Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  When Aiella finished speaking, the woman responded and the two carried some manner of conversation for nearly a minute, the woman speaking quickly, gesticulating wildly; Aiella taking a calmer, more measured tone. Be'Var thought the language a pretty one. It was filled with hard 'A's and many consonant sounds, but it seemed to flow easily, as though each word was intimately connected with the next. As he watched, he noticed the young woman occasionally put her hand to her belly and he got an inkling of what it might be that had her so frightened.

  Aiella turned back to him. "She says she is uninjured," she said, "but she says she is with child, that she is worried for the baby inside her."

  Be'Var nodded slowly. He kept his eyes fixed on the girl, trying to muster as much tenderness as he could. "Will she let me check?"

  Aiella spoke to the girl again, presumably translating the question. The tear-streaked face nodded quickly, desperately, and she shuffled a couple of inches closer to him.

  Be'Var gave the girl a small, reassuring smile. He slowly, deliberately, so as not to surprise her, reached out a hand and placed it on her belly. "Did she say what happened?" he said, turning his eyes to Aiella.

  "She says that she fell off of a horse during an attack," Aiella responded. "She said it was some time ago, before she came through the pass."

  Be'Var nodded, trying to keep the grimness out of his face. 'Some time ago,' wasn't good news. Briefly, he wondered what the Towerian girl had been doing north of the Greatstones in the first place.

  As he closed his eyes, reaching out into the woman's body with his mind, he wondered how Aiella must have been feeling about this interaction. Until very recently, the peoples of Creveya, the Summit and Creveya, the Tower, had been mortal enemies, and here she was lending herself to the task of helping this girl.

  He did a quick survey of the girl's organs, looking for any flows of fire energy that were out of place and might signify an internal injury. Her liver, kidneys, and heart all appeared to be well. Her pulse was pounding, but that was to be expected.

  He then shifted his consciousness to the womb, seeking out the child, looking for the telltale signs of another life. The fire element took a slightly different manifestation in almost every person—the flow of the Conflagration's tendrils into a body created textures and hues that could be perceived by the mind as easily as the eyes could pick out colors—and even a barely-conceived child had a feel that was distinctly different from its mother.

  As he worked, Be'Var felt his heart sink. He searched again, but it was of no use. There was no fire there, no energy, no pulse. Whatever had happened to this young woman, the event had taken the life of the child inside her, likely long before Kepren had even been a smudge on her horizon.

  When he opened his eyes, he could barely stand the look of expectancy on the girl's face. In less than a minute, he had given her hope; now he was going to tear it away again.

  "I'm sorry," he said, taking his hand away and shaking his head.

  Aiella didn't need to translate the words. The young woman simply melted into excruciating wails before them, her hands balled into fists, which she pounded into the ground. Be'Var, in all his years, even as a healer for an army, had only once heard that kind of pain, that unbelievable grief: she had been a mother, too, searching the remains of a dark, deserted battlefield for what was left of her boy.

  In the next moment, before either of them could react, she was holding tight to Aiella, crying against her shoulder, trying to speak through painful sobs. Be'Var could see that Aiella wasn't comfortable with the young woman being so close to her, and yet she didn't pull away. Instead, she held the girl, who was probably a year or two older than she, to her breast and spoke kind, reassuring words in that pretty language.

  What a thing is war, Be'Var thought, that it can elicit such sympathy between mortal foes.

  Marveling at the absurdity of it all, Be'Var turned around on his heels, both to check that the girl's cries hadn't upset any of the other patients too grievously and also to see if anybody needed his immediate attention.

  He started for a moment. He hadn't expected to see the familiar shape of Caymus before him.

  He wasn't sure, at first, that it actually was Caymus. The man towering over him was filthy with the same dust and grime that covered the rest of these people, and the look in his eyes was one of absolute seriousness. Caymus's face should hold a bit more of a smile.

  Still, the huge form, the sword and shield, and the mark on the back of the left hand were dead giveaways. Caymus had returned to Kepren. Be'Var put his hands to his knees and rose to his feet. "Boy," he said, "you're filthy. Did you just get back?"

  Caymus was looking at Aiella and the woman she was comforting. He didn't look away from them as he spoke. "Milo and I ran fast to get here as soon as we heard the news."

  Be'Var's spirits lifted just a little bit. "So, Milo's trick worked then? He actually heard the message?"

  Caymus only nodded.

  "Good," Be'Var continued. "All I heard about it was that you were coming back." He looked Caymus up and down. He couldn't believe how serious he looked. "And you?" Be'Var asked. "Did you have any luck with the Falaar?"

  "I did," Caymus said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Finally, he tore his eyes away from the two women and gave Be'Var a small smile. Be'Var's heart sung out in his chest to see that. It had been far too long since he'd seen Caymus smile. "I'll tell you about it on the way," he said.

  "On the way?" Be'Var cocked an eyebrow at him.

  Caymus nodded. "A page met us at Flamehearth." He shrugged. "I guess they knew we'd arrived. He said that the prince is having some sort of meeting in the Keep and that he wanted us to be there."

  "Both of us, eh?" Be'Var knew that the prince was aware that Caymus was important, but he was surprised to hear the boy had actually been invited to an official meeting.

  "And Milo, too," Caymus said. "Matron Y'selle told me where to find you, so I told the page I'd spare him the trouble."

  Be'Var nodded absently, then turned to Aiella and the girl who had become her charge. He wasn't entirely comfortable leaving the two of them in such close proximity. Their peoples were at peace for the first time in memory, sure, but generations of hate had a way of resurfacing when one least expected it.

  Aiella, who had been watching the exchange between the two, must have understood. "Go on," she said, a small amount of irritation in her voice, "we will be fine." She then lowered her head to look at Be'Var from under her eyebrows. "I am not likely to hold a grudge against a woman I have only just met when the world is at stake."

  Be'Var couldn't help but smile. The girl was a constant surprise to him.

  "And Caymus," she said, just before they turned to go. The faintest hint of brightness touched her features. "Welcome back." Be'Var couldn't be certain, but the boy seemed a bit surprised that she had addressed him directly.

  The two of them turned and walked out of the old building. After they had stepped out into the sunlight, Caymus asked, "Master Be'Var? That girl? That one who was crying? Will she be alright?"

  Be'Var didn't look at his pupil. "No, boy," he said, "I'm not sure she'll ever be alright again."

  "What happened to her?"

  Be'Var let out a long sigh, thinking about the girl's wails, remembering old battlefields, monuments to so very much loss. In that moment, life seemed so tenuous, so fragile. "She lost everything, Caymus," he said. "She lost her entire world."

  And she won't be the last.

  CHAPTER 17

  "Mind your manners while we're in there, boy," Be'Var said, adjusting his robes on his shoulders. "Considering the people who are going to be in that room, things are likely to get a little heated, and I don't need you adding to the general confusion."

  Caymus smiled to himself. He hadn't heard Be'Var mention the general confusion in a long time now, and hadn't realized he'd missed it.

  Absently, he scratched at the back of his hand. He wished he'd had a chance to b
athe before he and Be'Var had been summoned to the prince's meeting, considering how caked with dirt and road grime he was. Instead, they'd passed by one of the fountains in the Guard District on their way to the Keep—one of the few that still had any water in it—and Caymus had done the best job he could at wiping down his arms and face.

  Still, he felt woefully out of place.

  They were standing in front of a heavy, wooden door at the end of a long, stone hallway. A guard, a young man, resplendent in his band-and-mail armor and long tabard, stood to one side of the door, somehow watching the two of them without casting his eyes in their direction.

  In short order, the door opened inward, revealing a gathering of men standing around a table. At the head of the table was Prince Garrin, who looked up and impatiently waved them in.

  Caymus felt a bit out of his depth when he saw who else was arrayed around the table. Standing to the left of the prince was Brocke, looking as serious as ever. To the prince's right was a man Caymus recognized only by rank: the Keep-Marshal. Caymus had never met the man before, but he wore the silver medallion of station that marked him as the primary protector of the Keep itself. The King protects the doors to Kepren, the saying went. The Marshal protects the doors to the King.

  Also standing about the raised, wooden surface, which was strewn with maps of various sizes and many other bits of paper, were three men whom Caymus assumed were the three dukes of Kepren. He'd not met any of them before either, but he'd heard their descriptions: the old one, the young one, and the fat one. They each seemed rather uninterested in whatever was going on, and not one acknowledged him or Be'Var as they walked in.

  Caymus was relieved to see Milo was there too, though it seemed that his friend hadn't been quite so concerned with cleaning up as he had been. The air priest's face was still covered with grime. His teeth stood out like diamonds when he smiled.

  The last man stood just behind and to the left of Brocke. Caymus didn't know who he was, but he seemed to be in his late twenties, lean, and with brown hair that hung down past his shoulders and also collected on his face in a scruffy beard. He didn't meet anybody else's gaze and his posture seemed to show extreme deference to Brocke. Caymus would have thought him some manner of servant, if not for the beard.

  "Be'Var!" The man Caymus recognized as the Keep-Marshal was smiling warmly and walking toward them, his expression one of delighted surprise. He extended an enthusiastic hand to Be'Var as two men met at the near end of the table. "Garrin didn't tell me you were coming to this thing! How long have you been in Kepren?"

  Be'Var took the offered hand, then clapped the marshal on the shoulder. He seemed genuinely glad to see the man. "Hello, Tanner," he said. "I've been here a few months, I'm afraid." He looked over at Caymus. "I've been a little busy."

  The marshal looked up at Caymus and extended his palm to him, also. "You, then, must be Caymus," he said, a big grin on his face, "the Sleeping Giant himself!"

  Caymus had heard the moniker a couple of times since he'd awakened and wasn't sure how he felt about it, but he smiled and graciously took the hand anyway. "I suppose I am," he said.

  The marshal let go and gave him a hearty, good-natured laugh. "Be'Var isn't giving you too much trouble, is he?" he said, looking back at the old man. "I know he can be pretty tiresome, sometimes."

  Caymus looked back and forth between the two men. "You know each other, then?"

  "I was a healer," Be'Var said. "The marshal here was a soldier. We were bound to meet eventually."

  "Ha!" the marshal laughed. He held up his right hand before Caymus's eyes. "'Meet,' he says! If it weren't for this man, I'd have had to retire as a sergeant!"

  Caymus immediately saw what the man meant. Each of the fingers of the hand before him carried a thick band of scar tissue, all lining up in a neat row just above the palm. They had obviously been cleaved off at some point. Caymus raised an eyebrow at Be'Var. He hadn't known the man could actually reattach missing digits. Be'Var, however, just shrugged off the implied question.

  "Can we get on with this, then?" came a voice from the table. The marshal stepped aside, revealing the oldest of the three dukes, the one with the thick mustache, as the speaker. "If you're all finished reminiscing, of course."

  The marshal seemed about to retort, but instead he just nodded, and the three quietly took places. The Keep-Marshal returned to his previous place at the prince's side. Caymus and Be'Var filled some unoccupied space at the other end of the table

  Now that there was a brief pause, Caymus took a moment to get a good look around. The rectangular room they were standing in wasn't large. The space it occupied was perhaps a little bit more than that of the central courtyard in Flamehearth Mission. The place was a great deal more splendid, however, with large tapestries and portraits covering the walls, leaving very little bare stone between them. The tapestries depicted what appeared to be scenes of battle. The portraits, all of well-dressed men of varying ages, didn't have nameplates, but Caymus assumed they depicted former leaders of Kepren. A large, unlit fireplace took up nearly half of one of the longer walls and a single, small window let in some of the afternoon's yellow light.

  There was also a bowl of water—a font, really—standing about waist high on a narrow column, a few steps behind the prince. It seemed out of place in a room that was so obviously designated for the discussion and planning of war.

  "Thank you both for coming," the prince finally said, looking at each of the newcomers, in turn, with a nod. Prince Garrin was dressed in an embroidered leather jacket, dotted with occasional studs, which seemed only a breath away from being actual armor. He also wore the ever-present black sword at his hip. Between his manner of dress and the grim expression on his face, he seemed already prepared, at any moment, to jump into battle.

  "Now that everyone's here," he continued, "we can get to it." He took a deep breath and placed his hands on the polished wood in front of him. "You all know that Black Moon was sighted preparing to cross the Greatstones two days ago." He looked around the table, as though verifying this. "Since then, we've had more information. Some of it comes from scouts we've sent into the enemy's path. Some of it comes straight from the lips of the civilians trying to keep out of their way."

  Caymus thought back to the building where he'd found Be'Var, less than an hour ago, about the people who had littered the floor there, some of them barely alive. He briefly wondered which of them the prince might have been speaking of.

  Garrin slid some papers around before continuing, as though checking a few facts. Caymus idly noticed that Brocke, still standing quietly, just beside the prince, had that little box of his open, and was taking a sniff of whatever it was that the contraption contained.

  "This gentleman," Garrin finally said, indicating the man standing behind Brocke, "is one of those sources of information." He looked at the faces around the table again as he spoke. "He's brought some interesting facts to light. I've asked you all here so that you can hear those facts directly from him."

  Caymus noticed the prince's gaze seemed to hover over the three dukes longer than it did anyone else, though the moment was so short and over so quickly that he couldn't be sure. "Ambassador Brocke," he said, finally, "would you continue for us, please?"

  The ambassador seemed to have been caught off guard by the request, and he fumbled the little box closed and secreted it into a little pocket before putting himself together and addressing the group. Caymus wondered why the prince would ask Brocke, rather than the man behind him, who was presumably the one who had actually seen Black Moon, to speak.

  He also wondered what was in that little box.

  "The Army of the Black Moon," Brocke made a point of pronouncing the words 'black' and 'moon' separately, "is not as large as we had originally thought, it seems. We—"

  "What do you mean?" interrupted the duke with the mustache. "Just how large is—"

  "If you will let the man speak," the prince interjected, leaning across the table at th
e old man, "I'm sure the ambassador is more than happy to tell you, Duke Korwinder." Caymus didn't know what had previously transpired between these two, but it was obvious that the prince had no patience for the man. The way Garrin's eyes seemed to drag across all three of the dukes at once, in fact, made him suspect that the relationships between the most powerful men in Kepren was altogether unstable.

  Korwinder's mustache twitched as he glared at the prince, but he nodded an apology. "Of course," he said, then turned to Brocke. "Please, Ambassador, continue."

  Brocke merely nodded in response to the apology. "Some mercenary groups, thieves, and other small bands of men have apparently decided to toss their fates in with Black Moon, which has increased their numbers, but the core of their army is, it seems, a group of infantry only about two thousand strong."

  Caymus, far from an expert on matters of military tactics, was intentionally keeping his eyes off of Brocke and instead watching the eyes of the other men around the table, trying to use their reactions to gauge his own understanding of the situation. Each face registered some degree of surprise upon hearing the figure.

  Brocke continued. "They also count among their numbers those same creatures that attacked this city—many cities—several months ago." He nodded to Be'Var. "What Master Be'Var calls 'krealites'. Some of them are even being used as a sort of cavalry, carrying one or more soldiers on their backs."

  "You said that mercenaries bolstered their numbers." The prince said. "By how much, would you say?"

  "Between one and two thousand men," said Brocke, "are currently traveling with Black Moon, though other, smaller groups have been sighted trailing behind the main force, so that number is likely to grow."

  The faces around the table seemed confused, agitated, as though Brocke's words didn't make sense. By his own estimation, Caymus didn't think that an army of four thousand men sounded like that much of a threat to the city, though discounting the krealites would be a mistake.

  "If I may?" Duke Korwinder asked. Brocke nodded. "What siege engines do they bring with them?"