Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy)

by J. S. Morin

  Juliana plunked herself down beside him, sitting in the melted runoff and not caring. Brannis unclasped the demon helm and pulled it off, and his hot, sweaty head steamed in the icy air.

  “You stopped them,” she said.

  “Good. Any idea how many got through?”

  “Too many. They are overrunning the undercity by now. Not many of your troops were left to hold them off,” Juliana said.

  Brannis looked at her and saw the concern in her eyes. She knew that he was not going to give up, take his rest, and leave the defense of the undercity to those with more left to give.

  Brannis sat up and cupped her cheek in his ungloved hand. He leaned over and kissed her. The snow had cleaned much of the gore from him, albeit haphazardly. He looked nothing like the heroes drawn in the fairy stories that Juliana had grown up worshiping. He was bruised and bloody, with matted hair and dripping sweat, but he was everything she ever really wanted in a hero.

  “I have to go help them. I cannot just rest here, much as I might need it. If I think too much, I might not be able to move at all.”

  Brannis grinned ruefully. He took up his helm and put his gauntlet back on. Avalanche was lost somewhere amid the snow, and he had no time to look for it. He took up a discarded spear from the floor and headed down toward the undercity.

  “Stay here, or at least stay back. I have to go.”

  It was all she heard, all she ever heard from Brannis anymore. The rest did not matter. She would follow. She would never stop following him unless that phrase changed to: “I want to go.”

  * * * * * * * *

  The undercity was in chaos. Goblins were everywhere. The Kadrin defenders were few, and civilians were all over. Some reinforcements were arriving from the castle, but the castle defenders had been hard pressed as well. Brannis looked about and saw that there was no organization to the defense. If there were commanders about, they had been overwhelmed by the maelstrom of flesh and steel.

  Mennon’s plan was the only solution Brannis could think of. The ogre pens were along the south wall of the undercity and well away from where the civilians and their defenders were making their stand, at the mine entrances. It was hard to tell from the overlook at the lower interior gate to the undercity, but it seemed like pockets of Kadrins might even have been surrendering.

  Brannis ran.

  Brannis tried to run but managed a hustle. His back hurt, and his left arm was likely broken. The enchantment on the armor had saved his life, but it was done saving him until a sorcerer saw to it.

  I guess I should be glad the quicksilver stays solid when it runs out of aether, Brannis mused, mid hustle.

  When he got to the ogre cages, he found them in a highly agitated mood. They strode over to the barred door that marked the entrance to their little community.

  “Who is your leader?” Brannis demanded.

  From what he knew of ogres, they dealt in strength, using simple, straightforward chains of command that were often topped by the strongest warrior. He hoped these were at least sensible enough to follow someone who spoke good Kadrin.

  “That be me,” one near the door answered.

  The ogre towered over Brannis the way he did over Iridan. Brannis’s bloody face came to the ogre’s sternum, so he had to look up to see the furrowed brow and suspicious glare the ogre met him with.

  “What is your name?” Brannis asked.

  He refused to treat them with the dishonor the nobles of Raynesdark did. He wanted them to fight for him, not as slaves but as warriors. He hoped that the instinct for it still lurked behind the docile front they had showed so far. The cunning he saw in their leader’s gaze gave him some hope.

  “Me Glumg. Who you?” the ogre responded.

  “I am Sir Brannis Solaran. I lead the Kadrin army. I am the big boss. I am boss of all bosses. I want you to fight for me.” Brannis gestured to all of the ogres in the pen. There were hundreds of them, and most would be battle ready without training if the opponents were just measly little goblins. “All of you.”

  “Huh? You have us fight goblins? They everywhere! See ’em?” Glumg pointed out into the city.

  “So what? You are ogres. You are a lot bigger. Step on them. Kick them. Hit them with tools. Killing goblins is easy. There are a lot of them to kill,” Brannis said. “And it is fun. You will like killing goblins. They make a crunch noise when you step on them.” Brannis mimicked a crunching noise as best he could. It was a skill all little boys learned at an early age, and he got the point across. Glumg grinned.

  “But goblin give us gold. Say you give us weapons to fight goblins, we fight humans instead,” Glumg said.

  Brannis was impressed at the point he was managing to convey.

  The goblins paid the ogres off? So it would seem.

  “I make you a better offer. You fight for me, you get freedom. You fight for me, kill goblins, I make you free. No more cages. You get paid for working. Same as humans. You work, you get gold, you buy things you like. You come and go when it is not work time. Free,” Brannis promised.

  Duke Pellaton hates me anyway. If he still has a city left in the morning, he will be needing more than just slaves to populate it.

  “Hmm. Deal,” Glumg decided after a moment’s pondering with his chin cupped in one massive hand.

  “Deal,” Brannis removed his gauntlets and extended a hand through the bars. Glumg had seen the human custom of clasping hands and tried it for the first time. Brannis hand was engulfed in a stone-like grip of Glumg, and they made their deal in the custom of free men.

  “Juliana, burn through the hinges,” Brannis said over his shoulder.

  He had not watched her sneak up behind him, but he had caught Glumg’s gaze flicking over to her on occasion, and he had assumed she would follow him anyway.

  “Kohtho ilextiumane veeru,” Brannis heard from just behind him

  He smiled with amusement that he had outguessed her for once. The hinges glowed red and soft. Putting his gauntlets back on, he reached out with his good hand, grabbed the door not far from the hinge, and heaved. The weakened metal gave way, and he stumbled back with the door in his grasp. Not trying to balance the heavy and awkward piece of iron, he turned and let it fall away. He hoped the display was impressive enough for his new allies to respect his strength.

  Brannis turned at the sound.

  That did not sound right. The cannons were buried under the falling glacier, and if they had others out there, the snow and rock would have muffled the sound almost completely. Where was that sound coming from?

  “Hey, everybody. We goin’ do kill goblins. All goblins. Big boss say it gonna be fun,” Glumg shouted back, beckoning his fellows with a great sweeping gesture, and the leader of the captive ogres strode past Brannis out into the undercity.

  * * * * * * * *

  Brannis jogged through the city, Juliana in tow, looking for someone knowledgeable to ask. He had a suspicion about where the sound of cannon fire could be coming from. He had not seen Jinzan on the battlefield, and he had begun to suspect the sorcerer wished to use those cannons to destroy Gehlen’s Obelisk and sabotage the city. The plan seemed overly complex, especially if, as Mennon claimed, stopping the obelisk’s function would have no immediate effect on the city. He needed to find out where the echoes were emanating from, though. That would tell him what he needed to know.

  The front lines of the running battle were impossible to define. The goblins were cut off from their senior commanders, and their organized charges and flanking maneuvers from the battle for the overcity were gone, replaced by small roving bands of twenty to fifty goblins that were operating under lesser-ranked commanders. Brannis and Juliana avoided one such band and sent another scattering. They recognized Brannis and wanted no part of him, disengaging as quickly as they found and attacked them.

  At length, Brannis found Mennon, protected by a regiment of his father’s personal guards, near the undercity entrance to the castle. Brannis gave him credit for getting with
in sight of the battle, even if his men’s posture was strictly defensive.

  “Where is that noise coming from?” Brannis asked. Twice more they had heard the cannon fire, and with no clearer understanding of whence the noise came. “Could we be hearing it from the upper mines?”

  “Quite possibly. There is a cross-link between the upper and lower mines from one of the earlier horizontal shafts. The way between is boarded up, but sound certainly travels down from the upper mines when we have men working up there,” Mennon replied.

  “I thought you said the upper mines were abandoned,” Brannis said.

  “As mines, yes, but we use the old mine shafts for storage now. There is far more space than we would ever need there, and the castle is not so large that the extra storage is wasted,” Mennon said.

  “What is the quickest way there?” Brannis asked.

  “Through the castle, there is an entrance from the kitchens, cut through into the old mines to use for dry goods and wines,” Mennon replied.

  “Lead the way! All of you,” Brannis said, gesturing to the duke’s guards, “are coming with me. There is a sorcerer in those mines, and we have to stop him.”

  * * * * * * * *

  Jinzan swept away chunks of stone from the base of the obelisk with a bristle broom he had found within the warren of tunnels that constituted the upper mines. The Kadrins had apparently been using the abandoned shafts as a dumping ground for all manner of excess supplies: barrels, nails, iron ingots, old books, horse tack, cured meats, and anything else they did not wish to store elsewhere.

  It had taken him far too long to find his way through it, much of the wasted time coming when he had to climb over clutter and push things out of his way. He was thankful that the cannon had been miniaturized, or he would have been delayed far longer maneuvering it through the mess in the mines.

  The cannon and its accessories were back to their normal size now. Jinzan had managed the enlargement as deftly as he had shrunken them in the first place, and he could detect no flaws in the aspect of them. The cannon now was set facing the obelisk from a dozen paces away at the entrance to the obelisk chamber. The “chamber” was a dead end in the mines, a widened area with one entrance, and a rather suspect exit—it had an exposed view of the conduit of the volcano. If it were to ever erupt, the lava would rise through that very same vertical shaft.

  The obelisk was a genius work of ward crafting. Half again the height of a man and shoulder width on each side, every bit of it was covered in a single intricate ward with numerous functions all mingled into its web of runes. It drew aether in from all about it—Jinzan could approach no closer than a pace without feeling deathly ill, and even three paces away was uncomfortable—and it undid all magics that approached too close to it. It was formed of a light grey stone that was unfamiliar to Jinzan and was not native to the Cloud Wall.

  His first few shots had been promising, but the broken pieces the cannonballs blasted free had slid slowly back toward the rest of the ward and reformed themselves. Jinzan had tried to keep ahead of it, hoping to shatter the ward through force faster than it could repair itself, but alone he could not clean, load, and fire the cannon fast enough, even using telekinesis to do all the hard work. He had gone back into the mines to find the broom at that point.

  Now, after each blast, he approached as near as he could and reached out with the broom to brush away the loose pieces. If he moved them beyond five paces or so from the obelisk, they no longer tried to rejoin the rest.

  It is only a matter of time now. Jinzan grinned.

  Jinzan fired again, and the cannonball cracked a large chunk free from one corner. The heavy iron sphere ricocheted off and through the archway that led off into the nothingness of the volcano’s conduit. Runes were carved all along the archway, even along the floor from one side to the other, forming a ward that prevented the toxic fumes of the deep earth from wafting up into the inhabited portion of the mines. The obelisk seemed not to hinder those wards, despite their proximity. Jinzan suspected they might be somehow linked.

  The fallen chunk of rock was too heavy to yield to the broom’s bristles, so Jinzan picked up one of the cannonballs in his hand. Using telekinesis yet again, he “threw” the ball at the loose piece of the obelisk, releasing the magic before the ward stole the aether from him. Crack! The rock split, but both of the two largest chunks—along with the cannonball—went down the shaft as well, into the vast depths whence came a faint red glow.

  Back to his work, Jinzan loaded the cannon again, impatience making him forget to clean the gun before firing it again.

  Another huge chunk fell loose and did not seem to move thereafter. Jinzan’s eyes lit. He saw it then, a glint of white wood, the core of the obelisk: the Staff of Gehlen. Jinzan realized that he had finally done enough to the ward that it no longer drew against him. He inched carefully closer and discovered to his glee that there was no further effect on him.

  Jinzan drew up a reserve of aether and prepared to free the staff from its stony prison the way he knew best: with magic.

  It is mine!

  * * * * * * * *

  Brannis, Juliana, and twelve of the duke’s guards hustled down the passages of the mine, pausing to recheck their bearings each time they heard the cannon fire. They were growing close.

  When they had arrived at the kitchen entrance to the mines, Brannis had picked out the dozen men he had taken, and Juliana had taken advantage of the pause to re-infuse his armor with aether, hopefully enough to protect him in the event that they managed to find the Megrenn sorcerer and engage him in combat.

  There ought to be a crew of four or five goblins working that cannon. This should be more than enough men to deal with them.

  Brannis had also traded his spear for a sword from one of the guards he left to defend Mennon—there were only so many men that could travel swiftly together through the mines, and twelve was already stretching it.

  “This way!” Brannis whispered urgently after the most recent report.

  The group took a left at the next intersection they came to, based on Brannis’s hearing of the noise.

  Kthooom!

  There had been little pause that time between blasts.

  Not good. They are rushing. Either they know they are being pursued, or they are eager about something. Neither option bodes well for us.

  Despite their attempts at swift stealth, a group of fourteen, mostly in armor, could not avoid detection for long. The last blast had been close, and Brannis increased his pace, wincing at each step as his injured arm was jolted. The time for quiet was over, though, and the chase was on.

  BOOM!

  There was a great explosion, followed by a clatter of rock. It sounded distinctly different from the sharp report of the cannons. It sounded like destructive magic. It had come from just ahead and around the corner.

  Brannis led the way and stopped short when from a dozen paces away he saw the Megrenn sorcerer standing before an archway that was lit from the far side with a red glow. The sorcerer was a ghost from another world. It was Denrik Zayne, younger looking perhaps, and sporting longer hair, but definitely the pirate he had come to know. In his hands, he was holding a long white staff, topped with a pair of stylized wooden wings, cut at sharp angles.

  “Kyrus!” Jinzan gasped, eyes wide in shock. The staff leveled toward him. “Stay back!”

  “Hello, Captain Zayne,” Brannis replied evenly, smirking. “You are caught. There is no escape now. Drop the staff and surrender, and I shall guarantee your safety.”

  “Kyrus, you were not lying after all. You are just a brigand. No, I think I shall not surrender. With the Staff of Gehlen, I can fight my way out now,” Jinzan said.

  The sorcerer seemed much the same man Kyrus knew from Tellurak, perhaps a bit less reserved, but the voice, the manner, everything seemed to Brannis that this was Denrik dressed for a masquerade.

  “Not with a demon warlock outside. He would never let you escape, and I do not think
it would be wise to draw against him,” Brannis said.

  His companions seemed ill-inclined to move past him toward the Megrenn sorcerer their grand marshal parleyed with.

  “The only deal I will make is this. I will spare your life here, and you will spare me there. Understood? I know my predicament all too well now,” Jinzan bargained. “We can discuss this later. But for now …

  “Fetru oglo daxgak sevdu wenlu,” Jinzan began, leveling the staff at Brannis and his companions.

  Brannis reacted instinctively. He did not recognize the spell, but he understood Jinzan’s intent all too clearly. He dove and drove Juliana to the ground an instant before the air erupted in lightning. He heard the sizzle of flesh and felt a tingle along his back where the armor was probably saving him from a similar fate. He checked to see that Juliana was untouched by the lightning and then turned to see what Jinzan was doing as the duke’s guards fell dead all about him.

  Brannis saw nothing but an opaque sphere around where Captain Zayne’s counterpart had just been. He heard indistinguishable mutterings from within, and for the first time in his life, Brannis felt the flow of the aether, this time as it was drawn inward toward that same sphere. Juliana stirred beneath him in obvious distress. Brannis worried that whatever was happening was about to kill her as well.

  Then it ended. Jinzan was gone, as was a curved scoop of stone from the mine floor. In its place was gently turned soil and a few flowers.

  Chapter 35 - That Awkward Morning After

  I am still here, Kyrus mused, blinking up at the wooden beams of the ceiling above him.

  He lay on his back in his bunk aboard the Free Trader, feeling the roll of the ship beneath him. He ached everywhere, and his left arm felt the break that Brannis’s had in it, though he could tell that his own was intact. He looked over to the door and, in his aether-vision, found it to be intact with its wards undisturbed.

  Kyrus sat up and looked around in the aether to see what befell aboard the ship. He saw sailors bustling all about, no different than any other day he had seen since taking to the seas himself. If there was unease about the ship’s wizard, they were betraying no sign of it. The deck was being cleaned, there were men in the rigging, and the galley was manned with cook and hungry sailor alike.