by Sarah Zettel
“Cannot hold me,” said the voice. “You grow old, mortal woman, and you cannot hold me.”
Slowly, carefully, Medeoan got down on her knees so that she could roll back the edge of the carpet. Her aching fingers traced the edges of the stones underneath, until she found the notch that identified the one that could be heaved loose. Under that stone waited an iron door. Medeoan unlocked it with one of the keys on her ring. Underneath the door waited a ladder, its wood polished smooth from years of use. The ladder led to a stone staircase that descended into the dark and cold between the cellars of the palace.
Medeoan’s hands found the lantern that waited at the top of the stairs, and the tinderbox beside it. Her clumsy fingers dropped the steel several times, which caused her to have to search for it on her knees, but at last, she struck a light.
All the world kneels to me, she thought toward the whispering voice at the bottom of the stairs. But I kneel only to you.
“Let me go,” said the voice. “Let me go!”
Medeoan lifted the lantern in one palsied hand and picked her way down the steep, curving stairs. Her free hand brushed the stone and earth wall, helping to keep her steady. A dozen men — builders, planners, smiths, and stonemasons — had labored to make and secure this stair and the chamber below. All of them had vanished from Isavalta’s shores years since, pressed variously by privateers and pirates, all of whom had been paid well for their pains.
At first, the wall was winter cold, making her fingertips ache. But with each step downward, the stones grew a little warmer. Her breath ceased to steam in front of her eyes and Medeoan began to wish she had laid aside her heavy night robe.
At the bottom of the stairs waited another iron door. The metal was warm to the touch, and light flickered through a crack near the floor.
Medeoan set the lantern down and brought out yet another key. This one had wires of tarnished silver woven around its shaft and would burn any hand but hers that tried to touch it.
Medeoan had to press hard against the door to convince its weary hinges to move. It finally gave way with a high-pitched scream of dry, tortured metal.
Light and heat poured over Medeoan, making her squint and blink, and bringing out perspiration instantly on her forehead and upper lip. Her knees, old and tired years before their time, tried to make her shrink backward, but Medeoan held her ground, even if she could not immediately step forward. The thing that waited in the golden cage already knew too much of her weakness. She would not give it any other sign with which to torment her.
The cage hung from the stone ceiling by a stout iron chain and was about the size of a large man’s torso. Its charred bars had once been pure gold twisted and bent into the needful shapes. Medeoan’s hands still remembered the pain of that work. That cage had cost her, in pain and blood, years of life, and the life of the one man she could trust absolutely. But it had been necessary. Nothing else could hold the Firebird.
The Firebird, the Phoenix, blazed at the center of the cage, a bird made of living flame. Its wings and tail glowed a shifting pattern of gold, red and orange. Its sharp beak shone pure white. The blue from the very heart of the fire glowed in its round eyes.
When it saw Medeoan, it let out a screech that shot a bolt of pain through her ears. Its curved wings battered at the cage bars, raising clouds of smoke and the stench of metal and blood burning together.
“Let me out!” it screamed. “Medeoan! Let me out!”
Medeoan summoned all her strength and walked past that cage. The chamber beyond was made of earth and stone just like the staircase. It might have been a workroom. A crucible stood beside a workbench covered with nuggets of ore and scraps of metal, along with hammers and various tools for shaping that metal. Crouching down, Medeoan tended the fire underneath the crucible, clearing the ashes from the coals and feeding it bits of wood. All the while, she felt the Firebird’s burning eyes focused upon the back of her neck.
“Avanasy is here, Medeoan.”
Medeoan did not look back. Ordinarily, it would take a crucible hours to become hot enough for the task she required. She did not have hours. Medeoan stared unblinking at the flames, summoning the deepest part of her soul to the surface, willing it to course through her veins, to fill her hands and reach out through her fingertips.
“He stands beside the cage his life created, Medeoan. He says you must release me, or it will take your life as it did his. It will take your life and realm to keep me bound.”
Medeoan tightened her jaw. The creature lied, as it always lied. She pushed her sleeves up around her elbows and with bare arms reached into the fire. The flames crawled around her hands, but did not burn her. They felt soft under her fingertips, like clay ready to be shaped. Her fingers willed by her inmost soul could draw heat from the flames, could spread it into the stone of the crucible, could make that crucible blaze with white heat, to melt the metal, to renew the cage, to keep her empire safe. Her hands, her soul, her will, only hers.
“Your heart skips a beat, Medeoan. Your chest grows tight, grows tired.”
But the Firebird had waited too long. The flames were hers. Her hands stroked the crucible, spreading the heat, judging the temperature by instinct. True, her heart did labor, but it was from effort and concentration, not from age. Not yet. That was another lie the Firebird told. She could ignore that.
She drew her hands from the flames, stood and turned to the workbench. Lumps of gold ore waited for her and she cast them into the crucible. A knife also waited on the bench. Medeoan picked it up, steadied her arm, and drove the point into her fingertip. She turned her palm up, letting the blood run over her fingers so that she might breathe upon it. The blood fell hissing into the crucible, and its steam mixed with her breath.
“Let me go, Medeoan. Your Avanasy urges you. I will promise not to harm you or yours.”
“Liar,” said Medeoan through clenched teeth. She plunged her hands into the crucible, cupping the fragments of ore. The magic in her hands felt the gold melting from the stone and drew it forth, her fingers twisting and rolling it the way a weaver might twist thread and then bind those threads into a braid. But this braid was of gold, blood and magic. This braid would be woven into the cage, and help hold back the Firebird for another few days.
Medeoan lifted the soft plait of white-hot metal from the crucible.
“I called to your son, Medeoan.”
For an instant, Medeoan’s will faltered and unbearable pain lanced through her hands. She smelled the stench of her own flesh burning and she screamed, but she did not drop the braid. She clamped all her will, all her remaining life, down around the pain and raised the magic once again. This magic was hers, Isavalta was hers, hers alone to protect and defend. If she failed now, if she failed again, it would die, all of it would die. Her son would die at the hand of his cursed wife and all her family, as her parents had died at Kacha’s hands. Kacha, who had driven her from her own palace. Kacha, who had tried to invade Hung-Tse with her soldiers, so terrifying the Nine Elders that they transformed one of their own into the Firebird and unleashed it against Isavalta.
“He almost heard me, Medeoan. He is so susceptible to suggestion, how will he fail to listen to me?”
Medeoan pressed the braid against the bars of the cage. The Firebird flew at her, beating its wings against the cage and thrusting its beak at her. It sought to burn her alive, but the cage held yet again, and all she felt were minute pinpricks of heat that raised tiny blisters, adding new scars and spots to her face and arms. Nothings. She twisted the braid into place and the scent of burning lessened. Medeoan lifted her hands away, and the braid cooled even as she looked at it, becoming a new layer to the cage and encasing the old, charred metal.
Medeoan staggered and would have fallen if the workbench had not caught her under her elbow. She leaned there for a moment, panting, unable to think of anything but the pain throbbing in her hands. Black lines seared her flesh and that sight accompanied by the intensity of the pain rai
sed a whimper from her throat and wrung tears from her burning eyes.
“Set me free, Medeoan, or he will do it for you.” The Firebird turned one burning blue eye toward her. “You are a sorcerer, but he is not. Do you think he will survive the flames when I soar free?”
Medeoan raised her streaming eyes. “He cannot reach you here.” She pushed herself away from the bench, forcing her back to straighten. She lowered her arms to let her sleeves fall over her wounded hands. “No one can reach you here. You are mine.” Medeoan stalked up to the cage, her voice shaking with rage and pain. “I will keep you here as long as I have need of you. You will not go free until Isavalta is safe, if that takes a thousand years. You will stay here and the threat of you will serve wherever I require.”
“Be sure,” hissed the bird. “For you do grow old, Medeoan. Grandfather Death measures the candle of your life and sees it will soon go out. Then what of Isavalta? Then what will keep me from taking my revenge?”
Lies. Old lies. Medeoan turned away. She did not look back as she heard the Firebird beating its wings against the renewed cage. She wrapped her hands in her sleeves, and even so had to bite her lip to keep from screaming as she closed and locked the iron door. Unable to face the idea of picking up the lantern, she mounted the stairs in the dark, almost fainting when she had to touch the ladder rungs and pull herself back into the upper chamber.
Necessity and will sustained her as she locked the trapdoor, kicked the stone and the rug back into place and unlocked the chamber door.
“Seydas, Prathad.”
Her ladies, strong, capable and bound these many years by promises, threats and spells, supported her back to her private apartments. They laid her fainting on her couch and brought snow, salve and bandages for her hands. This was not the first time they had tended her burns, or even the hundredth. There would be some talk, of course. There was not enough magic in all the world to keep servants from talking. But that was not important. What was important was that the Firebird, and Isavalta, were safe again.
“Bridget will take up this burden,” she murmured, lacking the strength to keep her thoughts from her tongue. “Bridget will not betray me.”
“No one betrays you, Grand Majesty,” murmured Prathad soothingly.
“No.” Medeoan closed her eyes. “No one living.”
Sleep washed over her then in a great black wave, swamping all conscious thought. After a time, she dreamed. In the dream, she walked in a cave filled with candles, some tall, some melting into mere puddles of wax, all of them burning with a steady white light. A stately figure in black robes walked beside her until they came to one candle among the thousands of others nestled in the sand of the floor. It was barely one inch high, and wax rolled down its sides the way the blood had rolled down Medeoan’s fingers into the crucible.
“This is all there is, Granddaughter,” said the figure beside her. “I cannot change that.”
And Medeoan knew with her whole heart that the Firebird listened, and the Firebird heard.
Chapter Nine
At first, Bridget knew no body. She floated in a warm darkness, without thought or feeling. The darkness simply was, as she was. Gradually, a green light diffused around her, and she remembered she had eyes. With the memory of eyes came the memory of limbs and senses, and that memory opened the world.
Bridget fell coughing to her hands and knees in a pile of loam and pine needles. The thin air around her tingled with cold, and something she couldn’t name. Her lungs could not seem to get enough of it. She knelt there gasping and retching, until it seemed as if she would never stop. Gradually, however, her breathing eased and she was able to raise her head and look around her.
Pine trees rose on every side of her with black trunks and great green branches that locked together high overhead. She could not see the sun. Only a dim, green gloom surrounded her. Nothing grew on the ground; just an unbroken carpet of brown needles undulated here and there to show that the something of the forest had been buried. The sent of resin filled in the air so densely that Bridget could taste it in the back of her mouth. There was no sound. Her breathing rasped far too loudly in her ears.
I did it, thought Bridget, sitting back on her heels. Her next thought was, however, What have I done?
Bridget listened for a moment, and heard nothing. No voice, not even a bird. She might as well have gone deaf, the silence was so thick around her. There was not even any wind to stir the branches overhead.
Bridget tried to let out a long sigh, but it came out as a series of little coughs, as if her lungs did not want to let go of this hard-won air. She stroked her throat, trying to loosen it, and climbed to her feet. There seemed little point in shouting. In fact, the thought of breaking the silence so rudely tightened her stomach. She saw no shadow under her own feet, or beneath any of the trees, which made all directions the same, because she had no way to tell from which direction the sun shone. It was this detail that finally made Bridget afraid.
Nothing for it then. Bridget dusted off her hands and her apron, primarily to keep herself from trembling. I either stay here, or I start walking.
She could not bear the thought of just sitting still and waiting for whatever might find her. She fixed her gaze firmly on one of the trees straight in front of her and walked toward it. When she reached it, she laid a hand on its scaly, black trunk and picked another tree, also straight in front of her, and walked toward it. If she had no idea where she was going, at least she would not walk in circles.
The needles did not crackle under her feet. The branches did not whisper of her passage. Bridget walked from tree to tree wrapped in a blanket of unnatural silence until she felt her mind slipping into a slow dream where she had always been alone in the pine forest walking from tree to tree and trying to move in straight line. Her goal lay at the end of that line, and it was her task to follow it. Hunger did not trouble her, neither did thirst, only a strange light emptiness and a vague sense that something she could not understand was going wrong inside her.
Then, gradually, in keeping with the feeling of the dream into which she had fallen, the forest around her began to change. A flower pushed its white head through the pine needles. A birch tree stood stark and white between the black pines. Then there was a maple, and another. Leaves in all shades of tan and brown covered over the pine needles. Fern and bracken replaced the featureless brown carpet. Wind moved the leaves, although it left behind no rustling sound.
But the air grew no lighter; in fact, it grew dimmer. The green light cast by no sun was nonetheless fading into some sort of night she could not begin to imagine. Her ears rang, as if her body could not stand the silence any longer and was resolved to provide some kind of sound, any kind of sound.
A flash of gold caught Bridget’s eye, and she turned her head, thinking to see a firefly. Instead, a pair of golden eyes winked at her from the gathering shadows.
Of course there are animals. Bridget snapped her gaze straight ahead again and held her pace steady. Running would only lead to a chase. She must not run. She must concentrate on picking her trees, on moving in a straight line. She must think about how to find shelter now that it was growing dark.
A pair of green eyes opened right in front of her. Despite her resolve, Bridget jerked backward. The leaves shifted underfoot, almost toppling her. Bridget clenched her jaw, knotted her right fist around a bunch of her apron and skirt to lift her hems, found the tree she had been sighting on and started forward again.
Another pair of green eyes opened, this time on her right, glowing like a cat’s in the fading light. Bridget did not allow herself to break stride. A cooling breeze touched her skin, bringing with it a rank animal smell. Another pair of eyes opened ahead and to the left. These were red. Bridget’s stomach tightened, but she kept her attention on her chosen tree. Soon, she would pass it, and have to pick another.
Keep walking. Just keep walking.
The tree, a maple with a huge round bole on its side, passed by her
right shoulder. She fastened her attention on a pair of beeches several yards ahead. Two sets of green eyes, no, three, opened between her and the new trees. She walked, the rasp of her breath seeming unbearably loud and every inch of skin itching with the knowledge that she was being watched.
When she was ten, Bridget had conceived a fear of bears. She didn’t know what brought it on, but she was convinced that somehow a bear would creep up in the night, get into the keeper’s quarters and devour her and her father in their beds.
When explanations that there were no bears on Sand Island failed to calm her, Poppa had taken her for a long walk in the woods, showing her squirrels in their nests, and foxes in their dens. As they walked, he had explained slowly and carefully, just as he explained the workings of the gears in the light, that animals rarely attacked human beings. Mother animals with their babies were to be left alone, but other than that, all animals would rather live and let live when it came to humans. Bridget had never forgotten that day. Fear of bears, and other terrors of the woods, had fallen away from her. Even now, she kept his words firmly in her mind. All she had to do was keep walking, and the animals, whatever they were, would fall back.
So, he was kind to you. I’m glad.
Bridget stopped dead in her tracks. She whirled around in a tight circle, clouds of leaves whisking around her hems. But on every side, all she saw were animal eyes. Not one human pair shone in the darkness.
Anger exploded inside Bridget’s mind. No more. She would not be terrorized. She would not be laughed at, and whispered about by things she could not see. If whatever waited in the woods wanted to snatch her away like the dwarf-crows, they would have a fight.
Her right toe nudged a dead branch. Slowly, keeping her gaze on the eyes glowing from the darkness, Bridget bent down to pick it up. Chuckling filled the wind, shattering the silence and raising a scream in Bridget’s throat.
“All right, then,” Bridget said through clenched teeth, more to keep the scream back than to challenge whatever surrounded her. “Come out!” She lifted the branch in both hands, holding it over her shoulder, ready to swing down. “Whoever you are, come out!”