Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  Slowly, Rennika’s head began to shake back and forth. “It’s gone.”

  Meg pushed the lie. “Mama smuggled it out of Archwood.”

  “A bard was here. Three days ago. He said King Artem was dead. The prayer stone was smashed—”

  Meg set the two mugs on the hearth and took her sister’s hands, her pulse thumping. “The prince, Rennika. And the Amber. We have to go.” They were so close. So close. “It’s our duty to the people of Shangril to give them access to their Gods.”

  The girl paled, as if she were trapped. “Your duty, Meg. You’re the oldest—” Rennika blinked about the room, as if looking for an escape. “It was to be you all along. You know that.”

  “I can. Yes.” Meg gripped her sister’s hands harder. “But the Amber might only take me to the sixth Heaven, Rennika. Mama thinks...Mama thinks you could go to the seventh. To the One God. End this war.”

  Rennika’s nostrils widened, as if she sucked in air.

  “Return Shangril to peace. Return the people to their Gods. Ending the war is more important than one person. More important than marrying a weaver.”

  Rennika’s face was white and pinched in the firelight.

  Gods, let Rennika see.

  Rennika’s eyes became bright and her throat worked, forcing out a whisper. “I’ll go.”

  CHAPTER 33

  The trip from Highglen to the tarn took eight days walking, pushing hard. There were towns—Zellora, Kandenton, Ubica—to avoid along the road, and once they passed Coldridge, soldiers from Archwood would be on the road, returning to Holderford.

  But soldiers could be anywhere. It was best, Meg told her, when they were this close to the equinox, not to tempt fate and not to lose all because of a blurred hand seen at an inopportune moment. So they were alert to other travelers, few though there were, and hid in the woods at the first sound of footsteps or hooves. They carried potions and twice had to use a Confusion spell when strangers they’d failed to avoid became too curious. Once, they hid, breathless in a copse of trees, as the troops marching back to Holderford from the siege passed by. Likely under two hundred men, but was this the first company to return home, or the last? They didn’t know.

  As she walked, the likeness of Yon danced in Rennika’s head. Red hair and freckles. His linen shirt hung so gracefully on him, sleeves casually rolled up. When he’d stepped into the sunshine his eyes had glinted with pleasure at seeing her. Only twice they’d met, but she was sure he’d been as eager to spend time with her as she’d been to see him.

  But soon, she’d become magiel to a prince. Life would take her down different paths; paths that did not lead back to Highglen. But who was her prince to be? And how could this prince bring them the Amber?

  She hoped it would all come to naught.

  At last, they climbed through a steep pathless forest, over rock and deadfall, to an icy lake within the dubious protection of a high valley. Above, cliffy peaks looked impassively down on a few wind-whipped trees surrounded by spills of talus and scree, and the cold tongue of a glacier. By their calculation, the equinox would be that night, or the next.

  No one was camping by the tarn. They built a scrawny lean-to with poles and branches, hauled up from the slopes below, that barely cut the wind. Meg hunted for firewood and brought more spruce boughs up from the forest to chink their shelter, scanning for movement on the King’s Road below, while Rennika stood by the lake, watching cold mist swirl in the blustery sky.

  She didn’t want to be a princess.

  Why couldn’t she do something she wanted to do, marry and settle down? Become the wife of an apprentice weaver? She was thirteen. She should be making her own choices.

  This was Mama’s plan. To serve the people. But what was Mama’s plan to ensure her safety and happiness?

  None.

  Huwen’s horse picked its way through mud churned by the hooves of a year’s armies. The road from Archwood to Holderford was long.

  A number of messengers had raced ahead, of course, with letters announcing the king’s death and Huwen’s own ascension, but still, Huwen pushed his party long days. As they descended, winter gave way to mud and wet weather. Huwen’s intuition, reinforced by his advisors, told him the transition from one monarch to another would be perceived by the restless in Shangril as a point of weakness, a window for attack. He needed to be seen, present, in Holderford as soon as possible. The armies would follow at their best speed.

  And Eamon still had the Ruby. It was Huwen’s now that he was king. He would have to speak to Eamon about that as soon as it could be arranged.

  A steady drizzle chilled his bones, and the monotonous sound of horses’ hooves in the mud gave his thoughts a restless rhythm.

  And, the long journey gave his advisors time to brief Huwen on ongoing business. Details of villages captured by rebels and repatriated over the past year and a half; maps and histories scrutinized to reveal the thinking of uprisers; whisperings of spies and edicts against magiels; a growing wealth and too much education among the merchant and craft classes leading them to demand too much power, destabilizing their concept of their place in the world—all of this made Huwen wonder again, why his father had crushed the other kings’ prayer stones; why he’d declared death to all the magiels of the Great Houses. What had prompted him to ride out that first day, a year and a half ago?

  Watching the measured rise and fall of the haunches of the horse before him, Huwen mulled what he knew.

  His advisors were uncomfortable at the question. They didn’t know, other than the explanation that had been given all along: the country should be united under one God; the Goddesses of the first six spheres of Heaven were not holy at all, but demons. And...under questioning, his advisors admitted they had raised objections, which Father had overruled.

  It all came back to what had happened the night Eamon recovered from his illness.

  Eamon didn’t remember, or wouldn’t say. Father was dead. Wenid was in Coldridge with Eamon, and in any case, there was no point in talking to him. If Huwen was honest, the old magiel frightened him. Which left Uther. But Uther had gone to Holderford, bearing messages.

  Or...

  “Jovan.”

  Jovan drew his mount up beside Huwen’s.

  “The messengers that were sent across Shangril to announce my father’s passing. Was one of them Uther?”

  “I would think so,” the courtier replied.

  “To which city was he sent?”

  Jovan frowned and took his gelding forward to consult with the captain, and presently fell back to Huwen’s side. “Coldridge.”

  Coldridge? So close? “Not Holderford?” The capital city.

  “Lason was sent to Holderford. Both Wenid and Eamon are in Coldridge, and this message was thought to be...particularly delicate.”

  Huwen snorted. As if it wasn’t a delicate message for Mother.

  But...Coldridge. Only another two days’ ride.

  And Uther would have answers.

  The prince did not come.

  They waited. Perhaps something had happened. He was delayed. The roads were difficult. Rebels were warring.

  Rennika suppressed the part of her that skipped a beat, thinking of her return to Highglen. But another part of her was deeply saddened. So many—so many—had pinned their hopes on this slim chance. Meg, certainly. And...Rennika had, too. Part of her.

  The equinox was long past.

  Morning of the fourth day broke and lengthened. Watery sunlight ghosted in and out of cloud above the mountain’s shoulder. The rock Rennika sat on was bone-numbingly cold, and the breeze from the tarn carried a glacial chill. She huddled in her cloak, mittened hands close to the dying fire. She should hike down to the valley for more firewood. Her empty belly complained.

  A cold gusting rain crept down the mountains.

  Meg poked at the fire with a stick, stirring up ash and smoke.

  Rennika stood. She hadn’t planned to, she just did.

  Meg wat
ched her idly, unwilling to move, as Rennika stepped to the back of the lean-to. She pulled a spruce bough from its slanting roof and flung it into the scrubby willows.

  Meg frowned but said nothing.

  But it was time. Rennika heaved a second branch from the lean-to and tossed it into the bracken. A third. A fourth. The breeze poked fingers through the gap.

  “Stop.” Meg trembled, irate.

  Rennika took her knife to the rope that bound the ridge pole to a tree. “No prince came, Meg.” She threw the pole away, and the rest of lean-to collapsed. “Mama never arranged it.”

  “Don’t you say that!” Meg growled, her hair plastered to her face by the rain. “Don’t you ever think that!”

  “She might have tried. She might have thought she did it.” Rennika scattered the boughs of their bed. Then she stopped and let her arms fall to her sides, desolate with the grief of understanding. “She was raving, Meg.”

  “She was not! She—”

  “The Amber took her wits a long time ago.”

  Meg stood, trembling, choking on her fury.

  Tiredly, Rennika took their goat bladder to the lake and filled it with water, and, returning, poured the water onto the fire. “There’s no more prayer stones. No more magiels. No Gods or Heavens or death tokens.”

  Meg stood by the doused fire, wreathed in smoke, anger puffing in small breaths from her nose. “Mama was the most powerful magiel in Shangril. If she said she took care of us—took care of her people—then she did. She spoke to the Gods!”

  The rain driven horizontally by the wind cut between them.

  Rennika rolled up her pallet, tying the cord around it. She stood and kicked gravel into the embers, then took her pallet to her pack frame.

  “Over a year,” Meg said, and a pleading tone entered her voice. “It’s a long time. Something happened. Maybe the prince was hurt. Delayed. Maybe just delayed...”

  Rennika tied her pallet, sack of clothes, and camp gear to the wooden frame she carried on her back. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what to say. “I know you wanted...really wanted...to change the world.”

  “No!” Meg grasped her arm. “Wait. Stay. Faith is believing, even...”

  Rennika shrugged the pack frame onto her back, then straightened. “We haven’t eaten for two days.” She turned and trudged down the rocky slope.

  “You’d ignore Mama? The hopes of our people?” Meg shrilled. “Give up the rest of your life in luxury? Because you’re hungry?”

  “The siege at Archwood’s over.” Rennika stopped and turned. “The roads’ll be filled with soldiers going to Holderford. We have to find a place to hide, Meg. We have to go.”

  Meg’s lips parted as though she would argue; then with a sudden frown, she turned and gazed out over the icy lake. “Gods,” she whispered to the Heavens. “How...how can you abandon your people?” She lifted her thin arms to the wind, a pitilessly small figure beneath the swirling gray sky. “We’ve done everything...everything you demanded...”

  Rennika’s grief turned to lead in her limbs.

  The wind rushed over them, buffeting them with rain and spearing their faces with icy needles, its endless lonely breath in their ears.

  Then, as though she were an old woman, Meg shuffled to her feet, bent to the rocky earth, and rolled up her pallet.

  CHAPTER 34

  Huwen’s party reached Coldridge as the sun was sinking behind the mountains. The weather had grown wetter and the track muddier, and they finally dismounted stiffly in the castle courtyard under a somber, freezing rain. Eamon and Wenid and all the courtiers the fortress town could muster met him with proper words about Father. Huwen closeted himself with Eamon—and without Wenid—as soon as could be managed, so they might grieve alone. But he did not raise the issue of the transfer of the Ruby. This was not the time. And, Huwen needed to understand the underpinnings of his father’s crusade before he decided how to broach the issue.

  It was not until midnight when Huwen, exhausted beyond sensibility, bathed and ate his mutton in his room. He sank into a pillowed chair before a bright fire as rain splattered against the castle’s glassed windows, and called for Uther to attend upon him. Despite the candlemark, his elder half-brother appeared in breeches, woolen stockings and doublet, all of black: clean but plain.

  “Sit. Please. Brother.”

  Uther did so, somewhat reluctantly, Huwen thought. He’d probably never called Uther “brother” before. Huwen instructed the page to pour them both wine and to leave the bottle before departing.

  He leaned back in his padded chair, grateful for the heat of the crackling hearth pushing back the spring damp. It was not easy to be in Uther’s presence; Uther, who would’ve been king now, if his mother hadn’t been a mere serving woman. Uther, who had spent more time with Father in the past year and a half, by far more than Huwen had.

  Uther had left Archwood as soon as Father died—barely shedding a tear, as far as Huwen could remember—with letters to deliver. He’d not stayed in the fallen city to search for the Amber.

  Huwen, himself, had barely managed three days in the captured city. Three days was all any of them could endure—and that, sleeping outside the city walls. A curse, or so the rumor had sprung up among the men, had descended on the whole valley: Talanda’s curse. The magiel of the Amber and her king had not given up the fortress in life, and neither would she do so after death.

  Huwen believed in the curse; but even without mystical justification, the devastation the day they entered the city had repulsed him. His stomach he was able to purge. His dreams he could not.

  Uther set his glass down. “How may I serve you, Your Majesty?”

  Huwen cradled his wine in his lap. It would take time to get used to being addressed so formally. This was Father’s title, not his. And Father had left him, far too soon. The weight of grief, of war and reparation, of rebels and empty coffers, weighed like a mountain on his shoulders.

  “Your Majesty?”

  “I am king now,” he whispered, lifting his gaze from the fire and looking around the small but comfortably-appointed room. Beeswax candles scented the air, and a tray of honeyed nuts and jam cakes lay on a plain table between them. Funny how he noticed these small comforts. The end of the war would be welcome: landed gentry could get on with promoting trade and making themselves, and the country, wealthier.

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Sire. This, from his older brother.

  “I was told...” Huwen found the words surprisingly difficult to say. “I was told you were in our brother Eamon’s room, the night...”

  Uther did not move, did not prompt.

  “...the night Eamon recovered from his illness.” He masked his unease with a sip of wine.

  The fire crackled. “I...was,” Uther said tentatively.

  Huwen lowered the goblet to his lap. “Tell me.”

  Uther’s response was a long time coming. “What would you like to know?”

  He frowned into his goblet, irritated. “You know what I mean.”

  Above the snap of the fire, sheets of rain whipped the windows.

  “Piss on it.” Huwen turned on the bastard. “I am the king. I have just inherited a war that has divided the country, emptied its coffers, and impelled rebels to organize against me. My father’s war was not about trade, or disputes, or religion. I would end it if I could. What is it about, for the sake of all that’s Holy!”

  Uther fidgeted with his goblet, ran his tongue around his teeth. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember!” He had no patience. “I am your king. I command it.”

  “I wasn’t going to say I didn’t remember.” Uther looked him squarely in the eye. “I remember perfectly well. Every detail.”

  “Then tell me. That night. The night of Eamon’s miracle. It precipitated—” Huwen searched for words. “—everything.”

  “I was about to say, I should not pass on what I have not leave from my betters to reveal,” Uther said.
“I am a bastard. A servant. Surely you can see that. If Father and Wenid Col would not tell you, it is not my place.”

  “Father’s dead.”

  Uther’s jaw flexed, and his face turned away.

  “I have a right to know.” How could he explain this to Uther? “Do you know? Can you know? How Eamon has wanted to die since that night? By the One God, Uther, if you have any compassion—”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said into the dark.

  Huwen breathed, calming himself.

  “But you must promise to be satisfied.” Uther leaned forward, staring into the flames, his face painted with firelight in the dark room. “I did not go to Heaven. I know nothing but what I saw—in those rooms—that night.”

  Huwen breathed again. “Tell me,” he whispered.

  What is the station of a beloved bastard in the king’s court?

  Even after the birth of his brother Huwen, the legitimate heir, the king of Arcan came to his mother’s chambers. Uther’s mother was no longer a serving maid, but what title can be given to the king’s mistress? None; nor position, out of political sensitivity to the queen’s powerful family. Instead, his mother was given quarters in a distant part of the castle with a bit of walled garden and a friend to pass the time. A prisoner, really; a woman shunned by servants as much as by court. Yet loved, in stolen moments, by a king.

  But Uther was given the title of page, and useful work to do, and the freedom of the castle. He played and learned with the children of kings and ladies, and with each of his royal siblings as they came along. Father was tolerant and let all the children play together, all who lived in the castle or the great houses of the dukes; it was the servants who called their children back, forbade them to associate with their betters, forbade them to think themselves equal when they were not. And, in the evening, the children had all to be sorted out; royal children dining at the high table, magiel’s children to one side, revered and a little distanced from the others. Those with wealthy parents sat at the long tables, and the rest, like Uther, now stood in stiff livery behind the lords, holding flasks of wine or bearing silver plates with paper and ink, ready to run a message. Some of these were certainly bastards.