The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs)

by D. W. Hawkins

  “Right,” Dormael agreed, “Gather the horses. Round up the bodies and drag them into the shadows by the side of the road, so they’ll be out of sight by anyone on the ridge above. Allen, how are your hunting skills? Are you up for a bit of tracking?”

  “I could stalk a deer for miles and the bugger wouldn’t know I was there until I tapped it on the head,” Allen replied.

  “Good. Here’s what we’ll do then. You find the trail, track them back to their hiding place, but stay well hidden. If you have to kill anyone, do it quietly. D’Jenn, you take to the woods and ghost around their flank. Stay out of sight. I’ll take to the air and make sure that there aren’t any observers or archers that we missed, and then I’ll land near to their camp. Once we’re all there, we’ll see if there’s anything we can learn. We move on signal.”

  “Great. So what’s the signal?” Allen asked, tucking his weapons back into his belt.

  “You’ll know it when you see it.”

  It took Dormael, Allen, and D’Jenn around fifteen minutes to gather up the remnants of the bloody battle. The horses were hidden and hobbled a short distance down a side trail that Allen had discovered by the side of the main road. After the bodies had been stacked out of sight and well away from the horses, Dormael had to try and convince Bethany to hide in the hollow between three boulders that were leaning against each other. He hated leaving the little girl there alone, but casting a few defensive wards around her would leave her in a safer spot than taking her into the bandit camp with them. They had no way of knowing how many men the highway thieves would have hiding back at their campsite, and Dormael didn’t want to take her into battle again. After everything was taken care of, the three men put their plan into motion.

  Allen nodded once at Dormael in the gathering night, and ghosted off toward the trail they’d last seen Shawna carried down. His feet carried him with a predator’s grace, making no more noise than the rocky woods around them. He entered the trail and was gone.

  “I’ll swing around to the north side of the trail and see what scents I can pick up, coz,” D’Jenn said, “Be careful.” Dormael nodded to D’Jenn as he felt the tingling sensation of his cousin’s magic at work. D’Jenn’s form melted into that of a great, black wolf, and then he was gone in a blur of rustling dirt and swift shadows.

  Dormael reached up to check his head wound again. The bleeding had been stopped, at least, and coppery blood no longer ran down into his eyes and mouth, but it still hurt like a bastard. It would have to be stitched afterwards, but now there was no time for it. Dormael sighed and then opened his Kai and poured the magic down into himself, feeling his body slide into the familiar form of the gyrfalcon.

  With two bounding leaps and a few strong flaps of his sleek wings, Dormael was airborne. The constant wind blowing through the pass made getting into the air a little easier than normal, but also made staying aloft afterwards a bit trickier. He had to climb up and out of the wind stream to avoid being slammed into a rock face, and before he knew it he was gliding over the mountain pass in great circles. The night opened up below him.

  The moon, which to his human eyes only cast a light, silvery sheen over everything at night, blanketed the mountains in contrasting steely light and shadows, and Dormael’s falcon eyes could see as if the light were twenty times as bright. He could see the rocky crags of the mountains around him, reaching up like angry hands wishing to knock him from the air. Trees leaned at what seemed like odd angles on the slopes, in some places heavily blanketing the surface and in others sparsely sprinkled like stragglers arriving at some great festival. In the distance, off to the east, a bright orange beacon burned in the night, and small forms moved around it upon the ground.

  He’d found the campsite. He dipped his wings and turned in a great arc to bring the fire closer.

  Looking back to the west of the fire, he spotted his brother moving quietly up a narrow, winding trail toward the campsite, moving like some lion in Tasha-Mal stalking up to his prey on silent pads. Looking farther to the west, Dormael spotted two forms lying prone just off the side of the trail. The guards the bandits had left behind them, he presumed, dead from Allen’s blades. He looked for D’Jenn but his cousin was hidden even from his eyes, somewhere to the north and moving closer. At least, Dormael hoped he was.

  Dormael came to land on a tree just on the edge of the camp, high in the branches and as out of sight as he could manage, given the circumstances. His talons dug into the tough wood, and he took in the scene below him, trying to come up with a good plan of attack.

  In the middle of a cleared-out space below, the fire burned high and bright in the center of a large pit lined with rocks, casting the surroundings in flickering orange light. There were two wagons on the edge of the firelight, one loaded with what Dormael thought must have been looted supplies, and another empty wagon next to it. Four men were in the camp, one was on the edge of the light, lounging with his feet kicked up on a stray log and sharpening a dagger methodically. Another man paced around the fire with a scowl on his face, scratching at his neck and muttering curses under his breath. Two more stood near what Dormael and his companions had come to find.

  Shawna.

  She was tied to a post that appeared to have been driven into the ground for the express purpose of restraining someone. She sat with her back to it, hands bound behind her around the squared post of wood, head lolled forward in unconsciousness. Dormael’s heart sped up when he saw her, and he had to restrain himself from leaping to her supposed rescue. They had to learn more about their enemies. He kept repeating that to himself as he watched the scene below.

  The two other men in the camp were standing over Shawna, one of them examining her swords, turning them over and watching the firelight play off of the fine blades and running his hand along the magical steel in silent awe. The other, a much bigger man, was reaching a grubby hand down and squeezing Shawna’s breasts hungrily, a dirty smile cracking his great face in two. Dormael forced down a bout of rage and indignation at the sight.

  “I told you to keep your dirty hands off of her, you fucking idiot,” snapped the pacing man, turning to face the bigger one as he fondled Shawna openly. “The order was for her to be captured, not raped. If he finds out you did something, Karv, we’ll all be dead.”

  “I just don’t see why we can’t have a bit of fun with ‘er first, ‘afore we turn ‘er over to the pale-face,” grumbled Karv, “I’m not thinkin’ that he’ll be wantin’ her for her pussy. I do, though. So maybe I take some while we wait, eh?”

  The pacing man, whom Dormael had worked out by now to be the leader of this outfit, took a deep breath and cracked his neck back and forth before speaking. “If you don’t get your grubby mitts off that girl’s titties, Karv, I’m going to cut off your balls before I kill you. Or maybe I’ll let the cloaked one have you, eh? No telling what he’ll do to a fresh body. I don’t think he’ll want you for your sword arm, or your intelligent, enlightening conversation, do you? Your choice, Karv.”

  Karv’s eyes narrowed at the man, who stood now facing him, one hand resting lightly on a shortsword that was sheathed at his belt. Both men faced each other down for a cold, tension-filled moment as the rest of the men looked on, waiting on the outcome. Finally, Karv spat to the side and stood up, moving away from Shawna.

  “You’re a fucking coward, Jureus. I thought that’s what we were doin’ out here. Gettin’ rich. Gettin’ laid. All I wanted was a bit o’ fun.”

  “You’ll have plenty of fun when the contract gets paid, Karv. Plenty of whores will be glad to take your money and pretend they like your attentions. Plenty of travelers run through here that you can have your way with, just not this one. If you want to keep fucking, you stay away from her. Savvy?”

  “Savvy,” Karv spat again, and moved away to sit next to the man running his dagger across a whetstone.

  “Once we’re paid for this thing, we’ll have what we’d make in an entire season out here, or in any of our usual
spots,” Jureus said, starting to pace again, “Now, I need all of you deformed little shits to stay quiet. No one talks except me, got it?”

  Jureus didn’t wait for an answer. He moved around the fire, drawing out a symbol into the dirt, referencing a piece of folded parchment he’d pulled from somewhere on his person. This was not at all what Dormael had expected. Sure, they were bandits, and sure, they were being paid specifically to look for Shawna. But who in the Six Hells was this cloaked one they talked about, the pale-face? And what was all that talk about fresh bodies? It gave Dormael the chills to think of it. And why was the bandit leader drawing symbols around the fire?

  After Jureus finished with his drawing, he stood and pricked his finger with a dagger in his belt, and tossed his hand at the flames, dropping some blood into it. He muttered something in a strange, guttural language that Dormael had never heard, and stood back from the flames, waiting. Dormael’s heart sank as he realized what Jureus was doing. He was contacting someone.

  He was using Necromancy.

  In all his time as a Warlock, only two people had been convicted of using Necromancy. Both had been sentenced and executed summarily, but before they’d been caught they’d caused a great amount of damage and dealt out death without hesitation or thought. Necromancers were followers of Saarnok, the dark god of the underworld. They were wizards, who for one reason or another, turned from the common use of magic and instead used it to commune with Saarnok and his minions. Necromancy used pieces of dead, and sometimes living, flesh to accomplish its goals. It consumed it, like a fire consumed wood, as a sacrifice to Saarnok.

  Necromancers came in all shapes and sizes, and obviously Jureus had to have been at least the smallest bit Blessed or Learned to use it. Some Necromancers only dabbled in the dark art, as Dormael suspected Jureus did, without steeping to the deepest levels of corruption that others did. The worst of them could do amazing, if disgusting, things with the power. Thankfully the latter were few and far between, indeed, and in the past few hundred years there had only been a handful of them to reach that level of power. Their names were memorized and recited at the Conclave, forever burned into the minds of wizards as villains.

  Victor the Unfeeling, who had butchered an entire village of people in Dannon and used his powers to enslave their dead bodies into his service, was one. Stragen Childeater, whose favorite activity had earned him his title, and Saarn of the Thorn, who’d used his powers to subvert the king of Shera and had almost brought low the entire kingdom in his mad quest for power, were two of the most infamous names in history because of their use of Necromancy, and if Dormael’s guess was correct, a new name was going to join them before this was over.

  There was a word for the worst of them, those that ate the dead flesh and gained powers from it, those that cut into bodies and used rituals to enslave them, and those that summoned monstrosities from the underworld and rode the night with packs of howling demons.

  Vilthinum. In Old Vendon it translated roughly into “those who eat the dead”. Over the years, though, it gained the evil connotation that it was associated with. It was applied to the most powerful and vilest of Necromancers, and Dormael suspected he was about to see one for himself. He swallowed and forced himself to sit and watch.

  As Jureus spoke the last phrase, the fire suddenly flared upwards and spilled light into the surrounding woods, causing the men inside the circle to throw their arms over their eyes against the heat. The sudden blast of light made Dormael close his own eyes against it, his over-sensitive vision catching the light in great detail and causing him a small amount of pain. When he opened them again and looked back into the clearing, the flare of light was gone.

  A new man stood in the campsite, or perhaps his shade did, completely covered in some sort of black robe. His hood was drawn up, hiding his eyes, and his sleeves were so long that only the tips of his fingers showed underneath them. He stood quietly, not really looking around the campsite but only just turning his head the slightest amount to take in his surroundings. His chin poked from the shadows of his hood, gray pallid skin stretched tight over a grimacing skull. Dormael thought that he could see strange marks, or perhaps scars, scribbled across the surface of the dead-looking flesh. At first glance, Dormael thought that the cloak must have been made of some strange, extra heavy material, but when he looked a second time he noticed a very strange fact.

  The black-cloaked man was soaking wet. That was certainly curious.

  The other men in the camp tried their best to be quiet and avoid the notice of the slight man who now stood in the camp. There was no noise except the popping and crackling of the fire, and the constant sound of the wind blowing through the mountains. Finally, Jureus spoke.

  “We’ve got the girl,” he said simply to the dark man standing before him, “Caught her not an hour ago. She was riding through the pass with a few companions, one a warrior, and two wizards.”

  “Wizards, you say?” the cloaked man rasped, his voice coming out in a coarse whisper as if his throat had been cut at some point and he had trouble speaking. The sound made Dormael’s skin crawl.

  “Yes. Two of them,” Jureus replied, bowing his head ever so slightly and trying not to gaze into the shadowed hood of the man.

  “And where, Jureus, are these wizards now?”

  “Dead, most likely. We grabbed the girl and dragged her off. I left the majority of my men to deal with her friends.”

  “So what you mean to say to me, Jureus, is that you don’t know. You mean to say that you weren’t thorough. Do not invoke my displeasure, Jureus. You wouldn’t survive it,” the cloaked man hissed, coming forward a step.

  “Of course. I will make sure of them as quickly as possible.”

  “Do so. If the Conclave has a stake in this, then things have become decidedly more complicated. Do not underestimate the abilities of the Blessed, Jureus, whatever you think of them. They would fry you where you stand if they knew of even your modest abilities. This contract was for two things: the girl and her belongings, and the utmost amount of secrecy. If you fail to deliver me one or the other, I will kill you myself, Jureus. You wouldn’t like to become my servant would you?”

  “No, Master, I would not –,” Jureus began, but the cloaked man cut him off.

  “It was not a question meant for your reply, Jureus. Show me the girl.”

  Jureus stepped aside and gestured at Shawna’s unconscious form tied to the post. The cloaked man walked over to her and squatted down, looking at her face intently. He seemed satisfied, and stood to face Jureus again.

  “Did you find her belongings?”

  “They are being rounded up as we speak,” Jureus assented, bowing his head slightly.

  “Good. Keep her here. I will come within the next ten-day week. Do not disappoint me, Jureus. If you fail in this I will disembowel you and eat your corpse myself.”

  With that, the cloaked man stepped nearer to the fire and his eyes fell on the lounging man, who had begun to sharpen his dagger again as the conversation had ensued. The blade made a scraping noise on the whetstone, rhythmic and soothing, but the cloaked man stopped dead in his tracks and Dormael could sense the anger coming from the man as surely as if he could see his face. The bandit froze, the scraping noise cutting off abruptly.

  “What?” the bandit said, as if that were all he could think to say.

  The cloaked man’s gaze went from his face to the hand holding the whetstone, and he made a disgusted noise. “Nothing.”

  With that, the cloaked man stepped into the flames and was gone.

  Dormael felt tension leave the campsite like a long sigh as the men around the fire relaxed. Dormael himself realized that he’d also been holding his breath while the cloaked man, or his shade, had been present. He shivered, but in his bird form the gesture came out as a ruffling of his wings.

  Jureus moved to the fire and began to kick dirt over the symbols he’d scraped into the ground. He muttered to himself darkly as he did, accenting
his curses with light kicks. Finally he turned and gazed daggers at Karv and his companion, who had resumed his sharpening upon the Vilthinum’s departure.

  “Get out there and find out what in the Six Hells is keeping the boys. I want the girl’s belongings here now. They’ve had plenty of Gods damned time to kill those bastards and get back here,” Jureus snapped at the two men. Karv sighed and made a show of standing in his own time, rising to his full height and stretching his massive shoulders.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Karv said, smirking at Jureus as the man shot him a murderous glare. Karv turned to leave the campsite, headed right for where Dormael thought Allen must be hidden. Dormael had to make his move.

  He flapped his wings, rising from the tree branch he’d been sitting on and began a controlled fall to the ground. As he went, he poured his magic down into his body, sliding once again into the familiar form of his own skin. Dormael tried not to waste a second, reaching once again into his Kai as his feet hit the ground, preparing a magical strike that would end the greatest threat in the camp.

  He’d underestimated Jureus.

  “To arms!” Jureus called at the very same instant that Dormael’s feet hit the ground. As Dormael lashed out with his power, sending a stream of lightning at the would-be Necromancer, he felt the sting of a mind numbing mental slap that accompanied his spell being Splintered.

  The lightning split a slight distance from Jureus, arcing out into the night and striking a tree on the edge of the campsite, sending white-hot sparks skyward and igniting the winter-dried wood into bright orange flame. Dormael also saw it hit somewhere inside the camp, near to the man who had been sharpening his dagger. Pins and needles snaked down Dormael’s neck and arms as his magic recovered, and before he could bring his power to bear once again, he was in Jureus’s magical grasp.

  Pain suddenly closed around Dormael’s torso, pushing the breath from his lungs and causing the blood to pool up in his head as he felt some invisible force close around his chest. His first instinct was to claw at the invisible grasp, though he knew somewhere in his mind that it was futile. His fingers met nothing but hardened air as he tried in vain to wrest himself physically from Jureus’s power. He dimly saw the battle raging around the rest of the camp as Allen and D’Jenn joined the fight, but his mind was full of that all too human panic that grips people when they are being smothered.