Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy)

by J. S. Morin

  “That would be Sir Hurald Chadreisson, Warlock,” Caladris added sullenly. His normally jovial demeanor was, quite reasonably, dampened by the recent death of his brother.

  “Well, he will not be in charge much longer,” Rashan said. “Your first assignment, Brannis, will be to find where the goblins intend to invade and to drive them back. We will discuss this later and in greater detail. I have not fought a war in far too long, and I will not sit idly by for this one.

  “As for you two …” Rashan gestured to Iridan and Aloisha, still standing roughly in the middle of the chamber. “… we have two seats to fill here. Aloisha, you will take the seat that Stalia Gardarus once occupied. We will have someone from House Gardarus come to fetch her things later today, and you may have her offices as well.”

  Aloisha looked stunned. She had long expected to one day ascend to the Inner Circle, but she had always thought it would be many long summers away.

  “But I am not next in line,” she said. “There are others with seniority who—”

  “And they will continue to wait,” Rashan said. “Seniority is something of an issue for me. It bespeaks laziness and entitlement. Power was always supposed to matter, and competence as well. Sitting comfortably in these throne-like seats in a tower as the Empire shrinks around you, that is what leadership by seniority accomplishes. Aloisha, I hear nothing but good things about you, from what little time I have had to decide on a replacement. You are also kin, and I am not ashamed to admit to favoring House Solaran when there is little else to go by.”

  “Yes, Warlock. I accept the honor you are bestowing on me,” Aloisha spoke, still seeming numb and dizzy with the heady realization that she had just been given one of the most powerful positions in the Empire.

  “Lastly you, Iridan. I must confess I have done wrong by you.” Rashan paused and swallowed, as if unsure how to continue. “You have struggled and fought against a system that favors the purest of the bloodlines. Brannis told me that you finished top ranked your final four summers of the Academy and still garnered only token respect for it. You entered the Imperial Circle as a nobody, albeit a talented one. You were not arranged a wife, since a lone sorcerer in a peasant bloodline is just a fluke, not to be trusted until generations of sorcerers had proceeded from your line. How do you feel you have been treated by the Circle? Speak plainly now,” Rashan commanded.

  “Held back,” Iridan answered, seemingly uncomfortable with saying so in front of so many that had been in charge of the system that had favored weaker sorcerers from better families over his. “Like I would never be good enough because my parents are peasants.”

  “Do you think that traditional wisdom is wrong? That the blood does not tell? That talent may turn up unexpectedly, even in the most unlikely of places?” Rashan asked one question after another, giving Iridan no time to answer in between.

  “Yes, I think I do,” Iridan answered proudly, lifting his head.

  Rashan was about to elevate him to the Inner Circle, Brannis realized, and Iridan seemed to want to end the talk that his pedigree was not good enough.

  “You are wrong!” Rashan shouted.

  Iridan’s eyes widened in shock. It was surely not the response he was building up in his head.

  “Iridan, you have the purest blood in this room,” Rashan said. “You are no more a fluke than I am. When you were born, I was not ready to return to Kadrin, but I wanted you to be raised in the Empire, without revealing that I was still alive. You are my son, not the son of those kindly farm folk we left you with.”

  “What?” Iridan whispered. “I … Son?”

  “Yes,” Rashan said, “I did not choose to follow your band of refugees from Kelvie Forest because of my distant relation to Brannis, or the fact that he carried Heavens Cry and did not know it—though I admit that intrigued me as well. I followed you because I heard about your battle with the goblins and how you acquitted yourself,” Rashan rambled, getting caught up in finally revealing his relation to Iridan.

  “But I … I nearly killed myself,” Iridan said.

  “But you did not,” Rashan countered. “You took an instinctive step on the path to becoming a warlock. You used silent spellcasting in the furor of battle successfully. You have a natural talent; the rest is merely training.”

  “Wait, what? Warlock? Me?” Iridan sputtered.

  Brannis could understand that Iridan felt overwhelmed—on two fronts, no less: first, hearing that he was going to be elevated from Fourth Circle directly to the Inner Circle, then being told that Rashan Solaran was his father. Now he was to be trained as a warlock as well?

  I suppose I should have seen the resemblance, Brannis mused, feeling curiously detached from the proceedings.

  It was all too impossible to be real. His dreams actually felt more plausible than his own life, where he had just been the beneficiary of some sort of well-meaning reverse coup, where the usurpers had just been overthrown, and which had resulted in him being given an army.

  There is a hole in the side of the Tower of Contemplation. Three members of the Inner Circle are dead, including my father. Rashan is Iridan’s father? I am supposed to orchestrate the attack to drive back the goblin army. Oh, and apparently there has been no emperor in my lifetime.

  I would much like to wake up from this dream, too.

  * * * * * * * *

  Brannis did not get to wake up from the strange world he was now being dragged into. Instead he found himself at the center of a small parade, headed for the army headquarters. At the head of the procession was Jurl, who had transcribed Rashan’s proclamation into a set of written orders, which the warlock had signed. Two sorcerers walked next to him, his cousin Hernus Gardarus, and Iridan—Solaran? Brannis mused. Surrounding the lot of them to the sides and rear were a dozen of the Tower’s honor guards.

  The inclusion of Iridan—at his own request no less—made Brannis a bit more comfortable. He was unsure of the reaction he was about to receive. Just the previous evening, he had been in Sir Hurald Chadreisson’s office, taking the reprimand he knew he had coming for the loss of so many of his men. Now he was on his way to deliver orders requiring Sir Hurald to cede command to him. The general would be furious, to say the least.

  If Rashan had known the general, he might have sent more guards along.

  The trek across Kadris to army headquarters on foot was long enough that word spread ahead of them. The streets were lining themselves with Kadrin citizens, eager to begin putting the puzzle together of what had occurred that morning. Gossip was clearly raging already, and people shouted questions at them as they passed, occasionally calling out to the members of the procession by name if they recognized someone they knew. The guards were able to keep the curious at bay—a trick that being armed and accompanied by sorcerers made easier—but the press of onlookers blocking their path slowed them considerably, as the numbers in the streets swelled.

  They slowed to nearly a halt as the mob grew too large to get out of its own way, the ones nearest the procession being pushed forward by those far back trying to move closer.

  “People of Kadrin,” Jurl called out, “stand aside, in the name of Warlock Rashan.”

  This caused a buzz to go through the crowd as ale-room historians and quilting circle politicians circulated fresh gossip based on this newest revelation. Not one in four truly knew who Rashan was the night before, other than perhaps knowing the name from “somewhere.” By midday, all would have heard news of his return, and his history.

  The crowd was curious but had not been especially spurred to react in any sort of path-clearing manner. The foremost rows directly in Brannis’s path tried to edge sideways, but the constant press from behind would only allow for so much movement.

  From beside him, he heard Iridan chant, “Glaenu chukchaawe sevaani mafalu anahio.”

  Brannis turned to see what he was gesturing, but Iridan was quick; he finished before Brannis had a chance to see what he had just done.

  A clear, sh
immering liquid spread beneath the feet of Brannis, Iridan, the other two sorcerers, and the guards. It formed a small pond under them all, and once it had everyone supported, it began to rise up from the cobblestones. The feeling was disconcerting initially, but the gooey liquid seemed sturdy enough—akin to standing in very wet mud.

  “Nicely done,” Brannis congratulated Iridan.

  But his friend was paying him scant attention. Iridan’s eyes were unfocused, likely lost in aether-sight, Brannis guessed. Once they had risen above the heads of those in the crowd, the liquidy mass began to move. Unfortunately it did not pull everyone along with it; Iridan began to walk, and the rest followed his example. The surface tugged at their feet slightly as they lifted them, and there was an echoing ripple of sound, similar to a drop of water falling into a full bucket, with each step. The sound of sixteen pairs of feet made for an odd symphony as they walked. Fortunately the honor guard had been assigned to the Tower of Contemplation for long enough that unannounced bits of magic were merely unusual, rather than shocking.

  Iridan had not lifted their conveyance much more than head height, and hands reached up from the crowd to touch the magical walking-water as it passed above. Magic was quite far from unknown in the Kadrin Empire, but most often it was done out of sight of the common folk. It was a rare treat to see such a display, and diverted much of the crowd’s immediate attention from gossip to wonderment. In the meantime, Brannis, Iridan, and the rest of Brannis’s escort made haste for Kalak Square, where they would find the headquarters of the Imperial Army.

  A few paces into their midair journey, Iridan shook his head, clearing his sight back to normal vision and reorienting himself as he walked.

  “Thank you, I quite like this one,” Iridan said, belatedly accepting Brannis’s compliment.

  “So, um, Iridan,” Brannis began, “I guess this means we are … cousins.”

  “I will need to see a family tree at some point, I suppose, but I think we are four generations or so apart from being cousins. I cannot rightly say what we are. For all I know, I could be your thrice-great uncle, despite being just a month older,” Iridan replied.

  It seemed to Brannis that he had already given the topic some thought.

  “Welcome to the family, in any event. I imagine that you can move to the family estate if you would like. It seems rather clear that Rashan favors you,” Brannis observed dryly. “You might ask for any room you like.”

  As soon as Brannis mentioned rooms at Solaran Estate, he thought of his own room. Then he thought of the dream. His stomach twisted inside him as the anxiety returned, worrying what was going on in that world he saw at night.

  “Are you all right, Brannis?” Iridan asked. “You just got this look on your face like someone just told you that the beef stew you just ate was not actually made from beef.” Iridan walked a pace ahead of Brannis and turned to look him in the face head on. “Really, are you well?”

  “Lot on my mind, is all. The world changed a lot on us today, I feel. More so for you and me than for most, perhaps, but it changed for everyone. I think I know what it feels like now, when a pawn advances to the back rank. I am not sure what piece I have become, but I am fairly certain I am a pawn no longer,” Brannis said.

  “Rook, I would say. You have a rookish quality to you,” Iridan joked, and got Brannis to chuckle. “Always go in a straight line, once you get set on something.”

  The gnawing worry was still within Brannis, but Iridan helped keep his mind off what he knew he could not control, at least until nightfall. Brannis was not sure who was in control in his dreams, whether he was just an observer or whether he was the one deciding what to do. A lot of what this Kyrus fellow did seemed rather naïve, but it was an endearing sort of naïve that Brannis envied a little. Maybe in that world, he was just a more innocent version of himself.

  He hoped that the innocent self of his dreams was ready to face whatever was to come. That innocence would ill serve him, if Brannis’s second-worst fears were realized. If Kyrus had just died last night, all was moot anyway, and it seemed there would be no repercussion to Brannis. However, if Kyrus had been captured, Brannis still did not know how their fates were twined, and the worst might still be yet to come.

  Brannis’s thoughts, it seemed, could wander off without him, despite Iridan’s best efforts.

  * * * * * * * *

  “What is all this?” Sir Hurald Chadreisson demanded as Jurl opened up his message in the main entry hall and began to read it aloud to Sir Hurald and everyone else within earshot.

  As Brannis’s entourage entered the army headquarters, soldiers, functionaries, and officers had begun to congregate. As with much of the rest of Kadris, they were privy to an unusual sight … and curiosity was the surest lure of men.

  “‘This morning, the seventy-third day of Autumn, six thousand two hundred seventy-nine summers since the Founding, three members of the Imperial Inner Circle were executed for the crime of treason regarding the circumstances of the death of Emperor Dharus Kadrin. These included High Sorcerer Gravis Archon, Maruk Solaran, and Stalia Gardarus. Those who may have been aware of their treasonous conspiracy are granted conditional clemency, insomuch as there will be no formal inquiry beyond what justice has already been meted out.

  “‘These circumstances have necessitated changes in leadership at the highest levels of the empire. While there is no specific charge leveled against anyone in the Imperial Army and no officer thereof shall be singled out for dishonor, at this time I must place loyalty and competence above seniority and the standard chain of promotion.

  “‘Thus I hereby bestow upon Sir Brannis Solaran the title of Grand Marshal of the Kadrin Imperial Army, with full and complete authority over all men and materials of the army, and discretion to use them as he sees fit, subject solely to my direction and oversight.

  “‘Furthermore, all senior officers in the Imperial Army are ordered to appear in the Great Hall of the Imperial Palace at sunset tonight, to receive further details. All questions regarding the change of command may be held until that time.

  “‘Under no circumstances will anyone interfere with the transition of command to Grand Marshal Sir Brannis Solaran or disobey his orders. Anyone who does so will answer directly to me.’

  “Signed, Warlock Rashan Solaran, High Sorcerer and Regent of the Kadrin Empire,” Jurl finished, and walked calmly over to Sir Hurald and handed him the decree.

  There was a stunned silence in the hall. Many of the onlookers shifted uncomfortably, awaiting a reaction from Sir Hurald, who had listened less than stoically to Jurl’s recitation of the decree. His pale, pasty skin had flushed a bright red where it was not covered by beard, and he was breathing heavily. It seemed all he could do as he listened not to cross the few paces between himself and Jurl and run the sorcerer through.

  “Preposterous!” Sir Hurald thundered. “This is a coup. Take this lot prisoner immediately,” he ordered to no one in particular, gesturing to Brannis and his entourage. “These are traitors to the Empire!”

  Hurald’s hand went to the enchanted sword at his side, but instantly the honor guards’ halberds leveled in his direction. Several officers moved to General Sir Hurald’s side, though they were careful not to draw their own blades. While the honor guard was little tested in battle, they had a reputation for efficiency and obedience that left none to question whether they would die carrying out their order to defend the “usurper,” regardless of what Sir Hurald might wish.

  Others had watched from the entrance hall or the walkways above that overlooked it, but there was no great haste to take sides. On the one hand, they were suspicious of these orders, having just heard about the deaths of three of the most influential members of the Inner Circle at the hands of the one who gave them. On the other, the military was quite fond of history and educated its officers well on the subject, especially Kadrin’s rich and bloody history of conquest. Unlike the peasant-folk outside, these men knew who Rashan Solaran was and wante
d no part of defying him. Rumors had already spread that the old warlock was truly returned.

  “What are you waiting for, men?” Sir Hurald looked around the hall and up at those watching and waiting. “Draw steel and subdue these intruders. Are you cowards?”

  There was some element of truth to Sir Hurald’s accusation. The honor guard was the least of the troubles they saw. Three sorcerers of the Imperial Circle were among the entourage, and many had heard second- or third-hand accounts of Iridan entering combat in the Battle of Kelvie Forest. Sorcerers were always risky to fight, since when faced with death, they had no reason not to try to fight with aether, to the winds with consequences. Foremost, though, was that Brannis was known to carry Massacre. None in the hall had noticed—or knew enough to even tell the difference—that he was carrying Avalanche instead.

  “There has indeed been a coup,” Brannis replied. “It is over now, the usurpers killed. Rashan Solaran is Regent of the Empire now. This is a fact. The Imperial Circle already recognizes him as such. He meets with the nobles even now to inform them. Your summons for this evening is your time to see for yourself. I have seen him already.”

  “You shall not take the army without a fight!” Sir Hurald proclaimed. “I have served at the emperor’s command for nearly my entire life, and I will not allow some reckless pup to steer us into catastrophe. If none of you will draw steel to defend the fate of the army, then I will.”

  And Hurald drew his blade, a fine piece of both sword-smithing and aether-smithing. The blade shone like silver or seemed black as night depending on the angle of the light. It was scribed down the length with runes, keeping it razor sharp and easily balanced in Hurald’s hand. He presented it in the classic fencing salute.

  “I challenge you, Brannis Solaran, to a duel,” he spoke formally, but intentionally left off the “Sir” and any mention of rank.

  “Hold,” Brannis spoke softly, raising his hand to forestall the impending halberd charge he felt was coming from the honor guards.