Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

At intervals he heard down the maze of tunnels the sound of the storm screaming outside. Sand stirred up by its passage dried out his lips. But the sound faded as the passage dipped down to a circular aperture carved into the rock. Alain stepped high over a band of rock thrust across the corridor at the same time as he ducked to avoid the low ceiling; and passed into a world bathed in red, walls painted with ocher.

Hani bent, bowed, and murmured a prayer. A stickily sweet perfume hung in the air. They came into an antechamber carved out of the rock, stairs and doors, carved niches and stepped ceilings, all painted reddish orange. It was like stepping into a womb, the ancient home of the oldest mothers of humankind.

People waited here, sitting or kneeling in silence, shawls draped over their hair. He saw no children. Laoina knelt here, head bowed, by a second doorway, this one carved out of the stone in imitation of a lintel and frame made of timber.

She shaded her eyes with a hand as though to shield them from a bright light. When Alain paused beside her, she glanced up with a grimace of relief. “We did not lose you! Wait with me.”

He still did not see Adica. Ignoring Hani’s startled protest, Alain stepped over the threshold.

Inside, torches illuminated three people, two of them veiled and the third Adica. The cloud of incense choked him. Sorrow and Rage sat on either side of the threshold, waiting for him.

In silence, with a bent head, Adica waited as the veiled man chanted over a swaddled bundle held in his arms. His free arm lifted and fell, lifted and fell, in sweeping motions in time to his chant. He was missing two fingers on that hand.

A wide-mouthed white-and-red pot sat at his feet, incised with spirals whose smooth line, like that of a wild rose, was broken by nublike thorns. He bent to settle the bundle inside the pot, and in that instant, the cloth covering the bundle parted enough for Alain to see an infant’s face, gray and composed in death. Two Fingers covered the mouth of the pot with a lid.

The second adult stepped forward to place the pot beside a dozen similar pots, set neatly on shelves carved out of the rock within the niche. Then both retreated to the middle of the chamber, singing their prayers.

Adica saw Alain. Her expression was soft, and sorrowful, but a smile of relief twitched her cheeks as she touched a finger to her lips. Despite her occasional strangeness, he understood the language of her body well enough: she wanted him to stay where he was, so that he wouldn’t interrupt the ceremony. Nodding, he stepped back to stand by the threshold between Sorrow and Rage.

The chanted prayers ceased. Silence struck the chamber, powerful and thick as the smoke from the incense. Yet it wasn’t complete silence. The wail of wind whistled at the edge of his hearing, fading in and out. He thought, for an instant, that he heard a baby crying, but the sobs blended with that faint howl of wind to become an undifferentiated sound, low and long.

Two Fingers’ assistant unhooked her veil to reveal a young face marked with severe features and a furious frown. She shook a string of stone, bone, and polished wood beads, shattering the silence. Alain heard the crowd in the antechamber rise and move away.

A curtain of shimmering cloth was hung over the threshold; strands of thread worn into a metallic glitter striped the fabric, gold wings woven into a blue-dyed wool hanging, further elaborated with beads and shells. Two Fingers let his veil fall. He had a solemn face, weathered by sun and sand, and a clean-shaven chin. It was difficult to tell how old he was except for the crow’s-feet at his eyes. He spoke the conventional greeting, displaying his three-fingered hand with his palm out and open. The scar showed clearly, a cleanly-healed wound that ran raggedly, as though a beast had bitten off his fingers. “Why have you come, daughter? What news brings you?”

Adica told him the story of their hasty journey. Two Fingers listened intently while Hani and Laoina translated from behind the curtain. He interrupted at intervals for clarification, woven as this tale was through the barrier of imperfectly understood translations.

“Truly,” Two Fingers said when Adica had finished, “we feared the worst. Now we must post guards at every loom, because the Cursed Ones raid as they wish.”

“Have they learned the secret of the looms?” asked Alain. “Or are these raiding parties sent out to make you believe that they know more than they do?”

Two Fingers grinned. When he smiled, his face was transformed; he had a dimple. “Is this the husband of Adica who speaks, or my cousin’s son Hani? It may be that they send out raiding parties who roam for many moons or even seasons. So have they done in the past, to plague humankind. It may only seem to us that they travel through the looms, when perhaps they cloak themselves in other magic that we do not understand. Yet what does it matter, if they have killed Horn and broken the weaving?”