Cold-Forged Flame

by Marie Brennan

  All this time, she’s assumed he’s there for the same thing she is: blood from the cauldron. Blood, words—how many things does the Lhian trade in?

  Yet another thing the Cruais didn’t see fit to tell her.

  She probably won’t live to take her anger out on him. Aadet, though, is right there. “So you’ve come here to get your people killed.”

  “What? No!”

  Her lip curls in withering disdain. “I see. You know the secret to staging a revolution without anybody dying. Or is it that you think only the bad guys will die?”

  Aadet glares at her, no longer curled in on himself. “I know there will be a price. But there’s a price to staying as we are, too, and that one’s worse.”

  “So you say. How about these people you want at your side, though? You want to make them stand up and fight back—that’s what you said. Doesn’t sound to me like you’re going to leave them any choice.”

  It’s a guess, but a calculated one. Nobody would row out to this island and drag themselves all over its treacherous landscape just for a lesson in rhetoric. What Aadet wants from the Lhian isn’t just words; it’s words that will have a specific effect, one that can’t be resisted any more than she can resist the Cruais’s command. And by his own admission, he’ll use them to propel his people into a war that will get them killed.

  He deflates by slow degrees, righteous anger decaying into horror.

  “This king you’re fighting only rules their bodies,” she says, contemptuous. “You want to rule their minds.”

  Aadet whispers a phrase she can’t understand. It sounds like an oath in his own language, or a prayer to the gods. “I—that isn’t what I meant.”

  “Then you should consider your own words more carefully, before you go asking someone to give you new ones.”

  He buries his head in his hands, fingers gripping tight. “Nikkor ja riest. You’re right. But—” He doesn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence.

  It’s probably better that he stops talking. She’s busy flinching back from her own mind, from all the echoes of king and revolution and get your people killed. She couldn’t have said those things to him if she hadn’t known them firsthand, once upon a time.

  I don’t think I want to remember any of that.

  By the time Aadet looks up again, she’s half-blind from staring into the fire, but it doesn’t prevent her from seeing that his face is wet with tears. She wonders if he learned to cry silently while hiding from the soldiers. He says, “I can’t give up, though. I’ve come this far. And I can’t go home again—not unless I have a way to change things when I get there.”

  The word “home” twists inside her and almost provokes her into saying something vicious. But all that staring into the fire has done some good, because she’s able to hear him with a calmer mind. The story he told has struck a chord inside her, catching her imagination, and she finds herself thinking it through. As if it were a puzzle she wants to solve. “Which do you care about more? Changing things, even if it means forcing it on those around you? Or letting your people choose—even if it means you might fail?”

  He doesn’t reply immediately. She respects him more for that. His horror at realizing what he would have done tells her what his answer will probably be, but he takes the time to consider it. Finally he says, “Letting them choose. Now that I know what I almost asked for . . . I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I forced people into fighting. Into dying.” He swallows and wipes his cheeks dry. “Do you mean I should give up? Go after this without the Lhian’s help?”

  “Hell no.” She snorts. “Just ask for something different. Something that leaves them the choice.”

  There’s an answer waiting to be spoken, like a bright light in her throat. She doesn’t say it, though. Contempt was the right tone before, but now she wants to lead him to think of the possibility, not hand it to him on a platter. Besides . . . this might tell her what other kinds of deals the Lhian makes.

  The Cruais bound her to get blood. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she can’t trade for something else, too—something for herself. It might tip the scales after she leaves the island.

  But either Aadet is trapped in his original frame of thought, or the Lhian’s stock in trade isn’t limitless. “People don’t believe a revolution is possible. I could ask her to give me that inspiration—the ability to make them see that it can be done. It doesn’t force them to do anything, I think. It would just show them what I already see. I’ve tried to explain it before, but I’ve never really had the right words.”

  For the first time since she awoke in that stone circle, she feels like smiling. A real smile, not a threat with teeth. Aadet has seen it, the thing she wanted to suggest—and she helped him to it. She warns him, “They may not choose to fight. They may decide the cost is too high.”

  “Some probably will,” Aadet admits. “But not all of them. It might be enough.”

  She doubts it will be. Despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to shed all those echoes in her mind: other revolutions, other leaders like Aadet. Many of them failed. Possibility is only the start; after that there needs to be planning, organization, a core strong enough to survive the inevitable shock of bloodshed and death. In the long run, Aadet might be better off asking the Lhian for a battle plan—assuming she can give him that kind of thing. But the best plan in the world won’t do him much good if he can’t get anyone to listen to him in the first place, so she thinks he’s made the right choice.

  He meets her eyes and says, “Thank you.”

  “For telling you that you’re a fucking idiot?”

  “Yes,” he says, completely serious. “And for helping me see this differently. It isn’t what I imagined would happen, when I suggested we travel together—but I’m glad you agreed. Instead of stabbing me and leaving me for dead.” His smile is lopsided, rueful. “Even if you still don’t trust me enough to tell me your name.”

  Her name might be buried somewhere in those bloodstained echoes. Who has she been, that she recalls so many revolutions? But she can’t escape Therdiad’s words: Don’t try to remember. The more you remember, the more you might end up losing.

  “Get some sleep,” she says roughly, and lies down with her back to the tiny fire.

  Whether she’s incapable of sleep or just doesn’t feel the need for it right now, she lies there for quite a while without anything happening.

  On the other side of the fire, Aadet settles down. She can tell without looking that he’ll be hunched into a ball, conserving what warmth he can. Did he have a blanket with him and lost it, or did he row across the bay without one? Either way, the cold probably won’t kill him. He’ll just be miserable and stiff when he gets up.

  Helping him see his purpose differently . . . it felt good. It felt right, in the same way that the sash felt right, and the blade that lies within easy reach. Is this another gift of the island? A fellow traveler, someone whose path she can change? Or is it truly just chance that the two of them came here at the same time, found one another, decided to work together?

  No way of knowing. She can’t let go of the suspicion in her gut, though, the voice that tells her not to trust him. Aadet said that if the island wanted to trap him, it would have presented a damsel in distress, not a swordswoman. But if he’s a trap for her, then the Lhian chose her tool well: a man dedicated to a cause, unflagging in the face of adversity, even though it’s sure to get him killed sooner or later. He’s someone she can work with, at least for a little while.

  Everything good about this situation might be a sign of danger.

  Not like there isn’t danger everywhere she looks. Aadet, the island, the Lhian herself. The more you remember, the more you might end up losing. She’s been able to ignore it most of the time, because she has so many other things to distract her: finding a path, fighting those creatures, hiding her ignorance from Aadet. But that hole is still inside her, a bottomless pit. She’s already lost everything. What could possibl
y be so much worse that Therdiad would try to protect her from it?

  Before she can stop herself, she reaches out, trying to capture—something. Anything. To take one of those echoes and make it solid, reclaim something that means more to her than vague recollections of deserts and war. But it’s too late; she missed her chance, and all she grasps is void. The pain of that loss constricts her chest until she can’t breathe. There’s music in her mind, a wordless tune of lament; it sounds familiar, like a song she knew in the past, and the sorrowful weight of it is crushing her.

  No. The music isn’t in her mind.

  She forces her eyes open. It’s harder than dragging Aadet up that boulder, harder than dragging herself up the cliffs. There ought to be a great mass atop her, but there isn’t: just the night air, lit faintly by the fire’s last coals. She tries to inhale, and can’t. Tries to move her limbs; the most she can manage is a weak, spasmodic twitch. She may not need food, and she may not need sleep . . . but she needs air, and the lack is turning her vision black at the edges.

  She’s made it this far, and now she’s going to die because she let her guard down.

  Her fingers scrabble in the dirt, hauling her leaden arms behind them, searching for something, anything. Her sabre, though it won’t do her a damn bit of good when there’s nothing to stab. She can’t reach it.

  Instead her left hand falls in the embers of the fire.

  Pain sears through her scabbed palm. The music vanishes like a shadow in the light, and air comes rushing back into her lungs. She rolls onto her side, her knees, then lurches to her feet, swaying drunkenly. Breath has never tasted so sweet. She may expect to die here, but that doesn’t mean she’s resigned herself to it—not yet.

  Aadet.

  He’s on his back when she turns to look at him, lying still. Too still. She can’t hear the music, and there’s nothing on top of him, but his chest doesn’t look like it’s moving.

  She staggers over to him and drops to her knees once more. Up close, she can see the minuscule twitches, the signs that he’s trying to draw breath and can’t.

  Pain’s as good an answer as any. After all, it worked for her. The fingers of her left hand are still curled tight around the ember that burned her awake, and she thinks about trying to drag him to the fire. But that won’t be easy, with her body still shaking from her own ordeal. Instead she draws back her right hand and delivers a full-armed slap to his face.

  His head snaps to the side and his eyes fly open. She hears the gasp as he breathes in, his entire body jerking as if suddenly reinflated. Then Aadet begins to cough, curling in on himself.

  She sinks back on her heels, her own heart beating too fast. Her left hand aches fiercely; she has to use the fingers of her other hand to pry it open. When she does, she finds the ember still glowing in her palm—but it is cool to the touch. Nor for that matter has it left a burn mark on her skin, though she feels the pain as if it has. She touches it gingerly with her right index finger. No pain now, but the light glows through the skin of her fingertip as if it were still burning.

  She wants the warmth back, even if it hurt.

  Aadet is on his hands and knees, shivering. She leaves him there, going to retrieve her sabre, which is cold as ice when she picks it up. The blade she slides through her sash once more; the ember she tucks inside the fabric as well, keeping her back to Aadet until it’s out of sight. She doesn’t want him asking what that thing is. It would be just one more question she can’t answer. It’s mine. That’s what matters.

  “What the hell was that?”

  It takes her a moment to realize he’s talking about the suffocating music, not the ember. “Another test,” she says, turning to face him. “One we nearly failed.”

  “You mean, one I did fail.” He looks and sounds exhausted, worse than before, as if his sleep has done him no good at all. She wonders what he dreamt of, in those moments when he couldn’t breathe. “I knew we should set guards, but I was too tired, and I didn’t want to bother you.” He sags back onto his heels. “Thank you. I owe you my life.”

  She thinks about saying they’re even. After all, he helped her up the mountain, when falling would almost certainly have been lethal. But leverage over him may be useful. Instead she says, “We should move on.”

  He closes his eyes, lets his head droop. “You should go. If these are tests . . . who’s to say the Lhian will even deal with me when I get there? Maybe I’ve already lost.”

  Aadet might still be useful—but that isn’t why she crosses over to him. “Fuck that,” she says, and drags him to his feet. “Give up now, and I’ll kick you off this mountainside with my own boot. If the Lhian’s going to refuse you, make her do it to your face.”

  * * *

  They scale the peak, searching as they go for the cave that should be there.

  Conversation has mostly died again, but their silence is born of exertion, rather than hostility and distrust. She helps Aadet when she has the better position, and he returns the favor. That tense knot in her gut never quite stops expecting him to let go at the worst possible moment . . . but she accepts the risk and gets on with what she has to do.

  He never lets her go.

  Countless shadows mark the mountainside, crevices and pits that might be the entrance to a cave. They have to check them all, because neither of them knows what the Lhian’s cave is supposed to look like. Will it be natural, blending in with the surrounding landscape? Carved and framed with torches, a gateway to awe those who have found it at last? She starts to envision it as a maw, toothed with stalactites and stalagmites, ready to eat the fools who think they’ll find what they seek within.

  It doesn’t look like any of these things. And Aadet finds it by accident.

  He’s standing in a precarious spot, craning his neck to see whether there’s an opening farther up the slope, when his footing gives way. She lunges, but too late: all that time fearing he would let her fall, and it turns out she’s the one who fails him. She listens, jaw clenched, to the sliding rocks and snapping brush and yelped curses that mark his descent, and curls her hands into fists when silence follows. Then Aadet’s voice comes up from below, dry with self-mockery: “I think I’ve found it.”

  There might be an easier path than the one he took, but she doesn’t feel like searching for it. Knowing this place, she would never find him, or the cave, again. So she crouches and follows in Aadet’s wake, slightly more controlled, but arriving at the foot of the slope bruised all the same. A few more marks for my growing collection.

  The cave mouth is neither natural, nor particularly remarkable. It has the uneven edge of the other places they’ve searched, with a litter of dirt and leaves stretching inward, carried by the wind. There are no torches. But the floor is flat and the tunnel, which should be dark just a few feet in, has the same sourceless glow that lit the forest earlier. And there is a stillness to the air that isn’t simply a lack of breeze: it’s expectation, anticipation. This is the heart of the Lhian’s domain. Something will happen inside. It only remains to find out how bad that something will be.

  Aadet takes off his pack, pulls out his canteen, offers it to her. She shakes her head, not looking away from the cave mouth. He shrugs and drains the last of it. If the journey off the island is a quarter as difficult as the journey here, he’ll regret having to hunt for more water. But she understands why he does it. Going in to face the Lhian . . . he wants to be prepared.

  She doesn’t even know how to prepare. There’s just a ghost in her memory, one that says she’s never been here before . . . but all the same, she feels like she’s seen it, or something much like it, in the past.

  Don’t try to remember.

  It’s safer if you don’t remember.

  She snarls and moves forward, not looking to see if Aadet follows.

  Before long she can hear his footsteps behind hers, echoing off the stone walls. The tunnel curves, eclipsing the faint moonlight that fills the entrance. Every muscle in her body is loose
and ready, hand drifting near the hilt of her sabre. This would be the ideal place for an ambush: one final trial, before the traveler is allowed to reach the Lhian.

  But nothing attacks. There is only the sound of their footsteps, and that ever-present glow . . . and then, up ahead, a brighter light.

  She rounds the final curve, and knows they have reached their mark.

  The chamber does not look anything like natural. Its walls and ceiling are rough, the latter toothed with stalactites—but the stalactites hang in regular, concentric circles, and the floor below is smooth as glass. The glow is stronger here, and strongest around a black, rounded shape at the center of the cave.

  The cauldron. This is what the Cruais sent her to find.

  She half-expects the hook buried in her spirit to drag her forward the instant she sees the cauldron, but no: she stands frozen, staring, with Aadet just behind her right shoulder.

  Laughter echoes through the chamber.

  A woman steps into view. Inhumanly tall, her skin white as bone, her hair red as blood. Her nails are pointed like claws. She is the one laughing, and the sight of her feels like the ground dropping away. Unquestionably she is the Lhian . . . and she is familiar.

  Not familiar in the way of a person previously met. No, the Lhian is nowhere in those ghostly echoes of memory. But there is a resonance there—a kinship. A sense that the two of them share some connection, and Aadet does not.

  It’s her the Lhian is laughing at. The tall woman comes to the edge of the stalactites and brings her hands together in slow, mocking applause. “I see the Cruais has become more creative in his tactics,” she says. Her voice is melodious and cold, reminiscent of the music that nearly killed them not long ago. “He has tired of sending people, and losing them; and so he sends you.”