Voices of Blaze (Volume 5 of The Fireblade Array)

by H. O. Charles

  Cel, please come home. Do I

  have to come there and get you? Rafa

  Celysane pushed it aside, hid it amongst her pile of uncoded correspondence and left the room to take some fresh air. Well, she thought of it as fresh air, though such a thing was hard to come by in the catacombs of Cadra’s castle. Two ofthe Forllan guards fell into step behind her as she walked, but where they

  might once have conversed with her, they now remained entirely silent. They would not forgive her soon for her actions, and probably not for as long as she remained apart from Rafhiad. But she could not go back. Not yet. She wandered the damp corridors for a while, her appearance purposeless to any watcher, but her mind working fiercely. Oslond was close to paying the price for what he had done to her. Celysane’s little

  crickets had chirruped about his gambling habits and the debts he had accrued. More importantly, they had told her of the deal he had made to pay them off. Oslond had himselfa lucrative venture in smuggling stolen jewels, and it had taken the smallest of leaps to establish on whose lands these thefts were taking place.

  Celysane would reveal to all the merchants and nobles the identity of the man who had paid thieves to tear necklaces from their necks or gold from their pockets. But that was not enough for Celysane. Oslond could expect a lifetime in prison for such a crime, and she had no doubt that he would simper and use his father’s friendship with the king to have that sentence shortened. No, she had been forced use more creative methods in manufacturing his end.

  Calidell would soon learn that Oslond’s money was being

  channelled into funding for a Hirrahan attack – an attack intended to overthrow King Acher himself. Of course, the penalties for such treason were very, very harsh indeed. Inevitably, the whole di Certa clan would be named traitors, but Celysane did not feel terribly guilty about that. Erali had never been a woman deserving of sympathy, and no doubt she knew all about the jewel smuggling. As for the Oslond’s father, Gadlond, he

  could burn alive in a cess pit for all she cared!

  Celysane smiled to herself as she strolled into the fountain courtyard. Her vengeance would go some small way to healing her hurt, and once it was all done with, she could write to Rafhiad and tell him the truth. Then, with good fortune, their marriage would be strong as tempered steel once more.

  “Hello,” she said to a silkhaired girl by the fountain.

  The young girl looked at her, and then away. At Celysane’s best guess, she could have been no older than eighteen.

  “I’ve always wondered how this fountain works,” Celysane said. “It is a curious thing, don’t you think, that a man can build his own spring and carve fish about it.”

  The girl frowned at her. “I know who you are.”

  “Oh?” Celysane did not have to be an expert in behaviour and manner to know how this would go.

  “You bedded my father when he was drunk and didn’t know you weren’t my mother,” she said, biting her lip as she paused. “Why did you do it?”

  Celysane knew this girl’s name: Aval di Certa. Her chestnut-coloured hair ought to have been a clear sign of her identity, but Celysane had not noticed it until now. Her mind had been too taken with other

  things. “I made a mistake, Aval, and Iam sorry for it.”

  “All my mother and father do now is argue because of you.” “I – I will try and set it right.” Celysane felt something

  turn over in her guts.

  “My father never did anything wrong before now. He is a good man. You made him bad.”

  As difficult as it was to hear those words, she could not help but see that this girl was innocent – as innocent as Silar or any other child. Her father would soon be tortured and executed for treason – the only father she had. She would watch her whole family fall from favour, lose their lands and have their heads placed on spikes. And what had this child done to deserve any of it?

  The reflections on the water began to merge, grow brighter, and Celysane found herself seated before another letter.

  If this is how our marriage is to be, then so be it.

  Rafhiad.

  There was more light, and more time had passed. Celysane regarded her son as he paced the room. He had grown so very tall in those short years, so tall that she had to crane her neck to look up at him when he was close. He had also grown strong from his time spent with the sword, but

  his body was not where his true strength lay.

  “Do you want to come home with me? Just for a few months? Your father misses you deeply.”

  Silar folded his arms. “I need to stay here. There are... things.”

  Celysane smiled. “You mean, there are women.”

  His arms immediately unfolded. “No... yes. I - are you ready to go yet?”

  All of her things had been packed for travelling, and she already wore her warmest cloak about her shoulders. She did not expect a rapturous welcome from her husband, especially not after she had refused to return home so many times, but already her heart burned with anticipation at the thought of seeing him again. “I am ready, and you are ready to go your own way too, my son.” She reached up to place a hand on his chin, which was still too

  smooth to grow a beard. “You must find a purpose for yourself, or a great king to serve. You have a talent that can change the world for the better.”

  “But Acher is a great king, mother!” he replied, his voice muffled by the way she held his jaw.

  “He is powerful, but you must come to your own conclusions about him. I cannot tell you whom to serve, so for now you must serve yourself until it is time to choose. Listen to your network. Explore the truth.” Celysane hugged him goodbye, and stepped into the darkness of the Cadran tunnels.

  Silar’s head pounded when he awoke, as if a thousand Oslonds marched around in it with shoes made of stone. But as his mind cleared, the throbbing moved down to his heart and deep into his belly.

  Oslond was still alive.

  Oslond had never paid his price.

  Silar picked up the empty flagon, and with the power of his mind, he made it shatter into a

  Another boom rocked the walls of the cavern and made the air inside it pulse. Artemi felt dizzy, but not too dizzy to keep flapping her new wings. Flying may have been a wondrous thing, but she could never have anticipated how exhausting a blazed business it was! “They’re throwing grappling hooks onto the roof!” cried a mraki male above her, and the light in the cave flickered as a hundred minds tried to manipulate the sight of

  all eyes in it.

  “They’re climbing in through the outflow!” called another below.

  Ravendasor shouted to Artemi, “Emmi, go to the outflow and see that it’s sealed – now!” And then he soared off into the mists to solve the problems at the top of the cave.

  Artemi was quick to obey his orders. She swooped down to the glow of the city beneath her, and headed directly for the

  lowest point. There was a narrow tunnel there – too narrow for a full-grown mraki to climb down, and it was where all ofthe waste water coursed from the cave to the river systems beyond the mountain. Evidently the pintrata were trying to use it to gain access to the cave.

  There was another boom, but this time it sounded closer. It seemed perfectly possible that they were trying to blast their way through the outflow. Artemi

  could not imagine anything more disgusting or stupid.

  When she landed at the wastewater exit, she could see nothing of note: no wingless people and no damp explosives. All that was present was a bad smell and a collection of other mraki, ready for a good fight. Artemi could well understand their anticipation; she did long to throw a few punches at some deserving faces, pintrata or no.

  “He likes you a little too

  much, I think,” one ofthe mraki women said to her. “Rav, I mean. You should be careful with him.”

  “Why?” Artemi asked.

  The woman crawled toward her on impossibly long, winged arms and said beneath her
breath, “When the last attack came, he lost everything. He had just become a father to five little pups – still hairless – and his injra still had them suckling from her in the nursery up there. Pintrata attacked by throwing their

  fireballs and shooting their weapons, and they brought down Rav’s injra and his little ones. Screamed loud enough for the whole city to hear as they fell, I’m told. His wife left him after that. Very sad.”

  Rav had been married? And with babies? “Who was his wife?”

  “Wendala,” the woman said.

  Fires of Achellon! That was just what Artemi needed! She had not even tried to pursue

  Ravendasor, and now she was at risk of rousing the jealousy of one ofthe toughest women in the cavern. Blazes!

  Another boom sounded from the tunnel, only this time it made the wastewaters surge backward and bubble. The stench was horrific. “They’re using explosives that are good underwater,” Artemi said. “Flooding might drown them, but they’re clever. They may have prepared for it... We need to

  drown them in rock.”

  “You know explosives now? Do not insult us, child!” one of the men said with a growl. He looked like Learkin, but older and wrinklier. His father, perhaps?

  Artemi decided not to answer. Sometimes it was better to show rather than tell. It just so happened that she had seen a stash of explosives, presumably stolen from pintrata settlements at one time or another, locked away in one ofthe city’s

  storerooms. With a noisome flap of her new wings, Artemi hopped into the air and went in search of the stuff. She tried her best to ignore the calls of pintrata sympathiser and deserter as she left, though it would be a difficult thing to explain to Rav if he came to inspect the area before she returned.

  She soon located the cavelet beneath a roofthat was flat rather than conical, and discovered that the door was not

  much ofa hindrance to her. Her strength had become a feature that others remarked upon now, even Learkin and Wendala, at least when they were not busy picking fights with Rav. But it was the taqqa that truly gave her the strength she had, and it gave her the will to live another hour in this blaze-forsaken place.

  The storeroom was woefully damp, but Artemi recognised the nutty smell well enough to know that it was a type unaffected by

  moisture. She sighed quietly as she stacked the blocks in her arms, and thought of the father who had taught her about them. He had been brash and uncouth, but he had armed her with more than a few useful skills. How she would have liked to thank him now.

  When she had enough explosives to collapse most of the cavern, she departed directly for the outflow, and prepared her arguments.

  “You don’t understand,” she said to the other mraki when she arrived, “their explosions are very controlled. They are doing it in a highly skilled manner with just the right amounts. If we send this stuff down the shaft – uncontrolled - nine times out of ten it will blow up the wrong piece of rock and crush them. Which is exactly what we want.”

  The men and women looked at her askance. Blazes, there was no time to convince

  them!

  There was another boom from the outflow, and this time the water surged backward enough to make some of the onlookers’ feet wet.

  “I say wait and fight!” one ofthem said.

  “Yes, fight!” another responded, and Artemi ground her teeth. They would be so much more successful if they weren’t so consumed by fist-fighting!

  A whistle and flap of ragged

  wings announced Ravendasor’s arrival, and Artemi had her chance. “Let me blow them up,” she said excitedly. “Please?”

  He frowned at her, and looked to the other mraki about him. They all began clamouring about the virtues of smashing pintrata faces and breaking bones and drawing blood. At the very least, Artemi’s method would be more humane. It would be a better death for them – a quicker death.

  Ravendasor looked back to her. “You were born with such strength for a reason, Emmi. Use it. Leave this pintrata explosive nonsense for them.” He gesticulated lazily at the blocks. “That is their technology, but we have our ways. Our identity.”

  Almost as soon as he had finished speaking, the next explosion broke through to the cavern. Artemi was thrown onto her back and left with her ears ringing, but she was upon her

  feet again in a heartbeat. A horde of pintrata surged through the opening they had made with more oftheir tube devices raised and pointed toward her, but this time Artemi knew how to react. She danced and dodged and advanced upon them faster than they moved toward her. Soon she was smashing their faces and breaking bones and drawing blood, just as the other mraki had hoped.

  She knew that she ought to

  have manipulated their sight just as she had been taught by Rav, but in that moment, it seemed a waste of effort that could be better-focussed in her fists. The uniformed men rapidly became a mass of bloodied bodies, and Artemi found herself stood in the middle of them. She knew war better than most, but she did not know, and could not remember, how she had cut down all these people. What was happening to her? She was a swordfighter with

  a code of honour, not some brute!

  The rest ofthe battle passed in a blur, with Artemi only able to recollect small moments of it afterward. Inevitably, those moments were ones where she was not fighting, but standing in the midst of fallen bodies and feeling confused about how she had arrived there. When the pintrata’s small army retreated, Artemi went to lie against a hidden corner ofthe cavern wall

  to recover. She badly needed her next dose of taqqa, and a great deal of food. Meat would be just the thing – lots of pintrata meat, fried on the hot coals and dusted with uddiban roasted pea powder.

  As she closed her eyes, she felt the air swirl about her and whistle. “Rav,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “Emmi.” There followed the sound of him folding his wings and shuffling to sit next to her.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “A pea roast.”

  His voice altered in pitch suddenly. “A pea roast? Why would you roast a pea? I hate pea roasts. Such a waste of everyone’s time.”

  Artemi chuckled. “It was a messy fight, that one.”

  “All fights are messy,” Rav said firmly. “You distinguished yourself. Such stamina. Such brutality.”

  Artemi recalled a time when people had said of her: When Artemi goes to battle, she makes love with death. And it had been more of a love-making than this... thing. This had been something far more basic and callous. Manipulating the vision of the pintrata would at least have put some artistry in her killing, or given them something calming to look upon before they died, but she had bypassed her new skills altogether.

  She opened her eyes and

  looked at her fingers, which were still crusted over with dried blood. A blade could end a man’s life in seconds and give him an opportunity to dance his way out of life. But fist fights – fist fights produced slow deaths and inelegance. Artemi manipulated her own vision to make her fingers appear clean; much better.

  “I heard about the family you had, Rav. I am sorry for what you have lost – I know what it is to lose a pup, and the pain it

  causes.”

  He was silent for a moment as he picked at his claws. Then he said, “You cannot possibly know; you are too young to have had children.”

  “I did and I do. Three. One is dead.” Her stomach felt as if it had dropped through the floor when she said those words. Blazes, but it hurt to admit it!

  Ravendasor still shook his head in disbelief, and Artemi did not have the strength to argue

  with him. “Rink was a good injra – so clever. I think of it, and the children it cared for, every day.”

  “Were you still commander when the attack happened?”

  He nodded. “A new one. I had everything planned: the city made safe, family, years of besting others in fights... it was not to be. But then you came-”

  “I am married, Rav.”

/>   He leaned across to kiss her, but Artemi pushed him away and sprang to her feet. “If you want to impress me,” she said, “change the way you lead these people. Change the way everything is done here. Put your fights aside and learn to discuss your differences.”

  “It is who we are, Emmi. We are not pintrata weaklings!”

  “No, but their technology is better than yours. In a few years, they could well develop something that will be more than a match for your fists. That is unless you get over this perpetual squabbling, and get organised.”

  He hissed beneath his breath and uttered a curse that Artemi was not familiar with, before running off the ledge and spreading his wings to glide to the bottom. She might have followed him to try and convince him, but she needed taqqa as soon as possible. There was a stash secreted beneath her hammock in the chamber she was staying in, and she intended to make use of it as soon as