Call Of The Flame (Book 1) (16 page)

“C
ome dragon come dragon come dragon come dragon.
“

“Don’t sheath it,” Vaust said to Aiyan.  “Drop it.”

Aiyan did as he commanded and the flame went out.

“Now,” said Vaust, nodding to Kyric, “go and open the door
for them.”

“Don’t do it,” Aiyan said.

  A cracking sound came from the window, but it still held. 
Vaust’s lips pressed together.  If he could hold them for another minute it
would be over anyway.

Pitbull’s face turned green, and he heaved a little, like he
would vomit.  All of a sudden he spit a narrow spray of green fluid on the cock
of the flintlock.  It hissed and foamed, a white vapor rising.  It dug into the
metal.  A moment later there was a rattle, and the cock simply broke away and
fell to the floor.

As it did on Vaust’s flintlock.

Vaust blinked and looked at his gun.  It was useless.  When
Aiyan snatched his sword from the floor, Vaust threw away the carabine and ran
back down the hall.  Aiyan ran after him.

Pitbull flopped onto his back, ill or exhausted.  Jazul
quickly dragged the harpsichord bench to the window and held it against the
splintering shutters.  “I can hold them,” he said to Kyric.  “Go.”

Kyric sprinted down to the hall to an open door, into a room
with a stairway up.  He heard Vaust’s muffled voice.  He nocked an arrow and
crept up the stairs, bowstring against his cheek.

“I swear it,” Vaust was saying.  “I have no doubt you can
kill me, but you’ll have to pay for it with this boy’s life.  You can have the
book.  It’s in that chest there — take it and go.  But I will live or the prince
will die.”

Aiyan stood to the side in a large bedchamber, his blade
once again aflame.  Vaust knelt behind Prince Eren, a long dagger across the
child’s throat.  And Kyric knew it had been him.  He had cut Jela’s throat with
that very knife.

 “Either way,” said Aiyan, “Morae will be very displeased
with you.”

“So be it.  Make your decision.”

Vaust held Eren directly in front of him.  Very little of
him was exposed:  A small part of his face, his right eye, a shoulder, his arm,
his knife hand.  If Kyric shot him in the hand, would he drop the dagger? 
Would he switch hands and kill the prince anyway?  He didn’t know.

He was too angry not to take the shot, but he was too angry
to make it.

For a true warrior, all battles are battles of the spirit
.

And then Kyric burned.

It is the moment of the arrow
.

Vaust somehow sensed it.  He began to move the blade across
Eren’s throat.

There was no time to breathe deep and step into the field of
spirit.  There was no time to feel the wind of power that would carry his
arrow.  There was no time . . . and without time, there was only the moment,
indefinite, eternal.  Anger could no longer exist there, because within the
moment, the self could not exist.  He couldn’t tell his eye, his arrow, or his
spirit from one another.  They blurred into one.

He loosed the arrow.  It hit Vaust in the eye.  His head
snapped back, the arrow lodging deep in his brain.  The knife fell from his
hand.  Rain drummed against the roof.

With a long cry, Eren ran to Aiyan, oblivious to the flaming
blade in his hands.

“It’s all right, boy.  We have you now.”

Kyric couldn’t move.  A single tear slid down his cheek.  A
single tear for Jela, that’s all he would ever have.

Aiyan looked at the wound on Eren’s neck.  It bled freely. 
“That’s only a scratch,” he said, smiling for the child.  “Kyric,” he called,
“are you with us?  I need you here.”

Kyric wiped his face on his sleeve and turned away, leaving
his arrow in Vaust’s eye socket
.  Let them find him that way
.

He bandaged Eren’s cut with a handkerchief.  A few arcane
symbols had been drawn on his face and hands in some sort of ash or charcoal.  Aiyan
went to the ornate Baskillian sea chest Vaust had pointed towards and cut the
lock off with one blow from his sword.

Thump!  Something heavy struck the door downstairs.  Aiyan tossed
the book of rudders to Kyric, and looking deeper into the chest found a letter
bearing a strange seal.  He slipped it under his vest, took Eren by the hand,
and they hurried back to the common room.  A trail of six bodies lay across the
floor, and there was blood everywhere.  Kyric retrieved his wheel-lock.

Another thump, and the door shook with the impact.

Pitbull had made it to his feet.  His color was returning. 
“Can we go home now?” he asked Aiyan.

Jazul continued to hold the window until they made it back
to the basement, joining them at the head of the tunnel.  Pitbull closed the gate,
spat into the key hole, and touched the lock with his filigree key.

“They won’t get through that way,” he said between
chuckles.  “That lock will never open again.”

“What is this written on Eren’s face and hands?” said Aiyan.

Pitbull frowned.  “Part of the ritual spell that kept me
from finding him.  It means that they do have a magician working for them.”

Aiyan knelt in front of Eren.  “Who drew this on you?”

“The tall man with the dark eyes.”

“Morae.”

“Yes.  That’s what they call him.”

Aiyan turned to Pitbull.  “How can that be?”

Pitbull shook his head.  “A man has only one essence.  But
if he has the sympathy and some training, the magical Essa is strong below.  It
might be possible.”

“Eren, where were you when he drew these, down this tunnel?”

“Yes, down below.”

“We’ll worry over it later,” said Aiyan.  “Jazul, I’d like
you to carry the prince, in the event we need to move quickly.”

Jazul hoisted the boy into one arm.  Kyric picked up the
lantern he had left there, and Aiyan led them into the low-ceiling chamber.  He
backtracked their footprints though the sideways tower to the opening above the
storm sewer.

Water ran swiftly through the sewer, a little too deep,
Kyric thought, to be able to wade in it.  Maybe they could slide along.  But
then he thought about the elbows — you could break something, get knocked out, drown.

Pitbull cleared his throat.  “You know, I’m not a big
swimmer.”

“There’s another way out,” said Prince Eren.  “Back in the
chamber with the broken floor.”

The water in the sewer grew deeper.  They made their way
back, and on the opposite wall of the chamber, near the break in the floor,
hung a flap of dirty canvas.  It rustled slightly in a gentle flow of air. 
Behind it stood an arched portal and stone steps leading down.

Aiyan looked back at Eren.  “This is the way out?”

“Yes.”

They started down.  A foul odor rose from below, a rotting
smell.  The stairwell turned left and then right before it came to a landing. 
It continued straight and a set of branching steps led down to the right.

“Which way?” Aiyan asked the boy.

He pointed straight ahead.  “Keep going.”

Something troubled Kyric about the way Eren had spoken. 
With his heart still racing and his nerves on the edge of their limits, he
couldn’t think clearly.  The stench grew stronger as they descended, the steps
getting moist and black with mold.

Kyric stopped and turned to face Eren where he sat in
Jazul’s arms.  He leaned in and held the lantern close.

“Are you sure this is the way?”

“Yes,” the prince said, “keep going.”

Then Kyric saw, and the disgust nearly made him wretch.

“Aiyan.  He’s
lying
.  He’s lying — they made him take
the blood.”

Erin suddenly twisted, trying to jump free of Jazul’s
grasp.  “I want my father.  My
true
father.”  He writhed violently, but
Jazul was able to hold him.  “Father!” he screamed, “Father, where are you?”

“We’ll have to gag him,” said Kyric as they all retreated
back up to the landing, Eren still screaming and trying to bite Jazul.

Pitbull took something from his satchel.  A furry little
desiccated thing.  It was a cat’s paw.  He made a growling humming sound deep
in his throat and touched the cat’s paw to Eren’s lips.  The boy fell silent.

“Sorry kid,” Pitbull said.

Erin made a few muffled sounds.  His struggling grew weaker
and at last stopped.

“Good Goddess,” said Kyric.  “How could they do such a thing
to a child?”

“It’s even worse than you think,” said Aiyan.  “There’s a
reason they don’t take the very young.  The same reason Cauldin didn’t give his
blood to the lepers.”

He peered into the boy’s eyes.  “Let’s try the other way.”

The branching steps only went a short way down.  When they
saw a dim light at the opening, Aiyan crept forward into another open space.

The chamber was much taller, much wider than the one above. 
The floor lay covered with paving stones, and an open hole, too wide to jump
across, plunged into unseen depths just ahead of them.  The yellow-green light
came from a dozen melon-sized bubbles that drifted at random, bouncing lightly
off the ceiling of compressed earth and stone.  At second glance Kyric saw that
they weren’t simply bubbles.  They were filled with fine silt suspended in a viscous
fluid.  They seemed thick and heavy, and logic rebelled against the way they
hung in the air.

They skirted the hole and saw that it was a well.  It was
perfectly round, and the paving stones continued down its insides to be lost in
darkness.  There was nothing to keep someone from falling in.

“Aiyan,” said Pitbull.  He took quick shallow breaths.  The
light made his eyes glow greenly and his pupils were enormous.  “The Essa is
even stronger here.  Stronger than I’ve ever felt it.  I could do magic here
with no effort.”  He spoke distractedly, intent on watching the floating
glowing balls.  Kyric had to grab him by the arm to keep him from falling into
the well.

The far side of the chamber opened into an even larger
cavern, a natural cave with magnificent crystal formations and stalagmites
nearly touching the stalactites above them.

A voice echoed from the back of the cave, three words in an
ancient tongue.  Kyric recognized the voice.  It was Morae.

At once the air turned misty and coalesced into a thick
fog.  Kyric could barely see Jazul standing next to him.  Aiyan was only a dark
shape holding a pale flame.

Everyone stopped.  Pitbull began to giggle.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s only an illusion.  I can see
right through it.”

“Well the rest of us can’t,” Aiyan snapped.  “Can you do
something to help?  Dispel it perhaps?”

Pitbull exploded with laughter.  “Are you kidding?  I don’t
even know how it’s done.  No one’s been able to conjure true illusions since
the War of Mages.”

Pitbull fell silent then.  Kyric heard him weeping.  “All
this power.  All this power and I haven’t the skill for it.  Pity me for a
fool.  I’ve wasted my life pursuing an art that has no use for me.”

Aiyan struck Pitbull across the face with the flat of his
flaming blade.  “
Ano!
” he said in the Essian tongue.  “Take hold of your
essence and center yourself.  We need you, Orius.  Tell me what you see.”

Pitbull looked up and imitated a laughing sound, but this
time it was irony.  “I see a man with a sword coming at us.  I think he can see
through the fog as well.”

Aiyan waved his sword back and forth like a dowsing rod.  He
took a few steps and Kyric could no longer see him.

“That’s right,” said Pitbull.  “That’s where he is.  Now
he’s circling to your left.”

Kyric heard the shuffle of boot leather, then a metallic
sound, a clash of blades and a grunt.

“No,” winced Pitbull, “he’s cut Aiyan on the shoulder.  He
stays out of sight, and then rushes in.  Aiyan can barely dodge him.”  He
called out, “Aiyan!  He’s backing you into the well.”

Kyric reached for Pitbull in the fog.  “You have the power. 
Do something. 
Anything
.”

Pitbull tore the lantern from his grasp and pulled the cover
off.  He thrust his hand into the flame and screamed through the pain in the
Essian tongue.  In one of the nearby globes of light, the liquid began to
ripple, then bubble.  It churned in a roiling boil.  Pitbull screamed again and
smashed his hand down onto the wick.  The floating ball of light exploded, the
glowing liquid raining down on all of them.  It was sticky and scalding and it
painted them in light.  Suddenly Kyric saw Aiyan and Morae clearly outlined in
a yellow-green glow.

Morae had raised his sabre high, and slashed down at Aiyan’s
head.  Aiyan parried, holding Ivestra with one hand, his other hand seizing
Morae by the wrist.

All in an instant:  He stepped inside, pommel blow
shattering the chin, slid under his arm, cutting his triceps, pulling him off
balance, a slash to the back of the skull, and Morae lay dead on the floor,
much like they had found Sedlik.

The fog vanished.  Black blood pooled beneath Morae’s body.

Eren opened his mouth in wordless agony.  He twitched in
Jazul’s arms, convulsing rapidly before suddenly going limp.

“What was he doing down here?” said Kyric.

“I think I know,” said Pitbull.  “Come this way.”

They went deeper into the cave, weaving through the maze of
natural columns, only Aiyan’s sword and the glow of their own bodies for light. 
Aiyan bled from the shoulder but didn’t seem to notice.

The cavern narrowed to a man-sized opening.  Beyond lay
another cave that ended in a wide crevasse.  An altar of sorts sat at the edge
of the crevasse.  A shallow reflecting pool stood on end, like a mirror, in
front of a platform made of alternating plates of metal and clay, the water resting
calmly there as if sideways were down, disregarding gravity as easily as the
floating balls of light.  A sparkling mandala was inscribed in the floor of the
platform.  No, not inscribed.  It was laid in diamonds.

“Elistar’s breath,” said Pitbull, “do you know what this is
— it’s Derndra’s Mirror.  He created this to focus the most powerful Essa ever
conceived.  It is written that he could see his enemies in this and cast
hideous spells upon them.”