Everything around him was an eternity of shadow. He stood—or floated, he couldn't quite tell—in the black. He could feel the darkness on his skin, though, as if it was pressing against him. It had an oily presence that groped him, measured him, whispered to him.
A point of light appeared in front of his face. He shied away from it, and in the moment that he looked away, the light intensified. When he looked back, it was the ruby set into Shawna's armlet that shone into the darkness. As he watched it, the silver of the sinuous band began to undulate, then unravel like the buds of a flower. The silver turned liquid and began to quest outward from the glowing ruby, like the tentacles of some deep sea monstrosity.
Dormael tried to turn from the thing, but found that he couldn't move. The armlet came closer, burning away the darkness, and Dormael once again tried to shy away. Once again, he failed.
The silver tendrils suddenly lashed out, wrapping around Dormael's arm. He watched in horror as the thing climbed onto him, wrapping his shoulder in bands of sinuous silver as it settled onto his body. The ruby moved over his shoulder, and the red light filled his vision.
Suddenly the darkness blossomed with bright, angry flames. Dormael screamed as the fire embraced him, but he did not burn. The heat was intense, and he could feel every blazing second of it, but his flesh was unscathed. The armlet was cold against his shoulder, curving lines of ice cradled against his burning skin.
He could see people in the flames, great masses of people all struggling against each other. As he looked closer, he could see weapons rising and falling in the chaos, and people being struck down on all sides. The fire danced a tapestry of horror before his eyes, and he tried to shut them against the sight.
As he screamed, the fire crawled down his throat.
***
Dormael snapped awake like a man drowning. His hands went to his throat as he gasped for air, the vivid memory of blazing agony still filling his lungs. He sat up from where he had dozed off and took a deep breath, running his hands over his face to mop cold sweat from his brow.
His heart nearly stopped at what he saw.
The campfire, which had burnt down to embers the last time Dormael had seen it, was belching a silent, twisting pillar of fire into the air of the clearing. It was spinning in a hypnotic dance, waves of flickering heat floating from the edges, as if the very air were burning in complete silence. Dormael watched, transfixed by the sight, as the fire brushed the edges of the tree canopy without burning a single branch.
With a rush of realization, he felt his Kai singing into the night. For just a moment, he thought that he had somehow used magic in his sleep, unwittingly causing this strange occurrence with the campfire. Then, he felt the other song lilting out through the air—the song of Shawna's armlet.
Its voice was alien. It was something near to his own magic, but not made of the same essence. It was like hearing an unexpected harmony between dissonant instruments. His Kai danced through the night with the alien song, flitting around the clearing like a child at play.
The magic resisted Dormael's efforts to put it to rest. He had to focus, using exercises he hadn't used since he was a child in his First Four, and gather his willpower to regain control of his magic. Eventually he wrestled it into submission, and as his Kai finally slept, Dormael felt the alien song of the armlet turn its attention toward him.
It reached out to him, brushing against his consciousness. Dormael resisted, but was afraid to summon his Kai in defense, lest his power be ripped from his control again. The armlet reached for him a second time, and Dormael was unable to keep it away. With a feeling like being dunked in warm water, the song of the armlet flooded his senses.
A thousand feelings filled him at once. Rage, warmth, pain, lust, fear, and longing all filled his chest like a blazing flood. The combination was an almost physical sensation, as if his heart had been replaced with a tiny sun.
Images began to fill his mind, one right after another, faster than he could make sense of them. A star exploding somewhere in the cold expanse of the Void, a field of burning men, a line of blood-soaked spears, an ancient grotto—the images would not stop. With each picture a rush of emotion flooded through him, until tears came to his eyes as he tried desperately to fight them from his head.
A sound came to his physical ears—the whimpering of a child.
Dormael turned his eyes to Bethany, who crouched on the ground near the twisting, burning campfire. She was huddled on her hands and knees as if she was fighting a bout of nausea, but staring in rapt horror at the fire twisting above her. With each image that came into Dormael's mind, Bethany would flinch and utter a low cry.
Gods in the Void, she's getting them, too!
Dormael tried to crawl toward the girl, but his muscles felt weaker with each movement. Bethany turned her eyes to him, and he could see the flames reflected in them. Each image that the armlet sent fell like a hammer blow to his consciousness, and he felt as if he was having to crawl through them to get to the girl. He hadn't realized that he had reached for her, but he felt Bethany's tiny fingers close around his hand.
The world exploded into a thousand bright needles.
The Frozen Flame
Dormael snapped awake as he felt hands throttling him. He fought them, throwing his arm before his face and trying to roll away. The hands tightened down on him, and shook him by the shoulders.
“Dormael!”
D'Jenn's voice broke through his befuddled wits, and Dormael paused in his struggle. Cold sunlight, gray through a thick cover of clouds overhead, beamed into his eyes. D'Jenn's face filled his vision, a concerned frown tightening his features.
“The girl,” Dormael coughed through a dry throat. “Where's Bethany?”
“She's right here. Sit up, coz,” D'Jenn said, moving back to give Dormael some room.
He struggled to a sitting position just in time to receive Bethany's hug at full force. He was stunned by the girl's affection, and almost fell back to the ground, but wrapped a tentative arm around her shoulders as he steadied himself.
“Are you alright? Do you remember?” Dormael said, pulling her away to look into her eyes. D'Jenn raised an eyebrow at the question, but he kept silent.
“I remember,” she replied. “It was talking to us.”
“It was talking to you?” D'Jenn repeated, giving Dormael a meaningful look. “What was bloody talking to you?”
Dormael extricated Bethany from around his neck and looked the girl over. The only wounds on her face were the yellowing bruises that the Galanian colonel had left her with. Dormael spent a moment checking her over before turning his attention to D'Jenn.
“The armlet,” Dormael said. “It...did something last night.”
“Did what?” D'Jenn asked.
“It talked to us,” Bethany said.
“The armlet came into my dream somehow,” Dormael explained. “When I awoke, the fire was just...I can't even explain it. It was dancing, D'Jenn, writhing around like a living thing.”
“And your magic?” D'Jenn asked.
“Just like before,” Dormael said. “I had to focus harder this time to put it to sleep. When I did, the armlet reached out to me.”
“The song, you mean? The song from the armlet?”
“Aye. It showed me pictures in my mind, like snippets of memories, I think. I'm not sure. Each time...well, the contact was unpleasant,” Dormael said.
“It hurt,” Bethany nodded.
“You were getting them, too?” D'Jenn asked, turning a sharp look on the girl.
“I didn't mean to,” Bethany muttered, looking away. “It just happened.”
“You're not in trouble, dear,” Dormael said, tousling her hair. “You didn't do anything wrong.”
“Well, a few things make more sense now,” Shawna said, walking up from the firepit. “As strange as that sounds. The iron grate over the pit is melted through.”
Dormael looked toward the fire, and saw the metal drooping down the ins
ide of the pit like candlewax.
“You'd think that we would have felt the heat from a flame that hot,” D'Jenn said, looking over the remains of the campsite. “We were all sleeping close enough to it.”
“It was odd,” Dormael said as he climbed to his feet. “I could have sworn that the fire was touching some of the tree limbs, too, but none of them burned. It wasn't moving like fire, it wasn’t…gods, I don’t know.”
“Why did it wait until now to do this?” Shawna asked. “Why hasn't it tried to contact me? I've been living with it my whole life.”
D'Jenn shrugged. “We don't know enough about it to figure that out, yet. It could be that the more it reaches out, the more powerful it gets. It obviously has some resonance with Dormael's magic—his song, I mean—because it reacted to him before. It might be that bringing to this place, where there is such strong magic to begin with, is what caused the event.”
“Seems like I might have warned someone about this yesterday,” Shawna said, giving Dormael a meaningful glance. “They said something about 'good magic', I think.”
Dormael grimaced at the woman, but she only smiled in response.
“It could be something else entirely,” D'Jenn went on, gazing over at Bethany as he stroked his goatee. “There's no way to know. Not yet, anyway.”
“What should we do?” Shawna asked. “Is it safe to carry the thing around in my saddlebags? What if it wakes up?”
“There's only one thing we can do,” D'Jenn said. “We should have done it before we ever left Alton's manor, in fact. We'll put a ward on it and see what happens. From there we'll need to get moving. I'm afraid we'll have to forego staying in the village for the Solstice.”
“Why?” Bethany asked, disappointment on her face.
“If this thing can burn iron to liquid while we sleep,” D'Jenn said, more to Dormael and Shawna than to Bethany, “then what happens when it does it a second time, only we're sleeping in some small village inn, or someone's hayloft?”
“It's alright, little one,” Dormael sighed, patting Bethany on the back. “We'll steal some food on the way through.”
“Shawna, can you bring the armlet over here? Just set it on the edge of the firepit, please,” D'Jenn asked. She nodded and turned to retrieve it from her saddlebags. Dormael had expected her to be favoring her side more, but she was dealing with the pain well. She returned, holding the silver box that contained the armlet out at arm's length. She sat the thing on the edge of the pit like she was handling a snake, and stepped out of D'Jenn's way.
D'Jenn's song lilted out into the morning, causing Dormael’s arms and legs to itch. He gestured, and the box rose into the air, revolving as D'Jenn studied it. Bethany moved away from Dormael, watching D'Jenn with interest.
D'Jenn gestured to the firepit, and there was a great hissing noise as a piece of the iron began to glow red-hot before separating form the drooping mass. The globule of hot metal floated toward the box, but began to undulate as it came near. Dormael could feel his cousin's magic at work, his song weaving complex patterns into the air around the silver box. The hot metal unraveled, reaching out narrow tendrils in a manner that reminded Dormael of the dream he'd had the night before. The tendrils twisted and writhed around the box, still glowing with heat. Then, with a sharp gesture, D'Jenn brought the spell to an end. The iron suddenly tightened down on the box, cooling as it went, and the magic sank into the metal. When it was done, D'Jenn allowed the box to drop into his hand.
“Hopefully that will work,” D'Jenn said, holding the box out to Shawna.
“Well no one will be able to open it, anyway,” Shawna said as she took it back from D'Jenn. She turned it around and examined the tendrils of iron, shaking her head as she gazed at them. “What did you do, exactly?”
“It's hard to explain,” D'Jenn sighed. “But there's more at work there than a metal cage for the box. I warded the thing against magic, but instead of keeping magic out, I inverted the spell in order to keep it in.”
“Ah,” Dormael smiled. “Ingenious.”
“Thank you.”
“I'll take your word on it,” Shawna said. “Just tell me it won't wake up and burn me alive.”
“I have a good idea that it won't.”
“That's as good as you can get?” Shawna asked.
“According to my vast knowledge of magical theory, that should do the trick,” D'Jenn smiled.
“But you're not certain?”
“Nothing is certain.”
Shawna took the box back to her saddlebags, but Dormael smiled as she stuffed it in the deepest part she could find. In truth, he didn't blame her for having reservations. He was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened. No infused item he had ever seen could command so much power. Most magical items were made with a specific purpose in mind. Fire appeared to be a recurring theme with Shawna's armlet, but how could the thing also communicate?
The more he thought, as he readied Horse for departure, the more he was certain that the armlet had some sort of sentience. It had been trying to tell him something, trying to convey ideas to him. The more frightening thing was that it appeared to be able to act on its own volition, at least to some degree. It could have been resonating with the magic in the clearing, as D'Jenn had said, but Dormael wasn’t sure that was the case. Why did the thing continue to reach out to him?
Why had it included Bethany?
He turned the various problems over in his mind as he guided Horse back down the game trail and out onto the road, following behind D'Jenn and Shawna. The morning was locked in a deep chill, and thunder rumbled across the cloudy sky, coming from somewhere over the sea. The weather fit Dormael's mood.
Bethany had picked up the habit of playing with the weight at the end of Dormael's beard. She would pick the thing up and begin tapping it on the saddle horn, beating out an unconscious rhythm to accompany the one being made by Horse's hooves. This morning, though, she just held onto it, clutching it to her chest and huddling deep in her cloak.
“Bethany,” he said, low enough so that only the two of them could hear. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
“Did what happened last night frighten you?”
“Yes.” She huddled deeper into her cloak.
“What did the armlet tell you? Do you remember?”
Bethany was silent for long enough that Dormael thought she wasn't going to reply. When we made to speak again, though, she interrupted him.
“I think...I think it was alone for a very long time,” she said.
“Alone?” Dormael asked. He wasn't sure where the girl had gotten that impression. The one image that stood out in his mind was the flaming tapestry of people locked in that terrible struggle.
“I think so. It felt so lonely. I think that's why it hurt us. It was excited to finally talk to someone,” Bethany said, twisting in the saddle to try and look at him. “I don't think it was trying to be mean. I think it was an accident.”
Dormael wasn't sure what to think of that. He tried to remember the feelings that had jumbled together with the images in his mind, but he couldn't untwist them. Every thought had landed on him like a pile of stones, and somehow during the process, they had been stirred together into a confusing mass.
What he did remember, though, was a deep terror, and the feeling of burning alive.
“Had it spoken to you before last night?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“No,” she whispered. “Last night was the first time.”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
“Were you awake when it talked to you? Were you turning over, unable to sleep, or something?” he asked.
“No,” she said, then turned to look at him again. “It came into my dream! I didn't know what it was, though—it looked like you! That's when it told me its name.” She whispered the last, shooting a glance toward where D'Jenn and Shawna rode in close conversation.
“Its name?” Dormael asked, his own voice falling into a w
hisper.
Bethany nodded. “Fiega.”
Dormael's heart froze in his chest. There was no way Bethany could have known that word, and he doubted she had ever heard it in passing. It was a dead language, and one born far from these shores. It was the tongue of the Vendon, the ancestors of the modern-day Sevenlanders.
The word meant 'fire'.
“It told you that word—fiega?”
Bethany nodded again. “That's its name.”
Dormael took a deep breath. “Listen, Bethany, I want you to do me a favor. Can you do that?”
Bethany nodded.
“The next time it tries to talk to you, I want you to ignore it. There's a secret way to keep it out, but you have to learn it. Alright?”
“Alright,” she said.
“Good. Next time you hear it, I want you to close your eyes and picture a rock. No matter what you hear, no matter what it tries to send you, just picture that rock. Keep it right in the front of your mind. Do you think you can do that?”
“Just picture a rock?” Bethany asked, her face scrunching up with confusion.
“Just a rock, dear. You have to practice, alright? Do it while we're riding. See how long you can think about a rock.”
“That doesn't sound like fun,” Bethany grumbled.
“It will make you stronger,” Dormael smiled. “Go on, give it a try.”
Bethany sighed, but did as she was told. The rock exercise was a simple thing, one of the first exercises that children did when they began to discipline their mind for using magic. It wasn't a spell, but it was the only thing Dormael knew that would give her a way of defending her mind from Shawna's armlet, and whatever lived inside of it.
The armlet had conveyed something different to Bethany than it had to Dormael. He didn't know what to think of that, but he sure as all Six Hells didn't like it. Perhaps it could sense that her mind was weaker, more pliable. Dormael would have to watch the girl, and make sure she was protected.
D'Jenn dropped back some time later, and began to wiggle his fingers in the Hunter's Tongue.
The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection Page 25
