Chosen by Fire

by Harriet Locksley

  The stones – the thought trailed a stream of panic within her – What if he knows I have them? No, she reasoned, surely he would have taken them already. However, she knew it was only a matter of time before they were found.

  As Sir Jarl pulled her up onto the wooden block again and began turning the wheel, she wondered if she had any chance of overpowering Svelrik and escaping. The torch on the wall outside her cell was burning steadily and she tried to reach out to it with her Fire magic . . . but nothing happened. Neither could she probe Svelrik’s thoughts with Air magic. Were pain and exhaustion taking their toll on her or was her power inhibited by the iron cell as Tam had suggested? Was she like the elf-shot when Nannie had trapped it in an iron box, stopping its power?

  At least she still had words.

  She made herself smile, despite the pain and terror coursing through her. “They don’t know, do they?” she said as her arms slowly rose.

  Svelrik’s brows drew together.

  She let her smile fall and hardened her voice. “They don’t know that you have magic and that you used it to wreck the ships at Longmachlag Bay, killing hundreds of innocent people.”

  “Lies!” Svelrik hissed, lunging towards her. It was the first hint of anything like anger she had seen break through his flinty countenance.

  Sir Jarl paused. Her hands were level with her waist.

  “No,” she disagreed matter-of-factly. “And I’m not the only one who knows the truth.” She would frighten him if that was all she could do now. “Sir Jarl, Murdo, look.” Before he knew what she was doing, she heaved her iron laden arms towards the king, pulled up his sleeve and grasped the band around his arm which bore the Water stone. At the same moment that her fingertip brushed the Water stone, the three stones hidden high up her arm jolted a shock of power through her. Svelrik flinched. Had he felt it too?

  The ground shifted beneath her feet then and the air trembled around her. She was still in her cell – she could feel the iron clasping her arms and ankle, the wooden block rough against her bare feet – but she was also somewhere else. She no longer saw Svelrik or the others. The bars in front of her became branches and before her towered a great tree, black and silver like elf-shot. It towered over her, its knotted and gnarled trunk as wide as a house. Roots spread like a spider’s web, plunging snake-like into a still lake. Twisted branches, like many great arms, reached up and out above the surface of the water, decked in amber leaves.

  Then she was right up close to the rough bark, as if she was a tiny creature scurrying up its trunk – now quick as an arrow – up to the end of a branch and up further still, she was flung high through a dark sea, strewn with stars. Stars that whispered.

  Then she was in a room. Animal skins were hanging around curved walls, and ornaments of gold and silver gleamed in the cold morning light. A dog was cowering in a corner.

  “And why do you think such failure should go unpunished?” said Svelrik, his voice icy and detached. She staggered backwards as she saw him and it took some moments to realise that he couldn’t see her. “You have few duties as a wife and yet you’ve failed, again, at this most important one.”

  “Please, your Grace – husband,” said a woman in a trembling voice. “I will bear you a child – a son. It will happen. I swear. Please, don’t hurt her!”

  “I can’t very well have my queen going about with broken fingers, can I?”

  “Your Grace—” pleaded a second woman who stepped from behind the queen. Svelrik took her hand. There was a snap and a scream of pain.

  I’m in a cell. In danger. I have to get back, she told herself. However, trying to get out of the vision was like fighting against a strong current.

  She was in another room. A large fire crackled in a hearth making the gold thread and bright colours in the tapestries around the bedchamber sing with warmth. She turned. A woman stood by a window, looking out at a night sky.

  Kaetha’s jaw dropped. “Morwena? Mother?”

  Morwena didn’t respond. Kaetha’s eyes stung with tears as she took in those familiar features, the curve of her cheek, her large brown eyes and dark hair which fell in waves. Her gown was blue like an evening sky. It’s what she was wearing when I last saw her, she remembered.

  A bird flew in through the open window. There was a pause, Morwena and the bird looking intently at one another. Then alarm registered on her face and she dropped the goblet that was in her hands, wine spilling across the floor in a dark red puddle.

  “We have to leave,” said Morwena, turning to someone else in the room. “Now.”

  Then Morwena was with Princess Rhona in a small, square room. Barrels were stacked up one wall and another was hung with copper pots arching over a doorway. Before Morwena pulled the door shut, Kaetha had glimpsed rows of trestle tables in the room beyond. The great hall, she realised. Rhona went to an alcove in a corner of the room, partly concealed behind the piles of barrels.

  “My mother took me here shortly before she died,” said Rhona. “There were those at court she did not trust and she feared for my safety.” She disappeared into the alcove and, after snatching a candle and lighting it from the hearth embers, Morwena followed. Rhona felt for a groove in the stone.

  “A secret passage?” said Morwena.

  “This kitchen is all that remains of the original keep,” said Rhona. “The tunnel could be hundreds of years old. I just hope it hasn’t caved in.”

  Kaetha was still in the citadel, it seemed, but now a tall, curvaceous woman with a cascade of silver blonde hair stood before her.

  “His bedchamber’s unguarded,” the woman said. “We’ve seen to that. There’s no danger to you. It will look like he died in his sleep.” She hesitated, uncertainly. “If you’re going to do it, do it now. Just tell me when it’s over.”

  “You don’t wish to watch?” Svelrik looked younger with only stubble where Kaetha had expected to see a beard. There was a detached stillness about him as well as an unnerving intensity in his eyes. “Then you are weak, mother,” he said. “Your feelings make you weak. They are out of tune with your ambitions. Mine are not. I know what I want. I want to freeze his blood. I want to turn his heart to ice. . . .”

  No sooner had these words sent a shiver up Kaetha’s spine than she was in another chamber watching Svelrik drawing back a scarlet hanging from around a large bed. The old king started out of his sleep. A stone, pointed like an arrowhead, was gripped in Svelrik’s fist.

  “They’re coming,” said Morwena. Kaetha was standing beside her mother in the woods as she and her father helped Rhona up onto his horse. Rhona held Aedan tightly. “Go,” said Morwena. “Go now, Aedan.”

  Her father gripped her mother’s hand. “I’ll come back for you.”

  They shared a look which seemed to carry more meaning than words could. Then he turned and raced away with Rhona into the night.

  Morwena leant against the wall of a small chapel, catching her breath, her eyes closed. Then they snapped open. Kaetha had heard it too – hooves.

  “Quick – into the chapel,” said Kaetha, even though she knew her mother couldn’t hear her, that she couldn’t influence events which had already happened. Morwena put her hand on the door and was about to open it when a hooded figure emerged from the trees.

  “Where is she?” The figure took a step towards her. It was Svelrik, his voice casual, as if he were asking when supper would be served. “Tell me – or die.”

  “Gaoth,” whispered Morwena.

  “This is your last chance, I will kill you unless you tell me where she is.”

  Morwena looked up as wind rustled the branches above their heads. “Then kill me,” she said. “You know I’d never betray her.”

  Kaetha’s heart crushed within her chest and tears stung her eyes. “No!” she screamed.

  Her mother collapsed to the ground, like a doll dropped from a child’s hand, and Kaetha knelt beside her, trying to clutch at her but her hands went through her mother’s body as through air. Morwe
na lay there, unmoving. Then she blinked and Kaetha heard a shallow breath. Svelrik walked forward, holding up the Water stone but then Gaoth appeared like thunder and the force he slammed into Svelrik sent him crashing backwards into the nearest tree, wind whipping at him as if he was tied to the top of a ship’s mast in a storm. He broke away, staggering backwards and disappearing into the trees.

  Gaoth crouched beside Morwena. “What can I do?” there was sorrow in his voice. His pale hand found hers.

  “Find my daughter, Kaetha . . .”

  All went dark and then Kaetha blinked, her cell coming into focus again. Despite the bursting of emotions within her, she kept as still as stone, glaring into Svelrik’s cold eyes with a burning hatred. He did it. He killed my mother.

  THIRTY SIX

  The Light of Dawn

  Barely moments had elapsed, although it had seemed much longer. No one had moved. Svelrik’s tore his arm away from her grasp.

  “Get off me,” he snarled, his gaze shifting uneasily to Sir Jarl then back to Kaetha. “Again, Brocair.”

  The longer she was suspended, the more acute was the pain that blossomed through her body. She hung there, breathing careful, shallow breaths, scrabbling with her toes for an allusive footing. They left her alone, hanging for what felt like hours. She felt like crying when Svelrik and Sir Jarl finally returned to lower her down.

  “Will you talk now?” asked the king.

  She wanted to. She wanted this to stop. But she kept her mouth tightly shut and stared ahead, not meeting his gaze. He walked behind her. Hope leapt within her, as she wondered if he meant to lower her down, but then came a sound that brought her spirit crashing down. The warning crack of a whip. She thought of Finola then and saw the bloody cuts the Murdo left in her back.

  She cried out as a slash of pain split her back. Her flesh, taut as she hung there, pulled at the burning wound. She thought of Rorie and felt so alone. No one was here to pity her, let alone rush to her defence. Again the whip cut into her. Again. Again. Again. Each time harder than the last. She clenched her teeth, holding in her cries now but she couldn’t stop her tears from streaming down her cheeks.

  “Your Grace?” There was a nervous note to Sir Jarl’s voice.

  Another crack of the whip. Another. The pain reached a blaring pitch, then began to dull as the room faded around her into darkness.

  When she woke, one side of her face was pressing against cold stone. Her wrists were sore but free, though her ankle was still trapped in its fetter. It hurt to move, so she kept still, watching a spider, in the centre of its web, begin its stealthy crawl towards a moth it had ensnared. One wing fluttered pitifully before becoming still. Something else stirred at the corner of her vision and she carefully turned her head. She began to cry when she saw Tam.

  “Shh.” He stroked her head. “They could be back any time.”

  She drew a long, jagged breath. “Then we must be quick,” she said, wincing as she pushed herself up to a sitting position.

  “You freed me once. I’m sorry that I cannot do the same for you.”

  “That’s not important any more. You have to get the other stones far away from here. They must not get into the king’s hands. I can’t seem to use them in this cell anyway, they’re no good to me. Turn into whatever form will best let you get out of here.” He shrank before her, a smaller cat than earlier, his eyes gleaming up at her. She tugged at the copper bands around her arm, expecting them to loosen but she couldn’t get the Earth stone to let her do it. She started to panic as a light appeared down the corridor, drawing closer but, finally, she managed to slip off the three copper bands holding their stones and pushed them over Tam’s head so that they circled his neck. “Now go – quick!” she whispered.

  Someone was approaching. When she looked back, Tam was gone. She wished him luck, picturing him and Donnan getting safely back to Mairi. Go Tam. Get yourself out. She doubted that he could hear her thoughts but she sent them all the same. If you find Donnan and Mairi, tell them to hold onto hope. Her own store of it was swiftly diminishing.

  The cold tapping of footsteps drew closer and Kaetha made herself take slow breaths. If they were going to take her to her death now, she wanted to face it bravely. However, it was not Svelrik, Sir Jarl or a guard who stood before her cell. It was Meraud.

  “Come to crow?” said Kaetha, frowning at her.

  Meraud looked even paler than usual. “I came to bring you refreshment,” she said, crouching by the hatch in the door of the cell and passing through a tray which held a dish and a cup.

  “You don’t want to keep it for yourself? You might be glad of it, for I bet it won’t be long before you’re in my place.”

  “I do not see that as my fate.”

  “Did you see it as mine?” she said with a bitter laugh. Meraud was silent and Kaetha was puzzled by what seemed to be a twitch of uncertainty in her face, a chink of vulnerability. “I’m not getting out of this alive, am I?”

  Meraud squinted at her. “Your back.”

  “Aye.” Kaetha displayed her wounds for Meraud to see. “Your precious king did that himself.”

  “Come closer.” Meraud held a hand out through the bars. “I can help speed the healing. Ease the pain.”

  “I don’t want your help. Your on his side.”

  “Am I?” whispered Meraud. “In my years at Neul Carraig, I performed magic which no others had achieved before me. As well as seeing visions in the water, I astonished the Order by casting my own. It was instinctive. I could speak the name of a person with Water magic and send images to them. Sometimes I could attach feelings, even ideas to these pictures but no one could send me visions back. Not until the day I sent a vision to the king.”

  “You communicated like that with Svelrik?” said Kaetha.

  “I didn’t even know he had magic. I don’t think anyone else knew either. It was an accident. After hearing that old King Alran had died and that Princess Rhona had disappeared, I wanted to know what had happened. I was idly reaching out to Ciadrath, naming the earls I believed to be there, sending out the image of a crown with the feeling of a question. I named lairds I knew of, I named the king’s mistress, Lyka and then her son, Svelrik. A vision came to me then of the Water stone on his wrist and I felt the triumph that filled his heart. I don’t think he’d intentionally sent that vision back to me but, from then, the connection between us was strong.”

  “You were working together? So was it your idea or his to persecute people who had magic?” Kaetha came up to the bars and Meraud took a step back. “To set neighbours against one another and tear families apart?”

  “You must believe I did not approve of what he did. Just like the others of the Order, I worked hard to protect innocent lives.”

  “Yet you continued to be his ally as well?”

  “I knew you were coming, Kaetha, long before we met. I believed you would be important. I couldn’t stop him from killing those people but, perhaps, I could protect you.”

  “Protect me? That was why you tried to keep me at Neul Carraig?”

  “And I tried to stop you from reaching Longmachlag.”

  “The fever? That was you?” Kaetha laughed. “You thought that would stop me from going with the Order. We were about to part with them but my illness persuaded everyone that I needed Kahina’s help.”

  “That was an error on my part.”

  “You control and manipulate and call that ‘protecting’.”

  “But I watched over you. I wouldn’t have let you board a ship. Then, after, I tried to get you to come with me and I warned you not to come here. Why did you? Surely you realised how dangerous it would be? Why offer up your life to save a man who rejected your mother, who didn’t want to be a father to you? You could have found your aunt and left the country. I would have helped you.” Her voice became strained. Kaetha wondered if she was showing real sympathy for her. “Why did you do it?”

  Kaetha drew close to the bars, her hands cold as they wrapped
around iron. “Will you help me?” she ventured. “Help get me out.”

  Meraud looked into her eyes for some moments and Kaetha’s heart leapt with rekindled hope. Then Meraud’s old icy demeanour stiffened her features and, in that moment, Kaetha realised that she was using her own magic to suppress her emotions, to freeze her compassion. “I cannot,” she whispered. “He has to trust me.”

  Kaetha struck iron with her fist. “You’re just as much of a monster as he is.”

  “Shh,” said Meraud, turning. “He’s coming.”

  Meraud seemed to have heard his footsteps before Kaetha had. When the king finally emerged from the shadowy corridor, he fixed Meraud with a look of surprise. Kaetha noticed that she looked different now that the king was here. She stood taller, the hint of a smile caught at the corners of her lips and she exuded a calm confidence.

  “How did you know she was here?” he said.

  “I spoke with the lad from Braddon,” said Meraud. Alarmed, Kaetha thought of Donnan, wondering what had happened. Meraud’s glance brushed over her. “Macomrag I believe is his name. I think you underestimate him. You cannot doubt his loyalty.”

  Svelrik grunted. “Well, what do you say?” He gestured to Kaetha. “I have her now, after all this time.”

  Meraud bowed her head. “Congratulations, Your Grace. I wished to see for myself. I can confirm that she is the same person I held at Neul Carraig.”

  “If only my man had succeeded in smuggling her out as we planned, this would all have been much easier.”

  Meraud smiled. “Though less interesting perhaps. May I take my leave, Your Grace?”

  Svelrik waved his permission for her to go and she bowed before disappearing down the corridor.

  Then Svelrik entered the cell again and Kaetha was alone with the man who had killed her mother. She stood up, despite the pain screaming through her wounded flesh. He stared at her and she stared back. He didn’t move or blink. She kept expecting him to talk but he remained silent, just watching her, his gaze like cold fingers creeping over her skin.