Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  Waltharia remained seated at the window. “You married a woman who claims to be the great granddaughter of Emperor Taillefer and who has also been excommunicated and outlawed for sorcery, one who hasn’t been seen since she left Werlida in your company. In truth, nothing remains of her but the child. The same could be said, I suppose, about your mother.”

  His lips curled, although not in a smile. “What a great deal you know.”

  “Do I? It seems to me that the person who believes she knows a great deal most likely knows very little.”

  “A wise saying.”

  “My father taught me well.” She walked to the table to pour herself a cup of cider, letting the rim of the cup linger at her mouth as she examined him over the lip. “What happened to your wife? Did you abandon her?”

  His expression grew stiff. “More like she abandoned me. I have reason to believe she still lives. Whether she cares to return to me and the child I do not know. But you are right. The same could be said about my mother. How have you learned so much, out here in the marchlands?”

  “I received a message from my father some weeks ago.” She paused suggestively, lowering the cup. Anna almost sat up, eager to hear what would come next, but just in time she remembered that she was pretending to sleep. “He suggests that I support you as well as I am able.”

  “What does he mean by that?”

  “What do you think he means? Why did you leave your father’s court and turn your back on your father’s authority?”

  “Because he wouldn’t listen to me. There is a cataclysm coming, and we must prepare for it.”

  “The folk who work my estates think the Quman raids are cataclysm enough.”

  “So they are, but they are nothing compared to what we will have to face.”

  She set down the cup and simply watched him for a while in silence. Anna examined her profile: a strong face, as proud as a margrave’s heir must be but also clean like unstained linen. She had faint scars along her jaw below the mutilated ear, and a wine-colored birthmark in the hollow of her throat, easy to see from this angle, but nothing evil in her face, no hidden hatreds or petty jealousies. She knew what she possessed, and she wasn’t afraid to rule what was hers.

  “Of course, I am inclined to support you in any case, Sanglant.”

  “Are you?” He was either very drunk or very tired.

  Her smile hadn’t any answering softness in it. “We live in a time of troubles. Eika raid from the north while Quman strike at us from the east. Machteburg burned to the ground, did you hear that? For two years running there have been poor harvests in the marchlands. A hailstorm flattened a church south of here this spring. A two-headed lamb was born in Duchess Rotrudis’ lands. A child here in Walburg was born with six fingers. Along the north coast a thousand birds washed up on the shore, all of them dead. Half of the fraters wandering in my lands speak heresy instead of truth, and the people listen to them. In a time of troubles, the land must have a strong leader.”

  “My father is a strong leader.”

  “So he is, but he thinks too much about Aosta and Taillefer’s crown. We need a strong leader here in Wendar and the marchlands. Sapientia is weak, Theophanu is cold, and Ekkehard is young and by all reports foolish, if not already dead. But we march lords have not forgotten that Henry has one other child.”

  Sanglant had been resting his head on his hands, but now he pushed himself up. “What intrigue is Villam hatching?”

  “My father loves Henry. No man loves the king better. But my father loves Wendar most of all.” She fished into her sleeve and drew out a gold torque, holding it up. Its metal gleamed richly; light winked on the braided surface. “You no longer wear your gold torque, my lord prince. But you should.”

  He hissed sharply, taken aback by the precious ornament hanging so casually from her hand.

  “I pray you,” she went on, her voice sliding into a sweet languor as she dangled the torque from her fingers, “let me see how it becomes you.”

  Anna was old enough to understand what went on between men and women. That Sanglant was aroused was evident enough; he was flushed with more than the wine. Women were subtler but not always more difficult to interpret. Only a fool or a child would not have known what was on Waltharia’s mind at this moment.

  Blessing grunted in her sleep, rolled over, and nudged up against Anna, who squeezed her eyes shut and desperately tried to keep still even though Blessing’s elbow was jabbed against her ribs.

  “We wintered at Gent.” That hoarse scrape in his voice gave his words a nostalgic tone but in truth, his voice always sounded like that. “There was a woman there, a servant in the palace. Frederun. She wept when I left.”

  “Thinking already of the gifts she would no longer get from you.”

  “No. She was genuinely sorry to see me go.”

  “So will I be, Sanglant.” She spoke the words teasingly, but he did not respond in kind.

  “That’s not what I meant. It didn’t seem right somehow, to use her that way. It seemed as though I’d offered her something she desperately wanted and then snatched it out of her hands.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Waltharia impatiently. “I am a woman, just as she is. You know well enough what appeal you have to us, or at least you once knew it well enough to encourage our sighs and offers, and I know you have never suffered a lack of interest on our part. She was lucky you paid her any attention at all.”

  “Was she?” he murmured, but Waltharia either did not hear or did not reply. Sanglant sighed sharply. Blessing gave a snorting sigh as if in answer and rolled away, flinging an arm out as she shifted. She had grown into a remarkably unquiet sleeper.

  Lying still, Anna risked opening one eye.

  Sanglant still sat on the bed, looking intent but rather rumpled, as though he’d already taken a few rolls in the hay. He fingered his hair, playing with the tips, needing something to do with his restless hands.

  “Where is my schola?” he asked at last.

  “They were given my leave to sleep by the hearth in the hall this night.”

  At last he rose, walking to the window, leaning out to stare into the night just as Waltharia had done before him. His embroidered tunic showed off the breadth of his shoulders and the tapering line of his torso and hips. Anna was old enough now to note that men were good-looking. Sometimes she peeked at Matto, watching the changes overcome his youthful body, but she had never precisely thought of the prince himself in those terms. He was too old, and too high above her. The night breeze breathed in his hair, stirring black strands along his neck.

  “It would be treason to rise against my father,” he said to the night sky.

  “Walburg is a stout fortress, Your Highness. I do not doubt I can bide here safely, despite war and famine. But my people will not do as well, and if they suffer, then what kind of steward am I? Will there be anything left for my children, and my children’s children, to rule? I cannot take that chance.”

  “I am not ready to take so bold a step.”

  “Do not wait too long, Prince Sanglant.” Her voice roughened, and not only from passion. “Your child is precious, but children are easily lost in times like these.” He turned back, startled, to regard her. Tears shone in her eyes. “Our daughter was but two years of age when she died.”

  “I was never told. She was to be placed in a convent. That’s all I heard. My father made it clear that was to be the end of it, as far as I was concerned.”

  “And so it was the end of it,” she said bitterly. “Is the church not the proper place for an illegitimate child? When a stallion is brought in to breed a mare, isn’t he returned afterward to his master?”

  “What happened?”

  Anna feared to breathe, seeing how still the prince stood and knowing how well he could hear.

  After a moment, Waltharia continued. “Bandits fell upon the party that was escorting her to the cloister at Warteshausen. I had them hunted down and hanged, and let their corpses r
ot to nothing on the walls. But that did not bring back the child.” She smiled bravely, wiped her face, and downed another cup of cider. “There,” she finished, setting down the cup. It rang lightly on wood. “I had done grieving, until you reminded me. It happened four years past, not yesterday. I lost my second son to fever two winters ago, and I pray to God every dawn and every night that I shall not lose the other three.” Anger made her tears wither and dry, a heat that wicked them away. “I will not risk Villam lands and all that my father has left in my care so that Henry may run to Aosta seeking an illusory crown among foreigners.”

  “You risk Henry’s wrath if you counsel rebellion. You could lose everything, even your life.”

  The fever had passed, leaving her calm again, the kind of woman who rarely lost control and then only when she really, really wanted to and was prepared for the consequences. She displayed the gold torque again, tracing the curve of the braid sensuously with her finger. Sanglant, shuddering, shut his eyes. His hands, lying open against the stone ledge, curled into fists.

  She smiled as at a challenge offered and accepted. “We march lords must be prepared for anything.”

  He stirred at the window, opening his eyes. “Is that an invitation, or a proposal?”

  “It’s whatever you take it to be. Will you wear the gold torque, my lord prince?”

  5

  THE Eika fleet sailed out of Rikin Sound before a fair wind, two hundred and twenty-three longships and forty-six knarrs, the big-bellied cargo ships that plied the northern seas. Behind them came eight ships of various size and shape, captained by human allies. These were mostly young men from the merchant colonies that now paid tribute to Stronghand, restless youths eager to make a fortune looting Alba’s rich towns and heathen temples.

  At first the weather favored them, but they had no sooner seen the shorebirds flying overhead, they had no sooner heard the first shout from the foremost ships, sighting the green hills of Alba, than a gale blew up from the southwest and scattered the fleet north and east.

  Stronghand ordered his men to shorten their sails and they rode out the storm with ease, but it took six days for their merfolk allies to track down the scattered ships and escort them back to a rendezvous at the Cackling Skerries off the rugged northeastern coast of Alba, far from the southern lands where lay the most prosperous towns, fields, and temples.

  He met with his commanders on Cracknose Rock. Their skiffs were beached in a narrow strand strewn with coarse rocks as grainy as pumice. Cracknose Rock lay at the center of the Skerries, a fist of stone thrusting up defiantly out of the sea. Climbing to the top, scrambling on rock split and cracked and seeping water from every crevasse and depression, Stronghand could see the fleet riding at anchor in the choppy waters, most of the ships pulled well back from the scatter of rocky islets. Spray whipped off the sea. Breakers surged and sucked among the smaller rocks crowding like children about the foot of Cracknose. Dark clouds made iron of the sky. A pale promontory flashed in and out of view on the western horizon as a rainstorm occluded it at intervals.

  The storm had made a few of his allies timid.

  “What if it’s true that the Alba tree sorcerers raised that storm?” said Isa’s chief. “Our priests don’t have the power to call wind and make the waves into mountains.”

  Stronghand set his standard pole at the center of the gathered chieftains. He pivoted around, gripping it, looking each of his commanders in the eye. None looked away. They had more pride than that. But he knew he could not trust them all.

  “I have nothing to fear from the Alban tree sorcerers. They must fear me, although they may be too foolish to do so.”

  After a pause during which the chieftains fingered their spears in silence and a few regarded him as if they were thinking that it might be a good idea to run him through that instant, his littermate Tenth Son raised the expected objection, as they two had agreed beforehand. “It is foolish not to fear those with powerful magic.”

  “I am protected against their magic.” He raised his standard. Feathers adorned it, bones strung together with wire and clacking softly against strings made of beads and scraps of leather that twisted in the breeze as they brushed against the desiccated skin of a snake. Chains forged from the spun and braided hair of SwiftDaughters, iron and gold, tin and silver, chimed softly. The bone whistles strung from the crosspiece clacked together, moaning as the wind raced through them.

  “You may be protected, but what of us?” said Skuma’s chief, a huge warrior with massive hands the size of a spade and skin as pale as powdered arsenic.

  “All those I hold in my hand cannot be harmed by any magic thrown against me.”

  “What of spears and arrows?”

  He grinned, displaying the jewels set into his teeth. “Not even I can protect your sorry hides from plain iron. Are there any among you who desire such a shield in battle? Do you fear to fight?”

  They roared their answer as the wind ripped through their lifted standards, raising a hellish noise.

  After a bit, the wind dropped enough, and their shouting ceased, so that he could speak again. “Those who faithfully follow me, I hold in my hand. Those whose hearts are not loyal receive no protection from me.” He gestured toward the fleet before counting his commanders. “Who are we missing? Who has turned tail to run home?”

  Eight longships and two knarrs were missing from those that had set out eight days before. One had been seen drifting lifeless on the open waters, and no captain had dared board it for fear that the tree sorcerers had poisoned its hull with their magic.

  “It flew Ardaneka’s banner,” said Hakonin’s chief. “Not one of Ardaneka’s ships do I see now.”

  Some of his chieftains eyed the distant shore nervously. A blanket of fog had settled in over the headland, tendrils probing out onto the open sea before they were ripped to pieces by the wind. A warning whistle blew shrill and strong. At the fringe of the gathered assembly, right where the rock dropped precipitously away to the sea on its steepest side, his human allies huddled. They had pulled their cloaks up in a vain attempt to shield themselves from the battering of the wind, but now they exclaimed out loud and pointed to the northeast.

  A longship was coming in, bucking in the swells. Its mast had been snapped off halfway, and shreds of sail draped the deck. Seaweed wreathed the stem of the ship. A half-dozen oars had survived the wreck, but not one body could be seen. Deep gouges marred the clinker-built hull, scars cutting through the red-and-yellow paint to reveal pale wood beneath. Rigging trailed behind like so many snakes wriggling through the sea, except for two lines drawn taut at the front.

  The merfolk were hauling in the crippled ship.

  Four merfolk surfaced near the strand, propelling a bloated corpse. Two swam in close enough to give it a final shove, and it scraped up along the beach, rolling against the pebbled shore until it wedged face up between two rocks, caught there. They watched in silence as the sea troubled its rest, trying to suck it out as waves receded, trying to force it in to shore as waves rolled in.

  Even from the height of Cracknose Rock every soul there recognized the corpse. Like the rest of them, Ardaneka’s chieftain bore distinctive markings on his torso. Seawater and feasting crabs had obliterated portions of the three-headed yellow serpent painted onto his chest yet, even with sea worms writhing in the rotting oval that had once been his face, enough could be seen to identify him.

  Hakonin’s chief hissed derisively. “Ardaneka’s master only bared his throat to you after the battle at Kjalmarsfjord, when he saw no one else had the strength to resist you. It seems his faith in you was not strong enough to protect him from the tree sorcerers’ storm.”

  “So it was not,” remarked Stronghand.

  They all agreed then, one by one, that Ardaneka’s chief had been furtive and tricky, eager for gold and silver but reluctant to place his people in the front lines where they might take the brunt of an assault. His seamanship hadn’t been anything to boast of, either, a
nd he had only raided where the pickings were easily gained, not where he might meet real resistance.

  “He was weak,” said Stronghand at last, “and he was not loyal.” He regarded his captains calmly, baring his teeth in a grin meant to provoke the irresolute among them. “That storm was only the first magic that the tree sorcerers will cast at us. But I do not fear them. Do you?”

  None stirred. None dared show weakness, or hesitation, now that they had seen what the magic of the tree sorcerers had wrought.

  Perhaps the tree sorcerers were in fact capable of raising a storm that great, although he doubted it. He did not doubt the danger the Alban wizards posed to those unprepared to meet them, but he had seen for himself that their magic did not reach far beyond their physical bodies: a shrouding fog, a temporary storm front blasting through a line of ships drawn up for battle, a mist to dazzle the minds of men swayed by their power and guile. The gale that had scattered his fleet had encompassed a vast swath of the northern sea, according to his own observations as his ship had ridden out the gale and to the reports he had received as his loyal captains had straggled in to the Crackling Skerries afterward.

  Perhaps the tree sorcerers had called up that storm, seeing his fleet poised at their shore. But whether it was born out of the sea or out of their magic, he knew just how to make use of such opportunities, blown to him on the wind.

  That was why he had told the merfolk, in the aftermath of the storm, to hunt down Ardaneka’s ships and destroy them, each one. To bring him the chieftain’s body, drowned and broken.

  Let the capricious ones fear that they might be next to suffer under magic’s cold claw.

  Below, the red-and-yellow ship listed to one side. Seawater swamped the deck, and with a sucking sigh the ship sank under the waves, ropes slithering down until, at last, nothing could be seen except scraps of flotsam, bobbing on the swells. Waves battered the bloated corpse. One of the arms came loose, rotted away at the shoulder, and it rolled away like a lifeless slug. A ripple stirred its steady course; a ridged back sounded. Eels writhed, mouths snapping in eyeless faces, as one of the merfolk raised its gruesome head and, that fast, snatched the decaying arm. Limb and merman vanished beneath the gray-blue sea.