Leaves of Flame

by Joshua Palmatier

  “I’ve been here before, remember?” Colin said, humor coloring his voice. “I know the tunnel proceeds straight for about a hundred feet, then begins to slope downward. We won’t reach the first set of stairs for another hour.”

  Vaeren scowled.

  Behind him, light fl ared as one of the torches caught, harsh yellow flame flickering in the gusts from the doorway. Two more followed, the darkness receding enough to reveal Colin.

  “We’ll need to move swiftly if we want to have enough torches left for the return trip,” he said.

  The halls were empty, barren, and uninteresting for the first day, the tunnel carved from the rock with no attention paid to aesthetics or elegance. It had had a single purpose: to take Lord Gaurraenan’s Phalanx to the southern edge of the mountains. That purpose could be seen in the sharp edges of the cut stone, in the crudeness of the stairs as they descended, in the abrupt change in the path as the ancient quarrymen ran into impediments and obstructions in the mountain itself. At one point the tunnel veered away sharply, curving around a wall of what appeared to be ice, but was actually some kind of crystal, veined in blues and greens that glowed in the light of the torches. Clear in places, it almost seemed as if something were moving deep within the crystal, although no one could tell if that were true or if it were simply shadows caught by the refracting light. Later, the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern, circling a wide pit on one side, the entire room smooth, as if it had been hollowed out by running water. When they reached the far side of the immense room, they found a waterfall emerging from a crack in the granite near the room’s ceiling, the snowmelt pouring down and across the floor to the open pit,where it vanished in another fall.They forded the stream, the stone on either side slick with hoarfrost and ice, and entered the tunnel on the far side.

  The smell of blood wavered as they moved, sometimes strong enough Colin nearly gagged, at other times fading so that he barely noticed it. It became obvious he was the only one who sensed it. As in the pass, he caught fl ickers of Tamaell Cortaemall’s men as they made their way along the same path. They’d camped in the enormous cavern, their fires flaring in the darkness to either side of Colin’s small group, the phantom light highlighting the ancient Alvritshai warriors’ angular faces in sharp relief. Colin felt their presence against his skin, the same shudders he’d felt in the pass coursing through his body as they moved through the insubstantial camp. Sweat broke out on his back, prickled in his armpits and on his neck, but he tried to shrug the sensations aside. When he’d traveled this way before, over sixty years ago, the resurgence of these events hadn’t been so powerful. He’d caught glimpses of the battle in the pass, heard the clash and screams of the fi ghting, smelled the blood and death on the air. But inside the tunnel, he’d sensed nothing until he’d reached the bridge across the underground river and the halls of Gaurraenan’s House on the far side.

  That’s where the slaughter had truly begun, where the hatred and death had scarred the stone enough to leave a permanent echo.

  When they passed beneath an intricately carved arch— Alvritshai words etched into the stone high above in a style and form long dead—a draft of wind blew from the tunnel ahead, carrying with it the stench of thousands of dead.

  Colin gasped, drew in another breath unconsciously, then gagged and staggered to the side of the tunnel, nearly collapsing. Through the sound of rising screams, he heard someone cry out, heard scrambling feet, and then he was surrounded, someone holding his arm. He realized he’d bent forward at the waist and knees, his entire body trembling.

  “What is it?” someone barked—Vaeren or Petraen, he couldn’t tell through the echoing shouts from the tunnel ahead. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s worse than I thought it would be,” Colin gasped. “Far, far worse.”

  “What do you mean? What’s worse?”

  Colin looked up into Aeren’s face, the lord kneeling in front of him. But it hadn’t been Aeren who spoke. Eraeth was the one holding his arm, keeping him from slipping to the floor entirely. “They’re dying,” he said, his voice weak and shaking. “I can hear them dying.”

  Aeren frowned, glanced toward Eraeth.

  “What’s he talking about?”Vaeren demanded.He stood behind Aeren, arms crossed over his chest as he glared down at them all uncertainly. The rest of the Phalanx and the Flame clustered behind him, the torches held high.

  Colin tried to straighten, managed to rise using Eraeth’s help. He met Vaeren’s eyes, drew a few breaths to steady himself, then said harshly, “When I came through here before, I could see what had happened in the past. I could see Cortaemall’s slaughter of the House of Gaurraenan. I could smell it, hear it, practically taste it. Back then, I managed to force myself to continue. But this time. . . .” He drew in a ragged breath. “I can already smell the carnage. I can already hear the screams of the dying. And we haven’t even reached the bridge that leads into the main halls yet.”

  “Are you saying that we’re surrounded by spirits? That the Gaurraenen dead are waiting for us?” The derision in Vaeren’s voice held the faintest tinge of fear. Some of those behind him shuffled and glanced down the black tunnel ahead of them, drawing closer to the torchlight.

  “No,” Colin said, setting his staff on the floor for support and pushing away from the wall.After a moment,Eraeth let Colin’s arm go,but he didn’t step back.“These aren’t ghosts. They aren’t reenacting the past. What I’m seeing is the past.”

  Vaeren stepped back from the vehemence in Colin’s voice, his eyes widening, even though Colin trembled as he spoke.

  “I didn’t realize that was how it worked,” Siobhaen said into the awkward silence that followed.

  Colin glanced toward her.“It isn’t.”He frowned,his eyes ranging over them all.“Normally I control where I am,how far back I go, what I want to see. But since the battle at the Escarpment, there have been places where I’ve seen the past without willing it. Usually places where there were many deaths, but also where something incredibly painful or horrific occurred.”

  “But why since then? Why not before?”

  Even though it was Siobhaen who spoke, Colin turned to Aeren. “I think it’s because I’ve spent so much more time with the Well. Its taint has spread. I can feel it sinking deeper inside me.”

  Someone muttered,“Shaeveran,”but no one else spoke.

  Aeren rose and caught Eraeth’s gaze, his look troubled. “So what do you suggest? Should we turn back? You are the only one who knows the way through the halls of Gaurraenan’s House.”

  “No,”Vaeren barked.“We are not turning back.”At Eraeth’s glare, he stiffened. “It would add weeks to the journey!”

  Before Eraeth could respond, Colin cut in. “Vaeren is right. We can’t turn back. I don’t know what the return of the storms to the plains means yet, but we can’t afford to waste any time finding out. Not if they are already as violent as they seemed from the roof of the Sanctuary.” He drew himself up, squared his shoulders. “I survived this once before, I can survive it again.” At the looks of doubt, he scowled. “I was caught by surprise. I wasn’t expecting it to happen this soon. I wasn’t prepared. But now I’m on my guard.”

  He wished he felt as confident as his voice sounded. He could still smell the blood, its taint slick in his throat. The screams had died down slightly. But he knew it would be rougher once they were within the halls.

  Everyone hesitated.But then Vaeren said,“Let’s move.”

  They struck out again, moving faster than before, Colin trying to breathe shallowly as he suppressed the urge to gag. He tasted bile at the back of his throat, but swallowed it down. Aeren and Eraeth stayed close, the others split both ahead and behind. As they drew closer to the end of the tunnel and the bridge that crossed the underground river that marked the boundary of the Alvritshai halls, the air thickened and grew dense. The screams from ahead grew louder. Sweat sheened his face as he fought against the echoes, against their intrusion into the present that on
ly he could see. The tremors that passed through his body increased, as if he were locked in the throes of a fever.

  A moment before they emerged onto the landing of the bridge, he drew in a sharp breath. The tunnel’s walls were splashed with blood, the dark reddish sprays glistening in the torchlight, dripping down the stone. Alvritshai guardsmen lay on the floor on all sides, wearing the ancient armor of House Gaurraenan,their throats slit.They’d been caught by surprise.

  Then the tunnel ended,and Colin drew up short.Vaeren and Siobhaen were already halfway across the bridge, the light of their torches illuminating the far walls.

  The river coursed through a massive cavern that stretched out to either side before narrowing into a low passage, the water churning just beneath the ceiling where it narrowed. But the roar of the water wasn’t enough to drown out the sounds of battle coming from the numerous openings on the far cavern wall. Balconies, windows, and doors had been cut into the stone, some of the openings connected to each other by stairs and walkways jutting out from the main wall. The massive bridge—at least forty feet wide—arched out over the raging waters and drove into a doorway twice the size of the one they’d used in the pass to enter the tunnel. Unlike the tunnel’s entrance, these doors were finely crafted, chiseled into a pointed arch at least fifty feet high, the stone carved into many smaller arcs, all reaching from the center of the door to the sides.The doors stood open, one slightly wider than the other.

  Bodies were strewn everywhere—on the landing, along the bridge, and in the doorway. Colin saw where they had fallen, their blood pooling and flowing along the floor, faces staring up into the torchlight from the lanterns and sconces that lit the bridge and the wall of windows and balconies beyond. Shadowy figures played along the walls in that light as the fighting raged in the halls and corridors beyond.

  But he also saw what remained of the bodies now—the armor that appeared collapsed, the body inside it decayed, nothing left but bones.The stone beneath was stained black where the blood had dried and flaked away.

  “They didn’t burn them,” Aeren said. The anger in his voice startled Colin out of his paralysis.“They didn’t release them to Aielan’s Light. They left them here to rot. No wonder you can still see them,can still feel their pain.They were never returned to Aielan!”

  “Cortaemall had declared them ora-khai,” Colin said. “They no longer deserved Aielan’s Light.”

  Aeren shot him a vicious glare. “These people were innocents,” he spat.

  “Not in Cortaemall’s eyes.” Colin swayed where he stood, light-headed. He sucked in a sharp breath and caught himself. He motioned Aeren and Eraeth forward. “We should move. Vaeren is already at the main door.”

  They ran across the bridge, Aeren’s escort following behind, dodging the scatter of the long dead. Colin tried to stay clear of the blood as well, tried not to look at the men as he passed. But the stench—

  He shook his head to clear it and charged through the massive doors.

  Inside, it was worse. Bodies were piled everywhere, not just guardsmen, but women and children, cut down where they stood, thrown against walls, into corners, thrust out of the way. Occasionally, a warrior in blue-tinted armor lay among the dead, one of Cortaemall’s men, but for the most part the dead wore the armor of Gaurraenan, or the casual dress of the time, women with lots of drapery and hanging folds to their dresses, the men with boots and loose pants and shirts embroidered down the lengths of the arms and legs. In the close confines of the corridors and halls, the reek was cloying, enough that Colin breathed through his mouth, one hand raised to his face. His eyes began to water, but he raced forward, taking the lead even as Vaeren, Siobhaen, and the others in front slowed. He felt the urge to brandish his staff as the sounds of fighting grew louder and closer, but he swore to himself and kept moving. He couldn’t ignore the fact that the dead around him were growing fresher. Blood had not pooled and settled yet, was still seeping from new wounds. As they passed door after door, he caught glimpses of Alvritshai fighting each other out of the corner of his eye, heard women shrieking, men bellowing, children crying. He drew his sleeve across his sweaty face to clear his eyes, noticed that some of the bodies on the floor to either side were now moving, not yet dead. One Alvritshai reached out as he passed, blood bubbling from his mouth; another sucked in air through a stab wound in the chest, hand clutched over his heart, attempting to keep the wound closed.

  And then they lurched down a widening stairwell and out into a grand hall.

  Columns rose from floor to ceiling, thick and etched with hundreds of names and dates and deeds, a history of House Gaurraenan. The walls were lined with massive tapestries, interspersed with banners and paintings, urns and statues. The marble fl oor was coated with blood, bodies everywhere.At the far end of the hall,where three thrones stood, the level of the floor rising toward them in wide steps, the Cortaemall were battling a large force of the Gaurraenan Phalanx.

  Even in the one swift glance, Colin could see the fight was hopeless. There was nowhere for the Gaurraenan to retreat to, nowhere for them to run. Their desperation was as thick on the air as the stench of death.

  “Aielan’s Light,” Vaeren breathed at Colin’s shoulder.

  Colin blinked, and saw the hall as it stood now, littered with the remains of thousands of dead. The tapestries were gone, the statues and urns broken. The columns containing the history of the House had been mauled, two damaged so badly they’d shattered, chunks of stone scattered around the jagged stump of the base.

  Reality wavered and the past reasserted itself, a woman’s scream rising to echo through the chamber. She cowered near one of the thrones, the guardsmen of the House surrounding her. Another woman stood beside her, a band of twisted gold in her hair, her stance regal, her clothes too fine and elegant to be anything but a noble’s.The Alvritshai warriors fought savagely to protect her, but she did not flinch from the carnage. She glared out over it, her eyes filled with contempt.

  Gaurraenan’s wife, Colin realized. The Lady of the House.

  Her gaze turned toward him and something inside Colin’s stomach seized. He gasped, clutched at his gut, leaned forward over the pain, even as fresh tremors coursed through his body.

  “Eraeth!” Vaeren shouted.

  Hands grabbed both of his arms beneath the shoulder, tried to raise him upright, but new pain shot through his body.

  “We have to stop,” Aeren said from somewhere to Colin’s left. He could no longer see any of the group, could only see the past, the dead and the dying, the blood and bodies. He could feel their hands, but he couldn’t see them. He could barely hear them.

  “No,” he hissed through clenched teeth. He waved with his staff toward the mouth of the corridor across the long stretch of the hall, then realized they wouldn’t be able to see it, not with their torchlight. He could only see it because the entire hall was lit with the burning sconces of the past. “There. Go there.”

  They didn’t hesitate. Lifting him up between them, Vaeren and Eraeth hauled him across the hall, his feet dragging on the floor. He gasped as another wave of pain swept through him, sucked in a ragged breath, heard Siobhaen demand harshly, “What’s happening to him? Look at his arms! It looks like he’s fading, as if he isn’t really there!”

  And then they were through the hall, into the corridor beyond, but the pain didn’t stop. It escalated and he gasped, “Get me out. Get me out before it catches me completely.” Pain lanced through his arms and legs and he cried out, the cry ending in a moan, but he suddenly realized what was happening, why it was so painful. He’d been wrong. He’d thought the past was intruding on the present, that it was surging forward. But it wasn’t. The past was trying to drag him back, trying to pull him there, into the horror, into the miasma of death. Somehow, it had become a riptide, an undertow, trying to suck him down into the blackness that Cortaemall had visited upon the place. That’s why they could see him, why they reacted to him—the lord in the pass who had glared at him, the
lady in the hall. He was actually there. He was caught between the past and the present and it was ripping him apart.

  Horror spread through him at the realization and he frantically clawed toward the present. He was nearly completely caught in the past now; he could see nothing of the present, only the carnage of the halls. Even as Eraeth and Vaeren dragged him forward, he saw three Cortaemall Phalanx butchering a mother and two children, all three cowering at the base of a wall, the woman’s hands raised imploringly even as the cattans fell. Two more chased a group of servants down a side hall, cutting them down from behind, the women shrieking as they ran. Colin’s gorge rose as he tried to draw back, but the only reference he had was the insubstantial hands that pulled him along the corridor.

  The hands.

  Instead of reaching for the present, he focused on the hands holding him upright, closed his eyes to the death and destruction on all sides, tried to shut his ears to the sounds. He drew in a ragged breath, slowly, through his mouth, and pulled himself toward the pain in his arms and armpit where Eraeth and Vaeren gripped him so tight he could already feel his arms tingling where they’d cut off the circulation. He pushed through that growing numbness, enfolded himself in it, and felt the past receding, the shouts and cries of the hunted in the halls of Gaurraenan growing fainter. Through the prickling of his arms, he heard Aeren commanding the rest of his Phalanx to move faster and realized he hadn’t been able to hear them at all a moment before. Hope surging in his chest, he pulled the tingling closer, strove toward it with every beat of his heart, used it as his lifeline to the present. The past began to pull away, but he could feel its greedy undercurrent still attempting to draw him down into its depths. He mentally kicked at it, as if he were truly trapped underwater and struggling upward toward light and air. He felt the pressure of the undertow in his chest, squeezing—