Child of Flame

The fissure had split the ground in such a way that they could no longer reach the larger passageway toward which they had originally been heading. Instead, only a single, smaller tunnel opening offered escape from their section of the cavern.

White Feather shouted something very much resembling curses, but there was nothing he and his men could do. His proud face twisted with thwarted anger; a livid cut ran from lip to chin, and a bruise mottled his left cheek. Blood dripped from one ear, dribbling down to stain the leather armor that protected his shoulders. He wore a breastplate of beaten bronze incised with a vulture-headed woman, fierce and commanding. With a snarl, he turned his back on his enemies.

One archer masked with a boar’s face loosed a second arrow, but the wind caught the arrow and lifted it high until it was lost in the cavern’s murky heights as wind roared. They couldn’t leap the fissure, and the chasm had fractured like a trident into three crevasses, slitting the cavern’s floor into tiny islands surrounded by gulfs of wind. The most youthful of the warriors made as if to cast his spear, but a companion restrained him. After a brief conference, they walked cautiously across the length of floor left them, hauling with them three comrades too injured to walk, and crossed into a small tunnel so low that most had to duck as they entered.

Kel swore furiously. As the lamplight faded, Alain looked to see that the bridge over the first abyss had split down the middle, each half dangling down the face of the chasm.

They were trapped in the middle, caught on a narrow ridge poised between two crevasses.

White Feather vanished down the small tunnel, and his light with him. Blackness descended again. From out of the fissure boomed a throbbing like a giant’s reverberant footfalls, each one as loud as a thunderclap. The wind ceased in the next instant.

Rage barked as if surprised, and then all was still and utterly dark.

2

HER hands smarted as blood rushed back into them. She flexed them as she took steadying breaths in the darkness. Free, but not yet safe. Still, it was better than being trussed up as a captive of the Cursed Ones.

“Hallowed One, can you speak?”

“Beor, how came you to follow me? What happened at the village? Who else was taken?”

He stood to the right of her, panting in the way of a fighter trying to overcome the pain of his injuries. “One of Weiwara’s infants was stolen, but the foreigner won it back. Nay, Hallowed One, no others were taken. Only you. It was all a feint.”

“To get me.”

He grunted to show his agreement.

“We’re trapped.” Kel’s voice cracked, hitting a boy’s pitch before sliding down again.

“Adica.”

She couldn’t see Alain, but she felt him as she would have felt a roaring bonfire. He stood about an arm’s length from her. Instead of answering, she extended her hand into the blackness and, searching, found his arm. He squeezed her hand. That was all. The darkness in the cavern was so absolute that she could not even see his face.

Or was it?

Light rose gently, with the gleam of magic in it. At first she couldn’t see where it was coming from. Kel swore.

Alain was glowing.

Nay. An instant later she saw an armband the color of bronze, wound three times around Alain’s upper arm. This object glowed. By his expression, Alain was as surprised as she was. He fingered the armband cautiously, twisted it, and grimaced in pain when it would not come off.

“There’s an old story told by the grandmothers,” said Beor in an odd tone, “that the Wise Ones give precious gifts to those who aid them.”

Alain turned away, hiding his face as he examined the strange armband. The breeze blowing up from the fissure, light and cool now, stirred his linen tunic. From the back, with his fine black hair and his slender build, he might have been a cousin of the Cursed Ones—but he was not. He had felt human enough to her, by the birthing house in those moments before the Cursed Ones’ raid, when she held him close and kissed him.

“Rope,” said Kel. She looked over at the sound of the youth’s voice and saw him beside the fallen bridge, staring down into the gaping chasm with his expression painted with overflowing youthful frustration. He held salvaged rope from his pack. With his gaze he measured the distance between the posts on either side of the chasm. Beor limped over to test the strength of one of the bridge posts. She crossed to him at once and made him sit so she could examine his wounds. He had several, chiefly cuts in both legs and a deeper injury to his left shoulder. Someone had thought to put a compress and a length of loosely woven cloth for wound-binding into Beor’s pack. She used herbs from her own pouch to make a small charm, and bound it in with the compress and the cloth.