Call Of The Flame (Book 1)

by James R. Sanford

  Kyric began sobbing, harder and harder. His brother was going to share all that he was with him. And now he was gone. Gone.

  Aiyan walked over to him. He was furious. His voice shook with rage as he said, “Elistar’s holy breath! You did take some of his blood.”

  He struck Kyric across the face with the flat of his flaming blade. It burned like hot iron. Seeing it close now, it flickered unearthly, more like the ghost of a flame. The were-fire went out as he sheathed the sword.

  “We have no time for this,” Aiyan growled. “A troop of Lekon’s cavalry are camped nearby. We have to go. But first . . . ” He lifted Kyric up by the shirt collar and dragged him to where the body of the captain lay. He brought the lantern over and held it close.

  Black blood, blacker than the night, leaked from the wounds in the captain’s body. “Look at this,” Aiyan commanded. “See it and remember it.” He paused to listen for a moment. “Now we go. Grab the lantern and both of those pistols.”

  When Kyric didn’t move at once, Aiyan did it himself, not forgetting the spanner for the pistol. He placed the lantern in Kyric’s hand. “Crack the shutters just enough to see your footing,” he said.

  “I loved him,” Kyric said helplessly.

  Aiyan stopped and looked him in the eye. Gently he said, “I know. But soon it will seem like another man’s memory.”

  He took Kyric by the hand and led him deeper into the ruins.

  “I had almost come to it when I heard you call,” he said very softly. When Kyric didn’t answer he said, “I blame myself, not you. I should have known something like this could happen.” He shook his head. “We have ways of knowing—” he paused and swallowed an ironic chuckle. “Well, we have ways of reading certain signs if we think to look for them.”

  They skirted one of the roofless temples, pushing through thick undergrowth, then along a stone path winding among vague upright shapes. The full black of night had come.

  At length they found themselves facing a thick intact wall taller than their heads. Aiyan followed the wall to the left for a few minutes then slowed to a stop.

  “I think it’s one of these,” he said, choosing one of the foot-long blocks. Finding a pair of unseen finger holds, he worked the block out slowly. It made a grinding sound. “This knowing of places, it is one of the weird arts that a warrior may learn.”

  “You mean you could feel where you left it, even in the dark?”

  “That’s one way to do it,” Aiyan said. “But I tried to know the place where I would look for it when I first hid it, in case I was pressed for time when I returned.”

  He slid the block of stone all the way out and lowered it quickly to the ground, almost dropping it as he suddenly favored his right side.

  “What is it?” said Kyric.

  “His shot grazed me,” Aiyan answered. “If my ribs aren’t cracked they’re certainly bruised.”

  He reached in the hole, and Kyric brought the lantern close. It was just as Aiyan had said, an outlandish jacket that matched those crazy pantaloons, a false belly, and a large book with a wooden cover.

  Distant voices echoed in the ruins behind them. They could see no pursuit, but the moon had begun to rise.

  “Leave the lantern here,” Aiyan said. “The moon is near full and will be more than enough. And stay close on my left, for there is a fairly long drop-off to the right.”

  He struck out across a field of overgrown rubble, heading due south, the rising moon casting long black shadows across the jumbled landscape. Sharp stones jabbed at Kyric through the worn soles of his boots. Past the rubble, a rocky slope led them down and away from the ruins, into a wide pasture sparsely dotted with old oak trees.

  Kyric’s heart and head were racing. As his love faded for that man, the captain, his anger grew. He would have done anything for him. He would have killed for him, or been his willing slave. Wasn’t that what Aiyan had said in his fever? The man’s blood had been black, and it had done this to him. And that was the truth of it.

  “Your sword,” he said to Aiyan. “What was the strange fire that ran along the blade?”

  Aiyan was quiet for a moment. “My sword is named Ivestra. It was forged long ago and was first carried by Sir Mecaithen, a founding Knight of the Order of the Flaming Blade, and over the last two centuries it has been carried by many true warriors. Ivestra and I are bonded in the realm of power, for we have each chosen the other. When in my hands and touched by the essence of the secret fire, it becomes a weapon of spirit as well as steel and will hold that flame as I will it.”

  He looked at Kyric. “You were troubled earlier that I did not tell you enough. Do I now say too much?”

  Kyric didn’t look up. “I don’t know.”

  They crossed the pasture and cut between two wheat fields, the scent of the farm faint on the light breeze. The moon climbed into the night sky and by the time they reached a rutted east-west road Kyric felt all too visible.

  Aiyan knelt at the edge of the road, silent, listening again. Standing, he said, “I don’t feel that we are closely pursued.” He looked each direction down the road. Nothing moved. “Going west and walking hard all night we could be at the narrows by morning, but if I were Morae I would send the cavalry that way. And besides, I would have to leave you there.”

  “Don’t you want to do that anyway?” Kyric said. “I’m beginning to think that was the best idea, you with the holy quest of the merchant princes tucked under your arm and all.”

  A thin smile crossed Aiyan’s lips. “Too late for that now,” he said. “Now you’re too vulnerable, and too much of a target. You would be a nice catch for them.”

  He shook his head. “Two of them. Right under the nose of Esaiya. How bold. Now I know this isn’t Morae’s own private enterprise. No, this must be part of the Master’s plan.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You must stay with me until the taint of the blood fades away. Then you can decide. The west gate of Aeva is only a few miles down this road. I know a safe place to stay where I can learn of the goings-on that the missing rudders have incited. We’ll rest for a day, then I can have a boatman take me to Esaiya, and you can go to the archery tournament.” His eyes danced with a mischievous light. “Besides, I have a rather long story to tell you. You’ve certainly earned the right to hear it.”

  Aiyan set a quick march pace down the road. “I’m going to tell you this story as it was told to me. And if it’s a little dramatic, well, that’s how I heard it.”

  CHAPTER 5: The Knights of the Pyxidium

  On the first day of spring, in the year before the Long Winter, on the day the Council of Sages met to contemplate what wisdom they might offer to the kings and stewards of the realm, Sorrin, a master of the Knights of the Pyxidium, an order dedicated to serving the Council, greeted Master Cauldin in the outer garden of the great castle.

  “You have returned,” said Sorrin, going to him and clasping his arm. “You were gone a long time.” Then he saw that Cauldin’s eyes remained fixed as black pearls.

  “Something has happened,” Sorrin said.

  “Temma has not returned from his winter sabbatical. They wish to see us in the council chamber.”

  Sorrin walked alongside his old comrade, Cauldin eclipsing him with his great height and breadth. Long ago they had both learned to walk silently and leave no trace of their passage. Long ago it had become part of their nature.

  “They were in the chamber all night,” Cauldin said. “I wonder what they do in there. Do they gather around and stare into the Pyxidium with those twinkling eyes of theirs? They say that they cannot see the future, but I think, at times, that is exactly what they do.”

  Sorrin shook his head. “I believe that they see no more than they’ve said, that the Pyxidium only allows them to bring the realm of power into clear focus. And that is not the same as seeing what is to come.”

  Cauldin stopped and looked down at him. “You often forget that they were all powerful magicians at on
e time. And there is one aspect to them you cannot deny — they tell us very little; they do not share their secrets.”

  “I’m sure that there are folk who would say the same of you and me. Have you never had a young man ask you how he could become a Knight of the Pyxidium? There is no way to explain it.”

  Cauldin nodded thoughtfully. “But what is the true nature of the Pyxidium? Elistar wrote that it was the gift of the firebirds, who took it from the sky. The firebirds are hazardous allies, for they embody the Unknowable Forces themselves. What was their purpose in giving it, and what is the true purpose of the Stone?”

  A shadow passed over the castle, a low cloud borne on the sea breeze. Sorrin’s eyes hardened into a faraway stare, the waking dream coming upon him quickly and unbidden.

  “It is happening again,” said Cauldin, grasping the sleeve of Sorrin’s tunic. “Another vision. Tell me what you are seeing.”

  Sorrin could only manage a hoarse whisper. “I see the Pyxidium opening. Inside I see a spirit fire, in a pool of dark blood.”

  Then in an instant the dream vanished. Neither man said another word, and they walked on in silence.

  The council chamber lay in the heart of the castle. Sorrin and Cauldin entered the windowless room and bowed to the five sages seated behind the crescent table. Lit only by flickering tapers and the light of the Pyxidium, their faces seemed less aged, and their eyes shone with a quiet vitality.

  The frail woman in the middle, the Magus Archeus of the Council, nodded an informal greeting to the two of them. “Master Sorrin, Master Cauldin,” she said, “we shall speak plainly. Temma has passed from this world, slain by Aumgraudmal, the lord of the sea dragons.”

  Sorrin stared at the flawless crystal of the Pyxidium. Resting in the apex of a tapered wave of granite, it blazed as if it contained a tiny sun. “The loss is great for us all,” he said.

  “Even while he still lived,” she continued, “Temma was devoured by this creature. This we know, but the purpose of Aumgraudmal is beyond our sight.”

  A brazier stood in the center of the room atop a pedestal. Warming his huge hands there for a moment before he spoke, Cauldin said softly, “I could slay this sea dragon, and thus avert whatever evil it intends.”

  Darting glances met, passed, and met again along the table — inquiring looks, questions asked.

  The Magus Archeus, smiling grimly, placed one bony hand in the other. “You, Master Knight, know much of the ways of power. Your outward strength is exceeded only by that of your inner self and I believe you could defeat even this creature. But the Council has no will in this matter.”

  Then they sat in silence, waiting, looking past the glowing Pyxidium and into the eyes of the two warriors.

  “Shall we do nothing?” asked Sorrin.

  “It is not your choice, Master Sorrin,” said the Magus Archeus. “Nor is it ours.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “This is a matter that touches very close to us,” she said, “and we are blind to many things.”

  The man with salt-and-pepper hair, the Magus Secundus, spoke then. “There is something else we know.”

  Outside the chamber, a strong draft whispered through the ancient passages.

  “Lord Cauldin,” he said, “your life, and that of this creature are intertwined and knotted. On your path he lies and he you will meet — at the time of his choosing or at the time of yours. But hear this: the designing powers gather close about Aumgraudmal, and as you know, they care not for the will of men or serpents or even the firebirds. We, you, all of us ride the winds of the realm of power, but these winds carry us through mist and shadow.”

  Aiyan stopped speaking. They had topped a high point in the road and the outskirts of Aeva lay before them, the great city rising beyond. A village of sorts lay strung along the road, and despite the hour, bright lanterns hung at the entryways of the boarding houses, taverns, stables, eateries, and other businesses that served travelers. A few locals passed back and forth across the road. As they came within sight of the west gate, Kyric could see that it was simply a wide archway beneath an ancient tower, the kind that in the distant past held a portcullis. A high stone wall surrounded the west side of Aeva, as this had been the entire city in the days before cannons made such defenses obsolete.

  The gate stood bathed in light, tall torches burning all around it. A line of picketed horses stretched to one side and a dozen armed men lounged against the wall. They wore uniforms.

  “Those aren’t city watchmen,” said Aiyan, easing Kyric into the moon shadow cast by a tall house. “That’s the livery of Senator Lekon’s private battalion.”

  An officer stood at the archway fending off a storm of moths, stopping anyone who tried to enter the city.

  “So much for the back door,” Aiyan said. He opened Kyric’s knapsack and stuffed the book of rudders down into it.

  “It would take us all night to go back north, cross the river, and come in on the east side,” he said. “And there’s likely soldiers at every bridge. But there is another way, down by the harbor.”

  Slipping southward between the houses, they left the village, circling east across an onion field, coming to the city wall a good distance from the west gate. They followed the wall and soon Kyric could see the harbor, aflood in moonlight, a hundred ships at anchor on the dark ocean, and a hundred more against the watch fires of the great docks across the bay.

  “This story you’re telling me,” said Kyric, “is it true? Or is a symbolic tale like the Eddur?”

  “You think that the Eddur are myth or literature, like these scholars in the collegium,” Aiyan said curtly. “Those sisters were teaching you history my friend. Didn’t they tell you that?”

  “To be honest, they didn’t say that it was or wasn’t.”

  Kyric remembered that it was always Mother Nistra herself that taught him the Eddur. And she never asked him for interpretation or meaning like the other sisters did when he studied the classics. She only seemed concerned that he learn every detail and be able to recite them all accurately.

  “Are you saying there was really a war of mages nine hundred years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that dragons and firebirds lived in those days?”

  Aiyan let out a frustrated breath. “Kyric,” he said softly. “There are dragons and firebirds alive this very day.” He pointed to the west. “Out there, beyond the Keltassian Sea. The world is not much changed since the end of the Long Winter. It is only mankind that has changed.”

  A gust of wind passed over them, the land breeze rushing out to sea. “And to answer your question, yes, the story is true.”

  “What makes you think so?” Kyric asked.

  “I know someone who was there.” Aiyan said as if it were nothing remarkable. The sisters had taught Kyric that the Long Winter ended over two hundred years ago.

  “So,” said Aiyan, “shall we have a bit more of it?”

  The two master knights stood on the battlements above the tiny quay, untouched by the early-morning twilight. Their cloaks snapped in the wind, and clouds gilded in deep violet passed close overhead, rushing out to sea. They looked out over the ocean until the sky behind them blossomed in scarlet.

  Sorrin turned. “It will be a turbulent day for you, alone on the sea.”

  “I shall be running before the wind,” said Cauldin, his eyes still fixed on the western horizon. A dozen sleek single-masted boats dozed at quayside. One lay burdened with barrels of fresh water. “I’ve always loved the wind. When it blows hard I feel . . . I don‘t know.” He shrugged.

  “The mystery?”

  “Yes.”

  They watched a gull bank into the stiff breeze. It hung there motionless.

  “What will you do?”

  “Seek him, confront him. If he speaks I will listen. If he would devour me I will slay him.”

  Sorrin examined his friend’s granite features. “You have no fear?”

  “Of the lords of the
sea? Only a fool would not.”

  “I meant,” said Sorrin, “of death.”

  “Have you not always said that we and our brothers forge bonds that extend beyond death?”

  Sorrin nodded. The gull wheeled and let a fierce gust carry it away.

  Cauldin held out his hand. “It is time for me to go.”

  Sorrin took his arm. “May the winds blow fair for you, my brother.”

  “And for you.”

  Sorrin watched him go. The boat reached across the little harbor with a triangular blue sail and turned westward. When it was nothing but a blurred speck on the grey ocean, the passing clouds reared up into huge thunderheads and chased the tiny craft beyond the horizon.

  Far beyond in a sea cave, in darkness, Aumgraudmal stirred. His black-speckled eyelids cracked open, his diamond eyes soon reflecting the red sunrise as it seeped through the morning fog and into the cavern. The creature listened. The rhythm of the ocean was changing. Waves clapped against bare rock, beating out an irregular cadence, the vibration rising to call faintly at the mouth of the cave.

  His forked tongue flicked across misshapen stalactites, and the dragon edged to the mouth of the cavern, paused and tasted the air once again. No scent of man passed with the breeze, but it mattered not, Aumgraudmal knew him to be coming, saw him clearly in the spirit realm as a firefly against the dusk. And he knew the time of the man’s coming. The sage’s blood told him. The blood of the magus still reverberated with the whisper of the stars.

  Corrosive breath escaping from his huge nostrils, the creature let his eyes fall closed. He would have no need of them until the man came. Then he would open them. And the man would look into them. They would glow with the power and mystery and he would be entranced, unable to move, unable to look away.

  Then Aumgraudmal would open one of his own veins and force the man to drink the black blood.

  “Here we are,” said Aiyan as they came to the harbor bay. The end of the city wall butted against a tower that had tumbled into the sea. Aiyan showed Kyric a place on the tower where a wide jagged hole stood at head height.