Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth)

by Matthew Medina

  She’d nearly died, suffering for almost half a span with a terrible fever and fits of trembling, but she had prayed to the Divines every day, and at the time she believed that they had heard her prayer and delivered her from death’s door. It wasn’t easy, but eventually, with Their help, her body had fought off the sickness in her blood. It had reinforced her faith that They had some plan for her. She didn’t know what it was, only that she had to work hard at staying alive until They revealed it to her. That was sojourns ago, however, and these days she wasn’t as certain what the Divines thought of people, if they even existed.

  But ever since that incident, she never went out without a thorough check of her body before she left her roost, and after returning she inspected her skin for any cuts or abrasions that would need proper cleaning and dressing.

  After satisfying herself that apart from the soreness in her limbs, she was healthy and whole, she returned to her bathing area and emptied the shallow basin in a nearby storm drain, another of the improvements she had made to her living area. She refilled the basin from the second hot water pool, setting it out to cool for the next day, setting herself a mental reminder to go up to the roof later to bring in more water from the collector she had assembled on the roof to gather rainwater.

  She padded to the clothes line strung up on one side of the living quarters and donned a clean, dry set of loose, dark clothes; a tunic and drawstring pants. Then she climbed back up to the attic.

  Before she inspected the case, she stepped on a pedal that she had installed in the floor and metal slats near the ceiling opened, and she could feel the burst of warmth which indicated that it was letting the first rays of the rising sun in. She grabbed a glass jar of purified water from a nearby table where she always kept it, unscrewed the lid and drank deeply until it was gone. She set the jar back on the table for cleaning later, then walked over, sat cross-legged on the floor next to the case, and pulled it onto her lap.

  The first thing she noticed about the case was that it was made sturdily, and the outside of the case was covered in very fine leather. The case itself would fetch a nice price on the black market. She reached both hands out with the case propped between her crossed knees and felt along the entire perimeter of it. It was, just like everything else in Dane Eyrris’ apartment, extremely spartan and minimalist. Though she sometimes imagined that the more well off residents of the Seat enjoyed some privileges that the rest didn’t, she was beginning to see that even they were subject to a life of bland uniformity. A simple clasp on one side of the case was all that kept it closed. No lock; no complications.

  She lifted it and smelled it to be safe. Only the smell of the finely tanned leather stood out, though she thought she could detect the faintest lingering trace of Dane Eyrris’ perfumed scent on the handle and latch.

  She crinkled her nose at the reminder of him, and set the case back down in her lap. She unhooked the clasp and slowly lifted the lid of the case, her senses tuned for any trap that Dane Eyrris might have left in the case.

  No trap sprung as she lifted the lid carefully, and she ran her fingers along the inside of the case, feeling more leather, this flatter and pulled taut. She moved her fingers in small circles, spiraling them inward, probing what was something of a jumble to her other senses. She smelled oil, but there was the scent of something else there she’d never smelled before. It was vaguely metallic, but unlike any of the metals she was familiar with.

  Then, as she explored the interior of the case, her left thumb caught on something razor sharp and she quickly withdrew her hand, sticking the thumb in her mouth and tasting the tang of her own blood. She sucked it until the blood was gone, while her right hand continued to move inward even more cautiously, until it contacted a raised metal surface. Whatever it was, it was an unusual combination of shapes, a short cylindrical section, flowing into a thinner section that was clearly sharpened and curved around in a semi-circle, leading to to a point. A dim memory from her childhood appeared in her mind as she traced the contour of the bladed section; it was shaped exactly like the crescent moon. She had found the narrow, sharp tip with her thumb.

  She encircled the fingers of her right hand along the cylindrical section to grip the handle, and lifted the object from the case, and used the tips of the fingers on her left hand to examine it in more detail. The shaft seemed to be made of a long, single piece of molded metal, but even the cursory image that was forming in her mind was that of an ornately patterned design along the entirety of the shaft. It ran about half the length of her forearm before it turned abruptly and tapered and curved around into the crescent-moon shape of the blade.

  The inner edge of the crescent, curving around to form the tip, was also razor sharp, and that only confirmed that she was holding an exquisite weapon unlike any she had ever known of before.

  In contrast, she thought back to the way that her father’s sword had looked. It had been barely more than a hammered piece of rusted steel; sharp enough to stick the point in someone and do damage of course, but nothing had been nothing elegant about it. It had been an ugly tool for an ugly job. Even the swords of the Imperial army which she had seen plenty of examples of growing up, at least had the appearance of being professionally smithed, had still looked to be made of all crude jagged lines and hard edges.

  Over the sojourns, she had personally fashioned clubs and other crude stabbing instruments for when she’d needed to defend herself, but what she now held in her hands was unlike anything she even could have imagined. It was unlike any of the other artifacts she had ever seen or experienced from the Before. It felt like something crafted by the Divines themselves, existing in a class by itself.

  That thought sparked her to wonder if this was part of the Divine’s plan for her.

  Is this a weapon of the Divines? she wondered to herself, but not for long.

  It sounded pretty ridiculous once she thought about it and the voice of doubt immediately rose to confront that thought with one of its own.

  There is no plan, not for you, or anyone else. Why would beings such as you imagine the Divines to be even have need of weapons?

  As she ran her fingers along the curved blade once again, avoiding the razor sharp edge, she discovered that there was more to it than she’d first noticed. She slowed her fingers and ran them slowly along the cool, smooth metal. She felt herself flush with amazement to realize that the surface of the blade was not featureless as she had first assumed, but in fact was inlaid with a series of intricate designs that were etched directly into the metal. She had never imagined that it was possible to craft such whisper details into a metal blade this thin. Feeling it sent shivers down her spine.

  She extended the weapon with her right arm and swiped the air with it. It cut through space with no resistance, and no trace of wobble, proving her suspicion that it was expertly balanced, like an extension of her own arm.

  After feeling it in her arm, with the power and grace she had felt through the swing of it, she realized why Dane Eyrris had had such reverence for this artifact. Not only was it flawless in its design, weighting and balance, it was like something from a different world altogether. She certainly had never heard or experienced anything like it before.

  She continued to explore the weapon in all its depths, quite literally breathless as she ran her fingers up and down its surfaces. The handle had raised ridges along the grip, and these seemed to be embossed with images as well. A more careful pass with her fingers revealed that the handle was composed entirely of the sculpted figures of people, arrayed from top to bottom as though they were standing one above the other, with arms stretched overhead, so that each figure was holding up the one above. The figures likewise were sculpted from the same smoothly polished metal as the rest of the weapon.

  Catelyn had read in her books about artists, but she had never before beheld anything that she would have considered art, until now. The weapon she held was as much art as it was anything else, and as she explored the handle aga
in, focusing her bubble more into the tips of her fingers and the palms of her hands, she realized that here was where the artist had truly shined.

  Under her fingers, Catelyn could make out even the most whisper of details. The figures were flawlessly rendered, and their anatomies perfectly captured; muscle, bone, faces, breasts and even genitals. Flowing hair adorned the heads, while the bodies came in every variety imaginable; long and short, lean and heavy. And impossibly, Catelyn was almost certain that each figure on the handle was different and unique.

  As she ran her hand over the forms and down to the bottom of the shaft, the handle transitioned flawlessly to a perfectly smooth, rounded butt. There was no discernible seam to indicate that the handle and the blade were separate, a stark difference from the crudely assembled weapons she had experience with.

  She cautiously returned the fingers of her right hand to the curved blade. Just as with the butt, where the handle met the blade, only smooth metal was to be found; the blade simply extruded from the handle as though the metal had simply been pulled from the handle itself and shaped by the hands of the Divines, a work designed to fulfill some holy purpose.

  The edge of the razor-sharp blade was unbroken, as though it had never before been used. On the flat of the blade, she tried to make sense of the images that were etched there, but the work was so fine that even her sensitive fingertips could not make out the visual language well enough to accurately describe what was there. There appeared to be more of the figures as well as something even finer. Perhaps writing of some kind, but it was impossible for her to tell with any certainty.

  One conclusion seemed to stand out, and that was there was some kind of story being told on every surface of the weapon, but it was a narrative she couldn’t understand.

  Catelyn felt tingling in her fingers after such an intimate examination of something so exquisite, and she knew that she would be dedicating more of her time to studying this weapon, but she also knew that now was not the time.

  She could feel herself coming down from the adrenaline high of the night, and although the prize she was now in possession of was filling her with such curiosity and even awe, she began to feel her head slowly drooping in exhaustion.

  She carefully set the elegantly curved weapon back down inside the leather case, closed the lid softly and set it to the side, away from her things. She crawled over on hands and knees to the pile of blankets she kept on the floor, and collapsed face down, pulling several of them into a mound to comfort her head. She was asleep in breaths.

  The Emperor Uriel III stood at the great window of the tower in the Imperial Citadel, arms clasped behind him, and surveyed his Empire. Not for the first time, he silently wished that he had the power to obliterate them all. He dreamt often of a great wall of fire, stretching the length and breadth of the land, purging it in the heat of his righteousness, forever. This mental image made his heart race, sweat beading on his forehead, as his lips quivered in excitement.

  From this vantage point in his large windowed study, he could see his entire Empire. From the embattled walls of Eastmarch to the slums of Brunley and the encroaching Dun Marsh. In the far distance to the west, just barely visible to most, but crystal clear to his eyes, he saw the twin fortresses: Canlis Point, abutting the Wall of Regret near the foothills of the Greymount mountain range, and Fort Baldwin, the last of the fortresses left standing from the Before.

  Uriel III shook his head, the long black braid of his oiled hair swaying halfway down his back behind him. He was seventy, but through some gift of nature, which he had come to believe was his own sheer force of will, he had seemingly stopped aging forty sojourns ago. His face had remained smooth and beautiful, the face of a god in waiting. He had long ago stopped believing the nonsense of the past, in the Divines and their domain in the heavens, the unanswered prayers and the purity of chasteness, both of which he saw for the offenses against humanity that they were.

  Instead, he believed in the purity of fire, and through that great element, he saw the path to his own divinity. His great destiny was to bring the world to heel, to cleanse humanity of the stain of their own existence. He would be the first of their kind to transcend the commonness of their shared existence in this world.

  He longed to give the people of this world the truth of his power. And in so doing, to wake them up to their own power, as he had awoken to his. Not even his closest advisers understood his will. His destiny.

  He alone saw the path humanity must take, if they were to become as gods.

  The Emperor was not, however, alone in the room.

  Standing two paces away, silent and dutiful, were his Imperial Commander and closest friend Ortis Saeva, and his chief advisor Enaz, the head eunuch of the priory. Enaz, like nearly all of Uriel III’s subjects, hailed from Exeter and so was reduced to a single name. Ortis, on the other hand, was from Pyrus far to the north, and Uriel loved him.

  For that love, which had once burned as hot as the summer sun, Uriel had afforded him, and him alone, the right to keep his family name though none ever spoke it. Not even the man himself used the name he has been allowed to keep, which had always been a curiosity of Uriel’s.

  Despite his reluctance to display his special boon, this made Ortis unique among Uriel’s subjects, but if any man deserved such a prize, it was Ortis.

  Ortis’ unmatched prowess in battle, and the passion they had once felt for each other, had been the driving forces behind Uriel’s swiftly executed campaign to unify Exeter under his singular rule as a boy of thirteen, and his loyal and unswerving service over these long sojourns had earned Ortis many privileges, but the only one Ortis had ever asked for had been to keep his family name. All the more strange to Uriel then, that after securing the privilege, he chose not to flaunt it.

  Uriel had at first been wary of making such an exception, but he knew that Ortis had earned such a right ten times over, and so he allowed it, so long as Ortis swore the rest of his life to service of the Emperor. Ortis Saeva had agreed without question.

  Uriel looked to his two most trusted servants now, but his eyes lingered on Ortis, now frailer than he'd ever been, having reached his seventy-eighth sojourn. Ortis had been a young man in the prime of his twenty-second sojourn when they had first met. Uriel remembered well the strong, muscled body of the soldier he had once admired, with the most exquisite dark skin and piercing red eyes.

  Red eyes were highly uncommon among the people of Exeter, and Uriel used to tell Ortis, as they lay naked together after one of their exuberant couplings, that his eyes were an omen of their impending victory; that his vision “burned with the fire of war”. Uriel had fallen in love with him at first sight, and he could still recall every detail of how they had met.

  Uriel had been a boy of twelve when he had departed the Seat for a sojourn, having been sent away by his father on a customary tour to see the whole of their Empire. He had begun his journey by accompanying a retinue of his father’s advisers and a company of the Imperial army's soldiers to the northern lands to negotiate trade agreements.

  Uriel had already begun planning his father's demise, and his own rise to power, when he spotted the dark skinned warrior standing tall and graceful behind one of the Pyric lords.

  Ortis was already prized and loved by his people as a skilled warrior and after some subtle inquiries, the boy Uriel learned that he was a bodyguard for one of the regents of the Pyric kingdoms.

  The sight of Ortis stirred something in Uriel, and while the politicians had played at their games, arguing over petty matters of state under large tents set up on a flat, grassy hill, their eyes had met and all else faded away.

  Later that night Ortis had come to Uriel’s tent, and they had copulated the way eager young men did.

  After, in the glow of their sweat and sex, Uriel told Ortis of his plans to return to his homeland and unify it, first by killing his father and then conquering the Empire and quashing all opposition. Ortis, his exquisite brown skin glowing, had watched
him describe his plans in rapt amazement, his red eyes ablaze with awe. Uriel could tell that Ortis was the first to see the brilliance of what he would become.

  The next day, Ortis gathered the men under his command, and bent on one knee, pledging his loyalty and that of his men to Uriel, begging him, as their Emperor, to command them.

  And command them he did, beginning with ordering the execution of every one of his father’s men. Ortis and his three hundred phalanx of highly trained soldiers cut through the unsuspecting diplomats and their honor guard effortlessly.

  The Pyric regent he captured as well, but graciously allowed to return home with his life and any of his men who wished to remain loyal to their kingdom, provided that neither they nor any of their descendants make any attempt to become involved with the Empire of Exeter ever again.

  He then commanded Ortis to be the vanguard of his forces, and together they spent the next sojourn gathering more and more of his father’s armies under the banner of Uriel the Third of His Name, either through surrender or subjugation. Those who refused, Ortis and his elite battalion utterly destroyed.

  Although it had taken another six sojourns of bloody conflict and solidifying his base of power enough to be coronated, Uriel and Ortis both knew that the reign of Uriel III had begun in that tent with a simple shared look between two men of vision and potentiality.

  Now, with fifty-six sojourns since their first meeting behind them, Uriel could only dimly see the beautiful man he had once desired, and even those fiery red eyes had long since faded from brilliance. Though he still treasured Ortis’ presence as a friend and counselor, and as a man who shared nearly all of his appetites, he no longer sought solace in his arms the way that he once had. Truthfully, Ortis was the only thing that had ever connected Uriel to anything substantive in this life.