Flames Over Frosthelm

by Dave Dobson

  After a final turn, I came up short as the hallway expanded to a wide chamber with a high ceiling. An oil lamp hung above me, and in the flickering light I could see through an archway at the far end of the room. I cautiously approached the opening. This archway, twice as tall as the others I’d passed, opened into an ornate circular chamber. Inside, seven columns sprouted from the floor in a circle, meeting the chamber’s ceiling twenty feet above me. Through the columns, I could see a shaft of natural light striking the back wall, admitted through some unseen window high above. The floor was white and black marble, decorated with runes. There was a raised circular dais in the center, inside the circle of columns. The walls and columns were exquisitely crafted from small stone bricks. The air was fresh and cold compared to the musty halls and rooms. Across from where I stood, a trickle of silvery water flowed from some hidden source behind the wall down a groove to a small channel cut into the floor.

  But I must admit to not paying much attention to these details. I was distracted by the center of the chamber. There, set into the raised dais, was a pool of liquid, six feet wide and three feet deep, shimmering in the reflected daylight from above, surrounded by seven runes. If I weren’t wearing a metal collar and hadn’t walked seven days chained behind a horse to get here, I could swear I was back in our Headquarters, waiting for the Augur to finish cracking her knuckles and let me use her pool.

  43

  With a Capital T

  As I stood and stared, I noticed a few differences. This pool was seemingly fed by the slow flow of water through the floor channel, while ours could only be filled with great effort and ritual by water prepared by the Augur. The orientation of the small runes and decorations around the chamber seemed slightly different, but I was not sure I could trust my memory of those. The seven main runes, marking the importance of objects, were the same. The room here was slightly smaller, and the opening to the sky also smaller and much higher up. As I gazed upward, I guessed that the opening might be natural rather than shaped by the builders of this place.

  My mind was full of questions. Did this pool function like ours did? Or was it merely a decoration, a motif of these forgotten people duplicated many times, something everyone had in their home, down the hall from the hearth? It seemed too carefully crafted to be merely mundane, and the near-perfect duplication of the markings and ornaments around our pool argued for some important purpose, perhaps the same one. Did this society, the ancient builders, have many Augur’s Pools? Until this day, I had known of no other pools in the world. Our library made no mention of any, and the many treatises on the pool I’d read treated the pool as unique to Frosthelm. But all those scholars were working long after the pool was built, long after the secrets of its origin had been lost.

  There was a noise behind me. A grunt? Sharp needles of panic raced up and down my neck as I spun around. Gora was there, standing back in the antechamber, arms folded across her coarse dark robe, looking right at me. I was caught. I opened my mouth, but I could not think of any adequate words. The shock of finding the pool here was too great. I shut my mouth again.

  Gora studied me for a moment. I met her gaze, mustering up what I hoped was an expression of stiff-lipped brave resistance. To be honest, though, I’d have settled for anything that wasn’t guilty or bewildered, which were closer to my true feelings.

  Gora grunted again, then cleared her throat. “I can’t come in if you stand there blocking the way. Unless you enjoy the bite of the collar.”

  Mutely, I retreated to the back of the room, circling the pool and pressing up against the back wall next to the tiny stream of water. Gora shuffled in, stopping at the edge of the pool. “So, what do you think of this?” she said, waving a hand at the pool and looking at me pointedly.

  I considered my answer. I had no idea if she knew of our pool or of its purpose. She was our captor and our enemy, or at least working with our enemy. “It is beautifully made,” I replied.

  “It surely is.” She rubbed her chin. “I’m sure it is not the first one you’ve seen.”

  I remained silent.

  “Even we benighted savages have heard of the Augur’s Pool, now, boy.” She raised her arms. “Seeing the past, connecting memories and objects, sometimes predicting the future?” She paused. “Have you used it?”

  I didn’t want to give her any information, so I maintained my silence.

  She sighed. “I had hoped to mend our relationship, get on better footing, before showing you this.”

  I couldn’t help but scoff at that. “The collars aren’t really the best way to foster happy companionship.” A new pang of sorrow shot through me. “Nor was killing my … friend.” I suddenly had trouble finding the right word for Clarice. Friend seemed inadequate, though I'm sure she’d describe me that way. Or have described.

  She nodded once. “Fair enough. I regret the collars, but they are for my safety, and to keep you here, as I was ordered. And I am not the one who killed your friend.”

  “You serve and advise their ruler. You shackle and punish their prisoners. Forgive me if I don’t see a lot of distance between you.”

  “I haven’t punished you, ever. I saved your life, you know. You were going to be executed. And Okhot is not their ruler. He’s merely a Kanur. A subordinate chieftain."

  “Saved my life for what? Slave labor?”

  Gora sighed, exasperated. “That was only to get you settled. And this place is dirty. It took me three days just to clean this room. Even as feebly as the two of you are working, you’re faster than I am.” She waved a hand in the air. “One reason I saved you is to teach me how to use this pool.”

  Interesting. We had something she wanted. But I decided to let that simmer for a bit. Gora seemed talkative, expansive even. During our captivity, during the long journey, during our meals here, she’d never spoken so readily. In our training, we’d been taught to press our sources when they seemed willing to speak, so I tried digging. “What is this place? This…compound.”

  She looked at me, calculating. “What do you think it is?”

  I saw no harm in answering. “Not your home. Or else you’re a terrible housekeeper.”

  She laughed, a dry, gravelly chuckle. “No, not my home. Sorry for the deception. Or, simplification.” She leaned back against the pillar. “A trapper, one of the free riders, followed a herd of mountain goats up here several years ago and discovered this place. It had lain empty for many years, perhaps centuries. When she passed through my village, she visited me and told me of it. She mentioned the pool. I asked her to lead me back here – paid her well to do it. Once we got here, I started rummaging about. I found the pool, and the collars, and a number of old books and writings. But then my food ran short, and shortly after I returned home, Ganghira’s cousin was killed, and the fighting started, and I was called to serve my clan.”

  That was interesting. Gora seemed, as I’d suspected before, to be quite learned, a scholar, even. I needed to reexamine my assumptions about the barbarian clans. Most in Frosthelm thought them to be uncivilized nomads, prone to violence and only occasionally literate, with little culture other than an oral tradition of tribal songs and mysticism.

  The other, potentially more important part was about Ganghira. I knew from the Guild’s intelligence work that Ganghira was the leader of the barbarian clans, and that she was the one who had pushed for war, uniting the tribes and starting the attacks on the border. I didn't, however, know about her cousin. “What happened to Ganghira’s cousin?”

  Gora looked at me again, sharply. “She was murdered, tortured, by your countrymen.”

  That was puzzling. I doubted it was an official act. It didn’t sound like something the Prelate would order. Before the fighting, people in Frosthelm barely knew of, much less cared about, the barbarian clans. No one had heard of Ganghira until she became a threat. Even now, the people of Frosthelm saw the clans only as aggressors, the war as an unwanted burden, a reason for higher taxes and food shortages, and for s
orrow in families who’d lost a son or daughter in the Brigade during the fighting.

  “Are you sure it was people from Frosthelm?”

  “She was stolen from her village by people who spoke your language. Her village is high in the mountains – your people never go there, so it was obvious they were foreigners. They killed three men and a woman in her household when they took her. They headed toward the border, toward the flatlands. The clan sent out all its trackers after the attack, and two of them picked up the trail. Two days out of the village, the trackers found the criminals camped by a river. They had strung up Nera, Ganghira’s cousin, by her feet, and they were cutting her, over and over, with small blades. She cried out with every cut. One of the trackers was overcome with rage and charged at the attackers. He was killed. The other tracker could only hide and watch Nera die in pain.”

  An uneasy suspicion began to tickle at my mind. “Did the attackers escape?”

  “When they finished killing Nera, they threw her over a horse and rode onward. The tracker followed them, but they moved fast and avoided the villages. She never had a chance raise a war party to pursue them. They crossed the border and headed toward your city, and she returned to report.”

  “Was Nera important? I don’t see how one murder, no matter how horrible, would be enough to incite war.”

  Gora smiled, but it was not from humor. “Then you do not know us well.” She turned and traced the outline of a brick with her finger. “It was a combination of many factors. Ganghira was ambitious, and she was looking for a way to unite our clans. We lose many lives and resources to foolish squabbles and skirmishes between the clans, and together, we could be far greater than we are.” Gora’s voice grew stronger, and I sensed some passion building within her. “Though she serves primarily herself and her own power, Ganghira also serves our people. A common enemy, a shared passion for vengeance, can be a powerful tool to build a nation.”

  Gora turned back to me. “Ganghira also loved her cousin. Nera was young, charismatic, wise. A priestess by birth, one of the Kelar, and better suited to it than most. And she came from a highly-placed family.” Gora smirked. "In many ways, she was a perfect martyr.”

  “What are the Kelar?” I asked.

  “The Painted Ones, in your tongue,” she said. “According to our lore, the gods choose one child in a thousand to bear their mark and carry their word to the clans. They are always trained as priests or priestesses.” She fiddled with the hem of her robe. “If you ask me, though, there is nothing special about them. Just as some are born strong, or fast, or lame, or blind, others are born marked, and it has nothing to do with anything. The Kelar can be just as venal, just as stupid, as any other man or woman. But Nera was not – she was wise, even in her youth, and she felt the joys and pains of others as if they were her own. Her tongue was golden, her voice strong, her face handsome. I was honored to be in her presence.”

  “You knew her?”

  “The Kelar often travel, journeying from village to village, spreading the word of our gods. I first met her in my village, and later, often, at the council of Ganghira. She visited with Ganghira many times. They were cousins, but also close friends. When she was killed, Ganghira was filled with rage and sorrow, but she also saw a chance to use the opportunity that fate, and you flatlanders, had provided her.”

  My suspicion had grown too strong to ignore. “If I’m wrong, this is going to sound strange. First, was Nera of the Golesh tribe?”

  Gora’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes, but… how could you know that? They’re called the Gotani now, for years.”

  “And the Kelar, the marking. It’s pretty obvious, right?”

  Gora chuckled. “Yes, of course. The gods paint them blue as the sky, head to toe.”

  44

  A New Hope

  The soup Gora made was excellent, although the biscuits, which had survived seven days on the trail seemingly untouched, were hard and tougher than leather. I suspected they might survive rolling down the mountain or being trampled by horses. I dropped one in my soup, hoping that at least a thin outer layer might become softer than my teeth.

  Boog slurped his soup noisily next to me, then he spoke. “So, Marron started the war? Really?”

  “It looks that way. But I don’t think he meant to.”

  Boog and I ate in our small room. I had shared the day’s events with him. After our discussion by the pool, Gora gave us the rest of the day off. I admitted to Gora that I’d seen Nera’s body back in Frosthelm, but I said only that we’d confiscated it from criminals. That seemed to satisfy her curiosity temporarily. I told her I needed some time to think, but that we could talk more later. She seemed to accept that.

  “What can we do with this?” Boog asked.

  “With what?”

  “With this knowledge?”

  “Boog. We’re enslaved prisoners, captured by an enemy force, deep in enemy territory. The man this implicates is in a position of power in our hometown, where we’re murderers still scheduled for beheading.”

  Boog picked a hard pebble of biscuit from one of his molars. “That’s all true, Marty.” He pondered the bit of biscuit, then poked it back into his mouth. "But, if we get free, or can convince Gora, we could get word to the Prelate about what’s going on, and maybe they could negotiate a peace. Even if Marron doesn’t take the fall for it, an apology or an accord might stop the fighting. Ending the war would be good for Frosthelm, even if we’re still stuck here.”

  “Very noble.”

  “And after that, we can go kill Marron. On our own time.”

  I poked the biscuit in my bowl with my spoon. It made a metallic clank. “What about the pool?”

  “What about it?”

  “Gora knows about the pool at the Guild. She said so today. She wants us to teach her to use this one.”

  Boog ate three more sloppy spoons of soup as he thought. “Do we even know it works?”

  “It looked similar.”

  “Maybe ours does auguries, and this one summons fire demons from the Blood Mother’s private menagerie.”

  “Could be.”

  “Helping her use it could be helping our enemy in wartime. That’s treason.”

  “The penalty for treason is beheading, to which we are already sentenced. They can’t cut it off twice.”

  Boog looked at me. “Very funny. You know what I mean.”

  “I know. I don’t want to help her or hurt Frosthelm. But if we can use the pool for auguries, there’s stuff we could learn, from here."

  “What stuff?”

  “We’re trying to escape, right? Maybe we can learn how the collars work. How they come off, or how they’re controlled."

  “That’s good. What else?”

  If this pool functioned the same way, we’d need items to place on the runes. We didn’t have many items. I still had the Faeran amulet sewn into my trousers, but the last time we’d used that for an augury, it had killed Novara, nearly killed the Augur, and almost destroyed the pool. “I can’t think of anything else. But we might come up with something later.”

  Boog grunted. “A better idea might be to trade information with her for something we need.”

  “What? You mean teach her? I thought that was treason.”

  “If the pool even does auguries, it won’t be a great help to them. It’s far out of the way, and hard to use. I can’t see what relevant military information they’d get from it, even if they could use it reliably. We’ve nearly never used ours for that kind of thing, have we? And we’ve had it for centuries.”

  I thought about that. Boog was right. Our pool was used to solve crimes, to uncover betrayals and intrigues, or to find lost items, but it had very little strategic importance. The glimpses it offered of the future were too rare and too obscure to be of much predictive help. I certainly wouldn’t want to launch an attack or risk soldier's lives on a pool vision. If this one worked the same way, we wouldn’t be giving up much of any strategic importance. “So, what c
an we get in return?”

  “Our freedom,” Boog said, scraping the last drops of the soup from his bowl. “The chance to get home.”

  “And what do we do when we get home?”

  Boog looked at me. “Marty, I know you’ve been in a bad place for a while now, what with Clarice…” He trailed off. "I hate it too. And I know we’re hunted criminals. On the run. And all that beheading stuff.” He dropped his bowl on the table, the spoon clanging noisily. He pushed his chair back and stood up. "I’m tired of running. Tired of fleeing, tired of prisons.” He tapped his collar. “Tired of being controlled. Tired of the villains winning.”

  I hadn’t heard this tone in Boog’s voice before. He had enthusiasm for his work, and for fighting, and for the occasional girl he’d pursued, but now there was real fire behind his words. He went on. “We know Marron means to take over the city, or burn it to the ground, or worse. We know he murdered Sophie, and Edmund’s sister. We know he did something really bad to Clarice long ago, and it’s probably his fault she was out here to begin with to get killed. He’s framed us and done us wrong, and he’s hurt or killed the ones we love. And now we know he started this damned war in pursuit of this Faeran stuff you dug up, by brutally murdering a blue lady who sounds pretty terrific. He’s got hundreds of lives to answer for.”

  Boog put both hands, palms down, on the table, and I could see the tension in the muscles in his forearms. “Marron needs to die. And I want to kill him.”

  There were a hundred reasons to ridicule this plan, and a hundred more why it would never work, why it would be safer just to run off, hide somewhere, make a new life for ourselves. But these reasons were mere doubts, weaknesses, cowardice. Marron had stripped us of everything, and with nothing left to lose, there was nothing else to do. No other option had the least shred of honor to it. It was time to get him. And Tolla and Brand. For Frosthelm, for Sophie, for Clarice.