The Firebird's Vengeance (17 page)

She was tricked and she was tried, but she overcame, and in so doing put herself in even greater danger, although she doesn’t know it yet
.

“What do you mean?” demanded Grace, even as she took a step away. So much was wrong here, she couldn’t begin to comprehend it. She saw bright flickers out of the corners of her eyes, as if the flames that had scorched the wall and heated the stove still burned. She raised her hand to her temple to try to block out the bright illusions. “I don’t understand you.”

I asked her to take up my shame, and have placed her and my land in danger
.

More flames flickered at the corners of Grace’s vision. She saw strange glowing shadows about the room — a golden cage, a bird of flame, a dark-haired man with cruel, cruel eyes. Bridget. In the middle of it all stood the ghost, little girl, young bride, old crone, beautiful, mad, regal, pathetic, still in the present and in frantic motion in the glimmering past.

Grace could make no sense of these bizarre bits and pieces. “What have you done to Bridget?” she screamed at the ghost. “What
are
you?”

One who needs. She will come back, but not to me. Not without your help. I must undo what I have done, or I will have no rest
.

“Why should I?” Grace backed toward the door. “Why should I care?”

Do not leave me alone in the cold. I must atone. I cannot do that here
.

Grace felt regret roll in slow waves from the shifting ghost and shuddered under the onslaught. “Leave me alone.”

I cannot
.

More images crowded in on the edge of Grace’s mind. Shrouded figures laid out in a gilded church. A young woman sitting alone before a blazing fire and wishing desperately for help, for release.

“If Bridget’s coming back, you must wait for her,” muttered Grace. “She has the sight and the power, as she’d be quick to remind me. I’m just a bitter old woman.”

As was I. Bitter. Wronged and wronging. Frightened and terrifying
.

“And so?” Grace tried to keep her voice hard and her mind closed, but she was tired after the long trip across the barely-thawed lake. She wanted to be gone, despite her previous determination to solve this mystery. She did not want to face this haunting, this sorrowful voice and the fleeting visions it brought.

The ghost drifted nearer, settling for a moment into its visage as an old woman, straight and proud but with a face heavily lined from anger and the passage of years.
We are alike, you and I. We have blamed but do not take blame. We have acted but say that it is only because we were forced. We abandoned those who trusted us
.

“How dare you!”

The words burst from her, loud and forcefully. But the ghost was undeterred. The shade spoke again, coming nearer yet.

Like and like, you and I. That is why I may speak to you. That is why only you can help me. I have no other bond to this mortal world, and I am fading
.

“Fading?” Nothing had prepared her for this. Certainly not her “training” as a medium, nor the dozens of books on spiritualism she read so she could expand her repertoire of patter.

My body is gone
, Medeoan told her
. My bones are ash and the ash is scattered. I cannot hold onto myself. Spring wakes the world and the rush of life will overwhelm me. Even in the Land of Death and Spirit I will be diffuse, an aimless ghost without bones or heart to bind. I will only be mourned for some self I was in the distant past. It will not be enough
.

Grace knew she should have felt relief at this, but an unaccountable sadness bloomed inside her. The ghost flickered into her shape as a young woman, at once facing Grace, and turning toward Bridget, her arms outstretched and pleading.

I want to help. What comes is my doing, and my wish to undo came too late. I can neither hold nor help if you will not help me
.

“I want to be left alone.”

You do not want to be left alone. You want not to have turned away at the wrong time, from your sister, from her daughter. So I from my son, and from the true burdens of my birth. But I was old and bitter, older than you and far more crabbed in my heart. My ghosts came to me too late and I turned even from them. That last turning trapped me here to beg and to cry
.

“Stop it.” Grace pressed her hands against her temples. “You don’t need me.”

Medeoan was an old woman again, and her regret filled the room.
She is strong, your niece, but what is to come will terrify her. She may regain all she has lost, or she may through turning away lose all there is to gain. She will be terrible in her anger, and it will take more than one love to turn her back. I am weak. I cannot see so far. If she cannot be turned, the child will remain alone. Do not leave her. Do not give her more reason for sorrow
.

“The child?” Grace asked weakly.

Help me
. Medeoan’s need drowned her.
Help me save the child, and my own son and the realm. Help me do what I could not in life
.

Grace pressed her hand to her mouth. She did not want this. She felt the ghost’s sorrow, her desperation. The dead woman’s memories washed over her yet again. A boy, straight and handsome in fine clothes. A black-eyed man whispering poison in her ears. Another man with dark gold hair dying beside a golden cage. With a shock, Grace realized she knew him. That man was Avan, Ingrid’s lover.

Grace swallowed. She had not known that Avan had died.

“Grace? What the hell’s going on?”

Frank. When had Frank come in? He stood in the doorway, the spring winds blowing in behind him. It seemed the Medeoan wavered for a moment, like a reflection rippling in disturbed water.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Frank stepped forward, letting the door swing shut behind him. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I blew the fog horn twice. Didn’t you hear?”

“I … Frank … no … I’m sorry,” stammered Grace. Somehow he was harder to see than Medeoan. After all that had passed, he seemed not to belong in her world anymore.

You can choose now. Turn away again, and you will only be as you are. Turn forward, and you can shed the past, shed the sight you do not want, and in the end you will have my silence. I will be gone, expelled when all is over, but I will also be forgiven. Please. Please. I am dead and I am lost, and I need the help only you can give. Please
.

To be needed, to be forgiven. Grace bowed her head. Oh, she understood this woman’s yearning well. To forgive, to act instead of being acted on.

“Grace, what’s the matter? Did you get what you wanted?”

What did Grace want? Only silence? Only her rooms and her trickeries? She had wanted to help Bridget. She had tried, but it was not enough. Here was her chance, to try again, to show Ingrid that she was good for more than smiles and flirtations, to show Bridget that they were truly family, to show herself that she was not what she feared.

Grace shook. All this lay at the heart of the ghost’s offer, but ghosts lied. She’d been touched before, possessed by the need of another. She knew that cold and ice, that unyielding dread and hunger that could never be sated. It had drained her hollow once before. What if this ghost came only to do the same?

Frank touched her shoulder. She looked up at his worried, kind face, but saw it only with difficulty. He didn’t know what was happening, had no eyes to see or ears to hear, and she had no voice left to explain.

“Come away, Grace. This is no good for you.”

But at the same time, inside her mind she heard Medeoan’s fading voice.
Please. Please
.

She wouldn’t survive it again. Ingrid would not come running down the sands to save her with a Finnish sorcerer in tow as she had before. This time she’d shrivel and die.

But she’d die trying. That was the coldest comfort, but not so cold as the years that stretched ahead without it.

Grace covered Frank’s hand where he held her shoulder. “You’re a good man, Frank Bluchard. You deserve far better than I’ve given you.”

“Grace …” he began, but she did not let him finish. She turned away from him yet again.

“Very well,” she said to the ghost.

For one heartbeat, Grace saw the woman’s face clearly. She knew the lines and the eyes that had seen far too much. For one heartbeat, she felt the absolute cold of the ghost’s touch. In the next, cold dissolved in the warmth of her flesh and blood, it spread through her, and took unshakable hold. And she saw …

She saw the greenish brown waters of a canal slip by the gilded gunwale of her barge.

She saw her hand grip Frank’s hard and felt her knees tremble.

She saw her daughter-in-law kneel before her and hated her for it.

She saw the whitewashed fire door that led to the light through a haze of tears.

She saw the Firebird in all its glory soaring through the blue sky and knew it came at her call.

The visions overwhelmed her, robbing her of sense and will. Distantly, Grace felt herself fall. She felt Frank catch her in his strong arms and cradle her close.

“Oh, Grace,” she heard him say. “What’ve you done to yourself?”

It’s only for a little while
, she tried to tell him.
Only until Bridget comes home
.

Bridget
, said the voice of the ghost she carried.
Come home
.

Chapter Six

Lord Daren watched the Firebird through the eye of his mind. A glorious blaze of fire, it streaked through the pale sky of the Land of Death and Spirit, its tail streaming out behind it to light all the Shifting Lands.

It was coming for Isavalta. Daren could feel that. The Firebird screamed its intent before it. Its anger welled out like blood from an open wound.

He should have run. He knew that. He was but the sliver of a spirit here in the shape of a red-tailed hawk, but he had to make a stand. If the Firebird could be turned, or dissuaded before it reached Isavalta, then all would be safe. If there was a way to touch, a way to try …

But before Daren even moved his will beyond that thought, the bird twisted its long neck, and regarded his hawk’s shape with one burning blue eye.

It did not speak. It did not bother to challenge or warn. It flicked its great wing, and the curtain of flame fell over Daren, all light and color, and bright, blazing pain. Daren screamed with all the strength of his soul, screamed as if he would never stop, and the spell broke, but the pain did not, and he fell, shuddering, onto the stone floor of his chamber.

Chapter Seven

The door to Bridget’s room banged open. She shot up in bed, her heart pounding.

“Mistress …” came Richikha’s startled voice.

“Is she here?” demanded a woman shrilly.

Bridget tossed aside the heavy bedclothes and scrambled from the bed. The stones were cold under her stockinged feet as she hurried around the bed screens.

The room’s single window showed that dawn had just begun to light the sky. Richikha and Prathad, both of them up and dressed, blocked the path of a tall woman whose white hair was piled high on her head. Anger tightened her face, making her cheekbones stand out sharply and darkening her blue eyes.

“Good morning, Mistress Urshila,” said Bridget, coming forward to join her determined, but outmatched maids. “I did not think …”

“Evidently not,” snapped the other woman. “You send for the lord sorcerer, you send for the southerner, but you do not send for your teacher. I can only hope this is misguided courtesy on the part of a student determined to be careful of my age and greying head.”

Bridget accepted the rebuke. Mistress Urshila Daromiladoch Jarohnevosh had been brought to court, recalled actually, specifically to teach Bridget the art of sorcery. She had been one of the court sorcerers in the early days of Medeoan’s reign. She had also been expelled with the others when Valin Kalami came into power as Lord Sorcerer. One of the acts the current emperor and empress had undertaken was to recall all those who still lived and restore to them their titles and positions.

Bridget believed Mistress Urshila to be powerful and learned. She also knew the older woman was of two minds about her assignment. Bridget had balked at the idea of becoming an “apprentice,” and this was clearly not a response Mistress Urshila expected or welcomed. But when Sakra had point-blank refused to teach Bridget, saying that as she was going to live in Isavalta she needed to learn Isavalta’s magics, Bridget was left with little choice. Mistress Urshila herself was under imperial order and had even less choice.

Despite their uneasy relationship, Bridget acknowledged Urshila to be a thorough, if exacting teacher. She had begun their training by insisting Bridget learn the language of Isavalta by rote.

“But I speak perfectly …” Bridget had said.

“You speak the language of Isavalta because of an enchantment,” countered Mistress Urshila. “If that enchantment is undone, then what?”

Which, Bridget had to admit, was not something she had considered.

She tried to be a good student. She knew she had a great deal to learn and she did wish to learn. But she was not a child, and she would not be treated, or taught, like one. Her new teacher, however, seemed determined to do exactly that.

Mistress Urshila sat down in the nearest chair, her back straight as a poker. She gestured impatiently to Richikha, who hurried forward with a cup of the smoky, sweet tea favored by Isavaltans as a morning beverage.

“So,” Urshila said between sips. “What did the
louai’s
queen say to you? Exactly.”

Bridget smoothed down her overfrilled nightdress. She was not going to be given the time to make herself decent, obviously, but it was no good protesting that fact to Mistress Urshila. She took another chair next to the firepit, accepted a cup of tea from Prathad, and told Mistress Urshila of the Vixen and the Phoenix. Bridget was quite sure her teacher had heard all of that from other sources, or she would not have been so outraged. Then, although it tested Bridget to do so, she told Mistress Urshila of the conversation she and Sakra had held afterward.