that lay crumpled to one side. Beneath it lay a leather belt incised with smaller lions, fastened by a bronze buckle also fashioned in the image of a lion’s snarling face. Foot coverings cunningly molded out of soft leather lay in a heap with lengths of cloth and strips of leather that were, she realized, fine leggings.
Where had his people learned such craft? Why had they not joined the alliance of humankind against the Cursed Ones?
Beneath the clothing lay a garment woven of tiny metal rings, pale in color, yet not silver, or tin, or bronze, or copper. It was heavy. The rings sang in a thousand voices as she lifted them. They had a hard and unforgiving smell. Like the lion coat, the garment had holes that would accommodate a head and arms, and it was long enough to fall to the knees. Perhaps it was not metal at all, but a magical spell of protection made physical, curled and dense, to protect the body. Her shoulders ached from the strain of holding it as she set it down and picked up the knife that lay hidden underneath.
Not stone, not copper, not bronze: the metallic substance of this knife had none of the implacable fire of the bronze sword she had taken from the corpse of the Cursed One. It was blind, with a heartless soul as cold as the winter snows, as ruthless as the great serpents who writhed in the depths of the sea and swallowed whole the curraghs in which the fisherfolk plied their trade: having hunger, it feasted, and then settled back in quiet satiation to wait until it hungered again.
Magic was the blood of these garments. Was it any surprise that blood stained them all?
She looked back at him, hoping, even fearing, to find an answer in his expression. But in the way of any young woman who has gone too long without pleasure, she only noticed his body.
He was quite obviously not a child, to run naked in the summer.
“Wait here,” she said, making gestures to show him that she meant to go and return.
As she rose, her string skirt slid revealingly around her thighs, and he blushed, everywhere, easy to see on his fair skin. She looked away quickly, to hide her hope. Did he find her attractive? Had the Holy One truly brought her a mate? She gathered up her regalia and hurried away to her shelter, storing antlers and waistband in the chest and returning to him with the linen shirt draped over her arms.
He still sat cross-legged but with his head bowed and resting on his cupped hands. Hearing her, he lifted his head. Tears ran down his face. Truly, then, he wasn’t actually dead, because the dead could not weep.
She set the garment on the ground in front of him and took a few steps away, turning her back so that if he had any secret rituals he had to perform, crossing the threshold of nakedness into civilization, she would not disturb him. There was silence, except for the wind and the rustle and scrape of his movements. Then he coughed, clearing his throat, and she turned around.