Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (38 page)

“Whoa, wait!” Kyrus said, but quickly changed tactics
as his startled exclamation failed to halt the oncoming lawmen.
“Haru
bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora,”
he said as quickly as he could, casting the
levitation spell again.

They were by far the heaviest objects he had lifted,
but in his panic, he drew in aether to spare. Up rose the tables from the
floor, and Kyrus sent them tumbling at the constables.

Papers flew and ink spilled, the constables cursed,
and Kyrus ran. He knocked over his tea as he made for the kitchen. There was a
back door that led to the alleyway behind the shop where old stews got dumped
and chamberpots were emptied. Overturning cookware in his wake, he crossed the
kitchen in two strides and pulled the door open. He grabbed the door frame as
he ran through to make the turn down the alley quicker, but slammed into
something solid.

Another two constables had been waiting around the
back entrance of the shop, and he had just plowed into one of them. The
constable grabbed Kyrus as they collided and, with a shift of his weight,
brought both himself and Kyrus to the ground as they overbalanced.

Kyrus hit the cobblestones with the back of his head
leading the way. Had he been conscious by then, he would have heard the second
constable tell him that he was being arrested for the crime of witchcraft, and
that he ought not to resist.

The second, at least, was no issue, but Kyrus would
have to wait until the morning to learn of the charge against him. Brannis
Solaran, however, would have to wait until the following night to find out, as
he was startled awake from a terrible dream before finding out how it ended.

Chapter 20 - I Am Indeed Me

Brannis awoke suddenly, gasping in shock. He felt the
throbbing beat of his heart in his chest, and his breath came raggedly. He
threw off the bedclothes as he sat up and looked around the room.

It was his bedroom, but moments ago, it had not been.
He had just been in an alley, behind a scrivener’s shop. He was being chased by
constables—city guardsmen—and was about to be apprehended.

It was such a nice dream up until the end. He
remembered everything, from the meeting with the nobleman client to the shared
jug of wine by the seashore. He had even gotten another indulgence of his
secret desire to work magic. He closed his eyes as he recalled the clean, fresh
feeling of aether cascading through him and into those quills.

Just the very last bit was fuzzy. It seemed safe
enough to presume he had lost consciousness in the dream. He hoped that was all
that it was. It ended so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that he wondered if the man
he was in his dreams had just been killed. The thought chilled him.

He had been experiencing his dreams so vividly of late
that it seemed much like a second life that he resumed upon falling asleep. He
could recite the names of dozens of people in a city he had never visited. He
knew stupid little details of complete stranger’s lives, from the guests at a
nobleman’s “headsman’s wedding” to the going rate for spiced crescents made by
a local baker. He had seen so much of this other life that he had grown
attached to it, as if it were his own.

Brannis was worried.

*
* * * * * * *

Brannis dressed and made his way down to the dining
hall for dawn feast, worries about this Kyrus fellow gnawing at him. The worst
part was that it was such an
odd
thing to be worried about, he did not
know to whom he could look for counsel.

Father, there is a neophyte sorcerer in my dreams who
has gotten himself in trouble. I do not know what has become of him and would
like to lend him aid. What would you advise?

Well, that certainly would not pass muster.

Brannis reached the main dining hall as much of the
family had already finished their meal. For all his abruptness in waking,
Brannis had overslept, and by some hours, it seemed. The productive members of
the family had all departed for their daily business, leaving only his cousin
Danil—short for Danilaesis—and his grandfather, once High Sorcerer of Kadrin,
but now too infirm to use his magic for anything but life extension.

“Uncle Brannis,” Danil screamed when he saw Brannis
enter the hall.

Danil was of an age when he was looking for a guiding
male presence in his life closer to his own age than his father, and Brannis
had been anointed. The small bundle of excess energy leapt from his chair at
the dining table and sprinted headlong across the room to crush Brannis in a
hug around the waist.

“Good morning, Danil,” Brannis greeted him as he
absorbed the impact. “Have you been good while I was away?”

“Yeah,” the boy replied, though Brannis suspected
otherwise.

Danil was seven autumns old and a whirlwind of
mischief. He was the youngest son of Brannis’s uncle Caladris and his aunt
Felia, who were both rather too busy and important to look after him. Danil was
left mostly to tutors and servants, and occasionally overseen by his
grandfather—the latter being the likely cause of his free-spiritedness. While
the tutors lacked the authority to truly punish the boy—seen as a potentially
great sorcerer one day—his grandfather was both doting and growing in senility;
what behaviors his grandfather did not outright allow, were often permitted
through neglect or obliviousness.

“Brannis, my boy?” his grandfather said to him from
across the room. “If that is you, then come here and let me have a look at you.
Each day passing I expect to be my last, and you have been away too long.”

The ancient and infirm sorcerer’s eyesight had
deteriorated to the point where he rarely bothered with it anymore, preferring
the indistinct view of the world through aether-sight over the blurry view that
normal vision offered. Aether-sight used the eyes differently, though, and
through it, Axterion Solaran was able to manage despite his normal vision
having been nearly lost to cataracts.

Brannis obliged the old man, walking the length of the
fine polished oak table that took up most of the room. He knew that his
grandfather’s view of him in the aether was poor due to his own rather closed
Source. Axterion would have to make do with seeing his grandson in the light if
he wished to see him at all.

“How have you been, Grandfather? Has Danil been
causing trouble?” he inquired.

Axterion had always been kind to Brannis, even in his
disgrace of failing out of the Academy. Axterion was unable to work magic
anymore, lest his failing health give out on him, so he could at least somewhat
understand Brannis’s plight, though he was coming at it from the other end,
after a long and distinguished career of magic.

“Hmph, that boy can cause no trouble. He can scarcely
draw aether properly. His parents worry too much about him. He is a small boy,
and in my experience, he is doing precisely what they are supposed to do.” The
old man chuckled at his own observation. “But, Brannis, I hear there is true
trouble come to call. Your father and uncle both say that you brought back a
demon with you, who claims to be Rashan.”

“You hear truly. I met him in Kelvie Forest, on an
assignment. We were fleeing from a battle and came across him living in the
woods as a hermit,” Brannis replied.

“None of that sounds like the Rashan I knew. You found
him in the direction opposite a battle? Living in squalor, with no one around
to command? No, not like him at all,” Axterion mused, seemingly almost to
himself.

“But, Grandpa, what about that big boom, when the
floor shook?” Danil piped in. “I could see smoke from my window, coming from
the palace.”

The boy might have been young and a rascal, but he was
no fool.

“Indigestion, nothing more,” Axterion replied,
apparently not entirely grasping what the young boy had said.

“What ‘boom,’ Danil?” Brannis asked.

“Just before you came down to dawn feast, you must
have heard it,” Danil insisted. “The whole floor shook, too!”

“Sorry, but I was soundly asleep, I fear,” Brannis
told him. “No one has said what it was?”

“It is probably an invasion! With dragons and warlocks
and ogres and forest spirits and wyverns and—”

“Enough, boy!” Axterion snapped. He muttered something
under his breath to the effect of “not raising a blathering idiot,” then
continued: “If that is a demon you brought back with you Brannis, Rashan or no,
I suspect that to be the cause.”

Brannis’s heart sank again. If Rashan—or whomever he
turned out to be—was an enemy of Kadrin, Brannis might bear responsibility for
whatever had just befallen at the palace. He was now unsure whether he was
worse off in real life or in his dream life.

“I should go, then, and find out,” Brannis said, then
turned to leave.

But his grandfather caught him by the arm. The old
man’s grip was feeble, but Brannis was too respectful—and careful of his
grandfather’s health—to pull free.

“Sit. Eat. You may command soldiers, boy, but you are
just a pawn here. The Inner Circle knows of your involvement, and if they wish
to consult you on the matter, they will send for you.

“Cook,” Axterion called out. “Bring out more mutton
and eggs. We have one more left for dawn feast.”

Reluctantly Brannis sat down. Axterion was still head
of the family, though he exerted his privilege infrequently. Brannis had a lot
of leeway to disobey, given that his advancement in the knighthood had little
relation to the Circle’s politics, but he also knew that his grandfather was in
the right. While he might offer some assistance to the Inner Circle, he would
have to wait for them to call for it.

Brannis tried to enjoy the mutton and eggs the cook
brought out, but was too preoccupied to appreciate them properly. On top of it,
he had developed a headache. It felt as if something had hit him on the back of
the head.

*
* * * * * * *

The expected summons came an hour or so later. Brannis
had gone back to his room and dressed properly for a formal visit to the Tower
of Contemplation, and buckled on Avalanche at his hip. To bide his time until
the messenger arrived, he had been playing with Danil, something that few in
the household had patience for.

The messenger arrived on horseback and had gotten the
grooms of the Solaran stable to saddle one of their horses and ready it for
Brannis. The message itself was curt to the point of rudeness: “Your presence
is required in the Sanctum. Be quick about it.” The messenger was clearly
uneasy, though Brannis could get no details. When he pressed for answers along
the way to the Tower, the best answer he got was: “They shall explain when you
arrive.”

There were a number of guards at the gate when they
arrived, far more than the token presence the Tower of Contemplation usually
warranted. Upon entering the building, there were sorcerers milling about
everywhere; it appeared that most of the Circle who lived within Kadrin were
waiting in the entry hall of the tower.

The messenger took the stairs, and Brannis followed,
wondering if there was any particular reason they were taking the slower way
up. All eyes turned to follow him as he walked up, keeping pace with the
briskly ascending messenger.

The messenger was short of breath by the time they
gained the top landing. Brannis had gotten used to traveling in armor, however,
and without it, he felt a bit lighter of foot and not quite so quick to tire.
Both men took a moment to gather themselves before approaching the Sanctum.
Brannis then followed the messenger up the short steps to the chamber itself.

“Sir Brannis Solaran,” the messenger announced him,
then quickly withdrew. He brushed past Brannis on his way down the stairs, his
eagerness to be elsewhere clearly apparent.

Brannis walked up into the Sanctum with some
apprehension, which only heightened as he observed the daylight streaming in.
His worry changed to confusion when he noticed that it was Rashan Solaran, and
not Gravis Archon, seated in the high sorcerer’s seat directly opposite the
entrance. Brannis entered the chamber and found Iridan there as well, along
with his sister Aloisha, and a young sorcerer he did not know by name.

“Good morning, Brannis,” Rashan said. “As you can see,
there have been changes made this morning. Now that all of you are here, I
shall explain this just once.

“Gravis Archon is dead, by my hand, on the charge of
treason against the Empire.”

As Rashan spoke, Brannis took quick stock of the Inner
Circle. There were two empty chairs, not including the one that Rashan now
occupied.

“Yes, Brannis, I see you checking. Your father Maruk
Solaran was complicit as well, as was Stalia Gardarus. Both are dead, also by
my hand.”

Brannis stared at Rashan in shock. He hated his
father, but in a way that many boys do. He resented and quarreled with him, and
sought his approval for so long that he had given up trying to achieve
it—though always secretly hoping he would find it regardless. He had not wanted
his father dead—perhaps chastened, but never dead.

“What had they done?” Aloisha asked, ever the
practical one. She was tall and slender, as were most of the Solarans, and
resembled Brannis enough that no one would doubt their relation.

“There is no emperor,” Rashan stated simply and then
paused, letting the reality of that brief sentence settle in. “Some forty
winters ago, Tameron the Second died of a sudden illness. His successor,
Dharus, was a young and sickly boy, and he died not long after. Rather than
seek out the next closest in line for the throne, those dead today conspired to
replace the imperial line with puppets of naught but aether, controlled by the
sorcerers handpicked by the high sorcerer.

“While I know that others were most certainly aware of
this arrangement …” Rashan glared around the room at the remaining members of
the Inner Circle. “… I will not further weaken the Empire by seeking out and
executing everyone who knew about the plot. For those still breathing, there is
a second chance. I am forgiving this transgression, but I shall not forget it
entirely.”

“So what now?” Iridan asked quietly.

Brannis noted that Iridan did not seem fearful of
Rashan but still seemed disturbed by the events that had taken place.

“We will do what the Inner Circle should have done in
the first place,” Rashan said. “We will search through the royal bloodlines and
find the rightful heir and have a coronation. It will be a new dynasty, but it
shall be a legitimate one. In the meantime, I will act as regent.” Rashan let
that last part hang, awaiting a challenge, should anyone offer one.

“By what right would you rule, if you just struck down
Gravis for the same offense?” asked Dolvaen, perhaps foolishly. He was ever the
righteous one among the council, claiming that he was not beholden to a
bloodline family and was thus more free to speak and act by his conscience.