“I’m carrying a girl,” she said, patting her belly. “She’ll be named Sky.”
She left before I could say anything. My emotions were raging, and I wasn’t sure if for a second I was going to break down and cry. Instead, I blew out the candle and pulled my blankets up to my ears.
It was a long time before I fell back to sleep.
The next morning, the whole manor house seemed to be buzzing. The elderly lady who had shown me to my room brought me breakfast and a pot of tea, beaming at me as she did so. As she left my room, I thought I caught glimpses of other servants in the hall and I heard a snatch of excited gibbering until my door was closed again. I ate the steam buns – these ones had bits of apricots and peaches in them – in thoughtful silence. I got dressed as I drank my tea, dressing in the same breeches that had been laundered, but pulling on a white shirt this time; my green one was beyond repair, as part of the material was still out in the marshes attached to the claws of the dead Du’rangor. I left my hair down for once, impressed by the soft shininess of it after Rain had washed it. It smelt like fruits, and I made a mental note to ask her what shampoo she used.
All mental notes fled my mind as I opened my door. It seemed as though every servant that worked in the manor had found an excuse to be cleaning something outside or near my room, and when I opened my door they all stared.
I avoided their gazes uneasily, trotting down the stairs and praying that I wouldn’t fall flat on my face with everyone watching. Still peckish, despite the rolls and tea, I headed for the dining room, finding the others seated around the enormous table which had been decorated with a large bowl of red chrysanthemums. The others were already eating, their chatter reaching my ears just as the smell of bacon and eggs did.
“There she is,” Lord Hugh said, spying me in the doorway. “Our hero.”
He swept over to me and kissed me on the cheek as Petre had done.
“I’m not anyone’s hero,” I mumbled, embarrassed. “I did what anyone at this table would do.”
“You did what we couldn’t,” Ispin said, fixing his glasses on his nose. “None of us wanted to go off by ourselves, even though we suspected you were right, that the Du’rangor wouldn’t go after us as a group.”
“He’s right,” Rain said, echoing her soul mate. “Deny it all you want, Sky, but the fact is that you have courage that we just don’t.”
I couldn’t respond, so I just stood awkwardly, shuffling from foot to foot. Dena rescued me by pulling an extra plate towards her, beginning to load it up with toast, bacon and eggs. Lord Hugh pulled out my chair for me very gallantly, which just made me even more
embarrassed. I felt better as I started eating, though.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Yasmin advised. “Because I don’t think it would be very wise to mention this when we get home.”
I looked up from tearing a fruit roll in half. Had she guessed that Iain and Netalia wouldn’t be pleased with us? Her eyes glinted and I knew she had.
“I just don’t think Jett would be very pleased to know that we came here to risk our lives,” she explained for everyone else’s benefit.
“So only here we can call her the Du’rangor Slayer,” Petre said, grinning widely in my direction.
I pointed a rasher of bacon at him very threateningly.
“Don’t you dare.” I replied darkly.
We were saved any more comments by Sammy’s arrival in the dining hall. Despite his father and brother’s presence, he came straight to me and crawled up into my lap, completely at ease. He began eating some of my bacon as Lord Hugh started the conversation again.
“Samlin will be going to the magic tester in a few days,” he said proudly, the glow of fatherhood warm in his eyes. “The day he turns five. Who knows, maybe we’ll have another little mage in our midst.”
Sammy, completely unperturbed by this, finished the rasher of bacon and leant forwards for half of the fruit roll I picked up for him. I wondered if the little boy in my lap would grow up to be a Petre; spoiled and lofty on the outside, soft and caring on the inside. Now that I’d gotten to know Petre, gotten to know what he truly held dear, I couldn’t look down on him like I’d used to. I looked across at Rain on a whim, and saw such a look in her eyes as she looked at him that I felt embarrassed for a whole new reason, like I’d been intruding on something private. I looked down at Sammy in my lap instead. His golden hair had been washed, and I could already see it beginning to darken, so that he would have the same coloured hair as Petre and his father, a hue not so far from my own dark hair. The boy ate ravenously, and without prompting, began to tell about his take on the day the Du’rangor had stolen him.
He’d been playing in the gardens at the end of the estate. His father had told him not to play there many times, but that was the only place the stream flowed through, and though it was a meagre flow, it still created enough mud to make mud pies. As he’d been stretching towards the trickle of water, he’d looked up to see large red eyes in front of him. Immediately he began to scream and wail in terror, but he’d been too far from the house for anyone to hear.
Rather than clawing or biting him, the Du’rangor had lifted him off the ground by grabbing his shirt in its mouth. Carrying the wailing child, it had begun its slow walk towards the marshland just as one of the dry electric storms that so plagued the city began to build.
By the time the beast had reached the swamp, the storm was in full swing. During one particularly loud crack of thunder, Sammy’s shirt had torn and he’d fallen to the ground and taken off running. The Du’rangor, distracted by the lightning, hadn’t noticed him fall at first. These seconds were crucial for Sammy, who’d flown through the sparse undergrowth, trying to find a way out. Instead he’d managed to stumble into the midst of the marsh, and resorted to climbing a tree, the one I’d found him in, and staying there as the thunder and lightning clashed and the Du’rangor began its search for him.
For the next week he huddled in its branches, too afraid to move. He could hear the hunting parties searching for him, but he knew that the Du’rangor had to be close, and so he daren’t make a sound.
When it rained, he’d drunk as much as he could catch, the water filling his belly, but it was hollow succour for a growing boy. He’d tried eating a few of the bitter leaves from the tree he was hiding in, but they’d stung his mouth so he’d spat them out. As it was, he spent a total of nine nights in the tree, not moving, not making a sound.
He’d been asleep one morning when he’d woken up to the sound of the Du’rangor very close. He’d watched it stalk closer from under the brush, until it was right beneath his tree. And then he’d glanced over, and seen me almost face down in the mud.
“I didn’t think you were real, at first,” he admitted to me. “I thought you were a goddess come to take me away.”
One of the servants bore him away as his eyelids began to close, his small body drooping; he was exhausted after telling his story. I made eye contact with Petre.
“Not a word,” I said sternly, knowing I would never be able to live down being called a goddess, though I don’t think many of them made a habit of crawling through swamp mud.
Despite that, Sammy’s steadfast belief that I was going to save him and his unquestioning acceptance of me had melted my heart, and I knew I couldn’t think of myself in the same way ever again. I was still Sky, who couldn’t create objects or fire arrows accurately to save her life, but I had saved the life of a small child, and I’d never be the same again.
~ Once we’d finished eating, Petre brought up the bridge to Nurmin.
“I thought we’d ride out and take a look,” he said. “After all, a broken bridge shouldn’t be a match for the Du’rangor Slayer.”
I sighed heavily, knowing I shouldn’t deprive him of this joy that would be so short lived. The others agreed to see the bridge, knowing that if we could repair it, we would be well on the path to restoring Riverdoor to the glory that Petre claimed it was.
; Today was also the day we were supposed to be heading back to the Academy. We sent a runner with our apologies, explaining in our joint note that there was just too much for us to explore in only a few short days. We asked for a few extra days excusal, though we were cheating a little bit; it would take the runner four days to return with their reply, so odds were good that we’d be allowed to stay.
The day was breaking bright by the time we set off. I spied more servants around the stable as I was saddling Echo, and as we rode off down the drive, I mentioned my uneasiness to Petre.
“Do they always do that?” I asked him as the servants who’d been gardening stopped what they were doing to watch us pass.
“No, they don’t,” he replied. “They’re looking at you; they know you saved Sammy, and they know you’ve now killed two Du’rangors, the creatures they’d been brought up to regard as mythical. In their eyes, you’re a living legend.”
His explanation didn’t help. I flushed as every new pair of eyes sought mine, keeping my gaze on Echo’s mane. It was almost a relief to reach the gilded gates, turning out onto the road that would take us to the Nurmin Bridge.
The road to it was rough and unkempt. It made sense; when there was other work to be done in the city, why bother maintaining a road that, for the current part, was unusable?
We reached the bridge within an hour of setting out from the manor. It had crumbled in the very centre, so that only the beginning of the bridge still clung to each side of the river. The heavy stones of the bridge had dropped into the muddy, dilapidated river, and I was in no mood to go and heave them out by hand.
“Who’s ready for some magic?” I asked eagerly, dismounting.
The others certainly were. Together we began levitating the stones out of the mud, bringing them up to us on the Riverdoor side of the river. By midmorning we were covered with sweat, but the pile of stones beside us showed our effort and teamwork. I rubbed my sore muscles as the others stopped for a drink. Lifting the stones out by magic certainly didn’t grant us a rest from manual labour; my bones were aching as though I’d lifted them out by hand.
We ate our packed lunch quickly, and with full stomachs and rested arms, we set about pulling the stones into place against our side of the crumbled bridge, and two would hold it in place while the others sealed in into the main stone work. It was slow, hard work, and the sun was setting as we completed half of the bridge. We headed back to the manor exhausted, but feeling rather pleased with ourselves. By tomorrow, we reckoned, we would’ve reopened the road between the two sister cities of the state.
“And then,” I said in between mouthfuls of roast beef. “I want to look at the dam over the border.”
“We can’t though,” Rain said, looking shocked. “Like you said, it’s over the border; we’re not allowed into Orthandrell.”
“Who would know?” I asked her, winking. “Just a covert mission. I’m sure no one would notice. And wouldn’t it be terrible if the illegal dam happened to be destroyed in some way. Oh!” I leant back in my chair with my hand pressed against my forehead dramatically. “Imagine! All of that water flowing into the droughtstricken state! What to do, what to do...”
The others laughed at my antics. Despite my grin though, I was feeling apprehensive about setting foot into Phoenix’s home state. After everything I’d heard about it, the way Petre spoke of it, I was expecting a dank, awful country absolutely crawling in uneducated, wild mages.
The next morning we woke bright and early, packing our breakfast rather than eating it with the family. We were all eager to get to work on the bridge; the sooner we completed it, the better.
The portion of the bridge that we’d repaired had lasted overnight, so, renewed in our faith that we could indeed repair a bridge, we picked up the thread of yesterday with the aims of completing it by midday.
It was a goal we achieved. Encouraged by the clear skies, we set the last stone in place, and then gathered over the other side, looking back at our horses and our handiwork and feeling rather proud of ourselves.
“C’mon,” I said as we all threatened to stand about all day patting ourselves on the backs. “Let’s get to work on these supporting arches.”
We got down in the mud, having dressed appropriately. Once Ispin, Petre and I had completed the base work, we let the other girls work on the flair of the bridge, having discovered that we had no artistic talent at all. Dena had been working on the sides of the bridge, a task I’d been banned from when I’d started placing stones higgledypiggledy about the place.
As the sun began to set, we stood on the river, admiring the bridge that up until yesterday, had been unusable, a blight on the countryside. Now, we could inform Lord Hugh that the road to Nurmin was, in fact open again.
Those days were some of the happiest of my life. I was discovering a feeling of acceptance unlike anything I’d ever known in my life. I was the light of my friends’ eyes and I have to admit to revelling in it. I’d certainly earned it, but I was so unused to it that it still caught me by surprise when they included me in on a joke, or we were praised as a whole. The ‘legend’ thing that Petre kept bringing up whenever he caught servants or townspeople looking at me was something so unusual to me that I kept forgetting about it, and as a result was shocked into silence whenever someone did something that brought it to mind again.
A few brave townsfolk had ventured into the marshes to burn the body of the Du’rangor, something I’d been too preoccupied to do when I first killed it. They came back telling people that it had been three times as large as they’d been told, something that embarrassed me to no end because the adoration that had slowly falling by the wayside, increased tenfold.
When Lord Hugh announced the road open again, it was though clouds that had been casting a pall over the city had cleared. Commerce and trading opened up between the two cities again, with many travellers commenting on the handy work on the bridge.
“By hand it would have taken us months,” Lord Hugh said to us one night at dinner, not long after the road had reopened. “You’ve saved us a lot of work.”
I accepted his compliments with a faraway mind. We didn’t have long before we were going to be forced to return to the Academy, and I desperately wanted to have a look at this illegal dam.
One night, instead of going to bed like good little lambs, we all met in the stables. We’d dressed in black, though the odds of us being spotted weren’t high. We rode from the estate quickly, hoping to put distance between it and us so that the estate wouldn’t be connected to the destruction of the dam.
We took one of the disused roads to the border. Tension mounted as we closed in on it, and it was rather anticlimactic when Petre stopped to open a gate.
“That’s all?” I asked in a hushed whisper.
“What were you expecting?” He hissed back. “Full security detail? Just be thankful it’s not.”
We rode upstream, staying off of the roads. The night was bristling with frost, and I had to keep wriggling my fingers so they wouldn’t go stiff. There was no moon, and as a result, Petre had to light our way with a magelight close to the ground. Beside us, the river was almost dry, with only a small trickle of water running through it.
“If we destroy this all in one go, won’t it flood Riverdoor?” I heard Rain ask up ahead.
“The river widens just down from here,” Petre replied. “It should slow it enough that it won’t break its banks.”
I found myself nodding subconsciously. I’d also been worrying about accidentally flooding the river. I had no doubt that our hero status would decrease significantly if everyone woke up to find themselves floating away in flood water.
The dam loomed up ahead. In the stark light of Petre’s magic, it looked even bigger than I’d thought. We rode up around it carefully; we weren’t sure how close we were to civilization. Before us, the river glinted softly, soft waves lapping at the muddy bank. I gulped; there was a lot more water here than I’d thought.
What are
they doing with it? I wondered. I glanced about, though I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
Petre and the others were dismounting by the bank and I quickly followed suit. Echo, completely non plussed by what we were doing, began to drink from the imprisoned river.
“As soon as we weaken the base of it, it’ll all go,” Ispin said, examining the logs by the light of his own magic.
“How about we start from the top?” Yasmin suggested. “It’ll be a lot less work, and we might be able to maintain some control over the water.”
I doubted it – the river looked about ready to go – but I didn’t say anything.
And so, by the light of our magelights, we set about removing the top logs the same way we’d brought the bridge stones to us. Dena and I carefully managed to dislodge the first log, and a sliver of water trickled down the front of the dam, as though testing its freedom. Encouraged even by this small breakthrough, we worked steadily through the night, using our combined magic’s to dismantle the dam built by unknown persons.
As we removed the whole top layer of logs, more and more water began to trickle over the edge. Eventually, there was a solid stream, hitting the hard mud of the river with a soft splatting noise.
Rain and Yasmin were already working on their next set of logs before any of us had returned to the dam after piling our own aside. I turned back just in time to see them remove one from the very centre.
“No!” I cried, my harsh call tearing through the night silence.
It was too late. The water, sensing its freedom was close, burst out of the gap like a fire hydrant. The dam, weakened by our meddling and now stricken with thousands of litres of water, burst.
I dove for higher ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dena do the same, Theresa on her heels. As I hit the ground, my magelight went out and I was plunged into darkness. All I could hear was the gush of water and the clunking of logs as they were carried downstream by the flow. I kept crawling up the slope, finally managing to get my feet under me. I slipped in the mud with a cry, flinging my hand out for something, anything to grab a hold of. My hand caught a rein, and I realised Echo was right in front of me. She snorted as I pulled myself up, and then began to guide me away from the river.
Soul Fire Page 17