They were previously banished from Calidell and any discovered in the country, or found to be wielding, were immediately executed.
Wielders must choose their bed-fellows carefully, as they have the potential to burn their lovers alive. For this reason, most wielders will marry kanaala or remain celibate.
The Fireblade Array: Volume 3
Anomaly of Blaze
by
H.O. Charles
Anomaly of Blaze copyright H.O. Charles 2012
All illustrations by the author
Copyright Page
Anomaly of Blaze. Copyright 2012 by H.O. Charles. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
If you find a typographical error in a book published by Idol: a Tree, please email us [email protected]
The Fireblade Array
City of Blaze
Nation of Blaze
Anomaly of Blaze
Blazed Union
Voices of Blaze
Also by the same author:
Snowlands
http ://ciggofblaze.blogspot. com/ http://www.facebook.com/Hadleitth
An array offires; an array of lives. The Fireblade’s array is eternal, but the beginnings and ends of each life are ever the same. It must always begin with death and end with death.
Contents
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Glossary of Terms Chapter 1
Step. Step. And step again; one foot after the other. Forwards. The ground was slicked with old rain, grit glistening within it. It was death. Artemi had known a thousand, and yet she had experienced none. It ought to mark the end of a life. It was the conclusion, the ending of that story. And to those who continued to live, it was a chapter marker within their stories, which would quite naturally continue to play out until their own endings came. But to this living Artemi, this walking woman, his death meant her ending
had finally arrived.
His body lay in the cart before her: obscured from view, but drawn through the Gialdin streets so that all could bow as it passed. Its lacquered angles tugged at her even now as she trailed it. How deeply she desired to crawl into that litter, and how much she wanted to spend one more moment alongside his cold, motionless body. But his children walked beside her, and that was no sight for them to witness. Tallyn’s fire crept up her arm from her right hand, whilst Medea’s power froze the skin of her left. She was there to support them through their loss, though
in truth it was they who supported her. They were among the few who knew the circumstances of Morghiad’s death, since Dorlunh had so effectively disguised his own actions. Three beheaded and maimed eisiels were discovered by the king’s body, and so the people believed he’d died defending his city. The world would remember him as a hero.
Artemi had wanted her children to believe the same thing, but Silar had advised against it. Truth, he said, would serve them better in the long term. But it was clear that the truth had hurt them as it hurt her. The general was the only
other person who knew what Morghiad had come to believe about himself: that he had thought he would turn into a monster, and had ended his own life to prevent it. And how well he had hidden this terrible fear from her! If only he had spoken to her about it, discussed it with her so that she could offer her reassurances. They could have found a solution together, battled their problems as united warriors. That was how it had always been. A thousand times since reading his letter she’d rallied at the futility of it. It was a mistake, a mistranslation... He didn’t have it in his heart to hurt any of them!
She could still remember the sensations he had felt in his last moments. He had ridden a horse he was unaccustomed to, had recognised someone, talked to them, dismounted. And then he had knelt on the floor. She could recall with perfect clarity the feeling of twigs that prodded at his knees, the cool air that had touched his skin and the buzz of the single fibre of her hair that he had taken with him to grasp. She remembered how he took that last, deep breath.
Another tear coursed hotly down her cheek. She knew that Silar was walking closely behind her, his head
bowed in sorrow with everyone else. Her father walked beside him, and even his face was very sombre. “He was a good man,” he had said when he’d come to hug her the day before. In another life she’d have been delighted to hear such words.
The procession stopped at the entrance to the gardens, where a vast pyre had been constructed for her husband. It was taller than a twofloored house and already six of the army lieutenants stood with their starter flames aloft. She watched helplessly as the glossy black cart was driven into the centre of it, and with utter despair
as the fires flared around it. It took every single fibre of willpower and determination to prevent herself from jumping into that pyre with him. Artemi clutched tightly at her children. This was it. Those precious few years of perfection were done with, and now she had a duty to continue in adversity. Each of her children deserved a parent who would not fall to pieces, or fail them as so many had failed her in lives before.
“Tallyn. Medea. You must never forget your father, or the good things he did. He always chose the right path. He was a true hero and a fine
king. But we are still a family, and we will be strong. His blood will keep us together through any difficulty, and it will keep us alive.” She had, of course, defended his actions once they’d learned of his voluntary execution, as little as she’d wanted to. Damn his logic! And damn him! If there had been an afterlife, she would dearly have wished that one of her dead friends could give him a short, sharp punch from her. Or maybe a kick. Beodrin. Yes, he would be the perfect man to deliver such a message. And Neleum and Laothoe. Three kicks. A great, blazed pity that could not happen!
She remained with the pyre long after her children and most others had left, sitting before the flames until they had dissolved to small, flickering embers. When the sky had darkened and the biting breeze had dropped, Silar came to join her. He slung his cloak across her shoulders and sat crosslegged on the nearby ground. “He asked me to be a sort of father for your children.”
No surprises there. Her husband had prepared so much in advance. “And I’m sure you will do well at it.”
“He also asked that I watch over
“That is not necessary.”
Silar grunted. “I know what you’re planning, my lady. I can see it as clearly as I see my own hands. I will not permit it, whether it’s ten years into the future or twenty.”
“You would rather let me live in perpetual mourning once my duty is done? Once this world has no more need of me?” Those fires did look so welcoming.
“This world will always have need of you.” He was beginning to sound like The Daisain.
Artemi huddled deeper into the cloak. “Try living for a millennium or
two. Then you’ll understand how it starts to grate.”
“I can imagine.” He pulled a strange sort of grin.
“Silar... why was he so convinced that he would end the world? After all, we fixed him, didn’t we? And there was that other book that said I would be responsible. None of it really seemed that... reliable!”
The general frowned. “He feared something in himself, and he feared what he was capable of when you were not there to... calm him. Perhaps if you’d died again...”
“That can’t be true. He dealt
with it rather well the second time,” she paused only briefly as he raised an eyebrow, “and A
chellon knows he coped through several of my neardeaths.”
“Perhaps another would have tipped the balance,” Silar said, gazing back at the glowing ashes.
She knew he was keeping something from her. The general could read people well, but he was not so good at hiding his own thoughts. “Enough to go chasing after Tallyn or Kalad with a knife? Even you don’t believe that.”
“It hardly matters now, my
queen,” he said softly.
“No. I don’t suppose it does.” A shadow moved through her thoughts again, a dark emotion probably brought on by this grief. She shook her head and rose to leave the gardens. Their sight reminded her so vividly of all the other funerals she’d attended in her lives. Rites would vary considerably, but the feelings were always the same: guilt, loss and loneliness. At least Morghiad was now beyond Mirel’s reach. That was something to be glad for.
The smell of burning wood was detectable even there, miles into the sky above the capital. Below, Gialdin was merely a spray of white diamonds over a dark, green carpet. Only the glimmer of distant fires looked back at him with their angry eyes. He turned to the room and fiddled with the buckle on his coat. “It did work.”
Medea frowned as she tweaked
her latest Blaze form into shape. “We can’t be sure.”
“But it was the same. Mum’s always had those floating lines around her, and the ones we put on dad were exactly the same. Exactly!”
“And do you know what they really were?” His sister allowed her work to disintegrate. “How do you know we didn’t just make them the same in other ways? They were very different; they came from different bloody worlds! And you said Danner didn’t have them.”
Tallyn stood to pace the room. He never could sit still for long. Kahr
Fidgeter, Caala called him. “Danner was a wolf! And besides, I was younger then. I wasn’t old enough to see.” Medea couldn’t observe the things he did, of course. The way lines of time stretched around people, the way those threads became warped in the palace. But he’d needed his sister’s power to tweak those lines around his father. “We should tell mum.”
“No.”
He plonked back down into his original seat. “But it’ll make her so much happier if she knows-”
The kahriss leaned forward. “And so much more heartbroken if we
failed. It’s called false hope and it’s not fair on her.”
His sister was right, in a way. And they still didn’t know if their mother would be pleased with them if it had worked. She had always claimed to despise that aspect of her existence. Worse, she seemed to believe that their father had rightly dispatched a cruel creature when he had died. What if Tallyn had simply undone his father’s good work? “So we keep it a secret?”
Medea nodded. “Until we know.”
Make your mother smile when I’m gone, his father had said. And how
ever was he to do that? To make her proud he would have to step into his father’s legendary, hero-sized boots. And it wasn’t just the height or physical presence he currently lacked, it was so much more. Your father is an excellent king because he is just the right sort of tough, several of his tutors would recite. What they really meant, of course, was that Tallyn was too soft. “I miss him.”
“Me too, Tal. Do you think... do you think he really thought that about himself?” She was looking at that strange bracelet again: a thing with long, silvery metal claws.
He stood once more to check for sounds in the hallway outside. The servants always seemed to have very good ears indeed. “Why else would he have gone to Dorlunh?”
“Yes, but... he was happy! What if Dorlunh blackmailed him, or someone made him write those letters?”
Tallyn shook his head. If his mother believed the words their father had written, then they were likely to be genuine. “And what would they have had to gain? Not power. Mum’s still queen, you and I are still here. And Kal, as well.”
“Acron said he angered lots of people when they rebelled and he put them to work.”
“And they are still in chains. I think we’d have heard if any of them had escaped. King Acher left something bad in him, mum said. And dad just wanted to protect us all from it.”
His sister screwed her face up, clearly in one of her argumentative moods. “I never saw it.”
Nor had Tallyn. But then, he was old enough to know that some things had been hidden from him, from both of them.
Sleet pelted the windows of the offices, stuttering against the hard, Crux-wrought glass. Artemi breathed a sigh of relief. Nalka was decisively and finally over, and she wouldn’t have to suffer its undesirable effects ever again. She stood and withdrew her leading gale sword to examine it. Not a single
mark marred its silvery blade, and no wear was evident on the filigree tracings. The designs seemed old and out-of-fashion now, but she knew nothing superior had been made in recent years. Perhaps nothing better ever would. She and Mirel were the only ones who knew the forms necessary, and that partnership was unlikely to be rekindled very soon. Mirel’s broken sword still lay in the heart of the queen’s private collection, a curiosity she only partially understood. Artemi did not want to think about the day her enemy would return for her weapons. Not at all.
She set the blade back in its holster and returned to the red-leather chair. It had been Morghiad’s chair, really. All of the business laid out before her was the sort of thing he’d liked to deal with: contingencies, treaties, schools and charity. Always with his heart in the right place. They’d often joked that he was the peacemaker and she the war-maker, but the thought was sour in her mind now. She picked up the pen he wrote with, dipped it in a well of dark green ink and began to scribble. A knock sounded at the solid door.
“Come.”
An old messenger, Lunen, entered. His plump lips were smiling broadly. “Ah, my lady, apologies for disturbing you, only I have some good news to impart.”
“Really?” What could possibly be good news at a time like this?
“Aye. Another young woman has borne a kanaala son in our very own chamber of light. Both are doing well, my queen.”
That was just what she wanted to hear; someone else’s joy when she was heartbroken! Damn the blazed lot of them! “That’s wonderful. Pass on the palace’s best wishes.” She tried to
put happiness into her voice, but failed miserably.
“Ah, my lady... They have decided to honour our former king with his name. The child is to be called Morghiad.”
Artemi could not stop the frown that she’d fought so hard to contain from emerging. “He would be very pleased to hear that. Now, I have much work to attend to. If you wouldn’t mind, Lunen?”
“My lady, wouldn’t you like to see...?”
That was the last thing she wanted! After spending so much of her
time dealing with Kalad’s gloomy mood, looking at someone else’s cheerier infant would only serve to highlight all her failures. “Thank you, no.”
The messenger looked rather crestfallen at her response, but she could offer no other. He turned and left the offices in silence. A part of her wished they had never revealed the secret of the cave of light. True, it had saved many mothers, but each of its visitors risked opening the gate. All that was required was some hapless fool too careless with his knives, and the wrath of the already-angry Law-keepers
would be unleashed. No wonder it had remained hidden for so long.
Artemi went back to her work and re-read the sentence she’d composed. It clearly required modification. She scribbled a few of the words out, creating her usual scrawl of spidery messes. Blazes! She needed a good fight against a Kusuru, but none were left in Gialdin. Romarr had taken Selieni on one of his adventures, and Vestuna had returned to whatever remote cave he liked to dwell in. She still hadn’t heard anything from Khasha, and Dorlunh... Likely he would never show his face near her
country in the next age. Not that she wanted to see those angular, pointy little features
ever again! But Tallyn, the man whom she’d named her eldest son after, would return in the next year. That would be something to look forward to. Another knock sounded.
“Yes?”
A huge hand pushed the door open. Koviere was attached to it. He gave her a warm smile with his great, square face and proceeded to sit at the desk before her. “My queen.”
She’d never been able to work out what it was: his impossibly good nature, solid presence or twinkling
eyes, but he always made her want to smile back. Her lips turned up at the corners ever so slightly. “Koviere.”
“You should get back to fighting again, girl. It’s what you were made for. Not this paperwork stuff.” He grimaced at the pile before her.
Artemi couldn’t have chuckled if she’d wanted to; her heart ached with so much anguish. “I was thinking I might do that. When I’m feeling more ready.”
He shook his head. “No. It should be now.”
“Is that your opinion or an order?”
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 107