Page 234 of Kingdom of Ash

Sorrel flanked Manon’s right. “So shall the Thirteen.”

Manon waited, hardly daring to acknowledge the thing that began burning in her chest.

Then Bronwen stepped up, her dark hair blowing in the chill wind. “The Vanora hearth shall fly north.”

Another witch squared her shoulders. “So shall the Silian.”

And so it went.

Until the leaders of all seven of the Great Hearths stood gathered there.

Until Glennis said to Manon, “Long ago, Rhiannon Crochan rode at King Brannon’s side into battle. So has her likeness been reborn, so shall the old alliances be forged anew.” She gestured to the eternal flame. “Light the Flame of War, Queen of Witches, and rally your host.”

Manon’s heart raced, so wildly it pulsed in her palms, but she picked up a birch branch set amongst the kindling.

No one spoke as she plunged it into the eternal flame.

Red and gold and blue leaped upon the wood, devouring it. Manon withdrew the branch only when it had caught, deep and true.

Even the wind did not jostle the flame as Manon lifted it, a torch in the new day.

The Crochan crowd parted, revealing a straight path toward Bronwen’s hearth. The witch was already waiting, her coven gathered around her.

Each step was a drumbeat of war. An answer to a question posed long ago.

Bronwen’s eyes were bright as Manon stopped.

Manon only said, “Your queen summons you to war.”

And touched her flame to that in Bronwen’s hearth.

Light flared, bright and dancing.

Bronwen picked up a branch of her own, a long log burning in the fire. “The Vanora will fly.”

She withdrew the wood and stalked to the next clan’s hearth, where she plunged that kernel of the sacred fire into their pit. Again the light flared, just as Bronwen declared, loud and clear as the breaking day around them, “Your queen summons you to war. The Vanora fly with her. Will you?”

The hearth leader only said, “The Redbriar will fly,” and ignited her own torch before hurrying to the next clan’s fire.

Hearth to hearth. Until all seven in the camp had accepted and ignited the fire.

Then, and only then, did the young scout from the final clan take her burning torch, grab her broom, and leap into the skies. To find the next clan, to tell them the call had gone out.

Manon and the Thirteen, the Crochans around them, watched until the scout was nothing but a smoldering speck against the sky, then nothing at all.

Manon offered a silent prayer on the wind that the sacred flame the young scout bore would burn steadfast over the long, dangerous miles.

All the way to the killing fields of Terrasen.

Hearth to hearth, the Flame of War went.

Over snow-blasted mountains and amongst the trees of tangled forests, hiding from the enemies that prowled the skies. Through long, bitterly cold nights where the wind howled as it tried to wipe out any trace of that flame.

But the wind did not succeed, not against the flame of the queen.

So hearth to hearth, it went.

To remote villages where people screamed and scattered as a young-faced woman descended from the skies on a broom, waving her torch high.

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