Chased By Flame

by Michael Wolff

  Soon Castle Amden appeared on the horizon, a small gray blob changing to a fist of stone thrusting up from a rotund hill. As they advanced further the Azure River widened enough to be seen, meandering its way northward from the eastern Iskem shores. Further northward the river would widen again to the length of a man, eventually becoming part of the many pools and streams that Amden children loved to frequent. Mykel had seen both many times but didn’t frequent it as much. There were books to be read.

  “Halt. Who goes there?”

  Mykel glanced up and muttered an oath. Two Solvicar, resplendent in their gold cloaks, stood at the castle gates. It was obvious from the way they fingered the sword-hilts they were desperate for violence. Mykel felt infected by their misery, coiling in the stomach with ropes of fire. He played the doting, shy librarian, avoiding any sort of eye contact. With the black moods twisting their minds, any slight could mean the gallows.

  “Your pass.” Lazarus dug in his longcoat and produced the article of writ. The Vicar hid his bulging eyes at the wagon-master’s identity with a grunt. The pass was handed over to a town warden’s kiosk, where the pass was branded with a wax insignia and returned to Lazarus. A sharp snap of the reins put the horse to action, its hooves swallowed by the rusty whine of the gate.

  Mykel didn’t need to see the Solvicar to know the dagger glares piercing his back. Gate guards were the fate of some nameless peon, not for the Children of the Sun. It was the price of victory, as the Solvicar quickly discovered. It was one thing to win a war. It was entirely another to keep one’s rule from slipping like sand through the fingers.

  The castle’s outer courtyard was in its usual state of disarray. Since the early 500s the town of Kal Jada had been a den of the darkest, lowest people the nation had to offer. It was only recently, with the Amden defeat in the Three-Day War, that the royal family had to move from their castle in faraway Paree Vinaz to the long-ago decaying castle in Kal Jada. Vinaz itself had been taken over by the Church during the war, and afterwards they simply... stayed.

  Ten years later one wouldn’t think that the noblemen had set foot into the place. Straw-roofed houses piled up like clustered fingers jammed together, and more often than not had holes in which allowed rain and other manner of element free entry. The streets were grimy and dark, the torches that illuminated them weak and dying. Just like the people walking them. It seemed all Mykel had to do was glance and he saw another tavern, different by the sigil on the wooden sign, pitted and small like all the rest. Together the people hunched down like drunks sapping the last vestiges of warmth from the night’s fire. Mykel shivered in disgust just at the sight of it.

  If taverns were the homeless of Kal Jada the whores were their fleas, massing and swarming in flimsy wisps, smiling fake smiles as they peddled themselves to all that passed by. Mykel glanced away when they met his eye and fumed at their soft giggles. In the stories the heroes always helped the whores. Sefiros Cayokite, that grand champion of justice, helped an entire brothel to their freedom. Mykel thought all this knowing all the while that a thousand girls were doing their brazen trade in this filthy labyrinth of a city. No hero real or false could hope to aid this place.

  The inner courtyard was as different to the outer courtyard as night was to day. Stepping in Mykel felt the sheer vastness of the place briefly overwhelm him. Mansions gleamed dully in the sunlight, hard and harsh with jagged ribbons of gold and silver scrollwork, the smallest the size of a palace. Everything was perfect in its harshness, the stone not yet dying but retaining its last vestiges of strength with the dignity only stone could possess. It stood in stark contrast to the more diseased alleyways they’d passed; bulging against the pristine gates. It was as if some invisible wall separated the decay from plaguing the city’s other half.

  In the center of town was a fountain, wide and massive, with the statute of Sefiros Cayokite stretching into the sky, bronzed and stained. Ignored. Mykel twisted in his seat to watch it recede; he doubted anyone had done that in weeks for such a decaying sculpture. Sefiros Cayokite, the fool knight, the one who died in a blazing building no one cared for anymore, saving orphans no one wanted. The bards and journeymen who passed through here were still telling his tales. Unfortunately, the years were making him more fool than knight. The only reason why the statue hadn’t been torn down yet was because the noble children needed some target for their spitballs.

  Mykel noticed they were curving eastward, away from the castle. When he paused to remark of this all he got was Lazarus’ “A little while longer, lad. I’d like to see what the old city is going through.”

  Mykel barely restrained a snort. What the old city was going through was unsurprisingly little and none of it new from the month before. The streets of Kal Jada were once among the numerous and most beautiful of the kingdom, but the passing of years had made them something a great deal lesser than legend had foretold. Common men walked cautiously, their fingers always fluttering close to the steel at their belts. One man, erupting from an alley on the heels of a scream, was wet with the dark ruby of spilt blood as he vanished into the shadows. “It wouldn’t be the old city without the usual rape and murder around the bend.”

  Lazarus glared at him. Then he gave a short snap of the reins, and the horses responded, mending their way through the gloom.

  The streets were undisturbed by its newest murder. The beggars and mendicants kept hawking their bowls and their gods, while merchants screeched wagers in voices heavy with the cheery façade of salesmanship. Only the noble-folk noted anything amiss, and that was for the cadre of priests and alms-boys rushing to meet the dearly departed. One and all they nodded to the priests, and one and all they smirked in their scented pomanders before strolling away to greener pastures. A woman was dead. Better her than me.

  Mykel bristled. He knew that smirk. All the noblemen and so-called ladies, all the ones went swaggered through the banquet halls of Fenrir Manor, gave him that smirk. It was wrapped up nicely in false pleasantries and idle banter, but the heat in their eyes was no less real. Better him than me. The relief, cutting like knives. Thank the gods I was spared.

  Anger burned in him for the futility of it all. None of the fools were enough to survive in the games of noblemen; their presence waned with Fenrir’s minor status. Doubtless they lived past the year. Yet for all of that their relief still itched at him. Fools, all of them. Relying on gods for explanations, relying on gods for blessings and fortune! The dead arm shook with renewed life at the anger. Gods. That all of the suffering he’d endured, all of the glances, all of the head-shakes of noblemen, all of the whispers, was all some cosmic joke. The dead fist clenched till the knuckles were white, pale as a fish’s belly. Fools. Gods-be-damned fools.

  “Are you all right, lad?” Lazarus was glancing at him sideways, as if noting a peculiarity.

  “Yes. It’s nothing. Can we go now?”

  “After you, apprentice.”

  But as they neared the crossroads between the commoners’ domain and the upscale, ivory-glowing ramparts of their highborn brethren, it became increasingly clear that they were not going to arrive at the Red Boar Inn.

  A funeral blocked their way.

  “Here we mourn the passage of Loren Zephyr III, successor to Alfred Zephyr VI.”

  The affair went quickly, as such affairs were wont to go. Physicians labored for hours trying mightily to keep the king from the half-coma he descended to. All in vain. Loren Zephyr was dead by sunup, and the whole kingdom mourned.

  Mykel and Lazarus had their place amidst the peasants. Of the crowd assembled, the lowborn numbered the majority of it. One could say that the commoners were there because they mourned their monarch. But not Mykel. He saw the animals bristling within the men. They were here because the nobles were going to shower Zephyr’s coffin with gold coins. The p
easants were here to catch the remnants of what was left behind.

  From there the rite went forth in its inevitable decline. The priests traded the dais with various people, who then traded stories with those assembled. The families he met in person, giving closure and apologies for the sons and husbands, the fathers and brothers, claimed by the bloodthirst of the battlefield. Yes, Loren Zephyr was a just man, and a just king. He would be mourned for decades to come.

  Mykel couldn’t help but watch Lazarus. He remained tight-jawed about it afterward, giving nothing that might have shown for an old friend. Even now the face Lazarus showed was like stone, though a glimmer of emotion peeked out from behind the spectacles. Mykel mourned for the Khatari, too.

  Then a murmur came from the back of the crowd, a murmur that was hushed with time instead of growing, a murmur that pulled the faces of the crowd as though caught by strings. One by one the crowd parted to either side to make a path amidst the dismal cobblestones. The figure that walked those cobblestones was robed in holy insignia. The cowl pulled over his face hid his features in shadow. Even though his identity was obvious, disbelief made the crowd wonder as one might admire work of art; seeing was completely different than word by mouth. The figure ascended the dais, pausing once to allow the current priest a moment to kiss his fingers, then again while he surveyed the crowd from beneath the shadow of his cowl. Then, and alone then, did the figure pull back the hood.

  Cardinal Omeros had arrived.

  The crowd gave him the stunned awe common to any esteemed authority, but Mykel only had questions. The librarian knew the legends, of course. Everyone did. The man that faced the barbarian army and converted them to God’s wonder within moments. He was at the head of every crisis, swooping in to save the day like some fairy-tale hero. Lazarus wasn’t impressed. The sadness that softened his face had hardened upon sight of the holy man. That was all Mykel needed to see through the latter’s disguise. Omeros seemed to like the admiration a little too much.

  At first his purpose was a mystery. Omeros gave a speech of how great and generous Loren was. Typical fare that described any man with a smidgen of justice. It was by far more grandiose that even the local priest dared, but it was so full of exaggerations and gestures that it seemed Omeros was more in love with his own voice than his Godly passions.

  Then came the hammerblow.

  “What I read now is the last will and testament of Loren Zephyr, written for him by the pens of the Quillbearer. Being of sound mind, I, Loren Zephyr, have passed down all rituals, legal and otherwise, to the one true Church, so that my kingdom will reach the glory of Heaven, and prosper in its paradise.”

  Applause all around. Except for Mykel. “He... he didn’t do... what I think he did. Did he?”

  Lazarus snorted. “He did. He just extended the church’s power over the ruling class. Give him a year, and we’ll all be bowing to King Omeros the First.” And then Lazarus matched gazes with the librarian. His eyes, dark augurs, twisted into Mykel and held him fast. “Congratulations, boy. You’ve just seen the beginning of the end of this kingdom.”

  Mykel was awestruck. In all the time he knew the old Khatari, he’d never shown fear. He’d suffered wars, sacrifices, lost men in battle, turned a disaster on its head more times than anyone could count. And if Mykel hadn’t been so close, he wouldn’t have detected the curdling underneath his words, or the gleam of his eyes. Mykel followed Lazarus’ gaze. Omeros? He was the source? No. The man next to him.

  “Sutyr,” he whispered.

  No one could deny the power radiating from the man. A lean face of ridges and planes, dominated by eyes caught halfway between confidence and arrogance. His duster was black lined with red, splitting to form two “tails” at the hips and one at the back. A single flame was stitched into the conical shoulder pads, from which crimson sleeves descended. The sleeves ended at the forearm, following the red-black pattern down to the fingerless gauntlets and ever downward to the baggy pants, and the sheerness of soft, black leather boots wrapped in crimson silk.

  Only people were calling me a different name. Samaritan. Lord Samaritan.

  Then Sutyr caught sight of Lazarus and smiled as though surprised. As though it was coincidence that brought them together like this.

  “We must go.” Lazarus grabbed Mykel’s shoulder and eased himself from the crowd. But once upon the wagon there was a desperation to the old man’s touch, snapping the reins as though it was a quirt he laid to the horses. He even glanced back once or twice as they wended their way. He’d never done that before. Only men in fear of being hunted checked their shoulders. And now Lazarus joined their number. Mykel’s guts curdled at the implications. So when the carriage shuddered in a sudden stop, and the figure standing before them was bathed in the weak lantern-light, the librarian found his throat bulging as though clapped in irons.

  Sutyr.

  “Master.”

  The Khatari’s once impassive eyes were alive both parts of anger and loathing. Mykel needed no encouragement to get away from the pair. “Hello, Sutyr. You are a Lord, now, eh?” The tension was so thick the librarian expected the both of them to catch aflame. “And Samaritan. It’s the last name I would put to you.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Mykel whispered.

  Sutyr regarded the librarian as though seeing him for the first time. “So the boy can see through my disguise, eh? He must be very special, indeed.”

  “Not at all. It’s just your spell is so sloppy he can see right through it. You’ve gotten soft, apprentice.”

  Spell? Sloppy? Apprentice? The world had gone mad, and with that insanity a furious bloodlust welled up in the librarian, so hot and searing that reason dissipated, boiling down thought to one, single desire.

  KILL ME.

  Mykel’s khatar sliced through Sutyr’s form... And the twin halves that peeled away like a banana’s skin went into reverse, closing together like the lips of a Venus flytrap. “What the hell?”

  “It’s an illusion,” Lazarus supplied tiredly. “He is an enshou. A Weirwynd of Fire. He can construct illusions of himself. Just like a mirage.” A sigh and scratching of the chin as dots of flame flew from the torches that grew and rotated into perfect doppelgangers. “I knew I shouldn’t have taught you that trick.”

  “But you did. That and many more. Let me show you.” Then the man vanished to reveal the demon beneath. There was the helm, decorated with a black web of outlined diamonds, and again with the gold V-ended W poised skyward in a triple-spiked crown. The visor was a sharp bladed T of a gate, a place where light nor star glittered, where the abyss roiled and raged in silent smoldering. No eyes, no soul. The old catch-rhyme spun circles in the librarian’s head, endlessly taunting. No eyes, no soul.

  The discomfort did not end there. A great cloak of smoke mantled Sutyr from shoulder to boot, closed in twin doors as if to bar away the gruesome sight of the flesh beneath. He moved with a sinuous grace, feet gliding instead of walking, and Mykel realized with a chill that while the cloak fluxed and churned with his footsteps, flashing like dark mirrors, the edges remained still. Billowing, thrashing smoke, yet somehow restrained by invisible barriers. “Does that answer your question, little librarian? Does it dispel your vertigo?”

  Lazarus cut Mykel off with a glance and a grunt. “I did not expect to see you so soon. What cause has you skulking about in a funeral?”

  “Why the suspicion?” Mykel jumped out of his skin. The brimstone knight was there one moment... but the voice had come from behind. Mykel whirled and gawked at the sight of Sutyr leaning against the opposing wall. “Perhaps I have a benevolent agenda.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ve already killed the King.”

  “With your own technique, no less.” Sutyr turned an ey
eless gaze upon the frail monarch. “There are twenty million illnesses that work by subverting the body’s natural chemicals. Brain aneurysms, nerve disorders, cancers... so many cancers. I did him a mercy. No one should have their body betray them in old age.”

  “It is not for you or I to pass judgment.”

  “That tired old refrain? Do not worry, Lazarus. His death will look natural. You need not fear a conspiracy against you... or your little apprentice.”

  Just like that, Sutyr was gone.

  Words babbled from the librarian. “How do you know... someone like him?”

  Lazarus sighed. “I was his teacher once. A long time ago.” There were more questions, many questions. But Lazarus would not answer them. He simply started the carriage, and off they went to the dark.

  V

  The funeral had closed all commerce, effectively freezing the local businesses in time. So when Lazarus and Mykel finally reached their destination it was as though the days between arrival and tragedy had never happened.

  Their destination, the Red Boar Inn, was short and squat besides an empty moat. It had a ground floor of polished stone from the quarry down in the Sian Mountains. The highest floor was... less than magnificent. Once the roof was a dome of red marble, but ten years ago a braggart nobleman playing at being a Weirwynd gutted the roof with the inferno he unwittingly unleashed. It was uttered that he was punished by real-life Weirwynd for cheating them of their secrets.