Short Stories

This story first appeared in Lost Worlds magazine, Volume 9, No. 7, June, 1997.

DAUGHTER OF THE FLAME

� 1997 by Nora M. Mulligan

The man and the woman entered the inn with the air of travelers who were used to better things. Ellia noticed them out of the corner of her eye; she was busy lugging the heavy trays of food from the dining area to the kitchen in the back.

They had already sat down at one of the best tables in the house by the time Ellia came back into the dining room. She breathed a sigh of relief. She would never be allowed to serve at that table, which was reserved for the most honored guests.

She was clearing the dishes off one of the other tables, ignoring the pinches from the drunk sprawled on the bench, when she became aware that the well-dressed man was looking at her. Oh, no, she thought, not him, too. She was already claimed by Jack's son, and by Orff the Rat, and whoever else her owner had contracted her for this evening. But if this fancy man wanted to use her, he would go to the head of the line, and whatever he wanted, he would get. She gritted her teeth and ignored him as best she could.

The lady at the table reached out her arm and touched Ellia as she passed the table. "What is your name, young lady?" asked the lady. Her voice was clear and sweet.

"Ellia, ma'am," she replied, ducking her head. She had been beaten so often for looking people in the eyes that she had finally learned to keep her eyes down, where they belonged.

"How long have you been here?" the lady persisted.

"All my life, ma'am," she said, still not looking at the lady.

"Do you remember how you got here?"

"No, ma'am, I'm sorry - I've just always been here."

Ellia recognized Vitmar by his smell before she saw him. Her owner had bounded over to the table and was looming over her. "Is this unworthy slave annoying you, good people?" he asked in his most unctuous voice. He slapped Ellia on her ear, a backhanded, powerful blow that made her head ring and nearly knocked her to the floor. "How many times have I told you to go about your duties and leave the quality alone?" he growled at her.

The lady spoke up instead. "She is not bothering us. I had pulled her away from her work to talk to her."

Vitmar bowed repeatedly to the man and the woman. "You are only too good to take an interest in this -" He paused, obviously trying to think of a good description of Ellia.

"Yes," said the lady, "we are interested in her. I wonder if you could send her to our room after she has finished her duties here tonight."

Ellia's mouth dropped open in surprise. Vitmar reacted much more smoothly. "This one will never finish her duties tonight, at the rate she is going now, but I will make a point of sending her to your room as soon as you have retired, and she can finish the rest of her duties afterwards."

An hour after that conversation, Vitmar pulled her away from the kitchen where she was scrubbing the pots. "Leave those for now," he growled. "You are wanted upstairs."

She trudged up the stairs, rubbing at her ear, sore from Vitmar's blow. Whatever they wanted to do to her, she steeled herself to be ready for it.

The man and the woman were sitting on chairs by the fireplace, waiting for her. Ellia noticed that they were both fully dressed, and both looked perfectly serious.

"Sit down, Ellia," said the man.

She pulled up a stool and sat down. Yes, he was staring at her, but as far as she could tell, it wasn't with lust. And the lady was staring at her, too, with an expression very like the man's. "We have been looking for you for a long time," said the lady. "We would have come much sooner, but some of the documents were lost in the castle fire, and it took a long time to find the missing information."

"What -" Her mouth was dry. She swallowed and tried again. "What do you want me for?"

"We're not going to hurt you," said the man. "We've come to help you."

"You are not what you think you are," said the lady. "You were sent here originally for your own protection, to shelter you from your enemies, in a place where no one would think to look for you. But something went wrong, we aren't sure what. This was not supposed to happen."

"If I'm not what I think I am," she said hesitantly, "then what are you saying? What am I?"

"A hero," said the man. "The best hope for the kingdom."

She forgot herself entirely at that and looked the man in the eye, incredulous. "What kind of a joke is this?" she demanded, looking at the two of them.

They were both perfectly serious. "It's not a joke," said the lady. "You are the daughter to the Flame. When the Flame was dying, she hid you here. You have inherited her powers, and her responsibilities."

"The Flame?" Even Ellia, ignorant as she had been all her life, recognized that name. "The one who led the armies against the Lord of Darkness? The one who could call the fire against an entire city and destroy it in a night? The one who single-handedly stopped the invasion of the people from the north? You're saying that I - that I am related to her?"

"Her daughter," said the man. "No one who had ever seen her could doubt that, looking at you. You are her image, her only daughter. You are the one who inherited her powers."

Ellia shook her head. "No, no, that isn't possible - you've made a mistake!"

"We have not made a mistake," said the lady. "You have been wrongfully kept in ignorance of your identity, but we, who have been looking for you for years, know you without hesitation."

"It's a lie, and a cruel one, too. If I was the daughter of the Flame, then where are my powers? How could I have inherited her powers and spent my life thus?" She swept her arms around the room, a contemptuous gesture.

"You didn't know how to activate them," said the man. "You were very young when your mother died. She would have taught you how to use your powers if she had been here when you grew up. We don't know what happened, how your mother died without telling anyone where you were, how you ended up - this way. But we do know how you can activate your powers, become what you were always meant to be."

"How?" Ellia asked.

The man and the woman looked at each other. Their eyes spoke, but Ellia couldn't translate their language. Then the lady reached into a bag by her side. "Here," she said. "This belongs to you." She gave Ellia a small locket.

"It opens," the man said. "Touch the clasp on the side."

Ellia touched the clasp and the thing sprang open. Inside there was a picture. She was more confused than ever. "It's me," she said.

"It's your mother, the Flame," said the lady. "It is powerful magic. Her essence is in it. If you wear it, you will find your way to her powers. Here. This is the chain that goes with it." The lady threaded a fine silver chain through the locket. She reached for Ellia's neck, to put it on her, but Ellia flinched away.

"All right," said the man, "we won't rush you. When you are ready to trust us, you will. Go ahead, try it out."

Ellia still held the locket in her hand. It felt warm to her, but perhaps that was because her hands were cold from fear. "What, here?"

"No, not here!" the man cried. "It's too dangerous. No, you should take it outside. There's a field out back, you could try it there."

"Outside?" asked Ellia. "I'd never be allowed outside tonight, not with all that remains for me to do."

"Ellia," said the lady, "it is not for that pig of a man to forbid you anything anymore. But if you are reluctant to confront him, we will go outside with you. He will not forbid us anything."

Why not, Ellia thought. If it proved to be some kind of trick, then at least she would get outside the inn this night, and delay her duties with Orff and Jack's son. And if it proved to be real - no, she didn't believe that. "All right," she said. Her hands felt warmer, and the locket seemed to be brighter in color, as if someone were polishing it between her glances at it. "Let's go."

It was a cold, frosty night, and there were no others outside in the field. Ellia could see the inn from where she stood, its lights spots of brightness against the darkness of the night. The man and the lady stood back as Ellia climbed to the top of the hill.

"Put it on," said the lady. "Try it."

Ellia held the chain for a second, undecided. Then she dropped it over her neck. If it hurt her, she thought, she could always take it off as quickly.

Heat flowed through her. She felt as if she were shattering outward, exploding out of the form she had known for so long. She raised her hand, clenched in a fist, and then opened the fist. A fireball shot out from her hand.

The fireball arched upwards in the sky, lighting the night, bathing her and the landscape in an orange glow. Then it curved downwards, slowly, gracefully. She watched as it landed on a clump of trees some distance away. They lit like candles.

Ellia had to try it again. She thought of the fire, the heat that was in her, and she pointed at the fence around Vitmar's inn. Instantly, it burst into flames.

In a matter of seconds, Vitmar and many of the others were outside, screaming and dashing for the buckets of water that were kept for emergencies.

The man and the woman walked up to where she stood. "Well?" said the man. "Do you believe us now?"

"What is it?" asked Ellia, frightened. "Is this some kind of spell or something? It's this thing, isn't it?" She tore off the locket and threw it on the ground. "There! Now it's gone!" Experimentally, she raised her hand and pointed at a tree in the distance, thinking of the fire that had consumed the fence. A jagged bolt of fire flew out from her finger, and shot at the tree. The tree crackled in the flames. Ellia was so startled she jumped.

"That was just the activation," said the lady. "Now that you have sparked the fire, it doesn't matter whether you have the locket or not. You don't need that anymore, although I think you might like to have it to remind you of your mother."

Ellia's breath was coming quickly. She felt light-headed and different. "You mean - what you said about me, about my mother - you mean that's all true?"

"We wouldn't lie to you," said the man.

Down below, by the fence, they had almost put the fire out. Ellia could smell the smoke from where she stood. She heard the sound of their voices, the fear in them.

"You mean, if I pointed at them, they would catch fire?" she asked, gesturing quickly at the group by the fence.

"If you pointed at them and wanted them to flame, yes, they would," said the lady.

Ellia found that she couldn't look at the lady or the man anymore. She stared at the people by the inn. She could recognize most of them, even from this distance. Vitmar was ordering everybody else around, although there was little left for anyone to do now. That one with the limp, that was Jack's son, and the shaggy, ugly one, that was Orff. Those two by the side were two of the other servants, who had never had a civil word for her in all the time they had been at the inn.

She was sweating, and she turned back to the lady and the man. "Why am I so hot? Do I have to send out the fire to cool off?" Even as she said it, she knew from somewhere deep inside her that she could dissipate the heat that was so painful to her by burning something else. Or someone else, she thought.

"If you want to," the man said, carefully noncommittal. "It would probably work."

"You've been building up the fuel for a long time," said the lady. "You just didn't recognize it as fuel. But it is, and you can use it, Ellia."

"I don't know what you mean," she said. But she almost did.

"The Flame did not just destroy buildings and trees," said the man. "She would destroy whole armies, and cities with all their people. Are you really her daughter? Could you send the fire to people as well as to things?"

"Here's your perfect chance," said the lady. "I have watched how they treat you, Ellia. I can see how much you hate them, especially Vitmar. You can get them now. Show us that you can, and we will bring you back to the castle, and you can be the hero of the kingdom."

"You're activated," said the man. "You will find that it gets easier and easier, the more you try. But you have to start somewhere."

Ellia heard them as if they were far away There was a cracking sound inside her head, as if her body was on fire. She touched her ear, remembering Vitmar's blow, the latest in a series of blows. She could see the swagger in Orff's walk, and knew how he would be when he came to her bed that night. A thousand remembered insults and injuries rose in her throat like bile. How many times had she twisted in her bed in loathing, wishing every horrible death she could imagine on all of them? Even now, she could hear the way they would all scream if she rained fire down on them. The pressure inside her head made her ears pop. She clenched her fist, just thinking about them, and how they would suffer.

"Go ahead," said the lady. "It was a terrible mistake that you have been here all this time, treated this way. Now is your chance to rectify that mistake."

"The world will be better off without them," said the man.

Ellia dropped her hand, startled by the intensity in their voices. Why were these two so enthusiastic about her killing Vitmar and the others?

The sound of a laugh traveled up on the breeze. It was Jack's son laughing, and the tone of it set Ellia's teeth on edge. Why was she wasting her time wondering about the man and the lady? Why not just demolish that whole crew down there before they had a chance to figure out what was happening?

She reached down and took the locket in her hand again. She thought it might help her to focus her energies better. Ellia looked at the picture of her mother again, and this time she noticed the look in the Flame's eyes.

"What's the matter?" asked the lady. "Why do you hesitate?"

The look in the Flame's eyes, thought Ellia. It was totally ruthless. That woman was not the sort who would try to hide her child from enemies. If anyone was a danger to the Flame or to her child, the Flame would have destroyed them in a second. No, thought Ellia, if she brought me here, then she did it on purpose. She knew what kind of place this was. She knew what kind of person Vitmar was. She must have known what would happen, how her daughter would grow up.

"You all set me up, didn't you?" asked Ellia.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said the man. "We never laid eyes on you before today." But he seemed afraid, for the first time.

"You knew where I was all the time, didn't you? My mother told you - or told the king, and he told you. But you left me here. You wanted me to grow up like this. You wanted me to be sufficiently angry. That's the fuel, isn't it? That white-hot rage."

"We did it for your own good," said the lady. She was pleading. "So you would be able to come into your own. So that you would have all the power your mother had."

The crowd down by the fence was now looking up the hill at Ellia and the man and the lady. Ellia could hear the mumbles of their voices, and could feel their eyes on her. She didn't care.

"You want to see if I can use this on people?" she asked. "You want to see if I can kill?"

The man shook his head, and the lady opened her mouth to say something, or maybe to scream. It didn't matter. Ellia threw a fireball at the two of them, and they were consumed by it in an instant. The smell of flesh burning was terrible, and the smoke was greasy and rose high into the night.

She felt cooler then, as if some terrible pressure had been relieved at last. She walked down the hill, through the middle of the crowd of people by the fence. They parted in silence and terror and let her through.

She kept walking. When she had gone about a mile from the inn, she noticed that she still had the locket in her hand. It had melted so that the metal and the chain were indistinguishable. But the picture was still there, untouched by the fire. Yes, she thought, it looks exactly like me.