The Firebrand Legacy (18 page)

Carine had never been to an opera. Her family
had never been able to afford the tickets of any shows that came to
Esten on tour. Tonight, the stage was alight with strong emotions,
face paint, and beautiful floral costumes.

Carine barely noticed the time as the show
flew by, but in the middle of the second act, the narrators began
to sing of a daffodil who, mistaking a moth for a butterfly, fell
in love with it. Ansa’s costume was similar to normal faun attire.
Her shirt was full of pockets of soil, but only one flower bloomed:
a daffodil, right in front of her heart. Her long blonde hair was
like a waterfall.

The narrator sang as Ansa danced:

One day there was a daffodil

Bending softly as the sun rolled by

She felt a gentle patter on her face

It was the patter of a butterfly!

“There she is,” Giles observed.

“I know.” Carine watched, looking for clues
in the careful, flowing way that Ansa carried herself. The moth
character danced beautifully around the daffodil.

But then the day turned to night

And the butterfly took flight

Climbing upwards toward the fiery light

Unaware of its killer bite.

The lighting changed as stagehands puffed out
the illuminating lanterns. Only one remained lit. It was central
stage, and the moth headed right for it.

So screamed the crying daffodil

Who’d seen before how torches kill...

On stage, Ansa cried. She snapped herself
from her roots and chased after the moth on the wind, singing,

“
You don’t know, Butterfly?

Can’t you see that you’re going to die?

I’ve been watching you from the ground

And you haven’t seen me cry...”

“Does Ansa have any other scenes after this?”
Carine whispered to Giles.

He leaned over. “No, the daffodil dies at
this part of the show.”

David, eyes fixed on the stage, stifled a
yawn. It was surprising how much that made him look like
Marcel.

“Where will Ansa go then? We need to talk to
her.”

“I don’t know, but if we wait, we will miss
her. Performers never meet the audience in Verdiford. It is said to
break the fourth wall.”

“
For the sake of your pretty wings

And the sweet melodies you sing

And for the daisies that you might land
on

Please come down and carry on.”

“We have to catch Ansa right when she goes
off stage.”

David raised both brows. “Are you crazy,
Carine? Here, storytelling is sacred. We can’t go backstage. We’re
guests.”

“This may be our only chance to find out
about Firebrand, to find out if the sorcerer following us has any
weaknesses at all.”

To the annoyance of the fauns behind them,
they stood. Carine snaked her way around the audience to the side
curtains. The orchestral music pounded in their ears as they
approached.

“
I’ve been uprooted so I might fly
here

And now I know I don’t have long,

So I’m begging you, dear butterfly,

Come down and carry on.”

“Hurry,” Giles said, “that’s the death
scene.”

Carine wound around the orchestra and tucked
through the flower curtain as her heart beat.

“Hey! What are you doing back here?” growled
the man who’d played the crow. He was loitering by the side
curtains eating what looked like a sandwich. On stage, Ansa
crumpled.

“Excuse us,” said Giles, pushing past the
crow. “We are royalty.”

Carine stumbled behind the willow branch that
Ansa had passed.

Inside, the tree was a dressing room. Elegant
costumes hung from hangers on branches close to the trunk. At the
base of the trunk was a desk with a stool for sitting. White and
blue paint pooled in small containers next to a lantern that
flickered at the base of a mirror.

“Ansa!” Carine called out.

The faun turned, surprised for the hint of a
second. She looked Carine over. “The princes of Navafort,” Ansa
said matter-of-factly, assessing them. Her voice was peaceful. “To
what do I owe the pleasure?”

Carine bowed, not quite knowing why.

Ansa bowed back to Carine, just as the crow
bumbled in behind them.

“Are these people bothering you?”

She shook her head serenely. Bells seemed to
jingle. “They are my guests.”

The crow grunted and ducked away.

“You must be Prince David, the middle child.
And you, Prince Giles, the youngest.” They nodded, in turn, but
Giles didn’t look too happy being reminded of his birth order,
grumbling something about only six minutes. “But you, I don’t
know.”

“Carine Shoemaker of North Esten,” she said,
and then spit out her question. “What do you know about
Firebrand?”

“Quite a lot.”

“Good, because his imitator – not a centaur,
but a man – is following us. He’s already killed our friend, and we
need to know how to fight him.”

“I see.” She clasped her ring-covered,
long-fingered hands. “The legends of Wyre must not be well known in
Navafort, nor here either.”

“But do you know—?”

Ansa waved the question away. “Yes, yes. I
know the tale.” She sat and crossed one of her hairy legs over the
other. “Firebrand was a doctoral student in Wyre before the fall.
He had great ambition—too great, perhaps. For reasons
unknown—though I suspect he was frustrated by his failed
experiments—he presented his university false information and
invented sources in his final thesis. The university dismissed him,
but he was determined to make a name for himself.

“Firebrand traveled north, recruiting a young
human apprentice on his way. His goal was to study dragons, so he
went to the one spot in this realm where a dragon can reliably be
found.”

“Luzhiv’s cave,” David said, his eyes
wide.

Ansa nodded. “For more than a year, Firebrand
took detailed notes and made meticulous drawings in a journal. When
folk offered their hearts to Luzhiv, Firebrand watched from a
precarious distance and recorded everything. When others ran to the
cave to set their purses or swords around Luzhiv in hopes of
enchantment, Firebrand watched, noting all.”

“Dragon’s bane,” David whispered. “Did he
make all of these notes in pen and ink?”

Ansa nodded.

“I have some of his drawings in my room. They
must be his, but I never knew,” David said, nearly breathless.

“Could very well be,” Ansa said. “One of
Navafort’s kings collected part of the Firebrand collection in a
political trade many years ago.”

“A centaur in Midway told us Firebrand had
magic.”

“Magic…” She smiled to herself. “Do all of
you call the mysterious powers by that name?”

“We know the correct terms—pronunciation and
mispronunciation,” Giles said.

“Yes, Manakor is too deep a language to be
explained by throat, tongue, lips, and mouth. A word in Manakor
encompasses all that has been and all that is called to be. Only
dragons have the ability to speak this language.”

“The Gift of Calling,” Carine said.

Ansa nodded yet again. “The Heartless Ones,
on the other hand, trade for their power, and they can only speak
Manakor
Luzhivam
, which means,
in the name of
Luzhiv
.”

“Firebrand doesn’t speak Manakor
Luzhivam
, does he?” David asked.

“No, he learned a new way to gain the power,
and quite by accident. While Firebrand studied Luzhiv, the dragon
flew off and fought the rose dragon.”

“That was Luzhiv’s most recent attack before
Kavariel.”

“That’s right, Prince David. Luzhiv was
bleeding when he returned, and some of his blood sprinkled the
snow. Firebrand, for the sake of knowledge, tasted the blood. He
recorded his observations. That is the last entry he ever
made.”

“Riolo said Firebrand destroyed his home
city,” Carine said.

“He did. But we know about it because his
apprentice, Jon, wrote down what happened afterward: that the
dragon’s blood gave the Firebrand the Gift of Calling.”

“He could pronounce,” Giles said.

“No”—Ansa raised her finger—“only almost.
Nine of the ten dragons, including your Kavariel, pronounce. They
open their mouths and the Etherrealm speaks. Unlike them, Firebrand
could only mispronounce, but his Manakor was so close to the true
word that it confused nature. In his studies, Firebrand had learned
sufficient Manakor vocabulary to make use of his power. According
to Jon, the power poisoned him.

“I believe the task of dragons, given them by
the higher realm, is to remind creation of its name, to call
everything to order and beauty, affording this realm a glimpse of
the Etherrealm’s glory.”

Carine’s heart pounded. A month ago, this all
would have been terrifying. It still was in a way, but now it also
sounded true—even beautiful.

“When a dragon calls a name, he amplifies the
call from the Etherrealm. In a sense, dragons remind nature what
it’s for.”

“Except for Luzhiv,” added Giles.

Ansa nodded, pleasing the young prince.
“Luzhiv is the disobedient dragon. He chooses to avoid the
Etherrealm, and he spreads his disobedience and power through the
Heartless Ones. Luzhiv has the power to pronounce and to purely
remind nature, but he doesn’t do so. Instead, he perverts his words
with his own will and plans. The mispronunciation is subtle.

“Nature mistakes his call for the true call
and responds obediently. Firebrand followed his lead. Instead of
submitting his will to the Etherrealm, Firebrand imposed his own
ideas on the world. The power proved addicting.

“Firebrand returned to his home city, but the
university refused his new work, claiming his name had been
corrupted by previous cheating. Firebrand destroyed the city. His
apprentice, mortified, tried to convince Firebrand to stop
mispronouncing. It annoyed the scholar, who insisted that
everything was done in the name of science, and that he knew what
he was doing.

“One day, Firebrand grew so tired of Jon’s
incessant nagging that he poisoned Jon’s drink with his own blood,
which was filled with the power of dragon blood. As soon as Jon
drank it, he unintentionally received the Gift of Calling too.
Firebrand gloated, but Jon swore never to mispronounce the way that
Firebrand did. This upset Firebrand, who had thought he would win
Jon over.

“Firebrand attacked him. He started with
stones and vines. He shouted for Jon to defend himself. He did not.
At least, not by speaking Manakor; instead, the apprentice tore out
of the vines that wrapped around his neck. He sheltered himself
behind rocks as shields. He dug into his bag and pulled out a
pen.”

Carine’s heart pounded, but David asked the
question. “What did he do with the pen?”

Ansa smiled. “Words have power. Jon had been
studying his master’s work, so he could read and write the language
of the Etherrealm. He wrote the word
order
on a nearby leaf,
but his activity only made Firebrand angrier.

“Firebrand uprooted and raised a tree to
launch at the apprentice. Then, Jon did a brilliant thing. He
pronounced. I’ll tell you, he did not mispronounce. He did not
impose a single drop of his will on that word. He submitted his
will to that of the Etherrealm, and instead of verbally calling
nature to order, which would risk mispronunciation, he relied
completely on the Manakor written on the leaf.

“He touched the word. Jon called nature back
to the splendor that was intended for it, just as nine of the
dragons do. They say that Firebrand could not compete. Even though
he yelled and yelled his butchered Manakor to launch the uprooted
tree, nature heard the true call to order over Firebrand’s noise.
The tree did as trees should do. Instead of flying across the sky,
it simply returned to earth. It fell, crushing Firebrand beneath
it.

“Jon wrote of the tragedy. He did call it a
tragedy, for even though he hated the poison of the power, he
writes that he loved Firebrand like a father. That is where your
kingdom’s wishstone trinkets originate, actually. They come from
centaur country, from this old legend, but by now, Navafort has
adopted the tradition as its own and reduced it to mere
superstition.”

“What happened to Jon?” asked Carine.

“He disappeared. No one ever met him. We know
him only through his records. The journal itself was found in
southern Padliot decades ago. I always thought we would hear from
him eventually, that he would turn out rotten like Firebrand had.
But he never did.”

Carine’s face felt cold. A slew of details
swirled around her head, feeling as related and conflicting as
opposite poles on a magnet. Her granddad had the same name as
Firebrand’s apprentice and his book was found in the same region
where her granddad lived. It couldn’t be that Firebrand and her
granddad had anything to do with each other. Could it?

Ansa looked at Carine. “Are you ill?

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“Come on,” David said, watching her with
concern. He placed his hand on the small of her back. “Let’s go
back to our rooms.”

Carine held out her hand. “Wait. Firebrand is
a centaur, and he’s dead, so he can’t be the one that attacked us.
But there’s still the question of his apprentice. How old is he?
How long ago was this?”

Ansa thought. “Jon would be in his seventies
now, if he’s alive.”

“Then the sorcerer can’t be Jon either,”
David said. “He moves too fast to be that old. He looks and sounds
younger.”

It was difficult to imagine Carine’s
developing theory as reality. It would have been possible for
Granddad to be Firebrand’s apprentice. Her granddad had died from a
heart attack when she was younger, but if he hadn’t, he would be in
his seventies now, like Ansa said. He also had an abhorrence of
magic that matched the apprentice’s philosophy, which he had passed
down to his son Didda. Carine thought back to the sorcerer; he
smelled like home and wore leather gloves like Didda.