Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Heribert stepped forward. “She was the child who followed you down into the crypt, my lord prince,”

“Nay, true enough, but I know her. I know her. What is your name, child?”

“She is mute, Your Highness.” Mistress Suzanne stood protectively behind the child, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Her name is Anna. She and her brother Matthias escaped from Gent long after the Eika had taken it. How they survived there for all those months I do not know, but they got free of Gent through the intervention of St. Kristine and came to Steleshame. I brought them with me to Gent as part of my household. Her brother Matthias is betrothed to one of my younger weavers. He’s now a journeyman at the tannery.”

“You’re the daimone,” said the girl suddenly in a voice as hoarse as the scrape of sandpaper.

Suzanne shrieked, and her family began talking all at once, crowding forward to touch the girl.

“Ai, God,” Suzanne said through tears. “She’s not spoken a word for two years.”

“Sanglant?” Heribert rushed forward to lay a hand on the prince’s arm. Zacharias, too, pressed forward to stand beside the prince, because Sanglant looked utterly stunned, as though an unexpected blow had slammed into his head.

Blessing woke up and began to cry, frightened by all the noise. “Dada! Dada! I want Dada!”

“Ai, God,” Sanglant murmured, “it wasn’t a dream at all. Those two children, the boy with the knife and the girl with the wooden Circle of Unity hanging at her chest. I thought it was a delusion.”

Blessing wailed. She had the lungs for it, a voice to pierce the clamor of battle. The girl, Anna, got to her first, picked her up, and carried her over to her father. Sanglant took her without thinking. Blessing hid her face against his shoulder and, with a few hiccuping cries, lapsed into silence.

“Haven’t you a nursemaid for this child?” the girl called Anna demanded, looking around the chamber. Although Zacharias could feel the familiar snap, like the taste of lightning in the air, that he had come to recognize as Jerna’s presence, he could not see the aery daimone at all. But he felt the current of wind that marked her trail.

Yet that wind grew stronger, and stronger still, as though someone had opened shutters facing into a storm. An unnatural whirlpool of milky air spun into existence in the center of the room. Jerna flickered into view above it.

In these last months as Blessing grew with unnatural speed and ate porridge and cheese more while nursing less, Jerna had in contrast begun to lose that womanlike mimicry that had made her seem more substantial before. In a way, it seemed as if Blessing’s need had helped shape Jerna’s human form. Now the daimone only vaguely resembled a pale woman creature with the tone and texture of water.

The pool of light had nothing to do with Jerna. It was something entirely other, a sorcerous manifestation right there in the middle of the chamber.

Shrieks and shouts erupted as the gathered people shrank back in fright. Zacharias could not tell what frightened them more: Jerna’s wispy form, or the strange whirlpool of light pouring brightness into the chamber. Blessing reared back, clapping her hands over her ears. Hrodik’s steward had fallen down to the floor in a faint, and young Matto tried to haul him up to his feet so he wouldn’t be trampled.

A sound emerged as a faint murmur, emanating from the whirlpool of light.

“Sanglant.”

“Silence!” cried Sanglant in the ringing tones of a man accustomed to shouting orders above the chaos of battle.

Silence fell like a shroud. For an instant it was so quiet that Zacharias thought he had gone deaf, but then Hrodik giggled nervously.

The whirlpool spoke. “Sanglant. Blessing?”

Blessing twisted around in her father’s grasp and reached toward the eddying light, opening like an unshuttered window onto a place lying far beyond the walls of this world. “Mama! Mama come!”

“Ai, God!” Sanglant’s voice sounded ragged with hope, and pain. “Liath?” He took a step forward. “I can’t see you. Where are you?”

Zacharias saw nothing through that window of light but a hard glare, like staring into a vale of ice when the cold winter sun dazzles you. Was this truly the woman he sought? Where was she?

The voice spoke again. “Sanglant, if you can hear me, know that I am living, but I am on a long journey and I do not know how long it will take me.”

“Come back to us, Liath!” cried Sanglant desperately.

“Wait for me, I beg you. Help me if you can, for I’m lost here. I need a guide. Is Jerna there?” A dark shape moved through the icy gleam, one arm outstretched and the other thrown up before its eyes. A blue light winked and dazzled on the outstretched hand, and on the figure’s back hung a bow, visible because of fiery fire-red salamanders sliding up and down the inner curve of the bow. The figure reached. For an instant it seemed she would pass right through the curtain of light. Zacharias gasped and leaped back, slamming into Heribert, as Sanglant jumped forward to grab for her.

“Take my hand, Liath!” His hand swiped through empty air.

She said, “Yes! I see you!” just as Jerna’s silvery form spun down from the ceiling to wrap protectively around Blessing’s body. “Come if you will, Jerna. Return to your home. The way is open.”

The daimone spilled like water all down Blessing’s body, soaking her in light and in the aetherical substance of her aery form. Blessing cried out in surprise and delight; a moment later, Jerna coiled into a slender reed, twisted, and vanished through the window of light.

The whirlpool collapsed as Sanglant leaped after her. He landed hard in the middle of the carpet, looking, if truth be told, a little foolish. Blessing laughed and clapped her hands, as though it had all been a trick for her amusement, but her father was white at the mouth, almost rigid. Blessing sobered, looking frightened by the man holding her with such a look of wretched anger on his face.