The Raging Fires

by T.A. Barron

  Handsome did not describe her—just as, I well knew, it did not describe me—yet there was a strong, striking air about her nonetheless. Her chin, unusually long and narrow, rested upon her hand. She seemed relaxed, yet poised to move in a fraction of a second. Her braided hair glinted with the tans and auburns of marsh grasses. The braid itself swept across her shoulder and over the back of her yellow robe that seemed to have been woven from willow shoots. She wore no shoes.

  “Well, well,” declared a deep, resonant voice. “Our traveler has awakened.”

  I spun around to see a tall, broad-chested young man approaching us through the grass. Wearing a simple, tan-colored tunic, he stepped with long, loping strides. His chin, like the girl’s, jutted strongly. He possessed the same rich brown eyes, though not quite so large as hers. And he, too, had bare feet.

  At once, I knew that these two were brother and sister. At the same time, I felt the gnawing sense that they were somehow more, and less, than they appeared. Yet I couldn’t quite identify how.

  Pushing myself to my feet, I nodded to both of them. “Good day to you.”

  The young man nodded in return. “May green meadows find you.” He held out his hand, although the motion seemed slightly awkward for him. We clasped, his sturdy fingers curling around my own. “I am Eremon, son of Ller.” He cocked his head toward the trunk. “That is my sister, Eo-Lahallia. Though she prefers to be called just Hallia.”

  She said nothing, but continued to watch me warily.

  He released his grip. “We are, you could say, people of these parts. And who are you?”

  “I am called Merlin.”

  Eremon brightened. “Like the hawk?”

  Sadly, I smiled. “Yes. I had a friend once—a dear friend. A merlin. We . . . did much together.”

  Eremon’s wide eyes gleamed with understanding. He seemed to know, somehow, what I had left unsaid.

  “Unlike you,” I went on, “I am not from this region. You could, as you did before, call me a traveler.”

  “Well, young hawk, I am glad your travels brought you here. As is my sister.”

  He glanced toward her hopefully. She did not speak—although she shifted uneasily on the trunk. And while she continued to avoid my own gaze, she shot a direct look at Eremon: a look of mistrust.

  Turning back to me, he indicated the patch of matted grass where I had been sleeping. “Your travels have drained you, it seems. You might have slept a full week if your fitful dreams hadn’t wakened you.”

  A full week. All that remained—and now, less! Valdearg would return one week from last night. To devour me. And if not me, everyone and everything in his path.

  Seeing me suddenly tense, Eremon placed his hand upon my shoulder. “I have not known you long, young hawk. Yet I see you are troubled.” His gaze flowed over me like a wave washing over a rocky shore. “I have the feeling, somehow, that your troubles are also ours.”

  Hallia sprang to her feet. “My brother!” She paused, hesitant, before saying any more. At last, in a voice quieter but no less resonant than Eremon’s, she asked, “Shouldn’t you . . . wait? You are, perhaps, too quick to trust.”

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “Yet the feeling persists.”

  Still without looking straight at me, Hallia waved in my direction. “He only just awoke, after all. You haven’t even . . . circled a story with him.”

  Puzzled, I watched Eremon close his brown eyes thoughtfully, then reopen them. “You are right, my sister.” He turned to me. “My people, the Mellwyn-bri-Meath, have many traditions, many rhythms, some of which have come down to us all the way from Distant Time.”

  With the agility of a sparrow turning in flight, he moved to the stream’s edge and knelt by a strip of soft mud. “One of our oldest traditions,” he continued, “is to circle a story, as a way of introducing ourselves. So in meeting someone from a different clan, or even a different people, we often invoke it.”

  “What does it mean, to circle a story?”

  Eremon reached into the stream and pulled out a slender, gray stone. He shook the water from it, then drew a large circle in the mud. “Each of us, starting with you as the newcomer, tells part, but only part, of a tale.” Using the stone, he divided the circle into three equal portions. “When we have finished, the parts combine, giving us a full circle.”

  “And a full story.” I stepped to the stream bank and knelt beside him. “A wonderful tradition. But must we do it now? I am, well, much better at listening to stories than telling them. And right now my thoughts are . . . elsewhere. My time is short. Too short! Indeed, I really should go.” Under my breath, I added, “Though I’m not quite sure where.”

  Hallia nodded, as if my reaction had confirmed her suspicions. “Now . . . see there?” she said to her brother, her voice still hesitant, but urgent all the same. “He does not like stories.”

  “Oh, but I do!” I pushed some hair off my brow. “I have always loved stories. It’s miraculous, really, where they can take you.”

  “Yes,” agreed Eremon. “And where they can keep you.” He studied me. “Come, young hawk. Join our circle.”

  Something behind the rich brown of his eyes told me that staying a moment longer, in this particular place with these particular people, could be important. And that my part of the story would be heard with interest—and judged with care.

  “All right, then,” I replied. “How do I begin?”

  “However you like.”

  I bit my lip, trying to think of the best way to start. An animal—yes, that felt right. One who lived as I did now: alone. I filled my lungs with air. “The story begins,” I declared, “with a creature of the forest. A wolf.”

  Hallia started at my choice. Even her brother, whose wide eyes continued to scan me, flinched. I knew, beyond doubt, that I had chosen poorly. Yet I could not be sure why.

  “This wolf,” I went on, “called himself Hevydd. And he was lost. Not on the ground, but in his own heart. He wandered through the high hills, exploring and sleeping and hunting wherever he liked. He sat for hours upon his favorite stone, howling to the pearls of the night sky. Yet . . . his forest felt more like a prison, with every tree another bar on his cage. For Hevydd was alone—in ways he could not fathom. He hungered for answers, but he didn’t even understand the questions. He longed for companions, but didn’t know . . .” My dry throat made me cough. “Didn’t know where to look.”

  Eremon frowned—whether from sympathy or dismay, I could not tell. Yet I knew, as did he, that my portion of the story had finished. Deftly wielding the stone, he began to draw in the upper third of the circle. A symbol, I realized, of my part of the story. But instead of the head or body of a wolf, as I myself would have drawn, he drew a paw print. The wolf’s track.

  Looking not at me, nor at Hallia, but at the circle, Eremon began to speak. “Hevydd did not realize,” he intoned, “that the forest was no cage of bars—but an endless maze of overlapping trails. Where one trail ended, another one began. Deer loped this way; badgers ran that. A spider dropped from one branch; a squirrel climbed another. Along the floor slithered a newborn snake; across the sky soared a pair of eagles. Each of these trails connected to each other, so that when the wolf padded along the ridge by himself, he was really traveling alongside all the others. Even when he veered from his path to stalk his next meal, the trails of hunter and hunted became one.”

  His voice fell until I could hardly hear it above the splattering stream. “So Hevydd did not notice when the last oak perished, causing the squirrels to move away. Nor did he mourn when plague struck the rabbits’ warren, killing every single one of them. Nor did he mark the day when the yellow-backed butterflies stopped flitting through the groves, along with the jays and ravens who dined upon them.”

  He stopped, drawing a dozen different tracks in his portion of the circle—the prints of all the animals he had named, and more. As he was finishing, Hallia stepped closer, still avoiding me with her round eyes. For a moment she peer
ed thoughtfully at the drawing in the mud, while playing with her auburn braid.

  “The forest,” she began, “grew quieter . . . by the day. So very quiet. Fewer birds chattered in the branches; fewer beasts strolled through the underbrush. From his stone on the ridge, though, Hevydd howled more often. He howled from greater hunger, since food was more scarce. And he howled, as well, from greater loneliness.”

  Bending gracefully, she took the slender stone from Eremon’s hand. She started to speak again, then paused for a while before the words finally came. “The day arrived . . . that a new creature entered the forest.” With deep, harsh strokes, she filled the remaining portion of the circle with another track: the booted foot of a man. “This creature came . . . with arrows and blades. Stealthily, craftily, he approached Hevydd’s howling stone. No birds remained to rise skyward in warning. No animals scattered from his path. And no one was left to mourn when the man killed Hevydd . . . and cut out his heart.”

  13: TO RUN LIKE A DEER

  Hallia, her portion of the story finished, gazed solemnly at the splattering stream. Though I had been struck by the brutality of her words, I had been struck even more by the anguish in her voice.

  Eremon rose slowly to face her. “Would it be fair to say, my sister, that Hevydd might have lived if he had understood more?”

  “Perhaps,” she replied, pausing even longer than usual before she continued. “Yet it would also be fair to ask: Did the fault belong to him, or to the man who slew him?”

  “Both,” I declared, standing once more. “That’s usually the way of it. With fault, I mean. I’ve seen how often my own faults combine with someone else’s to make things worse.”

  While Hallia backed away, to the very edge of the stream, Eremon remained still, watching me quizzically. “And how, young hawk, do you know so much about your faults?”

  Without hesitation, I answered: “I have a sister.”

  His whole face wrinkled in a smile—which vanished as soon as Hallia glanced at him sharply. “Tell us, now. What brought you here? And why do I feel so much of the lone wolf in you?”

  Feeling the sudden urge to lean against my staff, I instinctively scanned the grass. All at once, I remembered. My staff was gone. Destroyed. Along with my powers.

  The boy of the wizard’s staff, the trees of the Druma had called me. I cringed at the memory. “I had something . . . unusual. Something precious. And now it’s lost.”

  Eremon’s thick eyebrows drew together. “What is this thing?”

  I hesitated.

  “Tell us, young hawk.”

  Gravely, I spoke the word. “Magic. Whether or not I might ever have become a true wizard, I still had some gifts. Gifts of magic.” I paused, reading the doubt in both of their faces. “You must believe me. I came to the realm of the dwarves at Urnalda’s request, to help her battle Valdearg—Wings of Fire. Then she turned on me. Stole my powers.” I touched my chest. “I feel, well, this emptiness now. My magic, my essence, was just ripped away. If only you could feel it . . . you would know I speak truly.”

  Eremon’s ears, slightly pointed at the top like those of all Fincayran men and women, quivered for an instant. “I can feel it,” he said softly.

  Turning to his sister, he asked by his expression whether or not she agreed. Yet Hallia’s face showed only mistrust. Slowly, she shook her head, her long braid glinting in the sun.

  My jaw tightened. “If you believe nothing else, at least heed this. In just six and a half days, all of Fincayra will know Valdearg’s rage. Unless, that is, I can find some way to stop him.”

  Eremon’s eyes widened.

  “And I have no idea even where to begin!” My hand squeezed the air as it would have my staff. “Should I just submit to the dragon now? Let him devour me? It might satisfy him. Urnalda said it would. But it might not! He could just continue on his rampage, destroying whatever he likes. I’ve got to prevent that.”

  “You ask a lot of yourself,” observed Eremon.

  I sighed again. “One of my faults.” My attention fell to the the circle in the mud at our feet. “It’s hopeless, really. Like the wolf in our story.” In frustration, I struck my fist against my palm. “Those two deer should have just left me to die!”

  Hallia started. “What did you say?”

  I winced. “If you doubt the rest, then you’ll never believe this part.”

  For the first time, she looked straight at me. “Tell us . . . about the deer.”

  “Well, it’s enough to say that two brave deer—for whatever reason—risked their lives to save me last night. It was they who brought me here. No, it’s true! I wish I could thank them—even though things would be simpler if they hadn’t bothered. I haven’t any idea where they are now.”

  Hallia’s deep eyes probed me. It seemed to me that a new doubt, different than before, shone in them. Then, suddenly aware that I was returning her gaze, she turned shyly away.

  Her brother bent toward her. “Say what you will about his words. I, for one, judge them true.”

  She took him by the arm. “Part of what he says may be true . . . but only part. Remember, he is a—” She caught herself. “A creature not to be trusted.”

  Her brother shook loose. “A creature not so different from ourselves.” He pushed a hand through his nut brown hair and faced me. “That Wings of Fire has reawakened is no secret. Nor that he has done much recently to punish the dwarves. Because the dwarves have very few friends in other parts of Fincayra, most of us who live on their borders have just assumed they brought this trouble on themselves. But no—if your tale is true, Valdearg’s anger must spring from another cause altogether.”

  Grimly, I nodded. “It does.” A cold wind arose, ruffling the grasses. “His eggs—his only young—were murdered.”

  Hallia tossed her braid over her shoulder. “I feel . . . no sorrow for him. He has wasted so many lands, so many lives. Still, I can’t help but feel sympathy for his hatchlings, murdered like that. Without even a chance to escape.”

  I frowned. “I feel no sympathy for them. They would have only grown up to be like . . .” My words trailed off as I realized what I was about to say. Like their father. How different was that from what Urnalda had said about me?

  Eremon’s voice resonated clearly. “For my part, I feel sympathy for them all. They did not seek to be born as dragons, but merely to be born.” He paused, watching me. “Do you know who killed them?”

  “A man.”

  His ears trembled once more. “And who was that man?”

  I swallowed. “Valdearg believes it was me. Since I am descended from his greatest foe—Tuatha. But it was not. I swear it was not.”

  His brow knitted as he studied me for a long moment. At last he announced, “I believe you, young hawk.” He drew a deep breath. “And I will help you.”

  “Eremon!” cried his sister, all her hesitancy gone. “You can’t!”

  “If his words are true, all of Fincayra should rise to help.”

  “But you don’t know!”

  “I know enough.” He stroked his prominent chin. “Yet I wish I knew one thing more: where those dragon eggs have lain hidden these many years. If only we could find whatever is left of them, we might find a sign. Something that could tell us who is the true killer.”

  “I’ve thought of that, as well,” I replied. “But the remains of the eggs could be anywhere! We have no time to search. Besides, what we need to find most is not the killer—but some way to stop Valdearg.”

  At that, the wisp of an idea rose within me. A desperate, outlandish idea. And, with it, an overwhelming sense of dread. “Eremon! I know what I must do in whatever time remains. It’s a foolish hope, yet I can think of no other.” I faced him squarely. “And it’s far too dangerous to ask anyone else to join me.”

  Hallia’s somber face lightened. Eremon, for his part, regarded me gravely.

  “One of the few things I know about my grandfather’s battle with Valdearg, ages ago, is that he tr
iumphed only with the help of an object of great power. A pendant—full of magic—known as the Galator.”

  Both pairs of brown eyes stared at me.

  “For a time I myself wore it around my neck. Yet I learned very little of its secrets.” My shoulders started to droop as I realized that, without my own powers, the Galator’s magic might be useless to me. And yet . . . there was, at least, a chance. I tried to stand taller. “I must get it back somehow! If I can, it just might defeat the dragon once again.”

  “Where is it now?” queried Eremon.

  I bit my lip. “With the hag Domnu—also called Dark Fate. She lives at the farthest reaches of the Haunted Marsh.”

  Hallia inhaled sharply through her nose. “Then you had best . . . devise another plan. You cannot possibly walk all the way there and back in just six and a half days.”

  I winced at her words. “You’re right. It would be difficult enough even if I could run like a deer.”

  Eremon threw back his head. “But you can.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, he turned and started running across the grass, his feet moving effortlessly. He loped faster and faster, until his legs became a blur of motion. He leaned forward, his broad back nearly horizontal, his arms almost touching the ground. The muscles of his neck tightened as his chin thrust forward. Then, to my astonishment, his arms transformed into legs, pounding over the turf. His tunic melted away, replaced by fur, while his feet and hands became hooves. From his head sprouted a great rack of antlers, five points on each side.

  He swung around, flexing his powerful haunches as he bounded back over the field. In an instant he stood before us again, every bit a stag.

  14: EREMON’S GIFT

  Astonished, I gazed into the deep brown eyes of the stag. “So it was you who saved me.”

  Eremon’s antlered head dipped. “It was,” he declared, his voice even richer than before. “My sister and I only wished to come to your aid, as you had come to ours.”