The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  The first place that he could think Artemi would want to travel to

  was her father’s old home. That meant taking the northern route out of the city, and so Morghiad charged through the town for it. But, upon reaching the road, he found that she was nowhere to be seen. The road was empty for a good two miles out of the city, and the lack of trees or obstructions meant that there was nowhere she could have hidden. She must have gone elsewhere. He rode around the entire circumference of Hestavos, looking for her horse and a flash of her fire hair, but saw nothing of note. He stopped people at each of the roads he passed, asking if they had seen her go by.

  Again, they reported nothing. He searched the city until the sun had set and the air had grown cold. No one had seen Artemi leaving, though some had seen her arrive that morning. He checked at the inns and taverns, but no woman matching her description had visited them. It was as if she had vanished into nothingness.

  Tyshar snorted as he stamped down Hestavos’ high street for the sixth time that day. He clearly did not approve of being made to trot in circles. The horse had done rather well, considering the effort he had been put to. Morghiad dismounted to give the

  animal a break, and began to lead him back toward the school. Tomorrow he would decide which town to ride to, and hope that his choice was correct. Artemi had to turn up somewhere nearby.

  Something clinked against one of Tyshar’s hooves – probably a stone, but it could have been the loose shoe finally giving up and dropping off. Morghiad knelt down to check the forefeet, and then the hindfeet. Curious. All of the shoes were on tight and no nails had been thrown. No one could mistake any of these for being loose. Why would Mirke have lied to

  him? He stood slowly, feeling the fatigue of the last three days catching up with him. What he would have given to find Artemi in his bed when he returned! Then he could have clambered in next to her, pulled her close and fallen into the most relieved of slumbers. Stupid, foolish woman for leaving him!

  He cursed aloud and pressed on toward Fate’s, his breath misting in the freezing air. Next time he went looking for her, he would make sure he packed a warm coat and gloves, and all sorts of sensible things. There was no sense in spending his last days feeling this cold.

  Morghiad decided to take the quiet route round to the entrance gates, since the noises of the town shutting down for the night were starting to give him a headache. This road took him past the smaller houses and tiny shops that sold old furniture or used clothing. It was not the sort of place he liked to spend time in, but the poverty of it made him feel somewhat closer to his absent wife.

  The road narrowed by ten feet as it drew closer to the school, and the houses began to thin. There were two children messing about in a pile of rubbish ahead of him, no doubt hunting for treasures or food. One of them yelled something to the other, and then he started running toward Morghiad. He was about to move out of the boy’s way when he noticed what was in the child’s hand. It looked very familiar.

  Three steps and an outstretched arm were all that was needed to take the boy off his feet. Morghiad placed him against the horse’s side and took possession of the item. It was a book about wielding weather forms and storms, one of Artemi’s books.

  The boy squirmed. “That’s mine!”

  “No, it isn’t. Show me where

  you found it.”

  He blinked. “Money.”

  “No money. You show me where in that pile this came from, and I’ll not wring your neck.”

  The boy thought about it for a moment, assessing his opponent’s apparent strength. He decided to comply. “Follow me.”

  The other child had gone by the time they walked to the rubbish heap. It was a large and stinking pile, slung against the huge outer wall of Fate’s, and it was rarely collected often enough to reveal the ground beneath.

  Morghiad’s guide hopped onto

  the first two tiers of sacks and began to dig. “Was low down, like – few days old,” he explained as he threw a bag of litter aside. “No one ever goes for the older stuff except me.” At last he found what he was looking for. “I’ll need some help pulling this whole thing out. It’s full of heavy books.”

  Lords did not venture into piles of rubbish, and they certainly did not go rooting through it looking for things that other people had discarded. But this was for Artemi. He would probably walk through the town naked on market day if it meant bringing her back so that he could put things right

  for her. Just what sort of fool had she turned him into? He sighed, released Tyshar’s bridle and clambered onto the pile. “Which one?”

  The boy pointed into the depression he had excavated. At the bottom lay a sack with the stamp of a Sunidaran flour supplier. It was a mark he had seen many times inside the school’s store rooms. Morghiad reached down and hauled out the bag, which appeared to have been packed with a great deal of heavy things. The uppermost book in the refuse was a history of Sunidara that Morghiad had seen many times on Artemi’s desk. It

  was all the confirmation he needed. “You may go now,” he said to his guide, who lost no time in running away.

  He sat there for some time, going through each of the volumes she had deemed unnecessary. Some he remembered seeing her holding, others he recalled being thrown at him. He pulled out a book on explosives and fuse making, and opened it on the first page. There was some scrawled writing on the first page that he could barely make out; his eyes were starting to complain after having to stay open for so long. Morghiad angled the book

  towards the light, and immediately the words became clearer. “To my daughter - Until fortune gives you fire, make your own. Love, Dad.”

  Why would she have thrown this away? She surely could not have had many more things from her father. Morghiad decided to keep the book for her. She would regret throwing it away when she realised what she had done. He continued to search through her small library, and the bottom of the bag was soon revealed. All of the books lay about him in a messy scattering, but her room had held more than just paper. There was still her clothing to

  account for. He turned back to the hole amongst the rubbish, and peered into the darkness for a glimpse of more flour sacks. Nothing was obvious, which meant some digging would be required.

  Rolling up his sleeves, he plunged his arms into the rubbish and tried to search for something that felt like canvas. There were some things he touched that he hoped he would never have to look at, and others he hoped would not leave a lingering smell. But his fingers did find another of Fate’s flour sacks, and he caught hold of it eagerly. It took some rummaging to get the other litter out of the way, but soon he was knee-deep in more of Artemi’s things.

  The clothes that she had left behind gave no clue to where she had intended to go. There was a roughly equal mix of lighter and heavier items for both desert days and nights. Strangely, there was no sign of the gowns she had worn at his house, but there was one dress amongst the mix. Morghiad recognised it immediately, and laid it out over the books.

  He was reminded of the rage he had felt when he last saw her wearing it, and he recalled how he had not been able to tear his eyes from the curves it brushed over. Perhaps this particular item could be saved. Perhaps, if he asked nicely enough, she would wear it for him again. He sniffed; it would need a clean first. The last of her possessions clinked and flumped their way out of the sack when he upended it from lack of patience, but one item was different from the rest. It glittered. He stared at it for several minutes, unable to understand why it was among her things. He had been convinced that she had either left it with Edilea, thrown it away or had donated it to some wretch she felt sorry for. But here it was, bright and shining and glowing with a light of its own. Artemi had clung onto it until now, in spite of her show of disgust. He picked the necklace up and turned it over between his fingers. It had cost him a small fortune from one of the only proper shops the city had, but he had thought it a wonderful piece to play in his games with her - until she found
a way of flinging it back at him without doing any flinging.

  Morghiad pocketed the jewellery and collected the other two items that he wished to salvage for her. The rest he buried beneath the piles of other

  people’s refuse, hoping that no more peasant children would be tempted to scavenge her things. Tyshar snorted loudly when he approached, which was most likely in response to the stink. At least it was dark and quiet. If any of the other lordlings had seen Morghiad rifling through rubbish, he would never have been respected again.

  He resumed his journey back to the school’s gates, but was struck by a new thought on the way. According to the scrounging boy, Artemi’s things had been there for days, not hours. That implied she had cleared her room and had decided to leave Fate’s School

  before she had ventured to Hirrah, before she knew that their deaths were so rapidly approaching. Why had she not mentioned it? And why had she bothered returning to the school afterwards?

  His head ached with conflicting thoughts, unfamiliar emotions and far too many questions with no answers. Sleep would be essential if he was to prove himself useful tomorrow. Thankfully the gates were still open when he returned, and in a state of half consciousness, he led Tyshar back to his box. Mirke had evidently gone to bed, for the only person on duty in the

  stable yard was a young cadet, probably given horse duties as a punishment for some misdeed or other. Still in a daze, Morghiad wandered into the tack room without realising he had no tack to put away. He stood there for a moment, thinking about what it was he had meant to do, but his eyes fell upon something unexpected. Cloud’s leather work was still there. To anyone else, the saddle looked identical to every other, but this one had been cut and re-sewn at the girth: a result of one of Morghiad’s more amusing jokes. Artemi may have dispensed with her possessions

  willingly, but to ride bareback when there was time to saddle up...

  Maybe she had returned. He checked the stable boxes again, but there was still no sign of Cloud. What in the fires of Achellon was going on!?

  Morghiad had seen enough. He stumbled back to his bed, which was sadly empty, and fell into a sleep that left him dead to the world.

  Several things occurred to him when he awoke. The first was a realisation that he badly needed a bath. The second was that it was late in the morning, and he had wasted too much time in bed. The third was that Artemi was missing, and he had an increasingly strong suspicion that something was not quite right about it.

  Morghiad found the hot water he needed in the fire room and poured his bath with as much haste as he could muster. Everything: himself, his clothes and his chamber smelled of rotting food and sweat. It was hardly a condition to meet his wife in, if he found her soon. A quick scrub and a change of clothes made him ready to face the world. Once done, he glanced at the objects Artemi had left behind. The book and the dress he could understand her disposing of, if she no longer cared for anything... but the necklace could have been sold in another town. Its value could have bought her everything she

  needed, and more than enough for the poor people she seemed to love so dearly. No... even the books she would have donated rather than thrown away. That was how soft and sentimental she was.

  He sat back on his bed and rubbed his chin. A horse without a saddle, possessions disposed of without thought and no goodbye to her closest friend. Something had happened to her. Morghiad closed his eyes to search for the beauty of the Blaze Energy streams wrought from each wielder in the world. He knew Artemi’s better than any other; he knew its behaviour as it

  weaved about and changed its course through the vacuum, he knew the force with which it flowed and the true potential that it had. It was still there, burning brightly in a corner of his consciousness. If only there was a way to prod it and talk to her through it. But the streams of wielders who were a thousand miles away looked the same as those belonging to women in the same building. His vision gave him no more information than that they existed.

  “Where are you, property? Where are you so that I can save your blasted, peasant backside?”

  Mirke.

  Mirke had been the last man to see her, and yet he had not noticed that Artemi had forgotten her saddle. And he had tried to prevent Morghiad from going after her. It was time to ask a few more questions. Except...

  There was one possibility that had to be ruled out first.

  ...Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. Thirty-four horses in the stables, thirty-five bridles and thirtyfive saddles in the tack room. Artemi had not taken anyone else’s by mistake. If she had ridden out bareback, then she would have done so because she was in a rush, just as he had been the day before.

  The stable master had seated himself in the middle of the yard again, and was busily scraping away at one of the horse’s hooves. “If that animal had been an ordinary one, you would have killed it with your exploits yesterday. Never ride a single horse that hard again... my lord,” he said without looking up.

  “I was concerned about Miss Fevtari.”

  Mirke harrumphed.

  “You told me you saw her leave yesterday.”

  “Hmm? What of it?”

  “Well, did she not say anything to you?”

  “No.” His tone was one of utter disinterest.

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Mirke set his tools down. “What are you up to, lad?”

  “I think something may have happened to her.”

  “She came in here, calm as you like, picked up her tack and rode out. Not a word to me. Now, will you get yourself to your training or whatever it is that you kids do?”

  Another lie. Why would Mirke lie? Morghiad gave the stable master a weak smile, and walked away. Some careful thinking was needed before he began throwing accusations around. He could no longer be sure of anything. Artemi’s horse had definitely made it here. Both he and Ulena had seen it. Now the horse was gone, and Mirke’s description of its departure was utterly unreliable. But other citizens of Hestavos had seen Artemi arrive the previous morning too... and none had seen her leave. He asked the porters, the men who knew everything and saw anything. They had no information for

  All evidence of Artemi had been removed...

  Morghiad continued walking until he was back on the streets of Hestavos again. There was one place he had not looked, or rather, one thing he had not been looking for. He stopped outside the market for livestock, and immediately saw it before him. Tied to one of the hitching posts, and with its price marked in paint along one flank, was Cloud. Burn that woman! Burn her for forcing him to buy the damn animal for her twice! He refrained from grinding his teeth

  together and checked his pockets for loose change.

  All around him were feathers making their descent from caged doves, clawed paws that thrust against bars from barking dogs, flapping chickens whose wings beat the arid air and sheep with empty eyes. Much like the rubbish heaps, it was not a place he liked to frequent.

  “Two sovereigns for the mare,” he began.

  The merchant was well-rounded from his business, and had the most ludicrous moustache that Morghiad had ever seen on a man. He was Sunidaran

  in just about every other aspect of his appearance: sun-darkened and with his long hair bound at the nape of his neck. “She’s worth a great deal more than that, Green Eyes. You ought to know.” He winked.

  “Tell me about the one who sold it to you and I’ll give you three.”

  The merchant raised his eyebrows. “Well... now, the coin must be in my hand before I start pouring out such valuable information.”

  Morghiad pressed a single Sunidaran sovereign into the man’s chubby fingers.

  “Let me see. Ah, yes. Young

  lad. Not yet old enough to grow a beard. Blond, blue-eyed. There was something else...” He looked expectantly at his new dupe.

  There was nothing to do but sigh and hand over another coin.

  “Yes, yes. He was from that school for warriors. One of the kids the
re. He’d lost a knot. There, you have your vital information. I paid a small fortune for that filly. I need to make my money back.”

  Morghiad handed over yet more of his coins, and soon found himself in possession of a horse he already owned. Sold by a cadet. If there was

  one thing he was sure of, he no longer trusted Mirke and his men to look after anything. Within a matter of minutes he had found an inn willing to take Cloud for a small fee. He looked into the horse’s eyes before he left her, hoping for some sort of clue about Artemi. “You must have seen what happened to her. Sometimes I wish creatures like you could talk. It would make my life much easier.”

  Cloud did not respond with so much as a whicker, and if she had, it would probably have been a request for feeding.

  Morghiad’s next duty was to

  find out which cadet had been impudent enough to sell someone else’s horse. He knew of several blondhaired, blue-eyed youths, but that combination was not unusual in Sunidara. There was only one, however, whom he knew was old enough to have dispensed with one of his precious knots. Gironar.