Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2)

by Stephanie Beavers

  The warrior’s grip on his leg eased as she unwound and stretched, dumping a pillow on his face.

  “Guff!” was the startled, smothered cry that emitted from Esset as he flailed under the sudden waterfall of pillows falling on him. How had they all become so precariously positioned above his head?

  Nefarious giggles emitted from the other side of the pillows. Esset growled and started digging his way out of the bedding, shoving her tail away in the process.

  They both froze when someone knocked on the door.

  Esset resisted the urge to hide in the blankets in case it was a concubine—or worse, more than one of them—on the other side of the door. To his horror, Tseka instead issued a perfectly relaxed, “Come in,” at the door.

  Erizen entered, his eyebrows rising as he looked them over. Esset just knew his hair would be sticking out in all directions, in stark contrast to the mage’s ever-perfect ponytail. Not that he cared. Of course not. Not at all.

  “I found the next focus,” Erizen said, and turned to go.

  Esset glanced at the curtains; the light that glowed from them was barely pre-dawn. “How?” he blurted.

  Erizen’s reply was more than a little condescending. “Scrying, of course. The same way I’ve been searching from the start.”

  Esset scowled; Erizen knew very well that wasn’t what he’d been asking. “But it’s barely morning.”

  Erizen’s smirk widened. “My bedroom activities last night left me…invigorated. Did yours?”

  Esset hated that he couldn’t stop the flush from spreading across his cheeks.

  “Yes,” Tseka replied, languidly rising from the pillows. “Sleep generally leaves one feeling restored.”

  Erizen’s gaze shifted to Tseka and his smile broadened into something only slightly less smirk-y.

  “Come, I’ll need you to get past Toman’s watchdog.” Erizen didn’t wait this time; he simply turned left.

  Esset scowled at the empty doorway.

  “At least he didn’t bring his harem with him?” Tseka said. There was a hint of amusement in her tone as well, something Esset’s still-sleep-fogged mind didn’t appreciate.

  Esset grunted and struggled his way out of the blankets.

  Erizen was tapping his foot by the time they caught up with him, and it was at least ten minutes before they were all gathered back in the planning room. The meeting place was the one room in the castle where they centralized all their information and plans for taking down Moloch, including maps, spell diagrams, and what intelligence they could gather on Moloch and his people. Right now, Erizen had a map spread out on the table and was marking down the four foci he’d tracked down and where he thought the others would be based on spell structure.

  “Now, I’ve also been studying Atah’s scrolls, and I’m confident that I’ve come up with a counter pattern that will reverse the Greymaker’s energy flow. We won’t even need to touch the foci themselves, so it’s less risky than our original plan to just destroy foci.” Erizen grabbed a cup of colored pins and began sticking them into the map in a pattern that complemented but never touched the existing pattern he’d marked in ink.

  “How long will it take?” Toman asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Erizen admitted, and went on to explain. “The Greymaker feeds the connected mage in a trickle and gathers a reservoir of power, like a stream feeding a lake. However, the Greymaker is drawing from a massive area and channeling it to a small point. When reversed, it might still only operate at a trickle, like a slow, debilitating illness. Or, given the reversal of the volume ratio, it’s possible it will work more like the suctioning back of a flood, and take everything all at once. Honestly, I think it will be somewhere in between. If he doesn’t break the connection, the Greymaker would probably drain him dry in about half a day. But that’s just an educated guess, and it’s likely he’ll break the connection when he realizes something is wrong. He’ll still be weakened, but not by much. However, the Greymaker will be effectively dismantled if he does that, and a major power supply will be gone.”

  “Plus don’t forget that working magic causes him pain,” Toman reminded them. “I imagine having the Greymaker try to suck him dry will at least cause him some discomfort. If we’re lucky, it’ll cause more than that.”

  “Indeed,” Erizen agreed. “And I say we work quickly. We need to verify the locations of the foci.”

  Toman nodded. “On it.”

  Erizen nodded back. “Then we reverse the Greymaker and immediately take down one of his castles. Every night we can take down another, and it won’t take long for the other Mage Lords to wonder why he hasn’t rebuilt a single one.”

  “What if he has another Greymaker somewhere else?” Esset asked; at this point, he thought that question was the main flaw in their plan.

  “Then we’ve still destroyed a major power source and annoyed him a little,” Toman replied with a shrug.

  “We’re assuming this will work at all,” Erizen reminded them.

  “Well, salt undid the geas,” Esset replied. “And you said the Greymaker works much the same as a geas.”

  “Yes, but you simply removed the geas. We’re attempting to, essentially, reverse the geas, turning master into slave and slave into master,” Erizen said. Toman looked up sharply.

  “Wait, is that possible?” the Animator asked.

  “Reversing an actual geas? No,” Erizen responded—it seemed he’d already thought of that.

  “Why not?” Esset wanted to know. “You said the Greymaker works like a geas.”

  “Yes, but there’s energy flow between mage and Greymaker. There’s no flow between master and slave in a geas scenario. A geas is more like a moat that has been dug around a person and filled with water so the target can’t leave the man-made island. The Greymaker is like a mountain stream running into a reservoir. When you undid the geas, you just evaporated the water in the moat. With the Greymaker, we’re rearranging the topography so the reservoir pours back into the stream,” Erizen explained. Esset was surprised how patient he was being. Then again, Erizen was getting to show off how brilliant he was.

  “Too bad,” Toman said bitterly. Esset sympathized, and he had no doubt Erizen had daydreamed about having someone like Moloch geas-bound to serve him. After one of Moloch’s underlings had decimated Tseka’s people, Esset had no doubt she felt similarly as well.

  “So first we need to get enough salt to create this spell structure, yes?” Tseka asked, tapping the nearest pin of the counter-pattern.

  “Correct,” Erizen confirmed.

  “How much?” Toman asked; the answer would determine how they went about this.

  “Well, it took a pouch of salt to free you from the geas. Multiply the difference in mass between you and a kingdom, apply the ratio to the amount of salt needed, and you have the amount of salt we need.”

  “So a lot,” Tseka said flatly.

  “There are salt flats to the southeast of Namara,” Esset said reluctantly. He and Toman exchanged uneasy looks—they’d done a job near there before. They’d had to eradicate some giant scorpions that were overrunning a small town. They’d had nightmares for a while after that job; the scorpions were frightening creatures.

  “That’s where we’re headed then,” Erizen said decisively, turning to leave the room. Toman nodded grimly and followed, with Esset and Tseka behind him.

  A couple days and a trip to and from the salt flats later, they were standing atop a hill in Moloch’s domain, and Toman was clenching his teeth and reminding himself that this was all necessary.

  Erizen pointed at a mark on the map Toman held, a mark that signified one of Toman’s creations. Many marks were sprinkled across the map, all across Moloch’s kingdom.

  “Move this one,” the mage said. “Up slightly. Down.” Erizen could tell where the creations were, thanks to the bit of his own magic he had placed in each of them. The animations also carried a precise amount of salt, salt that would hopefully undo the Greymaker once th
ey were positioned in their counter-pattern.

  “A little north. East slightly. No, back west. There.” Erizen’s litany seemed endless, and the only time his tone deviated from condescending was when it turned scornful after Toman over-adjusted. It was extremely irritating, to say the least, and they’d been doing it for hours.

  “This one.” Erizen jabbed a finger at another mark. “Down a bit. West. More west. North. No, too far, south.”

  Toman’s jaw was aching as he reminded himself again that the infinite corrections and adjustments were necessary. The placement of each portion of salt had to be exact for the natural magics of the world to channel a counter-spell. Toman was beginning to wonder if this would actually work—just because it had worked on the geas didn’t necessarily mean it would work here. Esset had gone back to advocating just blowing up every focus they could find.

  “Now a little further west—stop. There. Now this one,” Erizen continued. Toman glanced at Esset and Tseka instead of the map. They both looked bored, but they were keeping watch nonetheless.

  The permeating greyness seemed to make the already boring landscape even more monotonous and tedious. They were in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to look at beyond a few rolling hills and low scrub. They’d picked the place for that reason—nothing could sneak up on them—but it was also exposed to the bright sun, and the heat was making them more irritable than they already were. Nor did it help that Tseka’s boredom had led her to flicking small pebbles at Esset when he wasn’t looking. He thought they were flies biting him, and Toman certainly didn’t want to inform him otherwise; his temper was already short enough.

  Erizen snapped his fingers in front of Toman’s face, and Toman had to resist punching the mage.

  “This one,” Erizen repeated, pointing at a mark on the map. “South.”

  Toman obeyed. This would be worth it, he reminded himself, when the Greymaker came down. If the Greymaker came down.

  He was about to give up—or at least call a break—when a tangible tension began building in the air. Esset and Tseka snapped to attention, and Toman glanced at Erizen.

  “Erizen?” he asked—the mage was the most likely to identify the source of a magical phenomenon. Were they being attacked, was something coming, or were their efforts finally coming to fruition?

  “It’s working,” Erizen said, sounding smug. At least it was an improvement over condescending. He pointed at the map. “Move this one slightly east.”

  Toman moved the corresponding animation and the tension grew. Erizen had him adjust two more, and there was something like a snapping sensation as the tension vanished abruptly. They all looked around, but nothing seemed to change.

  “A satisfactory result,” Erizen said, bending to pick up the map and rolling it up. “I suggest you have your creatures secret themselves away in case they are needed again. If Moloch attempts to restore the Greymaker, we can simply do this again. I assume that you can get your creatures to memorize their locations and return to them swiftly, if need be?” Toman nodded—that was easy enough, at least. It was a relief that they likely wouldn’t have to go through all the adjustments again.

  “That’s it?” Tseka asked, sounding disappointed.

  “It?” Erizen asked. “That was an impressive accomplishment. It may not have looked spectacular, but the greatest works are not always—or even often—showy. Look at the Greymaker itself—it takes a week for any noticeable effect to show, but in the end… Well, you know.” Fortunately, their success lightened Toman’s mood enough that Erizen’s unbearable smugness didn’t make him want to punch Erizen enough to actually do it.

  “So we can blow stuff up now, right?” Esset asked.

  “Yesssss…” Tseka actually hissed her agreement. Getting to destroy some castles would no doubt please her endlessly. Or at least, watching the castles get blown up, since Esset was the one who did all the work there.

  Having gained a consensus, Esset spoke an incantation and the massive, smoky bird billowed out and took form before them. A matter of minutes later, they were airborne and so high in the sky they could easily be mistaken for a cloud.

  They all kept an eye on the landscape below, but the darkening skies made it difficult to tell if any color had returned. By the time they landed on a hill overlooking one of Moloch’s castles, it was almost full dark. They’d destroyed this castle before, but Moloch had since flaunted his power in rebuilding it purely from magic. Now they hoped his hubris would be his undoing.

  “Let’s see how good their memories are,” Esset said, his smile devilish. It was effortless for him to call one of his giant, raptorial birds into the air above the castle. Its flaming wings drew a crimson trail in the sky as it looped and climbed upwards before diving again.

  Below, shouts came from the castle and an alarm was sounded. Every person knew what was coming, for it had happened before, there and in other places; within the hour, the castle would be a pile of rubble. There was a flurry of activity as the castle denizens scattered.

  Esset kept a keen eye on the exodus from the hilltop. When he was relatively certain everyone was out, Esset set about summoning the giant tortoises inside the keep. That took more concentration; calling a summon to a location not within an arm’s length of himself was a new ability, never mind summoning multiple creatures to various places he couldn’t even see and ensuring they went off simultaneously.

  Then he wondered how far exactly he could control them. He wondered if he could control the tortoises’ burn enough to melt the castle instead of blow it up. Esset concentrated hard, ignoring the odd looks his companions were shooting at him when nothing happened long after they’d expected it to blow. Esset summoned two more molten tortoises within the castle to help, and time drew on. Then, slowly, the castle began to sink.

  “No way…” Toman said next to him. Esset could see an appreciative grin spread across his brother’s face in his peripheral vision. The castle began to cave in from lack of support, but anything that got close to ground level began to melt as well. Everyone was mesmerized, including some of the people who had fled and taken refuge on another hill closer to the town. Esset was entirely involved in controlling the tortoises, and Erizen, Tseka, and Toman weren’t paying attention to their surroundings either.

  Not one of them saw the attack coming.

  Ironically, the attack came in the form of fire. A stream of it blasted towards Erizen and Esset; Erizen reflexively threw up shields when he sensed magic hurtling towards him, but it was pure reflex, so the shields were only around himself, and they were insufficient to absorb the whole of the attack and he was blasted backwards. Esset took the brunt of the attack—half of it was directed at him, but Erizen’s shields deflected more of it at him too, and he was engulfed in flames and flung backwards down the other side of the hill. As Tseka and Toman whirled around the face the threat, Esset lost control of the tortoises in the castle.

  Half the structure was yet unmelted, and when Esset’s concentration was broken, it didn’t so much blow up as erupt. Geysers of molten stone sprayed up into the air with debris and stone. Had the force not been directed up instead of out, it would have easily reached the refugees on the hill; those people must have realized their mistake, for they scattered further, towards the town. None of the four responsible for the castle’s destruction saw any of it; they had other things to worry about.

  It was impossible to tell how many opponents they were up against, or where they were—all they knew was that they were under attack by mages, and Esset was down for the count. Toman gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep his attention forward, and not on his fallen brother or Erizen. He could only spare a prayer in that direction—Esset couldn’t be helped until the mages were dealt with, or Toman could turn himself into a casualty too. He dropped into a crouch, placed his hand on a boulder, and began shaping it.

  Meanwhile, Tseka was busy defending them. The attacks were coming from different directions, so she had her hands full fli
nging up shields to absorb the various attacks that were thrown at them. Another fireball exploded against a briefly erected shield, and then she put up a series of smaller ones to shatter several spikes of ice that hurtled towards them. A bolt of pure energy came from a different angle, but she managed to block it in time too—if only just. Then she almost bowled Erizen off the hilltop when he popped up beside her—evidently he’d bounced back from the attack already.

  Erizen had personal shields up and sought to find their opponents using magic, but they were shielded too, and it wasn’t working. Then he tried to track back where they were by the trajectory of their attacks, but the mages seemed to be moving around as they attacked, making that tactic of limited use as well. The light of the burning castle was making their position very obvious while casting a shadow for the other mages to hide in. Since Toman was busy concentrating on creating something useful, it took a minute for the Animator to realize Erizen’s struggle.

  “Tseka! Erizen needs to know where the enemy is!” Toman yelled at her. She alone would be able to find them with her heat-sensing abilities, but she was too busy shielding against attacks to do anything about it. Fortunately she didn’t need her hands to shield, so they were free to point.

  “There!” she shouted, pointing. Two balls of crackling green light immediately streaked in that direction, rotating around each other even as they sped out and provided a bit of illumination. It looked like they were going to go wide when a man’s arm was illuminated at the outer edge of their goal, but then the orbs changed direction abruptly like they’d been yanked to the side. The two orbs hit the mage’s shield and stuck, pulsing irregularly and crackling. The mage’s expression was panicky as the orbs sucked at the shields, forcing him to pour energy into them to maintain them. The orbs looked vicious, and he didn’t want to let them in. But even as they found the one mage, the others pressed their attacks.

  “Where else?” Erizen shouted. Tseka hissed in frustration.

  “They’re—” She barely blocked an attack in time with her concentration divided.