The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 301

No worse off, as long as he didn’t think about Lavastine and Tallia. As long as he just kept walking each day, talking each day, working and eating and sleeping as though another Alain who had never known any life but this one inhabited his body, that empty shell, scoured and scalded by the lie that had ruined Lavastine’s hopes. For he had no doubt that God was punishing him for the lie. And yet, given the choice again with Lavastine at his last breath, he would do it again, over and over again, every time, just to hear that beloved voice say: Done well.

Sorrow nipped at him, and he began to weep, but he struggled against it. He rubbed his face hard with the back of a hand, obliterating the tears. He knew where weeping would lead. He had to keep walking without looking back.

Ai, God. The innocent boy dreaming in Osna village would have given anything to march among the Lions, bent eastward toward adventure and the glory of righteous war.

Ai, God. That innocent boy had given everything: the only home and family he knew, the only woman he loved, the father who had loved him and died at peace because he had given everything he had into the hands of the heir he trusted.

All in ruins.

He sank to his knees, had to support himself on the ground with his spear fallen to the track beside him as he fought against the sobs that welled up in his chest. He could not weep. He must not weep. But he was drowning, swimming in grief, lost as the waves swamped him. Bodies jostled against him as though to lift him out of the tide

as he looks over the shoulder of Namms Dale’s new chieftain. There were few sons of the old chief left to choose from, after the conflagration visited upon Namms Dale by Nokvi, but Stronghand has been patient in gathering up a stray ship here and a pack of warriors there. Now one of Namms Dale’s surviving children has risen to take the staff of leadership. He has given himself the name Grimstroke and, like Bloodheart, he has chosen to observe the death magic ceremony.

Like Bloodheart, he has called his underlings together to witness his ceremony, to give notice that he does not fear death and treachery because treachery will rebound with greater force upon any person who dares to assassinate him.

But in truth, only one who fears death and doubts his own strength resorts to the death magic spell. Bloodheart revenged himself in this way upon the man who brought about his death. But the curse is a sign of weakness, not of strength. Bloodheart, after all, is still dead.

Stronghand watches as Grimstroke extrudes a claw and unhooks a tiny jar carved out of granite. Only stone can contain the venom of the ice-wyrms. The delicate granite lid falls back, and at once Hakonin’s hall is permeated with the scent of the only death a RockChild fears. Only a single grain of silvery venom lies in the jar, but it alone is enough poison.

The Namms Dale priest shakes a rattle and tosses a handful of herbs into the air. The herbs drift down onto the altar where corpse and jar lie side by side. The dead hatchling is no bigger than a man’s hand, and as white as roe. One pinch of a claw would slice it in half. It reeks of salt and seawater.

Only through killing does a hatchling become a RockChild instead of remaining forever a dog. In each nest, some of the blind hatchlings turn upon the others while most merely escape to live their short lives in the dog pack, the unthinking brothers of those who walk and plan. It is mind that separates a son from a dog, thinking that makes one a person and another simply a beast. In the nests of the Mothers, it is that first blind, groping kill that makes a mind flower.

And when the nests burst open and the hatchlings stumble out, corpses remain behind, caught in the ragged membrane. They soak there in brine, untended, unobserved, undecayed—

—unless a new chieftain fears death enough to risk the trek to the lair of the ice-wyrms, so that he can weave the death magic: the dead hand that will stalk the one who killed him and bring about the murderer’s death as recompense, a death for a death.

The priest lights incense, and the scent of it is so sweet that it stings, but it does not vanquish the smell of the grain of venom. With pincers forged of iron, Grimstroke lifts the grain from the jar and gently deposits it into the gaping, unformed mouth of the tiny corpse.

There is silence in the hall as Grimstroke’s underlings wait and watch. But there are other chieftains in the hall, from other tribes, whom Stronghand has called together to witness the rebirth of the Namms Dale chieftainship. It is his way of overturning Nokvi’s victory, of calling notice that he, Stronghand, will say who lives and who dies, who will flower and who will merely bark at his heels like a dog. Yet he needs these same allies to defeat Nokvi. And they need him. Alone, they will be sucked one by one into Nokvi’s jaws to become puppets dancing to the tune of human magic. They all know what transpired when Rikin’s tribe raided Moerin, that the Alban sorcerers ensorcelled their own human brothers to charge as berserkers into a battle they could not win. Perhaps some even hoped Stronghand would die there, caught in Nokvi’s trap, but he did not. They know now that Nokvi’s alliance with the Alban tree sorcerers threatens them all, and that they have no protection against Nokvi’s magic unless they join with Rikin.