Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

  Glimdrem shook his head in disbelief. He had been a Life-Shaper before the Forgettings robbed him of the knowledge, but he knew how difficult it would be to achieve. Five-hundred years indeed. “And these others?”

  Gornit raised a flamberge sword from the table, the waved length of its blade polished with hints of blue-gray swirl, similar to some patterned steels Glimdrem had seen, yet clearly so much more. The hilt and guard were solid black, the grip wrapped in silver wire. With a blade over four feet long, it was a two-handed sword for most, but for this giant cat single handed was an option.

  “Ikoruv?” Glimdrem asked.

  Gornit smiled. “Alloyed with Listulen and Thelsinit, we believe. Perfectly balanced to seem light in the hand, but as you swing, the more weight shifts to the fore. Watch the colors closely.” He swung the blade through the air, and the whorls of blue and gray shifted, slipping down the length of the blade towards the tip. “The force of a strike is uncanny.”

  For the second time, Glimdrem wanted to say impossible but instead he shook his head, and unable to form a word, only a breath escaped his mouth.

  Gornit lay the weapon on the table with care and turned to Xanesu as she held forth a heavy-bladed rapier with an intricate swept hilt design and long, filigreed quillions. Unlike many rapiers from the Gorotan, it was a cut and thrust sword. The bulk of the weapon was the color of polished and blued steel, but the weak of the blade and point were Latcu, and clear as icy waters. She smiled and pointed the rapier at him, and the end of the blade disappeared. In a duel, one might not even see the sharp piercing your heart.

  “The core of the weapon is pure Latcu,” she purred, “plated with what we believe to be an Iigrom-Toltogu alloy of some sort.”

  “Where did you find all of these? A collection such as this, there are no words.”

  “Indeed there are words! And you will write them,” said Uvin. “Instead of digging in the remnants of the past, you’ve an opportunity to be history’s witness. To record these events for posterity.”

  “You wish me to be your scribe?” Glimdrem scoffed.

  “Historian. Listen to what we say, see what we do… and later, write them down at your leisure. Then present them to your Lord Chancellor of Knowledge. Simple for a man of your reputation.”

  And a request impossible for me to deny if I want to stay in the good graces of the Chancellor. There was no way the Lady had sent him here without this precise purpose. He was her eyes where she would not go. The temptation to defy the will of the Edan, and the arrogance of Uvin, were strong, but curiosity and sense of duty were stronger. “What would you have me do?”

  Uvin clapped his hands. “You’ve already begun.”

  Glimdrem’s three hosts guided him to each weapon, describing them in detail and providing a history for several, and noted which of the Twenty-Five the weapon belonged to. The names of Infused-Metals and alloys he had only read about in books flowed from their tongues. Theret, Timou, Ofdolus, Ermolen, Meheroki, and others were common place, and the tally of times he recounted “unknown alloy, perhaps of” one infused metal or another, came to eighteen. His mind was so trained to this memorization he didn't notice when several of the Twenty-Five arrived, and by the time they finished he turned to find half of them were here.

  The Archangels were an odd assortment of peoples: feline, canine, rodent, lizard, vaguely human, but none were identical to the mortals who shared these superficial similarities. Uvin rapidly introduced him to these newcomers, but their interest in him was less than the two great cats had shown. Left alone for a moment, an awkward smile straining his lips as they ignored him, he strode from the group to find Uvin, the most familiar oddity in a world gone exotic. Uvin was eager for his company, and as the sun set behind the trees he unrolled parchment maps of Sutan across a table, and the two bantered about those wild, violent jungles and the mysterious ruins each had discovered.

  Glimdrem stood stunned at one point to find himself laughing about the experiences of his exploration, momentarily forgetting the pain and losses. Perhaps discussing the wonders and horrors rather than merely writing about them was the catharsis he needed all along, and it ended too soon.

  Uvin tapped a point on a map. “And here sits a buried temple I called the Blind Monkey, for a statue whose eyes had been—“

  Xanesu’s sultry purr interrupted. “The time approaches.”

  “So easily I lose my senses when in study!” Uvin clapped his hands and spoke to Glimdrem. “We will speak more, this ceremony shouldn’t take long.”

  The Archangel strode to the table, belting out greetings and salutations to the rest of the Twenty-Five, then requesting they step to their weapon.

  “Tonight begins a journey! Of history! Of discovery!” Uvin snatched the khopesh from the table, strode to the speaker’s podium and placed the sword on its surface. “Each has before them a weapon with some small amount of an alloy the Oxeum Codex names Reledinit, and experiments have proven that it is this alloy which allowed the gods to capture Elementals and spirits. Tonight we begin our reach into the Celestial Realms, so upon the Equinox, we may bind spirits to our weapons as the gods have done before us.”

  Glimdrem folded his arms across his chest and gazed at the stars, uncertain of any alignment they foretold, but walking any path the gods once took chilled his skin. The Vale brightened and his attention was pulled back to Uvin. On the pedestal sat a globe glowing with a writhing array of colors.

  “Place your hands upon the weapons before you, for tonight, we link our souls to these weapons, and make our first contact with the Celestial.”

  Uvin glanced to Glimdrem and winked, to which he could only smile, despite not knowing how to interpret the gesture. Moments later reality entered a time of legend, a time when the gods walked the lands, a time they could only read about in a few surviving books: the air surrounding Uvin wavered as a mirage in the desert before fingers of the distortion stretched from the metallic globe to envelope the Twenty-Five and their weapons.

  A twitch here and there and side-long glances indicated a few nerves reached an edge, but not a single Archangel broke their weapon’s touch.

  Visually startling, but completely silent, the effect didn’t hinder Uvin’s speech. “Now, focus upon the twelfth star in the Eyes of Ledvereun, will your spirits to greet the Celestial!”

  Glimdrem looked to the Ledvereun constellation, knowing there shouldn’t be a twelfth star. Yet there it was. Where the hell had it come from?

  But there was no time to consider this phenomenon; the Vale wavered as if reality were passing through the thousand ripples of a rain-struck pond. This universe was beautiful, but not the one he should recognize. He realized he hadn’t breathed in some time, that he didn’t need to.

  “And lower your eyes, our first contact is finished!” The voice was Uvin’s, but through this liquid-warped world the man himself was nothing more than a colorful blur.

  A rumble grew from the center of the Vale, akin to a distant thunderstorm, so slow did the thunder reach them, but when it arrived, the rolling clap pained his ears and a quivering force lifted Glimdrem and threw him to the ground.

  He crawled to his knees, his ears ringing so loud they deafened him to any other sound, but he could still feel the vibration of earth and air in his bones. Through the world’s waves he could see a stroke of silver-light rising into the sky, reaching for the constellation. Waves of reality buffeted him, and he didn’t move, wasn’t so sure he could if he wanted to. He closed his eyes, willing it all to go away, and when he opened them again the silver-light was shrinking back to the Vale.

  But this was an illusion. The beam was turning black, matching the night sky, blocking out stars. Something was horribly wrong. The black gained speed even as Glimdrem crawled forward, hoping to find Uvin, to assist in any way, but every movement was like swimming through mud. He screamed the Archangel’s name but couldn’t hear himself over the ring in his head. He looked to Uvin and froze. The silver beam was g
one.

  The globe went dark.

  Glimdrem came to his knees before he felt another explosion: slivers and needles drove into his body and he screamed in pain as the ripples in reality surged into waves, throwing him to the woods at the edge of the Vale in an instant that felt like a wick. His body collided with a tree and he crumpled to the turf, slow as if his body oozed to the ground. He blinked, still ringing-deaf, but his vision revealed a world returning to normal.

  There was blood and pricks of pain all over his body, and he’d hit his head on the tree, but he was alive. In the Vale nothing moved. He rose and lumbered back to the clearing, his head pounding with every beat of his heart. Beside the podium lay Uvin, but all the others had disappeared, the weapons with them.

  Glimdrem collapsed to hands and knees beside the man. Uvin’s hands were burned to charred black bones, but his chest rose and fell in rasping breaths.

  “What happened? Uvin, what happened?” He stared into Uvin’s eyes but the Archangel bore a fading gaze that traveled straight to the stars.

  Uvin took a great breath, then in a muttering rasp said, “Impossible.” His body went limp and he died staring into the dark of night.

  Glimdrem bowed his head in sorrow, and his temples throbbed. He stood and his head swam. His knees buckled before his skin went cold, and his vision shrank to a point of light before darkness took him, collapsing him into unconsciousness with a singular thought: Shouldn’t have stood.

  2

  Bread and a Golden Knife

  The Harbinger, the Temptress,

  the Sealer of an ancient doom.

  A dusting of Diamond white and Sapphire blue

  given Life by breath to soar and mingle,

  to dance in the air beneath a harvest moon.

  A pity you aren’t who you are, before birthing the

  Craven Raven.

  —Tomes of the Touched

  Meliu scrambled awake, sitting up and waving her arms at a demon reaching for her eyes; the Shadow fluttered and bled into a world of gray and brown, a leftover from her dreams. The rush of surf over rocks and the scent of a dead fire reminded her where she sat. She froze, then swept her eyes up and down the beach. The finger of stone stood fifty paces away, a clear path of beach and pocked stone leading to its base. If she’d jumped from its height at low tide, it would’ve hurt a hell of a lot more.

  She flexed her shoulders, grateful that sleep had eased the agony of her landing. Ulrikt. The boy. They must’ve been figments, no more real than the Shadow of Man in her dreams. Yet, a stone-ringed fire pit sat nestled in the sand in front of her, and a heavy wool blanket covered her legs. Someone lit the fire and saw to her survival, but no way in the hells it could’ve been either of the faces she’d seen when crawling ashore. With her senses returned, she wagered he was a fisherman who her agonized body and soul transformed into wishful, or nightmarish, thinking. A hermit. A sailor from the Black Owl. Anybody else.

  The Face of Ulrikt? She hadn’t believed in that fable since she was a barefoot postulant, she’d been too rational to get suckered into spook stories. The force of prayer required to change one’s skin and tongue, to become someone else so mothers and lovers couldn’t tell them apart, presented itself as an impossibility. But, the last month had corrected a number of her assumptions already.

  She settled on one of two possibilities, she’d encountered a legend of Istinjoln, or she strode the catwalk between sanity and madness.

  She snatched her pack and haversack, rummaged through them. Holy robes, tea, cup, and honey were still there. Her pouch of coins still sat nestled to her hip beneath her dress, and sleeves of hidden coins in her boots still buckled her toes. If everything else was here, what were the odds of the jewels being missing? She checked anyhow. She knew a little of gemstones, but almost nothing about their value. There were a couple of tiny sapphires and several larger topaz of varying quality, but uncertainty lay with a clear stone. Unfinished and the size of her thumbnail, if it was a diamond she might be able to eat for years with the treasure sewn into her hem. Appraisers weren’t known for their honesty in good times, revealing her gems might feed her to worms instead of making her rich. Funny how something could be valuable and worthless at the same time.

  But, not a thing was missing. She cocked her head.

  Except the arrow she’d found in the surf. She scratched through the cold coals of the fire and the sands around where she’d awakened. Nothing.

  She pulled a strip of dried pork from her pack and ripped into it with her teeth. Why the hells would the Face, or anyone else, steal an arrow? The pork was hard as her pa’s overcooked chicken and hurt her teeth to chew, but the salt and spice set her stomach growling for more. Unless she was going to learn to fish, she needed to move on.

  She stifled a groan as she stood and stretched her shoulders, struggling to right her brain in order to get her bearings. First trouble, she didn’t know whose land she stood on, Brotna or Hidreng. They were two Tek nations more at odds than Choerkin and Broldun, due to Brotna’s ties with Tek Thon. Of the two nations, the Hidreng supported more trade with the Silone and would most welcome her. The Brotna were as apt to sell her into slavery as to sacrifice her to some heathen god.

  If they’d sailed far enough, west might lead to the Hidreng city of Kulkar, but if she was in Brotna… She faced northeast and walked. No way to go wrong walking further into Hidreng territory. She followed the beach fifty paces before stopping; the arrow lay in the sand circled by seashells, and it pointed inland, due east or damned close to it.

  She stooped and nabbed the arrow, its rag falling back from the head to reveal a vial strapped to the shaft. The glass was blown with a thin wall in its center separating two liquids, and inside the rear half rested a piece of iron. A striker to break that wall, she assumed.

  She muttered to the arrow, “Wyvern’s Flash.” Rumor in Istinjoln spoke of priests failing to solve the mystery behind the demon magic Tek sailors wielded. “You explain the blaze on the Black Owl, but where the hells are you pointing me?” Hugging the sea meant she couldn’t get lost any more than she was, inland on the other hand, was thousands of horizons of foreign territory. She slipped the arrow into her pack, tip up to be safe, and stepped into the circling shells.

  She faced a natural trail leading up a rolling rise, its heights covered in grasses tall enough to hide a pony. Which meant damned near tall enough to hide her. No way in the forges nor hells did some fisherman or sailor point her way; her delusions were real and telling her where to go. Never question Ulrikt, Adelin had told her, but what about his Face?

  She didn’t trust either of them, hells, she didn’t trust her own wits, but if the person at the fire wasn’t a mirage, it was the closest thing to an ally she had.

  The slope shifted beneath her feet as she climbed, and once at the top of the rise she turned to look back at the sea. From here she could see the remnants of the Black Owl, fragments of crates, and bodies. Escaping the view made stepping into the unknown easier. Strides later she was so deep in the high grass there was no point to looking back, that horrifying world was gone, replaced by a view of the sea to a hazy horizon. In front of her, a rolling ocean of green turning brown, where waves were capped by strings of seeds.

  Within a candle this endless expanse unnerved her; an open world was a different sort of maze than she was used to, and as easy to get lost and die in. The sun was her only guide, so when it set to the west she bedded down for the night, and the second meal of pork made her jaws ache.

  She feared the onset of night and the cold it would bring, but the grass broke the breezes and the chill she expected never came. Of course it was warmer to the south. How far had they sailed, a hundred horizons? She fell asleep with her pack beneath her head, visions of maps and nautical lines before her eyes.

  Jocular voices awakened her before she had a chance to dream the answer. Singing. Distant and growing closer. She recognized the Hidreng dialect, but she couldn’t make out the
words the way they slurred.

  She poked her head above the stems of her bed; a halo of lantern light held high by a pole. Merchants or farmers with a wagon, she wagered, which meant she’d been close to stumbling onto a road.

  She watched them, stone still, and as their light climbed a rise then sank, she jumped to her feet to follow. The road impressed her, twenty paces wide and set with granite flagstones. Grasses grew between cracks, but the stones were set so close her fingers would find difficult purchase in their spacing. She’d stumbled on a well-traveled trade route, a welcome guide to somewhere.

  She followed the men and their cart, ignoring their songs, but listening for any banter between. They were Hidreng traders looking to turn a profit on some opportunity ahead, this much she’d picked up. Four or five candles later her eyes squinted into a rising sun and her feet and knees ached. The cart zigged and zagged up a steep rise and she waited for it to disappear before marching straight up the hill, saving hundreds of steps by taking the straight path.

  She huffed the last hundred steps to the crown of the hill and leaned palms to knees to catch her breath. A strong wind brought the distant but nauseating odor of human refuse to her nostrils, and when she looked up her view answered the question of what opportunity the traders were chasing. A walled town nestled on the shore of a bay, surrounded by tents and shanties and milling people; she’d found the Silone and what must pass for safety.

  Meliu breathed deep, hanging her head. When her eyes opened, she looked between her legs at a world upside down, and figured her perception wasn’t so far off. Her head spun as she righted herself, and her eye wandered to the bay and among the mass of bobbing timber she spotted the blue Luxun banner. “My ride beat me here. Damn that.” But she grinned, taking a tiny bottle of perfume from her pack and dabbing. She covered her nostrils with her wrists, a rush of lilac straight to her brain, covering the shit and rot stink. Life’s just better when it smells good.