Crown Of Stars 04 – Child of Flame – Elliott, Kate

 

 

                                  KATE ELLIOT

 

 

                   Child of Flame

 

 

                                                           

PROLOGUE

 OFF to the southeast, thunder rolled on and on. But in the broad ditch where three youths and two gravely injured soldiers had taken refuge from the battle, the rain had, mercifully, slackened. A wind out of the north blew the clouds away, revealing the waxy light of a full moon.

 
Ivar listened to the sounds of battle carried by the breeze. They’d scrambled down into die ditch from an embankment above, hoping to escape the notice of their enemies. They hadn’t found safety, only a moment’s respite, caught as they were behind the enemy’s line. The Quman warriors would sweep down from the earthen dike and slaughter them, then cut off their heads to use as belt ornaments. Or, at least, that’s what Baldwin seemed to think as he babbled confusedly about Quman soldiers searching the huge tumulus and its twisting embankments, lighting their way with torches.

 
From his place down in the slippery mud at the bottom of the ditch, Ivar didn’t see torches. There was a lambent glow emanating from the crown of the hill, but it didn’t look like any torchlight he had ever seen.

 
Sometimes, when a situation was really bad and there was nothing you could do about it, it was just better not to know.

 
“Careful,” whispered Ermanrich.” This whole end is filled with water. God’s mercy! It’s like ice.”

 
“Come on, Dedi, come on, lad,” coaxed the older of the two wounded Lions to his young companion, but the other man didn’t rouse. Probably he was already dead.

 
Ivar found the water’s edge, cupped his hands, and drank. The cold cleared his head for the first time since he had lost his fingers, and finally he could sit back and survey just how bad their predicament was.

 
Moonlight cast a glamour over the scene. The pool of water had formed up against a steep precipice, the face of the hillside. Over the course of uncounted years a trickling cataract had worn away the cliff face to expose two boulders capped by a lintel stone. Starlight caught and glimmered in one of the stones, revealing a carving half concealed behind tendrils of moss. Ivar negotiated the pool’s edge so as not to get his feet wet—not that he wasn’t already slopping filthy with mud—and traced the ancient lines: they formed a human figure wearing the antlers of a stag.

 
“Look!” Baldwin pushed aside the thick curtain of moss draping down over the stones to unveil a tunnel that cut into the hillside.

 
Their side had lost the battle anyway, and they were cut off from Prince Bayan’s retreating army and all their comrades, those who had survived. How could an ancient tumulus be worse than the Quman? Ivar squeezed past the opening, wading in. Cold water poured down into his boots, soaking his leggings and making his toes throb painfully. He couldn’t see a thing.

 
A body brushed against him.” Ivar! Is that you, Ivar?” “Of course it’s me! I heard a rumor that the Quman fear water. Maybe we can hide here, unless this pool gets too deep.” The ground seemed firm enough, and the water wasn’t deeper than his knees. Plunging his arm into the freezing water, he groped for and found a stone, tossed it. The plop rang hollow. Water dripped steadily ahead of them.

 
Something living scuffled, deep in the heart of the tumulus.” What was that?” hissed Baldwin, grabbing Ivar’s arm.” Ow! You’re pinching me!”

 
It was too late. Their voices had already woken the restless dead. A wordless groan echoed through the pitch-black tunnel.

 
“Oh, God.” Ivar clutched at Baldwin’s arm.” It’s a barrow. We’ve walked into a burial pit and now we’ll be cursed.”

 
But the voice made words they recognized, however distorted they might be by the stone and the drip of water.” Is it you? Is it Ermanrich’ss friends?”

 
“L-Lady Hathumod?” stammered Baldwin.

 
“Ai, t-thank the Lady!” Her relief was evident despite the blurs and echoes.” Poor Sigfrid was wounded in the arm and we got lost, and—and I prayed to God to show me a sign. And then we fell in here. But it’s dry here where we are, and I think the tunnel goes farther into the hill, but I was too afraid to go on by our-selves.”

 
“Now what do we do?” whined Baldwin softly.

 
“Let’s get the others and we’ll go as deep as we can into the hill. The Quman will never dare follow us through this water. After a day or two they’ll go away, and we can come out.”

 
“Just like that?” demanded Baldwin.

 
“Just like that. You’ll see.”

 
They trudged back to the mossy entrance, where they found Er-manrich shuddering and coughing as he clawed at the moss.

 
“Ai, God! There you are! I thought you’d been swallowed.” He heaved a ragged sigh, then went on in a low voice, making a joke of his fear and relief.” Maybe even the hills think Baldwin is handsome enough to eat, but I don’t know what they’d be wanting with an ugly redheaded sot like you, Ivar.”

 
“Dirt is blind, otherwise you’d never get inside. Come on.” Ivar waded over to the conscious Lion.” Friend, can you walk?”

 
“So I can, a bit, lad. But Dedi, here—” The old Lion got suddenly hoarse.

 
“We’ll carry him,” said Ivar hastily.” But let’s get him out of that mail first. Ermanrich, give me a hand, will you? Baldwin, you help the Lion in, and keep ahead of him in case there’s any pits.”

 
“Pits? What if I fall into a bottomless hole?”

 
“Baldwin, we haven’t got time! Here.” He found the unconscious Lion’s sword sheath.” Take this sword and use it to feel your way forward.”

 
Amazingly, Baldwin obeyed without further objection. He helped the old Lion to his feet and steadied the soldier as he hobbled to the tunnel.

 
It wasn’t easy to get mail off an unconscious man.” I think he’s already dead,” Ermanrich whispered several times, but in the end they wrestled him out of his armor.

 
Nor was it easy to haul him in through the tunnel even without his armor. He was a big man, well muscled, so badly injured that

 he was a complete dead weight. Luckily, the water did not rise past their thighs before an upward slope brought them shivering out of the water onto dry ground. The weight of the hill pressed above them. Dirt stung Ivar’s nostrils, and his mutilated hand burned with pain.

 
“Thank God,” said Baldwin out of the darkness. Ivar and Ermanrich set down the unconscious soldier, none too gently, and Ivar straightened up so quickly that he banged his head hard against the stone ceiling. The pain made tears flow, and in a way he did want just to sit down and cry because everything had been such a disaster. He really had thought they’d win the battle. Prince Bayan’s and Princess Sapientia’s troops had looked so magnificent arrayed against the Quman army, and even the dreaded Margrave Judith had ridden out with such a strong host that it seemed impossible that everything had fallen apart, including their line. Prince Ekkehard had vanished in the maelstrom, his companions were scattered or dead, and they were all that was left. Probably they were the last remnant of Bayan’s army left on this side of the river: two badly injured soldiers, four novice monks, and one lost nun.

 
The battle had started very late in the afternoon, and now night settled over them. Two hours at the most separated them from that glorious place where they’d waited at the front of the right flank, ready to sweep into battle. It just didn’t seem possible everything had gone wrong so fast.

 
But meanwhile, someone had to go back to make sure that the Quman hadn’t followed them under the hill. Cold, wet, and shivering, Ivar braced himself for the shock of wading back into the water that drowned the lower reaches of the tunnel. His leggings already clung to him like icy leeches, and his toes had gone numb from cold.

 
A hand snaked out of the darkness to grab at his sleeve.” Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Baldwin asked in a hoarse whisper.

 
“Nay. It’s better if I go alone. If something happens to me, it’ll take you and Ermanrich and Lady Hathumod to carry the injured Lion.”

 
Baldwin leaned closer. Despite the long weeks of travel in harsh conditions, the terror of a losing battle waged as afternoon gave way to dusk, and the desperation of their scramble over the ancient earthworks, Baldwin’s breath was still as sweet as that of a lord sitting in pleasant splendor in his rose garden, drinking a posset of mead flavored with mint.” I’d rather be dead than go on without you.”

 
“We’ll all be dead if the Quman find that armor and figure out that we’re hiding in this tunnel. Just stay here, Baldwin, I beg you.”

 
Behind, in the stygian blackness, Sigfrid’s gentle voice fell and rose in a melismatic prayer. Somehow, the darkness warped time. Hadn’t it just been moments ago that they had stumbled upon that hidden opening? It seemed like hours.

 
Beneath Sigfrid’s quiet prayer Ivar heard Hathumod murmuring words he couldn’t quite make out. She was answered, in turns, by monosyllabic grunts from the old Lion and whispered questions from Ermanrich. He could not see, not even Baldwin, who stood right next to him. He felt them, though, huddled together like frightened rats under the weight of earth and rock.

 
He took the unconscious Lion’s sword from Baldwin and tested the grip with his good hand, squeezed and relaxed until the leather grip gave enough to fit the curve of his hand. With gritted teeth, he surged forward into the water and shuddered all over again as the tunnel floor plunged down and the icy water enveloped his legs.

 
With the sword drawn tightly against his left leg, Ivar approached the entrance in relative silence. He smelled the distant stench of the battlefield. Night crows cried far away, alerting their cousins to the banquet. A pebble rolled under his boot, and he grunted softly, balancing himself. The wound on his right hand scraped stone. He caught back a gasp of pain as a hot trickle of blood bled free. Pain stabbed up his hand, and he stumbled forward. The stumps of his missing fingers, shorn off right at the second knuckle, jabbed into a moist tapestry of moss. Tears streamed from his eyes and made salty runnels over his lips. After a while, the pain subsided enough for him to think.

 
He had reached the entrance. Cautiously, with his good hand, he fingered the tendrils of moss which streaked the crumbling entrance. Behind this curtain he waited, listening. He couldn’t see anything, not even the sky. It seemed as dark beyond the curtain

 concealing the tomb’s entrance as it had deep within. The heavy scent of damp and earth and wet moss shrouded his world.

 
But he could hear the distant murmur of a host moving, hooves, shouts, one poor soul screaming, the detritus of movement that betrays two armies unwinding one from the other as the battle ebbs and dies.

 
From close by, he heard a grunt, a low breathing mutter.

 
The sword shifted in his hand before he was aware he had changed his stance. The Lion’s discarded armor spoke with that voice granted to all things born of metal: when hands disturbed it, it replied in a chiming voice.

 
Just as he had feared: a Quman soldier had found the discarded armor.

 
He lunged through the curtain. The Quman soldier had wings curling up above his back where he bent over the mail and helmet. Ivar ducked down to get under the wooden contraption. Just as the other man spun, he thrust. The short sword caught the winged soldier just under his leather-scaled shirt. With his wounded arm he reached out and wrapped his forearm around the man’s head and with all his weight pulled him in through the entrance. Wood frames snapped against the lintel as Ivar fell into the water with the Quman landing face first in his lap. The sword drove to the hilt between the enemy’s ribs.

 
Water licked Ivar’s lips as he pressed the man down, holding him under. The man twisted one way and then the other, trying to raise his head out of the water, but Ivar countered each movement j with a sideways push on the hilt of the sword. Steel grated against I bone, causing the warrior to convulse and lose whatever advantage he had gained. His black hair floated like tendrils of moss. Ivar tasted blood in the water. All at once, the Quman went limp.

 
Ivar shoved the dead man deeper into the pool and staggered to his feet. His body ached from the cold. He dipped a hand in the water to scrub at his face, to wash the taint of blood away, but all around him the pool seemed polluted by the life that had drained into it. He carefully slipped past the moss and found clear water outside.

 
Lightning streaked the sky, followed by a sharp thunderclap. A voice called out a query. On the earthworks beyond, a man’s shape, distorted by wings, reared up against the night sky, questing: an other Quman soldier, looking for his comrade. Ivar’s position at the base of the ditch, within the shadow of the lintel, veiled him. A moment later the shadow moved on, dropping out of sight behind the earthworks.

 
A drizzle of rain wet Ivar’s cheeks. With a swelling roar, the river raged in the distance like a multitude of voices raised all at once, but he couldn’t see it, nor could he see stars above. A bead of rain wound down his nose and, suspended from its tip, hung there for the longest time just as he was suspended, unwilling to move for fear of giving himself away.

 
Finally he set down his sword, rolled up the mail shirt, wrapping it tight with a belt, and looped the helmet strap over his shoulder. With the sword in his good hand and his injured hand throbbing badly enough to give him a headache, he felt his way back under the lintel. Gruesome wings brushed his nose, one splintered wooden frame scraping his cheek as feathers tickled his lips. Outside, rain started to fall in earnest. Thunder muttered in the west. If they were lucky, rain would obscure the signs of their passage and leave them safe for a day or two, until the Quman moved on. Then they could sneak out and make their way northwest, on the trail of Prince Bayan’s and Princess Sapientia’s retreating army.

 
In his heart, he knew it was a foolish hope. The Quman had scouts and trackers. There was no way a ragged band of seven, four of them wounded and most of them unable to fight, could get through the Quman lines. But they had to believe they could. Otherwise they might as well lie down and die.

 
Why would they have been granted the vision of the phoenix if God had meant for them to die in such a pointless manner?

 
Baldwin was waiting for him where the tunnel floor sloped upward and out of the water.

 
“Come see,” said Baldwin sharply.” Gerulf got a fire going.”

 
“Gerulf?”

 
“That’s the old Lion.” Baldwin tugged him onward, steadying him when he stumbled. Weariness settled over Ivar’s shoulders. He shivered convulsively, soaked through. He wanted nothing more than to drop right where he stood and sleep until death, or the phoenix, came for him. Or maybe one would bring the other, it was hard to think with the walls wavering around him.

 
Strange sigils had been carved into the pale stone, broad rocks

 set upright and incised with the symbols of demons and ancient gods who plagued the people of elder days: four-sided lozenges, spirals that had neither beginning nor end, broad expanses of hatching cut into the rock as though straw had been pressed crisscross into the stone.

 
Yet how could he see at all, deep in the heart of a tomb? With Baldwin’s help, he staggered forward until the tunnel opened into a smoky chamber lit by fire. He stared past his companions, who were huddled around a torch. The chamber was a black pit made eerie by flickering light. He could not see the ceiling, and the walls were lost to shadow. He sneezed.

 
Just beyond the smoking torch, a stone slab marked the center of the chamber. A queen had been laid to rest here long ago: there lay her bones, a pale skeleton asleep in the torchlight, its hollow-eyed frame woven with strands of rotting fabric and gleaming with precious gold that had fallen around the skull and into the ribs. Gold antlers sprang into sight as Gerulf shifted the torch to better investigate his comrade’s wound.

 
“You shouldn’t have lit a fire in a barrow!” cried Ivar, horrified.” Everyone knows a fire will wake the unholy dead!”

 
Frail Sigfrid sat at the unconscious Lion’s head, nearest to the burial altar. He looked up with the calm eyes of one who has felt God’s miraculous hands heal his body.” Don’t fear, Ivar.” The voice itself, restored to him by a miracle, was a reproof to Ivar’s fear.” God will protect us. This poor dead woman bears us no ill will.” He indicated the half-uncovered skeleton, then bent forward as the old Lion spoke to him in a low voice.

 
But how could Sigfrid tell? Ivar had grown up in the north, where the old gods still swarmed, jealous that the faith of the Unities had stolen so many ripe souls from their grasp. There was no telling what malice lay asleep here, or when it might wake.

 
Ermanrich and Hathumod sat together, hands clasped in a cousinly embrace. Both had lost a great deal of flesh. How long ago it seemed when the four youths and Hathumod had served together as novices at Quedlinhame, yet truly it wasn’t more than a year ago that they had all been cast out of the convent for committing the unforgivable sin of heresy.

 
Baldwin circled the stone altar and its dead queen, crouching to grasp one of the gold antlers. The light touch jostled the skeleton.

 
Precious amber beads scattered down among the bones, falling in a rush.

 
“Don’t disturb the dead!” hissed Ivar. But Baldwin, eyes wide, reached right in-to where strands of desiccated wool rope, whose ends were banded with small greenish-metal rods, curled around the pelvis. His hand closed over a small object, a glint of blue.

 
“Look!” he cried, with his other hand lifting a stone mirror out of the basin made by her pelvic bones. The polished black surface still gleamed. As Ivar took a panicked step forward to stop Baldwin from further desecration, he saw his movement reflected in that mirror.

 
“Ai, God, I fear my poor nephew is dead,” murmured Gerulf.” I swore to my sister I’d bring him home safely.”

 
Other shadows moved in the depths of the mirror, figures obscured by darkness. They walked out of the alcoves, ancient queens whose eyes had the glint of knives. The first was young, robed in a splendor as bright as burning arrows, but her mouth was cut in a cruel smile. The second had a matron’s girth, the generous bulk of a noble lady who never wants for food, and in her arms she carried a basket spilling over with fruit. The third wore her silver hair braided with bones, and the wrinkles in her aged face seemed as deep as clefts in a mountainside. Her raised hands had the texture of cobwebs. Her gaze caught him as in a vise. He could not speak to warn the others, who saw nothing and felt no danger.

 
Hathumod gasped.” What lies there?” Her words sent ripples through the ghosts as a hand clears away algae from an overgrown pond.

 
Ivar found his voice.” Baldwin! Put that down, you idiot!”

 
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 brilliant fire with her arms extended as if in we* for her, grasping for any lifeline.

 
Touched her hands.

 
And knew nothing more.

I

THE HALLOWED ONE

 

 
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.

 
Midway between the earthen gates and the stone loom, where the westering sun could draw its last light across the threshold, Adica had erected a shelter out of hides and poles. In such primitive shelter all humankind had lived long ago before the days when the great queens and their hallowed women had stolen the magic of seed, clay, and bronze from the southerners, before the Cursed Ones had come to take them as slaves and as sacrifices.

 
She made her prayers, so familiar that she could speak them without thinking, and sprinkled the last of her ale to the four directions: north, east, south, and west. After leaning her staff against the lintel of slender birch poles, she clapped her wrists together three times. The copper bracelets that marked her status as a Hallowed One chimed softly, the final ring of prayer, calling down the night. The sun slid below the horizon. She crawled in across the threshold. Inside the tent she untied her string skirt, slipped off her bodice, and lay them inside the stout cedar chest where she stored all her belongings. Finally, she wrapped herself in the furs that were now her only company at night.

 
Once she had lived like the rest of her people, in a house in the village, breathing in the community of a life lived together. Of course, her house in the village had been ringed with charms, and no one but her mate or those of her womb kin might enter it for fear of the powers that lay coiled in the shadows and in the eaves, but she had still been able to hear the cattle lowing in their byres in the evening and the delighted cries of the children leaping up to play at dawn. Any village where a Hallowed One lived always had good luck and good harvests.

 
But ever since the Holy One’s proclamation, she could no longer sleep in the village for fear her dreaming self might entice reckless or evil spirits in among the houses. Spirits could smell death; everyone knew that. They could smell death on her. They swarmed where fate lay heaviest.

 
Death’s shadow had touched her, so the villagers feared that any person she touched might be poisoned by death’s kiss as well.

 
She said the night prayer to the Pale Hunter and lay still until sleep called her, but sleep brought no respite. Tossing and turning, she dreamed of standing alone and small in a blinding wind as death came for her.

 Could the great weaving possibly succeed? Or would it all be for naught, despite everything?

 
She woke, twisted in her sleeping furs, thinking of Beor, whom she had once called husband. She had dreamed the same dream for seven nights running. Yet it wasn’t the death in the dream that scared her, that made her wake up sweating.

 
She rested her forehead on fisted hands.” I pray to you, Fat One, who is merciful to her children, let there be a companion for me. I do not fear death as long as I do not have to walk the long road into darkness all by myself.”

 
A wind came up. The charms tied to the poles holding up the shelter rang with their gentle voices. More distantly, she heard the bronze leaves of the sacred cauldron ting and clack where the breeze ran through them. Then the wind died. It was so quiet that she thought perhaps she could hear the respiration of stars as they breathed.

 
She slipped outside. Cool night air pooled over her skin. Above, the stars shone in splendor. The waxing horned moon had already set. The Serpent’s Eye and the Dragon’s Eye blazed overhead, harbingers of power. The Grindstone was setting.

 
Was it a sign? The setting constellation called The Grindstone would lead her to Falling-down’s home and, when evening came, the rising Grindstone, with the aid of the Bounteous One, the wandering daughter of the Fat One, could pull her home again. The Fat One often spoke in riddles or by misdirection, and perhaps this was one of those times. There was one man she often thought of, one man who might be brave enough to walk beside her.

 
Ducking back inside her shelter, she rummaged through the cedar chest in search of a gift for Falling-down. She settled on an ingot of copper and a pair of elk antlers. Last, she found the amber necklace she had once given to Beor, to seal their agreement, but of course he had been forced by the elders to return it to her. Then she dressed, wrapping her skirt twice around her hips, tugging on her bodice, and hanging her mirror from a loop on her skirt. Setting the gifts in a small basket together with a string of bone beads for a friendship offering to the headwoman of Falling-down’s village, she crawled outside. She slung the basket over one shoulder with a rope and hoisted her staff.

 
A path wound forward between grass to the stone loom. The circle of stones sat in expectant silence, waiting for her to wake them.

 
She stopped on the calling ground outside the stones, a patch of dust shaded white with a layer of chalk that gleamed under starlight. Here, she set her feet.

 
Lifting the mirror, she began the prayers to waken the stones: “Heed me, that which opens in the east.

 

Heed me, that which opens in the west.

 

I pray to you, Fat One, let me spread the warp of your heavenly weaving so that I can walk through the passage made by its breath.”

 
She shifted the mirror until the light of the stars that made up the Grindstone caught in its polished surface. Reflected by the mirror, the terrible power of the stars would not burn her. With her staff she threaded that reflected light into the loom of the stones and wove herself a living passageway out of starlight and stone. Through the soles of her feet she felt the keening of the ancient queens, who had divined in the vast loom of the stars a secret of magic that not even the Cursed Ones had knowledge of. Threads of starlight caught in the stones and tangled, an architecture formed of insubstantial light woven into a bright gateway. She stepped through into rain. Her feet squished on sodden ground, streaking the grass with the last traces of chalk. The air steamed with moisture, hot and heavy. Rain poured down. She bumped up against a standing stone, her shoulder cushioned by a dense growth of moss grown up along the stone.

 
It was, obviously, impossible to see any stars. Nor could she see the path. But Falling-down had built a shelter nearby, and she stumbled around in darkness until she bumped up against its thatched roof. A hummock of straw that stank of mold made a damp seat. While she waited, she worked her part of the pattern of the great working in her mind’s eye over again. She could never practice enough the precise unfolding of the ritual that would, after generations of war, allow those who suffered under the plague of the Cursed Ones to strike back.

 
As the day rose, the rain slackened. She walked down the hillock on a trail so wet that her feet got soaked while her shoulders remained dry. Fens stretched out around her, glum sheets of i

 standing water separated by small islands and dense patches of reeds.

 
Falling-down’s people had built a track across the fens, hazel shoots cut, split, and woven together to make a springy panel on which people could walk above the marshy ground. As she walked along the track, the clouds began to break up, and the sun came out. On a distant hummock, a silhouette appeared. A person called out a “halloo” to her, and she lifted a hand in reply but did not pause. It was easily a morning’s walk to the hills at the edge of the fens, where Falling-down and his tribe made their home.

 
Birds sang. She paused once to eat the curds she had brought with her; once she waded off the track to pick berries. Grebes and ducks paddled through shallow waters. A flock of swans glided majestically past. A heron waited in solitary splendor, queenly and proud. It stirred suddenly and took wing with great, slow flaps. A moment later she heard a distant trumpeting call, and she hunkered down on the track and watched silently as a huge winged shape passed along the horizon far to the south and then vanished: a guivre on the hunt.

 
At last the track gave out onto dry land that sloped upward to become hills. Abandoned fields overgrown with weeds gave way to fields ripe with barley and emmer. Women and men labored with flint sickles harvesting one long strip of emmer. A few noticed her and called to the others, and they all stopped to watch her. A man blew into a small horn, alerting the village above.

 
Soon she had an escort of children, all of them jabbering in their incomprehensible language, as she walked up to the scatter of houses that marked the village. On the slopes above lay more fields and then forest.

 
It was still hot and humid, the fever days of late summer. Sweat trickled down her back as she came among the houses. Two women coiled clay into pots while a third smoothed the coils into a flat surface on which she spread a fine paste of paler clay. A finished pot, still unfired, sat beside her, stamped with the imprint of a braided cord. Four men scraped hides. Two half-grown boys toiled up the slope carrying water in bark buckets.

 
The headwoman of the village emerged from her house. Adica offered her the bead necklace from the north country, a proper meeting gift that would not disgrace her tribe, and in return the

 
headwoman had a girl bring warm potage flavored with coriander and a thick honey mead. Then she was given leave, by means of certain familiar gestures, to continue on up the slope to the house of Falling-down, the tribe’s conjuring man.

 
As she had hoped, he was not alone.

 
Falling-down was so old that all his hair was white. He claimed to have celebrated the Festival of the Sun sixty-two times, but Adica could not really believe that he could have seen that many festivals, much less counted them all. He sat cross-legged, carving a fishing spear out of bone. Because he was a conjuring man, the Hallowed One of his tribe, he put magic into the spear by carving ospreys and long-necked herons along the blade to give the tool a bird’s success in hunting fish. He whistled under his breath as he worked, a spell that wound itself into the making.

 
Dorren sat at Falling-down’s right hand. He taught a counting game to a handful of children hunkered down around the pebbles he tossed with his good hand out of a leather cup. Adica paused just behind the ragged half circle of children and watched Dorren.

 
Dorren looked up at once, sensing her. He smiled, sent the children away, and got to his feet, holding out his good hand in the greeting of cousins. She reached for him, then hesitated, and dropped her hand without touching him. His withered hand stirred, as if he meant to move it, but he smiled sadly and gestured toward Falling-down, who remained intent on his carving.

 
“None thought to see you here,” Dorren said, stepping aside so that Falling-down wouldn’t be distracted from his spell by their conversation.

 
Faced with Dorren, she didn’t know what to say. Her cheeks felt hot. She was a fool, truly. But he was glad to see her, wasn’t he? Dorren was a White Deer man from Old Fort who had been chosen as a Walking One of the White Deer tribe, those who traveled the stone looms to learn the speech of their allies. As Walking One, he received certain protections against magic.

 
“I heard that Beor made trouble for you in your village,” he said finally while she played nervously with one of her copper bracelets.” You endured him a long time. It isn’t easy for a woman and a man to live together when they don’t have temperaments to match.”

 
He had such gentle eyes. With the withered hand, he had never

 been able to hunt and swim like other children, but he had grown up healthy and strong and was valued for his cleverness and patience. That was why he had been chosen as Walking One. He had so many qualities that Beor so brazenly lacked.

 
“Some seem better suited than others,” he went on. Surely he guessed that she had watched him from afar for a long time.

 
Her heart pounded erratically. Remarkably, his steady gaze, on her, did not waver, although he must have heard by now about the doom pronounced over her and the other six Hallowed Ones. Seeing his courage, she knew the Fat One had guided her well.

 
He began anew, stammered to a halt, then spoke.” It must seem to you that the days pass swiftly. I have meant to tell you ” He broke off, blushing, as he glanced at the path which led to the village. A few children loitering at the head of the path scattered into the woodland, shrieking and giggling.

 
“There’s a woman here,” he said finally, in a rush, cheeks pink with emotion.” Her name is Wren, daughter of Red Belly ,and Laughing. She’s like running water to me, always a blessing. Now she says that I had the man’s part in the making of the child she’s growing in her belly. The tribe elders agreed that if I work seven seasons of labor for them, then I can be named as the child’s father and share a house in the village with her.”

 
She couldn’t imagine what he saw in her expression, but he went on quickly, leaping from what he knew to what he thought. Each word made her more sick at heart and more humiliated.

 
“You needn’t think I’ll shirk my duties as Walking One. I know what’s due to my people. But there’s no reason I can’t do both. I can still walk the looms and labor here, for she’s a good woman, is Wren, and I love her.”

 
Horribly, she began to cry, silent tears washing down her face although she wanted anything but to be seen crying.

 
“Adica! Yours is the most generous of hearts, and the bravest! knew you would be happy for me despite your own sorrow!” Glancing toward Falling-down, he frowned in the way of someone thinking through a decision that’s been troubling him.” Now, listen, for you know how dear to me you are in my heart, Adica. I know it’s ill luck to speak of it, that it’s tempting the spirits, but I wanted you to know that if the child is born a girl and she lives and is healthy, we’ll call her after you. Your name will live on, not just in the songs of the tribe but in my child.”

 
“I am happy for your good fortune,” said Adica hoarsely through her tears.

 
“Adica!” Falling-down spoke her name sharply as he looked up from the fishing spear, his attention caught by her lie. She fled.

 
Falling-down could see into her secret heart because of the link that bound them when they worked the weaving together, and anyway, she hadn’t truly come to see him. She had hoped a wild and irresponsible hope, she’d turned the night wind into a false riddle, and now she’d spent her magic and her time on a fool’s journey, a selfish detour. She was ashamed.

 
She ran down through the woodland, not wanting to be seen in the village. Dorren yelled after her, but she ignored him. She came down to the shore of the fens and splashed out through the cranberry bog. Berries shone deeply red along the water, almost ripe. She got wet to the thighs but managed to get out to the track without meeting anyone except a boy trolling for fish with hook and line. Farther out on the track, two women hauling a net out of the water called to her, but she couldn’t understand their words. It seemed to her that all of human intercourse was slowly receding from her, one link severed, another warm hand torn from her grasp, one by one, until she would face the great working alone except for the other six, Falling-down, Two Fingers, Shu-Sha, Spits-last, Horn, and Brightness-Hears-Me. They were a tribe unto themselves now: the ones severed from the rest of humankind. They were the sacrifice through which the human tribes would be freed from fear.

 
The clouds broke up, and by the time she reached the island of the stone loom, she had only a short while to wait for sunset. Whatever Falling-down might have thought of her behavior, he was too old to walk out here on a whim. He would not follow and importune her with embarrassing questions. Would Dorren follow her? Did she want him to now that she knew he would find happiness with someone else while she remained alone? Not that she begrudged him happiness, not at all. She had hoped, in the end, for a little for herself as well. But twilight came, and she remained alone. As always, the

 working had slipped the course of days around her. By the position of the Bounteous One in the sky, she guessed that she had lost two days in the last passage, although it had seemed like only one instant to her.

 
That was the price those who walked the looms paid: that days and sometimes months were ripped from them when they stepped onto the passageways that led between the looms. But perhaps it was better to lose a day or three of loneliness.

 
The stone loom, seven stones set in an oblique circle, awaited her as darkness fell and the first stars appeared in the sky. She lifted her mirror and caught the light of the Bounteous One, the nimble-fingered Lady of Grain and Jars, and wove herself a passageway back to her own place. Stepping through, her feet touched familiar ground, firm and dry, untouched by recent rain. She walked slowly to her shelter and put away the gifts she had not given to Falling-down.

 
From the village below she heard voices raised in song. It took her a moment to recall that Mother Orla’s eldest granddaughter had recently crossed the threshold that brought her to the women’s mysteries and would by now be emerging from the women’s house, ready to take her place as an adult in the village.

 
She stood on the ramparts listening to their laughter and the old familiar melodies. Before, the villagers would have wanted her there to hallow the celebration, but now her presence would only make them uncomfortable. What if evil spirits wiggled in, in her wake, and poisoned the new young woman’s happiness just as such spirits sometimes poisoned sweet wells or fresh meat? The villagers’ fear outweighed their affection.

 
Why had the gods let the Cursed Ones afflict humankind? Couldn’t they have chosen a different way for humankind to rid themselves of their enemy? Was it so impossible that she be allowed some happiness as mate with a man like Dorren, with his withered hand and gentle heart? Why was it the Hallowed Ones who had to make the sacrifice?

 
But she shook her head, impatient with such thoughts, borne to her on the night wind by mischievous spirits. With a little spell, spoken out loud, then sealed by the touch of pungent mint to her lips, she chased them away.

 
Only the Hallowed Ones possessed the magic to do what was necessary. So it had fallen to her, and to the others.

 
She had been called down this path as a child. She had never known nor wanted any other life than that of Hallowed One. She had just never expected that her duty would be so harsh.

 
Sleeping, that night, she did not dream.

 
SHE woke abruptly, hearing the call of an owl. By the smell of dew and the distant song of birds in the woodland, she recognized the twilight before dawn when the sun lies in wait like a golden-eared bear ready to lumber over the horizon.

 
The owl called again, a deep to-whit to-whoo.

 
She scrambled up. After dressing, she opened the cedar chest to get out her sacred regalia. A hammered bronze waistband incised with spirals fit around her midriff. She slipped on the amber necklace she had hoped to give to Dorren: amber held power from the ancient days, and her teacher had told her always to emphasize her tribe’s power and success when it came time to meet with their allies. She set her hematite mirror on her knees before carefully unwrapping the gold headdress from its linen shroud. The headring molded easily over her hair. Its antlers brushed the curved ceiling before she ducked down in a reflexive prayer.

 
“Let your power walk with me, Pale Hunter, you who are Queen of the Wild.”

 
Tucking the mirror into her midriff, she crawled backward out of the tent on her hands and knees. Outside, she straightened to stand as tall as a stag, antlers gleaming, the gold so bright she almost thought she could see its outlines echoed against the sky. Clothed in power, she walked the path that led into the stones.

 
At the center of the stone loom lay the step stone, as broad across as her outflung arms but no higher than her knee. The sacred cauldron rested on the slab, as it had since her teacher’s youth.

 
Here, years ago, Adica had knelt to receive the kiss of power from the woman who had taught her almost everything she knew. She wept a little as she said a prayer in memory of the dead. Afterward, she touched the holy birds engraved on the cauldron’s mellow bronze surface and named them: Father Heron, Mother Crane, Grandmother Raven, and Uncle Duck. She kissed each precious bronze leaf, and with one hand skimmed a mouthful of water out of the cauldron and sipped at it, then spoke a blessing over what remained in her palm and tossed it into the air, to seed the wind.

 
Kneeling before the cauldron, she waited with eyes closed as she breathed in the smell of dawn and heard its sounds: the distant roll of the lazy harvest river, the disgruntled baaing of goats, the many voices of the morning birds calling out their greetings to” the waiting sun.

 
She heard the flutter of wings and felt the owl settle on the rim of the cauldron, but she dared not look up, for the Holy One’s messenger was a powerful creature full of so much magical force that even a glimpse of it could be fatal. A moment later hooves rang down a distant path of stone, then struck on a needle-strewn path, and finally the waist-high flax rustled as a large body passed I through it. The warm breath of the Holy One brushed the hairs on the back of her neck. Her gold antlers stirred in the sweet wind of the Holy One’s presence.

 
“You have been crying, Adica.” Her voice was like the melody of the river, high and low at the same time.” I can smell the salt of your tears.”

 
Hadn’t they dried over the night? Yet surely it was impossible to hide anything from a shaman of the Horse people.” I have been lonely, Holy One. The road I walk is a solitary one.”

 
“Haven’t you a husband? I remember that you were not pleased when the elders of your village decreed that you should marry him.”

 
“They have taken him away, Holy One. Because death has lain its shadow over me, they fear that any person I touch will be , touched by death as well.”

 
“Truly, there is wisdom in what they say.”

 
There was silence except for the wind and the throaty coo of a wood pigeon.

 
She glanced up to see the land opening up before her as the sun burned the mist off the river. Swifts dived and dipped along the slow current. People already worked out in the fields, harvesting barley and emmer. A girl drove goats past the fields toward the woodland.

 
The words slipped from her before she knew she meant to say them.” If only I had a companion, Holy One, then the task wouldn’t seem so hard. Of course I will not falter, but I’ll be alone for so long, waiting for the end.” She bit back the other words that threatened to wash free, borne up on a tide of loneliness and fear.” I beg you, Holy One, forgive my rash words. I know my duty.”

 
“Alas, daughter, your duty is a hard one. Yet there must be seven who will stand when the time comes. Thus are you chosen.”

 
“Yes, Holy One,” she whispered.

 
Unlike the villagers she watched over, Adica had seen and spoken with people from distant lands. She knew that the land was broad and people few, and true humans fewer still. In the west lay fecund towns of fully fifty or more houses. The gray northern seas were icy and windswept, cold enough to drain the life from any human who tried to swim in them, yet in those icy waters lived sea people with hair composed of eels and teeth as sharp as obsidian. She had seen, far to the east, the forests of grass where lived the Holy One’s tribe, cousins to humankind and yet utterly different. She had even glimpsed the endless deserts of the southern tribes, where the people spoke as if they rolled stones in their mouths. She had seen the Cursed Ones’ fabled cities. She had seen their wondrous ships and barely escaped to tell of it. She had seen the Cursed Ones enslave villages and innocent tribes only to make their captives bow low before their bloodthirsty gods. She had seen what had happened to her teacher, who had joined the fight against the Cursed Ones only to be sacrificed on their altars.

 
“We are all slaves of the Cursed Ones, as long as the war they wage against us never ends.” The Holy One shifted, hooves changing weight as she backed up and then came forward again, the unseen weight of her massive body looming behind Adica. Once, when she was a child, Adica had seen the Holy One’s people catch up to and trample the last remnants of a scouting party of the Cursed Ones, and she had never lost that simple child’s awe of their size and power. As much as she feared the Cursed Ones’

 
magic, she was glad to be an ally of the Horse people, the ones who had been born out of the mating of a mare and a human man.” Yet perhaps—” The Holy One hesitated. In that pause, hope whispered in Adica’s heart, but she was afraid to listen.” Perhaps there is a way to find one already touched by the hand of death who might be your companion. That way you would not be alone, and he would not be poisoned by your fate. You are youngest of the chosen ones, Adica. The others have lived long lives. You were meant to follow after your teacher, not to stand in her place at the great weaving. It is not surprising that you find it harder to walk toward the gate that leads to the Other Side.” Did a hand touch her, however briefly, brushing the nape of her neck? “Such a promise should not be beyond my powers.”

 
Hope battered her chest like a bird beating at the bars of its cage.” Can you really do such a thing, Holy One?”

 
“We shall see.” It was painful to hope. In a way, it was a relief when the Holy One changed the subject.” Have you seen any child among the White Deer people who can follow after you, Adica?” “I have not,” she murmured, even as the words thrust as a knife would, into her gut.” Nor would I have time to teach an apprentice everything she would need to know.”

 
“Do not despair, Child. I will not abandon your people.” A sharp hiss of surprise sounded, followed by the distant hoot of an owl.” I am called,” the Holy One said suddenly, sounding surprised. That I quickly, her presence vanished.

 
Had the Holy One actually traveled through the gateway of the stones? Had she stood behind Adica in her own self? Or had she merely walked the path of visions and visited Adica in her spirit form? The Holy One was so powerful that Adica could never tell.

 
Nor dared she ask.

 
Truly, humans had the smallest share of power on this earth. Yet if that were so, why did the Cursed Ones make war against them so unremittingly? Why did the Cursed Ones hate humankind so?

 
Wind clacked the bronze leaves of the cauldron. She thought, for an instant, that she could actually hear flowers unfurling as the sun rose.

 
A horn call blared: the alarm from the village.

 
With more haste than care, she hurried back to her tent, took off her holy garments, and ran down through the earthworks. She got to the gate of the village just as a slender girl with strong legs and a wiry guard dog in faithful attendance loped up. The girl threw message beads at the feet of Mother Orla, who had come to the gate in response to the summons.

 
Mother Orla’s hands were so gnarled that she could barely count off the message beads as she deciphered their meaning. She moved aside to allow Adica to stand beside her. At her great age, Orla did not fear evil spirits or death; they teased her already.

 
“A skirmish,” she said to those who assembled from all the houses of the villages.” The Cursed Ones have raided. From what village did you come, Swift?”

 
A child brought mead so strongly flavored with meadowsweet flowers that the smell of it made Adica’s mouth water. The Swift sipped at it carefully as she caught her breath.” I came from Two Streams, and from Pine Top, Muddy Walk, and Old Fort before that. The Cursed Ones attacked a settlement just beyond Four Houses. There were three people killed and two children carried away by the raiders.”

 
“Did any of Four Houses’ people go after them?” demanded Beor, shouldering up to the front. He’d been up early, hunting. He carried his sling in one hand. Two grouse, a partridge, and three ducks dangled from a string on the other. The guard dog nosed the dead birds, but the Swift batted it away until another child ran up with a nice meaty bone for the animal. It lay down and set to chomping.

 
“Nay,” said the Swift, “none of the Four Houses people pursued the Cursed Ones, for those killed were Red Deer people. There were two families of them moved in close by Four Houses two winters ago. They come out of west country.”

 
“What does it matter to the Cursed Ones whether they kill Red Deer folk or White Deer folk?” Beor had a good anger about him now, the kind that stirred others to action.” We’re all the same to the Cursed Ones, and once they’ve killed and captured Red Deer folk, who’s to say they won’t come after White Deer folk next? I say we must fight together, or we’ll all fall to their arrows one by one.”

 
People muttered in agreement. Young men looked nervous or eager by turns.

 
“What does the Hallowed One say?” asked Orla with deceptive softness.

 
Everyone fell silent as Adica considered. The Swift finished the mead and gratefully started in on a bowl of porridge brought to her by one of the boys she’d beaten at the races the summer before. He eyed her enviously, her lean legs and the loose breechclout that gave her room to run. He looked as if he wanted to touch the amber necklace and copper armbands the girl wore to signify her status. At the Festival of the Sun last year, when all the villages of the tribe met at the henge to barter and court and settle grievances, this girl had won the races and with that victory the right to the name “Swift,” one of the favored youths who carried messages between the villages of the White Deer people.

 
“Already the Hallowed Ones of the human tribes work in concert, and we count as our allies the Horse people. Yet the Horse people are less human than our Red Deer cousins, and we accept their alliance gladly.” Adica paused, hearing their restlessness.

 
The Swift finished off the porridge and hopefully held out the bowl, in case she could get another portion.

 
“In this next sun’s year is the time of greatest danger. If the Cursed Ones suspect that we mean to act against them, then they will send their armies to attack us. We need every ally we can find, whether Red Deer, or White Deer, or Black Deer. No matter how strange other tribes may seem to us, we need their help. If you are still alive after the next year’s dark of the sun, you will no longer have to fear.”

 
Orla made the sign to avert evil spirits and spat on the ground, and many did likewise, although not Beor. The younger ones withdrew to get on with their work or to check their bows and axes. As the villagers dispersed to their tasks, only the elders and the war captain remained.

 
“I will go with the war party,” Adica said. They had no choice but to agree.

 
She went to her old house to gather healing herbs and her basket of charms. Inside, the small house lay musty, abandoned. She ran her fingers along the eaves. One of the rafters still leaked a little pitch, and she touched it to her lips, breathing in its essence.

 
Outside, Beor waited with a party of nine adults whom he trusted to stand and fight, should it come to that. They walked armed with bows, carrying spare arrows tipped with obsidian points, and axes of flint or copper. Agda had a stone ax, and Beor himself carried the prize of the village: a halberd with a real bronze blade fixed at right angles to the shaft. He had taken it off the body of a dead enemy.

 
As they set out, the Swift loped past them with her dog at her heels, but she took the turning that would lead her on to Spring Water: Dorren’s village.

 
No need to think of Dorren now. Adica could enjoy, surely, this transitory peace, walking under the bright sun and reveling in the wind on her back. It wasn’t as hot as it had been on Falling-down’s island home. She walked at the back of the band, keeping an eye out for useful plants. When she spotted a patch of mustard and stepped off the path to investigate, Beor dropped back to wait for her. The others paused a short way down the path, out of earshot but within range in case of attack.

 
She ignored Beor as best she could while she harvested as much mustard as she could tie around with a tall grass stem and set into her traveling basket. He fell in beside her as soon as she started on down the path. She did not look at him, and it seemed to her, by the way he swung the shaft of his halberd out before him, that he did not look at her. Yet it was still comforting to walk beside another person, companions on the long march. Ahead, the rest of the band set out, keeping a bit of distance between them.

 
“The elders spoke to me yesterday.” His voice was a little hoarse, the way it got when he was aroused, or irritated.” They said that the reason we never made a child between us was because your magic has leached all the fertility from you. They said that if I don’t give up thinking of you that evil spirits will drain me, too, and I’ll never be able to make a child with another woman.”

 
Her feet fell, one step and another and another. She couldn’t make any thoughts come clear. The sun was bright. The path wound through woodland where a fresh breeze hissed through leaves.

 
“I never wanted any woman like I wanted you. But that has to be done with now. So be it. The elders say that Mother Nahumia’s eldest daughter over at Old Fort just last moon set her man’s hunting bag outside the door and made him leave. She’ll be looking for a new man, then, won’t she?”

 
“You’d have to go to Old Fort,” said Adica, since he seemed to expect her to say something.” You’d have to live there.”

 
“That’s true. But I’ve a mind to leave. I’ve even thought of walking farther east, to hunt for a season with my Black Deer cousins.”

 
“That’s a long way,” said Adica, and heard her own voice trembling, not able to speak the words without betraying the fear in her own heart.

 
“So it is,” he agreed, and he waited again, wanting her sympathy or regret, perhaps, or an attempt to talk him out of this rash course of action. But she couldn’t give him more. She had already offered her life to her people, and the magic hadn’t even left her a child to keep her name alive among them.

 
“You’re a good war captain, Beor,” she said.” The village needs you. Will you at least wait until my work is done before you go? Then maybe it won’t matter that they lose you ” Here she faltered. It was forbidden to speak aloud of the great weaving, because words were power, not to be carelessly cast to the four winds in case the Cursed Ones overheard them.” At least wait until then.”

 
He grunted but made no other answer, and after a bit picked up their pace so that they fell in with the others. Since the others feared speaking to her, and would not look at her, she might as well have been walking alone.

 
The sun had risen halfway to noon by the time they reached Four Houses, a scatter of a dozen sheds, huts, pit houses, and four respectable compounds, each one boasting a round house at each corner with a thatched roof and a rock wall built into storage sheds between. A half-dozen adults labored at a ditch, digging with antlers and hauling away the dirt in bark buckets.

 
The war captain of Four Houses was a stout woman with two scars who went by the name Ulfrega and who wore the string skirt that marked her as a woman old enough to choose a marriage partner. By the evidence of the pale birth threads that decorated Ul-frega’s belly above the band of her low-slung skirt, she had survived several pregnancies.

 
Ulfrega led them down past the river, through woodland rife with pigs, and along a deer trail that led to the Red Deer settlement. Two round houses and six storage pits lay quiet under the summer sun. Strangely, one of the round houses was entirely burned down to the stone half wall while the other stood as fresh and whole as if it had been built a month ago and lived in only yesterday. There was also a stone corral and a hayrick and a very neatly laid out vegetable garden, lush with ripening vegetables. Flies buzzed. A crow flapped lazily away as they approached. Even the village dogs had fled the carnage. The village lay empty except for a single abandoned corpse.

 
The Red Deer settlers had begun digging a ditch, too, and had gotten a rampart and ditch halfway around the settlement.

 
“Too little, too late,” said Ulfrega, gesturing toward the half-dug ditch and the fallen and partially burned rampart. Debris from the fight lay everywhere: arrowheads; a shattered spear shaft; and one of the Cursed Ones’ swords, a flat length of wood edged with obsidian, although most of that obsidian was broken or fallen off. Ulfrega picked up an arrow shaft and fingered the obsidian point quickly before tucking it away into the leather satchel she wore slung over one shoulder.

 
“You’re late to build a ditch as well,” said Beor.

 
She shrugged, looking irritated.” The other raids always came over by Three Oaks and Spring Water.”

 
“It’s not so far to travel between them, not for the Cursed Ones.”

 
“Hei!” She spat in the direction of the corpse.” In open country they may move quickly, but they’re slower when they bring their horses into the woodland. There’s a lot of dense growth between Three Oaks and here.”

 
“That didn’t save these people.”

 
The rest of Beor’s people fanned out to scavenge for obsidian points and whatever was ripening in the garden. They avoided the corpse.

 
“I’ll chase the spirit away,” said Adica. No doubt the Four Houses people had been waiting for her to settle the matter. Both Beor and Ulfrega made the gesture to avert evil spirits and delicately stepped away from her. She rummaged in her basket and got out the precious copper bowl, just large enough to fit in her cupped hands, that she used for such workings. At the outdoor hearth she struck sparks with flint and touched it to a dried scrap of mushroom to raise a fire, then poured blessing water from her waterskin into the bowl and set it on a makeshift tripod over the flames to

 heat. The others vanished into the woodland to seek out the trail of their enemy or to hide while she worked magic.

 
While the water heated, she stared in silence at the corpse.

 
His fall had torn his wooden lynx’s mask from his face. He had proud features and a complexion the color of copper. His black hair had been coiled into a topknot, as was customary for his kind, and all down his arms various magical symbols had been painted with blue woad and red ocher, one twined into the next. Yet truly his sex mattered little: it was an adult, and therefore dangerous, because it could breed and it could fight.

 
No animal scavengers had touched the body. The Cursed Ones protected their spirits with powerful spells, so she would have to be cautious. Luckily, none of the Four Houses people had tried to strip the corpse, although he wore riches. A sheet of molded bronze protected his chest, so beautifully incised with figures of animals that she could not help but admire the artistry. Across the breastplate a vulture-headed woman paced majestically toward a burnished sun while two dragons faced each other, dueling with fire. It was hard to reconcile the creatures who stalked and terrorized humankind with ones who could fashion so many beautiful things. His bronze helmet, crested with horsehair, had rolled just slightly off his head, lying askew in the dirt. Someone had trampled the crest during the fight, the crease still stamped into the ground.

 
A leather belt fastened with a copper buckle held tight his knee-length skirt, all sewn of a piece. The cloth lay so smooth and soft over the body that she could not help but touch her own roughly woven bodice and the string skirt. With such riches as they had, why did the Cursed Ones bother to attack humankind at all?

 
But didn’t they look upon humans as they did upon their own cattle? Maybe it was true that, before the time of the great queens, humankind had roamed like animals, eating and drinking and hunting and rutting, no different than the beasts. But that wasn’t true now.

 
Hanging a sachet of juniper around her neck for protection, she picked out four dried leaves of lavender, then walked to the north and crumbled one between her fingers. Its dust spilled on the ground. To the east, south, and west, she did the same, forming a ring of protection. Standing to the west, she crouched and cupped her hands over her nose to inhale the fading lavender scent, strong and pure. She murmured words of power and protection into her hands.

 
The water boiled. With bone tongs she lifted the copper bowl off the heat and brought it over to her basket. She dropped old thistle into the water and waited, hands raised, palms out.

 
The spirit manifested in her palms as a tiny vortex. Then she saw it rising from the body, slippery and white. It quested to the four corners but could not break free, bound by the spell of lavender. As it spun like a whirlwind, its plaintive voice first growled then mewled then whined, and suddenly the cloud of the spirit, like a swarm of indistinct gnats, sprang heavenward, running up the tunnel made by the four directional wards. She jumped forward to sprinkle lavender dust on the corpse’s eyes and dab lavender into the corpse’s ears and nostrils and over its lips. Pulling up the skirt, she wiped paste of lavender over its man part, then rolled the corpse over so she could seal it completely.

 
Far above, she heard a howl of despair. She clapped her hands three times, stamped her feet, and the sensation of a vortex swirling in her palms vanished. The spirit had fled to the higher world, up the world axis made by the wards.

 
Yet it had left a treasure behind: under the corpse lay a bronze sword.

 
Cautiously, she ran her hands over the metal blade. It, too, had a spirit, fierce and implacable. This blade had bitten many lives in half, and sent many spirits screaming from their bodies. Yet who should carry such a dangerous and powerful being? No one in the White Deer tribe, not in all the nine villages that made up the people, had a sword like this.

 
She found vervain in her basket, rolling it between her hands and letting it fall onto the sword, to placate that vengeful spirit and to temporarily mute its lust for blood.

 
In addition to the bronze breastplate, the helmet, the sword, the belt, and the loose linen tunic, the dead one had carried a knife, and also a pouch containing four common river pebbles, a sachet of herbs, a conch shell, and a small wooden cube engraved with magical symbols.

 
After stripping the corpse, she dragged it into the burned house and covered it with firewood. She marked the ruined threshold with hexes and threw the dead man’s sacred pouch and his war rior’s mask in after. As she shoveled hot coals onto the fallen thatch, the pyre began to burn.

 
Seeing smoke, Ulfrega led the others out of the wood.” No one will settle here again,” observed Ulfrega before she hurried after Beor to examine the treasure.

 
“Do not touch it,” said Adica quickly. Smoke boiled up from the funeral pyre.” The Cursed One’s magic lives in those things.”

 
“But I use this halberd, and it was taken from the Cursed Ones.” Beor eyed the bronze sword with naked hunger.

 
The vision hit her so hard that she couldn’t breathe.

 

Beor runs with the sword in his hand, leading a crowd of wild-eyed young people, running east to fight their own kind, humankind, burning their homes and stealing their cattle and goats.

 
This was the madness that the Cursed Ones had brought into their hearts!

 
Gasping, she found herself braced on her hands and knees. Everyone had stepped away from her. She was sweating, although a cloud covered the sun.

 
Unbidden, she wept, torn by grief. What would the White Deer people become, after she was gone? Were none of them strong enough to resist the implacable spirit that lived in the sword? Was this what the vision promised her, that her people would be consumed by its anger and lust? Were they fated to be poisoned by this legacy of the Cursed Ones, called war?

 
The rank smell of burning flesh washed over her, and she floated on that smoke into a more complicated vision, one without beginning or end.

 
There would be peace and war, kindness and cruelty. There would be honor, and shame.

 
All this would come to humankind.

 
It was already here.

 
Perhaps it was even true that the grandmothers had lived in a peace and loving-kindness unknown to the White Deer tribe now. Or perhaps the ancestors had fought their own battles, as simple as anger between friends or as complex as old enmities between tribes.

 
What would come, would come. She could only do her duty, here and now. So had the Holy One spoken. So had she agreed, knowing that it was the only way she had to protect her people.

 
The vision faded. Trembling, she got to her feet to find that the others had retreated to hunker down by the intact roundhouse and chew on stalks of dried meat, waiting for her to come out of her trance. She never had to explain herself. She went down to the nearby stream and cut reeds with her stone knife, then braided them into rope strong enough to bind and carry the dead one’s treasure. With this bundle hoisted over her shoulders and her basket tapping at her hip, she walked back to Four Houses. The others followed at a safe distance, keeping their voices low.

 
They feared her, because she had magic and they had none, because she saw what they could not see. That was how the gods chose, giving sight to some and leaving the rest blind.

 
Sometimes, she knew, it was more merciful to be blind.

 
THEY sheltered that night at Four Houses. The people hustled out of her way when she approached. Fathers pulled their children in through the gates that barred off the family compounds, where her glance could not scar or cripple any of these most precious young ones. No one invited her inside, and Beor was wise enough or fearful enough of what she might do if she were angered that he and his party sat outside, too, taking the meal that the Four Houses adults shared with them.

 
They ate well: fresh venison and swan; a malty beer almost thick enough to scoop up with her fingers; cheese; and late season greens, rather toothy and fibrous. The Four Houses people kept their dogs tied up so that they could eat in peace without the constant begging menace.

 
That night she slept outside, alone, in the shadow of one of the hayricks. Yet she could not help stroking the smooth cloth once worn by the dead Cursed One. She could not help crushing its soft weave against her cheek. It didn’t comfort her.

 
In the morning, they walked back to their village. Everyone

 wanted to see the bronze sword, but she kept it hidden. Its spirit still wept for its former master; it was still angry. She carried the treasure up the hill and wove a warding out of herbs and charms into an old cowhide. In this hide she wrapped sword and armor. A shallow hole just outside the stone loom made a convenient temporary grave.

 
She knelt by that hole for a long time, but no visions came. Finally, she walked down to the river and washed the linen shirt until no taint of the Cursed One lingered in it. Returning up the hill, she found a platter of food left by her shelter, a pottage now cold and congealed, a mug of ale dusted with a scattering of vegetal matter blown in by the wind. After she hung the linen cloth over the shelter to dry, she ate. No one ever turned down food. No one else ever had to eat alone.

 
It was a warm summer evening, golden and endless with promise, but she clutched only emptiness at her heart.

 
Binding on her hallowing clothes, she walked the familiar path to the stones as night fell. Stars bloomed above like the campfires of the dead. Was there a new star among their number, the spirit of the Cursed One she had banished from the Earth yesterday? She could not tell.

 
With certain gestures of ritual respect, she walked into the stone loom. The great stones seemed to watch her. Kneeling before the cauldron, she sipped at the water before flinging a handful into the air to seed the wind with its holiness. With arms folded across on her chest, she breathed herself into the trance necessary to the working, walked each step of the great weaving so that she would make no mistake when the time came and thus sever the threads. When she had walked it through in her mind’s eye without mistake, she walked it again.

 
But she could only remain deep in the working trance for so long. After a while, she eased herself free of it. She was tired, but not sleepy. Bowing her head, she waited.

 
Maybe she was only waiting for hope, or release. Maybe she was only waiting for the wind. Or for death.

 
It was a long night.

 
Mist crept up into the stones and wreathed her, cold and soft. The stars breathed in and out, souls sighing for their lost home. A nightingale sang.

 
An owl hooted.

 
She started up out of a doze. Her knees ached, her left foot was asleep, and as she shifted to banish the needles of evil spirits, come to plague her while she napped, she saw the owl glide in noiselessly on its great wings and settle on the cauldron. Swiftly, she covered her eyes with a hand.

 
Dawn lightened the eastern horizon. The mist retreated, like a creature withdrawing its claws, until its coils wrapped only the westernmost stones. A blue-white light flared before her eyes. The breath of the Holy One tickled her neck, smelling of grass. Hooves tapped the ground as the Holy One danced away.

 
The ground shuddered beneath her knees, throwing her back. Some force reached into her guts and yanked them one way while she was jerked in the other direction. The movement tore her in half and yet she was entire, whole and panting with exertion and fright. Her tongue had swollen, and her head spun with a myriad dizzy tumbles, as though she were rolling bodily down a steep hill even as she knelt unmoving beside the cauldron.

 
Something deep in the cosmos had come undone. The world murmured around her, unsettled and curious, and she heard birds coming awake in the forest and the distant howling of wolves. The breath of the stars grazed her neck, burning her with their fierce heat, as implacable as the souls of swords. She heard a gasp, and then all was silent except for the movements of the Holy One, murmuring quiet words.

 
Except for another voice, low and confused.

 
Except for the rank scent of blood, and an unknown smell that smothered her until she understood what it was: wet dog.

 
Startled, she looked up to see two huge black dogs, as large as half-grown calves, standing alert on the other side of the step stone. She rose cautiously, but the dogs made no move against her, nor did they growl or bark.

 
A naked man lay on the ground on the other side of the cauldron. He had the lean male body of one who is no longer a youth and yet has not been a man for many years.

 
The Holy One waited, unmoving, a spear’s length away from the prostrate body. A litter of bloody garments lay heaped on the ground before her.

 
Adica circled the cauldron cautiously, murmuring words of protection. Was this a conjuring man, walking abroad with his spirit guides?

 
The dogs nosed the body as though smelling for life before settling down contentedly on either side of the prone man. They did not try to bite her as she slid in between them to touch the man on the shoulder. His skin was as soft as a rose petal, marvelously smooth. He was much less hairy than the men of the Deer clans, but he hadn’t the bronze complexion that marked the Cursed Ones. Pale and straight, he was like no person she had seen before. She traced the line of his shoulder blade, his skin warm under her hand. He breathed softly and slowly.

 
“Here is the husband I have promised you, Adica,” said the Holy One.” He comes from the world beyond.”

 
His scent was as sweet as wild roses. His ear, the one she could see, had a whorl as delicate as that of a precious seashell, brought in trade from the north, and his lips had a delicate elder-violet tinge, as if he had recently been very cold.

 
She spoke softly, afraid to disturb him.” Did he come from the land of the dead?” Because of the way he was lying, it was hard to make out the shape of his face.

 
“Truly it was to the land of the dead that he was walking. But now he is here.”

 
Her hand rested on the curve of his shoulder. He had a young man’s thighs and buttocks, but she could not quite bring herself to accept that he was truly a male. Yet her heart pounded loudly. Wind sighed through the stones, scattering the mist as the sun’s hard face rose higher in the sky.

 
It was hard to speak when hope battered so harshly against her fears. Her voice broke on the words she finally forced out.” Will he stay with me until my death, Holy One?”

 
“He will stay with you until your death.”

 
The calm words hit her like grief. She wept, sitting back on her heels to steady herself, and didn’t notice that he stirred until he heaved himself up onto his forearms to look at her. He looked no less startled than she did, yet he also seemed as dazed as if he had taken a blow to the head. His skin had the pallor of one who has been ill. A small red blemish in the shape of a rose marked his left cheek, like the brands the Horse people used to mark their live stock. Despite the blemish and his paleness, he had a pleasing face, expressive and bright.

 
Before she understood what he meant to do, he brushed a finger gently along the scar that fire had left on her cheek, lifting a tear off her skin. The moisture surprised him so much that he exclaimed out loud and, reflexively, touched tongue to finger, tasting for salt.

 
“Who are you?” she asked.” What is your name, if you can share it?”

 
His eyes widened with surprise. He replied, but the words that came out of his mouth sounded like no language she had ever heard. Perhaps this was the language spoken in the land of the dead, incomprehensible to those who walked in the middle world known by the living.

 
He pushed unsteadily up to hands and knees, sat back on his thighs, and suddenly realized that he was naked. He grabbed for the tangled cloth lying an arm’s length away, but when his fingers closed on a patch still wet with blood, he recoiled with a cry and scrambled backward, looking around as if to seek the aid of the Holy One.

 
No trace of the Holy One remained within the stone loom. Her owl, too, had vanished.

 
“Come,” she said, extending her hands with palms up and open in the sign of peace.” Nothing will harm you here.”

 
The dogs had not moved, so he settled down cross-legged, hands cupped modestly over his lap. To show that she was a human woman, she took off the golden antlers and unbound the bronze waistband, setting them to one side. He watched her with a wary respect but without the fear that dogged every glance thrown her way by the villagers she had grown up with and lived beside for the whole of her life. Either he was still confused, or he was simply not afraid. Yet if he had walked the path that leads into the land of the dead, then perhaps he no longer feared any fate that might overtake him in the land of the living.

 
The smell of blood hung heavily in the air. The garments that lay in a jumble in the grass were stained with bright-red heart’s blood, just now beginning to dry and darken. The dogs showed no sign of injury, and although he bore a fresh pink scar under his ribs, quite a nasty wound, it was cleanly healed and wasn’t weeping.

 
Where had the blood come from?

 
“Do these belong to you?” she asked, cautiously reaching out to touch the closest garment. The wool shone with a brilliant madder gold, and when she shook it out, she recognized under the bloody stain the image of a spirit fixed to the gold garment: a lean and powerful lion woven of black threads set into the gold.

 
He jerked away from the sight. His face was so expressive, as if his soul permeated all of his physical being from the core to the surface rather than being lodged in some deep recess, as was true for most people. Perhaps he wasn’t a person at all but the actual soul, manifest on the physical plane, of the warrior who had once worn these garments and who had died in them. Perhaps he had killed the man who had worn them, and now recoiled from the memory of violence.

 
She examined a second garment of undyed wool, bloodier even than the lion cloth, that lay crumpled to one side. Beneath it lay a leather belt incised with smaller lions, fastened by a bronze buckle also fashioned in the image of a lion’s snarling face. Foot coverings cunningly molded out of soft leather lay in a heap with lengths of cloth and strips of leather that were, she realized, fine leggings.

 
Where had his people learned such craft? Why had they not joined the alliance of humankind against the Cursed Ones?

 
Beneath the clothing lay a garment woven of tiny metal rings, pale in color, yet not silver, or tin, or bronze, or copper. It was heavy. The rings sang in a thousand voices as she lifted them. They had a hard and unforgiving smell. Like the lion coat, the garment had holes that would accommodate a head and arms, and it was long enough to fall to the knees. Perhaps it was not metal at all, but a magical spell of protection made physical, curled and dense, to protect the body. Her shoulders ached from the strain of holding it as she set it down and picked up the knife that lay hidden underneath.

 
Not stone, not copper, not bronze: the metallic substance of this knife had none of the implacable fire of the bronze sword she had taken from the corpse of the Cursed One. It was blind, with a heartless soul as cold as the winter snows, as ruthless as the great serpents who writhed in the depths of the sea and swallowed whole the curraghs in which the fisherfolk plied their trade: having hunger, it feasted, and then settled back in quiet satiation to wait until it hungered again.

 
Magic was the blood of these garments. Was it any surprise that blood stained them all?

 
She looked back at him, hoping, even fearing, to find an answer in his expression. But in the way of any young woman who has gone too long without pleasure, she only noticed his body.

 
He was quite obviously not a child, to run naked in the summer.” Wait here,” she said, making gestures to show him that she meant to go and return.

 
As she rose, her string skirt slid revealingly around her thighs, and he blushed, everywhere, easy to see on his fair skin. She looked away quickly, to hide her hope. Did he find her attractive? Had the Holy One truly brought her a mate? She gathered up her regalia and hurried away to her shelter, storing antlers and waistband in the chest and returning to him with the linen shirt draped over her arms.

 
He still sat cross-legged but with his head bowed and resting on his cupped hands. Hearing her, he lifted his head. Tears ran down his face. Truly, then, he wasn’t actually dead, because the dead could not weep.

 
She set the garment on the ground in front of him and took a few steps away, turning her back so that if he had any secret rituals he had to perform, crossing the threshold of nakedness into civilization, she would not disturb him. There was silence, except for the wind and the rustle and scrape of his movements. Then he coughed, clearing his throat, and she turned around.

 
The tunic draped loosely over his chest, falling to just above his knees. Amazingly, he stood as tall as Beor. The southern tribes, and the Cursed Ones, commonly stood shorter than the people of the Deer clans. Only the Horse people, with their bodies made half of human form and half of horse, stood taller.

 
Through a complicated and awkward ritual of gesturing, he indicated himself and spoke a word. She tried it one way on her tongue and then another, and he laughed suddenly, very sweetly, and she looked into his eyes and smiled at him, but she was first to look away. Fire flared in her cheeks; her heart burned in her. He was not precisely handsome. He looked very different than the men she knew. His features were rather narrowed, his forehead a

 little flatter, his cheek was marked with the blemish, and his hair was almost as dark as that of the Cursed Ones, but as fine as spun flax.

 
He spoke his name again, more slowly, and one of the big dogs barked as if to answer him.

 
“Halahn,” she said.

 
“Alain,” he agreed good-naturedly.

 
“I am named Adica,” she said.” Ah-dee-cah.”

 
Her name was easier for him to say than his had been for her. When she smiled at him, this time he was the one who blushed and looked away.

 
“What must we do with the treasure you brought with you?” She gestured toward the heap of garments. A small leather pouch lay off to one side, its thong broken. Underneath it rested a peg no longer than a finger that resembled one of the wooden pins used to fasten together joints at the corners of houses. The peg had been fashioned by magic out of the same heartless metal that made up the coat of rings.

 
The rusty red of old blood stained the tiny nail. Like the knife, it, too, had a soul, crabbed and devious and even a little whiny in the way of a spoiled child.

 
He choked out a sound as he staggered backward and dropped to his knees. Did he fear the nail’s soul, or had it felled him with an invisible malignance? She quickly concealed it in the pouch. With an effort he got up, but only to retreat to the edge of the loom, bracing himself on one of the guardian stones, shoulders bowed as under the weight of a powerful emotion.

 
She gathered together the garments and hid them in the shallow grave next to the bronze sword and armor she had taken from the Cursed One. Finally, she returned to him.” Come.”

 
He and his dogs followed obediently behind her. Now and again he spoke to the dogs in a gentle voice. He halted beside the shelter to examine the superstructure of saplings and branches, the hide walls, the pegs and leather thongs that held everything in place.

 
“This is where I sleep,” she said.

 
He smiled so disarmingly that she had to glance away. Had the Holy One seen right into her heart? Impulsively, she leaned into him and touched her cheek to his. He smelled faintly of blood but child or flame far more of roses freshly blooming. His scant beard was as soft as petals.

 
Startled, he leaped back. His cheeks were so red and she was so overcome by her own rudeness, and the speed of her attraction to him, that she hurriedly climbed the nearest rampart to look out over the village and the fields, the river and the woodland and beyond these the distant ancient forest, home to beasts and spirits and every manner of wolf and wild thing.

 
The dogs barked. She looked back to see them biting at Alain’s heels, driving him after her. He slapped at their muzzles, unafraid of their huge jaws, but he followed her, pausing halfway up to examine the slope of the rampart and exposed soil, and to study the layout of the hill and the span of earthworks that ringed it. Then he halted beside her to survey the village below, ringed by the low stockade, the people working the fields, the lazy river, and a distant flock at the edge of the woodlands that would either be young Urta with her goats or Deyilo, who shepherded his family’s sheep. He spoke a rush of words, but she understood nothing except his excitement as he pointed toward the village and started down, half sliding in the dirt in his haste. She watched him at first, the way he moved, the way he balanced himself, sure and graceful. He wasn’t brawny like Beor, all power and no grace, the bull rampaging in the corral, yet neither had he Dorren’s reticent movements, made humble by lacking all the parts necessary to an adult’s labor. He was young and whole, and she wanted him because he wasn’t afraid of her, because he was pleasingly formed, because she was lonely, and because there was something more about him, that scent of roses, that she couldn’t explain even to herself.

 
Hastily, she followed, and he had the good manners to wait, or perhaps he had seen by her regalia that she was the Hallowed One of this tribe and therefore due respect. No adult carelessly insulted a hallowed adult of any tribe.

 
Everyone came running to see. He stared at them no less astounded, at their faces, their clothing, and their questions, which ran off him like water. Adults left their fields to come and watch. Children crowded around, so amazed that they even jostled Adica in their haste to peer upon the man. After their initial caution toward the huge dogs, they swarmed over them as well. Remarkably, the huge dogs merely settled down as patiently as oxen, with expressions of wounded dignity.

 
Into this chaos ran a naked girl, Getsi, one of the granddaughters of Orla.

 
“Hallowed One! Come quickly. Mother Orla calls you to the birthing house!”

 
Cold fear gripped Adica’s heart. Only one woman in the village was close to her birthing time: her age mate and friend, Weiwara. She found her cousin Urtan in the crowd.” This man is a friend to our tribe. Treat him with the hospitality due to a stranger.”

 
“Of course, Hallowed One.”

 
She left, running with Getsi. The cords of her string skirt flapped around her, bouncing, the bronze sleeves that capped the ends chiming like discordant voices calling out the alarm. As she ran, she prayed to the Fat One, words muttered on gasps of air: “Let her not die, Fat One. Let it not be my doom which brings doom onto the village in this way.”

 
The birthing house lay outside of the village, upstream on high ground beside the river. A fence ringed it, to keep out foraging pigs, obdurate goats, and children. Men knew better than to pass beyond the fence. An offering of unsplit wood lay outside the gate. Looking back toward the village, Adica saw Weiwara’s husband coming, attended by his brothers.

 
She closed the gate behind her and stamped three times with each foot just outside the birthing house. Then she shook the rattle tied to the door and crossed the threshold, stepping right across the wood frame so as not to touch it with any part of her foot. Only the door and the smoke hole gave light inside. Weiwara sat in the birthing stool, deep in the birth trance, eyes half closed as she puffed and grunted, half on the edge of hysteria despite Mother Orla’s soothing chanting. Weiwara had birthed her first child three summers ago, and as every person knew, the first two birthings were the most dangerous: if you survived them, then it was likely that the gods had given their blessing upon you and your strength.

 
Adica knelt by the cleansing bowl set just inside the threshold and washed her hands and face in water scented with lavender oil. Standing, she traced a circular path to each of the corners of the birthing house in turn, saying a blessing at each corner and brushing it with a cleansing branch of juniper as Weiwara’s panting and blowing continued and Mother Orla chanted in her reedy voice. Orla’s eldest daughter, Agda, coated her hands in grease also scented with lavender, to keep away evil spirits. Agda beckoned to Adica with the proper respect, and Adica crept forward on her knees to kneel beside the other woman. Getsi began the entering rituals, so that she, too, could observe and become midwife when her age mates became women.

 
Agda spoke in a low voice. A light coating of blood and spume intermingled with grease on her hands.” I thank you for coming, Hallowed One.” She did not look directly at Adica, but she glanced toward Weiwara to make sure the laboring woman did not hear her.” When I examined her two days ago, I felt the head of the child down by her hip. But just now when I felt up her passageway, I touched feet coming down. She is early to her time. And the child’s limbs did not feel right to me.” She bent her head, considered her hands, and glanced up, daringly, at Adica’s face. The light streaming down through the smoke hole made a mask of her expression.

 
“I think the child is already dead.” Agda spat at once, so the words wouldn’t stay in her mouth.” I hope you can bind its spirit so Weiwara will not be dragged into the Other Side along with it.”

 
Weiwara labored in shadow, unbound hair like a cloak along her shoulders. She moaned a little. Orla’s chanting got louder.

 
“It’s time,” gasped Weiwara.

 
Agda settled back between Weiwara’s knees and gestured to her mother, who gripped Weiwara’s shoulders and changed the pattern of her chant so that the laboring woman could pant, and push, and pant again. Agda gently probed up the birth canal while Getsi watched from behind her, standing like a stork, on one foot, a birthing cloth draped over her right shoulder.

 
Adica rose and backed up to the threshold, careful not to turn her back on the laboring woman. A willow basket hung from the eaves, bound around with charms. Because the birthing house was itself a passageway between the other worlds and this world, it always had to be protected with charms and rituals. Now, lifting the basket down from its hook, Adica found the things she needed.

 
From outdoors, she heard the rhythmic chop of an ax start up as Weiwara’s husband spun what men’s magic he could, splitting

 wood in the hope that it would cleave child from mother in a clean break.

 
Weiwara began grunting frantically, and Agda spoke sternly.” You must hold in your breath and push, and then breathe again. Follow Orla’s count.”

 
Adica found a tiny pot of ocher, and with a brush made of pig bristle she painted spirals on her own palms. She slid over beside Agda.” Give me your hands.”

 
Agda hesitated, but Orla nodded. Weiwara’s eyes were rolled almost completely up in her head, and she whimpered in between held breaths. Adica swiftly brushed onto Agda’s palms the mark of the moon horns of the Fat One, symbolizing birth, and the bow of the Queen of the Wild, who lets all things loose. She marked her own forehead with the Old Hag’s stick, to attract death to her instead of to those fated to live.

 
With a sprig of rowan she traced sigils of power at each corner of the house. Pausing at the threshold, she twitched up a corner of the hide door mantle to peek outside. Weiwara’s husband split wood beyond the gate, his broad shoulders gleaming in the sun. Sweat poured down his back as he worked, arms supple, stomach taut.

 
Somewhat behind him, looking puzzled, stood Alain.

 
Adica was jolted right out of her trance at the sight of him, all clean and pale and rather slender compared to the men of her village, who had thicker faces, burlier shoulders, and skin baked brown from summer’s work. Her cousin, Urtan, had a hand on Alain’s elbow, as if he were restraining him, but Alain started forward just as his two black dogs nosed up beside him, thrusting Urtan away simply by shoving him aside with their weight. They were so big that they had no need to growl or show their teeth.

 
“Aih!” cried Weiwara, the cry so loud that her husband faltered in his chopping, and every man there glanced toward the forbidden house, and away.

 
Adica stepped back in horror as Alain passed the gate. As the hide slithered down to cover the door, an outcry broke from the crowd waiting beyond the fence.

 
“It is born!” said Orla.

 
“Yet more!” cried Weiwara, her words more a sob of anguish than of relief.

 
Agda said: “Fat One preserve us! There comes another one! Hallowed One! I pray you, take this one. It has no life.”

 
Adica took the baby into her arms and pressed its cold lips to her own lips. No soul stirred within. The baby had no pulse. No heart threaded life through its body. Yet she barely had time to think about what she must do next, find the dead child’s spirit and show it the path that led to the Other Side, when a glistening head pressed out from between Weiwara’s legs. The sight startled her so profoundly that she skipped back and collided with Alain as he stepped into the birthing house. He steadied her with a hand on her back. Only Getsi saw him. The girl stared wide-eyed, too shocked to speak.

 
What ruin had Adica brought onto the village by bringing him here? The baby in her arms was blue as cornflowers, sickly and wrong. Dead and lost.

 
The twin slipped from the birth passage as easily as a fish through wet hands. Agda caught it, and it squalled at once with strong lungs. Weiwara began to weep with exhaustion.

 
Orla took her hands from Weiwara’s shoulders and, at that moment, noticed the figure standing behind Adica. She hissed in a breath between her teeth.” What is this creature who haunts us?”

 
Weiwara shrieked, shuddering all over as if taken with a fit.

 
Agda sat back on her heels and gave a loud cry, drowning out the baby’s wailing.” What curse has he brought down on us?”

 
Oblivious to their words, Alain gently took the dead baby out of Adica’s arms and lifted it to touch its chest to his ear. He listened intently, then said something in a low voice, whether to her, to the dead child, or to himself she could not know. All the women watched in horror and the twin cried, as if in protest, as he knelt on the packed earth floor of the birthing house to chafe the limbs of the dead baby between his hands.

 
“What is this creature?” demanded Orla again. Adica choked on her reply, sick with dread. She had selfishly wanted company in her last days and now, having it, wrought havoc on the village.

 
“Look!” whispered Weiwara.

 
The dead baby stirred and mewled. Color swept its tiny body. Blue faded to red as life coursed back into it. Alain regarded the newborn with a thoughtful frown before lifting the baby girl to give her into Weiwara’s arms. Weiwara had the stunned expression

 of an ewe brought to the slaughter. Living twins were a powerful sign of the Fat One’s favor.

 
“Aih!” she granted as the last of the pains hit her. Without thinking, she gave the baby back into Alain’s arms before gripping the stool one more time. Getsi expertly swaddled the other newborn in the birthing cloth.

 
When the afterbirth slid free and Agda cut off a corner of it for Weiwara to swallow, all the women turned to regard Alain. He waited quietly. Adica braced herself.

 
Yet no flood of recrimination poured from Orla. Agda sat silent. The afterbirth lay in glistening splendor in the birth platter at her feet, ready for cooking.

 
No one scolded him. No one made the ritual signs to protect themselves against the pollution he had brought in with him, the one who had walked into a place forbidden to males. Though it was wrong to let him stay, Adica hadn’t the strength or the heart to send him out. He had brought light in with him, even if it was only by the lifting of the flap of hide tied across the threshold, because the flap had caught on the basket hook, halfway up the frame, and hung askew. The rose blemish on his cheek seemed especially vivid now, almost gleaming.

 
“What manner of creature is this?” murmured Mother Orla a second time.

 
“The child was dead,” said Agda.” I know what death feels like under my hands.” She, too, could not look away from him, as if he were a poisonous snake, or a being of great power.” What manner of creature is he, that can bring life out of death?”

 
But of course that made it obvious, once it was stated so clearly.” He is a man,” explained Adica, watching him as he watched her. He seemed confused and a little embarrassed, half turned away from Weiwara as Getsi cleaned her with water and a sponge of bound rushes.” He was walking to the land of the dead when the Holy One brought him to me to be my companion.”

 
Weiwara was still too dazed by the birth to respond, or perhaps even to have heard, but Agda and Orla merely nodded their heads and pulled on their ears to make sure no evil spirits had entered into them in the wake of such a provocative statement.

 
“So be it,” said Orla.” If the Holy One has brought him to you, then she must not be afraid that he will bring any bad thing onto the village.”

 
“If he was walking to the land of the dead,” said Agda, “then truly he might have found this child’s soul wandering lost along the path, and he might have carried it with him back to us.”

 
Orla nodded in agreement.” It takes powerful magic to call a person off the path that leads to the Other Side. Maybe he has already seen the Other Side. Speaks he of it?”

 
“He cannot speak in any language I know, Mother Orla,” admitted Adica.

 
“Nay, nay,” retorted Agda.” None who have glimpsed the Other Side can speak in the tongue of living people anymore. Everyone knows that! Is he to be your husband, Adica?” She hesitated before going on.” Will he follow you where your fate leads?”

 
“That is what the Holy One promised me.”

 
“Perhaps,” said Orla, consideringly, “a person who can see and capture wandering spirits, like that of this child, ought to stay in the village during this time of trouble. Then he can see any evil spirits coming, and chase them away. Then they won’t be able to afflict us.”

 
“What are you saying, Mother?” Agda glanced toward Alain suspiciously.

 
“I will speak to the elders.”

 
“Let me take him outside,” said Adica quickly.” Then I will purify the birthing house so that Weiwara can stay here for her moon’s rest.” The new mother’s bed lay ready, situated along one wall: a wooden pallet padded with rushes, a sheepskin, and the special wool padding bound with sprigs of rowan that brought a new mother ease and protection. Cautiously, Adica touched Alain on the elbow. His gaze, still fixed on the newborn in Weiwara’s arms, darted to her.

 
“Come.” She indicated the door.

 
Obediently, he followed her outside. It seemed in that short space of time that the whole village had heard of the adult male who had walked into the birthing house. Now every person in the village crowded outside the fence, waiting to see what would happen.

 
Beor shouldered his way to the front. He took the ax from Weiwara’s husband and fingered the ax head threateningly as he

 watched them emerge. Like bulls and rams, men always recognized a rival by means not given to women to understand.

 
“I will take care of this intruder,” said Beor roughly as Adica approached the gate.

 
“He is under my protection.” The dogs pushed through the crowd toward their master. Their size and fearsome aspect made people step away quickly.” And under the protection of spirit guides as well, it seems.”

 
One of the big dogs, the male, nudged Beor’s thigh and growled softly: a threat, but not an attack. Alain spoke sharply to the dog, and it sat down, stubbornly sticking to its place, while Alain waited on the other side of the fence, measuring Beor’s broad shoulders and the heft of the ax. Under the sunlight, the rose blemish that had flared so starkly on the tumulus and inside the birthing house faded to a mere spot of red on his cheek, nothing out of the ordinary.

 
Urtan hurried up and spoke in an undertone to Beor, urging him to step aside. Beor hesitated. Adica could see the war waged within him: his jealousy, his sharp temper, his pride and self-satisfaction battling with the basic decency common to the White Deer people, who knew that in living together one had to cooperate to survive.

 
“No use causing trouble,” said Urtan in a louder voice.

 
“I’m not the one causing trouble,” said Beor with a bitter look for Adica.” Who is this stranger, dressed like a Cursed One? He’s brought trouble to the village already!”

 
“Go aside, Beor!” Mother Orla emerged from the birthing house.” Let there be no fighting on a day when living twins were given to this village out of the bounty of the Fat One.”

 
Not even Beor was pigheaded enough to go against Mother Orla’s command or to draw blood on a day favored by the Fat One. Still gripping the ax as if he wished to split Alain’s head open, Beor retreated with his brother and cousins while the villagers murmured together, staring at the foreign man who had come into their midst.

 
Alain swung a leg over the fence and in this way crossed out of forbidden ground so casually that it was obvious that he did not understand there was any distinction. He could not feel it down to his bones the way Adica could, the way she knew whether any hand’s span of earth was gods-touched, or hallowed, or forbidden, or merely common and ordinary, a place in which life bloomed and death ate. The crowd stepped aside nervously to make a pathway for him.

 
“You must wait here, Hallowed One,” said Mother Orla once they reached the village gates.” I ask this of you, do not enter the village until the elders have made their decision.” She called the elders to the council house, and the meeting pole, carved with the faces of the ancestors, was raised from the centerpost.

 
Adica had learned how to sit quietly as an apprentice to the Hallowed One who had come before her, the one who had been her teacher, but she was surprised to see how patiently Alain waited, sitting at her side. His dogs lay on the ground behind him, tongues lolling out, quiescent but alert, while he studied the village. The adults went back to their work and the children lingered to stare, the older children careful to keep the less cautious young ones from approaching too close.

 
In the end, it did not take long. The meeting pole wobbled and was drawn down through the smoke hole. Mother Orla emerged with the other elders walking deferentially behind her. Villagers hurried over to the gates to hear her pronouncement, all but Beor, who had stalked into the forest with his hunting spear. The dogs pricked up their ears.

 
“The elders have decided,” announced Mother Orla.” If Adica binds this man to her and lets him live in her house, she can reside again in the village until that comes which must come.” “So be it,” murmured Adica, although her heart sang. The villagers spoke the ritual words of acquiescence, and it was done, sealed, accepted. The Holy One had brought it to pass, as she had promised.

 
Adica had her own duties. She had to purify her old house, which had sat empty for two courses of the moon, and she had to purify the birthing house, since a male had set foot in it. Women who had borne living children passed in and out of the birthing house while she worked. They brought presents, food, and drink to Weiwara as they would every day until a full course of the moon had waned and waxed, at which time the new mother could resume her everyday life.

 
But afterward she was free to watch Alain, although she was careful to do so from a distance, pretending not to. She expected him to wait for her at the village gates, shy and aloof as strangers

 usually were upon first coming to a new place, but he allowed children to drag him from the well to the stockade, from the freshly dug outer ditch to the pit house where the village stored grain. He crouched beside the adults making pottery and the girls weaving baskets, and examined a copper dagger recently traded from Old Fort, where a conjuring man lived who knew the magic of metal-working. He coaxed in a limping dog so that he could pull a thorn from its paw, and scolded a child for throwing a stone at it, although surely the child understood no word of what he said. He fingered loom weights stacked in a pile outside the house of Mother Orla and her daughters, and combed through the debris beside Pur the stoneworker’s platform. He spent a remarkably long time investigating the village’s two wooden ards. Adica remembered her grandfather speaking wonderingly of helping, as a young man, to plow fields for the first time with such magnificent tools; all his childhood the villagers had dug furrows with sharpened antlers.

 
Alain’s curiosity never flagged. It was almost as if he’d never seen such things before. Perhaps he was born into a tribe of savages, who still lived in skin shelters and carried sharpened sticks for weapons. Why then, though, would he have carried such skillfully made garments with him?

 
Although she watched, she was afraid to show too much interest in him. She was afraid that she would frighten him away if he noticed her following after him. She feared the strength of her own feelings, so sudden and powerful. He was a stranger, and yet in some way she could not explain she felt she had always known him. He was a still pool of calm in the swift current that was life in the village. He stood outside it, and yet his presence had the solidity of those things which lie awake and aware in the world, cutting both into what is holy and what is ordinary, blending them in the same way a river blends water from many streams.

 
So it went, that afternoon, as Alain explored the village, followed by a pack of curious children whom he never snapped at, although they often pestered him.

 
So it went, that evening, when people brought food to her door, as if to apologize for their neglect from the months before, as if to acknowledge her new household and mate. They still would not look her in the eye, but the children sat easily beside Alain, and he showed them how to play a game made by lines drawn in the dirt and populated by moving stones, a clever way of capturing territory and retreating. Urtan made a flamboyant show of sitting next to him as though they had been comrades for ages, like two who handled the ard together at plowing time or spent a lazy afternoon supervising children at play in the river shallows. Beor still had not returned from his solitary hunt, but the other men were curious enough, and respectful enough of Urtan’s standing, that they came, too, and learned to play the game of lines and stones. Alain accepted their presence graciously. He seemed at ease with everyone. Except that night, when she tried to coax him into her house and showed him that he could sleep on the bed with her. At once he looked agitated and spoke words more passionate than reasoned. She had offended him. Flushed and grim, he made a bed for himself with straw just outside the threshold, and there he lay himself down with a dog on either side, his guardians. In this way, for she checked several times, he appeared to sleep peacefully while she lay awake and restless.

 
An owl hooted, a presence gliding through the night. One of the dogs whined in its sleep and turned over. A child cried out, then stilled. The village slumbered. In their distant cities, the Cursed Ones plotted and planned, but at this moment their enmity seemed remote compared to the soft breathing of the man who slept outside her door.

 
At dawn, Urtan took Alain to the weir with his young cousins Kel and Tosti. He went, all of them laughing in a friendly way at his attempts to learn new words. The dogs trailed behind. It was remarkable how good-natured he seemed. She wanted to see how he managed at the weir, but she had her own duties.

 
Going to renew the charms in the birthing house, she found Weiwara nursing one infant and rocking the other with a foot where it lay asleep in a woven cradle. The new mother examined the sleeping twin with a look compounded mostly of surprise, as though she had opened a door to admit a tame bear.” Is it true that the stranger brought the firstborn back to life?”

 
“So it seemed to my eyes.” Adica crouched beside the sleeping infant but was careful not to touch it.” I held this baby in my arms. Like Agda, I listened, but I heard no spirit stirring inside it. He called the spirit back.”

 
“Is he a conjurer, do you think?”

 
“No, I do not think so.” The woven cradle creaked as it rocked back and forth. The other twin suckled silently. A bead of clear liquid welled up from a nipple and beaded there before slipping down Weiwara’s skin.

 
“I hear he is to be your new husband,” added Weiwara.” Is he handsome? I didn’t truly see him.”

 
“No,” said Adica quickly.” He’s not really handsome. He doesn’t look like a Deer man.”

 
“But.” Weiwara laughed.” I hear a ‘but.’ I hear that you’re think- ‘• ing of him right now.”

 
Adica blushed.” I am thinking of him now.”

 
“You never thought of Beor when you weren’t with him. I think you’d better bind hands with this man, so he’ll understand your intentions. If he came from far away, he might not wish to offend anyone. He surely doesn’t know what is forbidden here, and what is not. How else could he have walked into the birthing house like he did? You’d better ask Mother Orla to witness the ceremony, so he’ll know he’s not forbidden to you.”

 
“So I must. I’ll have to show him what is permitted.”

 
She walked slowly back to the village, reached the gate in time to see Alain and Urtan and Urtan’s cousins carrying a basket slippery with fish up from the river, a catch worthy of a feasting day. Alain was laughing. He had let the cloth slip from his shoulders, to leave his chest bare. His shoulders had gone pink from the sun. He was lean through the waist, and remarkably smooth on chest and back, so different than the Deer men.

 
“Never did I think to see the Hallowed One at another’s mercy,” said Mother Orla, shuffling up beside her. She walked .with a limp, supporting herself on a broken pole that had once served as the shaft for a halberd.

 
“Mother Orla! You startled me!”

 
“So I did. For you truly were not standing with yourself.” They had to step aside to make room for the four men and their heavy basket to cross the plank bridge that led over the ditch and into the village. Alain saw Adica, and he smiled. She was not quite sure how she responded, for at that moment Mother Orla pinched her hard on the forearm.” There, now, daughter!”

 
She had not been touched in so long—except when Alain had brushed tears from her cheeks to see if she were real that she yelped in surprise, and then was embarrassed that she had done so. But the men had already passed, hauling the big basket up to the council house where it would be divided up between the village families.

 
Mother Orla coughed.” A stranger who sleeps in a woman’s house without her promise and her binding is not the kind of adult a village can trust as one of its own.”

 
“I was hasty, Mother Orla. Do not think it his doing. I invited him into the house without waiting for the proper ceremony.”

 
“He did not enter,” retorted Mother Orla approvingly.” Or so I hear.”

 
“I hope you will advise me in this matter,” Adica murmured humbly.” I have no experience. You know how things went with Beor.”

 
“That was not a wise match.” Mother Orla spat, to free herself of any bad luck from mentioning such an ill-fated decision.” Nev^ ertheless, it is done with. Beor will see that his jealousy has no place in this village.”

 
“So easily?”

 
“If he cannot stomach a new man in the village, then he can go to his Black Deer cousins, or marry Mother Nahumia’s daughter and move to Old Fort.”

 
“I believe it would be better to have a strong fighter like Beor stay here until—until the war is over, Mother Orla.”

 
“That may be. But we’ve no need of pride and anger tearing down our community in times like these. There will be no more spoken on this matter.”

 
“As you wish.” In a way, it was a relief to be spoken to as if from aunt to niece. It was hard to act as an elder all the time when she was really still young.

 
“Let the stranger sleep at the men’s house,” continued Mother Orla.” After all, would you want a man for husband who had so little self-respect that he didn’t expect courtship?”

 
Adica laughed, because the comment was so unexpected and so charged with a gratifying anticipation. At first she did not see Alain up by the council house, but she soon caught sight of him among the others because of the dogs who faithfully followed after him. A vision shivered through her, brief but dazzling: she saw, not

 Alain, but a phoenix, fiery and hot, shining beyond the ordinary with such intensity that she had to look away.

 
“Truly,” Mother Orla continued in the voice of one who has seen nothing unusual, “the Holy One chose wisely.”

 
II AT night, the stars blazed with a brightness unlike that of any stars Liath had ever seen. They seemed alive, souls writhing and shifting, speaking in a language born out of fire rather than words. Sometimes she thought she could understand them, but then the sensation would fade. Sometimes she thought she could touch them, but the heavens rose as far above her here in this country as they ever had in the land of her birth.

 
So much lay beyond her grasp, especially her own past.

 
Right now, she lay on her back with her hands folded behind her head on a pallet made of leaves and grass.” Are the stars living souls?”

 
“The stars are fire.” The old sorcerer often sat late with her, silent or talkative depending on his mood.” If they have souls and consciousness, I do not know.”

 
“What of the creatures who brought me here?”

 
Here in the country of the Aoi, there was never a moon, but the stars shone with such brilliance that she could see him shake his head.” These spirits you speak of burn in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds of

 aether, and now and again their gaze falls like the strike of lightning to the Earth below. There, it sears anything it touches, for they cannot comprehend the frailty of Earthly life.”

 
“If they aren’t the souls of stars, then what are they?” “They are an elder race. Their bodies are not bodies as we know them but rather the conjoining of fire and wind. In their bodies it is as if the breath of the fiery Sun coalesces into mind and will.” “Why did they call me child, then?”

 
He was always making rope, or baskets, always weaving strands into something new. Even in the darkness, he twined plant fiber into rope against one thigh.” The elder races partake of nothing earthly but only of the pure elements. We are their children in as much as some portion of what we are made of is derived from those pure elements.”

 
“So any creature born on Earth is in some way their child.” “That may be,” he said, laughing dryly.” Yet there is more to you than your human form. That we speak each to the other right now is a mystery I cannot explain, because the languages of humankind are unknown to me, and you say that the language of my people is not known to you. But we met through the gateway of fire, and it may be that the binding of magic lies heavier over us than any language made only of words.”

 
“It seems to me that with you I speak the language known to my people as Dariyan.”

 
“And to me, it is as if we speak in my own tongue. But I cannot believe that these two are the same. The count of years that separates my people from your land must span many generations of humankind. Few among humankind spoke the language of my people when we dwelt on Earth. How then can it be that you have remembered my people’s language all this time?”

 
It was a good question, and deserved a thoughtful answer.” Long before I was born, an empire rose whose rulers claimed to be your descendants, born out of the mating of your kind and humankind. Perhaps they preserved your language as their speech, and that is why we can speak together now. But truly, I don’t know, The empresses and emperors of the old Dariyan Empire were half-breeds, so they claimed. There aren’t any Aoi on Earth any longer They exist there only as ghosts, more like shades than living crea tares. Some say there never were true Aoi on Earth, that they’re only tales from the dawn time of humankind.”

 
“Truly, tales have a way of changing shape to suit the teller. If you wish to know what the spirits meant when they addressed you as ‘child,’ then you must ask them yourself.”

 
The stars scintillated so vividly that they seemed to pulse. Strangely, she could find not one familiar constellation. She felt as if she had been flung into a different plane of existence, yet the dirt under her feet smelled like plain, good dirt, and many of the plants were ones she remembered from her childhood, when she and Da had traveled in the lands whose southern boundary was the great middle sea: silver pine and white oak, olive and carob, prickly juniper and rosemary and myrtle. She sighed, taking in the scent of rosemary, oddly comforting, like a favorite childhood story retold.

 
“I would ask them, if I could reach them.”

 
“To reach them, you must learn to walk the spheres.”

 
The arrow came without warning. Pale as ivory, it buried its head in the trunk of a pine. Grabbing her quiver, Liath rolled off her pallet and into the cover of a low-lying holm oak. The old sorcerer remained calmly sitting in his place, still rolling flax into rope against his leg. He hadn’t even flinched. Behind him, the arrow quivered and stilled, a stark length of white against drought-blighted pine bark.

 
“What is that?” she demanded, still breathing hard. In the four days since she had come to this land, she had seen no sign of any other people except herself and her teacher.

 
“It’s a summons. When light comes, I must attend council.”

 
“What will happen to you, and to me, if your people know I’m here?”

 
“That remains to be seen.”

 
She slept restlessly that night, waking up at intervals to find that he sat in trancelike silence beside her, completely still but with his eyes open. Sometimes when she woke, half muddled from an un-remembered and anxious dream, she would see the stars and for an instant would recognize the familiar shapes of the constellations Da had taught her; but always, in the next instant, they would shift in their place, leaving her to stare upward at an alien sky. She could not even see the River of Heaven, which spanned the sky in her own land. In that river, the souls of the dead swam toward the o

 


Chamber of Light, and some among them looked down upon the Earth below to watch over their loved ones, now left behind. Was Da lost to her? Did his spirit gaze down upon Earth and wonder where she had gone?

 
Yet was she any different than he was, wondering what had become of those left behind? Da hadn’t meant to die, after all. She had left behind those she loved of her own free will.

 
At night, she often wondered if she had made the right decision. Sometimes she wondered if she really loved them.

 
If she’d really loved them, it shouldn’t have been so easy to let them go.

 
Twilight had little hold on this place. Day came suddenly, without the intervening solace of dawn. Liath woke when light brushed her face, and she watched as the old sorcerer’s expression passed from trance to waking in a transition so smooth that it was imperceptible. He rose and stretched the stiffness out of his limbs as she sat up, checking to see that her bow was ready and arrows laid out. Her sword lay within easy reach, and she always slept with her knife tucked in its sheath at her belt.

 
“Go to the stream,” he said.” Follow the flower trail to the watchtower. Do not come out unless you hear me call to you, nor should you wander, le;t others come upon you. Remember to take care, and do nothing to cut yourself or let any blood fall.” He began to walk away, paused, and called to her over his shoulder.” Make good use of the time! You have not yet mastered the tasks I set you.”

 
That these tasks were tedious beyond measure was evidently part of the training. She belted on her sword and fastened her quiver over her shoulders. She had become accustomed to fasting for a good while after she woke; it helped stave off hunger. She took the water jug with her, slung over her shoulder by a rope tied to its handles.

 
As she walked down the path, she noted as always how parched the ground was. The needles on the pine trees were dry, and perhaps a quarter were turning brown, dying. Few other trees were hardy enough to survive here: white oak, olive, and, increasingly, silver pine. Where dead trees had fallen, carob grew up, shadowing buckthorn, clematis, and spiny grass. She never saw any rodents. Despite the isolation of their living circumstances, she had seen no deer, aurochs, wolves, or bears—none of the great beasts that roamed plentifully through the ancient forests of Earth. Only rarely did she hear birds or see their fluttering flight in the withered branches.

 
The land was dying.

 
“I am dying,” she whispered into the silence.

 
How else could she explain the calm, the sense of relief, she’d fallen into since she had arrived in the country of the Aoi? Maybe it was only numbness. It was easier not to feel than to confront all the events that had led her to this place. Was her heart as stony as Anne’s, who had said: “We cannot let affection cloud our judgment”?

 
With these words, Anne had justified the murder of her husband. No faceless enemy had summoned and commanded the spirit of air that had killed Bernard. His own wife, the mother of his child, had done so.

 
Anne had betrayed Da, and she had betrayed Liath not just by killing Da without a scrap of remorse but by making it clear that she expected Liath to behave in exactly the same way.

 
And hadn’t Liath abandoned her own husband and child? She had not crossed through the burning stone of her own volition, but once here, in the land of the Aoi, she had had a choice: to stay and learn with the old sorcerer, or to return to Sanglant and Blessing.

 
Hadn’t she also let judgment override affection? Hadn’t she chosen knowledge over love? Hadn’t it been easy to do so?