Voices of Blaze

by H. O. Charles

  Just as a smile formed on Morghiad’s face, Orwin strode into view with Koviere and Jarynd either side of him. Together they resembled a series of progressively slimmer and shorter toy soldiers, and were quick to march to their seats at Morghiad and Beetan’s table.

  “All we need are The Hunter and your wife and we’d have half a squad,” Koviere boomed, the deepest tones of his voice almost shaking the ground beneath their feet.

  “You’ve forgotten about Seffe and Demeta,” Jarynd said. Strangely, the puckered scar that pulled his mouth into a sneer looked much less pronounced than Morghiad remembered. Time had softened it. Perhaps another century would pass before Jarynd would look more like everyone else. That seemed wrong to Morghiad, as if it might cleanse him of any character at all. No… that sharp nose of his would always be there, cutting through the air in front of him as severely as his voice.

  Orwin sniffed. “I wonder where they are. Still sneaking away into shadowy corners somewhere in the world, no doubt.”

  “I heard they got married,” Koviere said.

  Jarynd’s thin mouth spread to a grin. “I’d have loved to have heard what Silar had to say about that!” But the table immediately fell to silence instead of laughter. Of course, they still remembered Silar’s final order and subsequent disgrace.

  “Ease your grim faces, men,” Morghiad said, “I don’t blame him for it. He had a decision to make, and I trust him enough to know it was the right one in light of the alternatives. Artemi agreed with me. Silar was a good general and an excellent friend. I miss him.”

  There was an emptiness in the air while the other men thought of a response. Finally, Beetan began with, “But Tallyn-”

  “I’m in no shape to discuss him yet. Or Artemi, for that matter. Tell me what mischiefs you have been up to these past years.”

  Orwin obliged him with a straight description of several murderers they had captured and plots they had foiled, including one to assassinate Medea. Morghiad did not particularly enjoy hearing about that one, but he was grateful that these men had been aware and sword-ready in his absence. A father could drive himself insane worrying about the safety of his children, and his fears had already proven themselves justified. Midway through, Rahake joined the group too. New creases appeared to have grown upon his dark forehead, as if his responsibilities had pressed them into his skin from their weight alone. He managed a smile, however, and it immediately reminded Morghiad of happier days.

  “… have you seen Silar, then?” Orwin finished.

  Morghiad shook his head. “I have a letter, nothing more. He has arranged some sort of mission for himself, but I don’t know the details of it.” Blazes, he didn’t even know if the man was still alive! He took another swig of his ale, and when he looked up, he noticed a young soldier was doing his best to loom over the table. “Good evening,” Morghiad said.

  The young man did not return the greeting. Instead, he growled his words through gritted teeth. “We hoped you would be king again after our blessed queen - fires shelter her - but a Hirrahan - and no attempt to dispense with it! Follocks to that! You are a traitor!” The man spat at his feet before turning on his heels. Koviere made to move after him, but Morghiad caught hold of the giant’s arm. “Leave him, Kove. Attacking young soldiers won’t do any favours for my reputation. Let him have his opinions.”

  Koviere sat down very slowly, his muscles still quite clearly very tense in his limbs. Morghiad made every effort to demonstrate that he was unperturbed, though the shadows danced about before his eyes. Kill him, they whispered, kill him or betray us.

  Blazes, when had they started speaking?! Morghiad blinked at looked directly at the nearest patch of glowing wall. The light of it seemed to cow the creatures of his mind.

  “The young ones do not understand,” Rahake said softly. “They do not remember how we came to be here. All they see is the shining castle and their rich country. To them, everything else beyond it must be wrong.”

  “Frequently, the Hirrahans are wrong,” Orwin said, “No offence, Mor.”

  “None taken.” He took an especially deep draught of his ale.

  Rahake leaned forward on the table and lowered his voice. “The feeling is changing around here. Patriots have always been in good supply, but lately… there are some more… shall we say zealous advocates. They are growing in number as far as I can tell.”

  “How zealous? Will this hurt Medea?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. It’s more that they fear too many people have come into Calidell to exploit its wealth. You must have heard that Rhofin has suffered many poor harvests this century, while ours have been very strong. Workers arrive from there every day now, and there are some who feel the Rhofinians are working the farms that Calidellians should be tilling and taking the food that Calidellians should be eating. My guards have had to protect these men, and sometimes their children, from organised attacks. And they are making it worse for themselves – they all choose to live in the same part of the city – it just gives the flag-wavers a spot to pace about.”

  Morghiad frowned. “So spread them about the city – stop the Rhofinians from clustering and find something constructive for the flag-wavers to do.”

  “And oust Calidellians from their homes so that we can put Rhofin workers into them? The city is full – there aren’t empty houses like there were when you were in charge. The flag-wavers… blazes, I don’t know what to do with them. The last one I had imprisoned accused me of being well… un-Calidellian.” Rahake pointed to his face as if to illustrate the point.

  “I don’t understand…” Morghiad began.

  “Damn it, Mor! Need I spell it out? I don’t exactly look much like the rest of you, do I?”

  Rahake was pretty much the same build, fairly tall and just about the same shape as every other swordsman. Perhaps his hair was cut differently, but… “Ah.” With a different accent and an entirely different attitude, Rahake might have passed for Tegran. His skin was certainly dark enough, though everything about him was utterly Calidellian to Morghiad. “That is ridiculous. All people born here are Calidellian.” He raised an eyebrow. “Even the Gialdinians.”

  There were some muted chuckles, but most of the faces around the table remained grim.

  “The Followers are the worst, if you ask me,” Beetan said.

  “Followers?”

  “Ugh. Follocking pestles or apostles or something like that. They claim to follow the word of their blessed She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. If you ask me, I think your wife would quite like to be named. Anyway, they get up to all sorts of trickery in her non-name. Mostly it’s stealing other people’s things to prepare for the end of the world or taking money from new, gullible followers.” Beetan guffawed to punctuate his words. “I see that she’s special what with her powers and all that, but the way they pretend to be her chosen people… follocking fires!”

  Orwin piped up: “We need a common enemy, Mor. People are beginning to forget what it was like to go to war. And with this peace you propose, aggression will be forced to turn inward instead of out.”

  “You cannot honestly believe that?” Morghiad looked about the table, but no one seemed eager to disagree. “Well, perhaps I am asking the wrong people.” He took a final swig of his ale and excused himself from the gathering. It was the right thing he was doing, wasn’t it - to try to prevent people from dying in pointless battles over patches of land? Country borders meant nothing to time, and only something to kings or others who could profit from it. A world without borders… now that ought to be something good, surely?

  On the walk back to the chambers he had been given, he passed the grand throne room. He had intended to go directly to bed, but the draw of the vast hall was too great, and he found he could not prevent his feet from taking bold strides into it.

  The two thrones dominated the room with mellifluous sprays of crystal that grew from their seats and tapering streams of gold glass that cascaded from their arms. They appeared to be natural
formations in the context of the rest of the palace, and yet their irregularity and strangeness made them entirely unnatural. He had seen these thrones a thousand times or more, had even been part of the force that built them, and still he could not help but wonder at them each time.

  And they were so much more than seats for royal backsides. To be listened to again! He could still remember the feel of the cool stone against his palms and the hard glass at his back, the discomfort and the honour of bearing it without complaint. For forty-six years he had ruled, and that seemed but a breath on the air when compared to the storming gale of Acher’s three-hundred.

  If Morghiad had died only once, he would still be remembered as Calidell’s king. But now he was something else - something smaller, and a foreigner to boot. Though he had despised the role of king at times, he sometimes pondered that it had suited him better than his current station. His brothers’ existence ensured he was not heir to much beyond a title; his nationality was debatable; Artemi’s squad now took orders from Orwin before they would listen to him, and his surviving children were too old to give much heed to his advice. Morghiad now commanded nothing. His place was at the floor beneath the dais, and that truth sat more uncomfortably with him than he could ever have foreseen.

  We were a great king. We can rule again, the monsters whispered in their multiplicitous voices.

  How?

  Artemi had decided that it was time to stop walking for a while. She was hardly unfit, but rather she felt impossibly, inconceivably tired. It was nothing else but spiteful that the Law-keepers should land her in the middle of a blasted desert again! Spiteful and vindictive and utterly unnecessary! She tried to feel for the heat of the fires, but found only a lukewarm impression of their presence. This place was worse than being quenched!

  There was an endless expanse of sand and rocks about her, and it was unlike the soft, rolling dunes of Sunidara. Instead, the landscape was cold and bleak, empty and dead. Artemi drew her fingers through the grit at her feet, and felt another pang of something she could only interpret as thirst. Her body here was different somehow, though she had not yet worked out quite what it was. From what she could see of herself, she did not look especially different, except for three of the fingers on each hand. They were oddly long, and to have six on each side was something she had not experienced before.

  That she could not wield here was a certainty. Not even the sun shone enough light upon her skin to feel warm, or be more than a vague glow amidst the permanent clouds. The fires, while present, were too… feeble to be of much effect here. It was as if everything were smothered by a thick layer of down, or hidden behind a vast screen of heavy smoke.

  One thing was to her benefit, however. She had rather clumsily tripped over a rock during her trek, and had grazed her arm against the ground below. Except, her skin had remained unbroken, and the stones below her had shattered from the impact. Her fall had not even been very violent or noisy. Perhaps this world was vulnerable to her somehow, or she invulnerable to it.

  Without putting much force behind it, she threw a punch at a particularly large rock in front of her. There was a sharp hiss and a crack before the rock exploded from the point of impact, sending a spray of a thousand stone shards into the air around. Her knuckles did not even hurt from the collision. Now that was unexpected.

  Artemi thought for a moment. It would be logical to suppose that, given her relative strength, a more powerful step would take her farther forward here than in any other world. Perhaps a steady run would be a better way of reaching the edge of this desert than a sensible walk. Well, it had to be worth a try. She had no idea if stasis occurred here or was an especially unique feature of the Darkworld, and she didn’t particularly want to find out.

  She began running. Her progress was unremarkable at first, but as she put more effort into her stride and lengthened her steps… blazes! The ground began to rush by beneath her as if carried away upon the wind. Her thirst gripped at her throat and made her head pound throughout, but she bore her way through it with her fists clenched and her jaw set. When the frail sun had sunk beneath the horizon and no moon had risen to replace it, something else lifted above the rocks to illuminate her way. It looked like lights – the lights of settlement!

  As she pressed forward to the town, rows of buildings became evident. They were grey, square and uniformly identical. A heavy wall, painted red and tall enough to reach their roofs, encircled them where the desert ended. From the shape of the ramparts and the pikes at the top, it was definitely there to keep something out rather than in.

  Artemi slowed to a soft-footed jog toward it, small rocks still breaking beneath her toes. It took her a good few minutes before she found the gate to the enclosure, and another half an hour to properly scale it without breaking anything. She would have to tread very lightly in this place if she wanted to avoid destroying any piece of masonry she came into contact with.

  Another hop and a leap onto the ropes of a flagpole, and Artemi was descending with some dignity to the ground beyond. She landed softly on the stones of a courtyard, which were equally as grey and laid out in a very regimented design of squares. Not a soul walked upon those squares. This place was everything Gialdin was not.

  “Hello?”

  No voices returned any sound to her. Perhaps she was imagining this curious place, and perhaps she had spent too long wandering the desert without water. Her vision was certainly a little shakier than usual. Artemi took several steps forward.

  “Hello?”

  There had to be someone here. The town did not have the look of an abandoned place; it was far too clean for that.

  Something moved between the houses.

  She followed a wavering shadow to a new street and looked about her. “I know there’s someone here. I am unarmed.”

  Artemi could definitely sense living things now, and those things were almost certainly people. Why were they hiding from her?

  She rounded another corner, and it was there she saw the figures in a steady stamp of grey clothing and wan torchlight. They were lined up, looking at her as if she were a criminal already undergoing trial. Behind her was the sound of moving feet - no doubt a group sent to block her escape along the path she had followed.

  “I am thirsty,” she said, “I need your help.”

  “Ne-kh-afr bin nk-alie,” one of them said, her voice full of clicks and whistles. Of course, what reason would they have to speak Frontier Union, or indeed any language Artemi knew?

  It was then that she noticed how peculiarly the citizens of this place were dressed. Every person wore the same uniform of grey breeches, brown boots and a grey jacket. Only, it was not the uniform of an army or force. Even the children who clung to their parents’ legs appeared to be wearing it. Artemi was sure that her own black clothing would constitute some sort of transgression here. But there was something else different about them – none of them were obviously male or female, and each of them looked to be somewhere… in-between.

  She pointed at her throat and did her best to mime drinking. “Please,” she said with some desperation. It would be just her luck if they did something peculiar here, like inhaling water from a steam cloud or absorbing it from underground rivulets through their feet.

  At her action, one individual stepped forward from the group and lifted a heavy tube, apparently made of metal, toward her. It was flared at the end, had a handle at the other and was covered in decorative red and silver embossing. So… that was how they shared water.

  A smile touched her lips, but before she could take the tube in acceptance, there was a short, hard snapping sound, like a tree branch giving way. The world spun, and Artemi found herself laid flat upon the ground. Pain blossomed at the surface of her chest. Artemi knew better than to investigate her injury, since she was quite sure it would not threaten her life, and instead sought the source of it. Smoke was rising from the end of the man’s metal tube. Something – a something Artemi could not be sure of - had been jettis
oned from it at his command and had knocked her to the floor. What a friendly group of people these Nightworlders were!

  In any other situation, Artemi would have leapt to her feet and readied herself to do battle, but these were people she needed to befriend. In her many years of experience, she had learned that where people feared her, it was better to accept whatever abuses they had to throw at her than it was to give them more reasons to be frightened. She waited, still lying on her back, to see what they would do next.

  A man, or perhaps woman, with deeply tanned skin and black hair, approached from the crowd, his eyes narrowing as he looked toward her injury. He said something to the people around him, but none of them seemed keen to respond. Then, just as he was about to reach her, he spotted something on the ground and knelt to pick it up. “Nk aloti,” he said with a tone that sounded very much like wonderment.

  “Shadinat!” the person with the metal tube shouted back, before striding purposefully up to his fellow citizen and examining the object they’d found. Within the next few seconds, the two individuals had collected several more pieces of grit, or what appeared to be grit, from the surface of the street.

  The dark-skinned man – yes, he was a man - reached out to touch the point of impact on her chest, finally giving Artemi the opportunity to look down at it. It was still messy, and strangely, still bleeding - though she could see no evidence of poison. The wound was not particularly deep, however, and the damage affected nothing more than the top layers of skin. Why was it not healing? She was not that exhausted, was she?

  He spoke directly to her this time, his voice softer and more questioning, but Artemi did not know how to respond. A shake of the head or shrug of the shoulders could mean something entirely different here.

  There was however, a point of etiquette she had observed common to all cultures and many animals besides. Artemi rolled onto her front and lowered her eyes to the ground - a clear display of submission.