Fire Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Master Therapass had seen this. How could he have given up dark magic, after realizing its power?

  Kyja released the minotaur’s hand. “Good bye.”

  She turned and stepped forward into the flames.

  “Now,” the Master said.

  Marcus looked up and saw Kyja stepping into the vortex. Gathering all of the power inside himself, he commanded the elementals to do his bidding. Distant voices seemed to scream inside his head, but he didn’t care. They had to obey his will; they didn’t have any choice. Did it hurt them to have their magic torn away? His stomach twisted at the thought, but he ignored it.

  Sometimes you had to do hard things to get what you wanted.

  You don’t have to do this, a voice whispered in his head. It sounded like Kyja, but that was crazy. She was who he was doing this for.

  Hard things.

  He stared at her face as she stepped toward the flames.

  “Get her,” the Master said—his voice urgent. “Before it’s too late.”

  Marcus remembered her standing on the cold streets of Chicago, giving a homeless woman their cloaks and money. Would she have accepted dark magic? She’d always wanted magic, but he knew she wouldn’t take it. Not this way. He had to, though. It was his only chance to save her.

  Hard things.

  He reached out his arms and could actually feel his hands touch her shoulders. His heart pounded. Whatever it took. Whatever the price. He was willing to do hard things.

  This isn’t a hard thing, Kyja’s voice whispered.

  It wasn’t. He’d expected dark magic to be hard, but once he let it inside, taking what he wanted was the easiest thing in the world. Sometimes doing the right thing was hard. But this was easy because . . .

  It was the wrong thing.

  As much as he wanted to save Kyja, he couldn’t. Not like this.

  Sometimes you had to do hard things.

  He did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life—he rejected the power. He forced the darkness out of him. He let go of the person he loved most in the world.

  Kyja stepped into the vortex, and the fire destroyed her.

  17: Hard Things

  “What have you done?” The Master released Marcus’s arm, and Marcus collapsed to the ground. His limbs convulsed, and he couldn’t stop gagging. It was like he’d eaten a poisonous meal, managing to cough it back out only seconds before it killed him.

  With a wave of his hand, the Master sent the table, chairs, and food smashing against the wall. Mirrors exploded outward, covering Marcus in glass and debris.

  The wizard whirled around and advanced on Graehl, his face livid. “You told me he would save her!”

  Graehl backed away, tripped over a broken chair, and nearly fell. “I thought he would. She was the most important thing to him.”

  “She still is,” Marcus wheezed. He managed to push himself onto one elbow before the room started to fade in and out. “That’s why I couldn’t do it.”

  The Master’s face had gone an icy gray, and his eyes burned like coals. Marcus huddled on the floor, gasping. How had he ever thought the man looked like Master Therapass? “You have made a serious mistake,” the dark wizard hissed.

  Marcus clutched his stomach and sat up. “You can’t get to Kyja anymore. No matter what you do to me, I won’t help you.” The thought that he’d allowed her to die again, made him sick inside. But he knew it’s what Kyja would have wanted.

  An invisible fist slammed him to the floor, and his head cracked against the dark tiles. “You think I need you?” the wizard asked, towering over him. He yanked Marcus’s sleeve up, revealing the scar on his right shoulder. “What did your precious Master Therapass tell you about this?”

  Marcus turned away. With Kyja gone, the dark Circle could go ahead and kill him now. It didn’t matter.

  The wizard grabbed him by the jaw and forced his head around. “You can talk on your own, or I can make you talk. The second way will be much more painful, I promise. What did my brother tell you about the scar?”

  Marcus swallowed. His throat felt raw and bloody. What did it matter if he talked? It wasn’t like he’d be telling the Master anything he didn’t know. “It means I’m the one chosen to defeat you.”

  “Does it?” The wizard laughed and shoved Marcus’s head back against the floor. He turned to Graehl. “My ring.”

  His head bowed, Graehl scurried forward. He handed the Master the same ring he’d used to call down the Summoner—the gold band with the symbol branded on Marcus’s arm.

  The Master slid the ring onto his finger. “Do you find it an interesting coincidence that your arm and my ring share the same mark?”

  Marcus didn’t know what to say.

  “Would you like to know where yours came from?” The Master sat on a jeweled throne, which hadn’t been there a moment before.

  Did the Master really know about the scar, or was this another trick?

  The wizard twisted the ring on his finger. “I’m sure that by now, you’ve figured out that one of the creatures in the scar is a Summoner.”

  Marcus nodded. He’d noticed the similarity the first time he saw a Summoner. “What about the other one?”

  “The second creature doesn’t exist. It’s symbolic of the four elements.”

  He hadn’t considered the possibility, but now that Marcus thought about it, he could see how it made sense. The head of a boar like Lanctrus-Darnoc, the tail of a fish to represent water, bird’s wings for air, and a flaming sword. Land, water, air, and fire.

  “So what? It means that the elements will never give in to you and your creatures.”

  “On the contrary. If you look more closely, you will see that the Summoner is vanquishing the elements. The symbol is a representation of my control over their magic.”

  “Whatever.” Marcus shrugged, biting back a moan from the pain that the least movement caused. “You’d probably see a symbol of your victory in a bowl of creamed spinach.” A weight pressed on his throat, and he barely gasped out, “I’m destined to destroy you.”

  “Destined by whom?” The Master laughed, and the weight lifted from Marcus’s neck. “How do you think you got the mark in the first place? Do you think you were born with it—it’s a sign that you are something special?”

  Actually, Marcus had sort of assumed that he’d been born with the scar. No one had said any differently.

  The wizard stood from his throne. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, gloating above Marcus. “I’m the one who branded you.”

  Marcus shook his head. That couldn’t be.

  “Yes. I found you as a baby. You seemed like a likely enough lad. So I snuck into your room in the middle of the night, burned my symbol into your arm, and claimed you as one of my own. I knew that eventually, you would come back to me.”

  “That’s a lie,” Marcus said, his face hot. “I’m the one who will defeat you.”

  “I found it quite amusing the way everyone fawned over you when they saw the mark. The chosen one. The child from the legend who will save us. Do you think they would have reacted the same way if they knew you wear the symbol of the one they fear the most?”

  Marcus felt sick and exhausted. The Master’s claims couldn’t be right. Master Therapass had told him that the mark meant that Marcus was Farworld’s savior.

  “If you marked me, why did you try to kill me?”

  “If I’d wanted to kill you as a baby, I would have. I told my armies to destroy each person in the city—every parent, every relative, every friend you had. I had them break your body until you could barely feed yourself. I shattered your spirit. I stole your self-worth. I took anything that might have meaning to you.”

  He circled Marcus, eyes glittering, and knelt to look into his face. “Of course, I must hand it to my brother. I thought I had taken everything from you. But he considered something I hadn’t. He took your entire world. I knew that one day you’d come crawling back to it to join me like the worm you are.�
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  “Was that before or after he cut your face?” Marcus asked, pointing at the Master’s scar.

  It was only a guess, but judging by the wizard’s response, Marcus knew he was right. Before the Master could respond, Marcus spat in his face. The Master jerked back in surprise and revulsion.

  “I may crawl, but I will never join you.” Marcus reached for light magic, fighting past the dark slime that filled the room, and for a brief moment, he felt it find a way in—the smallest of cracks in the dark armor—and power began flowing through him.

  Then he was hanging upside down in the middle of the air in a vise-like grip that crushed his chest so tightly he couldn’t breathe. His heart struggled against the pressure, and each beat felt like the last.

  “Time to finish what I should have done a long time ago,” the Master said, pulling the cowl back over his head.

  Tide, Nizgar-Gharat, and Calem strolled into the room, smug grins on their faces.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time to see you die,” Nizgar-Gharat’s two heads said.

  Tide plucked a fish from the school circling his crown and popped it into his mouth. “Any bets on whether he suffocates before his heart stops beating?”

  Marcus tried to use magic, but it was blocked again. His head felt like a huge rock was smashing it, and his vision began to grow dark. But that was all right. If he was going to die, he’d want it to be while he was fighting against the Dark Circle, not fighting for them. And who knew—maybe he’d be with Kyja in the afterlife.

  “Wait,” Graehl said. “Don’t kill him.”

  The Master raised a finger toward the man, but Graehl held out his hands. “Kill him, and another savior will be raised up. But there’s a way to stop him for good. Something worse than death.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened. Wasn’t betraying him once enough? Couldn’t Graehl let him die?

  “No,” he tried to moan, but he didn’t have the breath.

  “What are you talking about?” The Master demanded.

  “Ask him,” Graehl said. “He’ll tell you everything.”

  Air filled Marcus’s lungs again, and he sucked it into his body, his vision slowly coming back. As soon as he could speak, he said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a lie.”

  Graehl shook his head.

  “We’ll see.” The Master did something then, and Marcus found himself standing on the floor—arms and legs locked stiffly at his sides, like a soldier standing at attention. “What’s this about another savior?” the wizard asked.

  Marcus tried to clamp his jaws shut, but it was impossible. “If I die, someone else will be born to take my place. The cycle has to be completed. Either I succeed, or someone else will.”

  The Master squinted. “That’s not possible. I chose you.”

  “Lanctrus-Darnoc said it themselves,” Graehl said. “They seemed to think you knew.”

  The Master turned to Nizgar-Gharat, hands clenched. “Did you know of this too?”

  The lizard heads looked at each other uncomfortably. “We didn’t spend as much time in the library as some of the others.”

  “Lanctrus-Darnoc was in the library all the time,” Gharat said.

  “If anyone knew, he would,” Nizgar added.

  The Master sucked a frustrated breath between his teeth and turned back to Marcus. “What else did they tell you?”

  “That you are a pompous bag of wind,” Marcus tried to say, but his mouth betrayed him. “If I am on Farworld when Kyja d-dies, then I return to Farworld completely.” He gave Graehl a desperate look. Marcus could understand his ex-friend kidnapping him in hopes of saving Kyja. But why did he have to reveal more?

  “Go on,” the Master said.

  The words forced themselves from his lips. “If . . . I am in . . . the realm of shadows when she dies, I will be trapped on Earth.”

  Inside his cowl, the wizard’s eyes glowed. “For how long?”

  They didn’t know? How could that be? Marcus tried to hold back the truth, but he couldn’t do it. He dropped his head. “Forever.”

  The Master turned to the spot where the smoke had shown Kyja earlier. “She hasn’t been destroyed completely yet, or the boy would have changed.” He looked at the elementals. “How quickly can you get him to the cavern of the Unmakers?”

  “Get him on a Summoner, and I will put wind beneath its wings,” Calem said.

  Tide rubbed his chubby hands together. “And I’ll make a storm.”

  Now that Marcus wasn’t forced to answer questions, he found that he could talk. “Please,” he begged. “Let me die. It could be years before another savior is born.”

  The Master laughed. “I have no fear of a savior. I have no fear of anything. But the idea of your spending the rest of your life trapped on that disgusting planet is too good to pass up.” He waved to the elementals. “Take him.” Then to Graehl, “As for you . . .” The Master raised his hand, and a gleaming, black dagger appeared in it.

  Graehl stepped away. “I’ve done everything you asked. Brought the boy. Told you his secrets. I betrayed everyone exactly the way you told me to.”

  “Yes, you did,” the Master said, his voice icy. “But I’m afraid I have little use for traitors.” He flicked his wrist, and the razor-sharp blade flew across the room, where it implanted itself in Graehl’s chest.

  Marcus gasped. Though Graehl had betrayed him, he didn’t want him to die.

  Graehl grasped the dagger with both hands as if trying to pull it out. A dark stain appeared on the front of his robe, and he moaned softly. As if in slow motion, he turned his head and locked eyes with Marcus. A second before Graehl fell dead to the floor he mouthed the words, “Hard things.”

  18: The Realm of Shadows

  Marcus didn’t bother struggling against the elementals as they dragged him through the cold, wet caves of the Windlash Mountains. The last time he’d been here, the Unmakers had tried to suck out his emotions. But the Master had done a better job of doing that than the invisible creatures ever could.

  He tried to imagine being trapped on Earth, with no hope of seeing Kyja, Riph Raph, Master Therapass, or any of his Farworld friends again. Stuck in a world where his magic made him a freak and people stared at his arm and leg with pity or scorn—and all the while, knowing that Farworld was being destroyed by the Dark Circle. The thought made him want to curl up in a ball and freeze to death on the icy floor.

  “Where’s your cocky attitude now?” Calem jeered. “Kind of makes you wish you’d kept your nose in your own business.” The Aerisian briefly turned his body into a mass of animal noses, all sniffling and sneezing at the same time.

  Marcus looked away. Whether the elementals were blocking his magic anymore or not, the battle was over, and he’d lost. Graehl had talked about doing hard things. Marcus had tried, but look how they’d all ended up because of it.

  It wasn’t like he had any hope of rescue, either. No one knew where he was. And if they did, the creatures protecting the entrance—ghastly monsters the color of raw meat, with gray, membraned wings and arms like an octopus—could have held off a small army.

  As they turned into another passage, all three elementals slowed down. A sucking wind tugged at Marcus’s hair, and he raised his head to see that the tunnel ended in an unfocused swirl of grays and blacks. Tendrils of smoke stretched out from the opening like ghostly fingers beckoning them forward. A blue bird—apparently startled by their voices—flapped into the tunnel behind them, fluttered in the wind, and circled away with a frightened chirp.

  Nizgar-Gharat flapped their wings and hissed. “Can’t we push him forward and let it suck him in?” the purple head suggested.

  “Let’s kill him and say we put him through the opening,” the green head said. “I don’t like this place.”

  Tide swung at the lizards with the back of his hand. “The Master told us to dump him into the realm of shadows, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Calem, who had turned his body
into a thick-trunked tree, dug his roots into the floor of the tunnel. “You all go ahead. I’m not getting any closer. Don’t you feel the way it wants to take whatever it can?”

  “All I feel is what the Master will do to us if we don’t obey orders,” Tide said, rubbing his hands on his robe. “Which one of you wants to tell him you failed?”

  Marcus understood their fear. The wind blowing them toward the doorway felt like the inhalation of some great beast, and the more he stared at the rotating circle, the more it looked like a mouth with scraggly gray teeth and a black throat. Back when he and Kyja had fought the Dark Circle together, it would have terrified him. All he felt now was a sense of inevitability.

  “We’ll do it together,” Tide said, taking one of Marcus’s arms. “You two grab him.”

  Nizgar-Gharat snatched Marcus’s other arm and Calem reluctantly wrapped a tree branch around his legs. Together the three of them hoisted Marcus into the air. Holding him in front of them like a shield, they edged toward the opening.

  “You’re all a pack of cowards,” Marcus said.

  Gharat flicked his tail. “If you’re so brave, go on your own.” They took another step toward the opening, and the pull of the wind grew stronger.

  The leaves on Calem’s body began snapping off and whirling into the portal. The little bird flapped around Calem, as if looking for a place to land, and Marcus silently urged it to leave before it got pulled in too.

  Marcus squinted against the bits of rock and dirt battering his face. “I’m not talking about the door. I’m taking about the Dark Circle. Kyja and I did a lot of things that scared us. But we did them because we knew they were the right thing to do. You’re only obeying the Master because you’re terrified of him, not because you believe in him.”

  “I believe,” Tide said, holding his crown down with one hand. “I believe that it’s better to be on the side of the strongest and smartest than to be standing against him.”