Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4) 00

“Alain!” Booms and clanks drowned out his reply. The walls hummed. A jolt slammed her against the wall. One of the dogs was trying to climb up on her, paw digging into her thigh. With an effort, she got the dog off of her, groped, caught Laoina in the armpit, tried to rise, suddenly panicked, and then Alain found her and sank down on the bench beside her, holding her tightly.

“The armband is gone,” she whispered. “They took it.”

“I have mine still, but it casts no light here.”

After a long while, waiting in silence, they realized that nothing had changed. The floor rocked slightly and steadily, as a boat would, but no waves slapped their hull. It was too dark to see anything.

“Are we at sea?” Laoina asked finally in a whisper.

“I think not.” Adica searched out their surroundings by touch. They might as well have been sealed inside a huge acorn; she found no trace of door or shutter, beam ceiling or dirt floor, only unknown patterns and textures covering the walls. “We are trapped.”

“Nay, do not say so,” objected Alain. “Let us wait, sleep, and restore our strength. Maybe what seems dark now will seem more clear after.”

“Good advice,” agreed Laoina. “Even from a man whose god fits in his sleeve.”

Alain laughed. His laughter made the darkness lighten, although there was in fact no actual change. They shared out water and a portion of the remaining provisions between the five of them. Afterward, Adica listened as Laoina settled down, making herself a nest, such as she could, for sleep. The Akka woman’s breathing slowed and deepened. The dogs panted, and then began to snore.

Secrets lie buried in the dark, where they fester and rot. Wasn’t it better to be truthful, no matter how harsh truth was?

“I’m going to die,” she murmured, finding Alain’s body and pulling him close.

“No, you’re not! The Holy One sent me to protect you. I’ll see you safely through this. I’ll see you safely to the great weaving you’ve spoken of. Don’t you believe I can do that?”

She rested her cheek where his shoulder curved into the soft vulnerability of his throat. Tears slid from her eyes to course down his skin. “Of course, my love. Of course you will.”

She could not go on. Grief choked her.

He found by touch the knots that closed her bodice. The darkness, and the silence, lent an intensity to their touching, just as rage and sorrow did: rage at fate for tearing from her the life she could never have, with him; sorrow at the loss that would come. Death did not mean as much to her, at that moment, as losing him. She had learned to live in solitude, even when she was married to Beor, but she had never understood how lonely her life had been until Alain had come to her.

His fingers found and caressed a nipple as she slid his skin tunic up his thighs and straddled him. They rocked there, falling into the pulsing rhythm of the floor shuddering under them. Cloth bunched up and spilled free as they moved. She caught her hands in his hair and pulled his head back to kiss him.

Let it last forever.

In her dreams she sees the fire-woman again, pushing, pushing, pushing as she struggles forward, trying to press her way through the glittering, golden crowd that swarms around her like bees buzzing and stinging.

“Let me pass!” the fire-woman cries frantically. “You must not give her the skopos’ scepter. You must not trust her!” But she cannot get through. No one even notices that she is there, astounding as that seems, given the way she blazes.

The hall in which they stand looms impossibly high and long. The figures robed in gold cloth who stand somewhat above the others, placed on a platform built at the far end of the hall, look half the height of normal humans. Maybe that is just a trick of the lamplight.

Maybe it is all a trick. Dreams and visions can be false as welt as true. But Adica knows in her gut that this is a true vision. The only thing she doesn’t understand is why it matters, or where in the middle world she stands, if she stands in the middle world at all.

She lifts her staff, surprised to find it in her hand. “Come, Sister, do not despair,” she cries, because the look of anguish on the fire-woman’s face touches her deeply. She has known anguish and isolation, too. “There is usually an answer if you only know where and how to look.”

Eyes as blue as pure lapis lazuli widen in alarm. This time, the fire woman turns, and sees her.

2

IN the sixth sphere there was always enough food, and everything shone with the golden light of plenty, courtesy of the empress of bounty, known in ancient times as the goddess Mok. But Liath despaired from the moment she entered the regnant’s feasting hall in the palace at Darre, just in time to hear King Henry rise to toast the woman who would, in a week’s time, be invested and robed as the new skopos, Holy Mother to all the Daisanite faithful.