The Dying Flame

by R L Sanderson

  Orla looked back down at the page again. It was nothing but black lines on a white background, meaningless as bird song.

  ‘Um…’ Orla said. She could see Shiiaan wriggling in her seat. The girl knew the answer and it was taking all her energy just to hold it in, to stop herself from bursting out with it. I could reach out for a moment…. Orla sensed the knowledge bubbling at the very surface of Shiiaan’s thoughts. Before she’d even realised what she was doing, she had extended her consciousness, quietly, subtly, seeking the answer that she knew was so close.

  ‘Orla!’ the tutor was towering over her, her sternness turned instantly to anger.

  Silma seemed to be able to sense when Orla even contemplated using her powers. When Orla had asked Roland how that could be, he’d just shrugged and said, ‘She pays attention. Most people don’t.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Orla said, pulling back, her head throbbing even from that momentary effort. ‘I don’t know the answer.’ She felt her face redden. Somewhere to her right someone sniggered.

  She was older than the other pupils by years, and the only one who had not been born within the high walls of this or some other Palace. Shiiaan was Uruhenshi, royal born. She’d arrived only the month before and already was fitting in better than Orla ever would.

  Orla was an oddity. At first the children had been frightened of her. They knew who she was, what she was, and seemed to believe that she was liable to eat them or cast some dark magic that would transform them into toadstools. The misapprehension soon wore off. Now they just thought her ridiculous: clumsy, uneducated, and unmannered. This world through which they glided was continually tripping Orla up and making her look foolish.

  ‘But you must make it your world,’ Roland told her almost every evening as they sat together in a warm corner of the kitchen and ate the bowl of soup and soft sweet bread that Lani prepared for them. ‘This is your life now.’

  Two seasons had passed already and she still didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘That letter, can you read it?’ Silma stood over Orla, pointing.

  ‘Kha’ Orla said, sounding it in her throat the way Roland had taught her to.

  ‘And that?’

  She frowned.

  ‘Come on Orla. A three-year-old child knows that one.’

  ‘Oo’ she sounded it out slowly, flushing even deeper red. The woman was trying to humiliate her.

  ‘Last one,’ Silma pointed once more.

  ‘Mi?’ Orla knew that one. It was a distinctive shape that reminded her of the sun rising over a tent.

  ‘Now sound out the word.’

  ‘Khumi’ she said tentatively.

  ‘It means daybreak,’ Silma said, her voice for a moment almost gentle. ‘Now, who’s next?’ and then she moved on.

  ✤

  Her mornings were taken up with lessons. Her afternoons were her own. She did not know which she hated more. The lessons were a continual reminder of her ignorance, of how far she was from fitting in. But in the afternoons time seemed to slow. She had learnt the few places she could go: the Reader’s courtyard, where she could sit alone within the walls and watch the fish glide in relentless circles in their small water-world. Her room, where Mishi, the girl who was assigned as her servant, would sometimes be cleaning, and might stop and talk for a few minutes. It was Mishi, she had learned, who had first bathed and dressed her after she was brought up from the well, drugged and half-starved, and the girl had looked at her since then with a kind of anxious tenderness. She was quiet and shy but she didn’t despise Orla the way most people did. She had a kind heart, Orla thought. She was better than those she served.

  Some days Orla would go and visit Roland, who might or might not be there. Although he blamed her for bringing him back to a place he’d sworn never to return to, Orla couldn’t help noticing that he seemed younger every day. The Court agreed with him, she thought. He spent many hours in the library, reading quietly. Other times she might hear the sound of his music, the bittersweet tunes he would play on the guitar. He’d sit by the fire, or in a patch of sunlight in one of the many waiting rooms, and strum. Other times she might pass by an open doorway and see him in deep discussions with one of the Councillors, or others who played roles at the Court she was yet to understand.

  Kynan, Orla hardly saw at all.

  ✤

  Today, when she got back from her classes, her room was warm and quiet. Mishi had been and gone, she guessed. The room she’d been given was bigger than her entire house in the Metkaran. The bed had a mattress stuffed with pashkin fur, soft as a dream, and it was raised off the ground by ornate metal legs. A small writing desk sat under the window, for what little good it did her.

  Today, she opened the top drawer of the desk and withdrew the parchment that she had been given on the day the Council had decided her fate. She flattened it out with careful fingers and traced the ridges of the deep red stamp that was affixed to it, the stamp of the King. She closed her eyes a moment and recalled the ceremony that had taken place after the signing of the edict. The Binding had been undertaken not in one of the grand halls but outside, under a tree, with only Kynan and Roland in attendance. It had been done by a haggard old woman who was missing both her front teeth and smelled of sweat and wood smoke, who muttered words Orla did not know and burned strange herbs before her. And so, she had been bound. She did not feel different, afterwards, not in the way that she thought she would.

  Orla opened her eyes. She began from the top again and studied the letters. She was beginning to recognise more of them, she realised, though Khuri when formally scribed was even more confusing than the type they were studying in class each morning. It was a ridiculous idea, she thought, a language for the kings and courts, a language for edict and decree that nobody even spoke, let alone wrote or read. And there, at the bottom, was her mark. That at least she could do. She did not know what sense the loops and curves made but nobody ever questioned it. It was funny, she thought, but no one seemed to expect that your mark mean anything, it was just the fact that you made it that was important.

  There was a knock on the door. She slipped the parchment back into the drawer and slid it closed. Though there was no reason, she would feel exposed, somehow, for someone to find her looking at it like that.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. It would probably be one of the servants dropping by clean linen, or Roland come to bother her about eating lunch. It was as though his initial task, of making sure she ate, was one that he’d taken on whole-heartedly and now would never give up.

  The door opened. It was Genevieve.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Orla said, trying to keep her voice steady. Genevieve had not only voted against her, but had made it no secret that she believed that Orla should not be allowed to remain within the Palace walls, and that for all their safety she should be put to death, sooner rather than later.

  Genevieve stepped into the room. Her long dark hair was bundled in a series of mounds that were held in place with fine lattices of different coloured silk. The emerald green dress she wore picked up the green of her eyes. She smiled, and Orla wondered, as she had done so many times before, how she and Kynan could be brother and sister and yet so completely unlike one another.

  ‘They have made you comfortable, I see,’ Genevieve said, strolling slowly around the room, picking things up to inspect them and putting them down again.

  ‘Yes,’ Orla said. She watched the woman carefully. Her heart was thumping, her hands beginning to shake.

  ‘I’m just checking to see how you’re getting on. I’m sure Kynan would have wanted me to make sure all was well, seeing as how he’s been unfortunately detained. He’d want you to know that you haven’t been… forgotten.’ And the smile was like a dripping poison.

  Orla froze.

  She had been surprised that Kynan hadn’t come to see her but assumed it was because he was busy. He had many responsibilities, many serious concerns; she was only a small one, she knew. Had something happened to him?

/>   ‘Well I shall be off now. I’m glad to see you’re settling in so well.’

  ‘Wait! Will Kynan be back soon?’

  Genevieve looked at her distractedly. ‘I imagine he’ll return at some point. Good to see that you’re getting on with your studies though. I think it might be a while yet before you’re called on to undertake any of your formal duties. If indeed you ever are.’

  And Genevieve turned and left the room.

  Orla sat down on the bed. Her legs were shaking. Calm, be calm, she told herself. There was no reason to be so frightened.

  Chapter twenty-six

  She checked the library, then the drawing room Roland favoured, which had a view out over the fernery, then the kitchen, and then his chamber. There was no sign of him. She walked the corridors, wondering if she might catch a glimpse of Roland through a doorway. The group of Uruhenshi delegates that had arrived the previous month seemed to be taking up most of the eastern wing. Shiiaan’s family, Orla guessed. She’d seen the girl showing them through the Palace, grinning with excitement. She tried not to stare at their elaborate formal gowns and the way they kneeled, side by side, on the ground to eat or talk quietly or read rather than using the sofas which they considered uncivilised, or so she understood. And maybe they had a point. Growing up where she had, you wanted to be as far from the floor as possible, but that was mostly because of the things that you might share it with.

  She passed the hallway that led to the grand hall in which the Council met, where she had been taken on the first day that she arrived. The Palace seemed to have been constructed in stages. The area she was staying in, and in which she passed most of her time, was newer. She now crossed over into a part of the building that was clearly ancient: the old stones were laid exactly, knitted together by their own weight and the passage of time. The rooms were darker, smaller. Roland mentioned that it had been a temple once, in some distant past. Orla had trouble finding her way around this section of the Palace. There were too many corridors, too many rooms, and not enough light. And it was as though the stones themselves absorbed all light and sound and warmth. It was like a cave, she thought, shivering as memories of her time in the well returned to her.

  Here, she seemed to pass a greater number of those clothed as Brethren. As she saw them she realised what a relief it had been to be almost free of them the past months. She took in their dark cloaks and sashes, recognising the different colours indicating orders and degrees of seniority. Deep red, the colour of wine, the colour of blood. That was what he had worn. The one who’d taken Merryn. Piroxi, Rian had called him. But there were none of those here. There were blues, and greens, bright yellows, which she had never seen before. They all wore the hoods drawn over their heads, men with beards shaven and all with hair shorn like a sheep’s. Extinguish the individual self, dwell in knowledge of your brokenness and corruption. Only those who fall can be raised up. The words came to her from some deep memory. She brushed them away and stood taller. The Council permitted the Brethren within the walls of the Kir-Enkerelan but they did not hold the power here that they did elsewhere in Sondaria. She was a member of the Court, appointed under the seal of the King. They could not command her.

  She continued on, venturing deeper into the Palace than she ever had been before.

  It was as though the hallways became narrower, the ceiling lower. She began to feel claustrophobic, but she had searched so far that something in her was determined she would continue. She had been pacing her allotted space for too long, like a caged animal. It was good for her to step outside it, she thought. And besides, she hadn’t been explicitly told not to wander, at least not that she was aware of. Perhaps she was doing nothing wrong. Nobody seemed to cast a second glance at her.

  The door was closed that she walked past. She was not sure what made her double back, and creep closer, straining to hear. Some sense that was aligned to her ability to read, but that did not capture words or thoughts or images, just a kind of amorphous feeling of intent.

  ‘And you are sure?’ she heard a man’s voice, strangely accented, the tone muffled and secretive.

  ‘Absolutely. She does not know. And will not.’

  Orla froze. The second voice was much more than vaguely familiar. She knew it too well. Roland. She hesitated. For a moment she thought she would knock, let him know the news she’d heard about Kynan, seek his advice, or at least his company. Then she had hesitated a moment too long and the conversation continued.

  ‘We must move quickly with Kynan gone. How long can they hold him?’

  ‘Not long enough. A week? Maybe two at most?’ Roland said. So Roland knew about Kynan. Orla flushed: he had not told her.

  ‘Does it give us time?’

  She heard Roland sigh. ‘I don’t know. I wish there was another way.’

  ‘But there isn’t. It must be done. What? Why do you look like that?’

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s just, she’s so young. She has so much to learn.’

  Orla froze.

  ‘There’s no time for softness. You know what is required. I hope you’re not considering backing out now.’ The man’s voice took on a threatening tone.

  ‘No, of course not, of course not…’ And there was the sound of something being moved inside the room, like a heavy drawer being opened.

  Orla drew away from the door, her heart thumping.

  What did it mean?

  She heard another noise from within the room. She turned and walked quickly back the way she’d come, into the dark labyrinth of stone, away from Roland, away from the words that she didn’t understand but that chilled her blood. She needed to think.

  ✤

  She used to lose herself in the districts adjoining the Metkaran. Although most of the time she stayed as far away from people as she could, preferring the company of animals, carpets of grass, and corridors of trees, sometimes, when she could not settle her mind, she would walk the crowded streets, and let it all in. This was when a certain mood would take her. The effort of trying to hold it at bay, of controlling her mind, of stopping herself from hearing, all day each day was draining. It was more than draining. It felt like she was having to kill off some part of herself. And sometimes she would decide it was impossible, so she would walk. At first the individual voices would niggle. But she’d head for Reylin, for the marketplace there and the crowded docks, and the voices would be added, layered, one on top of another. It wouldn’t take long before she was unable to make sense of any single one of them. It would be a cacophony. It would fill her mind and finally, for a little while, she’d feel free.

  She couldn’t do that now, though. The noise of the Palace was an almost-silent hum, enough to unsettle her, but not enough to fill her.

  She found she was shaking by the time she made it back to her room.

  Roland knew about Kynan and hadn’t told her. Something was being planned. Something concerning her? She couldn’t get the sense of threat out of her mind. She tasted it in the air.

  She shut her door and wished that it locked, but of course it didn’t. Any lock it might have had would be fitted on the outside, anyway, to keep her in. She had been here for what felt like a lifetime and still knew next to nothing about her purpose, about what she was to do in service of a King she had never even seen. And if what Genevieve said was right, that she might never be called, then surely she would be discarded? And she knew the Council would be alert to the risk that Orla might have heard something, learned something, that they would not wish to be shared; Genevieve would not let that possibility slip anybody’s mind. Orla would not be permitted to leave Kir-Enkerelan alive.

  She was still staring out the window, her mind racing but her thoughts leading nowhere, when there was a knock at the door. She froze. She didn’t want to open it. It would be Genevieve again. Or it would be Roland, and how would she face him now? Would she confront him? Would she pretend she had not heard and wait to see what happened next? Better just not to answer, she thought. The knock cam
e again, persistent. A rhythmic tapping.

  It was ridiculous. There was nowhere to hide, no way to escape. She was trapped in this room. The beautiful furniture and peaceful view and fine food was just a distraction. She was a prisoner as surely as she had been in the well. Whatever it was, she would face it. That was the one freedom that remained to her. She strode across the room and opened the door, pulling too hard so it swung wide. She had to step back to stop it from slamming into her.

  A young man she had never seen before stood on the other side. He had red hair like Kynan’s, but his skin was smooth and clear, and his eyes were dark brown.

  Strange, she thought. He was not dressed as a servant.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, coldly.

  ‘I am Gederen, but you may call me Ged,’ he said, and paused, as though waiting for a response. She looked at him blankly.

  ‘Silma sent me. I am to assist you in your studies.’

  Orla felt herself flushing.

  ‘Er,’ the boy said, looking awkward. ‘Silma has given me specific instructions. She said you have certain… certain abilities. And that they might be used to some effect to learn the required material. She thought the classroom environment might be too distracting for one such as yourself.’

  Orla’s head was spinning. What was he trying to say? Certain abilities? Silma sent someone for her to read, so she could learn Khuri faster?

  The boy continued. ‘I am skilled in all seven tenses, in the formal, informal and high modalities. I can write, I can read. I have made Khuri my special and extensive area of study for the past fifteen years.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Orla asked.

  Sheyen-drey she heard, as he spoke directly into her mind. Twenty-three. She understood it, immediately. He could project, cast his thoughts into her mind. He’d done this before, she thought. But when? With who? He was so young. From what she’d learned, the last Reader who’d served at the Palace had been killed years ago.