by Ronie Kendig
Pulled.
“Haegan, stop.” Trale whipped toward the passage, tugging at him. “Don’t do this.”
PULLED.
Mortar loosened.
Trale cried out. “Here!” he hollered. “Haegan’s here!” He barreled forward, knocking him into the stone wall. “I’m sorry, but she swore to kill me if I let you find him.”
• • •
NORTH OF LITTLE HALL
“I’m not getting on that thing,” Tokar growled.
Draed growled right back, eying Tokar’s gear on the ground.
Tili approached Umoni respectfully, asking permission with an outstretched palm. She settled her belly on the earth with a satisfied moan and allowed him and Praegur to mount.
Draed circled Tokar with a curled lip.
“Tili?”
“Don’t move,” Tili warned. “Give him time—No!”
Lunging, Draed snatched Tokar’s gear in his teeth and shook it until bits of clothing, food, weapons, and more littered the ground.
Hands on his head, Tokar groaned. “Are you kidding me?”
Laughter rippled through the waiting Pathfinders.
“Make peace, Tokar. We need to ride.”
“I have to make peace?” Tokar whirled, his brown eyes wild beneath his short-cropped hair. “I? He’s the one! Tell that beast—”
“His name is Draed.”
“More like Dread. Or Dead,” Tokar muttered.
The raqine hunkered closer to the ground—not lying prone as Umoni had—barely enough that Tokar could climb aboard.
“Now,” Tili ordered. “And with respect.”
Expelling a huffed breath, Tokar tentatively gripped the raqine’s neck and pulled himself up. Draed shook his shoulders back and forth, making it difficult for the young officer to swing his leg over.
“Freeze the flames!” Tokar groused, then hauled himself onto the spine.
Rhaemos then joined him—and Draed crouched still as a sleeping cat. Negaer and Vaqar were mounted and ready to lead the army to the palace. In one of the wagons, Astadia glared from within a constructed cage. Regret tugged at him, but she had given them no choice with her cynical, caustic words.
Umoni shot into the sky with an effortless leap that reminded Tili why he so loved the great winged beasts. He leaned into her, trusting her to sense where to go and allowing him to help guide. It took a mere twenty minutes to cross into Iteveria and catch first sight of Karithia, glittering in the morning sun. Tili aimed Umoni toward it, but the raqine defied his efforts to circle in on the castle.
The Deliverers. It had to be why Umoni wouldn’t veer closer. The thought was heady as they scouted the outer perimeter and saw throngs in the street. Riots. Chaos. People shouting. Hurtling weapons and rocks and anything else within reach at each other. Tili’s heart clenched at the violence. What kind of ruler sat in her castle while her people tore the realm apart?
For another half hour they circled and scouted the best routes, the paths of least resistance. Where they could gather supplies if needed. And how best to infiltrate the castle walls. As the girl had said—there was but one gate. Mountain and cliffs protected it on three sides. Options were limited. Supplies scarce. Defeat almost guaranteed.
He signaled Tokar to make for a clearing about a half league from the city, at the foot of the great mountain that bore Karithia on its heights.
Though he dispatched scouts, all returned in defeat. The assassin had been right—only one way to the castle. So, they waited for their army to arrive, allowing the raqine to rest and hunt and the officers gathered to make a war plan, which was as simple as possible—march up Karithia Road and break down the gate, using the raqine to push back resistance if they must.
• • •
Anger shot through Haegan. But he remembered. He focused. Father! He angled toward the bricks again and harnessed his abilities. Thanked Abiassa for helping him.
“Haegan, you stupid little puppet,” Nydelia shrilled.
Fury ignited. He snapped his hands at the wall. Yanked.
PULLED!
Heat wakes roiled through the bricks. They rattled and crumbled to the ground in a heap. Just like the glass in the shower. Darkness threatened again but Haegan threw a ball of light into the void beyond the opening and climbed through.
His heart wrenched at the sight. The chasm. Just as in his dream, a chasm separated him from where a pile of tattered blankets lay huddled in the corner. Haegan moved to the edge, searching for his father. He aimed light down into the void that blocked him. But no sign of the Fire King.
This made no sense. Why create this chasm if his father wasn’t here? Why lure him down here? Was it a trap? Had Trale helped with that, too?
Laughter rippled, bringing with it that bitter stench.
Haegan shifted to find himself facing the Infantessa. “Where is my father?”
She cackled, her mirage of beauty pointless. “Do you not recognize him, my pet prince? Are you so lost, so weak, that you cannot see the likeness between you?”
Frowning, Haegan looked over his shoulder, searching the shadows. Hauled into the past, into that wretched nightmare where the world fell away and took his father with it. Where fire claimed life and limb. Scourged. Scorched. “I don’t . . .”
The blankets shifted.
As a moan seeped from the rags, Haegan’s breath caught. “No,” he whispered.
The pile moved again.
He thought to illuminate the area more, but he feared what he would find.
Leave him. He’s weak. A failure. Ruination. He never loved you well anyway.
At the inflaming thoughts, Haegan grunted and shoved a blast of heat at the Infantessa. But it was diluted. With selfishness. With pride. With the piece of him that still clung to those childish thoughts and fears.
“See?” she crooned from the rubble. “Is this really worth turning against me? Is it worth sacrificing everything for such a despicable waste? Remember, he left you in that tower. He ignored you. He didn’t care. He was humiliated by you—and you should be of him now. Why is a Fire King cowering beneath the palace of his enemy?”
Before he could fail himself and his father again, Haegan threw himself across the chasm.
“No!” the Infantessa gasped.
Haegan rolled out of the landing and shuffled over to the pile. The smell was abhorrent. The sight . . . hideous. He wanted to tame the light, but the embers roiled through him in a miserable fury. Glowing, growing out of indignation, his rage at the sight before him. What the witch had done . . .
Gray-blond hair matted, face swollen and bruised, burned. Pocked with boils. Beard long and gnarled, soiled with food and dirt that stuck to the wiry strands. Clothes sizes too large. But even as Haegan thought that, he noted the grayish tunic bore the tri-tipped flame. House Celahar. The Fire King’s royal tunic. The one he’d worn the day he fought Poired. The day Haegan flew away, leaving him on the steps of Seultrie.
And it hung on him as if he were a child wearing his father’s tunic.
Empty, vacant eyes staggered up Haegan’s body, finally finding his gaze. “Oh,” came a wheeze, foul and crude. “I . . .” His father’s head wagged, too heavy for his neck, it seemed. “I . . . do I know you?” asked the weak voice, fragile.
“Father,” Haegan said, tears blurring his vision. His hands trembled beneath grief and shock.
Bobbing began, then his father’s gaze fell away. His arms went limp.
Haegan rushed to him and knelt. “Father—please. It’s me, Haegan.”
“Hae—” Eyes once an icy blue were now crowded with an empty gray. They seemed to search for sight, then drifted away. “No . . .” He shook his head. “No . . . who is Haegan?”
“Is it worth it, Haegan?” Nydelia taunted from the other side. “Look at him. This—this is what you are going to destroy everything for?”
Anger churned. Roiled. Thickened. But he pushed it away. Angry. He was always so angry. And that meant people got
hurt. He wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t be that scourge.
“Father, please!” Haegan pleaded, gripping his father’s face. Ignoring the slime and mats and clumps pressing into his palms.
Gray eyes met his once more.
“Yes,” Haegan urged him to remember. Willed him. “It’s me. Haegan—your son. You watched me sleep every night. Remember?”
The thick, dirty brow knotted beneath the clumped strands of hair. But he hung his head. “No. No, I just want to be alone. No more pain. No more daggers in the head.” He slapped at his temples. “No more. No more more more.”
“Haegan—”
Whirling to Nydelia, he lunged to his feet. Fists balled. “What. Have. You. Done?”
She faltered, her confidence shifting as light rushed through the cavern.
“Release my father!”
Arrogance lifted her craggy chin. “Your father is in a prison of his own making, Prince.” She shrugged, taking a step back, as if to feign confidence. But that was just it—it was false. Her face had gone pale. “I only helped him embrace what he believed.”
“Release him!” Haegan shouted.
She groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’re as pathetic as those blasted Deliverers, chanting, ‘Release him, release him!’ Night and day. You think this is cruel torture? Try living with their grating voices.”
“I did! I lived with your voice scraping away at my soul.”
She shook her head. “You’re truly as pathetic as him, aren’t you?” She sniffed. “You’ve been here weeks, putrid prince. You’ve eaten my words as if they were sweeties, and you—like that sizzled-out ember of a Fire King—have left your precious kingdom unguarded. Now it’s ours.”
“You will never have the Nine.”
“We already have it.” She smirked, stepping out of the cavern, back into the passage. “And now, I have snuffed out the Fierian.”
The floor closest the opening dropped away in a gaping yawn of terror.
17
“And down comes the Fire King, son and all.” Nydelia stalked back through the dungeon passages, a hand raised to any breathers hovering near the doors. She heat-smacked them and seared their faces. They fell away, screaming.
Paung rushed down the steps from the main level.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Get back up there—”
“Invaders, my queen! Sentries spotted them just inside the walls.”
“Who? None would dare come against me!” She stomped up the stairs, secured the door, then headed upstairs to the observatory. From there she could see down the side of the slope Karithia had been built upon. She let out a frustrated growl at the tunics slipping unheeded through her city—white, gold, and green. “Fools,” she hissed. “Why does no one stop them?”
But the answer was apparent. The people ignored the invaders sneaking past them because they were too busy venting their rage on each other. Nydelia pushed their thoughts into submission, gripping their doubts. Twisting them into sheer panic.
Instead of attacking the soldiers, however, the people turned from their bickering and began to shove and trample each other, desperate to flee. The soldiers’ destriers shifted at the thrumming agitation, but still they pressed on.
She pushed harder, twisted more. Reached for the thoughts of the soldiers . . .
“My lady!” Paung cried.
“What?”
“The soldiers!”
Glancing down at the army forming columns, she saw the officers. Saw the raqine, which made her blood cool.
“You should leave, my lady. Before they arrive.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I do not run.”
“I would call it a strategic repositioning,” Paung said. “They are many, and we are but two.”
“Two? I have—”
“But you don’t! They’ve left, one by one since they”—he nodded to the pillars of men around the city—“arrived.”
She huffed, fidgeting beneath the apparent defeat. “Bring my carriage. At once!” She stalked down to the foyer and hurried to the front door, irritated at how slowly Paung moved for the carriage. Worry chased her, the disbelief of her failure—No, this wasn’t failure. She hadn’t failed. She’d succeeded. Not only had she destroyed the Fire King, but she’d also taken care of the Fierian. They would never emerge from that pit.
Sirdar should be proud.
Bah! She didn’t care if the old Desecrator was proud. She was proud. She had done what she set out to do. But in that instant, a great chill seeped through her. Stumbling, she reached for the floor, confused—and froze at the sight of her hand. Parchment-thin skin. Shriveled flesh. Veins protruding.
“What is this?” she gasped, glancing up her arm—the same. She reached for the embers . . . and found . . . “No,” she breathed. Panic thrummed at the emptiness growing within her. She threw a bolt. But didn’t. “Nooo!” The embers were gone. “Impossible!” she cried out. Growled, reached again for the embers. Nothing.
A dark voice spoke, “Perhaps you now care what Sirdar thinks. I leave you to your end, Nydelia.”
• • •
He hated his anger. Hated hating.
But Aaesh had told him that sometimes his anger wasn’t merely his own. As he stared at his father’s limp form, a burning wrath rose through Haegan. He thought of the prisoners ensnared within their own doubts. Ghosts of themselves.
Making war on enemies of Aaesh and freeing enslaved minds;
releasing from prisons of their own making,
and then he finds himself standing obediently
and violently between life and death,
living and dead
first and last
then and now.
“Freeing enslaved minds,” he whispered, glancing at the words carved in his flesh. “Releasing from prisons of their own making.” The dozens of cells he’d passed. “Standing obediently,” Haegan paused. Thinking. Tasting. Testing the next word. “Violently between life and death. Living and dead. First and last. Then and now.”
Violently.
Between life and death.
She had robbed them—his father, himself, Trale—of their dignity. Of their will. Relegated them to puppets.
The glare in the cavern grew brighter.
“Standing obediently . . .” He stared at his hands. Remembered the night he’d been told his destiny. How he’d fled into the darkness. He breathed a laugh. He had fled again into the dark months later. Trapped himself. Lost himself. Selfishly. Only caring what it cost him to be the Fierian. Not considering that his disobedience cost thousands of lives.
He lifted his head. Spoke clearer. Louder. “Standing—I stand obediently.”
Violently. The word nudged his will. He winced.
Think not of yourself, Haegan, heir of Zireli.
Zireli. His father. Haegan again knelt at his father’s side. Touched the man’s shoulder. His father cried out with a shriek that terrified Haegan, watching the man who’d been the strongest accelerant in the Nine since Zaelero cower and scrabble to the wall, clawing stones. Fingers bloodied. Bony shoulders bouncing.
How often had his father done that? Had she taunted him so that he feared touch?
“Father,” Haegan croaked. “Please—”
“Go away! I won’t do it. I won’t touch the Flames again. I promise. Please. Just stop.” His father wagged a bony hand, face pressed to stone.
Teeth gritted, lips trembling with restrained fury, Haegan rose. “I stand here,” he shouted to the stone ceiling, to Abiassa, “obediently and violently between life and death. Living and dead. First and last. Then and now.”
Heat spiraled. Bubbled. Roiled.
His father howled. Curled into a ball, his back to Haegan. “It’s not me. No no no. I didn’t touch the Flames!”
“Abiassa!” Haegan called. “I am here. I beg Your mercy—thank You for choosing me, not for the sake of being chosen, but that Your people will be freed by Your hand in Your hour! Thank You for t
his gift to avenge Your name, Your people!” he shouted, turning a circle and staring past the ceiling, up through the palace, into the clear skies where freedom waited. Where—
Haegan gasped.
He saw them. Saw through stone and dirt. Saw the Deliverers standing guard over Karithia. Although they were taller than buildings and mountains, Haegan somehow stood eye to eye with them. Their strength, fed by the purity of Abiassa and their vow to Her, blew through him. Their swords, stabbing the earth, lifted with their fiery gazes and extended toward Haegan.
No, not Haegan.
The Infantessa. Who looked a thousand years old, trembling on a withered frame. She stumbled from the palace toward a gilded carriage. The same carriage she’d used to draw Haegan into her net. She had tormented him. Toyed with him. Humiliated him. Not just him, but his father-king. The people. Before his mind’s eye flashed thousands who had given her their will, imprisoned forever. And thousands more who had been unwitting prisoners.
“Nydelia!” Though Haegan called to her through time and walls, he hesitated. Could he do this? Kill her? The thought—
Release them, Fhurïaetyr, Aaesh’s words whispered through his soul. It is time. She is only a symptom, but the end must start with her.
Bolstered by Her words and the fleeing queen, he shouted, “NYDELIA!”
The wretched creature skidded to a stop, staring around. Startled. Terrified. She could not see him. She did, however, see the Deliverers. Noticed their swords had been extended. “No! You can’t do this—”
“ENOUGH!” Eyes on Abiassa, Haegan crossed his arms, fisted his hands, and drew in. “THEN. NOW. FOREVER!”
Instantly, he stood in the cave again. White-blue heat roiled through the cavern like a smoke-demon seeking freedom. It grew thicker. Brighter until the white of it seared his eyes. But no pain came. Only fury. Only the righteous anger of Abiassa for Her children drawn away, imprisoned in their pain, doubts, and fears.
It grew so large, Haegan feared its unleash. He braced himself and . . . surrendered. It was not his to say what She did with his life, this gift, but to surrender to whatever Her will may be. He threw open his arms and embraced his role as Fierian.