Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (31 page)

As he made his way clear of the worst of the crush of
bodies trying to get to the palace, he urged his horse to a trot and made good
time through the side streets. Kadrin was a large city and the seat of
government, with guards and knights and sorcerers in abundance, but still had
dangerous areas that decent folk avoided, especially after dark. Brannis did
not need to worry about being accosted as he took the shortest route home
through areas where a drunken merchant had a coin flip’s chance to make it
through with his purse. It was hours yet until sundown, and Brannis was hardly
the sort to invite trouble at any hour. Mounted and armored, carrying an ornate
sword and wearing the adornments of both the army and House Solaran, no sane
criminal would risk impeding him.

The ride home was not a long one, less than half the
time it would have been had he followed the main roads. He rode onto the
grounds of Solaran Estate and took a short gallop over to the stables. Situated
on the southern bank of Dragon Lake—so named for the small island that nearly
cut it in half running north-south, giving it the look of a reptilian iris—the
home of one of the most respected families in the Empire was extravagant. The
main building covered acres and was of construction as fine as the
palace—understandable, since it was constructed around the same time period by
many of the same sorcerers. Towers and parapets rose to heights carefully kept
just shorter than those the emperor’s home boasted. The grounds were manicured
green grasses, with gardens, topiaries, and orchards of exotic fruit trees
imported from all over the world. The estate also included stables, a number of
outbuildings to house the servants, a boathouse, docks, and fountains. There
was also an area of flat black marble that was inscribed with numerous runed
circles, glyphs, and other magical devices of general purpose for aiding in
certain spells.

Brannis ignored the commonplace wonders of his
familial home. He had been seeing them all his life, and while he was aware of
how spectacular the sights were, he was jaded to them. His current goal was a
simple one: get cleaned up and report to General Sir Hurald Chadreisson on the
Kelvie mission.

He left his horse at the stables and jogged up to the
entrance and opened the door. The wards on the door knew him as a member of the
Solaran family, so he did not need someone else to allow him entry. It was good
enough security that no servant manned the door unless guests were expected.
That served Brannis’s needs just fine, as he was in a rush and preferred not to
get the whole “Welcome home, how was your little adventure?” treatment from
some servant who had known him since childhood—and at Brannis’s still-tender
age of twenty-two, there were a fair number who had.

For once, Bygones Night was kind to Brannis, as much
of the household staff was let off work early to prepare for their own
celebrations. The family was nearly all invited to the palace for the evening,
so the servants were not needed around the house that night. Brannis made his
way up to his room without incident.

The room had been kept immaculate in his absence, in a
way that it could never be when he was regularly at home. The bed linens were
all cleaned and tucked tightly and there were no clothes or weapons or armor
left about. The wardrobe was closed—Brannis never bothered closing it—which
meant it was likely filled with his cleaned clothes.

Brannis closed the door behind him and began stripping
off his road-worn, battle-stained uniform. He struggled some getting out of his
armor without help, but with some trouble was able to manage, leaving the
discarded plates at the foot of the bed. He tossed Massacre on the bed in its
sheath. While it was perfectly acceptable to visit army headquarters armed,
even when speaking to a general, most in the army and the knighthood were
uncomfortable around that sword. While Brannis was far from the only knight
with an enchanted blade, his was a particularly nasty piece of work, and those
who knew its powers were leery of being too close to it. He studied the
workmanship of the hilt and wondered again why something so fierce was adorned
so whimsically. The sculpted dragon made it uncomfortable to wield in his bare
hand; the maker obviously had been less concerned about utility than aesthetics
when it he forged it.

Brannis pulled on fresh pants from the wardrobe and
made his way bare-chested over to the wash basin. The servants had kept it
filled, but the water was tepid. Any other adult in the family would have
heated it with aether without a second thought, but with no servant handy to
get him hot water for it, Brannis was forced to wash up with cold water.

After toweling off, he put on a clean uniform, emblazoned
with the Solaran family crest. It had taken some research for Brannis to
discover the crest when he had been knighted. Traditionally sorcerers wore no
family coat of arms, so despite their prominence in the Empire, none of the
family had known what their centuries-old crest had looked like. Brannis had
eventually found a rendering in an old book on the families of the Kadrin
Empire and had a seamstress embroider one from the picture to have on his
tabard.

 Suitably attired for polite company, Brannis headed
back down to the stables to retrieve a fresh horse and to answer for the loss
of his unit. He just hoped Sir Hurald was not already dressed for Bygones
Night. Being dressed down by a man in sorcerer’s robes was the last thing he
needed.

Chapter 17 - For Lost Time

Rashan walked casually through the halls of the
palace, not even pausing as he enspelled the guards to ignore him. He had come
up from the dungeons and proceeded directly to the residential portions of the
palace. The building was ancient, and there had been no significant remodeling
done in the hundred winters he had been gone. The decor had changed somewhat, a
combination of evolving fashions and the personal taste of the current emperor,
Dharus, of whom Rashan knew little.

Emperor Dharus was a recluse by all accounts,
preferring solitude and holding court infrequently, letting his advisers run
the day-to-day dealings of the Empire. He would appear at his balcony to make
proclamations and speeches, then retreat to his quarters, or more frequently
his country estates. Rashan was guessing that he would make at least a token
appearance at the Bygones Night festivities, however.

Rashan had been focused when he arrived in Kadris, but
not so much so that he had overlooked the obvious celebratory preparations
going on in the city. Times changed, but Bygones Festival was still one of the
favorite holidays in the Empire. Tradition held that the emperor had no rival,
no adversary to placate once an autumn, thus he attended any function of
Bygones Festival in his normal royal garb. In some ways, it isolated a man in
an already lonely position at the highest level of power in the Empire, to not
truly take part in the revels that his subjects enjoyed so much. However, it
was too much to pass up the sight of so many of the important personages of the
Empire making asses of themselves impersonating one another.

Rashan had every intention of crashing the party that
was to be held in the palace that evening. The building thrummed with excited
energy as the main ballroom was decorated for the occasion. Food and drink from
the finest merchants in Kadrin were brought in and set out in buffets. Coming
up through the dungeons was easy enough, but in the upper levels of the palace,
the bustle of so many people made staying unnoticed difficult. He had to
quickly hide the shabby clothes he wore before he drew attention. He
transformed them into a messenger’s outfit much the same way he had made them
look like a warlock’s ensemble earlier at the Tower of Contemplation. A
messenger who walked purposefully and looked like he knew where he was going
was seldom interrupted.

Rashan did have a purpose and most certainly knew
where he was going. It was a matter of what he would find when he got there.

He found his destination at the end of a hall that was
seldom visited. The floors were kept clean, but there was little other reason
to come down this way. The door in front of him was outlined in runes, both on
the door and on the stone frame it was set in. The two lines of runes matched
up, with identical symbols on each, directly across from one another. A faint,
subtle pull of aether fed the magic of the door’s locking spell. Unlike the
crude cell down in the dungeons, this work was a masterpiece. While it was not
designed to harm anyone, it was a bit of self-regenerating magic, an aether
construct that would repair and renew itself, rather than slowly give way to
the passage of time, weakening until it ultimately failed.

Rashan wove a complicated web of aether, touching just
the right places at the right times. It was so ingrained in him that he did it
with hardly a conscious thought. This was his room.

It was much as he remembered leaving it the day he
departed with the Red Riders for Farren’s Plain. There were the discarded clothes
he had worn the day before, ready to fall apart with age. The wardrobe stood
open. Upon the shelves was a collection of books, a few of which he had written
himself.

Blast!
he
thought.
Someone got in here.

There was a book missing, and after a moment’s
thought, Rashan knew which it was.
The Warlock Prophecies
was gone from
its spot. The immortal warlock sighed deeply. He hoped that the book had not
caused any trouble.

Rashan had always possessed a dark sense of humor. In
his younger days, when he was feeling annoyed with someone he could not justify
killing, he would often retire to his room and write prophecy. Rashan had no
gift of foresight, but it was cathartic to write of doom and woe in the most
cryptic and vague ways he thought someone might someday believe. As he wrote
them, he took his petty vengeance on the generations yet unborn who believed in
prophecy and would get what they deserved for reading his. He had always hated
prophecies and the passive, helpless thinking they engendered. Rashan carved
his own history with steel and aether, and the thought that fate or some
unknown agent of the universe controlled his actions was anathema to him.

In those younger days, he had taken a sinister glee in
the thought that weak-minded fools one day would follow his prophecies as some
sort of grand revelation that could save them from the dooms they predicted if
only they deciphered them. Now he just hoped that whoever had broken into his
room and stolen it had not taken it seriously. He could not recall everything
he had written, but some of it likely applied to the current era.

The entry into his room had been no small feat.
Whoever had managed it must have studied the locking aether construct
extensively. There were a number of steps required to disarm the layers upon
layers of aether guarding the construct. It would have been simpler to have
confronted the wards guarding the physical structure of the door and just
blasted it off its hinges. The latter would have required considerable power in
its own right, but was far less complicated and painstaking. However, Rashan
had not built any means of inflicting harm into the door’s protections; it was
in the middle of the palace, after all, and he had no reason to harm overly
curious palace staff or mischievous young sorcerers. It was simply a matter of
ensuring the sanctity of his own privacy—and if forced to admit it, to show off
how well he could craft it.

Whoever had broken in had certainly earned himself a
modicum of respect from the warlock. To take on the tedious task of figuring
out the lock rather than the idiot’s method of caving in the door bespoke
someone who also wished to show off their cleverness. However, to have
taken—near as he could tell—only the prophetic writings, damped that respect
markedly.

Rashan double-checked the rest of the room. His
recollections were a century old, and while he possessed a good memory, time
played tricks with even an immortal’s past. Still worried he might have
overlooked something missing, he concluded that it was probably just the book.

What Rashan had really come to his old room for was
easily found. On a special rack made just to hold it, hung his formal garb.
Identical to the robes and cloak he had imitated before the Inner Circle, these
were the genuine article. The tunic was of a rare spider silk that was
naturally black and shimmered iridescent in certain lighting. The gold trim was
actually gold-infused thread, and the red trim got its color from ruby dust.
The cloak was dragon hide, with meteoric iron pauldrons that were trimmed in
plated gold. The pauldrons were joined together in the front and back as a
single piece, and Rashan pulled them over his head as he finished changing.

Rashan reached under the back of his collar and pulled
his long hair free where it had been caught under the cloak, shaking it loose
and letting it fall back into place. He stepped over to the mirror and casually
swept away the century’s worth of dust that had accumulated, using a small wind
called up from the aether. He looked himself over critically. He looked younger
than the last time he had seen himself in that mirror, the wrinkles at the
corners of his eyes gone along with the dark circles that often hung below
them. His hair was pure white now as opposed to blond and grey, and covered all
the areas it had formerly retreated from. Age had been kind to the exceptional
materials his warlock’s gear was crafted from, but not nearly so generous as
the gifts immortality had granted him. Still, two items were missing.

The boots Rashan had preferred were lost at the Battle
of Farren’s Plain.
Fine, “Battle of the Dead Earth” if that is what they
insist on calling it.
They were a practical pair, suitable to the dirty
work of fighting necromancers, unlike the finery he had just donned. He had no
other pair like them. Walking barefoot over to the bed, he reached under and
found a nice pair of house slippers that looked enough like soft shoes to avoid
embarrassment, and slipped them on.

The last piece he was missing was hovering in the air
over its sheath, which hung from a pair of hooks in the wall just below it.
Ahh,
Avalanche, how long has it been? Too long, I think.
Grasping the
hilt, he pulled the sword from its perch atop nothingness. The blade had a
bluish tint to its steel, but the blade and crosspiece were otherwise not
unusual for a broadsword. He gave it a couple effortless sweeps through the
air, holding it in one hand; though in battle, he had always used two. He was
much stronger now than he had been as a mortal; the changes he had wrought in
his body were more than cosmetic. He was careful to avoid hitting anything with
the blade. Avalanche was a weapon that was difficult to impede. He could put it
through the wall if he was not careful with it.

He let the blade go for a moment, and it resumed
hovering exactly where it was left. To test its enchantment, Rashan leaned
heavily against the flat of the blade and could not feel the slightest give to
it. Satisfied, he retrieved the sheath from the wall and buckled it onto his
belt. Taking control of the sword once more, he slid it into its sheath with a
satisfying
snick
. Only in its sheath, or when wielded, could Avalanche
be moved.

Walking back to the mirror, he rechecked his
appearance. The shoes were not very noticeable, he was relieved to find. The
sword seemed lacking, though. While the workmanship was fine, and he had
carried it habitually through much of his tenure as warlock, he knew that it
was unimpressive to look at. The sword and hilt were finely crafted, but
certainly no more so than most knight’s blades. Whoever had crafted it, ages
ago, had been primarily concerned with utility. Rashan had always appreciated
that aspect of the sword since he had used it often and found it served its
purpose admirably. For now, though, he wanted something showier, something that
would cause a bit more of a stir.

He wanted to retrieve Heavens Cry.

Making sure the door was secured behind him, its wards
back to their silent sentry duty, he turned and set off to get it.

*
* * * * * * *

Well, that could have gone worse, I suppose,
Brannis thought, feeling drained.

He had just returned from army headquarters and his
meeting with General Sir Hurald and Sir Garibald, the commander of Kadrin
forces and his own commander, respectively. The older knight had thankfully
been in his army uniform still, despite being expected at the palace shortly
thereafter in foppish sorcerer’s garb. They had listened to Brannis’s
accounting of the mission, the battle, and the return trip home in silence, not
asking any questions until he had finished.

That was when Sir Hurald revealed that Sir Lugren had
already reported in, and had a different take on Brannis’s story. Lugren had
told Sir Hurald that the army had been unprepared for the goblins’ arrival
despite vain efforts to make them so. He reported that Iridan was unable to
effectively counter the goblins’ own sorcerers, and that many of their
casualties were a direct result. He had complained about the efforts of
carrying the stricken Iridan with them when no effort was made to bring any of
the fallen soldiers along, and of the time they had wasted with the delusional
hermit that eventually claimed to be Warlock Rashan.

Brannis’s own account had agreed on all the
wide-sweeping facts, but on the minor details and interpretations, Lugren had
disagreed entirely. While Sir Lugren spoke well of Brannis’s combat acumen, he
had convinced the general that Brannis was unfit for command. Even though
Brannis held a higher rank on the mission than Lugren, Hurald chose to take the
older, more veteran knight’s word on the matter, especially since Brannis
seemed to at least entertain the idea that the hermit they met might really be
the former Kadrin warlock.

As he walked though the house and up to his room,
Brannis could think of little aside from finding his bed and sleeping through
the rest of Bygones Night. The growling of his stomach asserted itself, though,
and he corrected his thought. He could think of little else but sneaking some
food from the kitchen, heading up to his room to eat, and sleeping away the
remainder of the evening.

When he reached his room, carrying a battered turkey
leg and a tankard of ale, he received a shock. Upon opening the door, he had
seen that someone had stolen in. His heart raced as he realized that the sword
on his bed was not Massacre.

He rushed over to the bed, hastily setting his meal
down on a side table, and looked to see what was there. Under some fragments
that appeared to have once been the dragon-sculpted handle of Massacre, there
was a note, written in a brusque, scratchy script:

I wanted my sword back. Take this one. I think you
shall like it better anyway. Its name is
Avalanche
.
Be careful with
it until you have learned its tricks. It does not move unless sheathed or in
hand. —Uncle Rashan