Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“I must see that she is safe.”

The guide’s glance was honed like a weapon, cutting and sharp. “This to me she says you will ask. She already goes to Two Fingers. I shall show this to you, from her, to mark she is safe.” He opened a hand to display one of Adica’s copper bracelets. “The dogs also came safely to our halls. Now, we go.” He turned and walked away down the tunnel.

Ceramic bowls had been placed just far enough apart along the tunnel that the last glow of light from one faded into the first share of light from the next as they walked. In this way, they never quite walked in darkness and yet only at intervals in anything resembling brightness. The rock fastness smelled faintly of anise. Alain shed sand at every step. Probably he would never be rid of it all.

The tunnel emptied onto a large chamber fitted with tents of animal skins stretched over taut ropes. The chamber lay empty. A goldworker had been interrupted in the midst of her task: her tools lay spread out on a flat rock next to a necklace of surpassing fineness, a pectoral formed out of faience and shaped into two falcons, facing each other. Two looms sat unattended; one of the weavings, almost finished, boasted alternating stripes of gold, blue, black, and red. A leather worker had left half-cut work draped over a stool. A child’s wheeled cart lay discarded on the ground; a wheel had fallen off, and the toy cart listed to one side.

His guide waited patiently while Alain stared about the chamber, but at last the man indicated the mouth of a smaller tunnel. “If it pleases you.”

This second tunnel, shorter and better lit, opened into a circular chamber divided by a curtain. The guide drew the curtain aside and gestured toward a pool. He wasn’t one bit shy. He watched with interest as Alain stripped, tested the waters, and found them gloriously warm. With a sigh, Alain ducked his head completely under. Sand swirled up all around him before pouring away in a current that led out under the rock.

“You are the Hallowed One’s husband,” said the man as he handed a coarse sponge to Alain. “Are you not afraid of her fate eating you?”

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

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

“Nothing will befall Adica,” said Alain stubbornly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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