Child of Flame - Page 377/400

But he loves his daughter anyway.

After all, the child is innocent. If anyone is guilty, it is Anne for the ruthlessness of her ambition. If anyone is guilty, it is the other five sorcerers, for aiding her with willing hands. If anyone is guilty, it is he.

He will never stop punishing himself. And because he is weak and imperfect, like all human souls, in the end he will punish his daughter as well, even if he never intended to harm her.

Anne wins. She has the child she wanted, the husband she lusted after, but she has kept her body pure, a matter of great importance to her, who thinks of all other human beings as tainted and unworthy. Bernard stays, because he is completely compromised now, because he is guilty, because he has learned the meaning of fear.

He stays. He names the infant after an ancient sorceress he read of in a book years ago while sojourning in Arethousa: Li’at’dano, the centaur shaman, mentioned in the old chronicles many times over many generations. Some called her undying. All called her powerful beyond human ken. In the western tongue the consonants soften to make the baby Liathano.

He calls her Liath.

He stays with the Seven Sleepers, toiling under Anne’s unwavering and unforgiving gaze, caring for his beloved child, until the day eight years later when the fire daimones come looking for their missing sister. Time passes differently in the upper spheres; an eye-blink may encompass months and the unfurling of a wing years.

That is when he flees with his daughter. That is when he expends the untapped potential of his own magical powers to lock away her soul and her power, which shine like a beacon, so that no one can follow them. Especially not Anne. Especially not the fire daimones, kin to the woman-creature he loved and murdered.

Did he run to save himself? To save Liath? Or to save the only thing he has left of the woman-creature he loved? Did he lock away Liath’s true self to hide her from Anne’s machinations, or to conceal her from her mother’s kin, so that they could never find her and take her away from him?

Anger was a river of fire, molten and destructive but also cleansing and powerful. She never understood until now how much she despised Da for being weak. At moments she even hated him because she loved him, because she wanted him to be strong when maybe he never could be, because maybe all along without knowing it consciously she guessed that he loved someone else more than he loved her. Because she hated herself for being weak, hated that part of herself, broken and crippled, that had chained her for so long.

The river of the past, that which binds us because it has already woven its chains around us, flowed easily and without any obvious transition into the future, the unreachable destination where we are blinded by possibility, by hope, by unexamined anger, and by fear.

She walked into the future with the river of fire streaming around her and she saw

King Henry strangled by a daimone as a pretty child resembling Queen Adelheid mounts the imperial throne, her mother standing protectively beside her.

Sister Rosvita, aged and leprous, lies dying in a dungeon. A discarded shoe, its leather eaten away by rats or maybe by her, rests just beyond her outstretched hand.

The Lion, Thiadbold, who more than once showed her kindness, drinks himself into a stupor in a filthy tavern by sipping ale out of a bowl. He has lost both his hands but somehow survived. Isn’t it a worse fate to live as a cripple, helpless except for what leavings others throw to you as to the dogs?

Ivar on trial for heresy before the skopos. The Holy Mother Anne condemns him and his companions to death, but he smiles, wearily, as if death is the outcome he has been seeking all along.

Hanna dead, by her own hand. The wounds that killed her cannot be seen on her skin.

Sanglant, still fighting and always fighting because he will never give up until his last breath, as the she-griffin strikes for his exposed chest.

Blessing stands by a window. Liath scarcely recognizes this magnificent creature, newly come to womanhood, tall like her father and with a creamy brown complexion, eyes green, or blue, depending on how the light strikes them or on the color of gown she is wearing. She is as beautiful as all the promises ever made to a beloved child. Then the door opens, and the girl turns. She shrinks back. Pride and youthful confidence turn to terror as the man who has come to claim her for his bride steps through the door.

“Hugh!”

Liath screamed her outrage as anger bloomed into wings at her back. Her kinsfolk, wings hissing in the aether and voices booming and muttering like thunder, stepped back to give her room as she leaped up and out of the river of fire.

Despite everything, Da had not abandoned her. Nor would she abandon her own child. Never would she abandon her own child.