The Purifying Fire p-2

by Laura Resnick

  “Of course not,” Chandra said dismissively. “This happened when Falia’s grandmother was a child.” A man who’d had grown sons and grandchildren that long ago wouldn’t still be alive now.

  “Yes.” Ignoring Chandra, Falia nodded, holding Gideon’s gaze. “The king lives still. And since the night Prince Velrav killed his family and turned his father into a sickly shadow of what he himself had become,” Falia said, “daylight has never again come to Diraden.”

  “How can the king still be alive after all this time?” Chandra wondered.

  “Blood magic,” Gideon said.

  “Fierce blood magic,” Falia said, her nostrils flaring. “Wicked. Dark.” She made the words sound… seductive.

  Gideon said to her, “That’s what the ‘hunger’ is.”

  They looked to Falia for confirmation. She nodded.

  “Why did he feed his father his own blood?” Gideon asked. “He’d killed the rest of the family. Why keep the king alive?”

  “To curse him,” said Falia. “The king lives in the darkest, deepest dungeon of the castle. He is fed only blood. He is left alone, in terrible solitude. No one speaks to him or sees him, except for Velrav, who visits him once in a great while and tells him about all the torment and suffering he is inflicting on the king’s realm.”

  “And this has been going on since your grandmother was a child?” Chandra asked, appalled.

  “So that’s why Velrav made it perpetual night here,” Gideon mused.

  “I don’t understand,” Chandra said.

  “Some blood drinkers don’t like daylight,” he said.

  “You mean they don’t want to be seen drinking blood?” she said in puzzlement.

  “No, I mean the sunlight burns them,” he said. “Like fire. Those who choose blood magic, those who decide to embrace the power it holds must guard themselves at all cost against the powers of light.”

  Fire. The word reminded Chandra of their predicament.

  “They don’t like fire, either,” Gideon said. “They’re vulnerable to it.”

  “So he uses the veil of false night to block sunlight and red mana,” she mused.

  “And that same sorcery winds up blocking all mana, except black,” Gideon said.

  Falia said, “Yes, my grandmother says there once used to be other mana here. Other colors in the?ther. Other kinds of magic.” She gave them both an assessing gaze. “You are not from Diraden, are you?”

  They both went still.

  After a moment, Gideon said, “No.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Someplace very far away,” Gideon said. “And we can’t go back there while Velrav’s power holds.”

  “And you would like to go back there? Together?”

  “Yes,” said Gideon. “We would.”

  Falia said with certainty, “The prince will not help you or give you permission to go.”

  “No, I didn’t think so,” Gideon said. “Tell me about this veil of night, Falia, this shroud. It blocks mana and light, but it also keeps things alive, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just enough that many things aren’t really alive here anymore, yet they don’t really die.”

  “That’s a tremendous amount of power. Can he do that all alone?”

  “No,” the girl said, “his companions work with him to maintain the veil.”

  “His companions?” Gideon asked.

  “They are the blood demons who helped him develop the power.”

  “And blood is what feeds their power?” Chandra asked.

  “Yes,” Falia said. “When they feel the hunger, they seek more blood to sustain them. To empower their dark work.”

  “How often do they get hungry?” Chandra asked.

  “Often.”

  “And then people are taken.” Gideon said.

  “People. Goblins. Creatures. Animals.” Falia paused. “They like people best. But any blood will feed the hunger. People, though… those thrill them.”

  Gideon studied her. “Do people with power thrill them in particular?”

  Falia nodded.

  “People with power,” Chandra said, “such as a menarch?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

  “You’re in danger?” Gideon asked quietly.

  “Always,” Falia said.

  Falia offered them water to wash their skin and damp cloths to wipe away the worst of the grime and dirt from their garments. She loaned them a comb and got one of the village men to lend Gideon his razor. After they were clean and tidy, she suggested they all get some rest.

  She was willing to share her hut with them… but not with Jurl.

  “Goblins are treacherous,” she said. “Even with his hands bound, I wouldn’t feel safe sleeping in the same dwelling with him. We should put him in a secure place.”

  Chandra thought that made perfect sense, so they woke Jurl, who was cranky about being disturbed, but became more so at the prospect of being locked up while the rest of them slept in relative comfort.

  One of the huts in the village had originally been built to protect livestock at night. However, most of the livestock on Diraden had long since died and now the building was empty. There was also a large, sturdy cage in the hut, which Falia said had formerly been used to keep wild boars being fattened for the annual harvest feast. There had been no harvests since Prince Velrav came to power, obviously, and it had been some time since the villagers had even seen a wild boar.

  They locked Jurl in the cage. He was hotly opposed to the idea, and it took Gideon some effort to get the goblin into the thing. Afterwards, Falia took Gideon back to her hut to clean the scratches that Jurl’s claws had left on his skin.

  Chandra remained behind in the livestock hut and said to the goblin, “Stop that snarling! We can’t let you go, and that’s your own fault.”

  “Bad,” said Jurl.

  “Nonsense. You’ll be perfectly comfortable in here.”

  “Village eat goblin,” he said ominously.

  “What?” She realized Jurl must have heard her dinner conversation with Gideon. “Don’t be silly. We were joking. They won’t roast you.”

  “Stranger,” Jurl said bitterly. “Stupid.”

  “I consider the source,” Chandra said, “and feel unmoved by the insult.”

  She left him sulking and made her way back to Falia’s hut.

  Predictably, perhaps, the girl had convinced Gideon to remove his tunic, and she was making a lengthy and intimate task out of tending what were only a few negligible goblin scratches on his chest. Chandra gave the two of them a dismissive glance, then went over to the bedroll that had been provided for her, smoothed it out on the floor, and lay down. While doing so, she noticed in passing that Gideon had a broad, hard, mostly hairless chest, and his arms were well muscled. There were several scars on his left arm, and another on his stomach.

  At length, Falia ministered to his wounds. Then she offered to comb his hair for him, which was still rather tousled.

  Chandra snorted.

  Giving no sign that he had noticed Chandra’s derision, Gideon smiled kindly at Falia and assured her he was accustomed to doing it himself. “But thank you for the offer.”

  Rosy-cheeked and glowing from within now, Falia looked quite different from the pale, hollow-eyed girl whom they had first met. “Please make yourself comfortable in the other bedroll,” she said to Gideon. “I must go and get another.”

  “Am I taking yours?” he said. “I don’t want to deprive you of your bed, Falia.”

  “Please, you’re my guest. It’s my pleasure that you should sleep in my bed!”

  I’ll bet it is, Chandra thought.

  “I’ll get another bedroll for myself from my aunt’s hut,” the girl said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  As soon as she left, Chandra said reprovingly to Gideon, “She’s a child.”

  “Actually, she’s probably older than either of us, Chandra.”

  “You think?�
� She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him in perplexity.

  “One of the typical effects of blood magic is that it slows or even halts the normal aging process.”

  “But surely she’s not a blood drinker?” Chandra said.

  “No, I think she’s exactly what she says she is: the village menarch. You heard what she said. The wise woman passes her wisdom to her successor through a blood ritual.”

  “Yes, I did hear that.” Chandra lay down again and stared at the flickering light from the candles as it bounced off the ceiling. “The wise woman passes along knowledge and wisdom through her blood, and maybe some power. And part of the power involves ensuring that the next wise woman remains the exact same age she is at the time of initiation… until it’s time for her to turn the duty over to her successor?”

  “It seems necessary,” Gideon said. “She remains young so that she can marry and bear children, but that could take a long time considering how few people are in the village. I imagine mortality rates among infants is high in this kind of environment.”

  “I think she sees you as a potential mate.” Chandra thought it over. “How old do you think she is?”

  “We’d probably be able to make a better guess if we met the aunt who was the wise woman before her.”

  “Well,” Chandra said, “no wonder Falia seems so, er, ready for marriage.”

  “That’s a surprisingly tactful way for you to put it. You must be tired.” He stepped over her prone body and started laying his bedroll in the narrow space between hers and the wall.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “You’re not sleeping this close to me.”

  “Yes, I am. I want you lying between me and her,” he said firmly. “You’re my protection.”

  Chandra snorted again. “Oh. All right. Fine.”

  She rolled over on her side, with her back to him, and closed her eyes. She assumed Falia wouldn’t be pleased with this arrangement when she returned to the hut, but Chandra was much too tired to care.

  She dreamed of fire.

  Not the hot power that had mingled with her fear and fury when she killed the Enervants. And not the wild flames that had scalded her in the Blind Eternities as she made her escape from the Prelate’s dungeon.

  The fire in her dreams wasn’t the seduction of a boom spell, or the fragile sparks of a new enchantment. No, this was the fire of sorrow and grief, of shame and regret.

  “I don’t want to kill any innocents,” Gideon said in that calm, impassive voice he often used. White flames danced around him as he said it. Pure white.

  And in those flames, she could hear their screams clearly. Their bodies writhed in the fire, and the stench of their burning flesh made her want to vomit, as it always did. Her throat burned with sobs that wouldn’t come out.

  But the sobs must be coming out, because she could hear them. Choked, desperate, tearful gasps.

  “Chandra,” he whispered, his voice cool against the heat of the agonized screams of the innocents dying in the fire.

  She tried to move, but her limbs were immobile. She wanted to scream, but only a helpless moan emerged from her throat.

  “Chandra.”

  And when the blade of a sword swept down to her throat, she awoke with a strangled gasp of horror.

  It was dark. No candles were burning. And Chandra had no fire to call upon here.

  “Shhh, it’s a dream, just a dream,” Gideon whispered. His arms came around her. “Shhh.”

  She struggled against the imprisoning arms.

  “It’s me,” he whispered. “You had a nightmare.”

  Her heart was pounding. Her temples throbbed. She was sweating. A strangled sob escaped her throat, humiliating her.

  His body was pressed up against her side as she lay on her back. One hard arm encircled her shoulders, the other curled around to cradle her face. “Shhh. You’re fine. It was just a dream.”

  Chandra raised her hand to the hand that cupped her cheek. She intended to reject that intrusive, offending caress. To fling off his hand… But somehow, instead, she found herself grasping it. He returned her grip and squeezed gently.

  “Just a dream,” he said again.

  She focused on her breathing, trying to steady it.

  “Maybe going to bed on a belly full of grub worms wasn’t such a good idea,” he whispered.

  A choke of surprised laughter escaped her.

  Then she felt queasy. “You had to mention that,” she murmured. “I’d actually forgotten.”

  “Sorry,” he breathed against her ear.

  She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She could still hear her heart thudding with terror and guilt.

  Gideon said, “Do you want to tell me what you dreamed?”

  “No.”

  He accepted this, and they lay quietly together. After a while, he lifted his head. Then he whispered, “It’s too dark to see, but I think she’s still asleep.”

  Chandra was glad she hadn’t disturbed the girl. Having woken Gideon was embarrassing enough.

  He lowered his head again, letting it rest close to hers. “I can’t tell how long we’ve been asleep. The light’s always exactly the same here.”

  “The moonlight, you mean.”

  “Mmm.”

  She tried to get her mind off the shadows of her past. It was better to think about the present-even this present. “Now that we know more about Velrav and this place… I don’t feel we’re any closer to knowing what to do about it. How to get out of here, I mean.” She kept her voice soft, so as not to wake Falia.

  “Widespread rebellion would be handy,” Gideon said, “but I doubt it’ll happen.”

  “Because it hasn’t happened yet?” she whispered. “In all these years of suffering?”

  “And also because this whole plane is steeped in dark magic.”

  “Including our hostess?” Chandra guessed.

  “That blood ritual? Yes.” Lying entwined with him like this, she could feel him shake his head slightly. “They won’t unite. The different groups here won’t help anyone but themselves. And however tormented the situation may be, it’s got a sort of consistency and balance that they’re used to by now.”

  “You’d think the food alone would be cause enough to rebel. Grub soup?”

  She felt his soft puff of laughter against her cheek in the dark.

  “If they would rebel,” Gideon said after a moment, “then the flow of blood to Velrav and his companions might be reduced. Even cut off.”

  “So that’s our plan?” she said doubtfully. “Lead an uprising?”

  “No. It would take too long. Years, if it worked at all. Which it probably wouldn’t.” He added, “Besides, it might also take a while for Velrav to feel the effects of going hungry and start weakening. We need a faster plan.”

  “Yes. Faster is better.”

  “I thought you’d think so.”

  “But in our current condition,” she whispered, “how can we attack someone that powerful?”

  Gideon sighed and shifted his position a little. “I don’t know.”

  Instead of rolling away from him, she shifted her position, too, getting more comfortable in his arms. The feel of his body was comforting. The whisper of his breath along her cheek, his voice soft in her ear… For now, he was a safe place to hide from her nightmares.

  “You said blood drinkers are vulnerable to fire,” she whispered. “Maybe we should burn down the castle. The normal way, I mean. With torches and that sort of thing.”

  “We’d have to go see the place to get an idea of what it would take to burn it down without magic. But stone walls added to a damp climate…”

  The prospect wasn’t promising. Chandra tried to think of another plan. “Jurl captures people and delivers them to Velrav. Actually, he probably captures goblins, too. He’s obviously not sentimental about his own race.”

  “You think Jurl may know more about Velrav than we’ve learned so far?” Gideon guessed.


  “But whether what he says will make much sense…”

  “Well, we can try in the morning.” He paused. “Or, uh, when it’s time to get up, I mean.”

  The night was so still and silent, the villagers must all still be sleeping.

  His hand brushed her hair as he whispered, “Try to get some more sleep.”

  Chandra’s lids felt heavy, but she was afraid to go back to sleep. Afraid of what her dreams might hold. She’d rather stay here, with him. “I’m not sleepy,” she lied.

  She was sure he heard the fatigue in her voice, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he stroked her hair in silence for a while.

  Finally he said, “I’m wondering…”

  “Hmm?” She didn’t move or open her eyes.

  “Will you…” He hesitated and again, then said quietly, “What happened to your mother?”

  Chandra drew in a sharp breath and went tense all over. She knew he felt it. The stroking hand on her hair became still.

  “What?” Her voice was cold.

  “You cried out for her. In your dream-your nightmare. It seemed like… What happened to her?”

  She sat up, tearing herself out of his embrace. When she felt his hand on her arm, she flung it off.

  He sat up, too, but he didn’t try to touch her again. “Chandra…”

  She started to speak, then changed her mind. Anything she might say now would reveal too much-even if only how forbidden the subject was.

  “I apologize.” His voice was calm. Trying to make her calm. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Chandra inhaled deeply. In, two, three. Then exhaled. Out, two, three.

  She could feel him peering at her, and was glad the darkness hid her face, as it hid his.

  When she thought she had control of her voice-of her words, and thoughts-she said, “You’re right, we should get some more sleep. I’m still tired.”

  There was a pause. “Of course.”

  His voice had that impassive tone he often used.

  Chandra lay down on her bedroll with her back to him. She felt him move away from her, returning to his own bedroll, where he should have stayed in the first place.

  She lay awake for a long time in the dark, with her eyes wide open, forbidding herself to think about anything. Anything.

  Although she didn’t expect it to happen, Chandra drifted off eventually, and she slept soundly. When she awoke, Gideon had already risen and gone back out into the night. Falia said some of the men had taken him to speak to someone who could tell him more about the Fog Riders that they had seen earlier.