Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  Anne stood. Each white butterfly spark bloomed with color—ruby, sapphire, emerald, carnelian, aquamarine, amethyst and rose quartz, banded chalcedony, iridescent opal—each one as lustrous as a gem. Their dance swirled around the chamber, making Rosvita’s head ache at the same time as her heart exulted. Henry rose slowly, staring as butterflies swarmed around his head to form a crown of luminescent stars at his brow.

  For an instant he gleamed there, crowned in splendor.

  The sparks vanished, leaving them with a steady gleam of magelight and a cool, pale woman of vast power and middling height. Whispering, half frightened and half in awe, the servants hurried to light lamps as the magelight spun itself into delicate threads and, at last, into nothing, simply fading until it disappeared.

  “Illusion,” muttered Villam.

  Hugh of Austra’s gaze glittered just as brightly as had those dancing sparks. In his expression gleamed an unsettling hunger.

  Queen Adelheid looked no different than he did, dazzled, thirsty for more.

  Even Henry. God save them, even Henry.

  “What do you want?” Henry asked again, his voice as hoarse as that of a famished man who has just seen a feast laid out on the table.

  Villam’s hand brushed Rosvita’s fingers, a signal she could not read. Nor could she speak to ask him, not even whisper, not with the silence lying so deeply around them, a cloak thrown over the assembly.

  Can we trust her?

  Rosvita no longer doubted Anne’s right to wear the gold torque. Granddaughter of Taillefer and Radegundis, daughter of Fidelis and the foundling girl Lavrentia; a mathematicus of considerable power. One could not ignore such a woman.

  Anne bent to pick up a shard of glass, as blue as lapis lazuli, off the parquet floor. She displayed it in her palm, blew on it gently, and a brilliantly blue butterfly opened its wings and flew away, quickly lost in darkness. She did not smile as she addressed the king. A woman with so much power does not need to smile, or to frown.

  “Do not turn away from me, Henry, Lord of Wendar and Varre,” she said, untroubled by the agitated currents roiling around her. “For without my aid, you will have no empire to rule.”

  7

  EVERY soul tainted by the touch of mortal earth is peppered with shadows and black recesses, caught where they are least expected: hates, loves, fears, passions, envies and angers, lies and truths. Every soul born on Earth can never be free of them. No matter how fiercely the cleansing fire rages, she will never be pure fire.

  She will always be trapped in her body.

  She hit the ground running, half crouched, bow ready. Here in the sphere of Jedu, a light snow fell. She loped over a plain marked by hundreds of small outcrops, tumbled boulders, heaps of stone, irregular folds, every lump and swell concealed under a blanket of snow. Cold flakes dissolved on her lips, swirling around her naked body. The only place she was warm was along her spine where her quiver gave her skin some protection from wind and falling snow. Her toes had already gone numb from the cold; each step was agony, like walking on needles. It was a bad place not to have any clothes.

  It was a bad place to be trapped in a physical body. Looking back, she saw no gate, no entry point, only her footprints, steaming as the brief warmth of her passing was whirled away into the bitter air. She could only go forward. That was always the case, wasn’t it? She could never go back.

  She brushed snow from her hair, felt it tickle her eyelashes and dust the end of her nose. Flakes melted on her nipples and strung a mantle across her shoulders, rubbed clean at intervals by the leather strap of her quiver. Her ears stung. Despite the stiffness in her fingers, she kept her bow raised and an arrow taut. In Jedu’s angry lair, anything might happen. She had to expect the worst.

  It didn’t take long for the worst to find her.

  Thunder rolled and tumbled in the distance. Lightning flashed, sparks of brilliance on the horizon. She paused, seeing no storm clouds, only the steady gray bowl of a fathomless sky.

  Not a storm at all. At first the figure looked impossibly small. In the time it took Liath to take in two sharp breaths, the creature doubled in size as the thunder of its footsteps rang in the air. As she caught in a gasp, it filled her sight, a monstrous giant.

  The Angel of War.

  In place of eyes she wore shining mirrors. Her mouth was huge and fierce, as red as poppies. Her black hair was as tangled as a bramble bush, and from it peeped two hideous horns, each one tipped with a stain of blood. For armor she wore masks, a hundred or a thousand or more covering her massive body. On each shoulder she wore a mask with mirror eyes. On each elbow there hung another such face, a mask with mirror eyes, and on her knees there hung masks as well, faces glittering and shining with every least movement she made; even her abdomen and back bore faces, each one frozen in a leer or a grimace. With mirrors hanging upon every part of her body, it looked as if she could see in all directions.

  She bore a spear and a sword, but not a shield. The masks—the mirroring eyes—were her shield.

  Where the Angel of War walked, the ground came alive. Snow shuddered. What Liath had thought were rocks and boulders uncurled into living beings. She walked not on an empty plain but on a battlefield that stretched impossibly far in every direction, a plain of corpses, the detritus of war.

  They didn’t look very dead now. They were rising out of the snow, and they were all armed.

  The easiest choice was to run.

  But she had only taken two halting steps backward before she knew that running was no choice. The dead were everywhere, too many to count.

  Thunder crashed. Jedu loomed, filling the sky. The angel’s face bore that grimace of uncontrolled rage that turns a beautiful face hideous. Thousands of huge mirrored eyes stared at Liath, yet their gaze did not perceive her. In each glittering, faceted eye she saw, not herself but a death on the field of battle, the killing thrust, the mortal wound, the last breath and bubble of blood. There were more than enough suffering dead to fill the vast plain.

  Out of the field of moldering bones and broken weapons, misty figures appeared, insubstantial at first but solidifying like wax sculpted into forms. To her left a phalanx of a hundred warriors moved into position, each man armed with a lancelike spear twice as long as any she had ever seen. She recognized these warriors from tapestries and frescoes, with their hammered breastplates and crested helmets: the soldiers who carried the banner of the old Dariyan Empire. Other groups of fighters cohered on the plain around her. Some of these cohorts she recognized, Aoi, Quman, or Eika. Others she knew only from stories or dreams, centaurs, men mounted on camels or huge elephants, a wild hunter leading his mastiffs, guivres and griffins rising in flight. Sounds issued forth, orders in a thousand languages, the cries of the beasts, the clamor of armies in motion.

  In the sphere of Jedu, war was never finished.

  Moving slowly at first, the armies began to advance. The phalanx at her left shuffled closer step by step, their hedge of sarissas leveled at her—nay, not at her but rather at a line of elephants formed up to her right. A clear trumpet belled the advance. The ground shook under that weight as the elephants advanced toward the phalanx, and toward Liath.

  Arrows, darts, and slender javelins filled the sky as a thousand conflicts unfolded. A stone from a sling struck a glancing blow on her thigh. She fell to her knees, blood streaming down her leg. The elephants rumbled forward, and the men in the phalanx braced themselves against that charge.

  One of the massive gray beasts lumbered forward directly toward Liath, trampling everything that came under its broad feet. Recoiling, she shot an arrow as it came into range. The shaft slipped between two armored plates protecting its throat and disappeared, buried deep. The creature bellowed in pain; its screams echoing along the line of elephants as they responded to its death cries. It collapsed to its knees after three more steps. Two men spilled from the carriage on top, one rolling clear while the other was caught under the rump of the beast as it pitched to one si
de and let out a weak, and final, trumpet.

  Then the rest of the elephants passed her position and crashed into the spears. The phalanx dissolved as the massive forms shattered spear and bone. Elephants, skewered through limb and neck, went berserk, tossing and stomping on their riders, on their foes, on anything they could reach. Blood spilled on the snow. Behind the elephants, soldiers advanced, carrying great axes; their job was to finish off the shattered phalanx. She could not tell if they saw her at all, but she dared not wait to find out. Rising to her feet, she shot any creature that seemed to approach in her direction. They weren’t real, after all. She wasn’t really killing them because they were already dead. She was only protecting herself.

  She fired ten times, and ten men fell dead or dying.

  Jedu’s expression warped, rage turning to sadistic joy. Liath reached to her quiver for another arrow. Only two remained.

  Ai, Lady. These warriors were as much victims of Jedu’s wrath as she was. She could remain here, trapped in the agony of war, or she could seek the gate that led to the sphere of Mok. With an effort, as the battle raged around her, she remembered her wings. She called fire and, with her wings burning at her back, lifted above the fray. Arrows that flashed toward her burst into flame, their ashes raining onto the carnage below.

  Men screamed. Horses fell, kicking. The killing went on and on and on.

  Let there be an end to it.

  She nocked arrow to bow and drew Seeker of Hearts one more time, aiming true at Jedu’s grimacing face.

  Loosed the arrow. That blissful smile of joy melted from the angel’s hideous and beautiful face to be drowned once again by an expression of rage. Her maw opened, exposing teeth like a thousand daggers; in that dark cavern, the arrow was lost at once.

  Heart pounding, wings hissing at her back as she beat hard to stay aloft, Liath reached back for her final arrow. Her fingers touched silken coverts, the gold feather given to her by Eldest Uncle, which she had used to fletch her last arrow.

  Before she could pull it free of the quiver, Jedu gave a cry, shrill and piercing, that caused every creature on the plain to shudder to a halt. Liath tumbled backward on the wind of that cry, fighting to control her flight, as the angel’s words boomed out over the battlefield.

  “Die a million deaths. Suffer for all eternity. No one, Daughter of Fire, enters Jedu unbidden. No flesh escapes my bite.”

  Then Jedu heaved out her chest, and sucked in.

  With all her might Liath fought to fly higher, but she was drawn in despite her struggles. The mirror eyes grew huge and in their depths she saw the slain, and the slayer.

  Ai, God. Some she knew. There a guivre, killed by Alain. There an Eika chief, falling under Lavastine’s sword. There a Quman soldier, being drowned by Ivar. There Ironhead’s pretty concubine, driving a spike through the sleeping king’s head.

  A lord outfitted in mail and helmet tumbled from his horse, dismounted by a spear thrust. The man who unhorsed him was no luckier; the impact of his own blow overbalanced him and he was thrown from his horse to land hard on the ground, losing his helmet, while a skirmish raged around him, made misty by the slant of light obscuring the mirrored eye into which she stared in horror.

  It was Sanglant, except he was so young, scarcely more than a boy.

  The stinking aroma of a charnel house dizzied her as the angel’s mouth opened wider, to swallow her whole.

  She twisted, reaching for Sanglant, spinning herself into the mirrored eye, into the grasp of her lover.

  She landed on a soft cushion of long green grass. The blinding sunlight stung her eyes, but at least it was warm here. Yet she hadn’t escaped Jedu’s rage. Her horse, leaping over her, galloped off, and the din of battle still filled her ears.

  She was not herself. She lay in a man’s body, a lord of Hesbaye, nephew of the countess, risen in rebellion because his mother’s portion had gone to his aunt at her death instead of to him. So inconsequential did King Henry think him and his rebellion that the king had sent his half-breed whelp against him, a child not more than fifteen or sixteen years of age, untried and unfit even with an older, wiser captain riding in attendance.

  How was it, then, that the brat had unhorsed him?

  A body slammed against him, pressing him into the grass. Ai, Lady, it was Sanglant, helmet lost and black hair streaming. He was so young, lithe, lean as a reed, not yet filled out with a man’s height and breadth. Yet he still felt firm and reassuring, lying against her.

  “Sanglant!” she whispered, having no breath to shout. “It’s me. It’s Liath!”

  He slipped his arm across her chest, a broad knife clenched in his fist as he brought it to her throat. In a quick motion, the merest sting, the blade bit deep and her words choked and drowned in blood as she struggled to tell him. Her life gushed from her neck. She clawed toward her throat, anything to stop the blood, but he pinned her arms under his weight. Gasping, she looked into his green eyes, but all she saw was the rage of Jedu. Rays of sun melted holes in her vision; murky stains blotted out Sanglant’s face. The world narrowed, sound faded, and all washed black.

  The clash of arms and the jerk of her horse woke her as if from sleep. On her left side the begh, with his fearsome griffin feathers gleaming from the wings fastened to his armor and his iron visor making a mask of his face, urged their line forward. His standard billowed in a stiff wind, the rake of the snow leopard’s claw that marked the proud warriors of the Pechanek clan. They charged and she, like her chief, lowered her lance. The banner of the Dragons amidst a mass of mounted Wendish and Ungrian soldiers surged forward to meet them.

  The King’s Dragon led the charge. Sanglant, older now, drove straight for her chieftain, his ax raised. With a deft shift of his point, the griffin rider slid his spear around Sanglant’s shield and caught the prince just where his coif gapped to expose his throat.

  The young prince fell back across the rump of his warhorse but still, somehow, managed to drag himself back up. He clung to the saddle, blood from the wound pouring down over his Dragon tabard, as the steed charged through the crowd and broke to the rear of the Quman charge. Behind, his Dragons raised a cry of alarm and fury.

  Liath fought her horse back through the chaos to catch up to Sanglant. His helm had fallen askew and he was as pale as if all his blood had drained out through that horrible wound. He lay like a dead man over the withers of the horse. Tears streamed from her eyes as she called out to him and brought her mount up alongside his. He convulsed once, like a man spitting-out his death, and heaved himself up to strike with the speed of a snake.

  A crushing force came down on her head and for a moment she could actually see along either side of the ax blade protruding from her forehead, but all she really saw was the desperate look in her lover’s eyes. Red seeped into her vision. She slid limply from the saddle.

  Slipping in the blood and stink of one of her fellows, she scrabbled to gain purchase on the stone floor. The man creature had one hundred small wounds, one hundred rivulets seeping blood. The scent of his blood made her wild with hunger. She thrust aside the others, biting at their flanks so that they gave way, and trod on his chest, pinning him.

  A glimmer of sentience sparked in her tiny mind. Was this man creature part of her pack? But hunger ate at her belly and he smelled so sweet. She lunged for the kill.

  He was too fast for her. He caught her under the throat and like a dog bit down on her windpipe. Thrashing, fighting, she felt the wind crushed out of her, the air choked, the rich smell of blood and death fading, dulling, until the world was cold iron and for an instant she remembered the waters of her birth softly lapping around her and then even that sensation fled.

  And she was fleeing Gent with the other RockChildren, running behind Isa’s banner, but a figure that stank of captivity rode her down and with the strength brought about by madness clove her head from her shoulders.

  And she had no body, not here where the perfume of flesh and blood made her thirst, an aching
, ragged, raw pain. She had not wanted to come here. Torn from the halls of iron, she swayed in the hot blast of wind and sighed the name of the one she sought. “Sanglant.” His blood would release her to return to her home. That alone she knew. But as she advanced with her sister galla, tasting his blood on the wind, he attacked, piercing her with the stinging tip of a griffin’s feather. The sorcery that bound her to the halls of earth burned and snapped, and she was flung into agony.

  And she shrank back in terror as the mounted man charged through her motley companions, cutting them down like reeds. She cried out, begging for mercy, as her last arrow spun uselessly to the ground.

  Ai, Lord, why had she left her mother’s house? She’d been a fool to argue with her brother, and a bigger fool to let anger drive her away, and the biggest fool yet to allow Drogo to convince her that there was wealth to be made and supper to be had by picking on hapless travelers. But she’d been desperate by then, and too proud to go home. She’d been so hungry, and Drogo had offered her bread if she’d join his miserable pack of bandits.

  Sage and fern halted her backward stumble. “Mercy!” she cried. Then he was on her, death in his eyes.

  Sanglant.

  His sword came down, and pain obliterated everything else.

  “Nay, Welf!” cried Ekkehard, stopping him with the point of his lance. “You’ll not desert me now.”

  She wept in her young man’s body. She had never known fear could hurt so much. “I’ll never desert you, my lord prince. You know that. But it isn’t right that we fight on the side of the Quman against our own countryfolk. It’s treason.”

  Ekkehard flushed. “We’ve dirtied our hands too much to ever go back. Better to die in battle than hanging from the gallows.”

  They waited as the gold banners flown by their foes advanced. Frithuric and Manegold waited with stolid patience, but he could see, she could see, the despair in their eyes. How had they all been so stupid? How had they let Bulkezu seduce them? It was a good thing his mother wasn’t here to see him now, the son who had dishonored the family name.