He turned toward her. “Your Grace, there is little more to be gleaned today. The days ahead will be more frantic and tragic, and it would be best to keep your strength up.”
“Thank you, General,” she replied. “I believe you are right.” She had sat in one of a hundred positions trying to let all her back muscles take a turn at aching. It had worked, but now they all were as cross as her eyes and complaining in unison.
The door opened and a servant in white livery entered bearing two glasses of brandy as she had ordered. He strode over with as good a posture as the general, placing the glasses in front of them with a practiced precision.
He straightened. “Will that be all, Your Grace?”
“Yes, that is all,” she answered.
He was halfway across the room when it hit her. Her gift from the Eternal Flame woke her weary mind, infusing her with insight as it had done many times before.
She let her Arrow Asp cane fall to the floor.
“Hold a moment if you would,” she said just as he was about to reach for the door handle. There was a flinch of the shoulders, barely perceptible, as she called for him to stop. He turned, face aloof. It was obvious now who he was, though he was quite good at disguises.
“Is the kitchen still open?” she asked innocently.
His shoulders relaxed just a fraction. “I believe so, Your Grace. Do you wish to make a request?”
He was behind the couch at the far end of the room. She tapped her finger to her lips until her sneaky little Arrow Asp could slither beneath the furniture to her right, darting under a chair and another couch before approaching the position she intended. Just like a real servant would, Melchor Raines stood stock still awaiting the pleasure of his Queen. And with such a nice still stance, the Arrow Asp’s formidable fangs had no trouble sinking into the heel of the impostor.
Melchor Raines yelped, face wincing in pain, and he leaned on the couch to support himself. Eyes bulging, he stared down at the snake latched onto his heel, face sweaty. The venom worked quickly. With a groan, he lifted a foot to crush the serpent, but his balance failed him. He grasped the back of the couch to keep from falling, face as white as his shirt.
“Stay perfectly still, Mr. Raines. The snake has only injected a little poison,” the Queen warned the Creetisian assassin. “General, help him to a seat if you will. You are familiar with Melchor Raines, are you not, General?”
General Cutler nodded and stood, face alarmed. Melchor’s eyes focused and unfocused, his balance ever more unsteady. The General grabbed him by the arm, and placed him on the couch across from the Queen. The snake’s fangs had punctured deeply into his foot, the snake’s body now coiled about its victim’s ankle.
“Now, Mr. Raines,” the Queen said evenly. “At my command the snake will release the full force of its venom. You will die within minutes, watching your leg turn as black as ash. As it is, you will be sick for a week. I was bitten by an adolescent Arrow Asp when I was young. It was hiding in a bed of flowers where I was picking daisies and it latched onto my forearm. The poison turned my arm purple and black. I’m lucky I still have it.”
Sweat poured off of Melchor’s face, the flesh around his eyes darkening. “I have nothing to say.”
The Queen picked up the brandy Melchor had delivered. “I don’t suppose I should drink this unless I want to end up like you. What poison did you use?”
Mr. Raines kept to his word, clenching his jaw shut. She knew his stomach roiled and tossed like the Bitter Sea. Some poor servant would find a rather unpleasant mess to clean up if the man couldn’t keep his stomach.
“Well,” the Queen said, “my old bones hardly have the strength to beat any information out of you. But do me a courtesy and tell me how you convinced the young Uticus Longford to shoot your ambassador. Yes, I reasoned it out eventually. It really was a masterstroke on your part.”
His lips slid into a sinister grin, pallid skin and darkening eyes turning his face into a portrait of horrifying cruelty. “Why, every young man’s dream, to be a hero. It’s an especially potent persuasion for those who feel guilty over enjoying another man’s fame.”
“So you know who the real hero of Harrickshire is?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but vomit came out instead, splattering on the floor. The sour smell burned her nose, roiling her own stomach.
Figuring the snake’s work done, she released its grip on his bloody heel and willed it to return to her, hardening it into a walking stick in her hand. Creetisians didn’t believe in the powers of the Primal Forces, and Melchor Raines’s eyes flew open wide. Though, the Queen noted, in his current indisposition he probably thought he was hallucinating.
The Queen leaned back on her couch. “General Cutler, would you fetch the guard without the door and send word to the Lord High Sheriff that he has another dastard to wring information out of? This one’s a member of the Creetisian Fist, so he’ll be as tough as dried beef, but the venom ought to help loosen him up a bit. They should get to him before his tongue swells up, though.”
The General, stunned speechless, nodded and went to the door. Melchor Raines moved as if to stand up to try to reach her, and the Queen wondered if his movement was a final attempt to fulfill his orders to kill her. But his flaccid limbs failed him, collapsing under his weight and throwing him into his own vomit.
“You really should stay still and be calm,” the Queen cautioned him. “Getting worked up only helps the poison move more quickly through your body. You’ll be in excruciating pain soon enough. No need to hurry things along.”
He moaned and the Queen shook her head. Maybe she had forced the snake to push more venom than was necessary. They really did need his information, if they could get it. At the very least, she hoped they removed him from the room before the convulsions started. Such a display would bring back unpleasant memories of her childhood, and she had drunk her fill of unpleasantness for one day.
Baron Olivanne Longford started up the dark steps to the Flame Cathedral. It was late. Lanterns burned by the doors to the massive structure, giving him the impression that his ascent was a journey from the abyss to an illuminated home of beauty reaching out to embrace him in its light. This was surely the intent of those who designed the building, reinforcing the notion that there was a meaningful reason to strive upward.
He paused. Getting past the sentries at the doors might prove troublesome if he roused the rest of the guard. With the war underway, a thick patrol of soldiers marched the streets and surrounded the gate of the palace complex. Had he appeared as a Lord, he might have talked his way past the guard at the gate on some pretense as long as they didn’t recognize him as a fugitive. But suffused as he was with the Primal Water, he came as the hulking Dales Marter. He felt more monster than man, his gigantic form making quick work of the soldiers’ necks where he had ascended a lonelier section of the wall.
The Voice that had found him as a youth suffused him with its quiet whisper, instructing him on where to go and what to do. His body was the vessel for Primal Water, his mind the vessel for the Voice. The two were one, it seemed. Were they collaborators, or was one a slave and the other a master? Whichever the case, he was not their thrall; he acted as a willing servant. The Voice provided him with purpose, the Water with power.
He placed one foot before the other and continued his ascent, boot leather rasping on the stones. This was the first time the Primal Water had allowed him to ingest it. The Primal Water’s effect upon him was markedly different from the river and pond water he had used in the past to transform into Dales. He felt like a flood ready to burst from a dam, his skin taut and slick with moisture. Anyone who saw him would think him sweating under a humid summer sun, but it was the water barely contained that gave his skin its sheen.
Taking three steps at a time, he reached the top and its warm light in a few strides, two guards’ eyes widening at the beast of a man before them dressed in the homespun wool and worn leather of a common worker. He smiled at th
em anyway, hoping a toothy grin might set them at ease. A little gregariousness and some down-home stupidity ought to do the trick.
“Beg yer pardon,” he said, removing his hat and wringing it in his hands nervously, “but is it too late fer an ugly cuss like me to pass a prayer to the Flame?”
They looked at each other in exasperation. “Only members of the House of Light can pass prayers into the Eternal Flame,” one explained, coming closer. “You may pass your prayers into any fire you choose and the Eternal Flame will receive them.”
“Oh,” the Baron said, trying to sound disappointed. “You see, my brother’s in the war in the south, and I wanted to pass a prayer directly to the Flame itself to make sure it got it, you see. Can I do that?”
The guard shook his head. “No. No exceptions. Good night, Mister. Please be on your way.”
The Baron replaced his hat. Just as he raised his head, his hands shot out and clamped on the necks of the two guards. He jammed his swollen thumbs into their tracheas, squeezing until they popped. Both men gurgled for air, trapped in his inescapable clutches. Their halberds clattered to the ground as they struggled, turned blue, and went limp.
Releasing his grip, he let the bodies crumple to the cold stone. With a long stride he stepped over them, finding the thick door behind them locked. A quick search of the guards for a key proved fruitless, but the solution popped into his mind, a prompt from the Voice.
He opened his hand, willing the water up from his skin to pool in his palm. With a thought, it formed into the shape of a key, and with another he hardened it to ice. He inserted it into the keyhole, but it wasn’t the right shape. The water, he now understood, was his to shape and control. He exerted his concentration until the shape conformed to the lock, and it slid in. The water moved and froze around the tumblers until, with a little turn, the lock clicked and the door swung open. His skin reabsorbed the water.
Inside the hall was empty, lanterns placed sparsely along the building’s long outer hall. Olivanne dragged the bodies inside, stuffing them in one of the many abandoned rooms that lined the hall. He had to hurry. The work the Voice called upon him to complete required concentration and some meditation, and he would fail if forced to confront a host of guards.
The path to the resting place of the Eternal Flame he knew as well as the one to the cave of Primal Water near his home. He had come to the Flame Cathedral often in his contemplations, the Voice instructing him to familiarize himself with the Primal Force he was to destroy just as he had killed Peacock beetle after Peacock beetle until they no longer seemed like objects of any consequence.
So during the summers he had come and sat in the public observation chambers high above the main floor and just stared at it as it hung. It was such an unremarkable thing, a modest fire in a peasant pot just as Joris Pulsipher had found it. He knew its shape, its light, its flickering patterns. He knew it would burn paper and flesh if touched, but gave off no heat. An oddity. But eternal? No. Eternal was a name people had placed upon it, people whose lives spanned but a blink in time. Tonight the Eternal would end and the harsh truth of life’s uncompromising fragility plant its seed in every mind.
Quietly, he pushed open the door to the central chamber, entering where only Lord Ember and members of the House of Light would come to commune with the Flame and pass in their prayers. Due to the late hour, he expected he would find it abandoned, but as he passed inside, he found that light bathed the chamber.
On the raised dais knelt Lord Ember next to a basket of little slips of parchment, a pile of prayers he fed into the Eternal Flame one at a time. Two lanterns sat on opposite sides of the dais, casting enough light to illuminate the first balcony of seats on either side of the circular chamber.
Lord Ember turned as the Baron approached, his eyes questioning. The Baron affixed a sloppy, country grin on his face, but Lord Ember didn’t buy it, his sharp eyes digging into his, the old man’s face paling. Baron Longford started into a run.
“What are you?” Lord Ember whispered, struggling to his feet. With an intake of air, Lord Ember opened his mouth to let forth a shout. But the Baron was faster, grabbing his neck and squelching the cry before it could leave his throat.
Again the Voice provided direction. Keeping his right hand clenched about Lord Ember’s scrawny neck, he raised his left and placed it over his victim’s gaping mouth. Primal Water seeped out of his palm and into the old man’s throat. Like a liquid gag it strangled his sounds, but let him breathe through his nose.
With two strides Baron Longford carried Lord Ember to the hook used to raise and lower the Eternal Flame’s pot. He dropped Lord Ember on the ground and pinned him there with a knee, trussing up his feet with the rope. Once finished, he pulled the lever and pulley to hoist him up into the air upside down. His orange stole of office fell to the ground beneath his reddening face.
“Now, Lord Ember,” the Baron said, dropping his low-class accent, “you will bear witness to this deed as your final act in the flesh. You see, Water and Earth and Air might war with each other, but none require the other to live. The Air and Water might chip away at the rock, but even as sand and dust it remains. The Earth might hem in the Water, but the Water remains. The Water and Earth might shun their sister Air, but the Air remains.
“But Fire, Lord Ember, Fire is like us. It must consume and breathe to survive. And when it cannot breathe, and when it cannot consume, it must die, just as we must die.”
He stepped to the pot, trying to scoot it along the ground with his foot. It wouldn’t budge. It was true, then. Lord Ember really was the only one who could move it. The pot and its flame stayed stock still no matter how much force he exerted. It was like an ant trying to move an anvil. How had the bull brought it, clenched in its teeth? The Voice chastised him for his delay and he knelt before the pot. But the Flame was different; it had diminished a great deal since last he had seen it.
It cowers in fear, the Voice said. Finish it!
The Baron leaned over the Flame, its weak tongues of fire not reaching to his face. There was no heat, but as he stared down into its flickering form, some emotion shot into the still deadness of his Voice-trained heart. His resolve shook, the foundations of his purpose cracking under the weight of emotions he had long tried to quell.
And then memories flooded unbidden into his mind. He remembered the beauty of the Peacock beetle, its purple and green carapace shimmering in the summer sun. He remembered the hours he had spent with the family dog as it followed him faithfully through forests and across rivers and licked his face and hands. He remembered the puffy cheeks and the tender cries of his firstborn son, his trusting gaze and grasping, tiny fingers. The worth of everything he had killed, its beauty, burned into his heart.
And he shrank.
I warned you this would happen, the Voice soothed. Beauty has no value because it has no permanence! What thrusts up in the summer season is crushed come the winter. Those who cling to beauty—whether in the heart or in the eye—are doomed to suffer agony at its loss over and over. Nothing has any value or lasting beauty or unending life, and only those who accept this truth can truly be at peace. Only then can they know the freedom you have known.
This lesson he knew well. The Voice had lashed it into him over and over with every life he had taken. And with those lessons had come peace. In an ephemeral world of fragile life, there was no need for guilt or exultation, sorrow or joy. There was only action and survival—if one cared to act or to survive at all. In the end, the choice didn’t matter because even caring about that choice was pointless. Death would come throw all into its depths unfathomable. It would drown every shame of failure or flush of success, every groan of misery or moan of pleasure, in the same inscrutable hole.
Fortified, he acted quickly before the Primal Fire could infect him with more of its naive, sentimental picture of the world. With a vomitus heave he expelled the Primal Water from his body, the crystal clear liquid gushing out of his mouth and draining from his
pores. His mouth strained, pain erupting down the length of this throat.
And with the violent ejection, his body deflated, water filling the pot, strangling the Eternal Flame, which seemed to flail and twitch as it shrank and withered smokeless and soundless beneath the onslaught of Primal Water. A pool grew on the floor as the water overflowed, soaking into the clothes that sagged around his diminished but true body.
Lord Ember’s bulging eyes remained fixed on the Eternal Flame as it suffocated like a drowning swimmer, its light failing ever more. At last the Eternal Flame winked out, and with it died the lantern light, casting the chamber into impenetrable gloom.
Chapter 43
After Davon had departed from Arianne with a tender kiss—a privilege he hoped to enjoy with greater frequency—he had transformed back into the powerful Khodo Khim. Urgency seemed to be the key to making the change, and urgency he possessed in abundance. The northern duchies were in grave danger, though, he realized, they were also the treasonous fools who had brought that danger to Bellshire’s door. Still, those who would suffer most would not be the nobles and aristocrats, but the common folk who had no part in the scheming. For their sake, Davon ran as if he were the prey rather than the hunter.
As the sabercat, his bodily senses extended, bringing the world into sharp focus. Smells announced themselves miles before he passed their source, and the lack of sunlight failed to deprive him of critical sight. Every movement in his field of vision registered to a mind that could instantly sort and track them. The night was alive to him like never before, like a blind man who had found sight. Without the weight of Arianne and the cage, he tore along the road with the force of a wild gale, startling late travelers as he sprinted past.
Flametouched Page 42