Flametouched

by Brian K. Fuller

  But there, in front of the Eternal Flame, he had felt that odd sentimentality that he thought no longer a part of his nature. He had remembered the soft embrace of his flaxen-haired mother after he had skinned his knee tripping over their gray cat, a memory he would have never recalled on his own. The wonderment that had struck him upon first hiking the eastern slopes of Ice Fire Mountains returned to his heart with redoubled force. And of all things, the stray thought of Lady Hightower’s exquisite beauty had set him aflame with a passion and desire he had long suppressed and considered the realm of young fools.

  He had quashed these thoughts. He had tried to let the Primal Water loose upon its natural opposite, but Lady Hightower had burned it out of him, and the Shadow had fled from her ignited hands. She had banished the Shadow, had torn it out of the Primal Water with hardly any effort. It could not abide her light and her heat.

  The Primal Fire was the superior of the Primal Shadow.

  And at that thought some feeling jabbed at his heart. What was it?

  I sense a hope within you, the Shadow said, voice castigating. Just because your army isn’t completely annihilated is no cause for joy. Focus on what must be done.

  He unstoppered the waterskin he had confiscated from a corpse and drank deeply. By the time he had finished his meetings with the Field Commanders, his raw, burned throat felt ill used despite the Shadow’s deadening effect on the pain. The lady’s burned handprint on his neck was uncomfortable beneath the collar of his shirt, but even as injured as he was, the Shadow’s presence had freed him from exhaustion.

  You must find the Queen, it commanded. I can help you get into the city. The Primal Water is in there somewhere, as well. If you can absorb it while I am with you, you will be formidable indeed.

  Shouldn’t he feel elated at the prospect of such power? He didn’t. Gathering as much capability as he could was simply the logical thing to do.

  How do we find her? Melchor asked. She will be in hiding.

  One of my gifts is Fear Finding. I have roots and seeds in the dark soil of every heart. If you know what Arianne fears most, then I can sense her and lead you to her.

  Melchor thought for a moment. What would a young Queen faced with war fear most? The loss of her country? The loss of her own life? Perhaps she feared for Baron Carver, for it seemed clear now that the two cared for each other. Another strange feeling pricked his heart. He shoved it down and tried to put himself in her shoes, and the answer came to him as clear as day: failure. Or even more specifically, the shame that Bittermarch had fallen to its foes and she had lost it in her weakness.

  He relayed his thoughts to the Shadow, and in moments he felt a connection, an odd tendril uncoiling from his heart growing outward. But it didn’t stretch to the city, it stretched into the wilderness to the northeast. Queen Arianne Hightower had quit Bellshire. Wise? Yes. But head north? The choice was odd. Would she not instead flee south toward her army hastening to return home?

  But then came the connection, as if the tendril had struck into soil and knew what grew there and who did the gardening. It was indeed Arianne. Finding her would be easier than he thought. But again, the thought of her face stoked some fleeting fire in his heart that he couldn’t quite identify.

  Do not gloat in your power, the Shadow chastised. We must hurry before she escapes our grasp.

  Melchor focused his mind on the task at hand and angled his way around the massive corpse of one of the mammoths that the Creetisians had managed to fell. He walked toward the edges of the encampment where the destruction was relatively light. While he doubted the Queen had a large guard around her for a stealthy trip north, he would gather soldiers to deal with whatever protection she had. How many would he need?

  In the end, he settled on fifty, and while none of the soldiers he had picked appeared enthusiastic about marching off into the countryside at the onset of evening, they all knew better than to cross a member of the Fist. Before the quarter moon had risen above the tips of the Ice Fire Mountains they set off, finding the road toward Harrickshire an hour later.

  While Melchor could see without difficulty, he had to allow his nearly blinded companions lanterns so they could move with enough speed to overtake their quarry. He could sense Arianne moving slowly ahead of them. Another two hours and they would catch them. If they could keep pace, he would have the Lady Hightower and maybe even Davon Carver in his sights well before midnight.

  Again the nagging feeling when he thought of her. The Shadow thought it gloating or some hope for his army, but it was something else. It was something in his soul, his heart. Something that rebelled against the utter apathy the Shadow had used to displace every feeling.

  Then the ephemeral feeling became a nagging idea, and while he hiked into the forest, the nagging idea became a risky plan.

  Davon stumbled over a root and caught himself before he fell, stirring up a ruckus among the dried leaves and snapping branches. Weariness had settled into his bones, the stirring dark of the Elder Wood calling for him to rest from days of running and toil.

  But he couldn’t. Not yet. He had to get Arianne far enough away from the city that no one could track and find her. His unsettled mind couldn’t stop reliving the harrowing memory of the shadow form that had driven the mammoth away. How far would Arianne need to go to be safe from such a thing? He only had his fear by which to gauge the distance, but whatever he felt, they would have to stop soon. He wasn’t the only one on the verge of falling face first to the forest floor.

  He chanced a glance behind him. While his vision was good enough to see, the rest of his party were forced to make their way double file by the light of three hunks of glowing blue moss. Even Ki’s lively gait had dwindled to little better than a shuffle, and Arianne leaned heavily on her sister, or perhaps it was the other way round. The soldiers fared best, but it had been a long day everyone.

  After a few more minutes of plodding, he stopped. A trio of Elder Oak formed a broad clearing next to a noisy stream that splashed against granite rocks and dead fall. The water would cover the noise of their camp and provide them refreshment, but he would need to find a way to cross the stream before he could rest.

  The group caught up to him and stopped. “We’ll rest here,” he said, earning a chorus of gratitude in return.

  “A very king-like decision,” Mr. Goodwin quipped. Davon still couldn’t get used to the man’s youthful appearance, but he would rip his limbs off if he didn’t quit teasing him about Arianne’s very unfortunate revelation about the Queen’s will. What was Filippa thinking? She knew what his reputation was. Even more, he was sure she knew how much he hated politics.

  Bitterly, he realized that Filippa had carefully calculated that his love for Arianne would outweigh his objections, and as the exhausted Lady Hightower walked over and took his arm, he knew the dead Queen was right. How could he ever give her up? But how could he lead a nation of people that thought him the worst sort of noble imaginable?

  “I feel like such a coward,” Arianne said. “It’s been nagging me for hours. I should be back in the city. I know staying alive is the right thing to do, but it feels wrong.”

  He slipped his arm around her waist. It still felt strange to take such a liberty, the newness of her touch exhilarating.

  “It may feel wrong to you,” he said, “but it feels right to me. I want you as far away from guns and cannons as I can get you.”

  “Your majesty?” Mr. Goodwin said.

  “Yes?” Arianne answered.

  “I meant Baron Carver,” Mr. Goodwin returned.

  Davon glowered at him, but Arianne’s smile persuaded him not to be too angry. If Mr. Goodwin’s annoying humor could keep her spirits up, then so be it.

  “What is it, Mr. Goodwin?” he asked.

  “I was wondering if we might light a small fire,” he said. “It is a bit cold and will get colder.”

  “No,” Davon answered. “We would be too easy to find. Have everyone huddle together. I’ve got t
o scout around to find a way across this stream. I’ll return shortly.”

  “Well,” Mr. Goodwin said, “if we’re to cram together like fish in the market, at least we all smell of mint.”

  Mr. Goodwin returned to Elaine’s side. The odd man had watched over her for the entire journey, and Davon wondered at his devotion to Arianne’s sister. It was clear that something about her had struck him, and Davon reminded himself to ask about it later.

  “You won’t be too long, will you?” Arianne said, squeezing his hand.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered. “There’s almost always an obliging branch that has fallen across the water or a nice set of stones. I’ll be back before you know it. Ki!”

  The Aua’Catan woman walked over, spear in hand and the carved snow finch perched on her shoulder.

  “This is a good spot, Brown Man,” she said, “but we are trapped against the stream.”

  “I know,” he said, “I am going to find a way over. Stay with the Lady Hightower, please, until I return.”

  She nodded, and Davon embraced Arianne again before transforming into a sabercat and padding away upstream. They had traveled close to the base of the Ice Fire Mountains on purpose. While the way was more difficult, it was littered with massive red granite boulders and deadfall that provided a hundred places to hide.

  The weak light of the crescent moon slanted downward through irregular breaks in the canopy, and as he followed the stream upward, birds and large animals scurried away unseen in the undergrowth. Dire wolves and short-faced bear lived in the woods, but he felt confident that one roar from his mighty throat would send them running should the need arise.

  About a half a mile up he found what he wanted, a desiccated Elder Oak that had cracked in half and fallen over the fern-lined stream, and to his surprise, he saw that the natural bridge had been used to cross the stream before. By the distinct imprint of hide covered feet on the soft mud at the edge of the water, the tracks were from Aua’Catan feet in soft leather boots. The North People traveled in Bittermarch more that he had thought.

  Satisfied, he reversed his course to head back to camp when his sensitive nose picked up on a scent that was out of place. It was to the north of them and distant, and he couldn’t quite put together what it was. Moss? Blood? Decay? The moss was certainly everywhere. He stopped for a moment to listen and smell, attuning his ears and sucking in a lungful of air through his nose.

  The scent seemed to fade, but another smell drifted his way from the direction of their camp: unwashed and unscented bodies. Creetisian soldiers, he was sure of it. But how had they found them? It was impossible! Casting aside his exhaustion, he roared into the night and sprang away.

  Chapter 53

  Melchor had ordered his Creetisian company of soldiers to shutter their lanterns and wait behind a tumble of boulders that had the appearance of having tumbled down a mild slope before slamming into the mighty Elder trees. To his fearful countrymen, the darkness of the Elder Wood was a monster all its own, something to be feared because of what it conjured in the imagination. And in the Elder Wood, the imagination wasn’t always wrong, so he couldn’t blame them for the slight tremor of their hands and their nervous glances.

  Even before the Primal Shadow had taken him, Melchor had learned to overcome such fears. But now, the uncanny ability the Shadow had gifted him to move soundlessly and without scent in the blackness turned the woods into a place of power and opportunity for him. When his foot alighted upon a crisp leaf or branch, it crumbled or snapped without the slightest noise, and that, in combination with his ability to shrink and grow, had allowed him his current advantageous position one hundred feet from the Queen’s camp.

  Stretched out on his belly behind a root, he could spy them through a gap in two trees. A group of Bittermarchians huddled together at the base of an Elder Oak, faces worn. There were soldiers stationed at intervals, and he was sure he couldn’t see them all. From time to time, the Aua’Catan woman he had smashed in the Flame Cathedral crossed between the trees holding her quartz-tipped spear. He hadn’t hit her hard enough, apparently; the North People were a tough lot.

  But Baron Carver was absent. Had he ever been with the group, or was he prowling around somewhere in the form of the huge sabercat? It didn’t matter, for his prize was in sight. The Queen sat in the middle of the mass of people, complicating his shot. Her luxurious hair was a bit limp now, but unmistakable next to the blonde locks of her younger sister. He needed to get the Lady Hightower apart from the rest so his shot could be precise. The first shot was for her, and when it rang out, his fifty soldiers were to assault the rest of the party.

  He breathed out, finding patience an easy virtue since the Shadow had smothered his desire. If everything was ultimately pointless, then it mattered little if he took his shot sooner, later, or at all. But this needed to happen. The opportunity to enact his plan would come, and he would not rush it. This task he would accomplish in a very particular way, and as the Shadow would no doubt agree, emotion would only endanger success.

  But even as he kept his eye on Arianne Hightower, her well-appointed form barely more than a shadow, he could feel that youthful stirring within him that had set him on his present course. He controlled it. The Shadow mustn’t guess his purpose. He kept his sight lined up on her, thankful he had acquired one of the quality Bittermarchian rifles rather than the poor offerings of his own nation.

  And then a deafening roar broke through the darkness of the Elder Wood like an angry thunder. Even the leaves seemed to tremble, though it might have been the sudden evacuation of everything with legs or wings from every nearby tree. He could only imagine the streams of urine running down the legs of his countrymen behind the boulders. Would the fear of the wrath of a member of the Fist outweigh their fear of some animal in the dark?

  But Melchor knew that the roar was not the work of any ordinary animal. Baron Carver was here, and it was likely he knew that someone had come for the Queen. The time for action had come.

  Melchor reaffixed his gaze down the sights of the rifle. An unintended but fortuitous side effect of the roar was that everyone in the Bittermarchian party had stood and was milling about, including the Queen. Owing to the skirts of her dress, he couldn’t tell precisely where her legs were, but he would take the chance. He pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through the dress and the Queen fell to the ground, wincing and holding her leg.

  Why did you not kill her? the Shadow asked.

  “I want her alive,” he answered. “If we can execute her in front of the walls of Bellshire, then it is almost assured that the Bittermarchians will leave their fortifications and attack us. It will also bolster the morale of our men and crush theirs.”

  The Primal Shadow seemed content with the explanation, and Melchor reloaded. Behind him, he could hear the Creetisian soldiers slinking out of their hiding places and navigating cautiously forward as the Bittermarchian guard took pot shots in the dark, bullets aimed at educated guesses tearing through the leaves.

  Melchor shot down two of the Queen’s guards as another roar tore through the forest. His men stopped and dropped to a knee. Melchor shook his head. He would need to inspire them to better efforts. Someone was pulling the Queen away from the conflict, just as he intended. First he would need to bolster his men, then he would find Lady Arianne Hightower.

  Pain pulsed through Arianne’s leg with every beat of her heart. She put her hand down along her left thigh and felt wetness there along with the hole in the skirt of her dress. All thought had fled after the booming shot, but Davon’s roar had cleared her head enough to move. Soldiers readied weapons and took up position behind logs, rocks and trees, a frantic Captain Gage kneeling in front of her, his rifle pointed into the inscrutable dark.

  Ki grabbed her under the shoulder and hauled her up. “The shot came from the west. Behind the tree, Arianne. Now.”

  Walking felt like fire was searing her leg with every step and she stumbled. Mr. Goodwin was just
ahead shoving Elaine behind the same tree, and after she was settled, he returned to take Arianne’s other arm. With Ki and Mr. Goodwin at her side, Arianne circled the tree in short order and sat next to her sister.

  “How bad is it?” Mr. Goodwin asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  Ki fished her blue moss out of her bag and handed it to Mr. Goodwin. “Hold it close to the wound.”

  Ki ripped the dress open where the bullet had torn it and peered at the damaged thigh. “It’s not deep. I’ll use a slice of your dress to bind it with some salve I have for healing. It won’t help the pain.”

  Arianne sucked air. “You just enjoy cutting up my dresses,” she said, teeth clenched.

  Ki smiled and set to work, and Elaine grabbed Arianne’s hand. “It’ll be all right, Arianne,” she soothed. “Won’t it, Mr. Goodwin?”

  Mr. Goodwin grinned soothingly and squeezed Elaine’s arm. “It will, Miss. It will.”

  Somewhere on the other side of the tree, the crush of leaves and branches evidenced that many men now advanced on their position, though at a slow pace. Davon jogged up just as Ki yanked the knot of her bandage tight, and Arianne writhed with the new pain. He knelt and took her hand.

  “It’s not bad,” she said upon seeing his stricken face.

  And then the pounding of gun shots utterly destroyed any peace left in the forest. Arianne hunched instinctively. It sounded like a hundred bullets whizzed about them popping into the bark of trees, thudding into the ground, and ripping through leaves.

  “There’s at least thirty of those Creetisian rats out there,” Captain Gage reported, leaning around the tree. “Probably more. And they’ve got lanterns. They will pay for that.”