Voices of Blaze

by H. O. Charles

  “You feel guilty because you are responsible for my existence, and my death was inevitable, so you feel guilty about that too. Guilt doesn’t really get you anywhere though, does it? It certainly doesn’t help me.”

  Artemi folded her arms. “Is there any way you could live again?”

  “I would still have to die again.”

  She could not hold back her emotions this time, and scowled at him. “Not for a long, long time.”

  “You cannot guarantee that, and before you offer to guard me from every danger, we would both be miserable if you followed me everywhere I went.”

  “I want you alive!”

  Tallyn shrugged. “Perhaps I’m happier being dead. It’s quite nice being made entirely of fire, you know.”

  “You really… you prefer that?”

  “It is different. It’s not paradise, but…” He sighed. “The world that was our home is about to grow much darker. I can feel it.”

  Darker? What, precisely, did he mean by that? “I need to get back there.”

  Tallyn nodded slowly. “You do, but I don’t know the way. I may be a ghost, but I’m not an all-seeing spirit, it seems. Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Stop apologising!” Artemi hissed.

  “Sorry.”

  She could feel her blood beginning to bubble within her veins, but decided to keep it contained. If this was her one chance to convene with him, it might as well be pleasant and productive. She ordered a drink, and went to sit in a corner where she could talk with her ghostly son.

  He nodded toward the man by the exit again. “He is nice. Why don’t you talk with him? You could even… you know…”

  Artemi studied the man carefully. He was well-built, even for a mraki, and his wings were an unusual array of different shades. Few holes were present in them, too. “You’re telling me I should sleep with him? A man who is not your father? And you think that is acceptable?”

  Tallyn shrugged. “When are you going to get another chance?”

  “I cannot believe you!”

  “He seems nice, mother.”

  “Well, he’s alright-looking, I suppose.”

  “Go on, have some fun.”

  “Are you sure you’re my son and not some wicked little…” She trailed off there, unable to throw any insults at her dead son. Doing so would have been unforgivable.

  “Father slept with Mirel.”

  Artemi snapped her eyes back to him. “How did you know about tha-?”

  “Oh, palace whispers, you know the sort of thing, mother. But don’t you think it’s unfair – that he was able to take another woman to his bed, while you can never experience what it would be like to lie with another man?”

  “She forced him. He didn’t have a choice,” she hissed. Morghiad had never really spoken about that time with her, and Artemi was quite sure that she did not want to hear about it. She had always been confident that it was not something he had enjoyed in the slightest. Very confident. And why was Tallyn talking about this sort of thing, anyway? Artemi had experienced encounters with other men in previous lives. They just had not… ended so well.

  “Have you ever wondered, mother, if the reason he is so devoted to you, so unerringly certain that you were the only woman he could love, was because he had seen something of the other side? He had experienced another woman, and was able to make a comparison of sorts. But for you it has always been different, hasn’t it? There were fewer choices available to you.”

  “Shut up, Tal!”

  Tallyn’s ghost did shut up, and when she next looked around for him, he was absent. Damn this world! Damn its black arts and twisted spirits! And damn her own stupid self for urging him to be more honest! Yes, of course it was true that wielders were at a disadvantage when it came to finding mates; of course it was unfair. But how was that a reason for her to betray Morghiad? Did he deserve that?

  Fate could bestow any number of advantages upon one person and yet deny the next even the slightest chink of light upon their lives. Artemi had experienced just about every privilege and every disadvantage that fate had to throw at her, and she knew that things in nature did not tend towards equality. People, on the other hand, were obsessed with equality. Only this world was less preoccupied with it than any other she had seen.

  Not that any natural order was a good reason to allow the poor to starve, or the rich to grow fat at the expense of others. Artemi gritted her teeth together and shifted about on her chair. Being a wielder hadn’t been fair. She had not even been given the choice to live as a normal woman, or the opportunity to find out whether what she had with Morghiad really was better than it could have been with another man – that was not fair.

  And she still recalled her older lives, and all those occasions she had observed other couples being happy together. How many times had she battled with her own jealousy as she watched them enjoy something she could never have?

  During her ten-thousand years upon the Darkworld, she could not count a single other romantic partnership besides Morghiad. Yes, there had been a handful of men who had taken her to their beds, but only one had ever been with her consent, and had occurred before she had realised the true extent of her powers. All had ended their time with her in blackened, charred sort of way that still gave her nightmares, even if most had deserved such an ending. Surely any other woman who had lived as long would have had more partners from which to draw experience?

  Perhaps Tallyn was right. Perhaps it was time to put this particular curiosity to bed, both in the physical world and the metaphorical, once and for all.

  Artemi took a deep breath, and strode gracefully toward the bar.

  “Hello.” She put on her best, most winning smile. Blazes, what was she doing?

  The man blinked at her.

  Alright, so she was not very practised at this sort of thing. She had flirted many, many times before in her lives, but always with the knowledge that nothing would ever come of it. Somehow, that had made it easier. Perhaps she should just ask him for sex directly. A nervous chill ran up her spine when she thought of that.

  Morghiad, whispered a small voice in her ear, but she answered it back with: Mirel.

  “So,” she ventured, “You look nice this evening.” She began fiddling with the neckline of the tabard she wore, but remembered to look up at him from beneath her brow ridges.

  He eyed her askance and frowned. “Why, thank you.”

  Artemi leaned forward a little. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  The man pouted prettily, but after a moment he nodded.

  A mug of the acrid stuff that these nightworlders seemed to enjoy was promptly poured for her object of interest, and Artemi was permitted an opportunity to study him in greater detail. He certainly had the height and broad shoulders that she had always appreciated in men – for a mraki, anyway - along with a strong pair of arms. Too many mraki men had long spindly arms that were all wing and nothing else.

  But he was also very neat. His tabard appeared to have been pressed with eye-wateringly strict precision, his boots shone like molten bronze and his face was entirely clean of whiskers. The hair on his head, though already very short, had been moulded with a gelling agent of some kind to make it stay in whatever position he considered appropriate, and remain there for the rest of the day. Or perhaps week. How odd that a man should have such impeccably precise hair.

  It made her think of Morghiad’s unruly waves of ebony, and the roughened Hirrahan braids that he now favoured. Artemi quickly shoved those images into a very dark corner of her mind so that she could continue her study. And the more she did examine this man, the more she suspected that he would not be the sort to hurry to bed with a woman he hardly knew.

  “What brings you to our city?” he asked politely.

  “Oh, just… work. On the port at the upper side of the city. Lifting, carrying – nothing too mentally taxing.”

  His tidy forehead became a mess of creases. “That is unusual work for a woman of your… pardo
n me – your bearing.”

  She smiled as sweetly as she could. “I’m stronger than I appear. What do you do?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Artemi shook her head.

  “Well, I’m the adjudicator for this city. So… you’re not here to bribe me for something?”

  Oh, well that did put her coy smiles and offers of drinks into a very different context indeed. “Ah, no. I’m not.”

  His face grew serious. “Then what is it that you want?”

  “I would have thought it was obvious.”

  Artemi was doing a very bad thing, she thought as she followed him down to one of the cavelets beneath the tavern. She did not even have a good idea of how mating would work in this world, or if an injra would be necessary. Oh, you are an old prude! Silar would have said, but he was not here now. He almost certainly would have said worse things to her than that.

  When the adjudicator closed the door behind her, Artemi began to disrobe. It was a cold and awkward thing when he kissed her, and midway through, Artemi placed a small drop of taqqa beneath both their tongues to make it easier. After some moments of increasingly frantic caresses, quite unexpectedly, he wrapped his wings around her so that she was almost entirely cloaked by them. His claws dug deeply into her shoulders the tighter he held her, but the pain of it was subsumed by the oddly pleasant sensations she began to feel from him.

  It was a strange manner of mating, she thought when they had finished, and she could not comprehend how an injra could ever be involved simultaneously. Most of all, she had found it something of a disappointment. There had been pleasant moments, certainly, but it did not even compare to the joy and the fire she had felt with Morghiad. Now she had her answer, but it did not stem the growing tide of guilt she felt.

  “Is it normally like that?” she asked the man when he awoke from his stupor.

  “Shouldn’t it be?” he replied with his heavy brows drawn into a frown. His voice was slow and deliberate, as if he were still barely awake.

  Artemi smiled thinly, and rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling. “How does an injra get pups?”

  “Do they not teach this sort of thing where you’re from?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, when it is your season, you will lay your eggs by your mate, and your injra of choice will incubate and eventually deliver them.”

  “So the injra is not part of the mating?”

  The man began laughing heartily, and Artemi knew it was time to leave.

  She dressed rapidly and left the adjudicator of fights where he was, his giggles now slowing as his eyelids drooped. Clearly he was not as resistant to taqqa as she had become, and he would probably slip back into the passive dream state before long. When she returned to the bar, she found Ravendasor looking for her. He grabbed her roughly by the wrist and hauled her out of the roof exit. “It’s over!” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Everything. All of it. I tried… I suggested what you said. For you. To impress you. Let’s talk first, I said. But they wouldn’t have any of it. I am not strong enough anymore, Emmi. Learkin beat me. I am no longer commander of this city. It’s over.”

  “I…” Artemi began. There was a faint ringing in the air – a familiar sound that she felt she ought to recognise, but did not. It sounded like the song of crystal glass or steel, and it sounded as if it sang only to her, but it was so very far away. There was also a hunger growing in the pit of her belly; she would need another dose of taqqa soon. That was what was important here, not stupid songs she could barely hear.

  He took her by the arms and shook her. “Don’t you see, Emmi? We cannot change! We are stuck like this.”

  Blazes, but he did remind her of Marteus! They were so similar in the manner that they spoke, and the only difference was the hope she heard in their words. Marteus had always believed in what he could achieve, but this man was lost. He had a hole in his heart like she did. “You must believe-”

  “What are these marks on your shoulder?” he asked with his brows drawn down. “Have you-?” He studied them intently, looking them over and over as if scrutiny would make them disappear. “Father of Storms,” he roared, “I thought you had promised yourself to me!”

  “I belong to no one!” Artemi hissed back. She pulled herself away from him, and went in search of the light she so badly needed.

  Chapter 10

  Morghiad had slept fitfully that night, and still had not changed out of the previous day’s clothing. He tore off his crumpled shirt and went to the washstand to make himself more presentable. It was always strange, he thought when he saw himself in the mirror, to see his body so free of scars. By the time he had died in his first life, he had accrued dozens from battles and bouts with eisiels. In his second life, he had spent enough years tearing about the Calidellian countryside, picking fights with bandits and ruffians to earn himself a new collection. But this body was smooth as a new-born babe’s.

  And if the other countries dug out the eisiel farms as they had promised they would do, and Mirel remained locked in her cell, it was entirely possible that his future bodies would not sustain pinh-filled scars ever again. His eyes flicked up to his lidir. Already they had grown out too much to be neat. They needed re-braiding desperately, but he had no time to busy himself with looking pretty. Perhaps when all this treaty business was done and he had Artemi around to impress, he would have his hair tied and oiled so that it shone in the shadows.

  Morghiad bathed himself quickly, excavated a clean set of clothes from the pile and decided he would search for Romarr. Kalad still slumbered peacefully, so Morghiad made sure to place two guards in the room whilst he was gone. It turned out that Romarr had been accommodated in chambers just a short walk down the hall, and Morghiad was glad to find the man already dressed and awake when he arrived.

  “I need to think,” he told the assassin, “and I really need a good fight so that I can do some good thinking.”

  Romarr chuckled loudly enough that even Koviere would have struggled to be heard over the sound, and nodded. “You plan to use that white sword of yours though? I don’t want my gales damaged – new ones are hard to come by these days!”

  “There’s a form you can use to protect your swords. Artemi showed me it - it doesn’t last forever, but it’ll do for a single fight.”

  “Hmm. Come in.” Romarr waved one of his meaty hands in invitation and called, “Sel? Could use some of your fire.”

  The wielder emerged in her dressing gown and night clothes, and giggled when Morghiad tried his best to look away. “At your service,” Selieni said. Morghiad had not noticed it when he had seen her before, but she had cropped her golden hair close to her head like a Calidellian boy’s. That was curious.

  When she and Morghiad had completed the form, Romarr examined it closely with his ancient eyes. “I remember this one now. Hadn’t seen it for a good few thousand years. Some of the things that girl remembers…” He shook his head. “Makes me worry what else I’ve forgotten.”

  As he finished speaking, Morghiad could not help but notice what was going on behind his back. Selieni and Anadea were… kissing. Morghiad blinked twice, but was still quite sure he did not understand. True, he had seen enough of the world to know that women did as men did, but Selieni… after all the times she had pursued him!

  He quickly moved his eyes back to Romarr’s swords and made a comment about how he missed Artemi, and after that the two of them departed for one of the courtyard practice areas.

  Romarr was, as Morghiad had suspected, a better swordsman than he. To anyone else watching the fight, they might have appeared evenly matched, but that was only because Romarr was being courteous. Though Morghiad had received a great deal of Kusuru training in his previous life, it had not been to nearly the same extent as Artemi, Mirel, Romarr or any of the other members of The Dedicated. Morghiad had been trained swiftly and economically – he had been given enough skill to defeat his wife in a very specific s
ituation. The room where he had captured her had been small, and the distractions he had provided her had been strong ones.

  In any other situation, he was the weaker fighter, which Artemi had been happy to demonstrate in subsequent years. It would take a few more centuries to match their abilities fully, but Morghiad had a good few centuries to occupy himself with.

  Inevitably, his mind returned to the problem he had to solve. How to get Dorinna off his blazed back?! Or indeed, out of his breeches?

  Morghiad leapt sideways to dodge another swipe from Romarr’s twin gale swords.

  What was needed was a weakness. Dorinna had to have vulnerabilities, and ones that Morghiad could exploit without putting the treaty at risk.

  He spun rapidly, and struck hard at Romarr’s left side. Romarr slipped free of the swipe like silk passing over polished steel. Not even his clothing was touched by the blade’s tip.

  Her children, he thought, would make excellent tools to bargain with. He knew they were here in the castle, and what mother would not give up the things she desired to keep her babies safe? He could kidnap all of them, or perhaps just one, and then hold it hostage until she signed her part of the treaty. It was not an honourable thing to do, but it would be easy. And for the sake of staying true to his wife, he would do it in a heartbeat.

  He recalled a time when he had prepared to sign his country away so that Artemi could live. A thousand more men might have died if Morghiad had handed his crown to Febain, but then, another four-thousand might have lived if Febain had sat the throne while Mirel rampaged.

  Morghiad stumbled as his mind touched on those days of madness again. They were still difficult times to remember.

  “Continue?” Romarr asked, his brow furrowing.

  “Continue,” Morghiad replied.

  The whirl of blades started up again, and Morghiad resumed his thinking. He would have given up anything for Artemi’s life, anything.

  This is not for her life, the creatures in his mind whispered. But she may live longer in lives to come if you rule the worms.