The Fire King

by Marjorie Liu

  “Where did he get it?” Soria asked.

  The woman shrugged. “He had it when we met, but I have only been with him for several years, and he is older and has traveled all over the world. A man can live through a great deal that others cannot know.”

  “Yes,” Soria said solemnly. “I understand what you mean.”

  She heard a shuffling sound from the other room. Robert turned to face the door. Karr did not, still engrossed with the sword.

  An old man entered. He was bigger than Soria would have imagined, broad and tall, with a grizzled strength that reminded her of how the movie actor Clint Eastwood had aged. He had short gray hair that was thick and bristly, and there was an angular quality to his wrinkled face that reminded her, for a moment, of Karr.

  He wore sunglasses, and stood very still, watching them. Soria suffered a chill as she stared back. Bayarmaa glided up to him, and slung her arm around his waist with genuine affection. He relaxed, but only slightly.

  “Tom,” she said. “Here are the guests you were expecting.”

  Soria heard a sharp sound behind her. She turned and found Karr staring at the professor with a look on his face that made her think he might faint. He was pale, stricken.

  “Oh,” Robert said. Soria glanced back, and found that the professor had taken off his sunglasses. He had golden eyes—and appeared just as shocked.

  “Tau,” whispered Karr.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Karr stared, numb. He had sensed his friend as soon as he entered this place, found himself washed in that old familiar scent that he could not believe. Not here, not now. I’m losing my mind, he had told himself.

  But that face—human somehow, no longer that of a wolf—was recognizable to Karr. It only felt like days since he had last seen Tau. Days, across thousands of years. He knew his friend.

  This was impossible.

  “Baya,” Tau said hoarsely, in Soria’s native language. “Would you leave us?”

  The woman blinked, surprised, but after a moment gave a curt nod. Quietly, quickly, she exited the room and shut the door behind her. Robert went to stand in front of it. Soria stayed by Karr’s side. He could feel her concern but did not look at her. All he could see was Tau. He was afraid that if he looked away, his friend would disappear.

  “How?” whispered Karr. “How is this possible?”

  Tau opened his mouth, then shut it with a snap. “I need to sit.”

  So did Karr. His legs were throbbing, and each step rolled agony through him. Soria took his hand and led him to a nearby chair. Her expression was closed, thoughtful; but just before she let go he felt a brief flash of connection between them, and saw Tau through her eyes: with suspicion.

  Tau began to sit in a chair opposite him, and then paused, staring, rocking on his toes. He took a step, and then another, until he stood close to Karr. His golden eyes were still the same—sharp and hard, and so familiar. Karr forced himself to breathe, but it was difficult. The room suddenly felt small and dark.

  He let Tau touch his face, though. He closed his eyes as the man’s fingers lingered on his brow, and trembled. Both of them, shaking. Memories burned through Karr, a lifetime through childhood—Tau, close as a brother, playing, fighting, bleeding, killing—until now, here, in this moment …

  “It is you,” breathed the other chimera. “I never thought …” Again, Tau stopped. Backing away, he dropped into a chair with a thud. “I buried you myself. Three thousand years ago.”

  “And you are still alive.” Karr gripped the arm of the chair so hard his fingers tore through the leather; his claws were out, and he had not realized it. “How?”

  Tau hesitated, and it was so strange—seeing him here, seeing that look on his face that Karr knew so well—that he wanted to scream.

  “He killed you,” Soria said quietly, staring at the other chimera. “He killed you, and you are alive, and he is alive, and the two must be connected. He did something to you, Karr. And it affected him, too.”

  Tau gave her a sharp look. “How do you speak our language?”

  “How do you remember it so well after three thousand years?” Soria replied, just as sharply. “You must practice a lot.”

  Karr touched her hand. “She is a friend, Tau.”

  The other chimera’s nostrils flared. “A friend? Your scent is all over her. I think she is your mate.”

  Soria narrowed her eyes. Karr struggled with his patience—and his nerves. It was so difficult to speak. “She is right. Answer the question. Why are we both alive?”

  Tau looked down at his hands, golden light flaring briefly over his skin. Silver fur rippled free of flesh, black claws replacing his nails, followed by a trail of dark golden feathers. Eagle and wolf, bound in one man. His control had improved. Karr had never seen him look human, except once in their childhood.

  Strange, he thought, suffering nausea from the pain in his legs—and from this shock. Stay calm.

  “We are alive,” Tau said slowly, still not looking at him, “because I did something terrible to you. Unforgivable. And seeing you here now, like this … I think it must be my punishment. My nightmare.”

  “Those are not the words of a friend,” Karr said, feeling as though he were in another man’s body, floating beyond himself. This was not happening. This was a dream.

  Grief crumpled Tau’s face, raw and wild. “I was not your friend after you killed my wife and child. I have had years to regret that.” He hesitated, slumped in his chair, looking every inch an old and broken man. “But you are here. And you look … exactly the same.”

  Soria made a small, frustrated sound. “What did you do?”

  Tau shook his head, closing his eyes; shame and despair rippled through the grief etched deep in his wrinkled brow. “I buried him alive. And I made sure he would stay alive in that darkness. Forever.”

  The creek water was cold. Karr splashed a handful over his face, gritting his teeth against the chill and the throbbing ache in his legs. His heart hurt, too, in a thousand different ways. Tau sat nearby, drinking from a long-necked brown vessel. They had relocated outside and now talked a short distance away from the others.

  “I went back to look for you,” his friend was saying. “To set you free, if I could. But when I opened your tomb, you seemed truly dead. No heartbeat, cold to the touch. You had not begun to decay, but I blamed magic for that. There was nothing I could do for you.”

  “And you were still angry,” Karr said heavily, remembering Yoana in her husband’s arms, smiling slyly, with that cold look in her eyes that had warmed only for Tau. He glanced over his shoulder and found Soria watching him. She stood by the black metal wagon, with Robert at her side and Ku-Ku leaning out the window, playing with a large knife. None of them looked particularly pleased.

  “I had stopped being angry by then,” Tau said quietly. “But I was afraid, and ashamed. You being dead was easier than the alternative. I knew that if I had found you alive, you would never forgive me. Rightly so.”

  “And your immortality?”

  “Linked to yours, I suppose. I have aged, obviously, a bit at a time. But death has eluded me. I did not know that would happen. I was not thinking. Just … reacting to an opportunity to take revenge.” Tau looked ill. “I am sorry, Karr. I am … I am filled with words that have no meaning. What I did is beyond apologies.”

  Karr finally met Tau’s gaze, searching for lies, for history, for anything that could tell him the story of this man’s life, this onetime friend whom he did not know anymore. All he had was the past, and that could no longer be counted on. Strange enough to be sitting here in the grass, dripping wet, with someone Karr had assumed was long dead. Worse, to find out he was alive because that friend had wanted him to be tortured for all eternity. Buried alive. Conscious. Clawing at stone, trapped in darkness, in filth. The idea made him ill. Every memory he had of Tau suddenly seemed tainted with the rage that had driven his friend to harm him. A desire for revenge that Karr had expected then, an
d that he still understood.

  “I forgive you,” Karr said, wondering if that was true. “I hope you forgive me for taking your family from you.”

  “I forgave you for that a long time ago.” Tau looked back at Soria. “Is she the one who found you?”

  “No. But she saved me.”

  “Saved you.” Tau gave him a sharp look. “From what?”

  “Old feelings die hard.” Karr smiled grimly. “Shape-shifters. Some of them still remember the old ways.”

  For a moment, pure hate filled Tau’s eyes. He took a long drink. “They are not so mighty now.”

  Karr disagreed, but did not want to discuss the matter. “Other chimeras still live. You know that?”

  “There is a group of them near here, less than a day’s travel. They live in the mountains, very isolated. I go there sometimes, just to visit.” Tau smiled sadly. “The world has changed, my friend. In so many ways. You cannot imagine the things I have seen. Humans have risen in ways we could never have believed. Their power is deep. And their lack of belief even deeper. I have hidden among them, pretending to be one of them, for more years than I can count. And still, they do not see the wolf among the sheep.”

  Karr imagined a hint of disdain in his friend’s voice. “How were you not hunted by shape-shifters? How did the war end?”

  Tau shook his head. “Badly, as you can guess. Your death … changed everything.”

  Karr looked down, wanting to ask more, but he did not have the strength to make those words. He had not fought for his people. He had left them, killed himself, rather than fight his own nature and make amends with action. A coward’s choice.

  Not one he would make again, no matter what.

  Karr said, “You have a human wife. Another one.”

  Tau shrugged. “There have been many. Women are easy to find, and when they are gone, there are others. To have someone to take care of me is not such a bad thing. Like Baya. She is a good woman, though she does not know my secret. You cannot trust most humans with such things.”

  “Not even the ones who love you?”

  Tau clapped his hand on Karr’s shoulder. “Does she? That woman who speaks our language?”

  “Love me?” Karr looked back at Soria again, and met her gaze. She looked worried, and her concern was a twist in his guts. “I do not know. But she is my friend, and I trust her with my heart.”

  “Imagine that,” Tau whispered. “You, who could have had anyone … after all these years, finding trust with a cripple.”

  Anger filled Karr’s throat. His vision blurred with golden light, but even as he turned, Tau held up his hands. “I always spoke the truth as I saw it. I still do. I apologize if I was insulting. But you know my meaning.”

  “She has more courage, more heart, than any one skin can contain,” Karr whispered dangerously. “We are in an odd place, you and I. If we are to be friends again, do not insult her.”

  Tau bowed his head. “My apologies.”

  Karr gritted his teeth, digging his cane into the ground to help him stand. “I would like to meet these other chimera. When can we go?”

  “Now,” Tau said. “But we should go alone. They will not take kindly to strangers.”

  “I will not leave Soria or her companions behind.”

  Tau hesitated. “How long have you been free, Karr?”

  “Only days.”

  “Then you know nothing of how this world works, or who you can trust. Humans are not like they used to be. There is no awe left in them. They do not respect our kind, only fear us.”

  “Soria knows what I am,” Karr replied. And much more than that.

  Displeasure flickered over Tau’s face. “You did not used to be naive.”

  “No,” Karr agreed, a cold edge creeping into his voice. “I was the one our people trusted with their lives. I am still that man.”

  Tau’s mouth tightened, but after a moment he nodded.

  “I think, perhaps, I will be apologizing to you for the rest of our lives.”

  Karr hoped not. Weariness filled him. Still, he hid it as he had done many times before, forcing himself to stand straight and tall. “If you do not wish to take us—”

  Tau waved a hand and shook his head. “No. Let me tell Baya that I am going with you. She will pack us things to eat.”

  He walked ahead, back toward the tent. Graceful, quick on his feet—he did not move like an old man, and Karr realized he had forgotten to ask his friend an important question, one of many. Will I ever die? Why have I not aged like you? You look old, but you are not three thousand years older. We are the same.

  Soria and Robert met him halfway to the wagon. Her braids were frayed again, and the wind tugged her long dress tight against her legs. Faint worry lines creased her brow, and her eyes were dark with shadows.

  “You do not care for Tau,” Karr said, not needing to be told.

  “Neither of us trusts him,” Soria replied in her own language, presumably so that Robert could understand. “Anyone who condemns another to be buried alive is not all there in the heart or head. I don’t care how much time has passed.”

  Karr could not disagree. He felt many things seeing Tau again, including excitement and a stunned, careful happiness. But there was grief, too, and distrust. A sense that this was too much. He had not survived in battle, or human politics, or led his people for years without listening to his instincts. Even when those instincts railed against his very best friend in life.

  “He is taking us to a group of chimera who live in the mountains near here,” he explained.

  Soria translated for Robert. Tau emerged from the tent holding a loose blue bag, and a red canister. Bayarmaa clung to his side, and when he bent to whisper in her ear, she smiled—but not with happiness. Her eyes held a sad acceptance, as though she was used to her husband taking unexpected excursions without her. It could not be an easy thing, especially as Tau had not told her what he was. Karr could not imagine keeping such a secret. To shift his shape—to live in another skin—was too much a part of him. To live under the same roof and be a mate to one who so obviously loved him, and yet hide that …

  Perhaps Tau was afraid of frightening the woman. He obviously did not trust her. But if either of those things was true, then Karr thought it more merciful for Tau to be alone. More merciful for both sides.

  “Let us play at being gods,” he remembered Tau saying, more than once. “Let us play, when we have so little. The humans are begging for it.”

  “No one begs for deception,” Karr had replied, always.

  And like always, as though part of a game, Tau would whisper, “But lies can ease the pain of living.”

  He could hear those words ringing through him as he watched Tau load his bag and the sloshing red container into the back of their wagon, and then hop onto the two-wheeled transport sitting upright outside his home. He made a kicking motion and it roared to life, spewing a dark fume that made Karr’s nose itch and burn. Odd, seeing his friend so well adapted to this modern world, moving through it with ease and grace. It rubbed at Karr, making him uneasy. Like seeing the sun in place of the moon. Felt wrong.

  Tau drove ahead, taking a road that led them north of the human capital and then west toward the mountains. Their wagon bumped and bounced over a dirty track that led across the rocky plain, passing men on horseback driving sheep beneath a sky that yawned blue and brilliant. Sunlight was constant, pressing warm through the window on Karr’s skin. Soria sat close beside him, also warm.

  No one talked, though Soria began tugging on her empty sleeve. A sign of nerves, Karr thought. He needed a sleeve to twist, himself.

  “I do not understand any of this,” he said quietly. “I trusted him with my life.”

  “Trust is difficult,” Soria replied, just as softly. “It is a leap of faith.”

  “Sometimes you fall.”

  “Hard.” Soria smiled bitterly. “I used to have a lot of trust.”

  She said nothing else. Her silence was
heavy and solemn, lost; and Karr did not want to press. Not here, where there was nowhere for her to run. Karr wanted to protect her from pain, not cause it.

  I trust her with my heart, he had said to Tau.

  He had trusted Tau, as well. From childhood unto death. And now he knew that trust had been misplaced. His friend had confessed to betraying him. Betraying him, and sentencing him to an eternity of torture.

  A numb horror filled him. He could not have imagined resurrection all those years ago, nor Soria. And not this. Not this. He did not know how to reconcile the discovery, except to treat it as part of the surreal dream his life had become.

  Tau had become his enemy. Once, long ago, without him realizing it. Was he still?

  Was Soria, for that matter?

  He glanced down at her, and she met his gaze. There was nothing hidden—not her concern, and not the tender heat that made his heartbeat quicken. He had been inside her mind; he had felt some of what had shaped her, and it was powerful, and tragic, and wildly fierce. He could not deny that. He could not convince himself that it was untrue. It felt natural as breathing, to trust her. He was simply worried that she should not trust him.

  Especially when he was still here, risking her life. Selfish, stupid. Yet he was burdened by a tiny voice in his head that was certain he would never allow her to be hurt—not by any enemies, not by himself. It was that sense of self, that little voice, which had allowed him to make excuses and ignore the danger, that little voice that had allowed him to keep her by his side.

  No, it made no sense, his feeling of security around her. And if it was true, that made it almost worse that he had killed Yoana and her unborn child: the idea that somehow he had been conscious enough to stop himself, had he wanted.

  They reached the foothills of the mountain late that afternoon, a forested area of large rock formations and distant snowcapped peaks. They pushed their self-propelled wagons along yet another rough trail, bumping and sliding through with bone-jarring strength until, finally, neither Tau’s two wheels nor their four could take them any farther. Ahead was a small footpath that led upward into the forest. Karr’s legs throbbed just looking at it.