Children of Fire

by Drew Karpyshyn

  The morning bells ended, and Cassandra scrambled up from her sleeping mat and pulled off her nightclothes. She slipped into her undergarments, then into her warm, gray robe—a robe just like the one the monks wore.

  When Rexol had first left her with the Pontiff she had been terrified of the monks. They rarely spoke, and with their strange, all-white eyes they seemed more like ghosts or spirits than real men and women. But they treated her with kindness, and within a few weeks her fear had given way to curiosity. She wanted to know more about the Order, and the Pontiff and the others had been eager to teach her.

  Now, four years later, she considered the Monastery her home. She couldn’t recall much about her parents or her life before Rexol: Vague memories of her father’s kind eyes and her mother’s tight, pinched face were all that remained. And even her years with Rexol were starting to fade, though she remembered enough to know she preferred living in the Monastery.

  There were other children here, for one thing. A few were younger than her, several were older; more boys than girls. And even though Cassandra didn’t speak to them often—like her, the other children were focused on their individual studies—it was nice just to see them around. But it was more than that. Living with the Order meant she was serving the will of the True Gods.

  The young girl opened the door to her tiny room then moved quickly down the dimly lit hall, eager to get some breakfast before beginning her daily lessons.

  Before coming to the Monastery, Cassandra had never heard of the True Gods. Now, thanks to her lessons, she knew all about them. How they were born from the fires of the Chaos Sea. How they created the world and all the animals and people. And how they used their power to form the Legacy to protect the world from the Slayer.

  Cassandra enjoyed her lessons. She liked the stories of the True Gods. She liked that the Order was working to preserve the Legacy and keep the world safe. She wanted to help them, maybe even one day join them.

  Which was why she couldn’t mention her vision. If she told anyone about what she had seen, they would send her away. Like Rexol. Like her parents.

  “The girl is hiding something,” Yasmin declared.

  The Pontiff set down his spoon with a weary sigh. He didn’t need to ask who Yasmin was referring to; there was only one of the Order’s wards she bothered to keep an eye on. The Inquisitor had been suspicious of Cassandra ever since the girl’s arrival, as if the child had somehow been corrupted by Rexol’s foul magic.

  “This couldn’t wait until after breakfast?” the Pontiff asked, keeping his voice low so the monks at the other nearby tables in the dining hall wouldn’t overhear. “You couldn’t even let me finish my porridge?”

  Yasmin shrugged indifferently. The tall, thin woman rarely ate with the others. She slept only a few hours each night, and by the time the morning bells called the rest of her brethren to the tables she had already finished her only meal of the day.

  “It is my duty to report what I see,” she insisted. “When you decide to take action is up to you.”

  “Action for what, exactly?”

  “The girl is hiding something,” she repeated. “She is carrying a secret.”

  The Pontiff didn’t bother to ask Yasmin how she knew this. Inquisitors were trained to sense deception and concealment; it was integral to their function. And Yasmin was very, very good at what she did.

  “I will speak to her now,” he said, rising from his seat. “Will that satisfy you?”

  “I will come with you,” Yasmin offered.

  “No,” the Pontiff corrected. “You will not.”

  If he was going to speak with Cassandra, the last thing he needed was Yasmin looming over them. Even full-fledged members of the Order found the burned scalp and intense presence of the Inquisitor intimidating.

  “The girl is dangerous,” Yasmin warned. “We all sense her power. We all know the wizard was teaching her.”

  “Cassandra is not our enemy,” the Pontiff told her, his voice calm but his tone hard as steel. “She is one of us now. She has power, but we must not fear it. We must teach her to control it.”

  Sensing the matter was resolved, Yasmin bowed and retreated to a far corner of the room without further argument.

  The Pontiff picked up his bowl and spoon and made his way through the dining hall to where Cassandra was sitting alone at one of the smaller tables. He had noticed she often ate alone, but that wasn’t uncommon. Many of the monks, and even several of the other children, preferred solitude.

  “Cassandra,” he asked in a soft voice, “may I share your table?”

  The blond girl looked up at him, her emerald eyes wide, her spoon frozen halfway between her bowl and her mouth. She gave a barely imperceptible nod, and Nazir set down his own bowl and took a seat across from her.

  Instead of saying anything, he silently turned his attention to the task of finishing his porridge. After a few seconds the girl seemed to relax and did the same. Only once they were both finished did he speak.

  The Pontiff had an idea of what Cassandra might be hiding. Given her talents, and her history, there was only one logical conclusion. But he had to approach the matter carefully if he wanted to bring her into the fold.

  “Cassandra, are you happy here?”

  Her head snapped up and her shoulders suddenly tensed; it wasn’t necessary to have an Inquisitor’s training to see her obvious anxiety at the question.

  “Yes, Pontiff,” she said softly. “I like it here. Very much.”

  “That’s good, Cassandra. Because I want you to be here. We all want you to be here.”

  “All of you?” the girl asked, her eyes darting for an instant to Yasmin standing watch from the far corner.

  “Yasmin can be scary,” the Pontiff admitted, “but she serves the will of the True Gods.”

  “I want to serve their will, too,” Cassandra said urgently. “I do!”

  “I know,” the Pontiff assured her. “You’ve worked hard at your studies. You’ve learned the history of the True Gods. But if you really want to serve the True Gods, that is not enough.”

  “Yes, Pontiff,” she said, casting her eyes down to her empty bowl.

  “You know that many of the monks here at the Monastery are Seers, right?”

  “Yes, Pontiff.”

  “The Seers are very important, Cassandra. Their visions guide us. They show us the righteous path we must walk.”

  “Yes, Pontiff.”

  “But the Seers must be properly trained before they can do this. They must learn to focus their talents.

  “Without this training, their dreams are nothing but the echoes of Chaos. Without the training, they have violent nightmares showing only death and suffering.”

  He paused, waiting for the girl to say something. She shifted in her seat, but only continued to stare down at her bowl.

  “Cassandra, would you like to become a Seer?”

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t have any dreams,” she mumbled.

  The Pontiff reached across the table to rest his wrinkled hand on the young girl’s wrist, his touch gentle and reassuring.

  “It’s okay, Cassandra. Whatever you saw, you can tell me.”

  The young girl shook her head, and he saw she was struggling to hold back tears.

  “Don’t be afraid, Cassandra. It was only a vision. It can’t hurt you.”

  “If I tell you,” she whispered. “You’ll send me away.”

  “No,” the Pontiff promised. “You are one of us. The Order will never turn its back on you. We will never send you away.”

  “My parents did. Rexol did.”

  “We are not like Rexol,” the Pontiff said softly. “And your parents didn’t want to send you away.”

  “They didn’t?”

  Her confusion was to be expected; she had been only four at the time.

  “Do you remember how you came to be with Rexol?”

  Cassandra shook her head uncertainly.

  “You were very young,�
� the Pontiff said, patting her wrist. “Too young to remember, I guess.

  “Rexol stole you from your parents. They wanted you to come live with us; they wanted you to join the Order. And he stole you away from them. From us.”

  “And you stole me back?” Cassandra asked, her voice hesitant.

  “The will of the True Gods brought you back to us,” the Pontiff explained. “This is where you belong, Cassandra. With us. With the Order.”

  The Pontiff released his grip on the girl’s wrist and leaned back. Cassandra nodded, took a long, deep breath, and wiped her eyes. She seemed more relaxed. Even calm.

  “Do you trust me, Cassandra?” Nazir asked.

  “Yes, Pontiff.”

  Her reply was short and simple, but he could sense the earnest sincerity of her words.

  “Then you must tell me your dream.”

  She hesitated only for an instant before speaking.

  “We are in the Monastery: you, me—everyone. It’s night. It’s raining. The storm is so dark it blocks out the moon. There are monsters at the gate.”

  “Monsters? What kind of monsters?”

  “I don’t know,” Cassandra said, shaking her head. “They’re just shadows in the night. And then the monsters are inside.

  “They break open the gate. They climb over the walls. And then they kill us all. Everyone. They rip us apart and leave our bodies piled in the courtyard.”

  Though her voice never wavered, Cassandra’s face had gone even more pale than usual as she recounted her nightmare. The Pontiff knew she was looking for reassurance—something to put her young mind at ease.

  “Do you know what symbolic means, Cassandra?”

  “No, Pontiff.”

  “It means sometimes a dream shows one thing but means something else. The monsters might not be real. They might represent some other threat—an enemy of the Order.”

  “Like Rexol?”

  “Him, or others like him.”

  “What about the bodies? The killing?”

  “Your visions are spawned in the fires of Chaos, Cassandra. Until you learn to control them, they will always end in violence and death. But that does not mean they will come true.

  “Do you want to learn to control your visions?” Nazir continued. “Do you want to learn to use your power as Seer, in the service of the True Gods?”

  “Yes, Pontiff. I do. I really do.”

  “The training is difficult. It will take many years. You must be certain you are ready.”

  “I’m ready, Pontiff,” she insisted, and there was no mistaking the conviction in her voice. “I want to serve the True Gods!”

  “We are all merely instruments of their will,” the Pontiff agreed, giving her a warm smile. “I will send word to the Seers. We will begin your training at once.”

  With his mystical second sight he didn’t need to turn his head to sense Yasmin storming angrily from the dining hall.

  Chapter 14

  And to Daemron were given the gifts of the Gods, the Talismans imbued with the power of the Immortals that their champion might battle and defeat the Chaos Spawn. And with these Talismans the Slayer, greatest of the mortal kings, became himself a God.

  Rexol read the passage of the slender volume a second time: slowly, carefully, word by word, then letter by letter. He spoke the Danaan language fluently, but this text was written in an ancient tongue five hundred years removed from any of the dialects spoken in the North Forest during the present day. The vocabulary and syntax were strange and alien. Even the alphabet was different, with characters and symbols that had long ago fallen into disuse. He wanted to be sure he had made no mistake.

  And to Daemron were given the gifts of the Gods, the Talismans imbued with the power of the Immortals that their champion might battle and defeat the Chaos Spawn. And with these Talismans the Slayer, greatest of the mortal kings, became himself a God.

  Rexol rubbed his eyes, blinking rapidly as his vision blurred. A bolt of pain shot through his skull, causing him to wince. The glow from the witchroot in his system was fading, making it harder to pierce the veil between the mortal world and the realm of Chaos.

  Spells of understanding were never easy. Unleashing Chaos to bring about death and destruction was elementary, but subtly manipulating its power to translate an ancient text was infinitely more complex. The safeguards necessary to contain the spell’s backlash—the unforeseen consequences Chaos inevitably wrought upon the mortal world—were many, and maintaining them required great discipline and patience.

  The strain was taking its toll, but Rexol had no intention of stopping. Ignoring another searing flash of pain between his eyes, he shook his head and forced himself to refocus. In response, his blurred vision became clear once more.

  He read the passage a third time, taking particular care with the last line as he struggled to contain his growing excitement. And with these Talismans the Slayer, greatest of the mortal kings, became himself a God.

  For the last six years Rexol had been entrusted with the education and training of the heir to the Danaan throne. In exchange the royal family had sent him a steady stream of books and manuscripts that predated the Cataclysm. But despite their promise to exchange ancient knowledge for Rexol’s vow to train the crown prince, it was obvious the Tree Folk didn’t trust him.

  The works were written in a dozen different languages, none of which was spoken anywhere outside the Danaan kingdom. Most were so archaic that even the present-day Danaan scholars would be hard-pressed to translate them accurately. They never imagined a human would be able to comprehend the true subject matter of what they had delivered.

  But the Danaan sorcerers had only a rudimentary understanding of magic. Chaos came naturally to them; it flowed through their veins and wove its way through the forests of their kingdom. It was easier to call upon—they relied more on natural ability, and less on the complicated spells, incantations, and rituals that were necessary to summon Chaos in the Southlands.

  In contrast, Rexol had spent decades learning to control and manipulate Chaos. The manuscripts had been preserved with the power of Old Magic—without it most of the works would have crumbled into dust centuries ago. Rexol knew how to draw on the lingering remnants of the Old Magic’s power. He knew how to bend and twist it to his own desires.

  It had taken nearly five years of study and research, but eventually he was able to read the manuscripts the Danaan had sent him, and he quickly discovered how he’d been betrayed. He’d expected to receive the works of historians and philosophers—accounts that would detail the lives and deeds of the great wizards of legend who had drawn on the raw power of Chaos before the Legacy had cut the mortal world off from the source of all magic.

  Instead, he received census reports, royal proclamations, storehouse inventories, diaries and logs recorded by insignificant bureaucrats working for the royal family—mundane works focusing on the minutiae of daily existence rather than the epic events that shaped history itself.

  Outraged at their treachery, Rexol had briefly considered ending the arrangement. But there was no other source he could call upon in his quest to unlock the secrets of the past. In the Southlands, all surviving documents that predated the Cataclysm had been locked away by the Order in the depths of the Monastery. Trivial as the meager scraps the Danaan fed him were, they were all he would ever get.

  Hoping to unearth something of value from the thousands of seemingly worthless texts, Rexol had devised powerful incantations that enabled him to read and comprehend the ancient writings. And as he read volume after volume, he was able to glean small kernels of the kind of information he hungered for, tiny threads of a much greater tapestry.

  This particular volume was the diary of a steward who had served beneath one of the many Danaan kings named Lassander. Since the first Lassander ruled nearly three hundred years before the fourth and final Monarch of that name, it made pinpointing the exact year of the manuscript’s compilation difficult. However, for Rexol’s pur
poses exact dates usually weren’t necessary.

  And to Daemron were given the gifts of the Gods, the Talismans imbued with the power of the Immortals that their champion might battle and defeat the Chaos Spawn. And with these Talismans the Slayer, greatest of the mortal kings, became himself a God.

  The excerpt was hardly what one would have expected in the diary of a minor court functionary. It was buried between the inscribed guest list for an upcoming social event and the item-by-item description, including cost, of a new wardrobe the author had recently purchased.

  A scribbled quote from a better-known text of his era, perhaps? An entry the steward made on that day to … what? Inspire himself? To give himself confidence about an upcoming event by reminding himself how anything was possible, even a mortal becoming a God?

  Rexol mulled the words over once more. He had found mentions of Daemron before in the Danaan texts. According to the legends, he was a great champion who ruled the Danaan people before the Cataclysm—a wizard, warrior, prophet, and king. Over time, the legends explained, he earned the title of the Slayer for his many victories over the monstrous creatures that rose from the Sea of Fire to threaten those under his dominion.

  The Order also had legends of a mortal hero called the Slayer. In their accounts, he was an arrogant wizard who dared to challenge the Old Gods. Rallying his followers, the Slayer made war against the Immortals. The Chaos unleashed in the battle caused the Cataclysm, and the world was nearly split in two. But in the end the Slayer was defeated and the Old Gods created the Legacy to keep the mortal world safe from the destructive power trapped in the Sea of Fire … or so the Order claimed.

  It was dangerous to make unfounded assumptions, but evidence seemed to indicate the Danaan Slayer and the human Slayer were one and the same. The implications of a shared legend opened the door for interesting questions regarding the origins of the two races. Were the Danaan and humans once a single people?