by Sarah Rayne
Reflection thought that you had to be charitable about your friends, but that, really, the Frost Giantess might be just a little less obvious. Also, she had already eyed several of Reflection’s own courtiers, and had tried to bargain with Reflection over the question of some of the furnace workers.
‘Young,’ she had said. ‘I like them young.’
Reflection liked them young as well, but did not go about saying so. She began to think that the Frost Giantess was abusing her hospitality, which, when you considered that Reflection had herself been thoughtful enough to tell the furnace workers to let the fires die down a bit, because the Frost Giantess could not be doing with too warm a room, was stretching friendship a bit far.
But she asked for their suggestions as to the enchantments they might best use to catch Flame and Floy, and agreed on the Robemaker’s crimson rope-lights, which were always useful, and the Frost Giantess’s tongues of ice and blizzard.
‘Then,’ said the Robemaker, ‘they will burn and freeze at the same time, and that, as you know, my dear, is a very nasty fate.’
‘But,’ said Reflection, ‘Flame must be spared, of course.’
‘Ah?’
‘For Inchbad,’ said Reflection. ‘Inchbad has made a most generous marriage proposal for the child.’
The Robemaker said in his hissing wet-lung voice, ‘That is something to be taken into careful consideration, of course. If you wish it, then she can be spared.’ There was a movement within the dark, enveloping cloak, and then he said, ‘And the payment, Reflection? The payment for our services?’
‘Well,’ said Reflection and stopped, because this was always the tricky part, and these two both probably knew perfectly well that she was on the verge of ruin and a debtors’ prison again. ‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, and the Robemaker leaned forward, the deep hood slipping a little, so that Reflection caught a glimpse of the ravaged, noseless face, and shuddered, and thought that if you could not weave yourself an enchantment to make yourself a bit more appealing you were not much of an advertisement for your own wares.
‘May I make a little suggestion?’ said the Robemaker and then, without waiting for a reply, said, ‘Payment could be the most amicable of arrangements.’
‘Yes?’
The Robemaker sat back in his chair and the hood fell back into place, shadowing his face. He appeared to be perfectly composed, but his breathing had quickened and Reflection could hear the horrid slimy rasping sound more clearly now.
‘Give Flame to me for a night,’ said the Robemaker, and the breathing slurred and thickened into a bubbling croupy wheeze. ‘That is all the payment I ask of you,’ he said.
Reflection said, ‘And you, ma’am?’ and the Frost Giantess squirmed in lascivious anticipation and darted her thick neckless body in Reflection’s direction.
‘Our good friend has made an appealing suggestion,’ she said. ‘And since money and jewels hold little interest for me, then I will take my payment in Human flesh, also. If the Robemaker is to have the girl for a night, I will have the young man.’
Reflection looked at them both and remembered her mounting debts and Inchbad’s growing impatience and his very lavish proposals. If Flame were to be lost, then it might be rather difficult to explain this to the Gruagach. It might be even more difficult to explain it to Reflection’s growing number of creditors, all of whom had agreed to be patient until after the much-vaunted marriage had taken place.
‘Very well.’ She stood up. ‘But we must leave at once.’
To those few members of Reflection’s household who had remained behind, the setting out of Madame, together with her Court, made a remarkable sight.
If there were those who thought that Madame had assembled an extravagantly large number of people simply to bring back one errant daughter and one impudent lover, they were wise enough not to say so. In any case, Madame was ever extravagant in the settling of her quarrels.
Reflection rode at the head, astride a white horse with a golden flowing mane and tail; she wore a fire-coloured robe and about her head was the diadem of moonstones and rubies which the Gnomes of Gallan had made to Madame’s own design and which incorporated the Amaranthine emblem. Her hair was loose and woven into it were tiny glinting rubies and opals. She carried the famous spear which legend said she had wrested from Fael-Inis on the night that Flame was conceived and which could hurl shafts of pure light at one’s enemies.
The Robemaker rode at Reflection’s left-hand side, dark and stooping and menacing. He carried the terrible night-black spear of necromancy and, wound about it, were the sizzling ropes of light which he would use to bind Flame and Floy.
The Frost Giantess did not ride on horseback. ‘Too unwieldy,’ said the watchers and told one another that it would have been hard indeed to have found a mount for the creature. But she had her own method of travel; a kind of canopied litter slung between silver poles, strewn with cold satin cushions, and with the poles embellished with twisting snake creatures and writhing worms and horrid bulgy-eyed fish-beings. ‘An ancient line, of course,’ said the watchers, trying to inject a note of respect into their voices.
She lay, half coiled on the litter, occasionally darting her head in one direction or another; the lidless eyes inspecting the young men who had been taken from the furnace rooms to carry the litter. She did not seem to be carrying any weapons of enchantment, but the watchers knew quite well that she was able to whip up a raging blizzard and call up the Storm Wraiths, never mind Madame had said she would not be seen within ten miles of a Storm Wraith.
The household rode or walked sedately behind these three, in careful order of precedence, garbed and accoutred as they thought fit.
Dusk had fallen and, although the moonlight was strong enough for them all to find their way, Reflection conjured up some half a dozen fire columns.
‘I see you have not lost your skill, my dear,’ said the Robemaker.
‘The merest trifle,’ said Reflection at once. And then, half turning to the Geimhreadh's litter, ‘I trust that they will not be too warm for you, ma’am?’
‘Since you deemed them necessary, I shall not complain,’ replied the Frost Giantess. And then, sharply, to the furnace workers, ‘Do not tilt the litter so sharply, you!’ The snake-head reared for a moment and the lightless eyes narrowed.
And then the Robemaker reined in his horse and lifted the dark spear and said, ‘There they are.’
Flame had walked warily at Floy’s side, liking the soft, cool night, liking, as well, the silence. She had known, in a vague way, that the Fire Court had been a place of unnatural blazing light, but she had not realised how dark and how tranquil the true night could be.
When Floy said, ‘You have lived always at the centre of a maelstrom of noise,’ Flame knew he had heard her thoughts and sensed her feelings and that he had left her to enjoy them and absorb the newness of everything.
There was a pale, silvery light from the moon, which was quite enough for them to see their way, and there were Trees, growing wild, which was not anything Flame had ever seen, because Mother would not permit Trees in the Fire Court gardens, other than the stunted artificial shapes she created, half by sorcery and half by the skills of the sempstresses and the carpenters and the gardeners.
Once, after they had been walking for quite a time, she said, ‘We are going to try to reach my-to reach Fael-Inis’s Palace of Wildfire?’
‘Yes,’ said Floy.
‘Can we do that?’ asked Flame, meaning: do we know the way? and Floy said, ‘I have no idea. But at Tara it was said that the Palace lies in the direction of the rising sun. Also, your father told me that if you follow the path of the moon and do not falter, all roads eventually lead to your heart’s desire.’
He looked at her as he said this and Flame said thoughtfully, ‘I see,’ and fell silent.
‘He is given to speaking like that,’ said Floy.
‘Yes?’
‘Extravagant and colourful.’
‘Yes.’ Flame would not say what she was thinking, which was that the words had sounded a bit like someone trying not to give exact directions because he did not really want to receive visitors but was too polite actually to say so.
Floy said, quite seriously, ‘I believe we are going towards the Palace, Flame.’ He lifted a hand, pointing. ‘Do you see there? Although it is night, there is an iridescence, a colour. Fael-Inis told us that for those who seek him, a path is always to be found.’
‘Oh.’
Floy grinned. ‘He will not be quite what you expect, Flame,’ he said, but Flame had no idea of what she was expecting anyway.
They stopped to rest twice and the second time Floy unpacked the small store of food that Flame had managed to bring.
‘Will your — will Reflection try to bring you back?’ he asked, and Flame drew breath to say that it was very likely, because Mother would be so furious with them both, when Floy jumped to his feet and stared back down the path they had just travelled.
‘What is — ‘ And then Flame saw it as well.
Reflection riding at the head of her armies.
And with her the grotesque shapes of the Robemaker and the Frost Giantess.
As they waited, helplessly, the armies streamed towards them. There was nothing they could do, for there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. They were on open ground and, even if they had attempted to flee, Reflection would have overtaken them within minutes.
Floy scanned the horizon frantically. Was the glimmer of light they had seen earlier a little closer? He thought that it was, and, as he strained his eyes, he thought there was a glint of spires, gold-tipped and vibrant. Bitterness twisted within him, because it would be Fate’s cruellest joke if they were to be caught so close to sanctuary. He was angry to think that he had not foreseen Reflection’s vengeance when he had so heedlessly taken Flame away from the Fire Court.
Flame said, very softly, ‘It was not heedless, Floy. You could not possibly have known what she would do. I did not know, even.’
‘I ought to have known,’ said Floy bitterly. And then, striving for a calm, practical note, ‘Over there,’ he said, ‘is Fael-Inis’s country. The Palace of Wildfire. I am sure of it now.’
‘Yes, I see it,’ said Flame. ‘But I don’t think we can reach it.’
‘What about the Spell of Invisibility you used at the Court?’
‘Impossible,’ said Flame at once. ‘Mother would rip it aside instantly and I could never withstand her.’
The armies were closing. They could see the outlines of Reflection herself now; her hair flowing out wildly in the night wind, the rubies catching the light of the fiery columns that road alongside her. The Robemaker was a little to her left, crouched low over his mount, but, as he rode, they saw him raise a hand and the crimson rope-lights spat and sizzled through the air. Floy and Flame threw themselves to the ground and the rope-lights went hissing harmlessly over their heads.
The Frost Giantess had reared up almost to her full height; Floy lifted his head cautiously and saw her, a massive ugly writhing thing, silhouetted against the sky, her little finlike hands whipping the young men who bore the litter on to greater speed, coiling and squirming in horrid, lustful excitement. Behind these three were the people of Reflection’s Court, riding in what Floy thought of, even at such a moment, as rather a mechanical way. As if they were here only because they had been forced to it …
I do not believe there is any escape, thought Floy half sitting, half kneeling, his arms about Flame, searching the horizon for something that might help, something that might come to their aid.
From the east, out of the gold-tinged glow they had thought must be the radiance surrounding Fael-Inis’s Palace, came the thin, sweet sound of a bugle call …
And hard on the heels of the sound, the rushing of chariot wheels.
Chapter Forty-five
Floy and Flame were at the exact centre, between the two rushing armies. Floy thought it was if they were at the heart of a small core of blackness, a miniature copy of the hole that had swallowed Renascia, and that it was entirely possible that the coming forces might not even be able to see them.
The armies bore down on them; Reflection riding her gold and white mount hard, shouting to her people to follow her. As she drew nearer, the air began to sizzle with the fiery columns and sting from the whiplash of the Robemaker’s crimson lights that he was flinging ahead of him, so that the darkness was laced and latticed with the livid tendrils of light. Reflection stood up in the saddle and hurled shafts of light from the glinting spear and Floy and Flame huddled lower to avoid them.
The Frost Giantess was slower than the other two but, as Reflection’s people slowed, they could see her ordering the slaves to lay the litter down and, as they did so, she coiled herself into a rearing, scaly creature ringed with glistening white slime, and made hideous by the distended fins in her neck. A cloud of white had formed immediately behind her and, from where they crouched, Floy could see the ghost forms of the sharp-nosed, pointed-fingered Wraiths. They both took all this in rapidly and then Floy turned his attention to the golden creatures approaching from the east.
To begin with there had been only a blur of shifting colour, luminous and iridescent, as if light had somehow leaked out into the night skies, and Floy had stood, shading his eyes, knowing how easy it would be to be deceived, knowing how desperately he had been hoping for some form of rescue. But then, quite suddenly, there was the outline of an immense rushing chariot pulled by swift creatures with flowing gold manes and tails of spun silk, and wise, ancient eyes …
Flame gasped and put both hands to her cheeks. She felt a sudden rushing hope that she dared not quite believe in yet. But surely, oh surely, it could only mean one thing …
And then he was there, standing at the prow of the fiery chariot, the wind whipped up behind him, his hair stirred to a storm about his head, his eyes molten gold, and such a look of reckless delight about him that Flame wanted to run from the safety of Floy’s arms. There was a look and there was an aura about him which laughed at the absurd, ineffectual creatures that Reflection was leading, and which said, quite clearly: we shall rout these ridiculous beings … we shall fight the world if we have to, and every creature in it, but for all that, we shall WIN, mortals, we shall WIN …
Fael-Inis, the rebel angel, the being of fire and light and speed, riding to the rescue of the daughter he had never seen …
Flame heard Floy give a sudden shout of purest delight and saw that in the golden wake of the great chariot were two smaller chariots, glinting gold, laced with firegems, scything effortlessly through the curling waves of light pouring from Fael-Inis’s chariot, harnessed to four more of the strange, spun silk creatures.
In the first of them was a dark-haired, slightly built young man, with slanting dark eyes, and very nearly the same reckless look as Fael-Inis. Flame blinked, and thought that here was someone else who might very well like to challenge the world and defy the gods, and ride straight at all kinds of danger and who might very well be the smallest bit dangerous himself. Standing in the third chariot was a girl with Floy’s eyes, and his smile, guiding the beautiful salamanders, handling the thin, silken reins with such ease and such joy …
Floy shouted, ‘Fenella!’ and stood up and, at once, the girl turned the chariot aside, so that the two salamanders pulling it swerved and came sweeping across the ground, showering the golden light everywhere, directly towards Floy and Flame.
‘Quickly!’ cried Fenella, leaning down to help Flame into the chariot. ‘Oh, quickly!’
Flame said, ‘Floy — ’ and turned to see that the other chariot, the one being driven by the dark-haired young man, had been following and that Floy was already being pulled up into it.
‘Sire,’ said Floy, slightly out of breath, clinging to the sides of the speeding chariot, ‘I believe I must thank you for — ’
‘Saving you from Reflection and the rest?’ Nuadu was concentrating on
keeping the salamanders in a straight line, but he half turned his head, and sent Floy the amused glance which Floy remembered. ‘But Fenella would have been so upset. And since we managed to reach Fael-Inis’s Palace unscathed and were taken in, it is perhaps only generous to give help to the rest of your party.’ His eyes went to the slender form of Flame in the other chariot. ‘You have been industrious, it seems,’ he said politely, and Floy grinned.
‘And of course,’ said Nuadu, thoughtfully, ‘it is almost obligatory to rescue a fair maiden from peril, these days.’
‘Reflection’s daughter,’ said Floy.
‘Really? And therefore Fael-Inis’s. So you have stolen Inchbad’s chosen bride, have you, Floy? But if she is his daughter, it would explain — ’
‘Yes?’
‘It would explain why Fael-Inis suddenly stopped talking as we sat at supper recounting our adventures; why he stood up and summoned the salamanders,’ said Nuadu.
‘The Samhailt?
‘Well, I don’t suppose it’s quite that in his case,’ said Nuadu, ‘but he certainly had the salamanders harnessed and the Palace gates flung wide almost before any of us realised it.’
Fael-Inis had turned his chariot about and positioned it to face before Reflection and the Robemaker and the Frost Giantess. He sprang to the ground, apparently unconcerned about the danger, and looked about him, as if he found his surroundings of interest. At once Reflection lifted her arm and, within a minute, the fire demons were forming, red eyes gleaming evilly, leaping and dancing. They circled Fael-Inis, grinning and pointing, hurling tiny wicked firethoms and Fael-Inis glanced down at them and brushed them aside as if they were no more than an irritation. But, as his hand moved, another of the cascading showers of golden light rippled from his fingertips and engulfed the demons, sweeping them aside. Flame, watching closely, saw fire tongues leap up, and engulf the demons and the terrible sound of demons screaming filled the night, and there was an acrid stench of burning.