The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  and their homes had found no new owners in the years afterward. Standing before them, Artemi could see little more of significance about these dwellings than the great, dark mouths that formed the empty windows. Twisted cobwebs built by long-dead spiders wavered softly at their edges, and the ancient timbers creaked and grunted from within. She had to admit that this was not the most appealing of adventures. Artemi raised her eyes to the roofs, and then to the outer wall of Fate’s beyond. It would only be a short clamber through the decaying buildings, a hop into the

  rafters and a leap from the stone castellations. She longed for the warmth of her bed.

  “I am not going in there.” Ulena’s voice was defiant in spite of her visible shivers.

  “Ghosts aren’t real, and even if they were, why would they bother hanging around here?” If Artemi had the chance to haunt a place, she would much rather do so in a luxurious palace. Or maybe in Morghiad’s room, just to annoy him. That thought put a smile on her face. “Come on! It’s getting cold already!” And it was. The chill desert air gave its heat up so very

  easily without the sun there to constantly hassle it.

  “What about eisiels?”

  “No such things!”

  Artemi bounded towards the walls and locked her fingers into several of the gaps within the mortar. The doors to the yellow houses had been sealed with layers of rotwood and wire, held together by an overzealous spray of nails. A conventional entry would not be possible here. She scrabbled up the wall as fast as she was able, poking her toes into any hold they could find and reaching high with her hands. At length, she arrived at the

  lowest of the windows and crawled into its dark aperture.

  The scene that greeted her was of crumbling, fractured furniture amidst scatters of tiles that had dropped from the walls to greet the dark floorboards below. And those floorboards looked anything but secure. Artemi thought she could see the room below through numerous gaps and areas of collapse, although even that was a guess. The floor was black, and so were the voids beyond; telling where one began and the other ended was going to be tricky.

  A scraping sound from behind alerted her to the presence of Ulena.

  “Temi... I really don’t think...”

  “Do you have the guts to be a warrior or not?”

  Ulena kept quiet rather than offer a reply. Artemi was hardly confident about this mission, but she wasn’t going to let her fears show now. Anything was better than this cold! She put one foot forward, tested it with her weight, then the other and the first again. In a matter of moments she had made it to the hallway and could see the stairs that led to the floor above. A soft, dust-filled breeze moved past her. There was a barely discernible whining sound that followed it, and Ulena heard it too.

  “Ghosts,” she whispered.

  Not ghosts. It had to be something else. An old door on rusted hinges, or draughts of air blowing through holes in the structure, perhaps. But not ghosts.

  Artemi made her way carefully toward the stairs which bowed visibly in the middle. “Stay as close to the wall as you can. The wood’ll be stronger there.” She had no idea if that was true, even if it seemed like a sensible thing to say. Her feet made their way forward once more, and soon she was standing upon the beam that supported

  the next landing. There was a peculiar scent here of old rags and dirt and something else she did not recognise.

  “Release me.”

  Artemi turned to Ulena, whose shadowed face appeared to have formed a mask of horror. Neither she nor Artemi had spoken those words. At that moment there was a soft but definite squeak, and the boards beneath Ulena’s feet gave way. She didn’t have time to scream or gasp, instead grappling wildly at whatever pieces of joinery she could to save herself. She did, but only managed to grip onto a single timber with one hand; the rest of

  her was left dangling in the indiscernible blackness. Her wide, white eyes locked onto Artemi’s.

  Artemi did not hesitate and dived toward her friend. She clasped Ulena’s wrist, hauling on it as hard as she could, but her efforts seemed to have no effect. Was she caught on something? Again and again she tried to pull Ulena out of the hole in the stairs, but nothing seemed to work. Her arms ached painfully with every haul. She simply was not strong enough.

  “You’ll have to let go.”

  “No.”

  “You have to.”

  The sound of another whisper from the room beyond blew through the air around them, prompting Ulena to scream and release her hold on the floorboard. She dropped with little more sound into the darkness below, and there came no audible indication of her landing.

  “Ulena?” Artemi’s voice had dropped to something between a rasp and a hiss. She looked briefly to the room that ought to contain the source of the mystery voice. Would it be better to investigate that first? But what if Ulena was hurt? She decided that she would attend to her friend before

  venturing farther into this place.

  “I don’t want to die in here.”

  Artemi paused. Those certainly were not Ulena’s words. It sounded like an adult - a woman. “Who are you?”

  There was no reply. After a moment spent scrutinising the shadows for any sort of movement, she turned her eyes back to the stairs. Blazes! She couldn’t see anything of them now! Not for the first time, she deeply wished that she was able to wield her own power, even if it was just to make a tiny, little flame. That’s all she wanted: a small piece of fire to make

  light. Surely that was not a greedy thing to wish for? She clenched her eyes shut and tried to reach for the power that she knew was hidden somewhere inside her. It just was not fair that the older boys could rummage around in her head and take it out like a tool from a box. It was her tool!

  In any event, her efforts were in vain. It was like trying to hammer through a wall made of so many layers of stone that the existence of anything on the other side became questionable. She opened her eyes to the darkness once more, and began to feel her way down the stairs. The unidentified voice

  seemed to be quiet for the moment, which was something of a relief.

  Artemi reached the bottom of the second set of stairs, but still no Ulena was apparent. There were plenty of gaps in these boards too, which meant that a falling body could have passed right through to several floors below. “Ulena?”

  Still no reply. How deep could this house go? To a cellar? Was there something else below that? “Ulen-?” A shape moved to her right, breaking up the obscurity with a darker sort of grey.

  It grabbed Artemi by the arm, talon-like fingers digging into her

  sleeve. She gasped in horror, kicked at her assailant with both feet and wrestled her arm free of the creature’s grasp. It stepped into a dim shaft of starlight as it came after her again, and the sight of it was more horrific than she could possibly have imagined. Artemi had never seen anything like it before. Its eyes were milky white spheres, its skin charred and covered in some sort of black oil. Its teeth were... oh blazes, its teeth! It was trying to say something, she realised, but she hardly wished to remain and find out what that was.

  Artemi ran with all the strength

  that she could draw into her legs, pelting up the broken stairs and launching through the splintered hallways beyond. The noises that came from behind her were deafening: sounds of walls being punched through, tiles smashing as they fell, floorboards giving way and the thunk of feet that were far heavier than hers. She was too afraid to call for help, and knew too well that no one would have heard her cries anyway.

  She made it to the top of another set of stairs and promptly collided with another body.

  “This way!” It was Ulena. How

  had she made it up...?

  Ulena took Artemi’s hand to drag her into another room and an area of utter obscurity. The sound of thundering and crashing still echoed around them, but it was coming from much lower down in the building now. “He must have fallen through one of the floors.”

 
“Shh,” Ulena hissed. “Get inside the wall. He won’t be able to fit.” Her voice sounded surprisingly steady, but the shake in her grip gave away her fear. Artemi did not think any less of her for it, as her own skin had grown icy cold and her lungs felt too stiff to

  breathe with. She obeyed Ulena’s instruction, clambering into the cavity formed by the tiled façade of the room’s innards and the stone shell of the house itself. The air was fresher in there, cleaned by the breeze that seemed to funnel down the narrow gap from the open skies above. Somewhere up there would be the roof, and their escape to safety. She began to shuffle upward against the rough masonry. Their progress was slow and tiring, but it took them away from the increasingly rabid screeches of the creature below them. When they reached the roof, Artemi could still hear it clattering about, tearing at the wood and thumping at the walls inside the house. She did not want to linger there for a moment longer than she had to.

  Together they raced over the crumbling stone tiles and up to the outer wall of Fate’s School. It was considerably taller than they were, and its surface was too smooth to scale.

  “You’ll have to get on my shoulders.”

  “But then you will be stuck here.”

  “Well, you’ll have to get me a rope.” Artemi did not particularly want to make that sacrifice, but she knew

  that good warriors always put their compatriots first. Ulena was a far better student anyway. She was not naturally as good a fighter as Artemi, but she did behave and pay attention in her lessons. “Are you going to go or not?” She kicked at the wall while her friend appeared to deliberate. “Ulena!”

  “Alright, alright.”

  It rapidly became apparent that Ulena was far heavier than Artemi had anticipated, and the business of hefting her up at the stony face was a rather painful one. After her feet had finished gouging holes in Artemi’s shoulders, the girl disappeared beyond the

  castellations to find the rope. Artemi was trapped and alone again.

  The stars above had grown impossibly bright within the sunless skies, and looking directly at them forced her to squint. She could still hear noises from within the building below, though they seemed reassuringly distant now.

  There was only one thing she had ever heard described that looked remotely like what they had seen, but she had been convinced it was a creature of myth. Yet that thing had looked too convincing to be a man in costume. Those teeth... How could

  that be real? How could it live? How could it have come to be? And why was it here, of all places? As she processed these questions in her mind, something else became apparent: the voice she had heard could not have come from the monster, and that meant someone else had been in there. Were they trapped?

  Artemi considered going back into the house to look for them, but decided against it. Master Rollow often called her overeager to stride into a fight, but she was quite sure that this fight was not one she could hope to win alone. She was not that stupid.

  Morghiad probably was, but not her. Oh... he would pay for all the trouble she had been put through today!

  “Temi!” Ulena’s head popped out over the wall above her, and a ragged length of rope dropped down. “Glad you’re still alive!”

  Glad indeed. Artemi hopped onto the rope, and it was not long before they were back in the relative safety of Fate’s School of Warriors. Whatever practice that had gone on earlier had since dispersed, and now the sprawling yard was filled only by dark yellow sand and the green light of the low-slung lamps. Lining this yard

  were tall, orange buildings with slits for windows and wind-worn walls. A few hints of illumination shone from within them, but it appeared that most of the tutors and cadets were asleep. The sight of the compound gave Artemi some comfort in spite of the telling off she knew she was about to receive. It was a scuffed and eroded set of buildings, but it was tidy, guarded, and home.

  “Time to go to Gilkore.”

  Ulena shook her head. “He won’t twitch a cheek about the... the thing we saw – only set us a punishment. We should go to Zandrin.

  He’s much bet-”

  “Two little wrens out of their cage at once! Well, who would believe it? And I could have sworn I saw one tethered by its captor earlier.”

  The two girls turned simultaneously, and found themselves standing in the shadow of Fate’s owner and master, Captain Gilkore. His hooked nose bore a new injury that matched one upon his cheek. They looked like claw marks or scratches, both drawn in the same direction. Why hadn’t they healed? Perhaps he had gotten into a fight with his pet crow, or a child with no understanding of

  discipline. Otherwise his countenance appeared to be as hardened and bluff as ever, with hair unusually short for a Sunidaran. Most never cut their hair, but he was experienced enough in battle and aged enough to have earned the honour to shave it close. “Captain.” The two of them bowed swiftly. “Captain-” Artemi needed to ensure he knew just how frightened she had been. “There’s something – I think it’s an eisiel – in the houses over there – the abandoned ones. We both saw it. It was burned and... and it was covered in this stuff...” Artemi recalled how it had

  grasped at her arm. She held out her wrist, and there it was: a smear of strange, black liquid left by the monster.

  Gilkore tilted his head only slightly to look at the evidence. He guffawed and rapidly pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Now, my sweet birds...” He commenced scrubbing the liquid from Artemi’s arm. “...How old are you both? I forget now. Seven? Eight?”

  “Nine, captain,” they said in near unison.

  “Nine!” He made one of his stone-like smiles. “Hah! Old enough to

  move out and have houses of your own! But still such ingenuity and creativity of the mind! Don’t concern yourselves with this monster, children. Once you have gained enough years to join an army, then you’ll meet your real monsters.” He finished his cleaning of Artemi’s wrist and pocketed the now-grubby handkerchief. “Is there anything else?”

  “It was real!” Ulena’s voice carried more than a little desperation. “It’s still there. It could kill someone!”

  Gilkore folded his arms and his smile took on a new quality. It was not a nice smile. “Eisiels are deadly.

  They’re fast. Two little, wingless chicks with beaks so big they can barely hold themselves upright can’t hope to escape from one. You are alive. It’s not a damned eisiel, now, is it?”

  “It fell through the floor.”

  He shook his head, pulled a red leaf cigar from one of his pockets and started to laugh. “Wrens!” With that he wandered over to the lamp fuse, kept close to a flame-keeper, and used it to light his cigar. “Here,” he said as he sucked heavily on the burning leaves, “Are you going to get yourselves to bed or am I going to have to give you a

  follocking disciplinary?”

  “But there was someone else in there.”

  “Really?” His tone was one of utter disinterest.

  Artemi nodded. “I think it was a woman’s voice. She was asking to be set free.”

  He frowned with some severity, but the fear it had once inspired was nothing compared to the horror that the eisiel’s face conjured. “That’s enough of this. No more adventures outside of the school for you; not for another year.”

  “But captain-”

  “Nor you, Juleenia.”

  “It’s Ule-”

  “BE QUIET!” His voice boomed across the courtyard. “You are cadets here, and your purpose is to listen and obey. I don’t care what shit you think you’ve seen, or whether there’s an army of flying lizards at the gates, or a gathering of Hirrahans with torches and pitchforks out there too. What I say is true, is true. That’s it. If you mention this to anyone else, I will have both of you run out of this school so fast you won’t know if your legs are still attached or a pair of stumps with wheels in them. Get out of my sight.”

  Artemi dared not say any more, and was rapidly realising that it would be a waste of her time, anyway. She
tugged gently at Ulena’s sleeve, and they tiptoed off toward their quarters without looking back at their angry master.

  “We have to tell someone,” Ulena whispered once they were out of earshot. “As soon as it works out how to get to the roof, it’ll be trapped in here with us.”

  “I think you’re right. Zandrin?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Master Zandrin was already out of his room with sword in hand by the

  time they arrived. His shirt had not been tucked into his belt, his trousers still hung awkwardly over his boots, and he was talking to someone Artemi did not recognise. She stayed out of sight with Ulena while his visitor remained; there would be no benefit in being seen by someone who could report them to Gilkore.

  “...Are you sure?” he asked his companion.

  “Yes. Very.”

  “How in blazes did they get away? I know one of them’s – you know – but surely ...? Anyway, we’d better get going.”