Free Firethorn by Sarah Micklem Page B

then she died. She is the only dead avatar. The god Eorõe lives on, still manifest to us as the Cornking and Frenzy, but the death of even one avatar warns us that the gods too may be mortal.
    Az rubbed charcoal on her eyelids, the better to see, and she cast the bones for me. I was reminded of how I was cut off from the tree of generations, with nothing to bind me to my forebears but a fragment of a dream, for I had only two bones in the stead of a handful of ancestors. She had to throw the bones three times for every reading, to point to six signs all told.
    The first reading is always for character. A drudge lives from one calamity to the next, and even a king can’t guard himself against every hazard; so we are tried like a coin, and learn whether we are made of base or true metal. Az didn’t ask the bones what was to come, but rather how I should meet my fortune. She pressed her fingers to her eyelids, smearing the charcoal, and swayed from side to side. Her voice altered. The Dame pointed to wandering, aimlessness, flood—or, it may be, discovery, resolve, wellspring, for every sign had two meanings. Na said beware of prisons, obstacles, shackles; their transformations were shelter, vessels, roots. Each warning was woven with its reverse, like a cloth with two faces. I could make little sense of it. Az said it was counsel to bear in mind on my journey, when I had to choose one path or another.
    For the second reading the compass marked time: the inner circle the past, the outer the future, the present in between. Az tightened her lips as she threw, displeased with the pattern the bones were making. Three bones landed in the present: Crux Moon, Hazard Chance, and Ardor Wild fire. Only one finger pointed to my past, to Rift Dread. Two bones fell in the future: Ardor Smith and Rift Queen of the Dead.
    I made light of it, saying I could see for myself that the present was ruled by a most mischievous assortment of avatars, and as for the rest, are we not all born in fear and living at hazard, and doesn’t the Queen of the Dead lie in wait for everyone?
    Az shook her head and said the bones were not so quick to give up their secrets. Avatars have many qualities, and the only way to tell which ones mattered here was to listen hard, for the bones spoke to one another.
    Seeing she was vexed with me, I asked her more humbly: what did she see, what did she hear?
    Az hesitated. “I see you’ve chosen a man who loves Chance. You’ll find he takes his luck too much for granted. He’ll wager, and the dice will tumble and the world will spin, and even when he wins, he’ll be overset. I see you travel toward the past as well as the future: war ahead and war behind, and strife along the way.”
    â€œNothing more?”
    She said that I need make no provisions for old age.
    Did she think I expected a long life? Such a reckless mood had overtaken me when I decided to go with Sire Galan that I believed I could greet whatever came my way, whether it be living or dying, with equal readiness; beneath that was a secret conviction—a folly of the young—that death was not for me.
    The third and last reading was for the gods. Az said that of course I shouldn’t shirk my duties to any god on its holy days, but the bones would tell me which gods I should honor with fealty, prayers, and sacrifices, and turn to daily for guidance and help.
    On the first cast both bones landed in Ardor, one in the Smith, the other in Hearthkeeper. On the second cast in Ardor Smith and Ardor Wildfire. The third, both in Ardor Wildfire.
    Az sat back on her heels, looking grim, saying nothing. She rubbed out the circle in the dirt and handed me the two finger bones with a little bag she’d made to keep them in, a circle of leather embroidered with the compass and tied with a drawstring. I kissed the bones and put them in the bag: red for Na, blue for the Dame. I didn’t think I’d be able to hear them