Call Of The Flame (Book 1) Page 3

  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 suddenly, “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.

  CHAPTER 4: Dragon’s Blood

  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.