A
FACE IN THE FIRE
So exhausted was Grandmother from casting spells that
she had nearly collapsed. Cole carried her away from the bodies of
Deglin and Sarat, with Min trailing behind and weeping. Lala walked
beside them, casting Grandmother anxious looks.
Cole halted at the
edge of the grove and gently set her down. Immediately he collected
wood for another fire. Min produced a blanket with which she
covered Grandmother.
“I’m fine, truly I
am,” she insisted.
“Are we . . . are we
safe here from those Sleeper creatures?” Min asked, fretting with
the hem of her cloak.
“I do not know,”
Grandmother replied. “I should think, however, what is in the
castle is of more interest to them than we are. At least for now.
Lala will make some wards, won’t you, Lala?”
The child nodded
solemnly.
“Be sparing with the
yarn, child. It is all we’ve got left.”
While Lala set to
work, Grandmother huddled beneath her blanket and dozed off,
dreaming of sunny, drier days in her little kitchen garden in Sacor
City, the birds twittering in the trees, and the smell of savory
herbs and soil on her hands.
She stirred when Min
gave her a cup of broth, startled to find it darker out and a
campfire blazing. She closed her eyes and felt the protections Lala
had placed around them—even without words, she’d given them the
power to work.
“My dear child, you
are a wonder! Your wards are very good.” She reached out and
clasped her granddaughter’s hand.
How old my hand looks next to hers, Grandmother
reflected. It is good she has taken so well to
the art. Grandmother knew she would not be around to lead
Second Empire forever. She hoped she’d have enough time to train
Lala to take her place.
The girl beamed at
her, then pulled her ratty piece of string out of her pocket with
which to play games.
“What’s next?” Cole
asked, sipping from his own cup of broth. “Are we
leaving?”
Grandmother heard
the weariness in his voice. She would like nothing better than to
leave Blackveil herself, though the mere idea of trekking all the
way back home deepened her fatigue.
“Since we’ve a good
fire, I would like to see what is happening in the world, and
perhaps God will speak to me and provide us with
instructions.”
In the guise of
teaching Lala knots, Grandmother sat back and rested while her
granddaughter did all the work. Lala encapsulated one of Birch’s
fingernails into a knot and tossed the yarn into the
fire.
Grandmother stared
into the flames, putting her intent into seeing through Birch’s
eyes. How did the training with his soldiers go? What was happening
on the northern border?
And then she was
there, gazing through Birch’s eyes only to see . . . the dark of
night. She sighed. After being in the dark of Blackveil for so
long, she’d gotten into the habit of thinking of the other side of
the wall as perpetually sunny, but it was not. Night fell there,
too.
Her sight adjusted
to the dark and she realized Birch was peering into the distance
where lamplight winked in windows. Someone crept up next to him.
Grandmother could make out very little of the newcomer’s shape in
the dark.
“Report,” Birch said
very quietly.
“Sir, looks like
thirty men or so. Just a few women. Must’ve sent the rest away with
the children.”
“Just like the last
two settlements,” Birch mused. “Word has gotten around about
us.”
“If they were smart,
they’d have all left. It’s just not as entertaining without them
trying to defend their families.”
“This is war,
Corporal,” Birch growled. “It’s not meant to be entertaining. We’re
training men to fight and kill.”
“Yes, sir,” the
corporal replied, sounding chagrined at the rebuke. “What are your
orders?”
Birch glanced at the
moon through the trees. It was a thin crescent like the fingernail
Lala had folded into the knot. “We’ll get a better lay of the land
at dawn. Then we’ll put the men into position. Strike at
dusk.”
“Thirty aren’t going
to be much of a challenge.”
“The practice is
good,” Birch said. “Soon our soldiers will be facing stiffer
opposition—bigger towns, trained militia. We need to take advantage
of these training exercises while we may.”
Grandmother withdrew
from the vision. It sounded like Birch’s work was going well.
Perhaps she’d look into the fire tomorrow to see how his campaign
fared. She began to doze, the broth warm in her belly and the heat
of the fire toasty against her skin. She felt as content as a cat
in a sunny window.
Curiously, she
imagined a pair of eyes watching her from the fire, a pair of
depthless, black eyes set in a face of flame.
She jolted to
wakefulness, and the face was still there. The others did not
appear to see it.
“M-my lord?”
Grandmother said.
“THE
SLEEPERS?”
“They are
awake.”
The eyes shimmered.
“EXCELLENT.” The face lost form for several moments, then the fire
plumed and the face reformed in a roiling fury.
“SHE HAS DEFIED ME.
SHE WILL STEAL THE SLEEPERS! YOU MUST STOP HER.”
He then told
Grandmother what to look for as glowing embers showered down from
singed trees. The Queen of Argenthyne had existed in some ethereal
form all these years protecting the grove in a piece of time. It
appeared she planned to awaken the Sleepers in that distant past
and lead them to a safe haven.
Grandmother was not
in any condition to seek a way to find the queen or figure out how
to fight her across time, nor were her people, yet she must obey
God’s will. She did have tools. She made a knot, tossed it onto the
fire, and sent a tendril of power into the dark of the grove,
seeking a Sleeper. Seeking several Sleepers. One or more of them
might be willing and capable of doing what she needed.