The Hidden Fire (Book 2)

by James R. Sanford

  In the center of the temple, a silver walkway led up to a dais of glowing quartz resting on a pyramid of crystals. At the top, a polished stone floated in a bowl of golden mercury.

  “This is the dreamstone,” Rolirra said.

  Kyric swallowed. “I know.” It was the very same stone he had handled in the rune temple. “I touched it when I was a boy.”

  Rolirra looked at him. “That is not allowed.” She stood over the stone and gazed down into it. “We can only watch and wait for it to open to us. Then maybe we can see a good way out of here and onto the rainlands plateau.”

  Kyric stared at the stone and it suddenly went black. He looked past the glossy sheen of its surface and saw many people within. They were in a terrible place. They reached out, pleading silently as their mouths moved without voices. Kyric felt like he could pull them to safety. He held out his hand.

  Rolirra slapped it away, hard. “What are you doing?”

  He staggered backward. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  They both stiffened as he felt a vibration ripple through the stagnant air. Something had changed. Outside, the wind howled with the fury of an approaching storm.

  Rolirra took his arm. “This is bad. We need to go.”

  Outside, dark clouds spun overhead. The air was chill and snow flurries swirled all around them. But out on the lake the water boiled. Cracks began to open in the streets and squares, spewing out jets of steam. Blurry figures formed in the clouds of steam, and when they moved forward Kyric could see right through them.

  “I don’t know how you have done it,” Rolirra said, her eyes rimmed with terror, “but you have summoned the faded lost from the four corners of the world.”

  There was no way past them in either direction, and more cracks were opening. The faded lost limped toward them.

  “Here,” said Kyric, leading her toward the egg-shaped dome. He had a feeling about it.

  “That is the Temple of the Star Watchers,” Rolirra said. “We will be trapped in there.”

  He pointed to the narrow steps that spiraled upward around the outside of the dome. “We’re not going inside.”

  A wide stone stairway led to the roof of the understructure, then they began to climb the dome. The steps were no wider than Kyric’s hand. Rolirra went first, as quick as caution would allow. The faded lost had no trouble following.

  The clouds turned faster as they climbed. As they reached the top, a funnel began to form, and it began to snow in earnest. A large bronze instrument, something like an astrolabe grafted to a sundial, sat on the peak of the dome. Kyric scrambled onto it, to get a bit more height, pulling Rolirra after him. The faded lost spilled onto the summit. Kyric reached for the funnel cloud, raising the spear. It dipped lower.

  “Jump straight up,” he shouted over the roaring wind.

  They leapt high, and the funnel drew them into the clouds. They spun violently. Kyric lost his grip on her and they were thrown into each other — a bump of heads, a jab of sharp elbows. He did his best to hold the spear above them.

  The funnel spat them out onto flat, rocky ground and then was gone. They sat up and sat still. It was quiet. The storm had passed and all that remained were grey, dirty flakes blowing on a hot wind.

  Kyric wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s not snow. It’s ash.”

  They stood on a featureless plain in the rain of ashes. There was nothing else.

  “How did we come to this place?” Rolirra said in a numb voice. “There is no choice of direction here. We are lost. We could wander here until we fade away.”

  They stood in silence, ash quickly covering their bodies until they merged with the barren landscape.

  “There is a way,” Kyric said. “Into the wind. We must go through it to get past it.”

  They walked into the blowing ashes, their eyes all but closed against the sting of the grey flurries. The ambient light never changed, and they had no sense of how much time passed as they trudged across the plain of ash, their footprints quickly disappearing behind them.

  They plodded along for what felt like days, their exposed flesh chaffing from the falling ashes. Each step became an effort. Kyric’s mind grew numb, and Rolirra stumbled along beside him. “I have to stop and lie down,” he croaked. His throat felt scorched.

  “No,” she said through cracked lips. “You might fall asleep. We can’t take that chance.”

  A burning stench had been growing for hours when they at last broke through the ash. The rain hadn’t stopped. It simply passed overhead now that they approached the source. Ahead lay a dozen burning hillocks. As they came closer they passed into a haze of roiling smoke, so that they were among the hills before they saw.

  The hills were heaps of burning corpses. They were all types of people, tangled and naked and charred. Rolirra placed an arm around Kyric to hold herself up, and he leaned heavily on his spear. One hand over their mouths, they lowered their heads and pushed through the smoke and the heat and the smell. The only sound was the hiss of the flames.

  And then the hot wind died, and they raised their heads to find that they stood above a time-carved badlands of dried mud and jagged black rocks.

  “We must try to find a stream,” said Rolirra. “We could follow a stream to the place where all water flows. I’ve been there — from there I could find the rainlands.”

  As they descended into the badlands they found it to be a maze of deep canyons. It certainly looked like water had flowed there at one time. The upper walls of the canyon stood awash with sunlight, but the floor seemed condemned to be always in shadow.

  “We cannot keep walking like this,” Rolirra said. “We will never get there in time, and I am tired from the plain of ash.” They had brushed the ashes away as well as they could, but she was still streaked with them in places, and her hair was grey.

  Kyric shrugged. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  She stopped and looked him in the eye. “I’m serious. We must find a better way to travel. And soon.”

  Ahead, the canyon widened as it entered a steep bend, and patches of tall, broadleaf grass began to appear along with huge trumpeting flowers that smelled like rotting meat. In the distance, a great mound of dried mud clung to the canyon wall. Winged insects crawled to and fro across the mound. Kyric thought they looked like big bumble bees.

  Rolirra plucked a blade of grass and pressed it between her thumbs, cupping her hands and intertwining her fingers. She blew hard into her thumbs, like she was sounding a conch shell. The whistle was torn and squeaky. Kyric suddenly remembered doing this as a child . . . somewhere. He tried to tell Rolirra, but his tongue felt like lead and he could barely move his lips.

  She whistled a song of ear-splitting screeches, swaying with a rhythm that wasn’t there. A handful of bees took flight, steering a winding, crazy course toward them. As they came closer, Kyric realized he had miscalculated the distance and the scale — the bees were the size of ponies.

  He dropped to one knee and set his spear against his foot. He would impale the first one to charge him. But the bees pulled up sharply to hover in front of Rolirra. They weren’t exactly bees. They didn’t have stings, and they had a single pair of eyes that were more like a lizard’s — each eye moved separately. They buzzed at her and she squeaked back at them. Two of them lighted on the ground and the others flew back to the nest.

  With a here-goes-nothing look on her face, she sauntered over to one of the bees and mounted it like a horse, pulling its antennae back and holding them like reins. The creature rose, bobbing and drifting side to side. Rolirra shifted her weight and reined in.

  “It’s alright,” she said. “Let’s ride.”

  Kyric climbed onto the other bee and tried to imitate Rolirra. The giant insect hummed silently with its own vibration, and it was sensitive to the slightest change in balance. He leaned forward and instantly they were in full flight, the wind of their passing pushing back his hair and filling his eyes with tears. He wove left
and right past sharp boulders with little more than a thought. He became giddy with the joy of it.

  Rolirra caught up with him and signaled that she would take the lead.

  “We should go higher,” he called to her. “Get out of the canyons and take a good look around.”

  She made an uncertain face. “I don’t know. We’re doing well like this.”

  “I’ll just pop up for a quick peek.” He lifted his haunches, raising his head, and sped toward the rim of the canyon. The bee began to slow. The wings beat harder, the buzz rising in pitch, and still they slowed, until at last the creature could rise no more.

  Above him, a rocky ledge jutted out from the rim. Something shiny and black looked down at him — something with a fanged maw between a pair of pincers. When Kyric urged his bee to dive for the canyon floor, the predator leapt from the ledge, spreading bat-like wings. It was a flying scorpion, and it was twice the size of the bees.

  The scorpion folded its wings back and dove straight at them in a free fall. Kyric kicked with his heels and pushed his mount’s head down. Its wings beat in a frantic blur as it powered its descent. Rolirra had been flying a slow circle, now turning out and rushing to full speed as Kyric leveled and passed her.

  Two more winged scorpions had joined in the chase. In level flight they were faster than the bees and they began to close the distance. Seeing that there was no outrunning them, Kyric reversed direction with a half loop, couching the spear under his right arm, and Rolirra followed him. He went straight at the lead creature. It arched its tail over its head, presenting a stinger the length of a rapier.

  They were lined up to pass on their right sides in a strange aerial joust. Kyric aimed the tip of his spear at the scorpion’s maw, but as they met his weapon was swept aside by a hairy claw. He leaned away and the bee rolled with it, narrowly dodging the thrust of the stinger — but not entirely — it had torn a rent in the bee’s hindwing.

  There was a shuddering vibration to the flight now, the creature bobbing and zigzagging before it regained control. The second scorpion came at him. While the bees were slower, they were far more nimble, he realized. He lined up on the scorpion as before, to pass by the right, then cut to the other side at the last second. His spear slid past the claws and struck the monster deep in the mouth, lodging there, the shaft breaking with the force of the impact. The scorpion went limp and fell to the ground, smashing into one of the jagged black rocks.

  Rolirra used the bee’s agility to avoid the first scorpion, turning as if to draw it away. It banked toward her, but could not turn so sharply. She slowed and turned back as the scorpion flew past her, and suddenly she was behind and above it, raining javelins into its backside. It broke off and climbed away, its wings beating desperately, heading back to the nest.

  The last scorpion wasn’t far behind the one Kyric had felled. He had only his shortsword now, and it felt awfully short as he drew it. He urged his mount to climb, and the scorpion veered to come up beneath them. Kyric looped as tightly as the bee could manage and became the one to pass underneath as he dove. He reached high and his sword opened a seam along the creature’s abdomen. It bled a trail of dark ichor as it twisted and died in flight.

  As he turned back to join Rolirra, he felt his arm going numb He had been stung on the last pass. There was a red-rimmed hole in his shoulder that strangely did not bleed. A purple-black stain beneath his skin spread rapidly from the wound.

  By the time he landed near her he could barely hang on. She helped him down. He could tell from her expression that it was bad.

  “We will have to ride double so that I can hold on to you,” she said.

  “Shouldn’t you cut the wound and drain some of the poison?”

  She shook her head. “That will not help.”

  She placed him in front of her on the bee, holding him with her elbows as she gripped the antennae.

  “Do not fall unconscious,” she commanded.

  She urged the bee to flight. It rose sluggishly to a height no greater than its wingspan, and labored forward at a fraction of its normal speed.

  “This will not do,” she said. “We need to find one of the blue springs as quickly as possible.”

  She leaned out and plucked one of the trumpeting flowers as they passed. The stem was long as her arm.

  “Haieee!” she cried, digging in her heals. She used the stem as a crop, whipping the great bee on the abdomen and between the wings. Golden pollen spilled from the flower in clouds, sticking to everything it touched. The creature flew a crazy circle for a moment, and then off they sped, fast and straight as an arrow, riding on a river of golden dust.

  They streaked along the floor of the canyon, weaving through rock formations and soaring over deep pits. The pitch of the buzz began to change. The bee started to shake and slow down.

  “No!” screamed Rolirra, beating it again with the flower. “You must keep going. You must.”

  They flew from that canyon into another. And into another. A terrible croaking whine began to rise from somewhere within the bee. Rolirra struck it on the head, showering it in pollen, and it flew on at a frightening pace.

  The walls of the badlands grew taller and more sheer. They had flown into a box canyon, and it ended ahead in a vertical rock face. They raced toward it.

  Kyric spotted what looked like cave entrance. He tried to point to it.

  “I see it,” Rolirra said.

  They flew into it at full speed.

  And out.

  Into the upper end of a valley. Through slitted eyes, Kyric could see hills and patches of green in the distance.

  The whine of the bee reached a crescendo, and pieces of its wings began to tear away as it shook violently from side to side. Rolirra urged it on nonetheless. Slowing, it sank lower, and lower, and then struck a grassy mound, and they were thrown forward, landing hard and coming to an abrupt halt in a patch of sand.

  Kyric tried to sit up but could only rise to one elbow. The giant bee lay on its back, legs curled, its shredded wings twitching, making a weak clicking sound. Rolirra stood over it with a javelin in her hands. She thrust it deep between the eyes and ended the poor creature’s misery.

  She managed to get a shoulder under Kyric’s arm and get him to his feet. “I can’t carry you — you have to walk. I saw the blue spring from the air. It’s just over there behind those trees.”

  He was partially paralyzed and couldn’t feel his legs. With him walking a few steps here and there, and her dragging him in-between, they somehow made through the trees to a pristine spring-fed pond. It was the most brilliant blue he had ever seen.

  Rolirra propped him against a rock and waded in to her knees, reaching down and digging in the soft earth. The sand lining the pond was blue. The water was blue as well, blue as a dyer’s vat. Rolirra brought up a handful of blue sandy clay and returned to kneel beside Kyric, smearing it over the puncture and the discolored patches of skin.

  “The blue loam will heal you,” she said. “Only give it a little time.”

  He already felt better. He hadn’t known he had been in pain till it began to recede. Rolirra went back to the pond and dunked herself, washing away the last of the ashes of the dead, and he felt his eyelids drooping. Warm, delicious sleep beckoned him.

  Rolirra saw and ran from the pond. “No! You must stay awake!”

  The world rapidly slowed. The water flying from Rolirra floated to the ground like tuffs of cotton. Her lips moved, but only a deep, garbled sound came out.

  And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 12: Where All Water Flows

  He awoke at first light, before the bell had rung. Lerica was sitting up, looking at him. “You got stung in the night by a nasty insect.”

  There was a large red welt on his shoulder. “Pretty sure it was a scorpion,” he said.

  Rolirra was handing out cold fishcakes. Kyric went to her. She looked tired. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said-signed. ‘I could not help it.’

  ‘You were bad
ly hurt. And I was pushing too hard after our . . . bad start.’ She managed a thin smile. ‘We will have to live one more day with sunshine.’

  The morning went much like the day before, with Aiyan refusing to kill the slave Thurlun selected, and Kyric and Lerica sent to haul nets. Thurlun went back to his hut and stayed there for hours. They had stopped for the noontime water ration when he came striding over to the stump, the locket in one hand and an axe in the other. He shook the locket at Aiyan.

  “Tell me how to open this.”

  Aiyan looked at him. “It cannot be opened by you.”

  Thurlun gave him an ugly grin. “Think not?” He tossed the locket onto the ground and took the axe in both hands. He waited.

  “Last chance,” he said to Aiyan.

  Aiyan said nothing.

  Thurlun raised the axe and swung down with full force. He must have caught the locket off center, because the axe and the locket both bounced away from the point of impact. The locket arced through the air and flew a dozen paces. When Thurlun picked it up, Kyric nearly choked on his water. It wasn’t even scratched.

  “Guppy!” shouted Thurlun. “Bring me a chopping block.”

  They set up a segment sliced from a tree trunk for the chopping block, and Thurlun had them nail the locket down with iron spikes. “Now I can land a solid blow without it slipping away.”

  He hit it dead center this time, with full force. The axe bounced back so hard that it flew from Thurlun’s hands. The axe blade was chipped in several places.

  Guppy stared at the locket in wonder. “Not a mark on the damn thing.”

  Thurlun looked for himself. Suddenly he whirled in anger, taking the axe and swinging with all his fury. It struck, and chips of the axe blade flew away. He swung again and this time the whole axe-head shattered.

  He pried the locket from the block. It looked untouched.

  “What in the hell is this?” Thurlun shouted to the sky. He stormed back to his hut, calling over his shoulder, “Guppy. Fetch me a hacksaw.”