Cast in Firelight

by Dana Swift

  My father steps forward. “Mount Gandhak is erupting. I don’t know how much time we have. I’m going to need your help for this. Maharani Belwar, I don’t think we can do this without you.”

  “Erupting? It hasn’t erupted in centuries. It’s a dormant volcano,” the head guard says.

  “Not anymore,” my father says grimly.

  Maharaja Belwar looks between the one small arched window and us. The sky has already turned to deep red in the past five minutes. “I’ll help, of course, but—”

  “I can’t leave her!” Maharani Belwar shrieks. “If I leave her now…” At her cry it dawns on me. He is asking her to abandon Adraa. My father would take away the little hope we have left for Adraa’s life?

  “Maharani Belwar has to stay with Adraa. She’s the only one that could possibly—”

  “She’s gone, Jatin, and we don’t have time,” my father says, his voice nearly breaking.

  A small body pushes forward and everyone looks. Prisha slowly pulls Maharani Belwar’s hands off Adraa’s body. “Mom, go. I will save her.”

  “Prisha, you— It’s too difficult and you need to evacuate.”

  “Sansria!” Prisha shouts, and a blaze of light-pink smoke consumes her mother’s darker pink. It swarms and then dives into Adraa’s mouth. “I can do it, and I won’t leave.”

  “I’ll help too,” a young woman dressed in a healer’s uniform whispers as she steps forward.

  “As will I. Tell me what you need, Prisha,” Riya says, rolling up her sleeves.

  The female guard, who I think is Riya’s mother, based on their similar features, pulls at Riya’s arm, holding her back. “You’ll be needed on the ground, helping with evacuation.”

  “No, Mother. This is my duty, to protect her no matter what,” Riya says.

  “But she’s—”

  Riya jerks her arm free. “She didn’t give up on Dad. I will not give up on her. Ever.”

  My father nods. “Maharaja Belwar, Maharani Belwar, we are going to have to contain the fumes. I believe it will take all three of us.”

  Maharaja Belwar whispers into his hands and wisps of orange smoke dart in various directions. “I’m calling to all my guards. If Mount Gandhak blows we will need green forte wizards to redirect any landslides.”

  Without Riya, Prisha, and that other healing girl, the rest of us run toward the training field. “Is Maharaja Moolek still here?” my father asks as we turn the corner.

  “He left a few days ago,” Maharani Belwar answers.

  “It all makes sense now,” I spit.

  “What?”

  “It’s too convenient. Moolek is gone, Adraa, the most powerful red forte in Belwar, is…gone.” A bulge of anger tangles in my throat. “It’s not right.”

  “You would accuse our most powerful ally?” Riya’s mother hisses.

  I don’t bother answering. I don’t care. This is Moolek. I can feel it.

  Riya’s mother doesn’t reply either, charging forward with plans. Assignments are yelled and thrown around like spilled rice. Riya’s mother will lead those who can’t fly to the docks. Hiren is sent straight there to make sure ships aren’t leaving port without the maximum number of passengers. Kalyan is tasked with evacuating Azure Palace. He and I nod to each other before he bursts into the air toward our home.

  And as I listen I don’t hear a word of how we are going to actually stop this thing. My heart lurches. Without Adraa…

  It’s just me. Our duo cut down to one.

  “I’m going to Mount Gandhak,” I say as those of us left round the last bend toward the training yard and front gates.

  My father whips in my direction. “Jatin.”

  “I’ll freeze it from the inside. I’ll stop the lava.” My voice hardens so that I don’t break in half. “No one else dies today.” Now that I’ve said it I’m calm, maybe still numb. But it feels like it’s the right thing. The Belwars each nod and Maharani Belwar even smiles through the tears still spilling from her eyes.

  “No.” My father’s voice bites. “I can’t lose you too.” The sad part is I don’t know whether he means my mother, my sister, or Adraa at this point. But now isn’t the time to argue or to elaborate on years of protectiveness and restraint.

  The ground quakes. The arches and stone balconies hold their shape, but dust and the sprinkle of rubble suggest total collapse. “I’m the only one that can do this. Please, let me be the raja of Naupure for once.”

  My father looks over at me like he’s trying to memorize my face. Finally he nods. “You always were.”

  People gush from the palace and into the training yard at the same time we reach it. Guards burst from the other side of the yard. Everyone is talking or yelling. I can’t hear anything but the roar splitting the sky in two.

  When we stop in the training yard, Maharaja Belwar cups his hands to his mouth and thousands of small pockets of orange light shoot into the sky. A few blaze over his shoulder and I hear bits of their message.

  Mount Gandhak…

  Evacuate to the docks. Fly if you can.

  Rest assured we will…

  But the message isn’t getting out fast enough. I can already see streams of color flying upward around Belwar. It looks like the Festival of Color. But no, that’s wrong. These are signals, all of them meaning only one thing: help.

  The Belwars and my father board their skygliders and fly to the roof. It takes me a second to process, but then I’m right there with them, bounding upward and landing on the thick tiles behind them.

  “Listen, everyone!” Maharaja Belwar’s voice booms.

  Chaotic chatter still consumes the air. Many people are already running out of the gates and into the street. I look behind me. The sky is crawling with skygliders. More fliers than I have ever seen in my life.

  Guards and servants below us shout out questions.

  “Is the Goddess Erif cursing us?”

  “Did Lady Adraa fail the ceremony? Is that why Mount Gandhak is erupting?”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Tar Vazrenni,” Maharaja Belwar casts, and his voice enlarges. “Listen!”

  Everyone stills and looks up at us.

  “My daughter and her ceremony have nothing to do with what we are facing. Listen to me.” He yells instruction after instruction about where wizards need to go. But I already have my duties. I look to Mount Gandhak. The gray cloud erupting from its top grows, pluming into layer after layer of mushroom-shaped spouts. The magnitude of what we are about to face, it’s indescribable. And we don’t have much time.

  Only when Maharaja Belwar pauses at the end do I truly listen. “I’m asking you all to save our country. I cannot force you to stay, but we must work together. Trust in your rajas as the gods have trusted in us and our home will still be standing at the end of this day. We will not fail.” He bows; his voice dims, and the last of us on the roof hear his final plea. “We cannot.”

  Danger

  Love

  Passion

  Blood

  Death

  Red, all around me, saturating, dripping, covering every particle I can see. I hold up my hands. Only the dark-brown hue of my skin has been left its natural color.

  I’m in a nine-sided parlor much like a prayer room, a demented prayer room. Wait. It’s more visceral and real, but this…this is the room, the land of my nightmares.

  “Adraa?”

  I turn to find a woman glowing in red. Red skin, red sari, and even redder hair, lashing out like fire around her shoulders. The only color not permeated with blood is her eyes, her black-as-coal eyes. And they’re staring at me. Before I can utter the words, my brain tells me this is Erif, Goddess of fire. I tumble backward and fall hard on my butt. What the blood?

  “I can’t believe I did it,” she says with a gleaming smile.
/>
  Panic builds up in my chest. I can’t breathe. There’s no air in this room. I’m going to faint. The bloodlike walls blur. They seem to be melting, gushing, oozing.

  “Oh!” the woman yells. A burst of red smoke smashes into my face. I gulp back life. After a few moments of silence, calmness wraps around me like a cool blanket.

  “Sorry about that. I forgot, your body thinks you are still dying.”

  Still dying? Still dying! “Am I…am I dead?”

  “No, not yet. But I had to take you out of there. Dloc was going to kill you.”

  The ceremony swims back to memory. Yes, I was trying to contain the blizzard, but it was too much for me. Frostbiting cold. There was so much pain, and then, then nothing but the color red. “I’m not dead, then?”

  “What did I just say? You’re not dead. You seemed smarter down in Wickery.”

  Well, this is great. I really hope this is a dream, because I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity being ridiculed by a woman whose hair is literally smoking.

  “This is a dream, right?”

  “You’re not physically here, just your soul.”

  “And you brought me here?” I scan the room. A giant fireplace sits center stage in the bleeding parlor. A set of wrought iron fireplace tools line the stone hearth. A few chairs and a table covered in satin look unused. “The nightma—I mean the dreams I’ve been having, they were you?”

  “I can only open up this portal at certain times. And several possible paths led you to never performing the ceremony. So yes, I called out to you in your dreams. But even after all my preparation, I didn’t think I could do it with Dloc attacking you. He’s so melodramatic.” Erif turns from me and tends to the fireplace, poking at the embers and the little tuft of flame.

  I can’t even fathom what she is saying. Dloc melodramatic? Melodramatic? “Are we just tools to all of you? Is my entire destiny based on your argument with Dloc?”

  At my tone, her coal-black eyes snap to me. “Look, you don’t have a destiny because I chose you to bless. I don’t have that kind of control.”

  “You don’t have that kind of control? But you did choose me. You decided to bless me. Didn’t you fight for that?” I pull up my sleeve, showcasing my bare arm. “That’s why I’m deformed like this?”

  “Yes, Dloc was pigheaded, and we fought over your blessing. Yes, he still holds it against me, and thus, by extension, you. But you aren’t deformed; you’re just a little different. You are the one who sees yourself as deformed and you are the only one who can fix that,” she scoffs. “Also, there is no destiny. There are only various paths and outcomes based on a collection of people’s choices.”

  No destiny? I have no destiny?

  Erif returns to tending the small fire. I can’t take it, her poking, her prodding. Am I not even worth her time? Why in Wickery did she bring me here if not to talk to me? To only tell me my entire mindset was wrong?

  I shove forward and grab the fireplace poker. “My life is worth more than this. Please, tell me what is going on. If I’m not dead, then why am I here? Can I go back?”

  She pushes me with a white-hot hand. I fly through the room and slam against a wall. “This fire is your life, Adraa. If you wish for it to die, interrupt me again.”

  I stay silent, staring at the fire. My life? That is my life? The fire is small right now. One could even call it weak.

  The next time the goddess speaks it is in a whisper. “I’m going to tell you why you are here, but we need to give your body and mind a little time to adapt. As for blessing you, it’s as political and complicated up here as it is down there. I saw your strength, your position, and I wanted you to be under my name.”

  “More like wanted to use me,” I say under my breath.

  She hears nonetheless. “How have I used you? I didn’t give you firelight. You came up with that spell on your own. You changed your world. I might have foreseen you could change it, but I didn’t know how, when, or if you would. No one did.”

  “And yet I died at my royal ceremony.”

  Her eyes turn red. I step back on instinct. “Almost died. Almost! I decided to save you. So show some appreciation. And grow up, because we don’t have time for all your problems. I need to warn you before it’s too late.”

  “About what?” I swear, if the nightmares were a warning Dloc was going to kill me when I tried to perform the Royal Ceremony, I’m going to scream.

  “I don’t think you are ready to hear it yet. Almost dying and coming here is strenuous on the body. And this is my first time doing something like this. Do you want…tea?”

  Something is wrong with her. “No.” I sit on one of the satin-cushioned sofas. Maybe she’s right; maybe my body is still messed up. The pain of the blizzard is only a memory, but it shoots through me regardless, as if it has soaked into my marrow.

  Erif checks the fire one more time. “Your mother is talented. I knew she could do this. Your sister too.”

  “My…mother? Prisha? What are you talking about?”

  “They are keeping your physical body alive. On the other side of the hearth.”

  I stare at the embers. In the smoke and ash I think I can see my mother hovering over my body. For a flash, Jatin’s hollow expression flickers in the flame. I blink and try to stare harder, but the image is gone. “They think I’m dying?”

  “Yes.”

  I stand up, bumping the table out of the way. “Please, put me back! You can’t do that to them.”

  “I need you here. I need to warn you.”

  “Then tell me. For blood’s sake, tell me.”

  Her eyes flick to the fire. It has brightened slightly. “I need to make sure you can pull through or none of this is worth anything. You will be worthless.”

  She means I’ll be dead, truly dead. I watch my fire too; trying to breathe evenly, trying to fill my lungs with life. I go through the motions, but it’s unnatural, like a fish out of water. For there is no air in this world and I don’t have to breathe.

  The fire pulses. Amid the flames, my body arches in a jolt. I see the edge of the clinic table and the smear of blood. I want to live.

  “Good. Promising. Very promising.” Erif spins back to me, her neck turning just past possible twist. I want to throw up.

  “Mount Gandhak is about to erupt and it’s because of your magic.”

  I shrink. “What?”

  “Firelight, your firelight, was used to set Mount Gandhak to erupt. In the next hours the capital of Naupure will die and all of Belwar will be melted away.”

  My brain tries to process what she is telling me. Mount Gandhak isn’t an active volcano. But Erif would know. She’s a bloody goddess. And she reigns over one thing.

  “It’s happening right now?”

  “Yes, it’s starting. That’s what helped me open the portal to pull you here for the first time.”

  And she let me yell for the past few minutes? She let me carry on watching my fire? She is demented. “Then send me back. Send me back now!”

  “That’s what I’m hoping we can do. I want you to save your country. But listen, this isn’t a normal eruption. It is fueled by firelight. Smoke, ash, and lava will spew for as long as firelight continues to fuel the magma. Do you understand?”

  “What? How…” Thoughts and fears explode in my mind. My firelight? Will fuel as long as…that’s two months! “How do I stop it?”

  “I may have blessed you, but you are the one who created firelight. I never gifted my Touched with that kind of spell. You will have to figure it out, and fast. I’ll try to help if I can.”

  Erif lifts the poker. “We shouldn’t wait much longer. This is going to hurt a bit,” she says, staring at the branding flame on the poker’s tip.

  Before I can make a sound of protest, she thrusts the poker into my chest. I croak out
a gasp. It’s fire and pain and…and…

  I crumble, shock tensing and stalling my every cell. Why, why would she kill me again in this way? I have to help Belwar. The room spins. I’m zooming backward, away from the red room. The pain eases slightly. I feel my heart pump once again and realize that in the past few minutes my body stood silent.

  “In the war to come, I’ll be on your side!” Erif shouts.

  “War? Wait, what war?”

  “Just worry about the task in front of you. If you don’t stop it, the war will be over before it even begins.” She pulls the poker, ripping it from my chest. Grasping my shoulders, she tugs me toward her. “Good luck.” And with a push I’m falling backward, into the fireplace. I scream out as my skin pulls and I’m sucked in.

  My gut tightens. I’m going to be sick. A spot on my stomach turns back into the rainbow of colors of my royal ceremony garments. I’m flipping, spiraling backward until other colors bleed into being.

  I come back to life gasping, my lungs starved and unable to purchase enough air.

  Several shrieks of surprise vibrate against my ears.

  “Adraa?”

  “Is she really…?”

  “We did it,” someone whispers.

  I blink back tears, my entire body groggy except for a dull ache that pulses a vigorous tune: I live. I live. I live. Color and light glare around me and yet it’s dark, gloomy. Only firelight lights up the three women huddled about me. I finally make out their faces. Zara, Riya, and my sister.

  Riya swings one arm around my back to help me sit up. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

  “I’m back,” I choke out.

  “This is impossible. Are you…How do you feel?” Zara asks. She’s practically itching to take notes.

  I begin to say that she can when Prisha leaps into my arms, crying. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

  The earth shudders. A rumble like thunder rips through the air. Jars of herbs crash onto the floor.