Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

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 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.