The Fire King (12 page)

Thousands of years.
Thousands.

The woman had said the words to him, and he had not believed her—and even arriving here, seeing this city glowing in the night, had not immediately proven anything. Karr had ventured into cities during the war: human settlements carved with beauty and violence from river valleys and mountainsides, the world re-created in fire and stone. Humans could do such things, and he had lost himself in those places; but never for long. His size and golden eyes had always made him a target—of those who thought him gods-sent or, more often, a monster. Either way, he’d always ended up feared and alone.

But not alone like this. If the woman’s words were true, if such a vastness of time had passed, then there was nothing left of the world Karr knew. Nothing of the people he had left behind. Not Tau and Althea, or all the others he had seen just before being buried in the tomb. Losing Tau hurt the worst, though. His brother—not in blood—but in friendship. A friendship that Karr had betrayed.

You had them kill you. You gave up. You left
them
behind. And now you grieve?

Yes, he grieved. It was a fool’s grief; he knew that. He grieved because he was still alive, and no matter how compelling his reasons for taking his own life the first time, it seemed like a coward’s choice now. He could have chosen exile. He could have walked into the wilderness and never returned to his people. But he had asked for death. And now he was the one who had been left behind.

There are ways to know for certain,
whispered an insidious voice.
Ways you can search beyond yourself to see if any of your kind exist.

So tempting. All it would require was meditation, a trance. Blood magic. Small words for a dangerous act. But even now, desperate, he was not ready to take the risk of losing his mind. He was so close to losing it already.

Karr knelt in the grass, his fists pushing against his chest, rocking forward until his brow touched the ground. He stayed like that, struggling to breathe as if the night and the stars and the entire world were sagging, collapsing, falling inward to crush his heart. He had seen ruins during the war, lumps and fragments of civilizations living only in legend. He had walked upon the bones of temples, had killed in those places and bled. But now … You
are the fragment.
You
are the relic.

Perhaps. But he had a choice now. A similar choice to the one he had been given before: die or live.

Death is not an option,
whispered a voice inside his heart.
Get up. Get up and do something. Find your people, if they still exist. Learn what you must. Learn why you are still alive. If it is a gift, then do not let it go to waste. Follow the woman.

Karr lifted his head, staring at the city. Soria’s scent burned through him. She was everywhere: on his skin, in the grass, carried by the wind. He could taste her on his tongue.

Follow the woman, though she might be your enemy. She can harm you no worse than you have already harmed yourself. Learn what you can from her. Even if there are others of your kind still alive, you cannot find them without knowledge of this world. You must know how things stand.

As always, information was vital to survival. Karr staggered to his feet—and winced as the scar in his side throbbed, sharply. It happened again, the pain more powerfully centered in his gut, and it was so like being stabbed that Karr bent over, clutching at his side, half expecting to feel a blade embedded there. But, nothing. Just air.

He closed his eyes, lost in memories that pressed tight and cold: his friends—
Tau, especially
—tight-lipped and shaking.

Do it,
Karr mouthed, feeling the words move through him again.
Before I hurt anyone else. Kill me, as I killed your wife.
He remembered baring his throat to Tau, expecting claws, teeth, a ravaging. But a sword had slipped quietly into his stomach and that was enough. He had let himself be thrown into the tomb, locked inside the coffin. Bleeding out, alone in darkness. Drifting into nightmare.

The pain eased. Karr kept his eyes closed, becoming aware again of Soria’s scent. A good distraction. He pictured her in his mind, heard again her voice. His name, on her tongue. He had not yet tried to say her name. It felt too personal to do so, though she was free enough with his. Hearing her speak his name was what had stopped Karr from entering the city with her.

Again, he was a fool. For one brief moment, hearing Soria call out to him had filled Karr with an unexpected sense of belonging, as if it was natural to travel with her, to be in the here and now with her. Never mind the rest. He had forgotten all of it, lost in the simple fleeting pleasure of being himself … with Soria.

The connection he felt to her frightened him, and he had given in to that fear. He had battled and overcome so many weaknesses—only to be unnerved now, by a human woman?

You cannot trust her,
he told himself.
No matter how much you want to.

But he needed her. Either way, he was damned.

Clutching his side, Karr followed her trail into the city.

He kept to the shadows as much as he could. He wore his father’s skin, the skin of a lion, though his tail was long and serpentine, edged in a razor spine of golden scales. No wings. He did not need them, and for once his body had obeyed.

Scents crowded his nose, bitter and strange: human, but mixed with something else that scalded the roof of his mouth, especially when those odd enclosed wagons of varying shapes and colors roared past the shadows where he hid. He watched them all, unable to determine what propelled their wheels. Perhaps the wind set them in motion, or mere thought. He took nothing for granted—especially not when he saw men and women perched atop impossibly delicate rods made of iron and air, with two slim wheels spinning underneath. And there were similar, bulkier transports that also traveled on two wheels only much faster, releasing the same acrid scent as the wagon. He saw horses once: at the side of the road, hauling carts. They seemed out of place, as much relics as himself. He did not linger. The horses started screaming when they smelled him, trying to bolt.

The wagons—all those humans on wheels—sped down streets made of smooth, flawless stone, bordered by monoliths that blocked the sky—so many, of such height and size that Karr could not imagine the lives surely lost to build them. Lights burned everywhere. Cold light, shimmering bursts of silver shining from tall posts that bordered the road. Some were filled with color, glowing and twinkling with a brilliance he had never witnessed beyond jewels, or the petals of flowers.

Lightning,
Soria had said.
Harnessed and controlled.

There are places of light and thunder,
Karr recalled his father saying.
Above the clouds where your mother soars. You will see them one day. You will steal fire from the sun.

Or fire from another world,
he thought, struggling to follow Soria’s scent.

He lost the trail on the outskirts of the city, and found in its place the acrid bitterness of a wagon’s exhaust. He considered this, briefly, imagining that she must have entered one to ride, as he had seen other humans do. It was a problem. All the wagons smelled the same to him, with only minor differences, and tasting those incremental distinctions required time. It was difficult to linger over the scent when there was so much activity along the road. He was not small, not in any form, and it was hard enough hiding with so many lights. Holding very still behind bushes and in the nooks between buildings was tiresome. And ineffective. Karr suspected he had already been seen.

Be wise, go back. If she returns and finds you gone, she will think you have left for good.

But he dismissed the idea. He could not quell the urgency growing stronger within him, perhaps nothing more than his grief becoming desperation. Or something more. He had suffered similar instincts during the war, and Soria had been attacked this night as well. He could picture every detail, every grimace and fall of light on her sweat-soaked brow. He could recall with perfect clarity the scent of her fear.

We share a common enemy.
An enemy that might be here, searching for them both. He could not take the risk. She was his only connection to this world, for good or ill.

Giving up on subtlety, he crouched in the open with his nose pressed to stone. He chose a rare moment when the road was nearly empty of wagons—twin lights shining at him from a distance—but there were still humans out, perched on their strange wheel-machines, and they stopped, staring at him in horror and shock. None were armed. Karr closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.

At the side of the road, at the exact spot where Soria’s scent disappeared, he detected a trace of burned metal, like the inside of a blacksmith’s stall. It was a corrosive smell, and beneath, in the stone, was something earthier: the manure of a pack animal, horse or donkey. The wheels had rolled through shit. He could taste it.

Karr heard shouts behind him, and a strange whooping noise. He glanced over his shoulder and watched a compact white wagon roar toward him, blue and red lights flickering wildly upon its roof. Humans hurried off the road, staring and pointing, some with small, square objects that flashed tiny lights, leaving stars in his eyes.

He thought about staying, shifting shape in front of these humans to gauge their reaction, to see if it was true that his kind were unknown. But he took another look at the faces around him—mixed with fear and awe—and thought better of it. He had enough problems.

Karr leaped away from the road and raced into the shadows.

He used side streets, cutting back around to the road when he could, to test the stone for the wheel scent of Soria’s wagon, to study his surroundings and memorize landmarks that would be useful from both the ground and the sky. The most fascinating things he found were statues of creatures that reminded him vaguely of his other skin: long-necked, long-tailed, reptilian. Not dragons, but something close. They were obviously revered—worshipped, perhaps, as he could see no other reason for creating such monuments.

He lost the trail several times, was forced to backtrack—but humans would shout and point, and within minutes flashing lights would appear, forcing him to run, intensifying his frustration. Time was running out, the streets becoming more tangled, scents crashing together. He was losing Soria. He thought, perhaps, he had lost her already.

Until, quite abruptly, Karr caught the scent of a shape-shifter.

He was cutting down a narrow street, traveling silently behind a human woman pulling a cart laden with bizarre-looking objects that looked dirty and used. She was utterly oblivious to the presence of the lion, and seemed quite old and tired. Karr did not want to frighten her. But the shape-shifter’s scent made him stop dead, and a growl ripped free of his throat.

The human began to turn, but Karr slipped away. Not far, just behind a wall that smelled like urine, crammed with delicate-wheeled transports chained to a metal rod in the ground. Karr stood very still, his face upturned, inhaling deeply, listening as wailing music filled the night, accompanied by drums that sounded like the clash of fists on stone and metal. The scent, however, did not belong to the leopardess. This was the smell of someone new, though that was all Karr could determine. He could not even say for certain whether it was male or female, or what skin the shifter wore. Simply, there was a spice in the air, a current of power that made his hackles rise. Somewhere, in this city, was a shifter. And it stood to reason that where it was, Soria would be as well.

She has betrayed you,
came the unbidden thought.

But he did not want to believe. Despite everything—all that he knew and understood to be true—he did not want to believe that Soria had entered this city with the intention to harm him.

So, find out the truth. If it means that much.

It did, Karr was surprised to realize. It meant a great deal.

And it meant even more, moments later, when he heard a woman cry out in the night, distant, almost lost beneath the odd drumbeat that was sparking a rhythm through the city streets. The sound tore right through him. He knew that voice.

Karr ran—fast, as though the human streets were little more than the canyons of home, twisting and riddled with false ends and loose rock. His feet barely touched stone as he raced through the maze, listening for that familiar voice. He heard it once again, closer, mixed with fear and anger, and burst onto a street full of color, dazzling sheets of flickering lights blazing from the fronts of buildings, sparkling and thrumming in time to the drumbeats roaring from within.

They blinded him for a moment. There was too much to see and hear, including human women in windows, barely dressed, posed in such a manner that he thought of the priestesses who inhabited the temples in the desert near the warm Phoenician sea—women who used their bodies to worship the goddess they believed lived beneath their skins.

Movement caught his attention. Soria.

Karr’s breath caught when he saw her—though from relief or concern, he could not say. She stood almost in the road, two men in front of her. Both wore dark pants, but one was dressed in a flimsy white shirt and the other wore black, his hair short and spiked, his frame soft with fat bulging over the cinched waist of his tight pants. His nose was bleeding. He was holding Soria’s arm in a tight grip, angling her arm so far up that she was forced to stand on her toes. Words were being tossed back and forth: heated, vicious. Soria’s face was pinched and pale but utterly defiant.

Other humans watched from a distance: men and scantily clad women emerging from doorways, curious and idle. Most turned away and did not go to help her. Several stood on the sidelines, shouting at the men holding Soria. Waving their hands in agitation.

Karr hardly noticed. A growl rumbled loose, his vision blurring behind a golden haze as his claws dug into the stone, muscles coiled so tight his entire body quivered. Rage choked him—more than was appropriate, he thought dimly—but he could not control the terrible fury that swept over him while watching those men surround her, touch her, scream at her.