Path of Shadows

by Ben Wolf

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “If you leave, and I complete this mission, and Falna doesn’t burn me to a crisp before we get back to Lord Valdis,” Garrick warned, “he’ll send me to find you next.”

  Kent fixed his blue-eyed gaze on Garrick. “Would you do it?”

  “Absolutely.” Garrick said it without so much as a hint of hesitation, but turmoil and uncertainty raged in his chest. Despite their rocky start, Kent had been loyal, and Garrick had actually started to like him.

  “Then perhaps our morals do differ after all.” Kent reached into his cloak and pulled the flail Lord Valdis had given him from the back of his belt.

  Garrick watched, interested and slightly concerned. The timbre of their conversation hadn’t indicated imminent violence, but Garrick had survived this long by being aware and being ready for surprises.

  Instead of attacking, Kent extended it toward him, handle-first. “I have no intention of ever using this. If you so wish, you may use it along with your new axe. They would doubtless make a fearsome combination.”

  Most warriors would be hard-pressed to wield both Lord Valdis’s battle-axe and his flail at the same time simply by virtue of their size, but Garrick’s height and extraordinary strength brought the idea well within the realm of possibility. Still, it troubled him that Kent would so willingly give up such a valuable weapon.

  Garrick squared himself with Kent. “I need to know if you’re with me on this or not.”

  “I will protect you and do what I can to keep you safe, particularly from Lord Valdis’s soldiers and from Falna,” Kent replied. “But I will not participate in the murders of our friends, and I will not stand at your side while you hand Kallie over to Lord Valdis. Please do not ask me to do so.”

  That would have to do, Garrick supposed. “Fine.”

  “And should you change your mind about this mission, please know that I will do everything in my power to ensure we survive whatever wrath such a decision might incur.”

  “That’s not gonna happen, but thanks all the same.”

  “Just consider it.” Kent reached up and patted Garrick on his shoulder, then he turned and headed back toward the cave.

  Garrick followed, somehow more frustrated and less certain of the future than he’d been before this conversation.

  Just consider it, Kent had said.

  Garrick had hardly thought of anything else since telling Lord Valdis he would bring Kallie back.

  Chapter Four

  “How are you?” Aeron crouched next to Kallie, who lay curled up near the fire in Mehta’s family home. He put his hand on her back and started rubbing it lightly.

  Night had fallen, and Mehta, Ferne, and the rest of the family had gone to the market on the south side of the village to look for some end-of-day deals. Kallie had wanted to go along, and Aeron agreed that it would’ve been good for her to get out for a bit, but she just couldn’t seem to get warm.

  “C-cold,” she replied through chattering teeth.

  Kallie already lay under the majority of the blankets in the house, all piled on top of her, and she lay within arm’s-length of the flames. When he’d gotten her out of Lord Valdis’s grasp, she’d been burning up. Now Aeron wondered if her coldness meant her sky-high fever was finally breaking.

  When Aeron had visited his parents’ house so many months earlier, his mum had discovered the shining mark on the back of Kallie’s neck—the one that denoted her as the chosen sacrifice for Lord Valdis’s ritual.

  At the time, her demeanor and the discovery of the mark had frightened Aeron. Now, after all they’d been through, he was somehow less frightened despite knowing what they were up against.

  Still, that didn’t mean he understood everything. And now that Kallie was safe, perhaps it was time to get some answers.

  “Do you feel well enough to talk to me?” He continued rubbing her back.

  She grinned up at him. “For you, b-big brother, I’d talk to a c-c-camel for an hour.”

  Fever-brain must still be lingering. He ignored her comment and asked, “How did you ever get us into this mess?”

  Her grin turned into a playful scowl. “Hey, you can’t lay this solely at my feet. You’re involved t-t—” She shivered again. “—too, yeah?”

  Aeron smiled at her and shook his head. “The only reason I’m involved is because I showed up and saved your rear-end. Twice.”

  “T-Twice?” She stared at him with her big blue eyes.

  “Yeah. Once from a dark lord, and once from Mum and Pa.” He winked at her.

  Kallie laughed and shivered both at once, but she’d taken the conversation off course. Aeron wondered if she’d done it intentionally.

  Mum and Pa hadn’t been able to get a straight answer from her about any of this after she’d taken ill, either. She’d simply refused to talk about it.

  Aeron wasn’t about to let her get away with it again. “How did all of this start, Kallie?”

  Kallie’s crooked-toothed smile shrank a bit. “You don’t r-really want to hear ab-bout that.”

  “Actually, I do.” Aeron patted her back. “So come on, kid. Spit it out.”

  Kallie remained silent for a long moment, just staring into the flickering flames. Finally, she said, “It’s a l-long story.”

  “We’ve got nothing but time.”

  “I’m not p-p-proud of it, Aeron.” She shivered again. “By the gods, why am I so c-cold?”

  “I’m not here to judge you. But I need to know what happened,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  Kallie exhaled a shaky sigh. “I had gotten a j-job working at a cemetery…”

  “A cemetery?” Aeron asked. “You were burying bodies when you could’ve been working for Pa and making at least twice the coin?”

  “Wanted some indep-p-pendence,” she stammered. “You know how Pa c-can b-b-be.”

  She had a point. Pa wasn’t easy to have as a father or an employer. Aeron had left home and joined the Govalian military at age sixteen to get away from Pa in both capacities.

  “But I w-wasn’t burying bodies,” Kallie said. “I was d-d-digging them up.”

  Aeron gawked at her. “What?”

  “Now you know why I c-couldn’t t-tell you or Mum and Pa what I was d-d-doing,” she said.

  “Why were you—” Aeron lowered his voice, even though they were the only ones in the house. “—digging up bodies?”

  “I was p-paid to do it. Some local doctors needed the b-bodies for experiments, yeah?” she replied. “I was making g-good coin for awhile, b-but it was hard, backbreaking work, even for a blacksmith’s d-daughter. And then one night, I d-delivered a corpse to a m-man, a physician, who offered m-m-me a way out.”

  “Oh, Kallie.” Aeron started rubbing his forehead.

  “Why does everyone always as-s-sume I sold myself to men?” she snapped. “I d-d-didn’t. I n-never have.”

  That’s a relief. “Good. You’re better than that.”

  “I know th-that.” She shivered again and continued, “Anyway, he told me I could earn m-more coin b-by joining a group he was a p-part of. Skip a few months, and I became a f-full-fledged member of the C-Crimson Flame.”

  “When did they give you that mark?” Aeron asked. “And why you?”

  “I was in c-competition with several other g-girls for some s-sort of honor,” she replied. “We were judged b-b-based on our looks and our smarts, as well as our adherence to the t-tenets of the Crimson Flame. I won. A m-mage branded me with s-some magic object and g-gave me the m-m-m-mark. Gods, I’m s-so c-c-cold…”

  “What does it mean?” Aeron asked. “I mean, I know Lord Valdis wanted you for his ritual, but why you? What does the mark… I don’t know… do?”

  “It’s the m-mark of the dragon, they called it. It’s d-different than the Crimson Flame emblem. It’s like a m-magical s-seal that can tether me to a d-dragon, if one ever hatches,” Kallie replied.

  “What?” Aeron eyed her. “You knew this at the ti
me?”

  “They d-d-didn’t tell me until afterward,” she said. “I just thought it w-was a way to advance in the g-g-group.”

  “The cult, you mean.”

  “You d-don’t have to r-rub it in.”

  “So they duped you. Even though you won in part because you were smart.”

  “N-not smart enough I g-g-guess.”

  Aeron sighed. “What else happened? What else did they tell you?”

  “The dragon is s-s-supposed to f-feed on my essence to m-make itself stronger. B-but they said I won’t really d-die; I’ll just become a p-part of the dragon.”

  Aeron recoiled. Perhaps that’s why she was running so hot all the time—the Crimson Flame was prepping her to be tethered to a fire-breathing monster for… forever?

  “You know that’s not how it works, right?” Aeron asked. “If you’re not here, even if you’re inside some dragon, you are still gone. My sister is not a dragon.”

  “I know,” she said. “B-b-but you should’ve seen the stipend they were p-paying me, yeah?”

  Aeron was about to retort, but he caught a hint of a smirk turning up the corner of her mouth, and he couldn’t help but smile. “You treacherous leech. You can’t toy with me like that.”

  “I m-most certainly can and will,” she countered. “At least, if I c-could ever g-get warm.”

  Back at his parents’ house, Aeron had watched Kallie drop into a bank of snow along the street while wearing barely more than her bedclothes. The snow had started to melt and turn to steam the instant it touched her skin.

  Then she’d fallen face-first into his parents’ hearth with the fire still burning. Kent had nearly cooked his arm to a crisp trying to haul her out of there, but Kallie hadn’t sustained even a single burn. It was as if she hadn’t even touched the flames.

  In light of what she’d told him about the mark, those experiences made more sense now. But if that was the case, why was she running so cold all of a sudden? Was her fever not breaking after all? Could it somehow be getting worse instead?

  Was it because he’d shattered the dragon egg? Had he severed her connection to the dragon in the process?

  He looked into the hearth again. The fire might provide a solution, but Aeron didn’t want to suggest it. He didn’t know what might happen to her if she touched the flames now.

  But he couldn’t let her suffer, either.

  “Kallie,” he said.

  She looked up at him.

  “If you reach into the fire now…”

  She glanced at the fire then back at him. “I d-don’t know.”

  Aeron’s basic medical training in the Govalian Army hadn’t covered anything this… exotic. He was improvising. “If you want to try it, I’m here, and I can pull you out if I need to.”

  “Are you s-sure?” she asked. “I thought the c-cold meant I was g-g-getting better.”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Aeron said. “But if you freeze to death after I went through all that trouble to rescue you, I’ll never forgive you for it.”

  She laughed again, and her whole body quaked with shivers. The mountain of blankets on top of her trembled.

  “Seriously,” Aeron said. “Just reach into the fire. Pull back if it burns you. And if it doesn’t…”

  “Then I’ll just curl up in the fire itself.”

  Aeron chuckled. “Like I said, I’m here, ready to help. I’ll protect you.”

  Kallie smiled her crooked smile at him. “I know you will, b-brother.”

  Then Kallie’s hand and arm slithered out from under the blankets like a pale snake, and she reached for the flames.

  Kent had grown to admire Garrick’s resolve once they’d gotten past their initial reservations about each other. But now that very resolve had the potential to gouge a rift between them that Kent couldn’t traverse.

  Aside from the immediate alternative being death, Kent had gone along on this quest only because he’d realized someone needed to stop Lord Valdis.

  He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could do it alone, but perhaps with Aeron, Mehta, and Garrick on his side—if he could successfully reunite them—they would have a chance of victory.

  One thing was certain: no one else was lining up to prevent Lord Valdis from gaining godlike power. Probably no one else even knew what he was planning, except perhaps the Crimson Flame.

  As Kent took his seat by the fire again, Falna winked at him.

  “Did you boys get enough fresh air?” she asked as Garrick sat down next to Kent.

  Kent ignored her sickly sweet tone. Garrick wouldn’t ever reconcile with Falna, and neither would he, but from a strategic standpoint, trying to earn her trust made a modicum of sense, so Kent had decided to temper his disdain for her.

  “We did, thank you,” Kent replied. “Tell me, how long have you been a member of the Crimson Flame?”

  Falna’s smile returned, and she eyed him. Suspicion colored her voice. “I was seventeen. I had just awakened to my magic two years prior, which was late compared to most.”

  Kent smirked. If Falna thought fifteen was a late age for a person’s magic to awaken, it would’ve stunned her to know that it hadn’t happened to Kent until age forty.

  “And what drew you to the Crimson Flame?” It wasn’t that Kent really cared what she had to say; he just wanted to keep the conversation going. Anything he could learn about her, the Crimson Flame, or Lord Valdis might prove useful later on.

  “It was somewhere to belong,” Falna said. “I didn’t have much growing up. At the time, my prospects were marriage, whoring, or the cult. Didn’t have an education to speak of. Could barely read. Decent jobs were out of the question. Didn’t want to marry any of the idiot boys in my town, either, so I took a different path.”

  She paused and stared into the fire.

  Kent studied her sullen expression. Was she lamenting some loss, or was she just deep in thought?

  “One day, about seven years ago, a man in a red robe passed through my town on a pilgrimage north, through Etrijan. He wore the Crimson Flame emblem on his hood.

  “I asked him what the symbol meant. We struck up a conversation, and he invited me to join him. He had deemed me worthy of becoming one of them. I said yes, and the rest is history,” she finished.

  Kent digested her words for a moment. By that point, Garrick had sprawled out on his bedroll and closed his eyes, as had most of the soldiers, though some were rotating shifts to keep watch over the cave entrance.

  “There are aspects of the Crimson Flame that I do not yet fully understand,” Kent began.

  “Such as?”

  “In our travels, we sought to retrieve the dragon egg and bring it to Lord Valdis. Prior to that, Garrick sought the map which showed the egg’s location. If the Crimson Flame worships dragons, why fight so hard to keep us from succeeding?”

  “The Crimson Flame are keepers of the knowledge of dragons. We don’t worship them, per se, but we do revere them. They’re almost as powerful as gods, so of course we show them the respect they’re due.

  “As for fighting against those who would trespass upon our sacred ground in search of that hidden knowledge, of course we’ll protect that which we’ve committed our whole lives to protect,” she continued. “Our knowledge, our artifacts, and our secrets are precious treasures. None but the initiated are supposed to have access to them.”

  “So why, then, is Lord Valdis is granted such access?”

  “He isn’t, strictly speaking.” Falna leaned back and put her arms behind her head.

  “Then, if I may be so bold as to ask, why are you helping him further his own ambitions when it comes at such a high cost to your beliefs?”

  Falna smiled at Kent. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  Careful, Kent. “In my old age, I have tended toward knowledge since I am growing increasingly more useless as a fighter. Besides, given our first encounter, I figure I am entitled to some answers.”

  “You don’t look useless to me.” Fal
na’s voice carried an undertone of suggestion with it, and she winked at him again.

  Kent hadn’t deciphered whether she was toying with him or not. Either way, he would play along, but only to a point.

  She had tried to kill him, after all.

  “Thank you.” Kent gave her a subtle grin, but rather than pushing the question he’d asked, he changed his approach. “Are there different sects of the Crimson Flame?”

  Her blue eyes narrowed at him. “What makes you think that?”

  “We encountered a man in Govalia by the name of Lord Arasmus Glavan. He was a Crimson Flame adherent, and he took possession of the map that led to the dragon egg. He claimed he was trying to prevent Lord Valdis from obtaining it under the pretense of preventing a calamity.”

  And after having met Lord Valdis, I am inclined to believe it.

  “Yet you are now aiding the very man Lord Glavan meant to confound,” Kent finished.

  Falna’s pleasant disposition soured. “Arasmus Glavan was a heretic, an apostate, and a fool. He deserved what he got in the end. And I’m not gonna continue this conversation any longer. You’re not one of us, so you can’t possibly understand.”

  It was a shallow argument, but rather than debating someone with cult-like devotion, Kent decided not to press the issue. He still didn’t have a complete picture of the Crimson Flame’s position on all of this, and he doubted that Falna spoke for the entire cult anyway, but he realized he wouldn’t glean anything more tonight.

  To Kent’s relief, Falna went silent and closed her eyes, so he took the opportunity to do so as well.

  As he lay back, in the stillness of the cave with the fire flickering and crackling nearby, Kent reconsidered his conversation with Garrick. He’d said he would support Garrick in confronting Aeron and Mehta. In reality, he didn’t know what he would do when they arrived.

  He knew he couldn’t allow Garrick, Falna, or Lord Valdis’s soldiers to take Kallie back with them. That was one line he could draw easily enough.

  He also knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t bring himself to hurt Aeron. Though if Kent had to defend himself, he could envision battling Mehta with everything he had. Still, he preferred not to. Fighting Mehta would end brutally, one way or another.