by C L Daniels
I sleep. Content. My mage snores softly at my side.
=o=
Shouts.
A whiff of fear.
I raise my head, prick my ears.
My mage is awake. I feel the flicker of her presence like a warm fire within me. Home fire. Comfort fire.
But she is concerned. I feel that, too.
“Flame?” Her voice is low, soft. Like when we hunt.
I growl, low, to let her know I hear.
My ears swivel, my nostrils flare.
There are more than our fourteen crew on this ship now. Many more.
My snarl fills the cabin, moves my mage. She grabs a sword. Together we go above.
The shouts are louder above, the fear smell stronger. And over all, like an autumn slaughter, the sweet, sweet smell of blood.
Fog fills the night.
My front paw pauses at the quarterdeck, my mage a stair step behind. Like a mouse impaled, my heart chills.
“Multon avenge me!” The oath is thick upon my mage’s lips.
Regists. A swarm pulling themselves over the railing, scattering over the deck. Two-score strong. And more. My mage knows what more.
Her loathing thrums through me like the drone of hummingbird wings.
A magelord.
The beryl stones’ value increases.
The ship shudders — hard.
We gain the deck. Over the rail, through the fog, the Regist ship looms. Heavy timbered, heavy masted. Battering pikes bristle about its hull.
Like rutting rams the two ships butt with each swell of the sea.
Our ship is smaller, our crew fewer. And the magelord that stands at the prow of the Regist vessel is a watermage, in control of the sea around him. But even wet wood burns when my mage wills it.
She reaches inside herself, touches the craft birthed from Multon’s Forge.
A part of me lies there within as well. I feel the power swell like a tsunami in the sea, like a fire in the forest.
My mage’s focus is inward, caught by the mage trap of her making. My soul lies bared within her trap, my flesh stands poised upon the deck.
A Regist sword flashes perilous close.
I leap — and hear the satisfying snap of bone, taste the hot blood upon my tongue.
One Regist down, but we are overwhelmed.
My mage protects the cargo, the crew protects my mage. Little there is the crew can do against such odds.
I crouch, spring, feel flesh shred within my claws. Once. Twice. Screams fill the darkling night.
Another screams nearby. From the corner of my eye I see his hair flare bright. My mage’s craft awakes.
A second Regist lights the night.
Smell of melting flesh, crisping hair.
“Firemage!” The cry is hurled from throat to Regist throat.
Waves dash the rails, damp the deck. The watermage’s power rises.
The ship shudders again.
“We’re foundering!” There is terror in our captain’s cry.
From within her craft my mage reaches for me. I am her focus. Through me her power blazes.
I press against her, steadying her against the buffeting sea. Power ignites within me as my mage flings her craft into the vessel that threatens us.
The power enthralls her, but I am not mage. I can move yet. A swipe, a snarl, enough to keep the Regists at bay. Not enough to stave the slaughter of our crew. Not enough to stop the sinking of our ship.
Flames flicker about the masts of the Regist vessel. Skeletons of trees a century old, knowing well the witching sea lights and the lightning-sparked flames of the forest. Proud trunks burning like beacons on the breast of the ocean.
The watermage sees the danger.
Waves, heavy with sea salt, wash over the tortured trunks, seeking to soothe like a mother’s caress.
The fire eats from within. Intense. Quick. The masts turn from night black to ghost white in the blink of an eye. For a final moment the fire-cooked husks hold their shape. Then salt spray withers them, crumbles them. Three centuries of forest disintegrate as the deck beneath erupts in flame.
Screams tear like talons through the night. Waves like cats’ paws slap at the leaping flames. The sea leaves off abuse of us as the watermage turns attention to the funeral pyre of his vessel.
But my mage’s fire is not so easily doused, fueled by the ever-burning flames of the godfire that sparks at earth’s hot core.
The Regists on our over-tilting deck gather courage. Swords dart minnow fast in my face. But I am faster.
My mage spares a thought for a brace of attacking Regists.
I never wish to die as they.
I hear the splash of flesh in foam.
Seasoned sailors, caught between sea of flame and sea of salt. Unforgiving fire, unpredictable waves.
They jump.
The watermage hesitates. I see him, limned clearly on the prow. Black silhouette stark against the flames.
The Regist deck is pocked with great cavernous holes. Fire eaten. And burning yet.
The roiling sea stills. The remaining Regists plunge into becalmed waters. Catching up an empty crate for buoy, the watermage joins them.
Abandoned, the handful of Regists aboard our sinking vessel dive like seals across the rails. Our crew, from fourteen live, now numbers six.
Heavy with water, the hull dips low. Like a dying beast we list.
“The beryl!” Wounded, the captain drags himself along the sinking deck. “What now, firelord?”
But my mage hears not. Weary, she slumps beside me. Backlash pain from the magery threatens. I take a part, sharing all as I ever do. But she is mage and bears the brunt. To set a ship aflame, to slay — magery such as this demands she pay. The mage-pain is a fire kindled in the soul. A spark that quickly grows. Blood afire that courses through veins of ash. A claw-caught crow, leaking its life upon the ground, must feel as this.
There is no help, for mage or crew or ship.
We swamp.
=o=
My world is water. Above, below. Within.
Laboring lungs. Sodden skin. I open brine-soaked eyes upon a new dawn.
A beach. Gray rock washed clean. No sand. No sedge.
No life.
My mage!
Slivered paws and bruised ribs seek to keep me down. I rise. A cold wind cuts like jagged ice. Even the sea has no smell in such a gale.
I eye the strand. Six bodies lie on rock or bob close by. I hurry to the first, the second, the third of them. All dead.
My mage is number four. Beaten, battered, but alive.
I nudge her, gently, with my nose. Stir her to consciousness. She reaches up, weak, to touch me, then cries out. More than mage-pain holds her in its claws.
She is marked by angry bruises. Blood pools thick beneath them.
There is no shelter on this rock shore. No warmth from the ice-edged wind. I lie beside her, offering what I can. She clings to me. We sleep.
=o=
The wind still blows strong when I awake. My stomach growls. I have not hunted, have not fed. Five bodies lie along the strand.
I look and there are four. One is washed to sea. Precious flesh, now fodder for the deep. I stretch stiff limbs and drag the four high upon the rocks, well past tide mark. My one mistake has cost us two days’ food. Another I will not make.
My mage wakes on my return.
“Flame.” My name is breath upon her lips. Entreaty? Command? Or simple reassurance? “I lost our cargo.”
Guilt.
The captain is among my hoard of dead. He will neither care nor tell. And, at the bottom of the sea, the beryl is out of Regist grasp.
My mage will not want to think of that. Protector is she. But a watermage cannot be foreseen, let alone one who is magelord, too, such as she.
I rub my rasp of tongue once, lightly, across her cheek. I know no other comfort. She must come to understand this for herself. If she is to live.
She coughs. Her lungs rebel again
st the brine. There is a sickness that comes from that. With her, there is much to worry for. Perhaps if she feeds …
Two of the bodies are Regist. From them she will gather their strength. Men’s flesh rends easily. I lay a haunch before my mage. Raw, she will not eat it. But she is firemage to cook her own.
She looks with distaste at my offering. Does she object? It is Regist, not of her kind. She coughs again. Tries to raise her head. Is she too weak to eat?
I try to touch her through her magery, through the bond we share. The touch is tenuous, but she responds. The spark between us grows.
Pain!
Pain of the body. Pain of the soul.
Backlash pain where none should dwell. Backlash pain that should be healed.
If I feel so much, what more must my mage endure? She whimpers, low. So low I must prick my ears to hear. Her head drops. Her strength ebbs. Even unconscious, her pain resonates within me.
I lift my head and wish to be a wolf to howl my grief away. Raw wounds I know to lick or pack with mud. Fever can be cooled with water. With wounds that bleed inside, I have no skill. And for mage-pain, there is no balm but time.
I am Flame, no helpless babe, and yet help I need. For her.
Her skin is cold for all the magecraft that burns inside. My choice is to lie beside her, warm her with my heat. My duty is to search for help. I race away. Away from the water’s edge. Away from she who needs me.
The gray rock does not give way. Patches of lichen splotch it now and then — camouflage, sunlight and shadow. But rock remains. No sea birds’ nests, no turtles’ holes.
And all too soon the sea looms large again.
Like the beryl stones, my heart sinks. I turn, follow the short, ragged shore.
I am hardly winded when I see my mage again.
I lie beside her and wait for her to wake.
The trap is sprung and we are caught more surely than a springbok in a leopard’s jaws. My despair deepens.
=o=
My hunger grows. Four corpses, even in this chill wind, will spoil before the next new moon. I feed.
Three times my mage awakens. The third time she chews some liver black with blood. She gags on it, but it stays down.
I carry water in my mouth from a rain-caught pocket and dribble it on her tongue.
She breathes, she eats, she drinks. I wonder if she knows we’re dead.
=o=
The two bodies left grow rank. They will sicken us soon.
I fish the cold waters but they are barren so far as I can swim. I taste the lichen but there is nothing to sustain us.
On flesh and water my mage survives. The mage-pain at last abates. Gingerly, like a bird encouraging its fledgling young to fly, she calls upon her craft. She sears what meat remains. I tear it into strips and we lay it out on the cold, hard ground to cure. Three days’ worth. Four, if we ignore the pangs that nag like jackals in our bowels.
After that …
How long do you starve before death takes you? How long before sanity flees?
How long before you look upon your mage and think only of her lifeblood dripping sweet upon your tongue?
=o=
Swollen and full-bellied the moon hangs in the night sky like a bloated corpse. I remember: The moon is a crescent when my mage and I share the last bit of dried flesh. Tiny strips like lizards. Tough and tasteless.
We suck bones, more to fool the mind than trick the belly.
I sleep, and wake to dark thoughts. Dark dreams. My mage’s flesh between my claws, her soft throat within my jaws.
But she is my summoner. My companion. My mage. My friend.
Without her I am alone. No longer alive.
My mage’s eyes are on me. Does she know my dark desire? Does she dream such dreams as I? The flesh of Flame warming her belly, easing her pain?
She takes my head between her hands, stares deep into my soul. Unflinching gaze, unblinking eyes. Not a challenge to be answered but a communion to be shared.
My mage is wise beyond compare. She knows my thoughts, my lusts, my needs.
“Do what you must,” she says, “my Flame.”
She offers herself as sacrifice. My lamb.
The gnawing hunger in my belly urges me to slay. The hunter will obey. But I am more than hunter. More than mother. More than father. More than those before.
She offers me a freedom. A choice to live or die. But there is no choice.
I am her Flame.
She breathes into me what life I have.
There is nothing left but she and me. Firelord and Flame. And ever-growing hunger in between.
I can break her neck with a snap of my jaws. She can burn my brain to ash with a simple thought.
Yet we curl together like two old cats to sleep, a shelter from the bitter wind.
=o=
My mage dreams tomorrows. I only know today.
I go hungry to my grave. The taste of lichen on my lips. The smell of salt within my nose. The barrow cold like fingers on my flesh.
What makes her different, she and I, when we think so much alike?
I am weak. She is strong. Strength of spirit where I have none.
I take comfort in the hearthfire of her heart.
She is dying.
I die with her.
I hope we die together.
=o=
My mage stirs. She listens. Not with mage-deaf ears but with craft-tuned soul.
I recognize the sense. An undertow of strength in the current of her craft. An impossible sensation. Long sought, yet long denied.
We scramble to our legs. Stand weak and swaying on the shore. To our west comes salvation. A mage in the night.
The sea lanes must have brought her here.
My mage calls on craft long untapped. Fire erupts on the barren rock. My mage shapes it. Like a candleflame, tall and thin, reaching for the stars. A beacon burning bright.
The task, though, is overmuch for a starveling mage. My nose upon her cheek reminds her I am here. Grateful, she draws from me what strength she needs. I feel her power flow like a river through my soul.
The stranger mage draws near. Her presence like the charged tingle of an approaching storm.
I shudder.
What if she is Regist?
Without warning, the icy wind goes still. Only a windmage can calm a gale. My eyes gather moonlight, but I hear the slap of waves on wood before I see the ship draw near.
My mage’s firelight dies. Weary as a hunted hare she sags across my chest. I strain to see the shadowed bow that closes on the shore.
Before it runs aground it casts its anchor down. My heart leaps. The sharply painted marks upon its hull are not of Regist kind.
We are saved.
=o=
Wood deck, warm broth. Relief from the cold and draining wind. My head falls gently on my mage.
I sigh.
Now I, too, can dream. Not of the here now or the here then. But of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
I dream. Of Firelord and Flame.
Together.
=o=
If you enjoyed these fantasy stories by C.L. Daniels from Steel Magnolia Press, you might also enjoy the science fiction thriller, SECTOR C, by Phoenix Sullivan.
SECTOR C
S A M P L E
A near-future medical thriller ripped from today’s research and tomorrow’s headlines.
=o=
10,000 years ago a plague wiped out most of the world. It’s back. Contagion meets the science of Jurassic Park in this thriller for fans of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook.
=o=
A rise in stroke-like cases has CDC analyst Mike Shafer on alert. Patients in every demographic in the Great Plains area, from toddlers to healthy adults to the elderly, are succumbing to rapid deterioration — and death.
Veterinarian Donna Bailey, meanwhile, is dealing with an outbreak of her own. It looks like mad cow disease. But to be affecting so many species? Impossible.
Wha
tever it is, it’s spreading. Fast.
As state and federal agencies race to contain the growing threats, Mike and Donna’s searches for Patient Zero intersect at a big-game compound in a remote corner of North Dakota. There they find their answer buried in a secret thought extinct for 10,000 years. A secret entrepreneur Walt Thurman will kill to protect.
But even if Mike and Donna can escape the compound with the secret of Sector C, it may already be too late.
Because after today, extinct no longer means forever.
=o=
CHAPTER 1
VIKRAM SHANKAR SQUINTED DOWN the long metal barrel. Framed squarely in the sight, not two hundred feet away, the white tiger sat on its haunches, its lower jaw drooping, ribs rippling under a mat of chocolate-striped fur.
A sweet shot.
Vikram’s right finger closed over the trigger. He inhaled slowly, deliberately. Too seasoned a hunter to let the thrill overcome judgment, he took his time, savoring the anticipation.
The nasal whounk-ing of a snow goose flying overhead pricked the big cat’s ears, and the heavy-set head swung toward the sound. With pounding heart, Vikram exhaled.
The sight bead wavered. He glanced down, and realized his left arm had begun to tremble.
Hell. Not now.
He willed his arm still, but it jerked — wide — then jerked again. The barrel danced in front of him.
Something — whether the movement or some slight sound Vikram made — drew the cat’s attention. It rolled into a crouch, facing Vikram’s blind. Sunlight bouncing off the snow caught its blue eyes and they glistened like tanzanite as it peered into the camouflage.
The rifle steadied as Vikram’s muscle spasms quieted. Again he sighted down the barrel, waiting for another clean shot. As long as his arm cooperated, he could outwait the cat. And with two hundred thousand dollars on the line if he missed the kill, he could wait a very long time.
After a moment, the tiger, apparently satisfied no threat lurked behind the blind, rose, turned and padded across the snow. A slight drag to its hind leg appeared to be its only imperfection. One that wouldn’t matter once it was mounted. What mattered now was bringing it down with one swift shot.
