Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  For a long while, nobody spoke. Gwenna could feel everyone's frustration: nobody wanted to just leave hundreds—perhaps tens of thousands—of people to fend for themselves against the most terrible creatures anyone had ever encountered, but nobody knew what to do about it. Even Caymus's expression was a mask of pain and anguish.

  Then, of all people, Rill's eyes widened, and he turned to the mitre. "Merkan," he said, that familiar excitement creeping into his voice, "you said the creature 'gasped' when you stabbed it, right?"

  Merkan seemed unsure what to do about Rill's sudden enthusiasm. His eyes betrayed confusion and suspicion. He spoke in measured tones. "Yes," he replied. "There was no mistaking it. The monster drew a deep breath when my blade found its guts."

  Rill nodded, then turned to Milo. "A couple of days ago, you said something about 'white air'. You said it's the part of the air that we all inhale when we breathe, and that fire uses it, too, right?"

  Milo had a pondering look on his face, like he was trying to figure out what Rill was up to, but he nodded. "I knew a priest who made white air his life's work," he said. "He told me that he could actually see white air enter a person's mouth when he breathed, and that it was gone, replaced by another color, when he exhaled. He told me that fire did the same thing."

  "It does," said Be'Var, arching an eyebrow. "You have an idea, Rill?" Gwenna noted that Be'Var's face was the least incredulous-looking of those around the fire.

  Rill's expression, on the other hand, was ecstatic. His hands moved rapidly as he spoke. "They breathe!" he exclaimed, looking around at the now curious faces. Nobody understood what he was getting at yet, so he turned to Caymus. "Okay," he said, "before we left the Temple, Wrentyl was telling me about the day you did your first pulling trick, or rather, failed to. He said that about the point where you'd made this really nasty flame, it was getting hard to breathe in the room. He said he'd been gasping for air just before the thing finally snuffed out."

  Caymus nodded. "I didn't see most of that, really, but that's what they told me afterwards."

  Be'Var scoffed. "You better believe it happened, boy. That blasted flame of yours had eaten up all of the—" Be'Var stopped, and a smile of understanding suddenly crawled over his face. "Burn me," he said. "Burn me, Rill, I think you might actually have something there."

  Gwenna couldn't quite believe it when the two of them, Be'Var and Rill, simultaneously turned to Merkan and asked if he could draw a map of the tunnels. They didn't seem to quite believe it either, and so, for the first time since she'd met him, Gwenna heard Master Be'Var laugh. She looked over at Caymus, who was looking back at her. He shrugged, but he was smiling.

  For the next few hours, Gwenna watched as Be'Var, Rill, Caymus, and the three mitre concocted a plan to rescue those that were trapped in the Center of Otvia. It was a wonderful sight to behold. Ever since the night of the attack, every one of her waking moments had been lived before a backdrop of fear and uncertainty. Why did the creatures attack? Where did they come from? Would anybody survive if they came again? Now, there was a sudden feeling of optimism around their small campfire. The plan they were coming up with sounded dangerous and Gwenna wasn't sure if it stood the slightest chance of working, but somehow that wasn't the point. The point was that now, for the first time, they could go on the offensive and not be so afraid of the unknown.

  As the night went on and the plan was hatched, Gwenna watched Caymus, trying to make sense of her feelings about him. She loved his friendship, enjoyed being close to him. He had been a warm, easy presence in her life ever since the moment he'd awakened in her little hospital. Did she love him, though? She honestly didn't know. She'd found herself mooning over boys before, of course, but this was different. She didn't feel that attraction to Caymus that she normally did in these situations. In the end, she supposed that it wasn't attraction at all that she felt for the boy from the Temple. It was comfort. She wasn't sure she could fall in love with him any more than she could a warm blanket.

  Eventually, she noticed that Bridget had noticed her noticing Caymus, and she looked away, feeling embarrassed. Here was everyone else, trying to figure out what they were going to do about the people trapped in the earth below, and there she was, trying to figure out what she was going to do about a boy.

  In the end, the only thing she could do was hope that they would all be careful when this plan of theirs went into motion.

  CHAPTER 8

  Rill could scarcely believe where he was, and he wasn't certain if anticipation, fear, or wonder filled the greater part of him in the moment. He was crouched in darkness, in a small hollow in one of the stone walls of Otvia, waiting for a plan that he'd had no small part in creating to take shape and to, perhaps, decide the fates of flames-knew how many mitre.

  He'd have laughed if he hadn't been so nervous. The quietness of the halls of the underground city was as intense as the thrumming his own heartbeat was making in his ears, though, somewhere in the earthen tunnels, he knew the skittering and shrieking of the dark creatures was hammering on the minds of his friends.

  The hollow was carved from one of the tunnels, just outside a fairly large chamber. The chamber itself, from what he'd seen of it, was roughly circular, with a mitre-sized stone door on either end. When he had peered into the room earlier, he had glanced a small, stone plinth standing in its center. The plinth had unfamiliar figures carved into its surface and had stood above a small pool of some oily substance that had burned quietly, peacefully. The room, its single ornament, and the soft, flickering firelight had been beautiful in their simplicity. Merkan had told him this was the place where he had been performing the steps of what he had called 'The Ritual' when the attack had started. Rill didn't understand most of what Merkan had said about the Ritual, but it seemed to have something to do with the celebration of some long-dead hero of the mitre.

  Rill knew that Milo should be standing outside the opposite door to the room by now, waiting to fulfill his part of the plan. Rill wished he could see him, could see anything. His own responsibility, for the moment, was to hide behind this door in this little hollow, which Merkan himself had created about twenty minutes previously. The mitre had assured Rill that he couldn't be seen with the door standing wide open: the hinges jutted out from the stone frame somewhat, which allowed it to lie flush against the wall, hiding the hollow completely. Rill had been amazed by Merkan's abilities. The giant warrior had pressed his hands into the stone of the tunnel and molded it as though it were bread dough, all the while humming and singing quietly with his eyes closed. When Rill had crawled into the resulting depression, Merkan had opened the door wide. Satisfied that Rill was well hidden, he and Caymus had quickly jogged off in the direction of the Center.

  Now, Rill knelt in his hide, still trying to balance excitement and trepidation. Any moment now, Caymus should be running up the underground corridor and into the room with the plinth. The creatures—hopefully, all of them—should be following close behind. It was Rill's responsibility to slam the door shut and throw the massive bolt when the last of the huge, insectoid creatures had passed through the portal, blocking their exit through this side. At the other end, Milo was supposed to do the same, but only after Caymus had passed him. The timing needed to be perfect. If even one of the monsters managed to follow Caymus through that second door, or if Rill slammed his door before all of the creatures were through, the plan would fail. There was also the possibility of Caymus getting trapped in the Ritual Room with the creatures. That was a thought Rill didn't want to linger on.

  Be'Var was also meant to be waiting with Milo on the other side of the far exit. Once the creatures were trapped inside the room, the plan called for him and Caymus to use their abilities to turn the small fire around the plinth into a roaring inferno that would quickly engulf all of Milo's 'white air', leaving the creatures to suffocate and die.

  Both Be'Var and Milo had raised concerns about this part of the plan, saying that, while Merkan's story had certainly imp
lied that the creatures breathed, there was no guarantee that they breathed the same air as humans and mitre. The argument had lasted for several minutes. In the end, however, they had decided that the risk was acceptable and that, at the very least, having the creatures trapped in the room should allow time to free Otvia's prisoners from the Center.

  There had also been some discussion about whether the creatures might be able to simply pass through the stone doors. They had arrived here somehow, in one of the holiest cities in the world, after all, and if Rill's theory was right, the monstrous forms might be able to pass through solid rock as though it were water. They had nearly called the entire affair off at that point, until Merkan had raised another point: if the creatures could pass through stone, what had been keeping them out of the Center for the last week? The group had agreed; the rescue attempt would move forward.

  Matron Y'selle, the girls, and the other two mitre they had encountered in the devastated outer camp, had stayed outside. Gwenna had argued for a minute or two about not being allowed to go, but when the matron had asked her for help getting bandages and poultices together, so they might be able to treat the wounds they were likely to see in the next few hours, she had given up her protest. Rill had gotten the impression that she seemed to actually agree it was a better use of her time and skills, that she wasn't simply acquiescing to the Matron's orders. That might have been an act, though. He wondered about that girl. He knew Caymus had taken a liking to her, and that she seemed interested in him, as well. Rill just hoped she wouldn't be trouble, in the end.

  As he waited, Rill rubbed the stone walls of his hiding place with the palms of his hands and was amazed by the smoothness of them. Every surface in the underground city, of course, had been the same way, so he was surprised to find himself still so fascinated. Merkan had revealed the door to Otvia in much the same way that he had created this hollow, making the outlines of the huge edifices suddenly appear with little more than a touch and a deep, humming sound. He'd then led them through several small chambers—small by mitre standards, as each room was at least a dozen feet high—and larger halls, all connected by a web of corridors and tunnels. The walls reminded Rill of the cave they had spent that cold night in, though the surfaces here were much smoother. He wondered if any mitre had ever made their home in that lonely place.

  Rill had been thinking about the past two weeks rather a lot, lately; despite the near-constant danger they had faced, he couldn't help but think that they had been some of the best days of his life. He felt as though he was actually learning, finally really finding out about the world he lived in. In just the last few days, he had learned more about the elements—even that of fire—than he had picked up in two years of cloistered studies. He thought about the tremendous power that Milo had demonstrated on the night that he'd flown Caymus up on to the walls of the Temple, about how amazed he'd been by the spectacle. He'd known that very night that he no longer wanted to be a disciple of the Conflagration, that there was a great deal to find out about the other elements and the other peoples of the world, and that he would never find those things while trapped behind the Temple's walls.

  He considered the quiet dignity of the room he now stood guard over, the carvings on the stone plinth and what they might mean, the Ritual that Merkan had spoken of. He'd never met a mitre before and he had more questions for the giant than he could count. Why had he become a warrior in the Mael'vekian army? How many mitre were actually down here? Did Otvia keep in contact with the other mitre cities? Just how big was Otvia? He hoped that this plan of theirs worked, else he might not ever get to ask those questions.

  As he pondered, he kept absently running his hands over the surfaces surrounding him, unconsciously expending nervous energy. When his fingers met the open door, he realized that there was some kind of figure carved into it. He could tell the figure was roughly a foot high and half as wide, but he didn't have enough light to make it out properly. He hesitated for a moment, listening for footsteps, yelling, or any other evidence that the plan was already in motion. As there was only silence, he chanced opening the door about an inch, just enough to let some of the light of a torch in the corridor in.

  When he saw the image, he gasped and quickly pulled the door back into position.

  The figure carved into the doorway was a simple one: a straight line, tipped over to one side very slightly, with another small line crossing perpendicularly near the top. That figure, a simple representation of a sword, was an exact match for the mark on the back of Caymus's hand. Instead of a stylized flame, however, this sword stood in front of the outline of a circle. Rill was quite certain that the circle's diameter was exactly the height of the flame that his friend carried upon his skin.

  "Flames." Rill had to fight himself to keep his voice to a whisper. "Caymus, you'd better make it out of this in one piece so you can see this."

  ***

  Left, left, right, left, right. Caymus repeated the words in his mind again and again, trying to burn them into his memory with repetition. He was crouched behind a low wall, looking down into a giant hall. The hall contained dozens of semi-circular rows of stone benches, which cascaded down onto a large, flat area. Merkan had told him that important meetings were held here, that the flat area was a stage from which the leaders of Otvia spoke to their people. Behind the stage, the wall took on a convex shape which stretched up to the ceiling, high above him, and to the left and right several dozen yards. That, Merkan had said, was where the door to the Center lay, closed and hidden as effectively as the entrance to Otvia had been just a few hours ago.

  An even dozen of the creatures slowly crawled, back and forth, along that wall, prodding at it with their sword-like claws, presumably trying to find a way in.

  The back of Caymus's neck was burning like fire.

  Merkan had just moved off to a darkened area of the room. Whereas Caymus stood near the center of the rear of the great hall, very near the mouth of a huge tunnel—the chamber's only entrance—Merkan was about a quarter of the way around to the left, keeping hidden behind the back row of benches. Caymus's job was to get the creature's attention, then take off running; it was Merkan's job to do the same with any stragglers. If they didn't get every last one of the creatures into the Ritual chamber, their plan wouldn't work.

  Left, left, right, left, right. Caymus had been picked to act as bait for the monsters because, other than the mitre, who were all still feeling the effects of dehydration and malnutrition, he had the longest stride and could run the fastest. Caymus had argued that Milo was, in fact, the fastest among them, but Milo had insisted that his usual speed would be greatly affected by the tunnels, that there wasn't enough air to carry him here.

  "Plus," Milo had said, "we already know you can outrun one of them." The priest had grinned about the comment, but Caymus hadn't thought it particularly funny at the time.

  Left, left, right, left, right.

  Caymus had asked Be'Var if he could borrow his sword for this part of the plan. Be'Var had told him no, that it would only serve to slow him down, either weighing down one hand or bouncing off his hip. "Besides," he'd said, "not to be cruel, boy, but if there are as many as Merkan says...let's just say that if they catch up to you, a sword isn't going to make a difference."

  Caymus had been forced to concede the point.

  Left, left, right, left, right.

  They'd left Be'Var and Milo on one side of the Ritual chamber, Rill tucked into a hidden hollow on the other. Merkan was in place. He'd told Caymus to start whenever he was ready.

  He was nothing like ready

  Left, left, right, left, right

  He took a very deep breath, trying to steady his nerves.

  Left, left, right, left, right. All right. Here we go.

  Caymus was actually surprised to find himself standing up and waving his arms with the biggest motions he could manage. "Hey!" he shouted. "Over here!"

  The creatures, all of them together, didn't even turn their heads
to look at him before they began charging in his direction. He didn't even have time to think about how fast they seemed to be moving before he was turning and running in the other direction.

  Left. The first turn came almost immediately as the tunnel branched off in three different directions. Not one of them was lit by torches at this point, and so Caymus had a brief flash of fear has he dashed, headlong, into a darkened corridor. As he ran, he heard an all-to-familiar scream behind him, only multiplied by a number much bigger than he was comfortable with. The sound reverberated through the hall. He hoped that meant they hadn't actually entered the tunnel yet.

  Left. A relatively small—only ten feet high at most—passage peeled off from the main tunnel. This one was lit on either side by pools of oil that gathered in troughs along the walls. Caymus could feel his legs starting to burn. The first night he had done this, he'd had a long way to run, a marathon to this day's sprint, and this time there were also no roots and leaves to trip over. This time, he could afford reckless speed, and so he was running as fast as he could possibly manage.

  Right. The passage opened up into a small chamber with stacks of barrels along the edges and large holes in the walls, up high, near the ceiling. On the way to the Center, he'd wanted to ask Merkan about those holes; now, he didn't given them even the smallest thought. Three passages exited out of this room: the one he just entered through, and two more. Caymus hurried through the one on his right.

  Left. For a moment, he panicked. The passageway continued straight ahead, but a fairly large tunnel opened up to the right. Did 'left' mean 'straight'? He knew to continue forward, but would this count as his left and make the next turn a right, or did 'straight on' not count in his list of directions, meaning his next turn should be a left?

  The sound of falling barrels and skittering claws behind him pushed him forward, regardless. He felt the panic pushing its way into his heart: his pursuers were getting much too close and his lungs were staring to ache.