The Cleansing Flame

by J A Hutson

  “You’re a saint.”

  He snorts. “She certainly never used to call me that. I always had a habit of getting into trouble.” His points a thick finger at my face. “Like you.”

  “Trouble?”

  “That fool redhead – we were all hoping you would keep him from jumping into the Cleansing Flame. He seemed like a right wanker. Then you went and dumped it on him!”

  “Wait,” I say, holding up my hand. “Are you saying he became a saint?” A tingling coldness is spreading through me.

  The barkeep – Bolivan, that had been what Bell had named him – shrugs and spits into the tankard he’s holding, then resumes his polishing. “Don’t right know, at least not yet. These things take some time to sort out. But I think you should pray pretty fiercely that he doesn’t end up getting what he wanted. He’ll have it in for you, I’m sure.”

  “Talin,” Deliah says, coming up beside me.

  “Look!” I say, turning and grabbing her arm. I gesture emphatically at the saint behind the bar.

  Who is no longer there.

  “Look at what?” she says.

  “I . . . there was –”

  She sighs and grabs my chin, turning me back to face her. “Talin. I have something important to tell you.”

  “You’re with child.”

  She blinks rapidly. “What? Saints, no. Bell and I had dinner with a group of Zimani traders. They told us about a girl over the Wall who could heal people with her hands. A pale girl with red hair and copper eyes.”

  “Valyra.”

  “It must be.”

  “Then we have to go to her. The Wall, you said? That means she’s in Zim?”

  Deliah nods.

  “Perfect. Xela thinks we should go there – I’m afraid we made some rather powerful new enemies.”

  “The shadowdancer is coming with us? And does what you’re saying mean we should leave now?”

  “That would probably be best.”

  Shaking her head, Deliah pushes away from the bar. “I’ll go and pack.”

  I watch her sway across the room, and she pauses briefly at the base of the stairs to lean over and whisper something into Xela’s ear. The shadowdancer responds with a wry grin and a glance in my direction.

  I let out a long sigh, leaning back with my elbows on the bar. My side is throbbing and I must have been scalded from my closeness to the flame, as the skin on my left arm is red and blistered.

  I watch the common room and the swirl of patrons. Men and women of every color, talking and carousing with unfathomably odd creatures. I am a stranger here, but I think I could learn to love this land.

  My gaze is drawn to a large fellow in a shapeless robe as he rises from his seat in the corner. His face is shadowed, but he tips his broad-brimmed hat in my direction as he stumps his way to the door. My mind drifts, untethered . . .

  I jerk back to myself as Bell wraps me in a fierce embrace. “Thank you, thank you,” she keeps repeating. My legs are tingling – I’ve been standing here, motionless, for quite some time. I feel strange, like there had been some mist that descended over me, blotting out my thoughts.

  I try to remember what had happened. I was standing here, watching the room. Someone had stood, nodded at me. Under his hat I’d glimpsed something . . .

  Wide white eyes. Fish eyes, like I’d seen before in a different world.

  There had been a Shriven here, the creature Valyra’s people had called a Voice.

  Yes, after tonight everything would be much more complicated.

  Thank you so much for reading The Cleansing Flame, and there is much more of the story to be told. While you’re waiting for the next installment, please consider checking out my epic fantasy series The Raveling, beginning with The Crimson Queen. Here’s a sample, and I hope you enjoy!

  Alec

  The Crimson Queen: Prologue

  The old man waited, shrouded in darkness, alone in a room carved from the mountain’s heart.

  How long had he been waiting? He knew, and yet he did not know. Time bled differently down here, so far removed from the sky and sea; usually it became thinner, more attenuated, moments stretching into eternities. But on rare occasion it seemed to bunch and swell, thundering through these passageways like a mighty river seeking the ocean after the spring floods, sweeping them all along whether they wished it to or not.

  That is the danger, he mused, of living in such an immutable place. Change, when it did come, seemed too hurried, too discourteous.

  And a great change was coming; he could feel it thrumming in the rock around him. They had a bond, he and the mountain. For one hundred and seventy-six years he had lived almost every waking moment within, one hundred and twenty of those as the daymo of the kith’ketan. The slightest disturbance reverberated through the halls to him like a great drum beating deep down among the mountain’s roots.

  So he was aware, even before his steward told him, that the Undying One was coming to see him.

  The air in his room eddied, ever so slightly, and he knew he was no longer alone. The old man closed his eyes, embracing the shadow, and in his mind the contours of his sanctum materialized. He sat cross-legged atop a dais carved from a giant femur – not a dragon’s, as his old master had once told him, since such remains held queer properties, but another beast from lost antiquity, one whose bones had turned smooth and hard with the turning of the ages. Five walls enclosed him, perfectly symmetrical, curving to come together far above, where a great iron bell was suspended. A silken cord dangled down, almost brushing his hand. A single tolling and his steward would appear. Two and any kith’ketan in the mountain of high enough rank to bear a shadowblade would hurry to attend him. Three and a dozen of his followers would burst through the chamber’s entrance and slay whoever had displeased him.

  He kept his hands in his lap, perfectly still.

  The presence in his sanctum did not speak. The silence stretched between them for a time –A moment? An eternity? – and then the daymo pulled from his voluminous sleeves a long, thin object, something he had sent his steward searching for as soon as he had felt this one approaching.

  “May I?” he asked, and at another time he would have choked on such a request. The thought that the daymo of the kith’ketan, within his own sacred mountain, would ask permission to do anything was galling – but, he chided himself, remembering his own teachings, pride was an illusion, an artifice that could be set aside when circumstances warranted.

  And conversing with their most honored guest was just such a circumstance.

  “Yes.” The Undying One spoke softly, without inflection or accent. An unmemorable voice. Yet there was power behind it – the old man felt the reverberations.

  Light flared in the darkness. Not a warm, golden glow, but a harsh, pale flickering that painted the room in shades of charcoal and bone.

  The daymo set the corpsetallow candle in a twisted black-metal stand. The white flame writhed and danced like a creature in pain – which, in a way, he supposed it was. Could a soul feel pain even when ripped from its body? A philosophical question, and one he suspected no man living could answer.

  The old man studied his guest. Tall, with pallid, unlined skin. Black ringlets that fell to his shoulders. Large, dark eyes and a thin mouth. The man was dressed in the traditional garb of their order, even though he was not truly a part of it – a black tunic lacking any design or symbol, loose black trousers cinched by a wire that could be used as a means to kill, a cloak and cowl. And it was as he suspected: the man matched perfectly with the image he still held in his memory from well over a century ago, when he had attended his own master in this very chamber as that ancient daymo had met with the Undying One to discuss the murder of a padarasha.

  “You are leaving us,” the old man said, passing his hand over the candle. The flame shied away from him, as if afraid.

  The Undying One nodded. “I have been summoned.”

  That surprised the old man, but he did not let it show. �
��A man cannot serve two masters.”

  “I have no master,” murmured the Undying One. Then his thin mouth quirked slightly. “And who said I was a man?”

  True enough, thought the daymo. Considerations of who or what this creature was had consumed more of his time than he would ever admit. His master, the previous daymo, had confided in him once that he thought the Undying One to be an avatar of shadow, a physical manifestation of the philosophy that guided the kith’ketan. Brought into being, perhaps, by the intense devotion of those that lived under the mountain.

  But the old man did not believe that. He now thought the Undying One was merely a visitor to their home, though his purpose for living amongst them for so many centuries remained inscrutable.

  “Before you go . . . I wish to see your blade. I have heard many stories.”

  Did the Undying One hesitate? Had the old man said something unexpected, deviated from whatever scripted dance they were engaged in?

  Then he stepped forward and drew his weapon. There was no sound, no rasping of metal like accompanied the drawing of traditional swords. Nor was there the faint whisper of silk, as when a shadowblade was flourished. The sword slid out as silent as a grave and the corpsetallow candle quailed in its presence, guttering.

  The Undying One held out his sword so that the old man could study its curved blade. It looked like normal steel, notched in places, with a few faint cracks threading the metal. But the hair on his arm lifted when he reached out to touch the weapon, and the Undying One shook his head firmly.

  “Do not touch. You are strong, but I cannot guarantee that it will not take you.”

  The daymo withdrew his hand, and the Undying One sheathed the sword.

  Surprisingly, he found his mouth was dry. He swallowed. “Will you return to us?”

  “I do not know. The world above is changing – surely you have felt the tremors. And now an old . . . friend asks for my counsel and help. She would not do this unless great events were unfolding. Perhaps the kith’ketan will be drawn into what is coming.”

  “We do not wish to guide the course of history. That has never been our purpose.”

  The Undying One shook his head slightly. “No, you would rather be the tools of those who would change the world. But perhaps you should consider another role for your order. Perhaps it does not conflict with your . . . philosophy as much as you believe. A new age is dawning, and the bold will shape it to their desires.”

  Those last words echoed in the old man’s thoughts long after the Undying One had turned and departed, leaving after many years the darkness under the mountain and emerging again into the world of light and life.

  Keilan

  Keilan leaned over the side of the small fishing boat and dipped his fingers into the dark water as his father pulled hard again on the oars. They slid forward through the swells that were trying to push them back toward land, his father grunting curses with each strong stroke.

  “Can I help?” Keilan asked, settling onto one of the boat’s seat-planks. Across from him his father grimaced a smile through his beard.

  “The day I can’t row out against the breakers,” he said, his face flushed, “is the day I hang up my nets and give this old tub to you.”

  Keilan nodded. The same answer, returned every day to the same question. Endless identical days, it seemed, different only in the size of their catch, his father’s mood, and the vagaries of wind and water.

  Keilan glanced at the southern horizon, that thin seam where sea joined with sky. Wind and water. He didn’t share his father’s old fisherman sense of the changing weather, but still he could tell that this day would not be exactly like most others.

  “Aye, you can feel it too, then,” his father said as Keilan continued to stare off into the distance. “A storm’s brewing out there. Something’s maddened one of the Shael, t’be sure. They’ll be lancing the sea before nightfall, looking to spear a serpent or two.”

  Keilan saw it, a faint bruising in the hard blue sky that warned of distant storm clouds massing. He turned back to his father and was surprised to catch something glinting in his slate-gray eyes.

  “Your father’s not so old yet, boy. The rowing’s hard because the sea’s starting to work its way into a fury. You’ll have to wait a few more years yet before you can call yourself the captain of this ship.”

  “How long until the storm comes?”

  His father squinted, lines scored by years of sun and salt cracking his face. “We should be all right if we get back around the late tide, but I also don’t want to tempt Ghelu. So we best start filling this boat with fish.” He paused his rowing, holding the oars suspended over the waves; water streamed from the blades, drops glittering like jewels in the sunlight as they fell. “You best do your dowsing trick.”

  My dowsing trick, Keilan thought, rolling his sleeve up. His father likened what he did to a man finding water . . . though of course, out here, water was easy enough to find. Other things were more difficult.

  He leaned again over the side of the rocking boat, this time farther out, and plunged his arm into the water up to his elbow. It was cold, but not bracingly so. Behind him he heard his father set down the oars with a clatter, and then a moment later the susurrus of nets being pulled from beneath the seat-planks.

  Keilan stared into the shifting blackness. The sounds of his father dwindled as he concentrated on the sea and the feel of his hand drifting in the gentle current. Gradually the sun on his neck and the wind tugging at his hair also faded away. He dissolved into the water, spreading out into the yawning abyss below.

  He was there. Under the water, floating, coddled by the freezing darkness. In the Deep. As always, the immensity beneath him was briefly, terrifyingly overwhelming, and he had to tamp down the panicked desire to kick for the surface and sunlight.

  Keilan mastered himself. He was not alone; down here, he was never truly alone, if he looked long enough. He felt them then, surprisingly close, pinpricks of warmth skittering through the dark, rising from the depths . . . stars falling up. They were close, but not quite close enough.

  With a gasp he returned to the boat, pulling his arm from the water. Below his elbow the skin had turned ashen.

  “Well?” his father asked. “Is this a good spot?”

  Keilan swallowed and shook his head, massaging his numb arm. “No . . . but not far. There’s a fair-sized school coming, a bit more that way.” He waved vaguely to the east, where a rocky spur thrust out into the bay.

  His father grunted and dropped the net he’d been baiting, picking up his oars again. “Ironheads, are they? Must be chasing the minnows round the rocks.”

  Keilan shrugged and shivered, reaching for the sealskin blanket his father now kept for him in the boat. They lurched forward as his father pulled hard at the oars, straining to get them positioned quick enough. Keilan kept his eyes fixed on the bottom of the boat, but he could feel his father watching him with concern.

  “You all right, boy? You don’t feel the falling sickness coming on again, do ya?”

  Keilan shook his head. “I’m fine.”

  And he would be. This was normal, a momentary weakness. Nothing like what had happened a fortnight before. When he’d almost died.

  He put the thought of that awful day out of his head – otherwise, he’d be too scared to even accompany his father out here, let alone attempt his . . . dowsing.

  His father rowed in silence, the rocks swelling larger behind him. They were black and jagged and veined by red strands of seaweed. When Keilan was a bit younger, before he had started coming out with his father almost every day, he and Sella would sometimes carefully pick their way along those same rocks, collecting fresh seaweed for Mam Ru to put in her soups. And there’d be other treasures, too, if they were lucky. Blue-shelled crabs tossed up by the waves and caught in the small pools that sometimes formed where the rocks came together, pale luminous sea-glass of different colors, and driftwood that must have come from one of the many ships
that foundered on the treacherous rocks hidden farther out at the mouth of the bay. Every time he’d found one of those chunks of wood Keilan had wondered if it had been torn from his mother’s ship, perhaps even if she’d clung to it before his father had pulled her from the churning waters.

  “Da, where did you find her?” The words slipped out, unexpected, and immediately Keilan regretted his question. There was an unspoken rule between them, never to talk about her.

  His father’s face slackened in surprise, then grew dark. He didn’t respond for a long moment, studying Keilan with eyes that almost looked reproachful. Finally, he sighed and gestured with one of the oars out beyond the end of the jumbled rocks.

  “There. Clinging to that damned chest so hard I wasn’t sure which was keeping the other afloat.” His eyes passed beyond Keilan, looking at something else. “Lightning was rippling the sky, an’ I saw her in the flash, bone white like some wraith come to drag those poor sailors down under. The waves carried me closer, and then there was another big strike, and I could see that she’d seen me, and that she wasn’t no ghost, just a girl, and that she was scared. Scared and beautiful and fierce to keep on living. She was refusing to let these waters drag her down.” His father cleared his throat and spat over the side. “I reached my hand out, and she took it, and I pulled her up and into this very boat, but with her other hand she stayed holding on to that chest, and she didn’t let go until I hauled it out of the water as well. What foolishness; almost capsized us bringing it aboard. Then I put my back into the oars and rowed for shore like the Deep Ones themselves were tickling at my hull. Your Ma stayed huddled at my feet watching behind us as the Shael kept lancing the water, giving us these glimpses of her ship as it finished breaking up on the rocks, and then one time it was just gone, like it had never been.”

  “Did the rest of them die?”