by Sarah Rayne
But she had heard a great many of the stories about Fael-Inis, the creature of fire and light and speed, and how Mother had somehow seduced him in the Fire Mountains and then quarrelled with him just before Flame was born. She had laid a great many plots for getting out of the Fire City and somehow travelling to the Palace of Wildfire where Fael-Inis lived, but Mother usually found these out (Flame suspected that this was not sorcery but plain old-fashioned spying) and confined Flame to her room for a week with bread and water to eat, and sometimes even summoned up a demon or two to give her nightmares so the game had ceased to be worth the candle. Flame would probably get to meet her father eventually, but not until she was quite old, by which time her father would have lost his famous charm and his intriguing habit of travelling through Time and it was all a very great pity.
It was going to be extremely tedious in the Court tonight.
‘I do wish,’ said Reflection, sweeping into Flame’s bedchamber an hour before the ball was due to start, ‘I do wish you would make an effort.’ She began to pick disconsolately at the contents of Flame’s wardrobe, remembering how this gown had been ordered for the night of the Masquerade Dance, and how this one had been worn on the day Inchbad sent his special envoy with the marriage proposal.
‘When I think,’ said Reflection, wringing her hands, ‘of how I scraped to give you a chance-well, I despair, that is all I can say, and that is a truly terrible thing for a mother to do of a daughter.’ She eyed Flame crossly. ‘Here you are,’ said Reflection, ‘approaching the age of-oh no, do not tell me your age, for I do not wish to know, so elderly-making-and how you are to be properly and honourably joined with Inchbad when all you do is scowl, I have not the remotest idea!’
‘Would you marry a giant?’ said Flame, and Reflection flung up her hands in despair.
‘If you knew the debts I have incurred,’ she began, which was quite an old ploy and one which Flame was entirely familiar with. ‘I am famous for my debts,’ said Reflection, who enjoyed her debts enormously and would not have relinquished one of them. ‘Do you know how many times I have escaped being flung into a debtors’ prison?’
‘Six,’ said Flame in a mutter.
‘Six,’ said Reflection dramatically. ‘My dear, the indignity of it! They would all be very pleased to see it happen, of course,’ she added. ‘The other sorceresses and the Court hangers-on. I should be the talk of the Sybilline Ladies’ Circle for at least a year, because they have very little else to occupy them, poor things.’ She eyed Flame. ‘But really, Flame, there is no help for it other than for you to marry Inchbad. They say he is quite reasonable-looking for a giant. And we should have the most lavish celebration.’
Flame said, ‘What about the Fire Ritual?’ because she had been brought up on the legend that if anyone with a vein of Amaranthine blood wanted to lie with a Human, the Human must first bathe in the Fire Rivers of Fael-Inis’s country. ‘Or,’ said the legend, ‘he will be shrivelled up at once.’
And so Flame, espying a possible escape here, said, ‘What about the Fire Ritual?’ every time Mother became too insistent on the proposed marriage with Inchbad.
‘A mere ritual,’ said Reflection, at once. ‘Hardly necessary, really. And you know perfectly well that the donning of a Fire Robe more or less gets round the problem.’
Mother had a cupboardful of Fire Robes, which the Robemaker supplied at a special price. She boasted that it was one of her hallmarks to coax her Human lovers into donning one of these before she took him off to bed, so that the Amaranthine blood did not harm him. Sometimes she did not bother with the Robe, of course, which meant that the poor young man had to be flung out the next morning, dried and scorched and shrivelled. Sometimes he was flung out anyway, Robe or not.
The Fire Robes were actually rather beautiful; they were made of a particular combination of fire (to match the Amaranth blood) and ice (to prevent the fire from scalding the colder Human blood). The Robemaker wove them with delicate threads of living flames and thin, pale icicles so that they hung to the wearer’s feet and down to his wrists, swathes of glittering scarlet and icy blue. They were silken to the touch and had the peculiar quality of feeling first blazingly hot and then exquisitely cool. Flame had seen several of Mother’s more favoured young men wearing them and they were extremely becoming. But the thought of Inchbad donning one made her feel ill. There was something quite horridly intimate about getting into bed with somebody who had put on a beautiful silken robe on your account. It ought to have been the sort of thing you only shared with someone with whom you were extremely close.
Flame knew quite well that, in fact, Mother’s ancestry was at best questionable. She had even heard whispers that her only claim on the Amaranthine House was that her great-grandmother had once caught the eye of a very famous Amaranthine sorcerer and spent a night with him, as far back as the reign of Cormac of the Wolves. With this ancestry, Mother could therefore claim nothing better than a bastard connection with the Amaranthines. And a tenuous one at that, said Reflection’s detractors dismissively, although nobody ever dared to say this to Reflection direct, because no matter how fragile the connection, Reflection could still call up remarkably effective enchantments, never mind the fire demons, with whom she was on very good terms. The servants said that Madame was a rare old one with the fire demons, and it more than a body’s life was worth to risk having them set on you.
Reflection smiled vaguely on Flame and departed in search of the sempstress who had left her new gown a half inch too short and would, as a result, be put to the mercies of one of those very demons for an hour or so, because Reflection did not believe in allowing menials to think they could get away with slipshod, slapdash work.
At the centre of the Fire Court, Reflection’s chefs and scullions and spit-boys and scrub-women were hard at work on the banquet that Madame had ordered for the evening’s entertainment. It was a fairly small banquet as banquets went; there would probably not be more than a hundred or so sitting down to the feast, although this could not be relied upon, because Madame sometimes had the way of adding upwards of a dozen extra guests at the last minute and it all made for a very difficult time. It made it hard to assess the number of roast swan and stewed peacock to serve and it made it very difficult indeed to know how many oxen to put on the roasting spits, because if the numbers at table were not what you had expected, you were left with a surfeit of roast ox, which was all very well, but could be a nuisance, since nobody wanted to have to eat roast oxen for a week, and Reflection would not entertain the idea of left-overs of any kind in the Aurora Banqueting Hall.
But a banquet had been ordered, and so a banquet would have to appear, never mind that they were all of them scratching their heads to get in the necessary food and wine, let alone clean table linen and crystalware, because if Madame had ever paid a bill in her life, nobody could remember it.
The bedchamber staff turned their energies to the laying of clean silk sheets on all the beds, because everybody knew how Madame’s banquets ended, and they were careful not to forget the discreet placement of flagons of aphrodisiacal wine for those whose strengths might flag a bit towards dawn. They were hotly in dispute with the kitchen staff as to which of them was the most overworked; Madame was very particular about her bedchambers, they said, and she was very particular indeed about her own bedchamber. When you considered that you never knew just what you might be finding on the floor of Madame’s bedchamber on mornings after a banquet, you might count yourself very fortunate if all you had to do was conjure up a few roast geese and maybe a swan or two to grace the table. Also, hadn’t Madame the habit of drawing up a strict rota for her own night’s activities. And if the kitchen staff thought it an easy task to have to keep an eye on the clock all night, and send in the young men every hour on the hour, they were welcome to try it.
The kitchen staff refused to be drawn. They said that, when you remembered that Madame had the way of flinging nearly all the unsatisfactory lovers bodily through
the window before breakfast, it cut down on the tidying up of a morning, never mind reducing the number of breakfasts to be carried in.
Deep beneath the great Court, the furnace rooms would pour out the leaping firelight and the fire-room slaves would be working throughout the night to keep the furnaces fed. Nobody knew very much about the fire-room slaves, who kept themselves to themselves, (although the kitchen staff said they ate pretty heartily), but it was rumoured that Madame had an arrangement with the Robemaker, who kept her supplied with slaves from his own dark Workshops, and that they were kept happy by Madame taking them to her bed, once a week in strict rotation. Nobody had ever been able to find out the truth of this, but it was the sort of thing you could easily believe. Amongst the kitchen staff (who considered themselves overworked) and the bedchamber staff (who considered themselves under-valued) the fire-room slaves were known as Madame’s rough-rides, because work in the furnace rooms was apt to coarsen a person.
And so the great Fire Court hummed and throbbed with preparation and the scents of food and wine mingled with the scents of burning applewood and fruitwood, which Madame caused to be flung into the furnaces in cruel defiance of the laws governing the Trees. The ladies of the Court studied their wardrobes and sighed, because no matter what one wore, one would certainly be outshone by Madame herself, and the gentlemen wondered, a touch uneasily, which of them might be beckoned to Madame’s bedchamber and whether they would be able to stay the course if so, or whether they would end in being thrown from the window, which was the sort of fate which could bring eternal shame and disgrace to your descendants.
Reflection herself passed a pleasant hour in trying on a new enchantment which she had ordered from the Robemaker, which would have the happy effect of making every man who saw her fall desperately in love with her, and Flame sat in her bedchamber and thought up four ways of escaping from the Court, and wondered if she would have the courage to try any of them.
The doorkeeper, preparing to take his usual postprandial snooze, noticed two somewhat bedraggled travellers approaching and sighed, because it was a sad old life when a man could not have a bit of sleep after his dinner. Still, you could not turn away two poor creatures who had fallen foul of the Geimhreadh. They would have to be brought inside and warmed and fed, and probably provided with clothing. Also, orders were orders, and Madame’s orders were that all travellers were to be taken inside and made welcome, because, Madame said with one of her greedier smiles, you never knew what might turn up on your doorstep.
Flame was not particularly interested in the news that two travellers had come from Inchbad with designs for Crown Jewels, although there were rumours about their escape from the Frost Giantess which sounded as if they might have an interesting tale to tell.
But Inchbad had been sending presents and deputations and concessions to the Fire Court ever since it had occurred to the Gruagach to try to ally themselves with Reflection’s daughter. The thing to do was to go on reminding Mother about the Fire Ritual, and the necessity for persuading Fael-Inis to let them into the Palace of Wildfire to accomplish this. Since Mother had spent eighteen years denigrating Fael-Inis, it seemed pretty unlikely that he would open his Palace gates for something so trivial. Flame was rather pleased to have hit on the word trivial, because it seemed to reduce Inchbad and the entire scheme to something that did not matter very much.
But she donned the new gown for the banquet because it would probably be quite rude to just not turn up, and tried not to arrive too early when nobody would be there, but tried not to be too late either, which would have meant making a grand entrance, and which would, moreover, have annoyed Mother, who liked to arrive last, so that the musicians could play a fanfare and everyone could turn to look. Mother enjoyed making sweeping entrances; she made no secret of this and liked to tell people that she had designed the Aurora Banqueting Hall, if not the entire Fire Court, with this in mind.
Flame knew this to be stretching the truth because the Aurora Banqueting Hall had been Mother’s attempt to rival Tara’s Sun Chamber and the legendary Palace of Wildfire of Fael-Inis. Opinions were divided as to how well she had succeeded. Her detractors were wont to smile sadly and shake their heads and say that poor Reflection had done her best, but that really there was no comparison, quality would always out and dear Reflection had allowed her Hall to be spoiled by shoddy workmanship and cheap materials. Her followers, loyal to a man, if not sycophantic, were loud in maintaining that the Aurora Hall was infinitely superior to the brash Sun Chamber and the austere Palace of Wildfire.
The Palace itself was built of the pale dressed stone which Reflection had managed to discover in the distant quarries of the Western Isles and had brought inland at considerable expense — although Flame did not think it had been at Mother’s expense exactly, because the bailiffs said that the stone masons had never been paid, although Madame might have handed out a few discarded spells by way of reimbursement. The cluster of buildings and houses and lodges which had grown up around the Palace, and which housed the servants and their families, was built of the same pale cream stone. Flame, who was rarely permitted to step outside the City Walls, but who sometimes sneaked out at night when everyone was busy, thought that even when you did not have anything to compare it with, it was a beautiful place.
The City Gates had been angled to catch the evening sun and were tipped with raw gold to catch the light of the dying day, so that every evening the entire palace could be bathed in fiery light.
Chapter Thirty-seven
The fiery light from the City Gates was the first thing that Floy and Snodgrass had seen when they emerged from the terrible water caves of the Frost Giantess and the River of Souls, and in their cold and exhausted state, it seemed like a beacon, a bright warm lodestar sending out its allure. They had stood looking at it for a moment, Floy wrapped in Snodgrass’s cloak and they had known that their mission for the giants was almost completed.
They had entered warily at the behest of a rather dozy doorkeeper, then they rested and bathed and refreshed, and then had been provided with clean new garments by Reflection’s servants; who had appeared to find nothing at all untoward about the appearance of two cold and exhausted travellers who had escaped the Geimhreadh’s evil machinations by the skin of their teeth.
They were unsure of what they would find in the Banqueting Hall and they were wary about these people who served a sorceress.
‘But,’ Floy had said as they prepared to leave the comfortable, silk-hung bedchambers allotted to them, ‘we have to explore as fully as possible, because of Fenella.’
‘I should think she’d have got here long since,’ said Snodgrass, comfortingly.
They stood together looking about them, scanning the assembly for Fenella’s dark head and seeing only the sycophantic faces of the panoply of beings who had found their way to the Fire Court; noticing that there was a rather odd, certainly raffish set of people here.
‘I can’t see Fenella,’ hissed Floy.
‘Nor can I.’
Snodgrass started to say that in a place the size of this one it would be possible for a hundred people to remain hidden when there was a fanfare of music from the musicians and every head turned to the great, curving stair.
Snodgrass, who was rather short, stood on tiptoe, and wanted to know what was happening.
‘I rather think,’ said Floy, ‘that it’s our hostess.’
The musicians had sprung to attention and were playing the fanfare which always announced Reflection’s arrival. Everybody prepared to kneel in homage, because wouldn’t there be the devil to pay if Madame entered the Aurora Hall music-less and unnoticed? And nobody wanted to risk having the fire demons summoned.
Reflection stood framed in the great golden archway at the top of the stairway, smiling and nodding, lifting her left hand in acknowledgement, because, as she told everyone, there was nothing like a fanfare to attract people’s attention.
Floy, standing with Snodgrass, found himself
thinking he had never before heard any music quite so garish or quite so grating, and he had certainly never seen anything to equal the arrival of the lady who was now descending the stair. He thought, as she moved down the stair and along the line of waiting people, that she had the pleased air of a wayward child who has dressed up in grand clothes and is expecting the grown-ups to praise her. See how important I am! she was thinking to herself. See how everyone kneels and renders me obeisance!
Floy thought she was not young by anybody’s reckoning, although he thought that to calculate her years by ordinary reckoning probably could not apply. How long did sorceresses live? She was rather tall and slender and her skin was the pure pale colour of buttermilk or of polished ivory. Her hair was dark and, although there were red lights in it, Floy thought these might be the reflection of the fireglow of the Banqueting Hall, rather than natural colours. Her gown of real leaping flames was the most dazzling thing he had ever seen; he thought to begin with that it was frightening, and then he thought it was beautiful, and then he thought it was neither of these, but part of the wilful child out to shock. Look at this outrageous gown I am wearing!
She is probably rather fun, thought Floy, but she is probably perfectly capable of calling up a nasty enchantment or two if somebody displeases her. I wonder what Fenella thought of her, wondered Floy, and looked round for Fenella again, because although he was rather enjoying Reflection and her bizarre Fire Court, he would have enjoyed it all much more if he could have shared it with Fenella.
