Rising Fire

by TERRI BRISBIN

  He stared away then, looking at the old ruins and the sky behind them. The words he’d offered her as advice came back at him, mocking him for his self-righteousness. After telling her that all that mattered was who you decided to be, William smiled at the irony of his plight and his quest.

  “Aye, I do, Brienne.”

  “And he knows of your birth?”

  “Aye, he does.”

  “And he has not claimed you? I do not understand.”

  “Worry not over my father, Brienne. I am making my own way, just as you will.” He glanced over his shoulder as the sound of people approaching grew louder.

  “My thanks for your kindness today,” she whispered. Lifting up to her toes, she kissed the edge of his jaw before dashing off around the corner of the building. Leaving him unmanned more completely than he’d felt since he was a young squire seeking his first feminine conquest and failing.

  He waited until he did not hear her steps fading away before stepping from the sheltered corner. Eudes began shouting orders for his men to gather and, when he saw William there, he nodded to him. Roger, Gautier, and Armand had followed as he’d told them to, and the four walked to the training yard.

  The rains had turned it into a muddy mess, but battles were often fought on ground just like that. What began as dry earth could turn into a bog of mud, blood, and mess as men fell and bled their lives out onto it. Therefore, it made sense to train in just such conditions. As he climbed the fence, taking off his tunic as the others had, he watched Eudes choose his best and line up facing them.

  Something tilted in his vision as the lines formed against each other, a sense—nay, the knowledge—that this would happen very soon and the intent then would be violent death and not civil practice.

  * * *

  The call came just after she closed the door to her chambers, pleased that no one had seen her sneaking back into it. Her body trembled from the pleasure of his kiss, and her heart was lighter—not for knowing that he was a bastard, but for the kindness and comfort William showed her. She dipped the kerchief in the now-cooled water to wash her face and hands and found herself on her knees, gasping against the blinding pain.

  Come to me now. Now.

  Rolling on the floor, she held her hands to her head, trying to block the screaming voice. When the waves of pain eased, she climbed to her knees and then to her feet.

  Lord Hugh summoned her now without even being present.

  Dizzy from the agony and from the pull of his call, she moved to the door and then into the corridor and through the house. With each step closer to his door, she felt the strength of his anger. Then, standing before it, Brienne realized she’d made a grievous error in seeking to learn about her power and for wanting to use it. Fighting the urge to vomit, she tried to resist him.

  Now!

  She crashed her body against the door as his power jerked the chain that connected her to him, unable to stop herself and unable to delay for even just the moment it would have taken to lift the latch and enter. Brienne tumbled into the chamber and skidded to the floor before him, scraping her hands and knees on the rough stone floor. Unwilling to anger him further, she stayed on her knees and watched as he walked to stand close enough that the folds of his garments touched her head.

  Had word gotten to him so quickly that she’d met with William? That he’d held her and kissed her? Shared his secret with her? Did he think she would give her virtue away much as her mother had—to a nobleman who beckoned her to his bed? Whoring herself for what?

  This time, she heard him gasp.

  And that was the only warning she got that he could tell what she was thinking. In the next moment, he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her against the wall.

  “What are you thinking?” he demanded. “Why do you look like a peasant again when I gave you appropriate gowns to wear? I do not wish you to be seen looking like a blacksmith’s daughter again!”

  And then her dress, the last thing she had to connect her to her previous life, went up in flames, the wet fabric first sending off sputters of steam as the water evaporated, and then it burned. She cried out with the little breath he allowed her and tried to push him off, tearing at his hands and kicking out to free herself.

  Only when the gown lay in ashes below her did he relent and drop her to the floor. Naked and gasping for breath, Brienne looked around for something to cover herself. Crawling over to the table, she began to pull the linen cover from it.

  “Stop!”

  This time the word was spoken so quietly that she thought she misheard. Glancing at him, she found him standing white-faced and shocked, his gaze transfixed on something on her back. Tugging the linen cloth around her aching body, she used the table to help herself to her feet. He was on her before she could take another step, pushing her down across the table and pulling the linen away.

  Then nothing but the sound of their breathing filled the ominous silence in the chamber. His hand was hot and unmoving where it lay on her upper back, holding her body down against the table as she struggled. Then she realized what he must see there. The other mark!

  No one knew about it but her moth—Fia—who’d discovered it during her baths as a child. She’d forgotten it, seeing it only once, in a looking glass that belonged to her . . . Fia’s friend.

  Suddenly, he released her and she slid off the table. When Brienne gathered the linen around her and faced him, she found him sitting in his chair, staring off at the wall. Shaking and bruised, she waited for him to speak. Minutes passed and he did not. He did nothing but stare off, ignoring her.

  She’d been thinking about her mother when he’d attacked her. And she could almost hear him thinking about someone when he stared at the dark, flamelike birthmark at the base of her spine. Was that something she’d inherited from the woman who’d given birth to her?

  “Who was she, my lord? Who was my mother?” she asked. If he killed her for this question or another, she wanted to know this first.

  Minutes passed again with no reaction from him. Then he stood and turned his gaze on her.

  “Begin.”

  She shook her head at him.

  Begin!

  This time she pushed back, forcing at the word as it still echoed in her mind and thrusting it out. He startled then, and she knew he’d felt it. Nothing as strong or as painful as his had been, but her head did not hurt as much now.

  “My mother,” she repeated. “Who was my mother?”

  Brienne felt his command this time before it entered her, and she pushed against it. His will was stronger and his art more practiced, so she knew she would fail, but she tried anyway. She looked away, finding it easier to battle his invasion when not looking at him.

  Begin. Softer now. Not painful, more like someone tapping on her forehead.

  My mother? she tapped back.

  “She is gone.”

  She glanced at him then and found him studying her closely, as though awaiting her next move in some game of skill. No anger in his gaze now; she saw only curiosity and . . . searching.

  “Was she your whore?”

  He stood close enough that she could feel his breath against her face. When and how he had moved, she knew not. His anger was back now. And then, as though he pulled his control around it, his temper eased and he stepped back.

  “She was no whore, so do not call her one.”

  The next question pushed forward and out before Brienne could control herself or consider the danger in poking an angry creature like Lord Hugh.

  “What was her name?”

  Silence was the reply as he walked back to his chair and sat. Brienne waited, hoping he would tell her, but those hopes were dashed with just one word.

  “Begin.”

  She let out a sigh and cleared her thoughts of all her anger and hope. Thinking only on the power within her, she
let it simmer in her blood until the heat pulsed through her as her blood did.

  The sphere appeared between them.

  The next hours passed with few words and less pain than the first lessons had, and when the sound of her empty stomach gurgling filled the silent chamber as she practiced creating and controlling the different forms of fire, he called an end to it.

  “Return to your chamber. I will have your meal sent to you.”

  She glanced down at the linen that she’d wrapped around her, knowing that many servants and even the lady and her daughter would still be making their way through the building on the floors below them.

  “Here,” Lord Hugh said. He held out a silken robe to her, and she tugged it on. “Turn around.” Clutching the robe to her, she turned, exposing her back to his gaze. She knew he reached out once more, but his hand never touched her. “Go,” he said in a whisper.

  Brienne tugged the too-long sleeves up and lifted the length of it from the floor. What the servants would think, she did not know. But she knew they would never question her or the lord about it. After curtsying to him and walking to the door, she lifted the latch and tugged, holding the edges of the soft, sliding fabric together in front of her legs.

  “I remember not her name.”

  Chapter 17

  She dared not look at him then, hearing the words and hearing the lie they were, too. The door closed behind her, and she stood in the hallway alone. She gathered her breath before she headed back to her chamber.

  Brienne wondered why he would lie to her. He remembered her mother. She knew it. And yet he’d said he did not. Why? Who could her mother be that he would deny any memory of her?

  The promised meal arrived and, thankfully, Emilie did not. The girl must be attending supper in the hall with the rest of them. Brienne ate every speck of food on the tray, even wiping up the sauce with the last bits of bread. With her hunger and thirst appeased and finally cleaned and clothed, she lay on her bed.

  The sounds of the keep across the yard traveled through her windows, and she thought about what William had said about the choice she had to make. Lord Hugh’s few clues about her mother only fed her confusion. She was the daughter of this nobleman who claimed blood back to the powerful families in Brittany and Normandy. She was the daughter of an unknown woman who had somehow known her father. As an infant, she’d been given over to Gavin and Fia to raise.

  No matter their words before Lord Hugh, they had never planned to give her back. Even when they knew he’d noticed her, they still had not wanted to lose her. All of their words, actions, and love claimed her as their daughter.

  And to William that love seemed even more important than noble blood. For his sad words revealed the pain of his upbringing—born of some liaison and not wanted by either or any of those he could name as parent.

  So, who was she then? What person was she at her core? What part of her could no one take away?

  She searched for that Brienne as she drifted into an exhausted sleep, one filled with dreams of William’s kisses and the loving embrace of two women—one was Fia but the other one she could never see. She could only hear her voice and the soft song she sang to Brienne before she died.

  When morning came, Brienne still had no idea who she was, but the ripples of power coming from beneath the castle and from across the miles told her she would need to know very soon.

  * * *

  Hugh stood on the battlements of the main keep, surveying his lands as the sun rose into a turbulent sky. The storms of yesterday had passed and yet the sky warned of more. He’d passed the night here, climbing to the heights and sending the guards away for the solitude he craved.

  Thinking on the way the girl had faced him last evening, he tried not to feel pride in her. Beaten, bruised, exhausted, and frightened, she stood there and defied him. Smiling in spite of himself, he could see her face as she lifted her chin at him and fought off his incursions into her thoughts.

  And all to gain the name of the woman who’d given birth to her.

  He tried to tell himself it was stupidity on her part, to challenge him when her powers were so feeble and could never hope to beat his, but he felt something profound when she pushed back at him. A need so deep that it gave her more power than she should have. Hugh would usually have just destroyed someone for such an insult, such a challenge.

  Then she fell against the table and he saw it.

  There on her back was the same birthmark that Jehanne—her mother—bore.

  Brienne was not just his bastard daughter—she was all that was left from the only time he’d defied his fate and the plans laid down for generations before him. His only failure.

  He tried to remember how Brienne had come to be here in Yester and could remember only a wizened, old midwife arriving at the gates with a squirming, squalling bundle she said was his. She’d said the nameless mother died giving birth and asked what he wanted done with this one, the latest in a long tally of bairns born to women he bedded.

  He remembered looking at this one and ordering her to be given to the blacksmith whose wife had just lost a child. For some reason, he had chosen to save this one rather than exposing her in the forest as he had other times. Even back then, in some way, he’d known that this one had meant something.

  Now her power was a real thing, and he would mold her to serve the goddess in his plans to free her. She was either the prize who would push the balance to their side, or she was the seed of his destruction planted in the only woman he had ever loved. The woman for whom he had defied his father. The woman for whom he’d been willing to turn his back on his heritage.

  In his father’s attempts to breed a fireblood that would be more powerful than any before and lead the fight to free the goddess, he’d refused Hugh’s request to marry Jehanne and forced him instead to marry Margaret. Jehanne, he’d said, was a mongrel, too much human and too little fireblood to allow her to taint their line.

  His father had destroyed Jehanne to demonstrate that he could. And to show Hugh that anything less than complete commitment and compliance to his plans was futile. He’d torn Jehanne’s mind in pieces and cast her body aside. Hugh had learned the lesson that night but did not know until now that she’d carried a child.

  Now their daughter stood before him, and from the amount of power she carried in her, she stood as proof that his father had been wrong about her mother.

  Would this girl be his downfall? When the moment came to sacrifice her in the service of his goddess, would he be able to do as his father had her mother? Or was she his last chance to save his own soul from eternal damnation?

  The sun burst through the clouds then, shining down on his lands and illuminating the fields and the hills around his castle. The followers were gathering, on his lands and near all four of the circles that needed to be destroyed to end the threat to Chaela forever.

  Only days stood between now and his destiny.

  He’d paid so much for the chance that was coming to him. Generations of his family had followed the goddess for centuries before him, believing in her and her right to rule the world, carrying out the plans that would reestablish her and place his family—and him—at her right hand.

  A man rode through the yard below him then, leaving the castle as soon as the gates opened for the day. Peering through the shadows the walls cast, he opened his senses and felt the warblood moving away. De Brus went to visit those he’d left outside the village.

  Did he know of his powers yet? Had the dampening effect of the stones and the bespelled chamber that opened into Chaela’s prison beneath the ruins kept him completely controlled?

  Unfortunately, Hugh needed William’s powers unleashed to use them at the stone circle in Daviot. Fortunately, he had just the thing to draw the warblood into play. Hugh made his way back down from the battlements to break his fast.

  There were many tasks he ne
eded carried out to prepare to leave Yester. If the plans went as designed, he would never return here, to his lands or to these people.

  So many things to do and now so little time in which to accomplish them. His blood raced with excitement, and he left his past and any regrets or doubts high above the castle.

  * * *

  William rode along the path away from the castle and was surprised to see the blacksmith waiting for him. He stopped and dismounted and greeted the man.

  “Sir William,” the man began, “have you seen Brienne inside?”

  William heard the pain and loss in the man’s voice and nodded. “I have. She seems well, Gavin.”

  “He will destroy her.” Gavin met his gaze and continued. “And you as well.” Did Gavin know of Lord Hugh’s seditious plans, then?

  “Why would he do that? What would that accomplish?” he asked, trying to draw the man out.

  “He is gathering weapons here and men in his northern property.”

  “I’ve been inside the castle, the keep, and the other buildings, Gavin. I saw no weapons cache there, and neither have my men.”

  “They are here in the village. Every cottage. Every building. Ready to be moved soon, according to the command delivered yesterday.”

  William glanced around at the cottages, estimating their number and how many weapons could be hidden there.

  “A score and ten,” Gavin replied to the unanswered question. “Cottages and storage huts here. More in Gifford Village.”

  Even if only a handful of weapons were kept in each place, that meant that hundreds were at Lord Hugh’s command. And if there was a man for each weapon, or close to it, that would be a devastating army to put on the field.

  “Why do you tell me this?” he asked the man who’d made a great many of those weapons.

  “She told me to come to you if there was trouble. Said to trust you.” Gavin glanced over his shoulder and up the road. “Trouble is nearly here, and I thought you needed to know.”

  His task of meeting with his men forgotten in the face of danger to Brienne, William needed to get back inside before Hugh suspected he knew. He mounted and turned his horse toward Yester. Gavin grabbed his leg.