SINGING STORM OF FIRE
Fire Fanned by Wind
Before you ask, no, I don’t know how I came to be. I can, however, discount many of the rumors.
My father, Sword Strike—who is the queen’s First and thus the moral compass for the entire holy sekasha caste—did not go mad. He did not rape my mother, Pure Radiance, nor did he mistake her for the queen during a drunken orgy. That anyone would even suggest any of the above proves that living forever does not make you wise.
Sword Strike couldn’t have. Ignoring who my mother is, the Wyverns would have beheaded my father instantly if he had lapsed into random madness or rape. As for drunken orgies—despite what might be believed of the elfin court, such things are just not done—as in the sun just does not go out.
Besides, one must consider too my mother, Pure Radiance. She is the queen’s oracle for a reason. I have seen the female stand blindfolded under oak trees and catch falling acorns. No male could touch her with force—she would foresee the event a week before he thought of it.
I wouldn’t put a lot of weight in those stories that my mother tricked my father somehow. Yes, she can manipulate events with amazing cunning. I’ve seen humans set up ten thousand dominoes to trip and fall in succession, and I thought “my mother does that with people.” But again, one must consider my father—who could and would—behead her the moment he discovered that he had been tricked. Since everyone knows that he’s my father, there could have been no trickery involved. (Okay, one could argue that my father knows that attempting to behead my mother would be impossible since she could stay twenty steps ahead of him at all times. I would think, however, this would infuriate my father, and having dealt with them my whole life, it is safe to say that the only thing my father feels toward my mother is bewilderment.)
My own theory, that has stood the test of time and knowing each of them well, is that my mother saw my existence necessary for some trigger of events. She approached my father to act as her stud, and took away his seed while leaving him clueless as to why. When I was a young child, I naïvely thought I would be the center of her plan, the pivot on which the fate of worlds would hang. For most of my adolescence, and the first years of my triples, I then became convinced that my mother was the one hiding a mental illness and I was just the first sign of her madness.
But I digress.
I’d been drowning myself in elfin novels at the time I met him. An odd and painful way to suicide, to be sure, but it let me escape my existence without doing bodily harm. Even in my deepest pain, I still believed that my mother had some great plan for me that I merely had to wait for. She was the queen’s oracle—the greatest intanyei seyosa ever born—surely she had some great, secret reason for bearing a half-caste child like me.
I was in the far corner of the royal garden, hiding with a book, trying to wade through the thick, endless prose of Flame Pen. It bored me to tears, but at least it wasn’t me suffering political scandals and lover’s betrayal. No one paid enough attention to me to include me in such things.
There he found me, and took notice. “Is that any good?”
I peered over the top of the book, already forming in my mind the title for this episode: Singing Storm of Fire is Tormented by Yet Another Minor Noble.
The Wind Clan noble was a young double like I was, maybe a decade older than my fifty years. By his clothes, he was hopelessly provincial. Somehow—as they all did—he’d mistaken me for sekasha despite my coloring, and pay court. Some wanted in my pants, thinking I’d be tenge and thus safe to bed. Others wanted me to pledge to their Vanity hand. Once they learned I was half-caste, and training in my mother’s caste and not my father’s, the taunting would start. Why did they all have to act as if I misled them when I tried my best to ignore them?
I’d found, though, that being stunningly rude was the best way to rid myself of unwanted attention, so I responded in low tongue. “It’s a load of dung, but better than any company I can expect here at court.”
“Ah, that doesn’t take much,” he responded in kind, not put off by my rudeness. “Have you tried Shakespeare?”
“Shakespeare?”
“He’s a human. I’m afraid, though, all his works are in English.”
“English?” I cocked my head. “What is that?”
“It’s one of the human languages. The humans have quite a few of them.”
Was he mocking me? So far, this wasn’t going like any of my previous brushes with members of the court.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped. “This area is for Fire Clan only.”
“I am Fire Clan.”
I scoffed. He was clearly Wind Clan with his black hair and blue eyes.
He spoke and gestured and a flame shield wrapped around him—the heat of it spilling over me.
“Forgiveness,” I bowed to him, properly chastised. Remembering my manners, I gave the hated name that my mother had bestowed on me. “Singing Storm of Fire.”
“Fire…storm song?” He rolled the conflicting images against each other, for the storm in my name indicates a thunderstorm. “It does not quite suit you—you lack the red hair to pull it off. I would think Discord would be a better name.”
I glared at him, regretting not for the first time that I wasn’t following my father’s path. If I had, I would have had a practice sword and the allowance to answer such pettiness with violence.
“Red hair, indeed! You are one to speak: you look like Wind Clan.”
The corner of his mouth twitched only slightly but his eyes openly mocked me.
And I lost my temper. Not that it was a rare thing for me—I’d been warned repeatedly that it wouldn’t be tolerated in my mother’s caste—but this was the first time I dared to attack a domana. And attack him I did. With a curse, I launched myself at him, and we went down in a rolling tangle of arms and legs. I have to give him one thing—he knew how to fight. Within seconds I knew I wasn’t dealing with my normal tormentor, who instantly curled into a ball and wailed when struck. He proceeded to deal out blows equal to my own.
Suddenly I was knocked back with a hit that rocked me into darkness. When my vision cleared, I had cooling winds wrapped around me, and my mocker stood between me and my father. Sword Strike had his ejae unsheathed and was glaring at me with murder in his eyes.
“Leave her be,” the male child commanded, perhaps ignorant of the fact that my father was the queen’s First.
“This will not be tolerated,” my father growled.
“I provoked her.” He stated it as if it was the truth. Stripped clean of anger and left only with terror, I knew that my father wouldn’t perceive the child’s words as spiteful.
“No harm has been done,” the child continued. “There is no need for this.”
“You’re under the queen’s protection,” my father snapped. “It doesn’t matter whose child she is—attacking you won’t be tolerated.”
“She is a child, and it will be tolerated,” my protector stated coldly. “The Wyverns enforce the queen’s law, but it is the queen that sets it and defines its limits. We will take this matter to her, if we need to.”
I had stayed tucked in a ball, terrified. My father had the right and ability to kill me where I stood, and I knew it well.
“She’s my daughter and part of the queen’s household and has been told that fighting won’t be tolerated in the oracle caste.”
“Shame on you,” the child dared to chide my father, “for denying your daughter the sword that is hers by blood. You let one of your lineage stray from the path given you by God?”
And my father’s attention left me to focus on the child between us. I couldn’t breathe, not because of fear, but in pure amazement. No one ever spoke to my father so, not even the queen.
“She chose her mother’s caste,” my father said finally, in a voice that was full of hurt, not anger.
“Can you not see that it does not suit her? A babe screams in hunger even as food is offered to it. You don’t strike down the hungry infant. You don’t kill the frustrated child. Where is the wisdom of your years? Why do you let her ignorance guide her to ruin?”
Father glanced at me and shook his head. “Why encourage her to take up the sword when no one will have a mongrel such as her? I don’t know what her mother was thinking.”
“I will take her,” the child said. “If she wishes to offer, when the time comes for us both.”
“You?” My father looked stunned.
Him? I thought, and stared at him, wondering for the first time who this bold child might be. I realized suddenly that while he had cast a fire shield earlier, it was a wind shield that protected me now. He tapped two sets of Spell Stones!
“Who better to take her but another mongrel?” the child said.
My father shook his head. “You are not a mongrel, Wolf Who Rules.”
Wolf Who Rules! I gasped. The court had been all abuzz about his recent arrival. He was the son of the queen’s sister and the head of the Wind Clan. While the youngest of ten children, he was the only one that was able to access the Spell Stones of both Fire and Wind Clan. He was gifted with a name that foretold a powerful future. You couldn’t find a greater opposite to myself—and yet there he was—likening himself to me. And more amazing—offering to take me as sekasha if I achieved my sword.
My father glanced at me. “Well?”
“I like to fight,” I admitted.
My father took it as a yes, and I suppose, in truth, it was. He sheathed his ejae and bowed low to Wolf Who Rules.
“Let it be said, lord, that you are earning your name.”
“Thank you, Sword Strike.” Wolf Who Rules proved that he knew exactly who my father was.
My father took me by the wrist and dragged me not only from the garden but out of the palace, taking me directly to the Wyvern training hall without even allowing me to collect my fallen book. Not that it was a waste. But I didn’t even get to thank Wolf Who Rules for saving my life in more than one way, or get him to promise that he truly meant what he said.
I gazed over my shoulder at him as my father pulled me away, wanting to lock down the memory of Wolf Who Rules. He stood and watched us go, and just before we rounded the bend in the path, waved to me, like I was a parting friend.