Manure from the byres was being carted out to the most distant fields in preparation for the winter. Beor and his cousins were slaughtering a dozen swine to feed the war parties, camped up beyond the embankment, and his sister had just brought up a big pot of hot boiled barley to catch blood for a black pudding. Young Deyilo tended a flock of geese out on the stubble of a harvested field.
Getsi appeared with a covered basket. She had grown a hand in height since Adica had last seen her, and the shape of her face had begun to change. In another year she would approach womanhood. But Adica would not be the woman guiding her across that threshold.
“What do you have there?” she asked the girl, more sharply than she intended.
“My mother has been collecting herbs and flowers for you. Where shall I set them?”
“Here, Daughter,” she replied, a little shamefaced pointing to the ground just in front of the door. “Your mother will have my thanks. This thatch needs beating. You’ve had a frost that loosened it.”
“It’s been cold early this year,” agreed Getsi. “I’ll get my sister to come do it. My mother says I’m not strong enough to do it right yet.”
“You’ll soon be.”
Getsi smiled, careful not to look her in the eyes, and loped off back to the village, lithe and eager.
Best to keep busy, and not to think on what she had lost. She completed her circuit of the birthing house before kneeling down before the basket, uncovering it. A rush of scent billowed up, dust dancing as wind caught and worried at dried summer milfoil, placed at the top. Beneath them she found small woven pouches containing flower petals or juniper berries, and beneath these butterwort, betony, and mint leaves, the bundled stalks of tansy and five-leafed silverweed, as well as lavender so fragile that it crumbled at a touch. She laid the contents of one of the pouches on her knees to sort it, sheltering the light petals from the breeze: eglantine and wild rose, made pale by age.
A horn call blared: the alarm from the village, a triple blast to call every person in to the safety of the walls. Shocked, she simply froze, lifting her head to stare as children shrieked and men and women dropped what they were doing and went running.
The horn sounded again, a single blast followed by silence, followed by another short blast. She heard shouts and cries turn from alarm to amazement as people streamed out of the gates, running to meet what a moment ago they had been running from.
Still she did not move.
A dozen horsemen appeared around the southern flank of the great tumulus, the Queens’ Grave. In the next instant she saw they were not horsemen but the Horse people. One of them carried a rider, a human like herself. Running among the centaurs came two huge black hounds.
Petals slid unheeded down her thighs, catching in the cords of her skirt. Never could she mistake him for anyone but himself, nor would she ever mistake another man for him. She leaped up, rose petals falling in clouds around her, trailing after her, as she ran to meet him.
He pushed through the crowd gathered to stare at the centaur women. They gave way, seeing his purpose. Breaking free, he hurried forward and caught her in his arms, holding her as tightly as if he never meant to let her go, his face pressed against her hair.
He said nothing. She wept helpless tears of joy and relief, and after a while he pulled back to kiss them away, although even he could not catch every one.
“Hush, Adica. I am come safely home. The Holy One is rescued. We couldn’t return south to get you because of the war, but when we learned that Queen Shuashaana had already sent you home, my friends agreed to bring me here. All is well, my love. All is as it should be.”
“I love you,” she said through her tears as the hounds bounded up, great bodies wriggling like those of pups in their eagerness to get a greeting from her. “I was so afraid I had lost you.”
“Never,” he promised her as he embraced her again. “Never.”
Held within that warm embrace, she knew she would not falter now, not even when it came time to walk forward to the death that awaited her. She would not go gladly, never that, but she could go with unhesitating steps because she had been granted strength and joy by the gift of love.
2
PALACES floated on a river of fire, each linked to the last by means of bridges as bright as polished gold. At intervals brilliant sparks flew up from the river of fire in the same way sparks scatter and die when a blacksmith strikes molten iron with a hammer. These sparks lit on her body as she met the embrace of a host of creatures, daimones whose substance was made entirely of fire.
Where they touched her, crowding around, she burned. Her hands burned, her skin burned, and fire from within broke the bonds of the binding Da had wrapped around her so many years before. He had tried to seal her away from herself. He had crippled her for so many years, but in this place his magic held no power. Sparks pierced the locked door behind which Da had hidden her soul, melting the lock until the door swung wide and vanished in a cloud of steam, and she burned until her flesh was consumed and fire within met fire without.
