Night of Flame (Steel and Fire Book 5)

by Jordan Rivet

  The Fire and Watermight whirled in a violent tornado of white-and-gold light. At its center, Dara stood with her hand on her dragon’s neck, forcing the power to dance around her. Vaguely, she was aware the soldiers outside her ring of power had fallen to their knees. And still the magic spun, roaring louder than a hundred dragons, flashing brighter than a thousand lightning bolts.

  Suddenly, she felt a new sensation. A warning reached her through the thrum of power, born on the magic that had become as corporeal as her hands. She felt a strange presence outside her tornado of power, a new danger beyond the assembled Vertigonian army. Someone was coming.

  Dara could barely feel her body anymore, but she needed to see this new threat. She pulled herself onto Surri’s back, and they launched into the air together, leaving her father and the fallen Fireworkers behind. As Dara and the dragon rose into the air, the cyclone of force moved with them. The mass of Watermight and Fire felt like a living thing. For the first time, Dara understood why Vine sometimes referred to the Air as a thing with its own motives, its own agency. She felt as if she were directing an ancient creature. She hadn’t tamed the power. Far from it. She could lose her grip any second, and the power would rip loose and destroy them all. But for now, it was hers to Wield.

  They rose higher, and she saw the threat that had stirred her senses in the distance: an army on horseback. The strangers were galloping across the plains, preparing to cut down the Vertigonian infantry while they were preoccupied with Dara and the dragons.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, Dara pulled the cyclone of power upward, forcing it above the heads of the Vertigonian soldiers. It massed into a storm of Fire and silver-white smoke, spinning faster and faster as it rose into the air. Before Dara could think better of it, she urged Surri to dive directly into the wild storm of power. Surri understood the instructions—and she liked them. They ripped into the maelstrom together.

  It was pure fury. Dara luxuriated in the feeling of the power on her skin, more intimate than a lover, more deadly than a storm at sea, more intoxicating than the purest flame. She was no longer sure whether her thoughts belonged to Surri or the power or her. They rode together, dragon and wielder, and they ruled the storm.

  Dara was invincible. She could cease to exist apart from the storm and still live forever.

  But she had a job to do. That mysterious army was charging toward the Vertigonians, getting closer. Her countrymen were about to be caught unaware. Their precious Fireworkers had been struck down. The soldiers were vulnerable without the magic wielders who had led them out to conquer. Dara wasn’t going to let them fall. She was going to show her father who really had the right to rule the continent.

  Surri responded to Dara’s thoughts without waiting for her to articulate them. Her great black wings folded toward her sides, and she sped toward the advancing army.

  The attacking host didn’t move in a militant formation. They were a nebulous mass, horses and riders and weapons melding into a single jagged-edged horde. Colorful scarves flew behind them, banners in a hundred different hues. They had no uniforms, no clear leader. What they did have was pure desperation. Trurens and Far Plainsfolk rode together, unified against the Vertigonian invaders. Their land had been trampled, destroyed. They were making a last rush, a final stand against the army that had ruined their homeland. Against Dara’s people. Soolens who had survived the battle at the Stronghold rode among them too. The dark-eyed former conquerors rode for vengeance. They rode to stop the Fireworkers from reaching the borders they’d left vulnerable, even if they died trying.

  They didn’t stand a shadow of a chance. Dara directed her incredible whirl of power toward them, manifesting as a wave of force once more. The first riders slammed into it. A great cry rose from the army as they crashed upon the seawall of Dara’s power. She barely registered the shocked faces of the men and horses as they hurled themselves into the diamond surface of the combined magical substances.

  These motley soldiers thought they could drive out the Vertigonians with a single desperate charge, did they? The Soolens had thought they could conquer with Watermight. The Fireworkers had thought they could conquer with Fire and establish their dominance over the Lands Below. But Dara was master of both. Dara was the storm and the fury and the Fire and the Watermight and even the Air. She would show them the folly of standing against her.

  Dara’s tornado of power rippled around the army of hastily allied Plainsfolk, Soolens, and Trurens. It pressed down on them, mocked them for their confidence. Their screams were nothing more than blasts of wind in her ears. The lives were nothing more than tiny flames, to be snuffed and ignited as she willed. She didn’t want to kill these men, but she knew it would be as easy as breathing if she did.

  Instead, she pushed them back, gathering them like spilled mijen tiles into a tidy pile a safe distance from the Vertigonian force. Her power churned around them. She sensed a tremor of pressure, as if some of the Far Plainsfolk were trying to fight her with the Air, but it was far too late for that. She unleashed spikes of Fire to contain them in a glowing white-hot cage, turning the would-be battlefield into a prison camp in a matter of seconds.

  When the mysterious attackers were contained in their fiery cage, she sent the remaining power back to engulf the men of Vertigon once more. A tornado whipped along their outer ranks, stopping any who tried to flee. She spared the soldiers’ lives, though. Her people had no idea they had chosen the wrong Ruminor to follow. She danced the power around them, warning them to be wary, demanding that they admire the Wielder who had chosen to save them.

  Dara and Surri soared around the two hosts, at one with the storm, making sure not a single soldier could escape. The power seethed in Dara’s body, screaming of her invincibility, making promises of the dominance to come. The magic wanted to stay with her, to make her great, to burn and freeze the lands around her, to demonstrate once more that no one would ever be as victorious as she.

  ENOUGH.

  The word from the dragon was so loud in Dara’s ears that she wasn’t sure she hadn’t said it herself. But she felt the truth of it at once. Her work here was done. She had to stop while it was still possible.

  They streaked back to the High Road where the Fireworkers lay still and the soldiers crouched in a trembling ring. Surri hit the ground with a teeth-cracking thud. Dara tumbled off her back, knees threatening to collapse, and directed the last of her power downward. The ground shuddered ominously, but there was nowhere else for it to go, and Dara couldn’t hold it any longer. She pushed all the power she had left deep into the earth.

  There was a powerful snap, and the ground split beneath her. Cracks spread away from her, to the east and the west. The fissure grew, eating through the rocks in a jagged line, burning up the grass and leaving frost in its wake. It split directly through the High Road, stopping mere feet short of the nearest soldiers—who had moved considerably farther away from her.

  And then it was over.

  As the last of the magic left Dara’s body, the world fell quiet.

  She felt nothing. No sensation, no emotion. After the furious torrent, it was as if a deafening silence had descended over her body and soul. It only lasted for a moment, but in that sudden stillness, Dara knew what true power felt like.

  She stood, resting a shaky hand on Surri’s neck. Now that the power was gone, she felt as weak as a newborn babe. But it didn’t matter. She had won.

  She surveyed the great fissure she had created across the High Road. Her father was getting to his feet on the other side of it. He moved gingerly, as if he’d fallen from a great height. He must have formed a shield in time to protect himself from the worst of her attack. The rest of the Fireworkers weren’t as lucky. She knew she had knocked them down, but now that the tempest had calmed, she could see that every single one of them was dead.

  Tears stood out in Rafe’s eyes. Dara knew at once they were not tears of pain.

  “Magnificent,” he said softly. “My daughte
r. Do you even know what you have done?”

  “I have an idea.” Now that she was no longer holding onto so much Fire and Watermight, she didn’t feel that furious invincibility, the sense that she deserved to rule the world. Had she really believed all that just a few seconds ago? She’d felt hints of this before, whispers of the enticements of the power. It had called to her, attempted to seduce her. But that had been like a tap on the shoulder compared to a punch in the face.

  “With power like that, Dara,” Rafe whispered, almost as if speaking to himself, “imagine what we could accomplish.”

  “I told you my demands,” Dara said. “Will you yield to the justice of the Amintelles?”

  “The Amintelles?” Rafe chuckled. “With power like that, I do not believe you would bow to them even for a year. Come, daughter, you must see that no one can stand in your way.”

  “I—”

  “You are the power in this land,” Rafe said, “the only one that matters. Will you really bend your knees after demonstrating what you can do? Look at these men, Dara. Look at them.”

  Dara looked around. The Vertigonian soldiers were staring at her with admiration, with reverence. They were riveted to her in a way she had only dreamed about as a young duelist trying to make a name for herself. They moved when she moved, breathed when she breathed, as if afraid of making a single gesture that would displease her.

  “Every one of them will follow you without hesitation. That is what true power can do.”

  He was right. The Vertigonian army was hers to command if she wanted it.

  Dara felt it now, the thing her father felt, the desire to bend nations and the forces of nature to her will. The allure was stronger than ever before.

  Previously when she’d combined the powers, she held a lot of Watermight and mere flickers of Fire. But this time her father had thrown tremendous quantities of Fire. Added to Surri’s vast store of Watermight, Dara had just deployed more power than any Wielder alive could imagine. And she had liked it. Firelord, how she had liked it. Vine had once asked her if using powers no one had touched before was a door she was willing to open. She’d been unsure at the time, but now she actually knew how it felt.

  She stared at her father across the rent in the earth, seeing the admiration in his eyes, the mix of pride and envy. He was definitely envious. He had always wanted more power. No one had truly challenged him before, but Dara had laid him low with a single blow.

  Dara and her father watched each other warily, neither one holding onto any magic now, both aware of what the other could and couldn’t do. Rafe raised an eyebrow, as if waiting for her response. Her command.

  Was he yielding to her? Would he do her bidding if she took up the mantle of her power? Dara wondered if this was the way to neutralize him she had been trying to achieve all along, taking command herself. But where did that leave Siv, his family’s throne, and his desire for justice for his father’s murder? Could she truly steal that away from him?

  Dara continued to gaze at her father as she contemplated these questions. He would have no choice but to do what she said—at least for now. But what instructions would she give?

  Before she could act or speak, a message stirred in the Air. Dara gasped as it hit her. It was a frantic plea, sent over hundreds of miles, forced on a current of Air across all the burned lands between here and the mountain. It was a message from Vertigon itself, a message that would change everything.

  Dara shook under the force of the communication, unable to hear anything for the sheer howling pressure of the words. When it was over, she opened her eyes to find her father watching her.

  “It’s Vertigon,” Dara spluttered. “The mountain has been attacked by a host of true dragons. They are roosting on King’s Peak and laying waste to our lands.”

  The soldiers around them looked confused, anxious, fearful. But Rafe only bowed his head.

  “So it has happened.”

  “You knew about this?” Dara was still trying to process the news she had been sent, trying to understand the magnitude of this threat. Her home, the place she and Siv had been trying to win back, was under siege by monsters of legend. Even though she had been traveling through the wilderness on the back of one of these very creatures, they took on monstrous proportions when she thought of harm coming to Vertigon.

  “I knew it was a danger,” Rafe said. “But it doesn’t matter. We hold these lands now. We can spread the Ruminor dominion across the Lands Below. Leave the mountain to the creatures.”

  “We can’t abandon Vertigon,” Dara said. “People are in danger. It’s our home.”

  Rafe shook his head. “We cannot stand against true dragons.”

  Dara met his eyes, and suddenly, her thoughts were quiet once more. Focused.

  “Maybe you can’t.”

  She turned to the soldiers gathered around them. “I am taking control of this army.” Her voice rang loud over the assembly, rippling like thunder. “We must return to Vertigon. This man has led you astray, but it’s time to march back to defend our home. A terrible threat has come to Vertigon, and we must answer it. We can’t delay. From now on, you answer to my orders.”

  A moment of shocked silence. Then the men cheered. They shouted until they were hoarse, swearing to follow Dara wherever she led. There was no time to wait for Siv to join them. No time to worry about what it meant that Dara was about to march away at the head of her father’s army. Vertigon needed her.

  As she crossed the fissure she had created to marshal the soldiers, her father fell in at her side. She glanced up at him, and he gave her a solemn nod. They turned to look to the north. It was time to return home. Together.

  30.

  The March

  SIV looked down at the Lower Oakwind, the very same river he had plunged into with Dara when he fled Vertigon in the depths of winter. He was still over a hundred miles from the Fissure. At this distance from the mountains, the river became wide and slow. The water was probably warmer here too. To his right, it disappeared around a bend and continued its steady roll toward the Ammlen Ocean, splitting the northern tip of Cindral Forest. The locals called it the Silverwind.

  Siv hadn’t expected to see this corner of the continent when he left Vertigon that cold winter morning. He certainly hadn’t imagined he’d end up at the head of a foreign army. Yet here he was, surrounded by men and horses, swords sharpened, quivers filled. And he was going home.

  Beneath the ridge where he stood, his allies worked to prepare the fleet of boats that would carry them upriver to the mountain. They had made camp where the river met the forest after a long march through Cindral territory. Voices competed with the babble of the river, punctuated by birdsong. A warm wind blew down from the northern plains of Trure and filtered through the Cindral branches. It carried hints of smoke—and hopefully news. It had been far too long since they last had news.

  When Vine brought word of the true dragon invasion in Vertigon, Siv had called together all the leaders of the forces gathered around Fort Brach: Crown Prince Chadrech and Lord Latch Brach of Soole, Gidon, Belna, and Berg of Cindral Forest, Lady Vine Silltine and the two Rollendar brothers of Vertigon, and Captain Lian of Pendark. They had been enemies at times, and their peace was fragile still, but Siv had no choice but to ask for their help.

  They gathered in an audience chamber in the fort. Latch had assumed the lordship of his father’s lands, and he offered his hospitality to those who helped him rescue his family. Siv wasn’t surprised to find that the chamber was decorated with paintings of the heroes of legend and an expensive weapons collection. He also spotted a glass case with an assortment of rare books, but he had no time to examine those.

  Everyone had brought a few of their own guards to watch over the uneasy allies from the shadows of the audience chamber. The leaders sat in polished wooden chairs—Cindral made, of course—and Vine told them what she had learned through the Air. Shocked silence reverberated through the room when she told them about the true dra
gons. Only the Cindral Folk didn’t seem entirely surprised. Their own dragons had been growing restless. They already feared something worse was coming.

  When Vine finished her report, Siv stood to address the assembly.

  “My kingdom is under attack,” he said. “Now that peace has been restored here, I must return to Vertigon.”

  “We wish you the best in your endeavors,” Prince Chadrech said briskly. He stood to go. Chairs squeaked as the others shifted nervously.

  “Wait,” Siv said. “I gathered you together to ask for your help. We can’t leave Vertigon to burn.”

  Prince Chadrech’s lips twisted. “It’s not our battle.”

  “It’s everyone’s battle,” Siv said. “I helped you forge a new alliance with the Brachs. I convinced Khrillin to leave without further bloodshed. People said those weren’t my battles, but peace is better for all our lands. This new threat is no different. Help me stop the true dragons before they come here too.”

  “How do you expect to do that?” Chadrech asked.

  “I’ll figure it out along the way,” Siv said. “I’ll go alone if I have to, but it would be easier if I had help.” He met the prince’s gaze steadily. “Ideally, Waterworker help.”

  Chadrech narrowed his eyes. “You think Watermight fighters—not that I’m saying I have any—can defeat the true dragons?”

  “I hope so.” Dara would have to be there too, but now wasn’t the time to mention her. Siv looked over at the Cindral Folk representatives. “Which means I’d need to borrow a few Cindral dragons to transport the Watermight to Vertigon.”

  “We have encountered nothing but betrayal from agreements such as this.” Gidon shot a pointed look at Latch.

  The young Soolen lord didn’t unleash his usual scowl. Instead, he stood, straightening his fine vest. “Your people were wronged by mine, Gidon. I acknowledge this and wish to make amends. My father paid the price for not following his own moral code, but the lessons he taught me were not in vain.”