by J. S. Bangs
Fire of Ages
The Powers of Amur, Book 6
J.S. Bangs
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Fire of Ages
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Map
Fire of Ages
Navran
Mandhi
Daladham
Navran
Vapathi
Mandhi
Daladham
Navran
Vapathi
Navran
Daladham
Mandhi
Daladham
Mandhi
Navran
Vapathi
Mandhi
Vapathi
Navran
Vapathi
Mandhi
Daladham
Vapathi
Mandhi
Daladham
Navran
Vapathi
Mandhi
Navran
Epilogue Navran
Mandhi
A Word from the Author Storm Bride
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Table of contents
Copyright and Thanks
Fire of Ages
Copyright © 2017 by J.S. Bangs.
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Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
Map by Robert Altbauer
Editing by Stephanie Lorée
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. You may find a summary of the license and a link to the full license here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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It was an uneventful trade voyage until they ran into the woman walking across the surface of the waves. Then came the pirates, the sharks, and the imperial guard. Will Patara risk his cargo and his livelihood to save the last member of a magical lineage?
The Wave Speaker is a novella that takes place in the world of The Powers of Amur, two hundred years before the events of this novel.
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Fire of Ages
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one another
– The condemnation for the crime –
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
– Anaximander of Athens (Translation from http://www.iep.utm.edu/anaximan/#H4)
The sacrifice that is spread out with threads on all sides, drawn tight with a hundred and one divine acts, is woven by these fathers as they come near: ‘Weave forward, weave backward,’ they say as they sit by the loom that is stretched tight.
The Man stretches the warp and draws the weft; the Man has spread it out upon this dome of the sky. These are the pegs, that are fastened in place; they made the melodies into the shuttles for weaving.
What was the original model, and what was the copy, and what was the connection between them? What was the butter, and what the enclosing wood?
What was the metre, what was the invocation, and the chant, when all the gods sacrificed the god?
– Rig Veda Mandala 10 (Penguin Classics, translation by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty)
Navran
There was a village here, a string of dusty mud-brick huts along the trampled road with parched rice fields on either side. A lamp burned in one of the windows, the only sign of life in the village, but Navran made no effort to talk to the person. If the villagers wanted to join Navran’s cohort, they would do it on their own terms. He waved to the drought-stricken emptiness of the fields, barely visible in the dark.
“Sleep here,” he said. “In the morning we move.” The order was repeated through the ranks following him.
Their companions on the road began to move into the fields. A young man, perhaps fifteen years old, walked a few steps into the field, curled up, and fell immediately into sleep without bothering to put out a blanket or a bedroll. Poor boy. A conscript from somewhere, pulled into Navran’s army in the hopes that they could break the Mouth of the Devourer. At least he was still alive. Most of the army lay in the riverbed of the Amsadhu, turning the trickle of the river red with their blood.
A hand touched his shoulder. Caupana, the tall, taciturn thikratta stood with Srithi and Amabhu at his side. He carried a bedroll for Navran and gestured for Navran to follow. Navran was about to refuse, but Caupana shook his head in anticipation of Navran’s objection.
“Come on,” Amabhu said. “We’ve been walking since dawn. You need to rest.”
“Do I?” Navran said. He looked over the silent, miserable masses fleeing with him. He had made them come to Jaitha to fall to the hordes of the Devoured. He was responsible for bringing them to Virnas.
“Yes, rest,” Amabhu said. “Everyone is groaning at the pace. Don’t pretend you’re fine.”
Navran grunted. “The Devoured…. We don’t know how much time we have.”
Amabhu glanced to the north in grim silence. “We don’t.”
“And Virnas is close.”
“Close enough to get there tonight?”
Navran shook his head.
They found a place near a leafless palm and curled on the ground. Srithi stretched out atop her bedroll and was asleep immediately. Caupana lay next to her, looking down with pity and concern.
“She’ll be fine?” Navran asked.
Caupana nodded. “Need to get her back to her husband and children.”
“We’re hurrying.”
Caupana tapped his thumb against his lips. “I’d prefer to bring her in good health.”
Navran sighed and lowered himself into a crouch. The remnants of their guards had followed him into the field and thrown down their own bedrolls, spears and bows clattering to the ground. They set no guard—there were no bandits or threats that could hurt them worse than the Devoured coming down from Jaitha. Groans, curses, and sighs sounded all around them.
“Did we lose anyone today?” he asked Amabhu.
“I don’t think so. Might have gained some from the villages we passed through.”
They had warned all of the villages about the Devoured. The men of the villages had already been recruited for the army. When they heard of their defeat, most of the women and children chose to come with Navran.
“And the pace?”
Amabhu sighed wearily. “No one wants to go slower, Navran. Another day and we can reach Virnas. Better get to safety.”
If Virnas is safety, Navran thought. He had a tattered army and a train of widows and children, and he had no idea whether he could save them or not.
“Go to sleep,” Caupana said.
“I should—”
“No,” Amabhu said, continuing his partner’s thought. “You weary yourself to no effect. Sleep.”
Navran nodded in resignation. He stretched out on his bedroll and looked up at the sky.
The Serpent stretched across the horizon in the west, the red prick in its heart burning like a drop of blood. He had nearly forgotten about the star in the chaos and horror of the past several days. Had it grown brighter? An evil omen. All omens were evil these days. But the stars were the domain of Ulaur, and if Ulaur pricked the Serpent to make it bleed….
He closed his eyes, and sleep snuffed out his thought.
* * *
“Navran.” An urgent whisper sounded in his ear. “Navran, wake up.”
He opened his eyes. T
he stars still burned in the black sky. The moon was down. His head throbbed, and his limbs ached with weariness.
“Now,” the voice repeated. Srithi. She shook him gently.
“What is it?”
“We need to get away from the road. Farther back, where they won’t see us.”
“Who?” he asked, but there could only be one answer. His limbs burned in rebellion at being torn from sleep and made to stand, but he would rise if he had to. “I’ll tell the others.”
Caupana was already awake and rolling up his and Srithi’s bedrolls. Navran rubbed his eyes and stretched his stiff, overworked limbs. He took a deep breath, steeled his will, and stood. His thoughts were sluggish and cloudy. He blinked, took deep breaths, and shook his head. It cleared his head enough to move.
He went to the nearest group of sleeping soldiers. He had to shake them three times before they stirred.
“Devoured are coming,” he said. “Srithi knows it. Get back from the road.”
A moan. “Yes, my lord and king,” a man said. They all knew who Srithi was, and they would move.
Navran roused another group, then another, then returned to Caupana and Srithi. By now the first men he had awakened were spreading the news throughout the rest of the camp. In a few minutes they would all be awake.
He caught up with Amabhu, Caupana, and Srithi a hundred yards away from the road. They crouched behind a hedge of dry, crackling brush, dessicated and brittle with the drought. They had crashed through a gap in the hedge and crouched on the far side. The soldiers and villagers filtered through the gap as well, putting the brush between themselves and the road.
He nodded at Srithi and Caupana. “How long until they come?”
“I don’t know,” Srithi said.
He took a heavy breath and stood to watch the stirring camp, shaken up with chaotic movement as the sleeping were roused and everyone moved away from the road and sought a place to hide.
“How could they have caught us?” he said. “I don’t think we could have marched any faster.”
“Do they sleep?” Amabhu asked. “Do they eat?”
Navran murmured. “We can’t even run from them.”
No one had an answer for him.
The evacuation finished. The dried fields nearest the road were emptied, and Navran’s army huddled among the hillocks and trees, watching the road in the darkness. Time crawled by. He heard soft grumbling from the men around him. Some of them curled up and returned to sleep in the withered grass. Nothing happened.
Srithi drew her breath in sharply. She grabbed Navran’s arm and pointed to the north.
Torches on the road. Raucous voices. Pounding on the clay walls of the village.
“How many people were left in the village?” Navran asked.
“I don’t know,” Amabhu said. “Not many. The one woman I saw didn’t want to join us.”
The torches advanced forward. There was a panicked scream from one of the houses, and the torches flickered. A woman stumbled into the street, chased by the mocking laugher of the Devoured. She tried to run, but in a few steps one of the men caught her and pinned her to the ground. The sound of her begging reached them as an indistinguishable muttering.
“… to Jaitha,” one of the Devoured men shouted. “Give your name to the Mouth of the Devourer if you want to live.”
“Yes. Please,” the woman said.
The Devoured man got off of her and shoved her down the road. With a howl of laughter they approached the woman’s hut and set their torches to the thatch. In a moment the roof was a crown of fire, sparks and embers spiraling up into the darkness on unseen eddies of smoke. The woman wept in the road. One of the Devoured kicked at her, and she ran off to the north.
With careless leisure, the Devoured went to every house in the village, pulled out whatever clothes and valuables they could find, and set the roofs on fire. Smoke obscured the stars to the west. Mocking and laughter mingled with the crackling of the flames. The thatch of the roofs didn’t take long to burn, and soon the Devoured continued on down the road to the south, leaving behind the empty, ruined huts.
Navran let out a long, slow breath. He cursed softly.
“If they’re ahead of us on the road,” Amabhu said, “how do we get to Virnas?”
“There were only a few of them,” Navran said. “Could we—”
But the thought died in his mouth. The men were in no condition to fight, and if there were a few Devoured here, then there would be more.
“Get everyone up,” he commanded. “We’ll walk by the half-moon.”
Amabhu groaned. “No one will like it.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His head pounded from the lack of sleep, and his legs ached with the thought of more walking. “We have to,” he repeated, for his own sake as much as anyone else.
It only took a few minutes to rouse those who had drifted back to sleep and get them moving to the south. They stayed in the dry fields alongside the road, stumbling over the uneven ground in the night. He heard men fall behind him, curses and groans surrounding them. The pain of sleeplessness grew sharper in Navran’s head, but he stumbled on.
The eastern horizon turned gray, and the gloom gradually brightened to pink. A hot, dry wind blew from the east. With the strengthening light of dawn, Navran watched the road for any sign of the Devoured. He didn’t like what he saw.
There were people on the road. Not enormous numbers, but enough to disturb him. The ones they had seen in the village were a vanguard, he guessed, one of many hordes going between Jaitha and Virnas. They would converge on the city. The Devoured would reach Virnas before them.
As a sliver of the sun rose above the eastern horizon, Navran spotted the peak of the first of the watchtowers of Virnas. They climbed a low ridge and looked down the shallow valley, and his heart fell.
The tower was surrounded by the Devoured.
He stopped walking. The army drew up behind him and halted. Caupana, Amabhu, and Srithi waited beside him. They watched the tower in silence.
There were men atop the tower shooting arrows into the Devoured. Useless, of course—but these men had stayed back to guard the city and hadn’t been at the battle of the Amsadhu. They wouldn’t know how to fight the Devoured. They wouldn’t know that you couldn’t fight the Devoured.
“We could sneak by them,” Amabhu said.
“And leave the men in the tower?” Navran said.
“They wouldn’t be the first ones we’ve left behind.”
The east wind gusted, stirring up the parched dust along the road. For a moment a swirl of dust obscured the Devoured milling around the base of the tower.
“Even if we go past,” Navran said, “they could see us. From this watchtower, there’s still most of a day’s march to the gates of Virnas. If they get there before us, they can’t open the gates to let us in.”
“We could arrange something,” Amabhu started.
Navran shook his head. “I wouldn’t let them open the gates. Better they lock us out than let the Devoured into the city.”
Hot wind pulled at Navran’s hair. He breathed heavily and kicked at the dry grass.
“I have an idea,” he said. He bent and picked up a tuft of grass. “In Davrakhanda, Kest said they destroyed them by burning their bodies.”
“We can’t—” Amabhu started to object, then he closed his mouth. He looked into the east at the sunrise and the wind, then back to the ground.
“A good idea,” Srithi said. “Let the wind take the fire to them. We just have to start it.”
“And when the fire continues past the tower across the countryside?” Amabhu asked.
“It does no more harm than the Devoured,” Navran said.
He called some of the soldiers together. The plan was simple, and the men executed it in half an hour: gather brush and dried leaves, which were abundant, and get them into a long pile to the east of the tower. They worked furtively, hoping to stay out of the view of the Devoured besieging the tower.
The wind was steady and dry.
When it was done, they had a line of kindling a hundred yards long, positioned directly in the path of the wind to the tower. Between them and the Devoured were only dried palms and brown sal trees, dead grass and withered scrub. The men had brands at the ready. At Navran’s signal, they set the kindling alight.
For a moment there was just a quiet crackling as the little flames licked up dry grass and brittle leaves. The flames rose and spread along the line of kindling. The grasses turned red and blackened, and the fire reached as high as Navran’s waist. A gust from the east blustered past them. All at once the fire seemed to roar.
It leaped and surged forward, sparks and embers flying toward the tower and sending up flames wherever they touched the ground. The fire marched, beaten by the wind, advancing with hungry, hot steps as fast as a man could walk.
“Now we watch,” Navran said.
Smoke obscured the tower. The line of orange blazed through the dried woods. The wind battered it, and the crackling of the fire became a roar. Navran and his men pulled back from the heat. Flames licked up into the crown of the trees between them and the tower. The fire didn’t advance on them—the line of kindling that his men had lit was already reduced to white ash—but it thundered toward the tower, now a wall of flame as high as a man’s head.
Smoke blackened the sky in the west. Navran pulled his kurta over his mouth to keep out the smoke. The land before them was a charred blanket of coals.
The wind gusted, and the tower emerged from the black. A cheer rose from the men. The Devoured were gone. Navran caught a glimpse of the last of them fleeing to the west, chased by the wind-fed roar.
“Get the men from the tower,” Navran said. “Quickly!”
He led them, picking his way through the fire-scarred fields and stepping gingerly on the coals in his thin leather sandals. Ducking their heads to avoid the ash and smoke, they dashed to the base of the tower.