Heart of Light

For those of you who remember that sometime ago I put up here the first few pages of a book, Heart Of Light, which I was just finishing.

The book has been finished and delivered — to Bantam — and now has a publishing date, in March 08.

In commemoration of this, here’s some more of it: 

The Wedding Night

 

“What is wrong?” Emily asked.

She sat naked on her bridal bed, the waves of her dark hair falling like a dusky veil over her golden shoulders and small breasts. Over it, wrapped around her, she clutched a multi-colored flowered shawl, a legacy from her Indian grandmother.

Nigel, her husband of ten hours, stood at the foot of the bed, trying to arrange his blue dressing gown with shaking hands and managing only to twist it, so it hung askew and displayed a portion of his pale, muscular chest.

He had turned away from her, but she could see his face reflected in the full length mirror. It showed a complexion splotched by sudden high red color, pale blond hair on end, where sweaty fingers had run through it again and again, and grey-blue eyes animated with an odd passion and rimmed by red as if Nigel – Nigel! – were near tears.

Emily pulled her long legs up, till her knees came right up to her pointed chin, and clutched her arms around her legs as she took a deep breath. It wasn’t possible that Nigel would cry. Proper gentlemen didn’t cry, and Nigel was as cool and collected as a gentleman could be.

“Have I done something?” Emily asked. Her voice wavered and trembled, brittle and little-girl like in this sumptuous suite, all red velvet and heavy mahogany furniture. “Failed to do something?”

Nigel’s back remained turned. He didn’t seem to hear her. He was tying and untying his dressing gown, as if it were the most important task in the world.

Emily wished to shout, to scream, to ask him what had happened and why. But proper young ladies didn’t scream at their husbands. Insecurity trembled in her voice as she said, “How did I fail you?”

“Failed?” Nigel’s head jerked back at the word. He looked at her, startled, but back at the mirror much too fast.

“Mr. Oldhall,” Emily said, making her voice as formal as she dared. “I asked if I’d done anything to disappoint you.”

“Mr. Oldhall?” The formal family name, which she hadn’t used since they’d become engaged made him give her a look of undisguised horror. “Mr. Oldhall?” He turned around, his hands feeling the pockets of his dressing gown for something.

Emily felt blood rush to her cheeks and took her hands to them, though she knew the blush would show only the color of sunset against her golden skin. “Nigel…”

Nigel pulled a packet of tobacco from a dressing gown pocket and a pipe from the other. He stared at her. “Yes?”

Her face burned and her voice caught. “No one ever told me what should happen on our marriage night.” She paused. “My step-mother did tell me it was all worth it for the children, but…” Her voice floundered and she shook her head. “But I have seen…” A deep breath to gather courage. “I was raised in my father’s country house, Nigel. We had dogs and horses and…” desperately, trying to avoid being explicit, she said, “Geese. And it seems to me the interaction between men and women cannot be all that different from what happens between… animals. Even horses and cats… and…” Deep breath. “Geese.”

She glanced up to see Nigel staring at her, his mouth half open, his face an odd mix of shock and amusement. But he said nothing, and since he said nothing, she was forced to continue. “I’m aware that humans, unlike animals, are leavened by divine grace and superior intelligence, but it can’t be all that different. And I expected…” She stopped. She could go no further.

Nigel said nothing. He drew a long breath that echoed noisy in the room. Turning his back on her, he fumbled. She smelled tobacco and saw him, in the mirror, pushing shreds of it into the bowl of his pipe. He struck the flint to light the wick of his lighter, then lit his pipe and inhaled deeply, a breath like a tremulous sigh. The lighter clicked closed and Nigel exhaled, forming a grey, aromatic cloud in the air in front of him. He put the lighter back in his pocket.

“I… I understand your disappointment,” he said, and cleared his throat. He pulled a heavy draft from his pipe and expelled it in increasingly neater rings. “Emily, I do understand,” he said, his voice now steadier. “How in your innocence, you might believe something untoward has happened or…” He cleared his throat again, and a slight flush tinged his pale cheeks. “Or failed to happen, but… Emily, now that you are a wife, you should understand that marriage… marriage isn’t always perfect.” He cleared his throat again. “There are moments when the body will not… obey the mind.”

He smiled suddenly, but his smile vanished just as quickly and it was only after another puff on the pipe that he managed to shape his mouth to his normal, aloof smile. Glancing away, he said, “Don’t let it disturb you, my dear. We’re just both tired. The day started devilishly early with the wedding breakfast and… with the parties… you’ve been trotting too hard, my dear, and no mistake. Let’s have a good night and then we’ll… we’ll both feel better in the morning.”

With those words, he reached over to pat her arm, then strode towards the closed door between their two rooms. He’d no more than set his hand on the polished brass doorknob than the whole room shook. Nigel stopped.

Emily stopped too, holding her breath. It had felt as thought, three floors beneath them, the magic carpet that supported the luxury carpetship, cruising above the clouds towards Cairo, had fluttered unsteadily on some air current and shuddered.

“It’s just the magic field we’re crossing,” he said. “Or… or the weather. I’m sure the flight magicians…”

But the curtains danced again. A rattle echoed through the ship – composed of stem of wear and crystal mage-light chandeliers colliding in liquid notes, crockery clashing down in the kitchen and the groaning of wood in framing and floors and furniture – firmly bolted down, but straining against itself.

Emily clutched at the bed covers. She remembered this noise. It bought back memories of her first trip to England. Every little current, every jolt had terrified Emily then. The ship had been all strange and scary. And her mama had been in the room, very ill, leaving no one but a cool English nurse to tell Emily not to be a goose.

That trip had ended well. The carpet ship had not fallen then. Oh, Emily’s mother had died six months after arriving in England, leaving Emily stranded, as a stranger, in the midst of her father’s family. But the carpetship had landed safely. Carpetships rarely fell. She closed her eyes and willed the ship to keep flying.

The carpetship trembled again, harder. Every window frame rattled. Every bed bucked. The support beams mounted on the carpet and supporting kitchens, ballrooms, parlors and passenger rooms, twisted and groaned like a dying beast.

Emily opened her eyes and caught a moment of panic on Nigel’s expression. He grabbed for the bed to steady himself. The ship rattled again, and started a ponderous half roll, like an animal trying to lay on its side.

Nigel was thrown, careening against a green-velvet sofa. Emily barely managed to hold on to the bed, whispering prayers to a divinity in which she very much wished to believe.

With a groan of stressed lumber, the carpetship started rolling the other way. Nigel held onto the sofa, his eyes wide in surprise, his panic no longer hidden. His lips were moving, and she supposed he must be saying words, but no sound reached her over the creaks and groans and the sharp breaking sounds of glass and pottery.

And now horns sounded, magically amplified, carrying the ship’s distress calls to the surrounding air and land and ocean, and alerting everyone in the ship to the danger. This meant they should seek the lifeboats outside, on the deck. It meant the carpetship was falling. Falling through the dark night sky to the cold ocean far, far below them.

Nigel’s hand on her arm and Emily opened her eyes, without realizing she had ever closed them. Nigel was very pale, holding onto the headboard of the bed with one hand, and onto her with the other. His lips moved, but only a word here and there emerged above the shrilling distress of the alarms. “Madam,” and “Sensible,” and, she would swear to it, “decent.”

Emily was sensible of her need to be decent; sensible of the fact that she was naked, and clutching only a flowered shawl. Her panicked mind told her she would die naked. Her shamelessly nude body would wash ashore, on some foreign land.

And then she realized Nigel was dressing her. He had somehow got hold of her white dressing gown embroidered with green sprigs, and was attempting to pull her hand up from the bed, to dress her.

Clinging, frightened, one hand clawing at his shoulder, Emily forced her other hand to let go of the bedcovers and to allow Nigel to put it into a sleeve. He was murmuring at her, but she could get no more than a general feel of comfort and an attempt to calm her. She clutched at him, and allowed him to slide her other arm into a sleeve. And then he was tying her belt, firmly, and pulling her up, still talking.

“Must,” she heard him say before the words submerged in other sounds. And then “Safety.”

She rolled from the bed, Nigel gripping her. Safety meant the lifeboats – mounted on smaller flying rugs tethered to the side of the ship. Each of them would take ten travelers apiece and lead them, unerringly, to the nearest patch of terra firma.

Fumbling, she and Nigel moved, holding each other, towards the French doors that opened from Emily’s room onto the deck. They held onto furniture in passing and Emily had a moment of gratitude that every piece was firmly bolted to the floor.

Nigel struggled to open the door, kicked it open and yelled, “Go, go, go,” propelling her through the open door to the deck outside.

 

The Royal Were Hunters

 

Emily stepped out the door and onto the glass-smooth polished mahogany of the deck.

“The boats,” Nigel yelled above the din, returning to hold Emily’s arm. “No one has pulled in the lifeboats.”

Emily looked across the deck where bedlam had been unleashed in the form of half dressed – or hardly dressed at all – men and women of all ages. Emily’s dressing gown was positively proper compared to so many of the people who were rushing about in their underthings, or one young, disheveled woman, clutching a sheet to her otherwise naked body and shrieking in fear. Not that the men were any better. One of the gentlemen nearby was wearing his hat, his gloves and his underwear and seemed perfectly composed with it, until one realized he was strolling about pointing with his cane and giving orders to no one.

On the other side of the deck, past the frightened throng, a tall glass partition, six feet tall and composed of small glass panes, protected passengers and crew from otherwise deadly flight-breezes and the air that at this altitude would be full cold.

And against that partition, on the other side, lifeboats knocked, tethered to the outside of the carpetship, knocking against the frame with a noise like the damned attempting to storm the halls of heaven.

To allow people to board the boats, they would need to be tethered right up close to the frame, not allowed to blow away from it on the air currents. And doors in the glass partition would need to be opened by the crew.

None of this had been done.

Still holding onto Emily’s arm, Nigel stopped a passing man – an amazingly groomed and properly attired employee in the blue serge uniform and cap of the carpetship line. “Good man.” Nigel yelled to be heard above the confused din of voices around them. “Good man, why haven’t the lifeboats been pulled in and made accessible. My wife must be taken to Terra Firma at once.”

The man tried to pull away from Nigel but Nigel held his arm and wouldn’t let go. “The Magicians are trying to save the carpetship milord,” the man said, also yelling above the babble of voices, but with every appearance of eager obsequiousness. “They think they can save it, milord. That it will pass.”

“Pass how?” Nigel yelled back. “When a carpetship’s magic fails– ” He stopped as the ship trembled, more violently than before. “What?”

The ship shuddered again, in great spasms like a dying beast. It should have caused a redoubling of the screaming and a blind panic on deck, but instead everyone fell silent. Nigel looked as startled as Emily felt. And then Emily saw something in the unrelieved black, outside the glass partition.

Something moved there, something shone. Not quite as bright as stars. It was more, like a bit of shining dust in the wind, like glimmers of flame, catching suddenly.

Without knowing quite why, but wanting to know, wanting to see what might be out there, Emily pushed through the crowd, towards the glass barrier. Nigel tried to protest, but was pulled along with her, his hand on her arm.

Pressing against the glass, Emily heard something – a sound like another wind beating within the wind, like the murmur of a heart composed of the hissing flames, like…

 

She looked toward the sound – perceived more with her mage sense and her mind than with her ear.

And there, by the side of the carpetship, she saw something deep blue green seemed to glitter and churn the air beside the ship. Slowly, it sailed closer; becoming clearer; revealing itself for a large reptilian-looking creature.

Moonlight flickered on a long sinuous neck, on bright, sparkling eyes, on an elongated body, on a curling tail.

Moonlight struck upon wings that looked as unreal as an artist’s dream, as if their armature had been carved in the finest ivory, then covered over with transparent fabric, upon which myriad fireflies had been caught which coruscated, brief and bright, captive of the beast’s movement, the beast’s churning of the air.

The carpetship trembled like a frightened beast, but it groaned to altitude again.

As though in a dream, Emily more felt words go through her mind than thought. So it was a dragon’s magical field that disrupted the flying spells. A dragon! Her breath caught at the word. Her mind tangled in wonder. A dragon.

She’d read about dragons in history books and stories, but Emily had never seen one. They were were-creatures, whose other form looked wholly human but who – in the period of their change – craved the hunt, the chase, and tore their prey alive, beneath their impatient fangs.

Watching the dragon, Emily breathed in little puffs that fogged the window. She wiped impatiently at the glass with cold, sweaty hands, and peered through the stripes left by her fingers, not wanting to miss a single second of the wondrous sight.

If she’d ever imagined dragons, she’d thought them sinister and frightening. And yet this creature was gossamer and moonlight, living flame and whispering wind – wild nature given a body and on the wing.

She wished she could engrave this scene upon the memory of her eyes, and relive it later, whenever she needed to refresh her vision from mundane sights.

None of the histories that spoke of the evils of dragons said that the pinpoints upon their wings shone like multicolored fairy lights rivaling the stars. None had mentioned that they transmitted an impression of power and joy. Nor had they admitted that dragons flew so effortlessly – gracefully – like dancing on air.

Books spoke of danger, cruelty, ruthlessness – never of magnificent wonder.

From behind Emily came the sound of running feet, and two employees of the company came rushing to turn cranks on the side of the glass partition that separated the passengers from the dragon.

“Letting us at the lifeboats, then?” Nigel said, in a confused tone.

“No, sir,” One of the men said. “Just opening the partition so the Royal Were Hunters can have at the beast.”

Emily, looking on the dragon, had only half-understood the words, before she heard a shout from behind. “Miss. You’ll have to get out of the way.”

She turned around and saw a whole regiment of royal were-hunters – Gold Coats – wearing gold uniforms with golden braid, about fifteen of them, in a line, each pointing a powerstick at the dragon. The powerstick, Emily knew, would be full of were-killing magic.

Like other such creatures who might feast on humans as well as animals — European werewolves and the were-tigers that sailors had brought with them, unawares, from the first voyages to India — dragons were outlawed within the reach and influence of the British sovereign. Any discovered would be immediately magically burned. The Royal Were Hunters were a regiment specially empowered by the Queen to hunt down and exterminate these terrifying beasts.

Emily knew they did good work. Without them, weres would overrun normal mankind and destroy civilization. A look over her shoulder at the flying dragon and she stood, rooted where she was. They couldn’t shoot – she thought. Not while she was here. And yet, they had a duty. And perhaps they would shoot and burn her along with the dragon.

And yet, neither could she just move aside and allow them to shoot at the dragon. She couldn’t.

“Madame,” Nigel was yelling at the Royal Were-Hunters. “She’s my wife. Mrs. Nigel Oldhall.”

The Were-Hunters in turn were yelling at Nigel, but their screams had nothing to do with Emily’s marital status. Instead, they were screaming at them to move, to get out of the way, so they could shoot. Nigel pulled at Emily frantically too, fingers scrabbling at dressing gown sleeve.

She heard him as if from a great distance “Emily. Emily,” his voice frantic and low.

But she could not move, even had she wished it, and the men in the green jackets with the powersticks were increasingly frantic, now aiming at her, now away, and begging her to move.

“Please Miss– Madam.” “We must do our duty.” “It is a dangerous beast.”

And the dragon, at that, probably was a dangerous beast and more. What she’d heard of dragons said they couldn’t control themselves. They ate people. They–

Behind her there was a sound and she turned, just in time to see a jet of flame singe along the edge of the carpetship. People screamed and ran, and Nigel grabbed at her arm and pulled her, hard and sudden against the polished deck.

When she managed to look up, there was no fire at all and the dragon had gone. The Royal Were-Hunter captain was standing nearby. “You should have let us shoot it, ma’am. You never know what those creatures are about. We have all sorts, in the isles,” he said, offering Nigel his hand to help him rise. “From wolves to foxes. And some of them are harmless enough, and we sort of wink at it. But them dragons, they’re desperate creatures that can neither be controlled nor brought down easily.” He pulled Nigel up and Nigel pulled Emily up along with himself. “We had a perfect shot.”

“She was too scared to move,” Nigel said.

And Emily supposed that could be true, but deep inside she didn’t think it was. Not scared, she thought. More… fascinated, intrigued. She couldn’t help turning her head a little towards where the dragon had been, nor feeling a lurch of dismay at the realization that the sparkling, magical being was gone.

She couldn’t quite understand why that would leave her feeling empty – as though a yawning abyss of dark, grey nothingness had opened where the wondrous should reside. But she felt low in spirits and out of sorts.

Nigel didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he attributed it to her presumed fright.

He said nothing until she was back in her cabin, sitting on her bed, in her dressing gown, wrapped in her mother’s shawl. And then what he said was neither reproof nor a demand she tell him why she had done it. Instead, it was a slow musing, as though talking to himself. “Dragons are natural only to China. It is said their noblemen suffer this hereditary curse and are venerated and given virgins for fodder in the days of their madness. There are many weres in England, but surely no true Englishman can be a were dragon?”

He didn’t seem to either expect an answer from Emily nor to want it. He shook his head as if at his own thoughts and went through the connecting door into his room.

Emily sat on the bed, hugging her knees. Before her eyes was the image of the powerful, elemental beast. Where had it come from? Where was it going? And why had she saved its life?