The Cleansing Flame

by J A Hutson

  “This is how it has to be,” he says. Silence follows this pronouncement, the only sounds in the chamber the crackle of the great flame and his boots scraping on stone as he approaches.

  I don’t know what he means, and he seems to be speaking to me.

  “How the threads all finally weave together.” He stops, putting his hand on his sword’s pommel. “In truth, I never truly believed in fate. But in a world where men can become gods, is the idea of a greater force shaping our destiny so unreasonable?”

  An explosion of movement to our left. Xela, sprinting from the other side of the Cleansing Flame – she must have been creeping across the room ever since Fen Poria had slain the Contessa, waiting for a chance to come at her. The Marquis doesn’t even turn as she hurdles closer, a long knife glinting in her hand, even though he must have heard the rapid patter of her footsteps. Just before she reaches him she’s smashed into, and Xela tumbles to the ground tangled with Fen Poria.

  Now the Marquis does turn, his head tilted slightly as if he’s enjoying this spectacle. The Zimani shadowdancer and the pale girl are like a pair of fighting cats, rolling around in a frantic blur. Then they separate, coming to their feet in an eyeblink. Xela is much taller, but her dress has already been slashed and she’s clearly wincing from pain. Fen Poria’s movements are crisp and skilled, and from the way she’s brandishing her curving dagger she looks like an experienced knife fighter. Her eyes are wide and her cheeks flushed, and the smile filling her face makes me want to shiver. She feints forward, and Xela backs away.

  The Marquis turns back to me. “It will be a good show, I’m sure. But it’s just the opening act.” His fingers tap out a quick pattern on his sword’s pommel. “It all comes down to us.”

  “I don’t know you,” I say, trying to keep my eye on the figures of Xela and Fen Poria. If things go badly for the Zimani, I’ll have to help, even if it means cutting through the Marquis before I can find out what’s going on.

  “You do, Talin.”

  Coldness prickles my skin at this. But it’s impossible.

  The Marquis grips the hilt and draws his sword. The prickle becomes a flood. The light of the Cleansing Flame blazes along a tapering length of red glass. The white hilt . . . the slightly curving blade . . . it looks the same as the sword once wielded by Amara.

  With his other hand the Marquis removes his red mask and tosses it aside. The hair on his head may be an unremarkable brown, but the close-cropped beard that had been hidden is a fiery red. His eyes are copper, and there are crow’s feet at their edges that hadn’t been there before, but the face is unmistakable.

  “Valans?” I whisper, shocked.

  A crooked smile. “I’m pleased to finally see you again, traitor. I’ve waited twenty years for this moment.”

  “Twenty years? But it was just a few days ago . . .”

  “For you.” The red sword slices the air in a quick pattern, almost too fast to see. “Long ago I came through a Gate in the depths of this city’s sewers, spat out into some ancient, forgotten temple. Alone, with nothing but my mother’s sword to protect me from the horrors that dwelled down there. I thought I would die, being hunted through the tunnels in the dark. I probably would have let the things take me if there hadn’t been something burning inside me, refusing to allow me to die.”

  Xela and Fen Poria have stopped their circling and turned to watch what is unfolding between us.

  “Anger. Hate.”

  “Towards me?”

  Valans sneers. “Of course. You took away everything from me – my home, my people, my mother. My sister. I was left bleeding in the darkness, sloshing through filthy tunnels, fighting off the blind white serpents and the things down there that gibber in the black.”

  “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”

  “Perhaps,” he says, shrugging. “Ghervas had told me some of the old stories, since I was to be the Red Sword one day. I knew the silvers were betrayers. I thought . . . I thought at the time maybe you were different. I wasn’t sure. But after I’d crawled out of the depths of this city, and when I could bring order to my memories of what had happened, I realized that you must have been sent back to finish what had begun when you silvers abandoned our world and left the rest of us to die.”

  “It was your mother’s idea to flee through the Gate. I had no idea I even carried the key.”

  Valans raises his sword, balancing on the balls of his feet. It’s a stance I know – like Amara, he has been trained to fight in the same style as me. “Do you have the key?”

  “No.”

  “Hidden in your room back at that hovel, The Last Word? Perhaps in the care of your pet lamias or the scientist’s seditious daughter? I’ll find a painful way to make them give it up.” Valans shakes his head. “You have no idea the irony of the key now being within my grasp. The gods are laughing at me.”

  He lunges forward, quick as a striking viper. I’m not expecting this and I just barely manage to raise my sword in time. When the red and green glass meet, a musical chime rings out.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, giving ground as he shuffles forward.

  With his free hand he gestures at the looming brazier and its dancing white flame. “I did all this to find them. To find Valyra.” Again his blade flickers out and I turn it aside. “Do you understand what I’m doing here?”

  My silence must be answer enough.

  “I searched for decades. I rose high in the Red Trillium and I used all my resources to scour this land for my lost people. For information about how to open the Gates. But there was nothing. It was like the memory of these doorways and the other worlds had been effaced from history.”

  Again our swords chime as they come together. He’s fast, as fast as I am. Whatever special strength or speed I have he shares as well.

  “But there is mystery in this world, traitor. The saints. Men and women who became more than mortal but less than gods. What secrets they must know. What powers they must wield – enough power to find my people.”

  My gaze flicks again to the Cleansing Flame. “So you did all this to become a saint.”

  “Yes. But I’m no fool. I know that simply being the leader of a Trust would never be enough to satiate whatever entity decides who may ascend.” He spreads his arms wide. “So here I stand tonight, the new king of Ysala.”

  “But the Trusts . . .”

  Valans points with the tip of his sword at the body of the Contessa. “Have all had their heads cut off. Right now the remaining lieutenants of the Trusts who survived the massacre at the Masquerade are pledging loyalty to the Red Trillium. To me.”

  My mind is whirling. “And that’s enough to win godhood? Becoming a king?”

  “Perhaps not,” Valans admits. “But I’ve tried to leave very little to chance. You see, I’ve studied the paths to sainthood carefully. This fire,” he throws out his arm again to encompass the Cleansing Flame, “the hotter it is, the less . . . achievement the supplicant needs. And so the scientist has been tasked with using the glitter to make the flame as hot as possible. To increase my odds of being elevated when I finally step into the fire.”

  “You’re insane.”

  Valans’s mouth twists. “Maybe I did leave something of myself down in the sewers of this city, gnawed off by the rats in the darkness. But I believe it’s also true that greatness requires a streak of madness. I like to think that this was always my fate, and all the horrors I’ve survived tempered me into becoming the kind of man who can reach out and claim immortality.” The brazier to our left pops and hisses, as if it can hear what Valans has said.

  “First, though, you need to die.”

  Our swords come together again with a ringing clash. All I can do is parry his slashes as he attacks again and again – there’s a fury driving him, lending him strength. It’s controlled, though, and he never takes any risks that would open up a chance for a counter. I give ground before his assault, barely warding away the gleaming red sword.

>   “Did you feel guilt?” he snarls as he continues to press me. “When you realized that you had destroyed my tribe – a people who had clung tenaciously to life for centuries – did you feel any pangs in your soul for what you had done?”

  “I did nothing,” I say, gritting my teeth as I catch the red blade with my falcon-shaped crossguard and turn it aside. “I saved your sister’s life. And if I hadn’t come to your people you all would have faded away. Your tribe was dying. Valyra told me. She wanted to escape that terrible place.”

  I’m off my back foot now, and for the first time Valans has to defend against my slash. I see a flicker of doubt in his face.

  He lunges again, trying to reclaim the initiative. He has left an opening, though, and as I send his blade skittering wide I step inside his guard and punch him hard in the face. He stumbles back, holding his nose, momentarily stunned.

  I’m just about to rush forward and skewer him when something thuds into me and red agony erupts in my shoulder. I reel away, cursing. One of Fen Poria’s throwing knives is jutting from my flesh – it should have taken me in my throat, but Xela must have charged her when she’d seen Fen Poria reaching for her bracer. I spare a quick glance away from Valans and see that they have resumed their fight, but the careful dance from before has devolved into a flurry of hacking and slashing.

  I need to end this. That isn’t a fight Xela can win.

  Luckily the knife didn’t strike my sword arm, and I rip the blade out and toss it away. Valans is coming at me again, blood streaming down his face and soaking his red beard, madness and anger in his eyes. He screams, his sword arcing. I catch the blade, letting it run down the length of my green glass sword. When it reaches my crossguard I twist hard, ripping the sword from his fingers. I kick out, catching him in his belly and sending him tumbling backwards.

  The red glass sword clatters to the stone. I step forward and raise my blade and he scuttles away from me. I can’t help but remember Amara dying in my arms, begging me to take care of her tribe. Her children. For a moment my sword wavers. Can he still be saved?

  Light gathers around Valans’s hand. What I’d thought was him desperately trying to ward my final blow away was nothing of the sort.

  The cutting light flashes in a burning line towards me. Without thinking, I do the only thing I can and raise my sword to meet it.

  A flash, nearly blinding me. The thread of power fractures like when light strikes a crystal. Each of these reflections rips into the world – shards of stone gout as several of the lines carve furrows in the floor, while holes pock the ceiling as other fragments of his power are sent spinning upwards. Another rips through the tripod upon which the brazier holding the Cleansing Flame rests.

  I think I must have a smoldering gap somewhere in my body, but after several nervous moments I realize that the splintering light has missed me.

  Valans seems shocked about this as well. Then he gives a raging, wordless scream and again the light begins to take shape around his outstretched hand.

  I don’t think I’ll be able to escape a second time.

  One of the legs of the tripod gives way with a shuddering crack. The brazier tips, sliding off its stand, and the white flame topples over . . . directly onto Valans. I see his mouth drop in surprise just before he’s consumed by an avalanche of fire.

  “Gods!” I scream, stumbling backwards from the heat. The blaze is so blindingly intense that I can barely see what’s happening inside the conflagration . . . a shadow, dwindling, wrapped in a cloak of rippling fire.

  He is utterly obliterated. When the flames subside there’s nothing but a dark outline of ash where once Valans had been. His sword has shattered, chunks of red glass strewn among the last flickering pockets of the Cleansing Flame.

  Xela. I tear my gaze from the remains of what had been Valans. The Zimani shadowdancer staggers towards me, her eyes rounded by shock. She’s clutching her side, blood leaking from between her fingers.

  “Are you all right?” I ask, rushing over to her.

  She nods, her face tight with pain. “Just a few flesh wounds. Hopefully that bitch doesn’t poison her daggers.”

  I glance away, looking for Fen Poria. “Where is she?”

  “Turned and ran as soon as the flame fell on the Marquis. Little loyalty there.”

  My attention returns to the pile of ash that had been Valans. “Not much left to be loyal to.”

  Xela grimaces. “I can relate,” she says, and I know she’s talking about the Contessa.

  “My boy! Are you all right?”

  Poz is emerging from under his worktable, his face aghast. “By the tainted saints, what happened to the flame? Oh, the hierophant is going to have our heads on pikes for this!”

  “He’s right,” Xela says. “When the temple finds out we destroyed the Cleansing Flame our lives will be forfeit.”

  “How will they know?” I ask, just as the doors to the chamber burst open.

  Warriors stream inside, more than a dozen, and take up position near the entrance. Several hold crossbows pointed at us. I groan, trying to push aside the exhaustion from my fight with Valans. Replacing it is a bleak hopelessness – how can we escape this?

  Through the open doorway glides a woman in a shimmering silken dress. Her mask is wrought of gold, and it matches the color of the hair tumbling around her shoulders. The warriors make space as she comes to stand in their midst.

  “What a remarkable evening,” she says, shaking her head as she regards the toppled brazier and the smoldering remnants of the Cleansing Flame.

  A shock of confusion goes through me. I know that voice.

  So does Xela. “Contessa?” she murmurs, just loud enough for the golden-haired woman to hear.

  The woman chuckles. “What is the point of wearing a mask when your hair is so distinct?” She sighs. “Poor Alenna. She always enjoyed the charade.”

  “The Marquis is dead,” I tell her, still struggling to accept that the woman murdered by Fen Poria had not been the Contessa.

  “Wonderful news. He was an ambitious creature and a danger to Ysala. Now he is gone, as are most of my rivals. Strange how fortune turns so suddenly.”

  “Contessa,” Xela says, and I can hear the tremor in her voice, “does this still settle our debt?”

  The Contessa waves her hand languidly. “It does, child. You are free. Though if you wish to stay in my service it could be arranged. You might need my protection after this. And you as well.” She is now addressing me. “Tonight you destroyed a religion. The zealots in the temple will try and take revenge. Even I may not be able to stay their hand.”

  “We will leave the city,” Xela says, reaching out to grab my arm. “We will find protection in Zim.”

  “We?”

  “Come with me, Talin,” she says fiercely. “Bring your friends. The hierophant cannot reach us easily over the mountains, and I have favors and allies to call upon.”

  The Contessa claps her hands together loudly. “That may truly be your wisest course of action. It will certainly make my life less complicated. Now, I have other important matters to attend to. I will bid you both farewell.” Her boots ring on the stone as she starts to leave the chamber, but just before she reaches the entrance she turns again. She hesitates a moment, and then she reaches up and removes her golden mask.

  “It was good to see you again, Talin. It had been too long.”

  Then she whirls on her heels and strides out of the room – some of the warriors fall in behind her, while others take up positions flanking the door to keep us from following.

  “What was that about?” Xela asks. “What did she mean?”

  I swallow, too stunned to answer. Her eyes. Her eyes had been silver.

  20

  “I can’t believe you destroyed the glitter,” Poz mutters for the thousandth time since we fled the manse of the Red Trillium Trust. He’s shaking his head as we climb the stairs up to the entrance of The Last Word, loose papers filled with his illegible scraw
ls clutched tightly to his chest. Behind us the giant cockerel that pulled us here in a rickshaw gives a piercing shriek and clatters away down the pockmarked road.

  “It was too dangerous,” I say as I open the door for him. “I wouldn’t even trust the Contessa with it.”

  “And she’s going to be angry when she finds out what you did,” Xela sighs, shaking her head. “She certainly wanted it, though for what I don’t know.”

  The glitter had smoked and fizzled when I’d dumped the contents of the vial Bell had given me into the chest, then quickly started to degrade. Before we’d left the chamber – to Poz’s horror – the substance had been completely ruined.

  “All the more reason to get out of Ysala quickly,” I respond.

  Deliah and Bell are sitting together at a table in the Word’s common room, and when they see us both of them leap to their feet. Bell’s hands go to her mouth, then she rushes over to Poz and throws her arms around his neck, nearly knocking over the old scientist. “Papa!” she cries, clutching at him. “Papa!”

  Poz awkwardly pats her on the back. “Bellamina, my dear,” he croaks, barely able to get the words out. “Careful, you’re going to strangle me.”

  Bell laughs through her sobs, squeezing him tighter. As Poz’s face starts to purple I turn away and make my way stiffly to the bar. It seems like every injury I’ve incurred over the last few days has reappeared at the same time – perhaps my sword did not so much heal me as push back the pain to a later reckoning.

  I lean against the wood, my fingers exploring my ribs to see if any are clearly broken.

  “Quite the night,” the barkeep says, coming up to me. “You look like you need a drink.”

  “A good idea,” I say, turning to him. My jaw drops in astonishment – the black-and-white-haired barkeep from before is gone. Instead, the fat blacksmith from Soril is standing there, polishing a dented flagon. He grins when he sees my surprise.

  “You’re . . . I saw you at the Masquerade.”

  The barkeep slaps his bulging belly. “You did! I wondered if you’d recognize me. Did you like my mask? My wife used to call me an old bear.”