Page 5 of Among the Burning Flowers (The Roots of Chaos #3)

KINGDOM OF YSCALIN

CE 1003

When Marosa was a child, many of her relatives had lived in Cárscaro. And then the lava had arrived, and Princess Viterica, her paternal aunt, had claimed the House of Vetalda should not ignore the omen. If Mount Fruma erupted, it would kill them all, ending their dynasty in a day.

King Sigoso had disagreed. You have no faith in the Saint, he had told his sister. The Knight of Courage spits on you, Viterica.

Impervious to even the holiest expectorate, Viterica had taken her children north, but often wrote to Marosa, asking her to visit. Over the years, those invitations had become a comfort, even if Marosa had no choice but to decline.

Her other relatives had gone to their own castles, mostly in the Groneyso Valley. Now she and her father were the last two in Cárscaro, and never did she feel more tense than when he called her to his side.

Ermendo escorted her to the royal apartments, which occupied the highest floors of the Palace of Salvation. She kept her hands clasped at her waist. They no longer shook when her father called, for she knew how to survive him. All she had to do was play the clay-brained fool.

King Sigoso was hard at work in his Privy Chamber. His thick chestnut hair was shot with grey, as was his beard, which tapered to a point under his chin. A ruby pear hung from his livery collar.

As a young man, he had been known for his sharp wit, studious nature, and devotion to the Six Virtues. Later, he was praised for emulating the Saint by marrying a Southern convert.

A convert who had gone on to betray him.

Now he almost never smiled; his ring finger was unadorned. Marosa often wondered why he had never found another consort. The Arch Sanctarian would have allowed it.

Ermendo closed the door behind Marosa. She knew better than to wait for acknowledgement.

‘Your Majesty,’ she said with a curtsey.

‘Marosa.’

King Sigoso did not look up from his writing. He rarely looked at Marosa at all, for he would see his faithless queen. The resemblance was strong – Marosa had the same curved nose and lofty cheekbones, the same rich black hair – but her eyes were the proof that she was trueborn.

‘Your uncle has written to me,’ he informed her.

‘Do you speak of Lord Ussindo, Father?’

‘Your Southern uncle, Marosa. That shameless unbeliever who calls himself the King of Kings.’

That was unusual. To her knowledge, King Jantar had not written to her father in nine years.

‘I see,’ she said, feigning cool disinterest. ‘What does he want?’

‘His letter pertains to your mother.’

Her chest tightened.

‘Jantar does not believe his beloved sister died by her own hand. He seems to think I have her chained in my dungeons,’ her father said. ‘What use she would be to me down there, I have no idea, but the fool has spent nearly a decade in denial. Rather than accept what happened, he blames me for her choices. To that end, he also demands evidence of your wellbeing.’

She forced herself to feel nothing, think nothing, reveal nothing.

‘Such intemperance is insulting. Only an evildoer could imagine such things,’ she said. ‘What could have moved him to make such wild accusations now, so many years after the fact?’

‘I would not know. The mind of a heretic is a strange and twisted place.’ King Sigoso spared her an impassive glance. ‘You will answer his letter. You will assure him of your personal safety and convince him, in as many words, to cease his raving and leave Yscalin well alone, or I will send my entire army to fight him back. Do you understand, Marosa?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Good.’ He dipped his quill and continued writing. ‘How is your betrothed?’

He knew very well. Every messenger dove that came to the palace was trained to fly to a bartizan near his quarters, where the Secretary of State would read the letters they carried.

‘Prince Aubrecht seems well,’ Marosa said, ‘though when last he wrote, he told me that Clan Vatten has been provoking the House of Lievelyn. He suspects they still want Mentendon back.’

Let him see that she had nothing to hide. Let him think that she did not mind him reading her letters, or had failed to realise he was doing it.

‘That is one of the reasons I made this betrothal,’ King Sigoso said. ‘The House of Lievelyn is young and intemperate. You will ensure they keep peace with the Hróthi. That none of this old grudge touches Yscalin.’

Yscalin had vocally opposed the Mentish Defiance, which had won the Ments their independence from Hróth. Marosa knew it would take some time for her Mentish subjects to trust her. That meant ensuring that the Hróthi did not try to claim back the land they had lost.

‘Of course.’ Marosa paused, realising. ‘Is … a time for our marriage decided, then?’

‘Yes. You will marry Prince Aubrecht on the first new moon in autumn. Preparations are underway as we speak. A wedding to demonstrate our prosperity.’

The tidings set her heart alight. The letter from Queen Sabran really must have impelled him to set the arrangements in stone.

At last, she knew when she would leave.

‘I am yours to command,’ she said, careful not to show her relief. ‘Where will it be held?’

‘The Great Sanctuary of Ortégardes. It is the oldest and grandest in Yscalin, befitting its Donmata.’ He returned his quill to its stand. ‘After the marriage, you will join Prince Aubrecht on progress in Mentendon. The Lievelyns intend to send you to eleven cities.’

‘I will endeavour to be a credit to Yscalin.’

‘I do hope so.’

In one movement, her father rose from his desk. She held still when he took her by the chin.

‘The Red Prince,’ he said, ‘is useful to us. But you are not a Ment. Once you are with child, you will return here, so I can ensure that you raise a virtuous heir for Yscalin. Your firstborn will not be tainted by a realm that trades with the wyrm lovers of the East.’ His grip tightened a little, nails pressing into her skin. ‘You won’t disappoint me, will you, Marosa?’

‘No, Father.’

‘And you won’t try to run away, like your mother?’

‘I am heir to this kingdom. I would never abandon it.’

‘Good.’

Marosa stared back at him, refusing to blink. Let him see his own eyes, the eyes of Oderica.

‘Write to your uncle. Give the letter to Lord Gastaldo by tomorrow eve,’ her father said, breaking the silent battle of wills. ‘And if you see Lord Wilstan Fynch, tell him to leave me in peace.’

****

She dreamed that night, as she often did, of her mother being hauled away.

Some Ersyris thought that roses soothed an unquiet dream. Queen Sahar had grown them on the terrace and stitched their petals into satin pouches for Marosa, tucking them under her pillow before she went to bed.

Now there were no roses, and so the nightmares came.

Marosa, wake up. A whisper in her ear, sharpened by dread. Listen to me. You must be very quiet.

What is it, Mother?

We are going to your uncle in Rauca. I will explain once we are safe.

She was sixteen again, in her old bedchamber, and her mother and Denarva were braiding her long hair into a cap, refusing to answer her questions, faces pinched in the dim light. Soon they all wore linen smocks and aprons, like the launderess, and carried heavy cloaks and packs disguised under bedsheets.

Now they were stealing through the palace with Denarva uq-Bardant, the Ersyri handmaiden, and they could only risk one candle, so Marosa could hardly see where they were going. Her mother kept a firm hold of her, and they had to be quick, there was no time to lose—

And there were the guards, waiting for them.

Marosa snapped awake, soaked in sweat, Priessa fast asleep beside her. Slowly, she sat up and drank from the cup of sleepwater by her bed.

It had been nine years, but the memories were as sharp as ever. Shaking the locked doors of her room, screaming for an explanation. She had no idea why they had been sneaking through their own home in the dead of night, or why her mother had believed that none of them were safe. After three days of fear, a guard had slipped a note under her door, written in Ersyri.

I did it to protect you. Do not anger or defy your father. If he asks you to deny me, obey him, but know that you are my world and my heart. Stand firm, like a desert rose, and you will yet be queen. My dreams for you could sow the whole of Edin with undying roses.

Marosa still had that faded note, tucked into the alcove where she kept the pendant. It was the last time she had ever heard from her mother.

A week later, Lady Sennera Yelarigas had released Marosa from her room, sat her down, and told her why her mother was gone. Queen Sahar had fallen in love with a servant. She had planned to elope to the Ersyr with him, forsaking her duties as queen consort of Yscalin. And when caught in the act, she had ended her own life, too ashamed to face her court.

Much later, Marosa had learned that Aryete Feyalda, Third Lady of the Bedchamber, had been the one to betray the plan. Sahar had confided in her, and she had gone to the king, to stop her from taking Marosa. For her loyalty, Aryete had been given a small castle.

But Marosa remembered no secret lover. There had only been the three of them. Perhaps her mother had planned to meet him at the Gate of Niunda.

Sometimes, in her fevered dreams, Marosa was sure Denarva had fought. She thought there had been smokeless fire; that she had smelled burnt hair and flesh; that the oily black walls had glistened with red. But that had surely been a figment of a mind deranged by fear.

Denarva – kind, bold Denarva, a consummate hunter, always quick to laugh – had been executed for abetting treason. After a trial, Sahar would likely have been exiled, had she not ended her own life. Under normal circumstances, Marosa would have been permitted to see the body, but her father had forbidden it, claiming the sight of the corpse would disturb her.

There was not much ground to be spared in Cárscaro. Most of its dead were buried on the Great Yscali Plain, in hallowed ground where rosemary grew. But royal bones were not interred beneath the flowers. Instead, they rested in black tombs in the Palace of Salvation.

Queen Sahar had not been given that honour. She was an adulterous traitor, whose conversion to the Six Virtues had clearly been either lax or dishonest. Perhaps she had even been a spy.

Marosa had never learned what happened to her body. Better not to ask. Denarva’s had been hurled into the lava, leaving her soul to roam for ever, with no way to enter the heavenly court.

The sleepwater worked quickly. As Marosa drifted off, one last picture crossed her mind. Not something she had witnessed, but a scene she had fashioned herself, in her nightmares. Sahar knotting her bedsheets together, then writing the note by the light of a candle.

Hanging from the ceiling like a leaf upon a tree.

****

Marosa woke again, slower. At first, she thought the trembling of her bed stemmed from her own body, racked by one of her shaking fits. They came from time to time, when she had nightmares.

But no, it was the Palace of Salvation that was quaking.

Marosa rose and unlatched a window. Across the city, the torches in the streets were aflicker. The Cárscari shouted as the Tundana glowed and spat. Even from high above, she could hear them.

‘Marosa—’

Priessa had woken. She tried to draw Marosa away from the window, but Marosa resisted, her gaze soldered to the city, as a rumble stemmed from the Spindles. It echoed in her very bones.

‘It’s so loud,’ Priessa murmured. ‘Is Mount Fruma erupting?’

‘We are doomed if it is.’ Marosa spoke with a strange calm. ‘We will not get away in time.’

Far below, people were rushing towards the Gate of Niunda, the ancient door to Cárscaro. The stone arch marked the beginning of the only paved and safe path to the ground.

‘Fear not,’ Marosa said. ‘The Palace of Salvation has never fallen. It will hold.’

‘I would not stake your life on it.’ Priessa made for the doors. ‘They must ready a coach for you.’

Marosa continued to watch the city, feeling its incessant shivering beneath her palms.

When Queen Rozaria had decided to raise the Palace of Salvation – a tower house like nothing the world had ever seen – she had hired the finest Hróthi masons to realise her plans. Those Northern builders knew what it was like to live on sleepless ground, for theirs was a land ruled by fire mountains, smoking with hot springs. They had carefully mapped the city, ensuring the foundations were built on solid rock, away from the abandoned mines that webbed Cárscaro. The tower had been made to stand the test of time, and so it had for centuries.

When Priessa returned, she was breathless and flushed, curls spilling out of her braiding cap. ‘His Majesty has ordered that we stay here,’ she said. ‘We are to wait out the earthquake.’

‘Then we shall,’ Marosa said. ‘Sit down, Essa.’

Priessa sank on to the bed. Marosa knelt before her and grasped her trembling hands.

‘My friend,’ she said, ‘it will be all right. We are safe.’

She had told herself the same tale for years; she knew how to make a lie sound convincing. Priessa mirrored her nods. She had comforted Marosa many times when she was frightened.

Cárscaro did not cease its shaking. Marosa and Priessa lay abed together, not wanting to lose their balance by standing, trying to sleep through the quivers and jolts. Marosa gazed up at her canopy, remembering every other small quake, all the way back to her childhood. Her mother must have been afraid, the first time she had felt one after her marriage.

At last, around two of the clock, Cárscaro fell silent.

A knock startled them both upright. Priessa unlocked the doors to admit Ermendo.

‘What news?’ Marosa asked him.

‘There is some minor damage to the city,’ he said, ‘but not to the Palace of Salvation.’

‘Thank the Saint.’ Priessa pressed a hand to her middle. ‘Is everyone all right?’

‘Yes, my lady. Some of the merchants have already taken their coaches and left, but I suspect they’ll be the laughing stock of Cárscaro once they’ve returned. True paragons of courage,’ Ermendo said drily. Marosa smiled. ‘Would you care for some wine, Donmata?’

‘Yes.’ Marosa rubbed her eyes. ‘Thank you, Ermendo.’

Priessa returned to her side, a little paler than usual. Marosa nudged her.

‘You see?’ she said. ‘It was nothing.’

‘I am not sure of that. First the Tundana, and now this,’ Priessa said, her tone clipped. ‘When you are crowned, you must choose a new capital, for all our sakes.’

‘Hush.’ Marosa laid a warning hand on her arm. ‘Do not imagine his death.’

Priessa glanced away, composing herself.

Ruzio soon came upstairs with honey wine, stuffed olives, and white cheese. Yscabel came after her with bread, following her older sister, as usual. There was more than a decade between them.

‘Yscabel, you should go back to sleep,’ Priessa said. ‘Your night duties begin next year.’

‘I didn’t want to be alone.’ Yscabel curtseyed. ‘I know I must disappoint the Knight of Courage, but … the tremors frighten me, Lady Priessa. I would stay, if it please the Donmata.’

Yscabel had turned fourteen only the month before. When Marosa nodded, Priessa beckoned her to the table.

‘Very well,’ Priessa said. ‘Let us honour him with bravery now.’

By then, it was almost dawn. They ate and drank and spoke of gentle things. As they grew tired and made to recover lost sleep, a roll of thunder came, making the city shudder again.

Marosa returned to her window. Her ladies came to join her, pressing close on either side. She heard the rattle of tiles on the rooftops, then a rumble as deep as the mines beneath Cárscaro, making her lift her gaze to Mount Fruma. Before her stricken eyes, several large slabs came loose and tumbled down the slopes.

‘Saint be with us,’ Ruzio whispered. ‘What it this?’

‘A rockslide.’ Priessa kept a protective hold on Marosa. ‘The tremors must have caused it.’

Marosa could not rip her gaze from the mountain. There were occasional rockfalls in Cárscaro, where a boulder would suddenly drop, but this was different.

‘It’s all right,’ Priessa said. ‘The palace is safe.’

‘But what of the stonecutters, the water tower?’

Now the sound changed to an ominous crack. As Marosa watched, transfixed by fear, a sheet of stone crumbled away from the mountain. Ruzio gasped as it shattered and crashed down the steep incline, chased by smaller fragments, grey dust billowing around. The debris rushed into the eastern outskirts of Cárscaro, overwhelming the houses there.

It took some time for the dark haze to clear. When it did, Marosa could only stare in disbelief. Where the colossal sheet had fallen, there was now a yawning break in the mountainside.

A cave had been revealed.

‘Fruma,’ Yscabel said in the barest whisper. ‘He seeks vengeance upon the children of Isalarico.’

Marosa looked at her, lips parting in question. Yscabel clapped a hand over her mouth.

‘Donmata,’ she said, ‘I beg your forgiveness. It’s only kitchen gossip. I didn’t mean—’

What Yscabel did or did not mean, Marosa never established, for then a mighty clamour filled the night.

A sinister light stemmed from the cleft, rivalling the river of fire. Marosa gripped the balustrade, her knuckles turning pale, as the opening abounded with movement, violent in its intensity.

A thundercloud seemed to emerge from the cave. Marosa could not understand what she was seeing, even as it spilled forth in a rush, solid and molten at once, and swept towards the Palace of Salvation. A twisting mass of shadow, which moved like nothing she had ever laid eyes on. Before it could reach them, Priessa and Ruzio pulled her away from the window.

‘No, no.’ She tried to fight them off. ‘I have to—’

‘Donmata, we must get out of sight,’ Ruzio insisted. ‘Yscabel, away from the windows!’

Marosa was not especially strong, but she did have the element of surprise. No one expected nobles to make sudden movements. With one sharp wrench, she broke free of Priessa and Ruzio, who was already distracted by her care for Yscabel. Before they could stop her, she burst from her apartments and rushed along the corridors, chased by her protesting guards.

She ran until she reached the balcony. Just as she shoved through its doors, the cloud passed over the lava, and she could see it, all of it. The bat wings and serpentine tails, ripped from a bestiary.

Wyverns.

The word tolled in her mind, paralysing her. She did not want to accept the evidence of her own eyes. For the first time in five hundred years, a flock of wyverns was soaring over Cárscaro.

It splintered at the edge of the cliff, leaving the Cárscari screaming in its wake. With piercing calls, the wyverns dived over the precipice, following the lava falls towards the Great Yscali Plain.

And then, by the distant light of dawn, Marosa beheld a sight that sent a knife into her soul.

Since she was sixteen, she had dreamed of death. None of her nightmares touched what she saw now. As she watched, red lights flared across the Great Yscali Plain, as far as the eye could see. At first, they were isolated bonfires, small and glimmering. One by one, those fires grew.

They have their flames.

The realisation stole the feeling from her skin. The Saint’s Comet had quenched their fire when it put them to sleep.

Like some terrible murmuration of starlings, the wyverns spread out across the Great Yscali Plain, sowing that unnatural red fire, the light of the Dreadmount itself. For a short time, there was utter stillness, the Cárscari stunned into silence, as they watched the flowers burn. All Marosa could hear was her own heart, and the uneven breaths of the people behind her.

Then half of the flock returned; the screams began again. The wyverns swooped upon the Great Aviary, which stood on a bluff above Vatana House, and brought it crashing to the ground. Marosa was too high to see her people; she only heard them crying out in terror.

More fire sprang in the corner of her eye. A small wyvern flew along the Tundana, its wings skimming the lava, before it blew a jet of flame, burning the archers that guarded the Gate of Niunda. More of the beasts fell upon the unattended catapults and bolt throwers on the cliff, weapons made for a second Grief of Ages. Marosa watched them crumble to embers.

‘They know what to destroy,’ Priessa said hoarsely. ‘They remember.’

Marosa Vetalda was used to nightmares, but now she felt as though she had been pulled into a folk tale. All the heroes of the Grief were in her body in that moment. She stayed at her post, like a soldier at war, and watched a hundred wyverns landing on the rooftops.

During the Grief of Ages, the Cárscari had descended to the old mines to wait out the destruction. Now, in this softer time, most of those mines were sealed for their safety. A bitter twist of fate.

‘Please,’ Ermendo said. ‘Come inside, Donmata.’

At last, Marosa let him guide her away. The doors to the balcony clanged in their wake.

In less than an hour, the Great Yscali Plain was on fire to the horizon. The flowers Isalarico the Benevolent had planted to celebrate his marriage, all gone. By noon, there was so much smoke in Cárscaro, Marosa could no longer see a foot beyond her window.

So when the voice came – a voice like stone grinding on stone – it seemed to stem from nowhere.

‘KING OF YSCALIN,’ it said. ‘COME FORTH, OR YOUR CITY BURNS.’

****