Child of Flame (Page 287)

Laoina turned. “I am thinking it is a good thing that these Bent People do not want humans as their slaves, because to me it looks like they have powerful magic. They have ships that can sail through rock, maybe. How else could we have come here? By some sorcery the vessel carried us under the land to the country of Shu-Sha’s tribe. When I was an apprentice to the Walking Ones, I met a man who walked all the way from Shu-Sha’s tribe to Horn’s tribe. That was when the Cursed Ones destroyed the stone loom and the fine city built by Shu-Sha’s people. That man left at the waxing quarter moon, and he saw three full moons before he came to Horn’s tribe. That’s a long path to walk in one journey. I don’t know what magic the Bent People used to make us sleep so soundly, but I’m not thinking we slept as long as three courses of the moon.”

“That’s a long way,” he agreed, thinking that maybe Laoina had lost her mind or gotten confused. Something had changed about the way she spoke, too; the hitches and pauses had vanished, as though the language of the Deer people flowed more easily from her tongue. And anyway, he could not explain any better than she could the things they had seen in the city of the skrolin. “How do you know where we are now?”

She indicated the opening behind him. He scrambled up, scraping his knees. Dirt rained on his head from rootlets stirred as he pulled himself out where he could see. At first it was too bright to recognize anything, but gradually the patterns of light and shade resolved into a rugged defile plunging deep into shadow. The far slope was covered in spiny bushes clinging desperately to the precipitous slope. At the top of the ridge opposite, he saw a massive wall rising up out of the hill like a waking dragon.

Laoina tugged on his foot. “Come back down, quick. That fort belongs to the Cursed Ones.”

He dropped back down. Adica still slept. Rage snuffled along the cave’s wall. “I thought you said we were in the land of Shu-Sha’s tribe.”

“So we are. But the Cursed Ones have killed or enslaved most of her people and have driven the rest into hiding.”

“Why do the Cursed Ones hate humankind so much?”

She regarded him with a quizzical look. “They need blood, or else their gods will turn against them. Maybe, too, they are like old man Joa, who buried ten skins and six stone axheads in the ground so nobody else could have them. Then he died, and when a girl accidentally found them two summers later, the skins were no good anymore. So maybe he did keep them for himself by spoiling them for anyone else. There are some people who are always wanting more, an extra piece of deer meat even though they already have enough, a handful of extra spear points even if another person must go short.”

“You think the Cursed Ones are selfish in that way.”

“Don’t they have enough already?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sighed sharply. “If this isn’t the land of the dead, then where are we?”

“In the land of Shu-Sha’s tribe—” But she broke off, seeing that wasn’t what he had meant.’

“I have seen dragons, and a phoenix, and lion women. I have seen a great city beneath the sea, where the merfolk live. I have seen the land underground where the ones called skrolin bide. I’ve seen the Cursed Ones, and I think they look very like the man I knew as Prince Sanglant.” He fingered the head of his staff, rubbing his thumb along the snarling dog’s mouth, touching each carven tooth. “The valley where your people live I saw in my dreams. But other people lived there once, who called themselves the Rock Children and whose mothers were like living stone.”

Laoina looked troubled. “These I have not seen, my friend. I know of no people calling themselves children of the rocks. As for the rest well, I am a Walking One, so I have seen many things, more than most. I admit that the city of the Bent People and the sea city of the merfolk confuse me, for how can it be that they have such strong magic and we have so little knowledge of them?”

“They live in rock and in water. How could we know of them, who live where we cannot?”

“Then why do they not show themselves to us? Nay, there is an answer already. What if they do not care for those of us who live where they do not? What if they do not need us as the Cursed Ones do? Maybe we have nothing they want.”

“I have seen merfolk in my dreams,” he murmured, thinking of Stronghand. “But they were like beasts. Such creatures could not have built a great city.” He knelt beside Adica, stroking her hair, wanting to wake her up gently. “All that matters, here and now, is that I protect Adica. But sometimes I just don’t understand where I am.”