The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  exploded. That look of anger had been enough to strike fear into the most hardened of warriors. All but Artemi, of course. Orwin shook the image from his mind. “If you require my aid or that of my compatriots, you know where to find us.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask to see him? After all, it tends to be the usual reason for exploiting do-koor.”

  “I have heard enough to be convinced and satisfied.”

  “I could be the worst father imaginable.”

  “I’ve met many bad men in my years patrolling Calidell, and I do not

  believe you are one of them.” There was a simple test to be employed with such men that Orwin had always found very reliable. Would he leave one of his sisters alone with this man? If the answer was no, then clearly Orwin had detected something of concern. He was confident, however, that Calyrish could be trusted. “Thank you for your time, my lord.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I have said all that needs to be said.”

  “Calidellians and their damn secrecy!”

  “I assure you, there are no

  secrets.” With that, Orwin made a shallow bow, wheeled around and ambled calmly toward the manor’s exit. The guards were conspicuously absent when he located his horse at one of the hitching posts, and his weapons had been left in a neat pile to one side. Peculiar people, Hirrahans. Who could say what effect they would have upon the young and impressionable Morghiad? No, Orwin thought, his former king was too much of a grumpy, immovable stone to be ‘impressed’ upon. Not even The Daisain had managed it.

  Silar huddled deeper into his chair. Time was almost up, and there was nothing he could do about it. He closed his eyes and thought of happier days, when he had first seen the sunshine break out across the walls of Gialdin City, or the moment when Artemi had awoken from her duel at The Spring Games, and the amusement it had provided both he and Morghiad.

  And he recalled that morning when Talia had awoken in his arms with mischief in her eyes. Talia. If there was one regret he would carry to the grave, it would be his involvement with that girl. As for the other things he had done...

  You will understand what is necessary.

  When he opened his eyes again the sun was still hovering luridly above the horizon, and the sounds of the citizens in the streets below heralded that the markets had not yet closed. People went on about their business as they always did, as they always would,

  whether he was there to see it or not. Morghiad and Artemi were out there also, alive and breathing once more. Silar was quite sure that he could not yet predict exactly where they had been reborn, but every time he thought of them his gaze was drawn to the west. Perhaps a small part of him knew, or perhaps he was imagining it. He would not hear of confirmation or negation until the search teams returned, and he already knew he would not be around to receive them. Some paths of fate were simply unavoidable; Silar knew that better than anyone.

  The door began to open. The

  time had come. Lord General Forllan of The Army of Calidell stood at his desk and inhaled deeply. “I know why you’ve come. I will go quietly. Everything is in order, and you will find lists of contacts, codes and locations of my eyes and ears. It’s ready for you, Hunter.”

  “Me?” The Calbeni, who’d entered the offices at the king’s side, looked uncharacteristically perplexed.

  How irritating. Silar had played this conversation through his mind almost a dozen times, and already he had begun to tire of hearing the same set of responses. “Yes, our king intends that you take my place. Is that not right, sire?”

  King Tallyn nodded solemnly.

  The Hunter raised his eyebrows after a moment, and dug his thumbs into the scarf at his waist. “Well, we can’t have a general who sends his queen to her death, now can we?”

  Former queen. She had given up that title some time ago. Did that make his choice any less criminal? Silar sighed and looked to the documents he had prepared. There was no use in challenging the words or defending his actions. Nothing would change. Besides, there were other matters to

  consider. “As a final piece of advice, I would recommend that you keep her squad as intact as possible. Put Orwin in charge when he returns. They’ll get restless ifyou don’t.”

  “I’m not sure I trust advice from you, murderer!” The Hunter spat.

  “It is up to you. I must find other uses for myself.” He strode toward the king with what little confidence he could muster, before placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. Had so many years passed since Artemi’s son had been an awkward teenager? The past felt as fresh as the future, sometimes. “I know it is hard to understand, and I am sorry there was no other way. If you ever need anything of me, write and I will come.”

  While the Hunter folded his arms and seethed, the king’s face only displayed hurt and disappointment. Not for the first time, he looked unsure, and that always produced worrying images in Silar’s mind. Tallyn said, “You’ve served my family well, but you cannot continue to govern here. You should have told me... or them. You should have given us a choice.”

  But, of course, that would have changed everything. No one else could see it in retrospect and there was no

  use in forming any sort of verbal defence. Pointless. Speaking was pointless, and most of the time it caused more problems than it solved! “Goodbye.” Silar made a small bow and exited the room in silence. It was the end, he realised, not just of his time there, but of the favourable esteem in which his family were held. The implications of his failure would weigh upon him for some time to come, and he had no doubt that any Forllans of the future would continue to curse his name through the next thirty centuries. A thousand more Seffes to despise him. Damn his bloody foresight! Burn

  it in the very hottest parts of The Blazes and fry the responsibilities it brought!

  Hot sand teased the surface of her face, and she could smell smoke upon the parched air. Something was burning... What was that horrible

  stench? She attempted to move a hand, but a sensation of resistance against her wrist told her that it had been tied. Not again! There could be no doubt that this was Renward’s work. It was always him. Ever since she had arrived at that blazed school he had seen to making her life a misery. He seemed to gain some sort of perverse joy out of it, though she was equally pleased to repay his actions in kind.

  Artemi attempted to lift her head.

  “Keep it there or the whole lot of you will go up in flames!”

  She remained still as her mind

  worked. He had found the fire ants. There could be no other explanation, and whatever he was doing was his latest work of retribution. She failed to remove the satisfaction from her voice. “Have your feet recovered yet?”

  “My feet are fine. Pity your hair won’t heal.”

  Artemi twisted her head rapidly, and the one eye that was not blinded by sand was able to see what he was doing. A burning wick darted between the farthest locks of her hair, causing the ends to fizzle and curl into blackened dust. The stink was unbearable. She wriggled against her

  restraints, but discovered that each of her limbs was tied to something. “You poisoned me!”

  “Only a bit. Stay still.”

  Another hiss marked the torching of yet more of her hair. “Morghiad!”

  “Don’t call me that! You’ll only make this worse for yourself!”

  Artemi forced out a laugh that was drenched with apparent confidence. His secret name had been quite an advantageous discovery in their warfare, and she had not hesitated in spreading it about the school once she had learned of its significance. It

  had been an accident, really. All of their tutors had called him Renward; that was how he had been introduced to the other children, though the manner in which the adults had frequently tripped over the name was always curious.

  A night-time adventure to the offices had revealed his records, and that his given appellate was something quite different. At first she had not understood why “Morghiad” shou
ld be consigned to secrecy, but the history lesson they had attended the next day had revealed the truth. She discovered that the old King of Calidell had borne

  that name, and that he had killed many a Hirrahan. Such a burden of shame for a boy to carry, and Renward had looked so very sheepish during that lesson. He must have done something terribly bad for his family to lumber him with the legacy and then dispatch him to Sunidara.

  But poison – that was new, and it meant that he was becoming more devious. Artemi resolved to check her food with greater care in future. Another waft of burned hair reached her nostrils, and she attempted to regain the calm that would stop her screaming with panic. She would not

  give him the satisfaction! “Stop it, Morghiad.”

  “No. You’re so proud of your fiery hair. You should be proud to have some real flames on your head!”

  Proud, yes. It had taken the best part of her lifetime to grow it as long as it had become. “If you don’t stop, I’ll put more fire ants in your boots next time! Maybe plains scorpions!”

  “If you even try, I’ll-” He broke off suddenly, and the sound that followed was of footsteps running away from her.

  “Morgh-?”

  A steadier set of steps made

  soft, near-silent impacts upon the sand. “No, little wren. Not Morghiad – Captain Gilkore.”

  Not good. The sound of clothes rustling and the rush of air about her ears meant that he had knelt by her side. The smell of old leather touched her nostrils. Gilkore was the master of the School of Fate’s Warriors, and his nature was as stony as his face.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  Artemi could not see the sky from her position, but she could feel the heat of the sun upon her back. Then again, it was almost always sunny in Sunidara. The only problematic

  feature of the daily weather was the wind, and at that moment, there was no hint of a breeze. “Yes, captain.”

  “Not like you to get yourself tied up like this. No good, little wren.”

  “No, captain. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed, and she could hear the sound of his stubble scraping against his roughened fingers as he rubbed at his chin. It meant he was considering her punishment.

  “Renward Calyrish poisoned me, captain.”

  “That’s Lord Renward Calyrish to you. Lord Renward Calyrish poisoned you. He may be a soil-nosed,

  slippery little rock rat, but he’s still got a title. We have good manners here, and we must observe them.”

  “Yes, Captain Gilkore.” Artemi remained as still as she was able. Wriggling in her bonds would undoubtedly have been taken by the captain as a sign of weakness.

  “Ah well, a little time out here in the sun will probably do you some good. You’re so pale, girl, one would almost think you were a foreigner to these lands!” His pronouncement was followed by the lifting of the cool shade he had temporarily provided for her left hand, and the sound of soft steps

  pacing away from her.

  Follocks! Worse curse words proceeded from the first, words she had learned at the foot of her father’s favourite bar table. “My daughter needs an education in all things!” he had exclaimed. And she had been educated in a great many subjects that most children would only have read about in histories: bombs, explosives, expletives, ales and chemicals. But it had all stopped when she had shaken hands with the man in white. Everything had stopped at that moment.

  A minute passed in which she

  listened for the presence of anyone living, but it seemed that only her mind’s ear would have borne witness to her foul mouth. Captain Gilkore was rather encouraging of her unsavoury language; the other tutors, however, were not as tolerant. Artemi squirmed at her bonds again. Knots! She hated knot lessons and rope twining! But Renward, oh, he loved that sort of thing just as much as he loved to create his own tangled schemes. He would soon learn that she was the better schemer, that the hair on this peasant was not made for burning! Yes, his punishment for this would be very

  special indeed!

  She wriggled again.

  “You won’t get out of these ones. You’re my property, remember? I own you.” Renward’s voice again. Or Morghiad’s. That name did seem to suit him much better. He had approached in utter silence, without even making the sand hiss beneath his footfalls.

  “If you don’t release me, you’ll get worse than ants next time.”

  “And you’ll get worse than this.”

  “And worse and worse... until one of us is dead.”

  “Until one of us is dead,” he

  echoed, and she could almost hear the grin spreading across his lips. “That’s not too long for you now...”

  Artemi was close to acknowledging that he might be correct, and when it became clear that he had departed once more, that acknowledgement loomed toward grim acceptance.

  After the heat of a Sunidaran summer day had passed, the evening brought with it a wake of cold air and utter darkness. Her skin, which had taken on the angry sting of sunburn where it was exposed, rapidly healed itself and turned calm once more.

  There was the brief sound of nightlarks and three hoots of the desert owl, but little in the way of the noises of artificial activity. She could not see much from her position because of the rises of sand either side of her, but she was increasingly sure that she was somewhere on the edges of the wastes, two minutes’ walk north of the school. Gilkore must have known what Morghiad was up to in order to find her, or had seen her dearest enemy dragging her here. Sometimes Artemi wondered if the two of them were in a peculiar sort of collusion.

  “Temi?”

  Ulena!

  Thank The Blazes! Thank them to the skies above and the rocks below! The frantic scrabbling of fingers against her wrists meant that her friend was unravelling her ties without even stopping to ask how she had come into this situation. “It was Morghiad.”

  “I know that. Who else would do this?” With one hand freed, Ulena began work on the second. “What has happened to your hair? It’s all-”

  “He set fire to it.”

  “Oh.”

  With her arms finally liberated from their restraints, Artemi pushed

  herself up and onto her knees. It did feel good to bend them again! A short stretch was all that was required to free her of the aches in her muscles, and she waited patiently while Ulena untied her ankles.

  “You do know that, if you stop this ridiculous fighting, he will stop doing things like this to you.”

  “No. I will stop when he stops!”

  Ulena raised her eyebrows in apparent resignation. “Then you’re just as stupid as he is.”

  When she’d finished being untied, Artemi gave her most dependable friend a big, rough hug.

  The girl had a sort of potato-ish look about her, with narrow eyes, a round nose and rounder cheeks and a head that sprouted brown, twisted roots of hair. But she was always smiling, and those smiles were infinitely better than the sour pout of Renward’s ever-bitter mouth.

  “We need to get back to Fate’s. Gates close soon,” Ulena said, shaking off Artemi’s embraces.

  “If they haven’t already. Let’s go.” The two of them sprang up and over the small dunes, racing toward the green glow of the copper lamps beyond the walls. The lights from within were

  periodically smothered and revealed by unseen bodies that passed over and in front of them. It meant that some form of training was still going on. No doubt Artemi’s presence would be expected at such training, and no doubt one of the fighting masters would be conjuring up a wicked sort of punishment for her.

  Fate’s walls were taller than the highest reaches of a soak-wood tree and as yellow as the sands that heaped at their base. As the girls rounded the corner of the outer ramparts, the sound of clanging gates echoed across the dunes. They were too late, and there was only one other way in.

  They looked at each other, but as the realisation came to Ulena, her face filled with despair. “I am not going that way. I’d rath
er sleep out here.”

  “We’ll freeze to death.”

  “But that wall’s haunted. You’ve heard the stories. Better to freeze.”

  Artemi did not believe in ghosts. “Let’s go.”

  “No...” came the soft whine from Ulena, but her muted complaints were followed by the sound of a reluctant pair of shuffling feet.

  They had to make their way to the side of the compound that butted

  up against the houses of Hestavos, but those houses had been derelict for some time. From the limited attention she had paid to her history lessons, Artemi recalled that they had once been the houses of the old water merchants: not the richest members of society, but certainly rather well-off at one time. Since a series of wells had been sunk into the rocks beneath the sand, and a pipe laid around the city that was large enough to for a grown man to stand inside, those merchants had found themselves without employment or demand. They had left for other cities in which they could still ply their trade,