by Shannon Hale
Enna slowly met Isi’s eyes, tried not to blink, and prepared to lie to her best friend for the first time.
“There’s nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s going on, except Finn just won, so we should be happy. I should go and . . . and let you be alone with Geric.”
As soon as she broke free from the throng, Enna ran down the central road to the east end of town.
“What happened?” the sentries called to her as she passed.
“War augury—our boy beat the Tiran.”
The men on watch howled gleefully as she left them and ran out to the frozen fields where the ground sank away from the town’s view.
“You’ve done it now, Enna-girl.” She sat on the ground and leaned back to look at the sky, a winter blue spoiled with patches of hostile winter clouds. The sun against the white snow burned her eyes, and she blinked away stinging tears. Again and again, she went over the augury in her mind, Finn’s fall, her intervention. The omen was clear—with her help, Bayern’s armies would be victorious, and without, there was only defeat.
“Ahh,” she wailed at nothing, and stood and paced and pulled at her hair. It was wrong; she had done wrong. She had promised never to use the fire, and now she had lied to Isi. But Finn would have been killed and the outcome of the augury sealed. There had been no other choice.
She faced southeast. Tira. The taken towns. Lately she always knew where southeast was, even at night, even with eyes closed. She fancied she could sense the enemy in her land, a great hulking presence. Just by facing that direction, her new decision to fight still raw but real inside her, she felt everything slide and click into place—Leifer’s sacrifice, the vellum in her hands, the augury, all steps to bring her to this choice. She would save Bayern.
Chapter 9
Enna lay awake most of the night staring at the crossbeams of the councilman’s house and thinking of Leifer. If she was to succeed, then she had to avoid his mistakes. She went over what things he must have done wrong—telling others, using fire against his sister in a moment of rash anger, then using too much all at once on the battlefield.
“All right, then,” she whispered so low that she could barely hear herself. “I will never tell a soul, I’ll never burn a living person, and I’ll keep it small, just bits at a time. I swear, Leifer, I swear.”
Enna hoped such caution meant she would not end up charred on a battlefield, but it also meant she could not fight as Leifer had. Remembering the Tiran tent in the snowstorm, Enna decided that stealth attacks might do just as well as a grand fire show. She would be the mouse that could bring down an oak tree, chewing one woody fiber at a time.
A woman beside her snorted gratingly. Enna smiled, imagining it was Hesel.
She spent all that day anxious, waiting for evening. Isi was busy with Geric, Razo and Finn with their hundred-band, and chores bored her when something so crucial was waiting. To pass the time, she battled with herself over what to do with the vellum. It was not safe hiding under her cot. She could not bury it—the ground was frozen, and besides, Leifer had found it under a fir tree. Perhaps long ago, someone like Enna had buried it to hide it, which meant that someone like Leifer could find it again. Enna did not want to commit the same error.
So Enna hid in a corner of the tanner’s house, unstitched her hem, and sewed the vellum inside her skirt. She had read it so many times now that entire sentences entered her mind unbidden, but she did not know if she would need it again. She dared not destroy it or lose it, not until the war was over and her part in the augury fulfilled.
At sundown she made the ride to the nearest taken town—Eylbold.
The dark gray Merry was a ghost of the night landscape. A light snowfall from that morning had taken the icy edge from the air. It felt like a gentle winter, a sleepy winter.
“I won’t be long,” said Enna, tethering Merry to a tree. She wished she had a bond with this mare as Isi had with her horse. If only she could ask Merry to keep quiet, she could probably take her closer. It would be a real benefit to have an animal by her side and draw on all that life heat for her task.
Enna rubbed the mare’s rabbit-soft nose regretfully and left her for the night.
The last scouting report said the Tiran camp sprawled from the edge of the northeast wood and into the taken Bayern town of Eylbold. The woods supplied good cover and a nice buffer between her escape route and the town, so she stayed in its moonshade, creeping from tree to tree. Intermittent patches of snow gave soft moans under her boot. She was grateful the night was not cold enough to freeze it, grateful to avoid crunching snow and that sound like a small beast eating, the noise of clumsy stealth.
She was aware of all the living around her. She could feel its heat—the trees, the sleeping animals in their arms or in holes in the ground. Even the frozen grass was still alive at its root, still emanating tiny strings of heat. Her sense of it was so much stronger than at first, and she knew she could draw on it at any moment. At first, the thought of at last giving rein to the fire was exciting.
Enna could feel the increase of heat before she saw the camp. Trees and plants let off so little in comparison, theirs a sleepy, measured life, a slow growth. But animals, and humans especially, gave off chunks of it, swirls and waves drifting off their bodies as though they had life to burn. And live fire was a powerful, steady source. So close to the men and fires of the camp, this edge of the wood throbbed with heat adrift.
She pulled her body against a fir and concentrated on drawing all that loose heat around her, readying herself to pull it inside. And hesitated. She closed her eyes, focused, and tried again. But her rapid breath seemed so loud, she could not focus on the push of the heat against her skin. Enna lowered her head and realized the excitement was gone, and her stomach moaned and twisted uncomfortably. She had resisted it for so long. That night in the snowstorm and at the augury, she had acted instinctively, to save herself or Finn. Now actually making the choice to pull the heat inside her felt as impossible as looking over a cliff edge and making her body lean forward.
Then a noise like a snapping twig.
Enna clutched the tree to keep still. It could be soldiers moving in on her, or it could be a branch settling in the cold. She listened, holding very still, breathing into the neck of her cloak to mask the sign of her icy breath. No other noise.
Her heart leaping in her chest reminded her why she had ridden so far and what she still must do. From nearby she could hear the shuddering, hollow sound of wind against a tent. She watched it a few moments to see if she could detect any inhabitants—no one entered or left, no lantern lit it from the inside. It seemed a safe target. This time she held her breath and closed her eyes. The heat was so close, so willing. She let go of her fears.
She inhaled and spoke to the heat touching her skin with a thought, a sensation, an invitation to enter. Her eyes opened wide, her voice nearly escaped in an indrawn scream from the unbearable burn. Focusing on the space before her where the tent stood, she felt a release and heard an outburst of fire whipping against cloth. Men began to shout.
Then a whisk she thought might be an arrow. Enna dropped to the ground, scurried a distance on her hands and feet, then drew up in panic for a full run.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she chanted to the mare as she mounted and set her at a gallop. By the time she left the Eylbold woods, no pursuer was in sight.
The ride back to Ostekin took her until dawn. It was a strange and long journey with nothing to fear or look forward to, the heat left behind. Everything seemed frozen. The mare’s hooves clipped against the icy earth, the mare’s breath made a silver mist, the air around her seemed frozen hard in the dark as though she could crack it with a wood wedge.
She, too, felt iced over. That fire she mustered left her momentarily numb to the heat she had become used to sensing. Strangest, though, was the hollowness inside her chest, and for some time she could feel nothing stronger than a vacant ache deeper than she could touch. But still clinging
to her was the memory that the rush of indrawn heat and release into fire had felt . . . astonishing. Unbearable. Lovely.
She neared Ostekin’s town wall in the dull, cloudy dawn. One of the sentries watching the east gate was Razo.
“Enna-girl, where’ve you been riding?”
“Scouting,” she said.
Two of the sentries squinted at each other. Razo looked up, slack jawed and unassuming.
“Talone put you on scouting duty?”
“Could be.” She still felt the vibration of the arrow like a cold spot on her neck. The long, freezing ride back made her feel she had lost part of herself somewhere in the woods, somewhere on the dark fields. She leaned over to stroke her mount’s neck and felt as though only the mare were real in all the cold, dim world.
“Come on, now, mistress chicken-girl, you know you’ve got to answer a sentry’s questions when entering the camp.”
“Talone said that . . . ” Enna feigned looking embarrassed, as if she had let slip too much. “Oh, I’m not supposed to say.”
A stable-hand took Merry to the stables. Enna wrapped her arms around herself and walked into town, avoiding looking back at Razo. It was better to lie than to break her promise of secrecy. But just then, numb and dazed and lonely, the wisdom felt like cold comfort.
Enna slept all day, flopping and kicking, dreaming that she was exhausted but could not sleep. She woke when the afternoon light had a sheen of winter gold, as though promising that what came next was even better than day. Isi was sitting by her cot, holding a mug. The sight of her felt like such a relief, Enna felt her throat tighten as if she were holding back tears.
“Good morning,” said Isi with a smile. She held out the mug. “Mint tea. It was warm an hour ago, but you might still like it.”
Enna drank it all without a breath, her eyes on Isi’s, wondering what Isi suspected and, if she asked, what Enna could tell her. Would she have to lie? Could she tell Isi and make her understand? The ashes of one little tent seemed feeble to her now, and the weight of the augury pressed her chest like a stone.
“Thank you,” said Enna.
“Are you sick?”
Enna nodded. She did feel ill and tired, cold from the inside out. A rush of memory brushed down through her chest—the intake of heat, the release of fire. She shivered.
Isi frowned. “The wind—it sees you a little differently. I thought you might be sick. You should rest. We’re riding back to the capital in three days.”
“I can’t go,” Enna said with conviction, before she had thought about it.
Isi pressed her hand to Enna’s forehead. “Are you terribly ill, then?”
“No.” Enna turned her head to look out the window. She could not leave Ostekin and the war front, not until she had done her part. Last night was not enough to win a war. “I can’t leave here so soon—not so soon after Leifer has died.”
“You need to stay because you are still mourning?”
Enna blinked only once before she said, “Yes.”
Lying to Isi felt like the start of something irreversible, as significant as reading the vellum or lighting the first fire. To assuage her guilt, Enna barely left Isi’s side for three days, aggressively protecting her from pushy ministers or soldiers, even when she knew it was not necessary.
It felt strange not to tell Isi everything. It seemed to Enna that her secret hung between them, always pushing them a little farther apart. Sometimes Enna was so conscious of the unspoken, she could not believe Isi did not know. She felt it keenly the morning she stood by Avlado and helped Isi mount, said good-bye, and watched Isi and Geric ride north. Then she turned around, back to the south. That very night she rode to Eylbold again, set another tent on fire, and fled into the morning.
Each afternoon the week after, Enna made a point to be in the main room of the councilman’s house when Talone gathered his scouts for the report. She swept the floor, oiled shutters, mended tunics. A few days after her second attack, she stooped over the hearth for some time, stoking the coals, her eyes on the fire, impatient with the lack of word about her exploits. Nothing was changing. Still the Tiran armies sat on Bayern land, waiting through winter.
Talone dismissed the men, and Enna swung around.
“What about Eylbold?” she asked.
Talone seemed surprised at her question, though his face rarely showed emotion. Some of the departing scouts stopped to look at Enna. Razo was among them.
“Why do you ask, maiden?” said Talone.
Enna shrugged. “They’re so close by. I just didn’t hear you mention them, and it seems like there’d be more information.”
“No word from Eylbold,” said Talone. “I thank you for your interest.”
Enna left the building with hot cheeks. No word. Was her burning accomplishing anything? That night she would return, and she must find a way inside.
This time she came upon Eylbold from the east and the open lands, thinking that the wood might now be well guarded. She left the mare in a copse of thorns and shrubs and crept across the frozen landscape. The moon was covered in cloud, and the only light in the world came from the campfires just over the next rolling field. She found herself looking forward to setting a fire in the night. The anticipation almost flooded out her fear.
She neared the edge of the encampment and saw the silhouettes of guards, spears in hand. At their backs the white tents seemed to glow like windows in the firelight. She stopped, lay down flat on the ground, and crawled closer. Her breath came from her throat in short gasps. Her hands tingled with cold and then grew numb against the frosty ground.
It was easy in the winter cold to pull the drifting camp heat out of the air, like stripping fibers from beaten flax. She also called on the roots of living things, asleep for the winter, and felt the curled-up body of some hibernating animal under the dirt. She would not pull heat directly from any creature, just gather what naturally left and wafted unused in the air.
Then, about a hundred paces from the nearest guard, Enna stopped. She looked carefully along the perimeter of tents. Guards every twenty paces. There was no way to enter the camp without being seen. She felt foolish for not having an alternate plan and, discouraged, started to crawl away.
Her limbs began to tremble and she collapsed, her face scraping the ground. Again she tried to pull herself along and again crumpled weakly. Her own breath was hot in her face, and she felt frustrated and helpless, the sensation of trying to run away in a dream but not moving at all.
What’s the matter with me? she thought angrily. Just get away, go.
But she paused and looked back at the camp. The Tiran, warm in their tents, snug on Bayern land, safe from attack all winter long. Her power, the augury, all useless if she did not act. To come all this way and not burn. The desire assaulted her, sharp as hatchet strikes, and she winced. Avoiding the thought seemed impossible. The longer she crouched there, hesitating, the more the pain built and boiled, filling her body.
“All right,” she whispered.
In that moment, she felt her insides bend as though leaning toward something, and her careful grip on the desire of the fire twisted like a snake in her fist.
Her eyes rested on a stack of barrels. She pulled in the heat, smooth and slick as butter, felt it change inside her, and sent it flying into her target. There was a satisfying explosion as the contents blew into the air.
A chill shook her as the heat left and shouts buffeted the night. She scrambled away, still keeping close to the ground. As soon as she dipped down over the first rise, she stood and ran. Immediately she heard bootfalls behind her and then a voice, clear and commanding.
“Stop or I will put this spear in you.”
Enna stopped, her skin wincing in anticipation of the spear. She had expelled all her waiting heat at those barrels. She held no weapon. He came closer.
“You will surrender yourself,” he said.
She was not quite numb yet, but she had no more gathered heat to attack. If o
nly he were closer . . . No, no, she argued with herself, I can’t set fire to a person.
“I said, surrender,” he said.
But if I don’t, I die. In that moment the maddening need to survive filled her, and she recognized in that need the same feeling the heat created when it pushed against her to be made into fire. Just do it. Just burn him. There seemed no other option. If only she were not alone.
Closer. She could feel him now. With a gasp she tugged at his body heat, what rose from his skin and circled around his head. Suddenly she knew she could get more, if she wished. She kept pulling and felt as though she tugged on a rope and someone on the other end tugged back, but she pulled harder and felt it give, freeing heat that was not loose, but what lived in his skin and beneath it. She heard him wheeze. She drew it in and sent it back at him again in its new and perfect form.
He screamed. Smoke rushed into her throat. Coughing, Enna turned and fled.
She did not look back, afraid to see him, afraid that if she looked, the image would burn itself in her eyes and she might never forget. Instead, what she did not see stayed with her, the orange flames thick in his tunic, licking his face, rising into his eyes. She shook her head and tried to focus on the moment—the darkness before her, the frozen grass crushed beneath her boot, the sensation that just behind her was something terrible and if she turned slightly, she would see.
At last she reached Merry and rode off to the northwest, holding close to the mare’s warm neck. She was numb from the fire making and from crawling on the cold ground and from fear, and she wanted the very real heat she could feel when she pressed her fingers into the horse’s fur.
As the mare galloped, Enna felt her insides rattle. She breathed in and out quickly, trying to clear her lungs, but the smell of smoke still clung like grease to her skin. She squinted into the cold wind and clutched the mare tighter. She had sworn never to set flame to a person, but she had failed. Her mind clung to Leifer and tried to avoid the pulsing thought of what she had just done. That sensation of something horrible just over her shoulder stayed with her on the long ride back.
