Brightly Burning Read online

  Kalira was not so lucky.

  With a shock they both felt, a bolt struck her hindquarters, driving in deeply in a lance of pain they shared. She shied sideways and screamed, and Lan screamed with her—it felt as if a red-hot sword drove into his hip and out the other side.

  But her pain and danger woke the serpent asleep inside him and roused it in a single instant to action.

  Red rage rose within, uncoiling with terrible swiftness, and giving birth to the fire; the next volley of arrows burst into flame in midair.

  Arrowheads clattered to the frozen ground beside him, and a drift of ash flew away through the flames.

  The volley after that never left the bows.

  The arrows nocked to bowstrings flared once; for a moment, arrow-shapes of ash holding for a heartbeat, before crumbling in their fingers. The arrowheads dropped to the ground, as the bows ignited. With startled shouts, the men flung their weapons away.

  His sight was filmed with red, and he prepared to strike a third time—

  :Lan—hold them. Just hold them. Don’t kill them, please!:

  Kalira’s mind-voice penetrated the rage as nothing else had; with a wrenching effort, he held and redirected his strike.

  As they turned to flee, they were barred by a wall of flame that rose between them and the end of the alley. A second wall penned them away from Lan and Kalira.

  Lan held the anger in with all his strength as it tried to escape him and take its rightful prey. It didn’t feel like a serpent anymore; it felt like a dragon, mindless and raging, and very, very hungry.

  Trapped, they lost their heads and their cohesion as a group; they abandoned anything like sense and climbed over each other in a panic, trying desperately to find an escape. When the mounted Guardsmen pounded up to the rescue, led by a Herald, they were jabbering and begging for mercy from within their cage of flame.

  The flames licked at them hungrily; Kalira helped Lan to hold onto control and keep back the fires. Lan wasn’t really thinking now; he was consumed by the fires within and without, and only Kalira’s aid allowed him to hold onto sanity and control.

  Lan sat in his saddle as rigid as a statue until the moment that help arrived. He didn’t even realize they were there until a strange mind-voice called to him; he was too intent on what lay within the fire to pay attention to what was outside it. It was so tempting—the fires beckoned so seductively—and it was such a struggle to keep himself from burning those evil creatures to a crisp. Nor was that all; he had to fight to keep the fires where they were, confined within the walls of the alley. If he lost concentration for a moment, they would escape, leap to the wooden building on either side of the alley, incinerating the innocent people inside. Thanks to Kalira, the dragon had been confined, but it was not tame and never would be. If he lost his hold on it for even a moment, all would be lost. His body was so tense he couldn’t move a single muscle, and although his head was clear, it was full of the rage and the fire.

  :Lavan!: a woman’s voice called. :Trainee Lavan! You can let them go now!:

  With a start, Lan came back to himself.

  :It’s all right, Lavan. Let them go; that’s right. We’ll take them now. We’re here to help you.:

  With an effort, he let the fires die, and with them his anger.

  :Good, Lavan, excellent. Thank you——: The Guards had come down off their mounts, and were rounding up the men who had ambushed them; the Herald rode forward as Lan slumped over the pommel of his saddle, then slid down off Kalira to take his weight from her wounded hindquarters.

  “I’m Herald Sharissa,” said the newcomer, dismounting quickly and going at once to Kalira, who shivered and shook with pain and reaction. Lan could only hold her head and shake, himself; tears poured down his face as he cradled her against his chest.

  “Hold on, little one, this is going to hurt.” The Herald took hold of the shaft of the crossbow bolt and gave a quick pull; Kalira’s body convulsed with the pain when the bolt came free, and she gave a low moan, a moan that Lan echoed as he endured her agony with her.

  The Herald took them both in charge, binding a crude dressing on Kalira’s wound, taking Lan up behind her, and getting them both away before the Guard had even finished trussing up the ambushers. The streets passed in a kind of blur; all that Lan could think of was Kalira. He was frantic now, wanting to urge Herald Sharissa to greater speed, then wanting to beg her to hold back to a mere crawl. If he could have carried Kalira, he would have.

  “Easy on, lad,” Sharissa murmured from time to time. “Easy on. She hurts, but she’s not in any danger.”

  But watching Kalira limping painfully behind them, feeling her agony with every step she took, did nothing to convince Lan of that.

  Halfway to the Collegium, Pol and Satiran came pounding up, shaking him out of his daze of fear and hurt. He stared dumbly at Pol and was vaguely astonished at the unfettered anger he saw in his mentor’s face.

  But Pol only looked him over quickly, then he and Satiran moved to Kalira’s side. Sharissa’s Companion took his place on Kalira’s opposite side, and Pol buckled Kalira into a peculiar harness he had brought with him, fastening the other two into it as well. In a moment, Lan saw what they were about; the two stallions were much larger than Kalira, and they were able to take most of the weight off her hindquarters. The relief to Kalira was so great that Lan burst into tears of gratitude.

  Now they were able to move more quickly, and soon Kalira was in the hands of real Healers in her own stall in the stables.

  Lan hovered anxiously outside the stall, still full of fear, although he felt everything that Kalira felt, and knew for himself that they were easing her pain and knitting her wound closed with their Healing Magic. He couldn’t see what they were doing, though, and he couldn’t be right with her, and that was horrid.

  Finally they all cleared away, and he dashed into the stall to fling himself down on the straw next to her and cry as he had not since he was an infant. His thoughts were a tangle of guilt and anger, guilt because if he hadn’t gone into the city, this never would have happened, and anger at those who had dared to harm her. His throat and stomach were one long knot; his cheeks raw, his eyes burning, and still the tears fell.

  “This is all my fault!” he sobbed into her neck. “You should never have Chosen me! If you hadn’t, you’d be all right!”

  “Shh, lad,” said Pol, dropping to his knees beside them. Lan had been so hysterical he hadn’t even heard Pol approach. He put his arm around Lan’s shoulders, dropping the load of blankets he’d brought with him. “If she’d Chosen someone else, she might well be on the Southern Border fighting Karse at this moment. She knows that Heralds and Companions can’t escape danger, don’t you, little girl.”

  Kalira raised her head with an effort and looked up at them both. :I just—wish that danger didn’t hurt so much,: she said ruefully, and nuzzled Lan. :I couldn’t—wouldn’t—have anyone but you, Chosen. Ever.:

  Before that could bring a new spate of self-accusation, Pol shook his shoulder a little. “I thought you’d probably want to stay with her tonight, so I brought up some bedding for you, and a hot brick. If you get cold, there’ll be a couple more bricks on the hearth over in the tack room. Now, let’s get a bed made up for you before you fall on your nose.”

  Making up a bed in the straw took what was left of Lan’s energy and all his concentration. When Pol left them, blowing out the lantern at the end of the stall as he went, it was all Lan could do to get into his crude bed and curl up with one hand resting on Kalira’s foreleg. She was already asleep, and he lay there, listening to her breathing, to the mice rustling in the straw, to the occasional stamp of a hoof in one of the other stalls. He thought he would never be able to sleep, no matter how tired he was, but it was very dark in the stable and as warmth crept into him from the hot brick he lay curled around, he felt his knotted muscles relaxing from sheer exhaustion. And finally, his eyes closed all by themselves and he, too, slipped into sleep.
r />   EIGHTEEN

  POL’S breath hung in clouds before his face; the icy air was as still as death, and the silence that hung over the gathered crowd made it seem that everyone in the Great Square had been turned into ice statues. Not in fifty years, perhaps even a hundred, had a King of Valdemar held an open Judgment like this, with everyone in Haven that could fit crowded into the Great Square in front of the City Hall. More folk still hung out of the windows or stood on the balconies of the buildings surrounding the Great Square.

  Theran sat in stony silence on a temporary platform draped in white, the King’s Own on his right, armed to the teeth, his bodyguard of Heralds around him, also armed, and all their Companions ranged in front of the platform. They could have been a grim snow sculpture; there wasn’t a hint of a smile on any face in that grouping. The only touch of color other than white was in the form of one set of Formal Grays, Grays worn by Lavan Firestarter, who stood at Theran’s left hand. The poor boy’s face was as snowy as Theran’s Royal Whites, but he was holding up gallantly; Pol was very, very proud of him. He was not the one waiting to be sentenced, but you wouldn’t have known that from his face.

  In a clear space below the platform, surrounded by a half-circle of Palace Guards in their special midnight-blue uniforms, stood the accused. Or perhaps, better to say the condemned, for their guilt was clear and they waited only for a chance to speak before Theran passed judgment on them.

  It was not likely that the seven hired thugs who’d accepted the job of murdering Lavan would say much; caught in the act, their guilt was beyond question. But the wife of the Head of the Silversmith’s Guild, Jisette Jelnack, was definitely going to speak her piece. She practically shook with rage and outrage, and her face was as pale as Lan’s, looking bloodless against the black of her gown. She twisted a handkerchief in her hands, the action suggesting that even now she longed to twine it around Lan’s throat and strangle him with it.

  Of all her family, only her husband was here, and he stood apart as if in a vain attempt to dissociate himself from her. He stood within the half-circle of Guards, but not himself under arrest. There was not one single member of the Silversmiths’ Guild here in attendance, in fact, they were notable in their absence; Pol did not doubt for a moment that by the end of the day there would be a new Guildmaster in that House.

  He was warned. If he couldn’t keep Jisette from doing something foolish, he should have turned her in to the Guard, and this would never have become a public matter. And he had to know. Hired assassins don’t come cheaply, especially ones who are thorough enough to track the target’s movements and friends, forge notes, and arrange to block streets with wagons and fighting gangs. Where did that money come from, if not the household coffers? Surely he didn’t think she was spending that much money on household expenses!

  Hoarfrost rimed every surface of the buildings around the Square, muting the colors; the sky above, a flat gray, promised nothing and added nothing. It seemed that all the elements had agreed to contribute to the atmosphere of rejection that Theran had concocted.

  Theran stood, and slowly scanned the entire gathering, the force of his personality ensuring that every single individual in the Square would be willing to swear later that the King had locked eyes with him, personally. Theran took a deep breath, and his voice rolled over the silent crowd.

  “We are here to pass judgment,” he said, each word weighted carefully. “You are here to bear witness that justice has been done. These seven men—” he gestured slightly at the hired thugs, “—were captured in the act of attempted murder of one of Valdemar’s Heraldic Trainees; this boy, Lavan Chitward, called Firestarter.”

  Pol’s swift intake of breath was echoed by many others; this was the first time that Lan’s Gift had been acknowledged publicly, and those who knew that he had been one of the boys involved in the Guild School fire would now be putting two and two together. This was no accident on Theran’s part, but what was he going to accomplish with this information?

  “These seven men stand convicted of that crime, and of the crime of attempted murder and injury of one of Valdemar’s Companions, the Companion Kalira, bound to Lavan Firestarter.”

  Another and more general gasp; for most people, the very notion that someone would deliberately harm a Companion was shocking. To actually see the men who had done such a thing was an outrage to their sensibilities.

  “Have you men anything to say for yourself before we pass judgment upon you?” Theran stared down at them; his look one of utter disgust. Pol didn’t really expect them to say anything at all, but to his surprise, one of them stepped forward.

  “We wasn’t to hurt the horse—I mean, Companion,” the grizzled, mustached man said defiantly. “And we was just doin’ the job we’d been hired to. By her—” and he pointed at Jisette Jelnack.

  The crowd murmured; there had been rumors flying all through Haven since the attack two days ago, but until now none of that had been confirmed. Pol noticed with satisfaction that if anything, the general sense of outrage had increased.

  Theran’s expression did not change by a hair. “We are aware of that,” he said, distantly. “Nevertheless, regardless of who hired you, or why, you intended to murder, you attempted to murder. The fact that this attempt was on one of our Trainees and resulted in the injury of one of our Companions only compounds the felony. You stand condemned out of your own mouths, under Truth Spell, and duly witnessed. Is that all you have to say?”

  The man wilted a little, and shook his head, stepping back a pace.

  Theran hardened his expression. “Very well. Your crime is punishable by death.” Here he paused, while the condemned looked sick and the crowd radiated approval. “But we have—another fate in mind for you, one that will serve Valdemar. You will proceed under guard to the Karsite Border. You will remain under guard, in heavy chains when you are not performing your duty, in light chains when you are. You will be outfitted in a special red uniform, patterned with a broad black cross on front and back, to make you visible and prevent you from being mistaken for Bards. You will serve the Healers in whatever capacity they deem fit—including and especially the extraction of the wounded from the battlefield during battles.” He raised an eyebrow at them, for the first time changing his expression, from one of condemnation to irony. “This will be your duty for the rest of your lives—however long or short that may be. And I do not recommend an attempt at escape. You would not evade my Guards and Heralds for long, and should you think to find mercy at the hands of the Karsites, think again. They burn our people in Karse, and you would never be able to pass yourselves off as Believers in their One God.”

  He gestured to the Guards surrounding the miscreants, who took the seven away to their fates, to the subdued approval of the crowd. Now his attention turned to Jisette.

  The Guards brought her forward at his gesture. Pol knew what was going through the minds of many who could not see her face. How could this wealthy, pampered, delicate woman have done what she was accused of? She stared up at the King in defiance, then her gaze went to Lan, and her expression turned to one of pure hate. Lan trembled, and would have shrunk back, if the King had not put a hand on his elbow. Of all of those present, only Pol and King’s Own Jedin could know how much it cost the boy just to stand there impassively. It was damnably unfair to put him through this, but worse was to come.

  “You, Jisette Jelnack, stand accused and convicted of hiring men to murder Heraldic Trainee Lavan Firestarter. Out of your own mouth you were condemned, under Truth Spell. Have you anything to say for yourself?”

  Jisette shook off the restraining hand of one of her Guards and stepped forward, entirely unrepentant. “That—creature—next to you is a murderer!” she shrilled, and Pol was not the only person to wince at her tone. “He killed my son! Put him under Truth Spell if you dare! I only sought justice for my poor boy when your justice was denied me!”

  More murmurs from the crowd, uncertainty this time. There had been rumors of thi
s also—and Theran had decided to deal with them in public, once and for all. He couldn’t deny that Lan had, in the sight of witnesses, brought up fire to protect himself and Kalira. People were already thinking back to the Merchants’ School Fire. He couldn’t have confidence in the Heralds undermined.

  So Lan would have to take the blows, and bear them, for his sake, and the sake of every Herald in the Kingdom.

  “I intend to,” Theran said flatly. “Now, in the sight of all these witnesses, so that there can be no question of the depth of your obsession and insane hatred.” He stepped back; Jedin stepped forward as Lan swallowed hard, and waited.

  A moment later, Lan was surrounded by a faint, blue glow, clearly visible against the universal white of the platform, the draping, and the white uniforms. Very few people, even those living in the capital, had actually seen a Truth Spell in action, and from the front to the rear they craned their necks, peering up at the platform in avid curiosity.

  Jedin wasted no time; after a few preliminaries to establish that Lan was, indeed, Lavan Chitward, and that he had attended the Merchants’ School as stated, he went straight to the heart of the matter.

  “Describe the situation between the younger pupils and the older,” Jedin ordered.

  In a strained voice, Lan related everything that Pol already knew about the behavior of the Sixth Form, as the crowd listened closely, and began to radiate disapproval—not of Lan, but of the gang of bullies who had so dominated every other pupil in the school. Jisette Jelnack, however, stirred angrily.

  “Lies!” she shrieked, when Lan was finished. “All lies!”

  Now the Seneschal’s Herald stepped forward and offered Theran a sheaf of papers. “This is testimony from forty other pupils of the Merchants’ School, all taken under Truth Spell and witnessed, that corroborate and add to the statements of Lavan Chitward,” he said, for the benefit of the crowd. “These include statements from the boys who survived the fire and styled themselves ‘Sixth Formers,’ and were the followers of the Jelnack boy.”