Fire - Kristin Cashore [5]
In his clearest moments, which only came to him when Immiker left him alone for a while, Larch wondered if it already had.
IMMIKER HAD HOBBIES. He liked to play with little monsters. He liked to tie them down and peel away their claws, or their vividly coloured scales, or clumps of their hair and feathers. One day in the boy’s tenth year, Larch came upon Immiker slicing stripes down the stomach of a rabbit that was coloured like the sky.
Even bleeding, even shaking and wild-eyed, the rabbit was beautiful to Larch. He stared at the creature and forgot why he’d come looking for Immiker. How sad it was, to see something so small and helpless, something so beautiful, damaged in fun. The rabbit began to make noises, horrible, panicked squeaks, and Larch heard himself whimpering.
Immiker glanced at Larch. ‘It doesn’t hurt her, Father.’
Instantly Larch felt better, knowing that the monster wasn’t in pain. But then the rabbit let out a very small, very desperate whine, and Larch was confused. He looked at his son. The boy held a dagger dripping with blood before the eyes of the shaking creature, and smiled at his father.
Somewhere in the depths of Larch’s mind a prick of suspicion made itself felt. Larch remembered why he’d come looking for Immiker.
‘I have an idea,’ Larch said slowly, ‘about the nature of your Grace.’
Immiker’s eyes flicked calmly, carefully, to Larch’s. ‘Do you?’
‘You’ve said that the monsters take over my mind with their beauty.’
Immiker lowered his knife, and tilted his head at his father. There was something odd in the boy’s face. Disbelief, Larch thought, and a strange, amused smile. As if the boy were playing a game he was used to winning, and this time he’d lost.
‘Sometimes I think you take over my mind,’ Larch said, ‘with your words.’
Immiker’s smile widened, and then he began to laugh. The laughter made Larch so happy that he began to laugh as well. How much he loved this child. The love and the laughter bubbled out of him, and when Immiker walked toward him Larch held his arms open wide. Immiker thrust his dagger into Larch’s stomach. Larch dropped like a stone to the floor.
Immiker leaned over his father. ‘You’ve been delightful,’ he said. ‘I’ll miss your devotion. If only it were as easy to control everyone as it is to control you. If only everyone were as stupid as you are, Father.’
IT WAS STRANGE, to be dying. Cold and dizzying, like his fall through the Monsean mountains. But Larch knew he wasn’t falling through the Monsean mountains; in death he knew clearly, for the first time in years, where he was and what was happening. His last thought was that it hadn’t been stupidity that had allowed his son to enchant him so easily with words. It had been love. Larch’s love had kept him from recognising Immiker’s Grace, because even before the boy’s birth, when Immiker had been no more than a promise inside Mikra’s body, Larch had already been enchanted.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER Larch’s body and his house were on fire and Immiker was on his pony’s back, picking his way through the caves to the north. It was a relief to be moving on. His surroundings and his neighbours had become tedious of late, and he was restless. Ready for something more.
He decided to mark this new era in his life with a change of his foolish, sentimental name. The people of this land had an odd way of pronouncing Larch’s name, and Immiker had always liked the sound of it.
He changed his name to Leck.
A YEAR PASSED.
PART ONE
Monsters
CHAPTER ONE
IT DID NOT surprise Fire that the man in the forest shot her. What surprised her was that he shot her by accident.
The arrow whacked her square in the arm and threw her sideways against a boulder, which knocked the air out of her. The pain was too great to ignore, but behind it she focused her mind, made it cold and sharp, like a single star in a black winter sky. If he was a cool man, certain in what he was doing, he would be guarded against her, but Fire