Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  “Meghra!”

  Her sisters were closer now, and this time Janat turned. She looked to the sky behind them and her eyes grew wide.

  She grabbed Meg’s shoulder, and Meg shrugged her away but looked to where she was pointing. Meg’s mouth opened.

  Nanna abruptly changed directions, dragging Rennika across the slope rather than down, and Rennika was hardly able to keep pace in the sliding stones. The wind buffeted her face and the cold air seared her throat as she ran.

  Meg and Janat were running now, too.

  The bird was big. Maybe like an eagle? Or was it bigger? It was too far away to tell.

  They reached a formation of rock fingers slicing out of the scree, and Nanna dragged Rennika up the sliding crumbs of slate between the first two rock ribs. Nanna fell to her side on the gravel, pulled Rennika up beside her, and lay on top of her. There was a crunching of footsteps as Meg and Janat fell prone on the rocks, then nothing but the silence of the wind and their ragged breathing as they lay beneath their cloaks, unmoving on the shale.

  Nanna’s words were the barest hiss in her ear. “If that creature attacks, you put your death token on your tongue. You hear? Your body’s nothing, but your spirit must cross into Heaven.”

  A lump of sickness flashed through her chest.

  “You hear?” Her nurse’s words were faint but intense.

  Rennika nodded, once. Heaven.

  The shattered rock was cold and Nanna’s weight pressed her back onto its unforgiving blades. She could see the blustering clouds racing across the seething sky. The wind roared across the defile. Had they offended the One God? Were they too close to his lands?

  Then, overhead. A gush of wind. A dark form the size of a scaly horse, claws outstretched, diving at them. Three long necks with gaping mouths quested blindly, like huge fanged earthworms.

  It swooped low.

  Then, with a shriek, Nanna leapt into the air—

  Immense wings flapped, once, a deafening blast, and the thing wheeled high, gliding over the rock rib. Gone.

  Nanna—

  Rennika’s heart stopped.

  Gone.

  Vanished.

  Nothing above but cold clouds.

  Rennika gasped and her heart resumed, thumping like the smith’s hammer. How...

  Someone moved, a scrape of gravel, but Meg shushed and the silence of the blowing wind returned. The thing had taken Nanna. Rennika wanted to jump up, run, but Meg—

  She gripped herself, pushing back an unreasoned flutter in her stomach. Cold, and the ache of trying to hold her back off the stabbing stones, crept into Rennika’s bones.

  After a long time, Meg’s profile rose against the leaden sky.

  Rennika breathed and lifted herself cautiously from the rocks. Meg scanned the heavens, hiccuping sobs.

  Nothing. Only clouds heavy with snow. “Meg?” Her own voice sounded small and wavering against the vastness of the wilds.

  Janat rose to her knees and shrilled, a high pitched whine that turned into a scream.

  Meg blundered to Janat’s side, her face red. “Stop it!” She raised a fist, and Rennika thought she was going to hit Janat.

  Janat toppled onto her back, silent as suddenly as she had shrieked.

  The flutter crawled into Rennika’s gut. “Where’s Nanna?”

  Meg said nothing, glaring down at Janat and breathing heavily through her nose. Janat lay at her feet, panting with fast, ragged breaths.

  The whistling wind filled the void of their silence, and the hazy peaks beyond the valley waited patiently as they had done since the beginning of time.

  Meg shook her fist at Janat. “Sound carries.” Her hiss broke the spell. “Do you want it to come back? Do you want the king’s men to come?”

  The worm in Rennika’s stomach gnawed and grew.

  Janat shook her head, mute, and crumpled against the rock with shaking sobs.

  Rennika stumbled over the sharp stones to Meg’s side and wrapped her arms around her sister, hot salt trickling onto her lips.

  The sky was vacant.

  “What...what...” Janat sobbed, and her face was streaked with tears. “What are we going to do?”

  Meg shook herself, staring at nothing. She sat on the scree and bundled Rennika into a fierce hug. She held out her arm and Janat scrambled over, and the three of them gripped each other, rocking and weeping.

  “I want Mama,” Rennika said in a small voice. “I want Nanna.”

  Meg grabbed Rennika’s hands and looked into her eyes, and Meg’s face was more scared than Rennika had ever seen it. “Nanna’s not coming back, Rennika. Not ever. It’s just us, now.”

  “Mama—”

  Meg’s grip on her fingers tightened. “We won’t see Mama for a long time. Do you understand? It’s just you and me and Janatelle.”

  Rennika could not keep the worm in her stomach down. She buried her head in Meg’s warm belly and wept.

  “We have to go back to the keep,” Janat said.

  “We can’t—”

  “We have to go back to the keep,” Janat said flatly, and stood. “King Ean’s dealt with the brigands. I know he has. We have to go back.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Nothing Meg said could dissuade Janat, who marched off down the slope. Grabbing Rennika’s hand, Meg crunched after her. A part of her, a part Meg tried to push down, breathed easier as they descended from the taboo country.

  By the time they came to a halt behind a low rock rib above Archwood Castle, evening had crept into the valley.

  In the east, the distant peaks glowed pink with reflected sunset. Below their hiding place, King Artem’s soldiers ringed the walls of the keep in siege. Stationed on the steep rocky meadows above the city’s rear defense, they gathered in small groups around cook fires and tents, just beyond an arrow’s flight from the wall. But the soldiers did not look up the mountain in Meg’s direction; their attention was on the parapets, patrolled by King Ean’s men. A number of the attacking archers stood along the edge of the encampment, arrows nocked, scanning the wall from below, restlessly alert.

  “They’re still there.” Meg lowered herself to the rocks behind the outcrop, her breath faintly visible in the starlight. “I told you,” she said to Janat. “There’s no way to get back into the fortress.”

  Rennika hunched beside her, curling up into a ball. Meg covered her with a corner of her robe.

  Janat peered over the rocky crest into the deep dusk punctuated by sparks of campfire. “We’ll have to give ourselves up to King Artem’s soldiers. That’s all,” she reasoned. “King Artem wouldn’t hurt us.”

  Meg couldn’t believe her ears. “Didn’t you see what they did? Last night? To the people running out of the great hall?”

  “Well, we can’t go up the mountain.” Janat glared at her, her voice tight and low. “Cliffs and cliffs and more cliffs.”

  By the Gods, Meg wanted to strangle her sister.

  “We can’t go down. We can’t stay here.” Janat slumped to the gravel beside them. “We can’t get into the fortress to find that merchant Mama said would help us. Whoever he is.”

  But—a thought occurred to Meg. “Janat—did Mama tell you anything, predict anything? About...this?” Mama saw the future when she did magic.

  Janat eyed her, wary.

  Meg had been mulling over their circumstances all day. Ever since they fled the castle last night, in fact. Mama had made hints to Meg, and she’d told Nanna something, too. Though Nanna hadn’t believed Mama, she’d at least managed to get them out of the castle before the gates were impenetrable. At the time, Meg had been content to let Nanna follow whatever instructions Mama had given her. But now, Nanna was gone. Dead.

  “What do you mean?” Janat asked.

  “Seven days ago...” Was it only then? Meg bit her lip, trying to remember exactly what Mama had said. Trying to piece together in her memory the glimpses of unguarded emotion escaping across Mama’s face as she tried to school herself. Meg tried to
recall the muted warmth of the fire behind drawn drapes, the marigold scent of incense lingering from Mama’s prayers...

  “What?” Janat’s voice was calmer now, quieter.

  “Mama knew this attack was coming. Before the messenger told her,” Meg said. “She had Nanna prepare.”

  Meg needed to piece together what Mama knew, what she’d told each of them.

  It’d been late when Mama had sent for her. Meg was in her sleeping robes, reading by candlelight. Nanna had stood in the doorway, an inscrutable expression on her face, as Meg followed the page from their apartments. Of course. Because that was what Nanna believed—that the glimpses of the future Mama saw when she used the Amber Prayer Stone, or when she used magiel magic, were only the ravings of a woman in the grip of Heaven’s seduction. A madwoman. Nanna was surrounded by magic, yet Nanna didn’t believe in it.

  Meg had followed the page through the chill corridors of the castle, the light of his candle flickering over gray stone, gilded picture frames and panel moldings, the soft marble of figurines in alcoves. Then the tall, double doors closed behind her, and she was in Mama’s outer chamber.

  Mama turned from the soft embers on the hearth and rushed to embrace Meg before she even had the chance to curtsey. “Meghra,” she whispered into her hair. “Come.” She pulled Meg’s hands, hastening her to the couch, sitting beside her, still holding her hands, looking deeply into Meg’s face.

  Unease rose in Meg’s throat. This wasn’t the soft Mama, the reasoned Mama. This was the strange woman she became after using the Amber. Meg had wanted to pull back against the grip of those hands, make whatever had alarmed Mama go away.

  “Meghra, something...” Mama shook her head, as though she’d started with a misstep. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but—” Mama licked her lips. “I’ve seen...futures, Meghra. Futures I don’t trust.”

  Such talk...it made Meg uneasy when Mama talked of her flights to the future.

  “The other magiels of the Great Houses, none of them have seen anything of alarm. Perhaps I’m mad.”

  “No, Mama.”

  Mama bit her lip. “I can’t see you, Meghra. You, or Janatelle, or Rennikala. None of you.”

  In the future, she meant. Meg’s stomach felt uneasy.

  “I see...” Her eyes drifted. “King Ean, his wife, his daughter, the servants, everyone, starving. Sick. I see...” She frowned a little, dredging up her vision. “King Ean says that without substantiation from the other magiels, my vision means nothing.”

  Why was Mama telling her this? Frightening her?

  Mama blinked, as though trying to remember, and spoke almost to herself. “I think...I think I’ve been seeing this for—years, maybe. But I didn’t piece it together.” Mama closed her eyes with a short nod, her fingers still gripping Meg’s. “A week ago, King Ean and I used the Amber to go to Heaven, to petition the Gods for death tokens for the people of Orumon.”

  This was not news. Mama’s place by King Ean’s side was to keep the people of Orumon supplied with the tokens they needed to travel to Heaven when they died. Each time she went, though, Mama was exhausted and disoriented, her time stream muddied by the magic. She slept or tripped through random bits of her life in a darkened chamber for days.

  “But this time?” Meg said slowly. She didn’t want to know. But she had to know.

  “The Heavens had been disturbed.” Mama’s grip on her fingers eased. “There were ripples in the flow of time. Someone had been there, praying, probably within the last week. I couldn’t tell when.”

  Again, not unusual. There were seven prayer stones. Seven magiels of the Great Houses. Seven royals to accompany them to Heaven, keep them safe. A just distribution of power. “Could you tell who it was?”

  “King Artem. But Kraae was not with him.”

  “Not with Papa?” The king couldn’t use the Ruby without his magiel.

  “He brought a different magiel. One I’ve never seen before.” Mama’s brows drew together. “I think...I think I know why I don’t see you or Janatelle or Rennikala in my future.”

  Coldness crept over Meg’s skin.

  “I don’t care about King Ean’s reassurances.” Mama’s fingers stretched like claws, then squeezed into fists. “I’m sending you and your sisters away. As soon as it can be arranged.”

  A feeling of dread filled Meg’s stomach at her mother’s words. “I’m not ready, Mama, I’m not. Janatelle and Rennikala—”

  Mama’s face drew gaunt. “Neither am I.”

  Meg blinked, trying to absorb what Mama had said. Send them away.

  “Watch over your sisters.” Mama took her hands again. “Do whatever you must to keep them safe. You have a great responsibility, you three. To survive, to fight, to restore balance.” Her eyes flashed, then, with thought. “Be careful. Of those who would use you for their political advantage. Of those who would use words to convince you down dishonorable paths.” She spoke quickly, as if she suddenly had a lifetime of wisdom to pass on in only a few minutes. “Beware of glim.”

  Meg stared at her, trying to follow. “I don’t know...I’ve never heard of...”

  “Glim.” Mama shook her head. “You may hear that glim no longer exists. That the spells for finding it have been lost.”

  “What is it?”

  “A seduction, Meghra, a trap. It seems to bring joy, but it only corrupts.” She blinked. “You may never need to worry about it. Magiels learned long ago never to write such spells in books where they might be discovered. But still, be wary.”

  Meg promised.

  Mama shook her head and brightened, but her change in mood was brittle, false. “Now. To work.”

  Work?

  “Meghra, I need you to do some magic.”

  Meg blinked. Mama had begun her instruction in magic when she was Rennika’s age, but for the most part she’d learned mostly history and theory. For the past few years, Meg had studied worldling spells, simple things that required only the combination of magical herbs and animal parts in particular order or under particular celestial signs, according to the instructions in a spell book. She’d only done magiel magic a few times. And, of course, Meg would not use the Amber to travel to Heaven until Mama was old and the mantle of bringing death tokens to the people of Orumon fell to her.

  “Magiel magic,” Mama said, as if reading her thoughts. She reached over to a spindly-legged table next to the couch and picked up a bit of dried, twisted root. She placed it in Meg’s lap. “Nothing elaborate. It will be good practice. Find a time when the root was young. If you can, take it back to seed.”

  Meg was confused, but she obeyed. She closed her eyes to remove distraction and held the root in her hands. She explored its shape, listening, feeling, reaching back into its time stream, searching for its earlier life.

  The room seemed warm, yet there was a chill on her skin.

  She opened her eyes and saw what her fingertips had already told her. The root—still only a fragment of the full tree—had shrunk, slightly, to a slender, smooth curl, its ends moist with fragrant sap as though the rest of the tree and its lower root hairs had only just been severed from the piece she held. Sweat beaded her brow, and the ruddy light of the fire had almost died. A great wave of fatigue washed over her.

  Mama smiled with quiet pride. “Good,” she said, taking the root from her and replacing it on the table. “You did very well. This is—what?—the fourth time you’ve done magic?”

  It was.

  “Now. You can sleep in my bed tonight. I will sit beside you.”

  Meg knew what would happen, and it made her uneasy. Using magic disturbed time. Her own time flow was now interrupted. Over the next minutes or candlemarks—even days, she supposed—she would live bits of her life out of order. She would disappear from Mama’s bedroom and reappear in another part of her life, a time when she had used magic. Herself from some other part of her life would appear here. No one observing would see the exchange. She would appear not to move from
Mama’s bed.

  But Meg had experienced this disorientation before, when Mama first had her learn magiel magic. The ordeal had been terrifying.

  Mama rose, and Meg rose with her. “Why?” she asked.

  Mama led her to the bedroom. “Two reasons. First, I’m hoping you will travel to one of your futures rather than to one of your pasts. You’ve only done magiel magic a few times before, so the chance of you living a piece of your life from the last year or two is not likely. I’m hoping to ask you what your future holds because I can’t see it.”

  Meg nodded. Mama was blind to any future but her own.

  Mama pulled back the thick duvet on her bed. “And I must tell your future self something you’ll need to know.”

  “What?” Meg climbed into the bed, her limbs heavy with exhaustion. “Why don’t you tell me now?”

  Mama’s faint smile in the dark was almost invisible, but her voice made an effort to lighten the gravity of her words. “You can’t tell a questioner what you don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “A questioner?” To Janat’s mind, the words were frightening. The pink light had left the far mountains, and darkness filled the wilds. A spray of stars splashed overhead, deep in the vast heavens. Sashcarnala's single star had not yet risen.

  “That’s what she said.” Meg huddled deeper into her shawl, her breath white. “I don’t know what Mama learned from talking to—” She shrugged. “Me, I guess. From my future. And she told me nothing. Just that she would send us away. But I don’t think even Mama guessed how soon King Artem would march into Orumon.”

  Janat drew in a slow breath, trying to fathom what was happening. The chill that touched her had nothing to do with the cold. Gods, she was only fifteen, just dancing at her first ball.

  Meg tugged Rennika’s shawl higher over her sleeping form. “I think, last night, Mama stayed behind to protect us. I think she wanted the king’s men to believe they’d caught everyone inside the castle. To give us time to...” She shrugged again. “Escape.”

  Escape. Did Mama think someone would hurt them, like in the old tales? The days when kings built walls and waged war?