Chased By Fire (Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Roine knelt before the golden box. “How did you open the lid?”

  Amia shrugged. “There is a switch there, as well.”

  “Few have ever learned how to open the box,” he began. “And none have ever realized there was another switch. How did you know?”

  “I felt it,” she said simply.

  Roine shook his head as if clearing it. “Felt it? Or sensed it?”

  “Are they not the same?” she asked.

  “Not to me.”

  Amia smiled. “You see the inside is marked much like the outside?”

  “The outside of the box doesn’t have much meaning, only symbols and spells for shaping,” he said, not elaborating. “That’s why when you shaped the box you were able to detect a trail. The markings on the inside have never been clear.”

  Amia ran her hands across the inner surface of the box and it snapped open, lying flat once more. “Try again.”

  Roine looked at the sides of the box, turning it so that the longest side was first. “Great Mother,” he swore. He looked to Amia and narrowed his eyes. “How did you know?”

  She laughed. “I can read.”

  “This language is long dead!”

  “Not to the Aeta,” she said.

  Roine nodded slowly and stood, holding the opened box carefully in his palms and walked toward the cavern opening. Standing before it, holding the box in his hands, he looked at Amia again. “Then I’ll need your help. Wait until I tell you, then send a shaping into the box.”

  Roine turned his attention upon the now flattened box. From the building pressure, he knew this a powerful shaping. Roine nodded to Amia. Another energy built, this time from Amia.

  And then burst of stale air blew out at them.

  Roine staggered back. Tan grabbed him before he could fall and lowered him to the ground. They let Roine sit while Amia snapped the sides of the small golden box back and closed the lid.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Roine looked at the cave. “The box was more than a compass. It was also the key to the wardings. There was a shaping that could only be triggered by another shaper.” He paused, looking to Amia. “Shapers.”

  Amia didn’t look as spent as Roine, though her eyelids sagged a bit more than usual.

  “How’d you know?” he asked.

  “This writing is still taught to my people. There is the warning Roine mentions,” she said, staring up at the writing overhead, “but there is also instruction interspersed. The warning is only for those who don’t carry the golden key.”

  Roine looked at her again and shook his head. “It’s fortunate you’re with us. I don’t think I could’ve taken down these wards alone.” He shook his head again. “The ancient warriors…”

  Roine slowly stood and walked toward the entrance to the cavern. There he hesitated, taking a deep breath before stepping into the darkness. Nothing happened.

  Roine let out a pent-up breath and motioned for them to follow.

  Amia grabbed Tan’s hand and they followed Roine into the cavern. The path widened, hollowed into the hard stone of the mountain, and the walls, at least where still lit by daylight, were unnaturally smooth.

  “Was this whole cave shaped?” Tan asked.

  “I think so.” He whistled softly. “Great Mother. I can’t imagine the strength required to do this.”

  Soon daylight no longer reached far enough to light their way. He squeezed Amia’s hand harder than he intended. She squeezed back, equally nervous.

  “How will we see our way?”

  “Watch,” Roine said, somewhere in front of them.

  Light bloomed all around them in small orbs attached to the wall. They were spaced regularly, like lanterns, and illuminated the cave as it stretched into the rock.

  Tan walked over to one of the orbs, expecting heat, but there was none, only light. “How’d you know how to light these?”

  Amia stared at the orbs in wonder.

  “There are lamps like this in Ethea. And they’re incredibly valuable. They were created by shapers long ago but their design has been lost. What few remain are owned by the greatest shapers.” Roine smiled. “I saw one as we entered. I hadn’t expected so many.”

  “How are they lit?” Tan asked.

  “Any shaper can light these lamps.”

  “Any?” Amia looked away from the orbs on the wall and turned to Roine.

  He laughed and nodded. “Any.”

  Amia focused on the nearest orb and it went out. She gasped before the light quickly came back on. “Amazing.”

  “We need to keep moving. I’ve no idea the length of this cave. Or where it takes us. But the entrance is no longer warded and I’d like to be away before the lisincend trap us here.”

  They walked quickly, Roine lighting the orbs as they moved through the cave, letting those behind dim after they passed. Roine’s limp was more pronounced again. How much had the shaping to bring down the wardings cost him? In order to survive, they might need Roine to become Theondar.

  The walls began to open and the ceiling overhead crept farther and farther away until no longer visible, lost in the shadows beyond the edge of the glowing lamps. A faint light glowed in the distance, brighter with every step. Soon the spacing of the lamps along the walls became greater and greater until they disappeared altogether.

  Had they walked all the way through the mountain only to emerge on the other side?

  But as they reached the light, he saw that it diffused from high overhead. A huge crack in the ceiling of the cave revealed light from the outside.

  Thick, dark vines seemed to grow out of the stone and covered the walls of the cave. Tan thought at first that he might be seeing carvings along the wall, out of the stone itself, made to look like vines. Huge leaves sprouted from the vines and the occasional fragrant pale white flower grew on them. As they moved deeper into the cave, the walls progressively widened, opening into a huge cavern.

  The vines twisted together, turning into something greater. Small bushes sprouted from the walls, stretching toward the light coming through the split in the rock overhead, reaching tendrils and leaves toward the light. With each step, the vegetation seemed denser, and soon the bushes turned to trees punching up from the rock as they grew toward the light overhead.

  Purple and red fruits hung along the branches of the trees. Tan reached toward one, but Roine stopped him.

  “Remember,” he warned, “this cave, everything you see here, has been shaped to appear like this. These fruits, these trees,” he said, motioning with his free arm, “may appear succulent, but I’d advise caution.”

  The ground itself now had a thin layer of fragrant grass and Tan could swear he heard the rush of wind and the soft burbling of a stream. The air around him was warm and comfortable, like a late spring day, and he felt at peace.

  “How can all of this be shaped?”

  “I keep telling you the ancient shapers were much more skilled than today. Many learned what they knew from the elementals themselves. A very different education than what I had at the university. I sense the underlying shaping and know this has all been artificially generated and is sustained. Great power was spent creating this.”

  Roine led them more carefully, looking from side to side as he moved deeper into the cave. Trees and bushes sprouted from the ground of the cavern as well, growing tall and high, stretching up toward the rock overhead. They blocked the light filtering down as they moved further into the cavern. Tan thought he heard the sound of birds chirping among the trees, but decided that must be imagined.

  Roine turned to Amia. “Which way?”

  She closed her eyes. “It’s hard to tell. Everything feels different here. I think—there.” She pointed left, off their current path.

  Roine allowed Amia to lead and she moved carefully along the soft greenery of the cavern floor. If Tan hadn’t known better, he would have imagined they were in a warm forest, though none of the trees looked familiar. Neither did the flow
ering plants erupting along their path. The vegetation had the air of familiarity to it, but the trees, the flowers, and even the grass growing under his feet were unlike anything he had ever known. A soft sensation, almost an itch, beat at the edge of his consciousness. It took a while to realize that he sensed the strangeness around him.

  Amia led them toward the soft burbling sound. As they approached, the towering trees stopped, opening into a clearing within the cavern. At the center of the clearing was a circular pool of silvery water, bubbling softly. An object hovered in the middle of the pool of liquid, suspended above it.

  With absolute certainty, he knew they’d found it. “This is it.” He started toward it.

  Roine restrained him and pointed toward a huge stone pillar rising from the ground. Deep etchings marked its perimeter, carvings and runes similar to those on the cave entrance. A suppressed energy emanated from the pillar.

  He let his consciousness stretch toward the pillar, trying to sense it. A painful crack within his mind sent his sensing snapping back to him. Tan dropped to his knees with the pain.

  Roine reached to help him stand. “Tried to sense it?”

  Tan nodded. Everything swam around him and spots danced in front of his eyes.

  “It will pass,” Roine said.

  “How do you know?”

  Roine laughed. “I’ve already done the same. My touch is gentler. Or weaker. So my response was less.”

  “What is it?” Tan asked.

  Roine shook his head. “Pure earth, channeled and trapped, almost like an elemental.” Roine stared at the towering pillar, hesitant to approach it. “Perhaps it is an elemental,” he mused. “Though that is not golud. You’d know golud if you met one.”

  “Why?” The effects of whatever his sensing had done faded somewhat, but had not cleared completely.

  “They create a barrier of some kind.”

  “They?” Tan asked.

  Roine nodded, pointing to their right. He had been so focused on the pillar of earth that Tan hadn’t looked around the clearning. A flame shot up and out of the ground, reminding Tan all too much of the fiery cage the lisincend used to trap Amia. The fire sizzled quietly, stretching toward the sky. Flames sputtered briefly before spouting higher into the cavern.

  In front of the spout of flame, beyond the silvery pool, a wide stream of water poured from the ceiling of the cave, running straight down and out through an unseen opening in the floor of the cavern. There was a faint glow to the water. He knew without sensing there was an elemental power to the water.

  Tan looked over to the stone pillar and over to the far left corner, expecting to see something there, another pillar of sorts, but saw nothing but the nearby leaves fluttering wildly as if in a heavy wind. Another elemental forming in a different sort of pillar.

  Tan shook his head. “How is this possible?”

  Roine looked at the four pillars surrounding the silvery liquid. “I would have loved to see the shaping of this.”

  “These are elementals, Roine.” Tan felt certain of that.

  The faint glowing of the water was almost certainly the nymid from the lake below. Tan began to wonder if the flames were once channeled from the draasin. That didn’t explain the pillar of rock or of air.

  Roine shook his head. “Not elementals. They can’t be.” He looked at everything in the cavern with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

  “Look at how the water glows and how the fire sputters. I can’t sense the nymid, but I suspect they flow through that water. And the draasin once created that fire,” he said, pointing. “I don’t know the golud or the ara, but they must be a part of this as well.”

  Roine stared, looking at the cascading water and then over to the fire. “They trapped the elementals here?”

  Amia shook her head. “I don’t think they were all trapped,” she said. “I can’t speak to them—not like Tan—but I sense the nymid offer themselves freely.” She tilted her head, as if listening. “There is a deep presence within that rock, as well. I don’t sense the anguish I felt with the draasin.” She shivered from the memory. “I sense nothing from the wind.”

  “Nor would you,” Roine said quietly.

  Amia frowned at him a moment. “I think only the draasin had been forcibly held.”

  “Why would the ancient warriors trap the elementals? What could be so valuable to need that kind of protection?

  CHAPTER 32

  Pillars of Protection

  Roine closed his eyes, looking from each of the pillars before finally settling his eyes on the silverly pool at the center. Anguish covered his face, that and another emotion that Tan couldn’t recognize.

  “Perhaps there was no other way,” Roine said.

  “No other way for what?”

  Roine pointed toward the silvery liquid, toward where the object hung suspended at the center. “To protect that.”

  “That’s the ancient artifact? Just out in the open?”

  Roine shrugged, squinting as he stared out past their barrier, trying to see what it was hovering above the liquid. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The artifact isn’t described. There were only vague references to what it does. Its power. So I don’t know what it might look like.”

  Tan looked from Roine out toward the silvery water. “What now?”

  “We get past this barricade.”

  “How?” Tan asked. “If this barrier is powered by elementals, how can we get past it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m working on it.”

  Roine paced along the outer edge of the pillars, walking past each one, moving slowly and stopping, staring, as he came to the next. Tan and Amia followed him, watching, waiting for Roine to come up with the answer, but Tan wondered if an answer might not be had this time.

  The power that stood before them was greater than Roine, perhaps even greater than the ancient warriors who crafted this place.

  Roine approached the pillar of water and paused, staring at it briefly, before moving on.

  Tan started to follow but Amia touched his arm and stopped him. “Can you speak to them?” she asked, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked at the water pouring out from somewhere overhead. It funneled down, hitting the stone without splashing before running out unseen below them. It created no spray, nothing but a solid sheet of water.

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure if this is the nymid.” He looked at the water, at the way it glowed as it flowed down. “What if this is the udilm?”

  “Can you speak to them?” she repeated.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, staring at the water, hesitating. The last time he had tried reaching for the nymid, he’d encountered the draasin. What if this was something different than the nymid? What if they were more like the draasin?

  And if they couldn’t reach the artifact, then the lisinced probably could not either.

  “We don’t even need to do anything. This protects it. Even the lisincend can’t pass.”

  She frowned and looked toward the pillar of fire. It sputtered more than before. “Are you certain?”

  The draasin likely had powered the pillar. And now that they were free, that connection would fail. Eventually the barrier would fail. Then the lisincend would reach the artifact.

  Had they not freed the drassin, it might not even matter. The lisincend wouldn’t have been able to reach the articact. Now, because of what they’d done—what he’d done—the draasin flew free. And the protection around the artifact failed.

  “This is my fault,” he whispered.

  Amia took his hand. “They deserved their freedom,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. With the connection formed by her shaping him, perhaps she did.

  “What if we fail?”

  She looked at Roine as he limped around the outside rim of the pillars, the limp more pronounced than before. His shoulders sagged and his eyes lost some of their luster. Roine would not be able to help if the lisincend appeared.

  “Then
we fail. At least we’ll have tried. And done right for the lisincend.” Amia let out a soft breath. “These others serve willingly, but they grow tired. They deserve their release too.”

  Tan closed his eyes and focused his thoughts as he had when standing along the lake as he reached for the nymid. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Nymid!

  He sent the thought with as much force and energy as he could muster. He swayed in place. Then he waited.

  Long moments passed. For a while, he thought he’d failed. A soft tickle came to the back of his mind, the sense of something else there, fleeting.

  Nymid!

  He sent the thought again with as much strength as he could manage.

  Again the soft tickle came to the back of his mind. Tan felt a definite presence, soft and gentle, settle into his mind. He took a deep breath, easing the tension he’d held.

  Who calls the nymid?

  I am Tan.

  He who is Tan. You know the nymid?

  Tan nodded and then sent the answer. Yes. You helped me once. He held up his arms and lifted the shirt Roine had lent him, revealing the burned and charred shirt below. You healed me once.

  You wear our armor. The nymid fell silent for long moments. We know you, He who is Tan. There was a pause. You released True Fire.

  We did. The Daughter felt their pain.

  He sensed sadness from the nymid. They felt much. If we had known, we would never have agreed to the plan. They were not to have suffered. Once we knew, there was nothing that could be done.

  They are free now.

  The nymid seemed pleased. You have done well. What can we do for you?

  We must reach the artifact. Tan sent an image of the object at the center of the pool.

  That is protected by the Mother, the nymid said. Only one blessed by the Mother can touch the object.

  Blessed by the Mother? We can’t pass even this barrier. Tan showed created an image of the pillars for the nymid.

  The barrier is weakened, the nymid said.

  It may be weak, but we still cannot pass. What is it?