by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Thirteen
Erlandr dreamed. He knew it was a dream; he could taste it, on the back of his tongue, mixed with the cinders that whirled about him. The dream hung in the bitterness of blood and bile that misted the air, floating just long enough for the inferno around him to dry them into an invisible powder that coated everything. He dreamed, but the dream was too close, too present, and its presence crushed the knowledge that he was dreaming down to a small voice, inaudible over the shriek of the flaming winds.
He stood in an island of calm. A dome of living flame, twisting and cavorting in the unseen winds that whipped around the protected space, blocked out everything else, but he knew that it was night, that the sky was clear. A hundred feet above him, everything was calm, serene. How do I know that? The question had no answer, and the dream pushed it away.
Underneath his feet, the green grass of the Apsian high gardens spread out to the edge of the flames, where a charred ring marked the edge of the protective wards. Flowers—lilies, roses, poppies—looked unfamiliar in the shifting shadows, their colors recast in the crimson light. The petals looked brittle, as though a stiff breeze would reduce them to dust. A few low stone benches marked places where lovers had sat once, whispering promises into the night air. I’ve sat here once, Erlandr thought. I said those words. The realization brought a wave of grief, enough almost to drown out the dream, to wake him. A woman’s face hovered in his memory, her features as clear as day. Long, dark hair, olive skin. The large nose of a true Apsian. It had taken Erlandr so long to love that bold nose, but he loved it now. He loved her now. But what was her name?
The dream . . . flickered. There was no other way to describe it. Everything seemed to jump, to shift. The flowerbeds moved a few inches, the flames changed their pattern. What was I thinking about? Erlandr wondered.
The change in the dream awoke something in Erlandr, even as his memory of the sudden shift in the dream faded. He knew his part to play; he played it every night, over and over again. He walked forward, to the center of the garden. The flames opposite him bent and parted, opening a passage out to the cool darkness of the city beyond. For a moment, Erlandr saw the ash-covered stones of the street, the lit windows of the houses, the slowly gathering crowd, their faces painted with astonishment.
A woman on the cusp of old age walked toward him, out of the dark town, through the tunnel that had carved its way through the heart of the flames. The tongues of fire drew back from her. She radiated a strange power; even the air rippled around her, like heat off of a stove, somehow hotter even than the raging conflagration. She walked unbent, in spite of her years, in spite of the terrible power that shimmered around her. Her short, silvered hair, held in place with a few ivory combs, barely came to her jaw. The lines on her face were as much from laughter as from age—even Erlandr could see that. As she walked toward him, Erlandr felt his heart breaking; he knew what he had to do. They both had their parts to play.
“Erlandr,” she said. The flames closed behind her as she set foot on the grass, shutting out Erlandr’s vision of the city beyond. He never heard her voice in the dream; even though her mouth moved, the words always sounded as though he himself were speaking. “Erlandr, you know this cannot be. What you are doing is abomination, forbidden. Stop this, now, while you still can. Even Kaj Black Hand himself did not try such a thing.”
“I am the Brilliant Flame,” Erlandr said, the words flowing from his lips. He could not stop them, could not change them. In the back of his mind, distantly, he screamed a different litany. I do not want this, that voice begged. Not again. “Nothing is forbidden to me. Do not interfere, Naea. This has nothing to do with you.” The words were stilted, too formal, but they were the words that had to be spoken. “Leave, now, while there is still time.”
Her dark eyes tracked his face. Erlandr could read the sympathy in them. He wanted to cry out, to beg for her help, to throw himself at her feet. The dream swept him forward. The flames that swirled around him raced along his veins as well, burning sympathy to ash, leaving only charred tracings. I do not want this, a distant voice echoed inside him, but it had lost meaning. Only a dream. Noise, confusion. Erlandr barely even noticed.
“I will not let this happen,” she said, but her voice was brittle now, hardened with fear. “You have no right to risk us all this way.” The shimmering air contracted, tightening around her bony shoulders into discrete waves. “I can stop you, if I must.”
He saw her hand rise, saw her begin to form the cheiron. Her lips parted. Erlandr could feel her breath pushing on the superheated air, forcing out the hepisteis. Only a dream. Erlandr knew Naea, knew how she thought, knew what she would do. I don’t want this. He had spent too much of himself to open the rent. Erlandr had no chance of resisting the sorcery that would rip him to shreds. She would undo all of his work. She would still his opportunity to defeat death.
It was so simple. He stepped forward. The blade dropped down from where it hid in his sleeve, the hilt slapping into his palm. Erlandr thrust. Steel met flesh, ripping through cloth and the wrinkled breast that hid behind it, biting into her heart. Blood misted her lips. The hepisteis fell, half-formed, from her mouth, their power vanished. Her hands curled, fingers tightening in shock, then pain, upsetting the carefully crafted cheiron. Her dark eyes widened. She fell, ripping the hilt from Erlandr’s hand. Naea hit the ground hard, hard enough that the petals on a nearby rosebush shivered into clouds of ash. The last lines of power rippled away from her body, vanishing in the hot air.
The shock of the blow still traveled up Erlandr’s arm. His breath came in short, shallow gasps; there was not enough air within the rent. The shredded fabric of reality within the enchantment felt ready to disintegrate at any moment. “Payla,” he shouted. The air shivered at his voice. “Payla, where are you?” She should be here, he thought. Where is she?
In the almost invisible eddies that stirred the air, the outline of shadow began to appear, hovering above Naea’s dead body. The flickering, crimson light made the features almost impossible to discern, but Erlandr could see her slowly taking shape. “Payla,” he said. No, he thought confusedly. Not Payla. What was her name? The shadow coalesced. For a single moment, Erlandr glimpsed her face. She was a stranger, young, her eyes lost in darkness. Erlandr did not know her. Payla. The thought was his own, but not his own.
Great rents appeared in the flaming sphere as crackling webs of actinic energy ripped through the dome. Like smoke in a breeze, the shadowy figure vanished. Echoes of remembered fury drifted through Erlandr. So close, he thought, watching his carefully crafted spell splinter under the onslaught. I was so close. The rage was muffled, however, refracted across some immense distance. He saw them, then, the two men racing toward him.
Errant flames licked their skin and robes, in spite of the protective magic that shrouded them. Neither was the equal of the dead woman who lay before him. The flames touched them for but a moment and they were through the barrier. The older man, on the left, stood still in horror, his stringy hair waving in the darkness, the only evidence of the tremors racking his body. He rushed to the side of the woman on the ground, hepisteis filling the air as he worked magic to save her life. Too late, Erlandr thought, but it was not his voice. No less than you deserve.
The other man watched Erlandr. He was a huge man, his arms and shoulders muscled, his dark hair and beard long and tangled. One large hand traced a cheiron, rainbow light flickering between his fingers. The dome of fire gave out a loud, long crack. Great swaths of crystallized flame fell as the barrier collapsed, striking the ground around them and burning through dirt and stone until they disappeared from sight. A long patch of the city wall glowed red with the heat, like steel in a smith’s forge, but the night air that swept in was cool, soothing Erlandr’s seared lungs and skin.
The older man still knelt there. Adence. The thought was unbidden, not a part of the dream, and strikingly clear. The other man, his name still escaping Erlandr, advanced, hepisteis and cheiron already
forming. The spell caught Erlandr like a vice. The sweet night air vanished from his lungs. Every inch of his skin felt like fire. Blood boiled in his veins, screaming for release.
Erlandr cried out the hepisteis, unleashing the spell that hung in waiting. It fell like a cloak, dropping over the circle of grass, plunging him into blackness.
Erlandr sat up, gasping for breath. His heart pounded, and he could not breathe. He could still feel the spell sucking his life out. Everything was darkness. A scream fought its way to his lips, but he clenched his teeth so that only a low, whistled moan escaped him as he rocked back and forth, shaking in the cold sweat that covered him.
Slowly, so slowly that it seemed to last an eternity, the dream passed. When his hands finally stopped trembling, Erlandr wiped his brow, swallowing to try and clear the taste of vomit from the back of his throat. He unwrapped himself from the blanket, stretching out cramped muscles, trying to breathe normally. That damned dream, he though, more despairing than angry. Again and again and again. Memory of the dream was fading, until nothing more than black and red blurs remained. Will I see it when I’m awake, now too?
It was dark under the canopy of tall pines where they had made their camp. The fire had died out hours ago, so that even the ashes were cold, but he could feel Adence’s hard eyes watching him. He did not need to see the old man’s face to know what it looked like. Strong jaw thrust forward, mouth drawn out into a thin-lipped grimace, every line in his face pronouncing the hatred that seethed under the time-ravaged skin. The eyes, though, were the worst, and Erlandr could see them in the darkness. The eyes that, for all the hatred that burned in those dark coals, opened onto an abyss of grief, a place so raw, even after all these years, that Erlandr had to turn away to keep from going mad.
I suppose I must have felt that at some point, Erlandr thought. He had lost everything as well. The rent, sealed up inside him, ate away at his life and his sanity. The only option had been an ancient Kajan ritual, to feed one life with another. And now I keep moving and killing so that I can kill again. And it is better than death.
Erlandr shaped awa and spoke a lone hepistys. A weak fire kindled in the pit. Erlandr cursed the ritual that had consumed his magic; before the curse, he could have set the forest ablaze. Now he conjured a fire that would have a hard time heating water for tea. Still, it gave light to see. Adence’s eyes were closed, his eyelids masking those bottomless wells, for which Erlandr was grateful. The old man’s rough breathing, though, told him that Adence was far from asleep. “Those dreams were a cruel touch to your curse,” Erlandr said, his voice rough, throat still sore from muffled screams. “I forget how very . . . vivid they are. And unexpected, too. Even after all these years.”
“We’ve had this discussion a hundred times,” Adence said. “Whatever dreams you suffer are none of my doing. Considering what you’ve done, though, I’d think they are small enough price to pay. Not everyone awoke from that terrible night, if you remember.”
There it was; the knife-edge of memory that each man held, pressed to the other’s throat, for eternity. For a heartbeat, the dead woman on the ground floated before Erlandr’s eyes, the laugh-lines around her eyes smoothed out from the monstrous surprise that widened them. I’m so sorry, Erlandr told her. I didn’t want any of that. The words hovered at the tip of his tongue, ready to be spoken to the old man, a peace offering.
The cold bite of the curse, the constant hole in his heart, returned, reminding Erlandr of the price that he still paid every day. The window for reconciliation, infinitely small as it was, passed. Days, now, he thought. Perhaps a week, at most, before I need blood again. “Not all of us wanted to wake up,” he said. “Life has not been ideal since that night.”
“You’ll forgive me if I feel little pity for you,” Adence said, his eyes opening. The old man sat up, the stringy fringe of hair swinging around his face. “You could let it all end, you know. End the enchantment that keeps you alive. Let your own creation consume you. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, it will take you to her. If you go far enough out into the wilderness, where you will not harm others, I will not try to stop you.”
Erlandr’s head reeled. The old man knew more about that night then he let on. Does he know what happened? Why I opened it? Is it possible? He had never considered that. Or is this a trick, a lie to make me give up, allow this thing to devour me. The rent in the fabric of reality, transplanted into his own heart, a tear in the world held at bay only by the limits of Erlandr’s skills. And why not? he thought grimly. After all, I made the thing in the first place.
Adence’s words, however, made him reconsider. Erlandr had fought the rent for so long, fought so hard to stay alive, because he feared that, if the rent took him, it would take him body and soul. Take me somewhere else, beyond Bel and the Sisters, beyond Ishahb and his spirits, somewhere where she isn’t waiting for me, where I’ll never see her again. But if he’s right, if it’s only death, or—maybe—it’s attuned to her, the way I intended it to be . . . But Erlandr had no way to know. No point gambling on it. I have the rest of eternity to figure it out; or at least until I figure out how to move the rent outside of me again.
That one fact, his inability to undo Adence’s enchantment, irked more than almost anything else—almost as much as the fact that he had failed with the rent in the first place. His memories of that night were muddled, but his failure was obvious in the long decades since. There was nothing to do about it. The cheira and hepisteis of Cemilian sorcery made as much sense to him as the block-like writing of eastern Nilgaz; he would need to find a Cemilian master to teach him, and Erlandr doubted that would happen while Adence still lived. And the old bastard intends to live forever.
“Don’t get your hopes up, my friend,” Erlandr said. “Perhaps it would do what you say, but it could just as easily destroy both of us—or the nearest city, or the continent even. Your desire to see me dead has given you a greater thirst for blood than I imagined.”
Adence lay down and closed his eyes without answering. Erlandr leaned back, resting against the bole of a skinny pine. For a moment, an unknown face appeared behind his closed eyes. So many of the details were lost, but it gripped him like a vice. Bel be merciful, Erlandr thought. I’m going mad. The image faded in heartbeats, but it left Erlandr shaking. His breath came shallow and fast. Sisters bless me, what happened that night?
