Call of the Flame (Knights of the Flaming Blade #1) Page 5
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 ch
anged 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?”
“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.
Morae signaled his troops to halt at the gate to the docks, all too close. Kyric tried not to look at him but couldn’t help it. Beneath the wide-brimmed hat, his dark eyes fell in turn upon each man waiting at the gate, and those who met his stare stepped back, looking down, or quickly turned to a companion. Kyric didn’t even notice when his sausage fell off the stick.
Morae stood in the stirrups, his head back as if catching a scent on the breeze. Kyric wanted to get away, but found that he couldn’t move. Suddenly Morae looked straight at him, and Kyric felt something stir in his breast. Inexplicably, he wanted to go to him. So drawn was he that he could hardly stop himself.
“Sir!” the lieutenant said to Morae, snapping to attention directly in front of him, “how may I be of service?”
Morae looked down at him, not sure now if he had scented any prey. “Has anyone sailed for the open sea this night?” he said in a voice sounding a bit too high for a tall man.
“No sir,” returned the lieutenant, “they’ve all been ferrymen and those rowing out to anchored ships and the like.”
“Be sure to look in everything,” Morae commanded. “Even in water barrels or casks of wine. And don’t forget that you can hide half a house under a woman’s skirts.”
“Yes sir,” stammered the lieutenant, now even redder in the face than before.
Kyric felt a tug at his sleeve as Aiyan dragged him into a dark place behind the sausage stall, and from there into a narrow side street. If Morae turned to look for him after dismissing the lieutenant, he wasn’t there to see.
“His horse was lathered,” Aiyan said. “He may have followed your scent all the way from Karta.”
“When he looked at me, I almost walked over to him.”
“That’s the draw of the blood. It will fade. And I will tell you something. He may have followed the weird to the old docks, but when you allow it to lead you, the weird sometimes takes you to places that have nothing to do with your life or what you want. So he couldn’t be sure why he looked at you.”
Aiyan hurried him along until they ran into the main boulevard and a river of people. “Like worldly eyes,” he said. “It’s harder for the spirit eye to see us in a crowd. Still
, try to stay empty.”
“I’m so tired I really do feel empty.”
“Not far now,” said Aiyan. “We’re only a mile from Sedlik’s house.”
The street was the famous Way of Kings, and Kyric tried to take in the ancient grandeur of the old city, the columns and arches and wondrous facades. This was all he had thought about during the last years of his servitude, coming to Aeva, the birthplace of his civilization, the source of the artwork, history, and literature of the Aessian culture. He had dreamed of standing in the Palace of the Old Kings, and in the Balerius, the great hall of the god and goddess. Sevdin might be the center of commerce, but if one would seek to know the soul of Aessia, he would come to Aeva.
They passed into the theatre district, where folks clustered thickly in front of cabarets. Below brightly-colored marquees, the tall commedia houses disgorged patrons onto the street while carriage drivers vied for places in the side lanes. Aiyan kept looking behind, once even stopping and waiting in a dark alley, but never spotted a follower.
At length, Aiyan led them down a dim side street, still flowing with tourists, the little paper lanterns they carried bobbing in the dark, and they entered a neighborhood where narrow lanes ran chaotically, crossing each other at odd angles. Stopping at an unmarked door, Aiyan tapped lightly with the knocker. They waited a minute and he tapped louder.
Something rattled behind the door and a tiny hole opened. “Who is it?” squeaked a girl’s voice.
“Jela, it’s me, Aiyan. Let us in.”
Another rattle and the door flew open. A young woman wearing little more than a shift leapt upon Aiyan, her slender arms around his thick neck.
“Uncle Aiyan!” she squealed. “But it’s the middle of the night. Are you alright?” She pulled them into the house.
A heavy-set man in a nightshirt thumped down a staircase next to the entryway with a candle in one hand and a shortsword in the other. He looked at Aiyan. “Well?” he asked.
Aiyan did his best to sound cheery. “Sorry to come at this hour, Sedlik, but we need a place to stay for a couple of days.”
Sedlik frowned. “You’re in trouble and you need a place to hide.” He looked down at the shortsword. “This is my house, Aiyan. My daughter lives here. You know that you’re always welcome down at the warehouse, that you can commit any heinous act you want there — in the name of your noble order, of course. Old Dendi is still there and I know he would love to see you. I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here.”
Aiyan looked him in the eyes, the unsaid words heavier than the silence between them. “Not this time,” he said gently. “This is too big.”
“All the more reason for you to go elsewhere.”
“There is no elsewhere.”
Sedlik stood staring at him. At length he lowered his eyes and handed the shortsword to Jela. He shook Aiyan’s hand warmly despite his stern words. “Look at you. You’re filthy. Go down to the wine cellar and get out of those clothes. I’ll loan you a couple of tunics.”
Kyric tried to not look at Jela. Her shift was cut with a short hem and a plunging neckline. And it was so sheer he could almost see through it. With her large eyes, loose wavy hair and the shortsword in her hand she looked like one of the statues atop the arches over the Way of Kings.
“I also need you to talk to your friend the magistrate. I need to know the latest in the Senate.”
“Aiyan, the Games of Aeva are starting tomorrow.”
“I need to know right away.”
“Alright,” Sedlik said. “Who is the kid?”
“Someone with whom you have something in common.”
Sedlik led them down a stone stairway behind the kitchen and into an open storeroom. A heavy door with a heavy lock was set in a nearby wall. Behind a wine rack lay a few sacks of straw.
“This is the best I can do for now,” Sedlik said. “Tomorrow I’ll rig some kind of bed for you.”
Jela brought down a plate of cold meat and hard bread, and some blankets to lay over the straw. Thankfully, she had put on a robe. After a few bites Kyric’s muscles turned to lead. He barely managed to slip his boots off before he fell back on the straw, instantly asleep.
This time he stood in an ornate library with tall windows and a vaulted ceiling. Fine wood paneling reflected the light emanating from statues of dragons, serpent headed horses, and strange preternatural birds. He found a secret panel and opened it, stepping into a cave with glowing stalactites. A man appeared before him, dressed very much like the black knight in the dream at the jail, except that he wore a long tunic over his chainmail and his greathelm had no visor, only eye slits and holes for breathing. All that he wore, tunic, sword belt, boots, all had been dyed black.
A sparkling light shone through one of the eye slits.
“Kneel,” came a deep voice from within the helm. And Kyric knelt.
The knight had a small spur on the thumb of his gauntlet, and, removing the other armored glove, he used it to open a vein in his wrist.
“Drink,” he commanded.
Kyric took his hand and drank from the flowing wound like it was a fountain. It was sweet, and it charged him with power, and the more he drank the thirstier he became, drinking more and more until he was filled.