Page 90 of Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Kel and Tosti laughed outright and clapped him on the shoulder. He could imagine what their words meant: gifts and women and longing looks. Some things didn’t change, even in the afterlife.

He had come a long way. He no longer wore the ring that marked him as heir to the Count of Lavas. He no longer had to honor the vows pledged between him and Tallia. He no longer served the Lady of Battles. With a smile, he put on the amber necklace, although the gesture made his friends whoop and laugh.

That day they hoisted the poles they’d cut the day before into place in the new palisade. Once, Beor neglected to brace while Alain was filling in dirt around a newly upright pole, and the resultant tumble caused two poles to come down. Luckily no one was hurt, but Beor got a scolding from one of the older men.

Alain went down with Kel and Tosti to the river afterward to wash. “Come!” shouted Kel just before he dove under the water. “Good!” he added, when he came up for air. “Good water. Water is good.”

Alain was distracted by the sight of the tumulus. Here, upstream from the village, the river cut so close below the earthworks that the ramparts rose right out of the water except for a thin strand of pebbly beach from which the men swam. He couldn’t see the stone circle from this angle, but something glinted from the height above nevertheless, a wink like gold. The twisting angle of the earthworks reminded him of the battle where he had fallen. He heard Thiadbold’s cries as if a ghost whispered in his ear. The past haunted him. Did the bones of their enemies lie up there? Two days ago, he had wandered off the height in a daze, following Adica. He hadn’t really looked.

Stung by curiosity and foreboding, he began to climb. His companions shouted after him, good-humoredly at first, then disapprovingly and, finally, as he got over the first earthwork and headed for the next, with real apprehension. But no one followed him. At the top a wind was rising and he heard the hoot of an owl, although the sun hadn’t yet set. Where it sank in the west, clouds gathered, diffusing its light. The stones gleamed. He ran, with the hounds beside him, sure he would see his comrades, the Lions, fallen beside their Quman enemies, whose wings would be scattered and molting, melting away under wind and sun.

As soon as he crossed into the stone circle, mist boiled up, drowning him, and he floundered forward. Was that the ring of battle in the distance? If he walked far enough, would he stumble back to the place he’d come from?

Did he want to?

He struck full against the altar stone, banging his thighs, and held himself up against the cold stone. The ringing had a gentle voice, not weapons at all but the click of leaves on the bronze cauldron.

“Why come you to the gateway?” said a voice he recognized from his dream.

He looked up but could see only a shape moving in the mist and the spark of blue fire, quickly extinguished.

“Why am I here? Where am I?”

“You have not traveled far as humankind measures each stride of the foot,” she answered. “I brought you off the path that leads to the Other Side. Has it not been told to you that you are to be the new husband of the Hallowed One of this tribe?”

He touched the amber necklace at his neck, remembering the way Adica had invited him to sleep beside her. He had been angry, then, because he felt his desire was shameful. “None here speak in a language I understand, nor can they understand me. How is it that we can speak together, you and I, while 1 speak as a foreigner would with the others? You aren’t even human.”

“By my nature I am bound to what was, what is, and what will be, and so my understanding is alive in the time to come as well as the time that is and the time that was.” Abruptly her tone changed, as though she were speaking to someone else. “Listen!” Her voice became faint. He heard the soft percussion of her hooves on the ground, moving away. “I am called. Adica comes looking.” Fainter still: “Beware. Guard the looms. The Cursed Ones walk!”

“Can’t you give me the gift of speech?” he called, but she was already gone.

“Alain!”

The mist receded as suddenly as it had come. Adica hurried to meet him as twilight settled over the stones. He sat down, worn out by labor and by strangeness.

Adica stopped before him and looked him over, both alarmed and concerned and, maybe, just a little irritated. She was handsome rather than pretty, with a wickedly sharp gaze and a firm mouth. This close, he had the leisure to study her body: she had the pleasing curves of a woman who usually gets enough to eat, but she had a second quality about her, an intangible strength like the glow off a hidden fire. In a funny way, she reminded him of Liath, as if magic threw a cloak over its wielders, seen as a nimbus of power.

Her next words reproved him, although he couldn’t be sure for what. Abruptly, she saw the line of the amber necklace where it lay concealed under his linen tunic.

Reproof vanished. She brushed a finger along the ridge the string of amber made under the soft fabric, then flushed.

“You gave this to me, didn’t you?” he asked, lifting it on his fingers to display it.

She smiled and replied in a tone half caressing and half flirtatious.

“Ai, God, I wish I could understand you,” he exclaimed, frustrated. “Is it true I’m to be your husband? Are we to come to the marriage knowing so little of each other? Yet I knew nothing of Tallia on the day we were taken to the wedding bed. Ai, Lady, so little did I know of her!” He could still feel the nail in his hand, proof of her willingness to deceive.

Mistaking his cry, or responding to it, Adica took hold of his hand and pulled him to his feet. For an instant, he thought she would kiss him, but she did not. In silence, she led him back to the village. The clasp of her hand made his thoughts swim dizzyingly until they drifted up at last to the centaur shaman’s last words. Who were the Cursed Ones? What were the looms? And how could he tell Adica, when they had no language in common?

2

“COME, up, to morning sun!” Kel prodded Alain awake. “To work!” He made an expansive gesture that included himself, Tosti, and Alain. “We go to work.”

Three more days had passed in the village. It was a prosperous place, twelve houses and perhaps a hundred people in all. They had about a fourth of the outer palisade raised and today headed back to the forest to fell trees. Work made the day pass swiftly.

During one leisurely break, Kel finished carving a stout staff out of oak, ornamenting each end with the face of a snarling dog. When next Beor hoisted his ax near Alain with a surly and threatening grimace, Kel made a great show of presenting the newly carved staff to Alain and even got Tosti to stand in for a demonstration of how the snarling dogs could “nip” at a man’s most delicate parts.

The men’s laughter came at the expense of Beor this time, and he grunted and bore it, since to stalk off into the forest would have made him look even more ridiculous. Grudgingly, he let Alain work in peace as the afternoon wore on.

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