The Hidden Fire (Book 2) (2 page)

“I’ll
never be able to fly with this,” Kyric said.

“Of
course you will.  This is the desert of light.”

“You
know, I do feel lighter.”  He shook his head to try to clear it.  He wanted to
say ‘Who are you?’ but it wouldn’t come out.  At last he pointed to himself and
said, “Kyric.”

“Rolirra.”

A
distant boom sounded, and thunder rolled across the cloudless morning sky.

“The
sun is rising and the firebird has come,” Rolirra said.  She pushed his arms
into the harness and tightened the straps.

“Now
we fly,” she said, breaking into a run back towards the dunes.

He
ran with her, a dozen steps and she dived forward, gliding effortlessly.  He
launched himself with her . . . and flew.  It was easy.  Each of his strides
was a small leap in itself, and when he pushed off he went a fair distance. 
Step, step, glide.

They
quickly reached the line of dunes and had to plow their way to the top.  He
turned as he heard a muffled roar behind them.

The
firebird was diving on the ship.  Feathers gleaming with streaks of gold,
brighter than the sunrise, it loosed a long tongue of flame as it passed over,
the sails and masts turning to pillars of fire.  It spread its gigantic wings
as it climbed away, turning to make another pass.

“We
must flee!” said Rolirra.  “The firebird will kill us.”

She
stepped, and leaped from the crest.  The desert floor lay lower on the far side
of the dunes, dotted with little knolls of sandstone.  They flew beyond the
base of the dune, leveling and gliding farther still, pushing off one of the
knolls, passing swiftly to the next and pushing off again.

They
sped along like racehorses, leaving the dunes behind, approaching a rocky
outcropping.  Kyric glanced back.  The firebird sat perched on the highest
dune, black smoke spreading across the sky.  Its head swung from side to side;
it was looking for them.

Far
to their left, the ground ended in a jagged stone lip, the edge of a cliff
perhaps.  Kyric caught up with Rolirra.

“That
way,” he said.  “We need to get below that drop-off before he sees us.”

They
turned nimbly with their wings, just a lean in that direction and they were on
a new tack, sprinting and making short quick glides.  They hit the edge of the
cliff at a full run and launched themselves.

Kyric
soared over an immense canyon, miles wide and thousands of feet deep.  The
floor was a maze of buttes and mesas splashed with reds and yellows.  They
lowered their heads and dived, streaking towards the ground.  The wind tore at
their hair, and their wings shuttered as they went faster and faster.

A
screeching cry echoed above.  The firebird banked over the canyon, folding its
wings back and plunging after them.  Rolirra dived even more steeply, almost
straight down, and Kyric followed.  The bamboo frame creaked and groaned and
the ground came rushing at him.  A cracking sound as they pulled out and
leveled off, but the wings held, and they sped along faster than arrows, just a
few feet above the stony floor of the canyon.

The
firebird began to gain on them.  Rolirra steered toward a forest of massive
stone columns, and they weaved a course around one then another as the firebird
closed.  Tongues of fire licked around the sides of the stone towers, and the
creature passed overhead.

“We
need to find a cave,” Rolirra called to him.  “A deep one.”

He
nodded to her.  “A cave with a cache of weapons.”

They
passed into the open, Rolirra leading them toward the canyon wall.  Far ahead
lay the ruins of some kind of structure, a fortress long fallen into itself. 
They stretched their glide but still touched ground a quarter mile short of the
ruins.  The firebird had circled and now dived for another pass.

Kyric
could see an opening in one of the ruin walls, and beyond, a chamber closed to
the sky.  They made straight for it, not looking back.  Kyric ran with all his
might and felt his heart was near to bursting on the glide.  He could hear the
wind in the wings of the firebird; he could feel the heat.  They weren’t going
to make it.

The
roar of the creature’s breath echoed in his ears as they flew through the
opening and crashed in a heap of dust, flesh, and flame.  Rolirra’s wings were
on fire, as were Kyric’s boots and breeches.  He tore them off and beat them
out on the floor.  Rolirra flung her still-burning wings out into the desert.

It
appeared to be a guard room.  There were several weapons piled in one corner. 
Kyric found a bow and a handful of arrows, all made of a shimmering silver
metal.  The bowstring was a wire of the same metal and quite intact.

Rolirra
brushed away the dust in one spot.  “There is a trap door here.”  She lifted
it.  “Steps down.  A cellar, or maybe a dungeon.”

Kyric
nocked an arrow and stood in the gap in the wall.  He was burned and bruised
and not in the mood to hide.  The firebird banked into a steep turn, circling
back.

A
little closer
.

He
raised the bow.

“No!”
said Rolirra, but it was too late.  He had already loosed the arrow.

He
hit the creature about mid-wing, the arrow knocking a few feathers loose.  The
firebird wheeled again and retreated up the canyon.

“What’s
wrong?” Kyric asked.

She
pointed to the feathers, three of them floating lazily to the ground like
falling leaves.  They each burst into flame the instant they touched, and the
fires grew, burning harder and unfolding until they were tall bonfires.  Then
something moved within the flames.

Three
lizards the size of wolfhounds came out of the fires and broke into a charge,
running toward them.

“Salamanders,”
said Rolirra.

Their
crimson scales sparkled in the sun.  Kyric nocked another arrow.  He aimed for
the head of the lead salamander and loosed, striking it in the shoulder.  The
creature barely flinched, still galloping across the hard sand, its jaw falling
open as it neared.

Rolirra
ran to the pile of weapons, finding a sword and a shield.  “Get down!” she
said.  “The spawn of the firebird have flaming breath as well.”

Kyric
jumped back as a long lance of fire stabbed through the opening.  Rolirra
dragged him down the steps.  There was a passage leading in one direction,
crisscrossed with beams of light shining through cracks in the walls and
ceiling.  Rolirra led him quickly along.  It turned left then right, then it
ended in a ramp leading up into bright sunshine.

“We
cannot go out,” said Rolirra.  “The firebird is not so hurt, and will be
waiting for us.  We must make a stand here.”

They
stood ready at the corner of the passage and listened.  It didn’t take long.

The
salamanders rounded the corner, the first two abreast.  Kyric instantly shot
one of them between the eyes, killing it outright.  The other turned a blast of
fiery breath on Rolirra.  It splashed against her shield as she closed with the
creature, her sword raised high.  She hewed its head off with a single stroke,
and the salamander’s green blood sprayed the walls of the corridor.

As
Kyric stepped back and reached for another arrow, the third creature spat a
stream of fire that engulfed him.  He twisted and screamed in agony.  Rolirra
let loose a war-cry, and thrust her sword into the ceiling of the passageway. 
There was a vibration, and then huge stones rained down.

Kyric
felt himself fall, then blackness.

He
woke to shouts on deck and the faint smell of smoke.  Aiyan’s hammock was empty. 
He could hear rattling and thumping and men cursing outside his door.

By
the time he pulled his boots on and ran out on deck the excitement had mostly
died down.  Aiyan stood chatting with the captain, and a thin cloud of smoke
from the forward part of the ship drifted on the breeze.  The sun had barely
risen.

“Nothing
to worry about,” said the captain.  “A little spark of a fire in the
forecastle, already extinguished.  Never a threat to the ship.”

Not
an outright lie, Kyric thought, but not the truth.  Anyone could see that on
the captain’s face.

Later,
when all had quieted and the ship returned to her routine, they stood on deck
with their practice swords.

“You
need to pay more attention to staying in the shade,” Aiyan said.

“What
do you mean?”

“You’re
badly sunburned.  What did you do yesterday, spend the whole day on deck?”

“I
don’t remember,” Kyric said.  But then he remembered the dream.  He hadn’t
noticed before, but he
was
burned a little.  His face felt hot and
tender, and his memory of the dream was suddenly very clear.  He felt like it
had really happened to him, even more so than with the ones where the
Unknowable Forces spoke to him.

They
entered the harbor at Rhyjusa the next day, and Kyric insisted on going ashore
to buy vegetables.  From a hill above the marketplace he could see beyond the
city.  There were some cultivated fields to the south and west along the little
river, but most of the land lay open in a patchwork of sandy soil and sparse
grasses.  In the Eddur of the age before the War of Mages, the city was called
Rhyon-i-Jusau
,
the forest at the waters.  Lush woodlands surrounded the city in those days.  Kyric
tried to imagine what kind of catastrophic sorcery could destroy so many miles
of ancient forest.

They
departed the next morning in a stiff breeze from the west and crossed the Gulf
of Lennaxes in only two days.  Isskiv was more of a large town than a city and had
been carved from a thick pine forest, what Rhyjusa had once been.  Light and shifting
winds made their southward journey along the Alerian coast a slow one.

At
practice the second day out Aiyan told him, “Today we will, umm, spar.  Too
many swordsmen will wait for an attack, thinking a parry and then a counter to
be the best defense.  Attacks are the key to any swordfight.  Far more attacks
hit home than ripostes.  So the rule today is no parries, no dodging — only
attacks.  I’ll give you a hint,” he said with a wink.  “Focus on distance and
timing.”

“Then
why have you been showing me so many defensive techniques?”

“Those
are for when you’re
late
.  Not on time.”

“So
I can attack any way I want?”

“Yes.”

“What
do I do if you parry and riposte?”

Aiyan
glared at him.  “You attack.”

The
next day Aiyan slipped his practice sword into his sash and had Kyric do the
same.  “I’ve shown you how to cut on the draw.  Today you will combine this
with first strike technique.  We shall stand still, and at some point I’ll
decide to draw and attack.  You must cut me before my sword has cleared the
sash.”

On
the first try Kyric didn’t come close.  It was he who got cut before his sword
cleared his sash.  “There’s no way I will ever get that fast,” he said.

“You
don’t need to be faster,” Aiyan said.  “You only need to be first.  You must
begin to move before I do, at the very moment I decide to kill you.”

This
time it was Kyric who glared.

Aiyan
tried to suppress a smile.  “This is your first lesson in the knowing of
moments.  If you are truly empty of self
—
much like what you already do in your
archery — you can feel certain vibrations on the spirit plane.  You can feel my
intention to attack you.  This one is not so hard as it seems, but it will be
harder in practice because I mean you no harm.  With someone who really wants
to kill you, it is much easier to feel, I can promise. 
If
you are not filled
up with everything in this world.”

Not
so simple to do, thought Kyric.  He felt like he was full of new thoughts.

“I’ll make this as easy on you as I
can,” Aiyan said.  “I’ll let you close your eyes.”

That
night they stood on deck and watched a shower of falling stars streak down from
the heavens.  A soft murmur of voices drifted past from a group of sailors who stood
in the glow of the foremast lantern.  They lit their pipes and smoked while one
of them played the squeeze box and hummed a low chantey.

“Last
day of summer,” Aiyan said.

“I
hadn’t realized,” said Kyric.  “I’ve lost track of the date.  I’m not even sure
what day it is.”

“It’s
Thirstday,”  said Aiyan lazily, watching another star fall.  He turned to face
Kyric.  “Emptiness is the foundation of almost all the weird arts.  When you
make yourself empty, the Unknowable Forces rush in — whether you want them to
do so or not.  They are one, but they are many as well.  Somehow, through your
years of archery I’m sure, you’ve learned a good bit about how to find
emptiness at need.

“The
way is to channel an individual aspect of the Unknowable to suit our need,
rather like picking out the melody of a single instrument from a full orchestra. 
The aspect we use, for example, to find directions, comes to me as, ah,” Aiyan
couldn’t help but grin a little, “a funny feeling at the tip of my nose when it
is pointing the right direction.  But it’s different for almost everyone. 
Master Bortolamae once told me that for him it was a sound he could follow. 
But be aware that we are not commanding the Unknowable, rather we allow it to
use
us
for . . . let us say, mutual benefit.  And there are aspects we
call the Designing Powers.  They have their own way and their own plans.”

“And
they care not for the will or wellness of man, or dragon, or firebird,” Kyric
said, reciting a lesson.  “The sisters may not have taught me the weird, but I
was
raised in a rune temple.”

“And
did they tell you how to keep those forces at bay?”

Kyric
looked out across the dark sea.  “Mother Nistra used to say that each man
possesses an inner fire that can light the way.”

Aiyan
nodded, holding up his locket.  “For we who follow the Way of the Flame, that
spirit fire is joined to another, the one we carry here.”  He opened the
locket, and when Kyric saw the ghost flame, he felt a mystery greater than any
he had felt in the rune temple.  Greater than when he had looked upon the
dreamstone.

Aiyan’s
eyes burned with the reflection of the flame.  “This is at the heart of a
Knight of the Flaming Blade.  Candidates of the Order continue to train while
on Esaiya, as do we all, but Esaiya is not for training.  Any man who arrives
there will have had years of training from his benefactor, and must be skilled
with sword, bow, and the weird.  This is why the Unknowable Forces denied you
admittance when you tried to swim the narrows.”

Aiyan
hadn’t mentioned that before this.  Kyric didn’t know that he had known.

“But
there are many men with these skills who cannot be a Knight of the Flaming
Blade.  Esaiya is a quest — a journey to discover an inner sympathy with the
mystery of the flame.  When Master Sorrin split the Pyxidium, he not only released
an aspect of the Unknowable, he fixed his own spirit to this world.”

“Are
you saying that his spirit did not pass on when he died, that it resides in the
flame?”

“Yes, it is the ghost of his own inner
fire blended with that of the Unknowable itself.  To touch the flame, to be
atoned to it, is the test of Esaiya.”

When
Kyric awoke he was still lying on the floor of the passageway.  He saw relief
on Rolirra’s face.

“How
long have I been out?”

“For
days,” she said.

His
skin felt like it was still on fire, but he could see that she had picked the
burnt clothing off him, cleaned him up, and had fashioned a loincloth for him out
of what remained of his clothes.  He tried to sit up but she placed her hands
on his chest and gently pushed him back down.

“Take
it slowly,” she said.  “You came close to dying.”

His
flesh no longer burned where she touched him.  She leaned forward to adjust the
wad of cloth under his head, and he slipped his arms around her.

She
pulled away, smiling broadly, almost laughing.  “I do not know you well enough
for that.”

He
tried to tell her that he wasn’t trying to seduce her, that it was the way her
touch took away his pain.  His mouth opened and his lips moved, but he couldn’t
make a sound.  Well, it would have been half a lie anyway.

He
eased himself up to one elbow.  The passage had collapsed at the corner,
burying the last salamander.  Rolirra had dragged the beheaded one from the
rubble and cut a long slit down its side.

“The
firebird?” he asked.

She
nodded and pointed up.

“If
we wait longer, might it go away?”

Her
look told him that it wouldn’t.  “I have a way past it,” she said.

Next
to the headless salamander lay a bladder that had been fashioned into a crude
canteen.  It leaked a dark green liquid.

“The
blood of the salamander,” she said.  “It can protect us.  There must be a way
out of the desert nearby.  Do you think that you can find it?”

“What
kind of a way out?”

“I
do not know.  Will you not be able to see it?”

“Perhaps,”
he said, “once we get up there.”  He really didn’t know what she meant.

She
smeared the sticky green blood all over herself.  She rubbed it into her hair
and between her toes, then she handed the bladder to Kyric so he could cover
her back.  He painted her shoulder blades with his fingertips, and ran his
thumb slowly down her spine.  Her flesh was so soft.

She
made an impatient sound, so he finished quickly and started in on himself.  He
realized that he had put on some weight, that he was a little broader in the
shoulder and harder, more muscular.  When it came time for her to smear his
back, she didn’t hurry.

Rolirra’s
sword had broken and her shield was just a lump of slag, but Kyric found the
bow and one arrow.  They crept up the ramp and peered into the bright sunlight. 
Before them lay a featureless salt flat.  Kyric scanned the sky for the
firebird but saw nothing.

Rolirra
broke into a slow, loping run, heading straight across the flats, and Kyric ran
with her, the salamander blood quickly drying to a powder.  They ran for miles,
casting no shadows, the sun overhead and the sky empty.  Suddenly Rolirra
stopped.

“I
thought it was here, but now . . . can you not find it?”

“The
way out of the desert?  These salt flats seem to go on forever.”

“Do
not say that!”  She looked angry now.  “You have to find the way.  You have
to.  You do not understand,” she cried.  “I’m
lost
.”

Something
made him look up.  The firebird wheeled above them.  It dipped one wing and
rolled into a dive.  Rolirra ran, but Kyric stood and nocked his arrow — he
would shoot the creature right in the eye, the same way he had shot . . .
someone . . . somewhere.

He
pushed the thought away.  No time — the firebird bore down on him.  He looked
into its eye and loosed the arrow.  It glanced harmlessly off the creature’s
beak, and then came the long tongue of flame.

It
was like stepping into a blast furnace, only he didn’t burn.  The stream of
fire cut a black swath in the salt and passed over Rolirra.  She turned back to
him, panic in her eyes, much of the green powder gone, now floating on the air
as grey ash.  Very little remained on his own skin.  The firebird climbed away
from them.

All
around him the air blurred in the heat of the firebird’s wake.  In the corner
of his eye, a golden dust-devil snaked a course across the flats, winding back
and forth.

“This
way,” he called to Rolirra.  He took her arm and pulled her into a run.  The
firebird slowly made a wide circle and they beat a tattoo with their footfalls.

The
whirlwind curved and weaved its way toward them.  It quickly came closer, but
the firebird was quicker.

“You
have salamander blood on your back,” she said to him, “and my front is still
covered.”

They
stopped and stood front to back as the firebird made its fiery pass.  The
ground blackened all around them, but they were unhurt.  Kyric felt singed in a
few places.

“Now
run,” he said, “fast as you can.”

The
firebird beat its wings swiftly now, banking into a tight turn, its breast
scales glowing red hot.  Kyric ran straight at the whirlwind as it grew taller,
gaining in fury, and taking Rolirra’s hand, he jumped into the flow.  Moments
later they floated in spinning sand, carried along in the hot grip of the wind. 
Kyric tried to turn and look for the firebird, but couldn’t move.  It was like
floating and being pinned at the same time.