“You sound like someone who loves his home very much,” she said.
“I thank you in any case for listening to all of that. My mind has been so tied up with other matters of late.”
He must, Estora thought, think of the situation in D’I-vary Province.
She found some pleasure in that he had spoken so of his home to her. She wondered if he would tell more of what troubled him. You will one day marry a man of rank and influence, her mother once told her, a leader of others. He will need someone who he can talk to. You must learn to listen, and to listen earnestly. And Estora had watched her mother do just that over the years, ever-so-gently guiding her father into conversation and revealing exactly what weighed on his soul.
The king did not speak further of what troubled him, and she chose not to follow her mother’s advice or pry. After all, she did not know him as a wife knew a husband, at least not yet, and she dared not attempt such a role.
For all her father’s wishes, Estora wondered if the king would accede to the proposal of marriage. He had held off this long, and though an alliance with Coutre Province made all the political sense in the world, he was also known for being unpredictable.
It strengthened her suspicion that someone else had caught the king’s fancy—no, not the rumors going around about a mistress in Hillander, but someone closer by, or at least close enough to retain his interest. It was either a well guarded secret affair, or totally unrequited. Otherwise, court gossip would have revealed the source of his interest long ago.
The notion intrigued her, and though she was an excellent observer, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly who it was that had captured his heart.
She decided she liked King Zachary very much if he was the sort of man who chose not to marry immediately out of political expediency, and despite the consequences, chose to listen to his heart. Estora decided she envied whoever that other woman was, and wondered if the king himself realized his heart was stolen.
She smiled.
Just then, dimly, faintly, the bell down in Sacor City struck out the hour.
Mara’s pounding heart stoked the fire within her and pressed it outward. She wore fire like her own skin, and its burning brought joy amid her fear. She delved deep inside for that vast, untouched reservoir of power, and drew it forth.
She molded a ball of flame in her hands. It pulsed like a heart bloated with blood. It pulsed in sync with her own heart.
She threw the ball of fire. It exploded on the wraith’s chest. To Mara’s dismay, the wraith absorbed the fire into itself, extinguishing it. The fire within her dampened, a great cold seeping through her veins.
The wraith drew his sword. The blade gleamed a sickly green.
“We have taken from those such as you before.” The wraith’s voice slithered through every crack and fissure of the old wooden building. “See it.”
The blade glimmered with images. It had taken many lives. It had been forged with the screaming souls of thousands; thousands who fled from their villages before the dark ones and their minions, only to be struck down, innocents and warriors alike.
One was singled out from thousands, a man—a Green Rider in ancient garb—his fire bled from him by wraiths who placed their hands on him. The Rider screamed.
Mara’s scream echoed his. Her brooch cried out in an agonized wail within her. Memory.
Only the fire blazing between them kept the wraith from advancing on her. It crackled as it fingered Karigan’s bed. The straw mattress exploded into flame.
Mara perspired not from her own inner fire, but from the heat of the ordinary fire. Her limbs had gone cold.
“We have taken many such as you.” The wraith’s voice was not boastful or angry. It was dead, toneless.
Mara backed away from the fire trying to recall her own inner fire. Moonstone crystals blazed on the table beside her.
“We seek,” the wraith said, “the Galadheon.”
Ancient enemy. The thought came unbidden to Mara. These creatures had destroyed too many lives. Not just lives, but souls. Anger heated her blood once again.
She coughed on the suffocating smoke that filled Karigan’s room.
“You will tell us,” the wraith said.
The flare of the moonstone crystals gave Mara hope. She scooped them into her hand. In her other hand, the one with the missing fingers, a new ball of fire formed. She flung it not at the wraith, but behind it.
White-gold flame splashed against the doorframe. The fire fed hungrily on the old wood. She threw a second orb through the doorway into the corridor beyond, cutting off the wraith’s escape. She might not be able to harm it directly with her powers, but the fire that burned around it appeared to be another thing. She heard its hiss above the hiss of flame.
The wraith tried to advance, but was stopped by the fire between them. It turned this way and that, seeking escape, its cloak swirling.
Mara threw more orbs of fire at the walls. It consumed Karigan’s books; sped across the rafters. The old barracks building groaned as though mortally wounded.
The wraith stuck its hands through flame reaching for Mara. In one last desperate measure, she flung the moonstone crystals at it. They cascaded through the flame, glittering and beautiful, a shower of light and color. Then they vanished behind the veil of flame.
The wraith wailed; a wail like the shrieking of a thousand souls. It was echoed by another outside.
The wraith’s hands withdrew into flame and burned.
Mara choked on smoke so dense she could no longer make out her surroundings. She smelled burning hair, burning flesh, and realized it was her own. Her inner fire could not protect her from the outer.