Ignite the Fire: Incendiary

by Karen Chance

  Neither of them was the pilot we’d met, who I now saw jogging this way with his hand outstretched. “Old Tagget just got in a barrel of Heart’s Gold—twelve years old—that he declares to be divine,” he informed us.

  My fey snorted but clasped arms with him, nonetheless. “I’m sure. But you won’t get off that easily.”

  “Forgive me for trying to improve your sadly deficient palate.”

  “Forgive me for thinking that you’re more worried about the deficiencies of your purse.”

  The pilot laughed. He did that a lot, more than my fey, who other than for the brief moment of excitement outside, seemed pretty dour. But the pilot was young, with a round and surprisingly pleasant face for a Svarestri and amused gray eyes.

  I looked into them and got a sudden flash of piles of silver haired bodies, lying dead and broken on the battlefield, during the fight for the capitol. There’d been heaps of our dead lying around, too, which was why I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. I’d just been trying to stay alive. But now . . .

  I really wished I could stop remembering now.

  But I didn’t have time to hear any more of their uncomfortable banter, because another fey had just hurried up.

  “The wine will have to wait,” he said, panting slightly as he came to a stop beside us. And caused me to do a double take, because he was the first light fey with a belly that I’d ever seen. It was pretty small in comparison to the vampire’s from the imprint, but it nonetheless managed to stretch the front of the blue velvet robes he wore. He also likely had a double chin, only I couldn’t tell because he wore a beard.

  I hadn’t known that the fey could grow those, either. But I guessed so, since it cascaded down his chest in a silvery white ripple, as if Father Christmas had just come back from the salon. And was having a really bad day, I thought, seeing his expression.

  “What is it?” My fey asked, sounding like he already knew.

  “He’s in a temper. You’re needed.”

  The pilot clapped us on the shoulder. “Annnnd I’ll have that drink in your honor—or your memory,” he said, and walked off.

  My fey scowled; I could feel it stretch our face. “Where is he?”

  “Where he always is.” The bearded fey looked up at the ceiling and then back down, and his expression was troubled. “There’s something else . . .”

  “What?”

  The bearded fey shook his head. “You’ll see when you get there. You’d better hurry.”

  My fey did not hurry. Nor did he get back on the claustrophobic elevator. Instead, he crossed the huge expanse of what I guessed was a landing bay at a saunter, giving me time to look around.

  The newest pilots to arrive had disembarked, and their still levitating unit was being pushed into line by a couple of flunkies in bright red tunics. It was the flashiest color I’d ever seen the Svarestri wear, who usually matched their mountains. But I guessed it helped with visibility, so no careless flyboy ran them down.

  I tried to count the small craft but gave up after a moment because there appeared to be another cave linked to this one, and I glimpsed some in there, too. And maybe more on the other side, for all I knew. There could be thousands all together, which made me wonder what they’d been doing during the battle for the capitol.

  Maybe they were too flimsy to take part? They certainly looked as if an accidental blow from one of the stone giants would obliterate them, much less a well thrown battle spell. But they could have stayed high and dropped potion bombs, the way Caedmon’s fey had done from their gryphons.

  Yet Aeslinn hadn’t used them.

  Maybe he’d been afraid to hit his own people? Because, by the time we’d deployed the gryphons, most of our troops were either dead or under heavy shielding. We hadn’t had much to lose.

  But when I thought of the fey that Aeslinn’s dragon form had ground under his huge belly, crushing them to pulp, I wondered—did he really care so much for his soldiers? Because it hadn’t looked like it then. It hadn’t looked like it much period, frankly, as far as I could tell.

  So, what was he doing with his airborne armada?

  I had no idea. Just like I didn’t know what he’d been doing in Romania. We’d only found him because we’d been looking for the goat creature, which my powers had allowed us to track to roughly the right place. Only to find, upon arrival, that Aeslinn was having a party with the local disaffected vampire clans.

  They’d long had a problem with the current system, ever since our consul introduced the idea of rules back in the fifteenth century. They’d even rebelled against her for a while, until she proved that she deserved her reputation, and killed half of them off. The rest had learned some manners, but they’d never been what you would call staunch supporters.

  The fact that Aeslinn had been meeting with them worried me. What worried me even more was that it had been the Aeslinn from our era—Zeus had admitted as much. Jonathan, the time traveling necromancer, had taken the king back to eighteenth century Romania, presumably to evade us after his defeat.

  Except that it couldn’t have been after, could it? Because Aeslinn hadn’t been at his capitol when it was attacked. That was one of the reasons we’d won: the king had not been there to lead his troops. It had been a hard fight, but if the Svarestri had had aerial support, or if their king had been on hand to rally his fey . . .

  Things might have been far worse.

  So, why hadn’t he been?

  The more I thought about it, the weirder it got. Jonathan had even warned Aeslinn about what was going to happen. Or what had already happened, because we’d fought that battle twice—the first time when we won easily, taking the fey by surprise, and the do-over when we’d barely pulled it off, because they knew we were coming. The necro had used Jo’s time travel abilities to go back after the first battle, and give Aeslinn a head’s up, so that he was expecting us.

  Yet, he still ran? He still didn’t use all of his advantages? He still lost?

  It didn’t make sense. It might have if Aeslinn was a coward, but I hadn’t gotten that impression on the Thames. He’d run then, too, but only when he was out of options, and badly injured. It was a retreat that anyone would have made, not a cowardly refusal to do battle.

  He’d battled just fine, as long as he thought he had a chance to win, and with no one else there to absorb punishment except himself. And Zeus hadn’t said that Aeslinn was cowering in a corner somewhere afterwards; he’d said that he was furious. That didn’t sound like a coward to me.

  Yet he let his capitol burn?

  Because he’d fled before the battle started, before we even got there, almost like he didn’t care. Like whether his capitol survived or not was irrelevant as long as it bought him time. But to do what?

  I didn’t know, and it made me want to chew my fingernails off, only I couldn’t because they were currently covered by a gauntlet. One that the fey was resting on a rail as he ran up a curving staircase made of that same buttery marble, scaling flight after flight without so much as getting winded. And then emerging at the top on a long, wide corridor that changed dramatically as we walked down it.

  Unlike some things around here, it didn’t actually move, but the thick bands of different types of stone that covered the walls, ceiling, and floor, that gave the illusion.

  It started off normally enough, with a gorgeous cinnamon granite that reminded me of the giant we’d passed on the way here, sparkling with little flakes that caught the light from a line of torches on the walls as we walked by. The torches were needed as there were no windows here, unlike the rest of this place, which had felt airy and open to the elements. But this hallway closed around us, long and dark and gleaming with treasures.

  But the wealth wasn’t displayed on plinths or glimpsed in storerooms; the treasure here was the walls themselves, and they were breathtaking.

  Like when a huge stone visage suddenly pushed out from the granite, blinking sleepily at me. The fey I was hitchhiking with stopp
ed and stood there, tapping his foot impatiently. The creature—because the face definitely belonged to one of the great stone creatures the fey made, just sans a body—did not get in a hurry. It yawned, so big and so long, that I could have stepped into the huge open mouth had I been there, and then blinked some more. There were no eyelashes on the huge eyes, but everything else, down to the pores in the “skin”, looked real.

  A hand formed itself out of stone with a finger extended, to gently poke us. The fey sighed, but turned around, I guessed so that the head could get a full look at us. And could delicately relieve us of our weapons, despite the size of the hand doing it.

  We completed the circle to find our weapons affixed to the wall, not held in place by the rock so much as partly buried within it, but the fey didn’t object. I supposed he’d get them back on the return trip. And that seemed to have been all the head had wanted, because it was already disappearing into the rock, with only the nose and lips still visible.

  Until the wall swallowed them, too, and then smoothed back out, as glossy fine as if it had never been disturbed at all.

  We walked on.

  After the granite was a section of petrified wood, only off of the biggest tree I’d ever seen. Its heart curved over top of us, like the tunnels I’d seen carved through fallen sequoias, big enough to drive a semitruck through. But this tunnel had striations of amber, crimson and gold peeking past the brown and stabbing down towards the earth, like a wooden sunburst.

  There must have been a skylight above it, because the colors were vibrant, almost boiling with light as if the tree was on fire. They shed multihued rays down on us as we walked underneath, so thick and so strong that I would have put out a hand to touch one, had I been able. I belatedly realized that the inclusions were opal that had infused the wood over time and had left it a piece of art.

  Then came a section of stacked sandstone, in tan and gray and white, which had been magicked or carved—I couldn’t tell which—into a herd of horses galloping down the hallway. The strata of the stone were clearly delineated and curved along the horses’ flanks, flowing manes and huge, wild eyes. The frieze was carved in extreme relief, as if coming off the walls, and the animals were fifteen, maybe eighteen feet high. The flowing manes almost closed together over our heads, giving the impression that we were in the middle of the herd, running along with them. Or about to be trampled, because they were so lifelike, I could almost hear their hooves thundering all around us.

  Then, just when I was sure that nothing could top that, came a section of sedimentary rock, filled with huge seashells, their surfaces still iridescent with mother of pearl. There were also the fossilized remains of large sea creatures trapped within the rock, most of them fish or eels—the latter’s skeletons rippling sinuously through the stone—or the imprints of ancient plant life, so perfectly preserved that I could almost see them move with the current. There was no color here, except for the vague, brownish tan of the rock, yet my brain kept trying to add it anyway—red to some coral, green to a turtle peeking out of some rock, yellow to some sponges—because it was all so real.

  Including stranger things, scattered here and there, which I couldn’t explain: a strand of pearls, perfectly strung and still gleaming softly, fallen to the sand; a three-pronged impression in the rock, too straight-edged to have been made by nature; the skeleton of a crab, clinging to something that almost looked like a human hand.

  I squinted at them, not sure what I was seeing in the dim, flickering light. It made the whole tunnel seem to move, as if splashed with rolling waves, confusing the eyes. And added to the strange realism of the scene, as if we’d plunged beneath a reef without knowing it.

  But then the corridor curved, and I saw something up ahead that assured me that I wasn’t seeing things, in the most gruesome way possible.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I felt the fey’s steps falter, as if he hadn’t expected this, either. The slowed pace gave me time to examine the latest fossil in detail as we approached. Only, in this case, I would have wished for less.

  Because it wasn’t an animal captured in stone this time.

  It was a person.

  I blinked, hoping what I was seeing was a trick of the light, which found all the dark places in the rock and made the dips and bulges seem almost to flow, like water. But the image remained the same. And it wasn’t merely a hollow in roughly the right shape, which would have been bad enough.

  This was a skeleton, half buried in stone, and looking like it was fighting to get out.

  But not the skeleton of a man. A mer-creature stared out at me, over a distance of who knew how many years. The limbs were frozen in place, and yet looked like they were still thrashing against the enveloping waves of rock that had engulfed him. There was no flesh on the bones anymore, but their thickness, and the breadth of the shoulder blades, showed that this had once been a powerful individual.

  And yet the rock had won.

  The rib cage was mostly filled with sediment, with just a few bones erupting from the surface. The great tail was visible near the bottom, with a delicate, skeletonized fin fanned out in motion, as if trying to churn up the water to escape. But it wasn’t water that menaced him. One arm was likewise almost completely visible, as if grasping for safety, and the skull . . .

  Was screaming.

  I swallowed, and tried to tell myself that it was just the way the jaw had fallen open after death. But that wasn’t what it looked like. It looked like he had died fighting the stone, which had crushed and then filled in his ribcage, like liquid magma. Or, I realized sickly, like the stone I’d just seen in the “elevator”, running free and then solidifying back up in an instant.

  I’d met some living merpeople once, in a secret coven trading post, and they had been beautiful. As this one was, even in death, with elegant lines and indentions in the rock where long locks of hair had once spread out around the skull, adding to the impression of movement. But I didn’t think his beauty was why he was displayed here.

  And then I knew it wasn’t, when we rounded another bend and came face to face with a massacre.

  The fey, who had already slowed his steps to a crawl, now stopped them altogether. As if the sight hit him, too, like a punch to the gut, although he must have seen it before. But I didn’t think it mattered in this case.

  Some things you didn’t get used to.

  Dozens of skeletons, half buried in rock, surrounded us on all sides. That was even true overhead, where the stone “wave” that had killed them broke over our heads, creating a tunnel of pain, an open graveyard. Even worse, the light made the bodies seem to move, with desperate, pleading gestures and silent cries, that had a shiver going up even the fey’s spine. As if he could hear them, too.

  Many of them were male, with the same broad shoulders and thick bones of the first skeleton we’d seen. But there were others scattered around with smaller frames: women, or possibly children in the case of the slightest. Like the one who peeked out from behind the tail of a man, with the small body mostly lost in rock.

  The fey slowly walked over to it, and knelt down in front of it, as it was near the bottom of the wall. There wasn’t much to see, just the tiny face, smaller than my spread hand, and the tops of a pair of delicate shoulders. The face looked strangely curious, staring at me as I stared back, and once again, I had the impression of our gaze meeting across the ages. I felt a shiver run down my spine, a hard one, but the fey’s attention had been caught by something else.

  There was a rope of pearls around the girl’s skeletal neck, not big ones, not even child sized ones. But tiny things, barely larger than seed pearls, that had been woven into the shape of flowers. The ends of the necklace were buried in stone, which was why it had survived, still caught in place after all these years. The fey reached out, and I instinctively shrank back.

  Don’t touch it! I thought. Don’t, don’t, don’t! I didn’t want to see this girl’s trauma, experience her last moments, or feel the pre
ss of the rock that had stopped her chest from expanding, suffocating her.

  I didn’t want to be buried alive.

  But the only thing I felt when he stripped off a gauntlet, and pressed both fingers and forehead against the stone, were the tiny, smooth bumps of the pearl flowers.

  We stayed like that for a while. I didn’t know what he was feeling, as I was too stunned to even try to read his thoughts. I was wondering how many hours somebody must have spent weaving such an exquisite jewel. She had been loved, this girl, possibly by the man who had died trying to protect her.

  And who had failed nonetheless, because how do you outrun a wave of stone?

  It didn’t look like anyone had. And she hadn’t been an aberration: no one here looked like a soldier. I couldn’t see much from the fey’s current position, but there hadn’t been any bodies dressed for combat when we came in. There’d been no weapons or armor in sight, and jewels had still gleamed dully at a few throats or wrists.

  And if the jewels remained, any weapons should have, too. Or their impressions, if this was so long ago to have rotted away metal. Yet I hadn’t seen any.

  The wave appeared to have solidified again as quickly as it had come, gluing everything in place. Including the skulls, long since stripped of flesh, but howling at us from all sides. I was suddenly, profoundly grateful that I wasn’t actually here. So much suffering, so much death, all crowded together in one place, might have overwhelmed me, even without touching anything. Staring into those large, darkened eye sockets, I was sure it would have.

  Because, Faerie or no, this place was definitely haunted.

  Which raised an uncomfortable question. Guinn had said that fey bodies and souls were linked in a way that those on Earth simply weren’t. That the two were inseparable until the body completely rotted away and the world reabsorbed it again, freeing the soul to live anew in another form.

  Only . . . what happened if that cycle never took place? What happened if the bodies were displayed like trophies in a wall of stone? Did that mean that the souls were also trapped here, bound to stay forever, silently screaming?