Who Walks in Flame

by David Alastair Hayden

  Contents

  Title Page

  Who Walks in Flame

  Please Review

  Other Books by David Alastair Hayden

  Chains of a Dark Goddess

  Wrath of the White Tigress

  Storm Phase

  About the Author

  Tales of Pawan Kor

  Who Walks in Flame

  David Alastair Hayden

  Published by Typing Cat Press

  at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2012 by David Alastair Hayden

  All Rights Reserved

  Version 2.0 | January 2013

  Cover illustration copyright © Pepper Thorn

  Tales of Pawan Kor

  The Tales of Pawan Kor series can be read in any order.

  Chains of a Dark Goddess

  Wrath of the White Tigress

  Who Walks in Flame

  Storm Phase

  This enchanting Asian-inspired fantasy series delivers fast-paced adventure for readers young and old.

  The Storm Dragon’s Heart

  Lair of the Deadly Twelve

  Who Walks in Flame

  With claws like sabers, a house-sized paw rips free from the earth and uproots a giant elm. Another bursts forth, sixty paces away. Between them, an angular head explodes upward and topples a stone granary. A scaled body the length of two villages snakes up after it, driven by eight powerful legs. Dirt crusts its scales of crimson, gold, and amber … until a dismissive shiver casts a cloud of dust so large it obscures the moon.

  Flaming eyes open.

  Ancient malevolence views the world once again.

  A flick of its spiked tail decimates a stand of olive trees. Then the behemoth lowers its head, opens its razor-fanged maw, and out rolls a dark, oily tongue. Wrapped within that tongue is something like a man, a being not seen in three millennia.

  This … man … of an old, forgotten race breathes.

  He remembers.

  “Khuar-na,” he says, naming himself as he slides from the tongue. He rubs a scale on the lowered snout of the behemoth and murmurs: “Old friend.”

  Khuar-na runs scarred hands along his body, touching the pockmarks where wounds once bled. Deep, deep within the hot earth, the magic of the Scorch-Walker healed them. Their gamble paid off. The nightmare has ended.

  Khuar-na scans the lush fields around him. How many centuries have passed? he wonders. This was hot barren waste when we dug in. Our glorious homeland. The splendid sands are gone. It is naught but the stink of human fields and orchards now.

  Faint footsteps, hushed cries. The Scorch-Walker snaps his head up. Khuar-na turns and a smile spreads across his reptilian face.

  A family fleeing a farmhouse: A panicked husband and wife urge their four children to run as fast as they can and stick together.

  My sons and daughters. Where are they now? Dust of centuries. Murdered by the humans who overthrew me.

  With one hand, Khuar-na caresses the rune-carved amulet of dark-iron hanging from his neck. I used to be merciful. There was a time when I would have regretted this. He extends the other and a gout of sulfurous hellfire springs from his palms and streaks unerringly toward its targets. The humans burst into flame. Their flailing limbs light the night like maddened fireflies.

  Khuar-na is pleased, and into his mind, the Scorch-Walker laughs. They are one in their joy and united in their desire for vengeance.

  ***

  Under the ashen light of the Dark Moon, Bregissa the Skald sings druid songs as smooth as spider silk and with a curious magic draws the egg from her womb. With trembling hands she places it in a root-tangled hollow beneath a giant, lightning-charred oak.

  There her egg will wait, perfectly preserved, until fertilized by a man chosen by the gods. What purpose this will serve, she does not know. But henceforth a terrible magic will strike down any who approach the tree without the blessing of the gods.

  “I have done what the Goddess asked of me,” Bregissa tells her companion and lover, Kerenthos, who stands between two twisting clay pillars adorned with forgotten runes, watching in silence.

  She wants to tell him the alternative the Goddess gave her. But it’s so unbearable she can’t bring herself to say it aloud, even to brave Kerenthos.

  Blessed lady, she prays in silence, your desire is beyond my ken and far beyond my skill to interpret.

  Bregissa dresses, putting on a golden ceremonial robe she normally wears only on the great festival days. Then, incongruously, she straps a saber and a wind pistol to her waist.

  “We should go back now,” she says.

  Kerenthos makes no reply. He is still staring at the barren oak, as if mesmerized. His hands are trembling.

  ***

  The palace sits, broken and eroded, on a treacherous mountaintop in the far reaches of the West Kingdoms. Forgotten, except by the … humans … who live in the valley below. The Scorch-Walker and Khuar-na burn a path of destruction all the way to this valley, humans fleeing before from them. But the people of the valley do not retreat, for in song and dance they remember their legacy. Khuar-na, their last king, has returned after 2,746 years. The day of their restoration has come.

  From his perch on the top of the Scorch-Walker’s head, saddled on a vestigial horn, Khuar-na immediately senses their difference and studies these people with his witch-sight.

  This is all that remains of my kind? Ignorant brutes, hidden like cowards, appearances masked by magic. A final spell from my sister, no doubt.

  They're savages, unfit but for slavery. It is not acceptable.

  But I have no choice. From these I must build our future.

  Patience.

  I have time enough for restoration after my vengeance is taken.

  As his people, the Skithikri, gather before the Scorch-Walker and kneel, Khuar-na turns his gaze upon what was once his glorious palace, his golden eyes turning a languid gray. For a few moments he sees not ruins but strong walls, curling spires rising far into the sky, and fluttering pennants, captured from his enemies. He hears the sibilant voices of children, the laughter of corpulent wives, the grunting of soldiers training, the whispers of scheming magi. He smells roasting flesh and jasmine wafting on pure mountain air. He relives his greatest moment: The spread of an army a hundred thousand strong, throughout the valley and down into the lowlands: Crying his name, swearing their allegiance to the second century of his reign, their first on this planet, having fled their dying home world.

  The Scorch-Walker lowers his head, parallel to the ground, and Khuar-na walks out onto the tip of the snout. His magically enhanced voice booms through the valley as he addresses his fellow Skithikri. Through no small effort, he hides his contempt.

  “My people, your King has returned! Blessed are the days. Deserts shall return. Palaces will rise again. Humans will bow to us as slaves.”

  He raises his iron amulet high above and speaks a spell of countering, made easy for he remembers well the structure of his sister’s spells. The illusion of pure humanity falls away, revealing…

  Khuar-na recoils in disgust. They have mated with humanity. Their blood has been watered down. In silence he stares, openly contemptuous of their pale skin, patched with scales, the hair on their heads, the fattened pupils… He closes his eyes.

  Strength. Patience. It is nothing that I cannot correct in time.

  Spurred now by a surging anger, he shouts: “Make ready now! We are few in number but strong in desire. I have seen our enemy on my way here. They are weak, unsuspecting. The crumbling age of men shall end in the fire of our vengeance.”

  ***

  As she sits on the steps of the Grand Library, waiting for the Kings of the East to gather, Bregissa burnishes the long, bronze
barrel of her wind pistol, a magic device fashioned three centuries ago by Arkos the Maker. The perfect weapon for a skald forbidden the use of gunpowder by religious edicts. Except that the pistol is nearly useless. When constructed, it could fire ten shots each day, recharging them as the sun rose. Now it holds only one.

  “How much longer must we wait?” asks Kerenthos, waking from his nap. He is ten years her senior, maimed and scarred by war. But to the Skald of the Land, he is kind and grimly handsome. She depends on him, and she honors Kerenthos by allowing him to witness rituals few have ever seen.

  “Until the kings all say so,” she replies. Then smiling she adds, “Or noon.”

  Laughing, Kerenthos glances up at a sky of blue like Bregissa’s eyes, a sun as golden as her hair. “Better get my leg on then.” He connects a wooden prosthetic to his right knee. “If that’s okay with you, oh woman who commands the Kings of the East!”

  A playful shove throws him off balance. “Watch that tongue of yours! I’ll not be mocked in so august a gathering.”

  “Oh yes,” he whispers. “Such great and honorable warriors are gathered here. Many can no longer fit their fat bellies within their armor.”

  “Aye, they’re a sorry lot, these kings of men. And I’d have no influence over them if they hadn’t respected my father so much. And hadn’t forgiven him for not fathering a son.”

  And if they knew the truth about me, they’d have me drawn and quartered, my name struck from the records. But the Goddess, bless her holy name, she gives me knowledge of her rituals and apparently cares not about how I became Skald of the Land.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, my love,” Kerenthos says. “You did convince them to gather here, and you’ve proven your worth to the Kingdoms of the East many times over.”

  “I’ll give them the tale and do what I can to encourage them. Then you and I can guard the Sacred Isle. Together there we can be happy for a little while longer. And if the army fails, my skills will be needed to rally our people.”

  Kerenthos’s response is interrupted by a page who reports that all the kings are now assembled.

  Bregissa climbs onto a stage and sounds three sharp notes on the Horn of Valyn. Silence falls over a host eager to hear about their enemy. Hints and rumors are all they’ve had, pieces of a history humanity had wished to forget.

  “Ages ago,” she says, summoning all the natural power she can into her voice, “the witch-king Khuar-na led a warped race of beings like unto men through a magical gate, fleeing their dying world and invading ours. Men named them the Skithikri and learned to fear their twisted sorceries and the fell, reptilian beasts they commanded.

  “Our climate displeased the Skithikri, so through sorcery the witch-king bound streams and rivers, rain and winds, to create parched scrublands and deserts. Farms failed and many thousands died. Those who remained, the Skithikri enslaved.

  “Yet our ancestors continued. As the centuries passed, their numbers increased, and so too did their will to be free. At last, humanity rose up against its oppressors. The great hero Palamaron struck down the witch-king. Rain returned to the parched scrublands. Streams flowed again. Sprigs of green shot forth, and young ones played under fast-growing trees that soon became forests. Our nations grew and prospered.

  “But he was not dead this king of the Skithikri. He retreated deep into the earth. As the centuries passed, his injuries healed. Many prophets said this would be the case, but so much time passed that people doubted and then ultimately forgot.

  “Until the witch-king returned three months ago and brought forth the last of his dread race that had remained hidden in the West: Ten thousand of them, strong, eager, deadly.”

  “What is this Khuar-na like?” shouts one of the kings.

  “We know little, your majesty, save that he rides a giant, draconic beast the size of a fortress, a monster from ancient times, a companion earned in sorcery but bonded by like spirit. The beast is named the Scorch-Walker. Its hide is supposedly impenetrable, and like Khuar-na, its lifespan limitless.

  “Powerful sorceries guard the witch-king from harm, but he has a vulnerability: the touch of a white-steel blade. The metal of the Bright Moon can cut through the enchantments that guard him.

  “Only three among us have white-steel weapons, though, so let us pray that our muskets and cannons can accomplish what the more primitive weapons of our ancestors could not.

  “Kings of the East, our goal is clear. We must unite to prevent the witch-king from destroying us. Though the nations of the West have already fallen, we are stronger. Together, we can prevail.

  “I have no more to tell you. The rest is up to you. May the Goddess bless us.”

  Heads nod. Murmurs spread. Voices strengthen, and arguments begin. Who will lead the army? Whose forces will form the vanguard? How will the cost of the war be divided amongst them? How will they guard against treachery in the empty castles they leave behind?

  Kerenthos places a hand on Bregissa’s shoulder.

  “It doesn’t take long for men to weaken,” she says, “even when the threat is so clear.”

  “And yet, when it comes to the fight itself they will bond as brothers, giving their lives for one another. I’d not be here today without the sacrifice of a man who hated me.” He taps on his wooden leg and chuckles. “Though I still think he could’ve gotten there sooner.”

  Kerenthos is right. They will stand proud together, if they can make it to the battlefield intact. Of that, I’m certain.

  The nobles cluster into factions with pages running between the lordly knots to announce terms and demands. After some time, a page of King Hugix approaches and kneels before Bregissa.

  “My lady,” he says. “It has been decided that a champion elected by each faction shall fight on the tourney field. The ultimate winner will determine who commands the army, and the rest of the officer ranks shall also be based upon the results.”

  “Gods,” curses Kerenthos. “What a waste.”

  “How many factions remain?” Bregissa asks.

  “Thirty, my lady.”

  “Thirty!” Bregissa fumes. “We cannot waste the strength of so many of our best fighters before we face the greatest threat of our age!”

  “You’re going to have to do something, my love. A tourney cannot unite them. It will only make things worse.”

  What would Orthinn do? I have not his strength or standing among these men. They listen to me, but they do not respect me. Deep down, I think they sense that I’m not like him. That I’m a fraud.

  Suddenly, tempers flare and a fight breaks out between two champions of opposing lords. Bregissa shoves her way through to the circle where the two men face off.

  “Enough!” she says, but they ignore her.

  She leaps in between the two men. One stops, in deference to the Skald of the Land. The other does not. He lunges past Bregissa, trying to catch his longtime rival off-guard.

  Kerenthos jumps in and parries the blow with a hastily drawn cutlass. Enraged, the man turns on him. Bregissa spins around, levels the wind pistol, and pulls the trigger. With a skirl and whoosh, a jet of concentrated air strikes the man without honor. The air lifts him from his feet and lands him on his back, ten paces away.

  Stunned, he rolls up onto his knees. Bregissa unsheathes her sword and points it at him.

  “Stand, and I’ll kill you.”

  I will do it. Millions of lives are at stake at here.

  The man sits down and looks away.

  Bregissa begins to stalk around in a circle, meeting as many eyes as she can. The voice of the skald, laced with life and death, earth and stream, wells within her. She glances to Kerenthos. Face set into a frown, he nods in understanding.

  I’m so sorry, my love. I should have known this would happen.

  “I will lead this army!” she bellows, “loathe as am I to do so!”

  Confused mutterings, curses, and newfound hope spread amongst the gathered host.

  “But you are the Skal
d of the Land!” cries one king.

  “And a High Priestess,” a second adds.

  A third one shouts, “What does a wordsmith know of battle!”

  And before she can respond, another yells: “And a woman!” Many second this sentiment.

  “Aye,” she replies. “I am a woman, the High Priestess of the Moon, and the Skald. And these qualities make me different from all of you. I seek neither crown nor coin. I have no interest here but victory over our enemy.

  “If the tale before us is not one for all the ages, then there is no strength in our hearts. Only in cowardice could we fail to make a story to rival all those that came before, in either victory or defeat. So who else could guide you into legend but the Skald of the Land?”

  Heads bob, followed by whispers of agreement. No one doubts the days ahead will become legend—just as no one doubts the Skald of the Land who sometimes graces their halls with songs of beauty and peace, inspiration and strength.

  “But what of military leadership?” asks one lord.

  “We will vote on a plan of attack and elect generals to serve under my command. I will see that every idea is heard and considered fairly. I will be your figurehead and your bond.”

  At that moment, old King Hugix bends his knee and swears that he will follow her. Seeing him concede, the others all agree, even those still apprehensive. Bless your fondness for my voice, Hugix. You have loved me better than my own father.

  Bregissa touches Kerenthos’s cheek. My death looms before me. My doom has come. But at least Kerenthos will live on, guarding the Sacred Isle that bears the seed the Goddess had me leave, for whatever her purpose must be.