Child of Flame (Page 123)

“Let me sit with him until it’s time for me to leave,” said Dorren. “I can teach him some of our language. The Walking Ones who taught me gave me certain secrets to help me learn the languages of our allies more quickly.”

“Truly, do so, and I will be grateful.”

He glanced at her oddly. “Is it true that the Holy One sent him to be your husband?”

She had to look away. Dried fish and herbs hung from the beams; smoke had gathered in the rafters. “I bow to the Holy One’s will.” Would they think it unseemly if they knew how quickly she had fallen under Alain’s spell? Would they suspect that the Holy One had used magic to bind her to the stranger? Not everyone trusted the Horse people and their powerful shaman, but she did. No magic had influenced her. Sometimes passion took people so: like a hawk, striking unexpectedly.

Dorren examined the council house thoughtfully before addressing Mother Orla with respect. “Where is my apprentice, Dagfa? She does not attend the Hallowed One as she should.”

“Her mother stopped breathing just as the barley harvest came in. She had to go back to Muddy Walk to help lay the path that will lead her mother’s spirit to the Other Side. Your old teacher is too crippled to walk all the way from Old Fort, and his other apprentice has gone to learn the language of the Black Deer people.”

“A strange time to do so when one is needed here with the Hallowed One at all times,” said Dorren with a frown. “Send a Swift to fetch Dagfa back. Her sister can draw the final spiral herself. When I am gone, Dagfa can teach the foreigner, so he can learn to speak. Falling-down would not have dreamed of him if he were not important. What if he brings a message from the Other Side? What if the gods have chosen to speak through him, but we cannot understand him?”

“So be it,” said Mother Orla, acknowledging the truth of his argument.

Yet Alain could communicate, even if not always in words. That evening when Adica led Dorren up to the loom Alain came with her, although no common villager dared witness sorcery for fear of the winds and eddies of fate called up by magic.

She had spent the afternoon with Pur the stone knapper, repairing her mirror. He promised to make her a new one, but meanwhile he had glue stewed from the hooves of aurochs by which he could make the mirror whole again, good enough to weave the loom this night.

When she met Dorren and Alain again before sunset, Alain greeted her very prettily, although it was clearly easier for him to parrot the words Dorren had taught him than to understand her reply. They left the village and walked up through the embankments to the tumulus.

“I remember my father toiling on these embankments,” said Dorren. “He believed that such fortifications would protect all the White Deer people from the incursions of the Cursed Ones, yet how can they if the Cursed Ones have learned how to walk the looms?”

They paused to look back at the village below, the houses with their long sides facing south to get the most warmth from the winter sun, the garden plots denuded except for the last leafy turnips going to seed, a restless mob of sheep huddled together for the night. Adults swarmed around the outer palisade, raising logs. “Each village must protect itself,” said Adica softly, “until that day we are rid of the Cursed Ones.”

Dorren looked away from her quickly, remembering the fate laid on her.

Beside her, Alain knelt to dig a hand into the soil. “This is called ‘earth,’” he said, sounding each word meticulously, although he couldn’t reproduce the sounds precisely. He gestured toward the nearest curve of the embankment. “This is called ‘wall of earth.’”

Dorren chuckled. “You will learn quickly with a good teacher.”

“A good teacher,” echoed Alain, wiping his hand off on grass.

They reached the loom as night fell. The circle of stones stood in silence, as they always did. She set her feet on the calling ground. Dorren knew to stand to her right side and, after a moment, she got Alain stationed to her left, although he seemed as likely to wander right into the loom itself.

Clouds covered part of the sky, which made the weaving more complicated. Since the Grindstone lay concealed by clouds, she would have to weave a gateway by means of the Adze and the Aurochs, whose hulking shoulders she could use as a weight to throw the gate open to the west.

Lifting her mirror, she began the prayer to waken the stones: “Heed me, that which opens in the east. Heed me, that which opens in the west.”

Alain did not tremble or run, as many would have, faced with sorcery such as she wove now out of starlight and stone. The hill woke beneath her. The awareness of the ancient queens gripped her heart, as though their hands reached through stone and earth and death itself to take hold of their living heir, to seize her for their own purposes.