Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  It is Queens’ Grave garbed as the Toothless One, the hag of old age. Its youth and maturity have long since been worn away by the bite of the seasons and the winds and the cold rain. It is like glimpsing herself as an aged woman, old and ruined and forgotten.

  Yet one stone still stands within the stone loom. Clothed in blue-white fire, it shelters a dying warrior. Clothed in metal rings, slumped against the burning stone, he waits for death attended by two spirits clothed in the forms of dogs. The falling woman cloaked with blazing wings of aetherial fire whirls past Adica’s sight. She reaches for the dying warrior, and as she grasps him and pulls him after her, Adica recognizes Alain. But the blazing woman’s grip tears away, off his shoulders, and he is lost, torn off the path that leads to the land of the dead so that he walks neither in the world where he lived or on the path that should take him to the Other Side. He is lost, with his spirit guides crowded at his feet, for the space of a breath and a heartbeat, until the Holy One’s magic, the binding power known to the Horse people, nets him and drags him in. He lands, bleeding, dying, and lost, on the great womb of the queens.

  She gasped into awareness at the same moment his hand found her shoulder and closed there. He said her name and dropped down onto his knees behind her, his face wet against her neck.

  “Alain,” she whispered. She turned to face him, together on their knees, and he clung to her, or she to him; it was hard to tell and perhaps they clung to each other, flotsam washed in a vast wave off the sea.

  It seemed to her then that they knelt not on stone but on a bed of grass, under the stars on a night made for mysteries. Trees surrounded them. Nearby a waterfall spilled softly onto moss-covered rocks. How they had come to this place she did not know, only that the wind breathed into her ears with certain subtle and alluring whispers. He held her tightly, and as she shifted, moving her arms on his back, his hands found other places to wander as well. He murmured under his breath, but though his words remained a mystery to her, the language of the body needed no words to convey its message.

  He spoke in other, wordless ways: I ought not, but I want to. I am unsure, disquieted, yet my desire is strong.

  This was the offering. Yet still he hesitated.

  She had not become Hallowed One because she thought sluggishly. She groped for and found the rope that bound his linen tunic tight at his waist, and when he kissed her, she unbound this crude belt so that the linen fell askew. She slipped her fingers down through his, twining their hands together, and with her free hand bound the rope around their clasped hands, once, twice, and a third time. She knew the words well enough:

  With this binding, we will hold fast together.

  May the Fat One bless our union.

  May the Green Man bring us happiness and all good things.

  May the Queen of the Wild reveal what it means to walk together.

  Like coals stored within a hollow log, he burned hot and shy. But in the end, the queens had their way. No doubt in their silent graves they still dreamed of that congress which is as sweet as the meadow flowers. She felt them inhabiting her body just as she knew their power blazed in her for this while, caught in an unnatural enchantment of their devising. Truly, in this place, what man could resist her?

  Not he.

  PART THREE

  THE VALE OF ICE

  IX

  A SLICE OF APPLE

  1

  WINTER laid in its usual store of bitter weather. For three days a viciously cold wind blew down from the north to turn the shores and shallows of the Veser River to ice. Every puddle that graced the streets of Gent had frozen through, and in some ways, Anna reflected, that was a good thing. It meant the stink froze, rainwater, sludge, and sewage in crackling sheets that little Helen liked to stomp on so she could hear them snap and splinter. At times like this Anna remembered the months she had hidden in the tanneries with her brother Matthias: the city had been cleaner when the Eika inhabited it, but perhaps that was only because it had been mostly deserted then.

  Not anymore. Even in the dead of winter folk walked the frozen avenue alongside the freshly whitewashed wall marking the mayor’s palace. Walled compounds faced the avenue on the other side. Well-to-do artisans and merchant families lived and worked in these compounds. A peddler trundled his cart up to one of the gates and called out, hoping for admittance. A servant boy emerged and, after looking the peddler over and examining the condition of his heavy winter tunic and cloth boots stuffed with straw, let him inside. At times, these signs of prosperity still amazed her. It had been less than two years since refugees and newcomers had flooded back to Gent after the Eika defeat.

  Anna had learned to amuse herself with such thoughts when she took Helen along on errands because inevitably she did a great deal of waiting. With her arms full of wool cloth, she couldn’t just grab hold of Helen’s arm and drag her along. The little girl didn’t understand any need for haste, nor did she seem to feel the cold even as Anna’s fingers grew numb, through her wool gloves. Helen warbled like a bird, phrases that leaped up and slid down with lovely precision, as she stamped on a particularly fine landscape of thin puddles, creamy with frozen shells that made a satisfyingly sharp crack when they shattered.

  “Here, now, little one, this is no weather for a child to be playing outside.” The voice came from behind them. Helen continued her singing and stomping without pause.

  Anna turned to see Prior Humilicus walking down the street with several attendants. The cathedral tower loomed behind him, marking the town square that lay just past the northwest corner of the mayor’s palace. The prior of the new monastery dedicated to St. Perpetua was a familiar sight in town these days, especially in the months since the abbot, Prince Ekkehard, had ridden off with Lord Wichman to fight in the east. Humilicus visited the biscop every day no matter the weather.

  “Ah,” he said, seeing Anna’s face and her burden. “You’re the weaver’s niece.” Like all noble folk, he had the habit of touching without asking. He stripped off his sheepskin mittens and fingered a bolt of cloth admiringly. “Very fine, indeed. A rich scarlet. Did Mistress Suzanne dye this wool herself?”

  Anna nodded. Helen had come to the last of the string of frozen puddles and was crushing the grainy ice that made a lacework of its miniature shoreline.

  The prior’s lean face tightened and his lips pressed together. “You’re the mute one, are you not? God have surely afflicted your family twice over.” Anna didn’t like the way he examined Helen. From a filthy, abandoned, half-starved toddler, she had grown into an angelically pretty little girl, some four or six years of age. “She has a remarkably true voice,” he mused. “I wonder if she can be trained to sing hymns.”

  His gaze shifted past Helen. The long wall of the mayor’s palace had once been painted with vivid scenes of the death and life of the blessed Daisan but had been painted over for the third time three days ago. Humilicus picked up a rose encrusted in hoarfrost, examining the wilted flower with the kind of scrutiny most folk reserved for maggots crawling on rotten meat. “I thought all these leavings were picked up last week.”

  “They were, Prior,” said the eldest of the monks, whose thin nose was blue with cold. A gust of wind shook the banners set atop the palace wall and set Anna’s teeth chattering. “The biscop’s clerics go around every week collecting such offerings. They brought in two wreaths, one carving, and four candles yesterday.”

  Helen darted forward to pluck the rose out of Prior Humilicus’ fingers, then scurried away to hide behind Anna.

  “Here, now!” scolded the thin-nosed man.

  “Nay, let her go,” said Prior Humilicus. “A whitewash won’t erase memory. If the common folk still lay offerings here after all this time, then chastising one witless girl won’t have any effect on the stain that’s crept into them. It was that stout lad who let the pollution in, he and his tongueless accomplice.” Despite his grim looks, he had a mild if somewhat sardonic disposition. He paused to examine the wall with an ironic
smile. “A clever and well-spoken lad was Brother Ermanrich. It passes my understanding that God should have allowed the Enemy’s work to enter such a fitting vessel.”

  “God’s ways are a mystery, Prior,” agreed his companion. “It is a good thing those young monks rode away with Prince Ekkehard.”

  Humilicus bowed his head as if in submission to the unfathomable mind of God. The procession of monks moved away down the street.

  Anna stamped twice, sharply, to get Helen’s attention. The little girl followed happily, skipping and singing, as they walked down to the waterfront gate, to the fullers’ yard. The mistress allowed them to sit on their cloaks by the hearth while she inspected each finger of cloth with an eye to flaws, but Anna didn’t mind waiting, since it was warm. She carried distaff and spindle with her, and began spinning fiber to yarn. Helen pried all the thorns from the rose and tucked it behind her ear, like an ornament. Sleepy, she yawned so widely that her mouth looked ready to split. A few girls their ages sat or stood in the hall, spinning, although most of the activity at this time of day took place out in the yard or in the tenters’ field situated below the city walls.

  “That’ll do,” said the fuller, who usually hadn’t a kind word to say about anyone. That she couldn’t find any flaws in the weaver’s work was high praise. “I don’t want anyone saying we’d damaged the goods in the fulling or tenting.” An assistant hurriedly took the cloth away to the yard. “I’ve twelve lengths done for you to be taking back to your aunt, although I see you’ve an errand to run before you go home.” She indicated the scarlet cloak, already fulled and finished, that Anna had set on the bench behind her. The fuller fingered the cloth in the same avaricious way Prior Humilicus had. “Not many can get such a good scarlet color. Did Mistress Suzanne get the wool already dyed?”

  Anna allowed herself a vapid smile. She hated being mute. The lack of a voice was like lacking hands, most noticeable when you weren’t thinking about it and reached instinctively to tighten your belt or take a slice of apple, but occasionally it had advantages.

  “Well, you’ve nothing to say! And no wonder. Your aunt has made much of herself in Gent since the Eika were driven out. If I didn’t know you were mute, I’d suppose you were simply too proud to talk to such as me!” The fuller had the kind of face easily creased by smiles, round and full, but she hadn’t any smiles in her gaze, only envy. “Still, you’re old enough to be betrothed, and you look as though you’re likely to be moving to the women’s benches come St. Oya’s Day. Has Mistress Suzanne found a husband for you yet?”

  Anna shook her head. She didn’t mind that her body was changing; that was part of the natural order. But she didn’t like the way people tried to tempt her with marriage offers. After all, no one actually cared about her.

  “You’ve a funny color of skin, it’s true, but you’re healthy enough and it would be a good alliance with a prosperous family, and advantageous for both our households to be allied one with the other. I’ve a likely nephew. He’s a good lad, almost nineteen—” The fuller seemed ready to go on at length, but shrieks erupted from the yard, followed by angry voices. She rose with a grunt of anger. “Gutta, give the weaver’s niece the cloth that’s done.” To Anna’s relief, she strode out to the yard, where Anna heard her voice raised in a blistering scolding.

  A girl no older than Anna transferred the fulled and dried cloth into Anna’s keeping as soon as Anna tucked distaff and spindle into her belt. She layered the good scarlet cloak in between the other cloth, for protection, and stamped twice to attract Helen’s attention. She held a dozen folded lengths of cloth that Mistress Suzanne would either trade to tailors’ row or finish herself into cloaks and winter clothing. With a sigh of satisfaction, she left the fullers’ yard behind.

  As usual, she had saved the best delivery for last.

  She loved visiting the mayor’s palace; The guards at the gate recognized her and let her and Helen inside without any trouble, although one of them, a lad not more than twenty years of age, bent down to speak to her.

  “I beg you, sister, say a good word for me to the lovely Frederun. I know she favors you for the handsome cloth you bring.”

  The other guard snorted. “This girl’s mute, Ernust. She can’t say anything to the lovely Frederun, not that it would mean much to you if she did! She hasn’t taken a man to her bed since Lord Wichman went away. Get on with you, then, child, and leave us out here in the cold. Maybe poor Ernust’s nether parts will cool off a little!”

  The palace compound had a neat layout, easy to get around. The stables and storerooms lay to one side, the palace on the other, and the kitchens at the far end of the central courtyard so that any fire that might break out wouldn’t spread to the other buildings. Despite the Eika occupation, the palace had survived more-or-less intact. One wing of the stables still lay in ruins, and three of the storerooms had burned to the ground and lay in various stages of repair. The eastern gate had fallen in completely to make a great heap of stone, but it had taken all this time to make the palace interior habitable and only this winter had his lordship sent to Kassel and Autun to find engineers who could direct the rebuilding of the gate.

  The palace itself had a great hall and several wings, one of them fully three stories tall, added on over many years. Anna made her way around to the carters’ entrance and was admitted to the servants’ hall, a goodly chamber busy with women sewing up rents in linens, mixing cordials, binding up sachets of aromatic herbs to relieve the smell in the closed-up winter rooms, and polishing the mayor’s silver plate, salvaged in the headlong retreat from Gent.

  Frederun had become chief of the servingwomen of the palace mostly because Lord Wichman had quickly singled her out when he’d taken over the lordship of Gent after the great victory over Bloodheart and the Eika. She had a chair set at the largest table, the seat of her authority, and when she saw Anna, she beckoned her forward and took the cloak from her. Standing, she shook it out. Work in the hall came to a halt.

  “Truly,” said Frederun, “Mistress Suzanne has outdone herself this time!” The cloak had a rich scarlet hue, fur lining, and a beautifully sewn trim in a fanciful design of elegant dragons outlined in gold-dyed thread.

  “Surely that’s not for you, Frederun?” demanded an older woman whose face bore an unsightly scar, the mark of an Eika ax.

  “Nay, it’s for Lord Hrodik. Now that Lord Wichman is gone, he fancies himself the proud defender of the city. It’s to go over his armor.”

  The women laughed.

  “His sister’s armor, you mean,” continued the scarred woman. “He’ll never be half the fighter Lady Amalia was, may God bless her name.”

  All the women there drew the Circle of Unity at their breasts and murmured a prayer for peace. Many of them remembered the noble lady who had died of her wounds after the battle for Gent that Count Lavastine and King Henry had won.

  “No sense in calling the poor young man names, for all his faults,” scolded Frederun. “The rats have fled the nest, and the mouse that’s left us is a kinder master than they ever were.”

  “True-spoken words,” agreed the scarred woman, resting a hand on Frederun’s shoulder. “You took the brunt of it, friend. We’ve none of us forgotten that.”

  Frederun traced the outlines of dragons embroidered along the edge of the rich fabric. She had dreamy eyes of a limpid brown, the kind one imagined gazing into a lover’s ardent gaze, set off by light hair caught back and covered by a shawl tied so loosely that curling strands of hair had escaped to frame her pretty face. She was, everyone agreed, the second handsomest woman in Gent.

  “Come, now,” she said, shaking off her reverie impatiently without responding to her companion’s comment, “here’s these two lasses who must be cold from walking outside in that wind just so Lord Hrodik can have his cloak the instant he desires it! Here, child, let you and your sister come in and have a bit of hot cider to drink for it’s that cold out, isn’t it now? Sit by the hearth.” She addressed one of th
e younger servants. “Give them a slice of apple, and be sure they have a bit of cake from the lord’s table as well.” She clapped her hands sharply twice. “Back to work! Let’s have no sleeping in the hall. We’ve little enough light these months as it is. Fastrada!” The scarred woman had taken the cloak from her to fold it up. “I pray you, will you see that the cloak is delivered to Lord Hrodik?”

  “Truly, Frederun, you know how he will complain if you’re not the one to deliver it to him.”

  Frederun exclaimed sharply on a gusty sigh, but she reached for the cloak and finished folding it with practiced ease. She had strong hands from years of hard work, although certainly she couldn’t have been more than twenty years of age. “Why must he believe he is owed what Wichman took?”

  No one else appeared to be listening, perhaps only because of the boring familiarity of the situation. “Can you not speak to Biscop Suplicia?” asked Fastrada.

  “She is kin by way of certain cousins to Lord Hrodik’s family. Why should she feel any compassion for a bond servant like me? Do I not owe service to their noble house?”

  “I thought you served at the mayor’s palace, not in the lord’s bed.”

  “You know as well as I that Mayor Werner was the last of his family. Nay, the noble lords have hold of Gent now, and they won’t give it up.”

  The older woman frowned sourly. “Very well. I’ll take the cloak up to him, and let him bleat as he may.”

  Frederun cast down her gaze, as though in exhaustion. “I thank you.” She straightened one of her sleeves and wiped a fleck of ash, floating out from the hearth, out of an eye. “He has grown worse—”