Brightly Burning (41 page)

Another sound broke through the general babble; the sound of a serious fight. Ahead, two gangs of boys clashed, fists and feet flying—and landing, with muffled
thuds.
They screamed at each other at the tops of their collective lungs, adding to the din. Shutters all up and down the street flew open; people leaned out of the windows, gawking, then shouting to the boys and each other, some laying bets on the outcome.

:Another detour, I think,:
Kalira said promptly; she increased her pace to a trot, and made a quick turn into yet another side street. He could see, as the noise died away, that this was a dead end, culminating in a cul-de-sac with one of the oil torches at the end.

:No worries,:
Kalira said cheerfully.
:We just nip down this alley and come back out on another street.:
She suited her actions to her words, and made a quick turn into a dark alley. The only light came from the street behind them, and Lan looked nervously back over his shoulder. It was as dark as the inside of a black bag in this alley, and suddenly Lan was no longer so confident that as a Heraldic Trainee his safety was a certainty.

The alley was awfully long—

And why couldn't he see light at the other end?

Then it was obvious why, as Kalira suddenly stopped, ears up in surprise and radiating annoyance; this alley was a dead end as well, with a wooden barricade built across it, a few arm's lengths from Kalira's nose.

:This isn't supposed to be here!:
she said in indignant surprise, when a faint sound behind and the flare of light above alerted both of them.

Kalira spun on her heels; two light baskets now hung from chains coming from second-story windows on either side of the alley, and between them and the exit was a group of villainous-looking men with bows, arrows already nocked to the strings. Six? Eight? Too many—

Lan sat frozen with shock, unable to do more than stare as they aimed, and let fly.

Kalira was not so paralyzed; she darted to one side, writhing to avoid the falling arrows, quick as falcon and lithe as a mink. She reared up on her hind legs and twisted her forequarters to the side to present the smallest possible target. Somehow Lan managed to hang on, bending over her neck and clinging to her with both hands tangled tightly into her mane, and somehow he managed to remain untouched by the half-dozen arrows.

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—

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.

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.

P
OL'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.