PROLOGUE (9 page)

"You must wait here, Hallowed One," said Mother Orla once they reached the village gates.” I ask this of you, do not enter the village until the elders have made their decision." She called the elders to the council house, and the meeting pole, carved with the faces of the ancestors, was raised from the centerpost.

Adica had learned how to sit quietly as an apprentice to the Hallowed One who had come before her, the one who had been her teacher, but she was surprised to see how patiently Alain waited, sitting at her side. His dogs lay on the ground behind him, tongues lolling out, quiescent but alert, while he studied the village. The adults went back to their work and the children lingered to stare, the older children careful to keep the less cautious young ones from approaching too close.

In the end, it did not take long. The meeting pole wobbled and was drawn down through the smoke hole. Mother Orla emerged with the other elders walking deferentially behind her. Villagers hurried over to the gates to hear her pronouncement, all but Beor, who had stalked into the forest with his hunting spear. The dogs pricked up their ears.

"The elders have decided," announced Mother Orla.” If Adica binds this man to her and lets him live in her house, she can reside again in the village until that comes which must come." "So be it," murmured Adica, although her heart sang. The villagers spoke the ritual words of acquiescence, and it was done, sealed, accepted. The Holy One had brought it to pass, as she had promised.

Adica had her own duties. She had to purify her old house, which had sat empty for two courses of the moon, and she had to purify the birthing house, since a male had set foot in it. Women who had borne living children passed in and out of the birthing house while she worked. They brought presents, food, and drink to Weiwara as they would every day until a full course of the moon had waned and waxed, at which time the new mother could resume her everyday life.

But afterward she was free to watch Alain, although she was careful to do so from a distance, pretending not to. She expected him to wait for her at the village gates, shy and aloof as strangers

usually were upon first coming to a new place, but he allowed children to drag him from the well to the stockade, from the freshly dug outer ditch to the pit house where the village stored grain. He crouched beside the adults making pottery and the girls weaving baskets, and examined a copper dagger recently traded from Old Fort, where a conjuring man lived who knew the magic of metalworking. He coaxed in a limping dog so that he could pull a thorn from its paw, and scolded a child for throwing a stone at it, although surely the child understood no word of what he said. He fingered loom weights stacked in a pile outside the house of Mother Orla and her daughters, and combed through the debris beside Pur the stoneworker's platform. He spent a remarkably long time investigating the village's two wooden ards. Adica remembered her grandfather speaking wonderingly of helping, as a young man, to plow fields for the first time with such magnificent tools; all his childhood the villagers had dug furrows with sharpened antlers.

Alain's curiosity never flagged. It was almost as if he'd never seen such things before. Perhaps he was born into a tribe of savages, who still lived in skin shelters and carried sharpened sticks for weapons. Why then, though, would he have carried such skillfully made garments with him?

Although she watched, she was afraid to show too much interest in him. She was afraid that she would frighten him away if he noticed her following after him. She feared the strength of her own feelings, so sudden and powerful. He was a stranger, and yet in some way she could not explain she felt she had always known him. He was a still pool of calm in the swift current that was life in the village. He stood outside it, and yet his presence had the solidity of those things which lie awake and aware in the world, cutting both into what is holy and what is ordinary, blending them in the same way a river blends water from many streams.

So it went, that afternoon, as Alain explored the village, followed by a pack of curious children whom he never snapped at, although they often pestered him.

So it went, that evening, when people brought food to her door, as if to apologize for their neglect from the months before, as if to acknowledge her new household and mate. They still would not look her in the eye, but the children sat easily beside Alain, and he showed them how to play a game made by lines drawn in the dirt and populated by moving stones, a clever way of capturing territory and retreating. Urtan made a flamboyant show of sitting next to him as though they had been comrades for ages, like two who handled the ard together at plowing time or spent a lazy afternoon supervising children at play in the river shallows. Beor still had not returned from his solitary hunt, but the other men were curious enough, and respectful enough of Urtan's standing, that they came, too, and learned to play the game of lines and stones. Alain accepted their presence graciously. He seemed at ease with everyone. Except that night, when she tried to coax him into her house and showed him that he could sleep on the bed with her. At once he looked agitated and spoke words more passionate than reasoned. She had offended him. Flushed and grim, he made a bed for himself with straw just outside the threshold, and there he lay himself down with a dog on either side, his guardians. In this way, for she checked several times, he appeared to sleep peacefully while she lay awake and restless.

An owl hooted, a presence gliding through the night. One of the dogs whined in its sleep and turned over. A child cried out, then stilled. The village slumbered. In their distant cities, the Cursed Ones plotted and planned, but at this moment their enmity seemed remote compared to the soft breathing of the man who slept outside her door.

At dawn, Urtan took Alain to the weir with his young cousins Kel and Tosti. He went, all of them laughing in a friendly way at his attempts to learn new words. The dogs trailed behind. It was remarkable how good-natured he seemed. She wanted to see how he managed at the weir, but she had her own duties.

Going to renew the charms in the birthing house, she found Weiwara nursing one infant and rocking the other with a foot where it lay asleep in a woven cradle. The new mother examined the sleeping twin with a look compounded mostly of surprise, as though she had opened a door to admit a tame bear.” Is it true that the stranger brought the firstborn back to life?"

"So it seemed to my eyes." Adica crouched beside the sleeping infant but was careful not to touch it.” I held this baby in my arms. Like Agda, I listened, but I heard no spirit stirring inside it. He called the spirit back."

"Is he a conjurer, do you think?"

"No, I do not think so." The woven cradle creaked as it rocked back and forth. The other twin suckled silently. A bead of clear liquid welled up from a nipple and beaded there before slipping down Weiwara's skin.

"I hear he is to be your new husband," added Weiwara.” Is he handsome? I didn't truly see him."

"No," said Adica quickly.” He's not really handsome. He doesn't look like a Deer man."

"But." Weiwara laughed.” I hear a 'but.' I hear that you're think-
'•
ing of him right now."

Adica blushed.” I am thinking of him now."

"You never thought of Beor when you weren't with him. I think you'd better bind hands with this man, so he'll understand your intentions. If he came from far away, he might not wish to offend anyone. He surely doesn't know what is forbidden here, and what is not. How else could he have walked into the birthing house like he did? You'd better ask Mother Orla to witness the ceremony, so he'll know he's not forbidden to you."

"So I must. I'll have to show him what is permitted."

She walked slowly back to the village, reached the gate in time to see Alain and Urtan and Urtan's cousins carrying a basket slippery with fish up from the river, a catch worthy of a feasting day. Alain was laughing. He had let the cloth slip from his shoulders, to leave his chest bare. His shoulders had gone pink from the sun. He was lean through the waist, and remarkably smooth on chest and back, so different than the Deer men.

"Never did I think to see the Hallowed One at another's mercy," said Mother Orla, shuffling up beside her. She walked .with a limp, supporting herself on a broken pole that had once served as the shaft for a halberd.

"Mother Orla! You startled me!"

"So I did. For you truly were not standing with yourself." They had to step aside to make room for the four men and their heavy basket to cross the plank bridge that led over the ditch and into the village. Alain saw Adica, and he smiled. She was not quite sure how she responded, for at that moment Mother Orla pinched her hard on the forearm.” There, now, daughter!"

She had not been touched in so long—except when Alain had brushed tears from her cheeks to see if she were real that she yelped in surprise, and then was embarrassed that she had done so. But the men had already passed, hauling the big basket up to the council house where it would be divided up between the village families.

Mother Orla coughed.” A stranger who sleeps in a woman's house without her promise and her binding is not the kind of adult a village can trust as one of its own."

"I was hasty, Mother Orla. Do not think it his doing. I invited him into the house without waiting for the proper ceremony."

"He did not enter," retorted Mother Orla approvingly.” Or so I hear."

"I hope you will advise me in this matter," Adica murmured humbly.” I have no experience. You know how things went with Beor."

"That was not a wise match." Mother Orla spat, to free herself of any bad luck from mentioning such an illfated decision.” Nev^ ertheless, it is done with. Beor will see that his jealousy has no place in this village."

"So easily?"

"If he cannot stomach a new man in the village, then he can go to his Black Deer cousins, or marry Mother Nahumia's daughter and move to Old Fort."

"I believe it would be better to have a strong fighter like Beor stay here until—until the war is over, Mother Orla."

"That may be. But we've no need of pride and anger tearing down our community in times like these. There will be no more spoken on this matter."

"As you wish." In a way, it was a relief to be spoken to as if from aunt to niece. It was hard to act as an elder all the time when she was really still young.

"Let the stranger sleep at the men's house," continued Mother Orla.” After all, would you want a man for husband who had so little self-respect that he didn't expect courtship?"

Adica laughed, because the comment was so unexpected and so charged with a gratifying anticipation. At first she did not see Alain up by the council house, but she soon caught sight of him among the others because of the dogs who faithfully followed after him. A vision shivered through her, brief but dazzling: she saw, not

Alain, but a phoenix, fiery and hot, shining beyond the ordinary with such intensity that she had to look away.

"Truly," Mother Orla continued in the voice of one who has seen nothing unusual, "the Holy One chose wisely."

II AT night, the stars blazed with a brightness unlike that of any stars Liath had ever seen. They seemed alive, souls writhing and shifting, speaking in a language born out of fire rather than words. Sometimes she thought she could understand them, but then the sensation would fade. Sometimes she thought she could touch them, but the heavens rose as far above her here in this country as they ever had in the land of her birth.

So much lay beyond her grasp, especially her own past.

Right now, she lay on her back with her hands folded behind her head on a pallet made of leaves and grass.” Are the stars living souls?"

"The stars are fire." The old sorcerer often sat late with her, silent or talkative depending on his mood.” If they have souls and consciousness, I do not know."

"What of the creatures who brought me here?"

Here in the country of the Aoi, there was never a moon, but the stars shone with such brilliance that she could see him shake his head.” These spirits you speak of burn in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds of

aether, and now and again their gaze falls like the strike of lightning to the Earth below. There, it sears anything it touches, for they cannot comprehend the frailty of Earthly life."

"If they aren't the souls of stars, then what are they?" "They are an elder race. Their bodies are not bodies as we know them but rather the conjoining of fire and wind. In their bodies it is as if the breath of the fiery Sun coalesces into mind and will." "Why did they call me
child,
then?"

He was always making rope, or baskets, always weaving strands into something new. Even in the darkness, he twined plant fiber into rope against one thigh.” The elder races partake of nothing earthly but only of the pure elements. We are their children in as much as some portion of what we are made of is derived from those pure elements."