The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  Oh, bloody Achellon! What had he started? “Ah, glad you’re alright. I’d

  better get back to it.” He turned and made ready to slay some more eisiels, but it was too late. She would not leave his blasted side for the rest of the bloody, damned battle.

  Artemi’s face met with the mud once more. She tried to push herself up, but there was something wrong with her left arm. It refused to do

  anything she instructed it to do. The whole limb stung furiously. Somehow Mirel had captured one of her blades, and was now making surprisingly good work of using it against her. Burn the woman! If it weren’t for her impossible army of eisiels, this would have been so much easier!

  Making use of her legs, Artemi thrust herself onto her good side and took what little time she had to examine her surroundings. She could now see between the blackened feet of the advancing eisiels, and there, lying on the earth, was Tallyn Hunter. His eyes were closed; he was not moving.

  Although the originating wound had since healed, a wide track of dried blood covered one side of his face. She could not worry about him any longer, however, as Mirel was recovering from the last blast Artemi had dealt her.

  The queen vaulted back onto her feet, but almost over balanced when she realised something was very amiss. No, not amiss... missing. She looked to her left side, and to where her arm should have been. Damn her! A string of curses left her lips, but she knew that anger was futile. On plenty of occasions the Daisain had casually lopped one of her limbs off and insisted that she learn to fight without it. All of the Kusurus had endured that sort of training, and had done so repeatedly.

  She turned her gale sword in her hand and surveyed the hordes for Mirel. She would pay.

  “Oh dear.” Mirel’s voice. “That’s not a good look.”

  Artemi followed her ears to its source, but was amused at what she saw before her. Mirel had not fared much better in the fight. What passed for her clothing was all but torn from her body, several fingers on her right hand were missing, and a large gash down her side oozed with the poison of her own creations. She must have fallen into a puddle of the stuff. That or one of them had decided she was no longer good enough to be their mistress.

  It was time to cage the monster. The queen unleashed a hard wave of white inferno at her enemy, and Mirel responded with her own fires of ice. The air where the two powers met crackled and boomed explosively, sending tremors right through the ground beneath them. But Artemi held firm, and readied her blade to make another strike.

  A child’s voice reached her ears.

  “M-” It sounded very familiar.

  She tried to search for it through the thinning crowds of eisiels, but all she could see were cascading sparks of flame that spun out from their meeting with Mirel’s forms. Was this a trick?

  “Help!” His voice again. Kalad’s voice. There was no way that Mirel could emulate that. Not without meeting him first, and that was impossible, surely?

  Kahr Tallyn tore forth into the mess of fighting bodies, and took a rapid swipe of his own at the eisiel that was headed toward him. Its burned head fell from his blade with a sickening flump, and bounced away down the slope. He looked around for his little brother, and saw no sign of him. This was not good at all. He ran deeper into the mess, cutting and slashing as much as he was able, causing black poison to rain down from his blade. Give no quarter and never hesitate, his father had told him. How

  that advice would have helped, he could not be sure, for there was no time to even consider hesitating.

  He pushed through to the other side of the burned bodies, and there he caught sight of his mother. But there was something wrong with her... she had... oh, fire and light of Achellon – she had lost her arm! Just as he made the realisation, a bright flash of power sprang up between her and another woman. Her opponent could only have been Mirel. Medea was close-by, striking at every eisiel that came within a few feet of her, protecting the queen. But Tallyn watched in horror as Mirel’s ice began to consume his mother’s fires. And then, in the briefest of flares, his mother was defeated. She and his sister lay motionless upon the ground. No. Their streams had vanished from the great swirl of Blaze Energy. Slowly, steadily, Mirel turned her cold, blue eyes to look directly at him, and Tallyn decided to do something very dangerous. He sought out every weave of time that ran through the air, searched for every thread of causality that turned around every being there. And once he had located the ones he required, he reached inside his pocket for the ghar

  ten that Medea had copied from the one in the vault for him. He pulled at the burning power that ran through it until it swelled into his body, and then he took hold of the strings of time. He hauled at them as hard as he was able, feeling the sweat break out upon his forehead and every sinew of his body strain with the effort. But gradually those threads turned, and the flare of light became visible once more. The rain rose into the sky, while the eisiels continued to move forward as if they were unaffected, but that was incidental. He continued to pull at time itself until the streams of his mother

  and sister popped back into existence. Alive!

  Kahr Tallyn hauled the threads a little farther, enough to give them the best chance, and then he gave Mirel a little kick of his own. Just a touch of Blaze: enough to send her off balance. He smiled. It was done.

  Taking every scrap of burning energy she could muster, the queen used nothing more than sheer force to crush Mirel’s weapon. Her body was alight. It was fire once more. Slowly, but steadily, Ice-Kill’s frosts started to recede. “Kal?” Artemi called. “Kal!”

  Something other than Blaze coursed into her veins as she worked. The flames were purer, clearer and almost undetectable. And they were a thousand times more powerful. Mirel’s blue fires were crushed to nothing and, once the cooler airs returned, it became apparent that Artemi’s foe was lying on the ground unconscious. This was it!

  “It worked.”

  Artemi turned to the voice behind her. Her daughter stood there, looking ragged and exhausted. There was no time for remonstrations, however. Mirel needed to be dealt with first. She raced to the assassin’s body, and immediately placed her remaining hand at her forehead. It burned with the freezing force of another wielder, but below it was the connection that Artemi sought. “Vestuna! Romarr! Kh-” The wiry, dark-haired and sunwizened Kusuru dropped from the skies before she finished his name. “Help me with this,” she ordered.

  Both of his browned hands covered hers, and she felt him manipulating Mirel’s vast well of Blaze through her. It was the only way to permanently quench a wielder, and the only way to render the mad woman safe. Artemi could see the wall that was growing beneath her fingers, and the complexity that Khasha was applying in its construction. The woman would never break free of it, and no kanaala or wielder would be able to aid her, even if they wished to.

  At last, the job was done, and the queen collapsed back into the mud. The clouds shed their entire volume in

  water upon them all. She wound several bonds of Blaze around their captive’s body, but she was too exhausted to do much more. Her missing arm ached and itched horribly. But it was done. They had done it. The last few eisiels were stumbling about, falling beneath the swords of her army. “Medea!”

  The sound of footsteps splashing toward her meant that her daughter had listened.

  “I told you to stay in the bloody cave!” She turned to look at the girl, or rather woman, who now knelt beside her.

  Worry filled her green eyes. “Kalad ran out before we could stop him. He’s here somewhere... but I can’t...”

  Artemi blinked. She had heard him. She rose as quickly as she was able, and scanned the scene around her. Blackened bodies lay everywhere, and so did far too many who wore the starred, green uniform. The sound of an eisiel scream drew them to a fighting pair some distance away. One of them was her eldest son, Tallyn. The creature fell at his feet, dead.

  “Kalad!” the queen called.

  “I’m h-”

&nbs
p; Her attention was drawn away to the left. The boy’s sentence had been cut short by something, and Artemi only just turned in time to catch sight of what it was. An oily, blackened form had thrust its dagger firmly into her son’s heart, and was pausing to enjoy its kill.

  A wolf was at the creature’s neck before Artemi could reach for her knives, and the animal snarled and growled as he tore open the dead flesh. Danner. The eisiel fell, but not before taking Kalad to the floor with it. As she ran towards him in panic, she noticed something odd. Kalad’s body was

  turning as black as his assailant’s, the poison seeming to engulf his skin in a wave of shining oil. He was turning into one of them.

  “No, no, no!” She landed clumsily at his side and turned his small body over. “Kal, please...” Every part of him: his hair, skin and clothing shone with the jet of a burned, dead and poison-filled creature. Artemi yanked the dagger from her son’s chest, tears now forging their paths through the mud on her cheeks.

  Kalad only whimpered softly, but Artemi did not know what to say to comfort him. His eyes flickered open,

  as black as the night sky, and then closed. He looked as if he had been painted with oil.

  “Kal?” She squeezed one of his arms and pulled him closer, while her loyal wolf nuzzled at her side. Her son did not move, but something else started happening. The black sheen of pinh began to drain from his skin, and the clothes he wore slowly recovered their blue hue. His cheeks regained their colour, and he looked... healthy. His eyes opened again. Dark brown.

  Artemi rapidly pulled back his coat to inspect the wound. There was none to be seen. How was that

  possible?

  “Now that is fascinating.” Khasha had crouched next to them, and his narrow eyes scanned her son closely.

  “Are you alright, Kal?”

  Her son nodded and grinned mischievously, as if it had all been a joke. His eyes brightened as he noticed Danner beside her.

  A hacking, rasped laugh from behind stole their attention. “Don’t you know what that freak is? The Lawkeepers told me what you’d made: a little baby eisiel of your very own! Ironic, isn’t it?” Mirel started cackling

  wildly, and the wolf set his own growls to the sound.

  The queen looked back at Kalad. He was perfect. There was not a chance he could be one of those things. Not with that face, and not with that smile. No.

  “If he was infected with the blood of an eisiel - with pinh, while you were carrying him...” Silar’s voice this time. “... then perhaps it is poss-”

  She had heard enough. Artemi stood and helped her son to his feet beside her. She took his hand in hers and marched back to the bound, defeated Ice-Kill. “What business have

  you with the Law-keepers?”

  Mirel sneered. “Your fault. They called me there because of your failure and-” She craned her neck to look at Medea. “-And your selfishness.”

  “Why? What have you to offer them?”

  “Oh, I gave them what they wanted. You see, Artemi... sister, we share more than just skill. I am of the pure fires, like you... just as your mother was... and her father.”

  Artemi sighed. Mirel had learned much, but she was clearly fabricating the entire scenario, or more insane than usual. “If that were true then you’d be

  dead. Pure fires have no siblings, and they’re extinguished once they’ve raised their single offspring. I am the last one.”

  The captive shook her head. “No. There are three. Your grandfather was part of an accident, an accident of triplets. But he was born first, and my sister and I were cast aside, left to rot in the Darkworld. We came before you, Temi dearest.”

  That was not possible. Mirel had no singular sparkle, no apparent glow of The Crux. But, then again, did Artemi? “Evidently the Law-keepers have no more need of you.”

  “I gave them what they wanted, and cut my way out of that damned place!”

  “You have a child?”

  Mirel paused only briefly, the introspection on her face a small flash of emotion. “A son. Left the brat with them. My duty and destiny are here. You are faulty, inappropriate for the task. I am the one who must save this world.”

  The irony of those words was not lost upon Artemi at all. “You should be with your family.”

  “Family and sentimentality make you WEAK! Look at you, Artemi!

  Look at how close you came to failure, at what you always do to those you care about. You destroy them, whether you want to or not. Real fighters do not have families.”

  She was not right. Of course not. The truth was quite clearly the opposite. And Artemi knew that much of the blame lay firmly at Mirel’s feet.

  “And now I know which ones are most special to you.” Mirel’s smile widened with amusement as she gazed at Kalad, but her blue eyes switched rapidly to someone behind the queen. “I’ve seen one like you before,” she hissed, “eyes that knew the world of

  tomorrow before the world of today was complete. But your queen here can tell you what happened to him. Sometimes a man’s genius can be his own downfall, can it not?”

  Silar did not deign to respond, and instead it was left to Artemi to shut the blasted woman up. A gag of Blaze was quite easily stuffed into her mouth. “We need to make her a special prison, and that means going back to the gateway.”

  Medea came to stand next to her. “Not necessary. I can help you here, as before.”

  Was that how she had wielded

  Crux power during the fight? Had Medea somehow done that through her? Or freezing the eisiels? Where had Medea been then? Blazes, but there was far more emerging about her family than she could deal with at once! “Then let us try it.”

  Her daughter was about to reach for her left hand, but immediately thought better of it and gently moved Kalad to take the right. “I’m very slow if I try on my own, but with you I thought it might be faster. I was right.”

  Artemi had never even attempted to wield the most basic fires

  without the aid of the light from the

  cave. The thought of it terrified her. But all too soon those strange, heatless fires were coursing through her veins and racing to form stone from the air about Mirel’s body. The stuff glowed brilliant white as it hardened, and it arced in impossibly beautiful sprays of hard crystal before settling to its final shape. It was a handsome prison, alright, but also a very small one. Its captive would barely have space to stand, and less to walk more than two steps.

  Khasha whistled in appreciation once they’d finished. “Do you think those Law-keeper types will want to

  free her?”

  The queen tried to keep herself from laughing. “They’ve never attempted to save me from pain or suffering before, and they have what they want. Mirel is best kept here.”

  “Hey, what did I miss?” The Hunter stumbled out from a messy corner of the battlefield, scraping the mud and blood from his face. “And where’s the city gone?”

  Thank Blazes he was alive! She turned to address the rest of the battle’s survivors, but halted before she’d opened her mouth.

  Before her, covered in pinh and

  wearing his long, lank and pale hair loose over his shoulders, was the man she had long dreamed of torturing. She rushed at him without a second thought, and poured every ounce of her remaining strength into pushing him to the ground. Her fingers wrapped tightly around his neck, but he did not fight back. “You...”

  He gasped, but the sentence he squeezed out was as eloquent as the books he read, “Whatever you think of me, Artemi, my allegiances are with the good forces in this world. I have never thought you were anything but goo-”

  Artemi slammed Dorlunh’s head

  against the ground. “What you did was not good!”

  He coughed and spluttered his response, “It was in the interests of your family as well as everyone else’s, but I was misled.”

  She wanted to kill him; she had to kill him! For Morghiad. For her fatherless children. Artemi used a foot to brace again
st his neck while she reached for one of his knives. The other Kusurus kept their positions and watched. None of them would dare interrupt her now. “Misled?!”

  “I will help you in the next life,” he whispered, “and the one after

  that...”

  His words only served to fan the flames of her ire. She pressed the blade hard into his neck. Perhaps a nice, slow, sawing action would be most appropriate here.

  “I’m sorry, Artemi. I shouldn’t have... I was wrong.”

  Wrong? Wrong? Not only had her husband died for nothing, but now it was a stupid mistake? “That is not something you should admit to, worm.”

  “I was misled... the information that was fed to me... We’re all being manipulated. We always have been. All of us. Even you!”

  She watched his grey eyes... so pale that they matched the winter skies perfectly. They appeared to be speaking the truth. They looked sorrowful, regretful even. Artemi took a long, drawn and ragged breath. Her fatigue was beginning to bite through her skin to her bones. So tired. So long without warmth in her heart. Manipulated? Who by? She no longer cared. “You deserve worse than torture from me, Dorlunh. But if I imprisoned you here my family would kill you, or I would kill you, and I will not be responsible for the death of your next mother. Enough children have already