Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  They were dancing.

  She recognized then what they were: cousins to Jerna, more lustrous, less pale; some among the daimones imprisoned by Anne at Verna to act as her servants surely had come from the Moon’s sphere.

  They were so beautiful.

  Entranced, delighted, she paused to watch them. Beat and measure throbbed through the aether. Was this the music of the spheres? Swiftly ran the bright tones of Erekes and the lush melody of Somorhas. The Sun’s grandeur rang like horns, echoed by the soft harp strings that marked the Moon’s busy passage of waxing and waning. Jedu’s course struck a bold martial rhythm. Mok gave voice to a stately tune, unhurried and grave, and wise Aturna sounded as a mellow bass nimble underlying the rest.

  They turned and they shifted, they rose and descended, spun and fell still. Their movements themselves had beauty just as any thing wrought by a master artisan is a joy to behold.

  She could dance, too. They welcomed her into the infinite motion of the universe; if she joined them, the secret language of the stars would unfold before her. In such simplicity did the cosmos manifest itself, a dance echoing the greater dance that, hidden beyond mortal awareness, turned the wheel of the stars, and of fate, and of the impenetrable mystery of existence.

  She need only step off the path. Easier to dance, to lose oneself in the universe’s cloudy heart.

  “Liath!” Hanna’s voice jolted her back to herself. Was it an echo, or only her imagination?

  She stood poised on the brink of the abyss. One more step, and she would plunge off the path into the aether. Staggering, she stumbled back, almost toppling off the other side, and caught her balance at last, quite out of breath.

  The dance went on regardless. In the splendid expanse of the heavens, she was of no account. Her own yearning might bring her to ruin, but nothing would stop her whichever choice she made.

  That was the lesson of the rose, which needs tending to reach its full beauty. Its thorns are the thorns of thoughtless longing, that bite the one who tries to pluck it without looking carefully at what she is doing.

  She had come so close to falling.

  With a bitter chuckle, she climbed on. At last the path parted before her, the silver ribbon cutting out to either side along a pale iron wall that betrayed neither top nor bottom. A scar cut the wall, a ragged tear through which she saw a featureless plain. Was this the Gate of the Sword, which heralded the sphere of Erekes, the swift sailing planet once known as the messenger of the old pagan gods?

  As if her thought took wing and brought form boiling up out of the aether, a figure appeared, a guardian as white as bleached bone. It did not, precisely, have mouth or eyes but rather the suggestion of a living face. The delicate structure of its unfurled wings flared as vividly as if a spider had woven the threads that bound bone to skin. It barred her path with a sword so bright it seemed actually to cut the aether with a hiss.

  Its voice rang like iron. “To what place do you seek entrance?”

  “I mean to cross into the sphere of Erekes.”

  “Who are you, to demand entrance?”

  “I have been called Bright One, and Child of Flame.”

  That fast, as though in answer to her words, it thrust, attacking her, and she leaped back. Instinctively, she reached for Lucian’s friend, the sword she had borne for so long. Drawing it, she parried, and where the good, heavy iron of Lucian’s friend met the guardian’s bright sword, sparks spit furiously. It struck again, and she blocked, jumped back, checked her position on the path, and made a bid to cut past it.

  Yet where it had not stood an instant before, it stood now, sword raised. “You have too much mortal substance to cross the gate,” it cried triumphantly, its voice like the crack of the blacksmith’s hammer on iron.

  The breath of hot wind off Erekes’ dark plain weighed her down. She was too heavy to cross.

  But she would not be defeated. She would not fall, nor would she turn back now.

  “Take this sword, then, if you must have something,” she cried, and flung the sword at it.

  The iron pierced it. The creature dissolved in a thousand glittering fragments of luminous iron. Unexpectedly, a strong wind caught her, and she tumbled headlong over the threshold into the pitch-black realm of Erekes.

  4

  THE trial commenced two days later, much to Bayan’s evident disgust. Surprisingly, Sapientia refused to hinder her aunt’s inquiry, and while Biscop Alberada had shown herself willing, if reluctant, to look the other way when it came to sins of the flesh, she stood firm on matters of heresy.

  It continued to rain steadily, making life in the palace environs wet and miserable. The stench of smoke from all the hearth fires became almost unbearable, and a grippe, an aching snot-ridden cold that left its victims wretched, raced through the army crowded into the palace compound and outlying barracks.

  So there was a great deal of coughing and snorting and sniffling among the audience when the biscop’s council met in the great hall. Alberada presided from the biscop’s chair, flanked by Bayan and Sapientia to her left and a dozen scribbling clerics seated at a table to her right. Heresy was such a grave charge that Alberada’s clerics wrote down a record of the trial as well as of her judgment, to be delivered to the skopos so that Mother Clementia might remain aware of the corruption that had infiltrated her earthly flock.

  Normally Alberada would have called for at least two other biscops to be present, to lend full authority to the proceedings. Given the season and the desperate situation, with Quman patrols sighted daily from the city walls, she contented herself with the local abbot and abbess from their respective establishments ensconced within the safety of Handelburg’s walls. They were complaisant, unworldly folk, unlikely to challenge the biscop no matter what she said.

  As the King’s Eagle, Hanna had to stand in attendance on the entire dreary proceeding so that she could report in detail to the king about the sins of his son and the righteous inquiry made by the biscop, Henry’s elder and bastard half sister.

  Ekkehard was given a chair facing his accusers. The rest of the accused heretics had to stand behind him, according to their rank, while witnesses were brought forward and, after several tedious hours of testimony, Alberada laid out her judgment:

  A prince of the realm had used his rank and influence to infect hapless innocents with the plague of heresy. And while some of his victims, faced with the wrath of a royal biscop, recanted quickly, others remained stubbornly loyal to his impious teachings.

  Ekkehard sat through it all swollen with the most magnificent indignation that a youth not yet sixteen years of age could muster out of his own terror, uncertainty, and fanatic resolve. Perhaps he was too young and self-important to be truly afraid. Six of his intimate companions had survived the battle at the ancient tumulus. Biscop Alberada showed her respect for the loyalty necessary between a noble and his retinue by making no attempt to force them to repudiate their lord. For them to abandon him, as it were, in the heat of battle would have been a worse offense even than their spiritual error. Let them be punished along with him. That was fitting.

  The intransigence of Lord Dietrich, his retainers, and about twenty assorted folk of various stations and purpose troubled her more.

  “What minion of the Enemy has fastened its claws inside you?” she demanded after Lord Dietrich refused for the third time to disavow the doctrine of the sacrifice and redemption. “The Mother and Father of Life, who are God in Unity, brought forth the universe. Into this creation they placed the four pure elements, light, wind, fire, and water. Above creation rests the Chamber of Light, and below lies the Enemy, which we also call darkness. Yet as the elements drifted in harmony, they came into contact with the darkness, which had risen out of the depths. Together, they mingled. The universe cried out in distress at this pollution, and God therefore sent the Word of Thought, which we also call Logos, to be its salvation. God made this world through the Word of Thought, yet there remains darkness in it. That is why
there is evil and confusion in the world.”

  “The blessed Daisan redeemed us,” said Ekkehard stubbornly, interrupting her. Lord Dietrich had the sense to remain silent.

  “Of course he did! The blessed Daisan brought the Word of Thought to us all. He prayed for seven days and seven nights seeking redemption for all who would follow the faith of the Unities and be brought into the Light. And at the end of that time, angels conveyed him to heaven in a light so blinding that St. Thecla herself, who witnessed his Ekstasis, could not see for seven times seven days afterward.”

  “He was sacrificed! He was flayed by the order of the Empress Thaissania, but his blood became roses, and he lived again! He rose from the dead.”

  “Silence!” Alberada struck the floor with the butt of her crosier. The sharp knock silenced him as well as all those whispering excitedly in the hall at his outspoken words. Even the cleric whispering a translation into Duke Boleslas’ ear clamped his mouth shut. “You are guilty of heresy, Prince Ekkehard. The penalty for heresy is excommunication and exile, or death.”

  “I am willing to die,” said Lord Dietrich calmly, not without triumph. He coughed, and blew his nose into a handful of straw.

  “You can’t punish me,” exclaimed Ekkehard manfully. “I’m the king’s son, born out of legitimate marriage!”

  “I am the church, here in Handelburg,” replied Alberada, ignoring the reference to her own illegitimate birth. “I do not punish you, Prince Ekkehard. It is the church which punishes you and all those who follow your heretical teachings. But it is true that you represent a special case. You will have to be sent to the king’s court.”

  “To my father?” Ekkehard abruptly looked much younger, a boy caught in mischief who has just realized he’ll get in trouble for it.

  Bayan let out an explosive grunt of anger. “How many soldiers must I send in escort to him? How fewer many then will stand on the walls, when Quman attack us?”

  “Can’t you just put Ekkehard in the monastery until the Quman are defeated?” Sapientia placed a hand on Bayan’s arm as though to soothe the savage beast. “He’s abbot of St. Perpetua’s in Gent, after all.”

  “And expose the holy monks to this plague of heresy? Bad enough that I receive reports every week of this pollution spreading in the countryside! Nay, he must go to the king, or remain here in prison, without recourse to the sacraments, until the Quman are defeated and he can travel safely and with a large escort. A guard will be placed in the tower to assure that he does not communicate with any sympathizers—”

  “Ach!” Bayan threw up his hands in exasperation. With a foul glare at a dog which had draped itself over his feet, he kicked it free, grabbed his cup, and downed a full goblet of wine. A servant hurried to refill it. “I need guards to walls, to sentry. To fight the Quman. Not to sit on our own countryfolk.”

  “You do not appreciate the gravity of our situation, Prince Bayan, which I fear I must attribute to some deficiency in your understanding as a recent convert. I cannot allow the Enemy to tri-umph. I cannot allow the Arethousan pollution to defile the kingdom and the holy church. I cannot turn aside and look the other way when Prince Ekkehard’s errors threaten us all.”

  “To my thinking,” said Bayan, “it is the Quman who threaten us all.”

  “Better we be dead than heretics!”

  Bayan twisted the ends of his mustaches irritably, but he did not reply. As at the ancient tumulus, he recognized the point where one chose a strategic retreat over wholesale disaster.

  “I choose death,” said Lord Dietrich. “Let my martyrdom prove who speaks the truth.”

  Alberada looked surprised and discomfited. “I am not accustomed to presiding over executions, Lord Dietrich.”

  “If you fear to do so, Your Grace, you must acknowledge that I am right. I do not fear death because the blessed Daisan embraced it in order to redeem humankind from our sins.”

  “Neither do I!” exclaimed Ekkehard, not wanting to look less courageous than a mere lord. Since he had not been afflicted by the grippe, his voice had a clear and robust ring, free of doubts or phlegmatic listlessness. “I will embrace martyrdom, too!”

  “I think an execution would be bad for morale,” said Sapientia wisely. Oddly, she looked not at all nervous at the thought of her younger brother’s potential demise. After two days in the biscop’s palace, she had a sleek satisfaction clinging to her in the same way a sour smell clings to a dying person. It was almost as if she hoped to be rid of him.

  “King Henry must be told,” began Alberada, temporizing. “A prince of the royal line, who wears the gold torque, cannot be treated as though he were a common-born troublemaker.”

  “Then send my Eagle,” replied Sapientia, with a wickedly complacent smile. “She has made the journey twice before from the east. She’ll take the news to the king.”

  Was this the blow that Hanna had feared for days, landing at last? Did Sapientia mean to rid herself of her supposed rival by any means necessary?

  Bayan said nothing. Brother Breschius, standing behind his chair, leaned down to whisper in his ear, but the Ungrian prince merely shook his head impatiently as if, after his last outburst, he had resolved to stay out of the fray no matter what.

  Abandoned on every side, Hanna waited for doom to fall. Thunder clapped in the distance. She heard rain clearly, and then it subsided again, as though a door had been opened and closed. Reprieve came from an unlikely source.

  “Send an Eagle alone through the marchlands while the Quman ride where they will and we hide here behind our walls?” Alberada surveyed her heretics with distaste. “That is in itself a death sentence, Sapientia.”

  “Make way!” A messenger hurried in, sopping wet. Her dripping cloak left a drunken line of water drops the length of the hall, and her feet, wrapped only in sodden leather shoes laced up with a cord, made a trail of mud on the carpets. Servants scurried forward to wipe the dirt away while it was still moist.

  “Your Grace!” The messenger dropped to her knees. She looked relieved to be kneeling rather than walking or riding, secure in a safe haven. “Is this Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan? Thank God, Your Highness. I bring terrible news. Machteburg is besieged by the Quman. The town of Dirden is burned, and those who weren’t killed have been dragged away into slavery.”

  Bayan rose, looking grim. “We are answered.” He raised a fist as though it were a club. “Bulkezu mocks me.” His good nature had vanished, and Hanna thought she saw the ghost of his dead son in his expression, ceaselessly goading him toward vengeance. She shivered, remembering how he had chopped off the fingers of a Quman prisoner. It was hard to reconcile a man so often pragmatic and cheerful with the harsh, merciless soldier who sometimes took his place. “Your Grace, this is not time to prison good soldiers. Every person who can fight, must fight.”

  “The Quman are not our only enemies, Prince Bayan. Once we let the minions of the Enemy into our hearts, they will destroy us. What they will bring is worse than death.”

  She would not be moved. She called her stewards to her and spoke to them in an urgent undertone. As soon as they had hurried away to make whatever preparations she had ordered, her palace guards led Ekkehard, Dietrich, their retinues, and the dozen or so other heretics to the church. At Alberada’s command, the rest of the assembly followed.

  Like the great hall and the palace rooms, the biscop’s cathedral—if one could dignify it with that word—had a raw newness about it. There were still artisans working on the ornamentation inside and out. Here in the marchlands, wood was easier to come by than stone, and even a biscop’s cathedral might appear humble compared to the old imperial structures still standing in the west.

  Here, too, dour saints surveyed the multitude—some hundred souls—who crowded uneasily into the nave. These statues carved of oak and walnut looked so remarkably displeased that Hanna expected them to begin scolding the sinners gathering below them. Four remained unfinished, all angle and suggestion, a hand emerging from wo
od, the curve of a forehead half hewn from dark wood, a frowning mouth in an eyeless face.

  Tapestries relieved the monotony of the oak walls, but they had been woven in such dark colors that Hanna couldn’t make out their subject because so few windows cut the gloom. The largest window, behind the altar, faced east. Segments of old Dariyan glass had been pieced together to form a mosaic, an image of the Circle of Unity, but because it was afternoon, most of the light filtered into the nave through the open doors. Cold air licked in from outside, stirring cloaks. From her station in the front, Hanna felt the merest breath of it on her lips, cool and soothing. A hot, oppressive atmosphere weighted down the crowded chamber, a scent of fear, anticipation, and righteous wrath as thick as curdled cheese.

  Every noble in Bayan’s army attended, because not to attend might place them under suspicion. From her position close to the altar, Hanna scanned the crowd, but she hadn’t enough height to see anyone except the top of Captain Thiadbold’s head, recognizable because of his red hair, far to the back. The biscop had commanded the highest ranking Lions to witness as well, so they could report the proceedings to the soldiers under their command. No spiritual charge was graver than heresy. It was, truly, akin to treason against the regnant.

  But all Hanna could think about was losing her head to a Quman patrol. Maybe she would have been better off letting magic carry her east. Maybe she’d been meant to choose Sorgatani over that glimpse of Liath. Yet hadn’t that been only a dream? Couldn’t she be excommunicated if Biscop Alberada knew the extent of her involvement with sorcery? Sometimes it was better to keep quiet. In a way, that puzzled her most about Ekkehard, Lord Dietrich, and lost Ivar. Why did they have to be so obstreperous about their beliefs? Why did they have to keep rattling the chain?

  But that was her mother, Mistress Birta, talking. “Why make a date to meet trouble,” she would say, “when trouble won’t go out of its way to avoid you should you happen on it in the road?” Like Prince Bayan, Mistress Birta saw the world in practical terms. Probably that was one reason Hanna respected Bayan, despite his annoying admiration of her—scarcely possible to call it a flirtation, given the chasm between their stations—that might well send her to her death. Of course, Birta had never cut off anyone’s fingers, but there was no saying she wouldn’t do so, if she thought it necessary.