Voices of Blaze (Volume 5 of The Fireblade Array)

by H. O. Charles

  Polar Regions, Morghiad could barely keep his eyes open. It was high time to bid them all good night and find his bed. Morghiad asked Romarr to escort Kalad safely to his chambers when they had finished their catching up, and then departed the room on his own.

  His mind was too tired to focus on much of consequence as he trod the heavy pile carpets that lined the corridors. He could feel the monsters swirling about

  and scurrying in the back of his thoughts, no doubt up to some mischief or other while he was unable to police them, but he hardly cared what they were up to. He longed to have Artemi at his side, or waiting for him between the soft sheets of a warm bed. Blazes, that embrace could have heated the soul of a thousand men like him! Artemi... gone. A thought occurred to him then. What if Ulena had not been acting under the auspices of anyone in particular, but had made the journey herself? What if she had heard Artemi was dead, and that he had murdered her? But ifthat were true, why had she approached Kalad with her sword hand readied? They looked alike as they slept, certainly, but Ulena would have known it was not him... wouldn’t she?

  “The night is advanced, and yet you are still... erect,” a silky voice said from behind him.

  Morghiad spun round, and found himself looking upon the Queen of Sunidara. Her dark blue dress pooled about her on the floor, but that was all that surrounded her. Dorinna was unaccompanied by either guards or attendants.

  “I thought you said you were busy, and yet here you are, wandering the corridors as if you had nothing better to do than call to doves.”

  “I am on my way to bed,”

  Morghiad said firmly.

  Dorinna nodded, ravenwood curls bouncing around her delicate features. “And would you like to take me there with you?”

  He blinked at her, unable to register what she had said to him.

  “Am I that repugnant to you, King Morghiad?”

  King and emperor! the creatures chanted. And you, our Queen of the Night and Shadow!

  “I am no king,” he said

  quietly. “You are not repugnant; I am married.”

  Dorinna looked about the corridors. “I do not see your... outspoken wife here.”

  Morghiad made to leave, but the queen caught him by his arm. “Perhaps I have given you the impression that you have a greater degree of choice in this than you truly have. Here is what I have: control of a school you are very fond of, control of an army your father once served in and

  that your friends serve in now. I can make and break trade links with your father. My husband may rule in name, but we both know he is incapable of lifting food to his own mouth, never mind forming a cogent sentence. I can refuse to sign your peace treaty.”

  “Do those things, and Sunidara will be left isolated and weak. Your people will suffer for it, and you will be ousted.”

  She laughed musically. “You

  seem to be under the impression that I care, sweet king. After twohundred years married to that man, bearing his children, lying beneath his sweating body, you think a rebellion and starvation would be any worse than the torture I have endured? It would be a blazed relief to be torn from him and executed! All I ask is to be loved for one night. Show me what it is to be needed, and cared for by a man whose face does not make my insides wither

  in disgust. Give me what so many other women enjoy – what your wife enjoys, and I shall sign your treaty. Do this thing... for the people of Sunidara.”

  “No... I-” Morghiad began shaking his head.

  “Think on it, Green Eyes,” she said, running her finger down the button seams on his doublet. “Think what your loyalty to her will cost. Everything you have worked for, gone in an instant! And think also of the truth that

  you need not lose your wife over this. It can be our secret.” Dorinna stroked the side of his face with affection, and then withdrew gracefully away amongst a rustle of heavy satin skirts.

  Light of the fires... she could not have meant that! Artemi came first, before any country or treaty or war. That was how it had always been. The world could burn, he thought defiantly.

  The world will burn, the

  monsters replied.

  The lines on her back were wavy like the oceans she had once bathed in, and a purple spear flower floated above them. Three flames beneath it represented the children she had borne, and a black panther with green eyes leapt over them. Artemi had collected few tattoos in her previous lives, but this one was necessary. She could feel her grip on her memories loosening, and she needed a way to remember. This tattoo would remind her of all that was important for as long as she walked and flew in this body. Artemi laced a tabard over the top of it, and departed from her mirror to make her way to the city’s bar. The rooftops were quiet in the aftermath of the battle, with many ofthe mraki remaining inside to lick their wounds or tape their wings. But Artemi had come out of battle almost entirely unscathed, and now people were beginning to recognise her for it.

  She drifted on the air above the soft light ofthe houses below for a while, listening to the screeches and grunts that rose from the fights going on down

  there. The efforts to establish one’s places in the hierarchy never ceased, it seemed. Artemi had already been forced to engage in two bouts since the battle, and she had not enjoyed them one bit. Not in the slightest. No.

  The roof of the bar was another conical affair– like a sea shell that had been upturned and shoved into the ground. A perfectly spiral pathway led down the side of it and toward the

  entrance.

  “Hello, mother,” said a voice behind her. That was definitely Tallyn’s voice.

  Artemi spun to look at him. And there he was. Alive, if a little pale and washed-out. “You’re here?”

  He shrugged.

  Was the Nightworld that sort of place? Did the dead walk here? And more importantly, could she bring him back? Artemi reached out to touch her son’s

  hair, but her hand reached nothing. “A ghost?”

  “Hmm. It looks like it,” he replied.

  “I miss you. And so does yourfather.”

  His lips formed a sad smile. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Artemi spun around again. She did not believe in ghosts. The last time she had thought she had seen dead people talking to her was when she had been half mad from starvation and

  dehydration. She had eaten recently, and had slept through the taqqa visions already. They did not come when a person was awake, did they? Or perhaps this meant she needed more. “Are you still there?” she asked, not looking at him.

  “Yes, mother.”

  “Right.” Artemi checked the peripheries of her vision for any more unexpected spectres. “Is my Sunidaran father with you?” The guilt of not asking the Law

  keepers for his life still dug at her.

  She heard him pause to look about himself. “No. Just me.”

  Artemi resumed walking toward the tavern door, brows beginning to knot. “How is it that you are here, my son?”

  “I don’t know. There I was, burning happily away in the fires that bind the worlds, and then there was a pop, and I was here.”

  “But you’re not here. Not properly.”

  “Sorry, mother.”

  “Oh, don’t apologise! Why apologise? You were always so quick to take the blame upon yourself! How is this even remotely your fault?”

  “Well, I suppose I did choose to die.”

  Artemi broke her stride only briefly. It wasn’t that she wanted him to go, rather that his presence signified something was very wrong with her head. “Silar told me you had to do it.” She opened the door silently, and

  stepped into the dim illumination ofthe bar. Few drinkers were there at this time of day, but a quiet, placid tavern was just what she had hoped for.

  “That’s not how time works, mother. It had already happened decades ago. I had already made the choice. It was will have going to have happened, anyway.”

  “What?!” she hissed, hoping no one had noticed that
she was speaking to herself. Unless... could they see him? Would they

  think him a pintrata man?

  “Never mind. Have you noticed that man is looking at you strangely?” Ghost Tallyn nodded toward a burly figure that stood closest to the walkers’ exit. “That one is a man here, isn’t he?”

  “He’s probably looking at me strangely because I am talking to the air behind me.”

  “You think I’m just air?”

  “No -” she began, but was cut short.

  “I was never going to live forever anyway. You knew that.”

  “I-”

  “And you also knew that I had a good life while it lasted.”

  Artemi turned to regard his pale face. “If I could have prevented the loss of your father, it would have been far better.”

  Tallyn’s mouth thinned. He resembled Morghiad when he did that. “All living things that can understand suffering will suffer at some point. It is the nature of

  existence. Perfect and uninterrupted contentment is impossible, and would mean nothing without suffering. You knew that too.”

  “I did know that.” Blazes, but philosophy from a ghost! “I would just have preferred for your... sufferings to have been more... minor.”

  His features bore a wry smile. “Sometimes I think we feel the minor irritations cutting as deeply as a surgeon’s knife, when there are no other wounds to distract us. Isn’t it strange, how the most impoverished and hungry man can still muster a smile when he trips over his own feet, while a rich man will scowl and curse when the same accident befalls him?”

  “Enough of that, Tal.”

  “You feel guilty because you are responsible for my existence, and my death was inevitable, so you feel guilty about that too. Guilt doesn’t really get you

  anywhere though, does it? It certainly doesn’t help me.”

  Artemi folded her arms. “Is there any way you could live again?”

  “I would still have to die again.”

  She could not hold back her emotions this time, and scowled at him. “Not for a long, long time.”

  “You cannot guarantee that, and before you offer to guard me from every danger, we would

  both be miserable if you followed me everywhere I went.”

  “I want you alive!”

  Tallyn shrugged. “Perhaps I’m happier being dead. It’s quite nice being made entirely of fire, you know.”

  “You really... you prefer that?”

  “It is different. It’s not paradise, but...” He sighed. “The world that was our home is about to grow much darker. I can feel

  Darker? What, precisely, did he mean by that? “I need to get back there.”

  Tallyn nodded slowly. “You do, but I don’t know the way. I may be a ghost, but I’m not an all-seeing spirit, it seems. Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Stop apologising!” Artemi hissed.

  “Sorry.”

  She could feel her blood beginning to bubble within her veins, but decided to keep it

  contained. Ifthis was her one chance to convene with him, it might as well be pleasant and productive. She ordered a drink, and went to sit in a corner where she could talk with her ghostly son.

  He nodded toward the man by the exit again. “He is nice. Why don’t you talk with him? You could even... you know...”

  Artemi studied the man carefully. He was well-built, even for a mraki, and his wings were an unusual array of different shades. Few holes were present in them, too. “You’re telling me I should sleep with him? A man who is not your father? And you think that is acceptable?”

  Tallyn shrugged. “When are you going to get another chance?”

  “I cannot believe you!”

  “He seems nice, mother.”

  “Well, he’s alright-looking, I suppose.”

  “Go on, have some fun.”

  “Are you sure you’re my son and not some wicked little...” She trailed offthere, unable to throw any insults at her dead son. Doing so would have been unforgivable.

  “Father slept with Mirel.”

  Artemi snapped her eyes back to him. “How did you know about tha-?”

  “Oh, palace whispers, you know the sort of thing, mother. But don’t you think it’s unfair – that he was able to take another woman to his bed, while you can

  never experience what it would be like to lie with another man?” “She forced him. He didn’t have a choice,” she hissed. Morghiad had never really spoken about that time with her, and Artemi was quite sure that she did not want to hear about it. She had always been confident that it was not something he had enjoyed in the slightest. Very confident. And why was Tallyn talking about this sort of thing, anyway? Artemi had experienced

  encounters with other men in previous lives. Theyjust had not... ended so well.

  “Have you ever wondered, mother, ifthe reason he is so devoted to you, so unerringly certain that you were the only woman he could love, was because he had seen something ofthe other side? He had experienced another woman, and was able to make a comparison of sorts. But for you it has always been different, hasn’t it? There

  were fewer choices available to you.”

  “Shut up, Tal!”

  Tallyn’s ghost did shut up, and when she next looked around for him, he was absent. Damn this world! Damn its black arts and twisted spirits! And damn her own stupid self for urging him to be more honest! Yes, of course it was true that wielders were at a disadvantage when it came to finding mates; of course it was unfair. But how was that a reason for her to betray Morghiad? Did he deserve that? Fate could bestow any number of advantages upon one person and yet deny the next even the slightest chink of light upon their lives. Artemi had experienced just about every privilege and every disadvantage that fate had to throw at her, and she knew that things in nature did not tend towards equality. People, on the other hand, were obsessed with equality. Only this

  world was less preoccupied with it than any other she had seen. Not that any natural order was a good reason to allow the poor to starve, or the rich to grow fat at the expense of others. Artemi gritted her teeth together and shifted about on her chair. Being a wielder hadn’t been fair. She had not even been given the choice to live as a normal woman, or the opportunity to find out whether what she had with Morghiad really was better than

  it could have been with another man – that was not fair.

  And she still recalled her older lives, and all those occasions she had observed other couples being happy together. How many times had she battled with her own jealousy as she watched them enjoy something she could never have?

  During her ten-thousand years upon the Darkworld, she could not count a single other romantic partnership besides

  Morghiad. Yes, there had been a handful of men who had taken her to their beds, but only one had ever been with her consent, and had occurred before she had realised the true extent of her powers. All had ended their time with her in blackened, charred sort of way that still gave her nightmares, even if most had deserved such an ending. Surely any other woman who had lived as long would have had more partners from which to draw

  experience?

  Perhaps Tallyn was right. Perhaps it was time to put this particular curiosity to bed, both in the physical world and the metaphorical, once and for all.

  Artemi took a deep breath, and strode gracefully toward the bar.

  “Hello.” She put on her best, most winning smile. Blazes, what was she doing?

  The man blinked at her.

  Alright, so she was not very practised at this sort ofthing. She had flirted many, many times before in her lives, but always with the knowledge that nothing would ever come of it. Somehow, that had made it easier. Perhaps she should just ask him for sex directly. A nervous chill ran up her spine when she thought of that.

  Morghiad, whispered a small voice in her ear, but she answered it back with: Mirel.

  “So,” she ventured, “You

  look nice this evening.” She began fiddlin
g with the neckline of the tabard she wore, but remembered to look up at him from beneath her brow ridges. He eyed her askance and frowned. “Why, thank you.” Artemi leaned forward a little. “Can I buy you a drink?” The man pouted prettily, but after a moment he nodded. A mug of the acrid stuff that these nightworlders seemed to enjoy was promptly poured for

  her object of interest, and Artemi was permitted an opportunity to study him in greater detail. He certainly had the height and broad shoulders that she had always appreciated in men – for a mraki, anyway - along with a strong pair of arms. Too many mraki men had long spindly arms that were all wing and nothing else.

  But he was also very neat. His tabard appeared to have been pressed with eye-wateringly strict

  precision, his boots shone like molten bronze and his face was entirely clean of whiskers. The hair on his head, though already very short, had been moulded with a gelling agent of some kind to make it stay in whatever position he considered appropriate, and remain there for the rest of the day. Or perhaps week. How odd that a man should have such impeccably precise hair.