Call Of The Flame (Book 1)

by James R. Sanford

  They followed the tunnel a few dozen steps to a sharp bend, then upward a few dozen more to where it ended in a small square space dug and shored like the tunnel, except that the opposite wall was made of stone blocks. A heavy wooden door stood behind an iron gate of crisscrossed bars, much like the one at the sewer opening, only this one was clean and new and oiled, the hinges set into the blocks with steel bolts. A huge keyhole lock held the gate fast.

  “This is it,” Pitbull whispered. “We’re so close I can almost taste it.” A short belch escaped him. “Oh yes,” he giggled, “I can taste it.”

  He took out the filigree key, turning it over in his hands and rolling it between his fingers. He shook it hard, one time, and it hummed faintly like a tuning fork. He touched it to the lock and there was a click. The gate silently swung open. He placed his hand on the wooden door.

  “This one isn’t locked,” he said. He stepped back and cocked the blunderbuss.

  Aiyan cracked the door the width of a hair, and a dim light outlined the frame. He signaled Kyric to place the lantern on the floor.

  “Make ready,” he whispered.

  Jazul shifted the axe to one hand — against his bulk it looked more like a hatchet — and he drew Sedlik’s shortsword with the other. Kyric pulled the wheel-lock and engaged the dogs, the grip smooth against his palm. The weight of the two barrels felt good.

  Aiyan pushed through the door, rushing into an open basement. Two men in shirtsleeves sat at a table, one of them in the motion of throwing dice. The dicer started with a yell, the dice caroming wildly off the table top, but the other man reached for a pistol.

  Aiyan’s slash caught him just above the ear, killing him instantly. The dicer stood and fumbled for his sabre, only to discover that Aiyan’s sword had thrust all the way through his chest. He dropped to his knees, then fell forward and was quiet.

  Kyric ran to the wide staircase leading upward, Aiyan handing him the dead man’s pistol as he joined him. They hurried up the steps side by side. A landing, open to the left, and they entered a room that was not so much a kitchen as a pantry with a cookstove in one corner. Harpsichord music bled through the pair of doors in the right hand wall.

  They kicked the doors open and the four of them rushed into a common room with a high ceiling. Three men sat at a big round table, two of them wearing the uniform of Lekon’s troops, officer’s braids at their shoulders. They had just finished eating and the dirty plates lay in front of them. Another, holding an empty wine decanter, was frozen in midstride as he headed to the pantry.

  Screeching like a bird of prey, Kyric fired both barrels into his stomach. He fell, and the decanter shattered, sending glass shards skittering across the floor. Pitbull raised the blunderbuss to the men at the table, shooting as they stood. The blast was deafening and smoke filled the room. Jazul lunged at the harpsichord player. The fellow stood and grabbed his sword arm with both hands, holding it briefly until Jazul buried his axe in the man’s ribs.

  A bald man dressed in hunting leathers came out of an adjoining room, a sleek longsword in his hands. His eyes were grim, his face scarred and expressionless, and he looked fast and strong as he came en-garde.

  Aiyan leapt past the wounded men at the table, running full force at him, raising the flaming blade. The bald man took position to block the overhand slash, ready to return a deadly counterblow after he had diverted Aiyan’s attack. Aiyan didn’t try to stop. He threw himself into it, roaring as he swung with all his might.

  With a ringing snap, he cut through the bald man’s sword and cut deep into his shoulder at the base of the neck, shattering his collar bone and severing his spine.

  One of the men at the table was down, but the other two, bleeding and in shock, somehow scrambled for the swords hanging over the backs of their chairs. Kyric stepped up to one of them and shot him in the face at a range of inches. Part of his skull flew away. Pitbull stabbed the other one in the groin with his machete.

  The front door swung open, another soldier in Lekon’s livery sticking his head in and withdrawing it immediately. A bell began to ring, sharp and loud. Kyric threw down his spent pistols and drew another, running to the open door.

  It was almost dark outside, and it had begun to rain. At the far side of a cobbled courtyard, soldiers poured out of a long low building. Pitbull had brought them out of the underground into some sort of barracks.

  The trooper ringing the bell in the courtyard turned and leveled his musket as Kyric stopped in the doorway. He pulled the trigger but got no spark as the rain fell harder. Kyric fired, hitting him in the arm, then slammed the door closed and slid the bolt.

  Despite the rainy evening, two windows stood open to the courtyard. “Get them closed,” shouted Jazul. He ran to the nearest and threw and barred the shutters. Pitbull closed the shutters on the other window, but couldn’t reach the bar, and as Jazul came to help him they flew open again, several bayonets jabbing, driving the two of them back while one soldier tried to climb through. Pitbull staggered away and sat hard on the floor near the table, a deep gash above one eye.

  Jazul reached past the bayonet of the one climbing over the windowsill and took hold of the barrel, pulling him in by his own musket, tearing it from his grasp and clubbing him in the head with the stock. Kyric readied his two pocket pistols, firing them out the window as the soldiers outside ducked away. Jazul pushed the shutters closed again and held them against the pounding of muskets while Kyric tried to get the bar into place. The window at last secure, he turned back.

  Five smaller rooms and a hallway opened to the common room. Aiyan dashed from one door to the next, making sure they were empty. The entire place lay thick with gun smoke. Kyric’s eyes watered, and he felt a choking stab at the back of his throat. Having no more loaded pistols, he slipped his bow out of its sling and drew an arrow. It felt big and clumsy even in a tall room. When he looked up everyone stood motionless, staring at the entry to the hallway.

  Vaust was there, standing perfectly still as well, sighting down the barrel of a flintlock carabine. He held a steady bead on Aiyan’s heart.

  “All of you lay your weapons down,” he said levelly.

  His view of Pitbull seemed blocked by the table. Gingerly, Pitbull picked up Kyric’s spent pistol. He pointed at it, whispering a word, then pointed toward Vaust and whispered another.

  “Now,” Vaust commanded, and Aiyan lowered his sword. Jazul placed his shortsword on the floor. Kyric was torn in half, raging with anger and horror. He wanted very badly to lunge for Vaust and jab the arrow into his neck, but a look from Aiyan convinced him to toss it aside.

  The banging on the shutter came more rapidly now, the wooden bar creaking with each blow. Pitbull began a chant low in his chest, harsh rasping words in the Essian tongue, his face twisted into a mask of malevolence. Kyric could barely make out the words.

  “Come dragon come dragon come dragon come dragon.“

  “Don’t sheath it,” Vaust said to Aiyan. “Drop it.”

  Aiyan did as he commanded and the flame went out.

  “Now,” said Vaust, nodding to Kyric, “go and open the door for them.”

  “Don’t do it,” Aiyan said.

  A cracking sound came from the window, but it still held. Vaust’s lips pressed together. If he could hold them for another minute it would be over anyway.

  Pitbull’s face turned green, and he heaved a little, like he would vomit. All of a sudden he spit a narrow spray of green fluid on the cock of the flintlock. It hissed and foamed, a white vapor rising. It dug into the metal. A moment later there was a rattle, and the cock simply broke away and fell to the floor.

  As it did on Vaust’s flintlock.

  Vaust blinked and looked at his gun. It was useless. When Aiyan snatched his sword from the floor, Vaust threw away the carabine and ran back down the hall. Aiyan ran after him.

  Pitbull flopped onto his back, ill or exhausted. Jazul quickly dragged the harpsichord bench to the window and held it against the s
plintering shutters. “I can hold them,” he said to Kyric. “Go.”

  Kyric sprinted down to the hall to an open door, into a room with a stairway up. He heard Vaust’s muffled voice. He nocked an arrow and crept up the stairs, bowstring against his cheek.

  “I swear it,” Vaust was saying. “I have no doubt you can kill me, but you’ll have to pay for it with this boy’s life. You can have the book. It’s in that chest there — take it and go. But I will live or the prince will die.”

  Aiyan stood to the side in a large bedchamber, his blade once again aflame. Vaust knelt behind Prince Eren, a long dagger across the child’s throat. And Kyric knew it had been him. He had cut Jela’s throat with that very knife.

  “Either way,” said Aiyan, “Morae will be very displeased with you.”

  “So be it. Make your decision.”

  Vaust held Eren directly in front of him. Very little of him was exposed: A small part of his face, his right eye, a shoulder, his arm, his knife hand. If Kyric shot him in the hand, would he drop the dagger? Would he switch hands and kill the prince anyway? He didn’t know.

  He was too angry not to take the shot, but he was too angry to make it.

  For a true warrior, all battles are battles of the spirit.

  And then Kyric burned.

  It is the moment of the arrow.

  Vaust somehow sensed it. He began to move the blade across Eren’s throat.

  There was no time to breathe deep and step into the field of spirit. There was no time to feel the wind of power that would carry his arrow. There was no time . . . and without time, there was only the moment, indefinite, eternal. Anger could no longer exist there, because within the moment, the self could not exist. He couldn’t tell his eye, his arrow, or his spirit from one another. They blurred into one.

  He loosed the arrow. It hit Vaust in the eye. His head snapped back, the arrow lodging deep in his brain. The knife fell from his hand. Rain drummed against the roof.

  With a long cry, Eren ran to Aiyan, oblivious to the flaming blade in his hands.

  “It’s all right, boy. We have you now.”

  Kyric couldn’t move. A single tear slid down his cheek. A single tear for Jela, that’s all he would ever have.

  Aiyan looked at the wound on Eren’s neck. It bled freely. “That’s only a scratch,” he said, smiling for the child. “Kyric,” he called, “are you with us? I need you here.”

  Kyric wiped his face on his sleeve and turned away, leaving his arrow in Vaust’s eye socket. Let them find him that way.

  He bandaged Eren’s cut with a handkerchief. A few arcane symbols had been drawn on his face and hands in some sort of ash or charcoal. Aiyan went to the ornate Baskillian sea chest Vaust had pointed towards and cut the lock off with one blow from his sword.

  Thump! Something heavy struck the door downstairs. Aiyan tossed the book of rudders to Kyric, and looking deeper into the chest found a letter bearing a strange seal. He slipped it under his vest, took Eren by the hand, and they hurried back to the common room. A trail of six bodies lay across the floor, and there was blood everywhere. Kyric retrieved his wheel-lock.

  Another thump, and the door shook with the impact.

  Pitbull had made it to his feet. His color was returning. “Can we go home now?” he asked Aiyan.

  Jazul continued to hold the window until they made it back to the basement, joining them at the head of the tunnel. Pitbull closed the gate, spat into the key hole, and touched the lock with his filigree key.

  “They won’t get through that way,” he said between chuckles. “That lock will never open again.”

  “What is this written on Eren’s face and hands?” said Aiyan.

  Pitbull frowned. “Part of the ritual spell that kept me from finding him. It means that they do have a magician working for them.”

  Aiyan knelt in front of Eren. “Who drew this on you?”

  “The tall man with the dark eyes.”

  “Morae.”

  “Yes. That’s what they call him.”

  Aiyan turned to Pitbull. “How can that be?”

  Pitbull shook his head. “A man has only one essence. But if he has the sympathy and some training, the magical Essa is strong below. It might be possible.”

  “Eren, where were you when he drew these, down this tunnel?”

  “Yes, down below.”

  “We’ll worry over it later,” said Aiyan. “Jazul, I’d like you to carry the prince, in the event we need to move quickly.”

  Jazul hoisted the boy into one arm. Kyric picked up the lantern he had left there, and Aiyan led them into the low-ceiling chamber. He backtracked their footprints though the sideways tower to the opening above the storm sewer.

  Water ran swiftly through the sewer, a little too deep, Kyric thought, to be able to wade in it. Maybe they could slide along. But then he thought about the elbows — you could break something, get knocked out, drown.

  Pitbull cleared his throat. “You know, I’m not a big swimmer.”

  “There’s another way out,” said Prince Eren. “Back in the chamber with the broken floor.”

  The water in the sewer grew deeper. They made their way back, and on the opposite wall of the chamber, near the break in the floor, hung a flap of dirty canvas. It rustled slightly in a gentle flow of air. Behind it stood an arched portal and stone steps leading down.

  Aiyan looked back at Eren. “This is the way out?”

  “Yes.”

  They started down. A foul odor rose from below, a rotting smell. The stairwell turned left and then right before it came to a landing. It continued straight and a set of branching steps led down to the right.

  “Which way?” Aiyan asked the boy.

  He pointed straight ahead. “Keep going.”

  Something troubled Kyric about the way Eren had spoken. With his heart still racing and his nerves on the edge of their limits, he couldn’t think clearly. The stench grew stronger as they descended, the steps getting moist and black with mold.

  Kyric stopped and turned to face Eren where he sat in Jazul’s arms. He leaned in and held the lantern close.

  “Are you sure this is the way?”

  “Yes,” the prince said, “keep going.”

  Then Kyric saw, and the disgust nearly made him wretch.

  “Aiyan. He’s lying. He’s lying — they made him take the blood.”

  Erin suddenly twisted, trying to jump free of Jazul’s grasp. “I want my father. My true father.” He writhed violently, but Jazul was able to hold him. “Father!” he screamed, “Father, where are you?”

  “We’ll have to gag him,” said Kyric as they all retreated back up to the landing, Eren still screaming and trying to bite Jazul.

  Pitbull took something from his satchel. A furry little desiccated thing. It was a cat’s paw. He made a growling humming sound deep in his throat and touched the cat’s paw to Eren’s lips. The boy fell silent.

  “Sorry kid,” Pitbull said.

  Erin made a few muffled sounds. His struggling grew weaker and at last stopped.

  “Good Goddess,” said Kyric. “How could they do such a thing to a child?”

  “It’s even worse than you think,” said Aiyan. “There’s a reason they don’t take the very young. The same reason Cauldin didn’t give his blood to the lepers.”

  He peered into the boy’s eyes. “Let’s try the other way.”

  The branching steps only went a short way down. When they saw a dim light at the opening, Aiyan crept forward into another open space.

  The chamber was much taller, much wider than the one above. The floor lay covered with paving stones, and an open hole, too wide to jump across, plunged into unseen depths just ahead of them. The yellow-green light came from a dozen melon-sized bubbles that drifted at random, bouncing lightly off the ceiling of compressed earth and stone. At second glance Kyric saw that they weren’t simply bubbles. They were filled with fine silt suspended in a viscous fluid. They seemed thick and heavy, and logic re
belled against the way they hung in the air.

  They skirted the hole and saw that it was a well. It was perfectly round, and the paving stones continued down its insides to be lost in darkness. There was nothing to keep someone from falling in.

  “Aiyan,” said Pitbull. He took quick shallow breaths. The light made his eyes glow greenly and his pupils were enormous. “The Essa is even stronger here. Stronger than I’ve ever felt it. I could do magic here with no effort.” He spoke distractedly, intent on watching the floating glowing balls. Kyric had to grab him by the arm to keep him from falling into the well.

  The far side of the chamber opened into an even larger cavern, a natural cave with magnificent crystal formations and stalagmites nearly touching the stalactites above them.

  A voice echoed from the back of the cave, three words in an ancient tongue. Kyric recognized the voice. It was Morae.

  At once the air turned misty and coalesced into a thick fog. Kyric could barely see Jazul standing next to him. Aiyan was only a dark shape holding a pale flame.

  Everyone stopped. Pitbull began to giggle.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s only an illusion. I can see right through it.”

  “Well the rest of us can’t,” Aiyan snapped. “Can you do something to help? Dispel it perhaps?”

  Pitbull exploded with laughter. “Are you kidding? I don’t even know how it’s done. No one’s been able to conjure true illusions since the War of Mages.”

  Pitbull fell silent then. Kyric heard him weeping. “All this power. All this power and I haven’t the skill for it. Pity me for a fool. I’ve wasted my life pursuing an art that has no use for me.”

  Aiyan struck Pitbull across the face with the flat of his flaming blade. “Ano!” he said in the Essian tongue. “Take hold of your essence and center yourself. We need you, Orius. Tell me what you see.”

  Pitbull looked up and imitated a laughing sound, but this time it was irony. “I see a man with a sword coming at us. I think he can see through the fog as well.”

  Aiyan waved his sword back and forth like a dowsing rod. He took a few steps and Kyric could no longer see him.