Chased By Flame

by Michael Wolff

  SEFIROS EISHI

  CHASED BY FLAME

  THE SMOKE & MIRRORS SAGA: BOOK I

  MICHAEL L. WOLFF

  © Copyright MICHAEL L. WOLFF 2016

  Published by Black Rose Writing

  www.blackrosewriting.com

  © 2016 by MICHAEL L. WOLFF

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  Second digital version

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61296-722-6

  PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING

  www.blackrosewriting.com

  Print edition produced in the United States of America

  To my parents, who supported me through years of small-time jobs and late, lazy nights spent in basements. To my friends, who demonstrated vast amounts of patience in dealing with my obsession with writing the eternally unfinished time-travel story. To the Cheshire High School class of 2000, who gave me a thunderous applause on graduation day.

  But especially to JP and MP, who took me into their home

  and made me a part of the family.

  Thanks guys. We did it!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PROLOGUE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  Black Rose Writing 20% off Coupon

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Mykel LeKym (Michael LA-Kem)

  Sefiros Cayokite (Suh-FEAR-ros KAI-yo-KAH)

  Sutyr (Suh-TER)

  John Jekai (ja-KAI)

  Lazarus (LA-ZER-ris)

  Shayna Kae (shay-NA KAY)

  Cardinal Omeros (Om-MER-ros)

  PROLOGUE

  Somewhere. Somewhen.

  A whisper on the edge of awareness was all the warning he had, and then suddenly his left arm blazed like a golden torch. Ifirit... A tremor shook his right arm until it was near to thrashing... Grothia. The two khatars thrust forward, and suddenly Sefiros was moving. He dug his heels in but it was no more effect than a twig had in a hurricane. Sefiros watched helplessly as the weapons took over and yanked him to the Mahou. The fire-water remained still as he waded through to the center. The arms rose upward, draped over as in prayer. Finally, in the instant before the twin khatars entered the Mahou, the Heart of the World, source of the planet’s magic, its lifeblood, Sefiros realized a horrible truth.

  A beast easily given food is a beast that craves more.

  What was more bestial than symbiotic weapons aroused from a diet of slaughter?

  The Mahou bubbled and spewed and hissed as the gauntlets pierced them and then down, deep, deeper, directly into the Leylines themselves. The power thrashed into Sefiros’ arms like electric fire and his whole body locked and convulsed, sinking into the luxurious magic. He could feel the power burning in him, sweet fire sweeping, devouring every fiber and cell, remaking them as they passed. He cried and the tears sizzled and hissed red smoke from his cheek. Red? He realized everything was tinted red, half flame and half blood. His very eyes brimmed with power. He laughed. Then the fire swept him and the thought sank into ashes. There was nothing to think about. Sefiros recognized the void he was drowning in and fought his way out, but his struggles were weak and grew weaker by the second. No. The khatars continued to devour the magic from the world’s very heart despite him. No. No. No! The despair was too strong.

  Suddenly it disappeared like a pricked bubble. The fire sweeping through him, filling him, remaking him, snapped away, leaving only a hollowed void where it had been. Hunger like he had never known pushed him to his feet. Where? Where is it? His vision was still blinded scarlet. He couldn’t blink fast enough for it to clear.

  The Mahou, the World’s Heart, was dry as a desert bed. Only a drop of magic remained, a tear of fire and blood, glittering as if in mourning. Sefiros took three steps forward before he realized what he was doing. “No!” The Hunger clawed at him, more desperate than anything he ever knew, and twice as keen as the cloistered hunger for flesh he knew as a mortal. Still his clawed fingers itched for the last tears of magic. “No! No, please...” He sank to the floor sobbing. “No... It can’t end like this.” Yet a part of him was relieved it was over, damn the consequences. It was an end, a sweet balm of release.

  For now.

  I

  Mevos Prime.

  Sepias 23rd, 2211 AD (Anno Domini Calendar).

  “I don’t see why I had to come.” Mykel grumbled.

  The creak of the wagon’s axle came in time to the wind’s laughter, sending cold knives skimming on his flesh. Mykel silently laughed, too, as he realized that his stepmother had been right all these years. It’s too cold out for that. Put on a heavier cloak. A red cloak with a heavy mantle on the side to better shroud the left arm. The gold stitching was re-woven just a few days ago, glittering in all its bastardized glory. There. That should do it. Never mind that it made him look like a circus bear. The only consolation was that he could remove the cloak in a few hours. He wanted to burn it, but somehow the ashes would find their way into Lady Fenrir’s hands, and she’d scold him on a gift denied. Mother was always one to find the worst truths at the worst times.

  His regular outfit underneath, the leather cuirass and the dark leggings of the 14th Century Khatari, complete with red fedora, was the only thing that saved the damn cloak from looking ridiculous. The chain-mail that reached halfway down to his knees in pronged spikes was not part of the uniform, either, but Mother was twice the worrier on outside ventures. What if bandits were to ambush you on the road? She quailed. What if some of the king’s guardsmen mistook you for a drunkard and shoots you through the eye? Such were the ghosts that haunted the manor of Mother’s mind. The extra precautions made him look even more ludicrous.

  Mykel tipped the hat lower to block the rising sun. He wasn’t exactly the best prize to look at this early in the morning. Deep black furrows under his eyes hollowed out cheek and bone, but the glasses he wore hid them, made him look almost normal. Black hair lay stiff and limp under the fedora, and the bare fringe around his chin rounded out his gaunt face. Mother was always the one to worry about nothing. A gust tickled his back with icy fingers, almost as if the cloak was not there at all. Well, maybe something. Just this once.

  Grunting he turned to his book. The Golden Helm, volume seventeen of the Sefiros Cayokite saga, the largest epic told in ages. Sighing as the cart jolted over a bump Mykel randomly flipped to the twenty-first chapter, where the great evil
Emperor Jagan was sitting in his tent with his advisor Sinise, discussing tactics for the coming battle over a king’s dinner. As usual, the emperor was being an idiot.

  “My Lord, I believe a hit-and-run strategy would be best in this endeavor.” A thin, skeletal man, Sinise commanded a broad, deep voice that put many an adversary off-guard. It was an advantage he seldom refused to take. “We do not know wherever or not Cayokite is in the Valley of Skulls.”

  “We don’t know if he isn’t there, either.” Jagan spat through a mouthful of lamb. A big, hulking man with a big, hulking face, the Sacred Emperor of the Dominated Lands always looked irritated. “You have to take risks in a war in order to succeed. Cayokite is a senile old man, but he has many allies. They will prod him there, and we will be waiting to crush him.”

  Mykel smiled, and in an instant his imagination put him into the book’s world.

  Mykel laughed, jerking the two men around. Ignoring their glances Mykel pulled up a chair and joined them. “Fine venison. You treat yourself well, Jagan.”

  The two men exchanged glances. Jagan, in particular, looked worried. He was a soulpyre, a mage who possessed others’ bodies and souls by touch. Yet even he wilted at the sheer power radiating from Mykel’s frame. And why not? Mykel was indeed powerful.

  “Who are you?” the emperor demanded. “Where did you come from?”

  “Just a passerby. Never you mind how I got here. Excuse me.” Mykel helped himself to the basted lamb on Jagan’s plate. “Thank you.”

  The great emperor’s face went red. “I demand to know who you are and how you arrived!” A metallic click punctuated the emperor’s words. Knives swished into Sinise’s fingers in quicksilver blurs.

  Mykel’s grin was smug. Earlier in the book, Sinise had diced a man to pieces and served the meat to a traitor in the army’s ranks with those knives. The strips were poisoned, of course. Still... “No import, as I said. Please, go on with your conversation. Pretend I’m not even here.” A flash of magic misted across his eyes, so deep and bottomless those even an untrained endem--those born without magic’s gift--like Sinise faltered. The knives, spinning like quicksilver, stabbed one boot on the way down. The bodyguard’s face was priceless.

  Emperor Jagan swallowed. “Sinise. Save the knives for Cayokite.”

  “What?”

  “Put them away!” His fist made the table rattle. “We have no time. Cayokite is in the Valley of Skulls. If we hurry—”

  “Cayokite isn’t in the Valley of Skulls.”

  Jagan’s face turned purple. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Mykel licked his fingers clean of baste, one by one. “He isn’t in the Valley. He’s in Idera.”

  “What?”

  Mykel smiled. In book sixteen, Cayokite had been transported to Idera, the Emperor’s homeland, by magical forces. “You know what I’m talking about. The fall of Idera. He did it.”

  “How?” Sinise shirked. “The Moghur assured us she would kill him!”

  Mykel snickered. The Moghur was the assassin Jagan sent in book six. She was the one who sent him there in the first place. “The Moghur failed.” Not dead, Cayokite was a Knight of the Old Code. But somehow Mykel doubted they would believe the old man managed to turn her to the side of good. After all, she was a demon. “He did it all by himself. Just by teaching the people how to fix a stairway.”

  Beyond priceless. Their twisted looks of disgust were stricken with the dawning horror of belief. The truth hammered nails in their coffins. “We’ll... we’ll get him.” Jagan nodded. As he rose he sat up straighter, his old confidence coming to his shoulders like a mantle. “It’s just magic he’s using. That conniving bastard. We’ve got sorcerers. We’ll teleport over there. I’ll hack his head and plant it on a spear! Then they’ll be nothing to stop us!”

  “You can’t.” Mykel’s grin reached from ear to ear. “You don’t understand, you idiot. You can’t just wave a hand and expect something to happen. It’s not like swords.”

  “Magic is magic,” Jagan spit out. He looked ready to rip Mykel’s head off with his bare hands. “The witches will do what I tell them to do.”

  “You’ll fail,” Mykel said, almost in sing-song.

  The Emperor had enough. With a scream to rival most bulls he charged. He might as well have been a snail. Mykel easily sidestepped his advance and spun him around. With one, scrawny, stick-like arm he grabbed the emperor by the neck and hefted him three feet in mid-air. The man’s boots jerked like a broken puppet’s.

  “Listen you scum-sucking buffoon.” Mykel paused to whip his other fist back while Sinise crumpled to the ground. “You cannot defeat him. Mainly because you’re an idiot. I should kill you right now. Granted the world would thank me for doing such a justice. But it would be beneath me. You understand?”

  Jagan choked and burbled through gasps. “I’ll... kill you.”

  Mykel smiled. “I thought you’d say that.” Reaching back, he...

  “Petyr tells me you haven’t shown up for archery practice.”

  “Huh?” Mykel came from the daydream dazed. It always took a moment to process the reality around him. “Yeah. So?”

  “So?” His godfather glared at him. A gaunt man with the nose of a hawk, Lazarus’ face was a roadmap of scars and stitches, courtesy of the countless wars legend had linked him to. Brown-black hair fell down his brow in soft needles streaked gray and silver, then collected snake-like about his right shoulder. A jagged scar traced its way down his cheek, dark and grim with the stitches still showing. “It’s not good to neglect your responsibilities, boy. You’re not getting any special privileges just because you’re my ward. Everyone must learn these skills.”

  What’s the point learning a skill you can’t use? Mykel’s arm quickened as a thing alive when he had approached the bow. The drawstring had snapped in twain the first time, for gods’ sake!

  “So you promise to go to Petyr once we get back?”

  “Yeah, Lazarus. I will.”

  “And you’ll talk to Dante. He’s one of the best swordmasters on the continent. Keep on thinking you can dodge him and you might find yourself with a belly of steel.”

  “I’ll talk to Dante. I promise.”

  The Khatari stared at him, at the khatar poised for release within the cloak’s long sleeve. “Get out.”

  Mykel blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I said get out, boy. We’re going to see how well you’ve mastered that weapon.”

  Mykel blanched. Here, on a stretch of dirt, he was to be taught weaponry? The stories never mentioned anything like this. On bridges arcing over a stream of water, or upon a spire overlooking a pool of fire and brimstone. Not like this. This was just... humiliating.

  “Tell me the history of your weapon.”

  Mykel rolled his eyes. Better known as the punch-dagger by the more layman-oriented scholars, the khatar held more kin to daggers and knives than to claws. Mykel’s own was a large knife blade, almost the width of a sword, suspended in a bracer one would use to hold a broken arm till the bones set. The bars making up the skeletal bracer lined up the forearm to the elbow, while a vertical bar connecting the two sides made the weapon’s grip. This khatar’s gauntlet was clear of runes and marking.

  The khatar was an ancient weapon. Granted, the bladed gauntlet was the choice weapon for assassins, and, as such, most men-at-arms steered clear of the things, thinking them more snakes than retractable blades, liable to strike them down at any moment. Mykel liked knowing something no one else knew.

  “Excellent. You’ve definitely done your studying.” Suddenly there were khatars at Lazarus’ wrists, though there was no snap of unsheathing. “The kata is the greatest expre
ssion of the weapon arts.” The Khatari circled as he talked. It made Mykel dizzy matching his gaze. “Each strike is a part of an attack.” A simple chop from out of nowhere. Mykel stumbled back just enough for the other’s khatar to miss. “Each strike is one step closer to your enemy. One step closer to defeating your enemy.” Three chops from the side, and suddenly there were three scratches on the leather vest. “The Snake Snaps Sideways.”

  Anger filled the librarian’s frame, roiling through his veins, building and building with no release. With each new cycle, the flames fanned all the hotter. “Katas are named after nature because the katas are nature. By mimicking nature’s motions we become closer to that nature. Closer to the world. Until we are one with the world.” Trumpet of the Grasshopper. Lazarus’ khatar brushed cheek and forehead. Blood dribbled down from a cheek, stinging of humiliation. “One with the world.”

  Mykel’s vision pulsed crimson. He didn’t know he was howling, didn’t know he was moving, until the world pivoted and the librarian was flat on his back with Lazarus’ steel poised at his neck.

  “Focus is everything. Will and heart hardened towards a singular purpose. It is what divides the art from sword-play. You need to find your center. You must reduce the world to you and your opponent. Nothing else matters.” A gloved hand pulled Mykel to his feet. “And do not attack in anger. That is the quickest way to die.”

  You’d think he’d get tired of lectures.

  Tired of the horizon creeping ever forward, Mykel traded books. Ever since he was old enough to hold a quill he wanted to write. He wanted more than just imagining himself into the stories of elder authors, aiding heroes and legends. He wanted to create his own stories, his own legends, his own heroes. Somewhere, deep down beneath all those wishes of creation, he nursed a secret desire that almost everyone knew: to have people revel in them. To like them. To want to imitate the hero he created.