The Boys of Fire and Ash

by Meaghan McIsaac

  I didn’t know that. I couldn’t be sure of anything I was saying. All I knew was Blaze got me through the Baublenotts. Blaze got me to the Beginners’ Temple. Blaze knew to ask for Gorpok Juga. If there was anyone who could get me, Fiver, and Av through the rest of this, it was Blaze.

  “Urgle, you’re losing—”

  “What other choice do we have, Fiver?”

  He looked away, tired of arguing or out of things to say, I wasn’t sure. But he said nothing, staring only at Av.

  “All right,” he said finally. “We’ll look for Blaze. But if those Tunrar have torn him limb from limb, I’m taking Av back to the Ikkuma Pit, got it?”

  I nodded, knowing full well Fiver couldn’t risk taking Av all the way back to the Ikkuma Pit alone. He was holding out for Blaze just as much as I was.

  The Tunrar let out another shriek, and Fiver’s head turned in the direction of the sound.

  “Other side,” he said.

  My arms felt heavy and my shoulders slumped when I realized we’d have to cross the river yet again. I reached down to help Av up but Fiver smacked my head.

  “Leave him,” he told me. “Let him rest; we’ll be back faster if we don’t have to carry his weight.”

  I hesitated. Part of me knew Fiver was right, but when I looked at how helpless Av was now, leaving him alone in the Baublenotts seemed like a risky plan. Before I could argue, Fiver had already begun hauling the boat back into the water.

  “Let’s go, Useless.”

  “We’ll be right back, Av,” I said. He stayed slumped against the tree, giving no indication that he’d heard me.

  Reluctantly, I ran after Fiver, leaping into the boat just as the current caught hold of it. We paddled hard, fighting our way across as we were pulled farther downriver. I glanced behind me and the shore was a mess of trees. I couldn’t be sure where exactly we’d left Av; I could only hope Fiver knew.

  The boat crashed into the opposite shore and Fiver leaped out, his body half in the pounding water.

  “Help me!” he said as he heaved the boat ashore.

  I lifted my legs over the side and slipped on the mud, landing hard on my stomach. Argh! Useless.

  Blaze’s belt slipped down my leg, and I readjusted, pulling it tighter than before. My leg began to throb at the wound.

  Before I could help Fiver tie it up, he had the boat secured to a low branch and bolted off into the Baublenotts.

  My leg still stinging, I got to my feet and followed. It had been a few minutes since we’d last heard the Tunrar scream, and I had no idea how Fiver knew where he was going—but he was going fast. He tore through the heavy undergrowth, sending branches whipping back into my face. I could barely keep up as he barreled on. Av had always told me what a great tracker Fiver was, much to my irritation, and as I tried desperately to keep up, I couldn’t believe I was hoping Av was right.

  As I plowed through a particularly thick, leafy bush, I emerged to find myself alone. Fiver was too far ahead, I hadn’t kept up. Every second of thought was time poorly spent and I continued on, my feet flying, hoping I’d find him again.

  WHAM!

  My body slammed against what felt like a wall, my nose squished into my face, and I fell back onto the ground.

  “Shh!” Fiver hissed.

  He was like a tree. I’d nearly shattered my body when I ran into him, but he stood poised and silent, as unaffected by the impact as one of the Fire Mountains would have been.

  I sat silently, my ears scanning through the chorus of birds, insects, water, and other sounds for any hint of Blaze and the Tunrar. I heard nothing.

  Fiver took a few cautious steps forward and crouched to the ground. I joined him, wishing that just once I could see whatever a hunter’s eyes were supposed to see in the mess of mud, sticks, and leaves.

  I saw nothing.

  Fiver could tell and he rolled his eyes, tracing for me the vague outline of a footprint. When he pointed it out, I could kind of see, but whether it belonged to Blaze, Tunrar, or something else I couldn’t have said.

  His finger guided my eyes to a path of minute destruction: a few snapped twigs, several gouges in the trunk of a nearby tree.

  As I tried to process what I was looking at, Fiver took off again, sharply to the left, and I was left sitting in the dirt. I jumped to follow but I couldn’t see him. I could only follow the swinging branches he’d left behind.

  “Fiver!” I shouted, wanting him to slow down.

  Nothing.

  “Fi—” I stopped short when I heard the hacking. That now-familiar, hideous phlegm sound, hissing through the throat of a Tunrar. It was coming from my right. As quietly as I could, I crept through the brush towards the noise and saw a clearing through the branches.

  I moved in closer and there they were—a scrawny, snarling Tunrar and Blaze, backed up against a tree. I’d found him.

  The sound that was hacked out of that gummy mouth flicked a switch in my brain, the image of my fight in Nikpartok and the giant Tunrar that had gouged my leg flashing across my mind. Holding on to that, I threw myself at its back in a flourish of seething hate.

  I hadn’t thought enough to do it quietly, and the angry roar I let out alerted the Tunrar quick enough for it to turn in time to throw me. My stomach crunched and my collarbone felt like it might snap as I was slammed into a nearby tree.

  Blaze, unfazed by my presence and uninterested as to why I was there, spotted his opportunity to escape and made a run for the thick undergrowth surrounding the clearing. The Tunrar was faster and pulled him back, throwing him to the ground.

  I found my breath and ignored the pain throbbing in my shoulder, flying at the creature for a second time, but before I reached him a heavy body crashed down on top of me—another Tunrar. It screamed its triumph and held me down. My shoulder was on fire with pain as its hand palmed the back of my head into the rotting leaves that littered the Baublenotts floor. I wriggled and thrashed but the Tunrar held firm. No matter how hard I tried to throw him, he stayed, without effort. I could hear Blaze grunting and growling as he struggled against the other, its hissing and shrieking goaded on by the monster that held me down.

  Then came the distant cries of still more Tunrar, and beside me, a fresh set of knuckles stomped the floor. A third. He squawked his approval and threw leaves in the air, rejoicing in what his comrades had captured.

  Then, interested in a closer look, he brought his face low and sniffed at my tears, that steamy rotten-meat breath burning my nose, that low growl rumbling in my ears. My eyes were wet and I fought the rising lump in my throat as I thought of Cubby, the evil blue that identified Beginners forever stamped into his forehead, forever a slave to Aju Krepin.

  Just then, a heavy rock smashed into the head of the Tunrar that had arrived late, knocking him off balance. Under the weight, I couldn’t see anything. Had it fallen from the sky? The one that held me down let out an angry scream and slammed my head into the ground harder as it tried to figure out where the assault had come from. The Tunrar on top of Blaze froze, while the injured one, obviously dazed, stumbled to face the direction the rock had come from too. The three were silent and stoic, watching the still vegetation. All that could be heard were Blaze’s grunts as he tirelessly struggled against the immovable strength of the Tunrar.

  Another rock, bigger than before, landed on the creature on top of me, knocking him slightly before it bounced off and landed on my angry shoulder. I cried out as my captor sprang off me and bolted in the direction the rock had come, but before he could disappear into the undergrowth, a familiar roar erupted from the silence and Fiver burst into the clearing, a log held over his head. With one tremendous swing he cracked open the face of the advancing Tunrar and it fell to the side, deader than mud.

  The other two screamed and flew at him, but Fiver was ready, screaming back with as much venom and predatory instinct as them. I jumped to my feet, and pain radiated through my shoulder and pulsed through my entire torso. I groaned, but I couldn�
��t let it distract me. Fiver was strong, but he couldn’t fight off two Tunrar alone.

  Blaze was up now, searching frantically through the dead leaves, and I found myself hoping he hadn’t lost his pistol.

  I grabbed the rock that Fiver had thrown and without much of a plan ran at the Tunrar. I leaped onto its back, barely missing a swing from Fiver’s log, and brought the rock down as hard as I could on the surprised Goblin’s head.

  Hardly flinching, it flung me off, and I was thrown to the ground. The two creatures tightened their circle on Fiver, dodging and ducking his every swing. Any second they would both pounce on him.

  Blaze was still frantically kicking up leaves, looking for something, and I knew he’d dropped the pistol in the scramble. I started looking too, swiping aside the rotted shedding of the Baublenotts until a metallic glint caught my eye. I grabbed the pistol and tried awkwardly to point it at the Tunrar, unsure if I was holding it right. I’d seen Blaze do it once and I tried my best to copy what I’d seen.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  The Tunrars’ necks snapped back towards me, and, recognition widening their eyes, they hissed and spat, crouching low and squaring their shoulders as they braced for the lightning they’d clearly seen before.

  “Urgle, don’t!” Blaze ordered.

  Don’t my foot. I wanted this time-wasting fight over, and I was ending it now.

  I stood shaking, pointing the gun towards the Tunrar as I struggled to figure out how to make it go. With a squeeze of my finger the gun exploded, knocking me back. I heard Fiver cry out as my eyes shut from the noise and the pistol fell from my hands. The Tunrar screamed and danced, frightened and disoriented. I scrambled for the pistol but Blaze was there first. With a practiced hand, he took aim and shot at the first. The sound was deafening, and I jumped.

  I waited for him to shoot at the second but he didn’t, drawing his dagger.

  “I’m out,” he said.

  “What?” Why wasn’t he firing at the other one?

  The Tunrar kept screaming, backing away slowly as Blaze advanced on it. This was a different scream. A howl, a high-pitched wail.

  “Fiver!” he ordered.

  Fiver was on the ground, clutching his thigh, his face tight with pain. He groaned and nodded, trying his best to shake off the sting. He reached for his log, unnoticed by the frightened Tunrar. It kept wailing, and Blaze was becoming panicked.

  “He’s calling for help! Fiver, now!”

  With all his strength, Fiver brought down the log on the Tunrar’s head and it fell limp to the ground.

  The Baublenotts were silent again, and I shivered, noticing for the first time just how much colder the world had become.

  “Nice aim, Useless,” Fiver growled. He was pawing at his thigh, afraid to touch it but needing to see the damage. His trouser leg was ripped, like a knife had made a large slice across his thigh. I may have missed the Tunrar, but I’d managed to graze something, anyway.

  “Fiver, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fine,” he growled.

  “I didn’t mean to, I thought—” My words were lost on my bleeding tongue when Blaze’s fist connected with my jaw, forcing my teeth to bite down, and my eyes to see stars.

  “Traitor!” he yelled.

  Spitting out the coppery warmth, and stumbling over my swelling tongue, I tried to apologize. “Blaze, I’m sorry! They had Cubby right there, I almost—”

  “I asked you for one thing!” he roared, grabbing my arm and shaking me so hard I thought he’d tear it off. “And you told him anyway!”

  “They were gonna kill Cubby if I didn’t!”

  With a glare full of poison he released me and I felt a hot shame creeping up my neck.

  “I’m sorry, Blaze! I didn’t know he’d—”

  He stopped listening and walked away, disappearing into the Baublenotts. I looked to Fiver, who was nursing his bleeding leg. “Go after him!” he barked.

  I ran after Blaze and found him not far ahead, slicing through the thick vegetation of the Baublenotts.

  “Blaze, wait!” I begged. “I need your help.”

  “Get away from me, Urgle.”

  “Just stop a minute, will you!”

  “I helped you get to the Temple, now you’re on your own. You gave me up to the Beginners. I’ve got to get the hell out of here. You’re the last person in the world I want to help.”

  There wasn’t a lot I could say to that. He was right. He’d told me not to mention his name, and as soon as Krepin had asked, I gave it up. Out of ideas, I tried a new approach. “Where will you go?”

  “Far away from here. Three Tunrar found me, dozens more are on the way. You heard that thing howling; they’ll be flocking here any minute.”

  I thought of Av, slumped alone by the tree, groups of Tunrar descending on him.

  “Blaze, I need your help.”

  He said nothing and trudged forward, doing his best to ignore me.

  “Blaze, Av’s hurt, really bad. He could die and we don’t know what plants are what out here. And now Fiver’s hurt too; we need your knowledge if we’re going to survive this.”

  He kept going.

  “I’m asking you as a Brother!”

  “Go back to the Pit, Urgle,” he said as though he couldn’t have cared less.

  “I can’t!” Desperate to make him help me, I grabbed him by the arm and yanked him around. “They’ll give me Cubby if I find the Belphebans.”

  His eyebrow rose. He’d heard me. “The Belphebans? What for?”

  “I don’t know. They’re interfering with some, some big fight the Beginners are having.”

  “The Holy War.”

  “Yes! And he said, if I kill the Belpheban Head, he’ll give me Cubby.”

  At that, Blaze burst out laughing, a maniacal laugh, unlike any I’d heard from him before.

  “Krepin’s sending you?”

  “Yes! And I’m going with or without you, but if you help me, I’ll have a better chance.”

  He caught his breath and wiped his watering eyes. “Urgle, do you even know who the Belphebans are?”

  “Our Mothers.”

  Blaze nodded, his laughter spent. “They told you that much, huh?”

  He flicked his hair out of his eyes and leaned back against the nearest tree, letting the air rush into his nose. I watched his chest rise and fall, his nostrils flare, and I wanted so much to ask him everything, to get him to put an answer to every question swimming around in my head. But he was just so mad at me, I wasn’t sure I should push my luck. I had to know more, though. “It’s like your story,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t tell me to shut it. “About the twins. That girl’s name, it was Belphoebe, right?”

  He stayed leaning against the tree; his eyes appeared closed as they watched me under his heavy lids. “That’s right,” he said. But he didn’t just say it. His voice went up at the end, like he was asking me something, to go on working it out maybe.

  “So the Mothers, they got something to do with that girl?”

  “They’re her daughters.”

  I swallowed, trying to moisten my throat as it dried up on me. The Mothers had always been nothing but faceless monsters, creatures that existed only to abandon me and my Brothers and cause evil outside the Pit. But that face, the face of Belphoebe I had seen on the rock, there was a kindness there, a beauty even, playing on her smile. She was their history, part of their story. I remembered her eyes, the shadows cast by the fire making them look alive. She was a part of mine.

  “And Krepin,” I started. Blaze’s nose wrinkled. He hacked up some throat juice and spat. I didn’t know if I should say it, I’d been so scared, so worried about Cubby, my mind might not have been working right. But still, I had to know. If I really did see it, Blaze would know. “The water, he could, I don’t know, when he came up to me in the Temple, he moved it, right out of his way. It was like what you said about the gifts.”

  Blaze snorted and spat again, smashing the splatter into the Bau
blenotts with his foot.

  “It was like your story.”

  Blaze nodded.

  “Is he—Aju Krepin, I mean—is it like the Belphebans? Is he Ardigund?”

  Blaze laughed, but it was empty, malicious. “He’d sure like to be.” Blaze kept digging his foot into the ground, the spot where his spit had landed growing into a muddy hole. His eyes didn’t notice. He was watching something in his mind again. “Ardigund lived thousands of years ago, Urgle. Krepin’s just one in a long line of his successors.”

  “Successors?”

  Blaze shook his head and his foot stopped moving. “Never mind. He’s not Ardigund, no matter how hard he tries to be.”

  My stomach felt sloshy. The way Blaze talked about Krepin, it reminded me of things I’d say about a Brother I wasn’t happy with, like Digger, or Fiver.

  “You know him, don’t you?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I felt my teeth floating in the back of my head and I bit down, trying to keep them steady. He’d remember if I asked it, remember it was me who gave him up to Krepin. But I had to know.

  “Blaze,” I said quietly, “what did you do to make him so mad?”

  Blaze grinned, his icy-blue eyes glinting with pride. “I took away his secret.”

  I couldn’t understand that but when I opened my mouth to ask him more, he stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. “The Belphebans don’t stay in one place long. Not easy to track down, even for Ikkuma.”

  He was done answering questions.

  “They told me I’d find them somewhere….” I racked my brain, trying to remember what Gorpok Juga’s last instructions were to me: last seen in Manoa Pass. “Near the Manoa Pass.”

  “If that’s what the Beginners think, then that’s the last place they’ll be,” Blaze told me.

  My stomach sank and my whole body was heavy. I had no idea where the Belphebans were, no idea how to help Av, and no idea how I’d get Cubby back if I didn’t complete my mission.

  “Sable Root,” Blaze said. “That should help your friend. Orange Blossom. Four petals. Size of your fingernail.”

  “Wait!” I couldn’t lose him. There was no other way to get my Little Brother back. “That’s all?”