Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4) Page 28

“Even a single drop of your blood on the parched earth will waken things better left sleeping,” the old sorcerer had said, “and every soul left in this land will know that you are here.”

The bleeding subsided, the serpent slithered away deeper into the thorns, but her thoughts continued to scatter and drop.

He meant to keep her a secret. But whether he thought she was a threat to his people, or they to her, she could not tell. As the salty tang of blood mixed with saliva on her tongue, she wondered what would happen when her monthly courses came in another hand’s span of days, or if they even would, without the influence of the moon upon her body.

Wind stirred the rope hanging loose behind her. The sun beat down, hot and heavy, on her back. The fog had led her not to the end of the world but simply to an unknown place not markedly different from the highland forest.

She stood at the edge of a plunging hillside. A broad valley ringed by highlands opened before her. On the far side of the valley’s bowl rose a saw-toothed mountain range. High peaks, denuded of snow, towered above the wide valley. A road ran along the valley floor below her, leading into a magnificent city that spanned a dried-up lakebed. It was the largest conglomeration of buildings she had ever seen, greater even than the imperial city of Darre. From this vantage point, and through air so clear that she could see the ridgelines in each of the distant peaks, she traced the city’s layout as though it were an architect’s study rolled out on a table.

Plazas, pyramids, and platforms, great courtyards flanked by marketplaces, houses arranged like flowers around rectangular pools, all of these were linked together by sludge-ridden waterways that had once, perhaps, been canals. Tiered stone gardens and islets lay desolate, furrowed by untended fields. Bridges spanned inlets and narrow straits that divided the island city into districts. Three causeways stretched across the dead lakebed, marking roads into the city.

Bleached like bone, the buildings had been laid out in an arrangement so harmonious that she wondered whether the city had been built to conform to the lake’s shallows and bays, or the lake dug and shaped to enhance the city. From this distance the city appeared deserted, empty buildings set in a vast wasteland of drained, cracking ground.

At that moment, she became aware of a solitary figure moving slowly along the road below her. It halted, suddenly, and turned as if it had felt her breath on its neck, although she stood far beyond any normal range of hearing. Its hand raised, beckoning to her, or gesturing with a curse.

The ground lurched under her feet. Stumbling backward, she pulled the rope in tight as she forged back into the fog. White swam around her, static and empty. Her foot hit a rock, and she reeled sideways, found herself up to her thighs in water. Salt spray stung her lips. Waves soughed on a pebbly shoreline, sucking and sighing over the rocks. Grassy dunes humped up beyond the beach. A gull screamed. Turning, she tugged hard on the rope and reeled herself in, one fist at a time, through the blinding fog.

When she staggered out onto the hillside, the watchtower rose before her and she fell to her knees in relief, gasping hard. Water puddled out from her soaked leggings, absorbed quickly into the parched soil.

“You are a fool, Eldest Uncle,” said a woman’s harsh voice. “You know the stories. They cannot help themselves. Already she has broken the small limits you set upon her. Already she gathers intelligence for her own kind, which they will use against us.”

The old sorcerer had a curt laugh. Although he was not a cynic, certainly he was not patient with anything he considered nonsense; this much she had learned about him in their short time together. “How can they use the knowledge of the borders against us, White Feather? There is but one human standing here among us. None but she has crossed through the gateways in all this time. Why do you suppose others intend to? Nay, she is alone, as I have told you. She is an outcast from her own kind.”

“So she would have you believe.”

“You are too suspicious.”

“Should I not be suspicious of humankind? You are too trusting, Eldest Uncle. It was those of our people who trusted humankind who laid down the path that brought us here. Had we not taught human magicians our secrets, they would not have gained the power to strike against us as they did.”

“Nay.” Liath saw them now, standing on her favorite ledge halfway up the ruined watchtower, looking down upon her like nobles passing judgment on their followers. “It was the shana-ret’z-eri who corrupted humankind, not us.”

“They would have overwhelmed us no matter what we had done,” agreed the woman. She wore a plain linen cloak, yellowed with age, that draped over her right shoulder and lapped her knees. Underneath, she wore a shift patterned with red lozenges and dots. A strap bound her brow; at the back, where her hair fell freely down her back, the strap had been ornamented with a small shield of white feathers. A heavy jade ring pierced her nose. “Humankind breeds offspring like to the mice, and disease in the manner of flies. We cannot trust them. You must bring her along to the council ground. The council will pass judgment.”