by Jordan Rivet
Table of Contents
Start
Contents
Dedication
Map of the Continent
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Night of Flame
Steel and Fire Book 5
Jordan Rivet
Copyright © 2017 by Jordan Rivet
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.
Contact the author at [email protected]
For updates and discounts on new releases, join Jordan Rivet’s mailing list.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design
Edited by Red Adept Editing
Book Layout & Design ©2013 - BookDesignTemplates.com
Map by Jordan Rivet
Night of Flame, Steel and Fire Book 5/ Jordan Rivet – First Edition, May 2017
Contents
1. The Tower
2. Attack
3. Flood
4. Escape
5. The Rock
6. Vertigon
7. Darkwood
8. The Princess and the Commander
9. Fork Town
10. Warnings
11. Berg Doban
12. The Desolate Coast
13. Mirror Wells
14. The Fight
15. The Forest
16. Cindral Folk
17. Stronghold
18. The Woods
19. Negotiations
20. The Waterfall
21. Night of Flame
22. The Vent
23. Brach Town
24. Flight
25. Fort Brach
26. Square Peak Caverns
27. Return
28. Advance
29. Power
30. The March
31. The Peaks
32. Mav
33. The Ruminors
34. The Fissure
35. The Dragons
36. The Mountain
37. The Army
38. Encampment
39. Breakthrough
40. Justice
41. Last Stand
42. Dawn
43. Return to Vertigon
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedicated to
formidable girls
everywhere
1.
The Tower
DARA teetered on the balcony rail, arms outstretched, bare toes clinging to the smooth marble. The rising sun shone harshly over the silver waters of Pendark far beneath her. The stone was cool under her feet, but that wouldn’t last. It was the first day of summer, and the heat had already grown oppressive in the southern city.
Dara edged slowly along the railing, breathing slowly, fighting the pull of vertigo. The drop to her left seemed to go on for miles, all the way to the foot of the tallest tower in Pendark. To her right, a fall onto the balcony would sting her pride more than her body. She didn’t intend to fall.
Advance. Retreat. Advance. She breathed steadily, picking up speed. Advance, retreat, advance, lunge. She recovered to her guard stance carefully lest she lose her balance and plummet to the rocks below.
A silvery glimmer rippled in one corner of the city, then another, drawing her attention away from her footwork to the teeming delta below.
Focus, Dara. It’s nothing. Breathe. Advance, advance, advance.
“What are you doing?”
Dara jolted in surprise, and her back foot slipped off the railing. Her heart stuttered as she fought to regain her balance.
“Dara!”
Rapid footsteps sounded on the balcony. She recovered her footing and twisted around to sit on the marble railing, settling down just as Siv reached her. His face was as white as a summer pear.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“I’m training.”
“Burning Firelord, Dara. Do you expect to fight your father on the edge of a cliff?”
“It’s for balance,” Dara said calmly.
“For bal—if you fell—”
“Siv. Look.” Dara held up the rope she’d tied around her waist to secure her to the railing. “Perfectly safe. Berg used to have me do this on the roof of the school.”
Some of the tension went out of Siv’s shoulders. “I always knew Berg was nuttier than a drunken crundlebird.”
Dara grinned. As she dropped the rope, a gleam of silver caught her eye again. She studied the city stretching out beneath the King’s Tower. Must have been the sun on a canal. Everything looked calm—or as calm as it ever got in the turbulent city.
“Shouldn’t you be practicing your Fire and Watermight tricks?” Siv said, leaning on the balcony where she sat, their faces even. “What’s with the footwork?”
“I needed a break. Latch is a tough coach. He thinks I should be able to pick up a lifetime of Soolen Watermight combat knowledge in three days.”
“If even you say he’s tough, I wouldn’t want to come within a mile of one of his training sessions,” Siv said.
Dara glanced at the double doors leading into the tower from the balcony. A few shapes were visible through the windows, standing around an ornate table. “The twenty-four-hour war council isn’t much better.”
Siv chuckled. “You mean you don’t like listening to the King of Pendark describe his captains and their various affairs in lurid and exhaustive detail and then waffle back and forth about whether he can spare them for our campaign against your father? Latch drops in now and again to growl at us to hurry up whenever he needs a break from you. It’s positively thrilling.”
Dara rolled her eyes. The King of Pendark was providing invaluable help, but it was taking a long time to make every decision. That was what happened when you had representatives from three different lands that hadn’t always been allies trying to plan a military expedition, however small and nimble their force was supposed to be. Dara was growing anxious. Accordi
ng to the most recent reports, her father was marching toward Soole with an army of Fireworkers. They needed to leave soon if they were to intercept him. They had been waiting on another key player in their plan, but Dara was beginning to doubt whether Princess Selivia would ever convince her true dragon friend to fly this way. Dara couldn’t fight her father without the power the dragon could carry.
Siv touched her cheek, drawing her from her worries. “I can leave if you need to be alone with your five-hundred-foot drop for a while.”
Dara caught Siv’s arm to keep him from going. He must have come out here for a break too. He hated meetings, though he was getting better at diplomacy every day. She traced the scars on his skin. Dozens of newer cuts crisscrossed them from his recent encounter with Wyla, when he’d thrown himself at her again and again to save Dara’s life. He also had marks from the Steel Pentagon, where he’d won friends, gold, and allies, and from the various assassination attempts he had endured. Despite everything he had been through, he was still warm, still loving.
Dara’s own scars were less obvious. She sometimes wished she had clearer badges showing the battles she had fought. Maybe a few scars from her encounters with Fire and Watermight would help remind her that she was capable of fighting—and winning. So many of the plans being discussed in that never-ending war council relied on her to seal the victory. But she wasn’t sure she could do it, even if they did successfully get the true dragon to transport Watermight to the inevitable encounter with her father.
As she traced her fingers over his scars, Siv pressed closer. He brushed her hair back from her face and buried his nose in the side of her neck, breathing her in. She put her arms around him, heart beating faster, pulse racing as if her veins were full of Fire. The last thing she wanted to do right now was worry about the fight to come, especially with Siv moving his lips along her collarbone like that. Her bare toes curled as he kissed his way toward the base of her ear.
Suddenly Siv froze, his body going tense.
“Uh, Dara? I think we have a problem.”
Dara turned on the balcony to look at the city behind her. Siv’s gaze was rooted to a spot on the canal far below.
A flood of silver-white water was sweeping toward them from the south. It bubbled up along the main canal, growing steadily. Flickers of silver revealed a swell of power barreling along a waterway to the west. And another to the southeast. The power was coming at them from all sides, still far away but building rapidly.
“It’s an attack.” Dara pulled the knife from Siv’s belt and sliced through the rope she’d used to anchor herself to the balcony. The streams of Watermight were already joining where the canals linked, becoming fists of watery power that tossed aside any boats and barges that happened to be in their way. That much Watermight must have taken all night to build up. And it was heading directly for them. “We have to move.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice.”
Dara and Siv sprinted for the doors leading into the King’s Tower. They were too far up for her to stop the attack from here. That much Watermight could drown half the island. The King of Pendark lived high up in this tower to avoid Watermight attacks, but the sheer quantity of power rushing toward them was no normal assault.
The silver-haired King of Pendark, several of his captains, Vine Silltine, and Vex Rollendar all looked up in surprise as Dara charged through the double doors and into the dining chamber. Tann Ridon leapt up from where he’d been sprawled on a fine silk sofa in the corner.
“Watermight attack,” Dara said. “Sound the alarm, Rid.”
“Who—?”
“Just do it.”
Rid took off running, limbs windmilling. Dara paused at the table.
“We’ll need every Waterworker in the castle on the lower levels,” she said. “The wave is traveling fast.”
“Can you stop it?” the King of Pendark asked, his aged face going pale. He reached behind him, and a white-clad nymph-like serving girl emerged from the shadows to place a wine goblet in his hand. He drank deeply.
“Dara can do anything,” Siv said before she could respond. Dara winced. Sometimes his faith in her went a little too far. She’d need help.
“I’ll try,” she said. “Has anyone seen where Rumy—?”
Suddenly, the king made a strangled sound. Dara broke off and spun to face the balcony, fearing that the Watermight attack had reached them already. Nothing but a slice of blue sky was visible outside. When she looked back, the king was curling forward over the table, sweat coating his forehead.
“Sire!” gasped the youngest of the gathered Pendarkan captains. “Are you well?” The others exchanged wary glances and began backing into the shadows.
Purple veins showed through the king’s silver-white hair. His gnarled fingers clawed at the map on the table. A bloodred wine stain spread away from the goblet he’d dropped on it.
The captain, a young man with an unruly shock of dark hair, hovered at his king’s side, unsure how to help him. Siv moved around the table on his other side.
“Don’t touch the goblet,” Vex hissed. “Could be salt adder oil on the rim.”
Siv froze, his fingers an inch from the offending cup, and instead moved to help the frantic Pendarkan captain lower the king to the floor. His breath was already slowing to an ugly gurgle. Dara and Vex turned as one to seek out the white-clad servant who had handed the goblet to the king. The woman had already disappeared, along with the other captains who had been part of the council mere seconds ago. Outside, the Watermight attack would be getting closer.
“Treason!” the youngest captain shouted from his position beside the king, who was now seizing violently. “Treachery! Come back, you gutter-feeding traitors!”
“Something tells me we’ve outstayed our welcome,” Vine said, voice tremulous.
“Agreed,” Siv said. “We have to get out of Pendark at once. The timing is no coincidence.” He leaned forward to put a hand on the distressed captain’s shoulder, offering what comfort he could as the man tried to shake life back into his fallen monarch. “Dara, we may need to fight our way out.”
“I’m on it.”
Dara was halfway across the chamber before she realized she had left her boots on the balcony after removing them to get a better grip on the marble railing. Too late to go back now. Every second counted. Where was Rumy? She’d be ten times more powerful against the Watermight with some Fire in her system.
The door on the opposite side of the chamber opened as she reached it, and Latch Brach appeared, looking every bit as tense as she felt.
“You saw?” he said.
“Yes. Bad?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Let’s get down there then.”
Latch stepped out of Dara’s way, holding the door for her, then followed her down the stairwell through the center of the tower, neither of them sparing a second glance for the morbid gathering around the fallen Pendarkan king. Latch appeared ready to fight, but from the looks of the Watermight attack sweeping toward them, it might not matter. They were in deep trouble.
2.
Attack
SIV’S boots skidded on stone as he ran down the narrow stairwell. He had paused long enough to make sure the King of Pendark was as dead as he looked. The young captain, whose name was Lian, had been kneeling on the floor beside the body, looking as if he’d been run over by a terrerack bull. So much for their grand new alliance.
Adrenaline thundered through Siv’s veins, and warning bells clanged around him. They may only have one chance to escape the city now. Judging by the torrent of Watermight approaching the tower, whoever had orchestrated the king’s poisoning didn’t intend for anyone to walk free. Siv had a pretty good idea who was responsible.
“It’s Khrillin,” Latch said over the drumming of their footsteps when Siv caught up with his friends.
“Figured as much,” Siv said. “Can we hold him off?”
Latch grimaced. “The king’s Waterworkers have been alerted, b
ut I doubt they’ll stand with us when they learn their ruler has fallen.”
“What does the Waterlord want?” Dara asked.
“Khrillin has been the most powerful man in Pendark for almost a week,” Siv said. “Guess he couldn’t resist making it official.”
Siv wished his father’s old friend had waited until he and Dara were safely out of the city to make his bid for the throne. But Khrillin knew about Dara’s incredible power. It wasn’t a coincidence that he set his plans in motion before they departed.
Uniformed guards ran by them on the stairs as they descended toward ground level, their boots adding to the cacophony. The stairwell, the only way to get to the top of the tower, was square, unlike the spiral staircases in the castle in Vertigon. They had to run back and forth, turning at right angles every twenty steps or so. It felt as if it was taking four times as long as it should to get to the bottom. The Watermight attack must be almost to them by now.
Damn you, Khrillin. Couldn’t you have waited until tomorrow afternoon to send in your poisoner?
He spared a thought for the old king, who had been as eager as Siv to restore peace to the continent. His sincerity wasn’t enough in the face of the ambitions of magic wielders. Was there any chance Siv could stop the violence they wrought?
“Sire!” a voice called from behind him. “Please, wait for me, King Siv!”
Siv slowed, and the young captain who had witnessed the king’s death caught up to him. His dark hair stood on end, and tears coated his cheeks.
“Sire,” Captain Lian said, not bothering to scrub away the evidence of his distress. “I wish to come with you. My men and I will give you the help our king promised.”
“We’re riding at once,” Siv said. “I don’t know if there’s time to—”
“You can count on my soldiers,” Captain Lian said. “I swear it.”
“You don’t have to help us,” Siv said. “Now that the king is—”
“I won’t serve his murderer,” Captain Lian hissed, chest heaving. “His final wish was to help you in your quest. Please let us follow you.”
