Heart of Light (59 page)

THE BEGINNING

Samson stepped gingerly down the mountain pass,
walking with the awkward gait of an elephant trying not to slide down the mountain. Atop it, Peter and Nigel sat, rocking with the motion.

“I wonder if Wamungunda knew what would happen when Carew touched the ruby,” Nigel said pensively, sitting astride the elephant's neck.

The sound of a flint lighter came from behind him, followed by the sound of Peter inhaling smoke, then exhaling. “Had to, didn't he? His family lived with it for generations.”

“Yes, but . . . Charlemagne had it, didn't he?” Nigel said, troubled. “And he performed a spell with it.”

“Probably without ever touching it,” Peter said. “I don't think the emissary touching it was the same thing. Wamungunda said the effect of destruction was triggered by sheer ambition and will to power. The emissary would not have that. Only a wish to serve his king.”

“Yes, yes, you're right,” Nigel said, and sighed. “As I had a wish to serve my queen.”

Peter made a sound from behind that was not quite a chuckle. “We've all been . . . redirected.” And then, “If you want to wave good-bye for the last time, we're about to go around the curve in the path.”

Nigel turned back. Kitwana and Emily stood side by side, his arm over her shoulders. She had never looked as beautiful as she did in a native wrap, her long, dark hair windblown.

“They look very happy,” Nigel said, and sighed heavily.

“Does it hurt to lose her?” Peter asked.

“Oh, no. It was never right. Somewhere out there, there's a woman for me. It's just that they're home, and I have to roam the world and keep this ruby safe all the while, until you find me and bring me the other jewel. And I have no idea how to do any of that.”

Peter chuckled softly. A thread of tobacco smoke floated forward to tickle Nigel's nostrils with tobacco and mint. “You did very well, Nigel, going all official on the regiment and sending them away, back the way they'd come.”

“Well, they were only boys from a nearby garrison. Carew had gotten them all talked up to defend the queen's jewel. You know what Carew was like.” He paused, remembering the moment when his brother had been incinerated. “The fact that he'd just become a pile of ash in front of their eyes probably didn't hurt. You know, this will become one of those stories they tell in drawing rooms forever after, and no one believes.”

“Yes, but all the same, you talked them down very nicely. I'm the worst off. I'm just a man with an unwanted tendency to turn into a dragon. Will you tell me where to find the Soul of Fire? And how I'm going to discover it? It's been lost for, what, five hundred years?”

Nigel smiled despite himself. “Well, Wamungunda said it was somewhere in India. And we have a certain dragon's eye. Doesn't mean the dragon himself can't use it to locate it.”

“Yes. And that makes things so much easier,” Peter said, exhaling forcefully.

They'd come around a turn on the mountain path, and they could see plains and hills crowned with green-blue vegetation, rolling with herds of wild beasts.

Nigel took a deep breath, savoring the sheer strangeness of the landscape and how odd his life had suddenly become.

Behind him, Peter chuckled softly. “Come on. Let's go save the world.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal more years ago than she's comfortable admitting. She currently lives in Colorado with her husband, teen sons and a clowder of various-size cats. She hasn't been to Africa in twenty-some years, but she would like to visit again. Around four dozen—at last count—of her short stories have been published in magazines such as
Weird Tales, Analog, Asimov's
and
Amazing,
as well as various anthologies.
Ill Met by Moonlight,
the first book of her Shakespearean fantasy trilogy, was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award. Sarah is also working on a contemporary fantasy series starting with
Draw One in the Dark,
and—as Sarah D'Almeida—is in the midst of a Musketeers' Mystery series starting with
Death of a Musketeer
. Her website is
http://sarahahoyt.com/
.

If you enjoyed
Heart of Light,
the saga continues with Peter's story in

SOUL
of
FIRE

by
Sarah A. Hoyt

Coming in August 2008

Here's a special preview:

SOUL OF FIRE

Coming in August 2008

“Mama, don't make me marry him,” Miss Sofie Warington said.

Seventeen years old, clad in a white dressing gown and clutching a blue muslin dress to her ample bosom—with her hair quite untamed and her expression wild—Miss Warington should not have looked ravishing. But the way her dark hair fell in tumultuous waves to the bottom of her spine; the way tears trembled at the end of the long eyelashes surrounding her blue-violet eyes; and the way her lips opened to let through her impetuous words would have brought strong men to their knees.

They had less effect on her mother, Lavinia Warington. “Don't be foolish, girl,” she said, her voice severe. “What are you doing out of your room? And why are you not dressed?” As she spoke, she skillfully shepherded her daughter up the spacious stairs, carpeted in expensive red velvet that showed wear in discolored, threadbare patches.

Sofie resisted, but it was useless. She felt out of step and like a stranger in this house. She'd been born into it seventeen years ago, and she'd spent her first ten years in its vast, resounding, sun-washed rooms, attended by a native ayah and adored and indulged by her parents' various servants. But at ten, she'd been put aboard a carpetship to London, where for seven years she'd been a pupil in Lady Lodkin's Academy for Young Lady Magic Users.

The summons to return home two months ago had overjoyed her. London had never felt like home to her. Too dark, too dank, and people were too ready to sneer at her honey-colored skin—the result of an affair between her great-great-grandmother and an English officer. She'd felt like a wayfarer in London. And yet, now home proved to be no home at all.

Instead, she'd found her mother and father to be far from the mythical, godlike figures who had watched over her childhood with pride and care. Her mother had grown bitter and her father . . . Her father didn't bear thinking about. She knew nothing of magical maladies, but she knew enough to guess when someone had been using dark magic, and using it far too extensively. And she knew it was an illness that could hardly be cured.

And then there was the reason they'd summoned her back home a year before her education was completed. It wasn't a longing for her company, as she'd hoped. And it wasn't even that they'd missed her. “Lalita told me that the man visiting tonight was a rich native prince from a distant kingdom,” she accused her mother. “That he offered for me several months ago, and you . . . you accepted! Before I even returned.”

“And how would she know this, since she has been in London as your attendant till just three months ago?”

“She says the kitchen servants talked about it. They said that's why you sent for me.”

Sofie's mother's lips closed tightly, until they seemed to be but a single red line. “Lalita talks too much.”

Sofie turned around fully, still clutching her dress, anxious fingers digging deeply into the folds of the material. “But is it true, Mama? Did she tell me the truth? How can you agree to give me away to a man I haven't even met? A man who . . .” Oh, if it was true, she had to run—somewhere, somehow—and find or make her own fortune.

“Child, you're being foolish beyond permission. We are not giving you away to anyone. We found you a most advantageous marriage, one that most women in your position would give their eyeteeth for. The Prince Ajith is a powerful man, the ruler of a vast native kingdom, and he's agreed to make you his only wife. You will live covered in jewels and surrounded by servants. Trust me, Sofie, your lot could be worse.”

As she spoke, Madam Warington propelled her daughter up the steep staircase, till, at the top landing, she could put her arm around the girl's small shoulders and shepherd her gently into the open door of her room.

The room, if not her parents, exactly matched Sofie's memories of childhood. It was, by far, vaster than anything she'd seen in England—almost as large as the dormitory that, at the academy, she'd shared with twenty other girls. The walls were whitewashed, since to wallpaper walls in India's hot and humid climate was quite futile. Even magically applied wallpaper started mildewing within days of being put up, and peeled altogether from the humidity and heat within months. But the whitewash was fresh, and if the occasional lizard wandered in through the open balcony door and climbed the walls, it looked like a planned ornament.

The bed was piled high with lace and silk pillows, and was covered in an intricate, colorful bedspread. A tightly woven lace netting draped over the bed lent it an air of romance, although its main function was to keep out the noxious flying insects that flourished in this climate. And all the silk and lace might give the impression of riches if one didn't know how cheap it was in these climes. Why, even the servants wore silken saris and gaudy gold jewels on ears and nostrils.

Still clutching her dress, Sofie allowed herself to be pushed all the way to the vanity in the far corner. The mirror—showing dark spots in its silver backing—gave her back her own image, with high color on both cheeks and moisture in her eyes, and she wondered how her mother could distress her so and not care.

Meanwhile, her mother had removed the dress from Sofie's clutching fingers and clucked at the wrinkles marring the fine blue fabric. “Why, you absurd creature, you nearly ruined this. Lalita!”

Sofie's maid and the constant companion of her adolescence emerged from the balcony, where, doubtless, she'd run at their approach, trying to evade Mrs. Warington's wrath. But Mrs. Warington was visibly more preoccupied with her daughter's attire right now than with punishing her garrulous maid.

Lalita, whose name meant playful and who looked it, wore a bright sky-blue sari, and large golden hoop earrings through her ears. Her hair was pulled into a heavy braid at her back. Not for the first time, Sofie found herself envying her maid's vitality, her beauty, and, most of all, her unrepentant certainty of who she was. Lalita didn't wonder whether she was more Indian than English. Lalita—the daughter of people born and raised in Calcutta for generations uncountable—might have gone to London with Sofie, but she never had any reason to consider herself anything but Indian.

She walked into the room with an expression of repentance that was no more believable than an expression of humility upon a cat's face. Bobbing a hasty curtsy, she took the dress and fairly ran with it out the door, presumably to do whatever it was one did to a dress to remove wrinkles. Sofie, who didn't know or care what that might be, allowed her mother to fuss over her hair. “I can't believe you'd go out there like this, Sofie,” Mrs. Warington said. “What if anyone had seen you?”

“Lalita said
he
was with Papa on the veranda off the parlor, and she said he is quite gross. And, Mama, she was right.” She shuddered at the memory of the enormous native grandee, his shapeless form covered in bright silks that would have done better service as sofa or bed coverings. But it was not his gross physique that had disgusted her. No. What made her tremble and swallow hard in fear were his features. She'd never seen anyone who looked like him. His face was broad and oddly arranged, with a very low nose and cruel lips. Between the scars crisscrossing his features, and the intricate tattoos marking his forehead and cheeks, he looked . . . not quite human.

And then there were his eyes, slitlike and quite yellow. The pupils were yellow-gold, but the sclera, too, had a yellowish tint, like aged porcelain or the teeth of a heavy smoker. Sofie shuddered at the memory.

“Mama, I—”

“Hush, girl,” Mrs. Warington said, pulling hard on the heavy tresses she was plaiting into a braid on either side of her daughter's face. “Don't make this into a melodrama. No one is going to force you to marry anyone you don't wish to. All I ask is that you look at Prince Ajith and think whether you could stand to marry him.”