The Cleansing Flame

by Alec Hutson

  This seems to mollify the crowd somewhat, and I see a few expressions soften. Valans and the red-bearded man are not among them, though. I realize, suddenly, that most of the tribe are women – only a handful are men of about my age. I wonder if that has anything to do with this hostility towards me. Or Amara’s visit last night.

  “What is the gift you spoke of?” asks a stout matron with ash-gray hair bound back in a tight bun.

  Amara reaches into her robes and withdraws the small chunk of stone she showed me last night. From the blankness of the stares I can tell this object is as much a mystery to them as it was to me.

  “Lorekeeper Ghervas told me this is a key long thought lost.” Amara holds out the stone so her tribe can see it better.

  “A key to what?” Valans asks, his eyes narrow.

  “To a Gate,” Amara answers. I see flickers of surprise in a few faces, but confusion in most.

  “The Gates are real?” The skepticism in the old matron’s words is obvious.

  “Do you doubt the lore of the Accord?” asks the white-robed old man in a quavering voice. He rises, his gaze sweeping over the gathering. “The words of Ben-Poli describe this key in minute detail. There can be no doubt.”

  “What are the Gates?” asks the red-bearded man, his frustration evident.

  “Doors,” the old man continues. “Pathways to other worlds. The keys were lost during the early days of the Winnowing, though the lore claims that some from our world managed to escape from the Shriven through them. My master told me that most suspect that these cowards had taken the keys with them so there would be no pursuit. Yet now one has come to us.”

  “And we can use it to escape,” Amara says, iron in her voice. “If we are bold enough to take this chance.”

  “Where are these Gates?” asks Valyra. Her question is directed at her mother, but the monk steps forward to answer.

  “There are many, most lost beneath the dust. But I know of one that may still stand. There is an ancient temple not a dozen leagues from here, and the old scrolls tell that it once contained a Gate.”

  “I know the place, I think,” says a scarred woman. “Shriven lair in the ruins.”

  “They will not be expecting us,” Amara says. “If we fall upon them with the entire fury of our tribe, we can win through to the Gate. But we must leave soon. The wastes are calm, but in a day or two the storms will rise again.”

  “And what happens if nothing is there?” asks the red-bearded man. From his tone he does not agree with this course.

  “Then we return, and wait for the darkness to swallow us with swords in our hands.” Amara meets the man’s gaze, and after a moment he looks away. The hostility is still clear in his face, but he does not say anything further.

  “When do we leave?” Valyra asks. I can hear the worry in her voice. The thought of abandoning this ancient refuge and venturing out into the wastes must be terrifying.

  “Tomorrow,” Amara says. “Spend the day gathering your –”

  “No.”

  Amara pauses, blinking at the interruption. All eyes turn to the old monk, who has risen again. “There is no time. We must go now. Something terrible is coming – I can feel the rock trembling with fear. Either we leave now, or we die.”

  4

  The wastes have been transformed.

  Yesterday, as I slogged through the dust, the sky and everything more than a dozen paces away from me had been lost within a maelstrom of swirling red. Now, though, the winds have gone utterly still, and the broken landscape unfolds before me in all its unearthly splendor.

  It is beautiful, in its own way.

  The dust has settled, and a rolling plain of red ripples into every horizon unmarred by trees or water. The only blemishes are piles of jagged, rust-colored rocks thrusting up from the wastes, and to my eyes these look indistinguishable from the refuge the copper-eyed tribe has just abandoned. It’s no wonder Amara’s people have managed to remain hidden for so long.

  Though the blood-red waste is breathtaking, my eyes are drawn again and again to the sky. There are no mountains to infringe upon its arching vastness, nor clouds. Not even a sun. But still colors cavort across the heavens – red, orange, blue, purple, green. Some flare with fiery intensity and then fade into glimmering nothingness. Others leak across the sky, spreading out like stains until subsumed by another blossoming hue. As I watch, a crackling bolt of saffron rends the sky, imprinting a vivid afterimage that lingers in my vision. It’s hypnotic, and I find it difficult to tear my eyes away.

  “Stare too long and the sky will eat your soul.”

  Blinking, I return my attention to the ground. The white-robed monk – his clothes now pink after trudging through the wastes for most of the afternoon – has come up alongside me while I paused to marvel at the display unfurling above us. His ward or apprentice or whatever hovers beside him looking concerned, but the old man seems to be handling our march without any trouble. He’s tougher than he looks.

  “They came from up there,” the old monk says, gesturing with a gnarled finger.

  “Who did?”

  “The Shriven,” he says, and spits. “They shattered the sky when they first arrived. Broke it right open as they descended. Scattered the stars and devoured the clouds, or so they say. The old scrolls even claim there used to be a ball of fire that moved across the heavens.”

  I squint at him, wondering if the old man is making some kind of jest at my expense. “You mean the sun?”

  “You know of it?” the monk says, eyeing me shrewdly. “They say it was so brilliant that a man would go blind if he stared at it for too long.”

  These people had never seen the sun? How was that possible? A trickle of unease goes down my spine as I realize something, and I shiver. How do I know about the sun? My gaze sweeps the blasted landscape. If what Valyra said is true, and the Winnowing was centuries ago, then the sky has been this strange bloom of colors for at least that long. And I don’t just know about the sun. Trees. Rivers. Oceans. Where did I come from, that the absence of these things is jarring?

  “Once this world was green and blue,” the old man continues, unaware that I’m barely listening, lost in my own thoughts. “But everything has turned red, rusted, and what’s left will soon be blown away. Merely dust in the wind.”

  “Halt!” The cry comes from the front of our little column.

  Amara has stopped, and the look of concentration on her face makes me think she’s listening for something.

  “What did you hear?” says the red-bearded man whose name I’ve come to learn is Kellic.

  “Nothing,” Amara says, her brow furrowing. “Not heard. Felt.”

  And then I feel it too, a slight vibration coming up through the ground. I’m not the only one, as several of the tribespeople cry out in surprise.

  “Earthquake?” I ask as the trembling comes again. I can actually see the dust at my feet shifting slightly.

  “No,” the monk beside me says. He points again, but this time back the way we’ve come.

  I squint into the haze, trying to make out what he’s indicating. We are standing on a rise – the wastes undulate almost like the ocean during a storm – and in the far distance I can see the knob of rust-colored rock that was the refuge of these people.

  “What is it? I can’t –”

  Oh.

  Oh, by all the dead gods.

  Even from this far away I can see that the dust beside the hidden fortress has begun to bulge upward. It looks like there’s something pushing up from below, rising towards the surface . . . but that’s impossible, because of the sheer size of whatever it must be.

  The gabble of surprised voices has given way to cries of alarm. Amara is demanding calm, but no one seems to be listening to her. And that’s understandable.

  Something pushes through the dust. At first it looks like a little gray-green nub – like the tip of a plant emerging from the soil. But given the distance, it must be massive. And it doesn’t stop once
it wriggles free of the wastes – it continues to emerge, serpent-like, until it writhes in the air.

  It’s reaching so far into the sky that it could nearly touch the top of the great rocks where the tribe had hidden, easily several hundred lengths in height. Cold fear pools in my stomach. The vastness of this thing cannot be comprehended. Another tendril slips upwards from the dust. Then another and another and another.

  There’s panic building behind me, among the horrified tribespeople, but I barely notice the shrieks and sobbing. I’m mesmerized by what’s happening.

  Several of the tentacles grope for the rocky fortress. They wrap themselves partway around it, pressing flat against the stone. There’s a frozen moment where the creature – or creatures, I suppose – goes perfectly still.

  “What is it doing?” asks the monk’s young acolyte.

  “It’s listening,” the old man says, and I can hear the dread in his voice. “The thing is searching for us.”

  It’s Amara who breaks the trance. “We must reach the temple! There is no going back! If you want to live, follow me!”

  We flee across the wastes.

  The monk collapses first, unable to keep our pace. His acolyte struggles to try and pull him to his feet, but I can see that the old man’s body has reached its limit.

  “Go on,” he says feebly between hacking coughs. “Leave me.”

  I crouch beside the monk, turning my back to him. “Put your arms around my neck,” I command, and a moment later I rise with him clinging to me. “Hold on,” I say as I start jogging again.

  “Thank you, my boy,” he says in his papery voice. “But if another of the tribe falls, you must help them instead.”

  “They’ll be fine,” I say, and that looks to be true. A few of the others are faltering, but the strong are offering shoulders to lean against, and no one is being left behind. Only the monk cannot run at all, which is understandable, since he looks to be at least twenty years older than the rest of them.

  Now that I have him literally holding on to me for his life, I can ask him a few of the questions that have been gnawing at me.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  There’s a pause, as if the monk is uncertain if he should answer.

  I sigh. We’re about to be swallowed by a giant dust-monster and still he’s reticent to share his secrets. All priests are the same, I think, though I don’t know where this thought comes from. “Surely I’ve earned your trust,” I say, adjusting his weight as he starts to slide down my back.

  “I don’t know you, specifically,” he says slowly. “But I’ve read about the Silvers. They were one of the great tribes of man when the Shriven fell from the sky. At first they fought against the demons, and during the Winnowing some of the mightiest heroes and warriors had silver eyes and wielded green glass swords.”

  I can sense there’s something he’s reluctant to tell me. “But?”

  “But,” he says, and I hear the grimace in his voice, “they are known in the scrolls as the great betrayers. When the Shriven had sundered the old empires, poisoning the land, and their victory was assured, the remaining Silvers gathered at one of the Gates. They had long been the caretakers of the keys that could open these doors, and so they chose to escape this world, abandoning the rest of us to our fate.”

  “They took the keys with them?”

  “They did . . . until you brought one back.”

  I run in silence for a while, considering what the monk just shared. The question of who I am and how I came to be here is even more maddening now. Am I a renegade? A relic? An attempt at atonement?

  A trap?

  I’m still mulling this over when a ragged cheer goes up around me. I quickly see why: there’s a building of white stone sheltering in the lee of another great pile of tumbled rocks. The remnants of two mighty statues stand guard beside a massive, open entrance. They are some kind of four-legged creatures, though they’ve been so effaced by the scouring wind that I can’t tell if they are lions or dragons or something else entirely. A huge mound of dust has piled three times the height of a man in the doorway, but the entrance soars so high that there’s still enough space to pass inside.

  We approach the ruin cautiously. It looks abandoned, but I remember that the scarred woman in the gathering had claimed the Shriven were known to dwell inside.

  “Thank you, boy, but I can walk from here,” says the old man, and I crouch to let him down. There’s wonder and fear in his face as he stares up at the temple. My fingers stroke the hilt of my green glass sword – I have a sense it will be needed soon.

  “This is our reckoning!” cries Amara, coming to stand before her tribe. “This is our chance at survival!” For the first time today the wind rises, as if stirred by her words. She rests her hand on the pommel of her crimson sword as her robes ripple and her long red hair dances. She must be feeling the same dread as the rest of her people, but there’s no hint of it in her face. Amara exudes calm strength, and I can see the effect it has on the others – slumped shoulders straighten, lowered eyes rise, clenched fists open. She looks like she might save them through the sheer force of her will.

  And then the ground shivers.

  “With me!” Amara yells as fear spasms through the crowd. She turns and begins running toward the entrance, but at first no one else moves. Then with a scream of defiance Valyra follows, and a moment later I’m beside her. I don’t turn around to see if the rest are coming, but I assume they must be. With their refuge uncovered, this thin hope of the Gate is all they have left.

  My boots sink into the dust as I clamber up the great dune filling the entrance. Above and ahead of me Amara has reached the apex, and she vanishes into the slice of darkness where the mound nearly brushes the top of the stone entrance. About halfway up another shake comes, stronger than the first, and I nearly lose my footing and topple backwards. Valyra is churning the dust next to me, and her hand flashes out to grab my arm. I smile gratefully, and she nods back. There are traces of fear in her face, but mostly I just see grim determination. She’s strong, just like her mother.

  We pass beneath the lintel of cracked stone and are plunged into dimness. There’s a vast space stretching out before us, most of it draped in shadows. The ceiling has been rent open in places, and the only light comes from the amber shafts trickling down through these holes. Each of these slanted pillars of light glimmers with swirling dust. Shapes bulk against the lengths of the walls, and as my eyes adjust I can see that these are towering statues of men and women with the heads of animals. The stone has been worn away, but I think I see the mane of a lion on one, a crocodile’s tapering head on another, and a pair of broken tusks curving up from where a statue has collapsed into a pile. Gods? Guardians?

  Amara is already halfway down the dust-pile, more sliding than running. Valyra and I share another quick glance and then follow her.

  At the bottom we pause, waiting for the others. The soaring hall is silent and seems to be empty, but I can see the tension in Amara. Her eyes scan the shadowed recesses, and her hand never strays from the hilt of her sword. At the very end of the long space there’s an archway carved of some kind of opalescent material, which glows faintly in the semi-darkness.

  “What do you know about this place?” I murmur, unwilling to speak too loudly into this emptiness.

  Amara kneels and begins inspecting the floor for tracks. Wise, and something I should have thought to do. It looks to me like the dust has been undisturbed for a long time. “Not much,” she says, glancing back as the first few members of her tribe start their descent into the temple. “There are a few of these old ruins scattered about. This was one of the closest to our sanctuary, but no one would dare shelter here, even if they were caught outside during a bad storm. Afraid of the Shriven, yes, but also of whatever ghosts still linger in these places.”

  Amara looks like she’s about to say more, but she staggers as the ground suddenly shudders hard enough that one of the statues topples over, raising a
plume of dust. Something dislodges from the darkened ceiling, and I brace myself to grab Valyra and Amara and pull them to safety if needed.

  But it’s not stones that are falling.

  Leathery wings flare as the creatures arrest their plummeting dives and begin gliding straight for us. I glimpse huge, faceted eyes, segmented legs, and curving stingers longer than my arm.

  “Shriven!” Valyra cries, fumbling to draw a knife from the folds of her robes. Her clumsy movements tell me the weaver is going to be useless in this fight, so I prepare myself to defend both of us. Amara has the same idea, as she’s already put herself between Valyra and the hurtling swarm.

  I twist away from a stinger that would have impaled me and slash my sword through the thorax of one of the insects as it buzzes past. Black ichor splatters me, and for a moment I’m blinded. I crouch, hoping to avoid any more of the Shriven that might have been swooping at me, and wipe frantically at my eyes.

  Amara has downed two of the insects in this initial pass, their wings and legs twitching in death. The swarm moves as if of one mind, retreating higher to come together again for another attack. I hurry to stand beside Amara.

  “If a stinger breaks your skin, you’re dead,” the swordswoman says, glancing at where my robes had been torn by the insect. “The poison kills in moments.”

  I look over to where the other members of her tribe have formed a circle at the base of the dust mound. More of these Shriven are swirling in the air above them, and a few of the insects are already scattered upon the floor . . . along with the sprawled body of the gray-haired woman who had spoken earlier at the gathering.

  I grit my teeth and return my attention to the swarm closest to us. They swoop down again, and I dance among the buzzing wings and flashing stingers, my sword flickering. This time I fell two of the creatures, while Amara stands over one. Behind her, a wide-eyed Valyra brandishes her knife awkwardly. It looks like Amara has managed to keep any of the insects from coming anywhere near her daughter.