by Graeme Ing
My hands balled into fists. Even halfway across the city, screams carried on the wind. My mind flitted back to that first street—burning timbers careening in all directions, crashing roof tiles, the smoke snaring its victims, driving them to acts of depravity.
My goblet slipped from my grasp and shattered on the tile floor. I shook the horrific image from my mind.
In the distance, a fiery column erupted high into the sky, illuminating a round, stone tower, out of place among the tenement buildings.
“That’s my street.” I leaped from my chair. “Phyxia, please. Tell me how to stop it.”
Our eyes locked. Was that fear I saw? I turned toward the stairs but she grabbed my arm. Yellow flecks whirled ever faster in her irises.
“If you put a defenseless person between a wight and a ghoul,” she said, “why do the creatures attack each other and not their victim? Why?”
I blinked. What? That was no help whatsoever. I pulled away and bolted for the stairs.
My stomach turned over and over. I swallowed hard.
Mother B.
Ayla!
What was I doing, dining with Phyxia? The fire creature had struck again and Ayla was defenseless against it. My pulse raced. I’d let her down.
After hurtling down five flights, I stumbled into the cold night air, gasping for breath. Where were the damn carriages when you needed them? I raced toward the river, clawing at the stitch in my side. A block later, I collapsed against the pole of a street lantern, my lungs ready to explode as I sucked in air. Sweat beaded on my skin. I was going to get there too late.
A man dismounted from his heleg in front of a tavern.
“Emergency,” I gasped, snatching the reins and thrusting three Malks into his hand. “I’ll send it home, I promise.”
The beast snorted and backed away, its wide, black eyes rolling in their sockets. It took me several attempts to get into the saddle, but finally I yanked the heleg around and drove it down the cobbled street. Behind me, the man shouted for the Black and Reds. Steering my mount proved difficult. The tristak thing didn’t like me one bit, and I had to cling on for dear life against it trying to throw me at every turn. Did I stink of death?
At the end of a wide avenue, I bullied the creature ever faster across City Bridge. The river ran black and cold beneath. On the east side of the river, the heleg put up a bold fight, spinning around and arching its back, kicking the air behind it. My moves weren’t elegant but I stayed on, and that seemed to have impressed the beast enough that it whisked me down Broad Street without further shenanigans.
At the foot of Kand Hill, it skidded to a halt as people poured around us, fleeing toward the river, crying and shrieking. The heleg’s coat was slick with sweat and its breath steamed into the night air. It whinnied and jostled. I led it to a trough, dismounted, and patted its nose. He’d done his part.
The last stragglers emerged from narrow streets and lanes that wound up the hill. Street lanterns shone through a haze of thin smoke, and the air was heavy with the stink of ash and charcoal. A sickly orange glow reflected in windows in the streets above me, and beyond roared a wall of flame. Tortured screams in the distance. The clanging of fire cart bells.
My heart raced. Could I go back into that madness? I took a deep breath and set my teeth. I had to.
The heleg fled, its hooves clattering on the cobbles. Alone, I started up the steep street. After the first turn, I lost sight of the river. The smoke grew thicker until it was like walking through an ocean fog, stumbling from one dulled street lantern to the next. Locked stores and tenements loomed on both sides. My hands trembled as I homed in on the screams and the crashes of fighting and smashing glass.
One block below my home street, I turned a corner and a blast of heat almost knocked me over. The smoke swirled into inky tendrils that probed every doorway and alley. The smoke was alive. Who or what controlled it? Wasn’t incinerating its victims enough?
I siphoned energy from my core and molded a Cleansing Shield, encasing myself in a buffer of frozen air.
In a corner store window, I spotted the ghostly reflection of two men clubbing each other with burning timbers. An old woman seized a shard of glass and held it aloft, twisting and turning it in front of her face as if contemplating what to do with it. The circling smoke seemed to egg her on. My hands trembled. Move, Maldren!
By slipping into a narrow alley I hoped to come to Mother B.’s inn by an easier route. Round Tower Street was close. Or what remained of it.
I shouldn’t have deserted Ayla tonight.
A house’s burning frame tumbled into its neighbor with a crash, cascading rubble and burning embers into the alley. Without hesitating, I ran through, trusting my shield to hold back the heat. My foot caught a broken brick, and I tumbled into the gutter of an adjacent street.
A man lurched around a corner, coat sleeve pulled over his mouth. His clothes were singed and covered in streaks of soot, but I recognized him as the stableman at the inn. He spotted me and backed against the wall. Then he tried to edge past me, his eyes full of fear. Fear, but not madness.
“Pilk,” I yelled, and moved to intercept him. “It’s me, Maldren.”
The blade of his knife flashed in the firelight.
“I’m not mad.” I showed him my empty hands. “The smoke hasn’t got me. Did they get to safety?”
He squirmed past, his gaze flicking between me and the blazing inferno at the top of the road.
“Mother B., Ayla?” I asked. “Where are they?”
Tentacles of choking smoke pushed at my magic shield’s invisible barrier, like roots searching for moisture. When they failed to reach me, they snaked toward Pilk. He squealed and made a break for it, sprinting away downhill.
“Mother died before I could get to her,” he said over his shoulder, sobbing.
My legs sagged and I crumpled to the ground.
“The girl?” I shouted. “What about the girl?”
“She fell from a burning window.” He turned the corner out of sight.
I rolled over into the wet gutter and pounded the ground with my fists.
I’d failed everyone, abandoned these people that I shared a home with. I could have helped them. Saved them. While fine brandy had burned my throat, Mother B. had died a horrible death to the flames, and as the liquor had descended into my stomach, Ayla had plunged from her bedroom window.
Damn it, I had no way of knowing when and where fire would strike. I should’ve been here but it wasn’t my fault. But it was my choice what to do next.
I jerked upright, aware of the searing heat on my face from the blazing buildings. Fire leaped from rooftop to rooftop, rolling like a juggernaut down the hill. Back on my feet, I yelled defiantly against the deafening roar of the flames, the crashing of timbers and falling masonry.
“The dying stops here.”
At my command, ice traveled my veins, bleeding from my body to replenish and expand my shield. Even as I shivered, a cauldron of power boiled in my gut. There would be no rest until I’d exhausted every spell I had against whatever primeval force powered this destruction.
At the very edge of the inferno, I stepped over burning rubble and charred corpses. A curious blue fire enveloped the dead. It shimmered and wavered in the wind and then zipped skyward, leaving a faint trail, quick to fade.
I sucked deep of the power within me. Every part of me hummed and tingled. Never before had I manipulated so much power at once. Magic arced and crackled from my hands to the metal posts of nearby street lanterns.
I hurled my fury at the fires surrounding me, discharging freezing lightning into the adjacent buildings, extinguishing them in an instant. Steam and ash surged into the road, but the street ahead—my street—still raged in the heart of the inferno.
The fire shrieked and whistled as if in pain, and the flames leaped high into the air until the sky burned. Like a vision from The Deep itself, the aerial firestorm broiled and swirled, flexing its muscles, pulsing and spitti
ng. Surely now the demons of Lak would rise from the abyss. The fiery wall towered over me like water brimming a dam.
It roared, it screamed. It was alive, I was certain of that now.
“You want a piece of me?” I screeched. “Then come and get it.”
A torrent of heat poured out of the sky, flowing down the road and reigniting everything around me. My eyebrows burned. I caught the stench of my smoldering hair. The fire creature was all around me: in the sky, the buildings, in the very air pressing down, making my lungs burn. I sensed a presence as old as time itself. What was this thing?
I cast Death’s Spark, with such intensity that I cried out in pain. My lightning rocketed into the sky, sparking blue until it exploded in the heart of the firestorm above me.
Thunder boomed across the city.
Gobbets of fire rained down. The burning wasteland around me offered no cover. No one lived to see my struggle. A ball of flame plummeted from the sky, exploding in a nearby abandoned cart, the flames like a plague of insects devouring an animal.
Raw, limitless power overran my Perception, shattering it. I had no chance so I ran.
Orange phantoms swirled out of the smoke and circled me as I sprinted along the burning street. Their hair was alight, and their faces seared and blistering. I snapped my eyes closed and muttered a protection spell, but they continued inside my head, wailing and whirling. Thousands of voices.
End our suffering. Free our souls.
The anguish! My head felt ready to burst.
Release us.
“I can’t. Get out of my head.”
I ran on blindly, waving my arms, swatting at ghosts, dodging fireballs detonating around me. I hurtled toward the river, fully intent on plunging into its icy depths. A sudden back draft grabbed me with a deafening whoosh, jerking me off my feet and smashing me into a street lantern. I clung to the pole with both arms. Boxes and barrels, debris and straw blew by me, sucked back toward the fire. A yowling cat flew past my head.
Then the sky went dark. Total silence. The air pressure equalized and I crumpled to the ground. The heat had gone, the firestorm extinguished supernaturally. Only burning embers remained, billowing smoke into the night.
The creature had chosen to withdraw. Why?
I lay motionless, my arms still wrapped around the metal pole. The only sound was the thumping of my heart. A breeze blew in from the river, and with it a chill fog. Ayla swirled out of the gloom, her clothes shredded and blackened, her eyes hollow, lifeless. She seemed to float upon the fog that billowed along the ground.
“I’m so sorry.” I moaned. “I’m too late.”
My head dropped to the cold cobbles.
She glided forward. Was the girl going to cling to me in death as she had in life?
“Go.” I waved my arm feebly. “Be at peace. I’m not your master now.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Don’t make me dispel you. It’ll hurt. Both of us.” I groaned. My gut ached.
Ayla’s ghost snorted. They can do that? She knelt and wrapped her arms tightly around me. Her body warmth seeped into me.
“I’m not dead,” she said. “I made it. We both made it.”
She clung to me and wouldn’t let go. Thank Belaya! I squeezed her tight and pressed my head into her lavender-scented hair.
I awoke to the aroma of mulip, fresh and minty. I savored the moment, relaxed on my bed, eyes closed. The world rocked gently. Had I gotten drunk the night before? Was that why I couldn’t remember returning to my room? I pitied whoever had carried my dead weight up the steep back stairs. My eyes jerked open and I sat up, cracking my head on the wooden frame of a bunk above me. The room was totally unfamiliar.
“Careful,” Ayla said. “Didn’t you get banged up enough last night?”
She lay cold, damp cloths on my arms and legs. They soothed the heat rashes on my skin and reduced the inflammation.
“That feels so good,” I murmured.
I studied her concerned expression as she perched on a chair by my bedside. No longer black with soot, her skin was pink and clean beneath her disheveled clothes. She pushed a steaming mug into my hand.
“You mumbled all night long about freeing spirits,” she said. “More than once you cried out for Mother B.”
My shoulders sank. Of course this wasn’t my room. It didn’t exist anymore. The whole inn, the whole street…gone.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I was across the river when it happened. I should—”
Her shushing sounds cut me off. “Don’t blame yourself.”
Morning light streamed in through a circular window at one end of the room, and through cracks in the ceiling boards. At the other end, a sturdy door stood open. It didn’t reach the floor—there was a six-inch step at the bottom. The whole room rolled side to side, accompanied by the occasional splash of water. The enticing smell of toasting sabatas wafted through the door.
“Why are we on a boat?” I asked.
Ayla dabbed at my burned arm. It was covered with scratches and flaking skin but I’d gotten off lightly.
“After I found you last night, you babbled on and on about getting to water.”
There was a gaping hole in my memory. Her hugging me beneath the street lantern was my last recollection. I shook my head and then groaned at the throbbing in my skull.
“I tried several inns,” she said, “but you kept pushing me away and mumbling about boats. Don’t you remember?”
“Where are we?”
“Boattown. I figured that’s what you meant, but you were rambling. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Whose boat is this?”
She shrugged. “He seemed nice enough and the rent was cheap. This is a good place to hide.”
Boattown was a superb place to lie low, among pirates, thieves, and lowlifes running from the law, but how had she gotten in? It was a miracle the boat owner hadn’t slit our throats and tossed us into the harbor. I imagined her walking into the heart of the floating slum, in the middle of the night, propping up a necromancer. Tongues would be wagging this morning, but she’d done good.
She stroked my arm. “Thank you for coming back for me.”
I lost myself in the depth of her chestnut eyes. My heart thumped and warmth spread through me.
“Go up on deck and get some air,” she said, removing the now-warm cloths from my limbs. “I’ll join you in a moment.” She stood and headed for the door.
I crawled out of the bunk, one hand holding my head, and stepped into a walkway containing half a dozen identical cabins. The door at the end opened into a galley, but I climbed a nearby ladder into what had once been a mess hall. It was now a mere shell with gaping holes in every wall. Beyond lay a spacious rear deck.
Solas was halfway to the zenith, and I tipped my head to soak up his warm rays. Our boat was packed among a flotilla. Some were broken merchant vessels like ours, others were huge hulks, or open and narrow. All had been lashed together with rope and planks. The wooden mass bobbed and undulated like a bed of moss upon a pond. Our boat lay close to the clear water of the harbor. Dozens of ramshackle boats had been moored between us and the rows of warehouses and silos on the shore. This was one place that fire creature would never venture.
Ayla joined me, balancing a tray laden with steaming mugs and delicious-smelling sabatas. I snatched one and bit into its flaky pastry, blowing hard against the hot meat and vegetables inside.
“This is really good.”
She frowned. “You didn’t think I could cook?”
“To be honest, no. Didn’t you have maids and servants to—”
Her eyes flared. “Why do you hate aristocracy so much?”
I was on dangerous ground, ironic since I wasn’t on ground at all.
“It’s good,” I said. “Thank you.”
She nibbled daintily on one end of her sabata.
“Mother B. was the only person who ever looked after me and cooked for me,” I s
aid. “My mother…”
I glanced at the trash-laden water sloshing between the boats.
A violent trembling seized Ayla, as if she’d been holding it back but could do so no longer.
“Everything burst into flames,” she muttered. “There was screaming…breaking glass…people leaped from windows. It all happened so fast.”
“I thought you had leaped too. Pilk said you had.”
She shook her head.
“I was downstairs. People ran in every direction.” She picked at her breakfast. “It was total mayhem. So many bodies. Then the smoke came. It…it…”
“I know,” I murmured. “I’ve seen it.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“It was horrible. The smoke was alive. People started…”
A single tear raced down her face, over her lips and chin. I had an urge to wipe it away, but stayed my hand.
“There were…fights. Someone grabbed my arm. Mother B. pushed me clear. Oh Gods, the man’s eyes.”
She dropped her forgotten sabata and her whole body shook.
“He had an ax. He…he…and she…so much blood.”
“I know, I know.”
I wrapped my arms around her and she buried her head into my chest, sobbing. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I simply held her. I understood her anguish. Undead in the sewers were one thing, watching friends and neighbors die was another.
No one should witness the horrors of that writhing smoke. The Guild should be keeping people safe from such horrors. Why wasn’t Fortak organizing them to seek and destroy this thing?
I patted Ayla’s back. She should be living a life of luxury with her aristocrat parents, safe from all this. I remembered the burning souls from last night, how they had wailed to be released from their torment. Even death was no escape. I looked across the city, where wisps of gray smoke spiraled into the clear green sky, like a tombstone marking a grave.
I squeezed through the ridiculously narrow alley that led to Phyxia’s door. High, ramshackle walls of wood and tin restricted the daylight. I ground my teeth. This time I needed answers, not evasion. The fire had taken my home and friends. It had gotten personal.