The Hidden Fire (Book 2)

by James R. Sanford

  A silhouette appeared at the crest of a long wave of dunes, a lithe feminine figure with wings like an angel’s spreading behind her. She ran and leapt, gliding silently down the slope of the dune, leveling, running a few steps and gliding again. Kyric watched her speed toward him. Step, step, step, glide.

  She pulled up and skid to a halt near the ship. “We must hurry,” she said, motioning for him to come down. “A firebird lives in this desert and he permits no trespassers. Quickly now.”

  He vaulted the rail and landed lightly next to her. Very lightly.

  She was beautiful, and naked save for a loincloth of woven grasses. Sweat glistened gold against her brown skin, and her breasts heaved as she fought to catch her breath. She didn’t have wings. She was harnessed into a frame of thin bamboo covered with a blanket of feathers. It didn’t look like anything that could glide. She handed him a bundle of cloth and straps and feathers, and helped him unfold it. She pushed the pieces of bamboo into one another and suddenly it came together, forming a wing like hers. She held it so he could slip into the harness.

  “I’ll never be able to fly with this,” Kyric said.

  “Of course you will. This is the desert of light.”

  “You know, I do feel lighter.” He shook his head to try to clear it. He wanted to say ‘Who are you?’ but it wouldn’t come out. At last he pointed to himself and said, “Kyric.”

  “Rolirra.”

  A distant boom sounded, and thunder rolled across the cloudless morning sky.

  “The sun is rising and the firebird has come,” Rolirra said. She pushed his arms into the harness and tightened the straps.

  “Now we fly,” she said, breaking into a run back towards the dunes.

  He ran with her, a dozen steps and she dived forward, gliding effortlessly. He launched himself with her . . . and flew. It was easy. Each of his strides was a small leap in itself, and when he pushed off he went a fair distance. Step, step, glide.

  They quickly reached the line of dunes and had to plow their way to the top. He turned as he heard a muffled roar behind them.

  The firebird was diving on the ship. Feathers gleaming with streaks of gold, brighter than the sunrise, it loosed a long tongue of flame as it passed over, the sails and masts turning to pillars of fire. It spread its gigantic wings as it climbed away, turning to make another pass.

  “We must flee!” said Rolirra. “The firebird will kill us.”

  She stepped, and leaped from the crest. The desert floor lay lower on the far side of the dunes, dotted with little knolls of sandstone. They flew beyond the base of the dune, leveling and gliding farther still, pushing off one of the knolls, passing swiftly to the next and pushing off again.

  They sped along like racehorses, leaving the dunes behind, approaching a rocky outcropping. Kyric glanced back. The firebird sat perched on the highest dune, black smoke spreading across the sky. Its head swung from side to side; it was looking for them.

  Far to their left, the ground ended in a jagged stone lip, the edge of a cliff perhaps. Kyric caught up with Rolirra.

  “That way,” he said. “We need to get below that drop-off before he sees us.”

  They turned nimbly with their wings, just a lean in that direction and they were on a new tack, sprinting and making short quick glides. They hit the edge of the cliff at a full run and launched themselves.

  Kyric soared over an immense canyon, miles wide and thousands of feet deep. The floor was a maze of buttes and mesas splashed with reds and yellows. They lowered their heads and dived, streaking towards the ground. The wind tore at their hair, and their wings shuttered as they went faster and faster.

  A screeching cry echoed above. The firebird banked over the canyon, folding its wings back and plunging after them. Rolirra dived even more steeply, almost straight down, and Kyric followed. The bamboo frame creaked and groaned and the ground came rushing at him. A cracking sound as they pulled out and leveled off, but the wings held, and they sped along faster than arrows, just a few feet above the stony floor of the canyon.

  The firebird began to gain on them. Rolirra steered toward a forest of massive stone columns, and they weaved a course around one then another as the firebird closed. Tongues of fire licked around the sides of the stone towers, and the creature passed overhead.

  “We need to find a cave,” Rolirra called to him. “A deep one.”

  He nodded to her. “A cave with a cache of weapons.”

  They passed into the open, Rolirra leading them toward the canyon wall. Far ahead lay the ruins of some kind of structure, a fortress long fallen into itself. They stretched their glide but still touched ground a quarter mile short of the ruins. The firebird had circled and now dived for another pass.

  Kyric could see an opening in one of the ruin walls, and beyond, a chamber closed to the sky. They made straight for it, not looking back. Kyric ran with all his might and felt his heart was near to bursting on the glide. He could hear the wind in the wings of the firebird; he could feel the heat. They weren’t going to make it.

  The roar of the creature’s breath echoed in his ears as they flew through the opening and crashed in a heap of dust, flesh, and flame. Rolirra’s wings were on fire, as were Kyric’s boots and breeches. He tore them off and beat them out on the floor. Rolirra flung her still-burning wings out into the desert.

  It appeared to be a guard room. There were several weapons piled in one corner. Kyric found a bow and a handful of arrows, all made of a shimmering silver metal. The bowstring was a wire of the same metal and quite intact.

  Rolirra brushed away the dust in one spot. “There is a trap door here.” She lifted it. “Steps down. A cellar, or maybe a dungeon.”

  Kyric nocked an arrow and stood in the gap in the wall. He was burned and bruised and not in the mood to hide. The firebird banked into a steep turn, circling back.

  A little closer.

  He raised the bow.

  “No!” said Rolirra, but it was too late. He had already loosed the arrow.

  He hit the creature about mid-wing, the arrow knocking a few feathers loose. The firebird wheeled again and retreated up the canyon.

  “What’s wrong?” Kyric asked.

  She pointed to the feathers, three of them floating lazily to the ground like falling leaves. They each burst into flame the instant they touched, and the fires grew, burning harder and unfolding until they were tall bonfires. Then something moved within the flames.

  Three lizards the size of wolfhounds came out of the fires and broke into a charge, running toward them.

  “Salamanders,” said Rolirra.

  Their crimson scales sparkled in the sun. Kyric nocked another arrow. He aimed for the head of the lead salamander and loosed, striking it in the shoulder. The creature barely flinched, still galloping across the hard sand, its jaw falling open as it neared.

  Rolirra ran to the pile of weapons, finding a sword and a shield. “Get down!” she said. “The spawn of the firebird have flaming breath as well.”

  Kyric jumped back as a long lance of fire stabbed through the opening. Rolirra dragged him down the steps. There was a passage leading in one direction, crisscrossed with beams of light shining through cracks in the walls and ceiling. Rolirra led him quickly along. It turned left then right, then it ended in a ramp leading up into bright sunshine.

  “We cannot go out,” said Rolirra. “The firebird is not so hurt, and will be waiting for us. We must make a stand here.”

  They stood ready at the corner of the passage and listened. It didn’t take long.

  The salamanders rounded the corner, the first two abreast. Kyric instantly shot one of them between the eyes, killing it outright. The other turned a blast of fiery breath on Rolirra. It splashed against her shield as she closed with the creature, her sword raised high. She hewed its head off with a single stroke, and the salamander’s green blood sprayed the walls of the corridor.

  As Kyric stepped back and reached for another arrow, the third creatur
e spat a stream of fire that engulfed him. He twisted and screamed in agony. Rolirra let loose a war-cry, and thrust her sword into the ceiling of the passageway. There was a vibration, and then huge stones rained down.

  Kyric felt himself fall, then blackness.

  CHAPTER 3: Remnants of a Dream

  He woke to shouts on deck and the faint smell of smoke. Aiyan’s hammock was empty. He could hear rattling and thumping and men cursing outside his door.

  By the time he pulled his boots on and ran out on deck the excitement had mostly died down. Aiyan stood chatting with the captain, and a thin cloud of smoke from the forward part of the ship drifted on the breeze. The sun had barely risen.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said the captain. “A little spark of a fire in the forecastle, already extinguished. Never a threat to the ship.”

  Not an outright lie, Kyric thought, but not the truth. Anyone could see that on the captain’s face.

  Later, when all had quieted and the ship returned to her routine, they stood on deck with their practice swords.

  “You need to pay more attention to staying in the shade,” Aiyan said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re badly sunburned. What did you do yesterday, spend the whole day on deck?”

  “I don’t remember,” Kyric said. But then he remembered the dream. He hadn’t noticed before, but he was burned a little. His face felt hot and tender, and his memory of the dream was suddenly very clear. He felt like it had really happened to him, even more so than with the ones where the Unknowable Forces spoke to him.

  They entered the harbor at Rhyjusa the next day, and Kyric insisted on going ashore to buy vegetables. From a hill above the marketplace he could see beyond the city. There were some cultivated fields to the south and west along the little river, but most of the land lay open in a patchwork of sandy soil and sparse grasses. In the Eddur of the age before the War of Mages, the city was called Rhyon-i-Jusau, the forest at the waters. Lush woodlands surrounded the city in those days. Kyric tried to imagine what kind of catastrophic sorcery could destroy so many miles of ancient forest.

  They departed the next morning in a stiff breeze from the west and crossed the Gulf of Lennaxes in only two days. Isskiv was more of a large town than a city and had been carved from a thick pine forest, what Rhyjusa had once been. Light and shifting winds made their southward journey along the Alerian coast a slow one.

  At practice the second day out Aiyan told him, “Today we will, umm, spar. Too many swordsmen will wait for an attack, thinking a parry and then a counter to be the best defense. Attacks are the key to any swordfight. Far more attacks hit home than ripostes. So the rule today is no parries, no dodging — only attacks. I’ll give you a hint,” he said with a wink. “Focus on distance and timing.”

  “Then why have you been showing me so many defensive techniques?”

  “Those are for when you’re late. Not on time.”

  “So I can attack any way I want?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do I do if you parry and riposte?”

  Aiyan glared at him. “You attack.”

  The next day Aiyan slipped his practice sword into his sash and had Kyric do the same. “I’ve shown you how to cut on the draw. Today you will combine this with first strike technique. We shall stand still, and at some point I’ll decide to draw and attack. You must cut me before my sword has cleared the sash.”

  On the first try Kyric didn’t come close. It was he who got cut before his sword cleared his sash. “There’s no way I will ever get that fast,” he said.

  “You don’t need to be faster,” Aiyan said. “You only need to be first. You must begin to move before I do, at the very moment I decide to kill you.”

  This time it was Kyric who glared.

  Aiyan tried to suppress a smile. “This is your first lesson in the knowing of moments. If you are truly empty of self — much like what you already do in your archery — you can feel certain vibrations on the spirit plane. You can feel my intention to attack you. This one is not so hard as it seems, but it will be harder in practice because I mean you no harm. With someone who really wants to kill you, it is much easier to feel, I can promise. If you are not filled up with everything in this world.”

  Not so simple to do, thought Kyric. He felt like he was full of new thoughts.

  “I’ll make this as easy on you as I can,” Aiyan said. “I’ll let you close your eyes.”

  That night they stood on deck and watched a shower of falling stars streak down from the heavens. A soft murmur of voices drifted past from a group of sailors who stood in the glow of the foremast lantern. They lit their pipes and smoked while one of them played the squeeze box and hummed a low chantey.

  “Last day of summer,” Aiyan said.

  “I hadn’t realized,” said Kyric. “I’ve lost track of the date. I’m not even sure what day it is.”

  “It’s Thirstday,” said Aiyan lazily, watching another star fall. He turned to face Kyric. “Emptiness is the foundation of almost all the weird arts. When you make yourself empty, the Unknowable Forces rush in — whether you want them to do so or not. They are one, but they are many as well. Somehow, through your years of archery I’m sure, you’ve learned a good bit about how to find emptiness at need.

  “The way is to channel an individual aspect of the Unknowable to suit our need, rather like picking out the melody of a single instrument from a full orchestra. The aspect we use, for example, to find directions, comes to me as, ah,” Aiyan couldn’t help but grin a little, “a funny feeling at the tip of my nose when it is pointing the right direction. But it’s different for almost everyone. Master Bortolamae once told me that for him it was a sound he could follow. But be aware that we are not commanding the Unknowable, rather we allow it to use us for . . . let us say, mutual benefit. And there are aspects we call the Designing Powers. They have their own way and their own plans.”

  “And they care not for the will or wellness of man, or dragon, or firebird,” Kyric said, reciting a lesson. “The sisters may not have taught me the weird, but I was raised in a rune temple.”

  “And did they tell you how to keep those forces at bay?”

  Kyric looked out across the dark sea. “Mother Nistra used to say that each man possesses an inner fire that can light the way.”

  Aiyan nodded, holding up his locket. “For we who follow the Way of the Flame, that spirit fire is joined to another, the one we carry here.” He opened the locket, and when Kyric saw the ghost flame, he felt a mystery greater than any he had felt in the rune temple. Greater than when he had looked upon the dreamstone.

  Aiyan’s eyes burned with the reflection of the flame. “This is at the heart of a Knight of the Flaming Blade. Candidates of the Order continue to train while on Esaiya, as do we all, but Esaiya is not for training. Any man who arrives there will have had years of training from his benefactor, and must be skilled with sword, bow, and the weird. This is why the Unknowable Forces denied you admittance when you tried to swim the narrows.”

  Aiyan hadn’t mentioned that before this. Kyric didn’t know that he had known.

  “But there are many men with these skills who cannot be a Knight of the Flaming Blade. Esaiya is a quest — a journey to discover an inner sympathy with the mystery of the flame. When Master Sorrin split the Pyxidium, he not only released an aspect of the Unknowable, he fixed his own spirit to this world.”

  “Are you saying that his spirit did not pass on when he died, that it resides in the flame?”

  “Yes, it is the ghost of his own inner fire blended with that of the Unknowable itself. To touch the flame, to be atoned to it, is the test of Esaiya.”

  When Kyric awoke he was still lying on the floor of the passageway. He saw relief on Rolirra’s face.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “For days,” she said.

  His skin felt like it was still on fire, but he could see that she had picked the burnt clothing off hi
m, cleaned him up, and had fashioned a loincloth for him out of what remained of his clothes. He tried to sit up but she placed her hands on his chest and gently pushed him back down.

  “Take it slowly,” she said. “You came close to dying.”

  His flesh no longer burned where she touched him. She leaned forward to adjust the wad of cloth under his head, and he slipped his arms around her.

  She pulled away, smiling broadly, almost laughing. “I do not know you well enough for that.”

  He tried to tell her that he wasn’t trying to seduce her, that it was the way her touch took away his pain. His mouth opened and his lips moved, but he couldn’t make a sound. Well, it would have been half a lie anyway.

  He eased himself up to one elbow. The passage had collapsed at the corner, burying the last salamander. Rolirra had dragged the beheaded one from the rubble and cut a long slit down its side.

  “The firebird?” he asked.

  She nodded and pointed up.

  “If we wait longer, might it go away?”

  Her look told him that it wouldn’t. “I have a way past it,” she said.

  Next to the headless salamander lay a bladder that had been fashioned into a crude canteen. It leaked a dark green liquid.

  “The blood of the salamander,” she said. “It can protect us. There must be a way out of the desert nearby. Do you think that you can find it?”

  “What kind of a way out?”

  “I do not know. Will you not be able to see it?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “once we get up there.” He really didn’t know what she meant.

  She smeared the sticky green blood all over herself. She rubbed it into her hair and between her toes, then she handed the bladder to Kyric so he could cover her back. He painted her shoulder blades with his fingertips, and ran his thumb slowly down her spine. Her flesh was so soft.

  She made an impatient sound, so he finished quickly and started in on himself. He realized that he had put on some weight, that he was a little broader in the shoulder and harder, more muscular. When it came time for her to smear his back, she didn’t hurry.