The Flames of Deception - A Horizon of Storms: Book 1

by AJ Martin

  “Princess! What-” he stopped and his face grew dour. “What has he done to you?”

  She shook her head. “We have to go. Now! Quickly!” She slipped past him into the room and threw his shirt at him from across the room where it had lain over the back of a chair, before clumsily lifting his heavy sword in its scabbard and dragging it to him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, throwing the shirt on and shoving his feet into his boots, pulling the laces tight and fastening them clumsily.

  “It’s Silar! He’s one of the sorcerers!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with fear. “He’s convinced the emperor I’m a witch! They’re going to kill us!” she panted. “We have to escape!”

  Thadius pulled his sword from its scabbard and ran into the corridor. “Come on,” he beckoned solemnly.

  They weaved their way around the corridors, Thadius holding on to Josephine’s arm as he guided her through the shadowy palace and down a stairwell. He tried the door at the bottom, but it was fastened shut.

  “Stand back,” he advised her and threw his weight against it. The wood shook and dust drifted down as he heaved his shoulder again and again, before with a crunch, the latch on the other side holding the door in place shut burst from the stone it was affixed to. Thadius stumbled, following the door’s trajectory. Beyond the door was a large, uninhabited hall and at the other end, another door. “Hurry princess,” he advised, and pulled her through. “I think we can get out to one of the gardens if we keep going this way,” he advised. “I have been studying the layout of this place as much as I could since we spoke.”

  Thadius spun round as he heard shouting coming from the stairs and hefted his sword. Two soldiers ran through, wielding scimitars. They ran at the knight together. With their lighter weapons they had the advantage of speed over him, but Thadius was experienced and he thrust expertly from one to the other, piercing one of the men in his gullet. The man went down instantly, clutching to his throat as the blood poured out between his fingers. As the other man wielded his curved blade clumsily, Thadius countered and tore the blade from his hand, before slicing across the man’s stomach. He fell quickly.

  “Move!” Thadius barked to Josephine, who picked up the scimitar and ran with him across the lengthy room. She reached the door first and pulled the bolt loose, throwing the door open. As she did, she ducked as another soldier ran through, screaming in Aslemerian and waving his sword madly at her. Thadius barrelled into him and pulled Josephine onward before he could stand up and attack them again.

  “I’m so sorry Thadius,” she wailed. “This is all my fault! I should never have made you come here!”

  “It was as good an idea as any princess,” Thadius replied. “How could we have known a sorcerer would be waiting for us? Ah,” Thadius pointed ahead. “I think the garden is ahead. This was where I was heading when the guard blocked my path. Hopefully we can get out there.”

  They carried on up the cloistered corridor until the sound of people running made them halt. Ahead, seven men pelted towards them. Josephine seized her power, concentrated, and with a flash of power, threw them about like skittles. Thadius pulled her through them as they struggled to right themselves, but then stopped again as a dozen more soldiers appeared ahead. The men behind them were in pursuit again as well.

  “Shit,” Thadius cursed, and hefted his sword.

  “What do we do?” Josephine asked.

  “Deflect the men behind again!” Thadius cried and with a roar dashed towards the men ahead of them and began to parry against their swords.

  Josephine turned to face the seven men behind them and focussed again. She knocked down four, but the others steadied themselves against the wall and kept coming. She tried again and the rest fell save for one, who bared his weapon at her. She flailed the scimitar in her hand wildly and caught him on the arm, and then focussed again. He flew backwards as if he had been hit with a battering ram, colliding with his brethren who crashed back to earth.

  She turned to look ahead. Thadius ducked as a scimitar whirled across his head and then slashed the shins of the soldier, who fell like a rag - doll, crying in pain. She whirled to glance behind herself again as another man jumped at her. Startled by how close he was, she outstretched her arm and impaled him in the stomach. He fell backwards to the floor just as the remaining men ran towards her. Thinking quickly, she created a pocket of air and filled the corridor with it. The men hit the air and bounced back as it they had just run into an upturned mattress. She smiled and then turned around to Thadius. Her eyes widened.

  “Thadius!”

  The blade pierced the knight through the back first, its curved end emerging beneath his rib – cage, in the abdomen. He looked startled a moment and then spun, wrenching the hilt of the weapon from its owner’s hand and leaving it sticking out of his back, before slashing the man’s face with his own sword. Another soldier threw his own blade down into Thadius’s chest, once, twice, then a third time. The knight fell to the floor.

  “No!” Josephine screamed, watching as he collapsed. His attacker and the other remaining guard jumped over him and ran towards her. “Bastards!” she cried and threw all her energy at them. They rocketed backwards and smashed their heads against the brick wall, falling unconscious in a pile.

  Tears running down her cheeks, Josephine fell to the floor beside Thadius. He was still conscious and looked up at her, lines of blood dribbling from his mouth.

  “I’m sorry princess,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I’ve failed you.”

  “Don’t say that!” she cried, and grasped his hand tightly. “You have to come with me!” She smiled through her sobs. “What would I be without you by my side?” She shook her head. “You have so much more living to do!”

  “It’s too late,” he said, and tried to push her away. “You must go now. There will be more soldiers.”

  “I won’t leave you!” She sobbed. “Not you!” Her body trembled. “You’re like a brother Thadius! I can’t let you die!” She clutched at his shirt. “I won’t let you die!”

  “I… am dying,” he said bluntly, through jagged breaths. “But it’s alright,” he nodded. “I’m a soldier.” He coughed. “Don’t let it be for nothing. Be strong for me…” he shuddered and reached up to grasp her shaking hand “Go, my Josephine.” He smiled up at her. “Go and save the world.” Then he closed his eyes and after a final few, rattling breaths, he was gone.

  Josephine looked at him in stunned silence a moment. His face had grown pallid, flattened somehow, the life gone from within. Her chest ached with sadness and she wailed, still clutching to his hand. But before she had more time to grieve, her ears pricked as she heard more people running up ahead, their footsteps growing closer. The wall of air behind her still held strong, and then men stuck behind it pawed at the invisible field. There could be hundreds more soldiers in front of her. She stood on wobbly legs and turned to the door just as five men appeared in the narrow gap.

  “Come with us princess,” one said. “This escape is over.” They walked towards her confidently.

  Josephine’s face changed as she watched them approach. Sorrow burned her heart, but it catalysed the rest of her emotions and began to set off a burning anger far greater than she had ever felt before. Her fists balled up and her eyes flared a bright sapphire. In the gloomy corridor they shone like a cat’s eyes caught in the moonlight and the men stopped in their tracks, taken aback by the sight.

  “Get out of my way,” she snarled at them and the air around the men began to shimmer and warp. The soldiers looked to each other and then, before they could act, the air closed around them and they dropped their weapons, clutching to their throats, gasping for air. A few seconds later they collapsed, unconscious on the floor and Josephine marched over them and proceeded down the corridor. She looked back one last time at Thadius, tears spilling from her eyes, and then she ran.

  More soldiers came at her as she fled but she grasped them with the energy and threw them aside like tw
igs in the wind. The air hummed around her and her skin luminesced as she continued on her way, until after a few more minutes she found herself atop a stairwell. The entrance to the palace stood beyond the wide entrance hall with a tall, ribbed vault ceiling, but between it and her, at the bottom of the stairs, two - dozen soldiers stood, bristling with weapons.

  “What will you do now princess? You are surrounded.” The voice made her spin round. Silar approached, a smile on his face, and he gestured to himself with his spindly hands. “Surely you did not think a collapsing floor would kill me?” he scoffed. “The emperor, on the other hand, is a lot more fragile.” He shook his head. “What if he dies? Are you a murderer, princess?”

  “I know what I am,” she growled. “And I know what you are. You don’t frighten me sorcerer.”

  The man held his unnerving smile on a face that had not known true joy for many years. His eyes regarded her. “Then you are very, very foolish,” he whispered, and the hairs stood on the back of Josephine’s neck as he took a step forward. “You are surrounded and your only ally is dead. You will never make it out of here alive. But I would be willing to preserve your life, if you would only do what I say.”

  Josephine sneered. “You don’t truly believe I would obey you?” she spat.

  Silar’s false smile finally fell and she felt him reach around her with his energy. But she was ready this time. Her entire body pulsed with the power, driven by her fury, and the wards he tried to wrap around her fell apart like an unravelling rope.

  “Relinquish your power and surrender!” he commanded angrily. “Or I will wrap you up in flame and sear the flesh from your bones!”

  “Then do it!” She wailed manically. “I won’t help you!”

  Silar raised a bony hand and knocked her against the railings with a ball of air. Her back crunched and she felt pain shoot up her spine. The iron rods were buckling under her weight and the pressure of Silar pushing her body into them. She gripped at one, searching for some kind of support, but it came loose in her hand. Before she could recover, Silar enveloped her in a ball of green smoke that filled her lungs and burned her eyes and skin.

  “You really have no idea who you are dealing with!” Silar hissed from the other side of the fog. “Centuries of planning, of lying low, only emerging when the time is right to manipulate events just so, in order to nudge this pathetic world in the direction of our choosing. Did you really think you could make a difference?” He laughed. “The gods were fools if they thought you could stop us. You are a weak child! A tiny, fragile woman.”

  Josephine felt herself fade in and out of consciousness. This is it, she thought. I can’t go on any more. I’m sorry, she said. To whom, she did not know. To everyone she had failed perhaps. Suddenly she felt a hand press against her chest and she looked up into the murky cloud. Silar continued to berate her, his sinewy features just visible beyond the gloom, maintaining the ball of fog that suffocated her. Her eyes flickered and tried to focus and then, momentarily, the outline of a man appeared for just a second. It looked like Thadius. She blinked and then it was gone. Thadius. His last words echoed in her mind. “‘Go and save the world’.”

  The anger reasserted itself within her and she felt strength pass into her exhausted body once more. She focussed and the fog began to melt away as if burnt by a heat from inside her. Silar stopped his monologue and looked at her in confusion. She bared her teeth and concentrated, flinging him against the wall, his arms outstretched. He struggled against the wards.

  “How are you doing this?” he asked.

  “I am a child of the Akari,” she sneered. “I am stronger than a mere sorcerer! I’ll be going now,” she said and wielding the iron bar still held in her hand, she brought it heavily down on his left temple. He slumped into unconsciousness and she released him from his invisible bindings, his body crumpling to the floor.

  Seeing what she had done, the soldiers advanced up the stairwell towards her. One threw a knife at her, but it bounced off a shield she extended around herself. With a nod of her head they fell about the hallway as a wave of power unsteadied them and she darted down the stairs. Though the power felt strong with her fiery anger, she couldn’t hold it forever, not against them all. More and more men appeared, encircling her and she could only hold them back for so long. Her fear and anger boiled over and she felt herself lashing out at the men that came at her with concentrated bubbles of her power in random combinations she didn’t understand or, it felt, that she could even control. One man burst in front of her, his entire body exploding as if it had been inflated from the inside until his skin couldn’t take any more pressure. She gasped at what she had done, but her survival instinct kicked in and she continued to press on through the throng. Another man dissolved into dust and another melted like wax. She watched herself kill people as if by instinct. She didn’t want to hurt anyone else! She needed to get out of here now! She turned. The locked doors stood ahead. She forced her energy towards them. Waves of concentrated power oscillated and the wood rattled as she strained against it.

  Come on! She thought as she strained with all her might and then the wood and brick of the door and wall buckled, and with a noise that resounded through all of Ank’ Shara the front of the palace erupted and funnelled outward in a cloud of dust and debris, brick and shattered glass. The soldiers ran and dived for cover as parts of the ceiling around them fell in great chunks. A boulder bounced off the shield Josephine had erected around herself and she walked forward into the dust, emerging into the sunlight. She looked behind her momentarily and then, her legs pounding, she hurtled out of the enormous gap, the soldiers around her shrouded in dust from the broken stone and dashed away.

  The courtyard outside the main entrance lay before her and freedom from the palace. Two more soldiers came at her, bearing their weapons at her. She threw a hand out and catapulted them away. A tingling feeling, like a sixth sense feeling danger, made her look backwards. Fireballs shot toward her, and she plummeted to the floor as they exploded about her. Several mages scurried towards her, their fur flapping in the wind as they turned to each other and babbled in their own, strange language. Then they fired at her again, flame bursting from their paws, snarling rabidly from little mouths with sharp teeth as they attacked her. Josephine rose to her feet and concentrated with all her might. Her arms and legs ached and across her face a vein began to creep from her forehead down her nose as she held her shield of power in place. The flame struck it and dissipated in a hiss of steam. The creatures, seeing this, babbled again and then struck her again, this time with green bolts of energy. They snaked around the shield and Josephine could feel it begin to waver.

  “I’m sorry!” she cried out to them. “I don’t want to hurt you! But I have no choice!” Flashes of light sparked from her body and the creatures bounced around like rubber balls. They chirruped and shrilled as they rolled around. Josephine turned and ran again, as fast as she could. A further set of smaller doors barred her path out of the courtyard, fixed in place by a large plank of wood at their centre resting on several metal brackets. At one side the plank was fastened to the brickwork by a large, metal stud. She threw her hand up, directing waves of energy at it, and it swung effortlessly out of its housings. The doors swung outwards at her command and she darted through them, down the pathway into the city and away, crying with pain as she ran.

  The Same Four Walls

  171st Day of the Cycle, 495 N.E. (New Era)

  The cell Augustus sat in could almost have been considered, by an outsider to Mahalia, to be luxurious. To the untrained eye, the lack of bars restricting movement, the clean, white walls and the upholstered chair might seem more akin to a guest house. In actuality, the walls were reinforced with wards preventing their destruction and an energy field covering the opening of the prison would turn flesh and bone to dust to one who would try to cross it. The chair was just for comfort. They weren't barbarians, after all.

  Pym had been imprisoned for weeks and in that t
ime his visitors had been restricted to the chancellor and those wizards and men the man deemed trustworthy. All Pym had to entertain himself was a book (reviewed by the chancellor himself for any code or secrets), the prospect of his twice daily meals - one at breakfast and one at sunset - and a small, reinforced window which looked out on to the plains. There were several other cells in the block - all empty. Aside from the door to the outside world of Mahalia and a flaming torch on the far wall, there was nothing else of note to look at.

  It was raining outside, which Augustus quite liked, because he could listen to the rhythmic pattering of the raindrops on the grasslands and buildings and watch the veils they cast across the horizon. As he continued to daydream, the door behind him clicked, and he turned to see who was visiting him this time. He gasped.

  “Embaer! What in the gods' names are you doing down here?”

  The elderly - looking man with a thick white beard and mottled skin shut the door behind himself quietly. “I thought you could likely do with some company,” the man replied, running a hand through his tonsured white hair above his right ear. “Unless you have already gone all crazy being down here for over a month?”

  “But how did you get down here? Surely the chancellor didn't allow you to see me? You can't have given up your position on events to him?”

  “One of the guards owed me a favour from long ago. I just had to wait until the time came when he was posted down here and was left alone to guard you. I'm sorry it took so long, but I had to bide my time.”

  “A guard owed you a favour? What did you do?”

  “It's probably best to leave the specifics to the imagination,” Embaer said carefully with a wry smile. “What matters is I have about fifteen minutes before the other guard returns, so we must talk fast.”

  Augustus nodded. “What's happening out there?” he asked.

  “Everything we don't want,” he sighed. “The dragon has been freed, Augustus.”