Child of Flame
With a grimace and a groan, Adica struggled to her feet, still dizzy from the backwash of the spell that had woken the dragons. “Did you measure the stones?” she asked Laoina. “Where will we find the tribe of Brightness-Hears-Me?”
Laoina had only to point to the oasis below them, rising out of the desert. “We go, quick quick.”
With Alain’s support and the broad back of the dog called Rage to lean on, she managed to pick her way down the hill and across the sand and pebble-strewn flat, baked hard by the merciless sun. The journey seemed to take forever, as if the oasis kept receding before them. The lion woman had vanished. Maybe she had only been an hallucination.
The smell of water hit. They staggered forward into the shade of tall trees whose fronds waved in the breeze. It was much cooler within the shelter of plants. Resting, they sipped water as they gathered their strength. The sounds of an unseen human encampment drifted to them: singing, a hammer pounding on metal, the braying of a donkey and the indignant bleating of goats.
A short figure swathed head to toe in voluminous robes approached them cautiously, both hands extended with palms out and open in the gesture of peace. Painted swirls and patterns of a deep blue color marked its palms. Adica quickly opened her own hands to show that they, too, came in peace. They followed their guide along a narrow path that led between gardens of dense bushes and trees laden with clumps of a tiny, green fruit. Purple-and-white flowers as broad as hands drooped toward the ground. Rushes lined the banks of a canal so narrow they could step across it, the rushes sliding and scraping along their thighs. Sweat streamed off Adica’s back. Her legs prickled from the heat.
The children ran about naked, shrieking and giggling, pausing only to stare and whisper at the strangers, keeping their distance. Beyond the encampment, herds of sheep and goats and donkeys made a cacophonous racket.
Under cover of the rippling melody, Alain leaned forward. “A woman watches us from inside.”
“Where? I see no one at the entrance.” Adica bit into the nut-brown fruit. It was sweet, not nutlike at all. Delicious.
“She watches us,” repeated Alain. Rage and Sorrow padded back from the pool, muzzles dripping as they flopped down in a shady patch and set their heads on their forelegs, content to rest. “Why did you need to measure the stone to find this tribe? Surely the loom where the sorcerer works her magic is always in the same place.”
When they were refreshed, a robed person motioned to Adica and Laoina, inviting them across the threshold of the tent. But when Alain rose to accompany them, Adica shook her head.
“No man may enter the tent of Brightness-Hears-Me. It is the law of their tribe.”