The Hidden Fire (Book 2) Read online

  Rolirra’s sword had broken and her shield was just a lump of slag, but Kyric found the bow and one arrow. They crept up the ramp and peered into the bright sunlight. Before them lay a featureless salt flat. Kyric scanned the sky for the firebird but saw nothing.

  Rolirra broke into a slow, loping run, heading straight across the flats, and Kyric ran with her, the salamander blood quickly drying to a powder. They ran for miles, casting no shadows, the sun overhead and the sky empty. Suddenly Rolirra stopped.

  “I thought it was here, but now . . . can you not find it?”

  “The way out of the desert? These salt flats seem to go on forever.”

  “Do not say that!” She looked angry now. “You have to find the way. You have to. You do not understand,” she cried. “I’m lost.”

  Something made him look up. The firebird wheeled above them. It dipped one wing and rolled into a dive. Rolirra ran, but Kyric stood and nocked his arrow — he would shoot the creature right in the eye, the same way he had shot . . . someone . . . somewhere.

  He pushed the thought away. No time — the firebird bore down on him. He looked into its eye and loosed the arrow. It glanced harmlessly off the creature’s beak, and then came the long tongue of flame.

  It was like stepping into a blast furnace, only he didn’t burn. The stream of fire cut a black swath in the salt and passed over Rolirra. She turned back to him, panic in her eyes, much of the green powder gone, now floating on the air as grey ash. Very little remained on his own skin. The firebird climbed away from them.

  All around him the air blurred in the heat of the firebird’s wake. In the corner of his eye, a golden dust-devil snaked a course across the flats, winding back and forth.

  “This way,” he called to Rolirra. He took her arm and pulled her into a run. The firebird slowly made a wide circle and they beat a tattoo with their footfalls.

  The whirlwind curved and weaved its way toward them. It quickly came closer, but the firebird was quicker.

  “You have salamander blood on your back,” she said to him, “and my front is still covered.”

  They stopped and stood front to back as the firebird made its fiery pass. The ground blackened all around them, but they were unhurt. Kyric felt singed in a few places.

  “Now run,” he said, “fast as you can.”

  The firebird beat its wings swiftly now, banking into a tight turn, its breast scales glowing red hot. Kyric ran straight at the whirlwind as it grew taller, gaining in fury, and taking Rolirra’s hand, he jumped into the flow. Moments later they floated in spinning sand, carried along in the hot grip of the wind. Kyric tried to turn and look for the firebird, but couldn’t move. It was like floating and being pinned at the same time.

  They skipped across the flats, quickly coming to another rocky drop-off. The whirling funnel broke apart as it careened over the edge and spilled them out, and they dropped in a spray of sand towards a pit where it all drained into the earth. They plunged into the pit —

  — and deep into cool clear water.

  Rolirra swam up to him, smiling, a bubble escaping from her mouth as she laughed underwater. They were in tropical shallows, and she led him deeper, skimming the sea floor, past glowing purple fan coral, phosphorescent brain coral, though schools of electrified barracuda.

  They came to a deeper place where encrusted rock formations rose from the floor of the ocean. Hundreds of wrecked ships lay broken on the rocks. They swam among the wrecks. None of them were covered with sediment. The brass fittings still shone, and the decks looked as clean as the day they launched.

  Rolirra stopped and hovered before a wooden figurehead at the bow of a small caravel. Her hair floated around her head like a nest of black snakes.

  Like most of them, this figurehead had been carved in the form of a bare-breasted woman, but this one wasn’t an idealized mermaid or angel. It was a Terrulan woman, eyes closed and naked to the world, worked in such fine detail that Kyric could see blemishes in her skin.

  Then she opened her eyes. And they were the cat-like diamond eyes he had seen so many times, green and glowing, looking at him accusingly.

  Suddenly he was almost out of air. He looked at Rolirra, pointing to himself, then to the surface, and started up. She stopped him and opened her mouth. She was taking deep breaths of water, and she signaled him to do the same. He had noticed that the water wasn’t salty, but what did that have to do with anything? He couldn’t breathe water. She pried gently on his lips with her fingers, mouthing, Go ahead, it will be alright.

  He couldn’t stay under any longer. He swam for the surface, but Rolirra grabbed his ankle at the last instant. His lungs ached, and the edges of his vision began to darken. He desperately tried to kick free. He clawed at the water as she pulled him back. He was suffocating.

  CHAPTER 4: Cat’s Eye

  He woke gagging on water, his face and hair wet. He coughed and spit and was able to breathe. Aiyan stood over him with a water skin.

  “You were thrashing all around and wouldn’t wake up,” he said. “Thought you were going to hurt yourself. I tried yanking your leg first, but it didn’t work.”

  Kyric sat up and vomited half a gallon of clear water onto the floor of the cabin. “How much of that did you pour into me?”

  “I only splashed a little on your face,” Aiyan answered. “You must have had a thirsty night.”

  Kyric slipped into his shirt and reached for his breeches. “Aiyan. I’ve had a couple of dreams that feel very real. They’re not normal dreams, not even for me. There’s this girl that’s taking me places and showing me things. I don’t know what it means, but there seems to be little coincidences — the first time, there was that fire right after I dreamed a firebird set the ship aflame. And just now I dreamed that I was drowning.”

  Aiyan shook his head. “I’m afraid I know little of the dream world. This would be a question for Master Zahaias.”

  “I’m probably making too much of this,” Kyric said. “I most likely sleepwalked and did drink a gallon of water. Anyone might dream that they were drowning after that.”

  “Perhaps,” said Aiyan. “I can tell you this much — now is the moment of the sleeping moon. It’s a time when dreams can be significant. I’ve had an interesting one myself.”

  “Yes?”

  “I dreamed that I was seventeen again, fighting in the war against the Jakavians.” He fell quiet while he tied his sash. “I thought I had stopped having that dream years ago.”

  As they finished morning practice, Kyric said, “If swordsmanship is required, I suppose it will be many years before I can try for Esaiya again. How long does it take to become skilled at this?”

  “You’re at an age where you can take long strides. If we keep practicing like this for five hours a day, technical proficiency will come quicker than you think. I was little more than a year younger than you the first time I picked up a sword. Within a year you’ll know if you can aspire to the highest levels of this form. With talent and dedication, you could be stepping onto that level in three years. After five years, I can tell you that any improvement comes in painfully small steps.

  “But technique and training is only part of the reason that we are the best swordsmen in the world. If you can open yourself to the weird as you fight, you gain remarkable insight and intuition within the eternal moment. With guidance from the Unknowable, the ultimate goal is to simply hold onto the sword and allow it to do the fighting.”

  Kyric shook his head. “How do I learn to do that?”

  Aiyan smiled. “That is part of a mystery that the masters call the symmetry of power. The Way of the Flame is not one of meditation — it is a way of moving. Perfecting these simple physical movements will refine your spirit to its warrior essence, and in turn your warrior essence invites the weird to perfect your movement. One comes not before the other.”

  “No beginning and no end?”

  “Exactly so.”

  That afternoon, Aiyan blindfolded himself and
handed Kyric his practice sword. “Place it somewhere on the main deck, within reach if you please. Be silent and give me no clues to where it is.”

  When it was done, Aiyan turned from side to side, his nose held up like he was trying to smell it. He struck out for it with a confident stride, stopping and sidestepping when the scuttlebutt blocked his path. He walked past the sword, then turned and came back, bending down and retrieving it with only a little groping.

  Returning, he handed Kyric the blindfold. “This is a lesson in the knowing of directions. Empty yourself. Open the correct door and you can do this.”

  Kyric prepared himself as if for a bow shot. When Aiyan told him to begin, he breathed out all that was he, and breathed in something greater. He took one hesitant step, not really feeling anything. Then another. He stopped, and just let himself go, as if he were floating in water. Aiyan apparently lost patience with him then, because he took Kyric by the hand, led him down the rail, and pulled his fingers straight to the sword. Kyric picked it up and stood, tearing the blindfold off and starting to say, “Why did you — ” but Aiyan was twenty steps away, looking a little nonplussed.

  “Took me a hundred tries before I did it even once,” he said. “Maybe it was beginners luck.”

  Kyric’s hand began to shake. “I . . . I don’t think so, Aiyan.”

  The ship turned eastward the next morning and the ocean turned greener as they entered the Straits of Terrula. Kyric had had a restless night, tossing and turning with the thought of larger forces using him. It had truly felt like someone — some thing — had taken hold of his hand.

  The passage was far wider than he had expected, and they sailed along the rows of tumbled down cliffs making up the Alerian shore, the land to the south remaining out of sight. They crossed to the other side the next day, sighting the low-lying shore of Terrula and the small colony that Kandin had founded there. A dozen tall ships lay at anchor in the harbor.

  “New Kandin is there to supply the fleets of the Syrolian allies,” Aiyan said. “Sevdin and Aeva maintain their squadrons at Ularra, but the Syrolians aren’t willing to rely on the political circus of the ruling council.”

  The sun had set behind them and deep twilight had come before they sighted Ularra. From a distance Kyric could see clearly that it was the tip of a peninsula. The city stood on a great flat rock jutting above forested lowlands that ran southward. It grew fully dark as they approached, and two bright lights slowly grew above the faint glow of the harbor. The sailing master steered between them, and when they at last entered the port it was through two curving horns of rocky land, each one tipped by a huge stone tower. Large fires burned at the top of each tower, but not so great as Kyric had imagined when he saw them miles out to sea.

  “Why do they seem so bright?” he asked.

  The sailing master answered. “They’re each backed by a great bronze mirror. Makes them beam.”

  Then Kyric remembered the story in the Eddur. The first king of Ularra had been the mage and artificer, Aelat. He built sets of lenses and magic mirrors that could focus the light of the sun so that it would set aflame any ship invading the harbor. Aelat had been defeated, of course, when his enemy attacked at night. Just a story? Kyric didn’t know anymore. He wondered if the burned remains of ancient warships lay beneath the dark waters.

  After the ship had docked, Aiyan led Kyric down the gangplank with his sea chest on one shoulder and his duffle on the other. Kyric had no idea of where he kept the nautical charts. They went a few blocks in, and a few blocks along and ended in a street of old houses.

  “Look for doors with bells tied to them. That means they have a room for rent — the more bells the more rooms.”

  After eighteen days at sea, walking felt strange, and sleeping in a bed that didn’t move felt even stranger. But they were up early, and after a breakfast of buttery corncake and calat, hot milk spiked with bitter-tasting roots, they went out.

  “Before we do anything else,” said Aiyan, “I want to visit an armorer.”

  “What for?”

  Aiyan looked at him. “Armor. No, not breastplates and mail skirts. Just something that might slow down a spear or an arrow.”

  Ularra was a city of many tongues. Kyric could hear smatters of Avic, Baskillian, and Jakavian coming from the market stalls as they passed, but there didn’t seem to be a Terrulan language. Terrulan fishermen bartered their catch in Cor’el. It was also a city of trees. Kyric hadn’t noticed in the dark, but tall, skinny trees grew at the street corners, in the alleys, between the houses — almost everywhere. Little marsupial monkeys nested in the high limbs and ran the rooftops.

  The armorer had the straight black hair of the native Terrulans, along with the traditional tiny feathers in his pierced ears. Aiyan signed a greeting in Cor’el and the man returned it, asking them in perfect Avic what they needed. He measured their torsos, taking each measurement with a ball of string, then cutting the string and tacking it to the wall. Apparently they were getting vests of hardened leather that would lace up the sides. Aiyan paid a little up front, saying they would return in a couple of days.

  “Where did you get all this money?” asked Kyric when they were back on the street. “This is certainly much more than you won at the games.”

  “I, ah . . .“ Aiyan smiled sheepishly. “Most of it came from Aerlyn, if you must know.”

  “You’ve seen her since that day on the docks?”

  “Well, yes. I saw her the, ah, day before we left Aeva.”

  It seemed that they had many other errands to run before they could look for a ship captain. The sun had sunk low in the west by the time they made it to the docks. They strolled slowly, looking at likely caravels and carracks, signing ‘no’ to the charm sellers and dodging the pickpockets. Aiyan called at almost every gangplank, speaking to a couple of captains but mostly to the watch officers, inquiring about the possibility of a charter voyage.

  They paused at a small caravel. Like most of them it had a squared-rigged main mast, with lateens on the smaller masts fore and aft, the upper deck surrounded by solid bulwark in place of a rail. Other than it being fairly weathered, Kyric could see nothing special about it and Aiyan made to pass it by. Then Kyric noticed the figurehead. It was a Terrulan woman with cat-like eyes.

  He must have started, because Aiyan turned and asked, “What is it? Do you have a feeling about this ship?”

  “I saw this ship in one of the strange dreams. Look at the eyes of the figure.”

  “Interesting,” said Aiyan. He went to the plank and called, “Ahoy. What ship is this?”

  “Calico. In her home port,” answered a woman’s voice. She leapt onto the gunwales, balancing lightly as she looked down on them.

  She was tall and athletic, and dressed like a man, with faded grey breeches and a ruffled silk shirt the color of cream. She was hardly older than Kyric, and had the dark brow and straight black hair of a Terrulan, tied back with a thong sporting bright feathers, but her face had the angular features of a Syrolian. And a curious smirk to go with her sparkling eyes, as if she were deciding to make them her playthings. She twirled one finger around the butt of her knife the same way another girl might twist a curl of hair.

  “Is the captain on board?” Aiyan asked.

  “How do you know I’m not the captain?” she returned.

  Aiyan smiled. “Well, you’re a little young.”

  “So I am,” she said with a quiet laugh. “I’m Lerica, the second mate. Captain Lyzuga isn’t here right now. May I be of service?”

  “I’m looking to charter a ship for a voyage to the south. Is Calico bound by a contract?”

  “Not really,” said Lerica. “We do haul cargo, but we also trade.”

  “If this is your home port, perhaps I could speak with the owner.”

  “Captain Lyzuga is the owner. He’s playing cards at The Vivace and is likely to be all night. Come back tomorrow.”

  Aiyan cocked his head. “Isn’t lyzuga the local name for t
he jaguar?”

  Lerica’s eyes almost twinkled. “You know, I think it is.”

  The music at The Vivace was indeed lively, but not exactly sophisticated. A small stage sat at one end of the room where a piano player banged out sour notes and a line of costumed ladies sang songs about their fannies and then lifted their skirts to show them. Kyric stared wide-eyed but the other men hardly noticed, the din of the room almost drowning out the chorus.

  The air hung so thick with smoke that the patrons at the other end of the room were but shadow figures. Over the reek of tobacco, Kyric could smell coffee, rum, and something fried in dirty oil. Waiters passed them with huge trays of little brown crayfish that looked more like boiled waterbugs.

  They passed through a curtain of beaded strings and into the gaming room. “My guess is that it’s him,” said Aiyan, pointing to a table of card players.

  The man seated in the corner wore a shirt that could be seen a mile out to sea — shimmering flame-red satin cut in the Baskillian style, with slashed sleeves and heavy stitching in gold thread. The cuffs sparkled with ruby studs. His straight black hair hung like curtains from beneath a bone-white bowler that matched his bone-white sash. Around his neck lay a choker woven from the claws of some great predator.

  Aiyan took out his purse and approached the table. “Good evening gentlemen. Is this a private game?”

  It turned out that it wasn’t. And it turned out that the man was indeed Captain Ellec Lyzuga. Kyric had to watch from an empty table, so he didn’t hear all that passed. Aiyan ordered coffee and Kyric decided to splurge on a bottle of wine. It was a long night. About once an hour, a different bar girl would come and sit at Kyric’s table and chat with him a while. They all wore too much make-up, and they were all very sweet and very worldly. Kyric offered the first one a drink. She ordered straight rum and tossed it down without blinking.

  A few hours past midnight the other players dropped out and only Aiyan and the captain remain. They waved Kyric over to the table. It seemed that Aiyan had won only a little, while Captain Lyzuga had done quite well.