Sacred Fire

by Chris Pierson

  Beldinas studied the scholar a moment longer, then nodded.

  “Very well, then, Varen. Speak, and let none interrupt until you are finished.”

  The courtiers leaned forward, imperceptibly. The scholar licked his lips, the look on his face saying he wanted nothing more than for the floor to split open and swallow him up. It took Varen several tries to find his voice.

  “It happened six months ago, at midsummer,” he began.

  *****

  No one spoke for several minutes after Varen ended his tale. In the silence, the Hall seemed to roar with every quiet cough, every rustle of robes. Many of the elder courtiers’ mouths had dropped open, while the younger ones looked confused. Tithian stared at Varen with wide eyes. Tears coursed down Lady Wentha’s cheeks.

  It was impossible to tell what the Kingpriest was thinking or feeling. The holy light obscured him, hid any sign that what the scholar had just told troubled him. He looked down from his throne, one hand stroking his chin. Rath MarSevrin glowered around the room. “Someone say something,” he muttered.

  That drew scandalized looks from the courtiers. Quarath stepped forward, a dark line appearing between his brows. “Be still, boy,” he declared. “That is not how to speak in the Lightbringer’s presence.”

  “He speaks his mind, and mine,” Lady Wentha snapped. Her voice was cold, but as she turned from the elf to the throne, it became something else: small, pleading, like a child’s. “Holiness, I beg you. I cannot bear this stillness.”

  But Beldinas still didn’t answer. Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet. All around the Hall, men and women dropped to their knees. Only Lady Wentha remained standing, staring at him with pain-filled eyes as he signed the triangle over the congregation.

  “I must think on this,” he said, the music of his voice muted. “Come to the manse at dusk, Lady—and you as well, Varen. We will sup together, and you will tell me all you know.”

  With that he withdrew, down the steps of the dais and back the way he’d come. An acolyte opened the door for him, and he was gone. The courtiers watched him leave, still stunned. Then, the moment the door clicked shut again, they exploded—shouting, arguing, every one of them jostling to get near the Weeping Lady, and the scholar who had located Cathan Twice-Born.

  Over the years, Lord Cathan MarSevrin had become a figure of myth, a legend like Huma Dragonbane. Once, he had been Beldinas’s right-hand compatriot, having sworn himself to be the Lightbringer’s protector after Wentha’s miraculous healing. He’d been at the Kingpriest’s side when he made his triumphant entry into the Lordcity, and had saved his life in this very Hall when Kurnos the Deceiver tried to kill him with a magic-poisoned dagger. Instead, Cathan had taken the blade himself, and it had killed him.

  But though Cathan had indeed died, right on the blue mosaic before the throne, Beldinas had still saved him. Crying out to the gods—not just entreating them, but commanding—he had worked a wonder that had never happened before, or since. Armed with righteous fury born of grief, the Lightbringer had poured all his power into Cathan and restored his life, making him the Twice-Born.

  After his resurrection, Cathan became the greatest hero of the empire. He was the first knight of the Divine Hammer, dubbed by the Kingpriest himself, and helped lead Beldinas’s war against evil. Countless monsters, dark cultists, and black-robed wizards had fallen to him and the sacred order, and in time he became Grand Master of the Hammer. But then something had gone wrong.

  It happened during the war against sorcery. At the dawn of that crusade, a surprise attack by demons summoned by a vengeful wizard had led to the slaughter of many knights—and a later assault upon the Kingpriest himself caused many more deaths. In the end, the Twice-Born had led a small army to Losarcum, to assail the Tower of High Sorcery there. But the wizards had had the final say, destroying both the Tower and the city around it to keep its secrets out of the church’s hands. Cathan’s entire force had perished in that final stroke—all save Cathan himself, and Tithian, once his squire. Together they had returned to Istar, and Cathan—ashamed and angry at what had happened to his soldiers—had torn off his Grand Marshal’s tabard, walked out of the Temple, and disappeared.

  Until now.

  Tithian moved quickly, getting himself between Lady Wentha and the gabbling masses of courtiers. Everyone wanted to know more—where was this cave of people trapped in glass? Why was the Twice-Born there? Why had he stayed out of sight for so long? Tithian gestured to Rath and Tancred, who helped him form a protective ring around their mother and Varen, and together, they made their way away from the chaos of the Hall of Audience.

  *****

  Ordinarily, a large part of the court attended the evening banquets in the imperial manse’s great dining hall: the hierarchs of the great churches of light, dignitaries from the realms of Solamnia and Kharolis, who followed the Istaran faith, the few nobles who were fortunate enough to have earned a place, and a regular contingent of high-ranking knights. On this day, however, as the sun gilded the city’s rooftops, the company was only seven: Beldinas, Quarath, Lady Wentha and her sons, Tithian, and—sitting in the chair of honor at the Kingpriest’s right hand and looking like he would rather be at the bottom of the Courrain Ocean—the scholar Varen. The scholar ate sparingly, his face coloring every time the Lightbringer glanced his way. His silence drew little note, however; the court followed the Taoli tradition that it was ill-mannered to speak of grave matters during a meal. Course after course was brought of fine, rich fare: fresh shellfish spa drenched in butter and the juices of Maeloon blood-limes; black-veined cheese dusted with ground vallenwood nuts; small pastries called Arathi from Midrath, crammed with minced pheasant and forty different spices.

  Finally, as the servants were clearing away the main dish—a roasted haunch of gorgon, infused with black pepper and mead—Varen spoke up.

  “There really is little more to tell, Aulforo,” he ventured, bobbing his head toward Beldinas. “I fled the Tears at all speed. Thank Paladine the Dravinishmen were still close, or I would not have survived. As it was, by the time I reached Attrika I was half-dead of heat poisoning. I had to rest for a month in a Mishakite hospice before I could travel again”

  “And yet you did not come here,” Quarath noted tersely. “I should think that, bearing such tidings, the Temple would be the first place you stopped.” The scholar looked down, biting his lip as the servants poured moragnac brandy around the table. He downed his drink in a swallow, then shook his head. “I went to Lattakay first. It was closer, and I had little gold for passage, without my fortune. And … I had heard Lord Cathan had kin there.”

  He glanced at Wentha, who smiled sadly. Beside her, Tancred and Rath exchanged grim glances.

  “And you are sure?” Beldinas asked. “You can vouch it was him?”

  “Only the Twice-Born has those eyes, Holiness.”

  Sitting across from Varen, Tithian nodded agreement. The act of resurrection had left Cathan that way, as a mark of providence. His eyes were pupil-less and white—like a blind man’s, though Cathan could see. Few could meet his eerie gaze without having to turn away. Tithian himself hadn’t been able to do it. If the man seen by the scholar had those eyes…

  Quarath scowled, and Wentha noticed it. “I know your suspicions, Emissary,” she said mildly. “I felt them as well. There have been enough stories of my brother, from every part of the empire and beyond—all of them false. I even sent scouts to the Tears myself once, but to no good. I gave up on finding him years ago. I was sure he had to be dead.”

  “So were we,” the Kingpriest agreed, his voice turning sorrowful. “But if this is true … .”

  “It is,” said Rath.

  “Show him,” Tancred told Varen.

  All around the table, eyebrows rose. The acolytes were serving stone bowls of fruited ice with sprigs of kender-mint, but no one paid the dessert any mind. They watched the scholar, who reached into a pouch and brought out a small, oblong box made of grayleaf
wood. He started to push it toward the Kingpriest, but Tithian stopped him with a firm hand.

  “Open it yourself,” the knight said.

  Flushing, Varen pulled back the box, released a catch, and slid back the lid. From inside, he pulled out a small, dark shard of glass. Gripping it between two fingers, he held it up to the light. Tawny rose fire blazed within. Despite years of courtly etiquette, Lord Tithian gave a low whistle as Varen set the fragment on the table.

  “Losarcine amber,” the scholar said. “I took it, if you’ll recall, just before I fled. I was half a mile from the cave before I even realized I had it.”

  Everyone stared at the shard, glittering in the dying daylight lancing through the manse’s windows. Quarath sipped his moragnac, watching with an inscrutable expression. Wentha and her sons seemed to silently defy anyone to doubt the truth of Varen’s tale. Varen now stared at his hands in his lap. Tithian, meanwhile, bent forward to pick up the glass shard. He turned it in his grasp, watching the honeyed light play within. He’d been at Losarcum, seen vast palaces melted into stuff like this when the Tower erupted. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people trapped in it.

  And Cathan was there, too.

  “Let me see it,” said Beldinas.

  Nodding, Tithian passed the shard down the table—to Tancred, then Quarath, and finally to the Kingpriest. The glass shone like a golden star as Beldinas’s light poured into it. He gazed into its depths, his thoughts unreadable. Everyone else watched him, trying to read them anyway. Finally he clenched his fist around the shard and turned back to Varen.

  “This cave,” he said. “Can you find it again?”

  Chapter 3

  FIRSTMONTH, 962 I.A.

  He hadn’t had the dream in years.

  It had first come to him a lifetime ago, during his vigil the night before the Lightbringer made him a knight. He’d been kneeling before the moonstone obelisks in the Great Temple’s Garden of Martyrs—and it had struck him as a vision, brought on by a fat monk named Brother Jendle. He had never seen the monk before that night, nor had he seen him since. He was no longer sure the man had even been real, rather than a figment of his sleep-deprived mind.

  That one dream had changed the world. When he began his vigil, it had been in preparation to join the Knights of Solamnia, the ancient and honor-bound brotherhood that had served Istar since before the first Kingpriest’s crowning. When he told Beldinas of what he’d seen, however, the plans had changed. Rather than a Solamnic order, he had joined a new knighthood entirely. In the years since, the Divine Hammer had grown strong, ridding the holy empire of evil. He himself had risen to Grand Marshal, the highest post of all…

  And then Cathan MarSevrin had fallen from grace.

  It was because of, of all things, a woman. Leciane do Cirica had come to the Kingpriest’s court as envoy from the Orders of High Sorcery. She had worn the Red Robes, not the expected White, demonstrating that she followed the path of neutrality rather than good. That caused a scandal in the Temple, but Beldinas had welcomed her, and assigned Cathan to watch her. That was Cathan’s undoing.

  Cathan still wasn’t sure if what he’d felt for Leciane had been love; perhaps, if times had been simpler, that might have been clear. When the treacherous Black Robes struck out against the throne, however, slaughtering his men, nearly murdering the Lightbringer as the empire tumbled toward war with the wizards, Cathan’s closeness to Leciane had cast doubt on his loyalties. As a last chance of regaining his standing with Beldinas, he had ridden south at the head of a force to strike at the sorcerers’ Tower at Losarcum.

  And she had been there too—whether by design or chance, he didn’t know. But the morning he was to attack, Leciane had found him. She had told him of the wizards’ plans to destroy the Tower—they had already done so in Daltigoth, rather than yielding their secrets to the unschooled, and they would do it again. But the warning came too late; the attack could not be stopped, and the doom she’d spoken of came to pass.

  Moments before the Tower destroyed itself and all of Losarcum, Leciane had cast a spell to spirit the two of them to safety, along with Tithian. But she was badly wounded, and did not survive. Maddened by grief, both for her and for the city that had died, he had returned to Istar and renounced the Lightbringer and the knighthood. It was a hard thing, among the hardest he’d ever done, but the dream, which had troubled him throughout his tenure in the Divine Hammer, had not come to him since. In fact, he hadn’t dreamed at all since that day.

  Now it was happening again.

  He recognized it at once, though it had been so long. There was no mistaking the feeling that came with it, the dreadful anticipation. It began where he slept, in the utterly lightless cave that had become his home. He felt himself hovering, and despite the dark he could sense his own body lying asleep beneath him. He hovered for a time, wondering at himself: gods, he’d grown so old. He was only in his fifties—the passing of years had been hard to track, so he no longer knew his true age—but the physical form below seemed at least twenty years older. Life in exile had been cruel.

  Cathan remembered what would happen next in the dream, but the suddenness of it still took him by surprise. One moment he was still, floating maybe a dozen feet off the ground; the next he was rising, falling upward toward the cave’s ceiling. There was no sense of acceleration, no rush of air: it was as though someone had pulled the ground away from him. When he struck the ceiling—or it struck him—there was no impact, no pain. He simply slid through it, like the ghost men said he was.

  There was even deeper darkness, for a time, as he passed through solid stone—then he was out in the night, staring at a fissure-ridden jumble of rock and glass that glinted in the light of the red and silver moons. Once, the rubble had been the hollowed-out mesa where Losarcum stood; now it was a mad broken heap, the empire’s largest tomb. The Tears of Mishakal stretched out around it, rocky and barren, threaded with baffling, meandering canyons.

  Now he found himself hundreds of feet up in the air.

  Now thousands, and there was the Sea of Shifting Sands, its dunes rippling with shadow all around the Tears. There, picked out in sprays of lamplight, were Dravinaar’s surviving cities: Yandol, with its vast, seven-walled bazaar; spike-turreted Attrika, impregnable atop a pinnacle of sandstone; Micah, the City of Glass, its great furnaces white-hot even in the middle of night.

  Still he rose higher, and the rest of the empire came into view. In the west, the sight of hilly Taol brought back faint memories of his youth, and his early days in the Lightbringer’s service. In the east, misty Seldjuk evoked darker thoughts, of Lattakay where slaughter had first visited his brother knights. To the north, the golden fields of Gather and the dark jungles of Falthana stretched out to kiss the blue of the ocean. And in the middle, glittering like a fallen star, was the place he had sworn never to look upon again.

  The Great Temple winked at him, a jewel set amid the golden domes of the Lordcity. A deep yearning opened within him as he stared at the basilica. He wanted to reach out, seize it, pluck it in his fingers. But he had no fingers to touch with, and could only watch the Great Temple recede as he climbed higher still, through the clouds and into the sky. The other kingdoms stretched out around Istar now—Solamnia, Kharolis, Ergoth. The forests of the elves, the dwarven mountain-halls, the frozen isles of Icereach … all fell away from him. Krynn itself began to shrink, becoming a turquoise orb amid the velvet black of night.

  Then he was turning, as he had so many times before, so long ago. Slowly, he rotated away from the world, looking out toward the star-scattered sky, diamonds and sapphires and rubies beyond counting. The moons were there: Solinari, glowing silver to his left, three-quarters full, and Lunitari low above, gnawed down to a scarlet sliver. The third moon was out there, too, he knew: black Nuitari, visible only to those who walked in darkness. He had beheld it once before, in this very dream, and now he spied it as an empty hole in the void. He shivered at the sight of it—and also in anticipat
ion. There was worse to come.

  He didn’t have to wait long; he never had. Soon he spied something moving among the stars—not the slow-gliding specks of the planets, but something fast, glowing orange as it moved soundlessly toward him. Bit by bit, it revealed itself to him: a huge chunk of stone, shaped like a hammer and wreathed with flame that trailed behind it. This was the Divine Hammer, after which the Kingpriest had named his knighthood. He had described it as a sign from Paladine that holy wrath must be visited upon the world’s evils.

  In his youth, Cathan had believed it. Now, the old man was no longer sure.

  Helpless, he watched it approach, flashing across the sky with a soundless roar. It went right past, the flames licking at him as it passed, but he felt nothing; he had no flesh to singe. He turned to follow as it spun toward Krynn, diving down, down toward it, as it always had before.

  Toward Istar, the Lordcity, the Temple.

  Cathan screamed …

  *****

  … and then he woke, shaking, back in the darkness, the echoes of a sound like ten thousand thunderclaps ringing in his ears.

  For a lurching moment, he had no idea where he was. Flashes of the dream, of the places he’d had it before—Istar, and Lattakay, and nameless spots where he’d camped with his fellow knights—muddled his wits. Past mingled with present, and he had to concentrate to figure out which was which.

  Losarcum. Of course.

  Sitting up, Cathan kicked off his blankets and winced at the deep ache in his leg. The sell-sword had done that, the first real wound he’d had in more years than he could count. Sloppy … he’d fought better warriors and emerged without a scratch. He’d done what he could for the injury, but he was no Mishakite, and knew only what healing arts were necessary for the field. He’d cleaned the wound with wine, then—a strap of leather clamped between his teeth—seared it with a fire-heated dagger. The pain had been incredible, but it had done the job: the bleeding stopped, and with care he’d kept it from fouling. Even so, the ache lingered, and would make protecting this place all the harder.