The trail of flame, p.1
The Trail of Flame, page 1
The Trail of Flame
The Seven Isles
Book Two
A.R. Knight
Contents
1. The Flying Seas
2. Below
3. What Rises Must Fall
4. The Gambler
5. Bolts and Blades
6. In Words, Ideas
7. A Mark
8. The Long Dark
9. Deviant Delights
10. Exodus
11. High Society
12. Into The Heat
13. Chance Meeting
14. Cave Walking
15. Spy Game
16. Protectors
17. Cave Demon
18. A New Look
19. Lava Rolling
20. Remnants
21. Raft
22. Prisoner
23. Hostages
24. Rescue Mission
25. The Wastes
26. A Test of Loyalty
27. Rock Run
28. Return
29. Bandit Camp
30. A Guardian Again
31. A Ship, A Shot
32. On The Water
33. Bringing Her Back
34. A Short Career
35. The Risen
36. The Rescue
37. The Great Forge
38. Surface Pressure
39. A New You
40. The Wind Queen
An Excerpt from The Wrath of Rivers
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
The Flying Seas
The lithe man held the rapier point-forward, the silver blade destined to strike right at Wax’s heart. With his hair tied back, his face as narrow as his sword, the Kance fighter looked every bit the Windmaster his isle proclaimed him to be.
Wax bobbed his feet, rolling them with the ship’s own shimmering silver-and-wood deck. The Kance ship cut through the waves, all its edges blinding in the sunlight as the rough-and-tumble regularity of a sea voyage found itself thwarted by cunning construction.
Wax himself lacked that beauty, his weave not doing much to keep him warm in the slicing sea breeze, his loose pants snapping, his climbing shoes biting at the surface in the one effective accessory he had.
Oh, and his Foti blade. The blue sword picked up the ocean’s reflection, carrying the sea in its waved steel. Thicker than the Kance man’s rapier, the Foti blade would have to use its strength to make up for its stubbier length.
Bets to that effect danced the deck around them, the sailors not actively steering the ship taking their midday break to see how badly their friend could beat Wax up and down the vessel.
One call in Wax’s corner came from his right, where his older brother Quik, holding onto one of the many rope loops against the Kance ship’s railing, hollered sage advice: don’t stand still.
Beside him, her bamboo staff sticking up over her back like some tree sprouting from her shoulders, stood his sister. Bliss held a nervous look, like she had almost the entire journey, and Wax tried to offer up a confident grin.
The man wouldn’t kill him, after all.
“Ready?” The Windmaster asked, reedy voice mashing with the crackling splash the ship made as it danced through another wave.
“Always.” Wax shifted his stance, brought his right foot forward and put the blade into a double grip.
Last time he’d lost his weapon, sent it skittering across the deck to leave a divot in the polished wood side. They’d had him scrubbing the dishes every night since, and Wax wouldn’t want to see what further punishment the Kance might devise should his Vis clumsiness do any more damage.
Then again, what did they expect? Wax wasn’t born on the seas. He was a jungle man, made for vines, for swinging through treetops and dashing into leafy groves.
The Windmaster cared not, and came on with a fast three-step, cutting the distance between them to a hair. As the man’s angle predicted, the rapier came in for a heart-stopping strike, one Wax batted away with his own sword.
A too-heavy parry. While he’d moved his thick blade all the way across his chest to knock the rapier aside, his opponent merely needed a wrist flick to get the stab back on target.
For once, the Kance ship gave Wax an out: on the backside of its latest wave slice, the ship dipped forward into the valley between the rolling monsters. Wax used the momentum, cutting left and forward with his shoulder. The rapier snipped a loose thread with its thrust, but missed Wax’s body, giving Wax a solid charge right at his opponent’s chest.
That Kance swiftness didn’t help here, the impact barely slowing Wax down and throwing the Windmaster into a flailing backpedal, one that should’ve ended the fight save for his opponent planting his right leg hard, then leaning forward and placing both hands, rapier slapped down in the left one, on the deck.
“Don’t let him recover!” Quik’s voice rose over the jeers and cheers, collectors and betters sensing an imminent opportunity.
Wax went on through the shoulder charge, taking his brother’s advice and bearing down on the Windmaster. He brought the Foti blade up for a two-handed smash, a fatal end. Surely the man would yield, throw up his arms and give up.
Instead the Windmaster slipped his left hand low, on the rapier hilt’s very end, and with his wrist, popped the blade’s point up, right where Wax ought to run himself through.
Or would have, if the fighter didn’t pull the point away, swiping the blade left and letting Wax catch himself, come to a stop as the ship began to climb into the next wave.
“Your brother gives you bad advice,” the Windmaster said, standing. He tapped Wax’s blade with the rapier. “Position is everything, whether your sword is nimble or slow.”
“I’m sure I’ll learn that sometime.” Wax looked at the blue blade. He’d yet to win a fight with the damn thing. “At least I caught you with the shoulder?”
The Windmaster chuckled, “At least that.”
* * *
The trio took their last dinner on the ship’s deck, calming seas as the vessel approached Foti allowing them a sedate meal beneath the ethereal sails. Kance had a way with blues, and the cerulean colors faded to white and purple depending on how the sunlight hit their thin canvases. More long than wide, the sails found the wind like Wax might’ve a vine in the jungle’s heart: with swooping precision.
Even now the sailors, stationed at three separate tills along the ship’s length, barked out calls to one another to keep the vessel flying across the water.
As the ship’s captain had told them upon leaving Vis: Rana might flow on the seas, but Kance would float above them.
Wax’s home? Kitaye preferred the ships to come to it. Seafarers could be found on the far coast—the thought of them bent Wax into a frown—but their craft, svelte boats built from cultivated, fallen leaves wouldn’t last long in the ocean’s rough-and-tumble grasp.
Then again, three days out and Wax already missed the feel of loam between his toes, of trees above and cooking spices lingering in the air.
“Better than this, anyway,” Wax muttered, sipping another leek soup spoonful. The thin liquid barely qualified, though the Kance captain made clear Wax could barter for something tastier.
As if Wax had anything to barter with.
“You muttering to yourself again?” Quik asked.
“Maybe.” Wax refused to admit what he’d really been doing: talking to Pan, picturing his friend with them, ready to join Wax in critiquing the culinary malfeasance forced upon their bodies. “Do you like this?”
“I accept it.” Quik shrugged. “When we’re out on long hunts, we live on what we can scavenge. This isn’t much different.”
“Thought Renewals would get something better.”
‘Take it up with Noctia,’ Bliss signed. His sister finished her soup, kept tilting her eyes towards the ship’s bow, as if she could spot Foti first. She looked less green now that the ship had passed into flat seas. ‘Maybe they’ll give you a salmon if you ask real nice.’
“Probably only if I give them this first.” Wax reached up to his chest, where the ever-present warmth lingered. There, slotted into a copper-colored necklace, sat a fragment of Vis. A bright emerald no larger than Wax’s thumb, the skar tickled Wax’s nerves whenever he touched it, like brushing a numbing leaf. Its faint voice now whispered nonsense in his head in the quiet moments, an insect he couldn’t silence but had learned to ignore. “How many do you think I’ll get?”
‘Every single one,’ Bliss signed. ‘I didn’t join you to see you fail.’
“Makes two of us,” Quik added. “Finish the soup, Wax. The next step starts tomorrow.”
Chapter 2
Below
The cave ate their footfalls. Svarde and Kivi, the rock-lizard ferrite, walked at the small column’s head. Svarde’s torch sputtered in his right hand, its glinting flame finding and destroying shadows in the jagged tunnel. Maena’s information said this cave would keep going deeper and deeper, far along to a point where every explorer failed to return.
Down there, somewhere, was the fiend’s source.
The cave wasn’t dead rock. Mosses and mushrooms poked out from crannies. Water dripped and joined them here and there, sluicing along through the earth. For the first hour, too, the Rana sailors broke up the journey with songs.
That ended when they reached the Aegis.
Like a spiderweb built from silver light, the Aegis ran along beneath the seven isles, protecting them. A gift from the gods in their last moments, or so the
Maena, the Rana captain, decked out now in her full deep blue leather and emerald cuirass, matching blue-and-green pants, joined Svarde at the lead while sailors grumbled behind.
“So this is it,” Maena said, reaching out and touching the filaments. A hand-length apart, the lines ran through the rock, and Svarde guessed if he chased them all the way, they’d lead right back to Catya, there in that prison.
“Beyond here we’ll have no protection,” Svarde said, his right hand going up to the axe on his back. “The fiends will be undeterred.”
“Are you scared, Guardian?”
“I’m not a Guardian anymore.” Svarde didn’t look at Maena, kept his eyes ahead into the gloom. “My name’s Svarde. Call me that, or nothing.”
“The march making you sensitive?”
“I’m keeping it simple. You should, too.”
Maena jerked her head back towards the column, the eyes peaking past torches to look at their leaders.
“All of them understand we’re likely to die down here, Svarde. They all have their reasons for coming, reasons that came from the lives they’ve led. Don’t ask them to throw that away.”
“All I’m asking is for their swords and crossbows when the fiends come.”
Maena nodded, “That, I think, they can deliver.” She stepped back from Svarde, faced her sailors. “After this, the songs stop. We move in quiet. Watch for danger, keep your feet steady. Trust your friends, your wits, your abilities, and we will not fail.”
Kivi snorted. Svarde agreed. Grand speeches always paled against harsh realities. Maena’s would fare no better down here.
Walking past the Aegis didn’t clear the air, didn’t make Svarde feel any lighter, heavier, sicker or happier. It did, though, raise the hairs on his neck, set his eyes to sweeping the cave on a constant patrol.
For a long time the cave had offered them nothing. Only a single path with winding turns, some steep and shallow sections. After the Aegis, though, the makeup changed.
The earth went wild.
Not five minutes after the filaments the tunnel burst open into a sprawling cavern, one broken up by towering pillars, irregular rock stomping on one another in a purple-pale mash-up. Lines carved by unnatural means scraped along the walls as Svarde and the crew poured into the broad space, fanning out with torches held high. Rocky teeth hung down from the ceiling, some dripping water onto equally large spires rising from the floor, some as tall as Svarde and twice as wide.
“A man could get lost in here,” Svarde muttered, waving his torch around, scouring the wet ground for a sign.
A sign of what, Svarde didn’t know. But he’d take a fiend’s trail. The monsters had to come from somewhere down here, and a claw track might lead them right to where they needed to go.
Might lead Svarde to where he’d wanted to be ever since Catya picked up that last skar, ever since becoming the Aegis went from fanciful dream to iron certainty.
Ever since he’d given up the one he’d loved for seven isles that didn’t give a single damn about her.
Maena broke Svarde’s reverie, calling for a break, a chance to drink some water, eat some of the salted meats they’d brought along. Svarde and Kivi rejoined the crew, found their several dozen setting up in their clicques, torches planted where they could.
The Rana sailors had a different cast about them now. Their tanned, sea-sprayed bodies hunched, their eyes roaming like scared beasts. A hand free was a hand on a saber hilt. Others checked once, twice that their crossbows were loaded.
“They’re scared,” Svarde said to Maena, the two of them, as they often were, sitting apart from the others. “We’re not even one day along and some look like they might crack.”
“Few have been in a cave before, Svarde. Much less one that runs this long.” Maena frowned at her own dull white fish strip. “Reality gives us a different taste than our dreams.”
“We’re far away from dreams now.”
“They’ll come around. Give them time.”
Kivi snorted, Svarde nodded. Time was all well and good, but they didn’t have time to give. Already, new sounds trickled up through the rocks, not the dripping water, the whistling wind, but the scrabble of claws on stone. The far off cries as beasts found battle, or purpose. The clicks, clacks, coughs as things unimagined took notice of their next meal.
Svarde stood, drew his right axe and held it aloft. It caught the torchlight, drew the eyes from every Rana sailor. Heaped over with Whent furs, his Guardian Foti-forged gear beneath, Svarde hulked. The weight gave him fortitude, bolstered his purpose, and he let the sailors find some solace in his form.
“Brothers, sisters,” Svarde began as the Foti often did. “Where we go now, monsters await. Demons, even. Creatures for which we have no words. I look at you and see what might pass as fear in lesser people, but that must now be turned to courage. For remember, you travel with soldiers, with fighters.” Svarde nodded at his axe. “We will see the worst before this is done, but when it is over, it will be the fiends that know fear. Not us.”
A few heartened grins caught Svarde’s ending, some others held up their swords, their waterskins. For a brief moment, the grand speech had its hold.
Until a howl, rising from the deep and coming closer, stole it all away.
Chapter 3
What Rises Must Fall
The Wound descended at Ami’s feet, its darkness dropping far below anyone’s sight. Sticks, stones, and even some lit torches tossed down vanished without sound into the Wound’s all-consuming black. Nothing thrown that way ever returned.
But plenty rose up.
“Be ready,” Catya whispered, the Aegis moving back on her stone chair, settling on the cushions and looking as frail as ever. Her robes looked to bury her body, too large by half, but no doubt measured right not long ago. “They are coming.”
The Aegis’s warning was unnecessary, as the flashes around the dimming necklace at her chest worked well enough as clues to what approached. The seven skars resembled dull rocks now, their faint colors the slightest reminder of what they once were.
“Wards,” Ami said, drawing her sword and bringing both hands to grip the great blade.
Foti-crafted, etched with glimmering orange topaz along the center, Flamebreak earned its namesake. The silverblack blade seemed to draw in the torchlight, glowing in its reflection.
The two Wards, Najahn guards in spotless purple-black plate armor, chakrams hooked into their backs and voulges at the front, stepped from their watchposts inside the dome.
They stood on rock, albeit clean rock, and the smooth gray surface let the trio spread out to cover the Wound. Ami put herself before Catya, while the two Wards took opposite sides, forming a triangle around the pit.
The scrabbling drew closer, raking as large paws and claws dug into stone and loosed it from the walls. Heaving lungs growled and huffed with every pull.
They were close.
Ami drew in a breath, felt Flamebreak’s wrapped hilt beneath her hands. Her armor sat heavy, perfect on her shoulders, her legs. A recent addition, that: with the fiends coming more frequently, Ami had to assume any day might bring a breakthrough.
At least this time she was here, ready to fulfill her role.
“Glad I get to be your Guardian one more time,” Ami said without looking back to Catya.
