Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

She knows this pleasant garden, once languid with butterflies and now made gold by a profusion of luminous marigolds. But the prize bed of saffron is quite simply missing, scorched and trammeled. A man stands with his back to the rest, surveying the ruined saffron. The other five weary, somber figures gather around the seventh of their number, which is in fact a corpse. It is one of these who kneels, face hidden, to gingerly examine the prone body.

One of the Seven Sleepers has died in the struggle, and Anne for the first time loses her majestic calm. She shrieks anger, an expression that on her face looks so startlingly wrong that it takes a moment for Liath to realize how much younger Anne is, here in the past. She has her grandfather Taillefer’s look about her, well built and excellently proportioned, with fine eyes and a dignified manner. She cannot be much more than thirty years of age, strong and extraordinarily beautiful in her prime.

“We were to bind a male daimone!” she cries, outraged at their failure. “It was to be the father! I was to be the one who would sacrifice my blood and my purity to bear a child.”

“This is the second death we’ve suffered,” says Severus, “although in truth I haven’t missed Theoderada’s incessant praying these last six years.” Taking years away from his face has not improved his sour aspect. “Can we risk a third death?”

“We must,” insists Anne as she glowers at the dead woman, crumpled on the ground, robes burned to nothing and her skin ash-white, still hot to the touch. “We must have a child born to fire who can defeat this half-breed bastard being raised by King Henry. Do you doubt that all is lost if we do not counter the influence of the Aoi? Do you wish to set their yoke over your neck?”

“No,” says Severus irritably, having been asked this question one too many times.

Meriam sighs as she regards the dead woman. “Where will we find another to join our number? Poor Hiltrudis was too young to think of dying.”

“Aren’t we all?” snapped Severus. His arms are burned, his cheeks flaming as though with fever. Blisters are already forming along his lower lip, and his eyes weep tears.

The youngest among them, a slight woman with wispy pale hair, stands back with a hand over her mouth to stifle the horrible stench. They are all marked by burns. “I’m afraid,” she whispers. She glances toward the seventh of their number, the man standing a stone’s toss away from the rest with his back to them. Light shines in a nimbus around his body, which by its position conceals something standing in the middle of the charred saffron. She begins to weep silently in fear. “I’m afraid to try again. You didn’t tell me it would be like this.” She gestures toward the corpse. “Hiltrudis didn’t know either. How could you not have warned us?”

“Hush, Rothaide,” murmurs Meriam, taking the young woman’s arm. “Surely you understood all along that sorcery is dangerous.”

The man kneeling beside the corpse looks up. At first, Liath does not recognize him. He looks so much younger than when she knew him, with only a trace of silver in his hair. He is even a little homely, the kind of man whose looks improve as he ages. “If we try again,” says Wolfhere, “it will surely be worse. Can we not make do with what we have? We succeeded beyond our expectations.”

Anne makes a noise of disgust, turning away. “Then I am forced to act alone, if I must. This day’s work is no success.”

But the man standing in the ashes with his back to the others sighs softly. “She’s so beautiful.”

“Go!” says Anne suddenly, caught by that voice. “Leave the body. I must think.”

They are not unwilling to retreat to salve their wounds. Meriam leads away the weeping Rothaide, Severus limps after her and, after a moment, but hesitantly, Wolfhere goes as well, not without two or three backward glances at Anne. The butterflies have begun to return, fluttering around her like winged jewels.

Then Anne is alone with the corpse and the man standing with his back to her, who has not, apparently, heard her command to the others.

“Bernard,” she says softly.

Surprised to hear his name, he turns.

Ai, God, it is Da, but so much younger, about thirty years of age and, by all appearances, a few years younger than Anne. Liath never knew he was handsome. She never really understood how much she looks like him, even with her golden-brown skin and her salamander eyes. The years of running took their toll. The magic he expended to hide her scarred and diminished him. This is the fearless man, face shaven and hair trimmed in the manner of a frater, who walked ardently into the heathen lands of the east without once looking over his shoulder. But that was all before her birth, before their flight, before that day when, by crippling her, he crippled himself.

Liath never understood until this instant, seeing Anne’s expression, how much Anne hated him because he is beautiful to her eyes. She never understood until this instant how much power Da had, and how he shone, as luminous as the sun and with a glint of sarcasm in his eyes. She only remembered him, only had memories of him, from after the fear had sucked him dry.

“Bernard,” Anne repeats, “you have been the thorn in my side for long enough. I know you have never cared about our work to save humankind from the threat of the Lost Ones. I know you joined us only to satisfy your intellect and your curiosity. We’ve suffered you all these years because of the strength of your gift, not for your loyalty to our goals. But the time has come for you to be of use to me. Can it be possible that you have at last seen a creature you desire more than you desire knowledge?”

Anger chases laughter chases longing across his expressive features. He steps aside, and Liath sees what they have caught in a cage made not of iron bars but of threads like spider’s silk, billowing as the breeze moves through them.

She is fire, incandescent, a living creature bound by magic beneath the moon, where she does not belong. She wears a womanly shape, scintillant and as bright as a blue-white sun, and her wings beat against the unbreakable white threads, but she is hopelessly trapped. Heat boils off her, but the cage neutralizes these streamers of flame, and when she opens her mouth to scream, no sound comes out.

“You can have her, Bernard, because I can see that you desire her. But only if what transpires now remains a secret between you and me.”

He is torn. He suspects that to agree will compromise him in some unintended way, but even as he struggles, Liath knows he will lose because he has fallen in love with the fire daimone, a creature so beyond mortal ken that even to call it down to Earth brings death.

“How can this be?” he asks hoarsely. “If it caused poor Hiltrudis’ death just to cast the binding spell, how can any flesh dare touch pure fire?” He raises an arm, then blushes, hot and red.

“First we must send the others away, to give Hiltrudis’ body a proper burial and to seek a seventh to make whole our number. There are certain spells known to me that can soften fire into light so that her substance will not burn you. But it will be up to you to win her acquiescence.” She eyes him as the daimone writhes, trying to get free. “None of this comes without a price.”

“What must I do?” He is already caught. He will agree to everything, because desire has trapped him in a cage of surpassing beauty, in the guise of a woman with wings of flame, daughter of the highest sphere, the soul of a star. He will agree to anything, if only he can have her.

Anne brushes a cinder, all that is left of a thread of saffron, off her sleeve. “First, this sorcery will weaken me. I will be an invalid, and you must care for me until I recover. Second, the others must believe that the child was made of my seed, not yours, that between us we freed this creature and captured another, a male, who could thereby impregnate me. The child must be thought to come of Taillefer’s lineage. Yet not just from Taillefer’s lineage, but legitimately born. To that end, you must marry me in a ceremony sanctioned by the church.”

“Yes,” he says absently, obviously too distracted as he stares at the daimone even to point out the gaping holes of illogic in this proposal. The woman-creature has calmed enough, now, to furl her wings and with apprehension and anger survey her prison.