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ing before the cauldron, she waited with eyes closed as she breathed in the smell of dawn and heard its sounds: the distant roll of the lazy harvest river, the disgruntled baaing of goats, the many voices of the morning birds calling out their greetings to the waiting sun.
She heard the flutter of wings and felt the owl settle on the rim of the cauldron, but she dared not look up, for the Holy One’s messenger was a powerful creature full of so much magical force that even a glimpse of it could be fatal. A moment later hooves rang down a distant path of stone, then struck on a needle-strewn path, and finally the waist-high flax rustled as a large body passed through it. The warm breath of the Holy One brushed the hairs on the back of her neck. Her gold antlers stirred in the sweet wind of the Holy One’s presence.
“You have been crying, Adica.” Her voice was like the melody of the river, high and low at the same time. “I can smell the salt of your tears.”
Hadn’t they dried over the night? Yet surely it was impossible to hide anything from a shaman of the Horse people. “I have been lonely, Holy One. The road I walk is a solitary one.”
“Haven’t you a husband? I remember that you were not pleased when the elders of your village decreed that you should marry him.”
“They have taken him away, Holy One. Because death has lain its shadow over me, they fear that any person I touch will be touched by death as well.”
“Truly, there is wisdom in what they say.”
There was silence except for the wind and the throaty coo of a wood pigeon.
She glanced up to see the land opening up before her as the sun burned the mist off the river. Swifts dived and dipped along the slow current. People already worked out in the fields, harvesting barley and emmer. A girl drove goats past the fields toward the woodland.
The words slipped from her before she knew she meant to say them. “If only I had a companion, Holy One, then the task wouldn’t seem so hard. Of course I will not falter, but I’ll be alone for so long, waiting for the end.” She bit back the other words that threatened to wash free, borne up on a tide of loneliness and fear.
“I beg you, Holy One, forgive my rash words. I know my duty.”
“Alas, daughter, your duty is a hard one. Yet there must be seven who will stand when the time comes. Thus are you chosen.”
“Yes, Holy One,” she whispered.
Unlike the villagers she watched over, Adica had seen and spoken with people from distant lands. She knew that the land was broad and people few, and true humans fewer still. In the west lay fecund towns of fully fifty or more houses. The gray northern seas were icy and windswept, cold enough to drain the life from any human who tried to swim in them, yet in those icy waters lived sea people with hair composed of eels and teeth as sharp as obsidian. She had seen, far to the east, the forests of grass where lived the Holy One’s tribe, cousins to humankind and yet utterly different. She had even glimpsed the endless deserts of the southern tribes, where the people spoke as if they rolled stones in their mouths. She had seen the Cursed Ones’ fabled cities. She had seen their wondrous ships and barely escaped to tell of it. She had seen the Cursed Ones enslave villages and innocent tribes only to make their captives bow low before their bloodthirsty gods. She had seen what had happened to her teacher, who had joined the fight against the Cursed Ones only to be sacrificed on their altars.
“We are all slaves of the Cursed Ones, as long as the war they wage against us never ends.” The Holy One shifted, hooves changing weight as she backed up and then came forward again, the unseen weight of her massive body looming behind Adica. Once, when she was a child, Adica had seen the Holy One’s people catch up to and trample the last remnants of a scouting party of the Cursed Ones, and she had never lost that simple child’s awe of their size and power. As much as she feared the Cursed Ones’ magic, she was glad to be an ally of the Horse people, the ones who had been born out of the mating of a mare and a human man.
“Yet perhaps—” The Holy One hesitated. In that pause, hope whispered in Adica’s heart, but she was afraid to listen. “Perhaps there is a way to find one already touched by the hand of death who might be your companion. That way you would not be alone, and he would not be poisoned by your fate. You are youngest of the chosen ones, Adica. The others have lived long lives. You were meant to follow after your teacher, not to stand in her place at the great weaving. It is not surprising that you find it harder to walk toward the gate that leads to the Other Side.” Did a hand touch her, however briefly, brushing the nape of her neck? “Such a promise should not be beyond my powers.”
Hope battered her chest like a bird beating at the bars of its cage.
“Can you really do such a thing, Holy One?”
“We shall see.” It was painful to hope. In a way, it was a relief when the Holy One changed the subject. “Have you seen any child among the White Deer people who can follow after you, Adica?”
“I have not,” she murmured, even as the words thrust as a knife would, into her gut. “Nor would I have time to teach an apprentice everything she would need to know.”
“Do not despair, Child. I will not abandon your people.” A sharp hiss of surprise sounded, followed by the distant hoot of an owl. “I am called,” the Holy One said suddenly, sounding surprised. That quickly, her presence vanished.
Had the Holy One actually traveled through the gateway of the stones? Had she stood behind Adica in her own self? Or had she merely walked the path of visions and visited Adica in her spirit form? The Holy One was so powerful that Adica could never tell. Nor dared she ask.
Truly, humans had the smallest share of power on this earth. Yet if that were so, why did the Cursed Ones make war against them so unremittingly? Why did the Cursed Ones hate humankind so?
Wind clacked the bronze leaves of the cauldron. She thought, for an instant, that she could actually hear flowers unfurling as the sun rose.
A horn call blared: the alarm from the village.
With more haste than care, she hurried back to her tent, took off her holy garments, and ran down through the earthworks. She got to the gate of the village just as a slender girl with strong legs and a wiry guard dog in faithful attendance loped up. The girl threw message beads at the feet of Mother Orla, who had come to the gate in response to the summons.
Mother Orla’s hands were so gnarled that she could barely count off the message beads as she deciphered their meaning. She moved aside to allow Adica to stand beside her. At her great age, Orla did not fear evil spirits or death; they teased her already.
“A skirmish,” she said to those who assembled from all the houses of the villages. “The Cursed Ones have raided. From what village did you come, Swift?”
A child brought mead so strongly flavored with meadowsweet flowers that the smell of it made Adica’s mouth water. The Swift sipped at it carefully as she caught her breath. “I came from Two Streams, and from Pine Top, Muddy Walk, and Old Fort before that. The Cursed Ones attacked a settlement just beyond Four Houses. There were three people killed and two children carried away by the raiders.”
“Did any of Four Houses’ people go after them?” demanded Beor, shouldering up to the front. He’d been up early, hunting. He carried his sling in one hand. Two grouse, a partridge, and three ducks dangled from a string on the other. The guard dog nosed the dead birds, but the Swift batted it away until another child ran up with a nice meaty bone for the animal. It lay down and set to chomping.
