The Fires of Heaven Page 4

  “You know I can keep an eye on him unseen,” Lanfear continued, “but the rest of you must stay clear or run the risk of detection. We must draw him back. . . .”

  Graendal leaned forward, interested, and Sammael began to nod as she went on. Rahvin reserved judgment. It might well work. And if not . . . If not, he saw several ways to shape events to his advantage. This might work out very well indeed.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Fanning the Sparks

  The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the great forest called Braem Wood. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

  South and west it blew, dry, beneath a sun of molten gold. There had been no rain for long weeks in the land below, and the late-summer heat grew day by day. Brown leaves come early dotted some trees, and naked stones baked where small streams had run. In an open place where grass had vanished and only thin, withered brush held the soil with its roots, the wind began uncovering long-buried stones. They were weathered and worn, and no human eye would have recognized them for the remains of a city remembered in story yet otherwise forgotten.

  Scattered villages appeared before the wind crossed the border of Andor, and fields where worried farmers trudged arid furrows. The forest had long since thinned to thickets by the time the wind swept dust down the lone street of a village called Kore Springs. The springs were beginning to run low this summer. A few dogs lay panting in the swelter, and two shirtless boys ran, beating a stuffed bladder along the ground with sticks. Nothing else stirred, save the wind and the dust and the creaking sign above the door of the inn, red brick and thatch-roofed like every other building along the street. At two stories, it was the tallest and largest structure in Kore Springs, a neat and orderly little town. The saddled horses hitched in front of the inn barely twitched their tails. The inn’s carved sign proclaimed the Good Queen’s Justice.

  Blinking against the dust, Min kept an eye pressed to the crack in the shed’s rough wall. She could just make out one shoulder of the guard on the shed door, but her attention was all for the inn further on. She wished the name were less ominously apt. Their judge, the local lord, had apparently arrived some time ago, but she had missed seeing him. No doubt he was hearing the farmer’s charges; Admer Nem, along with his brothers and cousins and all their wives, had seemed in favor of an immediate hanging before one of the lord’s retainers happened by. She wondered what the penalty was here for burning up a man’s barn, and his milkcows with it. By accident, of course, but she did not think that would count for much when it all began with trespass.

  Logain had gotten away in the confusion, abandoning them—he would, burn him!—and she did not know whether to be happy about that or not. It was he who had knocked Nem down when they were discovered just before dawn, sending the man’s lantern flying into the straw. The blame was his, if anyone’s. Only sometimes he had trouble watching what he said. Perhaps as well he was gone.

  Twisting to lean back against the wall, she wiped sweat from her brow, though it only sprang out again. The inside of the shed was stifling, but her two companions did not appear to notice. Siuan lay stretched out on her back in a dark woolen riding dress much like Min’s, staring at the shed roof, idly tapping her chin with a straw. Coppery-skinned Leane, willowy and as tall as most men, sat cross-legged in her pale shift, working on her dress with needle and thread. They had been allowed to keep their saddlebags, after they were searched for swords or axes or anything else that might help them escape.

  “What’s the penalty for burning down a barn in Andor?” Min asked.

  “If we are lucky,” Siuan replied without moving, “a strapping in the village square. Not so lucky, and it will be a flogging.”

  “Light!” Min breathed. “How can you call that luck?”

  Siuan rolled onto her side and propped herself up on an elbow. She was a sturdy woman, short of beautiful though beyond handsome, and looked no more than a few years older than Min, but those sharp blue eyes had a commanding presence that did not belong on a young woman awaiting trial in a backcountry shed. Sometimes Siuan was as bad as Logain about forgetting herself; maybe worse. “When a strapping is done,” she said in a brook-no-nonsense, do-not-be-foolish tone, “it is done, and we can be on our way. It wastes less of our time than any other penalty I can think of. Considerably less than hanging, say. Though I don’t think it will come to that, from what I remember of Andoran law.”

  Wheezing laughter shook Min for a moment; it was that or cry. “Time? The way we are going, we’ve nothing but time. I swear we have been through every village between here and Tar Valon, and found nothing. Not a glimmer, not a whisper. I don’t think there is any gathering. And we are on foot, now. From what I overheard, Logain took the horses with him. Afoot and locked in a shed awaiting the Light knows what!”

  “Watch names,” Siuan whispered sharply, shooting a meaning glance at the rough door with the guard on the other side. “A flapping tongue can put you in the net instead of the fish.”

  Min grimaced, partly because she was growing tired of Siuan’s Tairen fisherman’s sayings, and partly because the other woman was right. So far they had outrun awkward news—deadly was a better word than awkward—but some news had a way of leaping a hundred miles in a day. Siuan had been traveling as Mara, Leane as Amaena, and Logain had taken the name Dalyn, after Siuan convinced him Guaire was a fool’s choice. Min still did not think anyone would recognize her own name, but Siuan insisted on calling her Serenla. Even Logain did not know their true names.

  The real trouble was that Siuan was not going to give up. Weeks of utter failure, and now this, yet any mention of heading for Tear, which was sensible, set off a tempest that quailed even Logain. The longer they had searched without finding what Siuan sought, the more temper she had developed. Not that she couldn’t crack rocks with it before. Min was wise enough to keep that particular thought to herself.

  Leane finally finished with her dress and tugged it on over her head, doubling her arms behind her to do up the buttons. Min could not see why she had gone to the trouble; she herself hated needlework of any sort. The neckline was a little lower now, showing a bit of Leane’s bosom, and it fit in a snugger way there and perhaps around the hips. But what was the point, here? No one was going to ask her to dance in this roasting shed.

  Digging into Min’s saddlebags, Leane pulled out the wooden box of paints and powders and whatnots that Laras had forced on Min before they set out. Min had kept meaning to throw it away, but somehow she had never gotten around to it. There was a small mirror inside the hinged lid of the box, and in moments Leane was at work on her face with small rabbit-fur brushes. She had never shown any particular interest in the things before. Now she appeared vexed that there was only a blackwood hairbrush and a small ivory comb to use on her hair. She even muttered about the lack of a way to heat the curling iron! Her dark hair had grown since they began Siuan’s search, but it still came well short of her shoulders.

  After watching a bit, Min asked, “What are you up to, Le—Amaena?” She avoided looking at Siuan. She could guard her tongue; it was just being cooped up and baked alive, that on top of the coming trial. A hanging or a public strapping. What a choice! “Have you decided to take up flirting?” It was meant for a joke—Leane was all business and efficiency—something to lighten the moment, but the other woman surprised her.

  “Yes,” Leane said briskly, peering wide-eyed into the mirror while she carefully did something to her eyelashes. “And if I flirt with the right man, perhaps we will not need to worry about strappings or anything else. At the least, I might get us lighter sentences.”

  Hand half-raised to wipe her face again, Min gasped—it was like
an owl announcing it meant to become a hummingbird—but Siuan merely sat up facing Leane with a level “What brought this on?”

  Had Siuan directed that gaze at her, Min suspected she would have confessed to things she had forgotten. When Siuan concentrated on you like that, you found yourself curtsying and leaping to do as you were told before you realized it. Even Logain did, most of the time. Except for the curtsy.

  Leane calmly stroked a tiny brush along her cheekbones and examined the result in the small mirror. She did glance at Siuan, but whatever she saw, she answered in the same crisp tones she always used. “My mother was a merchant, you know, in furs and timber mainly. I once saw her fog a Saldaean lord’s mind till he consigned his entire year’s timber harvest to her for half the amount he wanted, and I doubt he realized what had happened until he was nearly back home. If then. He sent her a moonstone bracelet, later. Domani women don’t deserve the whole reputation they have—stiff-necked prigs going by hearsay built most of it—but we have earned some. My mother and my aunts taught me along with my sisters and cousins, of course.”

  Looking down at herself, she shook her head, then returned to her ministrations with a sigh. “But I fear I was as tall as I am today on my fourteenth naming day. All knees and elbows, like a colt that grew too fast. And not long after I could walk across a room without tripping twice, I learned—” She drew a deep breath. “—learned my life would take me another way than being a merchant. And now that is gone, too. About time I put to use what I was taught all those years ago. Under the circumstances, I can’t think of a better time or place.”

  Siuan studied her shrewdly a moment more. “That isn’t the reason. Not the whole reason. Out with it.”

  Hurling a small brush into the box, Leane blazed up in a fury. “The whole reason? I do not know the whole reason. I only know I need something in my life to replace—what is gone. You yourself told me that is the only hope of surviving. Revenge falls short, for me. I know your cause is necessary, and perhaps even right, but the Light help me, that is not enough either; I can’t make myself be as involved as you. Maybe I came too late to it. I will stay with you, but it isn’t enough.”

  Anger faded as she began resealing pots and vials and replacing them, though she used more force than was strictly necessary. There was the merest hint of rose scent about her. “I know flirting isn’t something to fill up the emptiness, but it is enough to fill an idle moment. Maybe being who I was born to be will suffice. I just do not know. This isn’t a new idea; I always wanted to be like my mother and my aunts, daydreamed of it sometimes after I was grown.”

  Leane’s face became pensive, and the last things went into the box more gently. “I think perhaps I’ve always felt I was masquerading as someone else, building up a mask until it became second nature. There was serious work to be done, more serious than merchanting, and by the time I realized there was another way I could have gone even so, I had the mask on too firmly to take off. Well, that is done with, now, and the mask is coming off. I even considered beginning with Logain a week ago, for practice. But I am out of practice, and I think he is the kind of man who might hear more promises than you meant to offer, and expect to have them fulfilled.” A small smile suddenly appeared on her lips. “My mother always said if that happened, you had miscalculated badly; if there was no back way out, you had to either abandon dignity and run, or pay the price and consider it a lesson.” The smile took on a roguish cast. “My Aunt Resara said you paid the price and enjoyed it.”

  Min could only shake her head. It was as if Leane had become a different woman. Talking that way about . . . ! Even hearing it, she could hardly believe. Come to that, Leane actually looked different. For all of the work with brushes, there was not a hint of paint or powder on her face that Min could see, yet her lips seemed fuller, her cheekbones higher, her eyes larger. She was a more than pretty woman at any time, but now her beauty was magnified fivefold.

  Siuan was not quite finished, though. “And if this country lord is one like Logain?” she said softly. “What will you do then?”

  Leane drew herself up stiff-backed on her knees and swallowed hard before answering, but her voice was perfectly level. “Given the alternatives, what choice would you make?”

  Neither blinked, and the silence stretched.

  Before Siuan could answer—if she meant to; Min would have given a pretty to hear it—the chain and lock rattled on the other side of the door.

  The other two women got slowly to their feet, gathering their saddlebags in calm preparation, but Min leaped up wishing she had her belt knife. Fool thing to wish for, she thought. Just get me in worse trouble. I’m no bloody hero in a story. Even if I jumped the guard—

  The door opened, and a man with a long leather jerkin over his shirt filled the doorway. Not a fellow to be attacked by a young woman, even with a knife. Maybe not even with an axe. Wide was the word for him, and thick. The few hairs remaining on his head were more white than not, but he looked hard as an old oak stump. “Time for you girls to stand before the lord,” he said gruffly. “Will you walk, or must we haul you like grain sacks? You go, either way, but I’d as soon not have to carry you in this heat.”

  Peeking past him, Min saw two more men waiting, gray-haired but just as hard, if not quite so big.

  “We will walk,” Siuan told him dryly.

  “Good. Come, then. Step along. Lord Gareth won’t like being kept waiting.”

  Promise to walk or no, each man took one of them firmly by the arm as they started up the dusty dirt street. The balding man’s hand encircled Min’s arm like a manacle. So much for running for it, she thought bitterly. She considered kicking his booted ankle to see if that would loosen his grip, but he looked so solid she suspected all it would earn her was a sore toe and being dragged the rest of the way.

  Leane appeared lost in thought; she half-made small gestures with her free hand, and her lips moved silently as though reviewing what she meant to say, but she kept shaking her head and starting over again. Introspection wrapped Siuan, too, but she wore an openly worried frown, even chewing her underlip; Siuan never showed that much unease. All in all, the pair of them did nothing for Min’s confidence.

  The beam-ceilinged common room of the Good Queen’s Justice did less. Lank-haired Admer Nem, a yellowed bruise around his swollen eye, stood to one side with half a dozen equally stout brothers and cousins and their wives, all in their best coats or aprons. The farmers eyed the three prisoners with a mixture of anger and satisfaction that made Min’s stomach sink. If anything, the farmwives’ glares were worse, pure hate. The rest of the walls were lined six deep with villagers, all garbed for the work they had interrupted for this. The blacksmith still wore his leather apron, and a number of women had sleeves rolled up, arms dusted with flour. The room buzzed with their murmuring among themselves, the elders as much as the few children, and their eyes latched onto the three women as avidly as the Nems’ did. Min thought this must be as much excitement as Kore Springs had ever witnessed. She had seen a crowd with this mood once—at an execution.

  The tables had been removed, except for one placed in front of the long brick fireplace. A bluff-faced, stocky man, his hair thick with gray, sat facing them in a well-cut coat of dark green silk, hands folded in front of him on the tabletop. A slim woman who showed as much age stood beside the table in a fine, gray wool dress embroidered with white flowers around the neck. The local lord, Min supposed, and his lady; country nobility little better informed of the world than their tenants and crofters.

  The guards situated them in front of the lord’s table and melted into the watchers. The woman in gray stepped forward, and the murmurs died.

  “All here attend and give ear,” the woman announced, “for justice will be meted today by Lord Gareth Bryne. Prisoners, you are called before the judgment of Lord Bryne.” Not the lord’s lady, then; an official of some sort. Gareth Bryne? The last Min remembered, he was Captain-General of the Queen’s Guards, in Caemlyn. I
f it was the same man. She glanced at Siuan, but Siuan had her eyes locked on the wide floorboards in front of her feet. Whoever he was, this Bryne looked weary.

  “You are charged,” the woman in gray went on, “with trespass by night, arson and destruction of a building and its contents, the killing of valuable livestock, assault on the person of Admer Nem, and the theft of a purse said to contain gold and silver. It is understood that the assault and theft were the work of your companion, who escaped, but you three are equally culpable under the law.”

  She paused to let it sink in, and Min exchanged rueful glances with Leane. Logain would have to add theft to the stew. He was probably halfway to Murandy by now, if not more distant yet.

  After a moment the woman began again. “Your accusers are here to face you.” She gestured to the cluster of Nems. “Admer Nem, you will give your testimony.”

  The stout man eased forward in a blend of self-importance and self-consciousness, tugging at his coat where the wooden buttons strained over his middle, running his hands through thinning hair that kept dropping into his face. “Like I said, Lord Gareth, it was like this. . . .”

  He gave a fairly straightforward account of discovering them in the hayloft and ordering them out, though he made Logain near a foot taller and turned the man’s single blow into a fight where Nem gave as good as he got. The lantern fell, the hay went up, and the rest of the family came spilling out of the farmhouse into the predawn; the prisoners were seized and the barn burned to the ground, and then the loss of the purse from the house was discovered. He did slight the part where Lord Bryne’s retainer rode by as some of the family were bringing out ropes and eyeing tree limbs.

  When he started on the “fight” again—this time he seemed to be winning—Bryne cut him off. “That will be enough, Master Nem. You may step back.”

  Instead, a round-faced one of the Nem women, of an age to be Admer’s wife, joined him. Round-faced, but not soft; round like a frying pan or a river rock. And flushed with something more than anger. “You whip these hussies good, Lord Gareth, hear? Whip them good, and ride them to Jornhill on a rail!”