Embers

by Ronie Kendig

  Head high, the warrior once more yelled to the dozen ravagers. Whether orders or some war cry, Haegan could not decipher. However, the chill running down his spine grew unmistakable.

  No more! They would not have a chance to finish off Thiel. No more would he tolerate brigands who upended his plans to reach the Falls. Who threatened his very existence and that of his friends. Haegan inched forward. Angry.

  “No!” Thiel yelled at him, once more grabbing his hands—his glowing hands—in hers. “Don’t.” Her eyes were bright with alarm and foreboding as she tightened her grip over his. “The archon—he’ll kill you! They—”

  A metallic taste filled his mouth as a sensation ripped through Haegan, drowning her words. He felt the fierce black eyes lock onto him as tangibly and sharply as if an arrow had struck him. Haegan shifted his attention and found the dark irises his mind conjured boring through him, virulent.

  With a whip of the Ematahri’s hand, something sailed through the air. Cracked against Haegan’s skull. He pitched forward. Went to a knee. His vision blurred, but he refused to succumb. Refused to surrender his acuity again.

  Hand against the cool, damp grass as he steadied himself, Haegan struggled to shake off the ache worming through his neck and shoulders. The same one that fought for control of his eyesight. The unmistakable vibrancy emanating from his hand. With a growl, he pushed upward in a world still smeared gray and black.

  A shout went up.

  “No,” Thiel ordered in a loud voice. She spoke with authority, which confounded Haegan as he dragged himself to his feet and cleared his mind. Firmly, she stepped in front of him and held her fisted hands to the side, legs shoulder-width apart. “I claim Kedardokith!”

  Like a whirl of black smoke on a strong wind, the warrior alighted, his ebony cloak swirling around him. The beast of a man stood at least a head taller than Haegan. He stormed forward, the rest of his men gathering on their horses. He sneered, not at Thiel, but at Haegan. “Who are you, worm, that this woman defends you? Where is your honor?”

  Shame silenced Haegan. That and confusion—what was Thiel doing?

  Although the Ematahri warrior glared, the muscled mountain did not cross the invisible line Thiel had drawn, when he could have easily sent her sprawling with a swift backhand. Instead, he stood before her, their boots touching. Finally, he turned his foul gaze down. To Thiel, who stood resolute in her defense.

  Haegan took a step forward.

  The tsing of drawn swords sang across the darkening hillside. Each of the ravagers sat tensed, eyes on him. As his gaze returned to Thiel and the Ematahri warrior, he twitched. The two stared down as equals.

  There could be no sense made of it. The ravagers ravaged. Why wasn’t he attacking her? Killing her?

  “I seek an audience with Seveired,” Thiel demanded. She seemed to grow several inches as she faced the leader. “This man is under my protection by the laws of Kedardokith.”

  Keda—what? Haegan scowled at Thiel, confused.

  “Seveired is gone,” the warrior growled. “You will counsel with the new archon.” He spun, the effect no less dramatic at close range. The cloak even stirred the air, puffing Haegan’s curls from his damp forehead. Mounted once more, the warrior glowered at Thiel. Then yanked his reins and vanished into the woods.

  The others followed, leaving them alone.

  Thiel pivoted and shouted up the small knoll for the others to come and bring their packs.

  “We’re—we’re leaving?” Haegan glanced over his shoulder, a prick of giddy but wary release bubbling within him. “We can go then?”

  Thiel scalded him with a look. “Only if you want your flesh boiled off in a vat of oil.”

  Was she serious? His answer came in the form of brutes on massive gray horses. The two warriors were twins in both their dress—gray-and-white streaked hair—and their impassive mirrored expressions. From their high seats, they stared down at the group in silent contempt.

  “Should’ve just given him to them.” Having emerged from the cave with the others, Tokar shouldered his way into his pack, eyes on the waiting ravagers. “He’s solid enough they would’ve accepted.”

  Thiel’s dark, angry eyes speared Tokar. “Before the new archon,” she said, “nothing we have is a high enough price.” She gave Laertes and Praegur a nod.

  As if her nod had been meant for them, the twins shifted their horses apart, effectively creating a passage between them. What was going on? The question about leaving once again formed on his tongue, but he forbade it voice. But were they leaving?

  “Again, you bring trouble,” Tokar grumbled as he trudged past Haegan, soundly thumping shoulders with him.

  Haegan could do naught but stare as Praegur ushered Laertes through the beastly “gates” before them. Fantastical visions of the two warriors swinging fiery blades and severing heads from torsos paraded through his mind. With that gruesome image, Haegan inched on, the muscles in his neck tightening when he neared the massive horses. As he passed between them, their long, broad skulls lowered as if telling him to keep moving. The beasts were so large even they looked down on him.

  Brown marble-like eyes locked onto him. Dark shadows above the large orbs moved like eyebrows. Speculative. How it was possible for a horse to seem to possess the same hatred and cruelty as their masters, Haegan knew not. Tangled and black, the forelock draped over one eye, reminding Haegan of the Ematahri leader.

  A twig snapped beneath his boot, sounding as loud as a club cracking against stone. Heart thundering, Haegan flinched. His leg lifted and swung to the left, away from the beast. Though in opposite directions, he was quite sure his heart and lungs ran. Something he wanted to do, but fear held him captive.

  The horse swung his head with a nicker.

  Haegan veered to avoid the enormous nostrils puffing steamy clouds in the cool morning air. A snort and whinny blasted against his ear. With a yelp, he resisted the urge to leap right. Instead, he threw himself forward as a shudder raked down his spine.

  Taunting laughter followed him, as did the heavy clops. Only as the hooves continued and warm, wet breath brushed his nape did Haegan realize these warriors were here to escort them, not watch them leave.

  Clip-clop. Clip-clunk. Clip-clop. Clip-clunk.

  A cadence. Marching him. To what? His death? Something inside stirred him to fight back. But what could he, a longtime cripple, now healed—temporarily—but untrained, do against the battle-hardened Ematahri?

  The image of his hands leapt into his thoughts. Of them glowing. Thiel holding them. Tight. “No!” she had warned him. But how had she known what would happen when he didn’t? Walking through the trees behind the others, he rotated his wrists and stared at his palms. What . . . what was it? Why had they glowed?

  It made no sense. He had no gift, and that would have been his first assumption—somehow he had a gift that manifested itself. But Abiassa had not chosen him to wield the Flames. She’d bestowed that honor on Kaelyria. A fate his father-king celebrated after Haegan fell into the cruel sleep and woke a cripple. So what was it? How had Thiel known? Not only known, but anticipated and prevented what he had not realized existed?

  He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger, trying to remember what he felt when the glow happened. Nothing. No different from any other day he’d felt angry—there was heat. The kind that spilled across his shoulders and down his back. As well as the answering coolness that swirled in the pit of his stomach. No strange affliction. No unusual side effect.

  But her touch—

  A solid jolt against his back sent Haegan sprawling face-first to the ground with a mucky splitch. Lifting his hands, he heard the slurping of his fingers, suctioning free. Amid the laughter and the humiliation, stench stung his nostrils. An odor so foul it coated his tongue.

  Guffaws snapped through the woods, the ravagers enjoying his situation far too much.

  “Kedardokith protects this man from any harm,” Thiel shouted angrily.

  “We di
dn’t touch him,” one of their escorts stated. “I believe your Kedardokith is . . . intact.”

  “Though he smells like the pig wallow,” the other added.

  Slick and sickening, the mud clung to him. So did the odor. He wasn’t sure there was a remedy to the stench that reeked of the humiliation he’d felt most of his life.

  Abiassa, I would have preferred you left me a cripple to die in that lonely tower than endure this.

  A strong grip cuffed his arm. Hauled him to his feet. Haegan stumbled and found himself staring not into eyes, but into the leather vest of the Ematahri leader. Dwarf. I am but a dwarf to him. And were the venomous gaze latched onto Haegan, he might be a dead dwarf. But it was locked on the escorts. The leader shouted something in their foreign tongue, then shoved Haegan to the side.

  Hands plied at him, pulling him through a thick throng of villagers, seeping from the woods like ants from a disturbed hill. Two women, their grips like iron, dragged him backward. Away from the others.

  Haegan searched for Thiel. For his friends. But he saw none of them.

  The women hauled him through their camp, a chaotic assembly of tarps and poles, fires, and what looked like stone wells. Children darted from one shadowed place to another. Gathering his wits, he weighed his options and tried to regain his feet as they wrenched him around and towed him onward. He needed to break free and run.

  As if his thoughts had been spoken aloud, two warriors emerged from the tent that lay in his path.

  Stomach tight, Haegan tensed as the women led him into the tent, past the warriors. Immersed in darkness, Haegan’s vision slowly adjusted. A lone glow emanated from the center of the tent. The light came from a fire with an enormous black pot over it. Steam rose from a liquid that gurgled and roiled under control of the flames.

  Oil.

  23

  “No!” Haegan writhed to free himself of the matrons’ iron grips, but they dug their nails into the soft flesh beneath his arms and yanked him toward the boiling vat. They shouted at him, and he shouted back, digging his heels in.

  But together, they gave a shove that pitched him forward, and he tumbled into the terrible pot. His mind blanked and a shriek rent the air. Immersed, he felt the sizzling of his flesh. Ached with the burning of his muscles. He held his breath and scrambled up for air. He broke the surface and gave a shout.

  The women laughed, pointing at him.

  Murderous, foul wenches! When he was in such . . . a . . . Haegan glanced down, half expecting to see his own fat bubbling to the surface. Instead, the only thing floating there were clumps of muck. He lifted his arm, surprised to find not welts and burns but a slick material coating his skin. Strangest of all—it ate clean through the clothing he wore but didn’t touch his flesh. “What . . .?”

  “Medicinal.”

  He lifted his head, surprised to find a warrior there. “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  Left bicep corded with a black and red braid, the warrior stood fast. A jagged scar traced an ugly line from his mouth to above his ear, where a brown braid ran along his head and down into the rest of his hair, secured in a leather strap. Only when the warrior searched for more drink did Haegan noticed the other braid had been dyed red. “You cannot go before the archon reeking of muarshtait.”

  “Right.” Haegan lowered his arm hesitantly into the—whatever it was. No one had been allowed into his father’s court without proper attire, so why would it be any different here?

  Perhaps because they were ravagers.

  The two women came at him with buckets and Haegan shrank, aware of his nakedness.

  “Boy, they’re healers,” the warrior growled. “They’ve seen more than you have and wish you had.” The warrior laughed as he stalked over to a bowl of fruit and a pitcher.

  “They may have, but I have not.”

  The warrior sipped from a wooden cup, then grinned. “Shy? Never been with a woman?”

  Haegan ignored the comment, shaking his head at the two matrons. “I’ll clean myself.”

  “No.” The heftier of the two leaned toward him with a bristled paddle that he supposed was their version of a brush or comb.

  He reached for it. “Thank you.”

  She smacked his hand.

  Haegan yanked back. “Now see here!”

  The woman ranted, her arms moving as fast as her mouth set into a dark-red face. Though he might not know her words, he did not need language to know he’d angered her. But anger or not, he would not let a woman scrub his nakedness.

  The warrior laughed then set aside his cup. “Umwæithietïel.”

  The women started. Glared at the warrior, then slapped the bristled paddled into the water—splashing the concoction into Haegan’s face—and huffed off.

  Those words . . . they sounded familiar. Like a faint echo of something he’d heard. But his attention fastened on the way the women heeded the warrior’s barked command. They left, and Haegan waited for the warrior to follow suit.

  “Your tantrums will not work with me, boy. Clean yourself and get dressed.”

  Haegan scowled. “And how am I to dress when this”—he waved his hands over the bubbling vat—“evaporated my clothing?”

  The warrior filled the cup with more amber liquid and pointed toward something behind Haegan. “There.” He tossed back the contents, swallowed, grimaced, then set the cup aside again. “And you’d do well to hurry or you’ll stand before him in all your glory.”

  So . . . naked. Haegan scrubbed himself down, surprised at the way whatever this was managed to clean him and leave him smelling woodsy but bathed. A noise outside drew the warrior’s attention, and Haegan seized the moment to lunge up and hurry behind the dressing screen where he found classic Ematahri attire. Pants. Just pants. “Right.” Hearing voices on the other side, he quickly shoved his legs into the rough material, then gave one more desperate search for a shirt. Feeling a draft across his chest, he stepped out, rubbing his arm.

  The warrior’s eyebrow arched with a smirk. “You haven’t seen much daylight.”

  Haegan resisted the urge to glance down at his pale, unmuscled chest and arms. “I was . . . raised indoors.” The warrior’s assessing gaze raked over Haegan, making him feel more naked than he had with the matrons. He shifted uneasily on his bare feet. “Is there something wrong?”

  The warrior stalked closer, every move rippling with power and threat. He tucked his chin, staring hard. “Who are you, boy?”

  Why did he care who Haegan was? Had he somehow discovered Haegan’s identity? “I . . .” He swallowed hard, afraid that if this warrior knew his father was the Fire King, Haegan would either be held for ransom or killed for sport. “I’m nobody.”

  In the space of a blink, Haegan registered two things: the fist and the ground. He flew back, the breath violently knocked from his lungs, and his throat squeezed tight beneath the powerful hold of the warrior, who had effortlessly pinned him. Rocks bit into his shoulder blades. Gasping, Haegan tasted the bitter metallic taste of blood. Felt warmth sliding across his upper lip and down his cheek, right into his ear. Hands wrapped around the man’s thick, hairy arm to stop him from choking him, Haegan shook his head, unable to breathe.

  On a knee, the warrior dragged his hateful glare from the dirt to Haegan. “Etelide wagers her life for nobody?”

  Can’t breathe!

  The tent flap fluttered, light broke in, then a shadow. “Zoijan.”

  The warrior didn’t move.

  The newcomer said something in their tongue.

  Zoijan growled something over his shoulder in Ematahrian, then swung his gaze back to Haegan. “You better be worth her life, or I’ll take yours.” After yet another disapproving glare, he stomped to his feet.

  Haegan hauled in greedy gulps of air, turning on his side and coughing.

  “Let’s go.”

  Clawing his way to his feet, Haegan shook his head and felt an acute awareness that disobedience would cost him more than a choking. He trailed the wa
rrior, feeling like a child behind this man. The ridges and scars across his spine back proved he’d fought—and probably killed—many. Was he one of the border marauders? The lawless ravagers.

  Head pounding, Haegan realized as he cringed at rocks and forest debris poking into the bottoms of his feet, that his nose was bleeding.

  Trickles of laughter poked out from various places. He’d never had to concern himself with his appearance, and living without the use of one’s limbs made it impossible to have the brawn these men wore as easily as clothing.

  Zoijan stalked a corral and gave a nod to two armed men. He shifted Haegan toward it. “In.”

  The gate swung open. Haegan frowned and look into the partially covered area strewn with hay. Sitting against a far slat wall, Praegur, Tokar, and Laertes stared back. Rubbing the back of his neck where a new ache had begun, Haegan entered, anxious to be rid of Zoijan.

  Hatred poured from Tokar, who turned away with folded arms. It was here more than anywhere else that the youth seemed at home, with brutes like Zoijan.

  “What’d ya do,” Laertes asked, grinning. “Sass the big one?”

  Haegan shook his head.

  “He doesn’t have the embers to talk back,” Tokar muttered.

  Hanging his head only made the throb worsen. Haegan slid down against the wall. It was hopeless. Ever since Luxlirien, they couldn’t seem to go more than a day without encountering trouble. He’d never make it to the Great Falls. Kaelyria would be permanently paralyzed. And he . . . he would live out his humiliation. Where, he didn’t know. Maybe he should just die.

  “Did you see Thiel?” Laertes squatted with his spine against the slat wall. “We ain’t seen her since they drugged her off—”

  “Dragged.”

  “—and threw us in here where they keep them muars.” He glanced at Haegan. “How’s come you got their clothes on?”

  “They boiled mine off me.”

  Tokar snorted. “Are we supposed to believe that, you stupid muar?”