Voices of Blaze

by H. O. Charles

  “You do know we’re not likely to go into battle while we’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean,” his son said, looking to the swords he wore at his back.

  Morghiad chuckled at that. Perhaps it did look ridiculous when they were so far from port and the seas so calm and empty. “The white blade was a gift from your sister and mother. It stays with me.” And in his experience, ships had a tendency to go down rapidly, leaving little time for rescuing things from cabins. As they walked, the ship began to rock regularly again, and he could sense that they were moving. They were free of the doldrums, and the breeze had returned. It was strange, Morghiad thought, that he had been able to sense when the winds would come. What was he, some sort of Silar, or had Artemi left him with this new power?

  He pulled his coat together to button it up the front, but paused when he noticed his son frowning at him.

  “It has to be one of the hottest days in one of the hottest parts of the world. Don’t you even sweat like a normal man?”

  “I experimented with Blaze too much in my youth. It’s left me cold.”

  “A form that means you never feel the heat? You can show me that when we next find a wielder.”

  Morghiad shook his head and all humour evaporated from his voice. “Definitely not. It’s no form, and the effects… I’m not sure I like the effects. I mean it, Kal. It was… wrong. Perhaps there are other things I can teach you.”

  But Kalad’s features had already been drawn into a look of disappointment.

  “There must be other forms-”

  “I remember what you did in the courtyard when I first met you. It’s that sort of destruction, isn’t it? Don’t worry. I’ve already tried it. I can’t do it.”

  Morghiad’s innards twitched. Kalad could have killed himself trying that! Don’t get angry about it. Morghiad managed not to get angry, though his dark creatures marched the edges of the shadows of his mind with heavy, clawed feet. “Try not to put yourself in such danger. Please. Your mother would never forgive me.”

  But Kalad’s expression twisted into one of further discomfort. “I need to return to my cabin.” He immediately departed the deck, and Morghiad came to realise what the problem was. He put Tyshar back in his box, secured the canvas sling underneath the animal and went to find Kalad.

  His son was already curled up in his bunk and had his head buried beneath a pile of pillows. “Leave me to suffer alone,” he said.

  “It is as you said to me many years ago: a good father does not desert his children. I’ll sit with you for a while.” Morghiad took his seat on a small, wobbly stool and picked up a book that had been lying on the floor nearby. It was bound in green fabric and was marked by the residues of sea water, but was otherwise legible. Pirates of the Maelstrom.

  While he read, Kalad shifted round to face him and murmured, “You think I deserve this.”

  “I think you’re old enough to know about the consequences of what you do, but no father wants to see his child in pain.” He turned over the first few pages, which seemed to describe the stormy nature of the Golden Seas. He did not need to read about rough conditions to know how they felt, and skipped ahead through the book. “Why do you do it?”

  Kalad shrugged and glanced downward. “This thing gives them pleasure.”

  Morghiad very nearly chuckled back. It wasn’t as if Artemi had ever complained about that particular aspect of her husband. He tried to scrub his mind clean of his thoughts of intimacy with her. That road only ever led to disappointment and longing. And besides, this was serious business that called for focus. “You would be giving them more pleasure if you stayed with them and let them enjoy… it for longer.”

  “You’ve never lain with anyone else, have you? Just mother.”

  Morghiad marked the page he had open with his finger and reached over to the lamp to open its air inlet. “There was Mirel, but I was not given much choice in that.”

  “No choice? How could a woman – I mean, it’s not the same as… ah…” He let the sentence hang without finishing it.

  “She tortured me, and then she presented me with something I found attractive. And she knew forms that could…” He decided not to finish that particular sentence. Kalad would understand. “When it came to it, I just wanted the pain to end. But you’re right. I felt like the weakest of men afterward – like a nothing, and when you feel as if you’re worthless, you start to treat other people as if they’re worthless too.”

  “So with you it was just mother, but she… ah, she always liked Silar. You must have felt that through your link to her.”

  Morghiad nodded slowly. “He’s a good-looking man.”

  “But you were never even attracted to other women?”

  “Your mother always owned my heart.”

  “That’s just… strange.”

  Morghiad chuckled. “It’s the truth. Perhaps you will understand it for yourself one day.” His eyebrows knotted as he sniffed at the air. “Blazes, was that you? It smells like death itself.” Fires of fires, how could a product of his and Artemi’s love bring forth the very airs of an underworld?

  Kalad smirked. “It was Danner.”

  The wolf looked at them both at the mention of his name, and the two of them began giggling like children.

  “Do your women put up with you doing that?” Morghiad said when his chuckles had subsided.

  “It’s the nalka. I’m a gentleman in every other situation.”

  Morghiad uttered a grunt of disbelief, and opened the book to read again. There had been three rogue ships in this area many years ago, and they had been led by a woman: a wielder with dark hair and bright blue eyes. A wielder who could not be sensed by kanaala. No… Mirel?

  “What did you think of mother when you first met her?” Kalad asked.

  Morghiad extracted his concentration from the book again. “I thought she was an irritating, emotional distraction who needed to learn some self-control. But I also thought she was the most beautiful woman who had ever lived, and I couldn’t remove her from my thoughts. She had a way of breaking through any barriers I put up against her with her damned stubbornness, and because she is undeniably good in her heart, and always loyal. I had no hope.”

  She wanted to cage us, when we should have caged her.

  Morghiad blinked. Had Kalad heard that?

  “Mother said you almost signed away your crown for her – to a madman.”

  “Her life was in danger.”

  “But he could have killed hundreds or even thousands of Calidellians, or driven the country to ruin... or anything.”

  “Indeed he could.” Morghiad nodded slowly as he spoke. “I just loved your mother more than I loved my own people.” And his love had been an avaricious creature. The trouble was, starving it of her only made it hungrier. He checked upon her stream again. Still absent. How much longer would it be?

  Kalad buried his head in the pillows and groaned.

  “It’ll all be over soon, Kal,” Morghiad said softly. His son had only asked him for privacy once during their conversation, and that either meant he had come to tolerate his company, was too weak to fight back, or felt lonely enough to be grateful for the presence of anyone at his side. Morghiad very much hoped it was the first of those things.

  There was something oddly attractive about the rolling black skies and the faint swirls of gold that pleaded to push their way out of obscurity. Few succeeded, but Artemi had come to believe that the light would one day warm this earth. The fires had always been an unstoppable force, and she could not imagine how they would ever remain permanently smothered. Not even in this place.

  “Longest winter I’ve ever known,” a hard voice rasped behind her in the Mrakian tongue. She understood it well after several weeks of dedicated lessons with the ancient Girrim, but her speech was still better in the Nightworld’s common tongue.

  Artemi jumped. She was supposed to be helping with loading cargo, not idling about and thinking of clouds! She jumped again when she turned
to find that the man speaking to her was not the dock master, but the Commander of Vaporik. “Ah, hello Rav,” she said in her newest language. Really, the collection of tongues she had acquired was becoming far too large for her single head. Why could she have not landed in a world where people had two?

  Ravendasor had not spoken with her since his fight with Wendala and Learkin, and in truth, Artemi had been somewhat disappointed by that. It was not that she desired his friendship, but more that she feared her route to someone with influence, and hence information on how she might get home, had been broken. He grinned at her as if they were old acquaintances. “I have been watching you.”

  “Oh?” Artemi tried to smile back and hide her discomfort, before going to the next bale of cloth that required loading onto a cart. When she had first been informed that she was to fetch and carry at the city docks, she had envisioned a brown sea port or perhaps a marina on a filthy river, but of course she had been wrong. This dock was located at the opening to a tunnel above the sheer cliffs of a mountain, and that tunnel led to the highest reaches of the cavern. She really ought to have known it would be a sky port given most of these creatures could fly, but her mind still worked the way of a Darkworlder.

  “I have noticed that you spend a great deal of time staring at the skies. Do you see anything there?” Rav asked.

  “I am thinking about my home.”

  “This is your home now.”

  Artemi forced another smile. “I have been made very welcome here.”

  “Hmm, that is good to know. And I see you’ve grown some muscles too!”

  She certainly had, and they were not the sort of smooth and slender swellings of strength she had come to know in the Darkworld. These were great, lumpen knots that circled her limbs like tree roots. Only Romarr would have been jealous of such things.

  She dropped the bale onto the cart with barely a grunt, recalling that she had found similar loads quite arduous in the weeks before, and turned to face Rav. She needed him as her friend, she reminded herself. “Is there anything I can help you with, commander?”

  He chuckled. “Your Mrakian is almost there. Come with me. It’s time you did as the adults do.”

  Artemi’s overseer grimaced at Rav as they drew away, though Rav did not seem bothered by it at all. Many people claimed that Rav was deeply respected by the city’s inhabitants, but few ever seemed to demonstrate that respect in their tone when they spoke of him. Ravendasor, they would say, with the corners of their mouths downturned and their tongues ready to spit. And their attitude to Rav was no exception. The port workers spoke of the dock master that way, and the dock master spoke of the city’s mayor that way. In truth, anyone with any degree of seniority was spoken of with eyes narrowed and teeth bared.

  It was the nature of this twisted culture. Every male and female mraki was spoiling for a fight, all of the time. Artemi counted herself as fortunate that the wingless pups like her were not seen as threatening enough to begin a contest with, and for as long as Rav remained friendly with her, she was content to remain at the bottom of their pile.

  He strode alongside her with relaxed shoulders and something of a swagger in his thin-legged walk. Really, he could almost be described as graceful, or at least as graceful as mraki could be. “It’s good that you are growing so strong, Emmi, but Dotho told me that you have not been eating properly. Is that so?”

  The pintrata meat. Just the smell of it cooking made her feel ill, and the air reeked of it in Dotho’s cavelet all of the time. “They were people. I cannot eat them!”

  “You were born to. The Father of-”

  “I don’t care about the bloody Father of Storms!” She slipped back into the Nightworld’s common tongue. “Peel off his scalp and turn him to ash! He’s an idiot.”

  At first, Rav’s eyes widened in shock at her blasphemy, but then a smile crept along his mouth, and he began to chuckle quietly. The chuckle became a laugh loud enough to echo around the vast cavern. “The more I see of you, the more I like you, Emmi,” he said when he had finished. “Now, tell me what have you been eating instead?”

  She shrugged. “Gechyll.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Gechyll? You do know we have not imported gechyll meat to this city in over four-hundred years?”

  “But-”

  “-But I think Dotho has played a little trick on you. It is for your own good. Look how strong you have become! And what’s that?” He placed one of his clawed fingers on a particularly knobbly part of her elbow. “Your wings are starting to come through.”

  A sudden wave of nausea hit Artemi, and it was strong enough to make her double over. She tried to empty the contents of her stomach onto the path in front of her, but it had been too long since she had last eaten. All she succeeded in doing was coughing and retching violently. What had they fed her? Women? Injra? Children?

  “Ah, come now, it’s the way you were made.”

  “I was not made to-” Blazes, the thought of it! “Did they suffer?”

  “Suffer?”

  Artemi tried to support herself by placing a hand on a nearby stalagmite. To her deeper disgust, she realised that her arms and fingers had grown long enough that she no longer had to reach for objects over a pace away. “Did they feel pain before they were slaughtered?”

  “I certainly hope so. Nasty little things.”

  Artemi groaned. “They are innocent. They don’t deser-”

  Rav’s bearing changed suddenly. “Now you listen to me, pup. They are not innocent! They have warred with us; killed our innocents.” His words hissed with anger. “I will chew through a hundred thousand of their bones before I give so much as a spider’s backside about how they suffered! They are meat.”

  She closed her eyes and wished him away. All of it! How could a place so soulless exist as this - a place where neither the victims nor attackers had hearts?! When she found her way back to The Crux, she would make the Law-keepers pay for sending her here! There was nothing redeeming in any of the people in this world. Nothing!

  But when she opened her eyes again, Rav was still there, and so was the city of Vaporik beneath them. Rav’s expression was one of puzzlement. “You are soft and hard at the same time and I don’t understand it,” he said.

  “Please, I need to get back to my home.”

  He took a step closer. “This is your home. You are one of us.”

  Artemi could not hold herself together any longer. She burst into tears, and slid into a heap on the ground. She managed to whimper a, “No,” between sobs.

  “Stop that,” Rav hissed under his breath. He looked about anxiously. “You must stop that. Now.”

  But she continued to cry. She missed Morghiad so deeply! And she so longed to see all of her children again. Tallyn. Tallyn was dead! Artemi wept even harder at the pain she felt in her heart.

  “Ah, bastard pup of a-” Ravendasor did not finish, and instead picked her up with one of his concertinaed wings. There was a rush of cold air, and they were descending quickly through it before Artemi could form another sob. They landed on the roof of a pointed building in the centre of the city, and Rav swiftly smuggled her through the only door atop it.

  The air was even cooler inside the house, or cavelet, as such domiciles were known, and the tunnels inside it were only lit sporadically by lamps. Rav carried her through to one of the darker rooms and lifted her into a hammock, and once he was satisfied he could do nothing more to quiet her, he began pacing.

  “Not even pintrata… do this,” he said at last.

  “Cry?”

  “Shh! One of my servants will hear you.” Rav went to shut the door, but was immediately interrupted when one such member of his staff scampered into view.

  “Commander-” she began. Artemi could not see much of the woman’s face with Rav blocking her view, but she could tell that the servant had a very lithe, very strong body. In spite of the manner in which the creature’s knuckles dragged along the floor, Artemi would have described her as havin
g a very attractive figure. Fires, what was happening to her mind?!

  “A moment’s privacy, please, Irwal. My friend here has taken ill. Wait a moment - fetch the taqqa band and the new box. The Aeravyan one; not that Yunish rubbish again.”

  “Fine,” the servant said with considerable bite in her tone. Not even a man’s own household treated their masters with respect here. She scurried off without a moment’s hesitation however, and Rav closed the door behind her.

  “Have you finished doing… that yet?” Rav asked.

  When Artemi had been training as Kurusu, her failing had always been her readiness to cry when things became difficult. Show no weaknesses! The Daisain had yelled at her again and again. Even if you are feeble inside, never let them know it! And those words were followed by the inevitable beating. Artemi had learned enough not to sniffle through those, but at other times, she simply could not do battle with her tears. “Yes, I’ve finished,” she said. “It’s done now.”

  “Good.” Ravendasor continued to pace in silence until the items he had requested were brought to him, and the door unceremoniously shut once more upon his servant’s pretty face.

  Pretty? Artemi wondered.

  The box Rav had been handed was made of varnished hardwood and was decorated by an ornate brass lock. Fishing a key out from the neck of his jacket, he said, “One taste of this, and you’ll never be that miserable again.”

  The box opened with a click, and almost as soon as it did, Artemi caught a waft of the most beautiful perfume she had ever smelled. “Is that-?”

  “It is your illumination. You once asked me where there was light in this world. Well, my young friend, it is right here.” He stood with some peculiar apparatus in his claws – apparatus that looked eerily similar to the tubes Artemi had seen on the eisiel farm. “Hold your arm out,” Rav said.

  “How much is this going to hurt?” It wasn’t that she feared pain, rather that she feared how incapacitated she might become. Ravendasor might have been the better example, but these were hardly trustworthy creatures.