Crown of Renewal(4)

“No,” Andressat said. “No, it’s Filis’s.” His voice wavered. “He … managed to give us warning. He must have known—” He cleared his throat and went on. “Filis knew what was coming. With only his fingernails to use—knowing Alured was going to send me his skin—he used them where Alured would not see. Under his hair. Perhaps Alured told him he would leave the hair to make sure we recognized him. This—in the old language of Aare, the old writing—tells us that Alured is controlled by a demon inside him, a demon who looks out his eyes at times and has a different voice. That is like the stories from the north of the Verrakaien who stole bodies.”

He looked around at his family and his most trusted servants. “Think on this, any of you who thought Filis might be a traitor. Captive, alone, tormented, yet he thought of us—of saving us—and tore his own skin to warn us. Think what courage that took.” He bent down and kissed the hair, then the forehead, and finally the lips. “My son, you deserve every honor that we can bestow on you. You will be remembered as long as our lives endure. And you will not go under the earth but be borne aloft in Camwyn’s Fire, as if with a dragon for your mount. From Esea came all life; back to Esea you shall go.”

“By Camwyn’s Claw,” everyone responded. “It shall be done.”

“Though first I must write to the north,” Andressat said. “Lord Arcolin must know of this, and his king. Perhaps his captains in Valdaire can get word to the north even in winter.”

Two days later, the funeral pyre stood ready on the cliff just outside the walls of Cortes Andres. On it lay the box, now drenched in oil, and in the box was Filis’s badge. “If it is Camwyn’s will that this fire may send every bit of Filis left below, wherever it may be, on the same smoke rising to the sky, then I invoke Camwyn’s Curse,” Andressat said. “By the Claw and the dragon who bore it, and by the power of Camwyn and the dragon together, I invoke it.”

When they lit the fire, the flames roared up to the sky as if drawn by the air itself and burned the pyre completely; white ash lifted and swirled like snowflakes. Then far, far above, a white line of fire raced across the sky, from above Cortes Andres to the east, and vanished.

“Camwyn consented,” Andressat said. He felt hollow of a sudden, and then a pain as if a horse had kicked him in the chest took all his breath, and he knew he was falling.


Cortes Immer

A servant’s screams brought the Duke of Immer from his study to his bedroom to find the bedside rug—patched together of skin from Filis Andressat, the Count of Cilwan, Cilwan’s wife, and several other people he’d had flayed—in flames, flames that quickly spread to the bedclothes. More servants ran in with pitchers of water, but the flames could not be stopped until every flammable thing in the room had burnt to ash: stinking, black, oily ash that clung to and dirtied whatever it touched.

“How did you start the fire?” he asked the servant.

“I—I didn’t, lord. I swear—I was sweeping when it—it burst into flames. Then I screamed.”

“Nonsense. Leather doesn’t burst into flames by itself. You dropped a lighted spill if you didn’t start it by intention. And the way the bed burned—what did you do, splash oil on the bed?”

“No! I didn’t!”

He made a gesture, and one of the guards ran her through. Even as she fell, a commotion broke out in the courtyard below. Immer looked out the window to see a fire in the kennels. He looked back at the guards. “It seems we have more than one firestarter. See to it.”

Some time later the guard reported that the dogs in question had been seen to burst into flame while in the dog yard. Nothing burned but the dogs … and not all the dogs. Only the dogs that had been fed human flesh. Immer shrugged. Someone had thrown a curse at him, clearly. Given the time of year—could it have been the old man, Andressat? He hadn’t thought the man had that much power—any power at all, in fact. He’d never been spoken of as a mage. But he claimed to be bred of Old Aare, a true line, so perhaps—perhaps he had been hiding it all these years.

Ferran Andressat, heir to the title, stood watch over his father’s body turn and turn with the others. No attack had come after all, and he had called Meddthal in from his guard post for the mourning. They must all be there; in the absence of a king to confirm any of them in the title, they used a ceremony passed down in the family for generations. But that would come after placing Jeddrin’s body in the appointed cave. Until then … they stood watch.