Mykel saw none of it. Enshou. Ice formed in the pit of his stomach. On the stage, the mage made broad gestures and sweeps, and the fire responded in kind, fanning and swirling. The Fire became larger and larger, spinning into a circle, one becoming two, two becoming three, until there was six flames the size of a man’s head being juggled. And as if that weren’t enough the faux-wizard pulled a cord of Fire from his throat between each pass.
“Ha!” Raptor clapped when the fake mystic fumbled with the rope and “pretended” to choke. There was even some Fire spurting from his nose. “Now’s that’s an act! I’ve got to learn how to do that!”
Mykel didn’t listen. The faux-enshou...he clawed his throat as though ready to rend it bloody, and the flames were all but brushing the roof. The roof. Not above the stage; above the common room. “Get out of here. Now!” He jumped up and gawked at the others. “Come on! Move! The roof’s going to burn!”
“How do you—” Sylver asked and stopped when Stromgald rose.
“Move. Now.”
One passerby happened to glance upward the instant the errant fireball exploded against the timber. A cacophony of shirks twisted the air with the crackling roar of fire. Timber broke and lit aflame in the same instant, almost groaning when they struck the floor. Almost instantly the heat began to sear.
Mykel felt time slow down. Hands grabbed him from everywhere, hoisting him as if he were a feather, pulling, scrambling back from the hungry fire. Flaming timber crashed everywhere; some not inches from where he lay. Some crashed upon the people thrashing about as crazed ants would, crushing all those underfoot. Their last cries were roasted in human flesh bubbling. The air was choking with them.
Suddenly they were outside. The air tasted sweeter. He hadn’t even known the smoke till the array of sky and tree and stone stabbed his eyes, all the brighter against the thick iron of the smoke. And still the inn burned like the very mouth of hell.
“You okay, kid?” Raptor and Sylver pulled him to his feet. They looked no worse for wear, save for the mosaic of smoke-stains pressed against their flesh. Other than that, and the smoke-stench that hung over them in a mantle, one would not think they nearly died in a fire.
“Y-yeah.” There was a crowd filling the square in a thick ring, heads darting and bobbing with curiosity, and in the center de Varin was on his knees, bawling like a baby. “Is everyone all right?”
“Is everyone alive, you mean?” Sylver, trying and failing to brush soot from her head, cocked her head to the side in a sort of shrug. “You saw the fire. It was right above the stage. There wasn’t much of a chance to begin with.”
“Lucky you saw it in time.” Raptor brushed soot from his sleeve, and then frowned when the ash smeared across the fabric. “Else we’d have bought it, too.”
“What I want to know is how you knew.” Orson leaned against a fruit stand, gnawing on a piece of orange that he obviously did not pay for, if the grimace on the fruit seller’s face was any clue. “Maybe he had something to do with it.”
“Come off it now, Orson.” Sylver folded arms beneath bosom and gave the swordsman the stare women were famous for. “It was chance.”
“Chance, hell. You heard him talking that drivel. De Varin’s roof being set on fire and all that. By a Weirwynd, of all things! Not three breaths after some punk comes up on stage, chokes on his bloody magic and burns the inn down!?” He snorted; it looked like a vulture choking. “One coincidence I’ll buy if the coin’s right. Two...” His hands came up as if to scrub his hair and a pair of flicklocks suddenly appeared in his hands. “I think he’s got something to do with it.”
Mykel laughed, waiting for the others to follow. It never did. “Um...wait a minute here. Just wait a minute.” Sylver looked at him as though seeking a hobbled knee in a horse, and even Raptor was giving him a second eye. “How could I be a part of this?” Never mind that the event was supposed to have happened ten years ago. “I’m no street mage. I’m just a librarian.” Orson grunted at that. The three pairs of eyes bore into him even deeper, if that was possible. “I don’t even know how to ride a horse!” Something thudded his shoulders and he glanced up to see Stromgald’s haggled face glaring with disinterest. “I didn’t do it,” he whispered.
“Yeah right,” Orson spit. “Let go take him to the Vicars and see if he sings another tune.” He stopped when Stromgald raised a hand. “What? You actually believe this wimp?”
“Yes.” He glanced over to the inn, flames still leaping from the crumpling wood, crackling and devouring one another, spearheads of fire so large their heat still threw off in massive pulses, cindering the silk on flesh. The local militia was just beginning to form a train of water buckets. “Without him we wouldn’t have survived. We owe him a debt.” The others nodded in agreement. Orson slumped his shoulders more in defeat than in agreement. He did put the weapons away, though.
Mykel barely heard any of it. Four rangers died that night, de Varin whispered. And Lazarus’ words on the road, a lifetime ago. John Stromgald. John Jekai, rather. Heard he led a ranger team before going to the Vicars.
Impossible. Then again...“Lazarus!”
“Lazarus?” Sylver echoed, and Raptor said, “The rich guy with the wolves?”
“Yeah. I uh...I’m his apprentice.” Strange how hollow the truth sounded. “I’m supposed to head back there by nightfall.”
“Nightfall?” Raptor laughed. “Ain’t anybody going out of here, kid. The roads are too icy to navigate now.”
In a land where it’s supposed to be the middle of fall. “The guards said as much. But I need...I need to get back there. I was wondering if you could...guide me over there. To Wyndei Darteria. You know, since the roads are so dangerous.”
“How much you paying?” Orson asked.
“Well, I...I don’t exactly have money...”
“Oh, that’s it!” Orson threw up his hands. “I can understand mistaking someone for someone else. I can understand an inn setting on fire. I can even understand doting on some idiot! But this...” He visibly shook in rage. “Doing something for free! Gah! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to find another bed. I need some sleep.”
The rest followed Orson, and with them Mykel’s chances of getting to the road anytime soon; he doubted the guards would let him out after that first meeting. “Wait!” Raptor shrugged, and Sylver paused to trace a line along his chin, as if to burn his face into her touch. They went all the same. He clutched at Stromgald’s sleeve and tried to hold him back. He had as much chance as an ant holding back a bear—and looked like one, too. “Wait! You’ve got to help me!” Oh, good one genius. They’re rangers. What are they going to do for you? “You said you owed me.”
Stromgald stopped, and although they were ahead of him the rest paused. Mykel hurried on, since he had the bit in their teeth. “You said you owed me,” he said in between pants. Gods damn it, Stromgald was strong. Panting like a little girl! “Owed me your lives. I heard you. You must help me. You have to.” Panting, and whining! To a dead man, no less! “Please!” A simpering little girl.
Good thing it worked. Mykel beamed when Stromgald nodded.
“Now wait a minute!” Orson stormed over to Stromgald and stood almost toe-to-toe with him. “Are you out of your mind, Stromgald? We were ordered to stay here until headquarters gives us our next assignment.”
“Who says we came here today?” Raptor said jovially. “Maybe the guards were a little tipsy this morning.”
“Shut up, Raptor. And stop glaring at me, woman. You know I speak the right of this.” Sylver did not stop glaring, in fact her dark brown eyes seemed to drill even harder, but Orson ignored it. “Doing a job that doesn’t pay is not what I signed on for, Stromgald.”
Ag
ain, Stromgald glanced over to the inn. “You have somewhere else to be?” The ranger captain stared the other down, dark sullen eyes cold with detachment. For a moment, their gazes locked smoothly, brown against blue. Still, silent eyes, sentinels of power just waiting to be unleashed.
Finally, Orson relented. “Good,” said Stromgald. “Raptor, where is the nearest inn?”
“Uh...the Dancing Maid, Boss. Down that way.”
“Good. Let’s get going.”
“Huh?” Mykel dogged after their steps. “Wait a minute. I thought we were going to the manor.”
“We are,” Sylver said with more than a hint of anguish. “Tomorrow. Only a fool would try to go out at night in this weather. It’s suicide.”
“But I –”
“But nothing. You want to go with us, you go on our terms. You don’t, you can walk to the manor. Without us.” Her eyes shone hints of the road’s dangers he wouldn’t overcome without them.
“Okay, okay.” There wasn’t any real reason to go now, not really. On the other hand, this place seemed less and less like the home he remembered. The walls and squares, the inns and laughing children all wore a cloak of alien life that made his skin squirm. Even the shadows seemed alive today. “Well, let’s go on.”
Murmured laughter rippled through the group. Mykel could have sworn Stromgald was smiling.
The Dancing Maid was no Red Boar, but it served. A toad of a house, hunched in decaying brick and slate, opened cracked wooden doors to reveal...a common room. Nothing special or spectacular. The tables and chairs were the same oak; the mugs were the same birch. Even the men and maids were the same, playing their games of coin-and-mouse. Mykel felt he had stepped through a mirror.
Almost. The innkeep behind the scratched wooden bar was no de Varin, with withered face and nasal nose, with big round eyes almost hanging from the sockets. They were a dark blue, Mykel noted, almost purple. They darted about like tittering foxes in heat.
“You’d be wanting the second floor, milords.” He smiled, and what Mykel took for a mustache cracked and flaked off thin lips. “Only the best for noblemen.”
“We’re not nobles.” Stromgald flinched as though bitten. “We’ll pay coppers.”
The innkeep’s face caved in. “That will get you the hayloft.”
“Fine.” The ranger spilled a handful of copper falcons upon the bar and led the others towards the stable. Only Mykel caught the leering glare the man shot them. Gods. He had half a mind to start running. Not everything spells doom. The roof-gutting fire flashed in his mind. I think.
Numbly Mykel followed the rangers, though in truth he was more dragging than following. Things were spinning in a frenzy. He was aware of the inn looming before them – the new inn, not the inn gutted by fire, the one he knew just died and still his mind screamed it already happened! – the road thick with horse sweat bending around wooden fences to the barns beyond. Lazarus will know what to do. He always knows what to do.
Awareness of his surroundings did little to improve his mood. The two stable-hands, good stout lads that were nothing like their father, claimed there was no more comfortable place in the inn. Maybe there wasn’t, but to Mykel all the bales of hay, filling the room in half-hazard piles, did not look all that inviting. He opened his mouth to complain – surely, they could get another room – when he saw Orson about to do the same thing. Orson eyed him too, and they both clamped their teeth shut. Maybe it’s not that bad. Orson’s irritation seemed almost warm. Hell, it’s dry.
So it was a complete surprise to find a knot of men in the room where there had been nothing a moment before. The men wore the wolf-headed pelt of a soldier, with the berserker’s gleam in their eyes and an unhealthy twitch of the fingers so close to the swords at their hips. Suddenly the air had gotten thick, and it wasn’t just the horse-sweat.
“You need not fear them,” a musical voice sounded. As if on cue the dark warriors parted down the middle to showcase their master in the moonlight.
It was a woman. Not just any woman. Flame-shaded robes failed to contain the sweetly-curved body. Her eyes smoldered with raw sensuality, and there was the vulpine, confident smile of a seasoned seductress. Even Stromgald was taken aback.
“I apologize for the hour, Sir Stromgald, and the circumstances. I am Aeon, the personal envoy for the Lord Samaritan. I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding. This boy is under our care. We will bring him back to where he belongs. If you would.”
No one was more surprised than Mykel to see Stromgald bar the envoy’s path. “I am sorry, Lady Aeon, but it is you who are mistaken. Mykel is one of my trusted rangers. He is not capable of stirring political interest.”
Aeon’s eyes narrowed to slits. Surprisingly her earlobe-long hair shifted from orange to blue and back again. “This is a dangerous game you play, Stromgald.” The creak of moving leather pulled the eye to the soldiers behind her, their faces hungry for destruction. “I cannot be held accountable for whatever misfortune waits for you.” Smooth as a gazelle Aeon glided from the hayloft alone, the soldiers following as close as her shadow.
“John.” Sylver lorded over him despite the foot-and-a-half difference in their height. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“She would have killed us all to cover the abduction.” As calmly as a discussion of tomorrow’s weather. “We will leave now, unless you want to be murdered in your sleep.” Stromgald gave Mykel a tired glance. “I hope you’re worth all of this.”
The stabled horses were calmer than Mykel had expected, blissfully unaware of the omens about them. “We’re...we’re going to take them? Steal them?”
“We cannot take the mounts that died in the Red Boar.” Stromgald began untying a black roan, smoothing back its mane.
“I...” He paused; the damn ranger was cooing the beast! “I don’t know how to ride a horse!”
“Perfect time to learn.” An apple appeared from nowhere, and the horse munched happily. Stromgald left to untie the rest.
He makes it look easy. Mykel snatched at the reins three times, and each time the horse whinnied and glared him straight in the eye. It was as if the beast knew what he was thinking. He snatched at it again. This time the damn beast nearly took his fingers off! Damn beast. Mykel willed his hand not to shake fastening the bridles and saddles, but shake it did.
“Give over.” Stromgald, finished with his horses, took the reins from Mykel’s hand and fastened them himself, deft and smooth. “They seem to want something very badly.” His one eye lingered at the dead arm.
“I do not know.” When it was clear that Mykel didn’t know, Stromgald turned away and waited.
He isn’t afraid. Mykel wished he had the same courage. I’m not, either. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. The horse glared at him, eyes full of glinting will. Even he knows I’m lying.
The three-returned whisper-quick and quiet, mounting their horses. “Where?” Stromgald asked, and Raptor pointed straight ahead. His hand was rimmed in blood. Mykel clamped his teeth shut lest the bile spill free. He followed the train and the blood followed him, flashing in his head in weak tentacles, flashing at him from the shadows as they trod forth, almost winking. It was enough to curdle even Stromgald’s demeanor. Mykel tasted a small satisfaction. If the ranger captain took to the nausea, then Mykel’s own weakness lessened.
After a time, the gate lumbered into view. “Where you going?” snarled Koden.
“We have business at Wyndei Darteria.” Stromgald said quietly.
Dokon spit, his grizzled face dark beneath his faceguard. “Ain’t allowed. The roads aren’t safe nowadays.”
“I am sure we can make accommodations.” Raptor trudged forward, produced a long-necked bottle from with
in his leathers, gave it to Stromgald and trudged back without a word. Stromgald cradled the bottle as if it were a treasured thing. “Fresh from the vendor. Cold, too. Sure to take off the chill of night duty.” His voice changed to meet the guards’ gazes, whisper-quiet to solemn cold. “It would be a shame if someone forgets it on his way out.”
“Klothos!” Dokon shouted. “Open the door!” At the guardsman’s returning cry his dark eyes fixed on Mykel. “What about him? We’ve seen his like before. He with you?”
Orson tensed as to disagree, but Stromgald simply said, “Yes.”
“If you say so.” The gate doors creaked open slowly. Stromgald got on the black horse, patted its neck. The others followed and slowed as Mykel fought to control the horse. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No.” A horse’s bellow of defiance, the hooves flashing like iron bells falling. No. He shook the memory away. The horse pranced and tossed his head, and he slipped on the saddle three times before managing a decent hold. Finally, he got on, feeling seven kinds of fool. Even Sylver was laughing! Quietly, of course.
“Well well now. I think someone just plum forgot their wine.” Dokon bent to fetch the bottle and downed a swig. Mykel’s breath caught when he saw the gold glitter on the bottle’s neck. Freshly made, Stromgald had said. The cold wind of winter blasted him full in the face. “Sylver, what...what year is this?”
“It’s 2201.” Sylver gave him a look of quiet confusion, and then vanished into the dark of night.
2201. Ten years ago. Impossible. Of course here he was; riding to the house of a dead man in the company of a man he himself had killed not a day past. Ten years in the past. Why not? He had certainly read of stranger things in his novels. Laughing, he booted the horse into the cold.
Sefiros Eishi: Chased By War (The Smoke and Mirrors Saga Book 2) Page 6
