The Memory of Fire

by Callie Bates

  Someone shouts behind us, but Rayka compresses space and we lose them. He’s gasping now, too, but he doesn’t let me go. The stones seem to waver. I blink, and we’re back in the kitchen, fumbling through the cellar, down into the cisterns, into sudden quiet. I blink, but my mind is too hazy to form coherent thoughts. Elanna should be here. Where is she?

  “Damn it, Jahan,” Rayka’s saying. “You can’t take down an entire prison by yourself!”

  “Where’s…El?” I manage, wheezing.

  “She took the prisoners back! She did what she was supposed to, and didn’t get attacked by the damned grand inquisitor himself—”

  “Alcibiades…”

  “The bugger got away—with the prisoners. What the hell were you thinking?”

  We’re limping together through the cisterns at full pace, and I can’t find the breath to explain myself. I don’t have an explanation, except that I acted without thinking. The walls seem to be squeezing in and out. I blink. Sweat drips into my eyes. Somehow, Rayka got a torch.

  We walk and walk. For a time, delirious, I imagine we’re clambering down into Madiya’s cave, and I shout “No!” Rayka shakes me. Then we’re crawling up the steps into Tirisero’s temple, and Elanna’s grabbing my other arm, and I’m being hauled up the hill. The stars spin overhead. I try to grab El’s hand, try to tell her something, but I don’t know what to say.

  The ground levels. I stumble. My head feels too wide. My brother’s shouting at the sorcerers who have gathered around us, blank faces in the torchlight.

  “Bring me anything!” he shouts. “He can take power from a rock if he has to. Though there won’t be much green left in this place.”

  Elanna stares at me, horrified.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, but no sound comes out.

  Then Irene is on my other side. “That didn’t happen when he healed me.”

  “Since when are you an expert?” Rayka sneers.

  El looks between Rayka and Irene, and whatever she sees there decides her. The world seems to fade and spin. “Take him inside the temple.” I reach for her hand, but I can’t lift my arms. Can’t move my fingers. Then I’m on my back under the temple’s high dome, feeling the power of Tirisero pulse around me, wild and dizzying. Elanna’s hand is crushing mine, though normally my grip is stronger than hers. There’s a cracked ceiling above me. Stars.

  “What did you say?” El asks, a whisper.

  “Vault…of the…heavens.”

  “That’s a useless thing to waste your breath on. Heal yourself, Jahan.”

  The lid of the font is still open. I can feel the power pulsing in the walls. I whisper the words. “The secret flame unified with the deep water, the heart of Tirisero.”

  And the power sweeps into me, a roar like fire. Warm, too, like fire. It rushes over me, dizzying, overwhelming.

  “Help,” I whisper. I struggle to open my eyes.

  And when I do, I’m not in the temple anymore. I seem to be in the heart of flame, pulsing around me, a gentle yet ferocious scarlet. The flames shift and coalesce into human form. A man—I struggle to sit upright, my chest heaving.

  But the man pushes me gently back down. He touches his fingers to my wound. And I feel the flesh heal together in an explosion of white light.

  * * *

  —

  I OPEN MY eyes. Someone has repainted the walls of the temple. The colors glow, vivid in the sunlight streaming through the oculus.

  Without effort, I stand. My limbs feel light and easy. Strange.

  A man and woman—no, a girl—stand before the font. The girl looks perhaps fifteen, her black hair tangled up in a matted braid, her feet bare. Her blue gown is rent and splattered with mud, but her eyes are bright and fierce.

  And the man…he wears a cloak of black feathers. He’s short, ugly. His nose looks as if it’s been smashed in more than once.

  My mind stutters. It can’t be.

  The girl’s head jerks around, her gaze flashing toward the open door behind me. She doesn’t seem to see me, however. I follow her gaze and, for the briefest moment, I hear what she does. A persistent thud, thud, echoing up from Naval Harbor.

  “Now, you know how this works,” the man is saying. “There’s a cost to this. You won’t be able to do everything you can now. No one will. Promise me you’ll get on that boat to the west.”

  The girl flinches and shivers, as if at a new noise. “But I don’t want—”

  “This isn’t about want. This is about need. You need to protect our power. Our knowledge.” He shakes his head. “You’re as soft as these damned Idaeans, girl. You know there is a cost to binding the power here.”

  She’s still looking beyond me, out the door. “But he won’t be able to use it?”

  At first I think she means me. I touch my chest. I want to protest that I wouldn’t hurt her.

  “Paladius wouldn’t know how to use magic if it punched him in the face,” the man says. He throws off his cloak. Underneath it, he’s a scrappy sort, in a jerkin and hose no better looking than the girl’s. He puts both hands on the font and begins to chant. His low, resonant voice fills the room, swelling and bursting against the stones.

  The girl watches, hugging his cloak to her chest, chewing on her lower lip. He casts her one last glance. I see all the affection in it. All the exasperation. All the hope and regret.

  He keeps chanting, and light begins to spill from the font. I feel the power coalescing, circling, demanding. Being drawn out of the air around us, out of the walls of this very temple, being pulled into the font. The girl lifts the lid. The man nods to her, still chanting. The last of the light flees into the font, and she slams the lid down.

  And the man disappears. He shatters into a thousand shining particles of light. They linger over the font, settling on it as delicate as dust.

  The girl screams. “Mantius! Mantius!” Tears course down her cheeks. She tries to pry the lid off the font, but it won’t come, so she beats her fists on it instead. “You lied to me! You lied!”

  I want to shout, too. I lunge forward, as if I can help her lift up the lid of the font. As if we can bring him back together. One liar to another. My ancestor Mantius, with his cloak of black feathers. But I can’t seem to grasp the stone lid. My hands pass through it.

  The girl slumps against the font, her shoulders heaving. I take a step toward her. As if she senses my presence, she lifts her head. She frowns. Squints at the space before me, not really seeing me.

  “Who are you?” I ask, and the girl jumps—

  A swift twist of air. The girl disappears. And a small, sleek silver fox darts past me, out of the temple, racing into the brilliant day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I open my eyes. I’m panting. Morning light slants through the small square window above my pallet bed.

  I sit, wiping the sweat off my forehead. I’ve never had a dream like that. El’s asleep, her arms sprawled around her head, doubled over beside me as if she dozed off sitting up.

  She comes awake, blinking. Then she throws her arms around me. “You’re all right! I thought you’d—drained your power—or—or—”

  “I’m all right.” I realize, dazedly, that I am. I put her back gently, grasping her arm. “El. The sorceress in Caeris—the one you saw in Dalriada, who shapeshifted into a silver fox…”

  “Tuah?”

  “Yes. She had black hair, didn’t she?” My skin still seems to be buzzing. I stand, pacing around the room, careless of the dried blood on my shirt.

  “Yes…” El says.

  “I had a dream—a vision—of her and this man.” I swallow hard. I still can’t believe it. After all these years, all the times I imagined him rescuing me, all these years of running from our family, I saw him. “Mantius. He’s…my ancestor.”

  El’s mouth opens.

&nb
sp; “Tuah was just a girl,” I say. “They were sealing the font—sealing all the power into it, so Paladius couldn’t use it. They must have known his victory was inevitable.” My throat works. “Mantius gave his life…”

  And his son, Kyros, betrayed our people to the Paladisans.

  “Tuah must have come to Caeris afterward,” El says, her eyes wide. “Maybe she thought sorcery would be safe there, but then the Paladisans conquered it, too…”

  “Yes.” But I’m not seeing Tuah. I’m seeing Mantius dissolving into particles of light. That must be how I opened the font—I reached for the fire and water and spoke the words, yes. But I also spoke his name. Somehow, by conjuring his memory, I released the power he concentrated in the font. The thing he gave his life to protect.

  If he gave his life for it, then it’s my responsibility to protect it, too.

  “Jahan…” Elanna’s worrying at her seal ring. “What your brother said—about you draining the life out of things…”

  All the gods. I forgot the fool spoke that secret aloud last night. I can’t make myself meet El’s eyes. “It’s just my charming personality. Nothing can resist it.” But she doesn’t laugh, and I feel even more a fool. I try again, grasping for the right words. “We all have to draw our power from somewhere. For you, it’s from the land. For most sorcerers…well, we have to use whatever we have access to. We can use any living force. Trees, plants, even the sea. All natural things have an energy, though it can be difficult to corral. In Caeris and Eren, it was easy for me, because the stone circles concentrated the power.” I pause. “We can use our own life energy as well. Or if we’re really unscrupulous, that of other people.”

  “You drain things,” El says. “You kill them…”

  I wince. “Not if there’s an abundant enough supply. Here, in the temple, when I lifted the lid on the font—El, it’s got so much power, you wouldn’t believe it!”

  She’s still looking at me as if I’m a stranger. “I never thought we were so different.”

  I swallow hard, and sit back down on the pallet, beside her. “I should have told you. I—I’m sorry. It’s not the way I want to be. It’s just the way it works.”

  She nods, but I don’t sense she’s particularly pleased. “This…font. Where does its power come from?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just there. It’s immense.”

  “And if you use it, you harm no one?”

  I struggle not to grimace. “As far as I know.”

  Her forehead wrinkles, thoughtful. She seems about to speak, but just then footsteps scuff outside the door. Both of us turn.

  Nestor bursts in, talking over his shoulder. “Here he is. He seemed to make himself better, but—Oh, Jahan! You look well.”

  But I can’t spare a glance for him, or even a word of comfort. My mouth has gone dry. I can hear my pulse echoing in my head.

  Because he’s not alone. A woman has crowded into the room behind him. A woman smaller than I remember, with silver threading her golden hair. But still straight-backed. Still powerful. Still terrifying.

  Madiya.

  She marches straight over to me, ignoring Elanna, and squats beside the pallet. It takes every ounce of control for me not to scuttle backward like a crab, away from her. My escape is entirely blocked.

  Behind her, in the corridor, I glimpse a slight boy with a flop of dark hair. Lathiel. She’s brought him with her. If I can get past her—if I can grab my little brother—I can wrestle him away from her, at last.

  If he’ll let me save him. If she hasn’t completely poisoned him against me.

  “I heard you were injured,” she’s saying. “Someone shot you! I came immediately, but I was afraid—I thought I might be too late.”

  She presses her lips tight together. Her eyes seem bright. Tears? Madiya has tears in her eyes? For me?

  I don’t believe it. Not for a moment. “Get away from me.” I start to get up, to aim for the corridor.

  Madiya pushes me back down. Actually pushes me. And because I’m at an awkward angle, I tumble backward. She’s grabbing my arm. “You healed yourself? Is it the well—the font?”

  I don’t believe this. I wrench my arm out of her grasp, but she’s still there, looming over me like the figure from my nightmares. I’m ten years old again, panting, my pulse ricocheting in my chest. She’s going to push me down. Drip laudanum into my mouth. Rustle about in my head, reconfiguring the patterns of my mind to make me a sorcerer. I’ll forget everything I ever knew. She’ll make me like my mother, a mindless shell of a person.

  “I never realized the Ida well was on Solivetos Hill. It’s brilliant of you, Jahan. Did you…” She stops. My blank terror must register with her at last. Quietly, she says, “You look so much like your mother. Like Alia.”

  “You have no right to speak my mother’s name.” I feel as if I’m choking. “Get away from me.”

  She blinks. Even though she’s kneeling, she seems to grow taller. “But I’m here to help you!”

  I should strike her. But I laugh—far harder than I should. “Of course you are. That’s what you always think you’re doing. Helping Rayka and Lathiel. Helping Elanna. Helping Bardas and Empress Firmina. But look at what you’ve done—you helped kill dozens of innocent people!”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Madiya says coldly. “I gave the ability, not the orders.”

  “And Lathiel.” I look at my brother, still peering in from the corridor. I try to stand, but Madiya blocks me. “You’ve harmed him—”

  “Harmed? I’ve never harmed anyone—least of all your brother!”

  “What are your damned experiments, then? What were you doing when you ripped the memories from our heads? When you forced us to do magic that didn’t come naturally to us, when you stole our mother’s memories—”

  “She betrayed us!” Madiya’s on her feet now, her hands clenched at her sides. “She was going to…she would have let witch hunters take you to the Ochuroma! Her own children!”

  “No, she wouldn’t.” Of course, Mother always said sorcery was a great evil. She screamed it at my father. She whispered it to me. But she didn’t hate sorcery enough to send us to the Ochuroma. She didn’t hate us. She would gladly have sent Madiya and Father to prison. But not her own children.

  “You’re lying.” I clamber to my feet. Lathiel’s right there in the corridor. I’ll push past Madiya and get him. “You always lie. You want something from me, and now—”

  “Who shot you, Jahan?” she interrupts. “Was it Alcibiades Doukas?”

  I stop dead. How does she know?

  “I knew it,” she mutters to herself. Then she looks at me. “Do you remember the witch hunter who came to my cottage, when you were ten years old?”

  I choke on a laugh. “Do I remember? Did you make me kill him? Or was it Rayka who did it?”

  Madiya blinks. She glances at Elanna, who is watching us with narrowed eyes, silent. But I can tell from her tension that she’s ready to act. To defend me, at a moment’s notice. It gives me courage.

  “You didn’t try to kill anyone,” Madiya says. “But your mother…”

  I touch my scar, its ridge filled with a grief I’ve never really understood. But I know too well how Madiya tries to manipulate us. I glance at Lathiel. He watches me with wide eyes from the doorway. For him, I have to be strong.

  “She was mad!” Madiya is saying. “You were children! What was I supposed to do?” There’s a strange desperation in her—a kind of twisted grief. Or maybe it’s me she’s twisting, like she always has. “Was I supposed to let you go through your life knowing what she did? Was I supposed to let her try to do it again?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say coldly. “But you’re obviously lying—”

  “I saved you!” Madiya exclaims. “I spared you!”

 
“From what? Our own mother?”

  She lunges forward, grabbing my jaw in both hands. I jerk back, but she just holds me harder. Elanna shouts, “Let him go!” But even though she hauls on Madiya’s shoulders, even though I struggle, Madiya doesn’t release me.

  “It’s all right, Jahan,” she says, panting. “Here’s the truth.”

  She presses her fingertips to my forehead, but there’s nothing gentle about the gesture. An arrow seems to lance from her skin into my skull, digging through the fabric of my mind, pushing and twisting. As if from far away, I hear myself cry out. It hurts so damned much, I feel tears stinging my eyes. She has no right to grab me like this—I try to pull away, but she pinches me harder. I kick at her legs and she bellows in my ear.

  “Hold still! I’m showing you.”

  “Let him go!” Elanna shouts again.

  “No—” I begin.

  But I stop, my mouth open. The inside of my head burns—as if she ripped open a scar. A spark rises out of it.

  Not a spark—a memory. The one she stole.

  It splits open.

  I’m in the cave with my brothers, as if it’s yesterday, as if it’s now. I’ve run to the bottom of the steps. Footsteps echo down the stones. I look up. I’m smiling; it’s my mother who emerges. She’s safe. The witch hunter didn’t hurt her. Maybe he hurt Father and Madiya instead. In her fine clothes, with her hair tidied up on her head, she seems more powerful than she ever has. Calm. She seems as if she could do anything. A knife flashes in her hand, bright and silver.

  Boys! she calls. We run over, and Rayka shoves Lathiel back into my arms. He starts crying, but I’m too stupid to heed his warning. I just bob him up and down.

  The witch hunters are here, Mother says. She’s composed. Smiling. She holds the knife as if it’s a friend. They’re going to take your father and that witch to the Ochuroma. But I won’t let them find you, my dear, sweet boys. I won’t let them take you away. Come here, Rayka.

  He goes to her, his eyes trusting. Docile. Hopeful.

  She strokes the hair back from his forehead and kisses his cheeks. She murmurs something to him. His eyes grow a little bit wide. I think maybe he’s going to cry out, but he never gets the chance. She pulls back her arm and plunges the knife into his chest.