Page 1 of Among the Burning Flowers
Marosa
CÁRSCARO
KINGDOM OF YSCALIN
CE 1003
Long before it was a city, Cárscaro had been a mine.
In those days, the Gulthaganians ruled the northeast of the vast continent of Edin. Eager to conquer the rest, the Imperator of Gulthaga had sent his soldiers over the mountains west of their city, into land they did not know, to mine copper for armour and swords.
On the other side of the icy Spindles, the soldiers had scented copper and dug. But the western tribes of Edin, known as Yscals, had revered the mountains of their land. They cursed the newcomers for mining on Mount Fruma, for they saw in that peak a petrified god, the giant who had created their people.
The Yscals fought with flint and wood, the Gulthaganians with bronze. The fight had been lost from the start. Forced to work inside the mines, the Yscals had sliced their own skin to atone, fearing the displeasure of their god.
The Gulthaganians had named this outpost Karkara, meaningbirdcage. Even when they were finally driven fromYscalin, two centuries after they came, Karkara had remained a place of exile. Anyone who fled its walls had perished on the plain below, their bones lost to the dust.
Those days were long past, for most. The old mountain gods were forgotten, supplanted by the foreign Saint. The ancient copper mines lay buried under Cárscaro, now transformed into the splendid capital of Yscalin, and its people could come and go as they pleased.
This was not so for their future queen, the Donmata Marosa.
****
On the seventh day of spring, her eyes flew open, as if the Saint had reached down from the holy court of Halgalant to wake her. Nearby, her First Lady of the Bedchamber slept on, dark curls fanned across her pillow. Priessa had always been a deep sleeper.
Marosa listened. Half of her was in her skin, the other half elsewhere, elsewhen. Three memories flared in quick succession: a whisper at her ear, a hand tight around hers, a scream.
When nothing disturbed the silence of her room, she rose and laced a sleeveless robe over her smock. The air was thick butter around her; even the smallest movements drew sweat. She opened the doors of her apartments, hoping for a cool breeze, an iced drink.
From the bruised light in the corridor, it was daybreak. She rarely woke so early of her own accord.
‘Donmata.’
The voice came from her left, where Ermendo Vuleydres stood by a window, armed with a pistol and rapier, a halberd near at hand. He must be cooking like a crab in all that gilded armour.
‘Ermendo,’ Marosa said, ‘did you feel something just now?’
‘A small tremor.’
‘Is that not the sixth in as many days?’
‘I believe so.’
His weathered face betrayed nothing. The Vardya were too disciplined to display such a base emotion as fear.
‘I will take my usual turn,’ Marosa said. ‘If you are at liberty.’
‘Of course, Your Radiance.’
There were occasional tremors in Cárscaro, but never so many, so close together. Still, Marosa was used to them. Knowing the city would shake now and then was part of being Cárscari.
They followed the path they had walked countless times, shadowed by two more guards. Here and there, Marosa glimpsed their reflections, folded into the polished walls of the Palace of Salvation. The walls that looked as if they had been painted with fresh ink.
Her prison was five hundred feet of blackstone and cinder and basalt, adorned with volcanic glass. Even on its lowest floors, with many arched windows to let a breeze through, it was always sweltering. A hundred thousand torches could not have truly lit its halls. Not only was it oppressively close, but abounding in tight stairways and trick walls to confuse intruders.
Queen Rozaria the Third had ignored her advisors when she ordered its construction. They had warned her that blackstone would hold in the heat; that only more northerly places, like Hróth, had need of such a dark fortress. Rozaria had not relented. This was her monument to Yscali strength, driven into the heart of Cárscaro. She had meantfor it to look as fearsome as a wyrm, to serve as a reminder that Yscalin had risen from the ashes of the Grief.
She had succeeded, even if she had not lived to see the tower loom over the rest of the capital. It reminded the whole city of Fýredel, whose dread wings had once cast the world into shadow.
