The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  “We’ve been waiting for a while for you to wake up, mother,” Morghiad hissed.

  “She’s not-” Kalad protested, before being hit squarely in the back.

  Artemi attempted to shout at her former husband to stop, but only succeeded in emitting a series of angry, muffled noises. She was powerless. Blazes, no fires either!

  “I do not have much time to deliver a speech for you, my queen, but I will do my best to ensure you understand what is going on. You are my captive, and shortly you will become property of my father. He is very disappointed in you, very

  disappointed indeed. You do remember what you were trained for, don’t you? You do remember the overriding duty of The Dedicated?”

  Guard the innocent from harm; prevent the end. She paused before nodding, however. Just whom had he been taking instruction from? She recalled some of her fight with Morghiad, and knew that many of the moves he had used were not those of an ordinary lumper. Someone had trained him like a Kusuru. Someone had told him their secrets. Could Dorlunh have done this?

  “Well,” he continued, “You

  have reneged on your duty of late. It is true that I have you to thank for my existence, but families are strictly forbidden amongst The Dedicated, and seeking to end your own life is the greatest, most selfish crime of all. Throwing all of that training away, and for what? You are a deserter. My father was very disappointed in you.”

  Who was his father? Felis Hasarde. Again that name tickled something, but her mind wanted to turn to a wall of blankness each time she thought of it.

  Morghiad shifted his grip upon their son, and thrust the engagement

  dagger into Kalad’s arm. To his credit, the boy did not make a sound of complaint. Be strong, Kalad, she tried to urge him, unable to prevent a tear from escaping her eye. Morghiad turned the dagger slowly, and continued his speech. “My father will collect you from here when I am finished with my twin. He won’t kill you, but he will almost certainly have to punish you for your failure. Innocent lives were counting upon you, mother. You let them down, and you made your weaknesses visible to everybody.” No weaknesses visible. How often she had been made to repeat that

  mantra. She had said it through her tortures and her training and at each one of her kills. That was the way it had to be done; show no weaknesses and no one would know where to strike. Kalad was one of her weaknesses. Both of these men were, and whoever had done this to Morghiad clearly knew that very well. She tried to speak through her gag.

  “Be quiet, or he gets tortured for longer,” the green-eyed man threatened. “I also have a more personal wrong to right with you. Now, it is obvious that I was ejected from this household because there was

  something very wrong with me. That’s the way it is – there’s always a brave twin and a malevolent twin in legend. But you thought I would grow to be the bad one. How wrong you were. Do you know I caught him conning your subjects out of money? That is very bad, don’t you think?”

  Kalad... That did not matter now! She had to stop his father; she had to make him remember early. But she could not speak! Damn it! Why had she not taught Kalad the words? How had she failed him so?

  “No,” their son said weakly, “I cannot be your twin. I am a year older

  than you. You can check the records. I am twenty years-old.”

  “So am I,” Morghiad purred.

  “No,” Kalad shook his head and took long, ragged breaths. “You can’t be. They must have lied to you. That, and you must have spent a childhood thinking you were unnecessarily small compared to everyone else.”

  Morghiad clenched his jaw and moved the knife to the kahr’s thigh.

  Artemi’s tears were free-flowing now. Please, would he stop - why would he not stop?

  “Not content with trying to have me expunged from this line of inbreds,

  my queen, you sent your waves of murderous soldiers to my new home, and there you burned my mother – a woman I consider to be my real mother – alive. I think it is the right course that you suffer for what you have done, and I think it is rather poetic that I, the offspring of you selfishness and weakness, should be the one to put things right. I do not delight in taking lives, but my brother here is a criminal, and his life will be a small sacrifice for the greater good.”

  He would not kill him, surely? Not his own son? He knew that Kalad was his! He had to know it somewhere

  in that blackened heart of his! Artemi sought desperately for the wild and dark creature within her mind, but she could not find it. Had it left her when she had been quenched? She needed it! She wanted to scream! Not Kalad!

  Her son spoke through his pain, “Your argument does not make any sense. If my mother wanted rid of you, then why did she welcome you back into this castle and not do away with you the minute she saw you? And do you think that torturing and killing me is going to hurt her if she is coldhearted enough to have any of her sons executed?”

  Morghiad paused. “When she met me she already knew she had sent the wrong twin away, brother. But killing you... it...” He waved the blade over the kahr’s face. He hesitated in confusion, and looked at Artemi. Her distress over her ‘criminal’ of a son would have been obvious to anyone, but now Morghiad had to search for reasons behind her callousness toward him. “You have grown attached to him, perhaps.” He looked introspective for a moment. “Am I your son?”

  Artemi’s shoulders sagged, and she shook her head slowly.

  He started checking Kalad’s

  bonds, and marched the perimeter of their immediate prison. It looked quite secure, and he walked as gracefully as any Kusuru. “A year younger... Where are the records I need to see?”

  “In the archives at the top of the third air tower. You’ll find me on the third day of the twelfth month. Felis Hasarde visited a year later.”

  Morghiad’s eyes blinked at that name, and his hand rapidly met with Kalad’s neck. “Then you know, and that means the records have been fabricated!”

  “No!” The kahr wheezed between words. “My mother and the

  general found it when you arrived here. That man is your father, and the woman listed in it must be your true mother, and she is no relation to mine!”

  His father’s fists opened and closed several times, and with each clench his knuckles became progressively whiter.

  “It is worth checking to make sure you are doing the right thing, don’t you think? One must always do the right thing,” Kalad urged. Artemi held her breath in hope. Her son was an excellent persuader.

  Morghiad appeared to consider the prospect for a moment longer, and

  finally nodded. “Anything to be unrelated to your mess of a family!” He tied a firm gag around the kahr’s mouth, stormed off toward the lighter section of the cisterns and then there was a large bang. An absence of the sound of watery footfalls followed. What had happened to him?

  Artemi looked immediately to her son, who was struggling in his bonds. She wriggled also, but knew her efforts were utterly futile. If only she could spontaneously wield Crux power like her daughter! But she could no longer sense any sort of energy. All of it was gone with The Blazes, and it

  would take days to reclaim those fires without another wielder to aid her. She met eyes with her son.

  Kalad looked determined as he shuffled toward her, but there was something about his brow that conveyed greater upset. It reminded her of the moment she had first laid eyes on him. He had given her a very strange look all those years ago, as if to communicate that he was afraid of something. She had often wondered since if he had known something of his future that she did not, or if he had been mirroring her own expression of fear. But he had been a new-born, and

  she was not able to embrace him now. Blazed chains!

  She dropped her head to the floor to see if she could gain any sort of traction against the bonds about her legs to remove her gag. It did not seem to be having much effect. Worse, the water level had risen by three inches. She unfurled herself and watched
her son instead.

  He was faring much better; already his gag was loosened, and he had his hands before him. It took only moments for him to lift them to his face and chew open the ties that bound his wrists. “Are you alright?” he said as

  soon as his mouth was free. He tore at his ankles with rabid hands. “Did he hurt you?” As soon as his feet could move, he ran to her to untie her gag.

  “I’m alright, Kal. You need to get out of here now.”

  “Did you see what he did? He was there, and then he just went. Stepped into nothingness!”

  She did not like to think what that meant about his new set of abilities. Not at all. “Then he can return just as quickly. This argument is between your father and I. You have to leave and find help. Now.” She said the word in her firmest mother’s voice.

  “He is very, very dangerous. We need Tallyn Hunter. And Silar. Find them, and tell them he has had Kusuru training.”

  Her son shook his head. “I cannot just leave you here.”

  “Kal! For once just listen to your bloody mother! He and I can die, but you won’t get a second chance. Now, go!”

  His face was desperate, bitter. But he turned and sprinted off through the water as she had instructed. She dearly hoped that he would remain safe. She did not like the implications of this turn of events, since it meant

  that one of the assassins had betrayed her again. Someone wanted to make the foretellings come true, and had clearly gone to considerable lengths to ensure that it did. But who would do this? Dorlunh had claimed he had been mistaken in killing Morghiad. He had promised to help her. Surely he had not meant to accelerate the end? He was not a man to go against his word. Mirel was locked away, and Artemi trusted The Hunter with her life. Vestuna? Romarr? No, they were both good people who had devoted a year of their lives to helping her with Morghiad’s sanity. And Khasha? Sometimes he

  could be so wrapped up amongst his dreams that he became cold, but surely he was not that cold.

  The more she thought about it, the less any of it made sense. Each of them had been disgusted at the training they had been forced to undergo once they were finally able to understand its significance. Becoming a Kusuru Assassin had been a traumatic experience for each of them, especially Mirel. Why would any of them wish to force a young Morghiad to endure such treatment? And who else would have the knowledge to squeeze multiplelifetime’s-worth of training into just

  nineteen years? It had taken centuries of experimentation upon them before The Daisain produced his perfect warrio... The Daisain. But he was dead. Mirel killed him. He had never been vanha-sielu, had he?

  Felis Hasarde. The name made Artemi nauseous. A headache settled in her skull. The image of the metal rod that Silar had found flashed into her mind. The fire that binds us is the flame that frees us. The Daisain had used those metal bars for discipline, and for instilling his ideas into her mind. What had he done in there? How was he still in her head after four

  thousand years?! She felt a sudden rush of cold.

  The water had risen considerably during her deep thoughts, and she now had no option but to stand upon her bound feet in order to escape its rising level. Was Morghiad coming back for her? Was anyone? She glanced behind herself at the metal chains. They were solid, heavy and black things that would certainly not float. But that was not the end of the world. She would be able to hold her breath for the duration of the cistern’s flood period. But how long could anyone who tried to rescue her hold

  their breath? Who could say?

  The noise of splashing came to her ears, though its source was not the castle-end of the cistern. Someone was headed her way, and had entered from the outskirts of the city. But the sound did not fill her with hope.

  My father will collect you from here...

  Four millennia had passed... The Daisain? Impossible! But he had been a very unique man – barely a man, really. Was he even capable of siring a son? The sounds of wading were drawing closer, and Artemi did not have much time to prepare. Her

  chains would act as a make-shift weapon against a poor fighter, but she had the feeling that she was not about to face such favourable odds. And then the man himself stepped before her.

  In an uncontrollable series of movements, she dropped to her knees and bowed before him as deeply as she could. It was necessary to place her head beneath the water line in order to properly show reverence, but anything less would have been unacceptable. Artemi waited for him to relieve her from her pose of submission, and it was a long wait.

  When his fingers reached down

  to raise her chin, she felt that same, peculiar combination of powers that she had long forgotten. And the reason for that odd combination became clear when one examined his face. It was too smooth and stubble-free to be that of a man, and his lips were too rounded and plump. His eyebrows were light rather than heavy, while his shoulders were narrow rather than broad. Though The Daisain had always identified himself as male, Artemi and the others knew that his physical presence was something in between the two sexes. Artemi had met others like him before, but they had lacked the ability to simultaneously

  wield and quench, and had been far better company besides.

  “Gharin ja fin’amarin!” she whispered. I am not worthy.

  He tilted his head so that one strip of tan hair brushed at his collar and then smiled with a row of golden teeth. “It is reassuring that you recall some of your training, Fireblade.” Again, his voice was not quite masculine, and not quite feminine. He drew an ice-hot finger down one side of her face. “Once my favourite pupil. And who could not believe in that inferno of hair that buds from your head as if you were the fires

  themselves made human?”

  She shivered. She had disappointed him; she could hear it in his voice. And his disappointment was never unwarranted and never went unpunished. Her mind began to fill with panic.

  “Do you remember your oath, Fireblade? Do you recall what Ice-Kill drove you to do, what she was trying to reinforce?”

  “No lover. No family,” she whimpered.

  The Daisain nodded slowly. “That is correct. And she policed that rule very well for some time, did she

  not? You were always too quick to love and too selfish to give it up, little Artemi. That was your weakness.”

  She heard a small whine escape from her throat. All of her strength had dissipated. “But... Romarr...”

  “You know he is not the same. He loves all women and most men. His is not a selfish love. He would not put his desires before his duty, Artemi. It is a shame our little school had to end before training was complete, but then... you children were becoming too close. Competitors are not meant to care for each other, after all.”

  He had sent Mirel mad, then? It

  had been his plan all along? But she had killed all of them, even him!

  The Daisain released his hold on her, and stepped back once. “I know your thoughts, Fireblade. And yes, I misjudged her response when she regained her memories. Madness is, after all, a very hard state of mind to predict. Now, where is this boy and my son?”

  Artemi was too afraid to answer him. Her feet quivered in her waterfilled boots and her heart turned cold with dread at what he might do to them. She did love them too much, and that would be her unavoidable failure

  before her master. Blazes, but she had been selfish!

  His voice was calm, soft, hypnotic. “Come now, child. Where have they gone? It is very important that one kills the other, do you understand? The whole world depends upon it. If we have no disaster, then we have no High Sentinel. There must be a guardian, Artemi.”

  She shook her head, tears now streaming down her face. Not her beautiful son! And not at Morghiad’s hand! The price was too high for her to bear. “Please...” She dropped to her knees again, so that she was chest-deep in water. “Punish me for my failure, but not them. They are innocent.”

  The Daisain reached forward and grabbed a handful of her hair. “Weak! Get over th
is weakness and give me what I need!”

  Artemi tried very, very hard to explain what had gone on between the two men, but she could not say it. Her mind had the words ready to describe their respective locations, but her mouth would not form the sounds. It was as if that dark creature had returned again, and was committed to making each of her intentions entirely remote from the body she wished to

  control. “I cannot.” It came out as a sob.

  A long sigh was emitted by her master, and a look of sheer disappointment owned his features. “I had feared as much. You are lost to us. Bow down, Fireblade.”

  She obeyed immediately, and thrust her head beneath the water once more.

  “When you remember, you will hear of their fate, and then the end will come.”

  She soon felt the cold steel of his blade touch the back of her neck. It left for an instant, and then swept down

  through her throat. It was ice through her bones. Artemi fully expected to die then, but things did not quite progress as they ought to have progressed.