Page 264 of Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“I am not afraid. I will protect her.”

The man had a complexion as dark as Liath’s, and bold, expressive eyebrows, raised now in an attitude of skepticism. “Fate is already woven. When the Shaman’s Headdress crowns the heavens, then the seven will weave. No thing can stop what befalls them then.” He touched a finger to his own lips as if to seal himself to silence. “That we may not speak of. The Cursed Ones hear all things.”

“Nothing will befall Adica,” said Alain stubbornly.

The man grunted softly but, instead of answering, rinsed out Alain’s clothing in the pool.

After Alain had gotten almost every last grain of sand out of the lobes of his ears and from between his toes, he examined his body. Winter had made him lean, and the work had strengthened him. He had welts at the girdle of his hips where the sand had worked down, and his heels were red and raw. Yet the sunburn he had gotten in the desert was utterly gone, not even any trace of peeling skin, as though days or even weeks had gone by in the instant it had taken him to step through the gate.

“You are a brave man,” said the guide solemnly, handing Alain his wet, wrung, and somewhat less sandy clothing.

Alain laughed. It sounded so ridiculous, said that way. “Who is brave, my friend? I want only to keep the one I love safe.” He began to dress, dripping as he talked. “What are you called, among your people?”

“It is permitted to call me Hani. What is it permitted to call you?”

“I am called Alain. Do your people always live in the caves?”

“No. Here we take refuge from the attacks of the Cursed Ones.”

Here was a subject Alain could understand. When had the Cursed Ones first attacked? How often did the raids come these days, and from what directions? Hani answered as well as he could.

“Do you believe the Cursed Ones walk the looms?” Alain asked.

“It may be. Or it may be they beach their ships along the strand and hide them. That way they can make us think they know how to walk the looms.”

“Then you would fear both their raids and their knowledge because you do not know how much they know.”

Hani gave Alain an ironic smile, peculiar to see on that proud face. “This I am thinking, but the Hallowed Ones and elders of my people do not listen to me.”

As they talked, each in his halting command of their common language, they walked back to the main cavern before ducking behind a hide curtain that concealed yet another tunnel. They made so many twists and turns, passed so many branching corridors, that Alain knew he would never find his way out again without a guide.

At intervals he heard down the maze of tunnels the sound of the storm screaming outside. Sand stirred up by its passage dried out his lips. But the sound faded as the passage dipped down to a circular aperture carved into the rock. Alain stepped high over a band of rock thrust across the corridor at the same time as he ducked to avoid the low ceiling; and passed into a world bathed in red, walls painted with ocher.

Hani bent, bowed, and murmured a prayer. A stickily sweet perfume hung in the air. They came into an antechamber carved out of the rock, stairs and doors, carved niches and stepped ceilings, all painted reddish orange. It was like stepping into a womb, the ancient home of the oldest mothers of humankind.

People waited here, sitting or kneeling in silence, shawls draped over their hair. He saw no children. Laoina knelt here, head bowed, by a second doorway, this one carved out of the stone in imitation of a lintel and frame made of timber.

She shaded her eyes with a hand as though to shield them from a bright light. When Alain paused beside her, she glanced up with a grimace of relief. “We did not lose you! Wait with me.”

He still did not see Adica. Ignoring Hani’s startled protest, Alain stepped over the threshold.

Inside, torches illuminated three people, two of them veiled and the third Adica. The cloud of incense choked him. Sorrow and Rage sat on either side of the threshold, waiting for him.

In silence, with a bent head, Adica waited as the veiled man chanted over a swaddled bundle held in his arms. His free arm lifted and fell, lifted and fell, in sweeping motions in time to his chant. He was missing two fingers on that hand.

A wide-mouthed white-and-red pot sat at his feet, incised with spirals whose smooth line, like that of a wild rose, was broken by nublike thorns. He bent to settle the bundle inside the pot, and in that instant, the cloth covering the bundle parted enough for Alain to see an infant’s face, gray and composed in death. Two Fingers covered the mouth of the pot with a lid.

The second adult stepped forward to place the pot beside a dozen similar pots, set neatly on shelves carved out of the rock within the niche. Then both retreated to the middle of the chamber, singing their prayers.

Adica saw Alain. Her expression was soft, and sorrowful, but a smile of relief twitched her cheeks as she touched a finger to her lips. Despite her occasional strangeness, he understood the language of her body well enough: she wanted him to stay where he was, so that he wouldn’t interrupt the ceremony. Nodding, he stepped back to stand by the threshold between Sorrow and Rage.

The chanted prayers ceased. Silence struck the chamber, powerful and thick as the smoke from the incense. Yet it wasn’t complete silence. The wail of wind whistled at the edge of his hearing, fading in and out. He thought, for an instant, that he heard a baby crying, but the sobs blended with that faint howl of wind to become an undifferentiated sound, low and long.

Two Fingers’ assistant unhooked her veil to reveal a young face marked with severe features and a furious frown. She shook a string of stone, bone, and polished wood beads, shattering the silence. Alain heard the crowd in the antechamber rise and move away.

A curtain of shimmering cloth was hung over the threshold; strands of thread worn into a metallic glitter striped the fabric, gold wings woven into a blue-dyed wool hanging, further elaborated with beads and shells. Two Fingers let his veil fall. He had a solemn face, weathered by sun and sand, and a clean-shaven chin. It was difficult to tell how old he was except for the crow’s-feet at his eyes. He spoke the conventional greeting, displaying his three-fingered hand with his palm out and open. The scar showed clearly, a cleanly-healed wound that ran raggedly, as though a beast had bitten off his fingers. “Why have you come, daughter? What news brings you?”

Adica told him the story of their hasty journey. Two Fingers listened intently while Hani and Laoina translated from behind the curtain. He interrupted at intervals for clarification, woven as this tale was through the barrier of imperfectly understood translations.

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