“You can't trust people, Jerani. Not the men of your tribe. Not your brother. Not me.”
“I trust in the goddess,” he said. “And she sent you to protect her children.”
“I couldn't protect your family.”
Jerani remembered shouting his throat raw. The bracer had been dark, and he had thought Celaise had not heard him. He was touched to learn she had wished to help, nervous to hear she could not.
“I am weak, so weak.” Her fires dwindled until only coals glowered at the hem of her dress. The smoke that filled her hands blew to the side and out of view, and the arms of her black dress ended in stumps.
This confession frightened Jerani far more than had the story of the girl jumping to her death. “But you're not afraid of the Rock-Backs. They can't hurt you. They're afraid of you.”
“No, they're not.”
“They should be. You wear smoke and fire.” Jerani talked faster as he grew more desperate to reassure her. “You are sky and wind. You are steam boiling from the side of the Angry Mother. You are strong, even if you don't smell as strongly.”
“What did you say?” Celaise burned him with her eyes. Though her irises were black tonight, within them flickered lines of red and yellow.
Jerani wondered what he had said, too. A memory of her wearing the steam dress feathered the back of his mind. Something had seemed wrong then, and now he understood. He had felt her heat, and the vapor had clung damp to his arms, but he had not smelled anything, none of the potent odor of the Angry Mother's vents.
Neither did he smell the smoke sifting out of her.
“Nah-nothing,” he said, embarrassed to have brought it up. Even if it is strange. “You just smell good, better than you'd think.”
“My dress doesn't smell right to you.”
Jerani wanted to knock himself out with his war club to end his humiliation. He had offended her, a handmaiden of a goddess and the one woman who had ever noticed him. What if she leaves because of what I said? Leaves the Greathearts, leaves you.
Eyes glinting, she asked, “The Headless, do they smell?”
“Yes, they stink. You smell far better than—”
“I mean, do they scent? Track by smell? Haven't exactly seen their noses.”
“Um…once the Holy Woman said it's the smell of the Angry Mother that scares them.”
“They are afraid of smells?” Flames burst to life within Celaise, and red ribbons of fire streamed up her skirt to her waist. “What does the volcano smell like?”
“You mean the Angry Mother?” He thought it an odd question, coming from her.
“The mountain, with its steam and fire.”
Jerani thought it like the musk of a dead crocodile beginning to rot. He did not know a polite way of putting that. “It's powerful.”
She waved to the flames in her dress. “And how should a fire smell?”
“You can't smell?” He gazed at her face, calm as if molded of clay, at her steamy white hair. Perhaps she's not at all human. A bit of mud shaped by the hands of the goddess.
Shaped into a beautiful woman.
Her eyes looked human. Better than human. Big and dark calf eyes, with streaks of color like sparks popping from a fire. Jerani thought he had seen fear in her gaze, even despair. Now those eyes shone with savage hope.
They held him, urging Jerani's heart to beat faster. His blood throbbed. He felt as if she dragged long fingernails over his skin, down his calves, across the small of his back and onto his chest. Her gaze left scratch marks.
He had never felt this way around another person, not even the beautiful Chiya. Celaise is beyond beautiful. She was terrifyingly magnificent. Excitement churned within him, a heat that spread from his stomach to leave him shivering.
Her gloved hand lifted, smoke fluttering upwards from her fingers like claws. “I must touch you,” she said.
I will Feast tonight, Celaise thought.
All this time, the Headless had more or less ignored her magic. She had addled the beasts but never frightened them. Now she knew why.
The stupid things think with their noses. Wherever they hide 'em.
Celaise never bothered to create a scent with her magic. It was just another detail to trouble over, amid a deluge of sensations she forced into minds. A man did not worry much about smells when he felt wind ripping his clothes and his guts shoved into his throat as he plummeted to his death.
Black Wine could change itself into an odor. She remembered the slaughterhouse stink of the toothy maw belonging to the Lord of the Feast. He had forced her to experience that eye-peeling reek as she might have as a girl. As a Feaster, Celaise would have smelled no blood, no rotting meat, only the bland fears of the animals.
She could sniff out the concerns of a maid carrying flowers through the night streets, but pressing the bright petals to Celaise's nose would bring nothing. To her, standing in front of a bakery would smell the same as loitering outside a coal mine, or worse, because none feared while cooking cornmeal. She could not even remember the scent of fresh mountain air.
Jerani would know the smells she needed. Fear could unlock them and bring them to the front of his thoughts, where Celaise could steal them with a touch.
Celaise hated touching people. Touch and you can be touched back. Doubt wriggled through her. The bracelet on his arm reminded her of the dangers, the risks, but she did not think she had a choice.
Though her arm was lifted, she had to wait, to align her dress with her center of vulnerability. It was a few paces away. A drip of Black Wine ensured Jerani would not notice her soft spot nearing. If he tried he would see shadows, or perhaps the outline of an unthreatening figure.
A trembling buzz seeped into her, a tickling weakness in her limbs. She had taken in her vulnerability. To preying eyes, nothing would seemed to have changed, but when she lay her hand on the side of Jerani's face—just behind his eye—his warmth coursed up her fingers.
Her thumb slid up his chin, each scar a raised wrinkle. The pale lines pointed to his brows, those black dashes, to his ebony eyes, the color of soothing darkness and quiet hideaways. Smoke from her glove billowed up his face. She did not know if his scars intensified his eyes or if he had been born with such a breathtaking gaze.
Inside she quavered. He could grab me. Seize me. He was quick, she knew. She wondered if he had tricked her to make herself vulnerable before him. He'll strike soon.
The blood in her hummed, painful with its heat. Fear clawed its way up her back, but she also felt more alive than she had since she had jumped from the cliff into the air all those years ago, with only gusts under her feet and nothing to hold her up but a desperate wish to live.
The bracelet on his arm warned her to finish her task quickly. She asked, “Have you ever been burned?”
Jerani's pupils yawned wide. Celaise smelled memories flashing by. This close, the aromas seeped from her nose into her eyes, forming visions of Jerani's past frights. She snatched one when he stepped over a steam vent, and a white jet surprised him and left him scalded. The scent of the vapor accompanied his thoughts. Celaise could not tell what it was, could not experience it as he could, though she willed her magic to remember it for later.
Finding the smell of wood smoke required tracing his fear during a search for a lost cow. He walked between burning fields of a summertime brush fire. Last, she took the scent of roasting flesh from the time a Greatheart warrior had tried to cook and eat a Headless. The warrior had said it tasted like cricket, but that was not important.
She had what she needed. She should withdraw her hand from Jerani's face. Red crusts of pigment ran down his brow, from sweat trails leaving his dyed hair. She flaked off one with a nail. Celaise, let him go.
But she could smell it now, a whiff of his deepest fear. Celaise could follow his memory, climb with him up the side of the volcano. Sharp stones from the slope wedged into his sandals and cut his feet. The dry air hurt his throat as he panted alongside an older man, and every chin
k in the rock steamed.
Jerani had to make the summit and return before nightfall. With a crashing sound, part of the rock face collapsed, and a red-hot crumbling slurry leaked downhill. He scrambled away as the lava tumbled onto a yellow field near steam vents. The colored rock caught fire and began to glow with blue flames, and lavender smoke hissed. Celaise took care also to steal his memory of this smell.
At the volcano's peak, he would see something that bowed him down with terror. It would make him cling to his mortality, and Celaise could use it to skewer him. He had opened himself to her, and she could rip a banquet from his dying breath.
Her hand heated the right side of Jerani's head. It did not feel like a woman's touch so much as a caress of hot air. His stomach clenched. His own fear surprised him. He trusted Celaise, but the flames of her dress licked at his toes.
His mind strayed to the past times he had burned himself. Without meaning to he leaned back in her grasp. He did not wish to offend her by breaking contact.
Jerani's right eye had closed because of the itching smoke. He still could not smell it. Then he could. A reek of wood smoke hit him in the face. Rich and stinging, brown leaves curling as they burned, sap sizzling from red bark. He gagged with surprise at the smell's strength.
Each second she touched him grew more intense. He felt as if he were about to be kicked by a bull in the chest, or perhaps in the groin. The tension wound up in his chest, and he had a sudden urge to flee from Celaise. Lightning flickered over the sky, and thunder whispered.
Run! Run—never stop—never look back!
The thought startled him, and despite himself he shifted his feet to sprint, though he somehow knew it would be too late. What're you thinking? Jerani, there's no need to run. She's—
Celaise lifted her hand from his face, leaving Jerani feeling stiff and cold.
She too looked shaken. Her eyes were huge and moist, and they rolled upward to flash their whites. Then they focused back on him and turned distant.
“I should thank you.” Her voice sighed, a breeze over a parched watering hole.
Jerani's dry tongue stuck to his teeth. “F-for what?”
He followed her gaze to the line of cows and warriors. His heart quieted enough for him to hear the thudding of Rock-Backs closing in on his tribe. Gorgeous was belting out a call for a defense, and he could not believe he had not heard until now.
Only then did Celaise answer him.
“You saved me.”
Flame designs traced up within the dark swirl of her dress, and as she glided toward the rush of monsters, she trailed a thick, eye-watering scent of burning.
Jerani scanned the night for Rock-Backs, though he could see little between lightning strikes. “I thought I saw a great-big one earlier.”
“Big or small,” she said, “we kill them all.”
Jerani flipped his war club to his throwing hand and ran a thumb down the polished wood of the family spear. She said 'we,' he thought. He liked the sound of that.
Lightning the color of ivy tinted the cows' fur a lime shade. Women hummed in a monotone behind the animals, stroking their spotted flanks. The cows knocked their horns against their neighbors' as if for reassurance while staring down the storm and onrushing Headless.
Celaise ignored the strange lightning. She ignored the tribesman who dropped his spear at her passing. Hunger narrowed her concentration to a ray of famished intent that latched onto the lead Headless in the pack. She did not see any especially large ones, as Jerani had said, which she counted a shame. Celaise was eager to try out her new gown, on all the beasts.
The foremost predator bounded toward the ring of cows, crystal-shard eyes glinting with firelight. Celaise stepped in its path. Only ten feet separated her and the domed back of the Headless. It missed a step in its stride. Celaise wondered if it had smelled the fire within her.
She caught the scent of fear from a Headless. It was subtle, like the smell of uncooked meat, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
Two smaller Headless shoulder-butted their leader forward. Instead of trying to change course, it hopped over what it must have seen as a fire pit with a woman's face hovering above.
Celaise reached up, and the Headless fell through her arms. Sparks whooshed as it landed in the circle of fire. It did not scream or even grunt, but its forelegs beat a quick tattoo before it reared upward to heave itself out of the pit. It scrambled toward safety.
The Headless had reacted to her magic. It believed in her fires. It feared.
Celaise tasted her first bite in weeks.
Raw flesh filled her mouth, leaking cold blood that gushed around Celaise's tongue in a metal tang. She hated the blandness of this fear, but she ate it. It gave her the strength to make the Headless think the walls grew, the pit deepened.
The beast fell back into the coals. Flames clawed at its legs, and Celaise made it experience the growing heat. It smelled the wood burning, now itself burning. She gobbled up its dread as a plate full of fresh meat.
The Headless tried to stomp out the coals. They burned brighter, lighting wood piled beneath. It lunged into the dirt wall of the pit to plow its way to freedom. Broad shoulders collided with clay as hard as stone, and more flaming logs rained on top of it.
Celaise did not chew but slurped whole strips of bloody fear. She felt like a savage for Feasting on such a stupid creature's unseasoned and primitive thoughts. But she kept eating.
She concealed the Headless from others, so its pack and the tribesmen could not see it. Tentacles of her magic bore into its spine, paralyzing the Headless even while it believed it was still moving, still thrashing through the flames, running in circles through a blackness of smoke, of stifling heat, of choking pain.
Yes, pain. She had Feasted enough to slam the Headless with burning, searing torment. Flames stabbed its belly and sizzled in its mouth. Fire raked its legs, peeling off skin and baking muscle.
Its terror still tasted of raw meat, though perhaps a more choice cut. Celaise wanted to gag as she swallowed what tasted like an entire liver. Her throat bulged from the slab of fear until it flopped into her stomach. Unpleasant, but filling.
A Skin-Back burst out of the creature's underside, but Celaise caught its mind in the same burning trap. Black Wine thrummed in her veins, and she impaled the Headless' brain with the concept of mortality.
You will die.
Agony rebounded within the creature, its heart straining at an unsustainable pace. Its blood vessels burst.
You will breathe nothing but smoke. You will feel nothing but burning, ever again. You will die.
Though the Headless refused her advice, it did pass out.
With a snapping sweep of her skirt, she allowed the Headless to reappear, blackened. The remains of its scorched legs flopped upward. “Finish it!”
She loved how Jerani did not hesitate to jump onto the creature and start stabbing downward.
Celaise breathed in the Headless' last gasp.
She felt like a jaguar rising from the kill, bathed in triumphant blood and engorged with life-giving meat. She had fulfilled her purest purpose. She was worthy. She was whole.
Fire roared within her dress.
As an anaconda might eat an entire goat, Celaise felt she had eaten more than her body weight. A warm fullness stretched the edges of her happiness, only to be replaced by an even richer sensation as her magic digested the glut of fear into Black Wine. Sweet laughter and dazzling glee pumped through her veins. Her body shivered with power. Best of all, she was no longer stuffed.
She could Feast again. She must.
Her appetite had been whetted.
Celaise bulged with smoke. Jerani's breath caught with amazement. She looked like a pregnant woman garbed in black and jeweled with sparks.
She straightened, and her smoldering dress flattened back into place to cling to her curves. Her arms lifted in two streams of smoke, and soot seethed from her back like an endless cape twisting upward.
Flam
es whooshed within her, coloring the Rock-Backs orange. The nearest monsters spread their claws and dug into the ground to stop their charge. They slammed into each other to avoid stepping too close to her.
Flames from her dress danced in Tall Tachamwa's gaping eyes. “Did she burn that Roller alive?”
“Ack!” A warrior grimaced as he prodded at the monster under Jerani's proudly tilted spear. “Smells like it.”
Jerani could feel Celaise's heat from here, and he worried she would burn herself. She won't. Of course she won't. The handmaidens of the Angry Mother bathed in fire. Her face was glazed with firelight, and her hair reflected red. Jerani had to remind himself to breathe. When he did, he gagged from the stench of burning flesh under him.
The dead Rock-Back trembled below his feet. Jerani was confused until he realized the ground itself shook.
A colossus of a Rock-Back trampled into the Greatheart camp. The monstrosity snuffed out fires with single steps of its massive legs, and as it chased down screaming warriors, it smashed over a termite mound. The red pillar crumbled into chunks of sandy earth, and white dots slid over the side of the charging hill.
“It's the size of an elephant,” Jerani said. His heart skittered, and his fingertips felt numb. The corpse under him tilted, and in a rare loss of coordination he fell off sideways.
Warriors were pulling cows away by their noses, women and children running to try to position the herd's horns between them and the marauding Rock-Back. This proved hopeless when the colossus plowed straight through the herd. Horns cracked against its lowered shoulders. Thirty eye crystals glinted across its armor plates with hunger.
One cow called out in a distressed moo as she ran under the colossus, the tops of her horns scraping the underbelly. The Rock-Back reared up on three legs then brought one down to crush the animal's skull. Jerani turned his face to the side and grimaced.
“Sky Bull, save us!” The warrior Farule threw down his spear and lifted his clenched hands to the stars. Isafo pushed him down to approach the battle.
Gown of Shadow and Flame Page 14