Call of the Flame (Knights of the Flaming Blade #1) Read online

CHAPTER 3: The Moment

  Kyric opened his eyes in the dark, his face moist, the smell of blood and smoke gone but still with him. A sudden gust of wind shook the willow outside the window, and branches scraped across the shutters like the hand of some monstrous creature clawing to get in. His death was riding in the dark and would be here soon.

  It is the moment of the night storm.

  He stumbled into the main room where he had left the lamp burning. Aiyan came instantly to his feet and saw the panic in Kyric‘s eyes.

  “You know,” he said, taking hold of the iron bars in his excitement. “You’ve made the leap somehow, and now you know it to be true.”

  “I know nothing,” Kyric said, gathering his bow, quiver, knapsack, and bedroll all together as fast as he could, “except that I‘m getting out of here.”

  “You’ve caught a glimpse with your true eye. You feel the coming moment, and you are afraid. As you should be.”

  Kyric didn’t look at him. He didn’t want to listen to him. He threw his boots on in a flurry and found his hat.

  “Before you go,” Aiyan said, “I have a request. Leave me my sword and locket that I might stand a chance with him.”

  But Kyric knew he didn’t. Aiyan’s sweat-soaked shirt clung to him, and he shook from fever chills. And he was in a cage.

  “Can you walk?” Kyric asked him.

  “I can run if I have to.”

  Before he could stop and reason with himself, Kyric fetched the keys and opened the cell, then he stepped back, not believing what he had just done.

  “You will regret this,” Aiyan said with a feral smile, going straight to the cabinet to get his sword. “But you have my thanks.”

  Aiyan’s locket hung on a long chain, and when he placed it around his neck and threaded it through his vest, the locket rested at waist height.

  “What do you keep in that?”

  “The essence of the secret fire,” Aiyan said simply as he adjusted his sword belt.

  “Show me.”

  “I fear you will see it soon enough.”

  Aiyan found the blunderbuss, then put out the lamp and cracked the door, listening for a moment. Kyric could barely stand still. Panic churned in his guts, a formless unreasoning terror he had never before felt. Was he the one who was mad? He couldn’t say — he just had to get out of this place. Now.

  Aiyan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t run. It wastes your strength and causes dogs to bark.”

  Kyric had planned to go a separate way and leave Aiyan to his own fate, but when they stepped outside he found himself too afraid to go alone. The night-veiled world lay haunted by moon shadows and powers he didn’t understand.

  They followed a cobbled street through a still and silent town. “Now that he thinks I’m in Liora,” said Aiyan, “the coastal path no longer seems a good idea. We’ll circle back to the highroad.”

  When they passed the last house and the lane turned to dirt, Aiyan had Kyric walk ahead, and once again he matched Kyric’s stride and covered his footprints. They walked a mile in silence, coming to a bridge over a small stream. The toll booth had long fallen in on itself.

  “Wait,” Aiyan said when they were halfway across. He ushered Kyric to the upstream rail of the bridge. “This won’t fool him, but with luck he’ll look downstream first. Now over the side. Ease in gently so not to stir the water.”

  In the shallow water near the right bank they found the streambed sandy and firm, but it deepened as they went and soon the water ran above their knees.

  “This is too slow,” said Aiyan, suddenly quivering with another bout of chills. “We’ll have to go cross-country and try to stay ahead of them.”

  Leaving the stream behind, they struck out due east, the sky lightening before them. Sunrise found them crossing an olive grove near a village called Mykinae. Kyric had passed through it two days before. Sparrows wheeled in the morning sky, and the olive trees still had a sweet, springtime scent. Soon they reached the highroad.

  Already a trickle of wagons and pedestrians ran south towards Aeva, and many travelers who had camped near the road hurriedly packed, finishing their breakfasts as they did, eager to get started while the cool morning still lingered. Aiyan steered a gently-curving course southward, merging at length with the highroad. The cracked and discolored paving stones had been laid in ancient times, and all that remained of the old mileposts were stumps of petrified wood.

  “With this kind of traffic it will be impossible to track us” said Aiyan.

  “But it’s clear that we’re going to Aeva,” Kyric said. “Maybe we should part company here and you go on alone. I could use a little sleep right now.”

  “We’ll do that shortly, but first we turn north for a ways. There’s a bridge this side of Mykinae. They’ll be chasing us on horseback and we can’t outrun them. My plan is to hide under the bridge. Hopefully they’ll follow our tracks here and just keep going, making the same assumption you did. I would let you go ahead alone, but if the constable is with them and sees you— ”

  “I wouldn’t want to have a conversation with this Morae.”

  “Exactly.”

  Aiyan led them northward at a quick pace, making sure to stay on the pavement. The oncoming travelers beamed at them with faces bright and flush with morning. The women and girls wore flowers in their hair, and some of those afoot sang or hummed walking songs. A few glum fellows gave them looks for going against the flow. When they came to a stonework bridge spanning a narrow stream, they waited for break in the traffic then ducked underneath.

  “You should try to catch that sleep now,” Aiyan said. “It may be a little while.”

  Kyric didn’t bother to unroll his blanket. Stretching out in the stale, musty earth beneath the bridge, he fell asleep almost at once.

  He awoke with Aiyan shaking him, saying, “They went past without stopping.”

  They said goodbye to each other, and Kyric went on alone. He made good time and reached the outskirts of Aeva just as the late summer evening faded to twilight. But Aiyan was waiting for him at the gate to the old city and when he spoke Kyric could see that his tongue was black. He raised the blunderbuss and fired.

  Kyric bolted upright as he woke, his heart pounding in his chest.

  “Whoa, easy,” said Aiyan. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “Just another one where I get killed,” Kyric said between breaths. “This time by you instead of Morae.”

  “Is that what happened at the jail? Have you had dreams like this before?”

  “From time to time. But not every time I fall asleep. And I’ve never dreamed of getting killed.”

  “Do you trust these dreams?”

  And Kyric realized for the first time in his life that he did. He had run from a job and got himself in trouble with a responsible official because of a dream. Trouble was putting it mildly — he could be set to hard labor for helping a prisoner escape. The most likely explanation of all this was that Aiyan was a spy for a powerful family, and that his mystic innuendo was art intended to scare Kyric into letting him go. Kyric began to think again that his was the unstable mind, allowing the suggested threat to manifest in his dreams and drive him to doing stupid things. He was sitting under a bridge hiding from what? Then a thought struck him. What kind of spy carries a large medieval sword?

  Aiyan suddenly turned his head, listening. Kyric could hear nothing over the traffic on the bridge. Creeping up the embankment, Aiyan lifted his head just enough to peer down the highroad. “It’s Morae and about ten others,” he said. “They’re following our trail across the field.”

  Kyric scrambled up to where Aiyan watched. A dozen horsemen approached the place where he and Aiyan had met the highroad. One of them dismounted and looked on both sides of the road for more tracks. Another rider, a tall man with a red hat, stood in the stirrups and simply gazed at the sky.

  “That is Morae,” said Aiyan, then suddenl
y, “Back under the bridge, quickly now.”

  They slipped back into hiding, Aiyan falling to his knees, instantly motionless. “Do not move. Do not think,” he whispered. “He searches for us in the spirit realm. You must make yourself empty. Send your spirit far away.” His eyes were closed. He barely breathed.

  And the unreasoning terror Kyric had felt in the jail began to rise. The shadow of the bridge turned to blackness and an icy hand groped for him in the dark, getting closer as it did. And closer, nearly touching him now. He didn’t know what to do, so he imagined himself back at the rune convent, practicing archery in the clover field. A long deep breath as he drew the bowstring to his cheek, the emptiness, the lack of self as he prepared to loose the arrow.

  Then the hand was gone and Aiyan nodded. “Well done. They’re moving on now.” He peeked out to make sure. “Yes, riding south now fairly slow.”

  “What just happened?” Kyric asked.

  “I already told you,” said Aiyan, dismissing the question with a shake of his head. “We should rest and give them time to get well ahead of us.”

  “I think I’ll stay awake if you don’t mind,” Kyric said.

  “Too bad. Now you have to choose. I had hoped to leave you here sleeping and never see you again.”

  “That suits me,” Kyric said, “but for one issue. My last dream told me that if we parted you would end up killing me.”

  “Tell me all the details of that dream, and of the one at the jail.”

  Kyric did so, and when he was done, Aiyan said, “Do all your dreams come to pass?”

  “Not always, but many do — usually unimportant things. But once I dreamed that one of the sisters died. She got sick two days later and was dead within a month.”

  “I do not believe these visions are fated,” Aiyan said, “only possibilities.”

  “And the way I saw him kill you in the cell,” Kyric said, looking him straight in the face and almost daring him to lie. “Tell me that it wouldn’t have happened that way had I left you there.”

  Aiyan simply met his stare with a level gaze. “The being with dragon’s eyes was an aspect of the Unknowable Forces themselves. One had best listen carefully to what they say. Is it true that you touched the dreamstone in the rune temple?”

  “I did more than that. My first year there, when I was eleven, I got into the temple using a tree near one of the high windows. I pretended I was the Hero King, and that the dreamstone was my orb, and I carried it about the temple in my left hand, banishing evil and doing great deeds with my right. In the end I fell asleep on it.”

  Aiyan let out a low whistle. “You’re in a lot of trouble, boy. If I were you I’d turn around and run right back up that road to the rune convent and tell them. I’m sure the Mother Priestess can help you.” Almost to himself he added, “I’m surprised they never sensed it.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Kyric. “Mother Nistra told me never to return.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, the music of the running stream echoing off the stonework.

  “You mean to come with me, don’t you?” Aiyan said.

  “I have to know the truth of this. Not just rudders and such — I need to know about my dreams, and these weird . . . feelings.”

  Aiyan gave him a hard look. “After what you’ve been through I don’t see how it could be any clearer. Go speak to yourself in the mirror. The only one stopping you from knowing the truth is you.”

  He placed a hand on the ground to steady himself. His face beading with sweat, he began to turn pale again. “And there are worse fates than getting killed. I would not see any of them befalling you because of me.”

  “You’ll need some help getting down the road,” Kyric said. “The midwife told me that you wouldn’t be better for a day or two.”

  “It should be safe to solicit a ride from someone.”

  Kyric shrugged. “You’ll need someone to watch your back while you sleep.”

  “Alright,” said Aiyan, letting out a great breath. “Until the Karta road then.”

  He laid down and closed his eyes, using his arm as a pillow, and waited for the poisonous fever to subside. Kyric looked him over once again.

  The Unknowable Forces. The Sisters of the Rune used the same name for the powers they invoked. No wonder the Runic religion wasn’t very popular — who wanted to worship an unknowable deity?

  After a short time Aiyan rose to his feet without warning. “Have you any money?” he said.

  “I have exactly four kandars.”

  “Good coins those Kandin ducats. Quickly becoming the standard I hear. Loan me one, would you?”

  Kyric reached for his purse as they walked up to the road. Aiyan took the kandar, laid the gun in a clump of grass, and waited until a covered wagon came their way. The first one held a large family, two couples up front with grandparents and children in the back. He let that one go past. The next one was a traveling tinker with two teenage boys.

  Aiyan strode right up to them, waving a greeting with an easy, natural smile. “Me and my nephew have sore feet,” he said, a slight country drawl slipping into his speech. “Trade you a kandar for a ride to Aeva.” He tossed the coin to the tinker, who looked at it before he returned the smile.

  “Why sure, my good fellow,” he said, coaxing his mule to a halt. His smile thinned a little when Aiyan fetched the blunderbuss, but he was the good natured sort, and he had a silver ducat, so he waved them into the back of the wagon.

  The tinker, a man named Ventin who stunk of old leather, asked the usual questions. Aiyan told him they were from Sevdin, and that they had been walking for two weeks. Their trade? Foresters on the estate of a lesser Archon. The archery contest? Oh yes — nephew hits the bull’s-eye every time.

  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.