War of the Burning Sky - The Novel

Chapter Ten

Soon, the frightened energy from fleeing the bounty hunters and possible Ragesian pursuers fled before the tedium and discomfort of the ride along the wintry mountain road. Diogenes ordered they stop for the night.

With the aid of Kathor, Rantle set to putting up the two tents they had stolen from the bounty hunters, those unneeded by the dead guards and their leader. Meanwhile the three mages – Diogenes, Torrent, and Sorra – gathered wood and set up a cookfire, discussing their respective experiences with sorcery and formulating tactics in case the group fell under attack. Diogenes used his cigarette-lighting wand to trace a ring in the snow around the camp, and the air within warmed enough to almost be comfortable.

Rivereye, half-hobbled and smaller and weaker than even the twenty year-old Sorra, could only contribute by lending his eye to the gear and coinage they had procured from the Black Horse, letting them know how poor they ultimately were. He mostly kept to himself.

As they settled down to a fortunate but unappetizing dinner of a domestic goat they had found, they considered the faint glow on the southern horizon, where flames reflected across low clouds, marking their destination: the fire forest.

“I’m a little unclear on what comes next,” Rantle said.

Torrent said, “I have several vials of an elixir that will alter the elements of your body and protect against the heat of the fire forest, enough for all of us and maybe a few of the horses. It will work as long as it stays in your body, so you won’t want to urinate unless you have to. It will keep your skin from blistering, but it isn’t enough to stop prolonged exposure to actual fire, though, so don’t go sticking your hands into any bushes.”

“You might want to repeat that one for Rantle,” Diogenes said. “Remember Rantle, that’s ‘don’t touch the fire,’ alright?”

A snarky laugh came from Rivereye.

Kathor said, “How long will we be in the forest?”

“A day,” Torrent said. “Two at most.”

“What if we get lost?” Sorra asked nervously.

“We’ll be fine,” Rantle said with a smile. “There’s supposed to be an old highway that runs straight through Innenotdar to Dassen. It used to be a minor trade route, so it should be impossible to miss.”

Diogenes said, “And I’ll start gathering sticks in case we have to draw lots on who gets the last of the elixir.”

“I have a compass,” Torrent said condescendingly. “If one of you manages to lead us off the road, it’s just twenty miles due south. Even if we miss the exit to Dassen, we’ll just come out in the mountains.”

“Safely between burning to death and freezing,” Diogenes chuckled. “Then let us not get lost.”

“We’re still assuming no one here betrays us,” Sorra said.

Rantle looked to Kathor and shrugged, but the man said nothing.

“I told you,” Rantle said, “Kathor’s trustworthy.”

Sorra looked away in disdain and muttered, “And why should we trust you?”

Rantle cleared his throat uncomfortably, and again the group was quiet. It was Rivereye who broke the silence.

“What’s your family?” Rivereye asked.

Kathor glanced at him. “Why?”

Rivereye nodded in the direction of his horse. “Your saddle, and your armor: I recognize the family markings.”

“Then you know my family,” Kathor said.

Sorra looked at Rivereye. “What do you know?”

Rivereye squirmed slightly under the sudden attention. “He’s from the Danava family.”

“Is that a problem?” Rantle said. “Are they a family of notorious liars?”

Diogenes chuckled, “No, that’s my family. To which I am a notable exception.”

Rivereye looked again at Kathor, but the man was focused on cutting more meat from the roast.

“His family is fine,” Rivereye said. “They’re very honorable.”

“Loyal to Ragesia you mean,” Sorra said.

“Leska is not the emperor of Ragesia,” Kathor said.

Rantle leaned back and patted his stomach, yawning.

“Family doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve been an orphan since I was seven. You can’t decide whether to trust me based on my family, so don’t judge the knight based on his. Anyway, if he wanted to harm you, he would have to go through me first. I won’t let a woman come to harm.”

Beyond Sorra, Torrent smirked. “So nice of you to offer.”

Sorra sighed, pulled her knees to her chest, and lay her head down. Tears welled in her eyes. Rantle remembered the man whose body he had pulled from the burning remains of the Apple less than a day ago. Humbled, he held his tongue.

Diogenes stood up and groaned, stretching his left arm but keeping his right hidden in his coat.

“We should have people on guard tonight,” he said, “just in case. We need to leave before sunrise. Anyone who sleeps too deeply or snores too loudly will be left behind.”

* * *​

Kathor had provided him with a full supply of firewood before he had gone to bed, so as Rantle kept watch in the midnight hours he had nothing to do but feed the fire and listen to songs from home jostling in his head.

A rustling in the women’s tent got his attention, but when he saw it was just Sorra getting up he relaxed. She cast him only a casual glance as she slipped into her boots and walked out of the perimeter of the camp, to relieve herself, Rantle supposed. When she returned she stopped beside her tent for a moment, then slowly came over to Rantle and sat down on a small boulder near the one he had chosen as his post.

“Everything alright?” Rantle asked.

“No,” she said. “Not much is right at all. I can’t sleep.”

“We could get Diogenes to put you to sleep.”

Sorra scowled. “He’s too amused with himself. You’re nearly as bad.”

“I-,” Rantle started, but then he strugged. “Look, I know you lost someone close to you. I haven’t. I left before I had a chance to lose anything. It helps me be optimistic.”

“What about your home?”

Rantle chuckled. “I have a couple, but the only real one threw me out. I mean, I’m not a coward. I want to drive back the rags, but back in Gate Pass? That isn’t the place to do it. This Seaquen sounds like a smarter idea. Get away, get safe, and then be the one attacking, instead of the one waiting to die. I’m sure someone’s planning how to do it as we speak.”

Sorra sighed, then looked up, though the sky was choked with clouds.

“Why are you leaving?” Rantle asked. “You sound like you’re having second thoughts.”

“My father ordered me to leave,” she said. “He knew it wasn’t safe, but it’s not fair. He’s Councilman Menash?”

Rantle nodded and smiled. The man was notorious.

Sorra continued, “He was making plans to restart the resistance, like he was some old war hero, but when Ragesia invaded last time he was six years old.”

“Stop thinking about it,” Rantle said. “It’s too late to go back now, and hey, it’s good to have the company.”

Sorra huffed in amusement. “I heard Diogenes telling us about your daring escape from Gate Pass. He gave particular emphasis to an encounter with a lovesick councilwoman, so please don’t try to pretend your intentions are innocent.”

Rantle shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to be charming. For all I know, you might have left a husband behind.”

“No,” she said.

The sadness in her voice hit Rantle almost physically. He cleared his throat and sat up straight.

“Let’s talk about the future,” he said. “Torrent said it will take a month or so to reach Seaquen. Do you think there’ll be an army forming up?”

Sorra shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t want to . . . to talk now. I just don’t want to sleep.”

Rantle nodded. Wind’s murmur filled the silence as the two of them watched the road.

Softly, Rantle said, “I’m not so good with being quiet, but I’ll do my best. Stay as long as you want, and if you want to talk. . . .”

Sorra said nothing, and Rantle let his words hang.

* * *​

Having gotten almost no sleep for two days, the few hours of rest Rantle managed to grab in the evening was not enough to refresh him. The next morning, while Kathor and Torrent led the group, Rantle leaned low in his saddle, still mostly asleep. He was certain occasionally he drifted off to dreams, and so when the sun seemed to rise before him at the end of the road, he was convinced it was just an imagining of his sleep-entangled mind.

The fire forest breathed like a living thing, inhaling long low gusts that pulled at Rantle’s clothes and hair, drawing him toward the flames, exhaling cinders into the sky with a throaty growl, like all the war furnaces of every army in the world working as one. Inaudible words crept into Rantle’s thoughts through his dreams, and when he shook his head to wake himself he could no longer understand what they were saying, if they had existed at all.

“My god,” he said, seeing the forest in the distance.

The Innenotdar fire forest lay in a valley, and though it was still a mile away, as they approached down the slope of the mountain road, he could see it stretching out to the horizon before him: endless trees, mostly pine, some towering a hundred feet high or more, flames clinging to them from the base of their trunks to the crowns of their branches, burning as they had for decades, as if the trees themselves refused to die.

Rocky hills still framed the road on either side here, but there was no snow, and the ground was carpeted with wilted yellow grass and vibrant red flowers. The soil was an almost black grey from falling ash, and already Rantle’s clothes and horse were turning ashen.

The road continued ahead for a few hundred more feet before it reached a broad field on a promontory just outside the fire forest. A gorge marked the clear border of Innenotdar, and an ancient, blackened stone bridge spanned it, steam hissing up from the water beneath it. The sun was nearing noon overhead, but was visible as little more than a platinum smear in the smoky sky.

“This is an interesting development,” Diogenes said.

Rantle followed his gaze to the field on the left side of the road, about a thousand feet away. A pair of squat stone buildings lay inside a low wall made of roughly-mortared rocks. One building looked like a stable large enough to have once belonged to a sizable ranch, and the other was clearly a house, just one story tall but big enough for a small family.

Just outside the house’s front door stood a slender woman holding a wiry black staff. Though Rantle could barely even see her at this distance, he knew for certain she was looking straight at him, and he felt the unblinking stare of the woman’s crystal blue eyes.

Rantle shivered and blinked. When he looked around, he saw the others were shifting uncomfortably as well.

“Enemies?” Torrent asked.

“Let’s find out,” Diogenes said. “Rantle, Kathor, go in front, in case it’s a trap. We’ll be right behind you.”

Rantle nodded, glancing back at Sorra to give her a reassuring smile. Then he and Kathor kicked their horses into a trot and headed down to the field.

When they were still a few hundred feet out, Kathor rode close to Rantle.

“Why do we do what the wizard says?” Kathor asked.

“Because he’s giving orders,” Rantle said. “He sounds like he knows what he’s doing, at least.”

The woman came forward to meet them at the edge of the low wall as they rode up. She looked no older than twenty, wavy dark hair to her shoulders, looking almost frail beneath her thin beige dress. Her arms were bare, with small brass ring bracelets around her wrists, and she held her staff – a starkly black shaft of wood capped with silver, with a smooth red stone set into the wood in its center – out wide, almost as if she was blocking their way. The firelight from the forest glinted violet off her blue eyes, and her gaze slid emptily across Rantle and Kathor.

“Justice flees the Scourge,” she said. “The skulls of the dragon pursue you, and you will ride yourself to your death.”

Rantle glanced at Kathor, who looked just as confused as he was. When he looked back, the young woman had lost her strange intensity, and now she cradled her staff close to her chest. She was as meek as a mouse.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know what-. . . . Come see my father, please.”

“Wait,” Rantle said. “Hold on. What was that?”

The woman shook her head slightly. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I sometimes see things that. . . . Please come inside. I need you to help my father.”

“What’s wrong with your father?” Kathor asked.

“The Ragesians are coming,” the woman said. “My father is a mage, and he won’t leave.”

“I must be running into every mage in the damn world,” Rantle groaned.

“You’re going into the fire forest,” the woman said. “Please, let us come with you.”

Rantle put a hand to the sword at his hip and looked to Kathor warily.

“Fire forest?” Rantle said. “What gave you that idea?”

Kathor heaved a single gruff laugh.

Crystin looked back to the house like she was torn. A faint voice called out, barely audible through the open door over the pervasive growl of flames.

“Please just come,” she said quickly.

She looked like she was struggling to say more, but then she bowed her head and turned to head inside.

“I must go to my father,” she said stiffly. “You should leave.”

“Like hell,” Rantle muttered. “This is too damned strange.”

Curiosity getting the better of him, Rantle dismounted and followed after the young woman warily, Kathor a few steps behind him. She went into the house, seemingly oblivious that they were following her. Inside it was dark, the walls shaped of strangely smooth stone with no mortar or bricks. Many paintings hung around the tiny living room, portraits barely distinguishable in the dim light coming through the curtained window. Low embers flickered in a hearth, and in a high-backed chair in the corner sat a man who looked to be in his fifties, with stringy brown hair and cracked, dry wrinkles criss-crossing his face. As Rantle came inside he nearly tripped over a pair of small empty traveling packs lying on the floor near the front door.

The man glared at Rantle with scorn and looked ready to yell at him, but he bent over coughing hideously, the sound like bloody flesh being dragged across a bed of splinters. His wrinkled jowls tensed as he continued to cough for a few seconds, and his daughter – no longer moving so stiffly – set her staff against the wall, bent to the hearth, and lifted a kettle from which she poured tea into a cup on the chair’s arm rest. The man struggled to lift the tea to his mouth and swallow a mouthful, after which his coughing fit subsided.

“Don’t argue, father,” the young woman said. “I know these men will take us to safety.”

The man, still slightly hunched, glowered at her. She lowered her head and stopped talking immediately. Then the old man turned his attention to Rantle and Kathor. His voice was a bitter, dark grumble.

“What in all the hells I’ve ever cursed about are you two doing in my house?”

Rantle smirked. “She asked us to come in. We were just passing through, and your daughter decided to lure us inside by saying things that didn’t make any damned sense. Please explain to me what’s going on.”

“It’s none,” he started, then coughed, but he managed to keep speaking, continuing to cough every few words, “of your business. Forgive my d-daughter’s oddities.”

Kathor said, “She’s a seer. She knew we were coming.”

The man shrugged, sipping and clearing his throat with a hideous hacking scar of a cough. “She wants me to go with you, but I’m not leaving.”

The old man scowled. Rantle rolled his eyes and scowled back.

“Listen old man,” he said, “you might not know this living out next to a cursed forest, but the rags are looking for hat tricks like you, and they’re probably coming this way. And not just imperial soldiers; the inquisitors are on the prowl. I hear they kill mages. The whole Ragesian military is marching to war, and we probably have a whole company following us right now.

“Now, I don’t know that I’m comfortable with having more helpless people in tow, but your daughter has a good idea. We are leaving, and you can come along too.”

“I’m staying here,” the man coughed out roughly. “When the Ragesians arrive, I’ll show them that we will still resist them!”

He grimaced and drank the last of his tea, then shook his cup at his daughter to demand a refill as he coughed more. The daughter obediently poured more tea.

“Fine,” Rantle said. “We don’t have time for this. You can stay here and die, but you,” he pointed at the daughter, “if you want to come, we’re ready to go into the fire forest now. We can get you safely to the other side, out of the torchies’ reach. But we’re not waiting.”

The daughter shook her head and calmly said, “No. I am staying with my father.”

Rantle shrugged and turned to leave, too irritated to ask any more questions. Through the door he could see the rest of the group riding up to just beyond the wall surrounding the house.

“Let’s go,” he said to Kathor.

He was just taking his first step when the old man laughed.

“Go, get out of my home!” he shouted. Then he began to cough uncontrollably.

As soon as the father began to cough, the daughter stood and leapt for Rantle, grabbing him by his arm. Her expression was imploring.

“He needs to leave,” she said. “We both do! My father’s just . . . just stubborn.”

The woman’s father looked like he was struggling to control his coughing, and he tried to stand. The daughter began to sway and stiffen, and Rantle pulled away, but Kathor stepped past him back into the house. In the span of two strides he had crossed the room and slammed his fist into the old man’s cheek, knocking him out of his chair and to the floor, where he lay unconscious.

“Kathor!” Rantle yelled in disbelief.

Kathor shrugged. “You said we don’t have time for this. I’ll put him on my horse, and if he still complains when he wakes up, we’ll leave him.”

The daughter was shaking slightly, and she leaned against the wall in shock. Her eyes were locked on her unconscious father with a mix of fear and relief, and Rantle stepped in front of her so she would have to see him.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m Rantle. You’re going to be alright. What’s your name?”

“Crystin,” she said. “Crystin Ja-nafeel. My father is Haddin Ja-laffa. He’ll be furious.”

“Don’t worry about your father,” Rantle said. “You want to come, right?”

Crystin nodded. “But we need to hurry.”

Supporting the unconscious Haddin with one arm, Kathor staggered out and threw the man across his horse. Rantle considered his own horse, too small to support two. Torrent and Sorra were already sharing the other horse, leaving only one option for Haddin’s daughter.

“Crystin,” Rantle said, “outside, you’ll see the ugly little jispin in the back of the group. That’s Rivereye. The two of you should be able to share his horse. Is there anything you need before we leave?”

Crystin stepped over to where she had left her staff. Once she had it, she looked much less nervous.

“My father,” she said, “he wouldn’t let me pack. I need to bring along his tea and medicine, and clothes. Should I bring a weapon?”

Rantle nodded impatiently. “Sure, girl. Anything you think you can swing without hurting one of us. Let’s get this stuff of yours and go.”

Crystin hesitated and turned to one of the smaller paintings on the wall, its frame only a few inches across. She pulled it off and tucked it into a pocket of her dress, then started pointing out things she needed to bring along. Rantle followed behind her, bags in hand, tossing into the first bag tea kettles, packages of leaves, small pouches of supposed magical herbs, and all the survival gear he could find. When it was full, he set it down and followed Crystin to the bedrooms of her and her father, gathering traveling clothes for both of them, since once they got past the fire forest the cold of winter would still be waiting on the other side.

A minute later, Diogenes found him in the house’s pantry as he was struggling to fit a few last bits of food into the second bag. The wizard stopped a few feet behind Rantle and gaped in disbelief.

“Did we not have enough useless people?” he said.

“Complain later,” Rantle said. “The old man’s a wizard too. Aren’t we trying to rescue mages?”

“No,” Diogenes said, “we’re trying to rescue Me, and every minute we waste is another the Ragesians could be catching up to Me. We’re not stopping so you can lay with a woman this time.”

“Yehrun!” Rantle cursed. “We’re coming.”

Slinging the bags over his shoulder, he pointed for Crystin to follow Diogenes outside. When they left the small house, the heat of the fire forest hit him hard.

“Torrent,” Diogenes said, “get those elixirs ready. We’re leaving.”

Sorra called out, “Are you planning to go into the fire forest without eating? We don’t have nearly enough food, so we should stop here.”

Diogenes groaned, but Rantle put a hand on the man’s fake arm.

“She’s right,” he said. “It won’t take long. Crystin, you don’t care if we take anything, do you?”

“I’m trying to hurry,” Diogenes said, “and you’re worried about lunch. We are less than a mile from the damned forest. To stop here would be,” he half-stammered, overcome with frustration, “moronic.”

“What’s that?” Crystin said.

She pointed toward a craggy hill on the opposite side of road to the west, maybe two hundred feet away. Rantle squinted and saw something skulking just at the rise of the hill. The figure, the size of a young boy or a jispin man, was only visible for a moment before ducking away.

“What was that?” Rantle said.

“Khabese scout,” Kathor said urgently. “The army employs them. We need to ride.”

“Just one guy?” Rantle said. “Why don’t we just kill him?”

From the scout’s direction, an arrow cut through the air and struck the wall of the house with a loud thump. A chorus of quiet curses went up around the group, and then another arrow flew in from the south and struck Diogenes in his fake arm. He cried out and ran for the wall at the edge of the yard, diving for cover as the crossfire continued.

Everyone else ducked and moved, or spurred their horses so they wouldn’t be sitting targets. Rantle shoved Crystin toward Rivereye’s horse, then ran for his own.

“How the hell-!” he shouted.

Kathor rode close, holding the unconscious Haddin upright as a human shield.

“Khabese can see in the dark,” Kathor said. “They must’ve cut ahead of us in the night.”

Another two arrows flew in, but people were on the look-out now and they managed to dodge out of the way. The second archer was crouched atop the roof of the stable, less than a hundred feet away, his sulfur yellow coat hiding him against the backdrop of the fire forest. Rantle tried to stoop as he ran for his horse, hoping to get to the crossbow on the saddle, but an arrow flew at him and he had to drop to the ground to dodge it. He began crawling the rest of the way.

The horses were panicking, all but Kathor’s, but Rivereye had managed to pull Crystin onto the saddle behind him. Torrent, meanwhile, was holding out her left hand toward the archers, and as an arrow aimed for her and Sorra whistled in she leaned sideways and the arrow narrowly missed them.

“Torrent,” Diogenes shouted, “where’s the elixir?”

Sorra had pulled open Torrent’s backpack, and she tossed a metal cask the size of man’s head to Diogenes, who tried and failed to catch it one-handed. She took out another, snapped open the mouth, and took a swig herself, then handed it to Torrent, who was mounted in front of her. Torrent, hand still raised to ward off arrows, drank quickly, struggling to keep her horse calm as she shouted directions.

“Just one swallow each,” Torrent said. “And one for your horse, or it will balk at the flames.”

“How do I make my horse drink?” Rivereye yelled in a panic.

Torrent poured a handful of the viscous elixir into her palm and slathered it across her own horse’s lips and nostrils. The horse tried to bite her hand, but then it seemed more interested in licking the slime off its face. She kicked the horse into a trot over to Rivereye, and handed him the flask, giving another handful to the horse he and Crystin were seated upon.

There seemed to just be two Khabese, but they were firing wildly now, an arrow every few seconds, barely aimed. Kathor was the largest target, and Rantle heard at least two arrows click off the man’s armor.

Diogenes had taken a gulp from his cask, and he ran for his horse, dashing the elixir across its face, then dropping the cask on the ground as he leapt into his saddle. He shouted at his horse and spurred it into a gallop toward the fire forest. Almost immediately, a horn sounded from the hill to the west.

Rantle cursed and ran for the cask Diogenes had dropped, picking it up quickly before too much elixir spilled out. Cask in hand, he ducked into the cover of the wall again, gulping down a mouthful as an arrow barely missed him. Almost instantly his throat began to burn and he felt like his skin was shaking, but the feeling passed, and he no longer noticed the heat from the fire forest.

“Kathor,” he shouted.

Kathor rode close and caught the cask as Rantle tossed it up to him. Meanwhile, the other two horses – with Crystin, Rivereye, Torrent, and Sorra – had ridden off after Diogenes, kicking up clouds of ash behind them.

Rantle had kept a large glob of the elixir on his hand, and he waited for the next pair of shots to fly before he made a break for his horse. He smeared the elixir on its lips, and was just stepping into the stirrup when an arrow imbedded into the horse’s foreleg. It reared and tried to bolt, and Rantle was thrown away. As he fell, however, he managed to grab the crossbow. Only when he landed did he realize he didn’t have any bolts for it.

He heard Kathor shouting, and for a moment he hoped the knight was coming to help him, but he saw instead that Kathor was trying to warn the rest of the group that a pair of Ragesian horsemen were riding fast out from behind a hill to the west. Kathor pulled out his huge sword and spurred his mount into a charge, leaving Rantle pinned down and alone.

Rantle lay on his side, outside the protection of the stone wall, and an arrow flew right over his head. It dug into the ground a few feet away, and Rantle scrambled over to it. He yanked it out of the ground, then awkwardly held it as he cranked the crossbow and tried to load it with an arrow. It wasn’t perfect, but it fit, and he rose to one knee, aiming for the nearer archer on the stable roof.

He prayed, then pulled the trigger and fired.

Living in a city, it had been years since Rantle had fired a crossbow, so he was not particularly surprised that his shot went completely astray, but he was nevertheless disappointed with himself. The Khabese archer’s crossfire counterattack was much more precise, and one arrow struck him in the front of his thigh. Growling, he grabbed the arrow, pulled it out, and staggered back toward the cover of the wall, trying to cock the crossbow and load it with an arrow covered with his own blood as he ran.

Once he reached cover, the shots stopped, the archers waiting for him to show himself. Rantle couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the fire forest and the rush of his blood pumping fear, but he knew if he waited the Ragesians would eventually regroup and come back to cut him down. Almost a minute passed as he tried to get his fear under control, preparing to make his move.

He raised his head, ducked, waited for the expected arrows to fly past him, then rose again, aimed for a breath longer than he thought was safe, and fired. The Khabese archer atop the stable was aiming as well, almost perfectly still. Rantle’s arrow struck the man’s chest just as he fired. The scout’s arrow went off course, but Rantle had already leaped back into cover, knowing there was still another archer. He fell to the ground and cowered, but laughed in satisfied disbelief.

He was looking around for other arrows to scavenge when he heard horse hooves approaching. The gait was awkward, like the animal was running with a limp.

“Rantle!” shouted Sorra.

Rantle looked up in shock. Sorra was riding his horse, and he guessed she had removed the arrow that had struck it, since the wound was magically healed. She reined the horse to a stop beside him and reached out to pull him up.

“You’re insane!” he shouted, but he took her hand.

He leapt weakly into the saddle behind her, nearly pulling her off as he struggled to get seated. She kicked to get the horse to turn and run, but it struggled against her for a second. In the distance, the Khabese archer on the hill across the road fired, and Rantle pushed Sorra’s head down. The arrow scraped across his arm and back, and he cursed, then kicked the horse’s sides as hard as he could.

The horse reared up for a moment, then landed and started to run. Rantle grinned, grabbed an arrow out of the quiver on the saddle, and tried to load as the horse sprinted. The Khabese archer waited, taking a long moment to aim ahead of the galloping horse. Rantle saw the next arrow flying in, and he shoved Sorra down, but it was too late.

Sorra screamed as the arrowhead drove into her neck. She reached up to the wound, losing her grip on the reins. Rantle grabbed her, but she fell away, and Rantle fell with her, striking the ground at the speed of a gallop. They rolled together and came to a stop, ash rising in a thick cloud around them.

Rantle crawled coughing to Sorra’s side, and she reached out to him, her face tense with agony. Wet coughs of blood spattered her cheeks, and the flow from the wound itself had soaked her shirt. She was trying to grab the arrow’s shaft, but her hands were too slick.

“No,” Rantle said. “What do I do? You’re- dammit, you’re a healer. What do I do!”

She reached for his hands, and he let her guide him. Her touch was so weak, and her whole body was convulsing, but she pulled his hands to the arrow. Closing his eyes, Rantle grabbed the arrow and pulled. It slid out, and the blood just poured out more quickly.

He kept yelling at her, asking her to tell him what to do, cursing, begging, but her body went limp, and her head lolled to the side. Her final, pained glance was cast northward, back to Gate Pass, and then she closed her eyes and stopped breathing.

Rantle’s voice caught in his throat, and he sat still beside her. Ash kicked up from their fall settled upon them, turning her skin and blood gray.

From behind him came the shuffling sound of someone stepping through the ash-coated road. Rantle felt his shock begin to burn hotter, and he shook with rage as he stood. He drew his sword and stalked out of the haze of ash, coming upon the Khabese archer as the man was trying to grab the reins of Rantle’s horse.

The scout, short like a jispin, covered in weapons and trophies, turned and gaped at Rantle. He knelt to grab his bow, but Rantle was already to him, and he kicked the man in the chest to drive him down, then fell upon him and stabbed him in the stomach. He was only dimly aware of the man’s cries of pain and of the blood slicking his hand as he pushed the blade, continuing until with a snagging sensation he felt its tip poke out the man’s back.

He stepped away, too weak to pull the sword back out. He left the man to whimper. He spared one glance at Sorra, then limped to his horse and grabbed its reins.

The ash had settled, and now Rantle could see the others in the distance, riding for the fire forest, their mounted ambushers dead or scattered. To the north, beyond the mouth of the valley, he heard horns of more approaching Ragesians.

“God damn it,” Rantle spat, feeling cold.

He climbed his horse and kicked it into a gallop toward the fire forest, the scourge following at his heels.
 

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wolff96

First Post
Well, if no one else is commenting on the quality and enjoyability, I will. I'm loving your novelized version of the modules.

Of course, I really enjoyed the War of the Burning Sky anyway, so that helps.

LOVED the inquisitor in the first section and the chaos of the fight just outside the fire forest.
 



hodge182

First Post
This was a very great read and made my day. I truly hope more is done, however I can only guess at how much work would go(and went) into that, so thank you for doing it.
 

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Intermission One

The Rites of Rulership



Among the Shahalesti, everything was done for aesthetics.

Shalosha knew that her father’s aides arranged for cheering, adoring crowds to always line the roads whenever she traveled about Calanis, and she suspected that they made sure all the faces she looked upon were pale, blonde, and beautiful – which in the eyes of her people meant jen only. Han, herethim, and jispin were apparently too unpleasant for one of royal blood to see without warning.

And she only slightly resented how much effort they spent in ensuring she herself was even more beautiful than any in the crowd, so that when her people looked upon her their cheers would be of sincere joy. For it was paramount that they adore her. Their devotion was her power, the will of a million followers at her fingertips, a nation’s pride manifested as nearly divine power, as granted by the rites of rulership.

She was the princess of Shahalesti, daughter of the Shining Lord Shaaladel – he who had driven out the seditious Taranesti, led the proud Shahalesti to conquest against their enemies, and halted the fury of the Old Dragon, Emperor Coaltongue. Her father deserved a dynasty, and the Shahalesti had demanded it, and so twenty-seven years earlier, for the sake of aesthetics, Shalosha had been born.

Though still young, she had the benefit of her late mother’s wisdom. Before her mother had died she had made sure Shalosha understood her place; as much as Shaaladel might love her as his daughter, he had sired her to cement his rule. He had crafted a historic image of himself, had convinced his people that he was leading them toward greatness, and had needed a child as a symbol of all the Shahalesti aspired to be.

Looking out across the jubilant crowds, Shalosha wondered, if her father could craft her as an image for their people to believe in, how he might have crafted the world she saw, and for what purpose. She wondered how what she saw of her father might differ from his true self.

But she had long held her tongue on this matter around her father, else he might not have entrusted her in this mission.

Pressed on by the cheers of the masses, Shalosha and her retinue of attendants and bodyguards ascended the road to the royal palace, its towers gleaming in the noonday sun, caught in the cold mist billowing up from the Reshial Falls. Despite her awareness of the stagecraft, she did love waving to her people, and before entering the palace grounds she turned and blew kisses to the throng. Their loyalty to her surged with their loving cheers, and she felt a brief flutter of power that forced a joyous smile onto her face as she gave one final wave and entered the palace.

Up she climbed through the many tiers of the palace, her enthusiasm lasting as she passed through gardens, beautiful halls, and chambers of politics, slowly fading from beaming to giddy to contented, until she saw her father. She put on her best loving smile as she entered the throne room, nodding to the various counselors and high guards of the Solei Palancis who bowed to her.

“Father, is everything alright?”

Her father Shaaladel looked up from his maps and gestured her over. He was not the handsomest of their people, but had a sharp aquiline nose, fair blond hair cut for battle, and eyes of sapphire blue. He always wore his sword at his hip, but she had never seen it unsheathed.

“The fleet is ready,” her father said, “but we’ve received unpleasant news. Yesterday, just after the turn of the new year, the Ragesians attacked Gate Pass. There’s still quite a battle going on, and we’ve actually received a request for aid, but Aurana has divined that they won’t last more than a few weeks.”

Shalosha frowned. This might be all the excuse her father needed to call off her mission.

They had known this would come, but for the past two months the royal court had felt like it was blind to the outside world, ever since Coaltongue had been slain. The teleporting couriers who regularly delivered news of other nations had nearly all died the same night, for when Coaltongue fell, something deadly had occurred in the spaces between worlds.

The Torch of the Burning Sky had given Coaltongue the power to instantly carry entire armies across the world in a pillar of fire, and now all those who used similar magic arrived at their destinations incinerated. Forced to rely on mundane messengers and the occasional magical missive, the royal court knew the Ragesians were marching on their nation, but could only guess where.

“This makes the mission all the more urgent, father.”

“Really?” He shook his head. “We’re about to go to war, and our fleet has a vital mission, but you want to take it on a detour to this school of witch doctors?”

Shalosha stood still but she glanced at the people eavesdropping from around the room. Disapproval had already crept into some of their expressions, for none were supposed to doubt the Shining Lord, not even his daughter. Her father must assume she would never be so rude to argue with him before so many. But he was as bound by the demands of appearance as she.

Shalosha relaxed and chuckled.

“You’re right, Father. The people want to see me safe on my journey, and you were gracious to offer half the fleet to protect me, but I only need one ship to go to Seaquen. The people clearly do not know how mighty even a single ship of our navy can be.”

In truth, the bulk of the mighty Shahalesti fleet was prepared to cut around the southern nations in order to reach Sindaire, where Coaltongue had fallen on his final campaign. Retrieving the Torch was paramount, and every ruler was rightfully terrified of what would happen if someone else claimed it first. In the two short months since the emperor’s death many had tried, but it was obvious that all had failed, because there was not yet a new warlord trying to conquer the world.

The fleet that was about to set out represented a daring investment of resources in order to claim a prize that would let Shahalesti rule over all other nations. Seaquen just happened to be on the way, and her father had always been reticent to allow for even a few day’s delay.

Shalosha smiled to those watching as she casually walked up to her father, who had that look of stoic disinterest he adopted when he was angry. His voice was low enough that the conversation was nearly private.

“Why risk your safety for this pointless gesture?” he asked.

“My safety?” Shalosha suppressed a quiet laugh. “Father, your tutors have trained me to defend myself against the greatest dangers the Ragesians can offer. Unless Leska herself is with them, we should pity anyone who dares attack the fleet.”

“The witch.” He sneered. “We should be thankful the Ragesians are coming to us. Without the Torch, they know we can defeat them. The smart generals will side with me, and then we’ll march on Leska. By next year Ragesia will have its rightful ruler.”

He looked down at the map on his desk and shook his head.

“No, we don’t need the aid of those foreign mages. They’re all children of Dasseni anyway. We don’t want them.”

Shalosha sighed. “What would you have me do, then? What should your noble daughter do in a time of war?”

“She shouldn’t question me!” he hissed, not quite quietly enough.

The rest of the royal court quickly found something else to pay attention to, and soon all but the guards were had left the chamber. Her father watched them go with unconcealed disdain. Shalosha shivered at the coldness in his eyes.

“The Ragesians,” he said, “will send forces around the northern Tunda Mountains, past Ycengled, though the main threat will be through Gate Pass. I will need someone to represent me among the generals at Nacaan and Piryas.”

“What of the Torch?” she asked.

“Telshanth is leading the expedition. You know that.”

“And you trust him, Father, to bring the Torch back to you when he finds it?”

Her father hesitated before responding. Through their connection by the rites of rulership she felt his confidence falter, and it made her weak in a way she could barely express. Her bloodline was tied to the fate of her nation, and she did not know what it would mean for their people if her father became paranoid of his subordinates. But it was a play she had to make.

Shalosha continued, “The Torch is too powerful, Father. The others are loyal, they love you, but they are not your blood. They have served you well for longer than I’ve been alive; don’t be cruel and put them against such temptation.”

Her father drew a heavy breath and narrowed his eyes.

“You’re right. This is too important to risk any chance, and I know you can never betray me, Shalosha. If only I could go, but I would rather like to go to battle with Ragesians again. It’s been too long.”

Shalosha forced herself not to sigh in relief yet, and she smiled.

“So will you give me leave to seek the aid of the mages of Seaquen?”

Her father nodded with restraint, going to the other side of his desk, where he pulled out an elegant scroll and then sat in a gold and ivory chair.

“You will leave as we originally planned,” he said. “I still wish I could have you aiding me in the north, but if you are going to speak to these mages, we should be clear under what conditions they will serve us. I’ll have to write this fast. Fetch me pen and ink?”

Shalosha kept her mask of elegance, nodded obediently, and got her father his quill and inkwell. As she waited for him to finish his decree, she looked out the window, down at the crowds clustered along the road below. Royal aides moved among them, no doubt weeding and selecting who would watch her journey to the harbor.
 
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Act Two

Chapter Eleven

Uselessly Rivereye clung to the horse’s neck and bridle, his short arms barely strong enough to keep him from being flung off into the flames that leapt from the forest brush and the trunks of trees. Smoke and cinders set his eyes to tears, and though the fire did not sear his skin, it smothered him and stole his breath. He had fled Ragesia to get away from horrors like this, and now he was riding, almost intentionally, straight into a living hell.

The young han woman behind him, Crystin, pulled at the horse’s reins, crying out for it to calm down and stop. Only moments earlier an ambush by the Ragesians had spooked the mount, and now in its panic it had turned off the main road onto a trail filled with flames.

“Stop!” Crystin screamed. “Help me!”

Through the haze of heat and concealment of trees, Rivereye saw glimpses of the main road fading away to the left. He dared to sit up and look ahead, to the game trail the horse was following in its panic, but the ground rose and fell and vanished beyond curtains of fire, and he couldn’t see more than twenty feet.

Then the horse crested the rise of its hill and started down a slope, toward a ravine filled with burning brambles.

Rivereye cried out and Crystin yanked at the reins, but the horse started to buck them. Thankfully, Rivereye realized, he didn’t actually want to stay on the damned horse, so he grabbed Crystin’s wrist and threw his weight sideways. The two of them fell away from the horse and into a patch of flaming brush, while the horse plunged screaming into the brambles.

Crystin coughed and flailed as the fire tried to cling to her cloak, but Rivereye rolled to his feet and, without stopping to bat out the flames on his own clothes, he dragged her onto the game trail, which was clear of burning brush. The magic of the elixirs they had drunk earlier kept them from being hurt by the fire, but by the time they managed to smother each other’s clothing they were rather singed.

Rivereye helped Crystin to her feet as best he could; though short by han standards, she was still a foot taller than him. He caught his breath, then took a slow, awed look at the forest, which thrummed like a vast, breathing furnace around them.

Thin trees stretched upward into a roaring canopy inferno, and bursts of ash and cinders swept through the forest beyond them like frenetic, incendiary cloud banks. To his shock, he saw what looked like a bird flying between branches, burning as fatally as everything else. Grass smouldered, and brush crackled as veins of fire burst through the skin of leaves. Everything here should have turned to dust decades ago, but still it burned, refusing to die.

“We’re lost,” Crystin whispered.

She looked so frightened, Rivereye thought. Nervously, he reached up and took her hand, trying to pull her after him.

“Let’s hurry back. We need to get to Torrent and the others before the Ragesians reach us.”

“Wait!” Crystin said. “The eyes of the fire beast. If we flee he will destroy us.”

Crystin’s posture had shifted, from one of fear to that of a woman walking in a dream, but her eyes were horror-stricken. Rivereye followed her gaze to the end of the trail, where the horse had fallen to its death, and beyond. There was nothing there but an endless stretch of rough hills and searing foliage. No animals moved in the brush, and there certainly were no eyes.

“It wants to speak with us,” Crystin said.

“He’ll have to wait for somebody else, then,” Rivereye said. “You’re seeing things. It must be the-”

Thirty feet away down the trail, suddenly their horse, which had vanished into the ravine, snorted and leapt into view, its body on fire and its cries of pain screeching through the air. It whirled, panicking as it tried to put out the flames on its skin, and finally it bolted away, running to its death in the distant brush.

Rivereye shivered, then quickly yanked on Crystin’s hand to get them both out of there. She resisted for a moment, looking back at the burning horse, but followed.

He scurried back along the trail toward the road was, shouting out for Rantle, Torrent, Sorra, and the others, while he told himself to ignore what he’d just seen. He had to tug the young woman with him to get her to move at all. Ash and clouds of cinders in the air made it hard to see beyond a few dozen feet, but he heard people calling for him and he yelled back to them.

At the sound of others’ voices, Crystin seemed to snap out of her trance, and she hurried alongside him of her own volition. When they reached the top of the hill, Rivereye spotted almost the entire group standing at the edge of the old Innenotdar highway, where no flaming brush grew. What he had heard had not been them calling out back to him, but rather a vicious argument.

Diogenes, the mage who had come with Rantle, shouted at Torrent, the two of them gesturing in the direction they had come from. Neither of them had a horse any more. The Ragesian knight sat on the one remaining horse, and he checked his armor and gear while casually holding the older mage, Crystin’s father, so the unconscious man wouldn’t fall off the saddle. He glanced up the road, as if waiting for the others, Rantle and Sorra, to arrive.

“Father,” Crystin called out.

The group looked up as Crystin pushed her way through flaming branches to reach her father. Rivereye cast a look backward, then followed.

“You,” Torrent said, seeing him. “Oh thank you, gods. Do you still have the case?”

Rivereye, reminded why he was on this trip, nodded and turned his back to reveal the sealed Ragesian documents in his pack.

“Are we staying here?” Rivereye said.

“No,” said Diogenes. He pointed southward. “It would be naïve to think the Ragesians can’t figure out how to follow us. If we stay on the road they’ll run us down. We’re going to have to head into the forest.”

“To a watery hell with the rags,” Torrent said. “We’re not leaving them yet.”

Diogenes spun away in a huff. He started picking through various tokens and amulets at his belt with one hand, while he kept the other tucked into his pocket. He still had an arrow stuck in that arm.

“Is he alright?” Rivereye asked quietly.

“Hm?” Torrent seemed lost in thought.

Rivereye looked down. He should have stayed in the palace, he thought. It was frightening there these days, but he doubted there was on fire. The resistance in Ragos had tried to recruit him to assassinate one of the inquisitors; he would have definitely been killed in retaliation, but being a famous dead hero was better than being a charcoal biscuit.

The forest blasted them with its dry breath for a moment, and then the Ragesian knight who Rantle had brought along – his last name was Danava, was all Rivereye could recall – spoke up.

“Come hear this. The girl says there’s something in the woods.”

Torrent and Diogenes went to hear Crystin’s tale of seeing eyes in the forest, leaving Rivereye alone. He stood at the edge of the group, tapping his foot and looking up the road for Ragesian forces, and down as well, for whatever demons might be living here.

“Rivereye?” Torrent said.

He blinked. “What?”

“Did you see this too?”

“No,” he shrugged. “Or maybe? This place is horrifying. I didn’t see anything, but where better for monsters to live than in a cursed forest?”

Diogenes said, “The girl is probably just spooked, but it’s better not to assume we’re safe. Another reason why I’m not all that eager to linger.”

“I believe her,” said the Ragesian knight. “When we first saw her, it was like she knew we were coming. Her expression . . . she’s like a seer.”

“Her name is Crystin,” Rivereye said. “Even if there is something out there, it didn’t come close. It said it just wanted to talk to someone, so I thought maybe it could talk to one of you.”

“Brilliant teamwork,” Diogenes said. “Lure the monster to us.”

The sound of horse hooves reached them then, and Rivereye looked up the road where they had come from. Rantle appeared a hundred feet away, riding in through a bank of ashes, alone atop his horse, his hands, shirt, and one leg covered in blood, with a bandage around his thigh. He rode up and reined his horse to a stop beside them. Briefly he seemed like he was about to look back over his shoulder, but instead sneered and sighed. Rivereye knew what had happened before Rantle said anything.

“Sorra’s dead.” There was none of his normal cockiness in his voice.

“Poor girl,” Torrent said. “Are you-?”

“I’m fine,” Rantle said. “We need to go.”

Everyone looked around in uncertainty.

Rivereye said, “Our horse ran off into the woods, on fire.”

“The rags shot ours out from under us,” Torrent said, “and we don’t have enough elixir to spare even if we had grabbed theirs.”

Diogenes said, “We will if we sit around and wait for them to come and kill more of us. Rantle, let the jispin and the girl use your horse.”

Rantle dismounted and met Rivereye’s gaze. The man cocked his head in the direction of the horse, then limped over to talk with the others. Rivereye considered the horse warily, wondering if this one would turn suicidal too, and decided to wait.

Crystin helped her father, who was now coming awake, from one horse to the other. A discussion began between the rest of the group, but Rivereye was too overwhelmed by his surroundings to pay attention.

“The ash is making his cough worse,” Crystin said.

The old man was hacking violently. The sound was terrible, and Rivereye cringed.

“Is he-? What’s his name? Is he alright?”

“His name is Haddin,” she said. “I need to tell you-”

Haddin managed to get his coughing under control and shook his daughter’s hand away. He looked around, spat, and glared at his daughter, who suddenly cast her eyes downward and shut her mouth.

“You brought me into the forest? How could you disobey me?”

“There are Ragesians following us,” Rivereye said, gawking. “You’re lucky we got here when we did.”

“Better to die fighting in my home than burn to de-”

Haddin covered his mouth as he coughed. He glared at Rivereye, then looked up the road to the entrance of the fire forest. Intermittently visible through ash and waves of heat, a small cluster of Ragesian cavalry had gathered hundreds of feet away. There were at least a half dozen of them, but they looked like they were waiting now. Rivereye wondered how hard it was to create the magic necessary to enter the fire forest.

* * *​

Guthwulf came upon the scene a carefully-planned few minutes after the fighting was over.

His subordinate, the herethim Inquisitor Boreus, had just claimed the soul of the Khabese archer with the sword stuck through him – one of the drawbacks of discretion was missing out on the first pickings – and now the hulking man stood and faced him.

“He saw them each drink some elixir before they fled for the forest,” Boreus said. “My target and his daughter went with them.”

Guthwulf scrunched his mouth to one side as he considered the situation. He had a good dozen men on horses left, plus the demon he had brought with him from Ragos, and though the fugitives had killed – he counted the corpses now strewn in the distance – five warriors, plus the two Khabese trackers, the quarry were low on horses. He just had to make sure they couldn’t get in too far and manage to hide.

“I’m entrusting you with recovering the case,” Guthwulf said. “Haddin is a distant second goal. They didn’t take all his research, did they?”

Boreus shook his head.

“Good,” Guthwulf said. “Here, take my demon, and go track them down. I’ll go see what the old man left behind.”

Boreus gulped and looked down at the twisted woman prowling servilely at Guthwulf’s side, sniffing in the ash.

“You look pale,” Guthwulf said. He patted Boreus on the back and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Trust me, she’s harmless if you keep her fed.”

“How are we to follow into the fire forest?” Boreus asked.

Guthwulf pondered a moment, then pointed at the dead han woman who lay in an ashy pool of blood, an arrow wound in her neck.

“She was with them. She drank this elixir?”

“I believe so,” Boreus said.

Guthwulf looked at her closely and willed his mask to reveal the strands of magic still in her corpse. He could tell she had drawn mana recently before her death, but nothing worth taking. Her blood, however, was still warm with the elixir. Guthwulf knelt beside her and felt for the artery in her neck.

“Have six of your men get out drinking cups,” he said.
 
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Chapter Twelve

The discussion between the others spiked in volume, and Rivereye turned at the sound of Diogenes’ exclamation.

“No,” the mage said, “it’s a fine idea. I just don’t appreciate the situation you’ve gotten me into.”

“Go peck about it later,” Rantle snapped. “Just find us a place we can kill them, Kathor.”

Haddin began to cough, and Crystin started to shake her head, her eyes struggling to focus. Rivereye recognized it as the expression of someone coming out of mind control; the inquisitors at the imperial palace used such magic almost as entertainment.

Crystin said, “What’s going on?”

“Quiet,” coughed Haddin casually.

And Crystin became quiet.

Rivereye squinted at Haddin, but then looked to Crystin with concern.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll get us to safety. Rantle’s saved our lives twice already.”

“Is he the one who punched me?” Haddin said.

Rivereye shrugged. “Don’t know, but it was Kathor who dragged your unconscious wart of a body out of the house.”

Haddin glared at him, and Rivereye grinned back with a smile that said, ‘I’m not important enough to deserve the time you would spend killing me.’ Everyone who worked in the palace had perfected that smile, or else they led a very boring life without ever having a chance to insult their taskmasters.

Kathor whistled and waved to get their attention.

“The ash is too thick,” he said, pointing at the ground. “There’s no way they’ll miss our trail even through the woods, so that is our best bet.”

He pointed to a rocky spur just down the road. It rose a jagged twenty feet above the right side of the highway. Burning brush and trees atop the spur provided cover but it was rocky and broad enough that in a few places a man could stand without being in fire. The larger trees of the forest provided enough concealment that the rags wouldn’t see them until they were less than twenty feet away. And something seemed to be moving in the flames beyond the trees. . . .

It was only a moment, but Rivereye felt certain the fire was watching him. He blinked and the impression faded.

Torrent said, “You’re one of them. How do we fight them?”

Kathor did not reply for a moment, though Rivereye couldn’t tell if he was brooding over an answer, or was offended to be asked. Everyone waited, until finally he nodded.

“We cut around the spur to the right,” Kathor said. “Make them think we’re going into the forest. The terrain’s too rough for horses or bows, so you can draw them into close quarters. Their horses won’t go into the flaming brush-”

Rivereye snorted.

“-so they’ll have to dismount. I’ll circle around and stay out of sight on the other side of the road, and catch them in a pincer. The inquisitor will likely hang back, so you just have to worry about the soldiers.

“You, your name’s Rivereye?”

Surprised to be addressed directly, Rivereye nodded. “Yes. I can fight.”

“Good, but I need you as look-out on top of the rock to let me know when it is clear to flank them. Mage.”

Diogenes was tapping his foot anxiously. “Eh?”

“An inquisitor means your magic’s more of a liability than an aid. You any good with a sword?”

“I didn’t go to eight years of overpriced arcane education to learn swordplay. I can handle the inquisitor. Or actually, I can handle whoever’s with him. I need you to put your swords in the inquisitor before his men put their swords through me. That’s how these things work.”

Rantle said, “Oh, so you’re not just going to run away this time?”

“Better than playing ‘archery target’ for the Ragesians,” Diogenes said.

Kathor interrupted. “Check your arm, mage. You’re giving away your trick.”

Diogenes looked at his fake arm with surprise, then awkwardly wiggled the arrow out.

Next Kathor pointed at Torrent and Rantle. “You two stay close to the mage.”

“I lost my sword,” Rantle said.

Kathor frowned, then drew a hand-and-a-half sword from a sheath on his saddle and passed it to Rantle.

“What if there are too many?” Rantle asked.

Kathor actually smiled, for the first time since Rivereye had seen him. “If there are too many, they kill us. Get moving.”

As the others started to head off the road on foot, Kathor looked to Haddin.

“You, old man,” he said. “Your daughter said you’re a mage too.”

The wind picked up, and a blinding cloud of ash blew across them.

“I did not want-,” Haddin started, then had to cough. “Did not want to come with you, so it’s fortunate I am no good-,” he spat dryly and cleared his throat, “no good in a battle, so now I don’t have to help you. My daughter and I will-,” he coughed, “stay in cover.”

During the man’s coughing Rivereye had noticed him glancing back up the road, clearly nervous despite his bluster.

“Fine,” Kathor said. “You and your daughter just stay out of the way behind the spur. Rivereye, up on the spur, and hide. When at least some of them have left the road to go after the others, shout to me. Be loud.”

Haddin and Crystin mounted the horse Rantle had ridden in on, and then followed Kathor as he rode off the side of the road and then around to the rock spur’s backside. The father and daughter stopped and hid, while Kathor continued on, eventually reaching a nice ambush spot on one side of the road. By circling around the rock spur he had not left any tracks that could be seen from the road itself.

Rantle, Diogenes, and Torrent stopped at a spot just around the curve of the outcropping, out of sight of the road.

They were all so well-hidden, and as Rivereye climbed up the many ledges of the rock spur he felt horrifyingly vulnerable. He settled in on a patch of ground with no flame that was hidden behind a large rock.

Looking down, to his right was a nearly twenty foot drop to the ash-covered highway, though if he needed to he could probably slide down the rock face without hurting himself. To his left, Rantle, Diogenes, and Torrent waited behind cover of trees and scorched boulders. Slightly ahead and on the right side of the road, Kathor sat checking his armor and patting his horse’s mane reassuringly, while behind him, about forty feet away, Haddin and Crystin sat on the other horse. The father held a rag over his mouth, coughing. The daughter simply sat still, even as a spray of cinders nearly seared her face.

Rivereye peeked over the top of his rock, and saw the Ragesians approaching.

Seven riders churned up ash as their horses galloped in, and what appeared to be a man-sized hound in a white cloak led them ten feet ahead. Four of the riders wore light Ragesian cavalry armor – crimson leather trimmed with bear fur for the winter – and each held an axe and shield at ready, with short compound bows on their saddles. Behind them rode a pair of scale-armored soldiers bearing the fireball standard upon their tabards and wielding long, spear-tipped poleaxes, marking them as middle-ranked armsmen.

Like bodyguards, these two rode flanking the final rider, the inquisitor. He wore no armor except the bear skull mask that shielded his soul from sorcery, wielded no weapon except an articulated bronze claw on his right hand. Clattering charms covered his hirsute body, some primitive tribal medallions, others religious icons cast in iron, and many of more obscure eldritch nature. His skin was the sickly brown color of rotting bark, and though the mask hid most of his face, by his size and by the short tusks jutting from his lower jaw, he was clearly a herethim. Within the empty sockets of the bear skull forest flame reflected dull red off his eyes.

As they closed, Rivereye realized the creature guiding them was no hound. It loped on all fours, but its gait was uneven, and its head was shaggy with plaited blond hair. They were only forty feet away when the air grew strangely heavy and the hound scrambled to a stop, and Rivereye could finally see the strange creature clearly.

It was a han woman, her limbs bent in an unnatural position to let her stride like a wolf, her flesh pale like a corpse. She wore a common winter cloak and coat, as well as a bracelet on one wrist, and her fingers dug into the ash like talons. Her neck twisted in ways that would have killed a normal person, letting her look forward while her body was bent over. She peered around with a serene, and almost sleepy expression, but her cheeks sat hollow and gaunt, and her stringy hair hung unevenly, falling out in clumps.

The riders reined their horses to a stop around the twisted woman-like creature. It sniffed the air, and its head lolled from side to side with jerks and twitches as it scanned its surroundings. It looked up at Rivereye and he nearly cried out.

He had heard the tales in the court, tales of monsters from the realms where evil souls were sent for punishment, beyond the gates of ruin. Whatever old gods watched over the world kept the monsters from actually traveling across the black gulf of death, but they could inhabit the bodies of the living and recently slain.

The inquisitors trafficked in death, and one of the older court staff – a jen named Bahurel, who seldom talked – would, in those rare instances he did speak, mutter stories of captives tortured to the brink of death. The inquisitors would tear out a dying man’s soul and offer it to one of those horrors beyond the mortal ring, beckoning it to our world.

Rivereye saw this thing’s eyes for just a moment, but he knew what it was: a demon.

Despite his fear, Rivereye forced himself to watch, if for nothing else than to make sure the creature did not come for him. The forest growled, and a thick gust of cinders sprayed down the roadway. The Ragesians covered their faces, but the twisted creature did not look away. Undisturbed by the fire, it kept its gaze locked at the rock Rivereye hid behind, then finally looked away when the inquisitor called out to it.

The inquisitor and his creature spoke too quietly for Rivereye to hear, and after a moment the woman snarled and stood up on her hind legs. No longer held by the creature’s gaze, Rivereye ducked behind the rock and began to breathe again.

It would not be that bad if he just hid and fled after the battle was over, he told himself. He was still hurt from the day before, and would be useless in a fight anyway, and someone would need to live to tell the tale of their deaths.

But a pang of guilt reminded him that Rantle and Diogenes had come to rescue him, and now they were in this together. He gulped to focus himself, and knowing he couldn’t risk any more hiding, he slowly raised his head to peer over the rock.

The inquisitor, the monstrous woman, and indeed the whole entourage of soldiers were looking straight at him. The inquisitor casually clawed at the air with a gesture Rivereye recognized from the many times he had spied on other inquisitors practicing. It was a spell, or rather a counterspell, intended to strip magic away and pull it into the inquisitor’s grasp.

Invisible claws tore across Rivereye’s face, and he ducked and screamed as blood sprayed into the air before his eyes. It was the worst pain he had ever known, but as he fell to the ground he knew something else far worse had happened. He felt a horrifying heat in his lungs as the magic that had protected him from the fire forest was torn from him. The air burned his chest, the stone seared his flesh, and as the roaring inferno battered him with its fury, he cried out and fell helpless to the ground.

* * *​

Rantle told himself he didn’t have time to mourn or regret what he had done. What had happened with Sorra was owed a great deal of regret, and if he didn’t live through this fight now he wouldn’t have nearly enough time for it all.

He was hiding behind a boulder of jagged black rock that had fallen free from the rock spur. Torrent crouched behind another boulder a man’s length away, her axe drawn back to hack off the feet of the first rag who came through the gap between them. She whispered a prayer or a chant for a spell, and looked far calmer than Rantle felt.

Ten feet further away, the coward Diogenes stood confidently behind a tree thicker than Rantle’s boulder. The mage, who Rantle was certain could have prevented Sorra’s death if he hadn’t fled, lit a cigarette with a grin by holding it to the tree’s burning bark, then took a drag. The man’s eyes closed for a moment as he savored the tobacco, and then he threw the cigarette away.

Rantle couldn’t afford to hate the man now. He just tightened his grip on his sword and peeked around the boulder.

Forty feet away, through rough terrain filled with burning brambles and thorned trees, Rantle spied the Ragesians. A woman in white had just stood up from the ash, speaking with a huge herethim wearing an animal skull as a mask, while six mounted Ragesian soldiers – some han, some herethim – looked around warily. Something was wrong with the woman, and Rantle felt the muscles in his neck seize up as he saw her head jerk in an impossible movement, angling upward. She pointed an emaciated hand toward the top of the rock spur, and all the Ragesians looked where she pointed.

Rantle turned and looked up as well, barely making out Rivereye in his hiding place. The jispin had ducked and hidden, and looked like he was about to pass out from panic.

“They saw him,” Rantle said, just loud enough for Torrent to hear. “The rags know where Rivereye’s hiding.”

Torrent said, “He’s safe if he stays down. Don’t ruin the-”

Just then Rivereye stood, but he ducked again almost immediately, crying out with pain and falling where the rock obscured him from Rantle. The inquisitor must have done some magic against him, but there was no way Rantle could get to the jispin without revealing himself to the Ragesians. He kicked the boulder in frustration at being helpless again, but just when he was about to step out and rush the Ragesians, Diogenes preempted him.

The mage kept his right foot planted and spun out to the left, emerging from the cover of his tree. He shouted and cast one hand out toward the Ragesians, and flames crackled across his palm. Then the fire from all the scattered brush seemed to coalesce into a pair of burning wolves which leapt forward, snarling and roaring toward the inquisitor and his guards. Less than a heartbeat after emerging, Diogenes pivoted back into cover.

“Kill them, my hounds!” he shouted.

Rantle looked out from cover for a moment, unsure of what to do, but Diogenes held out a warning hand.

“Don’t move,” Diogenes called to him. “I’ve got their attention. And look out for illusions; the inquisitor might recast my spell.”

“What?” Rantle called back.

He was not sure what the mage meant, but already the Ragesians were looking in their direction, and the soldiers struggled to keep their horses calm as two ululating hellhounds charged them. Two Ragesians with polearms swung out of their saddles and interposed themselves between the hounds and their inquisitor commander, while the inquisitor stood high in his saddle, holding his open hand outward at where Diogenes was hiding. From all the stories Rantle had heard, the inquisitor should have been using his power to destroy Diogenes’s conjured beasts, but the man simply ignored them.

The hounds leapt in, and most of the horses broke in fear, their riders struggling to disentangle themselves from stirrups before they were carried away. The two guards swung at the hounds, but when their weapons swept through the creatures without wounding them, the men fell back screaming.

Glancing over, Rantle spotted Diogenes stepping out from behind the tree again, only somehow there were two of him, one still in cover. The one who was hiding looked like he was concentrating intensely, while the one who had stepped out gestured as if to cast another spell. At the road, the inquisitor, still seemingly unconcerned with the fiery hounds, finally moved. He grasped at the air and shouted something just as the one Diogenes cast a spell. As soon as the inquisitor shouted, the Diogenes out in the open vanished, his body disappearing like a painting being clawed apart, and the other Diogenes who had been hiding pivoted out into the open, aiming with splayed fingers at the soldiers struggling to dismount.

The inquisitor spun his head to watch his soldiers begin to struggle to get back into their saddles, looks of unfounded horror on their faces. The inquisitor threw up his hands, a gesture not of magic but of frustration, and Rantle realized Diogenes had done something to infuriate him.

Rantle looked back up at where Rivereye had fallen, then to Torrent.

“I’ll get the jispin,” he said, “then shout for Kathor to attack.”

“Stay put,” Diogenes hissed. “Follow the damned plan!”

Rantle wavered, then heard brush and twigs snapping as some of the Ragesians charged in. Diogenes stepped out from cover again, normally a foolish move, but when the mage turned and ran, Rantle realized his path would draw the Ragesians straight between him and Torrent. Rantle drew back his sword and nodded to Torrent.

The first of the Ragesians, a well-armored herethim with a poleaxe, rushed through the gap between them, raising his weapon to cut down Diogenes. Instead, Torrent chopped into the warrior’s ankle, cleaving off his foot. The man screamed and fell, and when the second warrior followed through the gap a moment later he was already in mid-swing to strike Torrent, but Rantle spun out from behind his boulder and slashed upward.

He was aiming for the man’s wrist, but caught the haft of the poleaxe instead. His blade stopped the warrior’s blow but got lodged deep into the wood, and the Ragesian yanked his weapon away, wrenching Rantle’s sword out of his hand. Before the man could draw back his long polearm for another attack, Rantle stepped inside his reach, snapping a dagger out of his armpit sheath. He tried to stab up into the Ragesian’s throat, but the man deflected the attack with the haft of his weapon, then quickly spun the haft back around, pressing it into the side of Rantle’s neck and torquing sideways.

Before he knew what was happening, Rantle was knocked off his feet and shoved down into fiery grass. The Ragesian landed heavily on Rantle’s back, using his poleaxe to pin Rantle’s head and one of his arms to the ground. For an instant Rantle tried to push or roll free, but then the Ragesian stopped struggling. He felt blood splatter across him, and he managed to turn and look up to see Torrent pulling her axe out of the warrior’s head with a wet suction.

The sound of the inquisitor’s voice pulled Rantle’s attention to the road, where the skull-masked mage was rallying his four remaining warriors. Diogenes’s hellhounds had vanished somewhere. The eerie woman was bending over onto all fours, and when her milky-eyed gaze met Rantle’s, she snarled like a beast. The inquisitor spun to look in their direction and began to reach out with his clawed hand.

“Move!” Torrent shouted.

She grabbed Rantle by his armpit to try to pull him back behind cover. The air rushed like wind, and Torrent cried out. Rantle shoved the dead Ragesian off his back, then scrambled through the burning brush back to the cover of his boulder. Torrent also leapt away, and when they were both out of sight, Rantle saw Torrent holding her belly. Blood was gushing out in four parallel lines as if she had been slashed, but her clothes were untouched.

“Can you move?” Rantle asked.

The Ragesian who was missing his foot was still howling in pain. Rantle reached over and plunged his dagger into the man’s neck, and the man stopped moving.

“Not well,” Torrent said. “Huh. I think this might be mortal.”

Rantle reached out with his left hand to grab Torrent and help her move, but the air rushed like it had just before. He pulled his arm back into cover but too slowly, and wide gashes tore open the back of his hand and his arm.

He bit his lip and growled in pain, then realized he could hear the other Ragesians pressing through the forest toward him. At that instant the first of the remaining Ragesians soldiers appeared in the corner of Rantle’s eye. Expecting an attack, Rantle ducked and stabbed upward at the soldier’s belly, but his knife went through the man completely, and his momentum carried him through the warrior’s body, which tore apart like he was jumping through a sheet of paper.

More soldiers swarmed him, and Rantle slashed furiously to try to keep them at bay, but none of his blows met any resistance when he hit, and when the Ragesians attacked back, their blades were harmless. Then he heard Torrent shout a warning to Diogenes, and he realized he’d been tricked by the inquisitor’s magic.

Looking back, he saw that the actual soldiers had gotten off their horses, cut through the woods to their side, and had flanked them. Diogenes had leapt out from behind his cover and was now running back in Rantle’s direction, away from the soldiers and toward the inquisitor. Torrent had staggered to her feet, and she held up her shield as best she could to block any more magic from the inquisitor.

As Rantle came out of cover, however, rescue seemed at hand, for the inquisitor was looking away at Kathor, who was riding hard out of the woods, his massive sword was drawn back for a blow that would cut a man in half.

The inquisitor swept his claw at Kathor, and Kathor grunted with pain as streaks of blood sprayed out of his armor along his right arm, but he kept riding. Then, just as he was about to strike, the pale monstrous woman sprung into the air at him. Kathor’s blade struck her full in her chest, but the thing did not blink at the impact. It dug one clawed hand into Kathor’s horse’s neck, the other into Kathor’s shoulder, and then tore Kathor from his saddle.

Diogenes did some sort of magic, but the inquisitor clenched his fist as if catching it, and then shoved both hands at Diogenes, knocking him to the ground from thirty feet away.

“Kill that son of a-” Diogenes was yelling, when a Ragesian caught up to him from behind and planted an axe in his wooden arm, turning the mage’s shouts to panicked shrieks.

The inquisitor raised his hand to aim some magic to finish off Diogenes, but Kathor’s horse, still intent on its original target, reared and kicked at the Ragesian. The inquisitor wheeled his horse so that it would take the blow instead, and two hooves slammed into the confused mount’s head. Blood burst from its nose and its crushed eye, and then the inquisitor’s horse reeled and threw its rider, who fell into the ash.

Rantle pushed himself into a sprint, and he charged at the inquisitor, knowing he had to kill the rag before he got back up. To his left, four soldiers had surrounded Torrent and Diogenes. To his right, Kathor grappled the unnatural pale creature on the ground, punching it with gauntleted fists. And behind him, just as Rantle was about to lunge at the inquisitor with nothing more than a dagger, he heard another horse charging in, and he realized Crystin and her wretched old father were riding to join the battle. The inquisitor’s skeletal gaze turned to face them, and Rantle thought he might have a chance.

But then Haddin coughed out the words to a spell of some sort, and the inquisitor caught it in his clawed hand. Rantle swung his knife up at the inquisitor’s belly, but the huge herethim deflected the attack with his metal claw. Rantle struggled to make another stab, but the inquisitor clamped his other hand onto Rantle’s shoulder and punched him in the face with the palm of his claw.

The magic the inquisitor had caught from Haddin seared his skin and forced its way into him. Rantle felt like fish hooks digging through the inside of his skin, and the strings were pulling inward, coiling into knots, keeping him from moving.

The Ragesian inquisitor’s magic held his body like a puppeteer preparing for a show. Icy breath blew across Rantle’s ear as the inquisitor spoke.

“Kill those you came with.”

The strings pulled, the knots shifted, and Rantle found himself turning to Diogenes.
 

Chapter Thirteen

Heat crushed Rivereye and stole his breath, but though he clenched his eyes to keep them from burning away, he saw the firelight intensifying. It was when the lake materialized before him that he realized something strange was happening.

He sat on a broad, parched shore of desiccated fish bones surrounded by blackened rocks, and a perfectly still lake stretched a mile away in front of him, reflecting a smoky sky and endless fire. Pillars of fire surrounded the lake on all sides, and a song pressed through writhing branches in thin slivers, its rhythm full of longing. Hearing it, Rivereye felt heavier, real, even though he knew this had to be a dream.

The surface of the lake parted, and a broad rack of antlers rose up, dripping water for an instant before bursting into flame. An emaciated stag, its shoulders higher than a whole man, emerged from the lake. Two huge wounds pierced its body, at its left front shoulder and its right abdomen, and globules of flaming blood fell and sizzled on the lake’s surface. It stood atop the water, slowly swinging its head from side to side in order to watch him. Wisps of fire burned across its body.

The thing bellowed, but had no voice. Rivereye felt the words in his essence and knew that they were true.

“I am Indomitability. Eternal shall your torment be until you release me.”

Rivereye wondered if this thing was a god, and what he had done to call down its wrath.

“Of-, of course we’ll free you,” Rivereye stammered. “Am I dead?”

“None can die who have my power,” Indomitability said into his soul. “But if you do not end the song, you will forever burn in living torment. Free me from this enforced flesh!”

Rivereye stammered, and he looked around for help, but the absence of anyone who could aid him was so absolute that he felt it tangibly. He was trapped, impossibly so, abandoned by his kin in this strange, corporeal world, far beyond the Mother’s sight. So long he had been gone, and she would be weak without him. But he could imagine her pain, for oh, the wound in his side ever hurt, the hole through which the fires flowed, fires which would sear his captors until they could no longer bind him.

“Dah,” Rivereye cried. “No.”

For a moment he had been someone else, but he shook his head, and once again he remembered who he was supposed to be. Still, some part of this fire beast Indomitability floated around in his soul, like saliva lingering from an unwanted kiss.

“What are you?” Rivereye asked. “I mean, we will free you, of course-”

“You will not deceive me!” it roared inaudibly. “Come to the lake. Release me, or join my suffering.”

The embers in its eyes flared, and the surface of the lake burst with steam as the stag began to charge him. It swung its head furiously, leaving red and gold trails in the air behind it, and as it bore down upon him, Rivereye shouted.

“I’ll do whatever you want! Don’t hurt-!”

The stag trampled toward him, collapsing at the last moment into a gout of fire that rolled across him like a burning fog. And when it cleared, Rivereye awoke, the sounds of battle fierce and desperate in his ears.

Confused, he opened his eyes and looked around. He still lay atop the rock spur, and the fight was going on below, but the fire forest’s fury seemed to have relented against him. He could breathe again, and though he felt a heat still clinging heavily to his entire body, something new protected him from the power of the blaze. He stood and laughed with relief at the third time he had been saved in as many days.

Shouts from the ground snapped his attention back to the immediate danger. To his left, Diogenes and Torrent scrambled as four Ragesian soldiers tried to encircle them. Out in the road Kathor wrestled with his literal demon, which would be fruitless, since from what Rivereye had heard, only magic could harm creatures from beyond the world. And right in front of the spur, Rantle rushed toward the inquisitor.

The whinny and clomping of a galloping horse drew Rivereye’s attention down to his right as Haddin and Crystin rode in from the back of the spur, joining the battle. Haddin put one hand to his forehead and threw out another in the direction of the inquisitor. From vague rememberings of spell duels he had seen, Rivereye knew it was some sort of mind-affecting spell, and he also knew it was the worst possible thing to use against an inquisitor.

Rivereye pulled out his knife, crinkled his lips in dismay, then shrugged and started down the side of the spur, watching when, as he expected, the inquisitor turned Haddin’s spell and placed it upon Rantle.

Rantle was already turning to look at Diogenes, who was too busy cooly fending off the soldiers to see Rantle coming. The inquisitor laughed at Haddin, and the two were engaged in a contest of magic that Rivereye didn’t care to pay attention to. Haddin was a useless ass, and he only hoped that the old bastard would last long enough to make a good distraction.

Rivereye kept his head down and tried to stay hidden by flaming brush, keeping his gaze fixed on the inquisitor. Invisible forces of magic flew back and forth between the inquisitor and Haddin, and the Ragesian never noticed Rivereye’s presence, not until Rivereye broke from cover, ran up to the man’s side, and stuck a knife in his testicles.

* * *​

Rantle wanted to resist, though he had no idea how to combat magic. He stabbed at Diogenes, trying to get a grip on the frantic man while in the corner of his eye he watched Torrent go down with a sword in her chest. Diogenes punched him in the face and weakly tried to hold his dagger hand at bay. Again Rantle was powerless, and he wanted to scream, but the inquisitor would not let him.

Then, as his fist smashed into Diogenes’s nose, Rantle remembered Diogenes trying to explain how his magic worked, telling him that his mind wouldn’t do what it didn’t want to do. He tried to tell himself he did not want to kill Diogenes, and for an instant he actually believed he had a chance of freedom. But he did want the man to suffer for leaving and letting Sorra die, and that was enough to keep him trapped.

Finally he managed to punch Diogenes in the kidney and cut him across the temple with his knife, when suddenly the knots forcing his mind’s motions loosened, and his vision went blurry. Behind him he heard the inquisitor screaming in horrible pain, and a moment later the screams stopped.

Rantle fell back as Diogenes shoved him away, and as he regained control of his body he saw Rivereye finish sawing a small knife across the throat of the weakly struggling inquisitor, who lay in a pool of ashy blood emanating from his groin.

At the same time, Kathor was standing up from the dead body of the horrific pale woman. One of the three remaining Ragesian soldiers ran toward him, and Rantle thought he saw Kathor sigh in frustration as he dropped into a crouch, picked his sword up off the ground, and swung it through both the man’s knees.

Wary of the two remaining soldiers, Rantle rolled and pushed himself to his feet, nearly into the face of one of them. The warrior shoved Rantle back with his shield, and was into a backswing with his axe when Diogenes interrupted.

“Ignore him!” Diogenes shouted. “Kill me! I’m a mage!”

The soldier reacted instantly, unnaturally so, and turned to look at Diogenes, completely ignoring Rantle. The Ragesian started to rush Diogenes, whose eyes widened meaningfully as he glared at Rantle. Realizing the soldier was ensorcelled, Rantle shrugged and stabbed the man up under the back of his helmet. Then he shoved him down and stabbed him enough times to make sure he did not come back up.

Rantle kept his head up, though, since there was one Ragesian left. The herethim man had been chasing after Rivereye, but now he looked uncertain, and backed away as Diogenes advanced on him.

“Don’t worry,” Diogenes said, waving his wand slightly. “Surrender, and we’ll just leave and let you go.”

The soldier already bore a grievous wound in his shoulder, probably from Torrent, and he nodded weakly. He threw down his axe.

“Now,” Diogenes said to the soldier, “go to sleep.”

The Ragesian swayed for a moment, then closed his eyes and fell to the ground. Diogenes turned and grinned smugly at Rantle.

“Tie him up.”

Rantle looked around and saw that no one else threatened them. Still jittery from nearly dying, he moved quickly to tie up their prisoner.

“Sorry for trying to kill you,” he said.

Diogenes’s eyes narrowed, but then he shrugged. “You were under a charm. The fault is mine for not being more careful. Bad form. Though you did seem to enjoy it a little too much.”

“I’m just-,” Rantle started. “I’m sorry.”

Diogenes laughed in a way that managed to be both chiding and comforting. “Don’t take it so seriously. We won, at least. Now make sure the ropes are tight.”

Diogenes moved away to talk with Haddin. As Rantle stripped off the Ragesian’s cloak in order to tie him up, he looked around at all the bodies of the fallen: five Ragesian soldiers, the inquisitor, the strange monster woman, and Torrent. He did not feel much relief that they had ‘won.’

* * *​

The battle had ended, and they hadn’t all died, but as his fellow refugees regrouped and made plans, Rivereye fidgeted with the inquisitor’s mask, telling himself that he had just dreamed the vision of the stag, and that the voice he could hear in the roar of the forest’s flames was just his imagination.

The mask felt dry, drier than bone should be, Rivereye thought. It wasn’t the first time he had seen an inquisitor without his mask, but it was the first time he’d been able to spit in one’s eyes. He had already spat on the inquisitor, kicked out his teeth, and stolen his mask – in addition to gelding him and slitting his throat – but he was still nervous around the corpse.

He carried the mask with him as he headed over to Kathor, who was watching from afar, tending to the slashes on his horse’s neck.

“How did you kill the demon?” Rivereye asked.

Kathor looked down at him for a long moment before replying, giving Rivereye time to notice the rents in his armor from where the demon had wrenched it out of place, and the claw marks from the demon’s nearly-human talons that scraped nearly every bit of his skin that had been exposed. The knight no longer bled, but even though none of his injuries were individually mortal, Rivereye was sure any reasonable person would have let himself pass out by now.

“That was a demon?” Kathor said.

“Yes. Demons can’t be hurt except by magic. At least that’s what we always heard back at the palace.”

For a long moment, Kathor’s only reaction was a slight furrowing of his brows.

Then he said, “Odd. I had heard that too.”

Then he shrugged and went back to tending his horse.

Rivereye glanced back at the demon’s corpse, which now just resembled a woman who had been bludgeoned to death. He almost felt sick at the sight of it.

“Why am I doing this?” he moaned.

“Ragesia’s become a bad place,” Kathor said after a moment. “You kill the right people, and things will get better.”

Kathor paused, bent slightly, and pulled the inquisitor’s mask out of Rivereye’s hands.

“Good thing you came along,” Kathor said.

He put the mask down over Rivereye’s face. It was the sort of condescending gesture jispin had to get used to – being treated like a child, just because he was short – but somehow when Kathor did it, it gave Rivereye a sense of camaraderie.

The mask was huge on his head. It was, after all, carved from a bear skull, designed to fit a herethim nearly seven feet tall. But there was something odd about it, the way that everything he saw seemed to extend a few inches in another dimension other than length, width, and height, though that distance was twisted into knots in some way that was impossible.

Looking over at Diogenes, he saw a texture of elegant entwining magic in the air between him and the one prisoner they had taken. Haddin’s cracked, wrinkled face looked even more revolting with the array of jagged, tightly-wound threads that stretched out from it toward his daughter, weaving through the air and reaching her in three spots along her back and one on her head. Crystin coughed weakly, but didn’t wipe the blood from around her mouth.

In the air over the bodies of the fallen, threads seemed to hang loose, dangling out above an infinite darkness.

Rivereye took off the mask and shook his head. First a monster talking to his mind, then Kathor apparently being able to kill the demon with his bare hands, and now seeing the fabric of the world coming undone: he was through with magic for today, he told himself. He would just keep his mouth shut and his head down, and within a day or two they would be safely out of this terrible forest.

“Hey, filthy monkey!”

Rivereye looked up, seeing Rantle waving him over. He kept his head down and his eyes low as he walked over, but he already knew things were just going to get worse.

Rantle smiled wearily as Rivereye came up. When he spoke, there was pain in his voice, but also sincere relief.

“So, you changed your mind about letting the inquisitor kill you, huh? Nice job on that bastard. Are you alright?”

Rivereye shrugged. “I’m fine. Did you-”

Haddin interrupted, “The rat was just hiding until I saved the lot of you.”

“No,” Diogenes said, “the rat was attacked by an inquisitor and still managed to contribute to the battle despite his rather horrible wounds. You, meanwhile decided to ride to our rescue just in time to let the inquisitor defeat every single spell you used. And your daughter was doing her best impression of a slightly crazy woman who stands around staring off into the forest while the people trying to protect her are dying. It was very convincing.”

Haddin started to bristle with anger, but coughed before he could say anything. Rantle stepped into the space between the two mages and spoke over them to head off a fight.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” he asked. “That looks painful.”

When Rivereye realized everyone was looking at him, he said, “What?”

Rantle grimaced. “Alright, you should rest your heels. I think you may be feeble from all the blood you lost.”

Rivereye looked around in confusion, then said, “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not hurt.”

Haddin growled a laugh and walked away, while Rantle and Diogenes exchanged worried glances.

“If he can walk,” Diogenes said, “it must not be as bad as it looks.”

“I’m no doctor,” Rantle said, “but that looks serious.”

Diogenes shrugged. “He’ll live. Come on, help me with the woman’s body. We owe her at least to bury her out of this damn place.”

While the two men walked over to where Torrent lay, Rivereye carefully reached up to his face. He did remember being clawed by the inquisitor up on top of the rock, but his face didn’t hurt, and he wondered if maybe he had just dreamed that.

He touched his face, feeling sticky blood clotting in four long lines stretching from his left eyebrow to his right cheek.

Just then, Rantle yelped, and Rivereye turned at the sound of a body being dropped to the ground.

“Holy hell!” Diogenes shouted. “She’s alive?”

Rivereye backed away, seeing Torrent stirring slightly, despite several obviously mortal wounds. Her breastplate had been hacked through, a huge gash dug into the back of her skull, and she was covered with more blood than any person could lose without dying. But still she moved, albeit feebly.

Kathor came over, and looked to Diogenes.

“Did you do this?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know how to do this,” Diogenes said. “It’s not healing magic. And she isn’t a ghoul. She’s just not dying.”

Rantle stood up and looked from Torrent to Rivereye. Rivereye cringed and backed away more.

“What’s wrong with him?” Haddin said.

Everyone looked at Rivereye then.

“You know something?” Rantle asked.

Rivereye hesitated, and Diogenes looked up in frustration.

“Just tell us whatever it is you’re hiding.”

“Well,” Rivereye started. “I didn’t think it was important. But now it looks like we’re going to have to do a favor for a monster.”

“What?” Rantle said.

“I’m sorry,” Rivereye said. “I don’t really know what happened. I saw the inquisitor, and he hurt me, and then it was hot and I passed out. I thought I was going to die, but then I woke up on the shore of a lake, and saw a huge deer standing in the lake, on fire. It told me we had to help it, and I said we would, and then I woke up and wasn’t dying anymore. Oh, and there was a weird song.”

“Alright,” Rantle said. “I’m going to try to accept that you’re not hensblooding me, because that,” he pointed to Torrent, “is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. But could someone explain what’s going on?”

“There’s no such thing as monsters,” Diogenes said.

Kathor said, “I don’t think he’s lying. This forest does feel alive.”

Haddin took a break from coughing to scoff.

“Old man,” Diogenes said, “bring your daughter over here. She said she saw something in the forest before.”

Rivereye started, “I don’t think it’s an actual monster in the woods. I only saw it in-”

But Haddin interrupted. “How dare you order me around? You brought me here against my will, and I’m going back before I have to listen to any more of this nonsense.”

Red and orange flames at the edge of the road turned white hot, and a roaring wind burst across them. In the center of the road, Crystin began to flail, and her eyes rolled back in her head, while from Torrent’s body and those of the Ragesians, fire shot out of their wounds, and they all screamed.

A sound like thunder rumbled through the forest, and everyone cowered as words broke through the thunder and the screams.

“None shall leave. Release me, or burn.”
 
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Chapter Fourteen

“None shall leave. Release me, or burn.”

The voice came from all directions, but within it Rivereye heard a woman’s voice – Crystin’s – and he saw her speaking the words as the fire forest spoke to them.

Diogenes glared at Rivereye and yelled, “What the hell have you done?”

“We’ve got to run,” Rantle shouted.

“No,” Kathor said. “She’s possessed.”

The knight started to move toward Crystin, drawing a sword. Rivereye moved in his way and waved his hands to stop him. The knight hesitated, and Rivereye ran over to Crystin and shook her. She looked down at him, her eyes unfocused.

“Indomitability, right?” Rivereye said. “Crystin, talk to him for me. Tell him we’re going to free him. We just need time. If he harms us we won’t be able to help.”

“Crystin,” Haddin shouted, “say nothing!”

Crystin’s eyes focused on Rivereye, and she spoke quietly in time with the deep roar of the inferno.

“I can harm you as I like. You have my boon, and will not die until I let you. Do not try to trick me. Come to the lake, silence the song, and I shall release you. Attempt to leave, and I shall destroy you.”

The heat faded, the fires dimmed back to a cool red, and the screams of Torrent and the Ragesians ended abruptly. Suddenly the forest was quiet save for the regular crackle of embers, and Haddin’s gasping cough. Crystin sagged, and Kathor came forward to catch her.

Everyone looked around for a moment, uncertain what to do.

Diogenes cleared his throat. “Who wants to bet he was bluffing?”

Rantle laughed once.

“You idiot children!” Haddin said.

He advanced toward Rivereye and his fingers began to twitch the way a spellcaster’s does as he uses magic, but Rantle ran over and shoved the man to the ground.

“I don’t know what the hell you were planning,” Rantle said, “but no one is doing anything until we figure out what’s going on.”

Nearby, off the left side of the road, flames clinging to the trees faded out and nearly died. A dim trail appeared, extending out as far as Rivereye could see, twenty feet wide and free of fire. Meanwhile, gusts of flame burst out from other trees further up and down the main highway, intense enough to burn them even with their protection.

“I, um, think,” Rivereye whimpered, “that we don’t really have a choice.”

“Great,” Diogenes said. “I now feel so validated about fleeing the city. This is much better.”

“Stop it,” Rantle said. “We are going to get out of here, no matter what mad things come at us. I am going that way, and hopefully I’ll figure out what to do before I get to this lake it wants us to find.”

He looked at Rivereye. “Get up on the horse. We’re taking Crystin with us.”

“Leave her alone,” Haddin said.

“Oh go dive off a cliff,” Rantle said. “I didn’t see you trying to protect her when Kathor was going to try to cut out the evil spirits. Anyone else coming?”

Haddin fumed, but Diogenes nodded.

“I’m a little afraid you’re right,” Diogenes said. “But before we go rushing to talk to the monster, maybe we can try something else?”

“What?” Rantle snapped.

“I’m just going to check to see if the ‘monster’ can follow up on his threats.”

Diogenes knelt beside the tied up prisoner and whispered something. The man sat up slowly, blinking his eyes as if he were just waking up.

“Spirits protect me,” the man gasped. “I’m still here.”

“Yes you are,” Diogenes said. “Now pay attention to me.”

The man looked intently at Diogenes, his mind clearly addled.

“If you just answer a few questions for me, I’ll let you go back the way you came, and we’ll go where we’re headed. Alright?”

The soldier nodded happily.

“Alright, first question: why were you after us?”

The soldier looked over at Haddin for a moment, then back to Diogenes.

“Boreus, our commander, was dispatched to bring in the old one. There was another inquisitor sent after the jispin, I think. I’m sorry, sir. I only overheard that the jispin had stolen something they wanted back.”

“Oh yeah,” Diogenes said. Over his shoulder to Rivereye he added, “Remind me to take a look at those when we’re not in mortal peril.

“Anything else?” he asked the prisoner.

The man shook his head. “Not much, sir. I didn’t know there’d be this many of you, though I think you’re a mage since you put a spell on me, and we’re supposed to take mage’s prisoner. Oh spirits, please, don’t send me back. The inquisitors will execute me if they discover I’ve been tainted by your sorcery!”

“Calm down,” Diogenes said. “I’m a very skilled mage, and they’ll never realize I did anything to you. Next question: do you know about any monsters or strange creatures in this forest?”

The man shook his head, his expression still fearful. “I’m sorry sir. I haven’t heard anything.”

Diogenes looked back at the rest of them.

“Any other questions?”

Rivereye shook his head. Rantle sneered and looked away. Diogenes fumbled for a few seconds, but managed to untie the prisoner. Then he picked up some ash and sprinkled it over the man’s head.

“There you are,” Diogenes said. “I’ve cast a spell on you to protect you from even the hottest flames. Now quickly, before the spell wears off, run. Run back to your glorious conquering army, and don’t tell anyone you saw us, or they’ll kill you.”

The man stood up warily, and backed his way through the group to the road. Once he was clear, he turned and ran up the road toward Gate Pass. He had only managed to get about twenty feet away when he reached the bursting sprays of flame crossing the road. He cried out, but kept running for a few more strides before he began to scream, his clothing, then hair, then even skin catching on fire. Less than fifty feet away, he collapsed to the ground, smoldering.

Rivereye cringed, but Rantle said quietly, “Don’t look away. These murderers had it coming.”

Diogenes stood, took out a cigarette, and lit it with a wand.

“Alright,” he said. “I don’t think he’s bluffing. Let’s get moving before the bastard gets impatient with us.”



* * *​



Rivereye rode in the middle of the group. Crystin sat mutely behind him. The rest of the group had not yet noticed her odd behavior now that her father was conscious, but Rivereye wasn’t sure the old man wouldn’t kill him if he spoke up, so he said nothing.

Kathor led the group on foot, Torrent’s eerily alive body lain across his warhorse’s saddle. Haddin hobbled along next, saying nothing and coughing often. Rivereye and Crystin rode behind him, while Diogenes and Rantle brought up the rear, quietly discussing what to do. Rivereye just listened.

Rantle said, “We’ve got a few dozen refugee Innies in Gate Pass – Innenotdarasne people who fled when this place caught fire. I heard rumors the Ragesians were responsible, but I never heard anything about a fire monster.”

“It’s been forty years,” Diogenes said. “This ‘Indomitability’ entity could have come since then, though my suspicion is that it is what has been keeping the forest burning.”

“So if we let it go like it wants,” Rantle said, “what happens to the forest?”

“Take a guess.”

Rantle frowned. “So what does that mean for Torrent?”

“She’s as good as dead right now anyway. I don’t suppose you brought along the other woman’s pack – Sorra, wasn’t it?”

Rantle stiffly said, “No.”

“Then we may as well write off our guide from Seaquen. I don’t think she’s going to get better on her own. Let’s focus on those of us who might still have a chance to live and complain about this later.”

“Alright.” Rantle sighed. “Well, first thing, the ‘monster’ apparently got into Rivereye’s head.”

“That’s the jispin?” Diogenes said.

Rivereye looked back and glared at them.

“Rivereye Badgerface,” he said. “I killed an inquisitor. I think I deserve to be called by my real name.”

“Sure,” Diogenes chuckled. “Diogenes Filosi, while we’re at it.”

Rantle said, “So we know what to put on your tombstone?”

“Pardon me for being polite for once. Did you have a point, Rantle. . . ?”

“Just Rantle,” he said. “My parents died before I was old enough to remember. Anyway, my point was that this creature got into his head, and the inquisitor was controlling me, which I didn’t particularly like. So you need to tell us how to make that not happen again.”

Diogenes smiled. “Heh. This lake had better be far away, because this could take a while.”

For the next half hour Diogenes explained techniques for recognizing and combating magic of mental influence, and Rivereye wondered if Crystin was listening, or if she could even hear it.

They established a warning word – “roadway” – so that if one of them thought another was being compelled, he could say the word, and hopefully give the ensorcelled one enough of a jolt to shake free. Once, when they were resting after making it over a rough rocky hill, Diogenes practiced by charming both of them, and eventually each of them figured out how to wriggle free of his control. Kathor declined to participate, and when Diogenes surreptitiously cast at him, the knight proved his familiarity with resisting such magic when he walked over and put Diogenes in a head-lock for using sorcery against him without his permission.

The fire and smoke made the sky an impenetrable haze of orange-brown ash, and hours might have passed for as much as they could tell. They ate what little food they had, drank swigs of elixir when their first dose from the morning began to wear off, and occasionally checked on Torrent, though they could do nothing for her. Mostly only Rantle and Diogenes talked, though Rivereye was beginning to feel more comfortable around them, and he occasionally joined in. He and Rantle shared funny stories from their lives, while Diogenes mocked them in harmless humor, each of them trying to keep their spirits up as they traveled down the seemingly endless corridor Indomitability had created for them through the flames.

From time to time they spotted burning animals sprinting through the woods, panicked and squealing, as they must have been for the forty years since the forest had caught flame.

Soon thereafter, Kathor spotted stone buildings just off the side of the path, a common Innenotdarasne stonewood style house, where rocks were carved so they seemed to grow out of the ground like a living thing. Stone beams like tree trunks supported an upper level wider than the ground floor. Though the stone was burnt and cracked from heat, it looked sturdy enough to work as shelter, and the brush leading to it from the road was light enough that they would be able to reach the place without being burnt.

Kathor and Rantle went off to make sure it was safe, and were gone for a long time. When they returned, Rantle’s face was pale from whatever he had seen.

“There’s a village,” Rantle said. “It looks like the wooden buildings all burned away, but there are a few stone ones which should be safe enough.”

“Everything alright?” Diogenes asked.

Rantle struggled to speak for a moment, and it was Kathor who answered.

“It is now.”

When they reached the stone building, Rivereye made himself ignore the bare human footprints in the ashes, and the drag marks that led out to a nearby dry riverbed.

There was not much that could be done to make themselves more comfortable, and though Rivereye suspected some valuables might have survived the flames and be hidden in the village, he had no interest in going to look. They set up watches, and soon Diogenes, Haddin, Crystin, and Kathor were sleeping, while Torrent lay, still unconscious but her lips moving in the occasional inaudible murmur.

Rivereye and Rantle stayed up for the first watch, and they did not talk for a long time. Rantle hummed tunes, just loud enough for Rivereye to hear them and relax slightly. Most were the classic sort of sad but hopeful tunes Gate Pass was known for, though Rivereye had not heard many before. Songs of the imperial court were cheerier, but he did not really want to ever hear them again.

Eventually, Rantle began to yawn, and soon he said, “I need to wake Kathor. You should get some sleep too.”

Rivereye nodded, then said, “Rantle, what happened to Sorra this morning?”

Rantle looked at Rivereye, making him feel guilty for asking. A moment passed.

“She came back for me,” Rantle said. “One of the archers shot her. When she died, she was looking back at Gate Pass. Do you want to know anything else?”

“No,” Rivereye said. “Her last name was Menash, you know. She told me after the bounty hunters got us. I guess I felt like I owed it to her to know how she died.”

“I owe her a lot,” Rantle said. “And I’m going to make sure I repay that debt. We’re going to make it to Seaquen, Rivereye, all of us.”

Rantle went, and got Kathor, and then went to sleep, but Rivereye stayed up for a bit longer, looking out into the forest and trying to guess which way was home. When he went to sleep, he dreamed of Crystin trapped beneath the ice of a frozen lake, trying to call out to him.



* * *​



Rantle awoke. He did not feel refreshed from rest, or any stronger after the weariness of yesterday’s travel, but he no longer felt sleepy, and that was all he figured he would get in this forest.

Each of them drank another dose of the elixir, and then they returned to the trail Indomitability had left, and after a few hours of travel the path faded away as the forest thinned. The ground sloped downward sharply, the dull glow of an ashen lake peeked through the trees from the distance, and faintly the sounds of a choir singing floated above the weight of the inferno’s roar, drawing them to their destination.

At Diogenes’s urging, Rantle crept ahead with Kathor, heading for a hill that would shield them from view, while letting them spy on whatever awaited them.

The song floated eerily above the roar of the forest fire, and though he could not understand the words, he grasped its meaning clearly. Its strangely familiar rhythm brimmed with loss and longing and a memory of beauty which its singers would not abandon, no matter how thickly death surrounded them.

Though he was sure it was just the shimmer of the fire’s heat, the trees appeared to dance with the song's rhythm. When the music swelled, the flames dimmed, but always an oppressive weariness would creep into the singer's voices, and again ash and cinders would howl on the wind.

He kept low as he crawled to a hill which overlooked the lake, and he struggled to discern the different singers by their voices and their roles in the song. A core group of at least four, three men and a woman, held the song steady, though other singers occasionally joined from scattered directions around the shore. Two of the men would sing a repeating chorus, while the third man’s deeper voice rose above them in counterpoint, wavering between pride and fear, before finally dropping to a sorrowful drone.

But then, through the despair would rise the woman’s voice, haunting and inspiring, calling out and uplifting the other singers.

The song went through two verses as Rantle snuck forward, and would continue through several more as he and Kathor observed, but as far as he could tell it never repeated fully. Every time he heard the woman’s piercing voice, he could not help but feel weak at the beauty of it.

They reached a safe hiding spot, and Kathor whispered to him.

“If they spot us, you run back to warn the others. I’ll try to keep their attention so they don’t follow you.”

“Let’s not assume they’re hostile,” Rantle whispered back.

“Let’s not be naïve,” Kathor said. “Come on, and keep your head down.”

They crawled on all fours through elbow-deep ash to the lip of the hill. Beyond and below, the shore was cracked from heat, with hundreds of feet of dry, empty ground that had once been lakebed stretching out to the still, ash-coated waters of the lake. Far in the distance to the right, a river fed into the lake. Beside it, the people of the lake had erected a barricade of felled trees, still burning, ten feet high and hundreds of feet long. Another barricade blocked the coast to the left, and in the crescent-shaped area between them a scattered gathering of people walked and sang, oblivious to Rantle and Kathor’s presence.

The people were clearly alive and had not been caught in the flames of the forest, but they looked like no men Rantle had ever seen. Each stood around five feet tall, dressed only in tatters of rags to protect their hands, feet, knees, and groin, the rest of their emaciated bodies exposed to the heat of the fires. Wings hung from their backs, but these were withered, like those of a dragonfly held too close to an open flame. The color of their skin and hair was just slightly darker than the pale ash that coated the rest of the forest, though here on the shore the ground was bare, and Rantle could see these fairy-like beings brushing the dry lakebed with old brooms, keeping it free of ash.

In the center of the shore they had erected a platform that rose ten feet off the ground, creating a stage from which the four main singers carried on with their vigil choir.

Caves dotted the steep hills that surrounded the lake, and a pile of debris that looked like it might have been dredged from the lake decorated each cave’s entrance. Most of the people of this small village huddled in the caves, and only a dozen roamed outside, singing and tending to a small, desperate garden of plants that had escaped the forest fire. There couldn’t have been more than forty people in total.

Those still working and singing on the platform kept their eyes cast to the ground. Those in the caves sat with eyes closed, as if they were preparing for death.

Rantle saw only one person looking out at the world, a woman who watched the rest of her village with an excited expression as she gathered supplies in a cave and tucked them into a shoulder bag.

Rantle cocked his head toward Kathor and whispered, “We’re supposed to ‘silence the song?’ I don’t really know what that’s supposed to do, but it looks like the people down there, all they have is that song.”

“There are no children,” Kathor replied. “And that garden would never support so many. There’s magic here. We should go back and talk to Diogenes.”

“We should talk to them. They need our help more than this monster that’s trying to make us his puppets.”

Kathor continued to watch the village for nearly a minute without saying anything.

Then he said, “I know how you almost ran off to help the jispin when the inquisitor attacked him. It would have ruined our plans and probably gotten you killed. This time, we don’t rush into things.”

The woman with the shoulder bag left her cave, and Rantle thought he saw a hint of a smile on her mouth as she joined the song. She was looking up, and she was only a few words into the song when she stopped and stared straight up at Rantle.

Kathor ducked to hide, but Rantle met her eyes. He shook off Kathor’s grip when the man tried to pull him down, and instead he stood up and let the woman see him plainly. Neither of them moved for a moment, until finally Rantle found his voice and began to sing.

He did his best to match the tune of their song without using any words, and his voice was much stronger than any of the villagers. There was some gasping, and for a second everyone but the four singers atop the stage faltered. Rantle held out his arms to show he wasn’t holding any weapons, and slowly he began to walk down the rough slope to the village. Behind him, he heard Kathor crawl for a moment, then start running back in the direction of the others.

By the time Rantle reached where the burning brush turned to severed tree stumps and finally the cracked lakebed, it seemed like the entire village had come out of their caves to see him. The woman who had first spotted him was speaking to the others in her language, waving gently for them to keep their distance. The singers on the stage continued their song, but the rest of the three dozen nearly skeletal fairies all murmured fearfully.

When Rantle finished a chorus of the song, he lowered his arms and stopped singing.

“Um,” he started, “I don’t suppose anyone here speaks Seren?”
 

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