Send messengers,” Arvid said to Holly. “I want to know how far this has spread. Find out what we’re facing.”
Her father wanted to collect facts, but Ember knew what he would find. Fire had taken Himself away, to force her to come to Him. To be His slave, His—what? If He’d wanted to kill her, she would be dead already, like Osfrid. She began to shake, again, as she had after the fire had killed him.
Ash came up behind her and led her to a chair, sitting her down firmly. He handed her a mug of applejack.
“Drink,” he said, his hand on her shoulder. The human warmth, so mild in comparison to the searing heat of fire, comforted her, and she drank. She stared at the mug in her hands, barely listening as reports began to come in from nearby farms and villages.
She couldn’t go to Him. Over and over, she relived that moment when she had been surrounded by flames. Was that what He wanted? To have her like that forever? Shudders ran through her. She couldn’t do it.
The door banged open and a woman ran in to throw herself at Arvid’s feet.
“My lord, my lord, the fires—” she was gasping, tears of sheer panic in her eyes. “The world has gone mad, my lord!”
Arvid crouched down to lift her to her feet, but Ember could see that he didn’t know what to say. The world had gone mad. The woman’s face reflected her own fear. Without fire, their people were doomed…
Her fault. Was this her fault? If she hadn’t defied Him, let her temper get the better of her, He would not have punished her people like this. Wouldn’t have needed to blackmail her… She shuddered at the thought of going to Him, abasing herself. Of a prison made of flame if she failed. But what else could she do? If that was the only way to get the hearths relit, she had no choice.
“I have to go,” Ember said. “I’ll leave straightaway. I can be back by first snow.”
Arvid stared at her as though she were speaking a foreign language.
“You are not going anywhere,” he said. It was the warlord speaking.
She felt a moment of relief. Her father had forbidden her. It wasn’t her fault; she’d offered, and been refused.
But the woman at Arvid’s side, face still distorted by fear and distress—what could she say to her? When the snow came back, in winter, and this woman died of cold, or had to leave her home and everything she had in order to survive… would “my da told me not to do it” feel like enough excuse then? She wasn’t a child.
Her mother had pulled out the casting stones and sat right down on the floor to cast, as if she’d never been a warlord’s lady, never sat at the glass table with the officers and their wives. Her father was staring as if he’d never seen Martine before.
“Fire Mountain,” she said, looking up from the stones. “In the old stories, that’s His home. The stones say she must go there.”
Arvid spun on her, his face incredulous.
“You can’t seriously mean that!” he said.
Martine spread her hand wide, indicating the stones lying across the square of blue linen she used for casting.
“You’d send our only child out into the wilderness because the stones tell you to?”
Arvid’s voice was oddly flat and Martine sent him a quick look, then stared down at the stones again, her fingers touching them lightly, one by one, as Ember had seen her do so many times.
“Do you want your people to die?” she asked quietly. “Do you want them to be forced onto the roads like Travelers?”
He flinched.
“There must be another way. Some spell that can create fire without—without Him.”
Ash the Prowman stepped forward.
“No,” he said simply. “The Powers are the Powers, and they control their element completely, when they wish to. Not every spark struck catches flame at His command, normally, but He controls each spark if He wishes.” He hesitated and moved to the table, where there was a water jug. “Just as my Lady controls water, no matter where it is.”
He held his hand over the jug. There was a gurgle and the water rose up out of the jug in a straight column. Ember gasped—it was an impossible thing, impossible. Water hung in midair. It brought back the nightmare of Osfrid, screaming in the middle of an impossible column of fire. Cold sweat broke out all over Ember’s body. She swallowed her gorge, forcing herself to get up and walk over to face her father, who watched the water with a gray, expressionless face. The Prowman took his hand away and the water fell back into the jug, a few drops splashing out onto the tabletop.
“You will not light a fire without Him,” the Prowman said. “And He will not relent. Ember must go.”
The woman who had cried at Arvid’s feet timidly put her hand on his arm.
“My lord…”
“Get out!” he snapped. She ran for the kitchen door and a moment later he looked ashamed of himself, and spoke more quietly, to the Prowman, ignoring Martine.
“Fire Mountain is on the border with the Ice King’s people! She’s a child! She can’t—”
“If it weren’t for Fire,” Ember said clearly, “I’d have been a married woman by now and no longer your subject.”
He stared at her, his head lowered a little, like a bull facing enemies.
“You’ll all die, unless you leave this place,” she said. “Unless you go somewhere He hasn’t cursed. Or… unless I bring back a piece of the Fire Mountain, to light the fires again.”
“You’re not old enough to go out on the Roads…” he protested.
“I was four years younger, the first time I did,” Martine said quietly, standing up, her stones tucked neatly back into her belt.
“In the south!”
Her father was right. There was a world of difference between the mild, gentle southlands and their fierce northern country. But she had no choice.
“I’m not planning on going alone,” she said.
Ash and Cedar stood there like two sides of a gatepost, although Ash was a head taller and much broader across the shoulders. But both of them were solid. Dependable. Capable.
“You heard what Fire said. We’ll take her,” Ash stated.
Martine turned to Elva, looking uncertain.
“Sweetheart? Did the gods tell you anything else?”
Slowly, Elva came forward. She placed a hand on Ash’s cheek, the other hand on Cedar’s.
“They told me,” she said in a voice full of grief, “that I must send my sons.”
The brothers shared a look of satisfaction, but Elva’s head drooped, and they crowded around her, arms around her shoulders, trying to reassure her.
Ember went to her father and took his hand, as she had when she was a small girl. “The gods and the stones both say I must go,” she said.
Arvid hesitated, then turned with relief as Holly came back into the room.
“Holly has some old blood, don’t you?”
Looking puzzled, Holly nodded. “My grandam was a Traveler,” she confirmed.
“So Holly will lead you,” he said. “A full squad, all with old blood.” He looked severely at Ember. “And no arguments.”
“Not from me,” she said. He looked at the boys, and Ash shrugged. “The more, the safer,” he said.
“Maps,” Martine said. “Do we have detailed maps of the mountains?”
“If we don’t,” Arvid said, “I’ve been paying my scouts too much for too long.”
As they found the maps, as they hurriedly packed whatever food they could find that didn’t need cooking, as they unearthed the heaviest winter gear from its summer storage in the loft, as they strapped snowshoes and tent frames to the pack horses, reports came in from across the domain. No fires anywhere, with small, odd exceptions: a child’s play fire, a branch of candles which had been used in a bedroom while a couple made love, another wedding bonfire in a distant village, a lamp burning in the sickroom of a dying Traveler woman.
But none of these would share their flame.