Fireborn Champion

by AB Bradley

“The Six?” Nephele asked. The woman arched a brow. “Then will you take your bitter war to the other gods and cast them from Urum?”

  Ayska inhaled. She nodded and twirled to Nephele. “Yes, and then I will take my bitter war to the Six. They are the cause of this. Only when they’re wiped from the world will the devastation end. The Suns of the Six are over. It’s time we keep our own Sun shining, and the only way to do that is without the stain of those fools on it.”

  Batbayar snorted, swiping the air. “Silly girl, you cannot wipe the gods from the world.”

  “I will find a way!”

  Iron reached for her, but she slapped his hand away. “No, Iron. I will find a way to destroy the Six. They don’t deserve this world anymore. It’s our turn.”

  Nephele thrust a chin toward Iron. “Their brother stands beside you, honey. As long as Iron lives, so will they. Don’t you realize that? He is bound to them and they to him.”

  A cold hand gripped Iron’s heart as Nephele’s words disarmed Ayska’s tongue. The Lover’s priestess smirked and strolled toward Ayska. “Oh yes, haven’t thought of that, have we? If what we’ve learned is true—and I very much doubt it’s false, considering the giant statue of Iron standing behind the real one—then your lovely here is at least partly one of those gods you despise. You can rage against Sol and the Serpent Sun all you want. You can behead the High King, bury every alp, wipe all memory of the Six from every corner of the world, but in the end, this young man who quite clearly loves you will have to die, or everything you do will be for naught.”

  “There—there is another way,” she muttered.

  “No.” Nephele stopped before Ayska and stared at the woman down the bridge of her nose. “You know there is no other way. Gods cannot die, they can only be forgotten. He is their living memory. Like a farmer, he will spread the seed of the Six throughout the devastation you cause, and one day, those seeds will blossom and drink the Sun you raise. Once they do, the wheel of this war will spin again.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” Iron said. “I promised myself I would do this without the Six. I’ll stop the Serpent Sun and then—”

  A flash of silver whipped from Ayska’s side. Her curved blade pressed against his throat. She glowered at him with eyes stained by rage and tears. “Nephele is right. If I want to end this, everything connected to the Six has to die. That means you have to die too.”

  Iron swallowed, the blade rubbing against his sweaty skin. He clenched his jaw and pressed his throat against the blade. “Fine. Kill me. It’s what I wanted in Athe. Just finish the job if that’s what you want. It would be easier that way, wouldn’t it? No one would be close to you. No one could hurt you anymore.”

  “I’ll do it,” she hissed. “I hate them, Iron. I want them gone.”

  “Then do it.”

  “I swear I will!”

  “Do it!” His voice thundered through the cavern before tumbling into oblivion.

  Her arm tensed. A teardrop slid down her cheek and splattered on her collar.

  Behind her, a silhouette peeled from the darkness. Kalila wandered into the firelight. She rubbed her lumpy knuckles, her thick brows slinking together in a frown. In a few steps, she reached Iron and her sister. Ayska’s eyes flicked to Kalila and back to him. “Not now.”

  Kalila reached up and gently grasped her sister’s wrist. Ayska fought her grip, flashing the wall of her teeth. “I said not now.”

  Kalila’s knuckles whitened as her hold tightened. Slow and smooth, she lowered Ayska’s curved sword from Iron’s neck without ever letting go. Iron exhaled through his lips and brought a hand to his chest.

  Ayska writhed in her sister’s grip. “Let me do this! Stop it, Kalila! Stop!”

  “No,” Kalila said. With her other hand, she tapped her chest. “F…Fo…For…Me, Ayska.”

  The curved sword clattered to the rocks. In all their time together, Kalila never spoke a word aside from her sister’s name, and then it only came when Ayska’s life hung in the balance.

  Kalila cupped Ayska’s trembling hands and kissed them. Her sister shuddered. And then, she sobbed. Tears held back from her days in chains, tears held back during her hard life at sea, tears held back after her friends’ murders, and tears held back when she closed her heart to Iron all came spilling from deep within her. All the pain and anguish locked in the vault of her heart blasted from the steel box and flooded from her eyes.

  Ayska sprinted from the circle of bones, her furious steps softening as she put distance between her and the others. Kalila blinked at Iron. The spark that rose within her eyes faded with her sister’s footfalls. She smiled and wandered from the group, melting into the shadow of an enormous skull.

  Iron fell back against the statue’s pedestal. He pressed his palms against its cool, rough edge and stared at his feet.

  “She’s broken,” Nephele said. The woman placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to really love you, Iron. I’m sorry.”

  He rubbed his throat where the blade once pressed. “I thought she was going to do it.”

  “I didn’t think she’d go that far, but she did. Thank the Six for her sister.”

  “I don’t think the Six had anything to do with it.”

  “They have everything to do with it. Everything.” Nephele retreated to Sander and slipped her hand in his. Iron watched his master rub the woman’s knuckles. Something about the gesture knifed his heart, and he turned his gaze from them.

  “Bah, she will be fine,” Batbayar said. “First she must deal with grief. Wounds leave scars, but they heal.” The man sighed as he hooked his thumbs around the explosives resting on his broad chest. “We have a few weeks before this alignment. You have much work to do before then.”

  Iron blinked, prying himself from the statue. “Work?”

  “Yes, arphanarat, work. You remember this?”

  “I don’t know what work you could mean. There’s nothing to do here.”

  “There is plenty to do and learn.” Batbayar marched over to Sigrid and gave a melodramatic bow. “Priestess of Counter, you must teach him the Curious Count.”

  She huffed at the suggestion, shuffling back and smoothing her robe. “The Count? This is our secret art. It’s very inappropriate to teach the stance to someone not ordained to the Counter.”

  “Ah,” Batbayar glanced at Iron and winked. “So the truth must be you forget how, eh? Long nights in the dark dancing around titan’s graves might do this. I understand.”

  “Excuse me?” Sigrid’s cheeks flushed. “I remember the steps just as well as the day I mastered them. You think my mind has dulled in this solitude? Quite the contrary. I have sharpened both my mind and memory. Not a moment goes by that I do not recall what I see or hear.”

  “I am not convinced.”

  Her feet slid into an odd position as she cocked her elbow at a sharp angle, two fingers pointed at the ceiling. “Shall we test the careless force of the Shining Step against the infallible logic of the Curious Count? I will have you on your back in less than three moves.”

  “Ho, ho!” Batbayar slapped his belly before taking another deep bow. “I bend to your logic, priestess, but prove to us you know the steps by teaching this boy and not showing a fat Kerran how easy he falls onto his back.”

  Sigrid muscled past Batbayar and glared at Iron. “I am a Counter’s convert. We do not forget what we learn. Ever.”

  Iron raised his palms in surrender. “I, ah, I didn’t think you did?”

  “I will certainly not take this slight from some happy-go-lucky Child’s priest. I was—am—a master of the stance, and I’ll prove it to that buffoon if it’s the last thing I do. Rest and eat.” She glanced in the direction Ayska ran. “You have quite a bit to think about, and it’s better to begin training in a neutral state of mind. The Coin Counter is not an emotional god. He is steady. He is even-handed. You must be in a similar disposition when we begin.”

  “What’s the point? Without
the Mother’s priest, whatever should happen when the alignment comes won’t happen. It’s useless.”

  “It’s not useless,” Sander interjected. “Learn the steps. If anything, it will keep you from going insane while we’re trapped in this oversized coffin.”

  “But—”

  “No. No argument, Iron. Learn this and…” He tightened his jaw and nodded. “…I will hold your Oath fulfilled.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Curious Count

  One. Iron danced right.

  Two. Iron vaulted left.

  Three. Iron punched, his fist whistling through empty air.

  “Not good enough,” Sigrid said, her breath washing over his ear. Iron flew to the side, but Sigrid slipped her foot beneath his, and he slammed onto his back. The rocks coating the cavern floor bit into his spine. He winced, struggling with the blindfold masking his vision.

  Sigrid straddled him, two fingers pointed between his eyes. “You have yet to understand the rhythm of the Count. You are impatient, eager, excitable. These things will fail you when the time comes to use this stance.”

  Iron planted his elbows in the rocks and slid from beneath her. “I don’t understand. I’m counting perfectly.” He launched to his feet and turned his back. “Fuck! This is frustrating.”

  He stomped to the water’s edge and stared at its glassy surface. In the distance, the flickering light of their camp illuminated the cavern’s far wall and dark mouth leading to the raging sands beyond. Days came and went buried beneath the howling storm. Only Sigrid really knew when day gave way to night. Iron tried keeping to a schedule, but without the sun that was some task.

  “The storm will calm soon enough,” she said, standing beside him. Stones gathered around her toes like beetles. She kicked one up and snatched it at its zenith, then skipped it across the lake. “Most sandstorms are not like this, but once every few years when just the right conditions prevail, a beast like this one comes. It will flatten the desert once it leaves, and the Simmering Sands will look more like a table than an ocean. It’s a fascinating phenomenon.”

  It certainly sounded interesting to Iron. “What causes it?”

  She grinned, excited someone might share her scholarly enthusiasm for invisible forces of nature. “Oh, Iron it is fascinating. In the midst of summer, the sun heats the sands to such a degree, the very air makes the sky unstable. Wild winds that flow high sink to the desert and quite literally heave the desert into the sky.”

  “Not unlike the thundersnows. The peaks rise so high they block the high winds. The wind collects in a storm behind the mountain until the pressure becomes so great it slams the storm over the Everfrosts.”

  “I would love to see a thundersnow. Perhaps once we leave this place, you can show me? I’ve always wanted to perform some experimentation, determine the longevity of such mystifying tempests. I’ve often wondered if they ever really go away, or if they circulate behind the mountains, only ever so often cresting them and giving us a glimpse of their fury.”

  “Poetic.” Iron smirked and rubbed his chin. “You know, you might be right. Thunder’s common behind the mountains, even if you can’t see the storm.”

  “Interesting. I shall have to draw up an official hypothesis and plan the experiment.” Her brow furrowed in a pained wrinkle. “Before the Godfall, we would propose our investigation to the High Priests. I suppose I’m just going through motions now, aren’t I? If there are no High Priests left, then it is logical to conclude I need no permission.”

  “You’re not alone, Sigrid.”

  She pressed her lips into a line and stared at the lake. “I have been alone a long time, Iron. Do not pity me. I do not pity myself.”

  He couldn’t imagine languishing in this overgrown tomb for nearly twenty years. How she kept her sanity evaded him. Maybe she hadn’t, and one day she’d go full lunatic on him. Iron wouldn’t blame her for it.

  “I guess we need to get back to practice,” he said. “My nerves are a little calmer now.”

  “Of course. Replace your blindfold.”

  They turned away from the lake, and Iron secured the fabric over his eyes. He liked the dark-upon-the-darkness it brought. It bestowed a sense of tranquility that often eluded him trapped in the cave with the woman he loved, who just so happened to have nearly slit his throat only a few days prior.

  “You’re thinking about her again,” Sigrid said. “I can tell by the way your lips flatten. Think of something else.”

  “Fine.”

  His thoughts drifted elsewhere as he opened his ears to his surroundings. Sigrid’s feet made the barest shuffle against the rock, and Iron began his count.

  The Coin Counter’s stance didn’t rely on vision. It relied on trust of the other senses. Vision served an important purpose, but Sigrid said it had a habit of convincing the other senses false truths and illusions were reality. If only he could learn to trust his other senses as well as he trusted his eyes.

  He puffed through his lips and hopped into the Curious Count’s starting position. Ayska drifted through his thoughts again. No. Something else. Anything else. But what else was there?

  One other thought nibbled in her shadow. Namely, the alp who would be coming for them when the storm cleared, and who among Iron’s friends would bring the demon to their doorstep.

  “None of us are safe here, Sigrid. Caspran’s been on our tail since I left Ormhild. It’s—the timing’s just too convenient. It goes far beyond coincidence into something more like design.”

  Her fingers rammed against his shoulder. He stumbled back with a silent curse and steadied his feet.

  “Don’t imagine where I am,” she said. “Listen to my footsteps. Remember my height, weight and relative strength. Let your mind calculate my speed and positioning.” Her feet crunched on the rocks. “It sounds like you have a theory about the alp. Please enlighten me.”

  Iron inhaled through his nostrils and began the count again. “I don’t know if he’s tracking us or if…if it’s something else.”

  “Betrayal, then. You reason there is a spy among us.”

  His breath slipped from his lips. He jerked his head to the side, a wind whipping by his ear as her fingers whooshed by.

  “Good,” she said. “You’re learning. Now about this betrayal—I don’t suppose a spy is out of the question. And what empirical evidence have you obtained to support this assertion? Have you caught anyone in a lie?”

  The only lies I know are the ones I’ve told, he thought.

  “No.” He twisted and lashed out. His knuckled fist struck hers.

  Sigrid’s footfalls shuffled back. Iron grinned.

  “Then let’s examine the facts,” she said. “Tell me about each of your companions.”

  “Well, there’s Batbayar. He serves the Child. I met him in Athe, Eloia’s military capital. He told me he lived there for years, waiting for me.”

  “The tattooed priest of the Child, living under the king’s nose, yet all these years undiscovered? This is quite suspect. Statistically, it is highly improbable he would survive undetected, marked as he is by the Child’s tattoos.”

  Iron ducked, catching her furious kick as he fell beneath it. He threw her leg back and resumed his stance. “Nephele, well I found her—or actually she rescued me—from a storm that marooned us on the Rosvoi Islands. She’d escaped the cannibals living there and helped me free my friends.”

  “Brave actions from the woman. Yet, I wonder how a priestess of the Gentle Lover, disarmed of her magic, eluded her captors so easily on such a strange and storied chain of islands.”

  That fact bugged him about Nephele. She never really explained her escape to him or her time on the island before his arrival. Iron spun and lanced out. He struck Sigrid’s chest, and the woman gasped.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No, this is good. Who next?”

  “Ayska came to me in a tavern in Ormhild. She told me she made port hunting a man who enslaved one of her crew, and th
at it was just coincidence Caspran also arrived that day. She offered us a ride out of the city.” He pressed his lips together. “Caspran even boarded her ship. He still let her go. Even gave her a gold coin that guaranteed safe passage through Sol’s lands.”

  “And she has been with you since the beginning?”

  “Only Sander’s been with me longer. He’s an ass of an old man, but I don’t think he’d spend his life raising me only to make me go through hell and betray me now.”

  “You have no solid proof any of them betrayed you. However, the facts of the matter are fairly clear. You know to whom they point. Putting her sword against your throat didn’t help her case much either. The action suggests guilt may be weighing heavily on her conscience, which would make sense if indeed she had allied with the Serpent Sun.”

  “But her crew was slaughtered!” Iron ducked one blow. He twirled around another and vaulted backwards from a kick. “Everyone but her sister died, and Kalila only survived because she was with me.”

  “So when the attack occurred, Ayska was separated from you? Convenient.”

  “Seeing her crew die broke her. She cursed the Six for it, a woman who loved the Loyal Father more than almost anything in the world!”

  “A woman who turns from the gods she loved often finds herself bending to another. Her pain might have been a pretext.”

  Iron stiffened at the suggestion. He caught Sigrid’s wrist and held it with a stiff grip. “Could she be such a good liar?”

  “My words sound cruel, Iron, but facts often are. If she truly has betrayed you to the Serpent Sun, do you think she would mourn the crew she lost or be glad now only she and her sister share in the reward?”

  The words chilled his blood. In the distance, a greyhorn brayed. Laughter echoed from the camp across the lake.

  Ayska couldn’t betray them. She hated Caspran and the serpents more than anyone else among them. Yet, when Caspran attacked them in Athe, she hadn’t charged the alp. She’d stayed back and only put up a meager protest. Ayska never stood back.

  “We’re all in danger here, Sigrid.” He released her hand and pulled the blindfold down to his collar. “We’ve got to leave whatever this place is. Caspran will come for us when the storm clears.”