Call Of The Flame (Book 1) Read online

  They chatted a bit about places they had seen in the city, but soon Jazul had to go, saying he hoped they would meet again. After the big top, Kyric strolled through the fair, trying not to laugh when the merchants told him bald-faced lies about their wares. On the way back to Sedlik’s house he bought a melon.

  When Kyric got there Sedlik was gone. He found Jela in the kitchen, standing by the window in bright morning sunlight, packing a basket with bread and cheese. She wore a light sleeveless top with a very short skirt attached to it, and when he looked at her it made him feel like he was gawking at a girl in her underwear again. The girls where he came from didn’t dress like this.

  “Are you going to the games today?” she asked him.

  “I thought I would stay here and practice. For tomorrow.”

  “I’m going every day with my friends. We have so much fun. Maybe you could come with us on the last day.” She stood close to him, looking him right in the eye.

  “Maybe so,” he said, turning to busy himself with his melon.

  Here he was again, acting nervous and awkward with someone who’d had a normal upbringing. She was pretty and clever and full of life, and he wanted to be comfortable with her, so that she would be comfortable with him, but he never knew what to say to anyone, much less a girl his own age. So he said the first thing that came to his mind.

  “Is Aiyan your father’s brother or your mother’s?”

  Jela giggled. “Neither. Aiyan isn’t family — he’s much more than that. Better than that. I was ten years old when my father met him, and he’s always been Uncle Aiyan to me. He saved my father’s life, but that’s not why I love him.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because he’s kind and noble. And he laughs and enjoys the little things in spite of the life he leads.”

  Kyric offered her a slice of melon. “What kind of life does he lead?”

  “You know,” she said. “He hunts them and protects us from them. And all the while our leaders and great families will not accept the truth of the men of the dragon’s blood. The Knights of the Flaming Blade were once the most honored men of the realm. Now they must pretend to be monks, and hide their true power and purpose so not to arouse superstitious fear or accusations of vigilantism. The men of Esaiya are truly alone in this world.”

  “Did Aiyan tell you all this?”

  “Over the years he’s let slip enough hints about it. And after he freed my father from the dragon’s blood he had to tell him the story how it came to be, so he would know what had happened to him.”

  Kyric sat down at the big oak table. “So that’s what your father and I have in common.”

  Jela put her hand over her mouth. “You have taken the black blood and were possessed by the love of evil?”

  “It was only for a short time.”

  “When was that?”

  “The night we arrived here.”

  Her nose wrinkled in puzzlement. She looked closely at his face and at his hands, turning them over to see his palms.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that they tortured my father for an entire day before he would take the blood.”

  “He had a pistol aimed at my belly,” Kyric said, a little annoyed at her tone. “He would have shot me. Then he would have given me the blood anyway.”

  “Oh. Then you don’t know,” she said apologetically. “He could not have done that. For the spell to work you must take it willingly.”

  “Aiyan didn’t tell me.”

  She seemed puzzled again. “Isn’t he your master? Aren’t you a knight in training?”

  Kyric laughed loudly. “I broke him out of jail three nights ago because one of them was coming to kill him. We ran until we got here.”

  “I didn’t mean to assume,” Jela said. “It’s just that I’ve never seen him travel with anyone.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “It goes back to what I was saying about the life that he — that they all — must live. Listen to me: Aiyan is an honest man. Yet he hardly goes a day without telling a lie. At times he must cheat or steal in order to protect us from them, or is even forced to kill those who have taken the black blood, people he thinks of as victims, whom he would rescue if he could. That life would tell on anyone’s heart. But the worst part is: He feels like he places folk in danger simply by knowing them, the closer to his heart the more danger. He’s afraid to make friends with anyone. He would never dare court a woman or allow himself to fall in love. I can’t imagine how that feels.”

  Kyric stared into his melon. “My mother once said to me, ‘We’re not allowed to choose whom we love and whom we don’t love.’ It was one of the few times she spoke the truth to me.”

  Jela pulled up a stool. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. She sold me into servitude when I was ten.”

  Jela’s eyes went wide. “Your mother sold you?”

  “To the sisters of the rune convent. Ten years of indentured service.” He shrugged. “They didn’t lock me up or beat me or anything like that. I got to go to nearby towns on errands. It’s not the same as being a slave.”

  Jela glared in outrage. “In what way?”

  “They gave me an education. And when I turned twenty, my freedom.”

  “What did they have you do?”

  “Everything. I worked hard from morning till night every day I didn’t have lessons. They had me cook quite often my last few years there, but mostly I swept, cut hay, unloaded wagons, repaired walls and gates, milked the cow, took care of the mule, dug ditches, chopped wood — loads and loads in the autumn.”

  “No wonder you’re so fit.” She said, looking at his arms and chest and shoulders.

  He went back to his melon, suddenly not knowing what to say again.

  “You haven’t talked to many girls, have you?” Jela said.

  “No,” he said, managing to look at her. “There was this one girl in the village near the convent. She would come out and talk to me whenever I walked by. I even kissed her once.”

  Jela laughed. “Oooh, you’ve kissed a girl! You must be quite the wolf.”

  “Well,” Kyric said with a shy grin, “I think it was really she that kissed me.”

  “So what was it like?”

  “To be honest, I was in such a panic that I don’t remember.”

  They both laughed at that. Then they stopped and regarded one another in silence.

  The front door slammed. Sedlik was back. They listened to him climb the stairs.

  “I have to be off,” Jela said, picking up her basket. She smiled at him. “Good luck tomorrow.”

  An hour later Aiyan came in through the alley carrying a powder horn, a sack of lead balls and patches, and a keg of gunpowder about the size of his head. He also pulled a pistol from under his vest that was no bigger than his hand. “It’s all set with Pitbull. We meet him at sunrise in front of the Palace of the Old Kings.”

  “What’s the powder for?” asked Kyric.

  “Pistol practice this afternoon.”

  “Shouldn’t I practice the bow?”

  “You’ll be fine with that. This should be diverting.”

  Aiyan improvised some targets against the stone wall at the end of the alley. Kyric had heard fireworks going off sporadically since yesterday and figured that gunshots wouldn’t attract much attention. Kyric fired both the pistols they had acquired at the ruins, and the new pocket pistol. Aiyan showed him how to work all the mechanisms and how to reload. Pistol shooting was easy if not entirely precise, and after only a dozen rounds with each weapon Aiyan was satisfied with his accuracy. “Remember,” he said, “that with the pocket pistol you have to hit a vital place to bring them down.”

  Aiyan suggested that they go to bed right after sundown, for tomorrow would be a long day for Kyric. Sedlik had offered them the spare bed chamber the second night, seeing how they were bathed, and Aiyan gave the one narrow bed to Kyric and was content to sleep on the st
raw in the cellar.

  As Kyric sat on the bed in the deepening dusk, listening to the sounds of nightlife beginning to drift up through the open window, Aiyan came to the door.”

  “I forgot that I never finished the story,” he said. “There may not be time after tomorrow.”

  “You mean there’s more?”

  “Just a bit. I’m almost done.”

  “Has he spoken?” asked the young knight softly.

  The older man, a dark-skinned warrior named Wyram let out a shallow breath as he placed the last of his medicines in a clay jar. “Only to say that he will not move until Lord Sorrin returns.”

  “His eyes are blind.”

  “Yes, but he suffers from a deeper wound. It was he who kept the sea watch last night. He let our enemy pass into the castle unchallenged.”

  The young knight looked down at the blind man. “He was a master of the order. I do not hold Zahaias at fault.”

  “Nor do I,” said the older man. He glanced at the far side of the chamber where a score of knights stood in a circle speaking earnestly. Dozens more gathered in the hall outside. “Nor does any of us.”

  “I beg you, Zahaias,” said the young knight, “let us take you to a sickbed.”

  The blind man said nothing.

  “Could not a healer-mage aid him? Restore his vision if naught else?”

  “His eyes have not fallen ill — they have been destroyed. His nights at watch are done.”

  “No,” said Zahaias, “my watch had only begun.” His voice had changed. Soft, yet rasping. “It shall not cease until the Pyxidium is made whole. This is my punishment. And it is my rapture.”

  “You are very tired, Zahaias,” said Wyram. “You need bed rest.”

  “Zahaias, listen to him,” said the young knight. “It is now only twilight. Master Sorrin may not return for many days.”

  “Sorrin,” pronounced Zahaias, rising with perfect balance and laying his sword belt over one shoulder, “comes now.”

  As if cued by the words of Zahaias, the gangly boy appeared at the entry, saying between breaths, “He’s arrived. At the harbor. He says all who can stand are to meet him here in the council chamber.”

  “All are present,” said Mecaithen, a barrel-chested knight with grey hair.

  The boy nodded and ran off. All the knights but Zahaias gathered at the doorway.

  Then Sorrin was there among them. He walked past them, staring ahead with frozen eyes. His tunic was pierced in a dozen places, purple-red and wet with his own blood. Each step a labor, he made his way to the stand that had held the Pyxidium. He found it empty.

  “Where?” he said numbly, turning to the gathered knights. “Where is it?”

  “Master,” said Mecaithen, “you are grievously wounded.”

  “No,” said Sorrin. “I have already been killed. Tell me where it is.”

  “We could not find it. We think the power of your arrow annihilated it.”

  Then Zahaias spoke in his unearthly voice. “It fell into the brazier. Returning our half of the Pyxidium to its resting place is your final burden, Master Sorrin.”

  Sorrin went to the brazier and held his hand over it, feeling the warmth of a deeply-buried coal. He plunged his hand into it, and from the ashes pulled forth the second shard of the Pyxidium.

  Sorrin raised pained eyes to his brother warriors. “I could not take the other half from him.”

  The white light of the crystalline half-sphere played upon Sorrin’s face. For a moment he looked past them, as if seeing something far away, then he spoke with power — an inner fire rekindled.

  “Hear me now, my brothers, and know this for truth: Cauldin had gained a power beyond immortality. My arrows struck his heart many times. Yes, he bleeds and feels pain, but he cannot die.” He looked at the shard in his hand.

  “The power of the Pyxidium is such that as long as one holds even half of it he cannot be killed. He will live.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Even as I do now.”

  “Then do not let it go,” said Mecaithen, “until you are healed.”

  Zahaias stood very still.

  Sorrin began quivering, as if straining to hold up a great weight. “I cannot become what this would make of me. This was not meant to be held,” he said, tearing the words from his throat. “It can be touched . . . but never held.”

  He placed the shard on its setting and let go. He staggered to the brazier and drew his sword overhand, as if to thrust it into his own breast. Grasping it firmly with both hands he drove the blade downward, through the brazier and deep into the pedestal.

  Slowly, he sank to his knees. Then he died.

  A fierce blue-white flame shot upward, streaming from the edge of Sorrin’s blade. The knights watched in silence. The werefire burned steadily.

  Zahaias went unerringly to Sorrin’s still form, reached down and brushed his eyelids closed. “Farewell, my brother,” he said softly, “until we meet again.”

  Then standing, he ripped the bandages from his eyes. They were still there, but they resembled nothing human. Diamond shaped, shining like sapphires, they burned with their own fire.

  “By surrendering his life Master Sorrin has given us the gift of a new Way — a Way for the age to come. The Way of the Flame.”

  The being who had once been Zahaias drew forth his sword and touched the blade to the spirit fire. The flame caught and ran the length of the cutting edge.

  One by one, all the knights stepped forward to try their blades. And one by one, they saw their swords flame.

  Hailstorms followed the rains of spring that year, and summer mornings soon saw frost upon the vineyards of the Aessian kingdom. The end of warm days coming early, dark-eyed folk watched snow swirl in a night sky lit by the harvest moon. Autumn was a time of ice, giving way to a raw, glacial season which punished and imprisoned.

  The year turned, and as the days known before as springtime melted into another summer, so the banked snows ran away in streamlets, leaving the soil soft for a brief warm fortnight. But the cold came again too soon.

  This was the beginning of the Long Winter.

  CHAPTER 8: A Magic Arrow

  They left Sedlik’s house at first light and were standing near the gate of the Palace of the Old Kings before the sun rose above the dome of the Senate. Kyric could only stand and stare.

  “It’s been abandoned since the end of the Long Winter,” Aiyan said. “The Royal Library is all that remains in there — it’s a vast collection of Aessia’s oldest tomes and scrolls. Every book is hand written, and there’s history in there you won’t find in the Eddur.”

  A donkey cart driven by a long-haired boy came to a halt in front of them, and a midget with a longbow arrow in his hand climbed down. “Pitbull,” said Aiyan, going to him.

  Kyric had seen midget performers the day before at the circus tent, but they had not looked like this fellow. Pitbull was bigger. Beneath thick spectacles, he had the face of a grizzled bulldog and was built like a tree stump. His skin looked more like hide, and thick arms grew from clusters of muscle that served as shoulders. A barrel chest atop legs that seemed carved from stone made Kyric think that this man could not be easily knocked aside.

  The games pavilion lay nearby between the palace and the royal residence and they talked as they went. Pitbull handed Kyric the arrow. Steel tipped with white feathers, it looked well made. The fletching was shield cut and offset, like his own, and the balance point a little forward of center. He would have no problem with it. Symbols that Kyric didn’t recognize had been painted along the shaft.

  “This arrow has a deep enchantment laid upon it,” said Pitbull. “It is a magic arrow but it doesn’t work on its own. If you can reach out with your spirit self and touch the arrow, it will allow your intuition to guide it, and you cannot miss.”

  “Do not use it in every round,” Aiyan said. “Save it for when you really need it. You’ll still need to shoot as well as you can.”

  “This is it? This is how I�
�m going to win?”

  Pitbull grinned. “There’s other spells I’ll be using. Do not worry, my boy. You’ll soon have the gold arrow in hand along with all the buxom girls you can manage.”

  They crossed a paved square with an enormous fountain in the center, and came to a three-story structure that stretched along the field of contest. The upper floors were private box seats and the lower floor, built openly with wide arches, served as a place for the athletes. Clusters of men with all manner of bow converged there along with some heavily muscled fellows, weightlifters or wrestlers. Kyric looked for Jazul Marlez but didn’t see him.

  One of the bigger ones spat without looking, and suddenly Pitbull turned on him growling, “Spit that close to me again, buddy, and I’ll tear your leg off.” The man shuffled away from him.

  Aiyan pointed across the field to the stonework terraces where the commons were seated. “We’ll be over there. It will be a long day, do you have enough water? Then good luck, Kyric. I know you can do it.”

  Kyric walked into the pavilion alone. He didn’t like this. Cheating with magic. And this Pitbull didn’t act like he thought a magician would. But Aiyan had insisted that the very life of Princess Aerlyn could be the prize here.

  Mother Nistra had once said something about magic, that it still existed after the War of Mages in a lesser form. Rather than contradict nature, it could only reinforce the natural, push it along so to speak.

  And this story Aiyan had told him shook Kyric hard. He had tasted the black blood and seen the flaming blade and there was nothing for it.

  He waited in line to have his name written down and be given a wooden medallion with a number burned into it. Those who already had numbers began stringing their bows. Finally they were marched to one end of the field where a dozen targets stood. At least two hundred men, and a few women, gathered there.

  This was the qualifying round. Each target had three rings and a shot inside each ring scored a point. Each archer was required to score six points with only three arrows or be eliminated. The distance was a hundred paces, far enough to raise a question in Kyric’s mind with the added pressure of only three shots.