Call Of The Flame (Book 1) (17 page)

A row of alcoves had been carved in one wall of the cave. 
Some contained books and dusty scrolls.  One scroll lay on the floor, halfway
open.

“This is how he did it,” Pitbull continued, “he read
directly from Derndra’s original grammaries.  In a place of power like this,
one need only have the sympathy to make magic.”  He swayed a little, and Kyric
thought he would faint.  “I feel that I can invoke magic simply by
thinking
of it.”

Pitbull’s eyes shone with a feral light, and his mouth was askew
with a mischievous grin.  He leapt onto the platform and stood in the center of
the mandala.  He stared into Derndra’s Mirror.

“What do you see?” said Aiyan.

“I see many things.”  He fought down a giggle.  “I can see
my house.”

“Pitbull,” Aiyan said impatiently, “do you see a way out of
here?”

“Yes.  Yes I do.”

“Wait,” said Jazul.  “One handful of those diamonds would
make us all wealthy.”

Pitbull turned to him.  “How can you think of the material
when so much power flows from this spot.  Diamonds are nothing.  If you wish
for something truly rare, I could summon the essence of the Aerth itself.”

At once they felt a vibration beneath their feet.  The walls
of the cave began to tremble.

Aiyan stiffened.  “Pitbull, what have you done?”

Pitbull looked at each of them, shocked and suddenly
terrified.  “I’ve called forth golden mercury from the center of the Aerth,” he
whispered.  “I didn’t mean to.  I only thought about it.”

Aiyan dragged him from the platform as a crack opened
beneath his feet.  “Come on.  Show us the way out.”

A shiny golden substance flowed from the crack, bright with
heat and magic.

“No,” said Pitbull, rummaging in his satchel.  “I’m not
leaving without golden mercury.  It’s unattainable — you don’t know what it
means to a magician.  I need to find my magic jar.”

Outside, in the cavern, they heard the crash of a falling
stalactite.  The floor of the cave shook.

Aiyan spun him around.  “It is the moment of the hand.  If
we do not leave now we will die.”

Pitbull froze.  “So it is,” he said quietly.

He led them back through the cavern.  Kyric no longer felt
the ground tremble beneath his feet.  One of the glowing balls drifted close to
his face, making him blink with the afterimage after it passed.  When they
reached the chamber, a dozen silent figures crouched at the edge of the well. 
Dozens more were climbing over the lip.  The Wirmen had come up from their pit.

Pitbull pointed to the wall opposite where they had come
in.  “See?  There’s a tunnel leading to another cave.”

Aiyan sheathed his sword and drew his pocket pistol.  His
face glowed with luminescent splatters.

“Jazul, give the prince to Kyric and take out the keg of
gunpowder.  We will walk slowly to the tunnel, Kyric and Pitbull going first. 
If they move to attack us, throw the gunpowder into their midst and everyone
run.  I’ll shoot the keg and hope that it goes off.”

They started across the floor, the Wirmen packing together
and growing restless.  Kyric and Pitbull had just crossed under the great stone
lintel at the entrance to the tunnel, Jazul next and Aiyan covering the rear,
when the Wirmen broke and charged.

Jazul tossed the gunpowder over Aiyan’s head, and it arced
towards the middle of the pack.  Aiyan fired while it was still in midair.

The explosion knocked Jazul backward and threw Aiyan to the
floor.  Chunks of the ceiling rained down all around them.  Most of the Wirmen
lay dead or had scattered.

Kyric looked back through the tunnel.  The ceiling of the
chamber had begun to give way.  The supports holding the lintel at the head of
the tunnel crumbled, and the great stone came loose.  Then Jazul was there,
holding it up, his muscles bulging like knotted cables.  Aiyan staggered to his
feet.

“Hurry,” Jazul called to him over his shoulder.  “I can’t
hold it forever.”

Aiyan lurched toward him.  “It’s not too heavy,” Jazul
chanted between clenched teeth.  “It’s not too heavy.”

Aiyan squeezed past him.  Jazul shifted his weight,
preparing to drop the stone block, but a Wirman lunged from out of the
darkness, sinking its teeth into the back of Jazul’s thigh.  He fell, and the
huge stone fell with him.  He was crushed beneath it.

The tunnel collapsed in a cascade of earth and stone.  Aiyan
threw himself forward in a headlong dive, landing sprawled in the little cave
beyond.

He pushed himself up.  “Jazul!” he called, “Jazul!”  He
clawed at the debris filling the tunnel.

Pitbull gently pulled him away.  “It’s no use, Aiyan.”

The far end of the cave ended in a wall of ancient
stonework.  There was a vertical crack, wide enough for a man to pass.  The
odor was foul but somewhat familiar.

“Another sewer tunnel,” said Pitbull.  “The sanitary sewers
this time.”

They shuffled through and followed the flow of sewage. 
Aiyan drew his sword across the essence of the flame and led the way.  These
tunnels were much older than the storm sewers.  The mortar had crumbled in many
places, and some of the stonework had fallen away here and there.  In one spot
the floor stones had long ago sank into the earth, and they had to wade through
a pool of muck, Pitbull up to his chest.

Eren lay limp in Kyric’s arms, his breaths coming more
ragged as they went.  “There’s something wrong with the prince.”

They stopped and Pitbull felt his forehead, sniffed his
breath.  “We have to get him to my house.  Soon.”

They entered a section where the rain leaked in through a
score of cracks, soaking them to the skin.  The yellow glow ran from their
clothing in little rivulets.  The level of the sewer water grew higher, and
they waded on laboriously, Kyric up to his knees in water and filth, Pitbull up
to his waist.  Kyric’s skin stung where the magic fluid had scalded him.

“How are you doing, Pitbull?” said Aiyan.

“I’m nearly spent.  Feeling pain now.”  He held up his burnt
black hand.

“How much farther?”

“Miles.  These sewers empty outside the city.”

They waded on, steadily following the slight downhill
grade.  They looked for passages up to the street, but those that they found
were slick with filth, and too steep to climb.  There was no place to stop and
rest.  It became a hell of timeless labor.  Many times Kyric thought he saw the
tunnel come to an opening, only to find that it intersected another sewer, or was
a trick of the dark.

At last the tunnel joined a larger artery with a raised
sidewalk along one wall, and they climbed out of the sewage to lay wet and
exhausted on the concrete shelf.  Suddenly Eren was wracked with a coughing
fit.  He seemed unable to breathe.  Aiyan massaged his chest while Pitbull
whispered into his ear.  The fit ended, and Eren’s lungs made a horrible
scratching sound as he took another breath.

“We should be near the end,” Aiyan said.

“I’m done,” said Pitbull.  “I can’t get up.  Just leave me
here.”

Aiyan held out his hand.  Pitbull took it and was hauled to
his feet.  Kyric managed to stand, and Aiyan helped him gather Eren into his
arms.  They had walked only a few minutes when they saw the flash of lightning
at the sewer’s opening.

“We’ve made it,” said Pitbull.

They came to the end, a ledge overhanging a churning sea. 
The night was black and the rain fell in sheets.  There was no shoreline below
them.  The mouth of the sewer rested in a vertical bank of earth, too muddy to
climb.  There was nowhere to go.

Aiyan stood facing the storm and shook his flaming blade at
it.  “What would you have of me?” he shouted to the wind.  All of a sudden, he
fell to his knees.

“What is it?” said Pitbull.

“Stung once again by Morae’s poisoned sword,” said Aiyan,
showing him the wound on his shoulder.  “Bear’s bane.”

Lightning flashed again.  There was something on the water. 
A pair of bright eyes in the dark, then another pair — the lamps of a fishing
boat.  Then Teodor’s voice, almost lost in the storm.

“We’re coming to you.  We can see your light.”

The rain stopped shortly after midnight, and Pitbull came
out of the sickroom where he had taken Eren, telling them that he was out of
danger.  Earlier he had drawn the poison from Aiyan with some sort of spell
that involved rubbing salt into the wound.  He had done it mostly one handed,
and it had looked painful for both of them.

Aiyan spent several hours composing a long letter and
sealing it with the emblem of the flaming blade.  In the hour before dawn, they
wrapped the boy in a blanket and carried him to Pitbull’s wagon.  Kyric and
Aiyan sat with him in the back while Teodor drove them to the royal residence. 
He was awake, but sat still and said nothing.  He only stared into the dark.

When the guards officer at the gate saw that it was the prince,
he urged them to hurry to the main house.  He would send a rider ahead to tell
Princess Aerlyn.  But Aiyan placed Eren in his arms, along with the letter he
had written.

“But the princess will wish to speak to you personally,”
said the officer.  “She will want to know where he was held, and by whom.”

“It’s all in the letter.”

At Aiyan’s signal, Teodor turned the wagon around, and they
drove through the dark streets all the way to the old harbor.

They secured a room overlooking the harbor square.  Teodor
went to an undertaker and made arrangements for Jela and Sedlik.  Aiyan knew
that Sedlik had a sister living near Karta.  He wrote to her and paid a rider
to take it straightaway.  Kyric tossed for a couple of hours in an attempt to
sleep, then Teodor returned, hobbling on his makeshift crutch, and they took a
few bites of bread and cheese.  They sent their filthy clothes out to be
washed, and didn’t speak to each other the entire afternoon.  Kyric had time to
think.

All he felt was guilt.  Men had been killed all around him. 
Jazul had died.  Aiyan and Pitbull each bore a vicious wound.  And he had come
through it unhurt.  But worse, far worse than that was the guilt of what he had
thought about Jela.  It had been an insidious thought in the back of his mind
that he could not push away.

He had blamed Jela for her death.  The horrible little voice
said that it had been her fault for going to the reception, that Vaust had
connected her with Aiyan, and that he had found her when he read her father’s
name in the paper.  But now he saw that there was no way of knowing.  Vaust
might have seen her on the street by chance and followed her home.  Morae could
have seen it in Derndra’s Mirror.

Their clothes came back and
they went out for supper that evening.  Kyric ordered little and ate less.  They
overheard someone at another table talking about how the Senate had failed to
meet that morning, and how Senator Lekon was reported to be very ill.

“I think our boat has come,” said Teodor, standing at the
window of their room.

It had been a long sweaty night.  They were up early but
stayed in the room all morning, Aiyan pacing by the window.  Kyric wasn’t sure
if he was waiting or simply trying to make a decision.  At one point he called
to the landlord for ink and paper, changing his mind and saying he didn’t need
it a moment later.

Teodor spent the time sharpening and polishing his sword.  Aiyan
had sat down at last and shown Kyric how to clean the intricate mechanisms of
the wheel-lock pistol.  It was almost noon when the two knights began
discussing how they would return to Esaiya.

“It’s
Sea Sprite
.  Looks like the masters sent Marrus
and Jorlin to find us.”

“Good,” said Aiyan.  “Saves us a trip to the narrows.”

They gathered the few things they had.  Aiyan ran his hand
across the book of rudders before tucking it under his arm.  They walked down
to the harbor, meeting
Sea Sprite
just as it came to dockside.

The two men in the sailboat were dressed in identical
tunics, dark blue with intricate white stitching falling to the knee, reminiscent
of a knight’s surcoat.  They too wore the silver lockets with the mark of the
flaming blade.

Aiyan handed them the book of rudders and his gear.  “We
must return to Esaiya at once,” he said to them.

They helped Teodor into the boat, and Aiyan turned to
Kyric.  “I couldn’t have done this without you.  I only hope that you don’t
come to curse me for it.”

“I’m the one who chased you down the road to Karta.  I’m the
one who didn’t walk away after the archery contest.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility to shoulder.  I think you
must accord some of it to me.  Still, I can’t help but think the Unknowable
Forces had a part in the way we met.”

He held out his hand.  “I will see you again, Kyric.”

Kyric’s mouth fell open.  “You’re not taking me with you?”

He thought his heart had hardened over the last few days. 
He had thought that Jela’s death and all that followed would make him immune to
petty hurts.  But suddenly he was ten years old again, and his mother was
leaving him at the rune convent, saying that it would be only for the summer,
that she would come back for him.  And he saw every sign of the lie on her
face.

“I thought . . . I thought I was different.  I thought you
were teaching me.  I thought you were training me to become one of you.  You
introduced me to the princess as your squire — and I saw that it wasn’t a lie. 
Am I not your squire?”

Aiyan placed his hand on Kyric’s shoulder.  “Remember what
Teodor told you about the barrier surrounding Esaiya?  There is a law of the
order imposed upon us by the Unknowable Forces.  No man may come to that island
by the hand of another.  If we were to take you, we would not be allowed to
pass.”

“How am I unworthy?”

“I cannot say that you are.”

“Then what of redemption?  Jela and Sedlik were killed
because of us.”

“No,” said Aiyan, his grip tightening.  “They died because
of the hate of evil men.  Nothing more and nothing less.  You must understand
that, for if you do not, you will never be whole, never be at one.  Look me in
the eye and know that I speak the truth.”

Kyric still felt helpless.  “I have killed men.  Be they
evil or not I ask you:  How will I be redeemed?  You had your master to show
you the way.  How will I find it alone?”

Aiyan loosened his grip.  “My master showed me a way, but
even now I don’t know if I have found redemption.  I feel that I will not know
until my life is at its end.”

He leaned in close, lowering his voice.  “Listen to me,
Kyric.  You are the most naturally gifted young man I have ever met.  You have
started on the path without anyone having shown it to you.  But one step is
only one step.  And your natural talent, bereft of any training, leaves you
vulnerable.  I believe that we are not done with each other.  I have every
confidence that we will meet again very soon.”

Kyric looked away from him.  “Then is there nothing for me
now?”

A chorus of hoofbeats made them turn.  A fine open-topped
carriage with a cavalry escort rolled along the harbor road, stopping in front
of the dock.  Princess Aerlyn stepped out.  Aiyan and Kyric went to meet her.

She smiled when she saw them coming, but to Kyric she seemed
a little sad.  Aiyan stood before her and bowed deeply.

“Please don’t be formal with me,” she said.

“You are a princess and I am in your service.  How else
should I be?”

“Be the man who danced with me on Solstice Eve.”

Aiyan smiled at her then, a little sad as well.  “How did
you track me down?”

“Our good Senators are not the only ones with informants in
this city.”

“That is good to know.”

She brushed a strand of hair from her face.  “I read the
book you suggested.  There is much in there of which I would know more.  I also
read the letter you wrote me.  I couldn’t stop reading it.  I understand why
you think . . . why you think that we cannot . . . “

She couldn’t speak her heart with Kyric so near, so he
stepped away.  Eren and Kaelyn sat in the back of the carriage.  When he walked
toward them Kaelyn jumped down and ran to him, reaching up to him, wanting to
be held.  He lifted her into his arms, like he had done on Solstice Eve.

She laughed with delight.  “Have you seen any more
elephants?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“The pygmy elephant got to go home.”

“What a lucky elephant.”

Her eyes sparkled with sunlight and the sea.  She whispered
into his ear.  “Thank you for bringing my brother home.”

He was surprised that she knew.  He whispered back into
hers.  “Your servant, my lady.”

Aiyan and Aerlyn had fallen silent.  They looked at one
another, and Aerlyn took his hand and stood close to him.  He kissed her
lightly, with the barest brush of his lips upon hers.

Kaelyn saw it.  She kissed Kyric on the cheek, the same
cheek that Jela had kissed.

Go then.  Hero.

Aiyan turned away from Aerlyn and she watched him walk to
the boat.  He turned back before he boarded.  “I will see you again,” he
called.  Kyric wasn’t sure if he spoke to him or the princess.

Aerlyn stood motionless as they cast off, and Kyric took
Kaelyn back to the carriage.  Eren didn’t look at him.  It seemed that he
burned with a cold fire.

“You must remember,” Kyric said to him gently, “that what
you are feeling will not last.  Nothing lasts forever.”

Eren met his eyes then, and solemnly shook his hand.

Kyric drifted away from the docks and crossed the harbor
road.  He went back to the room and looked out the window.  The royal carriage
had departed, and
Sea Sprite
was lost among many sails out on the bay. 
He felt empty.  Spent.

He sat on the hard little bed and stared at nothing.  He sat
there until dark.