PROLOGUE (7 page)

"Who are you?" she asked.” What is your name, if you can share it?"

His eyes widened with surprise. He replied, but the words that came out of his mouth sounded like no language she had ever heard. Perhaps this was the language spoken in the land of the dead, incomprehensible to those who walked in the middle world known by the living.

He pushed unsteadily up to hands and knees, sat back on his thighs, and suddenly realized that he was naked. He grabbed for the tangled cloth lying an arm's length away, but when his fingers closed on a patch still wet with blood, he recoiled with a cry and scrambled backward, looking around as if to seek the aid of the Holy One.

No trace of the Holy One remained within the stone loom. Her owl, too, had vanished.

"Come," she said, extending her hands with palms up and open in the sign of peace.” Nothing will harm you here."

The dogs had not moved, so he settled down cross-legged, hands cupped modestly over his lap. To show that she was a human woman, she took off the golden antlers and unbound the bronze waistband, setting them to one side. He watched her with a wary respect but without the fear that dogged every glance thrown her way by the villagers she had grown up with and lived beside for the whole of her life. Either he was still confused, or he was simply not afraid. Yet if he had walked the path that leads into the land of the dead, then perhaps he no longer feared any fate that might overtake him in the land of the living.

The smell of blood hung heavily in the air. The garments that lay in a jumble in the grass were stained with bright-red heart's blood, just now beginning to dry and darken. The dogs showed no sign of injury, and although he bore a fresh pink scar under his ribs, quite a nasty wound, it was cleanly healed and wasn't weeping.

Where had the blood come from?

"Do these belong to you?" she asked, cautiously reaching out to touch the closest garment. The wool shone with a brilliant madder gold, and when she shook it out, she recognized under the bloody stain the image of a spirit fixed to the gold garment: a lean and powerful lion woven of black threads set into the gold.

He jerked away from the sight. His face was so expressive, as if his soul permeated all of his physical being from the core to the surface rather than being lodged in some deep recess, as was true for most people. Perhaps he wasn't a person at all but the actual soul, manifest on the physical plane, of the warrior who had once worn these garments and who had died in them. Perhaps he had killed the man who had worn them, and now recoiled from the memory of violence.

She examined a second garment of undyed wool, bloodier even than the lion cloth, that lay crumpled to one side. Beneath it lay a leather belt incised with smaller lions, fastened by a bronze buckle also fashioned in the image of a lion's snarling face. Foot coverings cunningly molded out of soft leather lay in a heap with lengths of cloth and strips of leather that were, she realized, fine leggings.

Where had his people learned such craft? Why had they not joined the alliance of humankind against the Cursed Ones?

Beneath the clothing lay a garment woven of tiny metal rings, pale in color, yet not silver, or tin, or bronze, or copper. It was heavy. The rings sang in a thousand voices as she lifted them. They had a hard and unforgiving smell. Like the lion coat, the garment had holes that would accommodate a head and arms, and it was long enough to fall to the knees. Perhaps it was not metal at all, but a magical spell of protection made physical, curled and dense, to protect the body. Her shoulders ached from the strain of holding it as she set it down and picked up the knife that lay hidden underneath.

Not stone, not copper, not bronze: the metallic substance of this knife had none of the implacable fire of the bronze sword she had taken from the corpse of the Cursed One. It was blind, with a heartless soul as cold as the winter snows, as ruthless as the great serpents who writhed in the depths of the sea and swallowed whole the curraghs in which the fisherfolk plied their trade: having hunger, it feasted, and then settled back in quiet satiation to wait until it hungered again.

Magic was the blood of these garments. Was it any surprise that blood stained them all?

She looked back at him, hoping, even fearing, to find an answer in his expression. But in the way of any young woman who has gone too long without pleasure, she only noticed his body.

He was quite obviously not a child, to run naked in the summer.” Wait here," she said, making gestures to show him that she meant to go and return.

As she rose, her string skirt slid revealingly around her thighs, and he blushed, everywhere, easy to see on his fair skin. She looked away quickly, to hide her hope. Did he find her attractive? Had the Holy One truly brought her a mate? She gathered up her regalia and hurried away to her shelter, storing antlers and waistband in the chest and returning to him with the linen shirt draped over her arms.

He still sat cross-legged but with his head bowed and resting on his cupped hands. Hearing her, he lifted his head. Tears ran down his face. Truly, then, he wasn't actually dead, because the dead could not weep.

She set the garment on the ground in front of him and took a few steps away, turning her back so that if he had any secret rituals he had to perform, crossing the threshold of nakedness into civilization, she would not disturb him. There was silence, except for the wind and the rustle and scrape of his movements. Then he coughed, clearing his throat, and she turned around.

The tunic draped loosely over his chest, falling to just above his knees. Amazingly, he stood as tall as Beor. The southern tribes, and the Cursed Ones, commonly stood shorter than the people of the Deer clans. Only the Horse people, with their bodies made half of human form and half of horse, stood taller.

Through a complicated and awkward ritual of gesturing, he indicated himself and spoke a word. She tried it one way on her tongue and then another, and he laughed suddenly, very sweetly, and she looked into his eyes and smiled at him, but she was first to look away. Fire flared in her cheeks; her heart burned in her. He was not precisely handsome. He looked very different than the men she knew. His features were rather narrowed, his forehead a

little flatter, his cheek was marked with the blemish, and his hair was almost as dark as that of the Cursed Ones, but as fine as spun flax.

He spoke his name again, more slowly, and one of the big dogs barked as if to answer him.

"Halahn," she said.

"Alain," he agreed good-naturedly.

"I am named Adica," she said.” Ah-dee-cah."

Her name was easier for him to say than his had been for her. When she smiled at him, this time he was the one who blushed and looked away.

"What must we do with the treasure you brought with you?" She gestured toward the heap of garments. A small leather pouch lay off to one side, its thong broken. Underneath it rested a peg no longer than a finger that resembled one of the wooden pins used to fasten together joints at the corners of houses. The peg had been fashioned by magic out of the same heartless metal that made up the coat of rings.

The rusty red of old blood stained the tiny nail. Like the knife, it, too, had a soul, crabbed and devious and even a little whiny in the way of a spoiled child.

He choked out a sound as he staggered backward and dropped to his knees. Did he fear the nail's soul, or had it felled him with an invisible malignance? She quickly concealed it in the pouch. With an effort he got up, but only to retreat to the edge of the loom, bracing himself on one of the guardian stones, shoulders bowed as under the weight of a powerful emotion.

She gathered together the garments and hid them in the shallow grave next to the bronze sword and armor she had taken from the Cursed One. Finally, she returned to him.” Come."

He and his dogs followed obediently behind her. Now and again he spoke to the dogs in a gentle voice. He halted beside the shelter to examine the superstructure of saplings and branches, the hide walls, the pegs and leather thongs that held everything in place.

"This is where I sleep," she said.

He smiled so disarmingly that she had to glance away. Had the Holy One seen right into her heart? Impulsively, she leaned into him and touched her cheek to his. He smelled faintly of blood but
child
or
flame
far more of roses freshly blooming. His scant beard was as soft as petals.

Startled, he leaped back. His cheeks were so red and she was so overcome by her own rudeness, and the speed of her attraction to him, that she hurriedly climbed the nearest rampart to look out over the village and the fields, the river and the woodland and beyond these the distant ancient forest, home to beasts and spirits and every manner of wolf and wild thing.

The dogs barked. She looked back to see them biting at Alain's heels, driving him after her. He slapped at their muzzles, unafraid of their huge jaws, but he followed her, pausing halfway up to examine the slope of the rampart and exposed soil, and to study the layout of the hill and the span of earthworks that ringed it. Then he halted beside her to survey the village below, ringed by the low stockade, the people working the fields, the lazy river, and a distant flock at the edge of the woodlands that would either be young Urta with her goats or Deyilo, who shepherded his family's sheep. He spoke a rush of words, but she understood nothing except his excitement as he pointed toward the village and started down, half sliding in the dirt in his haste. She watched him at first, the way he moved, the way he balanced himself, sure and graceful. He wasn't brawny like Beor, all power and no grace, the bull rampaging in the corral, yet neither had he Dorren's reticent movements, made humble by lacking all the parts necessary to an adult's labor. He was young and whole, and she wanted him because he wasn't afraid of her, because he was pleasingly formed, because she was lonely, and because there was something more about him, that scent of roses, that she couldn't explain even to herself.

Hastily, she followed, and he had the good manners to wait, or perhaps he had seen by her regalia that she was the Hallowed One of this tribe and therefore due respect. No adult carelessly insulted a hallowed adult of any tribe.

Everyone came running to see. He stared at them no less astounded, at their faces, their clothing, and their questions, which ran off him like water. Adults left their fields to come and watch. Children crowded around, so amazed that they even jostled Adica in their haste to peer upon the man. After their initial caution toward the huge dogs, they swarmed over them as well. Remarkably, the huge dogs merely settled down as patiently as oxen, with expressions of wounded dignity.

Into this chaos ran a naked girl, Getsi, one of the granddaughters of Orla.

"Hallowed One! Come quickly. Mother Orla calls you to the birthing house!"

Cold fear gripped Adica's heart. Only one woman in the village was close to her birthing time: her age mate and friend, Weiwara. She found her cousin Urtan in the crowd.” This man is a friend to our tribe. Treat him with the hospitality due to a stranger."

"Of course, Hallowed One."

She left, running with Getsi. The cords of her string skirt flapped around her, bouncing, the bronze sleeves that capped the ends chiming like discordant voices calling out the alarm. As she ran, she prayed to the Fat One, words muttered on gasps of air: "Let her not die, Fat One. Let it not be my doom which brings doom onto the village in this way."

The birthing house lay outside of the village, upstream on high ground beside the river. A fence ringed it, to keep out foraging pigs, obdurate goats, and children. Men knew better than to pass beyond the fence. An offering of unsplit wood lay outside the gate. Looking back toward the village, Adica saw Weiwara's husband coming, attended by his brothers.

She closed the gate behind her and stamped three times with each foot just outside the birthing house. Then she shook the rattle tied to the door and crossed the threshold, stepping right across the wood frame so as not to touch it with any part of her foot. Only the door and the smoke hole gave light inside. Weiwara sat in the birthing stool, deep in the birth trance, eyes half closed as she puffed and grunted, half on the edge of hysteria despite Mother Orla's soothing chanting. Weiwara had birthed her first child three summers ago, and as every person knew, the first two birthings were the most dangerous: if you survived them, then it was likely that the gods had given their blessing upon you and your strength.

Adica knelt by the cleansing bowl set just inside the threshold and washed her hands and face in water scented with lavender oil. Standing, she traced a circular path to each of the corners of the birthing house in turn, saying a blessing at each corner and brushing it with a cleansing branch of juniper as Weiwara's panting and blowing continued and Mother Orla chanted in her reedy voice. Orla's eldest daughter, Agda, coated her hands in grease also scented with lavender, to keep away evil spirits. Agda beckoned to Adica with the proper respect, and Adica crept forward on her knees to kneel beside the other woman. Getsi began the entering rituals, so that she, too, could observe and become midwife when her age mates became women.