Child of the Flames (The Seven Signs Book 1)

by D. W. Hawkins

  “What? Cursed?” Dormael couldn’t keep a smile from his face.

  “Why are you smiling at me like that, Dormael? Is it safe to sleep under all that magic? What will it do to us?” Shawna shook her head in disbelief.

  “It won’t do anything to us.” Dormael was trying his best not to laugh. “Sometimes you can feel the intent of a thing. This place is a refuge, Shawna. Have you noticed it’s warmer in here?”

  She paused. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “I promise you, this is the good kind of magic. We would be able to tell if something dangerous was going on here.”

  “I think a wizard died here,” D’Jenn said from near the cabin.

  “Because that doesn’t sound dangerous.” Shawna turned a raised eyebrow to Dormael.

  “That doesn’t mean his ghost is going to come screaming out of the trees.” D’Jenn walked over to join them and offered Shawna a mocking bow. “Or her ghost, respectfully. I think a wizard lived here, died here. He protected this place in life, so his magic does now that he’s gone.”

  Shawna snorted. “I still don’t feel good about this.”

  “When a wizard dies, they leave a sort of imprint on a place,” Dormael said. “It’s wild magic, unfocused, so most of the time there’s no clear intent. Where violence is done, sometimes you would find a place that’s hostile, or just…strange. Sometimes, though, other things happen. The magic in this place is welcoming.”

  Bethany smiled. “It feels warm in here.”

  “See? Bethany’s not afraid.” D’Jenn gave Shawna a weighted look.

  “Very well.” Shawna sighed, dismounting awkwardly around her wounded abdomen. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when the ghosts come screaming out of the trees.”

  ***

  Dormael was surrounded by darkness.

  He knew he was dreaming—lucid dreams were some of the first signs of being Blessed, and an innate ability all wizards possessed. This dream, however, seemed different. There was tangibility to this dream, a vivid sense of reality slapping his senses to attention.

  He floated in an eternity of shadow. He could feel the darkness pressing against him. It had an oily presence that groped him, measured him, whispered to him.

  A point of light appeared in the darkness. Dormael shied away, closing his eyes, as the light pushed away the shadow. When he opened his eyes, the light had gone the color of blood. Shawna’s armlet hung in front of him, glowing like a jeweled star. The silver of the sinuous band undulated, unraveling like a budding flower. The metal turned liquid and quested outward from the ruby. It reached for Dormael with mindless silver tentacles.

  Dormael tried to run, but his body was locked in place. The armlet came closer, burning away the darkness, and Dormael shied away. Heat blasted his face and sweat blossomed on his skin.

  The tendrils lashed out, wrapping around Dormael’s arm. He was frozen, forced to watch in horror as the armlet climbed onto him, wrapping his shoulder in implacable fingers of metal. The ruby moved over his shoulder, and the red light filled his vision.

  The darkness blossomed with bright, angry fire. Dormael screamed as the fire embraced him, but he did not burn. The heat was intense, and he could feel every blazing second of it, but his flesh was unscathed. The armlet was cold against his shoulder, curving lines of ice cradled against his burning skin.

  There were people in the flames, great masses of people struggling against each other. Weapons rose and fell in the chaos, striking people down on all sides. The fire danced a tapestry of horror before Dormael’s eyes, and he shut them against the sight.

  He screamed, and the fire crawled down his throat.

  ***

  Dormael snapped awake like a man drowning. His hands went to his throat as he gasped for air, the vivid memory of blazing agony still filling his lungs. He sat up from the ground and took a deep breath, running his hands over his face. With a shuddering breath, he mopped cold sweat from his brow.

  His heart nearly stopped when he turned to the campfire.

  Formerly home to a pleasant, low flame, the firepit now belched a twisting pillar of fire into the clearing. The column spun in a hypnotic dance, waves of flickering heat floating from the edges, as if the very air burned in complete silence. Dormael was transfixed. The flames brushed the undersides of the canopy overhead, but not a single leaf smoldered or smoked.

  His Kai was screaming into the ether. For just a moment, he wondered if he had somehow used magic in his sleep, unwittingly causing this strange occurrence with the campfire. The idea was shattered when he felt the other song lilting through the night—the song of Shawna’s armlet.

  Its voice was alien to his senses. It was something near to his own magic, but not made of the same essence. His Kai danced through the night with the alien song, flitting around the clearing like a child at play. Listening to the interplay between his magic and the armlet was like hearing an unexpected harmony between dissonant instruments.

  Dormael’s Kai resisted his efforts to put it to rest. He had to focus, using exercises he hadn’t used since he was a child in his First Four, and gather his willpower to regain control of his power. When he wrestled it into submission, and his Kai finally slept, Dormael felt the alien song of the armlet turn its attention toward him.

  It reached out to him, brushing against his consciousness. Dormael resisted, but was afraid to summon his Kai in defense, lest his power be ripped from his control again. The armlet reached for him a second time, and Dormael was unable to keep it away. With a feeling like being dunked in warm water, the song of the armlet flooded his senses.

  A thousand feelings filled him at once. Rage, warmth, pain, lust, fear, and longing all rushed into his chest like a blazing flood. The combination was an almost physical sensation, as if his heart had been replaced with a tiny sun.

  Images filled his mind, one after another, faster than he could make sense of them. A star exploding somewhere in the cold expanse of the Void, a field of burning men, a line of blood-soaked spears, an ancient shrine—the images would not stop. A rush of emotion flashed through him with each picture, until tears came to his eyes as he tried desperately to fight them from his head.

  A sound came to his physical ears—the whimpering of a child.

  Dormael turned his eyes to Bethany, who crouched on the ground near the twisting, burning campfire. She cowered on her hands and knees as if she fought a bout of nausea, but her face was turned in rapt horror to the fire twisting above her. With each image that came into Dormael’s mind, Bethany would flinch and utter a low whimper.

  Gods in the Void, she’s getting them, too!

  Dormael reached toward the girl, but his muscles felt weaker with each movement. Bethany turned her eyes to him, and in their depths was reflected an eternal tunnel of fire. The images kept coming, falling like hammer blows to his consciousness. He reached for Bethany, her fingers closed around his hand.

  The world exploded into a thousand bright needles.

  The Frozen Flame

  Throttling hands snapped Dormael awake. He fought them, throwing his arm before his face and trying to roll away. The hands tightened down and shook him by the shoulders.

  “Dormael!”

  D’Jenn’s voice broke through his befuddled wits, and Dormael ceased his struggles. Cold sunlight, gray through a thick cover of clouds, beamed into his eyes. D’Jenn’s face filled his vision, a concerned frown tightening his features.

  “The girl.” Dormael coughed through a dry throat. “Where’s Bethany?”

  “She’s right here. Sit up, coz.” D’Jenn moved back to give Dormael some room.

  He struggled to a sitting position just in time to receive Bethany’s hug at full force. He was stunned by the girl’s affection, and almost fell back to the ground, but wrapped a tentative arm around her shoulders as he steadied himself.

  “Are you alright? Do you remember?” Dormael pulled her away to look into her eyes. D’Jenn raised an eyebrow at the question, but
kept silent.

  “I remember. It was talking to us.”

  “It was talking to you?” D’Jenn gave Dormael a meaningful look. “What was bloody talking to you?”

  Dormael extricated Bethany from his neck and looked the girl over. The only wounds on her face were the yellowing bruises the Galanian Colonel had left her with. Dormael spent a moment checking her over before turning his attention to D’Jenn.

  “The armlet. It…did something last night.”

  “Did what?”

  “It talked to us,” Bethany said.

  “The armlet came into my dream somehow. When I awoke, the fire was just…I can’t even explain it. It was dancing, D’Jenn, writhing around like a living thing.”

  “And your magic?”

  Dormael grimaced. “Just like before. I had to focus harder this time to put it to sleep. When I did, the armlet reached out to me.”

  “The song, you mean? The song from the armlet?”

  “Aye. It showed me pictures in my mind, like snippets of memories, I think. I’m not sure. Each time…well, the contact was unpleasant.”

  “It hurt.” Bethany nodded.

  “You were getting them, too?” D’Jenn turned a raised eyebrow on the girl.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Bethany muttered, looking away. “It just happened.”

  D’Jenn furrowed his brow and stroked his chin in thought.

  “You’re not in trouble, little one.” Dormael tousled her hair. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Well, a few things make more sense now.” Shawna walked up from the firepit. “The iron grate over the pit is melted through.”

  Dormael looked toward the fire—the metal drooped down the inside of the pit like candlewax.

  “You’d think we would have felt the heat from a flame that hot.” D’Jenn looked over the remains of the campsite. “We were all sleeping close enough to it.”

  “It was odd.” Dormael climbed to his feet. “I could have sworn the fire was touching some of the tree limbs, too, but none of them burned. It wasn’t moving like fire, it wasn’t…gods, I don’t know.”

  “Why did it wait until now to do this?” Shawna asked. “Why hasn’t it tried to contact me? I’ve been living with it my whole life.”

  D’Jenn shrugged. “We don’t know enough about it to figure that out, yet. It could be the more it reaches out, the more powerful it gets. It obviously has some resonance with Dormael’s magic—his song, I mean—because it reacted to him before. It might be that bringing it to this place, where there is such strong magic to begin with, is what caused the event.”

  “Seems like I might have warned someone about this yesterday.” Shawna gave Dormael a meaningful glance. “They said something about ‘good magic’, I think.”

  Dormael grimaced. Shawna responded with a smile.

  “It could be something else entirely.” D’Jenn looked at Bethany as he stroked his beard. “There’s no way to know. Not yet, anyway.”

  “What should we do?” Shawna asked. “Is it safe to carry the thing around in my saddlebags? What if it wakes up?”

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” D’Jenn said. “We’ll put a ward on it and see what happens. After that, we’ll get moving. We’ll have to forego staying in the village for the Solstice.”

  Bethany’s face was full of disappointment. “Why?”

  “If this thing can burn iron to liquid while we sleep,” D’Jenn said, more to Dormael and Shawna than to Bethany, “then what happens when it ignites a second time, only we’re sleeping in some small village inn, or someone’s hayloft?”

  “It’s alright, little one.” Dormael sighed, patting Bethany on the back. “We’ll steal some food on the way through.”

  D’Jenn moved to the firepit. “Shawna, can you bring the armlet over here? Just set it on the edge of the firepit, please.”

  She nodded and walked toward her saddlebags. Her gait was pained and stiff, but she was moving better than Dormael would have expected. She held the silver box at arms’ length when she returned. She sat it on the edge of the pit like she was handling a snake and stepped out of D’Jenn’s way.

  Dormael opened his Kai to listen.

  D’Jenn’s song lilted into the morning, causing Dormael’s arms and legs to itch in response to his use of magic. He gestured, and the box rose into the air, revolving as D’Jenn studied it. Bethany moved away from Dormael, watching D’Jenn with interest.

  D’Jenn gestured to the firepit, and a piece of the melted iron glowed red-hot. There was a great hissing noise as the piece separated from the melted grill. The globule of hot metal floated toward the box, undulating as it came near.

  D’Jenn’s song wove complex patterns into the air around the silver box. The hot metal unraveled, reaching out narrow tendrils like the armlet in Dormael’s nightmare. The tendrils twisted and writhed around the box, glowing with heat. With a sharp gesture, D’Jenn tightened the iron around the box. The metal cooled as it set, and D’Jenn’s magic soaked into the bands. When it was done, D’Jenn allowed the box to drop into his hand.

  “Hopefully that will work.” D’Jenn offered the box to Shawna.

  “No one will be able to open it, anyway.” Shawna turned the box around and examined the tendrils of iron, shaking her head as she gazed at them. “What did you do, exactly?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” D’Jenn sighed. “But there’s more at work than a metal cage for the box. I warded the thing against magic, but instead of keeping magic out, I inverted the spell in order to keep it in.”

  “Ah.” Dormael smiled. “Ingenious.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll take your word on it,” Shawna said. “Just tell me it won’t wake up and burn me alive.”

  “I’m reasonably confident it won’t.”

  Shawna raised an eyebrow. “That’s as good as you can get?”

  “According to my vast knowledge of magical theory, that should do the trick.” D’Jenn’s face was unreadable.

  “But you’re not certain?”

  “Nothing is certain.”

  Shawna stuffed the box into the deepest part of her saddlebags. Dread wormed in Dormael’s stomach as he watched. The warring tapestry flashed in his mind, and he turned his eyes away.

  How can a thing be so powerful? That song—is it alive?

  Dormael tried to put it from his mind while readying Horse for departure, but he couldn’t stop chewing on the problem. What had it been trying to tell him? How had it touched the fire with nothing guiding its purpose? If it could shape and twist fire, what would it do next?

  Why did it talk to Bethany?

  He turned the problems over in his mind as they rode through the morning. The day was locked in a deep chill, and thunder rumbled far in the distance. The weather fit Dormael’s mood.

  Bethany was stiff in the saddle all morning, moving only to pull her cloak tighter across her shoulders. Her silence was weighted with tension. Dormael let Horse fall back in line.

  “Bethany.” He kept his voice low. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you frightened last night?”

  “Yes.” She pulled her cloak tighter.

  “What did the armlet show you? Do you remember?”

  Bethany peered ahead, chewing on her lower lip. “I think it was alone for a long time.”

  “Alone?”

  The clearest memory from Dormael’s dream was the flaming tapestry and the searing agony of fire climbing into his throat. Had the armlet shown Bethany the same visions, or different ones?

  “What gives you that impression?” he said.

  Bethany shrugged. “It felt so lonely. I think that’s why it hurt us. It was excited to finally talk to someone.” Bethany twisted in the saddle to look at him. “I don’t think it was trying to be mean. I think it was an accident.”

  Dormael tried to recall the feelings jumbled with the armlet’s sendings, but he couldn’t untwist them. Every vision
had landed ike a pile of stones, and during the process, they had been stirred into a confusing mass. What he remembered was deep terror and the pain of burning alive.

  “Had it spoken to you before last night?” He dreaded the answer.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Last night was the first time.”

  Dormael sighed in relief. “Were you awake when it talked to you?”

  “No.” She turned to look at him again. “It came into my dream! I didn’t know what it was, though—it looked like you! It told me its name.”

  “Its name?”

  Bethany nodded. “Fiega.”

  Dormael’s heart froze in his chest. There was no way Bethany could have known that word, and he doubted she’d ever heard it in passing. It was a dead language, and one born far from eastern shores. It was the tongue of the Vendon, the ancestors of the Sevenlanders.

  The word meant ‘fire’.

  “It told you that word—fiega?”

  Bethany nodded again. “That’s its name.”

  Dormael took a deep breath. “Listen, Bethany, can you do me a favor?”

  Bethany nodded.

  “The next time it tries to talk to you, I want you to ignore it. There’s a secret way to keep it out, and I’ll teach it to you. Will you do that for me?”

  “Alright.”

  “Good. Next time you hear it, I want you to close your eyes and imagine a rock. No matter what you hear, no matter what it tries to send you, just think about a rock. Keep it right in the front of your mind. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Just imagine a rock?” Bethany’s face scrunched with confusion.

  “Just a rock.” Dormael nodded. “You have to practice, alright? Do it while we’re riding. See how long you can think about a rock.”

  Bethany grimaced. “That doesn’t sound like fun.”

  “It will make you stronger.” Dormael smiled. “Go on, give it a try.”

  Bethany went silent, and Dormael hoped she was heeding him. The rock exercise was one of the first meditations taught to children at the Conclave. It would strengthen her mental defenses if she practiced.