Smoothing down her hair, Raina headed over to the small crowd that had gathered around Anwyn Bird and Jebb Onnacre. The clan matron was handing out the booze: a half-dram of her five-year malt to anyone who fancied it. She was dressed rather curiously in many layers—a dress, a bodice, an overtunic and an elbow-length cape-all sparkly and richly embroidered and bearing no resemblance to each other. Two peacock feathers were stuck like pins in her hair. Acknowledging Raina with a flat nod, she said, "I believe you shut down my kitchen."
Raina's instinct was to apologize but she she stopped herself and there was an awkward silence as the two women faced each other over the upturned barrel containing the half-drams.
"You look like a queen," Jebb Onnacre said shyly to Raina, breaking the silence.
"She does" Anwyn agreed, her light blue eyes still intent upon Raina. "So we must forgive her for acting like one."
Poor Jebb. His two favorite women in the world were regarding each other coolly and he didn't know what to do about it. He made a hmm-ming noise, opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and then reached for a half-dram and downed it.
Raina and Anwyn laughed at exactly the same time. 'Thank you for the bath and the pretty stuff," Raina said to her.
"Good luck," Anwyn replied.
It would do. Raina left them and mingled with the growing crowd. People seemed to know not to greet her and offered instead brief bows of respect. It was getting cold now, the air dry and crisp. The green lights in the northern sky tantalized: Now you see us, now you don't.
Suddenly there was a soft popping sound and a ball of white light shot straight up into the air.
"Blackhail!" screamed Stannig Beade. "Attend the stone!"
Everyone fell silent, and began moving like a cinched thread toward the center of the greatcourt. Raina hurried around them, anxious to take up her position.
Stannig Beade's helpers kept the area twenty feet around the stone clear of people. They were Scarpes, Raina noticed, but wisely wore no tokens of their clan. When they spotted her, they let her pass.
Stannig Beade had made Brog Widdie silver-plate a second, smaller platform that had been dragged into position before the Scarpestone. Stannig Beade stood upon this metal dais, flanked by iron torches that hissed as they burned gas. The clan guide noted Raina's presence but did not greet her. He glared at the crowd, a big man once trained to the hammer, with bloody eyes and twitching neck muscles.
"Blackhail!" he cried out when all were still. "Tonight we are gathered to present our new guidestone to the gods. It is not enough that it be delivered into the clanhold. The gods must be called to judge it."
His voice was grinding and terrible, filled with accusation as he prowled back and forth between the torches. "Look to yourselves, Blackhail, look into the center of your hearts and ask if you have cause for shame. The gods will come this night and they will know you. They will know this clan and every man, woman and child within it, and if they judge the sum of Blackhail unworthy they will reject its stone.
"Do not expect to fool them." He shot a brief, unreadable glance at Raina. "The gods come from stone and are stone hard. They will crush you down if you are false, smash the foundations of this clan." At the word clan, Stannig Beade's arm shot backward. Air rushed in toward the Scarpestone and the trench ringing its platform ignited in a sheet of flames.
Raina's ears roared. Heat beat against her cheeks. The crowd stepped back, fearful. One clan maid, Lansa Tanner by the look of her golden hair, fainted and had to be carried away.
The fire burned more fiercely than any fire Raina had ever seen. It dragged air from her lungs to feed itself and its flames shivered and leapt upward, alive. Stannig Beade's raised dais was only a few feet in front of the trench. Raina wondered how he stood the searing heat. He had become a dark profile againstethe light. A bear against the sun.
Screaming, he named the gods. "Ganolith, Hammada, lone, Loss, Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus. Hear me! See me! Come to this clan."
The words were Raina's cue and she took the simple torch of green wood from the Scarpeman Wilder Styke, but she was confused, for she was supposed to approach the Scarpestone and light the Menhir stack that lay prSed and ready by the foot of the stone. Beade had said nothing about a wall of flames. Unsettled, she took a step forward. From his position upon the second platform, Stannig Beade glared down at her.
"Walk forward and light the Menhir Fire so the gods will know where to enter the stone."
Raina felt-the pressure of thousands of gazes upon her back. Her face and neck were slick with sweat. A spark from the torch fell upon her hand, sizzling as it scorched a tiny black hole in her skin. She took another step forward.
Stannig Beade called out to the gods. "Behold Raina Blackhail, the chosen emissary of this clan. Judge her and allow her to step through the flames."
Rama could feel the silver thread in the front panel of her dress growing hot She was almost abreast with Beade now and had a choice between walking over the dais he stood upon, or around it, to get to the Scarpestone.
"The Menhir Fire illuminates the hole I will drill deep into the rock n he had told her two days back. "If all goes well I will tap into a vein, and the gods will be able to make their journey to the heart of the guide, stone. When they are present I will seal up the hole"
She did not know what to do. Instinct warned her not to take another step, that once she passed Beade's dais the heat would be too great to bear. Yet her clan was watching, needing her to step forward. Stannig Beade had manipulated her once again. Had he actually told everyone that if the gods judged her worthy they would kill the flames? The guide scowled ahead, giving nothing away. He was a man who knew how to intimidate a crowd.
And she was his enemy, and he had placed her in a position where he could not lose … and she could not win. Flee and she would let down her clan on this most sacred of nights. Stay and she would be burned.
Raina took the step required to raise herself onto his dais. She turned her head and looked at him, but he would not acknowledge her.
He was a coward then, in the end.
The silver plating on the dais had been so highly polished that standing upon it was like standing on a mirror. Raina glanced down and saw her face staring back. She looked like a puzzled child.
Taking another step, she moved behind Stannig Beade. One more would bring her down on the other side of the dais. She was perhaps two feet off the ground, yet the flames in the trench towered over her. They burned ruthlessly, lashing and curling like blazing whips. Their heat dried Raina's eyeballs, and blew back the hair from her scalp.
Not one sound came from the crowd. She knew what they would see: the rigid black silhouette of a woman bearing a torch. What did they know of such a ceremony? Blackhail hadn't had a new guidestone in seven hundred years. For all anyone knew Stannig Beade could be making it up as he went along.
Raina began the forward motion that would take her oft the dais. Of all the thoughts that were swirling in her head, one came to rest.
Do and be damned.
Rotating her hips, she shifted her momentum and stepped sideways instead of down. Suddenly she was right there, beside Stannig Beade in the center of the dais. Before he had chance to react, Raina held her torch aloft and addressed the crowd.
"Blackhail," she cried. "Our old guide, Inigar Stoop, had hoped this day would never come. Yet he swore to me that if it did he would walk through the fire with his chief. The gods must judge the guide as well as the clan. So I call upon our new guide to accompany me through the flames."
A moment of quiet followed, where the only noise Raina could hear was the pounding of her heart. Stannig Beade made a jerking movement, and filled his lungs to speak.