Leaves of Flame ch-2

by Benjamin Tate

“But you said the Source was only recently awakened. The storms began long before that.”

  “The storms are created when two magical forces are at odds with each other. The storms from before came from friction between the unbalanced Wells. The balance had not been thrown that far off, so the storms weren’t as common, the occumaen not as strong. But when Walter and the Wraiths began waking the dormant Wells.…”

  He didn’t finish; another bolt of lightning sizzled outside their shelter, the crack of thunder so loud he felt it lancing through his bones. It sounded as if stone had shattered. He gritted his teeth against it and stared out at the suddenly blackened day, rain sheeting off the stone shelf above them so fast it formed a waterfall over the shelter’s entrance. Somewhere in the rock plinth behind them, the water had found a niche or crack and ran in a slower trickle down one side of their alcove.

  “How long will this last?” Siobhaen asked, her back pressed against the crumbling stone wall farthest from the entrance. Her eyes were wider than normal, her shoulders hunched. When she saw both of them watching her, she stiffened and glared. “I don’t like lightning.” Her voice dared them to laugh.

  Colin shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. I’d settle in, though. I don’t feel any lessening of the energies that are creating the storm at the moment.”

  Siobhaen nodded and began rooting through her satchel, pulling out a package of smoked meat and a skin of water, both provided by the dwarren. Colin remained near the opening, faint spray from the rain dampening his face. He shivered again at the chill, although the worst of it had passed. His clothes clung to his skin.

  Eraeth shifted beside him.

  “You realize what this means, don’t you?” Colin said softly.

  Eraeth nodded. “Once the storm passes, we’ll be outside the protection of the Summer Tree.”

  “We’ll have to keep sharper watch. The Shadows and the other creatures of the Wraith’s armies will be able to attack us.”

  He felt Siobhaen still behind them, staring at their backs. Then Eraeth turned away from the driving rain.

  The storm lasted for nearly six hours, the lightning and thunder fading to the west, the trickle of water that had become a small stream lessening as the rains abated. Eraeth and Siobhaen had begun sniping at each other after the first hour, glowering and glaring in the small, confined shelter. Colin had ignored them and their bickering, finding a shelf of rock that acted as a bench. He’d settled in and closed his eyes, trying to sense the energies of the storm as they were created, but he found himself limited. He couldn’t connect to the Summer Tree here, could only feel its presence through its interaction with the Source, and then only barely. The play of the two powers overhead was obscured by the chaos of the storm. Only the effects could be seen, not the cause.

  He’d finally given up and made himself comfortable, allowing himself to nod off to the sounds of the rain and the scent of dampened stone.

  He startled awake to a low growl of thunder, looked through bleary eyes to see both Eraeth and Siobhaen stretched out on the stone floor, satchels used as pillows. The horses whickered when he rose, nostrils flaring as they fidgeted where they stood. He moved to calm them, then stood in the entrance and watched the storm retreat across the plains to the west. They’d lost the entire afternoon, the sun setting, burnished light glinting off of the rain-washed red stone plinths that dotted the landscape. He couldn’t see the sun itself, but he watched the shadow of the column of stone that had sheltered them elongate as it sank toward the horizon. In the last of the fading light, he heard a hawk shriek and saw it dive toward the freshly washed grasses, struggling back up into the sky with a hapless prairie dog or rabbit clutched in its talons.

  For a moment, the sharp memory of hunting prairie dog with his sling cut painfully into him.

  When the sunlight had reached its most vivid, the reddish-orange stone all around glowing with its vibrance, he heard Eraeth stir, then rise and join him at the entrance to the shelter.

  “We’ve lost the daylight,” Colin said.

  “You should have woken us,” Eraeth said, the reprimand sharp in his voice.

  “I only woke myself a short time ago. The storm has only just receded.”

  “Then we should travel at night to make up the lost time.”

  Colin shifted restlessly. “I don’t think that would be wise. The Wraiths and Shadows hunt much more effectively at night.”

  Eraeth nodded. “Then we should rest while we can.”

  “Go. I’ll take the first watch.”

  Eraeth returned to his makeshift pallet.

  In the morning, Eraeth shook him awake. They fed and watered the horses, then mounted and rode hard to the east, watching the horizon intently for any sign of the Wraiths, the Shadows, or the purported army they had gathered. They saw nothing that day or the following day. The landscape shifted around them, the grasses giving way to hard-packed earth and stone and sand, the fingers of rock growing in size and complexity and color.

  “I never knew rock came in so many colors,” Siobhaen muttered at one break, staring out across the wide horizon, eyes shaded. “It’s mostly gray and white and blue in the Hauttaeren.”

  Two more of the strange storms developed over the course of the next few days, but always to their west, marking the edge of dwarren and Wraith lands, the black clouds moving away from them. To the east, the sky was almost preternaturally blue, only a few faint white clouds scudding across it, heading southeast.

  On the fourth day, Siobhaen cried out and pointed into the sky. “What is that?” she shouted, keeping it in sight as she urged her horse closer to Colin and Eraeth. “Do you see it? There, above that mesa with the arc of stone jutting off to one side.”

  Eraeth squinted into the distance, began to shake his head-

  But then both he and Colin caught its movement. Something black and winged hovered in the sky over the massive table of rock. It glided over the mesa for a moment, then banked sharply and vanished behind the upthrust stone.

  Eraeth and Colin traded troubled looks.

  “It wasn’t a hawk or a vulture,” the Protector said.

  “It was too big,” Colin agreed. “And there was something odd about its wings and feathering.”

  “Do you think it saw us?” Siobhaen asked.

  “We have to assume it did, and that it may be part of the Wraiths’ army.”

  Eraeth swore.

  Colin twisted the reins in his hands, bringing his horse about. “Let’s move. Put some distance between us and the mesa. We may be far enough away from the army that they won’t be able to track us once their scouts get here.”

  “What if that thing was their scout?”

  “Then we fight.”

  They rode the horses hard for a short time but saw no one pursuing them, and no second sighting of the winged black creature. But unease crawled across Colin’s shoulders and he startled at every sound. They paused at a pool of water hidden beneath an overhang of umber rock, the water a vivid blue-green. Siobhaen refilled their waterskins as Colin scanned the skies, shrugging his shoulders in an attempt to relax the tension there. But the sensation wouldn’t pass.

  He’d lived too long to ignore the warning. He didn’t know what was causing it, but he’d listen.

  “Something’s wrong. I think we should halt here for the day, even though there’s at least an hour of daylight left. Siobhaen, see if you can find something besides the dried meat to eat, but don’t wander far. Eraeth-”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  That wasn’t what Colin had intended, but he saw the stubborn set of the Protector’s jaw and let it go.

  “Of course I’m the hunter,” Siobhaen muttered under her breath, but loudly enough to make certain they both heard. She pulled some lengths of leather gut from her pouch and with a few quick twists knotted them into snares. She halted before Eraeth, face-to-face, a little too close, but Eraeth didn’t draw back. “Next time, I accompany Shaeveran.”

 
Then she stormed out from beneath the overhang.

  Eraeth didn’t comment, raising an eyebrow toward Colin. “Lead the way.”

  Colin gathered his staff and satchel, slinging it over one shoulder, then motioned toward the north.

  They followed the edge of the mesa at their backs, the stone rising vertically to their right, the ground sloping away to the left. Rocks cascaded down the slope as they moved, catching in the dried sagebrush, sword grass, and scree. The loose soil and pebbles made keeping their balance difficult, Colin’s staff nearly worthless. He grunted, catching himself against the crumbling wall of the mesa as his left foot slid out from under him. They rounded one edge of the mesa and found a wall of stone protruding from the far side, an irregularly shaped hole piercing through it, its edges smoothed as if by water. Stones perched precariously on top of the jagged arm of rock, as if set there by a child-god’s hand. Colin made for the hole and the patch of blue sky through it.

  “What are we looking for?” Eraeth said when they were halfway there.

  “I’m not certain. But something isn’t right. I can feel it.”

  Eraeth grunted. Colin caught him loosening the clasp on his cattan as they reached the base of the wall of stone, the loose rubble giving way to layered shelves of sandstone and basalt. They began climbing the layers like steps, moving diagonally toward the hole in the wall. To the west, the sun had dipped nearly to a horizon dotted with more rock formations. Colin passed into the shadow cast by the wall, the ridge of rock striking almost due west. He paused to wipe sweat from his brow in the cooler shade, then pulled himself up into the lip of the hole.

  Then he froze and ducked back down behind the stone, even though he stood in shadow.

  “What is it?” Eraeth hissed, scrambling up the last leg and settling down beside him.

  “The Wraith army,” Colin whispered, his voice grim.

  He waved a hand toward the wide stretch of sand and stone spread out before them, even though Eraeth had already pulled himself up high enough that he could see. The Wraith army stretched from beneath the mesa across the plateau, a black stain on the reddish sand and stone. It was too distant to pick out many details, but it had obviously halted for the night, fires already blazing across its breadth, smoke trailing into the sky. It appeared to eddy and flow as groups moved back and forth, punctuated by gray as tents were raised and horses and gaezels were herded and penned for the night. A line of supply wagons trailed behind the main force, and Colin could see others trundling across the scrubland to the east, coming to join them. At least a score of the strange black birds they had sighted earlier circled above, wheeling through the layers of smoke. A few shrieks pierced the dusk’s quiet, along with an occasional bellow or cry. The army was too distant for general sounds to carry.

  “What do you see?” Colin asked after giving Eraeth a long moment to look.

  Eraeth’s jaw clenched and he didn’t answer immediately. Then: “You aren’t going to like this,” he muttered, but didn’t wait for Colin to press him. “The army appears to be split into groups. I see at least three, although those in the middle seem to be mixed. I can’t tell who’s in the far group-they’re too far away-but the middle group has creatures I’ve never seen before in it. The group closest to us,” he hesitated and caught Colin’s gaze, “is Alvritshai.”

  Colin felt the shock course through him, then harden into anger. “How is that possible? What House do they come from? Who sent them?”

  “I can’t tell from here. But they can’t be from any of the Houses of the Evant. How would they have gotten here? A betrayal of the Evant of this magnitude would not have gone unnoticed over the winter months!”

  “What about the Houses to the east? Licaeta and Uslaen? They border the Ostraell and the eastern Hauttaeren. They could have sent their Phalanx to the east along the mountains over the winter.”

  “Across the northern dwarren lands as well? Without them noticing?” Eraeth shook his head. “The dwarren would not have missed an Alvritshai army of that size, and they would have sent a protest to Caercaern immediately.”

  Colin drew breath to argue, but realized that Eraeth was right. An army, even a small group of Alvritshai, would never have gotten past the dwarren’s attention. They patrolled their lands too well. And no one could have gotten that far east by passing north of the Hauttaeren; the glacial plateau butted up against the mountains in that area. He couldn’t imagine the Alvritshai army marching across the ice, then crossing the mountains east of dwarren lands.

  He stared down at the Flat, the sun sinking fast, shadows filling the dips and depressions in the land as more fires were lit in the encampment.

  “How many do you think there are down there?” he asked, thinking of the dwarren that were coming to meet them.

  “At least seven thousand altogether. Somewhere between one and two thousand are Alvritshai.”

  “The dwarren outnumber them.”

  “The dwarren have to,” Eraeth said, no derision in his voice. “They are shorter. Their strength lies in their numbers and their ferocity. Based on their size, I’d guess these…” he waved a hand toward the army that was fading from view as night fell “.… things rely more on brute force. And then there are the sukrael and the Wraiths, which the dwarren have no defense against. I’d say that the two forces are evenly matched.”

  “The dwarren have more of a defense than you think. Remember, they have sought out the heart of the Ostraell and received the forest’s gifts.”

  Eraeth frowned, and Colin saw his hand clench, as if he’d realized he’d left the bow he’d been given back at the pool.

  Colin shifted away from the Flat as the last of the sun’s rays faded to the west. There was nothing to see now except a black landscape dotted with hundreds of campfires. The night was already turning chill, stars overhead, moonlight faint, barely enough to help him pick his way down from the wall of rock. He heard Eraeth descending from their vantage a moment later, small rocks and pebbles clattering down the slope ahead of him.

  He reached the edge where stone gave way to sand and scrub, Eraeth a step behind him. He’d just drawn breath to tell him he was going to check out the encampment when something reared up out of the shadows before him with a hideous hiss, stone and sand scattering from the figure. Colin caught a scent of bitter spice, saw moonlight touch a curved blade as it rose above his head-

  And then Eraeth shoved him aside, cattan out, slicing up under the figure’s guard and into his side. He heard Eraeth grunt with effort, dodging back as the figure’s blade fell, then the Protector darted forward again, cattan striking and penetrating the figure’s chest. He caught the man as he fell, settling the body to the ground before Colin had even thought to exhale.

  Stones rattled in the darkness beyond. “There are two more of them,” Eraeth barked.

  Colin reacted without thought, his surprised paralysis broken. Reaching for the knife tucked into his belt, he slowed time, moving toward the area where he’d heard the stones rattle. When the figure emerged from the darkness, shrouded in a cloak, he loosened time enough to plunge his knife into the figure’s back-once, twice, feeling something odd through the knife, the skin unnaturally tough-then slowed time again before the figure had begun to fall, before he could even gasp, spinning toward the second cascade of rocks. The second man was crouched low, his sword curved in an S shape, thicker at the end than near the pommel, held out to the side for balance as he skidded down the slope. Caught in mid-move, Colin slid up behind him, opposite the strange blade, and stabbed him in the throat at the same time as he released time once more. He reached around and grabbed the man’s chest over one shoulder to hold him steady as blood gushed over his fingers, the momentum of the man’s skid dragging Colin along with him. He cursed as he lost his footing and the two slid down the small incline. To one side, he heard a hissing gasp from the first figure he’d killed, caught sight of the figure slumping forward face-first to the ground and rolling once before coming to a res
t.

  Heart pounding, breath coming hard and fast, his chest aching, Colin jerked his knife free of the man’s throat. Adrenaline made his arms shake as he backed away from the body. He’d killed in the past, forced to by the Wraiths and their actions, but he had almost always killed the Shadows, rarely anyone else.

  The stickiness of the blood on his hands sent a shudder through his body.

  Footsteps crunched as Eraeth darted toward the first slumped figure, then the second, checking for a pulse.

  “Both men should be dead,” Colin said, swallowing. His voice was rough and shaky.

  Eraeth looked up from the last body. “They are. But they aren’t human.”

  Colin’s breath caught in his throat. Then he jerked forward, coming to Eraeth’s side next to the figure. “What do you mean they aren’t human? Are they Alvritshai? They aren’t tall enough to be Alvritshai.”

  “They aren’t either,” Eraeth said roughly. “Look.”

  He flicked the hood of the cloak aside.

  Colin recoiled instinctively at the face beneath. The skin was scaled like a snake, with mottled colorations whose true colors were impossible to determine under the washed-out light of the moon. He reached forward and touched it, smoother than he’d expected. But the skin was the least of the strangeness. The features were snakelike as well, the neck-thicker than a human’s-emerging from the shirt and cloak and widening into the rounded head and snout of a snake, the nostrils slits along each side, the mouth open slightly, fleshy fangs barely visible. The eyes were large, yellow-orange with black pupils, set on either side of the head beneath bony ridges. Blood seeped out of the cut Colin had made in its neck and from the corner of its mouth.

  After his initial shock, Colin leaned forward with interest, turning the head to either side as the bitter spice scent struck him again. Folds of skin were drawn inward on either side of the neck, but he couldn’t see the creature’s tongue. Not without putting his hand inside its mouth to pry it open. He didn’t trust the liquid glistening on the exposed fangs enough to try.

  He turned his attention to the rest of the creature’s body. Eraeth sat back silently as he exposed the hands, scaled like the rest of the body, although with only four fingers, some webbing between them near their base. Each finger ended in a small, pointed talon. Colin pried the strange sword from the creature and handed it off to Eraeth.