Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  His lips moved and his thumb touched each finger on his left hand. He nodded. “You’ve a head for numbers. You’d make a good trader, with a little training.”

  “But I did the work. I should get more than five.”

  He stepped back, a wary smile on his lips. “But you agreed to five. One thing a trader does, whatever else he may do. Honor the contract.”

  “But you knew I could get more than ten chetra profit. I look pitiable and the old man knows you.”

  He held out his hand, brow raised in expectation. “If you wish to join a band of thieves, I can direct you there as well.”

  She wilted. She gave him the money.

  He put the money in his purse. “I need my journeymanship.”

  She let out a deep breath. Still, she had five more chetra than she had before.

  But twilight had descended around them. She didn’t relish returning to Colin’s hut in the dark, followed, perhaps, by the thieves so recently referenced.

  Yon looked down at the snow. “I’ll tell you what.”

  She tilted her head.

  “A bard’s come up from Zellora. He’s at the inn near my master’s shop. From my nineteen chetra I’ll buy you a bowl of soup.” He peered at her roguishly from beneath an eyebrow.

  She laughed. She liked him. He was like a good-natured fox.

  “Hungry?”

  “Starving!”

  He held out his elbow with great exaggeration, as though he were a king, and she were a lady. She took his arm and walked with him, the warmth of his shoulder driving away the cold of winter’s final blast.

  The tavern Yon took Rennika to was a good one, with glass windows, several tables, and chairs with backs. The only taverns Rennika had been to were dark, low-ceiled, smoky places with trestle tables and benches.

  But today, the room was exceedingly crowded with locals, gaffers and tradesmen, mothers with babies, and children chasing one another underfoot. With the bard about to make his appearance any time, she and Yon had to eat their rice and lentils standing up, their mugs resting on a recessed shelf along one wall. The food was tasty and filling, and the dumplings stuffed with sausage—by far the best meal Rennika could remember having since coming to Gramarye. And it didn’t hurt that Yon entertained her throughout by pointing out each trader and imitating his voice or identifying him with a tidbit or scandal. And Yon told Rennika the gossip at the well: the high king was dead.

  King Artem Delarcan. She remembered him, a little.

  Dead. This was the day Meg had been waiting for.

  “Here he comes,” someone shouted, and the buzz rose. Some of the onlookers cheered.

  Above the heads of the gossipers, a raised hand holding a lute made its way across the room. It sank behind the crush, and the chatter subsided. The sound of strings being plucked and tuned filtered through the room. “If Highglen and Zellora ever decide to compete for the most snow, Highglen will win without contest,” the bard announced, and a ripple of laughter ran about the room.

  “In Theurgy, the roads that aren’t cobbled are mud, and in Arcan, farmers are planting.” The bard strummed his lute. “Listen well, my friends,” he said, and the chatter in the room fell away. “You may have heard rumors.”

  “The king’s dead!” someone shouted out and there was a general cheer.

  “I’m here to bring you tidings,” the bard called out over the commotion, and the audience settled. “The significance in Gramarye and all throughout Shangril is far-reaching.”

  He sang.

  Artem Delarcan, Arcan’s lord

  Fell to the One God’s last reward

  Huwen, grieving by his side

  Took up the crown with valiant stride.

  Born a prince in Holderford—

  “I’ll bet Huwen wasn’t at his father’s side.” A young man squeezed in by Yon’s elbow. “I’d wager my winter’s earnings he was plotting with his chancellors to raise taxes.”

  “Like father, like son,” Yon whispered.

  “How do you know? The bard said Prince Huwen was there,” Rennika said.

  The apple-cheeked boy looked curiously at her. “Who’s your friend?”

  Yon grinned and put his arm around her shoulder, drawing her into the crook of his armpit. “Rennika, Miach,” he introduced them. “Miach’s an apprentice tanner. That’s why he stinks.”

  “Don’t listen to him. Tanning’s a good profession.” He touched her ale mug with his, by way of greeting.

  “Shh!” A black-bearded man scowled at them.

  “Shh, yourself,” Miach said under his breath—low enough for his words to travel no farther than Rennika—and turned back to the bard.

  Yon left his arm about her shoulder, and the effect on her was at once thrilling and frightening.

  Long he sieged the traitor’s hold

  Till Archwood fell, as he foretold.

  Pierced by final rebel’s shaft,

  He gave his life—

  “Archwood!” a voice rang out. “Orumon!”

  The word fell like a hammer on Rennika’s heart, and the dark surrounding her closed in, a vibrating blackness. Fallen.

  Mama. Home.

  As if it had been a command, the bard’s song fell to nothing in the resounding silence.

  Archwood, breached by the siege. Mama was dead.

  It was not a question. Mama would have died, rather than give up the citadel to Artem. Even if by some chance she was not dead before the royal troops arrived, no magiel of the line was allowed to live.

  So.

  Mama was dead. Tears knotted in Rennika’s throat.

  Rennika’s home, the home of her childhood, was gone. King Ean. Faris. The children she’d played with. The maids and the cooks and the stable boys.

  Yon’s arm around her shoulder was the only solid thing in the world.

  And Nanna. Nanna was dead, too. Nanna, who’d sung to her and rocked her as a baby, told her stories, taught her to read.

  Meg and Janat. Taken from her. Somewhere in the seven countries of Shangril. If they were still alive.

  After a time, the bard’s lute began again to softly strum, and his voice was clear in the stunned silence.

  ...Amber, the final stone

  Was brought before the good king’s throne.

  An undercurrent of voices began to murmur.

  Crushed beneath the hammer’s weight,

  The swell of grumbling rose.

  It joined the other pray’r stones’ fate.

  The din drowned out the bard’s song.

  “The last one!”

  “Smashed—”

  “Our Gods are stolen!”

  All around them, people began to shift and gesticulate, angrily throwing down complaints, incidents and insults perpetrated by the imposition of a single God.

  “Why can’t we worship the Gods we choose!” The black-bearded man pushed his way through the rumbling crowd to get closer to the bard.

  “Well, that’s it, then.” Miach snatched a jug of ale from the tavern wench and tucked a coin in her bosom. He held up his mug with a sneer. “To King Huwen. The Beloved.”

  Rennika lifted her mug automatically, then lowered it without drinking. Was the tanner serious?

  “May the new king see the error of his father’s ways and give us back our Heavens,” Yon toasted.

  “And while he’s at it, how about returning our stolen lands, and end imprisonment without trial?” Miach and four or five others nearby drank to this.

  But the Amber was gone. “All of the prayer stones are smashed except for the Ruby. Huwen can’t give us back our prayers.”

  “Surely, he must see how his father’s torn the countries apart.” Miach’s words spat like acid on water as he filled their mugs.

  “Hush,” an older man with a broken nose cautioned. “A change of kings. You do not know how the land lays. A day ago—a candlemark ago—you could be dragged to Princess Hada’s dungeon for such talk.”

  “Huwen’s as b
ig a fool as his father if he doesn’t know how the people feel about having their access to the Gods cut off,” Miach said.

  “The prayer stones are gone,” the old man reminded him. “Nothing will be the way it was.”

  “Not the Amber.” Yon quaffed his ale. “The magiel’s daughter escaped before the king’s army sealed the walls. She has it.”

  Rennika’s attention flicked up.

  “Gossip,” the old man sneered.

  “No.” Yon put his mug on the shelf. “She’s been seen in Theurgy—and Holderford, by the Gods—even as far away as Cataract Crag.”

  Rennika squinted at him. Did he mean Meg? She’d never been to Cataract Crag. Unless...she’d gone there after they separated. But Meg didn’t have the Amber.

  “You’re a bloody fool,” the broken-nosed man said. “The Amber was in Archwood during the siege. Only the magic of the prayer stone could’ve kept those walls from falling to the king’s ladders and catapults. It’s smashed now, boy. You’re an ass if you think otherwise.”

  The room was oppressively warm and the stink of bodies made Rennika feel ill. She wanted to sit down.

  War. The plan. She and her sisters were to be at a tarn above Coldridge at the equinox, almost two weeks hence. But if the Amber was destroyed, what was the point? Did Meg or Janat know more about Mama’s plan?

  Yon leaned forward to make a point to someone in the discussion. He was handsome, in a devilish fashion, and he liked her. Meg and Janat would go to the tarn, if there was any reason to go. Did Rennika truly have to go?

  Her strength drained away, and she felt only despair and exhaustion. She slid out from under Yon’s arm. Miach filled the mugs around the circle, and Rennika let the ring of jostling debaters close.

  She put her mug on the shelf. In a corner of the room, a group crowded around a table, some sitting on chairs, others on a bench nailed to the wall. Rennika wormed her way over, and slid under the bench, her back to the heels that might nudge her, and drowsed in the warmth and mesh of voices.

  Mama was dead.

  With her boot as a pillow and her cloak as a blanket, she fought troubling thoughts until deep night.

  CHAPTER 32

  The shadow of the mountain had crept across the high valley beneath a golden sky by the time Meg crested the wide windswept snowfield. The yak herder’s hut was barely visible in the dusk, made of gray slates and nestled against a copse of stunted spruce. A wisp of smoke drifted from its chimney.

  Meg rapped on the door with frozen knuckles. She’d journeyed a long way from the melting valley to this wintry mountain, hope battling despair in her mind the entire time, and still she wasn’t certain she wanted to be here.

  The door opened to a waft of warmth and the fragrance of roasting sausage. Rennika stood before her, a puzzled frown melting into astonished delight. “Meg!”

  Before Meg could speak, Rennika whirled her in and closed the door, wrapping her in a fervent hug. “You’re—here!” she squealed. “How—? How—”

  Meg dropped her sack and held her sister close for a long moment, a rush of joy engulfing her, hardly daring to believe she’d found her. Rennika had...grown. Tall. Her hair, a tangle, was the color of honey and her cheeks bloomed like roses. Her voice—lower, modulated with the highlander vowels. She was, what, thirteen? But the promise of great beauty blessed her features. “I didn’t think I’d ever get through all that snow.”

  “Where’s Janat? Tell me everything. It’s been so long! What have you been doing?”

  “Janat...” Meg faltered.

  Rennika’s face went white.

  “Nothing like that,” Meg hastened to reassure her. “Last I saw her she was—fine.”

  Rennika stared at her for a long moment, as if still not believing her eyes. “Last you saw her?”

  “We parted ways. I don’t...know where she is.” Saying the words tightened her throat.

  Rennika looked puzzled. “I thought—”

  “We’re fighting for Shangril,” Meg said as brightly as she could, unwrapping herself from a layer of woolen swaddling.

  “With the uprisers.” Rennika took Meg’s cloak. She produced a thick yak hide from somewhere and threw it on the hard dirt floor before the hearth. “We haven’t much, but we have butter and a bit of honey for the bread. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving!” Meg took in the single room of the hut. The walls were well-chinked and cemented with some sort of mortar that kept most of the drafts at bay. The hearth, though not large, dominated the small space with a bright turf fire and a large iron cooking pot. A loft made a small sleeping space over a table with two wooden chairs and a tidy set of shelves and bins. A spinning wheel and small loom dominated one corner, surrounded by skeins of wool. Meg pressed her lips together, all at once filled with inexplicable sadness and joy. “I met a woman in Highglen who told me how to find you,” she said by way of explanation. “She said you’re working as a maid?”

  Rennika gave her a puzzled grin, and turning to a shelf, produced two mugs. “Come. Sit.” She disappeared through the door and returned in a moment with a jug of cream. “Colin will be home soon. This is his hut, but he’ll welcome you. He’s a good man.”

  Meg sat slowly, reappraising the hut and her sister. Rennika had grown taller, and her body, from what Meg could tell beneath the girl’s layers of skirts and shawls, was developing the shape of a woman. “And Colin is...?”

  “My master. He feeds me and lets me sleep on his hearth.” She knelt before the fire on the yak hide.

  Ah. Not a lover, then.

  Rennika’s smile was still naive. “I cook and keep the hut and make very good worlding potions for him and his yaks.” She pinched dried herbs from a small sack into a pot with a lid and a spout. She poured in hot water from a kettle by the fire. “And for the neighbors, for trade.” She poured a bit of the thick cream into each mug. “Once summer’s here, though, I’ll be able to do a lot more to pay for my keep.”

  “This spring equinox will be the second since we left Mama,” Meg cut in.

  Rennika poured the tea into Meg’s mug, then looked up at her questioningly before pouring her own. She didn’t remember.

  “We need to be in Coldridge before then,” Meg reminded her. The Gods had done nothing to help the uprisers; if Mama had found a way to spirit the Amber out of Archwood, Meg and Rennika had to carry out their charge and be prepared to use it.

  Rennika poured the second cup of tea.

  “Rennika.”

  She set the tea pot down.

  Her sister’s silence was unsettling. “Rennika, before we left Archwood, Mama—”

  “I know what Mama said.”

  Meg was confused. “We have a duty.”

  Rennika licked her lips and gave Meg her cup. “I thought it was only you who had to go.”

  “Mama said...” Said Rennika was strongest. Meg took her tea, then rested the mug in her lap. Rennika had changed. Since they’d run from Archwood, she’d always done what was required of her. Beg. Steal. Run. Always been their sister. A Falkyn. “Any of us can go, but it should be all three of us. You don’t want to go?”

  The girl took her own mug and brought it to her lips, but she did not drink. “It’s a long way. Can’t you just go with Janat?”

  “I told you, I don’t know where Janat is.” Heat tightened Meg’s chest. She hadn’t expected Rennika to argue. “Do you have somewhere else you need to be?”

  Rennika tilted her head, dismissively. “No.”

  “Then?”

  She shrugged a little. “This war is about big people. King Artem—King Huwen, I mean. Uprisers like Sulwyn and King Gramaret.”

  “And you. And me.”

  Again, Rennika tilted her head in dismissal.

  “Are you wed to this man? Colin?”

  Rennika’s head shot up, and Meg knew by her sister’s shock that she’d missed the mark. “Colin’s an old man.”

  Meg didn’t speak, but she held her sister’s gaze.


  Rennika let out a sharp breath. “Look at this place, Meg,” she said, relenting. “It has everything a person could want. It’s warm. It’s comfortable. It’s away from the war. There’s food. There are people in this valley who need me.”

  “This place?” Meg scoffed. Meg and Janat’s attic in Wildbrook was more comfortable than this hovel.

  Rennika frowned in frustration.

  “It’s people who make a home,” Meg said. “A family.”

  “Colin’s people. He’s like...like a father. And there are the people of the valley.”

  “The yak herders?” Meg couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You grew up in a castle!”

  “A long time ago.”

  “And once the world is restored, you’ll be a magiel princess.”

  “I don’t want to be a princess.”

  Meg stared at her. This wasn’t about what she wanted. “Well,” she said at last, “what do you want?”

  Rennika fingered her mug. “I met a boy. A man, I mean. A weaver, in Highglen. An apprentice, but he is working on his journeymanship—”

  “A weaver!”

  “He’s saving his money. Soon he’ll be able to open his own shop, and one day, he’ll be a master—”

  “A weaver!”

  Rennika shot her a black look. “You say that like it’s a bad word.”

  “Rennika, I spoke with Mama. Four weeks ago.”

  This caught the girl’s attention.

  “I was flickering through moments of my life after doing a spell. I found myself in her room before we escaped. Mama told me something. Why we need to go to the tarn above Coldridge. She’s arranged for us to meet a prince.”

  Rennika stared at Meg. “A prince?”

  “He’ll have the Amber.” This, Mama hadn’t said, but it had to be what she meant.