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he man standing in the ashes with his back to the others sighs softly. “She’s so beautiful.”
“Go!” says Anne suddenly, caught by that voice. “Leave the body. I must think.”
They are not unwilling to retreat to salve their wounds. Meriam leads away the weeping Rothaide, Severus limps after her and, after a moment, but hesitantly, Wolfhere goes as well, not without two or three backward glances at Anne. The butterflies have begun to return, fluttering around her like winged jewels.
Then Anne is alone with the corpse and the man standing with his back to her, who has not, apparently, heard her command to the others.
“Bernard,” she says softly.
Surprised to hear his name, he turns.
Ai, God, it is Da, but so much younger, about thirty years of age and, by all appearances, a few years younger than Anne. Liath never knew he was handsome. She never really understood how much she looks like him, even with her golden-brown skin and her salamander eyes. The years of running took their toll. The magic he expended to hide her scarred and diminished him. This is the fearless man, face shaven and hair trimmed in the manner of a frater, who walked ardently into the heathen lands of the east without once looking over his shoulder. But that was all before her birth, before their flight, before that day when, by crippling her, he crippled himself.
Liath never understood until this instant, seeing Anne’s expression, how much Anne hated him because he is beautiful to her eyes. She never understood until this instant how much power Da had, and how he shone, as luminous as the sun and with a glint of sarcasm in his eyes. She only remembered him, only had memories of him, from after the fear had sucked him dry.
“Bernard,” Anne repeats, “you have been the thorn in my side for long enough. I know you have never cared about our work to save humankind from the threat of the Lost Ones. I know you joined us only to satisfy your intellect and your curiosity. We’ve suffered you all these years because of the strength of your gift, not for your loyalty to our goals. But the time has come for you to be of use to me. Can it be possible that you have at last seen a creature you desire more than you desire knowledge?”
Anger chases laughter chases longing across his expressive features. He steps aside, and Liath sees what they have caught in a cage made not of iron bars but of threads like spider’s silk, billowing as the breeze moves through them.
She is fire, incandescent, a living creature bound by magic beneath the moon, where she does not belong. She wears a womanly shape, scintillant and as bright as a blue-white sun, and her wings beat against the unbreakable white threads, but she is hopelessly trapped. Heat boils off her, but the cage neutralizes these streamers of flame, and when she opens her mouth to scream, no sound comes out.
“You can have her, Bernard, because I can see that you desire her. But only if what transpires now remains a secret between you and me.”
He is torn. He suspects that to agree will compromise him in some unintended way, but even as he struggles, Liath knows he will lose because he has fallen in love with the fire daimone, a creature so beyond mortal ken that even to call it down to Earth brings death.
“How can this be?” he asks hoarsely. “If it caused poor Hiltrudis’ death just to cast the binding spell, how can any flesh dare touch pure fire?” He raises an arm, then blushes, hot and red.
“First we must send the others away, to give Hiltrudis’ body a proper burial and to seek a seventh to make whole our number. There are certain spells known to me that can soften fire into light so that her substance will not burn you. But it will be up to you to win her acquiescence.” She eyes him as the daimone writhes, trying to get free. “None of this comes without a price.”
“What must I do?” He is already caught. He will agree to everything, because desire has trapped him in a cage of surpassing beauty, in the guise of a woman with wings of flame, daughter of the highest sphere, the soul of a star. He will agree to anything, if only he can have her.
Anne brushes a cinder, all that is left of a thread of saffron, off her sleeve. “First, this sorcery will weaken me. I will be an invalid, and you must care for me until I recover. Second, the others must believe that the child was made of my seed, not yours, that between us we freed this creature and captured another, a male, who could thereby impregnate me. The child must be thought to come of Taillefer’s lineage. Yet not just from Taillefer’s lineage, but legitimately born. To that end, you must marry me in a ceremony sanctioned by the church.”
“Yes,” he says absently, obviously too distracted as he stares at the daimone even to point out the gaping holes of illogic in this proposal. The woman-creature has calmed enough, now, to furl her wings and with apprehension and anger survey her prison.
“Last, the child will be mine to raise.”
“Whatever you say,” he whispers, because the daimone has caught sight of him. She has no true distinguishable features, no human mask of a face, yet those are eyes that see him, that mark his presence, and she does not recoil as he returns her gaze boldly. She watches him, blazing and effulgent, the most magnificent thing he has seen in a life that brought him face-to-face with many wondrous creatures. He does not fear her. He is too much in thrall to desire, the man who until now had remained faithful to his vow of chastity despite the many temptations thrown in his path.
Whatever you say.
The words haunt Liath.
The corpse is carried away and buried fittingly. The next day, Anne and Bernard are joined in holy matrimony in the chapel, with the others looking on as witnesses. Wolfhere paces restlessly throughout the ceremony, looking ready to spit. Rothaide, Meriam, and Severus leave for distant parts, although Wolfhere lingers for a handful of days like a man in the throes of suspicion, believing that his wife is contemplating adultery. Only when his Eagle’s sight shows him the old king, Arnulf, bed-ridden with a terrible fever, does he leave, hastening away to the side of the king he has pretended for all these years to serve faithfully.
When Wolfhere is finally gone, Anne can at last work her spell, but hers is a devious mind and she has the means to punish the only man for whom she ever actually felt unbearable physical desire. The fire of the daimone’s soul is tamed, her aetherical body is given a semblance of mortal substance, but in this process her features are molded so that they resemble Anne herself.
Trapped and diminished, the daimone turns to the one who shows her kindness and affection. Fire seeks heat when it is dying. Bernard is not unaware of the way Anne has turned his wish back onto him, so that when at last the daimone surrenders to his patient courtship of her, it’s as if he is making love to Anne herself, her face, her body, but lit by aetherical fire from within, like Anne in the guise of an angel. With that wicked, sardonic humor that made him able to withstand much suffering in his eastern travels, he even calls her “Anne” although Anne lies as helpless as a newborn in the villa, tended by Bernard hand and foot because he remains as good as his word. His entire universe has shrunk to this villa, to the care he gives faithfully to the invalid who has made his wish become truth, to the sphere of the fiery woman-creature he worships and makes love to.
Maybe what he feels for the daimone is love and maybe it is only lust, a craving brought on by a glimpse of the high reaches of the universe, too remote for the human mind to comprehend. But if what he feels is not love, then it is hard to say what counts for love in a cold world.
Because the world is cold, and the universe disinterested in one insignificant man’s feelings, however strong they might be. Certain laws govern the cosmos, and not even love can alter them, or perhaps love is the unmoving mover that impels them forward.
Seed touches seed, by means unknown to humankind and perhaps influenced by the tides of magic. A seed ripens and grows, and the child that waxes within the creature born not of Earth must build a mortal body in which to live.
It happens so slowly that in the end it seems to happen all at once.
The child consumes the substance of the mother to make itself. All her glorious fire is subsumed into the child she births, and the birth itself becomes her death. All that she was she has given; even her soul is now part of the child. She herself, the brilliant creature bound and trapped months ago, is utterly gone.
