Child of Flame

Page 5

As Baldwin lowered the mirror in confusion, Hathumod crawled forward. Her hand came to rest on a bundle so clotted with dirt and mold that her hand came away green, and flakes fell everywhere, spinning away to meld with the smoke from the torch. Like Baldwin, she was either a fool or insensible. She groped at the bundle, found a faded leather pouch that actually crumbled to dust in her hands, leaving nothing in her cupped fingers except, strangely, a nail marked by rusting stains.
She began to weep just as Gerulf shook loose the rotting garments: a rusted mail shirt that half fell apart in his hands, a knife, a decaying leather belt, a plain under-tunic, and a tabard marked with the remains of a black lion. “Some poor comrade of mine must have crawled in here to die many years ago,” said the old Lion.
“Who’s there?” demanded Sigfrid, throwing his head back as if he’d heard something. Baldwin, still gripping the obsidian mirror, screamed and crumpled forward. On the ground, Gerulf’s dead nephew jerked as though a demon had poured itself into him.
The chamber flared with blue light.
Ivar cried out, but he could not hear his own voice. His throat muscles strained as he forced out air. Blue fire blinded him. The ground wrenched under his feet, throwing him sideways, and he tumbled to his knees, but no earth met his outstretched hands. He fell, endlessly, hands grasping at empty air, as the young queen with the knife-edged smile walked toward him over a carpet of brilliant fire with her arms extended as if in welcome. He reached for her, grasping for any lifeline.
Touched her hands.
And knew nothing more.
PART ONE
THE FLOWER
TRAIL
I
THE HALLOWED ONE
1
AT sunset, Adica left the village. The elders bowed respectfully, but from a safe distance, as she passed. Fathers pulled their children out of her way. Women carrying in sheaves of grain from ripening fields turned their backs on her, so that her gaze might not wither the newly-harvested emmer out of which they would make bread. Even pregnant Weiwara, once her beloved friend, stepped back through the threshold of her family’s house in order to shelter her hugely pregnant belly from Adica’s sight.
The villagers looked at her differently now. In truth, they no longer looked at her at all, never directly in the face, now that the Holy One had proclaimed Adica’s duty, and her doom.
Even the dogs slunk away when she walked by.
She passed through the open stockade gate and negotiated the plank bridge thrown over the ditch that ringed the village. The sun’s light washed the clouds with a pale purplish pink as delicate as flax in flower. Fields flowered gold along the river plain, dotted here and there with the tumbled forms of the grandmothers’ old houses, now abandoned for the safety of the new village. The grandmothers had not lived in constant fear as people did these days.
When she reached the outer ditch, she raised her staff three times and said a blessing over the village. Then she walked on.
By the river three men bent over the weir. One straightened, seeing her, and she recognized Beor’s broad shoulders and the distinctive way he had of tilting up his chin when he was angry.
How Beor had protested and complained when the elders had decreed that they two could no longer live together as mates! Yet his company had never been restful. He had won the right to claim her as his mate on the day the elders had agreed to name him as war captain for the village because of his conspicuous bravery in the war against the Cursed Ones. But had the law governing her as Hallowed One of the village granted her the right to claim a mate of her own choice, he was not the one she would have picked. In a way, it was a relief to be rid of him.
Yet, as days and months passed, she missed the warmth of his body at night.
Beor made a movement as if to walk over to catch her, but his companion stopped him by placing a hand on his chest. Adica continued down the path alone.
She climbed the massive tumulus alone, following the path up through the labyrinthine earthworks. As the Hallowed One who protected the village, she had walked here many times but never in as great a solitude as that she felt now.
Nothing grew yet on the freshly raised ramparts except young sow-thistles, leaves still tender enough to eat. Far below, tall grass and unharvested grain rippled like the river, stirred by a breeze lifting off the sun as it sank into the land of the dead.
The ground ramped up under her feet, still smooth from the passage of so many logs used as rollers to get the stones up to the sacred circle at the height of the hill. She passed up a narrow causeway between two huge ramparts of earth and came out onto the level field that marked the highest ground. Here stood the circle of seven stones, raised during the life of Adica’s teacher. Here, to the east of the stone circle, three old foundations marked an ancient settlement. According to her teacher, these fallen stone foundations marked the halls of the long-dead queens, Arrow Bright, Golden Sow, and Toothless, whose magic had raised the great womb of this tumulus and whose bones and treasures lay hidden in the swelling belly of the earth below.