Burning Bright (21 page)

How terrible a person did it make him to think of Pechal in one moment and of kissing his killer the next? Pechal deserved more than that, but Raz could not stop. Thinking of Dym was just as painful; he just did not know why.

The distant sound of bells tolling made him open his eyes, dismay rushing through him when he realized the bells were tolling the death of the Tsar. If they were tolling now, the Tsar must have died roughly a day ago.

Would they continue to hunt for him, then, or wait until the mourning period had passed? The mourning period for royalty was six months. Raz couldn't see them waiting that long—but one Vessel very recently killed, the passing of the Tsar … and then they would capture and kill him?

Pozhar was supposed to be a land of rebirth, not a land of death.

A flake of snow landed on Raz's hand, and he looked up and around, realizing that the storm had finally arrived. The snow was only falling lightly, but that wouldn't last. He should probably return to the village. Instead, he remained where he was and began to sing whatever bits and pieces came to mind of the hymns he once sang along with in the Cathedral of Ashes.

As he sang, the tune and the words slowly changed and his voice softened. Raz stretched his legs out again and looked up at the falling snow. He vaguely remembered a day filled with sunshine, the smell of flowers, and someone lying in the grass next to him. Raz fought an urge to reach out and drag the man's head into his lap, stroke his face, his lips, and draw out a reluctant smile.
Eminence
.

The sound of feet, of someone walking carelessly through the forest, broke Raz from his daydream. His eyes snapped open, and he stared at the shadowy, hooded figure standing at the very edge of the garden and felt a chill. Slowly standing, Raz brushed off the snow that had begun to cover him and let his arms hang loosely at his sides. Something about the man made him almost afraid. He also looked familiar, but Raz could not say why. "Good evening. I wasn't expecting guests."

"You should be, Vessel."

"Who are you?" Raz asked, though it was obvious the man must have been a hunter. Not Krasny or Dym, however, and that was strange. "Where is the High Priest? The Duke?"

The man laughed and drew back his hood, revealing a face that might have been handsome were it not so contorted with contempt and mockery. Fear ran through Raz's blood when he saw that the man's eyes glowed violet. That was the color of Schatten. How could this man be a shadow child? "Krasny? He is too busy pretending to be Tsar. The High Priest … " The man gave a cold, smug laugh. "Why, the High Priest protected the Tsar from a killing curse I threw at him. The last I saw him, he was lying dead on the floor."

"No!" Raz bellowed, a burst of heat flaring around him and spreading out in a circle from him, melting the snow and knocking the man off his feet. Raz barely noticed the snow, eyes only for the man. "What did you do to my priest?" he demanded as he crossed the garden and bent to yank the man to his feet. He shook the man hard and repeated, "What did you do?"

The man smirked again, though the effect was somewhat ruined by his bloody lip and the redness to his face from the heat that Raz had hit him with. "I told you. He died protecting the Tsar—" He broke off screaming and Raz dropped him, watched uncaring as the man curled into a ball on the forest floor, whimpering with pain.

Raz knelt beside him, fisted a hand in his hair, and yanked his head up. "I can inflict pain far greater than what you currently feel. A shadow child is nothing next to my powers. Tell me your name."

"Zholty."

The Minister of Magic, that was why he looked familiar. Except the man before him looked nothing like the pompous lord who had watched idly as men were dragged away to be hanged. "Did you truly kill Dym?" Raz refused to believe it. His priest was too powerful to be felled by someone like this, even if he could wield shadow magic.

"I-I-I don't know! He blocked my curse, even though no one should be able to do that. I've never seen one man with so much power!" He collapsed.

Raz let go and rose. "You had better hope he lives. Even your shadows will not protect you from my wrath should my priest be dead."

Zholty rose clumsily to his knees, still huddled in on himself with pain, and only at the last minute did Raz see the ominous glow of his eyes. He stepped back as Zholty began to speak, threw out his arms and stared wide-eyed when violet light struck the air in front of his hands and burned away in a flash of orange and the scent of fire.

He didn't wait to figure out what had just happened. Vessel he might have been, but he was a street rat foremost. React first, sort it all out later. He punched Zholty in the face, the gut,  and slammed his hands down on the back of his head. Zholty finally dropped to lie face down on the snow, blood streaming from his nose and still dripping from his split lip.

Raz panted, suddenly feeling cold. He took a step forward, and dizziness knocked him to his knees. He braced his hand on the ground, feeling ill.

His last thought was of sitting beneath the apple tree with Dym, singing just so his somber priest would smile.

*~*~*

Raz woke feeling devastated, but the reason why slipped away as he opened his eyes. He sat up, shoved away the blankets covering him, and saw he was in the inn where he had last spent time with Pechal. His gut twisted, but he shoved the pain away. He could not afford to be distracted by grief for the moment; time enough for that later.

There was a figure by the window. Ivan. "I wondered who would find me first:  You, Shio and Shinju, or the Vessel hunters. You came in a very close second. I'm surprised you beat out Shio and Shinju."

"I made certain they didn't get here first," Ivan said flatly, and then at Raz's expression added, "I've got three of my men slowing them down, though they won't be able to do it for long. I'd just kill them, but somehow I think scorching you that way would not help anything."

"No, it really wouldn't," Raz said. "Did they really—"

"Yes," Ivan said, finally turning away from the window and folding his arms across his chest as he stared at Raz. "We spoke to them again back in the Heart. They say they are here to ensure the Vessels all go to the Flames. They said other things, strange things, that I still do not entirely believe."

"Such as?"

Ivan shrugged. "Such as the High Priest is nine hundred years old and is the same Priest who was there when Holy Zhar Ptitsa was killed."

Raz remembered that moment when he had first seen Dym, the way his gut had wrenched, the pain, how pale Dym had gone. "I believe it," he said softly.

"Fire and ash," Ivan said, making a face. "All this god stuff is beyond me. I don't want to have anything to do with it, so why am I mired in it?"

"Because you're the Wolf," Raz said softly, gaze going distant. "In every life you protect Pozhar."

"You're being creepy."

Raz shook himself and held a hand to his forehead. "Sorry. I seem to be doing that sort of thing more and more often. It's like I'm two different people and it's driving me out of my mind. How long have I been out?"

"No idea, really," Ivan replied, leaning against the wall and eyeing him warily. "Since I found you a day and a half has passed. But you were out there in the woods for quite some time. There was nothing for several paces in a perfect circle around you and Zholty, but beyond that the snow was up to my knees." He jerked his head toward the window. "Nearly up to my nipples now."

Snorting, Raz finally climbed out of bed. He fumbled around for his boots and yanked them on. Striding to the window, he looked out at the piles and piles of snow. Nobody was going anywhere, not right then. "Where is Zholty?"

"Secured and being watched," Ivan replied. "Not sure what to do with him, what with his being nobility and all. I'd turn him in, but that gets a bit tricky seeing as there's a new, very generous price on our heads." He cast Raz a reproving look.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into all of this with me," Raz said. "You're certainly allowed to walk away whenever you want."

Ivan shrugged. "Not like we could get much work in this weather. Doing something is better than doing nothing, even if I don't understand what I'm doing or why." He pushed off the wall and motioned. "Come on, I'm sure you're hungry. You looked one step away from death when we found you."

"How did you find me?"

"We looked everywhere else, and then for some reason that weird stone tree came to mind. Sure enough, there you were."

Raz smiled ruefully. "I knew I wouldn't be able to hide for long." He picked up his jacket, hanging from the end of the bed and shrugged into it while following Ivan from the room and down the stairs.

In the main hall, Ailill sat at a table roughly in the middle of the room, close enough to the enormous fire to be warm without overheating. He lifted a hand in greeting when he saw them. "So should we be calling you Holy Raz, these days?"

"Douse it," Raz said as he sat on the bench opposite. "Why are you still here?"

"Intrigued, and I am a White Beast of Verde. I am granted that status in order to help the gods, even those beyond Verde."

"The gods long ago made a pact not to interfere with one another's affairs unless asked," Raz said.

Ailill lifted a brow. "Yet you have two mermaids running around ensuring the Vessels are sacrificed. I think it safe to say that pact has been broken. I will help however I may unless you tell me otherwise."

Raz shrugged, uncomfortable with the deference. Ailill was a duke, one of the most powerful men in Verde. He did not owe Raz, a stupid street rat, any sort of deference.

A woman came up with a tray of food and beer, and Raz happily dug into the distraction, his stomach growling. "Where is the rest of your pack?" he asked Ivan.

"Luka, Maksim, and Isidor are delaying the mermaids. Gleb and Ferapont are watching Zholty upstairs in another room."

Raz finished his beer, and then shoved all the empty dishes away. "He's dangerous. His eyes glowed violet."

"Violet?" Ailill said sharply. "That isn't possible."

"Apparently it is because he is very adept—a shadow sorcerer, I would hazard to say. But I don't know how he could have learned it. No one who goes up the Jagged Mountains lives to tell the tale, and I doubt that anyone who makes it into Schatten ever comes back."

"No one goes into Schatten. Holy Licht sealed Schatten off over nine hundred years ago shortly before the gods were Lost," Ailill said.  "No one goes in or out; it's impossible."

Raz shrugged. "Take a look at him for yourself; his eyes glow violet. Someway, somehow, he possesses shadow magic."

Ailill frowned, looking troubled. "I don't see how, and that is more than a little worrying."

"Rumors abound in this part of the country," Ivan said, looking at them both. "Zholty's holding are also not far from here, though it's said he pays his lands little attention and they have largely fallen into neglect. His land includes a good portion of the Jagged Mountains, and anyone who lives in this area will tell you that there are old footpaths leading up them. Whatever you say about impossible, I promise there are at least a few people in all of these northern villages who have managed the impossible. 'Shadow madness' is what they call it; they say those who climb too high are met by terrible black monsters with glowing purple eyes and scales harder than steel that nothing can penetrate."

Raz shivered, skin prickling. "I've heard of the shadows before, but I thought they were exaggerations."

"You live in the Heart and rarely leave it," Ivan said. "I've been all over this country more times than I count. Trust me, nothing is ever truly impossible. Not when people are bored enough or drunk enough or desperate enough."

"True enough," Ailill said with a grunt, sipping his own beer. "So what do we do now?"

"We wait until the snow makes travel possible," Ivan said. "We take Zholty back to the Heart and leave him where he can become someone else's problem, and then we take Raz wherever he wants to go." He gave Raz a pensive look. "What are you going to do?"

Raz shook his head and said nothing, because he just did not know what to say—or what he was going to do. Well, that wasn't true. He knew. He just didn't want to think about it yet.  He looked up. "Zholty tried to convince me he'd killed the High Priest. I don't believe him, but what's happened since I left the Heart?"

"The Tsar is dead, and we heard a rumor as we were leaving that Lord Krasny is now Tsar."

"I didn't know he could assume the throne," Raz said. "But I hardly know how any of that works, really."

"They were married, apparently," Ailill said. "It's all rumor, but I believe it; it's what I would have done in their place, especially if they had reason not to trust Zholty. Everything is really quite crazy right now."

Raz's mouth quirked. "Crazy? No." He turned his head to look into the fire and added softly, "The threads of Order begin to fray and all is falling into Chaos."

"It's really creepy the way he keeps doing that," Ivan muttered.

"You get used to reincarnations being strange," Ailill replied.

Raz blinked, turned back to them, and said, "Douse it."

Ivan and Ailill laughed. "When do you think the snow will begin to ease up?" Ailill asked. "I've never seen such snow; it's quite impressive."

"It's irritating," Ivan said. "This time of year we'll not see the ground again until it decides to begin melting in spring—and every year, spring takes longer and longer to arrive. Everyone fears the day spring never returns."

Raz shook his head. "That won't happen." Ivan's brows rose. "I won't let it," Raz said firmly.

"Your mermaids said something else interesting," Ivan said. "They said that the High Priest is trying to bring Holy Zhar Ptitsa back to life, not kill him.  So I have no idea what's going on with the High Priest or with Zholty. You can enlighten me any time, Holiness."

Raz made a face. "I don't know why Zholty—" he broke off when they heard screams followed by the sound of wood cracking and breaking—

Ferapont hit the floor in a shower of broken wood, screaming in pain before abruptly going silent, and it took only a glance to see that his left arm was broken. A moment later Gleb landed nearby, already unconscious. Raz bolted from the table, but he had only crossed half the dining room when another figure dropped down from the second floor.