Child of Flame Read online

  Praise for the CROWN OF STARS series:

  “… the first volume of Elliott’s new high fantasy… proves an entirely captivating affair… a resounding narrative revolving around three appealing protagonists…”

  —Publishers Weekly starred review

  “A break-out book… a grand and powerful piece of writing… what really counts are her characters. They keep the plot moving irresistibly forward and draw us into her work.”

  —Katharine Kerr, author of The Black Raven

  “The saga’s world is exceedingly well built (including a working economy, for instance), its pacing is brisk enough to keep the pages fluttering…. This certainly could become one of the best multivolume fantasies—fans take note!”

  —Booklist

  “There’s a bone-deep reality to the world that informs its people in both the small details and the large. Elliott has a strong ability to create a sense of other that is nonetheless human and compelling; one of the best arguments for the value of multivolume works.”

  —The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “A complex fantasy world with intriguing parallels to European history, colorful characters, and plenty of action and magic.”

  —Locus

  “Elliott weaves together the destinies of star-crossed lovers, ambitious churchmen, and barbarian invaders in a dazzling medieval fantasy set in an alternate Europe. Reminiscent of Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series, this engrossing saga should appeal to fantasy lovers and fans of historical epics alike.”

  —Library Journal

  Other DAW Novels by

  KATE ELLIOTT

  Crown of Stars:

  KING’S DRAGON (Volume One)

  PRINCE OF DOGS (Volume Two)

  THE BURNING STONE (Volume Three)

  CHILD OF FLAME (Volume Four)

  THE GATHERING STORM (Volume Five)

  IN THE RUINS (Volume Six)

  CROWN OF STARS (Volume Seven)

  The Novels of the Jaran:

  JARAN

  AN EARTHLY CROWN

  HIS CONQUERING SWORD

  THE LAW OF BECOMING

  &

  with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson

  THE GOLDEN KEY

  Child

  of

  Flame

  VOLUME FOUR

  OF

  CROWN OF STARS

  Kate Elliott

  DAW BOOKS, INC.

  DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

  SHEILA E. GILBERT

  PUBLISHERS

  www.dawbooks.com

  Copyright © 2000 by Katrina Elliott.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-63982-5

  Cover art by Jody A. Lee.

  Map by Michael Gilbert.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1164.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam, Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://www.sff.net/people/Kate.Elliott

  First Paperback Printing, November 2001

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The material that makes up the Crown of Stars series was originally intended to be a trilogy with a sequel trilogy to follow. As so often happens in writing, it didn’t turn out quite the way I had planned, since once I got started I discovered that I had more plot than I had at first realized.

  Some of the material I hoped to use I simply cut and set aside for another time, including one entire subplot that takes place among the Quman tribes.

  The rest comprises a single series now made up of five (or six) volumes which turned out to be the best way to organize the volumes so that I could maintain the quality of the writing as well as keep the publication dates relatively close together. The final volume in the Crown of Stars series will be titled “Crown of Stars.”

  I do, of course, leave open the possibility of returning to the Crown of Stars world for a later saga. Some day I hope to tell the story of Kereka, the Quman chieftain’s daughter who wants to be a man.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A bad bout of tendinitis caused an unfortunate amount of delay as I worked on this manuscript.

  I would like to thank my publishers for their patience, M. J. Kramer for not just once but twice on short notice typing in my hand-scrawled revisions when I could not, and especially my agent Russ Galen for his exceptional support.

  As usual, I must thank Jay Silverstein for input and feedback, as well as the usual suspects: Jeanne Reames Zimmerman, Sherwood Smith, M. J. Kramer, Katharine Kerr, Constance Ash, and my editor, Sheila Gilbert. I spent many wonderful and enlightening hours in the National Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and you will, I think, see the stamp of those hours in this book. If Adica has any progenitor beyond that of my imagination, it is the Egtved girl.

  To my readers: thank you for waiting.

  Dedicated to the memory of Arnold Bodtker, 1904-2000.

  “It does make a difference as to what we know and believe, and how we live with what we know and believe.”

  MAP LEGEND

  1. Heart’s Rest

  2. Lavas

  3. Autun

  4. Gent

  5. Osterburg

  6. Walburg

  7. Darre

  8. Handelburg

  9. Queens’ Grave

  10. Cackling Skerries

  11. Hefenfelthe

  12. Sliesby

  13. Novomo

  14. Machteburg

  A. Veser River

  B. Oder River

  C. Nysa River

  D. Rhowne River

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  THE FLOWER TRAIL

  I The Hallowed One

  II Many Meetings

  III Twisting the Belt

  IV Judgement in Haste

  PART TWO

  QUEEN’S GRAVE

  V In the Afterlife

  VI A Company of Thistles

  VII A Death Sentence

  VIII Unknown Country

  PART THREE

  THE VALE OF ICE

  IX A Slice of Apple

  X Beyond the Veil

  XI The Noise of Their Waking

  XII Deep Waters

  XIII A Vision of Times Long Past

  PART FOUR

  A MIRROR ON THE EAST

  XIV Jedu’s Angry Lair

  XV Eagle’s Sight

  XVI Into the Darkness

  XVII Poison

  XVIII The Field of Blood

  XIX The Unveiling

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  OFF to the southeast, thunder rolled on and on. But in the broad ditch where three youths and two gravely injured soldiers had taken refuge from the battle, the rain had, mercifully, slackened. A wind out of the north blew the clouds away, revealing the waxy light of a full moon.

  Ivar listened to the sounds of battle carried by the breeze. They’d scrambled down into the ditch from an embankment above, hoping to escape the notice of their enemies. They hadn’t found safety, only a moment’s respite, caught as they were behind the enemy’s line. The Quman warriors would sweep down from the earthen dike and slaughter them, then cut off their heads to use as belt ornaments. Or, at least, that’s what Baldw
in seemed to think as he babbled confusedly about Quman soldiers searching the huge tumulus and its twisting embankments, lighting their way with torches.

  From his place down in the slippery mud at the bottom of the ditch, Ivar didn’t see torches. There was a lambent glow emanating from the crown of the hill, but it didn’t look like any torchlight he had ever seen.

  Sometimes, when a situation was really bad and there was nothing you could do about it, it was just better not to know.

  “Careful,” whispered Ermanrich. “This whole end is filled with water. God’s mercy! It’s like ice.”

  “Come on, Dedi, come on, lad,” coaxed the older of the two wounded Lions to his young companion, but the other man didn’t rouse. Probably he was already dead.

  Ivar found the water’s edge, cupped his hands, and drank. The cold cleared his head for the first time since he had lost his fingers, and finally he could sit back and survey just how bad their predicament was.

  Moonlight cast a glamour over the scene. The pool of water had formed up against a steep precipice, the face of the hillside. Over the course of uncounted years a trickling cataract had worn away the cliff face to expose two boulders capped by a lintel stone. Starlight caught and glimmered in one of the stones, revealing a carving half concealed behind tendrils of moss. Ivar negotiated the pool’s edge so as not to get his feet wet—not that he wasn’t already slopping filthy with mud—and traced the ancient lines: they formed a human figure wearing the antlers of a stag.

  “Look!” Baldwin pushed aside the thick curtain of moss draping down over the stones to unveil a tunnel that cut into the hillside.

  Their side had lost the battle anyway, and they were cut off from Prince Bayan’s retreating army and all their comrades, those who had survived. How could an ancient tumulus be worse than the Quman? Ivar squeezed past the opening, wading in. Cold water poured down into his boots, soaking his leggings and making his toes throb painfully. He couldn’t see a thing.

  A body brushed against him. “Ivar! Is that you, Ivar?”

  “Of course it’s me! I heard a rumor that the Quman fear water. Maybe we can hide here, unless this pool gets too deep.” The ground seemed firm enough, and the water wasn’t deeper than his knees. Plunging his arm into the freezing water, he groped for and found a stone, tossed it. The plop rang hollow. Water dripped steadily ahead of them.

  Something living scuffled, deep in the heart of the tumulus.

  “What was that?” hissed Baldwin, grabbing Ivar’s arm.

  “Ow! You’re pinching me!”

  It was too late. Their voices had already woken the restless dead. A wordless groan echoed through the pitch-black tunnel.

  “Oh, God.” Ivar clutched at Baldwin’s arm. “It’s a barrow. We’ve walked into a burial pit and now we’ll be cursed.”

  But the voice made words they recognized, however distorted they might be by the stone and the drip of water. “Iss i-it you? Iss i-it Ermanrich’ss friendss?”

  “L-Lady Hathumod?” stammered Baldwin.

  “Ai, t-thank the Lady!” Her relief was evident despite the blurs and echoes. “Poor Ssigfrid wass wounded in the arm and we got losst, and—and I prayed to God to show me a ssign. And then we fell in here. But it’ss dry here where we are, and I think the tunnel goess farther into the hill, but I wass too afraid to go on by ourselvess.”

  “Now what do we do?” whined Baldwin softly.

  “Let’s get the others and we’ll go as deep as we can into the hill.

  The Quman will never dare follow us through this water. After a day or two they’ll go away, and we can come out.”

  “Just like that?” demanded Baldwin.

  “Just like that. You’ll see.”

  They trudged back to the mossy entrance, where they found Ermanrich shuddering and coughing as he clawed at the moss.

  “Ai, God! There you are! I thought you’d been swallowed.” He heaved a ragged sigh, then went on in a low voice, making a joke of his fear and relief. “Maybe even the hills think Baldwin is handsome enough to eat, but I don’t know what they’d be wanting with an ugly redheaded sot like you, Ivar.”

  “Dirt is blind, otherwise you’d never get inside. Come on.” Ivar waded over to the conscious Lion. “Friend, can you walk?”

  “So I can, a bit, lad. But Dedi, here—” The old Lion got suddenly hoarse.

  “We’ll carry him,” said Ivar hastily. “But let’s get him out of that mail first. Ermanrich, give me a hand, will you? Baldwin, you help the Lion in, and keep ahead of him in case there’s any pits.”

  “Pits? What if I fall into a bottomless hole?”

  “Baldwin, we haven’t got time! Here.” He found the unconscious Lion’s sword sheath. “Take this sword and use it to feel your way forward.”

  Amazingly, Baldwin obeyed without further objection. He helped the old Lion to his feet and steadied the soldier as he hobbled to the tunnel.

  It wasn’t easy to get mail off an unconscious man.

  “I think he’s already dead,” Ermanrich whispered several times, but in the end they wrestled him out of his armor.

  Nor was it easy to haul him in through the tunnel even without his armor. He was a big man, well muscled, so badly injured that he was a complete dead weight. Luckily, the water did not rise past their thighs before an upward slope brought them shivering out of the water onto dry ground. The weight of the hill pressed above them. Dirt stung Ivar’s nostrils, and his mutilated hand burned with pain.

  “Thank God,” said Baldwin out of the darkness.

  Ivar and Ermanrich set down the unconscious soldier, none too gently, and Ivar straightened up so quickly that he banged his head hard against the stone ceiling. The pain made tears flow, and in a way he did want just to sit down and cry because everything had been such a disaster. He really had thought they’d win the battle. Prince Bayan’s and Princess Sapientia’s troops had looked so magnificent arrayed against the Quman army, and even the dreaded Margrave Judith had ridden out with such a strong host that it seemed impossible that everything had fallen apart, including their line. Prince Ekkehard had vanished in the maelstrom, his companions were scattered or dead, and they were all that was left. Probably they were the last remnant of Bayan’s army left on this side of the river: two badly injured soldiers, four novice monks, and one lost nun.

  The battle had started very late in the afternoon, and now night settled over them. Two hours at the most separated them from that glorious place where they’d waited at the front of the right flank, ready to sweep into battle. It just didn’t seem possible everything had gone wrong so fast.

  But meanwhile, someone had to go back to make sure that the Quman hadn’t followed them under the hill. Cold, wet, and shivering, Ivar braced himself for the shock of wading back into the water that drowned the lower reaches of the tunnel. His leggings already clung to him like icy leeches, and his toes had gone numb from cold.

  A hand snaked out of the darkness to grab at his sleeve. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Baldwin asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Nay. It’s better if I go alone. If something happens to me, it’ll take you and Ermanrich and Lady Hathumod to carry the injured Lion.”

  Baldwin leaned closer. Despite the long weeks of travel in harsh conditions, the terror of a losing battle waged as afternoon gave way to dusk, and the desperation of their scramble over the ancient earthworks, Baldwin’s breath was still as sweet as that of a lord sitting in pleasant splendor in his rose garden, drinking a posset of mead flavored with mint. “I’d rather be dead than go on without you.”

  “We’ll all be dead if the Quman find that armor and figure out that we’re hiding in this tunnel. Just stay here, Baldwin, I beg you.”

  Behind, in the stygian blackness, Sigfrid’s gentle voice fell and rose in a melismatic prayer. Somehow, the darkness warped time. Hadn’t it just been moments ago that they had stumbled upon that hidden opening? It seemed like hours.

  Beneath
Sigfrid’s quiet prayer Ivar heard Hathumod murmuring words he couldn’t quite make out. She was answered, in turns, by monosyllabic grunts from the old Lion and whispered questions from Ermanrich. He could not see, not even Baldwin, who stood right next to him. He felt them, though, huddled together like frightened rats under the weight of earth and rock.

  He took the unconscious Lion’s sword from Baldwin and tested the grip with his good hand, squeezed and relaxed until the leather grip gave enough to fit the curve of his hand. With gritted teeth, he surged forward into the water and shuddered all over again as the tunnel floor plunged down and the icy water enveloped his legs.

  With the sword drawn tightly against his left leg, Ivar approached the entrance in relative silence. He smelled the distant stench of the battlefield. Night crows cried far away, alerting their cousins to the banquet. A pebble rolled under his boot, and he grunted softly, balancing himself. The wound on his right hand scraped stone. He caught back a gasp of pain as a hot trickle of blood bled free. Pain stabbed up his hand, and he stumbled forward. The stumps of his missing fingers, shorn off right at the second knuckle, jabbed into a moist tapestry of moss. Tears streamed from his eyes and made salty runnels over his lips. After a while, the pain subsided enough for him to think.

  He had reached the entrance. Cautiously, with his good hand, he fingered the tendrils of moss which streaked the crumbling entrance. Behind this curtain he waited, listening. He couldn’t see anything, not even the sky. It seemed as dark beyond the curtain concealing the tomb’s entrance as it had deep within. The heavy scent of damp and earth and wet moss shrouded his world.

  But he could hear the distant murmur of a host moving, hooves, shouts, one poor soul screaming, the detritus of movement that betrays two armies unwinding one from the other as the battle ebbs and dies.

  From close by, he heard a grunt, a low breathing mutter.

  The sword shifted in his hand before he was aware he had changed his stance. The Lion’s discarded armor spoke with that voice granted to all things born of metal: when hands disturbed it, it replied in a chiming voice.