Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“Adica!” he cried hoarsely, struggling against the jaws of Rage and Sorrow as he fought forward to throw himself down beside her crumpled body.

She was already dead.

White fire exploded from the crest of the hill, slicing open the stone loom, and swallowed him.

4

SHE moved fast, grabbing the haft of Cat Mask’s spear below the point. Just as he jerked back, startled, she found the memory of fire within the wood and called flame. With a shout of pain and surprise, he dropped the spear and jumped backward as she rose, holding the burning spear in her hand, thrust out to challenge them. It hissed and sparked, as bright as though she held lightning.

“I am not your enemy!” The warriors facing her backed away nervously as the haft of the spear burned into nothing yet left her skin unscathed. She caught the obsidian spear point as it fell and pricked her middle finger. Blood welled up.

“Child! Do nothing rash!” Eldest Uncle’s shout came from the pine grove behind her.

She dared not turn to see him, not with fifty armed warriors staring her down. Masks closed their expressions to her; she saw proud hawks, fierce panthers, snarling bears, and biting lizards. Cloaks covered their shoulders, and while most of these short cloaks were woven of linen, a few had the look of skin, cured and cut. Some of the warriors displayed bare torsos but most wore short, heavily-quilted tunics marked by sigils: a feather, a reed, a knife, a skull. All wore tattoos along their arms or on their chins, ranging from simple lines to more complicated hatching, diamonds or dots faded to blue.

Cat Mask drew a flint knife and lunged toward her.

She squeezed her finger and let blood fall.

Where it struck the ground, ten serpents boiled up out of the earth, hissing and coiling. Cat Mask leaped back. Another drop of blood spattered, and a third and a fourth. Flowers swayed alarmingly as serpents slithered through them. Warriors shouted in fear and backed away. One bright-banded snake slid right over her foot, and she sprang up in dismay. Snakes seethed everywhere, coming to life among the flowers.

She unfurled her wings of flame and rose above the meadow, fire streaming off her.

That was enough for Cat Mask’s war band. To a man, they broke and ran for the river.

She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked away the blood as she settled down at the edge of the pine wood, beside Eldest Uncle and a young-looking woman. The two Ashioi threw up hands to protect their faces from the hot wash of her wings, so she furled them, pulling them down inside, bound tight into her soul where they had, after all, resided all along.

“So,” said Eldest Uncle, looking her up and down with a charming grin. He hadn’t forgotten the pleasure of admiring a young woman’s body. “You walked the spheres. You have found your answers, and your power.”

“I have discovered the truth,” she admitted, blushing as she remembered modesty. She didn’t know where to place her hands. A glance toward the meadow showed the brilliant flowers still dancing drunkenly as the tangle of serpents raised by her blood worked their way outward through the dense growth. All her clothing lay out there, surrounded by snakes.

“So,” said the woman standing beside Eldest Uncle as she, too, measured Liath, “I am not surprised at the attraction.”

“Who is this?” asked Liath, looking her over, although truly it was difficult to stand confidently when she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. The other woman, however, wore only a pale, skin skirt cut off raggedly at knee length. She had a powerful torso, with broad shoulders and full breasts. A double stripe of red paint ran from the back of either hand all the way up her arms to her shoulder, covered in one spot by a garment draped over her left forearm. A green feather stuck jauntily out of the topknot she had made of her hair, a match to her jade-green eyes. Her eyes, the cast of her face, seemed familiar.

“This one is my younger daughter, the child of my old age,” said Eldest Uncle with a glint of anger in his expression as he glanced at his companion. He did not seem pleased to introduce her. “The-One-Who-Is-Impatient. Who has caused enough trouble!”

Old angers boiled below the surface as father and daughter looked at each other and, as with one thought, away. The woman shifted, and the folded garment hanging over her arm spilled open.

“That’s my tunic,” cried Liath, “the one I left in the saddlebags, on Resuelto. Ai, God! It was you, standing at the river’s edge and wearing my tunic, when I first walked the flower trail.” She grabbed the cloth, shook it open and, without asking permission, slid into it. Properly clothed, she could speak without embarrassment. “Where did you get it?”