Voices of Blaze

by H. O. Charles

  He placed a band about her outstretched arm and tightened it. “It won’t hurt.” Next, he placed one foot on a lever inside the box, and a stream of fluid spurted from the end of the needle he held between two fingers. “Ready?”

  It did smell… wonderful - like winter roses and honey and earth after the rain had fallen, or the sweet scent of fire blossom on a sun-filled day in the Southern Falls. It was all the scents she missed from the Darkworld, all except for the scent of her husband. “For the light?” Artemi asked.

  Rav nodded. “You will see.”

  The needle slid easily into her flesh, and when the taqqa began to flow into her veins, it felt like smooth silk rather than the acid she had feared. Artemi’s breathing began to slow, and just as Rav had predicted, her troubles drifted from her thoughts. The room brightened suddenly as if lit by a thousand candles, and in an instant, it was gone.

  Artemi was in the woodland – a verdant wood that teemed with brilliant insects and brighter birds, whose wings shone gold and red in the dusk sunlight. Spring blooms filled the forest floor, and deer sprang about between the tree trunks in a merry rush of white tails and twiggy legs. She inhaled every scent of the bell-flowers, the wild garlic, the ancient wood and the soft undergrowth that peeked between her toes. This was an old memory, she realised, of a place that had existed before Hirrah. It was land that now belonged to the Calyrish family, but over three-and-a-half thousand years before that, it had belonged to one of the greatest kings the Sennefhal continent had ever known.

  Besides Morghiad, Artemi reminded herself.

  She had been a new assassin then, still fresh from the heartache of the collapse of her Kusuru family, but fast becoming aware of what she could achieve in the world with the training she had. At that point, Artemi had already made it her mission to find good people, good leaders and to help them. And she had met Marteus Arrenfal, later known by the histories as King Ironheart.

  “Tem?” said a man’s voice to her left.

  And there he was, standing in the clearing with his famous black and gold sword at his hip. Marteus’ hair was mid-brown - the same colour as his eyes – and long enough for the ends to waver in the lightest of breezes. His features were not hard, but rather like a carving that had been expertly smoothed at all of the corners. The shadow his height cast would never be as long as Morghiad’s, but the old king would still have been described as tall and impressive.

  “It’s a long time since I’ve thought of you,” Artemi said to him.

  “Thought of me?” He frowned lightly. “I saw you this morning at breakfast. Are all those memories starting to confuse you?”

  Artemi laughed. “No. Though I suppose you are a memory now. As is all of this.” She knew that she should have felt sad about that, but she did not. This place was too beautiful – too perfect.

  Marteus folded his arms. “I hate it when you talk of me like this. I’m not dead yet. Now, come back to the castle and do some blazed fighting for me. The Queen of Gialdin intends to pitch her best warrior against mine, and I fully intend to embarrass her by using you. And perhaps win a few gold coins in the process. So, can I drag you away from staring into the middle distance for an hour?”

  “I want some of that gold, Mart.”

  He nodded slowly. “Alright. You can have a quarter.”

  “Three quarters. I am not a toy to be wheeled out for the entertainment of your royal friends.”

  Marteus chuckled quietly. “You can have all of it. Come and do what you do. I know you enjoy it really.” He slipped an arm across her shoulders as he guided her away, but she did not mind it. Marteus was a good king, and a man who kept to his word.

  “What do you think of Gialdin’s queen?” Artemi asked while they walked.

  “I am already married.”

  “Your wife did not rob you of your eyes.”

  “Sometimes I think she would like to.” He sighed and withdrew his arm. “Ah, I do not find Queen Irrean beautiful – not like Bessa, of course – no one is as lovely as her. No one at all. But make no mistake, Irrean is sharp as one of your daggers, and ruthless with it. I swear those green eyes could cut chunks out of mountains. If you are ever born with royal blood in one of your future lives, Tem, never make enemies of the Jade’ans. I thank the stars above and the fires within them every day that they agreed to become our allies.”

  “No, she is thankful for your alliance. Orta stretches most of the length and breadth of this continent. You could swallow Gialdin with a cough and she knows it.”

  Marteus pulled his mouth tight. “There is something else about them, and that palace of theirs… There has to be a good reason it has stood longer than any other. They have a power I do not understand – one I have no hope of understanding. It’s like you and your fire-breathing.”

  “I’ve tried to explain it to you-”

  “No, I don’t want to know. Fires in a person! I still cannot get used to the idea. I am eternally grateful they decided not to settle in me. No, keep all that to yourself. I’ll do the kinging, you do the warrioring and the… the, er… burning.”

  Artemi snorted at his discomfort, and her smile settled deeper into her features when the castle came into view. Marteus had started building it at the beginning of his reign, and only now was it reaching completion. It did have very many turrets. Artemi had insisted that he build a castle with lots of turrets. “It’s looking very impressive, my king. A little ridiculous with all those turrets, perhaps, but impressive nonetheless.”

  Marteus pursed his lips. “I agree. They are ridiculous, but a leader must maintain his appearances. I quite like them.”

  While she watched it, the colours drained from the sky, and the yellow stone of the castle was bleached to grey. The scene shimmered, and was replaced by the black rock of the chamber she had fallen unconscious in. Rav grinned at her with his strange, contorted face. “How was that?”

  Marteus Ironheart. It had been a very long time since she had thought of him. Why now? Why that particular memory? “I dreamed of a place that no longer exists, and someone I knew a very long time ago. A man I helped.”

  The millennia had done their best to scrub out everything Marteus had achieved in his lifetime. The floods five-hundred years later had seen to washing away his great castle, poorly managed battles had seen his country shrunk to the size of a city state, and the last man of his bloodline was but a feeble shadow of the legendary king. At least the historians had done him some justice in the millennia afterward. Stories would not forget him soon, even if the physical world had.

  “Ah. A romantic encounter?”

  Artemi shook her head. “No. It was never like that.”

  “Hmm. Fun though, yes?”

  She sighed. “I would like to go back. Can I go back?”

  Ravendasor put his hands out to help her from the hammock. “You’ve had enough for now. There is such a thing as too much.”

  Her legs were oddly firm when she tested them with her weight, and her mind was as clear as if she had slept a full night in the quietest Sunidaran desert. Taqqa really did make a person stronger and brighter, it seemed.

  “Want to test out those new muscles of yours in a fight?” Rav asked.

  Of course, what else would a man and a woman do here to pass the time? Did Injra fight too? Artemi had not seen it happen, though she would not have been surprised if that hidden section of society had possessed hard fists of their own. “Alright.”

  Her arms were far too long to be as effective as they had been in the Darkworld, at least with the moves she knew, though there ought to have been compensatory techniques here. That said, she had observed little in the way of technique in mraki fist fights. They tended to throw as many punches as they could at each other in as little time as possible, and how could more be expected of them? They spent so much time warring and puffing out their chests, there could be barely a moment when they would settle down and learn anything from one another.

  Artemi waited for Ra
v to launch a fist at her, and he soon obliged, but it was easily slow enough for her to avoid. This had to be the mraki version of gentleness.

  She responded with a quick rabbit punch of her own, but found that the length of her limbs got in the way of making it effective. She needed to gain more distance from Rav, and so she began to dance around him.

  “What are you doing, woman?”

  “Just try and touch me.”

  Ravendasor did try, but he missed three times. “This is cowardly.”

  “No,” Artemi said, “it is tactical.” She landed a hit on his shoulder, and did so powerfully enough to make him grunt.

  “Fight like that in public, and you will be thought of as a pretty butterfly, ready to have its wings plucked.”

  “Fight like this, and I’ll win!” Artemi dodged another of his blows and landed one of her own.

  “This is irritating; not satisfying for a man at all,” Rav said. “You need to show you’re made of stronger stuff – that you can take the knocks and stand.”

  Artemi lowered her guard. “That is just idiotic.”

  “What you don’t seem to understand,” Rav said, “is that fighting is not just about knocking the wind out of your opponent, or putting new holes in their wings, or even shoving their face into the dirt. It’s about demonstrating strength. If you can take the pain – if you can be iron against their knuckles – that earns respect. Hopping about like a frightened hare does not.”

  “I see. I just – where I come from, we don’t normally fight unless we have to, and we do tend to get more things done. Once you’ve proved your strength, isn’t all this a waste of your time?” Had she really said that? Truly? Or had Morghiad’s mind left a part of itself lodged in her own? Artemi loved a good fight over sitting around a table and talking! What was happening to her?!

  Rav’s frown was fierce, but it melted slowly from his heavy features. “I agree, but it must be done, Emmi. A leader must keep up his appearances.”

  Blazes, but this creature was like Marteus! Well, except Marteus had never eaten children, and he would never have hit a female member of his species. Not even a warrior. Artemi reconsidered her thoughts about them. The two men were not that similar, but there was something there. Was that why her mind had chosen that particular memory of the old king? Marteus had needed her to fight for the sake of appearances on that day, and Artemi had known at the time that demonstrating her skill to the Gialdinians was about anything but the money. Marteus held one of the world’s deadliest assassins in his pocket, and he had wanted his allies to know it.

  “Are you going to show me off to your friends?”

  “No. You are going to do that yourself. The day is coming when you will need to establish yourself in the hierarchy, and you would be more useful to me if you started higher up.”

  Useful? When had she offered her help to him? Artemi recalled a time when her aid had been a prize worth offering only to the best of men and women. Marteus had been one, Captain Feodsunu after him, Queen Reyanna was another, and Hedinar Kantari too. All of those people had been required to pass Artemi’s personal list of conditions, and she was quite sure that this Ravendasor would fail a number of them. “You want to change the way things are done, don’t you?”

  “You could say that, Emmi, but you would have to fight me to prove it.”

  Chapter 6

  Kalad urged his horse forward with a squeeze of his legs, and gazed at the city that perched atop the hill before them. He had always avoided the major Hirrahan cities during his travels, owing to his resemblance to a man who ought not to be received well here, but his father had ridden into the country as if he were the one who wore the crown and gave orders to the army. Perhaps his approach was effective. After all, no one had yet tried to stop them.

  Astalon, as it turned out, was not the looming fortress of pointed, black towers and sharp, jutting rocks that he had read of. Instead, it was very… red. There were clouded spires, hefty walls and stretched chimneys, but the place appeared to resemble the Calyrish house far more than any bastion of warfare. Kalad was distinctly unimpressed.

  To his left rode his father, and to his right was Qeneris, whom he supposed he ought to call his uncle. It had been peculiar enough when his father had turned up in Sokiri wearing full Hirrahan costume, but it had been even more peculiar to meet the rest of the braided clan. Kalad imagined that they found his existence similarly odd, and Qeneris had even said, “It is unusual for sons to arrive when a marriage is not yet five years old; even stranger for them to arrive fully grown and bearded.”

  Kalad had discovered that he liked his uncles well enough, but his grandfather was ice-cold in his bearing and rarely smiled at anyone except his wife. Not that Kalad blamed him for it. He turned in his saddle to flash a smile at the Lord and Lady Calyrish. The lady loosed one back at him, and it was rather stunning. Was that right, to find your grandmother’s smile attractive? She wasn’t truly related to him by blood. Kalad turned away from her and attempted to refocus his thoughts.

  He had read through every one of the notes his sister had provided him, and he was aware of Calidell’s somewhat precarious situation. They had some valuable things to bargain with, and Kalad was sure that Medea had chosen to paint a cautious picture of the situation over a realistic one. What had taken him some considerable time to understand however, was why she had chosen him for the task. At first he had wondered if she had arranged this in an attempt to force some sort of reconciliation with their father, but as he had pored over the parchments she had written, he had realised that there was something more going on.

  First, the reality of his responsibility had become magnified with every aspect of the country’s finances and usable land that she had outlined. The livelihoods of men and women now rested upon the words he would use in the negotiations, and with one ambiguous statement, he could lose Medea hundreds of square miles of land. Second, there were things she had left out, and she had clearly done so on purpose. Kalad did not know if those pieces of information would be waiting for him in letter form when he arrived at the palace, or if she wanted him to bargain with their enemies without knowing exactly what it was he had to lose or gain. Third, in many of her footnotes there were odd comments about The Hunter. It was only when Kalad reread everything that he realised what she was trying to communicate to him. Medea was asking if he thought it would be right to engage in some sort of romantic relationship with the man.

  How was he to know the answer to that?! Surely that was something she should have asked their father? Of course, their brother might have been the first man she would have spoken to on the subject, but though he was now dead, she still had female friends at court. Why didn’t she go to any of them about the problem?

  Fourth, and perhaps most disturbing of all, she had established that certain guarantees would have to be provided as a way of sealing whatever agreements the countries came to. Medea’s writing had been full of euphemisms, but Kalad knew exactly what they meant and why he was there instead of her. Calidell was still wealthy, but that would not last forever, and a new queen could not afford to concede any of the lands her parents had defended. Given that she could not trade herself, what else did she have in her storehouse, but him? Kalad was the meat to be sold in the market, and would likely come out of this a married man.

  Kalad studied his father, who rode proudly beside him, but whose eyes were fixed on something distant. His focus often seemed to leave him, though Kalad did not know if that was typical for the man. It was peculiar however, that his father would sometimes blink or twitch as if startled by something unseen. Kalad had not mentioned it, and it was apparent that it could not be explained by any abstract link to his mother. And then there were the multiple layers of clothing. Being colder than a glacier in Forda had seemed a boon in the heat of the Virulent Ocean, but now that they were in the temperate mountains of central Hirrah, his condition looked nothing more than unpleasant. No one else but his father wore fur-lined gloves
on this day.

  When they had arrived in Haeron, his father had sent messages by pigeon post and road to the neighbouring nations to give notice of the talks. He had done so with apparent blind faith that all parties would turn up, but Kalad had recognised the hand of Silar Forllan in the replies that had arrived far sooner than they should have. No doubt the former general had primed each ruler in one way or another. Dismissed. Away. And still a spy-master and manipulator. Kalad could not fail to be impressed.

  As they neared the city gates, the Calyrish household guard swelled about them protectively, holding their tall bows at the ready and knocking their arrows. Kalad had tried to shoot one of those weapons whilst in Haeron, but as with most things combative, he found he lacked the required steadiness or aim to excel.

  They passed through the gates without issue or hindrance, and soon entered the courtyard of the palace. It was a pleasant enough structure to look at, if you happened to like windows narrow enough to squint like suspicious eyes, sprawling arches that looked like bowed legs and brickwork the colour of a butcher’s block.

  The Queen of Hirrah was not the one to meet them upon the steps. Instead, they were greeted by a woman who declared herself the High Priestess of Quidarh. Hers was not a state built upon royal families or bloodlines, but a country formed around the worship of the fires. She had dispensed entirely with a guard of her own, but then she was a wielder of fair ability. Kalad had sensed her some time before they had reached the main gates. She was perhaps a little plump for Kalad’s usual tastes, but those lips of hers were made for kissing. Kalad smiled to himself. From now on, he would most likely look at every woman of rank as a potential marriage partner.

  “Welcome,” she said whilst holding gaze with his father, “to the one-time king, kanaala, warrior, revolutionary and husband of a legend. And to his father, Lord Calyrish of Haeron and his lady… and to their other son-”

  “Qeneris,” the man offered with a small bow, “My other brother is minding our estate.”