Fire skt-2 Read online

  Immiker burst into delighted laughter, and threw his arm around his father. And still Larch didn't understand; but Immiker's displays of affection were rare, and always overwhelmed Larch with a dumb happiness that numbed the discomfort of his confusion.

  In his infrequent moments of mental lucidity, Larch was sure that as Immiker had grown older, Larch himself had grown stupider and more forgetful. Immiker explained to him over and over the unstable politics of this land, the military factions that divided it, the black market that flourished in the underground passages that connected it. Two different Dellian lords, Lord Mydogg in the north and Lord Gentian in the south, were trying to carve their own empires into the landscape and wrest power from the Dellian king. In the far north was a second nation of lakes and mountain peaks called Pikkia.

  Larch couldn't keep it straight in his head. He knew only that there were no Gracelings here. No one would take from Larch his son whose eyes were two different colours.

  Eyes of two different colours. Immiker was a Graceling. Larch thought about this sometimes, when his mind was clear enough for thought. He wondered when his son's Grace would appear.

  In his clearest moments, which only came to him when Immiker left him alone for a while, Larch wondered if it already had.

  Immiker had hobbies. He liked to play with little monsters. He liked to tie them down and peel away their claws, or their vividly coloured scales, or clumps of their hair and feathers. One day in the boy's tenth year, Larch came upon Immiker slicing stripes down the stomach of a rabbit that was coloured like the sky.

  Even bleeding, even shaking and wild-eyed, the rabbit was beautiful to Larch. He stared at the creature and forgot why he'd come looking for Immiker. How sad it was, to see something so small and helpless, something so beautiful, damaged in fun. The rabbit began to make noises, horrible, panicked squeaks, and Larch heard himself whimpering.

  Immiker glanced at Larch. "It doesn't hurt her, Father."

  Instantly Larch felt better, knowing that the monster wasn't in pain. But then the rabbit let out a very small, very desperate whine, and Larch was confused. He looked at his son. The boy held a dagger dripping with blood before the eyes of the shaking creature, and smiled at his father.

  Somewhere in the depths of Larch's mind a prick of suspicion made itself felt. Larch remembered why he'd come looking for Immiker.

  "I have an idea," Larch said slowly, "about the nature of your Grace."

  Immiker's eyes flicked calmly, carefully, to Larch's. "Do you?"

  "You've said that the monsters take over my mind with their beauty."

  Immiker lowered his knife, and tilted his head at his father. There was something odd in the boy's face. Disbelief, Larch thought, and a strange, amused smile. As if the boy were playing a game he was used to winning, and this time he'd lost.

  "Sometimes I think you take over my mind," Larch said, "with your words."

  Immiker's smile widened, and then he began to laugh. The laughter made Larch so happy that he began to laugh as well. How much he loved this child. The love and the laughter bubbled out of him, and when Immiker walked toward him Larch held his arms open wide. Immiker thrust his dagger into Larch's stomach. Larch dropped like a stone to the floor.

  Immiker leaned over his father. "You've been delightful," he said. "I'll miss your devotion. If only it were as easy to control everyone as it is to control you. If only everyone were as stupid as you are, Father."

  * * * *

  It was strange, to be dying. Cold and dizzying, like his fall through the Monsean mountains. But Larch knew he wasn't falling through the Monsean mountains; in death he knew clearly, for the first time in years, where he was and what was happening. His last thought was that it hadn't been stupidity that had allowed his son to enchant him so easily with words. It had been love. Larch's love had kept him from recognising Immiker's Grace, because even before the boy's birth, when Immiker had been no more than a promise inside Mikra's body, Larch had already been enchanted.

  Fifteen minutes later Larch's body and his house were on fire and Immiker was on his pony's back, picking his way through the caves to the north. It was a relief to be moving on. His surroundings and his neighbours had become tedious of late, and he was restless. Ready for something more.

  He decided to mark this new era in his life with a change of his foolish, sentimental name. The people of this land had an odd way of pronouncing Larch's name, and Immiker had always liked the sound of it.

  He changed his name to Leck.

  A year passed.

  Part One

  Monsters

  Chapter One

  It did not surprise Fire that the man in the forest shot her. What surprised her was that he shot her by accident.

  The arrow whacked her square in the arm and threw her sideways against a boulder, which knocked the air out of her. The pain was too great to ignore, but behind it she focused her mind, made it cold and sharp, like a single star in a black winter sky. If he was a cool man, certain in what he was doing, he would be guarded against her, but Fire rarely encountered this type. More often the men who tried to hurt her were angry or arrogant or frightened enough that she could find a crack in the fortress of their thoughts, and ease her way in.

  She found this man's mind instantly – so open, so welcoming, even, that she wondered if he could be a simpleton hired by someone else. She fumbled for the knife in her boot. His footfalls, and then his breath, sounded through the trees. She had no time to waste, for he would shoot her again as soon as he found her. You don't want to kill me. You've changed your mind.

  Then he rounded a tree and his blue eyes caught hold of her, and widened in astonishment and horror.

  "Not a girl!" he cried out.

  Fire's thoughts scrambled. Had he not meant to strike her? Did he not know who she was? Had he meant to murder Archer? She forced her voice calm. "Who was your target?"

  "Not who," he said. "What. Your cloak is brown pelt. Your dress is brown. Rocks alive, girl," he said in a burst of exasperation. He marched toward her and inspected the arrow embedded in her upper arm, the blood that soaked her cloak, her sleeve, her headscarf. "A fellow would think you were hoping to be shot by a hunter."

  More accurately, a poacher, since Archer forebade hunting in these woods at this time of day, just so that Fire could pass through here dressed this way. Besides, she'd never seen this shortish, tawny-haired, light-eyed man before. Well. If he was not only a poacher, but a poacher who'd accidentally shot Fire while hunting illegally, then he would not want to turn himself in to Archer's famous temper; but that was what she was going to have to make him want to do. She was losing blood, and she was beginning to feel light-headed. She would need his assistance to get home.

  "Now I'll have to kill you," he said glumly. And then, before she could begin to address that rather bizarre statement: "Wait. Who are you? Tell me you're not her."

  "Not who?" she hedged, reaching again for his mind, and finding it still strangely blank, as if his intentions were floating, lost in a fog.

  "Your hair is covered," he said. "Your eyes, your face – oh, save me." He backed away from her. "Your eyes are so green. I'm a dead man."

  He was an odd one, with his talk of killing her, and himself dying, and his peculiar floating brain; and now he looked ready to bolt, which Fire must not allow. She grasped at his thoughts and slid them into place. You don't find my eyes or my face to be all that remarkable.

  The man squinted at her, puzzled.

  The more you look at me the more you see I'm just an ordinary girl. You've found an ordinary girl injured in the forest, and now you must rescue me. You must take me to Lord Archer.

  Here Fire encountered a small resistance in the form of the man's fear. She pulled harder at his mind, and smiled at him, the most gorgeous smile she could muster while throbbing with pain and dying of blood loss. Lord Archer will reward you and keep you safe, and you will be honoured as a hero.

  There was no hesitat
ion. He eased her quiver and her fiddle case from her back and slung them over his shoulder against his own quiver. He took up both of their bows in one hand and wrapped her right arm, her uninjured arm, around his neck. "Come along, miss," he said. He half led her, half carried her, through the trees toward Archer's holding.

  He knows the way, she thought tiredly, and then she let the thought go. It didn't matter who he was or where he came from. It only mattered that she stay awake and inside his head until he got her home and Archer's people had seized him. She kept her eyes and ears and her mind alert for monsters, for neither her headscarf nor her own mental guard against them would hide her from them if they smelled her blood.

  At least she could count on this poacher to be a decent shot.

  Archer brought down a raptor monster as Fire and the poacher stumbled out of the trees. A beautiful, long shot from the upper terrace that Fire was in no state to admire, but that caused the poacher to murmur something under his breath about the appropriateness of the young lord's nickname. The monster plummeted from the sky and crashed onto the pathway to the door. Its colour was the rich orange-gold of a sunflower.

  Archer stood tall and graceful on the stone terrace, eyes raised to the sky, longbow lightly in hand. He reached to the quiver on his back, notched another arrow, and swept the treetops. Then he saw them, the man dragging her bleeding from the forest. He turned on his heel and ran into the house, and even down here, even from this distance and stone walls between them, Fire could hear him yelling. She sent words and feeling into his mind, not mind control, only a message. Don't worry. Seize him and disarm him, but don't hurt him. Please, she added, for whatever it was worth with Archer. He's a nice man and I've had to trick him.

  Archer burst through the great front door with his captain Palla, his healer, and five of his guard. He leapt over the raptor and ran to Fire. "I found her in the forest," the poacher cried. "I found her. I saved her life."

  Once the guards had taken hold of the poacher, Fire released his mind. The relief of it weakened her knees and she slumped against Archer.

  "Fire," her friend was saying. "Fire. Are you all right? Where else are you hurt?"

  She couldn't stand. Archer grasped her, lowered her to the ground. She shook her head numbly. "Nowhere."

  "Let her sit," the healer said. "Let her lie down. I must stop the flow of blood."

  Archer was wild. "Will she be all right?"

  "Most certainly," the healer said curtly, "if you will get out of my way and let me stop the flow of blood. My Lord."

  Archer let out a ragged breath and kissed Fire's forehead. He untangled himself from her body and crouched on his heels, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then he turned to peer at the poacher held by his guards, and Fire thought warningly, Archer, for she knew that with his anxieties unsoothed, Archer was transitioning now to fury.

  "A nice man who must nonetheless be seized," he hissed at the poacher, standing. "I can see that the arrow in her arm came from your quiver. Who are you and who sent you?"

  The poacher barely noticed Archer. He stared down at Fire, boggle-eyed. "She's beautiful again," he said. "I'm a dead man."

  "He won't kill you," Fire told him soothingly. "He doesn't kill poachers, and anyway, you saved me."

  "If you shot her I'll kill you with pleasure," Archer said.

  "It makes no difference what you do," the poacher said.

  Archer glared down at the man. "And if you were so intent on rescuing her, why didn't you remove the arrow yourself and bind the wound before dragging her half across the world?"

  "Archer," Fire said, and then stopped, choking back a cry as the healer ripped off her bloody sleeve. "He was under my control, and I didn't think of it. Leave him alone."

  Archer swung on her. "And why didn't you think of it? Where is your common sense?"

  "Lord Archer," the healer said testily. "There will be no yelling at people who are bleeding themselves to unconsciousness. Make yourself useful. Hold her down, will you, while I remove this arrow; and then you'll do best to look to the skies."

  Archer knelt beside her and took hold of her shoulders. His face was wooden but his voice shook with emotion. "Forgive me, Fire." To the healer: "We're mad to be doing this outside. They smell the blood."

  And then sudden pain, blinding and brilliant. Fire wrenched her head and fought against the healer, against Archer's heavy strength. Her scarf slipped off and released the shimmering prism of her hair: sunrise, poppy, copper, fuchsia, flame. Red, brighter than the blood soaking the doorpath.

  She ate dinner in her own stone house, which was just beyond Archer's and under the protection of his guard. He had sent the dead raptor monster to her kitchen. Archer was one of very few people who made her feel no shame for craving the taste of monster meat.

  She ate in bed, and he sat with her. He cut her meat and encouraged her. Eating hurt, everything hurt.

  The poacher was gaoled in one of the outdoor monster cages Fire's father, Lord Cansrel, had built into the hill behind the house. "I hope there's a lightning storm," Archer said. "I hope for a flood. I would like the ground under your poacher to crack open and swallow him."

  She ignored him. She knew it was only hot air.

  "I passed Donal in your hall," he said, "sneaking out with a pile of blankets and pillows. You're building your assassin a bed out there, aren't you? And probably feeding him as well as you feed yourself."

  "He's not an assassin, only a poacher with fuzzy eyesight."

  "You believe that even less than I do."

  "All right, but I do believe that when he shot me, he thought I was a deer."

  Archer sat back and crossed his arms. "Perhaps. We'll talk to him again tomorrow. We'll have his story from him."

  "I would rather not help."

  "I would rather not ask you, darling, but I need to know who this man is and who sent him. He's the second stranger to be seen on my land these two weeks."

  Fire lay back, closed her eyes, forced her jaw to chew. Everyone was a stranger. Strangers came out of the rocks, the hills, and it was impossible to know everyone's truth. She didn't want to know – nor did she want to use her powers to find out. It was one thing to take over a man's mind to prevent her own death, and another thing entirely to steal his secrets.

  When she turned to Archer again, he was watching her quietly. His white-blond hair and his deep brown eyes, his proud mouth. The familiar features she'd known since she was a toddler and he was a child, always carrying a bow around as long as his own height. It was she who'd first modified his real name, Arklin, to Archer, and he had taught her to shoot. And looking into his face now, the face of a grown man responsible for a northern estate, its money, its farms, its people, she understood his anxiety. It was not a peaceful time in the Dells. In King's City, young King Nash was clinging, with some desperation, to the throne, while rebel lords like Lord Mydogg in the north and Lord Gentian in the south built armies and thought about how to unseat him.

  War was coming. And the mountains and forests swarmed with spies and thieves and other lawless men. Strangers were always alarming.

  Archer's voice was soft. "You won't be able to go outside alone until you can shoot again. The raptors are out of control. I'm sorry, Fire."

  Fire swallowed. She'd been trying not to think about this particular bleakness. "It makes no difference. I can't play fiddle, either, or harp or flute or any of my instruments. I have no need to leave home."

  "We'll send word to your students." He sighed and rubbed his neck. "And I'll see whom I can place in their houses in your stead. Until you heal, we'll be forced to trust our neighbours without the help of your insight." For trust was not assumed these days, even among long-standing neighbours, and one of Fire's jobs as she gave music lessons was to keep her eyes and ears open. Occasionally she learned something – information, conversation, the sense of something wrong – that was a help to Archer and his father, Brocker, both loyal allies to the king.

 
It was also a long time for Fire to live without the comfort of her own music. She closed her eyes again and breathed slowly. These were always the worst injuries, the ones that left her unable to play her fiddle.

  She hummed to herself, a song they both knew about the northern Dells, a song that Archer's father always liked her to play when she sat with him.

  Archer took the hand of her uninjured arm, and kissed it. He kissed her fingers, her wrist. His lips brushed her forearm.

  She stopped humming. She opened her eyes to the sight of his, mischievous and brown, smiling into hers.

  You can't be serious, she thought to him.

  He touched her hair, shining against the blankets. "You look unhappy."

  Archer. It hurts to move.

  "You don't have to move. And I can erase your pain."

  She smiled, despite herself, and spoke aloud. "No doubt. But so can sleep. Go home, Archer. I'm sure you can find someone else's pain to erase."

  "So callous," he said teasingly, "when you know how worried I was for you today."

  She did know how worried. She merely doubted that the worry had changed his nature.

  Of course, after he'd gone, she did not sleep. She tried, but nightmares brought her awake over and over again. Her nightmares were always worse on days when she'd spent time down among the cages, for that was where her father had died.

  Cansrel, her beautiful monster father. Monsters in the Dells came from monsters. A monster could breed with a non-monster of its species – her mother had not been a monster – but the progeny was always monstrous. Cansrel had had glittery silver hair with glints of blue, and deep, dark blue eyes. His body, his face breathtaking, smooth and beautifully cut, like crystal reflecting light, glowing with that intangible something that all monsters have. He had been the most stunning man alive when he'd lived, or at least Fire had found him so. He had been better than she at controlling the minds of humans. He had had a great deal more practice.