Firebrand

by Kristen Britain

  Slee paused, turned to look upon her. “Narivanine.”

  “I have been following and watching you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You have gone too far. It is not yours to take lives in this manner.”

  “You cannot tell me what I can or cannot do. I AM SLEE!”

  A tremendous wind thrashed through the trees. Snow and ice pelted Nari, but she did not waver.

  “You are an elemental,” she said, “that is all. No god to take life.”

  “No? Then watch.” He turned his attention back to the Galadheon, still held in the fist of snow.

  Nari flew across the snow and put herself before the blade’s tip. “Slee! You have overstepped. When I was freed, I made some friends, such as the Galadheon and Zachary. Others are less corporeal.”

  “You will die first,” Slee said.

  “I think not.” She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes. She imagined one friend in particular. When she looked upon Slee once more, an icy swordtip was pressed against her throat, sharp and painful when she swallowed. Slee gazed at her with eyes like hailstones. “You are out of season,” she told it.

  Slee cocked its head as if trying to comprehend her statement.

  “I call upon the ventos strallis!” she cried.

  Slee looked incredulous, then threw its head back and laughed. “You cannot—”

  But she could. The winds reversed the slee’s, coming from the south, pushing back the cold that the slee emanated. Slee stopped laughing, turned to face the oncoming mild wind even as snowflakes turned into raindrops, and raindrops turned into a downpour.

  The giant hand gripping the Galadheon crumbled and she fell to the ground. Zachary helped her to her feet and they scrambled from the center of the maelstrom.

  Slee whipped back to Nari, fighting to retain its shape as its snowstorm failed and became a gale of rain and wind. “How did you do this?” it demanded. The more it attempted to push back with the north wind, the more it failed.

  “I told you,” Nari said, “I made friends. One such is the ventos strallis.”

  Slee wailed as water gushed off it in freshets. Ventos strallis, the south wind, dominated the season they were entering. Slee had no power over it.

  Slee shrank, began to lose definition as any snowdrift in a spring rain. Its arms fell off and Nari stepped right up to it, stared into its melting face. “You will never harm another,” she said. “You will never steal someone away from their loved ones again. Not ever.”

  The aureas slee’s mouth had melted so it could not reply, only make a pitiful moaning sound. Its hailstone eyes also shrank within their sockets, and rolled out.

  Nari plunged her hand into the slush of its chest, and she groped and searched for the slee’s cold heart. When she found it, she yanked it out, triumphant. The heart of ice sat upon her hand, and what remained of the aureas slee collapsed and melted into a puddle that was washed away by the rain.

  “Nari,” said Enver, his eyes wide as he looked upon her and her prize. He was soaked, his hair stuck to his face. He looked otherwise unharmed from his encounter with the slee. “You have called the south wind. How?”

  “One can make friends anywhere,” she replied. It had taken effort, but had been worth it. Now she could take vengeance.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  She gazed at the ice heart. It pulsated with the life of contained winter. It would not melt, and Slee would reform next winter to torment others unless she ended it.

  “I must destroy it,” she said.

  “Nooo,” came the disembodied voice of the ventos strallis. “There must be balance. Nature must have its ice.” Its words flowed around Nari and caressed her cheek.

  “But I do not want Slee to return,” she said.

  “Ice must return, but it does not have to be in the guise of the elemental now melted,” the ventos strallis replied.

  “What do you mean? How can this be accomplished?”

  “You,” the ventos strallis said, “may draw the heart of ice into yourself. You may bring balance.”

  Nari weighed the heart in her hand. Long had she lived, and so much had changed since Slee had taken her captive. Her love, Hadwyr, was long dead, but that loss stung her as new as the spring wind. Her sister was gone from the world, and Argenthyne destroyed. Little of what she had once known remained.

  “Nari,” Enver said, “you are not truly considering this, are you?”

  “I have no one, and nowhere to go,” she replied, “and I grow weary.”

  “You would be welcomed in the Elt Wood. There are those of Argenthyne who would greet you.”

  She shook her head. “My time is past. I would just take the Great Sleep. Or, I could do some good in the world.”

  Enver nodded and touched her arm. “I will look for you when autumn freezes into winter.”

  Nari smiled. She pressed the heart of ice against her chest, first feeling how cold it was, but then it sent a welcoming warmth tingling through her body. She took a deep breath and pushed it into herself and was Nari no longer, substantial no longer, but the element that was of the ice. She turned to vapor and drifted to the clouds, and whispered, “I am the aureas narivannis.” She had sought, and at last found, completion.

  AFTERMATH

  When the giant hand of snow had crumbled apart and Karigan tumbled out, Zachary had helped her to her feet, thrown his arm around her shoulders, and run her to safety against the curtain wall, where they stood hidden in deep shadow. He drew her against him, wished that his breastplate was not between them so he could feel her heart beat against his chest.

  “Thank the gods,” he murmured over and over. “Thank the gods you are all right.” Overcome by having nearly lost her yet again, and by equal measures of relief that he had not, he kissed her hair, her eyes, her face, her lips, but she gasped and wrenched herself free of his embrace.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I presume too much.” His urgent need to be physically close to her had caused him to trespass.

  “I—” It was hard to see her expression in the dark. “My back—your embrace and the breastplate—it hurt. That is all.”

  “Oh gods, Karigan, I’m sorry!” The last thing he’d wanted to do was cause her pain, but he’d been so caught up in the moment. He glanced over his shoulder through the slackening rain and saw that the aureas slee was no more, and when he reassured himself that the fighting had not reignited, he returned his attention to Karigan. “In my relief, I forgot. I’m so sorry.” But was her reason for pulling away true, or was she just trying to spare his feelings?

  He was answered when she took his hands into hers and leaned in for a sweet, lingering kiss, of which he had only dreamed until now. He discovered the reality was, in fact, far better than the dream. This time, when she moved in closer to him, he held her gently, placing no pressure against her back. Then he forgot all else, even the rain soaking them.

  When finally they parted, there was some shyness between them, and he imagined a radiance expanded between them, engulfed and bound them. Imagined? No, felt it. She had stolen his heart long ago, and gave to him, in return, an intrinsic part of herself. He held her, their foreheads touching.

  After a time, Karigan said, “I think you need to see to your people. Your people who were slaves. They’re in the chamber of the Aeon Iire and need their king.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Do not let anyone touch the iire,” she warned him. “It is not meant for the living.”

  “I understand.” He could not resist brushing her lips with another kiss. Reluctantly he let her go, turned, and nearly plowed into Enver. As disconcerting as Zachary found it, Enver’s expression showed little emotion, though his eyes told the truth of what he’d seen. There was sorrow, and something steely cold in their depths.

  En
ver told them what had become of Nari and the aureas slee, and then promised to keep Karigan safe as Zachary attended to his people.

  The battle for the keep of Ifel Aeon and the Lone Forest had wound down quickly after the loss of Immerez. The River Unit squelched the defenders and rounded up those who survived and held them prisoner in the old slave quarters. Zachary freed the slaves from the chamber of the Aeon Iire, keeping in mind Karigan’s admonishment that no one touch the strange silver metal of the iire itself. To his sorrow, Binning and many others had not made it. Lorilie Dorran had, and she flung her arms around him when she was freed of her chains.

  “This does not mean I think there should be kings,” she told him, “but thank you for coming back for us.”

  Zachary only wished he had been able to come back sooner. He felt as though he had failed her and the others, but he hugged Lorilie in return.

  “Whether or not you think there should be kings,” he said, “I am pleased you are all right.” Most of the surviving slaves had suffered wounds of some kind.

  She shuddered. “I think it will be some time before any of us are truly all right. We saw some strange things tonight, demons and . . . I don’t know, a ghost of a knight? Then there was the strange creature of ice that killed Grandmother. And of course there is what we suffered in our captivity, as you well know.”

  So, it was the aureas slee, and not the avatar, who had killed Grandmother. He would have to find out what Karigan recalled of it.

  The able-bodied among the slaves helped their injured fellows. There was a guard barracks where they could shelter. Destarion and his assistants had been summoned to help with all the wounded.

  The corpses of demonkind smoldered away until they left behind only a black mark to show they had existed at all. He ordered the corpse of Grandmother to be displayed for the enemy prisoners so that they would know in truth that their leader was dead. For all his fury, he would have liked her alive for questioning. The head of the serpent had been taken, but he was not so naive as to believe that some other wouldn’t rise to lead Second Empire. Birch came to mind first and foremost.

  The bodies of the former slaves would be removed from the chamber of the Aeon Iire, and he ordered the chamber and its passage blocked off. Should the avatar need reentry, he did not think an earthen blockade would be a barrier to her.

  He still marveled that it was his Karigan who was the avatar. Could she have ever imagined, when she was a runaway schoolgirl, that one day she would be the chosen one of a god? Before he left, he found a small piece of leather on the chamber floor, her eyepatch, and pocketed it.

  Outside, it had stopped raining altogether, and for that he was grateful. He and Donal headed back toward the keep. He was exhausted and sore, his shoulder wound burning. The battle seemed to have laid waste to his fury. His brief moments with Karigan in his arms, her lips upon his, had restored his humanity and equilibrium. Now he was just a tired man wanting nothing more than his bed, but he knew that all the soldiers of the River Unit were just as tired, and if they couldn’t rest yet, neither could he.

  When they entered the courtyard, they found soldiers lining up the dead, mostly those of Second Empire who had defended the keep. Inside, a mender tended the wounded under the watchful gaze of guards.

  “Varius?” Zachary said in surprise.

  Varius gave him a harried glance. “Not now, Dav, unless you are dying.”

  Zachary nodded and did not reprimand him for disrespect. He knew that focused look as Varius tended the wounded of both sides.

  He spotted Karigan across the great hall, her back to him, head bent into her hand. Enver stood beside her with his arm around her to support her. Zachary thought that if he was weary, then she must be doubly so. Rennard stood with them, and he realized they were looking down at a body. He approached with foreboding, and when he stood beside Karigan, he realized she was crying. When he looked down, he saw why. Stretched out on his back with his hands crossed on his chest, was Lord Aaron Fiori, the Golden Guardian of Selium, and the father of Karigan’s best friend.

  “Gods, no,” he murmured.

  “One of my men said he charged into the keep looking for someone called Lala,” Rennard told him. “The civilians were all gone. No Lala here.”

  Fiori looked as though he slept, his golden hair glinting in the lamplight. Only the stab wound that had found its way beneath the edge of his breastplate indicated he was not just asleep. Beside Zachary, Karigan made a strange motion with her hand toward Fiori and softly whispered, “Sleep well.”

  “He will need an honor guard for his return to Selium,” Zachary told Rennard.

  “Yes, sire, I will arrange it.” The lieutenant then shrouded the body with a cloak.

  Zachary turned to Karigan, placed his hand on her shoulder. “You should get some rest.”

  She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, kept her right eye covered. “I should go be with Estral. She’ll need to know.”

  “Mist is coming,” Enver said. “She will carry the Galadheon and me back to the campsite.”

  Zachary struggled with himself, not wanting her to leave, but knowing it was for the best. This was a dark place, filled with death and dying. Even if she was Westrion’s avatar, she need not be in death’s constant presence. In any case, he was certain she would rest better at the campsite and there Enver could more easily tend her. Her cheeks were hollowed and her expression exhausted. She tried to conceal her pain, but it only told him how much she hurt. He longed to hold her once more, to comfort her. Would onlookers care, or even notice?

  Enver glanced over his shoulder. “Ah, I believe Mist has just arrived and awaits us.”

  The moment passed, and Zachary simply squeezed Karigan’s shoulder and let his hand drop to his side. “Oh,” he said, “I found something of yours.” He pulled the eyepatch out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand.

  “Thank you,” she said in relief. Hastily she put it over her eye and tied it in place, but not before he caught a glint of silver. She turned away, but then paused to look at him. “You need rest, too, and you should get your shoulder looked at.” Then she made her painstaking way across the hall, leaning on Enver.

  He glanced at his shoulder, at the torn fabric and the bloody grooves demon claws had cut into his flesh. It hadn’t bothered him much at the time, but now with the battle over and the energy that had sustained him draining away, the burning pain was even worse.

  “Sir Karigan is correct,” Donal said. “That should be looked at.” He made Zachary sit on a rough bench while he collected supplies.

  Zachary leaned back against the cold stone wall and shivered with a sudden chill. When it passed, he gazed around the torchlit great hall, watching as more injured streamed in and more corpses were carried out. Varius worked feverishly to help those he could with the assistance of a couple of soldiers. Moans and cries came from that end of the hall. On the opposite end, where he recalled the kitchen to be, other soldiers bustled about boiling water and perhaps finding some food to make for their weary comrades that would sustain them better than the simple rations they carried with them.

  Donal soon returned with a bowl of water, a bar of soap, and a cloth and bottle. He started to cleanse the wound and Zachary hissed at the sting.

  “Have you no wounds?” he demanded.

  “No, sire,” Donal replied.

  “I am sorry about Rye.”

  “As am I. He was young and did not have his full training, but he did very well. He would have made a fine Weapon.”

  “I agree. Had he family?”

  “Yes. Poor farmers in D’Yer Province.”

  “Then I will recommend to the council of Black Shields to confer status posthumously so that his family will receive a stipend. He, and they, are deserving.”

  “That is most generous, sire.”

  Zachary winced as Donal pr
obed into his rent flesh. “You did not seem very surprised to see Sir Karigan here.”

  “Little surprises me where Sir Karigan is concerned.”

  Zachary laughed. No truer words had ever been spoken.

  “If she was here,” Donal continued, “it was meant to be.”

  It was a very curious statement, Zachary thought, but though he had been surrounded by Weapons his entire life, he knew he would never completely understand their ways. There were already enough mysteries for one night—the demons of the Aeon Iire, Grandmother’s spellcasting, the avatar, and the aureas slee. He had a better grasp of it all than most, and he could only imagine what everyone else thought. Unlike Donal, they’d find Karigan’s sudden appearance among them odd.

  Donal uncorked the bottle he had found.

  “Is that whiskey?” Zachary asked, sniffing the air.

  “Yes, sire. Someone kept a small stash here.” Donal grimaced at the scent. “Not a very fine grade, however.”

  Well, it would still be a fine— “Ow! Damnation, Donal!” he exclaimed as the Weapon poured the contents over his wound.

  “Sorry, sire, but it was the only medicament I could find. The mender might have something else, but he is overwhelmed at the moment. Thought this would work in a pinch.”

  “All the fires of hell . . .”

  Donal bent down and searched his eyes. Was that a line of concern across his brow? “I suggest you sleep if you can, sire,” he said, bandaging the wound. “Once the urgent matters of caring for the wounded and so forth are sorted, decisions will have to be made, and you’ll be needed.”

  The gray light of dawn was already showing through cracks and windows. “What about you?”

  “I am your shield. I will keep watch.”

  Zachary had not expected any other answer. “You need to get some rest, too.”

  “Soon, sire, after you have had yours. If Sir Karigan had been in better condition, she and I could have taken turns, but I will be fine.”

  So, Donal considered her Weapon enough to guard him when no other was available. He wondered what the Weapons would think if her back never fully recovered enough for her to withstand the rigors of being a swordmaster. He decided he would not even consider the possibility. She must recover fully.