“We awoke the following morning to shouts and wailing. As the blood faded in them, the leprosy returned. New lesions were forming on their faces. They raged at us for killing the Mistress. In the end, we fled, chased out by a stone-throwing mob.
“I saw Haflor on Esaiya a year later. The leper colony was no longer there, he told us. Some had gone elsewhere, but many of them had killed themselves.”
Kyric’s mouth had gone dry. He took a sip of water and asked, “What were the writings?”
“The words on the monolith were the same on each side, the ancient Keltassian being the translation of the older cuneiform. Of course it took us a few years to find someone who could determine that and fully decipher the writings on the wall. The monolith tells of the founding of Keltassian civilization by the Mage-Kings. The wall records a sporadic war between the Keltassian mages and the firebirds of the far west. Peace came only when the Mage-King Elitass divined a magic so terrible that even the elder firebirds could not stand against it — a song, or a sound, that could unmake the essence of the firebirds. That is to say, the Unknowable Forces themselves. It changed them into mindless creatures without power.”
“Do you see?” asked Teodor.
Kyric nodded. “If Cauldin can learn the song, he can destroy the power that protects Esaiya.”
“Yes.”
Kyric let out a long breath he didn’t know he had been holding and took a long drink of water. The sun crossed into the western sky, and Jazul awoke from his nap. “Did I miss anything?” he asked.
“Just idle talk,” said Teodor.
Aiyan suddenly leapt to his feet, hand on the hilt of his sword. Teodor stood nearly as fast using his sword for support, the forked stick forgotten. He glanced all around, then looked to Aiyan.
“I’m not sure,” Aiyan said. “Perhaps it was nothing.”
He walked to the tree beyond the garden and looked up and down the river. Teodor took his makeshift crutch and hobbled to the front street, listening for something he couldn’t quite hear. They returned to the table, shaking their heads absently at one another. The harborside clock tower struck five.
Estia came out with a folded newspaper in her hand. “Orius will be out momentarily. He’s not happy.” She placed the newspaper on the table before them. “The social pages came out this morning,” she said, smiling at Aiyan as she turned to go back inside. “I thought you might find this amusing.”
Aiyan ignored the paper, so Kyric picked it up. The story about the royal reception topped the front page.
“The princess was right. Listen to this,” he said. “Who is Sir Aiyan Dubern? No one knows who added his name to the guest list for the royal reception on Solstice Eve, but we suspect it was Princess Aerlyn herself, for it is certain they were not strangers when she greeted him in the receiving line on Solstice Eve. There can be no doubt that until now, he had been the best kept secret of the royal court — “
“Would you mind reading that to yourself?” Aiyan said curtly.
While Kyric read, Pitbull wandered out to them and sat down with a heavy sigh. He didn’t look at Aiyan, and Aiyan simply picked at the patina of scratches covering the table.
Jazul sauntered up behind Kyric and peeked over his shoulder. “Am I in the newspaper too?”
Kyric glanced down the page. “Yes, here you are. ‘Weightlifting champion, Jazul Marlez, possibly the strongest man in Jakavia, swept into the reception in a daring lion’s skin cape escorting the lovely Jela Selgar, daughter of humble wine merchant Sedlik Selgar — “
Aiyan bolted upright, stiffening like he had been stabbed in the back. He looked from Teodor to Pitbull. “They wouldn’t read the society page . . . would they?”
Teodor answered him. “I would if I were they.”
“What is wrong?” said Jazul.
“If they connected Jela to Aiyan,” Pitbull said, “If they knew her father’s name and profession, it would be easy to find his house.”
Aiyan flew to his feet, sending his chair skittering across the patio. He tore into a run, and Kyric followed fast on his heels.
“We’ll be along in the wagon,” Pitbull called as they sprinted away.
Aiyan didn’t set a pace this time, and they ran wildly in the street like madmen. When they came to a crowded intersection, Aiyan cut a path through with the fierceness of his charge, and Kyric rode his wake. All of his muscles screamed in rebellion, his lungs burned for more air, and still they ran.
A block from Sedlik’s house, Aiyan pulled up short. “We could be running into an ambush,” he said between breaths. “We must restrain ourselves and go carefully now.”
He looked in all directions before sliding around the corner, hiding behind a man hawking newspapers, stopping and looking again. At the next corner he went to one knee and closed his eyes as if he could banish the cacophony of street noises and hear something far away. When they came to Sedlik’s street they could see that his door stood wide open, and Aiyan pulled Kyric back as he made an involuntary lunge toward it.
“No. We go in the back way.”
All the other doors on the street were closed, all the windows shuttered tightly despite the heat. No one passed in or out. The shadows grew long as they made their way around to the alley.
The back door had been knocked off its hinges. Aiyan signaled Kyric to ready his pistols, and held his locket open as he drew Ivestra across the tiny fire. A blue-white flame ran the length of the cutting edge. Kyric went in one step behind him.
They had seated Jela in a chair at the kitchen table before they killed her. It was the high-backed chair, and they had lashed her wrists together behind it so that she slumped forward only a little, but enough so that her blood ran across the table before spilling to the floor, leaving her house dress unstained.
For a brief instant, Kyric didn’t think it was her. Her rich copper complexion had turned paler than he would have thought possible. They had cut her throat and let her bleed to death.
Aiyan paused but for a second, the flame of his blade flickering weakly, nearly going out before it rose to engulf the sword once again. He moved through the kitchen, swift and silent, and into the rest of the house.
Kyric became dimly aware of a light coming up from the cellar. Holding his pistols at arm’s length, he ran halfway down the stairs in a low crouch, ready to fire. But the only one there was Sedlik, and he lay face down, the back of his skull opened by the single cut of a heavy blade. The door to his vault stood open, the key on the floor next to his hand.
Kyric knew that the book of rudders was gone, but he went to the vault to make sure. Of course it was gone. Nothing else had been taken. When he turned back Aiyan was there, standing over Sedlik. Kyric had not heard him come down the stairs.
“See?” said Aiyan. “You took them straight to it, just like you said you would. No need to get rough; here it is and good riddance.”
The cushion of numbness that Kyric usually felt wasn’t there. His skin prickled hotly, and he was aware of every little sound, the creaking of the house, the sputter of the lantern.
“Why?” he said. “Sedlik gave them what they wanted.”
“They may have killed him out of petty vengeance, but they killed Jela to break my spirit. What Morae doesn’t know is that as long as I carry the essence of the secret fire my spirit cannot be broken. He has only broken my heart.”
“Why did they not wait for us?” said Kyric with a dull, flat voice. “They could have shot us as we came in the door.”
“I don’t know. None of our things are here. Sedlik may have convinced them we were staying elsewhere. Or they may be surrounding the house as we speak. We should go at once.”
“We can’t leave them like this.”
Aiyan began to say something, then stopped himself. He ran upstairs and returned with Jela and two bed-sheets. They had bound her with thin twine, and with it now removed Kyric saw that it had cut into her wrists. She had struggled.
He and Aiyan wrapped them in
the sheets and laid them in the cold corner of the cellar. “That’s all the respect we can afford them now,” Aiyan said.
They left by the back door after Aiyan had peeked out windows front and rear. They stepped lightly through the trash-strewn alley, Aiyan’s hand on his sword, ready to draw. Kyric scanned rooftops and windows, hoping to catch someone spying on them. His conversation with one so caught would not be gentle.
They ran into the others at the turnoff to the boulevard, Pitbull driving, a slender machete in his belt. Teodor sat next to him holding Kyric’s longbow, and Jazul crouched in the back of the wagon.
“Turn around quickly,” said Aiyan, climbing in. “Take the roundabout way along the river road.” They were overloaded now, and the donkey strained to get the wagon moving again.
When Aiyan told them of Jela and Sedlik, Pitbull said nothing, but a sharp sound escaped his throat, like the distant whine of a whipped dog. Teodor didn’t blink, he simply drew one of Kyric’s arrows and nocked it. Jazul took it hard. He roared like a wounded beast, falling to the floor of the wagon, tearing at his mane of hair and weeping. Kyric envied him. Jazul’s feelings for her were not so strong that he couldn’t let it all out now. He would wake one morning to a sunny sky in a faraway place and not think of Jela or this day.
Kyric huddled against the side of the wagon and watched the cobblestones pass beneath the wheels. The world felt new and strange. He was suddenly aware of details he never noticed before. The woman they passed had a mole over one eye. The man selling newspapers spoke with a Syrolian accent. The Kyric that had danced with Jela was lying in a cold cellar on a narrow side-street, and the Kyric that was he had been asleep all these years, waiting for the one that had been to abandon this body.
And the anger he had felt over taking the black blood now seemed like a child’s toy, something to play with for his amusement.
“Pull over,” Aiyan said to Pitbull when they reached the river. He took a carefully folded handkerchief from his sash, opening it and removing a scrap of paper. It was the corner page he had torn from the book of rudders when he first gave it to Sedlik.
He handed it to Pitbull. “Can you find the rest of this book, my friend?”
Pitbull held it to his nose and breathed in sharply, again and again, turning it over and sniffing the other side. He was getting excited, his eyes glazing over into something akin to ecstasy. He suddenly popped it into his mouth, his back arching and his body quivering as he chewed, as if he had taken a powerful drug. He swallowed it and began to giggle.
“Oh yes,” he breathed. “Oh yes, I have it. Oh yes.”
He looked at Aiyan, his eyes sparkling darkly. “I have the scent. I’ve found it. It’s in the city, not far away.”
“Take us there. And let’s hope that Morae has placed both eggs in the same basket.”
Pitbull turned around and drove north along river. They didn’t have to go far. A hundred yards past the jetties where they had hired the boat on Solstice Eve, Pitbull brought the wagon to a halt.
“There,” he said, pointing across the river to an arched opening in the steep embankment. “That’s where we need to go. Into the sewers.”
CHAPTER 15: That Which Lies Beneath
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Aiyan. “He wouldn’t be keeping the rudders down in the sewer. Certainly it is only in that direction.”
Pitbull removed his spectacles and wiped them with his shirt tail. “We can drive over and see how it feels from there. But I tell you, Aiyan, that is the way.”
Pitbull drove them upstream to the nearest bridge. Thunder growled in the sky behind them as a line of dark clouds swept over the headland southwest of the harbor, and the city fell under a grey twilight as the storm blotted out the setting sun. As they followed the riverside drive along the left bank, Aiyan pointed down an avenue.
“There is where we should find them, in one of those upscale townhouses in the Lawyer’s Quarter.”
A few minutes later they all stood at a low wall, gazing down on the opening in the steep stonework embankment.
Pitbull turned to Aiyan. “Do not ask me why, because I don’t know. But that is the way.”
Jazul sniffed the air cautiously. “I don’t smell anything.”
“It’s a storm sewer,” said Teodor. “The, uh, other sewers empty beyond the harbor. Speaking of storms, I figure you have about half an hour before the rain strikes. You don’t want to be in there when that happens.”
Lightning flickered inside the towering clouds as the storm bore down upon the city.
“Then we go at once,” Aiyan said. “It is the moment of the arrow.”
He assigned weapons to each of them, his own pocket pistol for himself, and the other two for Kyric, along with the two big pistols. He emptied Kyric’s knapsack and stuffed the little keg of gunpowder into it, giving it to Jazul to wear on his back. Jazul would also carry the axe. He handed the blunderbuss to Pitbull.
Kyric dug through his things and found his bow sling. He was taking his bow. At least he could hit something with it.
“I suppose I’ll wait for you here,” said Teodor, removing one of the lanterns from the wagon and handing it to Kyric.
Aiyan managed a thin smile. “You are the laziest ne’er-do-well I have ever seen.”
Teodor shrugged. “Someone has to stay with the wagon.”
Aiyan took his hand. Each gave a nod to the other and Aiyan turned away.
They scooted down the embankment to stand on the brick apron at the opening. It was tall as a man and wide as an arm span, enclosed by a gate of rust-encrusted iron bars held with a large padlock. Pitbull produced what Kyric first thought was a big steel key. Looking at it more closely he saw that it was actually an ornament, shaped in a fine filigree of silver wire.
Pitbull touched the key to the padlock. “Magic won’t help this,” he said. “It’s rusted shut.”
“Step back,” said Jazul as he squared up to the grating. Taking a bar in each of his massive hands, he ripped the gate off its hinges and threw it aside.
The tunnel was brick lined and arched at the top, and Pitbull lead the way, Aiyan next, and then Kyric with the lantern. He held it high to give them light, but it helped only a little and produced a jumble of shadows. He heard a faint metallic scrape as Aiyan drew his sword and the blue flame erupted, shining coldly against the light of the lantern.
They walked for a time, passing a few side tunnels before coming to a Y split. Pitbull choose the left tunnel without hesitation. The floor was moist but not slick, and he moved on quickly, almost at the trot. Another split and they went right, into a long straightaway, then another and left, always with a slight uphill grade. They entered a curving section that narrowed at the end, turning into a series of elbows. A small pack of rats scattered at their approach.
A four-way intersection lay beyond. Kyric had lost all sense of direction with the elbow turns, but Pitbull pushed on into the right-hand tunnel, excited now, breathing harder, a trickle of water now running down the middle. A hundred strides brought them to the hole.
A collapsed patch of brickwork at the shoulder of the tunnel had opened a hole big enough for even Jazul to climb through. A hole leading into a larger space.
Aiyan sheathed his sword and scrambled through. A moment later the blue light of the flame appeared.
“It’s alright,” said Aiyan, “come ahead.”
With a leg up from Jazul, Pitbull and Kyric pulled themselves through and into a tunnel many times larger than the sewer. The floor was thick with dirt and other filth, and made uneven by protruding rocks. The side walls and ceiling were formed by a shallow arch of smooth stonework, with rectangular openings clogged with earth, the remnants of cut stone steps spiraling the length of the tunnel. Kyric suddenly realized what it was. They were inside an old tower or turret that lay on its side.
“Aiyan,” Pitbull said softly, suppressing a nervous giggle, “the magical Essa is strong here. Surprisingly strong.” He clinched hi
s teeth.
“Will you be able to control yourself?”
“I think so. The book isn’t far from here.”
“What is the matter?” whispered Jazul.
“Simply put,” said Aiyan, “when Pitbull uses magic, or even comes close to a powerful Essa, he gets a little . . . inebriated.”
Grinning stupidly, Pitbull said, “Just a little.”
Kyric shook his head. So that’s why all the hilarity at the archery tournament. And I took it for meanness. “We’re in the ruins of Derndra’s palace,” he said.
“I believe we are,” said Pitbull, a musical ring to his voice.
They crept forward, Kyric expecting any moment to see the eyes of the Wirmen reflecting at the edge of the lantern light. Then he remembered that their flat black eyes reflected no light.
After a short way, this passage opened into a larger space. The ceiling was low, and Kyric had to stoop a little. He ran his hand over the rough, weathered stonework. It had been an exterior wall at one time, having fallen over and crushed the upper part of this room. The floor ran smooth and level before them, but off to the right it was cracked, and it canted down sharply. A tangle of rusty equipment lay there — coiled metal tubing suggested a distilling apparatus, and in the corner something like a blacksmith’s forge.
“There,” said Pitbull, pointing to the left where a roughly square tunnel broke through the plaster. It sloped upward. “That’s where it is.”
It looked recently and hastily dug, shored crudely with scrap lumber. Pitbull rubbed his nose. “One good sneeze and this will come down on us.”
Aiyan shushed him. “We must go quietly,” he whispered, taking the lead.
Call Of The Flame (Book 1) Page 15