by Shannon Hale
"It was that captain, uh, Silver or something. He came in one day, mad as a chased hornet, and just took to beating us."
Enna blinked slowly. "Sileph did."
Razo nodded. "Oh, I'm all right. Alive. Just pulled my arm out of joint or something. He hit Finn harder, huh?"
Finn just gave a half smile and looked at his boots.
"Who was the third boy who came with you, the one killed?" she asked.
Razo and Finn glanced at each other.
"Don't know what you mean," said Razo. "We two came alone. Talone didn't even know."
"But wasn't there . . . Sileph said . . . " Enna stopped. It had been another lie, of course, told to make her a little more unsure, work on her to believe that Razo and Finn had been assassins. Enna squinted, seeing Finn turn a sickly yellow, then noticed that the yellowish shade was everywhere. The heat was suddenly awful, and she realized that she was enraged. She spoke slowly with forced calm, almost afraid that if she spoke with her real anger, her very words could scorch them.
"We're getting horses and riding north. I've got to finish this."
From outside, they could hear soldiers shouting. The fire blazed inside her; she resisted and immediately felt her body cringe and loosen. Her knees gave and she slumped. Finn was beside her, his arm supporting her.
"Easy, Enna, you all right?"
She nodded and the room wobbled. "It's worse, Finn. I started to let go out there, burning people and all. The fire wants to keep going; it wants all of me." She swallowed and felt her dry throat scrape against itself. "I've got to stop for a minute, so I can last until we find the army."
Finn set her carefully against the wall. "Sit easy. We'll take care of them."
"No worries, Enna-girl," said Razo, raising his sword with an eagerness that belied his tired, bruised body.
The door thrust open and five soldiers entered. Enna managed to burn a few swords out of hands before she concentrated on letting go of the heat, on breathing clear air. Behind the swirls of yellow and orange, she heard Finn and Razo fighting. She had no doubt they would win. They had to win now that she knew what she must do.
After a time, Finn's mild voice said, "We're ready, Enna."
She opened her eyes and nodded. "Let's go."
Hours later, they rode in the wake of the army. The frozen grass and wheat stubble was well trampled, the area scarred with the black pockmarks of fire pits. Sometimes, from far ahead, Enna could feel a tremendous heat. The cold night and the wind of riding fast had cooled her off. Now the rim of the sun was blazing over the horizon, and the promise of battle and the heat of hundreds of bodies began to taunt her. The hollowness in her chest throbbed like a wound.
"Let's skirt them if we can," she said.
Razo and Finn nodded. They had managed to scavenge some armor and two shields in Eylbold. Finn's helm made him look much older. Razo's was ill-fitting and tended to slip forward over his brow, and he reminded Enna of a small boy playing at dress-up. She cringed at the thought of his getting killed.
"On second thought, I'll go alone," she said. "You two go straight to the capital or Ostekin—whichever you think best—and warn."
Finn and Razo glanced at each other.
"Enna," Razo said gently, as though talking to an ill person or a child. She noticed he did not call her Enna-girl, and the abbreviation seemed to warn of something ending. "I think it's a bit late for caution. Scouts must've seen them by now, and the king's reinforcements'll come as soon as they can."
"Still, I think, just in case—"
"You aim to stop 'em," said Finn. "We're your guards, Enna. We're staying with you till the end."
"All right." Her voice squeaked as she spoke. Tired, cold, thirsty, she did not think she was capable of much emotion, but Finn's words pulled some out of her as easily as a showman tugs a scarf from his sleeve. The entire world seemed to be rushing down an icy slope, but she felt resolved. It was the price of victory, and the price of her crimes. But the unsinged part of her wished differently for Razo and Finn.
"It's not over, Enna," said Finn. His expression was concerned, and something more, afraid maybe, though she knew he was not fearing the fight.
"I don't want it to be," said Enna. "I wish . . . "
She left her wish hanging and urged her mount forward.
They rode east of the trampled earth, close enough to Ostekin that they could have ridden there in an hour's time, but they did not spare it. Enna could feel the constant pressure of heat to her left, where the army marched just out of sight. She ached with it. Her chest arched and trembled, anxious for the fire. She found she could resist for now, though it cost her some pain.
Once they passed two scouts heading east. Razo tore after them when they began to flee, hollering that despite the Tiran garb it was he, Razo.
"Unbelievable," said one of the young scouts. "Razo, you are alive. Talone said no chance the Tiran could kill you."
Razo puffed up visibly. "Indeed. What's happening, Temo?"
"We haven't known much these weeks. They razed a lot of our scout network."
Enna swallowed, remembering the houses and wagons she had burned and the Bayern scout with an arrow in his chest.
"A couple of days ago," Temo continued, "the king sent a force to stop an invasion of Fedorthal. Then the queen came back from somewhere saying she'd heard on the wind of a greater army marching north."
"To the capital," said Finn.
"That's right. The king had time to pull his army back. They'll meet before the city by tomorrow, I shouldn't wonder. We're off with messages for reinforcements."
The other scout grimaced. "Looks bloody. Lots of Tiran."
They saluted and gave rein to their restless mounts, hurrying off to the east.
Enna, Razo, and Finn had to stop past midday to rest the horses by a partly frozen stream. The three lay down on the banks close together for warmth, Enna snug in the middle, and slept for a few hours. Near sundown they rode again and through the night, stopping once again for an hour's huddled rest. Finn lay against her back, his arm over hers. She tried to feel hope at his touch, but instead of warming her, his heat reminded her that there was burning to do.
They rose and rode again. Only a couple of hours later, in the murky light of winter dawn, they heard battle.
Enna led them a little farther north and up a gentle slope. The noise became deafening. In the valley just a few hours' ride from the capital, two armies collided. This battle was two or three times the size of the battle of Ostekin where Leifer had died, and it seemed to Enna that the blue-clothed Tiran soldiers outnumbered the Bayern by at least three to one. She felt her mount shiver.
"What do we do?" said Razo.
Enna rode farther until they were a hundred paces to the side of the Tiran central force. Finn pulled out his sword and readied his shield. Razo followed. The sun crested the horizon behind them and touched their backs like a push from a warm hand. Despite the heat that hung about her like a poisonous vapor, Enna felt clammy and chilled. She knew she could not turn back now, but she trembled to begin.
"I miss you, Leifer," she said softly. Without further hesitation, she looked at the nearest grouping of Tiran soldiers, pulled in heat, and set them on fire.
At first she tried to go slowly, wait for the heat to gather again, not give up control too quickly, but the deeper she swam, the more desire she felt to just be pulled by the current. The fire begged, the lake of soldiers moved and shimmered, seemingly restless for their deaths. Surrender. So before the hollowness in her chest could turn cold and hard, before her skin numbed to the heat, she let go. It felt like dropping the reins on a wild mount, like pushing away from shore. She had been prepared for the horror, but she had not anticipated the joy.
Her horse began to prance and whine. She slipped from his back and onto her knees and continued to burn. It seemed a great while before men broke from their ranks to come after her. Perhaps Enna's Tiran dress and the boys' Tiran armor had fooled them for a time. Enna
was conscious of the closer sounds of swordplay, but she did not move her eyes from the battlefield.
Then something new. Enna sent fire not into a man's hair or clothes, the dead parts of him, but right inside him, into his bones. She stopped for the first time, stumbled away, and emptied her stomach. She had not realized before that the living could also be fuel, and she felt betrayed by the fire, its whispers justifying its existence because it burned only dead things. Lies. But to quit would be like stopping the water after swallowing. She turned back to the battle.
The burning field was mesmerizing. The heat from the sun, from the fires, the horses and living men, from Razo and Finn, it all met in her and became power. It was strange and beautiful how destruction and life were bound together in fire, and she marveled that she had never thought of it before. Her eyes stung, tears for the beauty of it scalded away before they could drop. Was that why she cried? For the beauty? And something else. Pain. She remembered that people cry for beauty and pain, and seeing both together was almost unbearable. She found she was on her stomach now, propped up by her shaking arms, straining her eyes at the field. She ripped apart her sleeves so that her bared arms could better feel the touch of heat.
Nearly a tenth of the field was on fire now, and the untouched pools of blue-coated Tiran seemed to be moving wrong, like a dammed stream. They were gushing out of the way of the fires. They were fleeing. Burn them, she thought, before they're gone. Again and again she filled up her chest with heat.
Then a noise like a twig underfoot. Something inside her cracked, and she felt the heat bleed into her, inside her chest, through her blood.
Now it's over, she thought, and she saw in her mind the hard, blackened body of Leifer crumpled on the battlefield. At last, here was burning pain without beauty, and it felt just. The world dimmed, the sounds of battle were muffled and far away. She felt herself fall forward, heard as from a distance her own cry. Everything seemed to be slipping away.
But before she was completely gone, a new sensation—wind. Cool, late-winter wind rolled over her skin, on her face, over her arms, into her lungs, touching her like a fall of water to wash away the grime. It was cool like a tree shade and carried with it the scents of snow, fox, pine, and hay. Wind reminded her of Isi, and Enna wondered if she were near. She thought she heard Finn say, "Hold on, Enna."
She breathed in as deep as her own roots, and when she breathed out again there was no pain, just sleep.
Part Four
Friend
Chapter 17
The sleep now was different from that of the king's-tongue days. Then the drug had smothered her in numbness and loss of will. Now, even unconscious, Enna found herself fighting. The struggle with the fire became a struggle to survive.
She idly thought that she was still lying on the rise over the battlefield because the sun was so very hot, burning her right through her clothing. It seemed to always be high noon. Sometimes she thought that she awoke, opened her eyes, and saw her body was a charred clump of hard ash. Nightmare. She recoiled into deeper, imageless sleep.
After a time, the struggle included a fight not just to live, but not to wake. In that faraway place where she could think, she feared that if she woke, she would die. She did not want to open her eyes and see the valley and the remnants of her burning. But awareness came closer and closer. She was cognizant of people touching her, speaking around her, placing a cup to her lips.
King's-tongue, she thought intuitively, and spat out the water. She creaked open an eye and saw that she lay in her old room in the palace. A physician stood over her, said something soothing, and brought the water back to her mouth. She drank.
She was conscious at first for only a scattering of moments. Sometimes she opened her eyes and saw that the room was dark and the windows full of night, and she admitted to herself that the heat came from inside her and not the sun after all. Often Isi was there, asleep on a sofa or reading by candlelight.
Slowly, painfully, Enna at last allowed herself to fully wake. The room was quiet. Only Isi was present, sitting in her chair with a book, twirling one short lock around a finger. Enna took a deep, shuddering breath.
Isi looked up.
"I'm still alive," said Enna, her voice raspy and without melody.
"Barely," said Isi. Her smile was friendly, but there were dark patches under her eyes.
Enna thought of the animal worker days in the city when Isi wore a hat all the time to hide her hair and identity and only Enna in all of Bayern knew that Isi was the foreign princess. She remembered Isi by Eylbold firelight, her hair chopped short, telling the Tiran guards the story of the prince and the dragon. She remembered Isi standing outside Ostekin, her hair long and loose, and her expression of horror—no, of sadness—when Enna unleashed a torrent of flaming heat.
Enna took another deep breath, wanting to say something, to explain. Her breath caught in her lungs, tightened, and turned into a sob. She covered her face and let the tears come, then cried out in pain when the sob shook a cracked place inside her chest. She remembered that injury on the battlefield, taking in more heat, feeling the hollow place get so hot, too hot, and snap. A flood of heat followed and even now continued to leak into her blood. She was changed. The fire was not gone—it would never leave. Neither would the images of that last battle, seemingly burned into the underside of her eyelids, always there when she closed her eyes.
Isi moved her chair closer and turned the wet cloth on Enna's forehead over to the cooler side. Enna held her breath until she could control the desire to cry, then spoke with a stunned, sleepy calm.
"I killed. Hundreds of people. I burned them alive."
"It was war," said Isi.
"It was me," Enna said bitterly. "You were right about the fire, about its power being too much for one person. But you should know, nothing forced me to do it. I chose to . . . to . . ." She lifted up her hands and saw the smooth, natural skin. "Why aren't I burnt up?"
"You nearly were. I heard rumor of you on the wind, and then I cooled you. The wind had to keep at you, like putting out a hay fire that keeps relighting."
"Ah," said Enna, remembering.
They were quiet a moment. Enna studied the way strips of light from behind the curtains painted the wall.
"It's over?" she asked at last.
"It's over," said Isi.
"And?"
"We won, more or less. Our land is ours again. It will be. There's still some . . . reconstruction needed."
Enna nodded. "Razo and Finn?"
"Razo's going to live, but he took a sword in the ribs, on the hill beside you. He's still in bed. I believe Finn's fine. To tell the truth, I've been here with you for days and haven't let anyone else in. I can go find him. He's probably hovering somewhere nearby."
"Don't," said Enna.
"All right."
Enna thought of Finn sneaking into a Tiran camp ready to kill an army to get her free; of Finn bound, gagged, beaten by a jealous Sileph because of a look that passed between them; of Finn asleep beside her, his arm over hers. She had loved Sileph while he and Razo rotted, she had attacked Bayern, and she had slaughtered hundreds of people, and still Finn would forgive her. That knowledge felt like a needle pressed into her heart.
She watched Isi's hand straighten a creased page of her book.
"I know now why Leifer died," said Enna. "Part of it was just what happens when you use that much fire, but part of it was choice. He surrendered to it and burned big, but then knew he couldn't live to see what he'd done, so he let himself burn out. It hurts, but not as much as seeing what you've made. I would've done the same as Leifer." Her chin trembled and her face tightened to stop the tears.
Isi sighed and took Enna's hand. "I want you to understand something, Enna, so listen to me. Are you listening? It's what I was trying to tell you that n i g h t . . . before you left Ostekin the last time. I've talked with Razo about you and I've read a bit, and I think no one could've come out of this as well as you. B
etween Sileph's power with words and the fire inside you aching for a reason to blaze, how could you resist? And yet you did for so long. Only Enna, stubborn, unyielding Enna. I know you've only done what you thought best."
Enna nodded. She would love a reason to give up the guilt. But she remembered the nascent flame leaving her body and shooting into a soldier, and before it fully became fire and left her awareness, she felt it enter his flesh, enter the soft center of his bones, the speed of his blood, and there burst into fire. She shivered from deep inside.
When Enna did not speak for a time, Isi said, "You didn't expect to live until now, did you?"
Enna shook her head.
"You still might not." Isi leaned forward, meeting Enna's eyes. "You're on fire, En. You've been living inside a fever now for over two weeks. The physicians don't know what to do. Is it just that you want to . . . burn out? Can you decide not to?"
Enna breathed in and winced at the tearing pain it made in her chest. "I don't know, Isi. I don't know how. It used to be that I had to find bits of heat and pull them to me, but near the end, the heat began to find me. It was like it recognized me, sought me out. It took all my concentration to keep it at bay. But on the battlefield, something in me . . . broke. I can't hold it back anymore. It's leaking inside me, all into me."
"Yes," Isi said thoughtfully.
"Is that how it is with you? Did the wind start to find you, stick to you, and you couldn't push it back?"
Isi looked about to respond, but they were interrupted by a physician bringing Enna food and a fresh cool cloth for her head. While he ministered to Enna, Isi stared at her book, though her eyes did not move across the lines. Enna slumbered, and when she woke again, she opened her eyes to a man standing over her. Instinctively she hunched deeper into the pillows.
Isi stood up. "Enna, it's Geric."
Enna's bleary eyes resolved the images before her, and she saw Geric standing by her bed, his brow furrowed.
"Should I go?" he asked.
"No, no," said Enna, trying to sit up. Isi put a hand on her shoulder that told her to relax. "You're fine, Geric."