Voices of Blaze

by H. O. Charles

  The man grunted something at her, before calling to one of his friends for something else. She was duly tied up with metal chains and dragged toward what she presumed would be a place of imprisonment. It would not be all bad, she considered. Most cultures gave their captives water to drink, didn’t they?

  Chapter 2

  “Are you sure it should be now?”

  Lannda nodded slowly. “This is what he told me. The first full moon of our three-thousandth, three-hundredth and twenty-first year, post diluvial. The moon has risen, and the path is now safe for us to proceed upon.”

  Fardine screwed up his strange, blocky features. “Just walk into Gialdin City - one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world? No arms, no soldiers, nothing else? My lady, if I may be so bold-”

  “Nothing else will be necessary. We can trust his word. Follow.” Lannda urged her horse forward with the gentlest of nudges from her heels, and directed him at the pale glow of the eccentric walls. She had never been to this new Gialdin before, and even the descriptions she had heard of it went only so far in properly describing its wild nature. It was beautiful, but also very… wrong at the same time. Evidently, she was one of the few who could detect the foul influence in its construction. One had to have experienced the processes of putrefaction and rot first-hand in order to properly see their cousins at work.

  Lannda headed directly for the eastern quarter of the city, an area that was clean and well-looked-after, but evidently home to the poor and impoverished. She paced the streets for six counts of one hundred, as she had been instructed, and then she found her quarry.

  “Master… Carlin, I presume?”

  The man’s icy blue eyes were unmistakable. “Ah… yes, it is. And to whom am I speaking?”

  “My name is Lannda, and I am a former sister of your daughter. I understand you know how these things work.”

  If the man was surprised, he elected not to show it. “Come with me,” he said, and led them to his small house.

  It was a peculiarly appointed place inside, with its gold-streaked walls of palatial quality, crumbling furniture and threadbare rugs. Lannda was not ungrateful for the opportunity to sit upon a comfortable chair however, since the ride from the border had been protracted and without any pause to rest. “This is my guardian: Fardine,” she said, gesturing to the sell-sword. “He is very good at beating people up, though please do not take that as a threat. I intend to use him to aid Mirel.”

  “And just how do you think you can aid my daughter? Beating up one of her guards might put a smile on her face, but that’s about it. And they are good men, besides. I’ve got to know them-”

  “We are going to free her, Master Carlin.”

  “Carlin is my first name. Never needed a second. Just Carlin. Wait – what? Free her? But she - are you sure that’s what you want? Even if you can achieve it… the things she’s done… I know she’s my daughter, but I-”

  “But you think she’s ready, don’t you?”

  “Imprisonment has changed her, to be sure, but…” he sighed and shook his head, “I don’t know.”

  Lannda drew herself up and put a little more force into her voice. “Relate the conversation you had with her today.”

  “Um. It was just the usual sort of chatter.” Carlin twisted his mouth a little. “We talked about her mother.”

  “What did Mirel want to know?”

  “Well, she asked what Helina did – my wife was a potter, a very skilled one as it happens – and I told Mirel about the things she made.”

  That sort of talk did sound very… trivial for the sister Lannda had met in The Crux. “Mirel asked about her mother’s occupation? Well, that is quite unlike the woman I know, or knew.”

  Carlin shuffled his fingers about a little. “She cares really. I think she always has. She just- she doesn’t want people to think she is soft. Show no weaknesses, she always says.”

  “And why would she? Mirel has been given the destiny of the world to guard. Do you think a woman who has been charged with the duties of a true hero can allow herself the time, or the dereliction of focus to think of small things like her temporary family? And yet, in her captivity, you have observed she has finally been willing to give those… items some consideration. Of course she cares, Carlin.” Lannda paused in thought. Blazes, Mirel cares? “I suppose what we want to know is whether, upon her release, she will charge about the countryside, making eisiels here, there and everywhere. Will she put aside her anger at The Fireblade and work towards more… constructive goals?”

  He chewed on his lip for a moment before answering. “I think… eisiels, no. You can persuade her off that business. Thank the fires! But the other girl – Mirel isn’t best pleased with the accommodation she’s been given for the past half century. Telling her not to fight Queen Artemi…”

  “Your Queen Artemi has left this world for a little while. In fact, I’m informed that there is a distinct possibility she will never return. So, fighting is something we need not worry ourselves with at present. It is Mirel’s anger I am concerned about. Can she put it aside?”

  “Gone?” Carlin’s eyebrows very nearly clambered off the top of his face. “I see. Well, I should imagine Mirel will have very little anger to speak of, in that case. She is, at least, better at dealing with her outbursts.”

  “Then she is ready.”

  “I suppose-”

  The three of them stood as if to leave, but Carlin hastily shuffled into the path of the door, “Now? Wait – ah – how do I even know what you say is true? About Queen Artemi and… er-”

  “A prediction, which, I can assure you, is as reliable as the one that we will succeed in releasing you daughter tonight. If we free Mirel, then you shall know that our grand-niece will no longer be a problem.”

  He nodded slowly, his features seeming almost drawn downward by the news. “I had hoped they would find a way to forgive each other. They used to be friends, you know?”

  Lannda drew breath as deeply as she could. Fools, all of them who met the girl! “The Fireblade has no place here, Carlin. Time and again she has put the interests of that man and the progeny she has borne him before those who would help the world. She is blind, and with all that she has been gifted with, she is dangerous. There is no way back for her. For Mirel, however, there is a very bright and hopeful future. Let us help her toward it.”

  “Morghiad is no good? I had heard he had turned to the Hirrahans, but…”

  “He is something far worse than no good, Carlin.” Lannda suppressed a shudder as she was reminded of the sensations that came from the very substance of the city. Blazes, that evil was everywhere in this place! “We must prepare ourselves for what is to come. Your daughter will be our saviour.”

  Mirel’s father did not look remotely at ease nor as overjoyed as he should have been with the news. His fingers twitched and his forehead filled with lines, but after a moment of hesitation, he was the first to step out of his house. “How are we going to do this? Do you have a plan?”

  “But of course!” Lannda exclaimed, following him into the crisp night air. “We are going to walk into the castle, open up her prison and walk out with her.”

  Carlin frowned. “You’re barmy.”

  “It is all in the timing, as you shall see. Come.”

  But the intersection of their action with the perfect situation for their entrance could not occur without a cue or two. How fortunate it was that The Daisain had given her an entire list of the things! The Fireblade was gone forever; her lover had departed for Hirrah; the girl-queen was out in the hinterlands, along with various protectors; the city’s most sensitive kanaala were either away, drunk or asleep and no one had any cause to be especially wary.

  When they arrived at the palace gates, Lannda waited for a black rat to run between the two men guarding and into the gardens beyond. Almost immediately one soldier ran after the creature, while the other turned to watch him in amusement. Lannda motioned for her accomplices to follo
w her in a leisurely stroll through the gates. From there they walked freely to the entrance of the main palace building, where guards appeared to look or move away at just the right moment, and the nobles to gaze only at their own boots. It was like an elegant dance of dandelion seeds - each weaving through the winds and one never meeting another.

  Their party continued to move between members of the castle staff, with Lannda asking that they pause at specified places for counts of five and breaths of ten. Within moments, they had breezed down the wide, spiral staircase and glided into the underground chambers that lay beneath the bedrock of Gialdin.

  A female prison guard met them at the entrance to Mirel’s place of confinement, and was kind enough to smile. “Who are these two, Carlin? Not family, I think?”

  “Ah? N-no,” the man stuttered, “Friends from Tegra.”

  “We met as children,” Lannda added, though in good light, anyone could have seen that her eyes were those of a woman several thousand years older than either of the two men.

  The guard drew her mouth tight at one side. “I need to check for weapons and other items before you go in there. Arms out.”

  Lannda and Fardine complied immediately, even removing the drawstrings from their cloaks when asked.

  “What is that in your pocket?” the guard asked Fardine.

  “Ah, my spoon from lunch – surely that’s not-”

  “Hand it over, please.”

  Fardine did as he was told, and Lannda had to admit some confusion at its necessity. The Daisain had instructed them to bring it, though quite what part a spoon would have to play in proceedings was a mystery to her.

  Once all checks had been completed, their small party was permitted to enter Mirel’s prison chamber. Not much was clearly visible inside, but in the dancing flame light, Lannda could make out a white box whose sides were made of slender, sprawling bars, and a dark figure that moved about inside it.

  “Sister?” the figure called to her softly.

  “I am here,” Lannda said, approaching the cage of stone. “By smoke, you stink worse than the canker on a ravenwood tree!” She reached out to touch Mirel’s hand through the bars, and was surprised to feel nothing but the warmth of the woman’s skin. Of course, she had been quenched, and though Lannda had barely known the woman in the Darkworld, the absence of any fire from her still felt more than incorrect.

  Mirel’s body was not in as bad a condition as Lannda had feared, however. She was filthy, with hair so knotted and wiry it could have been used as a scourer for cook pots, but she looked to be well-fed enough to fight and heal rapidly.

  “Are you fit enough to run?”

  “They have confined me too tightly even to stand straight, Lann. But even that is not enough to weaken me. I have waited so long. Ice and fires, almost fifty loathsome years in this hole!” Mirel spat the last word out.

  “We had to wait until the time was right. Now, how to…” Lannda moved her fingers to the surface of the cage. The foulness in its core was still evident from contact, though it was of a slightly different species compared to that of the city. “Someone else – not the man – made this structure.”

  “Whoreblade and her bitch daughter. They will pay.”

  So, it had infected one of them as well, if not both. That could be useful to know, or watch out for. “You won’t get your vengeance on The Fireblade. She’s gone. As for the daughter, we may need her in the months to come.”

  “Gone? Are you sure?”

  “The Law-keepers dealt with her. It is just you now.”

  “Just me…” Mirel’s focus appeared to wilt and drop into deep reflection, allowing Lannda to continue with her explorations of the prison cell. It had to be more than accident or fortune that they had been two of triplets: two processes of the substance of everything. Artemi was the third part: descended from their firstborn brother, who had been the nature of light from the fires. He had been the process of the taking part, the visible part, the hot part: the flames. Mirel, on the other hand, was the nature of melting water: She was the giving part, the invisible part, the cold part: the part that absorbed energy. Artemi’s fire could only ever come from breaking down objects, making ordered things chaotic, whilst Mirel’s ice would be born from the sorting and arrangement of such objects into crystallised order.

  And Lannda? She was neither an opposite nor a complement, but the exception to both. Lannda was the process of decay, of rotting and of decomposition. She was the mould that grew on old food, and the fungus that devoured ancient wood. Like Mirel, Lannda gave energy, but disorder and compost were the things that came out of it.

  She reached into the stuff of the bars, looking for any weaknesses, any tasty morsels upon which she could set her toadstools to feast. At first, she found nothing that looked like a landing site for spores, until she realised that this was no structure of Blaze and that an entirely different type of growth would be needed.

  Lannda recalled the moulds and mildews that she had smelled whilst in The Crux, their shape and their character. She imagined them in her mind and made them solid in her thoughts. With a tweak or two, a similar organism sprang up before her eyes. It glowed with a creeping, golden beauty, quite unlike that of any Darkworld rot she had seen, and she had to admit that she was more than a little impressed with her own creation.

  The blight crept through the white crystal, turning it to an ivory-brown mush.

  Almost as soon as the decay touched the ceiling and floors of her cell, Mirel plunged forward through the pulp and collapsed flat onto the stone floor of the chamber beyond. Her father ran to wrap his arms around her, seeming not to care that she was covered in the waste substances of mould.

  Lannda half expected her sister to strangle the man for even attempting to touch her, but Mirel did no such thing. Perhaps something really had altered within the woman.

  “Alright, that’s enough of that,” Lannda said, “Can you walk?”

  As her father’s grasp fell away, Mirel rose slowly. Her body straightened, she stretched her arms high into the air above and finally lifted her face to look at the exit in front of her. “Who is he?” she asked with a smile.

  “Fardine,” the man in question responded, “I’m here to help.”

  Mirel cocked her head as if listening to something, and then proceeded to walk past him. For a woman who had not taken a full stride in half a century, she looked to be quite at ease with her own limbs and the space she now had available to her.

  “Wait!” Lannda hissed, “If we are to get out alive, we need to follow the plan.”

  “I have no need of plans,” Mirel said, “But I will need that cloak from you.”

  Lannda undid the clasp at her neck and handed over the cloak, but said, “The Daisain gave me instructions, Mirel. I know that you will not want to incur his wrath over this.”

  “Master is here!”

  “We can’t free him. Trying to do so now will get us caught - and everything will be ruined.”

  Mirel looked thoughtful for a moment, but nodded. “I will do as he instructs. We are all under his influence, sister.”

  “I know. Now pull up that hood, and let’s move.”

  The assassin did as she was told, but swept out of the chamber and straight toward the exit without waiting for the rest of her party. Well, that sort of behaviour probably was to be expected. Lannda hurried out behind Mirel, doing her best not to run like an overeager child. When she caught up with her sister, she found the woman standing calmly before the guard, whose eyes were wide and fixed with fear.

  “A spoon?” Mirel said, “How kind of you…” She leaned forward gracefully, and extracted the cutlery from the guard’s hand. “I used to love practising with these. One…” She tossed the spoon into the air and caught it again on its fall. “Two…” Mirel threw it higher, this time enough to make it bounce back from the ceiling. “Three!” The spoon flashed out from her fingers, a spinning streak of silver light that shot straight into the guard’s neck. Bloo
d sprayed outward from the point of impact, and both head and body fell, quite independently, to the floor.

  “Mirel!” Carlin exclaimed, his face pale and his lower jaw hanging.

  “She was a self-righteous, smug bitch, that one,” Mirel replied whilst retrieving her weapon, “And we don’t have much on us to gag her with, besides. Have you ever tried ripping strips from cloak velvet with no knife? It’s near impossible. Lannda, I’m assuming that our master instructed us not to take her weapons?”

  “He did.”

  “Now, just a minute,” Carlin said, striding forward to face his daughter. Strangely, although he was taller than she, the closer he drew, the smaller he appeared. “I will not have any daughter of mine killing innocent people for no good reason! Not even to shut them up. No more killing.”

  Mirel sighed. “It was necessary.”

  “I disagree. Give me the spoon.”

  Her eyes flashed wildly and her fingers twitched twice. Her upper lip formed a snarl that bared her teeth.

  “Spoon. Now,” he said, his palm held out to receive it.

  There was a second where the air hung thick with silence, until Mirel rapidly thrust the item flat against his chest. “I give you leave to speak to me so, but no one else will have that privilege.” Then she turned, sweeping her cloak about her, and stalked away from the scene.

  For the remainder of their escape, Mirel kept her face hidden and her walk unremarkable, which made Lannda’s task much easier than she had feared it would be. As before, they moved only when the time was right, and danced their way clear of arrest. The skies were still dark by the time they reached the icy glow of the city’s gate, and as she walked through it, Lannda brushed a finger against the white stone. A gift to the Calidellians, she mused, for their arrogance and conceit at the Fordan border some years ago.

  Tyshar was no better-behaved than his usual self upon Morghiad’s departure from Gialdin City, and for a sterile old stallion, he did seem to miss Valina’s company far more than he should have. So many years alive really ought to have softened the warhorse into a calmer disposition around unknown people and windy weather, but they had not impacted upon his nature at all. Morghiad was almost glad for it though. His mount was one of the few things that did not seem to change when everything else moved on with such rapidity. A swift breeze swept in from the northern side of the road, and Tyshar stamped and huffed back at it.