Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  A breeze had come up in the trees. He listened but could not make words out of their rustling: they were not spirits of air, such as Anne had commanded, but only the wind. Yet that sound of wind through autumn leaves reminded him that he still had hope. In the palace at Angenheim, he had seen a gateway opening onto a place veiled by power and distance and the mysteries hidden in the architecture of the universe as Liath would have said. He had heard Liath’s voice. “She’s still alive,” he whispered.

  “It is amazing anyone survived.”

  Sanglant hefted the stick in his hand, weighed it, eyed the ragged thistles and, choosing mercy, lowered the stick again. “I know Sister Anne survived the maelstrom. How many of her companions did as well, I don’t know.”

  “Sister Venia survived,” said Heribert grimly.

  “How can you know?”

  “She’s the type who does survive, no matter what.”

  “You would know that better than I. She was your mother, and the one who raised you.”

  “Like a dog on a leash,” muttered Heribert. Sanglant watched with interest as that smooth cleric’s amiability peeled off to reveal an ancient resentment, nurtured secretly for many years. But, like a dog, the young cleric shook himself after a moment and put the veil back on. His expression cleared, and he glanced up at Sanglant with a cool smile. “Where might such sorcerers go, burned out of their home? Would they try to rebuild at Verna?”

  “I wouldn’t stay there, not after daimones of such power had come calling. There’s a mystery here, Heribert. Those daimones were looking for Liath. Bernard fled from Anne and her company because he feared that the Seven Sleepers might twist Liath to their purpose. But maybe he also feared the daimones. Nay, there is much I cannot explain. What I know is this: Anne will not rest. She will look for Liath, and even if she cannot find her, she will still try to stop the exiles from returning. She hoped that Liath would prevent the Aoi from returning, but just because Liath is gone, Anne won’t give up. I have to stop Sister Anne and her companions. I have to make sure the exiles can return.”

  “Well,” said Heribert, gesturing toward the camp rising among the ruins. “You, and a cleric under ban, and seventy men, and a baby, and one aery sprite. That’s a weak army to take against a sorcerer as powerful as Sister Anne.”

  “So it is.” He bent to pick up one of the thistle heads, cut off raggedly just below the crown. It prickled and stung his palm, but at least pain muted the anger and bitterness swelling in his heart. “I suppose this is how a loyal hound must feel when its mistress abandons it at the side of the road. I actually thought my mother—” He cursed, shaking off the thistle as his skin pulsed from its bite. “I actually thought—”

  He could not go on and had to just stand there, struggling to control himself, while Heribert watched compassionately. Distantly he heard the baa of the goat, and then a goatish reply in a higher pitch. The voices in the trees seemed to mock him, even if it was only the wind.

  “The more fool I. Did she ever treat me any differently than she did the pony who carried her pack?”

  Heribert seemed about to object but thought better of it.

  “Once I was of no more use to her, she abandoned me again, just as she did when I was an infant.”

  “Nay, Sanglant, don’t judge her harshly yet. Perhaps the king detained her.”

  “The king could not detain a sorcerer with her powers. She could have followed us if she had chosen to. But she did not. I no longer serve any useful purpose in her plotting, now that I am, as you say, as good as a rebel against my father’s authority. That was all she cared for.”

  “Nay, friend, I am sure there is a greater part for you to play if these prophecies come true.”

  “But will I play the part they wish me to play? I’m not captain of the King’s Dragons anymore, a piece to be moved about in their chess game.” He frowned abruptly, shading his eyes as he stared westward at the camp. A commotion had arisen. He heard voices but couldn’t quite make out the words. Was that two goats complaining, when they only had one? Yet Captain Fulk could deal with it. He had other battles to fight.

  Resolve came swiftly, and with all its sweet savor. Knowing that he knew what had to be done and that he was the one to do it cleared his mind of doubts and despairs. A man who doubted fared poorly in battle, so he had long ago trained himself not to doubt.

  “The Seven Sleepers must be stopped, Heribert. If my father won’t believe me, and won’t act, then I must act.” He knew he was right, just as he knew in battle when it was time to turn a flank or call the charge. He’d only been wrong once, defeated by Bloodheart’s illusions. He didn’t intend to be wrong again. “Consider what my mother did, and why I am here at all. She never cared for Henry. She didn’t become his lover out of lust or passion or love. She did so in order to give birth to me, so that I would be a bridge between his people and hers. We walked for twelve days together, fleeing Verna, and during that time when she spoke at all she told me about the Aoi council and how it is broken into factions. Some of them hate humankind still and hope to conquer all human realms, while some seek compromise and alliance.”

  “Alas, not even the fabled Aoi are immune from intrigue.”

  “Even animals mark their territories and who comes first and who last in their herds. If that faction of the Aoi who still hate humankind comes to power after the return, then some prince born of human blood must prepare for war. If my father will not do so, then I must.”

  Heribert coughed lightly. “My lord prince. My good friend. If you did not trouble Anne, and let her work her sorcery, then the Aoi would not return at all. And Wendar would remain at peace.”

  Sanglant looked away. “And all my kin would be dead. Nay. I cannot. I can’t turn my back on my mother’s people. I will not let them all die.”

  “Will you instead be the unwitting tool by which they conquer humankind? You said yourself that they showed little enough interest in you. In truth, Sanglant, you might be better served to ask your father’s forgiveness and help him restore the Aostan throne to Queen Adelheid. With Aosta in his grasp, he has power enough to be crowned Holy Dariyan Emperor, like Taillefer before him. Such power would give him the strength to meet any Aoi threat, should the events you speak of come to pass.”

  The image of Bloodheart’s chains rose in his mind’s eye. Those chains still weighed on him. They always would. “I won’t ask for my father’s forgiveness because I did nothing wrong except marry against his wishes.”

  “Had you married Queen Adelheid, as your father wished you to, you would have been king in Aosta and heir to your father. Then you would have had the strength to do what needed to be done.”

  Sanglant turned, stung into fury, only to see Heribert jump to his feet, half laughing, in the way of folk who seek to appease an armed man whom they have inadvertently insulted. He knew the look well enough. The cleric held his staff out before him, as if to protect himself, although he hadn’t any skill with arms.

  “I only speak the truth, Sanglant. I would offer you nothing less.”

  Sanglant swore vigorously. But following the strong words came a harsh laugh. “So you do, and so you do well to remind me. But I won’t seek my father’s forgiveness.”

  “So be it,” agreed Heribert, lowering the staff. “I know what it is to be unable to forgive. But it is well to understand the road you walk on, and what brought you to it.”

  “Hush.” Sanglant lifted a hand, hearing his name spoken in the camp. “Come.” Heribert hastened to follow him as he strode toward the ruins. He had gotten about halfway when the youth Matto came jogging toward them.

  “You see there, Heribert, a lesson to you. I need counselors who are not blinded by their admiration for my many fine qualities.”

  Heribert laughed. “You mean by your ability to fight. Forgive him, my lord, for he is young.”

  “I fear that if he persists in following me, he will not get much older.”

  “Do not say so, may God f
orgive you!” scolded Heribert. “We cannot know the future.”

  Sanglant did not reply because the youth ran up then. His broken arm still hung in a sling, but it didn’t pain him much anymore. His cheeks were flushed now with excitement, and he still seemed likely to cast himself on the ground at Sanglant’s feet, hoping for a chance to kiss his boots. Luckily, he had learned from the example of Fulk and his soldiers. Drawing himself up smartly, he announced his message as proudly as if he were a royal Eagle.

  “Your Highness! Captain Fulk begs you to come at once. A frater’s come into camp seeking you.”

  Entering camp, Sanglant sought out Blessing first; she was safely asleep in a sling tied between an old stone pillar and a fresh wooden post, rocking gently in a breeze made by Jerna. As the baby took more and more solid food and less of the daimone’s milk, Jerna’s substance had thinned as well. He could barely make out her womanly shape as a watery shimmer where the late afternoon sun splashed light over the pillar. Just as well. Those womanly curves increasingly bothered him in his dreams, or when he woke at night, or when he had any reason to pause and let his mind wander. Better that he not be able to see her at all than be tempted in this unseemly way.

  It was a relief to have distraction. He turned his attention to the stranger. It took him a moment to recognize the ragged man dressed in robes that had once, perhaps, been those of a frater. The man came attended by a fractious goat which was at this moment trying to crowd the other goat out of a particularly lush patch of thistles. A dozen of Fulk’s men, as well as Fulk himself, watched over him, not standing too close.

  “You’re the man who traveled with my mother,” said Sanglant, looking the man up and down. He was an unprepossessing sight, dirty, with an infected eye. He stank impressively. “She said you were dead.”

  “Perhaps she thought I was,” said the man.

  “Address Prince Sanglant properly,” said Captain Fulk sharply. “Your Highness, he is to you. He’s a prince of the realm, son of King Henry.”

  “Your Highness,” said the ragged frater ironically. “I am called Brother Zacharias.” He glanced at the prince’s entourage, the soldiers now come to stand around and watch since there was nothing of greater interest this fine evening to attract their attention. What he thought of this makeshift retinue he did not say, nor could Sanglant make sense of his expression. Finally, the man met his gaze again. He had a stubborn stare, tempered with weariness. “I followed you, Your Highness.”

  “Which is more than my mother did,” said Sanglant in an undertone, glancing at Heribert before gesturing to the frater. “So you did, Brother. Is there something you want of me?”

  Zacharias drew a smudged roll of parchment out of a battered cook pot that dangled from his belt, held there by a well-worn string of leather. He unrolled the battered parchment tenderly, with the greatest solicitude, to reveal a torn scrap marked with numbers and ciphers and diagrams, eccentricities, epicycles, and equant points, and pinpricks representing stars.

  Sanglant recognized that impatient scrawl at once. He took the paper from the frater without asking permission, nor did the man protest with more than a mild blurt of surprise, quickly cut off as he eyed the soldiers surrounding him.

  “Liath.” Sanglant pressed the scrap to his cheek as if some essence of her might reside in those hastily scrawled numbers and circles, a lingering tincture of her soul and heart that he could absorb through his skin.

  “Know you who wrote these calculations, Your Highness?” asked the frater, with rising excitement. His cheeks flushed, and he blinked his infected eye so rapidly that tears oozed along the swollen lids.

  After a long silence, Sanglant lowered the parchment. They were only markings, after all. He knew the names she had called them, but he didn’t really know what they meant. “My wife.”

  “Then she is the one I seek!” cried the frater triumphantly. He extended a hand, trembling a little, wanting the scrap back.

  With some reluctance, Sanglant handed it over. “You saw what became of her, surely. She was stolen by fire daimones.”

  The soldiers had heard the story before, but they murmured among themselves, hearing the words spoken so baldly. At times, it amazed Sanglant that they rode with him despite his defiance of his father and regnant, despite the reputation of his wife, who had been excommunicated by a church council for the crime of sorcery and had vanished under mysterious circumstances from Earth itself. Despite the inhuman daimone who attended him as nursemaid to his daughter.

  “Ah.” Zacharias considered the goats, who had resolved their dispute by pulling to the limits of their ropes where they had found satisfaction in a bramble. His profile seemed vaguely familiar to Sanglant, but he couldn’t place him. Had he seen him before? He did not think so, yet something about the man rang a resonance in his heart. The frater had a bold nose, a hawk’s nose, as some would have been wont to say, and a vaguely womanlike jawline, more full than sharp. He had the thinness of a man who has eaten poorly for a long time, and a shock of dark hair tied back at his neck. Like a good churchman, he had no beard. But his gaze was clear and unafraid. “Do you believe she is lost to you, Your Highness?”

  “I will find her.”

  Zacharias considered the words, and the tone, and finally nodded. “May I travel with you, then, my lord?”

  Oddly, the question irritated Sanglant. “Why do you seek her?”

  . “So that she may explain to me these calculations. She, too, seeks an understanding of the architecture of the universe, just as I do. She must know something of the secret language of the stars—”

  “Enough.” The man spoke so like Liath that Sanglant could not bear to hear more of it. Ai, God, it reminded him of the conversation he had overheard between Liath and Sister Venia: Hugh could read, could navigate the night sky, could plot the course of the moon; Hugh had a passion for knowledge, and Sanglant did not. Would Liath like Zacharias’ company better than his? She lived at times so much in her mind that he wondered if she ever noticed that with each step her feet touched the ground. Maybe her feet no longer touched Earth at all, not now. Perhaps all the secrets of the stars had been revealed to her on some distant sphere, and she need never return to the Earth he understood and lived on.

  Heribert coughed slightly, and Sanglant realized that every man there was waiting for him. “You may travel with us, Brother, as long as you abide by my orders and make no trouble.”

  “I have a wretched tongue, Your Highness,” said the frater, “and it has gotten me into trouble before.” He spoke bitterly, and made a kind of gesture with his hand, toward his hips, quickly cut off, as though he hadn’t meant to make any such gesture at all.

  “A little honest gossip is common to men accustomed to the soldiering life, Brother, but I don’t tolerate lies or betrayal. Nor do I punish men for speaking the truth.”

  “Then you are an unusual prince, my lord.”

  “So he is,” interposed Fulk. The good captain regarded the dirty frater with suspicion. “You’ll do your share of the camp work, I trust?”

  “I’m humbly born, Captain,” retorted the frater tartly. “I do not fear hard work, and have done my share, and more than my share, in the past. I survived seven years as a slave among the Quman.”

  The soldiers murmured on hearing this boast.

  “Is that so?” demanded Sanglant. “What tribe took you as a slave, and what was their chieftain’s name?”

  The frater’s grin had the beauty of a hawk’s flight, swiftly seen and swiftly vanished. “I walked into the east to bring the light of God to their lost souls. But the Kirakit tribe, whose mark is the curve of an antelope’s horn, scorned me. They traded me to the Pechanek tribe as part of a marriage agreement. You can see it on my back, if you will: the rake of a snow leopard’s claw, to mark me as the slave of their begh Bulkezu.”

  “Bulkezu,” echoed Sanglant.

  Zacharias shuddered. Even spoken so softly, and at such a distance, names had power.

>   Sanglant touched his throat, felt the scar of the wound that ought to have killed him, but had not. “I fought against him once, and neither of us won in that encounter.” He smiled grimly. “I will take you gladly, Brother, for it seems to me that a man who can survive seven years as a slave of the Quman will not falter easily.”

  “Nor will I,” agreed the frater, “although I was hoping for a wash.”

  “Who’s on water duty, Captain?”

  Fulk had been regarding the frater with surprised admiration. Now he turned to the prince. “I had meant to bring the matter to your attention, Your Highness. The ruins make a good defense, but there is no nearby water source. I’ve got the men carrying in buckets, enough for the night. Brother Zacharias may go down to the stream, if he wishes.”

  “Nay, wait a moment, Captain.” Heribert stepped forward. “This is a Dariyan fort, is it not?” He surveyed the ruins with the eye of a man familiar with ancient buildings.

  Sanglant had camped in old Dariyan forts before. Well built, they had usually weathered time and war so well that their walls still provided a good defensive position, and Sanglant had fought for too many years to pitch camp even in peaceful territory without an eye to defense. This fort, like all the others, had square walls and two avenues, one crossing the other, that split the cramped interior into four quarters, with four gates. Fulk had posted sentries along the outer walls and had placed the camp in the central square, itself ringed by a low wall. Heribert crossed to that inner wall and began a circuit, bending now and again to brush accumulated dust from the reliefs of eagle-headed soldiers and women with the muzzles of jackals that adorned the walls, a parade etched into stone that ringed the entire square.