Daughter of the Flames

by Zoe Marriott

  Caution warred with curiosity. Was this some kind of trap? How could it be, when Abheron already had Sorin and me just where he wanted? God only knew what the madman had planned, but it didn’t seem that close supervision was part of it.

  I wanted to see my old room. I wanted to meet the memories in private. This might be my last chance.

  I closed the door experimentally behind me. The gourdin stood motionless. That seemed to settle it. They would not interfere. Decided, I walked purposefully along the corridor, leaving the guards behind. My feet – bare, as they had usually been when I was a child – instinctively found their own way, leading me round a long bend in the corridor, down some low steps, and then…

  I walked in, shutting the door silently, and looked around. I had thought that seeing the nursery now, it would seem smaller. In fact it was bigger – a vast, echoing expanse of a room. Empty.

  The childhood clutter of toys, tables and books was long gone. The floor was bare, the shutters tightly bolted. Things were heaped haphazardly against the walls and covered with white sheets. Like winding sheets, I thought morbidly. When I tugged at one, it came back to reveal Sedorne furniture – disused and damaged pieces that had been piled here out of the way. There was nothing familiar.

  “Well.” I sighed to myself, disappointed. “It has been nearly eleven years.”

  I went to the place where I remembered my bedroom’s entrance being. It was almost hidden behind another pile of sheet-covered furniture. I scrabbled and pushed until I opened up a little space, enough to get at the door. With a shock, I realized another reason why everything seemed so alien to me now. There had been no wooden doors here when I was a child, only curtains, beaded at the bottom to hang straight. Abheron must have gone through the whole palace and had doors fitted into every entrance, even where the rooms were disused. An odd, compulsive thing to have done.

  I reached for the handle – feeling the slide of dust under my fingers – and turned it, squeezing through the narrow gap into the room beyond.

  Here, as in the nursery, furniture and junk were piled everywhere, but no one had bothered to tuck sheets around these discarded objects, and dust lay in a thick bluish-grey layer over everything. The large windows in the right-hand wall, which had often served as doors to me and my siblings, were shuttered, leaving the place in melancholy gloom.

  I gathered the full skirt of my gown around me and picked my way through the mountains of old furniture, looking for anything familiar. I found a book on the floor, its pages rippled and rotted with damp so that I could not tell what had been written there. The painted pictures were streaks of washed-out colour. Had it been a story I knew? A book I loved? There was no way of telling. The pages crumbled under my fingers, releasing a musty, sick smell.

  Near the far wall I found my old bed. It was nothing more than a box of polished redwood with a fanshaped headboard and a stylized pattern of dancing monkeys carved into the sides. I remembered tracing the pattern at night as I drifted into sleep. My fingers were too big now to fit into the grooves and bumps. I crouched beside the bed for a long moment, stroking the polished wood – thinking about stories read to me by my nanny and my mother, the way the sun fell through the windows in the mornings in long silky bars of gold, birds and monkeys calling, and the distant splash of water that had lulled me to sleep…

  Then I heard something that made me jump: laughter.

  The laughter was masculine, and close – someone was outside the window. I got up carefully, stepped over a fallen chair, and put my hand on the shutter beside my bed. To my surprise it was only pushed shut, not bolted; I eased it back, looked out – and froze in shock.

  Just outside the room, the cliff on which the summer palace was built extended on a long promontory of rock out into the lake, like a natural pier. From the end of the rock it was possible to see the whole of the lake and forest, and two low wooden benches sat there for people to enjoy the view. As children, my brothers and I had left food there, and watched from this window as the shy tamul climbed out of the water and crept up onto the pier to eat the fruit.

  Now Abheron was there. Dressed in casual clothes and with his long hair in a simple braid, he crouched on that finger of rock, hands full of fruit and scraps of bread. A tamul stood before him, its golden spotted hide and tiny pale horns shining in the last of the light as it delicately picked the food from his fingers.

  He laughed again, softly, as if the tamul was tickling his skin, though one of his hands was gloved. The little creature shied away at the noise, but returned to snuffle the last pieces of fruit from his hands. Then it trotted away from him to the edge of the stony bank. Swift and sure-footed, it disappeared over the side. A moment later, I heard a quiet splash in the water.

  Abheron straightened, his back to me, and stared out over the water for a long minute. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. What I had just seen was … was wrong. Abheron, vile murderer, feeding a wild creature from his own fingers?

  “You can come out now,” he called suddenly.

  I jumped, started back, and tripped over the fallen chair behind me, sending the shutter banging loudly shut. As I shoved the chair away, the unlocked shutter drifted open again to reveal Abheron standing just outside the window, looking at me.

  Too fast, I thought, blankly staring at him. This man moves too fast.

  “I could feel you watching me,” he said calmly. “I hoped you might decide to join me of your own volition. It’s a lovely evening.”

  I brushed the hair out of my eyes and climbed slowly to my feet, praying that my face didn’t reveal anything. I had no choice but to gather the shreds of dignity stiffly around me and step over the low sill of the window. He moved back, studying me with narrowed eyes. I jerked my chin up, and he smiled.

  “I thought I’d be safe from you, you know,” he said. “Foolish of me.”

  “What?” I said warily.

  He looked away from me, over the water again. “You really are very like your mother.”

  “I can barely remember her,” I said icily. Some reckless spirit made me add, “I’m told that I’m very like you, though.”

  He looked back at me. “Whoever said that was mistaken. You’re nothing like me, Zahira.”

  There was a moment of quiet, filled with currents of emotion from him that I could not decipher. I could feel that menacing swirl of darkness unfolding, pushing at me. It was all I could do to remain still.

  Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I burst out, “Why did you bring us here? What do you want?”

  “The answer to both questions is the same,” he replied, unperturbed. “I wish to seek redemption.”

  “Redemption? You dare speak of redemption to me?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”

  Night was beginning to draw in, and over the lake, swallows and martins swooped and wheeled, scooping up the insects that gathered at twilight. They swarmed above us, filling the air with a kind of noiseless rushing, the breath of beating wings. I could feel my heart thundering almost in rhythm with them as I stared at him.

  “I’ve done great harm to you and your family, Zahira. I never intended to, you must understand that. It is my fate to destroy all that I love.”

  “Excuses, Uncle?” My voice was high-pitched and shrill – even I could hear it. “There is no fate. We make our own choices for our own reasons, and we must accept responsibility for them.”

  “You’re young yet,” he said with a touch of weariness. “You will learn, as you get older, that destiny is a crashing tide. It picks us up, carries us away. No matter how we struggle and fight, there is no escaping it.”

  When I didn’t reply, he sighed. “I beg your patience for a short while, my dear. The truth – like fate – is a bitter thing. We must learn to swallow both.”

  “Go on,” I said, folding my arms.

  Abheron settled himself on one of the wooden benches. “I suggest you sit. No? Very well. The story begins with my birth. My mother died having me
– the first in a long line of deaths laid on my account. I’m sure you know of the Sedorne custom that every child is dedicated to a particular element? As heir to the throne, obviously my dedication was very important. Unfortunately, after the priests had chanted and prodded and conferred over me at length, they declared themselves baffled. Finally they called in their most revered priest to examine me. The old man had one sniff and reeled back in horror. He announced that I was cursed, doomed – for none of the gods would claim me. The fate that awaited me in life was this: just as I had killed my own mother by being born, so I would destroy every person whom I might ever love.

  “My father – the king – threw all the priests out in a rage, but he could not quite ignore what they had said. A cursed heir was surely worse than no heir at all. On the other hand, he was then in middle age, and had only managed to beget two children – myself, and my sister, six years older. He desperately needed an heir. And so he came up with a plan.”

  Abheron paused for a moment, shifting to prop his left ankle on his right knee. He rested his left hand, still gloved, on his thigh. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit?” he asked. “I’m afraid this tale goes on for some while yet.”

  Reluctantly I moved to sit on the bench across from him, rigidly straight, with my hands in my lap.

  “Carry on,” I said evenly, determined not to let my interest show. I knew that I shouldn’t believe a word he said. But he had mentioned my mother more than once now. Horrible as it was, this man – this man who had killed her – was the only person who’d known her well enough to tell me more.

  “Your grandfather was one of those men,” he said, “who believe that love is a kind of weakness – a flaw which afflicts women and children, but to which men are not prone. So he reasoned that if I were to be taken away from his home and isolated from my family until I became a man, when I returned, everyone would be safe from me. Of course, servants, tutors, nannies and such would have to go with me, to raise me as a king’s son, but it mattered little if any of them were to fall victim to my curse.

  “So I grew up in a wilderness far from anywhere, cared for by a succession of servants who went out of their way to ensure that I hated them. I’m sure you can understand that I grew into rather an odd sort of young man, with strange ideas and preoccupations. But all in all, my father’s plan might well have worked, were it not for one thing.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “That he was a stupid, dried-up old idiot who knew nothing of love.” He laughed, but the sound held no humour. “I was summoned back to the bosom of my family on my twenty-first birthday, to find a bewildering occasion in progress. This, I was told, was a joint celebration of my return and of my sister’s engagement to the ruler of a neighbouring country.

  “As I walked into the ballroom to meet my family for the first time, I saw a woman. Though she was not the most beautiful woman in the room, though her face seemed sad and still, when she looked at me … I fell in love with her. Truly in love. And I love her still, though I have not seen her in many long years.

  “Unfortunately for both of us, that woman’s name was Emelia and she was my own sister. Your mother.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  My skin turned to ice. I sat in frozen silence as he laughed again, bitterly.

  “What a coil! I had never loved anyone before, you know, and so I became very afraid – I knew I might cause Emelia to die, simply by caring for her. In the following weeks as she prepared to leave, I avoided her completely. I ran when I saw her coming, hid when I heard her voice, took care that we never exchanged a single word.

  “But fate – as I have told you – must have its own way. Which was why, on the night before she was to leave for her new home, Emelia sought me out. She had a soft heart, my sister. She wanted to speak to me at least once before she left. Seeing her then, being alone with her, I lost my noble ideas about protecting her, forgot how afraid I had been. I embraced her, and told her that I loved her – and when she understood what I meant, she looked at me, my dear Zahira, just as you are looking at me now, with horror and pity. She kissed me, just here” – he brushed his forehead with one gloved finger – “and told me that she wished me well. Then she walked away.

  “I must admit that at first there was a good deal of relief mixed with my sadness at watching her go. She would surely be safe, so far from me – because, of course, absence would cause my love for her to die away. Soon I would barely remember her. She would be safe.

  “Time did pass. My father grew feeble and ill, and the underclasses of Sedra – merchants, tradesmen, politicians – grew in power, until the warrior caste, the true Sedorne, were no more than figureheads, powerless and ignored. Until my father was no more than a puppet king, despised by all. And, despite my every effort to extinguish it, my obsession with Emelia did not die. I lived in daily fear of the report that would come, to tell me that I had killed her. But years came and went and still Emelia lived on.

  “Eventually my father died, and with his passing I began to see the world differently. There was no curse; there never had been a curse. It was a lie that had cost me the woman I loved. I was arrogant enough, you see, to believe that I could have made Emelia love me – that, if I had wished it, our relationship of brother and sister would have not mattered and we would have been happy together. Instead I had let her go.

  “At the same time, I was also struggling to deal with the events that were taking place in Sedra. The Sedorne were being taxed and persecuted to the point that in order to survive, many of my lords were making raids on wealthy neighbouring countries. Including Ruan, the land where my sister had made her home. I was powerless to stop it.

  “Eventually an ambassador from Ruan came to me, asking me to put a stop to the raids – to return with him as an honoured guest and negotiate with Rei Toril. I hardly know how to describe my feelings to you, except that the chance of seeing Emelia again blinded me to everything else. So I gathered up an honour guard of loyal lords and gourdin, and travelled to Aroha, and met with my sister’s husband. It went well, I thought. We talked. I asked for Toril’s advice, and he was kind enough to give it. I even managed to avoid staring at Emelia too much. Then night fell…”

  The shades of evening were thick now around us, and I could barely see his face – only a white glint of light in his eyes and a reddish one from his hair. But I was sure that he was not looking at me any more, I could get up and walk away and he would barely notice.

  “I had been given a suite in the family wing – for I was family, of course. I couldn’t sleep. I got up and wandered out onto the balcony that ran around the outside of the palace. It was there that I found Emelia. Perhaps she couldn’t sleep either. I called out to her, but she went white and fled back into the building. I thought I knew why. So I followed her into her private room.

  “She must have been reading, because there were lights burning everywhere. I remember the way our shadows warped and flickered on the walls as I tried to talk to her. To tell her that I had realized the curse was nonsense, and that she was safe from me. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t care about the curse; she’d never cared about it. She was frightened because of the feelings I had, which were so unnatural, so repulsive to her.

  “When I realized that, I became angry. All the bitterness that had been festering within me for so long spewed out. I grabbed at her – whether to strike her or kiss her, I do not know. We struggled. A lamp fell and set fire to one of the curtains. Then Toril came in; he must have heard the shouting. He saw the fire, saw Emelia trying to get away from me, and… Elements only know what he thought. He lunged at me, drawing his knife. He wounded me, here.” He touched his right shoulder.

  “I reacted on instinct. I took the knife from him and killed him with it. By then half of the room was in flames. I tried to grab Emelia again, to pull her out to safety. She ran away from me. She ran through the flames to her husband. I saw her one last time, kneeling over his
body. She wouldn’t leave him, even though he was dead. She loved him. She loved him.”

  He stopped abruptly. When he spoke again, he was talking to me, not to himself. “I ran out onto the balcony, shouting for help. The wound I had received was bad, and I was losing blood very quickly. I collapsed. I know little of what happened next except that my men, finding me wounded, assumed treachery. They got me out and left the rest to burn. When I woke, everything I had loved was destroyed, just as the old priest had warned.”

  I sat for a moment, images pulsing horribly in my mind – fire, smoke, screaming. Then gradually they drained away, leaving me cold and ill, head aching. My breath shuddered in my chest.

  “You tell the story,” I began haltingly, “as if you were nothing but a helpless victim. Do you believe that?”

  “Oh no, Zahira. It was all my fault. I accepted that years ago – accepted the curse,” he said evenly. “But perhaps I could be forgiven, if it were not for what I did next.”

  “Next?” I said numbly.

  “You know what happened after the Great Fire. You know what I did. Finding myself, suddenly, the sole relation of the dead rei, I seized control of his country, and made myself king. A real king, not a puppet, as I had been in Sedra. I have clung to that power with every fibre I possess in the years since.”

  “Then why?” I asked, bewildered. My eyes were stinging, and I lifted my hands to rub them fiercely. “Why any of this? You had a second chance here to begin anew. Why order the deaths of innocents? Why persecute the Rua and take their homes? Why have the House of God destroyed?”

  “Because it is all I can do,” Abheron said simply. “It’s all I can be. If I am a murderer, a tyrant and a despot, then I am a successful one, the best that ever lived. But if I am simply a man … then I have nothing. I am nothing.”

  Finally I whispered, “What do you want?”