Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  Huwen stood back from Wenid’s body, laid out on the floor of the throne room in the pale light of dawn. In the city, fighting continued but had shifted to hunting out those final nests of uprisers who had not died or fled.

  “A stab wound.” The Holder of Histories pointed to a gash just below his rib cage, congealed, now. Much of the blood had been wiped away from the magiel’s skin and the dark wounds looked like incongruous mouths. “Here. And a second, here,” the Holder went on. “Likely, these disabled him, and then the assassin cut his throat, to be certain he was dead.” He pointed to the gash beneath the magiel’s ear.

  The commander spoke. “I interrogated Wenid’s guard. He left his post just after one chime, when a call came from the wall for reinforcements. The assassin could have entered his apartments then.”

  Huwen’s order. Piss.

  But the Ruby had only just been used, maybe a candlemark ago. Had the magiel been attacked while insensible in Heaven? And if so, why was Eamon not taken with him? And where was Eamon? “Where’s the Ruby?”

  The holder lifted his head. “In...the shrine,” he said uncertainly.

  “It wasn’t on Wenid’s body?”

  “No.”

  “But it was just used.”

  The holder frowned.

  Something...“Go check. Be sure the Ruby is safe.”

  The events did not add up. If Wenid was dead, who had prayed to the One God for victory in battle? Eamon could have done so, but Eamon could not go to Heaven without a magiel.

  The page he’d sent earlier to summon Eamon appeared and bowed.

  “Speak.”

  “Prince Eamon is not in his apartment.”

  Meg pushed Janat over a tumble of stones clogging the stairs to the cells. Her sister stumbled stupidly as though she cared nothing for the destruction of the keep. The war. Life. Gweddien had not even roused himself to leave the cell.

  Gods, to be able to find the solace of a shrine. The listening ear of a Holder.

  Meg and Janat emerged into the bailey. A crowd of townspeople milled or sat, exhausted. The smell of smoke lingered. Ghosts, too.

  In the light of the paling sky, the back gate where Meg and Kilovan and Xanther had entered with their milk jugs—only yesterday morning—was closed.

  Piss.

  She propped Janat’s arm over her shoulder to keep her from sinking to the earth in helpless despair, and they made their way with the other refugees toward the main gate.

  And the bailey vanished.

  Meg lay on the sharp scree of a cliffy, windblown mountainside. Night. Early fall, with the smell of snow in the air.

  She shifted, lifted her head from the shale. Janat. Her sister was so young—and Rennika, only a child. They lay snuggled close to her, sleeping. Nanna’s eyes were closed, her mouth open, an arm thrown over Rennika. Far below, faint shouts rose from Archwood’s walls.

  The night they’d run from King Artem’s men.

  She, too, had been young, then. Not so much in years—what was seventeen compared with nineteen?—but in naiveté. She’d wanted gowns from Aadi. She’d wanted to be a celebrated magiel taking her people’s wishes to their Gods. Now...she wanted only to survive.

  No, she did want something. She wanted her sisters.

  By the Many Gods, Meg hoped her seventeen-year-old self inhabiting her body could escape Coldridge castle.

  CHAPTER 43

  The rebounds in Meg’s time stream had settled. Whichever version of herself had lived the past few moments of her escape from Coldridge castle had hidden in a shadowed corner of the compound, and she and Janat were still here, still alive—and still caged within the castle walls. The situation was bad, but it could have been worse.

  “Janat?”

  Her sister stared at some other world.

  “Did you do magic? Are you traveling?”

  “No.” Janat blinked as though her thoughts moved slowly. “I did. I’m back.”

  Meg had too many questions. What was Janat doing in Coldridge? In a dress? In prison? But there was no time.

  Tears again leaked down her sister’s abstracted face. Whatever happened, it had shaken her badly.

  “Can you walk?”

  Janat’s face rotated toward her as though she forced herself to stay in this world. “Why?”

  “To escape!”

  Again, her sister seemed unable to comprehend. She stared off distractedly, as though trying to fix on the ghosts.

  A wave of exhaustion came over Meg. She’d not yet recovered from her own magic. She wanted nothing more than to lie down here and sleep. But the archers were descending from the parapets now, several carrying stretchers or supporting the wounded.

  Meg shook herself. She couldn’t let her fatigue or Janat’s...melancholy interfere.

  The portcullis rose and the archers, unstringing their bows, drew swords and ran into the city streets. A handful of soldiers and uprisers clashed in small scuffles, but the resistance was feeble. Where were the rebels who, when the night was young, had scaled the fortress walls?

  Meg tugged Janat’s hand, and they shuffled with the other refugees, following the sounds of rout.

  Ranuat. She’d killed the magiel. The king’s chancellor.

  Meg pulled Janat’s unresisting arm, and they tripped down the cobbled streets, unhindered, toward the main road to the city gate. A few citizens looked out their windows or came onto balconies, or even into the street in wonderment. Dead and dying—both rebels and soldiers—lay on the cobbles in a fine layer of ash, and a few kind souls tended to those in pain.

  Magic.

  The battle had turned on magic. A complete reversal.

  Meg bit her lip as they walked, her breath coming ragged, her face streaming with tears.

  How? Only the Ruby had this power. And it took a royal and a magiel to wield it.

  Piss!

  Piss! Piss! Piss! Piss!

  She’d killed Wenid Col, by the Gods! He was the only magiel—

  Unless—

  Could some captured magiel, one destined to be burned for his Gods, have betrayed their cause? So near to the rebels’ victory?

  No.

  It was not possible. Any magiel whose hand touched the Ruby in the presence of a royal, who found himself face-to-face with the One God in Heaven—any magiel—would plead for the denouncement of the king who’d taken the people’s Gods from them, taken the people’s lands. Such a prayer could not be blackmailed by threats of reprisal.

  A sudden, magical turn of battle should have had the castle doors open to uprisers pouring in.

  Meg took numb steps, her feet crunching the gravel of the road.

  She’d killed Wenid Col. Her mind could not get past this simple fact. His image superimposed itself on her vision. His pale face, staring eyes, gasping lips, body shuddering with convulsions.

  She had murdered. And, for what?

  She felt dirty, soiled, damaged.

  For nothing.

  A man before her tried blindly to crawl.

  She knelt beside him and Janat stopped, too. Meg cast about for a bandage, a— No. He would be dead soon. Ghosts surrounded him. There was nothing she could do for him.

  Nothing.

  She had a Memory Loss. She placed a crystal in the man’s mouth, and in a moment the pain in his eyes gave way to confusion, and then to sightlessness. She removed his death token from his collar and placed it on his tongue. His face relaxed in the peace of Heaven, and his body across her lap became limp.

  She lifted her eyes to look at the street. So many. So many who would become ghosts, wandering in torment on this earth forever. How many had been able to place their death tokens on their tongues before death? How many, after almost two years of war, even had death tokens?

  A woman wailed in the distance. She’d found a father, a son, a lover, or someone she loved.

  Another man groaned.

  Meg moved from soldier to rebel to soldier to rebel, tying tourniquets, improvising bandag
es, expending the last of her Memory Loss crystals, and administering death tokens. Janat followed mechanically, helping listlessly when directed, silent, tears streaming down her face.

  Mourners, mothers, kin. Soldiers now moved from fallen to fallen, carrying some to wagons, giving the kindness of death and death tokens to others.

  And—

  —a silhouette.

  No.

  A form she never wanted to recognize.

  Heartbeat choking her, Meg crawled over stones and gravel and dirt. A mound of rocks, the blocks fallen from the king’s keep. Soldiers, and others, were moving chunks, stacking them. But there was a form buried beneath.

  Janat, following numbly behind her, stood over the body as if cast in marble. Then she crumpled, fell to her knees and lifted that precious head to her lap, releasing a rage of tears.

  Sulwyn.

  Oh, Gods, Sulwyn, not Sulwyn.

  A deep wound from his scalp above his forehead and across his cheek. Crusted.

  A soldier pulled away another block and helped Janat roll him over.

  There was another form beneath him.

  —Rennika?

  But Rennika moved.

  “Rennika!” Meg breathed.

  The man helped Janat hold Sulwyn’s protecting body away from the girl’s, and Meg felt her sister’s head, her neck, her back. “Can you move?”

  She blinked. “Meg?” she whispered. The fingers of one hand wriggled.

  “Rennika!” Janat wept.

  The soldiers working on the pile shifted the remainder of the rocks to free Sulwyn’s legs and reposition him to unburden her.

  “I was...trying—”

  “Hush,” Meg said.

  Rennika pushed herself up, cried out and fell back. Blood smeared her clothes and bruises bloomed on her face and arms. “I think my wrist is hurt.” She winced in pain as she rolled over and Meg cushioned her head in her lap.

  “Lie still,” Janat murmured, and she did.

  “Sulwyn?” Rennika asked. A comprehension furrowed her brow. “Is he...”

  Meg’s throat closed. She nodded. Touched his cheek.

  Skin, cold as the ground on which he lay.

  Pulse, chest, still.

  Janat touched the collar at his neck. Her face softened, just a little, and Meg knew. His death token was gone.

  The day was cool and capricious, sun hidden by low cloud. Huwen Delarcan was beyond tired, but he rode out with a contingent of men nevertheless to view the results of battle. Vultures wheeled overhead and rats skittered from the corpses on their approach.

  He directed his men to take rebels and soldiers alike to the healers, if there was hope of recovery; directed them to let the women bear their husbands’ bodies away for burial if there was not. As much as it tore at him to do so, he needed to see the destruction that had been wrought in his name.

  Couriers had begun to arrive from the nearest cities, all with the same message. Just before dawn, the tide of each rebel skirmish had turned. Every garrison—at least, those reporting so far—had won. Royal arrows flew true while rebel darts suddenly began to miss their marks. Royal swordsmen became energized while their opposites quailed.

  A powerful magic had been called.

  And Eamon had not been located, anywhere in the castle.

  Nor had the Ruby.

  But how had his brother petitioned the One God with no magiel?

  Huwen had ordered the castle scoured for any anomaly, anything to explain what had happened.

  Nothing. No clue.

  Rain began to patter on the stinking field. There was no more Huwen could do here. He called his men to return to the carn. Work aplenty awaited him there.

  As he turned toward the gate, a group of horsemen left the city, riding in his direction. Uther was at their head. Huwen rode to meet them.

  “Sire,” his half-brother reported. “I may have the answer to your question.”

  “Yes?”

  Uther indicated they should ride a few paces away. Huwen directed his guard to retreat, and followed Uther to a deserted part of the battlefield.

  The courier spoke in a low voice. “We’ve been scouring the castle to account for all courtiers and servants. Wenid had rooms set aside in the women’s wing for five women and their babies. More women in a cell in the basement.”

  “What?”

  “They are guarded and not permitted to leave their quarters and their garden.”

  “What does this have to do—”

  Uther’s features settled into a frown of disgust. “The women are all magiels and half-borns. The babies are capricious-skinned.” He grimaced. “Bred to ensure the Ruby is never without a magiel.”

  Huwen’s stomach sickened.

  “There’s more.”

  God.

  “One of the mothers and her child are missing. The oldest child, three weeks old. Dannle, the child’s name is.” Uther’s nostrils flared. “The night of the battle, just before dawn. Servants say Eamon took both.”

  Huwen’s mind leapt to the obvious, and he recoiled. “Eamon used the Ruby to petition the One God to turn the battle—using a baby? Or the mother?”

  Uther took a deep breath and raised one brow. “He dared not use the mother. Once in Heaven, he would have no way to control her prayer. Magiels have no love for Eamon. But the baby...” He shrugged. “All I can think is that if Eamon experiences Heaven like a magiel rather than a royal, he might also communicate with the Gods.”

  “That’s—that’s—”

  Uther nodded.

  “Beyond disgusting.”

  Huwen considered the implications. “If both Eamon and his magiel are subject to the wonder of Heaven, how can they return? It’s the royal’s place to bring the magiel back.”

  Uther shook his head. “A servant, perhaps? To break their grip on the prayer stone. Or...” He looked away momentarily.

  “Or?”

  “Exhaustion. Inability of their bodies to withstand so much...pleasure.”

  Huwen had seen how both Eamon and Wenid had changed, became reclusive, crippled.

  “I’m assuming Eamon cloaked the mother and child. Likely, took some money and slipped out of the castle during the turn of battle. Maybe in a cart with a driver, if he was stricken by the madness of prayer.”

  “Was that possible?”

  “Our men would let Eamon pass,” Uther reasoned. “The field was confusion. The rebels were a chaos of undisciplined peasants. But such men, farmers and the like, might well have let—what they saw to be—an apparently injured man, wife, and child pass them by, particularly if they were dressed as peasants. If he could survive a stray arrow, perhaps with hidden armor, he might have done it. With money, he could buy horses and protection in Big Hill.”

  “And go to Midell.” The country Father had given him. Only a few days’ ride.

  Uther let out a long breath. “One can only surmise.”

  “He’s stolen the Ruby.” Fear stabbed Huwen’s gut. “It’s treason.”

  His half-brother gave him a peculiar look. “Father gave him the Ruby. Last winter.”

  “Not to keep!”

  Uther made no comment.

  With the Ruby, and behind the ramparts of a keep, Eamon would be invulnerable. “He must not take sanctuary behind Theurgy’s walls.”

  Uther gave a sharp nod.

  “Send men. Immediately. By the One God, Uther, deliver him to me.”

  “He has a full day’s start—”

  “He’s traveling with a baby and a woman. Catch him!”

  The courier bowed his assent. “I will inform your general, and men will be dispatched with all haste,” he said. “But Sire. With the magic of the Ruby at his disposal, do not expect your brother’s return.”

  Meg thanked the wind for slapping her face. It gave her opposition to push against as she marched back and forth with her sisters to the edge of the woods, collecting brittle branches and hauling them into the field. Yet, even this foul weather c
ould not distract her from the visions that played again and again in her mind.

  The uprisers’ utter defeat.

  Wenid’s accusing body. Death token, fallen to the floor.

  Sulwyn.

  Oh, Sulwyn. Lying here as she piled the wood higher. She’d used her Confusion spell to steal a hand cart. She and her sisters brought his body here, to the far edge of the battlefield, near the woods.

  Oddly clear light stretched over the land as the watery sun dipped below the cloud, approaching the mountains. Women searching for lost brothers and husbands and sons still wandered the fields, but the soldiers had gone. A few groups of gravediggers swung pickaxes and shovels at the icebound earth. A scatter of funeral pyres already burned.

  Rennika would not stay put as she’d been told, but she carried what branches she could, one-handed. Janat, moving like an old woman, returned to the copse along the riverbank, snapping dead branches from the undersides of evergreen boughs. The overwhelming despair that had crippled her when Meg found her had lessened, but she would not speak of what had happened to her in the dungeon. Wenid was an evil man, was all she would say.

  Meg had failed, and now she paid for her sin. Her hubris.

  The men and women she had fought beside for the past year or more, her friends and brethren and family, were gone: dead or captured. Scattered to the four winds. Not through her doing, perhaps, yet the punishment was justified.

  She wrapped her arms around a bundle of sticks and trudged back to the field. She lit the pyre, and Janat and Rennika joined her. Flames crackled, eating their way into the mound of sticks and logs around Sulwyn.

  Meg put an arm around Janat’s shoulder. “Janat, I’m so sorry, I’m so—” By Kyaju, if she could take back what she had done to her sister...

  Janat turned and buried her head in Meg’s neck, sudden sobs rising in convulsive waves to crash over her, into her, through her. And the anguish of Sulwyn’s death bloomed in her again, and Rennika was beside them, holding them, weeping with them.

  The wind blew, and the sun disappeared behind the hills. Flames snapped in the wind.

  “You’re alive,” Janat whispered, lifting her head, laughing through her tears. “You’re alive and Rennika’s alive and we’re here.” She wiped her nose, and Meg laughed and Rennika laughed.