by C L Daniels
It occurs to me we catch the whiff of mage not two sunspans before they come. They have sensed my mage and made plans to march when she is half a day away. Is she so powerful? Or does the Citadel have means beyond with which to see? One thing is certain — they do not count on me.
“Stay steady.” My mage lays her hand along my spine.
A sunspan distant, the retinue divides. One group flanks left, the other right, a mage with each.
“They think to confuse us,” my mage explains. “Instead, they help our cause. The Adept is there.” She points to the band canting from the left. “I’ll focus on her. You have the others.”
I growl low to let her know I hear.
“‘Ware the mage. He’s not Adept, but that doesn’t mean his craft is weak. Deal with the warriors. I’ll deal with him. Unless,” she smiles a soldier’s grin, “you find a clear advantage.”
I stretch my claws. No craft is proof against them if a mage should step too near. Craft distracts, so advantage is quite possible to gain.
The Regists draw near. I touch my nose to my mage’s hand, granting her a permission she does not need. Reaching, she opens wide our soul-bond. Craft, wild with the godfire that burns beneath us, thrills through. The power plunges to my core. Braced though I am, it staggers still. I take her craft, embrace it, shape it, augment it, thrust it back ten-fold. The soul-bond reels with the force of it.
“By Multon’s Forge!” Gasping, my mage turns incredulous eyes upon me. “What did you do, Flame?” The words are not reprimand but praise. My heart echoes them in wild delight. My mage is pleased. I will not disappoint. Between godfire and Flame, my mage’s craft will blaze like lightning in the night, like a fire-caught forest burning bright.
She looses the first of the flames. Tiny watchfires spring up, dotting the barren Waste like blossoms on the steppes in spring. They flicker with anticipation. A thought, and the flames grow from watchfires to bonfires in a breathspace. Arcing out, converging, a wall of white limning the Waste to barricade us from the Regists. But it is not defense we seek.
The fire roar builds upon the Waste. To the right of us, something rends the sheeting pyre. For the space of ten paces flames fall, ripped through and batted down like a wake of grass behind my paws.
With a gesture, my mage repairs the breach. “It’s the windmage! I can’t hold the entire wall against his craft. He’ll likely force a path through.” My quick ears can barely hear my mage above the roar of flames. “The warriors will be first to cross, not the mage. Be ready!”
Hard it is to leave my mage’s side, but even such as she cannot be everywhere at once. Loping, I follow the fireline to where it was breached before. Hot wind tatters the tops of the flames, cleaves them in two. Ready they are to give way once more. Ready am I when they do.
I am crouched, tensed to spring, when the ground shudders hard beneath me. I ride the earth, rolling like the sea. When the ground stills, the flames before me part and Regist warriors scurry across the open Waste like shrews before a cat. Little do these shrews know another cat awaits.
Before they realize I am here two of them fall dead, second mouths torn from their tender throats. I brace to leap again when a blast of wind lifts me from my feet, slams me to the dirt. I roll to make myself less vulnerable. An unneeded precaution, I find, as the wind screams across the Regist band and they cower on the Waste. Craft undisciplined cannot distinguish predator from prey when this close we stand. And windcraft is not easily wielded when a single creature is the mark. Especially when the mage is not Adept.
Quickly the winds calm and the Regists rise. But I rise faster, and a third man slumps groundward, his head limp upon a broken neck. I turn for the next man, and the quarrel in his crossbow thrums against the strings. Beneath our feet the earth moves again. The man tries to catch balance as the bolt is loosed, and the shaft flies wide. I recover footing first, ensuring the fourth man will never fire again.
The windmage’s craft beats against my mage’s flames and they slip aside, opening a passage barely shoulder wide. The last two warriors retreat beyond the fire, singeing hair and clothes as they through that narrow passage fly. I try to follow but the flames fall into my face.
The fleeing warriors will regroup where my mage battles alone upon the Waste. Gathering myself, I run along the fireline. Ahead of me, flame and flying dust swirl, obstructing sight. The earth pitches yet again, sharp and sudden. I miss my footing, scrape wrists and knees along the ground. I struggle up, struggle to see, but the earth slips sideways one more time.
When the rumble of moving ground subsides, I gain my legs and hurry on. My mage’s craft beats within my soul. I know she lives, but I crave sight of her, to know that she is whole. From behind I come, squinting through smokeless fire and sulphured sky thick with dust. Five shapes lie on the trackless Waste. Char and ash. Regists once, now lifeless husks. One more to find. He hides behind the Mage Adept, protector no longer.
Or so I think till white flame glints from the steel he holds. A score of paces only from mage to mage. The mages thralled, intent upon their craft. The hunter intent upon his prey. But I, too, am hunter here. He sprints and lunges with his sword. A hammer blow, overhand to strike my mage’s neck. I sprint and lunge for him.
Too late.
In his dead hand the blade falls yet. Like a willing sacrifice my mage stands rooted, waiting. Enthralled in craft. With limbs that will not move and eyes that cannot see.
I twist, stretching out a desperate paw. My claws ring hollow on the fang-sharp steel that slashes at my mage’s neck. It pierces flesh and stains her skin with blood. A mortal wound if the hand dealing it could follow through. Mortal still for both of us if her concentration fails.
She gasps, and the flames around us start to fall.
I reach for her to share her pain, as her focus starts to fade.
And in that breath, the earthlord strikes.
The ground trembles, breaking open with a scream, spewing lime dust and chunks of sulphured crust across the Waste. Rocks rain down, pelting flesh and hide. A rift appears, long and narrow, cracking the earth between earthmage and firelord.
Pressures shift, and white steam rises from the rift like barrow wraiths. From somewhere beneath, I hear a slow bubbling. The earth shakes again, and the bubbling becomes a cauldron’s roar. Steam turns to rain as energies once pent release, pushing underground pools upward through the cleft. Waters geyser treetop high, poise like hawks before their stoop, then fountain down, no less hot than my mage’s flames.
Behind the earthlord, windmage and warriors appear. A foehn of wind gusts over flames and riven earth. The windmage is not Adept, his craft not strong. But it nuisances with gadfly zeal.
Beside me, my mage recovers some. The wind lifts steam-damp tresses from her face. Her eyes are bright. I see huntress in her yet. “Let’s get this over with.” Her voice is not strong, nor is it weak. Simply determined. Unafraid. The future nothing more than a path to now be trod.
I feel the soul-bond flare as she gathers to her what little power I possess. Flame-strength to battle earthcraft. But she is wound-weak, disadvantaged. She rides the bucking earth like a wearied horseman. Her flames falter.
But Flame will not. Frantic, I search a path to the mages, but the cloven ground between offers none. I look to my mage, but all for her is craft; she cannot help.
I want something to gnash, to rend. For the earth to open and swallow me. First, though, I will feel the earthlord between my claws and taste her mage-full blood within my jaws.
Like an untutored cubling, I flounder. Instinct alone do I have, but long have I trusted its guide. It bids me turn to the worldfire blazing below. Craft and power beyond imagining on which to feed.
Presumptuous, perhaps, to claim that godfire for our own, but there is no other choice. I reach, and touch the fire that birthed my mage’s craft. The shock of power knocks me from my feet. Power enough to fuel the world. Far too much for a hundred mages to share, much less a sing
le one to trap. And this not even the great well of Multon’s Forge from which the godfire springs and where the chained firehounds await release. One day this craft will rise and the world itself will fall in flame. But this is not that day. All I wish today is to claim a flicker of its glory for my mage.
Tentative, humble, like a supplicant before deity, I swallow pride — and reach again. A request, not a demand. A brush, not a touch. Power blazes through me, an inrush like a rain-swollen river. Raw and uncontrolled, it will burn through my mage till she is left a fire-cooked shell.
But I am Flame. My purpose to focus and to channel, refine and to control. I gift my mage with the godfire, feeding her a steady stream through the soul-bond that we share.
At first taste, she rallies. The surge of craft staggers the earthlord hard. In the wake of firecraft, sand melts like heated steel.
The windmage falls upon his knees, craft drained, relinquishing battle to the two magelords whose crafts are not yet spent.
Fire and quake rage across the Waste. But craft is more than that. The magelords’ battle carries beyond the Waste, twining like a giant serpent about flesh and thought and soul. Craft eats, consumes both its wielder and their prey. But what my mage may lose in battle I return to her from that bottomless well beneath.
The earthlord has no sustenance as this. No Flame to feed the earthcraft in her soul. Her end, inevitable, comes swift. A last desperate gasp of craft she breathes. Then the earth’s shudders still, and rocks no longer fly.
Arms outflung, the earthlord falls. Her hands scrabble at the crusted ground, a futile plea to renew her emptied soul. Surrender in that act.
The warriors with her fall back a step, their easy rout defeated. All left now is their retreat.
Taut the craft stretches in me yet, unwilling to be banked, not wanting to be calmed. Still, it is done and we have won. Only rest and healing lie ahead. But the craft within my mage rebels against that thought. Toward earthlord and windmage it reaches, hungry and unsated.
Defeat is not enough. The firegod, it seems, demands a sacrifice in turn. Craft craves more, and turns its power upon the mages on the Waste.
They scream.
Through the soul-bond I feel them die, even as their craft-drained flesh melts from their bones. Then the bones themselves turn ash and fall away.
Ah, but their sweet craft and sweeter souls stay on, lingering like dew upon the grass. My mage’s craft sups readily at these remains and the soul-bond expands with the spirits of the dead. I touch their death, an intimate delight. No other prey satisfies like this. Power, yes, from craft, but intoxication too. Life-force that is more than flesh, more than blood, I taste upon my tongue, inhale throughout my pores, quench within my soul. Hypnotic. I sway beneath its spell. Sink to the ground. Lulled.
The tenuous touch I have upon the craft below slips away. The firegod’s flame buries itself back into the world’s dark bowels. I care not, for my world now is dying craft. I fall deep into its throes. Until another presence joins in. A familiar comfort. A kindred soul. It breathes through the bond, like a whispered word. My mage.
My mage!
I jerk back, shake off the death shroud that enthralls like sleep. It is not mine to follow earthlord and windmage into the dark. Not today. Nor shall my mage, so long as I have breath to fight.
Snarling, I rise. I look and see the last of the warriors gone. Ash now, too, caught in the backlash of craft, their deaths unnoticed in the fray.
On her knees in the lime dust nearby I find my mage, a solitary figure gasping for strength, haloed in dying firelight. She stares out of sightless eyes. Twin black recesses, light-stealers and soul-swallowers, gazing into death. Not hers, though. Not yet.
The wooden shaft of a flame-caught crossbolt lying near her turns slowly to white ash. Like a wraith — form but substanceless. One touch and the shaft of glowing ash will crumble, lose form, and die. This is how my mage looks now — like ash holding its shape. Just one touch — the slightest brush of a whisker or the merest whisper of wind — can crumble her.
I will not let that happen. I call to her through the soul-bond. But what bait is there to counter the lure of dying craft? What bait to fire her spirit and hold her soul captive in this world?
No bait but Flame.
I call, and call again. I know the lure of death is strong, but my call is stronger still. This I hold as true as sulphured sky and the sharp tang of ozone that shrouds the lifeless Waste. As true as the keen-toothed mage-pain that rips through our collective soul. As true as the bloodstain wide upon my mage’s neck.
My mage’s hair, damp with fever-sweat, clings like strands of seaweed to her shoulders. Regret pangs sharp within her. I feel its dagger pierce our soul. To die is easy. To deny death … near impossible. Still she opens eyes as unfocused as a cubling’s first glimpse into the world. She blinks, and frightened focus resolves within them, the haunt of a cornered hare. Another blink, and hunted hare is hunter yet again. The intensity in her hunter eyes drills into my very soul, holds me crucified in their kindred stare.
“Why?” she asks, and the whispered word hangs like darkling night between us.
There are many things she could mean. But what she does mean she already knows the answer to. Within the soul-bond there are no lies.
Why do I not let her follow where earthlord and windmage lead? Why not let her follow where waning craft has gone?
But longing ache subsides at last, and the yearn to follow finally fades, like a fire-hot star in soft morning light.
Thrallment and trancement hold us no longer, tempting us with dying craft. Yet within the soul-bond I feel it still. That spark of soul stuff that is other-mage, nesting there like a falcon-winged traitor, ready to betray us yet.
For now, though, one truth thrums through the heart of Flame: mage and craft survive.
With no craft left to guard it, my mage will raze the Regist outpost, and we will free those trapped within the tortures of the Citadel.
Tomorrow.
Today, we heal.
=o=
Sea spray. The brine stings in my nostrils, lays heavy on my tongue.
My mage inhales deeply, pronounces it, “Brisk.” She smiles.
The air has the taste of uncleaned fish. My stomach growls. I follow my mage up a plank that leads to the deck of a ship.
A guard challenges us. I smell his fear, but he hides it well. His voice barely quavers. “This ship is a private vessel, not for hire,” he says. “Seek passage elsewhere.”
My mage’s grin spreads slow across her face. “I’m not a passenger. I’m crew.”
The guard laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. “Is that what the captain be calling his whores now?” His thumb jerks toward me. “And what be that?”
My muscles tense, but my mage’s raised hand stays me. She flicks a piece of tinder into her palm. The wood chip bursts into flame, falls between her and the guard. It burns on the wooden deck like a cold, bright star.
Scowling, the guard stamps it out. “And why would the captain be hiring the likes of you?”
“Apparently it isn’t your place to know or he would have already told you.”
“But it be my place to know who boards this ship, and till I see proof of contract —”
My mage flings a piece of paper at him. She is huntress here, controls his moves.
The guard catches it, looks at it, at her. His eyes are those of a cornered hart. Prey knows when it is trapped.
My mage shows her teeth in a tiny smile. “Advise the captain his firelord is here.”
=o=
The captain smells of shellfish and ambergris. Like my mage, he is hunter, leader. They meet on equal ground. Almost. My mage is protector, too, the captain not. He has need of her, which makes her stronger. He is first to nod, extend his hand. “Mara, welcome.”
She grips his wrist, returns his nod. “Maturro.”
“I’m pleased you joined us,” Maturro says. “The beryl stones we carry are
worth a lord’s ransom. Should the Regists discover our cargo —”
“It can go to thieves for all I care, so long as the beryl stays out of the coffers of the Twin-Born. The Regists will not pick a stone of it while I breathe.”
My mage’s voice is calm, but a she-wolf defending young has her same look. The captain understands. Not all hunters hunt alone. He smiles and claps his hands.
A crewman appears. Big, dark, easily lost in shadows. Fearless till seeing me.
“Show our guests to the starboard quarters next to mine,” Maturro tells him. “And see they are not disturbed.”
Few have ever disturbed my mage. None has disturbed her twice.
The crewman’s eyes meet mine. Eyes of the hunted. He dares not hold my stare. “Captain, what of that? Shouldn’t it be caged, or chained at least?”
My mage coils inside like a cobra set to strike. My upper lip curls back.
“It stays with the mage,” the captain says. “She will be responsible for it.”
“But captain —”
“It is part of our agreement!”
Anger — almost — overcomes the crewman’s fear. He hurries from the cabin, neck swiveling like a stampeded deer. Not wanting to turn his back on me, needing to see where he is going. My mage follows him. I follow my mage.
The crewman points us into quarters within the hull. It smells of brine and wood, fish and sweat. My nose crinkles. I settle on the floor, by the hammock slung on beams. It promises to be a long fortnight before we see shore again.
=o=
At night I dream. I remember: A cub nurses on the steppes, grows to weanling size. A herd of koldeer flees in the night. First kill. The drip of hot blood, taste of warm flesh. Solitary hunter preying in the moonlight.
The summons. My mage binds me to her lifeforce. Magery permeating my mind, my life, my soul. Firelord is she. Flame am I.
Flame I become. At one with my mage, bound to her will, bound to her power.
