Child of Flame (Page 161)

“Now you’ll see what a real man can do,” growled Beor.

The contrast between the two men was striking: Alain lean and smooth, Beor with his broad chest densely matted with curly hair. Alain always seemed to have a smile on his face, the look of a person who no longer has anything to worry about, while Beor suffered from a nagging, irritable discontent. But, in truth, Beor had mellowed over the winter. He didn’t argue nearly as much as he had once done. Maybe it was just that it had been a mild winter during which the village hadn’t suffered hunger or anything worse than the usual stink of being closed up in their homes for months on end. Maybe they were all just more at peace, despite the everpresent menace of the Cursed Ones, now that Alain lived among them.

“I said I will take on all men, not all bears,” said Alain to general laughter.

Beor lifted his hands in imitation of a lumbering bear and, with a mock roar, charged Alain. A child yelped with excitement. Alain sidestepped him, but not fast enough. Beor got hold of a shoulder, they grappled, then Beor twisted Alain back and with brute strength lifted him up and tossed him backward into the current. The big man threw out his arms and let out a scream of triumph that echoed off the tumulus. Adica laughed helplessly along with the rest of the village.

Alain came up thrashing, drenched through.

“Peace!” he cried. “You win.”

He extended a hand. When Beor took it, to help him up, Alain yanked so hard that Beor tumbled forward into the freezing water beside him. By this time the two black dogs had begun barking, and as the two men heaved themselves spluttering and laughing up out of the water, the dogs splashed into the shallows and, in their excitement, knocked them both over again.

“My stomach hurts,” moaned Weiwara, tears leaking from her eyes as she laughed.

“The village will smell a lot better now,” cried Beor’s sister, Etora, from the crowd. “Whew! Look how the river has changed color downstream.”

Adica found Alain’s wool cloak lying on the rocks. After he waded out of the water, she draped it over his shoulders. A winter spent mostly indoors and the immediate effects of the freezing water had made him pale, dimpled with goose bumps.

“Cold,” he proclaimed cheerfully as she fastened the cloak at his left shoulder with a bronze pin. He kissed her cheek.

His lips were as cold as death.

She shuddered.

“Adica.” Instantly attentive to her moods, he took her hand in his. His skin was as cold as a corpse’s. The vision hit like the slap of cold water.

Six figures, made indistinct by darkness, sit huddled in a stone chamber. A seventh rests on the floor, sleeping, injured, or dead, the figure of a lion sewn into the cloth on his heavy tunic. At the fringe of the light cast by a smoking torch lies a stone slab. On this altar a queen has been laid to rest. Her bones have been arranged with care and respect, and the garments and jewelry fitting for a woman of her status have fallen in among the bones, strands of rotting fabric, beads, a lapis lazuli ring, and armbands of gold. One of the figures lifts the torch to see better, and all at once the gold antlers placed at the skeleton’s skull spring into view.

Those are the holy antlers she wears, to mark her place as Hallowed One among her people.

“Adica.”

She swayed, clutching him. “I saw my dead body,” she whispered hoarsely. “I saw my own grave.”

He grabbed her, pulling her close. “Speak no evil words! No harm will come to you, beloved. I will not let any bad thing touch you.”

“I love you,” she murmured into his hair.

“Always you will love me,” he said fiercely as the dogs bounded up and thrust their cold noses and damp fur against her hips, trying to squeeze between them, “and always will I love you.”

She had never had the courage to tell him the full truth about the task that lay before her. It hurt too much ever to think of leaving him. That was the secret of the Fat One, whose face was twofold, wreathed half in light and shrouded half in shadow. She was the giver of all things, pain and death as well as plenty and pleasure. Was it any wonder that Adica chose pleasure when sorrow and death waited just beyond the threshold?

Meanwhile, villagers had gathered at a respectful distance, waiting for her attention.

“Hallowed One, Getsi has that cough again.”

“Hallowed One, my husband’s snare out in the south woods is being vexed by evil spirits.”

“Hallowed One, we’ve finished repairing the roof that was damaged in the snow, and it needs your blessing.”

Alain laughed. Even in repose, his face had a kind of glow to it, but’ when he smiled, his expression shone. He had the most luminous eyes of any person she had ever met. “You make the village live, so it is for me to make you live and be happy.”