The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  Morghiad turned the dagger once in his hand, and took it to his eyes.

  First one: fire in his head, but not as bad as acid pain. Then the second. Blood. Hot and liquid on his skin. But it was done. He ruled again now. He was the king.

  He rolled off the bed and stood, feeling for his clothes. He found some, dressed himself and fumbled his way to the doors.

  The king stumbled into the hallway, his state drawing gasps of horror from the guards. Blood dripped down his face, and his eyes were... missing. His body looked strong, but his right arm stopped at the elbow. Then again, he was alive. “My lord?” Koviere moved toward the younger man to support him. “Is Artemi still in there? Is she alright?”

  Morghiad made a peculiar growling

  noise. “That’s not Artemi. “ He took a ragged breath before saying more, “She’s harmless now. Put her in a cell. I’ll think on her punishment.”

  Koviere frowned and shook his head. “Sire, it’s her. I’m sure of it. She just killed Mirel. And her eyes-”

  The king shouted him down, “That is not her! She must have killed Artemi then. Did you see it happen? Did you see which one was killed? The body? She’s dangerous, Koviere. Very dangerous. She found out what Artemi means to us; tried to use her face. Lock her away.”

  Koviere watched his king stagger down the hallway with one of the guards acting as support, and stepped into the royal chambers. They were a rather disgusting mess, but he

  strode quickly through it and toward the bed. It was streaked with blood, and the red-haired woman lay in the middle of it.

  He bent down to inspect her more closely, but could not see any flaw in her disguise. It was her, surely? The care she had shown for the dead men had been nothing like the disregard Mirel had so frequently demonstrated for so many. And she had hugged Koviere with true recognition. Did Morghiad suppose that she had tapped into Artemi’s memories? Could other vanha-sielu do that? Her chest rose and fell with her sleeping breaths. She looked quiet and calm, innocent. And why would she have removed all the bars from Morghiad’s prison?

  Beodrin came stumbling in at that point, his hair lank and his body drained. “What

  happened to her?”

  “Morghiad says she’s still Mirel. Do you believe it?”

  The captain frowned in confusion. “There’s still a grade thirteen or fourteen or whatever-she-is alive. And where there was a twelve, there isn’t any more. I’m told Artemi was something stronger than a twelve.”

  “Morghiad’s wrong then.”

  Beodrin raised his eyebrows. “Either Mirel has found a way to manipulate whatI see, or she’s left him confused.”

  Koviere brushed a stray piece of firegold hair from her face. “I think he quenched her.”

  The captain reached across to touch her skin and nodded.

  “Let’s take her to the cells to be safe

  then. Wielder or no, I don’t want an angry one of these going after Morghiad in his current state,” Koviere said as he scooped her small body into his arms.

  He’d carried her before, of course, when she’d died... and when she’d been injured defending Gialdin... and when they’d known each other before. So long ago. And she always felt so light.

  Rainwater drizzled down the black walls of the carved tunnels beneath the castle, but there was no light to show it. Artemi’s skin was damp from the cold air, and she could see nothing of her new accommodations. When first she had awoken, she had feared herself finally and decisively dead; never to be reborn. But several minutes of fumbling around her cell had revealed its bars and walls and rotting straw. It had taken some time for her to reconstruct the events that had led to her current imprisonment, and to work out how she had been quenched. But now her chest ached where Morghiad had thrust the dagger into her, and her stomach twisted when she thought of the glazed, impassive look that’d been in his eyes. She groped about to find the dagger for a third time, searching for its comfort, but it had

  been removed from her. All of her weapons were gone.

  She slept for a time - how long she couldn’t have guessed, until she was alerted by a light moving in the distance. Artemi sat up to watch it as the yellow flame bobbed and bounced down the tunnel toward her, growing more orange and blinding. It caused shadows to dance round her dungeon, revealing the prison’s small size with their limited steps. But the surrounding hallway was vast and lengthy cavernous. This was not an ordinary keep within the castle; this was something special. The figure approaching was male, sworded, tall and broad-shouldered. Artemi held her breath, hoping it was Morghiad. But the darkened figure soon resolved as it stopped before her prison.

  “Silar!” Artemi clung to the condensation-slicked bars as she leapt forward.

  He was thin, she noticed, thinner than the king had been. He stepped sideways to place his torch in the wall-holder.

  “Where is this?” she asked him.

  He stepped forward with a sigh, then, and hugged her through the bars. “It is you,” he whispered with a squeeze.

  Artemi clutched at him tightly and buried her head in his chest, or the parts of it not obscured by the cold metal of her gaol. His clothing smelled stale and old, but she didn’t care. She had missed him almost as much as her beloved king.

  He moved back to examine her, moving some of the wild hair from her face.

  “Why amI here, Silar?”

  In the weak light she could see him pull his mouth tight. “We all suffered at her hand Morghiad the worst. His thoughts are... chaotic. He thinks you are her.”

  Artemi nodded slowly. Why else would he have stabbed her, but in a bid for escape? It meant part of him still wanted to survive. That was good. No part ofNe’alin’s mind had sought life following his treatment. “I have to stay – in case she comes back. I have to be here for the next time.”

  “Fine. But I can get you out of here now. We’ll have to hide you somewhere until he becomes less... uneasy.” Silar withdrew a key from his pocket.

  “No.” Artemi stayed his hand. “I should stay close. Then I’m here if I’m needed.

  And Morghiad needs to be able to trust his closest friends. Perhaps in time, if I stay, he’ll trust me.”

  Silar’s eyes bulged. “You can’t stay here! What sort of general would I be if I let my queen rot in this place?” He withdrew his keyed hand from her grip and moved it toward the lock.

  “No.” She stopped him again. “I’m nobody’s bloody queen. I never was. He has to learn that he can trust us. Besides, if I wanted to escape I could do it on my own in moments.”

  Silar’s jaw clenched, and his eyes became distant as he explored his peculiar talent. “Ugh. I can’t see anything anymore. It’s all so... clouded.”

  “In all my years on this earth, I’ve

  never met someone who can do what you do,” she grinned. Well, except perhaps one man, but that was different.

  “Likewise.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Staying down here?”

  Artemi eyed her surroundings again. “Precisely where is here?”

  “The escape tunnel. Entrance’s below the main courtyard. The exit caved in a few hundred years ago, I believe. But it’s several miles that way.” He nodded into the darkness.

  Of course, she remembered seeing the plans for it shortly before her encounter with Hegard. Few people would come looking for her here, and any visitors would be obvious.

  Her trip to the library reminded her, “Dorlunh.”

  Silar gave out a long sigh. “Ah yes. He tried to fight her. Who’d have thought that of a librarian?”

  A weak smile touched her lips. “He was the weakest of us, but he was still an excellent fighter. When our training – when it finished, we all went our separate ways to find our places in the world. He dedicated his life to reading, looking at prophesies and that sort of thing. He always liked to locate himself around...” Artemi’s sentence drifted as her thoughts came together. “He chose to stay near people he tho
ught related to his research, the sort of people he could write histories about. Silar, he’ll almost certainly have found something about this place and its future. It may help you if you know about it.”

  “You want me to go into that den of

  his? Did you ever notice quite how much stuff there was in it?”

  Artemi chewed her lip. “I can help translate some of it. But with your ability, you would be the perfect person to look at the prophesy books. You could say which ones were utter rubbish and which were not. You could work out exactly what it was he was looking for.”

  “I hate reading books. They’re always so bloody predictable!” He made a face. “I suppose I could try reading some of that stuff. Prophecy might be interesting.” Silar regarded the key as he spoke to her. “If you change your mind about staying here... Wait, you can break your own way out?”

  Artemi laughed softly. “There’s a weak spot in that bar over there.” He didn’t need to

  know that she could heal her own quenching within a few days. Though, he’d probably have foreseen it if he’d thought hard enough. “But I’ll stay here while I’m supposed to. Morghiad will come around eventually. I’m sure of it.”

  “I hope so, my queen,” he said. “And you were always our queen.” He grinned at Artemi’s hiss of disapproval. “And your Sunidaran friends are still here. They’re anxious after you... and Morghiad. They keep asking to see him. Should I let them?”

  “They were Hedinar’s sworn men.”

  “His

  father’s?”

  “Yes.” Artemi took a long breath. Morghiad had his father’s looks, alright. And no one needed to know about her slight infatuation with Hedinar. “Send them to see me if you can. And they should be allowed to see

  him. They’re owed that much, at least.”

  Silar frowned oddly. “Morghiad’s not... He’s ah... Aside from being a little fragile, he... When you found him, how were his eyes?”

  Cold. “What? A little distant, maybe. Why?”

  “He cut them out. At first we thought Mirel had done it, but he started mumbling all this nonsense about pretty, acid things and how he couldn’t allow himselfto see them.”

  An ice-edged chill ran through Artemi’s body then. Mirel had some very nasty retribution coming her way when she returned. “Fine. The Sunidarans don’t need to see him until he’s better-recovered. But I would speak to them if that’s possible.”

  Silar nodded, looking down at her. “It’ll be done. When did you last eat?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.” She had a great many questions she wanted to ask him.

  He smiled thinly, clearly still scarred by his recent treatment. “Time is short. I should go. But I’ll have some food sent down to you.”

  “One more thing, Si. How did she convince him to marry her?”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  She shook her head.

  “Artemi, she burned away half our army. Four-thousand soldiers, razed to nothing.” His voice cracked. “No one could stop her. It was Morghiad’s bargain to prevent her from killing more.”

  “Four th-?” She sank to the floor. It was no wonder they had stared at her with such fear and contempt. Four-thousand men.

  Four thousand of her brothers. Murdered.

  “And Kahriss Eryth?”

  “Dead too. The Hirrahans won’t be too happy when they hear about that, and that the wedding was a lie. And now we are too weak to defend ourselves.”

  “You still have me,” she whispered. For what little she was worth. All those men. “If you need me.”

  Silar nodded, reached through the bars to touch her hand and then turned to leave. His blond hair shone yellow in the fading torch light, and Artemi was left alone in the dark once more.

  She wept for some time over the dead men, bitter that death was so much more final for them. And she wept for Morghiad’s eyes. But sleep came to her at length, warm and

  sympathetic in its black embrace.

  When she next awoke, she began work on restoring her power. It was a difficult thing to achieve without the help of another wielder, but The Daisain had made her do it no fewer than thirty times in a single life. So much quenching in such a short time - so much pain she had undergone. Mirel had survived the very same trials in the life before she had turned rogue. Sometimes Artemi wondered if she hadn’t been the one to lose her mind, and if Mirel was the only one who’d produced a sensible response.

  Artemi sighed, closed her eyes against the intense blackness and sank into deep meditation. In her mind she saw a great swirl of colours and light. Distantly the fires of The Blazes burned, wrenched far away from her by

  her former lover, but immediately in front of them lay something she called the caldera. It was there, in every direction she looked: a vast crater that she would have to cross, a crater full of searing and blistering heat. Artemi made herselfmaterial in her mind’s eye. She felt the sharp, volcanic stone beneath her feet and the dry air in her lungs. The place smelled foul with its towers of sulphur and scattered human remains. Usually she saw her own bodies in this place, dressed in the clothes of their era and gazing up at the sky blankly, but this time they were all Morghiad, and every one of them was eyeless.

  She stumbled through the cutting rocks and over the putrefying carcasses, clawing her way through the hard heat and down to the edge of the caldera. Smoke rose everywhere

  from tiny holes in the ground, and yellowed shards of stone jutted out every few yards. Beyond, at the top lip of the crater, shone the brilliant blue light of the fires she so desperately desired. Numerous times, she had attempted to walk around the edge of the caldera to reach the other side, but it never worked. The journey would be infinite, the fires receding continuously as she drew closer to them. The centre of the crater had to be crossed. Taking a deep breath, Artemi launched herself down the face of the sliding rock slip. Her feet twisted and skidded through the angular debris, occasionally brushing against the soft flesh of the kings’ bodies she passed. The temperature of the ground turned from scorching to corrosive, and at times she was sure she could smell her own flesh charring. The heat of the

  centre was close now, and she could see the soft orange light of molten stone ahead.

  Artemi slowed her pace to build her strength before she stepped into the lava. It was going to hurt as much as quenching, but she would survive it. She knew that she had before. She took a deep, ragged breath of the acrid air, lifted her left foot and dipped her toe into it. As her foot went into the soft, liquid inferno, she screa

  Tem?

  Artemi’s meditation was broken, and she hurtled back into blackness. Her breaths came heavily and rapidly: panicked.

  “Temi? Are you... ?”

  She snapped open her eyes, surprised by the light of five bright torches.

  “Sweet Achellon!” Burrus exclaimed,

  “You are alive.”

  “I am.” She felt rather disappointed to have been disturbed at such a key moment, but the journey could be re-trodden, the pain reexperienced.

  Always ones for courtesy, the nine Sunidarans knelt to seat themselves at her level.

  “Shade and peace for Fhirin,” she chanted.

  “Shade and peace,” Leo replied. “Business first: we paid off your wagon drivers. And General Forllan gave us these to pass on to you.” He gave her a pile of battered-looking books with a gangly hand. The top one was written in Old Hirrahan, the others in a very old form of Ignarinian. An empty notebook and canal pen were hidden beneath one of the covers.

  “Thank you,” she said as she moved her eyes to the sweet-smelling food in Arrian’s hands.

  The dark-haired man grinned broadly at her. “Can’t say I approve of you being down here. But here we sit, feeding you like the wild animal you are.” He pushed the honeyed bread and cheese through the bars, which she greedily tore into.

  “How’ve you been treated?” she said between mouthfuls. “Well, I hope?”


  Arrian nodded. “With politeness and good lodgings, but these Calidellians are just as secretive as the stories. Few people will talk to us about anything of note.”

  “They are a people in mourning,” Artemi whispered. Four-thousand soldiers. Massacred. For what? “Have you heard

  anything about the king?”

  Softly spoken Jegard grimaced in the low light. “Mostly that he’s gone insane. He’s not fit to show himselfin public, I know that much.”

  “He needs to, and soon if his subjects are to have their faith restored,” Artemi said.

  Arrian sighed. “There’s not much faith can be placed in a man if he’s ranting and babbling with no eyes.”

  So they’d heard about that, which probably meant the whole city knew about his voluntary excision. So much for Calidellian secrecy. Artemi’s mind rapidly turned to the matter of restoring the situation. “We have to fix him. And fast. You men can help somehow, I am sure of it.” But how? “Arrian, you knew Hed the longest of any of us...” And he was the most sensitive when it came to dealing with delicate people. “I’ll ask Silar to introduce you to Morghiad. Talk to him about his father. Reassure him. Remind him of his father’s strength and expectations. Do what you can.”

  The sub-lieutenant frowned at the instruction, but did not protest.