Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  Huwen abandoned the winding path and crashed through the bushes. The song of the brook gurgling over stones and the snap of whipping branches smothered all sound.

  He reached the bank and plunged into the cool waters. The water was murky, but Eamon’s rounded form sank slowly below him, bubbles of air rising from his mouth and clothing.

  Huwen stroked, his boots and jerkin heavy, dragging at him.

  He wrapped his arms around the still form and immediately it sprang to life, wriggling, fighting.

  Huwen held on and kicked toward the surface, his lungs straining, his boots dragging him down like anchors.

  But Eamon struggled harder, twisting from his grasp. Huwen managed to grab him under the armpits, locking his fingers onto his brother’s shirt. He kicked again, chest bursting, and his head surfaced with a thrashing splash. Huwen managed to yell for help and take half a breath before Eamon’s squirming submerged him again.

  A body dove into the water close by, long limbs, blurring skin. Gweddien. He grasped one of Eamon’s arms, and he and Huwen stroked for the bank as Eamon’s writhing lessened.

  They surfaced, panting, and pulled Eamon’s face from the water. The boy was pale, his body unresisting.

  “Here! Here!” The tutor stood on the bank, bending low.

  The boys dragged the prince the short distance through the water to the steep, grassy shelf and pushed his limp weight up toward the man’s waiting arms. The tutor pulled him onto the grass and rolled him on his side as Huwen climbed from the pond, exhausted.

  A gush of water pumped from Eamon’s mouth and he vomited. His eyelids fluttered.

  “Run,” the tutor said to Gweddien. “Tell the steward. Tell him to send men and a litter.”

  Gweddien ran.

  Huwen stared at his brother. Had he fallen asleep? No...

  “And you, my young prince,” the tutor said severely. “Your brother is not yet healed from his illness. The day is warm, but this pond is over your brother’s head. Suppose he’d drowned? Hmm?” The man glared at him. “Who would have put your brother’s death token on his tongue?”

  “We weren’t swimming.” How could he think this? Huwen was still wearing his boots and jerkin.

  “He could have been denied Heaven! Did you think of that? With no death token?” the tutor went on. “He could have become a ghost wandering this sphere forever!”

  “We weren’t swimming!”

  The tutor rubbed Eamon’s back. The boy’s eyes were open and he breathed, but he stared at the ground, seeing nothing. “We will discuss this. With the queen,” the tutor threatened. “Once your brother is cared for.”

  “He fell in,” Huwen protested. Fell?

  The tutor raised a brow.

  “And where were you?” Huwen blurted. The tutor straightened, taken aback. “Fetching the servants to bring lunch? Your place is by him.”

  The man’s mouth became a straight line. He turned back to Eamon, pulling a handkerchief from a purse and wiping the boy’s lips, pushing the vomit away from his face.

  The tutor’s brows furrowed.

  What?

  The tutor lifted the handkerchief and rubbed the mess from something in the silk.

  A death token. In Eamon’s vomit. Eamon opened his eyes. He stared at the pale flat disk. “Why?” he whispered. “Why did you pull me out?”

  There was a way down the ridge below the shrine. Janat hadn’t thought there would be, but, to her credit, as the sun rose, Meg found one. Several gullies sloped away from the ridge, all steep, all treed. The one they chose was interrupted with short bands of rubble-covered cliffs, but with care, they were able to scramble down, or sometimes, to find ways around them. Meg didn’t think an army could have negotiated its way up to the ridge, but perhaps a few strong men—a trained strike force—could.

  They came to a small clearing with the recent remains of a campsite, and Rennika dashed forward, spying bits of gristle with shreds of salt pork clinging to them in the ashes of a cook fire.

  “Rennikala! Don’t!” Janat, horrified, ran forward to stop her sister from making herself sick on tainted meat.

  “I’m hungry!” Rennika cried, turning on her.

  Meg hung back in the trees. “We can’t stay here. Messengers to the king might come this way.”

  Janat grabbed Rennika by the arm and dragged her back into the woods. Rennika sat down, refusing to move.

  “Rennikala, get up,” Meg said crossly.

  “No. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I want Nanna.”

  Though the air was still cold, the sun emerged from the clouds intermittently, and now a shaft of sunlight fell on a branch over Rennika’s head.

  Berries.

  Janat pulled the branch down. Dark purple. Shriveled. A good four weeks past any nutritional value.

  “We can rest for a few minutes. But we need to get lower,” Meg said. “There are mining villages and farms in the valley. Someone there will have food. And shelter.”

  Janat fingered the berries.

  Then, stepping around Rennika, she brought the woody stems of the bush into her embrace. She closed her eyes, shutting out her sister’s complaints, and felt for a time when the bush was younger, just a little—

  “Janatelle!” Rennika cried.

  Meg’s hand touched her shoulder and she opened her eyes. Clusters of fat, ripe berries dripped from the branches. She pulled a handful into her palm and devoured them. Sweet juice flooded her mouth, and the pulp slid effortlessly down her throat.

  “I want some!” Rennika squealed, grabbing at the branches.

  Meg squeezed past her through the trees and pushed on the long, springy stems, lowering the tops of the branches to where they could all reach. Janat pulled a cluster of berries from their stems and cocooned them in Rennika’s hands.

  They devoured the fruit, stripping the bush of every berry it had produced.

  Another band of cliffs. Janat didn’t think she could go a step further.

  Meg was at the bottom, holding Rennika’s hips as she maneuvered her way down the last few ledges.

  Snow had begun to fall, perhaps a candlemark ago, and the rock was slippery. Janat stood on the edge, hunting for the best way down.

  And all at once—

  She sat by a table in a sunny room, sewing.

  —Oh!

  By the Gods. Terror spurted through her. The magiel magic she’d used on the berries—

  This was—

  She looked around.

  An attic with a window overlooking a narrow lane. A bread cart. The aroma of the bread...

  “Janat?”

  She turned. Meg stood by the door, dressed in a plain, well-mended robe. She was thin. But she looked well.

  Janat was being battered by waves in her time stream. Living part of her life out of sequence. Like Mama told her would happen when she used magic.

  This...this was a piece of her life, her future?

  Then the drape of night cloaked her, and she was—warm.

  “Janatelle.” Mama’s voice.

  She was in Mama’s bedroom.

  A fire danced on the hearth, heating the room, and rugs and tapestries swaddled them against the chill of night. Janat fell to her knees before the flames. Warmth, even for a moment.

  “Janatelle!” Mama was on the floor beside her, shaking her shoulders. “We only have a minute. Where are you?”

  Where—

  “Answer me, Janatelle. Just now. Before you joined me on the carpet here. Where were you?”

  The nightmare that had become her life.

  Mama shook her shoulders again.

  “Climbing down a cliff.” She didn’t want to let the image in. “It was cold. Snowing.”

  Mama seemed relieved. “How long since you left the castle?”

  How long?

  “Janatelle! We only have a few seconds until you go back!”

  “Last night...two nights ago? Maybe three.”

  “Listen to me.” Mama was in front of her
. Mama never came so close. She was angry with her. “Do you believe me? Do you believe I can see the future?”

  This was all so bizarre.

  “Do you believe—”

  “Yes.” No. She didn’t know.

  “Good. Listen. A year and a half from now. At the spring equinox. You and Meghra and Rennikala must go to a small lake in the mountains south of Postinghouse. It’s near Coldridge.”

  Go to a—

  “Say it back to me.” Mama shook her. “Say it.”

  “Meghra and Rennikala and I have to go to a lake south of Coldridge. Near Postinghouse.” Janat didn’t know where Postinghouse was, but Coldridge sounded familiar. Maybe...yes, it was one of the cities Mama had taken them to this summer.

  “At the spring equinox. Say it.”

  “At the spring equinox.”

  “It’s almost autumn, so the spring equinox will be in a year a half.”

  “A year and a half.”

  “Good.” Her mother licked her lips. “And you—”

  The room disappeared.

  Cold stone danced in front of her eyes. The skin ripped from her fingers and she was falling, backward—

  Rennika shrieked.

  Janat landed on her back on shrubs and rocks, her head snapping back into a bush, its stems scratching her neck and cheek—

  “Janatelle!“

  She took a gasping breath, a hand under her neck. Above her, trees stretched, straight and dark, into a gray sky swirling with flakes.

  Meg’s face appeared above her. “Are you hurt, Janat?”

  Janat blinked. Rennika came into view, her face pale with fear.

  She hurt all over, especially her feet, rubbing against hard leather boots for three days. Her fingers...she brought them up. Bleeding. She tried to sit up, against the insubstantial support of the springy bushes that cradled her. The overwhelming need to sleep after her use of magiel magic persisted, but...“No. I don’t think so.”

  Relief washed across Meg’s face and Rennika rushed to her, holding her fiercely. “Did you fall asleep?” Rennika asked.

  Janat shook her head, more to clear it than to respond. “The magic,” she whispered. She straightened herself properly and peered at her fingertips. They were bleeding but not badly. “I shouldn’t have used magic.”

  Meg bit her lips but said nothing.

  Rennika lifted her head from the embrace. “I love you, Janatelle. Don’t die.“

  Janat couldn’t help but smile. She hugged Rennika back. “I won’t.” She flicked a glance at Meg. “I...” She didn’t have words to explain. “I wasn’t here.”

  Meg’s eyes told her she understood. For once, she had the grace not to rub it in. Meg sat in the snow beside her and spoke quietly. “Did you see anything useful? A future that can help us know what to do?”

  A sunny room in springtime. The smell of bread. She shook her head. There wasn’t enough of that scrap to mean anything. “Not a future. A...past.” She gathered the second moment back to her. “Mama. She told me—she said, you and me and Rennikala, we have to go to a lake. A year from this spring.”

  “A lake?” Confusion wrinkled Meg’s brow.

  “Let me say it all before I forget. At the spring equinox, a year and a half from now. The lake is near Postinghouse, and Postinghouse is near Coldridge. South of Coldridge.”

  “A year and a half? Why a year and a half?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “And why do we need to go there?”

  The whole episode was taking on a dreamlike quality, its reality fading. “She didn’t say.”

  “And what about—”

  “I was only there a minute, Meg,” Janat snapped.

  “Think! You have to think!”

  “That’s all.” She slumped back against the foot of the cliff. “Meg, find us a place to sleep. I have to sleep.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Huwen Delarcan stood at his window, its glass frames opened to the chill night air. The scent of approaching autumn was in the wind. He couldn’t sleep. Rather, he’d slept, but worry had woken him.

  The One God, his star outshining the densest clusters in the River, stood constantly in the north. In the distance, snow-covered mountains stood pale against the horizon, while below, shadows striped the hardpack of Holderford Castle’s bailey.

  He could not shake the incident from his mind. It had happened over a week ago. Yet, no one seemed to think he was old enough to be told what was going on. Mother, who’d fretted for weeks when Eamon was ill, even failing to discipline Jace or sit with little Hada to sew, went back to fretting over him, dismissing the tutor and haunting the boy’s footsteps. Eamon disappeared into his suite again, so Huwen saw neither his brother nor Mother at all on most days.

  Father had not returned—he and Huwen’s bastard brother, Uther, had been gone almost four weeks and Huwen could not fathom why. His tutor, Sieur Daxtonet, had said other kings were jealous of Father’s prosperity and had banded together to charge taxes on Arcan’s trade goods. But among the aristocratic boys, gossip had arisen that Father was not merely negotiating the unfair trade practices. There was war. That the king of Midell had been capturing Arcan territory, sending thieving parties to raid Arcan towns. Why, after centuries of peace, the borders or trade goods were under dispute made no sense. But the final insult was that Uncle Avin, a fearsome man ruling in Father’s stead, refused to enlighten Huwen.

  However, rumor of war on the far borders was only a distant excitement; Father would come home soon and explain the misunderstanding. What troubled Huwen more was his younger brother.

  Eamon had placed his death token on his tongue and tipped himself into the water.

  Why?

  How could a boy, thirteen years old—a child!—want to die? Heaven was beautiful, certainly. It was more real than this world, everyone knew that. But one’s life, here on the lowest sphere, was sacred, too. Huwen could not imagine leaving his home, his family, his ambitions, his responsibilities to the people of Shangril. And most of all, his life.

  But there was more.

  Three days ago, Gweddien had become suddenly silent and thoughtful. He, too, refused to admit that anything had changed, and he, too, disappeared into his rooms.

  Servants whispered. Huwen’s tutor claimed to notice nothing amiss and redirected him to his studies. His swordmaster and his groom did the same.

  And why didn’t Father come home?

  A horse whinnied. Hooves on cobbles.

  Huwen leaned deeper out of the window.

  A groom led a saddled horse from the stables to the rail near the tradesmen’s entrance to the castle grounds.

  Stranger and stranger. Who needed a horse in the middle of the night? A courier?

  As Huwen watched, the groom returned to the stables and re-emerged, leading a second horse, this one bearing pack boxes.

  No courier, then. Someone planning to be gone for some time.

  Huwen pulled on his boots and found a soft leather cloak in his wardrobe. He knew better than to ask Sieur Daxtonet what was going on. He would get no answers. He slipped out of his sleeping chamber, past his tutor into the outer chamber, and past the dozing page, to the corridor.

  By the time Huwen eased through the castle’s kitchen door and crunched as quietly as he could across the bailey, three saddle horses and three pack horses stood at the rail.

  The kitchen door behind him opened, and he whirled to see a tall young man and a woman, cloaked for travel, in startled uncertainty.

  “Gweddien?” Huwen was as surprised as they were.

  The woman—Gweddien’s mother, a half-magiel with skin that barely wavered—recovered first. She pushed Gweddien’s shoulder, urging him toward the horses. “Your Highness,” the mother murmured as they scurried past.

  Huwen scrambled to follow. “Where are you going?”

  The groom emerged from the stables with a final pack horse. Spotting them, he tightened the cinches on the saddle horses.

 
Gweddien’s mother cast a worried glance over her shoulder at him as they approached their mounts.

  Huwen ran and caught Gweddien’s arm. “Gweddien! What’s going on?”

  The groom helped Gweddien mount a gelding, and his mother turned to Huwen, her lips pursed with decision, eyes flitting over Huwen’s head to the castle beyond. “Please, Your Highness. If you love your friend, keep our departure in your confidence.”

  What—

  “Lady.” The groom brought a second saddle horse forward.

  They were running away. The guards—Uncle Avin, Mother—didn’t know they were going.

  The woman, in riding culottes, mounted.

  Had they committed some crime? “Why?”

  Gweddien brought his horse around. “It’s your father,” he whispered savagely.

  What?

  “Hush,” the mother said.

  The groom opened the vendors’ gate to the city.

  “Father isn’t even here,” Huwen protested.

  “Your father attacked Gramarye’s capital city—the king’s fortress in Highglen.” His friend’s lip trembled. “Huwen, my father has been imprisoned.”

  Huwen stared at him. “What?”

  “Hush!” Gweddien’s mother admonished him.

  The groom mounted the third saddle horse and led the string of pack horses toward the gate.

  Gweddien tugged his gelding to a halt. “It’s no longer safe to be a citizen from Gramarye, in Arcan.”

  No—this wasn’t possible. There was a mistake.

  Gweddien’s mother brought her horse around and slapped Gweddien’s mount on the rear, spurring it forward. “Get!” she said to her son.

  Gweddien shot Huwen a contemptuous look and urged his gelding through the gate.

  “I beg you,” the mother said, “if you have any softness in your heart, let us leave with our lives.”

  Huwen could do nothing but stare at her madness.

  She pressed her lips closed against tears, then hastened her animal beyond the castle wall.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was the choking cry that made Rennika lift her head.

  Through the trees, the flutter of rags that was Janat called out, “There!” Then she fell to her knees at the base of a tree, holding it as if it were Nanna, and weeping on its trunk.