Page 63 of Among the Burning Flowers
‘Marosa Vetalda, Princess of Yscalin,’ she replied, her voice shaking. ‘You summoned me.’
‘You are the whelp of the Flesh King.’
‘Yes.’
Marosa forced herself to look up again. She had to take the measure of the enemy. There were dents and scores in his black hide, but no missing scales, no obvious vulnerabilities. All wyrms had a weak spot under the wing – their hides were thin and supple there, allowing them to fly – but she doubted even a javelin, even there, could pierce a High Western.
‘The fire burns through his body, though he does not perish yet.’ Fýredel spoke Inysh with a strange inflection, forcing her to concentrate to understand him. ‘Whenever he is too weak to rise, you will hearken to my commands in his stead. I will send them through the seneschal.’
The title had not existed for a long time, but the seneschal could only be Lord Gastaldo.
‘Yes, my liege,’ Marosa said, addressing him in an archaic manner. ‘We are ready to serve.’
She loathed how meek and docile she sounded. If only she had the mettle to defy him, like the heroes of the Grief, but forty thousand lives hung in the balance. How could she risk them?
‘There is a woman in your dungeons. Red her cloak and sharp her blade,’ the wyrm said. ‘In agony and fear she must die. The Flesh King will bear witness, so I might know the deed is done, hear the screams that mark her end. She must hang alive upon your gate of stone by dawn.’
He wanted this woman to be pecked and cut to death.
‘It will be done,’ Marosa said. ‘Wh-who is this woman?’
Fýredel did not answer her question, but his gaze scorched into hers through her veil, like a brand. It took all her will to keep her eyes open, in case that was the way he seized a mind. She had lived for years as a figurine, to be moved as her father wished; she did not want to die as a puppet.
‘Why do you do this?’ she said. ‘Why do you wreak such violence upon humankind?’
She did not know what possessed her to ask such a thing. Perhaps because she was one of the few who had ever come this close to a wyrm. Perhaps because Fýredel seemed, unexpectedly, to be listening.
‘You doomed your own earth,’ he said.
‘How?’
When Fýredel was silent, Marosa forced herself to rise, even though her knees shook. A low growl resonated through the chamber.
‘Majesty, I beseech you, give us your counsel,’ she implored the High Western. ‘Our ancestors slew your siblings. I know this. I see the scars upon your armour. But we fought you because you attacked first, because you did not tell us what you sought. If we have offended you, I am sure we can atone, but how can we put right a wrong we do not understand?’
Fýredel considered her. His eyes were like two great braziers beneath a pair of formidable horns.
And then Marosa did something that she knew was not only very foolish, but would surely enrage the Saint, who had risked his life to slay one of these creatures. She thought of her people in the other cavern, permitted to climb on the wyverns.
Before she could doubt her decision, she drew her pendant from her bodice and slowly held it up, showing it to the wyrm. Fýredel turned quite still, and she prayed that he could see a sliver of his own reflection, little though her mirror was. Perhaps he would be like the bird Denarva had brought from the Ersyr, unable to recognise its own image, courting itself in the looking glass. Even if he was too large to see himself, she hoped his curiosity would buy her time to speak.
She took a step towards the wyrm. Fýredel remained motionless. Slowly, she reached out her left hand, safe in its thick riding glove, and grazed her fingertips against his snout.
And Fýredel, the enemy of humankind, did not strike her down.
See yourself in others. She trembled violently as she felt his terrible heat through her glove, strong enough that it would surely make short work of the leather. Every breath moved through him like a slow rockslide.Show them the same grace …
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Tell me your purpose. Tell me how I can stop this.’
Another ominous rumble filled the room. She knew he was considering whether or not to kill her.
‘Broken are the roots of chaos. Thrice cleaved,’ Fýredel said, ‘and never knit.’ He bared his teeth, which gleamed like iron swords. She made out her own dim reflection in their polished surface. ‘The fire beneath must rage above. Allmust burn, from shore to shore.’
Marosa tried to parse the words through the dizzying fog of her fear.
‘Then you do mean to destroy Yscalin,’ she said. ‘Why do you stoop to this puppetry?’
Fýredel snarled at her. She fell hard on the ground before him. Still clutching the pendant, she stared into his mouth – at the second and third rows of teeth, and his forked tongue, dark as blood.
