by Kate Elliott
Thomas Southern approached them, lowering a dirty white cloth from his face. His skin was red, mottled by heat, and soot dappled the hollows of his eyes. “If you’re going out there, I’d advise covering your face with wet cloth. The worst of it is northwards, but there’s a front burning down this way, and another headed straight for the center.”
“Any sign of Lucias?” asked Kate.
He shook his head, called a worker over, and sent him off to get handkerchiefs for Maretha and the others. Julian, with an expressive grimace, retrieved his own monogrammed handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and refused the one offered him by Southern.
“Let’s walk towards the center,” suggested Maretha.
“You had best be careful, my lady,” said Southern. “It’s a fierce blaze, though it’s mostly burning east and north now.”
“I have to find my husband,” Maretha murmured. She set off so quickly that the others had no choice but to follow. The smoke lightened as they headed west from the laborer’s camp, but as the path wound north, heading for the central excavation, a trick of the breeze brought the sound of fire to them.
“I don’t like this,” said Sanjay. “I suggest we head back.”
“We can go up,” said Maretha. “At the Evening Palace we’ll have a clear view.”
They agreed, but by the time they negotiated the switchback trail that led up to the western ridge and its half-excavated edifice, they were all as hot and sweaty as if they had been fighting the fire. The panorama was spectacular: fire raced and burned below, blanketing half the valley, licking and racing and smoldering across stone and grass alike. Smoke hid the reaches of the forest beyond the northern river and lake; to the south a thin layer of ash hung lazily in the air. Even at this height, the light of the rising sun was dimmed.
“Look!” cried Maretha, pointing down.
At the closer camp, the earl’s, a single line of workers could be seen digging. Farther east, mostly obscured by smoke, three longer lines labored to save the larger camp.
There were five of them on the height: each saw something different, as clear across the distance as if their sight was telescoped.
The earl stood on the central platform in the shadow of the central pillar in the very heart of the dig. As Maretha watched, a wave of flame circled the excavated area and flowed along the bare dirt towards him. Perhaps she cried out—she was not sure later—but the fire arced and leaped as if it were alive, and washed forward to engulf her husband. And he laughed, truly laughed, as if its presence brought him joy rather than destruction. A sudden faintness as strong as any wind-whipped blaze drained her until she could barely stand, had to catch at a waist-high wall, as her knees buckled and she fell forward onto them. Far below, the earl blazed like a star might, thrown to earth, as beautiful and as deadly.
Julian had turned to look west at Maretha’s comment, and he saw, running away into the height above the Evening Palace, a snout-faced, whiskered child, a little cap askew on its head. “Pin! Damn it.” He split away from the others and climbed after the retreating figure.
The first moment Chryse thought they were instruments; the second she realized that she was seeing figures in or of the flames themselves, and that they were indeed using musical instruments, playing music atonal and wild. As the fire roared and spread, more liquid figures joined the flickering orchestra until, with a spitting crescendo, the entire vision vanished and she saw only flame again.
Smoke shivered Sanjay’s view of the forest, like mist sunk in trees. He saw the hounds first, in a pack as they ran along the river and disappeared into the forest again. Mounted riders followed on brilliantly arrayed horses; their faces were unclear in the smoke, their clothing unlike any he had ever seen, supple and golden. Of their quarry he saw no sign: only, solitary and small at the tail end of the hunt, a single man who seemed to be naked, running at a tireless pace, spear hefted and ready in one hand.
Kate saw Lucias. Hands bound, he was being driven by a man she did not recognize at this distance toward the eastern end of the valley, into the very center of the maelstrom. Their trail led into such thick billowing clouds of smoke that she was amazed she could see him at all. Then he and his captor vanished into the gloom.
“Come on,” she cried, grabbing the nearest person, who happened to be Chryse. “We’ve got to save Lucias.”
“Lucias?” Chryse hesitated, still bemused.
“Where?” asked Sanjay, quicker to register the comment.
“In trouble. If we run—” She faltered. “Lady,” she swore, paling. “How could I have seen him? He must be over two miles away. We’ll never reach him in time.”
“Point me where,” said Chryse with a sudden burst of decision. “Sanjay, your cards. Which one—”
“I know,” said Sanjay. “Kate, you’ll have to help us. Maretha. Where’s Julian?”
Maretha had recovered enough to hide her weakness, and in any case the faintness was ebbing now. She could no longer make out anything but flame and smoke where she had seen her husband. “I don’t know. What do we do?”
“Here.” Sanjay handed his cards to Chryse. On the top of his pack he had set the final face card: a woman tied to a stake, engulfed in flame, her mouth open in agony, or ecstasy.
Chryse tucked the rest of the cards into her pouch, keeping out one other from her half: a man bound and chained to stone in a closed cell. Holding them together in one hand, she knelt. Sanjay rested a hand on her right shoulder, Kate on her left.
“Kate,” she said. “Think of where you last saw him. Sanjay, think of fire.”
In the hush of their concentration, only the distant spit and roar of the fire could be heard, and once a chorus of barks that cut off abruptly. Chryse thought of Lucias, of his hands bound behind him, of his hair, golden as the sun. Of the sun, brilliant in its fiery high seat, of heat, of the lick of flame, of smoke, thick and choking and hot to the breath—
“—I can’t breathe,” she gasped. Heat seared her lungs as she reflexively took in air. Beside her, Kate choked, coughing and swearing.
“Put the cloth in front of your face.” Sanjay’s voice was muffled.
Chryse lifted one hand to her face, felt a cooling moisture on her skin as the cloth settled against her mouth and nose. Immediately her lungs breathed easier, but her eyes stung now. Smoke surrounded them; there was no sign of fire. Kate tugged at her sleeve, and she groped up to stand and stumbled after her.
“Where is Sanjay?” she gasped. Her foot caught on a rock and she tripped, but a strong arm gripped her and held her up. “Thank God,” she said to him. “Where’s Maretha?”
“I don’t think she came through.”
“Where are we?”
Sanjay paused to peer through the smoke. “At the eastern end of the valley, I think. It’s hard to tell.”
Kate dragged on them. “Come on!” Her voice was urgent.
They came out of the thickest smoke abruptly, straight into a blast of heat so fierce that she felt as if her face had caught on fire. Flame shot at least twice their height into the sky. What it fed on was inexplicable to her, here in this corridor of stone and dirt and scrub grass.
“There!” shouted Kate. Her yank on Chryse’s arm almost unbalanced the blonde woman, but Sanjay was still beside her.
Fire crackled and rumbled by turns about them, advancing at so slow a pace that it seemed deliberate, branching out to surround them. In a little sink of ground that was slowly filling with smoke, a figure lay heaped like any bundle thrown to earth, topped with a light crowning of hair. It was Lucias, bound both hand and foot now, struggling feebly to free himself.
They stumbled down a litter of sharp rocks to crouch beside him. Kate and Sanjay worked furiously to release him from the ropes. Chryse stood and stepped back to get a vantage point. Started back, fear like a vise in her chest. Flame surged up to cast a circle around them. They were surrounded.
Terror streaked through her. She did not realize that she had taken an
other step back until the ground gave beneath her boots. With a “whoosh” like fire leaping a great gap to kindle fresh fuel on the far side, her footing vanished and she fell. She tried to cry a warning, but smoke choked her throat.
The impact of landing jarred her through her body. She scrabbled at the dirt, found herself neck deep in a hole. Kate, Sanjay, and Lucias were almost lost in smoke above.
“Here! Down here!” she gasped.
A spark landed, sizzling, on Sanjay’s trousers. He slapped it, in the action of slapping saw Chryse, and grabbed Kate. Together they dragged Lucias over and threw him in beside Chryse, squirmed in beside her themselves.
“Farther down.” Kate’s voice was ragged, torn by the heat and smoke inhalation.
They slid back, down, found stone beneath their feet, felt with their hands a damp stairwell. Hunkered down as the fire roared above. Debris and sparks sprayed down on them like the offal of fireworks. They were filthy with dirt, patting each other free of embers.
From far off, a shuddering crack splintered the monotone rustle of fire. A flash of light too brilliant to be natural scorched the entire sky for a blinding instant, and following immediately upon it a second grinding clap of thunder. And rain.
Abrupt, tearing out of the sky that had been free of clouds the last time they had seen it. They turned their heads down to avoid choking on the rain, it came so hard. It pounded the dirt around them, peppered their shoulders and backs and hair, churned the dirt on which they lay into mud. The fire whuffed and steamed and vanished, as though it had never been. The rain faltered and ceased, and sunlight lanced across their faces through the dispersing smoke.
For a long time they just breathed.
“Hell,” said Kate at last, savoring the flow of the word and the hoarse flavor her strained throat gave it.
A dry coughing racked Lucias’s body.
“Are you all right?” Chryse laid a hand on his head. “Who did this?”
“Don’t know,” he rasped.
“I was afraid of that,” she replied.
“Holy Lady!” Kate’s voice was still thick with smoke, but her tone was clear. “It’s a stairwell. We’ve found another stairwell. There must be an entire lower level below the ruins.” She shook her head, wondering, and crawled up the slope to help Lucias find an unsteady foothold on a stone step.
Above, Sanjay crawled up to peer over the top at the destruction wrought by the fire. His body stiffened as he looked, and he climbed out of the hole and simply stood, staring, silent.
“Sanjay?” Chryse scrambled up beside him. “What is it—” Her voice died away, and she stared as well.
There was no sign at all that a fire had raged across the ruins like an inferno. The valley looked as it always did, but for thin trails of mist that separated into ragged streams, dissolving into nothing as they watched.
“Look, the sun has just come up.”
No one replied to Chryse’s comment. She turned finally to help Kate hoist Lucias out of the stairwell. The youth was filthy, his hair matted with soot and dirt, his wrists marred by a pink rope burn, but he was otherwise unharmed.
“You’re not going anywhere by yourself anymore,” said Sanjay.
Lucias merely wiped a tear from one dirty cheek.
“Rescued,” said Kate, her voice thick with irony. She waved an arm, and a group of searchers, Julian and Maretha among them, waved back and hurried over to them.
“We thought we’d lost you,” cried Maretha as they reached them. “Thank the Lady you’re safe.” She hugged Chryse, weeping a little, and from her shoulder Chryse saw Julian, without a word, grab Kate into a tight embrace.
“I don’t understand,” said Lucias. “How can the sun have just come up? Hours and hours have passed since I got up before dawn. It should be at least noon.”
“Don’t try to understand it,” said Sanjay in an undertone.
“Kate.” Julian broke away from her and stepped forward to gaze down the stairwell. “What do you suppose I found west and above the Evening Palace? I thought that child had gotten loose again—” He paused, and Kate came up to stand beside him, looking down as well.
The stairwell ended, they could now see, in a blank, featureless wall of stone some fifteen steps below ground level.
“Exactly the same,” murmured Julian. “West and east.” He and Kate looked at each other and, as if with one thought, at the pickaxes and shovels carried by the workmen in their party.
“Lucias,” agreed Maretha. “Go back with the workmen and wait for us at my tent.” The tone of her voice did not encourage protest.
“I’ll go with him,” said Kate quickly.
“Yes,” said Maretha. “But you three—” She paused, and Chryse, Sanjay, and Julian waited, curious, until the others had walked out of earshot, heading back to camp across the eerily intact grass and brush that flourished in the rubble. “We’ve got worse,” she said. “Thomas is waiting for us at the shoreline. But we’ve got to keep it to ourselves, I’m afraid.”
“I want a bath.” Chryse dragged her fingers through the matted tangle of her hair.
“It can wait. Follow me.”
It was a long hike to the shore of the northern lake, and all four were dragging their feet by the time they breasted a low rise and saw the dark water spread out before them, the darker forest beyond. No trees reflected in the lake, though the first spears of morning light lanced out across the still waters.
Thomas Southern knelt on the grassy beach, praying. His lips moved in some litany, and his hands were clasped at his chest. Now and again he crossed himself, for him a deeply devout gesture.
On the shore, water lapped gently at the body of a man. His clothes, rough-spun laborer’s garb, rippled in the tiny swells. His lips were open, his eyes shut. It was the worker Hawthorpe, the brash fool, as Southern had once named him. His left hand lay gripped as if it held a final message.
“If he had simply drowned,” said Maretha, “it would be no great disaster, under the circumstances of his boast. But the earl will not give up this valley yet, so you see why we must keep this incident secret.”
Peaceful enough, the scene: a dead man rolled on a calm lakeshore at dawn—except for the bloody stain on his back, drying now, but irrevocable. The broken haft of a spear protruded from between his shoulder blades.
Chapter 19:
The Drowned Man
“‘IT WAS EASY ENOUGH to let the laborers think that he had drowned trying to swim across the lake—a foolhardy venture in any case, whatever the outcome. By shrouding him immediately, and carrying him back into camp that way, we managed to keep hidden the fact that he had actually been killed by a spear thrust to the back. The broken spear we flung back into the lake, after examining its point: you will undoubtedly be interested to know that it was a fine chipped-stone implement, primitive and razor sharp. Quite effective, as you might imagine.’”
Aunt Laetitia paused to take a sip of tea, moistening her throat, and looked up from the letter at her visitor. “Although why he expects,” she added with asperity, “that I might imagine such a thing at all is quite beyond my powers of understanding.” Her guest merely chuckled. “Henry,” she said in a warning tone, and with a disapproving sniff returned to reading aloud.
“‘Nevertheless, the events of the morning resulted in an unanimous vote by the workers to strike. Our weeks of effort were salvaged only by the quick work of her ladyship and the foreman Southern: it was agreed to move the laborers’ camp out of the valley and to limit working hours to daylight, together with a promise to expect no underground digging from anyone. I fear that this might be setting a dangerous precedent, giving workers such say in their laboring conditions, but Elen is uninterested in matters so far below his station, and the countess is I fear entirely too sympathetic to the plight of the downtrodden, as those temperance pamphlets love to term the indigent classes. But in all fairness I must add that only some handful of the fellows left when previously the entire group had
threatened an exodus en masse, so one must show some respect for her ladyship’s methods.’”
Here Lady Trent interrupted herself again, taking another sip of tea. “I must say, Henry, that I did not read this to apprise you of my nephew’s political leanings. There was a reference here that reminded me of something you mentioned in our previous conversation—”
“No, no, Laetitia.” Henry, Lord Felton, leaned forward to choose a slice of cake and transfer it with the smoothness of long practice to his plate. “I find the letter quite interesting. Please read on.”
“Ah, well, Henry,” replied Laetitia with an air of tolerance that would have shocked any of her grand-nieces and -nephews, “you were always an easygoing man.”
He sighed ostentatiously. “But not so easygoing that you could ever be persuaded to accept me as your husband.”
The mischief that lit in Lady Trent’s eyes at this remark revealed as nothing else could have the spirited boldness that had made her the most celebrated beauty of her time. “And a great disappointment it is to you, too, Henry,” she scolded, with affection, “as I know with some certainty that the only reason you propose to me regularly is because you are tolerably sure that I will refuse you. You and I do very well as widower and widow.”
“I refuse to be discouraged.” He settled back comfortably in his chair, crossing his hands over the pleasant round of his belly as he waited for her to continue.
She coughed first, clearing her throat. “—exodus … methods … Here. ‘Our camp remains where it has always stood, only Miss Farr and the boy Lucias voicing any desire that it be moved. The children of course wish simply to run wild through as much danger as possible. The arrangement has settled out nicely, and work progresses only a little slower than before. The central building, which Professor Farr has now titled “The Grand Marketplace,” is almost completely uncovered. The three stairwells, middle, west, and east, have been partially dug out by Miss Cathcart, working entirely on her own since none of the laborers will help her and the rest of us are too busy with the other business of the excavation. However, any further work in the depths will have to wait: all of our lanterns were shattered by an unknown person or persons one week after the fire, and we are waiting for replacements. The only other incident of comparable interest was the arrival one week ago of a regiment of Horse Guards in the area, led by one Colonel Witless. He is evidently one of the undistinguished litter produced by that Sir Alfred Witless who was I believe commonly known to have lost trousers, shoes, and estates for the dubious pleasure of a single night with Lady Broadlands. I had the tale from my father.”
