Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  She was like them. She had a soul of fire no different than their own.

  Joy struck at her heart like lightning. The universe changed into purity around her, and in her heart and in her soul she knew she had entered a place existing beyond the mortal limits of humankind. Even her bow, Seeker of Hearts, had vanished. She had nothing of Earth left to her, nothing binding her to Earth any longer.

  In the embrace of fire she burned for an eternity, or perhaps only for one instant.

  Then she found her voice. “Who am I?”

  Here in the realm of fire their voices thrummed as though they were themselves taut strings on which the music of the spheres played out its measure. “Step into the river of fire, child. Here nothing can be hidden that you call past, which binds you, and future, which blinds mortal eyes.”

  She let herself fall, and the river swept her into the past.

  She knows this handsome villa, its proud architecture and well-built structures, an entire little cosmos sufficient unto itself. She recognizes the vista of craggy hills and of forest so dense and green that the midday summer sunlight seems to drown in leaves. Fields surround the villa, a neatly tended estate. Not one weed grows out of place. Even the bees never sting. This is the place where she was born and spent her early childhood.

  She knows this pleasant garden, once languid with butterflies and now made gold by a profusion of luminous marigolds. But the prize bed of saffron is quite simply missing, scorched and trammeled. A man stands with his back to the rest, surveying the ruined saffron. The other five weary, somber figures gather around the seventh of their number, which is in fact a corpse. It is one of these who kneels, face hidden, to gingerly examine the prone body.

  One of the Seven Sleepers has died in the struggle, and Anne for the first time loses her majestic calm. She shrieks anger, an expression that on her face looks so startlingly wrong that it takes a moment for Liath to realize how much younger Anne is, here in the past. She has her grandfather Taillefer’s look about her, well built and excellently proportioned, with fine eyes and a dignified manner. She cannot be much more than thirty years of age, strong and extraordinarily beautiful in her prime.

  “We were to bind a male daimone!” she cries, outraged at their failure. “It was to be the father! I was to be the one who would sacrifice my blood and my purity to bear a child.”

  “This is the second death we’ve suffered,” says Severus, “although in truth I haven’t missed Theoderada’s incessant praying these last six years.” Taking years away from his face has not improved his sour aspect. “Can we risk a third death?”

  “We must,” insists Anne as she glowers at the dead woman, crumpled on the ground, robes burned to nothing and her skin ash-white, still hot to the touch. “We must have a child born to fire who can defeat this half-breed bastard being raised by King Henry. Do you doubt that all is lost if we do not counter the influence of the Aoi? Do you wish to set their yoke over your neck?”

  “No,” says Severus irritably, having been asked this question one too many times.

  Meriam sighs as she regards the dead woman. “Where will we find another to join our number? Poor Hiltrudis was too young to think of dying.”

  “Aren’t we all?” snapped Severus. His arms are burned, his cheeks flaming as though with fever. Blisters are already forming along his lower lip, and his eyes weep tears.

  The youngest among them, a slight woman with wispy pale hair, stands back with a hand over her mouth to stifle the horrible stench. They are all marked by burns. “I’m afraid,” she whispers. She glances toward the seventh of their number, the man standing a stone’s toss away from the rest with his back to them. Light shines in a nimbus around his body, which by its position conceals something standing in the middle of the charred saffron. She begins to weep silently in fear. “I’m afraid to try again. You didn’t tell me it would be like this.” She gestures toward the corpse. “Hiltrudis didn’t know either. How could you not have warned us?”

  “Hush, Rothaide,” murmurs Meriam, taking the young woman’s arm. “Surely you understood all along that sorcery is dangerous.”

  The man kneeling beside the corpse looks up. At first, Liath does not recognize him. He looks so much younger than when she knew him, with only a trace of silver in his hair. He is even a little homely, the kind of man whose looks improve as he ages. “If we try again,” says Wolfhere, “it will surely be worse. Can we not make do with what we have? We succeeded beyond our expectations.”

  Anne makes a noise of disgust, turning away. “Then I am forced to act alone, if I must. This day’s work is no success.”

  But the man standing in the ashes with his back to the others sighs softly. “She’s so beautiful.”

  “Go!” says Anne suddenly, caught by that voice. “Leave the body. I must think.”

  They are not unwilling to retreat to salve their wounds. Meriam leads away the weeping Rothaide, Severus limps after her and, after a moment, but hesitantly, Wolfhere goes as well, not without two or three backward glances at Anne. The butterflies have begun to return, fluttering around her like winged jewels.

  Then Anne is alone with the corpse and the man standing with his back to her, who has not, apparently, heard her command to the others.

  “Bernard,” she says softly.

  Surprised to hear his name, he turns.

  Ai, God, it is Da, but so much younger, about thirty years of age and, by all appearances, a few years younger than Anne. Liath never knew he was handsome. She never really understood how much she looks like him, even with her golden-brown skin and her salamander eyes. The years of running took their toll. The magic he expended to hide her scarred and diminished him. This is the fearless man, face shaven and hair trimmed in the manner of a frater, who walked ardently into the heathen lands of the east without once looking over his shoulder. But that was all before her birth, before their flight, before that day when, by crippling her, he crippled himself.

  Liath never understood until this instant, seeing Anne’s expression, how much Anne hated him because he is beautiful to her eyes. She never understood until this instant how much power Da had, and how he shone, as luminous as the sun and with a glint of sarcasm in his eyes. She only remembered him, only had memories of him, from after the fear had sucked him dry.

  “Bernard,” Anne repeats, “you have been the thorn in my side for long enough. I know you have never cared about our work to save humankind from the threat of the Lost Ones. I know you joined us only to satisfy your intellect and your curiosity. We’ve suffered you all these years because of the strength of your gift, not for your loyalty to our goals. But the time has come for you to be of use to me. Can it be possible that you have at last seen a creature you desire more than you desire knowledge?”

  Anger chases laughter chases longing across his expressive features. He steps aside, and Liath sees what they have caught in a cage made not of iron bars but of threads like spider’s silk, billowing as the breeze moves through them.

  She is fire, incandescent, a living creature bound by magic beneath the moon, where she does not belong. She wears a womanly shape, scintillant and as bright as a blue-white sun, and her wings beat against the unbreakable white threads, but she is hopelessly trapped. Heat boils off her, but the cage neutralizes these streamers of flame, and when she opens her mouth to scream, no sound comes out.

  “You can have her, Bernard, because I can see that you desire her. But only if what transpires now remains a secret between you and me.”

  He is torn. He suspects that to agree will compromise him in some unintended way, but even as he struggles, Liath knows he will lose because he has fallen in love with the fire daimone, a creature so beyond mortal ken that even to call it down to Earth brings death.

  “How can this be?” he asks hoarsely. “If it caused poor Hiltrudis’ death just to cast the binding spell, how can any flesh dare touch pure fire?” He raises an arm, then blushes, hot and red.

  “First we
must send the others away, to give Hiltrudis’ body a proper burial and to seek a seventh to make whole our number. There are certain spells known to me that can soften fire into light so that her substance will not burn you. But it will be up to you to win her acquiescence.” She eyes him as the daimone writhes, trying to get free. “None of this comes without a price.”

  “What must I do?” He is already caught. He will agree to everything, because desire has trapped him in a cage of surpassing beauty, in the guise of a woman with wings of flame, daughter of the highest sphere, the soul of a star. He will agree to anything, if only he can have her.

  Anne brushes a cinder, all that is left of a thread of saffron, off her sleeve. “First, this sorcery will weaken me. I will be an invalid, and you must care for me until I recover. Second, the others must believe that the child was made of my seed, not yours, that between us we freed this creature and captured another, a male, who could thereby impregnate me. The child must be thought to come of Taillefer’s lineage. Yet not just from Taillefer’s lineage, but legitimately born. To that end, you must marry me in a ceremony sanctioned by the church.”

  “Yes,” he says absently, obviously too distracted as he stares at the daimone even to point out the gaping holes of illogic in this proposal. The woman-creature has calmed enough, now, to furl her wings and with apprehension and anger survey her prison.

  “Last, the child will be mine to raise.”

  “Whatever you say,” he whispers, because the daimone has caught sight of him. She has no true distinguishable features, no human mask of a face, yet those are eyes that see him, that mark his presence, and she does not recoil as he returns her gaze boldly. She watches him, blazing and effulgent, the most magnificent thing he has seen in a life that brought him face-to-face with many wondrous creatures. He does not fear her. He is too much in thrall to desire, the man who until now had remained faithful to his vow of chastity despite the many temptations thrown in his path.

  Whatever you say.

  The words haunt Liath.

  The corpse is carried away and buried fittingly. The next day, Anne and Bernard are joined in holy matrimony in the chapel, with the others looking on as witnesses. Wolfhere paces restlessly throughout the ceremony, looking ready to spit. Rothaide, Meriam, and Severus leave for distant parts, although Wolfhere lingers for a handful of days like a man in the throes of suspicion, believing that his wife is contemplating adultery. Only when his Eagle’s sight shows him the old king, Arnulf, bed-ridden with a terrible fever, does he leave, hastening away to the side of the king he has pretended for all these years to serve faithfully.

  When Wolfhere is finally gone, Anne can at last work her spell, but hers is a devious mind and she has the means to punish the only man for whom she ever actually felt unbearable physical desire. The fire of the daimone’s soul is tamed, her aetherical body is given a semblance of mortal substance, but in this process her features are molded so that they resemble Anne herself.

  Trapped and diminished, the daimone turns to the one who shows her kindness and affection. Fire seeks heat when it is dying. Bernard is not unaware of the way Anne has turned his wish back onto him, so that when at last the daimone surrenders to his patient courtship of her, it’s as if he is making love to Anne herself, her face, her body, but lit by aetherical fire from within, like Anne in the guise of an angel. With that wicked, sardonic humor that made him able to withstand much suffering in his eastern travels, he even calls her “Anne” although Anne lies as helpless as a newborn in the villa, tended by Bernard hand and foot because he remains as good as his word. His entire universe has shrunk to this villa, to the care he gives faithfully to the invalid who has made his wish become truth, to the sphere of the fiery woman-creature he worships and makes love to.

  Maybe what he feels for the daimone is love and maybe it is only lust, a craving brought on by a glimpse of the high reaches of the universe, too remote for the human mind to comprehend. But if what he feels is not love, then it is hard to say what counts for love in a cold world.

  Because the world is cold, and the universe disinterested in one insignificant man’s feelings, however strong they might be. Certain laws govern the cosmos, and not even love can alter them, or perhaps love is the unmoving mover that impels them forward.

  Seed touches seed, by means unknown to humankind and perhaps influenced by the tides of magic. A seed ripens and grows, and the child that waxes within the creature born not of Earth must build a mortal body in which to live.

  It happens so slowly that in the end it seems to happen all at once.

  The child consumes the substance of the mother to make itself. All her glorious fire is subsumed into the child she births, and the birth itself becomes her death. All that she was she has given; even her soul is now part of the child. She herself, the brilliant creature bound and trapped months ago, is utterly gone.

  That she existed at all can only be seen in the newborn’s remarkable blue eyes, as bright as sparks.

  He weeps for a long time, broken, pathetic, until Anne appears suddenly at his side, hale and hearty now that the spell which drained her strength has been dissipated by the death of the daimone.

  “So,” she says, examining the baby as if for flaws, “this is how lust ends, in death and despair.” She seems pleased to have found a way to escape this fate, since lust’s cruel hand brushed her as well. She surveys Bernard’s bent form with disdain. “Give me the baby now, as you promised.”

  “No,” he says, clinging to the naked little thing, still slick from the birth. Where he made for his love a childbed for her labor lies only a soft blanket, nothing else, no trace of her.

  “She killed her mother, the one you loved.”

  “I know.” He weeps, because Anne has trapped him, as she meant to all along. She knew, or guessed, what would happen. He fell as did the angels long ago, tempted by carnal desire, and now all he sees at his feet is the yawning Abyss. His heart’s strength is broken at that moment. In the years to come, his body’s strength will be broken as well, bit by bit.

  But he loves his daughter anyway.

  After all, the child is innocent. If anyone is guilty, it is Anne for the ruthlessness of her ambition. If anyone is guilty, it is the other five sorcerers, for aiding her with willing hands. If anyone is guilty, it is he.

  He will never stop punishing himself. And because he is weak and imperfect, like all human souls, in the end he will punish his daughter as well, even if he never intended to harm her.

  Anne wins. She has the child she wanted, the husband she lusted after, but she has kept her body pure, a matter of great importance to her, who thinks of all other human beings as tainted and unworthy. Bernard stays, because he is completely compromised now, because he is guilty, because he has learned the meaning of fear.

  He stays. He names the infant after an ancient sorceress he read of in a book years ago while sojourning in Arethousa: Li’at’dano, the centaur shaman, mentioned in the old chronicles many times over many generations. Some called her undying. All called her powerful beyond human ken. In the western tongue the consonants soften to make the baby Liathano.

  He calls her Liath.

  He stays with the Seven Sleepers, toiling under Anne’s unwavering and unforgiving gaze, caring for his beloved child, until the day eight years later when the fire daimones come looking for their missing sister. Time passes differently in the upper spheres; an eye-blink may encompass months and the unfurling of a wing years.

  That is when he flees with his daughter. That is when he expends the untapped potential of his own magical powers to lock away her soul and her power, which shine like a beacon, so that no one can follow them. Especially not Anne. Especially not the fire daimones, kin to the woman-creature he loved and murdered.

  Did he run to save himself? To save Liath? Or to save the only thing he has left of the woman-creature he loved? Did he lock away Liath’s true self to hide her from Anne’s machinations, or to conceal her from her
mother’s kin, so that they could never find her and take her away from him?

  Anger was a river of fire, molten and destructive but also cleansing and powerful. She never understood until now how much she despised Da for being weak. At moments she even hated him because she loved him, because she wanted him to be strong when maybe he never could be, because maybe all along without knowing it consciously she guessed that he loved someone else more than he loved her. Because she hated herself for being weak, hated that part of herself, broken and crippled, that had chained her for so long.

  The river of the past, that which binds us because it has already woven its chains around us, flowed easily and without any obvious transition into the future, the unreachable destination where we are blinded by possibility, by hope, by unexamined anger, and by fear.

  She walked into the future with the river of fire streaming around her and she saw

  King Henry strangled by a daimone as a pretty child resembling Queen Adelheid mounts the imperial throne, her mother standing protectively beside her.

  Sister Rosvita, aged and leprous, lies dying in a dungeon. A discarded shoe, its leather eaten away by rats or maybe by her, rests just beyond her outstretched hand.

  The Lion, Thiadbold, who more than once showed her kindness, drinks himself into a stupor in a filthy tavern by sipping ale out of a bowl. He has lost both his hands but somehow survived. Isn’t it a worse fate to live as a cripple, helpless except for what leavings others throw to you as to the dogs?

  Ivar on trial for heresy before the skopos. The Holy Mother Anne condemns him and his companions to death, but he smiles, wearily, as if death is the outcome he has been seeking all along.