The Dying Flame

by R L Sanderson

  ‘You will do this now? Here?’ Galed stood, pushing past a guard and approaching the leader of the Uruhenshi. ‘Will there be no trial? No deliberation? No weighing of evidence? You say the King conspired against you, but what proof do you have? What proof do we have, save that one of your men died at his table? Who’s not to say that you yourself decided that the death of a lowly priest would make a good swap for the death of a King?’ As Galed spoke, murmurs erupted amongst the crowd.

  Jexin stood taller, his face suddenly leaden. ‘Take him,’ he said quietly.

  Three guards approached and seized Galed’s arms, dragging him unresisting down the central aisle of the Great Hall.

  Orla heard Lyria calling out to her father, but she did not dare look. Her eyes, her attention, were only for the King.

  Piroxi stood and walked, each step slow and deliberate, fingering the long, curved blade that hung at his hip.

  Orla felt a sudden desperate cold overtake her body. She was frozen to the spot, unable to move, barely able to breath. They would kill him, here, now, before her and there would be nothing she could do.

  No, not nothing. Surely not nothing.

  Oh Ishkarin, Oh Reyvkam help me, help me now

  She closed her eyes, and gathered all her energy, drawing her anger, her hate, moulding it into something hard and heavy and cold. She let it sit, let it grow, and then she reached out, sensing for Jexin, reached towards his mind.

  He stood over the King. Two of his guards were holding the King back in his chair, pinning his arms to his sides.

  Orla waited, waited, though for what she was not sure. The entire hall seemed to have fallen into a stunned silence; not a whisper, not a footfall was heard. And then a voice that Orla knew and hated.

  ‘For the crime of treachery, for breaking of the sacred bonds of Treaty between our peoples, for sacrilege in the face of our God, you must die.’

  She could not breath, could not move. She felt the anger filling her, burning her ice-cold from within, ready to spill over, ready to scream its pain and rage, but she did not know how. She did not know how to unleash it. She saw Piroxi stand taller, draw the blade from the belt at his hip. She sensed the King brace himself, a sudden shock of fear and regret as he tried to turn his head to look at his son a last time but found he could not. He did not have the strength to turn. She felt the tears spill hot onto his cheeks as he realised he would never see his son again. And then, Piroxi raised the blade high and Orla heard and saw and felt it fall: a moment of searing pain, bright and white and beyond what could be borne, and then she felt his release. The King was free. He was free of this broken body. Free of the weight of his duties. Free of the darkness of his failures. And then he was gone.

  Orla gasped. Somewhere she heard a sob. Somewhere a woman moaned.

  She had failed. She had not saved him. This man who had been so fierce and kind, determined beyond measure, she had stood by his side and watched his life’s blood spill.

  Then it began.

  It was like it had been before, but somehow completely different. The flow of power formed in the centre of her chest, a sudden rising glow that brought a clarity to everything around her. It seemed that the world slowed and halted, waited as she was filled with a power, a great and growing force; she was throbbing with it, it surged and shimmered, she felt as though her legs should give way beneath her but somehow she stood, opening her mouth as though to cry out. And then: the anger, the rage, all the pain she had been shaping lovingly as a potter does clay, took form. It was searing hot now, unimaginably loud, and she felt it pour from within her so that she held it in her shaking hands, unseen, a shimmering mass. She looked around. The world was held in a net of her making. Before her, Piroxi and Jexin Beyn, the guards, the King a tableau of dark and glossy blood, beyond them all the people, the Council, the people of the Court, faces upturned, stunned, blank with shock, and behind them the ring of Uruhenshi soldiers holding the perimeter. She looked for Roland but could not see him. Something within her began to tremble. She was not sure how long she could hold.

  She had to act quickly, and at last she knew what she was to do.

  She stepped away from the King and walked through the uncanny silence to where Ged was being held. Slowly, with infinite care, she removed the hands of the guard from his arms and drew Ged towards her. He walked, but without expression, as though in a kind of dream. Quickly now, quickly, the surge was rising. She looked for Lyria but could not see her. She could only hope she’d escaped in the chaos. She should do more, she thought. She knew what was coming and there were many here who were blameless, many innocents who she could not get free. But the time was almost up. She felt the pressure growing to a mad roar within her, the images flashing, faster and faster before her eyes so she barely knew now where or who she was. Tears stained her cheeks. Her sister cowering on the ground, kicked. Piroxi raising his blade. The blood, the blood of the King. Darkness, everywhere, darkness and fear and shame. The hatred filled her.

  Somehow, she managed to control it. Shaking now, shivering with rage and with a power that was not of her but that was preparing to move through her, she took a step and then another. She approached Piroxi where he stood. She studied him a moment. He had a bland face, almost expressionless. He had killed a king and he looked as though he might have just come in from a walk in the gardens. Those hands, though, and that voice, the things that they had done, the evil they had caused…

  She didn’t want it to be like this; him frozen, unseeing, unknowing. She wanted him to see her.

  She took a breath and felt whatever it was that had bound the place and the moment stretch and then give. And in an instant, it all returned – the panicked voices and the smell of blood, the overwhelming horror, the feeling of events hurtling too quickly, out of control.

  She saw Piroxi startle and step back as he registered her standing directly before him, where he had not seen her the moment before.

  ‘This must end,’ she said, her voice ringing loud through the Great Hall. ‘Here. Now.’

  ‘Orla!’ Ged cried and the pain in his voice tore at her. It was not fair, she thought. It was not fair that one person should have to see both his parents killed. It was not fair that Ged, who wanted nothing but a quiet life of books and words, should be drawn into a war. And she was only going to pull him in further, she knew. If either of them survived this.

  Piroxi was looking at her, and for a moment a flicker of recognition passed over his face. It was still not enough. She wanted more. She wanted him to know. She wanted him to know who she was and why she was here and what she was going to do.

  ‘You killed my sister,’ she said.

  ‘I am the Black Arm. I have killed many,’ he said, ‘but all who have died deserved their death. I am the Hand of the God.’

  ‘Orla, wait–’ Ged cried.

  Orla shook her head. The pain caught in her throat, taking her by surprise. Merryn, her Merryn. She had not deserved it. There was nobody kinder, nobody stronger, nobody better.

  ‘I have bound myself to this moment,’ she said, ‘I have come to avenge her death.’

  Piroxi looked at her, all signs of fear now gone from his features, and for a second she almost felt a grudging admiration. Whatever he felt was hidden deep below what could be seen. By most people, she told herself.

  But she was not most people.

  She reached out and took his hands, even as he pulled away, she let herself go deep into him.

  Cold and dark and hard, hard, hard, the voice of a God that rang as a bell of fire voice of fire and stone, the sky was dark and all were crawling on a ground that was giving way to fire below and then the rain began and it was not water that fell from the sky but…

  ‘Oh Gods,’ she could not help but cry out. She let go his hand.

  ‘You saw it?’ he said in a low voice that only she could hear. ‘Did you see? That is what I live with. That is what fills my dreams. I am a servant of the God. Would that I were not.’ />
  She knew he was speaking the truth. She tried to look away but found that she could not. Something in him compelled her, as much as the hatred still filled her, singing, an arrow ready to be loosed. She could not look away.

  ‘Something terrible is coming and I am only one man, with a knife, with the word of a God, trying to stop it. If your sister died it was because there was no choice. Her death was a pebble thrown to block the cracks that are beginning to show, because if those cracks grow unhindered our world will be torn apart.’

  ‘No,’ Orla said, hearing the word before she realised she’d said it. ‘No. What is coming, you will not stop, nobody will stop. Not even a God. You killed her for nothing.’

  Then she saw his eyes flicker, just for a moment and she sensed the guards stepping forwards, reaching for her.

  ‘Orla!’ Ged cried, and at the sound of his voice something within her collapsed. It was not an arrow but a landslide, she realised, a wall of power, of hate and anger and pain, that flowed from her, shimmering silver and howling like an animal being slaughtered. Or was that her?

  She saw Piroxi open his mouth to speak and then, before he could form the words, it hit him. He gasped for air but none came. She felt another wave shiver through her, she felt the floor of the Great Hall begin to tremble and shake. Somewhere, someone screamed. A thin stream of blood tricked from Piroxi’s nose and he scratched and scrabbled at his throat, desperately trying to take a breath. And Orla felt as though she were growing, expanding, she felt powerful beyond measure. Her focus was on Piroxi whose eyes were rolling back into his head, the trickle turning into a dark rush, but she sensed, around her, that the guards too were struggling, and beyond them she saw the Council members, their faces contorted in agony, in fear, as they felt the unseen power washing over them. And it felt good. It felt good to be so powerful. It felt good to make them feel pain, to make them all feel pain. They had never understood her. They had never accepted her. They had always doubted and gossiped and judged. And none of them, none of them had helped her. None of them had helped Merryn. She smiled. This suffering was so little to what she could inflict…

  And then she heard it again.

  ‘Orla…’ a strangled choking cry, but unmistakeable.

  Ged.

  Ged.

  She turned to see him doubling over, a stream of blood pouring from his nose, his ears, the muscles on his neck contorting.

  Oh Gods, Ged, what had she done? She had promised the King she would take care of him. A moment before he’d been killed, she had promised. The final promise that she’d made him. And suddenly everything shifted. The room was full of moans and cries and screams. And her mind was opened. She felt their agony, she felt their pain, their terror. Each one, individual, unique. Each one the same. The way they begged and prayed: Please…. No… not like this…

  The way each had someone they wished to hold before they died.

  The way each of them was heavy with regret of things done or undone.

  Behind her, Ged was fading into unconsciousness.

  She gasped, a true, hurting breath, like a baby taking its first lungful. And then she staggered. As she did, she saw Piroxi, too, take a breath. He looked up at her. His gaze was not fearful, it was defiant. Proud.

  He still believed he could win.

  He believed that he was an instrument of the God and nothing she did, short of obliterating him, would change that. She couldn’t kill him now without killing all the others. She had power, but no control. Already she’d caused damage that she could never repair.

  She heard Ged’s sobbing intake of breath behind her.

  ‘Orla, this way,’ Lyria’s voice was like a bucket of cold water on a dark winter morning. It woke her. She turned to see the young woman somehow managing to lift Ged, balancing one of his arms over her shoulders, and gesturing to Orla to follow.

  Chapter fifty-two

  There was no time to speak. Orla took Ged’s other arm and followed Lyria’s lead. They were in a corridor, then walking through a door and down a steep set of stairs into a dark passageway. A heavy door closed behind them and suddenly it seemed they were entombed in silence, the only sound the ragged rhythm of their breathing.

  ‘We will be safe here for a little while but we have to keep moving,’ Lyria said in a low, urgent voice.

  ‘Is Ged alright?’ Orla was dizzy, her skin was awash with heat and then cold. She tried to study Ged’s face, but found that everything before her was swimming and uncertain. As if in reply, she heard him groan.

  ‘A little longer and he wouldn’t have been,’ Lyria said.

  ‘How did you–?’

  ‘Not now. Now, we walk.’

  And so, they walked. In darkness, supporting Ged between them, the passage just wide enough for the three of them to pass side by side. It was quiet. The air had a stale smell and Orla felt a kind of deadening weight, as though a thousand thousand tonnes of stone above them were blocking any sense of the place they had left. She felt they were alone in the entire world, could catch not a whisper of thought, not a stirring of feeling. Nothing but cold, heavy stone.

  She walked on, and as she did the reality of what had passed began to burn within her.

  Piroxi. She had let him live. Again. She had seen… She still didn’t feel ready to let herself linger on what she had seen. It had been terrible, worse than terrible. Because it had been in her own dreams too. What did it mean, that they shared such dreams? She felt faint and sick and burned with sweat, and then felt cold, the light dress she wore not enough in the cool darkness they were now wrapped in. And what she had done… She thought of the pain on the faces of those before her, the blood, the fear. She thought of Ged, and tightened her grip around his shoulder to affirm that he was, in fact, there and upright and walking. She would never be able to return. She would be marked, forever, by it. She would live in exile, hunted, for how long – days, weeks? And when they found her… her stomach turned.

  And then she thought of the King.

  ‘There is a word for what you are,’ Lyria said, her voice uninflected, matter of fact. ‘Roland suspected but wasn’t sure. Do you want to know it?’

  Orla shook her head, unable to speak. She was a murderer, a sorceress, crueller than even those she sought revenge against.

  It was Ged who broke the silence. ‘Nekrotien…’

  ‘Ged!’ Orla cried and hugged him in the darkness.

  ‘Whoa, careful now, we don’t know how bad his injuries are…’ Lyria pulled her back gently.

  ‘It’s what I came back to tell you,’ Ged said weakly, ‘I found the truth. Worked out well, didn’t it?’

  ‘How did you… what does it mean?’ Orla asked, and her brief bright happiness froze once more. She was a monster, she knew it, always had known it, had guessed it so long before. She was less than human. She brought only harm to those she loved.

  ‘It’s… complicated,’ Ged said, his words carried on an undercurrent of pain. ‘When we get somewhere… where we can rest… I will try to explain.’

  ‘We need to keep going,’ Lyria said, and as if to emphasise her words there was a sound somewhere in the darkness. Voices. Footfalls. It was hard to tell where the sounds were coming from, how near or far away. They froze, Orla felt the rushing of Ged’s heart, and she realised, suddenly, that she could not sense Lyria. She could feel her presence, but nothing of her thoughts or her feelings.

  ‘Come on, it’s not too much further. Roland is waiting.’

  So they walked on through the dark.

  ✤

  A half an hour later it felt like they had barely made any ground. The way was rough and the darkness almost complete, so they inched forward, fingers brushing against the wall for some sense of direction, following the vaguest light imaginable.

  ‘How much longer?’ Orla whispered. Ged was barely able to walk. He had somehow remained upright, but it seemed that he was beginning to slip in and out of consciousness. She was horribly, powerfully aware tha
t he needed help. He needed the care of a healer. He was damaged in some profound way. She had damaged him in some profound way and this movement through darkness was only making it worse.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lyria said.

  ‘And how is it that he is hurt but you are not?’ Orla asked, finally voicing the question that had been nagging at her since she’d first heard Lyria’s voice ring out over the chaos in the Great Hall. Lyria was the only one who seemed unaffected by whatever it was that Orla had done. Everybody else was in pain, near death, but Lyria seemed unperturbed.

  There was a long silence. Orla had almost given up hope of an answer when she heard Lyria’s hesitant response:

  ‘I… I had protection. Roland prepared me.’

  Orla swallowed.

  ‘How do you know Roland?’

  ‘He’s a friend of my Father.’

  ‘And why did he ask you to help me?’

  She sensed Lyria’s shrug as a subtle movement in the still, stale air. ‘We’re the same age. Both girls. He’s an old man, he probably wouldn’t see much further than that.’

  And then, in the silence, Ged moaned. His weight on Orla’s arm grew suddenly greater. She felt a hot, sick, blackness engulfing him.

  ‘Ged!’ she cried out, but there was nothing she could do except try to slow his descent so he didn’t hurt himself any further as he fell.

  ‘Ishkarin be damned,’ Lyria swore, and Orla heard a dull thud as the other girl kicked the wall beside them. Orla took a breath, then knelt beside Ged.

  ‘Take a rest, Ged, take all the time you need. We’re not in a hurry, I know it’s a long way in the darkness, but we’re almost there, almost there…’ Ged moaned again, a sound that carried pain, frustration, exhaustion.

  ‘He can’t keep going,’ Orla said.

  ‘He has to.’

  ‘He can’t. You go ahead, get help. I’ll wait here with him.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘You must not move,’ Lyria spoke slowly and clearly as though to a not very bright child. ‘If you move, I won’t be able to find you.’