Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  “Rumor has it that Henry has married Adelheid,” Ironhead growled.

  The glow of the lamp softened Hugh’s pensive smile as he stared out at the city below. In the distance, torches marked the harbor. “I’ve heard rumors that seafolk, people with the tails of fish, have been sighted beyond the harbor, out in the deep waters. Do you believe everything you hear, my lord king?”

  “I would be a fool to do so, and a worse fool not to think Adelheid won’t offer herself to Henry in exchange for his help. She was last seen in Novomo and is known to have marched north over the mountains with what remained of her retinue and in the company of Princess Theophanu. What if the nobles choose to rally to Adelheid’s cause? What if Henry claims the king’s throne of Aosta by right of marriage to its queen?”

  The bells ceased ringing. In the hollow silence, Antonia heard the whispering purl of the wind through the parapet railings and the myrtle wreaths. The lamp’s flame flickered, faded, and died.

  “With me at your side, my lord king,” said Hugh mildly, “you have nothing to fear from King Henry.”

  XIII

  A VISION OF TIMES LONG PAST

  1

  SHE has heard of the queens of the desert in stories told around the hearth fire by night. Many creatures stalk the wild lands, where humankind dare not tread. But she never thought to see them with her own eyes.

  Yet if she dreams, then is it true sight or only desire that causes her to look upon them, who prowl the wilderness? Perhaps it is a vision of times long past, and soon she will see the queen Arrow Bright, young and perilous, riding on the back of a lion queen out onto the sands to learn the mysteries of hunting from the ones who have long since proved themselves mistresses of the art of stalking and killing.

  It must be a vision, because even as she watches she sees a small human figure step out from the shelter of a huge rock with his hands outstretched in the gesture of peace. Two black dogs, made small in contrast to the towering sphinxes, growl softly at his heels.

  “Alain!” Adica jerked, and a hand pressed down on her shoulder.

  “Quiet,” whispered Laoina.

  Adica lay in such shade as a boulder afforded. Rocks dug into her shoulder and hip, but she didn’t have the strength to stand. Weakly, she groped to touch the bag her head rested on and found that it was her own fur cloak, bundled up. Just beyond it, within reach of her fingers, lay her pack with her precious regalia.

  Laoina gasped, sudden and sharp. The ground shuddered. The boulder’s shadow slid off Adica abruptly and the sun blasted her eyes. Laoina threw herself prostrate onto the ground. Rolling onto her back, Adica looked up into the inhuman face of a woman, looming above her. With a forepaw, the lion woman had rolled aside the boulder to expose the two hiding behind it. The boulder rested in the curve of her paw like a ball ready to be rolled along the ground.

  Her silvery mane streamed out as though a wind raked it. The lion woman regarded them with amber-colored eyes. The slit pupils made her look far more inhuman than the Horse people; although the centaurs had horses’ bodies, they had the torsos and faces—and eyes—common to humankind. The lion woman’s face had a human cast, but Adica saw nothing of human intelligence behind it.

  “I pray you,” said Alain’s voice, from behind the sphinx, “we come in peace. We mean no trouble to your kind.”

  The lion woman pushed the boulder away. It tumbled, crashing and rumbling, down to the base of the slope. Beyond it, nestled in the broad hollow at the base of the slope, lay the distant stone loom. Adica did not remember how she had gotten from there to here. Heat rippled in the air. Laoina had not stirred, but now the lion woman casually placed her paw, claws still sheathed, on the Akka woman’s back, and rolled her over.

  Adica struggled up to her knees. “I beg you, Lady Queen.” Her voice had a hoarse squeak to it, parched dry. “We seek the tribe of humankind who are led by the holy woman, Brightness-Hears-Me.”

  The lion woman cocked her head to one side, listening to a sound Adica could not hear, and sat back on her haunches. She lifted the paw touching Laoina and licked it thoughtfully. She had wicked-looking teeth, sharp and plentiful. After an excruciatingly long while of grooming her paws, she rose and strolled away as if she had forgotten her captives. Perhaps she just wasn’t hungry.

  Laoina staggered up to her feet. She said something in her own language, an oath, perhaps, before speaking to Adica. “Never I think to see a maoisinu so big.”

  “What is that?” exclaimed Alain, crouching beside Adica. “Ai, God, we must get you out of the sun.”

  With a grimace and a groan, Adica struggled to her feet, still dizzy from the backwash of the spell that had woken the dragons. “Did you measure the stones?” she asked Laoina. “Where will we find the tribe of Brightness-Hears-Me?”

  Laoina had only to point to the oasis below them, rising out of the desert. “We go, quick quick.”

  With Alain’s support and the broad back of the dog called Rage to lean on, she managed to pick her way down the hill and across the sand and pebble-strewn flat, baked hard by the merciless sun. The journey seemed to take forever, as if the oasis kept receding before them. The lion woman had vanished. Maybe she had only been an hallucination.

  The smell of water hit. They staggered forward into the shade of tall trees whose fronds waved in the breeze. It was much cooler within the shelter of plants. Resting, they sipped water as they gathered their strength. The sounds of an unseen human encampment drifted to them: singing, a hammer pounding on metal, the braying of a donkey and the indignant bleating of goats.

  “Look!” said Alain.

  A short figure swathed head to toe in voluminous robes approached them cautiously, both hands extended with palms out and open in the gesture of peace. Painted swirls and patterns of a deep blue color marked its palms. Adica quickly opened her own hands to show that they, too, came in peace. They followed their guide along a narrow path that led between gardens of dense bushes and trees laden with clumps of a tiny, green fruit. Purple-and-white flowers as broad as hands drooped toward the ground. Rushes lined the banks of a canal so narrow they could step across it, the rushes sliding and scraping along their thighs. Sweat streamed off Adica’s back. Her legs prickled from the heat.

  They crossed a second canal, wide enough that Adica was grateful to wade across, glad to get her feet wet. Finally, they came to the center of the garden where lay a pool of water about as far across as she could throw a stone, lined with rocks and cut by canals radiating out like six spokes of a wheel. Rage and Sorrow waded into the water to drink. Beyond this spring, small gardens bloomed with greenery, thickly scented herbs, young shoots of einkorn, and trees laden with fruit, reddish like apples but rather more swollen and round. Vines were staked out on hummocks of earth. Beyond the gardens lay tents, more than Adica could count at one glance. There stood among these tents one greater than the others: high and broad, the tent cloth so white that she had to shade her eyes from its brilliance. All around them, the people of the tribe of Essit went about their work. Most of them were covered from head to toe in flowing robes. Only their eyes and hands could be seen. A few, adorned with copper bracelets, worked out in the sun clothed in shifts and a loose head covering; these people had brands burned into their cheeks.

  The children ran about naked, shrieking and giggling, pausing only to stare and whisper at the strangers, keeping their distance. Beyond the encampment, herds of sheep and goats and donkeys made a cacophonous racket.

  Their robed guide led them to the holy tent. Soft pillows awaited the travelers beneath the pleasant shade afforded by a striped awning. While they reclined at their ease, two youths brought them wine in golden cups and a basketful of moist brown nutlike fruits. Only their hands were visible, soft and young, patterned with henna. A young person played a four-stringed harp. With brown eyes, thick lashes, and a delicately formed face, the youth could have been male or female; it was impossible to tell. A ring of brass pierced the youth’s nose; brace
lets adorned the wrists, and a brand marred her—or his—cheek.

  Under cover of the rippling melody, Alain leaned forward. “A woman watches us from inside.”

  “Where? I see no one at the entrance.” Adica bit into the nut-brown fruit. It was sweet, not nutlike at all. Delicious.

  “She watches us,” repeated Alain. Rage and Sorrow padded back from the pool, muzzles dripping as they flopped down in a shady patch and set their heads on their forelegs, content to rest. “Why did you need to measure the stone to find this tribe? Surely the loom where the sorcerer works her magic is always in the same place.”

  “The tribe of Brightness-Hears-Me does not live in houses, as we do. They have more than one loom in their land. When they move, the Hallowed One marks the loom nearest to her camp so that our magic weaves into that loom. The stones are arranged so that a line drawn between them points to the water hole where the tribe shelters.”

  When they were refreshed, a robed person motioned to Adica and Laoina, inviting them across the threshold of the tent. But when Alain rose to accompany them, Adica shook her head.

  “No man may enter the tent of Brightness-Hears-Me. It is the law of their tribe.”

  “Will you be safe?” he asked in a low voice. “I don’t like to leave you alone.”

  “Nay, beloved, there is no danger to me here.”

  After a moment’s hesitation he sat back down, although he did not relax into the pillows.

  It was not particularly dim inside the tent because plackets of material lay open along the sides, where wall and ceiling met, admitting light. Hard-packed sand made the floor. Six stakes had been driven into the sand, poles tied to them to make two triangles, one overlapping the other. Through these triangles, in the manner of threads of starlight woven through the stone looms, six women wove an intricate cloth out of blue, purple, and crimson threads. A shape was taking form on the cloth, but Adica couldn’t see, yet, what it was meant to be. These women wore no face coverings, although shawls covered their hair and their pale robes covered the rest of them, flowing loosely over their bodies. They had dark complexions and startlingly brown-black eyes. All of them had hands hennaed in the way of the attendants outside, dots and zigzag lines painted onto their skin. The melody of their murmured conversation rose and fell as though it, too, were being woven into the cloth. The youngest among them glanced up to survey Adica with bold eyes, but looked down swiftly when her neighbor pinched her on the thigh.

  The next curtain was drawn aside by an unseen hand, and they ducked low to enter a second, inner chamber. An old woman directed them to a basin gloriously shaped out of copper, where they washed their hands. This chamber was furnished with two chests carved with lion women, plush carpets, and a heap of pillows embroidered with flowers and vines. The curtains hanging on each side were woven of blue, purple, and crimson threads, and they, too, depicted the lion women in stately grandeur. The old woman rang a belt of bells hanging beside the innermost curtain.

  The curtain concealing the farthest chamber lifted. Adica saw briefly into a dimly lit chamber: a table and chair wrought of gold sat on thick carpets and, beyond them, a filmy veil of fine linen concealed the back of the tent. A woman shuffled through, laden with the burdens of age. She wore the same flowing robes as did the others of her tribe, but her head and face were veiled by a linen shawl. Not even her eyes were visible, only a loosening of the weave so that she might see without being seen. According to the beliefs of her people, she had looked upon the presence of her god, and the divine radiance still dwelt in her face so brightly that it would kill any other mortal to look upon her.

  “I greet you, Brightness-Hears-Me,” said Adica respectfully, waiting for Laoina to translate. “Grave matters bring me to this land, which is strange and perilous.”

  Brightness-Hears-Me had a bit of a stutter. She spoke laboriously, yet there remained a profound sense of weight in her voice, as if each word had been handled beforehand by her god. “I greet you in return, Young-One-Who-Stands-Among-Us.” She paused then, waiting in a silence broken only by the murmuring chant of the women in the adjoining chamber. The curtains and walls muffled the sounds of the outside world. At last, she spoke. “From where comes this man who is not born yet?”

  “From the loom,” said Adica, surprised. “The Holy One brought him off the path leading to the lands of the dead, so that he might be my companion until the last day.”

  “He cannot be dead,” said the holy woman, “because he is not born yet.”

  “Then how can he be here, in a man’s body?”

  “It is a mystery. His soul is not yet meant to walk on this Earth.”

  Adica wondered if Laoina had translated the holy woman’s words correctly. Yet truly, none of the other sorcerers, including Adica, had ever looked upon the naked face of their gods. Surely that changed a person. Surely that meant she might see things other mortals could not comprehend.

  “I fear I do not understand what you are saying.”

  Brightness-Hears-Me paused, as if listening, maybe to her god.

  “Much of life remains a mystery. Even I, who have glimpsed God’s presence, am not given to know everything that shall come to pass. Tell me what passes in the lands beyond.”

  At Adica’s direction, Laoina recited the events that had led to their arrival here.

  “What must we do if Horn is dead?” Adica asked, fearing to hear the answer.

  An uncanny silence settled over them. Adica could no longer hear the murmuring made by the weavers, no sound at all, not even the sigh of the tent’s walls billowing in and out with the wind. Had she gone deaf? That scritch was Laoina’s feet, shifting on the carpet. A chime rang faintly.

  Brightness-Hears-Me spoke in a whisper, as slowly as if she were repeating words dictated to her from an invisible source. “If our companion Horn is dead, then we must raise our children to be warriors. There will be fighting in every generation, unto uncounted generations, and the fighting will never cease, for the Cursed Ones are our enemies from the day they first walked among us, to this day, to all the days that will come. Once my people were their slaves. The God of our people led us forth from slavery and we came to this wilderness. Here the servants of God who have the bodies of lions and the wings of angels and the faces of humankind have protected us against the wrath of the Cursed Ones. But even so the magic of the Cursed Ones leans against us. Every year there are fewer of the God’s servants, for the Cursed Ones hunt them for sport and for sacrifice.”

  She lifted a hand. The prophecy had ended. The attendant came forward with a cup. It vanished under the veil; the holy woman drank, returned the cup empty. Adica could hear again: a child’s laughter, the bleating of goats, the murmuring of the weavers, a waterfall of notes made by the harpist.

  In a more normal tone, staggered only by her usual halting speech, Brightness-Hears-Me went on. “Go to the land of the stone giants where the phoenix flies. The one with two fingers will guide you. You must not walk into Horn’s country by the great loom that stands outside the city built by the tribe of Horn. You would only walk into the knives of the Cursed Ones. Go by the secret way. You are the young one. We rely on your strength. The rest of us must wait. If Horn is dead, then we must hope that the one she teaches as her apprentice is ready to take her place.”

  “If her apprentice survived the attack,” murmured Adica.

  “We must prevail, or the Cursed Ones will make slaves of all of us.”

  With that, they were dismissed.

  Outside, Alain had managed to relax, seduced into a doze by the heat and the ease offered by the soft pillows. Adica stopped dead in the entrance, staring. He had never looked more beautiful to her than he did at that moment as he woke and looked up at her: his expression radiant, his eyes bright, even his hair somehow glossier, as though it had been washed in egg white.

  He yawned, sipping at his wine. “I had such a strange dream,” he said drowsily. He had such an expressive face, open and honest without bein
g simple. “Petals of roses falling like snow. There was a wind at my back, huffing and blowing. I thought a huge creature stood behind me, beating its wings.”

  She shivered, as though a spider crawled up her back, recalling what Brightness-Hears-Me had said about him. But for once, he seemed not to notice her disquiet. He lifted a handful of the moist fruit toward her, like an offering, but as she bent to take them, one of the attendants gently pressed Alain’s hand aside with a stick before their hands could touch.

  “We are bidden to go,” said Laoina.

  Startled, they discovered that a new guide had appeared, this one also swathed in black robes and hood. Their supplies of water and food had been replenished. After hoisting their gear onto their backs, they followed the same trail past the spring into the riot of vegetation. It was unbelievably hot, even in the shade. The sun stood at zenith. They could not possibly walk back across the sands to the stone loom. When they halted in the shade of the last palm tree, their guide lifted a ram’s horn to his lips. He blew, although Adica heard no sound issue from the horn.

  A spit of dust appeared along a distant ridge. Three of the lion women loped down the ridge and across the flat with graceful strides, wings half open. Their eyes, so uncannily inhuman in a face so like to human form, examined Adica, Alain, and the Akka woman before they sank down to the ground, legs folded under them. The guide indicated their backs.

  Laoina swore in her own tongue. Adica could not move, unsure which was hotter: the breath of the sun, or her fear. Alain stepped forward cautiously. His back bowed under the weight of the sun’s heat as he crossed from shadow into sun. He hopped from one foot to the other, swearing at the heat of the sand, and finally dashed to the nearest sphinx. As he clambered awkwardly onto her back, his dogs trotted forward to sniff at the hindquarters of the huge creature. She lashed her tail, once, to drive them off to a respectful distance, then kneaded her claws in the sand as she made a rumbling sound in her chest, soft and threatening.