The wound had closed only after three, and the scar never stopped being irritated and red. Both of Hiron’s hands had been a battlefield of faint scar lines and half-healed cuts by the Festival of the Sun, and one of the other masters had even ventured, “Perhaps you should rest them a while.” Grovin had eyed the man with irritation: at that very moment Hiron had been halfway through the magnificent breastplate, a marvel of delicate carving done at just the right stage of air-drying; he rose three times a night to check the sections, to be sure he didn’t miss the chance.
Hiron had laughed a little, and said, “I’ll rest them when the statue is done,” but a month later, he had rested them sooner after all, because he spent a week vomiting and with the flux. Grovin hovered, feeding him soup and bread and wine with honey, miserably anxious: there were four pieces waiting for carving. Hiron tried to go to the workshop once, but his hands were shaking too badly; he scarred one piece beyond redemption, and then had to run staggering to the pot again anyway. After four days, Grovin looked in on the pieces that morning, then went back to his bedside and said, “It’s no use, they’re gone. You’ll have to remake them when you’re well again,” and Hiron had wept a little before he turned to the wall and slept for the better part of three days.
His hands were healed a little more after the enforced rest, but he had a hollowed blue look to his face that hadn’t been there before. He had been slower, afterwards; he only lost three pieces waiting for carving when feverish shakes laid him up two months later. He was sick three times during the rainy season, and listless; he was better once the weather dried out, but when the statue went up at last—after only eleven breakneck months of work—he came home from the dedication ceremony and lay down and was sick for a solid month with an illness no priest or physician or wisewoman could name or cure. Grovin brought a dozen through to look at him, spending the last of his own money to do it; Hiron had not sold a single piece since beginning to make the statue, and Grovin had not fired anyone else’s work. Neither of them had ever put much of anything aside.
The landlord came by and apologetically said that he had to have the back rent, which wasn’t to be had. Grovin had to sell four pieces of his prized collection, in anguish, although he managed to sell them to temples to be put on display, so at least he could go and visit them. “Never mind,” Hiron said, consolatory. “The statue’s done. As soon as I’m well, I’ll sell some pieces, and you’ll buy them back, if you really want to bother.” Hiron himself had never had much patience for the work of other clay-shapers.
He did rise at last, thinner, and went back into the workshop, back to the clay. But he wasn’t quite the same. Grovin swallowed it for a month, but he couldn’t bear it; when Hiron tried to hand him one truly awful urn, finally Grovin burst out, “What are you doing? This looks like the work of those guildless imitators down by the docks, making trash to pawn off as the grandmaster’s work. It’s—timid.”
Hiron had flinched, and then he’d smiled again, a little waveringly, and said, “You’re always right, Grovin,” and then he’d taken the piece and smashed it. His pieces improved after that, but there was still a thread of what Grovin called caution running through them, something withheld, for the next two years. Hiron wasn’t sick quite as often, and once he was making pieces for sale, there was more money for food and firewood, although never quite enough to buy back Grovin’s pieces. He never brought in as much as Kath’s crates full of dishes, and the money had somehow vanished more quickly even with only their two mouths to feed.
Then at the start of the fourth year, the blood-poisoning took hold. Hiron was feverish every evening, even when he felt well in the mornings. Everyone consulted could name it, of course; the symptoms were well known. There was no cure, except to stop working the bone clay. The grandmaster Ollin had even done so some two centuries before; he had died a year later in a plague and was still spoken of disdainfully among clay-shapers as having been justly punished for cowardice. Hiron and Grovin had insulted his name amongst themselves many times.
Hiron didn’t stop working the clay. Grovin was a little afraid at first, not of that, but of another weakening in his work. But the timidity didn’t return. Hiron’s work bloomed instead, going abruptly larger and stranger and even more complicated and convoluted. The pieces he made had no purpose but display, and found few buyers, but Grovin gloated over them with brooding joy, firing them with immense care and almost alone in the kiln; he added in only grudgingly enough other goods to pay for the fuel, at rates so low that their shapers wouldn’t complain about having their work treated dismissively and shoved to the sides. Hiron’s pieces became still more wild as the fevers crept further and further into his days, figures that twisted and writhed as if against strangling bonds. He had long since stopped speaking of when I’m better. But he still never spoke of fear. Grovin took the pieces that didn’t go in the final sale and used them to decorate Hiron’s tomb, a monument he considered greater than the statue itself, even if less refined tastes didn’t appreciate them properly.
Hiron had lasted four years, in the end. Longer than most grandmasters. But the bone clay had been taking him from almost the beginning; in a long, slow feasting, not a quick slaughterhouse blow. Sitting in Kath’s workshop, Grovin stopped lecturing Ala and instead looked down at her small, tender, unmarked hands. When Kath came in, he took her hands and turned them over, peering close: one small burn, from touching a cooking pot, and not a single cut, and her pains had not changed since the day they had first gone to the temple of Forgin three years before. She had been ill, now and again, but not with clay fever, or poisoning, or infections.
“Well, I’m not having you be the proof,” Kath said to Ala, and sent her to sit in her room for punishment, and then she called in her journeymen and told them all that she’d let some of them knead the bone clay for her, if they were willing to try and see if any of them began to be ill. “But don’t any of you do it if you have a child coming,” she added, “and I won’t have any bragging or teasing; it’s not a joy worth dying for.”
Grovin stifled himself before them, but when the journeymen had boiled out again in glee, he snapped, “It should be. That’s what’s wrong with their work: they don’t care enough.”
“If they don’t care enough to die for it, that’s as much as saying they’ve got sense,” Kath said, washing her hands off, and for a moment he hated her.
“Do you feel nothing of your own art?” he said through his teeth. “I hardly know how you can make your work when you talk of it like a farmer, only worried about bringing your crop to market. I suppose there are birds that sing without understanding their own music—”
Kath startled round at him, surprised and hurt, but even as he stopped, she went indignant instead; she faced him and put her hands on her hips. “You love pottery because you’ve put your heart inside it,” she said, sharp, “and you don’t love the world because you’ve put none of yourself into any other part of it. Well, my heart’s not shut up in a jar on a shelf. I understand my work, better than you. I’m making a thing out of the bones of the dead, and if it lives again, it’s only because someone living loves it, even if it’s just me myself. You can pretend, if you like, that a lump of baked clay means something on its own, even if no one touches it or looks at it or rejoices in it, and make that your excuse for not caring what any human being needs or wants. It’s just another way of being selfish.”
She swiped her wet hands off against her hips, back and forth, a decided gesture, and walked out of the workshop, back into the kitchen, with the shouting children. Grovin stood unmoving and blind there a long moment, and when he saw again, he had turned without realizing it towards the door, towards the faces of the goddess, blackened with smoke, cracked, misshapen; the goddess with her veiled face with its open mouth waiting, waiting to breathe and live.
SHAWN SPEAKMAN
WHEN I BEGAN WRITING “THE FIRE-RISEN ASH,” IT WAS MEANT FOR Unfettered II.
Sadly, it neve
r published there. My mother passed away at that time, and I felt I needed to commemorate her with a different type of story—one about her life and magic. I did that with “The Last Flowers of the Spring Witch.” Looking back on it, I made the right decision, but I always regretted not finishing “The Fire-Risen Ash.”
That regret is now gone. “The Fire-Risen Ash” features Knight of the Yn Saith Richard McAllister and his trusty fairy guide, Snedeker, as they embark on a quest to reestablish a fey species thought extinct. Those of you who enjoyed my novel The Dark Thorn will like this new Annwn Cycle tale. The short story also stands alone quite nicely without having read my previous work.
Hope you enjoy the fiery magic of the phoenix!
Shawn Speakman
The Fire-Risen Ash
Shawn Speakman
Richard McAllister ignored dozens of wounds, anger bolstering his resolve.
The Heliwr of the Yn Saith had taken a beating. He had expected his task to be difficult—but not like this. The home of Christophe Moreau had been built to repel an army. In fact, it was more of a Gothic fortress, protected by various magical alarms, watchful gargoyles, and a state-of-the-art surveillance system that would never exist in Annwn but did in Paris. A wizard could never be too cautious—Richard had learned that more often than not knowing Merle—and Christophe Moreau was no different. He was young in his craft but had the patience and attention to detail of a man three centuries older, his home reflecting it. Merle had thought one unfettered knight and his wise-ass fairy guide stood a chance at infiltrating the home though. And it had worked.
Richard hated to admit it, but he now knew he had been bested the moment he had stepped within the wizard’s walls. He knelt on cold stone, gathering his strength even as it bled out of him, livid that he had been brought so low so quickly.
“Would you stop with the blood and do your job,” Snedeker snapped.
If he had been near enough, Richard would have knocked his irascible fairy companion into one of the prison’s shifting walls and been done with his guide altogether.
Instead, Snedeker hovered on the other side of the room. And Richard could not muster the might to yet again put the fairy in his place.
“Easy to say that when you aren’t the one bleeding, Snedeker,” Richard shot back.
“We fairies do not bleed,” the other sniffed indignantly.
“Well,” the Heliwr said, spitting red again. “Aren’t you just the lucky one.”
“Your sarcasm is not going to sav—”
“Shut the hell up, Snedeker.”
The Oakwell fairy frowned bits of leaves and bark before returning his attention to their dangerous situation. Richard cursed inwardly. In the past they had broken into more fortified locations than the Parisian mansion. This time it had been different. Once inside, the home had become a living entity, a labyrinth of shifting walls and changing rooms, and occupied by a fey guard so intelligent and savage that the Heliwr had been outmatched from the outset.
Richard gripped the Dark Thorn close. He gathered what magic the staff afforded him. And waited for the walls to change yet again, to give them a new path.
And possibly a new chance at escape.
Long minutes slipped away.
“The creature must have a weakness,” Richard said mostly to himself.
“Elychher are very hard to kill. You see, they grow stronger with pain. It drives them mad until they are unstoppable and kill the prey they have stalk—”
“I know, Snedeker,” the knight growled.
“Well. Fine then.”
“Where did it go though?” Richard asked.
“How the Lady should I know?” Snedeker retorted. “You drug us into this mess!”
“And I’ll get us out,” the knight said, even as the walls began grinding into a new configuration. “Now go. Something new must be better than this.”
Snedeker flew into the next room, already seeking a way out. Using the Dark Thorn more as a crutch than a staff, Richard followed. Honestly he didn’t know if they would get free. The home of the wizard was one large trap. Even the power of the Dark Thorn could not seek the way out, its ability to find what was lost compromised by the mutable nature of the home. The walls had been fortified, enhanced to withstand magic. And then there was the elychher. Richard had come to end the fey creature, the elychher controlled by Christophe Moreau and sent into the Paris portal for some time to acquire magical artifacts, gems, and weapons. Arnaud Lovel, the knight who warded the portal into Annwn, had not been strong enough to prevent the incursions. It was only when Merle, the ancient wizard known as Myrddin Emrys and architect of the portal knights, had decided enough was enough that he charged Richard with ending the threat.
After hours of research, both men had agreed it was time. Christophe Moreau had grown too dangerous. Power corrupted. Left unchecked, Moreau would acquire a magical arsenal larger than even what the Vatican housed.
And now, barely able to stand, Richard bled for it.
The Heliwr tried to remember everything Merle had taught him about the elychher. They were fey creatures, catlike and lethal, highly intelligent and feared by even their own Unseelie Court brethren. How Christophe Moreau had discovered, caged, and learned to control an elychher, Richard didn’t know. It didn’t matter at the moment. Even with his experience, the Heliwr had struck the creature just twice in the last hour, and both times the cat had fled, leaving behind only its high-pitched hyena laugh, the walls shifting into a new configuration before the unfettered knight could pursue it.
—How does it feel, McAllister, being the fly instead of the spider?—
The voice of Christophe Moreau echoed in the silence of the new room that held ancient chairs, older paintings, and no doorways of any kind.
“Why don’t you show yourself and find out, wizard?”
—I am here. In these very walls. I am all around you. I have made you bleed. Do you not know that?—
“It will take more than my blood to kill me,” Richard grated, sending his senses into the mansion to discover the wizard’s whereabouts. He found nothing. “Others have done the same. I’m still here.”
—And yet you weaken with every breath. I sense it. It is clear Myrddin Emrys chose his newest Heliwr poorly—
Rage strengthened Richard. “Come in here and find out how poorly, fucker.”
—I will not be goaded, knight. You will see me when I wish it. I have not survived within the machinations of other European wizards and witches by being daft. You are nothing to me. Nothing to the world. You are an amusement, one I am slowly growing tired—
Richard gave voice to his fear. “You are toying with us.”
—Very perceptive, Heliwr—
“But why?”
—Many reasons. The least of which, you dared break into my home. The most being Myrddin Emrys. He sent you here. Yet I will outmatch his arrogance. I want to send a message. I want you broken. I want your death on his conscience. I want the guilt to cripple him as I will cripple you. I will make an example of you and your fairy friend just as one day I will make an example of him—
This last trailed off in a hiss of seething anger.
“Do you know what I heard in all of that?” Richard asked, grinning darkly. “I heard a lot of ‘I’ this and ‘I’ that. Bring your worst, you pompous coward.”
—And you are a fool for coming here at a fool’s behest—
The walls shifted anew, moving at a rate that matched the wizard’s ire.
—Heliwr, enough of this game. How do the powerful men in government put it? You are now collateral damage—
At that, part of the stone wall on Richard’s right suddenly slid open and the cat leaped from its shadows, the elychher on the Heliwr so quickly he barely had time to ward it off. The Dark Thorn and his own instincts saved him. Fire erupted down its length like the sun, the flames exploding against the creature. It was not enough. Claws raked his left ribs to the bone, rending muscle, spinning him like a t
op. The elychher kept at him, an elusive target, slashing at him on one side, passing, and returning to strike the other. Snedeker tried to drop explosive dust but the catlike creature was always a step ahead. The smell of burnt cat hair sat thick in his nostrils, but his own magic could not land a strong blow either. The fey beast was getting faster in the attack even as he slowed.
He sensed this was the end. The wizard had finally come for the knight’s death. Desperate anger was the only thing that kept Richard alive. He brought the entirety of his will and magic to bear, creating a wall of force that pushed the elychher back. It would not last long. But it would give him the time he needed.
When the invisible wall crumbled seconds later, Richard sidestepped the attack that leaped in a blur.
And sent the Dark Thorn’s magic where the fey monster would land.
The fire slammed into the elychher’s side, sending it flying through the air to crash into a small round table and its chairs. Body smoking, the creature attempted to flee from the brutal attack, to regroup as it had done several times before.
It was exactly what the Heliwr expected. Just as one of the walls opened to allow the elychher escape—closing as soon as it did so to keep the knight and fairy behind and trapped—Richard called the entirety of power he yet possessed.
“Tynnu rhaff!” he roared.
Unfettered III Page 70