Call Of The Flame (Book 1) (4 page)

The floor boards of the wagon were rough and uneven, so
Kyric spread out his bedroll, and Aiyan slept for a while.  He looked ahead the
whole time, but saw no horsemen searching for them.  When Aiyan woke, Kyric
took his turn.  He lay awake for some time feeling overwhelmed by all that had
happened.  He felt strangely vulnerable, but more alive than ever before.  This
time when he slept, he didn’t dream.

A sharp jolt, the wagon hitting a rough patch, and Kyric sat
up fully awake.  Aiyan wasn’t there.

“Your uncle said he had to see someone in Karta,” Ventin
said over his shoulder, “and that he’d catch up with you in Aeva.”

“We’re past the Karta road already?” Kyric said, looking out
and seeing the sun beginning to sink into the west.

“Passed it half an hour ago.”

“My uncle is ill,” Kyric said, furiously rolling his bed and
gathering his other gear.  “He shouldn’t be traveling alone.”  And he vaulted
the tail gate, nearly falling in the road, and began a steady jog against the
flow of traffic.

“You’re not leaving without an explanation,” he hissed between
clenched teeth.  “You and your essence of the secret fire — we’ll see about
that.”

He ran until he could see the road to Karta, a vineyard to
his left preventing him from cutting the corner.  When he turned off the paved
highroad he slowed to a brisk walk.  Karta was still five miles away.

He walked straight into the setting sun.  Even with only a
few horse-drawn carts on the road, the air was hazy with dust, and Kyric
couldn’t see very far ahead.  He walked hard, at times running a short way to
help vent his anger, hoping to come across Aiyan lying in the ditch, weak with
fever.

The western sky had become a deep blue curtain by the time
Kyric could see the town of Karta.  He knew that the ruins stood to the south
on a small rocky uplift, near this side of the town.  Crossing a large pasture,
he saw a movement in the fast falling darkness ahead where a shallow ravine
lead upwards into the ruins.  He broke into a run, scrambling over the loose
stones in the ravine and onto a landscape of crumbling walls and roofless
temples.  Indistinct shapes covered in overgrowth jammed the alleys between the
teetering facades.

He didn’t see him anywhere.  “Aiyan!” he called.

His voice seemed too loud.  Suddenly it felt dangerous to be
making noise.

He crept past a row of leaning columns, coming to a
courtyard with fallen walls and broken statues.  Something scraped on a stone
behind him and he turned.  A man stood there with a pistol in his hand at full
cock.  Another man nearby opened the shutters of a lantern.

The one with the pistol, some sort of gentleman cavalier
with lace cuffs, knee-high boots and a plume in his hat, looked past Kyric and
said, “Hold him.”

Kyric tried to run, but two big men appeared on either side
of him, grabbing his arms and pinning them behind his back with a painful
twist.  With their tattoos and earrings and a cutlass at their sides, Kyric
thought they must be sailors and the gentleman their captain.  The one with the
lantern was thin with a drooping moustache and carried a double-barrel pistol
in a red sash.

“What are you doing here?” asked the captain with deadly
calm.

Kyric could only look at him.

One of the sailors punched him hard in the stomach.  He
tried to double over but they held him firmly and he couldn’t breathe as the
pain rang like a bell inside him.

“It will take too long this way,” the captain said.  “We
will use the blood.”

The one with the lantern set it down and went to his boss
drawing a small knife.  He pricked the captain’s thumb, smearing a few drops on
the tip of the blade.  Then he stepped closer and held it up to Kyric, pushing
it towards his mouth.  In the weak glow of the lantern, the smear of blood
looked black.

The captain raised his pistol, carefully sighting at Kyric’s
stomach.  “If you think that blow hurt, wait till you feel a lead ball in
there.  Lick the blood from the knife or I will shoot you right now, and in the
end you will taste it anyway.  I do not lie and I will not ask you again.”

Even the dim light Kyric could see it was true, that he
would do it.  He was so afraid he couldn’t think.  Fear took him then.  He
licked the blade.  It didn’t taste like blood, more like an exotic liquor made
with sea water, salty and breathtaking.

At once the fear was gone.  How silly to have been afraid. 
The captain meant to help him — no, it was more than that.  The kindness of
offering his blood was a sharing closer than that of brothers; it was like they
had known each other all their lives.  The captain would be the older brother
he had never had, one who would understand him and care for him deeply.  The
captain would never leave him to fend for himself.  He would teach him, and
comfort him, and protect him all of their days together.  And Kyric loved him
with all his heart.

With a wave from the captain the two sailors released him.  “So. 
What are you doing here?” asked his new brother in the kindly manner he always
used.

“I’m looking for Aiyan,” Kyric said.

“And who, exactly, is Aiyan?”

“Well,” said Kyric, “that’s a good question.  He doesn’t say
much about himself.  But he did tell me that he stole a book of rudders from
Senator Lekon and hid it here in the ruins.”

“Wh—“ the captain began to say, then without warning he
leaped to the side, raising his pistol and twirling in midair to face where Aiyan
stood with the shouldered blunderbuss.  Aiyan slid to one side even as they
fired, both shots sounding as one.  The captain was thrown back against a
broken obelisk as a handful of bullets ripped into him.  He somehow kept his
feet, and even had his sabre half drawn when Aiyan sprang forward and cut him
down with a flaming sword.  Kyric could feel it as his beloved brother died.

He sank to his knees in grief.  “No!” he cried.  “Please,
no!”

The same shock seemed to strike the two big sailors.  For a
moment they stared in disbelief.  But the thin one didn’t hesitate, and he
pulled the pistol from his sash.  It was a wheel-lock, but the dogs were open and
he had to push them down.  Aiyan was quicker.  Alight with a blue-white flame,
his sword cut an arc against the night sky and the thin man’s pistol fell to
the ground along with his severed hands.  He opened his mouth to scream, but a
sharp thrust silenced him.  The two sailors ran.

Kyric began sobbing, harder and harder.  His brother was
going to share all that he was with him.  And now he was gone.  Gone.

Aiyan walked over to him.  He was furious.  His voice shook
with rage as he said, “Elistar’s holy breath!  You did take some of his blood.”

He struck Kyric across the face with the flat of his flaming
blade.  It burned like hot iron.  Seeing it close now, it flickered unearthly,
more like the ghost of a flame.  The were-fire went out as he sheathed the
sword.

“We have no time for this,” Aiyan growled.  “A troop of
Lekon’s cavalry are camped nearby.  We have to go.  But first . . . ”  He
lifted Kyric up by the shirt collar and dragged him to where the body of the
captain lay.  He brought the lantern over and held it close.

Black blood, blacker than the night, leaked from the wounds
in the captain’s body.  “Look at this,” Aiyan commanded.  “See it and remember
it.”  He paused to listen for a moment.  “Now we go.  Grab the lantern and both
of those pistols.”

When Kyric didn’t move at once, Aiyan did it himself, not
forgetting the spanner for the pistol.  He placed the lantern in Kyric’s hand. 
“Crack the shutters just enough to see your footing,” he said.

“I loved him,” Kyric said helplessly.

Aiyan stopped and looked him in the eye.  Gently he said, “I
know.  But soon it will seem like another man’s memory.”

He took Kyric by the hand and led him deeper into the ruins.

“I had almost come to it when I heard you call,” he said
very softly.  When Kyric didn’t answer he said, “I blame myself, not you.  I
should have known something like this could happen.”  He shook his head.  “We
have
ways
of knowing—” he paused and swallowed an ironic chuckle. 
“Well, we have ways of reading certain signs if we think to look for them.”

They skirted one of the roofless temples, pushing through
thick undergrowth, then along a stone path winding among vague upright shapes. 
The full black of night had come.

At length they found themselves facing a thick intact wall
taller than their heads.  Aiyan followed the wall to the left for a few minutes
then slowed to a stop.

“I think it’s one of these,” he said, choosing one of the
foot-long blocks.  Finding a pair of unseen finger holds, he worked the block
out slowly.  It made a grinding sound.  “This knowing of places, it is one of
the weird arts that a warrior may learn.”

“You mean you could feel where you left it, even in the
dark?”

“That’s one way to do it,” Aiyan said.  “But I tried to know
the place where I would look for it when I first hid it, in case I was pressed
for time when I returned.”

He slid the block of stone all the way out and lowered it
quickly to the ground, almost dropping it as he suddenly favored his right
side.

“What is it?” said Kyric.

“His shot grazed me,” Aiyan answered.  “If my ribs aren’t
cracked they’re certainly bruised.”

He reached in the hole, and Kyric brought the lantern
close.  It was just as Aiyan had said, an outlandish jacket that matched those
crazy pantaloons, a false belly, and a large book with a wooden cover.

Distant voices echoed in the ruins behind them.  They could
see no pursuit, but the moon had begun to rise.

“Leave the lantern here,” Aiyan said.  “The moon is near
full and will be more than enough.  And stay close on my left, for there is a
fairly long drop-off to the right.”

He struck out across a field of overgrown rubble, heading
due south, the rising moon casting long black shadows across the jumbled
landscape.  Sharp stones jabbed at Kyric through the worn soles of his boots. 
Past the rubble, a rocky slope led them down and away from the ruins, into a
wide pasture sparsely dotted with old oak trees.

Kyric’s heart and head were racing.  As his love faded for
that man, the captain, his anger grew.  He would have done anything for him. 
He would have killed for him, or been his willing slave.  Wasn’t that what
Aiyan had said in his fever?  The man’s blood had been black, and it had done
this to him.  And that was the truth of it.

“Your sword,” he said to Aiyan.  “What was the strange fire
that ran along the blade?”

Aiyan was quiet for a moment.  “My sword is named Ivestra. 
It was forged long ago and was first carried by Sir Mecaithen, a founding
Knight of the Order of the Flaming Blade, and over the last two centuries it
has been carried by many true warriors.  Ivestra and I are bonded in the realm
of power, for we have each chosen the other.  When in my hands and touched by
the essence of the secret fire, it becomes a weapon of spirit as well as steel
and will hold that flame as I will it.”

He looked at Kyric.  “You were troubled earlier that I did
not tell you enough.  Do I now say too much?”

Kyric didn’t look up.  “I don’t know.”

They crossed the pasture and cut between two wheat fields,
the scent of the farm faint on the light breeze.  The moon climbed into the
night sky and by the time they reached a rutted east-west road Kyric felt all
too visible.

Aiyan knelt at the edge of the road, silent, listening
again.  Standing, he said, “I don’t feel that we are closely pursued.”  He
looked each direction down the road.  Nothing moved.  “Going west and walking
hard all night we could be at the narrows by morning, but if I were Morae I
would send the cavalry that way.  And besides, I would have to leave you there.”

“Don’t you want to do that anyway?” Kyric said.  “I’m
beginning to think that was the best idea, you with the holy quest of the
merchant princes tucked under your arm and all.”

A thin smile crossed Aiyan’s lips.  “Too late for that now,”
he said.  “Now you’re too vulnerable, and too much of a target.  You would be a
nice catch for them.”

He shook his head.  “Two of them.  Right under the nose of
Esaiya.  How bold.  Now I know this isn’t Morae’s own private enterprise.  No,
this must be part of the Master’s plan.”

“What can I do?”

“You must stay with me until the taint of the blood fades away. 
Then you can decide.  The west gate of Aeva is only a few miles down this
road.  I know a safe place to stay where I can learn of the goings-on that the
missing rudders have incited.  We’ll rest for a day, then I can have a boatman
take me to Esaiya, and you can go to the archery tournament.”  His eyes danced
with a mischievous light.  “Besides, I have a rather long story to tell you. 
You’ve certainly earned the right to hear it.”

Aiyan set a quick march pace down the road.  “I’m going to
tell you this story as it was told to me.  And if it’s a little dramatic, well,
that’s how I heard it.”

On the first day of spring, in the year before the Long
Winter, on the day the Council of Sages met to contemplate what wisdom they
might offer to the kings and stewards of the realm, Sorrin, a master of the Knights
of the Pyxidium, an order dedicated to serving the Council, greeted Master
Cauldin in the outer garden of the great castle.

“You have returned,” said Sorrin, going to him and clasping
his arm.  “You were gone a long time.”  Then he saw that Cauldin’s eyes
remained fixed as black pearls.

“Something has happened,” Sorrin said.

“Temma has not returned from his winter sabbatical.  They
wish to see us in the council chamber.”

Sorrin walked alongside his old comrade, Cauldin eclipsing
him with his great height and breadth.  Long ago they had both learned to walk
silently and leave no trace of their passage.  Long ago it had become part of
their nature.

“They were in the chamber all night,” Cauldin said.  “I
wonder what they do in there.  Do they gather around and stare into the
Pyxidium with those twinkling eyes of theirs?  They say that they cannot see
the future, but I think, at times, that is exactly what they do.”

Sorrin shook his head.  “I believe that they see no more
than they’ve said, that the Pyxidium only allows them to bring the realm of
power into clear focus.  And that is not the same as seeing what is to come.”

Cauldin stopped and looked down at him.  “You often forget
that they were all powerful magicians at one time.  And there is one aspect to
them you cannot deny — they tell us very little; they do not share their
secrets.”

“I’m sure that there are folk who would say the same of you
and me.  Have you never had a young man ask you how he could become a Knight of
the Pyxidium?  There is no way to explain it.”

Cauldin nodded thoughtfully.  “But what is the true nature
of the Pyxidium?  Elistar wrote that it was the gift of the firebirds, who took
it from the sky.  The firebirds are hazardous allies, for they embody the
Unknowable Forces themselves.  What was their purpose in giving it, and what is
the true purpose of the Stone?”

A shadow passed over the castle, a low cloud borne on the
sea breeze.  Sorrin’s eyes hardened into a faraway stare, the waking dream
coming upon him quickly and unbidden.

“It is happening again,” said Cauldin, grasping the sleeve
of Sorrin’s tunic.  “Another vision.  Tell me what you are seeing.”

Sorrin could only manage a hoarse whisper.  “I see the
Pyxidium opening.  Inside I see a spirit fire, in a pool of dark blood.” 

Then in an instant the dream vanished.  Neither man said
another word, and they walked on in silence.

The council chamber lay in the heart of the castle.  Sorrin
and Cauldin entered the windowless room and bowed to the five sages seated
behind the crescent table.  Lit only by flickering tapers and the light of the
Pyxidium, their faces seemed less aged, and their eyes shone with a quiet
vitality.

The frail woman in the middle, the Magus Archeus of the
Council, nodded an informal greeting to the two of them.  “Master Sorrin,
Master Cauldin,” she said, “we shall speak plainly.  Temma has passed from this
world, slain by Aumgraudmal, the lord of the sea dragons.”

Sorrin stared at the flawless crystal of the Pyxidium. 
Resting in the apex of a tapered wave of granite, it blazed as if it contained
a tiny sun.  “The loss is great for us all,” he said.

“Even while he still lived,” she continued, “Temma was
devoured by this creature.  This we know, but the purpose of Aumgraudmal is
beyond our sight.”

A brazier stood in the center of the room atop a pedestal. 
Warming his huge hands there for a moment before he spoke, Cauldin said softly,
“I could slay this sea dragon, and thus avert whatever evil it intends.”

Darting glances met, passed, and met again along the table —
inquiring looks, questions asked.

The Magus Archeus, smiling grimly, placed one bony hand in
the other.  “You, Master Knight, know much of the ways of power.  Your outward
strength is exceeded only by that of your inner self and I believe you could
defeat even this creature.  But the Council has no will in this matter.”

Then they sat in silence, waiting, looking past the glowing
Pyxidium and into the eyes of the two warriors.

“Shall we do nothing?” asked Sorrin.

“It is not your choice, Master Sorrin,” said the Magus
Archeus.  “Nor is it ours.”

“I do not understand.”

“This is a matter that touches very close to us,” she said,
“and we are blind to many things.”

The man with salt-and-pepper hair, the Magus Secundus, spoke
then.  “There is something else we know.”

Outside the chamber, a strong draft whispered through the
ancient passages.

“Lord Cauldin,” he said, “your
life, and that of this creature are intertwined and knotted.  On your path he
lies and he you will meet — at the time of his choosing or at the time of
yours.  But hear this: the designing powers gather close about Aumgraudmal, and
as you know, they care not for the will of men or serpents or even the
firebirds.  We, you, all of us ride the winds of the realm of power, but these
winds carry us through mist and shadow.”

Aiyan stopped speaking.  They had topped a high point in the
road and the outskirts of Aeva lay before them, the great city rising beyond. 
A village of sorts lay strung along the road, and despite the hour, bright
lanterns hung at the entryways of the boarding houses, taverns, stables,
eateries, and other businesses that served travelers.  A few locals passed back
and forth across the road.  As they came within sight of the west gate, Kyric
could see that it was simply a wide archway beneath an ancient tower, the kind
that in the distant past held a portcullis.  A high stone wall surrounded the west
side of Aeva, as this had been the entire city in the days before cannons made
such defenses obsolete.

The gate stood bathed in light, tall torches burning all
around it.  A line of picketed horses stretched to one side and a dozen armed
men lounged against the wall.  They wore uniforms.

“Those aren’t city watchmen,” said Aiyan, easing Kyric into
the moon shadow cast by a tall house.  “That’s the livery of Senator Lekon’s
private battalion.”

An officer stood at the archway fending off a storm of moths,
stopping anyone who tried to enter the city.

“So much for the back door,” Aiyan said.  He opened Kyric’s
knapsack and stuffed the book of rudders down into it.

“It would take us all night to go back north, cross the
river, and come in on the east side,” he said.  “And there’s likely soldiers at
every bridge.  But there is another way, down by the harbor.”

Slipping southward between the houses, they left the village,
circling east across an onion field, coming to the city wall a good distance
from the west gate.  They followed the wall and soon Kyric could see the harbor,
aflood in moonlight, a hundred ships at anchor on the dark ocean, and a hundred
more against the watch fires of the great docks across the bay.

“This story you’re telling me,” said Kyric, “is it true?  Or
is a symbolic tale like the Eddur?”

“You think that the Eddur are myth or literature, like these
scholars in the collegium,” Aiyan said curtly.  “Those sisters were teaching
you history my friend.  Didn’t they tell you that?”

“To be honest, they didn’t say that it was or wasn’t.”

Kyric remembered that it was always Mother Nistra herself
that taught him the Eddur.  And she never asked him for interpretation or
meaning like the other sisters did when he studied the classics.  She only
seemed concerned that he learn every detail and be able to recite them all
accurately.

“Are you saying there was really a war of mages nine hundred
years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And that dragons and firebirds lived in those days?”

Aiyan let out a frustrated breath.  “Kyric,” he said
softly.  “There are dragons and firebirds alive this very day.”  He pointed to
the west.  “Out there, beyond the Keltassian Sea.  The world is not much
changed since the end of the Long Winter.  It is only mankind that has changed.”

A gust of wind passed over them, the land breeze rushing out
to sea.  “And to answer your question, yes, the story is true.”

“What makes you think so?”  Kyric asked.

“I know someone who was there.”  Aiyan said as if it were
nothing remarkable.  The sisters had taught Kyric that the Long Winter ended
over two hundred years ago.

“So,” said Aiyan, “shall we have
a bit more of it?”

The two master knights stood on the battlements above the
tiny quay, untouched by the early-morning twilight.  Their cloaks snapped in
the wind, and clouds gilded in deep violet passed close overhead, rushing out
to sea.  They looked out over the ocean until the sky behind them blossomed in
scarlet.

Sorrin turned.  “It will be a turbulent day for you, alone
on the sea.”

“I shall be running before the wind,” said Cauldin, his eyes
still fixed on the western horizon.  A dozen sleek single-masted boats dozed at
quayside.  One lay burdened with barrels of fresh water.  “I’ve always loved
the wind.  When it blows hard I feel . . . I don‘t know.”  He shrugged.

“The mystery?”

“Yes.”

They watched a gull bank into the stiff breeze.  It hung
there motionless.

“What will you do?”

“Seek him, confront him.  If he speaks I will listen.  If he
would devour me I will slay him.”

Sorrin examined his friend’s granite features.  “You have no
fear?”

“Of the lords of the sea?  Only a fool would not.”

“I meant,” said Sorrin, “of death.”

“Have you not always said that we and our brothers forge
bonds that extend beyond death?”

Sorrin nodded.  The gull wheeled and let a fierce gust carry
it away.

Cauldin held out his hand.  “It is time for me to go.”

Sorrin took his arm.  “May the winds blow fair for you, my
brother.”

“And for you.”

Sorrin watched him go.  The boat reached across the little
harbor with a triangular blue sail and turned westward.  When it was nothing
but a blurred speck on the grey ocean, the passing clouds reared up into huge
thunderheads and chased the tiny craft beyond the horizon.

Far beyond in a sea cave, in darkness, Aumgraudmal stirred. 
His black-speckled eyelids cracked open, his diamond eyes soon reflecting the
red sunrise as it seeped through the morning fog and into the cavern.  The
creature listened.  The rhythm of the ocean was changing.  Waves clapped
against bare rock, beating out an irregular cadence, the vibration rising to
call faintly at the mouth of the cave.

His forked tongue flicked across misshapen stalactites, and the
dragon edged to the mouth of the cavern, paused and tasted the air once again. 
No scent of man passed with the breeze, but it mattered not, Aumgraudmal knew
him to be coming, saw him clearly in the spirit realm as a firefly against the
dusk.  And he knew the time of the man’s coming.  The sage’s blood told him. 
The blood of the magus still reverberated with the whisper of the stars.

Corrosive breath escaping from his huge nostrils, the
creature let his eyes fall closed.  He would have no need of them until the man
came.  Then he would open them.  And the man would look into them.  They would
glow with the power and mystery and he would be entranced, unable to move,
unable to look away.

Then Aumgraudmal would open one
of his own veins and force the man to drink the black blood.

“Here we are,” said Aiyan as they came to the harbor bay. 
The end of the city wall butted against a tower that had tumbled into the sea. 
Aiyan showed Kyric a place on the tower where a wide jagged hole stood at head
height.

“Even at low tide you have to go this way.”

Grunting softly and leading with his left side, Aiyan hauled
himself up into the hole and signaled Kyric to follow.  A jumble of loose mossy
stones lined the floor of the place, and Kyric’s empty stomach turned at the
smell of rotting kelp.  They climbed a twisted stairway of bricks, then a long
jump down into a shallow pool of mud, duck though an arch, and they were inside
the city.  A garbage-filled alley led them to a cobbled harbor road.

This was the old harbor, now used for smaller vessels.  The
docks and quays there overflowed with catboats, skiffs, dhows, longboats, and a
few small caravels.  A crowd milled in the harbor square at the gate to the
docks where more soldiers in Lekon’s livery blocked the way.  They were
searching those who wanted to enter.

“It doesn’t matter if you only want to sleep on your boat,”
a red-faced lieutenant was saying to a wiry old man shouldering a duffle, “we
still have to look in your bag.”

“We’ve already had our goods searched,” said another man
standing aside in a group of four.  “Why are we still waiting?”

“All boats must be inspected before departure.  All the
inspectors are busy right now, but it will be your turn next.”

“Just keep walking,” Aiyan said.

A distant clock tower struck midnight, but the street looked
like early evening on a Fireday night, with people and carriages in each
other’s ways, pipers and lute players working the sidewalks, shouts and
laughter echoing in the taverns.  Across the square, Kyric spotted a stall
where they sold grilled sausage on a stick and pushed through the crowd to pay
an outrageous six pence for two skinny bangers, handing one to Aiyan as he took
too big a bite and scorched the roof of his mouth.

The clatter of hooves on cobblestone turned their heads.  More
of Lekon’s cavalry came trotting down the street, a man in a red hat leading them,
and Kyric’s insides went hollow.

“It’s him,” he whispered to Aiyan.

“I know.  Don’t look at him,” Aiyan said, slowly
sidestepping to place a large statue of some ancient seafarer between himself
and the riders.