Wildfire (10 page)

 

  
Forgefire, hearthfire, wildfire, breathing out noisy winds turbid with smoke. Their light pulsed and made shadows leap. I could only reckon the true size of these fires—greater than any Midsummer bonfire I’d ever seen—by the tiny figures gathered at the distant altar, King Thyrse and the queenmother, rhapsodists and Auspices and onlookers. The flames towered above them, as the statues above the flames.

 

  
We approached the crowd before the altar. Already the ram had been opened, and Auspices searched his liver, bellows, and heart for omens. The cow waited patiently, obedient to the man who held her halter, whereas the wild hart lay bound, trembling, with his neck outstretched and his round dark eye rolling. I’d never been so close to the queenmother; the hem of her crimson and white gown was marked by scarlet drops of blood. The charnel smell was sweetened by burning candlebark.

 

  
I knelt before the statue of the Smith and looked up, and the face that looked down was not as I would have imagined him, had I dared imagine: a flattened nose, beard squared off like a spade, twisted ringlets rising from his scalp like flames. No matter, the sculptor had called on the Smith and the avatar had answered, entering the bronze in its passage through fire. I touched my forehead to the floor. I’d been between the Smith’s hammer and anvil once, when I ate the poisonous berries of the firethorn tree in the Kingswood; he’d tempered me and let me live. In his honor I’d taken my
new name. I heard his hammer now, the thudding between my ears that drowned out Sire Rodela’s tiny whine. To do the Smith reverence I cast myself down, my face against the stone tiles, my arms over my head.

 

  
I’d come here to fulfill my small promise, the tribute of myrrh, and to give thanks for my life, which for a third time the god had spared instead of taking. Above all I’d come to plead for healing. Now that I was before Ardor in its temple, prayers deserted me. These things I’d carried here—the offering, my gratitude and hope—were unworthy. Ardor would know that my gratitude was hollow, the heart of it all eaten away by a worm of resentment that the god had robbed and afflicted me.

 

  
Galan knelt and spoke to me, and all I heard were unintelligible noises. I crawled toward Wildfire. The rim of the bowl was above our heads, and the flames higher still, tinged with green, giving off a plume of black and pungent smoke. I prostrated myself again. The heat was searing, a reminder that to come too close to the god was to be consumed. My cheek was pressed against the tiles and I couldn’t raise my head, for there was a great weight on me, the god treading on my back and skull, treading me down. I was emptied of everything but the hammerfall and din of pain, everything but the question. What did Ardor want of me, why had the Smith saved my life so that I could be broken by Wildfire? Was I caught between cross purposes?

 

  
But no, surely there could be no contradiction; the three avatars were but forms Ardor took to show itself to us. All fires partake of the one fire. This is a mystery Auspices ponder; it was never for me to try to comprehend. And what use was it to question the god’s purposes, when my mind—small, narrow, no longer whole—could not encompass the answers?

 

  
And yet understanding seemed so near, so imminent. Ardor’s presence was a word on the tip of my tongue, about to be spoken. I felt that if I could only speak that word, I might give voice to the god’s utterances, and in the very act of speaking, come to understand. And I trembled and longed for this; I relinquished myself to the god to become an echo for revelations. But thought and word, word and tongue were severed, and I was baffled when I tried to speak.

 

  
Yet for a moment I saw. All fires partake of the one fire. I too partook of that fire, it burned in each living being; it was the quick that divided the quick from the dead. I saw my hearthfire, my heartfire, a small tongue of flame wavering and bowing before the winds of happenstance. And when it flickered out, still it would be in the one fire burning. I’d thought the flame belonged to me, but it was only lent.

 

  
The weight lifted, the presence withdrew, and I wept. I’d sought mercy and found only the inexorable god.
I do as I will.

 
  

 

  
I opened my eyes on a glittering orange haze, and found I could raise my head. Strong hands lifted me to my feet. Sire Galan put his arm around my waist to steady me. I had lain a long time unknowing before the god. The cow and hart had been sacrificed, and their entrails examined; the king and queenmother had left the temple.

 

  
Now that the burden was lifted and the din silenced, memory was hardening around the shape of that moment in which I’d felt the god’s presence. The memory was an empty shell; the moment itself couldn’t be contained. What was beyond words proved also to be beyond remembrance. Yet I still felt, within the bony shelter of my ribs, a small flame burning.

 

  
Two Auspices of Wildfire stood before us. They had long hair and wore dirty rags and they stank, for hierophants of Wildfire are forbidden to wash. One was an old man and the other a young woman, yet they looked alike.

 

  
The priestess thrust a torch toward my face and I shied away. She examined my cheek. “This is your servant? She’s been called to serve another now.”

 

  
The old priest said, “Why else did you bring her, if not to dedicate her to the temple?”

 

  
Was this what the god had meant, treading me down? That I should be a temple drudge? I shook my head and opened my mouth, but I was still speechless, and the great
no
inside couldn’t get out. Galan tightened his arm around me. He’d gambled, taking me to a stronghold of Ardor, but he hadn’t reckoned on this hazard when he’d rolled the bones. He kept his voice light, as he sometimes did when he was at his most dangerous. “She follows me to war. Haven’t you heard? Wildfire runs with us.”

 

  
Sire Edecon laughed, a yap with no humor in it, loud enough to remind the priests that Sire Galan wasn’t alone.

 

  
The Auspices glanced at each other. In the darkness beyond the colonnades I could see black slits in the walls, windows to darker corridors beyond. I heard murmuring: A crowd pressed to those windows, gazing in. Mudfolk barred from the heart of the sanctuary.

 

  
The priest said, “There are signs here. She must be examined.”

 

  
“Alone,” said the priestess.

 

  
Galan said, “We’ll go now,” and pulled me back. I was afraid of the Auspices, so I went with him. But my fists were clenched. Galan had given a wealth of gold to the god, but he’d been stingy with his respect. He’d visited the temple to taunt his enemies, and used the mark on my face for his excuse. Did he think the mark meant nothing? I wished to know the meaning of the omen, even if he didn’t care to. I’d been foolish enough to think the god might speak to me directly, and it was no wonder I’d been rebuked.
Ardor spoke through its Auspices. It was their duty to interpret omens, and it might be their privilege to heal as well, if the god permitted it.

 

  
We weren’t many paces away before I stopped Galan, and opened my hand to show him the lumps of myrrh, and my palm sticky with the amber resin. And words came at last, all jumbled in the rush. I said, “Wait, see? I must go back, I have this cicatrice, scarifice to make. Because I want to wonderstand, to be…heeded, readed. Maybe the…Aspects…the Auspicates of the one who lightnings, maybe they can help, maybe they can anneal me.” I could see Galan was reluctant. I touched his sleeve. “You will come if they try to inkeep me?”

 

  
“Don’t be long,” he said.

 
  

 

  
Behind the great bowl of flames was a low doorway. Wildfire’s Auspices stooped to enter, and I followed them into a small room. Daylight through a high window showed gray smoke meandering through the air, a clutter of oddments on a table: a rind of cheese, a clay cup holding a puddle of blue ink, a bone flute.

 

  
The priestess poured oil into a bronze basin on a tall tripod, and set the oil alight. It blazed up, bright even in the sunlight. I showed her the myrrh and she nodded, consenting to the sacrifice. It gave off a sweet smell as it burned. She sprinkled salts on the fire and green flames wavered among the orange ones, sending up black smoke to twine with the gray. I sat where she bade me, and the priest sat knee to knee with me. He had a bony face with narrow eyes, and his gray beard was long and waggled as he talked. He leaned forward and rubbed the mark on my left cheek with his thumb. “Were you struck yesterday?”

 

  
I tried to put in order my memories of morning and night and day and night and afternoon. But truly I couldn’t tell. “I think—one daze behither—be behint that. Or thrice. Have you seen such a mar afore? What is it? Is it some kind of a burnt…brunt—a a…brand, which I must wear forever?”

 

  
“These signs fade quickly; it’s well you came here when you did. Were you otherwise burned? Wounded?” He had a gentle voice.

 

  
“Some little…sparks, here and there, that’s all. But my tent, my…top hurts, such a terrible terrible hardache. And you can hear how—when…Willfire stroked me down, how it clevered, it cleaved my…prong from my taughts.” I put my two forefingers together to show how tongue and sense had once been yoked like a pair of oxen, and now they were bullish, pulling apart. “So I cannot speak my find. I have offered many plaints, but the god didn’t heel me, so I wondered, I hoped you could ask…Attar to repent…relent.”

 

  
He poured a few drops of water from a flask into the cup of drying ink and stirred it with his brush. “Sit still.”

 

  
He began at the center of the lightning mark on my left cheek, drawing the wet brush lightly across my skin. I closed my eyes when he painted over my eyelid, and I kept them closed as he followed the branching bolts to every end, pulling aside my headcloth to lay bare the path through the hairs of my scalp, and down my neck to the slope of my shoulder. Ink cooled on my skin in the wake of his brush. He hummed as he painted, breath and hum and breath, and I followed the thin thread of his song inward, to the place where I was snarled and cut. The path was too tangled and I lost my way, but something loosened in me that had been tightly knotted, something opened that had been closed.

 

  
I returned to the outward reaches of myself and opened my eyes. The priest rested his brush on the lip of the cup. I straightened my headcloth and made a gesture of thanks, hand over my heart. The headache was gone. But I knew, even before I opened my mouth and found words as unbiddable as ever: the priest had soothed me, but he hadn’t cured me.

 

  
“I am gratiful,” I said. “But…but is there aught…naught you can do to heal my breach?”

 

  
“You speak as Wildfire wills—the better to speak its will.”

 

  
“But I speak…gabbledash!”

 

  
“Would you expect Wildfire to speak so that anyone could understand?”

 

  
The priestess sat at the table with her own brush, looking at my face and copying the mark into a book of pleated, sized linen. I pointed to the book, saying, “What is the meeting of this skin, this…scare that Illfire faced on me? Can you tell me that?”

 

  
The old priest said, “You’ve been called to serve Ardor. To serve in the temple.”

 

  
I stood up, shaking my head. That wasn’t what the sign meant, he couldn’t mean that.

 

  
“I think you’ll find it painful to refuse the god.”

 

  
“You can’t…you can’t—I go where I’m found, I’m found to go. You can’t halter…halt me.”

 

  
The priest said, “Do you think we’re trying to take you captive? Not so. But stay awhile. We have questions.”

 

  
I sat down again and the priest leaned toward me, his face intent, expectant. His head was in front of the shallow basin of burning oil and there were flames rising behind him; he seemed to wear them like a crown. “What do you see? Have you
seen
anything?”

 

  
“I see what anywhom would see. I see you.”

 

  
“Do you see anything in the fire?”

 

  
“You mean the crowd, the crown of fire?”

 

  
Smoke or shadows flickered and rose around the priest’s head, silhouetted against the flames, and I recognized the dark tinge of fear. Surely he was not afraid of me, but there was no doubt he was afraid.

 

  
“You see a crown? Who wears it? Queenmother Caelum or King Corvus?”

 

  
“Who is that, King Cravas? Oh, the prize—you must mean the prize, the the…prince.” So that was the queenmother’s son, the name I’d forgotten: Prince Corvus. They called him king here—I hadn’t realized.

 

  
The priestess wrote something down on a folded page of her book, next to the lightning mark.

 

  
The Auspex straightened up, moving out of the light, and said, “A crown of fire, yes. But who wears it?”

 

  
It was laughable that they’d ask me, as if I possessed secret knowledge. Laughable, yet I couldn’t laugh at them. The Auspices and their clan were trapped between warring ambitions, and feared to err by choosing the losing side. I pointed to the flames rollicking around the edge of the bowl. “There is no sanctity for you, no no safety, no matter which sight you choose, the queenmalice or her son. Because the the…thing that burns—no, no, the very burning itself, the…pyre…fire, it glees, it is all gleeful, it lives to burn. It doesn’t mean malefice by it, but neverthenaught it sets all ablame, you see? Whoever wears it will be spurned.”

 

  
“Yes, but who wears it? What else did you see?”

 

  
“I saw a shadow in the crow, the…crown. A dread.”

 

  
“Crow. She said the crow, King Corvus.” The priest seized on this stray fragment of a word, made it whole. I looked at what the priestess was writing, and the godsigns, upside down, made no more sense than I did.

 

  
I shook my head in vexation. “No, no! Don’t you hear me muttering, nattering? Utter natter. This is an end.”