PROLOGUE (46 page)

"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^ides 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.

Starlight caught in the stones and she wove them into a gateway of light. She scarcely heard Dorren's murmured "fare you well" before he swiftly left her side, stepped into the gate—and vanished from her sight.

Alain took two steps forward to follow him. Adica pulled him back.” No. Do not follow him." He moved no farther, yet his expression as he stared into the gateway of light had a blankness in it, as though his thoughts, his soul, his heart had left to cross into unknown country, where she could never follow. Unbidden, unexpectedly, her voice broke.” I would not have you leave me, Alain."

The light faded, the gateway splintered and fell apart, and all at once she began to weep.

One of the dogs whined. Its jaws closed, gently but firmly, on her hand, drawing no blood but tugging firmly. Alain took her mirror out of her hands and looped it at her belt. He scolded the dog softly, and it released her, but Alain clasped her hand instead.

"Come," he said, gently but firmly.” I give to the not-breathing ones. To the—the queens." He struggled to recall the words Dorren had taught him.” To the queens I give an offering."

To the queens.
They still resided in her. The echo of their presence throbbed in tune to the beating of her heart. The queens demanded an offering only from those who begged for their help. Yet once that bargain was struck, no matter how bitterly the price weighed on the one who had braved holy ground to petition them, it had to be fulfilled. Even she, especially she, could not escape promises made to the holy dead.

Like a stick thrown in a river, she went where the current pulled her. Alain led her down the eastern slope of the tumulus to the stone lintel that marked the sacred entrance to the queens' grave, the holy place for which the village was named. There lay the threshold of the passageway that led into the secret womb where the ancient queens rested. Clouds crept up over the heavens, veiling stars one by one.

Alain groped for and found a torch. She struck flint and lit it. The torch bled smoke onto the corbeled ceiling, revealing the symbols of power carved into the stones: ships drawing the sun down to the underworld, the spiral path leading the dead to the Other Side, the hands of the Holy Ones who had gone before, reaching for the four staffs of knowledge. Crouching at first, they were able to straighten up as the ceiling sloped upward, so that they walked upright into the low chamber where the queens rested in three stone tombs, each in her own niche.

The tombs bore carvings representative of each of the queens. The tomb of Arrow Bright, lying to the west, was carved with two sphinxes: the lion women of the desert from whom she had learned the secret ways of the Huntress. In the southern niche, Golden \

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Sow's tomb gleamed with gold melted from phoenix feathers and beaten into the shape of a sacred sow, the spirit guide of the queen whose magic had made all the women of her tribe fertile and their children healthy. Last, in the niche that faced north, lay Toothless' cairn, more primitive than the others, for she had reigned in the days when the magic of metalworking was not known among humankind.

Here, deep in the womb of stone and earth, not even the wind could be heard.

She stepped forward to offer a prayer, but Alain pressed her back and stepped forward in her place. He stood straight and proud, bright and fearless, as he spoke words in his own language, which she could not understand.

What was he telling them? She knew they were listening, because the dead are always listening.

The torch blew out, leaving her caught in their vast silence. She couldn't even feel Alain's comforting presence nor hear the panting of the dogs.

The vision hit like a blast of light, searing her eyes.

Alain, dressed in clothing unlike any garb she has seen before, stands beside a stone tomb so remarkably carved into the shape of a supine man that she believes that in a moment the stone will come to life and the man will sit up. Stone dogs lie with him, one at his head and one at his feet. Alain weeps silently, tears streaming down his face. A company of women enters the house behind him, only it is no house but a high hall of cunning and astounding design, lofting impossibly toward the sky. Alain turns to the one who walks foremost among them, a queen so thin and wasted that she is ugly; truly, the Fat One gave none of her blessing here. In the heart of this queen lies thwarted spring, knotted coils twisted and bent around a withered spirit stained with fear. But Alain loves her. The young queen offers him nothing, and yet he loves her anyway.

Adica weeps, bitterly, and her tears wash the vision away until she floats on the vast waters. Foam licks around her as she is caught in the wake of an animal as sleek as a dragon and as swift as a serpent, driving through the sea. At first she thinks it is a living creature, lean and long, but then she sees it is a ship. It is utterly unlike the low-bellied, hide-built curraghs in which the coastal tribes scour the shoreline for fish and fowl. A dragon's head carved out of wood adorns its stem. A creature like a man yet not one of humankind stands at the stem, searching as mist closes in around him. What manner of creature is he? What is he looking for?

But she knows as soon as she wonders, for within the vision she can see into the pumping mass of flesh veined with stone that serves him as a heart. He, too, is looking for Alain.

Mist sweeps in like a wave, blinding her. The tendrils that coil around her bum as brightly as if they are formed out of particles of fire. She sees into them and beyond them.

There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. Yet one among them sinks, weighted with mortality. This one falls, blazing, into a threshold composed of t\visting blue fire, the passageway between worlds. Through the gate this falling woman sees onto the middle world, the world known to humankind: there in the middle world, a huge tumulus ringed by half-ruined ramparts rests in silence. Dead warriors lie scattered along the rampart walls and curves. A killing wind has blown them every which way. Like leaves the dead lie tumbled up against a ring of fallen stones, some shattered, some cracked in half, that stands in ruins at the height of the hill.

Adica prays for the protection of the Fat One and the courage of the Queen of the Wild, though no words pass her lips
—
or if they do, she cannot hear them. She knows this hill and these ramparts, now worn away, crumbling under the hand of an immeasurable force she cannot name. She recognizes the ring of fallen stones, covered by lichen and drowned by age. It is Queens' Grave, but it is not the Queens' Grave she knows, with freshly dug ramparts ringing the queens' hill and a stone loom newly set in place on the summit in the time of her own parents.

It is Queens'Grave garbed as the Toothless One, the hag of old age. Its youth and maturity have long since been worn away by the bite of the seasons and the winds and the cold rain. It is like glimpsing herself as an aged woman, old and ruined and forgotten.

Yet one stone still stands within the stone loom. Clothed in blue-white fire, it shelters a dying warrior. Clothed in metal rings, slumped against the burning stone, he waits for death attended by t\vo spirits clothed in the forms of dogs. The falling woman cloaked with blazing wings of aetherial fire whirls past Adica's sight. She reaches for the dying warrior, and as she grasps him and pulls him after her, Adica recognizes Alain. But the blazing woman's grip tears -away, off his shoulders, and he is lost, torn off the path that leads to the land of the dead so that he walks neither in the world where he lived or on the path that should take him to the Other Side. He is lost, with his spirit guides crowded at his feet, for the space of a breath and a heartbeat, until the Holy One's magic, the binding power known to the Horse people, nets him and drags him in. He lands, bleeding, dying, and lost, on the great womb of the queens.

She gasped into awareness at the same moment his hand found her shoulder and closed there. He said her name and dropped down onto his knees behind her, his face wet against her neck.

"Alain," she whispered. She turned to face him, together on their knees, and he clung to her, or she to him; it was hard to tell and perhaps they clung to each other, flotsam washed in a vast wave off the sea.

It seemed to her then that they knelt not on stone but on a bed of grass, under the stars on a night made for mysteries. Trees surrounded them. Nearby a waterfall spilled softly onto moss-covered rocks. How they had come to this place she did not know, only that the wind breathed into her ears with certain subtle and alluring whispers. He held her tightly, and as she shifted, moving her arms on his back, his hands found other places to wander as well. He murmured under his breath, but though his words remained a mystery to her, the language of the body needed no words to convey its message.

He spoke in other, wordless ways: I ought not, but I want to. I am unsure, disquieted, yet my desire is strong.

This was the offering. Yet still he hesitated.

She had not become Hallowed One because she thought sluggishly. She groped for and found the rope that bound his linen tunic tight at his waist, and when he kissed her, she unbound this crude belt so that the linen fell askew. She slipped her fingers down through his, twining their hands together, and with her free hand bound the rope around their clasped hands, once, twice, and a third time. She knew the words well enough:
With this binding, we will holdfast together.