The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs)

by D. W. Hawkins

  He started with his fists, punching Dormael until his mouth bled and his lips were too swollen to speak. Then he’d drive his fist into Dormael’s stomach, expelling the air from his lungs. When Dormael went to suck in a breath, the man would stab him in the gut.

  It was painful, being stabbed, but also it was a strangely invasive feeling. It left Dormael feeling violated, the little knife entering his belly or his sides with short, strong little punches. The man’s expression was tight-lipped, as if he were a farmer tilling a field. Just working, grunting with the effort of jabbing that knife into Dormael over and over again. It hurt more than anything Dormael had felt in his life.

  The man cut, beat, and kicked Dormael until he was dizzy with the loss of blood. His hands began to go numb; his feet lost the strength to move any longer, until all his weight was dangling by his wrists. His blood was splattered everywhere within the Greater Circle that kept his magic at bay. It ran over his elbows and into his armpits, from his lips and eyes, from the stab wounds in his midsection. Then the torture stopped, and Inera would ask him again the same three questions. Dormael tried to curse at her, but all that came out were pitiful noises, something like a wounded animal would make.

  Then, it would start all over again.

  Dormael hung lifelessly from the chain, unable to do much but whimper and sob as the man stabbed him once again in the stomach. Then he twisted the little knife, and Dormael gasped as he felt something inside of him go askew. His mind was going fuzzy, his hurts fading away into a buzz in the background of his thoughts. He could feel his chest filling with his own blood, making it harder and harder to breathe. He began to wheeze wetly, tiny flecks of blood coming out with the spittle that involuntarily sprayed from his barely open lips. Vaguely he realized that the beating, the stabbing, the cutting, had stopped. All he could hear was the sound of running water somewhere around him. He felt a cool hand on his cheek. He squinted up weakly through blurry, swollen eyes.

  Inera wiped blood from his face, thumbing it from under his eyes. Her expression was a little sad, almost a melancholy benevolence. In her other hand, she held a small glass jar filled with what he thought was water – except there were tiny little lights whirling around inside.

  “It hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked, slipping her bloodied hand into her mouth and moving her tongue around sensuously inside, tasting his blood. She took a deep breath, as if his blood were the most delicious ambrosia. “I can make it all stop. You want that, don’t you? To feel no more pain, to be whole again? Yes…I know you do. Just say it…say that you’ll pledge your life to me. Tell me that you will serve me and be mine forever. Tell me what I wish to know. It wouldn’t be so bad, you know. We could lie under the stars again. We could be together again, Dormael. I know you want that as much as I do. I know that you want me again.”

  She pressed her mouth to his chest, began giving him light kisses slowly, as if they were about to make love. Desire was the furthest thing from Dormael’s hazy mind, though. Her lips felt wonderful; his skin felt afire with the pain he’d been dealt, and her lips were cool and soothing against it. But he could feel himself slipping away, could feel his life bleeding slowly out onto the stones around him with every beat of his weakening heart.

  He knew he was dying. He welcomed it. No one would come for him, he knew that now. He’d been here for Gods knew how long, unconscious, then being tortured. He’d gone through multiple rounds of the questioning, he knew that, but the numb feeling began to enter his head, and he couldn’t remember just how many rounds of torture he’d endured. A feeling of acceptance came over him, a strange sort of peace. He’d revealed nothing to her, he’d screamed and cried and sobbed like a wounded beast, but he’d told her nothing. If he was to die here, so be it. At least he’d won. She could kill him, but she’d never get what she wanted out of him.

  She was saying something again, but her voice was hazy and indistinct. Dormael’s vision faded to blackness, and he was floating. He felt weightless, cool and comfortable. His pains were still there, somewhere in his consciousness, but they were unimportant. He could hear his heartbeat begin to stutter, failing in his last moments.

  You are here. How have you come to this place again?

  Dormael realized with a mental start that the alien presence he’d met in his dreams was with him again. The power touched his mind, and he felt that strange stretching sensation in his thoughts again, as if his mind were spread through eons of awareness.

  I am dying, he thought, pushing the words out to the alien power.

  No. Life still beats in your flesh…I can feel that.

  Then how…, he began, but something wrenched him from that place of peace. He felt an odd stretching sensation, as if the presence were trying to hold on to him while something else, something far away, pulled him inevitably away. His head spun.

  He coughed, spluttered and choked as he felt his pain slam back into him as he awakened. Inera was forcing water into his mouth from that jar, spilling it over his face and into his throat. Suddenly he felt something enter his mouth from the jar, almost as if he’d swallowed a bug made of electric flame.

  He went rigid as every muscle in his body suddenly stiffened. The chain snapped and creaked and his body jerked back and forth as he suddenly went violently up on his toes again. He felt as if lightning were crawling over his skin, into his wounds, leaving a tingling sensation behind. His heart beat in his ears with a vengeance.

  He felt his wounds knitting together, his skin and muscle and innards twisting back into place with an unnatural tingling feeling. His head cleared abruptly and he sucked in air, tasting the water in it and smelling the sewage and blood and sweat hanging in the room like a haze. His pain faded and muscles went slack suddenly, leaving him feeling oddly refreshed and renewed.

  He stared at Inera incredulously. She smiled mysteriously at him, one side of her mouth ticking up with a knowing and satisfied expression. She turned, walking back to the table and setting the glass jar atop it, careful to step lightly over the sand of the Greater Circle. She reached behind her and picked up the knife from the table.

  “Now,” she said, smiling, “Where is the armlet?”

  ****

  Bethany sat on the edge of a fountain in the Conclave courtyards. She was near the Bruising Stretch, kicking her legs idly and watching Shawna spar with members of the weapons class that was currently in attendance. She’d left D’Jenn’s rooms and went searching for the red-headed woman just as D’Jenn had told her to do. Shawna had been here, and Bethany was entranced by the sight of her fighting with the other students. She loved to watch Shawna fight. One day, she would have swords, too. Maybe Shawna would teach her to fight.

  She smiled at the thought, imagined herself running around and fighting with monsters and big, mean men – beating them, of course, like Shawna always did. Shawna spotted her and waved to her, smiling. Bethany waved back, feeling happy but a little embarrassed at the attention. She liked being invisible to big people; it made her feel safe. She loved Shawna, sure, but she was content to sit and watch her from the fountain without having to actually talk to her. Big people were always so serious, always telling her what to do and where to go. This was the first time in a while that she’d been on her own. She intended to make the most of it.

  Hopping down from the fountain as Shawna turned back to her sparring matches; Bethany decided that it was time to find something fun to do. She hadn’t had a chance to explore all the places in the Conclave, what with all of the wizards wanting to talk to Dormael and D’Jenn and get a look at Bethany. She didn’t really know why they all wanted to see her, but she was polite, just like she was supposed to be. It did kind of irritate her, though, always having to answer questions about this and that. She was tired of questions.

  She headed back to the large double doors to the Conclave, where she’d come out, and skipped through the doorway and up some stairs to the floor above. No one stopped her or said anything to her, and she was hap
py about that. She made her way through the hallways, playing hide and seek with the servants – even though they didn’t know they were playing – and making her way around aimlessly with no real destination in mind.

  The Conclave was a very pretty place, with walls of white stone, worn and polished smooth. There were paintings and tapestries everywhere, and even though she didn’t know what they were of or about, she loved to skip around the hallways and find new ones. Sometimes, she even found the same one, just done by a different painter or with a different style. Some were so big that Bethany could take ten steps from one end of the picture to the other, and when she found those she wished she were taller so she could see all of the little details.

  In some places, mostly the living quarters – she knew that because D’Jenn’s and Dormael’s rooms were the same way – the walls were paneled in some sort of shiny, dark wood that was also polished to a shine. Sometimes she would see one of the students, either rushing one way or another or doing chores around the Conclave, and she would hide from them. They all acted like they were too good to play with her, and Bethany didn’t feel like inviting anyone on her adventure, anyways. She continued to explore, pretending that she was exploring an old castle with magic stuff hidden everywhere, with traps and monsters just waiting to fight her.

  In way, she realized, she kind of was doing just that. This was, after all, where the wizards lived, so there had to be magic stuff lying around. And it was sort of a castle.

  There had to be magic stuff lying around…

  The thought stopped her in her tracks. She hadn’t thought of it like that before. Of course there was magic stuff everywhere! Probably rings, and swords, and bells, and flutes…her mind filled with a treasure trove of things that could be just sitting somewhere, waiting for her to come by and pick them up!

  This had just gotten so much better.

  But where would the wizards want to keep all the magic treasure? In all the stories she’d ever heard, there was always a treasure room, or a vault, or something. It always had a monster guarding it, maybe a troll or a dragon, and it was always underground. All she had to do was find the basement. That shouldn’t be too hard. She didn’t like the thought of a monster living somewhere underneath her, but just going and getting a look wouldn’t hurt anything.

  Besides, Bethany was good at being invisible to big people. Maybe it would work on big monsters, too. She darted off in search of a stairway.

  ****

  Dormael wasn’t sure how long his torture had gone on, now. Inera had taken him to the brink of death over and over again, and then brought him back with that jar of swirling lights. During his lucid moments, he had the presence of mind to wonder what kind of magic she’d used on him, but soon his thoughts would again devolve into pain and despair. He knew that she was breaking him, conditioning his mind to believe that she was the only thing that could make the pain stop, could heal him and bring him back to health. The knowledge of it didn’t help – he could feel his resolve slipping away. Each time she came to him, crooning to him and placing light kisses over his body, he had to fight not to beg her to make it stop.

  If he didn’t get out of here soon, he would break. He just didn’t know what he could do.

  “I know your will is draining away, my love,” Inera was saying, sauntering toward him with the jar again. His heart beat slowly in his ears again, and the only part of his body he could feel anymore was his chest, where she’d kissed him and ran her hands over his injuries.

  “Just kill me,” he uttered, forcing the words out through the blood in his mouth, “I’ll never serve you, Inera. Please…if there’s anything left of you in there, just kill me.”

  “You’re wrong, Dormael. You will serve me. You will beg to serve me!”

  “No,” was all he could get out this time.

  Inera hissed and turned back to the table, setting the jar down on its worn, wooden surface. She took a deep breath and sighed deeply, bowing her head. Dormael could see the muscles in her small shoulders working beneath her pale skin. Her back, too, was riddled with those strange scars.

  “This is taking too long,” she said, reaching into the jar and scooping up one of those strange lights, closing it in her fist, “We’ll just have to do this the other way. I really hoped to have you by my side, Dormael, instead of at my feet.” She turned, her eyes alight with anger now, and stalked forward, slamming her hand over his mouth, forcing him to suck inward or suffocate.

  He sucked in reflexively, feeling the now familiar shock run through his limbs and body, constricting every muscle he could move, that familiar, dirty feeling of magic crawling over him, weaving his body back to health. The refreshment he felt afterward seemed a mockery, somehow.

  He breathed in, savoring the vigor in his body while he could, knowing that it wouldn’t last long. Inera turned and gestured at the men in the room behind her, and they moved to obey. They picked up the table and moved it off to the side of the room, working quickly and without comment, until the wall he was facing was completely bare. Dormael furrowed his brow. What were they doing, now?

  Inera moved to the wall before him, holding what looked like a piece of thin charcoal, and began scrawling on the stone. She drew a large circle on the wall, and then carefully began to write glyphs and symbols inside and around the edge of the circle. He didn’t recognize the working, though he knew how to construct all the types of the Greater and Lesser Circles.

  “If you won’t agree to help me, love, then I’ll just have to force you to do it. I’m truly sorry it has come to this, but there’s nothing for it. You must be turned,” she said, turning back to him.

  “What are you doing, Inera?” he asked, suspicion creeping coldly up his spine.

  “There are ways, dear Dormael, to force you to my will. My master taught me many things, and this is the one thing that will completely ensure your cooperation.”

  My master?, Dormael thought. Then, in a flash, he understood. He was suddenly filled with cold, overpowering dread.

  “You’re working with the Vilth! You’ve…you’ve become one of them!”

  “Yes,” she replied, her eyes showing no remorse.

  “Inera…how could you? You…you’ve eaten human flesh?”

  Inera laughed chillingly, and Dormael felt the dread crawling up his spine. His heart began to beat with fear. What did she plan to do with him?

  “I’ve eaten, yes, and so much more, Dormael. Goodbye, my love. I will miss you, whatever you may believe,” she said. With that, she pulled out a sharp looking little black dagger, and slashed her right palm, squeezing it tightly to force blood from the wound. Dormael watched with morbid fascination as she turned, slinging her own blood over the circle on the wall – top, bottom, then left and right. It glistened in the torchlight as it ran slowly over the glyphs, then it began to steam. She turned her back to him and threw her arms out to the sides and bowed her head, then began to chant in some strange, guttural language.

  Dormael panicked. He reached down into his being and pulled his Kai awake, trying to force it to bear against the magical pressure of the Circle that contained him. It was no use, summoning his magic was like trying to arm-wrestle with a giant. The Circle couldn’t be circumvented by battering against it with his power.

  He tried to move on the chain, to swing far enough in any direction to gain purchase with his feet. If he could kick something across the sand that formed the Greater Circle, he could break it. It was to no avail. His blood was splashed all over the floor inside the circle, wet and slippery, and every time he tried to pull his body around with his toes, his foot slipped in the blood and the manacles pulled painfully against his wrists. Swinging on the chain didn’t help, either. His feet couldn’t touch the floor. He was caught – strung up like bait on a hook.

  He looked around frantically, trying to find something, anything to help him. The men in the room all looked a little uneasy at the Necromancy that Inera was immersed in working. Perhaps they’d
seen it before, witnessed whatever horror that she was summoning up to deal with him. Their trepidation didn’t do anything to make him feel better.

  Then he spotted something curious. The knife that the man had stabbed him and cut him with was lying on the wooden table, forgotten. The three men in the room were gazing fearfully at him and Inera, backing away to the edges of the room, not paying any attention to it.

  The knife was glowing. Or rather, his blood was glowing, giving off a rose-colored mist that wafted up from the blade like some strange, magical fog. In fact, there were splotches on the table that were emitting that same strange miasma. Everywhere his blood lay outside the Greater Circle, it was glowing. And no one, as of yet, had noticed.

  D’Jenn. It had to be him. Dormael had to stall Inera, at all costs.

  “Inera! You bitch! Turn around and face me before I die!”

  She kept chanting, her back to him.

  “Inera! Inera, don’t do this! You can still stop, can still back away from the Vilth!”

  No reaction. Her chanting began to reach a strange crescendo, and there seemed to be another voice, more of a whispering growl, that overlaid her own words, twining in unison with them. Within the Circle she’d drawn, a substance like iridescent black fluid began to fill the cracks in the stone, spilling slowly outward and crawling together.

  “Inera! Inera, I love you!”

  She paused, her spell caught at the apex, waiting like a headman’s axe at the zenith of his swing to come down on Dormael’s head. She turned her head toward him, keeping her body turned toward the Circle. Her eyes were strangely sad, her expression pained and lonely. After all of this, as strange as it was, Dormael knew that she still loved him.