Gods of the Flame Sea

by Jean Johnson

  Satisfied, he turned his attention to the hares, busy sniffing at and nibbling on whatever blades of grass they could reach through the bars of their wooden cages. Untying the lashings holding the cage doors shut merely required a wave of his left hand, another spell he had practiced over and over.

  The latches slithered free, startling the hares inside. They stared warily, then hesitated, noses twitching at the opening to each cage. They didn’t like the wide open spaces, the unfamiliar location.

  Udrin waited patiently for them to come out. And waited. And waited. Patience flipped into impatience, impatience into anger. Teeth bared in disgust, he hooked tendrils of anima into each of the four cages and yanked them up on end. Dumped their startled occupants onto the grassy ground with thumps and squeals of pain and outrage. A couple of them even rolled heels over ears, comically tumbling free of the rest like little spinning wheels of gray and brown fur.

  Just that quickly, his rage ended in a laugh of amusement. Tossing the cages far away with a flick of his hand, letting the cheaply made things shatter against one of the walls of the little pocket canyon, Udrin contemplated the startled prey with a merry mood. They righted themselves while he watched, some freezing and twitching only their ears and noses. Others scampered away, trying to put more space between themselves and the rest. Two of them actually hopped out onto the sands. The first one froze near the grassline, paws on the pale-striped gray. The other edged cautiously forward a few more feet before rearing up on its hind legs to sniff at the upper wind.

  Sand rippled nearby. The foremost hare froze, all but for that rapidly wriggling nose. The grains shifted. Watching warily, the rabbit slowly, cautiously lowered its forepaws back to the sand—which exploded in a lunging beige mass. The hare whirled, leaped, and ran. It got four yards, scuttling beige beastie hot on its hind legs, before it squeaked sharply and stumbled, then dropped. The others either froze or bolted, the latter including the one at the edge of sand and grass.

  The beastie quickly dug itself under its fallen but still-breathing prey. Sand rippled around the hare’s body for about a moment. Then that body rocked. The mouth opened, and a very faint, high-pitched sound escaped, before the jaw fell slack.

  Amused, Udrin grinned. New little baby beasties would be born soon. On the trip where he had presented the cavy, he had implanted a compulsion to lay eggs in any creature at least two to three times bigger than . . .

  Hmm. He really needed a name for his beasties, now that they were more or less viable. What they were was simple enough: sand-dwelling insectish nightmares that he, Udrin the Powerful, had deliberately brought to life. As far as names went, however, that was a bit too long and unwieldy, and the acronyms in both Frijsh and Faelon made no intelligible sense. But there was a term for something horrible and powerful and unwanted that came up out of nightmares.

  The wiser of the humans called the Efrijt demons, for they were both powerful and demandingly cruel as taskmasters. Stern, strict, and ready to punish anyone for any infractions. Udrin had learned early on to hide any “deviancy” from what his Efrijt father’s kin wanted him to do or say or be. If they caught him cutting flies, he’d be flogged, for example.

  The Fae were no less particular, but they punished more often through horrible lectures rather than through physical pain. Both races applied plenty of other punishments through social pressure to conform, too. The humans living with his mother’s kin didn’t see their rules and ways as equally strict and cruel, but Udrin did. Udrin saw many things with clarity, even without the help of the vermillion dusting his snack.

  He certainly saw the fact that his beautiful beasties were demonic in nature. Diabolically dangerous. Beautifully cruel . . . yet no crueler than a spider capturing a fly, and spiders had every right to live. That meant his demon-beasties did, too.

  They, however, did not spin webs. Instead, they dwelt in the sand, so that made them . . . sand-dwelling demons. Not a bad name, but still a little awkward.

  Better yet, just plain sand-demons. That was what they would be. As he watched with paternalistic pride—a mix between Fae fondness and the stern, demanding arrogance his father’s kin displayed—he saw more signs than of just one sand-demon at work. The others approached, rising up out the sand in ripples. For a moment, they snapped their claws and swung their barbed, toxin-filled tails at each other.

  He almost interfered, but it was mostly just a dominancy display. Their venom could not hurt their own kind, did not paralyze their flesh. And they had no reason to cannibalize one another when there was so much meat available. With a minute or so, the sextet sorted themselves out at short, ignorable distances, and nipped into the rabbit’s limbs with their fangs and their claws, eager for fresh meat.

  Perhaps this one hare wouldn’t last long enough to breed new sand-demons, Udrin thought. They would consume it slowly over the next few days, eventually causing death from blood loss and shock. But oh well, there were plenty of others. Plus, the hares’ droppings would draw dung beetles to investigate, which being small and nigh thoughtless, would stumble out onto the sand and feed his demon-beasties.

  Udrin watched his little universe within the pocket canyon with a benevolent yet clinical interest. He had caught about eight bucks and nearly two dozen does across a wide range of terrain, from the grassy plains of the lower wadijt to the narrow, tree-fringed, mountain-high ravines. All with magic, of course, and the animals lured into the trap-wards by big piles of tasty grain. No vermillion, of course; hares were as fragile as humans when it came to mercury-laden dust. With plenty of anima-fed grass and water, with tasty bushes dotted around the fringes and a ward against major predators settled across the mouth of the canyon, the hares should fill this little pocket valley eagerly enough.

  Hopefully, by the time he returned in two months or so, he’d have more than a dozen of his pets surviving and thriving. They had plenty of sand, and hopefully plenty of food. Their bellies needed meat every so often, but they could eat carrion, which meant the carcasses of their kills should last a while. But . . . hares bred seasonally. Some of the does might be pregnant by now, but most would have to wait a year.

  That would not do. Since he had reshaped the local anima to start flowing into the grass, ensuring lush tasty growth, he shaped and cast out one more bit of magic, settling it over the hares. A fertility spell. Ridiculously easy for a Fae, really. In fact, they hadn’t even realized—not even Taje Jintaya-ul herself!—that the anima made them more fertile.

  Had he been more fully Fae to begin with, Udrin might’ve needed another five, six years of growth before he felt any curiosity about such things, let alone urges, but he was nineteen now, and had been feeling—and thus experimenting—with lust for the last two years. And in reshaping himself to be a little more Fae inside? Oh, he was very aware of how the anima reshaped fertility. So this spell, too, came out remarkably easily.

  Mostly, he used the opposite version to prevent himself from accidentally impregnating anyone. No Efrijt wanted to dally with him, nor the Fae, but Udrin had found a few humans to sleep with. It was rather like rutting with a dumb beast in some ways, since they were clearly inferior. His father’s kin were repulsed by how often the Fae tumbled into the arms of some local human or other, begetting yet another weakened variant of half-breed that could barely tap into a tenth more of the power a typical full-blooded human could access.

  The Efrijt had even less access to the local magics, hence the importance of Udrin’s existence. If Udrin ever had children of his own, and if they proved to retain his own strong affinities for the local anima, his father’s kin would try to enslave them to labor for Efrijt interests. No. Udrin’s plans would not stoop so low as to breed a new half-breed—quarter-breed?—race. Hares, yes, ensuring their heightened fertility kept up with the needs of his new pets. He would not have any copies of himself made, any rivals for his ambitions.

  After a while, bright light angle
d down into his eyes, forcing Udrin to squint and sway away from the sun peeking over the canyon walls.

  That sun had risen too high for him to linger and watch any longer. He certainly didn’t have time to make the next interesting change he had in mind, the ability to heal any injury caused by any blade. A crushing blow, yes, but not a standard sword, dagger, or whatever. These were going to be his nightmares, thank you very much, and he would not allow any Fae, Efrijt, or puny human to end their lives without his permission.

  For now, he had to keep his visits short, to keep the location of his visits a secret. He wasn’t all-powerful yet, after all. Yet. With this success, with the ability to shape flesh itself into a viable life-form capable of hunting, eating, breeding, and begetting a second viable generation, soon he would be able to purge himself of his own fleshly impurities and merge fully with the anima.

  Soon, he would be not just Udrin, the young half-breed son of the Fae and the Efrijt, the young man who would decide which half of his inheritance got to manage the resources of this particular world. He would be Taje Udrin-taje-ul, supplanting Jintaya as the one with all the power, and even supplanting Ban-taje, Death himself.

  He giggled to himself, rather liking that thought. Udrin picked up his madouk staff, rose, and unhooked the golden egg-shaped slip-disc from the back of his belt. His leg spasmed, twitching and threatening to send him stumbling. Udrin swayed, then turned it into his shuffling little dance, humming quietly to himself while his limbs jerked, partly from the quicksilver and partly from his will.

  The hares froze and sniffed the air, unsure if his noisemaking and gyrating meant danger to them or not. His sand-demon pets reburied themselves at the end of their partial meal, ignoring their creator. Insects chirped in the bushes, and a bird soared across the far end of the little valley in a swoop and flutter of its brown wings.

  With his shadow stretching across both grass and striated sand, dominating the landscape with his contorted little dance, Udrin sang his personal little anthem quietly to himself.

  “Leader Udrin, Leader-of-All! God of the Flame Sea, Master-of-All . . . !”

  And giggled again.

  Chapter Two

  Ijesh

  Flame Sea Territory, ten days later

  Blood splattered across the stage of the cavernous, cliff-built theater, whipped by the crimson-stained blades that gleamed golden in the light coming from the oil-filled braziers. Ban gritted his teeth against the pain, surging forward to try to catch his attacker on the point of his blade. He missed, but the movement opened his wounds.

  Using common hardened iron instead of the light, strong, rare golden of faeshiin, Fae-metal, the youth wielding those wounding weapons faltered. Seeing the deep cuts he had caused on the tall warrior fighting him, Nadj blanched. Cuts that buckled his opponent’s legs, having severed his quadriceps rather deeply.

  “Don’t falter, Nadj!” Seda ordered, the female of his three trainers. She stamped the butt of her staff against the stone flooring. “He’s still a danger to you!”

  Ban certainly strove to be. Ignoring the pain, the kneeling, bleeding, tattooed male lashed out with his long arms, slashing at the teen’s leather-covered legs. Yelping, Nadj managed to simultaneously skip back and deflect the blow with a clang from the clashing blades. The tip of Ban-taje’s sword did scrape along his leathers, leaving behind a paler scratch on the smoke-tanned material. It would not, however, have badly injured the youth if he hadn’t diverted the blow; Ban was delivering most of his blows with the flat of his blade, not the edge.

  However, he was relentless in striking hard, and swung again.

  “Would—you—stop?” Nadj hollered, bashing his blade with each word. “. . . Flames take you! Surrender!”

  Hissing ferally through a disturbing, toothy grin, the tattooed, black-haired man shuffled forward on his knees, leaving smears of blood from his open wounds. He ignored the pain of them as thoroughly as Nadj ignored the pain of his scratches and bruises, lunging with quick cuts.

  “He’s not going to stop, Nadj,” Bargo, the youngest of the three trainers, called out.

  Like Seda, he stood off to the side, out of immediate danger of the two combatants. So did the other seven of their pupils. Technically, the students of Krue-taje’s advanced combat class sat on benches, each of them having gone through a similar hard fight. No longer winded but still a bit sweat-soaked, they recovered from their bouts with Ban.

  The unstoppable outworlder shuffled forward awkwardly but swiftly on his knees, chasing down the last of the eight young warriors despite his terrible wounds.

  Tears streaking his cheeks, Nadj tried to get out of the way, and found himself nearly skewered again. Finally, the youth accepted that the man who could not die, would not die. Teeth bared, he stabbed with the dagger in his off hand, puncturing his foe’s throat. He ripped the blade out again a split second later, all while parrying with the short sword in his main hand as Ban swung his own dagger inward, to try to counterstab him in the side.

  More blood gushed out in a white-hot line of terrible pain. This time, the kneeling, blood-splattered male jerked, choked on a burble of liquid red, and keeled over, thudding into a puddle of his own blood. Sobbing, Nadj dropped the dagger from his left hand, though his right still clung to his sword.

  Bargo shifted his hand to his own short iron sword, watching the twitching death of their volunteer. If Ban’s death took too long, if the student refused to give a suitable death-blow, it would be a kindness for one of the instructors to step in and finish the job—a kindness for Ban, and a mark against the squeamish pupil.

  Older and wiser, Seda held up her hand, cautioning him to wait. Just a dozen heartbeats passed while Ban bled out in spurts, consciousness fading. Then he twitched one last time. His own blades fell from his grip, finally surrendering the weapons under the force of his own death.

  The other seven pupils eyed the fallen male with worried looks. Some of them moved their lips, silently counting heartbeats. Half a dozen beats after he died from the shock of massive blood loss . . . the body and the blood smeared over the floor, all of it flared. Enough of it had been spread around that everyone winced away from the rather bright flash.

  An instant later, the dead man reappeared on his feet, alive and whole, clean and clad in the same sandals, leather kilt, and matching black-dyed vest wrapped around his tattooed chest that he had been wearing before he died so gruesomely. His skin, virtually scarless, looked a few shades lighter than before, allowing the colorful tattoos inked under its surface to be more easily seen.

  That lighter skin color did not surprise anyone; they all knew by now that he “reset” to his original condition, to the moment when he had first been cursed immortal. It was only when he lived for several months at a stretch, or even years, that his skin shifted from golden brown to the deep, suntanned brown endemic to most of the people living in the desert lands surrounding their home.

  Without hesitation, the man named Lord Death in the tongue of the Flame Sea Tribe closed the distance between him and the crying teen and gently pulled him into a hug. “I’m fine,” Ban-taje comforted him. “I cannot be permanently killed. You did not actually harm me for long. It’s alright . . .”

  “I can’t . . . I c-can’t do this!” Nadj sobbed, clinging to the tall human. “I thought I c-c-could, but I . . . I j-just can’t!”

  “That’s okay, too,” Ban murmured, holding the shaking seventeen-year-old. He looked over at the seniormost of their trainers. “. . . Well?”

  The figure that sat in a comfortable chair at the far end of the bench of students would have been the oldest being in the auditorium, if Ban had not been there. Far older than Bargo’s twenty-nine years, or Seda’s thirty-five, Krue had seen nearly four hundred years so far, roughly a fifth of a typical Fae life span. For a quarter millennium, he had studied the various combat skills of his kind, striving to perfect hi
s place as a Fae Gh’vin, before being assigned to the pantean of the Flame Sea.

  Because of the uniqueness of this world, the anima-magics of the universe and the effects humans had on the Fae, the need for a contingent of Guardians had been deemed vital. Krue would have been the leader of dozens of specially skilled combatants, and had been sent ahead of the rest in order to assess this realm’s needs, to provide proper protection for the Fae who lived here, and the humans they lived among. That contingent had never arrived . . . which meant Krue-taje had reluctantly decided he needed to instruct the local humans in how to be efficient, effective protectors.

  “. . . Not everyone is suited to be a warrior,” Krue finally stated. Rising, he approached the two combatants. The scales of his golden faeshiin armor scraped and clattered softly, almost musically against each piece when he shifted upright, but once vertical, he moved so smoothly, his armor made no sound. “Not everyone can stomach the necessities of countering violence with violence, or the demands of war.”

  Nadj, pulling free of the Death Lord’s embrace, sniffed and tried to hold himself upright. Tried to look strong despite his trembling. He could not, however, look up enough to meet those ice lemon eyes. He had the light gold eyes and golden curls of someone with partial Fae blood, the brown skin and muscles of his human side, but at that moment, none of the grace that often came with that combination of lineages. Not when he trembled so hard that he shook between sniffing breaths.

  Krue-taje stopped to Nadj’s right, flanking him across from Ban-taje. “Nadj. There is no shame in not being a warrior at heart. This is why we practice upon Ban, with his permission. Killing changes a person. In someone who is good at heart, this is a painful lesson, because it changes the warrior, leaving unpleasant memories in the wake of each fight. Many who think they can take another life often only encounter that choice, and its cost, in the midst of actual peril. Those who freeze or refuse are often cut down by the ones they fight.