The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  The old giant leaned back into his chair with a sigh. “Tem, it breaks my heart to see you like this. How long have I known you? Six centuries? Seven? Blazes, it’s lost in my memory...”

  She remembered. “Orta’s civil war. Before the Battle of Ghost Hill, so eight-and-a-half centuries ago.”

  He frowned. “That long, eh? And in all that time I’ve never seen you look so forlorn as this. You need to come back to your old life, find the fire that you had with your soldier brothers. And you ought to retake your oath.”

  “And which oath is that?”

  “The ‘no man’ oath.”

  Artemi made an exasperated noise in spite of herself. “Because I am likely to marry again after this!?”

  “No. Because you are the sort of girl who needs rules, self-imposed or otherwise.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll do it here and now, shall I? I swear never to take a man to my bed in all the lives I lead, whether he’s the most powerful kanaala in the world or not. Artemi Fireblade shall love no man. How’s that?”

  “There she is – the old Storm of Stubborn.” He smiled approvingly.

  She had to admit she felt a certain reassurance with those words, though she could not have said why. Of course, her current situation was still a very different one from the lives she’d had before. She had children now, and she knew what it was to be in love. So much had changed in only a matter of decades. “Do you still remember the day we met?”

  He nodded sagely. “Aye. Just minding my pint, I was, and in walks this slip of a girl. There’s a pretty thing, I thought. But before I’ve taken a second sip she’s beaten up half the clientele and thrown them onto the

  streets. Next thing I know, I’m nursing my injuries along with the rest of them.”

  A small smile grew upon her lips. “I’ve apologised enough times by now, surely? It was an easy-enough mistake to make.”

  He shook his head. “No apology necessary. If I had never have met you, I’d have missed out on all those adventures.”

  “Nonsense. You were a very quick study with the sword. Those adventures would have found you regardless.”

  Koviere raised his great

  eyebrows briefly, but kept his immediate thoughts to himself. “Things usually became boring when you were gone, I know that much! But oddly enough, I always seem to bump into you in the most unexpected of places.” His implication was obvious. She thought back to her time in Sunidara, and those wild, yellow plains so barren that the mind would start to invent things to see. There she had achieved the rank of sub-lieutenant, and had marched into many a battle with Hedinar Kantari as her general. And she remembered the day when an ebony-haired woman had stumbled into their camp, desperate for water. Hedinar had been more than willing to personally see to the runaway’s health, and it hadn’t been long before he saw to her other needs as well. And then Koviere had thundered into the officers’ tent. She grinned, “You were really very angry with Medea.”

  He looked confused, but answered her anyway, “Your daughter is a handful.”

  “Not that Medea; her grandmother.”

  “Oh. Yes.” His confusion dissipated. “Well, she did force me to track her all the way across the

  continent.”

  “She had good reason to run.”

  The giant folded his arms defensively. “Perhaps.”

  “And a better one to stay in Sunidara.”

  He chuckled. “I was glad you were there, though. I needed someone to help me with that particular battle.”

  “She had her claws so deeply embedded in his heart; none of us could have parted them.” And a good thing too, as it turned out.

  “You mean he had his daggers planted firmly in her heart.” A wicked grin spread across his wide face. “You always were very fond of your General Kantari.”

  Artemi fought to relax every muscle that clamoured to tense. “Many women were. But if you mention that to anyone else here...” She narrowed her eyes at him. Of course Morghiad had inherited his father’s best qualities, in addition to developing many more of his own.

  Her old friend shrugged innocently. “You coming to the practice hall then?”

  “Oh, if it’ll make you quiet, Koviere!” She stood and tightened her sword straps, watching as he rose into

  his improbable height. It did tend to make him a rather more challenging fighter than most. Throwing him out of that inn all those years ago had required an inordinate amount of Blaze.

  They strode slowly down to the domed room, nodding politely to those they passed. The corridors smelled heavily of fire blossom and were unusually quiet, even in the middle of the day. Then again, she did not desire to see anyone loud and happy. She craved nothing more than silence and a good, hard fight.

  The domed hall was bustling with the heat of thousands of soldiers

  when she arrived. But the expressions on their faces... All were of pity and sadness so sickening she would rather have turned them to fear with a few errant fireballs. Though, that would hardly be an appropriate response for a queen in mourning. She gritted her teeth as she strode before Koviere’s lumbering figure, watching the silent ocean of soldiers part before her. The space where she had always stood with Morghiad was now empty, circled by a reverent cluster of downcast faces. In spite of not being Kusuru, the king had always made an excellent opponent for her in practice sessions. Silar was

  almost equal in ability, but his blond form was noticeably absent also. No doubt he had a mountain of duties to deal with at present.

  Artemi stayed near Koviere as they stepped into the space, and closed her eyes. She could hear the breaths of every soldier, the whispers they shared and the thump of her own heart. She could hear the song of the castle around her, and the way that Blaze Energy coursed through the more basic force that made it. The power of The Crux was barely visible, even to her. But she could tell that, for every one part Blaze that burned in the world,

  another five parts of The Crux flowed through it.

  The movements of the nowfighting soldiers around her were disrupting and changing the way the air shifted, but the smell of energy was just the same. That dark shadow moved through her thoughts again. What was that?

  “...Girl? Are you going to do any fighting or just stand there?”

  Artemi opened her eyes again. “Hmm? Yes, of course. Sorry to keep you waiting.” She withdrew her sword and waited for Koviere’s heavy barrage of attacks. Fighting him was much like

  working one’s way around a huge fort: vast, solid and vigorously defended. There were, however, a few weaknesses here and there. She leapt and dodged his rapid slices with some elegance, but took her time with the battle. There was no sense in finishing it before he was properly exercised, or she properly distracted.

  But Artemi found it a far more difficult battle to become distracted during the fight. Every move that Koviere made she found herself comparing to Morghiad’s. The giant was slower with his side-swipes, harsher with his parries, messier with

  his up-thrusts. But he had the same, curious wariness about his left flank that her king had always fussed over. This was getting her nowhere! She forced her resurgent sadness back into the cellars of her mind, and fought on. As she began to regain her focus, something poured back out of those dark reaches, something living. It coalesced into a prowling, walking thing that felt very... negative. Artemi made another hard strike at Koviere’s blade, bounded to the right and prepared herself for the next hit.

  But the dark, shadowy thing moved against her thoughts. It padded

  towards the fires at the edges of her consciousness. Artemi parried another strike, but she was too tense and overbalanced. The creature reacted immediately. It took hold of her power, almost every drop she could hold, and launched it at Koviere. She was only just fast enough to divert the fires away from him, but they shot out across the great hall in a brilliant streak of inferno. It hit the other side with a violent crash, and just as quickly dissolved to nothing
. Every one of the thousands of soldiers dropped their weapons to stare at her; some had fallen to the ground in fear for their lives.

  Light of Achellon, what had she done? The fires had drained from her body, and somehow she’d unconsciously re-sheathed her sword. Her whole body was shaking. “Koviere, are you...?”

  “I’m fine. I’m more worried about you, girl! What was that?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t...

  I...”

  He put his huge hands on his hips. “Emotions getting the better of you? Perhaps this was too soon. Let’s get you back to your rooms.”

  Emotions taking control? That wasn’t her at all! She’d never wielded

  something she didn’t want to, and certainly not at a friend! What was happening to her? “It shouldn’t have escaped...”

  He was guiding her out of the room, past the lines of wide-eyed soldiers. “It’s alright. We know you can be as fiery as that hair of you-”

  “I am not!” She turned to him rapidly. “I am disciplined, Koviere. You know that. When have you ever seen me do anything so... so.... errant?”

  The giant frowned as he ushered her into the corridor beyond and raised an eyebrow. “Tower of Cadra’s

  castle?”

  “That was intentional and planned!”

  He pulled a face and urged her to walk on. “It’s alright, Artemi. We all have a great deal to adjust to, you more than anyone. Don’t fret about it.”

  Don’t fret? Artemi felt her anger surge at his words. She would bloody well fret all she liked! She pulled out a dagger to spin in her hands. Flick. Too many people with too many ideas about what was best for her. Flick. People assuming she had a temper problem because of the way she looked. Flick. The comments she’d

  received about her children’s need for her. As if she didn’t know! Flick. That blasted, moth-brained husband of hers! The monster had roused from its slumber again. “Rhaaahhh!” Artemi jettisoned the blade into the mists of the hallway beyond, and waited for the sound of its fall. The creature wanted Blaze again, but she wasn’t about to allow it that satisfaction. Three seconds passed before the dagger clattered onto some distant floor.

  Koviere was watching her closely.

  “It’s alright, Kove. It’s under control.” She thought she knew what it

  was now: a reminder of Morghiad’s darker days, a gift he had left her with. But Artemi was made of different stuff, and a thing like that would not survive in her mind for long. Not a blazed chance!

  The air was cut through with the icy warmth that comes with an early spring, and the sun was bright for its low height. The gardens were starting to take on their odd sort of disordered beauty as grey death gave way to green life. It was only the second spring after Morghiad’s final winter, and yet it seemed more like an age of seasons had come and passed since that event. Silar often thought back with guilt over his friend’s death. He had known that the king was hiding things, training his face to conceal certain emotions and his mind to conceal feelings even from Artemi. And Silar had known that the

  end result would not be a happy one, but he had thought there was more time. He had been convinced that he could use the queen to knock some sense into her husband before he made a terrible mistake. Only, the great spymaster general had failed to account for Dorlunh’s change of heart upon his return. It was another disaster to add to his personal collection.

  Silar missed his friend sorely, even his stupid, glowering moods and looks of disapproval. No one else had ever been so much fun to wind up with jokes about their wife. And Artemi could never again be teased about her

  husband’s nature. A rich, verdant topic of amusement was lost to them all; that and so much more, a reasonable man who would listen. Morghiad’s wife, though seasoned and intelligent, was not quite so skilled in taking counsel.

  She was crouched on the lawn with her scarlet cloak swirling around her, and Kalad was in her arms. He was clutching at strands of her red-gold hair and grinning.

  “Don’t let him get too attached, or you’ll never extract him,” Silar warned as he seated himself opposite them.

  Artemi smiled a warm smile. She was doing that more often these days, which was a relief. He could still see the ache in her eyes though, the signs that told him what she would do. “He’s very practiced at untangling himself, especially when I do this!” The child started giggling furiously as she tickled him, and released his hold on her hair almost immediately.

  Silar would not have let go nearly so readily. He still found Artemi painfully beautiful, and still found himself dreaming of her soft lips and excellent curves each night. A part of him was glad he could take Morghiad’s place as a father to the children. The

  only difficulty had been when Kalad had started calling him dada and they’d been forced to reiterate over and over again that he was not. As if cued, the boy yelled, “Seeeee!” at him.

  “Go and sit with Silar, then,” his mother instructed, and the child waddled over to him.

  The general took hold of Kalad and balanced him on a leg. “Have you heard about the bandits in the Cadran woods? I’ve been getting rather a lot of reports about them recently. I think they’ve started recruiting.”

  “Oh? They’re becoming that organised?”

  He nodded. “We’ve made a large number of merchants very rich indeed, which just gives the thieves more to steal. And the more money they have...”

  “...The more time they have to plan and grow,” she finished. “So what do we do? Drench the woods with soldiers? Provide vast guards for our traders? Burn the bandits’ camps to the ground? Hunt them all down?”

  “Tem!” Her attitude was always bellicose, to say the least. “My queen,” he said more calmly. “I believe it would be far more prudent if we infiltrate their camps and see what it is they’re up to,

  first.”

  “Up to? They’re bandits. Their defining characteristic is that they steal.”

  He paused while he reattached one of Kalad’s loose shoes. “Initially, but then they grow into something else. I want to know who the leaders are, where they hide and the sorts of things they want. If we’re to prevent these groups from rising anew after we’ve broken them, we need to make sure their members become permanently disillusioned.”

  Artemi’s smooth forehead creased slightly with a frown. “And

  pick out the rotten ones at the top. We don’t want another Reduvi and his Free Men.”

  “Precisely.”

  She pulled her red cloak around her. “Is he still...?”

  “Yes.”

  The sad look in her eyes was more apparent for a moment. “We never did tell Morghiad.”

  No. That particular familial revelation had remained their secret. “It was for the best.”

  She nodded quietly, and he knew she was thinking about those flames again. It was understandable

  that she wanted to end her pain, but there had to be another way. “I... ah. Yesterday I... it happened again.”

  Silar grunted. He’d seen that particular outburst in one of his many flame-filled visions of her. “I know. Orwin.”

  “I’ve never even argued with him before! I don’t understand it. There was no reason for it. One minute we were talking, and the next I was trying to throttle him.”

  He knew the way that felt, having already been treated to several of her eruptions that year. “And he has already forgiven you.”

  “I could have killed him, Silar!”

  But Silar knew that she wouldn’t. His mind had shown him that much. A rather different sequence of events had been apparent to him when he’d seen the same thing in Morghiad. “You’ll beat it, Tem.”

  She thrust one of her strangely formed daggers into the grass. “I really don’t know how you can be so sure! The thing he left inside my mind is... That doesn’t help me with how I’ll do it.”

  “Have you noticed it never happens around your children?”

  “Don’t tempt fate, General
r />   Forllan.” Artemi took hold of her son

  and pulled him towards her. “You say Kal’s going to look even more like his father than Tallyn?”

  “The image,” Silar chuckled. He had almost thought that particular viewing was of Morghiad, until he’d seen the dark eyes.

  She grinned at Kalad. “And with Silar as your role model the women of this country are doomed.”

  “I object to that.” He hadn’t charmed a blazed woman in years. And Talia hardly counted. That girl seemed to have ideas all of her own.

  “Perhaps the influence of

  another is needed,” said a very familiar, oddly accented, male voice.

  Artemi’s eyes widened, and her smile broadened immeasurably. She plonked her son in Silar’s arms and allbut-leapt onto the man behind him. The general lifted Kalad as he stood and turned. It was her eldest son’s namesake, Tallyn Hunter.

  The Kusuru, who was evidently busy squeezing every scrap of air out of his queen’s lungs, didn’t bother acknowledging Silar’s presence. After an extended period of time, when the general’s toes had started to grow cold from lack of movement, the vanha

  sielus ended their embrace. “So which one’s this?” Tallyn asked as he glanced at the child.