The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs)

by D. W. Hawkins

  She’d obviously gotten better, or had received some training from somewhere. The last time D’Jenn had seen her, she had been untrained and not very powerful, and would have been incapable of fending off his attacks. That was not so any longer. She held out a hand, and the whirlpool of flying detritus was pushed outward slowly. It wavered, but still it moved away from her.

  D’Jenn could see the strain on her face, though. The two of them were locked in a struggle, each trying to maintain two separate workings at once. Magic was not easy to use. The problem with working spells was that magic had a sort of empathy, and could sense what you intended sometimes. This was good for some things, but bad for others. Particularly bad when you were tossing around enough energy to burn someone to cinders, especially chaotic energies like fire and inertia. Such things were hard to control, and required iron concentration.

  Each wizard had different gifts, and each was better at different things. Dormael, for instance, could toss around enough power to cause an avalanche, or break city walls, or burn stone to molten lava, and do it the hard way – but his concentration was a little on the weak side, and he could barely manage to do two or three things at once, as long as only one thing was difficult. D’Jenn, on the other hand, though a little weaker than Dormael in the raw power aspect, could divide his concentration multiple times, and manage more complex spells in different ways.

  It seemed that Inera’s ability with magic was limited. She was barely managing to hold the spinning cloud at bay and maintain her lance of fire, and she was growing weaker by the second. The only thing that worried D’Jenn was that other power she seemed to be tapped into, that greasy black feeling that permeated her Kai like oil poured over water. She closed her eyes and D’Jenn could feel her stabilizing her hold over the magic, but her concentration was wavering. He smiled and began to push harder, moving his shield forward and walking closer to her step by slow step.

  The steam hissed and billowed around him as he stepped forward, and he redoubled his efforts, pouring more magic into the whirling cloud, pushing harder against Inera’s will. Her fire wavered, but D’Jenn saw her school her expression into something placid and focused and the cloud moved outward again. He took another step forward, dividing his mind into yet another partition and began to leach the heat away from the flame slowly, pulling the energy from her working.

  The lance of flame began to waver at the edges, the fire becoming less focused as pieces of it wafted into the air, dying as they did. Suddenly, the fire fell away and D’Jenn pushed his barrier of water into the whirling cloud, sending it into the roiling mass with all the power left in that part of his concentration. His mind slid back into one focused purpose with ease, and he pushed the whirlwind of sewage and debris at Inera with all the strength he could muster.

  Since she’d abandoned her attack, however, Inera was able to concentrate on simply keeping the detritus away from her body, and her shield stabilized easily. Once again, the two of them were locked in a struggle of pure magical strength, and were almost evenly matched. D’Jenn was a bit stronger than Inera, and he was able to gain a little ground, but maintaining a shield of pure force was easier than pushing a whirling mass of debris inward, trying to break through a magical shield. She crouched, pushing her arms outward, and his cloud thinned a little as she pushed it farther away to try and give herself a little room to move. D’Jenn gritted his teeth and poured his magic into the spell, but he could gain no more ground against her.

  Suddenly, she snarled a word in a strange guttural language and tossed her hand upwards. Her hand was cut, and blood sprayed up from her palm, whirling into the cloud of water and debris. A black smoke-like substance congealed into the cloud, whirling into his spell and obscuring D’Jenn’s view of her. He felt the spell begin to come apart, as if it were being eaten from the inside, corroded by that same greasy power he’d felt her using before. D’Jenn cursed and abandoned his attack, and the debris that had been flowing around Inera evaporated into that black smoke.

  The cloud roiled up from the slight woman, gathering above her like an angry thunderhead. She was smiling now, holding her bleeding hand above her head, the smoke leaking from her wound as if her own blood were made of the dark, misty substance. D’Jenn tensed himself for another attack, but he’d never seen this before, and wasn’t sure what to expect.

  She snarled again, and in an instant, multiple tentacles reached out from the cloud, flying at D’Jenn faster than he would have thought possible. He fended them off, forcing them away with flashes of his magic, but every time he forced one of them aside, another whipped at him from a different direction. It was maddening, and he danced over the floor that was slick with blood and sewage, trying to gain an advantage by finding a more defensible position, but the cloud simply floated after him, chasing him around the room.

  Inera laughed maniacally, and ran from the chamber back out into the tunnels. D’Jenn cursed in frustration, but the cloud of roiling, oily smoke kept sending those tentacles at him, and he had no idea what would happen if one of them grabbed him. He was too occupied to chase the girl.

  “Dormael!” he shouted, his voice coming out a bit more desperately than he’d intended.

  Suddenly he felt his cousin’s power come to bear against the cloud, and as D’Jenn fended off the reaching, thrashing tentacles of Inera’s spell, he felt his cousin hurl his own power at the cloud itself. It began to shrink, to be compressed into a smaller mass, and as Dormael stepped up beside him, the cloud was suddenly pushed down to the size of a ball, and the tentacles stopped coming. D’Jenn linked his power with Dormael’s and together the two of them ripped the cloud to pieces, the backlash of power causing a strange shrieking noise to ring out in the magic.

  Then all was quiet. D’Jenn turned to take in the scene.

  All three of the guards were dead. Two of them had been killed and lay on the ground, pools of blood spreading out underneath them. The third…the third had been killed a little differently. He hung from the wall four hands off of the floor, pinned by a sword through each shoulder that stuck directly into the stone. His innards were spilled out onto the floor, grayish slimy ropes that cascaded haphazardly from a wound in the man’s stomach that had been ripped open more than cut. There were multiple stab wounds in him, but some of them appeared to have been made from the inside, rather than from outside – like something had crawled into the man’s gut and then back out again from another place. Atop the pile of ichor and intestines underneath the mutilated body, a single, small knife lay as if dropped there, covered from pommel to blade in slick, red blood.

  D’Jenn had to bite back his revulsion and swallow the bile that had risen to his throat at the sight. Allen and Dormael both were pointedly ignoring the body. Dormael was breathing hard and was covered in blood, but he didn’t appear to be hurt anywhere. There were smears of blood on him that looked like they’d been bled from him, but no wounds were in evidence.

  “Do you see my clothes anywhere?” Dormael asked, looking around the gore-riddled room.

  Allen snapped his fingers and stepped into the antechamber. In a few moments he returned with a pile of clothing and a few odds and ends. “Saw them in the corner, before we came in here. Are you alright, brother?” Allen asked, handing the clothes over to Dormael.

  Dormael looked down at his shackles, seeming to realize that his wrists were still held together by them. He frowned, and D’Jenn felt his song murmur lightly as the metal rusted and fell away into dust. Dormael brushed his hands together, taking the clothes and beginning to dress.

  “Inera got away?” he asked, looking at D’Jenn. D’Jenn nodded back silently, noting his cousin avoiding Allen’s earlier question. No one pressed him on the issue.

  “We probably won’t find her again, anyway. I have a feeling that she’ll come back eventually. D’Jenn, she tried to turn me. Tried to…feed me to some kind of demon. She’s working with the Vilthinum now. She’s…she’s one of them.”

  “God
s,” Allen gasped, “You mean, a Necromancer? But don’t they eat people, or dig up bodies, or something?”

  “All of those things, and worse, I suspect,” D’Jenn grunted in reply, “The Conclave doesn’t know much about them. They have a strict sort of kill-them-when-you-find-them policy. Most of what we know comes from eyewitness accounts of past Vilthinum activities, and some of it is…questionable. I’m surprised to see her alive.”

  “Imagine how I feel,” Dormael muttered, “Besides, I’m not sure she is totally alive.”

  “What do you mean?” Allen asked, “How can someone be kind of dead? And did you say that she tried to feed you to a demon?”

  “Yes a demon. A Taker, it would have assumed my identity. And as far as the other, I don’t know,” Dormael sighed, straightening out his shirt and getting ready to pull it over his head, “Just…some of the things she said were strange. I’m not completely sure what she meant by most of it.”

  “How do you know that, about the demon taking your identity?” D’Jenn asked, suddenly interested. Little was known about the denizens of the outside planes. Where had Dormael learned about them?

  “It’s not important,” Dormael replied, a little too quickly, moving to pull his shirt on.

  “Dormael, wait,” D’Jenn cut in, reaching out a hand to forestall him from pulling the shirt over his head, “That bruise you had. It’s gone.”

  “I know. There are some things we need to discuss…she used her powers on me, D’Jenn. She…healed me somehow. Do you see that jar on the table?”

  D’Jenn looked to where his cousin was pointing, and he saw a jar of water there, glass and with a cork stuffed into the top. Inside, though, there were tiny lights swimming around in the water, almost as if there were a couple of fireflies inside swimming placidly in circles – only fireflies didn’t swim. D’Jenn had never seen anything like it before, nor heard anything that described something like it.

  Allen walked over to the bottle and picked it up off the table, gazing into the water closely and examining the lights. He shook the bottle, causing both Dormael and D’Jenn to step back suddenly. One just didn’t go about shaking magical things. Some of them blew up. D’Jenn relaxed when nothing happened and just shook his head as Allen walked over to them.

  “The little sparks didn’t get shaken with the rest of the water,” Allen commented idly as he walked up, “Watch.”

  And again, as Dormael and D’Jenn both made protesting, fearful noises, Allen swirled the bottle in a circle this time, causing the water to spin. The lights continued their slow revolutions of the bottle, as if the water wasn’t even there. Dormael and D’Jenn both gave Allen meaningful scowls, and in return Allen just smiled broadly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just that shaking that thing around might have killed us all. Nothing to worry about,” D’Jenn commented. Allen smiled again, and shook the bottle up.

  “Like this?”

  “Give me that!” Dormael snapped, snatching the bottle from Allen’s hands as his brother just laughed at the wizards. Dormael handed the bottle over to D’Jenn and straightened his shirt over his torso. As he did, he noticed that there was a rip in the side of the garment, and a large piece was missing from the left side of the shirt. That was just beautiful, after everything.

  D’Jenn gazed into the water, watching the sparks of light revolve slowly around the bottle in contended circles. It was sort of beautiful, if you didn’t take into account that it had been used by a Vilth, and most likely made with Necromancy. The lights were twinkling slightly as they spun. It was hypnotic, and D’Jenn tore his eyes away and tucked the bottle under his arm.

  “What did she do with it?” he asked, moving away to try and find a sack to carry the thing in.

  “She sort of fed the lights to me,” Dormael replied, his expression becoming acutely uncomfortable, “There were more of them before. When she did it, it was…strange. My body would heal rapidly, until I felt completely renewed.”

  “Why in the Six Hells did she heal you?” Allen asked with his brow furrowing.

  “Because,” Dormael said, “I was close to death. She did it multiple times.”

  The casual way that Dormael said it gave D’Jenn the chills. Allen’s jaw worked again, his expression becoming angry. The room was silent for a tense, uncomfortable moment.

  “Let’s get back to the surface,” Dormael said, his tone businesslike and grim, “We need to get back to the Conclave as quickly as we can.”

  “What did she want, brother? Why did she take you?”

  “She wanted Shawna. She wanted the armlet. We have to get back. If she can abduct me right off the street, in the capital city of the Sevenlands and the Conclave’s main base of power…there’s no way to know what else she is capable of, or what plans she may have in place. Shawna and Bethany could be in danger.”

  With that, Dormael strode from the chamber, his footsteps echoing down the tunnel. Allen and D’Jenn looked at each other with tight-lipped expressions and worried eyes. Then they hurried after Dormael.

  ****

  Chapter Twenty

  Soul of the Fire

  Bethany had run down so many darkened corridors, through so many intersections, up and down so many flights of dusty stairs that she had no idea where she’d run to. Her magic had long since abandoned her to the dark, and her heart was racing too quickly to summon it up again. She couldn’t get her mind to calm down.

  She knew that she was still underground. The smell of the dead, dusty air around her was a clue, but somehow she just felt that it was right. She sobbed continuously, unable to get the screams of the burning man to stop echoing through her thoughts. She knew he’d been a bad man, but that didn’t make her feel any better. She’d been afraid and angry and alone, and that definitely didn’t make her feel better, either.

  She thought that she was deeper in the ground than before, and that thought scared her as well. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been down here, but she thought that surely someone would be looking for her by now. She hoped so, anyway.

  She’d run until she could no longer hear the man’s screams echoing through the dark hallways. It was darker here, and quieter, and even though Bethany had tried to follow every staircase she could find upwards, it was to no avail. Some of them had led to even more dark hallways, and though she knew she should be heading up, something in her would be afraid that he could be on those upper levels, waiting to trap her again. One had led to a landing that had a narrow, barred window too high for her to reach. The gray light coming in from the opening could only be coming from outside, but there had been no hope of her climbing to it. She’d been too scared to scream for help.

  She’d thought about staying there, huddling in the pool of light coming in through that window, but the landing was a dead end, and she’d begun to feel trapped after staying there for too long, so she’d continued into the darkened tunnels beneath the Conclave. There were no torches burning on this level, and Bethany made her way by touch, running her fingers along the rough stone of the wall as she cautiously stepped forward. Her sobs began to calm as the silence of the dark pressed in on her, and her fear of the unknown things that could be waiting in the dark made her stifle them as best she could.

  She had to summon her magic again. It was the only thing left that she could do. Without it, she could wander these halls for days and never get out.

  Bethany stopped as her hand felt something cool set into the rock. She remembered the designs that had been laid into the stones in the hallways above her, weaving sinuous lines of brass or copper that seemed to have been stamped directly into the stones of the wall. Perhaps the metal reached lower to the floor here.

  Bethany took a deep breath and used the feel of the cool metal to calm herself. She took deep breaths, just as D’Jenn had taught her, packing her emotions away one by one with each breath, until her mind was clear as a mountain stream. She felt her Kai again, a sense of light that lay in the deep pool o
f her mind, calm and serene as it ever was. She reached toward it, but the light seemed to slip through her fingers and recede every time she tried to grasp it. Bethany almost panicked again, but told herself firmly that she was a wizard now, and wizards didn’t cry. The thought helped her somehow, and she slowly reached toward her Kai again.

  It came to her tentatively, like a scared animal, but it sang. Bethany almost cried in relief to feel it coursing through her again. She relaxed, her shoulders slumping even though she didn’t remember tensing them up.

  Now she had to make the light. Dormael and D’Jenn had never showed her, but even with her senses heightened by her magic there wasn’t enough light to see by down here. She would just have to figure it out on her own.

  Light!

  Nothing happened.

  Shine!

  The darkness stayed firmly in place. This wasn’t working. Obviously there was some trick to it that she just didn’t know. Maybe if she just wished for it instead of trying to command it. But earlier when she’d made the fire go away, and the hinges stop creaking, she’d told the things what to do and they’d just done it. So why wasn’t that working with the light? What was different?

  Please just make the dark go away, she pleaded, but there was nothing. Her Kai just continued to sing lightly, lilting through her senses like a butterfly. She almost got frustrated again, but she made herself calm down. She had to think, and she had to be brave.

  What would D’Jenn do?

  He would probably just make the light. He knew how. But what would he do if he were her, and didn’t know what to do? What would he tell her to do? D’Jenn was very smart. He knew so many things, and could figure out anything that he didn’t know. So what would he do?